Viper led us to a large adobe style building. He led us inside and past the open rooms full of bunks all with women wearing the same dark red jumpsuits with a bright red R on the front. Pikachu seemed to get really nervous now and shrunk back underneath my hair. I didn't have time to ask him what was wrong though because Viper suddenly stopped in front of a bunk, each bed holding a red jumpsuit like the ones we had seen.

"Change into these and follow the other trainees down to the mess hall. After breakfast I'll meet you for the orientation.

As he left, Jessee and I looked at each other nervously. "What do you make of this, Jess?" Jessee whispered.

"I don't know. Pikachu is really freaked out though…" I replied. I could feel my little yellow pokemon quivering against the nape of my neck.

"This whole place is giving me weird vibes…" Jessee whispered. "What are we going to do if we can't get out? This seems almost like the military now!"

"Don't worry about it Jessee. I'll be looking for something. We'll do our best and if things really start getting wrong, we'll make a break for it."

Jessee nodded and picked up her jumpsuit. "Alright. Let's hope."

After we'd changed into our jumpsuits, I had Pikachu hide under the bed with the rest of our clothes and belongings and Jessee and I made our way to the mess hall. It was here that we discovered that this operation was much bigger than we had originally thought. We were wearing red jumpsuits, but apparently that was only the color of our barracks. In the mess hall there were also Blue and Yellow jumpsuits, and about 50 people of each gender in each. Not including the trainers, workers and other people who I'm not exactly sure what they did. But the room was packed.

Jessee and I squeezed our way to the back of the line and when we finally got up to the counter was rewarded with a big splat of mushy something or other. I bit my lip trying to keep my appetite enough to force the grey….whatever it was down my throat as Jessee and I moved to an empty spot to sit down. The din in the hall was deafening, and as I sat there forcing the goop down and struggling to keep it there, I couldn't help but wish for the peaceful quietness of our ranch and the delicious home cooked meals my mother used to make way back when….Before the divorce…when everything was still perfect…

It couldn't have been more that ten minutes after Jessee and I sat down that Viper came into the mess hall and blew a shrill whistle that shut the whole hall up instantly. "Listen up!" He barked into the silent room. "All new recruits you are to come with me for orientation and basic training! Now!" A handful, about twenty or thirty people including Jessee and me, stood up and followed him silently out of the dining hall.

Viper took us to a dusty track field full of obstacles. He lined us up and began his introduction. "My name is Viper, I will be your drill sergeant through the duration of your training. But you will call me Sgt. Viper. If I ever hear you NOT call me that, you will be instantly punished, and trust me, you don't want to go through that. I have trained every one of the new recruits for almost as long as there has been a Team Rocket. If you succeed through my program there is no doubt that you will be a wonderful member to the team."

He gestured to the track field. "Your first task is an endurance test. You need to go through this obstacle course in two minutes or less. If you fail you will be escorted out and not allowed to return. However this will be the only time during training where you will be allowed to leave unscathed."

Those words stopped my heart. What did he mean unscathed?! I could swear he was staring dead at me and I strained to keep my face emotionless as I glanced toward Jessee one or two people away from me. Her eyes were trained toward me too, and I could catch a minute twitch of her eyebrow. She was thinking the same thing I was.

Jessee went through the course before me, and she sailed through it with ease. I knew she would. Climbing ropes, crawling under wire, jumping hurdles, she was built for this kind of thing! She finished the course in just a minute. The guy that came after her though, not so lucky. After the buzzer rang for the two minute mark , two people in all black each with a black hat and a bright red R on their chest appeared and escorted him away without saying a word. I was just busy trying to figure out what our course of action would be when it was my turn. I finished just as easily as Jessee and caught her wink at me when Sgt. Viper called out my time: One minute and two seconds.

