History

[agent_aquato]

History: Raz is a ten year old circus performer who runs away to Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp with the dream of becoming a Psychonaut.

To truly understand what that entails, we must first go into what a Psychonaut is. A Psychonaut is a class of psychic spy, they specialize in finding solutions to real world problems and restoring the sanity of others, by mentally diving into their minds, and solving whatever scenario presents itself. Problems of this nature manifest in all manner of ways, from horrible nightmarish creatures, talking mental projections of memories, to cobwebs cluttering up the owner's mind. As such, a Psychonaut has to employ a wide variety of strategies to succeed in their missions, as well as learn to control their own powers.

A budding psychic himself, Razputin has looked up to the group of elite agents ever since he first read about them in True Psychic Tales; a comic book/magazine based on the adventures of real Psychonaut members. After receiving a pamphlet alerting him to a secret summer camp where Psychonauts are trained, Razputin gets into an argument with his father, who forbids him to go.

As any child with big dreams would, Raz runs away to attend the camp anyway, unfortunately, the teachers are more than aware they cannot train a child who arrived without his parent's consent, and refuse to let Raz attend any classes. They tell him he can remain in the camp for three days, until his father comes to pick him up. Where most kids would give up right then and there, it only makes Raz more determined to learn all he can before his deadline is up.

He gets his chance when Coach Oleander, (a character who is hinted to have secretly snuck the Pamphlet to Raz, back at the circus) turns a blind eye to Razputin's circumstances and allows him to attend a beginner's class dubbed “Basic Braining” which turns out to be a dangerous mental obstacle course, that no student ever passes.

To everyone's surprise, Razputin completes the course with flying colors, impressing not only Coach Oleander, but Sasha Nein, one of the other Psychonauts assisting the camp. Convinced that Raz has much more potential than the other students he tested on, Sasha hints that if Raz happened to “drop in" his secret lab for some training outside of class, he could technically ignore his not being a legal student. Despite his fellow camper's horror stories about the awful experiments Sasha conducts in his lab, Raz is all for it, and eagerly hunts down Sasha's secret headquarters to test out the Brain Tumbler.

It is from here that Razputin finally gets a taste of how to control his powers. Sasha teaches him how to navigate the Collective Unconscious, master the basics of shooting a psi-blast (or Marksmanship, as the merit badge names the skill) as well as take a walk through his own mind, which seems to be overtaken by a bizarre jungle of meat. Sasha blames the "cheap"ness of the Brain Tumbler for the strange mental entities, but Raz sensing something is amiss, goes in further to investigate.

After witnessing a strange nightmare where his classmate, Dogen, has his brain removed, Razputin discovers he needs more skills to rescue the student, and sets off to learn Levitation from Agent Milla Vodello, the third professional Psychonaut on staff. A run-in with Dogen in the physical world confirms his brain has been stolen here too, but everyone Raz tells refuse to believe him.

Despite the fact Dogen appears to have lost his brain even outside of his nightmare, Raz goes back into the Brain Tumbler to rescue him, only to discover Coach Oleander's secret plot to steal the brain of every child in camp and use them to power an army of psychic death tanks he will unleash upon the world! (..Yeah, that's really his plan.)

Raz defeats the mental projection of the plan, and goes to report the news, but finds that Sasha and Milla have been called away on “official Psychonauts business.” Having left the Psycho-portal (A “door” shaped tool that Psychonauts use to dive into another person's mind), Raz takes it upon himself to hunt down the kidnappers and “rebrain” all of the kidnapped children.

Slowly the rest of the children vanish only to reappear at camp in the same lobotomized state as Dogen. It takes Lili (a girl who, despite her cutting remarks and apathetic attitude, appears romantically interested in Raz, when he telepathically hears her thoughts) being kidnapped to finally reveal that the method the Coach uses to steal children is none other than a giant, mind-controlled, fish from the lake, (dubbed, the "Hulking Lungfish). Unable to pursue the kidnapper into the lake, due to a curse that will drown any of his family should they go into deep water, it seems Raz is out of options.

