Acquire a Pokemon

Before Grunt could even think about how he would go about obtaining a Pokedex, the fact remained that he was very **** and very out of place without a Pokemon. As it happened, very few of the agents in Team Rocket truly owned a Pokemon: more often than not they were "loaners" to be used and regulated as needed depending on the agent and the operations they took part in. A low-level agent on a minor mission would not, in theory, need a particularly powerful Pokemon. Until the Trainer from Pallet Town decimated the Rocket's ranks, it had never been questioned as to why so many Grunts carried weak Pokemon.

In truth, it wasn't as though the Pokemon they had were "completely" weak. Against the average Trainer, there was a better than average chance of stopping them within 3 to 4 consecutive battles against multiple Rocket agents. But to a Dex User, they were ridiculously under-powered for those kind of battles. And by the time everyone was ready to take the girl seriously, her team has already caught up with most of the higher ranked Rocket's lineup. Giovanni himself ultimately lost against a Dex User because the rate of growth is effectively limitless in comparison to an average Trainer. From the records Grunt had been able to go over, it sounded like a fairly challenging battle on both ends.

As it stood, he didn't have access to the higher leveled Pokemon that went into circulation in Team Rocket. And unfortunately, just about every Pokemon in their possession had been confiscated by the authorities, including the ones that had been in his possession. Unfortunately, this meant that he would have to start from scratch: pick up a fairly weak Pokemon and build up from there. If luck was on his side, then the first Pokemon he obtained would be worth something significant further down the road. But he sincerely doubted that he'd be able to get his hands on one of the Professor's "Starters" like Leaf had been given, and there were very few Pokemon outside the Legendaries that could give most Starters a decent run in battle.

But beggars can't be choosers, and right now Grunt needed SOMETHING.