Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If there is one thing Team Rocket is good at, it is poking around in places they shouldn't, and for once, Team Rocket HQ has decided to put those skills to good use.

And so it is that Jessie, James, Meowth, and Wobbuffet find themselves in the basement of a secretive, up-and-coming team known as “Team Sprocket”, a name which had Giovanni seriously asking Team Rocket's many lawyers if he had grounds to sue for copyright infringement.

“Just look at all of this stuff!” Meowth whispers as they pass yet another strange machine.

“What do you think it’s all for?” Jessie asks.

“I’m not exactly sure,” James replies. “But if I were to hazard a guess, I’d have to say that most of it looks pretty aggressive.”

“Do you think they’re planning to attack us?” Jessie asks.

“Hah!” says Meowth. “Good luck with that! No one beats Team Rocket’s research and development department.”

“I don’t know,” James says warily. “Most of this stuff looks pretty advanced.”

“All the better reason to get on with our mission and get all of this documented and sent back to HQ,” Jessie whispers. The other two nod and follow her lead.

After approximately a half an hour of picture-taking, the Team reconvenes.

“All sent off?” Jessie asks. James nods, Wobbuffet salutes.

“The boss is gonna be happy with this!” Meowth grins. “He might even promote us!”

The four bask for a moment in the rare glow of a job well done, when a noise suddenly startles them out of their reverie.

“Is that an alarm going off?” Jessie asks.

“And we didn’t cause it?” Meowth adds.

“Wobba?” says Wobbuffet.

The four look at each other. “Let’s get out of here!” they all shout, and start booking it for the stairs.

The team races up the narrow stairway, taking the steps two at a time. All around them they can hear bangs and crashes and the sound of an angry, persistent alarm. Once out of the building, they turn left, and narrowly avoid running into a panicking group of Team Sprocket goons. “It’s loose! It's loose!” they’re yelling as they run by. What’s loose?

The quartet manages to get all of the way to the abandoned warehouse on the edge of Team Sprocket’s property before they see it: A flying, mechanical monstrosity that could only best be described as a Thing, vaguely dragon-like, barely small enough to fully comprehend, and clearly quite unhappy.

With a horrible noise, it opens its mouth and lets loose a beam of red energy, decimating the warehouse and leaving Team Rocket trapped beneath the debris.

A large metal pipe lies on top of them, weighing down on Jessie and James’s legs and Meowth’s tail and left hind paw, although it does nothing to deter him from trying to pull them free.

Jessie blinks, her vision blurry, her body aching. The only one not caught up in the wreckage is Wobbuffet, who is desperately trying to push the metal piping off of them, but to no avail.

The Thing powers up again and lets loose another blast, destroying Team Sprocket’s building in a shower of bits of metal and wood.

Its head turns slowly. It’s only a matter of time before it notices them there.

“Wobbuffet, listen to me, you need to go,” Jessie shouts at Wobbuffet, who is still failing to budge the pipe.

“Wobba?” he says breathlessly.

"GO!" Jessie screams, her throat raw.

"Just GO! What are you waiting for?"

Wobbuffet shakes his head, which in his case is really more like shaking his entire body.

"Wobba! "Wobbuffet!" he cries, placing his arms imploringly over hers. "Wobbuffet."

She doesn't actually need Meowth's translation to know what he just said, but Meowth provides one anyway.

"He says he ain't leavin'!"

Jessie grits her teeth.

"Yes, you are!" she says sternly. "You're the only one of us who could possibly survive now, so you need to go!"

Wobbuffet grips her arms all the tighter, burying his face in the hunk of metal separating them.

"You don't need to do this!"

"Wobba!"

"I'm ordering you to go! As your trainer, I'm ordering you to go!"

"Wobba!"

He's not listening. He's not listening at all. Oh, Wobbuffet, you stupid, stupid creature, why won't you just go?

Jessie jerks from his grip and pulls out the last, desperate trick in her arsenal.

