Disclaimer: I don't own Psychonauts. The characters of Psychonauts are tortured for my own amusement, and I don't profit from it. The only thing I own is the plot of this story.
Author's Note: This is the story about the first time Raz realized he was psychic. It's kind of nifty, and I'd enjoy it if you reviewed and commented. Your opinion is muy appreciated dudes!
All of the best acrobats start young. A child's mind, after all, is more flexible than a teenager or adult. After a certain point, it's too late. Doubts have already been formed about catching a hold of a trapeze after a back flip, and fear becomes more difficult to overcome. Roldan had practiced this philosophy with his son. Raz was learning to walk a tight rope within a few months of his first steps. Now, at four, he was trained fairly well, equal to many older acrobats in their circus. He shouldn't have been nervous. Not a bit.
He nearly burst into tears when his father brought his costume in.
Roldan gently set the clothes on his son's bed, slightly concerned. Raz was unusually pale. "Razputin? Are you alright?"
Raz nodded timidly, but his green eyes screamed otherwise.
His father understood the emotion. He had felt pre-performance jitters when he was younger as well. "You'll do fine. You've got an easy part, remember? Short distance leaps, easy flips. You've done a lot of harder things in practice plenty of times."
Raz nodded, trying to look confident while he pulled on his leggings. His foot got cross-ways in them, and after a bit of stumbling he fell flat on his rear.
THAT got Roldan's attention. Razputin had never been much of a klutz, even when he was first learning how to walk. A loss of balance was a problem. Even easy parts require extreme precision in acrobatics. He frowned slightly, much more concerned now than before. He hadn't expected Raz, always brazen and bold, to be so shaken up. He cautiously made a suggestion. "If you aren't ready, we could take you out and improvise. Ollie can do the opening on his own, and I'll leave out that last catch and--"
"NO!" Raz nearly shouted back, and Roldan couldn't decide if that was the right or wrong button to press. Raz didn't always enjoy acrobatics, but he was violently stubborn. Giving up went against his nature. He met his father's eyes with a grim determination. "You said that you have to start when you awe wittle to be a good acwobat."
Roldan nodded slowly. Looking back, he wished he hadn't told him that. Raz was still scared, and Roldan knew it. His face was unnaturally gray, and was now tinted green. That combined with his determined eyes made him look more like a suicide bomber than a four year old acrobat.
Raz knew his father was still watching him, and tried in vain to make his hands stop shaking so he could put on his shoes. "I can do it," he said in a hollow voice, more to convince himself than his father.
Roldan decided to let it go. It was a decision he later regretted. But at the time, he didn't see the sense in fighting with the boy, and he had no doubt that his son had the skill needed for the night's performance. He just needed to calm down. Roldan decided the best way to bring that about was to encourage him, to show that he had confidence in him, even if Raz didn't. "Of course you can. Now hurry and finish getting ready." Then he left. Roldan didn't have a poker face, and if he stayed in the caravan with Razputin shaking like that, it was going to make him nervous too.
Raz walked to his window, climbing onto a crate so that he could watch his dad leave. He now shook all over, uncontrollably, and turned a much more violent shade of green. You had to give him credit though. He waited until he was sure his father was out of earshot before he threw up.
As the line in goes in several cliché Hollywood films, "The show must go on!" So it did. And despite the fact that Raz felt like the strong man was trying to beat his way out of his stomach, he did well. When the show began, years of training pulled his balance and surefootedness back to him. He sailed through the air just as gracefully as the others, and the crowd showed its approval. As the show went on, Raz's confidence slowly returned, and soon he stopped thinking about tossing his cookies. Eventually, he forgot to be nervous at all, and was actually starting to enjoy himself. At least, a little. Everything was going smoothly until the finale.
Roldan noticed with some hesitation that somewhere along the way, something had shifted, and things no longer seemed quite right. It seemed more than a hunch, but not strong enough to be a premonition. It was a wrongness. The wrongness grew in his mind when he had to stretch farther than usual to reach the trapeze, but he tried to ignore it. The timing was a little off in that area was all. The bar had not completed its out-swing when he jumped for it. Roldan had, of course, noticed it, and to compensate, had given himself a little more power than usual when leaving the platform. The problem did not magnify itself to him right away. Though he had taught Raz himself, he hadn't performed with someone that young in a very long time, save the practices of this routine before the show. He forgot that Raz was young, inexperienced, and, as a child, didn't really accept the idea that he could fall. Roldan only remembered this after he had started his swing back, when there was nothing else he could do to propel himself farther. Raz had jumped without judging the distance; a leap of faith as it were. Roldan tried to stretch himself out further, praying he could compensate for his son's error in judgment. It wasn't enough. The boy's eyes showed sudden terror as his hands missed the waiting ones of his father's by a solid inch.
He looked small and frightened now. The ground below looked hardened and menacing, as if waiting for a sacrifice.
"RAZ!" came the shout from Roldan, torn from his throat by a deadly fear. His voice rang true, even above the screams of the frightened audience. He swung the trapeze in a new direction now, toward the center pole, and leapt for it. As he slid down the support, he yelled another word. Fall. It was a single command that automatically froze any acrobat in their place. A young girl, about fifteen with blonde hair, halted on the same platform Raz had leapt from. She took a step back from the edge. She would have been next for Roldan to toss to the tightrope. Her halt, in particular, was essential.
Though the fall command held a freezing power over her and the others, it did not stop Razputin's deadly descent. Raz screamed loudly. He had not fallen, even in practice, for more than a year. That had been into the waiting embrace of a safety net. Even as Roldan slid down the center pole at a speed that blistered his palms, he knew he wouldn't make it in time to catch him. Raz knew it too. He shut his eyes tightly, waiting for the sudden stop that was inevitable. It never came. Instead, something warm held him, harboring its cargo away from the ground. Raz opened his eyes slowly. It was a hand. An orange hand made of some strange energy. Raz didn't understand until later, when he calmed down, that the energy came from him.
The crowd was silent.
Raz jumped off the hand and ran to his father's arms as his saving grace disappeared behind him. Roldan scooped him up and held him as the little boy shook with sobs of relief. The crowd erupted with cheers and applause, and Roldan pondered, not for the first time, the insanity that was a circus. He had no idea what the hell the audience thought had taken place. He didn't care either. All he knew was that, holding his son safe in his arms, he was thankful. It was the first time a psychic power had ever done him any good.