The holidays came and went. Jessica and Alison exchanged
gifts (at Ali's prompting) but, with the threat to Dazzler's life gone,
they didn't otherwise stay in touch. One morning in January, Dazzler
stopped by Harry's office to check in on a job. Harry was closing up the
office for the day. He was disheveled and had obviously been crying,
and revealed that Hamilton Glatt (known to Dazzler and the crew as
"Beefer") had died. He said they had tried to reach Alison, but Cassie
said she wasn't answering her phone.
According to Harry, Glatt's body had been burned black and
there had been "some kind of flower" drawn on his spine. Ali took him
out for a drink or ten, made sure he got home, and proceeded to get even
more plastered. Eventually she called Jessica, intending to ask for her
help. She wasn't communicating very well, so they both just got mad and
hung up. Alison went to Jessica's apartment around 5:30 AM, but Jessica
hadn't gotten home yet, so Ali lasered BITGCH, with the "G" crossed
out, into her door and passed out.
Eventually they hooked up at Ali's place in Chelsea.
Jessica did some research while trying to sober Alison up, noting the
irony while she ordered Chinese food. Alison concocted a horrible
mixture of champagne and wine coolers and kept drinking when Jessica
wasn't paying attention. She called Danny Rand and, over Alison's shouts
of, "Is he seeing anybody?" asked for his help with the
mysticism-related elements of the case.
Meanwhile, using some "borrowed" passwords, Jessica found
the crime scene photos. As Harry had said, the body was completely
charred and shriveled up like a mummy. Along the spine were five
identical symbols in white ash, with two more on the head – one on the
back and another on top. The figures were shaped like flowers with lots
of tear-shaped petals.
Danny showed up at about the same time as the food and
identified the flower patterns as lotus. He confirmed Jessica's
suspicion that the arrangement matched the seven main chakras and
mentioned that he had come across references to similar psychic
vampirism while researching ways to undo Davos's theft of the Iron Fist.
Jessica made sure Ali ate something, then asked Danny to
look out for her while she followed up on an idea. The two went to a
nearby bar, the Lava Lounge, where Ali subconsciously used her
emotion-shifting aura to make everyone want to dance. Danny resisted the
lightshow, but danced anyway. Then her thoughts drifted back to her
dead friend and she accidentally made everyone else sad.
Meanwhile (I love saying "meanwhile"), Jessica got a ride
south and then jumped from ship to ship to eventually land on the
artificial island prison known as The Raft. The prison itself was
windowless concrete with only one entrance. Well, two if you count the
yard in the middle. Avoiding searchlights and patrols, Jessica crept
closer and jumped to the roof, then dropped quietly into the yard. She
convinced a guard that she was a civilian inspector who wandered off and
found Davos's cell.
Davos was surprisingly accommodating and told Jessica
about a series of similar murders in K'un Lun. He laughed as he told her
that she was pursuing a hydra. In the incident in K'un Lun, the Hydra
was group of telepaths working in concert, led by a controlling mind
that never physically manifested. He asked for dust from the collapse of
Midland Circle in return for his help.
Jessica went back to Manhattan and eventually Dazzler
passed out. While that might seem like a decent end, the truth is that
we expected to play a fair bit longer than we did. So some time passed,
and a mostly-sober Dazzler put the moves on Danny, who mentioned earlier
that he and Colleen were kind of on the outs. I think we were cutting
back to Jessica when real life stuff ended the session.
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