A/N: Wow, I hadn't expected to get such a good response so quickly. Thank you for your time, everyone! I hope you find this chapter as enjoyable as the last…and if you don't, let me know why, m'kay? Can't fix it if I don't know it's broken.

Chapter Two: Divide and Conquer

Somewhere along the east coast, a very sleek jet was parked outside of highly secured building in a private airstrip. Despite the fact that the sun was shining brightly and the birds surrounding the area were chirping happily with the squirrels, the mood surrounding the building was decidedly dark. Heavily armed soldiers patrolled the perimeter of the building and across it. At every entrance there stood two more soldiers, standing at stiff attention. The air was charged, full of energy. It was the feeling of a battle fought and lost, and the anticipation of more battles to come. Battles that the defenders were in no way prepared for.

Inside the jet, the feeling was even more pronounced. Morceau Oleander sat in the pilot's seat, tapping his fingers along the console nervously. A lockdown. One that was almost complete, apparently. Sasha and Razputin approached the guards and received a rude welcome, at least as far as Oleander could see. The guards had refused entrance to Razputin, sending him back to the jet, where he now sat in sullen silence behind Oleander. Sasha had been forced to go to great lengths to prove that he was who he said he was, and even then, only grudgingly. When Lili and Milla tried to gain entrance, they repeated the process on Milla and told Lili that this was no place for a child. She begged to differ. They tried to force her to leave--and earned second degree burns for their trouble. Lili was not a Psychonaut, but she was the Grand Head's daughter and that tended to give one a certain amount of power. Ford hadn't even bothered to step outside of the jet; there was a large concentration of psitanium inside of it, and if he wandered too far away, he'd slip into one of his other personalities. The former Grand Head gave sympathetic ear to Raz's indignant fury at being turned away even though he was a full-fledged Psychonaut.

Oleander wasn't sure if they would allow him inside; and he frankly wasn't willing to give it a try. Not after all of the trouble he had caused. According to Nein, he had been under the influence of something he called the Black Spiral. The German man had then gone into a lengthy explanation that Oleander wasn't quite able to follow, but he found it reassuring nonetheless. Milla said it was Sasha's way of saying he forgave Oleander for kidnapping him, stealing his brain, and then attacking him with a giant psychic death tank. Oleander wondered why the man didn't just outright say it, but, he mused, Sasha was as much of a mystery to others as his experiments are to him.

A few moments later, Sasha walked stiffly back into the jet and silently sat down in his chair near the door. He seemed to take no notice of the fact that everyone's attention was focused on him. Five minutes passed before Ford finally got fed up with waiting and threw one of his bunny slippers at the back of Sasha's head where it bounced off and landed on the ground beneath Sasha's chair.

"Don't keep us waiting, Nein! What the hell happened in there?"

"Truman Zanotto was kidnapped only a few days ago. The same day that Rasputin snuck into our camp." Said Psychonaut grinned at the memory. "It seems some of our most trusted agents have turned on us; Zanotto was subdued and kidnapped by his own bodyguards."

Oleander fidgeted in his seat. "Think they were controlled by that black whatchamacallit? The thing you said made me go FUBAR?"

Sasha nodded. "The Black Spiral. I believe so." He paused for a moment. "But they do not."

Raz blinked, "What? They don't believe you? Let me go in there; I"ll talk with 'em--"

Sasha interrupted him. "They will not listen to you, Raz."

"Well...why not?"

Sasha sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in an unusual display of emotion--specifically, that of annoyance. It was not directed to anyone in particular, mostly just the senior agents of the Psychonauts. They had outright refused to believe Sasha's theory and insinuated that his proximity to psitanium and Cruller was having an effect on his thought processes. What was worse, they did not even acknowledge Razputin as a Psychonaut; they said it was simply too unbelievable that a child was capable of doing all that Sasha claimed he did. The fact that he was appointed as a Psychonaut by Cruller did nothing to persuade them since they saw Cruller as a doddering old fool with more personalities than fingers. He was doing his best to try and think of a way explain the situation to Razputin, a child that shared remarkable similarities with Nein himself when he was a child. Finally, he had an idea.

"Very well." Raz focused his attention on his mentor intently. "Say, for example, that a young woman who has six children experiences terrible birthing pains during the process. A male doctor informs her that the reason she experienced such pain is because she had not breathed correctly."

"O-kay..."

"Whose opinion would you choose to believe more? The doctor or the woman?"

"The woman."

"Why is that? What does she have that the doctor doesn't?" He looked at his young student expectantly.

