Another day on call, another day helping the police.

Today the excitement had been another attempted bank robbing. Seriously, Ghost was tired of these. The tension and the hostages and just everything was so been there, done that. Ghost stretched in her gray and white X-men uniform as she waited for booking of the criminals to complete and evidence collection to start. She was in the chain of custody and had some things to signin and pass over. Routine, really. She absolutely hated handling guns.

They took her prints for good measure. The ink, they assured her, was invisible now so at least her fingers weren't blue all day. She couldn't tell either way.

She'd been in to the different precincts a hundred times. No matter the tension between the X's and the police, her civility was almost always returned. They knew her. She knew them. So when someone suggested that Ghost go pay a visit to one of the members of the MRC, she didn't even hesitate after hearing why.

> "He does nerve stuff. I thought he was one of you, actually."

Garrett! So he'd really done it, then!

Ghost combed her fingers through her hair and made herself at least slightly presentable. She'd been hoping to track him down so that she could get a little help with her nervous system. If she got to congratulate him for joining the MRC, well, then that was just that much better.

After a little bit of guidance, Ghost was able to find the correct desk in the bullpen and she was delighted to sense that a person was at said desk.

Maya edged her hip onto the desk in order to scoot some paperwork to the side and make room for her derriere before she sat on Officer Joseph Linely's desk. If she'd known that this man was not her former boyfriend, she would have been embarrassed to be sitting on his desk in a nearly skin-tight super suit.

"So I hear congratulations are in order."

She was looking right at him, but couldn't actually see anything more than a person-shaped mass. Maya didn't advertise that her power had practically blinded her to all but the vaguest of shapes. She could press her power for details, and always did on missions. But here? In daily interaction? People did not respond well to an increase in air pressure.

Linely's week had been a rough one. Emily was pretty shaken up by the terror that miscommunication had brought, but had at least agreed to go on the date yesterday. It went...as well as could be expected under the circumstances. At least the place didn't blow up, even if she had been a little skittish about it. As much as Joseph had tried to comfort her, she couldn't stop bloody apologising, it made the whole situation rather awkward. Eventually he had grown tired of it, and had politely said goodbye after dessert. Perhaps a little too abruptly. It was his turn to apologise after she started crying. All he could do was promise that things were going to get better, but that they would both need time to recover.

Anyway, today he'd come back from another unpleasant case: another Burning Helix had appeared, this time targeted at a psychologist who had been helping out young mutants with dealing with their mental problems. Many psychologists refused to do this on the grounds of personal danger, but she had a brilliant reputation. A vanilla human no less! Not that it mattered to these punks. There had been several cases since the destruction of Utopia, anti-mutant groups had been emboldened at the lack of proper backlash. A few mutant solidarity groups had spoken against it for sure, as well as several congressmen, but it was made clear that nothing could be done.

"You have a visitor Linely" An officer with an overt smirk on his face had mentioned to him, "and she seems to know you." Emily had come to the MRC? Linely carefully tried to make himself presentable. Whatever it was it was probably important. Emily would never disturb him normally unless it was crucial.

Linely was surprised to see a translucent woman walk towards his desk, she was waif-like almost faarie in nature, strange that was for sure. Clad in a X-Men uniform, she sat suggestively upon his workspace. She even moved the papers on his well organised desk in order to do so.

>>"So I here congratulations are in order"

"If you mean, Miss, that the Rag-Man is now taken care of, then... please don't mention it." Perhaps she was a relative of one of the kidnap victims? Weren't all the victims vanilla humans though? Linely seemed to remember something about there being an air-elemental on the X-Men team, but he definitely didn't know who that was.

"Is there anything I can help you with, besides providing a nice, organised desk for you to sit on?" He quipped. She was being inappropriate already, not only was he more or less taken, but any action he took could be misconstrued as unprofessional conduct. As an X-Man surely she knew this? That said, Linely had encountered some odd methods with some of them, particularly that cat-human hybrid, so it was possible that this was just one of her eccentricities.

Miss? Rag-Man? Was that a joke of some kind? There was no way he didn't remember her.

> "Is there anything I can help you with, besides providing a nice, organised desk for you to sit on?"

If it was possible for Maya to go paler, she did. Maya reached out a hand and just barely touched... hair... on his head...

"Oh." Maya stood, embarrassed. "I am so, so sorry. I must be in the wrong place. I thought- They were supposed to... I mean-" She was flustered beyond the point of words, half pointing up to reception and with eyes clearly unfocused. At least she wasn't sitting on his desk anymore.

Ghost bowed deeply, so embarrassed that even the tips of her ears and neck were flushed. She tried to get her entire explanation out while she was still facing the floor. "The guys at the front desk said there was someone back here that might be able to help me with an issue I'm having with my mutation and I thought you were someone else. I am so, so sorry for the uh- inappropriate way that I behaved."

