- Location
- new york
that's one way to look at it.
Psychoprotective (Youjo Senki/Psychonauts)
- Thread starter Requiem_Jeer
- Start date
that's one way to look at it.
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
...You mean the thing she gave Augustus a nugget of wisdom for? The thing that Raz whined that Augustus was teaching him at the expense of other, cooler psychic techniques? The thing she spent a few paragraphs lecturing Mary about in her mind? That she used all the time in both Park Ranger and Cook Ford's mind? That she used so much in Helmut's mind that she had to stop using it because his mind was leading her in circles while she was using it?
That flight?
...No, couldn't figure it out. Don't know what gave you the idea she did.
Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
ah, forgot about those.
still, i could see her getting a liscence/permission to jump out of nostalgia
There was also a matrix reference.
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
"There is no secret ingredient" is literally a Kung Fu Panda quote. It's the realization that Po had when he contemplated the fact that the dragon scroll was just a mirror.
Edit: ah, you meant the spoon thing. Nah, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Last edited:
There is no spoon, he says while inside a simulated world...
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
It's not a reference when the observation is that there is an absence of a spoon where a spoon is expected.
Tanya and Helmut found plenty of bugs, incidentally.
Tanya's notes on bugs.
1. Food will occasionally come in wrong sizes. Difficult to reproduce. (Never happened to Helmut... Is it because of the size difference between the host brain's body and myself? Must investigate further)
2. Host brain stealing admin status. (Admin status should never change without assent from current admin! Must fix)
3. Chair texture errors everywhere. (Damn Helmut for his prank revealing this flaw. It only encouraged him)
4. Many food items do not act consistently with physics when exposed to unusually high kinetic impacts. (Jello is not that durable!)
5. Construct fragile, very glitchy when physic construction techniques applied. (This was expected, though)
Tanya and Helmut found plenty of bugs, incidentally.
Tanya's notes on bugs.
1. Food will occasionally come in wrong sizes. Difficult to reproduce. (Never happened to Helmut... Is it because of the size difference between the host brain's body and myself? Must investigate further)
2. Host brain stealing admin status. (Admin status should never change without assent from current admin! Must fix)
3. Chair texture errors everywhere. (Damn Helmut for his prank revealing this flaw. It only encouraged him)
4. Many food items do not act consistently with physics when exposed to unusually high kinetic impacts. (Jello is not that durable!)
5. Construct fragile, very glitchy when physic construction techniques applied. (This was expected, though)
Chapter 2.14
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
"Maybe we should have waited until winter for this." Said Helmut as Tanya took a turn necessitated by the search pattern.
"Do you sense your body?" Tanya asked. They were using Telepathy as the roar of the jet ski made using vocal communication unwise.
"No, not yet." Helmut replied, "But are we even near the right spot?"
Agent Mentalis cut in: "The melt cycle has made conventional geographic searches impossible. However, the hyperglaciator's permafrost coating at the bottom of this lake is thickest here, so it's bound to be near your body." It was a little strange, as a woman of science, to know that a mountain of ice was beneath this liquid water, but Agent Mentalis had explained the phenomenon quite thoroughly to Dr. Zhou on the way here to Grulovia. In summary: The hyperglaciator was designed to make ice that sank. It only sank to about two hundred meters, but the depth of the lake was half that, so it didn't matter. Tanya was unclear as to why this was supposed to be helpful.
"It occurs to me, " Agent O'Peia said over the mental link, "-that if the ice is mostly here because of psitanium deposits reinforcing the cryokinetic core, that the thickest part may instead be where the largest deposits are instead of the center of the effect."
The link was silent as Tanya continued to maneuver the jet ski in the predetermined search pattern. "I remember a rocky coast." Bob sent. "Are there any islands on this lake? I don't see any… is the lake at a higher than normal elevation? How's the rainfall been this year?"
"Perhaps we should all take a good look at the lake's perimeter before we start doing research in that direction." Recommended Agent Boole. "Come on Bob, let's take a walk around the lake."
"Ugh, walking…" Bob moaned, but he started moving nonetheless.
After another half hour, the search pattern had covered the entire area, with no detectable tether. "Well, there goes the easy way." Helmut commented as Tanya brought the jet ski back to the base camp, which was a lakeside cabin of some rich Grulovian that they had rented for the expedition. Agent O'Peia handled that part, Tanya wasn't really clear on the specifics.
"Well, I do have a few ideas, and made sure to bring my toolbox and some spare psitanium." Agent Mentalis said, telekinetically fetching the aforementioned toolbox. "Tanya, where did I leave the spare psitanium?"
"You put it in the thawing pod to save space." Tanya said as she refilled the jet ski's gas tank.
Agent Mentalis thought back, and nodded in agreement. "Right, right. Dr. Zhou, where did you put the thawing pod?"
Dr. Meiling Zhou was a half-Chinese Norwegian cryonics scientist, a capable psychic in her own right, and overall was just a pleasant lady. She volunteered because she liked field work a lot more than her peers. "Oh, I put it near the dock. I'll get your psitanium, Dr. Mentalis." Also, she had great English skills. Most of them could only read in English, with atrocious spoken English.
Once retrieved, Agent Mentalis explained his idea. "While I was hoping that Helmut could just sense his body using normal methods, there's a few reasons why he can't. First, the local psitanium could be providing interference, lowering the effective range of the tether."
"The psychically active neural tissue should still be functional." Dr. Zhou explained. "Even while frozen. However, a frozen debrained body is unprecedented. No data exists. It may not be transmitting whatever psychic signal that normally allows a disembodied brain to locate it."
"It's not really a signal." Agent Mentalis corrected, "It's more like an antenna that picks up the brain's signal."
"Right. But it could be absorbing the signal instead of reflecting, if we continue the radar comparison." Dr. Zhou said, "We could perhaps run some tests? I'm sure we could find a psychic animal nearby we could use… Or perhaps the University of Grulovia has some material we could use?"
Agent O'Peia groaned. "Can we avoid dealing further with the Grulovian government?"
Bob and Agent Boole walked into the cabin's door. "I don't think we found the right spot." Bob announced.
Agent Boole climbed onto a recliner and telekinetically retrieved a cup of tea that Agent O'Peia presented to him. "We did find two spots that roughly looked right."
"They weren't." Bob insisted.
"We can all take a look at them tomorrow." Agent Boole said with a soft smile. "I'm optimistic." Despite that smile, his emotional state was turbulent, the optimism struggling against the man's general anxiety.
"Yes, I think that's enough searching for today." Dr. Zhou said, "Now, I've made everyone some Raspeballs - they're potato dumplings."
"That sounds delightful." Agent O'Peia said, "Helmut, do you think you can play us all the Psychoddessy again? For old time's sake?"
"I'd love to."
---------------------
Something seemed off, was Tanya's immediate thought upon waking, the only illumination being the faintest hints of sunlight from the pre-dawn sky. Not because she wasn't sleeping in psychoisolation as per usual, she had tuned her personal shield to block telepathy and slept like she never left the front, quickly and dreamlessly on a cot in the same room with Dr. Zhou. There weren't enough beds for everyone, as while four bedrooms was quite a few bedrooms, it was not enough, and as the one with the youngest bones, Tanya was quickly volunteered to be the one who slept in a cot that was in the Pelican's emergency kit.
But… it felt like she was back on the eastern front again, that nagging feeling that she got when she had to wake up to find reports of another act of sabotage by the NKVD. Quickly, she got up and turned invisible, creeping throughout the cabin to check on everyone.
Dr. Zhou was sound asleep, sprawled over the bed in very little clothing. Agent Mentalis was also asleep, bundled up in the blankets but she could sense his dream, his mind lazily broadcasting his desire for garlic bread. Agents O'Peia and Boole, in the master bedroom, were quiet but present, and Bob's room with Helmut… was empty.
The covers of the bed were thrown aside, and the window was open, letting in the cold air in great amounts… but there wasn't anything like the kind of struggle she'd expect if they were taken, instead of just leaving to get an early start. Tanya peered outside the window, looking for signs of passage. The windowsill was scuffed, and both sides of the frame also had some signs of recent disturbance. Given how questionable it would be for Bob to fit through this window… Checked out.
The plants around the window… have definitely been telepathically manipulated. They were put more or less back into their original positions, but between the freshly disturbed dirt beneath them and slightly unnatural bends in the branches, it was clear.
She closed the window. "Amatuers." She spat, "Didn't even close the damned window." Using a small dose of pyrokinesis to ward off the chill, Tanya went to start preparing breakfast.
Slowly, the other members of the expedition settled around the dining table, as Tanya served up omelets along with hash browns, as they were still eating off of the groceries that they brought with them. "Bob and Helmut went to get an early start." Tanya idly announced. "Snuck out through the window like a pair of teenagers."
Dr. Zhou chuckled. "Well, you would know, right?"
"Quite." Tanya replied, not bothering to correct her misapprehension. "Now, Agent Boole, I saw the distinctive stone formations myself in Helmut's mind, so could you show me those coastal segments you mentioned once the sun's risen a bit more?"
"Oh certainly." Agent Boole said, in a much better mood than last night, "As fun as this adventure is, we really should be efficient about things."
"Oh dear." Agent O'Peia said, "I just tried to send a message to Bob and Helmut, telling them to come get breakfast." Tried? Uh oh.
"Did they say no?" Agent Mentalis asked, frowning.
"No, I couldn't reach them." She replied, brow furrowed. "I know I'm not as close to them as I should be, but I should be able to reach them. It's like they're in psychoisolation."
"That's not good." Dr. Zhou said, "Who or what could do that in this part of the world?"
"Well, there's the Deluginists." Agent Boole said, "They're a rather influential group in Grulovia, as you can imagine."
"Who are the Deluginists?" Dr. Zhou asked.
"A bunch of crazies." Agent O'Peia said dismissively. "They believe that Maligula was a dark goddess or something and seek to call her back to Earth, resurrect her, find her in hiding… the specifics vary based on which batch of cultists you're talking about."
"It would make sense that they'd have a base of some kind at the site of Maligula's final battle." Tanya reasoned.
"They probably thought they could handle any wild animal they found." Agent Mentalis added, "I certainly didn't worry about anything like that."
"To be fair, there are lynxes that can use cryokinesis here." Agent O'Peia warned, "They're a little dangerous." First rule of psychic animals: The predators get the dangerous powers.
"Quite reasonable cats, actually." Agent Boole commented, "Normally it's quite difficult to get cats to do anything, but they were surprisingly willing to fight when I asked." He paused, thinking about that. "On that note, they're quite territorial, so don't get too far from the shore or you'll provoke them."
"Well, it's time to switch the focus of our search, then." Tanya said, sighing. "Agent Boole, can you get some animals to help us track them down?"
"Oh, good idea."
---------------------
As it turned out, there was an owl that saw them leave. Bob and Helmut snuck out and took one of the PSI speeders (basically flying scooters) out of the jet, heading in the direction of the town that was closest to the lake. This was "early in the night", so Tanya estimated a bit before midnight.
Agent Mentalis stayed behind with Dr. Zhou to watch the jet and raise the alarm if necessary, but the rest of them went to the small town, which was called Borsec, Tanya flying under her own power and Agents Boole and O'Peia taking the other PSI speeder.
Borsec was rather familiar looking, the Grulovian architecture reminding Tanya of her time in the mind of Agent Cruller's janitor persona. It wasn't quite the same, all of the buildings were less than twenty years old, the entire town washed away by Lucrecia's destruction of the nearby dam. The original summer chateau of the Gzar (a title that still makes her roll her eyes) was still intact, but it has been converted into an anti-royalist communist propaganda museum, emphasizing the poor management of the Maliks and glorifying the "proletariat revolution" that overthrew them.
Unsure where in town they could have gone, they first visited Lucrecia's memorial to pay respects to her memory, although the fact that the tomb was empty was now common knowledge, after someone broke into it. Most people assumed the body was stolen, but the thieves would certainly know the truth: it was empty the whole time.
"The existence of the Deluginists always confused me." Agent Boole admitted, out of the blue while they were looking at the statue of Lucrecia. "I mean… Lucy was a person, like anyone else. No matter how powerful. Even if you reject that… She was a terror. Who would want her to return?"
Tanya scoffed. "They called me The Argent. White Silver. As if I was a heaven-sent angel to deliver victory to the Empire." She gestured to the statue. "If I had one of my men reincarnated here, or maybe one of the General Staff, and they told me that there was a cult trying to get me canonized for killing tens of thousands of people, I would believe them." She had long stopped being surprised at the irrationality of the masses. "It's a feedback loop. One person does a few great things, demonstrates power beyond what is thought possible, and the religious kooks start thinking that there's something more going on than what is apparent. Hidden conspiracies of witches, the blood of the divine, the hand of God." Tanya seized the water in the reflecting pool, causing it to surge upward in an effigy of Maligula. "Every victory proves the theories, increasing its reach and the fervor of the fools. It doesn't take many for people to assume that their new goddess can work miracles, and that's when they start eyeing their greatest enemies with greed in their eyes." The hydrokinetic effigy shifted, hunching over, the dress turning ragged, and the hair tying itself up into a bun. "But she is only a woman, and it's been a long time since the power of a single person could matter on a grand scale. They are fools for thinking that Maligula can solve their problems, and they are fools again for thinking that she would if she could." Tanya let the water drain from her grip, gently settling back into the reflecting pool.
Agent Boole hummed. "Yes, I suppose the parallels are quite apt."
"People don't like thinking things through." Agent O'Peia added.
"They saw Maligula before she fully lost control over herself." Tanya elaborated, correcting her. "No one just… spontaneously becomes a monster. While the evidence suggests that she was too far gone at the end, Agent Mentalis' files on her documented that she was…" Tanya paused as she tried to find the right word. Glorious? Happy? Pleasant? Ah. "Heroic, at first. She only killed the invaders, and that buys a lot of good will. It's not so difficult to believe that when someone whose first impression of her was being the hero hears about how she was a madwoman who killed thousands, they dismiss it as propaganda." Tanya snorted as a memory bubbled up to the surface. "There was this one time, where I met Princess Hildebrand. Earlier that week was probably the battle where I killed the most people directly. She never really understood military matters, not like her sister did. She had heard about that bloody battle, as she was high up in the propaganda department, and asked me how I got those 'mass murderers in the 203rd' to listen to me."
"Oh dear." Agent Boole said.
"Ouch." Agent O'Peia agreed.
"That's about right." Tanya said, wincing. "She had this image of me from a previous propaganda shoot, that I was just a mascot of the military instead of an actual soldier that killed people. She flat out ignored all of the parts of her briefings that said that I was a better killer than any one of my men. If someone who deals in propaganda as their trade could be so delusional, the sky's no limit for a less educated person." Without the real thing around? It would be much worse.
Agent O'Peia smiled. "That's a good story. Have you ever considered writing?" Tanya didn't dignify that with a response.
"Still, while it was nice to pay our respects and think on Lucy's life…" Agent Boole said, "-we still don't know where Bob and Helmut are."
"Fact 1: They left to go to the town early in the night." Agent O'Peia said, "Fact two: they're currently not contactable, so we assume they were captured."
"Well, if those are separate events, the question is simple: where would Bob want to go when it's late in the evening?" Tanya asked rhetorically, already leaving.
"The pub." Both of the Psychonauts said at once.
---------------------
It was morning, so the pubs were closed. But Borsec was a pretty small town, and when there's only around three thousand inhabitants, it becomes practical to ask around at the primary industries of the area… fancy bottled water, tourism, and spas. Apparently the area had several mineral springs, which meant that the freezing cold state that the Hyperglaciator imposed on the lake didn't actually inhibit them from making use of it. Which was pretty convenient. It did explain why Agent Mentalis wasn't forced to fix the damage though.
The only one who was actually fluent in Grulovian was Agent Boole, but he was able to telepathically pass on enough understanding that Tanya could muddle along when combined with their previous experience.
"I'm not a customer today. I am looking for my uncle." Tanya explained to the front desk at the spa. "He is brain in ball. Very distinctive. Have you seen any floating brains in balls last night? He may have been at the pub. Have any of your workers been at the pub yesterday?"
The front desk worker, a large but kindly looking old man thought for a moment. "I quit drinking, girl. I haven't been to the pub in years." He explained. "But one of the masezas sure likes his spirits…" Tanya frowned. She didn't know that word… "Buy some of his time and you can ask your questions."
Hmm… Tanya opened up her mind to read the thoughts of the front desk person. Hm, it looks like he was being honest, just trying to make more money while doing so. "Ask him if he was at the pub late last night. At least until midnight."
The old man stood up and wandered into the back, and after a few minutes of waiting, he returned. "Yes, he's seen your brain ball uncle. Now, 5,000 leu for an hour." So about ten dollars. Yeah, that sounds about right for a soviet puppet state's economy. Fortunately, Agent Mentalis had thought ahead and had acquired some leu in advance of their trip; apparently the government was very strict on forbidding the usage of foreign currency for normal economic transactions.
After double-checking with telepathy that he wasn't trying to scam her, Tanya paid the man and was led into… ah. 'Maseza' meant 'masseuse'. That made sense. A muscular man wearing a tight t-shirt and shorts grinned at her in a strange way that Tanya realized was supposed to be flirty after picking up his general intentions with telepathy. He definitely didn't speak any language she knew fluently, as it was difficult to pick up on his precise thoughts, just the broad strokes of them. The front desk man, despite sticking to Grulovian, knew enough… she guessed Russian, for it to be easier to read. "Greetings. I am Andrei, your masseuse for this morning. Now, if you would please remove your camasa and lay down on the table, we can begin. If you're shy, I can turn around."
Tanya spent a moment trying to translate the unfamiliar noun, glad that the mental link to Agent Boole was helping her understand as much as she was. Was he saying 'shirt' or 'clothes'? Well, she certainly wasn't going to strip completely, even if he's just doing his job. She gestured for him to turn around, and followed his instructions once he did. She was just wearing a turtleneck sweater with an undershirt and some cargo pants, either that or her jacket being her usual method to avoid having to carry a purse. One of the things she learned in this life is that you couldn't get away with carrying just a wallet and phone like you could as a man. Without living life as a civilian, she didn't learn that in the second.
Not that Tanya owned a cell phone. Telepathy was much more convenient, so she'll wait until the technology matures before getting one. Tanya decided to let the massage begin before the interrogation, and relaxed for the event.
"So much tension, little miss." Andrei commented as he poked at her back, taking some oil and rubbing his hands with it. "Relax. Andrei will take care of you."
Remaining silent, Tanya allowed the massage to begin, the smooth hands kneading her back with expert skill. Andrei grunted with effort as he worked, but the force of his actions weren't nearly enough for that to be more than theater.
"Ah, little miss." Andrei said after a few minutes, breathing heavily. "Are you, perhaps, some kind of Lady of Iron?"
What is he… Oh. She's still reinforcing her body psychically. At least she remembered to lower her barrier… "Ah. I apologize Andrei." Tanya said, abashed. She activated her psychic resistance formula at low power, which would prevent her from subconsciously reinforcing her body. "Try again, gently."
This time Andrei's touch was much rougher, although he immediately softened it after realizing the difference. He was confused, but did his job nonetheless. This was not Tanya's first massage, even in this life, and once he got into the groove of things it was quite pleasant, as expected.
Still, she was here for a reason, so she eventually started projecting her thoughts in his direction, because she was too relaxed to work her jaw. "Now, you went to the pub last night, right?" She asked. This method of communication should also help optimize her shaky Grulovian.
As he wasn't looking at her face, he didn't seem to notice that he wasn't hearing her with his ears. "Yes, little miss." He replied, "My grandmother has an excellent remedy for hangovers, I'm fresh as a daisy, I am."
"Did you see an elderly man with a large gray beard come in with a brain in a ball? The brain was probably floating?" Tanya continued.
"I did, little miss. My manager said the brain was your uncle? His friend was very shaky and irritable, desperate for some liquor. The bartender gave him some Tuica and he calmed down quite a bit." Andrei paused as he worked at a knot of tension, focused on his job. "I think your uncle's friend has a problem."
"I'm well aware." Tanya sent, sighing. Damnit, Bob… "When was this, and were they still there when you left? When was that?"
Andrei hummed as he worked, thinking about his answer. Tanya got flashes of images, Bob sitting at the bar. "They came in around eleven at night, I'd say. I left at midnight, had a shift to get to in the morning, you know. They were still there, drinking away, not really talking to anyone but each other."
