Watching Madame Boss's heli-jet take off last night, Miyamoto had felt a pang of disappointment. She hadn't told Miyamoto she was leaving, let alone thought to invite her along. No doubt it was because Madame Boss needed her at the Mt. Moon base where the highest-level projects could benefit from Miyamoto's continued oversight.
But still...
She would have liked to spend a few evenings in a hotel suite in Saffron.
Instead, Miyamoto sat in her own office that Sunday morning, a door away from the ornate chambers Madame Boss operated from when she was here. Miyamoto kept her own room more, in a word, childproof. The heavy cabinets were shut with special latches. A thick area rug covered most of the marble floor. There were no statues or plants to pull down with grabby child-hands. In the corner, hidden when the door to the hallway was open, sat a miniature play castle, a stuffed Ponyta toy jammed inside.
Jessie, her daughter, was at the Rocket Corp day care, and would be until late in the afternoon. She was having a blast at Sunday swimming lessons, no doubt, and hopefully not causing more trouble with the other girls. After a day in the pool and a hot dinner, Miyamoto hoped she would fall right asleep when she got home.
The quality of child care this job afforded Miyamoto was unbelievable, and that was just one of the many benefits. She had joined Rocket Corp as a university student looking for a grant. They offered her a job instead, in addition to funding the remainder of her degree.
Her first interview at Rocket Corp, four years ago now, had concluded with a conversation with Madame Boss, and the woman had ended up changing her life.
There were not a lot of universities offering grants for physics when Miyamoto was applying. Everyone wanted to fund studies about Pokémon, pumping money into land preserves and massive terrariums, building all manner of perverse breeding programs, and quietly fielding researchers brave enough to conduct autopsies.
Miyamoto just wanted to study how energy moved through different materials.
She had slogged from interview to interview, infant Jessie sometimes strapped to her chest, pitching her research. If sponsors weren't put off by her bland choice of topic, they were unfairly wary that being a single mother meant Miyamoto would be unreliable.
It had all felt impossible. She had been on the verge of throwing out her thesis entirely and starting over when a professor friend recommended she apply for a grant from Rocket Labs.
Rocket Labs had a reputation at the time - Miyamoto was certain it had only grown since - for being fast-moving, highly commercialized, and extremely toxic. She had decided it was worth a shot anyway.
The day of her interview, her sitter for Jessie backed out last-minute, meaning she had to bring Jessie with her to the office. The idea filled her with dread. She'd been hoping to avoid outside-of-work topics altogether and just pitch her research, but now there was no avoiding it.
On the way to the office, Miyamoto tried not to feel resentment towards little Jessie for what she was increasingly sure was going to be a rejection.
The first hint that Miyamoto had the wrong idea came the very moment she entered the lobby.
"Welcome!" the woman at the front desk had chimed, "Would you like a bassinet for the baby while you get checked in?"
The young man standing next to her dipped below the counter, then stood up holding a sturdy-looking carrier wrapped in a transparent paper. Before she even said 'yes', he tore off the sterile wrapper and placed the bassinet on the counter. He ducked down again and popped up with a pair of small, folded blankets and tucked them inside.
Miyamoto was stunned. She watched with bulging eyes as the man came around the counter holding her paperwork and carrying the basket. He set her up comfortably in a corner of the lobby, then left to fetch her a glass of water.
The first two rounds of her interview were conducted there in that sunny corner of the ground-floor lobby at the Rocket Corp. building in Saffron.
She didn't have much to discuss during the security interview, though she was daunted by the thoroughness of the Rocket background check.
The pair of scientists she spoke to after seemed normal enough, and excited by the idea of having her core science perspective on-hand. They both shook her hand and made her feel like things were progressing towards a yes with the grant.
Then, they told her to head upstairs for the final round of the meeting. She would be talking to "The Boss".
When Miyamoto scooped up Jessie from the bassinet, the man from the front desk was beside her immediately to carry it for her. He offered to carry her bag too, but that felt too indulgent.
Courteously, he escorted her to the elevators and up. Out the elevator window, she could see over the top of every other building in the city, all the way out to the stretching forests beyond. The boss would be at the highest floor of the highest building in Saffron. Of course.