She shouldn't have done that even if it was Garrett. It wasn't like she and Garrett were anything to each other now. She'd just thought... well, she'd thought that maybe it'd be funny.

"I will leave. Right now." And find a deep, dark hole to go die in.

The translucent woman went pale. How could she think she was dealing with someone else? Did she have issues with eyesight? That must have been it, as Linely certainly didn't have any twins to his knowledge. As she put her hand to his head, seemed to notice something which definitively proved that he wasn't who she thought he was, and with shock drew her hand away. The woman clearly had misread the situation significantly. Fortunately, Linely was more charitable than most.

"Mistaken identity eh? These things happen." At least she had gotten off the desk now, and was understandably blushing red. She wasn't going away until he found out what it was that she needed help with. "Wait. You said something about me helping with your mutation? If I can help with that I will" he stated, though what a translucent human could possibly want with a pain-manipulator was anyone's guess.

A couple of the officers had been watching and smirking at the reaction that the lady had been having. Linely gave them a filthy look. It wasn't fair to take advantage of somebody like that, particularly if this woman really did need help from someone with Linely's capabilities. "It appears that you aren't totally at fault for this misunderstanding" He was being awfully British about this, even more than usual.

"Anyway, I am PD Joseph Linely, seeing as it appears we actually do need introductions. You are one of the X-Men I presume, but what do I call you?" He smiled and offered her his hand to shake.

"I was told that you had some control over the nervous system specifically having to do with sensation or pain?" Oh no. Now she was going to have to explain why and that was potentially more embarassing. Luckily there were hands to shake first.

"Ghost. Air elemental. I've been working off and on with the police for maybe 6 years now." But that didn't mean that she'd met all of the officers. It was a really big town, after all.

And she could still hear some of them, despite the dirty looks.

"It's uhm, a bit personal to discuss the details of my predicament here. I'm really sorry to trouble you and I'm not even sure..." She knew how Garrett's mutation worked, this Officer Linely was a different matter.

Still... perhaps it wouldn't hurt to ask. "I have an incorporeal form and as a result I've lost a lost of physical sensation." She could feel the blood rushing to her head with the embarrassment. If she hadn't known Cafas as long or as intimately, she would not be embarrassed asking! "I didn't know... I thought that maybe... I don't really know the specifics of your power if it has anything to do with amplification or... not pain."

"I do have abilities related to that. Recalling of pain in particular." So she hadn't been totally misdirected, though if she thought Linely was someone else it was likely that said someone else was more appropriate for the task. Hopefully he would be able to help with whatever the problem was.

So this was the famous Ghost? Linely had heard of her. Everyone in the MRC had heard of her. 6 years of service from the X-Men was hardly ignored, and she'd been around for a very long time. She'd saved a lot of lives, though her activity had been reduced recently. At least in the sense that MRC and X-Men cooperation had been more limited recently.  It was possible this problem was part of that reason, though her obvious embarrassment at the problem implied it was mostly a personal issue.

Linely listened to the air elemental and nodded along with what she was saying. She was clearly embarrassed. Linely had no idea why she was so embarrassed in saying this, but he guessed that "physical sensation" meant a lot more than just being able to shake hands.

"It's fine, I'm always happy to use my power to help. I can make your body forcibly recall past pain. I can't amplify it, the pain has to have been felt before, but I'm guessing with your long service to the MRC, we won't have that problem."

Linely threw another dirty look at the officers mocking Ghost for her actions. A "do this again and I'll remind you of your most recent gunshot wound" look. The officers stopped laughing and promptly got on with their work. "Sorry about them. Even police officers can act somewhat unprofessionally at times."

Recalling pain. Why was it always pain?

Ghost sighed and tried not to fidget her hands. "No, finding a past pain would not be an issue." She'd had plenty to deal with from a ricochet friendly fire wound to having her end trails spilled out on the sidewalk: she had options.

"Whether or not I could feel it, though... That is exactly my problem. I don't exactly know the answer to that. Uhm. If it's nerves firing or mental that might be the difference." And if triggering her nerves was how it worked, it still might be worth pursuing, just to make sure they still worked at all.

He could apologize all he wanted on behalf of his co-workers. This wasn't a pretty conversation to witness either way.

"Could I buy you a cup of coffee, Officer? Or cut off the sound in this area?" It never hurt to ask.

As for the help? She was pretty sure this conversation was not going the way she'd hoped. "I'm not sure that you can help me, but at this point... I'd try almost anything." Emphasis on the almost.

"Well, your body would feel the exact same pain as it did as though you were undergoing the same pain again. Your past pain becomes your present pain so to speak." He was talking about how he could inflict pain on this woman. This wasn't morbid at all. He did not sound like a poorly written character by E.L.James at all...Ghost did need to know exactly how his mutation worked though, if he was going to be able to help her at all.

