The hot water runs out eventually. At this point she is pretty sure something is seriously wrong, so she clenches her teeth and digs her fingers into her sides as she stumbles through drying off and dressing and waking up her Mom and telling her she needs to go to the hospital, something's wrong. 

Emily Kenson, bless her heart, is at least going to believe her daughter when woken up at 1 AM and drive her to an urgent care, 8 AM shift start be damned. Wendy clings tight to the hug her mom offers but is eventually shifted to a car and pulls the seatbelt way too tight, which is very slightly relieving for some reason. She wriggles uncomfortably in the car the whole time and can't resist scratching at herself further. She's bleeding a bit in a couple places, and tries to avoid those. 

They get her a bed and call in an allergist and want to know if she has new sheets or anything. They take some blood. Can she please stop scratching, that's not good for any of the things it could be.

"No, same sheets as always. No new shampoo or soap, no new clothes, I didn't stumble into any weird plants or anything- Do you have a weighted blanket? Bandages? It's- I almost think pressure helps more than scratching?"

She's still scratching, kind of idly. She clasps her hands together to stop that, but then starts flexing slightly in the bed except when she focuses on just taking deep breaths instead.

They are happy to wrap her up in bandages, especially since it'll keep her fingernails away from her skin. They don't have a normal weighted blanket but can borrow one of the X-ray kind.

That's a little better. Enough better that she can sorta-mostly focus on taking deep breaths and worrying.

Eventually they exhaust enough of their guesses that they want to know if she thinks she might be having an esper awakening.

It certainly doesn't seem to be anything else.

Her mom dispenses hugs, which help a lot, for a few hours, and calls in sick for work, and hugs her more, and they talk. A lot.

That... No, surely that must be wrong. Isn't that really really rare? It doesn't happen to people like her? She barely got into a half-decent university with financial aid and loans, and espers are high-society rich-person stuff. It doesn't really make sense, doesn't hang together as a concept.

Her mom looks things up about espers. She's so excited. Her baby girl has a much brighter future than she could have imagined! And don't you dare go galivanting into dungeons or anything where you might die, and if you do be VERY SAFE. It's... A lot of feelings are produced, by that. It's - probably good, right? But on some level it feels like she's... Betraying something. She remembers reading that people who win the lottery end up fucked over a couple of years later, most of the time.

...More importantly, especially once her mom has to go get any actual sleep, so it's going to be like this for a WEEK? She's already exhausted, trying to squirm around under this blanket and bandages, holding herself stiff and still feeling intolerably floaty and not-quite-cold and not-quite-itchy. How is she going to sleep like this, the answer is she's not until she gets really exhausted or something changes.

Once they've decided it's probably an awakening they will go buy her a real weighted blanket. A really heavy one with chainmail inside.

But how much did it cost.

If she's an esper money probably isn't going to be a problem, even if it's something absurdly niche probably someone will pay for it, which is flat-out bizarre as a concept but sure.

She can exist very uncomfortably and sleep like this. She wants her laptop and queues up audiobooks on it.

Her dad biological father shows up on day five and tries to act all buddy-buddy. Offering hugs. No. Fuck you, dad, where were you two, five, eight years ago? Showing up for one or two days, randomly, and acting as if you still mean something when Mom works horribly long hours and does so much- What does she even see in you? She cusses at him until the hospital staff get rid of him. Her mom, who had invited him, tells her that was uncalled for. She cries.

She is certainly under no obligation to receive unwanted visitors!

Here are some brochures (and video presentations if she can't read right now) on various esper agencies and the services they offer.

Reading, see, would require moving her arms out from under this weighted blanket to hold media which would be horrible. She can just about manage bathroom breaks and eating by gritting her teeth and powering through and knowing it'll be done soon, but not for reading.

What are the definitely-super-prettied-up-for-marketing-and-full-of-BS videos saying?

An agent can connect you to opportunities and resources! They take only a tiny commission of dungeon bounties, materials auctions, or other esper-related income. You can interview many different agents and find one who clicks with YOU: do you want to stay up all night and be on call for emergency midnight dungeons? There's an agent for that. Do you want to do civilian construction? There's an agent for that. Do you need a partner? Your agent knows where all the mixers are, and can help guess who among those who don't show up to mixers might be compatible and arrange a test meet. Do you need a powers testing site? A marketing gig? A loan? A secret identity? Agents!

She'll schedule a few calls and try to feel out rough personalities. It's mostly gutfeel. Anyone who rubs her the wrong way, or sounds too Corporate, or fucks around the schedule at all, or talks too much about marketing, or just feels sketch, is gone.

The commission percentage thing is maybe a bit sketch. Incentivizes them to get her doing more profitmaking than might be ideal, maybe. What do various agents think about that?

Various agents think:

"In the long run, matching you with dungeons you're not suitable for just makes it harder for me to get dungeon clearances for any of my clients, and if I got you killed, half of them would drop me! Dungeons are a standard esper occupation but it's important to do them at a sustainable pace."

"Since you don't even know your powers yet, it's early to think about being over-dungeoned."

"You're certainly under no obligation to harvest dungeon materials while you're doing rescues, recon, monster coverage, or core-hunting, whichever aspect is most suited to you - if any. You don't even have to go through an agent to list materials at auction, you're just likelier to get ripped off if you don't."

"Ultimately, an agent likes me works for an esper, like you. If you turn out to be a prodigy who goes around taking down named dungeons, maybe 2-3% would be too high - the privilege of representing such a person would almost pay for itself - but a percentage of the dungeon bounty is the industry standard for the services we offer and it flexes gracefully with how much your other obligations, backlash management, and risk tolerance can handle."

The first one is the least sus. She kind of likes them. They listed actual incentives, whether or not those are... True. She'll look at reviews.

The second one is the most sus; She drops them.

Okay, well, she'll wait out the last couple days of this horrible horrible bleargh and get back to people.

(Honestly it's... Really easy to get pissed off when she feels like this. So. Probably a good metric for how she'll feel during the Bad Times as an actual esper, doing espery things. Whatever those are. Dungeons, apparently.)

(~I'll get back to you~, bleh.)

They are all excited to hear from her when she's out of the woods!

It really must be reiterated that feeling like something is wrong with your entire skin is really not fun. The super-heavy weighted blanket is lovely, it's her best friend, she will cherish it forever. The bandages are also very nice, tightly wrapping around her and satisfying that bone-deep urge to be squished as hard as possible. BUT the blanket doesn't weigh on her body EQUALLY. Her sides suffer in lonely despair when she lies on her back, and vice versa if she shifts to her side. Her muscles ache from being tense and lying down for a week straight. Massages would maybe be AMAZING like this or maybe they would just be horrible everywhere she's NOT being massaged. Anyway, the nurses quite reasonably have more important stuff to be doing. And finally- Her head is almost never under adequate contact and pressure. Her eyeballs itch. The inside of her mouth and nose itch. It doesn't go away. It can only be endured.

