Pyschoprotective 3

Yeah, the Anima Academy chapter is nowhere near finished, so as promised, I'm releasing this chapter I've had burning a hole in my pocket as compensation.

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Agent Nein, positively radiating amusement, depressed his foot into another section of floor.

Tanya’s eyes immediately snapped to a pipe that curved around the ledge behind them, releasing an odd creature. Looking like a caricature of an auditor, with a suit, glasses, and a stamp in their hands that had a red circle with a slash in it. “No.” It said in a robotic voice.

“Oh no, it’s a censor.” Agent Nein said, deadpan but with a wry grin. “They’re an integral part of any sane mind. They roam your psyche looking for thoughts that don’t belong. Hallucinations, manias, waking dreams, the call of the void… psychic intruders. Once found, they stamp them out. Take care of that one, will you? The other children might get hurt.” Blatant lies! “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.”

So that’s how he wants to play it? Tanya waited for it to approach them, clearly spotting Tanya as something that fell under its jurisdiction. It brought its massive arm up to hit Tanya with his stamp, and Tanya just created a mage blade on their hand and swiped at the lifted arm, the short creature’s disproportionately long arms an easy target for such an attack. The arm was cut cleanly in half, and the censor dissolved into dust. From the pipe, a second censor popped out. Irritation spiked out in a PSI Blast, the impact of the shot sending the little fake man flying off the side of the mind’s structure and into the void… or maybe just orbit.

“As always, your PSI blasts are impressively powerful.” Agent Nein commented.

“No.” Crackled out the mechanical voices of two more censors, as a second pipe had popped up.

“...But your rate of fire could use some work.” He added as Tanya blasted one of the two mental defenses, using a kick to send the second one after the first. “Overtaxing your mental energies can be a big problem, if you don’t modulate your blasts better.”

Now that he mentioned it, Tanya was beginning to feel fatigued. Normally, using multiple blasts in quick succession caused… not headaches, per say, but more of an emotional draining effect. Noting the now three censors had lined up for them, Tanya blasted the lot into dust once more. As before, the exertion seemed more of a full body thing than when using it in the physical world… which makes sense, as Tanya’s body was currently made entirely of mind.

“It appears that the side down there has begun to destabilize. Oh no.” Agent Nein said without even trying to sound sincere. “I couldn’t possibly leave the children unsupervised, so I must remain here.” He took a drag off of his cigarette. “If something isn’t done, we’ll have to cut this whole thing short. I’m sure the children would be devastated.”

Tanya crossed their arms as the sounds of mechanical refusals sounded out from down the ledge. After a moment, Agent Nein added: “They’re referencing my accumulated marksmanship knowledge to increase their effectiveness. Will someone think of the children?”

“Fine, I’ll play your game.” Tanya said, stomping over the ledge and letting the gravity re-orient as they crossed the corner.

If Tanya had to guess, the terrain spilling out of the square face of the giant foldout cube appeared to be memories of some kind of… basement? There were pipes, the thing spewing flames looked vaguely like a coal stove or water heater… stacks of giant shoeboxes provided a few elevated sections… It might be an amalgamation of multiple memories. There were some figments flitting about, images of shoes, guns, Miss Mila, and… was that one of Tanya?

The censors, on the other hand, seemed to have picked up a new trick, as they started launching bolts of energy shaped like the circle-and-slash that was on their stamps, using the word ‘no’ to launch them. They were… reasonably fast, but only as quick as a tennis ball. Wait a minute…

“I’ll be taking that advice.” Tanya said out loud as they manifested a mage… racket. Drawing on fondly-recalled memories from their first life, Tanya started returning the censor’s serves, taking to the air once the censor’s danmaku impersonation became too much.

With the changing of tactics from standing one’s ground to proper asymmetric warfare, the censors were almost too easy. Their stubby legs made their mobility useless, and there was plenty of cover to limit firing arcs. The mage racket was naturally quite sharp on the edge, and between the deflections, melee kills, and PSI blasts to destroy the pipes that were providing reinforcements, with the collection of figments providing Tanya’s system another jolt of energy, allowing them to keep going full bore. Tanya was finding it as fun as her favorite first person shooters. It had been so long since violence could be simulated rather than real… they found themselves outright giggling as they PSI blasted the last censor into dust. “Ah, I didn’t realize how much I missed video games until this one moment…” Psychic video games, that could be lucrative, if Agent Nein was right and non-psychics could still fiddle with their own mind. It would be like VR!

