The Dark Side of Innocence
-PART TEN-

by Anna Sartin

.

-ONE WEEK LATER-

Despite a few pains and the occasional dizzy spell, James felt like he was on top of the world. Ever since Jessie had removed the IV in his arm half an hour ago he had been flitting around the house enjoying his new-found freedom. He was so sick of laying in bed he'd been having daydreams of pushing it out the window, until Jessie pointed out that the huge bed wouldn't FIT out the window. Spoilsport.

"Are you sure you feel all right?" Jessie asked him for the third time.

All right? He felt better than he had in weeks! "I'm fine, Jess!" he assured her, wishing she would stop hovering over him like a mother hen. She'd been trailing him nervously for the past half hour as though she expected him to keel over the moment she left his side. "I am a little hungry, though," he said, hoping he could get her to leave him alone for a few minutes. Her constant fretting was starting to make him jittery.

"Really? We just ate less than an hour ago."

James laughed nervously, trying to think of an excuse that would spare her learning that the reason he was hungry was because the breakfast she had lovingly prepared for him was completely inedible. Again. Ever since Brock (who he had developed a new-found respect for, by the way) had left with Ash and Misty a few days ago James had been mourning the loss of his cooking. In addition to his breakfast being over-cooked, today Jessie had mixed up the salt and sugar containers. James had stashed his bowl of burnt, salted oatmeal under the bed to be disposed of when Jessie wasn't looking. One of the great things about being free of the IV was that he could go back to cooking the meals. "Thank the good green world!"

"Well, come on," Jessie said, pulling him toward the kitchen. "I think there's still some oatmeal left."

James whimpered inwardly, wondering how he always managed to get himself into these types of situations. "Isn't there anything else?" he asked pitifully, hoping he wouldn't hurt her feelings.

"Is something wrong with the oatmeal?" she asked suspiciously as they entered the kitchen.

Damn. It looked like there was no way out of it.

"Well... have you tasted it?" James asked.

"No, I ate some of the apples out back. I think I'm going to gather a bunch and try to make applesauce."

"Um, w-why don't you let me help you with that?" James sweatdropped, imagining what new horrors would be in store for him if she used salt instead of sugar to make THAT.

Jessie pulled the spoon out of the pan of oatmeal and put it to her mouth. "Sure, but w-" James watched as Jessie's face turned several interesting shades of green, before spitting what little food had actually gotten into her mouth into the sink. "This is disgusting!" she yelled at the spoon she was holding. "It tastes like melted rubber!"

James had no clue what melted rubber tasted like, but he could believe Jessie's concoction was pretty near the mark. He quickly took the pan from Jessie's hand when he noticed the "I really, really want to throw something" look on her face.

"Why didn't you SAY something?" she finally yelled, throwing the spoon in the sink. "You didn't actually EAT any of that?"

"Well, no... but don't worry, Jess!" He raised his hands in a gesture of peace. "Now that I'm better I can do the cooking again!"

"Good, because as far as I'm concerned I don't ever want to touch that piece of junk again!" She gave the stove a swift kick and stalked off, fuming.

Thank heaven for small miracles. James thought, smiling. On top of that piece of good news, Jessie's temper seemed to have alleviated her mother hen complex. This morning was getting better still! Now all he had to do was find something decent for both himself and Jessie to eat. It would smooth over Jessie's temper and solve his hunger problem in one fell swoop, and then life would be perfect.

He began searching through the kitchen cabinets in hopes of finding something both fast and easy to make. Brock had gone shopping for them the day before he and the others had left so there had to be SOMETHING decent around here. The first cabinet turned out to be canned goods, which was fine by him. Next task: Locate can-opener. This proved to be more difficult, and after fifteen minutes of searching he had given it up for lost. "Where could Jessie have possibly put the can-opener?" he wondered, unaware that he had passed it over a dozen times in his search as it lay discreetly in its well-camouflaged drawer, the same that Jessie had overlooked her first time around. His stomach began to rumble. He decided to resume his original search for food, and what he saw next made him forget the cans and can-opener altogether. His green eyes widened in amazement and he drooled at the sight of the large supply of Ramen noodles in one of the cabinets.

