HEALING
It had been two years since the nightmare...yet the dream had just begun; the pain of dreams best left forgotten...
James re-read the front-cover of the Poke-National News in disbelief. The Jennys had "blown their cover", the eldest members of their great family announcing themselves to the media, which devoured the story with voracity.
It was all over the television and radio broadcast news and glaring in the headlines of all the newspapers. Team Rocket, the remains of if after the ordeal on Isle Noir, had covered the activities of Giovanni well, as he had covered the activities of Team Rocket's generations that preceded him. Now, it would soon all come out-the secret origins of the Justicia family of police, the origin of the Happenstance family of medical professionals, and even-the Myamoto Project.
James had wondered how his old friend "Myamototwo" had such vivid memories of her predecessor-and he soon learned some of why. All kinds of major genetic researchers, various scientific minds, and even scholars and philosophers came to most strange conclusions in their debates over the Jenny phenomenon.
"Mental Connectivity" one man termed it, a phenomenon discovered among a few of the older Jennys, something that had only begun to happen recently among members of the "First" and "Second" generations. It was a "regaining" of the "memories" of the life of their original mother, decorated policewoman Jennifer Justicia. Ms. Justicia had had donated her tissue to an "undisclosed scientific group" for the study of genetic engineering...50 years ago.
A "Second Generation" Jenny, who called herself Jenni Justicia Steele, disclosed several dates concerning the experiments and their results (refusing to disclose the "scientific group" behind it). She also revealed that she and other members the Second Generation and the First were experiencing impressions of "memories" that, according to logic, they shouldn't be having. They were "memories" of themselves as their original mother after the dates of her tissue donations, a few women even had "memories" related to Jennifer Justicia's death.
"We have yet to come to a conclusion to explain this occurrence," stated one particularly expert geneticist on national television, "it may be evidence toward the hypothesis that living cells separated from the body retain some kind of energetic connection to the whole from which they were taken. Perhaps even though these women are separate from their original and from one another, they are connected."
The philosophers, of course, opted for more spiritual explanations. "This is evidence," one said, "that the body and the soul are inextricably connected." Some pondered that the Justicia clan was not made up of truly individual minds, but one collective soul. The Jennys themselves contested this vehemently, proclaiming their own individuality. One minister asked, "Does a clone have a soul?"
All James knew as he sat on the edge of the couch, reading the paper, was that this was going to tear Jessie to shreds. The secret of the Myamoto Project would surely be revealed in time. Of course, he expected to be questioned about it, along with Meowth. He hoped that Jessie would be left alone. James assumed that she would be, having a room now in Clemont Memorial Mental-Health Asylum.
The dark events of two years past had left James in a much-worrisome physical condition, but he was being helped. The "Jolteon splicing" that Giovanni had subjected him to was slowly being reversed with special medical therapy. Mondo and the young Jenny they had worked with had set him up with physicians who asked few questions...the physicians at the hospital in Anaranjado.
James was able to control the electrical impulses that his flesh generated now-much like an electric pokemon. He could use his powers like a pokemon before, but he never had complete control over them. Now, with the special therapies Anranjado's doctors had discovered by chance in working with him, his electricity was no longer generated involuntarily whenever his skin came in contact with a living organism. James could touch again.
Sadly, he could no longer give a comforting hug to Jessie.
James recalled the night that changed his spirited friend into the haunted creature that that she was now. The entire strange ordeal had changed her, but especially that night.
He, Jessie, Meowth, Jennifer Justicia ("JennyNine") and a friend, Tracey Sketchit, had broken into the hidden Team Rocket base on Isle Noir with "Myamototwo", the only successful product of the Myamoto Project. She was a clone of Jessie's mother, who had disappeared on a mission many years ago, the best agent in the history of Team Rocket.
The six souls found their way to the laboratory, to search it for samples of a substance needed to save Mya's life. She was created to be a perfect Team Rocket soldier, but had decided to betray her destiny.
Giovanni had rigged the base with explosives-a trap. Ms. Justicia and Mr. Sketchit were instantly killed in a violent explosion when he detonated one of the charges. Giovanni took Jessie hostage to shoot her in front of James, Meowth, and Myamoto, to rid Myamoto of the person she was betraying her "destiny" for. Myamoto, using the last of her rapidly failing strength, rushed the man and stabbed him with a large shard of glass, sacrificing her life to save Jessie's. She died in Jessie's arms.
Jessie's soul was broken after that. She, James, and Meowth did not know where to go or what to do after walking away from the flaming ruins of the base. Police choppers arrived roughly two hours later, responding to the concerns of citizens on the Anaranjado mainland who reported seeing fires on a distant island out in the sea.
