[Sasha Nein, M. Psi, Psychonauts Agent]

The last emotional baggage, the last weapon he had against the Devil of the Rhine, was a purse placed innocuously, hanging on a wall in the middle of a half-frozen prison yard. Oddly, the place was swelteringly hot rather than bitingly cold. “Nothing good ever happens in prisons.” He commented, feeling Milla’s attention through the mental link.

“She is still very sick, Comrade Loria.” A voice said, in Russian. “All twenty of the 203rd we managed to capture are still sick, in fact.” A pause. “The report should have said that they were incapacitated before the NKVD got to their camp, Comrade. The healthy ones were away.” Another pause. “The doctors believe it to be the same flu virus that’s been ravaging this country as of late. They have administered medicines to only Tanya, as per your rationing instructions, but they are still contagious. The whole gulag is under quarantine, no visitors for at least another week.”

The fact that this memory was when Tanya was feverish did explain the odd temperature. And the humid atmosphere. Sasha took a moment to take out a handkerchief to clean his face of sweat.

He looked between the hanging purse and a door to the interior of the gulag. Picking up some voices within, he picked the gulag interior. Inside was a finely appointed lady’s room, with Tanya strapped to a bed as a wet cloth cooled her head. She seemed older than she was now, which was a first. Maybe fifteen? This must be set well after Mary’s death, as she was very clear that the Tanya of her memories did not look older than her current age. How long did she live after that event? Sasha suspected that Tanya didn’t survive the war, given… everything.

“My men…” Tanya said, weakly. “What of my men?”

The Russian doctor, who suddenly appeared as a faceless caricature, grunted. “They’re alive. For now. If you don’t do anything stupid, they might even stay that way.” Hostages. “Or they could keel over from this illness like you seem determined to. You have the immune system of a starving orphan.”

“I am a starving orphan.” She muttered weakly.

The doctor considered the statement. “Fine, I’ll call for more food and medicine.” He stormed off, grumbling. “Damn Loria, should just work her to death like the rest. The only girl in the camp, and no one’s allowed to touch her. It’s bullshit.” Sasha felt ill. This was a memory?

…He was suddenly very glad that Mary had been ejected. Firming his resolve, Sasha watched as the memory shifted. Tanya seemed to have recovered, mostly, and was wearing a frilly red dress. Caricatures of communists moved in a large painting into the room of an older balding man that was grinning widely. It made the man seem sadistic and villainous, so while there probably was a painting, Tanya’s memory probably corrupted it.

She did look beautiful in this memory… and given the memories it seemed to be lumped with, her strong preference against wearing dresses was… ominous.

There was also now a chair that Tanya was seated in, with a phone next to it on a small table. The painting was placed directly in her view. The phone rang, but Tanya made no move to answer it.

“Answer the phone, Imperial bitch.” said one of the faceless communists. They disengaged the safeties on their rifles and pointed them at Tanya.

With a sigh, Tanya answered the phone. “Moshi moshi?” She said, with a perfect Japanese accent.

“...What?” Said a rather slimy man, the voice coming from the painting.

She continued to speak Japanese, adding an aged tremor to her voice. “Who are you? What are you selling? Hang on, my son speaks English, are you speaking English?” She turned to one of the soldiers and said, in Japanese: “Ikegesu! Speak to this man.” She held out the phone, addressing the soldier with a name that could be read as ‘pond scum’.

One of the communists, unamused, took the butt of his rifle and cracked Tanya over the head with it. The memory shuddered with the blow. The other communist spoke to the man. “I’m so sorry Comrade Loria. Yes, that was her. We have disciplined her for her cheek. Should we punish her further?” After listening to the other man, he gestured to his comrade. As instructed, the communist hit Tanya with the rifle again. Oddly, this second hit didn’t cause the memory to tremble like the last one did.

After a moment, Tanya had the phone again, and the painting started to speak: “Hello Tanya.” The man began. “You may be wondering why you’re being treated like a princess.”

“Princess?” Tanya asked, amused and defiant. “I know how you treat princesses, communist.”

