The waiting for Gourgeist to return was agonising for Bonnie. What if it couldn't find her brother and their friends? She started picking some of the dirt off her clothes absentmindedly to distract herself.

"You're filthy Twerpette!" said Jessie accusingly watching her do this. "Don't you have a change of clothes?"

"Well, sorry if my dirty clothes offend you, in case you weren't listening to my story I did roll down a fair chunk of this mountain today," defended Bonnie with her hands on her hips. "And yes, I do have some clean clothes, thank you very much."

"Well, we better go get you cleaned up then," said Jessie. " You look and smell like a homeless person."

"Shall I take her to the river and leave you to help her wash up?" inquired James.

"Why is that suddenly MY job?" questioned Jessie.

"Well, I think you doing it would be a tad less awkward….you know, with me being a man and all," explained James causing Jessie to turn a bit red and sweatdrop at the embarrassing realisation of how obvious the answer was.

"Plus you was almost a nurse," added Meowth. "Maybe you could fix up dat leg of hers?"

"You were a nurse?" asked Bonnie.

"Almost," sighed Jessie.

"How can you be almost a nurse?" inquired Bonnie, not noticing Meowth and James were shaking their heads willing her not to ask that.

Jessie looked annoyed before yelling "I FAILED MY FINAL EXAM ON A TECHNICALITY OK! Not that it's ANY of YOUR business."

"Geez, sorry I asked," mumbled Bonnie.

"James, help me get Little Miss Nosey down to the river to wash up, I'll take her bag and the medical kit," instructed Jessie.

"Wait, the river? As in where you found me?" asked Bonnie, "we have to go all the way back there?"

"No, thankfully part of that river flows closer to this camp. You somehow made it quite far downstream," said James as he once again picked her up and popped her on his shoulders. Bonnie was quite enjoying her piggyback ride with the tall man but it did make her miss her dad a bit as he used to do that often. It had been so long since she'd last seen him.

They walked to the part of the river where they had bathed earlier. It was very dark now, but thankfully they had their torches. James took the girl off his shoulders then walked back to the campsite to give the females privacy.

Jessie rested the torch in a nearby tree while Bonnie undressed and got into the now ever colder river. She could just stand in the deepest part, and thankfully the current was very weak, so she had no chance of getting swept downstream.

"Gahhh this is freezing!" she cried.

"Well, it's better than being covered in mud," commented Jessie.

"That's debatable!" shivered Bonnie washing the dirt off her as quickly as humanly possible so she could get out of the water. When she scampered out she was thankful that Jessie had taken her towel out of the bag and quickly wrapped the towel around the child. While Bonnie was drying, Jessie took out what she assumed must have been the girl's pyjamas, which appeared to be made to look like some kind of dinosaur-like pokémon. Before fully dressing and while Bonnie was snuggly wrapped in the towel the woman examined the girl's leg.

"Hmmm, you've twisted your ankle….and popped your knee out of joint," she muttered. "I'm sorry to do this Twerpette, but this is going to hurt you more than me."

Jessie then, quickly and without warning twisted Bonnie's leg sharply in such a way that her knee popped back into place.

"AHHHHHHHH!" screamed Bonnie in pain before rubbing her leg. "A warning would have been nice!"

" If I had warned you would you have let me do it?" asked Jessie.

"Probably... I mean YES, I'm not a baby you know!" barked Bonnie.

Jessie at this point had already started wrapping her leg in a long bandage to secure it and help it heal.

"Well, you're braver than James and Meowth then," commented Jessie. " I usually have to chase and pin them down when something needs popping back in."

"You do this a lot?" questioned Bonnie admiring the professionalism of the bandages and the fact her leg already felt a bit better.

"When you go blasting off into the stratosphere as often as we do you get a lot of practice giving first aid."

"Oh," said Bonnie not having really considered they might get hurt when they eventually landed. She briefly felt a twinge of guilt that she was on the side that did that to them regularly.

"You should really tell Head Twerp and the rest of your little crew that it's RUDE to blast people off into the sky," added Jessie.

"Well, has anyone ever told you and your crew that it's RUDE to try to steal other peoples pokémon!" defended Bonnie.

"Touche," smirked Jessie, now finished with the bandages and helping the girl into her onesie pyjamas.

"You'll need to say off the leg for a while yet," said Jessie in a very nurse/ doctor like manner when the girl was fully dressed. For the third time that night Bonnie found herself being carried by a Rocket, although Jessie opted to carry her in her arms bridal style, while Bonnie held the torch to light the path. Bonnie was even more shocked with Jessie doing this than she had been with James. James always came across as kinda nice but from Jessie, this was just totally unexpected. Between helping her dry, attending to her injury, dressing her and now carrying her back to camp in a similar manner as to how one would carry a baby Jessie seemed to be treating her almost motherly.

XXXXXXX

"Ha," chuckled James as he saw Jessie making her way back to camp with Bonnie in her arms. "Whose the Twerp taxi now?!"

"Carrying her now will hopefully save us carrying her tomorrow," shrugged Jessie placing her child on a log.

"Thanks, Jessie," said Bonnie.

"You breathe one word of this to your twerp friends, and you won't be thanking me," she threatened, to which Bonnie just shrugged, not taking the threat seriously at all.

Gourgeist entered camp at that moment and informed Meowth that the Twerps received the letter and would meet them outside the forest tomorrow. Meowth translated this for the group, which made Bonnie delighted and relieved knowing her brother wouldn't be searching for her all night. Jessie thanked Gourgeist and returned her to her pokéball.

