Pocheezy

After they go through the newly opened portholes, latch onto the brain waves of a passing dugong, and delve into the crater’s webs of warped steel and spectral illumination, Frazie and Raz find their mother relatively quickly.

This is in large part due to another memory of Raz’s that flashes before their eyes. It’s very much like the one that led them to Queepie. Though it’s not nearly as cheerful. For anyone.

----

“Razputin. I will ask you one more time.” Donatella warned.

Raz tried not to gulp or fidget. He shouldn’t have been so nervous. It was going to be the same question. He could tell from his mother’s surface thoughts that it wouldn’t be any different.

But everything was different now.

Ever since he and his father had come out as psychic. Ever since Frazie had left.

For the last few days, the changes had been circling around him, content to nibble on others.

Following a conversation with his dad where he asked her about an aunt Raz had never heard of, Nona became even quieter and more withdrawn.

His brothers and little sister didn’t seem to know how to talk to him anymore.

And his parents were fighting.

They had argued before, but that had usually been about stuff like travel routes, training regimes, budget deficits, and which local buskers to collaborate with. And they would do that openly with disagreements burning hot and vanishing fast.

These last few nights, the two of them would excuse themselves to trek deeper into whatever woods or fields or hills they were staying at. That’s when the shouting would start. Though their children couldn’t make out the words they were saying, it was mostly their mother’s voice they heard.

Augustus no longer slept by them in the caravan when they were travelling or in the same tent when they made camp. Nona or her tent was always between him and them now, like a wrinkly barricade; she was the only one who didn’t seem to mind. His grandmother would happily mumble something about it being “just like old times” before dozing off.

Donatella hadn’t treated him much differently though. The same embarrassing nicknames still tumbled from her lips and into his ears. They leapt atop the wagons to reapply sealant to their roofs. She’d even given him a haircut, just a regular trim. It had all been very ordinary.

Then on this muggy afternoon, as they were doing anaerobic drills, Donatella stood very still rather than squat into her next plank. She walked over to Raz and told him to stop his burpees, too. The rest of the family was in town gathering supplies and promoting their next show. It was just the two of them.

That’s when she asked him the question she was repeating now:

“Did you know your sister was going to run away that night?”

Raz felt he was ready this time. He could do this correctly. Whatever this was.

“No, mom. I told you I didn’t,” he reminded her.

“Mindreading counts, child.” Donatella said.

Raz hastily clamped down on his telepathy. Had she been able to tell he’d been using it? He had only turned it on to try and give her a better answer. But looking into her thoughts had been like looking into a mirror. Her mental gaze shifted from his eyes, to his hands, to his feet, to the corners of his lips, and even his nose. She was laser-focused on whether he was lying to her or not.

“Still no,” he said, trying to sound and act relaxed. And why shouldn’t he be relaxed? He had done nothing wrong. He wasn’t the one who had run away.

Donatella’s expression remained impassive. Inscrutable. “Did she ask you to cover for her?”

Raz was just going to say ‘no’, but he thought up a better way to respond. “Not for this. I promise.” That might pique her interest – the times he had actually covered for Frazie – then she’d ask about them and they could talk about less miserable things.

Donatella did not take the bait.

“Did she ask you to go with her?”

Raz flinched, his gut twisted the same way it had when he’d learned just where Frazie had gone from his dad. A summer camp for psychic kids like him.

“No.” was all he could say.

Seeing how uneasy her precious patatino had become, Donatella face softened. She leaned down and cupped his chin in one palm, gently stroking away the tear rolling down his cheek with her palm. She smiled and told Raz that they’d done enough training for one day.

She invited her son to come read with her in the shade where they’d listen to the radio as they flipped through their books. Afterwards, he would ride around on Sugarcube for a while; someone had to put the world’s smallest horse through her paces while Frazie was away. Then they’d go to the pantry to mix up a big pitcher of ice-cold orange juice for themselves and for the others when they got back. And he could have the first sip.

Except that hadn’t actually happened.

His mother had thought about doing that. She had thought about doing all that so hard Raz had been able to tell even with his telepathy muted. An entire plan for a pleasant afternoon she wanted to gift him was right there, so robust and complete that Raz felt he could step right into it.

But instead of raising a hand to his face, she crossed her arms.

Her blue eyes were sad, and there was a hint of fear in them.

“Would you have gone with her if she had?” Donatella asked.

----

“In my defense, Sugarcube was barely able to carry me.” Frazie tried to joke after the memory faded.

Raz wasn’t laughing. “I still hope mom grills you as bad as she did me once we get her back.”

As far as being a prisoner goes, Donatella is doing quite well for herself. She’s out of her cell, there are unconscious fish minions sprawled all over the repurposed call center she’s in, and she’s even snagged a harpoon to defend herself with.

The moment they get a clear shot at her cranium, Frazie and Raz use clairvoyance to get into it.

They discover that the inside of their mother’s Psilirium-spiked mind couldn’t be any more different than Queepie’s.

The orange glow is there, yes, but instead of hollow silence, Donatella’s sight is ablaze with the names and faces of her loved ones crackling in and out of her vision like firecrackers. There’s Dion, Mirtala, their dad, and of course, the two of them. Nona doesn’t appear as much; she does, just with much lesser frequency.

The two psychics try to hail their mom as she’s sprinting, sneaking, and fighting her way through the building, but it’s like she’s too fixated on saving them to hear them.

There comes a point where there is a partly flooded hallway between her and a slowly descending blast door. A fish guard utters what may very well be a cackle for its kind as it raises a shock mace and swings it down into the water, aiming to electrify the watery floor that Donatella will have to cross.

Instead of halting or trying to carefully hop from one piece of debris to the next like the fish or her kids expect, Donatella takes a running leap right into the quagmire. Just as she’s about to fall short of making it, she twirls her harpoon and stabs downward. Using the blunt end of the spear, she makes contact with platform she would have landed on to pole vault herself the rest of the way.

Her kids are thrilled, but at the moment her feet are about to plant themselves on the stupefied enforcer’s face, Frazie and Raz are kicked out of her brain. Their hold doesn’t slip. They are not shoved out or repelled. The two psychics feel a hard, foot-shaped force strike them in tender mental areas and they’re back in the young amberjack they had used to get there.

“Kaff! My tummy!” Frazie wheezed. “Feels like – kwuff – I got kicked in my tummy!”

Raz was in too much pain to make light of his older sister using the word ‘tummy’.  “Mwai knows! Dis won’t bwake mwai wheel won will eet?”

Donatella doesn’t seem to notice their ejection and races towards the door.

“Wait! Mom! It’s us!” Raz mentally yelled, hoping his thoughts could reach her like they did with Nona. “It’s Frazie and me! Come back! Come back.”

Harpoon in hand, his mother slides beneath the door before it slams shut, and she’s gone.

“I can’t believe she left us.”

“Raz, we were forty feet away and we’re not even in our actual bodies. I don’t think mom even knew we were here.”

“Should we go after her?”

“Maybe not. She’s free and we both know mom can take care of herself. We should concentrate on the others who are still locked up.”

“Speaking of locks, what hit us earlier? It felt like mom was giving us the literal boot.”

“Hard to say. I’ve been thrown out of brains before but never like that. Could just be the Psilirium making mom extra turbo stubborn.”

“Instead of just regular turbo stubborn?”

“Preeee-cisely.”

“Ahehehe.” See you later, mom. Raz thought. Stay safe.

“I heard that.” Frazie revealed. “And I’m certain she’ll be fine now that her wonderful Pootie-Wootie has wished it so.”

“Ehhhhhhhhhh, bite me.”

And a yellowfin tuna proceeds to do just that. To the amberjack their minds are in, that is.

Being devoured by something that they’ve scooped out of a can to make sandwiches with would’ve been a bit too bizarre for the two psychic children, so they sling themselves into the eyes of a far less appetizing pufferfish before that happens.

The living ball of poison carries them deeper into the Rhombus.

--

A plane crash. The sea. Ruins under the water. Hordes of inhuman mutants.

It is an odd story, but it happens more often than you’d expect.

It is happening to Donatella Aquato.

But unlike the poor souls who usually wind up in situations like these, she has two distinct advantages:

She knows EXACTLY who she is.

And that she can trust the voice in her head telling her where to go.

It had been right about the door combination after all.

Somewhere in these flooded forsaken atriums, her family is lost but alive.

She is going to find them. No matter what.

To be continued…

--

Commentary:

Art by @pocheezy

I really love this pic. It feels like a still from a movie or a really cool graphic novel that I wished existed or that I was rich enough to fully fund.

And that harpoon! Lookit it!

We're back to mixed narrative styles, so segments should come much breezier than they did previously. Like Donatella, we're entering our full throttle phase.

Donatella freeing herself from captivity and going commando all over the Rhombus of Ruin was always a big part of the plan from when I decided to not end Depths of Denouement neatly.

But as I was developing Rhombus of Reunions, I suddenly had a thought that while Frazie and Raz would basically be playing a tweaked version of the original Rhombus of Ruin game by exploring Charlie Psycho Delta with Clairvoyance, Donatella is just in the thick of it.

Imagine you’re her. There was a plane crash, you wake up in an underwater ruin, there are grotesque, violent, mutant abominations everywhere, your family is missing, and some strange alien substance in the area is messing with your brain. And yet, you must survive the horror. Fight through it.

Tl;DR, while Frazie and Raz are playing a VR title, Donatella is living her very worst Bioshock life (no Plasmid run).

And that bled into the art direction for the title art (art deco) and that in turn inspired me to write an extra scene to introduce the fish guards to Frazie and Raz as both an homage to the Big Daddy introduction in Bioshock 1 and to get across that these minions are a bit more aggressive and threatening than they were in the canon Rhombus game. Being stuck underwater with an increasingly paranoid and abusive dental supervillain for three months rather than, say, a day, really frays on your temper and maybe even morality.

Incidentally, the “memory” clues that would lead Frazie and Raz to their family members were originally going to be snappier script-esque vignettes. However, at the last minute, I realized if I made them into conventional prose, I could better convey the situation with the Aquatos after Frazie left and the fallout from her deciding to turn herself into Psychonaut custody for months. Stuff that I just briefly alluded to in their Motherlobe disguise character bios.

Mostly by sketching out how tough it’s been for Raz since unlike Frazie in canon, he actually came out as psychic when his dad did once he got back from Whispering Rock…without Frazie.

Augustus didn’t escape unscathed either, and he fares much worse here than he does in canon. Partly to give him more to do, give him an arc for this and the story that might come after, but also because I thought it was a tad strange that he didn’t get more grief in Psychonauts 2. Especially from Donatella.

As in, “Oh, instead of bringing home Raz, like you said you would, you let him get on a jet with a bunch of strangers, including the man who attacked him and tried to steal his brain. And you don’t know where he is right now...”

That said, while Donatella calls a lot of the shots in the circus, Augustus is still technically the boss. The ringmaster. The patriarch. So when he is suddenly psychic, he has some protection from the anti-psychic lifestyle he obliviously instituted.

And he would’ve had it in this AU continuation if Frazie had been gone for a couple of days like Raz instead of weeks, and if she had ended the last story as a Psychonaut-adjacent person instead of what is effectively an indefinite indentured guest to their clandestine test chamber dormitories.

Frazie might not be Donatella’s youngest daughter anymore, she’s still her first daughter, and thus her little girl for the rest of their lives. Augustus did not stand a chance in this AU.

But let’s get back to Raz who is not the boss/ringmaster/patriarch and is just the family middle child. So he’s easier to perceive and engage with, let’s say.

I have this headcanon that the reason Raz is so dear to Donatella is that ever since he was a baby, he had been subconsciously using telepathy to make himself aware of his mother’s moods/feelings.

And because he was a (mostly) good boy, he would act on that knowledge to make her feel better.

So when she was sad (however secretly she tried to hide it), he'd comfort her. If she wanted to be alone, he'd give her space. And so on.

Due to this, Donatella considers him her sweetest and most considerate child. Before he realized he was using telepathy for this, Raz just assumed that his brothers and siblings just sucked at empathy.

On the flipside, it’s also why despite resenting the once unreadable Augustus, Raz is far more forgiving with Donatella, to the point that he doesn’t seem to begrudge her for destroying his copy of True Psychic Tales #1. He was able to tell there was no malice in it. Fiscal irresponsibility, yes, but no malice.

Expanding the memory sequence let me fold some of that into the actual story, and also to take that away from Raz when said telepathy is not helpful at all in the confrontation.

Donatella’s initial interactions with Raz in Psychonauts 2 underpins what I believe to be the foundation for the family’s awkward treatment of him in that game. It’s not that he’s psychic, it’s that he ran away from home. So they frontload him with hugs and “forgiveness” but they have to give him some grief to let him know that what he did wasn’t okay. Dion and Frazie co-opt the hazing to vent out their own issues (fear of change/fear of one’s powers respectively), but Donatella stays true to its spirit, both for good and ill (the passive-aggressive hostility that might have driven him away in the first place). More on that later though.

This scene with Donatella and Raz takes place before the one with Queepie. So it’s technically the first instalment of these charming plot progression/character development plot devices where Raz is left holding the bag for being brave enough to reveal he’s psychic and despite not being the Aquato kid that ran away from home.

Augustus Aquato was in familiar, uncomfortable territory.

He was blindfolded, tied to a chair, and his entire body hurt.

None of these sensations or even combinations of the three were new to him. They’d crop up when he was performing risky stunts and escape tricks. Less ideally was how he’d have to slip or even fight his way out of this position whenever local thugs tried to shake his circus down for “protection” money. Then there had been that brief period in 1999 where he and Donatella tried to experiment a tad because they had bought into the Y2K end-of-the-world hysteria; they still poked fun at each other for it.

So while he would have rather been able to see, walk around, and not feel as if he had faceplanted onto a folding table (another old misadventure), it was better than perishing when the Albatross went down. Or worse, finding himself underwater alone with the family curse.

Alone.

Come to think of it, he had woken up earlier, and he’d been with someone. They had walked around somewhere, and he had felt perfectly fine outside of a tiny headache. Then he’d been slammed against a wall. By what, he couldn’t recall.

The fogginess of his memories might have had something to do with the sweet-smelling gas he’d been inhaling since he’d been roused from unconsciousness. The vapors had made his head light and his muscles loose, though he could sense a foreign weight on his skull. However, the chemicals weren’t wholly unwelcome; they helped numb the pain.

He was so pleased with the effects that he didn’t think twice when a man’s scratchy, high-pitched voice asked him who he was and why he was “here”.

Given that his host had likely saved him from drowning, it would’ve been rude not to answer. He told him that while he wasn’t sure where he currently was, his name was Augustus Aquato of the travelling Aquato Family Circus. They were available to perform for various events across the United States and even abroad now that their naturalization applications had all been approved.

There was the sound of shuffling plastic, a befuddled cuss, and the questions continued.

He was asked about the circus: what were its star attractions, how big was it, who he was, and why he was “here”.

Augustus answered questions new and old, which didn’t seem to please his host.

The man demanded to know where he had gotten his jet, what in-flight movies he had seen, who he was, and why he was “here”.

Augustus wondered if he had just misspoken the first two times, so he tried to explain himself louder and clearer.

This went on for a couple of hours by Augustus’ count. His interrogator would almost reluctantly ask him fresh questions – HOW did you get “here”? What is the name of the current President? When was the upcoming Winter Solstice? - before circling back to ask him to who he was and why was he “here”? No matter how much Augustus told him about himself and how he had no idea where “here” was, his host’s tone just became more frustrated and screechy.

