Chapter Text
When Jessie opened her eyes, she thought she might have still been dreaming. Her vision was blurry, but she saw three small figures looking down at her. One of the shapes looked like Meowth, but what were the other two? The figures startled and ran off before Jesse’s head stopped spinning.
The next thing Jessie noticed was how sore her back was. As she sat up, she realized it was because she was lying on the ground. That ground shifted under her as she moved, meaning it was actually sand. Sure enough, she heard rolling waves behind her. But her eyes were fixed on what was in front of her. It clearly used to be a building of some sort, built into a cliffside in front of her, all made of stone, worn with time, and overtaken with green plants and moss. But how did she get here? The last thing she remembered was going out to sea to go fishing with…
Jessie’s eyes went wide, and she quickly looked around. She was surrounded by wreckage from their boat, and hanging off of a chunk of wooden debris was…
“James!” Her blue-haired companion’s eyes were closed, but they winced in response to her voice. Jesse ran over and started to shake him awake.
“Ngh! Quit it! Ain’t it enough that I just got the worst bath of my life?!” That didn’t come from James. Jessie shoved James over onto his back to reveal that he was holding a very angry bundle of white fur.
“Meowth?” If their feline companion was here, what was the other figure she saw when she was waking up? Meowth didn’t care for Jessie’s confusion. He wriggled out of James’ grip and onto his feet.
“That’s right!” Meowth rose onto his hind legs and planted a paw on his chest. “It’s gonna take more than a shipwreck to sink Team Rocket!”
“Ugh, bloody…” Finally, James sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Any idea what wrecked us? I didn’t get a good look at it.”
“Well…” Jessie stopped. Something definitely flew out in front of their boat, but she didn’t know what it was.
“Guys, don’t we got bigger problems? Like that we’re stranded in the middle of nowhere?” Meowth started to run out to explore, but his foot caught on something, and he fell face-first into the sand. “Nya! I hate this place already!”
“Huh? What’s this now?” James’ question drew their eyes to the thing Meowth tripped on. It looked like a rectangular tablet, but wasn’t anything any of the crew recognized. It was made of some kind of metal, and it had a screen, but the material was unlike anything any of them had seen before. But as they watched, the screen flickered to life.
The World Tree has the answers.
The device sparked and the words faded and sputtered on the screen.
Seek the keys. The pals will guide you.
With that, the screen shut off. The trio stood there in silence for a while, looking at each other, waiting for someone else to explain that. When no one spoke up, Jessie let out a frustrated groan and picked up the device, pocketing it.
“Whatever! The first thing we gotta do is figure out where we are. This way!” Once again, when her team was at a loss, Jessie took charge. There was a path through the ruins leading up the cliff, and Jesse led her companions up the worn stone stairs. If they reached the top, they’d be able to get a better view of the land. That would be a good place to start.
“Do you think we could find any food up there while we’re at it?” James spoke up while they were climbing. “I’d hate to starve.”
“Well, you didn’t see any food down there, did you? We’ll starve for sure if we spend all day sitting around!”
“Wouldn’t it be better to stay near the beach, though? Surely the rest of Team Rocket will come looking for us.”
“And how would they find us?”
“Well…surely they’ve got some sensor on their ships to let them know if one of them crashes.”
“Not a chance. If we had anything like that, the cops might use it to track us. That’s the whole reason we’re not allowed to have any tablets on us, remember? You think they’d change that for a ship?”
Meowth got tired of listening to Jessie and James bicker, and the top of the cliff was close, so he ran on ahead. The path ended in an archway, which Meowth gladly passed through. And the view on the other side made him gasp. The land seemed to sprawl out ahead as far as the eye could see, and Meowth could see a lot farther than your average Jessie or James. There were clusters of smaller islands all around them, and one nearby seemed to have a dome of blue light shielding it. A statue that looked like some kind of bird on a pedestal stood next to a trail leading down to the mainland, where creatures Meowth had never seen before wandered. Were those pokemon? They had to be. But Meowth wasn’t paying too much attention to them. His attention was stolen by The World Tree.
