Chapter 3

The curry was warm and filling, the sauce having a gentle sweetness to it that worked well alongside the rice and sausages. Admittedly, Mars felt a little better as she polished off the last mouthful of her meal, setting the plastic knife and fork down on the now empty plate. She then picked up the coffee cup and took a another swig, having already drained half of the container's contents.

Of course, the comfort of having a full belly did nothing to ease her troubles in regards to her financial situation. She knew that giving all but her last few Poké bills to that infernal landlord in some desperate attempt to keep him off her back had been a rash, hasty decision that put her in a problematic position, but a couple hours ago, she hadn't cared. A couple hours ago, she had just thrown a big wad of money at a short term problem to make it go away, sparing no thought for any of her long term problems in that moment, simply not in the right headspace to appropriately deal with… well, anything at the time. She had just wanted to be left alone.

Now, however, with nutrition in her system and the better capacity for rational thought that came with such, she knew that she had a big problem on her hands. She was officially broke. She highly doubted she'd be able to convince the old woman at the Poffin House to give her another bonus to her minuscule salary - not that she intended to ask, either way. Call it pride, call it social anxiety, but Mars didn't typically going around asking others for favours, not that she would expect anyone to grant her such, given her reputation. She was not simply Mars - she was Commander Mars. Despite having long-since quit Team Galactic, that title, that affiliation would be forever on her head. It was all most people would ever see her as.

'I was barely making enough to get by as it was,' Mars mused in her private thoughts. 'That extra money could've done a lot of good for us, for my Pokémon… and I threw it all away in a moment of emotional weakness.' she banged her fist on the table. "How could I have been so foolish?!" she growled aloud through gritted teeth.

Alas, what was done was done. Beating herself up over it wouldn't change anything. That didn't make it any less frustrating or worrying, however.

Mars set her now empty coffee cup down, taking a second to stare at both it and the empty plate before her. This was the last decent meal she was going to have for a while, she predicted, and her Pokémon only had a few dry, powdery kibbles of the cheap, store brand variety for dinner - the last few in the packet, no less. Mars sighed gloomily, slowly getting to her feet. She knew that she ought to head back to her apartment and give Bronzong and Golbat their pitiful excuse for sustenance, if only for her own peace of mind. It was all she could do to refrain from snorting derisively, if not cynically, at that notion. Peace of mind? Just another thing she didn't have the luxury of.

As Mars turned towards the Pokémon Centre's main front desk, she was surprised to see Nurse Joy wave to get her attention, inviting her over, which immediately made Mars wary; what had she done now? Was she about to be lectured on how malnourished her Pokémon looked? There wasn't a whole lot she could do about that, as her mind saw fit to remind her every waking moment.

"Miss Mars? There's a phone call for you," the nurse told Mars as she approached, which made the crimson-haired woman raise an eyebrow, partly due to skepticism, partly due to genuine confusion; who could be calling her? And why?

Mars reached out to take the phone from the nurse, who immediately diverted her attention to the healing machine behind her, turning and facing away from the former Commander. Mars, despite her attempt to show disinterest in the fact that she had a phone call from who knows who for who cares what reason because it surely didn't matter anyway, couldn't help but feel a faint sense of unease as she lifted the receiver to her left ear. "Hello?" she said simply, doing her best to keep her tone dull, bored and uncaring.

"Hello, Mars."

Mars' eyes immediately widened. She knew that voice. It had been some time since she had least heard it, but there was no mistaking it, no mistaking its smooth, aggravatingly sublime quality. "You?!" she spluttered, struggling to even get that one word out.

"Me," Commander Saturn responded calmly. Mars could hear the smile in his voice, that smug, knowing smile he had always worn in front of those who ranked equal to or below him. A smile that suggested he knew something that those around him didn't, that suggested he was smarter than everyone else. That insufferably arrogant smile. "I do hope I haven't caught you at a bad time, dear Mars."

"Save it. What do you want?" Mars demanded, making no attempt to keep the ire out of her voice. She'd never liked Saturn. In fact, she'd always hated him. He thought he was so clever, that he always knew exactly what was going through the heads of those around him. The worst part? He had always been right in that regard where Mars was concerned; he'd always seemed to know just what to say to wipe the smirk off her face when she had felt like she was in charge of any given situation. He'd always known just what to say in order to indirectly remind her that even though they had both been of the rank of Commander, Saturn had always been held in higher esteem than the hotheaded, sometimes overconfident redhead by Cyrus, Jupiter, Charon and the many nameless, faceless grunts that made up Team Galactic's ranks, and Mars had hated that, not least because Saturn had always seemed to silently and smugly relish in such. Even now, with Cyrus and the other admins gone, Mars could tell from the dark blue haired Commander's voice that he hadn't changed a bit; being put in charge of the entire organisation had no doubt gone to his head, gone right to those pretentious horns that he typically had his hair meticulously styled into. That's what Mars spitefully wanted to believe, anyway.

