Cyg had mostly been a rank-and-file worker bee in Mauville’s seemingly endless drone-force of enslaved humans. The position had been a discredit to her genius. Give her a potato and a paperclip and she could power your smart home for a month, somehow. Electronics were, like, the one thing she was definitely good at.

Even then she had to admit that Derek’s idea was… well. It was unique. It was utter nonsense bordering on sheer brilliance and she had to applaud him for that, if it worked.

Also, it did seem like they were breaking numerous privacy laws. He was Petalburg’s Gym Leader but was the whole place, like, actually his property?

“This should be easy enough,” she said, hands on hips. “Closed-circuit cameras are pretty simple. You just need a server to host the video on.” She picked up a tiny Raspberry Pi computer, holding it in her palm. “It really just depends on how much footage you want to store, or if you’re just… observing.”

Which one seemed like the lesser invasion of privacy?

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"Storage is the priority." Derek starts, plucking a pokeball from the holster at his belt. "One of my Metagross will act as a sort of medium between the server and all the data collected by the Beldum, sorting through it before being placed on the shelf, so to speak. I won't be monitoring any of the footage until they suggest otherwise."

The psychic types were quite keen of being connected in any sense. Let alone pseudo telepathic properties, they quite literally conjoined in the wild to evolve. It was pretty wild to think about, whether it seemed like a fusion, or more along the lines of cannibalism.

"There's more to it than that, but for now I just need to test out if I can even get any footage." Converting psychic wavelengths into digital data via electronics sounded like it might as well be rocket science.

PETALBURG SURVEILLANCE ACT

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“Okay, cool,” Cyg said, tilting her head and sticking her tongue out slightly to think. “The Metagross takes care of that bit. They’re like little supercomputers. We have them in Mauville.” Was revealing that detail betraying industry secrets? She didn’t know. No NDA ninjas jumped out of the woods to kill her, so she supposed she was safe.

Now the question was going to be how to convert the psychic energy that the Beldum and Metagross had already into… video. “If we cut it down to its most basic, TV signal is just from an antenna, into a receiver, through a cable, into the home,” she said, beginning to sift through the surplus of technology Derek had provided.

“We would need to know the signal frequency, like a TV station; that’s how we-- uh, your Metagross-- picks up on the broadcast.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, not wanting to be a huge disappointment. “So I think we first have to ascertain what radiofrequency your Beldum are speaking on. The problem there is that Beldum-- and Metang and Metagross-- are, like, giant magnets. They would produce radiofrequency and electromagnetic frequency fields. Which makes measuring… difficult.”

She realized she was tangenting. “Sorry, hope I’m not boring you.” I’m really trying, honest.

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"Oh, no, it's fine..." Derek assures her it's not a problem, but yes, he can easily see the problem. Though with everything being said, he feels safe relying on his old buddy.

"Couldn't the Metagross itself just test in reverse by running through all of it's known frequencies?" Those that grew up 'speaking' the language should have an easier time narrowing it down, right?

And if they had the processing power of supercomputers, then maybe they had a shot at running through them all in a timely manner.

"Although I guess it would be a lot easier if I had a Rotom that could figure it all out for me." Derek really needed to get himself one of those.

But until then, he released Rasputin (his Metagross) for her to make use of.

ana fell

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Cyg snaps her fingers. “Yes, that’s a great idea.”

She turns to his Metagross when he lets it free. “Do you know what frequency your Beldum speak on?” she asks it, head cocked in question. “If not, could you run through them real quick so we can find one?”

She steps back so the Metagross can get to work. “Once we have the signal, it’ll be easy. The Beldum just… watch, and they ping their optic feed along this signal back to the Metagross, who then stores it for when you want to see.”

She considered, again, the possibility that she was helping him infringe on multiple privacy violations.

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