Fez the Mysfit Elf
Annyong
Well, here's my Laughingstock entrée. That's pretty much all the explanation that's really needed, but here's some more anyway: The Billion-Dollar Idea is a comedy one-shot about Team Rocket. But readers, ye be warned: It's long! At twenty Microsoft pages long, I don't think there's much argument about that. I decided to take the Laughingstock judges advice and edit out some of the unnecessary bits (meaning I didn’t go “comma crazy.J). So now to save space I'll shut up and let you read. Enjoy:
Team Rocket, or, more commonly known as Jessie, James, and Meowth, is not having a good week. But as you don’t know what I’m talking about, I guess I’ll have to tell you. After all, I am the narrator of this story. So anyways, our starring threesome isn’t having a good week. Why aren’t they having a good week, you ask? Because they have been temporarily banned from Team Rocket, I answer. Why have they been banned, you ask? Well, if you really want to know, simply read on:
The location: An office, in a Pokemon gym, in Viridian City, in the Kanto region. The scene: Our three stars standing outside an office door, waiting for their boss to give them permission to enter. James, a young man with bluish/purplish colored hair is busily pacing back and forth in front of the door.
“Jessie, what do you think the boss wants to see us about?” He asks his counterpart, who’s sitting on a bench a few feet away from the door. The red-haired woman shrugs her shoulders.
“How should I know?” She replies sourly. As most of you readers know, Jessie and James are both wearing similar Team Rocket uniforms that consist of white shirts with giant red R’s on them, black gloves, black boots, and white pants/skirt.
“Maybe he wants to give us a reward for all the Pokemon we caught for him!” The third Rocket member who goes by the name of Meowth chimes in. Meowth is a small, cream-colored cat-like Pokemon that for some reason speaks with a Brooklyn accent. Upon Meowth’s words, James spins around and grabs him by the throat.
“You imbecile!” He cries as he violently shakes the poor Pokemon. “We’ve never caught a single Pokemon for the boss! We’ve tried over three hundred times to catch that lousy Pikachu, but we’ve never seceded! We’re failures! It wouldn’t surprise me if the boss called us here to fire us!” As he finishes his rant, Jessie quickly pulls Meowth out of his hands.
“Get a hold of yourself James!” She yells as she smacks him in the head with Meowth’s limp body. “If the boss wanted to fire us, he could’ve done it over the phone! Why would he have us come all the way out here from Hoenn just to fire us?”
“I don’t know!” James shouts as he clutches his wounded head, curling up on the floor. As Jessie drops Meowth next to James, the door swings open, and a voice yells for them to enter. The Rocket trio waste no time in entering the room, and walking over to a desk. The desk is made of oak, has four cabinets, a lovely staining job done to it, and was bought at the finest antique shop in all of Kanto. But none of that really matters, as no one ever asks a man about his desk. Sitting at the desk is a simple man, with wavy brown hair, perfectly clean teeth, and wearing an orange suit, made by the finest tailors in all of Kanto. This man is Giovanni, the head of Team Rocket. Lying on a pillow next to Giovanni’s chair is his favorite Pokemon, Persian.
Giovanni looks down at the trio as they bow down in front of him, and scowls.
“Get up you three!” He yells, causing them to jump to their feet in fear. Our trio quickly gets their wits about them, and starts to complement their boss.
“My my sir, you have such lovely cuticles!” James says, taking his boss’ hand in his own and examining it closely.
“Yes, and your Persian has such a beautiful coat, sir.” Jessie says, busily petting the Persian.
“Yeah, and this desk is sure a beauty. Where did you get it?” Meowth asks, feeling the smoothness of the desk he’s currently standing on.
“That’s enough of that!” Giovanni shouts, slamming his hand on his desk and sending Meowth tumbling to the floor. The trio quickly stops their flattering, and stands at attention in front of the desk. “I’ve called you three here for a reason.” He tells them. “Over the past four years, you three have tried countless times to catch me a Pikachu. One simple Pikachu. In the process of its capture, you’ve spent over ten million dollars. That money came out of the Team Rocket bank account. So far, you’ve failed to put back one single cent, or catch me any rare Pokemon, so I’m afraid I have to take drastic actions: I’m temporarily banning you three from Team Rocket! I’m giving you two months, and if in that time you don’t pay back all the money you’ve borrowed or catch me some extremely rare Pokemon, I’ll be forced to take even drasticer actions by permanently banning you and forcing you to pay back your debt. Or worse.”
“Uh, sir, drasticer isn’t a word.” James quietly says.
“I can make it a word if I want to!” Giovanni bellows back at him. “Now Persian; take care of these three.” Upon its master’s command, Persian leaps up and chases our terrified trio down the hallway and out a window. Our trio hits the cement outside the window hard, but quickly jump back to their feet, and keep running. They run about three miles before they finally feel safe, and then sit down on a bench.
“I don’t believe it!” James moans in despair. “The boss threw us out of Team Rocket.”
“I think we got that James!” Meowth retorts angrily. “Just how exactly does he expect us to earn ten million dollars? It’s impossible!”
“I don’t know what he expects.” Jessie says. “Try to think of a way to earn money quickly.” The three of them spend the next few minutes thinking.
“Hey, I know!” James cries after several minutes. Leaping to his feet, he quickly reaches into his pocket and pulls out a rolled up magazine. “I was reading this article yesterday about a man named Bill Gates!” He explains. “According to this magazine, he made billions of dollars by making a company that sells PC’s and windows!”
“Hold on a minute James. What are PC’s?” Meowth asks his friend.
“I’m not really that sure. I always thought PC stood for Politically Correct. The Gates person must have made politically correct windows and sold them! We can do the same! We’ve sold windows before, remember?”
“Yes, but if you’ll remember correctly, we used ice instead of real glass, so they weren’t exactly what you’d call PC.” Meowth says, staring up at his teammate. “If we use ice, we won’t sell anything. And I don’t even know where real glass comes from.”
“You might not, but I do!” Jessie yells while jumping to her feet also. “A few days ago I saw a program on PBS that showed how people make glass! All you need is sand, and an oven!”
“I don’t know you guys; something doesn’t seem right about this plan.” Meowth says while scratching his chin, trying to think of a flaw. “It seems too simple. If money can be made so easily just by selling windows, then why doesn’t everybody do it?”
“Maybe no one thought about it before us! Besides, what could possibly go wrong?” James yells, his excitement rising. “Sand is free, we can use an oven for free, the whole thing is free, and we can earn billions of dollars! This plan has no flaw!”
“Oh all right. I’ll give it try.” Meowth says, caving in to his friends.
“Great! I’ll find us a stove while you guys find some sand to make the windows.” Jessie tells her friends as she turns to walk away.
“Wait Jess!” James calls after her. “How much sand will we need per window, and how many windows will we need all together?”
“I don’t know!” Jessie yells over her shoulder. “Try to find a book about it somewhere! I’ll call you guys when I find the oven!” And with that, she’s gone. James sighs and looks down at his companion.
“What should we do now?” Meowth asks him.
“Well, if we’re going to be looking for a book, I guess we should head to the library.” He tells the cat Pokemon as the two then stroll down the road towards the public library.
A few short minutes later, the duo arrived at the library. Meowth walks up to the door and is about to open it, when James holds out a hand and stops him.
“Hold on a minute Meowth! Look at that sign.” He says as he points to a sign on the door. Meowth follows his finger, and looks at a sign that says in bold letters: No Pokemon Allowed! “I think you should wait out here.” James tells Meowth.
“Oh, all right.” Meowth responds, walking over to a bench. As he pulls himself up and sits down, James enters the library. As soon as he’s out of sight, Meowth pulls out an iPod, a Nintendo DS, a miniature toaster oven, frozen chicken potpie, and a portable DVD player, and settles down for a long wait, because when it comes to books, James isn’t the person you want on the job. It took him over a month just to read The Cat in the Hat. This assignment would be a long one.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
One and a half hours later, on the other side of town:
Jessie is having problems. To be blunt, she can’t find a stove. She’s looked everywhere for one. She’s broken into seven different houses, but each one had a dog or a loud security device that scared her off. She’d even tried to steal an oven from the cities biggest Burger King, but the employees had caught her sneaking out the back door with the oven and called the police on her! When the cops arrived, Jessie was forced to flee the scene of the crime without her oven.
Now, she’s oven-less. She only been assigned one job on this mission, and she had failed. But not to worry Jessie fans: She hasn’t given up her search yet. In fact, just as she’s about to give up, she just happens to glance to her right. As she looks at the sight next to her, a smile appears on her face, for the building to her right is none other then the Viridian City mall. As she looks upon the mall, an idea pops into her head, and she quickly heads to the malls front entrance.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Back at the library, Meowth is dozing peacefully on the bench, when a loud siren goes off, waking him from his slumber. Meowth’s eyes shoot open just in time to see James jump out of one of the library windows and fall to the ground in a shower of glass. But he didn’t seem to be hurt by either the fall or the glass, as he just jumps back up and runs past Meowth.
“Run Meowth! Run for your life!” He shouts to his companion. Meowth looks behind James, and sees that he’s being chased by two large men. Meowth quickly jumps to his feet and starts running after James. As they’re running, Meowth shouts,
“What did you do James?”
“I didn’t…do anything…I only…from the library…encyclopedia’s!” James yells back, panting heavily. “ I thought…library’s…purpose!” The two Rocket members are now running along the edge of a road, and quickly hail a pashing taxi. They quickly jump in and yell for the driver to take them to the Viridian City gym. The driver quickly speeds off, leaving the two pursuing librarians in a cloud of exhaust. Meowth sighs with relief, and then turns to James.
“James, why where those two men chasing you?” He asks him.
“I don’t know really.” James replies. “All I did was enter the library and try to find information on how to make windows. I wandered for about an hour before I remembered about the librarians, so I then asked one where to look, and she said I should try the encyclopedia’s, so I did. I found the pages I needed in the encyclopedia’s, so I tore them out, but then my cell phone started to ring, so I answered it. When I started talking, a librarian came over and told me to take my call outside, but then he started yelling at me for tearing pages out of their books! His yelling attracted another librarian, who also started yelling at me. The two of them scarred me, so I jumped out a window, and that’s when I ran into you. That’s all that happened! I don’t know why they were so mad at me!” With that, James stops his explanation, and Meowth shakes his head sadly at his friends ignorance.
“I honestly didn’t think I needed to tell you not to tear pages out of books, James.” He tells his partner. “Libraries are for borrowing books, not pages. Why are we going back to the gym anyway?”
