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theinfamousillusionist

2時間前

Mel & Friends II

Mel first met Officer Jenny after what Team Rocket considered a perfectly successful robbery. They'd been sent to steal an experimental Poké Ball, but before they could make their move Mel had quietly spoken to its inventor beforehand and arranged for Rocket to take a broken prototype instead. When the other grunts fled, she simply stayed behind and handed Jenny the real one. Jenny couldn't quite understand the nervous young woman in the giant red R insisting that “stealing is bad,” but everything checked out. It wasn't the last strange encounter they had, either. Eventually Jenny learned that whenever Mel was involved in some Rocket incident, it was usually worth hearing her explanation before reaching for the handcuffs. Nurse Joy got to know Mel through a much less dramatic pattern: Mel kept showing up with Pokémon that weren't hers. A lost Oddish found beside the road, someone's elderly companion that needed a checkup, a wild Pokémon she'd noticed limping during an assignment—somehow they all ended up at the Pokémon Center with Mel hovering nearby. Her years working on a Miltank farm made her comfortable helping older residents groom and care for Pokémon they had trouble handling themselves. Before long, Joy stopped asking why a Team Rocket grunt was doing unpaid community work and started asking whether Mel could check on Mrs. So-and-so's Pokémon while she was already headed that direction. Eventually Jenny and Joy stopped thinking of her primarily as that strange Team Rocket girl and simply started thinking of her as Mel. Jenny knew she was trustworthy even if her employer decidedly wasn't. Joy knew that any Pokémon Mel brought through her doors had already been treated with pure kindness. Mel, meanwhile, hadn't realized she'd built any sort of reputation at all. She was just doing her job without stealing anything and helping whenever somebody needed it. By the time the three of them noticed they had become close, they were comfortably spending the afternoon by the pool eating ice cream together. Everyone in town knew exactly who the helpful "local resident" in the news reports was—even if nobody felt the need to tell Team Rocket.