January 29th, 2005: psychic investigator Enrico Reno is murdered in Los Angeles via the newly defined Domination discipline. His partner in investigating the Brain Scythe, a young agent by the name of Zina Cole, is the only witness to his death. The FBI took his notes and findings to try and find some pattern.

March 7th, 2005: known psionic supremacist Philip Bright is found murdered in Chestnut Hill, Philidelphia, along with seven members of his Anti-Human group ‘the Fullbrights’ in what appears to be a mass shooting event. Initially believed to be the result of a vigilante effort against the Fullbrights, Agent Cole’s investigation uncovered evidence the the murder weapons were from the Fullbright’s own stash of weapons, and determined that one of the murdered had a gunshot wound that pointed towards a likely suicide.

April 15th, 2005: leader of the pro-unity psychic group known as ‘Transhuman Unity’, Garfield Phelp, threw himself off of the Brooklyn Bridge and died of drowning before a crowd of observers. Armed with a knife, it was noted that Phelp seemed conflicted, begging the crowd to let him jump, but physically fighting to keep hold of the bridge until he slashed himself with his weapon.

June 6th, 2005: revolutionary leader of the pro-psionics and pro-unity movement Zhou Ping is found dead in a hotel room in Washington state after attending a gala thrown in his honor. The cause of death was found to be a fatal brain aneurysm during sex with an unknown female.

September 7th, 2005: following Zhou Ping’s death, the FBI announces that they may have a lead to follow in regards to the Brain Scythe’s identity and trail. From this date going forward, no known deaths are attributed to the Brain Scythe, and all investigatory trails turn up cold.

Surfing through the thought bubble was so much easier with the sheer amount of resonance that filled the air around PA.

Projecting herself on reality didn’t take a lot of effort, but without limiting herself to a ‘physical form’ Melodica could ride brainwaves and thought streams from pocket to pocket of brain activity between the heavy haze of untapped resonance.

She arced through the mimicry practice field, swimming and swirling about with her tail as the students jumped at her sudden appearance and disappearance amidst an impromptu Quidditch match, then swam towards the next beacon of thought.

{—aura, or, rather, the collective aura of a community coalesces into what you know as resonance and—}

Melodica giggled as she swam through a mass of individual consciousnesses astrally projected into a private bubble, drawing a surprised stir as she zipped through, briefly filling the psionic pocket with her presence, her character before she was gone.

By now she had a reasonable idea of where most of the buildings were, so she wasn’t necessarily flying blind as she followed subconscious comprehensions of various students’ surroundings to make her way to the cafeteria and recreation building.

Swimming into the second floor, the entire area suddenly clarified. Gone was the resonance haze she used to stretch her consciousness; she could quite easily see everything around her.

She smiled as she passed by Taz unnoticed, unformed, the blonde sitting at a table as a boy shuffled cards across from her, and Melodica slipped into the bathrooms.

Her consciousness pinged against Taz’s brain gently, and Taz didn’t even notice Melodica’s subtle contact. That ping became a bridge, one utterly unique to Melodica and Taz, as far as she knew, because that bridge allowed Melodica access to an idea she had stored within Taz’s subconscious thoughts: her body.

With Taz’s unconscious help, she could picture a body, crystal clear. Her beautiful, graceful tail was gone, and in its place was a pair of boring legs sticking out of a school skirt, but the rest of her, Melodica felt, still looked cute.

Psionics wove and shaped light around the area Melodica perceived as ‘herself’ until, through some practiced mimicry, she blinked, the world blacking out for that fraction of a second. How long had she spent observing people, or looking into a mirror getting blinking to look right? To feel right? She didn’t know.

But, back in range of Taz’s head, and with her body, Melodica felt right again. She was visible, and visibly inside of a stall. She wiggled her fingers and pushed the door open.

She walked out of the restroom, smiling and greeting a girl who was on the way in, the girl moving to walk around Melodica as if she was physically there. Of course, when she willed it, she could make her hands solid to poke the water fountain button just to touch and influence the world around her.

PA’s recreation floor was a big, big place. Tables were scattered all over it, and the walls were lined with big televisions for people to hook up game stations or computers. The movie club was getting chewed out by a staff member for not using the censored versions of their movies during their Quentin Terentino marathon, while a couple of teens played DDR against each other on a nearby television.

Other students were sitting around having little get-togethers over food, or playing ping pong or at the pool table, some had big, elaborate games set up on tables, and others, like Taz, were pouring over cards…

“Okay, so I tap three forests for three green mana.”

“Okay.”

“And then I tap my elvish archdruid, which makes two mana?”

“Five, because your elf tokens count as elves.”

“Oh cool! So I have eight mana, which lets me cast Craterhoof Behemoth?”

“Right.” Andy said, before throwing a card out on the field between them. “Except I counter it.”