“We aren’t. We just needed to get away from those librarians. You can drop us off here driver!” James calls up to the man driving. The driver nods and pulls up to the curb. James quickly rummages through his pockets, and pulling out the change needed, pays the man. James and Meowth then step out of the taxi, and look a their surroundings. They soon realize that they’re standing outside a K-mart, and since they have nowhere else to go, decide to head into the store.
Once they’re inside, they head to the back of the store and the produce section and sit down on the floor behind a citrus cart, so no one will see them. Once this is done, James reaches into his back pocket, and pulls out the pages James stole. Handing half of them to Meowth, the two of them start reading.
“Why’d you steal a bunch of G pages?” Meowth whispers to his friend.
“G for glass.” James whispers back. I also have a bunch of W pages for windows. Now be quite and read!” The two of them spend the next few minutes reading, and then turn to each other.
“What do your pages say about windows?” Meowth asks James.
“Nothing. I must have grabbed the wrong pages when those librarians caught me.” James says sadly. “What do yours say about glass?”
“It says here that to make glass you need to a certain mixture.” Meowth tells him, reading off the pages. “It says that the mixture has to contain three ingredients: silica sand, soda ash, and limestone. Do you know what any of these ingredients are?”
“Not exactly, but I get the basic concept.” James says, reaching to the table above him and bringing down a bag filled with green citrus fruit. “See, here are the limes we need. Now all we need is some stones to mix with them, and we’ll have our limestone. I bet we can find all the other ingredients throughout the store too. Lets get going.” And with that, the two friends start searching the K-mart for the rest of the ingredients.
Soon they come up with five 40lb bags of sand, five 40lb bags of river stones, twenty small bags containing five limes each, five 3-liter bottles of Pepsi, five bags of charcoal, two small boxes of matches, six bottle of lighter fluid, a double pack of knifes, two cutting boards, a spade, and an inflatable swimming pool, complete with electronic pump. As James pushes the two extremely heavy buggies through the store, Meowth looks at him in confusion.
“Uh, Jimmy. Why do we need all this stuff?” He asks him.
“Because!” James grunts as he pushes the buggies down an isle. “We need silica sand, soda ash, and limestone, but since the store didn’t have any of those things, we’ll just have to make our own. I don’t know what silica sand is, so I guess regular sand will do, that’s why we have the bags of sand. We have river stones because if we cut up the limes and squeeze the juice all over them, it’ll make limestone. And if we use these matches to burn this charcoal, it’ll make a bunch of ashes, which we’ll then mix into the Pepsi, making soda ash. Once we do all that, we’ll mix all the ingredients together in the inflatable swimming pool, and then make the windows in Jessie’s oven. Understand?”
“Yeah, I get it now! What a great idea!” Meowth exclaims as he watches his friend struggle to get his buggies to the front desk. Once he gets there, he quickly pays for his purchase and pushes his buggies out to the parking lot, where he parks his buggies by a bench, and sitting down, pulls his cell phone out of his pocket.
“Now all we have to do is wait until Jessie calls us to tell us that she’s found the oven.” No sooner had he said it then his phone began to ring. Looking at the caller ID built into his phone, James says to Meowth “It’s Jessie!” And quickly answers it. “Hello?” He says into the receiver.
“James? It’s me, Jessie.” Jessie whispers over the phone.
“Jessie, why are you whispering?” James asks.
“I can’t tell you right now. Just meet me at the front entrance to the Viridian City mall by the Lance statue, okay?”
“Uh, sure Jess, but why—”
“I gotta go!” And with that, Jessie hangs up on James. James stares at his phone for a minute, and then looks down at Meowth.
“Jessie says to meet her at the mall.” He tells his Pokemon counterpart.
“All righty then; lets get another taxi.” The duo quickly hails another taxi, and after a few minutes of struggling to pack the trunk, they’re on their way to the mall. They arrive after a few short minutes and after paying the driver and unloading the trunk into two buggies, head towards the malls front entrance. As they arrive at the front entrance, they look around, and see a majestic steel statue of a man riding a Dragonite with his cape flowing behind him, but no Jessie. The two decide that they must be early, so they sit down on a bench next to the statue.
“Are you sure this is where Jessie said to meet her?” Meowth asks James after several minutes waiting.
“I’m sure of it! She specifically said to meet her at the front entrance next to the Lance statue, and that’s where we are. I wonder what’s keeping her.” While the two are busy talking, they fail to notice a security guard sneaking up behind them. The guard is only a few feet away from them when James turns around, and seeing the guard starts screaming in fright, and dives under on of the buggies. Meowth on the other hand, stays still, and looks down at James in disgust.
“James, what are you doing?” He asks his cowering friend. James pokes his head out from under the buggy and looks up at Meowth.
“That security person scared me.” He whines. Meowth rolls his eyes, and then turns his head to look at the security officer.
“James, I’m not sure if you understand this or not, but that “security person” is just Jessie in disguise.” Meowth tells his friend, who pokes his head out more, and looks up at the security officer. Sure enough, it’s Jessie, but she isn’t wearing her normal Team Rocket uniform, instead dawning a light brown shirt, dark brown pants, black shoes, sunglasses, and a fake mustache. On her shirt, she brandishes a badge, and on her hip a taser gun.
“Oh no!” James shouts, pulling his head back under the buggy. “Jessie’s got a gun! Run away, run away from the pain! Everyone is on the run! Honey, what have you done? Jessie’s got a gun!” Jessie quickly reaches down and clamps a hand over the now singing James’ mouth.
“Be quite James!” She whispers fiercely at him. “I was thrown out of the mall earlier today for loitering, and if they catch me loitering here again they’ll throw me back out!” With that said, she releases her grip on James mouth, and he remains silent.
“Jessie, why are you wearing a security outfit?” Meowth asks.
“I just told you; they threw me out earlier today for not buying anything so I need to use this costume to get back in the mall.” Jessie replies. “Did you guys find out how to make glass?”
“Of course we did Jessie.” James says as he crawls out from under the buggy. “We got all the ingredients needed, so now all we lack is the oven, which you were supposed to provide. Did you get the oven?”
“Come on. I’ll show you.” With that, Jessie turns around and walks into the mall, forcing her partners to follow her with their loaded buggies. Luckily, Jessie’s uniform prevents anyone from asking question about the buggies. Jessie leads her two friends into a Sears home appliance store and over to an escalator. After a few minute of struggling, the three of them somehow manage to get the buggies up the escalator and into the kitchen appliance section.
“What are we doing here Jessie?” James asks her while pushing his buggies along.
“We’re here because of those.” Jessie says, pointing to her right. James and Meowth follow her finger and see a long line of ovens and stoves. The two smile at Jessie.
“Good idea Jess!” James says while maneuvering his buggies towards the stoves.
“Not so fast James!” Jessie says, reaching out a hand and grabbing James’ shoulder. “There’s an employee around here that goes around helping people find the appliances they need. He’s the one who called the security on me earlier today. One of us will have to distract him by pretending to want to buy something that isn’t located near the stove section, and by one of us, I mean you.”
“Me?” James wails. “Why me? Why can’t you or Meowth do it?”
“Because! If I take off my disguise he’ll recognize me from before, and if a security officer wants to buy something he’ll start getting suspicious!”
“Well then, why can’t Meowth do it?”
“Because he’s a Pokemon! Pokemon aren’t even allowed in the mall! The only reason he got in is because he was with a security guard, a.k.a. me!”
“But I don’t want to do this!” James protests. “You know how I’m afraid of appliance clerks! Besides, I’m the only one who knows how to make the windows!”
“Not true, Jimmy.” Meowth pipes up. “I still have the encyclopedia pages you gave me, which are our only source for making glass. We can do it perfectly well without you.”
“Oh, all right then!” James says, giving up his protest. “But what am I supposed to say to him?”
“Just tell him you’re looking for a dishwasher.” Jessie says while taking control of the buggies. “We’ll come and get you once the window’s are ready. What’s with all these random ingredients anyway?”
“I’ll explain while we work.” Meowth says, heading towards the stoves. “Now get going James! We don’t have all day!”
“I’m going already!” James says angrily before storming off to the customer service desk. When he gets there, he notices a little button with a sign above it reading: ‘Push button for service’. James reads the sign, and then pushes the little button. No sooner is that done then a blond head with long hair held back by a headband, hobo-like beard, and dawning purple glasses pokes out from under the desk.
“What do you want, man?” The head asks James.
“Uh, I want to buy a dishwasher.” James tells the head, a little unsure about this man.
“That’s cool!” The head says while standing up, revealing a four-foot tall man wearing a tie-dye shirt, a brown leather vest, long purple bellbottom pants, and a peace symbol medallion. “Let me show you our stock. By the way, my name’s Dolphin. What’s yours?”
“Uh…James.” He says, starting to feel a bit uncomfortable about the hippie as Dolphin nods his head.
“James. I like it!” He says. “It makes you sound all important. So, what do want again?”
“I’m looking for a dishwasher.”
“Oh! Have you tried looking at Sears? They have the biggest selection of home appliances in town.” At this remark, James can’t help but stare at Dolphin in disbelief.
“Where in Sears Dolphin! Aren’t you an employee?”
“Whoa! I’m a Sears employee!” Dolphin exclaims in shock. “Cool! That must mean I’m smart! I feel like a Harvard graduate. Wait a second, what did you want again?”
“A dishwasher!”
“Righteous, man! And why are you asking me for one?”
“Because you’re at the customer service desk! I’m a customer, and I need service!”
“So, you’re saying you want me to help you find a washing machine?”
“No, I said ‘dishwasher’!”
“All right man! Lets get a move on then!” Dolphin then grabs a nametag off the desk, and clips it to his headband. James reads the nametag, and then asks,
“Why does your nametag say ‘Richard’? I thought your name was Dolphin.”
“Whoa! My name’s Richard?” Dolphin says, quickly snatching the nametag off his head and reading it. “I didn’t know that! Thanks for telling me, man! I owe you one. Since you’re such a good friend of mine, you can call me ‘Ard’.”
“You mean as in Richard?”
“Whoa! I did not realize that! You’re a smart guy, Phil. Now, what was I doing?”
“My name’s James, and you’re taking me to see the dishwashers.” James says, letting out a sigh.
“Right man! Lets go!” Richard/Dolphin then turns around, and then goes running strait towards the refrigerators, with James close at his heels.
“This fridge is excellent, man!” He says, pointing to a large silver refrigerator with two doors side-by-side, one with an icemaker on it. “I have one just like it at home! That one’s great too!” He says, pointing to another fridge of the same model, only this time in black. “I have one just like that at home! That one’s also great, man!” He says again, pointing to yet another fridge of the same model, only this time in white. “I have two of those at home!”
“Why are you even showing me these? I want a dishwasher.” James says. “And why do you have four different refrigerators at your home?”
