The skeleton can't be said to not have been expecting it, mostly because the skeleton isn't even trying to play the part of something that has emotional reactions to things. It just staggers from the strength of the blow and drops its weapon. Once it's regained balance, though, it reaches back for the weapon to go after Marza.

As for Mi-cha, unfortunately a different skeleton is coming for her to drag her away who knows where.

The problem with that is that actually, that battleaxe it was holding? Marza scooped it up as soon as it hit the ground. (She tosses her club at a different skeleton.) It's a much nicer weapon, actually, balanced for combat and with a real handle and everything. She's very thankful.

CRUNCH goes her appreciation.

It buys her enough time to help with Mi-cha. CRUNCH goes another skeleton.

     "M-Marza?" Mi-cha asks, somewhat awestruck.

"Watch my back, Mimi," she barks. "Scream if something's coming."

     "...I can do that!" Mi-cha says with a wobbly smile.

She shepherds Mi-cha behind a sarcophagus and takes up a guarding stance. "COME AND GET SOME, MOTHERFUCKERS!" she roars in somewhat rusty Tagalog.

The decision to keep Mi-cha alive pays dividends. She's managed to scream about three skeletons and an approaching zombie within a few minutes. Besides the dozen or so other undead to hold off between them. The axe is fucking heavy.

Marza won't admit she's flagging, and she isn't flagging as badly as someone who worked out for looks instead of strength might. But she's not a lumberjack, and she's not a soldier.

A skeleton gets through her guard and slashes her arm. Mimi is screaming and Marza can't tell if that means something else is coming or just that she just got sprayed with her roommate's arterial blood.

That really is quite a lot of blood. Enough blood, in fact, that Marza does not find herself conscious for very much longer.

...and it ought to have been enough blood that she should in fact have remained unconscious, uh, forever. Instead she is, possibly, in hell.

Or at the very least an incredibly dark, cold stone box—or perhaps "coffin" would be a better word for it, if coffins were large enough to give her only enough space to move her arms around a bit and get about 25 degrees up from a prone horizontal position. It's pitch black, the kind of complete absense of light that isn't just a matter of getting your eyes used to it, and the air is still and stale.

It's a fucking sarcophagus. Were you not listening.

Marza is not going to give this fucking dungeon the kind of respect it would take to scream.

She breathes, deeply and slowly.

She clenches her fists.

She does not move.

She seethes, and does not move.

She hates, and she does not move.

She does not cry. If she fears, it is only to hate more. She will become hate. Anything else –

that is extraneous.

She gets one priority. She knows this. Anything else is extra credit.

Her priority is to deny the dungeon anything it could possibly want.

It's quiet. Very, very quiet.

It's dark. Very, very dark.

The air is too still. Maybe not unnaturally so, though Marza probably does not have comparable experience in sarcophagi to say. It's still too, too still. Suffocating. Is there enough of it? Logically, there must be—it is a known fact about dungeons that people mostly aren't killed by them, most of the time—but it's not clear how there could be.

The walls press in on her, or it feels like they do.

She could be left here, alone.

How will anyone find her?

Sensory espers is how, dipshit.

Really, this is kind of meditative.

Marza isn't the meditating type, of course. But it's an aesthetic she can grasp onto.

And the fear she won't let herself feel, that's something to push against.

If you can push against something...

and you've got a handhold...

you can hang off a cliff for a very long time.

A very long time.

A very, very long time indeed.

She can't fall asleep. It's too cold for that. But not so cold that she will pass out from hypothermia. And there's just something that keeps preventing her from falling asleep, some nagging feeling.

She can't, even, meditate very much, actually. Some nagging feeling. A noise—that's not a noise. There aren't any noises. A smell—there aren't any smells. There's nothing, really. Truly nothing.

Except she can't lose herself in it. Every time it feels like she might succeed, there's something. Something, something... something.

...something...

Oh.

The dungeon isn't just hostile the way the Sahara is hostile. The way a volcano is hostile. There's someone in it, and it wants her to fail.

This won't even be hard anymore. Not now that she understands that she has an enemy.

Fuck meditation. Fuck silence, and willpower, and not giving herself the room to move. She wraps her fingers until she's flipping the coffin-lid the bird, and laughs, not hyena-cackling but earnest and relieved. It isn't hard anymore. Not now that there's somebody to beat.

"I really thought you got me, you son of a bitch," she whispers. "But you tipped your hand."

She starts singing. Her breath control isn't quite there, what with the half-asphyxiating, and the acoustics are shit.

But it's a victory march.

It may be that, but will it be that for long enough? Because she's going to stay there a while. A long, long while.

Of course not.

She's not into K-Pop, much to Mimi's disappointment. But she's got a guilty fondness for American bubblegum. And Brit-punk, and some of the really experimental crap out of northern Africa. And, hell, give her long enough and she'll dip into Vocaloid. Is the dungeon familiar with the work of Giga-P? How about Neru, or Wonderful✰Opportunity?

She didn't die of blood loss in here, despite having every reason to. Will her throat get sore? Parched? Because that sure fucking sounds like the dungeon acknowledging that she's winning, now doesn't it? And she can sing on a sore throat. Until it feels like sandpaper. Until it feels like fucking knives.

It won't feel like that.

But she will slowly lose her ability to hear anything, including her own voice.

The answer to that sounds like SINGING LOUDER, BITCH! LOUDER AND WORSE!

And now she can't hear anything at all.

The cold starts getting replaced by numbness, like her nerves are slowly dying on her. Her sense of touch starts to go, actually, just in general.

Suspending her in the infinite unfeeling void, huh? Wow! How original! She bets all the dungeon's dungeon school friends are so impressed!

Objective time doesn't exist in a sensory void. But she can keep time, especially when she's singing – she doesn't have to hear her voice or feel her throat move, the impulse is enough. ONE-two-three-four-TWO-two-three-four...

It'll be a very, very long time.

Do you know how long it takes to count to one million?

Marza does. When she was six years old, a teacher said that you couldn't count to a million, or that if you could it would take too long to be useful. This was in order to segue into a lesson on multiplication tables, but she wasn't about to take that shit.

It took her two and a half months. She would write down her total at the end of each day. Once she hit numbers it took more than one second to say, she developed a sort of verbal shorthand.

She took her paper to the teacher, when she got there, and she told him that she had too counted to one million, and it was because he said she couldn't. He wanted to put her in advanced math classes. But she wasn't actually any good at math. What she was good at was – not even not knowing when to quit.

Not having a concept of quitting. Not when she could win, instead.

14496. 14497. 14498. 14499. 15000, asshole.

15001.

There's a noise.

...hey, that's not a number. She doesn't know what it actually was, because her ears are still coming online and she was not interpreting that sensory input.

Also, huh, now that her ears are working again she can confirm that she totally was successfully sending the "sing" command to her throat. Azkalita stays winning.

(The waking nightmare couldn't have picked a better song to end on than Ang Boyfriend Kong Baduy? She should've saved the good shit for the end, not the Manila Sound. Although she's admittedly been on repeats for about five hours.)

The noise resolves to fighting. Very, very quiet fighting, in the sense that the skeletons and zombies don't make any noises and their assailants are similarly mute.

Worth it? ...yeah, sure.

"FUCK THEM UP," she shrieks as encouragingly as possible while still shrill enough to pierce stone. "I BELIEVE IN YOU, RANDOM ESPER!"

There's the tiniest, shortest of breaks in the fight before it resumes in earnest. It does not sound like whoever is on the other side is breaking a sweat, anyway, to the extent that can be determined.

And it seems like the dungeon's either lost or given up on its ability to control her senses, seeing as how she's getting all of them back pretty swiftly.

"I win, motherfucker," she whispers.

She pushes on the lid, to see if that's also going to move. Wasn't worth trying when the dungeon was in control, obviously.

Nope, that one's being held down by the ordinary physics of thick stone coffin lids.

The fight ends, though, and the random esper walks over to her.

"Can you hear me?" calls a calm, firm, and loud voice. "I'm here. You'll be alright. Hang in there, I'll get you out."

"If I couldn't hear you, I wouldn't hear you," she points out, possibly too quiet for him to hear. (Though maybe not.)

There's another pause. "Right. I'll be just a moment."

