“Come on, we’ll show you around the Gym,” Tate said enthusiastically.

  “That sounds great,” I said. “Although maybe I should book into a Pokemon Centre first.”

  “Oh don’t worry we’ve got loads of spare rooms. Remember, we said you can use one of those if you like,” Liza said.

  “Oh yeah, alright then,” I said. Part of me would prefer staying in the Pokemon Centre, but I saw no real reason to refuse the psychic twins’ generosity. It’d save me the cost of a room at least, I told myself.

  “The normal training rooms first,” Liza said. Her twin nodded.

  Leah and I looked around with interest. The Gym was fairly spartan looking, quite modern too with lots of metal surfaces on the walls and ceiling in a sort of burnt orange colour. The floors were white tiles and could’ve been metal too but I wasn’t sure about that.

  Then we were waylaid suddenly as a man and a woman came around the corner.

  They were both dressed in dark blue outfits that went down to their knees. They were some sort of button up single piece outfit which gave me the vague impression of pyjamas and they had what might have been described as slippers on too.

  “Gym Leaders, thank Mew you’re back,” said the woman. “I-I was meditating and I saw some kin-”

  She stopped herself upon seeing me.

  Suddenly I felt like I was being judged for something.

  “This is Harry,” Tate introduced. “He’s gonna spend the night here before we take him to Sootopolis.”

  “Harry, this is Samantha and Fritz. They’re some of our Gym trainers,” Liza explained.

  The young woman seemed slightly uncomfortable, her brows furrowing as she looked at me, but the man didn’t seem fazed.

  “Hello,” he said, managing to sound disinterested while taking in the sight of myself and Leah before he turned back to the twins.

  “Samantha had a premonition of a strange individual coming to Mossdeep in the next twenty four hours. I thought you should be informed as soon as you got back.”

  “That’s right,” Samantha said. “There were eyes, great big eyes and there a horned ghost behind them the-”

  “Huh,” Tate said, interrupting the description the woman was giving and then turning to look at me. Liza likewise looked at me curiously.

  “You think I’m this strange individual?” I asked, wondering if I should be taking offense. I didn’t have any horns for a start.

  I could practically feel the amused look on my Gardevoir’s face right now and turning my head to look at her I saw her covering her mouth to hide a giggle.

  “Err, maybe?” Liza said, recapturing my attention. “I mean we’ve never seen psychic defenses like yours before. Gardevoir have horns too...”

  She gestured towards the chest horn jutting out of my starter’s torso.

  I frowned. I didn’t exactly know much about how psychics worked but if Liza and Tate thought it all worked that way then I couldn’t argue with that.

  “No, it’s horns were coming out of its head,” Samantha corrected.

  That brought up looks from everyone else present.

  “None of my other Pokemon have head horns either,” I said apologetically. It went without saying that I didn’t have any either.

  “If it is me, then I promise not to hurt anyone or do anything strange while I’m here,” I joked weakly.

  It was at that moment that the woman, Samantha, suddenly fainted. She fell to the floor in a heap, surprising everyone present.

  Fritz immediately went down to his knees to inspect the apparently unconscious trainer.

  “What happened?” I asked worriedly. Somehow this was going to be my fault, wasn’t it?

  “She’s alive,” Fritz said, reaching for her neck and finding a pulse. He closed his eyes and placed a hand over her forehead.

  “She’s… engaged in telepathy,” he said with confusion, looking at the twins and then at me with dawning curiosity and concern.

  Liza and Tate meanwhile only looked amused.and they both nodded their heads in unison.

  “We knew someone was gonna try to read your mind if you came here, but we didn’t think it’d happen this quickly,” the boy said exasperatedly while his sister approached the unconscious woman and did the same thing Fritz had been doing, placing her hand on top of the woman’s head and visibly concentrating.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, although I thought I already had an idea.

  “Most of the psychics just don’t get that people who aren’t psychic don’t like it when they do that.” Tate explained. There was enough annoyance and exasperation there that I knew that was probably a common occurrence. “Sorry, we would’ve stopped her straight away if she’d actually managed to read your thoughts. But we were kind of curious if it’d happen again.”

