Chapter Text
Her first challenger as the newest Sinnoh Champion, a week later, is Cyrus. Cynthia's thrilled to see them, honestly. She's talked with Cheryl since somehow winning, and Riley since somehow winning, but Cyrus?
She hasn't seen them since before her challenge began. Until now.
"Cyrus! Hi," Cynthia says, beaming. "I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to give some kind of ominous speech here, but who cares about that? It's good to see you!"
"You too," they mumble, not meeting her eyes. "How... what is it like? Being the champion?"
"Um. I'd say nothing like I expected but I also never expected this to happen until it did? So..." She shrugs. "A bit busy. Last champion stepped down to the Elite Four, the guy who left—the water guy, Wake?—he stuck around for a little bit to make sure everything was going smoothly and then said he was going to come challenge me, so that's... fun and a little ominous. Turns out being the champion doesn't count for anything until you've held the title for a while, though, so..."
"Interesting," Cyrus says. They look up at her, their eyes betraying not a hint of emotion. "Well. Shall we get to it, then."
Cynthia nods. "Yeah! It'll be fun."
And it is, for her—battling them always is, no matter the stakes. But she looks across the battlefield at them, after Rascal takes down their final pokemon and she's still got four to spare, and sees their shoulders slump as they recall Polaris.
"Cyrus?" She asks, carefully. "Are you... alright? We're pretty much evenly matched, I'm sure you'll be the champion after me."
"I doubt it," they say, staring down at their final pokeball, mouth set in a grim line. They turn towards the door to leave.
"Don't sell yourself out, I learned nearly everything I know from you." She smiles at their backside. "See you next time, Cyrus."
They stop, at the door, but don't look back. They nod, a motion so small that she could miss it, and murmur, "Goodbye, Cynthia."
If she'd known then, what the near and far future would bring for them both, she would have followed them. She would have tried, much harder, to get them to talk to her. And if that didn't work, she would have sneaked out after them.
But she doesn't. And so she watches them leave, smile fading, and hopes she'll see them again soon.
(She won't.)
Slinking out of Sinnoh with her metaphorical tail between her legs is absolutely not Executive Ariana's idea of a good time, for herself or for Team Rocket. But given the stunt that the new boss pulled, and the fact that their main base in the region is now even more of a smoking crater than Sunyshore City, they don't exactly have a lot of other options.
Stowing away on this ship bound for Johto are half of the Executives, a handful of grunts, and some of (not all of) their pokemon. There are more grunts still in Sinnoh, and Ariana risked traveling to some of their older bases here to leave directions for them, but beyond that? They're on their own. Petrel and Proton know where to meet them.
"I can't believe Helen did that," Archer mutters, glaring at the metal floor of the ship beneath his feet.
"I can," Ariana says. It's a lie, but Archer doesn't need to know that.
"Well, I didn't see you objecting to her plans."
She rolls her eyes. "Whatever. It was a mistake to put her in charge, clearly."
Archer goes to take a seat upon a crate and says, thoughtfully, "I'm not so sure."
"Um." Ariana raises an eyebrow. "You're saying it wasn't a mistake to put in charge the woman who, if she'd had her way, could very well have killed us all with her and half the remaining team?"
"That, yes, that was a mistake," Archer concedes. "But Team Rocket does need strong leadership. She was that, before that little brat defeated her and she turned out to be completely fucking nuts."
"That little brat is Sinnoh's new champion."
Archer blinks. "Ari. You're shitting me."
"Would I ever?"
"Yes."
"Fair enough, but you can look it up yourself."
Ariana gets up from her own seat, stretches, and goes to look out the porthole that will be their only company on the long voyage to come. Currently, they're still moored at the docks in Canalave City, but the docks themselves are largely deserted at this hour. They'll be setting off soon, for Johto.
"Of course she's the new fucking champion," Archer mutters sourly. "Maybe she'll be like that little shit in Kanto and fuck off to the middle of nowhere before too long. Maybe—"
"Archer, if you're trying to convince me to stay in Sinnoh," Ariana says flatly, "you're about fourteen years too late."
