Mind Over Matter

"Are you serious, Abigail?! Did you really figure it out?!" Chelsea asks hopefully, her voice getting just a bit too loud given her close proximity to the therapist.

"I believe I did. And I have you to thank for that. You helped me realize the final piece of the puzzle that I was missing," Abigail says, causing Chelsea to beam happily.

"So? Are you gonna tell us or not? Don't keep us in suspense," Mona demands in her classic, overly-aggressive tone.

"Right. I guess there's no point beating around the bush anymore. The person who mesmerized Noelle is..." Abigail decides to indulge herself in theatrics by going silent for a moment, forcing everyone to wait on bated breath. Then, to emulate some of the mystery films she would occasionally watch at home, she dramatically spins around before pointing a finger at one of the women in the room. "You! Pearl Espa!"

Gasps fly throughout the room as many people can't believe what they just heard. Lalita places a hand over her mouth to hid her shocked reaction. Chelsea's jaw drops, being both surprised by the reveal and impressed with Abigail's showmanship. Blondie just seems to be focused in the way Abigail's tits bounced around in her tight top as she spun. All the while, Pearl is silently stunned at the accusation.

"I knew it!" Cassidy cries out in triumph. "I told you she was trying to frame me!"

"I'm pretty sure you accused just about everyone at some point..." Isa notes as she rolls her eyes.

"Wha... I... I'm afraid I don't understand," Pearl finally manages to speak up. "I didn't do anything. I thought you trusted me, Abigail. Now I find out you think I'm some sort of criminal?"

"Drop the act, Pearl. I know you're the one responsible for what happened to Noelle," Abigail insists.

"Can I ask why you're making such an accusation? I would like at least some chance at defend myself and cleansing this negative aura you've cast on me," Pearl requests, managing to maintain her calm and collected nature.

"She has a point," Lalita chimes in. "I would also like to hear your reasoning before jumping to conclusions. And like she said, she deserves a chance to give a rebuttal."

"Well, for the longest time, I felt like there was some piece of information I was overlooking," Abigail begins to explain. "Like I had everything I needed to solve the case, but I just couldn't connect those final dots. But that's when Chelsea mentioned Noelle's drink. We know the culprit intentionally spiked Noelle's drink, which means they needed to make sure she would take a sip of it after it was **** for the plan to work. But then that just begs the question: how could the culprit ensure Noelle didn't leave her drink unattended once the singer decided to leave the room?"

"I think I see what you're getting at..." Chelsea says while trying to follow along. "You think that Pearl used her psychic powers to implant a suggestion into Noelle's mind. A suggestion to bring her drink with her when she went upstairs."

"Bingo!"

"Now hold on a second," Pearl interrupts Abigail and Chelsea's celebration. "Surely you don't mean to imply that I'm the only person here who could implant something like that in Noelle's mind. I'm pretty sure a majority of the women here could do something along those lines."

"Pearl's right," Danielle agrees. "In fact, who's to say you didn't hypnotize Noelle and give her a posthypnotic suggestion to do that exact thing?"

"But there's one important fact that you're missing here: Noelle hesitated. When she first got up to leave, she wasn't planning on taking her drink with her. It was only once she got to the door that she turned around and went back for it. At the time, we thought it was because she didn't want to leave her drink alone with Danielle, but I don't think that's actually what the reason was."

"Okay... but how does that prove that Pearl did it?" Mona asks.

"Don't you get it? If Noelle had a posthypnotic suggestion implanted ahead of time, she wouldn't have forgotten her drink. I've hypnotized enough people to know that once an idea is put into someone's subconscious, they don't just forget to act on it. And given what I know about the rest of your powers, I can't imagine they function too differently. Which means the suggestion had to be placed in that moment, as Noelle was walking toward the door! And the only person here that could do that in the middle of a room full of people, without anyone knowing is Pearl!"

"That's does seem logical," S.A.M. comments. "Pearl's psychic abilities can be used to alter a person's mind from a distance. And doing so wouldn't require any movement or sound on her part. If anyone else had attempted something like that, it would have been very noticeable."

After hearing Abigail's explanation, the group suddenly begins to question if Pearl really is the culprit. Despite her quiet and soft demeaner, Abigail's accusation does make it seem like she was the only person who could have committed the crime.

"This is ridiculous. Why is my character being put into question just because Noelle almost didn't take her drink with her? Perhaps it really is a coincidence. Maybe she really didn't want to leave it alone with Danielle," Pearl points out.

"I don't buy it," Abigail responds as she shakes her head. "The culprit went through all the trouble of spiking her wine. There's no way they would leave something like that up to chance. Not considering all all the other precautions they took."

"That's another thing," Pearl continues. "You say I set up Cassidy's brainwashing device and **** Noelle's drink ahead of time, but how would I have even gotten my hands on those things? Or do you think I somehow used my 'magic powers' to **** them to give them to me? Because I can assure you that doing such a thing would be impossible given the strength of my abilities."

