"I'm only earning wages on this. There's no real profit in it," Vance said inside the shop.
"All right, that price then. I need to buy a few things anyway, so give me a good rate."
"Naturally. Ambrose, take this gentleman round and let him pick."
Vance called into the back.
"Coming." Ambrose came out all smiles and took the customer in to choose.
"Mind how you go, sir."
A little later Ambrose saw the man out.
"Honestly, what a waste of my talents. Me, working here as a salesman."
With the customer gone, Ambrose came over to the counter and complained to the pair of them.
"This is criminal underuse, isn't it? With what the three of us can do, what job couldn't we pull off?"
"Heh. I think it's fine as it is." Emery was at his computer, entering data.
"He's right, I think this suits us very well. Sell a few things, pick up a bit of news — what's wrong with that? Fighting and killing every day, you never know which day you won't come back from."
Vance said it along with him.
"Heh heh, but we've got you, boss." Ambrose grinned, carried over a cup of water and set it down in front of him.
"Me? I'm small fry. Last time, if I hadn't run fast, I'd be gone." The thought of it still frightened him. He picked up the cup and drank.
"Anyway. Did you get anything worth having out of that one just now?"
"Ordinary talk, all of it. We can hardly expect an ordinary Trainer to know anything."
"No hurry. Feel it out slowly. Upstairs hasn't asked for anything specific — we tidy up whatever we pick up and send it on."
The three of them had an operating budget for this posting: the branch had allocated a million Poké Dollars, and whatever the shop made was theirs to keep.
"Speaking of intelligence, I know a place where we could pick up a bit worth having. You two should find it interesting as well, heh heh." Something had evidently come to Ambrose, and he was grinning.
"Oh? Where?" Vance said. Perhaps he imagined it, but there was something faintly seedy about the fat man's grin.
"A ball?"
"That's right, a ball. Tomorrow night there's a ball at Clearwind Manor. Think about it — the people who go to a ball are a better class of person, aren't they? So what they talk about is worth more, isn't it?"
"Not bad." Vance nodded his agreement. There was sense in what Ambrose said.
A ball counted as socialising at the upper end. Most of the people at one had either connections or ability; senior officials and nobility turning up would surprise nobody. It came down chiefly to the standing of whoever was giving it.
"A ball at Clearwind Manor? Which family is giving it?"
Emery put in from the side.
"The Quillon family."
"Quillon? Seriously? They're one of Kanto's great clans."
"That's right." Ambrose nodded. "They're a great clan, but they do business too. What's strange about them giving a ball? Oh — and come to think of it, the three of us are in business as well. While we're digging for intelligence, why shouldn't we do a bit of business at the same time?"
"...Business? Fatty, do you have some kind of misunderstanding about our miserable little shop? Is that the sort of thing mongrels like us get to take part in?"
"Oh, come on. However miserable, a shop is a business. We're young entrepreneurs. If we were at university they'd call it a student start-up — the sort of thing that gets praised and gets League backing. Where's the mongrel in that?"
Ambrose laid it out point by point, and the two of them found they had nothing to answer with.
"But we're Team Rocket."
Emery raised another objection.
"Exactly. Being Team Rocket is all the more reason to go. It's darkest under the lamp."
"Then here comes the important question. Isn't a ball by invitation? How do the three of us get in?"
Vance followed with the crux of it. The grander the ball, the higher the bar at the door, so how were three Team Rocket foot soldiers going to get through it?
"Relax. I'll handle it. Leave it to me."
Ambrose looked entirely confident, like a man who had the thing in his hand already.
Vance and Emery exchanged a glance, and Emery said to him, "You can really get us in?"
"I really can. Have some faith in what I can do."
"All right. Then we'll go and have a look."
Vance came down on that side; he wanted a look at high society himself.
"No problem. You two just wait."
Ambrose took it on, went out of the door, and set about it.
Just then several more Trainers came into the shop with questions, and Vance went to meet them smiling.
"We may be newly opened, but most of what's on the market we have here too, and cheaper. And if you come back with anything, you can sell it to us as well — we pay fairly."
Vance went through the goods with a practised patter, looking every inch a competent little shopkeeper.
Disguise, as a subject, had been graded "excellent" on Vance's Rocket assessment, so playing a shop owner now gave him no trouble whatsoever.
Nor was disguise limited to "owner." There was "beggar," "driver," "cook" and a great many other trades besides; Team Rocket members played whatever role the job called for.
"Ha, ha, ha. Mind how you go, gentlemen."
Another sale closed soon enough, and once they were out of the door he sat back down in his place and chatted with Emery.
The shop the three of them had opened was called the Pokémon Cottage, and because the goods were good and the prices low, Trainers were gradually coming in to trade.
As postings went, this one counted as a good one.
"Slack off, draw the pay."
He shut the computer and stretched out comfortably in the owner's chair. He was a Squad Leader; there was a salary of a hundred thousand Poké Dollars a month on top of everything else.
While Vance was idling here, in an underground base outside Pewter City, Rufus took his letter of appointment as Squad Leader with a flush of excitement on his face.
"Rest assured, Branch Chief, sir. I, Rufus, will do my duty to the last and serve the organisation!"
"Good, good, good. From today you are a Squad Leader too, Rufus. There's a great deal of light ahead of you."
"Sir!"
Rufus bowed his head respectfully. Who would have thought it — the road had looked closed, and here was a whole new village round the bend. For whatever reason this branch of his had been badly mauled and was desperately short of people, and he had been transferred in only days before the leadership picked him out and raised him to Squad Leader.
"Ha, ha, ha. I knew it. All that hardship before was only the grindstone, feed to help me grow. It was never more than that."
Glowing with it, Rufus came out in front of a whole squad of men and announced at the top of his voice that he had been made Squad Leader.
"What did I tell you! I said it before — a temporary difficulty can't beat me, it only makes me stronger! Ha, ha, ha. And here we are."
"Hail the Squad Leader!"
"I always said sticking with you, boss, would get us somewhere. And so it has."
"I remember you saying something rather different before."
"You've misremembered. That's exactly what I said."
The noise below him was all congratulation, and it filled Rufus with boundless ambition.