[Affirmative]

They take nearly an hour to find the core.

An hour is nothing. He's been on hold for longer times for worse reasons.

One final scan of the whole area, nice and thorough........

"No victims found," with a sigh of relief.

They debate doing a manual sweep, but they decide his power's probably trustworthy and there's no unaccounted-for known missings. They get everybody sounding off at the entrance, blow up the core, and get out of there.

He would like a list of the things he did wrong please. From someone. His agent maybe? There were definitely some, right?

The squad will get a report in within the hour, in the meantime he should wait at this agency silo for Traceless.

Can do. 'Alone in a silo' is pretty good, all told. You know what this mood is good for? Reviewing and fixing things. It makes him fucking perfectionistic. If only he had, like, github projects to debug or something.

Traceless appears after about a half an hour of waiting. "Hello there, I killed so many purple alligators, what'd your dungeon have?" Shirt comes off.

Oh good it's guiding time! Also shirt off.

"Giant snakes. A poor choice going up against guns."

"I, uh, mostly stood around at the entrance and checked for signs of people, though. I'm waiting on the report of what I did wrong. 'Cause even without backlash insisting there's always something, right?"

"Not every time." Hug.

The hug is very nice. They can sit on the couch and hug?

"I used to do first level tech support? And I figure if I import the - just a job aspect of the attitude, be polite, be efficient, be professional - it'll probably do me well."

"I guess your power'll have you spend less time with the victims than I do, and also you are not compelled to talk to them. I usually think of it as more like being a firefighter or a paramedic, they're often pretty freaked out."

"Yeah, that seems - different. Like I could probably do that, psychically talk to the dungeon victims and tell them help is on the way, but. It would be very personally stressful for not much benefit? And the military people said they'd rather have more scanning than reassured victims. -Oh, also I apparently cannot sense cores or monsters. At least, not giant snakes."

"Seeing victims is still good. Can you do it through the portal or only from outside?"

"It's way trippier and costs more backlash from outside the portal."

"Might still be worth doing sometimes - trippier?"

"I was also feeling people physically behind the portal. Still on earth, I mean, past the evac line. Maybe I could cut that out with practice. And there was... A thing. Very much a thing in the way."

"So you had to like, push through the portal?"

"Yeah. Or like- Up an energy level, less like you pierce through and then you're through. It was constant. It makes me wonder how I'll interact with space-twisty dungeons..."

"Good question - you'll be in especially high demand for those if you can make it work."

"Yay."

"Welcome to being an esper, deliberately giving ourselves debilitating symptoms to save people."

"Mmmhm. It compares favorably to level 1 tech support so far. I think that little one didn't knock me back that much all told, I was doing periodic checks. Definitely would have if I was pinging away constantly. I think I'm lower than you are even?"

"Yeah, I was being invisible to monsters for quite a while, though I didn't wind up having to fly."

He adjusts the hug for comfort and more arm on back contact.

"...You get these - ennui'd angsty characters in these web novels sometimes, like, with one wave of my arm I can till a thousand fields, what care have I for the peasants? And on the opposite end- What if superman didn't eat sleep or rest because there's always someone else to save..."