"Looks like Team Rocket's blasting off agaaaaaain!"
A familiar scene in the lives of Team Rocket.
"OUCH!" James landed in a bush. "That hurrrrt!" he whined, bemoaning his sore body.
Meowth landed in a tree. "Is yous okay?" he asked.
Jesse was the last to land. She landed on the ground, hitting her head on a large rock. HARD.
James freed himself from the bush he landed in and made his way toward Meowth's voice. "I'm okay. Jesse?"
Jesse didn't answer. James called again. "Hey Jesse! You okay?"
Still no answer.
"James! Come here!" It was Meowth's voice.
James broke out into a run. He had detected something in Meowth's voice that frightened him. Something that told him all was not well.
He found Meowth with Jesse a moment later. She was lying unconsious on the ground. Blood was trickling from a wound on her head.
"Jesse, wake up! Jesse!" He picked her up and gently shook her trying to revive her. "Jesse!"
"We betta get her to a docta," said Meowth.
It took them about 20 minutes to get out of the forest, but is seemed alot longer to James. His growing concern for the woman in his arms was starting to get to him.
"Why won't she wake up?" he asked, his eyes filled with tears. "Jesse, please wake up..."
"Don't worry," said Meowth "We've been blasted off more times den I can count. She'll be okay."
James held Jesse close to him. "But why won't she wake up?" He had a sick feeling in his stomach. All the times they'd been "blasted off" the worst any of them had ever gotten was a little burnt, shocked, or a twisted ankle. Nothing like this had ever happened, especially to the unperishable Jesse. They had all hit their heads so many times it was a wonder they didn't have brain damage. James remembered one time Jesse had been knocked head-first into a gigantic rock, and other then complaining about messing up her face, or "damaging her perfection" as she called it, she had been just fine. She had always been the toughest of the group, and he couldn't believe something like this was happening. To see her so helpless, so limp and frail was almost to much for James.
Meowth couldn't believe James was acting so emotional. At least, not over Jesse. He figured they'd get together eventually, but they were both so conceited and self-absorbed. Of course they loved each other deep inside, but Meowth figured it would take more than Jesse getting knocked out for James to realize it.
"So what's with da waterworks?" he asked James. "You don't cry when somebody gets hurts unless it's YOU."
"Hey, I'm not insensitive to people's feelings!" said James.
"Yeah right! What about the time I got a fever and you and Jesse were gonna just me to collapse so you could get dat pikachu all for yourselves? You were gonna just leave Meowth!"
James knew Meowth was right. But of course Team Rocket was mean and nasty! That was their job! And Meowth was just as selfish as they were. After a moment, he replied "What about the time Jesse and I came to your rescue when you were trapped by that gang of street meowths?"
"I guess Team Rocket sticks tagedda (together) most a da time," said Meowth "But I don't usually see ya crying over your teammates."
James looked at Jesse's face. Teammate. Yes, she was his teammate. His partner. Their partnership meant everything to him. They had been a part of each other's life for so long, James couldn't imagine it any other way. Jesse was the stability in his life. Where he had been weak and faltering, Jesse had always been strong. He certainly got aggravated with her sometimes, and she got aggravated with him MOST of the time, but there was an unspoken bond between them. Something that didn't need to be said, because it expressed itself in everything they did together.
In another 10 minutes, James entered the hospital with Jesse in his arms. When he had explained what happened, and the nurse had taken Jesse away on a stretcher, James collapsed into a chair, realizing for the first time how tired he was. He did not notice Meowth had hidden under Jesse's stretcher.
Meanwhile, totally unaware of the situation, Jesse was having a nightmare. She was lost, alone in the darkness, calling for someone to help her. A voice in the distance called out to her. "Jesseeee..." The voice was familiar, yet she could not place it. "Where are you?" she called back. "I can't find you!" The darkness surrounded and engulfed her...
Slowly, Jesse opened her eyes. She couldn't figure out where she was or how she had gotten there.
"Oh, you're awake," said a doctor, entering the room.
"Where am I?" asked Jesse.
"In the hospital. You took a bad fall and got hit on the head," the doctor told her. "How do you feel?"
"My head hurts," Jesse replied.
"I'm not surprised." The doctor held three fingers up and asked her how many she saw.
"Three," she said.
He put one down. "Now how many?"
"Two."
He took out a pen and started writing on her chart.
Meowth, who had been hiding under the bed, came out of hiding and jumped onto a chair. Neither Jesse nor the doctor noticed.
"Okay," the doctor said to Jesse, "Can you tell me your name?"