That's followed by the sound of rock being punched until it breaks, directly above her coffin's lid, and then by someone's fingers being directly shoved into the gap between the lid and the coffin like they're made of gravel. Then heeeeave and the lid is lifted up.

Thankfully, the crypt outside her coffin is not very well-lit, so her eyes don't have to do too much adjusting before she can see that her saviour is Lee Tae-gun, Korea's most famous esper and its only S-ranker.

"Are you alright?" he asks as he offers her a hand.

"Yes! Thank you, random – eh, it feels mean when I can see your face. Thanks, man."

Yeah, hand is good, she hasn't volitionally moved anything below her neck in not fewer than six and a half hours. Clasp and –

– she's suddenly drowning in sensation. She can feel everything.

There's a bone-deep ache in most of her muscles. That happens when you stay perfectly still. Some of her skin is touching the cold stone, indifferently polished, home to a dozen textures from mirror-smooth to sandpaper. Most of the rest is covered by cloth, and she could count the stitches if she had the time. Even the parts of her that aren't touching anything are reporting on the minute currents in the air.

You know what is touching something? Her hand. Her hand, which is touching this man's hand, is sending her the most urgent sensory data she's ever experienced. She got a second-degree burn once, grabbed the wrong end of a soldering iron. This isn't like that. This is more than that. She thinks she's feeling more in that skin-to-skin contact than she would if she rubbed the iron on her eyeball.

What the fuck???

He doesn't drop her, because he's a professional with years under his belt, but as soon as he manages to get her out he takes a step back and folds his arms behind his back. "You're—an esper?" Dungeons almost never grab espers. Never, actually, as far as he knows, but he doesn't want to make any confident statements.

"Nnnnnno? You're an esper. Is that what touching an esper is like, is that why there are so many chasers – honestly that feels way too intense for the average chaser, that was fucking scary –"

"Ah.

"I believe you may have just manifested as an esper. What you felt was—" How the fuck does he explain guiding to her. He's got a script for rescuing people and it does not include exceptions for people suddenly manifesting while he's rescuing them and it is especially not made for them to be so compatible with him that he can feel them from where he's standing!

Zanna had a friend back home who manifested. There was a party for him, cake and sushi platters and whatever.

She'd visited him the week before, when he was strapped down because otherwise he'd scratch every inch of his skin off, crying like a little boy how much it itched, how it hurt, how it felt like something was inside him.

"...does the magic at least come before the hospital visit?" she sighs. "I'd like to get to play superhero a little before they hook me up to a heated IV or a ventilator full of steroids or a dialysis setup."

"...no, I." Wait, public face, come on, Lee Tae-gun, you know how to do this. "I believe you will be skipping that part. Come with me? There are still some people I need to find, but then my guild can get you resources to help with anything you need."

"Oh! That's, uh, good."

Follow follow. "I'm Marza, by the way. What do you call yourself?"

........is she. Serious.

"Ah, sorry, that was very rude of me. I'm Lee Tae-gun. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too, mister* Lee Tae-gun-nim. Am I special because you're bringing me home to meet your guild, or is Customer Service Tae-gun pleased to meet everybody?"

*(There is not actually an honorific prefix of this nature in Korean. She just said "mista" out loud with her face mouth.)

He is extremely ill-equipped to deal with literally every aspect of this situation.

He may perhaps be grateful for the appearance of a skeleton, then?

Yes he is thank you skeleton-nim.

He grabs two blades made of pure ice which had been sheathed by his hip—which is to say, they had been floating next to him pretending to be physically attached to him—and goes into melee with the skeleton.

That's really just overkill.

Marza leans theatrically against a wall carving. Men will literally swordfight skeletons instead of

oh god DAMN it of course there was a ghost in the wall

Of course there was.

There's no hesitation, two ice blades appear under his feet to carry him faster than he otherwise could and he pulls her away from the ghost—

—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."

"This is part of my job," he replies calmly, but then yeah she vanishes in another flash of light.

The location she finds herself in is a large, white, sterile room with a one-way mirror, a table and a couple of comfortable chairs, and a heavy-duty metal door barring access outside.

One of the chairs is occupied by a person. "Good morning, María Espe—"

"Death would be preferable to you spending five seconds saying my legal name every time you address me for the rest of our conversation," she interrupts. "Call me Marza, or Azkala, or I can come up with something else if you want, and whatever honorifics you want to sprinkle on top of it. Please."

"—of course. My name is Kim Ha-yoon." She doesn't say it's a pleasure to meet her because she's getting a certain vibe from her. "Do you need anything? Water, food, coffee, a bathroom?"

"Thank you. I genuinely do not intend to be as much of a huge bitch as I am currently being, but I find it best to nip the foreign name thing in the bud, I just spent not fewer than six hours and twenty minutes trapped in a sarcophagus with no sensory input and then blew myself up, and I am in fact a huge bitch. I don't actually know if I need food, water, coffee, or a bathroom; I'm not actually feeling the biological urges but I think you might know better than I whether it's a good idea to fulfill them anyway after being sustained by a dungeon."

"It probably is, especially after awakening as an esper in the fashion you did. Come with me?" she asks, standing up.

She stands. Winces; her feet are still a little bit numb.

"...did that medical scan when I was leaving indicate anything about my general state of health," she asks, following along. "Like nerve damage. I'm slightly worried that I might have damaged my nerves, and I wouldn't whine about a broken leg or something but nerve damage is the kind of thing you want to address promptly."

"No, you seem to be in perfect physical condition. My first guess would be that that's related to your backlash." Open door, it wasn't looked, here's a nice corporate corridor with a water cooler and a coffee machine and some muffins in a basket and doors to bathrooms.

Order of operations... restroom, water, food, more water. Coffee's for nerds.

"So my backlash is my feet falling asleep?" she asks when she's done. "It's definitely an ironic personal hell, but it's not that personal. Or debilitating."

She starts leading the way back to the room. "Well, that's the thing, we don't really know. How much do you know about espers' awakenings and backlashes, so I can calibrate myself on how much to explain?"

"Knew a kid in high school who awakened, Feli. He got itchy, for a week straight, every part of his body. Had to tie him down. He turned out to have some kind of temporary regeneration he can distribute, no good for dungeoneering but he does recovery and disaster relief."

(And camshows, because he turned out to be able to orgasm hands-free by psychic itching and pelvic floor tricks and it looks pretty cool when he does it. She's not going to say that, because unlike Lee Tae-gun this lady does not look like she makes amazing faces when sexually harassed and has given Marza no reason to assault her customer service voice.)

"Anyway, he gets itchy when he heals, so I figured the awakening was just frontloading a ton of backlash? And... well, I guess I did spend a while completely numb, but I didn't think it really counted if it just happens to you."

She nods. "Awakening is frontloading a lot of backlash, as you say," she says as she sits back down. "But—backlashes are complex and multifaceted, in the same way powers can be. Someone with, say, fire powers could get hypothermia but they could also get cold and rude or slow and tired or emotionally blunted or any number of things. And even that first while of backlash frontloading doesn't always reveal all of it, and it never gets as bad as espers' most acute crises can.

"And from Lee Tae-gun's preliminary report, it seems like you may have run into a—small edge case that allowed you to skip over most of that. Do you know how esper partnerships work?"

"I am not fucking a man who speaks only in customer service voice," is what she says, leaping adroitly past approximately five entire branches of conversation that may or may not actually have been in order. "This is not fanfiction and my willingness to bully him into making horny-panic faces does not extend to prostitution. If it's fuck or die I'll find Nightmare and explode in it."

"—you do not need to have sex with—or even partner with—Lee Tae-gun!" she says, looking kind of alarmed. "Sexual relations are not at all necessary, nor even that common a component, of esper partnerships."

"Good. Okay."

Huff.

"Sorry for vaguely accusing you of being a pimp. I know less than I thought, apparently, about esper partnerships. Please continue."

"Right," she says, a bit thrown but recovering quickly. "Using your powers will incur what we call acute backlash—which is the type we've discussed, with symptoms psychological, physiological, or both, as the case may be. Not dealing with it for long enough, or incurring sufficient amounts of it in short periods of time, will cause what we call chronic backlash—damage to your body and energy, manifesting as chronic pain, lethargy, weakness, and eventually organ failure and death. 

