Disclaimer: OK, here we go... I don't own Pokemon, Nintendo does.. the lucky so-and-so's. A few exceptions: I did create the characters of Celadon City Police Commissioner Guenevere, Chaplain Mike Gerber, Agent Masterson (Yep, it's Annie again!) and (I suppose) Officer Jenny Morgenstern. Also, Part Three contains modified lyrics of the song "I Gotta Get a Message to You" By Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibb. No permission has been given to use or change the lyrics.

The Message

By Allan North

Part One: Broken Spirit


Butch sat in his solitary confinement cell, alone, hurt, and angry. For what seemed like the millionth time that day, he looked around his gloomy cell with a growing sense of despair. Soon, his time would be up for good, and he knew it. God, he needed a cigarette bad.

It had all seemed so simple at first… just a simple little payback, that’s all. After all, they had almost managed to get away that time, the last time he and Cassidy had been caught… Oh, how clearly Butch could see that day in his mind…

Part One: Broken Spirit

"Step on it, Butch!" Cassidy screamed, grabbing her partner and shaking him, Without a word, Butch slammed his foot down on the gas pedal, and the van took off at high speed. Cassidy was violently tossed back by the sudden burst of speed, and she landed flat on her back, just barely missing hitting the cages full of stolen Pokemon that were stacked in the back of the van.

Behind them, a motorcycle tore down the street, its siren blaring as the Jenny driving it pushed the bike to its limits. "Stop!" Jenny yelled for the fifth time.

Butch look in his rearview mirror at Jenny with a look of utter contempt. "Make us!" he yelled back in his trademark raspy voice.

The Jenny gritted her teeth and reached for the microphone on her bike. One quick flip of the switch, and the small loudspeaker attached to the front of her bike was turned on. "Now hear this, Team Rocket! You have been warned to stop. If you fail to do so, I will have no choice but to open fire!" Jenny replaced the microphone and flipped off the loudspeaker, praying she wouldn’t have to make good on her threat. In the van, Butch looked at Jenny in the mirror again, and knew she was quickly gaining on him. Cassidy had managed to stand back up, and was now slouched over her partner, her hands gripping his shoulders tightly as she silently screamed for speed. As Butch looked at jenny and felt Cassidy’s hands on him, his mind flashed back to when he was just a beginning White Rocket. The Voice of the Black Rocket who had trained him and Cassidy came back to him now, instructing him still…"Never give a Jenny the satisfaction of catching you. Don’t let them intimidate you. After all, take the uniform away, and what do you have? Nothing more than a cloned moron who just happens to look like every one of her other inbred relatives." How right Agent Masterson had been. Butch narrowed his eyes and shifted the van into overdrive. Once again, the van gained speed suddenly, and Cassidy held on tightly to avoid being thrown back into the cages of Pokemon.

Jenny watched the van speed up and ducked down close to the body of her bike. Shifting the vehicle into the extra gear the Police bikes had been outfitted with for chases, she sped up until she was as close as she could get to the van. The van was well within range when she braked suddenly and turned the bike sideways in the road, holding on for dear life as she did so. Once the bike was stopped, Jenny quickly drew her gun and fired at the van, praying it wouldn’t pull out of range. Butch swerved and as best he could, causing Cassidy to lose her balance and pitch wildly around the back of the van. She fell into the cages once again. Despite Butch’s best efforts, Jenny’s years of training, practice, and experience won out as one of her bullets found its target. Suddenly, Butch felt the van skidding out of control as the rear left tire deflated in seconds. Fighting desperately to keep the van under control, Butch hit both pedals at the same time as he jerked the steering wheel around violently. The van skidded down the road, leaving black tire marks in its wake, finally turning onto two wheels and tipping over onto its side. Butch could hear the footsteps running toward the van, and he knew they were caught. He could feel wetness on his forehead. He knew what it was before he even reached up to confirm it. Blood. He had gashed his head on the steering wheel when the van had turned over. Butch emitted a low, frustrated growl, and then was hit by a sudden thought. "Cassidy?" he called, remembering that his partner hadn’t been sitting in her seat buckled in, as he had been. From the back of the van came a low moan in reply. Butch’s eyes shot wide open. He quickly undid his seatbelt and climbed to the back of the van, hardly caring about the cops surrounding the van as the Police wagon approached the scene.

In the back of the van, Cassidy lay under three cages that had toppled loose and landed on top of her. Butch ran to her and grabbed the first cage, holding a stolen Charmander, and threw it roughly to the front of the van. Next came the other two cages, holding a Tangela and a Nidorino. The stolen Pokemon were of no consequence now. All that mattered was Cassidy. Butch looked at her sadly, his lips trembling as he fought back tears. Cassidy was also bleeding from a gash in her head, and her uniform dress was torn where the corners of cages had hit her. Her left arm dangled at an odd angle, and was obviously broken. Her right arm was weakly reaching for her partner as she said weakly, "Butch… help me… please…"

Butch looked at her with hurt eyes. He had always shared a closeness with his partner, a special bond he had never felt with anyone else, and now… seeing her like this made his stomach turn and his heart ache.

The back doors of the van broke open and three Jennies climbed in. Butch was too numb to react in any way. One of the Jennies, in fact, the one who had shot out the tires on the van, handcuffed him and led him to the waiting police van while the other two tended to Cassidy, administering first aid and calling an ambulance so she could be made stable for transport.