She doesn't get back to people right away when it finally, finally ends. She goes home. She finishes the chapter of her sci-fi story and posts it and VALIANTLY RESISTS the URGE to tell her ONLINE FRIENDS that she's an ESPER AAAAA WTF. And also resists the urge to poke at the shiny shiny powers. Mostly. She feels herself doing something by reflex when she trips on a stair and stumbles. Her hand shoots out and she doesn't even actually fall, it's like she shoved the stairs away from her, but they're a whole building, so by equal and opposite reaction it just put her upright again...

And she can feel the itch. Oh so very subtle, but definitely there if she stops and thinks about it. So she doesn't. She googles esper things a whole lot. She accepts her mom's hugs and reassurances that everything is going to be okay.

She tells various agents who haven't gotten the boot from her yet (god, there's so many of them, analysis paralysis is HERE), that her powers feel defensive and also kinetic. She accidentally saved herself from a trip and is NOT doing any more of that until she finds someone for... Guiding.

Hello hello, she texts agenty people, how do you do that? Google says there are events?

There are! She promptly has invitations to events in all the nearby cities. (Dungeons concentrate in cities, so dungeoneers concentrate in cities, so anyone who wants partners concentrates in cities.)

It's looking a lot like college might not happen. Travelling all around the everywhere with savings earmarked for college is... Acceptable, according to mother. And preferable to getting a loan about it.

She shows up to an event and feels pretty awkward and hesitant about the whole thing.

"Hi there, welcome to the Maple Esper Agency mixer! Can I get you a nametag?"

"...'M Wendy."

"Just Wendy?" asks the receptionist, writing that down.

Is that weird? Just one name? Or is it weird and formal to use your full name or is she overthinking it- This is an event. It's not 'casual'. She doesn't feel right. But, like, she could always just leave. She takes a bit of a deep breath and hopes she doesn't look too weird.

"Just Wendy, yeah."

Here is a nametag that says WENDY. "Here you go! Help yourself to the hors d'oeuvres and don't be shy about shaking hands, that's what all the espers here are here for!"

"Free" and "food" are two of her favorite words! She'll have some of that first. Occupy one hand for it, leaving the other free for, uh, awkward handshakes, she guesses?

...At least a few others look as uncomfy as her here.

It's not literally painful to shake hands with an incompatible esper. But it doesn't feel like touching a baseliner, either. A baseliner has no input into the novel sensory modality at all. An esper does, and if they're not compatible, the input is: NOPE. It's similar in character to biting into a food that you expected to taste completely different from how it actually tastes, except that expecting it and touching the same person a second time doesn't help; you can take a second bite of blue cheese after your first one disabused you of the notion that it was green tea, and appreciate it for the blue cheese that it is, but there is no appreciating the blue cheese of incompatible backlash.

And most people are not compatible. Stuffed mushroom, handshake, bad. Tiny pumpernickel slices with smoked salmon, handshake, bad. Crostini, handshake, bad.

It doesn't really compare to the Itching Doom Week. She's not really... Paying close attention to most people. It's pretty clearly awkward-handshakes-time not friendmaking-time for her, and she thinks at least about halfish are feeling the same way?

...She doesn't even recognize some of these foods. The mushrooms are good and she gravitates to cheese. Handshake, shrug, handshake, shrug, handshake, shrug... And on.

Handshake, bad, handshake, bad, handshake - good!

She yanks her hand in sheer surprise, then catches herself.

"-Ah. Hi." And looks at his nametag.

It says HARU.

"Hi! I was just thinking, we should do fistbumps instead, it'd make flinching less marked, and then - well, you did sort of flinch, is it asymmetrical -"

"Haru, huh? Asymmetrical? I mean, I felt it, a bit- Fistbumps would be better, less formal. It'd feel less like we're all standing around in suits at a job fair."

She tentatively reaches her hand forward again.

"I just got out of itchy hell like a few days ago, I barely even know what I can do, I don't know how this works really."

"Itchy! Huh. Mine's loneliness. Not obvious opposites but I guess I don't know what would be the obvious opposite of itchy. I haven't checked what I can do either, I don't want to rack up backlash I can't put down again. But I've always been kind of an esper nerd if you have questions?"

"It's not quite itchy but I still super hate it! Uh. Are agents... Basically legit? I am pretty leery generally of - big ticket corporate stuff, it sort of feels like it's scams all the way down, and like. You're a better person to ask than an agent."

"Well, I plan to hire one, I don't want to deal with all the - bureaucracy and stuff and I think if I find the right one I can have a more streamlined superheroics experience."

"So a 'yes' for 'agents are basically legit', okay. I would really suck at bureaucracy and stuff, it's just all so- Tangled up with itself, rules built on rules to fix other rules... I really want to try things now that I know I won't be itchy forever about it, but here and now in front of God and everybody probably isn't the right way."

"Well, do you think you call down lightning strikes? I think I don't and I'm up for some powers testing if you also don't, they have more rooms here for non-lightning-strike type stuff."

"They do? Handy! It feels defensive and - kinetic? I feel like I could fling stuff, maybe pretty hard. So I'll have to try and be really gentle. I stopped myself from tripping by reflex."

"Useful! I used to be dyspraxic, that seems to have cleared up but an anti-tripping power still sounds keen. Let's find a staff person - uh, setting expectations, here, we've got to hold it down to hugging-guiding levels of power use, I'm gay and would need some time to think about it before attempting platonic kissing."

Blink blink. "-Oh thank goodness. I was - very aggressively not thinking about that part. Uh, not that you're not- It's just- Feelings. Yes. Several of them. I have absolutely no calibration on what 'hugging guiding' level is though."

"We'll have to feel it out, I don't know either, just, we can't do anything really backlash-intensive and expect to get rid of it with seven minutes in heaven or whatever that one pair of blondes snuck off to do.

"I feel like it would be pretty presumptuous on either side to assume we could even if you weren't gay!!"

She realizes she raised her voice a bit halfway through and lowers it to a hiss by the end.

"Anyway, yes, I want to go see what we can do. Superpowers!"

"Superpowers!"

The staff can direct them to a room; it's got crash test dummies and shutters that can come down over the windows and separate battery-operated sconces instead of wired lighting. And a generously sized beat-up old couch, in the corner.

She folds her arms nervously. She's about to itch again. But hopefully it won't last long...

"So, superheroics, huh? It definitely seems like the thing to do... Hmm. I'm going to go ahead and try something on the dummy on the left? Gentle-like."

She holds a palm out and focuses...

"Nothing? I felt it, a bit, but..."

The dummy's head bobs a bit, and her arm is visibly pushed back slightly by some sort of counterforce.

"Woah!"

"Whoa, what was that?"

"I pushed on it from all the way over here! It's sort of- When I stopped myself from tripping I did sort of almost fall and then bounce back upright, I had the sense that I was pushing off the ground, and it looks like that's right? Or at least, one mode of power operation?"

"Neat! Okay, my turn -" He turns invisible.

"I can't see you!"

She looks for a shadow.

No shadow, but he returns! "Oh, neat! I could still see myself... I wonder if we can buttonhole someone to see if it's more expensive if there's more people looking or not."

