This post has the following content warnings:
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
The dungeon is in Korea, but as an esper with a pretty specialised power niche Haru is used to occasionally having to go international for these dungeons, and the fact that he already speaks Korean is definitely a bonus. The espers he's going to be working with are all in Quasar Guild, which is the largest one in Korea and which has just recently acquired a very powerful teleportation esper, one whose power can be stored in batteries Quasar also happened to already have in its possession, so they're covering the teleportation cost for Haru to get there.
Bell and Jaeha
traceless
"That's about as far as I got ideawise. Fucking gargoyle stalactite dungeon, did they kill it yet?"
traceless
"Good. I don't want to be seeing that one again in a year." Sigh. "I guess I should reconsider the 'talking to rescuees' thing, it was - like, I should have bailed out sooner, that was my primary mistake, but I was talking to them and the last one said something stupid and I was just -" He shivers and squeezes closer. "I thought, wow, that's stupid, good thing it doesn't matter that she thinks that, and -"
this_peculiar_power
His poor Haru.
(There's a part of his brain that is relishing being able to provide relief for Haru. He is shouting that part down because Haru ALMOST DIED.)
"Maybe an automated check from your comms system could help? Every ten minutes or something?"
this_peculiar_power
"Something in the center of you vision saying 'please review your brain', maybe? I'm not sure. If I had been there—but there's not much point in what ifs."
traceless
"You can't fly and my carrying capacity isn't unlimited, so I'd have been leaving you behind to grab people, but I could've taken mini-breaks and checked in, I guess, and gotten a second eye on my backlash load."
traceless
"Yeah. I used to have the worst time when I noticed Yamanaka was real, since, like, I couldn't do much about that. - this was when she was doing a dungeon with me, I've never gotten all the way to solipsism without her on hand between now and my awakening."
traceless
"Yeah. I didn't really take note of it at the time but if that's what pops out when you think I'm gonna die it's sweet."
this_peculiar_power
That's an incredibly weird way to put it and yet Jaeha is incredibly endeared and he gets to keep calling him Haru-ya and he's just going to be uncomplicatedly happy about this. As a treat.
"I was so scared."
this_peculiar_power
...that's not what he'd been planning to say. In hindsight he feels like it's probably fine, though. "When I got a message saying you were really badly backlashed and a suicide risk, I—"
this_peculiar_power
"No, it's—I'm not trying to—you don't have to apologise. I just—" Really, really like you.
traceless
"...okay, so, I'm not at zero yet and am known to over-apologize as a backlash symptom, but, also, I made a serious error that, among other things, frightened you? And I'm sorry about that!"
this_peculiar_power
"I—guess—but like you said you've been apologising a bunch already. I—forgive you, to the extent that makes sense? And we'll figure out ways to make it less likely to happen in the future and that's—better than an apology."
this_peculiar_power
God he's not sure how he'll survive something like this happening again. He'll make sure to follow up on that "figuring out how to not" thing. He needs his Haru to be alive.
traceless
Haru cancels his scheduled fourth dungeon for the day - the stalactite one displaced his scheduled #3, since it was such a power match. He writes up an incident report, once he's debacklashed enough to do it with his own two hands, and he doesn't let go of Jaeha all night, even down to zero.
In the morning he assesses himself and says he can do normal dungeons but if anything fucky shows up he wants Jaeha waiting outside for mini-breaks.