//------------------------------// // Hard At Work // Story: Celestia's Rocket Adventures // by Snake Staff //------------------------------//             Jessie and James, now wearing civilian outfits, sat casually outside one of Lumiose City’s many cafes alongside one of the gigantic city’s biggest thoroughfares. James, in a neat blue collared shirt, slacks, and a fedora, tapped idly at a laptop computer on the table in front of him. Jessie, in a pink blouse and white pants with a wide-brimmed hat, sipped at a latte while flipping casually through a city guidebook. They had been sitting there for over two hours already, apparently not doing much of anything at all. Those who didn’t know them would think they were slacking off. Those who did know them would be assured of it.             Uncharacteristically, they would be wrong.             “Inkay,” James whispered as he spotted a woman in a distinctive orange suit walking on the opposite side of the street. “Other side. Now.”             “Kay,” Inkay mumbled.             Detaching himself silently from the table’s underside, the little cephalopod Pokemon flew low to the earth. Darting between the legs of passers-by, he crossed the busy road easily, sweeping across the sidewalk behind the Team Flare woman. A quick flick of a short tentacle and a small barb attached itself to one of the legs of her pants, Mission complete, he disappeared into some shrubs planted near the sidewalk’s edge. He would make his way back to the table in a few minutes via a more circuitous route.             “Done,” James muttered, observing another dot taking shape on his screen before quickly changing tabs. “The boss’s technology just can’t be beat!”             “And those Flare fools make it so easy to pick them out with those tacky clothes and stupid hair,” Jessie giggled under her breath.             Lumoise City was large. Enormous. Far too enormous for a pair of people and a few Pokemon to search in any reasonable amount of time. But thanks to the dark miracles out of Team Rocket’s laboratories, they wouldn’t need to.             “That makes five on our end,” Jessie whispered into an earpiece concealed by her flowing hair and massive hat. “How’s it going over there?”             “Why I am still dressed up like a clown?” Meowth fumed back.             “Because truth or dare is sacred!” came the answer from his earpiece. “It’s said Arceus himself will punish those who go back on their dares!”             “Your god has strange priorities,” Celestia remarked.             “I’m pretty sure she’s just making dat up,” Meowth muttered to the still-pink alicorn. He peered through his oversized pair of binoculars, looking down from the tall building the two were currently perched atop. “Hold da phone, we got a live one over dere!”             Following her spotter’s pointed paw, Celestia picked out a tiny dot of bright orange against the mass of humans milling far below. Levitating her own binoculars up to her face, she confirmed the target before lowering them. She nodded, and at her psychic beckoning a tiny black barb rose from a small metal case full of them.             “Alright,” Meowth held a paw up. “Target at two o’clock. Prepare to drop it.”             Controlling such a miniscule object from almost forty stories up was no easy task. It needed a feather-light touch not to accidentally crush the technological wonder, yet she had to grip it tight enough that it didn’t slip away in the wind as it flew away from her. It required her total concentration to keep the tiny tracker on course. Which meant someone else had to plot it.             “Ready…” Meowth squinted. “Fire!”             The little black barb shot off like a panicked Dodrio, eating away the distance between the two and their unwary target far below. Celestia held it steady even as she felt her power waning the further it got.             “Twenty left!” Meowth cried.             Celestia adjusted the course without thinking, without a millisecond’s hesistating. She just did, and abruptly the barb flew in another direction.             “Down a bit, you’ll hit his head!” Meowth continued. “Right! Stuffed suit! Left! More left! Fat lady, down more!”             Despite his hasty, nonspecific directions Celestia simply closed her eyes to shut out distractions and listened to him. All her mind focused on keeping the meticulous balance, she followed his jerky path simply through instinct. She felt what he meant, and that was enough.             “Pull up and right!” Meowth was scrambling with his binoculars zoom. “Now duck the ice cream stand and go low! We almost got ‘em!”             Celestia could feel the shaky balance of energies around her projectile beginning to fade.             “’Celerate!” the cat Pokemon went on hastily. “Briefcase! Left! Home free, slam the gas!”             Forty stories below, the little barb shot of like an arrow.             “Aaaaand…” Meowth pumped a sudden fist. “Got ‘em! Direct hit on da back!”             With a sigh of relief, Celestia released the psychic power and opened her eyes again. To her surprise, she saw Meowth with one paw raised high, a triumphant grin on his face.             “Gimme five!” he laughed. “Dat makes eleven fer us an’ only five for da sad sacks down dere!”             “Tracking Team Flare back to its base isn’t a competition, Meowth!” came Jessie’s voice through his earpiece.             “You only say kind ting when you’re losin’!”             Celestia giggled.             “Are you sure this is going to work?” Twilight asked with a raised eyebrow. “I mean, doesn’t it seem a little… simplistic?”             “Look,” Pikachu said, putting his tool aside for just a moment. “I’ve known Team Rocket for years. Through good times, bad times, and just plain silly times. And I can tell you, from every one of those years of experience, that nothing will bring those three running faster than a chance to finally bring me to their boss. Trust me, we’ve done this before.”             Ash, Serena, Clemont, and all of their Pokemon stood in the middle of a wide open field not far from the forest’s edge. Working together in teams, Bonnie encouraging them from the sidelines, the lot of them were engaged in heavy digging. A good ten or so deep, wide pits were taking shape around a jutting grey rock with a flat top. They’d been at it since earlier that morning, and it’d wouldn’t be too much longer before they were completed.             “Team Rocket loves to use this trick on us,” Pikachu continued, struggling to pick up his disproportionately large pickaxe. “They dig pit traps in the middle of the road maybe once a month, sometimes more. But half the time they wind up in them themselves. We’ve pulled a trick like this before, in Unova. I lay out on that rock where they can see me, they come running to grab me while I’m alone, and that’s when they fall into the hole.”             “But would a simple trap like this really work on masterminds the caliber of Team Rocket?” Twilight wondered, rubbing her chin. “I mean, under the generous assumption that they don’t spot the bait for what it is…”             “They won’t,” Pikachu assured her.             “Then couldn’t they just hover over the rock in their balloon and drop a net on you or something?”             Pikachu tapped his noggin and grinned. “What do you think you guys will be staying in the woods for? When they show up for a snatch and grab, you’ll jump them and grab your friend back.”             “I don’t know… it just seems to me that such ruthless villains will see right through the trap and simply avoid it until we give up, if they don’t find some way to turn it against us.”             “Do you have any better ideas on how to find them? It’s been more than a week since they last blasted off so they’re practically guaranteed to be stalking us again.”             “Unless they’ve move on to some other phase of their master plan. Then they could be anywhere!”             “In that unlikely event that they’re not around they’ll inevitably do something really stupid and get on tv, then we can track them from there. But I don’t think that’s very likely.” Pikachu shook his head. “I think today’s the day we rescue your friend!”             “Well, plausible or not you have been spending all morning working hard digging holes in the hot sun just to help someone you barely know,” Twilight admitted. “And I’ll give it to you that I don’t know how we could track them from here unless they come to us first. If only I had my magic…”             “Cheer up, Twilight!” Pikachu patted her on the shoulder. “Team Rocket will be here for sure!”             “Say, Jess?”             “Yes?” Jessie irritably looked up from her article about Lumiose’s many high-class salons. “What is it?”             “Do you ever feel like you’re supposed to be somewhere else, but you’re not?” James mused, finger tapping his chin. “Because-”             “Of course not, what kind of stupid question is that? We’re right where the boss told us to be!”             After a moment, James shrugged.             “You’re probably right.”