Chapter 15
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
Mary's mind was… interesting. They manifested in a church, with Being X's iconography everywhere, and a statue of the Bloody Valkyrie herself, depicted as a cherubic angel. The comparison to the statue in her own mind, before it was shoved into a dark corner of Yomi castle, flitted through Tanya's mind.
"Now, to search for some emotional baggage." Tanya announced.
"Agent Vodello already took care of that." Mary pointed out. "I don't know how long it takes to make more but it's definitely more than two days."
"Drat." Tanya said, snapping her fingers. "Well, there are a few things I was curious about. Let's go." Tanya looked around the church, seeking the back rooms. She could feel… something. There was another section back here. It was a little bit like recognizing a secret door in a video game, but Tanya couldn't quite put her finger on how she knew that. Was it that section of wall looked a bit too featureless? Was it something about the carpeting that suggested the presence of a thoroughfare? All of these could indicate such things, but Tanya couldn't point out what it was beyond… it was.
"What are you looking for?" Mary asked, suddenly nervous.
After more searching, Tanya telekinetically pulled on a rope she spotted hanging from a hole in the ceiling, causing a church bell to ring out. After the sound receded, a door appeared, but did not open. "Perfect."
"Tanya?" Mary asked again. "What are you doing?"
"Taking a look around." Tanya replied. "Nuggets of wisdom are usually in out of the way, protected areas of your mind. If you haven't seen them yet, that's particularly true." There was a reason she kept hers where she did, after all.
"How many have you seen?" Mary asked, skeptical of her claims.
"...Four." Tanya replied. "I've seen them in every mind I've been to save Sam and Miss Milla."
Mary counted on her fingers for a moment. "Wait, Agent Nein had one?"
"Yes." Tanya replied as she attempted to open the door. It had some kind of donation slot… "In case you didn't notice, Agent Nein is all but officially my stepfather. He used a nugget as a prize in the shooting course he put me through."
"No fair." Mary whined. "What was the fourth one? You, Mr. Park Ranger, Agent Nein..."
"Agent Boole." Tanya replied as she started to hydrokinetically pull water from the nearby… Tanya could not remember what the fancy wash basin near the altar was called. She slipped it into the slot and opened the door from the inside. "He offered to teach me to cook in thanks for helping Agent Cruller."
"So you admit you have a nugget of wisdom!" Mary announced smugly. "You're older than you look too!"
Tanya entered the hidden room and smiled when they noticed a memory vault. Just what she was looking for. "I know how to do a lot of things." Tanya retorted as she smacked the vault with a burst of telekinesis. "I'm also six years older than you. It's not unheard of for someone my age to possess a nugget, just rare." Tanya was not entirely clear on whether that was true, but Agent Nein didn't dismiss the possibility, so…
The vault disgorged its contents, and Tanya picked up the… folder? Hm. It reminded Tanya of the dossiers and briefings she was used to reading during the Great War. It was labeled 'The Mission'.
Mary looked over Tanya's shoulder. "I haven't seen this yet…"
"You'll find it familiar soon enough." Tanya said as she opened the folder. The first photograph was of Tanya ripping out Mary's heart. Now that was a kill she didn't regret. Even after she showed back up to haunt her. Buying fifteen years of peace from her was well worth the effort. The second photograph was Mary wearing a white dress in a modern-looking office, sitting in front of a desk that was twice her size. The desk was manned by Being X, naturally. Anger burned in Tanya's throat, but she swallowed her anger at the self-proclaimed deity.
"That's when I was dead!" Mary declared needlessly. "That's God!"
"Sure it is." Tanya said sarcastically. The next page showed Being X surrounded by a few speech bubbles, with images rather than words. Tanya was in the first, the second was blank with a few lines to emphasize the emptiness, the third was Mary acting like a dog, sniffing a trail while Being X's finger pointed. The next page had a picture of Tanya and Mary, both praying while dressed as nuns. Finally, it showed Being X throwing Mary into what appeared to be pure chaos. Tanya couldn't find any sort of pattern or shape that was comprehensible, anyway. "Well, at least you weren't lying about your story." Tanya said, shoving the folder back into the vault.
"Of course I wasn't!" Mary said, offended at the idea that she'd lie.
"What was that other place, anyway?" Tanya asked. "What was it like there?"
Mary paused. "I don't remember that part." She admitted. "I think God called it…" She spent a moment wracking her brain for the memory. "Why do I remember him saying over a dozen distinct names for that place?"
"Like?" Tanya prompted.
"The Interstitial Space, the Blind Eternities, Pure Chaos, Cosmic Runoff, the Nexus…" She paused. "The list goes on. I'm positive he only said one thing, but why do I remember him saying so many?"
Tanya didn't even realize Being X could do that. "Interdimensional skitsnack, I would guess." She offered flippantly, which made Mary chuckle. "Anyway, no nuggets here, so let's go hunting."
Tanya walked with purpose through Mary's mind, leaving the church and examining the surroundings. It was mostly open sky with criss-crossing bridges of golden light, curiously solid despite appearing to require a rather large amount of acrobatic training to traverse, all overseen by a shining golden sun. Invisible floors with only hints of their presence was not nearly strange enough to register, in Tanya's opinion. Unlike Tanya's mind, she couldn't see any cracks in the sky from their own Being X empowerment. Hrm.
"I count… seven distinct areas." Tanya said. "Does that sound right to you?"
"Uh…" Mary thought for a moment, counting on her fingers. "Yeah, that should be all of them. Some of them have bits below them that are sort of separate areas."
Tanya glanced once more at the sun above them. Unlike sunlight, there was no consequence for staring directly at it. She modulated her barrier to protect her eyes anyway though. "Hm… Eight." She said, correcting herself.
"Eight?" Mary said, confused. She looked to where Tanya was looking. "Tanya, that's just the sun."
Tanya snorted. "First time I've seen a sun in a mental world." She pointed at it. "If you look closely, you can make out hints of structure. An airship, perhaps. Or a building."
"Why did you stare directly at the sun!?" Mary questioned. "You'll go blind!"
Tanya chuckled. "These aren't real eyes, Mary. Nor is that real sunlight."
"Do you feel fear at all?" Questioned Mary. Ironic, really. "Such a monster." She muttered.
Tanya winced, a tiny pulse of her headache reaching her even in the mental world. "Well, we have two options as of now: We could exhaustively search everywhere in your mind, which Agent Nein and Miss Milla have already gone over… Or we could go straight to where they haven't." She pointed towards the shining orb of light.
Mary considered the two options. Then she got distracted. "Um… Tanya? You got a little…" She gestured to a little spot above her left eyebrow.
