Kevin Curry
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Psychoprotective 16
🕑 Added 2023-01-23 23:06:49 +0000 UTCI had this scheduled to post this morning... but apparently I accidentally set it for PM, not AM. My bad.
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The next area was in a pit, and contained even more germs, another bucket, and another bottle of bleach. Even the figments were mostly the same, with the sole outlier being a viking helmet next to a small pond.
After two more areas of similar setup, albeit with emotional baggage tags, Mary groaned at the fifth. “Does this guy have anything but germs on his mind?” She shouted in frustration.
“No.” Declared a censor. On that being’s cue, an avalanche of Deep Regrets, several Bad Ideas, a Judge, and a smattering of censors, both heavy and non appeared with the intent to moderately inconvenience two world war veterans.
Needless to say, they were not successful. “Okay Tanya, I’ll get this one and you get that one.” Mary declared in reference to the emotional baggage. The Hat box was on some kind of balcony overlooking a plaza, while the Steamer Trunk was a little bit in front of a shattered dam.
Tanya took a deep breath, and attached the steamer trunk tag. Emotional energy flooded Tanya’s mental projection, rejuvenating and strengthening it. The emotions involved…
Horror. Confusion. Despair. Grief. Resolve. Demands. Sympathy. Struggle. Victory! Grief. Hope. Fear. Trepidation. Resolve. Disgust. Guilt. Resolve. Relief. Grief. Guilt. Resolve. Guilt. PAIN.
…were a lot. Tanya didn’t know how Miss Milla handled this, she was clearly not ready for this part of the job.
Mary walked back to Tanya, worry clear in her eyes. “Are you even in one piece anymore?” She asked. “Your fingers are bleeding!”
Tanya blinked tears out of her eyes, looking at the caked yet dripping blood covering her fingernails. Intuitively, she understood it was not her blood. Focusing, she cycled the excessive emotional energy until she felt like she could handle it. After twenty cycles, she opened her eyes and examined her body. While the blood had vanished for now, the golden cracks had spread compared to before the emotional baggage, each one singing in the chorus of pain papered over with that euphoric feeling of freedom. As if true freedom was at the tips of her fingers if she only… took it. “I’m fine.” She lied. “Let’s finish up.”
More and more germ cleanups. It seemed a bit too simple to Tanya’s finely honed gamer instincts/military experience, but she figured there was just an extra step or five once they had successfully washed the streets of filth.
After the seventh and final area, the city started quaking. “What have you done!?” Cried out Agent Cruller’s voice as the landmass started shifting into a more connected area. “Those were peaceful protestors, Lucy…” It suddenly occurred to Tanya that using hydrokinesis to clean a bunch of things dressed like Grulovian peasants was a little bit too on the nose, given Maligula. “You’re a monster.” Agent Cruller declared, which caused Tanya’s head to flare up in a spike of pain again.
The central area formed a second copy of the Heptadome, and within was a second portion of the mysterious device. It was valve-operated, apparently. This piece had a second dull drill, which was interesting as it was pointed directly at where the other one was. The terrain began to level out a bit, proving that the germs did represent something that was inhibiting his mind from pulling itself together.
A memory vault danced around the Heptadome, which Tanya promptly grabbed and divested of its contents. Mary looked through the slideshow goggles. “It says ‘Psychonauts summoned.” She said, flipping through the slides relatively quickly. “Maligula made a coup?” She said, intrigued. “Broken dam, world leaders begging the Psychic Six for help… Then they go! Paradrop style.” She went back to an earlier slide. “Why were the viking guy and the glasses guy sipping wine on lawn chairs behind their van?”
Cycling her energy some more, Tanya held her hand out. “Let me see.” She glanced at the image. It was just a normal domestic scene if one ignored the news alert about Grulovia. “So they lived in a van.” Tanya concluded. “So what? They were hippies.” It wasn’t a lifestyle choice Tanya would endorse, but there was a certain appeal to being able to pick up and go that she couldn’t deny.
“But…” Mary tried and failed to elaborate on what she was saying. “Isn’t it weird?” She she faux-whispered.
