Deep Space (Beta)

by wackedoutpet

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure
Length: 24204

A collection of Commander Mars' journals, chronicling the demise of Team Galactic.

A collection of Commander Mars' journals, chronicling the demise of Team Galactic.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2015-01-21 05:36:07 UTC

Chapter 2: The Sundering (RAW)

"The bringer of wars... Your target is the energy of the power plant.

The bringer of contentment... Your target is the Pokémon statue of Eterna City.

The bringer of aging... Your target is the Pokémon that sleeps on today.

The dream energy.

Team Galactic."

I'm not a great storyteller. I'm afraid that's what I'm becoming known for in these entries, to whoever may read them. To me, they're archives from a time that has long passed by, long before they're done being written. It's already ancient history.

This isn't one of those journals. Plenty of these are just my musings, where I need space to think and reflect, ponder the nature of certain questions that haunt me. It's for my reading. These are the entries I spend weeks writing, opening and closing the entry in order to continue writing them as new information churns in my head. Sometimes, these questions don't go away, and they spend weeks circling the shower drain of my head, trying to sink in. They go on for months. Years. The prospect of never finding an answer is somewhat self-destructive in just considering. Sometimes it's all I can do.

Part of this is that I don't know who'll ever read these. I know I click the submit button weekly and sometimes daily, but I know it's just a courtesy. No one reads these. Not even me. I don't like to reflect. I keep hard copies beside my desk but I never read them. It's more of a memories thing. For someone who doesn't like to reflect on their past, I certainly end up doing it quite a bit in these. I'm just not good at it, and sometimes I think it shows. I don't know, I already said I don't read these.

Somehow, all of these become stories. Without any certainty or control over it this happens repeatedly. It takes longer for me to get to a point like that than anything else, and it's usually because I'm telling a story.

I don't have a story for today.

I just want to talk about one thing today.

That one thing is Commander Jupiter.

It's a really short conversation, too. Get ready for a doorstopper of a novel that has nothing to do with it.

I don't think we can talk about Team Galactic if we don't talk about Commander Jupiter.

Maybe it's what I said above, that I can't understand Jupiter and I can't live in expectation around her. I've never ever felt comfortable around her. But I don't entirely believe I live in fear of her, or that I don't understand her character. Spending time with her, sharing life with her, it's a slow terrifying expose of something I just don't understand. Just when I think I've seen it all, she throws something new at me. Something new, horrifying, and ignorant of all logic or any understanding I had before. It's jarring. I can't be comfortable around something that always changes, but at the same time I can't always be afraid of it, especially when that something is a leader, or worse, a colleague.

Jupiter's story is not complicated. Thing is, I don't know it. She's never explained where she came from, why she left, and what made her join. I don't think I'll ever know, even when given an explanation. At this point I simply won't believe it. It's too ridiculous at this point to have something that makes sense.

She's a brute. A brute in high heels and lipstick. A woman that could make your will bend before your spine. She's a wolf in bitch's clothing. She acts like a woman, looks like a woman, talks like a woman, smells like a woman, and has the will and character of an absolute monster. You would never know it either.

Something else? She's extremely quiet.

Not only can you not hear her enter or leave, you can't hear her move through a room. It's scary when you know she's doing it. You can feel it, and all you can do is wait, for the most terrifying moment of your life.

You know she's thinking of something. It's terrifying. It goes beyond thinking, pondering, dreaming, wondering, or even knowing. Calculating.

But it's still not the scariest piece of the puzzle. I don't even want to call that a piece of the puzzle. That's just two years of guesswork and forgetting the rest. I could have gained all this insight last week and be explaining the same thing. It's detached from time.

Darkness is just the absence of light, and fear is just the absence of information. When someone hides in your closet and jumps out at you, whatever you knew about that room is gone and replaced by a spine-twisting spleen choking fear. When they scream, you can't trust the silence around you. Everything you knew was wrong, so how much right can you be about anything from now on?

This is the Jupiter effect. The span of two years behind me means almost nothing to me when it comes to her, because I've learned that I can't trust her. It's the same reason you can't trust a closed door when you know someone's in it. It's the same reason you can cross a car in a parking lot and not look twice at a figure behind glass. It's the same reason you lock your door at night, the same reason you lock the bathroom door when you're in it, the same reason you look in the backseat of a car when you get in, the same reason you don't go down that street at night, the same reason you don't eat that one food before a long trip, the same reason you look nice just to go to the store.

It's the same reason you look under your bed for monsters at night: there are enough monsters out there that don't have tentacles but have fingers, toes, the English language, and things you can't tell kids about.

Just like that, the less you know the more detached you are from the reality that is Team Galactic, the Sinnoh Region, the Pokemon world, and the space between your sheets and the rest of a dark room.

For reasons I clearly don't have and that being a reason itself, I don't trust Jupiter.

So, when I'm supposed to trust her with my life, and supposedly trust her life with mine, things get complicated. Celestic Town complicated. And slowly, whether I like it or not, things start to get weird.

I let a lot of things slide with Jupiter. For one thing, I can take a step back any time I like. She doesn't, and that sets her and me apart. For another thing, we're both women (and while she more mature than I, and clearly arguing for the separation of the singular term, this can be disputed) and that puts on a playing field that's certainly not level but certainly more discernible than the one Saturn is on. Jupiter is my supposed contemporary in this. If she decides to go harder, I have to as well. She's clearly stronger than me in a lot of ways. My competing factor is my morals, and I'm the only one who's ever noted that as a strength. For someone like Cyrus who actively says my strength is my emotional willpower, he usually follows that up with how it's also a weakness to be cured of. I've heard there's a middle ground. Jupiter's offering a way and I really don't want to take it. That makes it very hard sometimes to be a Commander, or even Mars.

It's one thing to be a personal issue. The only thing personal issues should ever be is a flaw, something I take too personally. It should hardly ever be justified. Jupiter makes me justify a lot of things, especially when they're things outside of her. Things committed by myself or reflections of my own actions. When it's the grunts, the things I do become Team Galactic's blessing or burden, one as a whole.

Of everything I loathe, dislike, distrust, or even would care less for, especially in Team Galactic, it's when my authority is questioned. It's the thing I hold against Jupiter and against the grunts. I never hold it against Saturn, and I certainly can understand when Cyrus has it to question; Charon I can list off a number of reasons to dislike him, and he hardly questions my authority. It's not even an issue I've encountered in the past or cared about. I simply don't care who respects my character, or at least not before Team Galactic. There are plenty of plainly unappealing things about me. To me, it's a issue of career.

The term 'grunts' comes from the term 'grunt work'. It's not an official term and it's hardly an in-house term. I won't disregard it's worth as a term, because it certainly helps, but it's not something I'm a huge fan of. If this were a real-world situation, I'd compare it to the people beneath a supervisor, and that supervisor would be me. We don't know what else to call them so 'grunt' sticks.

Grunts are incredibly important to what we do, and I'm not about to admit otherwise. It's grunts who get me through certain tasks I can't do, as opposed to what I won't do, and who pull the job through at the end of the day.

This is the first place Jupiter and I disagree.

Jupiter thinks they barely need names, just blue hair and the ability to listen.

"Good morning," Mars said, offering a cordial smile, brief and lips only. She nodded and turned to face the wall, walking the length of the gym. A Pokeball was clutched in her hand, red shell facing the top and reflecting the massive overhead lights in small passing dots on the surface, button release facing her. The arm holding the Pokeball was just in front of her so she could see, other arm crossed behind her back with a closed empty fist.

The gym was filled with rows of blue-haired grunts. A bright sheen formed on their freshly cut hair and brought ample lighting to their faces. Bright white light reflected on the new plastic material of their spacesuit-like uniforms. As uniformly as they all tried to look, they itched at their uniforms, shuffling in place briefly to try to relieve the tension or folds in places. Some looked panicked, watching intently. Others stared ahead with more ambiguous reactions. About twenty of them lined in single-file along the length of the gym, all facing forward at Commander Mars.

Mars' slow walk down the length of the gym stopped at the center, standing on a large glossy print of the Galactic 'G' logo on the floor. She stopped, turning to face all of them. Her head slowly tracked left to right as she gave them each a quick glance. When she finished, she turned and headed to a desk in the opposite lengthwise wall.

"I'm going to read off your names one at a time," said Mars. "They are your Galactic codifiers. Please listen closely. When you hear your name, please come up here and I will go ahead and distribute your new start information to you, as well as ask for any additional information I still need," she said, looking up from the clipboard she picked up. "That would also be a good time to ask any questions you may have. Understood?"

Scanning the room as she clicked a ballpoint pen, Mars quickly looked down to the clipboard, muttering an 'alright' to herself. As she cleared her throat, something shifted in the corner of her vision. She looked up, staring briefly at a grunt who had his hand up.

Pausing briefly, Mars clicked the ballpoint pen again, slowly raising the pen to point at him. "You have a question?" asked Mars carefully.

The grunt at the far left of the line cleared his throat. "What can we call you, miss?"

Mars blinked. She took a deep breath through her nostrils, continuing. "My name is Commander Mars, Executive Command of Team Galactic. You may refer to me as Commander," said Mars, nodding gently. "Thank you for asking."

"Reminding?" the grunt continued.

A small hush fell on the gym, all eyes either looking at the grunt or looking straight ahead at the wall above Mars.

"I should have mentioned it earlier, yes," Mars said, offering a small smile. "That aside, I'd like to continue."

From the entire line of grunts, a small chuckle left all of them.

The difference is purely policy. Jupiter is bad cop, I'm good cop. No more, no less.

I'm not the only one who knows it either. I know it's clear. Why else would I have my office so close to the grunt barracks and Jupiter's so close to Cyrus'? It makes my office look like a cubicle, devoid of almost any training space. Just a desk and PC, and a heap of paperwork.

I don't think my relationship with the grunts is unbelievably close, but it's something more special than my colleagues. People say I'm just an elevated grunt, and frankly it makes me mad, but it does make sense. I guess I come from a different generation of trainers and people in general. I'm already the youngest.

Mars pulled a red pen from the metal clip of her clipboard. On the last sentence of the last paragraph, right before the paragraph ended and left the rest of the last page blank, she underlined 'youngest'. The rest of the sentence, 'I'm already the youngest', Mars circled. Beneath the sentence, in the long blank margin below, Mars wrote 'Not enough pages. Expand on this idea,' underlining 'Expand' and then circling the whole thought. She drew an arrow to the last sentence.

Sighing, Mars stepped away from the wall she was leaning on, walking to her desk on the opposite side of her office. The red pen dropped into a Galactic 'G' labeled mug beside her PC monitor, clattering against the other pens. She undid the metal clip of the clipboard from the stacks of pages, sliding them down gently and letting the metal clip clap against the plastic backing of the clipboard. Mars slid the pages off and set the clipboard on another stack of papers, putting the pen-annotated stack of pages from the clipboard into a stapler and slamming down the red stapler head with a satisfying metal puncture sound. Sifting through the various stacks of paper covering the tiny white desk, Mars leaned over and found a small pile of stapled pages with a sticky note atop them, reading 'Journal Entries'. The stapled pages in her hand slid neatly beneath the topmost one. Mars then removed the 'Journal Entries' sticky note from the top of the page, placing it on the back of her hand. The stack in her hand, labeled Journal Entry #213, with a circled red pen note saying it 'needed some work', slid neatly into the metal clip of her clipboard.

Just as Mars was stepping away from her desk to read the contents of her clipboard, she looked up, ears alert to something ringing in the office. Looking over her shoulder to the desk, something caught her eye: her COMM wrist computer.

The white plastic wristband body of the COMM rested upright on it's wide arms. The glass screen atop it was no longer black as it usually was, instead lit with thin white console text, and several square buttons along the bottom margins of the screen. It continued to beep, as a little yellow LED flared atop it.

Mars picked the COMM up in her hand, bringing it just a few inches from her face, tapping the receiver button with her thumb. "Yes?" she answered quietly.

"Commander, I have the recruit you requested."

As Mars slowly returned leaning against the corner of her desk, she quickly found a specific form beneath the stacks of paper. Reading it carefully in the low lamp light of the room, she pulled the COMM back up to her mouth. "Right. Send her in."

Tapping the 'END' key and dimming the screen, Mars rested the COMM upright on her desk. It promptly rolled onto it's side. As she continued to read the form, Mars reached over to the doorway and tapped the keypad in the archway beside the door awake, lighting the screen and pressing the release key.

The door whooshed open. Mars looked up from the form she had in her hands. She smiled when she saw the two grunts in the brightly lit halls. Her hand signaled them in as she stepped aside.

"Thanks a lot Geegee," smiled Mars, eyeing the grunt between herself and Geegee.

The grunt between Mars and Geegee was much shorter, head half-buried in his own collar. The shoulders on his uniform were too wide and sagged in the sleeves. His blue-dyed hair was freshly cut but slightly unkempt. Beneath his left eye a brown bruise had already formed and taken shape over his cheek, barely visible beneath the tall gray collar.

"What's his name?" asked Mars.

Geegee shrugged, pulling out a clipboard from beneath her arms. "Dunno boss, I think he missed that part of orientation."

Mars groaned. "If he showed up on our reports, he has to have a name. I didn't ask for the scrawny, blue haired grunt, did I?"

Silent, Geegee buried her eyes in various pages in her clipboard. Her eyes raced beneath red-rimmed glasses.

The grunt between the two of them stared up at Mars, neither smiling or frowning. Completely expressionless and terrified. Mars in response smiled somewhat awkwardly, but it hardly changed anything.

"Geegee?"

"WS79!" Geegee announced triumphantly. "His name is WS79... Wow, that was hard," she chuckled.

"Thanks Geegee. I'll call you back when we're finished here."

The smile Geegee wore slowly melted away, replaced by sudden nodding. She tucked her clipboard away, looking at Mars and WS79 and back towards the door, promptly leaving. Soon after she left, the door sealed, leaving the both Mars and WS79 in the dimly lamplit room.