Tanya felt at that same spot on her own head, and found… a crack? Strange. She inspected her fingers, and found no blood or anything, so she took a deep breath and focused on closing whatever it was. "Did that get it?" She asked, feeling for the crack again.
"Yeah." Mary said, nodding. She looked up. "Let's go, I guess."
Seconds after the pair of them lifted off with theirflight formulas levitation powers, gravity abruptly reversed, and instead of going up to the sun, they were falling downwards to it. It was an easy adjustment, but Mary seemed to have a little trouble with it. Tanya frowned. "Mary, are you Levitating with purely telekinetic thrust?" Tanay knew the problem well; it was what tripped her up until Milla noticed the problem. It was a rare but known screwup; Tanya was a little surprised Miss Milla hadn't already corrected it. Then again, she's been very busy. The difference between flight formulas and true levitation. She still used that method when going fast, as aerodynamics can be exploited with shield use, but for anything less than double sprinting speeds you needed the tighter turning radius buoyancy based levitation provided.
"Yeah?" Mary said as they slowly descended to the sun. "That's how flying works."
Tanya chuckled. "But not how psychic levitation works. You need to negate your weight and allow yourself to float on the air, then you apply the telekinetic thrust. It's much less clumsy for low speeds, and much less focus intensive to boot."
Mary stared at Tanya. "...How the hell do I do that?" She demanded. She swayed back and forth as her balance was continually disrupted by small variations in her flight path which she manually corrected.
"Conventional instruction is to allow happiness and love to fill yourself and use that emotional energy to buoy you up." Tanya said, snorting. "But focusing your mental energy on the feeling of floating underwater works fine to get you started." By now, Tanya doesn't need to repeat the common psychic wisdom of 'if you do it once, you can do it again'. Mary knows.
Mary also wasn't stupid enough to miss why Tanya knew that little fact. "So does everything you have to say about yourself highlight how you're as heartless as Degurechaff was, or is it just the things I've heard?"
Tanya's levitation stuttered as the headache showed its face again. She felt at her forehead, and the crack had returned too. Glancing down at the shining structure, Tanya spotted something that resembled a balcony and dropped down on top of it. "Oh Mary…" Tanya said, chuckling as she walked into the hallway that was now visible. "Whatever you think you know about Tanya von Degurechaff… The only thing I can be sure of is that you are as wrong as someone can be." After all, Tanya von Degurechaff was primarily motivated by hate and spite. That's not something a heartless machine can possess. They're living proof of that. Her flavor of monster was all too human. People have the innate capacity for great evil, it requires only necessity, or the perception of it. Just look at Arenne.
Mary landed on the balcony as well, squinting as she tried to make sense of the shining golden architecture as Tanya tried to rein in the headache, which had spread to her chest for some reason. Probably because she was currently a mental entity. "This place… I've never seen this before."
"Oh? Can't remember where you've seen this kind of architecture?" Tanya asked, genuinely curious.
"No…" Mary said, nervous again.
Eventually, they crossed a door that was just a sheet of light. Tanya could vaguely sense that it wasn't any more a barrier than a curtain of darkness would be, when she focused on it, so she walked through without a moment's hesitation.
On the other side of the portal, was a mid-air battlefield. If Tanya didn't miss her guess, the terrain below was their second battle with the Bloody Valkyrie, on the southern continent. Curiously, the scenery lacked any kind of military fortification, being completely nondescript coast rather than an Imperial beach head surrounded by Republican armies supported by American volunteers.
The air itself supported Tanya's weight, making flight trivial. The battle that was still here was, of course, the Bloody Valkyrie and the Devil of the Rhine, locked in mortal combat. Mary's view of her own role was that of an avenging angel, winged and wreathed in orange flames as they swung a sword and launched bolts of light shaped like crucifixes. The angel prayed loudly, a few hymns that Tanya recalled from her choir days, but only as independent lines that were mixed in with improvised lines about how she will win by the glory of God or whatever.
Most notably, the angel had a shining golden computation orb hanging around their neck, and from the presence the device held, it was clearly what they were searching for. "There's the nugget." Tanya said idly as Mary entered the arena.
"Oh!" Mary said, impressed. "I think this was my third battle with Degurechaff!" Third? Did she have such a poor showing on one of the first two that Tanya never noticed? "I would have killed her this time, but she brought in her demons to help."
The Devil of the Rhine was depicted as one would expect, as a literal demon. Garbed in only hellflame, the bat-winged demon lashed out with claws that glittered with the glow of a mage blade, with knives of the same make providing her with ranged weapons.
The 'other demons' were interchangeable in appearance, larger and more imposing than the Devil in stature, but with proper Imperial rifles instead of the fantastical translations the main two combatants wielded.
Tanya couldn't be sure, but it did seem to follow roughly the tempo of that battle, to the best of Tanya's recollection of it. She noted each time one of Mary's blasts ended up causing tremendous collateral damage to her own side, and each blast was repeated in this recording. The only difference was… there was no one there to get killed by it. Did she forget about her collateral damage? Was she ever even reprimanded for it? "We've confirmed the existence of a nugget of wisdom." Tanya pointed out. "So I suppose there's not much else to do here." She already got the confirmation she wanted from that memory vault.
"No, wait." Mary said. "This doesn't seem familiar at all to you?"
Tanya snorted. "This is a literal angel and demon battling it out. I'd ask what color the sky is in your world…" Tanya trailed off before looking up. "But I can see that much for myself." It was kind of a uniform yellowish color, actually. Both out there and in here.
Mary frowned, looking at the memory recording that was playing. "...I guess you're right. Hang on, maybe if I…" The majority of the arena became swathed in darkness as the ground vanished, the sky turning back to the dreary gray of that day. Instead of playing in full scale, it instead played like a movie, sounds and sights from Mary's perspective flashing into existence.
Mary's prayers filled the ears as Mary flew to engage with the 203rd Aerial Mage Battalion, the Devil's Own. She glanced at her sides to see the rest of her own battalion, knowing that while the grace of God protected her… her comrades were not so lucky, the last time. Fresh faces, nearly all of them. She didn't even know their names. Just callsigns.
The 203rd were exactly as demonic as the stories told. Mary rushed forth to the physically smallest of the enemy mages, her barriers flashing as the demons attempted to break her resolve.
The Devil's gaze went straight for Mary; she no doubt sensed her Holy power as her greatest threat. Mary screamed her next prayer as she fired a bullet loaded with an explosive spell as she dived at the fiend.
