A Few Months Later, Acapulco. Posing As Beach Shack Owners.

A few months later Ai got back in contact. James and Jessy had been laying low in Acapulco, posed as beach restaurant owners. They had bought a foreclosed 'beach shack' and brought it back up to code and then back to proffitabilty. The shack gave them more than enough to live on: they'd even earned enough to repair their giant Meowth balloon; again...

They were just talking about fireing it up and going sailing when Ai walked in.

"You know, it's the weekend, Tony is watching the shop, we could go for a little sail on the balloon..." James said, leaning back in the chair on the patio of their apartment nestled up in the hills above the port.

"It would be fun to get aloft again..." Jessy mused, before they suddenly realized they were not alone.

"You two still have that thing?" Ai asked from the doorway. Nyarth stood beside her, studiously inspecting his claws.

"Um, yes? It's team property assigned to us, so..." James said, confused.

"Dispose of it." Ai ordered, then at their look of confusion and near panic explained. "That balloon is both well known to law enforcement and indelibly associated with your period of abject failure to the gang. Get yourselves a new hot air balloon if you want, just from what little I overheard on my way in it's clear you enjoy ballooning and you need to be able to relax sometimes, but get rid of that one styled like a gaint Meowth head: it's a liability, not an asset."

Jessy looked like she was about to object but James cut her off smoothly. "Consider it done. I know a guy in the states who I can trade it to for a clean one, he's wanted to buy it off us for years."

"Good, now come inside I've got your new assignment," Mistress Rohata declared.

"What's the angle?" Jessy asked eagerly inside, "New pokemon snatching operation, ****, bank heist?"

"Easy there tigress, your back in the bosses good books but to the team at large your still the butt of every joke. What you need to repair your reputations is to run a good long-term operation without anything going wrong for a few months, that'll show people that things have turned around for you and you're back on track. You Happen to already be in the perfect place for that right now."

"As you two know this town is more than half owned by the team already, one of our real success stories you might say. So, because you are seen by the rank-and-file as needing close supervision the boss wants you two to use your existing cover identities and take over one of our little profit making ventures. You will be splitting your time between your beachside food shack venture, (good job with that so far by the way,) and running an 'independent' deep sea fishing charter ship the boss owns called the 'Slice of Life'." Ai explained

"The boss has noticed that you two don't have many Pokemon, even after all these years chasing that brat and his pikachu, so he wants you to catch some rares out at sea, not for the team this time but for your own use in the future. This whole region is lousy with decent water types, there's Kingler, Seaking, Tenticrule, and even rumors of a pod of Gyaridos." Jessy and James' eyes both started twitching at the mention of Gyaridos but Ai didn't notice.

"Catch yourselves some strong water types and run the 'Slice of Life' well and profitability for about a year, then we'll see about getting you back into something more your former speeds." Ai said, and turned to leave.

"Oh, one last thing," she mentioned with one foot out the door. "The invoice and proceeds from selling that balloon had damned well better be on my desk by the end of the month," Ai instructed, and with that she was gone.

James contact in the states was overjoyed to get his hands on their Meowth styled balloon at last. He paid them a good 50K US for it. (Which of course they couldn't keep, the balloon belonged to the team.) Though there were tears running down their faces as they packed up the balloon which had been the closest thing they'd had to a home for most of four years for the final time, it had gone on its winding way towards Nebraska. Ai complemented them on a job well done, and handed them the keys to the "Slice of Life"...