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With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

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That's suspicious as fuck, and the fact that Paul didn't string two and two together makes me think that he may have suffered brain-damage recently.

That dude could not have looked more guilty if he wore a neon sign that read 'Telepathic murderer' around his neck.
 
King of Frost said:
I'm guessing he's too young to be the cause of the increase in suicides, unless it's a weird tradition that gets passed from one telepath to another as time goes on.
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Sure, but as an investigator he has the equivalent of a witness/record of the deceased and didn't ask any kind of relevant question.
 
iamnuff said:
That's suspicious as fuck, and the fact that Paul didn't string two and two together makes me think that he may have suffered brain-damage recently.

That dude could not have looked more guilty if he wore a neon sign that read 'Telepathic murderer' around his neck.
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except of course the fact that this has been going on longer than the dude (or at least the presented body) has been alive
 
Ardy said:
Damnit Paul after 2 years you're supposed to be more suspicious than this!!! Telepathy explains all of this and you just happen to find a telepath at the grave of a kid explicitly telling you why the kid would kill himself?

Come on Paul, get your shit together.
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King of Frost said:
I'm guessing he's too young to be the cause of the increase in suicides, unless it's a weird tradition that gets passed from one telepath to another as time goes on.
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Ardy's right, it's pretty obvious: he shows people, deliberately or not, what they are suppressing and the alread stressed young people can't handle it.
 
Mastigos2 said:
except of course the fact that this has been going on longer than the dude (or at least the presented body) has been alive
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Bodyhopping or it's a family business.

There's no excuse not to make the connection and look into this dude, but then maybe Paul is just trying to get away from the telepath before talking with the rest of the team about this guy.
 
Mr Zoat said:
"How did they die?"

Daniel Brown's grave is neatly kept, and the flowers in the stand next to the headstone are in good condition. At fifteen, he was one of the younger suicides.

"Shotgun blast to the chest."
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Doable solo, but seriously, not easy to manage. Instant yellow flag there.

"Shotgun?" Garth looks away from the grave and turns his attention to me, his hands about a metre apart. "Aren't shotguns about this long?"

"About that, yes. The pathologist wasn't sure how he pulled it off. Technically, the cause of death was either shock, septic shock or blood loss, but… It's not a way many people would choose to die. It would have been painful and not particularly fast. That's why I mentioned the 'slow and painful' option earlier."
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Yeah, movies may not show it much, but a shotgun blast to the chest would hurt. And unless he managed to hit the heart close to square (not easy because of the bones arrayed to protect it) it would be slow, painful and scary bleeding out... That's a red flag.

"Are the.. others like that?"

"There's no particular pattern. Drug overdoses, extreme risk-taking and self harm are all common, but over the total number unusual forms like this are more common than the statistical average."

I'm not seeing any black, but then again… I'm not sure that I would. My vision is empathic after all; this corpse isn't feeling anything.
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Not unless there was something very hinky keeping the soul around...

Hm.

"Linda, was this graveyard properly sanctified?"

"That is not for me to determine." She shrugs. "People earnestly pray here with sufficient frequency that it is hallowed enough for most purposes."
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Jeez, show some effort, girl. I know your angelic half isn't happy about the suicide stuff, but seriously.

Running out of covert ideas.

"Right, the interstate turnoff it is! It's a bit of a hike-" I turn away from the grave. "-but perhaps we-"

There's a boy… Probably in his early teens, standing and watching us from just inside the graveyard. He's slightly overweight, and a feel a pang of sympathy at the sight of the acne covering his face. He's wearing thick-rimmed glasses and his hair is an untidy black mop.
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Oh, that isn't creepy at all, nosiree. Danger alarm should be on Yellow alert at minimum.
Correction: 'and I feel'

"-can take a bus or something."

And then I feel it, a weak mental probe. It's out of character for a tourist to be able to block things like that, but I really can't take the risk of something like that worming its way into my mind.

Ring, stop putting everything into Greek.
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To avoid the obvious mismatch of words and mouthflaps, I take it? Kind of hard to be covert when you look like a badly dubbed anime.