After once again warming themselves by the fire Jessie yawned.

"So much for our early night, I'm bushed let's go to bed."

The pink haired woman started to head towards the tent and was unzipping it when something occurred to Bonnie. There was only one tent.

"James, if that's Jessie's tent, where is yours?"

Meowth grinned from ear to ear looking forward to this conversation while Jessie stopped what she was doing blushing slightly. James just stayed silent and thought he'd let the child work it out herself.

Bonnie continued to glance around the campsite wondering how she could have missed the second tent, then it hit her.

"You guys sleep in the same tent don't you?" she said in a monotone.

Then suddenly she perked up, and her eyes had huge love hearts in them.

"Oh my goodness!" the blonde girl exclaimed. "Are you guys MARRIED?!"

Meowth couldn't contain his laughter and laughed so hard he fell off his log. Jessie and James both turned a delightful shade of crimson.

Bonnie seemed to ignore this and continued with joy " I guess we wouldn't know if you were since you're always wearing gloves. It makes so much sense, you guys are always together and holding hands, you are so in sync. You guys were MADE FOR EACH OTHER!"

"Ha ha ha," continued to laugh the cat pokémon rolling around on the ground with tears in his eyes, "this is gold!"

James had seemed to freeze with embarrassment and continued to sit there like a stunned mullet. A very red stunned mullet.

"WE"RE NOT MARRIED YOU LITTLE TWERP!" shouted Jessie stomping her foot, her face the same shade as her hair although whether from anger or embarrassment nobody could tell.

"What Jessie means to say is," jumped in James managing come back from his zoned out world of embarrassment before Jessie got out the dreaded fan, "is that we are not married but do share one tent rather than lug around two. It's purely for travelling convenience."

"Oh," said Bonnie. "But you love each other, right?"

Jessie and James did a classic anime fall backwards at this. The girl simply didn't know when to stop.

" Jessie just did such a good job looking after me and I know she looks after you when you get hurt James. You should marry her!"

"Well….you see, we're just really close " started James but before he could get out the word "friends", he was interrupted by the small girl who was suddenly holding his hands with heart shapes still sparkling in her wide eyes.

"Oh James, I can see it now, you want to marry her, but you're just too shy to ask! You two should get married, leave Team Rocket and run away together! Don't worry about being shy I'll help you out!"

Meowth at this point was laughing and crying so hard he thought his sides would burst open.

"Jessie," blurted Bonnie facing the woman and getting down on one knee in her classic proposal pose reaching for her hand "Please marry James! You could take care of him and move into a house and have beautiful babies together!"

Meowth now thought he was going to die laughing. This was hysterical! Jessie and James had never blushed so much in their whole lives. Jessie looked furious, and James looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him up, but neither could utter a word.

After a short uncomfortable silence, Bonnie whispered into Jessie's ear "can I be your flower girl?"

"AAAAAAAHH!" screamed Jessie. " WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU BRAT?! Now I know how your brother feels! NOBODY"S getting married here."

"Yeah, and if I ever decide to ask Jessie to marry me I'll do it myself!" added James trying to sound tough but then realising he'd just said something a tad awkward as the other three had turned their gaze to him with slightly confused stares.

"Umm….not that I'm planning to," uttered James with a huge sweatdrop behind his head while touching his pointer fingers together.

"Oooookay," said Bonnie. "Guess I got a little carried away….but you've got to admit, it would be awfully romantic," she winked.

Meowth got up and hugged Bonnie and said to her between his non-stop laughter, "Oh, you've made me soo happy kid. You're too much! Look at der faces, der so embarrassed! Ha Ha,! Oh, Ouch! I'm sure I've pulled something laughing. Ha, Ha! Jessie, James, can we keep her? PLEASE!?"

"NO!" shouted both humans together.

XXXXXXXXX

When the awkward moment had finally passed, the question of sleeping arrangement came into question.

"Well," said Jessie. "You boys will just have to sleep outside tonight."

"But Jessie it's freezing out here!" pleaded James.

"Yeah, and I'm a pokémon, what does it matter if I sleep in da tent?" argued Meowth.

"We only have two sleeping bags! Apparently, Science Twerp has Mini-Twerpette's one" argued Jessie, "and as annoying as she is little BonBon here is an injured child. There's no way us girls should sleep outside!"

"And boys have germs," added Bonnie cheekily sticking out her tongue.

"I'll sleep on the edge and I promise to keep my 'germs' to myself," argued James using air quotes around the word "germs".

"Plus, Jimmy's so girly he probably don't got none anyway," teased Meowth.

"Why you little!" James was about to grab Meowth in anger when Jessie interrupted with the solution.

"Fine then, I suppose it's good we brought the biggish tent. We'll just have to share sleeping bags."

"I'll share with da Twerpette," offered Meowth. "Youse two can share one cause youse usually do dat when it's cold anyway," he added with an extremely mischievous grin.

"They are in love!" cheered Bonnie.

"Cannit Twerp!" said Jessie not wanting to open that can of worms again.

"Fine then," sighed Jessie and with that, she and James squeezed into the blue sleeping bag with James between the edge of the tent and Jessie. Bonnie claimed the pink sleeping bag which must have been Jessie's usually and Meowth after putting out the fire, closed himself in the tent with the others and curled up on Bonnie's sleeping bag between Bonnie and Jessie.

"Goodnight Team Rocket," said Bonnie cheerfully.

"Night Twerpette," the trio mumbled in unison before they all drifted off to sleep.