"I'm in HEAVEN!"

. . .

"You know, I've never been able to understand why a rich boy like you loves instant food so much," Jessie said, as she watched James wolf down his third bowl of noodles. "Shouldn't you have a taste for something more sophisticated, like caviar or something?"

"I like caviar," James responded. "I just like Ramen better!"

"I don't see why..."

"Hey, aren't you the one who always says minimal effort and maximum profit is the Team Rocket way?"

"Your point being?" Jessie asked, failing to see the connection between the two. Besides, they weren't IN Team Rocket anymore. I wonder if Team Jet has any openings? she mused.

"What could be easier than cooking Ramen?" James returned. "And it's a lot easier to steal, anyway. Besides, I had caviar all the time as a child. I didn't even know instant food EXISTED until I ran away from home! I was so deprived!" He began sobbing dramatically for effect.

Jessie rolled her eyes. They didn't get much weirder than her partner. Still, his melodramatic antics were a sure sign he was on the road to recovery, and for that she was thankful. "I prefer homemade Ramen myself," she told him.

"Homemade Ramen is good, too," James agreed, as she took his empty bowl and put it in the sink. "Especially Meowth's. When I close my eyes I can still see him slashing that big lump of dough into noodles in Christopher's restaurant."

"And on stage at the Lilypad contest," Jessie smiled, remembering the day James and Meowth had competed to win a contest ribbon for her when she fell ill. They both smiled at the memory.

"I wonder what Meowth's doing right now?" James asked. "I hope everyone comes home soon..."

Jessie stared out the window, wondering the same thing. She hadn't heard from Meowth, Mondo or Lana in over a week, and every day that passed the feeling of dread in her heart grew stronger. She went to bed every night hoping they would be back the next day. Most nights she barely slept at all.

"I hope so too, James. I hope so too..."

. . . . . .

Mondo stood in front of the mirror on the back of his door as he tried on his new black uniform. He hated it. It was too big for him to start, and when he put the matching black cap on his head his identity seemed to vanish into nothingness. The front of the cap shadowed his eyes, making him look exactly like every other Team Rocket grunt. Almost. He looked like a burgler who had burgled clothes that were too big for him. Frustrated, he took off the cap and threw it at his reflection.

I hate this place, I hate these clothes and I hate myself!

He looked back at his old uniforms, carefully folded in a pile on his bed. The one he had just changed out of was on top, and the bright red R seemed to mock him spitefully, as if going out of its way to remind him that he would sport Giovanni's logo no matter which outfit he wore. He sighed and picked them all up. He just couldn't throw them away, no matter how dirty that damned R made him feel. Jessie and James had made them for him to match theirs, and that reason alone kept him from discarding them, even if he never put them on again. They were a little small for him now. He'd been meaning to ask Jessie about making him larger ones for months but he had never gotten around to it. He shoved them in a bag with his other few belongings and pulled the drawstring shut.

Today was his last day in this room. He was scheduled to report to Human Resources and see his new quarters later that day. He no intention of keeping the appointment. Today he was leaving this place, or he was going to die trying.

He turned to the mirror again and glared at his baggy uniform. It didn't matter, really. He didn't plan on wearing it any longer then he had to, anyway. If he were still capable of laughter, he'd have laughed at the promotion he'd received for "finding" Giovanni's lost Persian. Little did Team Rocket's leader know that his beloved pet had been housed in Mondo's quarters for the past four days in a cage stolen from storage while Meowth fed it food laced with the pills Giovanni had intended for Mondo. Nor did he know that the "Persian" Mondo had presented to him this morning was actually Mondo's own Ditto. Mondo had ordered his well-trained Pokémon in advance to act sick, so Giovanni would agree to the boy taking his sick Persian away for treatment. It was risky, but it had worked like a charm and landed Mondo a promotion in the process.

