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closed - animals always making trouble around here

WHO: Jesper and Inej
WHEN: May - During the Moth Rabbit Migration
WHERE: Free Cities
WHAT: The Crows take on a new animal! Jesper gets more than he bargained for.
WARNINGS: TBD

Jesper doesn't go to the academy often due to his general lack of interest in school, he failed out of one school already, but sometimes he helps Nadine out and she's very into it. When the hares began their descent he found it a rather adorable change, except they kept going after food, which is naturally his favorite thing. But he is fine with sharing, except they're all a nuisance, and he's helped Mags shoo them out of the tavern. As usual though when offered a reward for something, he is right there and excited to get started.

This one seems easier than getting a pigeon! They're just supposed to put these mechanical doodads in places and make sure they don't explode. Jesper has one in his hand as they stand in a lab. It's early so no one's in it yet, they're here to put it in place and make certain the space is covered. "It's a big creepy, don't you think?"

Jesper can feel the electricity or something like it within the mechanical insect, something is making it work. Underneath his fingertips he can sense all kinds of things about matter, but he shrugs and puts it down. Except the strangest thing happens and he swears he can feel a ringing in his ears. He frowns and rubs a hand against his ear.

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When Jesper had come to her about another quest, she'd agreed immediately. The last one had been... a failure, and he'd hurt himself by the end of it, but it was kind of fun. And helping people is never a bad way to get her to agree to a thing.

"Looks like a spider," Inej points out, and she doesn't seem to find that creepy, personally. "Jesper, are you afraid of spiders?" Funny, that's the sort of thing she should probably already know about the person she calls 'best friend'. But... well. They didn't become friends in a normal kind of way, so why would they learn things about each other in one?

She exchanges a glance at him and shrugs. He places it and... nothing? Was there supposed to be nothing? But she doesn't miss the way he's fussing with his ear. She frowns and looks up at him, "Jesper? What's wrong?"

This one luckily doesn't seem like it'll involve running on rooftops after a pigeon. Jesper thinks the hares seem cute, maybe he'll get to see one up close sooner or later, but it's fairly harmless. But it's definitely good to keep them out of classrooms and such. Who knows what they'd chomp on in here.

"Am I afraid of spiders? With their creepy skittering legs? No." Which means yes. Afraid is not quite the same as being quick to brush them off, right? He can almost feel those spider legs on him just by looking at these mechanical ones. "Oh Saints this is going to skitter all over the place isn't it?"

He looks closer at the top, trying to figure out what it is that's bothering him. "Nothing, just ... hear this humming noise." It's very irritating and he puts a finger in his ear to see if it's something else. It doesn't plug it up, this is on a different level. "Maybe it's my powers, I can feel the electricity or something inside of it." It doesn't make sense that something would feel one way so he'd hear it, but who knows with his gifts, honestly.

"I don't think they said anything about it making noise though." He frowns at it but then shrugs. "Guess it makes sense, it's scaring off them somehow, right? Maybe it'll end up humming to us."

"Interesting, given your best friend has also been called spider," she giggles a little and nudges his shoulder playfully. "Probably... maybe? I don't know." She only sort of understood the point of the things, really. It was just a simple little task that seemed pointless to refuse, when it would help the city at large.

She considers that for a moment. Tony had explained a little bit about how electricity works. It seems to make enough sense, she supposes, given the nature of his powers, and how differently the electricity might interact with it, so she nods a little. "Maybe... we don't really have that sort of thing at home, so..." she shrugs. Who could be sure how Grisha abilities might react to more... modern tech.

"I don't hear it," she points out. Just for clarity's sake.

"They said they'll move around the area and put out some kind of ... signal? That makes the hares run away. Damned if I know how that works, really." It may as well be magic. Jesper knows first-hand that magic and science are essentially the same thing in a lot of ways, considering Grisha use 'the small science' and he doesn't bother calling it anything other than magic around here. So sue him.

It really is annoying, and she isn't hearing it, which is weird. Most of the time this would mean that he should really pay attention to his instincts and not turn the thing on, but it's Jesper. And he wants the money for doing the quest. So with a shrug, he hits the thing they said turns it on, and they are unlucky enough to get one of the devices that does not work.

