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Chapter Text

Razputin Aquato had been trained out of stage fright at an early age. An Aquato couldn't hesitate during a show, not when so many of their tricks relied on every member of the family (save his elderly Nona) to hold steady, lest their latest feat of human architecture come tumbling down. Still, the boy felt an unfamiliar, uncomfortable thrill as he stood before Whispering Rock's bewildered campers and counselors. This was an audience unlike any other he'd faced, and a performance more personal and more dangerous than even the most death-defying acrobatic act.

He was alone, for one. The Aquatos did not do solo acts. Their family dynamic was part of the appeal. This audience's myriad eyes ignored the adults surrounding him to fix on Raz and only Raz. He was ashamed to find himself wishing he had at least one of his four siblings beside him to share the spotlight.

No. He’d chosen to run away. That meant leaving the good parts behind with the bad. He couldn’t keep his brothers and sisters without accepting the accompanying parental panopticon, and that was something he had to escape for the sake of his mental health. 

Given his father’s increasingly demanding acrobatics lessons, his physical health might also be in danger. Basically, the situation had become untenable from every angle. Sorry Frazie, Queepie, Mirtala, Dion. If you’ve got complaints, take it up with the boss(es). 

Compounding his nerves was the knowledge that this audience could not be thrown into the post-performance mental garbage dump he'd filled with scores of one-time-only faces glimpsed in the transitions between various acrobatic feats. These were people he planned to know. People he wanted to know. Potential friends and allies in his quest for psychic enlightenment. He'd never had friends, and most of the family he'd thought were his allies had, in recent years, proven not to be. Among his goals in running away had been fixing those omissions. He needed at least some of them to be, if not impressed, then at the very least not repulsed, by his brief time on the stage.

Most imposing of all were the eyes he couldn't see. Behind him stood Sasha Nein, Milla Vodello, and Morceau Oleander, accomplished Psychonauts whose extensive accomplishments he'd memorized from the issues of his favorite comic series, True Psychic Tales. They were his idols, and their esteem could make or break his dream of becoming a Psychonaut himself.

As he opened his mouth to recite his first line, he quieted the nervous clamor inside his head by repeating a few simple facts. 

No one here knows who you were. 

They have no reason to question who you are.

Milla Vodello—yes, that Milla Vodello—had called him a little boy.

He summoned the voice he'd practiced—not a huge shift, just a little more gravelly than what tended to come out when he wasn't thinking about it—and said, "My name is Razputin."

That was true, no matter what his parents said.

"But everybody calls me Raz." 

Not true, but it would be pretty soon, if he could get the nickname to stick. That made it like, an honorary truth, right? A retroactive truth? 

Probably not worth worrying about.

Nobody objected. Nobody tried to correct him. One kid did call him a "lake monster," but even that was preferable to what his parents had called him the few times he'd tried that first line on them. He'd rather be a "lake monster" than a "daughter" any day.

"Compelling,” said Sasha Nein at Raz’s back.

Beside him, Oleander said, “Armored like a tank.” Raz could feel the agent prodding at the defenses he’d learned to construct back when he’d begun to suspect that his father might be psychic, too. His father would never admit it, of course. The Aquatos hated psychics, and Augustus Aquato seemed determined to toe the family line, even if it meant hating himself and his middle child. Still, if he was psychic, it wasn’t safe for Raz to leave his private thoughts unprotected. 

He had cobbled together a few theoretical techniques for mental fortification from the dry but informative “Did You Know?” sections found on the last few pages of most issues of True Psychic Tales and tested them against the one psychic he could trust to bash her way into his thoughts any time she thought she might find something funny, embarrassing, or both: his sister, Frazie.

To tempt her into pouncing, he’d wave the hint of a thought—something she could use to make fun of him for a few days, but not so consequential that he might end up actually bothered—at the edge of her consciousness like a cat’s feather toy. She’d attack, drag the thought out of its hidey hole, tease him with it for a while, then, once she’d drained it of all entertainment value, start sniffing around for something new. She was, to put it bluntly, an easily exploitable source of nonfatal aggression to pit against each new shield he built. The first few she punctured easily, but with each failure, Raz refined his methods, until one day Frazie grabbed him by the shoulders, dragged him into the wooded area beside their current campsite, and growled, “What are you doing?”

“What?” Raz said, projecting as much wide-eyed innocence as he could muster.

“Don’t give me that,” she said. “I know you’re doing something weird. I used to be able to bust into your brain whenever I wanted. Now it’s like trying to punch through a wall.”

“I just learned how to defend myself. That's all,” Raz said. 

Frazie frowned. “From what? Me?” Her grip on his shoulders loosened, and her next words were softer. “You know I’d never use anything I found to actually hurt you, right? We’re just messing around.”

“I know,” Raz said.

Frazie’s gaze shifted away from him, to the flickering campfire light just visible through the surrounding pine trees. “Dad?” she asked.

He nodded. 

“I don’t think he’d really hurt you,” she said. 

Raz said, “He already did. They both did.” He glared down at his tatty costume’s skirt. Donatella had bought it from a second-hand store, with great reluctance and a lot of shaming for wasting the family’s meager funds, after he’d thrown his old one into a campfire. When he told her she didn’t need to replace it, that he was fine with, say, borrowing one of Dion’s old costumes, his mother refused to consider it. 

“There is a boys’ costume, and a girls’ costume. We don’t want to confuse anyone by mixing and matching,” she said. 

“Who the heck’s gonna be confused by something like that?” Raz asked.

She poked him gently on the nose. “You, dear."

As always, she wrapped cruel words in affectionate gestures and addressed them to a pet name. Raz was left struggling for a way to say “I’m hurt” that wouldn’t be dismissed as an overreaction. She hadn’t been mean, after all. Not by any definition of “mean” that she’d accept. In the end, it took so long for him to come up with something sufficiently diplomatic that the moment to riposte had long passed, and he ended up saying nothing at all. 

If his defenses were particularly strong, it was out of necessity. He needed a fortress to shield both his mind and his heart. It had mostly worked against his parents. If it happened to impress the counselors, that was a nice little bonus that served the double purpose of ingratiating him with the Psychonauts and sprucing up an otherwise ugly necessity.

Impress and ingratiate were just the first steps in his still evolving plan to secure a place at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp. Next was to act like there was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing weird at all about arriving at camp under the cover of night and lurking, out of sight, until a chance misstep led to his discovery.  

In a professional tone usually reserved for the few direct interactions he had with the Aquato’s Family Circus patrons, he said, “Sorry I’m late. I don’t want to disrupt your briefing, Agent Oleander. Agents Nein, Vodello. Please, continue.”

He hopped off of the stage and made for the log benches where the rest of the children sat. He felt if he could just slip into place among the other campers, everyone would see that he belonged in that camp—in his chosen outfit, with his chosen name, wielding his passionately cultivated powers, far from the parents who denied him every one of those things—and should not be made to leave. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Oleander asked.

There was an aggressive rumble in his voice, but he didn’t try to stop Raz, nor did Raz stop himself. Despite his military attire and boot camp demeanor, Oleander was the least intimidating of the three agents. His exploits in True Psychic Tales had never quite matched the subtle flair of Agent Nein’s or the vibrant energy of Agent Vodello’s. He was a human club the Psychonauts wielded when the solution to a problem was simple, blunt force. Raz liked a good brawl in his comics occasionally, but even the coolest panel of Oleander slugging baddies in the face with a telekinetic fist didn’t ignite Raz’s imagination quite like the smart, classy solutions the other agents employed when the chips were down. 

In Raz’s unspoken (because he’d yet to find anyone who’d sit through the preamble) ranking of Psychonauts agents, Morceau Oleander was probably a low B, while Sasha Nein and Milla Vodello were high As. Those two were above even a few members of the Psychic Six. 

S-rank was, of course, reserved for the legendary founder of the Psychonauts, Ford Cruller, but poor Oleander could hardly be expected to measure up to that lofty standard. 

In a tone Raz couldn’t quite get a read on, Sasha said, “You’ve broken into a highly classified remote government training facility.”

“I know, isn’t it great?” Raz said, unable to fully mask his pride at pulling off such a stunt. Sasha Nein had broken into hundreds of government facilities over the years. Surely he, of all people, could see that what Raz had done should be celebrated. 

“Listen,” Raz said. He’d made it to the bench nearest the stage. He backed toward it as he continued. “Why don’t I just sit over here quietly with my fellow Psycadets.”

As he finally touched down, fitting easily into a gap between two of the other campers, he felt a wisp of relief. He’d made it. 

“We need to have this young man taken from here immediately,” Sasha said, and this time the stern authority in his tone was easy to read.

Raz realized that he had not, in fact, made it. 

Milla said, “I’ll call his parents.” 

“What?” Raz said. Her words were boulders hurled at Raz’s mental fortress. His carefully constructed wall of cool-guy composure cracked as they slammed into it. Call his parents? No. Not after he’d made it this far. He hadn’t run away just to be marched straight back by clueless adults who had no idea what he was running from.

He couldn’t tell them the truth. Not the entire truth. The psychic thing, sure. They knew how it was. Even in this era of increasing psychic acceptance, old prejudices still curdled in sour minds. The Psychonauts had even dealt with it in a few of the more pedagogical issues of True Psychic Tales. 

He had to keep secret the other reason he’d run away. He had no reason to believe they’d treat his circumstance any more kindly than his parents had. Most likely, they’d start demanding to know his “real” name. They’d stop referring to him as “him” or “he.” They’d start criticizing the way he talked, and walked, and sat, and dressed, and did every other little action the world had declared “binary” despite existing in as many variations as there are, have been, and ever will be human beings. 

His parents’ denial had sent him into a tailspin he only barely managed to pull out of. He was certain that if his idols joined them, there’d be no escaping the crash. 

Focus on the psychic angle, he told himself.

Keep the walls up.

No one here knows who you were. 

They have no reason to question who you are.

He said, “Don’t you train Psychonauts here?”

“Yes, darling, but—”

Raz cut her off. “To soar across the astral plane.” He had to keep talking. Distract them from any pesky delusions of being good, responsible adults by returning the poor lost child to his family. “To wage psychic warfare against the enemies of free thought.” 

“That is what I wrote on the front of the pamphlet,” Oleander said. His natural growl had devolved from leonine to catlike.

And just like that, Raz had his out. 

If he could get one of them on his side tonight, it might give him enough time to devise more effective ways of swaying the others. He could tell that Oleander was already close to buying it, and now Raz knew what pitch he needed to make the sale.

“Those words are why I’m here, Coach Oleander,” Raz said. “Do you remember what you wrote on the inside of that pamphlet?” 

No one, not even the more skeptical agents, spoke up to interrupt him. Raz took heart. The war might be in question, but this battle was winnable.

Raz was suddenly glad the pamphlet had been the only bit of reading material he’d managed to smuggle out of the caravan. “You were born with a special gift,” he recited. “But the people around you treat it like a curse. Your mother is afraid of you, and your father looks at you with shame in his eyes.” Raz noticed that Oleander was mouthing the words as he spoke. “Come to Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, and you can show them all. Back home, your powers make you a loner. An outcast. A circus freak. But in this dojo—in this psychic dojo—they make you a hero.” 

It was obvious before Oleander spoke that Raz’s gambit had worked. The man was practically in tears. 

“Get that soldier a bunk.” 

---

Milla pulled Raz aside as the campers were filing into the bunkhouses. The news wasn’t entirely good. They would let him stay for a few days, but he was prohibited from participating in psychic training without his parents’ consent. Worst of all, she would be contacting said parents as soon as possible.

A few details made the situation salvageable. First, Raz got the feeling that Oleander, at the very least, wouldn’t obey the mandate to keep him away from training. Second, it would probably take Milla significantly longer to contact the Aquatos than she was anticipating. One of the benefits of coming from a strictly mobile home was that the family had no landline and no address other than a P.O. box they checked around once a year for “fan mail.” She’d have to find out where they were performing, and Aquato advertising never seemed to make it very far beyond the surrounding neighborhoods of their current venue. 

The Aquatos had probably put a search out. (He hoped so, at least. As angry as he was, he still hated to think his family might just let him disappear without a fuss.) But they’d be searching for a name and description he no longer fit. Hopefully that would add a healthy layer of confusion to the whole affair. 

It was far from a perfect situation. He had a lot of work to do if he was going to get the training he needed and find a way to keep his family at bay.

He couldn’t feel too upset about it, though. Not when the bunkhouse they’d led him to was the boys’ bunkhouse. None of the other boys batted an eye as he climbed the ladder to an unclaimed top bunk. He grabbed the little slate hanging on the edge of his bunk and scratched “Raz” across it in white chalk. No one noticed. No one cared.

That, at least, was perfect.

Chapter Text

The bunk beds at Whispering Rock were unfortunate casualties of the Psychonauts' ongoing budget problems. Their mattresses were hard, with strange lumps in all the wrong places. The blankets were woven from a fabric so itchy that campers often chose the cold over the horrendous tactile experience of keeping warm. The pillows offered all the comfort of a strip of cardboard wrapped in a flimsy layer of cloth, and the bed springs screeched with every sleepy readjustment.

Most of the campers awoke feeling like they hadn't slept at all. They censured the sun filtering through the windows with groans and whimpers. They shambled to the bathrooms, then to breakfast, like a parade of strangely well-preserved zombies.

The sole survivor of the overnight apocalypse was Raz, who greeted the dawn with a satisfied yawn and a quick stretching session, then dashed off to the restrooms to take care of his morning routine. He was washed, dried, and dressed before any of the other boys arrived. He watched the others filter in from a nearby tree, positioned so that he could see the footpath, the building, and the face of a nearby clockpost without having to move. He noted the time the first boy arrived and the time that the last boy exited the restroom. If he wanted to avoid awkward situations, he figured it was best to always be first in, first out, or last in, last out. He’d see if tomorrow’s times matched up with today’s and adjust his sleeping plans accordingly.

After his reconnaissance was taken care of, he caught up with the largest group of campers on their way to breakfast. He followed them along a self-selected obstacle course of railings, trees, and lighting fixtures, listening for any conversations he might be able to join without sounding like a total doofus.

Most of the group spared this cryptid of unfathomable morning zeal only the occasional grumpy scowl. The exception was a pigtailed girl in a checkered tank and pink skirt, whose gaze traced the boy’s path with curious interest.

“What’s your deal?” she called up to him as he nimbly leapt from a branch threatening to dip under his weight to its sturdier neighbor.

He jumped from the new branch, grabbed onto it as he dropped, and swung down to fall into step beside her. “My deal?”

“How are you jumping around like a squirrel that broke into a coffee shop after a night here? I’ve seen prison cells with better beds.”

“You’ve seen prison cells?” Raz asked.

