Welcome back everyone! I'm out of town until the end of the month teaching at SPARC and ESPR again, so edits will come a bit slow. Hope you enjoy the chapter, and as always all feedback is welcome, either here or on the /r/rational post!

Chapter 71: Imposter Syndrome

At first, all he feels is overwhelming hunger in the pit of his stomach, gnawing and burning and growing to encompass his whole being. He feels weakness next, a lethargy that makes him struggle to wake, struggle to open his heavy lids as the temperature grows, heating his skin like he's a foot away from a bonfire.

He opens his eyes to see his bedroom lit by pale blue flames. The lampent hangs over his prone form, a fixed point in the universe that makes Red feel insubstantial and unreal, an intruder in its dreamworld rather than it a part of his.

Because it is a dream, he's sure of that. It must be, even if he feels his heart pounding, even if his stomach is cramping with hunger, even if his sweat is soaking through his sheets, because the only way this could really happen is if Jason wants to hurt him, and they just started becoming friends, and even terrified and hungry, Red can compare how likely each reality state is and conclude that a dream is more probable.

Or maybe he just wants that to be true, because the alternative would somehow hurt more.

But it's still a huge relief when Red gasps awake to the chime of his phone receiving a message, his eyes darting around his totally normal room, dimly lit by the warm sunlight streaming in through the shades and the electric glow of his phone...

He rolls over to dry the cold sweat from his face against his pillow, then reaches out and pulls the phone toward him.

The message was Rei letting everyone know to bring their phone or a laptop to their breakfast meeting. Red waits for his heartbeat to slow before he forces himself out of bed to shower. Now that he's not stuck in the nightmare he can remember that they're a common symptom of exposure to ghosts, and he resolves to only ask Jason if there's still some residue from his encounter if he has another nightmare tomorrow. To keep himself from lingering over it, he focuses on the upcoming meeting.

This is his chance to really push for the idea he came up with last night. He spent almost two hours "boggling" over what minds are and how they work, occasionally stopping to look into some facts and research some theories until he formed a hypothesis that might explain the perfect shield with all the information he has in mind.

The ability to lie without detection could have something to do with partitions or some unique development of mental shields, but when Red followed his confusion down to its central kernel, it led him, as ever, to pokemon biology.

In this case, specifically the way pokemon with multiple brains think and feel and experience the world. Perhaps because of his own internal struggle with Past Red, there's a sense that understanding that might be the key to both integrating his partitioned self and developing the perfect shield.

All he has to do is convince the others to let him work on it… or better yet, get someone else to help. A difficult task when at least half of his peers are open about their lack for respect for him.

His moderate success with Jason aside, he can't help but feel like the lack of regard from the other students is well earned. He doesn't feel as impressive as them, and he wonders as he turns the shower off and starts to dry himself whether he would have accepted Sabrina's invitation if he and Blue hadn't fought. He still remembers what he decided on the SS Anne, only to change his mind after his argument with Leaf. Maybe he really did come here too early.

The thought is so depressing that he quickly checks to see if his partition is still up and working. Confirming that it is doesn't particularly cheer him.

He pulls his clothes on and makes his way down to the building's third floor, which divides the upper apartments where the students live from the lower ones that serve as public meeting spaces and classrooms, then enters the kitchen to find most of Sabrina's students already sitting around the large kitchen table or moving among the kitchen counters and cabinets fetching yogurt, cereal, fruit, and other breakfast staples.

He's briefly distracted by the sight of Tatsumaki floating nuts and berries in an orbit around her head and into her mouth as both hands type on her phone, then goes to one of the fridges and starts pulling out food. They can each buy their own food to stock the cafeteria with, but generic groceries also show up courtesy of the money they make by teaching classes, which is also what covers their rent. This means that, though in some indirect way it is his effort that's paying for it, he's not actually purchasing the food that shows up in the fridge, which means Red can eat any unclaimed meat in it (mostly) guilt free.

He's still layering bacon on his cream cheese, hummus, and guacamole bagel when the last student files in. Satori takes a look around as her torracat walks between her legs, then goes to the fridge to pull out a fruit salad for herself and a can of fish for her pokemon.

"Thank you all for coming," Rei says as soon as the last of them is sitting at the table. Her own breakfast consists of a fruit smoothie, which she holds in one hand as the other taps at her laptop keyboard. "I hope you've all managed to spend some time thinking over the puzzle Sabrina has charged us with solving. Does anyone have any questions before we begin?" She looks around at everyone busy eating. "Great. I've prepared a document for us to use to share ideas and suggestions on how to proceed. Please follow the link I'm sending now."

Red takes a big bite, then pulls his phone out as it vibrates and opens it one handed so he can click through to the shared document as he chews. It already has half a page filled out:

Rei

Hypothesis 1: Sufficient focus on projecting a false emotion or thought while shielding could result in others sensing something that feels real to untrained psychics.

Test 1: Psychic with best projection ability should practice projecting while shielding.

Test 2: Everyone else practices projecting false emotions/thoughts.

Hypothesis 2: Projecting multiple sincere things at once at varying intensity may allow someone to hide emotions and thoughts in plain sight.

Test 1: Everyone should practice expanding their projection abilities to see if others will eventually be unable to process everything they feel.

Hypothesis 3: If others are within range, it's possible to "relay" something being sensed from someone else in a projection that feels genuine.

Test 1: Chain of 3-4 psychics take turns projecting and reading others at the same time.

Test 2: Psychic being read "assists" psychic projecting.

New words start forming as everyone else begins typing into the common document:

Daniel

With enough understanding of how mental shields or partitions work, the psychic might be able to only let certain emotions or thoughts through. We should

Jason

We don't know the circumstances, but I've wondered before whether an unscrupulous medium could

Satori

Psychic may have unique dark/psychic brain like Inkay line.

A sudden paragraph from Rowan all at once, who clearly already had his thoughts typed out:

Rowan

The psychic may have switched between partitions that split their thoughts entirely from themselves. We don't know how exactly this was discovered; maybe they induced amnesia to forget something, raised a partition around the emotion of not wanting to forget things, were asked a question about it, answered it honestly, then lowered the partition, which motivated them to remove the amnesia. Did some practice with this, think it may be possible. We should practice doing this and testing what we come up with to see if it would work.

Red has to force himself to stop reading their thoughts and start typing his own. He takes his notebook out and flips it open, then begins summarizing.

Red

Hypothesis: Psychic adapted this ability from a pokemon who has multiple minds.

Plan: Learn more about how pokemon with more than one brain process disparate information and resolve potential disagreements. Separate minds = separate trains of thought? Contradictory thoughts?

"Tatsumaki?" Rei asks, and Red looks up to see Rei watching the green haired girl. Red checks the document and notices she hasn't written anything yet, despite still being on her phone.

