Kepler pulls his turtleneck up more as he weaves between the bodies of the general science crowd. Nerds, like polar molecules, tend to attract each other. He’s small, so he skirts through without much notice.

The fuck the league chant is dying down. Kepler did not participate. He’s never been one for sports-game motifs.

He doesn’t know how he feels about the whole teleport the rock thing. He didn’t get to Hoenn in time to really help come up with a better option. Lulu Flint says she has one, and he trusts her. But theories and laws are different and fragile. A key property of them they must be able to be disproven.

Fact of the matter is, he doesn’t want to die. He’s worked so hard not to die. And, sure, his first instinct when met with physical opposition is to give up, but that’s more of an extension of his existence as a slippery parasite. Things usually do work out for him, in the end.

He really, really, really liked oscar clayton ’s idea, because he would love to get his hands on real, genuine space rock. It was a treasure trove of possibility and he knew he wasn’t the only science brain drooling over it. But the technicalities that would have to come into play to make that possible were… enormous.

It always astounded Kepler that they lived in a universe where people teleported and rode dragons to work and a fucking meteor-- the thing that possibly-most-likely changed the planet 6.5x10E7 years ago-- was still a massive threat. The irony was hilarious.

Eris Halla also raised a good point about opening a door-- the facet of a door was that things could enter and exit, both ways. It wouldn’t make a very good door otherwise. Kepler hadn’t been here the last time Things From Beyond(™) had invaded Hoenn but he’d read the reports and found them exciting-- which meant they were terrifying and scary.

He didn’t really go along with the whole ‘befriend Sea!Hoenn’ plan, because Kepler didn’t tend to trust anyone as far as he could throw them. Which wasn’t far, at all. Lulu was the exception.

Kepler one-hundred-percent planned to come to this and sit in silence and, just, absorb everything through verbal osmosis. But he surprises himself by speaking after Raphael Pryde .

“I want to see one, too,” he says, of a Primal Point, and it’s not demanding per se as it is a-- a verbal tic, something that bubbles to the forefront of his mind that he can’t internalize. And it’s not so much loud as it is close-- he’s at the forefront of the group of nerds and a lot of people can definitely hear him say it. “If they work, imagine what we could do with them. Even on a smaller scale-- less interdimensional transit and more… interplanatary. Because life has more extant properties as you go up through organization levels, right?” He shook his head, like clearing an Etch-a-sketch. “Digression. I’d like to make sure their science is at least in the ballpark of correct.”

He’s rambling. It’s neither here nor there. His point, though, is that if this technology allows them to movet through dimensions, imagine what it could do for travel between places in their own dimension, assuming that cross-dimensional travel is higher up on the organization levels than interplanatary. Like, cell-tissue-yadda yadda-biosphere-stratosphere-stellar sphere-interdimensional sphere.

Though he doesn’t agree with Chu-e Choi ’s harshness, he has to admit both the ex-underboss and mint frost have a point. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

“This is making a lot of assumptions that the Sea-people won’t just lump us in with the masses,” Kepler found himself saying, shortly after Rowan Wrynn threw out the enemy of my enemy is my friend line, like a good Winston Churchill.

He squints at the sandstorm, running through the mental math. He didn’t realize the League’d used these things before. And they had a history of removing one thing and replacing it with something else?

“One-point-five times ten to the 14th cubic liters of water?” he threw out. “Do we have to worry about that, now, too? Because that’s almost not any better than just getting smashed by a space rock.”

His stomach does a little dance when Killian Decker mentions alien life and, look, there’s a million pieces of media about why it doesn’t go well, but if they could just bank off of oscar clayton ’s idea and stop and isolate the meteor… maybe they could study it?

Mars brings up a good point: there’s another factor in play, here. Another power to contend with, in the form of the Dark Triad. Which, from what Kepler’d read of all the reports, was… astounding. Mathematically incomprehensible. It made him want to cry into his notes. He hated things that the numbers couldn’t attend for and the presence of a malevolent higher power was one of those things.

He looks over at Ceri Glynn , who did the verbal version of his gastrointestinal happy dance. "The meteor is massive. Like, larger than anything we can think of on a physical scale. We couldn't do enough damage to it fast enough to mitigate the opposing damage of its collision. We could try, alternatively, producing enough energy to move it so it misses us, but that's just more shooting in the dark. Any kinetic repulsion systems would require in-depth knowledge of the surface of the meteor."