"Do you know anyone else I could ask who was there longer?" Tanya asked, humming in contentment as the massage continued.
"No, but the bartender would know. He lives above the bar, so just knock." Andrei replied. Tanya hummed, smiling at the success of her objective as Andri rattled off directions. "It's Dorin's pub, down main street between the courthouse and the general store. Talk to Dorin."
She sent the information to the Psychonauts Agents, hopefully they'll be able to act on that information. As for her… She paid for an hour and she'll get her hour. She should get massages more often…
"Do you sense your body?" Tanya asked. They were using Telepathy as the roar of the jet ski made using vocal communication unwise.
"No, not yet." Helmut replied, "But are we even near the right spot?"
Agent Mentalis cut in: "The melt cycle has made conventional geographic searches impossible. However, the hyperglaciator's permafrost coating at the bottom of this lake is thickest here, so it's bound to be near your body." It was a little strange, as a woman of science, to know that a mountain of ice was beneath this liquid water, but Agent Mentalis had explained the phenomenon quite thoroughly to Dr. Zhou on the way here to Grulovia. In summary: The hyperglaciator was designed to make ice that sank. It only sank to about two hundred meters, but the depth of the lake was half that, so it didn't matter. Tanya was unclear as to why this was supposed to be helpful.
"It occurs to me, " Agent O'Peia said over the mental link, "-that if the ice is mostly here because of psitanium deposits reinforcing the cryokinetic core, that the thickest part may instead be where the largest deposits are instead of the center of the effect."
The link was silent as Tanya continued to maneuver the jet ski in the predetermined search pattern. "I remember a rocky coast." Bob sent. "Are there any islands on this lake? I don't see any… is the lake at a higher than normal elevation? How's the rainfall been this year?"
"Perhaps we should all take a good look at the lake's perimeter before we start doing research in that direction." Recommended Agent Boole. "Come on Bob, let's take a walk around the lake."
"Ugh, walking…" Bob moaned, but he started moving nonetheless.
After another half hour, the search pattern had covered the entire area, with no detectable tether. "Well, there goes the easy way." Helmut commented as Tanya brought the jet ski back to the base camp, which was a lakeside cabin of some rich Grulovian that they had rented for the expedition. Agent O'Peia handled that part, Tanya wasn't really clear on the specifics.
"Well, I do have a few ideas, and made sure to bring my toolbox and some spare psitanium." Agent Mentalis said, telekinetically fetching the aforementioned toolbox. "Tanya, where did I leave the spare psitanium?"
"You put it in the thawing pod to save space." Tanya said as she refilled the jet ski's gas tank.
Agent Mentalis thought back, and nodded in agreement. "Right, right. Dr. Zhou, where did you put the thawing pod?"
Dr. Meiling Zhou was a half-Chinese Norwegian cryonics scientist, a capable psychic in her own right, and overall was just a pleasant lady. She volunteered because she liked field work a lot more than her peers. "Oh, I put it near the dock. I'll get your psitanium, Dr. Mentalis." Also, she had great English skills. Most of them could only read in English, with atrocious spoken English.
Once retrieved, Agent Mentalis explained his idea. "While I was hoping that Helmut could just sense his body using normal methods, there's a few reasons why he can't. First, the local psitanium could be providing interference, lowering the effective range of the tether."
"The psychically active neural tissue should still be functional." Dr. Zhou explained. "Even while frozen. However, a frozen debrained body is unprecedented. No data exists. It may not be transmitting whatever psychic signal that normally allows a disembodied brain to locate it."
"It's not really a signal." Agent Mentalis corrected, "It's more like an antenna that picks up the brain's signal."
"Right. But it could be absorbing the signal instead of reflecting, if we continue the radar comparison." Dr. Zhou said, "We could perhaps run some tests? I'm sure we could find a psychic animal nearby we could use… Or perhaps the University of Grulovia has some material we could use?"
Agent O'Peia groaned. "Can we avoid dealing further with the Grulovian government?"
Bob and Agent Boole walked into the cabin's door. "I don't think we found the right spot." Bob announced.
Agent Boole climbed onto a recliner and telekinetically retrieved a cup of tea that Agent O'Peia presented to him. "We did find two spots that roughly looked right."
"They weren't." Bob insisted.
"We can all take a look at them tomorrow." Agent Boole said with a soft smile. "I'm optimistic." Despite that smile, his emotional state was turbulent, the optimism struggling against the man's general anxiety.
"Yes, I think that's enough searching for today." Dr. Zhou said, "Now, I've made everyone some Raspeballs - they're potato dumplings."
"That sounds delightful." Agent O'Peia said, "Helmut, do you think you can play us all the Psychoddessy again? For old time's sake?"
"I'd love to."
---------------------
Something seemed off, was Tanya's immediate thought upon waking, the only illumination being the faintest hints of sunlight from the pre-dawn sky. Not because she wasn't sleeping in psychoisolation as per usual, she had tuned her personal shield to block telepathy and slept like she never left the front, quickly and dreamlessly on a cot in the same room with Dr. Zhou. There weren't enough beds for everyone, as while four bedrooms was quite a few bedrooms, it was not enough, and as the one with the youngest bones, Tanya was quickly volunteered to be the one who slept in a cot that was in the Pelican's emergency kit.
But… it felt like she was back on the eastern front again, that nagging feeling that she got when she had to wake up to find reports of another act of sabotage by the NKVD. Quickly, she got up and turned invisible, creeping throughout the cabin to check on everyone.
Dr. Zhou was sound asleep, sprawled over the bed in very little clothing. Agent Mentalis was also asleep, bundled up in the blankets but she could sense his dream, his mind lazily broadcasting his desire for garlic bread. Agents O'Peia and Boole, in the master bedroom, were quiet but present, and Bob's room with Helmut… was empty.
The covers of the bed were thrown aside, and the window was open, letting in the cold air in great amounts… but there wasn't anything like the kind of struggle she'd expect if they were taken, instead of just leaving to get an early start. Tanya peered outside the window, looking for signs of passage. The windowsill was scuffed, and both sides of the frame also had some signs of recent disturbance. Given how questionable it would be for Bob to fit through this window… Checked out.
The plants around the window… have definitely been telepathically manipulated. They were put more or less back into their original positions, but between the freshly disturbed dirt beneath them and slightly unnatural bends in the branches, it was clear.
She closed the window. "Amatuers." She spat, "Didn't even close the damned window." Using a small dose of pyrokinesis to ward off the chill, Tanya went to start preparing breakfast.
Slowly, the other members of the expedition settled around the dining table, as Tanya served up omelets along with hash browns, as they were still eating off of the groceries that they brought with them. "Bob and Helmut went to get an early start." Tanya idly announced. "Snuck out through the window like a pair of teenagers."
Dr. Zhou chuckled. "Well, you would know, right?"
"Quite." Tanya replied, not bothering to correct her misapprehension. "Now, Agent Boole, I saw the distinctive stone formations myself in Helmut's mind, so could you show me those coastal segments you mentioned once the sun's risen a bit more?"
"Oh certainly." Agent Boole said, in a much better mood than last night, "As fun as this adventure is, we really should be efficient about things."
"Oh dear." Agent O'Peia said, "I just tried to send a message to Bob and Helmut, telling them to come get breakfast." Tried? Uh oh.
"Did they say no?" Agent Mentalis asked, frowning.
"No, I couldn't reach them." She replied, brow furrowed. "I know I'm not as close to them as I should be, but I should be able to reach them. It's like they're in psychoisolation."
"That's not good." Dr. Zhou said, "Who or what could do that in this part of the world?"
"Well, there's the Deluginists." Agent Boole said, "They're a rather influential group in Grulovia, as you can imagine."
"Who are the Deluginists?" Dr. Zhou asked.
"A bunch of crazies." Agent O'Peia said dismissively. "They believe that Maligula was a dark goddess or something and seek to call her back to Earth, resurrect her, find her in hiding… the specifics vary based on which batch of cultists you're talking about."
"It would make sense that they'd have a base of some kind at the site of Maligula's final battle." Tanya reasoned.
"They probably thought they could handle any wild animal they found." Agent Mentalis added, "I certainly didn't worry about anything like that."
"To be fair, there are lynxes that can use cryokinesis here." Agent O'Peia warned, "They're a little dangerous." First rule of psychic animals: The predators get the dangerous powers.
"Quite reasonable cats, actually." Agent Boole commented, "Normally it's quite difficult to get cats to do anything, but they were surprisingly willing to fight when I asked." He paused, thinking about that. "On that note, they're quite territorial, so don't get too far from the shore or you'll provoke them."
"Well, it's time to switch the focus of our search, then." Tanya said, sighing. "Agent Boole, can you get some animals to help us track them down?"
"Oh, good idea."
---------------------
As it turned out, there was an owl that saw them leave. Bob and Helmut snuck out and took one of the PSI speeders (basically flying scooters) out of the jet, heading in the direction of the town that was closest to the lake. This was "early in the night", so Tanya estimated a bit before midnight.
Agent Mentalis stayed behind with Dr. Zhou to watch the jet and raise the alarm if necessary, but the rest of them went to the small town, which was called Borsec, Tanya flying under her own power and Agents Boole and O'Peia taking the other PSI speeder.
Borsec was rather familiar looking, the Grulovian architecture reminding Tanya of her time in the mind of Agent Cruller's janitor persona. It wasn't quite the same, all of the buildings were less than twenty years old, the entire town washed away by Lucrecia's destruction of the nearby dam. The original summer chateau of the Gzar (a title that still makes her roll her eyes) was still intact, but it has been converted into an anti-royalist communist propaganda museum, emphasizing the poor management of the Maliks and glorifying the "proletariat revolution" that overthrew them.
Unsure where in town they could have gone, they first visited Lucrecia's memorial to pay respects to her memory, although the fact that the tomb was empty was now common knowledge, after someone broke into it. Most people assumed the body was stolen, but the thieves would certainly know the truth: it was empty the whole time.
"The existence of the Deluginists always confused me." Agent Boole admitted, out of the blue while they were looking at the statue of Lucrecia. "I mean… Lucy was a person, like anyone else. No matter how powerful. Even if you reject that… She was a terror. Who would want her to return?"
Tanya scoffed. "They called me The Argent. White Silver. As if I was a heaven-sent angel to deliver victory to the Empire." She gestured to the statue. "If I had one of my men reincarnated here, or maybe one of the General Staff, and they told me that there was a cult trying to get me canonized for killing tens of thousands of people, I would believe them." She had long stopped being surprised at the irrationality of the masses. "It's a feedback loop. One person does a few great things, demonstrates power beyond what is thought possible, and the religious kooks start thinking that there's something more going on than what is apparent. Hidden conspiracies of witches, the blood of the divine, the hand of God." Tanya seized the water in the reflecting pool, causing it to surge upward in an effigy of Maligula. "Every victory proves the theories, increasing its reach and the fervor of the fools. It doesn't take many for people to assume that their new goddess can work miracles, and that's when they start eyeing their greatest enemies with greed in their eyes." The hydrokinetic effigy shifted, hunching over, the dress turning ragged, and the hair tying itself up into a bun. "But she is only a woman, and it's been a long time since the power of a single person could matter on a grand scale. They are fools for thinking that Maligula can solve their problems, and they are fools again for thinking that she would if she could." Tanya let the water drain from her grip, gently settling back into the reflecting pool.
Agent Boole hummed. "Yes, I suppose the parallels are quite apt."
"People don't like thinking things through." Agent O'Peia added.
"They saw Maligula before she fully lost control over herself." Tanya elaborated, correcting her. "No one just… spontaneously becomes a monster. While the evidence suggests that she was too far gone at the end, Agent Mentalis' files on her documented that she was…" Tanya paused as she tried to find the right word. Glorious? Happy? Pleasant? Ah. "Heroic, at first. She only killed the invaders, and that buys a lot of good will. It's not so difficult to believe that when someone whose first impression of her was being the hero hears about how she was a madwoman who killed thousands, they dismiss it as propaganda." Tanya snorted as a memory bubbled up to the surface. "There was this one time, where I met Princess Hildebrand. Earlier that week was probably the battle where I killed the most people directly. She never really understood military matters, not like her sister did. She had heard about that bloody battle, as she was high up in the propaganda department, and asked me how I got those 'mass murderers in the 203rd' to listen to me."
"Oh dear." Agent Boole said.
"Ouch." Agent O'Peia agreed.
"That's about right." Tanya said, wincing. "She had this image of me from a previous propaganda shoot, that I was just a mascot of the military instead of an actual soldier that killed people. She flat out ignored all of the parts of her briefings that said that I was a better killer than any one of my men. If someone who deals in propaganda as their trade could be so delusional, the sky's no limit for a less educated person." Without the real thing around? It would be much worse.
Agent O'Peia smiled. "That's a good story. Have you ever considered writing?" Tanya didn't dignify that with a response.
"Still, while it was nice to pay our respects and think on Lucy's life…" Agent Boole said, "-we still don't know where Bob and Helmut are."
"Fact 1: They left to go to the town early in the night." Agent O'Peia said, "Fact two: they're currently not contactable, so we assume they were captured."
"Well, if those are separate events, the question is simple: where would Bob want to go when it's late in the evening?" Tanya asked rhetorically, already leaving.
"The pub." Both of the Psychonauts said at once.
---------------------
It was morning, so the pubs were closed. But Borsec was a pretty small town, and when there's only around three thousand inhabitants, it becomes practical to ask around at the primary industries of the area… fancy bottled water, tourism, and spas. Apparently the area had several mineral springs, which meant that the freezing cold state that the Hyperglaciator imposed on the lake didn't actually inhibit them from making use of it. Which was pretty convenient. It did explain why Agent Mentalis wasn't forced to fix the damage though.
The only one who was actually fluent in Grulovian was Agent Boole, but he was able to telepathically pass on enough understanding that Tanya could muddle along when combined with their previous experience.
"I'm not a customer today. I am looking for my uncle." Tanya explained to the front desk at the spa. "He is brain in ball. Very distinctive. Have you seen any floating brains in balls last night? He may have been at the pub. Have any of your workers been at the pub yesterday?"
The front desk worker, a large but kindly looking old man thought for a moment. "I quit drinking, girl. I haven't been to the pub in years." He explained. "But one of the masezas sure likes his spirits…" Tanya frowned. She didn't know that word… "Buy some of his time and you can ask your questions."
Hmm… Tanya opened up her mind to read the thoughts of the front desk person. Hm, it looks like he was being honest, just trying to make more money while doing so. "Ask him if he was at the pub late last night. At least until midnight."
The old man stood up and wandered into the back, and after a few minutes of waiting, he returned. "Yes, he's seen your brain ball uncle. Now, 5,000 leu for an hour." So about ten dollars. Yeah, that sounds about right for a soviet puppet state's economy. Fortunately, Agent Mentalis had thought ahead and had acquired some leu in advance of their trip; apparently the government was very strict on forbidding the usage of foreign currency for normal economic transactions.
After double-checking with telepathy that he wasn't trying to scam her, Tanya paid the man and was led into… ah. 'Maseza' meant 'masseuse'. That made sense. A muscular man wearing a tight t-shirt and shorts grinned at her in a strange way that Tanya realized was supposed to be flirty after picking up his general intentions with telepathy. He definitely didn't speak any language she knew fluently, as it was difficult to pick up on his precise thoughts, just the broad strokes of them. The front desk man, despite sticking to Grulovian, knew enough… she guessed Russian, for it to be easier to read. "Greetings. I am Andrei, your masseuse for this morning. Now, if you would please remove your camasa and lay down on the table, we can begin. If you're shy, I can turn around."
Tanya spent a moment trying to translate the unfamiliar noun, glad that the mental link to Agent Boole was helping her understand as much as she was. Was he saying 'shirt' or 'clothes'? Well, she certainly wasn't going to strip completely, even if he's just doing his job. She gestured for him to turn around, and followed his instructions once he did. She was just wearing a turtleneck sweater with an undershirt and some cargo pants, either that or her jacket being her usual method to avoid having to carry a purse. One of the things she learned in this life is that you couldn't get away with carrying just a wallet and phone like you could as a man. Without living life as a civilian, she didn't learn that in the second.
Not that Tanya owned a cell phone. Telepathy was much more convenient, so she'll wait until the technology matures before getting one. Tanya decided to let the massage begin before the interrogation, and relaxed for the event.
"So much tension, little miss." Andrei commented as he poked at her back, taking some oil and rubbing his hands with it. "Relax. Andrei will take care of you."
Remaining silent, Tanya allowed the massage to begin, the smooth hands kneading her back with expert skill. Andrei grunted with effort as he worked, but the force of his actions weren't nearly enough for that to be more than theater.
"Ah, little miss." Andrei said after a few minutes, breathing heavily. "Are you, perhaps, some kind of Lady of Iron?"
What is he… Oh. She's still reinforcing her body psychically. At least she remembered to lower her barrier… "Ah. I apologize Andrei." Tanya said, abashed. She activated her psychic resistance formula at low power, which would prevent her from subconsciously reinforcing her body. "Try again, gently."
This time Andrei's touch was much rougher, although he immediately softened it after realizing the difference. He was confused, but did his job nonetheless. This was not Tanya's first massage, even in this life, and once he got into the groove of things it was quite pleasant, as expected.
Still, she was here for a reason, so she eventually started projecting her thoughts in his direction, because she was too relaxed to work her jaw. "Now, you went to the pub last night, right?" She asked. This method of communication should also help optimize her shaky Grulovian.
As he wasn't looking at her face, he didn't seem to notice that he wasn't hearing her with his ears. "Yes, little miss." He replied, "My grandmother has an excellent remedy for hangovers, I'm fresh as a daisy, I am."
"Did you see an elderly man with a large gray beard come in with a brain in a ball? The brain was probably floating?" Tanya continued.
"I did, little miss. My manager said the brain was your uncle? His friend was very shaky and irritable, desperate for some liquor. The bartender gave him some Tuica and he calmed down quite a bit." Andrei paused as he worked at a knot of tension, focused on his job. "I think your uncle's friend has a problem."
"I'm well aware." Tanya sent, sighing. Damnit, Bob… "When was this, and were they still there when you left? When was that?"
Andrei hummed as he worked, thinking about his answer. Tanya got flashes of images, Bob sitting at the bar. "They came in around eleven at night, I'd say. I left at midnight, had a shift to get to in the morning, you know. They were still there, drinking away, not really talking to anyone but each other."
"Do you know anyone else I could ask who was there longer?" Tanya asked, humming in contentment as the massage continued.
"No, but the bartender would know. He lives above the bar, so just knock." Andrei replied. Tanya hummed, smiling at the success of her objective as Andri rattled off directions. "It's Dorin's pub, down main street between the courthouse and the general store. Talk to Dorin."
She sent the information to the Psychonauts Agents, hopefully they'll be able to act on that information. As for her… She paid for an hour and she'll get her hour. She should get massages more often…
- Location
- Argentina
Well, Tanya has been working a lot recently.
Chapter 2.15
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
Tanya was spared the tedium of having to find Bob by dint of getting "ambushed" by a group of men wearing concealing cloaks as she walked out of the spa, too relaxed to muster any serious killing intent. "I surrender." Tanya said lazily, holding her hands up. She was expecting this after the message Agent O'Peia got off before they failed to fight off the rabble themselves.
"...Good." Said the lead cultist, gesturing for someone to throw their sack over her.
As she patiently waited for them to carry her to the exact place she wanted to go, she sent another message to Agent Mentalis: "You should probably expect some thugs pretty soon. I'll handle things here." Theoretically, Bob could actually fight. Practically, the man hasn't done anything more violent than tossing beer bottles at people in five years. Helmut's psychic power would be substantially diminished with his lack of body, as the primary source of mental energy remains one's own metabolism.
She had no illusions that Agents O'Peia and Boole could effectively combat multiple opponents. Not without a decent quantity of animal life, which is in short supply in the middle of a city.
The Deluginist stronghold was a building that Tanya immediately thought 'church' when looking at it, but on a second look, there was no christian symbology like one would expect. She knew this because she was telepathically riding passenger in the sensory cortex of the man carrying her in the sack, with clairvoyance. She kept the connection light, visual only, to prevent him from noticing her eavesdropping.
