What beith amiss with fusty reliable telepathy?

5G, mate. Get with the times.

*Shine cocks his head quizzically* "I mean, I guess I assumed my 'telepathy' was at least line-of-sight limited? I kinda haven't really checked... ^_^;; It's been a bit hectic since I transformed, I haven't really had many opportunities to rope anyone into helping me figure out what my powers even are...I'm pretty sure there's some things I can do...I can feel it, this energy inside me...but I haven't quite worked out how it flows yet, yanno? And most of the humans I know...well, they're already pretty weirded out, and them being weirded out by the best thing that ever happened to me--even if it has a lot of difficulties baked in--kinda weirds me out. So I haven't really tried to push on getting any of them to help me figure this stuff out."

You're thinking about it backwards, kiddo. If Fancy there can disguise both his features and his voice - I mean, he can fit in and drive a car - then what else do you suppose he can do?

'Twould not be an unsound reason that all such newly converted would themselves become younglings who must fend and discover their own secrets for themselves.

Fair. But all the more likely then that somebody out there should be setting up their own private mental channels for other 'converted' to latch onto.

"...Yeah, if the Fancy Man has been himself as long as I think it'd take for one of us to grow up to maturity and still left me to swing in the wind...I'm gonna hafta eat all his expensive ties, or something, because seriously, fuck that. Far as I'm concerned, letting someone suffer the abject terror of having any scrap of stability whisked away alone, when you could easily share information and comfort is fucking unconscionable. My working theory is that he was 'Too scared to not be a dumbass,' but if there's some sort of secret society explicitly not bothering to help people, I'm gonna figure out how to burn it down.

"^_^ And hey, my vet wants me to quit my job anyway, look how much more free time that will give me!"

Then instead of butting heads trying to push him into making the next move, wouldn't it have been more helpful first while you had him to quickly ask 'when' and 'are there others'? Establish a benchmark from which to work?

"-_- I was working from the assumption that he was like me, and scared and alone. That his reaction was him shutting down and hiding to protect himself, not being an expert asshole who thinks others should explicitly suffer. I wanted to give him space to connect or not as he saw fit, and given he's a public figure and the location of the studio's public record, I figured this was the least threatening way to contact him. I also assumed there can't be a ton of us, because this feels like a thing it'd be industrial-strength hard to cover up. Given his job as literal news anchor, if he wanted to shut me up he'd be in a pretty choice position to do so, but, 'glare angrily and drive away,' seemed like a strange angle to attempt that from.

"I'm trying really hard to be kind and give him space and actually offer support...but I'm still SUPER pissed that someone who obviously has some of this shit figured out wouldn't bother to even twitch to help someone who was obviously in a terrible, frightening place and falling apart. And there's only so much I'm even willing to try and suppress that. I get acting from fear, but it wouldn't have taken much of anything for him to toss me a lifeline, and he very much refused to do so.

"But, spirits...did he abandon more people, too? How many are out there thinking they're alone, and just...suffering?"

Thy song be striking the wrong notes.

I was hypothesizing out loud... I don't know if it's accurate, do I?

Charitable.

Can it wait? Making a scene in front of the colt isn't going to help matters.

All I was really trying to say wih this was find out the facts first, then get pissy about them. But if it's any comfort, I was reaching the same kind of conclusions. There can't be too many of you to hide - yet - because massive pushback would be the first thing that would happen in the event of a breakout. It seems unlikely that Fancy turned long ago as he was having to think on his feet when he saw you, and still doesn't feel safe about exposing himself. You might have been the first one to ever go 'public', and scared him as much as it's scaring you, because there are so few of you right now. Never mind Fancy, if the 'broken out' can recognise each other, nobody has taken that first step and reached out to you yet.

I wonder. Does that non-human recognition extend to anyone still dormant? Perhaps that's the avenue you should be going down, because that's where the true numbers may lie. Be the future bedrock that anyone who follows can call upon, the moment they need it. OK, Fancy may have let you down but you can be better than that.