The acrobat himself was starting to lose his temper. Not helping his mounting indignation was how the flow of gas had slowed. He was starting to feel the discomfort return to his cheeks, shoulders, and solar plexus.

He was just about to bark back with questions of his own when a guttural shriek ended the cycle for him.

“This is getting me nowhere! Give that back!” A rubbery covering on Augustus’ mouth was yanked off in a snap of plastic. “And let’s get rid of that blindfold, too. You might be making rude expressions at me from under there!” The cloth around the circus man’s face was pulled away.

The room deserved more scrutiny than Augustus gave it. It was a spherical office or laboratory of some kind. The circular walkways and hanging platforms built into its sides were loaded with computers, gurneys, filing cabinets, beakers, and vandalized motivational posters. Dangled from the top of the room by a series of thick chains was a wide, veiled circular mass. Augustus doubted it was a chandelier.

Its denizens also merited a second glance that he didn’t give. They were fish people, similar to Linda the Lungfish, who he had met back at Lake Oblongata. However, they were much smaller than she was – between three to six feet – and their heads had more regular shapes. While quite an unfair comparison to someone who would have difficulty shopping for garments her size, these fellows were also fully clothed in wrinkled lab coats and diving suits.

Had he been more observant, Augustus might have noticed the expansive tunnel that led out from the chamber, and that many of these mutants were packing things into soggy crates. Typically, he would’ve been. If not for his host.

Augustus had seen an image of this man in some of the figments in Frazie’s mental world three months ago. And again on a Wanted poster the Psychonauts had mailed the caravan a week after that. On both occasions, Augustus had thought some artistic license had been employed. Over the course of his travels, he’d been privileged to meet many unusual and extraordinary people, but the photo he’d been given had been almost too strange.

Not so much now. It was all there in front of him: the straitjacket beneath the brown leather apron, the long dark rubber glove that went all the way up his left arm, the prosthetic that looked like a cross between a pepper grinder and a claw that replaced his right, the scars on either side of his mouth forming smirking curves, the red and green magnifying tubes where his eyes should have been, and dark hair poking out of a flowery patchwork lime-green shower cap.

This was one of the two men who had masterminded the Psychoblaster Death Tank plot at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, who had kidnapped over a dozen children, who had tried to hurt his daughter and pushed her over the edge with their schemes.

“You’re…you’re Doctor Caligosto Loboto.” A small spark of anger roiled in his cranium but failed to flare.

“And you’re a fat, little FED!” the alleged dentist spat, jabbing a finger at his captive’s direction. “I’ve pumped enough truth serum into you to make a mime sing the entirety of Les Misérables – THE NOVEL – and you’ve done nothing but lie to me.”

Augustus’ tongue rubbed the roof of his mouth, tasting a sugary leftover whiff of the gas. So that’s why he had been so loose-lipped. He swallowed, choosing his next words carefully. While he wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of being too polite with someone who had visited such hardship on his family, he wasn’t so proud or drugged up not to recognize he was in a literal bind.

“I’m…sorry?”

“A bit late for that!” Loboto’s glove squeaked as he rummaged in his pockets to produce a test tube full of bright fuchsia liquid. “See? That’s the last of this soggy junkyard’s supply of talkie-juice, because you made me waste the rest of it!” The steel pincers of his claw twitched leftward. “I would’ve used it on your accomplice over there if he ever bothered to wake up.”

“Accomplice?” Augustus looked where Loboto was pointing. His blood ran cold. “QUEEPIE!”

The youngest of the Aquato children, the circus’ little strongman, his baby boy was slouched back on a chair much like Augustus’ own. His typically cheerful and puckish eyes were closed, creased with sickness and strain. The lad’s entire body was almost completely wrapped in chains save for his legs, which were splayed out from under him.

Swaddled in a blanket of heavy metal. Augustus almost heaved at the thought.

“9…x…T…waffle…button…” the child wheezed.

“Why is tied up like that?” Augustus demanded. Lord, even the child’s hair looked lifeless. “What have you done with him!?”

Loboto raised his mismatched arms in front of him and retreated a step, but a smile was rising to meet his stitches. “Hey, now. Those chains are for your safety as much as they are for mine. After all, that gumball-headed geezer’s the one who knocked you out.”

Ah, right. The makeup still on Queepie’s face. Combined with how drained he looked now, he probably resembled an old man more than he ever had while pretending to be Ian Quip.

Besides, Augustus doubted Loboto would show any more mercy if he knew his true age. He hadn’t had much to give to those campers. “He wouldn’t do that to me,” he claimed.

“Perhaps not on purpose.” Loboto shrugged as he pocketed the truth serum. “Honestly, you were doing quite well at first. Slipping out of lockdowns, dodging my traps, and fending off my sea-curity.”

There was a pause as the dentist’s boat light eyes swung left and right in anticipation.

Machines continued to thrum. The soft clunking of footsteps shuffled on.

Augustus turned his head back as far as it could go to see if something was supposed to be happening behind him.

Loboto’s smile shook. He grabbed the forearm of his claw, and brought the hooks closer to his mouth. “Get it? Sea-curity? Eh? Because I created my guards from fish. SEA-curity.” The grip around his claw tightened. The grin ripped itself into a snarl. “Is this an abandoned government black site or a morgue!?” he yelled into his metal grasp. “C’MON!!!”

The air was suddenly abuzz with the clattering of clip boards, mugs, test tubes, power tools, and crowbars as Loboto’s creations dropped everything to applaud their master’s pun. It was loud, frenetic, untiring, and desperate.

*CLAP!*

*CLAP!*

*CLAP!*

*CLAP!*

*CLAP!*

The captive entertainer scowled. A Tyrant’s Ovation.

Loboto relinquished his hold on his claw and began waving it at his minions. “Thank you. Thank you. I’ll be here all day. Regrettably. NOW GET BACK TO WORK!”

The clapping immediately ceased. Technicians and guards alike began picking up after themselves while keeping their finned heads down.

“As I was saying, you were having a grand, old time as an intruder. Firing your brain beams, punching and tossing with those mind mittens, and doing backflips. Like a lot of backflips. And then your pint-sized partner somehow picks up a deluxe foosball table and DECKS YOU WITH IT! RIGHT INTO A WALL” Loboto laughed. “The surveillance station’s down the hall, so I can’t show you the footage, but woo. What a whoopsie. Tiny impaled armless soccer stars everywhere! GOAL!” he afforded himself a clumsy kick to the air. “He tried to take a few swings at my guards but ran out of steam fast. Afterwards, the both of you were easy pickings for my SEA-CURITY.”

*CLAP!*

*CLAP!*

*CLAP!*

*CLAP!*

*CLAP!*

“Better. Much better.” Loboto acknowledged. “I guess unlike you, Rip Van Winkle over here just couldn’t hold his Psilirium.”

Augustus frowned at the mention of the mineral. His mother had told him a ghost story about it long ago, and the effect it had on machines and people. Like the Albatross. And his family. But to affect them while they were still high up in the air; how much of that cursed rock was nearby? “Why would Psilirium do this to him?” he pondered. “If Queepie’s like this instead of focused, then that would mean he’s actually…”

Loboto gagged. “Spare me the fake surprise. That performance was so sickening I almost swallowed a filling,”

“We…we can’t leave him exposed like this.”

“Well, I used to have two psychoisolation helmets around here, but one broke so I threw it down the drain. Care to guess where the other one is?”

Augustus didn’t need to guess. His handful of psychic powers had failed to help him free his son after all. “It’s on my head.”

“Hehehehe. Yes. Tightly buckled to it, I might add.”

“Then put it on him instead. He clearly needs it more than I do.”

Loboto leaned forward and reached out. For a moment, Augustus thought he was going to grant his request. Instead, the dentist slowly dragged a steel talon across the rim of his helmet; the shriek of metal scraping against metal whipped itself all along the ringmaster’s skull and into his ears.

Augustus didn’t flinch, and kept his eyes locked on Loboto’s emerald and scarlet lenses. As the vibrations were also warping his vision, Augustus wasn’t sure if he actually saw a bowling ball briefly lift itself off of a dingy wheelchair on the other side of the room. If it had actually happened, could it have been Queepie? Bless him for trying.

The doctor sneered and pulled away.

“And why would I let a Psychonaut have full access to his creepy brain powers?”

Augustus gaped. “I’m not a Psychonaut.”

“It’s not healthy to lie to your dentist.” Loboto snapped as he turned on his heel.

For pity’s sake. Augustus thought. This couldn’t be why they’d been taken prisoner. “I’m not. On both counts. We aren’t Psychonauts.”

“So a squad of kung-fu dream-creepers invade my home and beat up my guards because they got lost on their way to a crystal ball-eating competition? No. You’re here for revenge; for your paychecks. You’re here for me.” He grabbed the hanging cloth concealing the massive object suspended above them. “And for him!” With strength beyond what his lanky frame would suggest, Loboto yanked the curtain off.

Augustus had been right about it not being a chandelier. Instead, what hung from the ceiling was an iron sphere that looked like a cross between a naval mine and an industrial oven. The black chains holding it up were also wrapped across its girth, as if the machine itself needed to be restrained. On its side was a brass door with boiled over metal bubbles pockmarking its surface like pustules; there were some orange crystals visible through a window at its center. Augustus had never actually seen any Psilirium himself, but the color was right, and the huge yellow biohazard sticker plastered next to the glass wasn’t exactly advertising rock candy.

And beneath this tangle of bolts, links, and heat was another prisoner. He was hanging from the bottom of this Psilirium contraption, as if he’d been stuck under it as an afterthought; or perhaps it had been put on his head before man and machine has been lifted off of the ground. He was around Augustus’ age give or take a year. He had a wide, healthy, peach-colored face that was casting a far less wholesome vacant stare with unblinking, stupefied eyes. Apart from the metal briefcase chained to his wrist and his lack of shoes, he looked quite ordinary in his blue striped bathrobe and maroon pajama pants.

However, as a fellow facial hair buff, Augustus would’ve known that curly dark brown whaler beard anywhere.

“What’s the matter? At a loss for words?” Loboto teased. “Jealous of how much fancier his headgear is than yours? I know I am.” He jostled his shower cap with the heel of his palm. The mass beneath it swayed in a nauseating wobble.

“Is that Truman…Zanotto?” Augustus asked, even though he knew it was. The Grand Head of the Psychonauts. Kidnapped. So this was why everyone at the Motherlobe had been on edge the day of Frazie’s breakout.

“Iz dat droolman zasnotto! yur doktah calamari lotteryboto!” Loboto mimicked in a falsetto that made his voice even scratchier. “This phony shock of yours, the ‘I know exactly who you are, but I’m surprised to find you in the place I was told you’d be’ schtick is getting really old. Yes, it’s Truman.” He threw his claw up and clenched its blades. “The Sultan of the Synapse Sniffers and his Psilirium Crown! The schmuck you were sent here to rescue.”

“I don’t want-.” Augustus stopped himself. That would’ve been an actual lie. Truman was a good man, and the father of Lili, one of Frazie’s new friends. “Nobody sent me here to do that.”

“Why not? That’s what the Psychonauts before you came here to do.”

At that, Augustus managed to suppress his surprise. He could mull over that later. For now, the only card he could play was trying to seem as unthreatening as possible. Perhaps a, Donatella might give him hell for this later, play at sympathy? “You know. Besides Mr. Zanotto, we’re technically all fugitives. I’m on the run from the Psychonauts myself after I helped break out my daughter Frazie from-.”

“Blegh. Still hawking that hokum? It’s like you never took the blindfold off.” Loboto jeered. “Too bad. My sources have told me that as late as yesterday, Frazie Aquato was still cooling her nasty, calloused heels in a Motherlobe test chamber with three other teenage timebombs. It’s been one of the few sources of joy in my life during these unendingly dark days.” he made his way to the banged-up wheelchair, carelessly tossed the bowling ball off of it, and plopped himself onto the leather and steel chassis. The chair was for a much shorter patient, and the doctor’s knees were raised above the level of his hips once his feet hit the ground. With his legs bunched up like that, he appeared smaller. Tired. Yet that cruel smile remained. “I help kidnap a bunch of kids, steal their brains – not that they were using them that much – with the intent  to brainwash them into becoming child soldier tank batteries, and the circus girl who saved those brats and stopped me (and that hairy hateful bean Oleander) IS THE ONE WHO GETS ARRESTED!” he cackled, repeatedly slamming his gloved fist into the armrest of the wheelchair.

Augustus’ grip on the armrests of his own chair hardened. “The irony is certainly…there.”

“Yesiree! She’s there. And I’m down here. She’s in psycho jail with no parole while I’m free! Free as a bird!” he boasted. “Free as a bird…like a puffin in the desert. Like a peacock in quicksand. Like a canary under a landslide.”

*CLAP!*

*CLAP!*

*CLAP!*

*CLAP!*

*CLAP!*

“Those weren’t jokes. They were just allegories.” Loboto moaned to his henchfish. “Free as a bird. Free as a three for three for free for three for free for three for three months!” Roaring, he snapped back to his feet, knocking the wheelchair aside. “I have been down here for three months! And I’m two days away from getting my rescue sub loaded with unmarked bills!” he spat, claw reaching towards Augustus, then Queepie, then Augustus again. “You people weren’t part of the plan! So you’re going to tell me what I want to know so I can make sure you don’t ruin everything!”

“I’ve answered every single one of your questions.”

“FALSELY!” Loboto stomped back towards Augustus, grabbing a dental trolley that had been between him and Queepie along the way. “You said you’re Frazie’s father, yes? An Aquato? Those hillbilly hucksters who have severe hydrophobia because they think they’re cursed?” he asked, plucking a curved metal stem attached to a hose from the trolley tray. “So why have you travelled to a secret underwater ex-government facility in the middle of the ocean?”

“We’re…” Augustus gulped, his defiance wavering. “We’re underwater?”

“We’re in Charlie Psycho Delta in the Rhombus of Ruin: one of your cruddy deep-sea clubhouses!! That doesn’t sound like a place an Aquato would go! Think fast!!!!” Loboto aimed the tool at Augustus’ face and squeezed its trigger. “Oh no! It’s water! It’s splashing all over you! The curse is coming! Woooooo! Come on! Be afraid! Aren’t you terrified right now!?”

“Blech! Blugh!” Augustus sputtered as his eyes, nose, and mouth were assaulted by feeble spouts of foul-smelling water. “I’m an acrobat, not a vampire!”

“And another thing!” Loboto dropped the water flosser to reach across Augustus’ lap for his chair’s mirror. “Your teeth are far too nice to be a carnie’s!” he accused, tapping at his reflection.

“That’s a hurtful stereotype.”

“Accusing me of profiling? Hmmm. Well, let’s do a simple experiment in pattern recognition, shall we?” he mewed. “Picture this: A plane falls down on the doorstep of one of the Free-Thinking World’s Most Wanted criminals. Despite how he’s on the run and has the Grand Head of the Psychonauts himself in captivity, he doesn’t jump to conclusions. He can’t just assume every moron that crashes into the Rhombus of Ruin is a Psychonaut out to get him. That would be MAD.” Loboto dragged the trolley to his side and fussed around for something on its lower tray. “But when he examines the wreckage, he finds that it’s a Psychonaut jet flown in straight from the Motherlobe. And inside of it, he finds Motherlobe staff uniforms, and Motherlobe staff IDs.” Amidst the clutter of hooks, brushes, and tubes, he found what he was looking for. “So with all these cute, cuddly clues at play, would it be unfair to guess that the plane’s passengers are Psychonauts, Mr. Tumble?”

A bead of sweat mingled with the water still on Augustus’ face. “I beg your pardon.”

