"Well what do you want me to say?" He asked, frustrated. "The number twelve is branded into his hand just like the last one. And you know what? If we look around this room long enough, we might just find a little metal cylinder. "

"An Elemental could do something like that. Kill people off without needing a source..." Selena offered while adjusting Miladies weight so the mute woman wasn't unintentionally crushing her to death. "... Though it would have to be a powerful one to control more than one element."

----------

At the mention of another number and cylinder, Neal quietly began scanning the conservatory. Mostly just the usual suspects: pots, flowers, gardening equipment... this really was as odd place to stick a pool... and a small metallic object near the edge of pool, somehow overlooked by everyone else.

Taking a few steps to the edge and acting like he was tightening his boot laces, Decker silently picked up the cylinder. "This might be of interested to you." he said, tossing the cylinder to the young cop.

In the Kitchen

"How nice to see you again, Miss Kai—" Cynthia began graciously, then faltered when the girl sat down at the table, gulped down half a cup of coffee, and then raced back out of the kitchen in the direction of the conservatory. "Goodness me, what a lot of get-up-and-go that young lady has! Time travelers are often that way, I've found. They're always there one minute and then gone the next, usually before you can so much as say bingle-bongle, dingle-dangle, lickity-doo, lickity- dah, ping-pong-lippy-toppy-too-tah."

"Oh, she's a time traveler? Maybe she's in a rush to kill her own grandfather," Anna said, hiding a smile. She was trying hard not to think about the nightmarish world outside the Mansion's doors or the man who had died last night. For now, the coffee and the conversation were enough to focus on.

Milady smirked.

She barreled into the officer and knocked him to the ground, more falling than running. She was engulfed in a surprisingly sparkly cloud of...something...but only for a moment.

! She kicked up her heels, then took half a stride and jumped out of the pool, straight at the fedora man. She took a lap around the room, easing into a trot, then lifted her head and released an ear-splitting neigh.

! ((Just to clarify, she's already completely transformed here))

Quickly taking a step to the side so as to not be trampled, Neal watched as the feral woman turned into a horse. Fighting the urge to shoot the thing when it neighed was difficult to say the least.

"I think that explains why she couldn't speak...." Decker mused as he eyed the horse before hopping down into the pool. "Looks like we have a morpher on our hands. Either that or a cursed one."

(((*Morpher- Someone that can change their form into an animal. Not sure if that's a "thing" or not, but for the sake of the RP, it works.)))

She was tempted to charge Fedora again, but the exercise had cleared her head a bit. At any rate, she didn't want to risk getting stuck in the pool again.

Best to watch and wait.

Jeff caught the cylinder out the air and was about to open it when the young woman slammed into him, knocking him onto his butt. On any other day, he might have drawn his blaster and took the shot. But not today, enough people had died.

"It's a key, well a drawing of key."

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 7892_n.jpg

Neal looked down at the key drawing before revealing the cylinder he had in his pocket. Removing the drawing from it, he examined both the crude map and the key.

"Well, we have some clues now. They're too random to really come to a conclusion at this point, though." he said with a sigh. "What are all those dots and dashes for?"

In the Kitchen

"So," said Cynthia, taking another sip of coffee, "I heard that there was a death in the Mansion last night. Very unfortunate, very unfortunate indeed. It seems that someone was electrocuted? Very odd, given that we haven't any power to speak of. Very likely it was some sort of electric eel. My father used to keep them in our basement when I was a child, next to the tank for the giant squid."

The window-shattering sound of a... neigh? ... then pierced the air. Cynthia slowly set her cup of coffee down in its saucer, china rattling.

"Do not tell me that there are equines in this Mansion," she said severely, to no one in particular. "I did not come to this gathering so I could relive the pony ride at my tenth birthday party. I was in the hospital for six months after that."

At first Angie had been willing to accept the possibility, no matter how remote, that her husband had indeed been killed by some bizarre accident. But now, hearing about another death forced her to reconsider that.

She downed the coffee and made her way to the conservatory just in time to catch most of the conversation.

"The number 12 was branded into him?" she asked, seeking confirmation of what she'd heard. "Not 13?" There were thirteen guests, and this seemed like just too much of a coincidence. Was it some kind of countdown? But to what? She hesitated to mention anything that might seem like she was simply stating the obvious, so she kept her own counsel until seeing the sketch of the key.

"Dots and dashes." She repeated Neal's question. "Morse code, I'd guess. I can't read it. Too bad it was Dan who was into that sort of thing. Maybe we can find someone here who can read it."

She trotted around the pool nervously. Everything about this place is wrong, yet it can't be a dream - the stench of decay is too strong. Her pace quickened. We have to get out of here, before it swallows us all.

In the Kitchen

"I don't like horses much either. It's the teeth. Well, that and a girl in my fifth grade class was eaten by these rabid flesh-eating horses. We were a field trip. In retrospect, the Jacob's Ladders on the barn and creepy hunchbacked farm workers should have been a giveaway that something odd was going on at that farm," Anna said.

In the Kitchen

"Rabid flesh-eating horses?" Cynthia said, eyes widening. "Well, I must say, it's hardly an unbelievable idea. My father had a stable full of horses and they were forever nipping at me. Would have eaten me alive if given the chance, I'm sure."

She got up and went to a window. "What do you make of all of these dead trees on the grounds? I don't remember seeing them when Max drove the car up the drive."

In the Kitchen

"Something moved the Mansion last night. Or maybe the world around the Mansion moved. One of the two. That's what the earthquake was. Everything out there is dead," Anna said. "My sister thinks maybe we've traveled into the future and this is what Dittopia looks like after someone fails to cancel the latest apocalypse."