Hiya folks! Another Psychonauts fanfic from me... this time a multichapter one!

Ever feel like Oleander got off a bit too light after the events of the first game? I thought of a reason for that, and finally decided to turn that headcanon into a fic.

Thanks to Jaywings and Pinky G Rocket for beta-reading.

Enjoy!

Coming to took a lot longer than usual.

He was disciplined—he always got up at his alarm at oh-five-hundred hours on the dot, as any good soldier should. Like any good general.

But now waking up felt like walking through mud in some blood-drenched battlefield, or trudging through a swamp, the muck threatening to pull him under again with every step. Moreover, the more conscious he became, the more aware he was of the aches all around his body, and the pounding in his head.

Oddly, his nose felt sore, too.

...Wait, his nose?

He yanked himself out of the brain fog and mental muck, scrambling to feel his nose and head, only to find his arms pinned to his side. Gritting his teeth, he shook himself, fighting against his restraints. "Oh, no you don't, you deranged dentist, you're not gonna get my—"

Oleander noticed that the room he occupied wasn't dim like the dentist's "office," and paused.

He had to blink a few times as his vision adjusted to the overhead light, and the near-equally-bright floor and walls. One wall had a large mirror stretched across it, but experience told him that wasn't what it really was. He was sitting upright in a chair, and the room he was in was wide and spacious, with a couple of beanbag chairs and a table providing the only other furnishings in the space.

The place, he realized, was the interrogation room in Ford Cruller's sanctuary. And occupying the two beanbags were two familiar faces: Agents Nein and Vodello.

Sasha's gaze was unreadable beneath his glasses, but Milla's was also hard to read. Her brows were slightly lowered, giving her a more serious appearance, but he couldn't discern her expression otherwise. Well... other than that she wasn't in her usual disco mood.

"Yeesh, someone crash your party?" Oleander muttered before he could think. Suddenly remembering what he'd blurted out upon coming to, he jolted. "Uh—about what I said, uh, you know, I've had nightmares about dentists since—"

"There's no need to hide anything any longer, Morry," Sasha said, crossing his arms.

"What, hiding? Me?" A chuckle that was a bit more nervous than he would have liked escaped his throat. "You know I'm not hiding anything other than some spare Psi-Pops in my office."

Milla inclined her head toward him. "Morry... do you not remember what happened last night?"

"Recranialization can cause some disorientation, particularly after the ordeal you went through." Leaning back, Sasha raised a hand imploringly. "I'll allow you to take a moment to gather your memories before we proceed."

"Proceed with what?" Oleander blurted, but the two of them remained silent. Feeling his head pounding, he once again tried to raise one of his hands to rub it, only to remember they were pinned. He glanced down, finding that he was held in place by a purple-and-blue device wrapped around his body, pinning his arms to his side. He recognized it—he'd only just gotten a few of these out to Loboto not long ago in preparation for their plan. He didn't need to try to look up to know he had the matching helmet stuck to his head. Anti-psychic restraints.

But... why? Had they really found out about his secret? What had Vodello said...?

Struggling past his headache, he tried to recall the events of the night prior. They'd been close to the new camp season, and he'd just finished ironing out the last few details with the doctor so they'd be ready for when the kids arrived. And... wait, no, the kids had arrived. And there was that one who'd sneaked in, who had a brain tougher than any he'd ever seen... and they'd used that awful monstrosity to capture the kids, and managed to capture Zanotto's daughter, and he'd...

Oleander's head shot up too quickly, pain lancing through it as he looked back at Nein and Vodello.

Nein, drop whatever you're doing and come up to my office immediately. I just talked with Cruller—something urgent's come up. Official Psychonauts business. Higher up's saying the Gastronauts are planting tracking devices in the food here and may be planning something again.

"It seems that you remember, then," Sasha remarked dully.

Oh, yes. He wouldn't forget ambushing his fellow agent with sneezing powder the second he hovered into his office—seeing the shock and betrayal on Sasha's face just before he, quite literally, lost his mind. Nor would he forget the cackling he heard over the radio as Loboto reported that he'd received the "package" containing Milla's brain.

"...Oh," was all he could say, his voice hoarse.

Nein was saying something else, but his words fell like radio static in Oleander's ears. Instead, his mind raced to remember what else had happened that night—what had he done?

There was the tower, and that fight, and then... the brain tank. He'd managed to take everyone out in one go... except for that big-headed kid. And then...

...then...

"Did you hear anything I just said?"

Jolting back to the present, Oleander looked up at Sasha with heavy eyelids. "What...?"

"I said that given the circumstances, we have taken the liberty of using anti-psychic restraints on you in preparation to interrogate you over last night's events, and to perform an evaluation."