"I wasn't... fourteen?"
Ariana says nothing, instead choosing to stare out at the docks again. There's a kid in a hoodie sitting on the edge now, a Glameow perched precariously on their lap, and their legs swing back and forth as they pet their pokemon and breathe in the coastal Sinnoh air.
She hopes that kid falls in and drowns.
"Anyway," Archer says, "I was thinking."
"A first," Ariana replies, looking back at him.
"Shut it. We need strong leadership, and for all his faults... Giovanni was that. We could try to find him."
"...and how in distortion do you propose we do that?"
"Well, first, we need to regroup. Obviously. Our Mahogany base still hasn't been discovered, which is why we're heading there now, but... next order of business is getting the word out to Giovanni that we want him back, and that the little shit that brought us down the first time fucked off to a frozen mountain, and the one who did in Sinnoh is presumably staying in Sinnoh, but..." Archer pauses. "Maybe we shouldn't mention that, if he doesn't know about it already."
"Let's not," Ariana agrees. "Especially not the threats."
"Especially not the threats."
"That... probably should have been a red flag."
"Yes, it certainly should have." Ariana sighs. "But no one is perfect, not even us. We need Giovanni. But in the meantime? You'll do the job."
Archer is, after all, quite easy to manipulate if you know the right things to say to him. Ariana has no real desire for climbing any higher than she already has, but given how royally the last two bosses have fucked up, she thinks maybe a slightly more influenceable one might not be a bad investment after all.
"Really?" Archer asks.
"You can't possibly do worse than Helen."
The boat lurches beneath them all. One of the grunts falls off a crate, but Ariana pays them no heed. She glances out the porthole again, for her last glimpse of land for weeks—and for her last glimpse, perhaps ever, of Sinnoh. Good riddance, she thinks, except—
That kid on the docks, their hoodie's fallen down on the wind, revealing short red hair not unlike Ariana's own. But the boat's already moving, and that kid's too far away to get a good look at them.
Is that... could that be?
It matters not to Executive Ariana. She huffs and turns away from the porthole, and doesn't look back through it again until there is nothing but endless ocean to be seen. Not until there are no more docks, no more Sinnohan cities, and certainly no more children that look too much like her.
Cynthia's first day as the newest champion comes and goes, with plenty of challengers eager to try their luck against the new champion. None of them come closer than Cyrus did, though the former Elite Wake comes close to Cyrus, if no further. He laughs, unbothered, offers himself up as a replacement gym leader should any of the current ones resign anytime soon, and walks back on out humming a sea shanty to himself.
The former Elite Wake (or as he insisted Cynthia and everyone else here call him now, Crasher Wake) is the last challenger she has for today. Cynthia's... a bit surprised, but kind of relieved, honestly. Her pokemon were getting tired.
(So was she. So is she. But that's never stopped her before.)
"Hey, what do ya know, you made it past the first day," Flint says with a laugh, petting his Houndoom in the breakroom. "You have officially done better than that one kid in Kanto."
Cynthia manages a smile herself, reaching out to pet the Houndoom in question as well. "You know what, I'll... take it."
"Don't scare the poor girl, Kanto doesn't close their League at all when there's a new champion," Bertha calls, stuffing the remnants of a tupperware full of casserole back into her lunchbox and zipping it up. "That young man lasted less than an hour, which I personally think is a sign that the Elite Four there aren't doing their jobs—"
"How... what's the shortest amount of time a champion has lasted here?" Cynthia asks. And clarifies, a moment later, just to be safe, "In Sinnoh."
"About... a month?" Aaron says thoughtfully. "I wanna say a month. Unless—"
"No, it was a month, and it was Aaron," Lucian says, not bothering to look up from his book.
"Listen! How in distortion was I supposed to be prepared for Bertha!"
"You weren't," Bertha says cheerfully.
