Maybe he could get mind-reading wait no that would be a terrible idea if he knew what everyone around him was thinking he's pretty sure he'd never leave his apartment again. That, or go blow a city up.

"Yeah, please don't go blow a city up. I might want to figure out how to find an off switch for mine, so I can deal with... psychically unpleasant things without needing to grit my teeth and bear it. Also probably it'd be polite or something, even though I think I wouldn't have any idea how to interact with people anymore. Uh, if we find something that lets you read just one person, you can read me?"

Seems like as good an idea as any. Then the last shreds of doubt he has over her personality, identity, and motives could vanish just like that.

(Maybe? Is that too paranoid? He did give her the keys to his place. Why did he do that again? ...wait if he's asking himself that she may well find out. Hmm. Why did he do that?)

"Aw. You feel as if it'd be strategically smarter if you were more paranoid, but you're not, and you don't actually feel that you're wrong about me. You just have survival instincts in the back of your mind going, 'Hey this habit could get you killed sometime.'"

"Next time I meet a charming castoff remind me to be more paranoid about them."

Giggle!

"Sure. Is there anything I can do to help prove I really am as nice as I seem?"

"Keep doing it?" he says with a shrug.

"I wasn't planning to stop! But I'm impatient." She beams at him.

"Unfortunately I'm slow."

Says the speedster teleporter.

"You are not. You're... mm. Cautious. Which is probably good, one of us probably should be."

"You are not wrong."

Giggle.

"Okay. Thank you. This helped a lot. Let's go talk to the cultists. I think I'll play curious loremonger, I want to know more than just the brother that Salimeri mentioned, though he's top on my list. I still have bodies to figure out how to make."

And here he was having so much fun interacting with the actual least terrible person in the world.

Back to some terrible people!

She beams and takes his hand when he has that thought. Just to give it a fond squeeze, because. He's so great.

And then, yes. Terrible people. Hello, terrible people!

"Do you have time to answer some questions I have about my family?"

"Oh, hello again, revered one," says Mimeon.

    "We would love to help," says Casmeen. "How are you feeling, after earlier? Any lasting effects from the clock?"

Huh. Actual interest in her status and health? Weird, she didn't know they were capable of it. Maybe they noticed what tended to offend her and adjusted accordingly, she doesn't think they've had time to grow as people.

"I'm all right, thank you. No negative effects that I can feel."

"We are glad to hear that," says Mimeon, and Casmeen nods. It is always a tragedy when some ill befalls one of the Changing God's children.

Ah, yes, there it is. Completely failing to care about her as an individual. Warm familiarity.

"Do you know how my sire creates our bodies? Or how often they end up making another child?"

"No longer than two decades, historically, is how long they've spent on any one body," says Casmeen, "but the process they use to create the new bodies has ever been a closely-guarded secret."

A genius does not share their secrets lightly.

She thinks that rhetoric is dumb and should go die in a fire. A real genius doesn't feel the need to be defensive about it, their genius is obvious enough that they can throw all of their discoveries to the wide open world and then still keep making new ones. But that's just her opinion.

"Makes sense," she says, because it does sound just like them. "Could you tell me about some of my notable siblings, then? In case I run into any?"

"Oh, how could we," demurs Casmeen. "All of you have done amazing things." Or died trying.

    "You all share the same type of tattoo," says Mimeon, "so you should be able to recognise each other with that."

"Regretfully a number of your siblings have withdrawn from society after a while, so you won't run into as many of them as you could."

"I mostly just want to hear about the famous ones, and maybe some I could collaborate with and learn from," she admits, smiling self consciously. "The worry isn't not being able to recognize them, it's not knowing if there are specific ones I should be looking for, for my interests."

"Oh, well, what are your interests, then?" asks Casmeen, brightly. It's always great when one of them finds their niche and brings more of their sire's genius into the world (even if diminished by distance).

“Understanding numenera, and understanding how to actually make new ones. Artificing, I suppose it’d be called. Salvaging from the ancients is all well and good, but I want to build instead of salvage.”

"Mazzof," says Mimeon immediately. "By far the most accomplished engineer and technologist of your sire's children."