"I'd expect that to like, move unnaturally. Maybe you just pretend to be very stoic all the time when you are doing your thing."

"That used to be somewhat necessary, when I was... ten?  And younger."

"Mask glue technology has improved since then?"

"The masks themselves, I think."

"Okay. Are we like, driving somewhere? Helicopter? Space elevators exist here and nobody mentioned it to me yet?"

"Driving at least initially."

"It seems like it might be hard to have me responsibly seatbelted while I am quite this tied up."

"I do not expect it to increase the chance of a fatality."

"I would also prefer not to be nonfatally injured!"

Aaaaaaugh "I acknowledge that I can't do anything about it but I'm accustomed to wearing seat belts in cars and would prefer to do so especially since none of the things you're apparently famous for were 'motor vehicle accident statistician'!"

"If you promise to cooperate I will partially un- and retie you around the seatbelt."

"What the hell else would I do, even if I could somehow overpower you I would be alone for hours because you knocked out my babysitter!"

"High-stress situations occasionally bring out people's stupidity."

"I am extremely insane but absolutely not in a way where I am remotely likely to deliberately court a risk of being alone for hours, I can barely go to the bathroom with the door closed."

"Then you can wear a seatbelt.  Slightly more conventionally than you would have."

"Thank you."

He is very cooperative about being retied.

It's a pretty basic-looking silver car, parked in a little dirt pull-off area, with ankle cuffs built into the passenger seat.  Those go on first, and then yes, untie seatbelt retie.

....And a hug, when she's done.  She rests her chin on his shoulder.

"Wow this must be fun to get detailed," he mumbles into her sleeve. "With the ankle things. Do you have to pass it off as a kink thing?"

She straightens up.  "It's removable.  With a few tricks."

"Oh, that makes sense. Also possibly you have - goons or something who clean the car for you, and you aren't driving past random car washes staffed with high schoolers who want to save up to go to France."

"Mhm."  Around to the driver's side she goes.

"We can talk about something else if the things I'm randomly coming up with are boring."

"Tell me more about your world."

"In my world starting in the seventies there are sometimes hostile pocket dimensions that open up a portal somewhere and kidnap people, just like y- not actually like you at all, most of them teleport people into themselves although some of them do dispatch monsters to collect victims instead. They usually don't kill them but they never have a good time. At the same time people, about one out of every fifty K in the late teens sometimes early twenties age range, started awakening as espers. Awakening means we get a unique symptom hitting really really hard for a week, then it goes away, then we have superpowers but using them causes backlash which consist of that same symptom proportional to power use. Espers can quote unquote guide each other's backlash away with close contact, if they're compatible, which we can tell by touching, but I don't know firsthand what that feels like, I was identified as a suspected awakening by paramedics and not by an esper. Espers don't get kidnapped by dungeons though people who will go on to awaken later can."