“Wait a second; what are you doing in my house?” Dolphin asks, pointing to James. “I didn’t say you could come in here! Help me! Somebody, please help me! This man broke into my house! Call the police!” Dolphin shouts as he takes off running down the isles of refrigerators, heading toward the stoves. Knowing that their plan will be ruined if he isn’t stopped soon, James goes running after ‘Ard’ and yells,
“Wait a minute Ard! Come back here! Don’t go to the stoves! I said I wanted a dishwasher!” With those words, Ard comes to a screeching halt, almost causing James to collide into him.
“Why didn’t you say so, man?” He asks, turning to James. “Lets get going to the dishwashers then!” He then goes running off in the direction the two of them just came from. James sighs, and takes off running after the little hippie.
“I hope Jessie and Meowth make the windows soon!” He says to himself. “I don’t think I’ll be able to take much more running!”
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Back in the stove section, Jessie and Meowth are just setting up their stuff. They quickly blow up the pool using the pump, and then dump in the five bags of river stones, while Meowth goes over the instructions with Jessie. “Okay.” He says as Jessie pours out the last bag of rocks. “Now we’re going to use those knifes to cut those limes in half, and when that’s done, we need to squeeze the halves evenly over the river stones, hereby making limestone. You start doing that, and I’ll go find something to burn this charcoal in.”
Why don’t you try the grill section?” Jessie suggests. “Just bring one of their grills over here. That way you can work while telling me what to do next.”
“Good idea Jessie.” Meowth says, getting up off the floor. “I’ll be right back.”
“Hold on a second!” Jessie says, holding out a foot to stop him from leaving. “You can’t just go walking around the mall like that. Pokemon aren’t allowed, remember?”
“Oh yeah. I guess I forgot.”
“I’ll get the grill. Wait here a minute and watch over the supplies. While I’m gone, you might as well start cutting the limes.” And with that, Jessie turns on Meowth and heads toward the escalators and downstairs. As soon as she leaves, Meowth gets busy working on the limes.
A few short minutes later, Jessie returns to Meowth, but now she has an enormous grill with her.
“All right, I got the grill. I also got these for you while I was down there.” She says, opening up the grill and pulling out a pair of toddlers pajamas. “Put them on and maybe no one will realize that you’re a Pokemon.” Meowth reluctantly takes the pajamas, and then stares up at Jessie.
“Thanks Jessie, but I don’t think this alone will fool people.” He tells her.
“Yes, I realized that.” Jessie says while reaching into the grill again. “That’s why I got these for you to wear with them!” As she pulls her hand out of the grill, Meowth sees that she’s holding a pair of glasses, a small black bowler hat, and a glue-on mustache with a bottle of glue.
“Great idea Jessie!” Meowth says, accepting the disguise from Jessie, and quickly putting it on while Jessie rolls the grill over to the bags of charcoal. While Meowth glues the mustache to his face, Jessie quickly dumps the contents of the five bags into the grill, and then pours three of the bottles of lighter fluid over it. With that done, she then closes the lid, lights a match, drops it into the smoke release vent, and then quickly slides it shut, as a small explosion happens inside the metal container.
“Now what do I do now that the charcoal’s burning, Meowth?” She asks as he adjusts his glasses.
“All you need to do now is wait until the fire burns all the charcoal into ashes, and then gather all the ashes and pour them into those bottles of soda over there.” He says, gesturing over to the five bottles of Pepsi. “And while you wait, you might as well help me cut up these limes.” He says while handing her the extra knife and cutting board. Jessie takes them from him, then sits down next to him, takes two limes from the bags, and starts cutting them with Meowth.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Meanwhile, James is having a rather difficult time with Dolphin/Ard. “For the last time, I want a dishwasher!” James yells as the hippie plays a demo of Super Mario Bros. DS in the electronics section.
“Well why didn’t you say so in the first place? We’re in the entirely wrong section! You should have told me that sooner! Lets go!” He says as he turns to run off again. But this time James reaches out a hand, and places it firmly on his chest.
“Listen Dolphin, or Ard, or whatever your name is!” He yells at him. “I’m here for one thing, and that’s a dishwasher. Not a refrigerator, not a lawnmower, not makeup, not a cradle, not a prom dress, not the Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD, and not a Nintendo DS! I’m here for a dishwasher! That’s it! One stinkin’ dishwasher! If you don’t take me to the dishwashers right now, I’m going to leave! Do you understand me?”
“Clear as Claritin. Now lets get going before all the good seats are taken!” Dolphin/Ard says, knocking James’ arm away and running down another isle. James sighs again, and runs after the hippie. They run around the store for a few minutes, before Dolphin/Ard finally brings James to a display of earrings, and stops in front of it. “Her we are!” He says in a singsong voice. “Just where you asked; the television section! Now can you pass me the pasta?” He says to James, holding his hand out. James stares at the hippie for a second, and is about to yell at him when someone beats him to it.
“Hey you! What are you doing back in the store? I thought I told you to never come back here again!” James turns around and sees a man with short brown hair and wearing a white dress shirt, navy dress pants, and a maroon tie come running towards them.
“Uh oh. I gotta’ go man. Peace out!” Dolphin/Ard says, flashing James the peace sign before quickly running off in the opposite direction of the approaching man with the maroon tie. James stares in bewilderment after the hippie as the man comes running up next to him.
“Hello sir.” He says to James. “I’m the manager of Sears. Did that man cause you any trouble?”
“As a matter of fact he did…Dave!” James says, reading the man’s nametag. “I asked him half-an-hour ago to show me some dishwashers and since then he’s been taking me everywhere but where I want to be! I’m going to be filing a complaint against him!”
“That won’t be necessary sir.” Dave says. “That old hippie doesn’t work here. He just comes in every once in a while to bother our costumers. For some reason he thinks he’s one of my employee’s, and I apologize for any inconvenience he caused you. Now, do you still want to see some dishwashers?”
“Well, I guess so.”
“Great! Let me show you them myself!” He says, leading James away by the arm.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Back with Jessie and Meowth, they’re busy scooping the ashes into some plastic cups they found under a stove. “Wow Jessie; those charcoal bricks sure dissolved fast. How hot did that grill get?”
“Who cares?” Is Jessie’s quick reply. “So long as it got the job done fast, I’m not going to question it.” Meowth nods in agreement as he scoops the last of the ashes into a cup.
“Now, we have five cups of ashes and five bottles of soda, so I’ll take two of each, and you take the other three and we’ll mix each bottle separately before mixing them all into the swimming pool with the limestone and the sand.”
“Why do I have to do three while you only have to do two?” Jessie demands.
“Because you’re bigger then me, meaning you’ll go faster.” Meowth retorts. “Now stop talking and stat mixing!”
“Fine!” Jessie shouts, grabbing three of the bottles and three of the cups.
“Before you add in the ashes you have to pour out a little of the soda so it won’t overflow.” Meowth warns.
“Pour it into what?” Jessie demands.
“I don’t know! Just take a couple of drinks before you mix the ashes.”
“But I don’t like Pepsi! I’ve always been a Coke kind of girl.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Meowth says in shock. “How can you possibly prefer Coke over Pepsi? Pepsi has a sharp, crisp flavor that Coke will never be able to pull off!”
“Who cares? Coke has a sturdy flavor that you can drink in large gulps instead of taking tiny sips, making it the better thirst quencher!”
“Look, we’re getting of focus here! Just drink the stinkin’ soda! It’s not going to kill you, unless you somehow die from all that money we’re going to make!”
“Good point.” Jessie says as she unscrews the lid of one of the bottle and takes several large gulps. While swallowing, she sets down the first bottle and picks up a second. After the duo gets through all five bottles, they start to add the cups of ashes.
“Here Jess.” Meowth says, handing her a funnel. “I found these in a bag downstairs when we were coming up.”
“Great! Now we won’t waste any ashes.” Jessie says, sticking the small end of the funnel into one of the bottles and dumping in the ashes. After she does this, she quickly twists the lid back on and gives the bottle a fast shake, mixing the ashes into the soda. She repeats this process two more times, with Meowth also doing it twice.
“Okay, we’ve made soda ash, we’ve made limestone, we have sand, so now all we have left to do is mix them all together and bake the mixture.” Jessie says, setting down her third bottle.
“All right; you pour the bags of sand into the pool and I’ll pour in the soda.” Meowth says, carrying his two bottles of soda to the swimming pool and pouring them over the ‘limestone’. Jessie picks up her three bottles, and following Meowth, sets them on the floor next to him. She then picks up one of the bags of sand and cuts it open with one of the knives, then dumps it over the ‘limestone’ and ‘soda ash’. She then repeats this with the other four bags, with Meowth repeating his job with the remaining three bottles. After all the ingredients are poured into the swimming pool, Jessie starts mixing them all together with the spade.
“Hey Jess, I just thought of something!” Meowth says as he watches her mix the ingredients.
“What’s that Meowth?”
“How are we supposed to get this mixture into window shapes? We don’t have any molds for the glass.” With these words, Jessie momentarily stops her mixing.
“You’re right Meowth!” She tells him. “I don’t know why we didn’t think of this before! This could completely ruin our plan!”
“What kind of windows were we going to make anyway?” Meowth asks. “Were we going to make windows for houses, for cars, for skyscrapers, for what?”
“Who cares?” Jessie yells, throwing her spade into the mixture. “If that Gates person made so much money selling a bunch of small politically correct windows, then we should be able to make even more money with one giant politically correct window, so we’ll just bake all the mixture at once!”
“That’s a good idea Jessie, but how are we supposed to fit the entire swimming pool into one of those little stoves?” At Meowth’s remark, Jessie looks around at the stoves, an idea forming in her head.
“I’ve got it!” She says as she takes a pokèball out from her belt and releases its occupant onto the floor in front of her. A bright white light flashes for a moment, and when it’s gone, Jessie’s Wobbuffet stands before them. “Meowth, you and Wobbuffet move the swimming pool to this location exactly!” She says, taking a marker out of her pocket and drawing an X in the middle of the floor. “Make sure it’s right on the X! I’ll be back in a minute!”
“Where are you going?” He asks her as she walks away.
“I’ll just be gone a minute! Start working on pushing the pool into place!” She says, not bothering to turn around. She’s soon out of sight, so Meowth and Wobbuffet are left to push the swimming pool into place. It’s a hard job, since the swimming pool is filled with over four hundred pounds of rocks and wet sand, but the two small Pokemon somehow manage to accomplish this inhuman feat. Just as they adjust the pool so the exact center is over the X, Jessie comes walking back towards them with a wrench in her hand.
“Where’d you go Jess?” Meowth asks, wiping sweat out of his eyes.