"We never wanted you anyway, you big blue buffoon!" she shouts desperately. "You were just an accidental trade that never should have happened! You were a mistake! A nuisance! And I've regretted having to drag you along after us ever since!"

"Jessie..." comes James's breathless, shocked voice, but she bites her tongue and ignores him. What does it matter if her harsh, cruel words break that big, blue heart for the rest of his life? At least he'll have a life.

"I- I wish I'd never met you," she continues, but there's no conviction in her voice. "You're just a- a-" But all of her acting prowess has failed her and she's choking on her own words.

Wobbuffet just gives another shake of the head and a little "Wobba". A much smaller movement, a much quieter tone than before. Damn it, he doesn't believe her. Not for one second.

"Leave," she begs quietly, and now she's crying. "You can leave. Please leave. Why don't you just leave?"

Another shake of the head, and Wobbuffet turns from her, squares up his shoulders, and marches as best any of his species can march to stand in front of them all. A lone guard before the oncoming army.

"What, are you crazy?" Meowth yells, no longer even trying to pull his back paw or tail out from under all the debris.

"Even your counter can't take that!" James adds, but Wobbuffet pays them no attention, scrunched eyes firmly on the Thing rising over the horizon before him.

"Leave," Jessie repeats, even though from the distance he's at he can't hear her. "Just leave. Please, just leave. For me? Please, just leave."

The Thing shrieks and they can all hear the crunch of metal on metal and the grinding of countless gears. It stares them down, and with a mighty roar, aims a beam of reddish light directly at them-

But Wobbuffet's counter is already up, and the blast ricochets off of him to strike the Thing head on.

It lets out an awful, mechanical roar as the attack hits it, bits of metal flying every which way. But it still is not undeterred. With another roar there comes another attack.

“Wob-buf-FET!” Wobbuffet shouts, and brings his counter up a second time, a glow surrounding him as the attack bounces off in a blaze of scarlet.

Twice more Wobbuffet counters the Thing’s relentless attacks. Then a third time. Jessie watches him, heart beating out of her chest.

He needs to win this. He needs to win this, because if he can't protect them, then he's died for nothing.

God damn it, why didn't he just leave?

The monster glows, powering up, and unleashes the biggest attack yet.

“Wob-BA!” Wobbuffet cries, bringing his counter up, and the returning attack sends the mechanical monster blasting back over the horizon and out of view, and for one brief, glorious second, it looks like they've won. Team Rocket will live, and Wobbuffet has saved them all, and in a few hours they'll all walk off into the sunrise like they always do, but it seems like the Thing has some kind of counter or reflector of its own, because even though it is now gone, some of its initial attack reflects straight back, and poor Wobbuffet has not the energy to bring his shield back up even one more time.

"Wobbuffet," he says with a little smile, just before it hits him head on.

***

There is no blood, no sign of organs of any sort, something which none of them can decide is a good thing or not. On the one hand, it makes the whole situation less grizzly. On the other hand, it makes the whole horrid affair seem oddly clinical, like Wobbuffet was just some inanimate thing instead of a living creature who walked and talked and always popped out of his poké ball at the worst possible moment.

The blast of energy that took out Wobbuffet blew the giant length of piping clean off of them, and after much scrambling, injuries notwithstanding, each of the rest of Team Rocket has managed to wriggle free.

Meowth is standing in shock, front paws covering his mouth, the pains in his tail and back paw completely forgotten. James’s heart feels like it's been torn out of his chest, and he is already crying, softly, but Jessie is moving, scurrying about back and forth as best she can and still calling Wobbuffet's name in disbelief, because although she knows he isn't human and therefore doesn't have anything close to a human's physical structure, damn it, she can't quite believe it because it looks less like he died and more like he just popped.

There are splashes of blue everywhere, torn and stretched like a burst balloon, and she hates how fitting it is, being a sight that Team Rocket is all too familiar with.