The man laughed. “Ah, you remind me of dear Anna. She was defiant too, at first.” Tanya’s amusement vanished, replaced with a cool calculation. The man in the painting’s jovial air vanished as well. “My name is Slaventiy Loria, my sweet.” Sasha double checked that Mary’s influx of mental energy didn’t return any information to her. Just in case, he erected a blind on the connection, in case she decided to try and peek in. “I lead the NKVD. Do you know what that is?”

Tanya’s expression remained impassive. “The place where you put all of your most sadistic and amoral thugs so you can stamp out any sort of motivation out of the populace.” It was an interesting choice of words, using ‘motivation’ rather than ‘dissent’.

“Exactly.” Loria replied, dismissing or ignoring the oddity. “I’m sure you’re right at home in their company.” The man in the painting changed his expression to a filthy leer. “But enough banter. I am calling to inform you that the war is over. I have won.”

Tanya’s frosty expression twisted in confusion. “The Federation has sued for peace? Why?”

Loria laughed. “Why yes! With how badly the war as a whole is going, the Empire welcomes a white peace with the powerful Russy Federation.”

Tanya seemed disturbed at the man’s joy at the result. “I understand that you’re a communist, so bargaining isn’t your strong suit, but a white peace isn’t a victory when you’re the aggressor.”

Loria laughed even harder, trailing off into sinister chuckling. “Ah, but it is when the only objective that matters has been accomplished. Every single bullet and bomb spent, all for this one goal.” Tanya schooled her expression again, silent. After a beat, he continued. “You! Your innocent beauty, juxtaposed with the confidence and dignity that can only be achieved by wielding real power. Even royalty can only pretend to have that kind of ironclad will!” Loria shuddered, working himself up into a frenzy as he showered Tanya in compliments, a girl that was a third of his age, as a conservative estimate.

Right before Tanya started to speak, he finished his thought. “There will be no pleasure in my life greater than when I break you.” Tanya’s eyes widened in shock, whatever clever snark she had readied died on her lips. “Here’s what’s going to happen: The prisoner exchange with the Empire can be put off for a few months before it’s finalized. In that time? We’re getting married.” Only now did fear enter Tanya’s expression. She glanced at the communists, rifles at the ready, then assessed her own dress. It was thick, encumbering. It was one that would be sweltering in any place other than a Russian gulag.

Loria continued to gloat. “I will teach you your natural place in the world: worshiping me as your god. Any resistance will be harshly punished, and I will relish the moment when you finally break, begging me, no, praying to me that I will give you mercy and allow you to experience an ounce of pleasure.” Tanya’s anger and rage continued to mount as the pedophile decided to move on to specifics of the tortures he planned to subject Tanya to.

The point of this was now clear: He was just enjoying the idea of Tanya squirming in fear, stoking her defiance so as to allow her to last even longer under the tortures. As he did so, the terrain warped, bled, and burst into flame as Tanya’s grip on the phone tightened and her expression twisted in disgust. Loria was a truly disturbed individual. Sasha had never seen such sadism before… and he strongly suspected that Tanya’s memory didn’t exaggerate this part as much as Sasha would have hoped.

The monster finally moved on to something other than his horrible plans. “It took a lot of effort to keep this country running for long enough to capture you, my sweet. Be sure to make this worth my while, don’t break too soon. I’ll enjoy it more that way.” The painting stilled as the man hung up the phone.

Tanya’s death grip on the phone intensified, cracking the case. If this was the current Tanya, that phone would be long destroyed as she reinforced her strength. The ‘Computation Orbs’ that keep coming up must be required for ‘magic’ to work, as there was no way they’d be so cavalier with her security if she could muster anything beyond the strength Tanya held as ‘a starving orphan’.

The memory vanished, and Sasha’s telepathy picked up on activity behind him, back in the prison yard, so he walked back out there. Tanya was still in the dress, and had her hair and makeup done on top of that, but was tied to the wall where the purse used to be, as several men, about twenty of them, wearing the Imperial uniform were kneeling in front of her, bags covering their heads as they shivered in the cold. Tanya’s face was impassive, tasting in an expression that could only be communicating contempt.

