Control/Mailgirls - Time Card

The transit of the such a deviously mundane looking piece of paper was conducted with the caution reserved for things that might start growling when the power goes out.

Jesse Faden watched from the balcony above as it arrived in Research via one of the containment carts that were far too large for it. Such a small thing, comically dwarfed, but that dwarfing, that difference in scale between what was used to carry the Altered Item, and the Altered Item itself - that was a hint to it's power.

Jesse had seen train carriages and movie cameras transported on the massive carts; the Time Card was secured within a reinforced class case like anything else that would be transported, looking merely like a piece of mid-century office equipment unfairly arrested on false charges.

"I with most of the things we found were more damn Objects of Power," Jesse said. "I could bind them all then, and that would solve most of our problems."

One of the Research team looked up at her, before glancing down at the clipboard. A man named Joe Parch. Lucky dude, to have had a HRA at the time of the Hiss.

"It would make it easy," he admitted. "No acting out or up. Langston does wish you could do it - it'd make his job easier, at least."

The Bureau's Director watched as the reinforced intake door closed behind it with the cacaphony of metal, and the cart's wheels roll rhythmically across the tracks, before it came to a stop, and the staff who were dealing with this new one got to the delicate job of moving the damn thing into a testing chamber without letting it go off.

None knew what exactly it did, but the reports weren't that good.

She had the base paperwork on her - the item's designation in the margins of the intake log. A PU item, like the X-ray box. Mind altering.

Moved, secured, and as soon as it was on the table...

"Polaris?"

Reality snapped.

The transition made no sound. One moment the research chamber was a slowly quieting cacaophy of ordered chaos, scientists buzzing around to set up their first tests; and in the very next moment, the world according to Jesse's perception snapped tight like the pulling of ropes, a sense of absolute silence that rendered the researchers' open mouths useless, just for the hint of a moment. A hiccup in time.

"That's not good."

And then came the Not Good.

The thud of it reverbed in the center of Jesse’s chest. It was a deep, bassy, heavy, strike of abstract something that she felt in the deepest parts of her self had realigned her entire existance.

One moment she was the Director, the architect of the Bureau’s recovery, slayer of the Hiss and the world's strongest Parautilitarian alive; and then in the space of a heartbeat, she was not.

The Time Card didn't have any tell of what it did; it simply did, and without warning.

She felt the number first. The number *001* bloomed across the pale skin of her right thigh, the black ink of the stencil sinking deep into her pores, marking her before she could even process it.

She'd opened her suit pants at the side just to see her get tattoo'd by the fucking thing.

And she knew that wasn't all, because that initial impact was the sensation of being told something instantly. An anomalous Packet of information; truth sent like a bullet.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Jesse Faden, Mailgirl 001 muttered.

Around her, the perception of who Jesse Faden was quickly realigned to fit the Time Card's needs. The PU's mind altering abilities dropped over the eyes of the researchers and agents in the immediate area, and Jesse knew, within the entirety of The Oldest House itself.

To everyone, the Director had not vanished. There was no questioning. Jesse Faden appeared as the latest Director of the Federal Bureau of Control, and Jesse Faden was also, at the same time, Mailgirl 001. And Jesse knew it.

And she knew that there was an out - Deliver the mail it wanted. Altered Items regularly did that - She'd had to handle the Postbox, which required similar mail-handling, but the catch was insane. Jesse knew the rules in the back of her mind; cold, procedural, awful dictates: "The delivery is conducted without clothing. The delivery must be made in person."

She didn't fight it - not because she lacked the will - Jesse was the most willful person in the goddamn bureau, and everyone up and including the Board knew that, and not because of Polaris, who was too slow for such an instantaineous anomalous effect to hit Jesse, but because the Time Card had already won. It had it's hooks, it had done what the Hiss could not.

Her hands moved with the hurried precision of somebody trying to get this fucking thing over with. Jesse kicked her shoes off, and then she reached for the buttons of her suit jacket to take that off, and then she undid her trouser belt, and then she worked out of her own bra and panties. The clothes fell away to the floor as the staff watched, not with any shock, but with the expectation that this is what should have been happening.

They were annoyed that the mailgirl had come to work wearing clothes.

Once she was out of everything, as bare as day in a room filled with her own employees, the bravery gave way.

But that wasn't all. A sudden, electric warmth trickled through her, almost like a leak in a faucet. It was an I'm-now-aware-of-the-eyes-on-me style of sensation that wasn't hers - she wasn't like that, a previous fling she had in her time as a wanderer confirmed it. But it was there. It behan in the base of her back, above her rear, and radiated outward across her skin, wrapping like a hug and turning the cold air of the research chambers into hyper awareness of just how much air was blowing across her exposed, hardening nipples. As she stepped out of her underwear fully, a sharp, insistent throb settled between her thighs.

"Okay, I officially fucking hate this thing," Jesse murmured.

She was no longer the Director; she was a Mailgirl.

The weight of the Time Card’s power pressed against her, turning her nakedness into a requirement of her job in possibly the worst gig job she'd ever done.

Once again, with a better view of lighting, 001 looked down at the stenciled nimber on her thigh, and felt the first leg of the route pull at her, a magnetic tug toward a canister waiting in a chute in Containment. She took a steeling breath, turned, and walked out the door, her breasts swaying gently with every step, her nervousness of this whole situation fighting her need to just get it over and done with.

"Okay," Jesse said, to no one in particular. "One delivery, then it stops. That's what it does."

The Time Card did not need to lie; it only needed to command.