Kevin Curry
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Psychoprotective Book 2 Chapter 17
🕑 Added 2023-08-14 14:01:00 +0000 UTCI'm moving soon, so I'm pretty much going to say that it would take a miracle of inspiration for me to be able to write the next chapter in time. But I have another Summon Perfect Warlady chapter waiting in the wings, so you get that instead.
Just FYI.
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As much as she’d like to claim the nap was just a fakeout to confer with the others trapped in here with her… dealing with the energy overflow from them channeling mental energy into her was quite taxing, mentally. From experience, she knew that extreme fatigue was normal after exerting one’s empowered survival drive as well, so while she didn’t know for sure that Maligula took frequent naps, the only reason they wouldn’t know that is if Lucrecia took pains to conceal those moments of weakness.
So when she awoke, she stretched fearlessly, looking around for the promised documents. Seeing no such thing, she growled and stormed into the attached bathroom, turning on the shower to collect water to threaten people with.
Hang on… Damn. After she handled pressing matters, she left the bathroom with a quartet of water snakes, walking out of the room to find… an obsequious man presenting her a folder full of papers. “The documents you demanded, Lady Maligula.” He said, his voice quavering.
…Yeah, this was fine. “You may live.” She said, to the man’s extreme relief. “Are you familiar with the contents?” She asked.
“No, Lady Maligula. I am your lowly servant.” The simpering man said, his fear spiking upwards.
“Hm. Take me to whoever can answer any questions I have.” Tanya commanded as she started to read through the documents. “Kevan, preferably.”
“Yes Lady Maligula.” The servant said, quickly walking ahead.
Keeping with the ‘in charge’ vibe, Tanya followed at an unhurried pace, not even looking where she was going with her eyes, although she had a snake keeping a weather eye out. Tanya sent a mental message to Helmut and Cassie, who will fill in the other two. After a few seconds, mental energy started trickling back in, and her awareness expanded as she stopped needing to dedicate so much attention to her aquatic threat display. “I want to know where the Psychonauts are held, too. Point them out if we pass.” Tanya commanded.
“Ah, they are down this next corridor here, Lady Maligula.” The servant said quickly. “The cells are at the end.”
“I assume they have been treated at least as well as a prisoner of war should?” Tanya asked rhetorically.
“I so not know, Lady Maligula. I am not involved with the prison.” The servant said immediately. From the way his fear rose slowly and screamed out of him, that was a definite lie.
“Instruct the warden that all prisoners are to be treated well. They are mine, and they will be tormented solely at my command.” Tanya commanded. “I look forward to interrogating them.”
“Yes, Lady Maligula.” The servant said, before presenting a door that was slightly fancier than the others. “Lord Galochio is beyond this door, in his office. I will speak with the warden immediately to convey your will.”
“Do so.” Tanya said, affecting a sneer. After the servant flees, Tanya opened the door with hydrokinesis, slamming the door open. “Kevan.” She said, glancing about the office. It was filled with psitanium devices and books, a treasure trove of knowledge. “Anything to report?”
Tanya had been as rude and domineering that she thought she could get away with, all to test the man’s patience. He clearly thought himself the Master of the Maligula project, and would not appreciate his project taking everything over.
As expected, Kevan outright glowered in her direction before smoothing over his face and smiling pleasantly. “Ah… no, your Ladyship. Matters are calm, and nothing has come up in the last two hours.”
Tanya put down one of the papers in front of the man. “Why is there no location for the Gzar? Or picture?”
Kevan coughed. “Ah, the Gzar is very security conscious. I have already sent word through the usual channels, but I was never told exactly where his safehouse was.” At Tanya’s glower, he swallowed thickly and added: “I’m fairly certain it’s on the east coast of America?”
“And the picture?” Tanya asked, growling.
“Photographs of the Gzar are hard to come by.” Kevan insisted. “You should be able to recognize him on sight, some of the memories used to restore you belonged to him.” Hopefully the Psychonauts can decrypt them.
Tanya decided that it was a good time to have a tantrum. She set her snakes out on a statue of the old Gzar, she actually recognized the man from the newspapers she studied that were in Lucrecia’s file. It was crushed to powder, and Tanya gave a pleased huff. “...Take me to the Psychonauts.” She demanded.
