[M&M 3e] Defying the Future IC

[Zelphas]

Nope

Natalie jumps a little in surprise at Nope's outline suddenly appearing, but nods seriously in response to his statements. Mr. Nope, um, can you.--umm, okay, you can turn invisible. Can you also... look like someone else? Or do you know if...if people can?" Her face is earnest as she tries to look where your face is.

Helios and Ariadne

Zephyr's lip curls in a sneer at Helios' veiled comment, but he doesn't reply aloud, choosing instead to glare and keep his arms crossed. Talia tilts her head, thinking, her eyes confused. "Well... Natalie did knit her uncle a scarf a year or two ago, but he didn't show for Christmas. He hadn't been here, not in years, but Natalie wanted to try out her skills..."

Spoiler: Ariadne

Show

Helios' eyes were on Talia, but yours were on Zephyr when he asked his question, so you caught it. For a second, Zephyr's face had gone ashen with shock, but he covered it up quickly.

"Thank you," Zephyr says stiffly, almost woodenly, accepting the needle as though he expects it to stab into him at any second. "We sent it to him, right? Forwarded it to his address in California."

Talia shakes her head decisively after a moment. "No, we didn't have his address," she argued, firmer now. "He said he was in the southwest, so we thought California, but--"

"Oh, right! Right. Wait, I remember now," Zephyr says, tapping his forehead for a moment. "I threw it away, when this whole thing started. Well, if he didn't want it, then why should we clutter the house with it?" he snaps defensively in response to Talia's look at him.

Spoiler: Insight DC 15

Show

Everything that Zephyr has just said is a lie.

[Ridai]

"No, I... I can only make things go away. Some things come back, like me becoming visible again. Some things don't." There is a heavy pause, and an audible exhale. Nope quickly pulls himself out of thinking about his own powers, and more towards Natalie probably asking something this specific for a reason. Well, at least he thinks she might. Mostly because of it seeming kind of important to her, otherwise he'd expect... more questions at once if it was just about "cool superpowers". "Other people might be able to shapeshift, though. Is there someone you think can look like someone else?"

[Abracadangit]

This is going nowhere, Kal muses. The more she pushes, the more the story changes, and the more Zephyr and Talia fall back into whatever weird fight they were having before the team showed up.

"What do I tell someone that doesn't want to talk?" Kal ponders.

"Simple, engoní. You tell them what you tell anyone who is afraid: the truth."

Kal glances at Talia and Zephyr, watching them fidget nervously, and then clears her throat.

"I have learned much in these past few days, not just about our strange situation, but also which resource is the most important at times like these. I used to think it was our gifts -- after all, you cannot fight if you cannot defend yourself, hm? And this is part-of-the-way true. Then, I think to myself, it is not our gifts, it is our cleverness, our cunning that is the greatest resource. Our gifts are only as useful as our creativity in wielding them, so that we can adapt to these new threats as we discover them. This is also part-of-the-way, but not all-of-the-way true. Looking back on our triumphs, I am realizing that I am wrong twice now. There is but one thing that allowed us to assist in time, and has been our most reliable ally, and that thing is information."

"It was information that kept us one step ahead of the crazy doctor man, who attacked the museum. It was information that helped us stop the cult meeting, before they could work their dark magics. It was information for the camp, and the water supply, and everything else. It was information that saved lives, Mr. and Mrs. Magro. Information in our hands, with enough time to act on it."

"Now, here is your other problem, but it is related, this I know to be true. If this was a situation for the police, and you don't like the officer who comes to write down what you say on their little paper, you wait for the next one. You go to the doctor and you do not like what they have to say, you go and get a second opinion. This is what everyone does. But you see, our situation here is... unique, is it not? There are no other police officers coming to write down what you say, there is no other doctor with a 'second opinion.' We are the only ones who can protect you from this strangeness, at your door. But we can only do that if we have the right information, with enough time to act on it. I beg of you, if you have such information, that you please share it with us, so we can protect you in whatever way we are able."

Kal gestures to the needle, now held by Zephyr. "I have put a little piece of my soul in your hands, Mr. Magro. All I am asking in return is that you put a little piece of your trust in mine."

[Zelphas]

Nope

Natalie listens to your explanation soberly, beginning to fidget as you ask your question in response. "I, um... well, it's just that... umm, you see... I don't like being called Nat!" She burst out, a look of almost horror coming to her face a second or two later. "No, I mean, what I mean is, it's just that, th-there's a, um..."

Bending down abruptly, Natalie seizes a small branch from the ground and begins to prune it of the spiny leaves from the bushes, her face and body slowly calming down as she becomes absorbed in concentration. "It sounds like a bug, right? Nat. At least, that's what Suzy said, and then they all laughed, and... a-anyway," she continues, her eyes focused on the branch as she begins carefully breaking off the smaller branches and smoothing out a few of the larger ones. "I don't like it. And Mom and Dad know that, a-and so they don't call me that. B-but..."