I embrace willingly that I'm good cop. There's nothing wrong with it. It's more wrong to criticize my leadership style, even after that's what I was hired for. My strength is mine alone, it's what makes me human, a woman, a Commander, and most of all Commander Mars. What I do with it is my business, and how I own it.

What I respect most about Jupiter is that she owns her strength. I could never do what she does, or at least as well as she does. I respect that willingly and openly. This isn't a question of Jupiter's authority when she certainly commands it. Even that still doesn't explain why mine is in question.

Jupiter and I aren't that far apart. We're the same generation, and even though we are different people raised in different ways, we come from the same home in Sinnoh. We grew up on the same world stage, facing the same generational experience and issues that our age brought us. What we did with it is a matter of who we are as human beings, and that's all something we can trace back as a human 'thing' civilization has done for thousands and thousands of years. It's the only explanation for racism and xenophobia we have; we can't explain the choices people make as easily when we come from the place. I imagine Jupiter's older but not significantly older than me. I know Sinnoh is an incredibly diverse region in ways that most regions can't relate to. We're a diverse people in a diverse landscape. To me, it is something unique to us, and that should change the playing field of our understanding, and Jupiter really should know that. I have too much faith in her to doubt it.

Even her having no understanding would be a good explanation, but it's just not possible. I can't believe that. I know that what she does isn't predictable, it comes from long meticulous planning and reasons exclusive to her. The thing I love about her most is the thing that can be most damaging.

"Did she tell you why I named her Geegee?"

WS79 was silent. He had even shifted his gaze downward to watch his own motionless legs. Every part of his face was now totally buried in his collar, with only the blue of his hair indicating he was present. Even though he was bare inches from the wall, he refused to lean against the wall, frozen in place.

"I'm about to give you an order I want you to follow, okay?" said Mars quietly. Her head shifted around to see if there was any ways through the collar to his head. Both her hands landed on his shoulders, holding them gently. "Are you there? Listening? WS79?"

WS79 nodded.

"Okay, I want you to sit in the chair behind you. I want you to relax a little bit, okay?"

As WS79 began to shuffle to the side, having eyed the white desk chair from beneath his collar, he felt a sharp tugging on his own shoulders, as Mars' hands gently guided him around to face her. He looked up into Mars' warm comforting smile with wide and confused eyes. He looked down at his legs, feeling Mars' gentle nudge on his shoulders easing him back with short steps to the chair.

"Just ease into it carefully, alright?"

Feeling the white cushion lip of the chair press into the back of his knees, WS79 dropped into the chair gently. His arms found the arm rests quickly. The grip on his shoulders relaxed, allowing his shoulders to sink into the plush material of the chair. The stiff upright collar surrounding his face bopped against his nose, trying to relax on his shoulders. He couldn't see through or above it any longer. Instead, he felt a sharp tugging forward on the cone-like collar immediately in front of him. He eyed the zipper. It slid down gently, as the collar parted and Mars' face slid into vision. The collar around him popped down around his shoulders.

Fresh air filtered through to WS79 nostrils, suddenly free of his fabric prison. He looked down at the collar's zipper, undone down to just below his shoulders as it followed the track to the right. The collar had popped down and conformed to the rest of his shoulders comfortably, the inner ribbed black rubber of the collar exposed to the surface. With the collar and zipper down just enough, WS79 could see the collar of his undershirt poking up to the surface, pulled just low enough to expose the faded red rings around his own neck.

Mars had finished scooping up the papers on her desk, stacking them into a moderately neat pile and tucking them into a manilla folder. Crouched down to a tall drawer in a small file cabinet beside WS79's legs, she slid it out and stacked the fat folder atop several other similarly stuffed folders.

"I know it's not necessarily regulation, but it's my office. I have the same thing with my skirt. It's not very fun to sit in, especially when I've got paperwork to review and logs to type up, so I make little exceptions that can't be seen. I treat this office like a bedroom, sometimes literally. I don't know, I think it's just roomy. Don't worry, I won't write you up for something like that. I'll put the order in for a newer, better uniform for you," said Mars.

WS79 merely sat there, listening intently to Mars' conversation making. He stared down at Mars as she wrestled with her drawers, trying to close the bottom one and then open the topmost drawer. To the side, draped over the keyboard to the asleep PC, he eyed the detached skirt.

"Do you like M&Ms, some hard candies, or just plain chocolate?" asked Mars, sifting through the various knick-knacks in her drawer. When she met with silence, she looked up WS79. "Oh come on, don't be shy."

WS79 swallowed. "M&Ms?" he asked at a near whisper.

"What was that?"

"M&Ms?" WS79 tried again, slightly louder.

Mars smiled. "I like that a little better."

The rattling sound the hundreds of little M&Ms made in the ashtray-sized glass bowl quickly became the only sound in the room. When the little chocolates filled the bowl to a small curve, Mars set the bowl on the edge of the desk closest to WS79, right beside the keyboard and skirt. She pinched up a few red M&Ms and quickly ate them, smiling as she sat up on the now completely clean desk, careful not to knock over her desk lamp.

"Did Geegee tell you why I named her?" Mars asked again, finishing chewing. She nodded to the bowl and swallowed. "Go ahead, take some."

WS79 didn't even look at the bowl, looking at the hands in his lap.

Sighing, Mars pinched up another small handful, then picked the bowl up and set it in WS79's lap.

"Geegee is my secretary, personal-assistant type. I named her because she works with me alone, and none of the Commanders," said Mars, looking up towards the wall as she thought. "I made it personal, I guess. Sure I didn't want to call her GG22 all the time, but the main reason is I made it clear I cared about her."

WS79 was silent.

"It's like, when you meet someone new and important, you want to use their name to make it personal between you and them. It establishes a relationship." Finishing another few M&Ms, Mars looked back at WS79. "Geegee also did worse on her exams than you did. Bet you can imagine where that put her, considering where we put you?"

Slowly, WS79 lowered his head so that it hung in embarrassment. His stare at Mars sank downwards. He sighed quietly, clutching his bowl of M&Ms to himself, staring at them gently.

As silence permeated the room, Mas looked down past WS79, at the wall behind him, the wall in front of her, and slowly back to him. Her hands had shifted from resting on her knees to gripping the desk's edge firmly. She bit her lip, holding her words until WS79 had finished his moment.

"Don't disappear on me," said Mars, offering a gentle smile.

WS79 was still frozen in silence. In his lap, the bowl still rested, thumb reached over the glass edge into the bowl to sift through M&Ms, not picking any out, just sifting. Glum eyes peered out through his tired brow and directly into the bowl. His bangs sank down over his face, hiding any expression he had.

"What's wrong?" asked Mars.

No response.

"You can tell me, you know. I'm not evil. I want to listen. There's nothing wrong with being afraid, I won't report you, or even say anything about it. Really!"

Raising his head slightly, WS79 made eye contact with Mars through a veil of blue hair, looking back down to the bowl. The slow sifting movements through the bowl slowly ground to a halt. Eventually he just sat there with the bowl, staring at it, hands cupped around it.

"Do you even like M&Ms? I mean, that was my last bag, and I don't know when I'll be able to run to the store. It's going to be a pretty busy week I think."

WS79 promptly put set the bowl on the ledge of the desk, nudging the keyboard and skirt and gently waking the PC. His hands sank back into his lap, fingers lacing together in a tight ball.

"No no! It wasn't a warning," said Mars quickly, panicking to herself. She picked the bowl back up and offered it to WS79. "Here, hold out your hand--"

"No."

Mars raised an eyebrow, looking slightly taken aback. "N... No?"

"I... I guess I'm not hungry..."

"Not...?" Mars froze in place, looking down at the bowl in both outstretched arms. Slowly, she replaced it on the desk, drawing her arms back towards herself as her hands found their previous place gripping the desk where it was still warm. She sighed quietly. "Alright, I guess I should have asked in the first place."

"I should've spoken up."

"No! No, you're fine," smiled Mars. "Just because I'm in command doesn't mean I'm going to be right all the time. Jupiter may tell you otherwise, and certainly will, but don't let it get your head, because then it will get to hers. Just, respect authority, okay? It'll make everything easier for everyone. Saturn and I will appreciate it, even if Jupiter won't."

"But... But I should respect it... It's not right of me, well, otherwise... What would I be... As a grunt?"

Mars blinked, crossing her arms. "Well... It's in the job title, for sure anyway... Do you think we don't respect you as a... A grunt?"

WS79 rolled the chair to the side slightly, facing closer to the wall parallel to Mars' desk than the desk itself, staring up slightly at the door. He sighed, preparing his next words.

"I don't expect it. If I wanted to be here I might be trying to make a career out of it... No... Not that I don't want to be here... I just don't know anything about, well, space..." said WS79 quietly.

"You don't have to want to be here," said Mars. "I still need you to participate. We're paying you for something after all."

After a brief pause, WS79 turned his chair to Mars, head raised slightly but back still hunched over. He stared up at Mars, eventually meeting her gaze as it drifted to him uncomfortably.

"Can I... Can I ask something... Personal?" asked WS79.

"I... Well," sighed Mars. "Yeah. Of course. But I need you to answer my own questions when I ask you, okay?"

"C-Commander..." WS79 began quietly. "Do you want to be here?"

"Depends on the context, I guess. Do I enjoy what I do? Do I wake up all happy and whatnot? Does the thought of Team Galactic put a smile on my face when we do what we do?"

WS79 swallowed. "A-all of that... Y-yes..."

"Another thing," Mars said, almost choking on her words, "I mean, just as something I should clear up. We don't do space. Nothing we've ever done has anything to do with space. Our concern is, well, the world around us. We don't like what we see in it, so we try and fix it. It's simple, but it's also incredibly important."

WS79 nodded.

"So, to answer your question, yes. I do like being here, a lot actually."

Pausing again, WS79 cleared his throat and spoke again. "I-I like that..."

Mars smiled.

"So... But... How do you... 'Fix', it?"

"We fund plenty of activities out there and around towns, Sinnoh, and plenty of other regions. A lot of it is supporting the arts and humanities, of it all. Restoration and stuff like that. We did that restoration in the, uh, Ruins of Alph, in, uh, Johto. That was a couple of months ago, I think? I honestly didn't do much for that one. But we do plenty of that. A lot of we 'actually' do is research. It's a science, but it's a couple parts anthropology, and asking hard questions that don't often get answers. And sometimes, when we can't get answers for harder things, we need to examine ourselves. We need to ask ourselves why we can't answer them, and sometimes that's the answer we really needed to hear all along. Not everyone finds the time to look for the answers, even when they want to. They simply can't find the time, or worse, the will. Our job is to provide them. It's the heavy-weight of the job that drags us down like any other one, but it's not a physically or mentally demanding challenge. It's... It's an emotional weight... Almost, I guess, spiritual..."

"It... It sounds demanding..." breathed WS79, lost in thought.

"No job in the world like it," said Mars, offering a small smile. "Are you still having a hard time adjusting?"

The long pause in WS79's words filled the air. He looked up as though he wanted to say something, but could not find the words inside of himself.

"There's... There's just... S-so much... I don't understand at all..."

Body slouching, Mars rested on the arms behind her as her hands held the opposite lip of the desk behind her. A dull, thoughtless look encompassed her as she thought to herself quietly. "It took a long time for myself to get used to it all, believe me. It's not easy at all."

"Maybe... I guess the hard part is... I don't understand any of it... It seems so... Pointless... So contrived... I don't think it has any meaning..."

"Want in on a little secret?" asked Mars. "That's the point. The point is that there is no point."

WS79 blinked. "W-wh...?"

"Before, well, any of this, a long time ago, Pre-Prewar, there was a guy who was equally as upset as anybody here. He wanted change, but change that everyone could have. It was a time when Pokemon and people weren't so close, and there was still a lot of animosity there. Not a lot of people think about how long it took before people figured it out and embraced Pokemon training almost everywhere. Hundreds, thousands of years passed where people didn't know what humans were supposed to be. They lived in fear of, well, everything. It wasn't that long ago either... I mean, the Prewar is the longest period of anything in human history, even Pokemon history. Humans spent generations trying to figure it out, constructing massive empires and civilizations, searching the planet for answers, creating large bodies of work to singular questions, fighting to communicate and fighting to listen, fighting wars and leaving scars that never heal. Unhappiness was the rule, and no one knew why. People needed hope, so he invented a solution. The man wrote of something called the 'Ego-Death'. He recognized that all the things people created worked against itself, and in that people where their own worst enemies. It's a horrific situation, where getting rid of the thing that plagues people most is getting rid of people, but it isn't fictional. Wars fought, even Prewar wars, all for the purpose of removing traits and qualities of people that we can find in ourselves even if they aren't plain. Injustice breeding more injustice, hurt never resolving, all things that often don't make sense and will never make sense. So, the man was smart, and he realized the solution was to put to death our desires and wants, because they are tumors against ourselves and would do more harm than good. The 'Ego-Death' meant a story of human history featuring compromise and understanding. It doesn't solve suffering but it makes it ultimately worth our time. Something hard becomes something we work hard to solve, even if it never resolves. People need purpose, or we make designs against each other."

WS79 thought quietly. "Isn't that what Pokemon battling is supposed to be... Though? A solution to... That?" he asked.

"You would think," said Mars. "But, that's the catch, isn't it? Pokemon battling is pure conflict, and pure desire. It embraces everything humans do worst. It plays with fire where we can easily spill over into hurting one another. It's the joy of hurting one another."

"S-spilling over?"

"Right," said Mars. "Team Galactic is a natural response of the world. We see things like the recent events in the Hoenn region and we respond to it. Do you think people learn their lesson after we get wack-jobs like Team Magma and Team Aqua to control demigods? Do you think the fact that people have freewill means they know how to use it? You can have a mostly good population and all it takes is a few rotten apples to spoil the bunch."

WS79 looked over contemplatively, staring past Mars. He sat hunched over, on the edge of his seat, head resting on his hand and propped by his arm. It took thought for him to blink.

