The morning’s activity, after Miss Milla ensured that everyone was wearing sunscreen, was something that didn’t involve astral projection, surprisingly. As such, Tanya was wearing her usual set of activewear, which was a pair of camouflage pattern cargo shorts and a white T-shirt, as it was an eminently practical choice for physical activities. Her long hair was tied back into a bun, secured by Tanya’s favorite baseball cap. The Yomiuri Giants was not exactly a normal team to own merchandise for, as someone who has never set foot in Japan in this life, but Tanya recognized the team somehow. Besides, looking at it for longer than three seconds seemed to be enough for Agent Nein to purchase it for her, and just like that, she owned a link to her first life.
She must have supported the team back in her first life, she had decided. Even if she struggled to pin down a specific memory of doing so.
The rest of the children had similarly worn clothing that were either completely new activewear, presumably purchased for the camp, or worn clothing that was deemed an acceptable casualty to the crucible of children at play. Another indicator of the relative wealth levels in the camp…
“Okay children, “ Miss Milla announced once the final camper arrived, which was Lizzie. “You’ve learned how to levitate, and that lesson is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from being a lesson on Telekinesis.” She giggled at her own joke. “So that’s what we’ll be learning today.” She used that very power to retrieve a basket full of tennis balls. “Now, due to the large concentrations of Psitanium, you may have noticed that your psychic powers have been easier to use ever since you’ve walked on to the grounds.” Really? Tanya didn’t notice anything odd… but then again, she also hasn’t strained herself at any point. Would any of those feats have been strenuous if it wasn’t for the psitanium? She wasn’t sure. Miss Milla spilled out a dozen tennis balls, catching them with her telekinesis and placing them gently on various stumps, branches, and benches. “So, it shouldn’t be too difficult to master this trick, even outside of a psychic realm. Try to lift one of the balls without moving it anywhere but up, as the first trick. There are enough balls for everyone, so don’t fight.”
Tanya rolled her eyes at the simple task, but claimed one that no one else was looking at and lifted it precisely one meter, a blue projection of a hand holding the ball within its palm. Similarly, a few of the other psychics completed the task casually, namely Adam, Lizzie, and Sam. The other five campers didn’t complete it quite so casually, most notably because of a small spat between Norma and Morris.
“Very good, children!” Miss Milla said, praising them indulgently. The younger half of the campers puffed up their chests with pride. “Now, next I want you to bring the balls into your hands. Be careful, you don’t want to hit anyone, yourselves most of all.”
With equal ease, the projection of a hand clutched the tennis ball and threw it into Tanya’s waiting hand. Her psychic barrier flared with the force of the throw, but that’s what it was for. Adam and Sam didn’t match the feat, but performed the task with as much ease as the first. Lizzie ended up dropping it before picking it back up and then calling it into her hand. Interestingly, while most of the children used the conventional hand projections to manipulate objects with telekinesis in ways beyond picking them up, moving the hand gently to themselves, Adam instead spooled out a thread of psychic energy, snagging the object and yanking it into his waiting hand. He then proceeded to make the tennis ball do yo-yo tricks.
Mary handled this task easier than the other one, launching the ball at herself and letting it bounce off her own barrier coated face, catching the ball on the rebound. Tanya wasn’t entirely sure if Mary suspected Tanya’s own origins, but from how often Mary glanced at her, Tanya bet that she noticed the startling resemblance, at least.
Miss Milla led the group through about a dozen different telekinetic feats, keeping the exercises going until even the least talented could manage the given trick on the first try. That person was Norma. She even accidentally set one of the balls on fire instead of telekinetically moving it. Lili did too, but it was not an accident. Lizzie and Tanya froze the flaming balls, both used to putting out random fires from the younger pyromaniacs.
“Okay, I think everyone’s got the hang of it.” Announced Miss Milla. “Now, after lunch we’ll move on to the last psychic technique we’ll be teaching you as a group: PSI blast.” Come to think of it, now that Tanya actually witnessed the children learn something, and how often tennis balls were ‘accidentally’ sent to hit another camper… was teaching them it wise?
…They could already hurt each other, what’s one more way to do so? It’s less deniable than telekinesis, too… Yeah, it was fine. Agent Nein mentioned that they would probably have to refine the curriculum through trial and error, as no one had ever tried to teach child psychics in a semi-organized manner before.
