AN:

Well, I just learned that Huron is French for "Ruffian" or "Rustic". It also the name the French gave the Wyandot people, who, based on my limited knowledge, are the native peoples of the Ontario region of Canada. It's too late to change it now.

Only two reviews so far? I know people are reading this....

(Spelling reminder goes here.)

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Ch5: It's Worse Than You Ever Dreamed

Raz was about ready to check in his sanity and ship off to an asylum.

He had been trapped, for five freaking days, inside of a hospital room the size of a matchbox. It wouldn't have been that bad, except the room was completely white, right down to the doorknob, there were no windows, and the fluorescent light above his head kept flickering. The only color in the entire room came from the comics scattered on his bed and the blue PJ's he wore. That, and somehow he'd ended up in a room with some cranky old psychic hater. Raz was willing to believe that the bastard had plans to murder him while he slept; plans that would have been carried out if the man hadn't broken his limbs in a skiing accident.

Incidentally, Raz could feel himself being given the Evil Eye through the blindingly white privacy curtains.

On the plus side, he'd been sleeping well for the past few nights (His psychic-hating roommate was on a very potent sleeping aid, one of the nurses had told him.), and he was feeling much better after a few days of rest. The sheets weren't scratchy, either, which was always a good thing.

The door to the room swung open with a creak. A fat, blond young nurse with a mole on her chin, which Raz had learned was ironically named "Dorothy Mole", stood in the doorway, beaming. He liked her. She'd played board games with Raz almost every afternoon since he'd arrived, and that alone had kept him from going completely out of his gourd.

But today she didn't have one of the brightly colored boxes with her. Instead, she had brought something much, much better.

"Razputin! You have visitors!" She said in a sing song voice.

Raz's face lit up like a Broadway sign. So he hadn't been left to rot in this sterile white hell! He jumped out of bed and got dressed as fast as he could, carful not to apply pressure to his injured arm as he put it into a sling. The doctors had told him he was luck that he didn't lose any more blood than he had, and that someone had shown up and given him fist aid. Otherwise, he undoubtably would have bled to death before anyone found him.

Dorothy walked him out of the room, past the guard that had been stationed at his door, just incase the assassin returned to finish the job, down a long white hallway that only had a few nurses and a doctor wandering its length, and into the visitor sitting area.

The visitors area was far more pleasant than the rest of the hospital. The walls were painted an inviting shade of green, unlike the blinding white of the rest of the hospital, and there were honest-to-goodness light bulbs in the tastefully color-coordinated lamps, which shed warm light across the room. It was empty save for an elderly couple, one of whom was sporting an IV, playing chess in the corner. They looked up at Raz as he entered the room, and he flashed them a nervous smile, and they smiled back before returning to there game.

Dorothy quickly ushered Raz through a door and into a smaller, privet area, and shut the door behind him. Almost as soon as he stepped inside, Raz was swept up his mom's loving embrace, her arms wrapped so tightly around him that he couldn't breathe, pressing into his wounded arm and sending searing pain shooting through his body.

"Razputin! I was so worried about you! When they told me you'd been attacked, I thought you were-"

"Mom!" He gasped. "You're hurting me..."

"Oh!" She let go of him. "I'm sorry, I forgot for a moment...." She smiled weekly. "The doctors said your arm will be fine in a few months, if you get plenty of rest."

Sasha, who had been sitting in a nearby chair, chose the moment to deliver some bad news.

"Unfortunately, due to the nature of your injury, Psychonauts' policy places you on mandatory sick leave for at least two weeks, and you will not be allowed to return as a field agent until the injury has completely healed." He said in a grave voice, adjusting his glasses as he spoke.

".... Months? I can't do anything for months?!" Raz cried. It wasn't fair! He had followed orders, bad ones at that, gotten maimed because his attacker had been way out of his league, and now he was being punished for it all!

Raz, now acutely aware of the people around him after his little outburst, glanced around the room. Milla was relaxing in the chair next to Sasha, her blue-gloved fingers interlaced with his, much to Raz's surprise. On a large blue couch sat his dad, Augustus, along with his older sister, Gretchen and her fiancé, Douglas Paterson; and his younger sister and brother, Elena and Caspian.

"Where's the Coach?" Raz asked as he hauled himself onto a chair. As much as he hated to admit it, even to himself, he was already starting to feel tired. His mom, Laura, sat down in the chair next to him

"He could make it, darling." Milla told Raz. "He had his bimonthly Psychiatric evaluation today. He did ask me to give you this card, though."

Raz took the card from Milla. It had a picture of a little bunny with its arm in a cast on the front, with the sparkly words "Get Well Soon" written in bubble letters across the top. Tucked inside of the card was a long letter, and just by skimming the first few lines, Raz could tell that it was some a war story of some kind.

