Kevin Curry
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Psychoprotective 3.12 (Book 3 end)
🕑 Added 2024-05-06 14:00:10 +0000 UTCThe blunt drill of the Astralathe emerged from the cloudy skies, as Ford put his hand to his temple and waved his arm to direct the large mental copy. “Look alive!” He shouted, the drill slowly winding up as it built up the psychic energy, dense enough to appear more as a stellar event than anything capable of being wrought by mortal hands.
“Oh dear.” Lucy said, hands trembling as she saw the event. “I remember this part,” She whispered, “-it hurt.”
There wasn’t a lot Tanya could do about that, but she grabbed Lucy’s hand and gave it a supportive squeeze, and braced herself as well.
The energy of the Astralathe burst out, creating a giant gaping hole in the emotional damage bag. Several individual pieces that matched the tags they had collected on the way down scattered in front of them. “Tags!” Tanya shouted, quickly grabbing one of the ones she kept and placing it on the purse.
Anticipation. Excitement. A flash of a crowd, streamers of water around her. Pride. Exhilaration. Awe. Indignation. Annoyance. Attraction. Ford Cruller, in his youth. Embarrassment. Shame. Fear.
Quickly doing her mental exercises to process the emotions, absorbing the power and attuning herself to the local environment, she glanced at the other four people here. Lucy was staggered, clutching her head. Razputin finished absorbing the suitcase and moved on to the hat box. Ford was still handling the steamer trunk, while Augustus worked on the duffel bag.
Grabbing the sixth tag from her belt, Tanya moved on to the jewelry box, inserting the key-like tag right into the lock.
Worry. Her own hand running through her hair. Weakness. Dread. Hope. Happiness. Love.
Ugh. “Back-to-back romantic baggage…” Tanya whined, staggered by the foreign emotions. She looked over the many other pieces of emotional baggage. Razputin was already on his third.
But it was too late. A giant image of Maligula, with a distorted caricature of Lucy’s face, emerged from behind the destroyed dam. How many baggages are left? There were a few duplicates that dissolved when the primary baggage was resolved, but… about five unattended? It looks like Ford was on his second, and Augustus was still recovering from his first.
It was a bit paradoxical that baggage provided more energy but still wore you out, but it once they manage to catch their metaphorical breath, they’ll find themselves much more able to hurt Maligula.
It had started to rain.
“Watch out…” Maligula’s sultry tone rang out, booming in volume. “A storm is coming.” Water came and rushed towards Lucy, enveloping her in water and transforming her into another copy of Maligula. Everyone else leapt onto one of the surrounding pieces of wreckage, except for Ford who was thrown bodily onto a wall.
“Agent Ford!” Razputin shouted, concerned.
“I’m fine, kid!” Ford shouted back, standing back up. “It’ll take more than a little water to take me out.”
The water also changed the environment, the dam-like setting changing to a familiar set of buildings in Grulovian style: The Deluge of Grulovia. Tsunamis of water, stilled in time, marked the boundaries of the area, and even now, hands of water reached out of those ersatz walls to drag people into their depths.
“Looks like we won’t have any other option than to suppress it.” Tanya commented, charging a PSI blast on each finger.
“Yeah, the Astralathe’s trying to keep her down, but Maligula’s too strong. Just need to wear her down.” Ford said in agreement. Which is good, because without that, Maligula can literally keep going until she dies.
“Okay!” Razputin said, leaping into action and landing on the large circular floor that Nona-turned-Maligula had been laughing in. The rain intensified. “I’m here to stop you, Maligula!” He announced, putting his goggles on to keep the rain out of his eyes.
“Oh, you poor boy. Thinking you stand a chance against the greatest psychic in history!” Maligula boasted, laughing. Snakes of water condensed from mid-air and launched themselves at the acrobatic kid, who danced around them while unleashing some weak but quick PSI blasts.
The larger Maligula loomed over the battlefield, eyes anrrowing at the nimble boy. That was her cue. Unleashing the focused killing intent in a barrage of powerful PSI blasts, the giant Maligula head exploded into water before reforming as a smaller, but still gigantic Maligula. Tanya flew after it, leaving the smaller one to the others.
“Hm, you’re the threat, I see.” Maligula commented, her tone cold and calculating. A very familiar tone, as Tanya’s heard it often enough from her own thoughts. She formed a series of waterspouts and unleashed them, forcing Tanya to dodge as she fired more PSI blasts.
“This is going to take a long time…” Tanya commented, frowning. “There has to be a faster way…”
“You little gnat!” Maligula shouted in frustration. “I get my first taste of freedom and you’re here to muck it up! I am the Deluge of Grulovia! Killer of thousands!”
