"They are so weird." Up up and away. "I think my powers are all related to - me deciding what can perceive and interact with me. I can turn invisible or inaudible or imperceptible by any sense, and that's cheap, but what's also cheap is noping psychic magic, saying it's not allowed to touch me. I think what's going on with the flight, based on how it handles, is that I'm deciding that the ground is not allowed to touch me. And then of course the backlash is that I become much more permissive about being perceived and interacted with."

"Ohhhh. Man, if that is a just-so story it's one that makes perfect sense - you've got a 'no dont' / 'yes do' power / backlash pairing! Simple! Easy! It just makes sense!" She laughs.

"Yes, but it requires knowing some fiddly details of how I fly. If I just say 'I can turn invisible and fly' those things don't sound related to each other, let alone to being lonely." He does a spin in the air.

She whoops. "Yeah! I wonder - if we knew more about Yan Xiu's power, or about - anything, everything - if there is some framing - maybe something cultural, I don't know - where it would snap into place as firmly as yours does?"

"Yan Xiu's combination makes sense to me, that's why I used it as an example! I wish more people's backlashes were public, but - I can't say I don't understand the impulse to keep them private, I bet you're not the only person who gets suggestible, for instance -"

"You'd need some kind of institution that was, like, so provably trustworthy that they could be allowed to collect that information and share it... Something like Korea or Japan's guilds but... bigger and more trustworthy, somehow. Man, I bet the big guilds do have some fun data..." Oh this is fun. Haru is fun to talk to and she's flying and touching him feels even nicer than it usually does...

"They probably do! Hopefully they're allowed to publish some of it posthumously and we'll know more in a couple decades."

"Ooooh, I really hope so! It's the kind of data I could see getting lost when an organization does, or just buried... Oh, that reminds me I have a classmate who was thinking about this as a project to try and spearhead. Some kind of like - international HIPPA law for esper data, to ensure it's protected, backed up, stored securely, in a way that gives espers rights over how it's used. I dunno how much traction it'd get, but I'm rooting for her! It's an ambitious in a field where there aren't enough ambitious projects."

"Well, there's the treaty of Reykjavík but that doesn't really have any provision for doing anything with the data besides not telling people about it."

She nods. "If you could snap your fingers and make one (1) big change in the field, what would it be? Either legal or normative."

"Ooh, good question." (He's flying higher now, skimming over houses and propelling himself between them in bursts.) "How broadly are we construing 'the field'?"

Ooooh! She's trying not to wiggle too much but she's so very clearly enjoying herself - knowing how his flight works and watching him apply it and feeling herself get more guided as his backlash ramps up is. It's a lot! She wants to kiss himmmm

"Hmmm. Let's say - as broadly as it should be construed for you to give the answer you'd most enjoy giving, if that's obvious to you, and if it's not, I'll come up with some bounds."

"Hmmmm. I think I want more support for live capture of monsters. My powerset is pretty good for it but every time I get one, I have to shop it around to zoos, and sometimes it takes a while to find someplace that'll keep it."

Oh no he's so cute... Right, she should think out loud, instead of pausing to form a better answer in her head. "Hmmm, maybe I'm oversimplifying but that one feels pretty achievable! Have you thought about... I dunno, hiring some people to run a nonprofit about this - have them look into the costs to run it, pitch the research benefits and estimated tourism revenue to various places and see what they can get for estimated cash inflow, figure out where and when it'd make sense to build a monster zoo?"

"I have thought that there should exist a monster zoo! I'm not sure I can afford to singlehandedly bankroll one, and I'm not sure who I'd want to run it, and I'm not sure where to find investors, but you have a point that the ingredients probably exist out there in the world."

!!!Networking opportunity!!! "I don't know how much Esper Money you have or how much a zoo costs, but figuring out the answers to all those questions is almost certainly within your means! I could definitely find you some grad students in related fields who I think are bright and would love to run a non-profit to do research on this for their resumes at very affordable-to-an-esper prices? I'd want to ask Prof Meadows about whether there's someone on faculty who'd be a good advisor for this project, that'd help a lot for getting things going faster..."

"I have less esper money than the big names because my guiding rate with June has hitherto been prohibitive - she can't stand interacting with people and the compromise is she hides under a blanket and sticks out just her feet, we're really compatible but it still takes hours and hours and we have to both be awake the whole time, so I don't do a dungeon more than threeish times a week. Also I give a lot of money to malaria charity but I could divert that if I had a monster zoo to put it in, the research benefits would plausibly be worth it."

Right, so if he's not sick of her at the end of the week she can definitely increase his dungeoning potential. She doesn't point this out, it has to be salient to him, if he's not mentioning it it's because he's being careful with her.

"Once you're back down to zero backlash, I could poke some people and work on getting you some initial / monthly cost spreads for a non-profit on this, if you like? You'd need to supervise me for the parts where I actually send the email, I suppose, but - this kind of networking is enrichment for me." She squeezes him a bit harder, feeling his backlash tick up as increased pleasantness on her skin. hhhh...

"No wonder we're compatible, I do networking as backlash pica and then I want to hide in my room with books all day when I'm finally able to stop. - the personality element is disputed but plausible."

canidoyournetworkingforyou, she valiantly resists saying. for now.

"Pica? ...I assume you do not mean, uh, the pokemon noise, but I don't have other concepts attached to that sound!"

"Pie-ka, not pi-ka. It's actually, like, an eating disorder, I'm using it metaphorically - sometimes somebody will eat, like, ice or laundry detergent or dirt or something, as a misfiring of the same thing that makes you thirsty when you're dehydrated or crave a burger when you need protein. When I'm backlashed the thing I need is guiding but the thing I crave is talking to anybody who'll hold still constantly and trying to restrain myself sucks so I don't, I just organize my life around spending a lot of time on the phone."

"Oh! That's a great thing to have a word for, actually, thank you for teaching it to me! But also - when this week ends, even if I get a power that I don't ever really want to use, I - I would love to reduce the amount of ice you need to eat." squeezesqueeze. She's blushing, but unlike a lot of the things she's said to Haru recently, this isn't her flirting - her voice isn't playful, just earnest.

"I would really like that! I would hesitate to drop June completely - she has a problem where her power is really easy to use by accident, so even if she stops doing dungeons she needs guiding regularly - but I like the idea of doing a heavier dungeon schedule for ego-syntonicity and profit and still spending lots of quality time with my sanity!"

She smiles warmly. "Then I will be delighted to help you achieve those goals." 

beat.

"...pending the evaluation of my unbacklashed self, of course,"

She buries her face in his neck to hide how much blushing she's doing, and casts around for a different topic - give them both a plausible conversational pivot, if he wants it..

"Malaria charities in general, or the AMF specifically?"

"Mostly AMF but when I hear about somebody with a credible angle on eradication I throw them some money."