Oleander took another glance down at the restraints before eyeing Sasha again. "You're treatin' me like a criminal, Nein."

"That's because you are."

"...Yeah. Uh. Guess I can't argue with that." He would've shrugged, if the restraints allowed it. "Uh... I'm... sorry about all that. Extremely."

Slowly, Nein and Vodello's gazes drifted toward each other, some silent, psychic communication being exchanged. Or a knowing glance.

Okay, not a great start. "Right. You got questions for me? Fire away."

"Keep in mind that if you lie to us..." Sasha nodded toward Milla, who held up her Psycho-Portal. "...we'll know."

The sight of the Psycho-Portal made him tense up. It wasn't like they'd never been used on him before. In fact, Sasha and Milla had entered his mind a few years back to check out his classroom. He himself used a Psycho-Portal to pull the kids into his classroom, and he'd had his initial evaluation when he'd first joined the Psychonauts, but he'd had his mental worlds prepared, then.

He wasn't sure what they looked like now, after what happened last night, and he would have no time to prepare.

But... someone else had entered his mental world recently, hadn't they?

Before he could think on it further, something moving caught his eye: a pen hovering over a clipboard that sat on the table between Sasha and Milla. "First, Morry," Sasha began, "we would like to know... what exactly your plan involved."

Oleander let out a humorless laugh. "Well, you were there for it. I'm sure you figured that out already, whatever that kid didn't blurt out, anyway."

Sasha and Milla exchanged yet another glance, and he felt a spark of irritation at not knowing what they weren't saying. He couldn't even try to get a read on them with the restraints on.

Vodello spoke next; her voice was even and lacked the relaxed tones he was used to hearing from her. "We would like to hear everything from you, Morry."

"All right, fine." Looking aside, he went over it in his mind, the same way he'd done over and over again the past several months, but with one difference. He'd always been so careful about mental defenses, never letting his guard down when he was at headquarters, or when he was around Nein or Vodello or Cruller at camp. It was something he'd had experience with anyway, growing up never certain if his father could overhear his own fearful thoughts or not, like he himself could hear the thoughts of the rabbits...

He yanked himself away from those thoughts like a hand from a hot iron, though they didn't seem to burn as much now.

There wasn't much of a point in hiding now, was there? The plan had failed. The doctor had run off, that weird assistant had scurried off with some spare brain, and there wasn't much left for that guard to... well... guard. Now he was alone, held captive and defeated.

What did he have to lose?

"The idea was... to take over the world. I'd need the ultimate weapon, which, for us psychics, that's our brain. I needed a lot of them, but Mentallis wouldn't let me use any of his, so I'd need to get them elsewhere. But more than that... I needed something more. With more of a punch. Otto's taught me a lot about machines, so I thought maybe I could make one."

"Was Otto involved in this?" Sasha asked. The pen he'd been writing with via TK had gone still, and he sat more rigidly on his beanbag chair.

Oleander raised an eyebrow. "Mentallis? Nah, not him. I didn't want to involve anyone else in the Psychonauts. Too risky."

Sasha relaxed a fraction and gestured toward Oleander with his pen. "Good. Continue."

"All right, well, I thought... what's the best weapon the military's got that doesn't involve psychics?" In spite of himself, he couldn't help grinning. "Tanks! If you combined psychic powers with a tank, it'd be unstoppable! But... unfortunately, I realized I wouldn't be able to do this all on my own. I'd need some help, both with obtaining the brains and building the machines. I wasn't gonna recruit anyone within the Psychonauts, so... I went... ah."

Oh boy, how could he put this.

"I may have... done a bit of digging... and found... a certain... someone... who had the sort of skill set I was looking for."

"The dentist," Milla said. "I... vaguely remember my encounter with him." Her eyes narrowed a fraction. "I heard from... the others about him as well."

"Ah... yeah." Oleander cleared his throat. "Doctor Loboto was his name."

"And... where was it that you did some digging to find Doctor Loboto?" Sasha prodded.

Well, they wouldn't like this. "I... uh... may have perused the Psychonauts' criminal database... and... found some people to get in contact with..."

"Morry!"

"You collaborated with enemies of the Psychonauts?"

"Not directly!" he exclaimed, wishing he could hold his hands up defensively. To his dismay, Sasha already had his hand to his temple, sending a message to goodness-knows-who. "I did contact some, but I wasn't gonna work with them. I-I just asked around, looking for someone who could do what I needed."

"But Morry, you still went to our enemies for help?" Milla asked. Her calm facade was starting to slip.

"How long were you in contact with these people?" Sasha demanded. "Did you tell them any confidential—?"

