[attr="class","mittag"]

@ gauntlet

[attr="class","mitmain"]
That stupid Goodra puts its stupid ass right in the middle of Kepler’s stupid whirlpool and tries to suck it up like a stupid sponge.
[break][break]
Sparks whizz by. One skates across his skin, burning his cheek. “Hydro Pump that sucker!” he says, aiming at the giant, orange, metal Volcarona. Ahamkara roars and strafes in front of the moth, doing just that, firing off twin beams of water from beneath her fins to hopefully ground the thing.
[break][break]
Kepler grits his teeth and tugs on Ahamkara’s whiskers, urging her to fly wide to the very margins of their arena, to gain more space. The dragon fights against him, erratic motions making Kepler a little nauseated. “We can’t just fly at them!” he shrieks above the weather. “We’ll-- WOAH!”
[break][break]
An errant chunk of ice goes flying over his head.
[break][break]
“Okay, fine! You wanna fight? Let’s fight.” He couches low on his Gyarados like a knight heading into a joust, knees up, shoulders squared, as Ahamkara shoots into the center of the maelstrom, ice growing between her fangs, aiming to chomp down on Fenelle Miller ’s Goodra.


[break][break]

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

@ gauntlet

[attr="class","mitmain"]
The next little bit hits like musical chairs, where you have to keep one hand on the chair ring while the music plays, except there’s only one chair, it’s his Golurk, and he’s ringing around it in rapid panic to avoid getting hit by anything. Meanwhile, Venus’ been taking shots like a champ, soaking it all up like a damage sink, and then, blessedly, out rings a voice, signaling the end of the round.
[break] [break]
One by one, the strongest opponents are falling. Kepler lets himself relax, knees shaking, one hand brushing across Venus’ rough surface. The poor Golurk is too stupid to do much more than stand there, smoke rolling off her chassis.
[break] [break]
“I can’t believe we’ve made it this faa-AAH!”
[break] [break]
The ground shifts. Kepler falls, tumbling like a log rolling down a hill. Venus goes straight down, heavy feet digging a divot in the ground when she lands.
[break] [break]
Kepler ends up on his ass in the dirt. Wincing, he looks up through the raised dust and sees they’ve all been pushed closer together. There’s just them, the pond, and the sky.
[break] [break]
“Oh, fuck.”
[break] [break]
He recalls Venus and releases Ahamkara, clambering onto the dragon’s back before she can get too angry, nestling behind her head fins. “Let’s take this to the sky, I guess.” As they rise in a serpentine pattern, he triggers her mega-evolution, blinking through the sparkles of her transformation.
[break] [break]
“Do a whirlpool on the pond!”
[break] [break]
Ahamkara picks up speed, causing the water in the center of the arena to begin to spin rapidly. Then, Kepler had another idea:
[break] [break]
“Hurricane! But, the other way!”
[break] [break]
Ahamkara reversed, wings flaring, as she pulled a C-curve and swept outward, summoning storm clouds and rain and wind, wind, wind, the opposite centrifugal forces trying to act like a vacuum to add resistance to their opponent’s movements.


[break][break]

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

@ gauntlet

[attr="class","mitmain"]
Venus’ attack went off. Kepler put a hand on her hip joint and tugged her back from the edge, in case the whole clusterfuck of fighting in the center of their little toilet-fishbowl turned on him.
[break][break]
Of course more fool him that he’s so focused on the big guns slugging it out at the event horizon that he’s not really paying attention to the other dregs of society, like himself. He just so happened to have luckily placed Venus between him and Kazuya Yoshida .
[break][break]
The attack still makes him jump. “Shit! Time to move.” Venus extends an arm to wrap around his waist, and then time and space and everything in between is blurring as they’re subsumed by phantom force.
[break][break]
But instead of moving away from their attacker, they aim to pop up behind him. Kepler hops out of the ghostly ether, shivering, the pit of his stomach lurching, as Venus tries to tower over the Wooper and fire an ice beam directly down on her head. Either way, the Golurk’s massive body is safely between Kepler and the action.



[break][break]

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

Lulu Flint

[attr="class","mitmain"]
“Agreed,” he said, if only out of respect for the number of times a stray ghost had almost ended his life. Which was, like, twice, but funny that it had happened twice.
[break][break]
He follows in her shadow, hackles raised, teeth on edge. All the weird impossible biology things to suggest fear.
[break][break]
“Right--,” his voice died off with the lights. He was pleasantly surprised to find the fear that coursed through him was a regular, known thing. Like maybe he was getting used to it.
[break][break]
He released Pluto, whose blinking cortex panel beamed through the darkness.
[break][break]
“Interface with the controls, please,” he requested, finding the courage to step out of Lulu’s space and up to said input board, “some of us need light to see. Unfortunately.”

