Kepler maps out the ballroom and all its locales: the staircase to the upperfloor (that’s actually offlimits, it’s just the carpeted L-shape that people can go up and down); the snack table, which is actually, like, seven tables; there’s a DJ, a dance floor, some tables and chairs.

Kepler is looking for a place to hide.

He’d gotten the invite as an extension, he expected, of being one of Mars’ business connections. Kepler Brueshaber, officially, was a physicist from the Sinnoh Region doing research in Hoenn. He doesn’t know what made him come.

(Maybe the looming end of the world? Maybe the fact that he’d never been kissed? Maybe the fact that his crowning achievement was being valedictorian?)

He doesn’t know why he’s out here.

Mars’ voice startles him out of his misery.

“No,” he says, direct and scathing, looking up from beneath thick-lined eyes with a venomous glare potent enough to knock a thousand of Mars’ stupid Inkays off their… tentacles.

He cradles a whiskey sour in a plastic cup in his palms, the ice melting, the drink slowly warming.

“The decor is nice,” he adds in a quiet voice.

Martín del Mar
we stan a genderfluid monarch

☉

KKepler sighs, a forced, measured exhale that is both a grounding attempt to keep his feet underneath him and a survival mechanism to mind his sharp teeth. Be polite.

“I could be convinced to play nice,” he said, instead of what he wanted to say, which was a liturgy of impudent remarks about hows Mars shouldn’t try to be as smart as him, actually.

He doesn’t understand the man but that’s not saying much. Kepler doesn’t understand people, in general. There’s no mathematical formula for them. You can’t make assumptions like you can with numbers.

Case in point: Mars’ next question catches him off guard. He looks up at the underboss, a little bit suspiciously, then back down across the floor at the gaggle of people intermingling in costume.

“Anything at all?” he asked. “Or anything within the bounds of reason? Is jumping to a timeline where the meteor doesn’t exist out of the question?”

Martín del Mar
we stan a genderfluid monarch

☉

Mars finds whatever it is he’s said humorous and Kepler fights the urge to roll his eyes. He’s still full of a burgeoning resentment at getting his face manhandled by a certain shadowy cephalopod.

“Don’t you find that our ever-changing reality really enjoys challenging the bounds of reason?” he shoots back without missing a beat.

Not everyone has super powers. Shut up.

“Not be here, in any sense of the word,” Kepler says, bringing the cup full of watered-down amaretto to his lips. “Not at this party, not in this timeline, in this universe. Somewhere where none of this has to happen.”

He licks his lips, looking back out at the dance floor.

“But it’s Schrodinger’s dimensional analysis. If I possessed the ability to not be here then it would be assumed that I also had the technology to make the meteor not be here and, ergo, the region is both dead and alive until you open the box.”

Martín del Mar
we stan a genderfluid monarch

☉

“No,” he says, instantaneous. “There’s a lot of unreasonable but very real shit out there.”

Like healthcare costs. And taxes. And going to the meteor to mine it before it destroys their entire dimension. Real, somehow. Very unreasonable.

“I’m too smart to appreciate things for what they are,” he said, flatly, head lolling to one shoulder, “and I thought you were, too.” Because there’s always extraneous factors. For every light there is shadow. The energy of a system is equal and opposite to the energy of its surroundings. Every plus a minus. Every up a down.

“Life is a gradient. Warm to cold. Endergonic to exergonic. There’s always the bitter with the sweet. The downside to existentialism is the dread goes hand in hand.”

Maybe it’s closed-minded. Maybe it’s the clinical depression.

“Who’s who at this shindig?” He asked, tipping his cup towards the crowd.

Martín del Mar
we stan a genderfluid monarch

☉

Kepler and Mars are like the Lewis structures of lanthanide molecules: unreasonable, unstable, and, unfortunately, doomed to exist despite their unlikeliness. They occur somewhere, for some purpose.

For this specific instance, Kepler doesn’t like that Mars is lecturing him on the multiple facets of life, which would be easy for him to profess given he’s, like, home to a thousand and one single-eyed organisms all peering at everything, or something. Kepler doesn’t actually understand how Mars’ quote-unquote avatarship works.

“I guess,” is as much as he’ll allow, because for all his faults, maybe he’s becoming a better person, and maybe he doesn’t want to entirely rain on Mars’ parade, or whatever hifalutin the world is dark and beautiful scripture he’s satiated himself with getting off on.

“...I do like space.” He tosses back the remainder of his drink and sighs, plotting a course from the refreshments back to the Mossdeep scientist. “I’ll get out of your hair. And try not to ruin your party. Have a good night and… hopefully I’ll see you on the other side of the apocalypse.”

It manages to come out not-defeated as he excuses himself from present company and puts on his big boy pants to go out and make it through the night.

Martín del Mar
we stan a genderfluid monarch

☉