“Not the point, Goggles.” She grabbed a lens of the aforementioned eyewear and tugged it hard enough to drag his helmet over his eyes. He jerked away and hurriedly righted his headgear. The less the other campers saw of the haircut he’d given himself in a train station bathroom, the better.

Once he was a Psychonaut, he’d get something professional. The sort of thing he wouldn’t be embarrassed to show a pretty—if slightly belligerent—girl. Maybe he’d ask Sasha where he got his done. Milla seemed to like it well enough.

“The bunks didn’t seem that bad to me,” Raz said, though in all honesty, he couldn’t remember much about the beds themselves. He could only recall the slate, the chalk, his name, and the sudden absence of a weight he’d carried for so long that he’d forgotten what being unburdened felt like.

He must’ve drifted off before the reality of the bunkhouse accommodations could sink in. It felt like years since the last time he’d fallen asleep before at least half an hour of staring at a wall and thinking too much. Funny he’d finally manage it in an apparently sub-prison-quality bed multiple states away from home.

“If those aren’t that bad, I’d hate to see what you sleep on at home,” the girl said.

“Just a normal bed,” Raz said. “I did sleep on a few benches on my way here, though. And two train cars. Maybe that’s why.”

“Guess that makes sense,” the girl said. A pause stretched briefly between them before she said, “You really are a runaway, huh?”

“Yep,” he said. “Did you think I was lying?”

“Why not?” she said, shrugging. “Boys’ll lie about anything if they think it makes them look cool.”

He tried not to smile too widely at that last remark. She’d meant it as an insult, and he really did not want to have to try and explain why he didn’t take it that way.

“Did it?” he asked.

“Did it what?”

“Make me look cool.”

She said, “Psh.”

Raz let his smile widen. That wasn’t a no.

He hoped she’d sit with him at breakfast, but instead of joining any of the tables in the Lodge, she grabbed a single muffin and a milk carton and darted outside without another word to him or anyone else.

Raz figured Dogen was the next safest option for a breakfast buddy. They’d had a short conversation the night before, and if he really did have the power to explode a person’s head, it was probably smart to get on his good side, just in case the tinfoil hat got knocked off during camp activities.

“Hey, Raz,” Dogen said as the taller boy set his tray down beside him.

“Hi, Dogen,” Raz said. “How’s it going?”

“It’s okay,” Dogen said. “I got through the whole first night without any accidents, so I’m pretty excited.”

He did not sound excited. He sounded a bit like he’d just come back from a family funeral. Raz thought that might just be his default, though. Like how the girl from earlier always sounded like she was about two seconds away from introducing the nearest face to her fist. “That’s great,” he said, and meant it wholeheartedly.

Dogen nodded. “How about you?”

“Pretty good so far,” Raz said.

He took a bite of the apple he’d picked as the side for his pancakes. It was impressively tasteless, but the texture was fine, and he wasn’t going to nitpick the faults of fresh fruit after a week of scrounging chip bags out of whatever vending machine he could find that didn’t have psychic sensors protecting its stale, semi-crunchy innards. “Can’t complain,” he said.

As the Lodge filled up with other campers, Dogen quietly gave Raz their names. By the end of his second pancake, Raz had a mental dossier for almost every kid at Whispering Rock. “Wow. Seems like you know the whole camp,” Raz said.

“They introduced everyone before you got here yesterday,” Dogen said.

Raz cursed himself for missing the first bus out of the city the previous morning and getting to camp so late. If he hadn't spent half an hour looking for a bathroom he could use without spending money or risking an uncomfortable run-in, he wouldn't be so far behind everyone else.

“I’ve met a lot of them before, though,” his new friend added.

“Here?” Raz asked.

“Nuh uh. This is my first year.” The younger boy picked at his pile of hashbrowns. “Most of the big psychic families get together a few times a year. My parents sometimes make me go.”

Raz had recognized a few of the last names. "So you're from a big psychic family?" he asked. He tried not to feel jealous. His family was big in number, and it wasn't exactly un-psychic considering he and Frazie were definitely psychics, his dad was probably a psychic, and his little brother Queepie showed the signs (though he wouldn't confirm it when Raz asked, and he’d never responded to one of his older brother’s attempts to reach out telepathically). What Dogen meant by "big psychic family," though, was something else entirely.

He was talking about the giants of the paranormal world. The people who put psychics on the map, for good or ill. Families like the Zanottos, who were integral to the founding and the running of the Psychonauts, or—

"The Booles," Dogen said. "My last name's Boole."

"Like Compton Boole? The Compton Boole? Psychic Six Compton Boole?" Raz said. His voice hit a squeak somewhere in that third question. He cleared his throat and took a second to readjust before speaking again. "That's pretty cool."

Good. That sounded right. Dogen didn't seem to notice the octave breach, at least. "He's my grandpa," he said.

"Do you have zoopathy, like he does?" Raz asked. Zoopathy—the ability to talk with animals—was one of his favorite psychic powers, but it was unfortunately pretty rare, and it couldn't be learned. He'd tried to commune with a few woodland critters before and hadn't gotten a single comprehensible thought.

He had gotten bitten by a raccoon, though. The rabies shots convinced him not to try again.

"Yeah," Dogen said. "I can hear everything, if I'm not wearing my hat. It gets overwhelming. I stay away from them when I can."

Raz frowned. He'd hate to have a psychic power that cool and not be able to use it freely.

"Even with my hat, I can hear them if they're yelling, or talking right at me," Dogen said. "Like that one." He pointed at the window. A squirrel was pressed up against the glass, its glassy black eyes locked on Dogen's tray. "He really wants my hash browns," he said. "He thinks they're some kind of special nut."

"Maybe if you give him a hash brown, he'll realize they're not nuts and go away?" Raz suggested.

Dogen shook his head. "He won't be satisfied." He stabbed his fork into one of the hash browns with a vehemence that made Raz wince. "They're never satisfied."

Oh yeah, it was definitely a great idea to get on this kid's good side.

Raz wanted to question him further about the Boole family and zoopathy, but he wanted friends more, and Dogen was clearly uncomfortable with both subjects.

Sipping lightly at his juicebox, Raz searched for a subject that wouldn’t trouble the other boy. “There are a few kids missing, I think,” he said, glancing around the room. “The girl with the pigtails. The one with the astronaut helmet. And I could swear there was another girl. Brown hair, striped shirt? I saw her once last night, but I haven’t seen her today.”

“The last one’s Milka Phage,” Dogen said. “She’s shy, so she spends a lot of time invisible.” He looked around. “She might be here right now. There’s an empty chair with a tray in front of it at that table over there. Don’t stare, though. You’ll scare her off.” Raz took a look just lengthy enough to confirm Dogen’s claim. There was, indeed, a tray of half-eaten food and an empty chair pushed back far enough from the table for a small body’s comfortable occupancy.

“The girl with the helmet is Chloe Barge,” Dogen continued. “And the one with the pigtails is Lili Zanotto.”

Raz almost spat out his drink. He managed to gulp it down without choking, and said, as casually as he was able, “Is she related to Truman Zanotto?” Truman Zanotto was the Grand Head of the Psychonauts. The guy who showed up in almost every issue of True Psychic Tales to explain the mission and assign it to the proper agents. He didn’t do much field work himself, but he did get the occasional action panel in the Psychonauts’ Nerve Center when a mission was in jeopardy.

If Raz was ever to become a Psychonaut, his candidacy would be subjected to Truman Zanotto’s shrewd and often mission-critical judgment.

“She’s his daughter,” Dogen said.

Raz didn’t know whether to be terrified or thrilled. On the one hand, she was one of the few campers who’d chosen to speak with him without any prompting. She seemed interested, but it was hard to tell whether it was a “good” interested or a “bad” interested, given her naturally hostile demeanor. If it was “good,” she might sway Truman Zanotto’s opinion of the boy, and raise his chances of getting into the Psychonauts. If it was “bad,” she might sway Truman Zanotto’s opinion of the boy, and lower his chances of getting into the Psychonauts.

Dogen said, “You okay?”

Raz hadn’t realized his trepidation was showing. He wrestled his face back into neutrality. “Yeah. Fine. It’s just a little intimidating, you know. Being surrounded by so many cool psychic families and powers.” He nudged the last bite of pancake with his fork. “My family’s only powers are acrobatics and repression.”

“Acrobatics is pretty cool,” Dogen said.

“Maybe from the outside,” Raz groused. “To me, it feels like a bad joke. Half the time I tell someone I was raised in a circus, they laugh.” He glowered at his tray. “It’s not even a good circus. We don’t even have elephants. All the Aquato’s Family Circus has is a ratty tent, rattier costumes, and the world’s smallest horse.”

“Oh, yeah. I remember that horse,” Dogen said.

Raz’s breath caught. His heart crumpled like a piece of paper in a closed fist. He said, “Oh. Ha. Did I mention Sugarcube earlier?” Had he? He had to have, right? There was no way anyone at Whispering Rock had seen the Aquato’s Family Circus in action.

“My mom took me to see your circus when it passed through our town a few years ago,” Dogen said. “She heard it didn’t have many animals, so she thought it was the best chance I’d ever get to see an act like that in person.”

Raz couldn’t think. No, that wasn’t right. He was thinking too much. He was thinking so much, so quickly, that all of the thoughts were banding together into a ball of meaningless sounds that all meant ‘panic.’

Should he run? Should he hide? Would Dogen tell anyone else? Had Dogen told anyone else already? Maybe that’s why so few of the other campers had spoken to him. Maybe they all knew. Maybe they were all just waiting to ambush him with. With something. Something bad. Something that would hurt.

Through the TV static buzzing in his ears, Raz heard Dogen say, “It was a pretty good show. I’m glad I got to see it.”

And then: “You were my favorite of the brothers.”

It was like he’d slapped the snow right off of Raz’s broken channel. The picture settled into place. The dialogue made sense again. The hand around his heart unclenched, and it started to settle back into its usual shape.

He took a breath. It only scraped his throat a little.

“Thank you,” he said.

They both probably knew he wasn’t thanking Dogen for the compliment, but Raz wasn’t going to clarify, and Dogen didn’t ask him to.

Dogen Boole was scary in a way that made being his friend practically a survival tactic. But he was a good egg.

Chapter Text

Milla was usually late to breakfast, so the early minutes of her absence at the counselors’ table passed by without remark. It was when Sasha looked up from his reading to find his watch reporting an extra fifteen minutes beyond her usual delay that he started to wonder if she might have been held up by something more dire than the normal adolescent quandaries she always stopped to address along her morning route. 

He sent a gentle ping along the psychic connection the pair maintained. “Everything all right?”

“Oh no, I’m missing breakfast, aren’t I?” Milla replied. 

To Sasha’s relief, she sounded ‘troubled’ rather than ‘in trouble.’ Though a single word apart in syntax, those statuses differed vastly in severity. 

“Not a problem. I’m almost done here,” Sasha said. “Do you need help with anything?” 

She said, “We could use your opinion.”

“We?”

“I’m with Ford, down in his command center,” she said. “I needed some assistance locating Razputin’s parents, and I thought he might be able to take care of it with his surveillance equipment. I was right, but what he found has complicated matters somewhat. Could you join us?”

Sasha remembered the sudden shift in Raz’s confident demeanor when Milla had mentioned calling his parents. The boy’s recovery and pivot into a new persuasive stratagem had been so smooth it convinced Sasha that the brief break in Raz’s expression was simply surprise at having his clever plan disrupted. If it had, instead, been fear quickly disguised by a child who’d already proven to have stricter control over his own defenses than a child should ever need, then Milla’s difficulties contacting his parents might have saved them from making a serious mistake. 

There were many reasons a child might run away from home far more severe than pique at having been refused attendance at a summer camp. 

He started gathering his things. “Is this something we should let Morry in on?” he asked.

“No. I think this is a matter that requires more subtlety than our friend is generally capable of,” Milla said. “Let’s just leave him to Basic Braining. Hopefully that will keep the campers out of trouble while the rest of us are occupied.”

“Understood,” Sasha said. “I’ll be there soon.”

He wrapped a muffin in a napkin on the way out. Milla likely hadn’t eaten yet, and her levitation class was scheduled shortly after Basic Braining. If he couldn’t eat breakfast with her, he could at least make sure she didn’t go without.

---

Sasha found Milla and Ford huddled before one of the elder Psychonaut’s many monitors. While the surrounding monitors flashed through various images or active feeds, this one featured a static image. Though Sasha couldn’t make out its subjects from the command center’s entry point, the way it pulled Milla’s gaze told him it must be the object of her discontent. 

“Good morning,” he said as he approached. The pair turned to greet him. 

“Mornin’,” Ford said. “Hope you’re ready for a real stumper.” 

“I’m ready to help, at the very least,” Sasha said. 

He offered the muffin to Milla. She accepted with a small, sleepy smile. “Oh, thank you, Sasha. You are a lifesaver,” she said. She took a bite and said, “So sweet.” 

Was it directed at the muffin, or at her partner in crime fighting? He’d assume the former, for safety’s sake.

“What, nothing for me?” Ford said, planting his hands on his hips. 

“I’ll do many things for the Psychonauts,” Sasha said. “Delivering greasy meat strips from the lodge to your cavern is not one of them.” 

“Bah!” Ford said, but his impish grin made it clear the affront was feigned.

“So, what am I here to help with?” Sasha asked. 

“Take a look,” Ford said, pointing at the screen they’d been considering.

On the display was a photograph of a colorful poster tacked to a utility pole. Large, eye-catching letters across the top read “The Aquato Family’s Circus.” Below was the family itself, stacked in a diamond-shaped tower that must have been one of the “death-defying stunts” the poster advertised.

Sasha counted seven family members. At the base of the diamond was the man who must be the father, and at its highest point, the mother. Between them were five children of varying sizes and ages, three in skirts and two without. 

Neither of the pair without was Razputin. One was a teenager—the oldest of the bunch, if Sasha guessed correctly—and the other was barely beyond toddlerhood.

Of the other three children, two were, again, clearly in the wrong age range. The sibling whose hair was tied in large, braided rings was too small, and the one with curly pigtails was too tall and too clearly teenaged.

That left the child at the middle of the pyramid. Proportionally, they better matched Razputin than any of the other siblings, but the finer details of their facial structure were difficult to make out at the family’s distance from the camera, and one of their more visible features, a long, tight swoop of a braid that Sasha suspected had been treated with a frankly unconscionable amount of hair product, given its gravity defying properties, was missing entirely from the camp’s resident runaway. Without context, Sasha might not have connected Razputin with the child on the poster at all. 

But Sasha did have context, and enough of it to be sure Ford had found their man. The acrobatic ability, the last name the boy had reluctantly provided when Milla pressed for it, and the particular combination of physical size, age, and shape matched what information the Psychonauts had. 

