The Perils of Paula

Dear Bob,

Now that we've stopped over at the Rogue Isles, you can consider it confirmed: the captors are Arachnos, and they are both humorless and creepy. On a positive note, they did fill us in on why they hijacked our cruise. They claim to have some kind of seeress in their organization called a "Fortunata", who goes by the name of Kalinda. Supposedly she had a vision regarding the cruise, something about one of the passengers being a "chosen one" who will lead them to victory over the heroes of Paragon City. The idea that they thought I might possibly fall into this category made me giggle, which of course got me singled out first for special questioning. Fun.

I got nervous when their glow-eyed black faceplates turned toward me to ask what I thought was so funny, so I tried to diffuse the tension with a joke about voice in my head making me laugh. Apparently that just made things worse, because they suddenly got real interested in this "Mindlinked Speaker". So when they asked me if I was a Mind Controller, I just had to make a crack about not being able to keep control of my own mind, let alone anyone else's. Once again, rather than laugh, they just got more serious. Why do I do this to myself?

That's when they decided to do a thorough search of my pockets and found my letters so far. Luckily, my handwriting's so bad they weren't sure it was actual writing, so I tried to just stick with my story about voices in my head and claimed I was writing messages only they can understand, just to keep them quiet. I'm not sure they bought it, but they let me keep them for now.

I was just starting to hope they were convinced I'm completely nuts and therefore they'd have to let me go, but as they started questioning the other hostages, I pretty soon realized they may have considered me the sanest one here. From the furry control freak to the scaley-faced bruiser who speaks in monosyllabic grunts (who in the heck thought "monosyllabic" was an appropriate word for that, anyway?), I'm beginning to fear they may actually think I'm their prime "chosen one" suspect.

Uh-oh, they've been taking us out one-by-one for solitary questioning, and it looks like I'm up next. WML -- wish me luck!.