At the top of the tallest tower of the personalized course, was something interesting. It was a gun. A Luger, in fact. Made of gold. It shined with light in a way real gold never does, and when Tanya reached out to it, the light pulsed, invigorating Tanya’s astral body like a figment would just from proximity. Was this… a nugget of wisdom?

Tanya grabbed the pistol, and was flooded with psychic energy. Flashes of memory, of hours at the gun range, of pistol maintenance, of practice to master the intricacies of the PSI blast. The terrain started to recede and fall back, within seconds becoming a flat square, with only a design reminiscent of abstract art being the only decoration. A door appeared in the air, shaped like what Tanya was beginning to understand was the symbol of censors, a red circle with a slash, just like every ‘no smoking’ sign ever placed.

Out of that door, a new censor type emerged. Broad and bulky, holding a massive riot shield marked with their usual symbol, their off hand armed with some knuckle dusters, decorated with censor symbols and the word ‘no’, of course.

Just like a video game, to present you an enemy with a vulnerability to the exact thing you just learned. Tanya immediately resolved to search the offices and apartments of Agents Nein and Mentalis for the video games they must be hiding. Video games existed in 1975, right? Tanya pointed her arm above the censor, an astral image of their mondragon rifle appearing. They took a moment to charge the shot as Tanya brought up the memory of an artillery spell, even though PSI blast could never get close to the level of devastation those could inflict. Finally, with a squeezing of the trigger, the overpowered PSI blast shot above… and immediately turned around to drill into the back of the oversized censor’s head, causing the mental construct to explode into psychic dust.

“Good work, Tanya.” Agent Nein said, although his physical presence was still back watching the other children. Naturally, a psychic of his caliber is aware of everything happening in his mind. “Not every psychic can extract something useful from a nugget of wisdom, particularly so quickly. Even moreso when the skills involved include so much you’ve not had much to do with.” Well, Tanya already knew quite a lot about guns, so they were able to focus on the PSI blast tricks without trouble. Was that what he meant? “Do me a favor, will you, and don’t mention this to the other campers? Passing on skills like this works fine for a single student at a time, but it can lead to bad things if psychic energy isn’t allowed to accumulate properly.”

"Understood." Tanya said as they walked over the lip of the cube to join Agent Nein once more. “...How do you organize your mind like this? It sounds useful.”

Agent Nein smirked at Tanya. “Ah, it looks like Agent Vodello owes me a dream fluff.” Did they gamble on Tanya asking that!? “Psychic construction is indeed incredibly useful. Organizing your mind operates as a defense against telepathy, one that doesn’t block off your own telepathy like your passive shield does.” Tanya’s eyes sharpened. That sounded like exactly what Tanya needed. “This includes astral projections trying to get your secrets, by the way. As you can see, only the parts of my mind that I allow you to see are accessible to you.” Tanya idly wondered whether or not such mental defenses would work against Being X… “Most importantly, it is a skill that can be turned to create psychic constructs in other people’s minds, which is a critical skill in many Psychonauts operations.” Tanya supposed it made sense that learning to shape your own mind would be a necessary step in learning how to shape the minds of others… but that raised important questions on the side effects of manipulating your own mind.

Actually… “Agent Nein, what are the side effects of restructuring your own mind like this?”

He waved Tanya off. “Minimal. All of your mind is still there, you’re just shifting it around a bit. Drawing connections and establishing narratives in another person’s mind has risks, true, but fiddling with your own mind is near impossible, as psychic constructs collapse if you’re aware that they’re fake. You’d need to damage your own memories, particularly the memory of you making the changes, in order for anything serious to happen.” After a moment, he seemed to have realized something. “Ah, just remember that sealing memories into memory vaults is both easy and safer than trying to destroy them. You’re not likely to succeed in actually destroying them unless you had additional psychic power backing up your attempts at a minimum, but…” Agent Nein paused, in exactly the same way he did when he chuckled at a sexual innuendo a few months ago before remembering Tanya’s age. “Just don’t.” The effects must be pretty grisly, if even he balked at recounting them.

Looking over the children once more, he put his hand to his temple. His voice rang loudly throughout the space. “Alright children, that’s enough playtime for now. Everyone leave by using your smelling salts so I can clean things up again.”

Tanya took out her own smelling salts, and with a twist, inhaled the acrid smell, every single muscle seizing at the thorough unpleasantness. All other senses… shattered, was the best word, as Tanya’s presence launched itself into the void that replaced the sky.

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After everyone was outside of the mind, Tanya made sure to ignore the fact that she was wearing different clothes than before, as assuredly Miss Mila would implement a decoy system to minimize embarrassment. It would give her an excuse to put Tanya in the cutesey hippie flower dress that she hated, didn’t pack, and was currently wearing. With pigtails.