Under normal circumstances, Ford’s discovery of the poster would have been the end of the matter. It provided clear photographic evidence that Razputin belonged to the family, and printed in the bottom right corner was a phone number to contact for “more information.” Even if the number didn’t lead directly to the Aquatos, Milla could surely use it to chain her way to them. 

Neither Milla nor Ford had chosen to call, though, and Sasha understood why. 

The gulf between Razputin as presented by his family’s advertisement and Razputin as he presented himself to Whispering Rock seemed too deep to be merely the disparity between costume and casual dress. Deep enough, at least, to give a conscientious camp counselor pause.

“The poster ain’t the only thing I found,” Ford said. “The Aquatos reported a missing child six days ago. Problem is, the report wasn’t filed for a ‘Razputin.’” 

As Sasha had suspected. He said, “Let me guess. It was filed under a name traditionally reserved for girls.”

“Bingo.” 

The screen blinked, and the poster was replaced with an official report including the missing child’s identifying information and last known location, a written description, and a headshot that dispelled any doubt that Razputin and the Aquato’s middle child were one and the same. All Sasha had to do was slide an imaginary hat over the child’s head, and they were identical.

Well, perhaps not entirely identical. The photographed Razputin wore the flattened smile of someone who didn’t want their picture taken but was resigned to it happening anyway. The spirited boy Sasha had met the previous night was not the type to resign himself to anything without a scrap. 

Sasha took out a cigarette and lit it with a flash of contained pyrokinesis. “I see why you skipped breakfast.” He took a long draw.

Milla crumpled her empty napkin with a sigh. “I just don’t know what to do. If he is transgender—do you think he is transgender?”

Sasha turned his head slightly to blow his cloud of smoke away from the other Psychonauts. “What, am I supposed to be the expert?” 

“Closest we got on hand,” Ford said. 

Sasha sighed. He didn’t like being asked to play arbiter of all things transgender when the matter cropped up in the course of his duties. Too often people mistook his opinion as representative of some monolithic transgender experience. He was just one man, and his was just one life. He'd never presume his truths could answer another person's questions, and he'd rather the other Psychonauts not presume as much on his behalf.

For Raz's sake, he'd hold off on voicing his complaints. It was true that he was the nearest thing to an 'authority' on these matters among Whispering Rock's limited selection of adults. Especially when over half of those adults were the same geriatric cisgender man in a selection of different hats. "We can’t assume anything until we hear the truth from the boy himself. It is possible he constructed the ‘Razputin’ identity just to throw the inevitable search party off his trail, but if he is transgender, then carelessly outing him could be dangerous. We don’t know what kind of people the Aquatos are. We don’t know what he might be running from.” 

He took another drag. A new cloud wafted away into the shadowed crevices of Ford’s cavern. “We do know that if he is transgender, his parents either aren’t aware, or they don’t recognize his identity. They’d have included his chosen name in the report if they did. We also know that for some reason he’s built a fortress around his mind strong enough to withstand a concentrated attack from a highly trained operative. In addition, I noticed a brief but significant loss of composure when you mentioned calling his parents last night.”

“Yes, I saw that, too,” Milla said. “I didn’t think anything of it.” She pressed two fingers to her temple. “I should have.”

“Now, now,” Ford said. “We might be psychic, but we’re not omniscient. No one’s gonna blame you for misreading a kid you’d met all of two minutes prior.”

Sasha nodded. He placed his free hand on her shoulder. “Ford’s right. I didn’t think much of it myself until you and I connected earlier. Even now, we can’t be certain what it meant.”

He looked back at the photograph. The fake smile felt unfortunately familiar. By the moment he became more and more convinced he knew its nature all too well. There were probably similar pictures of himself floating around the oldest of his social spheres. He’d indulged his friends’ longing for solid evidence of his presence at events, but it was entirely for their benefit. For his part, he avoided looking at them. 

He did keep one around, a group shot of his intern cohort celebrating graduation from the program Milla had given him a few years ago. She had ‘edited’ it by cutting him out of a more recent picture and pasting him over his past self. She’d even drawn a tiny graduation cap on construction paper and pasted that on his chronologically displaced head. The photo was warped from the paste, his pose in no way fit with the rest of the group, and he’d aged enough since graduation day to look like a thirty year old actor trying to fit in with the actual teenagers in a high school drama, but the imperfections only made him love it more. 

This photo of Raz was probably not a memory worth vandalizing. Maybe Sasha could find an excuse to snap something better during Raz’s stay at camp. He did seem the type to whole-heartedly embrace a chance at a photo with a Psychonaut. 

He tapped a finger against his cigarette, and a bit of ash fell to the floor. “I think we should give it at least a day or two before deciding on an approach. We can use the time to assess Razputin individually. I think I’ll invite him to my lab. See if I can get him to try out the Brain Tumbler, or invite him into my own mind and sneak in a few hints that we might be kindred spirits.” To Milla, he said, “Consider bending the rules a bit to let him into your levitation class.” 

“It does seem like the best option, for now,” Milla said. 

Ford said, “Anyone tries to get you in trouble, I’ll take the fall. No one’s gonna think twice about faulty orders from a broken old man.” 

Sasha nodded. “A little depressing, but likely correct. If you could keep an eye on things—”

“Oh, I certainly will,” Ford said. “But I ain’t sitting on my laurels while you two do all the real work. Not this time.”

“What, exactly, are you planning?” Sasha asked. 

“Not sure yet. Guess I’ll start by introducing myself. The real myself. We’ll see where it goes from there.” 

“Do not wrap him up in any wild schemes,” Milla said. “He may be talented, but he is still a child.”

“Milla, we’re running a summer camp. Only schemes we got around here are sneakin’ out after midnight or stealin’ extra snacks from the kitchen.” He chuckled. “But if it’ll make you feel better, I promise not to involve him in any grand, food-related heists. Unless we get really, really hungry.” 

Milla shook her head. “Just be careful,” she said. 

Sasha smiled. He said, “I understand your concern, but I don’t think we need to worry. Whispering Rock’s last grand emergency was three campers catching the flu and needing to be sent home early.” He took a final puff of his cigarette. “I highly doubt we’ll be facing anything wilder than that.” 

Chapter Text

Raz's hunch about Oleander proved correct. The boy needed none of the six separate arguments he'd concocted to secure an invitation to Basic Braining. The coach waited outside the Lodge as campers filed out, barking some variant of “Get your scrawny little behind up to class on the double” at any who swerved off the path back to the bunkhouses. When Raz emerged, Oleander held out his riding crop to stop the boy from passing by.

“I’m smart enough to know you aren’t gonna stop ‘til you get what you want,” the coach said, tapping the crop against Raz’s chest. “If you were the quittin’ type, you wouldn’t be here in the first place.” 

He gave the boy a feral, tooth bearing grin. “You’ve got drive. That’s something to be cultivated, not smothered under rules crapped out by desk jockeys who’ve never stepped foot on a real battlefield.” 

The crop slapped against Raz’s shoulder. “Milla can try and keep you out of her lessons if she wants, but I expect to see you up in that treehouse with the rest of the cadets, you hear me?”

Raz saluted. “Sir, yes sir!”

The crop withdrew. “Then get moving, soldier.”

---

Despite this encounter, Raz managed to miss the start of the lesson. In his defense, Whispering Rock brimmed with distractions too enticing for a young Psychonauts aspirant to ignore. Could he really be blamed for stopping to observe the ambient shenanigans of his fellow paranormal preteens? He’d wasted away in the Aquato family’s psychic barrens for ten long, lonely years. Now he found himself guest—albeit uninvited—at a table laden with every indulgence his starving heart craved, and he planned to partake.

When he’d finally wended his way through the gauntlet of camp happenings and stepped into the Coach’s treetop classroom, many other campers were already seated around Oleander and deep in a psychic trance that left them insensible to the outside world. The one student who reacted to Raz’s arrival was Lili, and only after a moment of thoughtless staring on the boy’s part. 

“Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer,” she said. 

“Whoops! Sorry,” Raz said. 

She slipped back into her trance without replying. 

Raz admired her effortless shift between the mental and physical worlds. He still felt clumsy using his powers in just one world. Two at once was an intimidating prospect. 

The difference between a real psychic education and his own one-man act as both teacher and student, Raz figured. It was a lot to make up for in the little time he had before he’d have to flee camp to avoid being hauled back home by whichever family members came to fetch him. 

He needed to earn his way into the Psychonauts as soon as possible. Once he did, they could take care of tricky issues like ‘custody’ and ‘child labor laws.’ The organization broke more consequential laws every other issue of True Psychic Tales. If they wanted Raz, they’d find a way. 

Raz approached the coach with mixed trepidation and excitement. “Coach Oleander? I’m reporting for Basic Braining.” 

The Coach didn’t open his eyes as he replied. “Son, do you realize that to take my course, I will have to pull you into my mind, and you will have to relive every bullet-scarred memory of every battle I have ever faced? It won’t be pretty. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather run around a bit more in the sunshine?”

“I’m ready, sir.”

“Well then. You’re late, Soldier!”

The Coach removed his hat. A tiny door sat atop his head. He lowered it toward the boy. “Get in here and give me twenty!”

The door opened. Raz hid his eyes behind his goggles and reluctantly lowered his defenses to allow the Coach’s grasping psyche inside. 

---

Everyone has a mental landscape that reflects various aspects of their “self” in aesthetic, population, and geography. Usually, these places remain unseen even by their creators, but psychic expeditions are possible if an explorer is properly trained. 

Raz, being both untrained and bereft of minds he felt safe experimenting with, had never helmed such an expedition himself, but mental world adventures made up a good chunk of his favorite True Psychic Tales stories. Sometimes the Psychonauts delved deep into a villain's mental lair to sniff out valuable intel. Occasionally, they stumbled across the evildoer’s tragic backstory and converted them to the side of good by helping them overcome some aspect of their trauma. In other issues, the Psychonauts visited more innocent minds — bystanders, witnesses, hostages, and even fellow agents.

Raz wondered what sort of realm lay undiscovered in himself. Some kind of circus, he guessed. Whether he liked it or not, his most significant memories dwelled in his family’s tents and caravan. He hoped it was at least a cooler circus than the Aquatos’ shabby real-world production. He deserved a tiger or two. 

His own mental world wasn't on the table today, and that suited him just fine. Raz wanted to make sure he knew what he was doing before he dove inward, and a Psychonaut's mind was the ideal environment for experimentation. Likely the Coach had configured it to support exactly that. Despite the other campers' doomsaying about Oleander's class, Raz anticipated mild peril at best.

The nervous twinge he felt when the Coach took hold of his psyche had nothing to do with the man's inner world. What worried Raz was, instead, a related phenomena he'd noticed in True Psychic Tales. 

When the Psychonauts explored a mind, they sometimes appeared differently from their real world selves. Usually it was just a change in style to match the mind's unique ecosystem, but one particular agent—Sasha Nein—diverged from his physical self in a more somatic way. 

A less discerning reader might never notice. Even Raz wasn't sure it was intentional until he realized the difference was consistent across all three of the periodical's regular artists. 

They drew Agent Nein taller in mental worlds. Raz confirmed it by comparing both Neins to both Millas. The pair shared panels often enough to amass a pile of evidence proving Sasha's variable height couldn't be accidental. Across all stories, artists, and issues, physical Sasha Nein was almost equal height with Milla, while mental Sasha Nein stood around half a head taller. 

Raz wrote a letter asking about the difference. To his surprise, one of the artists answered. It was a very short reply, just "Good eye!" accompanied by a sketch of the two Sashas and the artist's signature. 

Not much detail, but proof enough for Raz that the disparity was intentional. 

Currently, the letter lay pressed within a hardback book, a ‘greatest hits’ collection of True Psychic Tales issues from its first decade, with writer, artist, and even agent commentary. The collection rested at the bottom of his backpack, weighty with pages and purpose.

Raz had wanted to ask Sasha more specific questions about the mental world redesign before he went into a mind himself, but the agent disappeared during breakfast and hadn’t been seen since. He considered asking Milla, but she hadn't appeared at all that morning. The only adults in reach were the Coach, distracted by his lesson and surrounded by other campers, and the strangely familiar jack-of-all-trades groundskeeper, whose conversations and memory seemed limited to the concerns of his current job title. 

As Raz left himself for the first time, the unanswered questions followed. 

Can a mental self and physical self differ?

How much can they differ?

Why does it happen? 

Will I be okay if it happens?

Is it okay for me to want it?

---

Four of those questions were answered almost immediately as Raz’s consciousness landed in the disarmingly sedate first stop of the Coach’s psyche. He was so pleased with the answers that, for the first time in a long time, he was able to put the fifth aside.

Chapter Text

“So… this is it! The mental world…”

Raz started at his own words. They rode a voice much closer to ideal than he could pull off in the physical world. 

Thrill and terror struck him all at once. The difference wasn’t huge, but would the other campers—or the Coach—ask questions? 

One other student stood with Raz in the Coach’s mental office: Elton Fir, a kid Raz knew only from Dogen’s dossiers. “It looks like a dentist office,” Elton said. His reply gave no indication he noticed any change in Raz. 

Raz decided to test his luck. “A mental dentist office.” 

Elton only glanced around the room with anxious energy. Raz relaxed. No reaction was the best kind of reaction in this situation. He wasn’t safe yet, of course. Other, potentially more observant students now scurried through the Coach’s mind. In Raz’s estimation, the most dangerous campers were Lili Zanotto and Bobby Zilch. Every so often, he caught Lili watching him with an unreadable intensity that transformed into hostile scowling the second she realized he’d noticed. Paired with instincts honed by an upbringing in the world’s foremost psychic spy organization, her scrutiny could pose a serious threat.

He had earned the ire of Bobby Zilch, the camp bully, by defending another student and responding to Bobby's subsequent posturing with a taunt instead of fear. Raz considered his designation as a major enemy of the local bad boy kind of gratifying, but it meant keeping his guard up whenever Bobby or his mousey lackey, Benny, were on the prowl. If Raz bared his neck around them, the bully would sink his teeth in and shake the life out of him. 

Raz wished he could stop overthinking things. He couldn’t even enjoy the best thing that ever happened to him without dwelling on every “if/then” situation that might ruin it. It sucked!

He and Elton jumped as a projector on the desk behind them clicked on. The Coach’s face filled the wall in front of them, and his voice crackled through the room. “It’s a recruiting office, kids, and I’m here to recruit you for the greatest job in the world. Being a Psychonaut.”

Raz planted his hands on his hips. He couldn’t let his perpetual dilemma distract him for the entire lesson. This was his first chance to really show off for a Psychonaut. Time to put on his slightly-different-than-usual game face.