"Got nothing," the telekinetic says with a shrug, still orbiting food into her mouth every few seconds. "Not where my specialty lies."

Rei doesn't seem satisfied with that, but looks back at her screen without comment. He takes another bite of food, savoring the mix of flavors before he goes back to writing.

Test 1) Merge with doduo's two minds at once, see if multithreading possible.

Red tries to think of what else to write, and gets distracted as one of the nuts floating around Tatsumaki jerks out of orbit and starts bobbing through the air toward Daniel. Tatsumaki frowns in concentration without looking up, and the nut stops and vibrates between them, twitching back and forth, before it suddenly flies at Daniel, only to stop at the last second right in front of his mouth for him to eat.

"Alright, it looks like everyone has written their ideas out," Rei says, and Red quickly writes out his second test as Rei keeps speaking:

Test 2) Try to merge with separate seeds in exeggcute and figure out how single mind forms?

"...should discuss each, and choose which one to focus our attention on."

Red feels his heart sink. This is what he was worried would happen; he doesn't find it too likely that others would agree to work on his idea, but more importantly they shouldn't all commit themselves to any single idea.

"Satori, would you like to expand on yours first?" Rei asks. Red checks and sees that she had stopped after a single line.

The girl shrugs, not looking up from her bowl as she spears each piece of fruit and chews. "Pretty simple. Think the psychic might be unique. Chimera between dark and psychic parents. Sensei can look into it."

"What's a chimera?" Jason asks.

"Mythical pokemon that are combinations of different species," Red says. "Like, a pyroar's head on a gogoat's body with a seviper for a tail."

"And that's… possible, for people?"

"Fraternal twins that merge in the uterus," Satori explains before sticking a piece of melon into her mouth.

Jason blinks, and Red imagines his own expression looks a lot like the medium's. "What?"

"Wait, back up a step." Tatsumaki says as she turns to Jason, tone playful. "You know where babies come from, right?"

"I'm a medium, not a monk," he says, smiling slightly.

"Does that actually happen?" Daniel asks, tone skeptical.

Satori glances up, sees everyone looking at her, and looks down at her fruit again, fidgeting. "Yes. Very rarely."

"'When the absorption is incomplete, this results in the child having both complete sets of genes,'" Red reads from his phone, fascinated. "'Which often results in patches of different colored skin, eyes of two different colors, and if the twins are of different genders…' Oh." Red minimizes the page, cheeks flushed.

"So what probability would you assign this particular circumstance?" Rei says, and Red can tell she's fascinated and skeptical too, even as she tries to regain control of the conversation.

"Low. Dark and Psychic parents are rare, traits are mostly maternal." Satori shrugs. "Might not be possible. Just an idea."

"So we probably shouldn't waste time on it," Daniel concludes.

"But it is a good idea," Red jumps in, looking at Satori. "It's just not something we can test. I can do some research on the potential genetics involved, if you want, and we can present the idea to Sabrina when she's back?"

Satori looks up at him briefly, then nods as she returns to her food.

"Thank you, Red," Rei says, and types Red - Research on own time in red letters beside Satori's idea. "Next let's—"

"Hang on," Red says. "I think… I want to make sure, before we discuss the others, that we're going about this with the right attitude."

Rei's brow rises slightly, but she opens a palm in invitation to continue, and Red nods, taking a moment to collect his thoughts. "My mentor at Pallet Labs, Dr. Madi, liked to tell a story about a group of five biochemists were tasked with creating a solvent for different pokemon webbings," Red says. "They worked together to come up with hypotheses based on each one's chemical makeup, from caterpie to galvantula, and tried formulating each solvent along the way. A month later they had found only two of them. One of the researchers was married to an engineer, and they vented their frustration over dinner."

Everyone is more obviously paying attention now, even Satori's phone is leaning against the table, and he considers asking them if they can guess what the engineer did before squashing that impulse. Not the time to mimic his teachers. "So the engineer decided to fill dozens of bowls with every liquid they could think of, then put samples in each to see which ones dissolve at all. Once they found one, it became much easier to isolate the chemicals that would have a reaction."

"So you're saying everyone should just pursue their own ideas?" Tatsumaki asks.

"Nah," Daniel says. "He's saying we should just get to experiments, not spend too much time thinking about what might be true."

"Kind of both?" Red jumps in. "I think we should all come up with something testable for our ideas, like Rei and I did, and give each a try rather than committing to just one that everyone works on."

"Not all of these can be proven with a single experiment," Rowan says.

"They don't have to be proven," Red says, and has to resist the urge to explain how science works to a room mostly full of people who either already know or don't care. He briefly wonders if he would have had the foresight to recognize that a few months ago. "Even something small that might falsify them would be a better filter to narrow down ideas of what to spend more time on. If they show promise, we keep going in that direction, but if not we table that hypothesis and focus on the others."

Daniel shakes his head. "It would take a lot of time to even give that an honest attempt. Just look at your idea; even Satori takes days to fully merge with a pokemon."

"And some of these ideas require multiple people to test them," Rei adds. "Your analogy is well taken, Red, but we shouldn't split our efforts entirely. I'd like to return to considering each idea as a group, and we can at least decide which are worth pursuing to a first stage test?"

Red hesitates, unsure if he should try challenging her again. No one else is speaking up, so after a moment he nods with a sinking feeling.

"Daniel, it looks like your idea is similar to Rowan's. Do you want to go before him?"

"Sure. I know we've already been trying to figure this stuff out, but knowing something is possible changes things. I spent most of last night talking to Tetsuo about shields and how specific he can get with them. If there's a way to just shield part of your thoughts, a sort of quasi-partition if you will, then that seems like it would do the trick all on its own."

"Agreed, it makes sense as an avenue to explore." Rei highlights his idea in the document. "Rowan?"

"Seems pretty self-explanatory. I'm probably the one with the best chance at figuring it out, if this is the way to do it, but if anyone else thinks it's worth trying, go for it." He glances at Red.

Red opens his mouth, then closes it. He does actually find Rowan's idea interesting, but he's avoided experimenting with new partitions while he's still having so much trouble with his current one. Explaining that to Rowan led to a similar loss of interest from the older student as Tatsumaki learning that he can't use telekinesis.

"So long as you don't need anyone else," Rei says, "I don't see why you shouldn't pursue the idea. But we may need you to test other hypotheses as well."

The young man shrugs. "Anyone's welcome to ask, and I'll help out if I'm free."

Red sees Tatsumaki roll her eyes and Daniel glance at Rei with a brow raised, but the blonde doesn't argue the point, merely pursing her lips and writing his name next to his idea. Red wonders if she's not pushing the matter because she doesn't think it's worth the argument or expenditure of social capital, or if she's just glad for the excuse not to work with him.

"Jason?"