Tanya quickly shook off the odd gravity the narration held, taking a step back to examine the scene more objectively. Either Mary's situational awareness was absolutely awful, or her mind had trimmed the memory to the bare minimum. Given her reputation… Tanya was inclined to bet the former. She never even got a glimpse of Tanya's face in this particular battle, just a distant view of Tanya's goggles and face mask, meant to keep sand out of the mage's face.
Still, as the memory concluded, there were enough background details that Tanya could ask questions. "Why was there a city in the background of the real footage but not the edited one?"
"That wasn't a city." Mary corrected, stiff. "It was an Imperial fortification."
"So you attacked it with just your comrades?" Tanya questioned. "I noticed that you had some soldiers on the ground in your backstop on half of those shots. Good thinking, getting in some damage even if she dodged them all."
"Shut up!" Mary shouted. "They don't count!"
It was a fucking war, Mary. "I'm sure your superiors would disagree." Tanya observed. "Casualties are casualties. Anything that gives the enemy more of those would be well-received, I wager."
"I know what you're fucking doing, Degurechaff!" Mary said, tears in her eyes.
The sky lit up with another movie. "Sioux!" Shouted an American officer of some kind. She never memorized the rankings for them. Colonel, maybe? "The reports are in: Degurechaff played you like a fucking fiddle. You killed more frogs than you did krauts! You're supposed to neutralize Degurechaff, not do her job for her!"
The American continued to berate Mary, which caused Mary's tears to become full sobs. The sky started to fill with blue fliers, wielding heavy looking sea mines as they flitted through the skies. Balloons of purple muck inflated from nothing and opened their light-filled eyes, and censors were deployed from their usual doors, riding tiny biplanes.
All told, it wasn't anything that could trouble Tanya. Once the Deep Regrets, Doubts, and censors were dispatched, Mary seemed to have calmed down a bit as the fight progressed, blowing her nose on a handkerchief that she pulled out of nowhere when Tanya used a PSI blast to take down the last censor's biplane.
Another memory played. It was their final battle, over the mountains. Mary was injured, out of ammo, and running on pure anger and a prayer. The Devil wasn't in much better shape, for once. Her helmet was completely gone, she had thrown away Father's gun, and her fists were shining with blade formulas. The lack of helmet not impeding her wasn't a surprise, the Devil had infamously won a battle naked after taking a hit, wearing only her boots, a computation orb, and what was left of her sleeves. .
Mary's gun arm vanished, a stab of pain up her entire right side the only sign of the explosive shot. Where did she get another gun? A pistol. She has a fucking pistol. Mary shot forward, reaching out with her right arm to crush the weapon in her grip. Wait, didn't she los- no matter. God is with me! She could see the Devil's face, and she was afraid. She whispers what could be nothing but a prayer to Lucifer himself as she looked upon the power of God.
Mary drew her knife, and went for the kill. Deus Vult! But the Devil brought out a second computation orb, one much more elaborate and inlaid with gold. A showpiece in comparison to the functional dual-cores that the Imperials won through their compact with Satan. But.. was that… four cores!?
"O Lord, hear my prayer!" The Devil shouted, and Mary could only recall a story she always thought fabricated, after fighting Degurechaff so many times: On the Rhine front, the worst excesses of the Devil's artillery spells were always accompanied with hymns broadcasted on all channels. "Give me the strength to fight my battles, for my power cannot match the power of the Devil who stands against me!" Devil? DEVIL!? She's the Devil! "The blood-soaked berserker who has slain so many of your faithful, empower this White Silver to break the Bloody Valkyrie, I beg you!" As if those last words were magical, Mary felt… less. Lost.
Mary put every iota of mana she could spare into her barriers and flight, but the Devil shattered them with a barrage of artillery spells, aimed with precision and with a power that Mary could only barely resist. The Devil gave her one last chance to see her cursed face.
Tanya was… pretty. Her sneer had vanished, replaced by a genuine smile. Her eyes had softened, her expression transformed her face from a blue-eyed monster angry at the world… to a sad little girl with glowing golden eyes, younger than Mary, who pitied her like an older sister would. "You've completed your purpose." The girl whispered in a voice more melodious than any she had ever heard. "Go with God." The blade formula-covered hand dove deep into Mary's chest, and brought out a chunk of bloodied meat that could only be their heart.
Darkness.
Tanya slapped herself to shake off the reality of that scene. That wasn't how she remembered that going… Then again, she was using the type 95… Remembering the method of killing Mary accurately was probably more than she should expect from that particular memory.
It was a little strange, Tanya had expected Being X to gloat about that particular moment of weakness… But Tanya personally felt that Being X was cheating by sending a regenerating avenger who could pray for a magical powerup without the accursed type 95. She was just trying to even the scales. But apparently he managed it without brainwashing her, if the lack of cracks meant anything, so… fuck him.
Mary seemed to be shuddering at having to relive the memory of her death, tears pouring from her face as she cried. Tanya rubbed her back. Why did she think it was a good idea to poke at her worst actions during the war? Oh, right.
It's because she was a terrible person. A loud cracking noise ran out, creating golden fissures all over Tanya's mental projection. Intense pain followed by greater euphoria echoing throughout her body. With a deep breath and a cycling of her mental energy, half of the cracks closed.
So what if she was one of three mages to actually get close to killing her? So what if she was a fanatic that was so self-righteous that she could not consider a world where she was wrong? So eager to demonize the enemy that she couldn't even bother with an accurate mental projection?
…She was just a young girl. She died too young, and no one knew as much as Tanya did on how little going through a second childhood helps with maturity. She was the adult here, after all.
Mary, looking lost, looked up at Tanya. Her expression morphed into utter terror, as she exploded into golden fire and drifted away. "GO AWAY!" Echoed throughout Mary's mind. Ah, drat. She had lost all reason. She was having…
A crashing noise occurred as the Devil of the Rhine burst back onto the scene.
…A panic attack. The skies had turned blood red from its entrance and it crackled with iridescent power. Before, the fight was much slower than it was before, to improve the viewing experience presumably.
Now? The Devil was at full speed, abusing the mental acceleration formula to handle the massive speeds that the flight formula could impose on someone. The only saving grace appeared to be that the mental representation of Tanya didn't have the combat experience the real thing had, so Tanya was able to avoid the knives thrown at the speed of bullets and duck away and disengage from the demon's "surprise" ambushes.
"Calm down!" Tanya shouted to the sky. Wait, that probably isn't helping. One of the knives stabbed into Tanya's side before she dodged another assault. Great. It was learning.
Tanya flew towards the center of the battlefield, and true to her intuition, there was a barely visible Mary curled up in the fetal position. Taking out her smelling salts, she pulled at Mary's head and released the odor in front of the smaller girl's face while taking a big whiff herself.