“UGH.” Taz planted her face into her hands and groaned. “What’s the point of playing anything other than blue since they can just nope the other guy’s cards out of existence?!”

“It’s strategy!” Andy said with an offended frown, the heavy-set boy scratching his dirty blonde hair as his counterspell floated up in front of him. “See, if you’d baited me out with something weaker I wouldn’t have this card anymore, and you could have played your Craterhoof—”

“Andy, dude.” Cecil interrupted, watching the fight with an amused grin. “I told you to never teach a newbie with blue.”

“It’s a part of the game!” Andy grumbled. “And if I let her cast it, I lose!”

“Then lose, man, it’s her first time playing!” Cecil laughed, while Taz fumed, and leaned on her hand, her elbow sliding through a tree the size of a head of broccoli.

“Hey nerds!” Melodica grinned as she walked over with a spring in her step, making sure her shoes clacked against the floor.

“Hey Mel.” Taz said distractedly, then grunted in surprise as Melodica pressed her weight on Taz’s back, leaning over Taz’s shoulder to stare at the game.

Taz’s side of the card game was covered in lush, green trees surrounding a clearing where five pointy-eared, thumb-height elves stood at the ready with bows and swords in hand, standing on top of the cards that had their stats.

Andy’s side of the field was a ruddy mountain range with lakes flooding the valleys between the bases, forming an ocean that ended at the edge of Taz’s forest, and from it, a couple of Melodica-looking merfolk swam about.

Taz’s unplayed cards floated up in a fan in front of her face, her hands away from the card game itself, and she was pouting at her options.

“Oooh, can you play that one?” Melodica pointed at a card depicting an elf with beautiful purple flowers in her hair.

“Yeah I was gunna, but then I drew this cool dinosaur thing and was gunna play that but nope.”

“It’s part of the game!”

“It sucks!” Taz huffed and puffed as Melodica took the Behemoth card and cooed over its design.

“It kinda looks like it’s from Monster Hunter.”

“Right?! I was gunna mimic it in and put all my elves on top of it!” Taz whined, but Melodica nodded eagerly.

“Do it!”

“I can’t, he countered it.”

“Do it for fun!”

“That’s an illegal play!” Andy pouted.

“Do it because it’s illegal!”

Taz gasped excitedly. “Crimes!”

“Crimes.” Cecil nodded sagely.

Andy fumed and gave Taz a pouty glare. “If you aren’t going to take this seriously, I’m not teaching you!”

“Crimes~!” Taz and Melodica sang together, while a big, muppet-like monster appeared on Andy’s side of the field and started stomping his merfolk, the elves cheering on its back.

“Oh screw this…” Andy harrumphed and swept his cards up off the table.

Frowning after the boy as he stood up to leave, Taz called out: “Andy, c’mon, it’s just a game!”

“I’ve won tournaments, it could be my career!” Andy groused, putting his cards away and standing up. “I’ll see you later, Cecil.”

“Whatever man, I’ll be around.” Cecil waved him off and scooched over. The mimicked mountains and ocean disappeared, leaving the behemoth-riding elves cheering on an empty table, and Cecil motioned for them to head back to Taz’s side of the field as he took out a different deck. “Alright, my turn.”

“Do I have to put all my cards back…?” Taz asked, moving a hand over to grab her borrowed deck, then paused, then focused her telekinesis to pull the deck into the air, chewing her lip a little as holding so many things made her mind begin to heat up.

“Yeah, reshuffle.” Cecil answered, pulled his phone out of his pocket, and glanced over at Melodica. “Hey, so, like, you can pick stuff up, can you take pictures on a phone?”

Melodica pursed her lips in frustration. “I don’t know how to use electrokinesis yet, so I can’t use a touch screen.”

“Well if I set it on a video, will you hold the phone and record us?”

“Yeah sure.” Melodica shrugged her shoulders and moved around to the side of the table, the forests on Taz’s side remaining as the elves and the behemoth disappeared. “For mimicry class?”

“Gotta have pictures or video evidence of us using our mimicry outside of class time.” Taz affirmed with a quick nod.

Melodica made sure to get a lot of good shots of the battlefield shaping as forests and swamps grew across from one another, and soon elves and zombies were battling between them as Cecil casually talked Taz through how to play the game. Taz frequently paused what they were doing so the two could brainstorm how a particular card effect might look, or just to design a zombie getting peppered with arrows, or an elf succumbing to a zombie horde.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Cecil asked about twenty minutes into their game, glancing at her when he wasn’t checking his powdered brow in his makeup compact. “Like, I know I’m helping but this is a lot of mimicry, and I know, like, telekinesis is sorta…”

“I’m fine…” Taz insisted, despite a pervasive wince as her left temple burned.

“No you aren’t.” Cecil sighed.

“I really am! Keep playing!”