  Meanwhile Liza’s brows furrowed.

  “Hang on, I think I’ve got it,” she said.

  Suddenly Samantha gasped, sitting up straight and forcing Liza to lean away to stop them banging their heads together.

  “That doesn’t go there!” Samantha shouted in desperation as she sat up before blinking rapidly several times and suddenly realising where she was. The woman’s cheeks turned rosy, then red.

  “I-I was, and then, but you… W-what happened?” She asked.

  “You tried to read Harry’s mind! Something you’re not supposed to be doing,” Liza said just a bit too brightly, looking amused at the incredibly confused expression that statement caused on the woman’s face.

  “He’s a Fairy type trainer,” Tate said just as enthusiastically, which didn’t help.

  At this point the psychic lady looked like she wanted to disappear into the floor.

  I watched this byplay passively.

  I wanted to be upset, at least for the attempted breach of privacy, but the way the woman flinched after taking another glance in my direction was concerning.

  Well if this is what would happen whenever someone tried to enter my head I wasn’t complaining. I’d rather keep my mind to myself.

  “You never know what you’ll find if you read someone’s mind. And that’s why you should always try to be kind,” Liza said, like she was quoting a lesson taught to small children. Which I realised a moment later was probably exactly what she was doing.

  Did psychic kids have nursery rhymes just for them? Maybe they did.

  “Literally, this time,” Tate agreed with his sister’s statement, before guffawing.

  So it wasn’t just my Gardevoir that found this whole thing funny apparently, I thought sardonically. I could practically feel the amusement rolling off her.

  As Tate laughed, I noticed his sister was giggling too, and then Tate let out a louder laugh and then suddenly both twins were roaring with uncontrollable laughter.

  The transformation was kind of startling. Worried, I looked to the guy who seemed to be the sole responsible person in the room. Fortunately it seemed he did know what to do.

  “Liza,” Fritz said, putting a hand on the girl’s shoulder, Liza having fallen onto her back laughing. Both of the twins flinched, startled out of their sudden bout of laughter.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Sorry, thanks Fritz,” Tate said, taking a deep breath.

  They both regained decorum, looking slightly annoyed at themselves and a bit embarrassed as they brushed themselves off.

  “You should apologise,” Tate told the psychic woman sternly.

  Looking chastised, Samantha turned to me, but her eyes didn’t meet mine.

  “I apologise for trying to read your mind,” she said. “It’s just I-”

  “Am very sorry for assaulting a guest at our Gym,” Fritz interrupted before the woman could try and dig herself a deeper hole.

  Samantha ducked her head.

  “I’m going to take Samantha somewhere for a chat,” Fritz said slightly pointedly towards the awkward and now silent woman. “Will you both need me for anything else?” He asked the twins.

  “No, we’ll be fine,” Liza said.

  “You guys can go back to your training if you like. Harry’s a friend so there’s no need to worry,” Tate told the other two Psychic trainers.

  Samantha nodded immediately, but the expression on her face showed she was far from relaxed after being told off like she just had been. Fritz took a second longer to nod his head but didn’t seem conflicted about it.

  The man nodded curtly before helping Samantha to stand up.

  “I’ll see you both tomorrow for this next challenger,” he said more conversationally. “It seems like there’s a good chance they’ll be strong enough to get past me and challenge you both.”

  “Yeah he seemed really tough when we were meditating last week,” Liza agreed.

  It was strange, seeing them casually talking about the future like it was just idle gossip, I thought. The life of a psychic was certainly an interesting one. Not for the first time I regretted not having been born in this life with that particular gift.

  The two psychics bowed politely at their superiors and then turned and left. Once they were gone Liza let out a sigh.

  “Sorry about all that…” Tate said. “That sometimes happens if we get too emotional. The emotions sometimes echo between us and build up until we get caught up in them.”

  “No need to apologise,” I said politely. “That sounds pretty inconvenient for you both.”