Because what else could it possibly be? It stood far beyond the land that Meowth could see, enough that he couldn’t see where the tree began. And yet, it dominated the view ahead, towering over all the land. It rose higher than any cliff or lesser tree, high into the sky, where its branches seemed to overtake the entire sky, shrouding everything in a cover of green leaves. Sure enough, when Jessie and James finally caught up, they too stood slack-jawed at the sight.
“Guys,” Meowth broke the silence. “Are we even on the same planet? Someone woulda had to see that, right?”
“D-don’t be ridiculous!” Jessie took a step forward, but stopped. The bird statue suddenly began to glow. A pale orange light seeped out of the base of the statue, and the center of the statue itself lit up, revealing some sort of slot. Jessie heard humming coming from her pocket, and pulled out the tablet. It too, had lit up with a matching orange light. Jessie looked at the tablet, then at the slot on the statue, and then she put two and two together.
“Well everyone? What are the odds something bad happens?”
“What do we have to lose? Give it a go!”
“Yeah, I don’t see how it could make things worse, anyway.”
Jessie sighed. “Well I guess I’m outvoted, here goes nothing…” She placed the tablet into the slot of the statue, and the lights on both switched to vibrant blues. Team Rocket stood there, waiting to see what would happen…and waited….and waited.
“Well that was a big load-a nothing!” Meowth jumped up and pulled the tablet out of the statue, but the statue remained blue, and the tablet stayed on. “Huh.” Most of the screen was dark, but a blue icon appeared near the bottom that looked like the bird statue. Meowth took another look at the land stretching out ahead of the group, and he could see small dots of glowing orange scattered all over the place.
“So…” James looked over Meowth’s shoulder at the tablet. “Are we supposed to turn on all of those statues?” His pondering got cut off by a rumble from his stomach.
“We’re not gonna be able to do that if we’re dead!” Jessie fussed. But she didn’t have to look far to find an answer. Just a little way down the path was a clearing with a bunch of bushes surrounding it. Those bushes had little red dots all over them, and some of those creatures were picking at them. Berries!
The team rocketed down the hill to the clearing. Along the way, James noticed something sparkling in the grass on the side of the trail. It was a blue sphere, with yellow lines along its middle. It looked like a pokeball, but not quite. A pokeball was made of metal, but this seemed to be made of some kind of crystal. It looked valuable, so James pocketed it before catching up with the rest of the group.
He arrived to find everyone in some kind of standoff. The creatures that had been snacking on the berries had stopped, and were staring at the newcomers. There were three of them, and Jessie recognized them. One was a sheep-like creature, with wool that made it look like a ball standing on two legs. It took an awkward step back, clearly wary. Another was a large bird with white feathers and a red crest on the top of its head. It was still eating berries, oblivious to what was happening. But the most notable was a feline that looked extremely similar to Meowth. Same upright stance, same large whiskers, and a tuft of fur on its head similar to the coin decoration on Meowth’s forehead. The main difference is that the other cat had pink fur. It stepped forward and hissed at the group.
“Don’t try to act tough ya copycat!” Meowth took a step toward his doppelganger. “There ain’t room in this story for two adorable cat mascots!” The two stared at each other, not daring to move…and then Meowth ducked behind Jessie. “Go get em team!”
Jessie sighed at Meowth and reached for her belt where her pokeballs were stored…only to freeze when she felt nothing there. “James please tell me you still have your pokemon!” She whirled around to find James fumbling at his waistband, which had no pokeballs on it.
Upon seeing the intruders backing away, the other cat seemed to grow more confident. It slunk toward them, baring it’s claws and teeth. James’ fumbling hands eventually found the sphere he’d pocketed. On pure pokemon trainer instinct, he grabbed the crystal ball and threw it at the approaching feline.
The moment the sphere hit the cat, it opened up. At the same time, the cat seemed to turn into a mass of glowing energy, before getting sucked into the ball. Once the cat was sucked in, the ball closed and fell to the ground. It shook a few times, before flashing and falling still. The rest of the creatures fled, and the clearing fell silent.
