Psychoprotective (Youjo Senki/Psychonauts)

[Requiem_Jeer]

This is a post from my snippet thread, but it's got enough chapters that splitting it off into it's own thread seemed appropriate.
Found here.

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This orphanage was smaller than the last one. Well, it wasn't called an orphanage, but a 'group home', but Tanya always preferred calling things as what they were.

At that thought, Tanya stilled, and once again repeated her mental mantra. "I am Tanya Dosva, and I am six years old." As usual, the caretaker, a single woman for the eight kids in the converted church, gave her a concerned look, which was to be expected, given that she had telepathic abilities. Reminding oneself of one's name and age was not exactly a normal thought, but it was better than the alternative.

She should know, given how she was constantly bombarded with the normal, dreadfully boring thoughts of the other children. In this world, 'magic' was nonexistent, instead it was a mostly-normal world in the 1960s, only a decade and a half earlier than her first date of birth. The exception was in that 'psychic abilities' were very real, run by an Interpol-like NGO known as the Psychonauts. They were fairly secretive, but given that they intervened when a powerful psychic caused massive disasters in the Eastern European country known as Grulovia, there wasn't any realistic way they could go back into hiding after that, so they pivoted from their roots in research to their current priorities.

The only question was, what kind of organization were they? If you believe their marketing, they're basically super-spies that promote justice and halt the nefarious deeds of evil psychics, but that was far from a reliable source. If they had a psychic child known to them, were they the type to kidnap and indoctrinate them? Unclear. Worse, Tanya's status as an orphan opened up a perfectly legal avenue for such kidnapping. The fact that Miss Milla was telepathic but still mostly free was a promising sign, but far from definitive.

"Tanya..." Miss Milla said, scolding. "Come here and let me hug you."

Immediately, Tanya stood up and presented herself to her guardian, and was promptly picked up and placed on her lap before being embraced. "Always such a worrier." Miss Milla said with a fake smile. "You're still a kid, Tanya. You're too young to be worrying about careers and conspiracies. Just trust me, I won't ever let anything happen to you." When literal psychic spies were involved, Tanya held no illusions on how effective their amateurish psychic efforts would be.

Milla said nothing to that musing, only tightening the embrace.

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"Tanya, I'm here! The fire's gone, you can calm down now! It's safe, let me in!"

Tanya didn't know how long she had been shielding herself. Psychic powers, guided through the memories of magic from their second life, turned out to be able to emulate pretty much all of the various magical effects she remembered, although at a lower power level.

This was a boon, in the sense that it did not require infrastructure in the form of an Operations Orb. But also a bane, in that any loss of self-control had a tendency to manifest psychic phenomena, such as odd chilling sensations, causing others to hear voices, and objects moving through random telekinetic shoves. Tanya had plenty of self-control, of course, but while Tanya prided themselves on being able to handle any kind of potential guilt or moral concern that the Great War posed, as they had no other choice to survive in that hellish world… Tanya could not claim an immunity to what was then known as 'shell shock'. Years of exploiting reflex enhancement formula, experiencing life or death situations, gambling with the lives of others… It was almost merciful of Being X to remake her as a baby again.

"Hmm, I've never seen anyone manifest a psychic shield for this long before. It's been hours, you say?"

"Yes. I woke up early and went to go get some groceries, no more than a half hour, the nice ma- nevermind, when I came back, everything was on fire! I heard their screams... their final thoughts... But then I realized I couldn't hear Tanya! Her thoughts can be so very loud when she wants them to be. So when the fire was over, I checked around and here she was."

While Tanya wasn't thrilled to have accumulated even more years of being barely able to move and needing every small matter handled for her, it did allow her some time to regather herself. It did seem to give Miss Milla the impression that Tanya needed a lot more care and attention than any of the other children, when the opposite was true, but Tanya was not so foolish as to disregard the value of being the matron's favorite when it came to assuring her charge's safety.

Unfortunately, while Tanya's self control was above all expectations of any age, much less the one this life was… that didn't mean they could control their own dreams. One of the odd quirks of this life was that this new, psychic brain seemed incapable of producing pleasant dreams. Well, that wasn't quite accurate. Some dreams were quite pleasant. That what was made them horrible. Fortunately, Tanya rarely recalled specifics of these dreams for very long, retaining only the barest outlines about half the time, only recalling which flavor of unpleasantness it was the other half of the time.

"Hrm, I can't seem to penetrate the shield with my own telepathy either."

The issue was that these nightmares meant that the psychic phenomena were limited to when Tanya slept, and the power of the manifestations tended to match the emotional strength of the outburst… so the chills created frost on windows in summer, the hallucinations were screams of pain and rage, and the telekinesis tended to put dents in the wall.

For some damned reason, however, there wasn't a single psychic that was famous for setting things on fire with their mind. Specifics on what psychics can accomplish is hard to come by, with the only real source being the official Psychonauts Comic Book, True Psychic Tales.

"Oh no, you don't think she heard them too? She must have started shutting it out! She always was so fussy about her privacy, always repeating her name and age to herself whenever she suspected I could hear her thoughts. She's gotten pretty good at keeping her own thoughts in recently."

As such, it was quite a shock to find that the latest nightmare about the type 95's influence, interrupted by the call of nature, had provoked a spontaneous emission of pyrokinesis in a very flammable orphanage. As such, Tanya resorted to their most well-practiced psychic power, that of emulating the mage shell to protect themselves from the flames.

"More than a talent, a practiced one. It's worse than I thought."

"Can't you do something? Maybe some gizmo?"

If Tanya had an operations orb, she would have been able to do more than just maintain the shield and oxygen formulas. She could be looking around, tune the shield to not block literally everything, leaving her in a world of silent darkness. But memories were ephemeral things, unlike the cold hard mathematics she previously relied on to protect herself. Thus, constant reinforcement was required to ensure protection from the flames.

"I will return to my truck. There, I can use the communication equipment to contact headquarters and gain insight from a more senior Psychonaut."

"Oh thank you, Mr. Nein. I know I may be being pushy, but Tanya's all I have left!"

After all, Being X would be so very smug if Tanya ended up killing themselves with the powers the bastard 'blessed' her with. At least it didn't take long to shut out the incredibly distracting thoughts that bombarded her. She was well-acquainted with screams of dying children from the war, and she had no desire to repeat the experience.

"It's no trouble. Both of you have been through a very traumatic incident, and dealing with the dangers and unexplored frontiers of the human mind is what it's all about. Sometimes it means dealing with psychic criminals, sometimes it means helping a small girl who locked themselves in a closet. Metaphorically."

"I never thought of the Psychonauts like that before..."

From how much screaming there was before she tuned it out, she'd estimate it took her about four minutes to figure out how to do that. She wasn't entirely sure how early in the morning it was when the fire started, but it was late enough that she didn't feel any more exhausted than usual from lack of rest. Her stomach was begging for breakfast, but just because this life had plenty of food, doesn't mean Tanya forgot what true hunger felt like. It was ignorable. Her throat was parched, pleading for water, but once more, the hardships that Being X previously placed upon her made ignoring that desire easy. Her tiny little girl bladder was the thing that had woken her up in the first place, so it was no help in timekeeping.

"Well, if you need a change in career, we'd be happy to give both you and Tanya the psychic training you would need to control your abilities and use them for the benefit of mankind."

"Well, I don't think anyone's going to let me run another group home after this... and Tanya will need help for this..."

So how long was enough for the fire to have gone out? Perhaps an hour? Even if the fire lasted longer than that, Tanya's bedroom would just be ash. Possibly hot ash, but it shouldn't be immediately lethal. Has it been that long? Tanya recalled a few stories about how dangerous situations caused time to seem to go on much longer than in reality. For all Tanya knew, it had been only about five minutes more. Not nearly enough time for the fire to be over with.

"While he's doing that... Tanya dear, can you hear me? You've lasted long enough, and it's time to rest. Are you hungry? Mr. Nein brought some borscht with him, and it's very good."

Tanya will outlast this cataclysm, like she did Being X's constant tests and disasters. Maintaining the shield is becoming easier, perhaps she can spare the concentration to count. Ichijiku Ninjin, Sansho-ni Shiitake, Gobou-ni Mukago-ni, Nanakusa Hakusai, Kyuri-ni Tougan. Ten. Ichijiku Ninjin, Sansho-ni Shiitake, Gobou-ni Mukago-ni, Nanakusa Hakusai, Kyuri-ni Tougan. Twenty. Ichijiku Ninjin, Sansho-ni Shiitake, Gobou-ni Mukago-ni, Nanakusa Hakusai, Kyuri-ni Tougan. Thirty. Ichijiku Ninjin, Sansho-ni Shiitake, Gobou-ni Mukago-ni, Nanakusa Hakusai, Kyuri-ni Tougan. Forty. Ichijiku Ninjin, Sansho-ni Shiitake, Gobou-ni Mukago-ni, Nanakusa Hakusai, Kyuri-ni Tougan. Fifty. Ichijiku Ninjin, Sansho-ni Shiitake, Gobou-ni Mukago-ni, Nanakusa Hakusai, Kyuri-ni Tougan. One minute.

"Tanya! Please… I'm here…"

Just fifty-nine more to go and it's probably safe.

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Tanya had always suspected that the Psychonauts were hiding a lot when it came to their operations, always placing their best foot forward to the public eye. The fact that their official propaganda came in the form of a child-friendly comic book did not endear them to Tanya's discerning eye.

But as it turned out, what was hidden was not, as one would expect, the typical atrocities endemic to espionage organizations, but the rank incompetence that arises naturally when you get a bunch of literal science hippies and ask them to make a spy organization!

The Grand Head of the Psychonauts got the job from nepotism, being the nephew of one of the founders, the one that was constantly drunk and endangering every mission he deigned to take, up until said nephew finally made one good decision and axed the alcoholic. Several others in the staff were yet another of the founders, deranged and completely believing that he worked in several menial positions, using his teleportation and what must be some variant of the decoy formula to accomplish them all simultaneously.

Tanya will admit that the man was at least competent in all of those roles. He was great with hair. Psychonauts facilities were essentially military bases, and as such it had on-base housing for the ones with families, or just children. As such, Tanya spent the last three years either in the Basic Braining Facility or the Motherlobe, which was the central operations center for the organization. Grand Head Zanotto, about a year into Tanya's residence in the latter, made his second good decision of the year and created a fake summer camp for the man to run entirely by himself, somehow managing to delude the madman into staying over there rather than mucking up the main organization. Of course, then he ruined that decision by making the mental hospice into a real summer camp a few months after that once it actually became summer, exposing what would no doubt be dozens of psychic children to the shattered old man.

Still, Tanya may have a caretaker worth the name, but there was only so long Tanya could resist having her own mind's secrets plundered and then put into one of those Psychoisolation prisons for being crazy without having the shield of being one of the founding members. If Agent Boole wasn't one, Tanya had zero doubts that he wouldn't be given the option to occasionally leave his cell to do some beekeeping with the reclusive Ms. O'Peia, who is the most normal of the 'Psychic Six'. He also occasionally caused fires when he was overwhelmed, but that didn't make it into the comic book. If Tanya didn't learn how to divert all of her loose psychic energy into a passive mage shell during Miss Milla's Basic Braining, she had no doubt she would have a nice padded room in one of the other cells.

"Welcome to the Whispering Rocks summer camp!" Miss Milla said exuberantly to the collected children, whose ages ranged from the three year old Lily Zanotto, to the twelve year old Tanya. "Over the next two weeks, we'll all be learning so much about each other, and what it means to be psychic. It's nothing to be afraid of, children. Everyone has nasty impulses, and unkind thoughts. Each of you have probably had something bad happen because of your abilities. Perhaps you heard a thought that ruined your image of someone, or saw someone's horrible memory, or even accidentally lashed out and hurt someone who didn't deserve it." Milla made a sad face, clearly faked to emphasize her point. When her eyes glanced over at Tanya, it became more genuine. "It's alright though, what's in the past, is in the past, and together, we'll learn how to help others with our gifts, by first helping ourselves." After a pause, she started to float in the air, dancing over the group. "But that doesn't mean we can't stop and have some fun along the way, yeah?"

Ah, that was the plan. Tanya didn't really want to be at the summer camp, but Miss Milla forced the issue. The point was to use the excuse of teaching how to plunge more deeply into the minds of others, as a pretext to plunge into her own mind.

This will be the most dangerous two weeks of Tanya's third life, to be sure.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

The first day of the camp was, as expected, mostly orientation. There was a tour, and each camper was assigned a bed in one of the two cabins; one for boys and another for the girls. Everyone was instructed to refer to the insane Agent Cruller as 'Mr. Park Ranger', 'Mr. Cook', 'Mr. Janitor', or whatever other role he was aping at the time.

Despite theoretically being a child for the third time, Tanya wasn't entirely familiar with how a summer camp was supposed to go. But orientation meetings were something long familiar, and this hit most of the right spots. This was where you slept, this was where you ate, this was where the bathrooms were. After some lunch, everyone was back in the fire circle, decorated with seven torches each carved with the images of the famous founders of the Psychonauts, the Psychic… Six? Wait.

"Now, any questions?" Miss Milla asked the collected children as Tanya examined the posts. Otto Mentalis… Helmut Fullbear… Cassie O'Peia…

Samantha Boole, one of the other children that Tanya already heard of, by virtue of her also living in the on-site housing as the grandchild of Agent Boole, spoke up first: "Hey, what's the policy on animals, here? I already made a new friend here, say hi Clancy!" From the ten year old's hair, a squirrel popped out, chittering. "Clancy says hi." Samantha added.

Miss Milla stopped smiling for a moment, as she digested the question. Fortunately, despite how slapdash the Psychonauts usually were in most things, they did hire a consultant on how to create one, and thus they had a rulebook to fall back on. "Oh, your little friends will have to sleep in their homes, and you shouldn't be feeding them, either. Human food won't be good for them." Milla said, her smile returning as she successfully translated sensible policy into something a child would accept. "Do you understand, Samantha?"

"Just Sam, please." The girl responded.

"Sam, then." Miss Milla responded easily, her smile increasing in size.

The ten year old girl smiled back toothily. "No feeding the animals and keep them out of the cabins, got it." Ah, Miss Boole was a sharp one.

Tanya continued to examine the torches. That damaged one… There wasn't a name as the top was broken off, but none of the others were labeled Ford Cruller and there was a resemblance. Bob Zanotto's portrait was sober, and thus unrecognizable, but Agent Boole's portrait was a dead ringer. Ignoring the fact that one of the torches was broken despite everything in the camp having been just built, as this was the inaugural class, as it were, the only question was… "Who is Lucretia Mux?" Tanya asked out loud.

Milla startled at the question. "Ah… who?" She asked, clearly unsure as well. After a moment of examining the same torch Tanya did, she giggled. "I never noticed this before… I'll have to look into that, Tanya. These were carved by Mr. Park Ranger, so for now, it'll be Camp Whispering Rock's first mystery!" At the word 'mystery', the flagging attention spans of the collected children were instantly seized. That explanation explained an unsettling amount about Agent Cruller's mental state. "Any other questions?" She pointed to the nine year old girl, one of the twins: "Yes, Norma?"

Norma adjusted her glasses. "I heard the other side of the lake has an insane asylum, filled with the incurably insane." Bah, typical scary story fodder, no one would dare put a summer camp next to a sanitarium.

"Norma, you should be ashamed of yourself." Miss Milla said, scolding the fear mongering child. "There's no such thing as incurably insane. No one is beyond help." What. "The patients at Thorney Towers are just sick people in need of care and attention, and they're getting it." Tanya gaped at yet another layer to the horrible decision making of Grand Head Zanotto. Making the summer camp that acted as Agent Cruller's asylum be next to an actual asylum does make a level of sense, but he must have partaken of his uncle's infamous gubiduck if he thought it was in the same hemisphere of a good idea to let children near it.

Actual children, to clarify. Tanya could handle herself just fine against any mental patients. Psychic powers were fairly intuitive to master, although Miss Milla did insist that Tanya stay away from astral projection, the primary method of entering the minds of others and the Psychonaut's primary stock in trade, but the tools of psychic violence were easy enough to use.

"Ma'am." The dark-skinned British boy asked. "I saw a floating bear during the tour. Is that normal?" Unfortunately, yes.

"Oh, don't worry about the psychic wildlife, Adam." Miss Milla said, placatingly. "They're more scared of you than you are of them, and a quick PSI blast will ward them off if they start sniffing around."

"Or burn them!" Added the young Lily Zanotto. "Fire fix it!" Tanya made a mental note to keep a close eye on the three year old. The girl's mother was usually pretty on top of the fires the toddler's developing pyrokinesis (and pyromania) created, but now that responsibility has fallen on the responsible ones present.

"Until the time comes when you have mastered the PSI blast, " Tanya added. "It would be prudent to stay near the structures, or in the company of Miss Milla or myself."