Loria was there, gleeful as he walked with pep in his step, holding a pistol in one hand and the dangerous mind controlling orb, the type 95, in the other, hanging by a golden chain as he twirled it. “Now Tanya, you’ve captured my heart as thoroughly as I have captured your beautiful flesh.” He ran his gun across Tanya’s face, as if caressing it. “You’ve been very obedient, remaining silent like that. Just like a wife should.” Sasha was seriously tempted to interrupt the memory, but he knew from long experience that it would accomplish nothing. So he remained stoic. “So, the first word I wish to hear from your lovely voice is ‘Welcome’.” He said that word in Russian, where the rest of his speech was in German. “Simple, no? It’s only polite.”

Tanya ignored his instructions, impassive as she stared at nothing, intensely concentrating on something. Loria gave a wry grin, expecting that response. “Well, clearly they didn’t teach you manners in the Imperial Army. Clearly I need to speak your language.” He tore the bag from one of the prisoners, revealing his panicked face before Loria shot the man in the head, splattering two other men in blood and gore. The other men recoiled in fear, taking a moment to realize they weren’t the one shot before shuddering. “Now that I’ve given a proper Imperial hello, it would be best if you welcomed me in kind, using my language. Or I might think you didn’t hear my polite greeting.”

Mechanically, Tanya said the desired phrase. “Welcome, Loli-ya.” She mispronounced his name deliberately, emphasizing the accusation aspect. Lolita was kind of an obscure literature reference, but it clearly wasn’t one Loria knew, as he wasn’t nearly annoyed by it as he should have been.

“Is that a nickname?” He asked, vaguely excited. “I kind of like it. Like lollypop. It’s cute.” He frowned. “But it just makes me wish I caught you sooner, when you were…” He gestures to her vaguely. “More petite. The recordings of you when you stoked the fires of anger at Mosvka… You were exquisite.” He sighed, annoyed. “But that was five years ago. You’ve not quite spoiled yet… but you’ll need to make it up in enthusiasm.” According to Mary’s rough timeline… that meant that this was three years after her death.

The shivering Imperial soldiers had changed. Instead of shivering in fear and cold, they seemed more… incensed. Angry. Resolved.

“Now, how about we move on with our little date?” Loria said with a grin. “Let’s talk about your absolutely beautiful jewelry.” He brandished the type 95, still pristine without a single scratch on the gold plating. “What is this?” He pointed his gun at another one of Tanya’s men. “Tell me!”

Tanya took a moment to gather her words, but complied. “That is the Elenium Arms type 95 four-core computation orb.” She replied. “If you knew its testing record, you wouldn’t be holding it so casually.”

“See? This is how things should be. You, doing whatever I ask.” His eyes narrowed. “Just do it faster, or I might get impatient. Tell me, how does it work?”

“It’s a mind control device.” Tanya said honestly. “The end goal of its design is to break the will of the target and leave behind a hollowed out puppet that can do nothing but issue praise while on their knees. While convincing everyone around them that this is the right and proper way of things.”

Loria seemed caught off guard by the forthright explanation. “...Don’t spout nonsense!” He eventually said.

Tanya pretended to be contrite. “Ah, you meant what it did outside of my hands. My apologies, I’ll be more clear: if anyone else but me tries to put mana into it, it’s a very expensive bomb. Sometimes I wonder what kind of yield it would have, and how it compares to human achievement.” She spent a moment thinking over her question. “The good news is that if it does go off, most of us will die painlessly.” She then turned her head to the collected Imperial soldiers. “My previous warnings regarding the type 95 still apply, men! I will track you down in the next life and make you regret both births if you dare kill yourselves when your comrades are in the blast radius.”

“Yes, Colonel!” The men all shouted as one, their fear banished and their rage focused. Interesting promotion. The mental entity from earlier called her a Major… It was probably the rank she was longest.

Rattled at her matter of fact tone, Loria visibly contemplated whether he should keep going on this topic. “Tell me the truth!” He insisted.

“I did.” Tanya defended. “It doesn’t matter what I say about anything. You’ll only believe it if it’s exactly what you want to hear. No one other than myself has been able to get that thing to do anything besides kill the user. Dr. Schugel removed all the safeties before the only successful test and never put them back in afterwards.” She hummed. “I suppose if you really wanted to try, you could do what I do.”

“Which is?” Loria asked, drawn in by Tanya’s charisma and rhetorical tricks.

“Pray.” Tanya said, shrugging. “I make a promise to send more money to the church, sing some hymns, and pray that it doesn’t explode.” She scoffed. “I’d have thrown the thing into the Rhine years ago if it wouldn’t have gotten me shot for treason.”