Natalie is silent for a long moment, still picking at her branch. She holds it up to the sun to look at it; with her pruning and shaping, it looks roughly like a humanoid figure made of sticks, though the "arms" and "legs" are all different sizes. She starts trying to even them out for another long moment, before her hands slowly come to a stop. When the... when everything got weird. A couple days after, right after the 4th of July. When Dad came home from work, he... he called me. Nat. He said it a few times. And-and then he stopped. But everything was weird, but my parents are being weird and fighting when they think I don't hear them, but he looks just like Dad and Mom doesn't notice anything, but he--but..."

Her hands tremble on the branch. "I think my Dad isn't my Dad," Natalie whispers, her face hidden behind her hair.

Ariadne and Helios

As Ariadne gives her speech, Zephyr's face turns white and red in blotches, as though two different, strong emotions are fighting for dominance. His hand twitches as though he wants to throw the needle across the room, but he restrains himself at the last second, settling for quickly setting the needle on a shelf nearby and folding his arms tightly across his chest.

Talia looks between Ariadne and Zephyr, confusion quickly being replaced by surprise and anger. "Are you--Zephyr, is she saying that you're lying to them? Why would you do that?"

"I'm not lying." Zephyr's tone is tight, leashed anger and fear sounding behind every teeth-clenched syllable he forces out. He manages to meet Ariadne's eyes for a few seconds before looking away, though he refuses to look down. "I threw the scarf away. I don't have anything else to tell you."

Okay, what is wrong with you?!?" Talia explodes, bursting out of her chair and turning to face Zephyr. "Look, everything is crazy right now, and we don't have to agree on anything, but these people are actually trying to fix things! Just tell them the truth!"

Zephyr hunches in on himself a little further, but he refuses to back down. "I said everything I'm going to. I can't help you." Talia breathes in to continue yelling, heedless of the heroes around her, but Zephyr simply remains crunched in on himself.

Spoiler: Insight DC 20

Show

Weirdly enough, when Zephyr said that he threw the scarf away this time, he seems to be honest. However, he does not want you looking into this scarf, or anything about Nathan, and he's apparently willing to antagonize both of you and Talia to do so.

He's panicking and doubling down like someone being caught in a long-term lie, simply shutting down the questioning to hide something major.

[Ridai]

Given that the dome went up and soon after, Remy's mom and dad became not just villains but high-ranking villains, Nope has very little difficulty sympathizing. When the people you trust the most, who are like unshakable pillars in your life at that age, suddenly are someone else, it is hard not to be scared. A lot.

"I believe you, Natalie," Nope says. That is another thing. Letting the girl know someone understands, and tries to help. "My friends and I are looking into something scary, and whoever is pretending to be your dad might be part of it. I'll let my friends know, but we might not tell your mom for now. I think it is safer this way, and I want you and your mom to be as safe as you can be."

Nope is quiet for a moment, trying to think what to do. "We should probably get you back to your room soon. But... say, one last thing. Have you ever met your uncle? He and your dad are identical twins, right? Do you think he could be the one pretending to be your dad?"

[Dorni]

Helios studied Zephyr once again, doubling down and stonewalling. The man was entirely detestable, at least from the brief glimpse of the man that they'd gotten. We're not here for him, he reminded himself. And the truth was, if Abel really was Nathan transformed by Manchineel, he could sort of sympathize with the stress of seeing someone close becoming a menace...

"Have you ever encountered one of Manchineel's Punishments? A person that Manchineel has transformed?" He aimed for confident and sincere, rising from his seat to slowly approach the man. He didn't want to add to the shouting.

"We have, plenty of times. Everyone calls them monsters, and they can be plenty dangerous. But something we've learned is that Manchineel's transformations are not complete. She can't bend them to her will completely."

"The person that Manchineel transformed is still in there. We know this because we've been able to reach them through something they cared about. That's what we'd like to do with Abel. We don't want to have to destroy him if there's any way to avoid it. We want to save him. We can't do that if you won't tell us anything."

"If you don't want to help us, that's one thing. But please. Help your brother. Tell us what you know."

Spoiler: OOC

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Persuasion (1d20+17)[19]

[Zelphas]

Nope

Natalie takes a deep, shuddering breath as you say you believe her, keeping her face hidden behind her hair. Her shoulders slump, and shake slightly.

She looks up at you in response to your question, squinting slightly in confusion. "He was at Christmas when I was little once, I think; I didn't really meet him too much. Why would he do that, though? Dad always said Uncle Nathan was just figuring himself out, and he could use our help, when I asked. Mom... I guess she made her lips really thin when he was brought up, but she didn't say anything."

Helios and Ariadne

For the entire time you've been here, Zephyr has been expressing mostly anger, antagonism. You've caught flashes of other emotions, but anger has definitely been at the forefront.

At Helios' description of how the Punishments work, Zephyr's anger briefly vanishes, replaced by something else. There's fear in there, a lot of it. And, possibly... guilt?