“Now, have fun!” Miss Milla continued, causing Tanya to realize she had missed a few lines with her mental tangent. Quickly observing the children, they each ambled away to separate parts of the camp, some using levitation, others using telekinesis… ah. This was just some unstructured play time. It was an important thing for growing young minds to have such a thing, according to the child psychology books that Miss Milla had on her bookshelves. Time to pretend to be twelve some more.
Tanya glanced around, noting the location and composition of each group. Lili seemed to have attached herself to Mary, as she was the second youngest and presumed some connection on that basis. Norma and Lizzie split away and started some kind of string game with psychic hand projections rather than their physical hands, Gisu had taken it upon herself to assist Morris with mastering his new psychic wheelchair, which was just a small lawn chair he put a levitation ball beneath, and Sam had started collecting animals while paired with Adam, the boy refining his own zoolinguism by participating in the venture.
Agent Nein was nowhere to be seen, and there was no way Miss Milla would “encourage her paranoia” by providing useful advice on what Tanya had seen within her own mind. She’d likely, in her role of Tanya’s ‘mother’, encourage her to socialize with the other children. Well, there was nothing to it. At least she could investigate Mary a bit more.
Walking up to the smallest pair in the camp, Tanya idly listened to their no doubt riveting conversation before introducing herself.
“Okay, so imagine you’re setting something on fire.” Explained Lili.
Mary nodded. “Okay, now what?”
“You’re done, that’s it.” Lili replied. She looked around. “You’re not doing it right. Nothing’s on fire. Here, watch me.”
Tanya quickly snatched one of the discarded tennis balls, which remained in the area for the use of the campers, and presented it as a target for Lili’s pyrokinetic display. “Thanks Tanya!” Lili exclaimed, smiling widely. She focused for a brief instant and the tennis ball burst into flames. “See? Easy.” Tanya snuffed the flame by freezing it once more. “Okay, that part’s kinda not easy.” Lili said, nodding sagely despite the grammatical error.
“Lili, your talent for pyrokinesis makes it that simple for you, but for Mary?” Tanya said rhetorically. “Well, I’m sure she’s quite talented at wanton destruction, but you skipped a step.” Mary looked a little surprised at Tanya’s backhanded compliment. As she had the girl’s attention, Tanya made the quick decision to follow through. “When she said you had to imagine setting something on fire, she meant you had to imagine setting the specific thing you seek to burn on fire.” Tanya brought out another tennis ball. “Imagine setting this on fire. Picture clearly what each step of the burning process would entail, the first embers, the growing heat, the building smoke, until…” As Tanya explained, Mary set to follow the instructions as they were issued. The ball ignited into a golden flame that burned the ball completely into ash before Tanya could extinguish it. “Ignition.” Tanya finished.
Lili looked at Mary with wonder, star struck at the feat of pyrokinesis. “Wow! I’ve never burned up something so fast…” She immediately grabbed another tennis ball, and set it on fire once more. While it didn’t repeat Mary’s feat, it was a little faster than the last time; one third faster or so. “It didn’t work!” Lili exclaimed, hopping in place before pouting.
“Hm. It appears you have a talent in the burning of infidels.” Tanya commented, which drew Mary’s angry and suspicious gaze. “What? You said God sent you, after all. Historically, that is what people who said that tended to do: Pillage and burn.” The War College had an excellent selection of texts on the Crusades. Only half of them were of the pro-church variety, and several of those had some major criticisms about idiots going off half-cocked in God’s name but against the Pope’s instructions.
Mary glared at Tanya in a way that completely blew whatever facade she had of being a real six year old. “You…” She began, but left the statement trail off, as if unsure where to go from there.
Should she? It would be a normal response for angry six year olds. Tanya considered the question, assessed the risk, and decided to go for it. She patted Mary on the head, tousling her hair for just long enough to let the shock wear off, withdrawing her hand in time to avoid Mary grabbing it to bite. It’s not like it would actually do anything, and Mary probably didn’t have any permanent teeth to damage yet. “More seriously, Mary, you probably just used emotion as a psychic amplifier. Supposedly, pyrokinesis can be brought forth through passionate emotion. I’ve never seen the necessity of such things, but hate, rage, even lust can be used productively in matters of destruction.”
