-Chapter 3-

"I'm out!" cried Jasper. He patted down his fat frame, clothed in a black tuxedo and bowtie. "I'm alive! I'm away from that godforsaken, sorry excuse for a play! I could sing!"

Gloria, perched daintily on a chair, stared at him. "Where did you come from?" she asked sleepily, rubbing her eyes.

"Who are you?" sneered Jasper. "Never mind. I don't care." He began adjusting his bowtie, cufflinks, and curly cones of red hair.

"Excuse me, but you're sitting on my biggest fan," sniffed Gloria haughtily.

"He's a terrible chair," reported Jasper. "Not at all soft, lumpy, misshapen. I give him a D- at best." He stood.

Sasha, whose face had been pressed into the laboratory floor, gasped for air with an audible wheeze. "Fascinating!" he croaked, pulling out his crunched up, mangled recorder. "Mental being is actuallyexisting outside consciousness of subject!"

"Did you hit your head when you fell?" asked Gloria, sounding concerned.

"Good-bye, you uncultured peasants! I'm off to Hollywood!" cried Jasper, hurrying up the stairs and out of the lab.

Sasha sat up dizzily. "Oh no! Wait! Come back! You have to get back inside her head!"

"I'm never going back!" shouted Jasper before he disappeared out the door. He slammed it after him; it echoed in Sasha's lab. Sasha looked slightly worried.

"Well. This is bad," he reported.

"What's bad? What happened? Who was that guy?" asked Gloria.

"He was—never mind. Er… why don't you stay here and… um… admire yourself while I go… um… fantasize you over there somewhere," said Sasha. He dashed out of the lab, but by the time he'd climbed all the stairs to make it above ground, Jasper was long gone. He stood clinking in the bright sunshine, birds in trees chirping, and worried about what he was going to do.

"Ranger Cruller! Have you see a remarkably fat man with a grating voice walk by here?" asked Sasha desperately, striding dutifully towards Ranger Cruller, who was raking a pile of rocks absent-mindedly.

"Sure did," he said. "Said he was going to the lodge."

"Oh, thank God!" Sasha dashed off to the lodge, but was back only minutes later with a scowl on his face.

"Didja find him?" asked Ranger Cruller.

"I didn't mean Morry!" snapped Sasha in frustration, referring to the squat coach who ran Whispering Rock, the camp in which Sasha's lab happened to be located.

"Oh. Well, I can't help you, then," said Ranger Cruller.

Sasha pulled out a cigarette and lit it impatiently. He didn't want to ask for help, but the fact was that he'd released a mental being into the real world and needed to regain control of the situation—fast. With a sigh of defeat, he asked Ranger Cruller to circulate an announcement for the whole camp compound to meet him in the lodge that night.

"Alright, listen up, maggots!" yelled Coach Morceau Oleander. "You are the hunter! And this is the hunted!" He held up a poster.

"We're hunting posters?" asked Dogen in confusion.

"What's on the poster, Dogen," explained Lili patiently.

"Oh. We're hunting swimsuit models?"

"Are you blind? This isn't a swim—oh," said Oleander, looking at the poster. "Wrong one. This! This is your prey!"

He held up a picture of Jasper.

Phoebe Love raised her hand. "Is that a dangerous psychic criminal?"

"No. It's a mental being that Sasha carelessly let out of someone's mind during an experiment."

"It was a good experiment!" protested Sasha weakly.

"Ever noticed that all your good experiments end up like this?" asked Milla Vodello critically. Sasha's partner and polar opposite, she was a tall, beautiful, Brazilian woman with voluptuous hair and a love of all clothing produced prior to 1980.

"Not all of them…"

"Let's see. Brain Tumber. Five kids went insane."

"But not the sixth!"

"Flux transponder. Blew up half the lodge."

"It needed to be rebuilt anyway!"

"Microantimony diffusion ray. Dyed your hair canary yellow."

"That was on purpose!"

"Whipped cream and handcuffs…"

"Your experiment, not mine! I only participated!"

"Right, getting back on track!" barked Oleander, shaking the poster of Jasper at them ferociously. "We're all going to split up into groups and hunt him down! He's a critic so be careful, he'll probably be scathingly... um... critical."

Mikhail's hand went up. "When we find critic, we put him in headlock, da?"

"What? Um, sure, if you want," said Oleander.

Elka's hand went up. "He's not, like, a talent agent, is he? I mean, if we happened to have a really great romantic Hollywood play..."

"Um, no. Okay, frst we need two volunteers to stay with Gloria and make sure she doesn't leave before we can get her critic back into her head! Without her critic, she'll become egotistical and big-headed. We need two people to stay with her and criticize her as much as possible to make sure she doesn't get overly cocky."

"OO! OO!" shouted Clem and Crystal, thrusting their hands in the air.

"Okay, you two. Do you think you can be the meanest, most critical, most horrible friends to Gloria ever?"

"You betcha!" said Clem excitedly.

"Do you have what it takes to keep her down and not let her lack of an inner critic go to her head?"

"We put the 'cruel' in 'cheerleading!'" announced Crystal.

"There's no cruel in cheerleading, though. There's not a 'u,'" pointed out Lili.

"Oh my God, you're right, Lili!" cried Crystal. "You're so smart! Thanks for pointing that out!"

"Yay, Lili!" added Clem.

"Let's get back to groups!" yelled Oleander, pounding a fist on the table. "Group one! Kitty, Franke, Elka and... um... Nils."

"Score!" shrieked Nils.

"And Ford Cruller will go with you."

"Oh, no!" cried Nils miserably.

"Group two! Quentin, Phoebe, JT, Chops, Milka. Milla, you go with them."

"Alright!" exclaimed JT and Chops, slapping each other a high-five.

"Group three. Maloof, Mikhail. Elton, Benny, Bobby... where is Bobby, anyway?"

"He said he's not coming to the meeting because it's stupid," reported Benny.

"Okay, the group that finds Bobby gets extra credit," said Oleander. "Sasha, you take group three. And Lili, Dogen, and Chloe, you come with me."

"What about me, Coach?" came a familiar voice.

"Razputin! What are you doing here, sweetheart?" asked Milla.

"What do you mean?" asked Raz. "It's a psychonauts story. Of course I'm here. I'm the main character. The author said I had to be here."

Milla, Sasha, and Oleander all stared at him. "That's a bad explanation. You're already a psychonaut. Explain why you're in Whispering Rock again. Now!" commanded Oleander.

"Uh... I... came to see Lili," said Raz. "How's that?"

"Okay, that works. You come with Lili and me, soldier! Everyone in their group? Good. DEPLOY!" yelled Oleander. Everyone clamped their hands over their ears. "And remember your goal!" shouted Oleander. "Get that critic... and don't let him start criticizing you, or you will be defeated!"