"Need a hand?" the voice belongs to an older woman from somewhere behind Reve.

As Reve opens her mouth to reply, the woman cuts her off. "That was rhetorical. You obviously need help. And I wanna check something."  She reaches out a worn hand. "Let's get you up."

What???

But she's already reaching her hand out to Mystery Old Woman, who 

Who is guiding her, hand clasping hers tightly, and she's looking down at Reve with a very smug face indeed.

"Oh. Ohhhh. Wow? T-thanks?" The sensation! Of guiding! Is distracting! Especially when it's arriving via unexpected handholding! With - is that Scarlet Inferno??? 

Reve has a lot of questions but the only one that gets past her filter is "how???"

"Esper hearing doesn't fade with age, little Hourglass. I heard you explain your power and your backlash to three different people, tonight, and it sounded like we'd be compatible. And we are, so I have an offer for you."

She doesn't wait for Hourglass to ask the terms. "I'm Scarlet Inferno; you've probably heard of me. Here's my offer: I'll train you, we'll guide - skin contact only, I'm not in the cradle robbing business - and when I think you're ready, we'll do dungeons together. I'll do my best to teach you the most important things for dungeon espers - you will do your best to learn, which includes keeping notes, asking questions, and taking initiative, when the time is right." She waits. 

Reve finishes copying her summary of this offer to her phone! keeping notes. asking questions. "What would you be getting out of this?"

Scarlet's got an excellent smug smile. good job asking the right question, kid.

"Compatible guiding with someone who won't try and fuck me after I've told them no, a power that complements mine so well I bet we'll be duo-clearing A-tier dungeons in under a month, a chance to train a mentee with everything I've learned - I don't want to write a book about it, you understand, it'd be horribly dull - and lastly, it's something to do for the next 8 months, before I retire and become a full-time doting grandma."

Stars above.

Reve wants to say "when do we start?", and she thinks that's probably an okay answer. But - she wants to do better than okay.

"I'll tell my agent to expect to hear from you with a contract to review and sign," she says, trying to sound like Serious Law People do in TV.

The woman - Scarlet Inferno (Reve needs to go look her up, she only knows a bit!) - laughs, not at all unkindly. "You'll get it tonight," she says, and strides out of the venue.

"Can you move them? Can you change their strengths once active? Are there limits on the shape beyond continuity? How does the initial cost compare to upkeep?" 

The girl doesn't know. Scarlet sighs. Hourglass's power testing was not up to her standards.

She buys a collection of metronomes, a few varieties of perpetual motion deck doohickeys, and some simple motorized toys. She designs a long battery of tests and runs the girl through them, exhaustively, explaining what she's testing and why it might matter. 

"...Chronic." Scarlet is testing her on identifying backlash types, which she's been doing at the start of every training session all week.

"...do you just use your power before bed for this, when you want it to be chronic?" 

"I roll a die at 9:00 p.m. and use that. It'd be a bad test if I was deciding based on my whims, or if you knew the odds I was randomizing at." (It's still not a great test, of course. If Hourglass was careful and observant enough, she would pick up on changes in Scarlet's demeanor caused by her backlash, and guess from that whether it was chronic or acute. But she doesn't think Hourglass is that sharp with people, and she does the test first thing every morning, just in case.)

"Anyways, you're correct; it was chronic." She claps her hands, the way she always does when she's moving to the next topic. "Let's do the variable strength tests for projectile redirecting, like we talked about yesterday." 

She grins. "Don't move; try not to get hit." And as Hourglass opens her mouth to ask some question or another, Scarlet pulls out a truly massive nerf gun she'd kept hidden behind the kitchen island and opens fire.

HEY 

"Why is professionalism one of the things you're teaching me?" 

Scarlet just raises an eyebrow at her.

(Reve doesn't roll her eyes. It's fair to check if she's thought about it, she knows she asks these things before thinking, sometimes. but...) "I did think about it. I'm still stumped. It feels... incongruous? with the rest." 

Scarlet nods. "Alright."

Hourglass still has a bit of backlash, from their earlier sparring, and she's been managing it fine all afternoon. Now's as good a time as any to clear it.

She settles down on the snuggling couch and removes her jacket, beckoning the young girl over with an arm outstretched - Hourglass obliges, bouncing slightly. (Scarlet has given up pointing out that the bouncing makes her seem young and inexperienced - it takes a lot for her to suppress it. Either she'll grow out of it or she won't.)

"I'm teaching you professionalism because I think you'll need it. I've told you before that your power is genuinely exceptional, and you have the drive to see it used to its fullest, but it's not the power of a lone star, like Skybreaker" (she smiles fondly) "or that Lee Tae-gun fellow." (Her Korean pronunciation is near-flawless.)

(Reve blushes a bit, as she usually does when receiving genuine praise from Scarlet.)