Loria realized that he had lost control of the conversation, so he asserted dominance by pistol whipping Tanya. Tanya’s head turned but Sasha could have swore he saw… a flicker of light? Did she manage to shield herself? Tanya gave a victorious grin that she immediately suppressed, returning to an impassive state.

“Now, back to what’s important: Your obedience.” Loria said, once more commanding the pace of the conversation. “The next words I want to hear out of your mouth is ‘Yes Master.” As before, the last set of words was in Russian. He pointed the gun to another one of the soldiers. “Say it!”

The soldier in question, who was restrained by a pair of communists and brought closer to the pedophile, immediately retorted. “Stay strong, Colonel!” Loria immediately shot the man, gesturing for his subordinates to fetch another prisoner.

Tanya was shocked, dropping her impassive expression completely to stare at the dead soldier in bafflement. “W-what? Why did…”

Another soldier spoke up. “We all feel the same way, Colonel!” The other soldiers shout in agreement. “We could not live with the knowledge that you debased yourself for us! Allow us the honor of defending you to the death!“

Loria shot that man too, but hesitated on ordering the rest of them executed. “Mind control, huh?” He said, giggling as he examined the type 95. “I’m beginning to see what you mean, my sweet.” He played a bit with Tanya’s hair, dangling the type 95 from his other hand, which he kept far away from her. “Loyalty like that normally requires hostages, and even then, it’s a rare man who loves his family enough to die for them so uselessly. I know this well.”

Tanya still seemed shaken at her soldier’s outburst. “What did I tell you all!” She shouted. “Your job is not to die! Stop that!” She turned to Loria. “I’ve said more, to worse, for less.” She said defiantly. “Yes, Master.” She said insincerely.

The soldiers' anger surged at the words, the memory creating an aura of rising energy around them, even if they likely didn’t actually understand them. Loria, on the other hand, shuddered in pleasure. “Yes, it’s as amazing as I imagined… But you don’t yet feel the words. They’re just that for you now.” He checked his gun. “Nevertheless, I think you deserve a reward. A loving kiss from your future husband.” He pointed the gun at the next soldier. “Beg for one.”

“NO!” Shouted all of the soldiers, the aura of anger turning gold as they all stood up.

“STOP!” Shouted Tanya as the communists raised their guns to kill the lot. The soldiers' auras of anger guttered out, and the communists hesitated. “STAND DOWN!” The soldiers, still seething, kneeled back down. Their shoulders quaked with their suppressed sobs.

“That control…” Loria said, approvingly. “I never even imagined that I could gain the legendary 203rd under my control, by controlling their commander.” He grinned savagely. “Mind control… The Holy Grail of leadership…”

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“I would love nothing more than to have you as close to myself as possible.” Tanya said. “Please, come closer to me. I want you close enough to feel your breath on my skin.” Eagerly, and blinded by her previous compliance, he approached her. Whispering, she said: “The target of the type 95 is as it always was: Me.” In another example of the memory departing from reality, the glowing cracks erupted on her skin as the type 95 glowed with power. The cracks spread to the stone behind her, to Loria, to the ground, to her men, and detonated in an explosion of light and blood, shattering the entirety of the memory and leaving behind only a void.

Sasha looked around at the void, before he heard one familiar voice from up above as the area warmed, soft fuzziness filling the air invisibly. “It’s nice to meet you, Tanya. I’m Camilla, and I’ll be taking care of you from now on. I love you already.”

After that line completed, the memory reset, showing the bare prison yard and the emotional baggage that had hidden itself. Hurrying, Sasha affixed the tag and absorbed the emotional energy.

Discomfort. Dread. Fear. Horror. Confusion. Fear. Desperation. Resignation. Rage. Pleasure. Happiness. A flash of the prison from the sky, collapsed and smoking with flame. Panic. Pain. Another flash of vision, looking down at a mangled fusion of cloth, flesh, bone, and melted gold. Horror. Death. Resignation. Surprise. Confusion.

“He didn’t honor our deal.” Came Tanya’s voice from behind him.