"I only talked with them a couple times! I had to start somewhere!" Oleander cried. "I wasn't interested in letting Psychonauts' secrets slip—just finding the right guy for my job. Didn't take long to find, either. Turns out, that Loboto character had set up base in that abandoned asylum across the lake, which was perfect for what I needed."

"Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed," Nein said, leaning back. "I don't suppose you were aware of its other residents?"

"Not initially, no. Not until I got there." He could still remember how it sent chills down his spine to find that not only were people living on that decrepit rock, but that some of the people living there had been former patients of the asylum, left to rot. But at least one of them turned out to be useful to his plans later.

"You had no intention of helping them?" Milla frowned at him. "Those poor people who were trapped there?"

"I... well... no. It... didn't cross my mind at the time." Oleander bit his lip. "You know, focused on the plan and everything."

Everything was starting to sound a whole lot worse as he talked his way through it. But at least they hadn't asked about the—

"The former security guard who resided there did cross your mind," Sasha said, his voice going a bit lower, and Oleander felt his heart sink.

"...Yeah. Okay, so that one I did decide to wrap up into the plan. I didn't hurt 'im or anything! Just... talked to him a bit, and used some milk and cookies to... persuade him to help—"

"You hypnotized him," Milla cut in, the word bitter on her tongue.

Oleander let out a deep sigh, feeling some of his will leave him with it.

Deliberately messing with someone's brain—whether it be shattering it like Maligula had done to Cruller, or trying to change someone's mind like Forsythe had done before she'd joined the Psychonauts—was frowned upon by the organization. Heck, more than that—it was the cardinal sin, and they made that clear to all of their agents. Hypnotism, on the other hand, was an iffy gray area; while it was frowned upon as well, it was used on rare occasion as a last resort if it was absolutely vital to a mission. Because of that, it was a technique Oleander initially hadn't been sure of using, but the thought of just how much it would aid in his plans, how much closer it would bring him to what he wanted, pushed him past his uncertainties.

...Until they came crashing back over him now, anyway.

"Yeah," he found himself admitting. "I did."

Boyd wasn't here, but even if he were, there was no apology that could make up for something like that, so Oleander gave none.

The room was silent other than the hum of the fluorescent lights and the scratch of a pen against a clipboard.

"Continue," Sasha urged, and Oleander sighed.

"Well, the doctor and I, we worked out the plans together... designing the brain tanks, figuring out how we'd get the brains, making our own sneezing powder from scratch. Wasn't gonna order any from Otto—too easily traceable. Pshaw. Spent all my Psitanium on Psi-Pops anyway." He rolled his eyes. "It took us a while to get it right—the stuff's harder to make than you'd think. And the doctor... uh..." As the memory came back to him, a shudder ran down his spine. "I think he... really must've been into the plan, 'cuz I'm pretty sure he hacked off his own arm to replace it with a pepper-grinder prosthetic." Quickly, he raised his head, looking Sasha and then Milla in the eye. "That part was not on me, by the way. I swear on that one! The guy's just nuts."

Where was he? "Anyway... we solidified the blueprints and built a smaller model of the brain tank. And... a full-scale one too, heh, for when we finally had a good subject." They had both squabbled over the construction, but that might have been one of the most fun parts of the scheme altogether, just getting the tanks built and testing them out (as much as they could without extracting a psychic brain, anyway). For a moment his mind drifted back to the memories of him and the doctor getting the tanks assembled; he could still remember the joy he felt at seeing his creations come to life…

"And your subjects were the children."

The slight waver in that last word snapped Oleander back to the present. He found himself staring at Vodello. She was not staring back at him; she was staring into him, hackles raised. He could feel the daggers she glared at him stabbing into his chest.

He'd... never seen her that angry. And from the rumors he'd heard of her background, well... it wasn't hard to figure out where that anger was coming from.

"...Look, Vodello," he began, his voice hedged—while she rarely used her offensive powers, he knew from last night that her psi-blasts were no joke. "The procedure didn't hurt them. You've seen folks at headquarters use that sneezing powder before! And we didn't hurt the brains, either! I mean, would kinda be counterintuitive to the plan to do that anyway."

She continued to stare into him with an unwavering gaze.

"Look, they're fine, okay? The brains that didn't work got put in glass jars with protective fluid inside—same kind Otto uses. You were in that too, remember?"

"As were you, Morry," Sasha cut in.

"Huh? Oh, right, I was in the brain tank—" For a second his head pounded, and he winced. "...Oh." Heaving a sigh, rolled his eyes. "Well a headache's not gonna kill 'em..."

Vodello opened her mouth to speak, but stopped when Nein turned toward her. Now Oleander was sure they were communicating telepathically, as they both stared at each other silently until Milla's shoulders dropped and she resumed her former serious expression.

