Liddy Raynor had never been a particularly religious person. Myths, as far as she’d been concerned, had been primitive science passed down by artistic storytellers. What else could it be, when people anthropomorphized animals, natural phenomena, psychological tendencies, the institutions of civilization and finally the concept of greatest good in that order? Then her two year old son had killed her with his awakening and she learned otherwise.
Odin was real. He was fatherly, stern and very very present.
He had also chosen the soul of the person who would be reborn as her son and given her little boy a mission. WAR was coming, and it would eclipse the rage of the guild wars and communist rebellions by an order of magnitude. Little Jonny had to be ready for it. Not because Odin was cruel, but because the enemy would hunt humans with power, separating them from the herd like pack predators and consuming them whole.
She had raged and cursed and cried and asked the god: if the new enemy hunted Psions, why not stop Jonny from having powers in the first place? And so he showed her. How in all timelines where she married James, all of her children were Ghosts. How when her children were weak, they were either taken by the Confederacy and died during training, or became beacons for the enemy, ensuring that their family died first. In realities where she had no children, her mining camp would be abandoned by the Confederacy and either nuked, infested or smote with heavenly fire.
James would usually survive, leading other survivors into heroism… but without his family he often became a martyr. Only with a child or children of great potential did she herself survive Mar Sara and where she and her children survived, usually, so did James and a great many others.
Odin was not a god to cause calamity or lay grand plans, but war was inevitable and it was his nature to train heroes.
Lidya ruminated on that for two weeks as the doctors, mechanical and human, fed her various medicines and low grade nanites to speed her recovery. She’d worried, briefly, that this would put them in debt, but dear Myles had assured her that he’d cover it; that she and James had earned enough credit with him for this at least. The effort could have been over in three days with the good stuff… but the Sara system hadn’t so far warranted such investment by the Confederacy and importing it would be expensive.
Her spiralling thoughts were interrupted by a doctor, a new one whose face she didn’t recognize. She was tall and thin, wearing a rumpled lab coat with spots of blood on the collar. A surgical specialist, likely, but why was a surgical specialist here to talk to her?
“Mrs Lidya Elizabeth Raynor?” the woman asked, her voice void of all inflection.
“Yes?” She asked nervously.
The doctor entered the room and closed the door, a silvery undershirt poking out from the medical uniform as she did so. “My name is Amanda Walker and I’m from the Tarsonis Institute of Health.” She didn’t offer her hand to shake and Lidya reached out with her empathy to get a read on the odd doctor. Her emotions were dead. It was like there wasn’t a person in the room with her and that was even more unnerving.
Liddy nodded nervously, hoping not to upset the psychopath.
“Our records show that you sustained trauma consistent with a psionic attack.” The woman said, not consulting her notes. “We have taken interest in the many victims of this incident and would like to ask you some questions, if that’s alright.”
Two weeks ago she would have jumped to volunteer information. Ghosts were important to the Confederacy and it was her patriotic duty to send her son in for proper training. An honor and a service all around. But that was before Odin had shown her a thousand timelines where her son died before even completing training. At the examiner's hands, more often than not. Odin assured her that Jonny, this time, would be strong enough… but he was only two years old… it didn’t matter how many lives he’d lived, how many he still remembered, Jonny was a baby. HER baby.
“I’ll tell you what I can, of course.” She said aloud, while internally vowing to obfuscate and delay. When Jonny was in his teens; then she would tell them.
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Tony smiled and clapped along as Mother blew out the candles on her welcome home cake. There was something odd about the woman, reserved and closed off to his new senses, as though she were deliberately hiding herself from him. She treated her son the same publicly, and so he waved the change off as residual trauma from the incident, but the change still hurt somehow. His heart and throat clenched in a manner he was not familiar with, but he forced the feeling aside. It would be improper to interrupt the social function, they were welcoming family home, not examining his unfamiliar emotions.