A few seconds later, and its gone, covered over by a surge of desperate anger. "It can't have anything to do with my brother; it happened before Manchineel was around!"

In the short silence, Talia, her voice suddenly much quieter, asks, "'It' happened? What happened, Zephyr?"

"The scarf," Zephyr says too quickly, the anger being consumed by defensiveness. "I threw the scarf away before Manchineel showed up. She appeared around the 6th, right? I threw it away--before then."

Spoiler: Insight DC 16

Show

Again, he isn't lying about throwing away the scarf, but he is lying about that being what he meant when he said "it happened". Something else happened... well, obviously.

Spoiler: Expertise (Local or Current Events) DC 15

Show

Manchineel did make her first appearance on July 6th; however, Abel and Gabriel appeared publicly at the same time as she did. Abel could easily have been "created" on or around the 5th, depending on what Manchineel was doing at the time.

[Ridai]

"Well, that's something my friends and I will need to find out. If he's even involved and if yes, why, that is."

Nope glances to the front door again. "Want me to bring you back to your room? You'll be here one moment, and there the next."

[Abracadangit]

"A skilled liar is a dangerous thing, a spider of words. They scurry across each strand of their deception with care, living in it like their web," Ariadne thinks.

"Right. So then what do I do?"

"Fear not, engoní. This man -- he is not a spider, hnn, hnn, hnn."

"I see," Kal says aloud, with a respectful nod. "Thank you for being forthcoming with that information. It seems as though that period of time is our window for strangeness. Please, can you describe the manner in which you discarded the scarf, Mr. Magro. And around that time, is there any kind of change you could think of, in your brother's normal patterns or behavior. Very small things may seem insignificant, but could prove to be the key."

[Zelphas]

Nope

Natalie considers your question, glancing around the front lawn. She looks like she wants to shake her head for a long moment, and then finally nods. "I should--I can climb back up myself, but--if you want to...?" She looks curious at your description of your powers.

Ariadne and Helios

Zephyr looks at Ariadne for a moment, his mouth working silently. "I--what? I just--I just threw it away, why-why would I remember all the steps of throwing something useless away? And my brother, he wasn't any--I mean, we haven't seen him in three--five years, right--" He glances at Talia as if for support, only to see Talia looking at him in mounting suspicion and confusion. "All right? He isn't still--he isn't here!" It doesn't take an Insight score to see that he's grasping at straws.

[Ridai]

"Okay. Just so you know, it is not very flashy, but it might be a bit jarring. No calling out for me though, I'll still be out here. Are you ready?" Once Natalie gives the okay, Nope says "Okay. Don't lose hope, Natalie. We're doing everything we can to make this right. Okay, here we go."

And the very next moment, Natalie is standing in her room.

Given Nope has had at the very least subjective weeks of practice and is under no real stress or duress, he felt confident enough to move Natalie a little short distance. And technically he doesn't move from his spot. In realtime. Just as he technically didn't make the promise to the guy inside that house, given that's apparently not Natalie's real dad.

Regardless, Nope is being very careful in zero-time not to bump Natalie into anything, and he puts her onto the floor in a way that will not cause her to become unstable.

...he still puts her with her bed to her back and the carpet in front of her, just in case.

[Abracadangit]

"I mean no offense, Mr. Magro," Kal clarifies, keeping her eerie, masked gaze on him. "It is simply a matter of discerning how the scarf came to move from one place, to the other. And it is not often one quickly discards a garment, hm? Did you simply throw it in the trash, was it in a box awaiting donation? To make sense of this, we must see the situation from every angle."

[Zelphas]

Lily (with Nope)

Hannah was too busy with her other work to interrupt Lily today, and her work on Proxy's equipment is going... about as well as can be expected when dealing with the machinery made by a super-genius who may actually be from an unspecified point in the future. Lily's actually hit an odd bit of downtime in her research; some of the machinery she's using needs to be left alone to cycle, and so she finds herself with enough time to meet up with the rest of the team after all. As she approaches the narrow-lot style house, Lily can see a brown haired girl of around seven or eight having a serious conversation with thin air. A moment later, the girl herself vanishes.

Now, normally, this would be cause for concern, but Lily's been working with Nope long enough to recognize the signs.

Nope himself has plenty of time to notice Lily heading towards the Magro house in the endless non-time as he moves Natalie safely back to her room, which is decorated like someone who is falling violently out of love with horses and into love with Transformers as we speak, possibly.

Ariadne and Helios

"Who cares about the scarf!?!" Zephyr Magro shouts, rounding to face Ariadne directly. Kal feels a shiver run down her arms as Ariadne "suggests" that she perhaps show this man his place for trying to intimidate her. "That's all he--why would I want--It's just a stupid scrap of cloth barely holding together! Is that all you all care about? All this is going on, and all you people care about is the scarf?"