“No.” Tanya replied. It was completely ordinary for married people to live together. She’d elaborate, but it was better that Mary didn’t think Tanya understood her homophobia, much less sympathize. It was normal in this world, near as Tanya could tell. “Now shut up about it and let’s figure out if there’s anything else we need to do before leaving.” The pain wasn’t as bad, spread out throughout her mental projection like this rather than concentrated in her head. Briefly, she touched the spot it appeared to manifest, and found that there was a crevice about five centimeters deep in her head at that spot. Discreetly, she checked underneath her swimsuit and noted that her collar had a similarly deep crack in it, completely replacing her sternum with a crevice. Huh… that reminded her of how she… Well, if she had to carry around a mortal wound somewhere, that would be the spot. She thought that spot seemed more painful than the rest.
The restored terrain revealed an eighth location, a path of ice that led towards a portal of water. Not one to leave a task unfinished, Tanya trudged through the portal without even bothering to tell Mary to follow.
The portal led to a frozen lake, where the roar of the wind was replaced with a discordant cacophony of words and declarations.
“-eeds someone to listen!” “-got your brain, and I’ll keep it safe…” “...vaders! I will kill you and…” “-can do it Lucy! Just think back to the good times we’ve had!” “THIS IS FOR HELMUT!” “-ome back for the rest of you later. Just after I figure out what to do with Lucy…” “-orry kid, but you’ll be happier this way.” “-arona, I’m sorry to tell you but your sister Lucy is…” “-ust stay away from the water. It’s dangerous.”
Tanya rubbed at her temples as her mind continually picked up snippets of speech without any real understanding of the context involved. “This place is loud.” Mary complained. “I can’t make out a thing.”
Tanya took to the air, looking around the frozen terrain for something relevant. Eventually, she found a patch of ice that was broken. The figments in the area were… eclectic. Several animals, with snakes featuring most of all. Grand vines, the faces of the Psychic Six. Even an image of Maligula’s face… or rather, Lucrecia’s face. The odd one out was a small figment of a brain a few meters from the hole.
Still, Tanya was wondering what was down there, so she leapt into the frigid water, her personal barrier tuned to keep her heat inside. Mary shouted after her, but the hole froze over behind Tanya.
“You killed him.” Came Agent Cruller’s voice, clear as a bell. Unlike the echoing lines previous, this was addressed directly to her. “He was the best of us all, and you killed him.” Tanya flinched at the accusation. “You killed your own family, too. Remember her? You killed her with all the rest.” She didn’t! That was Being X’s fault! The cracks spiked in pain as they grew in size and number. “You’ve become a monster.” She stopped all that! It was a war! “But it was a monster that we let you become. War is hell, so go back there where you belong.”
The water around her suddenly vanished, leaving her stranded in a void with a small pile of corpses. She recognized Helmut Fullbear, but the others… one looked kind of like Lucrecia, but was subtly different. Glasses, for one.
The drills of the mysterious device appeared in the void, pointing straight at Tanya. They unleashed a massive blast of psychic energy, which Tanya barely avoided by throwing herself away from the corpses. Then they unleashed another, forcing Tanya to use her most powerful Shield.
She felt it. She was going to die. Against someone like Ford Cruller, the normal rules don’t apply. She needed…
…to be free.
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[Sasha Nein, M.Psi, Psychonauts Agent]
“So, if we assume that this whole ‘past life’ thing is validated fact…” Sasha said after a deep breath. The massive library they were holding the meeting in had a good ambiance, in Sasha’s opinion.
“Well, you’re less stubborn than Ford is when it comes to new ideas.” Agent O’Peia snarked. She waved her hand and refilled everyone’s beverages, the mental drinks steaming and flavorful.
“It still doesn’t fully explain Tanya’s condition.” Milla said, finishing his thought. “Or why Mary’s so convinced that they shared a life when they clearly did not.”
Agent O’Peia snorted. “Sure it does.”
“I beg your pardon?” Sasha said.
“Well, I’ll spell it out for you.” Agent O’Peia replied. “Fact 1: Mary has memories of a past life, even if you didn’t pry after the most traumatic ones nor seek her most vital memory vaults.” To emphasize her point, a book fell down from the upper shelves, titled ‘Mary Sioux and the War in Europa’
“That’s right.” Milla said.
“Fact 2: Tanya has memories of a completely different past life, where she was a he and much older to boot.” Agent O’Peia continued. “From these two points, we will accept the axiom that reincarnation is an actual thing.” She manifested another book, this one titled ‘The Corporate Chronicles of a Lonely Man’
“I’m half-sure I saw an image of the same “God” in both minds.” Milla added. “I didn’t open the memory vault I saw when down there, I was too busy to pursue it.” Milla generally disliked going through memory vaults, so she was quick to dismiss opportunities when they came. It was one of her few flaws as an agent.
