"Yeah, I can do transportation things which I'm hoping you all can help me test out."

They're all happy to help! They can go to an offseason athletic field for range tests and one of them is willing to go all the way to the grocery store down the street if that will be useful!

That would be useful! Lucien can tag them now and they can head there while he starts off experiments in seeing how many people he can tag (it turns out to be everyone) and how many layers deep his tagging can go - unlimited, though they all cost a little bit more than him doing the tagging. He has a few of the people tagged in that chain wait for the tags to expire and can spend time trying to pull differently sized groups of people different distances, taking detailed notes as he goes.

Haru is on hug duty while he does this. One of the girls in the club is possibly drawing them.

"You okay?" Haru whispers, too soft for the baseliners to hear.

"She's drawing us..."

"Yeah, she's an esper fangirl, she probably thinks we're cute."

".... Society has changed a lot."

"It's been a while. It'd probably make her day if I kissed you, shall I?"

"I think that might be overwhelming but also I still want you to do it."

Haru lays his hand against Lucien's face and kisses him.

Artist fangirl falls off her chair grinning like an idiot.

Lucien looks flustered and then, after pausing for a second, goes in for a second kiss.

Lucien is so fun to kiss.

(Artist fangirl squees.)

"It turns out kissing when I have a little bit of backlash is even better."

"Yup, the guiding really enhances it."

Haru is not himself backlashed so he can take notes on their experiments. The high schoolers apparently get to count this toward their community service requirement so they're willing to spend quite a long time trying stuff.

Lucien does not find a significant time difference between yoinking someone from across the street and across the football field - street student just accelerates until he touches Lucien at which point he comes to a complete stop without feeling any deceleration apparently. He figures out that if uses someone he tags to tag a third party the third party tag expires at the same time as the original tag. There are, as far as he can tell, no limits on the number of people he can tag, though retrieving more people costs more backlash, and someone's weight doesn't seem to effect anything either.

He also kisses Haru a few more times - for guiding reasons, of course.

Of course. Gotta have a partner on hand for guiding when you are doing powers testing.

"Your power is very cool. Can you keep track of who has tagged whom, and tell when they tag someone new by any feedback other than backlash?"

"I have to do the tagging myself through them, and can feel when that's an option."

"So I guess things might be confusing if they touched someone in a dungeon for another reason."

"Yeah - I could work out some sort of code maybe, like they have to touch someone twice in quick succession for me to tag them."

"Yeah, that's a good idea." He boops Lucien on the nose twice.

"Um, do we have any more experiments? I'm done with my list."

"Can you tag people through anything more than a layer or two of clothes?" Haru holds up a notebook against his chest.

Poke.

"Nope."