Jessie looks left and right for something, anything more complete than a few latex-like shreds of blue littering the pavement. For a moment she thinks, briefly, that it looks like the remains of a parade gone by. Maybe he's just hurt. Maybe he's not-

Her eyes search desperately, but can see only little rubbery scraps of brilliant cyan. The one solid thing left of him is-

Jessie's breath hitches and the tears start rolling down her cheeks as she kneels down, picks up the stiff, flat object, pulls it into her lap, and cradles the long, black tail of what used to be her beloved wobbuffet.

"I'm sorry, Wobbuffet." she says. Because there is nothing else she can say. Because no matter how many other words there are in the entirety of the world, there are absolutely none that are appropriate for this moment. Sorry that the trade that brought them together ever happened. Sorry for being the kind of person who could lead friends into such danger. Sorry for ever making him somehow think that she was a person worthy of-

Worthy of-

"I'm so, so sorry."

The tail blinks at her.

Chapter Text

James fidgets uncomfortably in a too-small plastic chair, one comforting hand on the arm of Jessie, who sits beside him, clutching Wobbuffet's tail to her like she is guarding a precious treasure, and the other over the edge of the arm rest.

If you had asked him a mere two days ago where he thought he would be before the week's end, he never would have guessed this. But, well, the four of them did live a rather... eclectic... lifestyle, didn't they? Truth be told they could have been just about anywhere, but sitting in the office of one Professor Samuel Oak (An office which, James notes with just the smallest amount of smugness, looks almost as disorganized as most of the more long-term rooms that Team Rocket has been lucky to snag over the years) was never something James would have even thought to guess, not even in a million years.

It had all started back at the scene of the accident, just after it looked like the giant mechanical menace had finished Wobbuffet off for good. Jessie had been sitting on the ground, having just found Wobbuffet’s tail, tears running down her face as she held it. Then there had been a pause, and Jessie had screamed so loudly that James swore people in Kalos must have heard her and had thrown Wobbuffet's tail into the air with such force that the darn thing had practically hit the stratosphere, then screamed again when she realized what she had just done and run about in a mad scramble trying to catch it before it hit the ground.

"Jessie!" Meowth called out in sheer and absolute horror. As Jessie skidded to a halt, clutching Wobbuffet's tail and grinning. "What are you doin'?"

"He's alive!" she'd shouted excitedly and whirled to face them, the tail clutched tightly in her hands.

"He's still alive! He blinked at me!"

And James’s heart had sunk like a stone.

"Jessie..." James said, and swallowed hard. He hadn't even finished processing what had happened to poor Wobbuffet yet. It still felt almost unreal, dreamlike. How could he possibly finish this sentence? And to have to say it to Jessie, of all people? Oh, Jessie.

"Jessie, he can't have. He doesn't-" James’s breath hitched and the tears started flowing again, both for Jessie and for poor Wobbuffet. He swallowed hard and forced himself to continue.

"- he doesn't have eyes anymore," he finished, in a pained, quiet voice.

Why exactly had he phrased it like that? How awful! What was wrong with him?

"And he didn't exactly do a lot of blinkin' with them scrunched-up things when he did have them, anyway," Meowth added unhelpfully.

"Not the eyes on the blue part, the eyes on this!" Jessie snarled, and brandished Wobbuffet's tail at them like it was a baseball bat and she was facing down a particularly aggressive home intruder. Sure enough, Wobbuffet's tail did, in fact, have eyes, a fact that had not gone completely unnoticed to the rest of the team in the past, but that each had individually deemed as likely having little to no significance. After all, plenty of pokémon had particularly unusual features for no discernable reason, why should Wobbuffet have been any different?

James stared at the tail's eyes.

The eyes stared back, unblinking, but perhaps, just for a moment, he thought he could imagine an expression of shock glinting out at him from those tiny, dark pupils.