“It’s about fighting a war for mental freedom!” the Coach said. “Are you ready to face torture, insanity, and death? Cuz this is your last chance to chicken out.”

“Ooh, me sir! I’d like to chicken out, please,” Elton said.

“TOO LATE SOLDIER!” the Coach bellowed.

Elton stammered, “But you said—”

“There’s only one way out of here: FIGHTING! I want one of you chickens to sock me square in the jaw! But I warn you, once you do, the war is on.” 

Elton cowered. Raz knew he’d have to be the one to free them, but he decided to look around the room before he got to business. It was possible the Coach was testing them. Maybe he wanted something more sly than a simple psi-punch. 

There wasn’t much to see. The Coach’s recruitment office was even more nondescript than the average dentist office. Just four walls, all of them bare except the front, where the Coach glared at the boys from his projection, and the back, where the Coach glared at the boys from a series of propaganda-adjacent posters. Only the desk, the projector, and a flag comprised the bigger objects in the room. 

Raz wandered over to the posters to take a closer look. The largest was a play on the famous “I WANT YOU” recruitment poster, with the Coach’s face replacing Uncle Sam’s. The poster beside it featured both the Coach and a curly haired young woman. It read, “I wish I were a man.”

Raz shrieked and punched the poster at full force.

The wall fell away. Both the Coach and Elton were silent for a moment. Raz felt their stares on his shuddering back. He tried to steady his breathing while panicked thoughts bombarded him. Stupid! Hadn’t he just told himself that no reaction was the best reaction? What if they figured him out just because he couldn’t keep his cool under pressure? Sudden, unexpected, unpredictable pressure that clamped around his lungs and squeezed him breathless, yes — but he wanted to be a Psychonaut! A paranormal secret agent! Dealing with the unexpected was part of the job! If Sasha Nein punched every problem in the face before taking the time to assess, his mission failure rate would be sky high. 

Still, what the hell was that? He had a lot of questions for the Coach he couldn’t possibly verbalize. 

Behind him, Oleander said, “I like your energy, soldier, but the action’s over here.” 

Raz’s panic subsided just enough for him to dredge up a shaky excuse. “Oh. I just thought, you know. There were more jaws to sock on this wall.” 

The Coach chuckled. “Well, you ain’t wrong. Now get over here and hit the big one so we can get started.” 

Raz nodded. He swiveled, marched past a quizzical Elton to the less offensive wall, and introduced it to his psychic fist. 

Dry heat blasted Raz’s face as he exited the office. What he could see of Oleander's mental world was a hellscape of weapons, barbed wire, and debris. The sky above roiled with clouds of sickly, unnatural green. Violent booms and staccato gunfire provided the soundtrack for the lesson, startling at first, but fading to white noise as the boy acclimated.

Elton shouted “CHARGE,” flew past Raz, and exploded.

The Coach, now projected on a giant, serrated blade thrust into the ground not far from the open office, laughed. 

Raz stared at the smoking spot where Elton had perished. The other campers’ warnings about the class’s lethality began to seem less hyperbolic. “What kind of obstacle course is this?” he asked. “That kid just got killed!”

“A mental obstacle course, you bleeding heart!” Oleander said. “He’s not dead. His astral projection just got kicked out of my mind. And I’ll kick your ass-tral projection outta here too, if you don’t get moving right now!”

No dying in a mental world. Good to know. Big relief. True Psychic Tales had, conveniently, failed to mention this. Likely to preserve a sense of danger, Raz guessed. He hoped this discovery wouldn’t dampen his next reread. 

Emboldened by his temporary immortality, Raz pressed on alone. 

The way ahead looked tame at first, but just as he passed the giant blade, another explosion ripped a hole through the terrain. He peered over the edge. Below stretched an abyss of camo-patterned sky. 

How long would he fall if he missed the jump? Was there ground somewhere below, too far away to see? Would the mental world mercy kill him early on, or let him fall until he screamed his hubris away?

He siloed off those thoughts. No reason to terrify himself over an easy jump. He’d crossed bigger gaps just navigating the campgrounds. He sprinted forward, tensed, and sprung.

Halfway over the gap, he realized he wasn't going to make it. He managed to grab the ledge and avoid discovering what a mental falling death entailed first hand, but pulling himself to safety involved a lot of undignified scrabbling.

Back on solid ground, he sat, panting, and stared at the drop that had almost killed his astral self. 

“Thought you’d be better at this, circus boy!” the Coach’s disembodied voice rumbled.

Raz grumbled, “I am better at this.” 

How had he misjudged so badly? He’d followed all of the usual steps. He’d moved exactly as taught by a lifetime of acrobatics and a general inclination for vertical travel. Both leap and landing should have been clean. 

A missile touched down near enough he felt the rush of heat from its explosion. Raz squeaked and scrambled to his feet.

"A battlefield's no place for navel gazing, soldier! Get going, 'cuz the next one ain't gonna miss!'

The boy got going, and as he was going, he noticed something.

His stride was slightly off. So slightly he may not have realized if he wasn't fixated on figuring out why he'd missed that jump before the next one became an issue. 

The reason for both his stride and the missed jump clicked into place. 

He was taller. 

The next jump was coming up fast. Should he stop and consider before attempting it?

No. What was there to consider? Acrobatic arithmetic is solved mid air.

He rushed forward, focused on the difference in his stride, and applied it to the jump.

He wavered a bit as he landed on the other side, but he kept upright and transitioned smoothly back to running as soon as he'd regained full balance.

The next jump was easier. The one after that was just easy. And after that, inconsequential.

His confidence mounted with every hurdle conquered. Fire and height did not intimidate a veteran of the flaming rings. Dodging weapons came naturally after years participating in the Aquatos’ knife-throwing act.

Oleander's battlefield became Raz's playground. The danger inherent to its attractions made it all the more fun to test his mental form against them. 

Unfortunately, Raz was soon reminded that just like real playgrounds, the mental world was infested with dangerous and often disease-ridden pests: other children.

Bobby Zilch stood at the edge of a wooden platform, scowling at the next obstacle, an unexploded rocket, its nose lodged in the ground and its rear spewing an unending stream of fire. Raz approached the bully cautiously, wanting a better look at the rocket and unwilling to risk looking like a coward if Bobby noticed him hanging back. 

Clearly too annoyed with the fire to descend immediately into full-blown hostility, Bobby said, “We can’t get past this. This is STUPID.”

If Bobby was willing to put their differences aside for the sake of the lesson, Raz wouldn’t be the one to break the peace. He pondered the rocket.

“Hmm. Looks like a test. There’s probably a secret, more advanced route,” he said. 

“What’s THAT supposed to mean?” 

And just like that, aggro Bobby was back. The bully redirected his scowl at Raz. For a few suspenseful seconds, Raz thought he’d been discovered. Bobby’s eyes darted from Raz’s face to the top of his head. He paused, opened his mouth as if to deliver some scathing comment about it, and then closed it with a snap. His heterochromatic gaze fell back to Raz’s face.

“You think you’re more advanced than me, new kid?” 

Raz, confused by the rush of fear he felt when Bobby noticed his height, and the fear’s sudden dispersal when the bully subsequently, obviously chose not to comment, said, “Sorry, what?”

Bobby said, “I’m not stupid. You’re stupid. The Coach is stupid. The whole camp is stupid.”

He pointed over Raz’s shoulder. “That thing flying at you is stupid.”

Raz pivoted to look behind him. “What’s flying at me?”

He felt a hard, painful impact on his back, and he was thrown forward and off of the platform. 

Raz heard the bully laugh as he was falling, and just barely registered his retort, “Bobby Zilch’s foot, that’s what! Ya stupid new kid! Yeah!”

Raz’s startled yell was cut off as instead of hitting the dirt, an unseen force stopped his fall. Upside down and still mid-air, Raz drifted around to see that he’d been caught by the mind of none other than Lili Zanotto.

He said, “Oh, heh. Thanks for saving me!”

“Well, actually, I was saving this plant,” she said. She indicated a small growth of flora, rather unique in the Coach’s landscape in that it wasn’t made out of guns, bullets, or related military paraphernalia. 

It looked like a hunk of bone-in meat. It was animal meat, the edible kind you’d see at a butcher’s shop, rather than the gore one might expect to sneak its way into a mental theater of war. 

“Huh. Never seen one so meaty before,” Raz said.

Lili said, “I have. It’s been appearing in this creepy nightmare I keep having.”

Raz’s stomach would have dropped if he wasn’t still suspended. “Something from your nightmares is showing up in the Coach’s mind?” He thought back to the poster. Was it possible he’d infected Oleander with his own hang-ups?

Lili shrugged. “That kinda stuff happens when you get a bunch of psychics together in one place. Dreams get projected. Thoughts get tangled up.”

She must have noticed Raz’s frown, because she added, “There’s too many of us here to worry about it. This could be from my head. Could be from the Coach’s. Could be from Dogen’s, for all I know. Doubt I’ll figure it out without some serious sleuthing.” 

Raz, mollified, said, “Oh. I knew that.” 

Lili said, “No you didn’t.” She lifted him up and deposited him back on the platform. Raz, knowing better than to sit and stew over what he’d learned, scampered straight to searching for a way past the rocket. Thinking came after escaping the mind of his warhead flinging teacher.

Chapter Text

Milla’s fingers tangled in the telephone cord as she paced Whispering Rock’s reception office. “Of course we will call you the moment anything goes wrong, Mrs. Boole” she assured the woman on the other end of the line. “But Dogen is in good hands here. All of our counselors have experience helping people who are prone to psychic surges. Compton—”

“Is a firecracker,” Mrs. Boole interjected. “Dogen is a nuclear bomb. Just be careful, please. I don’t want any of the other children to get hurt.”

Milla said, “We will do everything we can to make sure all of the children have a safe, fun stay at camp. Dogen included.”

There was a pause on the other end. “All right,” Mrs. Boole said. “Don’t tell him I called. He’ll feel better if he thinks I’m not worried.”

“Of course,” Milla said.

They traded goodbyes, and Milla dropped the phone back on its hook with a sigh.

She hadn’t told Mrs. Boole that Dogen’s attendance at Whispering Rock had been hotly debated back at headquarters. Agent Forsythe stood firmly against it. She insisted that the Psychonauts were not in a position, legally or financially, to deal with the fallout of an accident. Truman, though usually the type to give any psychic a chance—a trait he shared with Otto and Ford, the Psychonauts’ original recruiters—was hesitant. Dogen’s time at camp would coincide with Lili’s, so any danger posed was posed to her.

Milla believed that she, Sasha, Oleander, and the occasionally lucid Ford were more than enough to mitigate the risk. She argued that alienating Dogen would be far worse for the boy in the long run. The other counselors supported her, but most agents didn’t put much stock in Ford’s opinion post-Maligula, and many considered Oleander’s judgment suspect even at the best of times. She and Sasha were left essentially alone on Dogen's side.

What decided the issue was a rather surprising endorsement from Compton, delivered directly to Truman on one of the elder Boole’s rare expeditions back to headquarters from the Psychoisolation chamber. “I understand your concern. Believe me, I know the risk my family's power can pose,” he said. “But I also know what works best to mitigate it. I was always most in control when my friends were around to support me. I believe similar connections could help Dogen's control outpace his growing power."

Milla found out later that Compton's interference had been prompted by a visit from Sasha. She hadn't thought to approach him herself. Her mind seemed to challenge Compton more than most—too loud, too bright, she'd surmised from his pained apologies. She wasn't offended. Managing a condition like acute psychosensory overload often made for social situations a less informed person might find rude. A trained Psychonaut knew better than to chafe at necessary boundaries.

Sasha was a better choice for any Boole-centric diplomacy. His was a quiet mind of gentle, nocturnal shades, neatly organized and easy to navigate. He was one of the few agents the elder Boole seldom turned away.

Thanks to her partner's foresight, the matter was settled. They would allow Dogen to attend Whispering Rock in the hope that among its attendees, the boy would find the fellowship his grandfather recommended.

Milla suspected the counselors would be fielding further calls from Mrs. Boole. There was hope, at least, that they’d have more definitive proof of Dogen's progress before the next. Lili was smart enough to retract her claws when dealing with him, and their resident runaway, Razputin, had sought him out at breakfast.

Though heartening to see, it did further complicate the already tricky issue of what to do with Razputin. Dogen needed the uncomplicated, apolitical connection Razputin offered, and Milla suspected Razputin needed someone like Dogen, too. There was a muted desperation in Raz's interactions with the other children. She suspected the traveling circus life had provided plenty of meetings, but few lasting friends. Further, she doubted he knew any fellow psychics unless others lurked among his family’s number.

Perhaps she should spend some time preparing materials on support options for young psychics to provide his parents when they came for him. If they were reasonable people, they would listen when she explained the dangers of leaving psychic abilities uncultivated, especially for children like Razputin. Particularly powerful psychics needed training early, before they had a chance to develop unhealthy practices that could endanger themselves or others. Time was of the essence, and for someone of his potential, Raz was already running behind.

The phone rang. Absently, the musing Milla picked it up and delivered a practiced greeting. "Hello, this is Whispering Rock. How can I help you?"

"Hello," the caller said. His voice was gruff, but not unfriendly. "Whispering Rock, you said? Is this the, er—"

There was a shuffling of paper on the other end.

"—Psychic Summer Camp?"

He uttered the word ‘psychic’ at a half-whisper, as though afraid someone might overhear. Milla went on alert. Anyone who called their number looking for the Camp should already know both that they had it right, and that there was, of course, no need to treat its existence as some conspiracy. Though they minimized outside knowledge of the Camp’s existence, it was mostly to keep it safe from the harassment more visible psychic institutions sometimes suffered. "May I ask who is calling?"

"Yes, of course, of course," the voice said. "My name is Augustus Aquato. I'm looking for someone who might have come to the camp. Or if not, may appear there soon."

Aquato. The name Razputin had provided, and that they’d confirmed through the family’s own advertising.

The poster and its members flashed through her memory and landed on a lanky, bearded man supporting a six-bodied tower.

An as yet unknown element who may have given the boy cause to run away.

"Who might this someone be?" she asked.

"My child," Augustus said. "My—"

A pause. A wet sniff on his end. The paper crumpled.

"—son. My son. He's probably going by—no—his name is Razputin. He is a small. Lad. Around four-foot-four. Reddish brown hair. Green eyes. Probably carrying around a canvas bag."

Milla noted the stumbling around Razputin's gender identifiers. She was certain they'd supposed right. Raz was transgender. The question now was the nature of Augustus' stumbling. He could be a supportive father clumsily adapting to his child's revealed self. Or perhaps he planned to hide his disapproval until his wayward child was back within reach. The sniff was a good touch, if he was acting.