Cynthia sucks in a breath, and grabs her bag. "Alright. Good to know. I'll, uh... see you all tomorrow, then?"
"Seeya." Flint waves. "Fly safe, kiddo."
She decides not to comment on the fact that he cannot be that much older than her, and heads on out. The front area of the League is nearly deserted, now, with only the pokemart staff closing up shop for the day, and—
"Excuse me? Champion?"
Cynthia's head snaps up to find that the center's nurse is waving her over, looking worried. She heads over. "Is... everything alright?"
"I'm... not sure, but since you're the new champion and all, I thought maybe..." The nurse shrugs. "A trainer earlier today left their pokemon here and said they'd be back, but they... haven't come back. Should I... wait for them, or...?"
"You just... let someone leave their pokemon here?" Cynthia repeats.
"I thought they were going to the bathroom, and then it got busy, and..." The nurse sighs. "Listen, I'm sure it shouldn't be that hard to locate their trainer, Weavile isn't that common of a pokemon—"
"Did you say Weavile?" Oh no. Cynthia takes a moment to hope, desperately, that this is some other challenger with a Weavile (though there's only one that made it to her) and asks, "Can I... see them?"
There's five pokeballs. Inside them are a Weavile, a Crobat, a Gyarados, a Honchkrow, and a Houndoom.
"They just... left? And haven't come back?" Cynthia asks, worry growing exponentially by the minute. "...wait. This isn't their whole team. They've still got their sixth pokemon, at least—"
"Oh, fuck," the nurse says suddenly, and then covers her mouth with a hand. "Sorry, champion, didn't mean to... they did give us six pokeballs. But where's... how did..." She turns to her computer and types in something quickly, before going, "This doesn't make sense. I remember them handing in six pokeballs this morning, but according to our records... we've only ever had five."
"Begin Log 13," the scientist says, clicking the button on his tape recorder. He'll go over this and write it down later, but for now, this shall do. "It was by pure chance that I obtained information about the pokemon Rotom, and equally so that I have at last obtained a specimen of the pokemon itself. While I suspect that other such specimens exist, I have reason to believe that this is the very same Rotom written about in my supplementary materials, and as such, experimentation can proceed as planned."
Rotom—designated by a different name, but the scientist has no need for such sentimentalities in his research—attempts once more to escape its containment. It fails, as it always has, and always will. The scientist is quite thorough, and does not intend to make the same mistakes as he did with his last field of research.
"Rotom is a fascinating creature, and perhaps is capable of far more than even I realized at first," the scientist continues. "And now that I have it, it will yield its capabilities to me, whether it so desires or not. It no longer has a trainer to protect it, after all."
Rotom must be able to hear him, because it floats slightly lower in the air and bzzts sadly. The scientist ignores it, at first, but then—an idea occurs to him.
"Assuming, of course," the scientist says, turning away from the observation window, "that its trainer ever cared about it at all. Surely, if that trainer did, they would have come for it by now. I, however, have other priorities. That trainer could never unlock the full potential of Rotom, but I? I have no such petty emotional hinderances. The world will come to recognize me as the scientific genius I am, at last... and of course, we certainly can't allow any part of my research to be revealed to the world before it is complete."
He brushes aside miscellaneous papers on his desk, eventually finding the remote he'd been looking for, and switches it on. Something in the Rotom's chamber too powers on, and Rotom, twisting in midair to see it, makes a high-pitched noise that a lesser man might call distressed.
"And now, we shall begin," the scientist says. His gaze flicks back to Rotom. "Do cooperate, yes? It will only be worse for you should you resist. Experiment begin."
One of the various items pushed aside on his desk, teetering on the edge, falls to the floor. The scientist makes no move to pick it up. It is a trainer card, dusty, with a name on it.
Charon.
Cynthia supposes she should consider herself lucky that their parents are even in Sinnoh, at the moment. That their home was one of the buildings in Sunyshore left relatively intact after the blast, and that they were there, when she knocked on their door.
She doesn't at all, though, because of—why she's here.