Talia's anger is draining, replaced by mounting horror. She moves on shaky legs, going to place herself between Zephyr and the stairs to the second floor. Her hands, behind her, start scrambling over the drawers of a small dressing table set near the second floor, even as she shakes her head with mounting disbelief and shock.

[Ridai]

Returning to his spot, Nope briefly appears in outline, waving Lily closer. "Others are inside, talking to the parents. The little girl, Natalie, thinks the man inside the house is an impostor. Don't want to burst in there. Or let the impostor know I talked with Natalie. Could escalate things. Don't want that," Nope fills his colleague in.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Was it weird that watching the girl talk to empty air, vanish, and then Nope appear was actually kinda jarring?

Like, she'd had these powers for a couple months now and been working with Nope for much of that time. You'd think she'd be sufficiently used to it that she would barely pay it any mind. Maybe it was because she was still in her "researcher" headspace more than her "superhero" headspace. Or maybe it was just because this time she was seeing it "from the outside" so to speak. But she kinda paused for a step and blinked when she saw it. Kinda made her wonder what her own powers must have looked like to regular people.

"Hey Nope," she said as she approached, listening to his briefing and considering. By their lead, the man in the house would be Zephyr, grandson of Nathan Magro and twin brother of Nathan Magro...Jr? The third? Whatever. And, perhaps most significantly for immediate tactical purposes, father of Natalie.

It wouldn't take much more than a sniff of each of them for Lily to be able to confirm or refute whether the man inside shared half his genes with the young girl. Of course, that meant going in and getting face to face with both of them.

In principle, they could pull the same move they pulled with the cultists, with Nope removing the obstacle the house presented to her sense of smell. Buuuut...that hadn't exactly been a pleasant experience, and the cracked window suggested it wasn't entirely without risk. Call that Plan B.

If it was even needed, she supposed. "Are we convinced she's right, or do we want to try to confirm it?" There was more to that question than there appeared, which Nope may or may not have been aware of; around Uncle Bruno's gaming table over the years, Lily had had a tendency first to play characters with significant information-gathering capabilities (she was on record as saying that whoever thought diviners were underpowered enough to warrant giving up only one school rather than the usual two was an idiot), and when it game to gathering information, to always want to check things herself, rarely taking the word of NPCs at face value. She'd even double-checked the results of other PCs a couple times when it was information they had gained by passing notes, or when she wasn't in the room.

Point is, Lily tended to trust her own experiments and evaluations over the claimed knowledge of others. That she was willing to take Nope's assessment of Natalie's accuracy as given was, from her, a fairly significant statement of trust and confidence.

[Ridai]

"No idea if he's actually fake, or got his mind messed with, or something else. But Natalie noticed her dad acting weird since the barrier appeared, like calling her by a nickname he'd not call her because he'd know she hates it. I'd say something's up. Just not sure what exactly." A brief pause. "Not enough to walk in and accuse on the spot."

[Abracadangit]

"The scarf is one of our few leads," Kal says, coolly. "If we had more robust avenues of information to explore, I assure you, that is what we would do."

"But it seems as though our mention of this scarf is causing you a great deal of distress, hm?" Her voice betrays not a hint of agitation. She maintains an eerie calm, despite Zephyr's escalating tension. "It was not my intention to alarm, Mr. Magro, I apologize. Perhaps we could switch to a less charged topic of conversation, if only for a moment? Your lovely wife looks rather startled, this is the last thing I would ever want."

"Tell me, Mr. Magro. How did you two first meet?"

[Quellian-dyrae]

Lily nodded, thinking.

If Zephyr was an imposter, he could be a danger to the Magros, but he wasn't an immediate one - if he had been, he would have done something to them already. That could change if he felt his cover was sufficiently threatened, though. For that matter, while Lily might have trusted Nope's evaluation on its face, Natalie's was a different story; if imposters were on the table, it could just as easily be the daughter as the father, trying to deflect the heroes' attention.

Hrm. Well, maybe not just as plausible. That did seem like a low-probability move. Better to let the heroes think everything was normal than to get them looking for an imposter.

Or as Nope speculated, it could be mind control. That also struck her as a less likely explanation. Calling his daughter by a nickname she hates is the sort of mistake an imposter might make, but a mind-controlled person probably wouldn't. The exception would be if it was a form of possession, and the possessor was psychically interrogating the victim to see how to better act as them. In principle it seemed like someone with a strong enough will and sharp enough mind might be able to slip such subtle mistakes past the possessor to offer a clue to those who knew them.

A very reasonable theory, but the trick of solving mysteries in a world of superpowers was remembering that while anything may be possible, it wasn't all equally probable. They had no evidence that Manchineel had any sort of possession-related or similar psychic powers; that was more Proxy's schtick. But transformation was very much in Manchineel's wheelhouse.

Getting a whiff of Zephyr would offer useful data. But if another hero just showed up out of the blue, it might agitate him. The bold and dramatic step of knocking politely on the door could wait until other avenues of investigation had been exhausted.

