The Dark Side of Innocence
-PART NINE-
by Anna Sartin
.
This time Jessie had to see who was in the coffin.
The head mourner was standing in front of it, her face veiled and her left fist clutched against her breast. As Jessie looked out amongst the crowd of mourners, she realized that all of them were wearing Team Rocket uniforms. So was she.
"Please, tell me who's in this coffin!" Jessie begged the woman. "I have to know whose coffin this is!"
The woman did not answer her.
This time Jessie made no move to open the coffin. Instead, she grabbed the woman's black veil and ripped it from her face.
"Domino?"
Domino laughed insanely, and removed her fist from her breast. She held it out over the coffin and opened her hand, dropping two rings on the coffin lid. Jessie leaned in closer to look. Now where had she seen those rings before?...
. . .
Jessie was pulled from sleep by the sound of laughing. She tried to cling to the fleeting images from her dream before she lost them forever, but they were fading fast. There was something about those rings...
Finally she opened her eyes. "You all right?" she asked James groggily, rolling over on her side to look at him when she realized the laughter was coming from him. She had shared the bed with him last night so that Misty and Brock could occupy the beds in the next room. Ash had slept on the sofa with Pikachu. "What's so funny?" she asked.
"I had the GREATEST nightmare!" he replied, with a mischievous smile on his face.
"About what?" Jessie asked, wondering how a person could have a great nightmare. The images from her own dream were now too fuzzy to recall, much to her disappointment. Pangs of nostalgia were still nagging her over those rings, but she could no longer picture them clearly in her mind.
James laughed again, replaying his dream over again in his mind. "There was this guy with a stupid fan selling Magikarp, and he was telling me how the Magikarp was a Pokémon gold mine. I kept trying to remember where I'd seen him before, and suddenly it hit me!"
"What hit you?" Jessie asked, amazed at how much better he seemed to be feeling.
"He'd swindled me before! He sold me that stupid Magikarp that evolved into Garados and nearly got us all killed. And every once in a while we'd see him somewhere and he's try to swindle us again!"
Jessie certainly remembered the first time James had been conned into spending all of his (and her) paycheck on a useless Magikarp in its ridiculous gold-plated pokéball. At the time she'd seriously considered grabbing a blunt object and beating the crap out of him. She also vividly recalled the malicious Magicarp salesman who'd made fools of them over and over again. She hated to admit it, but he was a better scam artist than she, James and Meowth put together.
"He sold us that fake Feebas, and that fake Chimecho and remember the directions he sold us to build that stupid robot?" James asked.
"Ah yes, the evolution machine," Jessie remembered, making a face. That sleazy swindler had better hope I never get my hands around his throat!
"So you know what I did?" James asked.
"What?"
"I grabbed one of his Magikarp and I kept hitting him over the head with it! And it felt so GOOD!" He laughed again, almost giddy with delight.
"Um... and just how was that a nightmare?" Jessie wanted to know.
"Well, then the Magikarp evolved into Garados and tried to eat me... Oh, but Jessie it was WORTH it!"
Jessie looked on as James continued to giggle to himself, wiping tears of merriment from his eyes.
"Well, you certainly seem to be feeling better at any rate," Jessie commented, running her fingers through his hair before getting out of bed.
"My back still hurts," he replied, suddenly looking serious. "Hurts to laugh, hurts to move, but... I'm SO tired of laying here!" His last six words were expressed in a long, drawn-out whine. "And I'm worried Meowth and Mondo and what's-her-name..." He yawned, trying to remember the name of the green-haired woman who had taken care of him.
"Lana," Jessie answered, approaching the window.
"They're going to be okay, right Jess?" he asked, trying his best to roll over without making his back feel worse. He swore he was going to have nightmares about thunderstorms and falling out of air balloons for the rest of the decade.
Jessie stared out the window, where the sun had just begun to stare out over the horizon. "I... I don't know..." I don't know anything. I don't know if I can do this alone... Damn it, Mondo! Why did you have to go with them and leave me here alone? Why did any of you have to go at all? Come back!
In silence she watched as the sun rose, spellbound both the breathtaking beauty and the grim knowledge that she had recently acquired that one day the sun would set on her life and she would never see it rise again. Her chest became heavy and pained as her thoughts drifted to that far off yet inevitable time when the sun would rise as it had for billions of years but she herself would not live to see it set. Oh, how she feared that day... And how close James had come to seeing it!
