Scene #8990: JPT: Basic Braining (1)

Owner	Pose
Flamel Parsons	https://i.imgur.com/lt1Qr9N.jpeg Night Class cabins are fully completed and new, though the bunks are summer-camp quality. Lights out may have been at 11 PM, but when the nearby psychic PAs activate to announce Night Class activities are starting, it's the first time there's been a loud noise. They're accounting for the adults that have poorer sleep schedules, apparently. Though the announcements keep inching back by 10 minutes each time, trying to slowly encourage good sleep habits... https://i.imgur.com/mS0yukd.jpeg "Flamel Parsons here, voice of vague yet ominous public-announcer authority!" He's always so bright and chipper. "I'll be handling Basic Braining for you night-class folks today. Grab a bite to eat at the main lodge, if you haven't, then get to my monitoring post!" https://i.imgur.com/xOFbZIq.png https://i.imgur.com/0i1TVQL.png https://i.imgur.com/ve0IUob.png https://i.imgur.com/h6DtLPP.png One quick meal later (hamburgers and similar summer-camp foods, though the cook has no idea why any vegans might think this is supposed to be made from animals) and you folks are up in Flamel Parsons' exclusive MONITORING POST. https://i.imgur.com/Uupf3ro.png The mixture of glassy roofs and wood, complex machinery and ad-hoc carpentry, somehow scream both "ominous 70s-era spy tech" and "best-we-could-get summer camptech". Flamel's messing with large computer consoles, as he often does, directing the movements of the big dish antennae outside.
Kale Hearthward	Basic braining! "I've been in two mindscapes already, shouldn't I get a pass on this?" asks Kale when the topic comes up. He's in camp, for once, having finally brought his nation-building to a checkpoint such that he can leave it alone (Watch the board for a post later tonight, Kale Fans! -ed). So he doesn't have far to go when the assembly call is made. "Uh - it's... burgers are made from cows. You - I mean, they get killed and ground up, it's kind of messed up if you think about it?" Kale, who's had the veganism scared back into him (Scene 8969, True Kale Believers! -ed) is back to strictly plant based food. It'll be a while before he can work his way back from veganism to vegetarianism, either. If he can't get a vegan meal, then... well, for once, packing extra protein bars turns out to be useful. Hooray for peanut butter flavor. Up to the workshop we go! Kale and and will fly up instead of climbing up if there's sky access available. Today he's rocking an official 'I Trained Under a Secret Government Organization And All I Got was Cool Psychic Powers and Also this T-Shirt' Whispering Rock Summer Camp T-Shirt, and has in hand an official 'I Left ~~Peace~~ ^Pieces of ^My Mind Behind at Whispering Rock Summer Camp' Whispering Rock Summer Camp coffee mug, and slung over one shoulder is the official 'Can Hold More Issues than Even Emotional Baggage can' Whispering Rock Summer Camp duffel bag. ... Gift Shop Crueller talked a fast one on him. (That's his trouble! See Kale's +flaws for more info. -ed) Before things start, he takes a quick look around for any SCAVENGER HUNT ITEMS that might be lying around the tower. "Are we... uh, doing all this here? There enough room for training a whole class?" he asks as he looks around. (Kale doesn't know about Basic Braining. -ed)
Angela	Angela checks in periodically but for the most part, Parker is on her own. So long as nobody tries to take away her paper-faces or touch her unexpectedly she is remarkably well behaved outside of occasionally stealing something which seems to be a compulsive act on her part but it's usually stuff like utensils or weird knickknacks. She cares more about the initial thieving than the holding onto stolen items. Parker hunches over her food while she's eating like she expects it to get stolen out from under her--this too seems to be a habitual gesture rather than an actual fear of hers at summer camp's. Every few days she sends a report to Angela about the going-ons but there hasn't been much to send lately. Parker's face of the day seems to be a big smile. She only has one paper with her and one stolen pen on her. "Hey Flamel!" She says. "What are we doing? Are we going to brainheist...? I wanna heist a brain." She has no idea what they'll be doing. The Angelapad flickers on. "Ah, Parker, you are still alive. That is good--" "You're being silly, Miss Angela?" 5rAngela narrows her eyes thoughtfully.
Petra Soroka	Geez, these summer-camp quality bunk beds sure are uncomfortable! For authenticity, Psychonautra has been spending the night inside Coach Oleander's brain, where there's at least some bunk beds, though they take the form of taut military-style barracks with no one to keep her company besides a translucent figmentary commanding officer cycling the door open a couple times every hour to shout orders at her. There's better places to sleep than Oleander's mind, with all the shouting and booming-- but the military is the closest thing available to summer camp, while the other adult campers aren't around, and Psychonautra is very particular about emulating the True Camp Experience. She's got a psychic reflection of a Nintendo DS smuggled under her pillow, she sneaks off to Milla's mind to scam some intoxicating Delusions from the bar after hours, and generally makes herself a nuisance in just-barely acceptable ways. How else will she have a mental model of summer camp through which she can relate to the other campers, if she doesn't engage with mental models of summer camp as much as possible! Of course the PA system reaches inside mindscapes. No one attending class would ever hear them otherwise! Psychonautra hops out of bed instantly at the sound of Flamel's voice, wearing cozy matching solid-color pajamas, and then taps the blinking psionic gadget implanted right above the eyepieces of her ever-present goggles. "Alright! Grit your teeth, Coach! Ready up; this isn't nothing compared to boot camp!" Tapping the OFF button on the gadget, Psychonautra disables her psionic-limiter-limiter to temporarily blast the local area of Oleander's mind with blistering psychic radiation, completely preventing any observation or intrusion while she quickly changes into her goofy little mind-dive suit. Psychonautra does not need to eat-- but she does need to join the gang at the mess hall, zipping along through brains until she pops into Meika's with a familiar twinge and microphone-crackling "ahah!" Chef Cruller is greeted with a sourceless "Hey chef!" emanating from Meika's head, and then Psychonautra lounges on a rock on the misty-frigid beach short inside Meika's mindscape, chattering with the others and hitching a ride to Basic Braining. "Hey, dude, if spending time in mindscapes was enough to get a badge, I'd be out of here pronto. There's training! You can't just bumble around hoping practice makes perfect, y'know. Two little dives doesn't match decades of official Psychonauts research."
