Their injuries settled down in intensity over the next few days. After the initial twenty-four hours, James found that the pain ebbed to be little worse than a particularly nasty blast-off. What stuck around like an unwanted visitor, however, was the mental toll.

None of them left the dormitory if they could help it, and when they did, their movements were careful: eyes scanning each room, shoulders hunched in premature defence. The reactions they got from passing agents regarding their visible injuries varied wildly, from sympathetic frowns, to smirks, to complete indifference.

They got through most of the week without eventfulness. Their routine slowed to a monotony that almost tipped boredom into play, despite their perturbation.

Following their daily excursion for food supplies, James decided rest was just about the most productive thing he could do, and resigned himself to the couch. The closest thing to sleep he managed was slipping in and out of an uncomfortable doze for half an hour, before being pulled awake by the chime of their laptop. Groggy, he heaved himself to a sitting position on the sofa and rubbed at his eyes.

"Dat a message?" Meowth asked from somewhere behind him. Jessie knelt by the coffee table and jiggled the cursor to light up the screen. She tapped in their password, and gave an affirmative nod of her head.

"Yeah- new orders, it looks like," she said. Her eyes moved back and forth as she read. James shifted so he could see the screen over her shoulder.

Agent(s),

Your team has been reassigned to carry out independent operations on the field. Agents must report back to headquarters after location changes or the completion of a mission. Extra operations are permitted if they do not pose risk to the security of Team Rocket or its whereabouts. Operations involving or risking a high level of destruction or violence must be pre-approved by headquarters. Finances/ equipment exceeding a team's monthly allowance may be granted upon request. Weekly reports to headquarters are mandatory. Agents must carry their communication devices at all times, and remain online.

Glory to Team Rocket


It was early evening when they left headquarters. James ached all over- a fact not helped by the backpack of supplies pressing down on his shoulders- but as they stepped out into the open air, greeted by a horizon lined with lilac clouds and the rush of a bitter wind, he felt something nearing euphoria. There was the world again, unblemished and vibrant and here.

"Ya remember where we parked da balloon?" Meowth asked. It was an old joke, but the two humans chuckled anyway.

They reached the field where they'd last landed in less than ten minutes. Around them, the grass rippled with hushed swishes, shades of gold and yellow catching in the fading sunlight.

"Back on the field in every sense," James quipped as they began to wrestle with the tarp that covered the basket. "It's- It's great, isn't it?" He sighed and broke into a smile. "I can't tell you how relieved I am."

Jessie didn't look up from the peg she was working out of the ground. "Mm."

He stopped what he was doing. "What's wrong?"

"No, no, I agree," Jessie said. "It is great. Anything that puts distance between us and that psycho is a plus in my book."

James and Meowth jolted simultaneously at her remark.

"Jessie!" James hissed. "What if-"

"What, you think Carter has us bugged? That someone's listening to us?" Jessie shook her head and scoffed. "I don't think we're that important to them. Besides- if we were bugged he would have found out about a whole load of crap that we'd have been killed for by now."

"Well, it wouldn't hurt to go easy on the boss-bashin'," Meowth muttered.

"Yeah, okay. But look- what I was saying was..." She paused to wet her lips. "We're away from those missions. Good. Fine. But all that shit's still happening." Her eyelids fell shut as her face knotted into a frown. "I've been following the news around our last mission," she said, "and it turns out the woman we watched get shot used to be a part of some cartel before her Team Rocket days. Had a name for herself back in Johto. So now all the headlines are screaming about her and her gang having shot up that guard and robbing the place."

"You think it- what we saw- was a distraction?" James stammered.

"What else could it have been?" Jessie said. "Sure, Carter told us she was a traitor or whatever- but I checked, and she was still reported to have been in that cartel until a month or so ago. She can't have been in Team Rocket for more than what- a couple of weeks? That's barely long enough to find your way around HQ, let alone figure out a plan of betrayal."

James swallowed as he took in this new information. Killing traitorous agents was one thing- of that, he was not confident that Giovanni had been innocent- but to have someone offed purely to divert attention away from Team Rocket was another matter entirely. That meant that anyone could go.

Jessie put her hands on the rim of the basket and swung her legs over. "Let's get the burners going," she said. "I want to get out of here."


When they found a suitably secluded spot to land, out in a barren forest, it was near dusk. Surrounded by deadwood, collecting kindling was easy, and within ten minutes they had the hiss and crackle of a steady fire for background noise. Jessie sat flicking twigs at the thrashing flames, stony eyes glinting orange and red.

"We need to do something," she said. Her statement caught James off guard; he looked back at her, his stomach light with building dread.