Sasha turned around, to find the Devil of the Rhine, once more. With a golden chain that exactly matched the one Loria was hanging the type 95 on, another Tanya wearing that dress was lying unconscious, dragged by the mental entity. “Pardon?” Sasha asked.

“God.” The Devil clarified, rather than saying ‘Being X’. “I shouldn’t have expected that lazy, disorganized bastard to follow through, but I’m mad that I did anyway.”

Sasha knew he was missing some crucial context. “You seem awfully coherent.” He commented. “The Heartless Machine was, to hear Milla tell it, monomaniacal in their function.”

The Devil scoffed, waving her blood-soaked claws vaguely. Her pieces moved slightly, the gaps between them shifting in size and their positions slightly tilting to one side or another. “That neophyte? Please. That thing was new. Meant to keep me contained.” She grinned savagely. “It was stupid. Whenever she needs to lose all hesitation, to abandon all of the niceties that would just hold her down for her enemies, for scum like Loriya… That’s why I exist. If she called on me earlier, she wouldn’t have died there.”

“And yet you imperil her by attempting to murder Mary.” Sasha pointed out. How rational was this being?

Laughter was her answer. “It’s only a matter of time before Sioux gets her marching orders from God to kill me now that he’s paying attention.” She explained. “She has the power to do it, too. Just because she’s right about who I am doesn’t mean she’s not a delusional psychotic. She was one back then, too.”

“Your memory of Viktoriya called her ‘Bloody Valkyrie.” Sasha said.

“That’s what we called her.” The Devil agreed. “A fanatical berserker who killed more of her allies than she did her enemies. But she was one of only two mages that could contest the 203rd without a strong numerical or tactical advantage, so they kept sending her out.” She shrugged. “It’s not a pleasant bit of war calculus, but it is rational. We failed more than one mission because Sioux showed up.”

“You called her delusional.” Sasha observed. “It seems to me that her worldview is, despite how distasteful, fundamentally correct.” While declaring Being X to be exactly as described in the Bible is clearly wrong… that didn’t mean that he wasn’t who it was referring to. He clearly has power over life and death, if nothing else.

“She thinks she’s special.” The Devil of the Rhine elaborated. “She thinks God sent her against me because I killed her father, that he cares about her father, that defeating me was justice.” She shook her head. “No, she was a tool to make me desperate, to beg him for mercy, and one that he easily discarded until he needed another disposable pawn.”

“And if anyone tries to stop you, you’ll kill them too?” Sasha asked, already knowing the answer.

“I’ve killed tons of people who don’t deserve it.” The Devil said blithely. “All that matters is that I survive. No matter how bad things get, or how many people I have to kill to do it, it’s all for nothing if I die.”

“You have to know that we just want what’s best for you.” Sasha said, attempting to sooth her.

“Until you decide that you can’t trust any answer you didn’t pry out of someone’s brain directly!” She shouted, accusingly.

Hrm. That… sounded like she was quoting him. That was definitely a paraphrased thing he’s said to interrogation subjects before. “I wouldn’t do that to you.” He said, although he knew that it was a lie. Tanya was a habitual liar, and he would definitely want to see one of her battles with Mary. His brief perusal of Mary’s mind didn’t find any of them, although he probably could have tried harder to look.

“Enough talk!” She roared. “I’ll get free even if I have to walk over another mountain of corpses to do it! No limits, no expectations, just me on top of the world!”

Ah, this wasn’t good. But it was also expected. The terrain changed into a blasted wasteland of a battlefield, riddled with trenches that each were flooded with rivers of blood. In this nightmare realm, the cracks were everywhere, interrupting the terrain as well as featuring in the sky. The unconscious dress-wearing Tanya was tied to a crucifix that was in the center of the arena, bound to it by over a dozen thin gold chains.

The floodgates of Tanya’s mental defenses opened, with no less than eight Panic Attacks manifesting, a sign of just how desperate and trapped she was currently feeling. Personal Demons fell from the sky, held aloft by Deep Regrets until they could drop them in quantities normally reserved for bomber planes.

But Sasha was supported by more mental energy than he had ever had before. He launched a PSI blast, detonating it in an airburst explosion to disrupt the rain of personal demons as he launched himself upwards to avoid the barrage initiated by the panic attacks.