After all the trainees had gone through and Viper had weeded out the weaklings, there were only about eighteen of us left. "Very good." Viper said, addressing us as he made a number of notes on his small clipboard. "Now that you have all passed the initiation course, your real training will begin. Remember you're time, because you will be expected to improve that by at least 30 seconds by the time you become full fledged agents."

I gritted my teeth. What did he mean agent. We were supposed to be pokemon trainers but the way he kept talking was sounding more like spies…

Viper took us to a small classroom like area where he seated us all down and began to go over the history of Team Rocket. It was started by a man named Giovanni, he was crediting for funding many of the pokemon scientific discoveries. Though he also owned some other properties, the popular Pokemon Land, some gyms, basically this guy seemed to run everything behind the scenes, and it was kind of bizarre that I'd never heard of him before…

After Viper had finished up with his talk, we were released to the mess hall for lunch. After receiving a lump of something that I don't even want to know what it was, Jessee and I sat down at a table away from where everyone else was and lowered our voices.

"What do you think, Jessee?"

"This place is weird…And I don't completely buy that Giovani guy. I mean, neither of us have ever heard of him before, how can he literally be running everything."

"I agree…it's off…but I've been kinda scouting out a way out and it's not going to be as easy as I thought. There's cameras and workers literally everywhere." I paused. "Now if you had purposefully slowed down a little during the obstacle course we could have been ESCORTED out, but you had to show off…"

"Sorry, I wasn't thinking about that." Jessee snapped back. "I was just worried about getting through it. But we'll come up with something else…"

"Well, if it isn't Crazy Jessee and Mommy Jess."

That voice made my blood run cold. I turned slowly behind me to see her: Orange-blond hair pulled into two pig-tails, small angled eyes, pointy nose, triangular earrings dangling from her earlobes and wearing a jumpsuit like ours but hers being blue. She scoffed a little and smirked down at us. "Didn't think I'd ever see you two losers here."

Jessee was rigid. "Well, great to see you too, Cassidy…" She growled. "Never thought I'd see you again…"

"Well you wouldn't think I'd skip out on the chance to get in on the greatest crime organization on the planet do you?" Cassidy asked, squeezing herself between us and forcing Jessee and I to move a couple inches away to avoid being shoulder to shoulder with her.

Jessee and Cassidy knew each other intimately. They were in the same grade at school and had actually been best friends in elementary and part of middle school. I didn't consider myself friends with her necessarily during any of this time, there was something about her that I just could never stand, but because Jessee and I were so close in age, sometimes I would hang out with both of them. Around fifth or sixth grade though, Cassidy's true colors had started to appear. She got to be demanding, rude, and just overall a jerk to be around. My parents finally had enough and my dad banned her from ever coming over again after we caught her trying to steal one of our newborn ponyta from the herd. We hadn't seen her again, and I could never have been more relieved….until now.

"So what brings you goody-two-shoes here?" Cassidy asked with a flick of her hair. Her pigtail whacked me in the face. The smell of her strawberry shampoo was overpowering. As if I wasn't put off enough by her being here…

"Don't you have someone else to annoy?" Jessee asked.

"No, actually, I don't get my partner announced until today." She replied smugly, leaning an elbow on the table. "So again, what great change in the stars happened that made you two show up on Team Rocket's doorstep?"

"What do you care?" I snapped."This has nothing to do with you."

"Ouch, geez, just trying to catch up with my old friend." Cassidy huffed. "Well, I can see when I'm not wanted." She stood up. "I'll see you two losers at training. I'll have you know that I set the new Team Rocket record, let's see you try and beat that." She scoffed, and with a swish of her hair she flounced away.

I let the burning frustration in my cheeks subside and leaned in toward Jessee. "Don't worry, we won't have to be here for much longer. I think I have an idea of how to get out of here—"

"Oh we can't leave now." Jessee exclaimed. "Now that Cassidy is here, I'm not going to let her just walk all over me like that; we are going to stay and I am going to beat her sorry face."

What did I expect…Jessee is too competitive for her own good…