"The way to 'deal with it' is to spend time near someone with a compatible, or complementary, backlash. We call that process 'guiding', and every esper who uses their powers at all needs guiding if they want to avoid all of that. In theory, every esper can guide every other esper, but some backlashes are so incompatible they might as well not exist. Compatibility is also a matter of degree, and espers can be more or less compatible with each other; it is also not perfectly symmetrical, and it can be the case that one member of a partnership benefits much more than the other. Occasionally espers form three-way partnerships, with esper A guiding esper B, who guides esper C, who guides esper A. I believe there are two active four-way partnerships in the world right now, and I don't think there's ever been a five-way. Compatibility is also believed to be a function of personality match, though there's some controversy about how exactly that works.

"Things that increase efficacy of guiding are having similar levels of backlash, physical proximity, touch, and, ah," she clears her throat, "fluid exchange, which coupled with the fact that being guided itself often feels—pleasant—to both espers is the reason why closer physical relationships happen between partnered espers as often as they do, but there are plenty of partnerships that don't involve anything closer than platonically watching TV shows together in between missions.

"And if a new esper manifests in the presence of a compatible esper with sufficient amounts of chronic backlash, the new esper's initial backlash may be entirely absorbed by the more senior one. This happens extremely rarely, as the amount of accumulated backlash the more senior esper would need to be carrying for that to happen is—debilitating to most."

Sigh.

"One to ten me on how close that man is to having his organs explode if I don't cuddle him, please."

"...I... do not have information on Lee Tae-gun's backlash status." Pause. "But he hasn't had a partner in over half a decade." Her professional opinion is that she does not actually understand how he's currently alive, but she does not need to share that.

"I do not have that information, but means nine or higher." She rolls her head over the chairback. "This is so obnoxious. He's spent five years slowly dying of excruciating superhero disease, and he still smiles like a bank teller... anyway, I don't need to look desperate, I assume if I'm supposed to lie on top of him like a therapy cat I will be bureaucratically assigned to do so, and this conversation isn't supposed to be about him. Uh. Do your scanners figure out what rank I am or do I do some kind of obstacle course or what."

She purses her lips. "What happens next is up to you, to a great extent. You can choose to not engage with any of this at all and resume your life as a civilian. But if you want to work as an esper—it is not a game, Marza-nim, and I do need to impress upon you that you will need to take it seriously."

"I'm sorry, Kim Ha-yoon-shi. Nim. –that wasn't a dig, I just really suck at honorifics. I promise that I know this is serious, and I know that lives are at stake, and I promise that I can act like a human being about it at some point. But also, I have been conscious for something like twenty hours, seven of which have been spent sustaining an extreme manic state to prevent myself going permanently insane while being tortured by a dungeon, and I am going to need to give myself alcohol poisoning if I want to sleep tonight instead of falling unconscious where I stand when the adrenaline rush fades. And I can shoot lightning at things by wanting to do so, but only if I am prepared to blast myself mostly unconscious. This has been a bad day. My coping mechanisms are atrocious, and I apologize again for my tone, but if you need me to behave like a person now then the thing to do is sedate me, and the most offensive thing I will do is snore."

"Well, we can do that, if you mean it." God knows they've had to deal with espers going through much worse times than this.

"I don't say things I don't... yes. I am currently in an altered state that neither of us wants me to be experiencing, and I consent to being removed from it."

She considers.

"I am being glib but still not joking when I say that you can put me on top of Tae-gun like a therapy cat if you want, including while I am unconscious."

"I—don't have direct contact with Lee Tae-gun," she says, trying to interpret the first-name under the light of Marza clearly not being totally acclimated to the culture despite her pretty good mastery of the language itself. "But I'll pass that along." She stands up again. "Would any room here work fine? This facility is set up to be able to deal with—well, Lee Tae-gun himself, if it came down to it, so you needn't worry about your powers."

"My requirements are that whatever I sleep on should not be made of solid granite. Anything short of that will be acceptable."

She smiles. "That can be arranged."

"Soooo a new compatible esper, huh?" Park Yoo-min asks after they've cleared the dungeon of all civilians outside the boss room and are getting ready to face it.

Tae-gun trains an unimpressed glare on him. He doesn't regret sharing it, exactly, it would be bad operational practice if he didn't report this kind of situation to his superior when it happened; he just really wishes his superior for this mission weren't Park Yoo-min-sunbae.

"Aw, come on, aren't you even a little bit curious? And it's sort of romantic, isn't it, awakening someone while heroically rescuing them—"

His partner elbows him. "Hyung, Tae-gun is uncomfortable."

"Aw, you know it's just friendly ribbing! I mean it with love!"

"Let's focus on rescuing the remaining civilians."

(He needs to get out his backlash is driving him insane and it's all he can do to stay composed. He doesn't want to think about what's going to happen after the boss fight. He'll power through it, like he always does, but—)

"—right."

"Hyung is just nervous."

He scratches his cheek. "It's my first time facing such a big monster with a small party like that. And, don't get me wrong, I trust you, Tae-gun, just..."

"It's fine. Let's just get to it."

Yeah. Yeah, they can do that. Yoo-min goes into a more productive state and they can discuss tactics to deal with the undead dragon that's probably housing or guarding the core of the dungeon.

Tae-gun gets in the zone and stops paying attention to the symptoms of his backlash, only keeping track of its current level so that he doesn't overdo it. He has, actually, been overdoing it this whole mission, and yet he might end up backlash-negative due to his encounter with Marza. He did not know awakening another esper would bite such a huge chunk off his own backlash, though he's not sure that there's anything to do with this information; it's not like anyone has any way to find potential awakenings.

Yet when they've killed the boss, destroyed the core, and stepped out, Tae-gun is still the one who looks the most put together, looking for all the world like he could be on the cover of some magazine. The only evidence of the trouble they've gone through is the sweat on his skin and the slight dishevelment of his hair. He smiles for the cameras—there are always cameras, and this dungeon was in Busan of all places so there's tourists even, there's going to be pictures and videos of him all over Instagram—then requests a teleport to his isolation site.

All of his ability to hold together evaporates at once as soon as he's home, though, and the thoughts he's been avoiding all come crashing down on him.

It's ridiculous. It's so fucking ridiculous. He hates it, hates it so much, hates that his backlash is—is—this. It's him fumbling out of his coat and his shirt and his boots and his belt and his trousers, it's him being hard before he even gets out of his clothes. It's all of the fleeting, stupid, ridiculous ideas he had in that dungeon. It's...

...the way she ordered him around, and got pissed off at him, how he wishes she were calling his name.

...her lightning—he'd survive a direct strike, he's sure of it, but how would it feel? Would it hurt? What would she do with him if he were made helpless by it?

...how powerful she was, how maybe she could subdue him, could bring him down, could have him at her feet, begging, panting, whining, could have him at her beck and call, could could could—

It takes him far, far longer and far, far more orgasms than he would like to admit, than it usually does, before he finally manages to get himself sufficiently under control to grab the guiding meds. They are, at this point, only really going to help with the symptoms, but the symptoms are all he needs help with. He needs to be able to take any actions other than moan and touch himself and come, he needs to become human again. Become himself.

He hates it.

The room is, honestly, hotel room levels of nice: the bed is huge, the ensuite has an enormous bathroom, there's a desk and a table and a kitchenette, it's only the lack of a window and the materials the floor, ceiling, and walls are made of that give the game away.

Still pretty comfortable, though.

She did not turn out to need literal sedation. Regular sleeping pills plus the level of exhaustion she was experiencing knock her out for ten hours, at which point she wakes up, gets in the tub, and scrubs herself until she doesn't feel like she's coated in bonemeal and ashes anymore.

She determines how to contact Kim Ha-yoon (or equivalent) and does so.

"Good morning, or whatever time it currently is. I have recovered, and apologize for the portion of my earlier conduct for which I am able to honestly apologize. Is now a good time to continue my... possible interview?"

"Certainly. Interview is—not really what this is, though. I suppose that's on me for assuming you'd have been informed. Usually when espers manifest, the government sends them an agent to explain what this all means for them and what their options are. I'm one such agent, but this facility is special, for new espers who for one reason or another cannot just receive a visit in a hospital or similar. Usually just unusually powerful espers, but in your case it was both that and the fact that it seems you've come upon your full power all at once and it seems unusually destructive even controlling for how powerful it is.

