Title: The Thief, the Artist, and the Crow Part 1: The Point of Might Have Been
Author: Shadowcat
Shadowcat’s Notes: A strange little ficcie idea that I had, involving a couple of the Gold/Silver Pokemon that I’ve read about on the
‘Net. Forgive any inaccuracies. It is more of a strange adventure than anything else, even though you might see the tiniest bit of
romance. Oh, yes...this fic has some spiritual intrigue in it, and being a Christian...I’m warning people who have major problems with
Christianity ahead of time, so you have no right to flame me if you hate Christian ideas. If anyone is wondering about "Rocket Stew",
it is based upon an actual dish I’ve had a few times during my days as a Girl Scout, "Girl Scout Stew".
Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon, Ash, Misty, Tracey, Brock, Jessie, James, Meowth, Pikachu, Murkrow(Yamikarasu),
Selebi(Serebii), ect. I am making no money off this, for ‘tis only practice for my writing and done as a fan, so no suing, okay?
Ash, Misty, Tracey, and Pikachu had made camp in the forest that evening. They were on one of larger islands of the Orange chain,
one that supported thick forests of pine and spruce. Ash was sitting by the night’s campfire, browsing a book titled "Legends of
Pika-Don" by the light of the slowly setting sun. The orange circle cast great shafts of light through the trees as it settled in behind the
distant indigo-hued horizon. It was that magical time when day was not quite over but night had not yet begun and everything was
painted in glowing oranges and pinks.
While Ash was engaged in his reading, Misty was playing with Pikachu. She playfully tickled under his chin with a small feather she
had found. The yellow mouse batted at it with his paws as if he were a cat.
Tracey was sitting on a half-decayed fallen pine log, engaged in his favorite activity, drawing. His back was turned to Ash and Misty
and neither of them could see what it was that held his fascination as he stared into a patch of bushes with his pencil flying over his
sketchpad.
Misty left Pikachu with the feather (much to the electric-rodent’s delight has he pawed it, then seized it in his mouth and proceeded to
joyfully tear it apart) and crept up behind Tracey, hoping to get a glimpse of what he was drawing over his shoulder. He hated when
anybody tried to do that, which is precisely why she wanted to. The perverse thrill of really annoying the heck out of someone held a
special place with Misty’s sense of humor.
A loud rustle sounded in the bushes beyond and Misty saw the branches of an oak sapling quiver as a swift black shape departed its
perch.
"Oops." Misty whispered, realizing she had frightened away Tracey’s subject. "Sorry to mess up your sketch, Tracey."
"It’s okay, I was done with it, anyway, but I really would have loved to get a closer look at that pokemon. I think it was a new
species...one that hasn’t been discovered yet. I’ve never seen anything like it! It was kinda like a Pidgey, but with dark feathers, and
its beak was curved...here, take a look at my sketch."
Tracey handed Misty his sketchbook, with the shiny new graphite rendering of the strange poke-bird. Misty gasped in horror.
"What’s wrong, Misty, you look like you’ve seen a ghost or something? You don’t like my drawing?" Tracey asked. "I know, the
bird’s a little freaky looking, but that’s what it looked like."
"Don’t you know what this is?" Misty whispered.
"What? What is it?" Ash asked as he trotted up to Misty and took a look at Tracey’s drawing.
"It’s a Murkrow!" Misty exclaimed. "It’s called a Yamikarasu in some places." Tears welled up in Misty’s eyes. "It is said that if
someone sees a Murkrow in the evening like this, that they’re about to die!"
"Aw, sounds like just a bunch of superstition to me, Misty," Ash said. "Relax. It’s only a pokemon."
"Excuse me, Mr. Ketchum," Misty huffed, "but a Murkrow is not ‘only a pokemon’, they’re evil pokemon. And, a few years ago, one
of my aunts was really sick with a mysterious illness and said that she saw one when she was staying at the Cerulean Gym. She died
the next day! Oh, Kenji!"
