The clearness of the day, and by extension, Sasha's good mood, did not last longer than the time it took for him to reach his lab. He was drenched and dripping by the time he returned, and had only just begun to descend the staircase when Milla made a request that would send him right back out into the downpour.
I don't have my wallet, she insisted through their mental connection.
Yes you do, Sasha argued as he dried his glasses with a cloth that was itself too wet to do the job well. I saw you put it in your bag.
It's not there. I looked all through it.
Did you take everything out?
No, but I couldn't feel it and it wasn't in any of the pockets.
Sasha frowned and put his glasses back on, already knowing that they would be wet again within the minute. You took so many clothes with you that you need to take everything out. It has to be wrapped up in one of your dresses.
I will, sweetheart, I will, but can't you just check for me? Please? I really do think I left it on the dresser…
And because Milla was his closest friend, and because he cared for her in a way that he did nobody else, he levitated back up into the G.P.C. and ventured out once more into the rain. Even if it is on your dresser, what can you do about it? Sasha thought grumpily as he trudged over the muddy path that lead to the lake, a shield over his head the only thing protecting him from the water. It's not like you can come back and get it.
He arrived at her cabin and quickly found that the wallet was not on her dresser, nor was it in any of the other locations that Milla suggested he look.
It's not wedged under your mattress, he reported, at this point thoroughly irritated.
Maybe it's behind the- oh.
Oh-what? Sasha thought, knowing exactly what that 'oh' meant. The anticipation of giving a well deserved I-told-you-so was rising up within him. You've found it, haven't you?
…yes.
She allowed him to gloat for one minute before cutting the connection abruptly, an act that annoyed him more than a little considering how much trouble he'd gone to on her behalf. Oh well. He could always just bring this incident up the next time something like this happened (and there most certainly would be a next time).
The sound of the rain drumming on the roof had abated during his pointless search. Having no way of knowing when or if there would be another downpour in the near future, Sasha hurriedly made his way out of Milla's cabin with every intention of sprinting back to his lab before the bad weather could start up again. In his haste he nearly collided with Elka Doom, her hand formed into a fist and poised to knock on the door.
Elka gasped and drew her arm back; acting like a snake had opened the door and not a camp counselor that she saw every single day. "Agent Nein!" she said, cradling the hand she'd nearly touched him with as though he had bitten her. "What are you…?" She peeked past him into the one-room cabin beyond him, her face suddenly turning pink. "Um…"
The reaction at first seemed strange to Sasha, until he remembered that most of the camp was not aware of Milla's absence at this time, and that anyone seeing him exiting her quarters at this hour would make certain assumptions about their activities the previous night. "Milla was called away on an emergency mission," he explained hastily. "She left almost an hour ago."
In the span of a second Elka's expression shifted from relieved to disappointed, and then suspicious. "If Milla left about an hour ago," Elka said, her eyes narrowing and her hands on her hips, "what were you doing in her room just now?"
Sasha frowned, not at all appreciating the accusation in Elka's tone. "I do not have to disclose that information to you," he said curtly, exaggerating his accent a little more than necessary. Usually, speaking like that was enough to frighten nosy children off, but apparently Elka Doom was made of sterner stuff, as she didn't budge an inch. He realized then that being secretive would only fuel whatever wild speculation she had running through her mind regarding his presence in Milla's cabin and decided to tell the truth. "But if you must know, Agent Vodello asked me to check if she had left her wallet behind."
"Uh-huh."
The way those two syllables had been uttered implied that Elka did not believe him one bit. "That is the truth, Cadet Doom," Sasha said sternly, "and if I hear a different story making the rounds at camp I will know exactly who the source is."
Elka rolled her eyes. "I'm not a gossip, but okay." She stuck out her lower lip and looked past Sasha again, as though hoping to see that he'd been lying about Milla being gone. "She's really not here?"
"She is not." A moment passed in which Elka did nothing but stand there and block Sasha's way. "Are you going to move, or-"
"Oh, of course she's not here!" Elka burst out, covering her face with her hands. "Right when I needed her the most!"
Sasha stepped back; prepared to flee into the cabin should the girl in front of him break into hysterics. "What could possibly require Agent Vodello's attention at this hour?" he asked.
"You wouldn't understand!" she yelled, pointing at him accusingly. "You're a man!"
It would have been both immature and stupid to allow the words of a high-strung eleven year-old to offend him. And yet his lip curled up in annoyance. "I do not see what my gender has to do with anything. There is nothing you can discuss with Agent Vodello that you cannot discuss with me." Regret hit him the instant he stopped speaking, as he, in all honesty, did not really want to interact with one of the camp's foremost drama queens any more than absolutely necessary.
"You wouldn't get this at all!" Elka repeated.
Again, Sasha's idiot pride set his mouth in motion before his brain could stop it. "Try me."
It seemed that Elka had not expected him to be so insistent, for she fell silent, her need for validation at war with her general disdain for him. Unlike Quentin, she did not look at all that troubled- her eyes were bright and clear, her hair was perfectly done up, and her clothing was immaculate. Sasha would not go so far as to say that Elka did not have her struggles (pre-cogs of her sort were often prone to depression and a quick read-through of her most recent memories revealed that she was having some issues at home) but it didn't seem like there was anything out of the ordinary going on with her today.