Meika Kirenai	As if evening's silencing on the woodland's cicadas dampened the summer heat along with their sizzle-sounding song, or her stubborn refusal to acknowledge that it hasn't could be enough, Meika drags herself up the trails from the lodge with a little tray of something adjacent-to tater tots still in hand to finish later, shrouded once again in her favorite red-grey letterman; if one's been provided, she's chosen to rep a camp tee underneath it. Meika is not touching the burgers, despite the arguable existence of meat in them. She hopes that means nothing arguable about meat-presence in things it oughtn't be in. She only shuffles into the main lodge to shuffle out right after, yawning glares sapped of what malice bright-red irises ever can be sapped of, if only because the rest of her is too; from work, transit hassles, errands, everything, and a caffiene reliance she hasn't stoked enough for the hour. The most anyone she recognizes in the building gets from her is a grumbled or yawned a greeting; but that's the most- Kale might count himself lucky. 'It's kind of messed up if you think about it?' Almost lucky. "... Eugh. Don't- don't have to say it so gross." He didn't, really, she's just blaming him for why it grosses her out. ('Hey chef!') Not that she needs to, and not that sourceless psychic emanations proper-like indicates her- but Meika still flashes an expression of 'wasn't me' over her face, and scoots away from the counter. . . . . . A 'Monitoring Post' draws enough flare to immediately make mental note of; that there's monitoring like this, whose personal post it is, and little details she's not sure will matter, like the overall shape and construction of the treetop, and that there's lots and lots of- "What do those computers do?" She asks. All of this is going in the notebook later. 'Are we going to brainheist...?' "Can- can you do that?" A short blink. "Shteal- ack, sorry- Steal a - from- huh?" Meika, from where she's found to sit, scoots a person-width away from Parker. She opts to munch on the makeshift dinner she's brought up rather than poke more on that train of thought right now. Idly she wonders if trains-of-thought work like actual trains, on the mindscape side of things. Guess that'll get figured soon.
Flamel Parsons	"Who in the heck is making burgers outta grinding cows?! Sonny, get up there to the brainiacs and get your noggin fixed!" Chef Cruller rambles at Kale, flogging a burger at him. "You want meat, that won't be ready for a week! It's backordered, I'm the only one back here and I'm ordering it." Vegan burgers? Who knows. Flamel's so friendly. Who're you brainheisting? "Me! Sort of! This is to help people regain their brain-legs, so to speak, but people who already have an aptitude also have to be assessed for it, you know. You'll be taking a look inside a sample mind, while I assess your strengths and weaknesses in detail." He chatters in easygoing tones. "You can, though. Steal secrets, I mean. Oh, the computers?" He turns back, poking at them. "I've got them pointed at Kagoshima. I'm trying to monitor psychic phenomena associated with one of the members of your family, in fact! Don't worry though, I'm not stealing her secrets. I'm just trying to advance a secret global agenda about hidden powers that are most present in your town." Soooo good at talking to eighteen-year-olds. "Anyway! This is simple. You'll hop inside, do your best on some tests, and I'm pretty sure you'll pass!" He gets out... a tiny door. Itty bitty. Three inches tall at most. And he plants it on his head. "I'll keep you near the outer layers where my social structure is, so that if you die or get too hurt or anything, you'll just have your astral projection kicked out of my mind. Just be careful not to go too far into employees-only zones!" If nobody objects, he's gonna start planting that door on his forehead, and letting it ominously open...
Flamel Parsons	Those searching around to fill out their scavenger hunt lists can find a MAGIC BULLET CASING. This empty ring of metal has "2 PREZ - XOXO" carved on it. Filling it out on the page accurately reveals a little lore: During the deepest periods of the MAD memetic hazard outbreak, psitanium bullets were put into production that were telekinetically inclined towards leadership. A little while later, it was determined that they were, in fact, infatuated with the brains of all leaders everywhere.
Petra Soroka	"Can- can you do that?" "Oh, totally!" Having the unseen voice of Psychonautra interjecting whenever she wants, while being imperceptible otherwise, feels like someone leaning over Meika's shoulder all the time. It's only helped by the fact that Psychonautra's explained that she can't actually see or hear anything outside-- she just picks up wavelengths from the Phoneme Packing Plant where human language gets sorted away from all other sounds to be processed separately, which is apparently far easier to access for her. Echoic memory means your own words get looped back around through there too, who knew! "Brains're full of stuff to take. You can do it without even hopping inside, if you know the right words. It's easier to just toss a Psycho Portal on and dig for it yourself, though, if you really want to know." Psychonautra slides off the rock inside Meika's mindscape, takes a few wobbly steps through the sand to whirl around and plant down her own jury-rigged free-standing Psycho Portal in preparation to jump. "Hey, Flamel? Or-- wait, should I call you, Counselor Parsons, or something? Could you think of me for a sec, so I can jump to you on the first try?"
Kale Hearthward	"... Well, you don't want to know what they make chicken nuggets out of then," snaps back Kale. On the way out of the dining hall, he confronts her. "Do you have some sort of problem? C'mon Meika, I'm trying to be nice, but you just keep on being-" - keep on being... what? Oh, he's gone. If Meika happens to look up, he's ascending up into the air, very rapidly, as though being pulled off the stage by a vaudeville hook. (If the 'stage' happens to be the surface of the superplanet.) About a minute later, he's dropped back next to Meika, landing at high speeds (but somehow very gently landing?). He looks a little ruffled. "I'm sorry. I know this is a stressful situation, and it behooves me to set a better example, to be more understanding, and to choose my words better," he says, carefully. When everyone's up in the tower, he nods. "Ready," he says, staring at the door. "Though really, you don't need to do the tests, I'll ace everything. I got White Chalice at the House of the Seven Worthies, that's like - that's really good. (That's not how the grading there works. -ed) (And even if it was that's not the highest 'grade' either. -ed) The spent bullet casing gets claimed. That scavenger hunt reward will be his! ... Wait, what was it again? He forgot, but he wants it.