“Fine.” Cecil shrugged and held up his cards. “So I’ll swing with my Diregraf Colossus and three zombie tokens to—” He paused when his phone was held out to him. He took it, blinking, and ended the recording as Melodica stood next to Taz with a little grin, and wiggled her eyebrows.

“Taz, check out what I learned in the orchestral class.”

The game paused for a second for Melodica to wiggle her fingers, and let out a natural looking breath. A solid wooden cello materialized in her grip, looking a little… flat, in both color and design, like what a child might think a cello looked like, and with a cello bow in hand, drew out a long, low, soul-stirring D-chord, before sliding back into a higher, purring A.

Taz blinked over at her tulpa, a smile crossing her face as she remembered their conversation forever ago, and her fingers lowered from her temple as the sound resonated in her head, and made the burn begin to fade away.

She and Cecil continued to play their game as Melodica stood and practiced the imaginary cello, even borrowing a phone to follow along with some videos.

PA weekends were… chill. Madeline assured Taz that eventually she’d have more homework to start dreading in the second and third years she spent here, but this first week was nice. They had Fridays off! Taz got to wake up and head straight to the dorms’ lounge area and join some of the girls on her floor in watching some early morning volleyball.

Which coincided nicely with Taz’s new appreciation for shorts on girls.

Madeline rounded her up so they could knock out their written homework before lunch – of which Taz only had two pages from Mr. Burke on psience history – so they could go into town to check out a new lunch place.

Since then, Taz basically just needed to practice psionics on her own, with mimicry being the only one that needed pictures and video. She’d been using the free time to enjoy the campus and the food, though Noelle warned her to not over-indulge; something about the ‘Freshman 15’, whatever that meant.

Coming across Cecil and Adam had been by random happenstance, and having seen the game at NPH, she was curious as to how it worked. She doubted she’d keep up with it, but making a whole action scene out of it was fun!

Melodica kept up her cello practice with her mimicry, simply repeating back the sounds she heard with the motions she saw, with no more depth than imitation, but it gave some ambience as Taz and Cecil chatted.

Eventually, however, Taz felt a telepathic presence gently knock against her mind, and she sat up with a blink.

“You alright?” Cecil asked, watching her glance around in confusion.

“I’m fine. Is somebody trying to make a bridge with you too?”

Cecil shook his head. “No.”

Melodica stopped playing and looked up curiously as Taz cautiously connected with the knocker.

{Hello Natasha, I hope this fine Sunday finds you well.} The voice was, rather helpfully, accompanied by the identity of the speaker: Dr. Hugo Dewitt.

Taz turned her head to look around the recreation center curiously for the man. {I’m doing great! What’s up, doc?}

The bridge vibrated with both amusement and bemusement, and then he answered: {Ah, if only you were the first to make that joke.} The best Taz could offer was a telepathic shrug in response. {I wanted to ask if you would like to come meet with me. I’ve had a meeting and two patients cancel on me today and I’ve found myself with an abundance of free time.}

{What about?} Melodica asked, though it wasn’t really fair to call it an intrusion.

{You remember our meeting before the New Year, yes?}

{Mostly, I think.} Taz answered. {You were pretty interested in Mel.}

Melodica bristled a bit at that, and Dr. Dewitt’s little chuckle made her frown. {Quite so, but there’s something else I’m interested in examining right now concerning your psychic powers. I don’t want to do anything too involved right now, but I would like to establish a student-teacher relationship with you as soon as I can, as well as set some expectations.}

Taz paused, silent for a moment. She remembered what Madeline and Noelle had said about mentoring under Dr. Dewitt being a privilege…

{I think I’m all done with my homework… are you in the recreation center?}

{Nee, Taz, I’m in my study in the hospital. Would you mind coming and meeting me here?}

He was forming a bridge with her this far out? She supposed there wasn’t that much distance between them, really, but there was probably a good quarter mile between them if that was true! When she and Madeline had tried to telepath this far away when they were younger, it was basically just static and half-understood whispers from each other…

{Sure. Do you wanna come, Mel?}

After a moment’s hesitation… {Yeah, fine, I’ll come.}

{Excellent! I’ll see you both soon. I’ll make sure the receptionist knows you’re expected, she’ll have somebody escort you to my study.}

With that, the bridge dissolved, and Taz blinked rapidly as she focused on the game ahead of her; particularly, Cecil’s zombies doing the Thriller.

“Everything cool?” Cecil asked, mildly concerned.

“Yeah, it’s all fine!” Taz smiled. “A teacher wants me to come talk to ‘em, so I’m gonna pack up and go.”

“Alright.” Cecil shrugged, accepting his cards as they were scooped up and handed back to him, the battleground fading away to a simple tabletop as Taz grabbed her purse and Melodica looked… uncomfortable, but ready. “Best of luck!”

“Thanks Cecil!” Taz walked away, Melodica following behind with clicking footsteps.