He hugged his mother, ate the cake and responded brightly when prompted, as was expected of a young dutiful son, but he was almost glad when it was over and time for bed. As he drifted off, holding the blue shard in his hand, he focused his powers upward and drifted off. He had discovered the technique by accident, and sometimes his sleep would be interrupted by passing spacecraft, but in general, it quieted the surrounding minds enough for him to get some regular rest.
When morning came however, things were different. Mother took an active interest in his abilities and training, questioning him thoroughly on what he’d learned so far. Dutifully, he explained about the various levels of mental activity, the ranges at which he could detect them and how the crystal allowed him to change his focus.
She then suggested something he hadn’t thought of. “When I was a girl and just coming into my abilities, I used a stray cat to similar effect.” Mother explained. “It’s simple mind allowed me to focus and block out the emotions of others until I could get used to feeling everyone around me all the time. I don’t know if we should get you a pet, or if that crystal of yours will do the trick, but we can try. What do you think, Jonny? Would you like a pet?”
Tony considered this for a moment. He wasn’t particularly interested in a pet, to be perfectly honest. On the other hand, boys were supposed to have dogs as their best friend and it would send the right signals to accept his mothers experience as a teaching method. Who knew? Perhaps this curse would allow him to properly care for the animal.
Outwardly, he nodded. “Yes, Mother, a pet would be great. Something smart though, that could be trained. Also...” he hesitated. How to explain this one so that his request would be deemed as acceptable?
“Yes?” Mother asked, leaning in.
She flinched back as he rolled the blue gem between his fingers. “Would it be possible to get the other colors?” He asked. “Just small shards, like this.” Mother looked at him worried, and so he pressed on quickly. A concise logical explanation that would project confidence and allay her worries. “I figure, if crystals affect my magic, and the blue ones change how I hear minds, then the other colors might affect other things. If I can find one that turns my power in another direction, maybe I could use it more without hurting people. If you move the house out further, and I test them while you and dad are at work, then there should be no risk beyond money.”
Mothers presence bloomed with warm feelings and he nodded to himself. Showing contrition for wasting Mr Kelercheck loyalty and worry about wasting resources was indeed the right response. Mother was still closing off her thoughts to him, but at least he was on the path to mending bridges.
“I could do that,” she agreed, nodding. “I’d need samples for the resonator if I were searching for buried mineral veins or if I’d found some rare earth ores and wished to make seeds.” Then she frowned. “It will get us more attention from FedCom if the suppliers know I’m looking, but a month or two of no results and everything should quiet down.” She nodded sharply and opened the house's cockpit, connecting the home computer to the mobile mining facility computer. The order was placed and reasons given in short order and she ruffled his hair.
“Time for both of us to get to work, Jonny,” she said; shooing him out of the room.
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The package containing the ordered crystals and their resonator equipment arrived a week later by special courier. The woman had a highly active mind, on par with mothers, and when he mentioned the fact to her, she went pale, leaving the house to receive the package personally, rather than wait for it to be delivered to the house. Her thoughts were closely guarded as she left, but before the shutters had slammed down around them, he got an image of a room similar to Doctor Shugel’s laboratory and the words ‘it’s too soon’.
Fingering the blue shard, Tony decided to do some snooping and focused his powers on those within sight of the active mind, but not nearby. The effect was immediate. A storm of internal monologues clamored for his attention and he gritted his mostly complete set of teeth. Forcing his thoughts to sort through the various people and their incoming data, he found the perspectives of a few he could use without getting overwhelmed. They too had active minds, but on the level of Father, or just below, and soon it was as though he were in a room with them, rather than in a concert hall.
Their minds were not trained to resist him, and so Tony got their thoughts easily. The courier was a spidery woman with a beer belly and shoulder length black hair. She wore a silver bodysuit under a bomber jacket and cargo pants and steel toed boots. The people whose minds Tony was riding monologued with the impression that the woman thought she was wearing some sort of disguise, but none of them were buying it. Ghost, they all thought. A ghost is delivering packages, three weeks after ‘the incident’.