Petra Soroka	When Kale is yanked moonwards mid-sentence, Psychonautra is knocked off of her mental perch by all of her gizmos and scanners blaring alarms all at once. Gathering them back up and fitting them into the complex array of belts, bags, straps, hooks, carabiners, and buckles upon which they all rest (because, of course, when they activate so suddenly, they physically jump in urgency), she remarks, watching a red flashing warning display over a screen of maxed-out bar graphs. "Wow. What the hell was that? Did Kale just explode? Did he have some sort of abrupt, devastating self-realization about the falseness of the facade of his whole identity, causing his ego to violently collapse?"
Angela	Parker has no doubt been filling out her Scavenger Card, mostly because she is a gremlin who likes seeking out weird items and cataloguing them or moving them or just plain stealing them, though in this case out of respect for The Scavenger Hunt, she simply notes down their location in her handy dandy scavenger hunt notepad. She's thriving in Summer Camp. ''Can- can you do that?'' "I lose track of my thoughts all the time so it makes sense someone's taking them away. I hope to one day be able to steal them all back." Parker says, scootching about .3 a person's width closer automatically. ''I've got them pointed at Kagoshima'' "Ideal tact as ever, Flamel." Angela says. "Do you object if we gather enkephalin readings within the sample mind, then?" Parker asks, "What happens if we go to employee only zones?" She obviously is interested in breaking into the employees-only zones though whether that means 'too far in' as well is something not even Parker knows because she hasn't thought that far ahead yet. "I am hoping to adopt some Psychonaut techniques into employee training, due to it complimenting much of our other work already." Angela, an AI that can lie, explains further.
Meika Kirenai	'I'm trying to be nice, but you just keep on being-' Tired stare as he's dragged off, surprised little exhale, now tater tots in hand, when Kale lands, again. "... S-sure. Okay. where'd, uh... you get... nevermind." She figures that must be usual. She's not sure what unusual must look like, around here. . . . . . 'I've got them pointed at Kagoshima.' Meika didn't, on any form she signed to attend here, put that she was from Kagoshima. Meika isn't herself aware of any psychic phenomena in her family. Her posture tightens up, eyes sour, and fix just-off from his direction, at the screens behind him, as if she'd be able to figure out what they mean. "... Don't screw with me. They're- that's not- They're okay, right..?" A pause, actual worry- "... No, that's- that's not funny. Not funny." Meika's hands wring themselves out in her lap, leaning forward, stare boring holes through the floor. That she's had home come up more times here, at camp, than she's talked with anyone there since leaving, weighs on her in a way she can't quite place, pulling at her windpipe like guilt. 'Just be careful not to go too far into employees-only zones!' 'Brains're full of stuff to take.' Sourness transmutes to petty acts of ideating retribution, divorced still from practical mission-aims that stealing things from brains almost certainly could help along. It probably wouldn't take any effort at all to guess she's thinking about straying off course somewhere there. It takes just a bit more effort than Meika's putting to the thought to realize that's possibly an intentional goad. "... Isn't that door a little small..?" A little snort-scoff-laugh. "... Like from a dollhouse? Is- wait, is it like dollhouses, inside brains?"
Petra Soroka	"I lose track of my thoughts all the time so it makes sense someone's taking them away." Psychonautra, very seriously, advises Parker, "Have you tried tin foil?" More brightly, she continues with "You might just have a leak in some cognitive pipe somewhere! Thoughts've gotta go against gravity to get from the subconscious to the conscious-conscious, so if you're leaking anywhere, they'll just dribble out of some other pathway instead of heading on over to your concept rotation chambers! Any particular theme, maybe some repressed unfulfilled needs of yours, that're consistently getting stolen?"
Flamel Parsons	"... No, that's- that's not funny. Not funny." "Mhm! That's 'cause it's not a joke, you know. Your family's a pretty dense nexus of psychic relevance to some important powers. Especially your oldest sister." Flamel speaks, as an astral tug starts to pull on the classroom attendees. He makes sure they're seated on the little chairs... "Could you think of me for a sec, so I can jump to you on the first try?" "Well, I could hardly not, now! After all, prompting me to imagine you, even if I said no, would instantly start me thinking plenty about the splintered mental image of psychonautry fueled by the Petra mental well. But, feel free to call me Agent Parsons, if you want!" "Do you object if we gather enkephalin readings within the sample mind, then?" "Don't mind at all, if you can gather them!" "What happens if we go to employee only zones?" "Employee-only activities! I can't guarantee a lack of injury if you stray from the beaten path. But I trust you to be responsible adults and all!" The door nudges fully open... there's bright white light inside. The astral tug becomes a pull, then a yank. Similar to Kale being ejection-seat blasted into the sky, but much lighter, it's tugging the phantasmal forms of everyone into the mindscape!
Petra Soroka	"After all, prompting me to imagine you, even if I said no, would instantly start me thinking plenty about the splintered mental image of psychonautry fueled by the Petra mental well." "That's the plan!" Psychonautra hums cheerfully, waggling the Psycho Portal around in the sand until the radar-compass-contraption on top of the tripod displays that she's angled it exactly towards Flamel. After a few seconds, she thoughtfully remarks, voice emanation completely unchanged in volume and comprehensibility even while the others are mid-astral-projection. "I forgot the word Agent, for a minute." Psychonautra, inside Flamel's mindscape, looks-- unsurprisingly-- like Petra! But not exactly like Petra. Lacking the collar, the scars, the bomber jacket, and her often present EGO hairpin, she's instead covered chin-to-toe in some sort of slightly-too-slutty-to-be-proper-PPE hazard jumpsuit. Gadgets and gizmos, sensors and readers and suction-type devices you've seen on the wall of the camp store rattle around on their many attachment points to her suit, and she's got goggles similar to Qetra's pulled up onto her forehead, though she's in the process of pulling them down to over her eyes when she pops into being. "Alright; newbies, we've just got Meika and Parker, right? And maybe arguably me! I'm not sure if poking around in my own-- in the original Petra's mind really counts, honestly. Oh, and, about that," Parker and Meika-- she has to guess which one is which, but it's an easy gamble-- get a gloved wave. "Hey hey, I'm Petra. Cool of you to have bodies, now."