Ash and Tracey stared at Misty quizzically. Misty had called Tracey by his actual name. He always insisted on being called by the
nickname he had earned as a child back in his hometown for his artistic abilities. Therefore, it was a rather serious thing for anyone to
be calling him by his real name of Kenji.
"Don’t sweat it, Misty," Tracey assured, "I feel fine. Sounds like a lot of fluff and superstition. I’ll be fine."
In another part of the forest, within sight of the smoke of Ash’s campfire, another group of travelers made their camp. Meowth lay
curled up on top of his cat-sized yellow sleeping bag within the warmth cast by the fire, already snoozing.
James fiddled with his and Jessie’s mess kits, dropping them both in the dirt as he tried to unpack them from their supplies. The big
Meowth balloon was neatly folded up, it’s basket nearby, just adjacent to the large red tent that James had just pitched. He resented
that Jessie and Meowth left him to do all the work whenever they needed to build a campsite, but he had learned to keep his silence
about his feelings on the subject. As much as he disliked doing work, he preferred it to being clawed in the face or being hit over the
head with a paper fan.
James hated the camping, period. He would have much rather stayed in a hotel, but noooo! He and Jessie had to chase after that brat
and his little friends because of that special Pikachu. This was the fifth night in a row that the little trio of Team Rocket had to shiver in
their sleeping bags under the shelter of a thin nylon tent. How James missed a hot shower and a little room service!
He arranged the mess kits and ladled out from a small cast-iron pot on the fire a little bit of "Rocket Stew" - a dish made of many
different kinds of condensed canned soups thrown together. The stuff was different every time that James made it, and it settled any
disputes about what kind of canned soup to have for supper. Strangely, whatever weird combinations of soups were used, it always
turned out pretty good.
Jessie was sitting at the far side of the camp on a stump, staring at something.
"Dinner’s done, Jess!" James called. Jessie turned around and a small black shape darted out of a shrub into the mists of the falling
night. Jessie sat next to the campfire, made a comment about the laziness of cats upon seeing the sleeping Meowth, who yawned and
stretched, awakening, and took her bowl of stew.
"Yah, suppertime!" Meowth smacked his lips.
"Yeah, don’t help me with anything and wake up just in time for dinner." James muttered.
"What’s it to ya, Jimmy?" Meowth replied. "I do most of the thinkin’ work of dis operation, using all the smarts around here wears me
out."
"Why you little..." James growled.
Jessie kept silent and stared into the fire.
"What’s wit Jessie?" Meowth asked.
"Yeah, Jess?" James added. "Something wrong?"
"Ah-" Jessie started, "No, nothing’s wrong...I was just thinking...When I was sitting on that stump over there, I saw the strangest
looking pokemon. I was going to send Arbok out to battle it so I could catch it, but I...couldn’t for some reason. I don’t know
why...it’s just that this strange feeling came over me. It would have made a fine gift for The Boss, I haven’t seen any kind of
pokemon like it."
"What did it look like?" James queried.
"Well," Jessie explained, "It looked kind of like a Pidgey. A bird, but it was black and had a curved beak and red eyes. It would have
been perfect for Team Rocket, it was so...evil looking. I don’t know why I didn’t send out Arbok."
That night, Misty could not sleep. She tossed and turned in her sleeping bag, unable to get any rest. For a couple of brief moments,
she started to drift into that place between sleeping and wakefulness, but was jolted awake by some forest noise.
She was worried. She felt a pervasive sense of foreboding that would not leave her in peace. Ash slept soundly with Pikachu curled
up into a little yellow ball beside him. He held the pokemon like a teddy bear, and Pikachu did not seem to mind.
Tracey was softly snoring nearby. Misty looked at him thoughtfully. She hoped that he and Ash were right about the legend of the
Murkrow, that it was just superstition. She seemed to be the only one that knew of it, it was an old story passed around Cerulean
City when she was a young child. Misty borrowed Ash’s "Legends of Pika-Don" book to see if it had said anything about it, for the
book was a book of legends about pokemon. There were several stories about Pikachus and Raichus and a few about other
pokemon, even one about a creature that could travel through time, but nothing on a Murkrow or Yamikarasu.