Saturn chuckled softly, the sound barely audible over the phone, but Mars had no doubt that he had wanted her to hear it. "As uppity as ever, it seems."

"Why, you…! You've got a nerve to call me uppity! Your arrogant backside practically has a whole Cacturne shoved up it, you're so full of yourself!" Mars declared nastily. She was taken aback when Saturn burst out laughing in response to her words.

"As feisty as ever, too, I see!" the Commander exclaimed, still chortling. "I daresay it's reassuring to know that your time away from Team Galactic has not dampened your spirit in any way. No doubt our former 'Master' would not approve," he concluded somewhat darkly, his words something of a half-joke. Mars felt something tighten in her chest at Saturn's words; Cyrus' vitriol towards the human spirit had been his most defining trait, and one that was chilling to think about in hindsight - a fact that was not lost on either Saturn or Mars. "I'm actually impressed," Saturn went on. "From what I'd heard about your situation, I half-expected you to be a shell of the Mars I previously knew in terms of personality. Poverty does have a tendency to humble people, after all."

Mars didn't even know what to say to that. Loathsome as she was to admit it, these past few months had humbled her. Once upon a time, the very idea of living in a dingy, minuscule apartment, wearing secondhand clothing and scraping dried Poffin batter out of machines for a living had been unthinkable to her, had been beyond her wildest imaginings, beyond her darkest nightmares… yet that was her life. Her sad, sorrowful life. Could it even be called a life at this point, she privately wondered. She struggled to say her next words calmly. That struggle gave way to borderline hysteria very quickly.

"I don't know what you think you know about my 'situation', as you called it, but if you're calling to poke fun at me because you're up there at the Galactic HQ, relishing in a cushy job with a handsome salary that allows for a luxurious lifestyle while I'm down here barely scraping by through hard, honest labour, then let me just say that I expected better from you, Saturn!" She had intended to hang up right after saying that, but then a means to further drive her point home, to really rub it in and, with any luck, finally shatter Saturn's seemingly unbreakable ego occurred to her. "I don't know why I expected better from you, but then, I never was a good judge of character," she continued, her tone positively dripping with snideness. "After all, I did spend a good chunk of my young adult life following a madman who wanted to remake the universe in his own twisted image. I'm sure you couldn't possibly relate to that. No, not you, Commander Saturn, the man who's never made a single mistake in his life, who couldn't possibly get anything wrong! The man who spends three hours in the bathroom every morning using four hundred containers of hair wax to make his already hideous blue mop look as ridiculous as possible while still somehow being convinced that he looks like a total dreamboat! No, sir!" she declared. "What's your clever response to all of THAT, Mister I-Think-I'm-So-Cool-And-Brilliant?!" the crimson haired woman demanded jeeringly. "Or did I just finally strike you dumb and speechless with a cold, hard truth that you can scarcely wrap your ludicrous blue horns of hair around?!"

Several long seconds passed before Saturn finally spoke again, Mars standing there all the while with a look a mad triumph on her face, the redhead out of breath due to how fast and how shrilly she had blurted out the latter half of her little rant. "…Are you quite finished, Mars?" the Commander asked calmly at last.

Mars' face fell, her look of triumph fading to be replaced with one of dismay. Saturn didn't sound as though her words had fazed him at all. If anything, he sounded rather bored and resigned, as though he felt he had better things to do than listen to someone finally tell him what was what over the phone, because in his mind, what was what surely wasn't actually 'what' at all. Was his ego, his arrogance really that unshakable?

"Oh, I was finished with you years ago!" Mars managed, quickly brushing aside her disappointment and trying to pick up where she had left off. "The day I quit Team Galactic, the first thought on my mind was how wonderful it was that I wouldn't have to listen to you anymore, that I wouldn't have to look at your stupid, smug smile or your ridiculous clown hair or your—!"

"Yes, yes, I think I get the idea," Saturn said dismissively, and Mars grinned. She'd gotten to him. She's finally gotten to him to the point where he couldn't just take it in stride, to the point where he couldn't just act like it didn't bother him in at least some capacity. "I do hope your little self-delusion of 'victory' was worth it, Mars, not least because I called looking to extend the olive branch of, for lack of a better word, friendship."

Mars found herself scowling. She held the receiver away from her ear for a moment. "Even when you win, he still manages to take the wind out of your sails," she muttered to herself before putting the phone to her ear once more. "Olive branch? Friendship? What, is taking over from Daddy Cyrus too much for you, is it? Want me back at the office to make sure you don't collapse under the weight of all the paperwork that you have to fill out in a futile attempt to convince the authorities that you and your crew are among the 'good guys' now?"