Tanya snorted. “You don’t want to get into that contest against me.” She warned.
“Who do you think you ar-urk.” Suddenly, Maligula’s form shuddered, almost melting into water before firming back up. “What was that?”
Hm… from what her psychic senses were picking up… “That’s guilt.” Tanya replied, “Come on, let’s have a chat.” Tanya flew straight into the giant Maligula, coating herself in a barrier sharpened with intent and plunging straight into the heart of the giant construct.
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Inside the construct was another section of the mind, of course. It was a sewer, flooded and inundated with the smells of death.
“It’s been a while.” Tanya commented idly, walking forth without breaking stride once the waterlogged corpses came into view. “Good thing Razputin isn’t here to see this.”
Deep in the gore-filled sewers was Lucy, young again, gripping a particular corpse in grief. From the resemblance, this was presumably Marona. “Get up.” Tanya commanded. “We need to get your faculties sorted out. The war you fought is long over, and it’s time to settle back down into civilian life. But this time, with your eyes open.”
“Why’d you wake me up?” Lucy said, in Nona’s aged voice. “I was happier without knowing all of…” She gestured around to the corpses. “...this.”
Tanya sighed. “Because what Ford did to you was wrong.” She said firmly. “It was done in a rush, and with good intentions, without palatable alternatives… but just because you don’t like doing something, because it was the least worst option, doesn’t mean you’re not culpable for the consequences of doing it.” Even if those consequences are merely to suffer with that knowledge.
“Then why don’t you kill me?” Lucy asked miserably.
Tanya smiled. “Because you deserve happiness.” The list of people who don’t are those who deserve death. Like Being X. “All who live deserve happiness.” She elaborated.
“I had it.” Lucy insisted, “But now? With so many deaths… the death of my sister?” She shuddered. “Who can say that I deserve happiness?”
“I do. You deserve happiness.” Tanya repeated insistently.
“Why?” Lucy said, crying. “Why do you say such a thing?”
Tanya sighed sadly. “Because if you don’t deserve happiness… then neither do I.” She said, changing her form to a watered-down copy of her old demon. Her hands dripped with blood, her flight suit in tatters, and her body held together with cracks filled with solid gold.
Lucy looked over Tanya’s form with confusion. “W-what? Of course you deserve happiness, dear.”
“Do I?” Tanya asked rhetorically. “Otto worked out the numbers, you know. The Deluge itself killed two thousand, four hundred thirty-eight people, near as he can tell. Total casualties from your war record, while difficult to track, is estimated to be around five thousand enemy soldiers and two thousand civilians.”
“Over nine thousand…” Lucy whispered to herself.
“The most conservative estimate of my own kill count is around twenty-six thousand. The most generous at around one hundred seventy thousand” Tanya continued, “But don’t tell Razputin. I’m done with war.” Augustus had an idea, if not the scale. “So I cannot believe that you don’t deserve happiness. Not while retaining a will to live.” Particularly as death wouldn’t even help, in her case.
“H-how?” Lucy asked, confused and sad.
“That’s not important.” Tanya said, waving off the question. She snapped her bloodied fingers and restored her true appearance. “What is, is this: The past is the past. You cannot change the past, but at the same time, there’s no justice in suffering. You were not in your right mind, nor did you understand what was happening. No one did. It’s the threat that comes from pushing the cutting edge of science.” Tanya poked Lucy in the forehead and transferred some of the knowledge she had hoarded on their mutual condition. “You were sick, and all you need to do is accept treatment, like I did. Then all will be well.” It was a bit oversimplified, but that would suffice.
Lucy looked down at her sister’s corpse. Gently, she closed the corpse’s eyelids and stood up, looking around sadly. “You know…” She said, “The Deluge was an accident.”
Oh? “I believe you.” Tanya said immediately.
“The protests… I just made it rain. It dispersed them well enough.” Lucy said, walking to the next room. “The dam broke without me doing anything more than that, over weeks of rain filling it up.”
A memory vault ran up, and disgorged its contents to them. The memories were stored in needlepoint art stored in the form of a scarf, simplified but clear. Reading through it, the story was backed up. “Likely, the dam was poorly constructed.” Tanya said softly. “Whether it was from incompetence or someone cutting corners on purpose to pocket the difference, we won’t be able to know.”
“That does make me feel a little better.” Lucy admitted.
“See? It’s good that you regret your actions.” Tanya said consolingly. “I’ve plenty of regrets myself. But it does no one any good to beat yourself up about it. Most of all, your family wouldn’t want that. They’d feel terrible, seeing you punish yourself.”
