Oort had a bruise beginning to sluice down the front of his teal, tear-drop shaped form-- but he didn’t let that stop him, firing off a crisp salute and a cheerful “WAAAAA-BUFFET!” Kepler and Isaac couldn’t understand him but what he was saying was get good, scrub.

“Yes!” Kepler cheered, punching both fists skyward, as Isaac pushed away from him, releasing the tension in his grip and in the air. Kep wanted to run forward and hug his Wobbuffet. But then all of Isaac’s team began attacking the downed Swampert, and doing so would have put him right in the line of fire.

Isaac’s team went to work handling the Mega Swampert. The Dhelmise dragged it, stunned, out of the water-- just in time for it to jump up and start fighting back. Kepler was so focused on this aspect of the altercation that he didn’t notice the Cultist leader tackling Isaac to the ground until it was too late, Isaac going down in a rush of air and fabric behind his back.

“No!” Kepler yelled, throwing himself forward, not thinking-- for once in his life, he wasn’t thinking. He was wet and bedraggled and tired and done, and he all but launched himself at the cultist’s wrist, hitting it with enough force to divert the downward stroke of the knife. Instead of stabbing Isaac, the Corsola shard raked a stinging line down the inside of Kepler’s wrist and forearm, opening a slice in the underside of the limb as he grappled for the weapon. The force of the thrust coupled with Kepler’s weight drove the shard down into the wet ground, Kepler coming face-to-face with the fractured Sharpedo mask and the anger of the eye behind it.

Then there was a sickening thud sound as Gaia Bounced off the back of the cultist leader’s head, sending him forward with enough force to crash his eye socket against the shard buried in the ground. It went straight through with a sound like a cracking egg, puncturing-- cornea, iris, pupil, lens, vitreous body, Kepler heard his anatomy and physiology teacher rattle off in his head-- and the cult leader spasmed once, twice, and fell still.

Kepler froze, hands up, blood streaming out of the long slice on his forearm, from wrist almost to elbow. He was suddenly very cold.

Meanwhile, back in Crazy Mega Swampert Land, Oort glowed faintly teal, little spirals of energy, like DNA, flying through the air and linking him to the Mega Swampert in a Destiny Bond. He then hobble-hopped closer to the thing, aiming to get in close, within the reach of its flailing body, in the hopes that, now that they were intrinsically linked, if Oort fainted, so too would the mega-evolved Pokemon.

Isaac Merlo
kepler does something!
gaia uses bounce
oort uses destiny bond

☉