"So that's what I'm here to do, is tell you what being an esper entails in general terms and let you know what you could do about it, if you wanted to do anything about it."

"...ah. Yes, that would follow. My options.

"I intend to devote one hundred percent of my remaining lifespan to destroying dungeons as efficiently and as completely as possible. Any other options do not appeal. So whatever resources you can provide toward that end, I will happily put to use."

Kim Ha-yoon is used to dealing with teenagers, since awakenings tend to happen around the 17-22 age range, but this girl is unusually intense even considering that.

"There are numerous guilds in Korea. They are NGOs that hire you as part of their staff to help clear dungeons. They are supposed to represent your interests and interface with the government and other individuals or legal entities wishing to contacy you and to provide you with training, guidance, any facilities you might need to deal with your powers and backlashes, and of course payment. As part of the process of joining one your power levels will be evaluated, and after that initial training you will be assigned to dungeons based on it. 

"You will also get help in finding your first partner, usually but not always another newbie like you, usually but not always someone in the same guild as you. 

"That's the gist of it."

"Is Lee Tae-gun's guild considered generally reputable? I do owe him my life, and it would be a good position from which to address that, even if he would presumably be my senior."

"Yes, Quasar Guild is the most famous and widely considered reputed guild in Korea, though that is at least in part due to hosting Lee Tae-gun."

"...is he particularly noteworthy?"

She blinks several times. "Yes, Lee Tae-gun-nim is the most powerful esper in Korea, its only S-rank esper, and considered a good candidate for one of the ten most powerful espers on the planet."

"And still he smiles like a bank teller."

She shakes her head vigorously. "Tangent. How would I reach out to them, please?"

"We can get a representative here right now, if you want; they also have one of the most versatile teleporters in Korea, and a system they can use to store his power for automated use. You used it to get out of the dungeon and here."

"Oh, nice. Perhaps they can make a power plant out of me, as well... yes, the sooner this moves forward the better."

So Kim Ha-yoon summons a holographic screen just like the one Lee Tae-gun did yesterday and, after tapping at it a little bit, stands up and says, "They'll be here momentarily. It's been a pleasure to meet you, Marza-nim." She bows and takes her leave.

"You as well, Kim Ha-yoon. Thank you for everything."

She actually means that. It's rare, in this country, for a stranger to outright tell her she's being an asshole. It was a valuable diagnostic tool back home, and she can make do without, but it's really nice to have available.

Aaaaaaand now to think up more chuuni bullshit to say. It's a lot of overhead.

A few minutes after that there's a small localised flash of blue light and a tall, fit man with silver-green hair and pink irises shows up. "Hello hello, good evening, Marza-nim, I've heard you hate honorifics, can we drop those?" is the first thing he says, and even though he does use the honorific the rest of his language is informal.

"Oh my God, yes, please. Is this an invitation to not think about my formality level either? Because I am prepared to do so if it will achieve my goals, but it won't actually convey the information I want to convey. Also, I would be very bad at it."

"Sure, go crazy." He flops down on one of the comfortable chairs. "We never got to meet! I was in the dungeon earlier today, too. I'm Park Yoo-min, one of the few espers in the guild who can take a lighting strike to the face and end up no worse than naked. Maybe the only one other than Tae-gun!"

"It's my pleasure, Yoo-min. I don't intend to denude you but you know more than I about how much it's on the table anyway."

She inhales. "I want your guild to use my powers and skills in whatever way is most efficient toward the ultimate goal of destroying dungeons. If that means breakneck training until I can go out and inflict the wrath of a storm god on S-rank dungeons for the five years before something eats me, great. If that means cleaning up D-ranks and giving Lee Tae-gun lifesaving neck massages, fine. If that means dumping electricity into big magic guns in the basement eight hours a day when I'm not doing the lifesaving neck massages, I won't like it but I'll do it if it's really for the best. If that means, I don't know, fetching coffee for your boss, I will know that you don't care about saving lives and look elsewhere."

Exhale. "I have one priority. Everything else is extra credit."

"Wow, that's kinda hot," he thinks but doesn't say.

"We can get you that!" he does say. "Honestly from what Tae-gun said it might be the first one, though there aren't that many S-ranks around, you'll last more than five years I'm sure. Wow, I'm going to be so jealous, though, another lightning esper stealing my show and getting S-rank while little old me is just B-rank." He doesn't sound particularly jealous. 

"Anyway! Forgive me if I miss things or don't explain them in order, the literal only reason I'm here is the lightning thing and the fact that Tae-gun is too busy to do it himself."

He manages about a second of a straight face before he sporfles at the idea of Tae-gun giving a new esper their briefing. "And also Tae-gun would spontaneously combust if he had to do this," he adds for the sake of transparency.

"He did look like he was having a hard time with me in the first place," she laughs. "...I should probably stop sexually harassing him if we're going to be coworkers, but the faces..."

"He makes such amazing faces when you harass him and he's so gorgeous too, but if you're a coworker it'll take some practice to figure out how to do it in a fun way rather than a way that gets him to just run away. 

"But that's all theoretical, anyway, Tae-gun doesn't take partners."

"I was under the impression this was because no one was sufficiently compatible with him."

"Oh, maybe? His backlash is secret, like, I've been his sunbae for almost a decade and I have no idea what it is! But I think it's just that he doesn't want one."

"He is one of the most powerful espers on the planet. He is working under half a decade of accumulated backlash. From the information I have been given, his bones should be melting. And he does not have someone keeping him alive, because he doesn't want one."

"That is as I understand it the long and the short of it!"

The air pressure is rising.

Marza notices this, lifts her left hand to her mouth, and bites down hard on her knuckle.

The air pressure goes back down.

"I will share my opinion on this with Lee Tae-gun," she says around her finger. "At a later date. When I am confident that I can say it, with words, rather than blasting him into the nearest wall."

Park Yoo-min makes a thoughtful hmming sound, adopting a slightly more serious expression for a moment.

"You know, in terms of power testing and control, it would be useful for you to share your opinion on this with me, here in this facility, where the worst you're going to do is set the chairs on fire."

"...you asked for it."

She breathes in and out.

"You take a job because you want to do it," she says first. Then she shakes her head. "No. You – sometimes you take a job because not doing it would be worse than doing it. But if you do that, you – it matters. What you're doing matters. You are making yourself important. You are making people rely on you. People will need you. The longer you do it, the more they need you. And – if you're strong, or worse, if you're indispensable – that job might be saving the world. And I'm taking that job because I want to do it. But you can take it because it would be worse not to. If you're someone who it would be worse for, knowing you could be doing it and you aren't. And you can be miserable doing it. I don't like it, but you're allowed to hate your life.

"But if you want to die? Either you fix it, or you kill yourself. You kill yourself now. Before people need you. Before they rely on you. You kill yourself, or you get really into drugs, or you move to Mexico and farm soybeans. Because you can't do both. You can't – you get one priority. You get ONE. Anything else is extra credit, and dying is not extra credit. You can't die for bonus points. You want to die, everything you want is poison. Because you want it so you can die better.

"And... the one thing I can't tolerate. That's a lie, everything pisses me off, I can't tolerate shit, but – the thing that makes me a fire hazard. Is somebody who isn't doing his fucking job.

"And I don't care how many lives he saves, if your Tae-gun won't let somebody keep him alive, he's not doing his fucking job."

The pressure went up for a minute there, but it's dead air by the time she's done.

Yoo-min claps at the end of that. "Bra-vo, I'm not even singed. And, hey, that might be an argument that convinces him! Who knows? But f.y.i. if you call him 'my' Tae-gun to his face he's going to make quite a lot of faces. From experience, though, they'll be the fun kind of faces rather than the 'he's running away' kind of faces, so I'm all for it."

"Anyway! Uhhh what does a responsible guild recruiter say here. We're going to need you to explode some things or whatever it is you'll end up doing so that we know your range and just how likely you are to fuck up, and there'll be a contract because this is a job, and there's probably, like, logistics about housing and siloing—do you know about siloing? Espers have isolation sites, sometimes but not always their homes, and we go there after missions to decompress, deal with our backlashes, fuck our partners, that stuff. —you don't need to fuck your partner, to be clear, though I gotta say fucking someone who can guide you feels amazing. Is that TMI? That might be TMI. Let me know if I'm overcalibrating, I'm so used to Korean culture that I have no idea where the prudishness ends and where the genuine being too much starts."

