“Well, as she went from universe to universe, Mary unwittingly did something that amazed us all. Because of her wandering around in her obsessive search for us, she helped us map out the storyboards surrounding her own, Backfire’s and others. Look at this little pioneer go! Of course, for all the exploring she did further and further out into space, there was one tiny detail that was left unanswered…her home life. You see, trying to sum up as much as possible, her adventure actually started when her family freaked out over seeing her killed on television, only for her to be like, ‘Oh, she does look like me, doesn’t she? Hey! When did we live in that U.S. state?!’ Mary got on the internet and used various satellite map features to verify that she did live in the area seen on TV thanks to this nerdy girl having found one of these satellite cameras and smiling all big and cheesy just to be famous. I told you she’s persistent. Well, the truth is it was this scenario in which the System Director and AB first encountered her, and because of her disturbing abilities, they moved her and her family and wiped her memory of them defending her original hometown from a monster that killed a girl that looked just like her. Don’t worry; we were all just as confused as you surely are.”
Fifi’s holding her head and shaking around in a frantic circle. “And the mysteries abound!”
Blufie thinks this is so cute. “So, as Mary and her friends occasionally discuss her past, she eventually gets around to researching the girl that died. For whatever reason, this detective never found interest in researching the mystery of being teleported by her supposed heroes on national television from a town wherein a girl just like her was killed. You might think her memory wipe was the cause of this indifference, but it wasn’t. She just didn’t find it worth thinking about because something about the other girl struck Mary as distasteful. So, when she finally looked the other girl up, she learned this victim’s name. It was Fifi. She was a rising internet star who just happened to look like Mary, but she was a crude, dirty type of girl, or at least as much as she could be without crossing the line. Hope felt justified in avoiding this young woman, even if Novak was sad that the girl’s carelessness got her killed. Still, something was very wrong with this picture. How did Mary go so many years and never know this famous girl existed? Was the girl one of her projections? Was that girl the real person with Mary being a surviving projection? What kind of irony was it to have her searching so diligently for the very heroes that moved her and wiped her memory? She wanted to meet them so badly, and yet she forgot they were right there in front of her face and deemed it too important to let her remember that. Why?”
A chill of regret hits Fifi Rug. “I hope she wasn’t abandoned. We should reach out to her.”
“Patience, child,” Blufie says, “she will be fine if you listen. Now, since your kind heart can not take the suspense, and since the glory hog is killing my chapter space, I’ll get to the point. Mary discovered that this Fifi’s last name was Kaios. Does that help you at all?”
Fifi and her friends all gasp and freak out in amused wonder, “No way!” Fifi looks at Blufie like she just won a billion dollars herself. “It was Fiona’s daughter, as in Keb’s other half from when she was split into two people. So, where was Keb in this storyboard? Who were Mary’s parents? Was she adopted?!”
Blufie smiles and says, “There is a reason every other Keb in the System has issues with being called Mary, or even Maria. It’s almost…as if…somehow…someway…they knew. They knew they weren’t her. In this particular universe, little Keb’s birth mother put her into an American orphanage and changed her facial features accordingly. Because of this, Mary grew up happy instead of feeling like a weirdo in the original orphanage. Ergo, her natural powers were never activated, and furthermore, her link to AB was barely used because she felt content, so she never had the desire to reach out that drove OG Keb’s subconscious to contact the friend from her infancy. Mary was adopted super young, causing her to all but forget the details. It wasn’t until college that she even heard of the System Guards, but once she did, a light switch went off that sent her into an obsessive manhunt. This is when her nano-chat powers manifested themselves in a way that seems like a projection ability. All she was really doing was using all the same SG techniques we use, but in a more subtle way. That being said, Mary Hope began her search for the family she didn’t even know she was looking for.”
Inner Man Theatre 