"On that note," Miss Milla said, changing the subject. "We should each introduce ourselves. Please say your name, your age, something interesting about yourself, and any psychic abilities you can already use. Don't feel bad if you can't manage anything reliably yet, for many of you this will be your first chance to learn from other psychics, after all. Tanya, if you could start us off?"

Tanya resisted the impulse to sigh, but stood up and followed instructions. "My name is Tanya Dosva. I am twelve years old, and my psychic specialties are Shield and Levitation. I am nonetheless capable of PSI Blast, Pyrokinesis, Psychokinesis, Hydrokinesis, and Cryokinesis." The first half of that list was as simple as remembering her time as an Aerial Mage, but the rest was just a matter of there being very little to do except practice psychic abilities, as the entertainment options for children were dreadfully boring. In all of their lives, Tanya was never a person to shy away from hard work, after all. Unfortunately, the necessity of constantly needing to shield her thoughts from the psychic spies did make it difficult to work on the less material psychic powers, like Telepathy, Archetype, and Clairvoyance. At an expectant look from Miss Milla, Tanya scrambled to think of something to say that she liked: "I like learning languages." Two languages in the first life, four more in the second, and four more in this life made an even ten. Yes, that will do. Yawning as she sat down, Tanya wondered if she could fit in a nap soon.

"Thank you, Tanya." Miss Milla said. "Now, let's go left to right. Lily? You're next."

The tiny girl shot upwards, excited to be the center of attention. She wore her short red hair in pigtails, and wore a cute dress rather than something one would wish to be in the wilderness in. "My name is Lily Zanotto! My dad's the Grand Head, and I'm three years old!" She spoke with a bit of a lisp, but with an eloquence beyond her age. Picking up languages faster was supposedly a symptom of having a psychic child, which was quite convenient when people questioned why Tanya knew as many languages as she did. Such things were also one of the few study subjects that were acceptable for a young girl in the Motherlobe. "I can burn things, and read minds!" With her introduction complete, she sat back down.

Without waiting for Miss Milla's prompt, Samantha stood up, as the ones who lived in the staff apartments had naturally clustered together around on the log benches. "Howdy. I'm Sam, and this guy here." Sam tapped Agent Boole's torch. "Is my grandpa. I can talk to animals, naturally." Snorting at her own pun, she then looked annoyed and glared at a nearby bird. "No one asked you, Steve!" Turning back, she continued. "I'm ten, by the way."

Moving away from the 'related to a current Psychonaut' crowd, the next kid in line was the British boy. "Well, I'm Adam. Adam Joseph Gette. Eleven years old." He took out a yo-yo, performing a psychically-assisted trick that created a vaguely brain-shaped design out of the string. "My speciality is Psychokinesis, naturally." He tipped his straw hat at the group. "Don't go thinking I'm hopeless beyond that, I can do a little bit of everything. For example, for those who don't have talent in Zoolingualism, Steve over there asked if Sam was capable of listening to animals. Quite a good joke there, Steve!" He gave what he probably thought was a rakish grin and a thumbs up to Tanya.

Oh. Tanya supposed it was time to start being concerned about her nominal peers attempting romantic overtures. How to best discourage this? Ah. Tanya rolled her eyes and scoffed, putting as much derision as possible in those simple movements. From how wooden Adam's smile became before he sat down, it seemed to be effective.

Two of the girls stood up at the same time, but the larger one placed her hand on the other's head and shoved her down. "I'm Lizzie Natividad, and this is my little sister Norma. I'm ten, she's nine. I'm good at ice, she's good at fire. Anyone mess with her and I'll freeze off your favorite toe." She pulled a hand through her straight hair, getting it out of her face. "Finger too, if you break her glasses." Tanya nodded seriously. Glasses were a big deal, when you're young.

Norma waved off her sister's hands, adjusting her glasses and brushing her hand through her curly hair to fix it after Lizzie's interference. "I can take care of myself, thank you. We've both learned how to astrally project already, so if you have any questions, I'm sure I can answer them. If not, you're just talentless." Now that was interesting. Miss Milla always said that was one of the more dangerous powers to use.

"Thank you, Lizzie and Norma." Miss Milla said, exasperated at the threats they issued. "No psychic is good at everything, and astral projection in particular is very difficult to do safely. We'll not be doing any of that without safety equipment." Oh? Tanya's never had a chance to see astral projection in action, is there some technology that Agent Mentalis has invented that makes the process easier? That… changes quite a bit, when it comes to letting children learn it.

The next child was a small boy in a wheelchair, his body wasted away from some kind of developmental disorder. "Name's Morris Martinez, I'm eight. I can move my chair a bit with Psychokinesis, but I'd really like to learn Levitation, and be able to move just as well as anyone else. I like music." He seemed fairly nervous, but at the mention of music, his energy raised to match any other young child.

The second to last child was overflowing with confidence, immediately standing up and striking a pose. "The name is Gisu Nerumen, and I like to party!" Two psychokinetic orbs appeared below her feet, allowing her to glide across the ground as she made a circuit around the fire. "That's… pretty much all I can do right now, but I found some psitanium on the ground during the tour, and give me a day or two with that and I can show you something really cool!" Why on earth would psitanium, the psychically sensitive rock vital in the use of psychic compatible technology, just be sitting on the ground? But she was showing the arrowhead-shaped purple rock off in her hand, so it was clearly real. After Miss Milla cleared her throat, Gisu hastily added: "Ah, I'm eleven."

The final child was also a girl, with a passing resemblance to the Bloody Valkyrie. Odd, but it's not a big deal. "Ah, My name is May Daye, but I… don't like that name. Call me Mary, please." Still not a big deal. "I'm twe- six! Six years old." She kept stealing glances at Tanya, but continued: "I can use blasts, punch hard, and fly… and I'm not crazy! God sent me here for a reason, and…" She looked at Tanya again. "I'll make sure all of you are safe." Was this a plot by Being X? It was a strange one, if so.

Why would that incompetent put that fanatic in front of Tanya six years younger than them? Did they think that she would hesitate to kill a child? If Mary took up arms against Tanya once more… She would die.

Just like the last time.

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On the second day, after the return of nightmares oriented around the second-most difficult battle of the Great War and an unpleasantly greasy breakfast, Miss Milla introduced everyone to the other counselor, who had been busy with other 'critical Psychonauts matters'. Given the number and labels of the boxes he arrived with, those matters were apparently logistical in nature. Do not trust in God, when you could instead trust in Paper.

Tanya was quite familiar with Sasha Nein, at this point. As Miss Milla's adopted daughter, of course she had met and interacted with Miss Milla's boyfriend. Apparently, it was basically impossible to conceal romantic feelings for someone when you frequently telepathically link with someone, as the psychic connection frequently contaminates with empathic subchannels that are as blatant a signal as can be. Tanya doesn't really use telepathic links, so she wouldn't know.

"As Agent Vodello has told you, the primary task before you at Camp Whispering Rock is to master your psychic abilities, bringing them under your complete control." Agent Nein said after introductions were completed. "Only then can you be able to be considered for admittance into the Psychonauts organization."

Miss Milla floated upwards above the pillow she was sitting on. "Today, we'll start with the most exciting: Astral Projection!" Already?

"Yes." Agent Nein said. Her psychic shielding was intact, so it was probably a coincidence. "Previously, Astral Projection was considered an advanced technique, not due to difficulty but instead due to the dangers of being trapped within someone else's mind. But that is in the past." Agent Nein pulled out a small handheld door, painted in a checkerboard pattern. "This is a Psychoportal. It will create a safe and stable passage into someone's mind, and critically, it will keep it open." The possibilities… Tanya's mind raced to think up excuses to avoid having that be placed on her own head. "Removing yourself is as simple as receiving a blunt sensory shock, either to your real body or your astral one. As such, each of you will be given some smelling salts." From the case he had, several wooden canisters were telekinetically lifted and delivered to the collected children. "One whiff of these and you will return to your body in an instant."

As expected of children, Morris immediately opened it up by twisting it in the middle and gave it a sniff, contorting his face in pain and disgust.

"Don't do that." Agent Nein scolded lightly. "Now, everyone will begin by entering my mind. I have prepared a small obstacle course to get all of you used to moving inside of a mind." He placed the door on his forehead, and it stayed affixed without any visible support. He tapped the doorknob, and it opened to reveal a swirling black and white vortex. "Relax, and reach out towards the vortex. Focus your senses into the depths until nothing else is apparent. The first time is always the most difficult."

Norma and Lizzie, true to their claims of already knowing how to astrally project, each sent a white apparition which got sucked into the door, it closing behind them before Agent Nein opened it up once more. "Come now, it's somewhat similar to sending a mental message, if any of you know how to do that. Do that while also listening to my thoughts and that should do it." Over the next few moments, more and more of the children sent their own astral forms into the door.

Tanya continued to stare at the hypnotically swirling portal, but still remained steadfastly in place, astrally. When the last other child, Lily, successfully projected themselves into Agent Nein's head, Miss Milla approached Tanya.

"Tanya, your shield is interfering with your projection." She said in admonishment.

Tanya continued to stare at the portal, willing herself inside. Once more, nothing.

Agent Nein hummed. "If you wish to use multiple psychic powers at once, you need to create a paradigm when using them that doesn't interfere. If you're familiar with devices that do roughly what you want, that can be quite helpful." After a beat, he continued. "Perhaps if you mentally projected your shield, with you inside, outwards, you could leave your body without leaving yourself vulnerable."

Well, it was worth a shot. Tanya took the threads of mana/psychic power she wove around themselves for their passive mage shell, or the psychic equivalent of it, and, while deliberately not moving a single muscle, pushed that power forwards.

"Now you've got it!" Miss Milla said happily as the portal loomed larger in Tanya's perspective.

So she's behind the children in this skill. Tanya thought that she should feel indignant at that, but it wasn't a big deal, not really. She forged onward.

----------------------

"Here she is." Agent Nein announced when they were inside of his mind. The environment was strange and fantastical, but oddly… soothing. It was a single large structure floating in space, and while it was folded out into, as promised, an obstacle course made of white stone, it was to an attentive viewer clearly folded out, deliberately exposed rather than just hanging out everywhere. "Now, every mind is different, as you will see when you enter Agent Vodello's mind later. As you can see, mine is under my complete control." He stepped on the ground, depressing some pressure plate that probably wasn't even there until he wanted it to be.

The white blocks started to move slowly, arranging into ladders, walkways, small chasms, and… rails? "Now, all of you should get used to how your astral body both does and does not resemble your flesh body. In the mind, both that of yourself and of others, you do not grow tired from physical activity. Climb that ladder as fast as you can, and you will not be out of breath. Run along those walkways, jump over those obstacles, climb… You will be ready for more."

The children did not need any further prompting, as they all eagerly started to get on the mental playground Agent Nein constructed for them. Even Morris was able to move his wheelchair easily, a psychic hand pushing him along.

As Tanya watched the children play alongside Agent Nein, he lit up a cigarette, which somehow didn't carry even a hint of the scent to Tanya's nose. He knew Tanya disliked the smoke, was that on purpose? "I suppose you're too mature for this kind of thing, eh?" He said, faintly amused.

"No." Tanya said in German, which earned them a long drawn out sigh from Agent Nein. Continuing in German for plausible deniability, Tanya continued. "I'm well acquainted with using psychic power to move about and to increase my strength and endurance." The technique was usually called Psychic Fist, but Tanya just called it psychic reinforcement and was done with it.

"I suppose you do." Agent Nein conceded. "You don't need to actually do anything but stay in here for the most important part of this exercise."

"Which is?" Tanya asked. What could it be? Was there something happening to her unconscious body?

Agent Nein chuckled. "Make sure that all of you don't have any bad reactions to astral projection. Even when dealing with classes of adults, you usually get at least one that has an embarrassing if not dangerous reaction their first time outside their body." What kind of embarrassing reaction could be from… Ah. Tanya had assumed that box was for Lili, or just as a standard precaution for dealing with children. "Seeing how everyone is still here, clearly no one had an extreme reaction. Now it's just a matter of allowing Agent Vodello time to resolve any more minor adverse reactions." The way he said it, Tanya could almost imagine he was talking about the necessity of proper documentation rather than potentially embarrassing events in the outside world. "Usually we have nursing staff on hand for this part, but Agent Vodello assured me she could handle it." Thinking back to the group home… that checks out. She has experience in cleaning up children.

The playground that Agent Nein had constructed did not appear terribly safe, even if gravitational effects prevented anyone from falling into the void. Tanya noted that most of them had taken a painful looking fall by now, even Mary, who was either a strange child, taking the opportunity to enjoy childhood, or putting in work to establish her cover as an actual child.

When Gisu launched herself off a rail, overshooting the adjacent one and taking a nasty spill onto what appeared to be a giant alphabet block… wait, was the appearance of the place changing? Many of the obstacles had taken appearances suited to things you'd put in a nursery rather than the sterile white blocks from before. "Noticed that, did you?" Agent Nein said, making Tanya once more check her psychic shields. "Minds aren't as static as we'd sometimes like them to be, Tanya. Seeing children play would of course make me reflect upon my own childhood, and those memories will affect the environment of my mind. I didn't have many toys when I was their age, except the ones I had from when I was even younger. As a result, thinking about children will bring up images of blocks, cribs, and mobiles. As you can see."

Tanya looked at the environment, trying to spot the point when something changes. Wait. "What are those flickering wisps of color the children are chasing to collect?"

"Those are figments of imagination." Agent Nein responded, comfortable in the role of lecturer in a way that he wasn't when he was explaining the intricacies of his own mind. "Little bits of thought that are formed from stray memories as they're remembered, or ideas as they're conceptualized. Examining their shape can give you insight into someone's thoughts and memories, which can be useful when delving into the minds of people you don't know much about, as subconscious or forgotten thoughts still produce figments. Touching them with your astral form is like a little psychic pick-me-up, as the psychic energy replenishes what you've spent so far." He waved the hand he held his cigarette in, and in front of Tanya formed what appeared to be a crude drawing of a tacky lamp, like it was drawn with colored chalk, but floating in mid-air. "Touch it."

Tanya obeyed instructions, and the figment became liquid as it sucked itself into Tanya's hand, and a minor rush of energy suffused Tanya's form, like a drink of water when they weren't entirely sure if they were thirsty or not. "Figments are a natural byproduct of thought, collecting them doesn't harm anyone." Agent Nein said as an afterthought. "Psychics can more easily reshape their own thoughts like this than a baseline mind, but there's no such thing as someone with zero psychic power. What we think of as baseline is merely one with their power turned completely inward, unable to affect anything outside of their mind and body with their thoughts. As such, once you're inside of a mind, there's not much difference between a psychic's mind and a baselines, when it comes to danger. Some nominally baseline minds can be freakishly talented in defending themselves from mental attack, and troubled minds of both kinds are significantly more dangerous than those of stable mentalities."

"I understand." Tanya said. She had no intention of becoming a Psychonaut, so it was more useless trivia rather than anything actually important, but there was never anything wrong with learning a skill that would help keep themselves safe, even if they had no intention of entering a violent lifestyle.

Agent Nein continued his lecture. "Figments are the least of the various conglomerations of psychic energy that can be gathered to improve a psychic's endurance and attunement to the minds they travel to." Oh? This sounded useful. "Emotional baggage can be resolved by drawing and reinforcing logical strands of thought, using a strong positive thought that correlates with the negative thoughts and uniting them with a clear connection. This resolution releases an order of magnitude more psychic energy to the Psychonaut, and core life lessons in a mind can accumulate massive amounts of psychic energy, coalescing into a nugget of wisdom." It was sounding more and more like the job of a psychonaut is to leech psychic energy out of minds they travel into. Does that help people? "Figments can also bunch up and tangle in forgotten parts of the psyche, becoming mental cobwebs. Cleaning up your own cobwebs is one of the many tasks one must perform on your own mind to maximize your field readiness, as a Psychonaut."

Tanya idly nodded along with his lecture. "All very interesting, I'm sure." She said, "Are we done here?" Tanya was beginning to lose their patience with dealing with Agent Nein's assumption that they would become a field agent in the Psychonauts. No thank you, that sounds like a bunch of danger for inadequate pay.

"Do I detect a hint of boredom?" Agent Nein asked. "You could go join them."

"Unless you have a flying course prepared, this isn't going to be entertaining." Tanya replied.

"I don't have one of those." Agent Nein admitted. "But perhaps… Yes."

Tanya suddenly remembered that Agent Nein, despite his many accolades for his field work, was the personal protege of Otto Mentalis, and loved to run experiments. In other words, Tanya was mouthing off to not just her guardian's boyfriend, but the closest thing to Schugel Tanya has met in this lifetime.

…Uh oh.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

Agent Nein, positively radiating amusement, depressed his foot into another section of floor.

Tanya's eyes immediately snapped to a pipe that curved around the ledge behind them, releasing an odd creature. Looking like a caricature of an auditor, with a suit, glasses, and a stamp in their hands that had a red circle with a slash in it. "No." It said in a robotic voice.

