If you slip and don’t get up in time?  The crabs climb you and strip your flesh to the bone.  If you climb something to escape the crabs?  They climb it and get you.  If you try to double back when you’re abducted and get to the portal “early”?  You get crabbed.

So why not use explosives, one might ask?  They tried that on the third incarnation.  And they found that disturbing the ground too much causes crabs to burst from the ground and swarm the nearest ambulatory non-crab target.

The survivor of that demo team was the one who coined the term “crabocalypse”.

“So, the plan is that we act as a scouting rearguard when the  next wave of abductees comes through.  There’s a thirty-second window of opportunity.  We’d use ATVs, but if you put too much pressure on the ground, crabs come out and pincer the tires and get in the engine and it’s all terrible.  So, they have these fat-tire rickshaw things that usually don’t disturb the locals too much.  Anyone who needs a break gets time in the rickshaw.  We jump in, tank through the crabs, give the DRT time to chivvy the civvies, and try to find the damn core once we’ve bought them time.  Any questions?”

"Sounds simple enough," Sara nods as she checks a few reinforced straps on her gear (rated to withstand crab-force pinches). "If the core is anywhere underground I should be able to spot it within the first few minutes. If not, I will need to be a lot closer. At least I should be able to tell if the big crab has it, if we catch sight of it." 

Tim is similarly checking himself!  And his checklist.  “Last time around, they thought the big one was guarding the core instead of hosting it, but we try not to bring explosives in anymore.  Um.  Except that I have a standard horde-clearing technique.  I crank on my augmentation to ten to failure and I sort of blow myself up a little.  I’m going to hang onto that, just in case.”  He very respectfully pats a trio of grenades hanging onto side of his MOLLE rig.

"That sounds like it may just result in further crabs," she notes, raising a brow at him. 

“Historically speaking, yeah?  But as long as I don’t have more crabs on my face it’s a step in the right direction.”

"I guess that's fair," she is covering a smile again. 

"Are the rickshaws motorized? Or are we going to be pedalling the whole time?" 

“Pedal power.  They think the crabs get aggravated by vibration.  But mostly we get to walk, we’ll get a lift from the DRT ops if we need to rest.”

"Well, let me know if you get tired," she teases, "I can carry you for a while before we bother DRT."

“You’ve been training, huh?”  Tim’s mental checklist hiccups a bit as his magazines aren’t standard.  Or standard for him, either.  “I actually am going to buff all of us a bit going through, we can bring in more rickshaws if we can do one rickshaw per op instead of two rickshaws per op.  I don’t plan on knocking myself out, though.  Sorry to disappoint.  His tongue pokes out at Sara.

She pokes her tongue back at him, "Spoil my fun, why don't you." 

She keeps half an eye on the portal while they talk, waiting for the latest wave to come through. 

"How many victims should we be expecting inside?" 

“A couple dozen per wave.  Waves seem to be about one every three and a half hours.  It’s pretty manageable as long as we find it fast and don’t provoke the big one.  Or, you know, a lot of the little ones.”  Check the time.  Hm.  “About fifteen to m-minute.”

Nod, "Does it have a preferred victim profile? Should we be keeping an eye out for anyone who will need help walking?" 

“The vibe is that it prefers people who think they can escape.  A lot of the DRT’s job has been to make people pace themselves and not burn out, since getting to the portal requires you to sprint across a few crabs.  Er.  Only a few for this dungeon, anyway.  I can cover the victims on the sprint out, as long as I don’t gas out myself.”

Tim does look a little uneasy about that part.

"-should I carry you, Tim? I don't mind, and if I am using my endurance anyway it won't make much difference. Maybe not to start, but at some point?" 

“Maybe towards the end.  It honestly depends on how much I need to use my power, and I think they want us to do two sweeps if we can.  And if we kill enough crabs without provoking the underground ones, maybe DRT can handle the rest.  Honestly, I want to take a crack at the big one, but that’s sort of a stretch goal if we think we can survive.  No Mobility ranking here, you know?”

"Yes, me too. Has anyone attempted to kill it before? Do we know how durable it is?"

