"If you ride piggyback, yes, I don't think I can carry you in my arms and shoot at the same time. Do we have a place to stash monster corpses in case they bud even after they've been shot?"

"I assume we must but we can check for sure once we're there." They barely got to fuck. Fucking confluences, man.

"And I can probably snipe a lot of them from the ground if they're up in the sky, since humans are seldom up in the sky, unless they're carrying people off like birds of prey..." Are they doing that.

They are not. They just attach themselves to the humans and give the humans an unspecified bad time, psychic flavour.

In that case Haru can shoot them down with his partner clinging to his lap to un-bad the times of the humans around.

That's not the last emergency of the day. Or second-to-last. And the next day isn't much better. Their schedule is cleared on the day after to give them some time to rest after this rough start but there is another emergency call that evening, too.

Honestly, Haru wouldn't have cleared their schedule on day three. They're in this for the medium haul and he can do more than two days in a row of this, he thinks. But he'll take it; the people making the schedules are busy too and don't necessarily want quibbling. And maybe they don't want them too ragged to step lively for emergencies like the evening dungeon, or, eventually, Nightmare.

Or, eventually, Nightmare.

Day 09: Nightmare. Its location: Seoul, Korea.

Kang Jaeha gets a personal notification for that one. And since Nightmare likes appearing at night that means that he gets the personal notification at 10:22PM after having had the single busiest and most exhausting day of the confluence so far.

Sometimes he wonders if it hates him personally.

"We can just go and do a batch of shields for fresher espers and go back in the morning. It'll be around for weeks."

"Yeah. We can."

Squeeze.

"We don't usually go in the morning, because most of the time it doesn't kidnap people during the day. We could help mop up the last few rescues, but..." He feels guilty as all hell to consider the possibility of not spending the first Nightmare night active.

"We can also pull an all nighter and sleep in the morning, I can get us coffee. This is your show."

"...yeah. Let's do that. I'd—I know it doesn't make much sense but I'd feel guilty."

"It makes sense." Haru pecks him and goes to collect coffee and adulterate his.

No one knows what the very first dungeon was, but gun to anyone's head if you asked, most people who know about how these things work would say it's Nightmare. It's far from the most normal dungeon, in the most technical of senses, but it certainly is the paradigmatic one, when thinking about how bad dungeons can get. There's arguments, there'll always be arguments, it doesn't cook you inside your skin, it doesn't cause unending agony, there's lots of things it doesn't do that could reasonably be described as worse along one axis or another, but the thing it is, really, is evil. The thing it does is evil.

It reaches inside you, it finds the worst it can there, and it gives you it. It gives you the worst it can see in you, over and over and over. It shows you your worst nightmares, in gruesome detail. If you lost someone to suicide, it will show you how much their death must've hurt, or how they did it swiftly and without wasted time, or how long it took them to actually die, or it has them tell you in detail how much they hated their life and how much it was your fault just as they die. If you were in an accident that nearly killed you, you will relive that accident from every possible angle, you will see it in slow motion, you will feel it happen again and again. If there is anything you love, it will take it from you and twist it beyond recognition. If there is anything you fear, it will present you with it on a silver platter, inescapably, and it won't even give you death should you seek it. It doesn't need to burn you from the inside, when it can make it feel like you do. It doesn't need to do anything for real, and it's worse for that, because however bad it gets, you know it will just keep happening, forever.

It's not even all just an illusion. That car accident that keeps almost killing you? Those cars are there. They're really, actually there. When the rescue espers come for you—if they come for you—they will have to weave between those crashed vehicles, skip over the corpses to find you. The spiders you're terrified of? They're there, they're really there, you can't just close your eyes and hope they'll go away because they won't.