For most of them, their thoughts and imaginations went back to what they were doing when Tony touched the crystal, but one man continued thinking about ghosts, and so Tony turned his attention to that one. The man's thoughts swirled with images and thoughts Tony would have previously expected to see in a conspiracy theorist back during his first life. Having seen, even experienced, stranger in his own life however, Tony paid attention rather than dismissing them.
Ghosts, according to Julian Quincy’s mind, were government spies and assassins, responsible for everything that went bump in the night. If someone the people liked died suddenly and mysteriously? Ghost. If a building randomly blew up and the talking heads on UNN began spinning tales of umojian terrorists? Ghost. If a military convoy ended up dead with nobody claiming credit? Ghost. If a colony suddenly vanished without a trace? Ghost.
Ghosts could turn invisible, kill a man by looking at them and did the government's truly dirty work. Of this, Julian was certain. If a ghost was here, that meant it was time to leave. The sooner, the better. The only thing Julian wasn’t sure of, was if it was already too late.
Pulling back into himself, Tony found he was breathing heavily and sweating, just like Julian had been. Shaking himself, and regaining his composure, Tony sat down in mid air and began thinking furiously. Ghosts were obviously mages, the local counterpart anyway. Entity O had mentioned they worked primarily through telepathy, so a lot of what Julian had been imagining was probably accurate. More or less. For instance, Tony was pretty sure he didn’t need to look at someone to kill them. He just had to think a bit too hard their way, and pop, like a zit. It was far worse than killing someone with a gun too, being in their head as they died. Tony imagined it’d be easy to evade and act as though you belonged somewhere during infiltration and sabotage missions with this power. Going invisible shouldn’t be too hard, with illusion formula either.
The one he doubted was making entire colonies disappear.
Tony acknowledged his lack of experience and formal training with local magic might be skewing his perspective, but in none of his experiments over the past month had Mind Control offered itself as a possibility. He couldn’t change a person’s thoughts, imagination or memories short of offering someone his own. Even then, his chosen victims had been aware that his thoughts were not their own. Granted, they were all drunk, but his parents seemed to be obsessed with secrecy, so his opinions were limited to those who were certain to forget their evening anyway.
There of course lay the possibility that they’d used a mass mind-fry on the civilian population, but Tony couldn’t even imagine the insanity such an act would require. Experiencing that many deaths… the mind would likely shut down before the first thousand! It’d be easier to cut all of their throats individually. Better to just call in artillery. Or a nuke. This was the far future, were Nukes something your average specop could get on demand? Debatable.
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Regardless, Julian’s thoughts offered a quandry. Ghosts had powers. No other profession he'd found in the minds of the locals or his educational programs had even hinted at powers or a use for them. Ghost however seemed to be synonymous with them. At least in the minds of the men he’d just interrogated. That made his life path as John Anthony Raynor pretty clear. If he used his powers, it would be expected by everyone that he would be a ghost agent.
The problem with that was twofold. First, at least in the minds he’d so far inspected, ghosts were NOT socially accepted or appreciated. They were unlikely to receive retirements that didn’t involve bullets and being so closely linked in the minds of the people with the role of government boogeyman, the chance the role was voluntary was small. Not impossible, but small, nonetheless. Second, after his last life as Tanya,.. he didn’t WANT to be a magic weapon! That road, which had seemed a logical path to easy retirement in the rear, had clearly proven itself to be anything but!
Maybe it was different in this reality, where the potential for Psionic leadership seemed so tempting… but he didn’t have any data for that beyond his own suppositions.
The question was; could it be avoided? And if it couldn’t; was it better to just give in? Or resist and delay as long as possible? When she had been Tanya, the question had seemed obvious. The structure and resources of Military School was better than the deprivation of resources and opportunities offered by the orphanage or the streets. She just hadn’t imagined that they’d be as eager to throw away the life of a cute little girl as they had been.