“That may not be the best idea.” Kevan said calmly. “They are currently dangerous, even imprisoned. They are only physically restrained, not psychically. They may attack.”
Tanya scoffed. “If they try, I will kill them.” To emphasize her intent, she coated her arm in the water of one of her snakes and formed a water blade that promptly started moving like a chainsaw. “Painfully.” She added.
“As your advisor, I advise against meeting with them. We can still use them, but not if we kill them.” Kevan said, hands splayed placatingly.
Tanya rolled her eyes. “Fine. Take me to Helmut’s body first. They won’t try anything if I have that with me.”
He looked like he was about to object, but Tanya moved the water chainsaw in his direction and he yelped, walking speedily out of the room. “It’s this way, Lady Maligula.”
Tanya smirked as she dismissed the water chainsaw. The plan may have just been ‘pretend to be Maligula, improv from there’, but that just meant everything was going according to plan.
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Helmut’s body was placed in a deep chamber, one whose location was felt in the biting cold. This was clearly near the frozen lake.
It didn’t actually look much like the facsimile in Helmut’s mind. That one had nearly opaque ice, with only the hints of a silhouette revealing the contents.
Unexpectedly, the ice that coated Helmut was crystal clear, one of the wooden carved snuff capsules that the Psychonauts used to store smelling salts in his hands. They were also used for their patented “super sneezing powder”, and a potent tranquilizer that was rarely used. Naturally, this was assuredly the second of those three options.
Hydrokinesis couldn’t lift ice. Not directly, anyway. It could affect non-water liquids, but not solids like ice. It was why Otto brought the hyperglaciator to battle Lucrecia. Which is why Tanya lifted it with ordinary telekinesis, not even bothering to use a water snake to support it. She did, however, take care to conceal the telekinesis hand that would normally appear. It wasn’t actually a necessary thing, but it was considered polite to make them visible when using telekinesis in the Motherlobe, so she had never really gotten back into the habit of doing so invisibly like she used to.
Kevan looked at her suspiciously, but when all of her water snakes hissed in aggression at him he backed off and proceeded to lead her back to the prisoners.
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Right when Kevan was about to turn to the hallway the servant had pointed out, he turned back around and stared at her. “...Lady Maligula, before I show you the prisoners…”
Tanya glanced around, noticing that this segment of hallway that he was standing on was one of the nodes of the psitanium network. If he was confident enough to backtalk, it must be a different network than the one she broke. Or he fixed it during her nap. “What is it?” Tanya asked. “My patience is thinning. Only the value in your continued existence has allowed you this level of leeway.” Tanya glared at the man. “Do not push me further.”
“I’m just concerned about your strange behavior.” Kevan said, his mental energy priming the “ritual circles”. “I’ve never seen you so interested in the minutiae of administration before.”
Is that what he’s thinking? Probably not, but she can’t just bulldoze through this. “You realize I was a General, right? I was not some weapon, doled out to kill the Gzar’s enemies, but a military leader.” Tanya was betting that this man wasn’t actually involved in the administration of the Gzar’s dictatorship when Lucrecia was a general, so she didn’t need to know whether this was true or not.
Kevan hesitated, even that weak argument, confidently stated, chipping away at his conviction. Perfect. Tanya bulled over his next words. “You’re just like those other Generals, assuming that because I’m a woman I can’t handle ‘men’s work’ like the coordination of armies. Do you have any idea how much collateral damage mass hydrokinesis can cause? It was not easy to command the troops to maneuver so only the enemy drowned.” Tanya willed her eyes to glow, having long figured out how to do so at will. “But I did it. Not them, me. I will not be insulted by my own family like this. Now, follow my command and show me the Psychonauts!” Tanya was yelling at the top of her lungs at the end of that, and Kevan’s resolve broke, convinced that he had gotten exactly what he wanted, and regretting every second. Her men were right: she did have acting talent.
They entered the cell room, where Bob and Helmut were in one cell, chained in place, and Cassie was in the other cell with Compton, shackled to the walls. They gasped in shock at the sight of Helmut’s body floating behind her, which she didn’t tell them about so they could be genuinely surprised.