To that end, Lily headed over to conduct a thorough olfactory biochemical analysis on the local plantlife that involved using trace chemical evidence held in living plant cells to acquire information that normal examination would not normally be able to acquire and definitely did not involve talking to the plants in any way no matter how her brain's auditory-processing center may have translated the insights gleaned thereby because superpowers or no superpowers Lily was still a scientist and plants weren't sentient notwithstanding certain special cases like herself and Manchineel!!

But to anyone who was less clear on the whole "plants aren't sentient no matter how much evidence my very existence seems to present against that conclusion" deal, it would have very much seemed like Lily walked up to the Magro's lawn and asked the bushes, "Have there been any other humanoid plants like me coming in and out of this house regularly lately?"

Again, I want to stress, Lily was not speaking to the plants. She was talking to herself, verbalizing the information she was looking for as a means of focusing her attention on the right olfactory details. Because bushes have neither ears nor brains and Lily has never protested too much about anything in her entire life.

Spoiler

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Comprehend Plants. Also note that Lily's power has a Feature that plants can draw upon her knowledge for purposes of identifying and recognizing things.

I guess while I'm at it I'll turn on the full Senses suite and throw out a Perception roll. Maybe I'll get lucky: (1d20+15)[33]. Well I got lucky in one sense, whether there's actually anything out here to find is of course a separate question.

[Dorni]

Helios glanced from Mr Magro to his wife. It felt like the conversation had shaken something loose for her. A realization. Or a suspicion. He kept part of his attention on her even as continued the conversation.

"Ariadne is right, we don't intend to cause you undue stress. But we can put aside the scarf. A minute ago you mentioned that something happened to your brother around the time Manchineel appeared. Could you tell us what happened to him?"

Spoiler: If Needed

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Persuasion (1d20+17)[19]

[Zelphas]

Floral and Nope

As long as you have the nose for it, pheromones are a fairly fast means of communication. Floral gets a 'response' from the plants around the Magro household within seconds of 'asking' them. The result is simple: a resounding "no". No humanoid plants, no moving plants, no strange plants of any kind have arrived. The tree in the front yard is new, but it hasn't moved.

(It takes a glance to see that "new" is a relative term for the plants in the yard. The small tree, a little decorative Japanese Maple tree that's about as tall as Lily's waist, has been growing there for at least two years.)

That would be all... but there is a little thread of something. The plants haven't been cared for in the same way as usual, and their 'complaints' about this color in their response to Lily's question. It's a brand new thing, to a plant--so at most a few months old--and it it's a bit hard to parse, but eventually Lily gathers that the yardwork used to be a two-person activity, but lately only one and a half people have been doing it.

No, that isn't right; two people are still doing it, but one of them is missing something that the plants seem to think that they used to have, and so is doing a worse job. Either way, something changed a few months ago, around when the Dome came into being.

Ariadne and Helios

"I-I don't see how that's your business," Zephyr snaps at Ariadne, falling back to hostility as his old standby. "And he was--how would I know? I haven't seen him since--"

"Get out."

Talia has pulled a small handgun from a locked drawer near the front door; the key is in her other hand. Her eyes are on Zephyr, who is staring at her in shock. The barrel is pointed downwards and her finger is off the trigger, but the tension in the room still jumps several notches. "I couldn't believe it. I blamed it all, forgetting your work stuff, the strange comments, your roughness with Nat, on the Dome. It's driven everything crazy."

"Tal, baby, I'm not--" The gun twitches up in Talia's hand, stopping Zephyr's words as efficiently as a fist to the gut. She still doesn't point it directly at him, and her hand is shaking.

"You're not Zephyr. Get out of my house." Talia seems to have almost forgotten the two costumed, superpowered people in her midst, so intent is she on facing down a growing nightmare.

[Quellian-dyrae]

No humanoid plants. That didn't strictly rule out Manchineel's works; Lily's powers were limited to plantlife, but Manchineel's definitely weren't. Still, it reduced the odds. If it wasn't a transformation...

Well, there was an obvious enough alternative, and one which, amusingly enough, Lily expected her nose might not have picked up on in itself, although if they could be sure that the Zephyr in the house was an imposter, then a null result for her nose would leave only one conclusion reasonably probable.

Still, it wouldn't do to jump to conclusions, and while it seemed like a stretch...it did occur to Lily that if a change to one of the people here had negatively impacted their work on the lawn, on priors she might have expected it to have been a change to Talia the groundskeeper, not to Zephyr the warehouse manager.

So she continued communing with the plants, asking them more about what the person tending them had been doing wrong, as well as whether the one they were talking about was adult or child, male or female.

[Abracadangit]

Kal watches the drama unfolding before her, momentarily stunned. It wasn't fair -- she'd felt like she was making progress, even though the mysterious Zephyr fake had been growing hostile again. Kal thought that being a hero meant that people in the community would trust her or come to her for help; maybe not always to get cats out of trees, fine, but at least would believe in her enough so they could turn to her in times of need. But this whole dome situation from the start had lumped her and her allies in with the same maniacs that were tearing up Forester's Bay for power, profit, or personal gain.