Ugh, that's nasty!
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Both girls flailed wildly after their experience. Tanya's splitting headache was back, making the entire world swim to her perspective. Oh, there's that nausea that Agent Nein asked about… Mary's rapid breathing and groan of pain didn't seem like she came out of that much better. She was probably still panicking…
Simultaneously, both girls vomited on the floor of the psychoisolation chamber, the acidic stink completely overwhelming any other scent in the tiny room. On cue, the door was pounded on intensely.
"You filthy goddamn children!" Shouted Agent Cruller. The door unlocked itself and an absolutely furious Janitor Ford glared at the both of them before resuming his rant. "It's bad enough you two gotta sneak off to be alone to do who knows what, as if we weren't all young too once." What? "But no, you have to make sure to make this filthier than it's ever been, too! Well, if y'all are going to be as filthy as the place is, I'll just have to clean both!"
The janitorial bucket that followed Agent Cruller around burst forth with hydrokinesis, the sudsy weapon shooting into the psychoisolation chamber to collect the vomit and crashed into Tanya hard enough to inflict serious damage on her passive barrier.
Shit. Tanya reflexively caught something that fell out of the water, and realized she was holding the psychoportal. Thinking quickly, she threw it towards Agent Cruller's forehead, shouting "You're the one who needs cleaning, pervert!"
"Eh?" Agent Cruller asked before falling into a trance, causing the soapy tendrils of hydrokinetic might to still, but retain their shape. The door opened, and Tanya slapped Mary. "Come on!"
She didn't seem entirely recovered from the panic attack, but when Tanya's astral body entered the door, she felt Mary's presence right behind her.
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There was a storm. Unlike the literally shattered mindscape of Ford Cruller, this section of his mind was surrounded by a hurricane, with lightning, hail, and random cobblestones acting as hazards.
Oddly, they weren't thrown immediately into it. Tanya and Mary found themselves literally hanging from a representation of the Psychoportal in the sky, but the hurricane appeared to ignore a small bubble of space around it.
"This didn't happen in the first Agent Cruller." Tanya observed. "...or if it did, I didn't notice." She amended.
Mary looked around at the disaster, calming as she examined the area. "This… looks a little like Rus." She said, squinting at the area the hurricane was surrounding.
"Hm? Let me see…" Tanya looked at the architecture. Yes, that did seem a little Russy. "...assuming you mean Russia, the only Soviet location I've seen pictures of is the puppet state, Grulovia." She said, "This seems about right for that place." Come to think of it, it looked a lot more like Grulovia than it did the Federation. Given that Agent Cruller was crippled there, it made sense that his mental world would include references to the place. "It probably is Grulovia." Tanya said with authority.
"Such a stupid name." Mary muttered. Tanya wasn't exactly an expert on eastern european geography, but she was pretty sure that Grulovia had replaced Dacia, which was… Romania? "Where is Grulovia anyway?"
"Somewhere in the Balkans." Tanya replied, playing dumb. "I'd need a map to get more specific."
"What are the-" Mary started to ask before noticing Tanya's current condition. "Why are you covered in cracks?"
"Because I have a headache, clearly." Tanya replied flippantly. The cracks grew as a seething anger started to overtake Tanya at the offense, but Tanya cycled her mental energy again and the cracks diminished. "I'll be fine, we just need to clean things up here, possibly literally."
"Doesn't that hurt?" Mary asked.
Extremely. "Not much." Tanya lied. "It's just a headache." Tanya glared at the smaller girl. "Now let's go!"
"Eep!" Mary said as she dove towards the Grulovian village at full speed, using a barrier to deflect debris and lightning. Tanya was right behind her.
Now that they were in the central area, Tanya could properly assess the situation. It wasn't quite as bad as the first place, the sections broken apart only as badly as a large earthquake, with cliffs and pits being the primary separations instead of a dangerous void.
The place was also covered in germs. Not metaphorically, where it was just dirty, but instead giant amoeboids that were clearly supposed to be germs littered the area, dressed in clothing consistent with Grulovian peasants… during the winter. They were wandering aimlessly, not doing anything in particular that Tanya could deduce other than existing, but that existence probably represented something terrible for Agent Cruller.
"I don't think we should fly here." Mary observed, looking up. Tanya looked up as well, noting that the eye walls of the hurricane had warped themselves to the shape of the inner mind that was the eye, so any attempt to fly higher than two meters would be welcoming the most violent parts of the storm to attack.
"Well, let's get looking." Tanya said. "I don't feel like manually killing that many giant germs, so let's see if there's another way."
Mary attempted to use a mass pyrokinesis effect, incinerating dozens of peasant germs, but the germs were only diminished, not entirely killed. They slowly grew back into their regular size, regenerating the scarves and jackets they wore. "...Yep." Mary said in agreement. "Let's see what we got."
Tanya and Mary walked around the areas that weren't being currently blocked off by the germs, collecting figments of clouds, tidal waves, germs, snakes, and one of some kind of odd device. It looked a lot like something Agent Mentalis would make, but Tanya didn't recognize the specific one.
Eventually, they came across a janitor's bucket. "Ah, perfect." Tanya said, hydrokinetically seizing the water and pulling it out. It was ordinary water. "Mary, can you find any cleaning chemicals anywhere?" Tanya asked. The bucket appeared to be conceptually endless, as Tanya was still pulling out an increasingly large amount of water out of it. To improve the stability, Tanya started making it flow in a current, rotating around her legs to allow it to be more accessible, sitting in the whirlpool and allowing it to ferry her about. "This should be enough water."
"...I found some bleach!" Mary announced, holding up a white jug with telekinesis. She flung it into Tanya's water, and the bottle broke apart, giving the water a frothing appearance. Properly armed and with a protective layer of barrier, Tanya flooded the germs in this section of the mind with the water, who sizzled and screamed with startlingly realistic drowning sounds.
"That's these pestilences dealt with." Tanya said, discarding the tiny amounts of bleach-filled water they had remaining. A quick tug of the janitor's bucket revealed that it was stuck in place. "Well, if we need more we'll come back." Tanya declared.
"Right." Mary said, exploring the now revealed areas. "A nugget of wisdom!" She declared, holding it up from behind the cleaning bucket. It was, predictably, a golden mop. "How do you make it work?" She asked.
Tanya raised her eyebrow. "Just… absorb it. Recall what absorbing figments feels like."
The golden mop surged with psychic power, flooding Mary with its power. After a moment, she shook her head and realized she was no longer holding the mop. "I know more about cleaning than I ever wanted to." She said, rubbing her head. "At least there was…" Mary summoned a ball of water from the bucket. "Cool!" She exclaimed, looking like she just found some chocolate.