He starts to fiddle with his necklace. "My idea is obvious, given where my skills fall. It's dependent on certain factors that should be easy enough to check once Leader Sabrina returns, but there are stories of mediums who do not cleanse the influence of Ghosts on the soul, but rather manipulate and channel it."

"Is that something you've tried yourself?" Daniel asks, sounding skeptical.

"No, nor do I intend to."

It takes a moment for people to understand the implication. Jason bears the surprised looks from around the table with a calm expression, though his fingers continue to move over the prayer beads at his neck.

Red is the first to speak. "Because you consider it wrong, or dangerous?"

"Both."

Rei is frowning slightly. "Setting aside any modesty, my understanding is that you're one of the most skilled mediums in the Indigo League. If it's too dangerous for you..."

"We still don't know who sensei was referring to," Tatsumaki reminds her. "For all we know it was Morty, or—"

"Leader Matsuba is an honorable person," Jason says, calm but firm, with only the slightest emphasis on the title. "And I did not mean dangerous in the sense you are thinking. You fear the axe to the tree, not the poisoning of the water."

There's another moment as the room absorbs that. "You're talking about morally dangerous?" Daniel guesses, and Jason's brow creases, but he doesn't deny it. "Usually that's covered under 'wrong.'"

Red can see the frustration on Jason's face as he tries to explain. "It is more… spiritually dangerous. An eroding of moral safeguards." He looks around as if seeking understanding, and Red wishes he could support him, but he doesn't get it either.

"Seems oddly specific to have a religious tenet against imitating the effects of surrealism to fool a psychic reading your thoughts," Rowan says, not bothering to hide his skepticism. Daniel covers a snort by clearing his throat. "But if that's written somewhere, that might indicate some precedence..."

"It is not," Jason says, still clearly frustrated. "It is a personal belief. I have no intention of learning something that could cause such impure thoughts."

Red suddenly thinks of the cleansing ritual, and it clicks. "Oh! I think I get it," he says, and everyone turns to him. "Stealing is morally 'wrong,' while learning how to better steal is 'dangerous.' It may not be wrong itself, but it is a moral danger."

Jason smiles and nods, and Red smiles back. He's glad he was able to help clear the communication gap, not least of which because it resolved his own frustration. The table is quiet a moment, and eventually Rei says, "But this is what sensei tasked us to do. If there is a chance that this is the route to the perfect shield, we must explore it."

"Plus, if someone out there is doing it, knowing for sure and learning how could help us find a way to pierce it," Daniel suggests, and Red remembers what Sabrina told him about psychic defense and offense being a continuous arms race.

Jason is quiet a moment, then says, "I can assist others in trying to learn it, if they believe it is necessary. I simply will not perform the experiments myself if it may result in me learning it." His voice is firm enough that no one attempts to further persuade him, and after a moment Rei starts typing.

"Let's skip that one for now, then, unless we think of a way one of us can test it." She finishes typing the note next to his idea, then starts scrolling down the page, and when Red realizes that the two of their ideas are the only ones left his pulse speeds up. He doesn't spot a trap so much as intuit that there is one; Rei is running this meeting very deliberately, and from last night's conversation Red knows that she not only doesn't particularly like or trust him, she thought Sabrina might suspect him as having the perfect shield.

If he were in her position… He would keep him from directing plans or research efforts, thinking that his idea would just waste time. And of course she would want her own ideas to get as much attention as possible, but he can't tell what her strategy is. There are probably psychological biases at work here, something like anchoring or the peak-end rule, but he doesn't know enough to tell how robust or applicable the research on them are, or how they might apply to Red's idea going before or after all of hers.

The best he can figure, Rei has three hypotheses opposed to everyone else's one, and each is detailed, so if she goes last they would probably end up spending more time on her ideas than everyone else's put together, plus they would be ending on them, which could make her ideas feel more present when it comes time to decide how to assign them...

"Care to go next, Red?" Rei asks without looking at him.

And there it is. He can't be sure she's actually trying to be cunning, but one of the few things Red learned from pokemon battling that might be generalizable is not to let an opponent set the tempo of the match. He doesn't have to know why she wants something to benefit from not letting her have it.

"Actually, do you mind if I go last?"

Rei meets his gaze for a moment, and Red just looks back, unsure if he would or should need to justify himself. After a moment though she just nods and scrolls back up on her laptop.

"As you wish. My first idea is the most straightforward, and too obvious to ignore. I've certainly never tried projecting something through my own shield." She looks around. "Has anyone else?"

Everyone shakes their heads or stays silent, and Red wonders if others are trying it now, like him. It feels strange, like grabbing his own wrists and pulling in opposite directions, or, no, more like biting into his bagel and trying to convince himself it's chocolate cake.

"Who's the strongest projector among us?" Jason asks.

Everyone glances at each other until Daniel shrugs and flips his hand up. "I'll take that title, I guess. We should probably test it to be sure, but I wouldn't mind working on that."

"We'll see. If you can do it on your own time, you may be needed for another idea." Rei writes his name next to it, but leaves off on specifying anything further. "The next is about, in essence, practicing double-think. Maybe a better way to put it is to hide signal in noise by holding such a wide scope of emotions and thoughts at once that some are hard to pick up in the mix. Would you take it, Tatsu?"

"Why?" Tatsumaki asks. "I don't even think it would work. Hiding an emotion in a projection isn't like hiding sugar in salt, if it's there it's because you feel it, and if you feel it they will too."

"Don't know if that analogy works," Rowan comments. "I could see someone mixing just enough sugar in salt that it changes the taste, but not obviously enough that someone tasting it could identify how."

She gives him a look. "I meant visually."

"Then you should've said so, shouldn't you?"

Tatsumaki mentally flicks one of her orbiting berries at him, which he stops midair. Five more quickly follow, and he's forced to use his hands to block all but one, which bounces off his forehead. As always, Red watches these displays with a mix of wonder and envy. He wonders if either feeling will ever fade.

"Can we focus, please?" Rei asks, and the wobbling berries (which have been crushed by the opposing forces affecting them) suddenly shoot toward Tatsumaki for a moment before stopping in front of her.

"My deepest apologies, senpai," Tatsumaki says as she guides the crushed berries into her mouth.

Her mocking tone doesn't seem to bother Rei. "I believe the same multitasking skills that assist in your telekinesis might allow you to hold multiple emotions at once until some become nearly subconscious. Of all of us I believe you have the best chance to accomplish this, but if you don't think it will work then perhaps I should take it."

"What, you think I won't give it my all just because I'm skeptical?"

"Yes," Rei says, serenely unapologetic.

The green haired girl narrows her eyes at Rei, still chewing her berries. "For the record I see what you're doing, but fine, I'll take it."

