"Vast majority of espers will still be non-parahumans. Even accounting for espers who trigger during their awakenings, which might outnumber the parahumans who awaken but I'm not sure."

"Still, that's going to really change the paradigm, you'll wind up with people who can use their esper power solely as a holdout weapon and they'll be able to operate, empowered, for much longer than an esper can."

This is true and it's important info that Tattletale is only just getting from her power during this conversation. Not that she'll admit this when pretending she knew it all along is still an option.

"Cape powers are a bigger deal than esper ones, but yeah."

"Yeah, you'll get capes who aren't espers also running dungeons. What's a second trigger?"

"When someone who already has powers is under a lot of stress and their powers are failing them they can sometimes get an extra boost and unlock new abilities."

"Huh. Sometimes espers turn out to have powers that didn't come up in testing but I don't think they're ever definitely new. Awakenings are definitely a lot of stress though."

"Yeah - it'll still mostly need to relate to their powers in some way but if it does it'll probably meet the stress requirement."

"Relate how?"

"It'll vary - in Lucien's case it was freaking out about using his powers to hurt people."

"Do capes get a sense for what they might be able to do like espers do?" May is idly outlining an unpowered-team-taking-a-dungeon protocol in her notebook while they talk.

"Well, I did but I'm special."

"Most people get something though, but not as much as espers."

"Inconvenient. And if you," Lucien, "don't know what your second trigger did I guess being an esper doesn't extend to cover that."

"I can tell I have a new power but I'm pretty sure it's the esper one - it feels pretty different."

"Well, it sounds like we're getting set up with an NGO sort of mandate which isn't supervillainous at all so if you test it out I will simply have to kiss you about it afterwards."

Wow he really likes May.

Yes see this is why she needed to make an offer before Lucien decided to flat out ditch his life of supervillainy in favor of following his girlfriend into whatever she decided was a better use of their time. Which, admittedly probably wouldn't be that bad of a use of their time but it might not have benefited the Undersiders nearly as much as this plan. 

Cake cake cake. Notetaking. "So one thing we need for dungeons is response time - they're usually open for a few days if they aren't killed first, but if nobody knows where to send missing persons reports, or knows who to tell about a gigantic spooky portal in their basement or their backyard, then it would be possible for one to go undetected by anyone with the ability to react to it. The monsters leaving the dungeon would be noticeable, but plenty of dungeons aren't interested in sending out monsters, they just directly assume people into themselves; and if people noticed the monsters and attributed them to cape activity that would be a slowdown on response too."

"We have staff throughout the city who know to report things - probably you should talk to Skitter about this sort of thing. I'm only the messenger."

May's not SUPER thrilled about meeting Bullet Ant Girl, whose bullet ants she might now be proof against but who could sure backlash May to death making her prove it if she wanted to. "Does Rete have her email?"

"Yes, but she'll want to meet in person. She won't bite - you."

"Why will she want to meet in person?"

"She wants to know who she's working with."

"...I have spent a week marinating in the desire to be in direct in-person contact with my fellow human beings way more than I ever normally want to do that and it didn't actually leave me with a great understanding of why some people feel that way about meeting in person when they're not working with magic brain damage. Did she know Lorica at all, I'm apparently basically like Lorica except for all the stuff that's different."

"Not really - there was an altercation when we were ordered to rob a bank I suppose." If she didn't mention it Lucien would and that looks bad.

"Well, I can see how that wouldn't necessarily have left the strongest impression." And Skitter was the one who yelled at them with bugs, so it's not like May has been out of her range all along. Still. Email. It's cheap it's easy it's asynchronous it works.