Marza chokes a little on the transition, but she's laughing by the end.

"If you say something I hate, I can just tell you to shut the fuck up, it goes both ways. Are we guide-compatible, can like guide like? -nonsexual curiosity, you're not masc enough to be a good sub and you're not pathetic enough to be a good dom."

"...wow I feel like I just learned a lot about you. And—it's the backlashes that really say how well we can guide each other, not the powers necessarily. You and I are not so compatible we can feel it from a distance, at least, and I already have a steady partner and we're super compatible, but the best way to figure this out is touch." He offers her a hand.

Pinky-finger poke?

It doesn't feel literally painful but it does feel uncomfortable in a sort of physiological representation of "tab A does not go in slot B" way. Yoo-min does not flinch and pull his hand away because he is used to this kind of sensation but it very much is the kind of sensation that would make one feel the instinct to do that.

"No go," he concludes.

"Yeah, gross." No more pinky finger. "...obviously this isn't what happened there, but if it turns out guiding with Lee Tae-gun has ruined me for other espers forever because he's the only one whose metaphysical dick can give me transcendent awareness of the fabric of reality, I'm going to be annoyed with him for slightly more reasons. Which would be completely unfair to dump on him but I might bitch about it once I've badgered you into getting drinks with me. Fair warning."

"Oh I'm very very easy to badger into getting drunk with. Maybe we could get Woo-young and Seungjoo-ya, make it a party. —that's Tae-gun's best friend and my partner, respectively.

"Anyway, what else, uhhhh... Do you have any questions, I guess?"

"...can I have visitors in this facility-whatever? My roommate should probably know I'm not dead."

"Oh I can't imagine someone wouldn't have let her know. But, uh..." Neck scratch. "You're still not, like, confirmed safe around civilians? Is the problem."

"...yeah, that's basically what I was asking, if there were... bulletproof visiting rooms? But I guess I'm just too badass for that.

"Can somebody let her know that if she worries about me I'll kick her ass. That's all. Otherwise she will, is the thing."

"I mean, you can video call her if you want," he clarifies. "And the problem is just that, like, we don't know how bulletproof the rooms have to be? We don't even really know what your powers are, they looked lightning-themed and I happen to be resistant to a wider class of things than just lightning so I'm a good shot for who could take the majority of things you could throw at me but, like, if you can turn me into a red smear on the wall that'd be bad for civilians too.

"Sorry."

"Oh. Video is fine, actually, I chuuni-angsted myself into the 19th century and thought I needed to send her a courier pigeon if we couldn't be in the same room."

"No angst! You just got superpowers, man, you should be happy! Just, you know, uncle Ben stuff, great responsibility." He summons the commscreen then swipes it in her direction. All of the major communication apps are listed on the folder he opens for her as well as a regular phone app. "If you give me access to your phone we can connect it so that if you call her it'll show as your own number rather than some random government thing."

"Oh, no, that is actually literally the only angst I had about it, was thinking Mi-cha would be annoying about thinking I vanished. Everything else about leaving my human life behind me is fantastic."

She removes her phone from her pocket and... squints, rubs it with her sleeve, and taps on it several times.

"Apparently soaking your phone in blood and then calling down divine thunder on your own location does not have positive effects on its lifespan," she says, tossing it on the table. "Whatever. She'll take random-government-number calls."

"Ah, yeah, I suppose that would be a problem. Well, it's just like a touch screen except, like, not solid. ...do you know her number or would you like me to look it up?"

"I've got it."

She doesn't have a great memory for phone numbers, but it's one of the only ones she actually uses. You can remember one of just about anything.

She starts frowning the second it's picked up. "Mimi, you look like – shut up I'm fine – they let you leave looking like that? Go shower! Go – Yeah I'm fine, I have lightning powers. Uh, Lee Tae-gun touched me while h- Jesus, Mimi, you cannot make that noise when I ruptured my eardrums last night. Lightning powers. Yeah, so – yeah. Oh my God, Mimi, I don't know if he's cuter in person because I don't read your – ugh. Yes, he has a fantastic ass. Obviously. Go shower and eat something with protein in it before you hospitalize yourself you dumbass. Yes. Really. I'm fine! Bye!"

Huff. "Like I said. She worries."

Now that the call is over Yoo-min's wheezing laughter doesn't have to be silent anymore.

"What's so damn funny."

"Tae-gun's fantastic ass," he says, trying to get his laughter under control.

"I'm not going to lie to her," she drawls. "You've seen the man."

"Alright, well, in that case I think first order of business is getting you any of your belongings you might want plus a new phone, then test what you can do with your powers, and then it's bureaucracy."

"Yeah, sounds good. I'm gonna want my jewelry box... the embroidered combat boots, probably, those are the only shoes that matter..."

(She'll have to go back on her own to pop the seam on her mattress, but that's what paranoia gets you. It's not Yoo-min's business.)

Cool, cool, they can get all of that.

This is exciting!

Tae-gun gets a text from Park Yoo-min to meet up in one of Quasar's meeting rooms. This is irregular, and Tae-gun is almost certain he knows the reason, which makes him kind of nervous.

Still, he's there, waiting for Yoo-min.

Yoo-min walks in a couple of minutes after Tae-gun's arrived.

"Tae-gun! Good to see you, I was half-expecting you to not show up."

"What is it."

"Straight to the point, huh? Well, as you may have guessed, it's about the new girl."

Uh huh.

"You guys are, like, super compatible, right?"

"Probably."

"Well, I think you should hear her out."

"...huh?"

"I think you're going to try to flee the room whenever you catch whiff of her. I think that's a mistake."

"...it's none of your business. I don't take partners."

"Didn't say you should partner with her! Said you should hear her out."

"...what does that mean?"

"Literally what the words literally mean. She has things she wants to say to you; you should hear them."

"Why? You could just tell me if they're that important."

"Oh, I don't think I could, actually? At least, I can't do the, the whole thing she does, getting super invested in it and having a bunch of opinions."

"You've got plenty of opinions." To Tae-gun's frequent chagrin.

"Look, like I said, I'm not asking you to partner with her or anything. I know you don't take partners. Just, you know." Shrug. "Hear her out," he repeats.

"Fine."

"Atta boy," he says, patting Tae-gun on the shoulder.

He flinches. He and Park Yoo-min aren't as compatible as he is with Marza but they're still compatible enough that that felt—nice. Uncomfortably so.

Tae-gun prefers not to be exposed to that kind of nice any more than he strictly has to.

Yeah, buddy, he gets it.

Well, no he doesn't, but, still.

Marza sets herself to power training. This turns out to consist of a few days' worth of figuring out how to activate the power, then about a week of working out how to not activate it when she's pissed off. Chuuni she may be, but she is not going to be blowing out lightbulbs when she rants. Inconveniencing janitorial staff would increase the cost of ranting unacceptably.

Her powers are straightforward: concentrate negative charge in an area, optionally with another area of positive charge, resulting in a redistribution of energy in the form of an explosion of charged plasma. That is to say, lightning. If she's careful, she can keep it from shattering wineglasses further than a few feet away. If she's very specifically not careful, and gets the angles right, she can knock over a truck with the thunder from a bolt that's slagging a second, adjacent truck. She can't do very much truckmurder, but if she's more conservative with what she's doing, she can sustain combat pace for a while. Not as long as some absolute freaks S-Rank espers, especially since her backlash starting at her feet makes it so hard for her to actually move from target to target – but if she had a good partner, she could probably keep it up just fine. (Instead, she is considerately provided with some rando who guides her enough that she can do two whole rounds of testing on the same day, wow.)

And then she can do the obstacle courses and what have you. She was a highly kinaesthetic person even before getting superpowers; she was (and has not legally stopped) pursuing a degree in classical dance. She's strong, fast, and coordinated. Her grasp of tactics is surprisingly firm for a total civilian, but she does sometimes get tunnel vision when there's blood in the air. She hates to retreat, for all that she understands that it's sometimes how you win.

That'd be a high-B or low-A, depending on her performance live. She can take her pick for being Officially Declared B- or A-rank, depending on whether she wants to risk maybe being downgraded after some action or hope for an upgrade (the low sustain is what's docking the most points, here).