"No shadow, to me, which suggests... I'm not sure if your power was also editing out your shadow for me, or if it was making light pass through you and then giving you a vision of yourself. I should get a- Oooooh I actually have a postcard computer and one of those random electronics kits in the car, you know, it was Goodwill and 'software and electronics projects' looks good on a college app and it has a photodiode in it we could see if you're letting actual physical light pass through you and if you can be selective as to what can and can't see you!"

"It might only work on living things, if it's a psychic power?"

"This is something we can test! Along with someone else who looks unbusy for selectivity checking! Also my random electronics breadboard will be actually useful for something! I mean, if you don't want to we don't have to though...?"

"No, I'm into it, just trying to specify my hypothesis in advance responsibly."

"Science!"

She swings through the main area again and out to the parking lot for the stuff. Maybe nab a few more snacks and handshakes of people she hasn't already tried on the way. Then it's about three minutes on a beat-up laptop with a cord connected to the little circuit board thing before numbers start scrolling up the screen once a second.

Haru fistbumps people - the room catches on after the first few times he presents a closed hand - but nothing doing, and then he catches up to her and goes back to the room and goes invisible again.

Can she borrow an event staff for a moment to see if this invisibility power is selective?

Also, here, if he puts his hand over this it blocks the light and the voltage on screen goes down. If he's going transparent it'll go back up, if he's just not visible it should stay low.

It's selective! People to whom he is invisible see the light at full brightness, the gadget doesn't see it.

Can she see the gadget while he's, invisibly, holding or blocking it? She can see the wall behind him...

"This is really weird! I love it. I could try more kinetic stuff. But it feels like- I can only push, not pull, right, and that's definitely not the only thing I can do, is the sense I'm getting? Hmm... I almost feel like I could - push back against you being invisible to me? Except not."

Things he's holding or wearing disappear with him, things he is just standing in front of are visible through him. "Well, try it, but don't do it too much, we don't wanna get into a backlash-tanking fight."

"Okay. Just for a second or two, then."

She knows he's right there. His power is operating psychically, reaching out into her brain and removing things. She can't feel that influence but she can shove anyway-

-And then stop right away as the hairs on her arm stand up and she shivers. "God! That was - a lot more than pushing the dummy." She scratches at one arm with the other idly.

"Didn't do anything on my end, I guess trying to be invisible costs whatever it costs whether you're trying to resist it or not?" he asks, taking hold of the arm she's scratching with both hands.

Oh wow that feels nice! She can see why people, uh-

He's gay, so let's close that line of thought.

"I did see you for a second though. So... Good to know and good to have the option?"

"Yeah. If it's that pricey for you though you probably don't want to go in psychic dungeons on that alone."

"Maybe it'll get easier with practice or something."

"I don't think it works that way? Maybe if you learn how to be more - precise with it, I guess."

"Yeah, that. It felt... Really crude and violent, the way I did it just now? It's really hard to put these things into words, huh. Maybe there should be an esper conlang."

"But all our powers are different."

"...Fair. Oh hmm. I wonder if I can push things- Reactionless? Maybe I could be a stardrive! Magically push on a big spring, free of the tyranny of the rocket equation. If there weren't other problems about being in space. It'd be cool though."

"Huh, neat. You could do power generation stuff dirtside, get a feel for it under safer conditions."

"Gonna try the basic idea-"

She raises her hand and stares at the dummy. It gets shoved back a bit like a giant fistbumped it on the chest. Wendy doesn't move.

"Seems like it might work! Exciting. Do you think you can extend invisibility to the other senses?"

"Can you hear me now?" he doesn't audibly say. She can see his lips move.

"I think that worked. I don't know how to read lips. Nice!"

"I just said 'can you hear me now'. I'll be able to lay waste to monsters that can't tell I'm coming."

"Nice. The bastards won't know what hit them... This is noooot the place for it but maybe I can railgun."

"Oh, like how?"

"Just- very small object, lots of force."

"Yeah, not here. Maybe a gun range, I don't think I have direct combat powers so I'd be happy to join you at one."

"How's that follow? It - oh nevermind. So you can learn, right? Well, maybe we can ask one of the innumerable agents I've been texting to set it up. There's one who I kinda like more than the others so far, anyway..."

"Yes, so I can learn. Is the one you like with Maple?"

"Uhhhh... One sec."

She checks.

Yes!

"Looks like a yep!"

"Cool, I'm in preliminaries with some Maple folks too. They have to also be able to represent my four dimensional cat."

"...4D cat? Out of a dungeon or something?"

"Yeah, I thought I should get a cat to - absorb surplus social impulses while I'm backlashing. I was going to get a normal cat but then it turned out Maple was harboring this one and he doesn't like any of them and does like me so now I have a four dimensional winged cat. He can navigate 4D dungeons still, which when it comes up is really important. He can talk but I'm teaching him to read."

"I must admit, I never really understood the appeal of pets and one that can talk is even stranger. Is it a parrot situation or a - a person situation...?"

"He's a person. A really rude misanthropic fluffy pigeon-hunting person."

"Well, you guys do you I guess. Person, not pet, okay. Probably I should say hi if we're going to be meeting up to touch arms often."

"He seems mostly fine with the 'cat' social role, but like, the specific facet of the social role where you make like the cat is in charge and the humans around are the help. You should definitely meet him if we're going to silo together, especially if you will not always be super chatty while guiding because I get super chatty with backlash and freak out if nobody's talking back to me and will need Cricket - that's what I named him, he wouldn't take a name from anybody else - if you're not up for it."

"I don't know that I'll be un-chatty? Especially if you'll tolerate rambles slash rants about sci-fi. ...I'm going to want like, I know you're gay so not sexually, but... Maximum hug. Like, lie on top of me almost, in an ideal situation? The backlash definitely beats feeling awkward about it. Uh, for me, at least."

"I can platonically lie on top of you. Rambling about sci-fi is great - that's one of the things my dad did, during hell week, he'd read off a Star Trek plot and then we'd talk about that - as long as it's back and forth, if you don't take questions and comments during the process I'll have a problem."

"Yeah I can do that. Oh, Trek is the best but the worst. Where are their radiators??? Where are the radiators, LaForge??? Or does warp drive just not produce much heat? -Ah, ahem."

"I think I just assumed it was very efficient and didn't warm things up too much. They're right there in the room with it a lot of the time."

"At one point they say it outputs- You know what, I'll save this as ammo for backlash time, actually."

She huffs out a deep breath.

"I have lots of other testing ideas but, uh, some of them are kind of scary. I feel like I'd be - tough? Like, it's sort of a, pushing away the idea of being psychically affected, and that ought to work for heat or ordinary attacks or whatever. But, scary to think about testing that."

"I could, like, throw tennis balls at you, and then throw baseballs at you, and you could measure the difference between how backlashed each gets you, and extrapolate?"

"Tennis balls to get used to the idea sound like a good plan to start with."

"Ping pong balls, even."

"Bits of couch fluff?" She points to the offending article in the corner. "Since it's right here and all. Or napkins or something."

