Impostors in our Midst

“Fool!” Mella hissed at Marek. “Why bring these accusations against me now?”

“Because you’re a fake!” Marek raised his gun at Mella. “This whole time you've been a spy!”

“A spy?” Emily brushed the back of her head in confusion. “No way a cat could be a spy. That's just silly.”

Did she even know who or what Mella was? I’m pretty sure they’ve never even met before.

Uncle and I shared a serious gaze. We were both clearly not convinced what he was saying was true.

“Listen, I hate that bitc…witch,” Indena censored herself. “But even I can tell by how much she upsets me that she's the real one.”

“Why don't you explain to me how you really feel?” Mella sarcastically retorted.

“I'm defending your butt, dumb witch!” Indena shouted. “See?” Indena raised a hand toward her.

I had to agree. Mella hasn’t done anything yet that makes her seem different from her usual weird self. The cat thing was different, but it’s not much of a stretch to believe she could transform.

Plus, I know for a fact that when I first saw her in this cat form she had a namtag abover her head.

It was really strange that Marek would just bring this up suddenly. I had to get to the root of it before his paranoia escalated any further. Or worse...spread.

“So, Marek. If she’s a fake, who is she really and how did this happen without us noticing?” I asked.

“She must be The Actor,” Marek concluded. “He can transform into other people, no?”

Marek looked like he was about to crack under the pressure. He was a little too afraid, honestly. Maybe he wasn’t sure about this either?

“Idiot! She’s a cat, not a person! How do we know you're not a fake?” Indena asked.

“Now I’m worried you’ve been a fake too!” Marek said. “You suddenly lost the baby from before, so maybe you're a completely different person.”

This was going to get bad if we didn’t find a way to prove who was real and who wasn’t.

Uncle leaned over to privately tell me something.

“You could solve this very quickly if you used your nametags to point people out.”

“Wait, can’t you do that too?” I asked.

“My systems don’t support the name tagging system unless my IFF’s are active. And even then, that doesn't seem to be working right now.”

Well, he was seeing just about the same things as me. Nobody's name was showing up above their heads. This must be how humans see everyone. Remembering people just off of looks seemed like a big pain. What if they were twins, how can you tell them apart?

“You mean, your system isn’t working either?” he asked.

It's probably due to the demonic fog of war that appeared around demons.

Even though the darkness wasn't something we could see right now, a huge amount of it was flourishing in the air. It gets so dense that you normally can't see through it at all, but I think we're far past that stage.

Demonic takeovers seem to work in stages. I’d thought the last stage was darkness fog, but this situation challenged my belief. it evolved into something far more complex with Belphegor.

Introducing the idea that divine domains allow higher beings to manipulate reality, and this fog suddenly seems to me like a giant primitive hologram tube. Old holo-tubes used to bounce particles of light off steam molecules to project things in a 3D space.

I could upgrade my system sensors to pierce further into the fog, but that wouldn’t deal with the fog itself.

I'd already upgraded my sensors once before, and I've leveled up enough to do it again. Wouldn't hurt to give that a try regardless.

-Upgrading Passive Environmental Sensor Systems-

-...-

-Upgrade Complete!-

Hmmm…that wasn’t enough. I still wasn’t seeing anyone's names.

What if I boosted my scanners? I’ve done stuff like that with stardust before. Yeah…yeah! I think that should work.

When stardust decays, it emits light and radio waves, among other things. If I used both of those things to boost my sensors, they’d easily be able to pierce through the invisible darkness around us.

I twisted my ear and an antenna popped out of my head.

I focused stardust energy into the antenna, and that definitely boosted the power by a lot. It allowed the nametags to come back above people's heads.

Eureka!

The weirdest part was that it not only brought back the tags, but it also literally fought away the dream reality. Anyone within my sphere of influence was once again as they should have been in the real world. Even I was my seven year old self again.

Now I saw the imposters in our midst…we had two of them. Pretty suspicious that they got by our notice.

I synced up my vision with Uncle and looked at the two people who were not actually our teammates. “Uncle, grab the two of them. I'll take care of the rest,”

“Got it.”

Uncle bolted in and grabbed Yamin and Marek by their collars.

I blasted the two of them with stardust energy, causing Marek to turn into a cloud of pure black smoke. Yamin on the other hand got all melty like a wax doll.

“Ahh!” She screamed. “What are you doing?! Are you trying to kill me?!”

Bingo! Got her. Actually…I got him.

“No point in hiding now,” I prepared my spear to attack. “You’re not Yamin, you're The Actor!”