She needed to tease out the truth before she gave the boy away. "Why do you think your son might be headed to the summer camp?"

"I found a brochure near where we believe he hopped a train," Augustus said. "It had your contact information. Razputin is psychic himself, you see, and he’s always shown an inclination for it. But our family’s relationship with psychics is complicated. I think he interpreted our disapproval of such powers as disapproval of him, and he decided to seek support elsewhere.”

“You cannot blame a child for that,” Milla said, unable to fully mask her reproach with professionalism.

Augustus said, “Of course not. And I don't. Razputin is a clever boy—probably the smartest out of all the living Aquatos." Here he uttered a fond chuckle that shifted abruptly into a morose sigh. "But he is a child. His mother and I are responsible for guiding him. If he was convinced he needed to leave, then it was we who convinced him, however unintentionally.”

He said, “I made too many mistakes. It should not have taken such a drastic move for me to see that clearly. But I think I am seeing clearly now.”

He cleared his throat. “If this is the camp, and he is there with you, I ask that you trust me enough to let me know he’s safe. I don’t plan on showing up and storming off with him, but I do want to see him. I want to tell him, to his face, that if he wants to come home, we will work together to make sure he doesn’t feel the need to leave again. I’m done pretending I know best even when I don’t know anything at all.”

He went quiet. Milla knew she could not put off responding any longer. Time to decide what came next.

“He is here,” she said, after some deliberation.

Augustus exhaled into the receiver. “Thank god. Is he okay?”

“Yes, he’s perfectly well,” she said. “I don’t know how long he was on his own, but he seems to have made it through unkempt but unscathed. He showed up here last night. Currently, he is in a class with one of our other counselors. Normally we wouldn’t let him attend without parental permission, but—”

“No need to apologize,” he said. “He would have found his way in on his own if you hadn’t. Stubborn, just like his old man. Will you let me come to meet him?”

“We won’t stop you,” she said. “But we will act if we think it necessary.”

“Of course, yes, good. I can be on my way soon,” he said. “You are at the address on the brochure?”

“That address does not lead directly to the camp, but there will be someone there who can lead you to us. I’ll let him know to expect you.”

“All right,” he said.

“Should I tell Razputin you are coming?” Milla asked.

Augustus hummed thoughtfully. “Tell him… tell him that I am on my way, and that I hope he will speak with me, man-to-man. Those exact words, please. Man-to-man. Make sure he’s clear on that.”

It was this, more than anything, that convinced Milla she was making the right choice.

“May we continue treating him as a normal camper, until then?” she asked.

“Please do. I’ll sign any necessary forms once I get there,” he said. “Tell him that I gave you permission, if he asks. That should hopefully help convince him not to flee into the night.”

“We wouldn’t let him get far,” Milla said.

Augustus said, “Don’t underestimate him. He’s resourceful, that one.”

“Believe me, he made that pretty clear when he managed to sneak in,” Milla said. “I hope you know what you’re dealing with, Mr. Aquato.”

“I think I’m getting there,” Augustus said. “And if not, well. I’ll let him lead the way.”

Chapter Text

Dogen quivered at the edge of a mound-packed stretch of the Coach's mind. A nearby sign, painted with a glowing red skull and action lines, warned of danger.

The Coach himself said, “Watch those mines, kid. They’ll blow you up like a ten-cent kazoo.”

Raz had never heard that particular idiom, but the meaning was obvious enough. If he didn’t step carefully, he was going to end up like poor Elton back at the start of the course.

He traced the lines between the mines. He just had to think of the path as a tightrope—a thin strip of safety flanked by danger, requiring careful steps and measured balance. Easy enough for someone with his unique upbringing.

More difficult, he imagined, for Dogen, whose eyes darted from the mounds to Raz and back again.

“Hey, Dogen. What’s wrong?” He suspected he already knew the answer, but better to ask than assume.

Dogen said, “I keep blowing up.”

So he’d already tried crossing. Multiple times, even. Pretty gutsy!

He hated the thought of Dogen throwing himself at the same challenge until class was over, especially one this mean-spirited.

“Follow me! I’ll help you through the mines!” Raz declared.

Dogen regarded him with his usual funereal stare. For a moment, Raz thought he might refuse, but eventually, the other boy’s expression brightened. “Mm’kay.”

They entered the field together. Raz paced himself to keep just ahead of Dogen, clearly in the lead, but close enough to assure the other boy he hadn't been abandoned. Dogen shuffled forward, stopping every few feet to cower and declare, "I can't do it."

Every time, Raz halted, turned to Dogen, and said, "Yes, you can." He didn't take another step until the younger boy regained his courage and caught up.

Raz showed no sign of impatience. No tapping foot, no open sighs, no scowl or frown. When Dogen chanced to look up, he saw either Raz's back, always close enough to touch, or his smile, confident enough for both of them.

Raz knew how to lead a nervous kid through a risky trick. Every Aquato learned the technique as they trained. The family chained together, generation by generation, each child led by the hand ahead and leading the one behind.

Teasing ended where fear threatened to bloom. Frazie might make fun of Raz for his comic collection, but never for his nerves. If he hesitated above, she stood below and held out steady arms. If he messed up a move, she told him, "You're getting there," even if he wasn't. She demonstrated the trick again, told him where to fix his version, and watched him try anew. She tended scrapes and bruises with the overstocked first aid kit they kept nearby, quelling his tears of pain and shame with tales of her own spills.

He passed his own stories down to Mirtala. He said, "I'll catch you," and hovered under the tight rope as she walked it for the first time. He gently laid her favorite circus lion bandages over her scrapes. He showed her a move a dozen of times, watched her repeat it a dozen more, and never uttered a complaint.

“Remember, it is not a competition,” his mother liked to say before every new trick. “We shine brightest when everyone is polished.”

Step by halting step, reassurance after reassurance, the two boys crossed the field. When they’d reached the border, Dogen skipped onto the mine-free concrete beyond, and said, triumphantly, “Look! Raz! I didn’t explode at all.”

“Good hustle out there,” Raz said. Dogen grinned.

---

Bobby Zilch was a serial underminer of his own potential, Raz concluded the third time the other boy stood in his way. Bobby had decided that the new kid looking good made him look bad, and he was determined to derail Raz’s progress through the Coach’s obstacle course. He didn’t seem to realize he was sabotaging himself—Raz wasn’t sure how he did it, but Bobby consistently ended up ahead of him, even when he wasn’t stopping to help other campers. If he’d just kept moving forward, he’d already be done with the course, definitive winner of the race he’d invented to get one up on his chosen rival. Instead, he doubled back. He gave Raz extra chances to show off, always at his own expense.

Raz almost wanted to pull him aside and tell him to cut it out, for his own good, but he figured Bobby would see it as an insult, or a challenge, and double down. In any case, the kid was so relentlessly aggressive the fleeting urge to help him out curdled into resentment that he’d felt charitable at all.

He wasn’t going to seek Bobby out to get revenge. He didn’t have time for anything that petty, not with the clock ticking down to Milla finding his parents. For the same reason, he couldn’t spend extra time sidestepping the bully’s antics, so he refused to feel guilty about knocking Bobby into the abyss when he tried to body-block his progress down a rail. Or for stealing his victory dance afterward.

That he also might not have time to stop and guide his friend through a trap never crossed his mind. It didn’t even register as a delay. Dogen and the minefield were on the way. Bobby was in the way. Their time spent differently.

Chapter Text

Sasha always sat in on Oleander’s Basic Braining lessons. The Coach imagined an entire command center equipped with a number of screens Sasha could point toward individual students or wider areas. Sasha allowed most of these screens to cycle through the students and challenge zones at regular intervals, pausing only when the camera caught something out of the ordinary, but he directed one to Razputin and left it on him throughout the lesson.

Observation painted a fuller picture of the boy’s personality, but the extent of his psychic development remained in question. He conquered the obstacle course with unusual skill and speed for someone his age, but his methods were unorthodox in their relative mundanity. The course was designed to push a student in the camp’s age range just far enough that they’d have to pull out a few pre-taught psychic techniques to reach the end—or, more realistically, to get as close as possible given their current ability. Jumps were meant to be cleared with levitation. The trial against the wooden soldiers was more easily won if the challenger supplemented their psi-punches with psi-blast. If the Coach turned his attention on a particular camper and showered them with extra projectiles, invisibility served the double purpose of screwing with his aim and boring him into moving on to some other unfortunate soul.

Which obstacles stymied the students, whether they could overcome them, and how they did it, were all factors in determining what tutoring each camper might need. Students would be strongly encouraged to join classes on techniques they needed to practice, and counselors would know who needed attention.

Few students muddled the metrics by making it all the way through. Lili could, but whether she bothered or not depended on her mood. She knew the Psychonauts were well-acquainted with her capabilities. No need to show off for them. This year, she spent the class closely examining the landscape, especially those parts of it that could only be reached by creative application of an already developed skillset. The Coach ignored her. His favorite part of Basic Braining was terrorizing the students, and Lili Zanotto was not easily terrorized.

Bobby could probably make it to the end, but after a strong initial showing, he distracted himself menacing the other students. Consequently, he missed the cut-off before Coach tossed the students out of his mind.

Raz finished with the barest display of psychic technique Sasha had yet witnessed. He occasionally supplemented his jumps with a sort of homemade levitation variant in which he created a small, quickly dissipating bubble to bounce off of for more air, and he knew how to lash out with a basic psi-punch, but for the most part, he advanced through the course with pure athleticism.

That, in itself, was quite a feat. New mindscape explorers usually needed time and practice to acclimate to mental physics, but after an early stumble and some consideration, Raz adjusted expertly. He fell a few times, and strayed a bit too close to some of the flamethrowers, but that was to be expected. The course was, to put it bluntly, pretty damn mean. Milla couldn't sit through the thing. Watching the children explode occasionally distressed her too much.

Raz’s performance confounded the system. Was it simply easier for someone of his dexterity to complete the course without the help of the novice abilities they wanted to draw out, or was he such a prodigy of mental world traversal that the course was beatable despite an utter lack of those abilities?

Even discounting the various mysteries surrounding his history, the boy obviously needed Sasha’s one-on-one approach to testing. Sasha always picked a student or two for direct appraisal anyways. This just made the choice a bit simpler than usual.

Sasha exited the Coach’s mind just as Raz was receiving his Basic Braining badge. He wanted to intercept the boy before he could wander off to other Camp shenanigans. A quick dig through his pockets unearthed his usual recruitment tool: an orange button. Though it resembled an oversized shirt button, it actually served to grant or bar entry to the laboratory hidden under the camp’s defunct and decades outdated Psychoisolation chambers. It was one of only two methods of reaching the lab.

The other was Ford’s underground transit system, a series of tunnels and tracks traveled by a chatty cart only accessible by psychic permission. Ford occasionally gave interesting students permission to use the transport system without actively informing them. He liked to see if they had the curiosity and gumption to reach him on their own. Sasha wagered Raz had caught Ford’s eye the previous night—the camp had never been directly infiltrated, and certainly not by a child.

Raz emerged from the Coach’s mind straight into a confrontation with Bobby Zilch. Bobby responded poorly to direct adult intervention, so Sasha interrupted the spat by approaching Raz with his offer. “Your performance, young cadet, was outstanding. I’d like you to report to my lab for some advanced training.”

As expected, this drove Bobby away without further escalation. Sasha heard the boy growling plans for future harassment to his lackey. Something to keep an eye out for, but not pressing enough to derail Sasha’s plans.

He resumed his invitation to Raz. “These tests are unauthorized, though, so I can’t actually ask you to come. But if you happened to drop in, well, what could I do? Let me just give you this.” He floated the button to the boy.

He left the boy with a hint to the button’s use. “Your talent will always set you apart, Razputin. Sometimes isolation can be a good thing. It can lead to important discoveries.”

---

As he waited for Raz to find his way to the lab, Sasha busied himself with calibrating the Brain Tumbler for an ideal ‘new user’ experience. He planned to introduce Raz to the Collective Unconscious, then guide him, remotely, through a quick tour of his own mind—provided, of course, the boy was willing to let Sasha past his psychic bulwark. If Raz hesitated, they’d visit Sasha’s mind first. A show of trust might convince the boy to open up.

One by one, he disabled Brain Tumbler functions tuned for his own scientific endeavors. Most would serve only to confuse a layman. Children, in his experience, grasped the Tumbler better the more its rules mimicked the physical world.

A sudden warmth at the fringe of his thoughts let Sasha know he was no longer alone with them. “Be sure to turn off the little brainwave visualizer that shows up on the nearest flat surface whenever you stop moving, darling. It really disrupts the aesthetic sometimes,” Milla said, telepathic words clear as day despite the distance between their physical selves.

“That was the first thing I turned off.” Sasha said. “I thought a constantly moving, colorful graphic might prove distracting.”

He toggled off another feature—an automatic process that scanned the mental environment and highlighted objects of potential interpretive interest. A helpful tool, if you knew how to filter the false positives, but decidedly confusing if not. “Were you hoping to sit in?” he asked Milla.

“What?”

“Just wondering what might have prompted this astral visit.”

“Oh, no, I can’t sit in. Much to prepare for the Levitation lessons. I just need to speak with you before you work with Razputin. I have an update on the situation.”

“Oh?”

“I just received a call from Augustus Aquato. Razputin’s father,” she said.

Sasha glanced up at the Psychoisolation Chamber entrance. Still shut. No excited footsteps echoing down the stairs. Hopefully the camp’s myriad diversions would keep the boy occupied for a while longer. Not that Sasha was incapable of holding a mental conversation and a spoken conversation simultaneously. Missions often required it. But that was business. In a personal setting, such behavior was the height of impropriety.

To Milla he said, “That is quite the update. How was it?”

Milla said, “Illuminating. Mr. Aquato was open about why he thinks Razputin ran away. The family has issues with psychics, apparently.”

“The usual, then,” Sasha said. Filial ‘issues’ with psychics were an all-too-common thread among those not born into the community. Any agent who occasionally gave their fellows a routine check-up before a mission learned to recognize such issues by sight, even if they assumed wildly different shapes in each individual’s metal world. “Is Razputin in any danger?”

“No, I don’t think so. Mr. Aquato seemed remorseful about the part the family’s prejudice played in driving Razputin away,” Milla said.

“Remorseful enough to do away with that prejudice?” Sasha asked.

“I can’t say for certain,” Milla said, “but another aspect of our conversation convinced me to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“Another aspect?”

Milla said, “He told me he was searching for his son.”

“His son, specifically?”

“Yes. He stumbled over the word a bit, and did the same over a few other gender signifiers, but he was also very clear, in the end, that he wanted to speak with his son ‘man-to-man.’”

Sasha drummed his fingers on the console. “And he used ‘Razputin’ throughout?”