“Fact 3: Mary has the exact same face of Tanya etched into her mind as a mass-murderer.” Agent O’Peia continued, conjuring a newspaper with the headline ‘Tanya von Degurechaff: Fact or Fiction?’. “Now, this is a bit sketchy, as Mary had met Tanya before you had a chance to view her mind. So it’s not as reliable as it could be. Memory is like that.”
“Indeed. I think that covers everything.” Agent Nein said.
“Not quite. Fact 4: Tanya’s been seven up, eight down crazy since the day she was born.” Agent O’Peia said to finish her list, summoning a copy of the DSM to join the other books, although he didn’t quite parse her strange Chinese idiom. “Now, if we were talking about just Tanya, without Mary in the picture, I’d quote one of Boolie’s papers about how fragile infant minds are and how the burden of memories would break them… except that Mary’s just fine, and she apparently went through a war. So it’s something different.” Sasha wasn’t quite sure that was true. Mary had some kind of entity in her mind that she claimed assisted her in acting the part of a child, but if Tanya adapted in a similar way that ended up creating the Heartless Machine...
“What is your hypothesis?” Agent Nein said insistently. She really needed to get to the point, although her reasoning was appreciated.
“Well, if she has one past life in one part of her mind… Why not more?” Agent O’Peia concluded. “If the life you saw was her first life… who’s to say this was the second? Maybe it’s the third? Or even fourth?” Four would fit the number of castles, assuming Milla’s suppositions are accurate. They usually were.
Milla gasped at the proposal. “Of course… if she had another life before this one where she was a girl, that would explain why she seemed dysmorphic with the male form rather than the reverse…” It was a common enough ‘dark secret’ that Psychonauts agents were trained to recognize the signs of it.
“Well, it’s also possible she was just trans in the first life.” Agent O’Peia pointed out, not really invested but bringing it up out of obligation.
“She’s always disliked being overtly feminine, dresses and such, so I don’t think so.” Milla said, shooting down the point. “I’ve been trying to get her to dress more cutely, let her get more comfortable with her body, and I was going to teach her how to apply makeup soon, but… I should probably stop.” With this new information… maybe, maybe not. It is a parent’s obligation to push their child’s boundaries, at times. To prepare them for the pressures of society. It’s a long-term concern, anyway.
More immediately… “But where does the evidence of mind control come in?” Sasha said, bringing attention to the point that was not properly discussed.
Agent O’Peia gave a frustrated noise. “The fact that the damage is glowing is clearly relevant somehow.” She said, “But I don’t think we’re going to get an answer worth anything except from Tanya’s own mouth.”
“Do you think she knows what the problem is?” Milla asked, her stress apparent. She was beating herself up over her parenting, definitely. Sasha sent her some reassurance.
“No question in my mind. I’m 100% on that.” Agent O’Peia replied. For someone like her, such an assertion was rare, and should be taken seriously. “Look, you mentioned she was Japanese in her first life. Westerners don’t really get the degree in which face matters.” Ah, that cultural context would be relevant, wouldn’t it? Her front castle might as well be called Face Castle, after all. “Same thing happened in Hong Kong, it doesn’t matter what the problem is, it’s not a problem if you can ignore it. If her formative years were in that kind of culture…” She harrumphed. “The reason she was so adamant about not getting examined was because she knew exactly how bad it was from day one.” She held up a single finger, which she then twirled around her ear to mime Tanya being crazy.
“Milla mentioned that her education was in economics.” Sasha pointed out. She didn’t have the training to properly evaluate her own mental state.
“Don’t you nitpick me, young man.” Agent O’Peia said warningly. “She thinks she’ll be locked up if the truth comes out because she thinks she deserves to be locked up. She thinks that if she was in our shoes, that’s the call she’d make.” That… did make sense. One of the most common mistakes one can make is assuming that other people would come to the same conclusion you would. “If she really was the crazed war criminal that Mary thinks she is… We might agree with that measure once the cards are on the table.” She added, more somberly.
Sasha shuddered to contemplate what kind of prison would be necessary to restrain a psychic of Tanya’s strength and skill. The Vault, appropriately for the Psychonaut’s most secure prison, doubled as a mental hospital, but would it even be enough? The psychic restraints they used had weaknesses, and he couldn’t, in good conscience, use the lethal contingencies that were usually used to prevent the prisoners from exploiting them.
