"Medical research yes. Anybody co-opting a vaccine program for things other than getting people vaccinated against diseases should be tried at the Hague. Less so about cars, I guess I'd have to think more about why. My mom and I don't have a car at all, might be part of it."

"I see it as... A sort of scale. Everything is connected and such. Everything has risk factors... Uhh... I was going somewhere with this..."

"I wanted to be an epidemiologist. I mean, I wanted to be an esper, but I figured it wasn't something to plan on, so."

"I was going for electric engineering... Ah, my point was, regulating things and trialing people has costs too, in time and effort and trust and freedom? So ideally society would do it in ways where it's worth it. Like dungeon and medical research. And not where it's not."

"Yeah, I don't think everything has to be a high-trust occupation. The untrustworthy would starve. I just don't want them burning the commons when people are getting eaten for lack of espers who have compatible partners."

"Mmh. If I find someone else I'll mention you if they're amenable, at least."

"Thanks. Bonus points if he's a cute queer, but that's really secondary."

"Ugh. I have feelings about partner expectations."

"I have no such expectations of you! Just, it'd be nice, eventually."

"Yeah, I know, and I'm maybe even a bit disappointed but- It seems like you could have the thought 'I have to, for better guiding and clearing more dungeons' and that would be. Very thorny and bad."

"I sorta have that thought but I don't think it's doing me harm, really. I don't have to any specific time but, since I do want better guiding and to clear more dungeons - those things fucking kill people and I get to be a superhero! - then insofar as I can alter my approach to the facts on the ground, I want to do that in a way that leaves me open to hooking up with people when that makes sense, even though, had I become an epidemiologist instead, I'd probably be saving myself for a serious long term relationship that I expected to turn into a marriage."

"I'm gonna have to think about that. I hadn't really, before. Just a blob of vague anxiety."

So for Toronto-based would-be-dungeoneers the onboarding process is relatively well-developed. They're going to be shadowing an established dungeon esper, Rhombus, who does force field things that he uses for mobility and to slice monsters in half. He'll be able to protect them while they go through a bog-standard dungeon, one which would usually not even involve espers because it's straightforwardly traversible and is not actively torturing people particularly horribly. It does nobody any good if the baby espers get eaten by psychic bobbit worms from the fourth dimension so they don't start them in one of those dungeons.

This one has been cased by a sensor; it's a small, aggressively hilly dungeon, the monsters are these deranged armadillos covered in knives that roll up and down the slopes of the landscape, but they go down fine to armor piercing rounds, and the kidnap victims are being kept in armadillo-casing-esque pods, though most of those are empty and some of them are secretly armadillos lying in ambush, so you have to open them carefully in case of civilians inside and be mindful that it might sprout knives at you.

Rhombus wants, before they go in, an introduction to their powers and how they guess they might ideally interact with all these things.

Wendy is taking this deadly seriously. She's been working out and eating differently on the advice of her SCUBA instructor, and esper genetics have taken that well, but it still hasn't been that long. She's wearing tough but easy to move in clothes, and good boots.

"My power is kinetic- Pushing things, myself, monsters, and projectiles. Less efficient at range. I can hurt monsters with narrow pinching and crushing at close range, or with ball bearings flung at high speed further away. It's decently backlash efficient but not obviously better than ordinary guns for things that are only this tough- I have plans to get these darts but that's a sidetrack. I can run and jump fast, help ascending the hills and such, but I'm not great at that yet. I can also actively flare a defense that makes my body tougher, but it's expensive to maintain for any more than a few moments. And I have to see things coming. So- The goal is to get people out and then get the core and only kill the core when we're sure everyone's out? If it were just me... I'd want to stick to tops of hills and snipe all the monsters I can find, and only then check pods while flaring defense in case they're ambushers. And watching for more monsters. With a team I'm less sure."

"I'm selectively imperceptible, and more expensively I can fly, so if I were alone I'd walk right up to monsters and shoot them point blank, and then - how are we supposed to get the pods open, if the monsters themselves want armor-piercing rounds but the prisoners are in the same shells?"

"Hydraulic rescue tools, same as if they were trapped in a crashed car."