He released the air that had caught at the back of his throat and steadied his breathing. "If..." James cast a precautionary glance around, half-expecting to catch sight of a listening device poking out of the pebbled dirt, or some silent pursuer looming behind him. "If you're sure that woman's death was some sort of set-up-"

"I am."

"- then there's all the more reason we should go!"

Jessie's face fell. "Oh, not this again."

"I know you don't want to just let all this happen, but there's nothing we can do about it! We might as well get out with our lives- I could talk to my parents, make a deal with them- if they knew my life's in danger-"

"You're givin' up without tryin'!" Meowth interrupted him. "I get dat you're brickin' it Jim, but don't gimme dat rubbish."

James waved his hands in exasperation. He was exhausted of those looks they kept giving him- ones of quiet superiority. As if their bravado was worth it, to hold the moral high-ground. They were thoughtless.

"What, then?" he snapped. "What do you want to do about it?"

"I want to kill him," Jessie replied.

James surprised himself by laughing. The sound was bitter, and he didn't like it. He expected Jessie to lash back, but she just regarded him with a slight frown.

"It's the only way he's going to be out of the picture for good," she continued. "I'm not pretending I know how the hell to do it yet, but at least we know it can be done."

"How so?" James asked.

"Giovanni's dead enough, isn't he?"

Meowth edged forwards, closer to her. "Are ya... Are ya serious?"

"Yeah." Jessie prodded at the fire; a few glowing twigs crumbled from the stack. "I've been thinking a lot about all of the chaos recently- I'm sure we all have- and I... I think it's our only hope of stopping all this. People are getting killed left and right for no good reason, and Carter's only been in power a little over a month." She turned to James. "Think about Mondo," she said. "You want him in an organisation like this? And before you tell me we can just scoop him up before we make a run for it, there are plenty more kids like him who won't have us to save them."

James breathed in and tried not to let her words sink in too deep. "Jessie, if there was anything we could realistically do about it-"

"There is!" Jessie scowled at the ground. "You think I don't know there's risk, is that it? I know we might very well get ourselves killed. Thinking about that... You two dead... Nothing terrifies me more. But there's a chance we won't fail. And I can't ignore that."

Silence took hold for a moment, before Meowth replied: "Okay. Yeah. I'm in."

The scene unfolded before James like a bizarre screenplay he'd missed the rehearsal for.

"Wait- Wait, stop," he spluttered. "You're talking about killing somebody! We can't-" He stopped mid-sentence, waiting for his thoughts to settle into structure. "It's crazy. I hear what you're saying about abandoning people, but it's not our responsibility. It was their choice to join."

"Arceus, James, have a backbone." Jessie spat the words with such sharp anger that James felt himself flinch. "Not everyone's as lucky as you, you know. People like me, we don't get a choice. We didn't join Team Rocket 'cause it seemed like a quirky way of livening things up. We don't have mansions to run home to when things get rough."

He could feel tears already building beneath his eyelids, and willed them not to fall. That would only drive her point home: he was weak. A rich kid who bit off more than he could chew.

"Hey, easy, Jess," Meowth cut in softly.

James gambled on a reply, not entirely sure if his voice would hold. "You know it isn't like that," he said. The words tremored, wispy.

"Oh, what- your millionaire fiancee has a screw loose and Mummy and Daddy don't win parents of the year?" Jessie's eyes were colder than he'd ever seen them trained on him. "Forgive me if I don't cry for you."

"Jessie!" Meowth hissed.

"He takes it all for granted," Jessie muttered, then planted her hands on her knees and pushed herself off the ground. "I'm going to sleep," she announced flatly, bundling up her outstretched sleeping bag and stuffing it under her arm. "See you tomorrow." The cutting edge to her voice had faded, but there was no warmth in the goodbye either. James thought it better to keep his mouth shut. As he watched her trudge away from their small clearing into the dark of the forest, Meowth sat down next to him.

"She don't mean it," the feline told him. "She's just... Passionate 'bout dese t'ings, y'know?"

"Are you really going to go along with it?" James asked without turning his head.

Meowth sighed. "I ain't condonin' Jessie sayin' all dat stuff, but I agree with her- I'm sick of bein' idle while people croak left an' right. An' I don't t'ink we should just ignore it an' run."

"But you'd kill somebody?"

"I ain't sayin' you should want to do it. Just dat... We might need to."


James spent a long time that night staring at the sky. It was an oddly pleasant sleeplessness; he was hyper-sensitive to the faint rustles caught in the breath of the wind, the tint of light pollution in the distance, the stars that seemed to multiply the longer he looked.

It was all so beautiful. Yet they wanted him to throw it away and let them do the same. Logic dictated they were either crazy or not thinking straight.