"I, uh, suspect that's not what the couch is for."

"Well, no, but if bits are falling off anyway- Whatever, napkins works better, here."

She has some in a pocket from earlier and roughly balls them up and presents them.

He will gamely throw napkins at her.

She can, with a few attempts, stop flinging them away and instead make it so when they hit her she doesn't feel it!

"Fun! Fun fun fun... It's starting to feel like we should stop trying things right now and get to zero and, like, text people, make plans, exchange numbers. But I think I've tried more things than you?"

"And I'll zero you out faster if we match closer anyway, hm -" He stands up on his tiptoes, then - bends his ankles again, and doesn't come down - "- ha ha I can fly - shit, that's a lot more expensive than being invisible, though -" He lands again and hugs her.

Ooh hug! It's nice. Okay can she- You know what ask-

"That's cool! If I tried that it'd be wildly unstable, I think- Can I platonically put my arms under your shirt?"

"Yeah, go for it."

So she does and immediately feels the indescribable relief accelerate.

"You need me to keep talking, right? Or only when you're pretty backlashed?"

"So, strictly speaking, talking doesn't help, only guiding helps. But I am very motivated to have a conversation and I don't want to screw my backlashed self over by making that difficult for him. But I can spend longer periods of time not compulsively talking the less backlashed I am."

"Okay, I'll try to calibrate that accordingly. Or you can just say so. Backlash is fucked up, I won't blame you for it. Should we sit on the couch? I'm not sure how long this will take..."

"That's what it's there for... more or less." Couch hug.

She will, if not interrupted, ramble about hard sci-fi radiator design for a bit. Answering questions-ly. Her favorite theory on Trek radiators is that they leave a plume of very thin but extremely fast exhaust... Or dump heat into the warp field somehow.

"No chance they're just using the heat for various applications on the ship?"

"So, you know those big towers some power plants have? They're cooling towers. Every - mechanical or physical process we know of for using heat mostly just moves it around. They totally use warp core heat for applications on the ship. For the shields and replicators and stuff. But they'll be left with more heat than they started with. And no atmosphere to dump it into. It has to go somehow or the ship will eventually melt. It's possible they have some exotic cooling method. Throw it into subspace? But that's the lazy way out!"

"I don't think I'd accuse the engineering coherence of Star Trek of being non-lazy."

"And that's why it's frustrating since I'm into- I know how to do the basic design for a real interstellar spaceship, the basic math and stuff- That's not what they're going for so I guess I'm an annoying critic, eh?"

"What if your design would not be borne out should it ever be tested?"

"-That would stink? And there's a huge difference between napkin math saying 'yeah that is physically possible under known non-esper physics' and actually building it, yeah."

"Do you hope to go colonize Alpha Centauri?"

"That would be very awesome! So kind of yes. But- Well, Mars first, or maybe the Moon, the Moon has the advantage of closeness. Little steps. Also we have to fix aging at some point."

"I like your checklist."

"Thanks? I have... Absolutely no advantage on the medicine front though. I guess my edge there is esper money and potential scientists not dying in dungeons."

"Future scientists are not to my knowledge at elevated risk, but esper money can turn into lots of stuff, yeah."

"It's really weird to think about. I - wouldn't say I grew up dirt poor, but definitely not rich or even so much middle class."

"My folks are middle class but like definitely the kind where they actually are and not the kind where they're self-effacing about being rich. You can get great loan terms as an esper to get started with anything pressing."

"Mom and I agreed it warranted raiding the college fund, but if I need anything big or had to spend months travelling to find someone compatible instead of getting lucky on the first try that was the plan, yeah."

"I'm waffling on taking out a mortgage, leaning not until I've done a couple dungeons and know if I can keep up with it as a job."

"Mm. If I'm not going to be in student dorms or Mom's place, I haven't really thought about what else... And I can't say I'm really attached to the idea of college-per-college if esper stuff is going to be a big deal. Learning is great and all but... I don't know. I'm not dreaming about college culture."

She introspects on her itchiness levels.

"I think I'm pretty close to zero backlash? 'Nother minute or so at most."

"I think maybe - if you get to zero first I'll slow down so maybe ten, fifteen minutes for me."

"If I get to zero I'll push on the wall or something a little bit so we're clear faster."

...She's feeling a bit morose now, thinking about the future.

She adjusts pose until she can use her phone in one hand.

Yeah, that's a good idea, he's close enough to zero that he can at least text without having to start over six times even if he can't quite yet read a book. He tells Cricket and Ren and Charlie all the good news.

She texts her chosen agent all the recent happenings and discoveries and that she'd like to go with them at least for now, how does all the paperwork and so on go? And also her mom.

-She snorts in incredulous laughter and shakes her head soon after, at her mom's response.

"Share with the class?"

"I can tell religosity is fighting with protectiveness in my mom's head- About you being gay, I mean. I think protectiveness won."

"Wow, okay. Is this the sort of problem I solve by, like, acting normal around her, or by never meeting her, or what."

"First thing. She's... Well, I'm biased, but I really do think it was just a cached gut response? I'm arguing at her and she's apologizing." Typety type.

"Sure."

"Yeah, sorry about that."

"It's not a huge deal, just, like, it's the twenty-first century, usually I don't run into it."

"...It's... I can talk about it if you're backlashy enough to want to but... I'm going to push a very little bit on the wall, I'm out and I want to clear you a bit faster. I think feeling out backlash levels will come with practice."

"I'm low enough, don't worry about chatting at this level, like, I'll still talk a lot but it's not acutely devastating if nobody answers."

"Sure..." Back to texting.

They make sure they've exchanged numbers and promises to text and coordinate. And then they leave as the event wraps up.

Not that it feels very real. Still, it's a relief to not worry about being itchy forever if she slips up slightly. 

A few days later, Wendy shows up to an in person meeting with her selected agent. She has texted about not being sure what intermediate steps happen between now and going into a dungeon, or maybe preferably doing construction or something with her kinetic power.

Her chosen agent has an office in the Toronto office building floor that MEA rents. The place has potted plants and art on the walls and a nice fish tank, but Kathleen Havisham's office in particular has only one plant and one art and no fish. "Welcome!" she says, beckoning Wendy in. "I hope you didn't have to travel too far to get here?"

At least this office is less overfancy than the rest of it. 

"Uh, hi. Not too bad, just, city traffic and a new place."

"Well, go ahead and have a seat. Tell me about your powers, what do you see yourself doing with them?"

"I've been texting you some about them? Hmm... So, everything I've figured out so far works on the metaphor of pushing things. Though... Haven't really done a lot of testing yet. I can push on people and objects, and it's as if I'm applying force to them. Like putting a giant's fist on a crash dummy's chest. The push can push back on me, or not- Equal and opposite reaction, like? I can choose whether I get the opposite reaction, and be shoved away, or just stand there. And I can only push, not pull. Though I can aim it, sort of, as long as there's a line from my body to what I'm pushing. Like, if I hold something between my hands I can push off either hand to move it left or right. In terms of force, I shoved a crash test dummy around and it felt like I wasn't anywhere near my cap. Kinetics, pushing things, felt pretty efficient overall. I don't know if I can do a railgun thing- Small object, very high speed. Didn't seem like a great idea to test that.