The cultists opened up a staircase in the middle of the floor of the cathedral with a pair of them telekinetically lifting a rather heavy fake floor, and the background noise of urban life, the telepathic emanations that Tanya had long learned to tune out, cut out when they closed the entrance behind them. Psycho-isolation, then.
The man walked towards some kind of… ritual chamber? It reminded Tanya of some of the Elenium labs, actually. Not the parts where she worked that Shugel ran, but the spell formula research division, which tended to fill rooms with arcane formulae, spell circles, and formations of symbols as they created spells that were then compressed into forms that the computation orb could understand.
In the center of a series of "spell circles'' created with etched psitanium rings, sat an elderly man wearing the fanciest cultist robes of the lot. A psitanium platform was behind him, and he gestured for the man that was carrying Tanya to deposit her on the solid crystal.
Tanya gave her best 'unimpressed' look at the cult leader as she sat on the platform, splitting off an archetype to examine the device to discern its function and to sabotage it if necessary.
"Yes, you're powerful." The man said, pleased. He spoke in English, probably assuming that she didn't speak Grulovian. "Now, introductions: I am Kaven Galochio." Tanya's eyes widened at the name. "Ah, you recognize it? Perhaps a glimmer of recognition that you do not understand?"
Tanya frowned. What was he getting at? "I've heard the name before, somewhere." Tanya admitted. "But it's probably just a coincidence."
"Tell me, child: How old are you?" Kaven asked, smiling.
Tanya did not like where this was going. Still, she needed to buy more time for her archetype. "If you must know, I'm sixteen."
"Yes, that would make your soul… about seventeen years old, from conception to now?" Kaven continued, his smile growing.
What is he… oh. Is that what he's getting at? "No. What are you jabbering about, old man?" Tanya said, pitching her voice into 'petulant teenager'.
"You laugh, but you know exactly what I see." Kevan said, chuckling darkly. "You come here, where Maligula fell, in the company of her killers, and show off a casual mastery of hydrokinesis. Do you think I'm a fool?"
Yes. Yes she does. Instead of saying that, Tanya decided to move on. "What happens now?" He archetype rejoined, informing her that the platform is a prison that could be activated with a thought, completely restraining whoever was on top of it. It had many other esoteric functions that could only be used capably by someone who understood them thoroughly, and she didn't have time to reverse engineer them. Most relevantly, it interacted with the various other psitanium structures in the room to accomplish many tasks, reminding Tanya of an overly elaborate general purpose psychic machine, like Sasha's "brain tumbler". She'll have to be careful not to destroy this if things devolve into violence. She wants to study it.
"Now, we'll awaken the vestiges of Lady Maligula, my cousin, within you." Kevan explained, smiling.
"You're making a lot of assumptions." Tanya pointed out. "Shouldn't there be some sort of test?" She telepathically prodded the man, testing his mental defenses. They were ironclad, sadly. It looked like some of the psitanium in the room was reinforcing his shield, actually. Fascinating. It also meant that she couldn't simply kill him at will.
Logically, externally provided barriers shouldn't be as sensitive to intrusion as natural ones, so he likely didn't sense her probe at all. His ignoring of it seemed to prove that. "But there was a test." Kevan insisted, "My powers can sense the hidden rage within you. An endless well of power that will sweep the enemies of Grulovia aside."
Hrm. Well, she does have that… His mistake is still stupid, in assuming that only Maligula had an empowered survival drive, but if he knew… "The original Maligula was defeated by six people. The Psychic Six were a bunch of scientists, too. Hardly the ideal group to use for such a purpose. No one person can deal with the power of a modern military."
"Maligula did!" Kevan insisted. "They feared her, just like they'll fear you. Once you remember."
Tanya snorted. "You will die first."
"You'll thank me for returning you to yourself." Kevan corrected, "Your favorite cousin, much better than that traitorous Marona." Tanya attempted to act confused.
"Ah ha! You recognize that name too. You couldn't have gotten that from the Psychonauts." He said gleefully. Tanya winced. Right for all the wrong reasons… "Now, my minions are, as we speak, extracting the memories of Maligula from the Psychic Six. Between those, the memories of the Galochio family, that is, your family, and the Gzar's, you will have everything you need to reconstruct yourself."
Uh oh. Tanya had read the files on the Deluginist threat, and one of the things they were known for was the forcible extraction of memories related to their Goddess. It was not clean. Still, the Psychic Six should have significant mental defenses, right?
…Shit. She's seen those defenses. "Well… cousin…" Tanya felt sick referring to this madman so familiarly. "I suppose all there is to do is wait. I suppose I'll start by seeing if I can find any vestiges of memories of my previous life." Subtly, she released a hypnotic wave of emotion, more to make him think that she was sincere than in a genuine attempt to bewitch him. Part of her simulation research included a surprisingly large amount of tricks to baffle telepathic and empathic senses.
The madman grinned victoriously. "Yes, you'll see, General Maligula. You'll bring greatness to Grulovia, just like before."
Splitting an archetype to keep an eye on things here, Tanya sent the rest of her consciousness outward, seeking the one place she knew to get to nearby.
After all, she's been there plenty of times.
---------------------
The PSI King's mind was under attack. The Deluginists manifest somewhat anonymously in his mind, dressing almost like censors. Was that an attempt to confound his mental defenses? Does that work?
Well, if it doesn't work here, that's probably more because Helmut's censor energy is still quite low. His self-identity is not as firm as it could be, and trying to emotionally prop up Bob Zanotto was definitely not helping.
Still, hurting them and kicking them out of Helmut's head doesn't do any actual damage, so Tanya flew in and ripped each of their projections apart. "Vison, what's the situation?" Tanya asked as she spotted one of Helmut's sensory representations.
"They've got her!" Ford Cruller's voice said, maddened. "They've got Lucy! Everything we had! You're too late…"
Tanya frowned. That wasn't good… "Get PSI King. I need to talk with him." She ordered.
As it turned out, Helmut had retreated to the concession stands, as his mind was still modeled after an outdoor concert. Helmut was there, stress-eating an impressively large stack of corn dogs. "It's bad, Tanya." He said after swallowing, another corn dog got dipped in mayo and was shoved into his mouth.
"What happened?" Tanya asked.
Helmut reached for another corn dog, but they were gone. Weren't they just… whatever. "Bobby… He couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned, sweating… he had the shakes real bad, Tanya." Helmut sighed in defeat. "He needed a drink."
"Withdrawal symptoms." Tanya said, understanding. "He hid it from everyone, snuck out to get a nightcap."
"I came with him, of course." Helmut said, continuing.his story. "Found a bar that was still open, got him some of the local stuff, we just… talked. It was a date."
"I'm following…" Tanya said, taking a corn dog that was passed to her from Tasty. She looked at the… expansive platter of dips. No miso or wasabi… She likes barbeque sauce, let's go with that.
"So eventually some weird guy starts talking about Lulu." Helmut said, getting angry. "Talking about her like she was some Goddess. She was a person! A hurt one, who needed help."
Ah. It looked like Helmut had taken Tanya's lecture to heart, then. Has he read the research paper? Perhaps he just trusted it because it was an excuse to forgive? Who knows. "So you got mad." Tanya said between bites of her corn dog.
"I got mad!" He confirmed. "Bob wanted me to ignore him, and I did… for a bit. He was doing the whole cult gospel thing. So eventually, I got up and said 'Her name was Lucrecia!' and everyone looked at me like I was crazy." Or because he was a floating brain in a ball. "I kinda… went on a rant, about how she liked pancakes, and dancing, and she laughs like she has hiccups." Can confirm. "That she was a person, you know?"
"So they kidnapped you." Tanya finished.
"So they kidnapped us." Helmut confirmed. They dug through everything I could remember about Lulu after bringing me to the cellar of the bar."
Tanya huffed. "So I go through the trouble of getting kidnapped and don't even get brought to the same facility as you."
"Sorry."
Wait. This basement was psychoisolated. She couldn't have reached here unless Helmut was within the complex. "Maybe there's a tunnel…" Tanya said, pondering. "I need to get into Bob's mind. Could you guide me there?"
"Sure thing, Tanya. Thanks for kicking those guys out. Even if they were done, it was like having a boot on your neck, you know? They were calling me the Frozen Apostate or something like that. Don't know how that makes sense."
Tanya chuckled darkly. "I know quite a bit of putting boots on necks. I understand completely" Most of her experience was in jamming her boot on other people's necks, but in a more metaphorical sense, she's well acquainted with the feeling on the other end.
---------------------
Bob's mind was an ocean of alcohol. Literally. It was storming, with the darkened silhouette of Maligula in the distance. With no raft or boat, Tanya just flew, Helmut retreating back into his own mind to try and guard it against further intrusion.
Finding the place where the invaders were was more difficult this time, given the conditions. But it was nothing in comparison to the storm that was Janitor Ford's mind. A brief check in with her archetype showed that if Kevan noticed her exit, he was keeping that under wraps.
Eventually, she found Bob, ragged and tired, supported by a cactus that resembled Helmut, a tree with two faces, Agents O'Peia and Boole, and a set of watermelon vines, the fruit looking like… Tanya, Mary, and Lili. They were battling in a place where driftwood was everywhere, the plants growing out of the wood.
The cultists were still in their censor-like disguises, and the battle calmed when Tanya arrived, the cultists readying for a volley of PSI blasts but they held off on unleashing them, assessing her presence. "Leave." Tanya told them. She pulled up some of the alcohol sea that the driftwood was floating on and formed a hydrokinetic drill. "Or it will be time for some improvised dentistry." To add to the effect, Tanya made the water spin quick enough to whine in exactly the right tone to match a dentist's drill.
Morale broke immediately, and the cultists began to flee to the other parts of Bob's mind. "Wrong answer!" Tanya shouted, and Bob helped her dispatch every intruder in short order. "Is that all of them?" She asked.
"I think so." Bob said, exhausted. He closed his eyes and presumably felt out his mind. "Yes, you're the only foreign entity in here."
"Can you get me into Agent Boole's mind? Or Agent O'Peia?" Tanya asked. Theoretically, she's been in Agent Boole's mind before… but it's been years…
"They're captured too? Oh no." Bob said, rubbing his temples and sniffling. "I'm such a failure… I shouldn't have gone to that bar…" He took off his glasses and started wiping his eyes.
Agreed. "We didn't seriously consider cultists a threat." Tanya said, trying to console the now crying man. "Did they get what they wanted?" She asked.
"Yeah, they did." Bob admitted, "Well, some of it." He corrected, "Not everything. The memories of the battle are buried pretty deep by all that booze. They mostly got her gentler side. Lucy was always more interested in my research than the more mental stuff, you know. She just pretended to like it because Ford focused on that stuff." Bob blew his nose on a handkerchief that appeared in his hand. "She told me that my work with agriculture could make a big difference for the world. I didn't remember that until they dredged that memory up."
Tanya found herself smiling ruefully. Yeah, she knows what it's like for crazy mental shit to bring up memories that were actually pretty nice along with the terrible stuff. "It's not too late for you to continue it." She said after thinking about it. "But first thing's first."
"Right. It's been a few years, but I remember how to report back…" He stepped outside of his mind into the Collective Unconscious, and Tanya followed him. Oddly, unlike the usual 'blank everything' environment, this place had walkways of light between many doors. "Okay, Compton's mind was… over here."
Tanya looked around at the odd structures. "What is all this?" She asked.
"Wha?" Bob seemed confused as he looked around. "Oh, right. You're not an agent." He said, in a tone that screamed 'I made a mistake'. "Well, this place is a kind of… permanent waystation that Cassie made. It lets the Psychonauts check in on each other more easily." He glanced around worriedly. "It's classified, though. Don't tell anyone."
Ah, that makes sense. "I didn't even know this was possible… I'll ask Agent Mentalis how it works later." She could use this… could she use the Collective Unconscious as a server farm? The possibilities were delightful.
"Well, I don't really know how it works anyway." Bob admitted. He stopped at a familiar-looking door. "This is Compton's mind… or, not quite, but it's a way in that he's not going to block if he's fighting off the Deluginists." He leaned down, hands on his knees, and breathed heavily, exhausted. "Woo, it's been way too long since I've left my head like this." After a moment of catching his breath, he opened the door, the deceptively simple action probably representing a far more complicated action. "I'm not going to be helpful, I need to go back to my own mind. I need a drink…"
"I appreciate the assistance." Tanya said, "I'll take things from here."
"Just don't go crazy on us, okay?" Bob asked. Hm, someone told him about the Argent. Was it Agent Boole? Or Mentalis? It probably wasn't Helmut.
Nevertheless, Tanya doesn't think she can draw on that power when she's so far removed from her body. She'd need to bring back her archetype at the very least.
Time to go.
---------------------
The game show studio that was Agent Boole's mind was not in good shape. Four giant hand puppets, emulating Grand Head Zanotto, Agent Hollis, Agent Cruller, and Agent Mentalis as goats, were gorging themselves on food and spitting it out as gross projectiles on the censor-like invaders, who numbered five times as many as were still in Bob and Helmut's mind. The actual censors seemed confused, like they weren't sure who they were supposed to fight. Agent Boole was nowhere to be seen.
Well, until Tanya showed up. The censors, a rather large amount of them, zeroed in on her position and started to charge. Hm. Tanya left the mind. "Well, if it works for them…" Tanya muttered to herself.
Thinking back to that horrible week, Tanya recalled the entity that took on her old face. She recalled what it was like to be a man, to tower over people. She remembered her old desk, the seal she used to sign documents, including that fateful one, the one that got her killed. In the same way that Archetypes can be thought of as stepping out of oneself, she instead stepped inside, transforming her mental projection into a copy of her first life.
It… wasn't as bad as the last time they tried this. But then again, they weren't exactly in a good mental place back then. They definitely weren't completely comfortable in this shape, but in the unlikely event that they need to avoid censors instead of dispatching them, they'll probably do this again.
Newly armed, Tanya stepped back into Agent Boole's mind, channeling their own censor energy into their hand and creating a copy of a censor's stamp. They had absolutely no idea if this will have any side effects, but… Tanya ran at one of the cultist intruders, wielding their stamp like a katana and lashing out with an overhand swing, red ink manifesting as a blade from the censor tool.
Tanya grinned savagely as they sidestepped away from one of the globs of muck that was launched at the man he cut. Apparently, it was not enough, so a thrust accompanied by an iai impaled the cultist's projection through the heart, which was enough to dissolve it entirely.
"NO!" Tenya shouted, rallying Agent Boole's censors. Along with the word, Tenya sent out a burst of telepathy, designating each of the cultists as foreign invaders and himself as a friendly. As part of it, he projected a small sampling of cooking knowledge, sourced from Agent Boole's nugget of wisdom, to prove his identity. "NO!" He shouted again, instructing the censors to attack the invaders with another telepathic burst.
In short order, the invaders were dealt with and the game show stage reset, the giant goat puppets retreating into the understage. "I've never seen anyone try that before." Agent Boole said, sending his censors away. "Then again, I had no idea censors could be fooled so easily. I don't think we've ever tried disguising ourselves as them before."
"Well, I admit to making the whole thing up on the spot." Tenya admitted, chuckling. He looked down at the downright tiny Agent Boole. He was shorter than him even as a girl, so it was just strange seeing someone so small at this point. "Can you direct me to Agent O'Peia's mind, please?"
Agent Boole's eyes widened. "Oh dear, yes, we should help her. Follow me, Tanya."
Tenya hummed. Why was that so irritating? "Tenya, when I'm like this." He corrected.
"Only if you start calling me Compton." Agent Bo-Compton retorted. "Start using Cassie and Otto's name too. You've earned it."
What? Tenya blinked. "...Okay." He said. Compton has him there, he did ask for him to use his given name. He's too used to being an American.
---------------------
Age- Cassie's mind was, as expected for an author, a giant library. Paper flew all over the place, the cultists fighting paper-thin constructs depicting various things, from knights to dragons to anatomical models. Leading them was a group of similar drawing-on-paper entities that looked like Cassie in various roles, although Tenya didn't bother sparing the brainpower to decrypt each one's appearance. Most of them looked like some flavor of librarian, but that was mostly because Cassie's real appearance just screamed that.
Compton had put on his own censor disguise, taking off his hat and putting on some glasses along with wearing a suit and wielding a stamp. "Do I look weird?" He whispered.
"Extremely." Tenya replied, "But so do I. Own it." One of the lessons that they learned in this life was that if you were considered competent, if not a genius, minor transgressions of dignity reinforced your status rather than weakening it. That made some of the more unusual reactions of the General Staff make more sense, in hindsight.
Tenya channeled more censor energy and projected instructions throughout Cassie's mind, just like he did in Compton's. With that, a flood of censor doors started appearing, disgorging mental defenses that attack the cultist's projections.
With the censors preventing the cultists from teaming up, effectively providing covering fire, Tenya easily mopped them up, two or three at a time, until Cassie locked up her mental defenses and had the various paper dolls that bore her face fuse back together into a three dimensional psychic projection.
"That was rough." She said, "It's been ages since I've had a mental battle that tough." She gave Compton a hug. "But you saved me again Boolie. Thanks."
"Thank Tenya." Compton said, "He did all the heavy lifting, I'm afraid."
"Oh?" Cassie asked, intrigued. "Is that… Heaven field?" She asked. That is certainly a more common spelling…
Tenya shook his head. "No. It is written with Ten as in 'rules' and 'ya' as in 'affirmation'." After a moment, he added: "My family name is 'Deguchiya' which is written with 'exit' and 'affirmation' again." Which, in hindsight, is actually kind of an amusing coincidence, with someone who went to a different world having a name meaning 'exit'.
"It suits you. I'll be sure to remember that." Cassie said, smiling.
Compton put his hat back on and threw away the glasses and stamp. "Now, did they manage to get anything, Cassie?"
"Not much." Cassie replied, "They got up there," She pointed up into the very tall ceiling in this library chamber, a dome where a globe hung from the ceiling. "I didn't quite catch what they grabbed, but everything's still there so they only copied it."
"They're seeking your memories of Lucrecia." Tenya said. He looked over himself and decided that this guise has served its purpose. With a thought, the false face dissolved, leaving her back in a copy of her physical body. "Woah… that was… something." Tanya said, the effects of assuming their original body leaving in a rush.
"How are you feeling, Tanya?" Compton asked.
"I'm fi-" Tanya cut herself off. She should be honest here. "Kind of… light I suppose? I feel good." She supposed that she did worry that the improvised plan would go terribly, but it worked better than she expected.
"A conflict you didn't even know you had has just been resolved." Cassie said in an official tone, giving her medical opinion. "Sometimes you can gain a new appreciation of yourself by stepping away for a little bit."
"Yes, I theorize that finally stepping back in your old shoes, you cleared up the lingering dissonance from knowing that Tenya is also you intellectually and emotionally." Compton said, adding his own take.
Hm. "I suppose reinforcing my identity will be quite handy, given what's about to happen." Tanya said, "Now, I need to tell you what's going on."
Tanya started outlining things, also sharing her plan on how to deal with it.
"...Good." Said the lead cultist, gesturing for someone to throw their sack over her.
As she patiently waited for them to carry her to the exact place she wanted to go, she sent another message to Agent Mentalis: "You should probably expect some thugs pretty soon. I'll handle things here." Theoretically, Bob could actually fight. Practically, the man hasn't done anything more violent than tossing beer bottles at people in five years. Helmut's psychic power would be substantially diminished with his lack of body, as the primary source of mental energy remains one's own metabolism.
She had no illusions that Agents O'Peia and Boole could effectively combat multiple opponents. Not without a decent quantity of animal life, which is in short supply in the middle of a city.
The Deluginist stronghold was a building that Tanya immediately thought 'church' when looking at it, but on a second look, there was no christian symbology like one would expect. She knew this because she was telepathically riding passenger in the sensory cortex of the man carrying her in the sack, with clairvoyance. She kept the connection light, visual only, to prevent him from noticing her eavesdropping.
The cultists opened up a staircase in the middle of the floor of the cathedral with a pair of them telekinetically lifting a rather heavy fake floor, and the background noise of urban life, the telepathic emanations that Tanya had long learned to tune out, cut out when they closed the entrance behind them. Psycho-isolation, then.
The man walked towards some kind of… ritual chamber? It reminded Tanya of some of the Elenium labs, actually. Not the parts where she worked that Shugel ran, but the spell formula research division, which tended to fill rooms with arcane formulae, spell circles, and formations of symbols as they created spells that were then compressed into forms that the computation orb could understand.