Misty stalked over to where Tracey was lying. He had taken his "lucky headband" off and tossed it next to his sketchpad, which lay
just adjacent to his sleeping bag. Besides his pokemon, he had told Misty those two items were his "treasures". He wasn’t quite sure
what attachment he held to the headband, other than the fact that it kept his hair out of his eyes, and he had long filled many a
sketchpad with drawings, only to buy another when needed, but, still, he treasured them.
The sketchpad was his "voice" he told her, the medium by which he expressed himself. While she could readily state her mind, he was
much quieter, more often than not remaining silent and drawing in his pad. Sure, he drew many things from life, like the numerous
studies of pokemon that he hoped would get reviewed by and perhaps be of help to researchers such as the great Professor Oak
("You never really see something unless you try to draw it;" he had once said). He also did some drawings that were purely
imaginative, scenes of fictional worlds.
Misty listened to his soft and rhythmic breathing. He mumbled something about "black feathers" and "Murkrow" in his sleep. She
gently brushed some strands of hair out of his eyes. "Kenji, please be right about this..." she whispered.
James lay awake in Team Rocket’s tent with the same ominous feeling that plagued Misty. Meowth lay curled up at his feet in his own
little yellow sleeping bag, the pokemon's warmth keeping the young Rocket’s feet from freezing. Jessie lay close beside him, some of
her spiraled coif of red hair brushing his cheek.
Team Rocket was evil, or so James had been led to believe, but the young man doubted that he could ever face "real" evil. He knew
that he and Jessie were really just scared, lost, lonely kids, "playing criminal", because they had nothing else to do. Meowth, too, he
was only in this because he wanted approval from his Master and true friendship, something that he had not found on the streets of
Hollywood in his kitten days or anywhere else.
James had a great sense of fear now, like their camp had been visited by something representing "real" evil. Jessie had been acting
strange that evening, ever since she had seen that weird "evil looking" pokemon that resembled a Pidgey. James just had a bad feeling
about their whole conversation about it and he was not quite sure why.
He had not felt a sense of impending doom so strongly since they had been aboard the sunken St. Anne cruise ship at the bottom of
the sea with the Twerps, Ash, Misty, and Brock. He, Jessie, and Meowth had all nearly died. James still resented that the Twerps did
not think to let them borrow one of their water-pokemon during that daring escape, forcing the trio to rely on that Magikarp that he
had bought, which had proved utterly useless.
He looked at Jessie, her beautiful shut eyes fluttered, indicating that she was having a dream. He smelled the sweet, somewhat spicy
aroma of her hair, which was now in his face as she turned her head. This was one of the rare times that James really felt like he might
be falling in love with Jessie. They had been best friends since they were kids, but never anything more. Right now, she looked like an
angel. Of course, when she awakened in the morning, the illusion would be over and she would be her mean and hot-tempered self.
Somehow, James longed for her to be awake with him now, to chase away his strange and utterly lonely fear.
A few hours after dawn, Ash, Misty, Tracey, and Pikachu were walking on a forest trail, headed to a mysterious Gym that Ash said
was somewhere north according to their map. Misty sighed, realizing that Ash had probably gotten their little group lost *again*. She
wondered why she didn’t just stay in Cerulean City with her sisters or chosen to go it alone on her own pokemon journey. Still, the
experiences she had up to this point, she wouldn’t trade for the world. Ash was a good friend, and she had found a friend in Brock,
and now Tracey, and she had captured a few new pokemon, even if one of them had to be that dopey Psyduck.
Suddenly, Pikachu’s ears pricked, then the three humans heard an ominous creaking sound. All three were quickly hurtled by the
force of gravity into a large hole that previously had been covered with tree branches and dirt.
"Who would put a hole in a mountain trail like this?" Tracey asked rather stupidly.
"Who else?" Ash growled.
"Prepare for Trouble!" a feminine voice triumphantly shouted.
"Make it Double!" came the familiar masculine refrain.
"Will you knock it off?!" Ash shouted as he clambered out of the hole. "We’ve heard that same baloney from you about fifty-million
times!"