After a minute of internal debate, Elka looked up at him and heaved a sigh. "I saw him again."
Sasha waited for her to continue and then, when it became evident that she wasn't going to, made a further inquiry. "Saw who where?"
Elka sent him a withering glare, annoyed that her vague statement hadn't been informative enough for him to grasp her situation. "Nils Lutefisk," she answered.
"Ah. Was he peeping through that hole in the girl's cabin again?" Sasha thought that Ford had repaired that after the first time the boy had been caught.
"No! Well, actually yeah he was, but that's not what I meant." Elka shook her head. "I saw him…" here she paused for dramatic effect, "in a vision." There was a lull in the conversation as Elka waited for Sasha to prompt her with another question. Sasha let her tap her foot impatiently for a few seconds before asking her to elaborate on what she had seen. "Oh, I can't tell you exactly what happened," she said primly, looking away coyly. "All you need to know is that we were together and totally In Love."
Seeing oneself with Nils Lutefisk in a romantic capacity would be rather distressing for any other camper, but wasn't Elka obsessed with this boy? To the point where it was detrimental to her psychic development? "How exactly is this a problem?" Sasha said. "I thought you liked Nils."
Elka sucked in a breath, her hand flying to her chest. "Oh no!" she said, spitting the words out as though they disgusted her to say them. "Don't you know that I'm with James now?"
Sasha wasn't even certain who James was. "Why would I know that?" he said, exasperated and wishing that he hadn't allowed himself to engage with her in this manner. "I don't keep track of who's dating who." Attempting to untangle the social threads tying all these of children together would be a useless and headache-inducing endeavor.
"Ugh!" Elka slapped her palm over her face, likely also regretting that she had tried to talk to him about anything. "I broke up with Nils before camp," she said, speaking slowly, like she was trying to explain it to a very stupid toddler. "And then I met the love of my life, James Theodore Hoofburger."
"Oh, you were referring to J.T." Sasha said, nodding.
Elka's face scrunched up in distaste. "His name is James. And we are so deeply in love that I'm thinking of changing our names to Doom-Hoofburger." She thought a moment, tapping her chin contemplatively. "Well, maybe we'll drop the whole Hoofburger part, it doesn't really roll off the tongue that well."
"Yes, Lutefisk has a much better ring to it," Sasha said dryly.
Elka's mouth dropped open in shock, her fists clenching at her sides. "Agent Nein!" she shrieked, outraged that he would dare insult her in such a way.
"Ms. Doom," Sasha answered calmly.
She crossed her arms over her chest, sticking her nose up in the air as she glared up at him. "I don't think you're taking this seriously."
Sasha shrugged. "I don't know what it is you want me to tell you. If you don't like Nils then remain with J.T."
"His name is James!" Elka corrected shrilly. "And I can't just not be with Nils! I saw us together! In! My! Vision!" The last three words were emphasized with a stomp of her foot on the sandy ground.
"Just because you saw it doesn't mean it has to happen," Sasha said matter-of-factly.
"Yes it does!" Elka argued, looking very much like she wanted to reach out and punch him in the gut. "It's fate!"
"There is no such thing as fate," Sasha reasoned back, "with a little bit of thought and effort, anything seen in a vision can be changed. Why do you think the Psychonauts have an entire department devoted to pre-cognition?"
Elka had no answer to this question that did not invalidate her current world view and rather than concede that he had a point, chose to glare up at him dismissively and insult him. "I should have known better than to try to talk to you about this," she said scornfully. "Everyone knows that you have no experience with romance. I'll just wait for Milla to come back."
Sasha scoffed, wondering how it was possible that everyone could know that. Elka seemed to be under the impression that Milla was some sort of expert on relationships, which Sasha knew to be false. He was sorely tempted to refute that assumption by bringing up the fact that every single one of Milla's relationships had ended disastrously, and only resisted because that would have been a gross violation of her privacy. "The last thing that you need," Sasha said, "is advice encouraging your current behavior patterns."
The sound that came out of Elka's mouth was a mix between a gasp and a shriek."Excuse me?" she yelled, blood rushing to her cheeks.
"This little playground drama that you continuously create with that Lutefisk boy is clearly a distraction for your actual problems," Sasha said bluntly, "which stem from the emotional turmoil that your pre-cognitive visions have caused you."
For a moment, Elka was struck speechless, her mouth opening and closing uselessly as her mind tried to process the honesty that she was obviously not accustomed to hearing. "I- you!" She squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled through her nose. A glance into her mind showed that she was mentally counting to ten, a trick that some hack therapist had probably taught her. Her 'therapist' must not have been very competent, for when she exhaled and opened her eyes she immediately launched into a defense of herself. "I don't know what you mean by 'actual problems'", she said, bracketing the last two words with air quotes, "because the only problems I have are the ones caused by stupid men who don't know how to treat a woman."