Not that he cared.

At one point in his life this would have been a dream come true. Now he just felt so... empty. Lana was dead. That fact could not be disputed, could not be denied; and on the inside part of Mondo felt as if he were dead, too. His friend who he owed so much to was gone forever and it was all his fault. His colossal error had stripped his soul bare, taking away even his desire to live. He no longer feared being caught because he no longer feared death.

Why shouldn't I die? he figured grimly. I murdered Lana. I certainly don't deserve to live.

Several times he had considered stealing a gun from one of the weapons lockers and ending it all, but to reach the lockers he'd have to go through the labs. He hadn't set foot in them since Lana's death. For three days he'd had nightmares about that place as he'd laid in his own personal fever-soaked hell. Meowth claimed he'd never been more relieved in his life when Mondo's fever finally broke, because in the end the boy had become so delusional the nurse had had to sedate him. Neither of them ever wanted to see the lower levels of Team Rocket HQ again. So when Giovanni had ordered him earlier to take "Persian" to the labs for treatment, pick up a new uniform and clean out his quarters, Mondo skipped the first step entirely. His Ditto's identity would have been revealed if he'd let one of the doctors examine it, anyway. He was to report back to the boss at six o'clock with the healed Persian and receive his new assignment, then meet Wendy afterwards to be shown where he would live. Mondo picked his cap up again and glared at his reflection.

If I'm still alive at six o'clock, there's no way in hell I'll be living here!

. . . . . .

"Hey Jessie, look at this!" James exclaimed. He'd just discovered the old video game system in the entertainment center.

"What is it?" Jessie asked, coming into the living room. She found him sitting on the floor in front of the television

"Come play with me!"

"I can't play with that thing, James."

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because somebody decided to bite my hand," she answered. "My thumb still hurts too much to handle a controller." She held up her left hand. After Brock, Ash and Misty had left, cooking and cleaning up on her own had been considerably painful; but she refused to be deterred by such a minute thing as a hand injury.

"I bit you?" he asked.

"Don't you remember?"

James shook his head and looked away.

Seeing the tears beginning to form in his eyes as he turned from her, Jessie knelt down and embraced him from behind. "Doesn't matter, it'll heal. She kissed his neck before whispering seductively, "But NEXT time you bite me, I'm biting back!" She nibbled on his neck, making him giggle. Suddenly the world around her began to spin as a dizzy spell hit her, and she decided to remove herself from her partner before he noticed. God, I need to sleep...

"Does this thing work?" James asked, examining the television.

"Yes," Jessie replied tiredly. "It wasn't plugged in when we first got here but once Ash got ahold of it he hardly ever turned it off."

"Anything good on?" he asked, wondering why the remote controller wasn't working. He started banging it on the floor.

"Pokémon battles. There's several championships going on at the same time and they're on almost every channel. He and Misty fought for days over which channel to watch."

"I think the batteries are dead in this thing," James said, putting the remote down.

"Wouldn't surprise me," Jessie yawned.

James turned to his partner, who was now lying on the sofa. "You sound tired, Jess," he said, noticing for the first time the dark circles under her eyes. "And you look tired, too."

"I haven't been sleeping much," she responded. Between taking care of James during the day and lying awake worrying about her friends at night, sleep had not come easy to her this past week.

"Why don't you rest for a while?" James suggested. "Get some sleep."

"I don't want to leave you alone..."

James knelt down beside her and took her hand. "I'm not alone," he told her, his green eyes looking at her intensely. "I haven't been since the day I met you."

"James..."

He kissed her gently. "Go to sleep, Jess," he urged softly, covering her up with a blanket. "I promise I'll be the first thing you see when you wake up."

"You'd better be," she said, as sleep began to strengthen its hold on her. "Or I'll bash your brains in..." She felt his lips kiss her temple reassuringly.

