Okay, so this is like...the vaguest "plotting idea" ever, but sooner or later I'm really going to have to have Carmen pull off a heist of some variety or another. The problem is, she traditionally only does it when she's bored, challenged/provoked, or trying to mess with somebody, and the likelihood of her getting bored in Johto is pretty slim, all things considered, so that kind of paints me into a corner in the arena of motivating her to pull something.

That said, now that she's learning about Team Rocket's recent interest in the legendaries, she might be tempted (or susceptible to provocation) to go try to bag one of her own — either by tracking one down on her own or attempting to pull a Mewtwo and trying to figure out how to genetically engineer one from a fossil or something. (Don't look at me like that, she canonically tries it in an attempt to GET HER OWN DINOSAUR because why the hell not.) Anyway, the point is, she can have a really "anything you can do, I can do better" mentality, especially when it comes to stealing things, and it wouldn't be very hard to provoke her into trying to one-up Team Rocket on something or another, even if she's well aware she's being provoked into it or that it's a really obvious trap. Such is her ego.

I would also like to have her someday replace someone's entire roster with Metapods.

Basically, I don't feel like her stealing something is really capable of standing alone as a plot in and of itself, but I'd really like to find a way for it to help facilitate something else, if that makes sense?

...Or I guess she could always steal every Smeargle in Johto and try to paint her face on the moon again or something, hm.