(It hurts too much to think about too hard. But someone has to tell their family.)
"Whatever you're selling, we're not interested," snaps the blue-haired woman, already closing the door.
"It's about Cyrus," Cynthia says quickly, and the door stops closing.
"What did that child do this time?"
"Um," Cynthia says awkwardly, "my name's Cynthia. I'm the new champion. I... can I speak to their parents?"
The woman's eyes narrow. "You're speaking to one of them." She glances over her shoulder and hollers, "Eriks! The new champion's here."
A few moments pass before the door is opened wider by a man with slightly spiked dark hair, in a manner that's so much like and unlike Cyrus that it hurts even more. "New champion, eh? Perhaps you'd better come in."
Cynthia nods gratefully. "Alright. You... may want to be sitting down for this."
"I'm sure I've heard worse," Cyrus's mother says flatly, crossing her arms and shutting the door behind Cynthia to lean on the wall. That's the first red flag. "Spit it out."
"Cyrus is... dead," Cynthia says, unable to meet her eyes. "I'm so sorry. They were a good person. A good friend."
Eriks—Cyrus's father?—lets out a derisive snort and mutters, "Like any of that matters."
That's the second red flag. And Cynthia should ignore it, should just let it go, but she can't. She spins to face him and says, "Excuse me?"
"Did that kid do anything? Kept saying that... they, would be the champion next, and yet here you are instead. So where does that leave them?"
"...Mr. Akagi," Cynthia says in the most even voice she can muster. "Your child is dead, and... they killed themself, because they didn't think they were good enough. And all you can do is—"
"Well, clearly that child wasn't," Cyrus's mother says derisively. "I told you, Eriks. Allowing Cyrus to go on a journey alone was a mistake."
"No, it wasn't," Cynthia says sharply. And then her eyes go wide, and the third red flag hits her over the head with all the force of a Bullet Punch, and she whispers, "They're dead because of you."
"...care to repeat that?"
"Cyrus was never good enough for you, were they. No matter what they did, no matter how hard they tried—and they tried, so, so hard. They would never have been good enough even if they had the title I hold now. Would they."
Eriks does not answer verbally. Instead, he looks to Cyrus's mother and says, "Nikita? I think it's time this child was going, don't you think?"
"I do believe you're right," Nikita agrees.
"I am not going anywhere until you understand," Cynthia says firmly. She's—pretty sure she's crying, now. And she doesn't care. "Why did you hate your own child so much? Why couldn't you just accept them the way they were? They were so smart, and so kind—"
"Kindness? Don't make me laugh. Kindness is what gets you killed. Now, little champion, why don't we give you a little advice for the future?" She smiles, and—those are bold words, coming from someone shorter than her. "I would be careful where you're throwing your weight around. Someone like you? You won't hold that title for long. And even if you did—do tell me. How, precisely, do you intend to prove that we had anything to do with our child's... tragic death?"
"You—"
"You've overstayed your welcome, I think." Eriks crosses the entry hall, going to hold the door open for her to leave. "I'd be more careful in the future, if I were you, who you go around hurling baseless accusations at. You don't have any idea who we are, do you?"
Cynthia's eyes narrow. She stays put. "I don't see how that matters—"
"Eriks Akagi. Interpol."
"And Nikita Akagi, also Interpol," Cyrus's mother says. "We heard about what you did—or rather, failed to do—with Team Rocket here. Perhaps if you hadn't been so sentimental, we would not still be stuck assisting with cleaning up your mess."
"My mess?" Cynthia shakes her head. "Now I know you're just trying to mess with my head. And it's not working. If I hadn't done something—who would have?"
"Interpol, eventually. And with significantly less damage to the surrounding area. We are the reason that Team Rocket no longer dares to show their face in Kanto."
"Lovely." Cynthia has never wanted to punch someone in the face quite as much as she does now, and she knew Helen. "If they show their faces in Sinnoh again, I'll deal with them again. The same goes for both of you. Neither of you are welcome here, unless it is on official Interpol business—and if you do anything remotely approaching illegal—"
"Oh, you little fool," Eriks says. "You think your word carries any weight now?"