Separately, I can also push defense up- It does a lot more backlash than applying force did. I didn't even feel light objects like napkins or tennis balls thrown at me while I was doing that. And I also suppressed a psychic power for a little bit by pushing out the idea of 'psychic defense', but that was very heavy backlash, I don't want to make a habit of it... I have a gut feeling the defense thing might be amenable to practice, efficiency-wise? As for what I'd do... I wonder if my power can be used for reactionless acceleration. For spacecraft. If I can take something from suborbital to orbit, beat the rocket equation, that would be so cool! Uh, if it can be done safely. Other than that... I'm not eager to attack dungeons but they do need attacking and it's sort of the done thing. I had the thought that I might also be able to do construction or something?"

"Hmm, espers in construction are totally a thing but you need high precision for it, so if that's the direction you want to go you'd want to practice in situations where you can measure and verify your application of force. Launching satellites is a very exciting concept but also has very tight tolerances; I can start calling around to rocket science types and find out more about that. Your partner is also pretty new, right?"

"Yeah, I'm not really sure how the launching would work yet, just, exciting... Hmm. Precision practice sounds pretty interesting. I can play around with laboratory balances or careful aim... Juggle things, maybe? What are some examples of what construction espers do? Closer the practice the better, probably? He's also new, or well, I'm not sure if anything's official partner-wise? I met him at the first meetup I went to. We get along okay. Probably want to keep going to more events. For options and all."

"That's totally legit, a lot of espers kind of burn out on meetups right away and stop as soon as they find someone but from my perspective it's pure upside for you to go to as many as you could possibly want, so you have the best possible partner and plenty of possible secondaries. Construction espers often substitute for large equipment, especially in tight spaces or remote locations. You sound like since you push rather than pulling, you're probably not an excavator, and probably not anything that has to hold something or someone in place for an extended time like a crane - even if you have the precision for that safety regulations tend to assume that an esper could backlash out at any moment - but you could be a bulldozer, or do paving-type work where you pulverize old surface to make way for a new one you flatten. You could try that out on clay, try to aim for flat and level and then for specific angles. The balances idea is also great. I can order both for you."

"Sounds good on the clay and balances... I could probably pound things into walls or the ground, like nails, or fence posts, or those long snake drills for digging wells, what're they called... Augers? Sinking metal bars into liquid concrete? I wonder if I can twist bolts, run wires, that kind of thing. When you say 'remote areas' do you mean like, random cell phone towers in a field in Nunavut? National park trails too steep to get a bulldozer to?"

"Hammers and people to operate them are cheap. If you can do it very efficiently it might make sense to have you on railroad spikes or something, but if you want to command higher than union workman wages, better not to specialize in anything they can do with one of those alone. Park trails and cell towers are both good use cases, or research stations, or maybe underwater if you can work in scuba gear."

"Specialization, eh... I've never thought about SCUBA before. It might play nice with my backlash. The suits are tight, right? And it's probably still less dangerous than dungeoning."

"The suits are tight, and there's water pressure too, do you want lessons?"

"-Oh that sounds great to backlashed me. I won't want to come back up until Haru's ready to lie on top of me. So once I pick some other low hanging fruit, yeah!"

"Alrighty! I'll look into what kinds of things they might want pushed around underwater, sounds like potentially a great fit."

"...And there's always dungeons, they definitely need dealing with, but..."

"There are. I'd recommend going with - Haru? - or another partner at least the first couple of times, it'll change how your powers handle slightly but it makes it a lot safer to push. I'd match you with an experienced esper pair or team and start you in very basic dungeons, probably clearing monsters once the civilians are all out and they're looking for the core."

"Haru is the partner I've found so far. He's also with Maple agency apparently, so, whatever coordination to make everything smooth will be easier I guess? I know he wants to do dungeons- 'Superheroics', he said. But I definitely want to practice related stuff a few times before trying a dungeon."

"Absolutely. Looks like he's hired... Paula, I'll coordinate with her."

"We had the idea of going to a gun range for lessons there too- He can be invisible and inaudible, so, shoot monsters when they're not looking. And I think I might be able to do a - railgun thing, and obviously want to try that on a range and not a garage."

"Mm-hm, we can book you a time and an instructor."

"And this is all... Coming out of an expectation that the two percent of whatever will probably be worth it? No nickels and dimes?"

"Right now I'm booking things like that as a sales expense, since you're not picking up bounties yet and certainly shouldn't go out before you're ready. The way it usually works is that we get you set up and on board and then you have a long productive career installing infrastructure underwater and saving people from dungeons, maybe endorsements and whatnot if you like that kind of thing, and over the course of that career, two percent pays for my time and scuba lessons no problem."

"...I don't think I'm likely to like that kind of thing. Oh! When the money starts rolling in I want to set something up so that, uh... Hmm... Actually let's save that until I do actually earn some money, I won't exactly forget and I'm having feelings to sort out."

"Alrighty! A thing I like to do is, when my clients have partners whose agents are other Maple folks, have me and them substitute for each other if we need sick days or are on vacation - so that would have Paula working with you when I'm out, and me working with Haru when she's out, if you and he are both amenable, since we'll each need to know the basics about both of you anyway. Sound good, or do you need to meet Paula?"

"Probably meet her. I liked your style more than everyone else I was talking to, you know?"

"Of course. Still, I'm only human, so I need backup."

"Sense makes."

"I can get you an appointment with Paula in person this evening at seven on the phone or tomorrow at eleven in person?"

"Phone call is fine."

She's being inconvenient isn't she.

...Well, NYEH. That's fine really. She SHOULD be inconvenient.

"Sure thing." Typety typety. "Our calendar app is usually really easy to pick up but if you have any trouble with the link I've sent you, let me know, okay?"

"Sure... I'm gonna text Haru... Uh, is there like a break room I can hang out in for a bit?"

"Sure, there's a bunch of chairs around the aquarium you'll have passed on your way in."

"Cool. In a sec I'll go do that. Uh, I'm sure you'll get to know how I roll, what my preferences are and such- I'm trying to straightforwardly picture this as a, uh, mutual benefit thing, which it probably is but that doesn't make it feel like it automatically? Happy productive esper gives Maple a steady 2%, it's nice to have the incentives laid out clearly like that instead of being looking for the scam. I might need some things explained very simply, especially if it's bureaucratic and I'd prefer to not have to... Deal with that... More than I have to. I mean, not on the level of 'read these rules about Dungeon Conduct' that's fine, but like- I'm not sure what I mean but I'm sure there will be something."

"A lot of an agent's job is to shield you from the bureaucracy - everything to do with certifications and registrations and taxes and so on. It's up to you if you want me to explain it or just disappear it and give you the takeaways."