"Umm.... Didn't the whole "War Delusions" thing get fixed?" Raz said nervously.

"It did. The entire story did happen, but you still might not want to read it." Sasha said. "It's his rendition of how he fell off the side of a cliff during a foot pursuit."

It hurt Augustus to see his son like this. His boy looked so pale, so tired, like a cap had been put on his seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy. He had a thin red line, the beginnings of a scar, just below the eye, and his arm hung uselessly in a sling, covered in bandages. The clothes he wore were too large, and hung lose on his slim frame, making him look even more sickly than he already did.

But Razputin had a strong spirit, and, despite his weariness, was able to have fun. The nurse had brought some board games in, and they all spent several hours playing Monopoly and Bingo, and otherwise just enjoying themselves.

Evening came around, and, with many tears and kisses, Laura took the rest of the family back to the caravan. Almost imeidentely after they left, the conversation turned serious as the remaining adults (and Razputin) planed their next move.

"Razputin, we were told you would be able to come home soon." Augustus said, his brow furrowed. "But I don't think that you would like spending your days waiting around while that arm heals."

Razputin nodded sleepily. Of course he wouldn't want to come home with his arm like that. He'd seen the rest of his family break limbs and sit around for weeks on end, with nothing to do but read and watch the others preform.

"Camp will be starting up again in a week, darling. You could come stay with us for the rest of the summer." Agent Vodello suggested. Augustus liked the woman reasonably well, but, sometimes....

Suddenly, a loud, monotone beeping noise, emitting somewhere from Agent Nein's person, disrupted Augustus' train of thought. The Agent looked embarrassed, and, as he hastily left the room, Augustus caught a glimpse of what had to be the squarest cellphone in existence.

There was a moment of silence, and then they continued their conversation as if nothing had happened.

"I would like for Razputin to come home and visit his family for a time. We haven't seen him in months" Augustus said. "We won't be preforming for a few weeks, and we will be in the area. We could drop Razputin off when camp starts."

"Does that sound good?" Milla asked Razputin. "Staying with your family for a few days?"

"Yah. Sound great." Razputin said, his eye starting to close. The poor boy must have been exaughisted; he was slumping in his chair....

"Your toxicology report just came back from the lab, Razputin."

Augustus, as well as everyone else in the room, turned to look at Sasha as he stood in the doorway, blocky cellphone still in hand. He looked worried, his brow slightly creased and lips forming a frown.

"You had them run a tox screen on me?" Raz said with a start.

"The pain you described to Dr. Eppes, well, it simply was not at all typical for that type of injury. We believe the knives were coated with a poison that interferes with clotting, and intensifies pain. While we still haven't identified it, we do know that you were injected with a mixture of drugs that temporarily counteracted the poison shortly after the attack. It probably saved your life."

"Poison?!" The word rolled off of Augustus' tongue like the substance itself, bitter and taste in his mouth. "My son was poisoned?"

"Mr. Aquato, I assure you that he's fine now."

"You allowed my son to be sent on a mission where he could be killed?!"

"Razputin was sent on a mission where he should have been fine. The extremely poor planing of his mission leader, as well as several direct violations of protocol that, once again, were not Razputin's fault, put him in the path of danger."

"Has anything happened to Da- Agent Huron?" Razputin interjected.

"Why, yes." Agent Nein adjusted his glasses. Every time Augustus had seen him, regardless of the situation, Agent Nein had been wearing sunglasses. "He has been suspended for intentionally endangering a junior agent."

"Good." Augustus grunted.

In a small, but pleasant, gated community just outside of Seattle, sat the home of the Hurons. To call it a mansion would have been an over statement, but the stone and brick building was large and grand enough that calling it a mere "house" did not do it justice. In the fading evening light, the beautifully manicured shrubs and immaculate lawn were picture perfect, and the flower beds dotted about the house would have made any neighbor envious. These feats of landscaping should not be attributed to the Hurons, but instead their gardener, who worked six days a week to keep the lawn in its glorious state, carefully mowing around the tastefully selected lawn ornamentation and the water fountain, watering flowers, and trimming trees.

In his home office, Dave Huron, now on day three of a three week unpaid suspension, was moping. What was he supposed to tell his wife? That the obnoxious kid that he'd spent months trying to stop from joining the organization had gotten him suspend? Unthinkable! It was bad enough that he hadn't been allowed to go back into his office to retrieve his possessions, but what made it worse was that he had been the one to come up with that rule. Now important papers would be just sitting in his office, there for anyone to come riffle through them.

IT.

WASN'T.

FAIR.