Rei nods and types Tatsumaki's name next to her second idea. "My last hypothesis is that it may be possible for a psychic to project other people's emotions, acting as a sort of mirror redirecting light." Rei looks around the table. "Has anyone tried this one?"

"Red?" Jason asks, and they all turn to him. "Have you ever attempted to project a mental state you've copied to someone else?"

"No," Red says. "But honestly, I don't know if that part is necessary." Part of him is worried that he's going to be tasked with trying this idea out too, now that he's set himself up as so helpful, but it is a good idea. Theoretically speaking, modeling someone else's mental state should fool a psychic; it's part of why he was interested in mimicking the one Leaf used to keep the abra from teleporting away, and he's embarrassed he didn't think of it himself. "If the psychic in question can copy mental states well enough themselves, they might not need a co-conspirator to fool someone merged with them."

"Wouldn't they need someone who knows what the right mental state would be?" Rei asks.

"Not… really…?" Red frowns, trying to think through the possible circumstances. "It's hard to tell without knowing more about how the psychic is interacting with other psychics, and how deep the merger is."

"You mean like if they're meeting at a pokemon center, they can cover their thoughts by mimicking those of someone standing nearby with an innocuous mental state they can copy," Daniel says. "But that would only work if the psychic observing them is doing it passively. Like, checking if they plan to rob the place. If they're asking questions, the mood and thought content would be a blatant mismatch."

"Maybe it's possible to just mimic a mood?" Rowan asks "Like partitioning, someone asks you if you're angry about something, and you copy just the sense of calm from someone nearby as you say you're not. Even if the psychic is doing a full merge, they might not notice that the mood doesn't belong to them, and the lie itself might not even spark any dissonance."

Rei nods. "Does anyone disagree that this is worth pursuing?"

The room is silent, and Red knows what's coming next… but to his surprise, Rei highlights it without asking him to work on it, and turns to Red expectantly. "Last but not least."

Red smiles distractedly as he prepares his thoughts. Now is his chance to sell his idea, hopefully even get some of them to help—

"This one seems the least likely," Daniel says, frowning at his phone screen. "No offense, Red, but even if we assume you can learn actual psychic abilities from pokemon, which need I remind you no one has done before, it would at least have to be something other pokemon could do. Are there any pokemon besides Dark types that can hide what they're thinking or feeling?"

Red blinks, taken off guard by the first preemptive challenge to an idea, then mentally flips to the notebook page where he wrote out the counter arguments to his idea, trying to decide which question to answer first. "Well, for learning abilities from pokemon I've been able to tell if people are sleepy or not from merging with my drowzee, and—"

Daniel waves this off. "I mean real abilities, something unique, not things others can learn to do in other ways."

"But that might be a matter of power," Red says. "If psychic pokemon are just stronger than us—"

"We've talked about this," Daniel says, like their talk was in any way conclusive. "There are few if any abilities besides maybe teleportation that are exclusive to Psychic pokemon, there's nothing special about their psychic abilities, they're just another type of pokemon with inhuman powers."

"You're drawing an arbitrary distinction between—"

"It's not arbi—"

"Can I please finish a sentence?" Red asks, louder than he intended. Daniel's brow rises, and he leans back in his chair, holding his hands up as if to say fine, fine.

Red takes a moment to calm himself, frustrated and hurt by the older boy's aggressiveness, and what's worse, the others' silence. It's so unfair, no one reacted like this to anyone else's ideas, and everyone's acting like this is normal…

He focuses on the sensation of his breaths, and lets his worry that he's taking too long go as he breathes out. A second breath to let go of his fear of judgement. A third to… nope, the fear of judgement is back, and so he lets that go again, telling himself that if he comes out of this calmer he'd get more respect than if he's still agitated. A fourth breath to let his mind wander back to his notebook and what he wrote there when preparing for rebuttals.

"So first, the idea of whether pokemon do things like this..." Red's glad that his voice only sounds a little off. "Obviously we can't know if they do or not. Most of our interactions with pokemon are after they're caught and conditioned to be friendly and follow our commands. Very few people study wild pokemon behavior, and as far as I could tell only two of them were psychics. There's just no way to know if this is something pokemon are capable of, psychic or otherwise.

"Second, we don't know if this would even be considered a 'real ability.' It might be something like a Light Screen, which even our best telekinetics can't do, or it might be something like Amnesia, which almost every psychic eventually can."

"There's a scary thought," Jason murmurs, then gives Red an apologetic look. He doesn't mind the interruption though, it wasn't a challenge and Jason at least waited until he finished speaking. He holds an open hand out, and Jason shakes his head. "No, sorry, it would derail the conversation. There will be time to talk about implications after we know if it's even possible."

"You listed both psychic and non-psychic pokemon," Rei says. "What makes you think a doduo would be relevant? Does merging with them cause some similar effect?"

"I actually don't know," Red admits. "Before last night I was curious, but since they're not psychic merging with them hasn't been a priority. I couldn't merge with both minds when I tried."

He looks at Satori, curious to see if she has, and one by one the others do too. "It's possible," she says, fidgeting at the attention. "Mostly the same sensorium, but distinct minds."

"And from what I read, pokeball conditioning reduces disagreements," Red adds. "But in the wild each mind is even more distinct. I thought that might be useful to study in relation to potential partitions, but since Rowan will be covering that already, I would focus mostly on exeggcute. I looked into it, and we have very little comparative understanding of how their minds work. Each seed has a distinct brain, but is barely sentient on its own, like a magnemite, just reacting to its environment. It only reaches intelligence similar to other pokemon when they each merge with each other, but losing a seed results in a loss of knowledge and memory. Last night I read that the team of neuroscientists and coders that enabled simulations to work on multi-brain pokemon spent more time on exeggcute than every other one put together." He forwards the article to each of them, causing a series of chimes and buzzes around the table. "What if there's something about the way the different minds interact and divide up functions that we could mimic?"

The table is quiet a moment, and Red braces himself. He doesn't have to wait long before Daniel begins as if there hadn't been any interruption to his earlier challenge.

"Another problem with this idea is that psychics have been merging with pokemon since forever. Wouldn't we have known about this by now, if that's what allowed it?"

"Exeggcute are difficult," Satori says before Red can. "Hivemind. Risk of losing self, or dominating the clutch. It's why Sabrina rarely uses them."

"Plus," Tatsumaki adds,"The whole idea of a perfect liar is that, you know, they wouldn't be found out. We don't know the circumstances that allowed whoever it was to come under suspicion."

Red feels a swell of gratitude toward them, even if they're not directly supporting the hypothesis itself. "Also, there are historical rumors of psychics 'so powerful' they can lie to other psychics. I don't put much stock in them, most also get attributed other fantastic feats like speaking with the dead or levitating themselves, but… I mean if a human psychic started flying, those stories would suddenly warrant a bit less skepticism."

