"Maybe not."  Even without more than a sliver of backlash to tell him that it's totally going to be a long range, he kind of feels like it's totally going to be a long range.  "At least if it's long, that'll be good for dungeons, though?"

"If it works on monsters or comes with location data. Or if it lets you talk to people in both directions. If you literally just read minds that belong to people only and can't talk back to them, there are... probably dungeons where it'd be useful for the triage step? Like if a bunch of people are nonresponsive they like to know how hard to scramble depending on whether they're unconscious or in active torment of some kind. It might be easier to think of civilian applications. People with lock-in syndrome or whatever."

"Right...  Do you know how long Cricket's liable to be out?"

"He's been crashed for almost an hour, he'll be up any minute. If it doesn't work on him we're going to need a human subject though. Do you know anyone who'd likely be up for letting you read their mind?"

"...I can ask in one of my extended friend group chats and probably someone will be?"

Cricket mrrps and rolls over and yawns a big fangy yawn.

"Hey, kittycat, weird question for you."

"Mm?" Yaaaaawn. "What?"

"Julien maybe has a mindreading power..."

"You don't even translate what I say for the cleaning lady."

"I think that's different, it's not like she really cares to know."

"It would be really reasonable if you wanted me not to, although, uh, I've done it twice to Haru on accident so far.  But I can try."

Cricket startles quite dramatically -

"Not successfully, kitty."

"Oh. Well, I don't care. Do I have to not be watching TV?"

"You do not."

Cricket turns his attention to his laptop and baps the spacebar. He's on the fourth season of the Wire now.

And - what's he thinking about?

He is mostly thinking about The Wire (in this episode, someone is convincing truants to go to school for one (1) day for school budget reasons) but also: Haru was very obviously kissing Julien so he supposes he is going to have to get used to Julien even though he's jumpy and overwrought and also now has the same eye color as Cricket which is abstractly irritating. For a second there he thought Julien had managed to go THROUGH Haru's shielding and do something AWFUL because something very awful would have needed to happen for Haru to be so nonchalant about this happening but apparently he was just talking carelessly like a careless person who is careless. Dozerman is kind of a cipher of a character and Cricket is bored of him and thinks they should have found some other character who had more traits to put in this slot. He might want to go catch a pigeon for lunch and save his salmon for later in the day. Vivid mental imagery of closing his jaws on a pigeon neck chomp crunch blood yum.

Quietly, to Haru: "Yeah, I can read nonhuman minds."

"Okay, that's good - monsters with their dungeons attached might be different but it's at least promising." He's still got an arm around Julien's waist to guide down the backlash.

Right yes good right.  "Once this much is off, I'll ask again and then maybe try at distances?"

"Sounds like a plan." Haru's got his phone out in his free hand and is taking notes on the experimental results so far.

And when he's done with that can they head out of Cricket's line of sight and perhaps smooch?

They can! They can smooch as much as they want!