Lili looked surprised, but after assessing the situation, decided to copy Mary. “You…” She said, with an even higher pitched voice and even less idea on how to continue that sentence. Tanya chuckled and patted her head too. Lili smiled at her successful manipulation. “What’s an infidel?”
Ah, of course Lili would be curious about anything that implied she could burn them. “It’s what the meaner church people call people who don’t want to go to church.”
Lili frowned. The Motherlobe did have a small room that was decorated as and thus functioned as a chapel, although it was not used enough to have an actual priest. There was a religious old lady, Agent Hollis’ mother, who ran a small daycare out of her daughter’s apartment. This did not give religion a good impression among the youth.
Mary, on the other hand, decided to be a pedant. “It’s more complicated than that! Infidels are nonbelievers, like the muslims! People who don’t go to church are just impious.” You don’t really appreciate the depth of the christian default mindset until you have multiple childhoods. Tanya recalled using ‘church time’ in her second life to continually curse at Being X. She wasn’t entirely sure how she managed to muster up enough hate to do so for hours at a time, but Tanya von Degurechaff was an endless well of spite.
Tanya stared at the ‘six year old’. “Mary, she’s three. All she needs to know is that if someone calls someone else an infidel, they are a meanie.”
Lili took offense at that explanation. “Hey! I’m not stupid, I’m smart!” Tanya patted her head again, but Lili didn’t seem to appreciate it as much that time. Lili tried to set Tanya on fire, but Tanya’s barrier blocked the psychic emanations.
What would an actual twelve year old girl say in this situation? Of course. “You’re adorable.” Tanya said, patting her head again.
“What in the lord’s name does that mean?” Mary asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion. What? Tanya reviewed the last five seconds. Oh. She was thinking about Japanese twelve year old girls. She said ‘Kawaii’.
“I was saying she was cute.” Tanya said, sniffing in superiority. One constant among children: The older ones automatically think they’re better than the younger ones. “I speak tons of languages.”
Mary’s suspicious expression gained a smile. Oh, she thought she was being clever? “Which ones? Besides Albish, of course.”
Tanya resisted the impulse to chuckle at the clumsy attempt at interrogation. “What kind of made up language is that? I speak Japanese, English, German, Latin, French, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, Mandarin, and Arabic.” In that order, incidentally. Next on the list was Hindi. Initially, Tanya had an idea of becoming a translator to take advantage of knowing six languages before being born, but learning new languages had become a somewhat pleasurable activity all on its own. It will probably be useful for the localization of her future entertainment empire. If she gets it off the ground.
Mary cursed under her breath, or at least Tanya presumed she did. Tanya never did investigate exactly which nordic language ‘Legadonian’ was, but either way Tanya only knew a few swears and insults. One more, now. Still, Tanya had a narrative to maintain. “Oh, what language was that? It sounds Germanic…”
“It’s Legadonian.” Mary replied.
“Never heard of it.” Tanya glibly responded. “Where’s it from?”
“Javel!” Lili pronounced, gleefully repeating the swear. Mary flinched at the exclamation, realizing the natural consequences of swearing in front of a three year old.
“It’s from the Legadonian Entente, from my last life.” Mary replied, surprisingly straightforwardly. She then immediately added: “I’m not crazy.”
Lili giggled at the assertion. “Don’t worry Mary, I think you’re cool.” Mary seemed pleased at the small child’s assertion, which was vaguely amusing.
Tanya knew damn well that Mary wasn’t delusional… assuming the similarities to the Bloody Valkyrie wasn’t a coincidence. Crazy, but that was unrelated to the reincarnation.“That’s fairly interesting. I overheard Agent Nein talking about this assertion.”
Mary seemed intrigued at the dangling bait. “Really? What did he say?”
Tanya gave one her best drill sergeant grin at the question. Tanya wasn’t entirely clear why she had decided to throw Mary off balance, but she also saw no reason to stop. “He said you probably absorbed memories from an old veteran who was dying when you were a baby, creating a delusional reincarnation narrative to make sense of it.” Mary’s expression scrunched up as she digested the technical jargon. “In other words… you’re crazy.”
