A loud alarm blares in her ears, breaking her concentration.

It's followed by her partner's terrified voice. "Cara, don't try to - it's too big and you're too far away, it'll kill you! I'm - I lo -" 

(Later, Cara will wonder about whether she could have overcome her backlash and ignored Tia's last request, if she'd tried harder. For now, though, her brain is filled to the brim with a horrible panicky static and one now-totally-futile task to finish.)

It's his old friend from Casablanca, fancy seeing it here. He's sent an emoji to June - they'll both last longer if they're touching base occasionally while they can still function - and he's called Paula, and he's getting started. It's bigger, it's meaner, and it breaches as an opening number now. He wishes he'd killed it last time.

There's an esper rummaging in the rubble over there...

"Hey, what're you looking for?"

The esper is wearing a motorcycle helmet and perhaps cannot hear him? At any rate, she doesn't respond.

(She flips over a large piece of rubble with her power. ...Tia wasn't under it.)

Her protective leather jacket has several gashes torn into it. On closer inspection, one of them is bleeding.

He parkours up the rubble to get closer, waves in front of her face. She's going to attract worms doing that.

...headtilt. (He clearly wants her attention, so she gives it to him.)

"You''ll attract worms doing that, they sense motion - are you stealth -"

- she taps the side of her helmet, the near-universal gesture for I can't hear you.

(Let me handle talking to strangers for you, Tia had told her. Though - it's - she -)

...he'll try sign language, maybe she has a hearing related backlash and if she does it'd be smart. "Who are you?"

Oh. He's trying sign language. (She doesn't know sign language. :( )

...he obviously wants to communicate, though. And this is an emergency. 

...she takes off the helmet.

"Can you hear me?"

Nod.

"The worms for this dungeon are attracted to movement. If you don't have a stealth power or expect to be able to kill a worm you shouldn't handle search and rescue like this. What's your power?"

"Kinetic energy sensing and manipulation." She pauses to think, because they did talk about Infested Wasteland, a few months ago. "...I could kill one." (It'd be a lot of backlash, though. She could run from one more easily.)

"You're not from Toronto, is your partner in town with you?"

...she looks at the rubble pile. "I -" her voice hitches.

"- ah. Okay. What's your range, if I'm holding you up you won't transmit through the ground and if you're not right on top of the rubble a worm won't eat you while you're at it."

 "My range is pretty high." (...it doesn't really matter, though? Why...)

"Can you look for your partner from... there," an intact ledge.

She looks at the ledge, and then at the rubble. "I could? ...but it'd be a lot of backlash." She's supposed to be conservative with it.

"...long shot but check me?" Hand.

She removes a glove and reaches out a hand.

She's pretty compatible with him! And she's moderately backlashed - mostly acutely, but there's some chronic in there too, if he's paying attention.