Loboto’s claw began delicately picking up cards from a small stack he held in his gloved palm, flashing each of them at Augustus.

“Joe Nash.” There was Dion in his Motherlobe janitor uniform sans pompadour but still proud and handsome even as Loboto let his ID drop to the ground.

“Elias Dōnt.” Here came Donatella looking smart and scholarly in her baby blue three-piece suit and the beard made from her own hair. Loboto flung the therapist’s ID to the side.

“Snugglepaws the TheraPup.” Raz’s face was obscured by the mask of an adorable wolf costume. The outfit’s red vest and sly golden eyes failed to charm Loboto, who threw his ID where he had dumped Donatella’s.

“Ian Quip.” Augustus didn’t get to see this card. Loboto just tossed it at Queepie’s weary form. The ID bounced off of his foot.

“And Gussamer Tumble.” Loboto finished, flicking Augustus’ ID at his chest. After it hit, the piece of laminated plastic flopped onto his lap, and there he was: the Motherlobe’s Seasonal On-Site Air Conditioning Technician in his forest-green speed suit and baseball cap. It had been a pleasant job and a good disguise. Perhaps too good. “This is how I knew you were lying to me about who you were, about what your real name was. I’m not sure your five-man freakshow weren’t listed as agents on those cards, but-.”

Augustus’ whole body tensed. “Five? Don’t…don’t you mean eight?”

“Nope. I said five.”

Augustus felt his tongue turn to ash. “You must be mistaken.”

“Mistaken?” Loboto harshly echoed. “You think I’m a lying, lobe-licking, spoonbender like you!? HA, we’ll see about that!” the dentist dug into his pockets and pulled out the last vial of truth serum. He uncorked it with his teeth, spat out the plastic cap, and downed the tube in one swig. “Hmmm, oh, oh my. You prisoners have been holding out on me. This stuff tastes amazing! Woof. I haven’t felt this good in ages. ‘Not to be taken orally; Manic-Depressive Side Effects’. Feh. Last time I trust a spy agency warning label.” He hopped from one foot to the other, giggling at every landing. “I might run some laps around the lab after this interrogation is over. So go on. Go on. Ask me how many survivors there were.”

“How…” Augustus swallowed. “How many of us did you snatch out of the sea?”

“Five. Just you and the other four spooks on the cards.”

“There was no one else?”

“Didn’t find any. I honestly think you’re trying to trick me again. Like when you release 2 rabid raccoons in an enemy’s house but you label them as 1 and 3 to mess with them.” Loboto chittered. “But if you really did have three extra spies keeping you company, they’ve probably drowned by now.” he smacked his lips. “Or maybe they’re shark chow, or eel bait, or if the crash shredded them into really, really, really tiny pieces, whale food.”

“No.” Augustus rasped.

“Tragic, yes. That nature saw fit to give an animal that majestically large such ugly, skinny teeth. At least, I thought so. Which is why I-.”

“No.” Augustus sobbed. He didn’t want to believe it; it was just too awful. And likely. His mother Marona, who had escaped the deluges that destroyed Grulovia and eluded the curse with him for two decades. The imprisoned ‘Snugglepaws’ could’ve been Raz or Mirtala since the mascot’s real face had never been shown, but was either possibility better than the other? And Frazie. Oh, Frazie. His brave, brilliant girl. He should never have let her go; or at least, he should’ve been more patient after he had. They had all just missed her so much. And because of his desperation, she might be-.

“Sorry. Were you actually talking about those three agents you mentioned earlier? That sucks, too. But while getting turned into lobster chum is a bad way to go, it’s also a perfectly natural way to get your ticket punched. Circle of Life!” Loboto snickered. “Or maybe more like the Circle of the Opposite of That. Aheh. Ahehehe. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

----

Raz had been watching the interrogation unfold from the head of a nearby fish mutant lab assistant Frazie had slung them into. The minion did not seem to notice it had two new occupants in its cranium, perhaps due to how it was reading a comicbook hidden in its work folder. Likewise, it didn’t seem to hear them when they “spoke” or feel the death grip that Frazie had around Raz’s wrist.

He wasn’t sure if his disembodied consciousness had always had wrists - if so, what other body parts besides eyes and ears did it have? - or if it grew one in response to whatever Frazie was doing to him, or if his sister was just projecting a memory of when she had done this to him physically. Whatever the case, it was starting to get sore.

“Frazie, um, could you maybe let go of my brain-ghost-arm-thing, please?”

“Rasputin. Aquato.” Raz gulped. His full name. Frazie rarely ever said it. “Do NOT try that AGAIN.”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“The hovering bowling ball that was going to launch itself at Loboto’s head.”

“I wasn’t trying to lift it. I didn’t even know you could use telekinesis with clairvoyance,” he meekly protested. “I just kind of thought about doing it.”

“That’s kind of how psychic powers work.”

Raz’s trepidation soured and flared into fury. How could Frazie be laying into him after what they had just seen happen; what was still happening? “If you know so much, then why did you stop me? You could’ve helped! You saw it. He’s hurting dad and Queepie!” Their father could be strict, and their kid brother could be a nuisance, but neither of them deserved this. “And he insulted your ankles!”

“Heels.”

“Same difference! If we worked together, we could lift up a really big thing and knock him out with it.”

“Raz.” His nickname, the one he preferred. That was better, but her hold on him remained firm. “Loboto might look like a moldy noodle wrapped in dirty napkins, but the last time I saw him, a tank had shot him out of a ten-story window. And yet, here he is.”

“Darn. And I thought your pinecone-to-the-crotch throws were harsh.”

“I didn’t technically do it myself, but the point is that he’s tougher than you’d expect. If we try to squash Loboto and fail, he’ll think it’s dad and Queepie attempting to attack him, and who knows what he’ll do to get even. And may I remind you that we won’t be able to use our physical bodies to rescue them since they’re still stuck down that grate.”

“Then what can we do?”

The psychic grasp on Raz wobbled. “We…we should start by freeing mom, Dion, and Tala. At the very least, it’ll prevent Loboto from using them as leverage against us when we it’s time to take him down. And we are most definitely going to take him down.”

“So, even though we found dad and Queepie first, we have to save them last?”

“…probably?”

Hearing the uncertainty in his sister’s plan and even her voice was strangely comforting; they showed he wasn’t alone in his fear. Or in his rage. “It’s just that there are so many slammable objects in this room that we could use on the guy. Like that moldy mini-fridge over there, or that plaid wheelbarrow over there, or that giant novelty spatula.”

“Raz.”

He groaned, feeling his action hero anger already starting to cool. “Alright. I won’t try to smack him with sports equipment without telling you first.”

“Or anything else. Capisce?”

“Yeah. Sure. I promise.” Raz felt the grip on his phantom wrist vanish. “But how are we going to break the news about dad and Queepie to Nona?”

“You won’t have to, children.” Nona’s thoughts assured.

Raz gasped. “Grandma? You can hear our minds while we’re all the way up here?”

“Yes. But I could also hear that doctor from down here. With my ears. He is a very loud dentist. And a very bad man.” Nona grunted. “Frazie, may I ask how your father and Queepie are doing?”

“They’re banged up but breathing.” Frazie paused. Why couldn’t there be an easier, kinder way to say this to her grandmother? “And dad thinks the three of us didn't make it.”

The oblivious fish technician whose head they were conversing in suddenly felt her tongue starting to swell. Her scales began to itch.

“Cameras.”

“Nona?” Frazie asked.

“Cameras.” Nona repeated. “This Loboto mentioned a surveillance station. No surprise. Paranoid despots love their little, one-way mirrors.”

“And he’d use them to keep tabs on his prisoners.” Frazie finished, her voice lifting with the possibility. “We could see where Mom and the others might be.”

“There are also those Psychonauts he talked about. The agents who came before we did to save Mr. Za…no…tto. Zanotto. Yes, Mr. Zanotto was his name.”

“Hey, that’s right.” Raz noted. “And if they’re still alive, they might be able to help us beat this creep.”

“That’s the spirit, you two.” Nona praised, her tone less stiff than it had been a second prior. “Seek out the camera closet for clues and rally the resistance. I will be waiting for you below. Good luck.” The eyes of the fish woman seemed oddly hollow once Nona’s thoughts faded.

Frazie and Raz gave the upper chamber one last glance before they departed. Their father was quietly mourning. Queepie was whispering about a “…uba…ank…efill…” A still buzzed Loboto was running laps around his lab, raising his hand to high-five his underlings as he passed them; he was using his right arm. Each clerk and guard winced when its claws made contact with their palms.

The siblings travelled to the ocular nerves of a porter that was travelling down the hall, into the tunnel their father hadn’t noticed, the place where Loboto said the surveillance room was.

They passed by and through more minions and even more of the salvaged flotsam they had pulled in from the Rhombus such as a plastic cactus, a soccer goal, and a bisected Easter Bunny statue. But they found the surveillance station quickly enough. The big eyeball above the door that had a pool cue shoved through its iris was a rather generous giveaway.

The inside was as unkempt and messy as the rest of Charlie Psycho Delta. However, it was a decently sized monitoring station to watch from and work in. Or at least, it would’ve been if not for the magenta recliner sofa taking up most of its center with the words “#1 Dentist” scrawled onto its backrest in white paint. The two fish people manning the office sat on wooden stools.

As the other staffer was busy labelling videotapes, Frazie and Raz dove into the eyes of the one who was actually looking at the wall of television screens in front of him. The monitors were set behind a console that was almost as large as the couch; many of its original keys had been ripped out and replaced with an interconnected series of toddler sound boards. The rainbow of bulky pads had various oversized plastic buttons with cartoony images of starfish, squids, clams, and other maritime creatures and objects printed on them.

“Truth be told, I’m kinda jealous.” Frazie admitted. “Mom and dad couldn’t afford electric toys like this for me. Or you. Or for any of us, actually.”

“The buttons probably still light up and make sounds, too.” Raz pouted. “Although, would getting to play with these really be worth having to deal with Dr. Loboto every day?”

Brother and sister considered the question carefully.

“Nah.” They decided.

In contrast to the sound boards, the only colors the towers of CRT televisions came in were faded yellow, rusty brass, and gargoyle grey. Frazie and Raz were pleasantly surprised that their grainy broadcasts weren’t in black-and-white. Five of the tv sets caught their eyes as they were labelled with sticky notes; the ink on them was still fresh, and much of their spelling was wrong or misguided.

Donut: An open bullpen office with no workers, no bulls, or anyone else for that matter.

Snug: This one showed Tala snoozing on the fake turf of an indoor miniature golf course. Inexplicably, every time the fish they were watching the screen through blinked, their sister appeared to be sleeping by a completely different hole.

Joe: There was Dion, still sitting beside a window. Only the vehicle he was in – it looked like the interior of a train or a ferry - and the view outside of it had changed. And he was holding what looked like a notepad and pencil in his hands.

Agendat 1: A woman in an orange dress was sitting in the driver’s chair of what appeared to be a bus. Her left white-gloved hand was stretched out in desperation. Her beautiful face was frozen in horror, her emerald eyes darting left and right.

Agendat 2: A skinny dark-haired man in an outfit very much like Raz’s was sitting in a jail cell. Unlike the woman, he seemed calm, though every now and then, a nervous smile would shake its way through his lips.

“Holy cow! It’s agents Milla Vodello and Sasha Nein!” Raz exclaimed.

“The ‘u’ on ‘Donut’ is crossed out…” Frazie noted, recalling her mother’s alias on her phony ID card. “So that must be where they’re holding mom. Why can’t I spot her though?”

“Maybe she’s somewhere off-camera.”

“Maybe.” Frazie sighed. “I wasn’t expecting a map to each prison cell, but this is kind of a bust. We don’t know where any of them are, so we’re probably still going to have to search the whole Rhombus to find them.”

“True. But it’s still nice seeing that they’re alive, y’know?”

“Mhmm.” Frazie agreed. On a whim, she decided to scan the console one last time in search of any hints to the whereabouts of her family and her former summer camp mentors.

They were a few more sticky notes strewn about the toys that said things like “Foe Toe Capture”, “Spotlights”, “Disco Bawl” and “Front Shudders”, each with a corresponding combination of symbols below each word.

Front Shudders.

Front Shutters.

Could it really be that easy?

Frazie telekinetically poked at the buttons listed under the phrase: Barracuda, Pearl, Pearl, Lobster, Hook.

A heady metallic and hydraulic thrum resounded down the hall they had just come in from.

“Hey!” Loboto complained from afar. “Which one of you bait brains rolled back the blinds without me saying so!?”

“AUGH!!!” They heard their father holler.

“Hold on, this grim yet gorgeous ocean view freaked out the spy. Hahaha, he looks so scared. Maybe he fibs less when he’s frightened. Good job whoever did that!”

Frazie fumed. Pleasing Loboto hadn’t been her intention, but it would be worth it if those buttons opened what she hoped they did.

She and Raz left just as their host’s coworker, a 6-footer with head lips similar to the first mutant they had seen albeit of a different color, angrily chucked a videotape at him. For almost getting them into trouble with their creator, no doubt. They were gone before the cassette hit his face.

When he returned to his body, Raz felt something thin and prickly touching his wrist. He just about screamed, thinking it was a sea snake or poisonous aquatic slug.

But it was just his sister’s long, serpentine back ponytail, which she tugged away from him before he could crush and damage it with a PSI-Punch.

Their bodies had been drawn down into sitting positions.

Nona remained standing, her lined face was stern.

Her grandchildren made to get back on their feet, but she raised a hand in front of them, urging the two to remain where they were. Physically anyway.

She stood aside, and pointed at the distance with her walking stick.

The shuttered windows at the front of the chamber were now open. The sticky note combo had worked beyond the viewport in Loboto’s lab.

As they spotted a squid in the distance and cast Clairvoyance on it, they thought about their mother, Dion, Tala, Milla, and Sasha; of the strange and disconnected locales they glimpsed in the monitors, and remembered how vast the crater had looked from the outside.

They became very grateful that their grandmother had made their corporeal forms as comfortable as she could before their minds left her again.

Because they probably had a very long swim ahead of them.

To be continued...

----

Commentary:

Art by @pocheezy

Well, that solves some of the mysteries. Like why everyone at the Motherlobe was so restless and scan-happy during the last chapter of Depths of Denouement. Or where Sasha and Milla were during the “jailbreak”. Or why the fish diver had a lot of anger to take out on that shark.

In the original Later, Traitor story, Loboto’s introduction into the AU has a really great scene where he sees through a captive Milka’s attempt to make it look like she had escaped his office with Invisibility. I really hope the way I’ve written him captures the same amounts of comedic, criminal cunning he had while under BurningFox6’s pen. Albeit with a bit more intensity due to being stuck in Charlie Psycho Delta for three months instead of like, what, the three hours between the original Psychonauts 1 and Rhombus of Ruin?

The Psychonauts are a rather goofy and questionably competent bunch, but having an entire organization of psychic spies who could invade your brain or simply blast, beat, and burn you with their minds would be very scary. Especially if you’d been told by your boss that they blame you for that humongous lawsuit that almost eviscerated their institution beyond repair. Oh, and that fake military man you did work for has supposedly thrown you under the bus to save his own skin; that makes sense. He’s still working for the people he tried to betray after all.

Naturally, this doesn’t make a man who was willing to cook a turtle to death any easier to work for, even if you are fish mutant employees he made.

But hey, isn’t it kind of funny that you’re hiding from them in one of their old bases? Hilarious! For the first week anyway.