“All in all, that went well.” Agent Nein said after the last person regained consciousness. “Some of you put a bit too much of yourself into your astral projection, which puts your bodies into a coma instead of a meditative trance, but that’s an easy mistake to make. Even adults make that mistake in their first projection.” Tanya frowned at the condescension, but in these circumstances, being an adult in a child’s body doesn’t really help. So she once more put it out of her mind.

“It takes a few trips in order to get the hang of things, children.” Miss Mila added. “Never try to astrally project without a PSI door, especially here at camp. Without that, a mistake can be much more dangerous. Now, we’ll break for lunch, then we’ll have some fun in my mind, instead! I’ll show you how to use my personal favorite psychic technique!” She floated in the air, pirouetting as she moved towards the mess hall. “Come now, I’m sure you’ve worked up an appetite with all that exercise!” Despite being practically (and literally, in some cases) coma patients, psychic power did use up calories, just like magic did in her second life.

Still, going straight into another mind after a break did explain why Miss Mila decided to put Tanya in-DECOY. That was purely Miss Mila’s desire to play dress-up and had no other impetus. It was far from the first time such indignities have been required, a day or two is nothing compared to years. The important thing to focus on is the fact that unlike in her last life, the food is merely unhealthy, instead of also being terrible. Also on keeping calm in the face of the children teasing her for the ridiculous outfit.

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Much like before, Tanya was quickly separated from the children for a different activity, to account for the fact that Tanya had already mastered Levitation.

Miss Mina’s mind was laid out like a giant dance club… Tanya would call it an old dance club, but given the year, this was probably contemporary. Everything was spread out, and laid out a bit more like a skate park, with ramps and half-pipes everywhere separating the sections. The club was populated by caricatures of people, with their most prominent features emphasized and their personal color schemes reflected on their hair and skin as well as clothes. Tanya thought such a thing would be unsettling, but the unreality of the background characters was obvious enough that it merited nothing stronger than a shrug.

Mina communicated with the various students by showing up on one of the many floating monitors, dancing while giving advice on how to properly use the levitation ball technique, which was much easier to learn than free-floating levitation.

Tanya, on the other hand, was instead placed into a separate partition in Miss Mila’s mind, where the environment was reminiscent of the playroom in the group home to instead put further practice into Astral Projection.

Miss Mila had manifested the old television into the playroom instead of bringing in one of the floating monitors from the club construct for this instruction, which frequently switched between her vision outside, where Agent Nein was, and another instance of her dancing instruction. The television was never in the playroom in reality, mind you, but in comparison to the other changes in this mental copy, it was small potatoes.

“The issue persists.” Agent Nein said as he examined Tanya’s comatose body after the third attempt, slumped backward onto pillows rather than remaining upright while seated like all… most of the children. “I suspect that this issue is rooted in the constant mental shields, as the normal partitioning of some small part of your psyche in your original body, which is normally instinctive, is prevented by the protective containment.” Supposedly, that was the mechanism where people can somehow live in this world with their brain completely removed, albeit in a simple, toddler-like state. It was by far the strangest thing that psychic powers enabled, in Tanya’s opinion.

With this theory, Tanya resisted the impulse to groan. “You did mention that my skill in psychic shielding was unique…”

“Indeed. There are no documented cases of someone so thoroughly protecting their psyche from telepathy in the manner you have.” Agent Nein confirmed. “It’s developed to the point of obsession, and it has impeded your development of the senses most psychics take for granted.” Tanya thought that not listening to other people’s thoughts was just being polite, but what did she know? She was twelve, after all. Bah.

One of the stuffed animals, the bear that Tanya had seized in the past to better act as a little girl would (she had completely forgotten about it, in the confusion of the fire… didn’t she name it after Visha? In hindsight, she probably should have pretended to care about the thing afterwards), grew in size to match Miss Mila’s height before enveloping Tanya’s mind in a hug. Her voice came from Visha the bear: “Tanya, you told me once that you disliked violence.” She did? Tanya didn’t remember that. It was true, though. “If you want to learn the good that psychics can do, you need to stop shutting everyone out.”

Tanya’s passive mage shell flickered on her skin as it thickened at the thought. Who knows what horrible things the Type 95 had done to her brain? The psychonauts have not been historically kind to aberrant psychologies that weren’t one of the founders, and she had no intention of joining the ranks of those who died on the experiment table and had their brains shoved into Agent Mentalis’s collection.

