Lorcan hauled his jittering boss through his apartment towards the bathroom. Thankfully his kids were at school and wouldn't bear witness to the shaking mess his flaxen friend was reduced to.
"I'm going to find the rat who switched out your pills with duds, and when I do…" His oncoming vows of revenge were cut short by Kressara's sickened wailing.
"Everything is s-sss-so loud...I feel like my brain is pulling itself apart." Glitterstim overdoses were no laughing matter, especially when the person suffering was a repeat offender. Someone in their ranks must have disapproved of Kressara's leadership pretty harshly to replace her Blood cleansing agents with placebos. Lorcan shut his mouth and carried her into the little bathroom, gently placing her on the counter before drawing a warm bath to help ease the shivering and get blood flowing. He wasn't sure if it would help, but he remembered her doing the same thing for him when he was coming off of a two year spice binge. The mirrors fogged as hot water spilled into the tub, steamy air helping to ease the dryness in Kressara's sore, glit caked sinuses. After stripping down to her tank top and the knee length leggings she wore under her body suit, Lorcan hefted Kressara into the bathwater and started dabbing her mouth and nose with a damp washcloth to blot away the glimmering, blood tinged mucus from her face.
"Alright. You gotta try and calm down. Glitterstim helps you open up to the force more and right now you're letting it over expose you. That's what's causing half your symptoms right now. Just try and control your energy, alright?" Lorcan tried to coach Kressara through her oversensitivity, but she didn't have the skills required to mitigate her overloaded force presence.
"I can't j-just do that…I don't know h...how…" She admitted defeat without so much as trying, which only ticked off the karkarodon/near human hybrid.
"Yes. You can. Force users can control their own connection. You're a force user, aren't you? So stop acting like you can't stabilize yourself right now. You're better than that and I'm here to help you."
Kressara hissed, indignant. "You're not force sensitive! H-how would you help?"
He retorted, eyes narrowed. "And you're not a very talented force adept. Looks like we're both a couple of amateurs! So just shut up and try this with me. Okay? You're only going to get worse if you don't figure it out and I understand the force more than you know."
"How?" She questioned him, holding back the urge to vomit in the bath water. Lorcan answered, "...I read. You should try it sometime. Now center yourself. Imagine all that chaotic energy flowing through you like...like a poorly balanced PA system! Your amps are at max volume, the sound settings are all messed up, and your mics are hot. You're suffering from too much feedback because your mind is overly receptive to the force right now, hence, you're producing a lot of noise. You gotta lower that volume. Turn down the treble, up the base a little, and crank down the pick up on those internal microphones." Suddenly her friend, a man she assumed to be clueless in matters of the force, was speaking like he actually understood what she was going through. Like the words were ingrained into his memory somehow…even if the metaphor was typical of a music nerd.
"Find the source of all that noise and reduce it, Kress, until it's a low, calm hum. you can do this."
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Kressara swallowed her resistance and thought about what her friend was trying to teach her, desperate to relieve the excessive flow of the force that threatened to damage nerves and muscles throughout her body. The sabotage of an overdose on neuroenhancing drugs caused the helpless force user to fall ill from the inability to control a surge of force energy roaring throughout her quaking body. The bath water rippled with the violence of her trembling. Could she really train herself to control that power emanating so dangerously, causing her stomach to turn and her ears to burst from inaudible static? There was little choice in the matter. The partially submerged sith focused as her faithful friend bid her, seeking out the internal flow of life force that ran wild on account of the glitterstim illness. Raw, unmitigated potency clambered through her nervous system and wreaked havoc within, flowing from her wildly beating heart, throbbing grey matter, and aching bone marrow.
"I-I feel the force...it's like too much wattage running across a hair…I feel it stretching my nerves and eating at my mind...it's in my bones." She spoke between panicked breaths and Lorcan coached, "Okay. Good. You're sensing the force. Now try to calm yourself and imagine your heart like a microphone with too much feedback in the speakers. Tune down the heat on that mic so the overload smooths out."
Easier said than done, but she was willing to try anything at this point. Even listening to a non-force sensitive's advice. Kressara took a breath and tried to kill the thoughts of failure and fear ruminating in that wacked out mind of hers. She slowed her breathing and felt her heart hammering like a thrasher's kick drum as the unregulated force kicked her cardiac system into overdrive. Turn down power to the mic...he meant to calm the heart so that the force energy she produced as a byproduct of her condition mellowed to a tolerable degree...pointless! Kress tried and failed to envision it and it frustrated her to no end. Why was this sort of thing always so hard for her to grasp?
"This is impossible!" Another wave of seizure-like shakes caused water to spill over the edge of the bathtub, soaking the knees of Lorcan's pants.
"No it's not. You're giving up. Focus! Please try, Kress." He pleaded with those bright blues and she groaned as nausea and guilt made her head spin. When the room finally stood still Kressara agreed to try again, this time giving the exercize her all.
The force. It's alive in the world around each and every living thing, but it also lives within all life forms. Some are lucky enough to pick up on that energy and even control it. Kressara knew she was capable, even if it was hard for her. Her mind drifted from the external universe to the internal world that was her spice adled body. Once more she felt that painfully out of control energy coursing without the natural mental inhibitors everyone who didn't dabble in neuroenhancers, seemed to have. What keeps the force in check when drugs aren't disabling those restrictions?
Knowing your body and controlling your force signature.
Kress exhaled and felt the silence between each rapid heartbeat. She willed the blood pumping organ to gradually slow it's erratic thrashing and felt the way her life force responded with a slower flow, lowering the volume in her mind. Some amount of relief came! Now for the brain...Her cranial cavity felt tight packed and cramped as that supernatural rush threw her entire nervous system into a state of panic. The force permeated her thought producing flesh and screeched in her eardrums like rusted brakes whining constantly! That had to stop. The addict thought to herself, "Redirect the force down your spinal cord. Spread evenly. Slow down. Run like honey, not water. Slow...". The pressure eased and an electric wave sent chills down her back as the imbalance of energy spread evenly throughout her figure.
"Hey, great job! You're not shaking so bad...keep turning down that power." Lorcan dipped his hand into the hot water to interlock with hers. Kressara's only response was a barely noticeable nod, eyes shut so tight that faint shapes and colors danced behind her eyelids. Now that the mental noise was cut back, Kressara could focus on the source of the ill acting grey matter which failed to do its job under the stress of her overdose. Huh...interesting. When she tried, I mean REALLY delved deep into her own subconscious, it felt as if it were the section in her brain responsible for prayer, for connecting to a greater existence outside of herself. So the drugs temporarily put those sections of her brain into overdrive? Kress imagined her brain having many settings controlled by sliders, one of which being its influence on the force, then mentally turned down the dimmer switch until the rattling of her bones ceased. The energy smoothed and she achieved that manageable hum of power Lorcan talked about.
Relief flooded through her as she sunk further into the water, squeezing her unlikely teacher's hand reassuringly. She successfully regulated her own force presence gone haywire and now her poor husk was left reeling as her nerves finally had the chance to recuperate.
"How do you feel?" Lorcan prodded.
"Better...but I have to keep at it I think. Thank you, Lorcan. I didn't think I could learn to do this…"
Kressara spent the better half of a sun cycle focusing, keeping her settings on low power, and maintaining that control over the force while her natural ability to do so in the background recovered itself. She held that grip over her aura well into the night, grateful for the lesson.
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