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Stark Industries, Tuesday

Last week was last week. The future was now. With that kind of dedication to moving forward, Jessica was going to try coming up with stuff that could be useful in said future.

That's why she had some bits of metal on her finger. She pointed at a target she set up, aimed, and fired a webline. There was a satisfying crackle as the web flew through the air and hit the target. The readings suggested that she had to lessen the charge, but it was pretty clear that she had taken her first step towards making a stun-web. That could be useful during future invasions.

The shop was open, and slightly shocking.

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Atton had a bottle of booze in a brown paper bag in one hand, and some donuts in a paper bag in the other. Probably a good idea not to switch the two up.

Then again, it might not matter that much. What did he know?

"Hey, Jess," he called.

Seemed better to warn her before he walked into some kind of weird experiment.

"Hey, Atton," Jessica said, holding up a hand with a rubber glove to suggest that he shouldn't come any closer. As she carefully took the device - which now had TWO fingers on it - off her hand, she continued talking. "Do me a favor and stay right there until I take this off and have no chance to accidentally electrocute yooooooou okay hi."

Atton held his hands up - or rather, both bags - and stayed in place.

"...Is that the okay sign?" he checked. "Because I'd rather not have my hair standing up all day."

Jessica put the device down and stepped away. "All clear," she said. "Sorry, just working on some stuff. Once that's done, I'll be able to shoot taser webs at people and monsters during invasions."

"Nice," Atton said easily, and then he wandered into the shop. "And non-lethal."

But well, Jessica.

"I brought you some offerings," he added, holding up one paper bag. "This is for now, the other one's for when you're not trying to fry anything."

"Well, non-lethal after I make some adjustments. Right now it's probably insanely lethal. So stay away from that workbench," Jessica suggested. "And I don't know what those offerings are yet, but I'm going to feign modesty and say that you shouldn't have, at least until I know what's in that fancy wrapping."

"Donuts," Atton said, holding the bag out for her. He had no idea where might count as a safe place to put a bunch of donuts right now, and he didn't want to take any risks. "Well, that one is. This one--" he lifted the other bag, "--is booze. Figured you could use both."

"I'm guessing Sia filled you in?" Jessica checked, taking the donuts and putting them on a safe counter. "Thanks. Honestly, though, I think I'm doing okay-ish right now. Last week was pretty terrible, and my week on Battleworld was godawful... But I have closure now. I can actually make an effort to move forward with my life now that I know for a fact.

"Yeah, she mentioned the basics," Atton said. "Would've stopped by last week, but Mical called me in. Something something rockslide civilians Jedi stuff."

The details didn't really matter anyway.

"And closure's good," he added, "But in my experience, people are messier than that. So the booze is for whenever you're not okay-ish for a second, 'cause that's gonna pop by again sometime."

"I'll keep it for emergencies," Jessica said. "But seriously, I spent every day for six months knowing that my world was almost certainly destroyed. I've passed through plenty of nights where booze would have been - and was - helpful. Now that I know for sure, it's time to channel those energies and emotions into something positive instead of wasting another precious minute. I'm still alive. I should be making this world a better place."

"What've you got cooking in there, besides electrifying the neighborhood?" Atton asked.

He wasn't touchy-feely enough to push the point any further than he already had.

"Right now it's mostly repairs, my decommissioned portal stuff, and a bunch of stuff the other employees are working on," Jessica said. "I do have a notebook filled with ideas and rough sketches, though." She reached over for her notebook and started flipping through it. "I've it some stuff for the jail cells at the Trooper Station, some stuff for personal defense... Oh, and here's a design for a scaregremlin. Looks and smells like a person, but if anything bites it, they get a small shock. If I actually build that, I think it will either cut down on gremlin bites or accidentally make the creepiest gremlins more aggressive."

"You should park it outside Anakin's office," Atton said. "Figure we'll run out of gremlins in two days, tops."

"I'm never making the school administration guinea pigs for anything," Jessica said with a smile. "They treated me well. I'm not paying them back with an electric dummy fifteen feet away."

Atton pulled a face. "Just because you're one of the good guys, doesn't mean you have to be a stick-in-the-mud," he complained. Just look at him! "Besides, it's only Anakin."

Jessica raised an eyebrow. "I've gotta tell you, going from sympathic and present-bearing to lightly insulting in a couple minutes probably isn't the way to convince me to use someone I barely know as gremlin bait for an experiment."

Atton rolled his eyes. "He's one of my best friends," he clarified, "Though don't tell him I said that. Besides, if you put down an electrified dummy near his office, he's just gonna try to spruce it up."

"Which would change the conditions of the experiment. And him being your fried still doesn't change the fact that I've talked to him once since taking his class," Jessica pointed out.

She wasn't going to reiterate the fact that eye rolling and stick-based mild insults weren't great tools to convince her of something. Pointing it out did no good the first time. No reason to think it would work 10 seconds later.

It was usually debatable how much of these kinds of arguments were about Atton actually wanting to get something done, and how much of it was just because he preferred people thinking of him as an ineffective asshole, anyway.

"Fine," Atton said, "You're not going to get very far with it by putting the thing in the middle of the park or something, though."

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Stark Industries, Tuesday

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