Chapter 3: Mr. No

Think about the way I'm changing around words. "No" might just be a word that's been translated from another language.

She was having breakfast in the Main Lodge, and she was going to get a Dowsing Rod (she had enough arrowheads now) so she could get a little colorizer thingy for her levitation ball and see if she couldn't turn the thing black.

Looking through the eyes of the invisible girl sitting across from her (there are no secrets in Zig's world, except for hers) she saw Sasha Nein coming up behind her.

"Hi."

The little invisible girl turned visible. "What?"

"I was talking to Sasha. Weirdo."

"You should talk!" And she turned invisible again.

"Oh. You saw me."

"Yeah, I was looking through her eyes. What, would you prefer that I switched to you?"

"Uh, no. Milla said you wanted to talk to me. Usually I don't do this for the kids, but – you actually had to run away?"

"Yep. All the way from Pennsylvania. Over the mountains, to this little crater here. It was fun crossing the state lines. It was so easy, too! I just teleported over."

"You do know that's illegal, too, right?"

"Isn't running away illegal?"

"I'm not sure."

"Exactly."

He sort of twitched. "Wait, you're a teleporter?"

"Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"

"It's the rarest Psychic talent. To see it in one so young…"

"Listen. I'm good at my skills. When there's only one thing in your life that you can really depend on, you tend to work with it. The whole "psychic" thing conflicted with my mom, among other things, and she got mad at me a lot, and I ran away."

"Well, you're very lucky, little girl, because we have a very good teleporter on… well, on campus. He isn't a teacher, though."

"I just came here to hang. Maybe write some poems. I don't care about adjusting all my psychic skills. Well, I'm going to colorize my levitation ball, but black is way cooler than yellow, you have to admit."

"You'll be extremely bored without anything to do."

"I'm usually extremely bored." Except when her mom was mad at her. But that wouldn't happen any more, hopefully…

Behind her, she felt a bright, colorful presence. And she was having such a good day… Well, Milla had set her up with Sasha. She was okay.

"Sasha, darling! I didn't expect to see you here!" She to Sasha's mind with her clairvoyance. He saw Milla as… ew. Hearts were so little-kid stuff.

He turned to her. "Get out of my mind. I know ways to force you out."

She was more than happy to get out. She went back to the invisible girl. So Sasha liked Milla. Like, like-liked her. And from the way Milla was talking to him, she liked him, too.

So, why weren't they together? With Milla, it was obvious. Well, it was to Zig, anyway. If Milla used Clairvoyance on Sasha for half a second, she'd see… Or maybe she knew. Maybe she was waiting for Sasha… No. She was nice, but she didn't seem to think that way.

Then Zig had a thought that kind of unsettled her: she was thinking about other people and putting them in relationships with each other. Ew.

Finally, Milla had settled at another table.

"So, would you like to come to my lab for some advanced training?"

She hadn't thought Sasha was still paying attention to her.

"I already know how to shoot."

"No, I mean I have a new piece of psychic equipment, and –"

"And you want me to be your little test animal. No, sorry. I don't want to know what my mind looks like. I'm not that into demon-fighting."

"You wanted me to talk to you!"

"You want me to treat you like I treat everyone else? Okay." She turned back to her breakfast, completely ignoring him.

But he had to have the last word, which just happened to be "Fine." Sasha Nein wasn't as cool as she'd thought. Oh, well. He still had good comics. And he wasn't all colorful.

Later, she went to the kids' cabins area and asked some boy with really big hair if he knew where Lili was.

"And what if I do?"

"Then you should tell me."

"Why?"

"Because I'll whoop your butt if you don't."

"Oh, little-miss-goth-girl is challenging me! What do you make of that, Benny?"

The big-haired guy had some weird speech problem. His friend Benny had really big ears.

"You want a psychic duel? Over me asking for Lili? Sure!"

"Tonight, in the place with the burnt-out fire, where the coach gives his speech every year!"

"Um, hello? If one of us casts pyrokinesis there, it'll be the end of the whole camp. How about at the old abandoned asylum across the lake?"

"Th-the asylum! That's crazy! We aren't allowed to go there!"

"We aren't allowed to have a psychic duel, either. I'm pretty sure that place in the front is empty."

"No way! I'm not going there!" Just as she'd though. He was a complete sissy.

"Then tell me who Lili is."

"She's that girl over there next to the tree."

"The one with the pigtails?"

"Yeah, who else?"

