(Fiiiine, fewer clothes can be involved. Also a blanket please. It's only practical.)

"I'll text Kathleen about it. In a few minutes, if nobody comes and mentions things to us directly... I don't want to do a lot of dungeons, I think."

"That's fair. I find them really academically interesting even if the process of clearing them isn't the most - intellectually stimulating? So I think I want to do them... if you're working underwater it'll be complicated to get you to me or me to you from here in a hurry even if our schedules are aligned really cleverly but I can have Cricket wait for me outside dungeons and then bring him with to keep me company on my way to the lake or whatever?"

"I'm not sure how much underwater it will be versus like park trails and stuff. Also I think, like, bridge foundations also need divers and could maybe benefit from esper divers. Not just deep sea cables and oil rigs and stuff. River dredging? Iunno... The problem with the dungeons, see, is that part of me really wants to keep clearing them but that part of me is a fucking idiot. She'll get us killed. She wants to watch it smash to pieces and cackle in savage glee. And that is just... I was constantly chanting 'stay alert, stay cool, stay focused' in there... I'm having trouble phrasing things."

"Well, wherever you go, it sounds - remote."

"Yeah, if I'm too remote there might be trouble getting to you promptly. It's really good you have Cricket. I gather he prefers the status quo of not really trying to talk to him?"

"I have a hard time figuring out how he feels about people trying to talk to him when he has not yet gotten annoyed enough at them to expressly tell them to fuck off."

"I'm gonna continue not actively trying to talk to him probably, then."

"Super valid. Though I do sort of wonder if being aggressively purred on would be good for your thing too."

"...Gut feeling says 'maybe if it was like a full-size tiger'? Also it wouldn't be guiding."

"Well, yeah, isn't for me either."

"Still no luck on anyone new in my meetups- Might change any day now though! I went to Chicago for one a couple weeks ago... They have some pretty cool museums there, have I talked about museums at you yet? That'll be a good backlash filler."

"You haven't! What've they got?"

"The three big ones I saw while I was in town was the art institute, museum of science and industry, and the Field Museum. They have an old german U-boat in MSI, and all sorts of fun stuff about, you know, science and industry. Section on dungeon materials and everything. The oil refinery exhibit was kinda greenwashed and a lot of it I knew already on account of being a nerd but..."

This topic will indeed carry them for a while.

And eventually they zero out and can go home.

She diligently follows up with her agent and, like, anyone else it makes sense to, about after action reports/advice on what to do next time/surveys to fill out/etc etc. (Also registering the opinion that she only wants to do dungeons if they're pretty important.)

If she wants to do confluences - that's when it's mostly likely to be "pretty important" to have a marginal low-activity esper on the job - Kathleen recommends she stay in practice by doing another couple escorted runs with Rhombus and Haru, and then one a month outside of confluences to keep her hand in.

That sounds fine to her; She was indeed thinking of confluences. And in the meantime she can get better at the construction-work-practice-exercises, and SCUBA, and get Haru to fly her and eventually practice it on her own over a trapeze net, and practice parkour-type stuff with her power for cheap mobility, and very tentatively practice timing her defense-pulses for better efficiency, and get a tungsten or depleted uranium dart dispenser to make her offense even more railgun-y for heavy armor monsters, and practice incremental improvements at everything. And keep going to mixers.

He awakened a while ago, and this is apparently his life now.

These events are kind of terrible even if they're necessary. He's been to a few now. The overall fanciness helps. Vanguard being somewhat aggressive about... Almost pampering him. Cooperating with flimsy secret-identity plots and everything. He let himself be bullied into a few demonstrations of the general scope and parameters of his power; It turns out he can detect people a fair way away, though he refused to go anywhere near a dungeon yet, and can also talk to them and receive deliberate messages back. It's not quite telepathy, he doesn't think, there's no thoughts, it's more like being on a video call.

He quit his job and got a loan, facilitated by Vanguard Group. The terms are ridiculously generous, but apparently sensors make stupid amounts of money. They're very anxious and pushy to get him a partner, which is... Enh.

(They wanted to know his backlash. He told them 'social anxiety', which is his best verbal guess at the general mass of 'nobody actually wants to talk to me/I'm disgusting and awful and ugly/they're trying to get something from me'.)

At any rate, his nametag says 'Netlink'. And he perks up when he feels... Something that's not 'ugh'.

"-Oh, that's what it's supposed to be like."

"Oh, hi! Netlink, huh? Mind if I sit?"

He nods. She sits, still holding the handshake. It feels a little bit pleasant, more like a warm compress than the magical relief she gets with Traceless.

"Actually I think we're not very compatible? I have another partner, and we're more compatible than this. Hello, I'm Wendy, as you can see."

"Um, yes, Netlink. I'm going by my codename for personal reasons. So you've been an esper for a while? I'm - new."

Look, he is not going to be the first one to ask for more skin contact here. Both for backlash and personal habit reasons.

"Oh, just like... A few months? Lemme think... Yeah, three months and a bit now. I'd say I'm still fairly new. Getting used to things though."

Come on, make small talk or she'll decide you're boring.

"Uh- That's good. I'm a sensor and very new."

"I do kinetic stuff! Ooh, lucky you, I hear people love sensors."

She adjusts her grip a bit.

"I mean, they love sensors maybe a bit too much..."

"Hmm?"