"Huh? Isn't that Mr. James? What brings you to Vermilion City?" Heath asked in surprise. Although he had already more or less guessed why James had come to Vermilion City-Team Rocket's members had been gathering here lately, after all-he had no idea whether Team Rocket was planning some major operation. Heath suspected it might have something to do with that strange egg he had discovered earlier. After all, only Team Rocket had the ability to fuse the Legendary Birds together, and the League generally would not do such a thing. Though that was hard to say, too, since the League might sometimes have things it could not let others see.
Still, perhaps James had come here to attend Team Rocket's annual party. Of course, that was not very likely. Heath himself was not quite sure whether a criminal organization like Team Rocket even had something as remarkable as an annual party. He had never joined Team Rocket or asked Giovanni about it. But then he remembered that Giovanni always seemed to travel out of town for a day or two around New Year's. Thinking of it that way, Team Rocket might really have an annual party.
Annual parties were very peculiar things. Heath had liked celebrating New Year's when he was little, but as he grew older and faced all sorts of questions from his relatives, he had become indifferent to it. Then, after he started working, Heath discovered that there were things in this world even more terrifying than relatives asking him all sorts of questions: company annual parties. Not every company held them, and not every company's annual party was utterly bizarre, but the ones Heath himself had attended certainly had been.
Most workers these days were fairly averse to annual parties. Of course, some wonderful companies might