"No one interrupts the Team Rocket Motto, boy!" Jessie screeched.
"To Infect the World with Devastation!" a voice came from the forest. Jessie, James and Meowth turned their heads toward the
sound as did Ash, Misty, Tracey, and Pikachu as they climbed out of the hole-trap.
"To Blight all Peoples Within Our Nation!" came a very scratchy male voice.
Two figures leapt out of the forest foliage, one a tall blonde woman, the other a tall teal-haired man. Both were wearing black Team
Rocket uniforms.
"Cassidy" Jessie spat.
"And Botch!" cried James.
"That’s Butch you idiot!" the teal-haired man rasped. "Lookit you two, still trying to capture this small boy’s Pikachu!"
"Such failures!" exclaimed Cassidy.
"How did they get out of jail?" Misty asked.
"Wouldn’t you like to know." Butch wheezed through a sly grin.
"Dis is our assignment!" protested Meowth.
"Well," said Cassidy, "we’re making it ours. We’ll show you wimps the right way to do things in Team Rocket. Better step out of the
way, or you’ll regret it!"
Cassidy and Butch pulled two small handguns out of their hidden pockets.
"Those are-those are-" James stuttered.
"What does it look like they are?" Cassidy replied. She turned to Ash, "Now, you! Hand over that Pikachu and any other pokemon
you got or you and your friends get it!"
Pikachu charged up for a Thundershock.
"No, Pikachu! Don’t!" Ash cried, but it was too late, enraged at being electrocuted, Cassidy and Butch opened fire, not caring which
direction they were shooting.
"Jessie!" James cried as he saw his flame-haired partner clutch her chest and fall to the ground. He swiftly dragged her to a patch of
bushes and laid her down there, examining the torn spot where red was staining the white jacket of her Team Rocket uniform, silently
praying that he could find a way to stop the relentless flow of blood.
"Ash!" Tracey cried, jumping between the young trainer and Butch, only to utter a pained scream and fall to the ground. Suddenly,
sirens sounded.
Butch and Cassidy forgot their rage and their Pikachu prize and ran swiftly into the woods as a police jeep with a red-and blue
flashing light mounted on its hood and a blaring siren drove up with Officer Jenny and two male police officers seated within.
"We just heard gunshots! What just went on here?" Jenny asked.
"Get an ambulance!" Misty screamed. She halfway held Tracey up in her arms, he clutched his stomach and grimaced in pain. He
groaned a little, but otherwise made no sound and he trembled slightly.
"Kenji, just hang on, we’ll get an ambulance here, you’ll be alright, just hang on..." Misty whispered.
Tracey’s sketchpad fell out of his backpack, the drawing that he did last night facing up, the image of the Murkrow.
Two hours passed, and the lone Murkrow, Yamikarasu, sat high in the branches of a pine. He had watched over the scene of the
shooting, and now the victims and their friends had long left. The vile black bird laughed a dark cackling crow’s laugh as he soared
down to the lonely patch of trail and lightly pecked with his beak and scratched with his claws at still fairly fresh patches of blood
soaked sand.
Two weeks later...
James paced around his apartment at the Main Team Rocket base in Viridian City. Meowth lay curled in a kitty bed in the otherwise
empty little one-bedroom job. James feared that he might wear a hole in the living room carpet, though it was not much of a living
room and a really ugly carpet.
He did not know if he could bear this just yet. He was to be assigned a new partner today, after the "unfortunate tragedy" that befell
Jessie. Butch and Cassidy were on trial for murder, and The Boss would not bail them out this time. He would not have cared if they
had only killed the Twerp, but they had killed one of their own, and members were out of Team Rocket forever if they murdered one
of their own. There were very few people in the organization that held the authority to do that, and it had to be under The Boss’ order
and for a very good reason. No Rocket had died by his order in fifteen years.
James was to meet his new partner in an hour. The scenes of Jessie’s death played themselves over and over again in his mind, every
scene captured in a horrible still-frame, the un-pieced-together film shots of a movie.