"-Oh. Okay then. Uh, anything else we should talk about right now? I do want to do this, you know, correctly, take things seriously. Espering is replacing college. For now. I'm sure U-Mass letting me in again later is something you can talk to them about, but probably not for a year and maybe not ever. A lot is changing for me right now."

"A lot of espers decide to circle back to college later, but it has a very different relationship to your career than it would have. Do you want me to text you reminders of appointments that go on the calendar?"

"Maybe keep it to a morning summary, automatic or not? Plus updates if anything changes? Actually, let me just... I'm sure there's a way to give you access to Google Calendar in here somewhere and then it'll ping me automatically... Unless there's a better, epserified calendar app?"

"Morning summary and updates, sure thing - we use Partna, but it has some integration with Google Calendar available. I've emailed you a link to get you a pro account that's attached to mine, it'll lapse if you switch agents but you can export all the data or resume it with a new person if they use the same app."

"Yeah. The cloud is just somebody else's computer, anyway..." She can't help but mutter slightly. "Okay, I'll set that up soonish. I assume you're gonna criss-cross with Haru's agent, uhhh- Blanking the name, sorry- And I'm gonna text him and probably have a conversation about general scheduling tendencies."

"Paula."

"Paula. Okay. I think that's all then for right now? Thanks, Ms. Kathleen. This is all exciting stuff."

"Sure is! You have a good day, okay, Wendy?"

"I sure hope so."

She hangs out by the fishtank and, after some socially anxious editing and thinking that if he's backlashed at all he's probably grateful for ANY text, texts Haru.

Hey Haru. This is Wendy if you haven't got me as a contact yet. I just had a meeting with my now official agent, Kathleen also of Maple Group, and realized we probably have more to talk about. She wants to schedule my first dungeon (whenever I'm ready to go in one) WITH you for example. I remember you mentioned 'superheroics' so I guess you want to do dungeons? I might lean towards construction things. And we should talk about where and when to meet up and guide. So overall when is a good time for a phone call?

I do want to do dungeons. I think being invisible to monsters is probably a good generic power, once I can also shoot the monsters instead of just staring at them. It's my turn to make dinner but in 30m I should be done eating and can call

I think our agents are scheduling something for that. And that sounds like pretty good general offense & defense yeah. OK. I'm going to drive home, can it be ~1hr instead?

👍

She - texts Kathleen that she's leaving, then drives back to her Mom's place. Stops for fast food since that should make it pretty close to an hour total instead of like forty minutes.

Ring ring.

"Hey, Haru! How's it going?"

"Doing good over here. You decided your agent wasn't out to get you after all?"

"Yeah. It's- I guess I am kind of naturally suspicious? I don't really trust the system that much. Too full of moving parts that don't care enough."

"Well, I guess it's better if it's natural rather than a cynical product of long experience."

"Ehh... maybe eighty twenty. I guess you have a bit more optimism? ...But anyway, I want to practice with my powers more so we probably need to figure out... Stuff."

"Yeah. You wanted to do some of your testing at the range, but that's an awkward place for me to be backlashed because they make you wear ear protection even though espers don't really need it, so I can't rack up too much beforehand. Probably makes sense to hang out in the range parking lot or something afterwards and do a little me-testing so I can catch up with you enough to help, maybe do this several times during breaks in a longer training session so you're not too uncomfortable at any one time?"

"Yeah... I do want to see how well I tolerate low-moderate doses of backlash but I don't need to carry it for days. I will try and help you out as much as you're helping me of course. Uh, I also have some non-range practice to do. Going to work with lab balances and clay to try and build construction skills. I think I personally want to aim for a pretty high pace of power use? I mean. Superpowers. Which means a lot of time together if you have similar plans."

"I would certainly like to formulate such plans! How much should I expect to be talking to my phone or Cricket instead of you while I'm lying on top of you like a weighted blanket, ballpark?"

"...Haaaaaalfish? Maybe less? That's what I'm producing, but I don't have justifications for this estimate. Probably will take trying it to see for sure. I write fiction, and that'll be the easiest thing to chat for a long time about, for me."

"Sounds fun, I'm gonna guess hard sci-fi?"

"Yeah! Generation ship with political struggle over important ship systems."

"Well, if I don't interfere too much with your creative process I'm here for it."

"We'll see! Do we want to meet sooner than whenever the range visit happens, for mutual practice and clearing? If I'm going to talk about it, it might as well be when you're backlashed instead of doing your own thing."

"Efficiency, I love it."

"Mhm! So, uh, todayish tomorrowish, when is good? Are we gonna see each other every day, or less than that, or what?"

"Probably every day once we start doing dungeons but maybe not that often before then. I'm on leave from school till the end of the month, but will still be showing up part time after that to pass tests and stuff, and I might wind up needing more time on the gun range than you."

"I kinda want to hammer esper work as hard as possible but I guess I'll fill the rest of my time with more meetup events. Like, you seem pretty cool, but more options is always good?"

"Yeah, wouldn't blame you in the slightest."

Over the next couple of weeks she goes to more meetups. Starts attending SCUBA lessons. Goes to their gun range appointment and very cautiously practices- She finds a trick to hold up her projectiles and vector her power from her eyes at the correct angle and can indeed achieve fairly terrifying speeds on small enough objects. It turns out pushing on things at longer ranges ramps the backlash cost quickly, so 'keep pushing until the projectile hits' is suboptimal. At mutually convenient times for later babbling about her story and talking about Haru's blog and whatever else is on their minds, she practices with the balances and clay. Putting out steady, precise amounts of force and creating nice flat surfaces therewith are both tricky- She can widen out her pushes to large areas, and even do two slightly different operations at once if they're very simple, but it's extra to focus on, and accordingly expensive. She's making progress (and videos most of her practice and uploads it somewhere her agent can see it), but it's not trivial. 

She doesn't get much chance to practice the defensive aspect of her power. She does discover that she can push herself away from things without affecting the things, and pseudo-fly that way, but uh... Way too dangerous. Even running around and using this to go a bit faster makes her feel like she's about to crack her head open. Pushing defense might make that safer but that's expensive and also just, much more risky than she considers worth it right now.

"You could practice flying over a net," Haru remarks after a flying attempt, from where he's lounging atop her with Cricket topping the stack. "The kind circus performers do trapeze over."

"I could. I could also practice pushing defense only to the level necessary to block whatever's coming towards me. I'm getting better at precision and multitasking but also. Both of these things sound extremely scary to actually attempt."

"Why's flying over a net scary? I could fly with you if you want, be there to catch you?"

"Hmm. Hmmmmm... Hm? Ugh. I wonder if maybe I'm just scared of heights. I get the same NOPE from the idea of bungee jumping or skydiving. Or the Grand Canyon."

"Oh, that's rough. And my flying's great for barely-off-the-ground altitudes but yours kind of isn't."

"Ugh, I hate it. I probably should try to get over it in as assiduously safe a set of conditions as I can arrange."

"Maybe not at the same time as using your own power to fly, since it's tricky? I can fly you around."

"That should work... And I've been getting some work out of 'it's not as bad as awakening' for motivation. Yeah, I want to try both some time."