"Oh no, it's a censor." Agent Nein said, deadpan but with a wry grin. "They're an integral part of any sane mind. They roam your psyche looking for thoughts that don't belong. Hallucinations, manias, waking dreams, the call of the void… psychic intruders. Once found, they stamp them out. Take care of that one, will you? The other children might get hurt." Blatant lies! "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine."

So that's how he wants to play it? Tanya waited for it to approach them, clearly spotting Tanya as something that fell under its jurisdiction. It brought its massive arm up to hit Tanya with his stamp, and Tanya just created a mage blade on their hand and swiped at the lifted arm, the short creature's disproportionately long arms an easy target for such an attack. The arm was cut cleanly in half, and the censor dissolved into dust. From the pipe, a second censor popped out. Irritation spiked out in a PSI Blast, the impact of the shot sending the little fake man flying off the side of the mind's structure and into the void… or maybe just orbit.

"As always, your PSI blasts are impressively powerful." Agent Nein commented.

"No." Crackled out the mechanical voices of two more censors, as a second pipe had popped up.

"...But your rate of fire could use some work." He added as Tanya blasted one of the two mental defenses, using a kick to send the second one after the first. "Overtaxing your mental energies can be a big problem, if you don't modulate your blasts better."

Now that he mentioned it, Tanya was beginning to feel fatigued. Normally, using multiple blasts in quick succession caused… not headaches, per say, but more of an emotional draining effect. Noting the now three censors had lined up for them, Tanya blasted the lot into dust once more. As before, the exertion seemed more of a full body thing than when using it in the physical world… which makes sense, as Tanya's body was currently made entirely of mind.

"It appears that the side down there has begun to destabilize. Oh no." Agent Nein said without even trying to sound sincere. "I couldn't possibly leave the children unsupervised, so I must remain here." He took a drag off of his cigarette. "If something isn't done, we'll have to cut this whole thing short. I'm sure the children would be devastated."

Tanya crossed their arms as the sounds of mechanical refusals sounded out from down the ledge. After a moment, Agent Nein added: "They're referencing my accumulated marksmanship knowledge to increase their effectiveness. Will someone think of the children?"

"Fine, I'll play your game." Tanya said, stomping over the ledge and letting the gravity re-orient as they crossed the corner.

If Tanya had to guess, the terrain spilling out of the square face of the giant foldout cube appeared to be memories of some kind of… basement? There were pipes, the thing spewing flames looked vaguely like a coal stove or water heater… stacks of giant shoeboxes provided a few elevated sections… It might be an amalgamation of multiple memories. There were some figments flitting about, images of shoes, guns, Miss Milla, and… was that one of Tanya? It was one hell of a caricature, Tanya definitely didn't look that cute in reality… right?

The censors, on the other hand, seemed to have picked up a new trick, as they started launching bolts of energy shaped like the circle-and-slash that was on their stamps, using the word 'no' to launch them. They were… reasonably fast, but only as quick as a tennis ball. Wait a minute…

"I'll be taking that advice." Tanya said out loud as they manifested a mage… racket. Drawing on fondly-recalled memories from their first life, Tanya started returning the censor's serves, taking to the air once the censor's danmaku impersonation became too much.

With the changing of tactics from standing one's ground to proper asymmetric warfare, the censors were almost too easy. Their stubby legs made their mobility useless, and there was plenty of cover to limit firing arcs. The mage racket was naturally quite sharp on the edge, and between the deflections, melee kills, and PSI blasts to destroy the pipes that were providing reinforcements, interspersed with the collection of stray figments to keep fresh, Tanya started to feel a lightness in her chest, unfelt since her second life. Her cheeks ached as she found herself smiling. A terrible thing… if these were real. But since they aren't… Tanya found herself outright giggling as she PSI blasted the last censor into dust. "Ah, I didn't realize how much I missed video games until this one moment…" Psychic video games, that could be lucrative, if Agent Nein was right and non-psychics could still fiddle with their own mind. It would be like VR! Everyone loves simulated violence, even those who cannot abide the real thing.

At the top of the tallest tower of the personalized course, was something interesting. It was a gun. A Luger, in fact. Made of gold. It shined with light in a way real gold never does, and when Tanya reached out to it, the light pulsed, invigorating Tanya's astral body like a figment would just from proximity. Was this… a nugget of wisdom?

Tanya grabbed the pistol, and was flooded with psychic energy. Flashes of memory, of hours at the gun range, of pistol maintenance, of practice to master the intricacies of the PSI blast. The terrain started to recede and fall back, within seconds becoming a flat square, with only a design reminiscent of abstract art being the only decoration. A door appeared in the air, shaped like what Tanya was beginning to understand was the symbol of censors, a red circle with a slash, just like every 'no smoking' sign ever placed.

Out of that door, a new censor type emerged. Broad and bulky, holding a massive riot shield marked with their usual symbol, their off hand armed with some knuckle dusters, decorated with censor symbols and the word 'no', of course.

Just like a video game, to present you an enemy with a vulnerability to the exact thing you just learned. Tanya immediately resolved to search the offices and apartments of Agents Nein and Mentalis for the video games they must be hiding. Video games existed in 1975, right? Tanya pointed her arm above the censor, an astral image of their mondragon rifle appearing. They took a moment to charge the shot as Tanya brought up the memory of an artillery spell, even though PSI blast could never get close to the level of devastation those could inflict. Finally, with a squeezing of the trigger, the overpowered PSI blast shot above… and immediately turned around to drill into the back of the oversized censor's head, causing the mental construct to explode into psychic dust.

"Good work, Tanya." Agent Nein said, although his physical presence was still back watching the other children. Naturally, a psychic of his caliber is aware of everything happening in his mind. "Not every psychic can extract something useful from a nugget of wisdom, particularly so quickly. Even moreso when the skills involved include so much you've not had much to do with." Well, Tanya already knew quite a lot about guns, so they were able to focus on the PSI blast tricks without trouble. Was that what he meant? "Do me a favor, will you, and don't mention this to the other campers? Passing on skills like this works fine for a single student at a time, but it can lead to bad things if psychic energy isn't allowed to accumulate properly."

"Understood." Tanya said as they walked over the edge of the cube to join Agent Nein once more. "...How do you organize your mind like this? It sounds useful."

Agent Nein smirked at Tanya. "Ah, it looks like Agent Vodello owes me a dream fluff." Did they gamble on Tanya asking that!? "Psychic construction is indeed incredibly useful. Organizing your mind operates as a defense against telepathy, one that doesn't block off your own telepathy like your passive shield does." Tanya's eyes sharpened. That sounded like exactly what Tanya needed. "This includes astral projections trying to get your secrets, by the way. As you can see, only the parts of my mind that I allow you to see are accessible to you." Tanya idly wondered whether or not such mental defenses would work against Being X… "Most importantly, it is a skill that can be turned to create psychic constructs in other people's minds, which is a critical skill in many Psychonauts operations." Tanya supposed it made sense that learning to shape your own mind would be a necessary step in learning how to shape the minds of others… but that raised important questions on the side effects of manipulating your own mind.

Actually… "Agent Nein, what are the side effects of restructuring your own mind like this?" There was no reason she couldn't just ask.

He waved Tanya's question off. "Minimal. All of your mind is still there, you're just shifting it around a bit. Drawing connections and establishing narratives in another person's mind has risks, true, but fiddling with your own mind is near impossible, as psychic constructs collapse if you're aware that they're fake. You'd need to damage your own memories, particularly the memory of you making the changes, in order for anything serious to happen." After a moment, he seemed to have realized something. "Ah, just remember that sealing memories into memory vaults is both easy and safer than trying to destroy them. You're not likely to succeed in actually destroying them unless you had additional psychic power backing up your attempts at a minimum, but…" Agent Nein paused, in exactly the same way he did when he chuckled at a sexual innuendo a few months ago before remembering Tanya's age. "Just don't." The effects must be pretty grisly, if even he balked at recounting them.

Looking over the children once more, he put his hand to his temple. His voice rang loudly throughout the space. "Alright children, that's enough playtime for now. Everyone leave by using your smelling salts so I can clean things up again."

Tanya took out her own smelling salts, and with a twist, inhaled the acrid smell, every single muscle seizing at the thorough unpleasantness. All other senses… shattered, was the best word, as Tanya's presence launched itself into the void that replaced the sky.

----------------------------

After everyone was outside of the mind, Tanya made sure to ignore the fact that she was wearing different clothes than before, as assuredly Miss Milla would implement a decoy system to minimize embarrassment. It would give her an excuse to put Tanya in the cutesey hippie flower dress that Miss Milla loved seeing Tanya in. It wasn't a big deal, though. It's not like she was the only one wearing different clothes.

"All in all, that went well." Agent Nein said after the last person regained consciousness. "Some of you put a bit too much of yourself into your astral projection, which puts your bodies into a coma instead of a meditative trance, but that's an easy mistake to make. Even adults make that mistake in their first projection." It was condescending, but in these circumstances, being an adult in a child's body doesn't really help. So Tanya once more put it out of her mind. It wasn't important.

"It takes a few trips in order to get the hang of things, children." Miss Milla added. "Never try to astrally project without a PSI door, especially here at camp. Without that, a mistake can be much more dangerous. Now, we'll break for lunch, then we'll have some fun in my mind, instead! I'll show you how to use my personal favorite psychic technique!" She floated in the air, pirouetting as she moved towards the mess hall. "Come now, I'm sure you've worked up an appetite with all that exercise!" Despite being practically (and literally, in some cases) coma patients, psychic power did use up calories, just like magic did in her second life.

Still, going straight into another mind after a break did explain why Miss Milla decided to go so far as to put Tanya in, well, those. That was purely Miss Milla's desire to play dress-up and had no other impetus. Even if it was justified, it was far from the first time such indignities have been required, a day or two is nothing compared to years. The important thing is to preserve as much status as possible, which means refusing to acknowledge any taunts about her new outfit.

--------------------

After lunch and a quick nap to make up for the sleep lost to nightmares, Tanya wandered into the Levitation practice after everyone else and was tasked to instead practice Astral projection, as she was as proficient as Miss Milla herself in the regular subject. Moreso, in some ways.

Miss Milla's mind was laid out like a giant dance club… Tanya would call it an old dance club, but given the year, this was probably contemporary. Everything was spread out, and laid out a bit more like a skate park, with ramps and half-pipes everywhere separating the sections. The club was populated by caricatures of people, with their most prominent features emphasized and their personal color schemes reflected on their hair and skin as well as clothes. Tanya thought such a thing should be unsettling, but the unreality of the background characters was obvious enough that it merited nothing stronger than a shrug.

Milla communicated with the various students by showing up on one of the many floating monitors, dancing while giving advice on how to properly use the levitation ball technique, which was much easier to learn than free-floating levitation.

Tanya, on the other hand, was instead placed into a separate partition in Miss Milla's mind, where the environment was reminiscent of the playroom in the group home to instead put further practice into Astral Projection.

Miss Milla had manifested the old television into the playroom instead of bringing in one of the floating monitors from the club construct for this instruction, which frequently switched between her vision outside, where Agent Nein was, and another instance of her dancing, which she used to communicate. The television was never in the playroom in reality, mind you, but in comparison to the other changes in this mental copy, it was small potatoes.

"The issue persists." Agent Nein said as he examined Tanya's comatose body after the third attempt, slumped backward onto pillows rather than remaining upright while seated like all… most of the children. Gisu didn't quite get it the second go around either. "I suspect that this issue is rooted in the constant mental shields, as the normal partitioning of some small part of your psyche in your original body, which is normally instinctive, is prevented by the protective containment." Supposedly, a psychic imprint stored in the spine was the mechanism where people can somehow live in this world with their brain completely removed, albeit in a simple, toddler-like state. It was by far the strangest thing that psychic powers enabled, in Tanya's opinion.

With this theory, Tanya mustered a shrug. It made sense. "You did mention that my skill in psychic shielding was unique…"

"Indeed. There are no documented cases of someone so thoroughly protecting their psyche from telepathy in the manner you have." Agent Nein confirmed. "It's developed to the point of obsession, and it has impeded your development of the senses most psychics take for granted." Not picking up surface thoughts randomly seemed to be the polite thing to do, in Tanya's opinion. It wasn't worth arguing about.

One of the stuffed animals, the bear that Tanya had seized in the past to better act as a little girl would (she had completely forgotten about it, in the confusion of the fire… didn't she name it after Visha? In hindsight, she probably should have pretended to care about the thing afterwards), grew in size to match Miss Milla's height before enveloping Tanya's mind in a hug. Her voice came from Visha the bear: "Tanya, you told me once that you disliked violence." She did? Tanya didn't remember that. It was true, though. "If you want to learn the good that psychics can do, you need to stop shutting everyone out. Telepathy just requires you to listen, Tanya. Stuffing your ears and shutting your third eye is just going to keep causing problems."

Tanya's passive mage shell flickered on her skin as it thickened at the thought. Who knows what horrible things the Type 95 had done to her brain? The psychonauts have not been historically kind to aberrant psychologies that weren't one of the founders, and she had no intention of joining the ranks of those who died on the experiment table and had their brains shoved into Agent Mentalis' collection.

Then again… Mary was clearly something resembling free and without signs of being experimented on. She couldn't possibly have done a good job hiding her past life… She even was adamant that she wasn't crazy, which was total nonsense of course, but there was no way the Psychonauts would be so sloppy as to not even know about her claims of reincarnation…

…Wait, no, she could entirely believe the Psychonauts would be that sloppy. But Agent Nein was involved, and he's the meticulous sort. "...What do you know about Mary?" Tanya decided to ask. It was a little risky, but…

Agent Nein looked surprised at the change in topic, but answered readily enough. "Miss May Daye, alias 'Mary', likely due to a dislike of wordplay, or at least the specific connotation of her own name." He smacked his lips, a habit he displays whenever he is without his cigarettes. "According to her file, she suffers from delusions about having lived before as a member of the military during the first world war, with the details being nonsensical enough that it could not possibly be true." Well, that confirms one thing at least. "I suspect the actual cause is having absorbed and integrated the memories of multiple people at a tender young age, amalgamating them into a coherent, if fabricated, set of memories and coming up with the 'past life' idea to reconcile them with her age. I hope she'll allow me to investigate her mind, such a rarity begs for experimentation." A beat. "Of course at the end I would make sure to treat her delusions. While it would be difficult to excise false memories that have been with her for so many formative years, sequestration is still quite possible, allowing her to look at them more objectively."

Right. That answers that question. "You mentioned that there are other ways to protect against telepathy." Tanya said. "Psychic construction. Can we work on that?"

Agent Nein nodded. "Attacking the problem from another angle, that sounds prudent."

"Sasha…" Miss Milla said warningly.

Despite the warnings of his girlfriend, Agent Nein soldiered on: "Of course, psychic construction requires such intense focus, that trusting your shields to hold up while you are rearranging things is a fool's errand." Tanya scowled at the warning. That sounded like a challenge. "But a psycho-isolation chamber will suffice to keep your valuable thoughts from being heard by any nearby psychic. It has its locks on the inside."

Wasn't there one of those on the tour? "Is that playground model functional?" Tanya asked. Tanya wasn't entirely sure what it took to create a psychically insulated chamber, but it probably required some kind of technology, given that it was invented by Agent Mentalis…

"Of course." Agent Nein replied. "It's a bit small, too small for long-term habitation, or even standing for an adult, but you could spend a few hours inside your own head at a time without issue." Ah. It's not a cell, like the ones at the Motherlobe. Perfect. "It was designed for children who get overwhelmed by hyperactive telepathy and need some time in peace… but it will serve fine for the opposite problem." That was a lot more considerate than Tanya expected for the Psychonauts design team, but she supposed psychic-specific precautions would be something they would understand.

Visha the bear snorted at Agent Nein's solution. "You shouldn't encourage her paranoia, Sasha."

"Obsessive behaviors can be resolved in many ways." Agent Nein said to defend his argument. "The most effective ones cannot be done while Tanya maintains her psychic shielding. You know as well as I do how much of a violation it is to enter someone's mind without permission, " Did they forget Tanya was here? In her second life, being ignored was fairly common when in meetings with the upper brass, but that was more of a 'lower ranks listen but do not speak' sort of situation rather than this. "-this is a middle ground between allowing this unhealthy coping mechanism to continue and forcing the issue. It's a matter of safety for all involved."

Ah. That's the issue. The Psychonauts are getting impatient with Tanya's continued refusal to submit to a mind scan and the security vulnerabilities it introduces. It was a reasonable plan: teach a mental defense technique to the security risk that is incompatible with the effective one, and then barrel through the poorly constructed defenses once they are to be tested. It's not a good plan, but given their general incompetence, see allowing Tanya on the grounds at all despite that risk, one can't assume that their plans will be good.

Still, even if it isn't, the solution is the same: master Psychic Construction and prepare a mind that looks appropriate to what they would expect to see, and all will be well. It's just signal theory with extra steps, after all.

…This may require research of the minds of the children, but that shouldn't be too difficult.