"Jessie, come back to bed," James yawned sleepily. "It's still early."
"In a minute," she replied, her tear-filled eyes still fixated on the rising sun. She and James had watched the sunrise many times in their years spent together, but this was the first time it had ever touched her on such a painfully emotional level. As she watched the sky slowly change to different shades of gold, orange, and red, she wondered if Meowth, Mondo and Lana were still alive and breathing under the same sky with her.
Even if they are, they might not live to see it set again tonight...
. . . . . .
"I'm scared..."
"Don't be afraid. Whatever happens, we're all in this together."
Mondo stared into the woman's eyes, trying to draw comfort and strength from them. He could feel her hands pressing firmly on his shoulders. "I remember, Miss Lana. I won't forget... But why aren't you here? Please come and help me!... I'm scared... Lana? Miss Lana?..."
"Miss Lana... come back..." Mondo opened his eyes and found a woman he had never seen before mopping his forehead with a damp cloth.
"No, I'm not Lana," she said gently. "I'm a nurse from the Team Rocket medical unit. I've been sent to look in on you."
"Where... where am I?" he asked groggily.
"You're at home," she answered.
Mondo realized it was true. He was in his own room, in his own bed, at Team Rocket HQ.
"Everything's all right now. You were involved in a serious accident down in the labs last night. Do you remember?"
"Accident?" he asked, confused. He had been caught trying to steal a Team Rocket lab specimen, so why wasn't he in a Team Rocket cell? Why would they send someone from the med unit to care for him?
"Agent 009 reported that you were assisting one of the scientists and one of the lab experiments attacked you. You're very lucky to be alive."
"Miss Lana?..." he asked. "Where is she?"
"The scientist? She's dead."
Mondo's chest tightened, and tears immediately begin to spill from his eyes. "I was hoping... that... that it was just a dream..."
The nurse used the cloth to wipe his eyes. "No... but don't think about that now. You still have a fever and you need to rest. Go back to sleep, I'll be back to check on you later."
The woman gathered her equipment into the bag she was carrying and left. Mondo paid no heed to her. The events of last night were playing and replaying in his mind. Pushing Lana down, slamming his hand into the button that closed the door... His hand still ached from the impact. He had locked her inside the lab with the Persian.
"I killed her," Mondo whispered, as hot tears spilled from his eyes. "I killed her..."
. . . . . .
The sun had risen completely by the time Jessie pulled herself away from the window. James had fallen asleep, curled up on his side clutching Jessie's pillow. Leaving him to what she hoped were pleasant dreams, she walked into the living room where Ash and Pikachu were asleep together on the couch.
So close... she thought wistfully, gazing at the sleeping Pikachu that she, James and Meowth had never quite been able to grasp. But that's always been our problem, hasn't it? Close, but never close enough... our whole lives...
As she walked past them her thoughts again strayed to her missing comrades, wondering what they were doing at the moment. Everyone had been fine when she called them yesterday. Whatever plan Meowth and the others had in mind must be in motion by now... she thought, as she picked the video phone and began dialing her old phone number. She glanced back at Ash and Pikachu and sighed.
"I wonder where we'd be now if we HAD ever managed to catch Pikachu?" she mused, as the phone at the other end of the line began the ring...
...and ring...
...and ring...
No one answered.
. . .
Inside Jessie and James' old quarters, Meowth was hard at work. He had dismantled the video phone in their bedroom and sabotaged it so that it would not receive any incoming calls. Now that Mondo had been caught it was entirely possible that Giovanni would bug the phones, putting Jessie and James in danger if they tried to phone anyone at HQ. There could be no contact between them now.
"I hope 'dere all right," Meowth said aloud, as he put the machine back together. He would head to Mondo's place next and do the same to his video phone. He had no idea what to do after that.
All night Meowth had waited, not sure what to do as he spent one of the most miserable nights he ever remembered in his life. His untreated wounds pained him terribly, and he had slept light in fear that any moment someone would enter the place and discover him.
Suddenly he heard voices coming from the other side of the door, and he quickly hid under James' bed. The sound of a key turning was heard, followed by foot steps. Someone was coming in.
"It's bigger than I thought it would be," a male voice said.
