Kepler went sixteen rounds with the Doordash driver before finally giving in and heading off into the great unknown. He knew, for a fact, the store had his favorite flavor of Bangs in stock, but the delivery driver kept asking for substitutions. No matter. Kepler would just go out and get his own.

Except he hated going outside. The last time he’d done it, he’d been kidnapped and almost sacrified, then forced to run around half naked and soaking wet fighting cultists. Being in Rocket was supposed to stop him from having to do this stuff. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t far enough up the ladder to be able to call in any executive perks, but he did have a low enough pride threshold to do one thing:

Do you want to go to the grocery store with me, he texted to Isaac Merlo , I’ll buy lunch or smth.

His logic was strong: going in pairs reduced the risk of kidnapping, and he already knew Isaac was capable of taking care of himself. His own self. Not Kepler’s self. Though he wouldn’t mind that, either.

Flanked by his newly evolved Combusken Gaia, and his ever-present companion, Mercury, Kepler stepped off the bus and shaded his eyes against the glaring, out doors light. Any outdoor light looked painfully bright after absorbing the boreal halogen of the sub. Devoid of Flying-types, he’d asked Isaac to meet him at the transit stop just across from the store.

Ashley Shepard Isaac Merlo

☉

“Research Session ought-ought-one, subject study: Pokemon irregularity, subcodices quote ‘Shadow’ Pokemon, endquote.”

Kepler resists the urge to reach out and spin the recorder, a habit of his frowned upon by most of his research partners. It caused audio interference with the recordings, and could possibly damage the tape.

The fluorescents in the lab are a wash of moonlight over the stainless bulwark, a requirement for studying-- for living, really-- thirty thousand leagues under the sea. Like a ship in orbit-- Kepler’s ship. It’s clean, for once. Well, clean-ish-- Mercury has piled the trashcans full of leftover food wrappers and the recycling bin is overflowing with energy drink cans.

“Subject handler is one Mr. Martín del Mar . As the responsible party, he has been duly informed of his right to withdraw, and right to confidentiality, pertaining to this study. He is aware that all results are subsequently the intellectual property of Kepler Brueshaber and the organization Mr. Brueshaber is representing.”

He reached out and pressed the pause button, depressing it with a click; the record button popped up in equal measure.

“Old habits,” he explained, referring to his introductory script, spinning his finger as he cycled through the tenets of recorded research, sounding bored. “You can leave at any time, everything is voluntary, loose lips sink ships.”

He was a businessman. He got the idea.

Martín del Mar

☉

Her voice came out of the dark night and startled him enough to almost drop into the sea. As it was, it felt like his heart had lunged forward, cavorting free of his chest and taking a suicide drop down to the frothy, aquean, always open maw below.

“It’s okay,” he said, breath coming back into him and finding some of his regular bite, some snark, the normal prgrams he runs when he has to interact with people, when he’s incapable of being polite and has to be a smart ass, “if you like antequated heaps of metal.” His tone suggested he did not.

The lens, though. Fresnel lenses were a miracle of modern science-- at least, at the time. Part of his reason for taking this mission when it was so squarely out of his frame of experience was because he wanted that lens.

Him relaxing at her presence was an unintended side effect. She clearly knew what she was doing-- or, at least, had enough confidence to fake it quite well.

“It doesn’t matter what you have to do, but leave the lens intact,” he said, amazed at how smoothly it came out of his throat, a column so unused to giving orders. He pulled up his own mask and struck out along the coast for the lighthouse.

Zilla Dumay
MISSION

☉