Love in the Time of Trials

Chapter 20: A Stalking

"Jimmy, ya brain's gone numb."

"Or he's just had too much fun..."

"Wobba wobb..." Wobbuffet agreed, nodding up and down, clearly awake now. James decided to stroke his chin, thinking of the best way to explain this all to his compatriots.

"Think of it this way: we battle the twerps, we get beat. ARC is friends with the twerps," he said. They nodded, indicating he had their full attention. "So, if we battle ARC, we might go blasting off. The boss wants us to get rid of them, but sending us here to find them means he didn't even know where they were. So, those chums are pretty sneaky, and if we just ignore them, they'll remain sneaky. We can tell the boss we defeated them and then everyone's happy."

"And if dey decide to attack Team Rocket?" Meowth asked skeptically.

"Well, we can switch sides, of course!" The declaration caused Meowth to flop back on to the sand, rocking the balloon base a little more. James felt he was rather brilliant about the whole thing, but Jessie looked skeptical. At least it was better than Meowth's reaction.

"I'm still not sold on it," Jessie huffed out. "I'd like to think we're just as good at thieving as we are at world saving heroics. And we already top the twerps at that."

"If you say so, Jess..." Meowth mumbled out. James continued to tap his chin, and his face soon blossomed with a grin.

"All right, then how about this: we make one last attempt at thievery in Alola!" James told them. Meowth perked up at that and Jessie raised her eyebrows, listening. "If it goes well, we get back to hunting down ARC. If not, we focus on taking out Team Skull instead, and helping Jessie train for the Hope Leilani."

Jessie looked absolutely shocked by James' belief in her for the Hope Leilani. Sure, she still needed another Lei, but James knew she could win it in time. Her eyes became calculating as she considered the multiple options before her, and she, too, stretched with a grin. "Well, if we're going to show my unending beauty to the world, then perhaps we need something that could exemplify it, such as one of those Z-Crystals."

"Yeah, but where do we get one a dem?" Meowth's question was certainly a challenging one, but James already had the answer.

"The twerp does those trial things, right? So, we break into one of them and snatch it!" he said. "Not to mention, we know one is in that Megamart by the nearby village thanks to our twerp reconnaissance, so it would behoove us to go to that Megamart."

"Hey, dat's smart!"

"We can carry them all off with a cart!" Jessie said, jumping up and down with her fist raised. The balloon rocked, causing a horrible wrenching sound to be heard. The three and their Pokémon grimaced...and then the balloon tipped over, knocking them off the rock face they had been upon and sending them plummeting down below to the desert sands. Their infiltration would have to wait a little more.

X X X

"I'm so sorry!" Clemont's voice sounded panicked and upset as he bent low to the ground in front of the three girls. Ash scratched at his nose, just watching the whole thing. The sandstorm had since subsided, and with the sun now raising high above in the sky, he could begin to feel the heat rising in the area. Hapu, therefore, had busied herself with disassembling the tents. "I ran off without telling everyone and I must have made you so upset."

"It's fine, Clemont," Serena laughed out, her eyes twinkling with a smile at him. That was always to be expected for Serena, so Ash stopped scratching at his nose to put a hand around his friend. "I don't know why, but you're back here safely, and that's what counts."