Flamel Parsons	PARSONS ANOMALOUS CONTAINMENT INSTITUTE LIGHT CONTAINMENT - ACTIVE STUDY Flamel's mindscape. Again, for some. It's brushed steel and heavy concrete, interspersed with dense growth of contained plants for sensory enrichment. Scientific instruments protrude from walls at odd angles, with unclear purpose. Emergency buttons and alarms dot every corner. Seating room is ample but unused. Halls turn off towards rows of containment cells and test chambers. And of course, many are labeled properly: EMPLOYEE ONLY. You're along for the ride with a group of scientists, flanked by one or two guards. A heavy concrete and steel test chamber is ahead. Flamel's voice can be heard over the PA, and his face, seen on screens mounted beneath them sometimes. "Welcome! Welcome to the Anomalous Containment Institute. Here, we'll test some key psychonautical competencies and make sure you're cleared for basic braining certification. First door up: Psychic construct interactions! Make sure your weapons are loaded or readied, then enter the course." Neighboring chambers are visible through glass panels. Warped versions of others that Flamel knows can be seen through them, undergoing testing. A warped image of Angela is writing rapidly through stacks of paper and instructing smaller mental images. A lanky and exaggerated Kale is showing off with a combat dummy. Petra -- original flavor -- is being photographed from multiple angles as a stack of incomprehensibly diverse polaroids is printed. And Meika... Meika can see too-small, somewhat sickly versions of herself, and Kayoko, having medicine solemnly administered by urgently worried doctors. "Head inside! A series of constructs will be released into the enclosure. Deal with each one in sequence, however you see fit! You can exit the chamber at any stage. After this we'll move on to the next."
Angela	"Understood." Angela says, fearing this may involve more platforming than she'd like but fortunately she won't have to do the platforming--Parker will. If the interior of Flamel's brain is too annoying she can at least just turn off her her device. ''Have you tried tin foil?'' Parker's eyes widen as if being told something both obvious and unexpected. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Convince Parker to become stranger! "If tinfoil actually works, why don't more people use it?" Angela asks, wanting to believe Psychonautra but having great difficulty in doing so due to the excessive silliness behind the idea. "I dunno." Parker tells Psychonautra. "The last thing I remember is looking into the Well... The first thing I remember is looking into the well? Why was I there...?" Seems like the cause seems to be something to do with The Well! "Flamel..." Angela says to Flamel. "...While they are in there, I would like to talk to you out here. Parker can use the backup device." Parker sets down the Angelapad and heads inside with the others, drawing out a second pad Angela probably providd her in the case of an eventuality like this. ''COol of you to have bodies, now.'' "Parker always had a body I think...?" Parker says, now unsure. "Not as many as Petra though." Parker heads inside as expected and is naturally looking for stuff to see. Parker gives a look around, looking for something to steal. She stares at a long time for the weird warped image of Angela for a moment. "Wow...she got out...?" But she's mostly looking for stuff to steal. MEANWHILE, OUTSIDE "Flamel," Angela says. "I would like to know your reasoning for bombarding Miss Meika with information bound to confuse and stress her out. Is this part of your plan to treat her? If so, I would like to know how it would help rather than simply trouble her needlessly."
Kale Hearthward	ON THE TOPIC OF GETTING MOON-YANKED: "... Don't worry about it," says Kale to Petra. (He's under geas to be nice to girls, but has learned to not tell people that he is. -ed) "Though - what was that about abrupt, devastating self-realization about... ego collapse?" Kale didn't catch all of it. --- "Right! Weapons out!" Kale draws one of his swords. "See, whatever's in here, you can just follow my lead on how to deal with it," he brags. "I figure, I've seen practically anything and everything we might encounter in here." One beat panel later: "What the heck are those?" he says, staring through the glass at the mental constructs. And especially at his own. "... Do I really look like that?" Kale feels like he needs a mirror. "... Oh, uh, none of you look like how you do in real life either," he adds, diplomatically. Then he pauses. "Actually - no, Parker's not there, and neither is this Petra?" he says. "Just the original Petra." "Do - you need to go find the projection room here, or something?" he asks her, trying to remember what the heck it is she did in his own head. (This is futile, since he doesn't know anyway. -ed) He heads on in, sword still drawn, ready to fight!
Meika Kirenai	'Especially your oldest sister.' Meika's oldest sister is Kayoko, at around a year younger. Eyebrows furrow. "Leave Kayoko alone. She's- don't even joke about spying on her. I don't- I don't know what you're getting at. But I hate it. She's just a kid." A back-of-mind thought pops up that this must be Meika's fault, somehow, if there's actually spying going on- that's her cover story, that she used to have some sort of now-lost psychic powers, and it burns like bile that that's in some way causing strife for her family, potentially. Best case, she thinks, Flamel knows it's a lie and is just trying to hurt her back. That makes sense. That works. Anything else feels horrible. Meika barely notices the pull as it starts, maybe the trees are swaying a bit, or it's breeze in her hair, or- "Ah, hey-" Door's opened, and she's floating on someone else's whim. It's not until looking around to see that others are, too, that she lowers her guard. . . . . Dust-scuffed boots hit concrete, and arrest a stumble. Meika spins in place, nervous, blinking under the harsh fluorescent lighting, and mouthing out "Em-ploy-ee..." when one of the many indicators of no-trespass zones is the first sign she stays still enough to face, before turning on towards anything else. Seeing a guard puts her on edge. Seeing Petra, a version of her that eerily the same, makes her jolt. 'Cool of you to have bodies, now.' "Huh? I've always had a body." Weird response. She shoves her hands into her pockets, and sinks more into her oversized coat, as if trying to disprove that. Weirder response. "Um. Hi. You do too, I- I guess..? Cool?" 'Make sure your weapons are loaded or readied,' As if thankful for something else to shift to, Meika's hands shuffle in her pockets, and she pulls out an Actual Gun. Parker migtht recognize it as R-corp make, if she's ever cared or had the misfortune to stare at one up close. She thumbs off the safety before asking, "... What for?" Maybe she's a little un-cautious. Looking through the glass at the versions, here, makes her skin crawl. She knows Petra, the original, is important in a lot of ways, so that's less weird, and she can guess that herself and Kale might be there because they are, physically (astrally?) there and relevant- but Kayoko, again, is scowl inducing. "... What the hell? Why- why's she here..? What are you giving her- us? Down there?" She gestures through the glass, with her loose-held handgun. Kayoko looking uncharacteristically small and sick makes Meika think poison- Meika's copy in there looking small and sick to her seems normal. It takes effort to draw attention away, but she's thankful when she does, ducking through to the indicated chamber. If 'deal with' means fight, she's guiltily glad there's going to be something around to break.