“I was busting up the air conditioner!” She says, proudly displaying her wrench.
“Okay. Jessie, what exactly does that accomplish in the plan?”
“You’ll see!” See says, setting down her wrench and walking towards the nearest stove. “You two come and help me move this!” She calls to Meowth and Wobbuffet, who quickly run over to the stove and help her move it in front of the swimming pool. “Now, we have to do this with all the other stoves. Come on guys!” She says to them as she walks to another stove.
Jessie, Meowth, and Wobbuffet quickly move ten different stoves in a circle around the swimming pool. Once that’s done, Jessie recalls Wobbuffet and turns to Meowth.
“Now we have to turn all the stoves on, so they’ll bake the glass!” Jessie says, walking to the nearest stove and opening the door before turning on the oven. “Plus, we now don’t have the AC to cool down the ovens. Okay, I’ll turn on all the ovens on this side while you do the ovens on the other side.”
“All righty then!” Meowth says, hopping onto the nearest stove and grabbing on of the knobs. “Hey Jessie! Do I set the oven on ‘bake’ or ‘boil’?”
“Bake.”
“How high am I supposed to set it?”
“I don’t know. See if it says in those pages James found.”
“Okay Jess.” Meowth then hops off the stove and picks up the encyclopedia pages James stole from the library. After reading over it for a few minutes, he gets a worried look on his face. “Jessie, it says here that to become glass, the mixture has to reach temperatures of twenty-six to twenty-nine hundred degrees F! All these ovens only go up to five hundred degrees F! We won’t be able to make enough heat!” With this news, Jessie stops setting the ovens.
“This might be a problem.” She says to Meowth. “Let me think about this for a minute.” She then sits down on one of the stoves and puts her hand to her chin, deep in thought. After a quite moment of thinking, Jessie jumps to her feet. “I got it!” She tells Meowth. “If we need twenty-six hundred degrees of heat, but each stove can only get up to five hundred degrees, all we have to do is split up the amount of heat!”
“I don’t get it.” Meowth says, looking up at Jessie from his resting spot on the floor.
“We’ll just split up the heat!” She tells him. “We have ten stoves that can only reach five hundred degrees. Twenty-six hundred divided by ten is two-hundred and sixty, so if we just set each oven to that temperature, we’ll be able to reach the right degree!”
“Oh! I get it now!” Meowth exclaims. “Good idea Jessie! Let’s do it!” And with that, the two comrades turn every oven to ‘bake’, and then set the temperature to two hundred and sixty degrees. With that done, they sit down on an extra stove and wait for their concoction to bake.
One hour later:
“Jessie, just exactly how long is that supposed to cook before it turn into glass?” Meowth asks, gesturing to the swimming pool, growing restless from all the time they’ve wasted waiting for their glass to bake. “It still looks like a swimming pool filled with rocks and sand.”
“I don’t know! You’re the one with the encyclopedia pages!” Jessie snaps at him.
“Oh yeah. I forgot about them.” Meowth says sheepishly, reaching to pick up the pages. “It says here that it can take one day to…what!”
“What is it Meowth?”
“It says that some glass can take ten years to make!”
“Let me see that!” Jessie says, pulling the pages out of Meowth’s hands, and quickly reading over them. “It says only a certain type of glass takes ten years to make Meowth!” She yells at him angrily.
“Oh. I guess I should have read the whole article through before I said anything.”
“This is stupid!” Jessie shouts, throwing the paper into one of the open stoves and setting them instantly ablaze.
“What’re you doing Jessie?” Meowth shouts at her. “We need those papers to make the glass!”
“If we follow those instructions, we’ll have to stay here another twenty-three hours! I don’t think James will be able to keep the employees busy for a full day, not to mention the fact that the mall will be closing in a couple of hours! No. If we want to make these windows, we’ll have to make our own instructions!”
“But Jessie! If we make our own instructions the windows won’t be politically correct, making them go down in value.”
“That doesn’t matter! We don’t need billions: just millions! If we can pull off a few millions dollars, then we’ll be able to pay off the boss! That’s all that matters right now, so shut up and turn the stoves as high they can go!”
“All right Jessie! Stop yelling at me!” Meowth yells while running to the nearest stove.
“Guys, what’s taking so long?” A voice behind Jessie asks. Spinning around, Jessie comes face-to-face with James.
“What are you doing here?” She demands. “You’re supposed to be distracting the employee!”
“I know! I told him I needed to go to the bathroom before I decide on a dishwasher. I’m almost done deciding which one to get. It’s a tough choice, because one comes in a color I really like, but it doesn’t have as much space as I would prefer, and another one—”
“James! We’re not here to buy a dishwasher! We’re here to make windows, remember?”
“I know that, but this salesman is really good! I think I’m going to get a refrigerator also. And why’s it so hot over here? It must be at least twenty-six hundred degrees!”
“Hey, what are you doing over here?” A voice behind James calls out. Spinning around quickly, James sees Dave heading towards them.
“Oh no! That’s the guy that threw me out earlier!” Jessie says, turning her back to the man and covering her face with a hand.
“What’s all this?” Dave demands, waving his hand at the swimming pool.
“Police business.” Jessie says to her hand. “Go away.”
“I will not go away!” Dave protests. “What’s this swimming pool doing in the middle of my store, and why’s it so hot over here?”
“That swimmin’ pool’s nuttin’!” Meowth says, jumping in front of the pool as if he can possibly hide it. “She said it’s police business, so go away!”
“Oh my gosh, what’s wrong with that baby?” Dave asks, pointing at Meowth. “I think it’s the spirit of Groucho Marx reborn into this world in the form of a baby! I have to call the mall security! No, wait! Better yet, I’ll call the New York Times! They’ll surely want to know about this!” With that said, Dave turns around and goes running for the escalators and the pay phones.
“Quick you guys! Stop him or he’ll ruin the whole plan!” Meowth shouts at his comrades.
“Quick Jessie! Use your taser gun on him!” James yells frantically.
“Right! I forgot I had it!” Jessie says while taking her taser gun out of its holster and aiming it at the running manager. Jessie tries to pull the trigger, but it won’t budge. “I…can’t…get…it…to…work!” She grunts out while trying to shoot.
“Here, give it to me!” James yells, grabbing the gun.
“No! Let go James!” Jessie says, holding the gun up to keep it out of his reach.
“Give me it Jessie!” James yells, tackling her to the ground. The two of them roll around the floor fighting over the gun for a few seconds before accidentally firing it. The shot shoots strait into the air and hits a light bulb. Jessie, James, and Meowth look up at the roof to see what damage they did, and see sparks flying down from the destroyed light bulb. A few moments later, all the lights in Sears go out, and a loud shriek can be heard as Dave accidentally falls over the side of the escalator.
“Whoa! How did we do that?” Jessie asks.
“Uh, you guys. I think this would be a good time to leave.” Meowth voice sounds out in the darkness.
“We can’t leave! We haven’t completed the mission!” Jessie’s voice says. “Besides, you guys blew the last of our money on those supplies and I’m not leaving without them!”
“And I haven’t even chosen which dishwasher I want yet!” James voice whines in the darkness.
“We have to leave now you guys!” Meowth’s voice chimes again. “The fire department and the police will arrive any moment to find out what happened!”
“Fine, we’ll leave!” Jessie yells angrily. “But I’m going to steal stuff on the way out!” A small light suddenly lights up the area as Jessie turns on a flashlight. “It’s a good thing that security guard from earlier had a flashlight on him. Come on you guys. We’ll go out the back way.” She says, gesturing towards a back wall with the flashlight. Jessie then grabs a buggy and starts pushing it towards the back door, with her companions following close behind her, and Jessie constantly grabbing stuff off shelves.
About half way out, Jessie accidentally drops her flashlight, sending the three of them into temporary darkness. Getting down on her hands and knees, she looks around for a minute before finding it and standing up. She quickly grabs her buggy and they start towards the exit again. When they reach the back, James quickly holds the door open as Jessie pushes her buggy outside and the three of them sneak out of the mall. As they walk though the parking lot, they all let out sighs of relief.
“What’d you grab Jessie?” James asks, looking over at her buggy.
“I don’t know. It was to dark to tell.” She says, looking into her buggy as well. As the three of them look into the buggy, they find quite a surprise, for the buggy holds not electronics, clothing, makeup, or shoes, as they thought it would, but instead a dirty little hippie, sleeping soundly.
“What in the world did you steal that for?” Meowth yells in disbelief. “How can we make any money off that thing? I have a feeling it has very little worth at the pawn shop!”
“I don’t know what happened!” Jessie says in disbelief. “I specifically remember grabbing DVD players and game systems and shoes and stuff! How did it all turn into this stupid hippie?”
“Jessie, remember when you dropped your flashlight?” James asks.
“Yeah, what about it?”
“When you got down on the floor, did you move around?”
“Yeah.”
“Then is it possible you moved over to the wrong buggy and didn’t bother to check to see what was in it?”
“Oh no!” Jessie says, the realization of her mistake hitting her. The three of them slowly sink to the floor, their backs leaning against the buggy.
“Well, now what are we supposed to do?” Meowth asks.
“I don’t know, man.” A voice says from inside the buggy. “How about we go to that Woodstock thing I heard about? It’s supposed to be groovy, man!” Team Rocket looks up, and see that Dolphin had awaken and climbed into the seat of the buggy.
“We lost a lot of money you guys.” Jessie says, ignoring the hippie. “How exactly are we supposed to pay back Giovanni for all his money, and at the same time make back the money we lost today?”
“I know how!” James says, jumping to his feet and pulling a rolled up magazine out of his pocket. “I read an article in this magazine the other day! It was about this guy named ‘Lucas’ something or another! It says here that he made billions of dollars by simply making a documentary about stars and the sky!”
“We can do that!” Jessie yells, also jumping to her feet. “All we need is a camera, a telescope, and a lawyer!”
“What do we need the lawyer for?” James asks.
“All great movie makers have lawyers, so if we want to be considered one of the greats we’ll need a lawyer!”
“Good thinking! Lets get a move on then: We have a movie to make!” James says, linking arms with Jessie and strolling off down the parking lot. Meowth watches them for a minute, and then lets out a sigh.
“Here we go again.” He says to Dolphin before running off after his friends and jumping on their shoulders. As the three of them walk off into the sunset, dolphin watches them go and smiles to himself.
“Far out, man! I could really go for a pizza right now!” He says to himself before crawling back into the buggy and going back to sleep.
THE END
Well, that's it. I hope you enjoyed reading my story as much as I enjoyed writing it. Boy, that was a corny line. Anyway, please be sure to leave a review! After reading for so long, you might as well make it worth your time.