The light coming from the cracks pulsed, increasing in pace over time. The Devil moaned in pleasure as the cracks spread, the type 95 embedded in her chest glowing brighter as Sasha’s violent actions strengthened her hold on Tanya’s mind.

Something that separated the rank and file psychonauts from the rising stars was an understanding of metaphor, the ability to slant your actions to address the core issues the mind is facing rather than just destroying anything you face with brute force. It wasn’t something you could do every time, but it made things much easier, and allowed the mind in question to recover faster and more smoothly. Milla’s usage of fire fueled by emotional energy, as she noted in her report, was a good example of this. The fundamental issue Tanya faced was that she had exhausted her ability to feel emotions, burned out from her tumultuous second life. So ‘lighting a fire’ under her was a way to ‘reignite’ her passions.

Here, though… The entity was old, complex, and fundamental to Tanya’s mind. It could not be simply excised, and as it fed on violence, directly contesting it with such is… less than ideal. The speed at which it recovered from her last thrashing proved that much.

So even if he was more or less forced to violently winnow down the mental entities arrayed against him, he remained restrained when it came to attacking the Devil directly. He merely used Time Bubble on them to slow down her attacks and used Confusion attacks to pin the panic attacks down for long enough for him to destroy them.

After he finally dealt with the last of the most dangerous enemies, he decided it was time for words. “You have an insight beyond normal men.” Sasha said. “You see danger around every corner… because that is where danger lurks.”

The Devil crashed against the shield he erected, continually slashing and blasting it like a feral beast. “You think yourself broken, above all else.” Sasha continued. “Someone who you thought was a virtuous man, diligent and on the road to prosperity.” Sasha sighed as he remembered Milla’s face, weeping in sympathy as she recounted what she saw in the other part of Tanya’s mind. “But with the tortures of war and the perspective of hindsight, you realize that he, too, was just blind.”

The Devil screamed in anger, the chain that connected her to the dress-wearing Tanya glittering as it reflected the light shining from the fissures in the terrain.

“It’s painful to look back and see a monster where you once saw someone doing their best.” Sasha said, sweat forming on his brow as he reinforced the shield that prevented Tanya’s warped survival instinct from releasing her from the trance the psychoportal kept her in as long as he remained inside her mind. “But war… is a tragic waste.”

Something about those words seemed to strike deeply into Tanya’s mind, as one of the many tiny chains binding the unconscious Tanya to the crucifix snaked out and inserted itself into one of the cracks in the Devil’s flesh. He was making progress! Perhaps elaborating will help. Milla mentioned an economics degree, so… “War is, fundamentally, a matter of wasting material that could be used productively in order to destroy even more such material, but owned by other people. It is a black hole that eats money and productivity.”

“I KNOW!” Shouted the Devil as she started building up a series of large PSI blasts, a dozen of them forming mid-air with magic circles denoting their position.

“That’s not all it wastes.” Sasha continued, changing approaches as he extended his telepathy to anticipate the locations she was going to bombard. “It wastes people, too. Irreplaceable assets, destroyed by death, by maiming… by trauma.” Another chain whipped off of Tanya and stuck itself in a different crack in the Devil’s body, an annoyed grunt the Devil’s only reaction as she unleashed her bombardment of PSI blasts.

Sasha telekinetically launched himself to a safe zone, re-erecting his barrier once there to absorb the residual shockwaves of her attack. “You’re angry, and guilty, over what you did. What you were pushed to do. What you were forced to do. Even what you did by accident.” Sasha dropped his barrier and stepped to the side as the Devil launched a spike of energy, reading its exact trajectory and avoiding it rather than meeting it with his own force. “In your darkest moments, you wonder if the reason you were able to survive is because of your inhumanity.”

Ironically, the deadliest minds were not the ones able to condense and coordinate their destructive intent like Tanya could, even as they were absurdly so in the physical realm. Instead, the least coordinated and wildly destructive chaos of minds like Ford’s were the dangerous ones, even as it crippled their ability to be a problem outside of their own heads.

The happy mediums… are the Maligulas of the world. “The truth is that everyone has a survival drive. A point where fear overwhelms everything and nothing else matters but fight… or flight.” Sasha gestured to the sky. “Your survival drive was awoken, empowered… warped by Being X and his relic. But you knew this, you understood that this world was no place for the Devil of the Rhine.” More chains, two of them this time, affixed themselves to more cracks. The dress-wearing Tanya began to stir as the chains binding her to the crucifix slackened. The Devil roared once more and started attempting to break the chains, but her claws could find no purchase on the thin links of gold.