It was time to interrupt the increasing tension between the two counselors. It would be improper to allow their fight to fester, it would be a human resources disaster not to mediate things. "I'll do it." Tanya said, bringing attention to herself. "I'll go into the psycho isolation chamber, and tidy up my brain. Then I'll… give you a tour. Yes, a tour." Volunteering the concession before it could become a demand, anticipating the needs of the management was how Tanya succeeded in her first life. Even if it didn't seem to work as well in the second.

Tanya's gambit succeeded, as Visha the Bear slumped and tightened the hug. "Oh Tanya, that would be wonderful. I'm sure your mind is as beautiful as you are." After a beat, she added, clear worry in her tone: "But… be careful. Nightmares aren't any fun, and they can hurt you, if you let them." The bear looked at the toy chest, the interior of the closed container began to glow with ominous firelight. "Just remember, memories may be real, but it's your mind. You're in control, and smelling salts are just an aid, you can leave a mind without them if you wish for it hard enough."

Agent Nein nodded in agreement. "Yes, while even deliberate psychic construction can only influence yourself for brief periods, until you next sleep at the very longest, there is a small subset of mental dangers that can pose a minor threat to your personality even when exploring your own mind." He shrugged. "Even in the worst case, a telepathic assault meant to disorient is usually enough to set things right." Unspoken but understood, is that if that doesn't work, they'll dive in and fix things manually.

Tanya blinked. "I'll take that into account." Tanya looked at her comatose body on the television screen once more. "Ah, does plunging into your own mind…" Tanya searched for a way to phrase the question without mentioning her current problem. It's a topic that must be treated delicately, after all. "...have the same risks?"

Miss Milla took a moment to catch Tanya's meaning. "Oh! Well, yes to the type of risk, and no to the reason for it. What is that phrase you like to use… Plan for the best, prepare for the worst? Or was it the other way around…"

Ah well. It's not a big deal.

--------------------

Fortunately for Tanya's reputation, she was able to leave the levitation class before everyone else, and after some additional… preparation, Tanya found herself being let into the Psychoisolation chamber after dinner. It was a small dome, about the size of a jungle gym, that was designed on the outside to look a little bit like a big metal brain. The interior, on the other hand, revealed it to be a small padded room, which Tanya had to remind herself was appropriate for children and not exclusively reserved for asylums. No matter how much the nightdress with the too-long sleeves resembled a straitjacket.

"Now, the first step of using Psychic Construction is gaining an understanding of what the mind is before your interference." Agent Nein said as he ushered Tanya inside. "Therefore, before I will tell you how to do it, your first task is to take a tour of your own mind. As you've only got twelve years of memories, with at least three of which being mostly broken down completely, your mind should not be terribly large… although it's apparent size and actual size don't necessarily match up. For example, those long stretches between each room in Agent Vodello's mind were as important as a single doorway, so despite the apparent size, you only saw a small curated portion of Agent Vodello's mind. In contrast, despite the small apparent size of my mind, each and every block of that great cube is its own space, in a way."

As Tanya entered the chamber, she noted that she definitely wasn't claustrophobic. It was really quite cramped in here, although for a child it wasn't so bad. She could barely stand up if she was in the middle.

"You can stay overnight if you wish, it's not like the cabins have air conditioning either." He tossed in a pillow and a thin blanket. "Leave them in there if you would prefer to go back to the cabin, and enter through Agent Vodello's door, she left it unlocked for you. Agent Cruller will clean up in the morning." Each of the cabins had a counselor's room that had its own entrance, so that there was an adult of the appropriate gender nearby for any overnight issues. Even with psychically induced maturity, children were filthy and emotionally unstable, and there were any number of issues that could spring up when they were put in a strange place filled with other children and the violent sounds of nature. Last night vindicated that decision, honestly. Tanya would like to say that she'd like to know who thought putting a three year old into a summer camp was a good idea, but she knew exactly who: Grand Head Zanotto.

Of course, it's not like Tanya's track record has been much better, with the side effects on her other psychic abilities caused by her passive mage shell.

After locking herself inside, Tanya laid back onto the padded floor to begin, carefully not thinking about what laying on a padded surface reminded her of, or the frilly nightdress that she was wearing, or anything else related to those subjects. Self-reflection and exploring one's own mind normally required extensive training in meditation, or the use of Agent Nein's brain tumbler, but there was another, more traditional method that worked just fine.

Placing the shard of Psitanium on her forehead, Tanya focused on it the same as she would for Astral projection. She deliberately dropped her mage shell, leaving herself as helpless as a… leaving herself helpless for the first time since the fire. The bunker will serve instead.

--------------------------

Tanya wasn't entirely sure she was expecting, when she entered her mind, but if someone had told her ahead of time that this was what she would find… She'd probably have believed it.

Tanya was lying down still, seeing a ceiling split into three. The top was fuzzy and shrouded, but it was the style of ceiling she remembered from her first life, specifically the one from her childhood, the traditional Japanese ceiling tiles rather than the ones from her apartment she held for the years before her first death. Below and to the right was the ceiling from the orphanage in Berun, beams and a roof without a proper ceiling, that she arrived in during her second life. Below and to the left was the ceiling from the other orphanage, painted white with that pointless texturing, the one that burned down. That section of ceiling had something the other two didn't, a fraction of a mobile spinning around, vanishing and re-appearing as it moved into and from the other two sections. That mobile helped narrow things down, as well as the appearance of the bed once Tanya looked around a few more times.

This must be a representation of the earliest memory from each of Tanya's three lives. A fuzzy recollection of her old childhood bedroom, the cradle she was spoon-fed in by the nun, and the crib where Miss Milla introduced herself to the newest baby she was in charge of, unknowing that Tanya could understand and remember the words. Her clothing was similarly split, her shirt being merchandise of some J-Pop band whose name was as fuzzed out as the rest of the room, while the rest was covered half of a frilly gown and half of a onesie. The commonality of the two sides was not worth thinking about.

Well, the question stands: where to go from here?

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

Now, one would think that lying on an amalgamation of three different beds would be uncomfortable, but it wasn't. If not for the visual cue, Tanya wouldn't be able to tell the difference from just the feel of the unnaturally comfortable mattress. Memories flashed in her mind, mostly the various events that occurred when Tanya had to suffer from the physical infirmary of infancy. Too much time was wasted that way, in Tanya's honest opinion. Sure, she tried to rationalize it as a vacation, from her stressful job when she was in the care of nuns and from the Great War in the case of her third life, but that rationale wore thin very quickly. It was so boring…

Suddenly, Tanya noticed some of those figments of imagination that she saw in the other minds spinning out of the ether. Much like in those minds, they appeared as if chalk drawings floating in the air, this time depicting… mostly things relevant to the things Tanya was thinking about. The upper bodies of Miss Milla and faceless nuns featured prominently, but also items related to infant care.

On an impulse, Tanya reached out for one of the figments, not caring which one, and ended up touching a pacifier. Instead of the expected mental energy replenishment, it instead coalesced into an actual pacifier, an exact replica of one that Tanya recalled being given by Miss Milla.

Tanya spat out the memory and watched it fade back into a figment, this time an image of Tanya sucking on the pacifier. "Is this place trying to keep me here?" Tanya wondered out loud as she shifted in place on the bed, smacking her lips as she watched the figment drift in circles. Wait. With a jolt of adrenaline Tanya found the motive to finally get up off of the bed, leaping into the fuzzy part of the room, slapping herself as she shook off the room's mental trap. "Hrm. Did they mention getting lost in memories when explaining the risks?" Tanya didn't think they did, but when applying common sense, reviewing memories would logically have a risk of going on a mental wiki walk, at the bare minimum. It wasn't a big deal.

"Figments working differently in your own mind is a new facet of the experience as well." Tanya said out loud. It also made sense, but Tanya really wished they were less vague on the differences between exploring one's own mind in comparison to others. "So, there has to be some kind of exit…" While mental influences being merely hypnotic rather than simultaneously agonizing and euphoric was novel, Tanya did not have time for a repeat of the experience.

As it turned out, there were two: Both were doors leading out from the nursery settings, but a thorough examination of the wall in the fuzzy childhood room revealed no such exit. Even tearing aside the amalgamation of psionic tangles that was probably a mental cobweb revealed a blank wall. "Logically, each exit leads to memories from their respective lifetimes." The lack of such an exit into her first life was… troubling, to say the least, but given how little Tanya recalled of the room, perhaps it's just a matter of finding a clearer memory? That shouldn't be too difficult.

But which door to explore first? On one hand, seeing the most dangerous parts of her mind would be important, and seeing how the Great War would translate into a mental world would be informative… But on the other hand, Tanya would likely need to put the most work into making the third life's mental space presentable on top of just hiding everything else, so it was the logical choice.

As Tanya approached the door, it grew to a tremendous size, or perhaps Tanya just shrank, stumbling a bit from her clothes shifting entirely in accordance with the terrain rather than the odd split it was before, but telekinesis opened the door despite this obstacle and she walked through with only a slight wobble to her steps. The mental realm will need to be more inconvenient than that to bother Tanya Dosva.

----------------------

Tanya was not surprised, after another shift in outfit provoked by just walking, to see a rendition of the Motherlobe as the primary hub for her third life's memories. The exits were all labeled differently, but the core shape of the area was the same. The place was populated heavily with the same kind of caricatures as Miss Milla's mind, various people that Tanya had met rendered with emphasis on their most notable features and with small details washed out.

"I hope it's possible to reshape some of those…" Tanya said to herself once she noticed how some of the people were rendered unflatteringly… or too flatteringly, in some cases.

One of the curvier caricatures, dressed in… is that an imperial mage uniform? Marched over to Tanya and saluted, saying in an achingly familiar voice: "Major! Visha reporting for duty!"

"Visha?" Tanya asked redundantly. "What are you doing here?" Looking the memory up and down, Tanya realized that, once accounting for the caricatured proportions, bear ears and nose, and unusually large and expressive eyes, this indeed was Viktoriya. Come to think of it… The other caricatures all had large and expressive eyes, as if they were all anime characters. That was… probably fine.

"I'm here to serve you, Major!" Visha replied. "My duty roster includes cuddling, fire support, and coffee making!" A figment of Tanya issuing orders immediately manifested as Tanya remembered issuing that exact roster to Visha the bear in a fit of boredom-inspired mania.

Wait… Tanya leapt and snatched at that figment, the embarrassing floral overalls she had last worn at age two immediately becoming replaced with her mage officer's uniform, every detail recreated. "Ah, perfect." Tanya said to herself, stretching her legs. She was beginning to get the hang of this. Still, this is definitely a problem for the plan to make an innocuous mental realm for the Psychonaut's perusal. Or was it? Providing elaborate backstories for plush toys seems like a childish thing to do… Further research was required. "Now, about that coffee?"

"I'll aim to make it black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, and sweet as love." Visha replied, an amused lilt to her voice as she said the common quote about perfect coffee that said absolutely nothing about how Tanya liked her coffee. Exactly as OpSec required. Visha promptly flew towards the Motherlobe's mess hall, instead incongruously labeled with the name of that cafe Tanya favored when she was in Berun.

Tanya noticed some extra figments flit about, mostly depicting Visha, but ignored them and followed the amalgamation of memory into the cafe. The entrances into the various areas in the Motherlobe in reality were these strange psychic imprint-detecting doors, ones that Tanya by and large couldn't use normally due to her shield. As a result, Miss Milla gave Tanya a little doohickey that forced the scanner to instead register Tanya's face, as apparently that was a capability Agent Mentalis installed but the Psychonauts organization as a whole decided was too bothersome to make standard.

The cafe, on the other hand, had neither that nor the door the Berun cafe normally had, but a modern glass automatic door, as one would find in Japanese konbinis. The interior was no better, with the kitchen replaced by the Berun cafe serving area, the tables being largely accurate, but with half of the floor plan instead being stocked with claustrophobic shelving filled to the brim with all of Tanya's favorite foods, most of which Tanya needed a moment to actually remember that she liked. Potato pancakes wrapped in plastic sat side by side with the brand of instant noodles Tanya favored in college and bags of coffee beans labeled 'Visha's homemade'.

This will require some work to make palatab… non-suspicious. Visha turned around from the coffee maker with a steaming cup, the same kind that they had in the front lines, worn and battered but still working with grit and human ingenuity… although in this case Tanya suspected that Visha didn't so much prepare it as hum the same tune the real Visha did when preparing coffee only to have the cup magically appear in her hands at the end. Visha brought the coffee to Tanya, picking up the smaller girl and sitting down at one of the tables, which suddenly turned into an oversized armchair as Visha proceeded to sit Tanya in her lap, maximizing skin contact as she fulfilled her primary duty.

After a moment to reboot, figments spilling out into the area, Tanya recognized the armchair as her favorite one from the group home. Well, mostly. It also resembled Tanya's desk chair back when she was training the 203rd, but that was because the real chair also held that resemblance, even if it was stronger here. It was why she decided that she liked it. "Right. Good job, soldier." Tanya said as she took the mug, which probably would have spilled if this was reality given the handling. "Now, my coffee."

As expected, it tasted exactly how Tanya remembered. What was less expected was the fact that Visha's body, despite being warm and soft, didn't really have the same… give as a human body. It was more like being hugged by a giant stuffed animal that had just been in the dryer than actual human contact. Which, given how the construct was an amalgamation of the memory of a person and a stuffed animal, was fair. Tanya doesn't think she had ever cuddled with her subordinate, which was good, as such behavior was inappropriate.

After a moment of savoring the coffee, still perfect after far too long, Tanya decided that she should move on. "Visha, are there any exits in this place beyond the way we came in?"

"Not anywhere you'd want to go, Major." Visha replied. "There's a tunnel into the sensorium in the shelves there, but they're still in the planning phase for tonight's dreams, so it's not particularly interesting. The director there isn't exactly a person one wants around." Hm. That was vaguely interesting, but maybe later.

As they walked back into the main hub of the Motherlobe, Tanya's eyes flicked around as she picked out differences from the real thing. The floating platforms that Tanya always felt were proof that there was no such thing as work safety in the Psychonauts had been replaced with platforms that held statues, each with a blackboard outlining facts about the person the statue portrayed. Miss Milla was one of them, of course, but so were Agents Nein and Forcythe, and one for each of the Psychic Six. A few had groups of statues instead, each bound by some easily understandable theme. Floating up to the one depicting Agent Hollis, Tanya looked at the blackboard to check how worried she should be if this was seen.

Agent Hollis Forscythe
-Preferred address: Agent Hollis
-sign of affection, do not spread
-The woman Grand Head Zanotto foists duties he doesn't want to do on
-Colloquially: "Second Head"
-Much more suited to the position of Grand Head'
-Composed, good prioritization
-Cares about safety (rare)
-Psychic Specialty: Mental Connection
-Sharp dresser
-Favorite food: ???
-Detests cilantro

Tanya stopped reading each one, quickly becoming bored with reading what they already knew… which was because she was literally reading her own mind. With that mental knot untied, Tanya skimmed the rest to confirm there wasn't anything embarrassing there. Just… a thorough assessment of every little fact Tanya knew about the woman.

"This seems… okay." Tanya said to herself. "If I want to make a convincing facade, it should contain some sensitive information that I can afford to reveal." Maybe if she specifically hid Miss Milla and Agent Nein's profiles badly, it would be a suitable distraction…

"Yes, Major." Visha contributed, saluting.

"Hm… the relief looks different." Tanya said out loud as she floated herself to the art in question. In the real world, it was a stone carving on the wall that depicted the Psychic Six. Here?

Much like the real depiction, it was stylized. Five images over six panels. The center one, where Ford Cruller was supposed to be, had a strange man that Tanya didn't really recognize, tall and severe, wearing glasses and a business suit but with no face. Who was this?

Tanya jolted as she realized that this was her old self. The one in her first life. How could she have… Why wasn't there a face? …It must be because this wasn't the section of her mind where her first life memories were stored. Yes, that makes sense.

To the left of her old self, where Agent Boole was normally depicted, was Tanya's second life, wearing her Aerial mage gear. Oddly, the stylization reminded Tanya of a marionette, with visible joints and with the most notable feature being that the puppet's hands were coated in some kind of dripping liquid. There were strings being pulled between the depiction of her first life and the far left panel, where there was… Being X.

Being X was sculpted as he preferred, as the popular depiction of the christian god. Old man, white beard. Tanya felt slightly sick and heated at the bastard's sight. After a moment of concentration of her intent, Tanya unleashed a salvo of explosive spells at the depiction… which did precisely nothing. "I suppose that's what Agent Nein meant when he said that it was difficult to alter your own mind." She idly commented to Visha, who giggled at the observation.

To the right of her first life, in the section that normally had Helmut Fullbear and ex-Agent Zanotto arm in arm over the divider that was technically present, there was Tanya again, but instead depicted as a doll wearing a childish dress rather than a puppet, held in the arms of Miss Milla. The background in those two sections were of fire. To the far right… Being X again, but with a bored, dismissive expression instead of the cruel laughter the first one had. Not entirely unexpected, given the theme of the opposite side.