Instead it lets out a loud shrill and skitters away, moving and making a lot of noise instead of circling around, and it's loud for normal ears. But for Jesper, it feels like his head is exploding. Nothing has ever been that loud in his entire life, his eyes widen and he turns white. It's only a second between when it screams and he sucks breath in only to put hands over his ears. He doesn't realize he's crashing to the floor before it happens, onto his knees as the sound seems to be vibrating through his skull.

"Stop it," he whispers, everything so intense around him, unable to think clearly. The thing runs around the room, knocking things over, still screeching.

Science. Magic. Small Science. It's all variations of the same, as far as she can understand all of it. She shrugs and watches as he turns the device on.

"Saints!" she clamps her hands over her ears at the shrill squeal it lets loose. She's trying to think through the noise of it– obviously, they need to stop it, now– when, suddenly, the noise doesn't matter anymore because Jesper is pitching to the floor in obvious pain.

She gasps, though it can't be heard over the din of the noise, and drops to her hands and knees next to him. "Jesper?" She glances over her shoulder at the strange little skittering thing as it runs into something and knocks things around, but her concern is her friend. "What's wrong?"

Jesper knows that she's next to him, he can hear her talk and she sounds like she's screaming too, but it's just a numb echo compared to the shrieking in his head right them. Everything is so loud, even the beating of his own heart as it speeds up, pounding as he shuts his eyes and curls around his head.

"Inej," he whimpers, feeling like his voice would be too loud if he said it more than a murmur. "Stop it." He can't get a hand around one of his guns, he blindly tries, releasing his head on one side, but he can't focus enough to close his fingers around the handle. That's how bad this is.

She can barely hear him through the racket, but it’s obvious enough even without hearing the whispered request— this thing is hurting him somehow and it needs to be stopped.

“Okay,” she murmurs softly, twisting up onto her haunches, watching the screeching little thing. She just has to catch it now and shut it off.

There seems to be no pattern to how it’s scrabbling along, and it doesn’t seem to recognize when it’s going to hit a table leg or a wall.

It takes her several minutes— and she hears the low, pained moans of her friend underneath the general din that has encompassed the entire room and it makes her heart ache for his pain— but eventually she does manage to corner the skittering little device and snatch it back up in her hands.

She lets out a triumphant little noise and flips the switch. “Is it better now?” She asks, and her voice sounds so loud against the sharp, sudden silence in the room.

Jesper can only sit there in pain and he thinks he might pass out, but it's a strange kind of pain. Not that intense, but more like his head might explode. This has never happened to him, so it's fairly terrifying. He'll have more questions about the whys once he can open his eyes again, but for now he just cowers and hopes that Inej can handle it.

When the shrieking finally ends, he lets out a gasp of relief, because that was over the top. He felt as if his ears were going to start bleeding, but that's not the case because technically nothing is wrong with Jesper's ears. It's a new power he doesn't know about, but that hasn't connected to him. He flinches when she speaks, it does sound like a shout to him. He can hear other things too, that feel both far away and close, voices that he can't make out the words to, the skittering of the hares or people walking around.

"Something's happened," Jesper says roughly, sitting up and putting his back against the wall. He is still speaking on a whisper. "Everything's so loud."

He's curled up in that same position for a moment or two after she turns the switch on the device, and for a breath or two, she thinks maybe that wasn't the issue. But there's relief flooding his features, and he's sitting up and Saints, that's better than he was.

She sets the device down and rushes over to him on near-silent feet, dropping back to her knees next to him. He's whispering, and she doesn't understand it, but she keeps her voice low this time too. "Maybe there's magic in the mechanics that's reacting to you as Grisha?" It's the only thing she can think of– she isn't considering the magic of this world, and gifts they're given, either. "Whatever it is, I don't like it... it's hurting you. Nadine could give us a tonic, pain reliever or something." Assuming it still hurts and lingers, like she's expecting.

In the future, being able to hear things all over the place might be interesting to him, a naturally curious person, but since none of it makes sense to him now, it only is confusing. Jesper looks dazed when his gray eyes open, thrown off by whatever is happening to him. It is hurting less, now that it's far away whispers and her, but he can hear her heartbeat clear as day. What in the world.