That argument seemed to sway her. “Yes, you’re right. I need to be there, for Gussie. Even if he’s my nephew, he’s still my son.” As she spoke, she aged, her back bent by the ravages of time until she was back to her normal self.
“That’s the spirit.” Tanya said, giving Lucy a hug. “Now, let’s join him in shutting down Maligula.” Taking the old woman by the hand, Tanya used hydrokinesis to create a portal, and stepped through it.
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The battlefield that Tanya and Lucy jumped out into was chaotic, with Ford, Augustus, and Razputin scattered and injured. “NO!” Roared Maligula as the two of them escaped.
“Now, everyone pool their power on one of us!” Tanya shouted, before adding: “Not me!”
“I’ll do it!” Razputin volunteered, and he suddenly started growing as Ford and Augustus added their strength to his, and so did everyone on the outside.
Lucy was now glowing an ethereal yellow, and hopped onto Razputin’s now-massive shoulder. Maligula grew to match his size, but with so much psychic power on their side, including a not-insignificant portion of Lucy’s own mind working against the mental entity, the survival drive was driven back into a deep pit, where it belonged.
“We did it!” Razputin said, grinning widely. “Did you see, Dad? I was all ‘Bam’ and ‘Wham’ and ‘Roar, I am Goggolor!’ It was awesome!”
Augustus looked at Tanya, mouthing ‘Goggolor?’. Tanya shrugged. Turning back to the now-shrinking Razputin, Augustus gave a happy smile. “I saw it, Razputin. Good job.” The boy beamed at the praise.
“How do you feel, Lucy?” Ford asked.
“I feel… okay.” She said, “Like… everything’s going to be okay.”
Ford smiled. “That it will. That. It. Will.”
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The aftermath of Lucy’s restoration of herself and the final removal of Ford’s psychic construction was pretty much as expected: Opening with a big group hug among the Psychic Seven, all together again. Some minor work was done on the rest of the Aquatos, forcefully severing the mental connections (something so ingrained was usually a dense collection of connections instead of a simple water-death one, although some clusters were larger than others) that cause the hydrophobia, and a few hours of exposure therapy with Lucy guiding the water to keep it that way.
In the end, Razputin was invited to intern again next year, ‘properly this time’, with an additional promise of being provided all educational materials that would permit him to join the accelerated training program and become a psychonaut proper the instant he turns 18, or when he gets his Bachelor’s degree, whichever comes first. Plenty of Psychonauts continue their education after joining on the organization’s dime, this was just an extension of that.
But as a punishment for all those rules he broke and the damage he inflicted on Hollis, he’ll have to wait until next summer’s internship program starts before he can do any of that. Which was, in Tanya’s opinion, quite fair. She even cheated a little and provided Augustus the same homeschooling program materials she used to get her high school diploma early, which he’ll need to do anyway in order to become a Psychonaut. The most boring part of the path ahead of him, without a single ounce of the fun psychic stuff.
If he manages to keep at it until the internship, he’ll have earned the help.
Still, after flying the Aquatos back home, letting them end the day in their own beds, any remaining resolution was officially no longer Tanya’s problem. All she needed to do was fix the secure archives, and that could be put off until tomorrow.
“Ah, home sweet home!” Mom exclaimed as they all entered the house. Eric giggled and laughed.
“Home! Homehomehomehome!” Visha shouted, barking wildly in happiness. She then crashed into her bed and promptly fell asleep before the bed even stopped moving from the impact. Tanya snorted. Silly dog…
“Worst summer camp ever!” Mary declared.
“Marceau’s psychotic break was quite unfortunately timed, yes.” Dad agreed, “It’s a shame, I thought the fake villainous plot idea was quite innovative.”
“Eh… there were problems with the idea even without Oleander ruining it.” Tanya said, taking off her shoes and letting her feet sink into the carpet. “What’s for dinner?”
“After a day like this?” Mom asked rhetorically, sitting down on the couch and tickling Eric. “Something delivered. Sasha darling, could you?”
“I think the Chinese place is still open.” Mused Dad, walking to the phone in the kitchen. “The usual?”
“Teriyaki beef.” Tanya said, “Extra egg rolls.”
“Orange chicken!” Mary said from her position, laying upside down on the couch, flipping through the television channels.
“Kung Pao chicken.” Mom said cheerily. “Extra spicy.”
“Right.” Dad said, but he looked towards Tanya. “Err… would you happen to remember-”
“Actually Spicy.” Tanya said in Vietnamese, slowly enunciating it. The owners of Imperial Feast were not actually Chinese. America…
“Thank you.” Dad said, somewhat embarrassed at still needing to ask.