"Team Galactic's purpose in the world is to help it along. We shout in the streets the truths we've learned. We point to incidents like the Weather Cataclysm and say we're not ready. We point and say that we could have prevented this. We shout that this could be any of us. We point to all of human history, and say that we're on the right foot, but we need to know where we're going. We know where the slope is and where the gravity of human nature will drag us, but we have to know where we're placing the next step as much as we need to know why we are. Moral good is hard to maintain. The balance of the universe is fragile. We're not going down without a fight, we'll go down kicking and screaming, because that is what the universe deserves from us. We've been given so much as a species, but we can't live up to all the greatness of what we claim to be if we can't do so much as save ourselves."

I don't know why I've been thinking about Jupiter so much. I really wish I knew. Maybe not, actually.

A lot these journals are becoming about her. Not in that I devote entire journals to complaining about her, no, I haven't done that in a long time, but mostly because I don't have a clue what to think anymore. I really thought I'd seen it all a long time ago. It defeats the purpose of complaining where I don't know if I'm the irrational one now. Maybe that's my biggest complaint against her, that she does that to me, but even that's something I'm not sure she causes anymore.

It doesn't change the fact that she's in these journals, or that I think about her often, or that yesterday was the first time in a long time I'd had a conversation with Saturn about something other than her. Even then, her twisted spirit still hangs over every little syllable that comes out of my mouth. It hangs over me when I sit here, writing these journals. It's so upsetting.

Maybe it's bad that I wouldn't normally recognize it. It's a weird thing to be obsessed over but I wouldn't put it past myself to be obsessed with something so strange. It's happened before. I can think of a few posters in twelve-year-old Mars' bedroom, or the folded letters and photos in present-day-Mars' sock drawer. Obsession is healthy for almost anyone my age or before it. Even being a Galactic Commander, with all the 'prestige', and moreover, 'responsibilities' that follow such a title, it'd be totally normal to keep something on the forefront of my mind. I don't even think I'm justifying it. Saturn's gotten close to telling me about the MP3 player he keeps in his shoe, more implying it really, something very punishable for but equally important to him to keep. When Charon was hired, and Saturn asked me what we should do about the stash of brandy he found in the new-hire's desk, we only reported the syringes we found, because we both didn't have to tell each other how much our vices meant to us, because it's engrained in human nature. It's no surprise I couldn't tell you what Jupiter's vices are, and that I wouldn't reveal Cyrus' even if I knew, but I wouldn't put it past them to have their own.

Myself, I guess I can be a little more dubious. I like little things like trips to the beach, fresh coffee, a good movie, new clothes, but nothing huge or criminal. The biggest hobby/time-suck in my life right now is this journal. I'd only consider it a vice if I retreated to it, and I certainly do that more often than not.

Maybe our vices are telling about our character. Certainly Charon's reveals much about his age and state of mind, and Saturn revealing the things that he values most in life, but mine doesn't reveal much of anything. It's just a snapshot of my soul, only ever serving as a mirror when I'm the only one who looks at it. Any of my little pleasures can chalk me up for just how shallow I am.

If these journals truly are as soul-opening as I suspect or want them to be, then it reveals how much I think about Jupiter. They record when I have dreams about Jupiter's that aren't nightmares, but too dry to be dreamy. All I wish is to understand why she's so important, this nothing character to me.

When I know so plainly how much she does mean to me.

It reveals that I don't want to talk about why she means so much to me, or acknowledge it. At the same time, I want to deny a piece of my history, a piece of my character. It concerns me deeply.

But, to be fair, the more I think about it the more I’m reminded what parts of myself I had to deny in order to become closer to Team Galactic. I can easily remember Jupiter took up a large chunk of that denial and that’s where a lot of my understanding of Jupiter comes from. It’s not necessarily clear to everyone, however, even though it’s incredibly clear to me. The things that aren’t clear to me are the things when I realize everything I’ve said above about Jupiter are things I immediately picked up on when I first met her. They were things I knew before I joined before Team Galactic, hindsight be damned. They were things that I knew, and then used her as my gateway to where I am now, and while it wasn’t what gave me my own command, it was what seeded my interest in the things of Team Galactic, and more importantly gave birth to something I already knew I had before, something genetic and far reaching into the depths of what I truly believe, a notion conceived of pieces I’d had lying around for ages, a story that begins with my past and that Jupiter had picked up where I didn’t know where to begin.

I really thought picking this journal back up would give me some relief, where I could dump all the thoughts that’ve been plaguing me all day. Truth is, I don’t know if relief is something I can get from this topic. It’s like growing pains that always lead to more growing pains.

The other truth is, I didn’t need WS79 to remind me of this fact. It probably didn’t take much for him to ask it, but it took almost all of me to answer it.

Even when he asked.

“And... And it’s the same thing in the Johto region... Right?” WS79 asked, fidgeting quietly in his chair so that he sat on the edge, looking up at Mars, hands folded in his lap, looking over at the bowl of M&Ms briefly.

“The Johto region?” asked Mars, brow furrowing. “I don’t know too many things happening in the Johto region. Enlighten me.”

“Oh...” WS79 shrugged. His shoulders sank slowly with the rest of his body forward. His gaze sank forward, past Mars and down towards the desk. “N-Nothing... It... Well... It’s just a small town story...”

“Oh come on,” Mars smiled. “Spit it out. What happened in the Johto region?”

“Well... When... I was living there... The new champion managed to summon... Something ancient... Something that hadn’t been seen in thousands of years...  By anyone, ever... Just sketches and stuff... But it was a big deal. It was a large Pokemon, a Pokemon with massive wings and a loud, bird-like cry, like I’d never heard before... It was a cry, like... Bells... Loud, clanging, steeple bells, like in old towns... But also, kinda like, quiet, tiny bells, rattle-like chimes... Like... Like Winter Festival bells... And...”

WS79 froze. He stopped talking with a loud choke. As the silence went on, he slowly sank down in his chair, gazing down at the floor. The tips of his ears that poked above the blue tufts of hair turned bright red. Slowly, the heat from his ears spread to his cheeks and permeated them brightly.

Frowning, Mars leaned down, looking at WS79, trying to look beneath the sagging bangs as he faced the floor. “I like your story,” she said. “You’re not rambling on or anything. Please continue it for me? I really want to hear the rest of it.”

“I’ve... Told this story before... In many different ways, too... I don’t like telling it... Nobody... Nobody likes me telling it...”

“I like you telling it,” said Mars, reaching down and putting a hand on his knee. “You’re really good. You’ll do fine, I’m sure of it. It’s a safe place, you know.”

Slowly bringing his head up, WS79 faced Mars, cheeks flush with embarrassment. The feeling of Mars’ hand on his knee made his eyes flash down to it briefly. Eyes locked on Mars’, he took a deep breath, continuing his story, at the risk of making his cheeks even redder.

“I really need this, Commander... I have nowhere else to go... Nowhere else to turn... Team Galactic is my only future... Please don’t make me blow it... I know that you may not think I will, but I absolutely will... Please don’t make me do this... I can do it... I can be a... A grunt... I just need a chance...” WS79 whispered quietly. Both of his eyes began to water, squeezing up with the oncoming feeling of tears.

“Shhh...”

As he blinked away a small stream of tears, sniffling intensely, WS79 looked up at Mars with the most distraught look, despite fighting to hold it back.

“Finish the story. You can do it,” said Mars. “That’s an order.”

“T-The... The wingspan... The... The wings had... Plumy... Plumy feathers... Of every color of the rainbow... Every color I’d ever dreamed of or seen... All in one... All in one incredibly beautiful place... The Pokemon had them everywhere... All over his... All over it’s body... And... Well, it... Uh... When it flew... I saw it fly away, with the Champion on his... It’s.. Back... The trail it made... Rainbow... It was a rainbow... Almost not like a rainbow, it was so brilliant and colorful, so sharp... Every color on every feather of it’s wings, tail, and body all streaked the sky. It was so brilliant. You could see every color... You could see them all across the sky... Right before it flew away... Flew out and away over the horizon...”

When WS79 finished, he swallowed and took a breath, looking straight ahead. Where his fingers had knotted together the knuckles had turned white with intensity.

“It was a Legendary... I knew that much... They all talked around me about how it was in legends... How it had risen from the Bell Tower... The secret one... It had come to meet the Champion and the Champion had caught it... All it’s power and will it had given over to the Champion... Purely for his control... Not to be abused, with something so sacred given to someone... Barely older than me... It made that whole region... Well, it just made it special again... Magical, really... I... I didn’t know what to do with it when... Well... I had to.. Had to...”

“Give it up? Oh...” Mars interjecting, filling the gap between WS79’s intense breaths quickly. She slid off the desk, getting on one knee when WS79’s head drooped into his lap. The hands that tried to cover his crying eyes were stopped by Mars’, and once they had been laid to rest on the arm rests Mars reached up and held his cheeks with both hands, propping the face up so that Mars could see it. “Is... Was it your home, WS--? Was it? Are you from the Johto region?”

WS79 nodded. “Ecruteak City,” he sputtered out, before breaking down and crying.

Mars looked down in away from WS79 slowly, realization dawning on her rapidly. A dull stare filled her eyes, mouth opening at an incredibly slow pace to eventually chew on her lower lip as she thought. Her grip on his cheeks relaxed slowly, still propping the head up. The heel of her hand brushed away a stray bang from his eyes, giving her a brief excuse to look at him and think, but immediately looking back down and away from him as she thought.

After his story, I did a little research of my own. Ho-Oh is the one he was talking about, and everything in his story is pretty recent, actually. About four months ago. This Johtoan Champion he’s talking about, this kid, is still at it too. Who knows how long it’ll be before he’s trying our league? He’s already halfway through the one in Kanto. It showed up as soon as I punched it into the search box.

I didn’t research the Legendary bird because I didn’t believe him. I wasn’t lying when I wanted to hear his story either; he had me strung up, on the edge of my seat (or desk, I guess). I would have probably slapped him or gone to other drastic measures to get the rest of the story out of him. It was our connection. It was the only way I was going to save this thing between us. The only way I could keep him on as a grunt working for us. Plus, I really wanted to know.

I researched the bird because there was something I couldn’t interrogate WS79 over.  Even hours later, I can’t figure out why he told me that story, how he made that connection. It’s a pretty loose connection, but it’s an even looser connection to begin crying over. WS79 genuinely wanted to tell me something like the little bit of Prewar knowledge I shared, or the bit I lead on about Kyoto and Growler (I’m trusting I’ll fix this when I remember. Obviously it wasn’t as important to look up over Ho-Oh). This was his connection, this Legendary bird, owned by a kid, who did the right thing, even when he used it for his own personal gain, which evidently means curb-stomping the Kanto region gym leaders. I didn’t say it was the right thing, those are WS79’s words, and he really made that clear.

WS79 wasn’t crying because he was about to lose his job; the fact that I made it clear doesn’t matter. WS79 was crying because it meant something personal, putting his beliefs on the verbal chopping board. What did he believe? He believed that Gold, the Johtoan champion made a connection with Ho-Oh, something so personal and mutual that it was a kind of symbolic good for both the myths that mankind had and mankind itself.

This belief that using Legendaries for selfish gain and the mutual benefit of humans and Pokemon might be buried somewhere in there has nothing to do with my proposed idea, the Ego-Death, this thing that Team Galactic serves to be true. But the similar qualities of the two conflicting ideals is that neither WS79 or I invented them on the fly. We borrowed them from the two separate worlds we come from. Mine from Team Galactic and Team Galactic from it’s predacessors, and WS79’s from, well, the world. The world Team Galactic has divided itself from. The fiction.

There was a connection not being made, and clearly enough to be pointed out. Both WS79's point and mine were points that can never meet halfway for fairly obvious reasons. Team Galactic exists to be a separation from this worldview. We don't exist if it works.

But do we?

WS79 can clearly connect emotionally with everything the world in Johto holds, and I can too. Who am I to deny my own history? And who am I to ask WS79 to deny himself when I have such a hard time denying myself anyway?

No matter what happens in Team Galactic, what we say or stand for, we all have to say that this world shaped us. We're forged out of something impure, born of decisions made in weakness, born of knowledge learned to improve a body that won't heal, trying to finish the job, using the hands and feet that came with us in our impurities. This is something we may not all know, but when I see how it trickles down and pools at the bottom level, around the feet of grunts who support the structure, the only thing I see is how blind I've been to something immediately in front of me. Would you want to keep others in the dark?

This isn't the first time I've run into this. I've had dangerous encounters with this truth. Sometimes I encounter it again in situations like WS79, but others where I can't explain something in front of me, something I've done. The things WS79 has done out of emotion, whatever got him here, dropping him off on our doorstep as our thing to deal with, are all just a different way of seeing the same way I took. The things that scream at me when I'm justifying this is what kind of destiny led me here, because there are lots of days that feel exactly like WS79 does: someone not meant to be here. Any day spent here, any meeting with Cyrus and the Commanders, any meal in the lunch room or the Commander's Lounge, any training session, any mission, any Pokemon battle, any conversation, any journal entry, all reminds me that I'm the amateur. Sometimes I wonder what separates me from the grunts, and if I'm the only one wondering, or if I already know.

WS79 doesn't know it, but he knows something about me.

It's a farfetched conclusion, but if I'm right it means a couple of things. It means that Ho-Oh was a symbol of the Johto people, and that WS79 being one of the Johto people, had a meaning for Ho-Oh buried deep inside the core of his identity in culture, probably fresh in mind of anything he had thought of about Johto, and freshly torn, with a fresh wound at the top of these cultural memories. He's the baby Starly jumping from his mother's nest, watching the ground get too close.

He's learning something about home, something that we both now share as adults. Wounds from leaving home often leave marks that hurt a lot, even when they're the permanent parts of what memory does for us. Our memories can hurt us, keep us awake at night, but they comprise our very soul. We can live in our memories easily. Something gave our memories life, filling them with comfort and warmth or pain and sorrow, sometimes both, but when the thing that gave them life is removed, they stop growing. Home is one of those things. Home changes. You can't pick up where you left off. The cord is cut, and all that's left is a belly button and something finished, a baby we can choose to raise and give life of it's own until it too must leave, or let it die.

