Sitting around passively and hoping to find yet another one of those strange radio signals from the Shadow’s hidden endeavors was not only frustrating, it was indefensible.

They had superpowers, for crying out loud. There had to be something they could do.

Ren sat on the bed, lounging between the legs of Junior who lazily ran his fingers through Ren’s hair. If felt wonderfully calming – both the hairplay and the affection oozing out of the leader and Ren wouldn’t have traded his spot for anything in the world. Still, he felt restless.

It went without saying that their strategy wasn’t working. The underwater facility they had found had been rigged to explode with catastrophic results, so they needed a more careful approach that evaded detection. However, if the Shadow had time travel and Kaiju in his repertoire, they couldn’t afford to do anything short of seek and nuke any potential threat upon sight – the antithesis of caution.

If only there were a way for Ren to help.

He had seen the upper limits of his powers back in Busan and what he was capable of scared even him. With the despair and anger of multiple densely settled blocks around he had been able to breathe life into more Conmotes than he had been able to count. He had – how to describe it? – felt a bloodlust of sorts, the moment he had realized the potential. Negative emotions could be made permanent through self-sustenance i.e. hurting people.

But his range was limited. He couldn’t influence a whole city. How could his silent worker drones aid them?

“Junior?”

“Huh?”

“How far does Minhyun’s reach go?”

“The dreamwalking?”

“Yeah.”

Junior preferred to ask for clarification rather than pull the reverence out of the future. Else he might have gotten into the habit of projecting entire conversations and it might have become difficult to distinguish what had been real and he could thus expect others to remember. Junior had strange worries nobody else could understand and Ren did his best to make it otherwise.

It took the weary lover a moment to collect his thoughts but Ren of course sensed the contemplation going on and stayed quiet.

“From what he told me,” Junior began, “and from what my random knowledge sense told me, I think his ability doesn’t do ‘range’ in the physical world. He builds, a plane that links – or weaves – the dreams of individuals into a connected coherent realm he can traverse. I mean, his projected self traverses it.”

“Do you think,” Ren said, “we could combine our abilities to create something bigger? Or grander? Maybe I could use his telepathic range to construct and command Conmotes further away. Or he could use my emotion sense to target certain sleepers better.”

Junior sighed. “I have no idea. Baekho’s Twi seems not to allow any other ability to work when he takes one of us with him, so I- wait, yup. My random information sense tells me it works.”

“What?” Ren turned his head to meet the boy’s eyes. “Just like that?”

“It’s not too specific but yes. I’m glad it’s useful for once. Lately that power has only been telling me things I really don’t care about. Two yoghurts in the cafeteria have gone bad before their expiration date. The guy patrolling our corridor had to dye his hair from green back to black to get this job. There is a ten percent chance the main pipe in the upstairs bathroom will burst in a year or so. The site manager just bought a puppy…”

Ren let him ramble. It helped Junior to have someone who would indulge him when he expelled all the nuances and nuisances that flooded his mind half the time.

Back when he was close to the Kaiju, Junior had seen the creature’s past. He didn’t have much to report – the thing was grown in a tube and never saw the outside of its underwater prison. But one thing had been clear. There had been a machinery looking like the one in the bunker near Tokyo.

Assuming the Shadow had more of those, Ren had something specific to look for. If Minhyun and he could extent each other’s range indefinitely, that is.

***

“Have you thought about what to try first?” Minhyun asked.

The two of them were seated across each other in the dojo – a wooden room with bamboo mats over the floor and a few Kanji drawings hanging on the pillars that held the high ceiling. But otherwise empty.

Ren had finished his pondering. “I suppose ‘awake’ first. Seem to me that going to sleep is the more difficult part.”

Minhyun nodded and linked them.

The dojo was close to the provisional headquarters where the others were currently deciding whether to remain in Japan or not. But more importantly it was surrounded by trees, with only a few huts in direct reach of Ren’s power. The city proper wasn’t far away, so if they managed to expand their reach it would be simple to test.

Ren tranced as well he could. Minhyun would attempt to weave their waking minds into a dreamscape. If it worked it should be fundamentally different from the telepathy Ren was used to experiencing.

Over the course of two hours Ren did whatever he thought might help. He focused his emotion sense on Minhyun; he deliberately defocused his attention; he picked random people in the huts around and tried to perceive them in hopes of giving Minhyun something to tie into; he sat still; he ran in circles.

Around the time they became hungry, it was concluded – unspoken, but strongly implied by mutually assured sighing – to give up on plan A.

Lunch was a welcome distraction.

***

The next plan was for Ren to go to sleep first, with Minhyun staying awake. If that didn’t work then the other would also take the pill and they’d try their luck until Ren had finished the painting of a dog with both his parents watching over his shoulder inside the sanctuary, though which breed to chose? There were so many running around on the beach outside. It would be much easier if they stayed still since the ice-covered wasteland didn’t allow anything to move but the shimmering sea of fractured glass over which Ren was flying at high speed. It wouldn’t be long until he had gone over the horizon and into the galactic void of secundarity which he had to prevent if he wanted to follow the smell of roses.

Minhyun said “Hello.”

There was a stark discontinuity in Ren’s thoughts. What was this boy doing here? Wasn’t he supposed to be at the dojo to train? With… with himself?

“Since the medication will keep you asleep,” Minhyun continued, ”I guess I can just make this dream lucid without any danger of you waking up. You’re dreaming, Ren.”

It made immediate sense and Ren was hit by the oddity of how he had ever not known he was currently dreaming, versus the lingering sensation of how real it had all felt seconds ago.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m lucid.”

Minhyun looked upon the place they were flying over. Ren wasn’t sure if it would be considered good dream etiquette to turn an ice-desert into something more hospitable. It wasn’t as if they felt temperature unless focused on it in particular.

“So,“ Minhyun said, kicking Ren out of his musings, “let’s get you acquainted with the dreamscape. And let’s see if your perception still functions properly.”