Meowth peeked out from under the bed, and saw three uniformed agents enter the bedroom, one leading the other two. He recognized them all. Attila and Hun were Rockets from the Johto region. The woman in front of them was Wendy from Team Rocket's Human Rescources Department; he had seen her once or twice before.
"The former occupants have been demoted, so they've been reassigned to rookie quarters," Wendy told them. "Looks like they've already moved out. This place is yours now."
"I hope I never see the Johto Region again," Attila said, removing his sunglasses and putting his hand through his short, blonde hair. "Ever since we ran into those damn kids from New Bark Town, our lives haven't been worth living."
Hun gave a nod of agreement. "Ever since that incident, everything we've tried to do has backfired on us. Every time we turned around, the cops or those damn kids were there to interfere with our plans."
"And Giovanni has really laid into us," Attila continued. "He relocated Professor Sebastian over to Tyson's base where his research would be "safer", but less than a month later Sebastian sent word back to us that Tyson and a whole squad of his grunts got thrown in jail! And did the boss bite THEIR heads off? No, he bailed their sorry asses out!"
"But that all happened years ago," Wendy replied. "You mean to say the boss is STILL mad at you after all this time?"
"Yes, because everything's gone downhill since then," Hun replied. "Our bases in the Johto region have had a string of rotten luck. We requested to be transferred to the Kanto Region months ago, and now that we're here I hope we've left Johto's problems behind us."
"Yes, and get back to our objectives!" Attila continued. "We'll be back on the fast track to success in no time. We'll be at the head of this organization before you know it! Attila and Hun, Master Thieves!"
Wendy raised an eyebrow. "I wouldn't let the boss hear me say that if I were you," she remarked, as they left the bedroom to go inspect the kitchen. "And I wouldn't look on this transfer as a stroll in the park, either. We've had our own problems here. A lot of strange things have been happening here lately, and people have been turning up dead."
"Dead?" Attila and Hun asked at the same time.
"Last night there was some kind of accident down in one of the labs, and one of our scientists was killed. Agent 009 apparently rescued a rookie who was down there, and after the med unit carried him out, the place has been sealed off and no one is allowed in."
Rescued? Meowth thought. Why would they say Domino "rescued" Mondo? She couldn't possibly believe that their business down in that lab had been innocent! And if she had overheard their conversation about switching Giovanni's Persian with the one in the lab, she knew quite well that it wasn't. What the hell was going on?
"I feel sorry for the poor kid," Wendy continued. "They say he hasn't regained consciousness yet. But that's only been one incident of several disasters we've had lately. Last week Agatha, one of our field agents, brought her partner's corpse back here from a mission and had the whole place talking about it for days. She claims he started having convulsions or something, and then just dropped dead."
Attila and Hun exchanged glances.
"Before that another guy got shot by his own partner," Wendy continued, "and last month several Rockets went missing, and nobody's been able to find out what's happened to them."
Attila and Hun stared at each other, both trying to conceal the knowing grins they were exchanging. They both heaved an exaggerated sigh of dismay, as if their hopes of being transferred to a calmer base had been dashed.
From under the bed Meowth kept an ear open, hoping Wendy would mention where Mondo had been taken.
"You two sure arrived early this morning," Wendy said, oblivious of the looks the two were giving each other. "I had to get up an hour early just to arrange quarters for you."
"Just how it turned out, I guess," Attila answered. Neither he nor his partner had any plan to volunteer the information that it was Domino who had arranged for their early transport mere hours ago after phoning them in the middle of the night.
"Well, I hope this place meets with your approval," Wendy finished, turning to leave with her associates. "It's the best you'll get until you prove yourselves more useful than you were in the Johto region. But hell, as long as you're not as incompetent as the idiots who used to live here you'll be all right by me."
From the bed, Meowth stifled a growl.
"It'll do for now," Hun replied, as they exited the apartment.
"Yes," Attila agreed, with a glint in his eye. "We won't be here long..."
. . . . . .
"Miss Jessie is still burning up! I don't know what to do..."
"You need to get some sleep. Go to bed, Mondo. I'll stay up and sit with her...
"But, Miss Lana..."