Augustus is in a similarly unenviable situation, and his situation would likely not improve if he manages to convince Loboto that he’s the dad of the teenager who technically got him into his current predicament, but perhaps this will be a good juncture to showcase the man’s resilience.

To clear things up regarding the Snugglepaws and Mirtala connection, since the id for the mascot didn’t show a face, and Loboto only managed to capture five people from the jet, he just assumed that the shortest one who wasn’t Queepie just had to be the one wearing the costume. The dentist isn’t sure how she managed to fit those big hair donuts of hers into the wolf mask though.

Frazie woke to silence.

It wasn’t the quiet of an empty room or the whispered rush of the trapeze bar.

What surrounded her was full and thick, effortlessly holding her in place, though she dared not move.

Familiar faces greeted her.

Many of them unwelcome.

The bearded El Odio, ten times larger than she had seen him last, charges through the air. The horns of Edgar Teglee’s bovine alter ego were now big enough to gore both ends of a basketball court with a single thrust.

Turning to the side, she spots the spidery hulk of the Phobiamalgamation gliding by her, having apparently broken free of gravity as well. Was it channeling aerozoophobia perhaps? At least its many bestial heads weren’t snapping at her.

Everywhere Frazie looks, she sees more entities from the mental realm.

Disembodied marionette hands grip wooden crossbars, their strings droop and reach out in search of new puppets to attach themselves to.

Above them, neon tentacles from false, distant worlds slithered across the sky.

And rolling through the void is music.

Not heard. Seen.

Fiery and frozen notes – quavers, crotchets, and breves of all denominations - drift and scatter in every direction. Some of them are snared by the tentacles, others are caught by the puppet strings, but most escape to flit and frolic another day.

Their paths guide Frazie’s gaze downward, towards what lies below.

Like the broken jaw of a mad giant peppered with glowing wounds, Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed reaches out towards her; its crooked spires and the ill glow from its shattered windows seeming to invite the circus girl back. For revenge for how she had almost destroyed it, or out of a twisted sense of charity, Frazie can only guess.

But that makes no sense.

The asylum is in Lake Oblongata. What’s it doing all the way out here in the middle of the-?

Frazie woke up.

The great bull and the amorphous chainsaw spider lurch and contract into the hulks of languid whales.

The disembodied puppeteer hands bloat, redden, and turn translucent until they resemble large, pink jellyfish.

The alien tendrils shake off their extraterrestrial features, leaving only the shape of eels.

And the burning blizzard of shimmering symphonies flap and split into shoals of fish.

She isn’t in the Collective Subconscious.

She’s somewhere much less familiar. Somewhere much more dangerous.

She is underwater.

[HELLO. DO NOT BE ALARMED. YOUR AIRCRAFT HAS MADE AN EMERGENCY LANDING. YOUR COMPLIMENTARY PSI-SHIELD RAFT WILL FLOAT/LIFT YOU TO A CLEAR L-L-LOCATION FOR RE-k-k-k-overrrrrrrrrr…]

That’s right, she thought as she ran a hand across the thrumming inner surface of the sphere. She wasn’t IN the water yet.

When they had hit some turbulence during their flight to the Motherlobe from Whispering Rock three months ago, Sasha had assured her there was nothing to fear. If some irrecoverable mishap befell their plane, the machine would automatically shield them with psychic energy before ejecting them from itself. Then they would gently float down towards the ground, towards safety.

Or in case of a water landing, float up to the surface.

So why was the round, green shell around Frazie not moving?

She scanned the gloom, trying to find signs that the shield was actually ascending.

Instead, every part of her went still as she sees that her shield wasn’t the only one that was malfunctioning.

Frazie could make out at least five glowing orbs sinking deeper into the sea, growing further and fainter with each lost second.

Beyond them, the confined acrobat saw that the electric lights she’d hallucinated hadn’t vanished with the rest of the asylum.

She almost wished there was just darkness there.

Managing to regain a hold on her brain if not her limbs, she reached out towards her falling family.

Her hydrokinesis tore at the murk beneath her, trickling through the salt, foam, and other impurities to make distance.

Five Feet.

Ten Feet.

Twenty Feet.

Thirty.

Thirty-Three.

Too slow.

They’re too far now.

Frazie nearly brought a fist down on the shield, as if cracking her only lifeline would somehow save them where her stupid, worthless powers had failed.

But as her knuckles were about to break themselves upon the reinforced mental barrier, she remembered that there had only been five orbs.

She whipped her head round, and there they were. Two more spheres descending to the depths.

Before Frazie could cry out in joy or sob in relief, one of her hands had already lifted itself up towards the shields and yanked.

The twin orbs hurtled towards her, her telekinetic pull brutish and swift.

When they were close enough, Frazie channeled her own shields through the one the Albatross had provided. Her resolve, her protectiveness cycled across its exterior. When it touched its two counterparts, their safeguards detected no threat. Three spheres became one.

Frazie’s new passengers knocked her into the side of the enlarged barrier as she caught the pair. Her face pressed against their bodies, the redhead felt them before she saw them: a soft, quilted dress and a cheap leather jacket. And the torsos behind the clothes were breathing, slow but there. It was her Nona and Raz. Unconscious yet still alive.

She laid her grandmother and younger brother down on the bottom of the sphere and thought about what to do next. The little trick she and her dormmates (well, Jintly and Marvin anyway) had experimented with and learned out of boredom had succeeded. She had managed to merge the shields into a stronger singular bubble. There were more of them in it, but Nona and Raz weren’t sucking up too much of the oxygen.

If she was careful, she could coax their vessel in a certain direction. She could bring them up to the surface to hopefully await rescue and get help. Then again, she could also try to follow the others. There was no telling how long her mother, father, sister, and two other brothers would last down there. The pressure, the cold, and maybe even some sharks. Family curse or no family curse, those shields would only be able to keep them safe for so-.

Behind her, something thumped against the shield. There was a forceful squeal as it dragged itself along the barrier. The screeching warbled as if whatever was causing it was writhing or flexing across the protection. Or gripping.

No.

Not now.

But why not?

Would there be a better time or place for it to strike?

There was a second thump, then another. More scraping, more grabbing. The intruders pounded on the emerald surface. Each one knocked away by the protection came back alongside a new fellow attacker.

Frazie didn’t need to turn around. Right in front of her, four thin watery fingers coiled their way into view, joining together to form a palm, then stretched further back into an arm. A Hand of Galochio slapped itself against the shield. Its digits squealed as it squeezed.

Just like all the others surrounding the barrier were.

Hundreds of fingers from beyond the grave trying to pop a bubble.

“Stay away from the water!” she could almost hear her slumbering Nona warn, what she had been told all her life.

And Frazie couldn’t even do that. She had gone to a summer camp near a lake, went across it to an insane asylum, had almost killed people with that lake, and then wound up in a government facility next to a river. Even the mental worlds she had travelled to were full of water.

But her parents and siblings had done nothing wrong. And a curse, a hatred of this magnitude, one that could hound the Aquatos across nations and even generations was unlikely to be satisfied with a single victim.

Glaring hard to mask her desperation, Frazie raised her hands at those of her great aunt’s and pushed.

The liquid limbs spasmed and peeled themselves off of the shield. For a moment, they grew clearer, faded. Then all at once they congealed back into being and lunged at the sphere. Frazie suddenly crossed her arms. The Hands of Galochio were shredded to pieces and those fragments thrashed amongst themselves to reunite.

And so it went.

Frazie would use her hydrokinesis to repel the Hands. In turn, the Hands reformed and rallied to attack her anew.

Cracking her knuckles shattered theirs.

When they tried to punch through, she kicked them away.

An elbow jab pierced a hundred palms at once.

Frazie wanted to laugh. She had never in her whole life as a circus performer and a psychic been in as much danger as she was now. Most of her family was missing, she was miles away from civilization, she was slowly running out of air, and she was one lapse in concentration away from being snatched up and dragged down to her doom.

But after so many years fearing and feeling from these horrid hands, watching them leer at her from swimming pools, ponds, and even buckets, it felt so good to blow them apart.

All those mornings and afternoons of training her hydrokinesis were finally paying off.

She’d get these accursed revenants away from their bubble, and they’d be on their way.

She could do this.

And why wouldn’t she?

Frazie could sense where the hands were coming from.

She knew how to get rid of them.

It was so easy.

Effortless.

Weightless, even.

Maybe it was because she enjoyed eating them so much when her mother cooked them, but Frazie had never liked comparing noodles to brains; even after she had seen and physically handled several of them herself during her time at Whispering Rock, and could appreciate the resemblance. It was simply too unappetizing.

At present, she was starting to respect the metaphor what with her mind unspooling. That felt like the right word for it. Every one of her tensions, concerns, and terrors were tightly wrapped around a big iron fork. And now they were coming unwound.

They were uncoiling down her ponytail along with her vision, energy, sense of balance, and even a bit of her hearing. Not much left on the plate apart from what might have been clumps of iron and some spoiled milk. And pain. Fair bit of that.

What was this? It was just like what happened on the jet but ten times worse.

Frazie lolled and slipped, landing on her knees. It was hard to see. She sought the last live spark in her muscles and swung.

The hands didn’t budge.

They began clawing at the shield again. Little cracks formed where their fingers pressed.

Frazie clambered towards Nona and Raz, carefully doing her best to cover them with her body. She’d make a poor wall, but maybe she could hide them from the curse this way. If they couldn’t see the hands, then hands couldn’t see them, right? Not that hands could see, of course. However, this was all she could think up at the moment, and it seemed like as good a plan as any. She just needed to catch her breath – oh god, was their bubble shrinking? What about their air? Was that shrinking, too? – and she’d think up something better.

The young girl held her family close. She felt sick beyond belief, but the two them were warm and soft. Scrambled as her head was, Frazie couldn’t bring herself to turn away from the crumbling walls of the sphere. At the end of the day, she was still an Aquato. She could be fearless for a few more seconds.

Jointly, the Hands of Galochio reeled back.

Curtain call.

The specters surged forward.

There was a flash of light. Whiteness buried her eyes. Ringing flooded her ears.

Then darkness. Silence.

----

Commentary:

Art by @pocheezy

Please look at it one more time. The way the Hands of Galochio press upon the shield, how the image of Frazie’s fingers and hair are distorted where the water hands are placed. Just look.

And the way in which her third ponytail is wrapped around her – brilliant way to include her whole hairstyle in what I thought would be a rather narrow teaser image.

Pocheezy even managed to entertain one of my more “out there” requests of expressing the ocean Frazie was mired in vis-à-vis a parallelogram of water with some seaweed. I wanted to call up the image of a rhombus, because, well, the game this story is based on.

The intro to this saw some revisions as I couldn’t decide if I wanted Frazie to hallucinate the sea life as stuff she’d seen in the mental world or if I should cut right to her seeing her family’s escape pods heading down instead of up.

El Odio, the Phobiamalgamation, the puppet hands from Pepper’s Production, some aliens from Chloe’s headspace, and the music notes from Phoebe’s pyrokinesis drills were picked due to them being the most “believable” entities from the creative unconscious to morph into whales, eels, and the rest. Would’ve loved to include more references to Later, Traitor, but four was already pushing it.

I think you could’ve put this in the VR game, too. Wouldn’t even need to model everything (apart from a bit of Thorney Towers) if they couldn’t be imported or easily replicated from the previous game. Just use figments as stand-ins, and when the big reveal happens just blur the scene and replace it with the actually sea critters.

Some more of Frazie’s specialty with shields. Can’t let hydrokinesis take up all the spotlight.

PREVIOUSLY

Everything will be fine.

That’s what the supersonic Psitanium-powered jet chirped into her mind.

Frazie remembered Milla telling her about this. It was a safety feature of all large Psychonaut vehicles: a prerecorded mental message meant to pacify stressed passengers so they could make more rational decisions during times of crisis.

So the jet didn’t know that everything would be fine.

It didn’t know about her family’s curse that doomed them to die in water; much like the seas the plane was flying above.

It didn’t know about Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, or the Psychoblaster Death Tank scheme, or the asylum, or the Fact Flash, or her great aunt Malig-rather-Lucrecia, or the tidal crown, or how she had turned herself in to the Psychonauts to get her newfound hydrokinesis under control, or the way her family had somehow infiltrated the organization’s headquarters to break her out of there against her will.

And it certainly didn’t know it had been stolen by them.

So no, everything wasn’t going to be fine.

However, her parents and siblings seemed to be acting like they believed it would be. Most of them were even in their old circus costumes as if was just another day at the carnival. They sure didn’t act like they had just made themselves seven of the most wanted fugitives on the planet.

Her grandmother Nona was happily sipping from her fourth bottle of wintermelon iced tea from the mini-fridge.

Her mother Donatella was fussing over the jet’s massive flight manual, rapidly flipping between the glossary at the back and various chapters before it, grumbling in Italian with each failed referral.

Her father Augustus had seated her youngest brother Queepie on one of the plane’s curved, floating lounge chairs to try and wipe his elderly dockworker disguise makeup off of his face.

“Why isn’t it coming off, dad?” the world’s strongest boy whined.

“I think we just layered it on a bit thicker than usual today.” Augustus’ scarred visage grimaced as he pulled away yet another ink-stained moist towelette from his youngest child’s face. “Not to worry. We’ll try the soap in the bathroom once Razputin is done with it. He’s got to come out of there eventually.”

Served them both right, really.

Unlike Raz, Dion had entered and exited the plane’s only restroom quickly and quietly, his acrobat outfit back on and his pompadour restored. He then stowed his neatly folded janitor’s uniform into an overhead bin, had the audacity to ruffle Frazie’s hair as he passed her, and proceeded to seat himself near and stare out of a window. Dion hadn’t moved or spoken since. When he hadn’t responded to any of Frazie’s scowls or whispers, she had peeked into his brain with a smidge of Clairvoyance – purely out of sororal concern, mind you. She didn’t see anything out of the ordinary through his eyes, but she had felt the ghost of a warm hand in his and the echo of a husky yet girlish chuckle in his ears.

Raz had been in the loo for what felt like ages. Frazie knew from experience that it could take a hot minute to change out of and freshen up after running around - to say nothing of performing - in Dion’s old wolf costume for a day. But at this rate, the plane might run out of Psitanium before he was done.

She was relieved that Sugarcube wasn’t here. Apparently, her family had left her beloved tiny horse with some friends. How shockingly considerate of them

And here she was, still in her Volunteer Guest Tester scrubs and staring down at her old and only circus outfit. The ringed jumpsuit, the blue polka-dotted over-shirt, the indigo shoes, and her other accessories had been laid in front of her on a puce, pleather beanbag. Each item had been gently washed and carefully polished since last she had seen them. Even their patches appeared to gleam.

Over the last three months and some change, Frazie had often imagined putting it all back on. One day, she’d just decide to walk out of the Motherlobe during a tedious test or agonizingly dull seminar and she’d look like herself again. She would slip on her leg and wrist warmers before cartwheeling back into a world where the ceilings were not so low and the air was too spiced with sugared churros and applause to ever be stale or antiseptic.

She’d even tried to keep the shape of her shawl and skirt on her while she was away. Frazie was aware the repurposed cotton apron tied over her shoulders and the beige towel around her waist made her look a bit silly, but they brought her comfort nonetheless. 

Now her real, actual ensemble was right in front of her. She just needed to put it back on. It would be so easy. And she would. Any moment now.

“Are you scared it won’t fit?”

“Gah!” Frazie yelled. “Whuh-oh-Tala. Sorry. Didn’t see you there.” Although she could’ve sworn her little sister hadn’t been sitting to her right when she had looked in that direction a moment ago. 