Now, he had a family. A good one too, if a bit protective. From his understanding, he should have started socialization 20 months ago, but in his parents' thoughts he regularly heard their worries about him being discovered. Popular media from his first life aside, he’d not particularly understood what the issue was. In the empire mages had held a number of professions beyond Aerial Combat Officer, but now he felt he might understand. This reality actually agreed with Hollywood Horror directors.
At least as far as the hillbillies in this mining town knew, anyway.
But… what could he DO? Did the man have a way to detect him? Mother’s range was only a few dozen feet, and then only emotions. This man was similar to mother, but surely, if he was a professional, he had a magic signature detector? Tony bit his lip. No, no… this world was different, he didn’t know what their technical investigation into magic had yielded. For all he knew, they could be drastically behind the Empire, even behind the Francios or (shudder) the Rus; but by the same token, they could also be very much ahead.
In Tony’s imagination, he adjusted the flight formula to add a defensive film. It was quite difficult to hold both formulas in his head, and using the blue crystal made all psychokinetic uses of his power far more costly than it needed to be, but that was the point. It used up most of his power, contracting his range back down to just a few houses distant rather than twice the diameter of the mobile camp. This was not a sustainable effort, not without a proper computation orb to take the mental strain, but he could hold it until the other mage left.
Probably.
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The Ghost stayed on base for three more horrible sleepless days, wandering around and poking her nose into things before Julian broke. When the man took off on father’s modified vulture, the ghost chased after him. As soon as the Ghost had left, Tony collapsed into a deep, exhausted sleep. His dreams were troubled, and when he awoke, he swore he saw the face of Entity O smirking at him before his vision cleared and he saw father standing over him, a cup of fortified orange juice on offer.
Tony drank the juice and sat up, wobbling slightly as he became aware he was neither at home, nor apparently in a grounded platform.
“Where are we?” He asked as the juice finished irrigating his throat.
“A small science vessel.” James replied, easily. “Your mother’s in the cockpit using those new resonators to scan her sector for buried crystal deposits an I’m takin a few days off ta be with ma son.”
Tony tensed and bore it as the large brunette ruffled his blond hair. It was a sign of affection, and that ways near always a positive. “People won’t cause trouble with you gone, will they?”
Father chuckled, mind imagination flashing through the faces of a dozen different individuals and small groups. “Prolly, but they know the score, son. They don’t start nothin, there won’t be nothin. If I come after them, they’ve only got themselves to blame, an that settles most folk. A helpin hand settles most ah the rest. And for the truly rowdy? Well, reputations gotta be maintained somehow.”
Jonny nodded. Father had explained this a few times. His Law Enforcement policy was “don’t make me come over there” mixed with a liberal dose of “helping hand and open door”. It wasn’t a policy Tony particularly approved of, but with father and his five deputies as the only law enforcement for a radius of several thousand miles, and roughly 30 thousand people, it seemed to work remarkably well.
“So, what do we do on a family trip?”
Father grinned, and pulled a lead box down from the shelf. Opening it revealed four glittering gems set into foam; one each of blue, green, yellow and red. “Well, first things first, you’re gonna show me how it was you were flyin the last few days.” James said. “That was mighty impressive, I must say. After that, I’m a take you down to the bunker the sheriff’s office set up down below. During my investigation, I figured out the blast radius ah yer earlier experience, so yer ma an me are gonna watch via video feed from up here while you figure out what those gems do. One you’ve worked out the kinks, I figure I’ll teach you how to play poker.”
“You will not!” Mothers voice sounded from the door on the other side of the room.
Tony gig...chuckled. In his first life, he’d learned counting cards as part of participating in social functions. It was an important skill, as many of his co-workers favored card games for some unfathomable reason. More importantly, winning too often burnt bridges, while losing often lowered one's status. Therefore, one was best served by winning 7 times in 10, and losing the other 3. In randomized order as well, lest others become suspicious. This had remained true into her second life as Tanya, and he had few doubts it would come up again.
