Kevin Curry
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Psychoprotective 2.20
🕑 Added 2023-10-03 01:12:54 +0000 UTCOkay, I could not get Bob's mind to be anything but a dry snoozefest, so I wrote a Halloween party instead. Next chapter will be the last of Book 2.
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Tanya stood up, stretching out her joints and muscles from the inactivity. She checked the clock; the whole ordeal took about four hours. She telekinetically opened the meditation lounge’s minifridge and fetched a bottle of water for each of them.
After taking a deep drink, Mom smiled. “How are you feeling, Sasha?”
“Like I really want some bubblegum.” Agent Nein replied after his own drink, taking out the pack of gum he had brought with him for exactly this purpose. He put two of them into his mouth, chewing on it as it satisfied his nicotine craving via the placebo effect. Hypnosis was useful, at times.
Tanya threw the remnants of the bottle away, having downed it entirely. “Success.” She declared. “This would normally be the point where I start rattling off aftercare instructions for the procedure, but I’m sure you know them better than I do.”
“Indeed.” Agent Nein said, easily talking around the gum. An awkward silence descended, only the sounds of chewing breaking it up.
Tanya started to move to the evit. “Well, I think that’s everything. I’ve got some more preparing to do, so…” a pink telekinetic hand seized the back of her jumpsuit.
“I know what you’re doing, Tanya.” Mom said warningly. “We need to talk.”
“Do we have to?” Tanya asked, deliberately putting a bit of a whine in her voice. She’s avoided this conversation for literal years.
“Yes.” Mom said, putting her foot down metaphorically. She was still seated, so she couldn’t do it literally. “Sasha?”
It did help a bit that Agent Nein also didn’t seem to want to have this conversation. “Tanya…” He started, before pausing. He bought some time by placing another stick of gum in his mouth.
“Sasha!” Mom scolded.
“...I would prefer it if you referred to me more familiarly.” Agent Nein said quickly.
Oh, is that all? “No.” Tanya replied.
Neither of the two adults expected that answer. They stared at Tanya, who crossed her arms in defiance. Sasha continued to chew his gum, brows furrowed as he processed the answer. He looked at Mom. “You were wrong.” He said.
She palmed her face, sighing in frustration. “Why not, Tanya?” She asked, voice dripping with annoyance as she side-eyed Agent Nein.
“You have been dating for six years.” Tanya deadpanned. Before they could object to the timeframe, she continued, barreling over their attempts to speak. “In that time, you have never once, in my presence, actually called your constant outings dates. You have never introduced yourselves as boyfriend and girlfriend to anyone.” She really didn’t want to bring this last bit up, but she had no choice. “Further, while I appreciate this last point, I don't even know with one hundred percent certainty that you two have had sex.” She was only… ninety-five percent sure. She always made herself scarce when it looked like things were approaching that direction.
She took a calming breath. “I can understand how, at first, you may have attempted that circumspect treatment of your relationship in some misguided attempt to protect my mental state.” You know, back when they didn’t know that she wasn’t really a child. “But that excuse became meaningless four years ago. I refer to you as Agent Nein because it is respectful. Even in America, addressing a paternal figure by their first name is not done.”
“So you do see me as a father figure?” Agent Nein said, touched.
"I'm not entirely sure what it would feel like if I did." Tanya replied honestly. "I think I do, but it's not all that different from the bonds I've had with my men, and I certainly didn't think that of them." Her feelings for them were more maternal, to be honest. She went and sat in her mother's floating lap, falling into an affectionate embrace. “But that is our respective social positions. As a potential stepfather, you must be addressed respectfully. If you want me to change how I refer to you, either break up or propose.” She shrugged. “I don’t care which.”
Mom seemed pensive at most of Tanya’s short rant, but was absolutely aghast at the last sentence. “You don’t care?” She asked incredulously.
Tanya shrugged again. “It doesn’t really affect me.” She replied, “While I do love you and appreciate your care of me," to an extent that would spark ridicule if fully known, "-and while the legalities have yet to catch up, I am an adult. If you wish to marry Agent Nein, it’s not any of my business. If not, it’s still not any of my business.”