WS79 is right about a lot of things, in his mystery, and he really gave me a lot to think about. Too bad I can never admit it to him.

"There's a path through the forest, where the ground is always soft and mushy, very muddy, and the trees are really bright and healthy, so teal they're almost blue. It's a very thin path but it borders through a thick space of tall grass with all sorts of Pokemon in it. Honestly, I can't remember the forest's name, or even the route if there is one. The path splits and goes almost anywhere, to a couple of cities and towns, the beachhead and an area filled with caves. The grass stays the same, but the Pokemon don't, and it always fits the scene, even when it's different, but at the heart of the forest where the trees are the bluest, the bark almost a deep reddish purple color, the grass is the most interesting and pretty. The forest is always so... So wet... It makes the area very spongy, like your skin feels spongy, soaking up all that moisture that comes off the trees and grass. It's not a cold mist, but it's very refreshing. It puts little beads of water on the outside of your jacket. If your shoes have some kind of fabric or opening to the sock, even when you're off the muddy parts of the path and on the gravelly patches, the air alone will drench you, not sweat or anything, it's just the mist hangs on the ground and hovers nicely. The mist keeps the sky locked in a hazy morning gray,  a sky already barely visible through the dense trees, even on the brightest, bluest day, where you can't see the sky until mid-afternoon and then it returns in the morning. If you get up early enough, and you watch the sky carefully, it'll change right before your eyes, parting open in a magical sort of effect. It makes for incredible sunsets, where the sky turns deep pink and purple, making the trees black and the haze a halo-ish orange. Then the night sky is a cosmic kind of blue, with the brightest stars that side of the city... Heh, I guess I've given it away, that I've spent all day there a couple times... But who wouldn't? It changes for every season, giving something new but equally magical.... Timeless, even. The spring makes it almost neon green with all the life in the plants, and a deep pastel blue in the trees, with bright red soil filling all the spaces in between. Nothing a Pokemon doesn't compliment nicely in any season... In the winter seasons, there's always a Delibird migration happening, adding a nice bright red touch to the white, muted atmosphere of snow, or at least frost on the trees, depending on how cold it was... In the summer there's always too many bug-types, but I never minded, especially when I was watching the Ekans slither around my steps with a careful eye as not to step on them. And then the fall... Hehe... There's always something spectacular about the way everything stops in nature for fall. The trees never change of course, they stay that bluish color, but the ground certainly does. The tall grass had turned a lemon-green or full yellow, like an extension of the light brown soil... It's the only time the mist stops actually... Piles of leaves from sparse, rarer trees that aren't native to the forest, usually appear pretty quickly, before more blow in from other towns that connect along the paths. It's a great spot for leaf collecting, spotting different leaves and guessing which towns they're native to... When the winter and the possible snow passes, the leaves are still there, slowly turning into mud, being broken down by that mist... I love that mist so much... I'd take friends in just to see what it did to them, if it changed their mood... Sometimes, if they had really long or thick hair, it'd get all wet, sag and deflate... We'd go for long walks, filled with long meaningful conversations. Sometimes I'd write them down. Sometimes we'd circle back to them. Other times, most times, we just made new ones. We told stories whether we meant to or not. We were poets, philosophers, shooting off hot air and just being, well, kids. Sometimes adults. It took years before I stopped going, out of, just, being an adult and what not. I made exceptions, taking friends for walks when we had nothing to do... It was always really special when someone took me there just because they thought I'd like it... It was like a miraculous guarantee from the universe we would be friends... But I took plenty of trips solely for myself, too. There was a secluded piece of forest, where the path thinned and began to circle around something you couldn't see deep in the forest, wrapped around, looping, curling around like a helix towards a center. I like to think it was by design, by some mystic force or secret people. It wasn't a crazy notion either, considering the center. The light in the forest, coming down through the trees, always had some kind of sacred quality to it... Sacred feeling, I guess... The light would stream down from the trees, through the leaves, and... Sparkle? I said it was magical, but maybe it's the kid in me... But the light always landed on the clearing, and the shrine. The clearing around the shrine was a perfect circle, completely free of tall grass or loose leaves, like someone had gone in and swept it. The shrine was a tall, old wooden box with an A-frame roof on it, like a house or a hut, with an opening in the center. The wood was old and grayish, the tan wood color barely retaining, having grown deeply saturated with dark green growth seeping into the wood's color, aged and ancient, years of cold air and moisture making the browns muted and silvery, becoming bright brown again when the rains came in. There was a... Ummm... See, I've always wondered what the plaque was made of, because it was definitely some kind of metal. It had mostly rusted away into a muted, dark grayish blue-green color, but the original contents were... Silver? It was strange... It wasn't mounted with bolts or screws, though it seemed attached to the wood casing in front of it, nearly seamlessly jutting from the wood, unlike every single beam attached to it  that never seemed to be flush with it's own socket, sitting uncomfortably but never shifting... Around the opening in the center, the traces of old ornamental paint are barely visible, faded in their clay-like red colors, and would never be visible if it weren't for the light carvings that traced their path around what the front might have been when it was first built how many centuries ago. It must have been ancient. The words on the plaque... They didn't seem to mean anything, at least in English... They were some ancient language... I had tried to ask what it was but nobody had ever heard of the language... And it was hard to describe when it wasn't in English. It was a mystery, the whole thing existing itself... But it was my mystery... I had been there with people before but they didn't see it for what it was... The mystery of it... It was a good place to be alone when I needed it... It was a good reminder that some things couldn't be solved or weren't meant to be there... I don't want to say I prayed to it, but when it became something special to me I suppose that's what it was... Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever see it again, if I'll ever know what it meant, what the forest meant, anyway..."

WS79 blanched, realizing the story was over as he slowly looked up Mars. He was sitting forward, hands holding the lip of his seat, having stared into the ground, looking the most relaxed he had for the entire meeting. His mouth hung slightly agape. The rim around his eyes went slightly red as the heat rose in his face.

"The... The Ilex Forest...?" asked WS79, dumbfounded. "But... But where... You?"

"Yep," Mars smiled. "Goldenrod City."

"You... What...?"

Mars chuckled. "I guess it was pretty unfair to make it a surprise and all, but to be fair you never asked where I was from, nor did I say it. You have to ask these things sometimes. No, I'm not from Sinnoh, though I was born here. I've lived most of my life in Johto, Goldenrod City, to be exact."

"I... When did you leave...? Did you know about... About the legendary bird...? About the... The champion?" asked WS79. He had perked up, even scooting closer to Mars on the chair's wheels, hanging on her every word.

"No, I've never heard any of that. I actually meant that when I said I hadn't heard of anything in Johto. I mostly checked out when I left, honestly. That was about... Three, four years ago? I guess so."

"W-Why?" asked WS79.

Mars swallowed, avoiding eye contact. "Um... Well... Things got complicated at home... My mom had some work-related, well, issues... Our family financial 'situation' tanked... And, well... I decided to go to school in Eterna City... At a university, actually. Eterna Historic and Scientific Academy. I found a way to branch my field into some of the things that Team Galactic needed, and, well, it went okay from there."

WS79 nodded slowly. "I kinda guessed," he said. Beneath Mars' desk, where the drawer Mars opened for the bag of M&Ms and hadn't fully shut, the sliver of something forest green and ceramic could be seen through a small opening. "The mug had the 'Terrible Torterras' mascot on it..."

"Terry," Mars chuckled, "Terry the Terrible Torterras... Our stupid basketball team..."

"Um... What... What were you studying?"

"I started with Psychology... Did a few semesters of that, and then started mixing in some History classes. Kinda boring when they kick out the Prewar stuff and just leave the Postwar, very very recent Postwar stuff... I wasn't totally sure," said Mars. "Can I ask something, well, personal?"

WS79 nodded. "Yeah..."

"Why did you leave? What were you coming to go do?" asked Mars. "It sounds like you had big reasons. Leaving home is no easy task."

"I... I left because of a school, too..." WS79 spat out. The heat rose intensely in his cheeks, head lowering once again. "There's an... Um... A s-school... A university, too, actually..."

"What kind of university? Like, which one?"

Taking a deep breath, WS79 continued. "An art school... One in Hearthome City..."

"Is it Amity? Amity University?"

"Yeah..." muttered WS79.

"That's cool! Amity University is a great school! I know Saturn did some basic coursework there, like his first few semesters and general education stuff. I can't remember where he transferred for the life of me. But it's a great school!" said Mars, offering a warm smile.

"It is. It's the best around. People were talking about it all the way over in Johto... I didn't want to be a farmer, either... I was going to inherit it, sooner or later, and going out to be a trainer didn't seem all that... Fun... Or meaningful... So I left it all... Everything... I moved to Sinnoh... Hearthome... Got set up in an apartment with a few roommates... All people who went to the school. Nice people... Did a semester... Worked full-time to pay for it alone..." WS79 trailed off and froze.  His voice choked. "Didn't.... Didn't make it..."

"What do you mean, 'didn't make it'?" asked Mars.

"I... Well... I knew it had a good chance of... Failing... Crashing... But I knew I had to do it... It... It was... It was my dream... Nothing short of a dream... And I had to do it, or I'd never see... I mean... It'd just be a dream... So.... So... So irresponsible.... So irresponsible!" WS79's voice cracked, eyes closing. "Things just got too expensive... Too pointless... I couldn't do it..."

When Ho-Oh flew away with Gold on his back, something changed Johto.

When WS79 flew away with his entire life on his back, something changed him.

The two will never align again. The paths they on are diverged a long time ago. They're made of decisions, dreams that end too quickly and leave us hanging when we wake up.

There's something about sentiment that embodies WS79: it's separate. It's the Observer Effect, where the meaning we derive is self-evident, something only we can hold. We can hold it up and give it meaning, in my case name it, but what it means to us is special and unique to us. Only humans can tell you a sunset is beautiful, or how pretty a friendly face is, or even how grim an outlook is. The meaning isn't tangible, it's a part of the human experience. It's the Ilex Forest. It's Ho-Oh. For a lot of people, it's Gold, with a thousand different unique meanings under the same experience. It's embodied in grunts, where there value is that of a blank slate, assigned by us the Commanders.

"Come on, let's go for a walk," Mars smiled, reaching over and lifting her skirt off the keyboard, before sliding off the desk and onto her feet.

Wiping away his tears with his stained gray sleeve, WS79 looked up at Mars from his hunched position, sniffling as quietly as he could. "W... What...?"

Standing in front of the door, Mars unfurled the skirt from it's half fold, stretching it out between her two outstretched arms, holding it around her waist. The zipper on the skirt jingled gently as Mars fumbled for it. Reaching behind her back made her back arch backwards gently, producing a small grunt of irritation from her. Over her shoulder, Mars looked over at WS79, returning her smile. "A walk? Nothing crazy, I just want to show you something that might interest you. Besides, this office is getting a little boring, don't you think?"

"Um..."

A click signaled that the zipper had successfully found it's metal track under a hidden white flap, just below her utility belt. Mars breathed a sigh of relief, zipping the full circumference of her waist until the zipper stopped just short of where it began behind her. She zipped the two loose flaps together until the perfect conical shape of her white skirt held. When she finished, she went to the desk and picked up the tipped over COMM on her desk and clipped it around her wrist.

"Let's go. That's your new order. Go for a walk with your superior," said Mars. Her thumb activated the touchpad in the door's archway and opened the door.

The bright light of the hall that flooded into the office made the room perceptibly darker. Where WS79 sat behind the desk made the room darker. Stepping up from the chair, wiping his eyes one more time, WS79 peeked into the light, shielding his eyes from the sudden burst of light by holding his hand out in front of his eyes. He finally stood up fully beside Mars, squinting and looking over at her expectant expression from behind his hand.

"Come," said Mars.

Down the hall, where Mars followed around a corner to the left, pausing gently and taking a step back, looking over her shoulder. Seeing WS79 follow somewhat slowly brought a smile to her face. She visibly looked left and right down either end of the hall, then looked back down to WS79.

"A little faster please," chuckled Mars. "This is totally regulation, if you were wondering."

WS79 nodded, hastening his pace. Walking on the left side of the hall nearly brought his shoulder into another grunt's shoulder, before he quickly sidestepped in a kneejerk reaction, proceeding to clip another grunt's shoulder. He barely got out the first syllable of the apology before the grunt had moved along a little more. Then he looked back to Mars, cheeks lighting afire when he saw her stifle a giggle.

"What do you have to be afraid of? I mean, seriously? Do you forget who you're with, and where you're at of all places?" said Mars.

Alongside Mars, just barely finishing rounding the corner of the hall, WS79 stopped, exuding his nervous breaths and exchanging them for much calmer ones. He looked up at Mars and past her, then looked to his shifting feet as he stood beside her, waiting for her to continue.

"What do you think it means when I'm with you? Or, when you're with me, rather. Do you think it makes a difference?"

WS79 choked, trying to swallow a thought. A thin layer of sweat formed over his brow, not from speedwalking after Mars.

"It means," WS79 began, staring down the hall ahead of them as he gathered his words. "I mean... I guess I still don't understand..."

Mars raised an eyebrow. Her lip curled up into a twisted smirk as she fought to stifle a chuckle. She failed. A snort of laughter came through her nose, then through her mouth as she could no longer contain the laugh. Her body flinched, jolting forward briefly, holding her stomach in her hand.

Starting to walk down the hall, Mars turned back to WS79. "Heh..." she breathed. "Aren't you starting to wear out your welcome, hm?"

WS79's face turned bright red. "I... I..."

"Don't you get it?" asked Mars. Looking back over her shoulder at WS79 as she continued to walk, she made eye contact with him, eyes flaring with interest. The smirk she wore faded into a reassuring smile. "The place isn't defined by the place, it's defined by the people in it. The people define the place, right?"

WS79 followed slowly. "I guess..."

Mars stopped in the center of the hallway, turning back to him. "Think?"

"This... This is the gym we started in... Before..." WS79 said.