Mary scowled at the summary, more firm in their convictions than ever before. “You’re just trying to get a rise out of me, Degurechaff.” She said accusingly.
Tanya was fortunately ready for this, although she wasn’t entirely sure Mary even knew Tanya’s old name before now. After a beat and a prize-winning confused face, Tanya asked “Who?”
Mary gaped at the reply. Tanya placidly stared back at her. Wait, she’s pretending to be twelve. Tanya burst out laughing at Mary’s gobsmacked expression. Mary seized on the opportunity. “Degurechaff! You Devil!”
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“Your face!” Tanya said in explanation, putting more effort in her laughter. “I don’t know what your problem with me is, but whoever this Degurechaff is, I’m not her.” Wait, should she have mispronounced it? …no, she just told Mary that she spoke German.
“You look exactly the same!” Mary insisted. Tanya should hope not, she’s already taller than she was at age twelve in the Empire… but she killed Mary when she was fourteen. Hrm. “You sound the same when you speak Albish, and you can use psychic powers to emulate magic like I can! God sent me here for a purpose, and I can’t do his will if I get lobotomized!”
“Nonsense.” Tanya replied. “Lobotomies were outlawed ten years ago. You may not get history lessons about psychics at whatever public school you go to, but they’re not going to lock you up for such tame delusions.” Tanya was actually pretty sure that they would, but Mary made an excellent canary for that coal mine.
“My past life is not a delusion!” Mary insisted.
“That too.” Tanya added, provoking a groan of frustration from Mary.
“Who is Degoochaff?” Lili asked, struggling with the unfamiliar word.
Mary visibly struggled on how to respond to the honest question, and eventually decided to elaborate. “Okay, you know how I said I’m actually twenty-four?” Lili nodded. “In my last life, Tanya von Degurechaff was a horrible monster of a woman who killed my father, stole his gun, and then, later on, killed me with that very same gun. I was eighteen.” It was a war, Mary. You were a volunteer, even. Also, Mary’s father was the guy with the fancy gun? The one who refused to let Tanya remove her bayonet from his chest as he fell into the ocean? That was a good gun… “To make things even worse, that gun was a present from me!” At least Mary has good taste in armaments. “She was also known as the Devil of the Rhine, killer of thousands and the architect behind the Arene Massacre.”
If Mary wanted Tanya to break by spouting inaccurate data that demanded correction… Well, Tanya had used the internet before. Don’t feed the trolls. Still, there was one weakness in her story. “Massacres aren’t usually perpetrated by one person.” Tanya observed. “Is it a translation error? Perhaps the Arene Murders?”
Mary flagged at the odd point, just as planned. “No, it was a massacre of most of the city of Arene. The Imperial artillery, at the command of Degurechaff, firebombed the city when it was still full of civilians.” Pheh. Propaganda. Tanya only commanded the mages there. The commands came straight from the General Staff, too. Being a soldier sucked.
Still, it was a point to pick at. “Military?” Tanya questioned. “You mean, she was a soldier? There were lady soldiers?” Tanya scoffed, before pretending to realize something. “Wait, you said she looked just like me. There were lady child soldiers?” Tanya was all for gender equality, but poking at timeline inconsistencies is a great way to muddle the matter.
“She was just short!” Mary insisted. Oh? Tanya didn’t expect that. “Degurechaff was a mage, one of the strongest. She couldn’t beat me fighting fair.” No such thing. That said, essentially accurate. Tanya did need to take steps to ensure that all engagements with the Bloody Valkyrie were undertaken with the deck stacked as much as possible. Fair fights were for corpses. “Physical strength doesn’t matter for a mage.” It does, but being light and small were actually pretty significant advantages to compensate for that.
“Like psychics.” Tanya added. “Because magic isn’t real.”
“Yes, exactly.” Mary said before realizing what she just agreed with. “I mean no! Magic was real, you used it with computation orbs that calculated the spells for you.” Don’t feed the trolls, Mary.
“So it’s like the psychoactive technology Agent Mentalis creates.” Tanya replied.
“Yes, like that.” Mary agreed, spending a moment to review the statement for any trickery. “I couldn’t understand the science, but it used Elenium to channel mana through the calculative parts to create the effect. It was like a pocket watch.”