“It would affect you, though.” Mom said.
“Not much. You wanted honesty, you're getting honesty.” Tanya corrected, relaxing deeper into her arms. “If you break up amicably, I will be able to consider him a friend and peer, and refer to him more casually. If you get married, he would legally be my father and it would thus be appropriate to refer to him as such. Both outcomes are acceptable.” Mom looked like she was about to clarify her meaning, Tanya held up a hand to stop her. “I know that if you two were to marry, it would complicate the living situation. That would certainly affect me, but I was planning on insisting on a change on that front anyway, as sharing a room with Mary will soon become problematic.” it already has, but it's still something that willful ignorance can handle. For now. "In short, I'm a big girl now, I can handle change."
The silence this time was less awkward, and more contemplative. Agent Nein’s gum chewing was still present, but ignorable. "...For psychics, we’re not very good at communicating.” Agent Nein concluded.
Tanya couldn’t help it. She laughed at the irony,
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Something that Agent Nein and Tanya had in common was a general apathy towards ceremony. Mom liked parties, but apparently thought that weddings were ‘financial deathtraps meant to entrap the imaginations of women into believing that their highest aspiration should be marriage’, so contrary to Tanya’s expectations, the two of them registered their marriage with paperwork within the day.
Tanya was somewhat less surprised at how quickly they secured a nice four bedroom four bathroom house. Both of her parents were rather wealthy from their True Psychic Tales income, and given that real estate was cheap in this decade, the hardest part was finding one for sale, and given that Mrs. Zanotto was a real estate agent…
Psychic powers, particularly when split among so many people, made the act of moving a breeze. Seventy two hours after their discussion, Tanya was already considering whether or not she should add a planter to the windowsill in her new room. There was plenty of space, after all, and the window was south facing, so sunlight wouldn’t be an issue, and herbaphony meant that even normally delicate plants could thrive past any mistakes she makes in their care.
“This is a pretty nice room.” Helmut said. He and Bob had volunteered (or rather, Helmut had volunteered Bob) to help them move, as unnecessary as it was. Helmut’s body was restored enough by now that he was living in it again, although he had to use some special leg, back, and arm braces that Tanya had designed to reduce the stress moving around put on his body, and use a cane on top of that. If having real senses again gave him any trouble, Tanya didn’t hear about it.
…Well, she actually designed them to be used in power armor after an argument about a comic book superhero with Razputin, but they’re much more useful as medical braces. Unfortunately, like most psychic technology they could only be used by psychics, so the patent was not particularly profitable. One of many things she’ll have to remake once she cracks that barrier.
“It’s fairly large, yes.” Tanya agreed, “Good insulation, “ which wasn’t asbestos, she checked, “-good natural light from this window, “ which was also larger than the door in total area, she brought in all of her stuff through it. It was the whole reason she requested this particular room. “-and the walk-in closet is nice.” Plus her own bathroom. The last time she had one of those was when she was living alone in Japan.
“Are you going to keep the paint?” Helmut asked. This room had been painted by the previous owners, a starry sky on the ceiling that was astronomically accurate, with the constellations drawn in.
“The paint isn’t lead based, so yes.” Tanya replied. It was fantastically done, it would be a waste to paint over it. “The lack of light fixtures is a touch annoying, but it’s nothing an extra lamp or two can’t fix.” If she really needed to, she could create light with pyrokinesis. She looked down at the spacious suburban backyard, watching Bob section off the far side of it into a garden with Mary, who was quite excited at the idea of having a flower garden. The grass literally crawled away from or through the fence, leaving bare soil for planting. …It would probably be easier to just carve a section of the garden for herself than to install a planter. “It looks like Bob’s having a good day.” She observed.
Helmut immediately looked away, his guilt obvious. “Well, you know, there are good days and bad days.”
“...He’s drunk, isn’t he?” Tanya asked.