Mars' fingers tapped through various menu items on the touchpad built into the doorway. Her gaze shifted over to WS79, smiling gently, returning her gaze back to the touchpad as she entered her passcode. "See?" she said. "You're figuring your way around this place pretty quickly. You'll have it down in no time."

When she reached the release key, the touchpad released an electronic whine of confirmation. A hydraulic piston fired deep inside the wall, sliding the door open as it disappeared into the wall. The door opened into darkness. A sliver of the gray rubber-matted floor appeared in the light. Around the corner, a dim ray of light from the touchpad lit on the other side of the doorway. Overhead of the doorway, a small red light lit, bathing the small space of floor in front of the doorway in a hazy red glow.

Following Mars' nod, WS79 stepped over the door track into the dark room, walking to the edge of the red light. He stared up to the ceiling, barely making out the silhouettes of metal supports and heavy halogen lights. His wandering steps quickly took him back into the center of the light, where he paused, looking to Mars.

Mars finished keying something into the touchpad, locking the screen so that it only said 'In Use'. She then stepped into the dark room and activated the touchpad, sealing the sliding door and locking them in the dark room.

A low hum encompassed the room, combined with the clicking sounds of lights overhead. It made WS79 flinch in the room, as he stared up and searched the dark surroundings.

"The lights in here usually take awhile to turn themselves on," said Mars. "It'll be just a moment."

"Yeah..."

Mars looked across at WS79 in the short space between themselves, standing close in the small area the red backup lights shone on. The red glow outlined their features in sharp red outlines, giving them a mystic aura. Again, she offered a slight smile to cheer him up, but instead changed her focus to her utility belt. She reached down to the array of Pokeballs displayed on her hip, shrouded in darkness from the shadow of her raised arm. Her fingers fumbled blindly through the Pokeballs, counting under her breath, until she finally plucked one from the plastic holder with a snap.

"I like it," said WS79 quietly.

"Hm?" asked Mars. Her focus was in the Pokeball in her hand, resting upright in her palms as she rotated it, looking for the number she had written in marker on the surface.

"The red light. I like it."

"It's just the emergencies," said Mars. "Nothing special. There's supposed to be one across the gym, but I think the batteries probably died."

"It really compliments your eyes," said WS79.

Mars looked up from the Pokeball, blinking. Looking at WS79 made her pause. It took her moments before she remembered to smile. "Thank you, WS79. It makes your hair look less, well, blue."

"But, that's what I like about your eyes. They're... Bright... And... And fiery. More red light, like with your skin turning red, and the whole of your eye turning red... Well... It makes it special when you can see the red... Just like your hair..."

Mars chuckled. In her hand she pulled out a small scanner, the size of a salt shaker, with a white plastic case that matched her COMM. The light blinked yellow on the case. She touched the black glass tip to the red shell surface of the Pokeball. A beep resounded from a tiny speaker inside. She flipped her wrist around so that the COMM screen faced her when it lit. Tiny white console writing appeared on the screen with stats about the Pokemon inside. "I guess," she said. "When everything's red and you don't notice it, doesn't it make me look normal? A little less intimidating, maybe?"

WS79 smiled. "I wouldn't say that. It... It makes you wonder. Wonder if what it means to behave like... Mars... And like a Commander... And what it means... What it means to look like Mars... What does it mean? It's... It's a silly example..."

"If you can blame it on looking like a party girl, stupid attitude and stupid funny ways of saying things? I ask those questions everyday. I know I'm not the only one," said Mars.

"No... No... It's not that... That's not what I mean... At all..." said WS79. "They are... The way they are... They're not subjective... For once it is... You can't change people... People are... They are... The way they are... Just... Like anything we accept...?"

Mars chuckled. "I wouldn't put it past you, the artist, to figure out the weirdest way around to it. Good job."

Another tri-tone beep emitted from the scanner. Mars clicked a small switch on the backside and pocketed the scanner on her utility belt. She powered off her COMM with a small key on the side. Reaching her hand out, with the Pokeball in the center of her hand, she offered the Pokeball to WS79.

"You'll need this," said Mars.

The lights slowly faded on, filling the light with a dark gray atmosphere, barely lighting anything. It brought color to WS79's complexion, giving his hair a slight purple tint. He looked down at the Pokeball, slowly scooping it up into his hands. He cupped it with his hands and stared at it.

"Okay..." said WS79. As soon as he had the words out of his mouth, he choked, feeling hands on his arms and a force guiding him, suddenly landing one foot after the other as he walked.

"Come," said Mars, "we're going to redo your battle test."

The lights came on a little more. A subtle lighting change occured, but kept the majority of the gym in total darkness.

WS79 stumbled over his own feet as Mars guided him. He still would have kept stumbling forward if Mars didn't yank him back and stop him. When he stopped, he looked down at his feet, where they stood on a white line printed onto the mat. Feeling the grip on his arms release gently, WS79 lifted his hands together so that he could see the Pokeball, as he stared at it with an intense curiosity.

Finished setting WS79 where he was, Mars walked a few paces in front of him, turning to stand in front of him. Mars mockingly brought up her hands together, making a landscape photo frame with her fingers, squinting with one eye closed and looking through the frame.

"Looks good, but you need a better battle stance. I'm not about to fight some weakling. I want to actually get into this, because you have way more potential than that," said Mars.

"W-Well..." sputtered WS79. "I... I don't want to get my hopes up..."

"It's totally okay to get your hopes up," Mars interrupted, chuckling mid-sentence. "I want you to imagine a thousand fans screaming your name, 'WS79'! 'WS79'! All at the top of their lungs, together at once, because they all agree that something amazing is about to happen, every last one in that packed out arena. They all came to see you. An announcer, announcing that you, 'WS79', is in the corner, just as the fans had hoped, about to go up against the big, bad, Commander Mars!"

"That's... That's not... Well, okay... But... No one... No one would... Chant... 'WS79'... Even if I'm good."

"Don't be ridiculous. I can't live in a fantasy world where you tell me what I can and cannot do. That's ridiculous," said Mars. "Though, that's a good point. No one would chant 'WS79'... It's too, um, technical.... It lacks that human quality. It's not interesting, or intimidating or even nice on the ears. Just like no one would chant 'GG72'. They might, however, chant 'Geegee'."

"They... They might..."

"I let Geegee name herself, because she was one of mine... I say it's up to you. You are one of mine, after all. I think you can imagine what's off the table, as well as some kind of copycat. I'm not going to call you 'Wessie'," said Mars.

"Um... Wow... There's... Well.. Lots to think about..."

"Mmhmm," nodded Mars. She grabbed her own Pokeball, taking a few steps back. "Don't take too much time, I want to get into this soon. I'm pretty excited."

The lights in the room rose just a little more, before dimming sharply. Mars looked up at the lights briefly and the darkened room around her, and then back down at her feet, seeing herself step past just the white line that made up the traditional Pokeball outline in the center of the gym, just short of the outlined Galactic 'G' that centered the Pokeball. In her hand, she tossed the Pokeball up and down, watching the Pokeball and then looking back over to WS79.

"Any ideas?" asked Mars, looking back up at the lights briefly.

"I... I did a seminar on Roman Mythology... I-It was one of my first art courses... At the Hearthome school... And... I did a series on some of the lesser... Deities..."

"Yeah? Interesting.... I'm fairly familiar with some of the main myths. Being named 'Mars' does that to you."

As he stared into his own reflection on the Pokeball in his hands, WS79 paused. He looked up at Mars, took a deep breath, and continued. "How... How about 'Io'...?"

"'Io'?"

"Yeah... Io... He was a servant... A servant of Mars... I believe..." said WS79. "I didn't... Didn't do well... Actually... It's just a guess... I like the name, though... I'd like it if I could..."

Mars shushed WS79 and smiled. "I have my doubts. Sounds like you did pretty well in the course. I really like that name. Say no more," she said. "Io it is."

Io smiled.

"I think Io is a wonderful name," said a voice behind Mars. "Very well done for yourself, Io. You have a potential here with us, with Team Galactic, something to be proud of."

"Oh no," said Mars under her breath. She looked up from the nervous hole she was boring in the floor with her gaze, catching a glimpse of Io's nervous glance behind Mars' shoulder, staring long enough to see Io look back at her as for what to do. Mars gave herself away with a blank look, containing no answers.

Mars turned slowly, head looking as far over her shoulder as she could before taking another step, carefully choosing her steps as the dark figure came into the corner of her vision. A cold breath escaped her as her eyes slowly traced the distance over the floor to where the figure was, and finally looking up to her barely visible, leering silhouette. The Pokeball in her hand slowly made it's way into the utility holster and clipped. A pair of sweaty palms rubbed together, then balled up into fists that held out to either side of her. She swallowed and prepared for the worst.

The lights in the gym flickered up to full brightness on their own.

Jupiter stood at the far end of the gym, with the toes of her boots on the opposite line of battle. The stoic look on her face slowly faded to a smirk. Purple painted lips drew to the corners of her mouth in an ugly, vicious smile. Her poised eyebrows raised in doubt over half-lidded, mascara thick eyes. Her stance held her tall, though her one leg with the exposed thigh piece slouched dramatically to the side. Both of her arms had crossed together, slowly unfolding.

"So nice of you to join us, Io," smiled Jupiter, walking towards the center of the gym. "We're honored, the two of us."

"Hey there Jupiter. It's been a bit," said Mars.

"Mars..." Io spat out, before choking on his own thoughts. The sight of Mars quickly shushing him made him pale.

"Hello Mars, it's very nice to see you again," said Jupiter. "This is some very high quality work you've done here today. Very good acting. Did you go through puberty over the weekend?"

"W-What... What's going on...?" whispered Io.

"Io," Mars hissed. "Just... Hang on for a moment. Okay?"

"No Mars. I actually need you to do me a favor. 'A solid', as you might say," said Jupiter. She had reached the opposite edge of the Pokeball etching Mars was standing on, pausing in her steps. She then chose to walk the circumference, counterclockwise, towards Mars at a slow pace, arms swinging in a taunting fashion with each step. "I need you, you Mars, to explain what you and I had planned this entire time. What this whole little episode was about. This special, strange, miraculous instance in time that happened, where we, or I, the audience, have been dying for an explanation."

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Really," said Mars. "This isn't funny."

Jupiter had reached the end of the Pokeball's circumference, standing besides Mars. "The act is up, Mars. You need to tell us all what happened, because I know that's what you love to do, telling stories."

A hand landed on Mars' shoulder. Before she could protest, a hard yank on her shoulder turned her to face Io. A second hand landed on her shoulder, both fingers clawing deep into her shoulder and neck muscles and massaging the tissue. Warm breath spread over Mars' cheek, neck and ear. The heat of another person slowly emanated from a not-so-mysterious source beside her. Mars didn't look to the corner of her eye, seeing the lavender hair in her vision to confirm her suspicion, instead choosing to stare straight ahead at Io.

"And it looks like we have a new audience member joining us. Go on, tell us all the truth, Mars," whispered Jupiter in Mars' ear. "For me. For Io."

Mars stared straight ahead into Io's eyes as they stared back at her. Her jaw had locked, lips firmly pressed against themselves and clenched, unable to make a sound. The fists she had curled threatened to make deep marks into the heels of her hand.

"Really?" asked Jupiter, feigning surprise. "Nothing? Not even a peep?"

Fingernails poised like claws, Jupiter slowly brought her hand around to Mars' chin, tickling the skin just where her neck turned into her head with the faintest touch.

"There really is nothing I can get you to say? Not a noise or protest?" smirked Jupiter.

"Get away from me."

"Oh? She speaks?" Jupiter stopped, fingernail poised just below Mars' neck. Without warning, she grabbed Mars' chin, fingers pressing deep into Mars' cheeks, shaking her head gently. "You are just so committed to lying to this young boy, aren't you?" She put on her best, scratchy, high-pitched voice in mocking imitation of Mars' voice. "It's too much fun! Way too much fun! I can't stop! It's soooo interesting!"

Mars' head turned slightly, despite Jupiter's grip on her chin, staring intensely into Jupiter's flashy purple eyes. Despite the seething look of rage and confusion Mars wore, Jupiter's smile only widened.

"No? You won't do the explaining? You're going to make me do it?" smiled Jupiter. Getting even closer to Mars, her voice dropped. "Well good," she hissed.

Just as Mars opened her mouth to protest, she felt the grip Jupiter had on her jaw forcefully release, pushed back hard, causing Mars to stumbled back a few steps. As she massaged her jaw with one hand, her eyes tracked Jupiter carefully as Jupiter strode lightly forward to Io, silent, carefully pacing around her with several steps.

"Io," Jupiter began with a wide smile, lined with polished white teeth. "I bet you have a lot of questions and even more that I cannot answer. Questions that Mars can answer, but she doesn't want to. Why, you ask? Isn't that a hard question. Well, it's because she 'doesn't know'," said Jupiter, throwing up air quotes with her hands. "I'd say she's in denial but that's a far false premise. After all, I believe her. She really doesn't know. And you say that's crazy? There's a reason, and that's because she is. You're right, Io, trust your instincts. So very right."

Io's mouth had fell open, jammed full of words and thoughts, making nothing but unintelligible sounds and making his lips wobble. His eyes darted back and forth, between watching Mars and then watching Jupiter trace steps around himself. Eventually, he settled on staring down at his feet and the floor, trying to close his quavering lips.

Just as Io drooped his head, Jupiter reached under Io's chin, raising it ever so slightly so that it faced her, making eye contact with him. The wide, taunting smile she had on faded down to a more demure and subtle one, curling just as she saw him. Her own head tilted down, giving him full view of the bright purple colors that wheeled inside her eyes, open wide and interested in Io. They slowly scanned all the details on his face, noting the messed up blue bangs, the lack of color in his cheeks, the quavering lips, the searching eyes, the shaking posture he maintained. Gently releasing her grip on his chin, watching to make sure it held, Jupiter stroked his hair, straightening the mess of his bangs.