“Like psitanium channels psychic power at the direction of a psychic.” Tanya added, plucking the meditative chunk she had in her pocket and holding it up. “Agent Nein’s pocket watch is capable of telling time accurately even within a mind. It’s quite useful, as the perception of time can be quite fluid.” It was one of the risks Agent Nein explained ahead of time about psychic meditation. One couldn’t wake up to physical stimulus as easily from a meditative trance as they could to regular sleep, after all. As last night’s consequences proved.
Lili, her attention span having expired, turned to Tanya. “Really? I want a psi watch!”
“Ask Agent Mentalis.” Tanya immediately said, passing the buck like a professional babysitter.
“We’ve drifted off topic.” Mary said. Drat. “The point is, Tanya von Degurechaff is the worst, and you are very blatantly her!”
“Lili, do I look like someone who would kill thousands?” Tanya asked, before realizing her mistake.
“Yes.” Lili immediately answered. “You’re scary when you’re mad. Or if you miss naptime.”
Tanya pouted at the slander. “Well, I’m not.” Tanya lied before transitioning back into the truth. “I detest violence, despite my talent for the more physical psychic arts.”
“Yeah, you stink at telepathy.” Lili agreed. “And zoolinguism.” She added. “And clairvoyance.” With a sneaky grin, she slung one more arrow right into Tanya’s dignity. “And you really stink at astral projection.” She giggled and swatted Tanya’s baggy shorts. “You might want to get changed if we’re going back into Sasha’s mind for PSI blast training.” Well, that ended any chance Tanya had of being respected by Lili for a while. Lili also couldn’t do half of those things, but one of the few things her tiny three year old brain understood was that pointing out the fact that she was three was the perfect verbal parry when it came to such arguments, with no shame at deploying it in the same conversation that she asserts the opposite.
As such… “I said I detest violence, not that I won’t use it when provoked.” Tanya said warningly. It was blatant intimidation, and Lili shrunk back at the threat in her tone, but children were simply not rational enough for reasoned debate.
Mary seemed a little confused at the exchange, which proved that she did miss the innuendo on the subject of exactly what the embarrassing consequences of improperly astrally projecting were, either from overeager execution or forced expulsion. “What are you talking about? Why would she need to change?” Mary asked.
Tanya waved off Mary’s concern. “It’s not important. I participated in marksmanship training earlier, I won’t be joining you for it. I’ll be learning something else.” At least, Tanya was reasonably certain that was what was going to happen.
“Why do you get all of this special training, anyway?” Mary whined.
“It’s because her mom’s Agent Vodello.” Said Gisu, skateboarding into the conversation with Morris rolling in behind her. “There was a memory vault I found that showed Tanya’s baby pictures.” Tanya blinked, then played along with the intent and acted embarrassed. “That’s right, I got some juicy memories from a real psychonaut.”
Tanya immediately popped Gisu’s ego. “You only saw what Miss Milla allowed you to see.” At Gisu’s skeptical brow, Tanya elaborated. “Tell me, what exactly did you see?”
Gisu shrugged and answered the question. “It was a slideshow. First, there were two pictures of baby Tanya with Agent Vodello. Then it was her meeting Agent Nein, who was rescuing you from something, he was very dashing. Then it was you doing homework or something in what I think was her office while she did Psychonauts things. Finally, it showed you walking off the jet with her to Camp.”
Tanya nodded along. “Yes, a carefully curated set of memories.” She said after Gisu finished. “Describing the events that led to Miss Milla meeting Agent Nein as ‘rescuing me’ is so far off the mark she likely just fabricated that particular memory for your perusal.” Also, Tanya had never seen a memory vault before, so knowing that it showed static pictures had potential.
Morris seemed pretty interested in that tidbit. “Yeah, I saw the vault too. What really happened? It sounds like it’s something really gnarly.”
While Tanya had never heard that particular slang before, it was easy enough to parse. “None of your business.” She said, shutting down that line of inquiry. “It’s not for children to know.”