“Every Psychonaut, eventually, finds themselves with a difficult choice:” Sasha and Milla were facing that very one right now, really. “You find someone dangerous. Not because they are evil, but because they are unwell. Your choice is to hurt them deeply, to imprison or even maim them in the name of keeping others safe, or to take the risk, to help them with a softer hand, in the hopes that they don’t hurt anyone in the process of healing. Mountains of risk for a single extra saved soul.”

The Devil stopped trying to break the chains and turned back to him. As if she could sense that his power was flagging, she renewed her assault, using lightning quick attacks to force him to expend energy withstanding the blows rather than dodging them.

Directing his words to the stirring Tanya rather than the Devil, Sasha continued. “No one wants to make the first choice, Tanya. Everyone wants to save the most people. But sometimes, it is necessary. You saw that, and locked yourself away. Every day you had the choice to listen to this part of you, that only blood and strength can keep you safe. But every day, you stayed your hand. You held on to those pieces of humanity that Being X would have you discard: Your compassion, and your conviction.”

Half of the remaining chains broke free and drove themselves into the Devil’s body. She screamed in pain as they burrowed deeply into the fissures that lined her body. Sasha shouted over the din of that scream, looking straight into Tanya’s blood-shot eyes as she attempted to gather her strength to break free. “Sometimes, being a Psychonaut involves waste, destroying what would ruin what peace exists. But sometimes, as we always wish for it to be, it involves fixing things, turning what was tuned for war and making it something beautifully productive.” He dropped the shield and walked to the flailing Devil of the Rhine. “I promise you this: If you ever find yourself needing to be the protected, rather than the protector, for once… I will take on that burden.”

Sasha laid his hand on the type 95 embedded in the chest of the corrupted survival drive. “Teach me how.” As he expected, it was a nugget of wisdom. He dove into the memories of brutal combat, of welding destructive forces so great that only nuclear weapons could exceed them, learning everything there was to know about ripping out people’s hearts with one’s bare hands, aided only by telekinetic will. He strained his mind, slowing down the flow of energy so he could more easily integrate the instructions, step by step. There was a trick to it, getting more out of nuggets of wisdom.

With that third piece of knowledge, Sasha coated his hand in psychic energy, forming claws that lengthened his fingers to grip the type 95 one-handed before tearing it free from its mooring. The theoretical underpinnings behind the combat analgesic formula, clear enough that turning it to a psychic technique was obvious. All of the little problems with turning a time bubble to accelerate oneself, solved.

Pyrokinesis. Hydrokinesis. Cryokinesis. Every single weaponized talent that has ever been conceived of by psychics and some that haven’t, all flowed into his mind. Even mundane means of murder were not held back. How to adjust a rifle for wind, for extreme elevation differences, how to compensate for the curvature of the Earth. With each of these skills, a vision of using those skills to kill at least one person flashed through his mind. But he held firm. If he was to falter, even the slightest failure of conviction, at the pale reflection of these memories, there was no way he could fulfill his oath.

There was not a single ounce of skill that was not paired with death. Whatever joy, wonder, or sense of safety Tanya received from her powers were absent entirely, the Devil’s core fueled only by the endless rivers of blood that caused her enemies to refer to her as inhuman, as if such colossal costs in life could never be accomplished with human hands. Foolish.

There will be no need for Tanya to take up arms again. He will take it on in her place, as he swore the day he became a psychonaut. Exploring the frontiers of the mind was why he took that oath, but he agreed to stand as a shield to stop the evils of the world, and he meant it.

Without the nugget of wisdom, the Devil of the Rhine slumped, whatever glue that was holding together her fractured pieces having been tied up in that nugget. Only the chains, threaded through the chunks of flesh, kept the mental entity in one piece, trailing back to Tanya’s hand. She was no longer affixed to the crucifix, and no longer wearing the dress she died in. Instead, she wore the same clothes she’d wear on any trip to the park or jog around the Motherlobe.