Suddenly it hit her. She had no idea! Jesse had no idea who she was! She looked helplessly up at the doctor and said "I don't know."
James had dozed off when Meowth came running down the hall and jumped onto the chair next to James yelling "You're not gonna believe dis!"
James awoke with a start and fell out of the chair.
"What do you want, you mangy feline?!" James yelled, rubbing his sore bottem.
"Dis is serious!" said Meowth. "Jesse's got amnesia!"
James, who had been pulling himself up to the chair, fell right back to the floor again.
A few minutes later, the same docter who had been attending to Jesse came out into the waiting room and asked James if he was the one who had brought in the woman with the long red hair.
"Yeah, dat's us," said Meowth.
"How is she?" asked James.
"She's got temporary amnesia," said the doctor.
"I don't understand," said James. "How could this happen to her now? She's always been fine before."
"Has she been hit on the head before?" asked the doctor.
"Yeah, we all have."
"More times den we can count," added Meowth.
"Then I'm not surprised," said the doctor. "If she's taken repeated blows to the head the truama is probably starting to catch up with her. If she coninues to get hit on the head, she could get alot worse than temporary memory loss. She needs to be more careful. You all do."
"Will...will she be okay?" asked James.
"She'll be fine. We expected alot worse. You can go and see her now."
Jesse sat up in bed, trying to think. Where had she been before she had woken up in the hospital? She just couldn't remember.
Suddenly a blue-haired guy and a meowth came into the room.
"How are you feeling?" the blue-haired guy asked her.
She noticed he had the most extraordinary green eyes.
"Uh...my head hurts," she replied. "Who are you?"
"Uh...I'm James," he said, unable to get anymore than that out. Suddenly he took the rose he was holding (he had stolen it a moment ago from a bouquet out in the hall) and handed it to her. "Here."
"Thank you," she said. "Do I know you?"
Trying not to let Jesse see his sadness, he smiled and said "Yeah, I'm your partner."
"Hey don't forget about Meowth!" The cat pokémon jumped onto her bed.
She looked at Meowth and then back at James again. She couldn't stop looking at his eyes. They were the most beautiful emerald green. As for Meowth, she didn't even wonder how the pokémon could talk. It seemed perfectly normal to her.
"Well, if you know me, could one of you tell me my name?" she asked.
"You're Jesse," said James, wanting to cry. He wished he still had the rose he had given her, so he could hide his face with it. He had led himself foolishly to believe that as soon as she had seen him, her memories would come flooding back. He saw now that this wasn't the case.
"You said we're partners, right? What do we do?" she asked.
James closed his eyes tightly, trying to keep his tears at bay. He wished he could say the Team Rocket motto, but he couldn't bring himself to do it alone.
Meowth must have also been thinking about the motto, because he said, "We're members of da illustrious Team Rocket! To protect da world from devistation!"
James caught on at once. "To unite all peoples within our nation!"
Jesse noticed he had opened his eyes again when he said this. She was glad, because she liked looking at them.
"To denounce da evils of truth and love!" Meowth continued.
"To extend our reach to the stars above!" said James.
Meowth stopped. The next line was usually "Jesse!" but he couldn't say that. Suddenly he knew how to do it. "You're Jesse, he's James, and Team Rocket blasts off at da speed a light!"
"Surrender now, or prepare to fight!" James finished.
"Meowth! That's RIGHT!"
A wave of nostalgia passed through Jesse, but was gone in a second.
Over the next few days, James and Meowth tried everything they could think of to bring back Jesse's memory. First, James told her their whole history together, from when they first met, to flunking the entrance exam of Pokémon Tech, to being in a bicycle gang, and finally to joining Team Rocket. When he had run out of things to say, Meowth took over and told her all about the Team Rocket organization. Jesse listened to all of this attentively, but her memory did not come back.
Next, they tried describing their usual everyday activities, but that didn't help either. In fact, Jesse had asked them why in the world they spent so much of their time trying to steal some ten-year-old's pikachu; and if it was so important, why they hadn't caught it yet!
Finally, on the third day, James had the idea of describing specific things to her in detail to see if she could picture anything he was saying. He was in the middle of describing Giovanni while brushing her long red hair for her when Meowth jumped on the bed and said " Speakin' of da boss, don't ya tink he should know what's goin' on?" James stopped brushing long enough to look Meowth in the eye and say "No, I don't."
Meowth dropped the subject.
That night, he brought it up again.
"So how come you don't wanna tell da boss what's goin' on?" he asked James.
"I...I just don't," James said, staring into the fire.