The table is silent for a bit, and Red barely tastes his bagel as he finishes it, waiting for someone else to object. His gaze jumps to Rei as she stirs.

"What you propose sounds like cultivating the formation of another mind," Rei says, "I'm wary this task would risk mental unhealth."

Ouch. He wouldn't take the implication so personally if she hadn't already mentioned how much she dislikes his use of partition.

"A valid fear for the ungifted, perhaps," Rowan says while Red is still considering his own response. "But are we not striving to become masters of our own minds? This sounds like a worthy challenge for those of our ability."

Rei meets Rowan's gaze. "I'm trying to be cautious, as anyone should when sailing uncharted waters."

"If anyone feels uncomfortable attempting it," Red cuts in. "They wouldn't be forced to, of course." It would be difficult working on it alone, but he will if he has to.

The table is silent for nearly a minute as everyone looks around, and finally Rei nods. "With no other comments, I believe we've finished what I'll call our first evaluation round." To Red's relief, she highlights his idea. "As it stands, Rowan will be pursuing the use of partitions, Tatsumaki will be trying to drown signal in noise, and Daniel will be trying to project through a shield. That leaves four of us to either work on merging with pokemon that have multiple minds, or attempting to deceive through copied mental states." She glances at Red. "It seems to me that the optimal division of labor would be for Satori and Jason to work on merging with pokemon, if they agree with that, while you and I work on mental states."

Red blinks at her, unable to hide his surprise. He had been afraid that no one would want to work with him. Now Rei is offering to, despite what she said the night before...

...and all he has to do is let someone else take over his idea, while he works on hers with her.

It makes sense, and after a moment he realizes that he doesn't want it to make sense. He can feel his brain struggling against the logic, looking for a way to make it not true, to allow himself to work on merging with pokemon and navigating multiple minds. Is it just because he wants to work on his project and better understand the idea of multiple minds? Or is he also struggling against the idea that he was unfairly judging her motives while running the meeting?

Once he realizes how dumb his brain is being, he forces himself to speak. "Yeah. Sounds good."

Rei nods, and even smiles at him briefly before turning to Jason and Satori. "Objections?"

"No," Jason says, while Satori shakes her head.

"Great." Rei starts typing out the last assignments. "Does three days seem like a reasonable amount of time to meet again and see how we've progressed along each of our experiments?"

"I would request longer," Satori says, which takes Red by surprise. After a moment he realizes he hadn't expected her to care enough about his idea to actually give it a fair shot. She looks at Jason. "Unless three is enough?"

Jason is quiet a moment before saying, "I think I can do it in four."

"Four, then," Rei says, and closes her laptop. "Thank you all, and good luck. Red, would you mind staying a minute?"

Red nods as everyone else files out, Jason pausing to grab an orange from the fruit bowl on the way out. "What's up?" he asks once they're alone. "Do you want to start now?"

"Yes, but not yet." She considers him a moment, and he senses one of her blunt statements coming a moment before it does. "I was wondering why you wanted to go last."

Ah. He supposes they'll be talking about this after all. He briefly considers making some excuse, like he just wasn't ready to talk about his idea yet, but she chose to work with him, and he doesn't want to lie for such a petty reason. "I just thought it might be easier to get people to want to work on my idea if it was last, instead of yours taking up the whole last part of the meeting."

Her brow furrows briefly, and then she snorts quiet laughter. "I see. And here I was thinking that by saving my ideas for last, people would already be invested in the others."

Red shifts slightly in his seat. "Ah." He's unsure whether that's what the actual effect would have been, and more importantly, whether she's being honest about her intentions, but he feels like an ass regardless. "I guess I must come off as pretty selfish…"

"I don't know if I'd say that." She folds her hands in a bridge below her chin, watching him. "I realized after your visit last night that the model of you that I had was incorrect. I assumed you were meek and reserved unless in an intellectual debate, but if that were true you would never have tackled a social problem head on like you did. Not particularly gracefully or skillfully, mind you, but with no harm done."

Red feels his cheeks burning at the semi-compliment. "I have a friend who helped me to push past some social comfort zones, and also helped me realize my, uh… 'hustle' isn't as good as it should be, for what I want to accomplish in life."

"Well, today you ended up fighting for your own idea without letting your desires get in the way of the optimal strategy. Be sure to give yourself credit for that." She gives a rare smile that's full enough to show her teeth. "Do you have anything planned this afternoon?"

He's still processing her comment, and it takes him a moment to answer. "No, my next class is tonight."

"Then let's meet at the cafe across the street so we can begin."

Red stops at his room to get his shoes, then takes the stairs down to the bottom floor, leaping from the steps halfway down each flight. Yesterday he was worried that he would be largely ignored for this project, but his idea was given just as much consideration as anyone's. He'd still prefer to be working on it himself, but the fact that the others are actually making an honest effort to test it really drives home how much his earlier worries seem to have been for nothing.

Of course, it's not just relief that's fueling his energetic movements. A mix of excitement and nerves sit uneasy with the bagel in his stomach as considers the fact that he'll be spending extended time working with Sabrina's most senior student. He doesn't want to embarrass himself, of course, but he also has to make sure he doesn't over-exert himself and erode the partition before nightfall. His lesson tonight is pretty basic, just some meditation techniques to novice psychics, but if Mopey Red takes over he might just stay in his room, or half-ass it.

The sun has just barely cleared the skyline to the east as he reaches the cafe and sits across from Rei beneath an umbrella'd table, where she's typing on her laptop. He can see from the angle he approaches that she has one of those screens covering her monitor that blur anything on them when viewed from an angle. "Hey."

"Hello. I've thought of some initial tests we can run. I'd like to use this opportunity to improve my own ability to mimic mental states in case the perfect shield requires a mix of skills that I can learn, but first let's test the obvious."

"Yeah, alright." Red sits and scoots his chair forward, wiping sweaty palms on his pants.

"Pick someone to merge with," she says, throwing a careless hand to the side. "I'll ask you a question about your mental state or mood, and you report theirs as if it's yours while I'm merged with you. If it passes as an honest remark, I would consider that mild evidence that this sort of technique could be used to build a perfect shield."

Red slowly nods, suppressing his discomfort with her cavalier approach to merging with strangers. He should have seen it coming, really, how else would they do this? Instead he just closes his eyes and sorts through the mental impressions his psydar pulses give of those around him, trying to find one that stands out. He eventually identifies a mind with a distinctly restless signature, its attention jumping from one thing to another, and merges with it to feel the man's nervous impatience.

Red spreads his awareness throughout his body and mind, locking down each part of the mental state and then releasing the merge along with a breath. "Okay… I've got impatience. Copying…" He feels the butterfree fill his stomach again as he mimics the experience and makes it his own. "Go ahead."