Cassie knew about what they were supposed to be surprised about, though. “Tanya? What happened to you?”
Tanya twisted her face in confusion. “Who? I am Maligula.” She said dramatically. Her water snakes hissed and snapped their jaws to emphasize her statement.
Kevan grinned at their shock, clearly enjoying it. “My mastery of the arcane arts has resurrected my dear cousin, something all of you have made possible.”
“You monster!” Helmut shouted, his fake outrage very convincing.
“You realize that we are international law enforcement, yes?” Compton asked. “Is that really something you should be admitting to?”
Kevan scoffed. “There’s no crime in resurrecting the dead.”
“But there is for brainwashing.” Cassie said.
“Or, in this case,” Tanya said, dropping the Maligula voice. “Attempted brainwashing.” Before Kevan could fully register just how screwed he was, Helmut’s body moved, crashing into the man’s head and knocking him out. One side effect of brains being so absurdly durable in comparison to her other lives was that hitting people in the head to knock them out was FAR safer than it had any right to be. There are many cases of literally skull-cracking force causing no permanent brain damage. It was absurd.
“I see you found my body!” Helmut said joyously. “Look at that handsome devil.”
Tanya coughed, using pyrokinesis followed by cryokinesis to sterilize one of her water snakes before taking a bite out of it. “I forgot that I didn’t spend years acclimating my voice to a lower register in this life. That was unpleasant.” She sent telepathically. She had actually destroyed her voice, she had stopped being able to hold notes while singing at around age fifteen during the war. Of course, at least some of that could have been the mustard gas, some minor remaining damage that she exacerbated.
“You were pretty convincing.” Bob complimented. “I had to double check that you weren’t actually taken over a few times there.”
“Yes, a splendid performance.” Compton said, nodding in agreement. “Now, we should get back to Otto, tell him the good news.”
“And get my body in that defrosting machine.” Helmut added.
“You all do that, I’m going to collect more evidence.” Tanya said, giving Compton the documents. “This should help later Deluginist hunting.”
Now, about that “arcane knowledge”...
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“This is fascinating.” Otto said as he reviewed the notes that Tanya stole from the Deluginist base. “I never would have thought to use that kind of pseudo-valve structure to neutralize aligned energy.”
“It’s bulky.” Tanya pointed out. “But it works. These notes may be what we need to create automated psitanium alignment.”
“Well, all of these structures require a trained user.” Otto said, brow furrowing.
“But the level of expertise needed is lesser.” Tanya argued, bringing out another one of the documents. “If you look here, these allow ‘lesser sorcerers’ to direct power by performing rote actions, without them needing to know what those actions are actually doing. If we can replicate this layer of obfuscation, we can use psychics with only limited training to operate psitanium factory machines. A clear step forward.”
“Ah, I see. If we can improve upon these techniques… Could we create a manual interface?” Otto said with a grin, imagining the possibilities.
“I can’t make heads or tails of any of that.” Helmut said, floating over Tanya’s shoulder. “Especially that stuff.”
“These are in Russian.” Tanya pointed out. “You don’t read Russian.”
“It’s been a long time since we’ve gotten any technical manuals from Soviet designers.” Otto said, “But once we disseminate this stuff, our agents will be able to counter Soviet technology much more effectively.”
“Hollis and Truman will be ecstatic.” Compton said as he sat, translating one of the manuals into English by hand. Cassie was right next to him, doing the same for two books at once. Tanya never could manage to split her attention quite so effectively, assigning one eye and hand to two different archetypes.
A third archetype operated Cassie’s mouth. “Too bad most of that data that Tanya got us is gonna be wasted.”
“Forcing them to scatter and re-organize is plenty of damage.” Tanya said dismissively. “We came here to thaw Helmut’s body, and we’re doing that.”
“Yep! Speaking of, hey Mei! How’re things?” Helmut shouted.
Dr. Zhou shouted back. “This is going to take all night! Don’t worry, this is easy compared to surgery!” She had explained that she had originally gone into general surgery before she was picked up by the cryonics laboratory. Helmut’s thawing body couldn’t be in better hands. She was well acquainted with standing in one place focused and working for ten to twelve hours at a time. She also apparently took ice samples in the Arctic as a hobby, because why not add ‘climate scientist’ to her resume?
