The Cold Hard Truth

By: Shagti2

Their laughter and ridicule had finally caused him to snap. There was no question about it.

It was just another day chasing after Ash and his Pikachu. Team Rocket had tried another crack-pot scheme and failed. This time, they had been set on fire and blown up with Snorlax’s hyper-beam and had been blasted off again.

Through some mishap, they didn’t blast off far. They landed hard into the trees nearby and were struggling to pick themselves up.

Team Rocket unceremoniously got up, their spirits dampened, what little of their pride had taken another severe blow. TO make matters worse, the annoying brat was pointing and laughing at them.

Jessie got up on rubbery legs, her head swimming. She tried to ignore them and knelt down by her partner James. She slapped him awake.

With a start, James opened up his eyes and saw Jessie standing over him.

“C’mon, James. We’ve got to get out of here,” Jessie said as softly as she could. James nodded his head and struggled up, his body aching. Meowth was already up and the trio decided to trudge off to wherever they could set up camp.

Ash and the rest of his friends were busy laughing their collective heads off, but Ash was laying into them bad.

“HA HA HA! WHAT A BUNCH OF LOSERS! NEVER COULD LEARN COULD THEY!” he laughed at the top of his lungs, pointing his finger at them.

Jessie looked at him, her temper flaring up. She patted the small lump in her arm length gloves.

“I oughta..” she began, garnering the attention of James. James also patted the lump in his boot. Without a second thought, James dug into his calf length boot.

All that could be heard was the sound of the thunderous gun shot, echoing through the forest.

Ash Ketchum froze, his face pale. The hole in his hair smoked in the wind. His friends behind him, Misty and Tracey, all wore similar expressions.

James still had the smoking gun pointed at Ash, this time right between his eyes. Jessie and Meowth were a bit astonished at James, but kept their mouths shut.

James strode forward to Ash, until he was close enough to grab him by his shirt. He pulled him close until their faces were almost touching. The maddened Rocket pressed the still hot barrel to the side of Ash’s temple.

“I could waste you right now, and you wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it. I could waste any of your friends right now and you couldn’t do a thing about it,” James sneered into Ash’s face. “Now, who’s the bunch of losers, now, twerp?”

A lone tear ran down Ash’s cheek, the realization going in to his head. He realized James was telling the truth. They could kill them all right now, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing he could do about it.

“You know,” James continued, pressing the hot barrel deeper into Ash’s head. “We could have done this since the beginning, but we chose not to. We never wanted to hurt you kids, at least not seriously. Do you have any idea how much hot water we get into just by not putting a bullet in your heads?”

Ash still stood stock still, not answering, as another tear joined the one already on his face.

“That’s enough James,” Jessie said, sighing. She placed her arm on his hand. Reluctantly, he roughly shoved Ash backwards on to the ground, and then he turned face and started walking.

Jessie stopped and turned around. “At least don’t interrupt the motto again, ok?”

Not expecting or waiting for a response, she ran to catch up with the rest of her teammates.