"If they talk. Or, well, I suppose I can tell them either way, same as I can call spirits from the vasty deep, but."

“If it goes well enough, I should have said. I’m not assuming that non-verbal means non-sophontic but at this stage of research talking is definitely a better outcome than not talking.”

"So far the zoo folks haven't found any that are obviously smarter than, like, dogs, while not being able to talk, but I confess 'obviously' is a big qualifier there."

“Dogs can get pretty smart, depending on the breed, but fair enough. A persony dungeon creature seems like obviously a better outcome than a not-persony one but even a not-persony one could be considered going ‘well,’ since existence failure on dungeon destruction is also an option. …And also…failing to destroy the dungeon…I was really insufficiently precise.”

"They don't have the core for this one yet, I'm probably going to come back again tomorrow and look if they don't have it by then."

“The dungeon getting away would increase the research value of my video, probably, and yet I don’t prefer it at all.”

"Mood! I don't think this one's priority enough that they'll bring in Columba, though."

“Yeah. And it could be moving! What fun.”

"Could be, yeah. Maybe one day somebody'll have her power but a backlash that lets them use it for more than five minutes."

“Or a partner so compatible you can tie them to her back and give her more stamina that way.”

"Yeah. I had an inkling once that she'd be compatible with my metapartner Arctic but I suggested it to them and no dice, it's hard to predict these things."

“I’ve looked into it some but I’m sure I know less than any actual esper.”

"I mean, not necessarily, if you stared at the compatibility map's raw data enough you might spot something - actual espers are busy and don't have a magical intuition for compatibility before we actually fistbump somebody."

“I’m sure I’ll do a data science project on it eventually but I haven’t yet and just staring at it sounds less efficient.”

"Well, staring here as metonymy for whatever data manipulation sparks joy."

“Quite. Anyway, not yet. So.”

"And here we are." He's spent much of the trip to the portal on foot, balancing on pre-butcher-papered strings of the web, imperceptible but at least not flying; he can last longer that way. "I'm gonna hand you off to the folks with the acetone, I'll leave your phone in the recovery tent, all right?"

“Okay! Thanks so much! For everything!”

"You're welcome, it was lovely to meet you, shoot me an email anytime!"

And he drops off her and her phone and once more unto the breach.

Lucy gets acetoned and reclaims her phone and watches a couple of minutes of the video she took and chortles quietly to herself about how not ruined by the low lighting it is and e-mails the professor whose class she vanished out of that she has been rescued and emails a different professor whose class she failed to show up to that she was absent due to dungeon and not personal negligence and heads back to campus to reclaim the stuff she had with her but not, like, on her.

She is met there by a TA who does the class she vanished out of. “Are you okay???”

“Mhm! I got, like, spiderwebbed for a while, but nothing fell off from constricted circulation, and I had my phone on me. And! I! Was rescued! Personally! By Traceless!”

…She is not so into celebrity espers that she immediately recognizes the name. She googles it.

“…Okay,” she concludes once she has. Like, he isn’t not cute, but.

“He has a blog, let me show you,” she already has the blog open in her phone. She shows her.

Huh. Okay, yeah, the monster cat is pretty cute.