"Whatever. 'Bye loser!"

She walked over to Lili."

"Hi, Lili."

"Uh, hi. Who are you?"

"Zig."

"Oh! You look really different with the eye shadow."

"I've heard. Do you know why Sasha Nein and Milla Vodello aren't together yet?"

"Uh, because it's Sasha? Hello, this is Sasha Nein we're talking about!"

"Oh. Well, I don't know them very well…"

"Okay, Sasha in love is the weirdest thing I've ever heard."

"Why?"

"Because… Well, it's just the sort of thing that doesn't happen. The day the world crashes into the sun, I'll believe you."

"But you'd be dead."

"Exactly. It's completely impossible to confirm."

"No, but you wouldn't believe me because you wouldn't care because you'd be gone."

"You're sucking all the fun out of this."

"I know."

There was a moment of silence between them, then Lili made the obvious realization. "Wait, Sasha likes Milla, right?"

"Yeah, duh. Why else would I ask?"

"Well, there's also that they're the only two adults here. Besides Cruller, of course, but he's ancient."

"Ford Cruller?"

"Yeah. That's the one thing my dad doesn't like about this place. See, in all the official files, it says Cruller's a loon. But he also likes to help the kids with stuff. You can go talk to him if you ask one of the mine carts to take you to his sanctuary. You have to say "my" sanctuary, though, because it thinks you're Cruller."

"You talk to mine carts for fun? What is this, a hippie LSD camp?"

"You'll see. If you jump down one of those tree stumps, you can ride them."

"This has to be a camp joke. I'm not that dumb, Lili."

"Fine. I need to cash in my new mental cobwebs anyway."

Then Lili ran over to the log near the bridge and jumped in. It was the dumbest thing Zig had ever seen. The weird part was that Lili disappeared down through the log.

Eventually, Zig switched her clairvoyance to the lamp over the log and looked in. It was actually hollow, and there was a modified mine cart in it. So it wasn't one of those things people say to newcomers. She jumped down.

"Hello. This is the Whispering Rock Rapid Transit System. Where would you like to go, Agent Cruller?"

"My sanctuary. Where'd you think?"

"Are the kids giving you a hard time, Agent Cruller?"

"No. I'm just, uh, kinda down today."

"Okay, Agent Cruller."

The computer was almost flirting. Cruller was even weirder than most old guys. But then, all psychics were weird. It was just something they did.

After a minute or two, she was in a huge cave that kind of made her ears ring a little. She was on a big walkway that went across to a big circle. There was a rock floor several feet below her. That sucked.

She saw Agent Cruller, wearing the dark, striped uniform of a psychonaut. He introduced himself and gave her a piece of bacon. Just then, Lili came up with her rank newly established and Cruller said, "Just a minute, Zig, I have to talk to Lili." His mind went into her head. They said he had been the best of all the teleporters, before he'd gone insane. But if he was insane… maybe that explained the bacon. It sure didn't explain much else.

After a couple of minutes, they came back out. Lili said, "Okay. Glad that's over. Come on, Zig. You have to learn about some stuff."

And she went over the ledge, floating down. Zig just looked down and teleported.

"Cool. You're a teleporter, too. Okay. So, this is the Mental Cobweb Loom. It takes the threads from mental cobwebs and weaves them into psi cards. Over here" she walked to a slightly different device, "Is the machine that makes psi challenge markers. If you have nine psi cards and a psi core from the main lodge, you can make a psi challenge marker. Oh, yeah, and for the cobwebs, you only get one psi card per. They really add up, though. Once I had, like, all these cobwebs, and I went from, like, nine psi cards to 38. It was cool! Then I didn't have enough psi cores. It was actually kinda funny."

"Whatever." She teleported back up to the top of the ledge, walked back to tree stump, went down to the mine cart, and went back to the cabin area. Then she walked back to her cabin, took her journal out from her duffel, and wrote in a new poem.

Yeah, I know Zig was a buttmunch to Sasha, but she's just emo to everyone. How many words into the next chapter do you wanna bet before the rumor really gets going at camp about Sasha and Milla? Yeah, and Zig's gonna be working on schoolwork in the next chapter. That also makes good filler. Unless you're Raz, you can't run, jump, and psi float all day long to get the collectibles. Plus, Zig doesn't seem like the sort of person who's into leveling up. She's probably level 100 anyway. She has to be at least level whatever-it-is-to-get-a-dowsing-rod.