Mary hummed. “You know, they did mention at one point that we’ll be peeking at each other’s minds…”
“On a volunteer basis.” Tanya corrected. “With veto power on who gets the chance.” One of the big things that Agent Hollis repeated whenever she trained newbie agents (often enough that Tanya’s limited exposure heard it twice) was that consent was paramount when it came to non-mission based usage of psychic powers, with Astral Projection being more controlled than any other. It reminded Tanya of her drill sergeant days, making sure her battle maniacs knew exactly what qualified as a proper military target or not. “You couldn’t get into my mind if you tried.” Agent Nein confirmed that psychic shielding did protect from the Psychoportal, it just slides off the barrier.
Mary’s eyes lit up at the explanation. “That means I can volunteer and not have to let you in? Perfect.”
Well, there was a pretty good chance that Agent Nein or Miss Milla would veto entering the mind of someone they see as delusional, but Tanya didn’t really need to see what having past lives looked like in a person’s mind, so it’s not a big deal. “Suit yourself.” With their conversational goals accomplished, Tanya decided to do some exploring.
If nothing else, a larger chunk of psitanium could be quite useful.
----------------
The grounds were fairly large, and oddly regular. She couldn’t quite put her finger on exactly why she got the impression that this was a large garden rather than actual wilderness, but… hrm. Could it be a psychic impression? She did notice some psychic traps, the kinds of things that would be used to misdirect travelers…
Tanya stepped off one of the paths to more closely examine a rock that looked like it might be carved when Agent Cruller suddenly appeared, enraged. “Hey now! Stay on the path!”
Tanya’s psychic shield flared as a powerful telekinetic shove brought her back on the path. “What the?” Tanya found herself asking as she looked at Agent Cruller.
Back at the Motherlobe, Agent Cruller’s disposition varied depending on his particular role. In the mail room, he was erratic and bossy, having a singular vision for his environment and violently correcting any deviation from that vision. In the bowling alley, he obsessively cleaned and sterilized every surface and every bowling shoe, but didn’t lash out at anyone, being strictly professional as he tended to his imagined sanitation duties. Finally, in the Hair salon, he was instead laser focused on tending to whoever needed his services, gently but insistently restraining any of his clients that tried to leave before he was finished with their hair, then letting them get on their way.
Each one of Agent Cruller’s personae needed to be managed independently, as the man was still a powerful psychic that was perfectly willing to abuse that power if it meant that he could fulfill his assigned tasks. The Park Ranger guise he was currently wielding appeared to be one of the more erratic ones. “Apologies, Mr. Park Ranger.” Tanya said placatingly. “I will stay on the path.”
Agent Cruller absently twitched as he processed the statement. This happened sometimes, as another factor in dealing with Agent Cruller is that his lucidity tended to wax and wane, occasionally going on a tangent that was impossible to divert him from. “Alright then, I’ll let you off with a warning this time, Missy. The paths are marked, just stay on it and everything will be nice and will be where it needs to be.”
That was actually much more coherent than the mailman persona usually is. “I do have a question, if you have a moment.”
“Yeah?” Agent Cruller said as he carefully raked the disturbed grass from Tanya’s foot.
“The torches at the meeting hall.” Tanya said, gesturing vaguely in the appropriate direction. “I know most of the names on there, but… Who is Lucrecia Mux?”
Agent Cruller flinched and shuddered at the question, clutching his own head and moaning. PSI blasts lashed out, nearly breaking Tanya’s psychic shield and causing significant damage to the nearby woodland. “Wha?” Agent Cruller made out before noticing the broken tree branch, the scorched grass, and the cracked sign. At the minor damage, he wept as if it was much greater. Strange psychic phenomena manifested as he howled at nothing, a broken man breaking further.
Tanya had a well developed sense of threat, when it was time to retreat and when it was time to attack. This was the former situation, so Tanya took flight and went at full speed far away from the powerful psychic’s meltdown. A stray piece of psitanium shot out like a bullet, shattering Tanya’s passive shield and scoring a cut on her arm. Tanya focused once more on her shield, curling into a ball as it formed a complete protective sphere, blocking out everything as it rolled around.
Another sharp impact sent Tanya tumbling and moving, causing her to lose track of what direction down was, much less keeping track of where she was going.
