As the group gathered around the table, Janken couldn't hide his exhilaration. He grinned, and jumped up on one of the chairs, so as to look over everyone.
He clapped his hands to get the attention of the rest of his science team and beckoned them over to join the gathering.
"Well now that we're all here, and everything's in place, all that's left before we can begin is to make introductions and give you the general rundown of what we aim to achieve with today's test."
Janken bent down to grab a cracker and some cheese off the plate.
"Mm. Pho, infroducfonf firft... GULP... First cab off the rank is Jane." He gestured towards the Huntress with the cloak.
"Jane is an old friend of mine, and a Huntress with a very unique Semblance. To be honest, I'd very much like to perform some studies on it, but unfortunately the Atlesian government got there first." Janken pulled an exaggerated grumpy face, aimed at Jane. Jane playfully stuck her tongue out in response.
"I heard through the grapevine that they've had some... interesting results, but that's a discussion for another time. Basically, she can safely detach a person's... I guess their soul from their body?" Janken looked quizzically at Jane.
Jane, who picked up on the hint, filled in the blank space Janken had left.
"I won't pretend to be an expert in the science or mysticism behind it, but that's as good an explanation as any. Essentially, once detached, the soul (if indeed that's what it is) creates an ethereal version of the body it left out of Aura. You'll be able to walk, talk, and touch things as per normal. You body will just stay where you left it. Now I'm sure that will bring to mind a lot of questions, such as 'what happens if the Aura in my ethereal form depletes?' or 'what will happen to my ethereal form if my body is hurt?' and the answer to any and all such questions is 'I'd very much prefer to not find out.' Much of the equipment surrounding you is there to specifically make sure that question goes unanswered for today. Janken?"
She offered the metaphorical stage back to the strange head scientist.
"Well, that sums it up nicely. Now, next in line, the man with the hoodie. That'd be Wilson. His Semblance is technopathy. He can control machine with his mind"
Wilson opened his mouth, quite clearly annoyed, but Janken cut him off
"Yes, I know it's more complicated than that, but you use so much jargon that even I fall asleep listening. He controls machines with his mind, end of story." Wilson rolled his eyes and trotted off to take his place in one of the chairs.
"Don't mind him. He's a bit of a grump. This is his community service. Hacked into some pretty important people's scrolls and was found guilty of some... light treason. Anyway, next up is Grace, the sleepy looking girl in pyjamas."
Grace yawned and waved at the group.
"Grace here is a high Telepath. Capable of not just reading minds, but also connecting them, projecting them, and probing the subconscious. Very useful. And don't worry, everyone's got secrets. She's here to connect and project. No reading or probing involved."
"Nnnnnope." Agreed Grace, slurring the N and popping the P.
"And last, but definitely not least, is Dave. Dave here is my shrink. As before mentioned, you'll be running around inside my head. This is the guy who's going to be keeping an eye on things and hopefully making sure that we understand what's actually happening."
"I would just like to state for the record that I don't condone this kind of reckless poking and probing, but seeing as I know Janken's just going to do it anyway, I'm here to make sure he doesn't get himself into too much trouble... again." Dave locked his hands together in front of him, indicating he was done talking.
"Well, that was nice and uplifting. Okay, well, as mentioned before, we're trying to see if we can help people get over things like trauma and such in a more direct way, here. The idea is that if we can interact not with the person, but with their minds, we might be able to help them recover faster. However, in attempting to get funding for our little project, we've hit something of a circular roadblock. We can't get funding to make a device capable of such dives without having proof that it would even work, and we can't prove it works without being capable of making dives.
And so, we've had to improvise, and come up with an absolutely genius solution, if I do say so myself" Janken gave himself a smug grin, and looked at the volunteers.
"Jane was the key to this solution, and being an old friend kindly agreed to help out with the tests for free. Thank you very much, Jane!" Janken bowed, and Jane gave a mocking curtsy.
"Jane here will... look, I'm just going have to say the stupid thing for lack of a better way of putting it. If you are still willing to be a part of our experiment here, Jane will detach your souls, while Grace links all of our minds to Wilson. Wilson will be mentally controlling the room by feeding my unconscious mind into it. Now for the room... It was initially designed as a training tool for Atlas soldiers. The room could be programmed to make a variety of layouts and virtual opponents. That carbon dust swirling around has a bunch of different densities, all the way to the diamonds in the back there. The room controls the dust to create different strengths of stuff. Basically, punch something that's supposed to be a brick wall, and it'll feel like a brick wall. Punch something that's supposed to be a face, it'll... well, probably not feel like a face, but it'll cave in like one anyway. There are also projectors all over the room to project images onto the objects so that they look more or less like what they're supposed to, and not just grey imitations.