The easy thing for Sasha to do would have been to allow Elka to stomp away and seek out one of her more sympathetic campmates to cry to. But would that have been the right thing to do? Would it be responsible to let this child go without at least attempting to address the reasons that she kept involving herself in all of this pointless drama? Drama that, when all was said and done, did nothing to resolve her pain and ultimately affected her mental health negatively? It was for that reason, and not at all because he wanted to have the last word in, that as she turned to go he reached out with his psi-hand and held her firmly in place. "Hey!" she squawked, trying to wrench herself free of the invisible hand grasping her by the shoulder. "Let me go!"
There was a note of genuine fear underneath Elka's tone of haughty indignation, which was really quite understandable given that he was an adult male and there was nobody else in the lake area at the moment. "I will release you," he assured, stepping back to dodge her swinging fists. "Right after I've said what I believe needs to be said."
That reassurance should have been enough to calm Elka's fears regarding his intentions. And yet, he still felt a faint heat creeping up the back of his neck. "Your pyrokinesis is rather weak, considering you're age and rank," he pointed out as he effortlessly blocked her attempt at fire starting him. "Perhaps if you focused more on your studies and less on boys, you would have successfully been able to set me alight."
Elka said nothing; her mouth clenched shut, tears of frustration pricking at the corners of her eyes. Was she going to start crying? Sasha didn't particularly relish the thought, but it wasn't going to stop him. This was, after all, for her own good. "It is not unusual for pre-cognitive psychics to suffer from depression and anxiety, as that ability produces a great strain on a person's well-being." Something softened in Elka's expression then, and she stopped struggling, though her body was still quite tense. Encouraged, Sasha continued. "Witnessing constant misfortune before it even happens is very draining on the psyche and developing ways to cope with your visions is essential to your mental health." Elka looked down, a contemplative look in her eyes that Sasha doubted had anything to do with her shoes. It seemed he was getting through to her, which came as something as a surprise (even though everything he was saying was right). "However, what you are doing right now is not a healthy coping mechanism, and the way you are behaving is detrimental to yourself and to those you draw into this nonsense." Her head snapped back up, all thoughtfulness in her eyes gone, replaced by outrage. "This is the truth," Sasha said, meeting her glare levelly. "You are at an age where your mind is beginning to mature, and any habits you form now will be very difficult to break later in life."
"I'm not coping with anything," Elka snapped, restarting her attempt to wriggle herself free of his telekinetic grip. "My visions of Nils and I together are real! I've seen it so many times-"
"Only because you continuously revisit them during times of crisis," Sasha interrupted.
"Stop talking!" Elka demanded, putting her hands over her ears and squeezing her eyes shut. "James is going to be so mad when I tell him how you attacked me!"
Sasha was glad that she couldn't see him roll his eyes at her immature display. I understand that you are having very difficult time right now, Sasha thought, projecting the words past her meager mental shields directly into her mind, dealing with your parent's failing marriage. However-
The thought was cut off by a beam of pure psychic aggression hitting him square in the chest. The psi-blast nearly knocked him off of his feet, and he'd been so caught off guard by it that his telekinesis broke, freeing Elka. She darted off down the beach the second she was released, kicking up sand as she ran. "I'm telling Milla what you did!" she yelled as she fled, heading quickly up the hill that led to the Main Lodge. "You're gonna get in so much trouble!"
"I most certainly will not!" Sasha replied back once he regained his balance and his breath. "She has no authority over me!" This statement was only half true- he and Milla were equals, yes, but she was definitely not going to be happy once she heard that he had used telekinesis on one of the campers. I had good cause, Sasha justified to himself. That girl wanted advice, and I gave it to her. She's only angry because it wasn't what she wanted to hear. He looked down at himself, making a quick evaluation of his condition. His chest stung in the way that a minor burn did, but was otherwise fine, and it didn't seem like Elka's psi-blast had left any physical marks aside from a big blackened spot in the middle of his sweater.
A camper using their psychic powers on an instructor outside of classroom setting was a pretty serious offense, but Sasha decided not to take any disciplinary action against her (even though he very annoyed that his sweater was ruined). The show of force was an interesting development coming from Elka Doom, as up until this point he had not observed her using any sort of offensive ability. She puts quite a lot of effort into maintaining her persona of an innocent victim of circumstance, Sasha thought as he began walking towards down the beach. Perhaps this, in combination with the tension caused by her visions and her increasingly troubled home life has given her a reservoir of psychic aggression for her to draw upon. Interesting. It was too soon to tell if Elka had any real potential as a marksman, but there was certainly something there that might be worth looking into.
She's not a stupid girl, Sasha thought as he headed up the slope that lead to the Main Lodge. Some of his words had seemed to resonate with her for a brief moment. She was upset right now, of course but there was a chance that when she calmed herself down, she would be able to reflect on their conversation without her emotions getting in the way, maybe even gaining some much-needed self-awareness.
A drop of water hit him right on the top of his head, followed swiftly by several more. Sasha looked up and sighed, thinking that his hopes for Ms. Doom's future were a little too optimistic.
