—and then the area is suddenly littered with ice dust flying out of one of his pockets, which makes the temperature drop dramatically.

She's shaking off the disorientation – she feels furious at herself for being such a damsel –

will ice even work? They need POWER –

It's very dark, apparently, after lightning strikes less than a foot away from you. Very quiet, too, except the dental-drill noise in her ears.

When her senses start coming back online, she'll find herself surrounded on all sides by ice walls, able to hear the occasional sound of further fighting. It does not seem like she was moved from where she was prior to her lightning strike.

...rrr. Her sight and vision are coming back online but her legs are asleep. Does that mean she somehow gave herself nerve damage? Her powers are bullshit and she wants a refund.

"I can hear again," she slurs loudly once that's mostly true.

The fighting was sufficiently intermittent (due to them having mostly cleared this module of the dungeon) that he can take a break and open a gap on the ice wall to look at her directly.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like I just performed enthusiastic oral sex on a flashbang grenade. Other complaints are minor except my legs don't work."

She manages to swing her right leg, clublike, into an ice wall. It produces a rush of static and a throbbing complaint.

"Okay, they just work very poorly."

Lee Tae-gun, get your thoughts the fuck away from that gutter, you have a job to do.

(his powers are working so much better, he hasn't received this much guiding in years, not since don'tthinkaboutit, it's actually giving him trouble balancing it)

(he's really glad she was out of it for that long, that meant he didn't have an audience for his fumbling with using his powers with a partner around again)

(ugh.)

"Your manifestation is irregular and it might be a danger to you or others," he says rather than engage with any of that. "Would you be alright with being teleported somewhere safer?"

"Are you joking? You can teleport me into a concrete box in the Kurils if it means I can't accidentally blast someone to pieces with the wrath of a thunder god! Do that before I wake up next time, what if I was disoriented and trigger-happy?!"

"This place and I can both take a lightning bolt, the med team and the support staff outside can't, I wanted to be more sure it would be safe before moving you," he explains. "Ready?"

"...sorry for snapping, you're not an idiot and I didn't know the situation. I thought you were just being... nice. I'm ready."

...he was also being nice, but sure. He lifts his right hand to eye level, index and middle fingers together pointing forward, and slides them down in the air to make a light-blue holographic screen appear in front of him. He taps a few words at it and then both of them are relocated in a flash of light.

The room with the dungeon entrance is larger than the rooms she's been in so far. It's been cleared of threats and, despite the presence of a team of espers and non-espers under a tent by the exit portal, the lack of fighting noises makes the ambiance feel a lot more oppressive, like the support team is a small torch in the cold and dark. The light of their lanterns does not reach as far as it by rights ought to, and the shadows feel almost like a presence trying to reach them and smother them.

Which is still not as bad as the coffin Marza was in, of course, but the dungeon cannot be said to not have been trying.

As for the exit, it's a large flat pitch-black circle hanging in midair framed by an ominous ring of red light, swirling and crackling unstably like the portal might collapse on itself at any moment.

A small group of people exits the tent and walks up to Marza but doesn't, immediately, start doing anything.

"The team needs to check you over for monsters or any other medical issues you might have that should be dealt with before leaving the dungeon," he says. He's not usually the one giving these explanations but he's still the one who'll need to deal with the possibility of her electrocuting anyone so he's keeping an eye on her until they've gotten somewhere she has less risk of hurting someone.

"Do I need to give them verbal consent? Please, shove whatever probes you need wherever they need to go, I'm not delicate."

Must she phrase things that way?

They don't actually need to shove any probes in her. They have some techy-looking scanners and they ask her to look into some lights and breathe into some tubes but it's overall quick and painless.

And now through the portal!

"Didn't even take my blood," she mutters. "Waste of a perfectly good medical kink."

He DID NOT HEAR THAT.

The portal opens to a hidden-away corner in Haeundae-go district, ten meters above the pavement, but when she steps out she finds herself gently floating down to the ground.

The area around it has been surrounded by yellow tape, and there are a couple of fabric canopies about halfway between the portal and it with support staff under them. The immediate vicinity of the portal has been cleared of staff, and the entire place is in stark contrast with the crowd of onlookers outside and the warm late-morning sun and the sea breeze.

Tae-gun's already got a commscreen up with coordinates to teleport her. "Ready?" he repeats the same question from before. He's looking a bit more on edge than he'd been before, now that they're amidst civilians.

"Will you stop asking my permission for things?" she asks, looking more genuinely irritated than she has all day. "I'm not your coworker, I'm a delivery. Do your job."