He feels Rei's mind merge with his before she asks, "Are you waiting for something?"

"Yes," Red says, foot bouncing beneath the table. "I think."

"Waiting for someone?"

That feels more true. "Yes."

Rei withdraws her mind, and Red releases the mental state and opens his eyes to see her shaking her head. "Both answers were detectably off. You'll have to practice getting a better handle on what the specifics of the emotion are."

Red frowns slightly, unsure that's relevant but unwilling to argue it after just one test. "Alright."

"I'll try now."

Red waits for her to find a mental state to use, then waits some more as she sits with her eyes closed, probably attempting to mimic it. By the end of their first lesson together it was clear that Rei is better than most at adopting the skill, on par with Sabrina. Daniel is swiftly catching up and may even surpass her soon, but this extra practice will likely keep them neck and neck. There's a part of Red that worries about his value fading once the others learn his techniques, which in turn drives him to work hard to learn theirs and keep developing his abilities. At least so far no one has made any progress on copying his mental shield.

"Ready," Rei says, voice a little… brighter, than usual. Red closes his eyes and brushes her mind, then merges with it and immediately shares in her flimsy, fragile joy.

He's been told that merging with him while he's imitating a mental state is incredibly difficult to differentiate from when he's not, but the reverse is certainly not true. To Red, sharing Rei's emotions while she imitates someone else's is like looking at a picture of a rainbow with a bright yellow filter over the image. With just a bit of analysis he can recognize all the emotions underneath, and while some are blurred and blended by the false mental state, he can still adjust for that and guess what the confusing mess of feelings are meant to be, for the most part.

"Are you happy?" he asks, trying not to delve too deep into Rei's real emotions, but he can't help but feel them too; tension, anticipation, something like calculation, all in minor amounts around her primary sense of DETERMINATION. He doubts he would have been able to recognize so much before his time in Saffron.

"Yes," Rei says, and a new emotion blends with the others. Not even an emotion, really… more a sense that gets implanted into Red's awareness as simple as a flashing light in his face, a sense of falseness. Of being aware of misleading or aware of artifice, and that feeling is connected to another related one that he wasn't spending much time focusing on, but which now feels highlighted in some way...

And then her shield goes up, booting Red out of the merger. He must have gotten close to something private. Red opens his eyes to see Rei watching him. "No?" she guesses, and Red shakes his head. "How could you tell?"

"Well I could tell it wasn't your real emotion, but even aside from that, some part of you was just so obviously aware that what you were saying wasn't the truth. Maybe because I imagine it takes an enormous effort to maintain that overlay."

Rei raises a brow, but accepts the compliment with a minor nod, perhaps because she recognizes his sincerity. "It does."

"What about me? How did that feel?"

"Like your real emotions were your own. But for both responses, there was an added, almost contextual emotion of being deceptive." She's typing as she speaks, and purses her lips thoughtfully. "That might just be from you being a terrible liar."

"You have no idea," Red says, thinking of his attempt to cover up Pikachu's unexpected evolution on the S.S. Anne.

She gives him a look he can't quite decipher. "Something to work on, then."

"You want me to work on becoming a better liar?"

"To solve this puzzle, yes. It's possible this hypothetical psychic is just so naturally capable of deception that he simply deceives himself in the moment he's speaking by modeling the mimicked mental state as his own. A lie isn't a lie if the speaker believes it, after all. Ready to pick another?"

Red is still mulling her words over, and why they feel related to the flash of emotion he detected from her. She's misleading him in some way. The question is whether it's for an innocuous reason or not. Maybe he can learn more the next time they merge… "Yeah, one sec." He closes his eyes and casts his thoughts about until he senses a mind flickering through intense emotions he can't quite decipher. He merges with her and—

—roiling anger, paralyzing indecision, beneath it all a twisted pain and self-loathing, despair pounding through him with every heartbeat—

"Red?"

He lets the merger go with a gasp, tears in his eyes as he reflexively looks in the direction of the mind. He sees a young woman with her hands balled up in her lap. She stares down at them with an absolutely desolated expression, and he wonders how she's not already crying... but he felt that too, the sheer willpower going into her restraint not to lose control in public.

Rei turns to follow his line of sight, and Red suddenly wishes he didn't look, didn't reveal the girl to someone else. Rei may even now be merging with her mind to see what he felt, though there's no physical reaction from her to indicate it if so. Maybe she's skilled enough to recognize the emotions without a full merger.

This...

His imagination is in overdrive, providing not memories but extrapolated imagined circumstances from the emotional map of what she's feeling, as if he can't help but try to figure out what happened to make her feel that way. He's glad he's not a better psychic so that all he got were emotions rather than any images or thoughts, but the fact that he now knows this thing about her, incomplete as it is, bothers him...

This is wrong.

It also bothers him that it took this to remind him of that. He told Dr. Seward and Leaf that he's worried about losing himself, and it's not hard to imagine what Leaf or Blue or Aiko would think if he was doing this sort of thing regularly on their journey.

"Do you ever feel like this isn't right?" Red asks, and Rei looks at him with blank curiosity. He waves a hand around. "This, the breach of privacy. If this were an actual scientific experiment, no ethics committee would allow us to do this."

"Not particularly. People speak in public without knowing whether someone nearby has acute hearing, and everyone is aware that psychics exist in the world."

"Hearing is passive, more like just sensing minds." Which wasn't passive for him before, of course. He remembers how much effort it used to take. But ever since he developed psydar it's effectively automatic; he has only to wonder whether people are nearby or what someone is feeling and he'll get a glimpse, though it still takes concentration to interpret what he senses most of the time. He imagines it's much the same with other psychics who have been practicing longer. "But merging like this... it used to bother me more, before it got so easy to do myself." He remembers how significant and important it had seemed when he signed the paper giving permission for Narud, but now that he's in the world himself he can see the polite fiction for what it was.

"I don't see what the alternative is," Rei says, seeming puzzled. "Perhaps one in a hundred people could even notice that a psychic is merging with them, even if everyone is trained to defend against it. Any law that would try to restrict it is utterly unenforceable, and if people were aware of the degree to which we can sense them, and how often we do it..."

"I know." It wouldn't be as bad as if it got out that influencing people's beliefs turns out to be possible, but it would still be pretty bad. "I'm not trying to make some sweeping normative judgement that everyone has to follow." Mostly. "Just... It makes me uncomfortable, knowing such intimate things about people who have no idea that I know."

"You'll never even meet them again."

"We can't know that, and even still, it feels wrong."

Rei is frowning at him, and after a moment he feels her mind brush his. He lowers his shield and projects his discomfort, as well as his nervousness for challenging her. Her frown deepens. "Hm. You're not just trying to get out of working on this project."

Red blinks, letting her feel his honest surprise as he says, "No, not at all! Is it that strange to care about this sort of thing?"