  It’s not that big of a problem. It hardly happens anymore and we’re getting better all the time,” Liza said.

  “Come on, let's carry on with the tour,” Tate said earnestly to his sister, clearly wanting to move on from this awkward interaction.

  “Sounds good to me,” I said, happy to let them move us past what had just happened.

  The twins then chose to let their Solrock and Lunatone out of their balls and their Pokemon hovered beside their trainers as they set about giving me a tour of their home.

  I’d only seen battle areas, the niche Pokemon habitat at Norman’s Gym and some of the more casual spaces for Gym staff before now. But as they showed me the different rooms it became apparent that Mossdeep was mainly built around training of psychics and Psychic type Pokemon.

  I wasn’t sure how much of all this would be useful to myself personally as a Fairy type specialist but it was a learning experience and a part of me mentally catalogued what I was seeing as potential inspiration for whatever I was going to write next.

  At least Liza and Tate seemed happy showing off.

  “So this is the main training room where we hold lessons for people trying to see if they’re psychics or not,” Tate told me as we entered the room.

  It was currently empty, a fairly large hall with a white tiled floor and metallic walls and ceiling in a burnt orange colour, much like the other spaces I had seen so far. There were some fitted desks with chairs like a sort of high-tech classroom and there was a sort of podium with a TV screen up there too.

  “So this is specifically where people learn if they’re psychics or not then?” I asked, looking around.

  “It’s also where we have lessons for people trying to learn how to be psychic,” Tate told me slightly disparagingly.

  “Yeah, we can actually tell ourselves most of the time,” Liza continued. “But apparently people don’t believe you unless you let them actually try first. So we have to host classes for people who think they’re psychic but actually aren’t.”

  “It’s… kind of stupid,” Tate finished.

  I nodded in agreement. I could definitely imagine that being something the Mossdeep Gym Leaders had to deal with a lot of the time. People who were just so sure they were special. It was probably easier to indulge them than to make them angry by forcing them to acknowledge the truth of the matter.

  “What sort of lessons do you teach?” I asked. Maybe with a better understanding of psychics I could introduce a psychic character into Trainers Colliding.

  “Really simple stuff usually, like trying to bend a spoon,” was the answer from the female sibling. “If anyone can actually use psychic powers then we’re supposed to offer them further training. We haven’t had anyone new in ages though. Normally we have one of the Gym trainers handle the lessons.”

  “Most of the time being a psychic is something you’re born with, but yeah,” Tate said, continuing the explanation.

  “Interesting,” I said, putting the new information to memory. My mind went back to the weak psychic I think had seen in the Sabrina episode of the cartoons. I think he’d tried to show he could bend a spoon but he’d clearly struggled and either not done it or barely managed what was probably the weakest of psychic achievements.

  Of course then Sabrina had spent the rest of the runtime of the episode acting like a PG friendly horror villain. So the difference between a weak psychic and a strong one could be vast. I couldn’t help but wonder where Tate and Liza fell on that scale. At least they weren’t actively malicious.

  The kids showed me some other rooms like a Gym eating area and lounge and some other facilities I’d come to see were common practice like an open office space and a dedicated healing station room.

  Almost all of the rooms were empty, it being late in the day now. We did spot a bunch of Abra just sleeping together in a big cuddle pile. Apparently that actually counted as training for them.

  Then the kids decided to show me where they practiced with their Pokemon.

  The place the twin psychic prodigies practiced their own abilities was another room with the same orange metallic walls and white floor. There were some balls that looked like training weights and a shelf with what I figured were training aides.

  “So how do you train your abilities?” I asked them with curiosity. The room seemed pretty spartan but that was probably the point, removing as many distractions as possible.

  “Basic stuff like predicting what’s on the card,” Liza said. “We’re still learning, technically.”

  “But we’re already better than all the other psychics in the Gym, and we’re getting loads better all the time,” Tate said proudly.

  “Usually we practice with our Pokemon. Telekinesis is hard, but telepathy is super easy for us.”

