"Most certainly! I don't suppose you would want to do this inside your labyrinth? I have my own mental construct but yours is... rather superior, I admit."

"Mmm... I'm concerned about how it's a shared mental space, and there's at least one person I don't know bouncing around in it. Will the superiority of the structure affect the teaching much, or the amount that you might potentially lose if I turn out to be a dangerous mind bending weapon?"

"I was thinking more about your ability to create isolated spaces within it... but you're right. I am perhaps a bit biased by my curiosity about it."

Vetmera snorts.

"We can poke at it when I have more practice at not melting minds. I'm curious about it, too, but. I want to be systematic about this."

"That's sensible. Well." Dhama offers Vetmera both hands across the table. "Hold them and let's get some basics out of the way. I can't make you a professional but I think I can at least show you where the 'on' button is."

WE ARE SO BORED how long is this going to take

Tahir thinks they are going to need to learn how to deal with not having constant action all day long 100% of the time.

THAT SOUNDS AWFUL we are starting to rethink that deal WAS THAT PART OF THE DEAL maybe it was in the fine print WE CAN'T READ

Do they even have a suggestion for what to do?

sitting here is probably the first thing that has to stop YES LET'S GET OUT OF THIS STUPID BAR we can find adventures outside

Really? Do they not even want to solve the mystery with the erased women?

...maybe YES HOW DO WE DO THAT

Sit. And. Wait.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING

She takes Dhama's hands, smiling.

Her worries about melting brains turn out to be well-founded. She is not the weapon of psychic destruction that she feared, but neither is she precisely safe. Simple projection of speech turns out to be both easy and harmless, but projection of strong emotions or full experiences is a bit more hit or miss. While she can push harder if she means to, feeling something strongly magnifies the strength as well. Accordingly, she'll need to be careful about anything she feels particularly strongly about. Fortunately, the minor damage from these experiments is recoverable—Dhama's isolated mindspaces start unscrambling themselves slowly, and do so more quickly when reconnected back to the rest of his mind. Interestingly, as they scale up the size of the isolated fragment, it withstands the force much better. A complete mind will probably hold up even better than these safer experiments.

And with that Dhama thinks they're done for now.

"You will probably need to practise some on your own. Each mind is unique, and I can't directly teach you everything I know, you'll need to figure out how your own thing works. I can probably give you some pointers for what to try, later, once you're more familiar with yourself."

"Okay! Thank you very much." She's going to go find and hug Aleks, because she's excited.

"I can project!" she says brightly. "Without melting minds, even! I shouldn't right now because I'm excited about it and that makes it a bit dangerous but still!"

Aleks laughs and pets her hair fondly. "Congratulations."

“Thank you!” Pause. “… okay just words would be fine, it’s shoving my glee at you that would be dangerous.”

A voice speaks in his mind, in words-but-not-words. It might in other circumstances be a little disconcerting, but its flavor is very recognizably her, and backed with warm affection.

::And this way I can talk to you silently! Oh and also relay what the nanites are saying directly and stuff. It sounds a bit tedious, but no seriously they’re hilarious, and…:: She tails off, and he gets the impression she wanted to send a more complicated thought concept, but thought better of it. ::… this is friendlier/more cooperative/I care about your perspective? We’re a team.::

He starts when he hears her voice but relaxes a fraction of a second later when it's clear it's her. Anyway he doesn't know what his perspective would add, in the ten seconds since they started speaking aloud they've just sounded like nuisances.

WHY DID THEY SUDDENLY GO SILENT probably telepathy THAT IS NOT AN ADVENTURE

By the ancients just sit still for five minutes

MINUTES???? THAT IS TOO LONG!!!!!! weren't you meant to be killing missing girls or something SAVING THEM saving missing girls or something

::So, yes, but also: :: and then she relays what's happening in Tahir's head. ::Hilarious.::

"Sorry guys. We should be done with the boring sitting around bit for now, there's other mind stuff I want to check on but I should probably have a better handle on projection before I get to it. Do you want to handle the girls getting overwritten or getting you some nanite friends first, since we made you wait so long?"

GIRLS girls

"I am outvoted," laughs Tahir, who is also of a mind with them anyway. The nanites can wait, he'd have years still regardless of Vetmera's help.

“As our nanite contingent commands!” She turns to Dhama and his companions. “So! Apparently a bunch of girls are getting their personalities overwritten? What’s that about?”

“Oh! That,” says Ziobe. “So we're not entirely sure how it picks people to replace, it seems to be a mix of physical similarity with someone-that-was and similarity of personality. All at the same age range, getting worse as they get older, until they die from it or, you know, related trauma from losing who they are. The source comes from somewhere in this city, but wherever it's coming from is hidden well enough that we can't find the damn thing, and neither could anyone else that's tried in the past couple hundred years. Apparently. But if you will look to that dark and ominous corner over there..." She motions dramatically. "You can see my and Dhama's pet project to try and figure it out."

... Yep. That's a ghost in the corner. Only not notable in this bar of people because, well, it seems to be the kind of bar that has a lot of weirdos, most of them passed over by narration until now.

"Your pet project is a ghost," Aleks half-states, incredulously.

"More like a conglomerated composite of the person that had been replacing all of the victims, carefully pulled off of them and arrayed on a suitable telekinetic mesh that can hold everything up and keep the puzzle pieces together and figure out just who is replacing them. ... But, basically, yes. Pale blue and transparent seemed less presumptuous than deciding any specific coloration or features. Also, fun."

"If I may ask, the reason you believe that will work when the past however many years didn't...?"

"Eh. Truth be told, we don't?" she says, with a shrug. "But it seemed only decent to give it our best shot. And 'recreate the person that keeps getting shoved at people to ask her questions' is a weird enough solution that presumably no one's tried it before. She won't say a damn thing, though."

"I feel this may be above my paygrade."

MAYBE WE COULD FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE HER TALK with torture SHE'S AN INNOCENT we don't know that yet, we should torture her just to make sure

Tahir makes a face like "I'm sorry they're Like This."

"And talking instead of mindreading is because... Dhama can't read her? Should I go try, with my weird nanite reading abilities?"

"Right in one, and that might be pretty helpful actually!" says Dhama. "I can see that there's a mind there but can't... really... interact. Much."