"It's not your fault, Io. None of this is," said Jupiter with a comforting, motherly tone in her voice. "That's why deception is so hard."

"Jupiter, stop," said Mars. "That's not what happened. You're screwing everything up."

"Calm down Mars," said Jupiter. Her loving gaze never broke from Io. "Let me finish."

"You have no business--"

"Mars," said Jupiter, raising her voice.

Mars froze in place. Her nervous pacing had brought her closer to Jupiter, where she could still see what was transpiring, but still kept her a good distance from her and Io. Arms crossed, she had brought her hand up to her face, teething on the edge of her fingernails lightly.

"What did Mars tell you?" asked Jupiter.

Barely opening his mouth, Io tried speaking. "I... Uh... M-Mars... Mars... She... Uh..."

"Wait, don't tell me," said Jupiter. Sarcasm slightly permeated her voice. "Did she tell you were special, despite failing the new hire exams? Did she tell you that everyone had a special talent that held the team together? Did she tell you she was from the same town in Sinnoh as you?"

"No," Io said, raising his voice. "She's... She's from Johto, just like me."

"Did she?" Jupiter raised her voice, looking over her shoulder at Mars. "Those are rare these days, are they not? What was it this time? Blackthorn? Azalea? Cherrygrove?"

"I... I don't understand... What... What are... Are you...?"

"What city did she say she was from?" repeated Jupiter.

"Goldenrod... Goldenrod City..." said Io.

"Goldenrod? My my is she getting sloppy. No backstory either, huh? Or did she recycle that stupid Ilex Forest story? That one that was on the TV the other night? She's done that one a few times. I suppose it's the things that they don't tell you. Mars would have a hard time connecting if she told you she was some trailer trash from Solaceon Town... Or was it Celestic Town?" she looked over her shoulder to Mars, winking. "I suppose any old Robert Frost poem might have tied the whole thing down at that point."

Io's body shivered wordlessly.

"As much as I hate to admit it, she is good. A very good storyteller. Unstoppable," said Jupiter. "I almost have no words. Almost. Having had to run others through the same talk has given myself a little bit of practice."

"O-Others?" Io whispered.

"What 'others'?" asked Mars. She took a step forward towards Jupiter and Io, until Jupiter reached a hand out and stopped her in her tracks.

"My my, she's really strung you up in some lie, hasn't she? I would have thought if she had run her mouth out long enough she might have run out of gas. No, she's getting better, stronger--"

"Jupiter stop."

Jupiter turned towards Mars, holding her hand out to her again, this time pointing a Pokeball release at her. The smile on her face disappeared in an instant, replaced with blind rage. The knuckles around the Pokeball whited. She stopped brushing Io's hair, stepping back from him to face her full body towards Mars. Stepping forward swung her hip out slightly to show the rest of her Pokemon party on her utility belt. Her hand rested on the first ball in her party, brandishing them in plain view of Mars. The other hand with the Pokeball hung rested down by her hips.

"Take another step and I will incapacitate you, if that's what it takes to have a conversation with this young man," said Jupiter."

"All the better," replied Mars quickly. "I don't want another second of this crazyness."

"Oh calm down Mars, just look at your party. I know you have three, as do I, but you've already given one to Io, to finish this showy 'battle test' of yours. Even if the tables were turned, your three against my two wouldn't change the tide of battle. I suggest you just sit back and close your lips, Commander, while I finish this conversation."

The fury in Mars' face slowly built. "You know that's not why I'm going to engage you," she said.

Jupiter chuckled. "I'd even excuse that silly, awful reason for my own amusement."

"I'm just afraid of what you'd do if I beat you," said Mars.

"Don't tell me that's an option," smiled Jupiter. "I already know you've given WS79 your best Pokemon. Without Purugly you stand almost no chance."

Mars stared at Jupiter coldly.

A slow realization came to Jupiter. Her smile spread across her face, eyes flaring with interest. She took a deep, excited breath, letting out a small scoff of surprise and amusement. Dropping her jaw, Jupiter feigned surprise. "Oh, Commander Mars, you cannot be serious! You didn't give Io your Purugly? You gutted him? Oh my stars, Mars, that's tragic, even for you."

Mars' gaze sank towards the floor slowly. She swallowed.

"Io, do you see it now?" said Jupiter, stepping back from Mars but still watching her carefully. The Pokeball in her hand clipped into her utility belt and freed both her hands. "She left you out to dry! Mars was never looking out for you. She was going to break down your self esteem into nothing, so that you would need her. That's how she got miss Geegee to follow her to the ends of the earth, the premise of being fired constantly hanging over your head like some mad god with catastrophic intent."

"That.... That's not true... It... Can't be..." said Io. His shivering turned violent. Hot red blush had taken over his face. "It... There's no way..."

Jupiter turned her gaze onto Io. The thin smile widened into another full, teeth-lined grin. Slowly, she began walking towards Io, walking very slowly, watching him carefully. "I can respect a man of faith and self-confidence. Would you like to test that theory? Your faith in Mars?" said Jupiter. The feigned look of surprise returned. She stopped in her tracks, clapping her hands together. "Oh, Io! You've given me the best idea. How about we play a little game?"

Io watched nervously.

"A game..." Jupiter mused aloud. A purple painted fingernail drummed on her lip as she thought, pacing in looping invisible paths that brought her closer and closer to Io. "A game, where you test your faith in Mars. A game, with high stakes," she grinned. "A game with action, and excitement. A Pokemon battle, of course! We are in the correct venue, after all. And those high stakes... It could be who you report to! You could choose Mars, go along with her plan. This made up, fictional, gambit of a plan that Mars has, solely promised by the concept that Mars is telling the truth and has your best, personal interests at heart. Of course, you could go with me instead, that's an option. I won't promise that your best interests are at the core of my heart, which makes me certainly sound like a bad guy, but I would certainly argue that the best things I have to offer, where my own heart lies, with the team, is not based on personal promises, but on teamwork and a collective understanding, collective goals and the like. I won't teach you comfort, I will teach you success. Success with the team, of course, but success has many, many applications. I will not give you the easy way, I will give you the strength to find the right way, and that strength will come through suffering. So, whatever you believe, that will come through in battle, just as any good battle should. That is my first lesson to you. You may choose to make it your last, but that is based on a simple question."

In Io's hands, the Pokeball had almost been forgotten. When he saw Jupiter staring at it, and then looked over at Mars and saw her staring at it as well, he looked at it himself, contemplating it. His thumbs had wrapped over the top of it. He slowly pulled them off of the top of the Pokeball, revealing it to the air.

"Io, I will make you a deal," said Jupiter. From her utility belt, she unclipped all three Pokeballs and set two of them on the floor, rolling them to the far corner of the gym. The one she held in her hand she stared at as well, holding it out so that Io could see it. "This is my primary Pokemon, Skuntank. It is level 43, Dark and Poison Type combination, exceptionally powerful for its species. She knows Night Slash, Poison Jab, Flamethrower, and SmokeScreen." Jupiter pointed to the Pokeball in Io's hand. "Mars has given you one of her own. Now, Mars has claimed your best interests are at heart. She was going to battle you to raise your confidence, if I'm not mistaken, and there were going to be two outcomes,win or lose. If you won, your confidence surely would be raised, not out of some falsehood either; battling takes a certain level of skill that Mars has for certain. However, let us consider what would happen if you lost. You would have lost to Mars, your superior, who controls your destiny here at Team Galactic. Would Mars hold it over your head? Why, of course not! She has nothing to hold over your head! Well... Except for a failed exam... No, two, actually... I can't imagine that looking too good. If Mars sees that as good, for whatever reason she has, she is clearly the only one who sees that. You might be at Mars' mercy, forever. She might hold it over your head for ages."

Io's stare into the Pokeball in his hand never broke, expressionless and lost in thought.

"So, do you think Mars has any reason to have given you the edge in battle? After all, if she didn't give you her main Pokemon, would she have surely used it. She would have beaten you in an instant, and I don't think she would have given you a chance to call it unfair," finished Jupiter.

"She... She... She..." started Io.

Jupiter pressed on. "Do you think this is unfair? I already said I was going to use my main Pokemon, did I not? I would say it is, for certain. In fact, I'll certainly give you the opportunity to. First, however, I'd like to tell you about my deal. Are you interested?"

Io was silent.

"I will trade you, for this battle only," said Jupiter. "You can have a guaranteed advantage by having Skuntank. If Mars gave you an absolute 'stinker' of a Pokemon, I have little success of winning. If she gave you something excellent, the planes of battle may be much more even but you still have the slight advantage that I don't know Purugly's moveset, and that Skuntank is familiar with my battle style, and I am not familiar with yours. Skuntank could lead the charge against me easily and I be defenseless with all my strategies in her hands."

"Io," said Mars. "Please, you have to--"

"To what?" Jupiter shot back. "Trust that Io will make the decision that suits your interests best? The only person you've sabotaged is yourself. Take that selfish inclination somewhere else, Commander. Io is independent, he can slide out from under your thumb for air if he would like to."

"Mars... It's okay..." said Io. "I... I have faith in you..."

"Oh Io, your faith in your Commander is making me woozy with emotion. If half my own had your patriotism I might have started my own team. Do you not see the deal I'm offering to you? You can keep your Commander Mars but have the edge over her! Think of the weeks, months, years Mars might spend trying to win back your favor, not to spread juicy gossip with a Commander to back those words of yours up. I have nothing to hold against you, even if you beat me I know how to respect a worthy opponent when I meet one. How rare is it to have a grunt with the respect of two Commanders? You could get half of the command staff to give testimony, virtually handing you a Commander role in a matter of months."

"I said.... I said I have faith in Mars. I've made my decision..."

"But are you sure?" asked Jupiter.

"I said I've made my decision..."

The silence in the room hit Mars, breaking her train of thought. As she looked up to Jupiter, catching the wry smirk she wore. Her eyes followed Jupiter as she walked to the opposite corner of the arena. Mars swallowed hard, looking down at her feet. Slowly, her face buried into her own hand, with her other arm crossed.

Jupiter stepped onto the white line, turning on her heel to face Io. Her Pokeball remained poised at the side, ready to toss. "Your faith is astounding, Io. I'm very impressed. Still, I'm somewhat disappointed."

Io swallowed. "R-Ready?" he asked.

"Of course! On three, ready?" said Jupiter.

Io nodded.

"One."

Io clenched his Pokeball, pulling his arm back into a tight curl. His right foot stepped back, poised and supporting the majority of his weight as he leaned back.

"Two."

Mars covered her face with both her hands.

"Three."

At once, both Pokeballs flew high into the air, carrying a distinct electronic whine with them, expanding quickly and lighting up. Both exploded into twin balls of bright blue light, still falling to the ground at an increasing rate until they slammed into the gym's floor.

On Jupiter's side, Skuntank landed on all four, thin paws, hoisting it's massive, barrel-shaped body up on spindly white legs. The large plumy tail unfurled, fluffing up the oily feather-like fur by batting itself around until it had expanded to almost the side of her body, before resting atop her back, conforming and flipping her tail up at the tip to reveal her tiny cat-like head. Dark purple fur slicked into points of greasy fur intermingled with cream fur under her belly and her legs, with a long stripe of cream fur on the underside of her tail. A pair of beady, mostly white eyes poked out from pink fleshy eyelids, scanning the gym with tiny slits for pupils. Her tiny mouth opened and filled her with breath. Twin tiny fangs poked out beneath two thick cream-colored jowls. A gristly roar emitted from her as she dug her claws into the rubber mat floor.

On Io's side, Purugly slammed into the floor, bellowing a high-pitched screech.

Mars burst into laughter, dropping the hands that hid her smile. She laughed harder and harder, hunching over and clutching her stomach, hitting high-pitched squeals with her voice, face turning redder and redder progressively. Taking a deep breath as the laughter faded into silence, she finished with a snort. Her eyes had turned wet and watery. She put her hand over her mouth as she tried to stop.

"That was too good... Hehehe..." said Mars. "You really thought I was gonna be that selfish? The only out-there selfish move I pulled was giving myself a challenge! You knew I would have--"

"Skuntank, Night Slash now!" Jupiter shouted at the top of her lungs.

Skuntank leaned back sharply, her body lowered over her hind legs and her forelegs fully extended. A set of claws shot out on both paws. The momentum sent her sliding back, dragging her claws through the rubber surface of the floor as she braked herself. She pounced forward, breaking into a full sprint down the gym.

Slowly focusing back on the scene at hand, Mars had barely enough time to react, seeing Skuntank was speeding directly towards Purugly at lightning speed and already halfway across the gym. She ran towards Io in a panic, tripping over feet that weren't prepared to run.

"Slash, Purugly!" Mars shouted.

It was too late. Skuntank's weight slammed into Purugly and used her for braking until they hit the back wall together. Her forelegs leaped up over Purugly's back, giving her a dominant position over her, leaning into her and pinning her. Just as Purugly recovered from the shock of what happened, Skuntank raised her foreleg high, charging it with a dark aura and plunging it down into Purugly's back. The gristly roar returned, as Skuntank raked her claws through Purugly, claws pulsating intensely with the dark aura. No gore came from the claws, though it left deep claw marks, streaks of the dark aura that streamed like liquid from the open 'wounds'.

Though she howled with pain, Purugly slowly regained her focus, opening an eye that she had shut in pain to look up at Skuntank. Her little fangs gritted with pain, feeling the claws embedded deep in her back. She extended her own claws through the fat toes of her paw and swung it hard into Skuntank's torso. Her hind leg rolled into her chest and sprung out against Skuntank's, sending Skuntank tumbling back from her position over Purugly.

Skuntank roared with annoyance, slowly recovering her footing and standing up. The roar faded into a guttural growl as she stared down Purugly. Her stance lowered into a battle stance, prepared to leap at any second.

Mars had instinctively grabbed Io by the shoulders, having backed him away from the tangled mess Skuntank and Purugly had got into and put herself between the two Pokemon and him. Her breathing had turned intense, watching the two Pokemon stalk each other, trying to wrap her head around what was happening.