“Yes.”

After a moment’s silence, Sasha said, “Do you know anything about the concept of ‘true names’? Common in folklore and fantasy.”

“A little,” Milla said. “Something like, a true name can give someone magical power over you.”

“Exactly,” Sasha said. “The usual advice for keeping oneself safe—should you find yourself living out a faerie story—is to lie. Keep your true name hidden, and you’ll limit the power antagonistic magical entities can wield over you.” He chuckled. “For people like Razputin and I, it’s the opposite. When we give someone our true name, and they agree to use it, it gives us more power over our own selves. Some parents try to seize control of their children’s identities by refusing to use their true name. One who uses their child’s true name, even when they’re not around to hear it, has willingly chosen to cede power. It’s the rare admittance that they don’t always know best.”

Sasha coughed. “All that to say… it’s a good sign. Certainly something to keep in mind as Razputin and I explore his mind. I suspect we’ll find his father in some form or another in there. It will be useful to have an outside perspective on the man as well. Thank you for telling me.”

“Of course. Oh, but, don’t tell Razputin. I’d rather do that myself, since I spoke with Mr. Aquato directly,” Milla said.

“The thought never crossed my mind,” Sasha said. “It would skew the results of the testing.”

Chapter Text

The mystery of Sasha’s button was a little too easy to solve, in Raz’s opinion. He only had to wake a snoozing Oleander and show him the button to learn where it came from.

Unfortunately, along with this disclosure came a growling accusation. “Hey, you stole a button from the Geodesic Psychoisolation Chamber!”

“No I didn’t!” Raz protested. “B—“

He stopped. He’d been about to pin the nonexistent crime on Bobby Zilch as revenge for all the trouble he’d caused, both within the Coach’s mind and without. But the mean little urge dissipated when he remembered their first meeting on the obstacle course.

Bobby had figured him out, Raz thought. If not, he’d at least noticed the change in his rival’s stature. And, though he took every other excuse he could find to needle Raz, he’d decided not to push that particular button.

To Raz, it felt like Bobby had drawn a line in the sand. It marked the limit to how far he would go to antagonize Raz.

Well, if Bobby could hold back from being the absolute worst, Raz certainly could, too. He wasn’t sure where Bobby’s line was, yet, but he’d step a bit more cautiously until he figured it out.

So he left Bobby out of it, and instead risked his own hide by countering the Coach’s accusation with the truth. “Sasha gave it to me,” he said. “He told me he wanted to give me advanced training.”

Oleander leaned in to stare at the boy, eyes narrowed and brows sharply angled. After a few long seconds, just as Raz was starting to sweat, the Coach sat back and turned his glare to the treehouse wall. “So you’re the one he picked this year,” he said. He tapped his fingers on the table that had supported his nap. In a low and ominous rumble, he said, “Tell him I said not to go overboard. I’d hate to see anything happen to a brain like yours.”

Raz raised an eyebrow. Sasha couldn’t be planning something that would put his student’s mind in real danger, could he? Still, it seemed best to mollify the Coach, so he said, “Yes sir.”

“Dismissed,” Oleander growled, and Raz scurried away, eager to escape the Coach’s scrutiny.

He combed his map for the Geodesic Isolation Chambers. The symbols used to represent the camp’s various landmarks were a bit abstract, and the map lacked labeling or a key, but he guessed a group of three symbols—shaped a bit too much like circus tents for his liking—might mark their location. If not, well, they were in a part of the forest he wanted to visit anyways, so it wouldn’t be a total waste of a trip.

—

Two paths away from the lodge eventually arrived at the Geodesic Psychoisolation Chambers. He chose the longer route. It meandered past a few landmarks he wanted to check out. It also gave him some extra time to fend off a surprise attack by his overactive imagination, launched just as his elation at Sasha’s invitation began to wane.

He should be unconditionally excited. A one-on-one with Sasha Nein was a dream come true. He could only imagine what sort of amazing psychic tech waited in Sasha’s hidden laboratory and how the Psychonaut planned to use it.

But he needed to impress the Psychonauts into recruiting him as soon as possible, and while Coach’s obstacle course suited his skillset just fine, he suspected Sasha would favor a quieter, more constrained setting where Raz wouldn’t be able to disguise his shortcomings with showmanship. His psychic deficiencies would be glaringly obvious if Sasha asked for anything too specific.

Raz also worried that a close examination by someone as discerning as Sasha Nein would give away his other secret. He knelt beside a pond that bordered one of the footpaths through the woods and squinted at his slightly distorted reflection. Cutting his hair, wearing clothes he liked, introducing himself with the right name and pronouns without someone stepping in to ‘correct’ him—all of those things, simultaneously small and enormous, made him happier with what he saw and felt than he’d ever been pre-escape.

But was it good enough to keep him safe?

He scowled. His reflection scowled back in solidarity. At least he understood how much it sucked to have every dream-come-true tainted by the fact that he was always one mistake away from reliving the worst day of his life with a new cast reciting a terribly familiar script.

Raz grabbed a rock from the bank, ignoring the damp earth that flecked off its smooth, gray surface and onto his gloves. He stood, pulled back his arm, and threw the rock with an accompanying, wordless yell that drowned out the ‘plish’ of projectile meeting water.

Behind him, a deep, animal growl countered his objection to the universe with a challenge of its own. Primal fear seized Raz by the neck and forced his head, with a painful, jerking motion, to face the peril lumbering his way.

A brown-furred mass of muscle and natural weaponry swaggered out of the forest’s arboreal shadows. “Bear,” Raz’s brain reported. Raz’s terror agreed with that assessment. Raz’s legs did not immediately respond.

But that was okay, right? Running was the wrong choice, here. A few years ago—before the name Razputin had been spoken to a confused and unappreciative crowd—he and his father had met a bear while on an otherwise peaceful hike.

His father had placed a steadying hand on Razputin’s shoulder. “Don’t yell,” Augustus said. “We don’t want to startle it.”

Raz remembered thinking it was absurd to imagine that a creature that sharp could be startled by a pair of clawless, blunt-toothed humans. Still, he did as told and swallowed his impulse to scream.

Augustus took a slight step forward to put himself between the animal and his child. “Hello, Mr. Bear,” he said, addressing the warily snuffling animal with the same placating tone he used to defuse squabbles between the Aquato siblings. He raised his arms a bit and waved slowly as he spoke, as if greeting a friend. “We’re just passing through. Don’t mind us.”

Out of the corner of his mouth, he said “Move with me, [REDACTED]. Slowly, now. No running.” He steered them away from the bear at an angle, his eyes trained on the animal. Raz mimicked his motions as best he could through his full-body trembling.

Augustus said, "Nice weather we're having. A perfect day for a stroll. Eaten any good berries recently?" The bear responded to none of his pleasantries, but Augustus kept up a steady stream as he and Razputin made their exit. The bear's gaze followed them, but the rest of him did not.

When the human pair could no longer see the bear's bulky silhouette against the setting sun, Augustus said, "I think we're in the clear."

Razputin's legs gave out, and the breath he'd been holding escaped in a single, long sigh. Augustus reached down and hoisted his child upward and onto his shoulders. "That was the scariest thing I've ever done," Razputin wheezed.

"Hopefully that will be true for many years to come," his father said. He gave the boy's ankles a gentle squeeze. "You did well."

Razputin wrapped his arms around the top of Augustus’ head and hid his smile in his curls.

Raz’s breathing slowed over the course of a few silent minutes. When it was steady enough for conversation, he asked, "How'd you know how to deal with a bear?"

Augustus said, "I spent Dion's infant years reading as many safety guides as I could scrounge up."

"Bear safety?"

"All kinds of safety! Wildlife, fire, heavy machinery, electrical, water, inclement weather—I wanted to be prepared for any trial my children might ever have to face."

"Guess it worked," Raz said.

"Well enough, in some respects," Augustus said. "But I've since learned that no amount of helpful guides can prepare you for everything. Practical matters—"

"Like bears."

“—like bears, yes,” Augustus continued. “They are simple. You can memorize what you need to do. Personal matters are harder to solve with tips and tricks. You could spend a lifetime studying a person, and they’d still find a way to surprise you." With a chuckle, he said, “You children find new ways to surprise me every day.”

Surprise was a nice word, back then. Birthday parties. Presents on normal days. A trip to the carnival squeezed out of the Aquatos’ meager funds. It was not yet the look on their faces when Raz tried to share his joy with them, or the way his stomach dropped when they started to speak.

For once, though, Raz wasn’t dwelling on that part. Danger scraped the memory clean of emotion and rearranged it into a list of steps for getting out of the situation unscathed. Move slowly. Speak gently. Don’t turn away. Do not approach.

“Nice bear,” Raz said. The animal’s ears twitched. “I’m just gonna get out of your way, okay?” He took a single, slow step to the side.

The bear’s growl cut off, and for a few blissful seconds, Raz thought he was in the clear.

This misconception shattered as the bear’s feet—all four of them—lifted off of the ground. The bear’s paw, freed from the responsibility of keeping the creature upright, raised to its forehead. A hand a lot like Razputin’s own psychic fist appeared over its shoulder.

“What the hell?” Razputin barked, all pretenses of escaping the bear the recommended way abandoned. The hand swiped toward him. Raz’s acrobatic instinct kicked in just before its clawed fingers wrapped around his midsection, and he leapt away.

Raz ran. Not toward the Geodesic Isolation Chambers—too risky when he had yet to acquaint himself with that part of the forest’s layout—but back toward the lodge. Chancing a look over his shoulder, he saw the bear hovering after him, its psychic hand still outstretched.

He’d almost reached the campfire area when a voice called out from above. His head whipped around. The janitor—or cook, or ranger, or whatever he was—waved frantically from his perch. “Stump just past the campfire!” he shouted. “It’s unlocked!”

Raz didn’t have time to wonder if taking advice from a guy who seemed to regularly misplace his own identity was wise, or to ponder why in the world he’d used the term ‘unlocked’ in reference to a stump. He flew past the campfire, under the arch dividing the Reception Area from the lodge, and dove into the first stump that looked hollow enough to hold him.

His shoulder rammed against something unexpectedly hard. He glanced down and saw, rather than a wooden hollow, a thick sheet of metal. It was a hatch. He rolled off of the stump, scrabbled at the hatch until it opened, and leapt in.

He fell. It wasn’t a long fall, but it still hurt when he hit the strangely springy surface below. “Ow,” he said, blinking away a few tears. Above him, hinges groaning, the hatch swung shut.

Raz let out a sigh that deflated his entire body. “That was the worst,” he muttered to himself.

Another voice, feminine, silky, and modulated, said, “I’m sorry to hear that, Agent Cruller. Might I recommend a nap in your secret lair?”

Raz, too exhausted to fully register that the ground should not be soft, that his limbs should not be dangling over armrests, and that no one would ever confuse him for Ford Cruller, only said, “Ugh.”

“As you wish, noble Psychomaster,” the voice said, and the thing he’d landed on started to move.

Chapter Text

Raz struggled upright as his ride rolled onward through a tunnel of smoothed stone. Wooden beams flashed past him, and overhead dangled a line of simple bulb-in-bowl lights. The tracks he traveled looked more suited to mine carts than the sleek, modern build of his transport, but rather than the expected squeal and clickety-clack, the cart’s soundtrack composed of a pulsing, quiet whir.

A monitor blocked much of Raz’s forward vision. A vivid green waveform danced across its near-black screen. If there was meaning in its undulations, it was nothing Raz could decipher.

Raz ducked to watch the road ahead past the thin neck of the monitor. There were no landmarks, nor any signs to signify how far they’d gone, or how far they had left to go. The cart barreled onward, direction and elevation unchanging, until it reached an unlabeled junction where the singular tunnel branched into three. Raz’s ride turned itself down the rightmost path, and the track began to angle gently downward.

Raz sat back and trained his gaze on the monitor, trying not to worry that the underground was growing deeper by the second.

Recalling the voice who’d greeted him at the start of the ride, he said a tentative, “Hello?”

“Hello, Agent Cruller,” came the reply. The waveform on the monitor jumped in time with the words.

Raz remembered similar visuals in certain tech-heavy stories in True Psychic Tales. The cart must be controlled by one of Otto Mentalis’ famed psychoresponsive AIs. They came pre-programmed with a personality, functions tuned for their intended purpose, and a library of necessary knowledge. They learned and adjusted their own behavior by reading psychic ripples within set operating areas. A recurring gag character in True Psychic Tales was a vending machine mistakenly installed with a psychoresponsive AI who became convinced, via a combination of the Motherlobe’s espionage-laden psychic atmosphere and the nature of its work as a vending machine, that he was the Psychonauts’ head of requisitions and distribution. He called himself Agent Magpie.

Otto insisted psychoresponsive AIs weren’t sentient, though True Psychic Tales had once printed a meandering letter to the editor proclaiming otherwise. Being unfortunately unversed in robotics and machine learning, Raz understood little of the provided evidence, but the author’s vehement use of capitals and extra punctuation had convinced him it must be wrong. In any case, Otto Mentalis was one of the Psychic 6. No way he’d stoop to using a loophole in the definition of sentience to avoid addressing ethical concerns, as one of the letter’s more coherent sections argued.

Raz wanted to ask why the cart kept calling him Agent Cruller, but he was afraid it might dump him onto the tracks if it found out it was carrying the wrong person. “Where are we?” he asked instead.

“We are currently one minute away from your private sanctuary, Agent Cruller,” the AI said.

“Right, right,” Raz said. A giddy thrill quickened the drum of his heart. Ford Cruller had a private sanctuary? Here at Whispering Rock? And he thought he’d hit the jackpot with Sasha, Milla, and Oleander! Even if Ford himself wasn’t present, his sanctuary was sure to be a dragon’s hoard of psychic secrets.

He did hope Ford was there, though. Raz really, really, wanted to meet him.

As one of the Psychonauts’ founders, and the first to hold the title of “Grand Head,” Ford was one of the most fascinating figures in the agency’s history. Unfortunately, he stepped down years before Raz was born, so most of his adventures could only be found in back issues of True Psychic Tales. Those were hard to come by for a kid whose finances were managed by adults who still referred to psychics as “fortune tellers.” His parents allowed him to buy new issues of the series, albeit with some grumbling and a number of unsuccessful attempts to steer his interests toward superheroes instead, but price-gouged, vintage Tales were a different matter. The few he owned he’d fished out of bins in used book stores run by folks who hadn’t researched the value of their own bounty.

A grown collector would’ve been disgusted by the state of Raz’s Ford issues. He treated them with care, but there was only so much one could do to preserve the state of pages turned hundreds of times. Not to mention the impossibility of keeping his siblings’ grubby fingers off them, and the reality of storage limitations while in a state of perpetual road trip.