In the center of a series of "spell circles'' created with etched psitanium rings, sat an elderly man wearing the fanciest cultist robes of the lot. A psitanium platform was behind him, and he gestured for the man that was carrying Tanya to deposit her on the solid crystal.
Tanya gave her best 'unimpressed' look at the cult leader as she sat on the platform, splitting off an archetype to examine the device to discern its function and to sabotage it if necessary.
"Yes, you're powerful." The man said, pleased. He spoke in English, probably assuming that she didn't speak Grulovian. "Now, introductions: I am Kaven Galochio." Tanya's eyes widened at the name. "Ah, you recognize it? Perhaps a glimmer of recognition that you do not understand?"
Tanya frowned. What was he getting at? "I've heard the name before, somewhere." Tanya admitted. "But it's probably just a coincidence."
"Tell me, child: How old are you?" Kaven asked, smiling.
Tanya did not like where this was going. Still, she needed to buy more time for her archetype. "If you must know, I'm sixteen."
"Yes, that would make your soul… about seventeen years old, from conception to now?" Kaven continued, his smile growing.
What is he… oh. Is that what he's getting at? "No. What are you jabbering about, old man?" Tanya said, pitching her voice into 'petulant teenager'.
"You laugh, but you know exactly what I see." Kevan said, chuckling darkly. "You come here, where Maligula fell, in the company of her killers, and show off a casual mastery of hydrokinesis. Do you think I'm a fool?"
Yes. Yes she does. Instead of saying that, Tanya decided to move on. "What happens now?" He archetype rejoined, informing her that the platform is a prison that could be activated with a thought, completely restraining whoever was on top of it. It had many other esoteric functions that could only be used capably by someone who understood them thoroughly, and she didn't have time to reverse engineer them. Most relevantly, it interacted with the various other psitanium structures in the room to accomplish many tasks, reminding Tanya of an overly elaborate general purpose psychic machine, like Sasha's "brain tumbler". She'll have to be careful not to destroy this if things devolve into violence. She wants to study it.
"Now, we'll awaken the vestiges of Lady Maligula, my cousin, within you." Kevan explained, smiling.
"You're making a lot of assumptions." Tanya pointed out. "Shouldn't there be some sort of test?" She telepathically prodded the man, testing his mental defenses. They were ironclad, sadly. It looked like some of the psitanium in the room was reinforcing his shield, actually. Fascinating. It also meant that she couldn't simply kill him at will.
Logically, externally provided barriers shouldn't be as sensitive to intrusion as natural ones, so he likely didn't sense her probe at all. His ignoring of it seemed to prove that. "But there was a test." Kevan insisted, "My powers can sense the hidden rage within you. An endless well of power that will sweep the enemies of Grulovia aside."
Hrm. Well, she does have that… His mistake is still stupid, in assuming that only Maligula had an empowered survival drive, but if he knew… "The original Maligula was defeated by six people. The Psychic Six were a bunch of scientists, too. Hardly the ideal group to use for such a purpose. No one person can deal with the power of a modern military."
"Maligula did!" Kevan insisted. "They feared her, just like they'll fear you. Once you remember."
Tanya snorted. "You will die first."
"You'll thank me for returning you to yourself." Kevan corrected, "Your favorite cousin, much better than that traitorous Marona." Tanya attempted to act confused.
"Ah ha! You recognize that name too. You couldn't have gotten that from the Psychonauts." He said gleefully. Tanya winced. Right for all the wrong reasons… "Now, my minions are, as we speak, extracting the memories of Maligula from the Psychic Six. Between those, the memories of the Galochio family, that is, your family, and the Gzar's, you will have everything you need to reconstruct yourself."
Uh oh. Tanya had read the files on the Deluginist threat, and one of the things they were known for was the forcible extraction of memories related to their Goddess. It was not clean. Still, the Psychic Six should have significant mental defenses, right?
…Shit. She's seen those defenses. "Well… cousin…" Tanya felt sick referring to this madman so familiarly. "I suppose all there is to do is wait. I suppose I'll start by seeing if I can find any vestiges of memories of my previous life." Subtly, she released a hypnotic wave of emotion, more to make him think that she was sincere than in a genuine attempt to bewitch him. Part of her simulation research included a surprisingly large amount of tricks to baffle telepathic and empathic senses.
The madman grinned victoriously. "Yes, you'll see, General Maligula. You'll bring greatness to Grulovia, just like before."
Splitting an archetype to keep an eye on things here, Tanya sent the rest of her consciousness outward, seeking the one place she knew to get to nearby.
After all, she's been there plenty of times.
---------------------
The PSI King's mind was under attack. The Deluginists manifest somewhat anonymously in his mind, dressing almost like censors. Was that an attempt to confound his mental defenses? Does that work?
Well, if it doesn't work here, that's probably more because Helmut's censor energy is still quite low. His self-identity is not as firm as it could be, and trying to emotionally prop up Bob Zanotto was definitely not helping.
Still, hurting them and kicking them out of Helmut's head doesn't do any actual damage, so Tanya flew in and ripped each of their projections apart. "Vison, what's the situation?" Tanya asked as she spotted one of Helmut's sensory representations.
"They've got her!" Ford Cruller's voice said, maddened. "They've got Lucy! Everything we had! You're too late…"
Tanya frowned. That wasn't good… "Get PSI King. I need to talk with him." She ordered.
As it turned out, Helmut had retreated to the concession stands, as his mind was still modeled after an outdoor concert. Helmut was there, stress-eating an impressively large stack of corn dogs. "It's bad, Tanya." He said after swallowing, another corn dog got dipped in mayo and was shoved into his mouth.
"What happened?" Tanya asked.
Helmut reached for another corn dog, but they were gone. Weren't they just… whatever. "Bobby… He couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned, sweating… he had the shakes real bad, Tanya." Helmut sighed in defeat. "He needed a drink."
"Withdrawal symptoms." Tanya said, understanding. "He hid it from everyone, snuck out to get a nightcap."
"I came with him, of course." Helmut said, continuing.his story. "Found a bar that was still open, got him some of the local stuff, we just… talked. It was a date."
"I'm following…" Tanya said, taking a corn dog that was passed to her from Tasty. She looked at the… expansive platter of dips. No miso or wasabi… She likes barbeque sauce, let's go with that.
"So eventually some weird guy starts talking about Lulu." Helmut said, getting angry. "Talking about her like she was some Goddess. She was a person! A hurt one, who needed help."
Ah. It looked like Helmut had taken Tanya's lecture to heart, then. Has he read the research paper? Perhaps he just trusted it because it was an excuse to forgive? Who knows. "So you got mad." Tanya said between bites of her corn dog.
"I got mad!" He confirmed. "Bob wanted me to ignore him, and I did… for a bit. He was doing the whole cult gospel thing. So eventually, I got up and said 'Her name was Lucrecia!' and everyone looked at me like I was crazy." Or because he was a floating brain in a ball. "I kinda… went on a rant, about how she liked pancakes, and dancing, and she laughs like she has hiccups." Can confirm. "That she was a person, you know?"
"So they kidnapped you." Tanya finished.
"So they kidnapped us." Helmut confirmed. They dug through everything I could remember about Lulu after bringing me to the cellar of the bar."
Tanya huffed. "So I go through the trouble of getting kidnapped and don't even get brought to the same facility as you."
"Sorry."
Wait. This basement was psychoisolated. She couldn't have reached here unless Helmut was within the complex. "Maybe there's a tunnel…" Tanya said, pondering. "I need to get into Bob's mind. Could you guide me there?"
"Sure thing, Tanya. Thanks for kicking those guys out. Even if they were done, it was like having a boot on your neck, you know? They were calling me the Frozen Apostate or something like that. Don't know how that makes sense."
Tanya chuckled darkly. "I know quite a bit of putting boots on necks. I understand completely" Most of her experience was in jamming her boot on other people's necks, but in a more metaphorical sense, she's well acquainted with the feeling on the other end.
---------------------
Bob's mind was an ocean of alcohol. Literally. It was storming, with the darkened silhouette of Maligula in the distance. With no raft or boat, Tanya just flew, Helmut retreating back into his own mind to try and guard it against further intrusion.
Finding the place where the invaders were was more difficult this time, given the conditions. But it was nothing in comparison to the storm that was Janitor Ford's mind. A brief check in with her archetype showed that if Kevan noticed her exit, he was keeping that under wraps.
Eventually, she found Bob, ragged and tired, supported by a cactus that resembled Helmut, a tree with two faces, Agents O'Peia and Boole, and a set of watermelon vines, the fruit looking like… Tanya, Mary, and Lili. They were battling in a place where driftwood was everywhere, the plants growing out of the wood.
The cultists were still in their censor-like disguises, and the battle calmed when Tanya arrived, the cultists readying for a volley of PSI blasts but they held off on unleashing them, assessing her presence. "Leave." Tanya told them. She pulled up some of the alcohol sea that the driftwood was floating on and formed a hydrokinetic drill. "Or it will be time for some improvised dentistry." To add to the effect, Tanya made the water spin quick enough to whine in exactly the right tone to match a dentist's drill.
Morale broke immediately, and the cultists began to flee to the other parts of Bob's mind. "Wrong answer!" Tanya shouted, and Bob helped her dispatch every intruder in short order. "Is that all of them?" She asked.
"I think so." Bob said, exhausted. He closed his eyes and presumably felt out his mind. "Yes, you're the only foreign entity in here."
"Can you get me into Agent Boole's mind? Or Agent O'Peia?" Tanya asked. Theoretically, she's been in Agent Boole's mind before… but it's been years…
"They're captured too? Oh no." Bob said, rubbing his temples and sniffling. "I'm such a failure… I shouldn't have gone to that bar…" He took off his glasses and started wiping his eyes.
Agreed. "We didn't seriously consider cultists a threat." Tanya said, trying to console the now crying man. "Did they get what they wanted?" She asked.
"Yeah, they did." Bob admitted, "Well, some of it." He corrected, "Not everything. The memories of the battle are buried pretty deep by all that booze. They mostly got her gentler side. Lucy was always more interested in my research than the more mental stuff, you know. She just pretended to like it because Ford focused on that stuff." Bob blew his nose on a handkerchief that appeared in his hand. "She told me that my work with agriculture could make a big difference for the world. I didn't remember that until they dredged that memory up."
Tanya found herself smiling ruefully. Yeah, she knows what it's like for crazy mental shit to bring up memories that were actually pretty nice along with the terrible stuff. "It's not too late for you to continue it." She said after thinking about it. "But first thing's first."
"Right. It's been a few years, but I remember how to report back…" He stepped outside of his mind into the Collective Unconscious, and Tanya followed him. Oddly, unlike the usual 'blank everything' environment, this place had walkways of light between many doors. "Okay, Compton's mind was… over here."
Tanya looked around at the odd structures. "What is all this?" She asked.
"Wha?" Bob seemed confused as he looked around. "Oh, right. You're not an agent." He said, in a tone that screamed 'I made a mistake'. "Well, this place is a kind of… permanent waystation that Cassie made. It lets the Psychonauts check in on each other more easily." He glanced around worriedly. "It's classified, though. Don't tell anyone."
Ah, that makes sense. "I didn't even know this was possible… I'll ask Agent Mentalis how it works later." She could use this… could she use the Collective Unconscious as a server farm? The possibilities were delightful.
"Well, I don't really know how it works anyway." Bob admitted. He stopped at a familiar-looking door. "This is Compton's mind… or, not quite, but it's a way in that he's not going to block if he's fighting off the Deluginists." He leaned down, hands on his knees, and breathed heavily, exhausted. "Woo, it's been way too long since I've left my head like this." After a moment of catching his breath, he opened the door, the deceptively simple action probably representing a far more complicated action. "I'm not going to be helpful, I need to go back to my own mind. I need a drink…"
"I appreciate the assistance." Tanya said, "I'll take things from here."
"Just don't go crazy on us, okay?" Bob asked. Hm, someone told him about the Argent. Was it Agent Boole? Or Mentalis? It probably wasn't Helmut.
Nevertheless, Tanya doesn't think she can draw on that power when she's so far removed from her body. She'd need to bring back her archetype at the very least.
Time to go.
---------------------
The game show studio that was Agent Boole's mind was not in good shape. Four giant hand puppets, emulating Grand Head Zanotto, Agent Hollis, Agent Cruller, and Agent Mentalis as goats, were gorging themselves on food and spitting it out as gross projectiles on the censor-like invaders, who numbered five times as many as were still in Bob and Helmut's mind. The actual censors seemed confused, like they weren't sure who they were supposed to fight. Agent Boole was nowhere to be seen.
Well, until Tanya showed up. The censors, a rather large amount of them, zeroed in on her position and started to charge. Hm. Tanya left the mind. "Well, if it works for them…" Tanya muttered to herself.
Thinking back to that horrible week, Tanya recalled the entity that took on her old face. She recalled what it was like to be a man, to tower over people. She remembered her old desk, the seal she used to sign documents, including that fateful one, the one that got her killed. In the same way that Archetypes can be thought of as stepping out of oneself, she instead stepped inside, transforming her mental projection into a copy of her first life.
It… wasn't as bad as the last time they tried this. But then again, they weren't exactly in a good mental place back then. They definitely weren't completely comfortable in this shape, but in the unlikely event that they need to avoid censors instead of dispatching them, they'll probably do this again.
Newly armed, Tanya stepped back into Agent Boole's mind, channeling their own censor energy into their hand and creating a copy of a censor's stamp. They had absolutely no idea if this will have any side effects, but… Tanya ran at one of the cultist intruders, wielding their stamp like a katana and lashing out with an overhand swing, red ink manifesting as a blade from the censor tool.
Tanya grinned savagely as they sidestepped away from one of the globs of muck that was launched at the man he cut. Apparently, it was not enough, so a thrust accompanied by an iai impaled the cultist's projection through the heart, which was enough to dissolve it entirely.
"NO!" Tenya shouted, rallying Agent Boole's censors. Along with the word, Tenya sent out a burst of telepathy, designating each of the cultists as foreign invaders and himself as a friendly. As part of it, he projected a small sampling of cooking knowledge, sourced from Agent Boole's nugget of wisdom, to prove his identity. "NO!" He shouted again, instructing the censors to attack the invaders with another telepathic burst.
In short order, the invaders were dealt with and the game show stage reset, the giant goat puppets retreating into the understage. "I've never seen anyone try that before." Agent Boole said, sending his censors away. "Then again, I had no idea censors could be fooled so easily. I don't think we've ever tried disguising ourselves as them before."
"Well, I admit to making the whole thing up on the spot." Tenya admitted, chuckling. He looked down at the downright tiny Agent Boole. He was shorter than him even as a girl, so it was just strange seeing someone so small at this point. "Can you direct me to Agent O'Peia's mind, please?"
Agent Boole's eyes widened. "Oh dear, yes, we should help her. Follow me, Tanya."
Tenya hummed. Why was that so irritating? "Tenya, when I'm like this." He corrected.
"Only if you start calling me Compton." Agent Bo-Compton retorted. "Start using Cassie and Otto's name too. You've earned it."
What? Tenya blinked. "...Okay." He said. Compton has him there, he did ask for him to use his given name. He's too used to being an American.
---------------------
Age- Cassie's mind was, as expected for an author, a giant library. Paper flew all over the place, the cultists fighting paper-thin constructs depicting various things, from knights to dragons to anatomical models. Leading them was a group of similar drawing-on-paper entities that looked like Cassie in various roles, although Tenya didn't bother sparing the brainpower to decrypt each one's appearance. Most of them looked like some flavor of librarian, but that was mostly because Cassie's real appearance just screamed that.
Compton had put on his own censor disguise, taking off his hat and putting on some glasses along with wearing a suit and wielding a stamp. "Do I look weird?" He whispered.
"Extremely." Tenya replied, "But so do I. Own it." One of the lessons that they learned in this life was that if you were considered competent, if not a genius, minor transgressions of dignity reinforced your status rather than weakening it. That made some of the more unusual reactions of the General Staff make more sense, in hindsight.
Tenya channeled more censor energy and projected instructions throughout Cassie's mind, just like he did in Compton's. With that, a flood of censor doors started appearing, disgorging mental defenses that attack the cultist's projections.
With the censors preventing the cultists from teaming up, effectively providing covering fire, Tenya easily mopped them up, two or three at a time, until Cassie locked up her mental defenses and had the various paper dolls that bore her face fuse back together into a three dimensional psychic projection.
"That was rough." She said, "It's been ages since I've had a mental battle that tough." She gave Compton a hug. "But you saved me again Boolie. Thanks."
"Thank Tenya." Compton said, "He did all the heavy lifting, I'm afraid."
"Oh?" Cassie asked, intrigued. "Is that… Heaven field?" She asked. That is certainly a more common spelling…
Tenya shook his head. "No. It is written with Ten as in 'rules' and 'ya' as in 'affirmation'." After a moment, he added: "My family name is 'Deguchiya' which is written with 'exit' and 'affirmation' again." Which, in hindsight, is actually kind of an amusing coincidence, with someone who went to a different world having a name meaning 'exit'.
"It suits you. I'll be sure to remember that." Cassie said, smiling.
Compton put his hat back on and threw away the glasses and stamp. "Now, did they manage to get anything, Cassie?"
"Not much." Cassie replied, "They got up there," She pointed up into the very tall ceiling in this library chamber, a dome where a globe hung from the ceiling. "I didn't quite catch what they grabbed, but everything's still there so they only copied it."
"They're seeking your memories of Lucrecia." Tenya said. He looked over himself and decided that this guise has served its purpose. With a thought, the false face dissolved, leaving her back in a copy of her physical body. "Woah… that was… something." Tanya said, the effects of assuming their original body leaving in a rush.
"How are you feeling, Tanya?" Compton asked.
"I'm fi-" Tanya cut herself off. She should be honest here. "Kind of… light I suppose? I feel good." She supposed that she did worry that the improvised plan would go terribly, but it worked better than she expected.
"A conflict you didn't even know you had has just been resolved." Cassie said in an official tone, giving her medical opinion. "Sometimes you can gain a new appreciation of yourself by stepping away for a little bit."
"Yes, I theorize that finally stepping back in your old shoes, you cleared up the lingering dissonance from knowing that Tenya is also you intellectually and emotionally." Compton said, adding his own take.
Hm. "I suppose reinforcing my identity will be quite handy, given what's about to happen." Tanya said, "Now, I need to tell you what's going on."
Tanya started outlining things, also sharing her plan on how to deal with it.
- Location
- Askew to the British Isles
I wonder if Tanya ends up being a reincarnation of the original Marona somehow? That would be confusing/amusing if the ritual worked as the Deluginists expected given she was the one who died and not Lucrecia.
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I wonder if Tanya's going to end up with a permanent copy of the softer side of Lucretia hanging around?
- Location
- Argentina
That wouldn't be so bad since her own soft side is usually busy playing with Demon Tanya.
Chapter 2.16
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
At some point during Tanya's out-of-body sojourn, Kevan Galochio had activated the telekinetic restraints that he placed Tanya into. Testing them, Tanya determined… that she'd need to use the Argent if she wanted to brute force them. Sure, she could generally out-muscle, psychically, any two or three psychics, but psychic technology could out-muscle anything. It was only a question of how much psitanium you had to exert that force. While the methodology is significantly more arcane than the programming style she learned from Agent Men- Otto, this was still fundamentally psychic technology, much like magic from her second life was still technology at the end of the day.
"You struggle in vain, child." Kevan said once he noticed that Tanya had returned to herself. "This region's ley lines are powering the containment circle, only the full power of Maligula can overcome them."
Did he… hook up his psitanium machinery to the buried deposits? That was actually clever. There wasn't much point to it, in terms of technological progress, and the Psychonauts can just get more psitanium when they need more… but how did they overcome the inherent instability of natural deposits? The methods that sustain the hyperice at the lake could maybe do that… but allowing him the versatility that this complex machine provides? Tanya once more resolved herself to make sure she preserved this device. "Impressive." Tanya said honestly. "I'm a bit of a magical engineer myself, this is very good work."
Kevan puffed up his chest in pride. Ah, so he is the engineer in question. "Naturally. The arcane arts have been passed down through the Galochio family for generations. With this much manatite, my rituals eclipse the power of the petty sciences." He laughed maniacally. "With my backing, Maligula will be more powerful than ever! She'll be a true Goddess of wrath, and the Soviets will be finally expelled from Grulovia for good!"