That is as logical an answer as anything else. "It's true, I've never worked with electricity like this, and I heard it humming before it happened." So it might be that this device is the culprit, and it affected him worse than her because he is already connected to things. He did put his hands on it first, he felt the power in it, there are a lot of reasons to believe it has to do with this object.

Jesper's head turns sharply in the direction of a plant in the corner. He rubs a hand across his face and points at it. "There's a hare there. Maybe open a window and let it out?" They're supposed to get rid of them. And yes, he hears the thing. He hears it burrowing and sniffling.

Her heartbeat is definitely at a quicker than typical pace, if only because she had panicked when he'd proven to be in pain.

She frowns a little at his comment. "What? Jesper, what are y-" she turns to glance at the potted plant in the corner of the room. It takes her a second, the hare is buried in the leaves of the plant, but then... yes. Movement. She huffs softly and looks back at him, "How did you...?"

Her question hangs in the air as she shakes her head and pushes from her haunches to her feet. She's practiced the Silence spell plenty by now, so to ensure she doesn't frighten the hare, she casts it now before she moves carefully and slowly to open the window and encourage the little bugger to get out.

Once the hare is taken care of, she goes back to Jesper. The spell lasts ten minutes, and takes up a decent amount of space around her. A space that now that she's practically right next to him, Jesper is most certainly inside of. The whole world is blissfully silent suddenly. "Let's get out of here. Go back to Mags..." her fingers brush his cheek. "you're still awfully pale."

Jesper does look pale and shaken up, there have only been a few things in his life that he couldn't roll with the punches and get a reaction out of. This knocked him right off his feet. For now, he is going to blame the technology. It really does make the most sense from his point of view. He watches her take it out, so that's good, but he shakes his head.

"You need to go try the other two out in the other rooms. You know now to hit it if it does that again. I don't think it's supposed to." They definitely would have warned them if it was supposed to go haywire and scream at them, alright? He definitely believes that. "Need to complete the mission." That's Jesper for you. Not only for the coin, which of course is always what he's after, but he doesn't like failing.

He's also not entirely certain he should get up just yet and go out onto a street with a lot of sounds. Maybe this will just ... go away in a few minutes.

Her lips draw in a line and she's debating it entirely. She could try to bodily haul him out of here, but it would be awfully awkward and probably wouldn't really work.

"You're so stubborn," she chides him lightly. "Fine. I'll take care of the other two. Stay here... I don't want it to hurt you again." Maybe if he's further away from them, it won't be as bad. Whether it was supposed to react that way or not did not, in fact, change the fact that it had. Or her theory that it had something to do with whatever it is that makes Grisha... Grisha. That thing inside of them that makes them more.

The silence surrounding her makes it easy to slip into the other rooms and place the other devices where they would be most helpful to deter the hares. Jesper will note, once she's out of the room they started in, the noise filters back in with a quick slam of the din of the building.

By the time she comes back, the spell is over, though. No more absolute silence today.

Jesper hopes that them being farther away will help too, and honestly, in his mind that seems to be proven correctly. He does hear the little buzz of them, but no shrieking, no outrageous sounds to throw him off. Maybe he shouldn't be touching everything he doesn't know what's in it, or using his powers to poke and prod. He has to remember he still is new to actually using his gifts actively, and it may be that he's too reckless. If nothing else, the pain and fear of this situation certainly has shaken him!

He breathes a sigh of relief when she comes back though, because that means it's over. It does feel quieter though. It feels like the noise is slowly receding. He can still hear strange blips, although he can't pinpoint it, chatter or doors closing, but nothing so loud as to scramble his brains. He struggles to his feet, leaning on a table when she comes back in, taking deep breaths.

"That'll teach me to not know enough about my gifts, huh?"

"Idiot," she swats his shoulder for his own self-deprecating commentary, but still wanders over to where he's struggling to get himself to his feet, looping an arm around his middle. It will be an awkward level of support because of their height difference, but they will manage.

She nods her head and tugs on his shirt. "Come on, then. Let's go." she will mother-hen at him until he stops looking like a wounded bird.

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closed - animals always making trouble around here

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