>Garcian. <Fine, Goddamn it. You guys can't just be heroes for once...> You walk right up... and knock on the door. Hey, sometimes these things require a gentle hand.

You sighed a really deep and disappointed sigh out of frustration with these friggin' bums. With hands in your coat pockets, you walk to the lonely door unaccompanied through the dim and filthy corridor. Eugh. The stench from the darkened aperture gets worse and worse with every step, but nothing's going to happen if all of the humans in the room stand there with their thumbs up their asses. Dan starts as if to join you then stops and turns to your new boss.

"You're not going, Foster?"
"I'm getting my money's worth seeing you work." Mr. Foster crosses his arms. "What am I paying you for anyway? You should get in there too."
"Mmm. Garcian! Good luck in there buddy."

You flip Dan off. Jeez, this guy sucks...

AT THE THRESHOLD (The White Chamber OST - 14. Something stinks (Living Room Fridge) [2005]) https://youtu.be/z9TkPfTvEEA

You take a moment and reach out with your mind...

There's something on the other side of the door. Whatever it is, it's much larger than a human, taller than you even.

You try to read the mind and sense the telltale signs of a human woman (clone or not, there's no difference, you turn one upside down and they're all alike ahah), Professor Beefwood most likely, almost certainly but when you try probing a bit deeper, you're immediately struck by the waves of distorted emotions and extreme alertness and barely repressed animal instincts. You clutch your head as you fight back against the malignant feelings. You gasp and quickly terminate the probing before your headache gets even worse.

You brace for the retaliation against the failed telepathy. Nothing happens. Whatever it is, it doesn't seem to have noticed a thing.

"Garcian, you good?" Oh, now Dan wants to play the nice guy, ohhhhhh wow. You flash him a thumbs up and wave him away before he can approach.

Anyway, what's happening here?

When you were a Kirlia, you used to try read minds of Bug types and regular bugs under rocks as a way to test your abilities. It was really disorienting being crammed into a smaller mind, your vision fragmenting into hundreds of angles through compounded eyes, but you always pulled out of there safely. It was easy. And so it was as well with the more Normal animals — easy to enter, easy to understand, real simple souls. But trying to enter this mind almost fucked you in the head right on the spot. It wasn't like barely noticing an asshole Dark type blank spot in the world. This is new. It's walking through the desert and almost sinking into a sudden patch of quicksand. No, no, no, it's more like a stumbling into turbulent pit of pitch black tar. What the Hell is thing?