The idea of losing them- really losing them- settled in his mind for long enough to send a ripple of horror through his body. He lurched up so he was sitting and set his view on the fire, chasing the thought away with the heat of the flames.


Jessie had returned when he woke up the next morning. She and Meowth sat eating baked beans from cans, mumbling to each other sleepily. Having noticed James' movement as he got out of his sleeping bag, she rolled an unopened tin across the dirt to him.

"Look..." Jessie fidgeted with the hem of her skirt. "I'm sorry I said those things to you. It wasn't fair." Before James could reply, she cleared her throat, and continued, "I should have given you time to think about it."

He listened for any hint of disguised feeling in her words, trying to discern whether he was truly in the clear. But she sounded flat, and he couldn't tell if it was a side effect of her apology, or restrained bitterness.

"It's okay," he said. "Thanks."

James took a plastic fork out of their food basket, picked up the can, and peeled back the lid before stabbing the contents. The sauce was congealed, moulded to the shape of the metal cylinder, but as their food supplies went it was one of their better breakfasts.

"Suppose we should make a plan for today," Meowth said. "Better dat we have somethin' ta send back ta HQ."

"Ugh- in that case, let's make it as easy as possible," Jessie groaned. "Something low-risk that gets us quick money."

Meowth scratched his neck. "Well, da quickest plans would be a hold-up or gettin' ahold of someone's bank account."

"Neither one of those ideas fills me with joy," James said, smiling weakly.

"I know we're not ones to talk morals, but after everything that's happened recently I'm not sure I have the heart to take someone's last cent," Jessie agreed. "And the last thing I feel like doing is pointing a gun at a civilian."

"Okay... Den we hit a place wid lotsa dough ta lose," Meowth suggested. "Go for a subtle approach an' leave quietly widout scarin' nobody."

Jessie smirked. "That almost sounds legal," she said. "We'll be volunteering for the community before you know it."

"Ya in? We ain't too far from a city."

With the realisation that they were waiting for his verdict, James shrugged. "Sure, let's do it."

In comparison with their other plans, a heist sounded like child's play.


He rolled his shoulders back in the stiff fabric of the navy blazer Jessie had thrown his way from their mismatched stockpile of disguises. She donned a blouse and chinos, her hair tucked under a bowler hat. It was as aristocratic as they could manage to look.

They'd been scouting a jewellery store from the bench down the road for the best part of an hour, watching for security, counting staff. The street was crowded- it couldn't have been far off rush hour.

"You ready?" Jessie asked.

Adrenaline rose. He told himself that was a good thing. "Yeah. Let's go."

She left first, slotting into the human traffic. James tapped the heel of his shoe against the cobbled pavement until he felt enough time had passed to follow.

The store wasn't too busy, but enough potential customers swanned around the displays for his entrance to go unnoticed. He spotted Jessie in the corner of his eye, drumming her nails on a glass case. Swiveling on her heel, she flagged down the pacing manager.

"Excuse me- is it possible to try these on?" she asked. The manager beamed and nodded his head.

"Certainly, ma'am." He took a ring of keys from his belt, taking a few seconds to find the right one before unlocking the cabinet. "Shopping for any special occasion?"

"Oh, not really," Jessie answered. "My collection was just looking a little bare." James watched her slip a ring onto her finger and hold out her hand for inspection. Mid-preen, she caught his eye. He returned a shallow nod.

The display case he'd had pre-selected in his mind was by the wall across the room, filled with rows of earrings that winked in multicolour against the glass. He walked to it gradually, pretending to browse on the way, and when he was as sure as he could be that no one's focus was on him, he edged his fingertips under the lid.

James exerted just a little pressure at first, testing the waters, then tensed his arm as he began to pull upwards. Nothing. The beginnings of worry started to take root- what if they'd overestimated the security? He ignored the idea and checked his surroundings. Nobody looked back, so he tried again, this time with both hands. Most of his effort was mental, trying not to let the strain show on his face. The alarm began to scream a couple of seconds later.

He stumbled backwards, genuinely startled for a moment. All activity around him ground to a quick halt- the shoppers turned their heads around the store, hunting the source of the noise. It wasn't long before he was approached by the manager, who had apparently worked out the alarm's root.

"I don't know what happened," James told him. Though the man stood a mere metre away, he had to raise his voice to a shout just to be audible. "Maybe I leaned on it too hard? Sorry!"

The manager frowned, circling the cabinet before crouching down by its lock and fumbling through his keys. James risked a glance to the side and caught sight of Jessie's back as she slipped out through the entrance.

After the manager had unlocked the case, he turned another key in a slot inside, and the alarm cut out mid-screech. Murmurs of bemusement hummed through the air, vaguely disapproving.