"It is not the hero's job to be loved," Ariadne says inside Kal's mind, with a sort of grim resignation, as though she had faced this exact moment herself. "It is a hero's job to do what is right. First, take her weapon with the pattern we have been practicing. Then..."

"You're right, it isn't my job to be loved," Kal thinks back, strangely emboldened. "But it IS my job to help those who are hurting. And Talia Magro is no villain... she's just in so much pain."

"Be not foolish--" Ariadne begins to warn, but Kal is already lunging forward.

She stands between Talia and Zephyr, facing Talia with her arms outstretched, making plain her intent to protect.

"You have every right to be angry," Kal says, the edge in her voice having disappeared, softened to an understanding plea. "I will not pretend to know the things you have suffered since this man entered your home, that would be disrespectful and unkind, and I do not traffic in disrespect or unkindness. You have clearly endured more than any of us have had to bear, and yet still you stand. You are a very impressive woman, Mrs. Magro, this I know to be true. And if your venom, your hatred, your rage demands that you pull the trigger, you can point it at me. Unleash your bottled sorrows, and scream so loud the gods might hear you. Perhaps my thread can protect me, perhaps not. Why protect this liar, this pretender in our midst, hm. Here is the truth of it, Mrs. Magro -- if I am injured, I can recover. But if we hurt this strange man beside me, and he loses his life, or escapes? We lose our one lead on how to find your real husband, and this is a mystery we may yet solve."

Kal doesn't want to take her eyes off of Talia for an instant, so to address Zephyr behind her, she invokes a curious pattern.

The back of her trademark red cloak and hood bristles and ripples like water, and the thread rearranges itself until it forms the image of a sort of ghostly, crimson Ariadne duplicate, facing Zephyr. The head of the duplicate stretches forward, on a neck made of twisting thread, until its face is close to Zephyr's, and the duplicate mask's eyeslits narrow disapprovingly.

"You may not know the stories about me, but I am no stranger to lying men, Mr. Not So Magro. One of them left me on an island, did you know this? After I helped him take back his freedom. Did he leave me there to die, or simply because he grew tired of me?" The threads making up the face briefly twist and shudder, as if wracked by anger. "I was able to forgive him in time, but it is the thread, you see, that has never been able to forget the injustice of lying men." For an instant, the threads harden again, the edges of the duplicate gleaming coldly like razors. "The difference between that man and you, however, is I believe you are clinging to this lie to protect someone. The man whose face you wear, his family, I am not certain. But I can tell you this: the lie is inflicting pain now, and I will not stand by and watch idly as you cause pain. Now is not the time to be telling tales out of school, Mr. Not So Magro. But if you enjoy causing Mrs. Magro to suffer, and perhaps you do, by all means continue to lie."

"What do you know of the man whose face you wear?" Ariadne asks, her voice becoming increasingly demanding, jagged, and terrifying.

Spoiler: OOC

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Switching Threadworks array to Defensive Thread, just in case things go south.

[Dorni]

Helios stood, reaching for threads of aether. The possibility that the man sitting here was an imposter was alarming, and between Manchineel and Apophis' cults there were plenty of beings that could manage a disguise or a memory tamper. Assuming this wasn't just Zephyr's twin.

But quick as he was, Ariadne beat him to it. Rather than interrupt her, he split his attention, readying threads of solid air just in case. Talia pulling a gun had surprised him, but there was still a chance to deescalate this. And "Zephyr" was running out of chances to come clean.

[Zelphas]

Ariadne and Helios

Ariadne's move in front of Talia seems to remind her that Ariadne and Helios are still there, and she stares at Ariadne with a look of confusion. "What? I--no! I'm not--I mean, yes, I'm angry, but I don't know who he is! This was to protect me and Natalie, not--I'm not going to shoot you!"

Meanwhile, "Zephyr" is staring at the image on Ariadne's back, his face white with terror. Helios catches his eyes flick to the large, curtained window behind him just a second too late...

...too late to stop him from breaking the window, that is; Helios is still able to snag the man in midair when he's halfway through where the window once was. Hopefully the curtains protected him from the worst of the broken glass all around him.

Floral and Nope

Plants don't have the best grasp of human ages (or biological sex, for that matter), but Lily's able to make her way through their ignorance quickly enough. The person wasn't doing anything specifically wrong, from what they could tell; there was just less of him, in a way the plants couldn't quantify. He was adult, and they think he was male.

At about this time, the large window at the front of the house shattered, and Zephyr's head and upper shoulders appeared out of the swirling glass and curtains before he was abruptly stopped in midair.