Then again… Mary was clearly something resembling free and without signs of being experimented on. She couldn’t possibly have done a good job hiding her past life… She even was adamant that she wasn’t crazy, which was total nonsense of course, but there was no way the Psychonauts would be so sloppy as to not even know about her claims of reincarnation…

…Wait, no, she could entirely believe the Psychonauts would be that sloppy. But Agent Nein was involved, and he’s the meticulous sort. “...What do you know about Mary?” Tanya decided to ask. It was a little risky, but…

Agent Nein looked surprised at the change in topic, but answered readily enough. “Miss May Daye, alias ‘Mary’, likely due to a dislike of wordplay, or at least the specific connotation of her own name.” He smacked his lips, a habit he displays whenever he is without his cigarettes. “According to her file, she suffers from delusions about having lived before as a member of the military during the first world war, with the details being nonsensical enough that it could not possibly be true.” Well, that confirms one thing at least. “I suspect the actual cause is having absorbed and integrated the memories of multiple people at a tender young age, amalgamating them into a coherent, if fabricated, set of memories and coming up with the ‘past life’ idea to reconcile them with her age. I hope she’ll allow me to investigate her mind, such a rarity begs for experimentation.” A beat. “Of course at the end I would make sure to treat her delusions. While it would be difficult to excise false memories that have been with her for so many formative years, sequestration is still quite possible, allowing her to look at them more objectively.”

Right. That answers that question. “You mentioned that there are other ways to protect against telepathy.” Tanya said. “Psychic construction. Can we work on that?”

Agent Nein nodded. “Attacking the problem from another angle, that sounds prudent.”

“Sasha…” Miss Mila said warningly.

Despite the warnings of his girlfriend, Agent Nein soldiered on: “Of course, psychic construction requires such intense focus, that trusting your shields to hold up while you are rearranging things is a fool’s errand.” Tanya scowled at the warning. That sounded like a challenge. “But a psycho-isolation chamber will suffice to keep your valuable thoughts from being heard by any nearby psychic. It has its locks on the inside.”

Wasn’t there one of those on the tour? “Is that playground model functional?” Tanya asked. Tanya wasn’t entirely sure what it took to create a psychically insulated chamber, but it probably required some kind of technology, given that it was invented by Agent Mentalis…

“Of course.” Agent Nein replied. “It’s a bit small, too small for long-term habitation, or even standing for an adult, but you could spend a few hours inside your own head at a time without issue.” Ah. It’s not a cell, like the ones at the Motherlobe. Perfect. “It was designed for children who get overwhelmed by hyperactive telepathy and need some time in peace… but it will serve fine for the opposite problem.”

Visha the bear snorted at Agent Nein’s solution. “You shouldn’t encourage her paranoia, Sasha.”

“Obsessive behaviors can be resolved in many ways.” Agent Nein said to defend his argument. “Most of them cannot be done while Tanya maintains her psychic shielding. You know as well as I do how much of a violation it is to enter someone’s mind without permission, “ Did they forget Tanya was here? In her second life, being ignored was fairly common when in meetings with the upper brass, but that was more of a ‘lower ranks listen but do not speak’ sort of situation rather than this. “-this is a middle ground between allowing this unhealthy coping mechanism to continue and forcing the issue. It’s a matter of safety for all involved.”

Ah. That’s the issue. The Psychonauts are getting impatient with Tanya’s continued refusal to submit to a mind scan and the security vulnerabilities it introduces. It was a reasonable plan: teach a mental defense technique to the security risk that is incompatible with the effective one, and then barrel through the poorly constructed defenses once they are to be tested. It’s not a good plan, but given their general incompetence, see allowing Tanya on the grounds at all despite that risk, one can’t assume that their plans will be good.

Still, even if it isn’t, the solution is the same: master Psychic Construction and prepare a mind that looks appropriate to what they would expect to see, and all will be well. It’s just signal theory with extra steps, after all.

…This may require research of the minds of the children, but that shouldn’t be too difficult.

It was time to interrupt the increasing tension between the two counselors. It would be improper to allow their fight to fester, it would be a human resources disaster not to mediate things. “I’ll do it.” Tanya said, bringing attention to herself. “I’ll go into the psycho isolation chamber, and tidy up my brain. Then I’ll… give you a tour. Yes, a tour.” Volunteering the concession before it could become a demand, anticipating the needs of the management was how Tanya succeeded in her first life.

