Note: I'd like to say, before you read this, that this will probably turn out extremely horribly, because I find both Mars and Maylene two of the hardest characters to write. I am taking everything I know completely from the game-verse, so if either don't match up with whatever the anime has made them out to be; too bad. I see Mars as someone who, despite her love for her job, isn't all too friendly with her coworkers, and Maylene as someone who is tough beyond the surface, so both aspects will be touched on here.

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Mutiny

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"Surely everything is going fine." Mars would say to no one in particular as she walked the quiet upstairs halls of the Galactic Veilstone Building. She had never been one to particularly believe in karma, or the concept of things that go around would come around, but when she tripped, stumbled for a moment, and finally fell on the linoleum floor just seconds after her comment was made, she had a tough time believing that it was her shoes that had done her in. She frowned just momentarily, wanting any excuse to tell herself that she wasn't going to be judged for her belief in the Galactics.

Her excuse would not come, however, so she shook her head as if to release the evil spirits that were both clogging her brain with silly superstitions and causing her to trip. When she took another step forward, her new shoes squeaked in accordance. Never one for dress shoes: she wore sneakers every day of her life, but sneakers grew dirty and used fast, especially in her line of work, and so they had recently been replaced.

Rubber met the floor as she took another step, and it caused her to grate her teeth in near-frustration when she noticed that – certainly – her shoes had not been squeaking against the floor before she had made her comment and fallen flat on her face. But she refused to take insanity into account, and blamed her annoyance on a lack of sleep she knew she wasn't suffering from.

It was nearing noon, or so the ticking hands of the old-fashioned analog clock told her as it hung mounted from the wall, placed so very near the corner of where the left side met the next wall that it wasn't all too hard to be read while you were walking around the curve, before you even faced it. Some tidbit towards Cyrus' obvious impulses when it came to certain things; she imagined. She would never have the guts to say this to his face, however, so if it was ever brought up as the subject of conversation, the conversation would obviously be laced with a thick anger and rage, sarcasm almost dripping from the edges of words. That is to say; it would be a very long time, if ever, before she would be filled with enough fury to make such a blow at his strange fixations.

Any strange fixation of Cyrus', however, would not stay on Mars' mind for long, because she was soon meandering down a hallway she had never seen before, yet was very familiar with. The hallway led to an elevator that only went up and down for one floor, and only for one person. The elevator, quite simply, led to the main quarters where Cyrus did all his scheming, planning, and all about evil; his office, to put it lightly.

Saturn had been up there once, and he came out of it with a horrified look in his eyes, and he refused to talk about it for several days. When Jupiter had finally cracked some information out of him, all he would say was that it was quite potentially the worst place he had ever been. So Mars and all the other Galactic members – even the lowest of the grunts – knew that it was a place they would surely never visit.

Until today, however, when Cyrus was gone on a search for the Drifloon at the Valley Windworks, planning on capturing it to examine its finer points. Mars was in no doubt when she guessed that his plan would all but soon begin to unfold and her place guarding the Windworks when Cyrus returned was already plotted. Jupiter, as well, knew her position inside the Eterna Headquarters was all but unimportant, and she took a great pride in her recent advancement into a commander.

Her pride – almost to the extent of arrogance – was one of the two things that made Mars quite sick of Jupiter, the second being her ungodly purple hair, for surely no one could enjoy looking at what seemed to be a Muk making love to her head. Mars' own red hair was, of course, dyed, but at least she had the sense to use a normal color that did not – despite a few comments from both Saturn and Jupiter – make her hair seem on fire at all.

She advanced cautiously towards the elevator, because it was a poison to the mind, leading to one of the most unholy places ever to be found in Sinnoh, according to Saturn. Not like this was a surprise to Mars, of course, because every organization has some sort of slightly crazed wacko, and she already knew that Cyrus was quite quirky in some aspects.

A buzzer went off before she could get any closer to the doors to the elevator, and Jupiter's voice buzzed over the intercom, demanding she arrive at the interrogation room immediately.

--

Mars was not surprised to Saturn and Jupiter already there when she arrived, but she was indeed surprised to find that Cyrus had already returned and was waiting near the one-way-window. "Hello, Cyrus." She gave all the common courtesies among commanders, and they were returned in brevity, all four of them struggling through the motions, wanting to avoid a break down in a crucial moment nearing their plan's initiation.

The girl inside the room was young, there was no doubt about that, but not a teenager, and after a few moments, Mars was able to place her as Maylene – Veilstone's Gym Leader. "What's she doing here?"

"Go in and find out." Cyrus said tensely, and Mars knew that it was not a smart idea to disobey an order when he was so bothered.

"Hello, Maylene," she greeted cheerfully, pulling on a ruse she had been told to perfect for moments like these. "How are you today? Why exactly are you interested in Team Galactic all of a sudden?"