Since they had no money to sleep in town, James and Meowth had been sleeping in a nearby cave. "I just don't think it's a good idea," he said, after a minute.
For once, Meowth didn't argue. He knew how unpredictable Giovanni could be. After all, had he not sent Meowth to work with Jesse and James, only to replace him with that stupid Persian later on?
Meowth looked at James' sad face. "She"ll be okay," he said, and with that went into the cave leaving James alone by the fire.
James stared hard at the fire, picturing Jesse's smiling face. He knew if the boss found out, he would tell James and Meowth to go on alone, and Jesse could rejoin them when she got her memory back. James couldn't, wouldn't do this. He was not going to leave Jesse all alone in the hospital not knowing who she was. "I won't leave her alone," he said to himself. "I WON'T!"
Jesse tossed and turned in her hospital bed. She couldn't sleep. She knew if she did, the nightmare would come. It was always the same one. Lost in the darkness, trying to find the voice that kept calling to her. James' voice.
She felt like something vital was missing from her, and the pain was causing her to sob. She concentrated hard on holding back her tears, and when she had done this, she reached for the rose on the table beside her bed. James brought a fresh rose to her every morning. She wished she could remember him. He was so sweet to her, coming every morning and brushing her hair for her, always careful not to hurt the wound on her head, and spending all day trying to help her remember. She brought the rose to her face and smelled it. The scent brought on a wave of deja vu, along with a memory...
She was looking into James' eyes...
"Double trouble time, right?"
"Sounds great to me, James! "
Then, as quickly as the vision had come, it left her again.
She concentrated hard on the memory, trying to remember more of it.
She couldn't. Suddenly she became angry.
Why couldn't she remember?!! Then, as if fed by her anger, another memory popped into her head.
James had just been hit by a pokémon. It was wearing boxing gloves. The full force of the punch sent James crashing into a wall.
"How DARE you strike my friend?!!" she yelled.
The vision faded away, increasing Jesse's anger. Why had that pokémon hit James? Trying again to summon a memory, Jesse succeeded in producing one last picture.
SHE was hitting James this time, slapping him back and forth.
The memory started to fade. Jesse concentrated furiously on the image, refusing to lose this one.
Around them was a blazing inferno. "James James James James James! How long do think you can last on this side? Now lets go...We'll cross together..."
The vision faded out.
Finally, her anger subsided and gave way to weariness. She was so tired, but she wanted to remember! After trying, without success, to remember something more, she finally gave up. She laid back down, still holding the rose, and started to cry miserably.
James couldn't sleep either. He tossed and turned in his sleeping bag, wishing Jesse were in hers beside him. He thought about their life together. In his eyes, he and Jesse seemed to be a perfect team. They were so tuned in to each other, they were always finishing each other's sentences, or saying the same thing at the same time. They were never uncomfortable around each other, because their unity always seemed perfectly natural. And whatever one of them lacked, the other one made up for. Jesse was more than his partner, she was a part of him. And now she was in the hospital, not even knowing who he was! He had assumed, since the doctor had said the amnesia was temporary, that she would get a little better everyday, but there seemed to be no change at all. He missed her. He would give anything to have the usual conceited, short-tempered Jesse back. The Jesse that hit him with paper fans, the Jesse that finished his sentences. His Jesse. The Jesse that led and protected him, and most importantly, the Jesse that deep down in her heart, truly loved him.
Then a horrible thought came over him. "What if she never remembers?" All the time they had been together, he had never stopped to consider how he felt about her. "Why?" The answer came to him almost immedatly. "Because nothing ever threatened to take her away from me. I never even considered what it would be to lose her." He promised himself as soon as Jesse regained her memory he was going to tell her how he felt. "She'll get her memory back soon. She will."
Chanting it over and over in his mind like a kind of mantra, James eventually fell asleep.
The next day, James made a last-ditch effort to get Jesse's memory back. The doctor had told him yesterday that Jesse was going be released soon, whether she got her memory back or not. Once she was released, they were going to have to call the boss, and they weren't going to be able to hide Jesse's condition from him. If the boss found out Jesse had amnesia, he might take her off the team.
James packed almost everything Jesse owned to bring to her. There had to be something that would trigger her memory. He packed her disguises, her Team Rocket uniform, her make up, her earrings, her paper fan, her hand mirror, and her pokéballs containing Arbok and Lickitung. He had been caring for them while she was in the hospital, and they both missed her. The doctor had told him he couldn't let them out of the pokéballs. A talking meowth was one thing, but the hospital was not a pokémon center, and there wasn't room for everyone to fill it with pokémon.