"Then I'll just have to keep winning until it does, won't I," Cynthia tells them. "In the meantime? May the gods curse your every waking moment, because I have more important things to deal with than you."
She walks out the door, ignoring its slam behind her. She makes it all the way to where Bertha and Lucian are waiting before completely bursting into tears.
There's change in the air in Sinnoh. Leader Janine of Pastoria can feel it. Though she wouldn't have to be able to feel it to know two things, at least: that Team Rocket is finally out of Sinnoh, good fucking riddance, and there's a new champion.
It's that Cynthia girl that helped so much with Team Rocket. Honestly, Janine isn't really surprised. Maybe she should set up a bingo card for what region's going to get a visit from those bastards next, and whether or not one of the children involved in their defeat ends up at the top of the regional food chain.
By the same token, Janine isn't entirely surprised to get a call from her father one fine summer evening in southeastern Sinnoh. She picks it up and turns on the video, grinning widely. "Hi, Dad! How are things back at home? ...wait, what time is it there—"
"It's a reasonable time," Koga says, just a little too defensively—though it's hard to get a perfect read on why with his mask on. "Listen. Janie. I heard about what happened with Team Rocket—are you alright?"
She laughs. "I'm fine, Dad! Promise! I wasn't even involved with the last incident, though I kinda wish I had been."
"I'm glad you're safe," her father says, genuinely. "And I'll take your word for it."
Janine raises an eyebrow. "Alright. What's going on? Usually you'd be wanting the whole play-by-play. It was really awesome—well, being undercover for several days was less awesome, but they didn't catch me and I'm quite proud of that, so—"
"Agatha's retiring."
"Oh," Janine says. "As in... Indigo Elite Agatha, probably-Professor-Oak's-old-flame Agatha? That one?"
Koga nods. "And Lance asked me to join the Elite Four! I asked him to let me think about it, of course, but —"
"Dad. Don't be ridiculous. You have to take it! This is your dream!"
"Oh, I'm going to," Koga says proudly. "But there's the matter of who will take over the Fuchsia Gym for me. I suggested you, of course. And Lance agreed, so long as you'd be willing to come home and help out during the transitional period —"
"Dad. Are you kidding me?" Janine breaks into a wide grin. "I've literally been waiting for this my entire goddamn life. Give me a week. I think I know someone who can take over for me here—I'm pretty sure he already lives in Pastoria, actually."
"Oh! Good. I'm glad." Her father pauses. "Are you... certain about this? I know you've been having a good time in Sinnoh —"
"Well, yeah, I wouldn't have stayed here so long if I wasn't. But Sinnoh was never meant to be permanent. Everyone knows that." Janine's grin only widens. "I'll call you back once I've gotten the details figured out. Love you!"
"You too," Koga says, and then the call ends.
Janine fires off a quick text to one Crasher Wake, gets an immediate and quite enthusiastic response, and then finds the back room of her gym.
"Good! You're all here," Janine says to the assembled girls who all look just enough like her to be disconcerting to the average challenger. She spreads her arms wide and proclaims, "I have wonderful news. Ladies? We're going home."
Cynthia isn't entirely clear on how the Pokemon League works in other regions, but in Sinnoh, what generally happens is that the Elite Four is made up of past champions. This works out decently well in that no matter what, she's got four decently nice people around who know what being the champion is like, and know how to keep said position, and how to help people take you seriously.
"They won't, until you've kept it a year or so. Give or take a bit, depending on how much you're in the public eye," Lucian says, turning a page in his book. "But there's a few things you can do to help with that—and I'd recommend one of them sooner rather than later."
"...what?" Cynthia asks.
"You need a new outfit. Something that says this is the champion, and you are NOT winning this fight." He turns another page. "Ideally, I'd say something that reflects your type specialty, but you don't really have one of those, do you?"
"Nope."