"Purugly, if she moves--" Mars began.

"You sly devil, Mars," breathed Jupiter. "I swear you get better with age. You truly did get me."

Mars smirked. "I know."

"Well, I believe I did take the first move. I suppose I should give Purugly one," said Jupiter.

"My pleasure. Purugly, I need--" Mars began again.

"It's not your battle, Mars."

A beat of silence passed as Mars realized her mistake. Her eyes grew wide, slowly pausing. Her jaw dropped. The fists her hands had curled into slowly released. Slowly, she scanned the room.

Purugly, though her fur remained somewhat messy from the attack, stood tall. With a body shaped like a house-cat with the physique of a gorilla, she stood on a set of four, trunk-like legs, with high and wide shoulders and equally wide hips, a torso of white cottony fluff, and a thin, long, curly, spring-like tail. A wide, round head with large and tall purple-tipped pointed ears barely rose above her main body. Thick black whiskers sprung out from her face. Two bright golden cat eyes gleamed out beneath heavy whitish purple eyelids. Her entire body was striped gray and white in zebra-like swirls. An incredibly tiny black nose crowned a tiny cat mouth.

Io stared up at Mars with a confused look. His face shifted between hope and fear constantly. When he looked at the battle, the scene of Purugly, Skuntank and Jupiter, he looked fearful. When he looked at Mars, he looked hopeful.

Though Mars returned Io's hopeful gaze with a smile, her her head turned slowly to face Jupiter, smile slowly fading, even as she tried faking it. She rested a hand on Io's shoulder outside her line of sight and squeezed it somewhat therapeutically.

Jupiter's face was stony, looking down at Mars and Io from where she stood. With arms crossed high, her fingers drummed impatiently on her arm. The cocky smile was gone. Bright purple eyes reflected the gym's florescent greenish light, staring with intent at Mars, concealed in darkness beneath her stoic brow, free of bags or any kind of exhaustion, perfectly focused and laser-locked. Instead of legs tight and locked together as she had when she walked into the gym, Jupiter splayed them slightly in a battle stance, prepared to spring and react to any action.

"I'm getting impatient, Mars," said Jupiter. "If you cannot keep yourself out of the battle then remove yourself."

Snapping out of her daydream-like state, Mars looked away from Jupiter. The hand on Io's shoulder slowly slipped off and away to her side, curling into the familiar fist. She took a step back slowly. One step after the other, she found herself watching herself move away from Io, watching as the hope slipped away in his expression. Focusing on Io put her back into the daydream state, and she suddenly found her back slamming into the back wall, though she didn't snap out of the state, instead sliding along the wall towards the door, and stopping in the doorway.

Jupiter smiled. "Sorry we were so rudely interrupted, Io. But, who am I to apologize for others? Who am I when I just interrupted the lesson you two were about to have?"

Io nodded. "Right... Ready..."

Raising an eyebrow, Jupiter unfolded her arms, holding them out beside her hips, taking a step back. Her gaze shifted to her feet as she rocked back and forth. Her upper lip bulged as she licked her front teeth, thinking to herself. "Are you ready for your first lesson?"

"Yes..."

"Good," Jupiter replied. She raised an arm sharply skyward. "Skuntank, Night Slash." Her arm dropped in an arc, pointing all four fingers forward.

Just as before, Skuntank reared back onto her hindlegs and sprung forward, scuttling onto her front paws and sprinting at full speed down the gym's length.

A thundering pounding sound came from the matted floor, building towards Io increasingly. Io did nothing, watching with wide eyes at Skuntank racing at high speeds, and looking over to Purugly as she stood proud, watching Skuntank get closer and closer. His mouth opened but gave no commands, choosing instead to let his lips blubber as he watched.

"Are you watching? No commands? Really?" Jupiter taunted. "Are you still waiting for the lesson to begin?"

Mars did nothing but watch, expressionlessly, until she closed her eyes.

"Let me be the first to tell you, Io. The lesson has already begun. This is the lesson."

Skuntank didn't stop to brake. Instead, she lowered her head, burying it deep within the fluff of Purugly's chest between her front legs, raising it sharply when she made contact. Her body turned slightly as she did so, putting a slight spin on Purugly's tumbling form and her own skidding path. The length of Skuntank's body made a sharp quarter turn, sliding with the length of her body facing forward, her side out. A hind paw sank its claws deep into the rubber of the floor, bringing her head and front speeding rapidly around into Purugly, who had just landed on her side. Skuntank's shoulders slammed into Purugly's chest, adding extra force to when Purugly slammed into the wall. Her front claws stopped her this time, giving her a chance to quickly backpedal from Purugly as she fell limp to the ground. With a good few feet from Purugly, Skuntank returned to standing, facing Purugly, looking over her shoulder briefly to Jupiter and back at the battle at hand.

Jupiter walked from her side quickly, fists balled, gritting her teeth.

"Lesson one!" she shouted. "I will never help you."

Io looked over briefly from Purugly's half unconscious form to Jupiter, and winced when Jupiter immediately snapped her fingers.

"Io, Io, Io. We never look away from a battle!" Jupiter shouted. "Flamethrower, Skuntank!"

Though her body was half unconscious and battle weary, Purugly had a violent reaction when she heard the words. Her shoulders rose, trying to get her paws on the ground to pull herself upright but stopping short when her chest turned, letting out a quiet yelp of pain when she moved her side and her injured ribs. Instead, she continued to lie there, raising a brief paw to defend herself against Skuntank when Skuntank leaped to attack.

"GGRAAWWWWW!!" Skuntank roared. She leapt up with her forelegs, lifting her body high onto her rear legs, opening her gaping jaws, giving Purugly's panicked golden eyes full view of the fiery glow that built inside. A fiery stream poured out violently in thick globs of flame, spreading over Purugly's screeching body.

"Nothing?" said Jupiter incredulously. "Nothing at all? You saw, did you not? Purugly's panic? That whine of terror, knowing what was coming and then the sudden realization that nothing would save her? How she flinched in pain, fighting for the chance to get up and defend herself, and then realizing it was in vain? And you just watched?"

Io looked down at Purugly as the parts of her body not obscured by bright red flames, the hind paws and thin coiled tail, the ears that poked high above the flames, all writhing helplessly in pain. The heat from where he stood had become so intense it singed his own cheeks, though he didn't move. The red glow from Purugly encompassed his vision and turned everything around him into that familiar red outline. A silhouette appeared beside him, the silhouette of Jupiter. He didn't turn to look at her.

"Nothing... Even still," Jupiter continued. "What does that say, hm? What kind of lesson do you think we can take away?"

Io swallowed.

Jupiter smiled, looking up past Io to where Mars stood. "Funny, even Mars had something to say, some kind of answer. She wasn't doing as bad as you're doing though. Maybe we broke you faster."

Beneath her lips, Mars gritted her teeth, accidentally feigning a pitiful wide-lipped smile. She tried to open her eyes to look back at Jupiter with the look of scorn she had, but opening her eyes brought another large load of tears streaming down her cheeks.

Jupiter held her hand beside her head, shifting her gaze back down to Io. Stepping even closer, putting the height difference of herself and Io in plain sight, Jupiter half dropped down to one knee, bringing herself eye level with Io. One of her hands found the shoulder that Mars had put her hand on. It brought Io's attention slightly over to her hand, and though he kept his eye contact away from Jupiter,  it brought a smile to Jupiter, who continued to stare at his eyes in an attempt for eye contact.

"When I tell Skuntank to stop, I want you to answer a question of mine. A question that will determine the course of this battle, and whether or not I continue to torture Purugly," said Jupiter at a near whisper.

Chapter 1: The Red Chain, Part 1

Journal Entry #213

June 13th, 2008

Commander Mars

I hate what happened in Celestic Town.

Mars's fingers curled around a Diet Cherry Coke, immediately releasing her grip when the frigid surface touched her fingertips. She scowled under her breath, before her bored frown returned, staring ahead at the wall, lost in thought. Sitting on an aluminum bench, far away from any of the grunts in the room, she sat hunched over her tray of food uncomfortably. The black latex material clinging to her thighs had become stretched and irritated as she tried to adjust her sitting position and avoid the sharp edges of the bench. Though she tried to adjust her legs as ladylike and discretely as possible, the umbrella of her own white skirt draped over her thighs and rear and made reaching herself impossible. She sat there, stewing in her own thoughts and frustration, looking down with an indifferent expression at her food, and then back to the wall. Drumming her fingers on the table, she took a sip of her Coke, sleeve stretched over her palms and fingers to keep the condensation from her skin, and then looked down at her report.

I would have done it literally any other way if given the choice. What happened to Jupiter was terrible. What Cyrus had to overcome to finish the job was terrible. What I did was inexcusable.

I don't get to change it, and that's the bottom line. I've never been a fan of bottom lines anyway.

What gets me most of all is nothing I've already said. It's the fact that nobody believes me.

"Well, it's not quite there, but it's something," said Saturn, setting his own tray down on the opposite side of the aluminum picnic table. His focus was on a clipboard in his hand, with several papers flipped over the metal clip atop the plastic board base. As soon as he set the clipboard down with a triumphant, dramatic clatter, he looked up at Mars and offered a grin with no teeth.

Looking up at Saturn, Mars quickly picked up her spork and stuck it in her mashed potatoes, quickly stirring the pile on her tray. She pretended not to care, though she kept looking up from her mashed potatoes up to Saturn. Her irritation got the better of her, and she looked up, setting the spork aside.

Saturn is usually so cool about things. He's my go-to guy for these things. When I can't think, even aloud, he helps me along. Without mincing words, I know I can't always trust my judgment on things. I'm very good at thinking things are what they aren't. I know I'm hard to read, even for myself, but these things just come out. These things happen uncontrollably. Of course I regret them, and I don't always want to make sense of them. Saturn can do that very well.

So when he comes in and gives me his opinion, and it's exactly what I was thinking, it really disturbs me. I mean really.

Saturn swung his leg over the picnic bench and sat down. He immediately hunched over as to get close to Mars, flipping the clipboard around to face Mars, pointing to a highlighted spot with his pen. "See here? Those are positive signs of radiation on the far north sector of Mount Coronet. The Spear Pillar has to be there. Can you believe this? This is the closest we've gotten, ever!" said Saturn. He stuck his own fork in his mashed potatoes, mashing in a small flat square of butter into the mix, looking up at Mars as he did so. He paused. "Um, Mars? Your spork?"

Mars looked down at her spork, lifting it out of the mashed potatoes. Thick gray globs stuck onto the plastic wrap that covered the spork. Her head drooped as she scowled into her chest, avoiding eye contact with Saturn or any of the grunts that filled the room. Taking a deep breath she returned to the focus of the conversation, setting aside the wrapped spork and folding her hands together.

A wandering look to the side of her tray brought a glob of mashed potatoes to Mars' attention. It sat atop a half filled form. She quickly wiped it up while Saturn read his clipboard. She quickly reread what she had written beneath the fresh stain to make sure it was legible.

"Saturn," she began. "Why are you here, exactly?"

Saturn delicately swallowed his mouthful of mashed potatoes, quickly wiping his lips with a napkin. He pointed to his clipboard with his spork. "I needed to tell you about this."

"I was the one who got kicked out of the Commander's Lounge, not you," said Mars. She leaned closer to her tray. "Cyrus would be annoyed," she hissed.

"I can forgive you in private, Commander. I don't outrank you." Saturn flipped the clipboard around to face him, continuing to read the material on the pages behind the one he had just shown.

And when I said he came in, I mean he really came in. Saturn's not even supposed to be in the same room as me. That's an entrance right there. Cyrus always says something about the empathic transfer of emotion and that it will corrupt his team. One bad apple will spoil the whole thing. I think it's cool, but not necessarily practical. Even if it is kinda dumb, I wouldn't ever violate it. That's what made me panic about Saturn, right from the start. We mutually respect Cyrus at an equally high level. That's an entrance. It's out of character. Already, something is afoot.

He doesn't even have to speak. I can guess Saturn's either really angry or really cares. If he knows what's really going on, maybe he can speak into it. Maybe he's here to make sure I learn my lesson. I have the best of faith in his abilities now and always.

"You certainly don't outrank Cyrus. Don't override his decisions."

Saturn flipped his clipboard over. Slowly, he closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.

"I understand what we're doing is important. I understand work comes first, even if it means foregoing your private lunch area," said Mars. After many attempts at tearing open the clear plastic side of the spork's wrapper, she finally tried the side covered in mashed potatoes. The wrapper on her spork came undone with a hard tug. She tossed the wrapper to the side. When she realized she had paused, she continued, resuming stirring her mashed potatoes. "I understand we have reason to celebrate. I also think that Cyrus has specific designs on the world, and it starts with us. It starts with us obeying, hm?"

Saturn spread his arms, metaphorically highlighting the picnic table. "This is a creative solution to a problem that interferes with carrying out Cyrus's will," he stressed. "My only opinion is that I have no opinion."

Mars frowned, looking deep into her mashed potatoes. The mess that covered her fingertips from getting the wrapper off made her scowl. When she went to lick her fingers, out of the corner of her eye she caught some grunts pointing and laughing. She looked them dead in the eye and gave them a rude hand gesture below where Saturn could see on the table.

"Why are you so upset? I know Jupiter wouldn't have made a point to come see you," said Saturn.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"You can say you didn't want to see her, but deep down I know you're disappointed she didn't want to see you," said Saturn, "even if it was to taunt you."

Mars was silent, staring at Saturn.

"I agreed to make personal sacrifices, not team sacrifices," Saturn continued. "This wasn't my choice, it was what was needed."

I didn't expect that.

"This wasn't my choice either," huffed Mars, looking down at her food. She quickly scooped up a glob of mashed potatoes onto her spork and ate it.

"Was it? What did you think was happening when you went up against Jupiter at Solaceon Town? Fate?"

"Celestic Town," said Mars. As she spoke she wiped her mouth and quickly took another bite to maintain her focus on her food.