"This is clearly unacceptable for the viewing of guests." Tanya declared. Maybe take that big curtain on the left and extend it to cover it? No, that would be too obvious. "Now, what on earth is over here?" This half of the Motherlobe was where you could get to the staff apartments, as well as a few "businesses" that catered to the staff in their off hours. One half had entertainment, including a bowling alley and skating rink, while the other half had services, such as a hair salon and a spa. The outward appearance of the bowling alley, on the left, had been exchanged for what appeared to be… from the target reticules, maybe a shooting range? It was labeled 'The Devil's Playhouse'. Tanya made a note to change that.

Inside the annoyingly named area, the interior was surprisingly similar to the real place: a hallway that led to the bowling alley, with an offshoot that led to all of the other entertainment options. The aesthetic was more… militant, vaguely reminding her of the hallways at the War College. Harmless, if other context is removed.

Walking into the bowling alley, Tanya immediately revised her assessment. This was a shooting gallery. It looked an awful lot like the one in the War College, as while there weren't any marksmanship standards for the officers, the scores were clearly displayed, and it was a factor for being considered among the twelve Knights. While nobility was an outdated custom, there was a visceral pleasure in earning such a direct promotion in status as a result of one's own efforts. Tanya glanced at the scoreboard, and saw what she expected: in first place was Tanya von Degurechaff, with one point shy of a perfect score, followed by the 203rd's top aces, in the order that Tanya internally ranked them when it came to skill in combat. "...Maybe if I change the names to their callsigns, it would be acceptable."

"If you say so, Major." Visha agreed. Was she this sycophantic in reality? Or was that just an imperfect recollection? Or Tanya was just being paranoid. All three are possibilities when Being X enters the equation. She brought out a notepad and wrote something down.

"Let's take a look at the game." Tanya said, going to the weapons locker and opening it up. Instead of a physical object within, a series of holographic panels were beamed out of the container, creating an interface that reminded Tanya of her favorite first person shooter. "I must have spent hundreds of hours on this…" She said, before remembering to smile. She manipulated the holograms as if it was a smart display, browsing the selection of weapons.

Unsurprisingly, it included every single weapon that Tanya had ever used in any game as well as the kinds from any video game… including the ones that had no business being used in a 1920s era firing range. "I'll need to constrain this." She said as she made a selection. An anti-material rifle manifested in the locker, which expanded to fit the massive weapon. It was some kind of Barrett, although Tanya couldn't consciously remember exactly which model it was, which was reflected in the display.

Visha's eyes sparkled at the weapon. "Wow, Major! I've never seen such an amazing rifle…" She stroked it reverently as Tanya brandished it. "Is it time to shoot some Francois? Or Communists?"

"Why not?" Tanya asked, the undoubtedly heavy weapon feeling light as a feather as she maneuvered it to the firing range. Did it make sense? Not really. Would a gun from her second life have weight? Maybe.

The War College's firing range was not indoors. It was a field backstopped by a concrete wall that they had piled a bunch of dirt in front of, as the dirt made pleasingly large explosions when fired at by modern weapons, and it cut down on the amount of maintenance that needed to be done to that wall. More video game menus popped up, a selection of firing range setups allowing one to pick what exactly one could blow up.

Tanya had loaded the rifle (using the menu) with bullets enchanted with an explosive spell, so she picked a Russy battalion. The firing range morphed, the ground suddenly half of a kilometer below the firing range's counter. Below was a view of the aforementioned battalion, infantry marching on foot with tracked platforms to support, ample anti-air to fend off mage assaults.

With a wide grin and Visha's cheers to accompany it, Tanya spent an enjoyable amount of time killing communists, as all soldiers should. The war was never really the same after she learned exactly what prompted Rus into entering the war. Loria…

Without Tanya interfacing with the firing range and without reloading her rifle, the firing range changes to an overhead view of Moskva, and Tanya immediately shot the NKVD's headquarters, both the public one and then the secret one that she only learned about later. Idly, she noted that her weapon had changed to the one she had used on that attack… The structures exploded messily with all the force of a maximum power explosive spell. At the center of the secret one's ruins, a golden computation orb floated. That must be a nugget of wisdom… she was hiding this area anyway.

"It was one thing to know that the massive waste was being waged to redraw maps or because of machismo…" Tanya said to Visha. "But as empty of reasons for such a loss of human resources as those were, there's just no topping 'because a pedophile wants a new toy' for the worst reason to send millions of soldiers to their deaths."

"No question, Major." Visha replied.

Tanya examined the shooting gallery once more. "...This has to go." She concluded. It was too enmeshed with her second life. "At best, I'll need to incorporate Agent Nein's marksmanship lessons and make it look like that's where this all came from." Would some gilding hint towards the usage of the nugget of wisdom? That seems like it would be tricky to research.

"There are other entertainment options, Major." Visha reminded Tanya as she wrote down the notes Tanya just dictated.

"Right." Tanya said, leaving the room. After the door shut, she stopped, sniffing at the air. Looking down, she noted that her uniform was now filthy with ash, concrete dust, and blood. "Ah, I should fix this." Tanya focused on the idea of clothes, trying to spin out figments she could claim. After a moment, the various outfits she had worn in her lives started to manifest in the now familiar chalk drawing format. There were also some outfits she's only seen other people wear, but a moment's consideration had Tanya reaching out towards her old dress uniform. "There we go." It was crisp and fresh, as it always was when she had a chance to use it, and Tanya felt freshly showered, her hair instantly done up into the usual style.

In fact… Tanya looked herself over, noting the subtle differences as she flexed and hopped in place. "I feel… strong."

"You've truly come back, Major! Congratulations!" Visha said exuberantly. She picked up Tanya again and gave her another giant bear hug.

"Yes, I appear to have completely transformed myself into my second life's form." Tanya said with wonder. Could she? Tanya looked around for the suits or school uniforms from her first life… but saw nothing, just military uniforms and childish outfits. Even focusing on such things produced no figments. "...Drat." How was it determined what did or did not produce figments? Questions for later.

The other entertainment options were actually rather limited. She expected some kind of strategy game at least, but beyond the firing range, the rest were entirely confined to entertainment options she held within this life: An obstacle course that shifted randomly, tainted with reminders of basic training and the 203rd's training courses. "Definitely need to cut the artillery." She dictated to Visha, who had brought the notepad back out. The other two options were a small army of dolls that enacted whatever imaginary scenario you told them to emulate and something that Tanya would like to say was based off of builder video games, but was more accurately just exceptionally fancy building blocks; another legacy of the years spent with no intelligent conversation.

At the start of this life, Tanya decided to put a little effort into actually seeming childish, and as such spent the majority of the first three or four years of this life building facsimiles of buildings from her first two lives, and reflecting on various what-ifs from her previous lives. In other words, she played with blocks and dolls. It wasn't so bad; the limits of the entertainment was in your imagination and intelligence, and while Tanya never considered themselves particularly artistic, a few blocks could be repurposed as dice and she still remembered a few wargame rules. Lesser girls would have gone mad, but despite the unusual format of her mind, Tanya was still pretty confident in her sanity.

If only she could trust the Psychonauts to agree with that assessment. 'Suffering from delusions.' Bah! Mary did represent a security risk, now that Tanya thinks about it. Hopefully, her memories of 'The Devil of the Rhine' were too warped by caricature to be recognizably Tanya. Tanya walked out of the entertainment section, looking at a woman who was, in life, just rather fat, but in Tanya's mind, she was short enough for her width to make her outright round. Tanya didn't know the woman's name, but resolved to learn it later.

"Visha, do you have the time?" Tanya asked.

"No, Major." Visha replied without an ounce of contrition. "The Director has sent a message asking when you plan on going to sleep." Visha looked worried as she asked the question, before carefully elaborating. "He's been positively gleeful about the available material for your dreams tonight." She spoke as if it was a warning.

Tanya reviewed the day's embarrassments, ignoring the figments produced by that act. "...not yet." She eventually said. "Is everything in this section just an assortment of memories?" She asked Visha.

"Agent Nein told you that a sane mind is pretty much just that." Visha reminded her.

"Ah yes." Tanya replied, remembering that particular explanation. "Let's just do a quick catalog of the remainder and then we can check out the other sections." She said after a moment of thought.

"Yes Major!"

-------------------------

Tanya awoke to a pounding noise on the door of the Psychoisolation chamber. When did she fall asleep? They finished logging the sections of the fake Motherlobe, went back to the room she initially entered her own mind through, then… Ah, she must have fallen asleep at that point. Was it because of the hypnotic bed that was there? As they regained consciousness, the first sensation she registered was a feeling of being filthy. Sweat caked her form, and the smell was worse than any armpit. But it didn't hold a candle to the Rhine front, so Tanya put it out of her mind, having long burned out her Japanese standards of cleanliness. There wasn't even any stench of blood or gunpowder.

Fortunately, the nightmares were… less violent than usual. There was still a lingering feeling of mortification and embarrassment, but the details were outside of Tanya's memory. The pounding continued, so Tanya crawled over to the entrance and unlocked it, taking the psitanium but leaving behind the pillow and the blankets she had kicked off of herself at some point during the night. Despite this, Tanya felt more rested than she has been in years. A consolation prize, to go with the less desirable consequence of staying asleep in the face of stimuli that would normally awaken her.

It immediately opened, to reveal the crazed visage of the founder of the Psychonauts, Ford Cruller. He was dragging a janitorial cart, although it floated instead of having wheels, an example of psychic technology bent to something actually useful for once. "Hoo!" He exclaimed, his nose scrunching up. Tanya felt even more self conscious about how filthy they felt. "That's some real 'kid locked in a box' stink, alright. Go on missy, I have to clean up your mess. The sweat alone… Have to give this place a deep clean, else germs will be building their own city within the week!" As Tanya slinked off, turning herself invisible as she went, he added "And get yourself cleaned up too!"

The camp had two bathroom facilities. One was purely toilets and sinks, but the other had three stalls and a set of five shower stalls (per gender, although Tanya would bet some of those stalls were urinals in the boy's section) with their controls low enough to the ground that the children could use them without assistance… although the younger ones might still need assistance. These stalls were currently in use, but even if there was an open one, she was not in a state to be seen by the other campers.

There was a third and even forth location… but they were the private bathrooms of the camp counselors. The bathrooms at the place she was instructed to go after she left the Psychoisolation chamber. Perfect.

Tanya invisibly entered Miss Milla's room, right as Miss Milla, in a towel, was sending a freshly dressed Lili Zanotto back into the camper section of the girl's cabin. Lili had proven last night that she was not fully capable in matters of dressing herself. Turning around, she immediately noticed Tanya's invisible presence. "Tanya! Let me see you, dear." After Tanya dropped her invisibility, she smiled widely. "It's good to see that you're okay, Tanya. Come on, let's get you cleaned up."

Tanya plastered a smile on her face as she followed Miss Milla into the bathroom and allowed the woman to undress and bathe her. Some of the first thoughts Tanya had picked up on when her telepathy was developing was how Miss Milla saw herself as the mother for all of the children of the group home, as Miss Milla had the loud thoughts of a psychic that had not fully developed their abilities. It was somewhat unprofessional of her, but after the fire and being officially adopted by her, the logical course was to encourage this mindset, as while being under Miss Milla's protection but under the scrutiny of the Psychonauts was far from an ideal position to be in, being a known psychic outside of any protection was infinitely worse. Eavesdropping on some of Agent Nein's conversations with Agent Mentalis about psychic experiments proved the wisdom of this decision.

As such, Tanya had a general policy of just going along with everything Miss Milla suggested in her capacity as Tanya's parent figure, and to seem happy about it, with only the occasional bit of resistance when the request was particularly onerous. Tanya had worn many masks in her lives, and 'dutiful daughter' was a much lighter one to wear in comparison to 'Imperial Patriot', even after one considered that Miss Milla was a very doting mother. If she wanted to bathe and dress Tanya like she was no older than Lili? She had to withstand that exact thing for longer than Lili had been alive already, an encore performance every now and then didn't matter.

It all came down to her mantra: No matter the trial, it's still more pleasant than the front lines were.

 

[Image]

And sold. Tanya's mind sounds like a fun bonus level. Probably has a lot of psychic aggression upgrades to be honest. I think Her old life form and being x could be construed as her memories of her father and grandfather at a pinch. Not happy ones to be sure but interesting. Also the animu plush people make great mental residents. Choice.

As for Milia and Tanya's relationship I think Tanya actually quite enjoys her new foster mother more than she claims. Can't wait to see what kinda of rivalry happens betten May and Tanya.

 

[M24M42]

And when the Psychonauts enter, Visha will go on and on about how strong and brave and caring Tanya is. And how if she actually cares, she never admits it and just pretends that it's purely business and a trial she has to put up with

Really waiting to see what happens when MayDay breaks her way into Tanya's head to make sure she isn't Argent the Silver.
Is mayday going to get in before Tanya has had time to rearrange anything, is she going to believe anything she finds? Is Tanya going to have a chance to explain that power does not equal divinity

Is Tanya going to finally be forced to admit that she is not the same person as was pushed off the train platform. That she might actually be a better person.

So many questions.

 

[Pinklestia]

I love this story.

Mary is totally gonna end as Tanya's little sister somehow, right?

 

[por]

This will be the most dangerous two weeks of Tanya's third life, to be sure.

Click to shrink...

Bo clue why you are trying to hammer home this forced psychic plunder plot. When such operations are forbidden on anyone under the age of 18, and plus is wasnt much of a problem in the first place

 

[Vanigo]

Bo clue why you are trying to hammer home this forced psychic plunder plot. When such operations are forbidden on anyone under the age of 18, and plus is wasnt much of a problem in the first place

Click to shrink...

He isn't. This is Tanya's perspective, and she's a very bad judge of such things. She's 90% jumping at shadows and screwing herself over here.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

Bo clue why you are trying to hammer home this forced psychic plunder plot. When such operations are forbidden on anyone under the age of 18, and plus is wasnt much of a problem in the first place

Click to shrink...

Vanigo has the right of it. Tanya is an incredibly anxious and paranoid person, and this is an example of that.

 

[Pinklestia]

To be fair, agent Nein is pressuring Tanya a bit so of course Tanya takes it the wrong way.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

Let's just say that Tanya's seen some shit when it comes to just how sociopathic Sasha Nein and Otto Mentalis can be when it comes to their experiments. Her concerns aren't entirely baseless, particularly given how her greatest concern isn't that they'd do stuff to her just to see how she ticks, but instead what they'll do in the name of 'curing' her of her 'delusions of having a past life'.

Sasha Nein's expressed opinion about Mary did not help. Where Tanya goes wrong is that Sasha and Otto are big on the scientific method, and there's not any scientific value in suppressing or excising the memories, beyond knowing how to do that for future cases. They'd definitely do it if they thought Tanya and Mary were being harmed by the memories, like if they were exceptionally traumatic or led them to gain an inflated sense of importance, or if their presence just gave them exceptional amounts of stress, but if they were beneficial, they'd prefer to study the phenomenon rather than cure it.

 

[M24M42]

And thus the engines of misunderstanding begin to fire again, the runaway train of consequences ready to pull out of the station.

 

[Pinklestia]

, but if they were beneficial

Click to shrink...

Mary past life memories are not beneficial at all. Unlike Tanya she was about being a berserker running on the power of "God" that killed her own allies. This is not the kind of stuff you want a six year old to have in her head.

If Mary has regained any sanity at all she should feel horrified about how she killed her own people. Sure she can blame Tanya all she wants, but it was still Mary who killed her own soldiers, no Tanya.

Edit: Now now, who will berserker Mary remember the Psychonauts of?

 

[Whiteeyes]

Oh boy a new Tanya fic! You're always so good at showing the world through her distorted lens and how that all fits what she knows and what she "knows". A really well done study of a character so many get wrong.

 

[Enthusiast#117]

I admit to feeling disappointment that she's going to get to hide her past life again.

Mary's presence and matching memories could have acted as a verification to keep her story from being dismissed as mere delusion.

I'd have been interested in seeing the outcome of Tanya actually getting some form of competent (if esoteric) psychological help, instead of what's looking like a doubling down on her mental issues.

Telepathy would have been a great way to eliminate the standard misunderstandings, which is I suppose the reason why it's always blocked or neutered whenever Tanya encounters it in a fic.

I guess I was more interested in seeing how the Psychonaughts affected Tanya's outlook than how Tanya will affect the Psychonaughts.

Plus, it'd have been interesting seeing the other people react to the evidence that Being X is real.

But from here it doesn't look like that's likely to happen.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

But from here it doesn't look like that's likely to happen.

Click to shrink...

You are dead wrong here. This is a case of 'its going to get worse before it gets better'

If it was going to be about how Tanya affects the Psychonauts, the story wouldn't be seven years pre-canon.

If the story was going to be about what Tanya looks like after therapy, it would start with a sane Tanya.

This is a story about how the Psychonauts and telepathy affect Tanya, and to do that, she needs to be crazy at the start.