Still, there was something irrationally amusing about his parents' interactions.
Still, he understood his parent’s caution. He, peace loving salaryman and sorceress, had killed someone in the most horrible of ways last time he handled an unknown artifact. By accident. Such negligence could not be tolerated, and a bunker in the middle of nowhere with medical evac on standby seemed the perfect place for such Shugel-esque experimentation.
But father had asked a question. The flight formula, almost an instinct now, wrote itself in his mind's eye, and Tony lifted up off the bed to float up to eye level with his father. “Magic is just energy. A little bit lets me listen to others thoughts, a lot can lift me up. It’s been hard, I often had to fight to keep the right thoughts to fly, but now it’s like walking; I have to think more about where than how.”
Father gave a short chuckle and wry grin, “Magic, yeah.”
Tony frowned at his father. “Neither the brain nor the body produce enough energy to support even telepathy, let alone flight. What else would you call such an inexplicable energy?” Dr Schugel and others had researched the topic thoroughly in her life as Tanya. She remembered the mans’ rants on the subject, both before and after his visitation by Being X. Before that event, he’d been furious about how science couldn’t seem to isolate the basic mechanism behind magic despite everything else it could quantify or manipulate on the subject. Later, between frothing at the mouth as he praised the lord, he’d been in a furor about various drugs, meditations, revelations and acts of faith he hoped to use to improve the quality of his soul, thus gaining magic himself. Whether in this life, or the next.
“Psionics?” Father offered, grinning wider.
Mothers voice sounded from the cockpit. “A rose by any other name would still stink.”
Father raised his hands into the air “aright, I know when I’m outnumbered,” he laughed, “I surrender.” He chuckled quietly, and leaned in. “Let that be a lesson for you, jonny. If it’s not a matter of principle, always agree with yer wife. It hurts nothin, makes life easier and lends yer words weight when you do stand your ground.”
Tony rolled his eyes, but nodded. He’d heard, and followed, a similar policy in both his first and second lifes; though with employers rather than lovers. Bosses always preferred to be agreed with, particularly if the subordinate was competent rather than merely sycophantic. It made them more willing to tolerate when you did challenge them, as did said competence and a bit of decorum. It was an efficient use of resources.
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Ten minutes later, he was on a shuttle down to the surface with his box of crystals. When he landed, he entered the code father had given him into the door and sealed the bunker behind him. He listened as the Shuttle took off again, on autopilot before opening the box.
Each of the gems were labeled with their local names. The blue gem he’d been using for his telepathy was called Silium ore, the green gem Xenon, the Yellow Jorium and the red Ardeon. Leaving the lid open, he floated over to the bunkers com system and punched in the code for the science vessel overhead. When the holographic view screen fizzled into clarity, he returned his parents' wave.
“What crystal should I start with first?” He asked, focusing on mother. She was the mineral expert.
“I’m thinking the Xenon crystal.” She replied. “It has known anti-gravitic properties, and you smile more when you’re flying.”
“Flying isn’t recent?” James asked, looking at his wife, curiously.
She shook her head. “The baby monitor says otherwise. His first flight was at three months. He didn’t really get into it until 14 months though. Probably a development issue.”
Tony grimaced, but nodded. A baby monitor? Perhaps he should have expected such surveillance, mother was always there the moment he needed something; but Tony had figured that was her psionics expressing itself, not surveillance.
Floating back over to the box, he reached out and poked the crystal. Static flushed over his skin, but otherwise, nothing happened. With that positive reaction, he reached out and removed the crystal from the case entirely and held it fully in his hand. The result was immediate, but not entirely clear. The jade colored Xenon crystal didn’t improve his telekinesis, instead weighing it down in the same measure as the blue Silium mineral did. Instead, the shadows around the room seemed to distort somehow and a growing headache began to form behind his right eye.