“Well, RPGs didn’t work and had.  Er.  Consequences.  I thiiiiink I could take it, but I don’t know for sure.  I wanna try my big pistol before I try rasslin’ it for sure.  Er.  The big pistol is the one that’s an anti-materiel pistol.  It’d break your wrist if you didn’t have a strength or endurance power.”

She nods again, "I won't use it without ticking my endurance, then, if at all." She pats her shotgun, "You can use mine if you need it." 

“I have a smaller one.  Can’t burn backlash too much.  And it’s loud, too, I don’t like using it without augmenting bystanders.”  His normally-silenced pistol is gestured at.  “No silencer today, though.  Not much point.”  Deep breath, check through his kit as he walks.  Nothing has mysteriously gone missing in the last few minutes.

"Eekoshi. Positions? Will you be hitting them more with melee, or at range?" 

“Well, we have the Crabwhacker 9000!  We can’t really shoot crabs usefully, not for three and a half hours with no explosives.”  The Crabwhacker 9000 is perhaps the silliest polearm invented.  Tim swipes one out of the armory Rickshaw.  “It’s a ten foot long pole with a flat twenty pound weight on the far end.  It’s like a weighted snow shovel.  You just drop the weight on the crab swarm, then pick it up and flip it over and do it all over again.”

She holds a hand out to take the Crabwhacker 9000, giving it a couple swings to get a feel for it. 

"More efficient than a shotgun," she nods, "At least for as long as we will be in there. Are the DRT with us rated for your strength?" 

“Yes’m, up to an hour to failure.  We ideally want to be the last two, but we should prefer to engage only if it buys us sensor time or saves a civilian.  And I can ride piggyback while the DRT plays whackacrab if necessary, it’s just - a little risky.  They don’t have powers, you know?

"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.

She doubles the pace for a moment, once she's steady again, "Désolé. I am fine. Maybe, let us see what the situation is like at the portal." She would really love to kill that boss, though have the video games been a bad influence on her? Maybe.

They’re a good influence, you run away from dungeon bosses until you figure out the trick to killing them.  Then you murder them to death.

”Maybe I should be carrying you, hm?”

The next cluster of victims is just a little ways ahead.  The DRT ops are currently explaining that they need to move, here’s some hiking sneakers and socks, no, it doesn’t matter how much you like your dress boots.  Leave them and claim them on a dungeon insurance claim.

"I'm okay," she repeats. "Should we clear more space for them?" She gestures towards the victims. She's inclined to leave the actual chivvying to the DRT, but they can help in their own way, perhaps? 

“Yeah.  We have enough space that it’s not actually urgent, just.  It’s gonna be a long day.”  Time to turn around and with some help from the DRT, Whack some Crabs.

Whack and smash and fling and whack and smash and fling and whack and smash and- 

Any sign of the core?

There is no core.

Only crab.

Of course. 

She applies herself to reducing the amount of crab, then. 

Lol

And so passes the next three hours.  No underground signs of the core, but many underground signs of Crab.  This group of abductees has been saved.  They’re approaching the portal and the Dirties want to know if their esper support has another three and a half hours in them.  Some of the ops are going to take a break, but one DRT op is much like another.  Espers are less interchangeable.

Sara can keep going. She's been running her endurance this whole time, but Tim sharing his power means it's only been on low level, so it hasn't been too expensive. 

She'll need a break after the next run, though. 

Tim has no endorsed envy of other powersets.  Right now, he’s seethingly jealous of Sara’s ability to Just Keep Going.

He might take a ride in a rickshaw in the middle of a circuit.  But for now, he’s fine and can do at least one more lap around the island.  Crabwhackin’ along.

The handoff goes pretty smoothly.  The new victims appear.  The replacement Dirties hop out of the portal and Tim gets to extend his power to them as they enter, and the victims and tagging-out Dirties as they flee.  It’s all fine!

Until a victim trips.

Merde. 

"Tim!" She points out the victim with her next crab fling. "They're down!" 