Well, if she got demoted she'd kill everyone in this room and then h find it disheartening, so she should probably start at B.

"B-rank buddies," she says to Yoo-min, clearly not thrilled but bearing up admirably. "For now. Also, is it a coincidence that my shiny new anime hair color is one that I was already dyeing it?" She runs a still-slightly-tingly hand over her tight-buzzed but now all-natural crimson hair. (It's also gloriously smooth, the way that hair gets when it physically cannot be damaged without concerted effort. Bedhead: not an esper-level issue.)

"Kind of but kind of not! We all tend weird colours—not everyone, Tae-gun's got black hair and his eyes are only a little unusual, for example, and his old partner Kang Jaeha has brown hair and black eyes—but there's some trends, and it always—well, we always look hot? And whatever we end up with always looks hot on us? And for some reason when people dye their hair or wear contact lenses or whatever prior to manifesting they'll get those colours naturally more often than not." Shrug. "Whatever's giving us these powers wants all of us to be anime protagonists."

"I looked hot anyway," she scoffs. "...but I do like the color palette. Anyway, Tae-gun has had partners in the past? I'm not trying to be a stalker or anything, just... I'm curious and it might be job-relevant information."

"Oh, yes, five of them. The first three lasted a few months each, then Kang Jaeha was like a year and a half or so and then there was someone else but that one barely got off the ground and that was a bit over five years go."

"Huh. Picky... scratch that, if I make fun of him for not getting along with people well enough God might actually personally smite me for my hypocrisy."

Yoo-min laughs and shakes his head. "He's good people. Lots of newbies get intimidated by him but he's a sweetie, really.

"So! I think it's, uh, I guess signing a contract next? This is when you can choose to pick another guild if you want but Quasar is the best guild, really."

...then he turns a bit more serious.

"I do actually think it's the best guild in Korea," he continues more slowly. "And I can tell you why I think that, but you might want to hear pitches from other guilds. I don't know. There are penalty clauses to these contracts, usually, so I don't want you to walk into it blind. The government agent from the other day can get you in contact with some other places, and they're supposed to be all neutral and stuff, so you might also want to hear their more, uh, objective, I guess, assessment of each guild?"

"...is there any other guild in Korea that will have the leverage to use me properly, and also put up with my bullshit? Not the bullshit like my honorific allergy, I could work on that if I had to, but – from what you've said, it seems like you guys take someone caring about the job more seriously than, uh, someone maybe calling your boss a little bitch to his face. And I don't want to say I'm gonna be doing that once a week, but. It could happen. And I don't think there are that many guilds who would put up with it happening even once."

He rubs the underside of his nose with his index finger in the standard weeaboo smug gesture. "Quasar is the only guild in Korea that will let you yell at its president."

"Then... it's not that I wouldn't try to make it work with another guild. But I'd be risking more. And it's not like Korea's only S-rank would stick with a bunch of slackers. And I do still owe him my life, and it's still going to be more convenient to do something about it from his own guild even if he doesn't let me guide him."

"I feel like the responsible version of Yoo-min would insist here but I also feel like you might punch him and honestly the responsible version of Yoo-min is imaginary at the best of times so whatever, he can stay in his corner. Let's get you to HQ and have you sign some documents."

She can do paperwork! It's an annoying but very real consequence of living in civilized society instead of an anarchic hunter-gatherer commune, which she has already accepted is not going to happen!

They teleport to the foyer, because Marza is not authorised to teleport directly to anywhere else in the building until she's actually signed that contract.

The foyer of Quasar Guild HQ is clean and professional but not bare or too utilitarian; they have an image to uphold, after all, and it wouldn't do to look anything but welcoming.

One of the walls is taken over by a cute small café with a few sitting and standing tables, while the center is dominated by a beautiful fountain with pretty karp swimming in it, surrounded by benches. The doors outside are glass set on glass and the reception desk is across the hall from them. The last wall has four elevators sectioned off from the rest of the room by swing turnstiles which require either a visitor's pass or registered biometrics to pass through, and heavy-duty security people stand at attention by the turnstiles. The floor is marble and the walls are polished steel, and there are two muted TVs hanging behind the reception showing two different news channels, one of which is showing a section on Lee Tae-gun.

The area is moderately busy, with a few groups of people having coffee or standing around chatting or just sitting by the fountain admiring it.

"Oh my god, it's a yuppie ~workspace~," Marza mutters. "For superheroes. This is fine."

Glance at the TV. He really is cuter in person; the camera keeps you from seeing the tells that he's faking his entire personality.

"Espers have enhanced senses, by the way," Yoo-min murmurs as he leads the way towards the reception without looking at her, at a volume she almost certainly wouldn't have been able to hear as a non-esper.

"Ah. It is very pretty, I just have an allergic reaction to built-in cafés," she says at similar volume.

He grins but turns to address the receptionist as they get there. "Jaehee!" he greets her as he leans over the desk to grab a pen from one of their pen holders and start playing with its clicky button. "Get my girl Marza here a badge so she can get in and sign some documents?"

"Sure! It's a pleasure to meet you, Marza-nim. May I have some ID?"

Marza presents a Philippines passport, containing her full legal name and an assertion that as of two years ago she was seventeen years old.

"I really need to get local ID," she mutters. "I'd been getting by with my university card, but that's going to stop working."

Well that's going to be difficult to type in, but she'll do her best.

"...wait, are you the esper Lee Tae-gun-sunbae awakened in that dungeon?"

"Yes, I am. I also very nearly electrocuted him, for bonus points."

Baek Jaehee is much too professional to squeal in public like that but she has some tea to share with some people later.

"That must've been scary," she says, reaching for inane things to say as she tap tap taps and then she offers Marza a plastic card. "Welcome to Quasar!" she says, smiling.

"Actually the dungeon didn't manage to scare me more than, like, a mid-grade American slasher film? And I certainly wasn't afraid of electrocuting T- Lee Tae-gun... sunbae... because I had no idea who he was. Thank you though, I do feel very welcomed." She knots the lanyard around her wrist in such a way as to have easy access if she needs to scan it for things.

No... idea... who...

.......wha.

Clicky clicky he drops the pen back into its holder, gives Baek Jaehee a two-finger salute, and leads her past the turnstiles and to the elevators up. "Tae-gun is a stickler for the honorifics, by the way. We've known each other nearly a decade and he still just calls me Yoo-min-sunbae. At least I managed to get him to drop the Park and to not call me sunbaenim anymore, so that's progress."

"Oh, this is how I die," she mutters. "Icepicked by the K-pop man. Can I just call him Sunbae to his face and... try very hard not to slip up when talking to anybody else?"

"He's not going to icepick you but he will correct you every time." Yoo-min seems to think this is hilarious. "People do vary in how seriously they take it but, like, this is Korea so everyone's going to at least find it weird if you don't do the thing. It's second-nature to us, see, Tae-gun calling me sunbae is downright affectionate, especially compared to calling me shi or," shudder, "nim. But if anyone's, like, a dick to you about it you can yell at them. Or tell me to yell again, or yell at prez, always healthy to yell at prez."

"Correcting me is so much woooooooorse," she moans. "Like that nightschool teacher! Would you call your mother 'young lady'? No, teacher-nim, if I end up inside Nightmare and have to speak to my mother again that is not what I will be calling her!"

"You can never go wrong with calling him sunbaenim, or just sunbae if you get partnered, but I realise that's not that helpful."

Ding, the elevator's here.

Elevator! Probably it's glass, right, that's the kind of establishment this is?

It is! How'd she guess?

It actually goes up really fast, and soon they're on floor 15, where her meeting with the bureaucrat will be.

"'Scuse me," says the tallest guy in the lift as he gently tries to push past the crowd and then continuing to lead the way.

Marza isn't the shortest person in the lift, but she is not very large. She does know how to get through a crowd, though.

Andddd meeting room!

There's a person already inside. She gets up and bows. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Marza-nim, my name is Jeong Seo-ah."

"And here's where I leave you! Catch ya later."

"See you, Minime. Hello, Jeong Seo-ah-nim. I am going to meet a great number of people today, and if I am pleased to meet them all, I may combust, but I think I can safely be charmed."