Basically, they're running out of time. And options. And they really should've started working on this, like, six years ago.

TL ; DR
>> oh my this was a lot. kepler hides with the nerds.
>> he wants to join the ppl that examine the primal points
>> doesn't want to befriend sea!hoenn.
>> worries about what will come through the doorway w the league plan.
>> talks to ceri about space stuff
>> wearing

Kepler nods as Mars releases his Hatterene, who gives Kepler the dirtiest look he thinks a Pokemon has ever been able to conjure-- which is saying something, given his rampant history of being bullied. He does his best to ignore it, making sure the needle is well snug in the lock and putting the syringe between his teeth to snap on a pair of nitrile gloves, just to be safe.

The miasma around the Inkay’s body burns cold, even through the gloves. It’s a very strange feeling, one that Kep wants to bottle and investigate-- but maybe later, because he has to get all his baseline shit down before he can start running around in fantasy fairy shadow gas land.

He’s not the most well-versed with needles and blood draws but he’s done his fair share of micro pipetting and PCR analysis; he flips the needle bevel up, clicks off the cap, and goes to apply pressure around the cephalic to get it to really pop, two fingers in each side of the vein, pads of his pointer and middle finger pressing into the soft flesh of the Inkay’s mantle.

The vein is, surprisingly, not very abnormal. It’s purple in color, which is to be expected. It stands up beautifully and Kepler is pretty much sure he’s gonna hit it dead on; when the needle slides in, like a knife through butter, he slowly begins to draw back the plunger. Dark ichor floods the syringe, spiraling through the needle hub first before beginning to drip into the 3cc tube.

He’s got almost half of the full thing when the Inkay’s tentacles lash up and wrap around his restraining wrist. Kepler panics and jerks the needle back, at the same time trying to follow proper procedure and hold the venipuncture off while the Inkay savages his hand and wrist with tentacles. Her lights begin to flash angrily in warning. “Hold on-- I just gotta-- make sure you stop bleeding, ack, Mars!”

One of her longer feeder tentacles lashes across his face, hitting his cheek with a wet slap and pulling at the skin. At the same time, she launches forward, beak snapping within millimeters of Kepler’s nose.

Martín del Mar

☉

Jayden laughs-- a burst of a sound, like laughing was the last thing he expected to do-- and it makes Kepler’s insides feel fuzzy. He tamps that shit down real quick. “I’m sure you would’ve come up with a better name,” he says, sarcasm only slightly coloring his vote of confidence. “Then again, it’d be hard not to.”

Kepler makes a face, then, at Jayden’s description of the event. “Like…” he doesn’t know why his fucking brain goes here, but go it does: “...like a… maid cafe, or something?” Which is quite possibly the dumbest sentence that has ever left his mouth and it doesn’t help that he’s picturing Jayden in a maid outfit now and god fucking damn it, Kepler, you need to tamp down on that shit.

He shook his head to dislodge the image from his brain.

“I have a pretty low threshold for bullshit,” Kepler tells him, almost conspiratorily, like it’s a secret, “and Hoenn constantly finds a way to exceed it.” But he takes the point, watches curiously as Jayden produces a Pokeball and the Unown that emerges from it.

Ah, a K. His favorite letter.

“Absolutely,” he says, without hesitation.

---

wearing

jayden cross

☉

“Ah, yes, avoiding latenight television,” Kepler says, a breathy sort of sarcasm that hints at mocking reverence, “the luxuries of the rich and popular.”

Jayden confesses to not having many friends and Kepler gives him a wry smile. I’m sure you don’t, Mister Person in a Position of Power. We are not the same.

It's a rough line of thinking that he's cultivated over time, like a suit of armor, an exoskeleton.

“Right?” he says, nodding, tucking his arm back against his side. “And sooo many Clamperls. It’s going to be one hell of a mess to clean up.” His gaze shifts out of focus into the middle distance.

“I won’t miss summer,” he adds as a quiet afternote.

jayden cross

☉

And lo, Isaac and Kepler engaged in a very strange, very comical battle of facial expressions intended to replace an actual verbal conversation about what the fuck was Mew-Man and Isaac really doesn’t want to tell this story again does he and that was kind of why they were friends.

