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[hauntedcalamari]

You've reached the Late Benjamin Hargreeves, leave a message.

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Resist the Call breach

[mothmansplaining]

[Late one evening, Ben will hear someone knocking on his door. It is too hard to be a businesslike rap. It's the kind of righteous indignation that usually comes from neighbors who have complained about the noise to you twice already and are one more warning away from calling the cops on your party.]

[hauntedcalamari]

[Ben is only half moved in, his apartment marked by several stacks of boxes and the sort of furniture that you really can't get by without for long. He'd normally be a bit more cautious about random knocking, but he doesn't have his bearings here yet. Could be the landlord or something. He opens the door with no air of defnensiveness, youngish with bland dress sense and a slightly aimless air]

Um. Hi?

[mothmansplaining]

Did you hire a private detective to come after my family?

[Cutting right to the chase here.]

[hauntedcalamari]

[For all Ben's carefully cultivated normality, he's sharp as his oddly conical canines would suggest. He makes very quick calculations here, risk minimization and best outcomes for what he actually wants here (and no small irritation at discovering he hired a pretty bad detective).

He cuts to the chase, too.]

I hired a private detective to try to find my family.

[mothmansplaining]

[Ford narrows his eyes.

Is this guy looking for the Pineses? Or...]

...let me see your teeth.

[hauntedcalamari]

[This actually takes a moment of resolution, despite the fact that it was his desired outcome. He's very used to hiding this. At first because his grandparents made him, and then because it was just habit, reinforced by their denial, the easy answer that he was the crazy one. But after a moment he pulls his teeth back in an awkward grimace. The incisors are passable enough that he doesn't have to talk funny, but the further back, the better suited for snatching fish.]

[mothmansplaining]

[The teeth tell him about as much as the kid not questioning why Ford is asking about teeth.]

...

...okay. I'm willing to hear you out. But not out here. Anyone could be listening.

[hauntedcalamari]

[As a way to gain entrance into an apartment under false pretenses, those are some silly pretenses. And there's nothing unpacked that's worth stealing. Ben overrides the boring cautions of the regular life he's supposed to live and decides to embrace whatever this might be. He steps aside, leaving the way open to a living room with one chair and a lot of cardboard boxes.]

Why?

[mothmansplaining]

[Ford goes in, making sure the door is shut behind them before he goes on.]

What do you mean, why? If you're what I think you are, you must take your privacy very seriously.

[hauntedcalamari]

...I have no idea what I am.

[There's no risk-reward assessment to that one. It's just an ugly truth.]

[mothmansplaining]

[????]

...What exactly do you know about your family?

[hauntedcalamari]

[Sigh.]

That my mom got knocked up in college and didn't want to talk about it.

[mothmansplaining]

That's it?

[This is going to be complicated, Ford can already tell.]

[hauntedcalamari]

Honestly? Yeah. I kind of hope she had plans to communicate a little more, but after she died I just lived with my grandparents and they had a whole denial game rigged to win.

[mothmansplaining]

Okay.

[How the heck is he going to approach this?]

Mr. Hargreeves, what is the strangest thing you've seen in Arkham?

[hauntedcalamari]

Me.

[He shrugs.]

Sorry, too easy. I've been here a week.

[mothmansplaining]

Oh boy.

[How does he break it to this kid??]

Kid, if you want to know the truth, then you're going to need to have an open mind. Do you understand? I'm about to tell you something, something that you won't believe.

[hauntedcalamari]

I'm working with the assumption that it's weird, okay? I used to have to use my allowance on salt.

[mothmansplaining]

All right.

Your father, and at least one grandparent, weren't entirely human.

There's a lot of weird stuff going on in Arkham if you know where to look. One of those things is that sentient amphibious beings in our waterways have been intermarrying with humans for hundreds of years. There are more in Innsmouth, but we've got a Little Dagontown up the river here.

...with me so far?

[hauntedcalamari]

No, but in the way I knew I wasn't going to be.

[Did some small part of him want an actually rational explanation? Sure, but it clearly wasn't going to come. So time to lean into the crazy.]

[mothmansplaining]

Well, that's better than I expected.

Anyway, I've known them for a long time. They take sacrifices in exchange for fish and gold, but since the fishing industry hasn't been Arkham's primary revenue source for years, they've moved over to coffee.

[hauntedcalamari]

[Why does that sound so reasonable? ...Probably because he sleeps in the bathtub, and finding a one-bedroom apartment with a decent sized bathtub is a huge pain in the ass.]

I can see why maybe my mom didn't want to discuss the guy.

[mothmansplaining]

Some of them can be very nice!

I married one, actually. Maddy. She and I have been together over twenty years. That's the connection the detective you hired found out about.

[hauntedcalamari]

I guess I... sort of? Figured that part.

[Insofar as he can figure on a subject like the mother he barely remembers being seduced or whatever by a fish guy. It'd be nice to imagine true love, but given how that shook out...]

[mothmansplaining]

So, are you going to run to the cops? The military? The Weekly World News?