Raz's response was immediate and triumphant. "A vagina!"

Fifteen minutes and two cigarettes later, Sasha returned with a different tactic. Sometimes it just wasn't possible to lead Raz to an answer--you had to tell it to him outright. "Experience, Rasputin."

The young Psychonaut looked up at Sasha curiously. "Experience?"

"While your answer was...unique...the reason most people would take the woman's word over the doctor's is because she has actual experience in child birthing."

"So...you're saying that the reason the senior agents wouldn't listen to me is because they think I don't have any experience?" At Sasha's nod, Raz frowned. "But I have plenty of experience! I went into crazy people's brains! I defeated Napoleon Bonaparte!"

Ford finally spoke up from the chair across from them. "Yeah, but yer still a kid to 'em, Razputin. We believe ya, but they don't." He suddenly looked much older. "Y'know, the Psychonauts weren't always this fractured..."

Oleander's rough voice came into the conversation. "What about Milla? She went in there to find out who's working on the case, right?"

Once again, Sasha nodded. "Correct. She said she would be out in half an hour. Give her forty-five minutes."

It was at that moment that Milla and Lili walked back into the jet. Lili's expression was tired, worn, and unspeakably angry. If it hadn't been for the fact that she had a boyfriend and life was actually beginning to get interesting, the past few days would have qualified as the worst of her life. First, she gets a cold…in summer. Then she gets kidnapped (she still had trust issues with flowers after that incident) and some dentist wearing a shower cap tries to remove her brain. Then her dad gets kidnapped and all of the Psychonauts turn into a bunch of arrogant jerks! She seethed quietly, keeping her thoughts to herself as best she could. She seemed to have a problem with broadcasting her thoughts lately.

Milla followed after Lili and sat down beside Sasha, tossing her hair over her shoulder abruptly and looked around at the others. Her green eyes were narrowed, her delicate eyebrows pulled down, and her lips were thin lines. She stood there for a good five minutes before Ford's bunny slipper flew from the ground and smacked the back of her head.

"Out with it, Vodello! You an' Sasha, sheesh…"

Milla's shoulders sank. "They aren't giving us the case. That…that horrible little goblin in Networking—"

Lili supplied the name. "Kyle Andrews."

"—refused to even tell me anything! He said that it was being taken care of by someone else. Someone more 'qualified'." She spat that word out with such venom that the others sank back. Milla was always kind and warm; the sort of person you could go reveal your deepest secrets to knowing that she would keep it in the strictest confidence. "He told us to go back to Whispering Rock. Said he'd keep in touch."

"So, what? We're useless?" Oleander's voice grew louder, angrier. Everyone focused their attention on him. He jumped up to his feet—adding a total of three inches to his height. "We came all this way to help them and they tell us to go home? Who the hell's in charge? I'm gonna give 'em a piece of my—"

Sasha spoke up, his tone even and neutral. "Morry, you're letting your anger control you again. Please extinguish Agent Cruller's bunny slipper."

Oleander froze in midstep, frowning. He lost control again…and the evidence of that was as clear as day. Probably clearer since the smoldering bunny slipper caused a thin layer of smoke to hang in the air. He turned to the others, looking frightened and embarrassed. He had lost everyone's trust only a few short days ago and he seemed to be making it worse. Regaining that trust was one of his highest priorities. "I-I'm sorry…"

"It's alright, darling. Just sit down with us." Milla offered him a small smile. "And don't worry. We're going to help find Truman."

"Yeah, whether they like it or not!" Lili said with steel in voice and determination in her eyes. Raz nodded in agreement.

Sasha looked at the others. How they exactly they planned to accomplish this was beyond him. They were locked out of headquarters; Andrews made sure of that. He doubted anyone would share information with them. Andrews was effectively the Grand Head in absence of Truman, and even though Cruller had a number of supporters, most agents were still wary of his fractured psyche. They wouldn't be able to get any information using Cruller's name. What they were suggesting was nothing short of insubordination, but… What else could they do?

"I assume you two have a plan?"

A heavy silence fell after Sasha's question. And it grew by the second. Short of infiltrating their own base and stealing the information they needed—becoming psychic terrorists in the process—they could do nothing.

The sound of a man clearing his throat broke that silence. He wore the Psychonauts uniform, and had his dark brown hair cropped short, the color matching the color of his eyes and the stubble beneath his chin. He was as tall as Sasha and a little older. Needless to say, everyone's attention turned towards him. When the man spoke, it was a in a surprisingly soft voice that carried irrefutable authority in its tone.

"Perhaps I can be of assistance…"