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Something lingers at the back of Kepler’s attention span, a nagging itch that he hasn’t the claws to scratch. All throughout his night as he stares at his computer screen until the wee hours of the morning when the sun begins to peek through the clouds; something vaguely important, like a test he forgot to study for, or a funeral he’s meant to go to, events of import that he cultivates nothing but apathy for.
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He doesn’t sleep much as it is but he spends his day dozing and reading, dozing and reading. Raine’s sent him a handful of PDFs of star charts and measurements and whatever the fuck else she includes in her reports; he clicks through them with measured disinterest. He’s somewhere between his fifth energy drink and sixth nap when Mercury all but busts down the door to his lab and points to Kep’s phone with an irritated squeak. “Yeah, yeah, don’t get your panties in a bu-- oh, shit, that’s what I forgot.”
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Not so much what, as who, and in a second Kepler’s tugging on jeans over his boxers and giving himself a brief sniff test before he’s out the door with a granola bar and an armful of books, some spiral-bound notepads all torn and marked to shit, and some big, heavy textbooks, dog-eared and well worn. Mercury shakes his head, grabs Kep’s computer, and hightails it behind him.
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He finds Mars under a setting sun at the base of Mt. Pyre, near the destroyed part that some dumbass rangers dropped some time back; it hasn’t been repaired yet. Kepler takes in the view of the damages and idly wonders how many bodies were uprooted in the disaster.
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“Sorry I’m late,” he says, not sounding sorry in the least, “I got caught up in research.” I didn’t want to come was the unspoken bit, but Kepler was nothing if not a giant fucking nerd, and it seemed Mars was, too. At least, he had the vibe of one, from their communication. That, or someone totally fucking obsessed. “So, Unown, huh?” Kepler asked, getting right down to business. He sat down in the dirt and laid his notebooks and textbooks out around him, beginning to shuffle through the chaos with the experience of someone who knew how to handle disorder. “Oh, I forgot my-- oh, thanks, Merc,” he said, as Mercury produced the laptop and mobile charger Kepler had rushed off without.
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“Where do you want to start?”

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Giant fucking nerd or totally fucking obsessed?
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As they would say in a certain region which name cannot currently be disclosed: ¿Por qué no los dos?
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Rocket admin as he is, Mars has heard a few things about kepler brueshaber. Good things and bad ones. He has read the physicist’s file and everything, but in the end, meeting people in person makes all the difference, and first impressions matter. What is his first impression of Kepler, then? Well, it goes as follows: for a man who has probably spent copious amounts of time studying time, he sure isn’t punctual.
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Of course, nothing about this first impression shows itself on Mars’ expression, being calm as he could ever be.
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”Don’t worry about it.” He watches, still leaning against a tree, and while he can hear the rustling of leaves that indicates that there’s a pokémon nearby, Mars chooses to ignore it.
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Where to begin?
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That depends, doesn't it?
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”Hmm… Well, how much do you know about Unown? Most people aren’t all that familiar with them.”
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Not even he knows everything about them, even if he’s constantly trying to get more of them…

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Ah, por que no los dos. Kepler would call that the taco meme.
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Yeah, Mars probably saw the whole spectrum in Kep’s file. Lazy and prone to truancy. Disparaging remarks about superiors. But well and truly brilliant.
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It was hard out here in this gangster’s paradise.
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“Unown,” Kepler says, pulling out a stack of papers messily stapled together, “a Pokemon with 28 shapes-- 26 letters of the Latin Alphabet, the question mark, and the exclamation point. They are thin black lines with open eyes; the punctuation marks have half-open eyes.” The page he’s looking at has diagrams drawn of the Unown, complete with questionable cross-sections about their internal anatomy. “We don’t know if they pre-or-postdate written language, and if one is based on the other, or not.”
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Flip. “When multiple Unown come together, they produce an odd power. Large numbers of them can be used to manipulate time and space itself. How exactly they do this is, haha, unknown.”
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A nearby Golett is harassed by a bored Mercury, who downs the golem with a double kick. Kep lazily tosses a Pokeball in an arch over his head, not looking.
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He looks up at Mars, making eye contact for the first time. “Do you want me to keep going?”

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Quietly, Mars listens to what Kepler has to say, occasionally nodding along with his statements. Twenty eight known forms? Nod. Black lines? Nod. Not knowing when they originated? Nod. A group of Unown being capable of manipulating time and space? That’s when he pauses, watching the Scorbunny take down the Golett.
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After all, that had been information Team Rocket technically acquired after venturing into the Tree of Life, when he had a group of Unown create a portal to bring everyone back to Sootopolis. It’s accurate but not entirely true. Not when taking into account the things the assassins’ Unown appear to be able to do. Father Winter’s Unown had seemed capable of creating rifts all on its own, unless something else helped it do so.
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”No need, that’s more than enough.” Much more knowledge than what most people seem to have, at least. ”They’re also capable of closing rifts in time-space, like they did at the Star Soirée.”
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Those are far from fond memories, and he’s quick to move on from them:
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”Personally speaking, why do you think someone might want to catalogue all the Unown in Hoenn?”

