Nikita kicked open the door to the abandoned Ranger checkpoint, her gun raised and her ursaring growling behind her. Reports of Rocket remnants harrasing trainers on their way to Indigo Plateau had come in and she'd been first to respond.

It was a sorry sight.

"I can't say this is exactly what we signed up for." The man's eccentric blue hair was stuck to his face, shining with sweat. He looked at Nikita and offered her a sheepish grin. Discarded at his side was a crumpled white shirt, which left him in nothing more than a black undershirt and baggy, dirty white pants and scuffed black boots.

At his side, a woman with extremely long, brilliant red hair sat beside him, her head resting on his shoulder. Her hair was splayed out everywhere, covering her face, her chest, her arms – how she managed it was beyond Nikita. The mystery gangster was dressed the same way, though bandages had been wrapped around her midsection several times. Several spots of blood dotted the uppermost layer of bandages, but the evenness of her breathing suggested she was stable.

"Being out of your depth doesn't give you a free pass on your crimes," mumbled Nikita. She knelt down and held her hand out. "Hand over your pokemon."

With some difficulty, the man pulled several balls free from his belt and then tossed one to his side. It broke open and produced a terrified meowth. Nikita was already on her feet, upright, pistol raised. The ursaring behind her growled, long and low. The terrified cat ran to the man's side and clutched him tightly, mewing into his arm and shaking its head.

"Lower your gun and tell your bear to calm down. I thought we were supposed to be the gangsters here." He laughed miserably and then inclined his head. "Meowth, calm down. We're going to be fine."

The cat pointed insistently at the woman at his side. "She'll be fine too, I promise." He gave the cat a fond kiss on the crown of its head. "Sit down, I think that bear has a taste for housecat." The ursaring behind Nikita growled again, much longer this time, which earned an angry, unintelligible retort from the meowth.

"You're the only set of Rockets I've run into that haven't put up a fight. Even when I've run into ones that clearly came off worse in a scuffle, somehow they still manage to work up the energy to get themselves shot." She sighed and shook her head. "Fools. Why do you always fight?"

The man shrugged. "I've never been the type to get in line for a beating fresh off the back of one."

"Picked a poor profession to have that kind of common sense."

"And now you see why I say this isn't what we signed up for." He laughed again leaned his head back against the wall behind him. "Really though, we should have expected as much. What did we think would happen when someone is on their way to the League itself? That we'd somehow have a chance?"

"Wait." She stared hard at the two gangsters and scanned them up and down. "You're...unarmed?"

"Guilty as charged." He smiled. "Stupid, right?"

The woman beside him stirred and her eyes fluttered open. "Wh-what... what's going?" She raised her head feebly and focused on Nikita with what appeared to be great difficulty. "Are- are we going to die?" The quiet resignation in her voice bothered Nikita.

"No," said the officer, stowing her gun. "You look stitched up well enough for a trip back to the station."

She closed her eyes and her face broke into a wide smile full of self-loathing. "Ah. I- I see."

"Don't sound so torn up about it," said the man. He nudged her with his shoulder and chuckled. "Best case scenario if you ask me."

"I'm not fond of flushing several years of my life down the toilet." Her tone was overwhelmingly bitter. "Mistake or not."

"Let's get you two up and moving. Maybe you'll get off lucky. Certainly seems like you already took your lumps," said Nikita.

"You've got no idea," groaned the man, standing up with great difficulty. It was clear from his gait that his right leg was injured. The woman got to her feet with grunts of pain, and her hunched over posture and arms clutching her stomach concerned Nikita.

"What happened to you two?" asked the policewoman.

"We decided we'd try and rob Kanto's finest," mumbled the blue-haired gangster. "Uh, trainer. League prospect. Whatever you want to call him."

"Try is a very strong word," added his partner. "We decided we would fail miserably at robbing him."

Nikita stared. "Robbing him of what? His pokemon?"

"What? No. That's insanity, they'd kill us the second we released them. His badges," replied the woman. "Do you know how much they fetch? Buy a badge, have someone adjust your record and make your way off the League and challenge them. It's not a huge market but it pays dividends."

"And cash is exactly what we're looking for to get out of this mess," added her partner. "We're through with Team Rocket."

"More like it's through with us."

"Then the feeling is mutual."

"Almost got us killed," she added, looking at Nikita.

"And we figured that was the time to get moving. We missed the chance to dip out when the going was good."

"The going was honestly never really good."

Nikita looked between the two of them and shook her head. "Saddest sacks of would-be gangster shit I've ever seen. What are your names?"

"Jessie."

"James."