Milla objected to Agent O’Peia’s statement on more emotional grounds. “We will not be locking Tanya up.” She said with finality. “If she had some kind of psychotic alternate personality like Lucrecia did, there’s been plenty of opportunity for it to come out, and it hasn’t.”
“Except that the mind is very complex and delicate.” Agent O’Peia observed. “And you just ripped out a part of it that was suppressing most of her emotions.” She laughed amusedly, in the way that made the interns call her a witch. “If she had her own Maligula… don’t you think that the Heartless Machine was suppressing it, too? Mental entities are frequently adaptations to the mind’s environment. If there was a suppressive one… That meant that Tanya wanted, at some point, for something to be suppressed.”
Milla wavered in her conviction. “Well, I suppose if she started going on a violent rampage or something…” She hedged. “Maybe some temporary measures could be needed.” She coughed. “You know, until treatment could be applied.” Sasha immediately remembered the camp’s stock of restraints. Milla objected strenuously to their presence, but if they were needed…
“I’m tempted to ask Truman to send you Morceau…” Agent O’Peia said, letting her worry show. “As much of a doofus as he is in physical combat, he’s one of our best when it comes to hypnosis… She should be vulnerable to it if she’s got the mental damage you’ve described.”
“We’re not hypnotizing her.” Milla said, but it was a weak objection. She knew she’d be overruled if Cassie thought it best.
But there were other reasons to not do that. “For one, she has mental defenses. Good ones.” Sasha pointed out. “For two, she’d see any attempt as equivalent to imprisonment, which will cause the problem we’re attempting to avert.” Which was not an entirely unreasonable position to take, really. Properly executed hypnosis was essentially just another form of imprisonment. It was Agent Oleander’s specialty.
“You’ve lost your objectivity.” Scolded Agent O’Peia, not unfairly. “You didn’t have to subdue over a dozen berserk teenagers with combat training the last time this kind of threat was around.” Ah, that was a good point. Sasha had read the after action reports of that mission, and the details were… grisly. “Things don’t always work out like they do in stories, as much as it pains me to admit it.” Such an admission was tantamount to admitting that she wasn’t objective either, but the sentiment was still valid.
Sasha’s Agent archetype sent a notification of… an explosion? From Milla’s startled expression, she was receiving the same message. “We should go.” Sasha said before rushing back to his body.
Something tells him that this is more than just some rambunctious campers…
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The Psychonauts, fundamentally, were an organization about three things. First and foremost, it was to learn about the human mind. Second only to that, was protecting the health and sanctity of those minds. Lastly, it was about protecting the public from the very real physical dangers of psychic powers, either from the actions of the Soviets or from psychics who have lost control of themselves. Other Psychonauts may disagree with the order of those priorities, but Sasha knew that some harm was allowable in the name of progress.
That said, when it came to hours of labor, the vast majority of the Psychonaut’s resources were spent on that last one. There were good reasons for that, as the contributions from the various governments tended to earmark specifically for research, medicine, and security purposes, and while the bean counters weren’t entirely compliant with those limits, stretching the definition of security-related spending for more medical and research budget, the security actions of the Psychonauts always did receive the lion’s share of contributions.
As such, as a psychonaut junior enough to have very little control over what duties they are assigned, Sasha has accumulated quite a lot of physical combat experience. Unlike many in the Psychonauts, he didn’t experience much degradation in his combat prowess when fighting in the physical world rather than the mental one. It was one of the reasons why he and Milla were considered rising stars in the organization. Enough to become named characters in True Psychic Tales, as of the start of the year.
So when Sasha burst out of the small office he had in the main building to the outside, he didn’t feel completely outmatched when he saw two small girls savagely beating each other up hovering above the crater that used to be a psychoisolation chamber.
Tanya was wearing her swimsuit still, for some reason, with a white T-shirt that had a big tear in it from something, and was coated in a dark red telekinetic aura. Her hands weren’t even visible underneath the psychic fists, which were rendered into claws that she savagely attacked Mary with. Occasionally, she released a PSI blast more powerful than Sasha had ever seen before, obliterating whatever piece of terrain they happen to hit.
Mary, on the other hand, was coated in a gold telekinetic barrier, bright and shining as she defended herself surprisingly expertly against Tanya’s assault. She did not counterattack.