Jessie, noticing James and Meowth's still grief-filled faces, realized immediately what was happening, or rather, what hadn't happened.

"Do it again!" she snarled at Wobbuffet's tail with a sort of feral desperation.

"Do it again! Blink, damn it, blink!" she shrieked, and shook the tail with such ferocity that had it had a mouth as well as eyes, James would not have been surprised had it vomited right then and there.

"Come on, Wobbuffet, for me?"

She held up Wobbuffet's tail to face her teammates again.

And this time the tail did blink at them, multiple times in succession.

Both James and Meowth screamed in horror, with Meowth shooting up into James’s arms, every fur on his body on end, leaving them both clinging to each other and shouting.

"Alright, that?" Meowth said, once he had caught his breath, and once James’s voice had gotten back to a decibel level that didn't make Meowth's poor feline ears ring like cathedral bells. “That just ain't right."

Jessie sniffed indignantly.

"Well, "right" or not, don't you see what this means?" She turned from them slightly and spoke in the most tender voice either had ever heard her use, cradling the tail gently in her arms, "He's not dead.” She pulled the flat, disembodied black appendage into a tight hug and nearly whispered the next part.

"Wobbuffet's still with us."

Jessie's ability to recall Wobbuffet's tail into a poké ball certainly bolstered her theory that he was alive and- well, certainly not alive and well, but most definitely alive, but the reaction of the Nurse Joy who ran the pokémon center in the nearest town had done little to inspire anyone else's confidence.

"Oh! My goodness!" she had shouted, when Jessie had released what she had expected to be an injured pokémon, only to be met with a single, disembodied limb.

"Well?" Jessie asked, slamming both her hands on the counter.

"Well what, ma'am?" The Nurse Joy asked, eyes flitting from Wobbuffet's tail to Jessie and back again.

"Well, what are you going to do about Wobbuffet?" Jessie snarled, for once not bothering to insist that it was  Miss and not Ma'am, thank you very much, never "Ma'am" except in the case of someone respecting her authority, and how old did she think she was, anyway? But a vein still bulged visibly in her forehead.

"This is a Wobbuffet?" Nurse Joy asked in disbelief.

"OF COURSE IT'S A WOBBUFFET! WHAT ELSE COULD IT POSSIBLY BE?"

Nurse Joy had enough sense not to even try to answer that question honestly.

"My apologies, ma'am, it's just that we don't get a lot of wobbuffet in here, and well, certainly not in this condition. Oh my!" She put a hand to her heart. The eyes on the disembodied tail had just blinked at her. So the thing was alive after all. Nurse Joy honestly couldn't say whether she thought that was a good thing or not. Was the poor creature suffering like this? It didn't look like it was suffering, but then again, it didn't look like much of anything at all right now.

"So, what are you going to do?" the pink-haired woman asked, and Nurse Joy could practically hear her teeth grinding. She was suddenly deeply grateful for the man standing on the woman's right and the meowth on the counter to her left, each with a pair of comforting hands on one arm, for Nurse Joy feared that without them the woman would have launched herself right over the counter and right at Joy's own throat about two seconds into this conversation.

She sighed deeply.

"To tell you the truth, I'm not really sure I know what I can do. I'm afraid this is beyond my expertise," she said sadly. "As far as I know, nothing like this has ever happened before. At least, nothing we humans have been around to observe. Oh, but wait!" She snapped her fingers. "That's it!"

"What's it?" the woman asked.

"There's a man just a region over who's very interested in this kind of thing. He's a pokémon professor who's dedicated his life to understanding everything there is to know about pokémon, and even if he doesn't know anything, I'm sure he would at least have some advice, and he would definitely want to see this, nonetheless."

After a brief moment of trepidation, she reached out and gently stroked Wobbuffet's tail, all reassurance and maternal warmth. She knew as well as anyone how protective a wobbuffet usually was of their tail, but she didn't want to leave the pokémon without at least some form of comfort, and given that the tail seemed to be the only part left, well... in for a penny, as they say. "Just hang in there little one, there might be someone who can help you yet!"

