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.