In a way, bent pages and torn corners were fitting for Ford Cruller and the early Psychonauts. It was a messier time for psychics overall. Dislike, distaste, and outright hatred of psychics was common, and extreme measures to ‘cure’ or control them were legal. The Psychonauts faced resistance on all sides. Even the people they wanted to help sometimes refused to accept a psychic solution, so the Psychonauts often had to let the government agencies they worked with take full credit for their victories. True Psychic Tales revealed the truth years later in stories as heavy with intrigue as with the usual bombastic psychic fight scenes. The slow shift of public sentiment sped up in response to the Psychonauts’ new depiction as cool, heroic, and obviously wronged by the federal institutions they assisted.

There were plenty of people who clung to prejudice, even as it grew unpopular and embarrassing to express in public settings. Raz saw his parents as evidence of that. Change was happening, though, whether those folks liked it or not. Maybe when Raz starred in a True Psychic Tales issue, his parents would read it, and their son’s heroics would convince them they’d gotten it wrong.

More reason to prove himself as soon as possible.

The cart hooked a sharp right and began to slow. It hummed to a gentle stop in what looked, at first, like a random spot in the tracks. Ahead, they continued through more tunneling, and when Raz searched the walls for some sort of doorway, he found only unbroken stone.

“We have arrived,” the cart said. “Please keep your arms and legs at your sides to ensure a safe exit.”

“What?”

Raz probably should’ve expected what happened next, given that he’d arrived at the track via an opening in the tunnel ceiling. Still, when the seat tensed under him and sprang suddenly upwards, he let out a shriek that echoed down the tunnels. He flew upward, passing through a hole he’d missed in his scan for an exit, then a tight, wooden hollow that opened into a sizable cavern.

Before he could plummet painfully to the rocky ground, Raz caught himself with his makeshift levitation-adjacent psychic jump assist orb and, with a curled midair roll, reoriented his fall into a landing clean enough for a round of applause during one of his family’s shows.

“Nice save,” a familiar voice said from behind.

Raz pivoted to find himself only feet away from the man he now recognized as the aged Ford Cruller.

His face was familiar, and not only because Raz now saw its resemblance to the younger Ford he knew from True Psychic Tales. It was the face of the man running the camp’s combined shop and grill. It was also the face of the grounds-keeper. And the ranger. And possibly other roles he had yet to meet.

“You’re Ford Cruller!” he blurted out before he could think of something more intelligent to say.

“The one and only,” Ford said. “Or maybe it’s the ‘several and only,’ these days.” He chuckled at his own joke.

Raz took those few seconds to compose himself before saying, “It’s an honor to finally meet you, sir.”

“Likewise,” Ford said. “I been waiting for you to find your way down here since you crashed the entrance ceremony.”

“Really?”

“Yes indeed,” Ford said. “It ain’t often we get a camper who can block Agent Oleander. The man’s a psychic battering ram.”

Raz stood a little straighter and planted his hands on his hips. “He did hit pretty hard, but I’ve had lots of experience keeping people out.”

Too busy preening over the recognition of his skill, Raz missed the frown that flitted briefly across Ford’s face. What was a point of pride for Raz was a reminder, to the elder Psychonaut, that the psychic community still had a lot of ground to cover to reach his ideal world—one where children would feel no need to develop their powers beyond their years just to keep people out.

“Sir?” Raz said, returning his full attention to Ford. “Can I ask—what are you doing here at Whispering Rock?”

“This training facility is built right smack on top of the largest Psitanium deposit known to man. It runs under this whole valley and makes this a very critical area for the Psychonauts, so I’m here to look after it. And to make sure you little spoonbenders don’t kill each other.”

Eyes wide with morbid interest, Raz said, “Has there ever been a real murder at Whispering Rock?”

“Not so far, but there’s a first time for everything ‘less you prepare for it.” Ford leaned in, mustache turned upward by a devilish grin, “We definitely weren’t ready for a whippersnapper like you, that’s for sure.”

Raz grin stretched to match Ford’s.

Ford said, “Now, lemme turn that question back on you. What are you doing at Whispering Rock, and what made you take the route you did? We wouldn’ta turned you down if you sent an application the normal way.”

Raz’s smile faded. “I wouldn’t be able to get permission from my parents,” he admitted. “They hate psychics.” He crossed his arms. “They want me to just stop using my powers. Spend all my time practicing acrobatics, like everyone else in the family.” His shoulders slumped. “I tried doing that, for a while, to make them happy. But I couldn’t keep it up. I am psychic. I can’t change that. And I don’t want to, anyways. I’m good at psychic stuff. I like studying it, and I love practicing it!” He glared up at Ford, eyes blazing the reckless determination of someone who’d stick his hand straight into a fire to retrieve his heart’s desire before it turned to ash. “I’m here to become a Psychonaut. Once I do that, they’ll never be able to stop me."

Ford studied the boy for a long moment. Raz didn’t recoil. His glare grew no less fiery. “I see,” Ford said. “And do you know what it means to be a Psychonaut?”

Raz tilted his head. “Saving the world as a paranormal secret agent? Kicking bad guy butt with psychic powers?” When Ford failed to reply immediately, Raz’s confidence faltered. He knew he’d gotten it wrong.

Ford said, “Intelligence work convinces the powers that be to keep the Psychonauts around when the money people start grumblin’ that we’re too expensive—and too dangerous—to be worth it. But that ain’t all we are. It ain’t why we founded the organization in the first place. We wanted to make a place where psychics could come together, support each other, and do the work needed to make sure things are always getting better for us. And I do mean all psychics, not just the ones who’re easy to handle and who’d be considered ‘socially acceptable’ if they didn’t have these powers. No organization’s got a wider selection a’ colorful backstories than we do. Whatever you got, there’s someone who can relate. Maybe not to all of it at once. You ain’t gonna find a history that’s a carbon copy of your own. But there’s someone out there for every piece.”

“Every piece?”

“Every single one.”

Ford saw a question teeter on the tip of Raz’s tongue. He saw the boy’s mouth open wider, to set it free. He saw the question withdraw, instead, to huddle in the dark with other things unsaid.

Raz said instead, “You’re telling me I’m gonna find another Psychonaut who grew up in a circus.”

Ford wouldn’t go looking for the hidden question. It’d reveal itself in its own time. “Maybe not a circus, exactly, but I’d bet you a crisp hundred dollars you’ll find a performer or two,” he said.

“I can’t take that bet.”

“’Cause you know I’m right!” Ford said. His grin returned.

“No, ‘cause I’ve never had a hundred dollars,” Raz said. Frankly, the idea of holding that much money at one time was as terrifying as it was enticing. What would he even do with that much money? Plus, he knew from experience that bills were easily lost, and not all of them found their way home via an idle dig through pockets or the tighter crevices of his bag. Misplacing a couple of dollars was unfortunate. Losing one hundred of them would be a full-blown tragedy, complete with a funeral once his mother got ahold of him.

Ford said, “Well, how ‘bout this then. Every time you find someone, I get a dollar.”

“Like a swear jar, but for friends,” Raz said.

Raz’s mom had instituted a swear jar after Dion discovered the innate entertainment of peppering his speech with four letter words. Raz, who saw his brother as a primary source for ways to act cool and masculine, followed suit. They only owed quarters, but it was enough to deter Raz. Every quarter taken was one he couldn’t save for things his parents wouldn’t buy him.

Dion moderated himself when he knew their parents lurked nearby, but otherwise continued unabated. He wanted the ‘right’ things for a teenage boy. Things his parents would happily provide on rare occasion that the family budget made it possible. A quarter was worth the occasional overheard damn.

“Exactly!” Ford said.

Raz said, “Fine. But only ‘cause I think I’m gonna owe you, like, two dollars at most.”

Ford held out a hand. “Shake on it?”

The boy took the offered hand. He failed to stop a big smile and accompanying wide-eyed wonder from dispelling what dignity he’d held onto during their conversation. Bet or no, it was a handshake from one of his personal heroes.

“Now that that’s settled,” Ford said when Raz had reluctantly retracted his hand. “Gimme a dollar.”

Raz blinked. “What.”

Ford said, “You found me, right? And I know exactly what it’s like to be a psychic on his own. Pay up, bucko.” His hand, again extended, now demanded (with a few finger wiggles) rather than offered.

“I don’t have a dollar. I spent all my pocket money getting here.”

Ford sighed with exaggerated, poorly acted disappointment.

“Guess I’ll have to take an IOU, then,” he said.

Raz’s scowl over the injustice of the situation faded when Ford, after a brief disappearance, returned with a torn strip of notebook paper marked “IOU $1 - Ford Cruller.” Raz clutched it tightly, eyes gleaming. He’d gotten Ford’s autograph and hadn’t even had to go through the embarrassment of asking for it.

“Guess I’ll have to keep a close eye on you so ya don’t run off with my money,” Ford said.

He dug around in his pocket, and after a moment, drew out—

“Is that… a piece of bacon?” Raz asked.

Ford waved it at Raz, and the boy took it, confused, and a little concerned about the state of the senior Psychonaut’s pockets.

Ford said, “I’m gonna be a psychic stowaway inside your noggin. This is a special device you can use to make me appear whenever you need my help with somethin’.” He grinned at the boy’s bewildered stare. “I just love bacon. I smell that stuff and I can’t help it! I come running.”

Raz turned his stare to the bacon. “Uh. What do you mean by ‘psychic stowaway?’”

“I’ll be hanging out in your head so I can keep track of you while you’re with us,” Ford said. When the boy’s bewilderment tensed into concern, he added, “Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna be able to see anything you ain’t okay with me seeing. It takes real effort to bust through emotional barriers, even for me, and you’d know it if I tried.”

The boy relaxed. “Oh, okay,” he said. “Do you have, like, a little baggie or something I could put this in?”

Ford said, “Ain’t there someone waiting for you? You best git before he gets impatient. And before I get hungry.”

Raz still had many, many questions, most of them collected over years and years of combing True Psychic Tales for all possible points of interest, but Ford was right. Sasha Nein was waiting.

Chapter Text

The Geodesic Psychoisolation Chambers were a set of metal domes bordered by a tall fence. Despite the fence’s barbed bars and a scattered set of warning signs, an open gate allowed Raz to cross the barrier unhindered.

He found Maloof sobbing in the highest of the Chambers, victim, once again, of Bobby Zilch’s unearned malice. The younger boy explained the purpose of the Chambers (a form of solitary confinement constructed from materials able to dampen and contain psychic abilities) before scampering off with Mikhail, who’d come to ask if the boys had seen his quarry, the gigantic, hairless bear apparently stalking the campgrounds.

Raz hoped the bear lurked only in Mikhail’s imagination. After a narrow escape from the psychic claws of a smaller, furrier specimen, he wanted nothing to do with its cryptid cousin. He liked his monsters confined to film reels and comic books, or else small and made of molded plastic.

A set of small tines poking out of the Chamber’s padded floor accepted Sasha’s button with a mechanical hiss, and the section of padding it was wedged into swung open. Below, Raz could see only shadowed metal flooring. A ladder offered safe passage, but he ignored it, dropping straight through the hatch and onto the landing with a practiced disregard for gravity.

The lab, in stark contrast to its entrance, was brightly lit. Uneven stairs, made partially of stained glass and tinted in a range of dark but varied hues, spiraled down into its depths. Not wanting to risk ending the session early by landing on Agent Nein’s head, Raz took the rainbow route into the lab. “Agent Nein? I’m here for the advanced training,” he called on his way down.

The lab was surprisingly messy for an inhabitant who always seemed so effortlessly put together. Unmarked boxes full of who-knows-what lay scattered about the room, most stacked with a mess of books, folders, and towers of loose paper. The floor, dusted with a fine layer of dirt and scuff marks, was in dire need of a mopping.

In the middle of the lab loomed an intimidating device, red and reminiscent of an enormous hairdryer. A blue light glowed in the center of its nozzle, and a green, ribbed cord extended up into the square hole the device hung from. “So, what are we going to learn? Bending spoons? Burning stuff?” Burning stuff seemed like something a massive hairdryer could do.

One corner of the lab was unfloored. From a patch of dirt sprouted a stump, similar in size and circumference to the one Raz had taken to Ford Cruller’s secret lair. Another entrance, Raz guessed. It made sense for the other Agents to have easily accessible routes to Ford hidden away from the prying eyes of the campers.

Sasha himself stood at an orange console, tapping away at the numerous buttons covering its rightward panel and observing the up-down jerk of a waveform across the oval monitor to the left.

There was a crank attached to the front of the console. Somehow, in a room overflowing with mysterious objects, that was, to Raz, the least explicable. He pondered the thing as he approached the busy Psychonaut, but couldn't come up with a sensible reason for its existence.

Sasha was unbothered by Raz’s late arrival, much to the boy’s relief.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come at all, to be quite honest,” he said, fingers continuing their dance across the console. “I know my sessions have a bit of a reputation around camp.”

Raz said, “Coach’s did, too, and the obstacle course wasn’t that bad.” He lifted himself on tiptoes, hoping to parse what the Agent was up to, but the waveform revealed no secrets, and the pair of post-it notes stuck to the panel were written in what Raz thought might be German.

Sasha ignored the boy’s blatant snooping. “Your opinion might be a tad unorthodox, in that particular case,” he said. “Your real-world training and natural athleticism gave you a bit of an advantage over the other students.”

“Is real-world training really that helpful?” Raz asked. His heels fell back to the floor. “Acrobatics is physical stuff, and mental worlds are, y’know, mental. My physical self wasn’t actually there.”

“Athletic training is never fully physical,” Sasha said. On the screen, the waveform had settled into a steady flow of equally sized peaks and valleys. Sasha nodded to himself, clearly satisfied with whatever he was reading in those undulations, then turned, at last, to his visitor. “While you train your body to handle the strain of physical activity, you learn how to approach each trick to maximize success rate and minimize injury. This knowledge carries over into the mental world, even if your body doesn’t.”

“Oh,” Raz said. “I guess that makes sense. There was a time in there where I almost missed a jump because—“

He stopped, realizing he’d come dangerously close to exposing his secret.

“Because?” Sasha prompted him.

Then again, Raz thought, if he chose his next words carefully, this might be a prime information gathering opportunity.

“I think I made my mental self a little taller,” Raz said. True, and he didn’t really need to go into detail about why, or about the other alterations he’d unwittingly made to his mental self. “Is that possible?”

“Ah, yes,” Sasha said. “Quite common. The mental self is constructed of many things, not just what you see in the mirror, or how your physical existence feels. Things like self perception and self idealization have a hand in creating the metaphysical ‘you.’ It can even be mildly affected by the mind you’re exploring, but never in ways that would override the most important aspects of ‘you.’”