“No, of course not.” Helmut said immediately. “He only had one drink, he’s just a little buzzed.”
Tanya sighed. The sad thing was, it seemed to work: Bob had been smiling and, while he was still a rather withdrawn person, had been more or less pleasant company as he assisted the move. “Have you convinced him to allow me to assist?” She asked Helmut.
“...I’m wearing him down.” Helmut replied, “He’s convinced that you’ll hate him if you saw his mind in full.” After a moment, he added: “That anyone would. He barely lets me inside.”
“I know that feeling.” Tanya said softly. “I know it very well.”
“...How’d you get past it?” Helmut asked.
Tanya had to think hard to remember that. What was she thinking? “I fooled myself into thinking that I could get help for something small, more concrete, without the truth getting out.” She eventually said. It was not her finest moment, intellectually. “Things degenerated from there. Ended up with a brain that was held together by a thread” granted, ‘a mother’s love’ was one of the better options for mental anchors, “-at the end of it, but Mom was able to take a month or two piecing me back together.”
Helmut looked aghast at the news. “But I had way worse problems than an addiction.” Tanya clarified. Although her actual alcohol addiction was so quiet that it was easily removed as part of the treatment. They didn’t even need to swap out the cravings, although they did anyway, to milk. “This won’t be that bad.”
“You sure?” Helmut said, fearfully.
“Positive.” Tanya assured him. “It was my fault it ended that badly, so unless he’s going to try and stick his metaphorical hand in a blender while trying to get help, it will be fine.”
“Good.” Helmut said to himself. “That’s great.” After a pause, he asked: “What exactly is the blender in this metaphor?”
“Ford.” Tanya deadpanned.
“Oh yeah, that’ll do it.”
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Tanya expected Bob’s mind to give some sort of difficulty or drama, but Dad’s mind gave her unrealistic expectations. It was just big. She did have to clean up a LOT of glass though. She ended up constructing greenhouses for the man, imposing her psychic will to use those to section off his mind instead of the giant bottles he was using. So instead of a barren wasteland of a planetoid covered with water, she left his mind as a grand garden, a much healthier place.
Well, she had to beat him up psychically to make those changes, destroy a few nightmares, but it seemed to work; he seemed much happier now.
“How do you get them so big?” Lili exclaimed as she marveled at Bob’s pumpkins. “This one makes Dad’s pumpkins look tiny!” It was a little bit of an exaggeration. Grand Head Zanotto’s pumpkins were of a fine size for conversion into Jack-o-Lanterns.
“Good fertilizer, plenty of water, and lots of love.” Bob replied with a smile, patting the oversized gourd proudly, “You can thank Helmut for that last part.”
“Aw, thank you Uncle Helmut!” Lili shouted at the man as he scooped out one of the big pumpkins.
“You’re welcome, Lili!” Helmut said immediately, not even paying attention as to why.
While it was improper to decorate the Motherlobe for Halloween, as it was a high security facility, the on base housing complex had no such limits. Every Psychonaut was invited to the party, which lasted all day.
There were costumes, of course. Lili was dressed up as a witch, with a black pointed hat and fake nose, and she carried a broom with a stuffed black cat strapped to the bristles. Bob was dressed as the ferryman of death, which was like dressing as the grim reaper, but he held an oar instead of a scythe. Helmut was dressed as a transvestite lumberjack, which made sense in context: there was a song, you see.
Tanya was dressed as a baseball player, specifically Babe Ruth. She also had a bag full of the chocolate bars named after him to give out to the children. It was also an excuse to show off her special baseball bat filled with psitanium, which she made on a bet to see who could create the better melee weapon out of the stuff. It completely destroyed Otto’s psitanium katana.
“Now Lili, I’m not going to let you carve the pumpkin unless you help me empty it out.” Mrs. Zanotto said to her daughter warningly. “Don’t you go pouting at Uncle Bob to get out of it.”
