Huh. Valerie's moving fast with this one. Good shit.

Yeah, I'm game.

Then she cleans up after her meal and gets out her violet wand.

Singularity arrives at the briefing wearing her usual combat outfit — a done-up leather jacket, fingerless gloves, a pair of safety sunglasses, and her usual jeans and combat boots. Though she doesn't wear a helmet, Ancile's seasoned eyes can tell that she's wearing low-profile body armor beneath her coat and jeans. 

"So," she says. "I've worked with barrier espers before, but most of them were lower-powered than you, Ancile, working in teams, and not good matches for my backlash. We're going to have to rederive some of this from first principles. I've gone through the background dossier on you in the last hour to get some familiarity with your M.O. and I think I can see some obvious adaptations, but we're going to need to drill the cover and motion maneuvers in live environments. Usually I burn extra power preventing spalling and shrapnel from TK maneuvers in dungeons, but we might be able to hit higher efficiencies together by relying on your barriers to screen it out. And I'm not going to be used to the degree of mobility you can give me — a pair can move faster than a team of four any day."

Ancile, wearing similar gloves, her reinforced utility jacket and jeans and boots from before, and a moderately personalized armored vest, nods and hums. "Keeping a few barriers going continuously is fairly cheap for me, yeah. Doesn't start getting expensive until either they get big or we need lots. Shouldn't be hard at all to keep one or two between us and any shrapnel-producing actions, especially with the passive sink of your compatibility. Probably I won't need my room-clearing shield-rings very often, with as much range and flexibility as you have. Those are fuckin' expensive."

"Sounds like we've got the basics then. Standard cover drill number six, with screen delta for shrapnel management scenarios?"

She nods. "What do we know about the dungeon itself?"

"We've got good sensing and no unknown areas. Some heavies in the core room — that's where we come in — but nothing we shouldn't be able to handle. Here's the map provided by the sensors, threats marked in red, proposed breaching path in black." 

Liath passes over the document.

Hailey makes a few minor tweaks to the path to better take advantage of partial cover from walls near clustered threats, then nods.

"Looks good."

Then she looks up at Liath. "Also, call a clock direction if you want me to put a solid shield there, if you see something you think I haven't. Noon is our current movement direction. I'll also have my holo screen running an attacker/projectile detection suite to silently notify me of additional shield needs, but it may miss things, so don't hesitate to call. Power is cheaper than blood, in a dungeon."

"Sounds good to me."

Liath goes over the document herself, checking Hailey's work and the work of her people, but then nods. 

"Alright, let's go."

She nods, a smile coming over her face, and stands, ready for teleportation.

And a moment later, they're in the dungeon. It's a twisted mess of black concrete, budding with red pustules and fungoid creatures that don't look too happy to see them. 

"Let's go." 

Liath reaches out with her power, and grabs. 

Hailey weaves a reasonably complex set of shields. It costs more of her attention, but it's very power-efficient for covering one or two people. Each of the four shields is a cut-out of the surface of a sphere, all partially overlapping with each other. The rear-and-up shield is the largest of the four, and a solid surface, while the other three are each about an eighth of a sphere, and have a mesh or grid surface. This retains visibility, blocks melee, and saves power usage, and in the event of projectiles she can just solidify that shield.

It's not a hard clear. The mushroom-like creatures spit spore clouds, but with her power she can grab the toxic part of the air, concentrate it, and let Hailey sweep it with a solid shield to get rid of it for good. The mushroom creatures themselves have internal "hearts" she can just crush directly with her power, and the crowd management is easy between her TK-enhanced mobility and Hailey's screens shielding the rear. Keeping proximity makes everything more efficient than she's used to, and she gets a few flashes of fear in combat, but it's nothing she hasn't experienced before. Even the core monster is a pushover for the pair of them working together.

Hailey's reasonably pleased with their performance. Liath is more efficient than most people she's worked with previously, and adapts quickly to calling shield directions. On top of that, it's so much easier to shield-wipe things when Liath holds them still for her.

Soon enough they're striding confidently out the portal as the dungeon crumbles behind them.

Liath casually fixes her hair as she steps out into the cameras.

Hailey smiles her press smile as she walks up beside Liath. It's a bit rigid, but that's better than her honest opinions about the press.