…This man was not as crazy as Tanya thought he was. That was, if you ignored all of the numerous failure points that doomed it from the start, actually a decent plan. Hydrokinesis is somewhat unique among psychic disciplines in that it can act on the largest scales of known telekinetic disciplines. While Tanya was confident she could defeat Maligula in one on one combat, if she resorted to the Argent, in a contest of army-killing, Maligula won by a tsunami. Literally. Tanya could only compete by copying her methods and using her own hydrokinesis, and she wasn't entirely confident she could manage to use it while drugged up on her war memories. Never in testing had she used a power that didn't get sourced from those memories, after all.
Tanya imagined a boat lined with these psitanium ritual circles, propelled by Maligula's hydrokinesis while fueling her with a hold full of psitanium and protecting her with a barrier like the one that kept her restrained. She could certainly defeat the Salamander Kampfgruppe easily with that kind of setup. Her men would escape, but the non-mages would be doomed. More modern arms… she wasn't sure. It could work. Tanya wasn't entirely clear on the doctrine that the Americans used when deploying their combat psychics, much less the Soviets. The Vietnam veterans don't talk about it, particularly with her.
"But what if you're wrong?" Tanya asked, buying time while she mentally probed the containment circle. Psitanium engineering is a rare enough skill that there was a good chance that he didn't take steps to make them resistant to tampering. "What if I'm not Maligula?" She was curious if he would even consider it.
Kevan grinned savagely and laughed. "Do you think I would go through all of this trouble, little Maligula…" His expression darkened. "If I thought for a second that I'd ever be this lucky?"
Ah. That explains that. He intended to create a fake Maligula. In fact, he probably didn't even truly believe it when he said she was a reincarnation of Lucy, he just kept insisting as part of a gaslighting campaign to make the hypnosis stick better.
Tanya frowned. Tanya liked to think she was good at examining psitanium devices, from all of that practice she got during school. Otto liked giving her random inventions and asking her to identify what they did and how as quiz grades. But this… she could pick out some familiar structures embedded in the quartz-like mineral, but the overall design seemed… she didn't want to say nonsensical, it clearly had some form of logic to it, but it was like trying to learn a new language through immersion, which she only ever had to do once, with German. Twice if you included Japanese, she supposed.
"Lord Galochio." One of the cultists said as they came into the room. "We have gathered the necessary memories." Tanya was expecting this, so made sure to project trepidation at the news.
"Excellent. Bring them here and I can begin the ritual." Kevan said, looking over Tanya appraisingly. "...Bring the meal too. I can already hear Mother complaining about how thin she is."
"Lady Ophelia will be pleased, sir." The cultist said, bowing and leaving. Ophelia? As in, Lucrecia's Aunt Ophelia? The one who she thinks cast the curse on the Aquatos?
"You recognize that name, too?" Kevan said, grinning. "This will work even better than I had hoped." She really needed to get better at concealing her thoughts. She can't use her shield to do it right now, she needs those psychic senses to analyze the containment circle.
"No." Tanya lied, "I'm just hungry." Well, she was, so that wasn't quite a lie. "Also, how long am I going to be here? There are certain realities of confinement that have not been addressed." She fortunately went to the bathroom before the massage, so things weren't desperate, but this telekinetic straightjacket was not the first time she had been locked up for hours.
"You should be back to yourself soon, Maligula." Kevan said, "Just give it one more hour." Well, she had her deadline.
It did appear that Kevan had instituted basic anti-tampering measures, making it substantially more difficult to alter the psitanium's structure. Normally, it was rather malleable to psychic shaping, but once you had it structured how you like, it was just good sense to reinforce the pathways and crystal structures, which served the purposes of increasing the device's durability, making it tamper resistant, and giving the device a reserve of easily available and non-structural psychic energy to fuel the machine's function. The metaphor Otto liked using was that it was like how human bones acted as a calcium reserve, ensuring that you never ran out of that crucial substance, as your bones weakening will become a big problem far before you become unable to execute basic biological processes like muscle contraction.
But he didn't seem to do anything more serious to black box his processes. She was slowly beginning to understand which parts were keeping her restrained, and which parts were restraining her other psychic powers, although she didn't actually test them.
…She hates that Kevan has made her regret not going straight to violence. That way she'd be having fun.
Tanya reviewed that last thought. Ah, the Argent was still riled up from using it last Saturday, and those fights did the opposite of helping. No, violence was not the best way. No matter how satisfying cutting up Kevan's smug face would be. If she attacked those cultists instead of surrendering, the others would still be locked in combat woefully outnumbered. Or, in the case of Cassie, outgunned.
A decrepit Grulovian woman came in with a plate of Grulovian cabbage rolls. "Oh, you're too thin, dear." She said. Tanya was getting a lot better at understanding Grulovian. Apparently immersion works extra well if you're telepathic. "Have some sarmale." She presented the plate.
Tanya attempted to move her arms, using enough power to be able to barely do so before they snapped back into place, crossed over her chest. Instead of attempting to speak Grulovian, she just gave the old woman a meaningful look and opened her mouth.
The woman gave Kevan a gimlet stare, but picked up one of the cabbage rolls and fed it to Tanya. It was delicious, much superior to the 'secret family recipe' that Nona Aquato made that one time back at the circus. Her knowledge as a cook, still somewhat separate in her mind as a skill, gave her the impression that it was the same recipe, just created with more skilled hands and better ingredients. A flash of Lucrecia's smiling face accompanied the feeling, an echo of memory from Compton's nugget of wisdom.
Hm. It's been a while since that's happened. Tanya took her time eating, splitting off the childish part of her that enjoyed being hand-fed to pilot her body while she dedicated the majority of her attention to figuring out how this apparatus worked.
"This is so good!" Tanya heard herself saying after swallowing. "More please, Baachan!"
"What a polite girl." The old woman said. "Kevan, why can't you be more like Lady Maligula, she knows how to appreciate home cooking."
Kevan rubbed his temples. "Mother…" He took one of the cabbage rolls for himself. "Thank you." He started eating, practically pouting as the woman who must be Lucrecia's Aunt Ophelia fed Tanya another roll.
Tanya was long since used to feeling her body act without her conscious input, as leaving an archetype to handle menial tasks like eating was something she did fairly often. She could still taste everything, she just didn't need to think about the minutiae of chewing, swallowing and other such things. It is not recommended to try to do such a thing to do things that are actively unpleasant, as it will not reduce your suffering, and if you pick the wrong archetype to do it with, you may end up not using the part of you that can tolerate the thing in question, exacerbating the problem.
Still, the food bought enough time that Tanya was fairly certain she was beginning to understand the foreign grammar of the psitanium structures. Instead of being structured like a machine, with discrete sections that can be flow-charted and clearly defined user inputs, it was constructed more like a brass instrument, with the adjustable variables creating complex changes throughout the entire structure, many parallel and interlinking channels, but only one path was used at any one time. That bundle designated which output circle was used, that bundle designated which effect was invoked, that bundle designated which of the programmed options were used… Yes, she understood this. All she needed to do was to run a complete circuit through all of the bundles, making sure that the zero channel was used when the purpose of the bundle was non-applicable.
The only issue was that she didn't fully understand what each of the channels did. At least three bundles of channels were used to designate the exact effect, and while the parts she did understand meant that she could, for example, do something with pyrokinesis on the circle that was around Kevan's chair, she had only vague notions as to the difference between incinerating him, if that was even an option, or heating up his drink.
"I'm full now, thank you Baachan." Tanya heard herself saying. "I would like something to drink, please. Milk?"
"Of course I can get you some milk, Lady Maligula." Ophelia said, smiling.
"My name is Tanya, Baachan."
"Of course it is." Ophelia said on her way out.
Right around the time where Tanya thought she figured out which channels were being used to restrain her, the other members of the expedition finally gave her the signal. She thought about starting the plan now… but decided to instead send them a delay message. Some milk sounded good. Besides, she wanted to study the circle some more. How is it stopping her from using telekinesis? She's pretty sure it's that part, but how is it doing it?
Once Ophelia got back and both Tanya and Kevan drank their glasses of milk, they were ready to begin. "You should really appreciate your mother more." Tanya said to Kevan after she re-combined with her archetype. "She was being so considerate and you didn't even say thank you."
As expected, the statement threw him off of the dramatic statement he was about to make. "...I hate you." He said, "But you're not going to be who you currently are for much longer, so…" He took out the psitanium diadem that Ophelia delivered with the food, and placed it on top of Tanya's head.
Tanya sent the ready signal, and sent her attention inward, leaving only a small fraction of attention behind.
---------------------
It was raining inside her mind. The mechanisms behind the diadem were much more familiar, as because it was a dedicated device the differences in the construction methodology were not as severe. It was memory storage, but also communicative. Otto had created a similar device that could take a picture then infuse the memory into the user's mind instead of printing out the image, creating a crystal-clear memory that lasted weeks before it started to fade, and made it nigh impossible to completely forget.
This particular device was intended to create a powerful hypnotic attack, in the form of rain. As her mind flooded, the more the artificial Maligula personality will overwhelm her own. However… this was an expected event that was planned for. The pyramid that her mind's structures surrounded shifted, along with the roofs and streets, creating ducts and gutters that diverted the vast majority of the rain into a newly-created aquifer.
Proper psychic combat, where an invader wants to impose things on the target mind, was explained to her as being similar to a 'wizard's duel', with a Disney film about King Arthur being shown as an example. It wasn't about raw power, although power still mattered, but instead about outwitting the enemy by pitting metaphor against metaphor.
Tanya thought a more apt comparison was the kind of play fighting that elementary school boys engage in, where the goal was to invent a counter to whatever the hell the other boy came up with.
Still, 'rain' is countered by 'civic engineering'. Your move, Kevan.
The aquifer, which was outside of the city and in the infinite-looking desert outside of its borders, started to surge upward in a twisting waterspout. From the water cyclone, a copy of Maligula emerged, a near identical copy to the one Tanya defeated in Helmut's mind. The primary difference was that it did not have any of the normal Nightmare accouterments, it was much more real to life. You know, if you ignored the fact that the Maligula copy was fifty feet tall.
Good choice. 'Civic engineering' does indeed lose to 'kaiju'. The question is, what defeats a kaiju?
"I call upon the power of friendship!" Tanya boldly announced. On cue, four other minds entered hers, as they were invited.
"So here's where I left my nightmares. I knew I smelled trouble." Helmut said, grinning at his own one-liner. Battle music started up around him, a heart-pounding beat setting the mood.
"I just cleaned up, you know!" Bob said angrily at the manifestation. "Stop making a mess!" Vines appeared out of the ether, whip cracks sounding out as the plants were twitching with energy.
"If you don't have a library card, it's just stealing." Cassie added, frowning as a swarm of bees sprung into existence around her.
"I'm afraid this is Psychonauts business, my dear. Let the Agents handle it." Compton said as he came astride a bear. A few other animals manifested around him.
Excellent. They all took her 'say something cool when you come in' instructions to heart. Bob's could use work, though.
"You are… Maligula!" The apparition announced. "An avenging angel, destined to bring Grulovia to greatness!"
Tanya frowned, then started to slowly smile. She knew what to do with angels… She started focusing on her creation, it's been a long time so she'll need to dig deep to create this…
Bob's plants surged upward and speared the Maligula shade, drinking deeply of the water. "I'd like my memories of Lucy back!" He shouted.
"I don't, but Mama Fullbear didn't raise no litterer!" Helmut added as he started inhaling strongly, a stream of water from the aquifer going into his mouth.
The swarm of bees surrounded Maligula, threads of telekinetic power creating a cage between them. The rain continued to pool beneath the waterspout. "It takes more than a few memories to make up a person, Galochio!" Cassie shouted. "Even from multiple people! Split up!" Maligula's image punched the cage, her fists getting cut up by the razor wire and letting water drip down to lead to Cassie.
Compton just kept summoning animals to drink from the aquifer. "Yes, those are our previous memories, and you may have been able to take them, but there's nothing stopping us from taking them right back."
The Maligula entity thrashed against the cage, furious at the interference. But the rain continued… until it stopped. "Ah, finally." Tanya announced. "I was wondering when my archetype was going to finish disabling that blasted diadem."
After another moment, Cassie called out to Tanya: "Okay, we've done our parts!"
Tanya unleashed the final weapon her imagination called forth. A pair of black metal spears, twisted against each other to create a single fork-like weapon. It pierced the Maligula entity in both the head and the heart, shattering it into an incoherent puddle of water.
With the entity reduced to a morass of mental energy, it was a simple matter for each of the present members of the psychic six to siphon what remained into their own minds for later disposal. "Excellent. Now, hopefully those other memories will be useful when it comes to dismantling the Deluginist's operations."
"Yes, let's hope so." Compton said, worrying at the brim of his hat now that the action was over with.
"Ah, here's the nugget of wisdom you asked for." Cassie said, handing Tanya a golden book. "This will help your plan."
Tanya seized the book, digesting the information within. "Thank you. Now, I have an appointment with my least favorite "cousin". Remember the plan." Tanya said, before willing herself outside of her mind.
---------------------
Tanya opened her eyes, an inner light shining forth. "A storm is coming." She said, in her best Lucrecia impression. There wasn't any water nearby, but enough was in the local air that Tanya was able to condense a small water snake that wrapped itself around her left arm.
"Ah, how are you feeling, Lady Maligula?" Kevan asked, a big smile on his face.
"Like my mustard's about to jump off." Tanya said, invoking one of the Grulovian idioms she picked up from Cassie's language nugget. It was actually really difficult to learn a new language through a nugget of wisdom, but it was very good at expanding one's knowledge of a language that you already knew at a basic level. "You have five seconds to justify your continued air supply." The water-snake she had on her arm hissed at Kevan.
Kevan flinched at the frosty reception, a look of confusion on his face. "I'm Kevan, your cousin." He said, "The son of your Aunt Ophelia? Your father Zalto's sister?"
"...why would that matter?" Tanya asked, affecting confusion. "I never let blood relations stop me from killing people. I kill lots of people, you know."
"I'm here on behalf of the Gzar, overseeing your recovery!" He hastily added. "Gzar Gristol Malik? His father died while you were indisposed."
Interesting. Tanya pretended to hesitate at the invocation of an authority. "...You live another day." She said, as if deciding right then.
While the conversation occurred, Tanya felt her power grow as the members of the Psychic Six added their mental energy to her own. Using that power, She forcefully broke the telekinetic constructs holding her back, using her connection to the psitanium construct to direct the damage to a part that she understood well enough, ruining it while preserving the parts she still wanted to study.
"My ritual circles!" Kevan exclaimed, distraught. Tanya sympathized, she'd likely react much worse if someone destroyed her prototypes.
"Eh?" Tanya vocalized. "I don't care." She walked out through the door like she owned the place, her water-snake hooking Kevan's arm and dragging him along. "Where's the Gzar? I should report."
"Ah, he's in a safehouse." Keva said, to Tanya's glower. "In America." He added.
"Why?" Tanya asked.
"The Soviets have installed a replacement regime here in glorious Grulovia." Kevan explained, "While they doubtlessly keep their communist spies watching the Gzar, once the Soviets are expelled by your invincible might, he will return to bring Grulovia back to its glory days!"
Tanya scoffed. "What glory days?" She asked, "Even when I was here, I was just trying to keep a failing nation from getting overtaken by the communists. The Gzar was a joke that failed to understand basic civics and sociology." Tanya admittedly didn't know that much about what happened, but the point was to make him abandon his plan by thinking that it was poorly conceived, or else he might do it to someone else.
Kevan frowned suspiciously. "You don't sound like yourself, cousin." He said warily. "How do you feel?"
Tanya took on an angry look. When questioned, go on the attack. "How do I feel?" She asked hysterically. "I've lost half a meter in height, I have the body of…" She looked over herself, steeling for the insult she was about to say about herself. "-some fourteen year old girl, who knows how many foreign memories swimming around in the mental stew you decided to make of me." The water snake lashed out, wrapping around the man's neck and lifting him bodily into the air. "I've already brought this nation back from the brink before. Why should I try to do it again?"
"You'll be worshiped as a Goddess of vengeance!" Kevan said frantically, arms failing to dislodge the aquatic binding. "Your family is still here, me and Mother and Uncle Luca!"
"QUIET!" Tanya shouted. "I'm in charge now. Have everyone of importance report to the meeting room. I have a speech to give."
"Yes Lady!" Kevan stammered as he raised his hand to his temple, presumably contacting his confederates.
---------------------
They actually had a throne room prepared for Tanya to hold court, which was amusing. Well, it was really more of an auditorium, but instead of a podium, there was an elaborate throne on a pedestal, with the chair positioned so that the area in front of the stage was bigger and more easily visible, clearly part of the show.
Tanya had collected some additional water, and had five water snakes around her to further the 'Maligula' facade. Controlling this much water this precisely for this long was harder than Tanya expected it to be, but mental energy can assist with more than just raw power. Cassie was helping manage the mental load, and Compton was helping with the snake's animal mannerisms.
The seats were not full, indicating that the Deluginist's full membership could not be called upon so quickly. It looked like the place could seat half the town, although that was more of an indictment of how small the town was than the seating capacity of the auditorium. In fact, less than a dozen people were present, presumably the inner circle.
Tanya frowned at the lack of attendance. "Well, the speech can wait, I suppose. Now, report on all operations and resources." Tanya declared. "I need the full picture of the organization's reach if we're going to launch a coup."
Another cultist, a man by the name of Vlad Burcur, explained things. Apparently, the cult had more or less full control over the local town, with the mayor and city council being members. The Deluginists operated in a cell structure, with each cell being led by either a member of the Grulovian nobility, this cell being an exception, instead being controlled by the Galochio family. As Kevan was a notable "sorcerer", with enough expertise to actually execute the "necromancy" required to "resurrect" Maligula, he had significant influence over other Deluginist sects.
The resources they could command were psitanium reserves measured in tons, all "rituals" being limited only by the throughput of the circles. The facility could hold prisoners and had supply reserves fit to feed, fuel, and otherwise supply the whole town for a year, although this was intended to be a strategic resource for their takeover of the country.
Tanya was sure to spend copious amounts of time during the explanations to further intimidate her audience, of course.
Their financial resources were not as significant. They had the income of the fancy bottled water facility, as well as tourist income, but the total income was not particularly great, as the exchange rate of the local currency and, say, the dollar was not favorable.
"But what do we have to garner international support?" Tanya asked, "The Psychonauts, as you say, were the ones to stop me before, but do we have any leverage over them? A bribe, a hostage?"
"We have four of the Psychic Six in our jail." Vlad announced proudly.
"Psychic Six?" Tanya asked, aping confusion. "We were the Psychic Seven! If it was reduced because of my demise, then why isn't it the Psychic Five? I know I killed one."
"The frozen apostate lives, Lady Maligula." Said another one of the cultists, a man by the name of Radu Dragos.
So they really do call him that. "...Who?" She asked.
Vlad cut back in. "Helmut Fullbear, Lady Maligula." He said, "We found them coming to seek the frozen body of him, he is a brain in a jar."
Tanya rubbed the bridge of her nose, silently conveying how much she did not like that news. "Okay, do we know where it is?"
"We have it, Lady Maligula." Vlad continued. "It was thought by Lady Ophelia that we could trade it to the Psychonauts in return for their support against the Soviets, or at least their non-interference. They are opposed to the Soviets, but they ignore their puppet regime, pretending to be fooled." He shifted uncomfortably. "The Psychic six have repelled our best sorcerers, so they could be planning something nefarious."
Finally, some good news. "Alright, I'm going to take a nap. Get as much information as you can about the Deluginists as a whole down on paper, and once I've read it through, I'll have your next instructions. I want it at hand the second I wake up, understand?"
"Yes, Lady Maligula!"
"You struggle in vain, child." Kevan said once he noticed that Tanya had returned to herself. "This region's ley lines are powering the containment circle, only the full power of Maligula can overcome them."
Did he… hook up his psitanium machinery to the buried deposits? That was actually clever. There wasn't much point to it, in terms of technological progress, and the Psychonauts can just get more psitanium when they need more… but how did they overcome the inherent instability of natural deposits? The methods that sustain the hyperice at the lake could maybe do that… but allowing him the versatility that this complex machine provides? Tanya once more resolved herself to make sure she preserved this device. "Impressive." Tanya said honestly. "I'm a bit of a magical engineer myself, this is very good work."