And if that's still not enough for you, you can't actually leave. Even should you find the exit, somehow—and oh, will you see it, you will be given so many opportunities to seek an end, and none will be real—you can't step through it. You can't leave, not until someone helps you. Not until they find you and create a psychic shield to protect you from the dungeon and clear the mark it leaves on you. For as long as you're marked, you're Nightmare's. It can see you, it knows you, it can find you, and you can't leave. It can find you again. It can find you again, after it's gone, and it can bring you back. You're not safe. You're never safe. You will never be safe. If you ever, ever think you'll be safe from it, you'll be wrong.

Unless, that is, Kang Jaeha is the one who rescues you. If Kang Jaeha clears Nightmare's mark from you, then it's gone. You're safe. It won't get you again.

In any case, no one really tries to kill it, anymore. There just isn't any point. It's achieved apex predator status, its core has never been found, it's too large and its layout too inconsistent—too dreamlike, even—for proper exploration. It has the highest esper kill rate out of all dungeons on record, it's extremely hard to predict when it's about to seal itself and then going back to the exit is a race against the clock during which you know you're inevitably leaving victims behind so that you yourself can survive; many espers have traumatic experiences with the entire surrounding context. Survivor's guilt is common, and Nightmare does seem to try to tempt espers by showing them victims that they could save if they took a small detour just as the dungeon's sealing itself...

The teams that are sent in are consequently always small: one or two psychic espers for the shielding and rescue proper, one esper who can find the victims, and if necessary an esper who can find the exit. Teleportation does work inside, but distances are inconsistent and constantly shifting, and that makes most types of it unreliable or more expensive than they could be. Nightmare doesn't waste time, and is constantly and continuously kidnapping victims throughout the night, without stopping. The only reason people aren't told to immediately evacuate its environs is that... it's been tried, and when that happens, Nightmare just seals itself quickly and quietly and goes elsewhere, and on net, more people are lost.

When Haru and Jaeha get there, there are two such small teams inside, plus a handful of others congregated outside. One of them looks like it's just stepped out, and the victim they've rescued looks ashen and near-catatonic, her mascara long since run from the crying. She's hugging herself and flinching whenever anyone gets too close, but the support team seems competent to handle it, and they're getting her a blanket and some food and water.

...well, Jaeha doesn't need to be the one to rescue you, exactly. Just the one to clear Nightmare's mark off you. And his range is well wider than this. So, shoo, Nightmare's mark; it will never get to her again.

Haru's right there with him to pull away the backlash from doing that. Any briefings they need to hear about what's in there today before they go through the portal?

They've been aware of the dungeon being out for less than an hour, so they don't have a very comprehensive list of who's been kidnapped, not that it's really possible to actually get one, especially given just how many people live in Seoul. There are some reports that are probably legit, but that's the extent of the preparation, is knowing the people who might be inside, and maybe having some hints about what their nightmare could be about. This person is a veteran. This person was kidnapped once. This person is one of five survivors of a horrifying accident that was caused by a dungeon portal suddenly appearing in the middle of some train tracks while a train was barreling towards it at full speed. And so on.

The tracker they managed to get on such short notice is a French esper called Colette Fauron who can hand them little wooden doodads that came from a dungeon and have an affinity with her power. While inside and holding a doodad, a trail of glowing petals will show the way to the nearest non-esper, and she's by the portal and can point them in a direction no recent esper team has gone in so that they can make sure to find a new victim rather than one that's already being tracked.

Haru doesn't really speak French but he is from Canada and can do a competent "Merci" for his doodad and attach it to his wrist.

Is Jaeha parking by the portal while Haru does mobility things?

No, he has to shield the victim once they find them to make sure Nightmare won't keep chasing after them, he has to come with. He shields Haru just before they step in—no reason to have Nightmare backlash Haru when it's a one-time cost for Jaeha—and in they go.

In they go holding hands and following the doodad in an unvisited direction, then. Haru goes a half-step behind Jaeha, so if he needs to suddenly seize him and fly into the air he can do that without having to spin around, but they'll have better stamina if they walk where that's feasible.

What's there to see?