  “You’re supposed to have a main companion to train with and they’ll help you start learning,” Tate explained. “Most of the trainers in Mossdeep only have one main Pokemon who they work with, same as us, although we had our grandma’s Pokemon to help before we got our own Pokemon.”

  “Oh so your Lunatone and Solrock are your only personal Pokemon then?” I asked, surprised.

  “Yup!” the twins said brightly, at exactly the same time and glancing at their respective starters. I could practically feel the loving vibes coming off of them both.

  “We have a big roster of Gym Pokemon for battling Gym Badges with,” Liza explained. “We’re gonna get some more Pokemon of our own eventually though. It’s just things are so busy at the moment and we never got to go on a journey or anything to find more Pokemon for ourselves.”

  I grimaced and nodded in sympathy. They were only like ten or so, psychic powers or no. Based on the way they had spoken, taking over the Gym seemed like a bit of a sore spot for them. Psychic prodigies they might have been, but Tate and Liza were still kids and it seemed to me then like they’d been thrown in the deep end without a great deal of support.

  Suddenly an Alakazam teleported into the room.

  It was clearly an older member of the species, with a long fu manchu beard. Or at least that’s what I think it was called. It being longer meant that this one was male.

  The Pokemon entered and saw the kids and then turned to look at me with an interested expression on it’s face.

  “Ally, this is Harry, the new Gym Leader,” Tate said.

  “We’re showing him around,” Liza added.

  The Alakazam nodded in understanding and then turned back to look at me. Then a second later he reeled back slightly, a confused and slightly dazed look on his face.

  “What was that?” I asked. Did the Alakazam just try to read my mind?

  Based on how Leah’s hand on my arm tightened slightly I figured he had.

  “Ala, kazam?” The old Pokemon asked warily.

  “Garrrrde,” Leah replied, followed by several long hums from the Solrock and Lunatone.

  “I guess your defenses work the same way on Pokemon too, not just us,” Liza said with interest. “We’re stronger than people like Samantha or Fritz so we basically always have our telepathy turned on a little bit. That’s part of why we found out before. It’s the same with Ally.”

  Ally the imaginatively named Alakazam was looking at me curiously and seeing the twin’s explanation seemed more curious about me than hostile. He stepped a bit closer.

  “Zam?” He asked, looking towards the two Gym Leaders for an explanation.

  “This is the guy who wants to make a new Pokemon Gym,” Liza explained to the older Pokemon, making his nonexistent eyebrows rise.

  “Ala, alakazzzam,” the Pokemon said, nodding. He seemed satisfied with the explanation, probably having already known about me from the sounds of it. He gave me another curious look before waving goodbye and disappearing in another teleport.

  “So anyway that’s the tour, basically. What do you think of our Gym?” Liza asked.

  I carefully thought about my answer for a few seconds.

  “It’s really great,” I told them, making the two kids smile with happiness.

  “You’re clearly doing a great job and everything, but…”

  “But?” Tate asked while both of their faces twisted in sudden worry.

  “Why’s it orange?” I asked, perplexed. I gestured at the burnt orange wall and ceiling. This was a psychic type Gym, wasn’t it? I really didn’t understand why it was that colour. Some shade of purple or pink I could understand at least. Orange just seemed out of place.

  The two kids let out a bit of laughter, but they didn’t fall into hysterics like last time, to my relief.

  “Grandma liked orange,” Tate said, shrugging.

  “We might change it one day,” said Liza, but she didn’t sound like they cared too much about it.

  The Lunatone came and bumped its trainer’s shoulder, capturing Liza’s attention.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “Do you think you could start helping us learn Moonblast now?” She asked.

  I could somehow sense the otherwise non expressive Lunatone practically pleading with its eyes as both the girl and her Pokemon did their best attempt at Lillipup eyes.

  I checked my PokeNav. It was late, probably late enough for the moon to have risen in the sky.

  “Absolutely,” I said. I was just as interested in seeing if I could make this work as the psychic girl. It was time to finally figure out Moonblast.