Kevan puffed up his chest in pride. Ah, so he is the engineer in question. "Naturally. The arcane arts have been passed down through the Galochio family for generations. With this much manatite, my rituals eclipse the power of the petty sciences." He laughed maniacally. "With my backing, Maligula will be more powerful than ever! She'll be a true Goddess of wrath, and the Soviets will be finally expelled from Grulovia for good!"
…This man was not as crazy as Tanya thought he was. That was, if you ignored all of the numerous failure points that doomed it from the start, actually a decent plan. Hydrokinesis is somewhat unique among psychic disciplines in that it can act on the largest scales of known telekinetic disciplines. While Tanya was confident she could defeat Maligula in one on one combat, if she resorted to the Argent, in a contest of army-killing, Maligula won by a tsunami. Literally. Tanya could only compete by copying her methods and using her own hydrokinesis, and she wasn't entirely confident she could manage to use it while drugged up on her war memories. Never in testing had she used a power that didn't get sourced from those memories, after all.
Tanya imagined a boat lined with these psitanium ritual circles, propelled by Maligula's hydrokinesis while fueling her with a hold full of psitanium and protecting her with a barrier like the one that kept her restrained. She could certainly defeat the Salamander Kampfgruppe easily with that kind of setup. Her men would escape, but the non-mages would be doomed. More modern arms… she wasn't sure. It could work. Tanya wasn't entirely clear on the doctrine that the Americans used when deploying their combat psychics, much less the Soviets. The Vietnam veterans don't talk about it, particularly with her.
"But what if you're wrong?" Tanya asked, buying time while she mentally probed the containment circle. Psitanium engineering is a rare enough skill that there was a good chance that he didn't take steps to make them resistant to tampering. "What if I'm not Maligula?" She was curious if he would even consider it.
Kevan grinned savagely and laughed. "Do you think I would go through all of this trouble, little Maligula…" His expression darkened. "If I thought for a second that I'd ever be this lucky?"
Ah. That explains that. He intended to create a fake Maligula. In fact, he probably didn't even truly believe it when he said she was a reincarnation of Lucy, he just kept insisting as part of a gaslighting campaign to make the hypnosis stick better.
Tanya frowned. Tanya liked to think she was good at examining psitanium devices, from all of that practice she got during school. Otto liked giving her random inventions and asking her to identify what they did and how as quiz grades. But this… she could pick out some familiar structures embedded in the quartz-like mineral, but the overall design seemed… she didn't want to say nonsensical, it clearly had some form of logic to it, but it was like trying to learn a new language through immersion, which she only ever had to do once, with German. Twice if you included Japanese, she supposed.
"Lord Galochio." One of the cultists said as they came into the room. "We have gathered the necessary memories." Tanya was expecting this, so made sure to project trepidation at the news.
"Excellent. Bring them here and I can begin the ritual." Kevan said, looking over Tanya appraisingly. "...Bring the meal too. I can already hear Mother complaining about how thin she is."
"Lady Ophelia will be pleased, sir." The cultist said, bowing and leaving. Ophelia? As in, Lucrecia's Aunt Ophelia? The one who she thinks cast the curse on the Aquatos?
"You recognize that name, too?" Kevan said, grinning. "This will work even better than I had hoped." She really needed to get better at concealing her thoughts. She can't use her shield to do it right now, she needs those psychic senses to analyze the containment circle.
"No." Tanya lied, "I'm just hungry." Well, she was, so that wasn't quite a lie. "Also, how long am I going to be here? There are certain realities of confinement that have not been addressed." She fortunately went to the bathroom before the massage, so things weren't desperate, but this telekinetic straightjacket was not the first time she had been locked up for hours.
"You should be back to yourself soon, Maligula." Kevan said, "Just give it one more hour." Well, she had her deadline.
It did appear that Kevan had instituted basic anti-tampering measures, making it substantially more difficult to alter the psitanium's structure. Normally, it was rather malleable to psychic shaping, but once you had it structured how you like, it was just good sense to reinforce the pathways and crystal structures, which served the purposes of increasing the device's durability, making it tamper resistant, and giving the device a reserve of easily available and non-structural psychic energy to fuel the machine's function. The metaphor Otto liked using was that it was like how human bones acted as a calcium reserve, ensuring that you never ran out of that crucial substance, as your bones weakening will become a big problem far before you become unable to execute basic biological processes like muscle contraction.
But he didn't seem to do anything more serious to black box his processes. She was slowly beginning to understand which parts were keeping her restrained, and which parts were restraining her other psychic powers, although she didn't actually test them.
…She hates that Kevan has made her regret not going straight to violence. That way she'd be having fun.
Tanya reviewed that last thought. Ah, the Argent was still riled up from using it last Saturday, and those fights did the opposite of helping. No, violence was not the best way. No matter how satisfying cutting up Kevan's smug face would be. If she attacked those cultists instead of surrendering, the others would still be locked in combat woefully outnumbered. Or, in the case of Cassie, outgunned.
A decrepit Grulovian woman came in with a plate of Grulovian cabbage rolls. "Oh, you're too thin, dear." She said. Tanya was getting a lot better at understanding Grulovian. Apparently immersion works extra well if you're telepathic. "Have some sarmale." She presented the plate.
Tanya attempted to move her arms, using enough power to be able to barely do so before they snapped back into place, crossed over her chest. Instead of attempting to speak Grulovian, she just gave the old woman a meaningful look and opened her mouth.
The woman gave Kevan a gimlet stare, but picked up one of the cabbage rolls and fed it to Tanya. It was delicious, much superior to the 'secret family recipe' that Nona Aquato made that one time back at the circus. Her knowledge as a cook, still somewhat separate in her mind as a skill, gave her the impression that it was the same recipe, just created with more skilled hands and better ingredients. A flash of Lucrecia's smiling face accompanied the feeling, an echo of memory from Compton's nugget of wisdom.
Hm. It's been a while since that's happened. Tanya took her time eating, splitting off the childish part of her that enjoyed being hand-fed to pilot her body while she dedicated the majority of her attention to figuring out how this apparatus worked.
"This is so good!" Tanya heard herself saying after swallowing. "More please, Baachan!"
"What a polite girl." The old woman said. "Kevan, why can't you be more like Lady Maligula, she knows how to appreciate home cooking."
Kevan rubbed his temples. "Mother…" He took one of the cabbage rolls for himself. "Thank you." He started eating, practically pouting as the woman who must be Lucrecia's Aunt Ophelia fed Tanya another roll.
Tanya was long since used to feeling her body act without her conscious input, as leaving an archetype to handle menial tasks like eating was something she did fairly often. She could still taste everything, she just didn't need to think about the minutiae of chewing, swallowing and other such things. It is not recommended to try to do such a thing to do things that are actively unpleasant, as it will not reduce your suffering, and if you pick the wrong archetype to do it with, you may end up not using the part of you that can tolerate the thing in question, exacerbating the problem.
Still, the food bought enough time that Tanya was fairly certain she was beginning to understand the foreign grammar of the psitanium structures. Instead of being structured like a machine, with discrete sections that can be flow-charted and clearly defined user inputs, it was constructed more like a brass instrument, with the adjustable variables creating complex changes throughout the entire structure, many parallel and interlinking channels, but only one path was used at any one time. That bundle designated which output circle was used, that bundle designated which effect was invoked, that bundle designated which of the programmed options were used… Yes, she understood this. All she needed to do was to run a complete circuit through all of the bundles, making sure that the zero channel was used when the purpose of the bundle was non-applicable.
The only issue was that she didn't fully understand what each of the channels did. At least three bundles of channels were used to designate the exact effect, and while the parts she did understand meant that she could, for example, do something with pyrokinesis on the circle that was around Kevan's chair, she had only vague notions as to the difference between incinerating him, if that was even an option, or heating up his drink.
"I'm full now, thank you Baachan." Tanya heard herself saying. "I would like something to drink, please. Milk?"
"Of course I can get you some milk, Lady Maligula." Ophelia said, smiling.
"My name is Tanya, Baachan."
"Of course it is." Ophelia said on her way out.
Right around the time where Tanya thought she figured out which channels were being used to restrain her, the other members of the expedition finally gave her the signal. She thought about starting the plan now… but decided to instead send them a delay message. Some milk sounded good. Besides, she wanted to study the circle some more. How is it stopping her from using telekinesis? She's pretty sure it's that part, but how is it doing it?
Once Ophelia got back and both Tanya and Kevan drank their glasses of milk, they were ready to begin. "You should really appreciate your mother more." Tanya said to Kevan after she re-combined with her archetype. "She was being so considerate and you didn't even say thank you."
As expected, the statement threw him off of the dramatic statement he was about to make. "...I hate you." He said, "But you're not going to be who you currently are for much longer, so…" He took out the psitanium diadem that Ophelia delivered with the food, and placed it on top of Tanya's head.
Tanya sent the ready signal, and sent her attention inward, leaving only a small fraction of attention behind.
---------------------
It was raining inside her mind. The mechanisms behind the diadem were much more familiar, as because it was a dedicated device the differences in the construction methodology were not as severe. It was memory storage, but also communicative. Otto had created a similar device that could take a picture then infuse the memory into the user's mind instead of printing out the image, creating a crystal-clear memory that lasted weeks before it started to fade, and made it nigh impossible to completely forget.
This particular device was intended to create a powerful hypnotic attack, in the form of rain. As her mind flooded, the more the artificial Maligula personality will overwhelm her own. However… this was an expected event that was planned for. The pyramid that her mind's structures surrounded shifted, along with the roofs and streets, creating ducts and gutters that diverted the vast majority of the rain into a newly-created aquifer.
Proper psychic combat, where an invader wants to impose things on the target mind, was explained to her as being similar to a 'wizard's duel', with a Disney film about King Arthur being shown as an example. It wasn't about raw power, although power still mattered, but instead about outwitting the enemy by pitting metaphor against metaphor.
Tanya thought a more apt comparison was the kind of play fighting that elementary school boys engage in, where the goal was to invent a counter to whatever the hell the other boy came up with.
Still, 'rain' is countered by 'civic engineering'. Your move, Kevan.
The aquifer, which was outside of the city and in the infinite-looking desert outside of its borders, started to surge upward in a twisting waterspout. From the water cyclone, a copy of Maligula emerged, a near identical copy to the one Tanya defeated in Helmut's mind. The primary difference was that it did not have any of the normal Nightmare accouterments, it was much more real to life. You know, if you ignored the fact that the Maligula copy was fifty feet tall.
Good choice. 'Civic engineering' does indeed lose to 'kaiju'. The question is, what defeats a kaiju?
"I call upon the power of friendship!" Tanya boldly announced. On cue, four other minds entered hers, as they were invited.
"So here's where I left my nightmares. I knew I smelled trouble." Helmut said, grinning at his own one-liner. Battle music started up around him, a heart-pounding beat setting the mood.
"I just cleaned up, you know!" Bob said angrily at the manifestation. "Stop making a mess!" Vines appeared out of the ether, whip cracks sounding out as the plants were twitching with energy.
"If you don't have a library card, it's just stealing." Cassie added, frowning as a swarm of bees sprung into existence around her.
"I'm afraid this is Psychonauts business, my dear. Let the Agents handle it." Compton said as he came astride a bear. A few other animals manifested around him.
Excellent. They all took her 'say something cool when you come in' instructions to heart. Bob's could use work, though.
"You are… Maligula!" The apparition announced. "An avenging angel, destined to bring Grulovia to greatness!"
Tanya frowned, then started to slowly smile. She knew what to do with angels… She started focusing on her creation, it's been a long time so she'll need to dig deep to create this…
Bob's plants surged upward and speared the Maligula shade, drinking deeply of the water. "I'd like my memories of Lucy back!" He shouted.
"I don't, but Mama Fullbear didn't raise no litterer!" Helmut added as he started inhaling strongly, a stream of water from the aquifer going into his mouth.
The swarm of bees surrounded Maligula, threads of telekinetic power creating a cage between them. The rain continued to pool beneath the waterspout. "It takes more than a few memories to make up a person, Galochio!" Cassie shouted. "Even from multiple people! Split up!" Maligula's image punched the cage, her fists getting cut up by the razor wire and letting water drip down to lead to Cassie.
Compton just kept summoning animals to drink from the aquifer. "Yes, those are our previous memories, and you may have been able to take them, but there's nothing stopping us from taking them right back."
The Maligula entity thrashed against the cage, furious at the interference. But the rain continued… until it stopped. "Ah, finally." Tanya announced. "I was wondering when my archetype was going to finish disabling that blasted diadem."
After another moment, Cassie called out to Tanya: "Okay, we've done our parts!"
Tanya unleashed the final weapon her imagination called forth. A pair of black metal spears, twisted against each other to create a single fork-like weapon. It pierced the Maligula entity in both the head and the heart, shattering it into an incoherent puddle of water.
With the entity reduced to a morass of mental energy, it was a simple matter for each of the present members of the psychic six to siphon what remained into their own minds for later disposal. "Excellent. Now, hopefully those other memories will be useful when it comes to dismantling the Deluginist's operations."
"Yes, let's hope so." Compton said, worrying at the brim of his hat now that the action was over with.
"Ah, here's the nugget of wisdom you asked for." Cassie said, handing Tanya a golden book. "This will help your plan."
Tanya seized the book, digesting the information within. "Thank you. Now, I have an appointment with my least favorite "cousin". Remember the plan." Tanya said, before willing herself outside of her mind.
---------------------
Tanya opened her eyes, an inner light shining forth. "A storm is coming." She said, in her best Lucrecia impression. There wasn't any water nearby, but enough was in the local air that Tanya was able to condense a small water snake that wrapped itself around her left arm.
"Ah, how are you feeling, Lady Maligula?" Kevan asked, a big smile on his face.
"Like my mustard's about to jump off." Tanya said, invoking one of the Grulovian idioms she picked up from Cassie's language nugget. It was actually really difficult to learn a new language through a nugget of wisdom, but it was very good at expanding one's knowledge of a language that you already knew at a basic level. "You have five seconds to justify your continued air supply." The water-snake she had on her arm hissed at Kevan.
Kevan flinched at the frosty reception, a look of confusion on his face. "I'm Kevan, your cousin." He said, "The son of your Aunt Ophelia? Your father Zalto's sister?"
"...why would that matter?" Tanya asked, affecting confusion. "I never let blood relations stop me from killing people. I kill lots of people, you know."
"I'm here on behalf of the Gzar, overseeing your recovery!" He hastily added. "Gzar Gristol Malik? His father died while you were indisposed."
Interesting. Tanya pretended to hesitate at the invocation of an authority. "...You live another day." She said, as if deciding right then.
While the conversation occurred, Tanya felt her power grow as the members of the Psychic Six added their mental energy to her own. Using that power, She forcefully broke the telekinetic constructs holding her back, using her connection to the psitanium construct to direct the damage to a part that she understood well enough, ruining it while preserving the parts she still wanted to study.
"My ritual circles!" Kevan exclaimed, distraught. Tanya sympathized, she'd likely react much worse if someone destroyed her prototypes.
"Eh?" Tanya vocalized. "I don't care." She walked out through the door like she owned the place, her water-snake hooking Kevan's arm and dragging him along. "Where's the Gzar? I should report."
"Ah, he's in a safehouse." Keva said, to Tanya's glower. "In America." He added.
"Why?" Tanya asked.
"The Soviets have installed a replacement regime here in glorious Grulovia." Kevan explained, "While they doubtlessly keep their communist spies watching the Gzar, once the Soviets are expelled by your invincible might, he will return to bring Grulovia back to its glory days!"
Tanya scoffed. "What glory days?" She asked, "Even when I was here, I was just trying to keep a failing nation from getting overtaken by the communists. The Gzar was a joke that failed to understand basic civics and sociology." Tanya admittedly didn't know that much about what happened, but the point was to make him abandon his plan by thinking that it was poorly conceived, or else he might do it to someone else.
Kevan frowned suspiciously. "You don't sound like yourself, cousin." He said warily. "How do you feel?"
Tanya took on an angry look. When questioned, go on the attack. "How do I feel?" She asked hysterically. "I've lost half a meter in height, I have the body of…" She looked over herself, steeling for the insult she was about to say about herself. "-some fourteen year old girl, who knows how many foreign memories swimming around in the mental stew you decided to make of me." The water snake lashed out, wrapping around the man's neck and lifting him bodily into the air. "I've already brought this nation back from the brink before. Why should I try to do it again?"
"You'll be worshiped as a Goddess of vengeance!" Kevan said frantically, arms failing to dislodge the aquatic binding. "Your family is still here, me and Mother and Uncle Luca!"
"QUIET!" Tanya shouted. "I'm in charge now. Have everyone of importance report to the meeting room. I have a speech to give."
"Yes Lady!" Kevan stammered as he raised his hand to his temple, presumably contacting his confederates.
---------------------
They actually had a throne room prepared for Tanya to hold court, which was amusing. Well, it was really more of an auditorium, but instead of a podium, there was an elaborate throne on a pedestal, with the chair positioned so that the area in front of the stage was bigger and more easily visible, clearly part of the show.
Tanya had collected some additional water, and had five water snakes around her to further the 'Maligula' facade. Controlling this much water this precisely for this long was harder than Tanya expected it to be, but mental energy can assist with more than just raw power. Cassie was helping manage the mental load, and Compton was helping with the snake's animal mannerisms.
The seats were not full, indicating that the Deluginist's full membership could not be called upon so quickly. It looked like the place could seat half the town, although that was more of an indictment of how small the town was than the seating capacity of the auditorium. In fact, less than a dozen people were present, presumably the inner circle.
Tanya frowned at the lack of attendance. "Well, the speech can wait, I suppose. Now, report on all operations and resources." Tanya declared. "I need the full picture of the organization's reach if we're going to launch a coup."
Another cultist, a man by the name of Vlad Burcur, explained things. Apparently, the cult had more or less full control over the local town, with the mayor and city council being members. The Deluginists operated in a cell structure, with each cell being led by either a member of the Grulovian nobility, this cell being an exception, instead being controlled by the Galochio family. As Kevan was a notable "sorcerer", with enough expertise to actually execute the "necromancy" required to "resurrect" Maligula, he had significant influence over other Deluginist sects.
The resources they could command were psitanium reserves measured in tons, all "rituals" being limited only by the throughput of the circles. The facility could hold prisoners and had supply reserves fit to feed, fuel, and otherwise supply the whole town for a year, although this was intended to be a strategic resource for their takeover of the country.
Tanya was sure to spend copious amounts of time during the explanations to further intimidate her audience, of course.
Their financial resources were not as significant. They had the income of the fancy bottled water facility, as well as tourist income, but the total income was not particularly great, as the exchange rate of the local currency and, say, the dollar was not favorable.
"But what do we have to garner international support?" Tanya asked, "The Psychonauts, as you say, were the ones to stop me before, but do we have any leverage over them? A bribe, a hostage?"
"We have four of the Psychic Six in our jail." Vlad announced proudly.
"Psychic Six?" Tanya asked, aping confusion. "We were the Psychic Seven! If it was reduced because of my demise, then why isn't it the Psychic Five? I know I killed one."
"The frozen apostate lives, Lady Maligula." Said another one of the cultists, a man by the name of Radu Dragos.
So they really do call him that. "...Who?" She asked.
Vlad cut back in. "Helmut Fullbear, Lady Maligula." He said, "We found them coming to seek the frozen body of him, he is a brain in a jar."
Tanya rubbed the bridge of her nose, silently conveying how much she did not like that news. "Okay, do we know where it is?"
"We have it, Lady Maligula." Vlad continued. "It was thought by Lady Ophelia that we could trade it to the Psychonauts in return for their support against the Soviets, or at least their non-interference. They are opposed to the Soviets, but they ignore their puppet regime, pretending to be fooled." He shifted uncomfortably. "The Psychic six have repelled our best sorcerers, so they could be planning something nefarious."
Finally, some good news. "Alright, I'm going to take a nap. Get as much information as you can about the Deluginists as a whole down on paper, and once I've read it through, I'll have your next instructions. I want it at hand the second I wake up, understand?"
"Yes, Lady Maligula!"
- Location
- Argentina
Tanya should take acting classes.
- Location
- new york
The mama's boy of cult leader got schooled
JmonsterNEO
Spouter of nonsense
- Location
- The quest forums
A black Spear of Longinus, I believe.