Eventually, as the only sense that Tanya possessed that could discern anything outside of her complete shield was her sense of balance, she deduced that she landed in the lake at some point, as while she had not come to a complete stop, the remaining motions were reasonably regular and of low intensity.
…Also, she was reasonably certain she was upside down, and was not as resistant to motion sickness as she thought she was. Ew. Biting the bullet, Tanya dropped her shield, water flooding in and soaking her to the bone. The fact that this also concealed what happened within the bubble of isolation was a bonus.
Before she could orient herself properly, a telekinetic hand plucked her out of the water, turning her until she was face to face with Miss Milla.
“Tanya.” Miss Milla said worriedly. “What happened?” Her gaze zeroed into the cut on her arm, bleeding freely. “You’re bleeding!” She flew towards the cafeteria, which also had the first aid station attached.
“Agent Cruller appears to have had another episode.” Agent Nein said, frowning deeply as he approached Miss Milla helping Tanya out of her wet clothes. He was politely not looking directly at her. “The damage his own powers are inflicting to the environment is creating further stressors, a feedback loop.”
Miss Milla looked between Tanya, who was bandaged and in dry if insufficient clothing, and the psychic chaos. “...I should help Mr. Cruller.” She eventually said before taking off towards the deranged psychic.
Agent Nein’s hand twitched towards his cigarettes as he smacked his lips. “I take it you stumbled across a new trigger? You’re too meticulous to provoke him intentionally.” He said calmly.
Tanya nodded, glad that Agent Nein immediately understood the situation. Working with competent people was quite pleasant, at times. “I asked him about Lucrecia Mux.” She looked at her soaked clothing and started to focus, drying them with hydrokinesis.
“Ah. Reckless, but it’s good that we’ve identified this before any of the other children could set him off. I’ll make an announcement at lunch.” Agent Nein said, nodding to himself as the situation was more or less resolved. It wasn’t in question that Miss Milla could calm Agent Cruller down, after all. “While I have you here, “ Agent Nein continued. “-did you manage to explore your entire mindscape? Or did you get tied up in memories?”
“I made a lot of progress, I think.” Tanya said. “...But I ended up falling into proper sleep as I transitioned from one section to another.” Well, an exceptionally deep sleep. Tanya would definitely have woken up in the middle of the night if it wasn’t for that.
“That happens when you meditate at night, yes. It was prepared for.” Agent Nein said in his usual matter-of-fact tone. It did make her feel a little bit better about her failure. “Do you have any questions about what you’ve experienced?”
Tanya thought for a moment. “You mentioned a few things in your explanation on what you see in minds that I didn’t find.” She asked. Finding the clothes only slightly damp, she got dressed once more. Their trip in the lake definitely put them far from being clean, but there was no way Tanya was going to go outside without them.
“You’re too young to have formed a proper nugget of wisdom…” Agent Nein tilted his head. “Then again, you have many useful psychic skills and know many languages… You may have one or two hiding away. Don’t be worried if you don’t find it. You haven’t used those skills much when it comes to practical application, which is important for the formation of a nugget of wisdom.” Good to know. “As for emotional baggage… you’re blind to seeing it within your own mind. It’s not impossible to resolve things without assistance from another psychic, but it’s not easy. As you may have noticed, the rules for how you interact with the mind changes if it’s your own.”
Tanya hummed at the explanation. “I did notice that when I touched figments, it manifested the memories referenced.” At least, when it referenced one.
“Yes, that’s a good example.” Agent Nein agreed. “The second step of learning psychic construction is taking that property and mastering it, producing and manifesting a figment in one smooth process.” He created a telekinetic construct, but instead of a hand it was a tennis racket. “You’ve already mastered this, so you’re halfway there on this step.” He telekinetically fetched a tennis ball. “Shall we? We’ll continue our discussion.”
Heh. Agent Nein, in his role as Miss Milla’s boyfriend, did have a habit of slotting himself into a fatherly role when it came to Tanya. His willingness and lack of intrusiveness with it was appreciated by both Miss Milla and Tanya. “I could go a few rounds.” Tanya said, manifesting their own racket.
They didn’t have a net, or a clear enough space to pretend to have one, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t just whack the ball in the other’s direction in a clear-ish area. It was the tennis equivalent of playing catch.
It was a relaxing way to pass the time until lunch, at least.