Ariel

Ariel Ariel has one of the most useful powers in Fallen Angels, but the doorways are only part of what makes her important. She can open a door and have it lead somewhere completely different. You follow her through what should be an ordinary entrance, and the place on the other side isn't where you expected to go. That gives her an enormous amount of control over this little group. She can bring people together, move them out of danger and decide where the next part of their adventure happens. When everyone is depending on her to get somewhere, they're also depending on her to tell them the truth about the destination. And Ariel is keeping quite a bit to herself. She comes from Coconut Grove, where her people are concerned about their apparent inability to continue evolving. Gathering mutants from elsewhere is part of their attempt to solve that problem. The friendships forming around her are taking place alongside a purpose the rest of the group hasn't agreed to. Chance knows more about the arrangement than the others, but that doesn't mean either of them fully understands where it will lead. Ariel's confidence makes it easy for her to keep pushing forward. She answers enough of a question to move the conversation along, then somehow everyone is going with what she wants to do. That turns out to be an ability in its own right. The persuasion is a mutation, distinct from the doorway travel her people can already perform. The person helping collect mutants discovers that she belongs in the category her own people are prepared to imprison. Being useful to them doesn't protect her once they decide she is useful in a different way. Her capture doesn't cancel out what she did to the others. They've still been deceived. Some of them have every reason to leave her behind, and the story allows that disagreement to happen. Forgiving Ariel requires a decision from the people she betrayed. She can't simply announce that they're friends again and have the whole situation disappear. When they give her that chance, she uses her influence to help get them free. Chance's involvement matters there too, because their abilities can work together. The same qualities that helped Ariel steer the group into trouble become part of getting everybody out. There's also an obvious problem with Coconut Grove's entire excuse. If Ariel herself can be a mutant, the claim that her people have reached an absolute evolutionary dead end doesn't hold up the way they thought. They were willing to harm other people while failing to understand someone from their own population. She leaves Coconut Grove with the people she brought there, but her place among them has changed. They know what she did, and they also know that she helped them get home. That gives her friendship with Chance, and her place in the group, something to work through beyond the escape itself.