-Nodnod.

"The true strength of your power lies in what you can do when working with other espers, which requires learning what they can do beforehand and then working with them to get the most out of what you both can bring to the table. We've been going over different kinds of power interactions to look out for and how you can test them in the field since day one, and we'll keep doing that for as long as we're working together, but all that prep is useless if you can't get a stranger to take a minute to plan with you before going in. And professionalism is the core skill for doing that." 

(As is often the case, she can feel Hourglass fidgeting in her arms, and it's a bit distracting, but the girl is paying attention, so she doesn't comment.)

...huh. It is?

"Over time, your skills and reputation will grow, and so will the range at which DRT allocators request you for assignments." It was a lot more hectic, back in the day, but Hourglass isn't Scarlet's first pupil in the modern era, just her most promising one. "By the time you're half my age, you'll have worked with espers and mundies from thousands of different intersections of race, class, and culture, and much of what is unmarked and normal to you would drive a fifth of them insane - that's just how the world works. Professionalism is our mutual attempt at codifying an unmarked set of behaviors where most kinds of people can meet as strangers and work together; it's better than anything you'll develop on your own, and it's the type of thing that make most people take you more seriously."

She sighs. "And it's not especially fair, but with your size and your backlash" and, frankly, personality "you're going to have work extra hard, sometimes, to get people to take you seriously right at the start."

Her lips quirk up. "I find it dull too, dear. Believe it or not, there was a time when I swooshed my cape dramatically and brainstormed one-liners on the ride to a dungeon." (Hourglass cackles, her entire body shaking, and Scarlet smiles as well.) "But it's the kind of dull work that can save lives, yours included, so it's something I'll train you in." She is not letting this girl get killed in her first year on the job, not if there's anything she can do about it. It would be a tragedy and it would be a waste.

She and Hourglass practice the obvious and non-obvious synergies with their powers for ten days. During the latter five, Scarlet preps the girl on dungeon protocols, and runs mock communication sessions going over various common (and uncommon-but-dangerous) scenarios.

When she's satisfied the girl has them down, she starts from the top, this time with Hourglass's backlash in play.

AUGH

Scarlet's agent quietly pokes at Hourglass's agent to see if she's up to snuff. (You aren't really supposed to have agents do this, especially when they're at different agencies. Scarlet doesn't care, and went through several agents until she got one that didn't care, either.) Seems like she is.

Most espers, especially those in a mentoring partnership, would consider it prudent to run through a tiny, safe dungeon with them.

It's not her style. 

"If you want your first dungeon to be a freebie, you can babysit a DRT squad through one sometime this weekend," she tells Hourglass as they eat lunch (delivery to her Bellevue house, which is where they train and where Reve's been sleeping most nights, for convenience.) "Starting Monday, you can tag along to any dungeon I get pulled in for. You're as ready as you can be, without actual practice, and I'm not going to waste our time walking into some nothing hole and incinerating anything that moves with a snap of my fingers while you hold my hand and make the ashes fall to the ground slower."

Oh! (It feels so sudden, and - Scarlet usually gets called in for A rank or nasty B rank dungeons! She's one of the PNW's top fifteen dungeon espers in terms of firepower, and of those she has more experience than the next four combined.)

She nods, excitement and nervousness warring within her.

That's uncharacteristically quiet, for Hourglass. "Nervous?"

"...A bit, yeah," she admits, swallowing her mouthful of burrito.

She feels something inside her shift, as she thinks about it more.

"But you think I'm ready, and you'd know." 

Scarlet smiles. "I think you'll be ready by Monday. There's a lot of time between now and then."

She looks at the line of metronomes, wired up to boot up at the same time with each other - they're moving in a wave, now, perfectly spaced, and as she watches, Hourglass cleanly pulls them back in sync, all without spilling any of the water running down the parallel tracks flanking the setup. "Good." 

She's struggling to keep her attention on it, with this much backlash to start with, but the task is right here and it's interesting and she's focused and Scarlet is proud of her -

There sure is a lot of time between Friday and Monday. Stars above, she's tired.

She sleeps snuggling with Scarlet, to work off both the backlash they get from the heavy practice they're doing - it'll be like that when they're doing dungeons. 

(Reve had not expected "sleep while snuggling (non-sexually) with a woman over three times her age who she only knows by a code name" to be a regular feature of her life, when she turned eighteen. But life is full of little surprises.)

She's a tiny little thing, Hourglass is, and so earnest it's almost painful. Even at backlash rates Scarlet hasn't hit in a dungeon in ten years, the girl doesn't scare her at all.

(She's very careful, very choosy, about the espers she works with, even the professional guides. She has been for years, since Kaylee died. It's not worth getting that close to someone, not at her age, at this point in her career. But despite herself, Scarlet is growing fond of Hourglass. This one has promise, in more ways than one.)