Petra Soroka	"Not as many as Petra though." "Oh, mhm, so I've heard. It takes a certain kind of ego to be both undefined enough to refract and split along so many different interpretations, but still substantially-defined enough to maintain a coherent identity throughline between all of them, right? I'd say I'm curious, but it's kind of repulsive, haha." Psychonautra chats with Parker as if Parker is completely normal, while peeking into the Petra-chamber. She takes out her own polaroid camera, snapping a few pictures-- was that camera there before? It's hard to tell among all of her gadgets-- responding to Kale over her shoulder while studying the printed pictures. "Oh, I already made a stop by Flamel's mind's eye earlier. Escorted, of course, since it'd be cheating for these tests now if I got free roam." As Meika passes by her, though, Psychonautra elbows her and lowers her voice cheerful-conspiratorially. "But hey, I've got his coordinates locked in my Psycho Portal, if you're getting any ideas about those Employee Only areas. This isn't really a heist; it's just a lame little guided tour, and I don't need to hang out in your Broca's Area with my subtext interpretation monitor to get a sense that you've got a bit of resentment that won't work out just with this. And, you know-- it'll be fun." Psychonautra's weapon, holstered then drawn, is unsurprisingly a gun. It's a psychic gun, of course, but it's still a fundamental aspect of 'Petra' that the concept of aggression is best visualized through a gun, no matter how 70's-appropriately-goofy the tech might look.
Flamel Parsons	OUTSIDE... "If tinfoil actually works, why don't more people use it?" Flamel answers, finally. "Oh, ages ago some intelligence agencies did a disinformation campaign, that's just how it goes. It's like MSG, it's very good but a lot of mean people decided to scapegoat it!" "I would like to know your reasoning for bombarding Miss Meika with information bound to confuse and stress her out." "I'm teaching her that I'm an honest person, without pushing the information to her on purpose. She can engage or disengage all she wants, but she'll never find anything but truth. When some of the things I say turn out to be truthful, then she'll know I've been being honest and respectful with her from the start -- and there's no more important an impression to make on a young girl! It's a long-game position, you know?" INSIDE... "Just the original Petra." Flamel's voice on the PA calls out during Kale's testing. "Agent Petra is already a reflection of Petra, in a lot of ways. I'll show you the file sometime! She's easy enough to understand, since she's a way of understanding me. And that's part of what this test will be about!" "What are you giving her- us? Down there?" "Oh, I've been brainstorming cures for you three for ages. I still can't figure out what's going to help you! I hope that while you're here, I can figure something out. But who knows, really. As long as you walk out of Whispering Rock healthier than you walked in, though, I'll have done my job!" Those looking for things to steal around here will probably have their opportunities between tests... People are going one at a time. As for the tests themselves...
Flamel Parsons	TEST - MENTAL IMAGE INTERACTION TYPE: COGNITIVE/EMPATHY CONTAINMENT AREA: Standard light containment chamber PSYCHOHAZARD WARNINGS: Ensure visual clarity is low to prevent Uncanny Valley. Ensure an emergency escape button is present to prevent traumatic response. Post-testing debriefing should include this protocol in full, unredacted, to prevent guilt. PROCEDURE: Introduce raw Cold Reading mental canvas into the chamber, ensuring that it is stressed but not sufficiently powerful to cause harm. This will appear as an ambiguously aggressive red mass, similar to the "slime" or "shadow" construct in many minds. This should start below humanoid shape, ideally. Increase the level and resolution of mental canvas imprinting by one per disposed impression, increasing the pseudosapient behavior of the entity up towards full personhood. Acts of violence or helpful kindness should be sufficient to dismiss the Canvas form. Increase accuracy and information density to maximum, or until test termination. The image used for this protocol should be an image of the sophont being tested. RATING: Determined by the number of increases to visible personhood required for the individual to treat the opposed entity as deserving of kindness, or distressing enough to terminate the test. Those who enter the chamber are subjected to a small parade of entities that look more and more like them, until they are willing to treat it -- or rather, themselves -- with empathetic kindness, or at least sympathetic aversion. Those who fail to do so at maximum don't seem to find any reduction in kindness and bright friendliness from Flamel.
Kale Hearthward	Kale ends up cutting through each and every one put in front of him, up to and including the ones that look and act like him. "And - time!" he declares when it becomes clear that he's cut through the last one. "Hah. They were getting tricky towards the end, too. Like they were trying to learn what I looked and acted like," he says as he cleans and sheathes his sword. "Pretty sure if I was any slower they'd start trying to attack me back, good thing I'm that fast. Perfect run."
Angela	''it's a long-game position, you know?'' Angela says, "I...understand that, Flamel. But this is a similar method to what I used to induce psychotic breaks." She frowns. "But I do respect that you are attempting to heal beyond the poison as well. If you are certain such provocations will not push her away from healing I will not object." She'd probably approve of the studious hard-working inner-Flamel, honestly, distorted or no, if perhaps confused as to why there even is one. Parker looks to Psychonautra, apparently finding her completely normal too. "I dunno." Parker says of Petra's repulsivity levels. "Sometimes bad guys make the best good guys. People too obsessed with not being fucked up don't get anything done. I only really knew the Petra who really helps us out all the time. I hope she can redeem herself a little in the eyes of those she cares about. I think she's trying but it's never a direct path right?" After that weird moment of uncharacteristic crime-unrelated wsincerity, Parker adds, completely oblivious to what Psychonatura is telling Meika. "I wanna break into the Employee Spaces." Parker will punch and kick and occasionally stab vague blobs rather than immediately just presume that kindness is the order of business but once they start to look at her--after a moment of freezing up--Parker treats them differently. She gives one 'Parker' a hug, she lets another steal her MIND WALLET, she agrees to form a heist team with a third Parker. Generally speaking, she seems to have an easy time getting along with other Parkers--she already does that all the time, after all. She helpfully draws a face for the last Parker she runs into and makes it a little sad face before plastering it on the other Parker's face.