By the time that officers found the former Rockets out in the island's woods, Jessie had cried herself into exhaustion and lay sleeping, curled into a tight ball against the base of a large tree. Meowth huddled next to her to keep her warm while James sat on a patch of moss a few feet away.
To James' surprise, Brock and Mondo were with the police who found them, along with "Jennynine's" "niece-a Jenny who had just learned the dark truth about her family.
Brock asked James what had happened in stunned one-word questions. James was too shocked and sorrowfilled to answer with speech.
"Myamoto?" Brock asked, the inflection in his voice indicating "is she dead?"
James nodded, tilting his face toward the smoldering building rising up from the forest in the northeast.
"Officer Justica?"
James nodded again. Young Jenny sobbed into her hands.
Tears began a rivulet down Brock's right cheek. His voice cracked as he asked his final query.
"Tracey?"
James nodded once more.
Even with the police involvement and the news coverage of the destruction on Isle Noir, not much of the cloning lab was left and no solid evidence of the main function of the Base. Myamoto was disclosed by Jessie, James, Meowth, Mondo, Brock, and Jenny as merely a subversive Team Rocket member who was, with them, trying to help the police close down a Team Rocket pokemon smuggling operation.
None of the six ever knew why, exactly, they had not revealed the entire truth-perhaps, it was because they felt at the time that it was information that the world (particularly the Happenstance family of the Nurse Joys and the young Jennys) could not bear. Perhaps, it was because they feared another group would rise up like Team Rocket to re-create the projects. Had events gone differently, James and Myamoto would have testified against Team Rocket, bearing the whole truth. Now, all involved kept their silence.
Mondo had an apartment in Pewter City and he invited Jessie, James, and Meowth to stay with him. The young man had been much better about saving his Team Rocket paychecks than James and his partners had been.
A month after moving in, and trying to put tragedy behind them, Jessie's grief, instead of healing, gnawed at her soul. She had a severe nervous breakdown. She was now in Clemont Asylum, undergoing counseling from doctors who didn't believe half of what she told them for nearly two long years.
She was allowed visitors few and far between. James put down the newspaper, got up off the couch and grabbed his parka. He set out into the pouring rain beyond the apartment door. Meowth and Mondo were already on their way. It was an hour's drive to Clemont, even longer in the heavy rain and James needed to make a stop, but he would be there this day, to see his Jessie.
He pulled his Toyota through the open iron gates of a cemetery...
There they were, and of course they would be, the exact anniversary. James parked beneath a large oak tree and stepped out to meet them, rain spattering on his face. Misty grabbed him in a fierce hug. "You came," she whispered, "you came."
Brock and Ash stood between two headstones. Ash was holding a shivering Pikachu in his arms while Brock held an umbrella over both of their heads. Pikachu's tail hung limply, and frayed. James heard the story of how the rodent had been shot. He wondered why the Pokemon Center hadn't just amputated it; the once proud flag now a scarred disgrace.
Standing a few feet off at another stone marker was a Jenny, and James knew which one. James thought to walk up to her to ask how she was taking the headlines and the news, but scratched it from his mind.
"I really wish," Brock sighed, "I had gotten to know him better." He stared at the headstone with the intricately carved Watchers' Society Seal on it below the name Tracey K. Sketchit.
"He was a good friend," whispered Ash, "much like you in many ways."
"And her." Brock added, nodding toward the stone on his left, the one bearing the name Myamoto Lillis.
"I knew her best," James sighed, placing a single longstem red rose upon the grave, "The bravest person I've ever met. If Jessie's true mother...w-was really like her, I can understand why she never got over losing her as a child. She used to tell me a little bit about her time growing up, and she never completely got over the disappearance. This whole mess-we've all changed, but Jessie, oh, it's broken her..."
James fell silent, a tear streaming down his left cheek.
"Have you heard the philosophers' debates over the Jennys?" Misty asked, "That one guy-saying that he believes a clone cannot truly have a soul?"
"Idiot!" James hissed. "Myamoto-the Myamoto I knew...was a woman with a brilliant soul."
James sighed. "I have to go now." He pulled a white rose from his parka pocket and handed it to Misty. "For your friend." He said, glancing at Tracey's grave. Then he walked back to his car. As he drove out of the cemetery, something caught his eye, the silhouette of a man...standing at a particular gravesite. He glanced out the window again and the man was gone.
"It couldn't be." James thought, no one ever came to honor HIM, even on this dark anniversary. The man had left no known family.
James recalled the riot his burial had caused two years ago...
This cemetery, The IronGate, was a field of honor. People who had earned some kind of special honor in their lives or by their deaths were buried here. This was the place where many police officers that had been killed in the line of duty were interred.