Actually, come to think of it, Tanya completely understood the appeal of going to inhospitable lands to take scientific samples, contribute to human knowledge, as a hobby. It’s not like doing that is profitable, and it’s certainly more praiseworthy than, say, climbing the tallest mountain in the world just for bragging rights. The mystique of being an explorer, forging new metaphorical trails in the quest for knowledge…
But the task before her is not in collecting samples. It is instead in innovation, harnessing the power represented by psitanium and leashing it to human ambition. Otto wants to be a brain in a jar in his old age? Foolish. What he needs is an android body that the brain jar can operate.
One of the primary limiting factors of brains that are separate from their bodies is that the amount of psychic power that the mind can wield is unchanged, but the amount it generates is sharply reduced. This is no big deal for short periods of time, but when one needs to consider everyday usage… It is an obstacle.
But these formations, allowing the Galochios to draw on natural deposits like they were tanks of fuel… They had potential. Not directly, of course, but they got around a problem that pops up when you try to use psitanium as a modular component in a device: psitanium was made of mental energy, and there wasn’t really such a thing as ‘neutral’ mental energy. Technicians can get around this by aligning things with the purpose of the device, so while you could theoretically make hot-swappable ‘fuel rods’ of psitanium, the metaphorical ‘fuel mixture’ of the rods would have to be individually tailored to the device.
There were a few powerful weapons in DARPA that used those principles, as Otto consulted with them and Tanya’s played secretary to those meetings before, but they lacked the psychic industrial capacity to translate those weapons into useful quantities for the United States military. Tanya didn’t know if they were mothballed or just put to use by the CIA, Secret Service, or even the IRS, but they were decent pieces of kit, in her expert opinion.
Bob took another swig of the bottle of beer he had taken from the Deluginist hideout. “No lynch mob’s forming yet.” He grumbled. “Not anywhere in my range anyway.” Looking at him, it was easy to forget that Bob was, for years before his alcoholism got out of control, one of the Psychonauts’ best agents. Maintaining surveillance from a few miles away was well within his capabilities, as long as the terrain wasn’t too inhospitable. “The news is out, though.” He gestured to the corner of the room. “Prisoner’s awake too.”
“I got it.” Helmut said, floating to where Kevan was restrained. The Pelican always had an emergency set of restraints, enough to restrain four people, and they could be adjusted to all be put on the same person to restrain powerful psychics. They used two sets for Kevan, as he wasn’t that much of a threat without access to his psitanium tools, but they didn’t know how much of one, so they doubled up to be safe. “Hey man, what the flip did you think you were doing?”
Kevan groaned. “How did you overcome the Crown of Maligula?” He asked, glaring at Tanya.
Tanya gave the man a deadpan stare. “You assumed I was helpless. I was not.” She said, a wry grin tugging at her lips. “Even if you did prevent the Psychic Six from helping me deal with it, which you did not, you could never have succeeded.” Admittedly, it may have ended in her needing to resort to lethal force, but in this case, any outcome where she didn’t end up killing people was a good one. She siphoned water from the air and created a small water snake. “Even if you did succeed, you assumed you could control Maligula. You could not.” Tanya scoffed. “You couldn’t even handle someone pretending to be her. The real thing would not be so easily placated.”
“Definitely.” Helmut added, chuckling. “Lulu was stubborn as a mule and sharp as a whip. She’d see right through your lies.”
“Not that you’ll get another chance.” Compton said, putting down his pen and stretching his fingers. “It won’t take long for you to be sent to The Vault. Even if your crimes were stopped, they were quite heinous indeed.” While psychic recordings were not 100% reliable, they were certainly as reliable as video evidence in the modern day. Theoretically tamperable, but when several the Psychonauts attest to the accuracy of the evidence, it was something of a slam dunk legal case.
“You’ll all regret this. Once Maligula rises again, I will be avenged!” Kevan shouted before one of the restraints repositioned and reshaped itself to keep his mouth shut.
“Shut up.” Tanya said, taking her hand off of her temple.
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After the initial defrosting, Dr. Zhou declared Helmut’s body as being in ‘better condition than Homer’s was’, attributing the improvement to the high levels of mental energy within the hyperice and how that interacted with Helmut’s metabolism as a psychic.