There couldn't be much time left until someone thought to check the CCTV footage, a fact James was all too aware of. Keeping the sense of urgency from messing with his nonchalant demeanour was a challenge.

"Sorry," he said again, and flashed a smile. "I honestly don't know what happened there."

"Ah, these alarms are too sensitive," the man replied, but he didn't sound wholly convinced. He peered through the glass at the earrings- James watched him mouth numbers as he counted. When the manager looked up again, he appeared to be satisfied. "Sorry for the bother," he said. A smile about as fake as the one James had given him stretched his lips. "Is there anything we can assist you with today, sir?" James was on the verge of declining when the man's gaze moved past him. "What-"

The manager rushed over to the still-open case where Jessie had been standing. He snapped his head around, clearly hoping to see her somewhere else in the store. A grimace crossed his face soon after.

"We've got a runner," he said to the woman behind the counter. James didn't stick around to watch any further developments.

Two steps out of the door he heard shouts behind him, and he adapted his stride to a sprint, weaving past pedestrians. Jessie had covered decent ground just walking- it took him a short while to catch up to her. She turned to face him before he reached her.

"Go," he blurted, slowing momentarily so as not to overtake his partner.

They tore down the street together, their breaths short and heavy. James felt a jab of pain shoot through his ribs every time his foot hit the ground too hard, but it wasn't enough to hinder him.

"This way," Jessie puffed, tilting her head right to a gap between two buildings. He followed her lead and they carried on with the partial cover of a food stand behind them. Though the distance hadn't felt all that great earlier, James began to wonder if his stamina would hold. His concern was put to rest, however, when he saw the tips of their Meowth balloon's ears poking out over a rooftop. Soon after, the concrete beneath them turned to pale dirt.

Meowth had the burners ready for their arrival. He backed up to far corner of the basket to give them ample space to vault over; James landed first, Jessie tumbling into him as she followed.

"We're away!" Meowth declared as they ascended into the sky.

"Don't count your Torchics," Jessie said, but grinned anyway. She lifted her hands and wiggled her fingers, most of which were adorned with at least one ring. "Check out the spoils."

The two pursuing members of security had come to a halt beneath them, shrinking into blurred figures that could only crane their heads up. Their shouts soon faded as the air grew cool and wet.

"They'll have called the police," James commented.

"Ain't no cameras trackin' da sky," Meowth said. "One of da many beauties of air travel."

Eased back to normality by the safety of the clouds, James observed Jessie pull the rings off her fingers. She turned each one in her hand before putting it into her bag, inspecting the various gems inlaid in the gold and silver. He leaned against the basket wall next to her.

"You could have settled for just a couple," he chuckled.

"Pssh. Strike while the iron is hot and all that." She stretched her arms above her head. "Hopefully this'll be enough to keep the powers that be satisfied," she mumbled.

The fear that had paid him a brief visit the night before returned, no warning before its grip in the pit of his chest. Watching her eyes, he saw them blank and dead, her lipstick met with the blood that clotted Meowth's fur-

"Please don't do it." The words were out of his mouth before he could think them through. He waited for regret to sink in, but it didn't. Anything to confine his conjured image to fiction, to make their presence feel less temporary.

"I've got to," Jessie said. She looked ahead, not at him. He could feel the distance building between them again. "This organisation really means something to me. It may be pretty messed up but it saved me from just wandering the streets my whole life. And... I know it meant a lot to my mother, too." Her eyes fell shut. "You want another reason why I can't watch Team Rocket become a glorified murder factory, there it is."

James bit his lip. "I just don't want you to die," he said, letting his voice break freely.

"I don't plan on it," Jessie rejoined. She sighed. "Look, James... I can't and won't make you help us. But we could change something here. And I'd much rather do it as a team."

Her eyes met his now, imploring. He looked back, hoping that he expressed a similar desperation. Maybe she would sway.

"Please, Jessie."

Not much changed in her countenance, and the bits that did- the crease of her lips, the dip of her brow- only appeared for a flash. It was sort of like she'd winced.

She sat down, pulled her legs towards her. "We should get this lot to a pawn shop quick, before the authorities send the alert out to buyers," she said. "Set a course, Meowth?"

Jessie didn't say anything more, but James got the message.

Coward.


AN

It has been far, far too long since I last updated this story, and for that I apologise. I had intended to have this chapter up at the beginning of August last year, but one thing after the other rendered that very difficult. The main issue I've been having is with my physical health- I don't have anything I can't recover from, but my brain functions are pretty badly impaired as a result of my illness, which basically means concentration is a bitch.

On the plus side, I've been writing quite a lot this week, which is a good sign- long may it last!

I hope you're all well, and thank you once more for all the support. It means a great deal to me.

This thing will have an ending, I promise!