“Hey, Jonny boy, you still there?” Father asked, startling him out of whatever trance the crystal and placed him in.
“Yes, father.” Tony answered, turning around. “What is it?”
James' face looked troubled for a moment before clearing. “It looked like we were having imaging troubles, maybe. You started to fade out, like a bad photo.”
Tony’s eyes widened, and he focused on the crystal again, spinning up an optical decoy formula. It was a low cost spell generally, but with the gem in hand, he only noticed the drain at all because he was looking for it.
“Hoooly Shit; teleportation!” James exclaimed over the comms. “That’ll be a useful trick.” Then he elbowed Lidya. “Grounding him’s never going to work now.”
Tony canceled the spell and shook his head. “It was not teleportation, unfortunately.” He replied. “That was an illusion. I moved the light around me somewhere else. This may be the answer to ghost agent invisibility.” Wincing, he quickly put the crystal down. The headache had kept growing the longer he held it. Specifically why that was should be examined later, but for now, the fact that it was occurring at all, earned the crystal the same respect as a live explosive.
Exchanging it for the blue Silium crystal, he confirmed it was the same as the blue mineral he’d had before. Replacing it as well, he went for the golden gem. He picked it up with some reluctance, due to its resemblance to the effect Being X had on her type 95 orb and spellwork. If the soft golden light and warm feeling emanating from it were the same, he would know it for the trap it was, but if the similarities were only superficial, it was still best to know what it did.
Seizing the gem, Tony nearly dropped it as warmth spread up his arm and into his brain, soothing the earlier headache. Immediately, objects around the room, from bits of sand to crates he’d thought were secured began to float in the air around him, bolts of electricity snapping lazily between them, though harmless, like a plasma globe. Much to his pleasure, this felt more like the original magic detecting helmet from her first testing as Tanya in the orphanage than the Type 95. He didn’t start spouting off about the Glory Of God, or Odin for that matter, there was merely the calm confident power of mana.
It was glorious…
Tony moved things around the room for a moment, reveling in the feeling before rescuing everything back in place and doing a self evaluation. As with the Xenon crystal, his awareness of his parents' minds shrunk significantly. He could still feel them, hovering three miles above and to the right, but suspected that anyone else would be invisible to his detection at that distance.
“Well, there’s your flight crystal, kid.” James commented, amusement clear in his voice. “Though with that lightshow, I don’t think you’re gonna get to enjoy it much. Kinda obvious.”
“Naturally it’s the one all three great power consider a strategic resource too,” Mother groused. “Jorrium refines several key components for constructing the Yamato Cannon and Defense Matrix.”
James scoffed. “Just wait till they see this.” He gestured across the screen, to where Tony was running through the various formula he remembered from her life as Tanya and more s/he’d gotten from the deal with Entity O.
Mother winced. “A repeat of the guild wars, you think?”
“At least.” Father agreed. “Unless they already know about it.”
“Wouldn’t they have too though?” she asked, voice tinged with both worry and skepticism. “I mean, if they know that one crystal type can affect ghosts, it only makes sense they’d look into the others. You can say all sorts of things about the big three, but they’re not incompetent.”
Father snorted. “Sure they aren’t. I admit though, it’s too simple a jump even for them to miss.”
Tony frowned. Disloyalty on the fringes of civilization was expected, but still… Shaking his head, he put the Jorium crystal back in its socket and reached for the red Ardeon gem.
With a feeling like an ice pick to the brain, Tony fell to the ground. Collapsing like a puppet with his strings cut, he didn’t even notice when his head bounced off the floor. His strength immediately began returning as he lost contact with the gem, but for a moment he felt… as weak as a two year old. He lay there groaning, his head spinning and thoughts muddled. Trying to lift his head made everything spin even worse and his words, when he tried to speak, were slurred.