Imposter Syndrome

Red wakes from a nightmare of a pale blue lampent looming over his bed—a lingering symptom of his exposure to Ghost pokemon. He shakes off the dread to attend a morning meeting with Sabrina's other students, organized by Rei, to brainstorm how an unknown psychic could have achieved a "perfect mental shield" capable of lying without detection.

Rei presents her hypotheses, focusing on projecting false emotions or holding so many simultaneous thoughts that the true signal is drowned in noise. Red proposes his own idea: studying how multi-brained pokemon like doduo and exeggcute process thought, and attempting to mimic their mental division to create a truly partitioned consciousness. Daniel aggressively challenges the idea, dismissing it as unlikely and questioning whether psychic pokemon abilities can even be learned by humans. Frustrated but maintaining his composure, Red defends his reasoning. He points out that wild pokemon behavior is barely understood, and argues that even small, falsifiable tests of everyone's ideas are better than prematurely committing to just one. Rei eventually pairs herself with Red to study a different hypothesis—mimicking someone else's mental state to fool a psychic merger.

That afternoon at a cafe, Rei instructs Red to non-consensually merge with strangers and copy their emotions. As Red practices, he grows deeply uncomfortable with the ethical breach. He realizes that his own psychic development has desensitized him to privacy violations, and refuses to continue without the subjects' consent. Rei proposes a compromise: they will conduct the experiment in Saffron Gym's cafeteria and post a warning sign, establishing implicit consent for anyone who enters.

As they walk, Red senses that Rei has a hidden agenda. Confronted, Rei drops her pretense and reveals her true motive. She suspects Sabrina is hiding a massive secret involving her frequent disappearances, and believes Sabrina recruits students for specific, hidden purposes. Rei wants to use the cafeteria experiment as an excuse to be in range of the gym's administrative offices so she can study the mental shields of the gym's Second and Third. Red's partition allows him to quickly consult the internal models of his "Past" and "Future" selves. Weighing the risks of complicity against the benefits of cooperation, he agrees to an uneasy alliance with Rei, negotiating for her eventual help with his exeggcute research in exchange.

Inside the gym's offices, Red secures permission for the cafeteria sign from Tetsuo. While there, he catches a glimpse of a monitor showing Blue commanding a massive, multi-trainer battle scenario. When Tetsuo asks about his former journeymate, Red's face betrays a complex tangle of grief and animosity, and he simply states that they don't really speak anymore. As they leave, Rei points out that his face gave him away despite his mental shield, reminding him that he has a long way to go in mastering deception.