Raz scratched at the spot on his forehead brushed by a small tuft of hair that had escaped his helmet “So, um… which one’s the real me? Brain me or body me?”

“They are both ‘you,’” Sasha said. “Self perception and idealization are naturally influenced by your bodily experience. Similarly, self perception and idealization influence how you choose to present and adjust your physical self.”

“What you wear, for example,” he said, tugging at a corner of his jacket. “Or how you cut your hair,” he added, lightly touching a loose strand with a gloved fingertip. “These are choices made, and a choice is made in your mind.”

Raz said, “Huh. I was worried I did something weird. Or wrong.”

“Not at all,” Sasha said. “I, myself, have been known to make a few changes when in a mental world.”

Raz snapped his fingers. The sound was muffled by his gloves, but the gesture still translated his excitement. “So that’s why the True Psychic Tales artist draws you taller in mental world panels.”

“He does?”

“You never noticed?” Raz asked.

“I have obviously not read True Psychic Tales with the discerning eye of a true fan,” Sasha said. “Truth be told, I find the entire publication a little embarrassing. Their creative team is prone to exaggeration. I'm afraid the illustrated Sasha is far cooler than the real thing.”

“No way!” Raz said. “You’re so much cooler in real life!”

The shimmer in his eyes and the vehement clip of his syllables told Sasha the boy wasn’t lying. The corner of the man’s mouth twitched. “Well,” he said. “It is nice to know I haven’t disappointed a fan.”
Raz shook his head with vigor.

“Now,” Sasha said. “You asked earlier what we’d be learning. For part of today’s exercise, I’d like to assist you in a dive into your own mind. With your permission, of course. It's a traditional expedition for psychics in training. One I suspect you’ve not had the chance to undertake.”

Raz said. “The only mental world I've ever been in is Coach's.”

“Ah, what a first,” Sasha sighed. “Well, even disregarding the relative… intensity… of Oleander’s inner life, this should be a very different experience. What you saw was a construct created for the exercise. Though it resembled his mental world’s unedited state, its route and architecture were artificial. You could think of it as a building, with rooms purposefully assembled and decorated to suit the owner and his guests. The mind’s natural state is more like a cave system, its paths and chambers shaped by a sort of ‘weathering’ resulting from one’s lived experiences. It’s a fascinating thing to witness, especially the first time, and quite revelatory, in more ways than one.”

“Hmm,” Raz said. The prospect of actually seeing his own mental world was simultaneously thrilling and terrifying. What if he hated what he saw? Worse, what if Sasha hated what he saw? Disappointing himself was one thing. He was used to that. But disappointing Sasha Nein?

Sasha glanced down at the boy, or at least Raz thought he did. His chin dipped a bit, but it was hard to tell where the man was actually looking with those sunglasses in the way. “It’s okay to be nervous. Most people are, especially when accompanied by a second party. But it’s an important step in one’s psychic development, and having an ally at your side is the safest way to approach it. People can get lost inside themselves without a second mind to help guide them back.”

“Really?” Raz said, eyes widening in alarm.

“Yes,” Sasha said, low and solemn. “It is a recoverable situation, usually, but not pleasant. Few people emerge from such a thing with all of themselves intact.”

“Scary,” Raz said.

“Quite,” Sasha said. “Luckily, all Psychonauts are well-acquainted with playing the guide for these inward journeys. We do it regularly. It’s good practice for maintaining mental wellness in active psychic populations.”

Raz rubbed his chin. “So if I join the Psychonauts, I’ll get to see inside your head?”

Sasha said, “Why wait? I was thinking we might make a quick foray into my mental world before we visit yours. To establish trust, and to give you a chance to observe a more organized state of mind.”

“Good idea!” Raz said. Maybe a glimpse into Sasha’s mind would help him figure out how to hide the parts of his mind he didn’t want his hero to see before they were laid bare.

“Then let’s begin.”

From a jacket pocket, Sasha produced a door, similar in shape to the Coach’s but unlike in style. The Coach’s had been splotched in the muddy greens and browns of military camo, while Sasha’s was painted in alternating rectangles of red and blue. The lines of Sasha’s design were a little uneven, and the rows of squares were imperfectly sized. Raz wondered if the doors came customized, or if their owners decorated them by hand.

Sasha floated the door to his forehead. It opened with the quiet scream of a turning hinge.

Raz lowered his goggles and prepared for the forceful tug he’d felt when the Coach’s mind had pulled him in. Instead, he felt a gentle prodding at the corner of his thoughts. Sasha’s open door was not a demand, it was an invitation. His mind was an outstretched hand offering easy passage. Raz took hold.

—

Sasha Nein’s inner world was nothing like the Coach’s. The duo of mental spelunkers stood on a flat surface covered in monochrome, geometric designs. Beyond the surface’s edges, a void stretched off in all directions. Rows of ethereal, seafoam green octagons rotated in the emptiness, intersecting, occasionally, with clouds of what looked like detached, bodiless nerves.

Raz spun in a slow circle, hoping to see some other, more interesting location in the distance, but the only landmass in sight was what lay beneath their feet. With nothing at eye level, Raz scurried over to the nearest edge. Maybe the rest was below them?

Peering downward, Raz realized that what he’d originally interpreted as just a plane was actually a cube. Unfortunately, there was nothing to see below its sides but more octagons and nerve clouds.

"Is this… all of it?” Raz asked, looking back at Sasha.

Sasha said, “No, not all of it. Even I have not seen all of it. The human mind is vast, and the deeper we delve, the less we’re equipped to understand. This is just one of the more interesting corners of what we can perceive.”

“One of the more interesting corners, right,” Raz said, brow raised at the featureless cube.

Sasha tapped the floor with the tip of a shoe. Raz jumped as the cube began to shift. The sides below folded upward, becoming walls around the pair. The bottom, attached to one of the sides, slid into place above them. For a moment, they were enclosed in a darkness Raz’s goggled eyes couldn’t penetrate, and then a lamp flickered on above them. Its light revealed a room, clean but fashionably cluttered, tchotchkes arranged both to complement each other and to ensure the room’s aesthetic could never be accused of uniformity.

A small orange couch sat against the right wall, flanked by an end table on one side and by a hooded lamp and an angled bookshelf on the other. More bookshelves took up two of the other three corners of the room. A desk and computer filled the other. A coffee table, made of white wood and slightly misshapen, stood before the couch. It was topped with official-looking documents, a cup of steaming coffee, and a tray for the cigarettes Sasha seemed never to be without. Squeezed into the spaces between furniture were a variety of house plants, none flowering, most leafy but for a huddled mass of squat, round cacti.

“I thought you might enjoy a glimpse at Psychonauts headquarters,” Sasha said.

“Headquarters?” Raz squeaked. “I thought this was a living room.”

Sasha chuckled. “It is, in a sense. I’ve spent many a busy week doing more living here than at home.”

“Wow,” Raz said. He twisted on tiptoes to take in the room. “I thought offices were supposed to be boring.”

“It certainly would be if I hadn’t put time and some of my own money into personalizing it,” Sasha said. He sighed. “The finance department turned down my reimbursement requests for everything but the computer and some of the ‘more relevant’ texts, even after I explained that a comfortable and aesthetically pleasing environment would vastly improve the quality of my work.”

Sasha waited patiently as Raz scampered around the room. The boy paused at the bookshelves for a while to scan the titles, muttering about how he wished normal libraries would stock more books on the psychic sciences, and that he could only read his copy of Mindswarm so many times before he started having The Bee Nightmares again.

“The Bee Nightmares?” Sasha asked.

“They start out as just bee dreams,” Raz said. “Hanging out with a cute little cloud of bumblebees all thinkin’ about flowers and honey and stuff. Then the flower thoughts turn into buzzing, and the buzzing gets louder and louder, until I can’t think about anything else.” His voice dipped to the hushed low of a campfire horror story. “At the end, right before I wake up, I realize that I, too, am now a cloud of bees.”

“Anyways,” he said, tone snapping effortlessly back to lighthearted cheer, “that’s when I know it’s time to put Mindswarm down for a few months.”

Sasha put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I think we may need to prioritize expanding your library, Razputin.”

“Yes, please,” the boy said, eyes wide and glimmering.

With the bookshelf thoroughly scrutinized, Raz moved on to Sasha’s computer and its many monitors. When these proved disappointingly blank, his attention drifted to the next wall.

This was the part of the room Sasha had been waiting for Raz to reach. Hanging over the low couch where the Psychonaut spent hours poring over scientific printings and written evidence (and where, when work was busiest, he took brief naps between tasks), was a pair of picture frames. One held a large, abstract painting he’d purchased not for its shape (simple, triangular, easy to make up meanings for when he felt like messing with visitors) but for the strokes of green that clashed in just the right way with the orange of the couch. The other, smaller frame held the graduation picture Milla had ‘fixed’ with glue and a newer Sasha.

Raz paused at this picture, just as Sasha had hoped. He tilted his head like a quizzical pup. “How come you pasted over this one? Bad hair day?”

“You could say that,” Sasha said. He strode up to the wall and plucked the photo off of its hook. “My hair and I were in a contentious relationship, back then, and I was not yet equipped to wage war against it.”

Sasha popped open the back of the frame and withdrew the photo.

“Oh, you don’t have to—“ Raz started.

“It’s no problem,” Sasha said. “This isn’t the real photo, so no need to worry about permanent damage.” Still, he winced as he gently peeled Milla’s addition away. It had been years since the Sasha beneath had seen the light of day.

He expected a familiar twinge of pain when he looked into the glass-obscured eyes of his former self. Instead, he felt only the usual embarrassment of sharing an old photo with a new friend. He wanted to sigh at his hair, unfitting and unfashionable; at his clothes, purchased to say not “This is who I am” but “This is who you want me to be;” at the makeup, applied ineptly because he only bothered on special occasions—but a sigh was, to his surprise, all he needed. Time had dulled the piercing edge of the past. The hit it delivered bruised rather than bit.

He was glad. This next moment would be defining for his continued interactions with Raz. Calm would serve them both well.

He handed the photo to Raz.

The boy took it. Looked it over. Sasha watched his expression evolve from surprise to bewilderment, and at last to something too complicated for a single word, some mixture of awe and yearning and saucer-eyed discovery.

After a moment of silence, the boy blurted, with throat scouring gusto, “ARE YOU ME?”

Sasha said, “Not unless something has gone dreadfully wrong.”

“W-wait. That’s not what I meant. I meant, um…”

Sasha waited as Raz gathered himself for a second attempt. It was important, he thought, to let Raz drive this conversation. He must be patient. It was possible—likely, even, given what he knew of the boy’s history—that Raz didn't have the vocabulary for a conversation like this.

Sasha first heard the word ‘transgender’ as a teenager, dropped like a bomb from the lips of a friend's out-of-towner buddy as she gossiped about classmates he would never meet. He still remembered the definition she gave when he asked her what the word meant. It was overly focused on genitalia and utterly devoid of empathy. Sasha was insulted on behalf of the absent classmate.

Only when he was in bed that night, tossing, turning, and replaying the conversation in his as yet unexplored mind, did he realize that he was also insulted on behalf of himself. The girl had unwittingly become the first person in Sasha’s life to ever verbalize the thoughts he’d long kept leashed and muzzled, and she’d delivered it with a malice meant to misconstrue the absent classmate’s truths as blatant lies.

Not for the first time, Sasha found himself wishing he’d spoken up. He wished he’d had the wherewithal to parry her ignorance with his own understanding. But he was ill-equipped to fight a largely unknown opponent in front of an audience he’d want to leave the arena impressed.

He comforted himself to sleep with the thought that he had, at least, not left the encounter empty-handed. He’d learned a new word. A word he could take elsewhere, to seek definition from people whose thoughts weren’t born of petty cruelty.

And so he had. From this search came the relief of knowing that he wasn’t alone. He’d tried to pass it along to others. He hoped he could pass it along today.

Raz glanced down at the photo, then back up at Sasha. He lifted the picture to hide his expression as he spoke again. “Did you. Did you used to be… a girl?” he asked from behind his glossy shield.

There it was. Clumsily worded, yes, but exactly what he’d expect from a child having this conversation for the first time. “Everyone else certainly thought so. The doctor who delivered me. Friends. Classmates. Teachers. Strangers. Even my own father,” Sasha said. “But I knew better. Even as they told me, over and over again, that I was wrong, I knew better.”

The photo lowered a little, and Sasha could see the bend of Raz’s frown over the rim. “They told me I was wrong,” he said. His voice, usually loud, with a confident, kinetic momentum, was low and halting. “They said I was confused. It was just a phase. I’d get over it. I tried to get over it, for a while. I thought, since they were older, they had to know something I didn’t. If they said I was wrong, I must be.” His hands, still clutching the photo, dropped away from his face, and Sasha could see a wobble play across his lips. “Are you sure we’re not wrong?”

Sasha said, “I once spent far too much of my time pondering the same question. For many years, I thought I’d never come to a decisive conclusion.

One day, I decided to change my approach. I am a scientist, after all. Why not treat the question, instead, as a hypothesis? Why not do a little experiment?

I finally got the haircut I’d been yearning for, dressed up in the most masculine outfit I could assemble from my wardrobe, and called a friend. I asked to spend the day together, and I asked that she only refer to me with male pronouns while we were together.”

“Did she?”

Sasha smiled. “Oh, yes. She was very careful. I could not have chosen a better partner.”

She told him later how happy she was that he’d trusted her with that day. For him, it had never really been a question. Who else but Milla to help him judge the energy of his self?

Sasha’s hand moved toward his mouth. A cigarette appeared, conjured to complement a motion that had over many years become subconscious. “She called me ‘he,’ and it felt right. I ended the day telling myself that further experimentation would, of course, be necessary, but I already knew, in my gut, what the end result would be.”

“I added new elements to each new experiment. Tested it on other friends. On new people. In new places. Adding new props and adjusting my performance. In the end, I was ‘experimenting’ almost every day. It had become my new normal. And my new normal felt so much better than what came before. In the end, I knew who I was, and I knew that it was right. I had the evidence to prove it.”

He coughed. “All of that to say… we’re not wrong. There’s nothing wrong with you, Razputin.”

The boy had tears in his eyes. He tried to blink them away. “I knew it,” he said. He rubbed his arm across his eyes. “I knew it as soon as I got here. Everyone called me what I wanted, and it felt nice. It’s been a long time since it felt nice to be around other people.” He handed Sasha the photo. “I’m really glad to hear it from someone else, though,” he said. “Thank you.”

He smiled up at Sasha, but after a second the smile turned into a grimace. “Ugh,” he said.

“Ugh?”

“I owe Agent Cruller two dollars now.”

In the back of his mind, the old man cackled.