Tanya settled onto the couch as well, laying her head on Mom’s lap and laying her feet over Mary’s stomach. “Anything good on?” She asked Mary.
“Just the Facts of Life.” Mary commented idly, leaving it on that show. It was a sitcom about an all-girls private school. Tanya didn’t particularly enjoy it, but when the alternative was getting up from the couch after a day like this and figuring out something to do… she’ll watch it. Mary liked it fine, though.
Mom placed Eric on Tanya’s stomach and started running her hand through Tanya’s hair. “This is nice…”
Tanya started to hold Eric’s hands and moved them about, eliciting another giggle from the one year old. “Dance time…” She murmured, smiling at the cutie.
They fell into a pleasant silence once Dad sat in his chair, waiting for food to come to them rather than needing to work for it, like true Americans.
Once the food had arrived and they had rearranged themselves into proper sitting positions, Visha woke back up. “Food!” She declared with a bark, immediately jumping up to Tanya’s lap and turning her soulful eyes to beg for some. “Please, I’m starving. I love you…”
Tanya laughed. “I love you too.”
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[1990, Age 26]
Finally, it was time to show off her hard work. Years of careful calculation and focusing for hours, painstakingly crafting the perfect telekinetic psitanium array to execute her vision.
This particular convention was known as PSY Con, and while it sounded like an industry convention, it was really more of a Psychonauts media fan convention that also dabbled in other speculative psychic fiction. It used a sports stadium, with temporary structures and a retractable roof with close attention paid to the weather. The stage that her panel was to be held on was visible from the air, as it took a solid fifth of the space. She wasn’t the only one to have panels there, of course, but it was the biggest space.
Going at speeds that would be unsafe to the pilot if used in a traditional vehicle, Tanya flew from the cloud cover to right above the stage, slowing to a stop in far too little space. Her new car separated several sections as it unfolded into her masterpiece: a six meter tall mechanical walker powered by her will and a psitanium sand reserve for high-energy maneuvers like this one.
The crowd exploded in excitement. “Welcome!” She announced through the speaker system, already hooked up to the microphone attached to her clothes. “My name is Tanya Dosva, of True Psychic Tales fame, this is my panel, ‘does psitanium make combat walkers practical?’ and this is my transforming mecha, which I’ve named ‘Ambition’!” The crowd’s roars intensified. “Thank you, thank you.”
Tanya turned on the stereo behind her and started dancing, the mecha synchronized to her movements and the music projecting to the speakers set up around the crowd. It wasn’t quite as flexible as she was with her body in the prime of youth, but that just meant she couldn’t get too fancy with her dance moves. Eventually, the crowd settled down, and she turned off the music. “The question on what constitutes an effective weapon of war has many facets to it,” She began, “But in my opinion, the most important answer is ‘how well does it operate in the conditions of the battlefield you have in front of you’? To that, we must look at recent wars. Due to the threat of nuclear exchanges, the scale of conflicts are smaller, typically rather asymmetric fights against technologically inferior enemies, from the perspective of the United States. Against such foes, psitanium powered armor and powered walkers are, bluntly, invincible when operating. Key words there: when operating.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, the limits of the conflict show what the issue is: The psitanium supply is growing slower than psitanium demand, which means that if the military were to start fielding psitanium-based weapon platforms rather than the current system, where they’re using specific psitanium-using modules on more mundane platforms, the demand will spike, and supplying that much would be… incredibly difficult for current infrastructure.”
Tanya leapt from the stage, bouncing off the pylons as if they were actually capable of holding the weight of her mecha, using levitation to reduce her mass enough to make it work. “As you can see, mechas have the durability of tanks but with unmatched mobility, able to assume a position similar to an armored, infantry, or support fire unit. The costs, on the other hand…” Tanya shook her head, the head of the mecha copying the movement. “The convention’s picking up the bill of one full tank of psitanium sand, and I’ve already eaten through a fifth of it.” Most of that was from that show-offy instant stop at the start, mind you. Reinforcing everything enough to tolerate that level of G-forces was not cheap, she might as well have soaked a barrage from an anti-air autocannon.
Tanya continued her prepared speech, eventually wrapping it up with: “Bluntly, anything you would want to use a mecha for can be accomplished better by using more psychic soldiers in psitanium powered armor, no more than three meters tall. Any questions?” The first person to raise their hand was an academic-looking man, wearing a Sasha Nein cosplay. “Yes, you.” Tanya said, pointing and using a telekinetic hand above him to mark him more accurately.