She wanted to get out of the area with the mocking voices. Away from the madding crowd. There were a few places that Linely could try that would be relatively quiet. Interrogation Room 1 had just had a pig-human hybrid with "particularly poor personal hygine" on a charge of public indecency in for questioning, so that was likely a good bet for being avoided and quiet. "Might I suggest interrogation room 1? I'll have to apologise for the bad smell though."

The woman was desperate, and her remark that she'd take any help that she could get was enough to warrant Linely not giving her false hope. "Well, all I can say is that I can try and help. It makes a change from dealing with disagreements between overgrown children about Pokemon Go! Just because one of those adults was a gun-toting serial criminal who could have killed him but didn't because reasons, didn't mean the reasoning behind the arrest wasn't ridiculous. It was at least nice to have a job that didn't mean being insulted or spat at.

Linely got up from his desk. "Shall we get to it then?" He walked towards the hallway, signalling to the translucent mutant to follow, accompanied by a couple of poorly timed wolf-whistles from his colleagues.

Wow. He was peppy. So... they were really going to go do this then.

"Uhm. Yes. Sure. I appreciate it, Officer." Yeah. Somehow she was thanking him for potentially hurting her on purpose.

Ghost trotted behind Linely until they entered an unoccupied interrogation room that smelled as if it had cleaner days. She pressed her lips together and refused to complain despite the fact that her sense of smell was in no way impeded.

"Let me soundproof." She didn't gag. Not exactly. But she wasn't just going to stand there and breathe that filth in either. The air in the room began moving, swirling, and picking up speed. One of the heavy chairs moved in a slow drag across the ground as Ghost exchanged the air in the interrogation room for something fresher. She made sure the foul smelling air was pushed entirely out of the building despite the fact that she could have left it near a certain gaggle of officers' desks.

The thought did cross her mind, though.

Once the air did not taste so foul, Ghost let the area fall still and she began to construct the fragile soap-bubble structure required to entirely cut off all sound traveling into or out of the room. All of this she did without twitching a muscle or moving her eyes. She didn't see out of them any more anyway.

"Alright. I suppose I'm as ready as I'll ever be. What do you need from me?"

As they walked at a brisk pace to the room, Linely could smell the pig-man's odor from under the door. It was going to need some airing for sure. It had been a while since hosing down had been abolished. Surely they could make exceptions for that particular case? Surely? Probably not. He held his breath as he opened the door.

Ghost spoke something about soundproofing, and then promptly the room was aired out. It was like a massive window had been opened in the room, in the middle of a cyclone. He watched as one of the chairs was blown from its resting place by the force of the wind. The air elemental hadn't moved, but somehow Linely knew that she was doing it.

Ghost spoke again, this time the air gaining an echoed quality round the two of them, as though sound had been muffled from outside the bubble. She was asking what he needed her to do. Well at least that was an easy one.

"You need to sit down. I'm going to try and force you to relive the most pain you have ever experienced physically. Is there anything in particular you'd prefer me to avoid. I can't see the specifics, but I can guess what the context of the pain is based on what you tell me in terms of where it was and how long ago."

"Oh. Straight for the biggest pain in my life, huh?" She had to joke because what else was left? Ghost folded her long legs beneath herself and sat in tailor fashion on the cold tile floor.

It still stank. At least, to her delicate nose, it did.

"Well, I've been eviscerated, shot, stabbed, sliced, electrocuted, and I have a son, Officer. I couldn't rightly tell you which was the worst at this point. Would you like to see what childbirth is like?" That could get really, really awkward depending on how his power worked.

"If I get to choose, I suppose I'd say getting shot. You've got two options for that. One here, one here." Ghost pointed first to her rib cage and secondly to her hip. "Separate incidents, if that matters." She shrugged. "The evisceration didn't actually hurt that much, but that could have been the circumstances." Specifically, the crippling shock. Revisiting that did not seem like the best idea.

"I didn't exactly keep a diary for the dates of all these. Uhm. I could tell you which was oldest? That'd be the electrocution. I was in the internment camps where they used the shock bracelets and collars that activated every time a mutant uses a mutation." Ghost held up her wrists and touched her neck where the restraints had been. "That was maybe 9 years ago now? I hadn't so much as broken a bone before that." But she had been determined to get out. She could change between corporeal and incorporeal at near instantaneous speeds because of her stubborn attempts to change states faster than the cuffs could trigger.

((OOC: If the rather clinical description of what the pain sensed by Linely through Ghost is too graphic do let me know))

Ghost's inventory of her injuries that she had been pervaded with was almost amusing to say the least. Linely felt it best not to go for the childbirth that she mentioned...last time he did that, it wasn't particularly pleasant, but it had been necessary for the take down. Pain in areas that he didn't have yet did have, it had certainly been an odd experience. So, that left the evisceration, electrocution and the gunshots. "Hmm." he mused to himself as he touched the air elemental's arm. This was going to be easier than normal, having a willing subject and bodily contact after all helped him concentrate.

