[attr="class","mittag"]

Ashley Shepard

[attr="class","mitmain"]
Ash is not-- well, unbothered would be giving him too little credit. But the way he turns his cheek like he expects the hit is just disastrous, like Kepler’s whole world is shaking down to his core. Because it means he knows and it means he knows and it means he KNOWS and he isn’t doing anything about it!
[break][break]
It makes him want to scream and tear his hair out. He manages a warped, hiccupy little half-sob, half-croak, squeezes his forehead, his face, imagines the quadrillion stars out in the expanding universe, imagines he’s out there, somewhere, feeling small, instead of feeling small right here next to the man he loves.
[break][break]
“You fucking died,” he squeaks, and he hates himself for how weak he sounds, but volume and pitch control is beyond his capability right now. “You fucking died, you fucking asshole!”
[break][break]
All at once his hands fall away from his face and he sheds his meek skin. He has surpassed the delimitation of biology. He is not weak, he is not constrained by the lesser science of mortal men. His wrath is great and all-encompassing, cleansing and blue-hot.
[break][break]
“How fucking dare you!” he screams, and he’s shaking so hard he might break through the bounds of matter and into something new, something unholy. “Every time! Every time this happens you sit there and you bow your head and you say I’m sorry, Kepler. I’ll change, Kepler. I’m so sad and pathetic, Kepler. And then Isaac or Jayden or Declan or Zev or whomever the fuck else waltzes in and asks you to sit down on the tracks in front of the fucking train and you do! You fucking do!”
[break][break]
He’s shrieking, at this point. He doesn’t care.
[break][break]
“You fucking died, Ashley Shepard. Oh, cool, you have a friend with fucking life controlly powers. Lucky for fucking you. Do you know how-- the chances-- the microcosmic SPECK of a chance-- you had-- to come back from that? Does anyone? Because no one seems to fucking care. Everyone acts like life-- yours, in particular-- is a fucking afterthought. Oh, we need someone to fucking jump on the grenade? Throw Ashley in there, Isaac can bring him back.”
[break][break]
His rage has transferred to kinetic energy. He paces back and forth.
[break][break]
“But last time I fucking checked, you weren’t married to Isaac, you were going to marry me. Till death do us part. Remember? Remember that?!”
[break][break]
And then he does scream. He’s worked himself to a fever pitch and when Ash says I don’t know how Kepler throws his head back and roars, something old and primal and long and loud and so much it makes his vocal chords snap and his voice is raspy afterwards.
[break][break]
His speaking voice is loud in the deafening silence.
[break][break]
“I don’t give a shit, frankly, what you do and don’t know,” he says, tears streaming down his face. “Do like I fucking did, and learn.”
[break][break]
And he jabs Ash once, with one finger, in the center of his forehead, on the word learn, and then grabs his face and kisses him.

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

Ashley Shepard

[attr="class","mitmain"]
“I.”
[break][break]
He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t, honestly, think he can do this. His stomach is beyond tying itself into knots, it is inventing new degrees of dimension and is operating on several different realities right now.
[break][break]
“I can’t.”
[break][break]
His hands are sweaty and his voice is thin and reedy and he feels like he does on the edge of a heart episode but it isn’t cardiac events gathering in his chest but dread, dread, dread.
[break][break]
“I can’t keep doing this, Ash, I can’t.”
[break][break]
He gestures vaguely at all of Ash, but what he really means is the damage. The pain. The suffering.
[break][break]
“You just keep-- ugh.” He digs the pads of his fingers into his eyes to burn away the need to cry. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. But it is-- I know this is farcical given that you keep almost dying but it is literally killing me seeing you like this. Every time. Every time something happens. You keep doing shit. Shit for Isaac. Shit for Jayden. Getting chewed up for these fucking people. But you never do anything for you. To take care of you.”
[break][break]
He can't look at him, right now, so he draws tessellations in the silver lights in his eyes and presses, presses, presses. If he presses hard enough maybe he can shove his fingers right through into his brain and kill himself.
[break][break]
"I love you so much but it is like watching your favorite Meowth walk into traffic a thousand times and not being able to stop it."

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

[attr="class","mitmain"]
He was fond of Meteor Falls. This was where he’d caught his first wild Pokemon, after arriving in Hoenn. The once suffocating rushing of the water and the way it echoed had become a balm to his worried mind, and he now walked through the glow of the tidal pools with ease and confidence, his Munna floating along silently beside him.

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

jayden cross

[attr="class","mitmain"]
Kepler was a scientist, first and foremost, and knew that a lot of research endeavors turned up dick butkis, with a lot of wasted effort and resources and nothing to show for it. But this one was personally important to him, for a number of reasons.
[break][break]
He had to find Chocobo. He had to.
[break][break]
Luckily enough, he’d run through his Pro-Rocket-Anti-League covers so often that they were becoming second nature. So when Jayden joked about dropping Leaguers in volcano, he reacted with a knee-jerk “Preach, sister,” that was flatline emotionally and just tired enough to sound sarcastic.
[break][break]
Meanwhile, he imagined Jayden taking a nice little hot lava bath.
[break][break]
Which wasn’t unique to just Jayden, mind. There were a lot of people-- faction notwithstanding-- that he’d like to dunk in a volcano, at the moment.
[break][break]
Riding the middle line of the Rocket-League railcar was beginning to chafe.
[break][break]
“There’s a spot north of Slateport and West of Oldale, around Route 110,” and far away from any pseudo-confirmed sightings of the Galarian birds that Kepler knew of, “that I think would be perfect. Topographically it’s ideal because it’s essentially raised flatland between the mountains and the coast. It’s forested but not so much as to be a hindrance, and it doesn’t garner a lot of foot traffic.”