With a scream of rage, he slammed his fist into the wall. It gave, allowing his knuckles to scrape past the 2x4 that lay beneath, and leaving sizable hole in the drywall.

He took a deep breath and slowly pulled his hand out of the wall, wincing as he saw the blood on his hand. Thankfully, he didn't seem to have any splinters lodged in his flesh.

'This wasn't how things were supposed to have happened.' He thought, looking at the blood trickling down his knuckles. He hadn't broken his hand, at least.

Dave pulled out his handkerchief and pressed it against his hand. Then, of all things, he started to cry. The crushing weight of all that had happened over the last few days, from getting suspended to loosing badly on poker night, came crashing down on Dave like a boulder.

He had spent night after night away from home, working hard to keep his organization strong, no matter how much that idiot Trueman tried to relax the regulations. He wasn't the only one, he had supporters in the upper ranks. He planed, and did everything he could, to ensure that only the agents with the appropriate respect for rules, and a desire to preserve the image of The Psychonauts, made it into the upper ranks. But, Trueman continued to surround himself with allies, and no matter how hard he tried-

Dave stopped sobbing abruptly. Years on the job had sharpened his senses to unexplained and unexpected sounds, and he had just heard the distinct sound of his refrigerator door slamming in the kitchen, which, coincidentally, was just down the hall from his office. His wife couldn't be home yet, she wasn't due back from her business trip for a few more days, and the cleaning people had come the day before....

Someone was in the house who wasn't supposed to be. Somehow, they had gotten past the community's own security system (which usually kept the druggies and other rabble out), past his home's state of the art security system, and was now raiding his kitchen. Odds were it was a burglar, but what kind of burglar with the sophistication and skill necessary to break into a house like this would make the mistake of slamming a door? Let alone raid the refrigerator? This person must know he was in the house with all the noise he had been making, punching a hole in the wall and crying like an infant.

Dave gritted his teeth and stood up, still cradling his bruised and bleeding hand. If he needed to, he could simply lob a confusion grenade on the person, or, more likely because of his mood, psyblast them. With skill and a surprising amount of grace, He crept, cat-like down, the hall, socks silencing his footsteps as he walked across the mahogany floors. Standing just in front of the door to the kitchen, he took a deep breath.

In one fluid movement, he threw open the door and leaped into the room, bringing his index and middle finders to his forehead as he did so.

Sitting casually on Dave's marble counter, eating a parfait made with Dave's fruit and yogurt, which was being eaten out of one of Dave's glasses with one of Dave's spoons, was Rupert De Locke. Rupert's right arm was in a cast, so he was levitating the parfait holding the spoon in his left hand.

"Wha- How did you get in here?!" Dave said, aghast.

"Oh, C'mon, Agent Hervon. Take a seat- I have ice for that fist of yours." Rupert said, telekinetically tossing a bag of ice wrapped in a dish towel towards Dave. Dave caught it, and pressed it against his injured knuckles.

"I should arrest you for breaking and entering, let alone the attempted murder." Dave grumbled.

"The attempted murder you arranged? Don't look so shocked. Although, I must admit, it was all very clever of you. With the anonymous message to kill any lone agent in the Los Angeles area, the 'leak' about the location of your group's favored parking space a few months back, how you got the kid to stay behind to guard the van, the faulty emergency transmitter, making certain none of the others were in telepathy range.... No one, not even the assassin who pulled it off was supposed to know that it was a targeted job, isn't that right? I only figured it out when you were surprised that the kid was 'still alive'. Lucky for you the rest of the diversity squad was too fixated on the kid to notice your little slip there." Rupert spooned some more parfait into his mouth while for Dave's response. When Dave said nothing, he continued. "What? You didn't know that I was still there? Neither did the kid and his little rescuer."

It took Dave a minute to process all this. He telekinetically brought a chair out of the dinning room and slowly lowered himself into it with a sigh of resignation.

"I'll listen."

"I'm finished. This is usually the point where my employer starts asking me questions, if you're so inclined."

"Then I have a question. The brat said his rescuer left a few minutes before we arrived when he was questioned. Why didn't you finish him off before we came back?" Dave demanded.

"I had my reasons. Mainly, despite what the kid might have told you, he did know who him saved from a horrible, messy death. I didn't get a clear look at him, but the kid called him 'Crispin'. Seemed very surprised to see him, almost as if- my, you're looking a bit pale there, aren't you? It's been awhile I've seen someone turn that color..." Rupert trailed off as he watched his employer's face turn a sickly green. "Does the name ring a bell?"

"Did either of them mention a doctor?" Oh no. The brat couldn't be right. That was a career starter (Or, in Dave's case, ender.) right there, if the brat was right...

"Why, now that you mention it, yes."