Mondo lay on his hot, tear-soaked pillow plagued by a fever that would not abate and haunted by memories of the friends he had failed and the woman that was now dead because of him. An unending stream of tears flowed from his eyes as he recalled that night at the cabin, his heart in his throat as a feverish Jessie was laying unconscious on the couch. How Lana had kindly, although firmly, sent him to bed as she put another damp cloth on Jessie's forehead. He remembered the intense, irrational fear that had possessed him that Jessie's fever might worsen, that she might never wake up again. The horrifying thought that after everything that they had been though together that she and James might both... die.
Die.
Mondo struggled to breathe, his chest tightening as his raw, uncontainable grief overwhelmed him. Jessie had not died. Neither had James. Lana had died, after saving them both! It wasn't fair, it wasn't right! And it was all his fault. Now he was going to die, he was sure of it. His body was going to suffocate him to death, an act of judgment not from an executioner or a higher power, but by his own conscience. But the final, fatal moment he expected never came. The pain of grief just went on and on...
. . .
Meowth was surprised to find the light turned on as he entered Mondo's room. Having learned nothing else from Wendy's conversation with Attila and Hun, he had surmised that Mondo was either in the Team Rocket medical center or had been taken to a secure location to be treated and then questioned by Giovanni later. It had not occurred to him that they would bring Mondo back here; Meowth had only come for the purpose of sabotaging Mondo's video phone.
Mondo lay drenched in his own perspiration, ragged breaths escaping his throat. His cheeks flushed red as though as internal fire burned underneath them. He didn't notice that Meowth had entered the room.
"Mondo?"
"She's dead," he whispered. "She's dead!"
Meowth set the bottle of pills he was carrying down on the floor and jumped onto Mondo's bed. There was no way Mondo could escape in this condition. They would have to remain on the base and find a way to salvage the operation, or else everything they had done up to now would amount to nothing.
"She's dead," Mondo said again, in a hypnotic tone and he stared right through Meowth. "I killed her..."
"Ya didn't kill Lana, dat THING did," Meowth replied, shivering as he remembered the Persian's claws slicing into his flesh. His wounds still throbbed painfully.
"Yes, I did!" Mondo cried, covering his face with his arms. "I... I pushed her... I panicked and I pushed her down. I pushed her down and I ran, I left her there so I could get away myself! Then I shut the door, I locked her IN THERE!" He thrashed violently to his left, meaning to roll over and hide his face in his pillow, but instead he rolled completely off the bed, hitting the floor with a thud. Too weak to even attempt standing up, he pressed his hot face against the cold floor and continued to cry. "I murdered her..."
Meowth stared at him from up on the bed. What could he say to the boy? He HAD pushed Lana back, and in his blind panic had shut her inside the lab. He was responsible for the woman's death.
"Meowth, what am I gonna do?" Mondo wailed, now groveling on the floor in grief and horror.
Meowth watched the pathetic human figure. Do? What WERE they going to do? Lana was dead and their plan was in shambles. The Persian they were going to replace with Giovanni's was either dead or in the hands of Domino. They needed another plan and they need one fast.
"Damn these things!" Mondo screamed, trying to throw his bottle of pills that Meowth had left on the floor across the room. He only managed to slam the bottle into the floor, still in his hand.
Suddenly an idea hit Meowth. He jumped off the bed, and took the bottle from Mondo's hand. It was going to take time, but they might still be able to salvage their plan.
"What are we going to DO?" Mondo continued to weep into the floor.
Getting in Mondo's face, Meowth replied, "We're gonna make sure dat Lana don't die in vain. We're gonna make sure we DON'T fail!"
. . . . . .
Back at the cabin, Jessie was happily devouring the leftover "Mystery Stew" that everyone else shunned as she sat in bed eating breakfast with James. His condition definitely seemed to have improved overnight, and Jessie was overjoyed with the fact that he could sit up and converse with her. Several pillows supported his back, and the painkiller recently injected into his IV seemed to be kicking in. "Do you want some stew?" she asked her partner when she noticed he was eyeing her bowl with an odd expression on his face.
"I'll pass," James laughed nervously, as a multitude of sweatdrops appeared on his head. He quickly went back to eating his bowl of rice porridge Brock had made for everyone, eager to show that he was completely satisfied with what he was eating so that Jessie wouldn't make him get any closer to the foul-tasting substance she was consuming.