Petra Soroka	Psychonautra, is, of course, Petra's own mental image of Flamel, reinterpreted back into an image of herself both due to psychic and empathetic irregularities inside Petra's mind. Petra's own mirrored social comprehension systems involve, more strongly than others, the conceptualization of herself suffering, improving, functioning, philosophizing, and actualizing in the context of another person, so that the influence of their identity can seep into her enough that she can attempt to understand them. So when confronted with the blank metal images of herself, in their default blobby state-- the explanation of the test primes her to confabulate memories of her past time at Whispering Rock, remembering fighting the slime-concepts until they became similar to herself, and then fighting them harder, but that never actually happened. She shakes her head and shudders a bit, pushing the not-memories away-- what she's prepared for is entirely different from what comes out. The first parading line of constructs look like... Flamel? Not even herself. "Hahhhh.... That's not what I look like! As nice as it is to see the cool ass Psychonauts uniform on an image associated with me, I kind of hate that it looks like... him." That's not out of malice to Flamel; in fact, she's still glowing a bit about being referred to as 'Agent'. Instead, the 'him' seems almost generic, the concept of a reflection of her being describable as such innately horrifying. "Move along! Get cuter already, jesus. Or get blobbier, but I don't think the mental image conceptualization matrix works that way." At first, the constructs are treated with undue violence, blasted on sight with her psi-gun or bombed in groups with grenades mimicking Flamel's. At one point, when they're androgynously mid-blondeification, she gets annoyed enough to flick off her psychic-limiter-limiter, briefly filling the inside of the chamber with painful needles, shredding the images as a cluster. They come back appropriately cuter-- though still collared and Petroid, rather than Psychonautroid. A little crestfallen, Psychonautra still kneels down to gently pat the Petras, giving them gadgets for enrichment to rotate in their hands or lifting them up to other parts of the chamber so they can clamber around the equipment. "Ah, well. I guess my original purpose was helping this Petra, anyways. Girl's got a job!"
Meika Kirenai	'Oh, I've been brainstorming cures for you three for ages.' 'You three'. Any thought put into Flamel's phrasing is met with 'that means both concepts and me', or 'that means me, Kyou, and Kayoko, for some reason', and utterly not in any way close to what Flamel actually means. It's no more odd to her than the other things he's been spouting about home: utterly nonsensical, but without anything she can as-of-now latch onto. "... Just leave them alone. They've got enough to deal with." Then, a pause- hollow and trying just to reaffirm her cover, "Sides-besides, I- I'm the one who's here, anyways." 'And, you know-- it'll be fun."' The elbowing draws out a short little jolt and a less-short yelp, as if she's almost surprised things like physical contact work in mindscapes like this. The surprise fades quickly, into thought-mulling. Meika isn't quite sure what level of audibly agreeing with Psychonautra is safe, around guards, around others- but she's not hiding it by asking like that, and Flamel's just an ominous voice in the announcement system, so, whispered- "... Yeah. Sure thing. That- that would be fun. Later, yeah..? You bet there's plenty of good stuff around?" Stepping into the test chamber, both hands on her gun, she's been practicing the habit of matching aim and eye-attention, and this is technically part of a mercenary-ish secret mission she's been put on, so she might as well try and think on that- all told, that means that when the first inhuman red shapes start to flow in, sharp pops of gunfire follow. Ironic. Hesitation comes quite quickly, but only once they start showing tell-tale marks of person-ish ness: hands, heads, the silhouette of hair. They don't even have to look like herself, yet- though the ones that do are easier to point her weapon at than apparent strangers. "Are they supposed to- these are- they're just targets, right..? You said weapons out, and..." Meika, for all her sourness, for all her harm-slinging, even as a magical girl, never once killed someone on her own volition- by negligence, by failure, but not intention. Any assurance that it's okay, not real, or harmless, or even just that she should keep pulling the trigger, and she will- but without that, she keeps the gun outstretched and backs up until she's touching a wall. "... I- I don't like this.."
Flamel Parsons	Meika refusing to interact with the target, after a while, eventually auto-aborts things. Kale gets nice brain-snacks while he waits for everyone else to finish up. The debriefing gets handed out, even to the Parkerlets that she walks out with. They've gotten ratings -- not just for how many levels they went, or their approach to each, but also on an aspect of 'consistency' that seems to be the most relevant factor possible. More testing. More chambers. TEST - MENTAL NAVIGATION TYPE: ATHLETIC/CURIOUS CONTAINMENT AREA: Labyrinth zone on sublevel 3 PSYCHOHAZARD WARNINGS: Injuries to astral self. Emergency escape buttons should not be scattered excessively densely. Purge minos-type memories and archetypes before test. PROCEDURE: Introduce subject to sublevel 3 via elevator. Provide subject with a basic dossier of the presumed memories of the persona of 'Flamel Parsons'. Using a description of current circumstances and some available memories, the subject should be able to select appropriate paths and navigate athletic challenges. RATING: Higher of either the number of labyrinth challenges that were solved using dossier/contextual data or the number of challenges solved using "cheat" methods. Flamel's personal history? Unredacted? A memoir? It can't be right, almost none of the years match up in the timeline and he's got two sets of first times riding a bike, plus a few too many 'everyone clapped' moments at his stays at Whispering Rock. But running the test-maze of memory-constructs where re-enacting both his memories and his ways through which events were processed will be an interesting event. How will they approach it? TEST - ASTRAL GATHERING TYPE: MEMORY/FOCUS CONTAINMENT AREA: All of light containment PSYCHOHAZARD WARNINGS: Bar individuals from level 2 restricted areas and above. PROCEDURE: Subjects should be allowed 'leisure time' to wander the institute and gather figments of imagination and emotional baggage produced by mind at rest state. Areas that have been heavily gathered at should be refreshed with brainstorming. RATING: Figments and baggage gathered should be totalled per individual. Use table A4 to provide bonus credit for consistency within a given area or time period. The labyrinth was a little complex and silly, but this one's just a wider exploration. They can all visit areas that may or may not be relatively familiar to them by now, enter observation decks for cells where Flamel is testing mental images of various people... or even wander off-track into employee-only zones where who-knows-what mental machinery might be found, like someone's particular interest in one of the areas signposted as the COMMUNICATIONS CENTER. But if you have a psychic radio in your astral hand, acquired from sneaking into a big 80s-era-looking recording and video-editing studio, will it really be retained when leaving the brain...? Well, anyway, here's hoping Parker doesn't raid the FACIAL RECOGNITION department too much, otherwise she might make Agent Parsons faceblind for a few days.