The thing about the Crab Dungeon that humanity hasn’t quite grasped yet is that it doesn’t really want to kill people.  It does!  But it feeds on a diet of struggling to survive. And crabs.

When someone trips and falls into a mass of crabs, they don’t get sliced apart.  They’re pinched by crusher claws that shake.  It’s possible for a human being to pick themselves up fast enough to eacape.

A healthy mid-forties man with a diet problem and a heart condition and a very recently rolled ankle is not, actually, capable of standing up on his own.

“¡Hijo de puta!”  Fast as thought, Tim’s power extends to the downed man.  “Let’s grab him, cover us!”  Tim draws his pistol and tries to at least reduce the number of crabs.

Instead of 5.56 NATO, his pistol is loaded with shotshell today.  Extravagant?  Not exactly, it was originally intended as anti-drone ordnance.

They have less fancy ammunition, but automatic shotguns can kill crabs.  Now they just need someone to grab the poor guy.

Sara needs a goddamn broom. But her shotgun will have to do, so she draws it and begins firing as she advances through the crabs towards the victim, clearing what she can and ignoring any crusher claws that attach themselves to her. She can endure it, where the man only has as much time as Tim can give him. 

She has to stop firing when they get close, of course. At that point it's just a matter of wading through and getting him off the ground, ignoring the crabs for now. 

He’s not heavy, and Sara probably notices that her endurance isn’t being used all that much.  She almost certainly notices that the weight of seventeen crabs climbing her thighs isn’t actually particularly noticeable.  And when she gets to the fallen man, her partner is only a few steps behind her.

“Get the legs, I’ll support his neck!  Sir, you’re okay, they can’t hurt you!  Just hold still!”

She doesn't really notice at the time, busy following that plan and then brushing crabs off him as she is able. 

"We have you, Monsieur! We will get you out of here!" 

With Tim’s strength surging through her, ‘brushing crabs off’ might turn into ‘ripping their bodies from their claws’.

The man is COVERED.  There are easily four dozen crabs she can see, pinching all of his everything from his face and eyes to tearing his shoes and pants apart.  The jeans are holding up well, but the sneakers are being slowly shredded.

If tearing their bodies from their claws is what she can do, then she will do it! While they slowly carry him towards the edge of the crabrwave so they can eventually get him on a rickshaw. The claws can be pulled off once there is nothing directing them. 

Yeah, let’s get this guy closer to the Dirties and cleaned up of crabs.  Just hustle a hundred and fifty feet carrying half of a 221lb man while using a fatiguing power on two people, one of whom is.  Having Problems.

During the Decrabbing, Tim speaks up.  “I think he’s got something wrong with him.  He’s got something going on with his heart.”  Tim doesn’t so much sweep crabs aside as crush any he encounters with his bare hands.

"Merde. Heart attack? Let DRT know?" 

At this point she isn't sure if she is going to want a pile of crabcakes for revenge after this, or to never see a crab again. Regardless, crab squishing and tearing will continue until further notice.

Hey, sergeant!  This guy’s got something wrong with his heart, he can feel the tissue dying in there.  What’s the SOP for a man with a medical condition in a dungeon?  Get him out if he’s savable?  Great.

Once he’s been decrabbed, he can get dumped transferred to a rickshaw.  How’s the crab situation looking?

Crab leader is visible at this point.  It’s only barely visible through some convenient sea smoke, but it’s there for sure.

Sara takes a few moments to decrab herself (and get a few stragglers off her partner) before focusing on that entire crabtuation. 

"Still want to try wrestling it?!" She calls over to him, through the sound of scuttling, "How is your backlash?" 

“I’m good for now, but it’s not a sprint.  We still have another ten miles.  Uh, sixteen kilometers?  And whatever’s happening to his heart keeps happening.  I don’t think we can take it right now.” Not without losing this guy. “Maybe we give it a fight closer to the portal, see if we can soften it up for the next team?”

Firm nod, "Let's reassess there, if it has gotten any closer. For now let's see if we can give the vics a bit more space?" 