It sounded a lot like stuff Tanya already knew, which was lucky. "I'll get the next one." She declared.
"No way!" Mary argued. "You already got two!"
"The first one was freely given, it does not count. I got the last one, you got this one, so I get the next one." Tanya reasoned.
Mary looked like she wanted to argue that logic, but couldn't think of a way to do so. "...let's just keep looking."
"Now, to search for some emotional baggage." Tanya announced.
"Agent Vodello already took care of that." Mary pointed out. "I don't know how long it takes to make more but it's definitely more than two days."
"Drat." Tanya said, snapping her fingers. "Well, there are a few things I was curious about. Let's go." Tanya looked around the church, seeking the back rooms. She could feel… something. There was another section back here. It was a little bit like recognizing a secret door in a video game, but Tanya couldn't quite put her finger on how she knew that. Was it that section of wall looked a bit too featureless? Was it something about the carpeting that suggested the presence of a thoroughfare? All of these could indicate such things, but Tanya couldn't point out what it was beyond… it was.
"What are you looking for?" Mary asked, suddenly nervous.
After more searching, Tanya telekinetically pulled on a rope she spotted hanging from a hole in the ceiling, causing a church bell to ring out. After the sound receded, a door appeared, but did not open. "Perfect."
"Tanya?" Mary asked again. "What are you doing?"
"Taking a look around." Tanya replied. "Nuggets of wisdom are usually in out of the way, protected areas of your mind. If you haven't seen them yet, that's particularly true." There was a reason she kept hers where she did, after all.
"How many have you seen?" Mary asked, skeptical of her claims.
"...Four." Tanya replied. "I've seen them in every mind I've been to save Sam and Miss Milla."
Mary counted on her fingers for a moment. "Wait, Agent Nein had one?"
"Yes." Tanya replied as she attempted to open the door. It had some kind of donation slot… "In case you didn't notice, Agent Nein is all but officially my stepfather. He used a nugget as a prize in the shooting course he put me through."
"No fair." Mary whined. "What was the fourth one? You, Mr. Park Ranger, Agent Nein..."
"Agent Boole." Tanya replied as she started to hydrokinetically pull water from the nearby… Tanya could not remember what the fancy wash basin near the altar was called. She slipped it into the slot and opened the door from the inside. "He offered to teach me to cook in thanks for helping Agent Cruller."
"So you admit you have a nugget of wisdom!" Mary announced smugly. "You're older than you look too!"
Tanya entered the hidden room and smiled when they noticed a memory vault. Just what she was looking for. "I know how to do a lot of things." Tanya retorted as she smacked the vault with a burst of telekinesis. "I'm also six years older than you. It's not unheard of for someone my age to possess a nugget, just rare." Tanya was not entirely clear on whether that was true, but Agent Nein didn't dismiss the possibility, so…
The vault disgorged its contents, and Tanya picked up the… folder? Hm. It reminded Tanya of the dossiers and briefings she was used to reading during the Great War. It was labeled 'The Mission'.
Mary looked over Tanya's shoulder. "I haven't seen this yet…"
"You'll find it familiar soon enough." Tanya said as she opened the folder. The first photograph was of Tanya ripping out Mary's heart. Now that was a kill she didn't regret. Even after she showed back up to haunt her. Buying fifteen years of peace from her was well worth the effort. The second photograph was Mary wearing a white dress in a modern-looking office, sitting in front of a desk that was twice her size. The desk was manned by Being X, naturally. Anger burned in Tanya's throat, but she swallowed her anger at the self-proclaimed deity.
"That's when I was dead!" Mary declared needlessly. "That's God!"
"Sure it is." Tanya said sarcastically. The next page showed Being X surrounded by a few speech bubbles, with images rather than words. Tanya was in the first, the second was blank with a few lines to emphasize the emptiness, the third was Mary acting like a dog, sniffing a trail while Being X's finger pointed. The next page had a picture of Tanya and Mary, both praying while dressed as nuns. Finally, it showed Being X throwing Mary into what appeared to be pure chaos. Tanya couldn't find any sort of pattern or shape that was comprehensible, anyway. "Well, at least you weren't lying about your story." Tanya said, shoving the folder back into the vault.
"Of course I wasn't!" Mary said, offended at the idea that she'd lie.
"What was that other place, anyway?" Tanya asked. "What was it like there?"
Mary paused. "I don't remember that part." She admitted. "I think God called it…" She spent a moment wracking her brain for the memory. "Why do I remember him saying over a dozen distinct names for that place?"
"Like?" Tanya prompted.
"The Interstitial Space, the Blind Eternities, Pure Chaos, Cosmic Runoff, the Nexus…" She paused. "The list goes on. I'm positive he only said one thing, but why do I remember him saying so many?"
Tanya didn't even realize Being X could do that. "Interdimensional skitsnack, I would guess." She offered flippantly, which made Mary chuckle. "Anyway, no nuggets here, so let's go hunting."
Tanya walked with purpose through Mary's mind, leaving the church and examining the surroundings. It was mostly open sky with criss-crossing bridges of golden light, curiously solid despite appearing to require a rather large amount of acrobatic training to traverse, all overseen by a shining golden sun. Invisible floors with only hints of their presence was not nearly strange enough to register, in Tanya's opinion. Unlike Tanya's mind, she couldn't see any cracks in the sky from their own Being X empowerment. Hrm.
"I count… seven distinct areas." Tanya said. "Does that sound right to you?"
"Uh…" Mary thought for a moment, counting on her fingers. "Yeah, that should be all of them. Some of them have bits below them that are sort of separate areas."
Tanya glanced once more at the sun above them. Unlike sunlight, there was no consequence for staring directly at it. She modulated her barrier to protect her eyes anyway though. "Hm… Eight." She said, correcting herself.
"Eight?" Mary said, confused. She looked to where Tanya was looking. "Tanya, that's just the sun."
Tanya snorted. "First time I've seen a sun in a mental world." She pointed at it. "If you look closely, you can make out hints of structure. An airship, perhaps. Or a building."
"Why did you stare directly at the sun!?" Mary questioned. "You'll go blind!"
Tanya chuckled. "These aren't real eyes, Mary. Nor is that real sunlight."
"Do you feel fear at all?" Questioned Mary. Ironic, really. "Such a monster." She muttered.
Tanya winced, a tiny pulse of her headache reaching her even in the mental world. "Well, we have two options as of now: We could exhaustively search everywhere in your mind, which Agent Nein and Miss Milla have already gone over… Or we could go straight to where they haven't." She pointed towards the shining orb of light.
