She snorts. "She was pre-ordering... but for a new esper partner... did something happen to her old one or was it just that bad of a match?"

"I don't remember, I'd need to look it up."

"Do you remember the name?" Or, well, she has her phone, if she searches "Singapore esper visiting hospitals for partner" does she find anything?

Apparently the Singapore esper liked to characterize her hospital sweeps as a public service but did do it a lot less often after she found her partner, and her previous one was low-compatibility.

Extremely valid of her, honestly. How many espers did she identify before she found her partner? 

Fifty-four.

Oh wow. 

"Okay, it was for increased compatibility reasons, but also - she found fifty four espers before she found her partner, and she still does it sometimes! As a public service."

She hums thoughtfully. "I might want to see about doing that here, actually, if the hospitals here are cool with it... Obviously most people won't to get to be this lucky, but... fifty four is a lot of starfishes, right?" 

"You can do that if you want! But she was at it for years and had to travel internationally. - Singapore is very small, but still."

"Yeah, I probably won't hit that many if I stay in Toronto, and I don't think I'd travel for this... Though it might be nice to see if I could network with espers in..." pokepokepoke "Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, São Paulo and pitch them on this. Starfish bucket brigade."

"Might work. I'm sure they've mostly already heard of the idea but maybe for some people having a... leaderboard or whatever, is the push they want."

She giggles. "Yeah, there's definitely a type. I'm guessing the world of speedrunning does not intersect with yours any more than the world of fanfic does?"

"Possibly even less. People mention fanfic in my blog comments sometimes and seldom to never do they bring up speedrunning."

She sighs dreamily. "They're some of my favorite types of guys. They'll work together to achieve things I would have never dreamed possible, and when they achieve it they'll say they didn't even do it very well. They'll also argue for collective months about tiny changes to leaderboard rules. I want to study them under a microscope forever..."

"I don't really get video games - like, I used to play a lot of Civ, I get wanting to play a video game, but I don't get the kind where you're shooting things or jumping around on platforms, and I especially don't get obsessing about how quickly you got all of these artificial tasks out of the way."

"Hmmm. How do you feel about like - people who try and beat sudokus as fast as possible, play blitz chess, speed Rubix cube solving? - also if this uninteresting I can go back to reading your blog, it's just so nice to chat."

"How about I take you flying and then I will really want to chat."

:D flying! "Now? Or after dinner, for sunset?"

"Either! Or both, being backlashed for me is at moderate levels only that bad if I'm trying to do something it's incompatible with, and talking to you is not one of those things."

"Oooh, let's do both! You said you wanted to get practice flying, right? And you've got one decently compatible, heavily backlashed esper who will be happy to drain your backlash all week." She looks around for her clothes. "Did I grab a crop top? I hope so..."

"Don't remember, it's all up in the guest room." Hup.

Hup! She did in fact pack a tank top, which she will wriggle into. "Okay, what now?"

"Now you tell me your thrilling aerial maneuver tolerance and then we go outside and I pick you up and zoom."

She thinks about it for a moment. "I'm haven't really tested my thrilling aerial maneuver tolerance! Can you do a gradual increase and maybe check in every so often?" She smiles.

"Sure!"

And out they go, and up she's scooped -

eeeee this is awesome! 

-Right, she needs to talk to Haru while he's backlashed! Gonna get a good grade. "So - how does your flight work? It really doesn't seem like it makes sense with the rest of your powerset, but from reading Galaxy Brained Opposites I get that power conceptual groupings are. Weird."