"Drop the act. I don't think that any of you three," Maylene began, speaking her mind into the conversation, "make that four, I forgot the crazy boss. There's always a crazy boss. Anyway, I don't think that any of you four realize that what you're spending so much time working together on and cherishing your time with each other," – sarcasm, Mars could tell – "is right. It's all horribly, horribly, incorrect, wrong, and faulty!"

"Listen," Mars sneered, her lips pursing as soon as she started, one hand making a fist on the table in front of her. She glared into Maylene's eyes, but the girl – who really couldn't have been a day over twenty-one, now that she paid attention, and oh how jealous and old it made Mars feel inside – held no fear in her stare. She was obviously stronger, both mentally and physically, than she looked. "Despite the fact that I work with them, Saturn and Jupiter are no where near close enough to be called my friends. We're simply three people working under one person for the same goal. And speaking of Cyrus; he gets increasingly intolerable with every passing day."

Behind the one-way-glass mirror into the interrogation room, all three – Cyrus, Saturn, and Jupiter – quirked one eyebrow into the air as they watched themselves be insulted by their coworker.

"And about what you said about being them and their goals not being right," Mars continued, holding the steely glare at Maylene, who had yet to flinch, "I don't care what you think isn't right. They may not be right, but they certainly aren't wrong – far from it. We here in Team Galactic all work towards one purpose, and whether that purpose is right makes no matter, because we will continue to work for it even against your silly wishes."

There was a slight lull in the conversation – not surprising, considering Maylene had spoken nothing but a few words since the beginning of the encounter – so Mars continued. "What exactly do you think you're going to accomplish by telling us we're not right anyway? Do you think we'll stop? Do you think we'll bend to the will of a ridiculous girl who couldn't stop us if she tried? Our plan is in motion, and once it begins there will hardly be anything you can do about it."

"I take it," Maylene said cautiously, "that you very much believe in the success of your operation--"

"Of course I do." Mars cut her off.

Not to be put off by the outburst, Maylene began again where she stopped. "Because of this fact; that you believe in the success of your operation, you've become extremely blind towards the actual horrors you're committing."

"I know exactly what I'm doing." Mars spat out. She was quickly growing tired of the way that the girl in front of her refused to back down or flinch or do anything to let her have any sort of power over her. She knew in truth that Maylene probably was at least a bit shaken by her, but neither her facial expressions nor her body language gave any knowledge away.

"You do?" Maylene asked, slightly tilting her head to the side, giving the question a severely inquisitive look. "Then, this plan for the Windworks—"

"How did you find out about that," Mars knew she was about to lose her temper, and outside the interrogation room, Cyrus was busying asking himself the same question, while Saturn and Jupiter – completely uninterested – were making bets on if Mars would punch the girl. Saturn was firmly advocating that Mars had at least enough control to wait until the girl was dragged off to another part of the base before finding something to punch (hopefully Jupiter), while the purple-haired girl was expecting a broken nose spurting blood, although whether she thought the victim would be Maylene or Mars – hit in retaliation – she didn't say.

"I'm not to only one standing up to fight against you, you know." Maylene countered, saying nothing more, and Mars noticed for the first time that her eyes were slightly heavy, and dark lines from lack of sleep were showing.

"You're right. You're not. Alone, that is. You're exhausted, aren't you? Been staying up late into the night with other fools trying to work out a plan on how you could put an end to us before we begin?"

"I'd imagine it would be that obvious, yes."

Mars shook her head once, "You're a fool, Maylene," was what she implied, but she said nothing out loud and instead turned and stormed out of the interrogation room, barging down the hall before she could be stopped by Cyrus and also before she could see Jupiter handing a twenty over to Saturn.

--

The girl – Maylene – was twenty-five when Mars would encounter her again, long after Cyrus' flee to the outskirts of Canalave and the disbandment of Team Galactic.

Fleetingly, not even face-to-face, they saw each other from across Snowpoint, and despite the obviousness that it was her, Mars hid her face – and her hair, now its natural brown – within her hood. She was left alone, and while she hoped dearly that Maylene had not recognized her, she knew the girl had by the way her expression changed when they locked eyes for just a brief second.

Almost four years previous, after the scene in the interrogation room, Mars hurried off to the Windworks where she expected to drown herself in a bit of sorrow before completing her part of the mission. It should have been easy too; but she had gone alone instead of with backup and it was not hard for her to be pushed away from the combined efforts of the Windworks workers and the people of Floaroma.

She didn't bother returning to the base – a waste of time for a failure like herself.

There had been hushed whispers for the three and a half or so years between the times of then and now, all of them stating that Team Galactic was just waiting to build its forces back, that they weren't really gone. That was bullshit, and everyone who had once been part of the Team, even Mars, knew it.

And she could tell, by the look on Maylene's face when they crossed paths for just a few seconds outside of Snowpoint, that she knew it too.