They can sort of entwine their arms a little bit, it'll help if they roll their sleeves up. But once they're out of the building - "I think I should fly you back to my house, this'll work better if I have more backlash to more closely match you."

"Wow.... thank you." That Haru will fly about Lucien specifically seems like it is probably a really big deal?

"Do you have a preference about how to be carried?"

"Anything you think is good will do?"

Okay then. Bridal style works well with distributing weight when he's in the air. Scoop and up above traffic level, Cricket flapping after them.

(The feeling of guidance slides more sweetly into place as Haru's backlash accumulates closer to Lucien's level.)

Lucien is two parts clinging to Haru real hard and one part 'this must be what it is like to have a personal guardian angel'. He is not sure if that part makes sense but he's having trouble thinking clearly about it under the circumstances.

It's farther than Haru would usually fly, but he's carrying a compatible person who doesn't seem averse to having a conversation. "They told me you started trying to call the cops on yourself in a restaurant?"

"Yes?" Lucien was already assuming Haru knew this. 

"And this had to do with the Philippines somehow? - we can talk about something else if you want but I'm gonna need to be talking about something."

Th subject is definitely too important to avoid!

"Uh, yeah there was a TV report about how I um. Killed a bunch of people and did billions of dollars of property damage in the Philippines. ... Which I now think I probably did indirectly somehow I guess? It's probably really important to figure out exactly how though - since keeping me in a place won't prevent it from happening again. Um... if killing me would probably you should drop me but that thought seems like maybe it isn't right and I am not sure it would?"

"I think the, uh, remote-control disasters are... handled. I'm not gonna drop you."

"Are you sure it isn't like, costing billions of dollars to handle? That would also be bad even if it might not be as obvious except presumably everyone is paying enough attention to notice that even if ordinarily they might not be."

"That would also be bad, but, good news, espers make lots of money, usually not billions but it'll depend what your powers are."

Unfortunately Lucien was raised by economists.

"So.... people are expecting me to pay them back but this might in fact be possible? I'm not sure how much that helps - probably some but it would be much better for me to get the powers and put the money to the next most important use and not have everyone preventing me from wrecking more places in the first place."

"Oh, I don't think they do expect it, but if you did feel so moved to help out with Philippines disaster relief. Also solves your historians-aren't-that-rich problem with supporting yourself."

"Um, just checking - they don't expect it because they think I wouldn't bother to help given that I caused the problem in the first place?"

"I think they mostly don't expect it because it would take the form of a charitable donation and the baseline rate of people making charitable donations isn't in their favor."

"And they assume the baseline would apply to me because why?"

"Well, they don't know very much about you."

".... are you sure about that?"

"I guess I haven't asked them but that'd be my guess. I think your backlash is affecting how you reason about this."

"Oh."

"I think I can tell that is the case but can't tell if it's because the backlash is effecting how I weigh things in importance or if it's about how I think it's appropriate to respond or what i think is actually happening? ... I'm guessing it's at least a bit of that last one?"

"I think it's at least partly the last one. Like, if you were responsible for some kind of disaster in the Philippines that would be a big deal."

"But I'm not? Even indirectly?"

"Seems really unlikely but if you think it'd make you feel better I can look it up when we're at the house."