“Is it…” Mirtala began, self-consciously scratching at her shorts. “…is it because your eyes still hurt?”

Frazie shoved down the very recent and painful memory of Tala accidentally blinding her with flashlights that were thankfully no longer looped into her hair. “Nope. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to see that you’re wearing your wings.”

Mirtala’s concerned frown blossomed into an infectious smile as she hopped off their shared bench. “Yup!” she performed a quick expert pirouette, letting the purple veils connecting her wrist bands and her own shawl twirl in the artificial breeze. The bells tied to her ringed braids jingled. “We’re all back together again, so I just HAD to dress for the occasion. You should hurry and put your costume on. Then we can match!”

“I’d love to, Tala.” Frazie claimed. And on a less felony-filled day, that would be completely true. “But, in case you didn’t notice, Raz is hogging the toilet right now .”

“Hmmmmm…ooo!!!” Mirtala snapped her fingers. “I know what we can do while we wait! Let’s play Loop Shot!”

“Tala, I’m not really in the mood for-.”

“G’wan. It’ll be fun!” Mirtala dashed off to one of the jet’s cupboards that were next to its mini-fridge, and just as quickly returned to her sister’s side. “Here! Ammunition!” she said before dumping an armload of small paper pouches on Frazie’s lap and taking several steps away from her.

It was a small mountain of sugar packets, each one with the Psychonauts insignia printed above the condiment label. Subtle. Very subtle for a spy organization. “You didn’t eat any of these, did you?”

“Pfffft. You know I’m not allowed to eat that much sugar all at once anymore. Plus, that would give me an unfair advantage. So have at it.” Mirtala urged, pointing at the two great circles on either side of her head. “Take your best shot.”

“Mrph.” Frazie picked up one of the packets and lazily tossed it. The shot fell short, barely making it halfway between them.

“Okay.” Mirtala nodded. “Let’s call that a practice throw. It’s important to stretch.”

“Yus.” Frazie flicked another packet. This one flew wide to her left, missing Mirtala’s right ringed braid by a whole foot.

“Trying to make me let my guard down, huh? It won’t work. That is what you’re doing, right?”

Frazie didn’t answer. Instead, she lobbed the next packet upwards. It would’ve gone right over Mirtala if the younger Aquato girl hadn’t jumped up and headbutted it back into her face.

“Oi!” Frazie exclaimed. “Hey, penalty!”

“Nuh uh.” Mirtala teased, tapping the carpeted floor with one of her ballet slippers. “You know the rules. I landed right where I started so I haven’t technically moved from this spot. Maybe you should try aiming better if you want a point.”

“Why you-.” Frazie pinched the edge of one of the bags between her thumb and index finger and then snapped it clockwise as she threw it. The pouch blasted towards the hole ringed by Mirtala’s left braid before sharply curving towards the one on her right.

“Wow! A curveball!” Mirtala quickly turned her head leftwards, the outer edge of her braid knocking the packet away before it could enter its loop. “I didn’t know you could do one of those this up close.”

“That should’ve gone in.”

“It didn’t, but you nearly got me there. Try again. Try again!”

Eyes closed, Frazie took her fingers off of the mound of remaining sweeteners to slowly rub at her temples. “Like I said, Tala. Now’s not the best time for-.” The teen knife thrower’s hands lashed out, their swings crossing as they released the sugar packets she had secretly palmed. The twin bags whirled towards the circular gaps of Mirtala’s braided loops dead center. If she tried to deflect them as she had before, at least one of them would go through, and they were travelling too fast for her to jump over or duck under them.

So Mirtala arched her back at a near perfect 90 degrees instead, letting the pair whizz past where her head had been. “Like I said, it’s important to stretch,” she reminded as she straightened herself back up. “That was your best one yet, though I gotta say, you’ve gotten really rusty, sis.”

“Ah, well.” Frazie flexed her hands outward in surrender and sighed. “I didn’t have too many chances to stay sharp at the Motherlobe,” her eyes met her kid sister’s sympathetic gaze and tried not to look at how two of the sugar packets she had previously thrown were now hovering right behind Mirtala’s head. “I picked up some other tricks though.”

At her mental command, the bags shot out from where Frazie had telekinetically lifted them. They had a straight path towards their respective targets.

Which were robbed of them when Mirtala swiftly tucked herself forward and landed on her braids; their coils were so tight, thick, yet pliant that she could balance atop them as easily as her hands, feet, or noggin. She was performing her signature “Strand Stand” as she liked to call it.

“Get outta town.” Frazie balked as she caught the thwarted pouches. “What gave me away?”

“Well, Dad and Raz use their psychic powers a lot around camp nowadays.” Mirtala hopped back to her feet so she could continue her explanation face-to-face. “So I know there’s like this ‘thwuwuwuwhum’ sound when they’re using televisionesis to lift boxes and junk”

“Telekinesis.” Frazie corrected.

“Right. Right. That.” Mirtala nodded. “So are you feeling better? Or do you wanna go another round?”

Everything will be fine.

There was a click of plastic against metal as the lavatory door swung open.

“Sorry I took a little while, but I’m ready, refreshed, and all set for our new lives on the run as wanted men…and girls.” Raz proudly announced.

The ten-year-old middle child of the Aquatos proudly stood in the frame of the jet’s bathroom with his mascot wolf head mask tucked under his arm. But instead of the traditional pastel green or blue-and-white stripes of his clan, he was garbed in a chartreuse and emerald sweater that somewhat matched his eyes. And rather than the bright star-adorned pullover shirt he’d worn since he was seven, he had on his frame a dark brown leather jacket, dark brown pants, and dark brown leather gloves. Literally topping it all off was his weathered training circus helmet, which he only started putting on again because he insisted that it made him look like a World War 1 flying ace when combined with his beloved oversized, mail-order goggles – that he had apparently taken back from Tala since the flight started.

“Raz?” Frazie began. “Why are you dressed like Sasha Nein?”

This got their father’s attention away from cleaning Queepie up. “Dressed like-?” Augustus turned towards the back of the plane and frowned. “For goodness’ sake, Razputin, where’s your costume?”

“I’m wearing it under my clothes, dad.” Raz assured, tapping at his chest. “And to answer your question, Frazie, my outlaw outfit looks nothing like Agent Nein’s spy duds. The colors are mostly different, and he wears super cool sunglasses whilst I’ve got these different but still very cool goggles.”

“This fanboy thing’s still kind of creepy, Pooter.” Frazie kept it to herself that from what she knew of Sasha, the psychic spy would’ve secretly been flattered by this little tribute.

“Grrr, at least I’m putting a bit of effort in reinventing my appearance.” Raz claimed. “The Psychonauts will be looking for circus performers, so the rest of you should be trying out new disguises, too.”

“So dressing like one of the guys they’ll be sending after us will make you harder to catch?”

“You got a better idea?”

“Yeah, try not breaking into their headquarters next time.”

“Well, maybe you should try not needing us to break you out of there.”

 “I never asked any of you to-!”

A pointed, queenly whistle from the cockpit pierced the air.

“Frazie. Razputin,” they heard Donatella call. “And Augustus, dear. Please come forward. There is something we must discuss.”

Raz tensed, suddenly appearing quite uncomfortable in the cosplay he had so adamantly defended not a minute before. He stole a quick glance at himself in the washroom mirror, straightening out his collar and dusting off his pants just in case, and started shuffling towards Donatella’s direction.

Augustus stood up from where he was trying to help his youngest child. “Bathroom’s free. Go on, Queepie. Try using the soap in there to get the makeup off. I’ll check up on you after I talk with your mother. And remember not to use your cape for wiping. You might stain it.”

“M’kay. Later, dad.” Queepie hopped off his chair and headed towards the restroom. “Good luck, Frazie,” he told his sister as he passed her and Mirtala. “It was nice knowing you, Raz.”

“I wasn’t the only one mom called!” Raz protested, although he slowed his pace until he could fall into step with his father’s.

Sighing, Frazie gently set aside the sugar packs on her lap that she had been on the cusp of chucking at Raz’s face. And she would’ve nailed him with it too. “Salut, Tala.” Frazie said, indulging in a bit of the French she knew as she stood.

“Saloon, Frazie.” Mirtala curtsied.

Dion just kept brooding.

The teen’s slippers softly pattered on the crimson carpeted aisle as she quickly strode to meet one of her literal makers. Might as well get this over with.

Donatella was still perched on one of the pilot chairs, reviewing a few passages of the manual before looking up at her husband with two of their children at his sides – Frazie on his left and Raz on his right.

Grandma Nona, seated on the co-chair, hummed contentedly whilst gazing at the sky beyond the cockpit.

Frazie watched her mother close the book and clear her throat. “Firstly, no one here is in any trouble. So there is no need for any alarm or nervousness or abrupt emotional spikes of any kind. Alright?”

The three psychics in front of her slowly nodded, more puzzled than assured.

Donatella batted her long eyelashes and smiled at them as she lifted the thick hardbound pilot’s manual as easily as she would an in-flight magazine, angling it so they could all see the cover. “I’ve been leafing through this ponderous little tome over the last hour to better understand our surroundings.” she gently explained. Frazie recalled seeing her mother adopt such a tone while she read storybooks by the cribsides of Raz, Mirtala, and Queepie when they were infants. “We are currently onboard the Albatross. One of the Psitanium-powered jets that the Psychonauts own and operate.”

“The Albatross? Phooey.” Raz pouted. “I was hoping we’d stolen the Pelican. That’s a way more famous Psychonaut vehicle.”

Augustus bit his lip and made a go at a good-natured chuckle. It came out as a strained, jovial cough. “Aheh. ‘Stolen’ is a very strong word for what happened, son.”

Frazie rolled her eyes. “Is it, dad? Is it really?”

Her mother’s smile tightened, brandishing more teeth. “May I finish, please? Thank you.” Donatella opened the manual to an earmarked page. “According to this book, there is a particular way that the Albatross, and presumably all the other planes of its type, are turned on,” she continued in her storyteller voice. Which felt rather appropriate, as due to how small the page’s text was and how abstract its illustrations were, Frazie, Augustus, and Raz might as well have been babies having this shown to them. “As you can see, for such a large and expensive craft, the ignition is deceptively easy to activate.” But Donatella’s voice was commandingly gentle and she sounded like she knew what she was talking about, which is all a baby can really ask for when something is being read to them.

So her audience, who were pretty far removed from being babies, gave her a second nod.

Donatella turned another page. “In essence, the Albatross can only be activated and piloted by a psychic,” she rubbed her free hand over a paragraph she had circled in red ink before moving on to a later chapter. “The controls of which can only be shared or transferred by that same psychic who turned it on in the first place. Which I found to be rather prejudiced and shortsighted – I mean, what if the pilot takes ill mid-flight and the only other person on the jet is not psychic. What then? – but perhaps that’s only fair. After all, it wasn’t until recently that we held misgivings and distrust towards psychics, even if some us secretly were…that,” she trailed off, eyes downcast for a moment. But only for a moment. There was still work to be done. “So it stands to reason that a member of our family gifted with such powers is the current pilot.”

Augustus’ calloused hands stroked his beard in thought. “Yes, that would make sense, and, oh. Oh,” his brow creased. “Oh dear. I thought Nona had just knocked us into auto pilot when she struck the dash with her cane.”

“If only it were that easy, Augustus.” Donatella murmured, setting the now closed manual back on her thighs. “Now comes the hard, that is, the important part. We’re going to have to be very careful – CALM – calm as we do this.” The Aquato matriarch looked to her right, blue orbs from across generations locked. “Frazie, my little sunbeam, do you think maybe you kickstarted the engine? Even by accident?”

Frazie’s nails dug into her palms. Each of her ponytails trembled as her body shook with indignation. “Mom, if I was in control of this oversized lawn dart,” the words filtered themselves through a dam of gritted teeth. “I would have flown us back to the Motherlobe so we could all BEG FOR FORGIVENESS!”

The stolen jet became rather quiet save for Nona’s humming.

Frazie wasn’t going to look behind or even beside her to check the reactions of the rest of her family. Her attention lay squarely on her mother whose fingers had dug into the spine of the manual deep enough to leave marks when Frazie shouted the end of her answer.

Despite that, Donatella turned her gaze away from Frazie’s to squint at the Albatross’ display screens rather easily. “Based on what you just loudly said, and how none of the readings of this gizmo that responds to the thoughts and moods of its pilot have changed much, I think we can rule you out. For now.”

“Unbelievable.” Frazie moaned, slinking away a few feet to lean her back against the fuselage. From this angle, she caught a glimpse of a weary look of disappointment on her father’s face. She’d likely get a stern talking-to later. Worth it, she silently huffed.

“Am I next?” Raz piped in nervously.

“You certainly can be, Razputin.” Donatella said, her expression and voice softening at her darling patatino’s initiative.

“Sweet. Now what should I try first?” Raz pondered. “A loop-de-loop? A nosedive? Oo, Oo, how about a barrel roll?!”

His mother swiftly leaned forward to cup his cheeks in her hands to pull him away from his thoughts and back to her. “No! No. You shouldn’t strain yourself, Razputin. It is too early in the day for that,” she chided, lightly patting his face before releasing it. “Let’s start small. I want you to try to find a connection with the Albatross and then think slightly higher thoughts and slightly lower ones while I look at these numbers and…colors? Then we can move on to more advanced maneuvers. Like slowing down and landing.”

“Sure.” Raz stretched his right hand forward and pressed his left index and middle finger to his temple. “I can do that.”

“Excellent.” Donatella studied the dashboard. “Now just concentrate. Focus. Like when you’re packing up juggling pins without touching them, or when you’re shooing away varmints with those big orange glowy fists, or when you’re trying to listen to someone’s thoughts or see through their eyes.”

Frazie just about gagged hearing how much free reign Raz now had to openly use his once secret shameful psychic abilities around camp since she’d been gone.

“Got it.” Raz’s face scrunched up, his mind seeking a handhold if not a joystick. “I think I’m getting something. Higher. Lower. Higher. Lower. Higher…I can’t feel the plane moving any different. Is anything any different?”

Donatella shook her head. “No. It’s all the same.”

The boy’s shoulders sagged. “Sorry, mom.”

“No need to apologize, Pootie,” she assured.

“Your mother’s right, Razputin.” Augustus agreed. “Though I must admit, I’m a little relieved that it’s down to me. Not that you or your sister couldn’t have done a fine job as aviators. But if you’re too young to hold the reigns of the caravan, you’re probably too young to steer a jet. Even if you might have the goggles for it.”

“I guess.” Raz mumbled.

 “There, there.” The Aquato gave his son’s shoulder a light, consoling squeeze as he stepped forth to meet his wife. “Donatella. Uhm. Hello.”

“Hello, Augustus.” Donatella said with a half-smile. Even a few yards away, Frazie could spot the corners of her mother’s lips trying to lift themselves up higher. Her father’s own mirrored the discomfort. She had never witnessed her parents being this awkward around each other. This stiff and, dare she say, distant. She must be imagining it. Surely. “Are you ready to begin?”

“Absolutely. I’ll just get into position…” he began, raising his right arm and putting two fingers of his other to his temples like Raz had. “…and I’ll get us back on track in…no time…” the ringmaster’s lopsided grin fell askew. His right palm pressed flat against the air, followed by its fingers tapping at what it had pressed against. “That’s…worrying.”

“What is?” Donatella asked.

Augustus was looking past his wife, concentrating on a presence beyond hers. “I can sense the controls, but I can’t reach them.” His hand continued to wave through the emptiness in front of him, jerking left and right at points to slide across flat, invisible surfaces. “They’re all covered with this tight band of…force, I suppose you could call it. Locked away from me.”