Nictis
Best Sidekick
- Location
- Ninja Dave's Cookies
- Pronouns
- Any
I never played Psychonauts, is this supposed to be saying that the Grand Head fired himself?
I believe this should be Cruller.
Extra quotation at the end.
Forgot to quote earlier but it is really cool to see the pieces come together with the aquatos backstory, Tanya's mantra and the Nona's lines. This is going to be one heck of a horror revelation when Raz and them learn what happened.
Well she seems like a treat. I'm sure there won't be any conflicts between an overly controlling teacher who takes issue with the abnormal and claims to teach at a catholic school and Mary, the psychonaut berserker who has met God, actually, and is starting to question some of the morals in the Bible.
Edit:
Mentallis.
ICBMs.
Last edited:
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
No, the Grand Head fired his uncle. His depressed, alcoholic uncle. Who just so happened to be one of the founders of the Psychonauts. Canon.
In Ms. White's defense, the psychic power thing is a school rule, not one she made up. It's not particularly well enforced, but it is not a good idea to let kids use whatever psychic powers they want during school hours. It's disruptive.
Nictis
Best Sidekick
- Location
- Ninja Dave's Cookies
- Pronouns
- Any
Completely fair, but that's more of a contributing factor to the other bigger points.
Chapter 2.17
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
Next week is a Summon Perfect Warlady chapter. Updates are going to switch between this story and that for a while, actually. Unless I get some kind of productivity miracle this week, I suppose.
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As much as she'd like to claim the nap was just a fakeout to confer with the others trapped in here with her… dealing with the energy overflow from them channeling mental energy into her was quite taxing, mentally. From experience, she knew that extreme fatigue was normal after exerting one's empowered survival drive as well, so while she didn't know for sure that Maligula took frequent naps, the only reason they wouldn't know that is if Lucrecia took pains to conceal those moments of weakness.
So when she awoke, she stretched fearlessly, looking around for the promised documents. Seeing no such thing, she growled and stormed into the attached bathroom, turning on the shower to collect water to threaten people with.
Hang on… Damn. After she handled pressing matters, she left the bathroom with a quartet of water snakes, walking out of the room to find… an obsequious man presenting her a folder full of papers. "The documents you demanded, Lady Maligula." He said, his voice quavering.
…Yeah, this was fine. "You may live." She said, to the man's extreme relief. "Are you familiar with the contents?" She asked.
"No, Lady Maligula. I am your lowly servant." The simpering man said, his fear spiking upwards.
"Hm. Take me to whoever can answer any questions I have." Tanya commanded as she started to read through the documents. "Kevan, preferably."
"Yes Lady Maligula." The servant said, quickly walking ahead.
Keeping with the 'in charge' vibe, Tanya followed at an unhurried pace, not even looking where she was going with her eyes, although she had a snake keeping a weather eye out. Tanya sent a mental message to Helmut and Cassie, who will fill in the other two. After a few seconds, mental energy started trickling back in, and her awareness expanded as she stopped needing to dedicate so much attention to her aquatic threat display. "I want to know where the Psychonauts are held, too. Point them out if we pass." Tanya commanded.
"Ah, they are down this next corridor here, Lady Maligula." The servant said quickly. "The cells are at the end."
"I assume they have been treated at least as well as a prisoner of war should?" Tanya asked rhetorically.
"I so not know, Lady Maligula. I am not involved with the prison." The servant said immediately. From the way his fear rose slowly and screamed out of him, that was a definite lie.
"Instruct the warden that all prisoners are to be treated well. They are mine, and they will be tormented solely at my command." Tanya commanded. "I look forward to interrogating them."
"Yes, Lady Maligula." The servant said, before presenting a door that was slightly fancier than the others. "Lord Galochio is beyond this door, in his office. I will speak with the warden immediately to convey your will."
"Do so." Tanya said, affecting a sneer. After the servant flees, Tanya opened the door with hydrokinesis, slamming the door open. "Kevan." She said, glancing about the office. It was filled with psitanium devices and books, a treasure trove of knowledge. "Anything to report?"
Tanya had been as rude and domineering that she thought she could get away with, all to test the man's patience. He clearly thought himself the Master of the Maligula project, and would not appreciate his project taking everything over.
As expected, Kevan outright glowered in her direction before smoothing over his face and smiling pleasantly. "Ah… no, your Ladyship. Matters are calm, and nothing has come up in the last two hours."
Tanya put down one of the papers in front of the man. "Why is there no location for the Gzar? Or picture?"
Kevan coughed. "Ah, the Gzar is very security conscious. I have already sent word through the usual channels, but I was never told exactly where his safehouse was." At Tanya's glower, he swallowed thickly and added: "I'm fairly certain it's on the east coast of America?"
"And the picture?" Tanya asked, growling.
"Photographs of the Gzar are hard to come by." Kevan insisted. "You should be able to recognize him on sight, some of the memories used to restore you belonged to him." Hopefully the Psychonauts can decrypt them.
Tanya decided that it was a good time to have a tantrum. She set her snakes out on a statue of the old Gzar, she actually recognized the man from the newspapers she studied that were in Lucrecia's file. It was crushed to powder, and Tanya gave a pleased huff. "...Take me to the Psychonauts." She demanded.
"That may not be the best idea." Kevan said calmly. "They are currently dangerous, even imprisoned. They are only physically restrained, not psychically. They may attack."
Tanya scoffed. "If they try, I will kill them." To emphasize her intent, she coated her arm in the water of one of her snakes and formed a water blade that promptly started moving like a chainsaw. "Painfully." She added.
"As your advisor, I advise against meeting with them. We can still use them, but not if we kill them." Kevan said, hands splayed placatingly.
Tanya rolled her eyes. "Fine. Take me to Helmut's body first. They won't try anything if I have that with me."
He looked like he was about to object, but Tanya moved the water chainsaw in his direction and he yelped, walking speedily out of the room. "It's this way, Lady Maligula."
Tanya smirked as she dismissed the water chainsaw. The plan may have just been 'pretend to be Maligula, improv from there', but that just meant everything was going according to plan.
---------------------
Helmut's body was placed in a deep chamber, one whose location was felt in the biting cold. This was clearly near the frozen lake.
It didn't actually look much like the facsimile in Helmut's mind. That one had nearly opaque ice, with only the hints of a silhouette revealing the contents.
Unexpectedly, the ice that coated Helmut was crystal clear, one of the wooden carved snuff capsules that the Psychonauts used to store smelling salts in his hands. They were also used for their patented "super sneezing powder", and a potent tranquilizer that was rarely used. Naturally, this was assuredly the second of those three options.
Hydrokinesis couldn't lift ice. Not directly, anyway. It could affect non-water liquids, but not solids like ice. It was why Otto brought the hyperglaciator to battle Lucrecia. Which is why Tanya lifted it with ordinary telekinesis, not even bothering to use a water snake to support it. She did, however, take care to conceal the telekinesis hand that would normally appear. It wasn't actually a necessary thing, but it was considered polite to make them visible when using telekinesis in the Motherlobe, so she had never really gotten back into the habit of doing so invisibly like she used to.
Kevan looked at her suspiciously, but when all of her water snakes hissed in aggression at him he backed off and proceeded to lead her back to the prisoners.
---------------------
Right when Kevan was about to turn to the hallway the servant had pointed out, he turned back around and stared at her. "...Lady Maligula, before I show you the prisoners…"
Tanya glanced around, noticing that this segment of hallway that he was standing on was one of the nodes of the psitanium network. If he was confident enough to backtalk, it must be a different network than the one she broke. Or he fixed it during her nap. "What is it?" Tanya asked. "My patience is thinning. Only the value in your continued existence has allowed you this level of leeway." Tanya glared at the man. "Do not push me further."
"I'm just concerned about your strange behavior." Kevan said, his mental energy priming the "ritual circles". "I've never seen you so interested in the minutiae of administration before."
Is that what he's thinking? Probably not, but she can't just bulldoze through this. "You realize I was a General, right? I was not some weapon, doled out to kill the Gzar's enemies, but a military leader." Tanya was betting that this man wasn't actually involved in the administration of the Gzar's dictatorship when Lucrecia was a general, so she didn't need to know whether this was true or not.
Kevan hesitated, even that weak argument, confidently stated, chipping away at his conviction. Perfect. Tanya bulled over his next words. "You're just like those other Generals, assuming that because I'm a woman I can't handle 'men's work' like the coordination of armies. Do you have any idea how much collateral damage mass hydrokinesis can cause? It was not easy to command the troops to maneuver so only the enemy drowned." Tanya willed her eyes to glow, having long figured out how to do so at will. "But I did it. Not them, me. I will not be insulted by my own family like this. Now, follow my command and show me the Psychonauts!" Tanya was yelling at the top of her lungs at the end of that, and Kevan's resolve broke, convinced that he had gotten exactly what he wanted, and regretting every second. Her men were right: she did have acting talent.
They entered the cell room, where Bob and Helmut were in one cell, chained in place, and Cassie was in the other cell with Compton, shackled to the walls. They gasped in shock at the sight of Helmut's body floating behind her, which she didn't tell them about so they could be genuinely surprised.
Cassie knew about what they were supposed to be surprised about, though. "Tanya? What happened to you?"
Tanya twisted her face in confusion. "Who? I am Maligula." She said dramatically. Her water snakes hissed and snapped their jaws to emphasize her statement.
Kevan grinned at their shock, clearly enjoying it. "My mastery of the arcane arts has resurrected my dear cousin, something all of you have made possible."
"You monster!" Helmut shouted, his fake outrage very convincing.
"You realize that we are international law enforcement, yes?" Compton asked. "Is that really something you should be admitting to?"
Kevan scoffed. "There's no crime in resurrecting the dead."
"But there is for brainwashing." Cassie said.
"Or, in this case," Tanya said, dropping the Maligula voice. "Attempted brainwashing." Before Kevan could fully register just how screwed he was, Helmut's body moved, crashing into the man's head and knocking him out. One side effect of brains being so absurdly durable in comparison to her other lives was that hitting people in the head to knock them out was FAR safer than it had any right to be. There are many cases of literally skull-cracking force causing no permanent brain damage. It was absurd.
"I see you found my body!" Helmut said joyously. "Look at that handsome devil."
Tanya coughed, using pyrokinesis followed by cryokinesis to sterilize one of her water snakes before taking a bite out of it. "I forgot that I didn't spend years acclimating my voice to a lower register in this life. That was unpleasant." She sent telepathically. She had actually destroyed her voice, she had stopped being able to hold notes while singing at around age fifteen during the war. Of course, at least some of that could have been the mustard gas, some minor remaining damage that she exacerbated.
"You were pretty convincing." Bob complimented. "I had to double check that you weren't actually taken over a few times there."
"Yes, a splendid performance." Compton said, nodding in agreement. "Now, we should get back to Otto, tell him the good news."
"And get my body in that defrosting machine." Helmut added.
"You all do that, I'm going to collect more evidence." Tanya said, giving Compton the documents. "This should help later Deluginist hunting."
Now, about that "arcane knowledge"...
---------------------
"This is fascinating." Otto said as he reviewed the notes that Tanya stole from the Deluginist base. "I never would have thought to use that kind of pseudo-valve structure to neutralize aligned energy."
"It's bulky." Tanya pointed out. "But it works. These notes may be what we need to create automated psitanium alignment."
"Well, all of these structures require a trained user." Otto said, brow furrowing.
"But the level of expertise needed is lesser." Tanya argued, bringing out another one of the documents. "If you look here, these allow 'lesser sorcerers' to direct power by performing rote actions, without them needing to know what those actions are actually doing. If we can replicate this layer of obfuscation, we can use psychics with only limited training to operate psitanium factory machines. A clear step forward."
"Ah, I see. If we can improve upon these techniques… Could we create a manual interface?" Otto said with a grin, imagining the possibilities.
"I can't make heads or tails of any of that." Helmut said, floating over Tanya's shoulder. "Especially that stuff."
"These are in Russian." Tanya pointed out. "You don't read Russian."
"It's been a long time since we've gotten any technical manuals from Soviet designers." Otto said, "But once we disseminate this stuff, our agents will be able to counter Soviet technology much more effectively."
"Hollis and Truman will be ecstatic." Compton said as he sat, translating one of the manuals into English by hand. Cassie was right next to him, doing the same for two books at once. Tanya never could manage to split her attention quite so effectively, assigning one eye and hand to two different archetypes.
A third archetype operated Cassie's mouth. "Too bad most of that data that Tanya got us is gonna be wasted."
"Forcing them to scatter and re-organize is plenty of damage." Tanya said dismissively. "We came here to thaw Helmut's body, and we're doing that."
"Yep! Speaking of, hey Mei! How're things?" Helmut shouted.
Dr. Zhou shouted back. "This is going to take all night! Don't worry, this is easy compared to surgery!" She had explained that she had originally gone into general surgery before she was picked up by the cryonics laboratory. Helmut's thawing body couldn't be in better hands. She was well acquainted with standing in one place focused and working for ten to twelve hours at a time. She also apparently took ice samples in the Arctic as a hobby, because why not add 'climate scientist' to her resume?
Actually, come to think of it, Tanya completely understood the appeal of going to inhospitable lands to take scientific samples, contribute to human knowledge, as a hobby. It's not like doing that is profitable, and it's certainly more praiseworthy than, say, climbing the tallest mountain in the world just for bragging rights. The mystique of being an explorer, forging new metaphorical trails in the quest for knowledge…
But the task before her is not in collecting samples. It is instead in innovation, harnessing the power represented by psitanium and leashing it to human ambition. Otto wants to be a brain in a jar in his old age? Foolish. What he needs is an android body that the brain jar can operate.
One of the primary limiting factors of brains that are separate from their bodies is that the amount of psychic power that the mind can wield is unchanged, but the amount it generates is sharply reduced. This is no big deal for short periods of time, but when one needs to consider everyday usage… It is an obstacle.
But these formations, allowing the Galochios to draw on natural deposits like they were tanks of fuel… They had potential. Not directly, of course, but they got around a problem that pops up when you try to use psitanium as a modular component in a device: psitanium was made of mental energy, and there wasn't really such a thing as 'neutral' mental energy. Technicians can get around this by aligning things with the purpose of the device, so while you could theoretically make hot-swappable 'fuel rods' of psitanium, the metaphorical 'fuel mixture' of the rods would have to be individually tailored to the device.
There were a few powerful weapons in DARPA that used those principles, as Otto consulted with them and Tanya's played secretary to those meetings before, but they lacked the psychic industrial capacity to translate those weapons into useful quantities for the United States military. Tanya didn't know if they were mothballed or just put to use by the CIA, Secret Service, or even the IRS, but they were decent pieces of kit, in her expert opinion.
Bob took another swig of the bottle of beer he had taken from the Deluginist hideout. "No lynch mob's forming yet." He grumbled. "Not anywhere in my range anyway." Looking at him, it was easy to forget that Bob was, for years before his alcoholism got out of control, one of the Psychonauts' best agents. Maintaining surveillance from a few miles away was well within his capabilities, as long as the terrain wasn't too inhospitable. "The news is out, though." He gestured to the corner of the room. "Prisoner's awake too."
"I got it." Helmut said, floating to where Kevan was restrained. The Pelican always had an emergency set of restraints, enough to restrain four people, and they could be adjusted to all be put on the same person to restrain powerful psychics. They used two sets for Kevan, as he wasn't that much of a threat without access to his psitanium tools, but they didn't know how much of one, so they doubled up to be safe. "Hey man, what the flip did you think you were doing?"
Kevan groaned. "How did you overcome the Crown of Maligula?" He asked, glaring at Tanya.
Tanya gave the man a deadpan stare. "You assumed I was helpless. I was not." She said, a wry grin tugging at her lips. "Even if you did prevent the Psychic Six from helping me deal with it, which you did not, you could never have succeeded." Admittedly, it may have ended in her needing to resort to lethal force, but in this case, any outcome where she didn't end up killing people was a good one. She siphoned water from the air and created a small water snake. "Even if you did succeed, you assumed you could control Maligula. You could not." Tanya scoffed. "You couldn't even handle someone pretending to be her. The real thing would not be so easily placated."
"Definitely." Helmut added, chuckling. "Lulu was stubborn as a mule and sharp as a whip. She'd see right through your lies."
"Not that you'll get another chance." Compton said, putting down his pen and stretching his fingers. "It won't take long for you to be sent to The Vault. Even if your crimes were stopped, they were quite heinous indeed." While psychic recordings were not 100% reliable, they were certainly as reliable as video evidence in the modern day. Theoretically tamperable, but when several the Psychonauts attest to the accuracy of the evidence, it was something of a slam dunk legal case.
"You'll all regret this. Once Maligula rises again, I will be avenged!" Kevan shouted before one of the restraints repositioned and reshaped itself to keep his mouth shut.
"Shut up." Tanya said, taking her hand off of her temple.
---------------------
After the initial defrosting, Dr. Zhou declared Helmut's body as being in 'better condition than Homer's was', attributing the improvement to the high levels of mental energy within the hyperice and how that interacted with Helmut's metabolism as a psychic.
That didn't mean that Helmut's body was ready for his brain right away. The thawing machine had many supplementary functions, all dedicated to taking a frozen body and turning it functional again. A form of dialysis cleaned out his blood, a cocktail of pharmaceuticals inserted as well to help break down and remove the worst off, fully necrotized portions of his body. Telekinetic surgery techniques helped close the gaps that were made, and materials to encourage new growth flooded the body. Finally, the nerves were all stimulated by telepathic signals, with unresponsive ones being treated by yet more drugs.
The whole process would take about a week, she had explained, and after then it would be better to let the remainder of the damage heal the slow way, with Helmut's mind directing it. There were hypnotic techniques that allowed psychics to heal physical damage faster, encouraging cell growth similarly to how herbaphony can allow plants to grow. Helmut would be learning these techniques over that week, as they don't work very well on other people.
Still, while the thawing needed close attention by a cryonics expert to make sure that only a tiny fraction of the cells necrotize, once the dialysis started Otto was able to take over while everyone loaded things back onto the Pelican.
"So what's the first thing you're going to do when you get back in your body?" Tanya asked, mostly just to make conversation. She was already strapped into the copilot's chair, just waiting for Otto to finish securing the thawing machine.
"Kiss Bobby." Helmut immediately replied. Well, that was expected.
"Do you want me to fix you something specific to eat?" Bob asked, continuing the conversation. "As your first meal?"
"Don't say you." Tanya immediately warned him. Dirty old man…
"Aw." Helmut whined. "Okay, serious answer, gimme a minute."
Otto shouted from the back of the jet. "Alright Tanya, get us off the ground. Helmut's body is as secure as it's going to get, but I want to be here just in case."
"Mei's still asleep." Cassie informed them. "She's all strapped in, though."
"Right. Check your seatbelts, people." Tanya announced as she connected herself to the telekinetic engine. One of the lesser-talked about parts about piloting these things was how it felt, like you were suddenly astride a great beast that you needed to direct, lest it go out of control without your input. Everyone tended to use different mnemonics to help them, but Tanya liked to focus on the biggest difference between flying personally and flying a machine to help her direct things: the fact that she was sitting down. Placing a hand to her temple to signal to everyone that she was focusing, she slightly bounced in her seat, causing the Pelican to start rising into the air, and by tilting her hips she turned the plane around until it was pointed in the correct direction, then leaned forward by a degree to start moving in earnest.
Something about the movement, either the slight disruption in her balance or the shift in the mental energy, disturbed Dr. Zhou enough to wake up. "Hva?" After a moment of looking around, she seemed to understand what was going on. "Oh, right. The cultists. So where are we going?"
"The Motherlobe." Tanya replied, "As you surmised, staying in Grulovia would be ill-advised. We will return you and your equipment to Norway when they are no longer needed."
"Or we could just buy you a plane ticket once we're back in the States and ship the machines later." Compton added.
"No, I'll stay." Dr. Zhou said, unbuckling her seat and standing up to stretch. "My colleagues wouldn't let me hear the end of it if I didn't document the process from start to finish. I trust Dr. Mentalis to know what needs documenting or not, but one of us needs to be at hand at all times."
"Sending just one doctor seems irresponsible when you put it like that." Tanya said idly, splitting her attention between this and communicating with air traffic control. Not Grulovian air traffic control, but the Hungarian one.