Lili groaned, but when she saw Bob look away from her and drink a bottle of cola, distancing himself from the matter, she huffed and rolled up her sleeves. “Coming, Mom…”
“I think that’s the last of it, Tanya.” Helmut said as he flung the last of the pulp to the ground, gasping from the exertion. He had taken to psychic reinforcement well enough, but he could still only exert himself for twenty minutes at a time before needing a break. He sat down on his wheelchair. “You go ahead with the precise stuff.”
Tanya glanced at her reference design. It was a pencil drawing of Helmut and Bob, and while she would ordinarily be rather hesitant to make such a complex carve, correlating the thickness of the pumpkin with the shade of gray used in the picture was simple enough. She created telekinetic blades on her fingers and started carving.
“Hey Tanya!” Mary said joyously, dressed in her own costume of an angel. It was fortunate that she had learned the temperature regulation technique, because she sure needed it with that breezy dress. “Me and the girls are going to go bob for apples and then make caramel apples out of them, you wanna come?”
Tanya perked up. Halloween had the best seasonal treats. “Give me two minutes.” She said, waving them off. “I’ll catch up.” She telepathically signaled Helmut, and with his help she enveloped herself and the pumpkin with Time Warp, allowing her to speed up without compromising precision. It was draining to do this, but if she limits how much she moves through space, it’s not as bad as it could be, and Helmut’s feed of power helped even more.
Once the time warp ebbed, Mary and her friends, dressed as a variety of things without any unifying theme Tanya could spot, were still there, looking at Tanya in awe. Tanya used hydrokinesis to clean off the stray juices off from her hand and the pumpkin, and presented it to Helmut. “What do you think?”
“Now that’s cool.” Helmut replied, grinning. “I can handle the simpler stuff, thanks for the artisanal touch. ”
“That’s so cool!” Exclaimed one of Mary’s friends. Tanya tried to remember her name. She wanted to say… Rachel? She was dressed like a vampire. “How did you do that?”
“Practice.” Tanya replied, “Also, Telekinesis.” She created psychic blades on her hand and willed them visible. “It’s an advanced technique, but I learned to mold and carve by taking art classes in college.” Well, she learned to telekinetically mold from the art classes. Those classes used tools to carve, so she learned with those. She may have taken more art classes than she needed, but the skills were quite useful when creating things with the APES.
“Yeah whatever.” Mary said, grabbing Tanya’s free hand. “Come on, let’s go!”
Tanya let Mary drag her to the apple bob. Laughter and fun was had as Tanya took off her baseball cap and dunked her head into the water and utterly failed to retrieve an apple without cheating. She did cheat, though, so she had her apple, which was promptly stabbed with a stick and dipped in the hot caramel as she watched Mary and her friends repeat the feat.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice that, Tanya.” Cassie said warningly as she offered Tanya a bowl of nuts to coat her caramel apple with.
Tanya shrugged, running the hot caramel coating through the nuts. “Mary didn’t, and that’s all that matters.” If she didn’t completely out-do Mary in everything that wasn’t being feminine, she’d have to seriously rethink their whole relationship. Mary finally got an apple, after six goes at it. She didn’t cheat though, Tanya was watching for it.
“Do you feel famous yet?” Cassie asked curiously.
“I’m here instead of at the comic book store watching people get the new issue, so no.” Tanya replied. “But new comic book day loses out to Halloween, that’s just how the cookie crumbles.” The local nerds knew about Helmut’s return anyway, although he’s lightened up on the flirting for Parson’s sake. She’ll sign autographs on Friday.
“It is rather funny that they were able to put Helmut’s issue out on Halloween.” Cassie said, smiling at the serendipity.
Idly, Tanya wondered whether or not Lucrecia would see the issue. She sent a signed one to Razputin… She took a bite out of her caramel apple and switched to telepathy. “Speaking of that debacle, how is progress on Ford?”
“Boolie thinks that we’ll need to move him to another environment if we want to help him.” Cassie explained, “But Hollis won’t allow it. The personalities you helped are locked up tight, and the new one exploits the safeguard to stop us from using it.”
