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Oh. Right.

She doesn’t even have the grace to be embarrassed as she sluices down through the floor and disappears. She finds Kepler not too long after, with Phobos hovering over him, Drifloon-cooing a greeting. Ruby joins their little party in good time.

Her palm slaps against Kepler’s cheek-- not as hard as it could have, mind-- and his eyes flicker open. The memory of running for his life slams into him a moment later and he sits straight up with a gasp. The following seconds bring the delayed pain response of a head injury, and he palms at the back of his head with a hissing inhale. “Ouch. Fuck.” There’s no blood but he’s going to have one hell of a Zangoose egg there later.

“Ghosts are scary and I hate them,” he growled, glaring daggers up at Phobos, who made a little balloon-noise in innocence. “Did you find anything fun? Pho, help me up, you ass.”

Phobos offered a tendril and Kepler used it to jerk himself to standing, only a little wobbly on his feet.

“Can we get out of here now?”

Ruby Garcia
set just pre-PAAA
wearing

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Kepler’s head hurts and he blinks against delayed pain. “Th-those two things are not mutually exclusive. I still can’t believe they did that. Next time I’m telling them to get a fucking exorcist.”

Luckily Ruby had the correct idea and Kepler waved his hand dismissively. “That seems solidly in your wheelhouse. I postulate--,” he grits his teeth against every ‘T’ in the word, “--once we do get it out of here, the unusual activity will cease.”

Ruby’s curse made Kepler jump, and he recoiled, curling into a little huddle. He’d thought the shadowy blurs in his vision were part of his lingering concussive protocols, but then the flash of Pokeball light made him squeeze his eyes shut.

Just when things seemed to calm down something else happened and this time Kepler did scream, nerves raw and head sore and mildly concussed.

“I hate this game I hate this game!”

Deimos cackled excitedly and tore off in the same direction as Cerberus and whatever was causing all the bedlam now.

“This is such bullshit,” Kepler spat. His heart was doing funny things in his chest, rate bordering on tachycardia. He needed to calm down or he’d have an episode. He put his hands on his knees and bent double, squatting to try and get his heart to seek a normal equilibrium.

“I guess let's go see what the fuck this noise is,” he said, miserably.

Ruby Garcia
set just pre-PAAA
wearing

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“Hold on, I have to--,” Kepler was keen to say there and keep practicing his breathing but then Ruby grabbed his wrist and-- she really didn’t even have to pull him, honestly, she was so strong and he was so weak that just the thought of her heading in a direction meant he had to go that way, too.

Deimos delighted in the cacophony and was swirling around the broken filaments and shards of glass spitting electrical charges, cackling laughter echoing down the empty laboratory halls.

Kepler had to focus on walking and not falling. Eventually, his legs caught up and he wasn’t so hunched over but he still kept one hand pressed to his chest, willing his heartbeat to regulate. His pale face was blanched blue in the light of the security monitors and his beautiful and complex brain had been relegated to inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.

His scream cut off as he shrank and pressed his back to Ruby’s, not able to keep up with the way the Rotom-- it had to be a Rotom-- jumped from computer to computer. Disc drives whirred and stuck out, fans sprung to life, and buttons charged blue and then faded with crackling pops. He didn’t see it when it charged but he heard Cerberus’ roar and clapped his hands over his ears, willing his heart to slow down, slow down, slow down--

“Ruby-- Ruby, I’m--,”

Deimos spiraled towards the computer the Rotom had shot into like a fish down a toilet bowl, seeping into the inner mechanisms and blowing it apart with a shriek of hilarity, forcing the Rotom out into another machine. Deimos doggedly followed, having the best time, but each explosion sent pieces of techy shrapnel scattering over the ground.

Kepler’s heart gave a painful squeeze.

After four or five explosions Deimos tired of the chase and zapped the Rotom with a Hex that sent it careening across the open space and into the wall of TV screens, causing one to shatter to pieces and spider-web cracks to branch out across the ones directly surrounding it.

Ruby Garcia
set just pre-PAAA
wearing

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Don’t die on me in here. Don’t die on me in here.

Kepler’s brain filtered those words in and latched on, sinking to a crouch and then falling onto his ass, hands still clamped over his ears and face scrunched painfully.

Don’t die on me in here.

Things fell into a sort of blessed silence, the speaking tongues of the ghosts muffled by the sound of his own pulse. He counted the beats of his heart and found safety in his favorite thing: numbers. The little space between three and four where his ticker was throwing an ectopic beat.

Don’t die on me in here. One, two, three, and, four. One, two, three, and, four. One, two, three… four.

“I won’t,” he finally said, chest seizing a bit with the force of getting the words out. His eyes fluttered open, vision still blurred for the lack of oxygen making its way through his system. “I won’t. Hoooooly fuck.”

He pressed one hand over his heart as it continued to beat-- rapid, but a steady rhythm, now.

“Stupid fucking defective piece of shit.”

He looked up. The only light in the room was from a few scattered standalone computers that hadn’t been blown up, and the occasional spark of wiring.

“Can we be done now?”

His voice was quiet in the dark.

Ruby Garcia
set just pre-PAAA
wearing

[attr="class","top"]

Kepler took advantage of the offered hand to help him stand. The world spun for a little bit, oxygen deprivation vertigo punching his brain. After a few beats he realized he was still gripping her hand so he let go and bent double to put his hands on his knees.

“I’m good,” he said, hopefully convingingly, “I’m good. Lets boogie.”

Once they were outside and the car door shut behind them, he took a good long last look at the abandoned research facility, finally silent as it was intended to be, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever had happened there… that place deserved to be haunted.

Ruby Garcia
set just pre-PAAA
wearing