Her agent forwards her info about the dungeon, an A rank with bloodthirsty swarms of tiny knife-armed kangaroos that jump and stab and bite. She pulls up the videos of their movement. "Notice anything?" 

She points at their feet. "Look at how they jump. They tip forward as they head up. A planar slice right here will mess up their momentum on the way up, stop them from getting up in our faces and maybe even trip them when they try. Clump em all up for you."

Scarlet replays the video a few times, thinking about it. "Good eye," she says, sounding impressed. (She is impressed. No time to stop, though.)

"The car gets here in ten minutes. Get your stuff and tell me everything I need to know about fighting melee swarms, like I just got over my hell week yesterday, and I'll tell you what you missed on the car ride there."

There's! A lot of them!!! 

Scarlet squeezes her hand, and that grounds her. "Slowing the 9 o'clock group," she says, because they're closer and she has a better view of them. (She can feel Scarlet using her own power, through the guiding link, though she doesn't stop to watch. They'll review footage after.)

Reve drops a planar section of slowed time on the knifegaroos, right above their feet. The ones already starting to jump wobble, and several trip, their sharp arms stabbing into the ground, or occasionally each other. 

Scarlet finishes immolating the other wave of pests and turns, looking approvingly at Hourglass's work. "Good." 

Then she incinerates them with a wave of her hand.

 "Alright. There's another few victims over that way. We need to get them before the next wave." 

Reve does not especially think she's well-suited to imitating Scarlet's victim reassuring strategy, which is being Tall and Imposing and Obviously Capable of fucking up the entire dungeon alone. 

(Over the next few months, they'll refine her style - calm, gentle, professional, and in control, and give her chances to practice it. But today, she stands alert, scanning for the next wave, as Scarlet gets the three victims on their feet and moving towards the portal.)

There are so many fucking knifegaroos.

There sure fucking are.

Scarlet is pretty visibly on edge, by the time they get to the core. "Alright. I blast this and then we run, for the exit, understand? And don't let go of my hand."

 (It's becoming hard to focus, but - they're here to clear out the dungeon, they've gotten all the survivors, the other three espers in here are holding off the knifegaroos in the southern wing...)  Reve nods.

Then, before Scarlet gives her The Look, she remembers to say out loud:

"I understand. You blast the core, we run. Holding hands."

(The guiding feels good. It's an anchor, something that stays real even as her mind feels like it's very slightly vibrating out of her head.)

She blasts it apart. (It's satisfying, every time. Even her damned backlash gnawing at her and telling her to Run, Run, Run won't take that from her.)

And then they run. She holds onto Hourglass's hand, tightly.

!!!

(They make it out with plenty of time. Scarlet takes her into one of the guiding tents, and holds her as they both catch their breath.)

"Good work, Hourglass," she says, and it's easy to hear the pride in her voice. "For your first time in a dungeon, you did fine."

(Pause, to let it sink in, and to pat the girl on the head.)

"Now. What could we have done better?"

She thinks. "Well, with the second pair we escorted out..."

They work three more dungeons together that week. In between, they cuddle away their backlash and alternate unwinding (her with video games and Tumblr, Scarlet with her Spanish soap operas), debriefings, and verbal mentoring - more professionalism and some victim interaction roleplay. 

"b-b-but you're just a child!", Scarlet wails, her voice at the edge of hysterical. "You can't really be an esper. Oh, oh, oh no, I need to be rescued soon, my son is getting married today, he's going to think I hate him and his husband," and she starts fake-sobbing.

"...Ma'am, please calm down. I'm an adult esper. I'm just short. Here, I can show you my ID." 

"Cut!" She waits a beat. "Far too annoyed, Hourglass. Try to keep it in! ...or try to keep in mind that they're just ordinary people, in a very stressful situation. They'll be confused, they'll be scared. And it adds a lot of stress, trusting someone to rescue you when you think they're mad at you."

Pause. "You can't avoid that all the time, of course. People who get anxious easily can go haywire in dungeons, and it's usually better to just get them out than to try and soothe them. But you should try to hide it when you're annoyed with a victim. It's usually not their fault, and it rarely helps." 

"Alright. I get it, just..." She sighs. "...can we take a break with the short/child shit? It's grating." 

She hums. "How would you handle that situation in the field, if you can't talk them through it?" 

"Ask them to wait while I escorted a DRT operative or fellow esper there."

And she's forgetting somethin- "Or carry them out myself, if that's safe." 

"Very good. We'll have you practice carrying some of my weighted dummies, later, but for now, let's move on to a new scenario..." 

Scarlet and Hourglass share a bed every night now, with the backlash they're taking doing dungeons. The girl is almost noxiously clingy in her sleep, but it's good for guiding, at least.