 

[Enthusiast#117]

You are dead wrong here. This is a case of 'its going to get worse before it gets better'

If it was going to be about how Tanya affects the Psychonauts, the story wouldn't be seven years pre-canon.

If the story was going to be about what Tanya looks like after therapy, it would start with a sane Tanya.

This is a story about how the Psychonauts and telepathy affect Tanya, and to do that, she needs to be crazy at the start.

Click to shrink...

Well, then I guess I'm happy to be wrong, and will look forward to what you're doing with the concept.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

The morning's activity, after Miss Milla ensured that everyone was wearing sunscreen, was something that didn't involve astral projection, surprisingly. As such, Tanya was wearing her usual set of activewear, which was a pair of camouflage pattern cargo shorts and a white T-shirt, as it was an eminently practical choice for physical activities. Her long hair was tied back into a bun, secured by Tanya's favorite baseball cap. The Yomiuri Giants was not exactly a normal team to own merchandise for, as someone who has never set foot in Japan in this life, but Tanya recognized the team somehow. Besides, looking at it for longer than three seconds seemed to be enough for Agent Nein to purchase it for her, and just like that, she owned a link to her first life.

She must have supported the team back in her first life, she had decided. Even if she struggled to pin down a specific memory of doing so.

The rest of the children had similarly worn clothing that were either completely new activewear, presumably purchased for the camp, or worn clothing that was deemed an acceptable casualty to the crucible of children at play. Another indicator of the relative wealth levels in the camp…

"Okay children, " Miss Milla announced once the final camper arrived, which was Lizzie. "You've learned how to levitate, and that lesson is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from being a lesson on Telekinesis." She giggled at her own joke. "So that's what we'll be learning today." She used that very power to retrieve a basket full of tennis balls. "Now, due to the large concentrations of Psitanium, you may have noticed that your psychic powers have been easier to use ever since you've walked on to the grounds." Really? Tanya didn't notice anything odd… but then again, she also hasn't strained herself at any point. Would any of those feats have been strenuous if it wasn't for the psitanium? She wasn't sure. Miss Milla spilled out a dozen tennis balls, catching them with her telekinesis and placing them gently on various stumps, branches, and benches. "So, it shouldn't be too difficult to master this trick, even outside of a psychic realm. Try to lift one of the balls without moving it anywhere but up, as the first trick. There are enough balls for everyone, so don't fight."

Tanya rolled her eyes at the simple task, but claimed one that no one else was looking at and lifted it precisely one meter, a blue projection of a hand holding the ball within its palm. Similarly, a few of the other psychics completed the task casually, namely Adam, Lizzie, and Sam. The other five campers didn't complete it quite so casually, most notably because of a small spat between Norma and Morris.

"Very good, children!" Miss Milla said, praising them indulgently. The younger half of the campers puffed up their chests with pride. "Now, next I want you to bring the balls into your hands. Be careful, you don't want to hit anyone, yourselves most of all."

With equal ease, the projection of a hand clutched the tennis ball and threw it into Tanya's waiting hand. Her psychic barrier flared with the force of the throw, but that's what it was for. Adam and Sam didn't match the feat, but performed the task with as much ease as the first. Lizzie ended up dropping it before picking it back up and then calling it into her hand. Interestingly, while most of the children used the conventional hand projections to manipulate objects with telekinesis in ways beyond picking them up, moving the hand gently to themselves, Adam instead spooled out a thread of psychic energy, snagging the object and yanking it into his waiting hand. He then proceeded to make the tennis ball do yo-yo tricks.

Mary handled this task easier than the other one, launching the ball at herself and letting it bounce off her own barrier coated face, catching the ball on the rebound. Tanya wasn't entirely sure if Mary suspected Tanya's own origins, but from how often Mary glanced at her, Tanya bet that she noticed the startling resemblance, at least.

Miss Milla led the group through about a dozen different telekinetic feats, keeping the exercises going until even the least talented could manage the given trick on the first try. That person was Norma. She even accidentally set one of the balls on fire instead of telekinetically moving it. Lili did too, but it was not an accident. Lizzie and Tanya froze the flaming balls, both used to putting out random fires from the younger pyromaniacs.

"Okay, I think everyone's got the hang of it." Announced Miss Milla. "Now, after lunch we'll move on to the last psychic technique we'll be teaching you as a group: PSI blast." Come to think of it, now that Tanya actually witnessed the children learn something, and how often tennis balls were 'accidentally' sent to hit another camper… was teaching them it wise?

…They could already hurt each other, what's one more way to do so? It's less deniable than telekinesis, too… Yeah, it was fine. Agent Nein mentioned that they would probably have to refine the curriculum through trial and error, as no one had ever tried to teach child psychics in a semi-organized manner before.

"Now, have fun!" Miss Milla continued, causing Tanya to realize she had missed a few lines with her mental tangent. Quickly observing the children, they each ambled away to separate parts of the camp, some using levitation, others using telekinesis… ah. This was just some unstructured play time. It was an important thing for growing young minds to have such a thing, according to the child psychology books that Miss Milla had on her bookshelves. Time to pretend to be twelve some more.

Tanya glanced around, noting the location and composition of each group. Lili seemed to have attached herself to Mary, as she was the second youngest and presumed some connection on that basis. Norma and Lizzie split away and started some kind of string game with psychic hand projections rather than their physical hands, Gisu had taken it upon herself to assist Morris with mastering his new psychic wheelchair, which was just a small lawn chair he put a levitation ball beneath, and Sam had started collecting animals while paired with Adam, the boy refining his own zoolinguism by participating in the venture.

Agent Nein was nowhere to be seen, and there was no way Miss Milla would "encourage her paranoia" by providing useful advice on what Tanya had seen within her own mind. She'd likely, in her role of Tanya's 'mother', encourage her to socialize with the other children. Well, there was nothing to it. At least she could investigate Mary a bit more.

Walking up to the smallest pair in the camp, Tanya idly listened to their no doubt riveting conversation before introducing herself.

"Okay, so imagine you're setting something on fire." Explained Lili.

Mary nodded. "Okay, now what?"

"You're done, that's it." Lili replied. She looked around. "You're not doing it right. Nothing's on fire. Here, watch me."

Tanya quickly snatched one of the discarded tennis balls, which remained in the area for the use of the campers, and presented it as a target for Lili's pyrokinetic display. "Thanks Tanya!" Lili exclaimed, smiling widely. She focused for a brief instant and the tennis ball burst into flames. "See? Easy." Tanya snuffed the flame by freezing it once more. "Okay, that part's kinda not easy." Lili said, nodding sagely despite the grammatical error.

"Lili, your talent for pyrokinesis makes it that simple for you, but for Mary?" Tanya said rhetorically. "Well, I'm sure she's quite talented at wanton destruction, but you skipped a step." Mary looked a little surprised at Tanya's backhanded compliment. As she had the girl's attention, Tanya made the quick decision to follow through. "When she said you had to imagine setting something on fire, she meant you had to imagine setting the specific thing you seek to burn on fire." Tanya brought out another tennis ball. "Imagine setting this on fire. Picture clearly what each step of the burning process would entail, the first embers, the growing heat, the building smoke, until…" As Tanya explained, Mary set to follow the instructions as they were issued. The ball ignited into a golden flame that burned the ball completely into ash before Tanya could extinguish it. "Ignition." Tanya finished.

Lili looked at Mary with wonder, star struck at the feat of pyrokinesis. "Wow! I've never burned up something so fast…" She immediately grabbed another tennis ball, and set it on fire once more. While it didn't repeat Mary's feat, it was a little faster than the last time; one third faster or so. "It didn't work!" Lili exclaimed, hopping in place before pouting.

"Hm. It appears you have a talent in the burning of infidels." Tanya commented, which drew Mary's angry and suspicious gaze. "What? You said God sent you, after all. Historically, that is what people who said that tended to do: Pillage and burn." The War College had an excellent selection of texts on the Crusades. Only half of them were of the pro-church variety, and several of those had some major criticisms about idiots going off half-cocked in God's name but against the Pope's instructions.

Mary glared at Tanya in a way that completely blew whatever facade she had of being a real six year old. "You…" She began, but left the statement trail off, as if unsure where to go from there.

Should she? It would be a normal response for angry six year olds. Tanya considered the question, assessed the risk, and decided to go for it. She patted Mary on the head, tousling her hair for just long enough to let the shock wear off, withdrawing her hand in time to avoid Mary grabbing it to bite. It's not like it would actually do anything, and Mary probably didn't have any permanent teeth to damage yet. "More seriously, Mary, you probably just used emotion as a psychic amplifier. Supposedly, pyrokinesis can be brought forth through passionate emotion. I've never seen the necessity of such things, but hate, rage, even lust can be used productively in matters of destruction."

Lili looked surprised, but after assessing the situation, decided to copy Mary. "You…" She said, with an even higher pitched voice and even less idea on how to continue that sentence. Tanya chuckled and patted her head too. Lili smiled at her successful manipulation. "What's an infidel?"

Ah, of course Lili would be curious about anything that implied she could burn them. "It's what the meaner church people call people who don't want to go to church."

Lili frowned. The Motherlobe did have a small room that was decorated as and thus functioned as a chapel, although it was not used enough to have an actual priest. There was a religious old lady, Agent Hollis' mother, who ran a small daycare out of her daughter's apartment. This did not give religion a good impression among the youth.

Mary, on the other hand, decided to be a pedant. "It's more complicated than that! Infidels are nonbelievers, like the muslims! People who don't go to church are just impious." You don't really appreciate the depth of the christian default mindset until you have multiple childhoods. Tanya recalled using 'church time' in her second life to continually curse at Being X. She wasn't entirely sure how she managed to muster up enough hate to do so for hours at a time, but Tanya von Degurechaff was an endless well of spite.

Tanya stared at the 'six year old'. "Mary, she's three. All she needs to know is that if someone calls someone else an infidel, they are a meanie."

Lili took offense at that explanation. "Hey! I'm not stupid, I'm smart!" Tanya patted her head again, but Lili didn't seem to appreciate it as much that time. Lili tried to set Tanya on fire, but Tanya's barrier blocked the psychic emanations.

What would an actual twelve year old girl say in this situation? Of course. "You're adorable." Tanya said, patting her head again.

"What in the lord's name does that mean?" Mary asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion. What? Tanya reviewed the last five seconds. Oh. She was thinking about Japanese twelve year old girls. She said 'Kawaii'.

"I was saying she was cute." Tanya said, sniffing in superiority. One constant among children: The older ones automatically think they're better than the younger ones. "I speak tons of languages."

Mary's suspicious expression gained a smile. Oh, she thought she was being clever? "Which ones? Besides Albish, of course."

Tanya resisted the impulse to chuckle at the clumsy attempt at interrogation. "What kind of made up language is that? I speak Japanese, English, German, Latin, French, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, Mandarin, and Arabic." In that order, incidentally. Next on the list was Hindi. Initially, Tanya had an idea of becoming a translator to take advantage of knowing six languages before being born, but learning new languages had become a somewhat pleasurable activity all on its own. It will probably be useful for the localization of her future entertainment empire. If she gets it off the ground.

Mary cursed under her breath, or at least Tanya presumed she did. Tanya never did investigate exactly which nordic language 'Legadonian' was, but either way Tanya only knew a few swears and insults. One more, now. Still, Tanya had a narrative to maintain. "Oh, what language was that? It sounds Germanic…"

"It's Legadonian." Mary replied.

"Never heard of it." Tanya glibly responded. "Where's it from?"

"Javel!" Lili pronounced, gleefully repeating the swear. Mary flinched at the exclamation, realizing the natural consequences of swearing in front of a three year old.

"It's from the Legadonian Entente, from my last life." Mary replied, surprisingly straightforwardly. She then immediately added: "I'm not crazy."

Lili giggled at the assertion. "Don't worry Mary, I think you're cool." Mary seemed pleased at the small child's assertion, which was vaguely amusing.

Tanya knew damn well that Mary wasn't delusional… assuming the similarities to the Bloody Valkyrie wasn't a coincidence. Crazy, but that was unrelated to the reincarnation."That's fairly interesting. I overheard Agent Nein talking about this assertion."

Mary seemed intrigued at the dangling bait. "Really? What did he say?"

Tanya gave one her best drill sergeant grin at the question. Tanya wasn't entirely clear why she had decided to throw Mary off balance, but she also saw no reason to stop. "He said you probably absorbed memories from an old veteran who was dying when you were a baby, creating a delusional reincarnation narrative to make sense of it." Mary's expression scrunched up as she digested the technical jargon. "In other words… you're crazy."

Mary scowled at the summary, more firm in their convictions than ever before. "You're just trying to get a rise out of me, Degurechaff." She said accusingly.

Tanya was fortunately ready for this, although she wasn't entirely sure Mary even knew Tanya's old name before now. After a beat and a prize-winning confused face, Tanya asked "Who?"

Mary gaped at the reply. Tanya placidly stared back at her. Wait, she's pretending to be twelve. Tanya burst out laughing at Mary's gobsmacked expression. Mary seized on the opportunity. "Degurechaff! You Devil!"

"Your face!" Tanya said in explanation, putting more effort in her laughter. "I don't know what your problem with me is, but whoever this Degurechaff is, I'm not her." Wait, should she have mispronounced it? …no, she just told Mary that she spoke German.

"You look exactly the same!" Mary insisted. Tanya should hope not, she's already taller than she was at age twelve in the Empire… but she killed Mary when she was fourteen. Hrm. "You sound the same when you speak Albish, and you can use psychic powers to emulate magic like I can! God sent me here for a purpose, and I can't do his will if I get lobotomized!"

"Nonsense." Tanya replied. "Lobotomies were outlawed ten years ago. You may not get history lessons about psychics at whatever public school you go to, but they're not going to lock you up for such tame delusions." Tanya was actually pretty sure that they would, but Mary made an excellent canary for that coal mine.

"My past life is not a delusion!" Mary insisted.

"That too." Tanya added, provoking a groan of frustration from Mary.

"Who is Degoochaff?" Lili asked, struggling with the unfamiliar word.

Mary visibly struggled on how to respond to the honest question, and eventually decided to elaborate. "Okay, you know how I said I'm actually twenty-four?" Lili nodded. "In my last life, Tanya von Degurechaff was a horrible monster of a woman who killed my father, stole his gun, and then, later on, killed me with that very same gun. I was eighteen." It was a war, Mary. You were a volunteer, even. Also, Mary's father was the guy with the fancy gun? The one who refused to let Tanya remove her bayonet from his chest as he fell into the ocean? That was a good gun… "To make things even worse, that gun was a present from me!" At least Mary has good taste in armaments. "She was also known as the Devil of the Rhine, killer of thousands and the architect behind the Arene Massacre."

If Mary wanted Tanya to break by spouting inaccurate data that demanded correction… Well, Tanya had used the internet before. Don't feed the trolls. Still, there was one weakness in her story. "Massacres aren't usually perpetrated by one person." Tanya observed. "Is it a translation error? Perhaps the Arene Murders?"

Mary flagged at the odd point, just as planned. "No, it was a massacre of most of the city of Arene. The Imperial artillery, at the command of Degurechaff, firebombed the city when it was still full of civilians." Pheh. Propaganda. Tanya only commanded the mages there. The commands came straight from the General Staff, too. Being a soldier sucked.

Still, it was a point to pick at. "Military?" Tanya questioned. "You mean, she was a soldier? There were lady soldiers?" Tanya scoffed, before pretending to realize something. "Wait, you said she looked just like me. There were lady child soldiers?" Tanya was all for gender equality, but poking at timeline inconsistencies is a great way to muddle the matter.

"She was just short!" Mary insisted. Oh? Tanya didn't expect that. "Degurechaff was a mage, one of the strongest. She couldn't beat me fighting fair." No such thing. That said, essentially accurate. Tanya did need to take steps to ensure that all engagements with the Bloody Valkyrie were undertaken with the deck stacked as much as possible. Fair fights were for corpses. "Physical strength doesn't matter for a mage." It does, but being light and small were actually pretty significant advantages to compensate for that.

"Like psychics." Tanya added. "Because magic isn't real."

"Yes, exactly." Mary said before realizing what she just agreed with. "I mean no! Magic was real, you used it with computation orbs that calculated the spells for you." Don't feed the trolls, Mary.

"So it's like the psychoactive technology Agent Mentalis creates." Tanya replied.

"Yes, like that." Mary agreed, spending a moment to review the statement for any trickery. "I couldn't understand the science, but it used Elenium to channel mana through the calculative parts to create the effect. It was like a pocket watch."

"Like psitanium channels psychic power at the direction of a psychic." Tanya added, plucking the meditative chunk she had in her pocket and holding it up. "Agent Nein's pocket watch is capable of telling time accurately even within a mind. It's quite useful, as the perception of time can be quite fluid." It was one of the risks Agent Nein explained ahead of time about psychic meditation. One couldn't wake up to physical stimulus as easily from a meditative trance as they could to regular sleep, after all. As last night's consequences proved.