Cassidy had fired the shot. He had dragged Jessie out of the battle zone and examined her wound. He glanced over for a brief
moment at the twerps and saw the bratty girl cradling the green-haired Watcher boy in her arms and whispering to him. He heard the
sirens and glimpsed Butch and Cassidy high-tailing it away. Jessie reached out her hand to him and tried to say something. He told her
that she was going to be okay and that an someone would soon arrive to help them.
"James-I-I," she muttered, and then fell silent.
"No, Jessie, don’t leave me, hang on, please don’t die. I need you!" James cried, but he knew that it was futile. He brushed his hand
over her eyelids and curled up beside her still form and cried. The paramedics soon came and quickly came to the conclusion that
their services were not needed. They tapped James on the shoulder and tried to get him to get up, but to no avail. When they took
Jessie away, only then did he rise to follow them to the local hospital and it’s morgue. Some of the hospital staff helped him and
Meowth get cleaned up and the police started interviewing them. James and Meowth were cleared of all criminal charges connected
to their repeated attempted thefts of Ash Ketchum's Pikachu because of the ordeal they had been through.
James had heard that the Twerp boy died at the hospital. Jessie’s funeral was a lavish affair, with all of Team Rocket who were not in
prison or on trial in attendance. Her casket was draped with an enormous black flag emblazoned with a great red "R". Giovanni
gushed on about how they had lost such an important member of the Team, but James knew that it was all a bunch of emotional
fakery. He and Jessie and been losers in his eyes. In fact, he thought that The Boss had been quite excited in recent days at the
prospect of assigning him and Meowth a new partner, someone who would "lick them into shape".
There were a lot of roses at Jessie’s funeral. James no longer carried a rose with him anymore. It had been Jessie’s favorite flower, as
well as his, but it was his favorite no longer. A long-stem red rose reminded him too much of her and the acknowledgement that she
was no longer around was too painful for him to bear. He and Meowth were seeing one of Team Rocket’s counselors for his grief,
and was to continue seeing her after receiving his new partner. She was a good ear, but James knew that even with her help, that he
would probably never get over the things that he had seen.
"James;" a voice beckoned from somewhere in the apartment.
"Meowth, is that you?" James asked. He glanced over at Meowth’s kitty bed to see him still curled up, sound asleep.
"James;" the voice called to him again. James, bewildered, turned his head to the direction from whence the voice was calling.
Steadily, a bleary shape began to form before his eyes, it took on a white square with blurred edges and there was the top half of a
human figure within this strange square shape. It was like a big-screen television had materialized in the air in the middle of his
apartment. As the square became more defined, so did the shapes within it, for James saw two shapes now, one close by the "screen"
with only the head and torso showing, and the other a full-figure standing far away in an endless sea of white.
"Jessie?" James asked, seeing the face of his deceased partner staring back at him.
"James, it’s me. Listen, you have to help me, you’re my only hope."
James fainted.
Misty sat on the bed in the Sketchit family’s guest bedroom. She and Ash had been staying with Tracey’s family for the last several
days after coming to Tangelo Island for his funeral and had not resumed their Pokemon Journey as of yet.
Marie and Drew, Kenji’s mother and father, had been most gracious to their son’s best friends despite their own devastation over his
tragic demise. Ash and Misty were going to book a hotel room for a few days at one of the tourist traps, but Drew Sketchit insisted
that they stay in the spare bedroom of their house, for "It is best for people to pull together in times like these".
Misty and Ash had learned a heck of a lot about their mutual friend that they had never known before. They met his Aunt Krissy, who
had recently become a professor of Ecology at Tangelo University. They learned that she had been the one who had sparked his
interest in pokemon watching when he was a kid. They had also learned that the Scyther he had caught on Mikan Island had not been
the only Scyther he had ever raised. Krissy had given Kenji a Scyther egg she had found in the woods when he was a little boy. He
had raised it and ended up releasing it into the wild later.
Misty now had ownership of Kenji’s Marill, and Ash his Venonat. Scyther was given to Krissy. The Sketchit family also insisted that
Misty take some of their son’s drawings. She sat on one of the two beds in the guest bedroom thumbing through his last sketchbook.