As James slowly approached the sphere and picked it up, Jessie snapped out of her shock. “James, where did you find that weird pokeball?”
“It was in the grass next to the trail. Some poor bloke must have dropped it.” James held out the ball, and it opened up. With a flash of light, the cat appeared in front of him. It looked confused, but it definitely wasn’t hostile anymore.
“Alright, alright, maybe there is room for one more cat mascot.” Meowth approached the other pokemon “Hey buddy, ya know where we can find some folk to steal…I mean help us out?” He spoke to it in the secret language of Pokemon. The other pokemon looked at Meowth like he’d grown a second head and responded in a low, growling, chitter. “Wha-huh?!” Meowth’s eyes went wide.
“What’s wrong?” James clearly knew something was amiss, but he could not have prepared for what Meowth was about to say next.
“T-that ain’t a pokemon.” Meowth took a wary step away from the other cat. “Every pokemon knows what another pokemon’s saying to them, but I didn’t get a lick of what this guy said, and I don’t think he understood me either.”
“What?! That can’t be right! I caught it with a pokeball, so it has to be a pokemon! Maybe we’re in a region where the pokemon speak a different language?”
“That ain’t how it works!”
While James and Meowth were arguing, Jessie heard a ping from the tablet. She pulled it out to look, and she saw that there were now two tabs on the screen. One, the tab that was currently on, was labelled ‘map’. The other was labelled ‘Palpedia’. Jessie tapped it, and the display changed. Now, there was a numbered list on the left of the screen. Most of the entries were blank, but three of them were named: Chikipi, Lamball, and Cattiva. Jesse tapped Chikipi’s name, and a picture of the bird creature from before appeared next to the name. Lamball was the sheep creature, and sure enough, Cattiva was the name of the cat creature. Unlike the other two, this one had a paragraph underneath the picture.
Cattiva put up a tough act to scare rivals, but they are known to actually be cowards, and will flee at the first sign of trouble. Getting bullied by a Cattiva is one of the most embarrassing things that could happen to a pal tamer.
“It’s a pokedex!” James and Meowth had come over to see what Jessie was reading, and now they were both looking over her shoulder.
“Aw, is Cattiva really that weak? No wonder I caught him with one ball.”
Jessie probably should have scolded them for not minding their own business, but her mind was too busy spinning. The Palpedia was clearly a pokedex. The entry mentioned pal tamers, when it should have said ‘pokemon trainer’, and…yeah, that tablet said something like ‘the pals will guide you’ when they first got it. So instead of pokemon, these were…pals?
“Hey, peanut gallery. Help me figure this out.” Jessie turned to her companions. “Is this like…some kind of alternate universe?”
“That’s…it’d better not be! How’re we supposed to get home?”
“Didn’t this tablet say something about how the world tree would give us the answers?”
“Well sounds like we got a plan!” Meowth jumped up and started picking berries out of the bushes. “Time to get our hiking shoes on!”
“Wait…” James and Meowth stopped and turned to Jessie. Her tone sounded…scary. “What we’ve got here, is an entire region full of ‘pals’ no one in our world has ever seen before! What kind of Team Rocket members would we be if we didn’t take advantage of this?!” Jessie whirled around to the vast land ahead of them, spreading her arms wide. “We’ll reach the world tree, and we’ll get back home, and when we do, we’ll bring every last pal on these islands back with us! Forget getting a bonus, when we open up the multiverse to Team Rocket, we’ll be the ones calling the shots!”
Meowth leapt onto Jesse’s shoulder. “I LIKE that idea! Creatures from another universe! Get them while their hot! We’ll be the richest people in the world!”
“Fame, admiration, I can’t wait!” James seemed to swoon at the thought.
Jessie struck a pose, and her team immediately stepped into position. “This world has no idea what’s coming…Prepare for trouble!”
“Make it double!”
“To protect the world from devastation!”
“To unite all people within our nation!”
“To denounce the evils of truth and love!”
“To extend our reach to the stars above!”
“Jessie!”
“James!”
“Team Rocket! Blast off at the speed of light!”
“Surrender now, or prepare to fight!”
“Meowth! That’s right!”