"Why did you choose children as your subjects?" Sasha went on.

"Eh... part of it was easy access, but the main part was—you both work with them. You've seen how violent those kids can get! Young psychics are full of potential—and energy! They should've worked great in the brain tanks. Though that's also why I didn't wanna just smuggle the kids there... we needed a bit of help with that."

"The fish."

"Right! That part was Cal's idea. We needed a way to sneak the kids over to the tower, and sneak the brainless bodies back before anyone noticed they were missing." He bit his tongue to stop himself from thinking about how easy that would be anyway with the other counselors the way they were—he didn't need them getting any angrier with him than they already were. "Cal said a fish could do that, but there weren't any big enough around here, so... he'd have to make one. And given this place already has rumors about a giant lake monster, it'd be easy to write off any kids mentioning it as just making up stories. So... we made the fish, but he didn't exactly want to obey us straight away, and I had to... uh."

As he trailed off, Sasha and Milla exchanged a tired glance. "More hypnotism?" Sasha asked.

"Well... kinda yes and no... it was an implant in its brain."

"Morry, how is that any different?" Milla asked in exasperation.

"The difference is it was a fish, not a person! And that kid broke the device anyway, so I guess the thing's swimming free now." Oleander found himself struggling in his restraints—not to escape, but because an itch was beginning to ride up his back from the chair. "But before then, it worked. Together, Loboto and I got it to do what we wanted, and we used it to catch the kids and bring 'em back and forth to the tower."

"And... how did you communicate with him? You weren't at the tower when the children were being captured."

"Eh... used the old radio we had sitting around. I stayed at camp to keep an eye on things here, while Loboto handled... the rest." He shook his head. "According to him though, most of the kids weren't as violent as we hoped. He couldn't get 'em to do anything in the test tank. So we had to keep catching kids, hoping we'd find the one that worked. But the new kid was catching on too fast, and I had to take some... precautions."

"Yes... we are aware of that part," Vodello said, frowning.

"He broke the implant on the fish, too, and I had to get back to the lab before he messed anything else up. It took me a while to get from camp to the tower, and from there I went to prepare the brain tank, since I was sure we could get one of the remaining brains ready by then. Once I got that set, I ran up to talk to Loboto, but he must've got cold feet and run off by the time I got there. And uh... I think you all know what happened next."

"Indeed. But what about that explosion?"

"Oh, that was Cooper's work," Oleander said. "It... was something I asked him to do, but it was supposed to be after we'd finished the work with the brain tanks, to cover the tracks. He did it a bit early. But... worked out well enough, I suppose. And then... you know the rest."

"Yes, I think we've heard all we need in that regard," Nein agreed. "Almost, anyway."

Oleander grunted. "Well, if you wanna know what happened at the lab, you'd have to ask Cal. He told me some, but you'd have to get all the details from him."

"That would be difficult," Sasha said, adjusting his glasses, "as according to our sources, he was blasted out the window by the brain tank model."

"What?!" Oleander nearly leaped out of his chair, eyes wide. "You never told me that!"

"It wasn't relevant to mention it until now," Sasha remarked, while Oleander found his mind reeling.

Yeah he'd... sort-of counted on the explosion taking Loboto out anyway, to keep him from turning on him once he got what he needed. But to hear he'd actually been taken out... no, he hadn't really, had he? He couldn't have been. What brain was even used on the tank to cause it to fire like that? Unless it was a malfunction... but...

"The other thing we need to hear from you, Morry, is..." Sasha faltered, then turned to Milla for a moment. She nodded before the two turned back to him, looking very, very tired. "...Why?"

Oleander's thoughts were still reeling when Nein posed the question, and it caught him off-guard. Glad for the distraction from less-than-pleasant musings, he opened his mouth to answer, only to falter. "I... uh..."

It was strangely hard to answer the question. He'd had his reasons before—he had for years. But now, for some reason, actually voicing them felt impossible. Yet Sasha and Milla waited for him patiently.

"...I... it was... I just..." He struggled to answer, and swallowed.

"I thought so." Nodding to Vodello, Nein faced Oleander again while his partner retrieved her Psycho-Portal. "As stated before, now that we've concluded our interview, we will proceed with the psychic evaluation."

"Guess I don't get a choice in the matter, huh?" Oleander muttered, leaning back. "All right, let's get this over with."

Vodello gently TK'd the device over to him and allowed it to rest on his head. In spite of the restraint, it seemed to attach to the helmet without a problem, settling over his forehead.

"We'll see you there, Morry," Milla said, lacking her usual energy.

"Yeah," Oleander mumbled. "Yeah I'll... see you."

But as Nein and Vodello began to astral project themselves into his mind, he didn't see them. He saw a boy, and a very strange circus.