Through the course of the following week, Butch and Cassidy were taken to jail once again and placed in separate cells. Cassidy’s accident had broken more than her arm…. Worse, it had broken part of her spirit. Butch knew that hardly anyone, least of all Cassidy’s rival Jessie, would believe it, but underneath that cold efficient front lurked a very sensitive and scared little girl. However, as he had learned soon after becoming her partner, Cassidy often kept that little girl buried as deeply as possible. Now, it seemed, the little girl had been forced to the surface.

Butch spent the better part of the week sitting by the iron bars of his cell door, looking across the hall at Cassidy, who simply sat in her cell staring ahead with dead eyes.... Dead eyes devoid of spirit which occasionally fell to the stark white cast that had been placed on her arm at the hospital after their capture. Butch longed desperately to touch it, as if he could take all of Cassidy’s pain away simply by feeling the hard plaster that was holding his partner down, keeping her from soaring like the majestic creature that he had come to know.

It pained him, tortured him, to see her like this, and he began to wonder if her spirit would ever recover itself. He could only pray that it would….

As he had done in the past, Giovanni himself came down to bail them out, but this time, it was different. Bail was only posted with the strict warning that the favor would not be repeated. Giovanni’s anger was all too clear as they rode back to team Rocket Headquarters in the back of Giovanni’s black limo.

"This is the third time! Are you two becoming as incompetent as those two fools Jessie and James?" he ranted at them from his seat, yelling across the limo as he stroked his Persian in his lap.

Butch looked at the Boss nervously, knowing he had never seen him quite so angry with them before. He and Cassidy had always laughed when they had watched Jessie and James be the recipients of Giovanni’s red-hot temper, but now Butch had nothing but empathy for their rivals. His eyes went to Cassidy for her reaction, and he realized that her face only held the look he had seen the entire time in prison…a look of sadness, of broken spirit.

After the couple had returned to Headquarters, Butch walked Cassidy to her quarters on the Black Rocket level. Cassidy produced a key on a chain from around her neck without a word and walked into the room. Once inside, Butch closed the door and the dam burst as every bit of pent-up emotion that Cassidy had been holding back finally came flooding out like never before. Tears began to stream down her face as she collapsed on her bed and buried her face in the belly of an overstuffed teddy bear, a remnant of her distant childhood. She had had the bear for as long as she could remember, and it had been a comfort to her more times than she could count. Normally, she would never have even considered showing Butch what it meant to her, preferring to let him think it was just a souvenir, but she didn’t care anymore.

Cassidy sobbed into the bear as she blurted out her frustration, giving voice to all she had felt in the past few days. "Oh, Butch, maybe he’s right… maybe we are just becoming incompetent… God, I’m doomed to be just as stupid as Jessie…."

Butch looked at Cassidy from behind her, and felt tears forming in the corners of eyes…. Tears? The last time he had cried was when he was just a kid of 6. For the longest time, Butch had seen one and only one way of dealing with the world, and that was to be strong and silent like a stone, and never commit the ultimate sin of betraying his emotions to anyone. Butch had spent so long training himself to be hard and to not show emotions… to not show "weakness" as his first Team Rocket Mentor had called it, that he had truly believed he was incapable of crying anymore. Now his partner was proving him wrong.

Hardly aware that he was doing it, Butch began to gently rub Cassidy's back, comforting her and wishing that he could mend what had been broken. "No, Cassidy… No we're not… We've just been a bit… unlucky lately." He said quietly.

Cassidy sat up and turned to face her partner, tears still streaming down her cheeks. "Unlucky?" she said loudly. "The Breeding Center was unlucky. That Drowzee was unlucky. Jessie and James finding us was unlucky. This was just us being beaten by someone better than us… a lousy cop!" Cassidy wrapped her good arm around Butch and cried into his shoulder. "And not just any cop, oh, no… it was one of those damned inbred Jennies!" She sobbed violently into Butch's shoulder as Butch's face tightened into a tight and nasty scowl. Officer Jenny had done this to her… hurt her, shamed her, broken her… even made her believe she was incompetent.

Butch knew she wasn't incompetent. She couldn't be. She was THE quintessential Team Rocket agent, the best Black Rocket there was. Efficient, lethal, cunning, exacting, and damn good at her job. Hell, if anything, HE was incompetent. He could barely think of what to say from one moment to the next, let alone think up decent plans. Cassidy did almost all the planning as far as their team was concerned, even if Giovanni didn't know it.

That was one of the many things that had endeared Cassidy to Butch, even if he had trained himself to never show more than a simple camaraderie. She was strong, intelligent, resourceful, beautiful… and at the same time sentimental and emotional.

Now Cassidy was just as broken as her arm, as scarred emotionally as she could be, and it was all because of one person… Well, one person who looked like a million others, but Butch knew that he would always know that particular Jenny by sight, and that he would hate her forever more.

As Cassidy sobbed into Butch's shoulder, Butch continued to rub her back and talk soothingly to her as an idea began to take root in his mind…. An idea for a plan, for a payback to a certain Celadon City cop, that brainless clone, that… Officer Jenny.



Part Two: Payback