And she panics a bit, almost every time she wakes up. Squirms, shakes. Starts to hyperventilate, eyes wide.

The first time it happens, Scarlet wonders if it was a particularly bad nightmare. The girl isn't interested in talking about it, though. 

The second time it happens, Scarlet notices that Hourglass only calms down when she realizes she can move her limbs freely. From then on, she starts rolling over to make sure the girl can more easily.

The fourth time, she says "...you should try talking to someone about it," in her best approximation of a gentle voice, once it's obvious Hourglass is awake and alert.

"Mmmmm." Sad clingy blue girl. (She's still backlashed, which doesn't help.)

The next morning, however (at least after she orients and calms down), Reve explains in short, fractured sentences how she spent most of her hell week.

(Scarlet thinks about how Hourglass often gets really anxious when she's backlashed, even when the symptoms themselves are relatively mild.)

She sighs. Alright. She'll give this a try.

"Look, Hourglass... ...Reve." She takes the girl's hand in hers.

"For all of us - almost all of us, I suppose"... (bungling this already, huh) "...for you and for me and for everyone I've worked closely with - hell week was the worst week of our lives. It happened to us without any warning, and we couldn't do anything about it. Most of us almost died. Some do die. And then then we come out of that knowing that using our powers will put us back there." 

She shrugs. "There's espers out there that never use their powers. Not even once. And it's a damned shame, when any of them could be the next... oh, what's his name, that kid who teleports half the world around..." Hourglass starts to open her mouth, and Scarlet cuts her off with a vaguely irritated hand-wave. "You know who I mean."  

"Anyways. It's a shame, but - I'd yell at anyone who nagged them about it. Especially if they weren't an esper. They have no idea what it's like, to spend a week burning their hand on a stove and then make a career out of poking it on the daily."

She squeezes Hourglass's hand. "What I'm trying to say is - it takes real courage to do this. And you should be proud of yourself, for that." Pause. "I know I am."

O-oh. She blushes, a bit, and straightens up. "Thanks."

"Leave that bra on, girl," she says drily. "My daughter has seven years on you, I don't want to see your tits." 

She sighs. That backlash...

"Here's your phone. Pull up that video app you like, pick something fun to watch." She's pretty sure Hourglass will stop trying to get more guiding if she gets enough stimulation, even with this much backlash. 

Oh! Phone!

She opens up the gaming livestreaming app and clicks almost randomly on a vtuber she likes.

Much better.

...

"Is that a cartoon character playing a video game? Who are they talking to?"

"Oh! No, it's a vtuber, which is a..."

Scarlet has discovered that even with a decent chunk of backlash, Hourglass can read informative blogposts if they're well-written, and she has her music on in the background, and they're snuggling, and she's allowed to ask every question that comes to her mind immediately. Scarlet doesn't even need to answer them right away - Hourglass usually will do it herself, often interrupting her own questions.

She even can do it while watching her soaps (subtitles on, one earbud in), as long as she's up for pausing and rewinding every so often. (Hourglass doesn't really get distracted by them - she can't read Spanish, and the visuals aren't much to write home about most of the time.)

Oh this is going to be tricky.

"Hourglass! Hop on my back!" 

What? 

"What?" She's already heading over, though. 

"We need to get out of here before the water level rises! And I'm not doing a princess carry, I want my hands free and I need you to see so you can use your power if the gulls come back." 

The girl hops on. (Luckily, she barely weighs anything. Scarlet isn't too old for this yet.)

She makes a ramp of flame and runs up it. She hears Hourglass yelp. "You'll be fine!" 

(The angry seagulls are in fact coming back. She waits, waits, waits and then as they dive she slows them, longer and more heavily than their trajectories can account for, and they slam into the fire behind or the water below.)

Weeks turn to months. Hourglass learns fast.  They do more dungeons, and the debriefs smoothly transition from hours-long in-depth reviews to "good work. One or two notes..." 

Scarlet starts thinking ahead. 

"And you're sure you're not into boys?" 

"Pretty sure, yeah." Pause. "Why?" 

She frowns, and moves some names to a different list. "No reason." 

Hourglass peels herself away from the window as they level out above the clouds. "This is insanely cozy for a plane. Why do we get to sit on a couch. Why does it have this fancy cover over it. Is it some kind of antique."

"These cabins were designed for esper usage." She sips her ginger ale. "And time in the air is time that can be spent guiding."

Sip.

"The couch is probably new. But the cover makes it a lot easier to clean." Siiip.

Wuh? Easier to clea - oh.

She winks at Hourglass, and goes back to her book.

(On the flight back, she falls asleep in Scarlet's arms, which she hasn't ever done in a plane before, but it's cozy and dark and warm and her vtuber is playing a cozy game (the wifi is SO GOOD on esper planes she loves this))