Tanya’s gambit succeeded, as Visha the Bear slumped and tightened the hug. “Oh Tanya, that would be wonderful. I’m sure your mind is as beautiful as you are.” After a beat, she added, clear worry in her tone: “But… be careful. Nightmares aren’t any fun, and they can hurt you, if you let them.” The bear looked at the toy chest, the interior of the closed container began to glow with ominous firelight. “Just remember, memories may be real, but it’s your mind. You’re in control, and smelling salts are just an aid, you can leave a mind without them if you wish for it hard enough.”

Tanya blinked. “I’ll take that into account.” Tanya looked at her comatose body on the television screen once more. “Ah, does plunging into your own mind…” Tanya searched for a delicate way to phrase the mortifyingly embarrassing question. “...have the same risks?”

Miss Mila took a moment to catch Tanya’s meaning. “Oh! Well, yes and no. What is that phrase you like to use… Plan for the best, prepare for the worst? Or was it the other way around…”

Tanya was afraid she’d say that.

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Fortunately for Tanya’s reputation, she was able to leave the levitation class before everyone else, and after some additional… preparation, Tanya found herself being let into the Psychoisolation chamber after dinner. It was a small dome, about the size of a jungle gym, that was designed on the outside to look a little bit like a big metal brain. The interior, on the other hand, revealed it to be a small padded room, which Tanya had to remind herself was appropriate for children and not exclusively reserved for asylums.

“Now, the first step of using Psychic Construction is gaining an understanding of what the mind is before your interference.” Agent Nein said as he ushered Tanya inside. “Therefore, before I will tell you how to do it, your first task is to take a tour of your own mind. As you’ve only got twelve years of memories, your mind should not be terribly large… although it’s apparent size and actual size don’t necessarily match up. For example, those long stretches between each room in Agent Vodello’s mind were as important as a single doorway, so despite the apparent size, you only saw a small curated portion of Agent Vodello’s mind. In contrast, despite the small apparent size of my mind, each and every block of that great cube is its own space, in a way.”

As Tanya entered the chamber, she noted that she was glad that she wasn’t claustrophobic. It was really quite cramped in here, although if she was her old size, from her first life… He never could fit in those capsule hotels.

“You can stay overnight if you wish, it’s not like the cabins have air conditioning either.” He tossed in a pillow and a thin blanket. “Leave them in there if you would prefer to go back to the cabin, and enter through Agent Vodello’s door, she left it unlocked for you.” Each of the cabins had a counselor's room that had its own entrance, so that there was an adult of the appropriate gender nearby for any overnight issues. Even with psychically induced maturity, children were filthy and emotionally unstable, and there was any number of issues that could spring up when they were put in a strange place filled with other children and the violent sounds of nature. Last night vindicated that decision, honestly. Tanya would like to say that she’d like to know who thought putting a three year old into a summer camp was a good idea, but she knew exactly who: Grand Head Zonotto.

Of course, it’s not like Tanya’s track record has been much better, with the side effects on her other psychic abilities caused by her passive mage shell.

After locking herself inside, Tanya laid back onto the padded floor to begin, carefully not thinking about what laying on a padded surface reminded her of, or the cutesy outfit that she was still wearing. Self-reflection and exploring one’s own mind normally required extensive training in meditation, or the use of Agent Nein’s brain tumbler, but there was another, more traditional method that worked just fine.

Placing the shard of Psitanium on her forehead, Tanya focused on it the same as she would for Astral projection. She deliberately dropped her mage shell, leaving herself as helpless as a… leaving herself helpless for the first time since the fire. The bunker will serve instead.

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Tanya wasn’t entirely sure she was expecting, when she entered her mind, but if you had told her ahead of time that this was what she would find… She’d probably believe you.

Tanya was lying down still, seeing a ceiling split into three. The top was fuzzy and shrouded, but it was the style of ceiling she remembered from her first life, specifically the one from her childhood, the traditional Japanese ceiling tiles rather than the ones from her apartment she held for the years before her first death. Below and to the right was the ceiling from the orphanage in Berun, beams and a roof without a proper ceiling, that she arrived in during her second life. Below and to the left was the ceiling from the other orphanage, painted white with that pointless texturing, the one that burned down. That section of ceiling had something the other two didn’t, a fraction of a mobile spinning around, vanishing and re-appearing as it moved into and from the other two sections. That mobile helped narrow things down, as well as the appearance of the bed once Tanya looked around a few more times.

This must be a representation of the earliest memory from each of Tanya’s three lives. A fuzzy recollection of her old childhood bedroom, the cradle she was spoon-fed in by the nun, and the crib where Miss Mila introduced herself to the newest baby she was in charge of, unknowing that Tanya could understand and remember the words.

Well, the question stands: where to go from here?

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