“Can you feel a way in?”

“Mrrmm. No seams or cracks. It’s like fog made from iron,” he strained against it a moment more before giving his arms and brain a rest. “Donatella, are you quite certain there’s no other way the Albatross could’ve gotten airborne?”

“I-I’ve cross-referenced and double-checked every possible section in the manual’s index about how to get it started and how it’s flown. I wrote down notes and-and-and-.”

Augustus’ voice remained gruff and measured. “Then we can double-check together. We might find some alternate method for-.”

“No! There are no alternatives. It has to be one of you. You’re the only psychics I know who are on this plane!”

Everything will be fine.

“But fine!” Donatella snapped, slapping the manual back open. “I’ll read through this glossy doorstopper again. Twice or even thrice. And I better do it quick before we fly into the side of a mountain or even outer space!”

“Dearest.” Augustus gulped. She was flipping through the book’s pages so violently that she was practically slapping them to get to the next chapter. “Perhaps a break is in order.”

*SNAP!*

Everything will be.

Despite his gloves, Raz managed to snap his fingers in astonishment. “Something just switched on in my brain,” he smiled. “Maybe I am the pilot after all. It feels kinda horrible, but that’s probable just the weight of being responsible for a multi-million-dollar aircraft.”

“YIPPEEEEE!” Frazie almost jumped out of her skin at Mirtala’s shriek of joy coming from the back of the plane. “Mystery solved! Captain Raz! Captain Raz!” she cheered. “Where should we go first now that we can steer this thing?” she jogged to Dion’s side. “Rome?” she sprinted to Raz to elbow her immediate older brother in the arm. “Boston, maybe? Oh, I got an idea!” Suddenly, she was at Frazie’s feet, smiling ear-to-ear with big, blue unblinking eyes. “We could actually go to Indonesia for real! Hahahahaha!”

Frazie stared dumbfounded as Mirtala laughed and resumed zipping around the aisle listing off the cities and countries they could visit with Raz supposedly at the helm.

Her sister had always been energetic, and could be so peppy at times that it could be exhausting, but she had a good head on her shoulders that let her read the room and stopped her from doing, well, whatever that was that just happened.

The chiming of bells echoed across the jet.

Fine everything.

“Actually, Razputin.” Augustus winced. “I’m starting to feel a bit out of sorts myself.”

At that, Frazie could no longer hang back as she wished. It was all getting too strange. The changes in mood. Her father and Raz’s infamously thick skulls getting migraines out of the blue. She needed to figure out what was going on before it got worse.

She pushed herself off of the fuselage and stepped forward. Or tried to, anyway. Her body leaned ahead, but her foot wouldn’t follow. Odd.

“Frazie?” a familiar voice that had once dazzled her with stories of ponies and dragons long ago asked.

How could someone so close sound so far away, she wondered. 

The edges of her vision glowed and the rest blurred yet she felt terribly unbothered.

Weightless, even.

“Frazie!”

Be will everything.

The teenager coughed as she fell onto a slender yet stalwart shape. Wiry, muscled arms held her in place and stopped her from spilling sideways. Soft, dainty strokes tickled her forehead.

Butterfly kisses, her mother had called them.

“I’ve got you, Frazie. I’ve got you.”

And there she was now. Holding her up. How nice of her.

“Bambolotta, what happened?”

She wasn’t sure actually.

“I’m…fine, mom. I just need to, like, catch my breath or…something?”

-will be.

Donatella was fretting over her with her mouth and hands, checking if she had a fever, asking when was the last time she ate and if she needed to lie down. Probably. It was coming through rather muffled.

Frazie remembered that she was going to have a look around before she almost fell flat on her face, so she started scanning the room for whatever it was she was trying to find.

She checked on her grandmother first. Nona was rolling a bottle cap across her left knuckles, watching intently as the disk flipped from one crevice to another. It would’ve been a quaint trick if any other Aquato had been doing it, but Frazie hadn’t known the old matriarch was still capable of such dexterity. Good for her.

Reluctantly, she did the same for Dion. To her surprise, while she could barely make out what Donatella was saying to her despite how close she was, she could clearly hear him. “Hair curled like forest vines, calloused hands so pleasing to hold,” he muttered, tracing letters on his window. “…and eye bags from long nights of…eye bags? No, that’s stupid. Stupid. Terrible line.” The older boy’s sleeve hastily rubbed away what it had written on the glass.

*CRACK!*

Fine will thing.

There was a crumpling of metal and plastic as the door of the lavatory was ripped off its hinges and fell outward.

Queepie hobbled his way out of the bathroom, moving as old as the lined makeup still on his face made him look.

The world’s strongest boy was barely holding up his own shoulders. “Sorry…about…the door, dad.” Queepie apologized. “Couldn’t get the lock to turrrrrrr…” The words trailed behind the lad as he collapsed on top of the entrance he had shattered.

“Queepie!” Augustus yelled, stumbling a moment before running towards the prone form of his youngest child.

Donatella bit her lip, eyes darting from Frazie in her arms and Queepie on the floor, from her eldest daughter to her littlest son; both young acrobats catastrophically off-balance and it was killing her that she didn’t know why. “Frazie, I’m going to check on Queepie for a moment. Let’s get you seated down. There,” she said, guiding Frazie onto one of the Albatross’ curved, cushioned hover chairs. “Razputin! Watch over your sister for me! I’ll be right back,” she gave one of Frazie’s limp, heavy wrists a tender squeeze before departing. “I promise.”

Ev-ever-everybe.

What was that horrid stuttering she kept hearing? It couldn’t be coming from Raz; he was speaking quite clearly to her.

“Frazie? Wow, you don’t look so good.”

Maybe even too clearly.

“Are you thirsty?” Raz asked worriedly. “I could get you some water. Or some of that ice tea that Nona won’t stop drinking.”

“Rrr-ruh-rzzz.”

His face brightened at that, there wasn’t a trace of resentment in it from their earlier argument about his costume; it had been forgiven if not forgotten.

“Saying my name’s a good start. Though you still sound really sick,” Raz lowered his voice to a conspiratorial pitch. “Do you maybe need to puke? Would that make you feel a bit better? I stashed some barf bags in my outlaw outfit before I left the bathroom. Now where did I put them? I hope they’re not in my pouch,” he rummaged through his pockets and patted at his jacket. “To be honest, I kinda just grabbed them because they had the Psychonauts logo printed on the front.”

Even as delirious and weakened as it was, Frazie’s body tried to will itself to groan in secondhand sisterly shame. This did not succeed, but the force of her failed utterance actually lolled her head to side, giving her a good view of the cockpit and the flight controls.

Through bleary eyes, she saw it happening. The unchanging displays that refused to respond to her, her father, and Raz were shimmering like Christmas lights; flickering emerald characters besieged and strangled by crimson alerts. Gauges rose and fell as if tethered to the puck of a high striker. Dials frantically wavered and spun, looking less like analytics and more like escape attempts.

She tried to point it out. To her Nona who was right next to it, still fixated on her bottle caps. To her brother who was right in front of her, inspecting his pockets. To anyone. With her voice. With her telepathy.

The words in her mouth curdled into mud. The thoughts in her head were a swirl of silt.

With a single witness and little warning, the bright, wispy blues of a cloudy afternoon sky darkened and were made solid save for the ivory cuts of curling waves.

Everything will be fine.

The Albatross crashed into the ocean.

To be continued...

----

Commentary:

Teaser and Title Art by @pocheezy

The Aquatos are back!

The Aquatos are down!

Was inspired to make a beefier intro than the one in Depths of Denouement (which I hope you've read along with the original Later, Traitor) for this sequel.

I really enjoyed writing the Aquatos in the final chapter of Depths. So if you were likewise delighted by them during their great escape, then please stay on the lookout for more chances to explore the Rhombus of Reunions!

Mirtala, believe or not, was the impetus for why this opener got so long.

I had this VR joke scene in my head where she tried to lift Frazie’s spirits with a game where she would have to throw objects through her ringed braids to score points.

It seemed like a pretty natural game bored siblings would concoct, and in trying to house that moment, a lot of other prose blurbs emerged rather naturally until a few thousand words of traditional narration came about.

The rules of Loop Shoot are pretty simple. Every miss is a point for Mirtala and every successful shot through her loops is a point for the challenger. No aiming for the eyes, no live ammunition, and hitting her on purpose constitutes a penalty. In turn, Mirtala can’t use her arms to block, deflect, or dodge. And while she can bend back or jump, she must land back where she started or that’s a penalty.

It’s not a perfect model, but they’re learning as they go along.

If Rhombus of Reunion was a VR game, you could of course just keep throwing sugar packets all over the plane (and its passengers) while the Loop Shoot segment was going on. Nona, Queepie, and Augustus would yelp in surprise and ask Frazie not to bean them again. Dion would catch the packets before they hit him without looking. Donatella would likewise just swat them away while reading the manual and warn Frazie to stop.

Similarly, Frazie would be able to use her other powers to a degree as Raz did in the original game.

However, she will pointedly refuse to do a couple of things like use Pyrokinesis beyond mildly heating things up (“I know Sasha said that it’s okay to smoke in these keys, but there have got to be SOME limits.”)

Dialogue when you use powers on the other Aquatos would change depending when in the prologue they’re used during (start/Frazie’s outfit, Loop Shoot, interview). For example, using Clairvoyance on family members besides Mirtala and Raz will have them try to coax Frazie into humoring Mirtala so the plot can continue.

Exploring the jet would give the player opportunities for Frazie to take note of various items that call back to Later, Traitor and Depths of Denouement which could help refresh some info about the current plot.

These would include a brochure of Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, an old newspaper about the Psychonauts getting sued by the parents of the campers due to Oleander’s kidnapping scheme, a promotional ad for Cognitive Technologies for Recreation and Leisure, and maybe some epilogue materials of what some of the asylum inmates are currently doing or just stuff that reminds Frazie do them (ex. a magazine with a Gloria interview, a print of one of Edgar’s poker dog paintings, a toy resembling one of the denizens in Pepper’s mental world, a copy of the Waterloo board game, etc)

Before I forget, here’s a sampler of some of those interactions I mentioned. These ones involving Clairvoyance.

Augustus

Augustus: This doesn’t feel like Razputin…Frazie? Is that you?

Frazie: Hi, dad.

Augustus: Practicing your astral projections sans those little doors, I see. Don’t be discouraged if this is as deep as you can go for now. I’ve a notoriously thick skull.

Frazie: Actually, I’m just using Clairvoyance.

Augustus: Ah, that makes much more sense. In that case, you’re doing wonderfully. By the way, could you perhaps visit Queepie’s mind and ask him to stop squirming so much? Otherwise, he’ll be stuck looking older than me with this makeup.

Queepie

Frazie: Maybe you should try staying still./Dad wants me to tell you to stay still.

Queepie: Can’t I have space in my own head? Jeez.

Dion

Frazie: Oooooooooo, Dion. This is your conscience speaking. You must see the error of your ways and-.

Dion: Frazie. Get out of my brain, or I’m going to make you regret visiting it.

Frazie: Pffft. As if. I don’t scare easily, Dion.

Dion: I’m going to give you until the count of five. 1-2-3-.

Frazie: GAH! What the hell was that?

Dion: Hahaha. Aw, you should’ve seen your actual face when you saw that.

Frazie: Grrr. Fine. I’m leaving. See if I ever come over here again!

Frazie: (back in her own head) Heh. That'll show him…wait.

Donatella

Frazie: …hi, mom.

Donatella: Mmmm. Hello, Frazie. Say, your father told me that you left him behind at that summer camp by flying off in a jet very similar to this one. Is that true?

Frazie: …yeah.

Donatella: Then perhaps you could tell me if – no – never mind. These paragraphs look rather promising.

Frazie: Okay.

Nona

Nona: Teehee. Someone’s rooting around in my heeeeeeead. How nostalgic.

Frazie: Who else has been in here? Raz? Dad? Did…did Aunt Lucre-?

Nona: Maybe I’ll tell you someday. But first, another drink.

Mirtala (Loop Shot)

Frazie: Mmmm, nah. That’d be cheating. Beyond reason anyway.

Mirtala (Hyper)

Frazie: She’s moving too fast for me to get a bead on her.

Raz (Bathroom)

Frazie: Pass. I’d rather not see through Raz’s eyes while he’s in the bathroom. Like. Ever.

Raz (Outside)

Frazie: (deeply) POOTIE! I can see you’ve been lying to me! Did you really think you could hide your thoughts from your own mother forever?!

Raz: Ahhhhhhhh!!! Mama, I can explain! Oh, God. I always knew you were psychic. Everything makes awful, terrible sense now and…and…hey, that wasn’t how my mom’s thoughts sound like.

Frazie: Awww, you can actually tell the difference. That’s adorable.

Raz: Grrrrrrrr.

Don't blame me for that bit with Dion. Blame the interns for pranking him with that video back when he was Joe Nash.

That’s all for now. See you in the next segment!

And to close things off, here's a clearer look at the title art for Rhombus of Reunions!

Even if she didn’t have telepathy she was too alarmed to use at the moment, Frazie knows with absolute certainty who’d she trust enough to scoop her into a box with no resistance, as well as who would be strong enough to carry it with no issue. Someone tall and someone small respectively. She doesn’t know how they got to the Motherlobe, but she has a terrifyingly strong inkling as to why they are there.

Frazie feels Queepie’s pace slow and then cease. Though muffled by her confines, she can just faintly make out a mildly concerned voice of a Motherlobe staffer. Its owner seems weirdly blasé about encountering two random trespassing circus kids carrying around a big, metal box.

“Custodial Officer Nash? Mr. Nash? Yo, Joe.”

Who the hell is Joe?

“Oh, sorry. I was waving to Gis-erm-Intern Nerum-I-we-we got a form, Agent Jared, sir.” Dion stammered. “I’m just helping Old Quip here navigate. He was having trouble getting back to the docks with this freight.”

Whatever. Her two idiot brothers from either extreme of the sibling pecking order couldn’t possibly succeed. They were doomed. The moment they removed her MARB, likely so she couldn’t be tracked with it, they had cut off her vitals feed to the security office. At best, they had a minute or two before the Psychonauts started looking for her. She could just wait in silence for them to fail while sharpening a ‘what were you two thinking!?’ between her teeth.

“This brain building’s too dang complicated.” she heard Queepie complain in a strained, phony curmudgeon voice. “If it were built like MY noggin’, it’d be a straight road every which way - I tell you what.”

Jared chuckled, a rare sound. “Give yourself a little more credit, Ian.” he said. “Lemme have a look at your paperwork. Shouldn’t take more than a second. Then you two ought to head back to your posts. Top brass wants everyone to be where we can find them today. And tomorrow. And maybe indefinitely.”

But the longer this went on, the worse it could get for Dion and Queepie. The sooner this ended, the sooner they were caught, the better. Frazie’s mind is too bewildered to tap into her psychic powers. But her body, crammed and bagged as it is, is still listening to her.

So she decides to kick.

The small talk promptly stops.

Questions are asked. Excuses are made about how part of the package was left behind and how they’ll be back in a second after they get it. And Frazie feels her oldest and youngest brothers retreat the way they came.

She kicks again and again whenever there’s the slightest pause in the crate’s jostling.

More halted greetings from agents and staff. More excuses by the brothers. More backtracking.

“Please, Frazie.” Queepie quietly pleaded. “Please stop.”

Frazie does so, but not because her little brother’s desperate tone was one of the most heartbreaking sounds she’s ever heard. Her legs are getting tired, and she needs to catch her breath.