Mary considered the two options. Then she got distracted. "Um… Tanya? You got a little…" She gestured to a little spot above her left eyebrow.
Tanya felt at that same spot on her own head, and found… a crack? Strange. She inspected her fingers, and found no blood or anything, so she took a deep breath and focused on closing whatever it was. "Did that get it?" She asked, feeling for the crack again.
"Yeah." Mary said, nodding. She looked up. "Let's go, I guess."
Seconds after the pair of them lifted off with their
"Yeah?" Mary said as they slowly descended to the sun. "That's how flying works."
Tanya chuckled. "But not how psychic levitation works. You need to negate your weight and allow yourself to float on the air, then you apply the telekinetic thrust. It's much less clumsy for low speeds, and much less focus intensive to boot."
Mary stared at Tanya. "...How the hell do I do that?" She demanded. She swayed back and forth as her balance was continually disrupted by small variations in her flight path which she manually corrected.
"Conventional instruction is to allow happiness and love to fill yourself and use that emotional energy to buoy you up." Tanya said, snorting. "But focusing your mental energy on the feeling of floating underwater works fine to get you started." By now, Tanya doesn't need to repeat the common psychic wisdom of 'if you do it once, you can do it again'. Mary knows.
Mary also wasn't stupid enough to miss why Tanya knew that little fact. "So does everything you have to say about yourself highlight how you're as heartless as Degurechaff was, or is it just the things I've heard?"
Tanya's levitation stuttered as the headache showed its face again. She felt at her forehead, and the crack had returned too. Glancing down at the shining structure, Tanya spotted something that resembled a balcony and dropped down on top of it. "Oh Mary…" Tanya said, chuckling as she walked into the hallway that was now visible. "Whatever you think you know about Tanya von Degurechaff… The only thing I can be sure of is that you are as wrong as someone can be." After all, Tanya von Degurechaff was primarily motivated by hate and spite. That's not something a heartless machine can possess. They're living proof of that. Her flavor of monster was all too human. People have the innate capacity for great evil, it requires only necessity, or the perception of it. Just look at Arenne.
Mary landed on the balcony as well, squinting as she tried to make sense of the shining golden architecture as Tanya tried to rein in the headache, which had spread to her chest for some reason. Probably because she was currently a mental entity. "This place… I've never seen this before."
"Oh? Can't remember where you've seen this kind of architecture?" Tanya asked, genuinely curious.
"No…" Mary said, nervous again.
Eventually, they crossed a door that was just a sheet of light. Tanya could vaguely sense that it wasn't any more a barrier than a curtain of darkness would be, when she focused on it, so she walked through without a moment's hesitation.
On the other side of the portal, was a mid-air battlefield. If Tanya didn't miss her guess, the terrain below was their second battle with the Bloody Valkyrie, on the southern continent. Curiously, the scenery lacked any kind of military fortification, being completely nondescript coast rather than an Imperial beach head surrounded by Republican armies supported by American volunteers.
The air itself supported Tanya's weight, making flight trivial. The battle that was still here was, of course, the Bloody Valkyrie and the Devil of the Rhine, locked in mortal combat. Mary's view of her own role was that of an avenging angel, winged and wreathed in orange flames as they swung a sword and launched bolts of light shaped like crucifixes. The angel prayed loudly, a few hymns that Tanya recalled from her choir days, but only as independent lines that were mixed in with improvised lines about how she will win by the glory of God or whatever.
Most notably, the angel had a shining golden computation orb hanging around their neck, and from the presence the device held, it was clearly what they were searching for. "There's the nugget." Tanya said idly as Mary entered the arena.
"Oh!" Mary said, impressed. "I think this was my third battle with Degurechaff!" Third? Did she have such a poor showing on one of the first two that Tanya never noticed? "I would have killed her this time, but she brought in her demons to help."
The Devil of the Rhine was depicted as one would expect, as a literal demon. Garbed in only hellflame, the bat-winged demon lashed out with claws that glittered with the glow of a mage blade, with knives of the same make providing her with ranged weapons.
The 'other demons' were interchangeable in appearance, larger and more imposing than the Devil in stature, but with proper Imperial rifles instead of the fantastical translations the main two combatants wielded.
Tanya couldn't be sure, but it did seem to follow roughly the tempo of that battle, to the best of Tanya's recollection of it. She noted each time one of Mary's blasts ended up causing tremendous collateral damage to her own side, and each blast was repeated in this recording. The only difference was… there was no one there to get killed by it. Did she forget about her collateral damage? Was she ever even reprimanded for it? "We've confirmed the existence of a nugget of wisdom." Tanya pointed out. "So I suppose there's not much else to do here." She already got the confirmation she wanted from that memory vault.
"No, wait." Mary said. "This doesn't seem familiar at all to you?"
Tanya snorted. "This is a literal angel and demon battling it out. I'd ask what color the sky is in your world…" Tanya trailed off before looking up. "But I can see that much for myself." It was kind of a uniform yellowish color, actually. Both out there and in here.
Mary frowned, looking at the memory recording that was playing. "...I guess you're right. Hang on, maybe if I…" The majority of the arena became swathed in darkness as the ground vanished, the sky turning back to the dreary gray of that day. Instead of playing in full scale, it instead played like a movie, sounds and sights from Mary's perspective flashing into existence.
Mary's prayers filled the ears as Mary flew to engage with the 203rd Aerial Mage Battalion, the Devil's Own. She glanced at her sides to see the rest of her own battalion, knowing that while the grace of God protected her… her comrades were not so lucky, the last time. Fresh faces, nearly all of them. She didn't even know their names. Just callsigns.
The 203rd were exactly as demonic as the stories told. Mary rushed forth to the physically smallest of the enemy mages, her barriers flashing as the demons attempted to break her resolve.
The Devil's gaze went straight for Mary; she no doubt sensed her Holy power as her greatest threat. Mary screamed her next prayer as she fired a bullet loaded with an explosive spell as she dived at the fiend.
Tanya quickly shook off the odd gravity the narration held, taking a step back to examine the scene more objectively. Either Mary's situational awareness was absolutely awful, or her mind had trimmed the memory to the bare minimum. Given her reputation… Tanya was inclined to bet the former. She never even got a glimpse of Tanya's face in this particular battle, just a distant view of Tanya's goggles and face mask, meant to keep sand out of the mage's face.
Still, as the memory concluded, there were enough background details that Tanya could ask questions. "Why was there a city in the background of the real footage but not the edited one?"
"That wasn't a city." Mary corrected, stiff. "It was an Imperial fortification."
