Atlas' Observation Diary: Subject 1, Christina Stuart

"Mom, Dad, I'm back!" Atlas called out as he walked through Steward Manor's front door.

In the last five minutes, he had managed to completely gather his thoughts and had decided on a plan of action.

Slipping off his shoes and socks, Atlas left the former on the shoe rack that stood to his left and placed the latter into his pocket, planning to drop it off into the washing machine along with the rest of his clothes later.

As he walked past the kitchen, he made sure to acknowledge his parents' greetings and promised them he'd eat his dinner after he cleaned himself up a bit.

I don't have time to play with them.

He really did see the Hoffmans as his parents, but purely for his human side. They could provide him with money and love, but the things they could teach him, though interesting at times, were limited.

Although he hadn't ever met his 'dead' parents, Ena and Theo, in his heart they were his real teachers. They had left him a suitcase filled with five books. Four of the books were compendia containing large collections of information pertaining to four separate subjects, and the last was a near-empty book with a single letter written in it.

The first of the four compendia was a journal written jointly by the two of them. It was about the same size as your average dictionary and was written in a low-quality notebook. The notebook's delicate pages were nearly translucent, only allowing his parents to inscribe their stories on one side of each leaf. Bound in a cover of equally fragile cardboard, they had each taken turns recounting their lives, making sure to leave Atlas lessons and pieces of advice along the way.

The second compendium was a guidebook that instructed Atlas on how to release his psychic energy and taught him how to control it in the most efficient way possible. It was written by Ena in a way that made most of the things contained in it easy for Atlas to read, regardless of his age. It was designed to be the first book read out of the five.

When Atlas was younger, his psychic energy had been sealed by Ena using a complex mind hex, so the people hunting his parents wouldn't be able to track his psychic energy. The guidebook also explained the reason why the two of them couldn't be with him. Unlike Atlas, Ena and Theo had trackers implanted in hard-to-reach places by 'those people' and that even Atlas' father, who was apparently known as 'god' by the psychic community for his ability to use his telekinesis sub-atomically, couldn't remove the trackers without risking serious damage to their brains.

The third and fourth compendia were textbooks written by his parents on telepathy and telekinesis, respectively. The textbook on telepathy was made to be read directly after the guidebook on psychic energy and before the journal. The telekinesis textbook was meant to be read whenever he wanted, after the telepathy book.

The style of telekinesis his father had taught himself apparently allowed him to be more powerful the more intense and unstable his emotional state was.

If that was all, Atlas would've probably still learned it at the same time as his telepathy, but it had to be noted that telekinesis was an art that required one to sacrifice their psychological state in the first place, and that Atlas' father hadn't become as strong as he did without sacrificing a few things. He was known for being a suicidal 'genocide artist' who had killed nine of his loved ones and massacred a countless number of 'those people'.

Sighing at the thought of the sad, sad lives his birth parents had lived, Atlas went upstairs and entered his shower.

I wonder how my life would've been if 'those people' didn't exist.

Would we have been a part of one of those 'psychic clans' the journal talked about?

That sounds like it would've been nice.

As the warm water fell on Atlas' body and he began to scrub away the day's accumulated grime, Atlas took the time to go over his thoughts and plans once more.

Chrissy is most likely a psychic herself.

That was the only way Atlas could explain his powerlessness against her delusions.

But that certainly wasn't telepathy.

His mother's telepathy textbook had gone over the many different mystical powers, or rather applications of telepathy, she had created herself and taught him how to use them. There was even a specific section on illusions, and there were a couple useful hexes like illusion creation and psychological invisibility, but Ena herself had written, "Although us psychics are given the power to read and control minds by dominating them, tricking minds is not something we have much skill in."

She had explained that when telepaths wished to create illusions, they would have to first dominate someone's consciousness before they could insert fabricated images, sounds, tastes, or feelings. She also mentioned that the illusion hex would not work if he tried doing things the other way around and tried to dominate the target's consciousness by inserting fabricated thoughts and images.

She proposed the idea that the reason the very straightforward, but incorrect, method didn't work for telepaths could be because it was a power belonging to another type of psychic. Ena hadn't been taught that other types of psychics existed until she was brought Theo to read and fix. Even after they escaped, the young couple had only met psychic clans capable of using telepathy, different flavours of kinesis, and clairvoyance.

Chrissy could very well be a type of psychic my parents hadn't encountered.

If she really is a psychic, she's probably a total novice that can't control her psychic energy.

If she could, she would've been able to notice him today and would've acted differently. 'Those people' hunted psychics and it would be extremely dangerous to have another psychic next to you that you didn't trust.

