Town Hall, Tuesday

[weirderthanthou]

You know, the stretch of about a year there where she didn't feel constantly paranoid someone was watching her and something was going to happen? That had been nice, Jesse reflected. Felt like a distant dream now.

Especially after walking through the park this morning and hearing... giggles. Coming from somewhere, making her want to do... something.

She wasn't proud about falling back into old habits, but... as soon as she made it back to Town Hall, she vanished into her office and locked the door. She'd just ignore her assistant's pounding on the door while she poured through reports. Yeah.

[[ open! ]]

Comments

[grenadesandohana]

Did the phone work in your office, Jesse? Because Steve was calling someone at Town Hall.

[weirderthanthou]

It did.

It was an old rotary phone. Couldn't be helped. But that did explain why, when Jesse jerked up at the sound, she didn't immediately grab for the phone.

"What's this?" she muttered, staring at it.

[grenadesandohana]

Ancient 20th Century tech, Jesse. It was terrifying!

Steve kept the phone ringing. It wasn't like Danny was letting him out of the house to go down to the building himself.

[weirderthanthou]

Jesse literally had a rotary phone to the Astral Plane wired into her brain, so these things made her jumpy for entirely different reasons than they did other people.

Very slowly, she reached for the phone. And... picked it up. "Trench?" she said.

[grenadesandohana]

"No, McGarrett," Steve replied. "Hi."

[weirderthanthou]

"Oh thank God."

Probably not the reaction Steve was going for, but, well.

[grenadesandohana]

There was an awkward pause.

"...you're welcome?"

[weirderthanthou]

... Jesse, you weirdo.

"Sorry," Jesse said, sitting up. "This is the mayor's office, what's going on?"

[grenadesandohana]

"I was almost drowned by a big thing with tentacles off the coast," Steve said, "so we should probably have signs up to keep everyone out of the water. I'm a strong swimmer and that thing almost got me."

[weirderthanthou]

But then I'd have to go outside...

"That sounds like a good idea," Jesse said. "Can you, uh... describe the tentacles?"

[grenadesandohana]

"Big and sucker-y?" Steve said. "Possibly bleeding. I hit it with my knife a couple times."

[weirderthanthou]

Jesse sighed. She was beginning to see where a federal agency like the Bureau got its attitude about the military. "Color, consistency?" she said. "Was there anything attached to it that you could see?"

[grenadesandohana]

"It was an enormous octopus or kraken," Steve said, "so...purplish? I wasn't sticking around to interview the thing."

[weirderthanthou]

"An enormous purplish tentacle thing with suckers," Jesse said aloud as she wrote that down. "I'll have a sketch made."

It was possible she was joking. You couldn't tell by her tone.

[grenadesandohana]

"Yeah, knock yourself out," Steve replied dryly. "Just make sure there's signs up so none of the kids get eaten, okay?"

[weirderthanthou]

"You do your job, Steve," Jesse said just as dryly. "And let me figure out how to do mine."