"So you attacked it with just your comrades?" Tanya questioned. "I noticed that you had some soldiers on the ground in your backstop on half of those shots. Good thinking, getting in some damage even if she dodged them all."
"Shut up!" Mary shouted. "They don't count!"
It was a fucking war, Mary. "I'm sure your superiors would disagree." Tanya observed. "Casualties are casualties. Anything that gives the enemy more of those would be well-received, I wager."
"I know what you're fucking doing, Degurechaff!" Mary said, tears in her eyes.
The sky lit up with another movie. "Sioux!" Shouted an American officer of some kind. She never memorized the rankings for them. Colonel, maybe? "The reports are in: Degurechaff played you like a fucking fiddle. You killed more frogs than you did krauts! You're supposed to neutralize Degurechaff, not do her job for her!"
The American continued to berate Mary, which caused Mary's tears to become full sobs. The sky started to fill with blue fliers, wielding heavy looking sea mines as they flitted through the skies. Balloons of purple muck inflated from nothing and opened their light-filled eyes, and censors were deployed from their usual doors, riding tiny biplanes.
All told, it wasn't anything that could trouble Tanya. Once the Deep Regrets, Doubts, and censors were dispatched, Mary seemed to have calmed down a bit as the fight progressed, blowing her nose on a handkerchief that she pulled out of nowhere when Tanya used a PSI blast to take down the last censor's biplane.
Another memory played. It was their final battle, over the mountains. Mary was injured, out of ammo, and running on pure anger and a prayer. The Devil wasn't in much better shape, for once. Her helmet was completely gone, she had thrown away Father's gun, and her fists were shining with blade formulas. The lack of helmet not impeding her wasn't a surprise, the Devil had infamously won a battle naked after taking a hit, wearing only her boots, a computation orb, and what was left of her sleeves. .
Mary's gun arm vanished, a stab of pain up her entire right side the only sign of the explosive shot. Where did she get another gun? A pistol. She has a fucking pistol. Mary shot forward, reaching out with her right arm to crush the weapon in her grip. Wait, didn't she los- no matter. God is with me! She could see the Devil's face, and she was afraid. She whispers what could be nothing but a prayer to Lucifer himself as she looked upon the power of God.
Mary drew her knife, and went for the kill. Deus Vult! But the Devil brought out a second computation orb, one much more elaborate and inlaid with gold. A showpiece in comparison to the functional dual-cores that the Imperials won through their compact with Satan. But.. was that… four cores!?
"O Lord, hear my prayer!" The Devil shouted, and Mary could only recall a story she always thought fabricated, after fighting Degurechaff so many times: On the Rhine front, the worst excesses of the Devil's artillery spells were always accompanied with hymns broadcasted on all channels. "Give me the strength to fight my battles, for my power cannot match the power of the Devil who stands against me!" Devil? DEVIL!? She's the Devil! "The blood-soaked berserker who has slain so many of your faithful, empower this White Silver to break the Bloody Valkyrie, I beg you!" As if those last words were magical, Mary felt… less. Lost.
Mary put every iota of mana she could spare into her barriers and flight, but the Devil shattered them with a barrage of artillery spells, aimed with precision and with a power that Mary could only barely resist. The Devil gave her one last chance to see her cursed face.
Tanya was… pretty. Her sneer had vanished, replaced by a genuine smile. Her eyes had softened, her expression transformed her face from a blue-eyed monster angry at the world… to a sad little girl with glowing golden eyes, younger than Mary, who pitied her like an older sister would. "You've completed your purpose." The girl whispered in a voice more melodious than any she had ever heard. "Go with God." The blade formula-covered hand dove deep into Mary's chest, and brought out a chunk of bloodied meat that could only be their heart.
Darkness.
Tanya slapped herself to shake off the reality of that scene. That wasn't how she remembered that going… Then again, she was using the type 95… Remembering the method of killing Mary accurately was probably more than she should expect from that particular memory.
It was a little strange, Tanya had expected Being X to gloat about that particular moment of weakness… But Tanya personally felt that Being X was cheating by sending a regenerating avenger who could pray for a magical powerup without the accursed type 95. She was just trying to even the scales. But apparently he managed it without brainwashing her, if the lack of cracks meant anything, so… fuck him.
Mary seemed to be shuddering at having to relive the memory of her death, tears pouring from her face as she cried. Tanya rubbed her back. Why did she think it was a good idea to poke at her worst actions during the war? Oh, right.
It's because she was a terrible person. A loud cracking noise ran out, creating golden fissures all over Tanya's mental projection. Intense pain followed by greater euphoria echoing throughout her body. With a deep breath and a cycling of her mental energy, half of the cracks closed.
So what if she was one of three mages to actually get close to killing her? So what if she was a fanatic that was so self-righteous that she could not consider a world where she was wrong? So eager to demonize the enemy that she couldn't even bother with an accurate mental projection?
…She was just a young girl. She died too young, and no one knew as much as Tanya did on how little going through a second childhood helps with maturity. She was the adult here, after all.
Mary, looking lost, looked up at Tanya. Her expression morphed into utter terror, as she exploded into golden fire and drifted away. "GO AWAY!" Echoed throughout Mary's mind. Ah, drat. She had lost all reason. She was having…
A crashing noise occurred as the Devil of the Rhine burst back onto the scene.
…A panic attack. The skies had turned blood red from its entrance and it crackled with iridescent power. Before, the fight was much slower than it was before, to improve the viewing experience presumably.
Now? The Devil was at full speed, abusing the mental acceleration formula to handle the massive speeds that the flight formula could impose on someone. The only saving grace appeared to be that the mental representation of Tanya didn't have the combat experience the real thing had, so Tanya was able to avoid the knives thrown at the speed of bullets and duck away and disengage from the demon's "surprise" ambushes.
"Calm down!" Tanya shouted to the sky. Wait, that probably isn't helping. One of the knives stabbed into Tanya's side before she dodged another assault. Great. It was learning.
Tanya flew towards the center of the battlefield, and true to her intuition, there was a barely visible Mary curled up in the fetal position. Taking out her smelling salts, she pulled at Mary's head and released the odor in front of the smaller girl's face while taking a big whiff herself.
Ugh, that's nasty!
----------------
Both girls flailed wildly after their experience. Tanya's splitting headache was back, making the entire world swim to her perspective. Oh, there's that nausea that Agent Nein asked about… Mary's rapid breathing and groan of pain didn't seem like she came out of that much better. She was probably still panicking…
Simultaneously, both girls vomited on the floor of the psychoisolation chamber, the acidic stink completely overwhelming any other scent in the tiny room. On cue, the door was pounded on intensely.