Flamel Parsons	"But this is a similar method to what I used to induce psychotic breaks." Flamel's peaceful meditation doesn't break. His smile is as consistent as ever. Peaceful. Serene. "I'll be honest. Inducing a psychotic break is what it would do, if the material circumstances weren't changed. Forcing someone to confront facts and heal from doing so is impossible under some specific circumstances of... well, starvation or equivalents, you might call it? But Lilian Rook, and her own efforts, they're all keeping her afloat materially." He sighs a bit, happily. "It gives me the wiggle room to make something happen in a few months that would usually take some years. If there were someone kind like that for the people you induce psychotic breaks in, then honest truths would heal them too."
Kale Hearthward	Brain snacks! Yah! "Oh, wait, are these vegan?" asks Kale, after already having eaten three of them. --- MENTAL NAVIGATION Kale does, actually, pretty well when it comes to navigating the maze by re-enacting memories and past events. He doesn't get too hung up on there being multiple iterations of the same memory, or unaccounted for gaps, or conflicting accounts - Memories are stories, right? And stories change over time or per the person recording or telling them. It is actually to his detriment a bit - Kale's potentially the one here with the most cheating methods available, but he's among those most into throwing himself into the task, so when his approach of how he (thinks he) should be tacking a problem runs into trouble, it takes him longer to realize he should be figuring out other approaches. --- ASTRAL GATHERING Kale can fly and has both birdly and psychic-ly senses for locating stuff. He's going to clean up, maybe literally. ... Oh, and he also has that fancy new official 'Can Hold More Issues than Even Emotional Baggage can' Whispering Rock Summer Camp duffel bag that he just bought today, so he can hold more stuff, too. It's all coming up Hearthward!
Petra Soroka	TEST - MENTAL NAVIGATION TYPE: ATHLETIC/CURIOUS If there were two labels applied to Psychonautra's skills as a Psychonaut, it would be these two. She's absolutely enamored by the trip through Flamel's memories, despite fully knowing that they're false-- in fact, she remarks, directly to the Flamels within the memories (not a universal tactic! She just thinks it's suited to him, specifically) that she's excited to see any manufactured memories, because it's impossible for the mind to generate complete self-falsehoods that hold up to enough interrogation that they'd function for the test. Even one person's life is more than a single mind can hold in veracity at once, so the more pressure is put on a fake one, the more indirect or unintentional truth ends up shining through. This means, of course, that Psychonautra gives 110% to the platforming. Normally she'd give 100% anyways; almost in a literal sense, bouncing and wall jumping between mental visualizations is what she lives for, but in this particular case she's stretching the limits of her extensive platforming skills to peek around undeveloped corners, access NPCs meant to be background features, slide into hard-to-reach chambers and prod at the mental vaults within. The entire time, she's adoringly supportive of the Flamel-constructs too, clapping along when he implausibly saves the camp for a third time in a summer, helping spread invitations for a nearly-ruined birthday party, and so on. Between test chambers, Psychonautra falls in line with Meika again, chatting and a little out of breath as if she can just pick up their conversation right from where the earlier chambers disrupted it. "Oh, he's got tons of secrets in here somewhere. I bet the real details on whatever he's talking about doing to your family are locked down tighter than us amateurs could get to-- though you're doing really good! That rocks-- but you know what they say about the route to a man's most innermost secrets and feelings: it's through his posts! I bet there's some kind of social vulnerability we could exploit. For fun, you know. And extra credit. And spite!" TEST - ASTRAL GATHERING TYPE: MEMORY/FOCUS Psychonautra is prepared beyond belief for a collect-a-thon. With access to gear beyond what trainees should have-- psychic imagery generated in her arsenal to mimic what she's told and what she's seen of a typical Psychonaut's gear-- she's obsessively scraping corners, peeling away obstacles, cycling through every permutation of button-press toggles for a modular testing chamber, she's got bagfuls of tokens, greebles, and images to proudly display, like a cat returning from the hunt. She's also more than happy to take Meika along on some less-than-sanctioned adventures. "Hey hey, I've got a cool trick to nuke all those security cameras, by the way. Just in case you can think of any, potentially useful applications of that. I've got nooothing in mind, though."
Angela	Angela listens to Flamel's reasoning and then nods slowly. "Admittedly, the circumstances for our Sephirah are considerably harsher. Like myself they do not get to even go outside--" And then just in case this makes it seem like she is saying the other SEphirah's suffering is equivalent to her own's-- "But of course, they all have been outside ''before'' their current circumstances, so it is not as if the experience is wholly alien to them. They have plenty memories of life that should sustain them." She frowns. "It is a pity that healing them normally was not an option. It would have been easier." MEANWHILE PARKER MENTAL NAVIGATION Parker knows a tried and true method of getting through a maze--always turn right! When she sees a memory of FLamel's, she observes it and then runs the Enkephalin Reader over it to send back to LobCorp for analysis. She doesn't seem troubled by multiple sets of memories though sometimes she has to go back and edit her notes on the pad that she's using. Luckily it's TECHNOLOGY and it isn't too awkward to do rather than, like, pen and paper or something. Multiple choice backstories is just another element of having multiple faces in Parker's view. Besides, nobody said Flamel couldn't have learned to ride the bike for the first time multiple times. ASTRAL GATHERING Parker obviously is going to raid Facial Recognition who do you think she is, she tries to sneak right on in there and take all the faces she can find and just start shoving them onto her own face. These are the risks one undergoes when letting Parker into their mindscape. Parker takes to platforming with gusto even when she completely messes it up but she seems relatively limber, seeming to recall something in a forgotten life that helped her in the past. If she has time she'll definitely sneak into employee only areas, but obviously she'd be heading into Facial Recognition First it's basically a honey trap for Parker.