She gets back to crabwhacking, extra motivated now, and trying to take more of the load off Tim since he's keeping that victim alive now, too. 

Nod.  Now let’s see…

Externally, Tim is simply Whacking Crabs.  Internally, he’s trying to juggle the bare minimum of backlash required to keep this vic alive, maintain Sara and the DRT’s buffs, and “toggle” his own personal buff so it only kicks in when he’s lifting or flipping his Crabwhacker 9000.

He can manage this for about forty minutes before he admits to himself that he needs a break.  “Doing alright, Sara?”

Sara is relying mostly on Tim's buff and still only using the barest amount of endurance. Crabwhacking is an exercise in long-term resource management. 

"I'm okay." Whack and turn and flip and breathing steadily- "I can make it to the portal like this. You?" 

“Um.  Not so much.  I’m too far away from our vic.  And this is kind of a lot.” She’s like a goddamn juggernaut.  She could just walk through an ocean of crabs. “Can we, er, guide closer to our vic?”  There are a few others that got picked up, but they aren’t trying to die on him!

-she immediately starts wading towards him, "Yes, of course. On my back?" One of her shoulders is actually bare right now, owing to a particularly stubborn crab from the earlier incident, so there's even some bare skin there for him to hold. "I can drop you off at a rickshaw, or just carry you for a while." 

“Hang onto my vest for a sec?”  He hands off his vest and strips down out of his shirt.  Then puts his vest back on, but backwards, so Sara doesn’t get jabbed in the back by a multitool or a magazine.  “Okay, ready when you are?”

She holds the vest when asked, and then she makes sure she gets her back to him and stays steady so he can climb on, keeping the crabs off them in the meantime. 

"Go ahead!" 

Sara gains Status Effect: Mildly Encumbered.

Tim slips his arms around her shoulders.  It’s mildly fraught navigating the region between Neck(do not choke your noble steed) and Below The Neck(do not sexually assault your noble steed).  But this isn’t the first time he’s been carried and it won’t be the last.  He can handle mild peril.

”Okay.  Try to stay about equidistant between the rickshaws and the rearguard?”

Mmmmmmguiding.  Tim is doing his level beat to curl his entire body around Sara’s exposed shoulder.

"Yes. You can rip up the top of that shirt," she adds, "It is ruined anyway, and you need the skin contact," he really does, she can now tell. Meanwhile, he can tell that she is more backlashed than she appears, but not close to the worst he has seen her (though he might not remember it well). 

She starts whacking her way towards the indicated range. Hopefully their heart attack patient is still alive?

THIS ISN’T THE FIRST TIME A GIRL HAS ASKED HIM TO JUST RIP UP HER CLOTHES BUT AUGH.

This is a dungeon, and this poor guy might die if you don’t build a bridge and get over yourself. After a split-second of internal monologue, he rips the shirt and settles himself against significantly more of her bare back.  “You barely feel backlashed at all.  You could be an ultrarunner.”

"I'm backlashed. I am just. Good at regulating my breath. I have practice at this." Though it has been a couple months since she did a dungeon like this. "I haven't needed to use much endurance with you buffing me, I would be much worse without you." 

Tim hums into her neck.  She can feel his backlash accumulation rate rising and falling, but it’s mooostly trending downwards.  “I’m glad.”  This guy just won’t stop trying to die on me.  It’s getting a little better but augh.  Backlash surfing is hard.  I’m glad Carol made me learn.  “Little closer to the rearguard?  They can do another twenty minutes of crabwhacking and then I can try for zero?”

She nods, and slows briefly to allow the rearguard to get closer. 

"How is he?" 

“I thiiink better?  He’s…So, I can more or less tell how someone is?  Usually I just use it for power prioritization.  I can feel something in his heart trying to die on me.  It was pretty bad right after he fell.  I’m pretty worried about him, and I’m just hoping he doesn’t do something stupid while I surge him.”

"You can tell it's his heart, though, not something the crabs did?" She huffs, "Why would a man with heart problems think he could handle this walk? That is why the dungeon will have taken him, yes?" 