"I suppose I've forgotten how new you are to all this," she says, and withdraws her mind from his before gazing silently off into the distance and leaving him to try and decide whether to take offense or not. "What do you propose, then?" she asks after a moment. "I can't practice this on my own, and no one's mimicry is as developed as yours. We may see benefits from practicing consistently using the already established mental states, but eventually we will need to try new ones."

"I could take mental states from the others, when they're not busy."

"But they will know you're doing it, which will contaminate their samples. It will be useful for testing the effectiveness of a willing accomplice, but not for the true hypothesis."

Red knows she's right, and sighs down at his hands. "I don't know what the right answer is yet, but I'll try to think of something."

Rei is quiet for long enough that he starts to worry that he's upset her, but he's not going to go back on what he says. He's just starting to think that he should ask if she wants to try with one of the previous mental states when she closes her laptop starts to put it in her bag. "I have a solution."

"You do?"

"Your main complaint is that they are not consenting, correct?" She gets to her feet and starts walking, and he quickly follows her.

"Uh, yeah, basically."

"Then we will go somewhere that will require implicit consent."

It takes Red a few steps to get it. "The gym? Why would that require implicit consent?"

"Because we will put a sign up that makes it so. Over the cafeteria, for example, so that there is no disruption of the gym's main functions."

Red isn't sure forcing people who want to eat to subject themselves to mental merger is justified, but he's already made enough trouble for further objection, and just silently matches her quick stride. He supposes it's a fair enough compromise, and he really should have thought of this before agreeing to help. He's still grateful that she wants to work with him at all, considering what she said last night about...

...not trusting him.

Red regards the blonde from the corner of his eye as they walk. The sense he got from her before, of her seeming to be hiding something, and the way she dropped her shield to check whether he was just making an excuse, make it clear she still has reservations about him. Which makes sense… But then why work with him at all?

Unless she just wants to keep an eye on him.

As Saffron Gym comes into sight, he decides to just ask, knowing that she'll detect something in his feelings the next time they merge anyway. "Is this all a test for you to ensure I'm not actually the psychic Sabrina was talking about?"

"Partially," she says without pause or hesitation. Because of course she knew that he sensed it in her, and was just waiting for him to piece things together. "If your technique is the key to unlocking the perfect shield, I want to be there to notice the transition when it develops."

A ball of dread and hurt forms in his stomach, heavy enough to slow his steps. She doesn't slow with him, and Red forces himself to speed up again. "What about Rowan?" Red asks, then realizes before she can answer. "Nevermind. He wouldn't let you in anyway, and I'm also capable of manipulating partitions, and..." He feels like such an idiot. "...you don't know if he's already capable of it from his practice last night, or even before that, but there's still time to learn if I am."

"You also happen to be the best suited for this particular experiment," she says, tone only mildly conciliatory. "I'm not just using you to ensure that Sabrina is aware of potential perfect shields among her students."

Red stops entirely, then watches her continue to walk without him. For a moment it seems she will just continue on and enter the gym alone, but then she slows, looks back, and stops as well.

What she said makes sense, but he doesn't believe her. What he felt from her wasn't an urge to protect, or serve, or even just curiosity. It was goal oriented toward her own benefit… and now that he knows she's not being honest, he would be an idiot to take her words at face value.

They must look strange to the people passing by, a young boy and an elegantly dressed woman over twice his age, just staring at each other. Eventually he feels her mind brush against his. After he doesn't shield, she merges with him, and he focuses on his feelings of indignation and challenge and skepticism and resolution.

He knows he's the youngest of Sabrina's students, and likely the weakest. But whether by accident or effort or some combination, he has unique abilities that she's already admitted she finds valuable. Not to mention that he's survived a pikachu swarm, helped stop a paras migration, and saved multiple lives from a Stormbringer. At his core, arrogantly or otherwise, he feels capable of at least being Rei's peer, and if he was willing to leave his journey with Blue and Leaf after Blue stopped treating him as an equal, he's not going to let Rei treat him as a subordinate, let alone a potential enemy.

After nearly a minute he feels Rei's mind leave his and merges with hers instead so he can contemplate her own mental state, which he finds unshielded.

Wariness... uncertainty… suspicion... surprise... worry?

Rei finally brings her shield back up, and Red walks toward her until they're standing an arm's length apart. "What are you so scared of?" he asks, eyes shifting between hers.

Rei glances away, or rather just around them, checking that no one is in hearing distance, and when she speaks her voice is low. "Sabrina has a secret, and I want to find out what it is."

Red's brow rises. Whatever he expected, it wasn't that. Rei has always seemed so loyal to the Leader. "The place she disappears to?"

"Yes. She's been doing it for years, before she was even Gym Leader. I respected it for a long time, thinking she would eventually share it, but if she does it's with none of her students except perhaps Rowan, or her gym Second and Third. Perhaps not even them."

Red is frowning now. "What does this have to do with me, or the assignment?"

"I think every student Sabrina takes on has some specific purpose. She is expanding her skills to build toward something, I just don't understand what. I thought when you arrived that your partition was a way for you to hide something relevant from the rest of us." Her gaze is steady on his. "I can't quite square all your behavior from last night and today with this hypothesis, or your emotional state and thoughts."

Red feels… well, he doesn't know how he feels. Uncomfortable to be talking about Sabrina behind her back like this. Worried that Rei is plotting something harmful… or worse, that Sabrina is. It's all too much for him to quite process right now, and he glances at the gym behind her. "So you want to go to the gym because… what, you think there's evidence there or something?"

"No, it's a reasonable solution to your moral quandary. But the cafeteria is within my psychic range of the administrative offices where Tetsuo and Keiji are, and it will be a good excuse to study their shields."

Red's sense of worry inches toward panic, and he resists the urge to take a step back from her. "Why are you telling me this? If they or Sabrina merge with me—Wait. How do you manage not to give some sense of this away?"

"I have built a narrative around myself of being obsessive and curious about anything related to Sabrina. It was not difficult, since it's true. The line between suspicion and curiosity is blurry enough that as long as they do not ask me direct questions about it, all is well."

"Hang on, just… give me a moment." Red's heart is pounding, and he closes his eyes as he tries to take in this flip of circumstances and perspective. It takes a few deep breaths, and concentrating on the feel of the sun on his face and sound of the city around him, before his thoughts slow enough for him to realize his most important thing to update on is that Rei has revealed herself twice in the past few minutes to be someone who readily hides multiple purposes and motivations into her actions, and that she is telling him all this.

"You haven't been checking my mental state," Red says, opening his eyes. "What if I go tell Sabrina all this now?"

"I suspect I'll be released as her student." Rei shrugs. "My tutelage with her has hit large diminishing returns, and I was ready to leave months ago. Only my curiosity in this, and whatever abilities her new students might bring, interest me now."

