[b]Pink and Orange![/b] STAGE INTERIOR, INTERMISSION Orange: Clearly the issue with Selena is the relationship with her brother. We cannot achieve a full success on this magic show without addressing this. Pink: So we have thirty minutes to heal a lifelong sibling rivalry? White: This is not operationally relevant. We need merely to distract Selena for the duration. A sufficient maneuver would be to pickpocket her phone, forcing her to remain in place until the show ends so she can look for it. It will render the experience mildly stressful for her but will achieve our chief goal of causing a distraction for Green. Orange: Did you hear something? Pink: No? Orange: Weird, could have sworn. Pink: So, what, do we need to Inception this, or what? Orange: Sadly we do not have the resources on hand. I don't think common threat/trick gone wrong is either practical or effective under the circumstances. Forcing a direct confrontation between Selena and Pablo risks outright disaster... Pink: We need to get her to laugh with him. Orange: Go on. Pink: We can close this out with an Ariel/Caliban battle. We have Caliban put Bondi in peril as scheduled, and then have Ariel try to rescue her. We put everyone who we trust on Ariel's team and everyone we [i]don't[/i] trust on Caliban's team. Then we arm Ariel's team with water balloons; Caliban's team is to put themselves physically between Caliban and the balloons, try to catch the balloons with their bodies. A party game, gets everyone engaged, it's a warm and dry evening, can even try to draw Barrera into it. Orange: ... that works. Many of the people who we couldn't risk arming with water balloons - Pablo, Jordan - would actually make ideal blockers. Pablo understands stage presence and will sell the hits, Jordan would benefit a lot from an impromptu cold shower. Pink: Gwen would die for you and it would be wrong to deny her the chance to do so. Orange: And - hopefully - Selena would be able to appreciate the chance to hit Pablo with a water balloon. It's sufficiently childish a discharge of frustration that it hopefully provides some catharsis, and if we line it up with the big conclusion then we can make her the hero of the game. Pink: Perfect. Let's do it. [b]Green![/b] She loved puzzles like this. What was the least suspicious way to get an unaware target to move? Fortunately she was in a house filled with children, and unfortunate smells were a fact of life. Even if the guard hadn't smelled it at first he'd quickly come to realize that the smell wafting down from the top of the stairs indicated there'd been an accident. Enough to put him from his food, and not the sort of thing a heavily muscled bruiser would be keen to spend his break cleaning. She didn't need anything from him other than to decide this was not his problem and find somewhere else to eat his lunch - preferably outside. [Chemistry 0/1 Preparedness 6/8 (no spend): 4+3 [b]7[/b]] She shifted the formulae to neutralize the smell afterwards. No need to get anyone blamed for crimes they didn't commit. After that the riddle shifted back to: how to effectively explore an unfamiliar space? She only has one data point to leverage right now: shame. This house holds a known secret and the tension of it will stain the walls. She looks for the place that has not been maintained beyond the necessary; the corridor with the old photographs, the place with a conspicuous lack of warmth in the furnishings. The part of this house where someone lives but doesn't feel like home. [Bullshit detector 0/1] [b]Black and White![/b] "What the fuck, White," said Black. "You didn't do any sort of background check on the girl you were sleeping with?" "I was going to ask you the same thing," said White. "I did but -" she hard stopped and changed course. "I mean, you could have asked. Socialized. Pillow talk." "Again, I will ask you why you never thought to do this," said White serenely. "... the way I did it did not involve a lot of space for pillow talk," Black said, shifting. "Likewise," said White. "Are you suggesting that we should sacrifice our gag kink in the name of operational efficiency?" "Flawed line of conversation," Black said, clearly melting down in embarrassment. "Abandoning." To Fiona: "Explain. Explain the robbing of the banks."