"Do the ones that are secretly monsters want a lot of provocation to reveal themselves?"

"Let's say you didn't know."

"Then I guess I'd go at a pod with the tool from the top, standing uphill since there's always an uphill, and be ready to fly if it took that amiss. Anyway, with a team, I can't prevent them from seeing you, so I might want to be in sort of an outrider position, going ahead to see if there's anything over the next rise."

"Okay. In fact we know this one, though, they'll actually unroll if you just throw something at them, so we're going to bring some poker chips they had lying around."

"So, just so we're clear on the plan- I stick to the hilltops and attack monsters that come to me, Haru as a scout to warn of upcoming monsters, and we both hit monsters as necessary, and after we've cleared out most obvious monsters we go around getting the victims out, checking pods with thrown chips, then opening them with the hydraulic tools and escorting them out? Subject to changes, discussed over comms and such."

"The dungeon can make more armadillos whenever it wants. We're going to fight our way to a stationary pod, check it, and if there's a person in it, escort them to the entrance, repeat. I'm going to let you two take point, since you're both operating at decent range; if anything gets too close for comfort, I'll kill it for you."

"Are we expecting the victims in condition to walk?" Haru asks.

"They shouldn't have broken legs. Might be deoxygenated or freaked out. If they're too traumatized, I'll carry them piggyback, I don't need my hands to use my power and you need yours for your guns and ball bearings."

"Okay, understood. Approach pod, check pod, escort victim, repeat."

She pats her little ball-bearing-dispenser-thing, to double check it. And her backup, loose bearings in a little messenger bag.

She has to be switched the hell on for this. She makes a mental note to ask her agent if pre-dungeon stimulants are a good idea, later.

"I'm ready if you two are."

"Are there other people on the dungeon?" Haru asks.

"No. I could solo this if I had to. We'll do more like this and might share some of them with SWAT guys but for now no need to worry about friendly fire or anything."

"How do we tell when we've gotten everybody out?"

"Support guys have a list of missing, which isn't going to cover anyone who wasn't noticed but will give us a decent idea when to switch focus. If finding the core takes too long we'll do another sweep to see if it's added anyone; when we do find the core, we'll park it with a support at the entrance, do another sweep, and kill it on our way out. Sometimes, you miss someone. It sucks and there's no perfect way around it."

Deeeep breaths. "Leaving it alone longer would probably be worse."

"That's the idea. We think it's got about fourteen people right now, and it'll add one every couple of hours, tops, so a good sweep will cover us unless we're very unlucky. Don't rush, but don't dawdle. If you need a break to go sit in each other's laps take it but don't be prudes and take twice as long because there's staff around, everybody's seen it."

"Gotcha," says Haru.

"Let's get to it?"

They get to it. There's support people at the entrance with sandbag-filled bollards up at a perimeter to prevent any armadillos who attempt a breach from rolling into traffic, but no armadillos have attempted this yet. There's a ladder to get them up to the entrance; Haru climbs it rather than spend backlash on flying up. Inside: steep rolling hills, grassy and covered in holes from being aerated by armadillo knives. Fake sky, greener than the real one, shedding sunless ambient light. It looks almost silly, like someone turned a slider all the way up in a computer program that generates a landscape.

"Point, pick a direction," says Rhombus, and Haru nods and sets out in front, gun at the ready.

...She sees the comparisons to video games, sheesh. She will also climb totally normally instead of spending backlash to help herself up.

She jogs after him, diligently keeping her head on a swivel to look for monsters, ball bearing at the ready between her fingers.

(Holy shit. This is real. She's really doing it.)

Haru shoots an armadillo dead before they find a pod. Poker chipping it does not provoke it, but when they jaws-of-life it open there's nothing in there. Rhombus pockets a chunk of its shell. "This pays the bills. Lotta taxpayers don't understand why exactly you have to pay espers more than you pay firefighters," Rhombus says. "It's probably nothing but you grab stuff when convenient in case."

As they're tromping up the next hill they are approached by two at once, one from nearly dead ahead and the other from the left. Haru focuses fire on the left one.