As she halts her efforts, so too do her siblings. Though for a very different reason.

*ACCESS DENIED. MINIMUM REQUIRED THINKERPRINT LEVEL: 3*

“No. No. No. What gives? Practically everyone’s supposed to be able to use this door!”

“Here. Let me try, Dion.”

*ACCESS DENIED. MINIMUM REQUIRED THINKERPRINT LEVEL: 3*

“Queepie. I’m a Level 4. You’re a Level 5. Why would it have worked for you?”

“Well, um, what should we do?”

“I-I dunno, they must have switched up the access privileges. Probably for the same reason everybody’s so nervous and head scan happy today.”

“Could we maybe borrow a Level 3?”

 “Like wait for someone to open it for us? It’s not a bad plan, but folks with that kind of clearance don’t really go down here. Level 3s are usually in management, specialist positions, or they’re kids in the int-.”

“Joe?” Frazie heard a new voice ask.

“GYAAAAH-guh-Gisu? Hey! Eheh. Hi. I can’t really talk right now. I’m still on the clock. Sh-shouldn’t you be in class or a workshop or something?”

“They’ve been cancelled for today.”

“Huh. So that’s why you were at the lobby a second ago.”

“Yup. Speaking of which, are you alright? You looked really freaked out back there and…all the other places I followed you through.”

“T-totally. I’m totally fine. just on our way to grab a part of Quip’s – this old dude here - delivery we forgot. It’s through this door that’s giving us some trouble. Could you maybe-?”

“Good, because you need to calm down. Like immediately. Fake it if you have to. I can’t go into specifics because Hollis would obliterate me if I did, but something really bad and really major went down last night. Adam thinks it might be one of the Top 5 Worst Things to ever happen in the history of the Psychonauts.”

“Adam said that?”

“He did.”

“But he knows everything about Psychonaut history. Including the current Top 5 Worst Things to ever happen in it.”

“Well, it looks like there’s going to be a new list. So I thought you should know that everybody’s more than a little on edge right now, and that it’s a very bad time to be acting odd, weird, spastic, or suspicious in any way.”

At this moment, Frazie manages to tightly brace herself against the bottom of the crate before kicking out hard with both her legs.

The force and angle of the strike send the box tumbling out of Queepie’s hold, knocks off its lid, and sprawls Frazie onto the floor.

She quickly wriggles her way out of her bag and gets her first real good look at her kidnappers.

They are quite horrified and ridiculously dressed – which is saying something given the number of themed gimmicks their parents have tried to boost interest in their circus. Dion is in a Motherlobe janitor uniform and it seems like he’s deflated that pompadour he’s so proud of. Queepie would be cute in his wool cap and little workman’s suspenders if it wasn’t for the (hopefully) fake gray handlebar moustache. And standing next to them, appearing very befuddled is that short, crazy, scientist girl from the Psychonaut internship program. The smug shrimp with the levitating skateboard. Geezer or Jessie or something.

“Whuh?” Geezer (or Jessie) stared. “You’re that Young Inmate who used to be a carnie. The hydrokinetic. Frasier Avocado.”

Frazie scowled. After all those times Geezer (or Jessie) and her hoity-toity posse gave her and the other Volunteer Guest Testers grief, how could she not know her name? Sam knew. Why didn’t she? “It’s Frazie!”

“And her last name’s Aquato.” Dion added before carefully spinning the smaller teen to face him. “Same as mine.”

Dion gently presses his forehead onto Gisu’s.

Frazie can practically see the thoughts flowing from his mind.

They’re mostly memories, but they’re ever so slightly wrong until they correct themselves.

A school auditorium becomes the bleachers of the Aquatodome. A modern gymnasium transforms into their old shared obstacle course. The scowling faces of their parents smile. A family photo with only one child blossoms into a picture featuring five.

And there’s some of Dion at what looks like a job interview, a few of him mopping floors, a couple of Frazie walking around the Motherlobe, and a lot involving Gisu. That was her name. Frazie doubted she’d ever forget it with how often it came up.

The stream ends.

A skateboard with no wheels clatters to the ground.

“D-Dion?” Gisu murmured as she was gently lifted up to the ThinkerPrint scanner.

*Scanning for ThinkerPrint…CLEARANCE MINIMUM MET. WELCOME, INTERN NERUMEN*

Queepie rips off and slides one of the crate’s panels in between the shutters to keep them open.

“Is that-?” Gisu continued, still half-stunned. “Is that like Italian or-?”

*CLICK*

Gisu stares at her wrist only to see Frazie’s MARB has been slid onto it and tightened to fit.

“Goodbye.”

Which is the last thing she hears before Dion pushes her into a supply closet and shuts the door behind her. He gestures to Queepie who wedges another crate panel underneath the room’s knob.

Their gazes drift back towards their sister.

“Frazie.” Dion began, picking up the discarded sack. “Get back in the bag. Please.”

She shook her head. “Dion. Queepie. I don’t know how you guys got in here or where you got those tacky disguises…”

“You’ll be easier to carry this way. Please get back in the bag.”

“…but read my lips: I am NOT GOING BACK INTO THAT BA-!”

Without missing a beat, Dion and Queepie grab both ends of the sack, charge at Frazie, crisscross, loop back, and jump over each other to just tie her up with the cloth. Complete with a knot and bow.

Dion shoves her onto Queepie’s shoulder and her kid brother carries her into the next hallway.

They run. Frazie screams.

“Why aren’t you cheddarheads in Indonesia?!”

Dion rolled his eyes. “Nice to see you too, sis.”

Queepie wiggled his bogus moustache. “Did you gain weight, young lady?”

God, Frazie thought. That lip caterpillar better not have come from their Nona’s beehive. “It’s not too late for you guys to stop, let me go, and get away from this place before it gets worse for you.”

“Nah.” Dion grumbled. “I’ve scrubbed too many toilets to quit now.”

“And I had to pretend to have rheumatism.” Queepie hmphed. “I don’t even know what that is!”

“Plus, the coolest girl in the continent probably hates my guts. One second.” Dion took a running leap at the nearest wall and kicked off it to reach the throat of an air duct that lined its opposite side.

Hanging onto the edge of the vent with one hand, he used his other to knock against the throat of the metal tube three times. After a brief pause, he followed this up with an open slap, four knife-hand chops, two more knocks, and one final slap before swinging himself off of the grate. The eldest Aquato son dove into a brief roll and swiftly sprung back into a sprint to rejoin Queepie and Frazie.

Before Frazie could chastise Dion for taking out his romantic woes on the base’s climate control, the vents mimicked the meat of his gestures. The sound of a slap, four chops, two knocks, and a concluding slap rung in the wall alongside them. It happened again in the ceiling, and then it darted away down a leftward corridor, repeating again and again as it faded from hearing. Frazie told herself it was just an echo of Dion’s tantrum: a very sharp and insistent echo that could lag behind you or surge ahead.

The brothers continue their flight, ducking into adjacent corridors whenever they see a Psychonaut at the end of the one they’re in, and dodging security cams wherever they can. Theirs is a desperate dash, but Frazie can tell it’s not a random one. Not once do they hit a dead end. Every detour has them reroute towards a vague yet consistent direction. Maybe that was a way she could get them out of this.

“Look. If you’ve got some stupid escape plan cooked up, use it,” she offered. “Just leave me behind, and get as far away from the Motherlobe as you can. I’ll try to stop them from putting your faces on WANTED posters.”

There was a lot about Dion that Frazie had missed over the last three months. The smarmy smile he was flashing at her had not been on the list. “Who doesn’t want to be Wanted? I just hope they use a good photo of me.”

“We’re busting outta here together, Frazie!” Queepie huffed.

Frazie wished her arms were free enough to smack herself in the forehead. “Your skulls will be the only things getting busted when mom and dad hear about this!”

They turn a blind corner into one of the Motherlobe’s many breakrooms and Frazie is greeted by the sight of Augustus Aquato locked in a Psi-Blast struggle with a much shorter man in a business suit; three other well-dressed but unconscious people are strewn about the room.

Their beams are locked, both streams fighting to grind down the other. With a great cerebral heave, Augustus’ bolt breaks through and collides. The impact slams the small agent into a nearby bulletin board. He drops down to the floor, out cold and lightly covered by a drizzle of old newsletters and Chalupa Chewsday flyers.

After checking for a pulse on his fallen foe, Augustus lets out of wheeze of exhaustion and relief.

“I’m so sorry, Chet.” Augustus apologized, brushing off a couple of thumb tacks that had tumbled onto the defeated agent’s jacket.

“Pops!” Dion greeted, letting out a tired gasp of his own.

“Dion?” Wincing, Augustus staggered away from Chet to face his son. “You all made it.” He stretched out his left hand to tap the air as he approached them. “Queepie, let your sister down for a moment. You look like you could use a breather.”

Frazie’s baby brother lifted her over his head and set her back on her feet. She frowned at the loud grunt he made as he did so; she hadn’t missed a day of exercise since she saw him last, so she wasn’t that much heavier than before. “Ham it up, why don’tcha?” she muttered. Queepie stuck his tongue at her from out of the depths of his moustache as he began to stretch his tired yet not too strained muscles.

“Frazie?” she heard her father ask. Frazie prepared herself to glare at him just as harshly as she had towards Dion and Queepie. Maybe even critique his outfit – short-sleeved teal coveralls with a brain-shaped belt buckle – as well. But the sight of the weary smile on his lined, scarred face stopped her eyes and tongue from hardening like she wished. It was so different from the aching reluctant one he had tried to give her when she left Whispering Rock with Sasha and Milla. “It’s so good to see you again.” Augustus scooped her up into a loose hug. She didn’t fight it. “I’m glad I got Tala’s message in time.”

“Dad?” Frazie said, willing herself not to be distracted by the warmth of the embrace. Or the scent of freon coming off her father’s clothes. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“I could say the same to you,” he chided, pulling back from the hug to fuss over the sack she was tied in. “Let’s get you out of that bind, shall we?” Which wouldn’t take long as he had taught his sons every knot they knew. “I guess Plan A didn’t turn out so “crate”, did it? Heh.”

Dion crossed his gloved arms and frowned at the pun. “For the record, Queepie and I almost made it through the lobby, and we would’ve been home free if it hadn’t been for-.”

“Say! Dad! You just beat up three Psychonauts by yourself. That’s crazy.” Frazie interrupted. “And impressive. And awful. Maybe we should call it a day.”

“You’re not wrong. About the situation being terrible and spiraling out of control, I mean. But I don’t think what I did was impressive at all. I had the element of surprise, I barely won, and these agents were good people. I just couldn’t convince them to get away from here. And I had to make sure the path was clear for you three.” The bag fell away from Frazie’s midsection. As she rolled the feeling back into her wrists and shoulders, she couldn’t help but grin despite this shaping up to be one of the worst days of her life. “There we are. Though did you perhaps miscount earlier? I believe I battled four-.”

There’s a hiss and a billowy clap as the passage Augustus fought so hard to keep open shuts closed.

Standing on the door’s other side, visible thanks to it having larger bulletproof glass portholes than its service tunnel cousins, is the one who locked them in. It is a sharply-attired and Rubenesque woman - one of the agents Augustus had fought.

Despite her disheveled red shoulder-length bob cut and shaky posture, her eyes are alert. Their attentions dart from the assembled Aquatos to something to her right that’s out of the family’s view. An alarm possibly.

She slowly reaches for whatever it is, though her gaze remains focused on the gathered intruders.

So much so that she can’t react fast enough when the air vent grate on the wall to her left pops open and an azure blur shoots out of it to latch onto her messy, auburn hair.

The agent panics as the blur proceeds to rain down a flurry of small, rapid blows on the top of her already aching head.

She’s moving around too much for Frazie to see what’s attacking her.

“AHHHHHH!” the woman stumbled and shrieked. “It’s the Wall Growler!”

“Sorry about this, Sherri!” the Wall Growler shouted sweetly as flashes of light burst from rings on the side of its head and onto the woman’s face.

“AHHHHHHH!” Sherri stumbled and shrieked. “The Wall Growler knows my name!!!”

“Sorry-Sorry-Sorry-Sorry-Sorry-Sorry-Sorry-Sorry!” the Wall Growler repeated as the strikes and flashes continued.

Sherri is a bit too distracted with being pummeled and blinded to tap into her psychic abilities to rid herself of her attacker.

So the Wall Growler continues to keep her away from the alarm and ride her, even managing to get her in front of the door’s ThinkerPrint scanner.

*Scanning…*

Recognizing that floundering in fright isn’t getting her anywhere, Sherri picks a direction and charges. Maybe she’ll find help this way. Perhaps she’ll be able to shake the Wall Growler off with the surprise spurt of speed.

*THUNK*

Instead, she runs into the door she had just closed and joins her coworkers in dreamland.

*…Access Granted. Welcome, Agent Sherri Komure.*

“Super extra sorry.” the Wall Growler said again as she took a step away from the slumbering spy. “And I’m super glad you worked things out with Thad by the way.”

Frazie squints at this new arrival. The Wall Growler looks like a little girl, somewhere between seven and nine years old. Her clothes aren’t entirely inappropriate for someone who crawls around cold air ducts all day: leg warmers, a compass, cargo shorts, a black beanie, white gloves, and what appears to be a top salvaged from a discarded Psychonauts standard uniform – the kind that resembles a sweater onesie.

More peculiar are the girl’s other accessories such as a belt festooned with pouches, a grappling hook made out of intertwined ladles and tongs, and a pair of dorky, steel-rimmed crimson goggles. But it was the glass bulbs tangled in the Wall Growler’s hair that brought it all together. Those firm, fanciful loops were unmistakable.

“Tala?” Frazie said.

The youngest Aquato squeaked and spun towards where her name had been called. “Frazie!” Mirtala cheered as she crossed the room and leapt into her eldest sister’s arms in the span of a single breath. “I wanted to say hi to you earlier, but I had to make sure everyone got Dion’s warning.” she explained, nuzzling deeper into the embrace before lifting her head to look at who she had grabbed onto. “I missed you soooooooooooo so very much,” she sniffed.

Aha, so that’s what that banging in the vents was, Frazie thought as she met Mirtala’s gaze and returned the hug with fondness. “I missed you too, Tala.” she smiled. “I gotta ask though. Why are you wearing Raz’s doofy specs?”

The purpose of the goggles becomes clear when one of the military-grade flashlights looped into Mirtala’s braids shortcircuits and fires over a thousand lumens directly at Frazie’s eyes.

Frazie screams in pain.

Mirtala screams in apology.

And then the Motherlobe’s security alarms start to blare.

“Aw spoot. There goes Plan B.” Augustus cursed. “Queepie, please keep carrying your sister. until she can see again.”

“No, no, no! Don’t!” Frazie shouted, trying to make her defiance heard over the klaxons. “You guys have to staaaahaaaaahaaap!”

She literally doesn’t see a much more rested Queepie approach and so Frazie’s unable to stop him from throwing her back onto his shoulders.

Onward they go.

The Aquatos race forth. Four of them clearly know where they are going. Frazie remains lost in a maze of light specks and clashing sounds.

As the splotches of color invading her blighted vision slowly shrink and fade, she catches glimpses of her family’s flight. Blurry faces in the distance demanding they halt. Several potted plants being blasted to smithereens. Augustus surfing on a push cart with a giggling Mirtala tucked under his arm. Cushioned footfalls hardening and hollowing as they traverse different sectors.