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

Makoto Kurumi

[attr="class","mitmain"]
Kepler made a noncommittal noise and let his head fall to to the side, shifting his hand to his cheek. He would not be asking Amor anything. “The primordial god of darkness it is, I suppose.”
[break][break]
Or maybe Erebus meant something else in this universe. Given that the mythos were all different. But that was too meta even for Kepler’s highly-evolved brain (sarcastic... kind of).
[break][break]
“More to the point of why I wanted to see it. When I was in space, a version of Deoxys emerged terastalized from the meteor. Now, I’m not sure how Amor used it, or how you’re planning to use it, but Killian used it mostly as an armor, it seemed. What I want to do is replicate it and investigate it’s propensity for use as a sort of… space suit. The ones we have are clunky and protect poorly against radiation. But if Deoxys can thrive past our atmosphere, and it can also retroform into a human shape…” he spun one finger in the air, allowing Makoto to make their own connections. "I'm hoping also it will have multifaceted use. Namely for deep sea travel, or travel into other dimensions where the conditions are less than suitable for life."

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

@ gauntlet

[attr="class","mitmain"]
He and oscar clayton made the briefest of eye contacts before everything exploded.
[break][break]
Oscar rolled off his Genesect, which took several thousand amperes directly to the face. Kepler could smell the burning chassis from here. He tried really hard not to giggle and kick his feet, and just barely managed to resist the urge. Talk about killing your heroes.
[break][break]
He hadn’t done the mental math about dropping Oscar from such a height. “Oops. All’s fair in love and war, right?”
[break][break]
Pluto looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, clearly concerned for his mental status. She didn’t have enough time to run psychological specks on him, though, because the Genesect was up and shooting at them, in a massive howitzer of a blow, and Kepler opened his mouth in a perfectly cut scream before his vision was subsumed in silver and red and the ground under his feet simply wasn’t there anymore.
[break][break]
He’s so busy falling and getting jostled by subsequent explosions that he doesn’t have the chance to see Adrian Malcolm ’s interference. All he knows is that when the dust clears, his protect bubble touches down with a gentle clink. It flickers and fades, Pluto sags, her rocky body battered and beaten, but still standing. “Oh, good girl. GOOD girl. Best alien.” The call to freeze comes out and he recalls her, holding her sphere close to his fluttering heart. A number of names are called out as eliminated, including Oscar’s. Kepler hadn’t really intended to take him out of the competition, really, but he supposed that was the name of the game.
[break][break]
Just like last time, everyone breaks out into smaller scraps at the drop of a hat, although with fewer contestants, it’s more like everyone’s little fights ooze into one big amalgamation of one.
[break][break]
And no one is paying attention to him.
[break][break]
He cocks his head, and watches them all throw punches, wondering if the smart move here would be to just vibe. It might be… weak of him, but, isn’t part of being the best having the best strategy? Knowing when not to get involved and letting your enemies do the damage for you?
[break][break]
He summons his Golurk, Venus, and beckons her down. She kneels with a grinding of stone and allows him to clamber up onto her shoulder. “Fly up there,” he said, pointing, and she does, joint sockets rotating as her arms and legs rotate. Jets of green-licked flame burst from her elbows and waist as she lifts off, moving up high past where everyone has sort of fallen in the middle, like they’re being sucked down a toilet bowl of doom. From his higher, separated vantage point, Kepler tries to identify who the strongest opponents are: dorian westcliff , parker jones , and Hitoshi Inoue , probably.
[break][break]
He didn’t so much relish the loss of his anonymity, such as it was, and he quickly threw away the idea of launching Venus into the fray. He pointed at the Gouging Fire, exhaling shakily. Again, this could all just blow up in his face, but.
[break][break]
“Snipe it. Ice Beam.”


[break][break]

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

oscar clayton

[attr="class","mitmain"]
Standing in the shadow of the power plant, Kepler had never felt smaller in his life. Which could be considered an amazing feat given that he felt like a parasite in his own body on every regular day.
[break][break]
Rocket was gearing up for war, which meant hoarding materials like a rabid Greedent. While most of the average rank and file were sent out for brainless things like scrap steel-- which would only give you tetanus if you were stupid enough-- it seemed the wheel of fate had different things in mind for the science-y types.
[break][break]
Which is how he ended up here, on Mossdeep’s coast, with the proper of Hoenn’s landmass looming in the distance. Here, cliffs flattened into a sandy beach for stretches at a time, and here Hoenn erected a smaller power plant. Kepler and oscar clayton were here to steal raw weapons-grade materials-- which was technically a metal.
[break][break]
Everything was already scary because of the gravity of the mission. It was made even scarier because of who he was here with.
[break][break]
Kepler swallowed hard and tried to keep his breathing even, stepping forward to unlock a sealed door with the fake plant ID badges they’d been given, trying not to let his hand shake too much.