A collective funeral for Myamoto Lillis, Jennifer Justicia, and Tracey Sketchit was held here...to honor them for their sacrifice in trying to bring down the "smuggling operation" of Team Rocket. A riot was nearly caused by Tracey's Scyther when it was let out of its pokeball to say goodbye. Not accepting that it's master was gone, it moaned and ran around trying to cut everybody down with it's blades...the beast was tranquilized by the nearest Pokemon Control, only then it returned to the pokeball in the hand of its former master's aunt.
Further disruption was caused...when a group of people came with the casket of Giovanni. The people present for the triple funeral demanded to know why HE was being buried in this honorary place, and on that day-it was a horrible insult to the three whom it was known that HE had killed. Groundskeepers explained that the plot had been paid for...rather richly...and that the burial could not be denied.
James burned with anger...but there was nothing that could be done about it, so the once Head of Team Rocket lay amongst the honored, amongst the very same people he had slain.
As James mused about the past, and about the man he thought he had seen standing in the rain at Giovanni Sakaki's tomb, he soon found himself at the gates of Clemont Memorial Mental Institution. He told the gatekeeper his name and purpose-and was let inside the grounds to park.
He walked into the main lobby, to find Mondo and Meowth sitting in plastic chairs there. "They won't let us in!" Mondo said to James as soon as he saw the blue-haired man step through the door.
"Won't let you in!? I demand to know why!" James said, first to Mondo, then to the nurse at the front desk.
"Which patient are you here to see?" she asked. The nurse here was olive skinned with indigo hair-not a Joy, like at the Pokemon Centers.
"Jessica Lillis, ID number 776235." James replied.
"No," the nurse said, "not letting anybody in to see her today..."
"Why!!?" James nearly screamed, slamming his fist down on the desk. Small curls of blue lightning arched off his knuckles. The nurse stared at him, clearly frightened.
"Sir, if you don't calm down, I'm going to have to call security. I already explained it to your friends over there, and given them the appropriate paperwork to go over. If her condition improves, you give us those papers as soon as you fill them out...and we can call you. Her doctors said that she can't have visitors today."
James resigned himself to sit down next to Mondo and Meowth. This was the first time, he had hoped, that he could at least hold Jessie's hand since his "splicing". The last time he had visited her, 2 months ago (according to Clemont's limited visitation policies) he didn't have quite enough control over his electric impulses to touch someone in complete safety. He would not have killed her, but she definitely would have been given some painful burns.
Meowth crawled over Mondo's blue-jeaned thigh and looked James directly in the eyes. "Dey won't let us in...'cause...she's gone batty again."
"I'll explain this," Mondo began. "She was in the group area, like they've been letting her go to for the past few months...since she's been doing so well. Anyway, last Wednesday, the TV was on in there. She saw the news...about the Jennys. That's what the doctors and the nurse over there says. They say she started screaming hysterically and grabbing things and throwing them at everybody."
James sighed, a tear welling up in the corner of his eye. Mondo continued.
"A couple of the security boys grabbed her...sedated her, and her doctors are not letting her out of her room...only for 'necessary evaluations' or something...and they are not letting her into visitation, even for us."
"Why didn't anyone call us?" James asked.
"Their wretched bureaucracy," Mondo explained, "We didn't have the right paperwork on file for that, apparently."
"How is she..." James whispered, then turned to the nurse at the front desk again, "HOW IS SHE!?" he screamed, his hair standing up out to the sides from the static charges his body was generating.
"Sir, if you don't calm down..."
A pair of moving objects coming down the north hall caught James attention. A man in white uniform was pushing a wheelchair...with a familiar red-haired figure.
"Jessie!" James breathed. He ran down the hall, everyone in the lobby staring. The nurse paged security.
James ran with an aura of blue electric light surrounding him, the man pushing the wheelchair abandoned the patient and ran to save his own skin. James skidded to a halt in front of Jessie and fell to his knees in front of her. She stared off into nothingness, as if she didn't notice him there.
"Jessie?" James cried, the tears down his face free flowing now. "Jessie, dear?"
He gently clasped her hands in his. She stirred, surprised to feel his skin upon hers. She mumbled, then slowly rose from the wheelchair, and James rose with her.
"James? You...can touch me?"
"Yes...now..."
Two security men came up behind him, but the doctor who had been wheeling Jessie was watching from the other end of the hall, he held up his hand in a halting gesture.
"No, this is the first time she's spoken in a week. Let them be."
Jessie hugged James around the waist, and they stood there, James letting Jessie cry into his shoulder while he cried into her long red hair.
Things would never be as they were before the Myamoto Project. Still, James knew that this was the beginning of healing-for Jessie, for him, for all those who had survived through that terrible adventure.