"Oh, by the way, if you run into anybody else you're compatible with at one of the mixers I want to hear about it, odds are higher than genpop that I'm compatible with them too at least a little."

"For sure. Nothing yet except one girl who was less ugh but not even worth getting her number. We both kind of made contemplative faces and then shook our heads simultaneously. Little moment of connection."

"I'm so mad that the people who said they wanted to put three thousand of us in a room and check all the combinations turned out to be embezzling their funding, that would have been cool."

"Fraud is everywhere, man. I saw this Kickstart for an anti-dungeonnapping electronic device? Which is obviously bullshit? But because of the way they phrased it, just implying things about electric fields, never actually saying it'll keep you safe, it's not actually an illegal lie. Like, the same people who sell anti-static wristbands to people who're afraid of cell phone towers."

"Wow, I didn't see that, fuck that."

"...It would have been really cool. Get all the annoying checking over with at once, like. I feel like trying to get more than fifty people to do something at once becomes exponentially difficult to organize."

"Yeah, they were going to do it right after a confluence when everything that can possibly be done by normal SWAT teams, is done by normal SWAT teams, and bribe everyone to show up for science at a nice resort, and they collected quite a lot of investment in science - you'd need a lot, for bribing that many espers - and then it was not all where it was supposed to be."

"Typical, really. Anything without strong enough oversight that actually holds it accountable can and often will devolve into graft due to the individual and collective incentives of the people involved. It almost feels like the second law of thermodynamics."

"I think it mostly frustrates me not that someone wanted to do fraud but that they chose this vector for it. Selling products that don't work, that's whatever, it's annoying and should be cracked down on but it's basically the cost of doing business. Research fraud about dungeons which kill people every day, I feel like if you successfully think of it I expect more followthrough."

"...You feel the same way about, oh, car manufacturers and safety regs, or medical research? And maybe they've discredited the idea but someone can try again."

"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.

"So noted."

These things are startlingly fast and she's not here to take risks. So, ranged fire not close-in crush. She's done this on the range. Ever so calmly, hand up, line up-

POP.

The sound is pretty distinct- No explosion, the bearing is bigger than most bullets, and also going faster.

-She wants to watch it tumble but NOPE. Switch on. Ignore Haru's target, glance around, any third or fourth ones? Then back to hers, to make sure it's not recovering from the hit.

Looks like she got hers and Haru got his, though his keeps rolling downhill after it's dead and he empties a few more into it to be sure. They have pink blood.

Onward. Another pod. This one wakes up to a poker chip. Bang.

She startles and shoves a fair bit harder than she was planning to on a bit of carapace in the neat little narrow circle she's been practicing! There's a disgusting wet crunch.

"Shit!"

She clenches one fist. No, don't freak out. Glance around. Situational awareness is queen.

"-I'm okay, just- Startled."

"You need a second?" Haru asks, holding out a hand.

"What I need is- Actually, yeah, just five seconds."

She touches the back of her hand to his palm. Deep breath. Glance at Rhombus, glance around for monsters.

"-Okay. I'm good, let's keep going."

They're still in a dungeon and she still has to take it seriously. Deep breath, move on, no catastrophizing.

Haru's racked up less backlash than her but five seconds doesn't get it all. Rhombus doesn't comment, just watches their six. When they move on again, they next see armadillos from the top of a hill, two that way and three that way - "I'll take those," Haru says, gesturing at the group of three and taking aim.

It was more for the centering effect than to actually clear it.

"Taking the group of two."

Aim, POP. Pull a new steel ball from her leg-chute. POP.

Yeah, this is fine, just keep going steady. The not-quite-an-itch is plenty ignorable at this level.

"We should have hand signals if we're going to do this, guns are fucking loud," says Haru.

"Good thinking," says Rhombus.

They find another pod. This one's got a person in it.

Oh no how do you do this part. Her mouth goes on autopilot.

"Hello! Let's get you back to the entrance, nice and easy- How are you feeling? Can you walk with us?"

"Here, let me give you a hand up out of there," Haru adds, clasping the woman's arm and hauling. She's gasping for air and doesn't respond right away, but nods and seems able to keep her feet.

She's less chatty and more watchful as they progress, though also glancing at their rescuee in concern. It must suck, being kidnapped and then getting the newbie squad on rescue duty.

And then they only have to do this thirteen more times. Maybe she should also train with guns, just to have a lower-backlash solution? No, no, stop letting your attention wander in a dungeon. Glance around for monsters.

They kill two more armadillos on the way back to the entrance, and spot another pod that can be their first port of call on the way back.

She keeps reminding herself that this place wants to kill her. Don't slip into thinking it's tedious. That's how bad habits start. It wants to kill you. It's not a game. You should be alert.

They jog, they check pods, they kill ambush-armadillos, they rescue people. They find the core on one of the trips out. She runs through her ammo steadily and calls a one-minute break after rescue #10 to refill the chute-thing. She doesn't overkill any more armadillos in startlement.

"Weird that it just kept the core in a pod. Lazy."

"Yeah, uh, lazy dungeon is good for us. Let's chat about the terrain or their attack patterns, stay on topic. Two more known victims and we can go relax."

She will NOT scratch herself, not when she just half-lectured Haru about it.

"No we can't, we've got to do the sweep, the longer we wait on that the more likely it is to grab another guy."

"Right. Two more known victims, final sweep. Can't get lazy."

"I'm not lazy I'm chatty. There's just not a lot to this dungeon to talk about."

"I'm the one at risk of laziness. Careful of that one bit on the right, there's a little dip one might be hiding in-"

They have lots of poker chips; he throws one into the dip.

Nothing.

She does her best to keep focus as they keep going. Regular breathing and focusing on how it will be Done Soon.

They find the next guy. The last one proves evasive; they keep finding pods, including in places they've already been, but they're empty, empty, empty, and eventually Rhombus calls for them to go sit in each other's laps outside the dungeon while he checks if the missing person report is still good. It turns out they found the guy. They can call the last while of looking through pod after pod their sweep, drag out a few more shells, and blow up the core now.

Oh good it's over. (She can help with pod hauling even if it's more backlash if this saves a minute or two!)

She's pretty self conscious about, eh, maximizing skin contact near support staff. Luckily, privacy curtains exist.

"Do we need to do a - report, debrief, you think? Talk to Rhombus?" She asks Haru.

"Yeah, probably, I don't know if there's a written form or what - I don't think they can expect it right away though since some people have backlash even more incapacitating than ours and even mine is plenty to make it so I can't write," he says. The privacy curtain is around an air mattress. This is suitable for lying on top of her on.

(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?"

"The agent group I've been talking to has been very - you should find a partner right away! I can read subtext. And now I have, but it's apparently... A weak partnership?"

"You shouldn't let anyone tell you what to do. Espers got to stand up for ourselves. Backlash sucks ass, right? So don't let anyone bully you into using your powers more than you can handle. And yeah, we're not very compatible. But more than zero! So I can be a backup option for you and vice versa when you find someone better."

