Quite close, it feels like. Up the hill a bit. Right over there.

Great. Sophie will climb the hill at a slightly more reasonable pace, keeping her eyes peeled for anything surprising.

You push through another set of bushes, and through the trees and rain you see...

Who, by all the Powers above and below, is that?

It's the card you were following, of course! It's also a tall, glowing woman you've never seen before, dressed in medieval tunic and sandals, totally untouched by the chaos and disasters of the morning.

"...Kyle?"

And it's addressing you by name, sort of!

Now that he's closer, can he tell which card it is?

There's fire energy pouring out all around her, that's easy enough to sense. If you were standing next to her you doubt you'd even need any special attunement, you could literally feel the heat. The way she's overwhelming the water influence of the rain around her is also a pretty big clue.

Wands, then, and probably a low number.

...did Nico somehow create bodies for the Archetypes? No, that doesn't fit, everything he did was aimed at the spirit world, the material world he pretty much left alone. Even if everything went as wrong as it possibly could, it ought to have gone wrong with spirits, not bodies.

Was she like that the whole time? Maybe she's carrying around the Moon, or something, and the fire aspecting is just a coincidence.

Did she get a wire too? Did everyone in this town get one? What happens if you invest a spirit of intellect in something that's already a near-flawless representation of a spiritual entity? That doesn't seem likely, the Adam deck was and is focused on him particularly, and yet...

She wants to sprint forward and fling herself into his arms, but she doesn't want a repeat of the Oak Tree Incident and she doesn't like how his reaction...isn't. She will slowly and calmly walk toward him, and channel her excess energy into crushing any plant life foolish enough to exist in her way.

This does not feel like a safe situation to Nico. This person is clearly very powerful, was lurking in the vicinity completely undetected, and popped up just in time to steal a piece of his power. Now she's smashing her way toward him with an intense, worried expression.

She recognized his body. Can he bluff his way out, pretend to be plain old Kyle just lost in the big scary storm? That could have worked on that cop -- did work, basically, even though he was trying to do the opposite.

Then again, the cop clearly didn't know anything about anything. This woman knew enough to find his card in the big scary storm. She knew enough to use it to find him; there's no chance at all this meeting is a coincidence, even if she clearly wasn't expecting him to look the way he does. She might believe he's Kyle, if he can skate over his lack of Kyle's memories somehow; she won't and shouldn't believe he's uninvolved. What kind of story puts him at the center of all this mess, without making him responsible for any of it?

And if he can't come up with one, what is his plan here?

Nico does not, as a rule, fight people. He prefers not to tangle with other practitioners at all, and when he does he studies their methods and tools, secretly subverts their defenses, and then kills them without any excitement or risk to himself. Make the checklist, follow the checklist: that's how Nico wins. Getting into random forest brawls with strangers is...not that. He has ever in his life done things that stupid, but if he makes a habit of it then eventually he's going to become another sad story of lost lore.

He kinda just wants to bail out, to let Kyle's body fall over and snap back to his original one for good. He can track her through the card, and set up an ambush later after he -- but wait, no, he thought about this already. He can track the card she stole but it points to him, too. If he goes back to the body he was born with she'll just follow him there, and then he'll be in real trouble. It's far safer to have this conflict here.

Kyle please just say something so I knows you're OK. She can't bring herself to say it out loud.

He looks OK, for some weird new definition of "OK". His jeans are torn and shin is bleeding, and he clearly needs some sleep, but he's standing there steadily in the rain, not seeming to notice or care as it runs in rivulets off his jacket and onto his shoes. He looks like he's the only real thing in the whole forest, like all the rain and thunder and trees and bushes are just cheap set dressing.

Yeah that's probably just Sophie's point of view. She keeps walking closer.

Can he pretend to be Kyle, but with ritual-induced amnesia? Nico doesn't think that's a thing, but he doesn't know it's not. Would she?

Whoever she is, there's no way she understands everything that's happening, not if even Nico doesn't. Or if she does, she's from some hidden order of double-secret super alchemists, and he's just doomed. So assume she's confused too. Think it through from her perspective: she found the card, and followed it back to its maker, so she probably thinks that he's powerful (true!), caused this (kinda!) and knows what's going on (not as such!). And if she thinks that, she's not going to want to mess with him, not right in the middle of his big mysterious working. Nico can use that; he might be able to scare her off.

On the other hand, if he can pretend to be Kyle, then he's set: she'll let her guard down, probably lead him to safety, and sooner or later he'll get a chance to retrieve his card. He might not even have to kill her!

Too bad he knows nothing about her, and has no way of guessing which plan is better.

She's getting close, Nico; you have to commit!

Split the difference, then. He'll take a moment to tweak poor Kyle's overworked nervous system, ratchet it a little further toward tension and suspicion, and say:

"Who are you supposed to be?"

Sophie stops. It's Kyle's mouth moving, but it's not his voice. Not his expression either, or his way of standing, she's realizing, now that she's getting over the shock of seeing him again. Grappling with that, it takes a moment for the actual meaning to penetrate, and then she's confused all over again as "of course he doesn't recognize me, it's not him" collides with "of course he doesn't recognize me, I'm not me" in her flailing brain.

Did Sophie's superpowers lead her to Kyle's secret twin brother from Ohio, or something?

"Who are you?"

Well that half of the plan lasted about four seconds. No big deal, that's why he made another. He starts smoothing away all that new tension, aiming for overwhelming and obnoxious confidence. "This morning, I'm the master of New Hampshire. Thanks for returning my property." He'll hold out a hand palm up, like he's expecting her to put something in it. That works far more often than it should, even on other alchemists.

Also, special bonus test: will she recognize the reference to the wizard Nico killed earlier?

It's not going to work on Sophie! Whoever this guy really is, screw him, he's not getting anything he wants.

"Why do you look like that?"

"Oh, this?" Nico will make a show of looking over the hand he held out to her, the one that she so rudely ignored. "I'm just borrowing it. A basic precaution, for a ritual like this."

Nico knows of exactly one other alchemist who ever did this body-stealing trick, and that was a century ago. This should be at least a little impressive.

It's not. "Give him back!"

Slowly, unevenly, Sophie's brain is starting to work again. Something stole Kyle's body? What could do that? She did just learn about a kind of thing that can rearrange your mind, didn't she. What would have happened, exactly, if she hadn't decided to welcome her new Friend and also couldn't get rid of her?

Except...it owns her Friend? Or, her card? It did a ritual?

She doesn't talk like a powerful alchemist, is the thing. His missing card is for sure right there?

It is, and more densely present than you've ever felt it.