Lili, her attention span having expired, turned to Tanya. "Really? I want a psi watch!"

"Ask Agent Mentalis." Tanya immediately said, passing the buck like a professional babysitter.

"We've drifted off topic." Mary said. Drat. "The point is, Tanya von Degurechaff is the worst, and you are very blatantly her!"

"Lili, do I look like someone who would kill thousands?" Tanya asked, before realizing her mistake.

"Yes." Lili immediately answered. "You're scary when you're mad. Or if you miss naptime."

Tanya pouted at the slander. "Well, I'm not." Tanya lied before transitioning back into the truth. "I detest violence, despite my talent for the more physical psychic arts."

"Yeah, you stink at telepathy." Lili agreed. "And zoolinguism." She added. "And clairvoyance." With a sneaky grin, she slung one more arrow right into Tanya's dignity. "And you really stink at astral projection." She giggled and swatted Tanya's baggy shorts. "You might want to get changed if we're going back into Sasha's mind for PSI blast training." Well, that ended any chance Tanya had of being respected by Lili for a while. Lili also couldn't do half of those things, but one of the few things her tiny three year old brain understood was that pointing out the fact that she was three was the perfect verbal parry when it came to such arguments, with no shame at deploying it in the same conversation that she asserts the opposite.

As such… "I said I detest violence, not that I won't use it when provoked." Tanya said warningly. It was blatant intimidation, and Lili shrunk back at the threat in her tone, but children were simply not rational enough for reasoned debate.

Mary seemed a little confused at the exchange, which proved that she did miss the innuendo on the subject of exactly what the embarrassing consequences of improperly astrally projecting were, either from overeager execution or forced expulsion. "What are you talking about? Why would she need to change?" Mary asked.

Tanya waved off Mary's concern. "It's not important. I participated in marksmanship training earlier, I won't be joining you for it. I'll be learning something else." At least, Tanya was reasonably certain that was what was going to happen.

"Why do you get all of this special training, anyway?" Mary whined.

"It's because her mom's Agent Vodello." Said Gisu, skateboarding into the conversation with Morris rolling in behind her. "There was a memory vault I found that showed Tanya's baby pictures." Tanya blinked, then played along with the intent and acted embarrassed. "That's right, I got some juicy memories from a real psychonaut."

Tanya immediately popped Gisu's ego. "You only saw what Miss Milla allowed you to see." At Gisu's skeptical brow, Tanya elaborated. "Tell me, what exactly did you see?"

Gisu shrugged and answered the question. "It was a slideshow. First, there were two pictures of baby Tanya with Agent Vodello. Then it was her meeting Agent Nein, who was rescuing you from something, he was very dashing. Then it was you doing homework or something in what I think was her office while she did Psychonauts things. Finally, it showed you walking off the jet with her to Camp."

Tanya nodded along. "Yes, a carefully curated set of memories." She said after Gisu finished. "Describing the events that led to Miss Milla meeting Agent Nein as 'rescuing me' is so far off the mark she likely just fabricated that particular memory for your perusal." Also, Tanya had never seen a memory vault before, so knowing that it showed static pictures had potential.

Morris seemed pretty interested in that tidbit. "Yeah, I saw the vault too. What really happened? It sounds like it's something really gnarly."

While Tanya had never heard that particular slang before, it was easy enough to parse. "None of your business." She said, shutting down that line of inquiry. "It's not for children to know."

Mary hummed. "You know, they did mention at one point that we'll be peeking at each other's minds…"

"On a volunteer basis." Tanya corrected. "With veto power on who gets the chance." One of the big things that Agent Hollis repeated whenever she trained newbie agents (often enough that Tanya's limited exposure heard it twice) was that consent was paramount when it came to non-mission based usage of psychic powers, with Astral Projection being more controlled than any other. It reminded Tanya of her drill sergeant days, making sure her battle maniacs knew exactly what qualified as a proper military target or not. "You couldn't get into my mind if you tried." Agent Nein confirmed that psychic shielding did protect from the Psychoportal, it just slides off the barrier.

Mary's eyes lit up at the explanation. "That means I can volunteer and not have to let you in? Perfect."

Well, there was a pretty good chance that Agent Nein or Miss Milla would veto entering the mind of someone they see as delusional, but Tanya didn't really need to see what having past lives looked like in a person's mind, so it's not a big deal. "Suit yourself." With their conversational goals accomplished, Tanya decided to do some exploring.

If nothing else, a larger chunk of psitanium could be quite useful.

----------------

The grounds were fairly large, and oddly regular. She couldn't quite put her finger on exactly why she got the impression that this was a large garden rather than actual wilderness, but… hrm. Could it be a psychic impression? She did notice some psychic traps, the kinds of things that would be used to misdirect travelers…

Tanya stepped off one of the paths to more closely examine a rock that looked like it might be carved when Agent Cruller suddenly appeared, enraged. "Hey now! Stay on the path!"

Tanya's psychic shield flared as a powerful telekinetic shove brought her back on the path. "What the?" Tanya found herself asking as she looked at Agent Cruller.

Back at the Motherlobe, Agent Cruller's disposition varied depending on his particular role. In the mail room, he was erratic and bossy, having a singular vision for his environment and violently correcting any deviation from that vision. In the bowling alley, he obsessively cleaned and sterilized every surface and every bowling shoe, but didn't lash out at anyone, being strictly professional as he tended to his imagined sanitation duties. Finally, in the Hair salon, he was instead laser focused on tending to whoever needed his services, gently but insistently restraining any of his clients that tried to leave before he was finished with their hair, then letting them get on their way.

Each one of Agent Cruller's personae needed to be managed independently, as the man was still a powerful psychic that was perfectly willing to abuse that power if it meant that he could fulfill his assigned tasks. The Park Ranger guise he was currently wielding appeared to be one of the more erratic ones. "Apologies, Mr. Park Ranger." Tanya said placatingly. "I will stay on the path."

Agent Cruller absently twitched as he processed the statement. This happened sometimes, as another factor in dealing with Agent Cruller is that his lucidity tended to wax and wane, occasionally going on a tangent that was impossible to divert him from. "Alright then, I'll let you off with a warning this time, Missy. The paths are marked, just stay on it and everything will be nice and will be where it needs to be."

That was actually much more coherent than the mailman persona usually is. "I do have a question, if you have a moment."

"Yeah?" Agent Cruller said as he carefully raked the disturbed grass from Tanya's foot.

"The torches at the meeting hall." Tanya said, gesturing vaguely in the appropriate direction. "I know most of the names on there, but… Who is Lucrecia Mux?"

Agent Cruller flinched and shuddered at the question, clutching his own head and moaning. PSI blasts lashed out, nearly breaking Tanya's psychic shield and causing significant damage to the nearby woodland. "Wha?" Agent Cruller made out before noticing the broken tree branch, the scorched grass, and the cracked sign. At the minor damage, he wept as if it was much greater. Strange psychic phenomena manifested as he howled at nothing, a broken man breaking further.

Tanya had a well developed sense of threat, when it was time to retreat and when it was time to attack. This was the former situation, so Tanya took flight and went at full speed far away from the powerful psychic's meltdown. A stray piece of psitanium shot out like a bullet, shattering Tanya's passive shield and scoring a cut on her arm. Tanya focused once more on her shield, curling into a ball as it formed a complete protective sphere, blocking out everything as it rolled around.

Another sharp impact sent Tanya tumbling and moving, causing her to lose track of what direction down was, much less keeping track of where she was going.

Eventually, as the only sense that Tanya possessed that could discern anything outside of her complete shield was her sense of balance, she deduced that she landed in the lake at some point, as while she had not come to a complete stop, the remaining motions were reasonably regular and of low intensity.

…Also, she was reasonably certain she was upside down, and was not as resistant to motion sickness as she thought she was. Ew. Biting the bullet, Tanya dropped her shield, water flooding in and soaking her to the bone. The fact that this also concealed what happened within the bubble of isolation was a bonus.

Before she could orient herself properly, a telekinetic hand plucked her out of the water, turning her until she was face to face with Miss Milla.

"Tanya." Miss Milla said worriedly. "What happened?" Her gaze zeroed into the cut on her arm, bleeding freely. "You're bleeding!" She flew towards the cafeteria, which also had the first aid station attached.

"Agent Cruller appears to have had another episode." Agent Nein said, frowning deeply as he approached Miss Milla helping Tanya out of her wet clothes. He was politely not looking directly at her. "The damage his own powers are inflicting to the environment is creating further stressors, a feedback loop."

Miss Milla looked between Tanya, who was bandaged and in dry if insufficient clothing, and the psychic chaos. "...I should help Mr. Cruller." She eventually said before taking off towards the deranged psychic.

Agent Nein's hand twitched towards his cigarettes as he smacked his lips. "I take it you stumbled across a new trigger? You're too meticulous to provoke him intentionally." He said calmly.

Tanya nodded, glad that Agent Nein immediately understood the situation. Working with competent people was quite pleasant, at times. "I asked him about Lucrecia Mux." She looked at her soaked clothing and started to focus, drying them with hydrokinesis.

"Ah. Reckless, but it's good that we've identified this before any of the other children could set him off. I'll make an announcement at lunch." Agent Nein said, nodding to himself as the situation was more or less resolved. It wasn't in question that Miss Milla could calm Agent Cruller down, after all. "While I have you here, " Agent Nein continued. "-did you manage to explore your entire mindscape? Or did you get tied up in memories?"

"I made a lot of progress, I think." Tanya said. "...But I ended up falling into proper sleep as I transitioned from one section to another." Well, an exceptionally deep sleep. Tanya would definitely have woken up in the middle of the night if it wasn't for that.

"That happens when you meditate at night, yes. It was prepared for." Agent Nein said in his usual matter-of-fact tone. It did make her feel a little bit better about her failure. "Do you have any questions about what you've experienced?"

Tanya thought for a moment. "You mentioned a few things in your explanation on what you see in minds that I didn't find." She asked. Finding the clothes only slightly damp, she got dressed once more. Their trip in the lake definitely put them far from being clean, but there was no way Tanya was going to go outside without them.

"You're too young to have formed a proper nugget of wisdom…" Agent Nein tilted his head. "Then again, you have many useful psychic skills and know many languages… You may have one or two hiding away. Don't be worried if you don't find it. You haven't used those skills much when it comes to practical application, which is important for the formation of a nugget of wisdom." Good to know. "As for emotional baggage… you're blind to seeing it within your own mind. It's not impossible to resolve things without assistance from another psychic, but it's not easy. As you may have noticed, the rules for how you interact with the mind changes if it's your own."

Tanya hummed at the explanation. "I did notice that when I touched figments, it manifested the memories referenced." At least, when it referenced one.

"Yes, that's a good example." Agent Nein agreed. "The second step of learning psychic construction is taking that property and mastering it, producing and manifesting a figment in one smooth process." He created a telekinetic construct, but instead of a hand it was a tennis racket. "You've already mastered this, so you're halfway there on this step." He telekinetically fetched a tennis ball. "Shall we? We'll continue our discussion."

Heh. Agent Nein, in his role as Miss Milla's boyfriend, did have a habit of slotting himself into a fatherly role when it came to Tanya. His willingness and lack of intrusiveness with it was appreciated by both Miss Milla and Tanya. "I could go a few rounds." Tanya said, manifesting their own racket.

They didn't have a net, or a clear enough space to pretend to have one, but that didn't mean they couldn't just whack the ball in the other's direction in a clear-ish area. It was the tennis equivalent of playing catch.

It was a relaxing way to pass the time until lunch, at least.

 

[Vanigo]

Tanya: I'm just gonna gaslight Mary; what could go wrong?

 

[Image]

Such good friendship. 20 bucks says they lovingly strangling each other at the end of camp. Tanya having positive childhood barring the fire is refreshing.

Poor Cruller.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

"Children, I have an announcement. The seven names on the torches, you know the ones, are forbidden to be spoken of. It upsets Mr. Cook and his associates to hear them." Was the first thing said by Agent Nein when everyone gathered for lunch.

"As I said on the first day, he's had a very rough time of things lately and we should be considerate of his feelings." Miss Milla added.

Agent Cruller… or rather, "Mr. Cook" had calmed down in time for lunch, although he seemed… twitchier than he was at breakfast. Hopefully he'll remain stable, the nature of his madness combined with the fact that there is nothing that can contain the man beyond his own delusions provided something of a conundrum.

Damn Truman Zanotto for putting children within the blast radius of this ticking time bomb. Putting the man in a mental asylum for one wasn't exactly what Tanya would call an ideal solution, but it was at least a stopgap!

Briefly, as Tanya waited for Agent Cruller to finish distributing the meals, she considered what the man's mental world would even look like. Supposedly, according to the propaganda comics, his mind was shattered as a casualty to the battle against the Deluge of Grulovia, Maligula. But would that shattering appear literal within the mind? It would explain why they'd phrase it that way, at least.

Come to think of it, how did a famous hydrokinetic inflict such serious telepathic damage? Back then, multidisciplinary psychics were unheard of with the exception of Ford himself and his confederates, and she'd have to be an incredibly potent telepath in order to do such a thing. Even today, psychics tend to monofocus on a single discipline, branching out to basics like Astral Projection and associated skills as they need. Only Tanya's past life memories allowed her such quick mastery of the kinetic arts.

"Here you go, Missy." Agent Cruller said as he placed the hamburger with cheese and bacon in front of her, surrounded by a line of thick fries. Artery-clogging, but at least the man was skilled at whatever tasks he dedicated himself to in his madness, and understood portion sizes. "You're a growing gi…" His eye twitched as he blanked out for a moment, before resuming right where he left off. "...kid, and you need your protein." He patted Tanya's head and abruptly vanished, teleporting back to the grill to clean his workstation. So convenient…

About two minutes into the meal, Norma started to stand up, her food only half eaten. Immediately, Agent Cruller appeared behind her. "Finish your food!" He said, half-yelling at the girl.

"But-" Norma began, before being interrupted by Agent Cruller.

"The only butt here is the one that's going back in your seat." Agent Cruller said, telekinetic hands enforcing his instruction by shoving her down by the shoulders. "Finish your food." He said again.

Norma looked at Miss Milla, Agent Nein, and her older sister, but after a tense moment, decided to just shove what was left of her burger into her mouth, looking vaguely ill but swallowing it under the stern gaze of the unstable psychic.

Lizzie's gaze was arctic as it assessed the old man. Ice crystals formed around him, but he countered the cryokinesis with his own pyrokinesis without even seeming to notice.

Still, lunch resolved without any explosions, which was more than Tanya had expected after that announcement.

The counselors led the campers back into the 'classroom', which was really just a meditation chamber filled with cushions, and directed the group to enter Agent Nein's mind for PSI blast training.

After the last camper entered Agent Nein's mind, Tanya felt it was time to raise her concerns. "Agent Cruller is a problem." She announced.

Miss Milla winced, but nodded. "Yes, I think that Grand Head Zanotto underestimated the risk."

Agent Nein hummed to himself. "Well, it wasn't the Grand Head's idea to contain Ford by creating a summer camp. That was Agent Forscythe."

"Really?" Tanya asked. She seemed so sensible!

"Yes." Agent Nein confirmed. "The part where the summer camp became a revenue-generating project for the Psychonauts, that was Grand Head Zanotto's idea." Ah. That sounded more like the Psychonauts that Tanya was familiar with.

Wait. Tanya tilted her head. "...How much are the other campers getting charged for this? Three out of nine already live on base…"

"This is an experimental session." Agent Nein explained. 'It's not meant to turn a profit this run." In other words, not nearly enough. "We'll need to at least double the number of campers in the future."

Miss Milla nodded along. "Yes. We'll need a little more help, I think, even if Ford manages to stabilize his new personalities to be less volatile."

"I believe Agent Oleander expressed interest in, quote, 'training the new recruits', unquote, when the project was proposed." Agent Nein added offhandedly as he fetched a cigarette.

"Hm." Miss Milla said, her smile shrinking a bit. "Morry can be a bit… much." She glanced at Tanya. "We should probably explore our other options first."

"There's not many other options, unfortunately." Agent Nein groused. "Most agents don't particularly like children. The ones that do, tend to have their hands full with their own."

Wait, this was a chance to get out of coming in the future. "Also, I suspect having the child of one of the counselors here is causing some friction. Picking agents that would bring their own spawn with them could be problematic."

Miss Milla narrowed her eyes suspiciously at Tanya. "Has anyone teased you for being my daughter?" She asked.

"Not directly." Tanya assured her, before elaborating. "There was a comment about special treatment."

"Well, I'm not leaving you alone for two weeks." Miss Milla said decisively. "But if you'd like me to treat you more like the other campers…" She offered.

Tanya thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. "No, given what's occurred, preferential treatment is still ideal." Tanya flushed and shuffled in place, suddenly uncomfortable with the topic drift.