Queepie’s shoulder jabs into Frazie’s unprepared stomach, followed by a moment of weightlessness, another jab, a second instance of lacking gravity, and a final jab before she feels him continue his run. Through the haze, Frazie recalls that there aren’t many regular stairways in the Motherlobe.

When her sight returns to normal, the first thing she sees is the lobby stretched out beneath her. Over the second-floor railing, she spots the entrance to the Mail Room, the place she was headed before the morning went mad. Frazie can still feel the letter in her pocket. Maybe she could still get it delivered to her family’s bogus address. Those Psychonauts down below pointing at her and shouting and beginning to levitate upwards might be able to help.

Queepie turns himself, and Frazie by extension, away from the railing to join the rest of their group as they head into a disused office space. Before the big lawsuit, it was a large, bustling hub of bureaucracy loaded with managers, sub-managers, and operatives. That’s all gone now save for some defective furniture no one wanted to claim after they were transferred or fired. And yet, empty as it is, the Motherlobe has managed to function fine without it; they must not have been doing anything too important here.

It isn’t abandoned today, however. Because of the Aquatos. And the dozen-or-so agents huffing-and-puffing towards them from their starboard side.

The acrobats are outnumbered and out in the open. Bad odds.

This is where the wolf bounds in.

Or at least, someone dressed like one.

The little furry fellow outraces the agents to plant himself directly in their path with nothing but a red vest on his back and an old boom box he sets at his feet.

The stampeding spies halt in their tracks. The Aquatos freeze.

A gloved hand taps the Play button on the radio and a jaunty country track fills the air.

The wolf takes a whiteboard eraser from his pocket and starts sliding it across his muzzle in tune with the harmonica instrumentals.

A moment later, he swaps it out for a pair of markers. He uncaps them, and the eyes of the agents track the pair as they’re tossed into the air and follow them as they fall back into their caps held up by the mini mascot. Some in attendance applaud.

Both markers back in hand, the wolf twirls and drums them upon an overturned steel mesh wastebasket to the beat of the song.

Suddenly, he tips the wastebasket over on its side, grabs a broken computer keyboard from a nearby table, and hops onto the metal cylinder to effortlessly balance atop it. The mascot cradles one end of the keyboard with his left paw and begins waving its right one over the other end. And just in time for the recording’s banjo-heavy climax.

The office supply guitar solo hits the road; the wolf gets the wastebasket going with a series of practiced, measured kicks, rolling it forward while keeping himself on it with precise adjustments to his posture. Frazie is reminded of how she typically uses her Levitation ball to get to places fast.

The wolf rides his squat, rusty chariot around the room, miming strums and twangs whenever the song allows. He circles the crowd of Psychonauts, shaking hands and doling out high-fives as he passes them. Coinciding with the music’s finale, he proceeds to wheel the wastebasket backwards all the way to where the Aquatos are standing.

At song’s end, he tosses away the keyboard, jumps off the wastebasket into a three-point landing, and then splays his arms to the side, wiggling them at the wrists.

Tah-dah.

“No, Snugglepaws!” One of the agents shouted. “Get away from them!” The man moved to rescue the performing pup only to lose his balance and fall to the floor. A coworker of his yelps and falls as well. Another pitched to the side, bringing a fellow spy down with her. And so on.

Somehow, all their shoelaces have all gotten tied up together (and around the ankles of those wearing slip-ons and pumps) without any of them noticing.

Snugglepaws silently gives Frazie a thumbs-up. She does not return the gesture.

And perhaps rightfully so as the family notices that the Psychonauts coming up from the lobby are now hovering past the second-floor railing. But as these agents levitate themselves into the office, someone else enters the scene.

A slim, bearded figure strides down the opposite way the spies struggling on the floor did, adjusting his tie as he approaches the Aquatos. The little rips and tears on his light blue slacks and matching plaid dress shirt fail to detract from his poised and confident stature. The petit grey spectacles perched on his nose-.

For pity’s sake. Frazie mourned. This couldn’t be real. Her mother hadn’t even bothered changing her hairstyle for this. And she still had her eyeshadow on to boot.

Donatella reaches into her torn dark navy jacket and then whips her arm out from it.

A palm-sized shape slices through the air and smacks into the chest of the first Psychonaut to land on the second floor.

The agent winces and looks down. A pus yellow plastic disk has latched itself onto her blouse, exposed wires poking out from where it wasn’t being held together by scotch tape.

Then she’s levitating again, encased in a bubble of mental energy that she doesn’t remember calling forth. She tries to banish it with a thought, which does nothing. She attempts to command it to move her forward, which fails. She struggles to break out of it physically, which winds up tilting the bubble backwards. Unbidden, a jovial papery voice starts crackling from the disk.

*th-Thuh-Tha-Thank you for agreeing to test our experimental Thought Bubbler badges – sure to bababab-buh-be a breakthrough in aiding thaaaaaose krrrzt struggling with Levitation. Your trial run endzzzzz in four minu-FOUR HUNDRED minutes.*

“No way.” the agent seethed as she tried to rip the badge off of her. “I thought Otto got rid of these defective pieces of sh-!“

Her curse goes unheard by the more impressionable Aquato children as her uncontrollable hovering ball floats her out of the room.

Donatella throws another disk at an agent who was distracted by his partner’s bubbling and soon joins her.

*-yu-your own passive mental energy field faaaaa-uels the badge.*

One Psychonaut tries nailing her with a Psi-Blast, but the cross-dressing carnival mom ducks under it to counter with a flung badge that finds its mark.

*Skkkhssshrt letting you levitate thrice as long for a fraction of the effort.*

A pair of agents telekinetically rip panels from the wall to block the next throw, but Donatella just ricochets one disk off of the ceiling above them, and another off of a nearby fax machine.

*grrrrrreat at parties!*

At one point, Donatella is seized from behind by an invisible chokehold, but she doesn’t need to see her attacker to snap her head back against his face, kick out with her legs, and throw him over her shoulders. When the now visible agent gets back on his feet, he finds a metal brace has been slipped onto his right arm, one attached to a set of crisscrossing hinges with a gloved hand at the end.

The glove’s scissor arm bends to make it level with his right knuckles. It curls itself into a fist. He mirrors the gesture. It starts to shake, so does his. Paper, he thinks. The glove’s fingers splay open. A tie. Scissors. The glove’s fist remains closed this time. A loss. Okay, maybe Rock? Another loss. Well, maybe Scissors again?

Freed up from the grab, Donatella flicks a badge at the last free Psychonaut in front of her who manages to bring up a psychic shield around himself before it hits. The disk plops itself upon the shield. A bubble forms around the barrier. And the man inside it.

*-with no danger of suffocation. But be sure to pack a lunch, just in case!*

And so the Psychonauts who came up from the lobby are now angrily and aimlessly floating above it, kept company by old sound bites of Otto Mentalis sharing helpful facts about his discarded creation.

Donatella dusts herself off as she makes her way to rejoin her husband and children, but spots that the first group of Psychonauts have successfully untangled themselves from one another. Fingers to their temples, they manifest a flock of telekinetic energy hands aimed right at the Aquatos.

The ghostly appendages lunge at the acrobats.

Donatella rips off her beard and flings it to the ground.

When it strikes, a silver lava lamp pops out. The churning red goop behind its glass glows gold. Then it turns green.

And the entire office is engulfed in flames.

Fire stretches across every wall. The entirety of the ceiling has been set alight. And the floor? The floor is now a lake of bright-orange molten rock.

Frazie had witnessed hellscapes in the mental realm before in cartoon cities, volcanic dance clubs, and portals to nightmarish realms. But this is the material world. A searingly deadly reality.

She feels herself being crushed between the sweat on her brow and the dryness of her throat. And she hasn’t even started burning yet.

Frazie’s gaze scrambles to find a means of escape and sees that the pursuing gang of Psychonauts has scattered in search of safety.

Cerebral soldiers and explorers stand panicked on plywood desks, huddled atop crooked office chairs, and clinging to the sides of empty water coolers. Two of them are tightly clutching each other so they can both squeeze their feet into a plastic file tray labeled “IN”.

“The Floor is Lava!”

That guy has the right idea.

Frazie nods, breathing hard and shivering despite the heat. She needed to get her family to higher ground. Even a piece of paper or an empty potato chip bag or a raggedy t-shirt would do. Keeping their feet on the carpet would mean certain annihilation.

A hand tenderly strokes her hair.

Frazie turns her head. This is the first time she’s seen her mother face-to-face in a while. As it was with her father and siblings (though she wasn’t sure what Raz’s situation was beneath that wolf mask), it’s like no time has passed at all. It’s still her, as warm, stern, and bubbly as ever albeit with red patches of irritated skin around her face from pulling off her fake beard too fast.

“My little sunbeam,” Donatella chided. “No need to fear. It’s just a game. One that you know very well.” she fanned herself with her other hand. “Admittedly, a very convincing version of it. Whew.”

Frazie takes note that her mother is clearly uncomfortable despite her assuring words. There’s tension in her frame and a flickering in her eyes. No panic though. Queepie, Mirtala, her dad, and presumably Raz (it must be like a sauna in that suit now) all share this apprehension, but they aren’t running for the hills or trying to take refuge amongst the filing cabinets. The fire is everywhere, but nothing is burning; the air, though hot and heavy, is free of fumes.

Dion is even on the far side of the office, pushing a bookshelf aside while up to his thighs in lava. Either his janitor’s uniform was indestructible or they weren’t actually in danger of getting roasted.

Her big brother finishes shoving the shelf aside, exposing the interior wall of the Motherlobe. He raps his knuckles on it. There is a ripple of motion, but he doesn’t turn to ashes.

“It’s still here!” Dion shouted. “We’re good to go. Let’s move it!” he commanded, slapping the wall. “Move it! Move it! Move it!”

The Aquatos don’t need to be told a fifth time. They sprint through the illusory inferno and towards the wall at full speed, zipping by a Psychonaut deeply engrossed in an endless game of rock-paper-scissors.

“Me first! Me first!” Mirtala laughed, already ahead of the pack.

“Ramming speed!!!” Queepie snickered, tightening his hold on his big sister’s torso.

Frazie snarled. “Queepie, my face is too pretty to be used as a battering ram. So you better not – and WHY ARE WE RUNNING STRAIGHT INTO A CONCRETE WALL?”

“I’ll explain later.” Donatella said, then tapped her chin pensively. “Or on the way down.”

“Down?” Frazie asked, eyes locked on their final destination, which was, phony flames or no phony flames, still very flat and very hard. “Wait, wait, WAIT!”

Despite Mirtala’s best efforts, Dion tackles the wall with his shoulder at the exact moment she dropkicks it. Frazie’s parents and little brothers (with her in tow) arrive a few scant seconds after. However, its resistance is moderate rather than definite. And the more force and bodies thrown against it, the more it yields until it tears away like cloth.

Because it is. That particularly section of the Motherlobe’s walls had been replaced with a fake last Wednesday.

The tarp is ripped from where it was fastened, sending it and the Aquatos tumbling outside.

Violent and confusing as it’s been so far, it is still a very beautiful day. The sky is blue, bright, and grand.

And the Aquatos are now falling through it.

To be concluded

----

Commentary

And here's the full line-up!

Art by @pocheezy.

Did you think Raz and Frazie were the only Aquatos capable of breaking into a classified government facility!?

Just to be clear, Dion isn’t psychic in this story. He simply thought very, very hard and openly in her direction, and she instinctively took it all in since – despite this being an AU of an AU - they’re still rather close. It’s similar to what she did to him during that whole crystal ball debacle mentioned earlier when she was too flustered to talk yet needed to explain herself.

Jared, Chet, and Sherri make some cameos. Jared got in Lili’s way, so why not Dion and Queepie’s? I got nothing against Chet and Sherry, but their subplot is beefy enough that familiarity with it conveys that the Aquatos have been bonding with the Motherlobe’s personnel while they’ve been infiltrating it.

And that through travelling in the vents, Mirtala has been able to keep up with a lot of Psychonaut gossip.

For Sherri’s last name, I just used the surname of her VA.

Speaking of Queepie, since he’s shown a willingness to punk his older siblings, I thought it prudent for Frazie to have a turn, and a free ride!

Mirtala's a total sweetheart, but I believe she could be a huge menace if properly pushed. Or motivated.

Raz/Snugglepaws was originally going to distract the agents with a less elaborate dance while he telekinetically tied their shoelaces together. However, it felt a bit too simple of a diversion, so some music and a couple of extra playful stunts were thrown in.

The Thought Bubbler badges operate on similar principles to Otto’s various pins and were meant to aid psychics who had trouble levitating. Unfortunately, while they could get their wearers off the ground, that’s pretty much all they did. Those who tried them couldn’t make the bubble move in any direction beyond physically squirming that way. What’s more, despite (or because) the badges functioned by latching on to a person’s passive mental field, it was difficult to remove them. Thought Bubblers don’t even have traditional off switches, and only shut down once their timers reach zero; which can be adjusted on the fly, but these clocks are pretty fragile, and if they were to break, there’s no telling how long a wearer would be stuck hovering in the air.

The MittMate was initially designed for interrogation purposes against those with profound levels of mental defense/resistance. While the individual was preoccupied playing unwinnable games of rock-paper-scissors with a robot glove that knew their move before they did it, a Psychonaut could use telepathy or a Psycho-Portal to find out what they needed to know. This didn’t pan out well. Mind-reading was blocked by a never ending procession of thoughts about which gesture to use, and entering the target’s head just brought Psychonauts to a very painful mental world that was filled with nothing but rocks, papers, and scissors. Attempts to reconfigure it into a commercial product failed as well due to how grossly addictive the MittMate could be, and (inversely) how its feedback loop was incompatible with more complex games such as poker or even tic-tac-toe; wearers would catch on almost immediately that the glove was “reading their inputs” and they’d subsequently try to destroy it for cheating.

The Infernollusion Grenade is a victim of its own success as it technically worked perfectly. When triggered, the device will cause everyone in a 15-meter radius to experience a vivid hallucination of their immediate area bursting into perpetual flame and the floor beneath them turning into lava; its secondary mechanism broadcasts a hypnotic suggestion that tells its victims they can save themselves from immolation by standing on an object that isn’t the floor even if it’s something as flimsy as a pillow or a towel. The Infernollusion Grenade is also light, collapsible, reusable, solar-powered, and looks like a nifty chrome lava lamp. What’s there not to love in a weapon? Well, it did its job a bit too well as no one could find a way to mitigate its potency; you could be an arsonist with psychoisolation helmet on at the very edge of the Infernollusion’s range, and it would still hit you full force and turn you into a terrified, skittish wreck. The many (too many) test subjects struck with the device were afflicted with long-term debilitating pyrophobia for days, weeks, or even months after exposure. Otto Mentalis didn’t think it was such a big deal until Truman Zanotto himself purposefully locked them both in a room and triggered an Infernollusion grenade. Otto tossed away all of the psychic explosive’s prototypes and shredded its schematics and many of his related notes; he couldn’t bring himself to use the on-site incinerator to get rid of them. That said, something Otto didn’t have a chance to articulate to Truman before getting a taste of his own medicine was that the grenade technically had a weakness. While the hallucination was guaranteed, the reinforcing hypnotic suggestion could be resisted. Theoretically, someone who exposed themselves multiple times to the weapon would eventually gain an immunity to the mental nudge telling them they’d be safe so long as they didn’t stand on the floor; they would still see themselves surrounded by fire and brimstone that looked very real, but they’d be able to parse that nothing was actually burning. Counterpoint, who would be crazy enough to do that?

To bust out of the second floor inner/outer wall, Donatella was going to use a fourth gadget in an earlier draft. However, I felt like it would’ve been one too many.