"And who exactly is this exalted pokémon professor?" Jessie asked.

"Oh no," Meowth muttered, one paw covering his face. He had a pretty good idea of exactly where this was going.

"His name is Professor Samuel Oak!" Nurse Joy had said with a smile. "Have you heard of him?"

And so it was that Team Rocket had made the long journey to Professor’s Samuel Oak’s pokémon research laboratory in Palette Town.

They were worn down and tired by the time they had arrived, and, as Team Rocket’s bad luck would have it, who should be waiting for them in the reception area but Ash Ketchum and his pikachu?

"Team Rocket!" the child yelled, immediately assuming a fighting stance, "What are you doing here?"

But Jessie had shocked everyone by just pushing right past Ash with a world-weary sigh.

"Yeah, yeah, trouble... double... protecting the world from... whatever. Listen, twerp! Believe it or not, we're not actually here to cause trouble today. We have much more important things to do than chase after you and the electric rat!"

"Pikaaa?" said Pikachu, sounding a little offended, one ear cocked questioningly to the side.

"We're here to see Professor Oak."

"What do you want to see Professor Oak for?" Ash raised an eyebrow, an unintentional mimic of Pikachu’s cocked ear. "Is this some kind of trick to try to steal the pokémon in his laboratory? Because no offense, this scheme seems pretty low-effort for you guys. You didn't even bother getting dressed up or anything."

"I ALREADY TOLD YOU, WE'RE NOT HERE FOR TROUBLE!" Jessie shrieked, and rounded on Ash, teeth bared, James quickly grabbing her under the arms to hold her back. Despite all of their altercations in the past, he still had the sneaking suspicion that a grown woman getting into a kickboxing match with a ten-year-old probably wasn't the best look for any of them, especially not if they wanted Professor Oak to actually agree to see them and not just boot them out flat on their backs with the aid of an oversized bulbasaur or something.

“Are you sure?” Ash asked with a little smirk. “Because that looks pretty troublesome to me.”

Jessie all but started growling at him.

“Look, kid,” Meowth sighed, stepping forward. “I know we ain’t done a lot in the past to get you to trust us, but we promise, this time we ain’t here to steal no pokémon.”

“We’re here because there was an accident,” James explained, cautiously loosening his grip on Jessie.

“An accident?” Ash echoed.

“Yes,” Jessie replied, eyes downcast and full of worry. “With Wobbuffet.”

Ash blinked and looked at them. Normally, he wouldn’t trust this sort of thing, but they all looked so tired and Jessie looked so sad that he couldn’t help but be moved.

“Gosh,” he said, as James went to register with the receptionist. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Thanks, kid,” said Meowth, and the trio settled into the waiting room’s cheap seats, an awkward silence hanging in the air.

It wasn’t long, however, until they were called in.

“Good luck!” Ash blurted, just as they stood up. “It’s just, I mean… Pikachu’s had some bad accidents before, and I remember how worried I was, so…” he paused for a moment. “I hope everything works out with your Wobbuffet, Jessie.”

Jessie blinked in shock, then gave a small smile.

“Thanks, twerp,” she said.

Professor Oak, despite his surprise, both at the state of Wobbuffet and the identity of his most recent visitors, had confirmed that Wobbuffet was most definitely alive. He seemed to be having a bit of trouble concealing his excitement, though, dashing back and forth and piling textbooks upon his desk for reference. James wonders idly if they might topple right over.

“You’ll excuse me if I can’t get you the clearest answers,” Oak says. “But as you know, despite their friendly appearances, wobbuffet are very mysterious creatures. Not a lot of them like to leave their caves, and those that do are often resistant to scientific study, particularly when it comes to attempts to examine their tails, but theories have been proposed that the tail is actually where a wobbuffet houses its consciousness."