Spoiler: Floral, Perception DC 25

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It... actually takes you a second or two to puzzle out exactly what you're smelling from this person and the room beyond. He's human, cut in at least two places (though you're pretty sure he only has shallow cuts), and terrified; and for a long moment that's about all you're getting. You would've put money down in that moment that this man really is Zephyr Magro. It takes a deliberate, deeper sniff to catch the trick.

Your sense of smell allows you to break down organic material to the molecular, genetic level, giving you a dizzying array of information on the being you are smelling. This particular situation tests this ability to the limit, because the scent of this person in front of you and the older scents of the man living at this house are functionally identical down to almost the smallest detail.

Identical twins have the exact same DNA... right after they split apart in the womb. After that, they divide and grow millions of times, and each cell division has the chance of introducing tiny, minor mutations into the DNA of the twin--mutations that are quite possibly different from their identical twin next to them. Most identical twins have a few of these tiny mutations, setting them apart in infinitesimal ways from each other, a few small bumps in billions of DNA sequences. These mutations are magnified when one identical twin has a child--in fact, a full DNA sequence for both twins, the mother, and the child are necessary to confirm which identical twin is the father in cases of paternity disputes, and even they aren't foolproof.

In short, you'd need to check Talia and Natalie to be certain, but you can probably bet that this isn't Zephyr Magro who is currently struggling against an invisible force while halfway out of a window in front of you.

[Ridai]

Nope starts at the sudden crash, bewildered by the suspended "Zephyr" hanging in the floating mess. "Why you jumping through a window, man?!"

He tries to fix the damage the guy did to himself with the weird stunt (surface cuts are much easier to deal with than internal injuries and such, plus he has much more practice with the former), then calls into the house: "Is everyone alright?!"

[Quellian-dyrae]

Spoiler: OOC

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Routining the Perception check; since I'm on full-power senses the olfactory bonus is enough to take it up to 25.

A couple months ago, Lily might have startled visibly when "Zephyr" came crashing out the window. But the past couple of months had trained Lily's reactions sufficiently that she didn't even flinch physically (although someone with sufficiently esoteric senses might have noticed a certain internal gathering of stored solar power, as she whelmed her powers for combat in case of a threat). Instead, she looked calmly over at "Zephyr" as he struggled against Helios's magic. "...Hi there," she said, a bit bemusedly.

Now that he was outside, it took little more than...not even a sniff, just a normal indrawn breath through her nose, to...not necessarily confirm his identity, quite, since she was making a comparison to trace elements, but still very strongly shift the probabilities in favor of one particular hypothesis. "Nathan, right? I'm Lily. Nice to meet you," she said, calm and polite as if he hadn't just come crashing out of a window.

Spoiler

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Sticking to full sensory stuff, but swapping the five points from Commune with Nature to the Limited Deception/Persuasion boosts of Scent Intensification.

Persuasion to just generally try to improve his reaction: (1d20+10)[27]. If Attractive applies, add an additional +10; 5 for Attractive itself and 5 for her Limited Enhanced Persuasion.

Deception to basically deceive him into believing she is fully aware that he's actually Nathan so it'll hopefully be kinda pointless for him to keep pretending otherwise: (1d20+10)[27]. Again, +10 if Attractive applies.

[Zelphas]

Zeph--Nathan Magro stops struggling to stare at Lily and Nope, his eyes wide in panicked, disbelieving shock. Then, implausibly, he begins to laugh.

There is no humor in the laugh; it's a hysterical, wild thing on the edge of sanity, the laugh of a man who has been put face to face with the impossible until he is forced to accept its existence. "I'm in a kid's cartoon," he gasps out between choking giggles. A kid's cartoon. And I'm the bad guy. What... is any of this real? Is all of it real?"

---

Saying that Nathan "calms down" might be a bit of a misnomer; there's a wildness around the edges of his eyes, a sense of frayed sanity in his expression, that doesn't really fade. He does, however, become more coherent. Perhaps due to his current mental state, the full story practically spills out of him before you can ask. It's jumbled, and filled with self-justifications and fabrications that Lily's nose can easily see through, but the gist of it is this:

The man in front of you all is Nathan Magro. He had come into Forester's Bay on the morning of July 1st, planning to drift in and out of town before his family knew he was there, and maybe get his brother in some minor legal trouble as a "prank" via some sloppy shoplifting at the Deep Forest Mall. What happened next is familiar to all of you (and especially to Helios, given his place as a non-native of the Bay): The Dome appeared, and Nathan found himself unable to leave. He spent the next few days scrambling like everyone else, until he came up with a plan.

On July 5th, Nathan called Zephyr and asked him to meet in the woods near Agnelli's bluff, claiming that he had "found something important". Apparently, Zephyr trusted his brother enough to go out to meet him, and he brought along the scarf that Nathan had forgotten at Zephyr's house. When Zephyr got to the meeting place, Nathan snuck up behind him and hit him over the head with a tree branch.

(Nathan claims that he wasn't trying to kill his brother here; believe that as you will.)