"Actually, you wouldn't have to use your telepathy to obtain the Mind Rewriter," S.A.M. interjects. "You were with me in the backyard when we heard Cassidy explain how it worked and where it was located. All you would have to do is go find the device and take it upstairs to hook up when no one was looking."

"Wait a second, does that mean you're the one why made me fall in love with Cassidy?!" Lalita shouts in annoyance. "Did you implant that it my head like how you made Noelle want to take her drink with her when she left? How dare you play with a woman's heart like that!"

"W-what? No! I didn't do any of that!" Pearl refutes, her voice suddenly becoming shakier. "What about Danielle's weird sex potion? She keeps all of that stuff in her lab coat, doesn't she? There's no way I could steal that!"

"It's actually not that hard to steal off of Danielle when she's not paying attention," Sabrina pipes up. "I did it while she was watching Blondie and Lalita go at it earlier to get that bimbofication pill. As long as she's even slightly distracted, anyone could probably do it."

Danielle looks away and blushes, embarrassed by Sabrina's casual mention of how easy she is to steal from. Suddenly, Isa gasps as she's hit with a realization of her own.

"My massage! When I was giving Danielle a massage and she was all tranced-out, you were groping her! You could have grabbed the potion then!"

At this point, all of the other women begin approaching Pearl as she starts to back away nervously. Her eyes start to widen with each step as she's clearly on the edge of a breakdown.

"N-no! You're wrong! You're all wrong! I didn't do it! I couldn't have!" The psychic cries out while scrambling to think of anything she can say at this point.

"Oh no? Well then how about I go over everything that happened today as I understand it, and you tell me if there's anything I get wrong. If you really are innocent, then you shouldn't have an issue noticing a contradiction in my story," Abigail suggests.

Everyone watches the hypnotist closely as she steps forward and places on hand on her chin before beginning to recount the story of the events that took place in the manor earlier that day.

"Earlier this evening, I had a chat with S.A.M., who told me about a little disagreement you had with Cassidy not long after the two of you arrived. I didn't think much of it at the time, but given what I know now, I'm guessing some of the things she said about you didn't sit too well. Normally, I don't like to play therapist outside of work, but just this once, I suppose I can make an exception. I'm willing to bet that her discounting your abilities really got under your skin. More than you let on. You wanted to prove her wrong. Prove that you could control people. Prove that you were smarter than her. Than all of us. So you decided to try and manipulate all of us without anyone finding out."

"I should have known. Just a little kid thinking she could hang with the big girls," Cassidy remarks in a condescending tone.

"You probably saw Noelle as an easy target, so you settled on her as the center of your plan. But since your ESP only gives you a limited ability to influence people, you had to find another way to gain control over Noelle. So when Isa just so happened to give Danielle an entrancing massage, you saw the perfect opportunity to swipe one of her potions. But considering that you had no idea what said potion would do, you couldn't rely solely on that. That's when you started to using your powers on Lalita, slowly making her fall for Cassidy."

Lalita noticeably tenses up when she hears that, likely very upset learning that Pearl had been messing with her emotions. Still, she does her best to keep her mouth shut as Abigail continues.

"You knew there was no way to get Cassidy to spill any information about any mind control gadgets she may have brought with her, so you hoped that by influencing Lalita, she would use her charm to get the information for you. Which is exactly what happened. Once you found out about the Mind Rewriter, you found it's hiding spot, swiped it, and hooked it up to the TV in the guest bedroom at the top of the staircase. Then you slipped back into the party and spiked Noelle's drink with the potion while no one was paying attention. I wouldn't be surprised if you also used your powers to distract one or two of us at that time either."

"Wait a second," Mona stops Abigail as she tries to follow. "What's the point of using both the potion and the device? Wouldn't one do the job on its own?"

"Pearl had no way of knowing how exactly these events would play out, so she probably was just trying her best to set up multiple traps just in case. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if even she wasn't expecting Noelle to be hit by both at the same time."

Abigail glances at Pearl, but the young woman just gives a nasty glare in response, knowing she can't actually respond to what she just heard without making things worse for herself.

"Anyway, as I've already explained, when Noelle got up to leave the room, you couldn't risk her leaving her spiked wine alone, so you implanted a suggestion in the singer's mind to go back and get it. After that, Noelle went up stairs to the second floor. This is when I'm guessing she actually took a drink from the glass, right before walking into the bedroom and triggering the Mind Rewriter. As she was being programmed, the effects of the potion kicked in, interrupting her brainwashing and causing her to immediately strip down and start masturbating on the bed."

"That's probably how the wine stain got on the rug!" Sabrina adds. "She must have dropped her glass after the video started!"