Another two-finger salute and off he goes.

She blinks a couple of times, but decides to not draw attention to whatever it is that Marza just said and sit down instead, gesturing at the chair across the table from her. "Please, sit. So here I have the standard contract for new hires; I can go over it with you or you can read it in your own time if you wish. You are of age, yes?"

"Indeed I am. By all means let's go over the provisions of the standard contract."

Saying "I literally don't care what it says as long as I can eat and sleep somewhere and blow up dungeons" does not go over well with pencil-pushers.

The guild has basic housing and siloing as a standard part of the contract, and she'll be making a mildly obscene amount of money, so that's a yes to two out of three, at least. There's a lot of customisation available to her, but they're apartments, and not huge ones at that, so if she wants something else she'll need to acquire it herself with her actual money. Beyond that, the contract has a lot of legalese for saying exactly the things she's been told: training, interfacing with other companies and the media, assigning her dungeons, medical care, etc etc etc. This contract itself does not assign her a partner, but it does say that helping her find a suitable one—in-guild or not—is also part of the guild's responsibilities.

As for her obligations, she needs to help clear at least 70% of the dungeons she's assigned to, plus make a reasonable effort to replace the remaining 30% with an equivalent workload, barring injury or impossibility. She should uphold the image of the guild in public, which basically means not talking shit about it where the media can get their grubby hands on it or airing any kinds of dirty laundry about people in the guild without their permission. Plus, in general, stuff she says to the media needs to be treated with care, and the contract highlights that they have teams responsible specifically for dealing with PR and she should really strongly consider never ever talking to the media on her own ever because the media is full of sharks. The guild reserves the power to break the contract should Marza be found to be acting negligently with respect to her or the guild's image.

(Seo-ah goes over this as someone who's outlining a way in which this guild is a lot less draconian than one might expect; she keeps phrasing things as "you only need to worry about" and "it's not a problem if". Which probably stands to reason, given the whole way celebrities are made to behave in public in Korea.)

Finally, there are a lot of non-disclosure clauses. In full generality, she is not allowed to discuss or publicise any details about any espers' powers or backlashes that aren't already public, including her own, without the guild's permission. She is not allowed to leak any internal documents, in public or in part, to any third parties, and there are strict internal access levels and she can't share anything of a given level with anyone of a level lower than that. She is not allowed to discuss details of the dungeons themselves, tactics and strategies, team compositions, or partnership planning with outsiders. She is not allowed to disclose her schedule. Other guilds are generally considered to be "allies" and have their own rules for disclosure that are more lax than with proper non-guild third parties, but independent espers do not have such exceptions and are treated as external actors.

And on, and on, and on.

"Am I covered if I... wink salaciously, or something, in a direction containing cameras? I have no intention of voluntarily interacting with the media, and I don't make friends I could leak information to, but I might roll my eyes at reporters if not warned otherwise."

"It's... risky. There's more leeway for less communicative acts like winking or rolling your eyes, especially in light of espers' altered emotional states after using their powers, but if you could lean on the more positive kinds of interaction that has less potential to backfire. We don't have as much of a focus on enabling parasocial relationships as K-pop artists do, but it's definitely something your audience will be familiar with, showing positive or flirtatious emotions towards them or the media."

"...yes, I can probably do that. Redirect to neutral-flirtatious... tossing my hair? Hmm." She shakes her head, an act which might toss her hair if her head were not still buzzed. "These terms are acceptable to me."

Then she can sign here, here, and here.

"Alright! Welcome aboard, Marza-nim! Do you have a preference for what form your access to the comms system should take? Most people just have chips implanted but some people prefer earrings or rings or bracelets. Once you're linked to it you'll have access to a welcome packet with more information about next steps. Oh, and if you've already arranged for guild lodgings you may be able to teleport to them directly using the system."

"Yeah, you guys can put the chip wherever. I... don't think I've arranged for lodgings yet, but maybe I should ask Yoo-min about that? I guess maybe it's more your job than his."

"It is, though the system will have an automated interface to make it easier!" She opens her commscreen and presses a button that materialises a chrome cube approximately 10cm to a side with a circular aperture on top. "Insert a finger into this and you'll get the chip implanted on its tip."

"Ah! Good. ...it's hardened against lightning powers, right? I don't want to fry it in two hours."

"Yes, it should be able to withstand anything you throw at it."

"Great."

Poke! Ow. Flick flick try to imitate some of Yoo-Min's gestures?

A light blue-green holographic screen of light appears before her eyes and the first thing that it shows her is a popup asking her if she wants to go through the tutorial.

She just barely stops herself from refusing the tutorial. She does in fact need a tutorial. No matter how much tutorials are bullshit.

It's reasonably simple! You open the window by swiping two fingers down in the air, and you can program other gestures for shortcuts to specific programs. The sidebar menu can be customised, and it's a pretty straightforward computer. She can also connect her phone to it and use any of her phone's apps on it or make calls.

There are, however, some bits of added functionality. She can summon more screens, resize them, move them, and modify them to open 3D structures like blueprints; she can share the contents of her screen with other users nearby; she can materialise certain items (mostly weapons, though she might get access to more stuff later); she can request a teleport to her silo, her assignment destination, a specified set of coordinates, or one of a list of saved locations. For the latter two she has a budget of teleporting power she can spend on this, and power grows with the square of the distance between her current location and her destination, but it also goes down depending on things like whether it's a known or famous location, or next to someone else in the system who's already there, or a number of other things, plus she can request an emergency teleport beyond her current available budget which she'll need to justify in the future.

There's also an app for internal Quasar logistics: receiving and reviewing her schedule, requesting resources, scheduling meetings, and so on. That app currently has three notifications for her: a link to a request form for lodgings, one for a silo, and an invitation to the Quasar employee group chat.

Groupchat!!!!

Please choose your display name: María Esperanza Ricardo y Belleza ▮

Azkalita

, asshole.

MODERATOR ANNOUNCEMENT: @Azkalita has joined the chat.

🍸nomu?: welcome! who dis

taegun fan no. 1183: welcome!
taegun fan no. 1183: you're probably Marza-nim, right?

yoo-min-max: muh girl's here!
yoo-min-max: welcome!

🦔gangnag: eyy welcome!

🐣qt patoo t: welcome!

🧋youngwoo: welcome ^_^

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: minime!!!!!
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: i didnt get a verdict on that nickname btw. y/n/fall upon my own blade in shame
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: also a bunch of other people who aren't minime. he and i share a warrior's bond that cannot be broken tho

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: also yeah it's marza. system tried to get me to use my govt name but i am too smart for fairy tricks

yoo-min-max: hey, whatever floats your boat
yoo-min-max: still not sure I get it

SenSoJoo: welcome!

🍸nomu?: why warrior bond?

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: warriors bond forged by him visiting me in hospitaljailschool because he is immune to both lightning and rudeness
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: and i will take literally any excuse to call anyone something that isn't their name plus a 1-2 syllable suffix

❄️sn0wpup: what's wrong with names :3

🗡cutwithoutreason: Are you asking because you care, or because you think people ranting is funny?

❄️sn0wpup: she's new! it's an icebreaker!

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: if people ranting is funny im about to be hilarious
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: nobody in this country understands what names are FOR
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: your mom and your friend w benefits and your accountant shouldnt call you the same thing with one syllable adjusted for level of asskissing
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: and if they absolutely gotta there should be like fifty. japan got that part so right
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: having like six of them is the perfect antidote to being interesting. it turns honorifics from embedded metadata abt your attitude towards whoever into like...
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: arithmetic about how much ass u gotta kick
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: ...kiss
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: it would be cooler if it was evaluating whether you could beat yr conversational partner unconscious

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: uhhh not to say y'all's entire language is bullshit sorry,

🍸nomu?: LMAO
🍸nomu?: you go girl I like that spirit

🦔gangnag: my fwb calls me oppa

🧋youngwoo: TMI, woojin, TMI

🦔gangnag: you know that's nothing compared to what goes on in this chat when @do-not-jin is asleep

🚫do-not-jin: I'm trying not to rain on you guys' parade here because of the newbie
🚫do-not-jin: but please just let me watch anime in peace without having to worry you're about to cause a lawsuit

🍸nomu?: wow, some of us getting our asses kicked by dungeons out here and Dojin-sunbae's watching anime

Jeong Seo-ah clears her throat back IRL. "I think we're probably done, then?"