"I'll be here," he promised.

.

Domino was still laughing insanely as she stood over the black coffin. There was no crowd of mourners this time, only two austere-looking pall bearers standing by each end of the coffin, holding it up. One was wearing sunglasses.

Jessie stared at the rings on the coffin lid, reaching out to touch the "R" on the larger of the two. Where had she seen those before?

"Who's in this coffin?" Jessie demanded to know, grabbing Domino by the arms and shaking her.

Domino shoved her violently, knocking her to the ground. She then grabbed the rings off the coffin lid and put them on her own hand, one on the second finger and the other on the third. Suddenly Jessie realized exactly where she had seen those rings before, and as the realization dawned on her a man's voice started yelling from inside coffin, pounding on the lid and demanding to be let out.

.

"GIOVANNI!" Jessie yelled as she opened her eyes, sitting up so fast on the couch it made her head spin.

"Where?" James asked fearfully, dropping the roses he had gathered from the bushes outside. He spun around frantically looking for his former boss, almost expecting him to come out of the woodwork.

"Those rings belong to Giovanni!"

"What rings?" James asked, completely confused.

"If Domino had the boss's rings, then the person in the coffin had to be him!"

James stared at her blankly. "Coffin?.."

. . .

Fifteen minutes later Jessie sat with James at the kitchen table, drinking the tea he'd made for her.

"So let me get this straight," James said, after listening intently as Jessie described the series of dreams she'd been having. "There was an old woman on one side of the street with a coffin and Domino on the other side of the street with a different one?"

"Yes, the old lady said I didn't belong there so I went across the street where Domino dropped Giovanni's rings on the other coffin. She laughed like she was insane!"

"It was just a dream, Jess."

"She wouldn't tell me who was in the coffin," Jessie continued. "But I KNOW those rings were his! And I could hear his voice inside the coffin screaming at her to let him out!"

"So what if it WAS him?" James asked. Didn't they want that horrible man to die?

"She took the rings back and put them on her own hand... it's got to MEAN something!"

James blinked. "What? What do you think it means, Jess?"

"Domino's going to kill Giovanni!"

. . . . . .

"Lookin' good," Meowth commented later that evening as Mondo adjusted his cap and attached the pokéball containing Persian to his belt. The young man nodded but said nothing. He hadn't said much of anything over the past week. Staring blankly at his reflection, he wondered if there was anything left of the person he had once been.

Meowth knew Mondo was taking Lana's death hard, but he had no idea how to help him overcome the guilt and self-loathing eating away at his soul. There was no way around the fact that he was directly responsible for her horrific demise. What comfort could he offer?

The boy had been too ill to attend her memorial service, but Meowth had watched from the shadows. He decided to spare Mondo the knowledge that it had been held on what would have been the woman's 27th birthday. Agents from all over the world had flown in for the service; including her old training instructor Viper from Team Rocket Academy and the ever-elusive Professor Sebastian, who'd had more than a few words to say about the tragic loss of his protégé. Meowth was saddened by the lack of family members present until an uncle on her father's side took a turn at the podium to speak, followed by a younger man in a standard Team Rocket uniform who turned out to be a cousin. The line of speakers drolled on as lab assistants, Domino, friends and fellow scientists took their turns. Last was Giovanni himself, who praised Lana's competence and loyalty to the organization. Meowth just shook his head. If only the man knew... After the service the daughter of Team Rocket's late agent Daniel had been flown off to be buried next to her father. Meowth wondered how he had died.

"You should get out of here before all hell breaks loose," Mondo said, breaking Meowth's train of thought.

"Da' balloon's all ready," he told Mondo. "I'll be waitin' for ya, so don't go gettin' yerself killed!"

"I'll try."

Mondo picked up the empty cage that until a short time ago had housed Giovanni's Persian. He would return it to the storage area he'd found it before heading to Giovanni's office.

"Mondo..."

