Broken Souls (Part 1)
by Cori Falls
@->->- 

Author's Note
This story is a continuation of a fic called The Pinball Machine by Alph. The Pinball Machine was a tragic tale that was set in a world where Jessie and James never met. (James was hooked to a suicide machine in an abandoned warehouse and debating whether or not to end his life since he was so miserable. While he was trying to decide, a woman came into the warehouse and started playing "The Love Game," which was a pinball machine. She told James that she was running from five lovers, two husbands, and three children, and James asked her if he should end his life or not. The woman didn't answer him, but when she won the pinball game, she started screaming "yes." Mistaking her enthusiasm for an affirmative answer, James injected himself with poison. When she realized what was going on, the woman took James in her arms, told him her name was Jessie, and kept him company during his final moments of life. X___x) 

Even though the plot was extremely far-fetched and Jessie and James were completely out of character, the fact remains that The Pinball Machine is one of the most upsetting fics I've ever had the misfortune of reading. I guess it bothered me so much because it was the first death fic that was submitted to my site. (This was back in the days before I established any fanfic submission guidelines, and I mistakenly thought that I was obligated to post everything that people submitted, no matter how much I hated it. XP) Reading that fic made me physically ill, and posting it made me feel even worse. At first, I tried reminding myself that it was only a stupid fic written by somebody who doesn't really understand or appreciate Jessie and James's characters and that the events which transpired in it would never happen, but when it was still depressing the hell out of me over a month later, I knew that it was a serious problem. 

I knew that I had to do something...anything to make myself feel better and set things right for Jessie and James. 

I got the idea for this story one evening when I was driving home from work. I was in the middle of another nervous breakdown brought on by The Pinball Machine continuing to haunt me, but I stopped and asked myself if there was any possible way to get around or undo James's suicide. After thinking about it for a couple of minutes, I realized that not only would undoing the tragic tale be possible...it'd be pretty damned easy, too! Since the fic was open-ended and there was never an actual death scene, writing a sequal where Jessie saves James's life and the two of them fall in love and live happily ever after would be a simple matter. And indeed, it was -- even with all of the twists and sub-plots I added, Broken Souls practically wrote itself, and the end result was a success. When I finished writing it, I found that I wasn't upset about The Pinball Machine anymore! 

Before you read on, however, bear in mind that Broken Souls has no relation whatsoever to my regular story arc -- it takes place in an alternate reality which was created by another author, so many of the events and characterizations (like James's attempted suicide and Jessie's husbands, lovers, and children by a man other than James) are things that I'd never write about in any of my regular stories. Indeed, the very reason this story exists is so that I can undo those horrible things and get our heroes back into character as much as possible. 

As for the author of The Pinball Machine? I make no apologies to her. No real fan of Team Rocket would even think about killing them off in their fics, so she's not a real fan as far as I'm concerned! Alph doesn't even seem to be in the fandom -- after submitting this fic, I never heard from her again. Even her e-mail address was a dead link. I can only conclude that she was somebody who hated TR and wrote The Pinball Machine for the specific purpose of upsetting real fans. And if she was somebody who liked TR, then she sure had a weird way of showing it! At any rate, I don't care if she (or anybody else) is offended by this -- being subjected to that awful fic offended me, so I felt entitled to write this and give myself a little peace of mind. 

That said, enjoy Broken Souls.