Compliance.

"Good morning!" I smile politely and raise my right hand in greeting.

"I'm trying to look at your thoughts, but I can't see them."
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Red alert! Creepy kid who flat out admits he's probing your mind? Big red flag!

At least he's honest about it.

"I know how to keep telepaths out. Have you heard of a man named Henry King Junior?"

He just sort of stands there, arms held limply at his sides.
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Oh, we got a live one here, folks... Seriously, OL...

Oh. Right.

"Did you.. know Daniel?"

"He was in some of my classes. I knew him, but he didn't know me."
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o/~ "I'm just a teenage dirtbag, baby..."

O.. kay…

I open my empathic vision a little, but I'm not really seeing anything particularly unusual. The lack of fear is interesting, but I suppose that if he's known what everyone around him was thinking and could project into them then he wouldn't have much reason to fear other people. Of course, legally that's pretty questionable, but mind reading isn't illegal in most states and mental suggestion… Isn't inherently illegal in most places either. In Oregon it would bump up the severity of an offence but wouldn't be a crime itself unless he actually started puppetting people.
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And he has no passive shields of any kind? No way not to see all the dirty little parts of human thought? Oh, he's gonna be right round the bend...

"Do you know why he did this?"

"He was ugly."

Ah… The pictures I saw looked fairly normal to me. But I suppose that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

"Everyone's ugly on the inside. Sometimes they see it."
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So far around the bend he's tied into knots... I think we got a prime suspect here.

And of course the problem with a telepath in a non-telepathic species is that, A, there's no one around who can recognise what they're doing and B, there probably aren't any people around who can stop them because you don't have to be a very powerful telepath to ruin most peoples' days.

Ring?

Nigel Patterson, 15. Good scholastic record. No criminal record.

Of course, if he's telepathic, getting answers to test questions wouldn't be all that hard.
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And apparently still human enough to care about good grades. Probably because he gets praised for it...

"How do you mean, 'ugly'?"

"They all have things that make them afraid or ashamed. They force them way down inside but they spend so much effort and time pretending that they're not there that things get all muddled. Muddied."

Garth glances at me, his tattoos on low-glow. I give my head a small shake and make a 'stop' gesture with my right hand.
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Don't rule out restraint, at least...

"I see. I'm not like that."

"I can't see your ugliness because you're keeping me out. But it's there, under the shield."

"No, I have this shield because I've fought telepaths and telepathic weapons before. A little over a year ago I was forced to take a good long look at my own ugliness." I shrug. "It's not an issue any more."
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I suppose that's one way to describe the process of gaining an Emotional Enlightenment...

Nigel.. shudders, his jowls wobbling is a way I find quite disconcerting.

"Show me."
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No! No, no, no! Bad idea! Especially if he Wants it that badly...

Okay. Turning off my shields around a telepath. I have practiced regaining control in this sort of situation but it's not particularly easy. On the other hand, this boy isn't exactly M'gann, is he? Quick scan of the area for telepathic weapons…

And I relax my mind and let my conscious be free.
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There are not enough Facepalm emotes. Have you learned nothing, OL?!

I feel the probe and deliberately don't stop it, letting the.. mildly uncomfortable presence touch my thoughts. With an experienced telepath there are ways to encourage them to look in particular places, but… Yes, he isn't examining in a structured way. I feel momentarily flashes of feeling and memory as he prods at something he's probably the only person in the state to be able to perceive. I'll need to talk to his parents about getting his some tuition.

And now he's shaking all over.
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Oh, gods... I think he's just made you his new best friend, OL. You do not want that.

"Ah, are you alright?"

"It's beau-beau-beautiful."

He gently removes his glasses from his face with his right hand and uses his left to wipe the tears from his eyes. Then his legs give out and he collapses onto his bottom.
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If he wasn't underage, I'd ask if he wanted a cigarette. Ew.

I can still feel him on the edge of my mind, just… Feeling me. It's just about the least invasive thing he could do, and I'm… Not sure if I should let him keep doing it or cut him off.