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

Makoto Kurumi

[attr="class","mitmain"]
Kepler had a Stockholm Syndrome-based relationship with laboratories. He loved them-- they were safe, sterile, wide and empty; they smelled familiar; he knew where most things were. But he had been forced into this room and now he was too scared to leave.
[break][break]
He sees himself in the living deoxyribonucleic alien, on edge and poised to strike, gearshift ramped so far up fight-or-flight’s ass it’s liable to burst through its throat at any moment. He doesn’t move towards it, because he recognizes the need for space, that scared rabbit out of room look, the vibrations of a being constantly living just a nuthair away from a panic-based cardiac episode.
[break][break]
Except it doesn’t have a heart.
[break][break]
“Right.” He doesn’t really care. Rocket is a tool to him, and all the people in it are just well-formed lumps of stainless steel in the big, rickety, rusty, metal box.
[break][break]
He’s sitting on a stool at a table, elbow on the black surface, chin nestled in his palm, looking with half-lidded eyes at Deoxys. He just wanted to see it. Wanted to see if it reminded him of the strange too-shaped being that almost ended his life in space.
[break][break]
“Where does it go next, I wonder?” It’s more of a spoken-aloud thought than a question for answering, drifting off in an eponymous cadence.
[break][break]
“Why Erebus?” he asks a moment later with the rubber-band snap of focusing on a new topic.

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

Makoto Kurumi

[attr="class","mitmain"]
The ever revolving door of Rocket scientists turned and turned again, pendulum of doom sweeping ever closer to their throats. With every pass, the gurney ratcheted up an inch, offering new, uncut jugulars to the mercy of the blade. And, with every pass, the eternal gacha machine of life cranked out another plastic sphere, and whatever magic powers or deitific being that had blessed the previous purveyors tumbled down and out into the waiting hands of another.
[break][break]
Kepler hadn’t gotten his close examination of Deoxys like he’d wanted, before. Killian had been terrifying and he’d been… busy with other things while it was with Amor. Distractions, long since parted, and a clarity offered with a severing of everything he knew and held dear.
[break][break]
But now, a new opportunity. A chance to learn. To look into the eyes of the cousin of the beast that had almost ended his life in space. To glean… whatever he could from it, for whatever good it would do.
[break][break]
“Don’t you think it’s funny, this… arbitrary passing-along of sentient space goop?” he asked, as they sat for their granted meeting in an offshoot Rocket lab. “Like a Meowth and the chosen strand of FIV.”

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

@ gauntlet

[attr="class","mitmain"]
He’s not the only one who has taken the high ground. He can see that… from the high ground. Kepler watches oscar clayton rise on his fucking Genesect and thinks about how fucking unfair that is. In a very cool kind of sexy way.
[break][break]
Pale tendrils of thin mist curl across his little cliff, clinging to his leggings. It seems odd, given that the humidity is rather static and dry, so he follows them back to their source: the wide and sweeping fog bank of misty terrain, though he doesn’t really know that’s what it is or where it’s coming from. But he knows it isn’t normal and so he clocks that down as a variable to keep an eye on.
[break][break]
The voice of evil god tells them their waiting period is at an end. Everything goes to hell in a handbasket real quick. Stones are flying, explosions are going off, zip zaps are being zap zipped. Kepler swallows hard and tries not to quail back against the rock.
[break][break]
He has to make a decision. He can either turtle here and wait for the final rounds, or he can be a big boy and jump into a combat he might not win. He’s so fucking scared, he’s so fucking scared. Of what? Of failure? Of pain? His heart is racing. He’s going to give himself a fucking cardiac episode if he just continues to sit here and break apart into his lesser components.
[break][break]
Pluto clocks his rampant pulse and waves a hand, casting a protect barrier over him to give him some semblance of peace of mind. The rainbow-hued soap-bubble structure calms him, if only a little. He exhales, inhales. He has to either deal with the strange fog bank right next to him or go for the throat of someone else. He’s a scientist, not a fighter, what the fuck is he doing?
[break][break]
“Go big or go home,” he says on an unconvincingly raspy exhale, pointing into the sky at the floating Genesect.
[break][break]
Pluto brings her arms together and down, summoning booming thunder as she aims to draw a thunderbolt down on top of oscar clayton .
[break][break]

[break][break]

[attr="class","mitpoke"]