The one thing I love about Saturn is he can keep a cool head about things, no matter what. This was the exception. I know he still has a cool head, but he never raises his voice. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at anything he does from now on. It was different from the start. Everything is new from now on. I can't expect the expected, and maybe he can't either. Maybe I've blown the cover off something horrible he thinks I could never be capable of. Worst of all, maybe he knew I was capable of this. Maybe he expected me to reel it in like I always do. Even worse, maybe he knew I couldn't handle it. He's taking it personally. See? I can't expect anything anymore.

"Did Cyrus just intervene because he wanted to?"

Mars shook her head, looking down. "He wanted to see to it personally anyway."

"That's why he sent you. You are his personal touch. That was your job," Saturn raised his voice.

Mars was silent.

Saturn sighed, returning his voice to normal. "Look, I didn't want to tell you about finding a radiation signal on Mt. Coronet because I knew you'd be all over it."

"No..." said Mars. Though her arms were crossed, she stared at Saturn attentively, waiting for him to continue.

"Of course not. And I'm not an idiot, it's just not your thing," said Saturn. "If I told you we were that much closer to the goal maybe you would a little more, but that's not the point, and I accept and expect that. Again, I'm not an idiot. I don't want your false enthusiasm, and I'd hope you respect me enough to not give it to me, and so far you've done a pretty good job with that."

"I respect you, a lot," said Mars, arms crossed even tighter. Her eyes had shifted down to staring into her lap. "I do."

Saturn smiled briefly. He leaned in, arms folded on the table. "I appreciate that a lot," he said. Even though Mars continued to look down, arms crossed and her focus down into her lap, Saturn looked at her with a serious expression and tried to make eye contact. "I came here because I wanted you to know something. Something you may have thought of, or maybe not, but something I want to at least affirm for you, and it's that time is running out. Things are moving quickly, much faster than I think any of us anticipated. We're ahead of schedule. That's definitely a good thing. That also means that things are going to change quite a bit. Things already have changed, and I think you've noticed. The main thing is, things aren't going to be the same, success or failure. There's a point of no return and we're past it."

Mars looked up at Saturn.

"There's no satisfying answer to it, but I'm worried," said Saturn. "I don't want to think I'm alone in that. I want to treasure these moments. Because, success or failure, we need each other. We do. These are too important times in our lives. I worry because, as selfish as it sounds, I know the gap is closing. Our lives are going to change forever--"

"Success or failure," Mars finished.

"Right. Does it bother you as much as it bothers me that we'll stop growing? The deed will be done? The people we know ourselves to be will be gone? And the thing we want most is to have that stripped of ourselves? An existence removed from the challenges and flaws that shaped us into the people we are? We would be the last people to have known that?"

Saturn paused.

"It scares me. This is the last opportunity I'll ever have to do any of that. It'll be over, and I'll have no more to learn. No more goals to go for. That would be the end. And you know what? I think Cyrus knew that, all along. He's not that much older than us, but I see him and I see something old and tired, used, unfazed by anything new. The vision of something brand new that no one else can see, it doesn't ring in as crazy to any of us. There's nothing to discuss, and it's not filled by a void. And I think, if I can believe he  doesn't see doubts in his plan, if his vision is as perfect as we've made it out to be, a lack of growth does not mean death as it always has."

The clipboard facing Saturn flipped around once more, facing Mars. Saturn flipped the pages to face the one he had originally shown her. He pointed to the highlighted section of the report.

"This confirms it, just as he said. That's why it's important. It's a way. If he isn't worried about it, I think I have no reason to worry either."

Saturn flipped the clipboard to face him. Slowly, he pulled out the highlighted page he had just shown Mars. When it caught on the staple, Saturn tugged even harder and tore it loose. Between the two of them, where they could plainly see, Saturn crumpled the paper up into a ball.

Mars' eyes widened.

"So," Saturn continued. "Do I think I'm going to get in trouble with Cyrus? Disobeying a direct order for you to work this out alone? Taking part in your punishment, when I don't have any reason to experience it? No, absolutely not. I don't think it even matters. Cyrus doesn't care about growth. It doesn't fit into his plan. To him, it's simply aesthetic. It's what emotions are, the concept of spirit, and the notion of meaning: absolutely unnecessary. Growth is a bi-product of struggle, learning a bi-product of how to deal with those struggles. If Cyrus was crazy, he wouldn't have a way. Failure doesn't change this. If we can get rid of struggles, we don't have to grow. He's doing us a favor, removing our struggles, because then we become transcendent of our flaws. Growth truly becomes aesthetic. Cyrus' punishment to you was the isolation, not the potential 'infection'. It was to you, not as you. He knows your emotions are your strength and he wants you to set them aside in this situation to deal with your problems rationally. The issue isn't where you're supposed to grow or not grow, that's not the issue at all."

"It's about breaking trust. This is okay because I'm building it," finished Saturn.

The spork dropped from Mars's hands, bouncing off the edge of the plastic lunch tray, scuttling across the aluminum surface of the lunch table and finally clattering on the smooth concrete floors. Mars was too deep in thought to think about it, looking blankly at the top of her tray without really knowing it. Idly, she wiped her mouth on her napkin.

It's a sign that I'm alone with my thoughts, once again. This time it scares me. My own voice rattling in my head, always and forever, never ceasing as long as I can have the notion of wanting something. It's the only reason I can think to write in here any more. This dumb log has been hanging over my head for the past several months incessantly. It was supposed to end as I would have in Floaroma Town, with my mission at the Valley Windworks ending and no one reading my reports. Even though it's true, it's unfair to say my mission was cut short, especially when we got all the power transferred to the batteries before the kid stopped me. I don't believe it was a failure either. Though Charon was there to collect some of the bounty (so to speak) much later in the mission, I don't believe it was a team effort. That was myself and my greatest success. Sure no one believed me when I told them I was beat by a kid (very sorrily, in all honesty, though it was close), it was the first time we butted heads, but not the last or even the best. She's pitted herself against every commander I've met/care about and won. While it bothers me that they beat them so easily, that she beat me so quickly at the Windworks with only a single badge, it's not the single thing that bothered me. I know it could easily have kept me up for nights without ever resolving, but it doesn't stick with me as much as everything else about it. Truth be told, I was looking forward to a couple months at the Windworks. It was the first time I'd ever been trusted with anything at Team Galactic. I wanted it to mean something. I'm fine that it was successful, that's as arguably as important as the first encounter with the kid, or even meeting Commander Charon for the first time. It just didn't mean anything. I treasured that, for the first time, I had something that set me aside from the grunts, beyond telling them what to do. I drove my Purugly hard. I refused to let the possibility of failure enter into the situation, even when it was hypothetical. It meant something to me.

Maybe that's why I still write in this log, the last remaining piece of that mission. I've still got Purugly, my skirt, some of the responsibilities managing the power I obtained, even the little electrical burns on my knuckles and down my left arm from hooking up the machine for the first time. The log means the most to me. When I write in it, I feel a little like the mission is still going on. That little feeling of wonder is something I haven't felt in forever. Truth is, I did feel it. I know where to place that feeling in time, because I can't place it anywhere else but the times where I first wrote in it. That's the first time I felt important in this whole thing, and that's how I want it to be.

"Am I making sense at all? Mars?" asked Saturn, leaning down to look at Mars as she stared down into her tray. "I know that was a lot. I didn't want to overwhelm you, really. I just wanted to help you understand. If it didn't help I'm sorry."

It's been a long time since I've been in fundamental school, though not as long as my colleagues remind me it was (they may be right, too), but I still remember a few things. I was never a fantastic writer. When it came to Math, Science, or even Sports or History, I was still worse than what I did in English, and that still wasn't an incredible period of my education. I actually applied in English. None of the other subjects were as interesting, and I wasn't allowed to take art. I cared about English. Cyrus taught me about how emotionally driven I was from the start, and while hindsight is 20/20, it seems so clear that English is where I should have done the best to begin with. I don't know that Jupiter, Saturn, or even Charon had logs when they had their mission, and sometimes I wonder if I was special to have a log when I went to the Windworks. I'm certainly not known for my writing, and I know I shouldn't be for sure, but I know it's the one thing I get into. Cyrus knows a thing or two about emotions, I suppose that's why he hates them so, and he knows what I am. I can write down every little nonsensical detail that I think matters to me and be passionate about it. Again, it's been a long time since high school, but I do remember a few things, and I do know what a soliloquy is. That's what I'd like to think this whole thing is, one giant recap of what I think matters. A soliloquy is all sentiment. It genuinely is worthless if you can't feel a thing or care. That's what makes something like Shakespeare so much drier than anything written prewar. You can't read Shakespeare if you don't care. I'd never admit I liked Shakespeare because that's just not true. I can appreciate certain things, though. Soliloquy is interesting and deep, exposing the intricate layers of a story that's otherwise boring and uninteresting. Human beings think, and pages of stories don't, but the more real a human being in a story becomes the more someone can relate and understand. If I'm doing anything at all, it's relating, because sometimes people need to understand. Sometimes I need to understand.

"Well, if I'm getting through to you at all, I just want you to know this," said Saturn. "Time is running out. Time is running out to grow, to learn, and to be human. Someday all that's going to change and it's coming very soon. Think of it as a bucket list

That's the other thing about soliloquy: it's not real. None of it is real. This log is real, and that's what tears it away from being soliloquy. As interesting as I can think soliloquy is, it's not real, and it's not real because it's impractical. There is absolutely no reason for soliloquy to exist, and that's why it doesn't in the real world. It adds depth where there is none. Soliloquy is a technique for making things real and understandable where they aren't, and that doesn't need to be here.

But it does.

The table rattled. Mars winced as she felt a sharp pain in her leg, causing her to look down immediately. She had been standing up. Her thighs embedded into a sharp edge of the table where the aluminum curled around into a faux edge. Sighing, she swung her leg over the bench and finished standing up.

She brushed a stray red hair from her bangs back into perfect unison, while she thought of something snappy to say back to Saturn. Nothing.

"Going to inspect the grunts?" asked Saturn. He hadn't looked up from his clipboard.

Mars stared at him for a moment, then sighed and looked at a small group of grunts reenacting her incident with the spork; particularly the last part of it. "Yeah," she said. "I'll get to it."

It's my worst fear, and I'm living it. It's a fiction. Nothing about what is happening is real. I wear a latex skirt and go-go boots to work everyday. My coworkers are lavender-haired mobsters and bluenettes with hair shaped like cat-ears. My boss hasn't smiled for his entire life, and that's the first thing that bothers me above him playing god. Our entire careers are built around myths people wrote about thousands of years ago, pre-prewar, about things we can't prove and that no one knows or cares about. We're fighting a war against the human race and nature itself.

And maybe that's the strangest thing about the Windworks. The thing that let me down most of all when I didn't need it. I never received another task like the Windworks again. I was so successful with the short month I was at the Windworks that I was never needed again, and I hardly did anything. I gave a performance that should have resulted in my promotion and I did hardly anything to achieve it. It's a cosmic insult, knowing that my best work and human potential was so brief, and that I know it will never appear again if we succeed. What I did at the Windworks, my 'best' work? I held a sweatshop in a bunch of scientist's own labs. I overworked them for days on minimal food, water, and sleep. I embodied human cruelty to save their race, like prisoners of war liberating themselves. I kicked a six-year-old daughter out, away from her dad as I overworked him and his colleagues without promise of hope, a daughter who I didn't have to try to relate to. This was all I was good for. Maybe it's not shocking I was beat by a kid. Maybe I let it happen.

Then what happened at Celestic Town? Nothing I know compared to what I did at the Windworks. I got frustrated with Commander Jupiter for little to no reason (and reasons I've already written about in my last log). I don't really care what happened, but I'm mad that I got in trouble. I had only read about people who put human rights violations above traitorous actions until I joined Team Galactic. I know Commander Jupiter has a special place in her heart for disloyalty, I know I poked it, and I know that I was kicked out of the Commander's Break Room because of it.

"If you can, we need someone to review new recruits and set up interviews and organize training sessions," said Saturn. "Do you think you can handle it?"

Mars nodded, adjusting her skirt. "Absolutely. Will that be all?"

Looking up from his clipboard, Saturn swallowed what he was chewing. "Yes, Commander... You're aware you don't take orders from me, right?"

Maybe this is necessary, like ripping a bandage off.

Maybe I'm oversimplifying it.

Maybe the human race deserves to be treated like prisoners of war, like slaves, if that's the thing that saves itself.

Maybe this is where I start believing in higher good.

Maybe I can't have faith in humans.

"Might as well," said Mars.

The moment I start to justify any of this, is when this becomes a fiction. This shouldn't be happening, but it is. Logic has been replaced by something far scarier, and I've just never noticed.

This is the last thing I have to say about soliloquy, and hopefully it'll stop being an issue. I don't care that this is fiction, and I certainly don't care that I got in trouble over Celestic Town, especially when I already know I'm in the wrong and I deserve it. I'm bothered by the fact that Windworks didn't matter. I never got what I deserved from the Windworks, and I can feel it coming soon. Even if it's remotely equal to what I deserve for the Windworks, it'll be big, and I know that Team Galactic probably deserves it. They'll bear the blunt force of this.

This is the fiction. This is where the greatest moments of my life happened, and I don't know why.

This is where the fiction ended. I started it, and I finished it.

I'm proud to say this is all wrong. The only thing I regret is not saying something sooner.

Soliloquy is a descriptive tool. It's a means to an end. I've already said that I need it to work through what I think, but I'm no longer alone in this. Someone else needs to read this. Someone else needs to understand what happened.

I can't be alone, especially when I don't know what happened to Commander Jupiter, Saturn, Charon, or even Cyrus. I don't even know what happened to Team Galactic. All I know is that the fiction ended, and Team Galactic entered the real world. I don't know where it is any more. I need help finding it.

This log is my last log. The last log I will ever make for Team Galactic. Appropriately, it will chronicle it's collapse, because that's all that's left now.

And I still need to make sense of it for myself.

--Commander Mars

The exit was only a short walk away. Mars managed to think for all of it.