The novice theory would also explain how unnaturally strong her delusions are.

Unlike him who used his telepathy often, depleting his psychic energy at a healthy rate, if Chrissy had been neglecting her psychic energy for her entire life, it could very well have started to compress and overflow.

Her psychic energy overflowing would lead to her powers going out of control, would probably lead to strange occurrences. Like her delusions. As for her psychic energy being compressed, although it might seem like a good thing that meant more power, just because a psychic's energy became more potent didn't necessarily mean the potency of psychic energy their bodies would be able to withstand, and control would be any greater.

As Ena had written in the psychic energy guidebook, "Psychic energy certainly has many mystical capabilities, but protecting against psychic energy isn't one of them."

In Chrissy's case, this meant there was no way for her to stop the rogue psychic energy from controlling the rogue psychic energy or even stop it from affecting her body negatively like making her into a total horn-dog.

In the context of a fight, this meant that the only way to defend against a telepath would be to use telepathy on yourself to wrestle control, and the only way to block a telekinetic attack would be to somehow affect the thing that user was throwing at you.

On his way home, Atlas had realized that since he couldn't teach Chrissy to tame the rogue psychic energy, his best course of action would be to help her use it all up and get it down to a level where it was a potency she could control.

I'll have to study her delusions quite a bit to figure out what causes the rogue psychic energy to overflow...

Atlas blushed profusely as he got out of the shower and started to dry himself.

He also had to somehow make sure that they weren't exposed as psychics until Chrissy got herself under control. That would mean he'd have to keep an eye on the Hoffmans, the Stuarts, Elise, and everyone else who wanted to get close to the two of them. In fact, he probably couldn't even trust Chrissy off the bat, she could just be acting like a helpless maiden in distress, when she was a monster who could be pretending to have an issue with rogue psychic energy to bait him in.

Atlas made his way to his room where he quickly got dressed and sat down on his bed cross-legged.

I guess I'll have to get better at telekinesis…

He held his right hand in front of him with his fingers extended. Slowly, a suitcase slid out from under his bed and started to levitate towards his hand, shaking.

Fuck this is hard…

Learning telepathy was like broadening the capabilities of the human mind he already had by using psychic energy, whereas learning telekinesis was like suddenly realizing you had another limb made of psychic energy all along and were slowly remembering how to control it.

Atlas had only read a few chapters of the telekinesis textbook, but according to his parents' journal, Theo had apparently been able to grow back limbs, shapeshift and transmute anything he touched with his psychic energy.

How the fuck did you realise you had a limb that could turn you into a fucking dog…

There was a certain passage from the journal that Atlas couldn't decide was wholesome or really disgusting, it read, "Hello Atlas, today your father surprised me by turning into a wolf. We spent our entire day playing in ways that weren't possible for a couple of humans. Neither of us have ever had a pet before, so it was certainly an experience we'll hold precious for the rest of our lives…"

"…"

Slightly disgusted as his imagination ran wild, Atlas opened the suitcase by inserting his psychic energy into the padlock that held it closed and retrieved the fifth book he had been left. There was a hex on the padlock that distracted the minds of anyone who tried to open it. Without unlocking the padlock with Atlas' psychic energy, anyone who wanted to open or peer into the suitcase without Atlas' permission would forget it existed. The hex would recharge itself whenever Atlas was close by, siphoning a minuscule amount of his psychic energy. Inside the suitcase along with the books was a bunch of cash, a couple guns and other assorted weapons.

Opening the fifth book Atlas was greeted by the final message he had been left by his parents…

"Dear Atlas,

I'm writing this while you're in my arms cooing to me, telling me wondrous things. A normal mother would say something like that without actually understanding what you're saying, but I definitely can. I can tell that you're going to grow up into a very respectable man, as handsome as your father and as intelligent as I am (Don't tell your father I called him handsome and not intelligent, he's not very good with his emotions and has such a fragile ego for someone so strong.). The reason we left you this book is to leave you with one last pieces of advice, 'If you don't understand something, just keep observing it.' The reason 'those people' are able to hunt us down like animals, even though we're so much stronger than them, is because they've been observing our kind for centuries. This strength of theirs… make it yours. Till we meet again, little one.

Love,

Ena."

Taking a pen that was kept near his bed, Atlas opened the notebook to its third page, leaving the back of the leaf of paper holding the letter untouched. He wrote, "Atlas's Observation Diary" and turned the page again, leaving another blank page, "Subject 1, Christina Stuart" …