"Yeah. I count off the seconds in my head for a bit to see if matches the seconds on my watch."

"Good. It's pushing pretty hard on me, some psychic dungeons are a light touch but this one's heavy duty."

"Took a chunk of backlash to scrape it off too, though I don't have a basis for comparison yet."

"I don't actually know if how expensive it is to clear is related to how hard it pushes in the first place, that'd be interesting to find out. Might or might not be the same across espers, too."

"Well they'll probably want us for something like this again if it comes up. So we will have research opportunities."

"Yeah, this is probably pretty close to our standard workflow going forward, maybe with more sensing work for you because usually we'll be coming in closer to the beginning of a dungeon's existence."

"I do wonder if we're missing something here, sensing wise since they haven't found the core in more than a week."

"Could be. It could be buried under the floor, or in a bat, or in the ceiling, or in one of the alcoves farther back than the victims have tended to be."

"I'm not specced to find it if it's buried somewhere but if it's in an alcove the bats might be able to see or echolocate it."

"Yeah. But there's no guarantee they'd be looking at it, and you can't make them, can you?"

"No.I might be able to do something a bit clever with projective empathy to get them to move closer to something they can already see but that's it."

"I might recommend they call in Columba for this one. It's - linear enough that it shouldn't give her too much trouble, and it's such a jerk. I'm almost there."

"It does seem like it might be in her wheelhouse and it really is a jerk."

"There might be an American with a comparable power but Columba's the one I know about, she found the core for Cricket's dungeon." He's audible without the comm system now. The ladder snaps under his hands before he's within reach of the lip of the cliff; he floats up accordingly, startled but not lastingly so.

"I heard they call her in all over North America, or a good chunk of it, so maybe there isn't somebody else quite as good. Though maybe there's an American who would be specced for this particular dungeon." She reaches out for his hands.

Handhold. "Can someone get Mary off me - thank you - we're at least still in the general Great Lakes deployment region, though New York also pulls from Eastern Seaboard -"

"Okay. Let me get this cleared off." scraaaaape the nasty gunk.

Mary, like the previous victim, goes from distant slow misery to more acute freaking out and is escorted through the portal by an unpowered field agent. Traceless squeezes Vantage's hands pretty tightly. "One more that they know about but I might want to go all the way to the floor as long as we've got a fresh undamaged ladder deployed, have a looksee around there and make sure I'm not missing anybody on the way up in case it recently abducted another person."

"Sounds reasonable, yeah. We might be pushing it on time by then though." Watch check, careful counting.

"If I'm going all the way down, I can just jump -"

"No you can't, the ladder needs to be secured to the wall at a few points if you're going to climb it from half a mile down," says a SWAT guy.

"...okay, I can just jump and catch myself at a few points, if they're marked?"

"Yeah, they're marked."

Haru gets a crash course in how to secure the ladder and then he jumps.

Well okay then. She doesn't have commentary during the ladder securing lesson but she remains in the comms device.

"Geronimo!" he chirps into the comms as he falls.

Slightly strained giggle then "Why do people say that anyway?"

"I don't remember the etymology! It might be one of those things that has a few disputed possibilities anyway."

"Ah well. I could technically stick my phone out and check but I'd get in people's way."