This fic has been brought to you by the mind of Fez the Mysfit Elf.
The Billion-Dollar Idea
Rated G-PG (somewhere in between. There's a bit of violence, but not much).
Rated G-PG (somewhere in between. There's a bit of violence, but not much).
Team Rocket, or, more commonly known as Jessie, James, and Meowth, is not having a good week. But as you don’t know what I’m talking about, I guess I’ll have to tell you. After all, I am the narrator of this story. So anyways, our starring threesome isn’t having a good week. Why aren’t they having a good week, you ask? Because they have been temporarily banned from Team Rocket, I answer. Why have they been banned, you ask? Well, if you really want to know, simply read on:
The location: An office, in a Pokemon gym, in Viridian City, in the Kanto region. The scene: Our three stars standing outside an office door, waiting for their boss to give them permission to enter. James, a young man with bluish/purplish colored hair is busily pacing back and forth in front of the door.
“Jessie, what do you think the boss wants to see us about?” He asks his counterpart, who’s sitting on a bench a few feet away from the door. The red-haired woman shrugs her shoulders.
“How should I know?” She replies sourly. As most of you readers know, Jessie and James are both wearing similar Team Rocket uniforms that consist of white shirts with giant red R’s on them, black gloves, black boots, and white pants/skirt.
“Maybe he wants to give us a reward for all the Pokemon we caught for him!” The third Rocket member who goes by the name of Meowth chimes in. Meowth is a small, cream-colored cat-like Pokemon that for some reason speaks with a Brooklyn accent. Upon Meowth’s words, James spins around and grabs him by the throat.
“You imbecile!” He cries as he violently shakes the poor Pokemon. “We’ve never caught a single Pokemon for the boss! We’ve tried over three hundred times to catch that lousy Pikachu, but we’ve never seceded! We’re failures! It wouldn’t surprise me if the boss called us here to fire us!” As he finishes his rant, Jessie quickly pulls Meowth out of his hands.
“Get a hold of yourself James!” She yells as she smacks him in the head with Meowth’s limp body. “If the boss wanted to fire us, he could’ve done it over the phone! Why would he have us come all the way out here from Hoenn just to fire us?”
“I don’t know!” James shouts as he clutches his wounded head, curling up on the floor. As Jessie drops Meowth next to James, the door swings open, and a voice yells for them to enter. The Rocket trio waste no time in entering the room, and walking over to a desk. The desk is made of oak, has four cabinets, a lovely staining job done to it, and was bought at the finest antique shop in all of Kanto. But none of that really matters, as no one ever asks a man about his desk. Sitting at the desk is a simple man, with wavy brown hair, perfectly clean teeth, and wearing an orange suit, made by the finest tailors in all of Kanto. This man is Giovanni, the head of Team Rocket. Lying on a pillow next to Giovanni’s chair is his favorite Pokemon, Persian.
Giovanni looks down at the trio as they bow down in front of him, and scowls.
“Get up you three!” He yells, causing them to jump to their feet in fear. Our trio quickly gets their wits about them, and starts to complement their boss.
“My my sir, you have such lovely cuticles!” James says, taking his boss’ hand in his own and examining it closely.
“Yes, and your Persian has such a beautiful coat, sir.” Jessie says, busily petting the Persian.
“Yeah, and this desk is sure a beauty. Where did you get it?” Meowth asks, feeling the smoothness of the desk he’s currently standing on.
“That’s enough of that!” Giovanni shouts, slamming his hand on his desk and sending Meowth tumbling to the floor. The trio quickly stops their flattering, and stands at attention in front of the desk. “I’ve called you three here for a reason.” He tells them. “Over the past four years, you three have tried countless times to catch me a Pikachu. One simple Pikachu. In the process of its capture, you’ve spent over ten million dollars. That money came out of the Team Rocket bank account. So far, you’ve failed to put back one single cent, or catch me any rare Pokemon, so I’m afraid I have to take drastic actions: I’m temporarily banning you three from Team Rocket! I’m giving you two months, and if in that time you don’t pay back all the money you’ve borrowed or catch me some extremely rare Pokemon, I’ll be forced to take even drasticer actions by permanently banning you and forcing you to pay back your debt. Or worse.”
“Uh, sir, drasticer isn’t a word.” James quietly says.
“I can make it a word if I want to!” Giovanni bellows back at him. “Now Persian; take care of these three.” Upon its master’s command, Persian leaps up and chases our terrified trio down the hallway and out a window. Our trio hits the cement outside the window hard, but quickly jump back to their feet, and keep running. They run about three miles before they finally feel safe, and then sit down on a bench.
“I don’t believe it!” James moans in despair. “The boss threw us out of Team Rocket.”
“I think we got that James!” Meowth retorts angrily. “Just how exactly does he expect us to earn ten million dollars? It’s impossible!”
“I don’t know what he expects.” Jessie says. “Try to think of a way to earn money quickly.” The three of them spend the next few minutes thinking.
“Hey, I know!” James cries after several minutes. Leaping to his feet, he quickly reaches into his pocket and pulls out a rolled up magazine. “I was reading this article yesterday about a man named Bill Gates!” He explains. “According to this magazine, he made billions of dollars by making a company that sells PC’s and windows!”
“Hold on a minute James. What are PC’s?” Meowth asks his friend.
“I’m not really that sure. I always thought PC stood for Politically Correct. The Gates person must have made politically correct windows and sold them! We can do the same! We’ve sold windows before, remember?”
“Yes, but if you’ll remember correctly, we used ice instead of real glass, so they weren’t exactly what you’d call PC.” Meowth says, staring up at his teammate. “If we use ice, we won’t sell anything. And I don’t even know where real glass comes from.”
“You might not, but I do!” Jessie yells while jumping to her feet also. “A few days ago I saw a program on PBS that showed how people make glass! All you need is sand, and an oven!”
“I don’t know you guys; something doesn’t seem right about this plan.” Meowth says while scratching his chin, trying to think of a flaw. “It seems too simple. If money can be made so easily just by selling windows, then why doesn’t everybody do it?”
“Maybe no one thought about it before us! Besides, what could possibly go wrong?” James yells, his excitement rising. “Sand is free, we can use an oven for free, the whole thing is free, and we can earn billions of dollars! This plan has no flaw!”
“Oh all right. I’ll give it try.” Meowth says, caving in to his friends.
“Great! I’ll find us a stove while you guys find some sand to make the windows.” Jessie tells her friends as she turns to walk away.
“Wait Jess!” James calls after her. “How much sand will we need per window, and how many windows will we need all together?”
“I don’t know!” Jessie yells over her shoulder. “Try to find a book about it somewhere! I’ll call you guys when I find the oven!” And with that, she’s gone. James sighs and looks down at his companion.
“What should we do now?” Meowth asks him.
“Well, if we’re going to be looking for a book, I guess we should head to the library.” He tells the cat Pokemon as the two then stroll down the road towards the public library.
A few short minutes later, the duo arrived at the library. Meowth walks up to the door and is about to open it, when James holds out a hand and stops him.
“Hold on a minute Meowth! Look at that sign.” He says as he points to a sign on the door. Meowth follows his finger, and looks at a sign that says in bold letters: No Pokemon Allowed! “I think you should wait out here.” James tells Meowth.
“Oh, all right.” Meowth responds, walking over to a bench. As he pulls himself up and sits down, James enters the library. As soon as he’s out of sight, Meowth pulls out an iPod, a Nintendo DS, a miniature toaster oven, frozen chicken potpie, and a portable DVD player, and settles down for a long wait, because when it comes to books, James isn’t the person you want on the job. It took him over a month just to read The Cat in the Hat. This assignment would be a long one.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
One and a half hours later, on the other side of town:
Jessie is having problems. To be blunt, she can’t find a stove. She’s looked everywhere for one. She’s broken into seven different houses, but each one had a dog or a loud security device that scared her off. She’d even tried to steal an oven from the cities biggest Burger King, but the employees had caught her sneaking out the back door with the oven and called the police on her! When the cops arrived, Jessie was forced to flee the scene of the crime without her oven.
Now, she’s oven-less. She only been assigned one job on this mission, and she had failed. But not to worry Jessie fans: She hasn’t given up her search yet. In fact, just as she’s about to give up, she just happens to glance to her right. As she looks at the sight next to her, a smile appears on her face, for the building to her right is none other then the Viridian City mall. As she looks upon the mall, an idea pops into her head, and she quickly heads to the malls front entrance.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Back at the library, Meowth is dozing peacefully on the bench, when a loud siren goes off, waking him from his slumber. Meowth’s eyes shoot open just in time to see James jump out of one of the library windows and fall to the ground in a shower of glass. But he didn’t seem to be hurt by either the fall or the glass, as he just jumps back up and runs past Meowth.
“Run Meowth! Run for your life!” He shouts to his companion. Meowth looks behind James, and sees that he’s being chased by two large men. Meowth quickly jumps to his feet and starts running after James. As they’re running, Meowth shouts,
“What did you do James?”
“I didn’t…do anything…I only…from the library…encyclopedia’s!” James yells back, panting heavily. “ I thought…library’s…purpose!” The two Rocket members are now running along the edge of a road, and quickly hail a pashing taxi. They quickly jump in and yell for the driver to take them to the Viridian City gym. The driver quickly speeds off, leaving the two pursuing librarians in a cloud of exhaust. Meowth sighs with relief, and then turns to James.
“James, why where those two men chasing you?” He asks him.
“I don’t know really.” James replies. “All I did was enter the library and try to find information on how to make windows. I wandered for about an hour before I remembered about the librarians, so I then asked one where to look, and she said I should try the encyclopedia’s, so I did. I found the pages I needed in the encyclopedia’s, so I tore them out, but then my cell phone started to ring, so I answered it. When I started talking, a librarian came over and told me to take my call outside, but then he started yelling at me for tearing pages out of their books! His yelling attracted another librarian, who also started yelling at me. The two of them scarred me, so I jumped out a window, and that’s when I ran into you. That’s all that happened! I don’t know why they were so mad at me!” With that, James stops his explanation, and Meowth shakes his head sadly at his friends ignorance.
“I honestly didn’t think I needed to tell you not to tear pages out of books, James.” He tells his partner. “Libraries are for borrowing books, not pages. Why are we going back to the gym anyway?”
“We aren’t. We just needed to get away from those librarians. You can drop us off here driver!” James calls up to the man driving. The driver nods and pulls up to the curb. James quickly rummages through his pockets, and pulling out the change needed, pays the man. James and Meowth then step out of the taxi, and look a their surroundings. They soon realize that they’re standing outside a K-mart, and since they have nowhere else to go, decide to head into the store.