You could’ve mentioned Schrodinger’s cat, Isaac; Kepler’s a physicist. He gets it.

An unusual sense of humor. Kepler’s face heats at the praise, such that it is. He was used to being called unusual, though usually it was you fuckin’ weirdo and pinned in place by a clenched fist.

What he doesn’t understand is this apparent mutual desire to, like, scrounge for ingredients and cook a meal. Kepler frowns, bottom lip sticking out in slight petulance.

“I don’t much care for adventure,” he says, but goes along when the other two go, because he may be nervous but he’s not stuck so deep in the mud that he can’t be flexible.

He thought about what he was craving and didn’t come up with food-- instead, he saw his lab. Smelled the autoclave. Light gleaming off the metallic surfaces. His spectrophotometer, curettes all in a line.

“Seafood sounds fine,” he says, punching the nerd in him back down into hell where it belongs. “But if you’re cooking--,” and he emphasized the you’re over the we’re, “--I better not get food poisoning.”

Because, what the hell. Let’s camp in Mauville. Why the friggidy fuck not.

Ashley Shepard Isaac Merlo
the autism is strong in this one

☉

Kepler’s mouth makes a little oh shape when Mars says the Inkay hatched. He thinks back to all the times he walked by the repro lab. Never ventured in-- genetics, while exponentially fascinating, were not his cup of tea.

Mars sighs as though disappointed and Kepler can’t stop the peristalsis of failure that slides its way up his gut like he’s about to vomit a slug.

“I see,” is all he says, because what else can he say? He’d still been wobbly on his feet a few months ago. Fresh out of Alamos, setting up his lab, nestling into the Rocket Sub like a good Cuterebra. Then he’d gotten kidnapped and killed a guy. He’d been busy!

“If she’ll permit, I’m going to take a small blood sample,” he said, splitting the package on a 3CC luer lock with a 22 gauge needle. “Then, a small tissue sample with the biopsy punch.”

He pointed to a spot almost dead center of her mantle. “Her cephalic artery should be there, so that’s where I will draw from.” He looked at Mars for permission to approach-- not because he really, specifically wanted it, but he did want Mars to be aware and jump in if she tried to hentai his face.

Martín del Mar
im reading about the circulatory system in cephalopods it's very interesting

☉

Kepler tilts his head, thinking. What could he say that would not be a confession of the lamest magnitude?

“I didn’t-- don’t have a lot of friends.” It’s said without emotion, corrected in a beat, because it is important, always, to be accurate. Speaking in the past tense would be spurious. "Do you know when poker's on TV? Between midnight and six A.M."

He reaches up to touch his shoulder, then drags his fingers down his arm to the fresh scar slicing vertically up his wrist, nestled between his radial and ulnar artery. If the cultist’s blade had slipped centimeters right or left, he’d have bled out in Isaac Merlo's lap.

“It’s fine. Just a little pop.” The crackle of the bone in the joint, the sick gush of cranial fluid as the knife entered the eye. He inhales, blinks, shakes free of the scene.

“Did you go diving?”

jayden cross

☉

He doesn’t even realize the faux pas. Kepler doesn’t socialize much. Isaac jumps in to help explain things but doesn’t really help, at all. “It’s rather a short story, actually,” he adds, equally as unhelpfully. But he squints up at Isaac when he mentions Mew-Man.

He doesn’t realize Ashley’s been staring at him, waiting for the punch line. There is no punch line, Ash-- or if there was, it’s just Kepler’s life.

Funny. Kepler looks back towards the ground. “Thanks.” Actually, I’m brilliant, dies on the back of his tongue, because no, Kepler, this is how you alienate yourself, and then you have no friends to help you when your bullies handcuff you to a chair on a trampoline.

Another long story.

So he tells the truth. “I don’t get that one a lot.”

Isaac chimes in with splitting ingredients and Kepler squints at him, again. When was he going to understand this boy? His gaze flashes from Isaac to Ashley and back, because apparently, they were all in on the same plan.

“I was just going to buy you food. From a restaurant.” He makes a vague gesture around them. “We’re in Mauville. The whole place is a stove, essentially.”

Kepler could calculate inertia’s effect on a supply line to the moon without blinking, but he could not cook. Which was ironic because it was essentially just chemistry. Eurgh, chemists.

Ashley Shepard Isaac Merlo
the autism is strong in this one

☉