[attr="class","top"]

Kepler? Her voice echoed back through the hallways, sounding somehow impossibly close but also very far away. He didn’t know where she was-- he didn’t know where he was, which meant he didn’t know where he was going.

Where are you?

“I don’t know!” he yells, fear bursting in his throat like a balloon and, oh, boy, this isn’t good for his heart. He rounds a nondescript corner and bolts down another equally nondescript hallway. “Idon’tknowIdon’tknowIdon’tknow!”

The dual tube-shaped fluorescent lights crack off of Ruby’s protective bubble, fracturing in the center and spitting sparks and shards of glass and filaments as they go out. The wires snap and crack as they whip down from the ceiling, one pulling taught and slicing up as it does so-- only the protect stops it from garroting Ruby right then and there.

The Sunny Day filled the room with a bright and unforgiving gleam, reflecting off the tile and metal tables; something made a horrible groaning noise, as though the sunlight really was hurting it. From a corner of the room, the shadows began to bubble and hiss, like sugar bubbling in a pan; as the darkness receded, Deimos popped out with a triumphant shriek, speeding towards Ruby with her little tendrils flowing out behind her. She circled around Ruby and then, with a scream of utmost impudence, fired off a hex in the direction of the bubbling shadow.

It struck the darkness and gave it shape, the Dusknoir forming out of the receding ichor, crying in pain and grasping at where the hex struck through it like a spear, pinning it to the wall.

Kepler, meanwhile, was running chaotically around, freaking out the entire time. He rounded another corner and-- bomf!

Ran smack-face-first into Phobos, the sudden stop of his forward motion throwing him backward to crack his head on the floor and black out.

Ruby Garcia
set just pre-PAAA
wearing

“Hope is a logical fallacy,” Kepler says, unhelpfully.

He zooms in on the little squid and has flashbacks to Mars’ attacking his fucking face. Almost as though they’re going off of his vitriol, Phobos and Deimos zoom in on the cephalopod, terrorizing it with a smattering of ghost-type attacks and leaving it dazed and confused as Kepler throws a Pokeball.

“How do we start? Go back out to the ocean? Make a whirlpool? Maybe that can conjure up the doorway again.”

The word conjure comes out as a half-snorted laugh, a hint of wry humor in the otherwise insistent nature.

Martín del Mar
ghost/psychic
catch attempt inkay

☉

Of course it would turn out that as soon as Kepler has Real People to Interact With (friends?) he would spend his time giggling like a little girl. How embarrassing. Was this why no one liked him?

His shame was quickly washed away by Isaac’s very passionate spiel about Why Trainers Were Good, Actually.

“Are you sure the League didn’t try and recruit you?” he asks, in the brief silence that follows while both he and Ash are too busy being stunned by the sheer charisma power to say anything. “You’d make a great public speaker.”

He did have one thing dead on.

“That’s all Sinnoh is-- legends and dusty books. That’s why I got out.” And because Rocket was paying him money that Alamos U Research and Development could only dream of offering, but they didn’t need to know that.

Ash mentions Bongo is his other brain cell and Kepler giggles at that, too, before he can stop himself.

“But only one of the braincells has hand-eye coordination?”

Isaac Merlo Ashley Shepard

☉