"Yes. Eekoshi, I think that is all I need to know."

She rests the Crabwhacker against her shoulder. 

"Are you zeroed?" She holds her other hand out in offer, and to check. 

“Pretty close, yeah.”  He wraps his hand around her wrist.  He’s got a few wisps of backlash, hardly anything at all.  “Ready to whack some crabs?”

"Born ready," she nods, clasping his wrist in return and squeezing. "Do you think anyone here has a good crab cake recipe?"

“Someone will, we’re pretty close to Boston.  Alright, let’s do the briefing.  Seven minutes left.”

One briefing later, they Stick To The Plan.  Tim jumps through first, sprints through the Crab Flood and turns around, ready to buff his partner and the DRT ops as they come through.

His partner comes through after him, her endurance already ticked part-way up so she can join him past the wave and help clear the path for the DRT. 

Then she can get a buff!  And crabs can get a whack.  “It’s just like snow shoveling!  But the snow wants to get you!”

And the DRT ops pour out.  Each is carrying an aluminum rickshaw.  Each gets a buff as they come out, and they sprint to about 60 feet behind Tim and Sara.  They rapidly de-crab and give the all-clear.

As the all-clear is given, Tim drops his power from the ops.  “Now we just shovel snow for ten minutes while walking backwards.  If that’s enough to slow them down, they seem to prefer a uniform line across the world.

"Tedious but effective," she nods, and begins shoveling snow crabs. Snowcrabs? Are there any recognizable species in this horde?

No snowcrabs per se!  They’re all small, the largest is about two inches wide.  They don’t actually have pincer claws, they have double-crushers.  They’re easily crushed by the Crabwhacker 9000.  Some of them want to scuttle up the handles, though.

The scuttlers will experience Flinging, then! She alternates between smashing and flinging as necessary, as they make a backwards march towards the other end of the island. 

...any sign of the core? Sara has her stonesense flung out to the largest radius she can manage, about ten kilometers (or six miles), and detailed enough to catch a dungeon core (or a fake). If it's touching the ground, she should be able to feel it within that range. 

No search results found for: DUNGEON CORE.

Did you mean: DUNGEON CRAB?

Sara can feel the footsteps of the boss crab.  And the fact that almost all of the island dungeon is covered in crabs.

in case that had somehow escaped her notice.

No, she noticed that. She also noticed that the island is apparently made primarily of crab, given the sheer number of them under their feet. 

Also: giant enemy crab approaching?! 

"Tim, I can feel the boss crab." 

“Where is it?”  Lift-drop-flip.  Lift-drop-flip.  Lift-clear-the-handle.

Indeed. 

"That way," she gestures with her Crabwhacker 9000, incidentally flinging a few crabs off, "About three kilometers." Past the neverending line of crabs. 

“So if we want to kill this dungeon - “ lift-drop-flip “ - we have to walk through two miles - “ lift-drop-flip “ - of goddamn crabs.  Unless it’s hiding the core in a pile of crabs underground.”

"I can't feel it down there, but I might not be able to through the crabs," she admits, flipping and smashing as she goes. "There are a lot." 

“Maybe on the second go-round.  This dungeon only disappears at the end of a circuit, or we’d be hosed.”  Tim thinks back to when he learned to fire a heavy pistol and starts only buffing himself when he lifts or flips his Crabwhacker 9000.  “I wish we had a Beam esper who could just.  Whoooosh these stupid crabs.  Think the Dirties are 200 feet away?  60 meters?”

She narrows her range and raises her granularity, briefly.

"About that," she agrees, returning to wide-shallow, "I can't sense the victims yet, though. I would happily give up my pay for this dungeon in return for some Beam backup. I might give up my ruby." It's not as though she couldn't make another. 

“Let’s head back, then, and guide on the way?  If you’re good with that?”

She nods and, after smashing a few more crabs, they can make good their retreat. 

Then they can briskly powerwalk away.  It seems a little silly to smash a 60x40cm rectangle of crabs at a time, but they seem drawn to resistance.  So.  Smashing retreat followed by powerwalking arm-in-arm seems to be the order of the day.  “So.  Maybe we just walk into it and ignore having a hundred crabs on us while we fight the boss crab to the death near the portal?”

"If we guide the entire time we may be able to do that," she muses. "But it really is a lot of crabs."

She pauses to take a few deep breaths as they continue to walk, reminding herself of her breathing pattern. 

"They may stop us with sheer numbers." 

“And we can’t even use my patented horde-clearing technique.  I think…maybe if we get there and then, er, clear them?  Maybe?” She better keep moving…. He does wait, but not particularly gracefully.