Conrad's squad has mostly decided to just ignore what happened and just treat Conrad as having taken an unscheduled week of vacation, having returned to service immediately after his hospital stay and power testing. He's still the same person, sans backlash. Yes, the steel-gray hair and eyes are new, but they wear face-covering helmets anyway, so.

His power lets him make entities more durable, and to maintain that durability by touching them, but this durability degrades if he's not. But his own body seems to be special — he is considered to always be touching himself, so he can effortlessly maintain the durability on himself. The maintenance isn't free, but only technically — it's so cheap as to be practically negligible when only maintaining one entity. If he was to do it on his personal effects, it would be noticeable, though. Just before power testing ended, he loaded himself up with it.

Hell week was very unpleasant, but provided that his survival was guaranteed, he would totally have gone through it just for the physical benefits, even if he got no power out of it. His body feels better, feels stronger. He hasn't broken his PRs but he thinks that's just because. He suffered major injuries. And because he's still getting used to his new body.

And yes, he would be so pleased to meet him!

Then a meeting can be arranged.

James Lim is a staff sergeant with the DRT, but he is also a lot more obviously an esper than Conrad, with hair that is what platinum blond would look like if platinum blond were a colour human hair came in naturally and eyes as red as blood. He's in the meeting room waiting when Conrad arrives, and stands up when he walks in. "Hello—"

"—wait, I recognize you. You're..."

"October! Pleasure to meet you!"

???????????????????

...oh. Last year someone approached him to model for a "shirtless DRT officer calendar" and he agreed because they were paying good money. He recognizes him too, now.

"Pleasure to meet you too, January."

"Congrats on being an esper, now. Next calendar will look even better, huh?" He offers a hand to shake.

Slight smile. He shakes!

...that felt a lot better than the guy he was with for power testing. He doesn't know quite how to describe it, aside from 'good'. Maybe the closest descriptor would be 'relief'.

"Are we compatible?" he asks.

He laughs. "Well, at least from this direction we are. You've done power testing?"

Right, asymmetry in compatibility exists. "Yes, I think I am compatible with you. You are only the second esper I have tested compatibility for, but it's a significant increase in compatibility compared to the partner I had for power testing. And yes. Should I describe my power?"

"Please, go ahead." He's still holding Conrad's hand. He should instead stop and sit at the table.

Oh, he didn't even realize he forgot to let go. Oops. Yes, they can sit.

"Broadly speaking, my power grants durability to people and objects. This durability is broad and encompasses physical force, temperature, and radiation. It functions like...basically, whenever you might encounter something externally that would hurt you, it is used up instead and you are left unharmed.

I don't think it works on deprivation, suffocation, disease, or inhaled poison, but I think it won't. I don't know if it works on psychic phenomena but I think it isn't protective against them.

How much it costs to make something durable depends on its size and how much durability I want to impart to it. There's an inflection point as to how much durability I can impart where it gets very expensive very fast — I've learned to stop just before that point. For humans, that point comes to something like...being able to take one instance of lethal or maiming damage, like a gunshot, or a fall that would break a bone. The durability isn't discrete and will be reduced proportionally less for lesser injuries, like getting a cut or bruise.

I need to touch something to impart durability to it. It takes about one minute for me to impart optimal durability to a person. Once I stop touching them, the durability starts to degrade. Around ten minutes for full degradation from the optimal level. I think the rate is linear. My power always considers myself to always be in contact with me, so it's trivial for me to maintain it — I have it on right now. Maintaining durability has a backlash cost but it's very low, basically negligible unless I maintain multiple things at once for days. Maintaining durability seems to have a flat cost but it's difficult fol me to tell."

"...you should probably not maintain it even if it's cheap. It adds up, and you don't have a partner. ...unless we partner, I suppose, but that sounds pretty good, you sure you wanna stick with the DRT?"

Right. That makes sense. His power is just so useful though. He never gets bruises or scrapes or even feel terribly hot or cold, if he doesn't want to.

"I've been told that while my power isn't useless, it's not spectacular. So it seems most useful for me to stay with the DRT."

"I think yours would be on the edge of useful enough for proper esper work, if you wanted. ...and I know at least one esper whose power is substantially worse than both of ours that's with an agency anyway. Mine's more personal, though—I can form a three-dimensional map of my surroundings, inside my head. The longer somewhere stays in range with my power active, the more detail I can get, starting with something like omnidirectional sight and progressing all the way to being able to see more detail than a microscope can."

Part of the reason is that he feels attached to the DRT as an organization, having already been in it for several years, but that seems kind of pathetic to say, so he doesn't.

"That seems very useful. How much range do you have? If we partner, I could enable you to traverse dungeons more freely to map its layout. I admit that I haven't worked significantly with espers before so I don't know the tactics very well — especially because esper power diversity means tactics don't generalize well."

"Not much range, about twenty meters radius. It's not very useful for proper sensing because to get enough detail I need to stand still for a while, so I mostly use it in short bursts as a personal tactical aid."

Short range, not enough for dungeon mapping. But enough to prevent monsters or hazards from sneaking up on him.

"I see.

I have no strong attachments to Boise and my commander has given leave for me to be reassigned if I choose to partner with you." There's probably more to selecting a partner than just compatibility especially given that James would become his commanding sergeant, but. Compatibility is the main factor limiting esper effectiveness, second only to time. So all of the other factors are much less relevant, really.

"Well, that could work out, then. Have you given thought to what kinds of guiding you're okay with?"

"I am interested in trying and learning about the guiding techniques that will be the most efficient."

Eyebrow lift. "From your reaction I gather you're thinking of sexual guiding? Are you attracted to men? The efficiency isn't worth it if you're making yourself do it out of necessity, so we should only do that if you would actually be okay with it."

"Yes. And yes."

His face continues to be neutral and stoic but the effect is rather undercut by his face flushing.

"Understood. Do you have experience with men? Or sexual experience at all? —forgive me if these questions are impertinent, you don't have to answer them, I'm only asking to know what to expect," and, well, partially to get to know Conrad better, too. "I'm fine with anything."

"Yes. Only...oral..." he should really hurry up and get used to talking about these things given that he wants to be a Real Dungeoneering Esper, now, but. Intimacy is difficult. It's exposing and vulnerable. Having his power wreathe him makes him feel better about it, though.

"And mutual masturbation. Both with men."

"Oral is better for guiding than mutual masturbation, but in my experience trying to organise guiding sex so as to only do the maximally efficient guiding tends to overall work a lot less well than just treat it as regular sex. But we can figure that out as we go along, if we partner.

"I've been asking a lot of questions, do you have questions for me?"