"You know what they say. Jack of all trades, master of none..." He closes his book, and smiles. "...but better still than a master of one. It's quite uncommon for trainers not to specialize in something, but in your case, that means you can do whatever you want."
"I like my hoodie?" Cynthia says. It comes out as more of a question than she'd like it to.
"It's a lovely hoodie, dear," Bertha says, looking up from her knitting. "But it isn't exactly intimidating. It makes you look like you're trying to hide from something, and... if you are, that's your business, not mine, but—"
"I do want to be taken seriously," she says quietly, looking down.
"I mean, it's okay if you don't," Aaron points out, swinging down from— okay, apparently his Drapion is crawling on the ceiling and so is he. "But it's nice to have a different outfit for official league business, and one for everyday things. Keeps you from getting recognized. And... hey, we are here to help. The longer you stay in, the longer I stay in, and battling at this level pays pretty well."
"I don't," Flint says with a shrug. "I just don't care 'bout getting recognized."
Cynthia looks down at her half-finished application to the archaeology program at the University of Veilstone. She's not so naive as to think she can do all her classes online, nor that she'll be in and out by the time people start caring about her title.
"I... might have some ideas," Cynthia says hesitantly. "Can I run them by you all first?"
(Her poketch buzzes on her wrist. It's another text from Cheryl.)
(She ignores it. She's fine. She is fine. Her name is Cynthia, she's the champion, and... she'll figure out what to say and how to say it some other time when the pain isn't as fresh and she isn't waking up sweating in the middle of the night nearly every night.)
(It's okay. It's fine. Everything is fine except her, and that doesn't matter at all. Her friends that aren't dead would be better off without her anyway.)
The rumors of Cyrus Akagi's death have been greatly exaggerated. This was not their intent, and in truth, a large part of them wishes that they weren't exaggerated at all. They also aren't really rumors, either—Cyrus Akagi is, at the very least, legally deceased.
"Sooo," Marceline says, glancing over at them, "are you gonna tell any of your friends that you're alive? Or—"
"We were never friends," Cyrus responds. And for the sake of not getting this child to further attach herself to them at the hip, they don't add what they're thinking: that the state they're in now hardly counts as being alive.
"...okay. Well, the people we're going to meet now are friends of yours, right?"
"No."
"Are we friends?"
"No," Cyrus says, only for Marceline's Glameow to promptly stomp on their foot. Hard. They suppress a pained yelp and amend, "I suppose, if you think we are..."
"We're friends," Marceline says, with all the wildfire stubbornness they'd expect from a traveling trainer on the younger side. "Everyone needs at least one. Even you."
Cyrus sighs. "If you insist. The others should be this way."
They're in Veilstone City, at an early enough hour of the day that the city is not busy—merely a matter of not being seen and recognized, and nothing more. To further ensure this, Cyrus is—somewhat reluctantly—borrowing a hoodie from the child that is not their friend.
Two more familiar faces are waiting at the sidewalk cafe they're supposed to be at. One, a woman bearing a striking resemblance to the new gym leader of Hearthome City, is glaring more and more intently at a young man with hair bluer than their own and a Croagunk sitting in his lap.
"Listen, I feel for ya, I do," Saturn is saying, "but the last time I tried to report on something involved with the League, I got in big trouble with the champion."
"Well, there's a new champion now, isn't there?" Jupiter demands. "We've met. She's a reasonable enough kid, I'm sure she'll—"
"No, she won't," Cyrus says evenly, sliding into one of the empty chairs left around the table. Marceline takes the other. "Jupiter. Saturn. Thank you for coming."
Saturn stares at them for a long moment. "Fucking— Lugia, you're supposed to be—"
"Keep it down," Cyrus hisses. "You see now why I had to contact you both through Marceline here."
"Hiya!" Marceline chirps, her Glameow hopping up into her lap.
"...okay then," Jupiter mutters. "Why do you have a child—"
"She's not mine, she just started following me and I can't get rid of her," Cyrus says, not untruthfully.