Once they’re inside, they head to the back of the store and the produce section and sit down on the floor behind a citrus cart, so no one will see them. Once this is done, James reaches into his back pocket, and pulls out the pages James stole. Handing half of them to Meowth, the two of them start reading.
“Why’d you steal a bunch of G pages?” Meowth whispers to his friend.
“G for glass.” James whispers back. I also have a bunch of W pages for windows. Now be quite and read!” The two of them spend the next few minutes reading, and then turn to each other.
“What do your pages say about windows?” Meowth asks James.
“Nothing. I must have grabbed the wrong pages when those librarians caught me.” James says sadly. “What do yours say about glass?”
“It says here that to make glass you need to a certain mixture.” Meowth tells him, reading off the pages. “It says that the mixture has to contain three ingredients: silica sand, soda ash, and limestone. Do you know what any of these ingredients are?”
“Not exactly, but I get the basic concept.” James says, reaching to the table above him and bringing down a bag filled with green citrus fruit. “See, here are the limes we need. Now all we need is some stones to mix with them, and we’ll have our limestone. I bet we can find all the other ingredients throughout the store too. Lets get going.” And with that, the two friends start searching the K-mart for the rest of the ingredients.
Soon they come up with five 40lb bags of sand, five 40lb bags of river stones, twenty small bags containing five limes each, five 3-liter bottles of Pepsi, five bags of charcoal, two small boxes of matches, six bottle of lighter fluid, a double pack of knifes, two cutting boards, a spade, and an inflatable swimming pool, complete with electronic pump. As James pushes the two extremely heavy buggies through the store, Meowth looks at him in confusion.
“Uh, Jimmy. Why do we need all this stuff?” He asks him.
“Because!” James grunts as he pushes the buggies down an isle. “We need silica sand, soda ash, and limestone, but since the store didn’t have any of those things, we’ll just have to make our own. I don’t know what silica sand is, so I guess regular sand will do, that’s why we have the bags of sand. We have river stones because if we cut up the limes and squeeze the juice all over them, it’ll make limestone. And if we use these matches to burn this charcoal, it’ll make a bunch of ashes, which we’ll then mix into the Pepsi, making soda ash. Once we do all that, we’ll mix all the ingredients together in the inflatable swimming pool, and then make the windows in Jessie’s oven. Understand?”
“Yeah, I get it now! What a great idea!” Meowth exclaims as he watches his friend struggle to get his buggies to the front desk. Once he gets there, he quickly pays for his purchase and pushes his buggies out to the parking lot, where he parks his buggies by a bench, and sitting down, pulls his cell phone out of his pocket.
“Now all we have to do is wait until Jessie calls us to tell us that she’s found the oven.” No sooner had he said it then his phone began to ring. Looking at the caller ID built into his phone, James says to Meowth “It’s Jessie!” And quickly answers it. “Hello?” He says into the receiver.
“James? It’s me, Jessie.” Jessie whispers over the phone.
“Jessie, why are you whispering?” James asks.
“I can’t tell you right now. Just meet me at the front entrance to the Viridian City mall by the Lance statue, okay?”
“Uh, sure Jess, but why—”
“I gotta go!” And with that, Jessie hangs up on James. James stares at his phone for a minute, and then looks down at Meowth.
“Jessie says to meet her at the mall.” He tells his Pokemon counterpart.
“All righty then; lets get another taxi.” The duo quickly hails another taxi, and after a few minutes of struggling to pack the trunk, they’re on their way to the mall. They arrive after a few short minutes and after paying the driver and unloading the trunk into two buggies, head towards the malls front entrance. As they arrive at the front entrance, they look around, and see a majestic steel statue of a man riding a Dragonite with his cape flowing behind him, but no Jessie. The two decide that they must be early, so they sit down on a bench next to the statue.
“Are you sure this is where Jessie said to meet her?” Meowth asks James after several minutes waiting.
“I’m sure of it! She specifically said to meet her at the front entrance next to the Lance statue, and that’s where we are. I wonder what’s keeping her.” While the two are busy talking, they fail to notice a security guard sneaking up behind them. The guard is only a few feet away from them when James turns around, and seeing the guard starts screaming in fright, and dives under on of the buggies. Meowth on the other hand, stays still, and looks down at James in disgust.
“James, what are you doing?” He asks his cowering friend. James pokes his head out from under the buggy and looks up at Meowth.
“That security person scared me.” He whines. Meowth rolls his eyes, and then turns his head to look at the security officer.
“James, I’m not sure if you understand this or not, but that “security person” is just Jessie in disguise.” Meowth tells his friend, who pokes his head out more, and looks up at the security officer. Sure enough, it’s Jessie, but she isn’t wearing her normal Team Rocket uniform, instead dawning a light brown shirt, dark brown pants, black shoes, sunglasses, and a fake mustache. On her shirt, she brandishes a badge, and on her hip a taser gun.
“Oh no!” James shouts, pulling his head back under the buggy. “Jessie’s got a gun! Run away, run away from the pain! Everyone is on the run! Honey, what have you done? Jessie’s got a gun!” Jessie quickly reaches down and clamps a hand over the now singing James’ mouth.
“Be quite James!” She whispers fiercely at him. “I was thrown out of the mall earlier today for loitering, and if they catch me loitering here again they’ll throw me back out!” With that said, she releases her grip on James mouth, and he remains silent.
“Jessie, why are you wearing a security outfit?” Meowth asks.
“I just told you; they threw me out earlier today for not buying anything so I need to use this costume to get back in the mall.” Jessie replies. “Did you guys find out how to make glass?”
“Of course we did Jessie.” James says as he crawls out from under the buggy. “We got all the ingredients needed, so now all we lack is the oven, which you were supposed to provide. Did you get the oven?”
“Come on. I’ll show you.” With that, Jessie turns around and walks into the mall, forcing her partners to follow her with their loaded buggies. Luckily, Jessie’s uniform prevents anyone from asking question about the buggies. Jessie leads her two friends into a Sears home appliance store and over to an escalator. After a few minute of struggling, the three of them somehow manage to get the buggies up the escalator and into the kitchen appliance section.
“What are we doing here Jessie?” James asks her while pushing his buggies along.
“We’re here because of those.” Jessie says, pointing to her right. James and Meowth follow her finger and see a long line of ovens and stoves. The two smile at Jessie.
“Good idea Jess!” James says while maneuvering his buggies towards the stoves.
“Not so fast James!” Jessie says, reaching out a hand and grabbing James’ shoulder. “There’s an employee around here that goes around helping people find the appliances they need. He’s the one who called the security on me earlier today. One of us will have to distract him by pretending to want to buy something that isn’t located near the stove section, and by one of us, I mean you.”
“Me?” James wails. “Why me? Why can’t you or Meowth do it?”
“Because! If I take off my disguise he’ll recognize me from before, and if a security officer wants to buy something he’ll start getting suspicious!”
“Well then, why can’t Meowth do it?”
“Because he’s a Pokemon! Pokemon aren’t even allowed in the mall! The only reason he got in is because he was with a security guard, a.k.a. me!”
“But I don’t want to do this!” James protests. “You know how I’m afraid of appliance clerks! Besides, I’m the only one who knows how to make the windows!”
“Not true, Jimmy.” Meowth pipes up. “I still have the encyclopedia pages you gave me, which are our only source for making glass. We can do it perfectly well without you.”
“Oh, all right then!” James says, giving up his protest. “But what am I supposed to say to him?”
“Just tell him you’re looking for a dishwasher.” Jessie says while taking control of the buggies. “We’ll come and get you once the window’s are ready. What’s with all these random ingredients anyway?”
“I’ll explain while we work.” Meowth says, heading towards the stoves. “Now get going James! We don’t have all day!”
“I’m going already!” James says angrily before storming off to the customer service desk. When he gets there, he notices a little button with a sign above it reading: ‘Push button for service’. James reads the sign, and then pushes the little button. No sooner is that done then a blond head with long hair held back by a headband, hobo-like beard, and dawning purple glasses pokes out from under the desk.
“What do you want, man?” The head asks James.
“Uh, I want to buy a dishwasher.” James tells the head, a little unsure about this man.
“That’s cool!” The head says while standing up, revealing a four-foot tall man wearing a tie-dye shirt, a brown leather vest, long purple bellbottom pants, and a peace symbol medallion. “Let me show you our stock. By the way, my name’s Dolphin. What’s yours?”
“Uh…James.” He says, starting to feel a bit uncomfortable about the hippie as Dolphin nods his head.
“James. I like it!” He says. “It makes you sound all important. So, what do want again?”
“I’m looking for a dishwasher.”
“Oh! Have you tried looking at Sears? They have the biggest selection of home appliances in town.” At this remark, James can’t help but stare at Dolphin in disbelief.
“Where in Sears Dolphin! Aren’t you an employee?”
“Whoa! I’m a Sears employee!” Dolphin exclaims in shock. “Cool! That must mean I’m smart! I feel like a Harvard graduate. Wait a second, what did you want again?”
“A dishwasher!”
“Righteous, man! And why are you asking me for one?”
“Because you’re at the customer service desk! I’m a customer, and I need service!”
“So, you’re saying you want me to help you find a washing machine?”
“No, I said ‘dishwasher’!”
“All right man! Lets get a move on then!” Dolphin then grabs a nametag off the desk, and clips it to his headband. James reads the nametag, and then asks,
“Why does your nametag say ‘Richard’? I thought your name was Dolphin.”
“Whoa! My name’s Richard?” Dolphin says, quickly snatching the nametag off his head and reading it. “I didn’t know that! Thanks for telling me, man! I owe you one. Since you’re such a good friend of mine, you can call me ‘Ard’.”
“You mean as in Richard?”
“Whoa! I did not realize that! You’re a smart guy, Phil. Now, what was I doing?”
“My name’s James, and you’re taking me to see the dishwashers.” James says, letting out a sigh.
“Right man! Lets go!” Richard/Dolphin then turns around, and then goes running strait towards the refrigerators, with James close at his heels.
“This fridge is excellent, man!” He says, pointing to a large silver refrigerator with two doors side-by-side, one with an icemaker on it. “I have one just like it at home! That one’s great too!” He says, pointing to another fridge of the same model, only this time in black. “I have one just like that at home! That one’s also great, man!” He says again, pointing to yet another fridge of the same model, only this time in white. “I have two of those at home!”
“Why are you even showing me these? I want a dishwasher.” James says. “And why do you have four different refrigerators at your home?”