"Wait, there's a stain on one of my rugs?" Lalita questions.

"Exactly what I was thinking, Sabrina," Abigail agrees. "Noelle dropped her glass onto the floor and it rolled under the bed. That's why we didn't see it when we got to the room. Fast-forward a bit and Chelsea finds Noelle in the bedroom, then comes and gets the rest of us. We all decide to split up to look for clues, but Pearl specifically requests to help investigate the bedroom. And where's the first place she looks once we start searching the room?"

"Under the bed!" Mona quickly answers.

"Right. She must have noticed the stain on the rug and figured out that the glass was under there," Abigail confirms.

"Seriously, was no one going to tell me that my rug had a stain on it?" Lalita repeats herself.

"Pearl didn't want us to find both the glass and the Mind Rewriter, because she knew if we only found the Mind Rewriter, she could pin the crime on Cassidy. So she used her powers one last time to draw my attention to the TV, which is how I ended up discovering the device."

"So you were trying to frame me, you bitch!" Cassidy yells at Pearl.

"While Mona and I were distracted trying to figure out what the device we found was," Abigail continues on, ignoring Cassidy's outburst, "Pearl took the opportunity to sneak across the room and drop the glass out the window along with the vial she took from Danielle. And that was how Pearl managed to nearly break Noelle's brain without anyone even knowing what she was up to. Well? How did I do, Pearl? I may have made some assumptions to fill in a few details here and there, but I think I got the general gist across. Anything you have to say now?"

The ten other women in the room all stare at Pearl, waiting for her reply, though it's pretty obvious that they've all already made up their minds about how they feel. Pearl tries to inch further away, but she finds herself backed into a corner. Seeing everyone look down at her, appearing to almost tower over her, causes something inside of her to snap.

"I... I... NOOOOO!" She screams. She quickly reaches behind her and pulls out a small, slender object resembling a silver pen. Pearl holds the object in front of the other women. "Everybody back off!"

"Goddammit!" Cassidy swears. "She's got the fuckin' Blackout Light..."

"Yeah, that's right! So all of you better get away from me or it's lights out!" Pearl threatens.

"Woah, let's calm down, Pearl," Chelsea tries to reason with the frantic woman. "Let's not do anything too hasty."

"No! I'm sick of you all acting like you're so much better than me! I'm just as much of a mind controller as any of you!" Pearl says in a commanding tone, though her hands are still shaking. "You think you outsmarted me, but you're wrong! All I have to do is press this button and your minds will all switch off, just like that! Just think of all the things I could do with your empty heads before you wake back up!"

"Pfft. Don't make me laugh," Cassidy scoffs. "I was right about you. You really are a pathetic nobody. You claim to be so smart, but you can't even hold one of my inventions right. You've got it pointed backwards, idiot..."

"Cassidy!" Abigail, Lalita, and Sabrina all yell in unison.

"What?"

Pearl gives a cocky grin as she spins the Blackout Light around in her hand.

"Thanks for the tip, genius. Now I think it's time you all take a little nap..."

Pearl reaches up and clicks a small button on top of the device as all of the other women flinch. Instantly, an intense, blinding light flashes directly into Pearl's eyes. As soon as she sees the light, all of her thoughts pause as she slumps over onto the floor. A bead of drool trickles out of her mouth as she lays mindlessly against the wall.

After a moment, the other woman open their eyes to see Pearl's empty gaze looking back at them. Before anyone can ask any questions, Cassidy steps forward and turns to the rest of the group, a confident smirk plastered on her face.

"Ha! You guys didn't seriously think I was that dense, did you?" She laughs before looking at the stupefied Pearl. "Who's the dummy now? Oh wait... It's still you!"

"Alright, I'll give you this one. You did save our butts," Sabrina relents with a **** smile.

"You're damn right I did!"

"So, what are we supposed to with her now?" Lalita asks as she picks up one of Pearl's wrists to find that her arm is completely limp.

"Hmm... Not sure, but we definitely can't let her get off scot-free," Mona replies. "Not given all the hassle we had to go through because of her."

"And don't forget we still need to fix Noelle before it's too late" Chelsea reminds everyone. "Danielle? Cassidy? Do you guys think you can undo all that stuff Pearl did to her?"

"Now that I know she took one of my sexuality supplements, crafting up an antidote should be a piece of cake," Danielle assures the magician. "I'll just need some dried basil and a bit of vinegar."

"Assuming the girl's able to focus again once she stops touching herself nonstop, I'm pretty sure I can write up a program to reverse the effects of the Mind Rewriter," Cassidy explains.

"Awesome!" Chelsea cheers.

Once the two scientist disperse to begin the work needed to cure Noelle, Abigail rounds up the remaining ladies and gathers them all together.

"Now, let's discuss what exactly we should to do with our little traitor once she wakes up..."