"Everyone says they'd rather stick with Brock's cooking," Jessie said. "I admit he's got a knack for it, but I can't believe I'm the only one who appreciates the superb flavor of this stew. It just goes to show I'm the only person here with any taste!"
"Hey, even Misty won't eat her own cooking!" they heard Ash's approaching voice yell from the hallway. "Obviously YOU'RE the one with no taste!"
"How DARE you question my taste!" Jessie yelled, throwing a pillow at Ash as he appeared in the doorway with Brock. "Twelve year-old twerp!"
"I'm thirteen!"
"Whatever! Go way!"
"Is that anyway to treat someone who brings you food?" Ash shot back, pointing to the plate of rice balls Brock was holding.
James and Brock both sweatdropped, watching the pointless exchange without comment as the more animated members of their respective teams fought their verbal battle. James eyed the rice balls Brock was holding hungrily, wishing that they'd both shut up so that the oldest twerp would get around to handing out the food.
"And how can you EAT that stuff, anyway?" Ash asked, crinkling his nose at the smelly concoction Jessie was chowing down on. He wondered how James could stand to sit so close to it.
"It's really good!" Jessie told him as she finished what was left in the bowl. "Are you sure you don't want any, James?" she asked, turning to him. "There's still a bit left."
"N-no thank you!" he answered quickly, cringing at the thought. "I... um... I'm full!"
"Oh, well let me take that for you then," Jessie replied, taking the bowl out of his hands and out of his reach as she got off the bed.
James whimpered as she left the room with the twerps, his breakfast, and that delicious-looking plate of rice balls, now seeing the flaw in his seemingly flawless excuse to avoid the Stew from Hell. Those rice balls had his mouth watering, and now he couldn't even finish the porridge left in his bowl. Stupid Misty and her stupid stew...
. . .
"You look tired, Ash," Misty commented as Ash entered the kitchen. Togepi sat beside her eating a rice ball, while Pikachu lay curled up on a nearby chair. The Togepi she was caring for was actually her second, her first having evolved into a Togetic some time ago.
"I am tired," Ash grumbled, sitting down at the table across from her. "You and Brock took both the beds and left me stuck on the couch. It's so hard it's like sleeping on the ground!"
While Jessie was secretly inclined to agree, she couldn't resist the urge to taunt the youngster. "That's my personal revenge on you for never letting us capture Pikachu!" she said with a self-satisfied laugh. "Besides, you could always have gone and snuggled up with Misty!"
The aforementioned Misty choked on her food, while Ash shot up from his chair.
"Pikachu, THUNDERSHOCK!"
Everyone waited for Jessie to be electrocuted by the rodent. Nothing happened.
"Uh, kid?" Jessie finally spoke, after opening her eyes. "Your Pikachu's asleep!"
Ash groaned and Jessie laughed insanely, feeling empowered by her small victory.
Brock took advantage of the distraction to sneak out of the room with the plate he was still holding. He had seen the defeated expression on James' face when the well-meaning Jessie had taken his food, and had recognized his successful but flawed strategy to make sure he ate a breakfast that did NOT include Misty's so-called "cooking". He swore, if the man was going survive after he and the others had gone he was going to have to come up with better tactics. Still, he mentally chuckled, Jessie hadn't managed to kill him yet.
James actually squealed with joy as Brock reentered the room, staring at him worshipfully with big tear-filled eyes and silently vowing to never call him a twerp again as he wolfed down the food.
Brock laughed at the scene, his mind recalling similar domestic images of his siblings back home. He wondered how his family was doing, but his mind quickly flashed back to the first time he, Ash and Misty had chanced upon the estate belonging to James' parents years ago. I wonder if they ever worry about their son? Would they be sad if they could see the condition he's in now?
James thanked him profusely as he returned the now-empty plate, and Brock resolved to have a talk with his companions. Jessie, he had observed, was an emotional basket case going from high to low and back again trying to deal with her partner's illness while worrying about the absence of her other three companions; and James, in his weak (and not always coherent) condition was in no better state to care for himself.
"It wouldn't be right leave them alone yet," he decided as he headed towards the kitchen. "They could both use some physical and emotional support. It couldn't hurt to stick around a few more days."
He stopped dead at the sight of the full-scale food fight currently underway in the kitchen, smacking his forehead after a rice ball hit him square in the face.
"Or maybe it could..."
-CONTINUED IN PART TEN-