With Raz as the only sane child left in the camp, Mr. Cruller, a man who has only shown himself to Raz in a few dreams and otherwise appeared around the camp as the janitor or manager of the camp store, reveals himself to be the one and only legendary Ford Cruller, one of the greatest agents the Psychonauts have ever had.

After being severely wounded in a mental battle, Ford Cruller's consciousness fragmented and he can only remember his true identity when he is in his secret underground sanctuary, which is located by the world's largest psitanium deposit. While psitanium (a chunk of meteorite that brings out mental energy) is part of what amplifies a psychic's power, it can also drive people to insanity; which explains what happened to the town that existed on the campgrounds before they opened, as well as the abandoned mental hospital located on a nearby island.

Although he knows it is dangerous with Sasha and Milla out of the picture, being unable to leave his sanctuary with his mind intact, Cruller gives Raz permission to hunt down the Coach's hideout and rescue the minds of the other children. True to his word, Raz eventually finds a way beneath to the lake and after coming to the aid of Hulking Lungfish, and several residents of Thorny Towers (the abandoned insane asylum the Coach opted to use as his base of operation) he tracks down where the brains of the children, the still-brained Lili, and Sasha and Milla are being held.

After defeating Doctor Loboto, the man Oleander employed to remove brains in the physical world, it seems that all is well. Sasha, Milla and Cruller, now carrying a large chunk of Psitanium with him, confront Oleander for his betrayal and- much to their disappointment- send Raz and Lili somewhere “safe” while they defeat him. Unfortunately, Oleander proves to be too strong, as he has already converted himself into one of his psychic death tanks and goes after Raz, the brain he was after from the start.

Raz succeeds in just narrowly defeating Oleander's contraption but a well-placed trap, when he opens the cockpit, ends up extracting Raz's brain anyway. Unable to do much else, Raz uses telekinesis to throw his own brain into the broken death tank, and his mind begins to fuse with Coach Oleander's...

Waking up in the mental world, Raz and the now child Oleander 'Ollie' realize their nightmares have fused together, combining Raz's negative feelings about his home at the circus, with Oleander's nightmares of his father's butcher shop. Consumed with anxiety over the misunderstanding he had with his father before he ran away, Raz imagines a nightmarish version of his own father, who attempts to kill him by forcing him to perform dangerous, elaborate acrobatic tricks.

When everything seems too much, and Raz can hardly take it, who should arrive but Raz's real father, Augustus, who we now see also has psychic powers himself! Having assumed his father hated psychics (and subsequently himself, as only a child would conclude) Raz is stunned to see he has come to his rescue, and Augustus attempts to comfort him. He explains he only wanted to keep his boy safe, and that their family has many enemies. He wanted Raz to learn some discipline before jumping headfirst into building his psychic powers, and had only trained him so rigorously back at the circus for this reason.

He then tells Raz only he can win a fight in his own mind, and gives the rest of his mental energy to supercharge his son and let him finish off the ever-growing nightmare both minds have already begun to create. Reinvigorated from learning the truth and the new burst of energy, Raz goes on to defeat the manifestations of both his own father, and those of Coach Oleander.

With both minds at peace, Raz wakes up back in the physical world, in his father's arms with his brain restored. In recognition for his hard work, and saving every member of the camp, including that of several professional Psychonaut Agents, Ford Cruller, now able to leave his sanctuary with most of his mind intact, declares Razputin an official member of the Psychonauts agency; the youngest ever enlisted.

Ten years old, and this time with his father's permission, Razputin sets off with the other agents on his first mission. He has achieved his dream of becoming a real Psychonaut agent..!

Aaaalmost. As it turns out, Ford Kruller doesn't have the authority to commission Psychonauts as they once had, but it's enough to get the kid into the intern program when they return to the Motherlobe, the grand headquarters of the Psychic Superagents.