"So, Wobbuffet’s brain's been in his butt this entire time?" Meowth asks.

Jessie rounds on him, still clutching Wobbuffet's tail to her chest.

"Do you ever know when to shut that big mouth?!" she shouts, and Professor Oak is glad for the man sitting in between the two, because watching a meowth get ripped limb from limb is not something he had particularly wanted to witness today.

"It was a legitimate question!" Meowth shouts, literally climbing the wall beside him, while James struggles to hold back an irate Jessie, a task made a little easier than usual as she is still holding Wobbuffet's tail in one arm and therefore has only one hand with which to claw at the unfortunate cat.

"Ahem!" Oak clears his throat rather loudly, in the same way he does when he notices the students in the classes he does guest lectures for getting a little too rowdy. It is a practiced sort of sound, honed over years of experience, and it always works.

Team Rocket settles back into their seats, Jessie glaring at Meowth, Meowth sticking his tongue out at Jessie, and James looking at no one in particular, but wearing an expression especially familiar to all of those unfortunate enough to have to work a minimum wage job.

"As I was saying," Professor Oak continues, figuring it easier to simply ignore the outburst than to try to actually make any sense of it. "Not an awful lot is known about wobbuffet physiology. However, in addition to the hypothesis that their consciousness is stored in their tails, there is also the hypothesis that the part of them most would term to be their body proper, although capable of movement and taking in nutrients in what appears to be the same way we do, is not, in fact, a "real" body at all, but more like a highly advanced puppet controlled by the tail. A sort of decoy used to distract potential predators in the wild who might want to eat them from going after the one part of their body that actually matters: their tails."

“So, they can live without their bodies?” James asks.

"A decoy wouldn't be much of a decoy if its destruction led to the destruction of the entire organism,” Oak looks over a few notes again. “That being said, existing as nothing more than a tail isn’t exactly a long-term solution, as every organism still needs to take in nutrients and move about.”

Wobbuffet listens as Oak speaks. He would nod, if he could.

“So, suffice it to say, I think that there is a fair chance of regrowth.”

"So, he'll come back!" Jessie cries, eyes alight. "My Wobbuffet will come back!"

She's called him "my wobbuffet" a couple of times before, but never like this. It's usually just to differentiate him from other wobbuffet for the ease of someone else, things like, "That's my wobbuffet," when picking him out of a group of two or more of his own kind, or, "My wobbuffet and I challenge you to a battle!" But this time? This time she says it in the same way someone might say "my sister," "my mother", "my brother", or "my son".

Tears begin forming in the corner of the tail's oblong eyes. The tail portion, of course, does not usually cry on any occasion, but given that he has no other eyes from which the tears can be expelled at the moment, the ones on the tail must take up the slack. Wobbuffet has never before felt so touched in all of his life! If he could, he would tell her that she's "his Jessie", too.

It is a few moments before she notices, nodding along as she is with Professor Oak's excited lecture about how this sort of thing had been theorized for a long time, but never observed, and oh, my, this really is quite exciting isn't it? Not until she feels an expected wetness against her chest does she think to pull Wobbuffet back and check that the source is him.

"Oh, Wobbuffet," she says, more kindly and patiently than she has to almost anyone in eons. "I know you must feel horribly sad, but honestly, you are completely soaking my jacket."

But Wobbuffet doesn't feel sad at all. He feels ecstatic! Those tears are tears of joy, not misery. Oh Jessie, can't you tell?

“… really presents us with a unique opportunity for study,” Professor Oak is saying. “So I’d like to make you a little proposition.” He clears his throat. “I’d like to offer you a place to stay for the duration of your Wobbuffet’s recovery. So long as you are willing to take notes on the process, I can offer you free access to a small cabin just outside of Palette Town. And free food as well, of course.”

Jessie, James, and Meowth’s heads all shoot up in unison.

“Free food?”