Point is, the room couldn't react and reprogram itself based on what the trainees were doing, and humans couldn't program it fast enough. Hence Wilson, who can reprogram it as quick as thinking. Also a bunch of the testers got carbon dust in their lungs which was a problem.... but you lot won't have to deal with that because your physical bodies won't be in there.
So with the room able to create a physical space out of my mind, and you lot able to safely enter without choking to death, we come to the part where I explain why I need combat capable people and... Geez, I need some water"
Janken did not grab any water. He instead stuffed another cracker into his face while one of the scientists got him a glass.
"Gulp.... thank you very much. As I was saying. Combat capable.
So, we've run a few tests before this, and I won't bore you with the details. Just the important stuff.
We found that... Well, let's say for example we plug Manfred into the device, and you're running around Manny's mind. Let's say for the sake of argument that Manny-Boy has a crippling fear of donuts. Should you come across anything that might upset Manny, his mind may manifest some angry donuts that may attack you. This is all funny and silly, but it gets a bit more serious if say, you come across a memory of Grimm, or anything that may cause him to dream up some Grimm." Suddenly, Janken's posture and general demeanor changed. The joviality gone from his face, and his stance was a bit stiffer.
"That's half of why we needed combat trained individuals. I'm personally putting myself at risk being the guinea pig here, but that's because I can't condone using people who may not fully understand the risks. Nor can I condone putting my volunteers at risk any more than is preventable. Just as there's a risk of your ethereal bodies getting hurt in there, there's also the real Grimm outside to worry about. As I mentioned before, previous tests attracted some Grimm attention when we were inside the boundaries of Atlas' protection. This is partly because to the effects of the tests themselves, but also a peculiar side effect of Jane's Semblance. For some reason... which I have my own theories on... the Grimm's sensitivity to negative emotions is heightened by the ethereal bodies. If you think of negative emotions like a Grimm beacon, when you're a detached soul, you'll be attracting Grimm in twice the radius, at double the strength. As you've seen, we have security here, but in the unlikely event of a Grimm breakthrough, I couldn't allow untrained civilians to be put at risk by my experiment. You four, I hope, will at least know how to handle Grimm should the need arise." Janken exhaled deeply, licked his lips, and with a clap of his hands seemed to be back to his normal... well, 'normal' self.
"So, last little thing to mention before we get stuck in, would obviously be what your goal is today. I imagine that would be quite helpful.
We need to prove that diving into the mind like this can actually have some notable effect, so we can get our funding to research a less scrappy way of performing the dives, so we can get funding to research possible psychological applications of the dives.
Our earlier tests showed that at the higher levels of consciousness, we could affect things to about the degree of mild hypnosis. We could, for example, make a person nervous at the sight of donuts" Janken winked at Manfred.
"At the deeper levels, however, people start to resist being affected a bit, and that's where their anxiety and discomfort tends to manifest aggressive nasties. Early attempts at trying to work around this resulted in some... bizarre reactions, like the panic attacks I mentioned before. That's when I realized that it would have to be my mind the testers would run around in... Mitigating risks and all that.
Another interesting detail we discovered was the ability to locate representations of personal metaphor. For example, if you have a happy place you go to in your mind when you need to calm down... well, we could find it in there. The same goes for any... unhappy metaphors. Memories of trauma, or recurring nightmares... anything like that.
So to prove that my device can change things for the better, your task will be to dive deep into my subconscious, find my personal, unhappy metaphor, and... well, do something. Try to change it. However it occurs to you to do so. Dave here will be monitoring me, and will be talking to you through Grace's abilities to keep you updated. He'll also be the person to notify if you decide you want to exist the experiment."
Janken took another breath, and composed himself.
"Now like I said, this is my mind. My memories. My personal metaphor. There's gonna be a lot of personal stuff in there that you're likely to see. You may come across people from my past, you may run into several different versions of me... anything could happen in there, and all of it will be personal. It'll be how I see things.
That, as you can imagine, is a terrifying amount of opening up to do to people you just met. However, someone needs to do it if we wanna get this thing off the ground. So I'll just ask that whatever you see in there... Don't judge me by the things that happened in the past. Judge me by the person they helped me become. And if you could keep those positive attitudes up, that's not just to help deter the Grimm. That's to try and comfort me a little bit. I'm not ashamed to admit that."
Janken stepped down from the chair, and Christina stepped forward.
"Okay, so if anyone doesn't want to take part in this experiment, now's the time to speak up. We can escort you to a spare dorm room, and you can wait there for the test to finish before we fly you back home. That said... we can pull you out any time, so I say why not have a go?
And lastly, if there are any last questions you have before we plug you all in, we better get to them now. If not, make your way over to the chairs please and Jane and Grace will get you set up for our little venture"