"Nigel, we're a bit busy. Are you going to be alright? Do you want us to phone someone for you?"

"No. I'm fine. Just leave."
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At least put some kind of trace on him, man! How can you not pick up that he's almost certainly involved?:eek:

I'm unsure, but… I glance at Garth and Linda but get a pair of shrugs.

I restore my resting shields and lead the way out of the graveyard.
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Seriously! What? I know he might not seem all that threatening, but ... What?

Okay... Calming down. I sure as hell hope OL doesn't just ignore him. Even Bizarro could tell this kid is significant...
 
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Rebu said:
If I remember Needful Things correctly, he could've used his toe.
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My best friend from high school killed himself with a shotgun like that. He was paralyzed from mid chest down from a wreck and generally pretty depressed anyway. He used one of his reachy squeezy claw grabber sticks to push the trigger away from him. Humans are a tool using species after all.
 
Nugar said:
My best friend from high school killed himself with a shotgun like that. He was paralyzed from mid chest down from a wreck and generally pretty depressed anyway. He used one of his reachy squeezy claw grabber sticks to push the trigger away from him. Humans are a tool using species after all.
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... that needs a Hugs rating.
 
Ardy said:
Damnit Paul after 2 years you're supposed to be more suspicious than this!!! Telepathy explains all of this and you just happen to find a telepath at the grave of a kid explicitly telling you why the kid would kill himself?

Come on Paul, get your shit together.
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Yeah... there is a reason why I am only still reading due to the Grayven chapters
 
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King of Frost said:
I'm guessing he's too young to be the cause of the increase in suicides, unless it's a weird tradition that gets passed from one telepath to another as time goes on.
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If Zoat is keeping with the comic book
The Sheeda Circus of Maggots crashed there, awaiting the opportunity to metamorphose into Spineriders. Whether he was a latent telepath to begin with, or if the Sheeda can just grant telepathy is unclear, but he's a symptom, not the cause.
 
Okay while admittedly a telepath coming by someones grave and explaining why that person killed themselves is a tad suspicious, he's nowhere near old enough to be the cause.

And if he was some sort of ancient telepath in the shape of a kid, there's no particular external indicators and there's two sorcerers and a empath looking right at him.
 
Mr Zoat said:
The lack of fear is interesting,
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Mr Zoat said:
Drug overdoses, extreme risk-taking and self harm are all common, but over the total number unusual forms like this are more common than the statistical average.
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I feel that the two things are related. What if they are killing themselves because something is eating the fear of death and pain?

After all, who would put up with all life's humiliations—the abuse from superiors, the insults of arrogant men, the pangs of unrequited love, the inefficiency of the legal system, the rudeness of people in office, and the mistreatment good people have to take from bad—when you could simply take out your knife and call it quits? Who would choose to grunt and sweat through an exhausting life, unless they were afraid of something dreadful after death, the undiscovered country from which no visitor returns, which we wonder about without getting any answers from and which makes us stick to the evils we know rather than rush off to seek the ones we don't? Fear of death makes us all cowards, and our natural boldness becomes weak with too much thinking.
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iamnuff said:
Bodyhopping or it's a family business.

There's no excuse not to make the connection and look into this dude, but then maybe Paul is just trying to get away from the telepath before talking with the rest of the team about this guy.
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Agreed.

A) Kid's too young to be the ultimate cause.
B) He's not an *imminent* threat to people. The suicides are a low level background increase. It's not like the kid needs to be immediately put into a telepathic Faraday cage.
C) Jumping the gun without prep could set the kid into panic mode. Also, since this is a training mission, it's *really* worthwhile to discuss plans unless there's an *imminent* threat.

I will be very surprised if next episode is "well, that kid was weird, I'll see about a tutor or something and he will never be mentioned again."
 
Ace Dreamer said:
From memory, in a number of European/Continental languages the word for 'conscience' and 'conscious' is the same, due to historical development of ideas about the mind. This little detail can really trip people up, when English is not their first language...
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But it's a song lyric. I even linked to the song.
 
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