"—alright, well. What do you really want with us."
Cyrus folds their hands on the table and looks at her. Looks all three of them. "This world isn't fair. We know this. All four of us know this, perfectly well, for one reason or another."
"Duh," Saturn says. "If the world was fair, I would have been able to run my scathing exposé on the last gym leader here. But what do you propose we do about it? Make the world fair?"
"Impossible. This world is too set in its ways to suddenly become fairer. Better." To suddenly become anything but the world that has betrayed Cyrus over and over and over again. "I am not proposing that we make the world fairer. I am proposing that we remake the world."
Marceline blinks. "What."
"Are... Cyrus," Saturn says uneasily. "Are you... feeling okay?"
"Would any of us be here if we were?" Cyrus looks, once again, at each of them in turn. "This world isn't fair. But we can make one that is. A better one."
One where they won't have to feel anything, anymore. Nothing they've ever done has kept them from feeling, always feeling so much, always feeling that they'll never, not in a million years, be good enough. But this? This could, maybe, just maybe, work where everything else has failed.
"How the fuck would we do that," Jupiter mutters.
"It would take time. And it would not be easy. But the gods of Sinnoh are powerful. They control time, and space. Nightmares and daydreams and even the manifestations of feelings themselves."
(Mesprit had appeared to Cheryl. Azelf had appeared to Riley. And while Cynthia had never said anything about it... Cyrus knows that Uxie certainly didn't see fit to grace them with faer presence.)
"I mean, distortion—I've got nothing better to do," Saturn says with a shrug. "I'm in."
"Me too," Marceline says.
Jupiter narrows her eyes. "You're a literal child—"
"You think I haven't known pain? You think I don't know just how fucking unfair the world is?" Marceline hisses, easygoing mask gone in an instant. "I said I'm in, and I fucking mean it, and if you think I'm too young —"
"Okay, calm down, I got it." Jupiter sighs, and looks at Cyrus. "Might as well see what's up. Certainly beats living off my sister's pity money. You have any ideas for... a name, for this club of yours?"
"Ideas, yes, but nothing fully formed. You've all heard of Team Rocket? I don't mind the idea of a team, a cohesive whole working towards a single goal—but we need a better name than that."
"Terrible idea," Marceline says, once again looking like a perfectly normal teenager on a perfectly normal pokemon journey. "So your name is Jupiter? And your name is Saturn?"
Jupiter shrugs. "Blame my parents. They're the ones who thought this was an acceptable name, but I've made it my own."
"Listen, it sounded cool, and I don't have to justify my name to any of you," Saturn says defensively. "I picked it myself and it's far better than the old one."
Marceline gives Saturn a strange look, but it becomes one of understanding after a moment. "Well. I remembered hearing somewhere that Cyrus was an old name that meant sun —"
"What," Cyrus says flatly. "Where did you hear this?"
"None of your business," Marceline replies, and Cyrus decides it's not worth mentioning that they could see her scrolling through fanfiction websites yesterday. "But—hey. I like my name too, but you know what I realized it could shorten to? Mars. It's a cute nickname. And it fits the whole accidental theme we've got going on already."
Jupiter blinks. "So... what are you suggesting. Team Planet? Team Solar?"
"Nah. But we could definitely do something with the space theme."
"There was some old group called the Galaxy Expedition Team in Sinnoh a few hundred years ago," Saturn offers unhelpfully. "Saw a documentary about them last week."
"Team Galaxy?"
"Doesn't quite have the right ring to it," Cyrus says, still thinking.
"Yeah, no, you're right. Makes us sound unprofessional, and I draw the line at unprofessionalism."
Thinking about this is preferable to thinking too hard about anything else, at this point. To thinking too hard about how the friends they never really had must be doing, and to wondering about the girl who achieved the dream that was never hers to begin with.
(They'd hope she was doing well, if they had it left in them to hope at all.)
Cyrus lifts their gaze once more and asks, "What about Team Galactic?"