It was an odd sensation, his hand went translucent as he touched her, at first it was as if he was just moving his hand through air, but he could feel her uniforms solidity pretty quickly. She really was having trouble keeping solid wasn't she? Well the pain was still there, her body certainly hadn't forgotten it. What he assumed to be the gunshot to her ribcage pulsed in his mind. It had been rather painful, he could sense the skin breaking and the bullet that had bored through the muscle, had bones been shattered? Linely wasn't sure,but it was a good candidate. He could sense a pain towards the lower end of the body that was deepseated and strong, but he thought it best not to even consider bringing THAT to the surface, it was difficult to discern what was the evisceration and what was the childbirth, but he didn't care to try for either.

"You're going to feel some pain in your chest" Linely stated clinically. He took a deep breath in, and out.  This was going to hurt, even though he knew exactly what it was like to get shot. He reached out to that old pain, and brought it to the surface, withdrawing his hand from her as he did so. He watched as his hand soon became solid matter in front of him . Then the pain pulsed through his chest, like a numbing cold that jolted through his body. It would be worse for the air elemental, but even so Linely took a step back as he began to breath more rapidly. It wasn't exactly pleasant. Sooner rather than later he got his breathing under control. "I'm glad I didn't use your childbirth as my focus" he quipped. "How do you feel?"

Pain in her-- "AUGH!" Ghost cried out and her form dissipated immediately from as solid as she could manage to an amorphous cloud.

She writhed around, the cloud undulating and folding in on itself despite the fact that under normal circumstances, Ghost couldn't feel anything in this form.

Ohhhhh yeah. She felt that.

Maya panted as the burst of pain subsided. She touched her side, fully expecting to be bleeding, but it was impossible to tell...

So how did she feel? Her voice was strained. "Yes. That was remarkably like how I remember it." Maya spent her time slowly manifesting and coming into her weight. She had to be careful and take extra care to pay attention to her uniform to be sure that she became solid without any problems.

"I have a feeling your power is at least partially psychic." She tried to check her hand for blood, but again, couldn't see. But she didn't feel any blood. And there was no tear in her uniform. "Under normal circumstances, I can't feel much at all in my air form and there's no actual wound." It was fascinating on some level, now that it was over.

But unfortunately, this probably wasn't going to help her.

"I'll have to test this... see what the longer-term effects are." Maya took a moment to breathe. "I saw you flinch was that... sympathy?" Or was his relief for avoiding the childbirth pains because of some other reason?

Linely watched as Ghost dissipated into some kind of cloud form, well, he did warn her that it would hurt. Hopefully he hadn't killed her, now that would be really awkward, it would be on camera and all. Though honestly he could just tell the enquiry that he was trying to help a valuable individual on the team out, who was growing increasingly unable to help due to her creeping uncontrollable incorperality. He breathed a sigh of relief as the air elemental re manifested herself slowly and responded to his question. Inquiry averted.

"Well, pain normally doesn't go away, unless you have some kind of amnesia in your pain receptors which has happened once or twice" he joked. "There is a psychic element to it for sure, and a bit of nervous sympathy as well." She had got pretty badly hurt if the pain he had felt was anything to go by. "I feel half the pain I recall" he plainly responded to her inquiry about hi flinching. "Don't worry, I'm fine. I've recalled worse pains than that before. I know what it's like to be shot for real." Trying to protect an artist who had a habit of following danger around, or was that visa versa? You could never really tell with Shelby.

"So do you think my powers can help with your sensation problems?" He asked. That was the whole point of the exercise after all. He wasn't expecting there to be a miracle cure for her issue, which seemed very specialist, but nuking her pain receptors and nervous system with that hormonal reaction would surely have some effect, short term or long term he didn't know, but an effect nonetheless. 

Goodness. What would it be like to have a power that hurt every time you used it? Ghost opened her mouth to ask, but stopped to consider that he might not know that it was like to not have a power that hurt. So the question was rather... moot. She stretched and felt her side again, so curious that she had felt it for real while nothing had actually happened.

> "So do you think my powers can help with your sensation problems?"

"I'm not sure, but my instinct says no. It's too focused, I think. And I'd rather not give birth again either, if it's all the same." She tried to make a joke of it to mask her disappointment.

Ghost forced the sound barrier to pop which for most people resulted in a bit of inner ear weirdness. Air pressure did weird things sometimes.

"Thank you for your help. It was lovely meeting you, officer." She dipped her head by way of a goodbye, inhaled herself into incorporeality, and whooshed herself as an amorphous cloud out the door.

She could test that spot. See if it retained any extra feeling, but her guess was that it wouldn't. She would just have to keep trying things until she found an answer.