They stepped out into a marble-floored foyer. The carved double-door entry to the boss's office dominated the opposite wall, the only way forward. Its opening ritual of knock, announcement, and the call of invitation from beyond felt a touch dramatic, but the payoff of the reveal was real. Madame Boss herself was stunning, black-haired and red-lipped, divine in a form-fitting red suit sat in a high-backed chair behind her massive mahogany desk. Miyamoto could only stand frozen in awkward awe, her rounding eyes magnetized to the woman, as the porter bustled past her to set up the bassinet, then disappeared into the hallway outside and shut the door.
"What's their name?" the boss asked her once the door closed.
"Ah." Feeling now invited to speak, Miyamoto walked forward to the boss's desk. She leaned down and showed her Jessie's sleeping face, swaddled deep in a blanket burrito. "This is Jessie."
"She's a good sleeper."
"Yes, fortunately for me," Miyamoto responded, pulling Jessie back to her chest and gently rearranging the blanket around her face, "Her father's not in the picture, so I'm lucky she's set on easy-mode. ...I can assure you she won't be a hindrance to my research."
Madame Boss turned her head and looked off thoughtfully. "I'm all too familiar with that game," she said, toying with Miyamoto's allusion, "Glad to hear your darling is such a team player." She looked back at Miyamoto. "Please do sit."
"Thank you." Miyamoto slipped into one of the chairs set before Madame Boss's desk and settled Jessie in her lap, her bag tucked beside her.
"Do you have one of your own?" she ventured.
The boss's face hardened.
"Yes...one brat of a son." The comment caught Miyamoto by surprise, but Madame Boss's delivery was flat enough that, at the time, she thought it might be a dry joke. "While I didn't become a mother of purpose, I have found the experience quite motivating.
"Motherhood is sacrifice," she continued, eyes sliding to Jessie bundled in Miyamoto's arms, "But it kindles in us women the instinct to take control. To build a better world for our children."
Miyamoto hugged Jessie a little tighter at the boss's words. She considered them, tested them as an explanation for her own impulses.
"Whatever you plan to do in the field of science, Miss Miyamoto, if you do it with the future of your child in mind, then we are happy to help you work towards it at Rocket Labs."
It took Miyamoto a moment to parse what the glamorous woman was telling her, but when the realization fully sunk in, it hit with a wave of euphoria.
Support. Safety. Understanding. Respect. Miyamoto had jumped the whole hierarchy of needs with one interview. And in one interview, Rocket Corp and Madame Boss had won Miyamoto's undying loyalty.
Once Miyamoto started working daily on the Cinnabar campus, and then later at the Northern Cerulean lab, she saw Madame Boss sporadically, but the woman always took time to check in on her and Jessie. There were other parents on the campuses, and a number of other children, but the boss had taken a special interest in Miyamoto...and it was one Miyamoto leaned into.
She had never expected to end up in Madame Boss's confidence, let alone her bed, but one order had followed another. The closer Miyamoto got to the boss, the more she had to submit to the woman's whims, and the longer it went on, the happier she was to do so.
The Rocket Corporation expanded rapidly under Madame Boss, and the circle of people she trusted narrowed into a point, with Miyamoto firmly in the center. Several grand successes under the brand or its white-labled partners were directly correlated with breakthroughs Miyamoto had made for the company.
As a couple, the two women shared a generative energy that sparked new ideas and powered massive projects. Miyamoto didn't try to fool herself though. The lust she saw in her boss's eyes wasn't just for her body - it was for her brilliant mind, and all the possibilities and profits it generated. Somehow, that excited Miyamoto even more.
The only problem now was the "brat boy" Madame Boss had scoffed at back then had grown into a young man who finally learned to play for his mother's favor. Miyamoto had watched him rise in value in her eyes. He got taller. Got handsome. Started wearing suits. Won some Pokémon tournaments. Did some interviews. Pushed some product. And suddenly he was the genius. Never mind the advances Miyamoto was making with Pokéball containment efficacy, or her breakthroughs on in-stasis conditioning.
The lack of communication this visit, and the boss's sudden departure, made Miyamoto feel antsy. She needed to make a move soon, to raise her relevancy, and to bury Giovanni's. But first, she needed to keep watching the heli-pad. She couldn't access Giovanni's expense reports or shipping manifests, but she could see everything coming and going at the base by air.
If Miyamoto could obtain evidence that Giovanni had gone behind the boss's back and authorized an expense of that magnitude…for something she was certain neither he nor Ariana could explain in a pinch…he would be on thin ice with Madame Boss.
But Miyamoto needed him sunk.