"You filthy goddamn children!" Shouted Agent Cruller. The door unlocked itself and an absolutely furious Janitor Ford glared at the both of them before resuming his rant. "It's bad enough you two gotta sneak off to be alone to do who knows what, as if we weren't all young too once." What? "But no, you have to make sure to make this filthier than it's ever been, too! Well, if y'all are going to be as filthy as the place is, I'll just have to clean both!"
The janitorial bucket that followed Agent Cruller around burst forth with hydrokinesis, the sudsy weapon shooting into the psychoisolation chamber to collect the vomit and crashed into Tanya hard enough to inflict serious damage on her passive barrier.
Shit. Tanya reflexively caught something that fell out of the water, and realized she was holding the psychoportal. Thinking quickly, she threw it towards Agent Cruller's forehead, shouting "You're the one who needs cleaning, pervert!"
"Eh?" Agent Cruller asked before falling into a trance, causing the soapy tendrils of hydrokinetic might to still, but retain their shape. The door opened, and Tanya slapped Mary. "Come on!"
She didn't seem entirely recovered from the panic attack, but when Tanya's astral body entered the door, she felt Mary's presence right behind her.
----------------
There was a storm. Unlike the literally shattered mindscape of Ford Cruller, this section of his mind was surrounded by a hurricane, with lightning, hail, and random cobblestones acting as hazards.
Oddly, they weren't thrown immediately into it. Tanya and Mary found themselves literally hanging from a representation of the Psychoportal in the sky, but the hurricane appeared to ignore a small bubble of space around it.
"This didn't happen in the first Agent Cruller." Tanya observed. "...or if it did, I didn't notice." She amended.
Mary looked around at the disaster, calming as she examined the area. "This… looks a little like Rus." She said, squinting at the area the hurricane was surrounding.
"Hm? Let me see…" Tanya looked at the architecture. Yes, that did seem a little Russy. "...assuming you mean Russia, the only Soviet location I've seen pictures of is the puppet state, Grulovia." She said, "This seems about right for that place." Come to think of it, it looked a lot more like Grulovia than it did the Federation. Given that Agent Cruller was crippled there, it made sense that his mental world would include references to the place. "It probably is Grulovia." Tanya said with authority.
"Such a stupid name." Mary muttered. Tanya wasn't exactly an expert on eastern european geography, but she was pretty sure that Grulovia had replaced Dacia, which was… Romania? "Where is Grulovia anyway?"
"Somewhere in the Balkans." Tanya replied, playing dumb. "I'd need a map to get more specific."
"What are the-" Mary started to ask before noticing Tanya's current condition. "Why are you covered in cracks?"
"Because I have a headache, clearly." Tanya replied flippantly. The cracks grew as a seething anger started to overtake Tanya at the offense, but Tanya cycled her mental energy again and the cracks diminished. "I'll be fine, we just need to clean things up here, possibly literally."
"Doesn't that hurt?" Mary asked.
Extremely. "Not much." Tanya lied. "It's just a headache." Tanya glared at the smaller girl. "Now let's go!"
"Eep!" Mary said as she dove towards the Grulovian village at full speed, using a barrier to deflect debris and lightning. Tanya was right behind her.
Now that they were in the central area, Tanya could properly assess the situation. It wasn't quite as bad as the first place, the sections broken apart only as badly as a large earthquake, with cliffs and pits being the primary separations instead of a dangerous void.
The place was also covered in germs. Not metaphorically, where it was just dirty, but instead giant amoeboids that were clearly supposed to be germs littered the area, dressed in clothing consistent with Grulovian peasants… during the winter. They were wandering aimlessly, not doing anything in particular that Tanya could deduce other than existing, but that existence probably represented something terrible for Agent Cruller.
"I don't think we should fly here." Mary observed, looking up. Tanya looked up as well, noting that the eye walls of the hurricane had warped themselves to the shape of the inner mind that was the eye, so any attempt to fly higher than two meters would be welcoming the most violent parts of the storm to attack.
"Well, let's get looking." Tanya said. "I don't feel like manually killing that many giant germs, so let's see if there's another way."
Mary attempted to use a mass pyrokinesis effect, incinerating dozens of peasant germs, but the germs were only diminished, not entirely killed. They slowly grew back into their regular size, regenerating the scarves and jackets they wore. "...Yep." Mary said in agreement. "Let's see what we got."
Tanya and Mary walked around the areas that weren't being currently blocked off by the germs, collecting figments of clouds, tidal waves, germs, snakes, and one of some kind of odd device. It looked a lot like something Agent Mentalis would make, but Tanya didn't recognize the specific one.
Eventually, they came across a janitor's bucket. "Ah, perfect." Tanya said, hydrokinetically seizing the water and pulling it out. It was ordinary water. "Mary, can you find any cleaning chemicals anywhere?" Tanya asked. The bucket appeared to be conceptually endless, as Tanya was still pulling out an increasingly large amount of water out of it. To improve the stability, Tanya started making it flow in a current, rotating around her legs to allow it to be more accessible, sitting in the whirlpool and allowing it to ferry her about. "This should be enough water."
"...I found some bleach!" Mary announced, holding up a white jug with telekinesis. She flung it into Tanya's water, and the bottle broke apart, giving the water a frothing appearance. Properly armed and with a protective layer of barrier, Tanya flooded the germs in this section of the mind with the water, who sizzled and screamed with startlingly realistic drowning sounds.
"That's these pestilences dealt with." Tanya said, discarding the tiny amounts of bleach-filled water they had remaining. A quick tug of the janitor's bucket revealed that it was stuck in place. "Well, if we need more we'll come back." Tanya declared.
"Right." Mary said, exploring the now revealed areas. "A nugget of wisdom!" She declared, holding it up from behind the cleaning bucket. It was, predictably, a golden mop. "How do you make it work?" She asked.
Tanya raised her eyebrow. "Just… absorb it. Recall what absorbing figments feels like."
The golden mop surged with psychic power, flooding Mary with its power. After a moment, she shook her head and realized she was no longer holding the mop. "I know more about cleaning than I ever wanted to." She said, rubbing her head. "At least there was…" Mary summoned a ball of water from the bucket. "Cool!" She exclaimed, looking like she just found some chocolate.
It sounded a lot like stuff Tanya already knew, which was lucky. "I'll get the next one." She declared.
"No way!" Mary argued. "You already got two!"
"The first one was freely given, it does not count. I got the last one, you got this one, so I get the next one." Tanya reasoned.
Mary looked like she wanted to argue that logic, but couldn't think of a way to do so. "...let's just keep looking."