“Wait a second; what are you doing in my house?” Dolphin asks, pointing to James. “I didn’t say you could come in here! Help me! Somebody, please help me! This man broke into my house! Call the police!” Dolphin shouts as he takes off running down the isles of refrigerators, heading toward the stoves. Knowing that their plan will be ruined if he isn’t stopped soon, James goes running after ‘Ard’ and yells,
“Wait a minute Ard! Come back here! Don’t go to the stoves! I said I wanted a dishwasher!” With those words, Ard comes to a screeching halt, almost causing James to collide into him.
“Why didn’t you say so, man?” He asks, turning to James. “Lets get going to the dishwashers then!” He then goes running off in the direction the two of them just came from. James sighs, and takes off running after the little hippie.
“I hope Jessie and Meowth make the windows soon!” He says to himself. “I don’t think I’ll be able to take much more running!”
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Back in the stove section, Jessie and Meowth are just setting up their stuff. They quickly blow up the pool using the pump, and then dump in the five bags of river stones, while Meowth goes over the instructions with Jessie. “Okay.” He says as Jessie pours out the last bag of rocks. “Now we’re going to use those knifes to cut those limes in half, and when that’s done, we need to squeeze the halves evenly over the river stones, hereby making limestone. You start doing that, and I’ll go find something to burn this charcoal in.”
Why don’t you try the grill section?” Jessie suggests. “Just bring one of their grills over here. That way you can work while telling me what to do next.”
“Good idea Jessie.” Meowth says, getting up off the floor. “I’ll be right back.”
“Hold on a second!” Jessie says, holding out a foot to stop him from leaving. “You can’t just go walking around the mall like that. Pokemon aren’t allowed, remember?”
“Oh yeah. I guess I forgot.”
“I’ll get the grill. Wait here a minute and watch over the supplies. While I’m gone, you might as well start cutting the limes.” And with that, Jessie turns on Meowth and heads toward the escalators and downstairs. As soon as she leaves, Meowth gets busy working on the limes.
A few short minutes later, Jessie returns to Meowth, but now she has an enormous grill with her.
“All right, I got the grill. I also got these for you while I was down there.” She says, opening up the grill and pulling out a pair of toddlers pajamas. “Put them on and maybe no one will realize that you’re a Pokemon.” Meowth reluctantly takes the pajamas, and then stares up at Jessie.
“Thanks Jessie, but I don’t think this alone will fool people.” He tells her.
“Yes, I realized that.” Jessie says while reaching into the grill again. “That’s why I got these for you to wear with them!” As she pulls her hand out of the grill, Meowth sees that she’s holding a pair of glasses, a small black bowler hat, and a glue-on mustache with a bottle of glue.
“Great idea Jessie!” Meowth says, accepting the disguise from Jessie, and quickly putting it on while Jessie rolls the grill over to the bags of charcoal. While Meowth glues the mustache to his face, Jessie quickly dumps the contents of the five bags into the grill, and then pours three of the bottles of lighter fluid over it. With that done, she then closes the lid, lights a match, drops it into the smoke release vent, and then quickly slides it shut, as a small explosion happens inside the metal container.
“Now what do I do now that the charcoal’s burning, Meowth?” She asks as he adjusts his glasses.
“All you need to do now is wait until the fire burns all the charcoal into ashes, and then gather all the ashes and pour them into those bottles of soda over there.” He says, gesturing over to the five bottles of Pepsi. “And while you wait, you might as well help me cut up these limes.” He says while handing her the extra knife and cutting board. Jessie takes them from him, then sits down next to him, takes two limes from the bags, and starts cutting them with Meowth.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Meanwhile, James is having a rather difficult time with Dolphin/Ard. “For the last time, I want a dishwasher!” James yells as the hippie plays a demo of Super Mario Bros. DS in the electronics section.
“Well why didn’t you say so in the first place? We’re in the entirely wrong section! You should have told me that sooner! Lets go!” He says as he turns to run off again. But this time James reaches out a hand, and places it firmly on his chest.
“Listen Dolphin, or Ard, or whatever your name is!” He yells at him. “I’m here for one thing, and that’s a dishwasher. Not a refrigerator, not a lawnmower, not makeup, not a cradle, not a prom dress, not the Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD, and not a Nintendo DS! I’m here for a dishwasher! That’s it! One stinkin’ dishwasher! If you don’t take me to the dishwashers right now, I’m going to leave! Do you understand me?”
“Clear as Claritin. Now lets get going before all the good seats are taken!” Dolphin/Ard says, knocking James’ arm away and running down another isle. James sighs again, and runs after the hippie. They run around the store for a few minutes, before Dolphin/Ard finally brings James to a display of earrings, and stops in front of it. “Her we are!” He says in a singsong voice. “Just where you asked; the television section! Now can you pass me the pasta?” He says to James, holding his hand out. James stares at the hippie for a second, and is about to yell at him when someone beats him to it.
“Hey you! What are you doing back in the store? I thought I told you to never come back here again!” James turns around and sees a man with short brown hair and wearing a white dress shirt, navy dress pants, and a maroon tie come running towards them.
“Uh oh. I gotta’ go man. Peace out!” Dolphin/Ard says, flashing James the peace sign before quickly running off in the opposite direction of the approaching man with the maroon tie. James stares in bewilderment after the hippie as the man comes running up next to him.
“Hello sir.” He says to James. “I’m the manager of Sears. Did that man cause you any trouble?”
“As a matter of fact he did…Dave!” James says, reading the man’s nametag. “I asked him half-an-hour ago to show me some dishwashers and since then he’s been taking me everywhere but where I want to be! I’m going to be filing a complaint against him!”
“That won’t be necessary sir.” Dave says. “That old hippie doesn’t work here. He just comes in every once in a while to bother our costumers. For some reason he thinks he’s one of my employee’s, and I apologize for any inconvenience he caused you. Now, do you still want to see some dishwashers?”
“Well, I guess so.”
“Great! Let me show you them myself!” He says, leading James away by the arm.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Back with Jessie and Meowth, they’re busy scooping the ashes into some plastic cups they found under a stove. “Wow Jessie; those charcoal bricks sure dissolved fast. How hot did that grill get?”
“Who cares?” Is Jessie’s quick reply. “So long as it got the job done fast, I’m not going to question it.” Meowth nods in agreement as he scoops the last of the ashes into a cup.
“Now, we have five cups of ashes and five bottles of soda, so I’ll take two of each, and you take the other three and we’ll mix each bottle separately before mixing them all into the swimming pool with the limestone and the sand.”
“Why do I have to do three while you only have to do two?” Jessie demands.
“Because you’re bigger then me, meaning you’ll go faster.” Meowth retorts. “Now stop talking and stat mixing!”
“Fine!” Jessie shouts, grabbing three of the bottles and three of the cups.
“Before you add in the ashes you have to pour out a little of the soda so it won’t overflow.” Meowth warns.
“Pour it into what?” Jessie demands.
“I don’t know! Just take a couple of drinks before you mix the ashes.”
“But I don’t like Pepsi! I’ve always been a Coke kind of girl.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Meowth says in shock. “How can you possibly prefer Coke over Pepsi? Pepsi has a sharp, crisp flavor that Coke will never be able to pull off!”
“Who cares? Coke has a sturdy flavor that you can drink in large gulps instead of taking tiny sips, making it the better thirst quencher!”
“Look, we’re getting of focus here! Just drink the stinkin’ soda! It’s not going to kill you, unless you somehow die from all that money we’re going to make!”
“Good point.” Jessie says as she unscrews the lid of one of the bottle and takes several large gulps. While swallowing, she sets down the first bottle and picks up a second. After the duo gets through all five bottles, they start to add the cups of ashes.
“Here Jess.” Meowth says, handing her a funnel. “I found these in a bag downstairs when we were coming up.”
“Great! Now we won’t waste any ashes.” Jessie says, sticking the small end of the funnel into one of the bottles and dumping in the ashes. After she does this, she quickly twists the lid back on and gives the bottle a fast shake, mixing the ashes into the soda. She repeats this process two more times, with Meowth also doing it twice.
“Okay, we’ve made soda ash, we’ve made limestone, we have sand, so now all we have left to do is mix them all together and bake the mixture.” Jessie says, setting down her third bottle.
“All right; you pour the bags of sand into the pool and I’ll pour in the soda.” Meowth says, carrying his two bottles of soda to the swimming pool and pouring them over the ‘limestone’. Jessie picks up her three bottles, and following Meowth, sets them on the floor next to him. She then picks up one of the bags of sand and cuts it open with one of the knives, then dumps it over the ‘limestone’ and ‘soda ash’. She then repeats this with the other four bags, with Meowth repeating his job with the remaining three bottles. After all the ingredients are poured into the swimming pool, Jessie starts mixing them all together with the spade.
“Hey Jess, I just thought of something!” Meowth says as he watches her mix the ingredients.
“What’s that Meowth?”
“How are we supposed to get this mixture into window shapes? We don’t have any molds for the glass.” With these words, Jessie momentarily stops her mixing.
“You’re right Meowth!” She tells him. “I don’t know why we didn’t think of this before! This could completely ruin our plan!”
“What kind of windows were we going to make anyway?” Meowth asks. “Were we going to make windows for houses, for cars, for skyscrapers, for what?”
“Who cares?” Jessie yells, throwing her spade into the mixture. “If that Gates person made so much money selling a bunch of small politically correct windows, then we should be able to make even more money with one giant politically correct window, so we’ll just bake all the mixture at once!”
“That’s a good idea Jessie, but how are we supposed to fit the entire swimming pool into one of those little stoves?” At Meowth’s remark, Jessie looks around at the stoves, an idea forming in her head.
“I’ve got it!” She says as she takes a pokèball out from her belt and releases its occupant onto the floor in front of her. A bright white light flashes for a moment, and when it’s gone, Jessie’s Wobbuffet stands before them. “Meowth, you and Wobbuffet move the swimming pool to this location exactly!” She says, taking a marker out of her pocket and drawing an X in the middle of the floor. “Make sure it’s right on the X! I’ll be back in a minute!”
“Where are you going?” He asks her as she walks away.
“I’ll just be gone a minute! Start working on pushing the pool into place!” She says, not bothering to turn around. She’s soon out of sight, so Meowth and Wobbuffet are left to push the swimming pool into place. It’s a hard job, since the swimming pool is filled with over four hundred pounds of rocks and wet sand, but the two small Pokemon somehow manage to accomplish this inhuman feat. Just as they adjust the pool so the exact center is over the X, Jessie comes walking back towards them with a wrench in her hand.
“Where’d you go Jess?” Meowth asks, wiping sweat out of his eyes.
“I was busting up the air conditioner!” She says, proudly displaying her wrench.
“Okay. Jessie, what exactly does that accomplish in the plan?”