Dr. Zhou giggled. "Ah, you're lucky you got me. No one else wanted to go to Grulovia because it's an Eastern Bloc country." She paused, thinking on the matter. "Actually, I could probably call for another one or two doctors if we're going to the States."
"I'll send a request, then." Compton said, "Home base will contact your organization and hopefully we'll get enough doctors or nurses for the shifts to be reasonable."
"That's cool." Dr. Zhou said, a mischievous grin on her face for the minor pun. "Working with the Psychonauts is so convenient, you can just contact anybody from anywhere."
"Well, I'm sure cell phone technology will mature enough to accomplish a similar feat soon enough." Tanya said, hanging up the radio. "I can't wait."
-------------------------
As much as she'd like to claim the nap was just a fakeout to confer with the others trapped in here with her… dealing with the energy overflow from them channeling mental energy into her was quite taxing, mentally. From experience, she knew that extreme fatigue was normal after exerting one's empowered survival drive as well, so while she didn't know for sure that Maligula took frequent naps, the only reason they wouldn't know that is if Lucrecia took pains to conceal those moments of weakness.
So when she awoke, she stretched fearlessly, looking around for the promised documents. Seeing no such thing, she growled and stormed into the attached bathroom, turning on the shower to collect water to threaten people with.
Hang on… Damn. After she handled pressing matters, she left the bathroom with a quartet of water snakes, walking out of the room to find… an obsequious man presenting her a folder full of papers. "The documents you demanded, Lady Maligula." He said, his voice quavering.
…Yeah, this was fine. "You may live." She said, to the man's extreme relief. "Are you familiar with the contents?" She asked.
"No, Lady Maligula. I am your lowly servant." The simpering man said, his fear spiking upwards.
"Hm. Take me to whoever can answer any questions I have." Tanya commanded as she started to read through the documents. "Kevan, preferably."
"Yes Lady Maligula." The servant said, quickly walking ahead.
Keeping with the 'in charge' vibe, Tanya followed at an unhurried pace, not even looking where she was going with her eyes, although she had a snake keeping a weather eye out. Tanya sent a mental message to Helmut and Cassie, who will fill in the other two. After a few seconds, mental energy started trickling back in, and her awareness expanded as she stopped needing to dedicate so much attention to her aquatic threat display. "I want to know where the Psychonauts are held, too. Point them out if we pass." Tanya commanded.
"Ah, they are down this next corridor here, Lady Maligula." The servant said quickly. "The cells are at the end."
"I assume they have been treated at least as well as a prisoner of war should?" Tanya asked rhetorically.
"I so not know, Lady Maligula. I am not involved with the prison." The servant said immediately. From the way his fear rose slowly and screamed out of him, that was a definite lie.
"Instruct the warden that all prisoners are to be treated well. They are mine, and they will be tormented solely at my command." Tanya commanded. "I look forward to interrogating them."
"Yes, Lady Maligula." The servant said, before presenting a door that was slightly fancier than the others. "Lord Galochio is beyond this door, in his office. I will speak with the warden immediately to convey your will."
"Do so." Tanya said, affecting a sneer. After the servant flees, Tanya opened the door with hydrokinesis, slamming the door open. "Kevan." She said, glancing about the office. It was filled with psitanium devices and books, a treasure trove of knowledge. "Anything to report?"
Tanya had been as rude and domineering that she thought she could get away with, all to test the man's patience. He clearly thought himself the Master of the Maligula project, and would not appreciate his project taking everything over.
As expected, Kevan outright glowered in her direction before smoothing over his face and smiling pleasantly. "Ah… no, your Ladyship. Matters are calm, and nothing has come up in the last two hours."
Tanya put down one of the papers in front of the man. "Why is there no location for the Gzar? Or picture?"
Kevan coughed. "Ah, the Gzar is very security conscious. I have already sent word through the usual channels, but I was never told exactly where his safehouse was." At Tanya's glower, he swallowed thickly and added: "I'm fairly certain it's on the east coast of America?"
"And the picture?" Tanya asked, growling.
"Photographs of the Gzar are hard to come by." Kevan insisted. "You should be able to recognize him on sight, some of the memories used to restore you belonged to him." Hopefully the Psychonauts can decrypt them.
Tanya decided that it was a good time to have a tantrum. She set her snakes out on a statue of the old Gzar, she actually recognized the man from the newspapers she studied that were in Lucrecia's file. It was crushed to powder, and Tanya gave a pleased huff. "...Take me to the Psychonauts." She demanded.
"That may not be the best idea." Kevan said calmly. "They are currently dangerous, even imprisoned. They are only physically restrained, not psychically. They may attack."
Tanya scoffed. "If they try, I will kill them." To emphasize her intent, she coated her arm in the water of one of her snakes and formed a water blade that promptly started moving like a chainsaw. "Painfully." She added.
"As your advisor, I advise against meeting with them. We can still use them, but not if we kill them." Kevan said, hands splayed placatingly.
Tanya rolled her eyes. "Fine. Take me to Helmut's body first. They won't try anything if I have that with me."
He looked like he was about to object, but Tanya moved the water chainsaw in his direction and he yelped, walking speedily out of the room. "It's this way, Lady Maligula."
Tanya smirked as she dismissed the water chainsaw. The plan may have just been 'pretend to be Maligula, improv from there', but that just meant everything was going according to plan.
---------------------
Helmut's body was placed in a deep chamber, one whose location was felt in the biting cold. This was clearly near the frozen lake.
It didn't actually look much like the facsimile in Helmut's mind. That one had nearly opaque ice, with only the hints of a silhouette revealing the contents.
Unexpectedly, the ice that coated Helmut was crystal clear, one of the wooden carved snuff capsules that the Psychonauts used to store smelling salts in his hands. They were also used for their patented "super sneezing powder", and a potent tranquilizer that was rarely used. Naturally, this was assuredly the second of those three options.
Hydrokinesis couldn't lift ice. Not directly, anyway. It could affect non-water liquids, but not solids like ice. It was why Otto brought the hyperglaciator to battle Lucrecia. Which is why Tanya lifted it with ordinary telekinesis, not even bothering to use a water snake to support it. She did, however, take care to conceal the telekinesis hand that would normally appear. It wasn't actually a necessary thing, but it was considered polite to make them visible when using telekinesis in the Motherlobe, so she had never really gotten back into the habit of doing so invisibly like she used to.
Kevan looked at her suspiciously, but when all of her water snakes hissed in aggression at him he backed off and proceeded to lead her back to the prisoners.
---------------------
Right when Kevan was about to turn to the hallway the servant had pointed out, he turned back around and stared at her. "...Lady Maligula, before I show you the prisoners…"
Tanya glanced around, noticing that this segment of hallway that he was standing on was one of the nodes of the psitanium network. If he was confident enough to backtalk, it must be a different network than the one she broke. Or he fixed it during her nap. "What is it?" Tanya asked. "My patience is thinning. Only the value in your continued existence has allowed you this level of leeway." Tanya glared at the man. "Do not push me further."
"I'm just concerned about your strange behavior." Kevan said, his mental energy priming the "ritual circles". "I've never seen you so interested in the minutiae of administration before."
Is that what he's thinking? Probably not, but she can't just bulldoze through this. "You realize I was a General, right? I was not some weapon, doled out to kill the Gzar's enemies, but a military leader." Tanya was betting that this man wasn't actually involved in the administration of the Gzar's dictatorship when Lucrecia was a general, so she didn't need to know whether this was true or not.
Kevan hesitated, even that weak argument, confidently stated, chipping away at his conviction. Perfect. Tanya bulled over his next words. "You're just like those other Generals, assuming that because I'm a woman I can't handle 'men's work' like the coordination of armies. Do you have any idea how much collateral damage mass hydrokinesis can cause? It was not easy to command the troops to maneuver so only the enemy drowned." Tanya willed her eyes to glow, having long figured out how to do so at will. "But I did it. Not them, me. I will not be insulted by my own family like this. Now, follow my command and show me the Psychonauts!" Tanya was yelling at the top of her lungs at the end of that, and Kevan's resolve broke, convinced that he had gotten exactly what he wanted, and regretting every second. Her men were right: she did have acting talent.
They entered the cell room, where Bob and Helmut were in one cell, chained in place, and Cassie was in the other cell with Compton, shackled to the walls. They gasped in shock at the sight of Helmut's body floating behind her, which she didn't tell them about so they could be genuinely surprised.
Cassie knew about what they were supposed to be surprised about, though. "Tanya? What happened to you?"
Tanya twisted her face in confusion. "Who? I am Maligula." She said dramatically. Her water snakes hissed and snapped their jaws to emphasize her statement.
Kevan grinned at their shock, clearly enjoying it. "My mastery of the arcane arts has resurrected my dear cousin, something all of you have made possible."
"You monster!" Helmut shouted, his fake outrage very convincing.
"You realize that we are international law enforcement, yes?" Compton asked. "Is that really something you should be admitting to?"
Kevan scoffed. "There's no crime in resurrecting the dead."
"But there is for brainwashing." Cassie said.
"Or, in this case," Tanya said, dropping the Maligula voice. "Attempted brainwashing." Before Kevan could fully register just how screwed he was, Helmut's body moved, crashing into the man's head and knocking him out. One side effect of brains being so absurdly durable in comparison to her other lives was that hitting people in the head to knock them out was FAR safer than it had any right to be. There are many cases of literally skull-cracking force causing no permanent brain damage. It was absurd.
"I see you found my body!" Helmut said joyously. "Look at that handsome devil."
Tanya coughed, using pyrokinesis followed by cryokinesis to sterilize one of her water snakes before taking a bite out of it. "I forgot that I didn't spend years acclimating my voice to a lower register in this life. That was unpleasant." She sent telepathically. She had actually destroyed her voice, she had stopped being able to hold notes while singing at around age fifteen during the war. Of course, at least some of that could have been the mustard gas, some minor remaining damage that she exacerbated.
"You were pretty convincing." Bob complimented. "I had to double check that you weren't actually taken over a few times there."
"Yes, a splendid performance." Compton said, nodding in agreement. "Now, we should get back to Otto, tell him the good news."
"And get my body in that defrosting machine." Helmut added.
"You all do that, I'm going to collect more evidence." Tanya said, giving Compton the documents. "This should help later Deluginist hunting."
Now, about that "arcane knowledge"...
---------------------
"This is fascinating." Otto said as he reviewed the notes that Tanya stole from the Deluginist base. "I never would have thought to use that kind of pseudo-valve structure to neutralize aligned energy."
"It's bulky." Tanya pointed out. "But it works. These notes may be what we need to create automated psitanium alignment."
"Well, all of these structures require a trained user." Otto said, brow furrowing.
"But the level of expertise needed is lesser." Tanya argued, bringing out another one of the documents. "If you look here, these allow 'lesser sorcerers' to direct power by performing rote actions, without them needing to know what those actions are actually doing. If we can replicate this layer of obfuscation, we can use psychics with only limited training to operate psitanium factory machines. A clear step forward."
"Ah, I see. If we can improve upon these techniques… Could we create a manual interface?" Otto said with a grin, imagining the possibilities.
"I can't make heads or tails of any of that." Helmut said, floating over Tanya's shoulder. "Especially that stuff."
"These are in Russian." Tanya pointed out. "You don't read Russian."
"It's been a long time since we've gotten any technical manuals from Soviet designers." Otto said, "But once we disseminate this stuff, our agents will be able to counter Soviet technology much more effectively."
"Hollis and Truman will be ecstatic." Compton said as he sat, translating one of the manuals into English by hand. Cassie was right next to him, doing the same for two books at once. Tanya never could manage to split her attention quite so effectively, assigning one eye and hand to two different archetypes.
A third archetype operated Cassie's mouth. "Too bad most of that data that Tanya got us is gonna be wasted."
"Forcing them to scatter and re-organize is plenty of damage." Tanya said dismissively. "We came here to thaw Helmut's body, and we're doing that."
"Yep! Speaking of, hey Mei! How're things?" Helmut shouted.
Dr. Zhou shouted back. "This is going to take all night! Don't worry, this is easy compared to surgery!" She had explained that she had originally gone into general surgery before she was picked up by the cryonics laboratory. Helmut's thawing body couldn't be in better hands. She was well acquainted with standing in one place focused and working for ten to twelve hours at a time. She also apparently took ice samples in the Arctic as a hobby, because why not add 'climate scientist' to her resume?
Actually, come to think of it, Tanya completely understood the appeal of going to inhospitable lands to take scientific samples, contribute to human knowledge, as a hobby. It's not like doing that is profitable, and it's certainly more praiseworthy than, say, climbing the tallest mountain in the world just for bragging rights. The mystique of being an explorer, forging new metaphorical trails in the quest for knowledge…
But the task before her is not in collecting samples. It is instead in innovation, harnessing the power represented by psitanium and leashing it to human ambition. Otto wants to be a brain in a jar in his old age? Foolish. What he needs is an android body that the brain jar can operate.
One of the primary limiting factors of brains that are separate from their bodies is that the amount of psychic power that the mind can wield is unchanged, but the amount it generates is sharply reduced. This is no big deal for short periods of time, but when one needs to consider everyday usage… It is an obstacle.
But these formations, allowing the Galochios to draw on natural deposits like they were tanks of fuel… They had potential. Not directly, of course, but they got around a problem that pops up when you try to use psitanium as a modular component in a device: psitanium was made of mental energy, and there wasn't really such a thing as 'neutral' mental energy. Technicians can get around this by aligning things with the purpose of the device, so while you could theoretically make hot-swappable 'fuel rods' of psitanium, the metaphorical 'fuel mixture' of the rods would have to be individually tailored to the device.
There were a few powerful weapons in DARPA that used those principles, as Otto consulted with them and Tanya's played secretary to those meetings before, but they lacked the psychic industrial capacity to translate those weapons into useful quantities for the United States military. Tanya didn't know if they were mothballed or just put to use by the CIA, Secret Service, or even the IRS, but they were decent pieces of kit, in her expert opinion.
Bob took another swig of the bottle of beer he had taken from the Deluginist hideout. "No lynch mob's forming yet." He grumbled. "Not anywhere in my range anyway." Looking at him, it was easy to forget that Bob was, for years before his alcoholism got out of control, one of the Psychonauts' best agents. Maintaining surveillance from a few miles away was well within his capabilities, as long as the terrain wasn't too inhospitable. "The news is out, though." He gestured to the corner of the room. "Prisoner's awake too."
"I got it." Helmut said, floating to where Kevan was restrained. The Pelican always had an emergency set of restraints, enough to restrain four people, and they could be adjusted to all be put on the same person to restrain powerful psychics. They used two sets for Kevan, as he wasn't that much of a threat without access to his psitanium tools, but they didn't know how much of one, so they doubled up to be safe. "Hey man, what the flip did you think you were doing?"
Kevan groaned. "How did you overcome the Crown of Maligula?" He asked, glaring at Tanya.
Tanya gave the man a deadpan stare. "You assumed I was helpless. I was not." She said, a wry grin tugging at her lips. "Even if you did prevent the Psychic Six from helping me deal with it, which you did not, you could never have succeeded." Admittedly, it may have ended in her needing to resort to lethal force, but in this case, any outcome where she didn't end up killing people was a good one. She siphoned water from the air and created a small water snake. "Even if you did succeed, you assumed you could control Maligula. You could not." Tanya scoffed. "You couldn't even handle someone pretending to be her. The real thing would not be so easily placated."
"Definitely." Helmut added, chuckling. "Lulu was stubborn as a mule and sharp as a whip. She'd see right through your lies."
"Not that you'll get another chance." Compton said, putting down his pen and stretching his fingers. "It won't take long for you to be sent to The Vault. Even if your crimes were stopped, they were quite heinous indeed." While psychic recordings were not 100% reliable, they were certainly as reliable as video evidence in the modern day. Theoretically tamperable, but when several the Psychonauts attest to the accuracy of the evidence, it was something of a slam dunk legal case.
"You'll all regret this. Once Maligula rises again, I will be avenged!" Kevan shouted before one of the restraints repositioned and reshaped itself to keep his mouth shut.
"Shut up." Tanya said, taking her hand off of her temple.
---------------------
After the initial defrosting, Dr. Zhou declared Helmut's body as being in 'better condition than Homer's was', attributing the improvement to the high levels of mental energy within the hyperice and how that interacted with Helmut's metabolism as a psychic.
That didn't mean that Helmut's body was ready for his brain right away. The thawing machine had many supplementary functions, all dedicated to taking a frozen body and turning it functional again. A form of dialysis cleaned out his blood, a cocktail of pharmaceuticals inserted as well to help break down and remove the worst off, fully necrotized portions of his body. Telekinetic surgery techniques helped close the gaps that were made, and materials to encourage new growth flooded the body. Finally, the nerves were all stimulated by telepathic signals, with unresponsive ones being treated by yet more drugs.
The whole process would take about a week, she had explained, and after then it would be better to let the remainder of the damage heal the slow way, with Helmut's mind directing it. There were hypnotic techniques that allowed psychics to heal physical damage faster, encouraging cell growth similarly to how herbaphony can allow plants to grow. Helmut would be learning these techniques over that week, as they don't work very well on other people.
Still, while the thawing needed close attention by a cryonics expert to make sure that only a tiny fraction of the cells necrotize, once the dialysis started Otto was able to take over while everyone loaded things back onto the Pelican.
"So what's the first thing you're going to do when you get back in your body?" Tanya asked, mostly just to make conversation. She was already strapped into the copilot's chair, just waiting for Otto to finish securing the thawing machine.
"Kiss Bobby." Helmut immediately replied. Well, that was expected.
"Do you want me to fix you something specific to eat?" Bob asked, continuing the conversation. "As your first meal?"
"Don't say you." Tanya immediately warned him. Dirty old man…
"Aw." Helmut whined. "Okay, serious answer, gimme a minute."
Otto shouted from the back of the jet. "Alright Tanya, get us off the ground. Helmut's body is as secure as it's going to get, but I want to be here just in case."
"Mei's still asleep." Cassie informed them. "She's all strapped in, though."
"Right. Check your seatbelts, people." Tanya announced as she connected herself to the telekinetic engine. One of the lesser-talked about parts about piloting these things was how it felt, like you were suddenly astride a great beast that you needed to direct, lest it go out of control without your input. Everyone tended to use different mnemonics to help them, but Tanya liked to focus on the biggest difference between flying personally and flying a machine to help her direct things: the fact that she was sitting down. Placing a hand to her temple to signal to everyone that she was focusing, she slightly bounced in her seat, causing the Pelican to start rising into the air, and by tilting her hips she turned the plane around until it was pointed in the correct direction, then leaned forward by a degree to start moving in earnest.
Something about the movement, either the slight disruption in her balance or the shift in the mental energy, disturbed Dr. Zhou enough to wake up. "Hva?" After a moment of looking around, she seemed to understand what was going on. "Oh, right. The cultists. So where are we going?"
"The Motherlobe." Tanya replied, "As you surmised, staying in Grulovia would be ill-advised. We will return you and your equipment to Norway when they are no longer needed."
"Or we could just buy you a plane ticket once we're back in the States and ship the machines later." Compton added.
"No, I'll stay." Dr. Zhou said, unbuckling her seat and standing up to stretch. "My colleagues wouldn't let me hear the end of it if I didn't document the process from start to finish. I trust Dr. Mentalis to know what needs documenting or not, but one of us needs to be at hand at all times."
"Sending just one doctor seems irresponsible when you put it like that." Tanya said idly, splitting her attention between this and communicating with air traffic control. Not Grulovian air traffic control, but the Hungarian one.
Dr. Zhou giggled. "Ah, you're lucky you got me. No one else wanted to go to Grulovia because it's an Eastern Bloc country." She paused, thinking on the matter. "Actually, I could probably call for another one or two doctors if we're going to the States."
"I'll send a request, then." Compton said, "Home base will contact your organization and hopefully we'll get enough doctors or nurses for the shifts to be reasonable."
"That's cool." Dr. Zhou said, a mischievous grin on her face for the minor pun. "Working with the Psychonauts is so convenient, you can just contact anybody from anywhere."
"Well, I'm sure cell phone technology will mature enough to accomplish a similar feat soon enough." Tanya said, hanging up the radio. "I can't wait."
- Location
- Argentina
Magical Healing in Youjo Senki healed Tanya from crippled and almost dead to full health. It can't regenerate lost limbs but unless she fully lost her vocal cords it should have been fixed.