That didn’t mean that Helmut’s body was ready for his brain right away. The thawing machine had many supplementary functions, all dedicated to taking a frozen body and turning it functional again. A form of dialysis cleaned out his blood, a cocktail of pharmaceuticals inserted as well to help break down and remove the worst off, fully necrotized portions of his body. Telekinetic surgery techniques helped close the gaps that were made, and materials to encourage new growth flooded the body. Finally, the nerves were all stimulated by telepathic signals, with unresponsive ones being treated by yet more drugs.
The whole process would take about a week, she had explained, and after then it would be better to let the remainder of the damage heal the slow way, with Helmut’s mind directing it. There were hypnotic techniques that allowed psychics to heal physical damage faster, encouraging cell growth similarly to how herbaphony can allow plants to grow. Helmut would be learning these techniques over that week, as they don’t work very well on other people.
Still, while the thawing needed close attention by a cryonics expert to make sure that only a tiny fraction of the cells necrotize, once the dialysis started Otto was able to take over while everyone loaded things back onto the Pelican.
“So what’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get back in your body?” Tanya asked, mostly just to make conversation. She was already strapped into the copilot’s chair, just waiting for Otto to finish securing the thawing machine.
“Kiss Bobby.” Helmut immediately replied. Well, that was expected.
“Do you want me to fix you something specific to eat?” Bob asked, continuing the conversation. “As your first meal?”
“Don’t say you.” Tanya immediately warned him. Dirty old man…
“Aw.” Helmut whined. “Okay, serious answer, gimme a minute.”
Otto shouted from the back of the jet. “Alright Tanya, get us off the ground. Helmut’s body is as secure as it’s going to get, but I want to be here just in case.”
“Mei’s still asleep.” Cassie informed them. “She’s all strapped in, though.”
“Right. Check your seatbelts, people.” Tanya announced as she connected herself to the telekinetic engine. One of the lesser-talked about parts about piloting these things was how it felt, like you were suddenly astride a great beast that you needed to direct, lest it go out of control without your input. Everyone tended to use different mnemonics to help them, but Tanya liked to focus on the biggest difference between flying personally and flying a machine to help her direct things: the fact that she was sitting down. Placing a hand to her temple to signal to everyone that she was focusing, she slightly bounced in her seat, causing the Pelican to start rising into the air, and by tilting her hips she turned the plane around until it was pointed in the correct direction, then leaned forward by a degree to start moving in earnest.
Something about the movement, either the slight disruption in her balance or the shift in the mental energy, disturbed Dr. Zhou enough to wake up. “Hva?” After a moment of looking around, she seemed to understand what was going on. “Oh, right. The cultists. So where are we going?”
“The Motherlobe.” Tanya replied, “As you surmised, staying in Grulovia would be ill-advised. We will return you and your equipment to Norway when they are no longer needed.”
“Or we could just buy you a plane ticket once we’re back in the States and ship the machines later.” Compton added.
“No, I’ll stay.” Dr. Zhou said, unbuckling her seat and standing up to stretch. “My colleagues wouldn’t let me hear the end of it if I didn’t document the process from start to finish. I trust Dr. Mentalis to know what needs documenting or not, but one of us needs to be at hand at all times.”
“Sending just one doctor seems irresponsible when you put it like that.” Tanya said idly, splitting her attention between this and communicating with air traffic control. Not Grulovian air traffic control, but the Hungarian one.
Dr. Zhou giggled. “Ah, you’re lucky you got me. No one else wanted to go to Grulovia because it’s an Eastern Bloc country.” She paused, thinking on the matter. “Actually, I could probably call for another one or two doctors if we’re going to the States.”
“I’ll send a request, then.” Compton said, “Home base will contact your organization and hopefully we’ll get enough doctors or nurses for the shifts to be reasonable.”
“That’s cool.” Dr. Zhou said, a mischievous grin on her face for the minor pun. “Working with the Psychonauts is so convenient, you can just contact anybody from anywhere.”
“Well, I’m sure cell phone technology will mature enough to accomplish a similar feat soon enough.” Tanya said, hanging up the radio. “I can’t wait.”