“You’ll see!” See says, setting down her wrench and walking towards the nearest stove. “You two come and help me move this!” She calls to Meowth and Wobbuffet, who quickly run over to the stove and help her move it in front of the swimming pool. “Now, we have to do this with all the other stoves. Come on guys!” She says to them as she walks to another stove.
Jessie, Meowth, and Wobbuffet quickly move ten different stoves in a circle around the swimming pool. Once that’s done, Jessie recalls Wobbuffet and turns to Meowth.
“Now we have to turn all the stoves on, so they’ll bake the glass!” Jessie says, walking to the nearest stove and opening the door before turning on the oven. “Plus, we now don’t have the AC to cool down the ovens. Okay, I’ll turn on all the ovens on this side while you do the ovens on the other side.”
“All righty then!” Meowth says, hopping onto the nearest stove and grabbing on of the knobs. “Hey Jessie! Do I set the oven on ‘bake’ or ‘boil’?”
“Bake.”
“How high am I supposed to set it?”
“I don’t know. See if it says in those pages James found.”
“Okay Jess.” Meowth then hops off the stove and picks up the encyclopedia pages James stole from the library. After reading over it for a few minutes, he gets a worried look on his face. “Jessie, it says here that to become glass, the mixture has to reach temperatures of twenty-six to twenty-nine hundred degrees F! All these ovens only go up to five hundred degrees F! We won’t be able to make enough heat!” With this news, Jessie stops setting the ovens.
“This might be a problem.” She says to Meowth. “Let me think about this for a minute.” She then sits down on one of the stoves and puts her hand to her chin, deep in thought. After a quite moment of thinking, Jessie jumps to her feet. “I got it!” She tells Meowth. “If we need twenty-six hundred degrees of heat, but each stove can only get up to five hundred degrees, all we have to do is split up the amount of heat!”
“I don’t get it.” Meowth says, looking up at Jessie from his resting spot on the floor.
“We’ll just split up the heat!” She tells him. “We have ten stoves that can only reach five hundred degrees. Twenty-six hundred divided by ten is two-hundred and sixty, so if we just set each oven to that temperature, we’ll be able to reach the right degree!”
“Oh! I get it now!” Meowth exclaims. “Good idea Jessie! Let’s do it!” And with that, the two comrades turn every oven to ‘bake’, and then set the temperature to two hundred and sixty degrees. With that done, they sit down on an extra stove and wait for their concoction to bake.
One hour later:
“Jessie, just exactly how long is that supposed to cook before it turn into glass?” Meowth asks, gesturing to the swimming pool, growing restless from all the time they’ve wasted waiting for their glass to bake. “It still looks like a swimming pool filled with rocks and sand.”
“I don’t know! You’re the one with the encyclopedia pages!” Jessie snaps at him.
“Oh yeah. I forgot about them.” Meowth says sheepishly, reaching to pick up the pages. “It says here that it can take one day to…what!”
“What is it Meowth?”
“It says that some glass can take ten years to make!”
“Let me see that!” Jessie says, pulling the pages out of Meowth’s hands, and quickly reading over them. “It says only a certain type of glass takes ten years to make Meowth!” She yells at him angrily.
“Oh. I guess I should have read the whole article through before I said anything.”
“This is stupid!” Jessie shouts, throwing the paper into one of the open stoves and setting them instantly ablaze.
“What’re you doing Jessie?” Meowth shouts at her. “We need those papers to make the glass!”
“If we follow those instructions, we’ll have to stay here another twenty-three hours! I don’t think James will be able to keep the employees busy for a full day, not to mention the fact that the mall will be closing in a couple of hours! No. If we want to make these windows, we’ll have to make our own instructions!”
“But Jessie! If we make our own instructions the windows won’t be politically correct, making them go down in value.”
“That doesn’t matter! We don’t need billions: just millions! If we can pull off a few millions dollars, then we’ll be able to pay off the boss! That’s all that matters right now, so shut up and turn the stoves as high they can go!”
“All right Jessie! Stop yelling at me!” Meowth yells while running to the nearest stove.
“Guys, what’s taking so long?” A voice behind Jessie asks. Spinning around, Jessie comes face-to-face with James.
“What are you doing here?” She demands. “You’re supposed to be distracting the employee!”
“I know! I told him I needed to go to the bathroom before I decide on a dishwasher. I’m almost done deciding which one to get. It’s a tough choice, because one comes in a color I really like, but it doesn’t have as much space as I would prefer, and another one—”
“James! We’re not here to buy a dishwasher! We’re here to make windows, remember?”
“I know that, but this salesman is really good! I think I’m going to get a refrigerator also. And why’s it so hot over here? It must be at least twenty-six hundred degrees!”
“Hey, what are you doing over here?” A voice behind James calls out. Spinning around quickly, James sees Dave heading towards them.
“Oh no! That’s the guy that threw me out earlier!” Jessie says, turning her back to the man and covering her face with a hand.
“What’s all this?” Dave demands, waving his hand at the swimming pool.
“Police business.” Jessie says to her hand. “Go away.”
“I will not go away!” Dave protests. “What’s this swimming pool doing in the middle of my store, and why’s it so hot over here?”
“That swimmin’ pool’s nuttin’!” Meowth says, jumping in front of the pool as if he can possibly hide it. “She said it’s police business, so go away!”
“Oh my gosh, what’s wrong with that baby?” Dave asks, pointing at Meowth. “I think it’s the spirit of Groucho Marx reborn into this world in the form of a baby! I have to call the mall security! No, wait! Better yet, I’ll call the New York Times! They’ll surely want to know about this!” With that said, Dave turns around and goes running for the escalators and the pay phones.
“Quick you guys! Stop him or he’ll ruin the whole plan!” Meowth shouts at his comrades.
“Quick Jessie! Use your taser gun on him!” James yells frantically.
“Right! I forgot I had it!” Jessie says while taking her taser gun out of its holster and aiming it at the running manager. Jessie tries to pull the trigger, but it won’t budge. “I…can’t…get…it…to…work!” She grunts out while trying to shoot.
“Here, give it to me!” James yells, grabbing the gun.
“No! Let go James!” Jessie says, holding the gun up to keep it out of his reach.
“Give me it Jessie!” James yells, tackling her to the ground. The two of them roll around the floor fighting over the gun for a few seconds before accidentally firing it. The shot shoots strait into the air and hits a light bulb. Jessie, James, and Meowth look up at the roof to see what damage they did, and see sparks flying down from the destroyed light bulb. A few moments later, all the lights in Sears go out, and a loud shriek can be heard as Dave accidentally falls over the side of the escalator.
“Whoa! How did we do that?” Jessie asks.
“Uh, you guys. I think this would be a good time to leave.” Meowth voice sounds out in the darkness.
“We can’t leave! We haven’t completed the mission!” Jessie’s voice says. “Besides, you guys blew the last of our money on those supplies and I’m not leaving without them!”
“And I haven’t even chosen which dishwasher I want yet!” James voice whines in the darkness.
“We have to leave now you guys!” Meowth’s voice chimes again. “The fire department and the police will arrive any moment to find out what happened!”
“Fine, we’ll leave!” Jessie yells angrily. “But I’m going to steal stuff on the way out!” A small light suddenly lights up the area as Jessie turns on a flashlight. “It’s a good thing that security guard from earlier had a flashlight on him. Come on you guys. We’ll go out the back way.” She says, gesturing towards a back wall with the flashlight. Jessie then grabs a buggy and starts pushing it towards the back door, with her companions following close behind her, and Jessie constantly grabbing stuff off shelves.
About half way out, Jessie accidentally drops her flashlight, sending the three of them into temporary darkness. Getting down on her hands and knees, she looks around for a minute before finding it and standing up. She quickly grabs her buggy and they start towards the exit again. When they reach the back, James quickly holds the door open as Jessie pushes her buggy outside and the three of them sneak out of the mall. As they walk though the parking lot, they all let out sighs of relief.
“What’d you grab Jessie?” James asks, looking over at her buggy.
“I don’t know. It was to dark to tell.” She says, looking into her buggy as well. As the three of them look into the buggy, they find quite a surprise, for the buggy holds not electronics, clothing, makeup, or shoes, as they thought it would, but instead a dirty little hippie, sleeping soundly.
“What in the world did you steal that for?” Meowth yells in disbelief. “How can we make any money off that thing? I have a feeling it has very little worth at the pawn shop!”
“I don’t know what happened!” Jessie says in disbelief. “I specifically remember grabbing DVD players and game systems and shoes and stuff! How did it all turn into this stupid hippie?”
“Jessie, remember when you dropped your flashlight?” James asks.
“Yeah, what about it?”
“When you got down on the floor, did you move around?”
“Yeah.”
“Then is it possible you moved over to the wrong buggy and didn’t bother to check to see what was in it?”
“Oh no!” Jessie says, the realization of her mistake hitting her. The three of them slowly sink to the floor, their backs leaning against the buggy.
“Well, now what are we supposed to do?” Meowth asks.
“I don’t know, man.” A voice says from inside the buggy. “How about we go to that Woodstock thing I heard about? It’s supposed to be groovy, man!” Team Rocket looks up, and see that Dolphin had awaken and climbed into the seat of the buggy.
“We lost a lot of money you guys.” Jessie says, ignoring the hippie. “How exactly are we supposed to pay back Giovanni for all his money, and at the same time make back the money we lost today?”
“I know how!” James says, jumping to his feet and pulling a rolled up magazine out of his pocket. “I read an article in this magazine the other day! It was about this guy named ‘Lucas’ something or another! It says here that he made billions of dollars by simply making a documentary about stars and the sky!”
“We can do that!” Jessie yells, also jumping to her feet. “All we need is a camera, a telescope, and a lawyer!”
“What do we need the lawyer for?” James asks.
“All great movie makers have lawyers, so if we want to be considered one of the greats we’ll need a lawyer!”
“Good thinking! Lets get a move on then: We have a movie to make!” James says, linking arms with Jessie and strolling off down the parking lot. Meowth watches them for a minute, and then lets out a sigh.
“Here we go again.” He says to Dolphin before running off after his friends and jumping on their shoulders. As the three of them walk off into the sunset, dolphin watches them go and smiles to himself.
“Far out, man! I could really go for a pizza right now!” He says to himself before crawling back into the buggy and going back to sleep.
THE END
Well, that's it. I hope you enjoyed reading my story as much as I enjoyed writing it. Boy, that was a corny line. Anyway, please be sure to leave a review! After reading for so long, you might as well make it worth your time.
This fic has been brought to you by the mind of Fez the Mysfit Elf.
But when you think about it, you said it was well written, and the judges said it was funny, so it can be concidered both! Yay! Or, you could look at it as the judges not liking the way it was written, and you don't like the humor, so it's a lose-lose situation. Boo! Now I'm really confussed!