James didn't care. Jesse had to get her memory back, and James was running out of options.
Jesse was sitting in bed watching a video one of the hospital volenteers had brought. He must have been an animé fan, it was an episide from "Revolutionary Girl Utena."
"If it cannot break out of it's shell, the chick will die without ever being born. We are the chick, the world is our egg. If we don't crack the world's shell, we will die without truly being born..."
Jesse sighed. She was the chick, and this amnesia was her shell. If she didn't smash it, she would have live without knowing who she really was, and that was very much the same thing...
"Morning!" said James, coming into the room.
Jesse noticed both he and Meowth had their arms full of stuff.
"What's all this?" she asked as they dumped it all onto her bed.
"Your life," said James.
"That's right!" said Meowth.
She looked through each of the articles in the pile, and finally picked up her Team Rocket uniform. "It looks just like yours," she said to James.
"What can I say?" said James, smiling. "We both have great taste! But of course, you always did brag about your good fashion sense!"
Jesse held the jacket up, trying to picture herself wearing it. Then it hit her; she didn't know what she looked like.
"James..." she asked softly. "What do I look like?"
James eyes filled with tears. He broke down completely. "She doesn't even know what she looks like. All this time, I never thought..."
His emotions completely took over. Holding a rose, he took her hands in his and looking into her eyes said, "You're beautiful. You are the most beautiful woman in the world. Your eyes are the most beautiful shade of blue and your hair is the color of this rose. You are a rose, Jesse. You're my rose."
Suddenly reality hit him and he realized what he was saying. "Oh no, what have I done?!" Turning red with embarrassment, he backed away, and then ran from the hospital room.
Jesse sat there speechless as James ran out. The telivision was still on playing the Revolutionary Girl Utena video. The song "Absolute Destiny Apocalypse" was playing...
A shining place in a dessert of darkness
A gold-plated shan-gril-la
Day and night turning back on one another
A time-plated paradise lost...
"Yes," thought Jesse. "That's what it is. Everytime I look into his eyes..."
James stopped just outside her door. He leaned against the wall, where Jesse couldn't see him. He couldn't believe himself. "What have I done?!" he screamed in his mind. "Now I've alienated her from me, and once she gets her memory back...she'll hate me. She'll think I tried to... to take advantage of the situation... she'll think..." "James!"
It was Meowth.
"Get in back in there!"
James just stared at him.
"Go on!" Meowth extended his claws."NOW!"
James sheepishly came back into the room. He pulled Jesse's hand-mirror out of the pile on her bed and handed it to her.
"Uh...here. You can see yourself... what you look like..."
Jesse had no make-up or jewelry on, and her hair had not been brushed yet that morning. She had dark circles under her eyes, because she had not gotten any sleep the night before. She looked at the face in the mirror, and something in her mind exploded.
"MY FACE!!! MY PERFECTION!!! IT'S RUINED!!! SOMEBODY'S GOING TO PAY FOR THIS!!!!!"
Meowth took a step back, but James came closer and cried "Jesse! You remember!"
"James, look at my face! DO something!" she yelled. Then she realized she DID remember. She remembered everything.
James had grabbed her hairbrush and had started combing her hair for her. When Jesse had put her lipstick and earrings on, she sat there for a moment, trying to place her lifetime's worth of memories with her memories of the last few days. James had been there the whole time. Then she remembered what he had said to her only a few minutes ago.
She turned around to face him and said "James, how could you?"
James stopped brushing. He started to tremble. "Oh no," he thought "She remembers what I said. She..." Jesse interrupted his thoughts. "All this time, you told me all about my life, all about our life. How could you leave out the most important thing?"
James just stared. Now he was really confused.
Finally he asked "The most important thing?"
Jesse put one hand on his shoulder and the other to his face.
"How much I love you."
James couldn't speak. His eyes filled with tears.
"How much I've always loved you," she said. "Even though I didn't always know it..."
Tears flowed from James' eyes, and Jesse gently wiped them away. Softly, she kissed his lips, which made James cry even harder.
"Oh Jesse!"
He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly, silently vowing to never let go.
Through her own tears, Jesse said "Even without my memories, my heart wouldn't let me forget you... I love you, James. I'll never let go..."
Meowth sat smiling nearby, watching the whole scene with great satisfaction.
Team Rocket had certainly changed for the better. Or had it? Now he was going to have to put up with this sort of mushiness all the time. And what was the boss going to think about it? "Oh well," thought Meowth as he yawned and settled down for a catnap. "Plenty a' time ta think about it later...Tomarrow's another day..."
