It is also with five hundred additional dollars! "Wow, please don't let those loose, I'm not sure Cricket could catch them before they escaped into the walls."

"Could too."

"I think it might slow you down if, say, the tank broke and there was glass all over."

"Hmph."

“I’m sure you could but I also don’t want to have to clean up broken glass.”

"The cleaning lady's here today, but I don't super want to make her do it either. Anyway." Hand holding.

Handholding! “I’m really excited to test my dungeonability,” she confesses.

"Paula's just called, she got me lined up to do sensor stuff in a new one that opened up if the initial unmanned casing of the joint comes back saying that it's environmentally tolerable and I know what gear I need. You can come with me and wait around being bored till it's confirmed safe enough for a greenhorn. - What are low levels of backlash like, for you?"

“Low levels mostly look like expecting other people to make the choices I would make or assuming that they already know things. I’m trying to develop a habit of over explaining to compensate for the latter.”

"Makes sense."

“I guess you could call the whole thing failure of theory of mind. On a related note, I’ve been vaguely toying with ‘Sonder’ for a name.”

"What does it mean?"

“The understanding that other people have internal lives as real and significant as your own.”

"Oh, I like that, that's a really good name, is it free on Racehorse?"

“Yeah!” Also it’s a tumblr neologism but she doesn’t have to say that part out loud. “I checked. So’s Marionette, I sorta compulsively checked everything I was still considering after about five minutes.”

"I think Sonder's better than Marionette personally."

“It’s definitely better but I was going back and forth about whether it really fit my powers of if I thought that because I’m biased because I like it so much.”

"It fits - the opposite of your backlash, and in that respect fits your powers?"

“Awesome. Sonder it is!!!” She does a little twirl. Fortunately the cockroaches are at this point on a solid surface.

Giggle. - phone beep. He pulls it out of his pocket. "Paula found a - water dungeon, that's not great for your roaches, should I tell her nah or do you want to stop by it anyway?"

“I can at least check if I can control dungeon monsters!”

"Okay!" He texts Paula and shows Lucy the phone-on-a-stick images of the water dungeon. It looks... wet in there. The dungeon "sky" is black but so dense with "stars" that there's enough to see color, blue-green still water with spooky trees sticking out of it. "They've put a pontoon through the portal. I'll go through first and see if anything even tries to notice me and I'll come get you when it seems safe."

“Ee! Thank you!”

"All my gear's in the garage, Paula's got some loaner stuff that'll meet you at the portal." Out into the garage he goes.

Lucy makes sure the cockroaches are stable for the next, like, while, scribbles a short note about them in case Haru’s mom comes in while they’re out, and heads out to the truck.