“Hey Counselor?” Ford asked, starling Sasha. “Some of the kids have gotten… a little rowdy.” He coughed wetly. Sasha turned and saw that Ford’s park ranger persona had sustained a rather large wound in his torso. “They’re not staying on the path like I told them to…” Ford swayed as his hand went to a chunk of psitanium that had embedded itself in Ford’s skull. “When did that get there?”
“Milla!” Sasha sent. “Ford is injured, get him medical attention!”
“But Tanya’s gone crazy!” Milla sent back. “I have to-”
“What you need to do is keep Ford and the other campers safe.” Sasha sent back. Milla still hadn’t fully recovered from dealing with the first mental entity. They thought they’d have more time... “I will handle Tanya.” Milla didn’t reply directly, but she started to send the majority of her mental energy to bolster his efforts, so Sasha took that as an agreement with the plan.
“It’s my fault.” Ford said, surprisingly lucidly. “She just reminded me… of painful times. I was more right than I knew.”
Sasha noted that Ford was holding a psychoportal. Grabbing it, Sasha ran towards the battle, checking if it had its hypnotic trance safety setting activated. It did, which was good. He split off his Scientist archetype, allowing it to direct a portion of his telepathy in order to gather additional information. His Agent archetype was recombined and replaced with his Soldier archetype, whom he tasked with managing his shield and levitation powers so he didn’t need to use much focus on them.
Clairvoyance was a fairly versatile power, when you got right down to it. Not only could you directly project your senses into another being’s senses, useful enough on its own, but you could also pick up hints as to how that person sees the world, what they pay attention to, and their opinions of whatever they are experiencing. These things can manifest as synesthesia or hallucinations creating flaws in the feedback you receive, but an experienced Psychonaut is usually quite familiar with a lot of the usual shorthands.
The Scientist archetype reported that Tanya was perceiving Mary as an existential threat, with an additional detail of her registering Mary not as a six year old girl, but instead as the 18 year old war veteran she claimed to be, backed by the divine figure that Mary claims to be backed by. Sasha’s first instinct with this information was that Tanya saw Mary’s memories and was somehow convinced of their reality… but Agent O’Peia’s theory was also a fitting explanation.
Now that Sasha had gotten closer to the battle, which had drifted a fair bit away to an otherwise uninteresting hill, he could hear that both sides were praying… or singing.
“Lord! Give me the strength to overcome this Devil who spurns your mercy and wants nothing more than the blood of the faithful!” Mary prayed as her mental energy surged with her conviction. There was a reason the Vatican’s psychic operatives were so feared, after all.
“There is power in the name of the Lord, to break every chain, break every chain, break every chain!” Tanya sang as she launched another PSI blast that Mary dodged, creating a hole in the hillside. His scientist archetype noted the presence of a previously unknown cave system for future examination.
Still, it was time to announce his presence. The PSI blast that he had been building up was released, striking Tanya without warning and shattering the shield around her left hand right in time to turn a possible evisceration into a love tap.
Tanya's attention turned to Sasha, and his scientist archetype immediately reported that Tanya also saw him as an existential threat, with her specifically remembering the exact appearance of his skull-saw and fusing his appearance with that of another threatening scientist from her memory, one he did not recognize. Admittedly, the white mustache and bushy eyebrows did make him seem more dignified…
Hrm. When did Tanya see his skull-saw? He never extracted the brains of corpses when she was around… right? Milla specifically told him not to do any grisly experiments where Tanya could see them.
No matter. Tanya was laughing wildly in between hymns as she attempted to kill Sasha. Her eyes were brightly glowing a gold color, the exact same gold coloration that occurred when she complained of a headache earlier that day. Ah, consulting with Agent O’Peia before acting was clearly a mistake. He should have insisted on an emergency examination.
Mary’s shining golden PSI blasts distracted Tanya from continuing, the girl screaming in frustration. “Artillery shot!” Tanya declared as they fired a blast of their own, a construct of a rifle appearing that she aimed and fired at the flying six year old.
It was the perfect opening. Sasha released his PSI blast directly in Tanya’s face, shattering the telekinetic aura that protected it, and immediately affixed the psychoportal onto her forehead. Tanya fell into a trance as the psychoportal opened a gateway into her mind, and Sasha quickly leapt mind-first into it.
Hopefully this was still fixable.
Comments
Chris Larson
If I recall Sasha was one of the figures commanding the Devil...that's going to be interesting for him to see.