She had taken the drawing of the Murkrow and burned it. That was the one drawing that she could not stand to look at.
Tears dropped from her eyes onto one page, it was a portrait of her and Ash. "My Friends" was scrawled in cursive letters
underneath the chest-up images.
"Misty," a voice from nowhere called, "Misty, can you hear me?"
"Wha-? Who’s there?" the girl asked, turning her head in all directions.
"It’s me;" the voice answered, "It’s me, Tracey."
Misty saw a strange rectangle of white light materialize in the center of the room, like a giant, fuzzy TV set. Then it became clearer and
she saw the face of her dead friend staring back at her from within the rectangle.
Awestruck, Misty slowly reached out her hand, which passed right through Kenji’s image. "Kenji...Oh, Kenji...Is it you? Are you
a-a ghost?"
"No." Kenji answered. "I’m not a ghost, in fact, you could say that I’m not really even dead."
"Not dead?" but how?
"It is difficult to explain, but I will try. When I died, the lady, Jessie from Team Rocket and I died, it was not our time. Do you believe
in God, Misty?"
"Yes...sort of, I guess."
"I never told you and Ash this about myself, and I regret it." Kenji sighed. "I’m a Christian. I believe in the whole God and the Devil,
Heaven and Hell and Jesus and that whole shebang."
"Your parents...told us...about what they believe and all."
"Well, this does not happen often, or at all, really, but Jessie and I truly died before our time. It was the doing of Yamikarasu, that
Murkrow, the one that I saw that night was a special Murkrow, a Messenger of Death, like you said that the legends told. He is the
Head Murkrow, the leader of them all. At some point in the future of our world, Jessie and I were going to make some kind of a
difference, though we don’t know what is. Yamikarasu wanted to upset the timeline and create Chaos."
Kenji paused letting Misty take all this in, then continued. "Jessie and I have somehow been trapped in a vertex of time. We were
transported here just before we "died" in our own world. We are at a point that is out of time, we never died and what you are living
now is a Chaos Point, a timeline that is not supposed to exist. So, we are kind of alive and dead at the same time. If I had really died,
I would be in Heaven now, because I believe in Jesus. Jessie, I don’t know exactly what she believes, but I think that she would be in
Hell right now."
"Wouldn’t she?" Misty asked. "She’s a thief!"
"The Heaven and Hell thing doesn’t work that way, Misty. It’s a misconception that a lot of people have. I had it once. Then I
discovered that getting to Heaven is not about what you do, it’s about whom you know. I learned that Jesus died for everybody’s sins
and accepted him as my Savior."
"Oh," Misty said, trying to take all this in.
"To the matter at hand," Kenji stated. "Jessie and I are trapped in this time vertex and you are in a Chaos Point. Time does not pass
for us, as you can see, we are in a blank, white realm with no dimension of time, while time goes on for you. This is part of a war
between Good and Evil, Yamikarasu must not succeed. In order for the world to be right, we must not have died."
"But how?" Misty asked.
"I’m getting to that." Kenji explained. "Look at my right hand."
"It’s...semi-transparent?" Misty started, staring at the indicated appendage on the other side of the "screen".
"Jessie and I are fading;" the young artist elaborated. "If you do not correct the timeline after a certain number of days in your Chaos
Point, I have learned that Jessie and I will both fade out of this realm and we will die."
A tear trickled down Misty’s cheek.
The young man continued. "Do you remember that old legend Ash was telling us about from his ‘Legends’ book about a
time-traveling pokemon?"
"Yes;" she answered. "Yes I do."
"Selebi;" Kenji enlightened. "Selebi does exist. You and Ash must seek her out. Jessie’s old partners, too, in order to establish the
correct timeline and thwart Yamikarasu’s plans. The encounter with Butch and Cassidy of Team Rocket on that forest trail was a
Point of Might Have Been, and it must be changed, changed so that Jessie and I are not shot, so no one dies. Otherwise, a dark
future will result and Yamikarasu will appear to many more people. You have to help us."
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