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: not to immediately start more shit but >oppa dont get me started on the gender. so much gender. spanish was bad enough
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: can i not jsfk;

"Oh my God have I been. Yes, okay. Thank you so much for your help and I will now leave your office as quickly as I physically can!"

Scuttle scuttle scuttle.

❄️sn0wpup: dojin-hyung's snipers got her. rip

yoo-min-max: @Azkalita hey girl you alright? did you suffer a stroke?

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: 100% fine and did not at all just zone out in front of jeong seo-ah-nim for like 10 minutes while i was supposed to be doing paperwork bc i am way too distractible to be trusted with cybernetic groupchat

yoo-min-max: LMAO is that true @SeoAA?

🆘SeoAA: I cannot confirm nor deny it

🆘SeoAA: not anybody!
🆘SeoAA: some people don't use chat at all
🆘SeoAA: anyway back to work with me

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: ...i do have to ask if ltg is among the persons i can gossip/rant about without summoning him
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: for legal reasons

(It's moderately annoying that he was able to go from "completely unknown local celebrity" to "subject of at least two rants" this quickly, but she isn't going to pretend she doesn't have the rants.)

...she feels a little bit better able to navigate while still using the screen. And walking along a flat surface is probably the one way to get better at it, right? Even if her feet are still a little numb, and her vision's weirdly blurry and her ears ring a little because she didn't quite zero out her backlash before it turned chronic, she's a dancer, she does this, she has –

no, it turns out that even a semi-professional dancer can, in fact, take an absolute pratfall if some asshole leaves a wall cord extended and it gets caught on the carpet. Who does that. Absolutely villainous. And she is perfectly positioned at a blind corner, so whoever's coming around can kick her in the face!

The person around the blind corner is none other than Lee Tae-gun, a man who has good enough reflexes to not only not kick her in the face, but also gently hold her to stop her fall.

Had she ever asked herself the question, "What happens in the story of Marza's life right after she trips and falls while not paying attention walking in Quasar HQ's hallways?", she would've been able to predict this.

yoo-min-max: he's, like, in the chat, but he never reads it

Oh! Fantastic! This sucks!

"...sorry."

Something... is up with him.

He closes his eyes...

...then looks at her.

Oh so the porn is right sometimes.

And this is is why people's backlash is confidential information.

Cool cool cool cool cool.

She twists and then flings herself out of his arms, landing in a tactical crouch three feet away.

And by the time she looks at him again he's schooled his expression and folded his arms behind his back. "Marza-shi," he says.

"...Lee Tae-gun-nim. My sincerest apologies."

(She can get it right, when she needs to apologize. She can be serious enough to give a shit. Helps that that one's always -nim, though.)

"No apology is necessary. Are you here to... sign up for the guild...?"

"Indeed, I have signed. I have yet to choose my lodgings or silo."

She feels kind of slimy saying it. But she needs to get him in a room if she's going to actually communicate with him, and it's not like it isn't true, so...

"Are you busy? I imagine you have some experience with such things, and I have never attempted... real estate. Or, you know, whatever this is. My time in this nation has exclusively been spent in hostels and university dormitories."

There is very little he wants less than this.

"You're my hoobae, then," he says, switching to informal language. "I think I'm not the best person to help you with that? I've been in the guild for eight years, I wouldn't know what the current procedures are." Which... is true assuming that the current procedures have changed, which he's assuming for the sake of getting the hell away. On the other hand he was homeless prior to joining the guild, so, he actually does have some experience with that. Which, again, he's not going to use at all, due to all of the getting the hell away from here he's about to be doing.

"Okay. That is not actually what I meant. Cards on the table, sunbae, it is absolutely understandable to request a teleport to Mongolia after what just happened, I considered it myself, and if you need to go – take a bottle of guiding pills and do an inadvisable amount of yoga – I will absolutely not stop you, but if it is even distantly possible that this could happen again, perhaps right before a dungeon, then we need to address it sooner or later, and I would very much rather it be sooner."

"'This'."

"Coming into physical contact with me, or possibly just being too adjacent, and then going catatonic until I physically removed myself. I doubt very much that you missed it."

"I would've stepped away. And now that I'm prepared for it to happen, it won't anymore."

"My acute backlash includes, at its extremis, full-body paralysis. If we are ever in a combat situation wherein you are best positioned to rescue me from the consequences of a major assault, you will not be the only one at risk. Will you please allow me to talk to you about potential solutions, you –"

Deep breath.

Deep breath.

"I am going to continue apologizing throughout this conversation," Marza notes. "I feel passionately about this, but I do not need to subject you to... undue... verbal abuse. Sorry."

He twitches at the outburst and is about to say "no" more firmly when he recalls Yoo-min's request. Just hear her out, Yoo-min said.

"Fine," he sighs. "Come with me." He spins on his heels and starts to move away with purpose, opening his commscreen as he does to check something.

Same, actually!

❤️‍🔥Azkalita: sorry for afk and also more afk after this msg
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: i am called upon to perform righteous violence
❤️‍🔥Azkalita: ...not literal

yoo-min-max: good luck with the bloodbath!

🍸nomu?: may your enemies tremble and cower before your might

He leads her to a very large meeting room, the kind that could seat thirty people comfortably, then stands as far away from her as humanly possible once they're both inside. Even so, she can still feel him, a muted version of what it was like to touch him, pressing on her skin from where he's standing.

Jesus Christ, dude.

...shut up. No spite. He can handle spite, apparently, and it takes a weapon out of her kit but it takes the armor out of his.

She'll helpfully lean against the wall along the longest available axis. She can project her voice through an auditorium, a conference room isn't a problem.

"...why are you an esper?" she asks. "Like, I know that powers are random, but... why be an esper. Instead of doing K-pop or e-sports or football. I know this doesn't sound relevant."

...this is not anywhere near where he expected this conversation to start.

"I'm the most powerful esper in Korea. I couldn't do K-pop," he says like it's the most self-evident thing in the world. "The dungeons exist, and the world isn't going to be made safer if people like me decide to do something else."

"Cool. So... great power, great responsibility? Doesn't matter what you want, because people need you?"

That question seems incoherent to him. "I want to help people. And I do have a responsibility to help people."

Oh so he's fucked up fucked up.

"Cool. Not really my game, but I respect it. With me, the only thing that could possibly matter for me to be doing is the thing that I do best. I'm a good singer, and I watch anime, and I was a part-time model for a while. That's all stuff I want, stuff I like. But the thing I do is what I do best. That was dancing, because I could dance better than anybody. Now it's the pro esper bit, because so few people can do that. Yeah? And I expect I'll like it, but that doesn't matter. If I didn't like it, that wouldn't matter either. Not until it impacted my performance. Stopped me from getting out of bed. Meant I started taking sloppy risks. Because if your feelings are getting in the way of doing the thing that's most important to you, then you gotta re-evaluate which one is more important to you."

"...okay."

He has no idea how to interact with any of that? Why is she telling him all of this. Like, yeah he does find some of that relatable, but where is she going with it.

"Do you think that refusing to be in the same room with me is going to help you do what is actually important to you?"

She shakes her head. "Let's generalize that, actually, past the topic we've been on. Do you think that operating under a life-threatening amount of backlash helps you more effectively do what is actually important to you? Do you think that having a fatal aneurysm in the middle of a dungeon when you push yourself that little extra bit harder is going to be better for the world and for the people who need you than figuring out how to deal with your issues?"

"It's complicated."

"I... understand that. Not your reasons, but I understand thinking that – your circumstances have to break the rules. Because you're too strong, or because you're too far gone, or. Whatever.

"But the first thing I learned about you is that you saved my life, and the second is that I could help you, and the third is that the medical profession thinks you should've died years ago. And if you had, I'd be dead now too. So I am not going to stop. I am going to find a way to help you, or you are going to tell me why your complicated reasons matter more than... the people who will be less lucky than me."

"...I don't know who told you I should've died years ago but that's not true." Admittedly it might be true of—a different sort of person. But not in principle. He's a case in point, but he doesn't think that was powers lottery, he thinks that was—skill and effort. Anyone could do it, if they had to, if they tried.

"Was that all you had to say?"