"I'm not going to not help rescue people, even if it 'sucks ass'." He huffs. "It's- It's- I have a moral duty, not to give everything to charity and live as a monk or something, but... You know?"

"...Yeah kinda. Most people have that kind of charity in them somewhere. Just- The bureaucracy will chew you up and spit you out if you let it. You can be heroic while playing it smart. Actually, um, I mentioned another partner?"

Is this the part where she tells him he's not good enough?

"He does dungeons and is all heroic about it, and is, you know, smart and safe about it. Gets his due, gets paid, gets fair treatment, sticks up for himself. Also. Apparently if you're compatible with one person, you're statistically more likely to be compatible with people that person is compatible with? So Traceless asked me to mention to him if I found anyone I was compatible with. If you don't mind that. More options is always good."

"Aren't partners, um- I mean, would I be intruding on... The pamphlets mentioned, uh. Some things."

"Um. I mean, sometimes skin contact is platonic."

"Oh." He has no clear line of conversation to follow up on after that. This is terrible.

"I'm - not opposed to that kind of thing on principle, but - it's not mandatory either, right? And - okay shutting up now, talk about this later."

"No, yeah, agreed. Later." Or 'never ever'.

"Do you mind if I, platonically, touch more of your arms? I think we could both use it, it feels like you're carrying a bit of backlash and so am I."

"Surethat'sfine."

Anxious as all hell, isn't he. She feels sympathetic, was she this bad at her first meetup? No, but maybe only because she was bold about it.

She telegraphs her movements and presses both of her arms against his, palms too, up to the elbow.

"...It is kind of nice. And necessary, to use the powers."

It's also more skin contact than he gets on most days. He tries to imagine this being part of a daily routine. Necessary to superheroic people-saving. Oh noooooo what a saaaacrifice.

...This is why all the esper fic exists. He feels like squirming as he vaguely imagines Wendy's bare back...

No! Bad brain! Fic is not reality! You literally just met.

"So, when Traceless- He has a regular name too but I try not to spread it around to randoms- Is backlashing, we tend to talk. A lot. It's become a habit of mine to ramble while guiding. Mind if I fill the air with babble? Also, d'you want to go to a side room instead of this loud table in the middle of the place?"

"No here's fine," he says quickly. "Um, and no, I don't mind. What kind of babble?"

"Well, today, I'm interested in civil engineering since I'm actually learning some to help with esper construction work."

"-Ooh, engineering!" That's much better than he was expecting. He's not sure what he was expecting, though. "I'm an IT guy. Or, uh, was."

She will nerd out about cable-stayed bridges with her new friend for a while!! This is great.

Yep, this is great!

They're eventually bothered by a Vanguard staffer who would like to know if they need anything? It looks like they're compatible, are they partnering up?

-Ugh, interruptions.

"We're slightly compatible. No need to make anything formal at this point, thank you."

"Oh, of course, of course. Wendy, right? Are you with Vanguard?"

"No, Maple. I'm sure you can find my agent's number, right?" Go AWAY.

He glances at Netlink. Netlink just kind of blinks at him.

"Well, just let us know if you need anything. And by the way, the event is wrapping up in about half an hour, just so you know."

He retreats at this point.

"Er... Did I miss something?"

"...I dunno. Something about his attitude rubbed me the wrong way? Sorry."

"...It's fine. Um. We should probably... Make plans or something though."

"Yeah. I'd be happy to talk more and guide more, it's nice to find a fellow nerd! Uh- I usually guide with more skin contact though."

"Platonically. Right?"

"Yep, completely 100% platonic lying on top of me to help with the backlash symptoms and guide us both faster. I mentioned earlier, Traceless wants to know if I find compatible people? Do you mind if I mention you to him?"

Platonically. Right. The world makes sense and feels safe again. It's just utility, convenience, efficiency.

"I don't mind. I guess we'll want to meet somewhere and check?"

"Yeah, probably. I'll text him."

Hey Haru, guess what I found at a meetup event in Boston?

Cricket's long lost twin

Snrk.

A cute boy who is mildly compatible with me and willing to be introduced to you. No information on queerness yet. Want me to give him your number?

He'll just... Wait, then? Anxiously.

Please! Is he Bostonian or from farther afield? Am I allowed to know his backlash?

He said 'social anxiety' and is going by a codename. Netlink. Idk where from we mostly talked abt bridges. 1 sec. 

"So his number is-" and reads it off.

"Okay. I guess I'll text him?"

Hello, this is Netlink. My apologies if I have the wrong number.

You have reached Traceless! Your backlash sounds like a possible best-case for matching mine in principle, I get lonely.

Does your thing directly impede guiding or do you not know yet? It seems like it might.

I am trying not to spread it around too much and also using a codename because layers of separation help. I did manage to literally not notice it was backlash until it was over because I did remote work and had plenty of groceries in my apartment. I don't know how I'll feel about it when under heavy backlash.

("So," Wendy says, "I should give you my number too. Any chances to use my power more often are something I'll gladly take, you know?"

"Oh, sure." He'll exchange numbers with her, too, he guesses. "Uh... I get the impression that I will be pointed at dungeons and asked to find all the people inside and then shuffled away before anything can try to hurt me."

"Yeah, sounds about right," she nods.)

Holy shit, you didn't notice? That's really impressive.

I'm based in Toronto, but I can come to you if you prefer. The meetup is Boston, I hear, are you?

I definitely noticed something was wrong but backlash/awakening is much less common than a psychotic break and I considered myself too mature to erroneously think I was special. Also my brain was telling me I was definitely not special. So I was just planning on how to literally never leave my apartment again and order everything online etc.

Well right NOW I'm in Boston. The agency people will probably be perfectly fine to comp airfare to Toronto if it gets me sensing dungeons faster. (I can sense people's locations and also video call them with my brain).

What agency are you with, do they operate in Canada? I'm with Maple and would need to switch agents to relocate to the States altogether though they can handle deployments for one-offs in the region even across the lake

It's called Vanguard Group. I'm not particularly attached to them. If it's harder to actually work with compatible people from the US, moving to Canada is probably fine.

Cool. I think it's worth the flight to try. I don't have a guest room yet (still househunting in the esper-money price bracket) but if there's anything that'd make it an easier visit lmk.

I'm not sure.

I'd prefer a hotel room to a guest room. Also ubers or similar.

Want me to get you a hotel or is your agent on that?

Actually I don't think I like my current one now that I think about it at zero backlash (I did some testing). Can you have your agent do that part?

On it. Do you have an esper passport or should I give her your regular name to book it under?

I have an esper passport under 'Netlink'. Thank you.

Is there anything I should or shouldn't do Re: You and Wendy?

I don't think so but maybe I don't know what you mean?

(A pause of no texts for about 10 minutes. While agonizing over rephrasing himself he exchanges numbers and vague plans with Wendy, and leaves the event.)

I'm not sure either. Sorry.

We're not an item or anything, I'm gay.

Not that it would be guaranteed that we would be even if I weren't, that's just a concise way to express the extent to which we are not