Talia found herself a bit overwhelmed as Manny went on and on about the different heroes and their stories and the different issues that they were from in each... She had just come from a time of surprisingly enjoying herself with Bob even though it had been under stressful circumstances. He had a way of just keeping her fears at bay and distracting her with one thing after another. She had dared to look in the mirror once, after their haircut appointment, and already scarcely recognized herself... 

Her usual long, flowing, dark hair had been cropped rather short, and she'd gotten highlights of a light purple/lavender color streaked throughout it now. She'd been forced to forego her previous silken, flowy, sensual outfit from her days as The Performer for something more of a steampunk/goth appearance with shorts and a crop top. It wasn't what she was used to, but it was still form-fitting and made of a flexible enough material to not hinder her typical tricks and moves and that was the important thing.

It had been a lot of change and a long day full of strange and new and frightening and as Manny talked on and on, she struggled to keep up. When he got to the part about the pretend kidnapping of her parents, her mouth fell open in shock. She quickly closed it, having been exceptionally well-trained at keeping her opinions to herself and deferring to others that were smarter and wiser than she. Bob had been trying to work on this with her, but she fell straight back into the old, programmed habits in a second. [i]What a loser she still was...[/i] she thought to herself.

"Oh," she managed to get out and it sounded calmer than she felt... [i]Resigned? Already?[/i] "Wow, that's not what I expected. That's an interesting plan, Manny." She had to stop after that. If she kept going, she might accidentally give away everything with a nervous laugh.

Talia knew this was a bad idea; that kidnapping her parents under some pretense could backfire on this plan in a million ways. Manny and Bob didn't know her family, they didn't know the heavy dishonor that would fall on them all with such a trick, they didn't know the backlash that Talia would get from it either... but she said nothing. Her desire to not disappoint or hurt her new friends, vastly outweighed her ability to speak her mind in front of everyone.