Nathan had already broken his own phone and thrown it into the woods when he saw his brother arrive. He stole Zephyr's phone, wallet, and clothing, and left his own clothes, wallet, and the scarf next to his brother before leaving. All it took was a quick break-in to an abandoned barber shop (the streets were still in chaos at that time), and Nathan looked like his brother exactly, or at least close enough for no one to ask questions at this time. He claimed that his plan was to impersonate his brother, steal what he could from the house, and make a clean getaway "before Zephyr came back, of course,", disappearing into the city chaos until the Dome came down and he could leave.

Manchineel made her appearance the next day, with her full Menagerie already in place. Realizing that there was no way out of the city any time soon, "Zephyr" simply... hid, using his ruse to live a normal life in the insane circumstances. He had almost thought that his "trick" would never be fully discovered... until you all appeared on "his" doorstep.

It's probably a good thing that one of you convinced Talia to put the gun away before Nathan began his tale; she looks like she's torn between throwing up every meal she's ever eaten, dissolving into tears, or murdering Nathan with any and every implement on hand, and the murder is winning the fight. Natalie is still upstairs in her room, you think; she hasn't heard any of this.

You now probably have a fairly good idea of who Abel truly is; something that may be useful, out of this entire mess.

[Ridai]

Nope tries to fix the window with his powers as the others move back into the living room. It is good that he attempts this at that point, as the attempts would become quite hazardous during the explanations.

By the end, Nope is standing there, his indistinct face somehow still clearly having a "wtf did I just hear" expression on it. Overall mild-mannered as he is, his response is:

"We are in a city-sized prison, locked in with a psychotic civilization-hating druid, a mad god and his equally mad cult gung-ho about human sacrifice, a superpowered crime lord and his gang terrorizing anyone unfortunate enough to be in the same place, and a robot maniac stuffing people into brainwashing suits. And yet, I have never, in my life, met someone as deserving as you of the title 'C***'." If it wasn't clear, the last word is the one people in the UK don't think should be part of polite conversation but isn't all that bad, while Americans usually get real mad about it.

To the others: "****** needs to be stuffed into a cell he can't worm out of. Can't have another cultist or Chain Ganger running around. Should leave him in the forest, but I'll deposit him in jail."

[Quellian-dyrae]

For the most part, Lily's powers were very much not tied to her emotions, on account of the whole thing where using them properly actually required performing on-the-fly genetic engineering. Being very angry wouldn't let you do that harder, let alone accidentally. So she didn't actually start dripping acid over everything.

She did put off an intense scent of fresh baked bread, though. Her powers and emotions were not entirely decoupled.

Lily's relationship with her family, her sister in particular, had been kinda shaky since her transformation. That was what it was. But there was a world of difference between that and being willing to get your sibling involved in legal trouble as a "prank", which was literally the least hostile thing Nathan had just confessed to doing to his brother. Even if his intent hadn't been murderous, getting knocked unconscious from a head blow was medically extremely serious and could cause long-term damage especially if not promptly treated what's that this is a superhero setting and we have precisely zero legs to stand on in that regard? ...Fine. But it was still really mean! Especially when the intent was then to go back and burgle his brother's house.

But the thing was? Come down to it, none of that was really why Lily was approaching Talia-level furious at Nathan.

He had left his brother to get transformed by Manchineel.

Did he intend it? No. Did he have any idea it was even a possible outcome of his actions? No. Lily was aware of that. It didn't change how she felt. She remembered all too clearly the horror, the helplessness, as Manchineel worked her powers upon her, painfully twisting her and her colleagues into plant monsters without there being anything they could have done about it.

And as horrible an experience as it had been, she could only imagine how much worse it might have been if it had been coupled with the sick realization that she had been put in that situation because her brother or sister had betrayed her.

(And deep down, a sickening realization that she might actually owe Nathan something for that, that if Manchineel hadn't already had her Abel when she had attacked the lab, it might well have been Lily who had been forced to join the Menagerie. It wasn't certain, but it was a possible way history could have unfolded.)

She didn't speak. There was nothing she could think to say that Talia didn't have far more right to say than she did. She just stood there silently, smelling like a bakery at dawn.

[Abracadangit]

Kal is torn. On the one hand, she knows they should turn over Nathan to the proper authorities. But on the other hand...

"Such things are more complicated than they once were," Ariadne echoes, now that she's comfortably back in Kal's mind. "Before, you could deal with these things by yourself, and not raise much commotion. But now..."

"Not helpful," Kal thinks back. She sees Talia, struggling under her tidal wave of awful emotions.

"Ms. Magro, I..." She pauses. "...I cannot imagine to know your pain, so I will not pretend to. But what I can do is offer you my word, and my promise that we will rest at nothing to find a way to undo this damage that has been wrought."

She flicks her wrist, and the needle that she gave Nathan before zooms back into her hand. She now holds out it to Talia.

"If there is a way to save your husband, Ms. Magro, we will find it. And we will bring him home."