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Town Hall, Saturday Morning

The clouds had all come together in one dark shroud over the town. It wasn't encouraging. Neither was the way the lights in Town Hall occasionally flickered, as if they were on the edge of complete failure.

Still, Jesse was at work. She'd gone over the radio broadcasts of the past few days, and written Barry's findings all over the whiteboard.

Now she was standing there, staring at it. Trying to keep Dylan out of her head.

Polaris helped. Whenever the surge got too much, Jesse could feel her resonance passing through her, pushing the memories aside. How long that would keep working, though... she had no idea.

[[ open with some ocd ]]

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She's straightened her ponytail.

"So you're apparently the mayor, and allegedly you're actually doing something," Lucifer said as he stepped inside.

Dropping into this gently? Not a chance.

Jesse looked up from her stacks of papers. "Allegedly," she said dryly.

Oh look, a hot asshole.

... Don't say anything stupid, Jesse.

Lucifer ignored the sarcasm in her voice entirely. "I believe Duke and I have fixed it," he said brightly. "Thinking nice things makes it go away." Beat. "You're welcome."

"Thinking nice things," Jesse echoed, her eyebrows crawling up into her hairline. "You're going to have to give me more than that."

Why do the douchiest people have the nicest faces?

Lucifer sighed. "I was at the piano in the dark, the whole... mess came crashing down on me, and then I thought about a nice memory, instead of all of this depressing hogwash, and it went away."

A pause. "Duke was there too," he added, "That seemed to help. Have I given you enough? Because that's all I have, and I desperately need a morning screwdriver."

Jesse eyed him a moment longer, dubiously. "...Thanks," she said.

Think nice things. Okay. Well. It's worth a shot?

"You're very welcome," Lucifer said, bright grin back on his face. "Goodbye."

And with that, he sauntered back out of the office.

Jesse watched him go with a pained look on her face. She shook her head.

Don't get distracted.

In the center, it still reads NIGHTMARES. Organized in a circle around it are the phrases TRANSMITS TRU TOUCH, POSSIBLE PSYCHIC PARASITE CREATURES, NOT WEATHER RELATED, and LIGHT.

Sometime during the morning, Jesse walked up to the whiteboard and wrote NICE MEMORIES on the board.

After a moment's thought, she added, stronger w/ more? underneath it. Underlined it. Stared at it.

"Maybe..."

Duke stopped by, looking over the board. He tapped the ‘psychic parasites’ note.

“Rey says they’re horses.”

Jesse looked up. "Real horses?" she said. "Or horse-shaped objects?"

Duke shrugged. "You'd have to ask her. She just said 'horses'. Invisible and intangible, unless you've got psychic Force powers."

"Great," Jesse said. A pause. "Sorry, not criticizing, just-- this whole mess, you know?"

She walked up to the whiteboard to write down horses.

"Island threw you right into the deep end, huh," Duke observed. "I didn't have to deal with anything really nasty for at least three months after I got here."

Duke. Duke, this was how you kept ending up showing people how you got dangled over a lava pit.

There was a short pause, as Jesse weighed how much she wanted to say, and how much the island was liable to show if she wasn't quick about making a decision.

"Let's just say I've had worse deep ends," she said finally.

Duke's eyes flicked from her to the "TRANSMITS TRU TOUCH" note and back.

"We, uh. Totally sure about that one?"

He'd spent most of his last couple days around people he had very strong bonds with, so he hadn't noticed that part just yet.

"That's what Liam said," Jesse said, glancing over at that note. "And not touching people seems to have kept me out of trouble so far."

"Huh." Duke frowned, skimming back through the last couple of days in his head. "You don't know anyone really well yet, though," he observed. "With Steve, it happened when we touched. But with Octavia, we weren't even on the same boat. Maybe it has something to do with how well we know each other?"

"Well, if they're psychic entities," Jesse said slowly, "That could be right."

She looked pained. "Only one way to find out," she said. "I could turn off the lights."

"I am definitely going to regret volunteering to be a guinea pig here, aren't I," Duke said with a resigned sigh. "Alright. More intel the better, right?"

"Hopefully, I'm staying the guinea pig," Jesse said wryly.

She flicked the switch. The lights went off.

She opened the doors to the Bureau...

"Anything?" she called, approaching Duke quickly.

Edited 2020-08-22 17:41 (UTC)

"Nothing I haven't seen before," Duke said, keeping Octavia in her butterfly dress at the front of his mind to avoid getting swamped with his nastier memories.

"Okay, I'm going to touch you now," Jesse warned, and reached for his arm.

An office that looked like it came straight out of the 70s. A dead body on the floor - a man in his 50s. She reached down to touch him, and suddenly she had the gun in her hands, and an upside-down pyramid that flickered in her mind-- < ...bind the Service Weapon. You must choose to be the Chosen One >

... and she let go again, as Polaris's resonance roiled, turned and flickered in her to protect her from the intrusion/extrusion/short.

Duke held perfectly still, resisting the urge to flinch back. Or run.

". . . Was that one of your worse deep ends?"

"Yeah," Jesse said. With the serial numbers filed off.

She needed Polaris to push her through the last of that memory, through the next few feet, and she hit the light switch - hard.

"Thanks for keeping it short," Duke said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "So. Touch or proximity, then, depending on emotional closeness."

He was just going to ignore what that said about some of his friendships on the island. He'd already admitted he and Danny were tight, okay?

"Fun way to torture someone," Jesse muttered, making her way back to the whiteboard. "Mind writing that down for me?"

"Nah." Duke picked up a marker and added a quick note under the "THRU TOUCH" text.

stronger emo bond = transfer over more distance

"Hopefully, that'll help us figure out how to actually get rid of the things."

... yes, I blew through it in the exact time a workday takes.

Edited 2020-08-22 12:37 (UTC)

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Town Hall, Saturday Morning

Talk to Jesse

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Check Out That Whiteboard

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OOC