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

mint frost

[attr="class","mitmain"]
“Because I’m not a mother, his-- theirs-- or otherwise.” There's more anger in his words than he really knows what to do with; it was not something he could explain to anyone, really. Except maybe Ash. Definitely not Mint.
[break][break]
Mint’s speciality was intel. He, like Kepler, was small, fragile in appearance, and decidedly more dangerous than he let on.
[break][break]
At least, Kepler liked to think he was capable of great danger, though all he’d done so far was prove to be a danger to himself.
[break][break]
“Sure. Exactly. Game recognizes game.” He didn’t get to finish the lecture spooling on his tongue because the stupid whale picked then to make an appearance. “Ah, fuck, Olympus--,”
[break][break]
The Metagross summoned a whirlpool, twisting the massive waves of water into a spiral around them, offering some protection from the onslaught. The aqua tail, however, crests over their protective helical, slicing through it like a knife through hot butter.
[break][break]
Kepler gets dunked, Metagross and all, and it’s all he can do to inhale before he goes under. The sea is cold, and he’s a mass of flailing limbs in rising, foaming bubbles.
[break][break]
Until the bubbles clear, and he’s staring at the mass of Kyogre, huge and unyielding, a dark shadow in the deep abyss, and in that moment Kepler feels very, very small.
[break][break]
Then his Metagross is back beneath him and they’re rocketing skyward. His inhale turns into a scream, chest burning, skin stinging and plastered with salt.
[break][break]
“FUCK!”

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

Lulu Flint

[attr="class","mitmain"]
He really shouldn’t be here unloading all of his bullshit onto his boss. She had asked, of course, but Kepler knew-- he knew a great many things-- but he knew, perhaps most of all, that people didn’t really care.
[break][break]
“It was just-- so--,” he grips the edge of the table, watching his already pale fingertips go paler as the blood is squeezed out of them. “--it seemed so miserable. And forced to just… indiscriminately attack. Destroy. Offer itself. And I don’t know, of course, that Dialga wouldn’t be like that, just, in general. But. I don’t want that to happen to Ch-- to the Galarian birds.”

[attr="class","mittag"]

Ashley Shepard

[attr="class","mitmain"]
Everything was hell. It always felt like hell. It would have been better if Ash could… stop. Stop running into the fire. Stop going where Kepler couldn’t follow. Kepler would feel better if he wasn’t always two steps behind the love of his life, getting the full IMAX 1080p picture of Ash’s pain played out like Kepler’s own version of snuff torture films.
[break][break]
Three months or so was never long enough. Would never be long enough.
[break][break]
He turns to look back at Ash because he’s exhausted from staring out at nothing.
[break][break]
“I. Oh, god. We need to talk.”

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

Ashley Shepard

[attr="class","mitmain"]
The codependency is real. If only this paradise could extend forever; if only they could stay here, forever, instead of going back to Hoenn where nothing ever makes sense and catastrophe is always just around the corner.
[break][break]
“No,” he says, resting a palm over Ash’s cheek, “I want to take your name. Kepler Shepard is perfect.”
[break][break]
He answers his-- his-- his fiancée’s question with a slow roll of his spine.
[break][break]
“You should know what I want to do first on vacation. I’m sitting on it.” A beat. “Though not as much as I’d like to be, I have to admit.”

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

Lulu Flint

[attr="class","mitmain"]
Kepler felt a little rush of glee when Lulu not only didn’t immediately kebosh his idea, but seemed to support it.
[break][break]
He lifted a hand and fired off a salute.
[break][break]
“Ultra Crater tomorrow, boss.”

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

Lulu Flint oscar clayton Tempest Quinn

[attr="class","mitmain"]
Cresselia’s presence put a big damper on ship repairs, for sure. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that her presence put a big damper on their continued survival, but, when it boiled down to it, they were both, kind of, the same thing. In space, no one can hear you scream, and all that jazz.
[break][break]
Luckily for oscar clayton, the Rocker’s onboard cams caught a play-by-play of him throwing a Pokeball and having it stop inches away from his fingers. Remember, in space, no one can hear you scream.
[break][break]
“Yeah, yeah,” Kepler said, flopping back into his nav chair, fingers flying as he rerouted some processors to direct drive-by navigation to his station, rolling them both up into one subroutine and putting himself firmly in the driver’s seat. “I’m landing this bad bitch. Everyone buckle your seatbelts, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride. Pluto, cover Oscar.”
[break][break]
Lulu Flint’s presence beside him was comforting, even as it faded, and Kepler hyperfocused on the task at hand: keeping everyone alive.
[break][break]
Pluto maneuvered her protect to safely encapsulate Oscar as the vessel began to enter the moon’s minute gravity, its hull warbling as the forces at play tugged it to and fro. Callisto buzzed around, applying psychic pressure to any seam that seemed liable to pop; and the Genesects hovered, cautious of Tempest Quinn’s worries that Cresselia might reappear and savage them again, with greater success.
[break][break]
Despite all the odds stacked against them, the landing gear deployed, and the Party Rocker set down with only a semi-violent crash and a huge spray of moondust. Then, and only then, did Kepler let his fingers fall away from the controls, taking in his first breath of pressurized air in what seemed like ten years.
[break][break]
“Everyone still breathing?” he asked, a little hoarse.

[attr="class","mitpoke"]