“I imagine she’s happy that Ford’s new personality provides some level of value to the organization?” Tanya guessed, before taking another bite of her apple. Delicious.
“Right on the money.” Cassie said, sighing. “She says it’s because he’s stable now and she doesn’t want to risk it, but that’s what she means.”
“Hey Tanya.” Mary said, her own caramel apple finished. “Otto’s giving rides in his hovertank. You wanna come with? Dad asked me to come with him.”
She’s driven it, but Tanya smiled anyway. “Right behind you, Mary.” Tanya waved goodbye to Cassie as she walked away, and the old woman waved back politely.
Otto’s hovertank was about the size of a delivery van, with a turret on top with a separate seat. Wisely, the scientist had disabled the turret before letting children near the vehicle, in addition to removing some of the armor panels to act as windows as the tank flew around slowly. “Here we have the quarry that the Motherlobe is built next to. Normally, if we flew around here, we’d be shot down by those turrets down there, and there.” Otto explained, pointing out the anti air guns. “But we have permission, so it’s fine.”
Dad, dressed as a different famous baseball player, Walter Johnson, added: “The shield on the Vanguard can take a few shots either way.”
“Are we gonna get shot?” Asked little Dogen Boole, Compton’s five year old grandson.
“Can you tell them to shoot us? That would be so cool!” Sam, his older sister, exclaimed.
“No, no.” Otto said calmly. “Hollis said I wasn’t allowed to field test around children after the last time.” The collected children groaned in disappointment.
“We won’t tell!” Said a child Tanya didn’t know the name of.
“Sorry, the guy working the turret today is a real tattletale.” Otto countered. He was really good with children, Tanya had noticed. Helmut said it was because the man never really grew up, although he phrased it differently. “But as soon as we get out of his line of sight, who wants to do some loop de loops?” The cheering was unanimous.
Mary, from her position in Dad’s lap, looked around. “Uh… wait a second. Is this safe?”
Tanya said out loud: “Maybe.” But followed it up with a telepathic “Yes. The internal kinetics are designed with such events in mind.”
Otto laughed as he accelerated the hovertank, bringing it up and around, and overall impersonating a roller coaster with his flying. Much like magical flight, levitation lost effectiveness at higher elevations, so the hovertank could only go about a hundred meters into the air. This was plenty for the trip, as he brought the maneuvering of the vehicle to its limits.
After he steadied the flight, Otto let the groaning subside before asking: “Everyone okay back there?”
Tanya gathered the contents of the telekinetic buckets that were needed, and flung the ball of vomit out of the window after checking that it would only land in the quarry’s water. “I think it might be wise to come in for a landing.” She suggested.
“Yes, some of the crew seem a bit ill, tank captain.” Dad said solemnly.
“Ah, casualties.” Otto said faux-ruefully. “Tragic.”
Once the tank was unloaded, Tanya pickpocketed some gum out of her father’s pocket, popping half of it into her mouth and passing Mary the other half as she went to retrieve her bat.
“Here you are, darling.” Mom said, handing over the weapon. She was dressed as a mermaid, using levitation to make the fact that she couldn’t walk with that tail irrelevant. “Are you having fun?”
Tanya nodded, twirling her bat to refamiliarize herself with the weight. “Halloween is probably my favorite American holiday.” Mostly because it wasn’t associated with christianity, but she liked it on its own merits as well. “Candy and cosplay, two things that go very well with each other.” She took some of the gummy fishes that were within reach. “None of the teenagers have hit on me, either. I think they’ve learned their lesson from last year.”
“Or they’ve noticed that you have a weapon.” Mom retorted with a giggle. “It looks like Helmut’s setting up a stage, do you want to join him?”
Tanya’s head snapped towards Helmut’s distinctive psychic presence. He had her karaoke machine, and was setting it up. “Yes. Yes I do.” She started to fly over towards the stage. “Love you Mom!”
This was not how she expected her first few months of being a Psychonaut to go, but at least it all worked out. All she needs to do is avoid drama and get her ticket to the billionaire club finished.
But how hard could that be?