Miss Milla giggled. "Tanya darling, that's not special treatment." Tanya stiffened. "I'm happy to help any camper with problems, no matter who or what they are. I'm not sure if you're aware, but I'm a bit of a childcare expert." She was very competent at dealing with the group home, although Tanya always tried to keep her burden as light as possible. "The only reason we're doing things this way is because of your own stubbornness." She said, slightly scolding. "You're the one who is putting a blindfold on, after all. It's not like you're asking me to do anything I haven't done before."

Ah, the 'I used to powder your bottom' argument. The weapon of caretakers everywhere. Tanya distinctly recalled Sister Wagner being particularly fond of uttering it at the church orphanage. Still, this called for a topic change. "Fair point." Tanya said, conceding the argument. "Nevertheless, it's probably a good time to do some more training in the Psychoisolation chamber."

"Right. That." Miss Milla said, the smile in her tone gone. "You know, there's nothing that could possibly be in your mind that would make me think less of you."

"Of course not." Tanya deflected. "Nevertheless, psychic construction is a very useful skill that will be important to my future." As a Psychonaut, was the implication. As a media producer, was the truth. VR games would be ungodly popular and lucrative, and developing a psychic interface that was safe and couldn't be used to scramble the brains of the user would be a technology that would make the developer ludicrously wealthy.

Miss Milla huffed, logic rebuffing her emotional appeal. Even ignoring the accusations of insanity that would inevitably follow, Tanya still needed to be sure that the type 95's influence was gone before allowing anyone access to that potential minefield. Not having encountered it in the 'new' section was promising, but the old one was more likely to exhibit it. "Well, okay. But first, we should make sure you're fully prepared. Come on." She took off into the air and floated to the girl's cabin.

Tanya sighed and followed along. It was times like this that Tanya understood the appeal of concepts like karma. Sure, implementing a diaper ration to the soldiers in the trenches reduced casualties to certain diseases by half, something like ten percent overall, which amounted to thousands of lives saved, so she didn't regret that decision one bit, but if there was some kind of cosmic force ensuring that those who inflict suffering suffer in turn, it would be earning its wage about now.

It was after fifteen minutes of 'extra special treatment', which in this case was code for 'hugs, cuddles, and clean clothes' that Tanya was led back to the Psychoisolation chamber. After the incident with Ford, she was probably under the impression that Tanya required all of these things in order to regain equilibrium.She was wrong on all of these points. Tanya spent two lifetimes without needing to be cuddled, so no matter how pleasant it was, it was a luxury, not a requirement. That said, luxuries were meant to be enjoyed, so she meditated and allowed Miss Milla the illusion of performing a vital service.

The psychoisolation chamber was swelteringly hot, and stank of cleaning chemicals. Fortunately, it wasn't any problems that couldn't be solved with liberal application of psychic powers. Cryokinesis could be bent towards cooling air, and psychic barriers could be used to move large-ish quantities of it to move the frigid, and thus denser, air without issue, leaving pleasantly cool air, freshly drawn from outside, within.

"That's clever…" Commented Miss MIla.

"Can't take credit for the cryokinesis." Tanya commented. "Agent Boole demonstrated the technique to me last year." She shrugged. "The air scoop is just basic physics." Miss Milla hummed, vaguely disapproving. What was that about?

"Well, I'll come back for dinner." Miss Milla said. "You'll be sleeping in the cabin tonight." That's fair.

"Understood." Tanya said before closing the door.

Now… time to wade into the blood and guts of the Rhine once more.

----------------

One of the 'rules' of having psychic powers is that if you manage to do something once, it's a lot easier to do it again. It was why Tanya was able to so easily master any psychic power she could relate a mage formula to. It was why Miss Milla could, from her office, astrally project into the minds of certain psychonauts agents on the other side of the planet.

It was also why Tanya wanted to make sure she could handle herself before inevitably opening their mind for a brief perusal. While they couldn't exploit it without her noticing and she could… probably block their entrance if needed, Miss Milla and Agent Nein would have a backdoor into her mind the second they stepped an astral foot into it.

Come to think of it… maybe allowing Agent Nein on the tour wouldn't be a good idea. Miss Milla was just worried about her child's mental state and has the tools to check on it, so a reasonable facsimile of a healthy mindscape would be enough for her. Agent Nein though… he would be curious. Being the subject of Agent Nein's curiosity is a dangerous place to be.

Enough dithering. Tanya laid back on the padded floor on the Psychoisolation chamber and focused on that bed, easily transitioning back into her own mind. She stood up immediately, shrugging off the hypnotic properties of the room.

Instead of going to the motherlobe, Tanya floated immediately towards the plain wooden door, her patchwork outfit transitioning to be completely the white gown that was folded to swaddle infants in the church orphanage.

Crossing the threshold, Tanya followed Agent Nein's instructions on how to manifest objects properly.

"First, you must recall the memory you're drawing upon to fetch the object." Tanya murmured to herself. An image of the General staff issuing her orders emerged in her mind. "Then, you focus specifically on the object. Three details for best results." Tanya directed her thoughts to recall the gleam of the Silver Wings Assault badge, the texture of the trousers' fabric, neither fine nor rough. Finally, she focused on the weight of the too-large hat, with the need to balance her head properly in order to keep it out of her eyes. "Then, you think about something else, which vents the figment. Reclaim it before it fully manifests by drawing it to yourself with a thought." Just like that, the linen gown was replaced with her officer's uniform, although unlike before, she was still using the soft body of her third life, unweathered by the ravages of malnutrition and military training.

With that vital step completed, Tanya looked over the area dedicated to her second life. Explosions easily identified as a continuous artillery bombardment ravaged the trench-riddled landscape, literal rivers of blood flowing through each one into one massive flow. The stench of war was easily identified, the smell of putrefied guts mixed with shit, mud, and gunpowder into an aroma that Tanya would never forget. Soldiers deformed into the same anime-faced caricatures that inhabited the other section, wading through the blood rivers and shooting anyone in a different trench, with nothing distinguishing the two sides of the pointless conflict. It was every man for themselves, with each one that fell back into the blood emerging elsewhere to continue fighting.

Taking off into the sky, Tanya surveyed the massive battlefield for landmarks, as she could tell that the wide open area represented very little directly beyond her educated opinion of war. From overhead, she could confirm that the largest river of blood matched the shape of the Rhine river, the place where she made one of her many names. After a moment, she saw some. "Visha?" She asked out loud.

"Right here, Major!" Visha the bear-girl said, suddenly appearing at Tanya's side.

"Those whirlpools of blood, what's in them?" Tanya asked.

Visha saluted needlessly. "Each one is a shrine to your most notable battles." She replied. Ah. Where her nightmares are kept, then.

"Hm. Well-hidden, I suppose." She only noticed them as important due to a difficult to describe awareness of her mind's geometry. She didn't really notice it on her first trip, but the sense was stronger now. "Now about those glowing cracks in the sky, and that bottomless pit with the golden light coming out of it."

"Don't go down there." Visha immediately warned. "It's dangerous."

"Oh? What is it?" Tanya asked, curious.

Visha swallowed thickly at the idea. "That's where the Devil lives." She whispered.

Ah. Some kind of representation of… something related to her second life. Something horrible, presumably. The type 95's influence, perhaps? Being X? There's a few options. Nevertheless, disturbing it would not be a good idea right now. "I'll stay away." She promised her adjutant.

"Good." Visha replied. She pointed in the distance. "If we fly that way, we'll reach Berun." Eh? Now that Tanya focused, she could sense another transition in that uncracked part of the sky.

"Onwards, then." Tanya said as she flew straight into the transition. In the liminal space, the battlefield rapidly retreated at far greater speeds than her flight would ordinarily allow. At the same time, the nondescript Imperial wilderness quickly flew beneath her, taking only a single minute for an urban area to show up beneath her. "Here we are." She announced out loud.

On review, the place this memory recorded was not Berun. Each structure used a different style, some Imperial, some Francois, some even Japanese or Russy. The Imperial War College was visible in the distance, even though it was nowhere near Berun. Finally, the Army Headquarters was tall and monolithic in a way that it wasn't in reality. It was as if it was melded with a generic office building in Japan, if she had to identify the influence.

Was this the building she worked in her first life? …Probably, but there wasn't any logo or anything beyond the Imperial double-dragon to confirm that one way or another. Maybe if she found her old office…

Tanya's eyes caught the entrance to an underground train station. Or maybe… She landed onto the street, familiar stone painted with the traffic lines of modern concrete roads. An odd juxtaposition, but if she got hung up on every slap-dash fusion here she'd never get anywhere. The people who were wandering were, much like the soldiers, anime-faced caricatures of various archetypes. Soldiers, civilians, even Japanese schoolgirls and boys wearing middle school uniforms.

…Was that the one for her own school? No, she was pretty sure this one was from an anime. Her own school had… Tanya frowned. It wasn't that important. She waved away the figments that had lingered like annoying gnats, and realized her mistake too late when she touched one of the schoolgirl uniform figments, her outfit transforming as appropriate.

"Major, you look so cute!" Visha exclaimed, hugging Tanya enthusiastically. "Was that really how girls dressed in Japan?" She asked innocently.

"No." Tanya immediately responded. "This skirt is way too short. It's clearly something I saw once in one of those anime with far too many panty shots." She couldn't identify the exact one, unfortunately. It seemed pretty distinctive, too. Mostly white with purple accents and a purple bow on the jacket, with a purple shirt beneath and a white office skirt to finish the ensemble off. Did Tanya ever see something like this? The jacket had long sleeves with some kind of blue circle in a black chevron as a symbol, but Tanya was drawing a blank as to where it came from. "It's not important." She immediately repeated her previous steps to change her outfit again, quickly regaining her officer's uniform.

As she walked to the train station, random people stood to attention and saluted her, as appropriate for her visible rank insignias if soldiers did it. But it looked kind of odd for that shrunken old woman to do it without hesitation.

Nevermind that. Tanya walked down the stairs, finding what would be a pretty ordinary train station… if it wasn't monochrome and had every single thing within it be absolutely still, like time had decided to go home for the day before completing the day's tasks. "Hm." Floating above the crowd, Tanya went to the train. Surprisingly, there wasn't a tall japanese man in front of it, about to get hit. That accursed drug addict was similarly missing. The door was open, though. Inside the train, it was empty with the sole exception of a train map with a lever in front… which was front and center like it was a selection rather than a helpful map to remind people.

Ah, Tanya understood things now. A glance at the door to the train conductor confirmed to her senses that the door was a wall: There was nothing there. The stations were all labeled.

The Front Lines
Frontways Station (You are here)
The Church of Valkyries
The School of Missed Chances
The Office of General Fools
The End of the Line

"Major, I did notice another station back before we flew here." Visha observed. That must be where that first option goes.

"Hm. I suppose we'll do this in order." Tanya said to Visha. The bear-girl immediately pressed the button for the church and the train immediately closed and started moving.

The train station was completely identical to the other one, so Tanya ignored the frozen anime characters and moved outside.

The Church was a cathedral with a statue of a saint in front… at least that's what Tanya assumed before noticing that the statue was of the Bloody Valkyrie. Of course she was here. It wasn't a very flattering statue… Well, it actually was, in the sense that she was wearing a gauzy toga-dress thing rather than a flight suit, and while Tanya couldn't definitively state that the proportions were inaccurate, it did make her seem quite beautiful. At least, if you ignored the blood-soaked status of it, the rictus of hate deforming the face, the emptiness in her eyes faithfully recreating what they looked like as she died, and the gaping wound right below her breasts. Despite what Mary would like people to believe, the number of people she had to kill by coating her hands in mage blades and jamming it into the enemy's torso was very small. It was four. Mary was one of them, mind you, but that just meant she was biased. Most of her melee kills were with her bayonet.

She walked into the Church like she owned the place… because she did. The place was covered in art depicting Being X. Some of it had him doing things like laughing maniacally while puppeting things, and others included him getting introduced to the kind of violence that he seems to like so much. The actual benches seemed to have been replaced with… actors?

"Okay people, let's move on to scenario four!" Shouted the man with the director's visor on his head. He was absurdly tall, wearing a regular business suit with a trenchcoat. She couldn't see his face, but he had black hair closely cut and styled to his head, a practical decision. There were two prop-people on the stage, one dressed as Being X… poorly, the other dressed as Mary.

"Visha? Who's that?" Tanya whispered.

"That's the Director of Mental Resources." Visha whispered back. "He's the one who decides what dreams you have and stuff. He's super-wise, the oldest one here by a mile."

What did that mean? Was this… a leftover from her first life?

The Director pointed at the fake Being X. "Okay, so the puny mortal has died again. You put her into another stinking orphanage to get vivisected by spies, everything's going according to plan, but then you realize she's not suffering enough!"

The actor chuckled darkly. "Burn her house down."

"We've already covered that angle." The Director snapped back. "This time, you realize you still had a brainwashed pawn you weren't doing anything with. You could use this to make Tanya suffer." He looked around the stage, checking the place of each entity supporting the endeavor. "Action!" He shouts.

Mary's actress, having laid down on the stage artfully, bursts up. "What's going on?" She said, panicked. "Where's the Devil?" She really had the girl down pat. Clearly, this imaginary actress will go far.

"Behold, for I am THE LORD, your god." Rattled off the Being X actor. "Know that you have been chosen to enact My Will."

"Anything!" Mary's actress replied, pleading with worship in her eyes.

"The Devil of the Rhine has, in her treacherous nature, escaped hell." Being X's actor proclaimed solemnly. "None outside of the Heavenly Host can best this demon, and so it is you I must send to unearth that creature's whereabouts."

"But my lord," Mary's actress said, scared. "-she has hidden herself from your sight? But I am just a girl, a dead one!"

"Only one with the conviction of a true believer has a chance of piercing that princess of lies' deceptions." Being X's actor replied. "I must send you to be reborn in the place she is hiding. Find her, and bring her back into My Light. Even one such as she can be saved, if she only prays for it."

Mary's actress did a fantastic job demonstrating the fierce resolve of a zealot. "I won't let you down! Deus Vult!" Hrm, Tanya didn't even consider before that Mary could have received a direct quest from Being X before. It seemed too outlandish. But now? It makes all too much sense.

"Cut!" The Director said. "Excellent work. Now, I have to get rid of some pests. Take five." He then turned towards Tanya and Visha.

The Director of Mental Resources was an immense man, tall and broad in a way that would make him blessed if he were real. He did not have a face, but instead a theater mask with an impassive expression carved into it. "Oh." He said, unimpressed. "It's you."

Tanya hummed as she looked the man over. She would have liked to look like this in her first life. He was probably based off of some idealized version of her first life's appearance, because she didn't remember being nearly two meters tall. She was only… It was definitely above average… Okay that wasn't important either. "Yes." She replied. "It's me. The one in charge here."

The Director scoffed. "Sure you are." He replied with an amused lilt. "I'm hard at work, as you can see. I know you've forgotten what that means, so move along, little girl."

Tanya's eye twitched in annoyance. "About that. I'd like to log a complaint about last night's dreams." She didn't quite remember the details, but they were incredibly embarrassing, she remembered that part. Really, she should be complaining about the total lack of pleasant dreams. One thing at a time.

The Direct's mask exploded off of his face, another one with an enraged expression replacing it. "What did you say?" He growled. "Those dreams were the perfect warnings. Every indulgence you give Vodello risks her deciding to take things further. It's a logical progression, Tanya. First, it's reasonable precautions about a known risk. Then, it's 'comforting' you with cuddling. Then, before you know it, she's strapping you into a stroller and it's back to a liquid diet!" He nodded to himself. "Psychics aren't a large community, Tanya. Odds are good you'll be seeing the other campers down the line, and you know more than anyone how long memory can stretch. Lily already knows, and all it takes is one other girl teasing her in order to have her sell you out to redirect their aggression."

Tanya gulped. That dream was beginning to come back to her now, and it was a bit intimidating how small each step was. "Perhaps so, but you've skipped quite a few steps, there."

"I said enough to remind you what's at stake here." He said, his mask exploding again and reappearing as a neutral expression. "Now, I've got a lot of scenarios to go through to ensure preparedness for anything Sioux might pull." He said, turning around and sitting back into his director's chair. "Then I have to prepare for Cruller's nonsense, times three… no wait, I should do stuff with the old personas too. My point is, I'm swamped! Go away."

In her first two lives, such disrespect would have angered her. But in this one? All of Tanya's indignation just failed to appear as she turned away from the intimidating man and left the area back to the train. He was just doing his job.

As she walked past the statue of Mary's corpse, she now understood one thing: She should really worry more about Mary's presence in this life.

 

[Darik29]

Ah. The sheer Amount of messed up mess inside tanya's head is still nough to filla damn DLC for Psychonauts. I know this is before Raz's time, but damn if it doesn't feel like an entire adventure he would go through to help one of the Psychonaught's kids. Which Tanya is.

And all just because he wants to help, and is way too nosy to leave things alone.

 

[Hylas]

Are the salaryman's memories inaccessible because of trauma, or is Tanya II so far removed from the Salaryman that they're no longer her memories? Very intriguing work. Thanks for writing.

 

[SoralTheSol]

When your own mind is your worst enemy.