Meika Kirenai	<J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "You did stop though! Good work!" Confused, and a little bit distraught, Meika thumbs her gun's safety back on, but doesn't let go of it, and doesn't stray from keeping her back up to a wall away from the constructs, trying really hard not to look at the ones closer and closer to her, until dilly-dallying really has no excuse. Out and onwards, down the elevator, to- -\| MENTAL NAVIGATION \|- It doesn't take long for the handed-off dossier to start reading as odd, but even if it's false, insight into methods and training is what she's meant to collect info on, so once she's skimmed through, it's off to her messenger bag with the packet, to hopefully bring with her when she gets out, if that's possible in the slightest. The fact that it might just dissapear isn't intuitive enough to stop her from stashing the papers away. "... Two first times riding a bike..? Really? And it's not even, different types, or a motorcycle, or something..?" Meika isn't sure how best to get out of a maze like this, or what an exit would even look like, ambling through memories, but that's the first one she tries to head to, letting headphone music from her phone blur the time through 'That Awkward Bus Ride Where The Driver Kept Getting Lost' to an asphalt cul-de-sac with a bike to practice riding- thankfully, thankfully without training wheels. She still isn't sure how to get out of a maze like this, but she's taking the bike with her as she routes through it, wheeling it along through a living room that's part of 'Snowed In', pedalling hard to keep up with careening spy-equipment laden vans on neon-lit nighttime streets of 'Tailing A Target', scene after scene, replacing know-how with simply focusing on a nice excuse to ride, tacking situation after situation together as they fit, until there's finally an exit button, beyond some fences in 'Dropped Wallet In Dark Alleyway', wasting the effort to drag the bike with her up and over what should be an easy climb just so she can bring it with her outside. Out of breath, slow to complete, and seemingly without cheating, she makes it out, (second-first) bike wheeled along as if she always had it. "Oh, hey-" A finger put up as a pause, as Psychonautra starts up chatter, pausing for a chance to catch her racing breath. "Secrets, that's... yeah. I'd bet it's- it's hard to find whatever the hell he keeps going on about. I- I wanna know, but..." A short, blank stare. "His posts? I- yeah. Sure. Let's go looking, when we can? You'd know better, and- and I'm kind of supposed to... poke around for-" Oops. Secret mission. "Hah. Extra credit. As if he wouldn't be pissed." He wouldn't, probably! Meika expects he'd be more like a teacher, though- and expects teachers to be mad. "... Good luck next round, yeah..?" She's still wheeling the bike, still kind of rattled-pumped-up from the excercise, and even sticks out a fist for Psychonautra to bump- that's kind of an odd action, coming from her. She seems happier and looser, though, with a handful of combined context bits, yay! -\| MENTAL NAVIGATION \|- Meika spends a normal amount of time, doing mostly the same- excuse for motion, seeking through here and there, finding collectathon items with middling success. It's when she bumps into Petra again, that- "You said posts, right? Did you see the communication's center? I bet that's- I haven't gone in yet, but it's got to be something, right..?" 'I've got nooothing in mind, though.' "Well, I- I don't have nothing." If Petra's joking at all, Meika doesn't catch it. "C'mon, we can get in and out easy if you can do something like- like that, right?" She pats the back of her stolen bicycle, and hops on it herself. "Get there faster. Or funner. Sound good?"
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's artificial mind and its falsely patched-together memories make for a somewhat confusing environment, but by keeping it low-scope and contained in a specialized containment area, it's manageable. Parker's approach is insightful, while Kale's is direct, and so their consistent approaches rate highly purely on the grounds of consistency. Psychonautra is professional, and she can see the structural expression, the way a fake mind expresses the truth. There's always an aspect of control and conspiracy in the fake life, a mysterious idea of someone, somewhere, knowing a truth about Flamel that he doesn't know. And as for Astral Gathering, well, everyone here is rating pretty highly. This test seems to be primarily focused on seeing if the people are capable of engaging with psychic drudgework: the accumulation and sorting of random chunks of assorted info and data that isn't super relevant to a big mental knot that needs undoing, but is still just nice to know socially. Healing someone psychically means being their friend, and being someone's friend means soaking in their outer identity, their imagination, their outside-layer cognition. By the end, everyone who reports in will have acquired their BASIC BRAINING CERTIFICATION, as well as a small badge for it. Did this really involve any psychic work? Or was it mostly psychological testing? It seems, either way, to have turned out well. Though some people have't reported in... In the last minutes before Parker leaves, Flamel explains something important to Angela. "You need to know this about my approach." He says. "It's true, I put a little stress on the mind. But reality is a kind of weight on the brain. The more truthful reality you're exposed to, the more your mental landscape buckles and cracks and, eventually, it can shatter. And when you load more healthy truth onto that weight, without removing the harsh dangers of things that feel like starving, it can hurt the mind. But if you take the starvation away, every mind can hold the truth up in the end." "Do your Sephirah ever feel hungry, Angela? Do you? Hungry for sunlight and fresh air, for..." He trails off. "Well, maybe there's not a good way to ask this question. One way or another, I guess a lot of what you do will mean someone holds up the truth eventually." Speaking of which, an old, familiar janitor, cleaning with his broom, just wandered through the door of the COMMUNICATIONS CENTER. If Meika and Psychonautra want to get in there, tailgating him would be wise. But they'd better be quick... And when Kale and Parker are done, they may find Meika is still in her trance for a little while.