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Despite what it seemed the entire world seemed to think, Jessie, James and Meowth were not the bottom of the Team Rocket food chain.
If they were, they’d be grunts. The faceless, nameless peons that stood in corridors and got mowed down or even killed when Pokemon Rangers and Legendary Pokemon swept through the halls of Giovanni’s bases.
They just weren’t all that respected.
If they were honest (which they weren’t – even with themselves), they weren’t really sure how they hadn’t been demoted yet. They’d spent the last who-knew-how-many years being constantly defeated—by a kid with a mouse—and often enough helping the good guys. Sure, their random acts of good-guy-ness were usually related to world-saving, which were excusable because they were ultimately selfish acts, but the whole defeat thing was a lot less forgivable.
James thought it might be because of who the kid was. He argued that the Twerp was important to Giovanni somehow, and so by constantly chasing after the pikachu, they were always keeping an eye on the kid. So technically, they were always doing good.
But then, James had never been the brightest bulb in the basket, so they really didn’t have much of an idea.
The other option was that the higher ups had mostly forgotten about them and their constant screw ups. You only got paid when you submitted a report, and even James wasn’t stupid enough to submit countless reports saying ‘tried for the pikachu and failed’. So they usually only went in (and therefore, only ever got paid) when the Twerp ran into a rare pokemon or something. Because then they could fudge the thing and make it sound like they were doing reconnaissance.
Sometimes, when the Twerp had spent a few weeks being an ordinary trainer and not seen anything special, meaning they were feeling broke, one of the trio would wonder why they didn’t just go after someone else. Before they’d met the Twerp, they’d been rather respectable, as criminals went. People were scared of them. They were on wanted posters, and raked in the cash. It was just that they kept going after that darn Twerp, or doing stuff the darn Twerp would get involved in. So whenever they were feeling particularly broke and useless, they considered going back to Kanto, and rebuilding their rep from the ground up.
But then either Jessie or Meowth would refuse to admit defeat, and start plotting something even bigger and nastier than last time. Because they were Team Rocket! And they weren’t going to be cowed by some twerp and his electric rat! They were going to take him down!
Which, coincidently, was why they were inside a huge, crumbling castle, begging the brainwashed Twerp to wake up as he gazed back at them with blank eyes. Because no way were they going to let someone else defeat him, even if that someone else was a psychic after the Twerp’s Aura abilities, rather than his pokemon.
“My mission is to collect all the lucario in the world,” the Twerp recited dully. “With them as his army, my master will rule the world. Ha, ha, ha.”
“Isn’t it convenient how he just sums up the story?” Meowth commented. “Kinda like the third-act recap, ain’t it?”
“Well, I suppose we are getting close to the third act,” said James. “All we need now is the hero of the day to come in and remind the Twerp of his real mission.”
“You idiots! We are the heroes of the day!” cried Jessie, and she spun around to dramatically point at the Twerp. “Listen up! Your name is Ash Ketchum, from Pallet Town, and it’s your dream to become the world’s greatest Pokemon Master! You barely even know how to use your Aura powers!”
“Now you mention it, how do we know about his Aura powers?” wondered James. “I don’t think we’ve ever really seen him use them…”
“Oh, it’s one of them plot-hole thingies that come up because the big stories don’t always fit in with normal events,” Meowth explained. “The point is, though, that we know the Twerp would never give up his pokemon for anything. ’Specially not some freaky human powers. So he never would’a learned how to use ’em!”
“Actually,” the Twerp said, lifting his hand to show off the blue glow surrounding it. “Some things just come naturally. And I will do whatever it takes to serve my master.”
“Oh, yeah, brainwashed,” they all realised, just before he blasted them out the window.
“Remind me again why we thought we were the heroes of the day?” James asked, folding his arms as they blasted through the air.
“Well, we have to be sometime, right?” Jessie pointed out.
If they were honest (and really, they never, ever were, especially with themselves), that was probably the real reason they kept tagging along after him. It felt… nice… to be… not the bad guys. Sometimes. Occasionally.
As long as nobody called them on it.