She could be lying, but if so he can't see what the purpose would be yet. It's hard to remind himself again that he's talking to someone who's (probably) smarter than him, and far craftier than he's ever had a reason to try to be. "So what happens now? You recruit me into your investigation?"

"No, not unless you would like to join it. Now we simply have a better understanding of each other, and can more effectively work together. This is what you wanted when you came to my room last night, yes?"

Red doesn't trust for a moment that this is her entire reason for sharing this, but he nods, still feeling like he's struggling to keep his head above water. "Where you told me you can't trust or respect people with partitions."

"I've been biased by my experiences with Rowan and some others," she admits. "I'm not claiming to trust you now. But I'm willing to extend some if you are."

"Give me a minute." Red closes his eyes and imagines the table from his dream. Okay guys, huddle up. We need to talk.

Future Red and Past Red show up at either side of the table, or rather, he imagines they do, and he does his best to model their perspectives as best he can with his partition up. This is a horrible idea, Past Red says. We're here to learn to be a better psychic, not unearth some conspiracy.

But we did want to form better relationships with the others, Red points out. She's not asking us to help her or anything.

Future Red shakes his head. She made us complicit by telling you what she plans. If you don't report her now, we could get in trouble later if it's discovered we knew. There's nothing we gain out of this.

But maybe we could, Red thinks, and senses agreement from Past Red at the idea of fulfilling his previous goals. Future Red is more wary, but reluctantly agrees as well, and Red opens his eyes to see Rei patiently watching him.

"I want to help Satori and Jason with my idea, not just work on this one with you," he says.

"Really? You're turning this into a negotiation?" Rei shakes her head. "You make it seem like you have leverage. Would I have given you all that information if I feared you using it against me?"

"No," Red says. "But this isn't blackmail. You're getting a lot more out of us working together, and I'm just trying to make things more equitable."

Rei considers him a moment, then nods. "Very well."

That was quick. "You should help us too," he adds without thinking.

Her grin is brief. "Don't push your luck, Verres."

He grins back and shrugs. "Just saying, I'm pretty sure we'll learn a lot from it, and you would be a huge help."

"I've got my own projects to tend to. But you're free to pursue both hypotheses as long as this one has priority."

He holds a hand out, and after a moment she takes it. They shake, and walk side by side into the gym's air conditioned lobby.

So we're really doing this, huh? Future Red sighs. You're getting blamed for this if everything goes sideways.

Works for me. If anyone asks I'll just say I was spying on Rei's activities for Sabrina.

There's no way that would work.

Well you'd better hope so, because it'll be your problem.

Rei leads them up to the administrative offices, where they find Tetsuo at Sabrina's desk. The Gym Second looks up from his computer with a raised brow as they enter, then pauses whatever video he's watching (sounds like a gym battle) and turns his attention to them.

"Hello Rei, Red. Was wondering how long it would take. What do you need?"

Rei looks at Red, and after a moment it's clear she expects him to speak. Which is fair enough, since it was originally his request, but also feels unfair given the fact that she's getting something out of the venue choice. He ensures his shield is secure and takes a breath. "Would it be okay if we put a sign on the cafeteria entrances? Something like, 'Ongoing psychic experiment occurring inside, anyone entering is subject to unannounced emotional reading?"

Tetsuo frowns, leaning back in Sabrina's chair slightly. "Just emotional merger?" Red isn't sure if the Second is simply confirming, or wondering why they would need a specific place for that. He just nods, and Tetsuo rubs his neck. "Well, we sell nearly at-cost so it's not like it's a significant income stream, but I'm still hesitant to risk discouraging people from eating. Hungry trainers are less focused trainers. How important is this?"

"It's... uh…" Red is aware of Rei still looking steadily at him, making it clear that this may have been her idea but it's his concern. "It's mostly a matter of principle," Red says, struggling not to mumble.

"Hm." Tetsuo taps his fingers on the table as he glances at Rei, then back at Red with measuring eyes. "We can set it between meal times, and put warnings up today so people can plan around it tomorrow and onward. I'm worried that people will continue to think it's happening even after the signs go down, though."

Red considers this a moment. "We can sit in an obvious place? So everyone can see us, and once we're gone it's more clear the experiment is over." Red glances at Rei to check if she's okay with that, then back at Tetsuo.

"Yeah, could work. Alright, you have my permission. Hope it's helpful; most people who go in will probably be dark or psychics capable of shielding, but you may get a few people who see it as a thrill, so don't be surprised if that influences what you end up with."

"Right," Red sighs. Having principles sucks sometimes. "Thanks."

Tetsuo waves a hand as he turns back to his computer. "No problem." Red has already turned toward the door when the Second starts his video again, then says, "Oh Verres, what's your take on all this?"

Red turns back as the monitor is rotated to face him, and feels his face go blank as his curiosity is replaced by a stew of conflicting emotions.

Various scenes play out on the screen from different camera angles, trainers and their pokemon in the middle of some battles, and he quickly recognizes Blue dressed in the Vermilion Gym uniform, as well as others; Glen and Elaine are there, as well as Lizzy, Taro, and Chie, along with perhaps a dozen others whose names Red can't remember or whom he never met.

It quickly becomes clear that the trainers are all involved in the same group battle, but not like any Red has seen before. Their surroundings aren't a traditional pokemon arena, but a much wider area with what seems to be a rough ring of various objects, from boulders to tree trunks to the concrete barricades used during the storm.

"Figured he might head here next. Any idea if he's planning to spread stuff like this to other gyms?"

It's a natural question to ask. They started their journey together, were on the news together after catching the abra, and it's not like they made some official announcement of why they split up. Or that they're not talking anymore. He's not sure what Blue tells others when the subject comes up, but for his part…

"I don't really talk to him about trainer stuff anymore," Red says. The camera shifts to show an overhead view, and Red can see now that one group of trainers form a small outward facing ring around a cluster of pokedolls in the middle of the battle area, while the rest are spread out around them in a wider ring facing in. "Been trying to stay focused on my psychic training and research."

"Right. Figured with how much time you spend here that might change eventually." He turns the screen back and intently studies whatever is happening on it. "Good luck with the experiments."

"Thanks." Red heads for the door, and Rei follows silently at his side.

"You really are a terrible liar," she eventually murmurs as they walk through the halls.

"What are you talking about?"

"Your face, when Mr. Oak showed up on screen. Why the animosity? Didn't you two grow up together?"

Red knows his shield was up the whole time, and he didn't feel even a tentative probing. If she gathered that much just from his face, he really does need to learn to lie better. "We used to be friends," Red says as they step into the elevator. He presses the bottom button first before correctly hitting the ground floor's, distracted by thoughts of simpler times that feel particularly distant right now. "A long time ago."