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Kepler pauses, seemingly staring off into space as his mind works. “Aside from a childish obsession with completion?” he asks-- a question for a question, Martín-- before packing his books and papers back together in a haphazard pile.
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Nearby, a tree rumbles and stretches its roots, rising out of the ground. Mercury quickly quells it with a flame charge, leaving large portions of its legs blackened and smoldering. Kep takes the time to look, at least, before hitting the smoking treant with a Pokeball.
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He thinks of jayden cross and mint frost and their mysterious devices. Thinks on what they’ve told him, but also how cagey Rocket’s been about it, as a whole. He’s a scientist, for fuck’s sake; this kind of thing should be more available to him.
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“I’d wager it’s just like any game,” he says after a moment, “collecting them gets you rewards.” He looks at Mars to deny or confirm.

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A childish obsession with completion.
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A game.
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Mars considers the words spoken by kepler brueshaber, and admittedly, they leave a bitter taste. What has his own obsession with collecting Unown and adding entries to the report earned him? Said report becoming as if engraved into his mind, his own name becoming an entry, almost getting killed in another dimension, and stolen power. Out of those four, none came without a huge amount of uneasiness.
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”Rewards, huh?” He chuckles, amused, and just as he does, nearby ring the familiar bells of a Bronzong. ”Wonder what the reward will be once it’s completed, then.”
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That’s all he says on that, releasing a Rapidash from its Luxury Ball. The pokémon stands proudly, its FLAME BODY setting blades of grass alight with its every step. Mars nods towards the Bronzong’s direction, and Incitatus breaks into a trot in turn, one that soon turns into a gallop as it aims to strike the Steel type with a FLAME CHARGE.
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An effective strategy.
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”The grand majority of the entries in the report relate to astrophysics.” He continues to explain then, looking at their surroundings. ”But, it mostly seems like a loose collection of terms with no real purpose.”
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Not entirely true, he has seen some of their purposes, but that still doesn’t explain why exactly it’s these words.

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Look, Mars probably has a good reason for wanting to collect all the Unown in the history of the world. Everybody has a rationale for the crazy shit they do-- it’s the rationalizing that makes them crazy. Kepler doesn’t particularly give a hoot one way or the other, but if he didn’t seize the opportunity to take a childish shot at someone perceived to be his elder and better then, by God, he wouldn’t be Kepler Caiaphas Brueshaber.
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“Judging by the grand history of known things,” Kepler says, watching with bored, half-lidded eyes as Mars’ Rapidash bodies an innocent Bronzong, “it will either be very good, or very bad. Or both.”
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He’s a quantum physicist. His best grasp of things is at their basest level.
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“Unlikely,” he counters Mars’ statement. “Everything has a purpose. We just don’t know what it is right now.”
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There’s a squeaking noise that grows steadily louder as an errant Hatenna comes flying in over their heads. It lands, bouncing like a ball, and Mercury is there in an instant to send it skyward again with a double kick. He dribbles it like a soccer player for a few moments before Kepler shows mercy on the little, pink gnome and captures it in a Pokeball.
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“Or,” he says, suddenly and out of the quiet, “it had a purpose, and no longer does. Vestigial organs. Creatures that helped develop and create the known universe have lost their priority in the ebbs and flows of existence.” He shrugs.

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Mars spends every single day of his life around people who believe themselves to be in the right and won’t see otherwise, and admittedly, there are things about which he too acts in the same manner. Kepler’s behaviour doesn’t surprise him, but it does utterly bore him. He’s not here to play games like these.
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”And that’s why I said ’seems’. Because that’s likely what they want it to appear to be.” It doesn’t take a genius to know the Unown Report does have a purpose, Mars knows that well, but the question is what that purpose may be. He had had his theories in the past, but the appearance of his own name in it changed things.
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Kepler’s next comment, however…
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That theory is interesting.
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”Oh, great, an appendix. Hope we don’t end up with Peritonitis.” He says it dryly, smirking just so slightly, but he considers the words carefully. ”I doubt it has lost its purpose or why would they bother with distributing the devices that have the report, but it’s an interesting theory nevertheless. I like that… ”the ebbs and flows of existence.” Poetic.” Mars has always been one to appreciate such things, after all.

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He doesn’t mean to be petulant and argumentative. It just happens.
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“I was thinking more along the lines of pelvic structures in Wailmer,” Kepler said, “but then, I did my thesis on oceanographic quantum physics.” He didn’t give a whit for human biology. Human beings were boring-- limited.
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“Have you ever heard of cyclic cosmology?” Kepler asked, following the string of his own making. Mars was inconsequential, now; he may have been speaking to an empty room. That’s how he went, when he had an idea: roll it along the ground and just keep following it. “It’s a Penrose theory. Essentially, since our universe started from nothing, it will end in nothing, and be reborn in nothing-- in a different, yet identical, timeline.”
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Across the expanse in front of them, Mercury is soccer-kicking a Polteageist over the grass, tinkling ceramic loud in the evening as the little ghost within grips the teapot’s lid and ducks down into the shell of the body to hide. At the last second, Merc slices the kick, and it flies over Kepler’s head, crashing against the tree behind him, and falling to the ground. Kep taps the poor, dazed thing with a Pokeball, collecting it.
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“If cyclic cosmology is to be believed,” Kepler continued, almost as though nothing had happened, “the end of our universe is to be exactly like the beginning. Maybe the Unown are part of that.”