A heavy sigh could be heard from Saturn's end of the line. "Mars, I can assure you that I speak with utmost seriousness. I—"

"Blah, blah, blah," Mars declared in an intentionally juvenile manner; she was really enjoying this, really enjoying finally sticking it to that smug, blue haired, self-righteous son of a Houndoom. "Quit trying to sound as smart as you think you are; stop using ten words when two or three will do. Just say 'I am being serious'. It's not hard!"

Another heavy sigh, this one followed by Saturn quietly muttering something that sounded like, "Why do I even bother…?" Mars found herself grinning once again at that.

"Oh, it's no bother, Saturn, I assure you. In fact, I could do this all night," she taunted. "It's about time someone knocked you off your high Rapidash and made you realise that you're not as big of a deal as—"

"I'm offering you a job, Mars!" Saturn suddenly snapped, his voice sounding uncharacteristically shrill for just a split second. "I'm offering you a part-time position at Team Galactic because you have previous experience in this line of work!" He sighed heavily once again before continuing more calmly, "You're right about one thing, Mars: I can't manage an entire organisation singlehandedly," he admitted. "Moreover, I can't be everywhere at once. As a fellow former admin, you know how to organise and manage groups. There are some new interns who need to learn the ropes and subsequently be put through their paces."

Mars, despite her personal opinions of Saturn, looked thoughtful. As she had spent the better half of this evening musing, her financial situation was as critical as a Pokémon with its health bar in the red. Speaking of Pokémon, her Bronzong and Golbat would benefit as much as she would from a new, more dependable source of income, if not more so.

Than again, she wasn't sure if she wanted to go back to Team Galactic. After Cyrus had disappeared, the entire organisation had quickly fallen into disarray, struggling to find its footing. That's why Mars and Jupiter had joined Charon in his ill-fated money making scheme. Mars had quickly realised that there was no future for her at Team Galactic, not without Cyrus, prompting her to strike out on her own in the hopes of finding him. Her eventual epiphany in regards to Cyrus had made her realise that she never should've joined Team Galactic in the first place, let alone ever consider running back to them with her proverbial tail between her legs.

Additionally, she didn't want to officially go back to being Commander Mars. People were still giving her filthy looks as it was; to return to that role, to embrace that reputation… She was better off not calling attention to herself like that.

Then again, with Saturn running the show in place of Cyrus, it was possible that things were different at Team Galactic HQ now - new policies, better treatment of employees and the like. Mars didn't know for sure, of course, but the fact that Team Galactic was still being allowed to even operate suggested that Saturn, at the very least, wasn't looking to rip open the fabric of space-time and rewrite the laws of physics to his liking. Perhaps things could be different this time. Different for Mars. Better for her.

For her and her Pokémon…

Mars looked up in time to see Nurse Joy place the tray containing Bronzong's and Golbat's respective Pokéballs on the counter, and a rare look of compassion passed over the crimson haired woman's face.

"For them," she whispered to herself, moving the phone away from her hear again. "If nothing else, I should do it for their sake… and for the sake of…" She sniffed sadly. "Purugly's memory…"

"If you're interested, I can send some grunts— Pardon me, employees around to pick you up as early as tomorrow morning," Saturn offered as Mars returned the receiver to her ear. "As you can tell, I'm still getting used to using the politically correct terminology. That aside, I think you'll like the new road transports - less armoured than the old trucks, but faster and more flashy to compensate. The rebranding of Team Galactic is really starting to work in the organisation's favour, if some of the more recent reviews from clientele are anything to go by."

One more quick glance at her encapsulated Pokémon clinched it. "Then I guess I'll be seeing you sometime tomorrow… Boss," Mars declared, surprised to find herself smiling at the notion. "Don't get used to me calling you that, though," she added quickly, trying to keep up appearances regarding her demeanour.

Saturn chuckled knowingly. "I was about to say as much myself." The blue haired Commander then hung up on his end, soon turning his attention from the phone to the intercom on his desk, pressing a button on the latter. "Stacey?" he said, addressing his secretary.

"Yes, Commander Saturn?" the secretary responded promptly.

"Schedule a trial run of the new speeder models from headquarters to Hearthome City, round trip. Appoint two teams of employees to each vehicle, one novice and one veteran in each group. It'll be good practical experience for the 'newbies'."

"Very good, Commander, sir. Is there a particular time frame you had in mind?"

"Have them set out at five-thirty tomorrow morning," Saturn confirmed. "Oh, and tell them to make room for an additional passenger on the return trip."

"Sir?"

"I'll message the finer details to you as they become relevant, Stacey," Saturn assured her before taking his finger off the intercom's button, opening a drawer built into his desk and pulling out a bottle of Scotch and a shot glass, pouring less than a mouthful of the amber liquid into the glass and downing it in one, sighing contentedly as he set the now empty glass down on his desk. "Hmm. Perhaps I am just a touch complacent in my position," he mused aloud. He then furrowed his brow slightly. "Note to self: Never admit that in front of Mars." He then chuckled knowingly. "Oh, she truly has not changed…"