The building doesn't seem able to quite match his speed, or, no, it doesn't seem like it knows he's speeding up more like, it's just growing out rapidly in all directions with no concern for where he is, but that does still mean that his arc is going to be quite wide if he wants to avoid the fire.

Yes, well, he does. ...he might be able to go over the building more easily and just trust that he'll still be twenty feet above it if it grows another fifty, but he'd rather try that for the first time with a growing building that isn't on fire, and anyway it didn't work in the minotaur labyrinth so it's doubly not wise to try here. Fast as he can get, skirting around the nightmare building. "JAEHA!" he calls periodically.

No Jaeha.

No Jaeha.

No Jaeha.

No Jaeha.

N—

Yes Jaeha! Or something that looks quite like him, curled up on the ground far enough away from the fire that he probably sprinted for a while but still right in sight of the encroaching building.

Someone else will have to get Fire Victim. Or maybe Fire Victim will just have to stay here, they lose a few people every time. Haru's getting Jaeha.

"Jaeha, get the fuck up!" he screams. Panic, backlash, tactics, they're all in agreement here and it doesn't matter which one is steering.

Oh. He's hearing things, now. He always thought that was just a fiction thing. Ha ha. Or maybe that's just Nightmare messing with him. Ha ha ha.

Haah...

"If you broke your fucking leg or something I'll carry you, fine, but at least TALK TO ME!"

Well he supposes he can twitch in the general direction of the voice. "You're dead, though. So what's the point."

"Who told you I was dead, fucking Nightmare?"

"I felt you die. So probably you're Nightmare." Though that's, like, enough to get him to actually turn around and sit up.

"If I'm Nightmare does that mean I have a fight on my hands about picking you up or should I assume that you don't care because you were lying on the ground?"

"Assume I don't care?" he says, wobbling a bit, because that. That was a very Haru thing for Nightmare to say. Wasn't it.

"That should be fun to go over with your therapist later." His flight power is perfectly happy to help him stop on a dime: he wants to arrest his momentum when he's just precisely that far from his Jaeha and then land and pick him up. "The comms cut out so that was also completely goddamn delightful. I'm abandoning whoever's trying to die in a fire over there, they can find somebody else for this one." Tracker, which way out - running.

Oh. Oh this feels—nice. Like guiding. Can Nightmare fake the feeling of guiding? Jaeha can, but, but, but, "Haru-ya? Is, is it really—are you really—"

"I realize I asked you the same question once upon a time but it's a silly question! Surely I would claim to be real even if I weren't!"

Okay now he's crying on his Haru. Thankfully that does not mean he needs to stop talking.

("I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, Haru-ya. I love you. I love you so much. I thought, I thought, I felt, you were—burning—")

"I love you too. I'm okay. We're gonna be okay. We're gonna hit the exit any minute now and you're gonna faceplant in my shirt so nobody sees you crying because you're gonna care about that later and we're going to take five, report, and go the fuck home, we can finish rotating our sleep schedules tomorrow."

Oh, God, it really is Haru. But it really was Haru earlier? Except it was an amount of Haru he—thinks he could've imagined? This much concentrated Haru is, he doesn't think he can come up with this much concentrated Haru on his own.

("Okay. Okay. We can do that. I'll follow you to the ends of the Earth.")

"We're arguably not on Earth!"

("I will follow you into hell itself, and I think I might feel like arguing if you said we aren't there right now.")

"No argument to be had, it's wretched in here. So -

- Jaeha -

- can you not shield yourself -"