He turned to look at Meowth, who was eying him anxiously. "Hm?"

"Just... be careful, okay?"

"Right. You, too."

Mondo gave his room a final farewell glance as he opened the door and let Meowth exit ahead of him. It was small, but it had his home for... how many years? He didn't know anymore. The truth was he owed a lot to the Team Rocket organization. He'd always been grateful to Giovanni for taking in a homeless child and giving him a job and a place to live. Until recently he'd have given his life for the man in repayment of his debt. He would never have dreamed that one day he'd be trying to kill him. With a heavy heart he finally exited the room and closed the door behind him.

He replayed the events of the past week in his mind as he returned the cage to the storage unit where he'd found it. He was not a suspicious person by nature, but too many of the strange coincidences that had occurred over the past week had been too damned convenient. It had started with his awakening in his quarters after Lana's death. For the life of him he he still couldn't figure out why he hadn't been locked up. He'd been found in a restricted area where one of the scientists had just been killed; yet no one had bothered to question him about the incident, or even ask what he'd been doing there in the first place! Certainly it was convenient for him, but it made no sense. Domino had to have known something was going on, so why hadn't she reported him?

Another thing that puzzled him was how easy it had been to get his hands on Giovanni's Persian. Two agents he'd never seen before had knocked on his door in the middle of the night and given it to him in a pokéball and told him not to ask any questions. He had no idea who his mysterious allies were, but he'd seen them sneaking around several times since then looking suspicious.

The cage he was returning was another unexplainable mystery. Cages were kept in the labs, somewhere he had no plans to ever step foot in again, but this one had been found in a storage unit down the hall from his room the morning after he'd been provided with Persian. Was it a coincidence, he wondered, as he put the cage back in the corner and shut the door, or had it purposely been left there for him by the same people who'd stolen their boss's favorite Pokémon in the first place? He didn't know.

He headed for Giovanni's office next, keeping careful tabs on the time. Giovanni had a meeting at five o'clock, which gave Mondo the perfect opportunity to go in and place the pokéball on his desk while he was out. He did so and quickly left the room, hiding in the utility closet across the hall. Once Giovanni entered the room Mondo would cut the power to the electric door, trapping him inside, and Persian would do the rest. A simple plan, provided nothing went wrong. Mondo pressed his ear to the door and waited...

. . .

Around the corner a woman with a gun in one hand and a two-way radio in the other heard the door of the utility closet shut. "The boy is in place," she reported.

Up on the roof Domino pulled out her own two-way radio. "Excellent. Operation "Solemn Hour" is about to commence. We await your signal."

"I think "Operation Elimination" would have sounded better," Attila commented to his partner.

"Not very discreet," Hun observed.

The two were in Giovanni's personal helicopter, tying a piece of rope to one of the seats while on the ground Domino tied the other end of the rope to the top of a cage. The Pokémon inside it paced back and forth nervously.

"Don't start the engine yet," Domino called up to Attila. "Wait for the signal. And make sure that knot is secure!"

"Don't you worry about my knots!" he told her. "My knots could hold a raging Tauros!"

"And have," Hun remarked, who'd seen him lasso them in.

"What's the target's ETA, Agatha?" Domino asked into her radio.

"Target expected within the next ten minutes," Agatha said. "He'll be back as soon as he learns his meeting has been cancelled. I've already taken care of his secretary." She peered over the corner at Giovanni's office door, then at the closet Mondo was hiding in. "What about the boy?" she asked.

"What about him?"

"Mondo might still back out," Agatha said. "Or he could panic like he did last time. What do I do with him then?"

Domino's expression darkened. For a week she had carefully built her plan around that boy and the flawed scheme he and Meowth had come up with. She had flawlessly orchestrated every move up to this point to make sure their actions coincided with her own master plan. If the entire operation failed because of him... She gripped the radio hard.

"If Mondo fails this time... kill him."

-CONTINUED IN PART ELEVEN-