“...She knew I caused the fire.” Tanya said faintly. It didn’t take a mind reader to know who she meant: Milla knew Tanya accidentally burned the other children to death.

“From the start.” Sasha confirmed. “It was obvious, if you saw the burn pattern.”

“I should kill it.” Tanya said, tugging at the thin golden chains to indicate the target of the new pronoun. “When flesh is infected, amputation is the proper course. Losing my sense of self preservation will be difficult… but I can probably manage.”

“It’s not that simple, sadly.” Sasha replied. “Even if you could excise her without collateral damage, she’s still a part of you. The sample size for such damage is small, but the effects are known. All higher thought collapses, leaving the subject a feral beast.” Really, calling them ‘beasts’ was overselling their rationality. Animals usually only lashed out when threatened.

Tanya’s expression darkened. “You tested it?”

Sasha shook his head. “No, it was a Soviet program we dismantled. I read the reports after Milla mentioned the cracks in your mind. Forcibly empowering the survival drive into an alternate personality that thrives on violence to create psychic super-soldiers. The symptoms match. A lot of our mental trauma research is focused on helping the victims of programs such as that one, or similar ones.”

“Communists.” Tanya spat. She knew their evils more than most. “I should have known.” She started to tug at the chains, poking the broken shards of the Devil into some semblance of order. Then, she suddenly grinned. “...I don’t suppose this would be a medical disqualification for field work as a Psychonaut?” She asked, amused.

That’s begging for an international incident if things go hairy. “You? On the same continent as a communist government? Out of the question.” Sasha said. “No, when you become an official Psychonaut, you’ll be kept well away from anything remotely dangerous. Research only.” Anything that caused Tanya to fear for her life could set the Devil back off. How likely that was or how extreme the fear would need to be would depend on how well they did on containing the alternate personality, but there was absolutely no guarantees in the chaos of missions.

“Rear line duty, of course.” Tanya said, giggling before breaking out into a huge smile. “That’s fine by me.” The golden chains liquified as Tanya directed the molten gold with delicate hydrokinesis. The gold filled in the cracks and fissures of the Devil of the Rhine, gluing the entity back together so finely that, after she was finished, it resembled golden nail polish drawing lines across her body rather than the weld that it actually was. Even the massive cavity that held the type 95 was filled, a perfectly shaped kintsugi repair.

The blood-drenched claws had shifted, instead a pristine shine as they were replaced with silver fists. Her outfit was replaced with a Psychonauts jumpsuit, a heavy marksman rifle strapped to her back that turned those enlarged metal hands into a deadlier weapon than any claw. She accessorized with a belt of ammunition, thick magazines drawn across her torso. She wore a regular-sized officer’s cap that looked large on her small head, her hair tied and stuffed into it.

“Now, she gets put away with the big guns.” Tanya said, snapping her fingers and causing the nightmare realm to shatter. It had ejected them into a new place, a bloodstained armory, filled with weapons of all sorts. All of the weapons rose from their position on the walls and started to assemble themselves into a throne of rust and steel. Tanya placed the Devil, which resisted as little as a doll, onto the throne and conjured more of those golden chains to wrap around the throne and its occupant. As a finishing touch, she used a tiny lock, like one would use in a jewelry box, to secure the chains. “That should do it.”

Sasha nodded. Sometimes, less was more. “You’ll need to submit to isolated observation for what’s left of today and all of tomorrow.” He said, instilling as much medical authority that he could muster. “There will also be at least a week’s worth of medical observation outside of isolation afterwards during your recovery, but Milla can handle that.” This wasn’t quite psychic surgery, but it was as close as one could get without the heavy duty tools being broken out.

“Joy.” Tanya said sarcastically. “Didn’t I destroy the psychoisolation chamber, though?” She did.

“We were able to construct an improvised replacement. Milla assures me you’ll be quite comfortable.” Sasha reassured her. Milla got the idea from a habit Tanya had when she was young and feeling overstressed from her telepathy. “Fortunately, the isolation is not so critical that you can’t leave it for a few minutes at a time, for meals and hygienic concerns.” Milla had volunteered for nursing duty, naturally.

Sasha was fairly confident that she won’t relapse into a violent episode at this point. Having her mental state tailspin into a completely different disaster, on the other hand…

Well, they’ll take things as they come.