“Why did you make a transforming mecha?” He asked, “Wouldn’t that introduce structural flaws? It already flies, what’s the point?”
Tanya looked at the man strangely. “Because it’s cool, obviously.” She said, slowly so the fool would understand. “Who else has a real transforming mecha? No one. It’s mine. Some people build project cars, I do this.” She struck a pose. “I don’t even have any weapons on this one. Well, no dedicated weapons. Just tools.” There wasn’t really any such thing as a tool that couldn’t be used to kill people, if you needed to. “Next?” She asked, before pointing. “You, in the magical girl outfit.”
The girl cleared her throat. “Yes, do you know that new character? Razputin?”
Tanya chuckled. Of course they were curious. “Yes, I do.” She replied, “And yes, he’s really seventeen, just like I was sixteen when I started.” As it turned out, Razputin’s extensive knowledge of psychology drawn from True Psychic Tales and a few supplementary books was not a form of savant-like obsession, but an indicator of him being a genuine child prodigy. As such, while he didn’t manage to beat her record as the youngest psychonaut with a Master’s degree, although for him it was in psychic therapies, with plans on trying for a doctorate after a few years as a Psychonaut, he came by the title honestly.
Naturally, the True Psychic Tales people were itching to include him. “Do you have another question about him?” Tanya asked, to be polite.
“Is he single?” The girl asked.
Tanya waved her hand vaguely, which triggered a 360 degree turn in the mecha’s wrist. “I’m inclined to say no, but I don’t think it’s official.” She said, “I don’t really pay attention to that kind of gossip.” She lied. Lili was shooting for a doctorate already, as she was extremely competitive and was determined to not let Razputin’s abandoning of the race ruin her motivation. Whether they were actually dating? Tanya had no idea. “Okay, next question… you.”
“How true is Razputin’s tragic backstory?” Asked the curious teenager who was wearing some of Razputin’s merchandise goggles.
“Eh… about… eighty percent of it?” Tanya said, thinking about it. “Maligula really was his great aunt,” Now grandmother, “-and most of his extended family was wiped out in the Deluge, but a lot of the specifics were punched up a bit.” Tanya shrugged, which she made sure her mecha was capable of. “Oh, and he really grew up in the circus. The Flying Aquatos are a little obscure, their circus isn’t exactly world-famous, but they exist and are still performing. I believe they’re somewhere in Kentucky right now?” Eh. “Next… you. Please make it something about mecha.”
The woman wearing the Cassie cosplay flinched. “Oh, very well, one more. What do you want to know?” Tanya asked.
“Ah, the comics kept hinting that you were secretly good at fighting, most recently in the Independence Day issue last month.” She began.
“Is there a question in there?” Tanya asked, annoyed.
“Who would win in a fight, you or Razputin?” She asked.
“Me.” Tanya said immediately, before pausing. “Wait, do I get my mecha?” She waved the question off. “Of course I do, it’s mine.” After years of going to conventions, Tanya had mastered the art of deflecting inconvenient questions.
“What if Razputin had a mecha too?” The woman asked.
“Where’s he going to get one?” Tanya retorted; “Irrelevant. Now, does anyone have any mecha-related questions? I worked very hard on Ambition so I could show him off to you all.”
After the panel, Tanya grumbled to herself and reached out telepathically. Without a pre-set connection, it wasn’t easy, but she was used to it by now. “Helmut?” She sent.
The aged musician sent back his own amusement. “What’s up, Tanya?”
“You know how I laughed at you at your first con panel, where you wanted to talk about music but just had questions about me?” Tanya asked.
“Yeah?”
“Well, I know I’ve already apologized, but I just had the same thing happen to me. It sucked.” Tanya explained.
Helmut’s laughter was literally contagious, as Tanya burst out into laughter from the avalanche of emotion. “What was it you said? Welcome to being a supporting character?”
Tanya snorted. “I’ve always been a supporting character.” She insisted, “Protaganists are supposed to be everymen, and as much progress as I’ve made, I’m still far from normal.” She smiled, her mood vastly improved by the sympathetic laughter. “But normal is overrated. Give me the life of an eccentric billionaire inventor any day!”
“Damn straight!” Helmut declared, before cutting the connection.
Tanya settled her mecha down onto the pedestal set up for the display, opening it up and leaving so she can enjoy the convention. “Maybe I am a protagonist.” She admitted to herself. “But if I am… I’ve earned my happily ever after.
Comments
Kevin Curry
I'm going to be writing a lot of epilogues. Mostly to get all those ideas out.
Chris Larson
Great ending. Any plans for the future or is the series ending here?