“That’s just a vibe, they haven’t proven anything.”  Tim’s reproach is very half-hearted.  “But yeah, I can tell you’re fine and you don’t have any health problems.  You’re exerting yourself, but only a little.  You feel like you could do this all day and all night.  The Dirties are kind of a mixed bag.  The one on the far left had a blister before she took her turn on crabbing duty.”

"That is useful feedback," she nods. "I am glad we were assigned here." 

She focuses on crabwhacking for a while, eventually ticking her endurance up a little to compensate for the extra weight and additional crab load she is handling. Her backlash declines more slowly, as a result, but it is still being drained, at first.

Tim irrationally feels like he should be helping.  It’s hard, but logically he knows that buffing four people is four times as valuable as being one crabwhacker.  But.  If he has to cling to the back of a cute girl while she squishes thousands of crabs in a pocket dimension, he can accept his fate.

He'd better! She can feel his backlash! 

Also, frankly, buffing four people and guiding her all at the same time is much more valuable in this situation, now that he's backlashed enough he can't fight beside her.

Sara goes quiet for the next little while, saving her breath for whacking and walking. Unless someone needs something from them, or an emergency crops up, they can keep this up for the next twenty minutes. 

The thing about slowing the oncoming horde of crabs is that it doesn’t, actually, slow the boss crab at all.  It’s not what anyone would call close, but it‘s closer.  The next twenty minutes are spent in relative silence.  Well, silence-ish.  The crabs are pretty noisy when splattered.

Yeah she has half an eye (half a sense, really) on that big crab. They can see it looking over the horde, at this point. 

"Well," she huffs, "We won't need. To go looking for it." 

This may or may not make sense as a statement, depending on how much attention Tim is paying to their surroundings. 

Tim isn’t NAPPING in a DUNGEON.  He’s keeping his eyes open!  And that’s a giant-ass crab.  “Yeah.  Think we could mount its head on the mantelpiece?”

"Bit. Big- for that. Could- hang it in the. Theatre. Foyer. Maybe?" She isn't slowing down, but talking is definitely a bit of a challenge. 

“Backlash check?  Let’s give you a break?”  How is Sara’s general condition and backlash level?

Worse than it was when she started carrying him, with her endurance ticked up a bit more now. Still not as bad as she was when they got to the truck last weekend, but definitely well past the point she'd been at after digging up copper. 

She nods, "Short- break. Yes." How far are they from the rickshaws? 

About eighty feet.  Just a little bit of a jog.

Ugh, through crabs, though.

Well, it is what it is. She begins jogging. 

"Tell them?" The DRT, that is. 

“Sorry about your ears.”  Tim makes an attempt to project away from sad esper ears.  “We’re taking a tactical pause!  Pull back, then we pull back!”  At a more reasonable volume: “Sorry.  Again.”

She slows down because that's actually what she should be doing, yes. She maybe should have taken that break earlier. 

"It is-" she huffs a breath.

"-Kiyaam," she says instead. "Tell me- when I can- go?" 

In the meantime: Sara smash.

Retreating under fire crabs is one of the things they trained for.  “We’re clear!”

She doesn't wait to be told after that, starting a steamroll retreat back to the rickshaws. A bit of extra endurance won't hurt that much when she can get better guiding sooner. 

Once they reach an open one, she drops Tim in it before climbing in after him and collapsing as she lets go.

Her breaths hitch a bit, going a little uneven, but she manages to keep mostly on top of it. 

“Hey, hey, easy there, one second here.”  Tim lifts Sara up off him with one hand and unbuckles her LBE with the other.  “Just a sec, lemme just - there.”  Once Sara’s been helped out of her vest, she can get guided.  With a hand on her shoulder.  “Better?”

"-yeah," she gets out. She curls into his skin, shuddering. 

Normally she might go for kissing, at this point. They haven't actually talked about that, though, not after last weekend, and it sounds like it might push his boundaries. This isn't the time to talk about it, either. 

"We need- to talk about- guding limits," she tells him instead. "Properly. List it?" 

A moment of stunned hesitation, then - “Yes’m.”  Somehow, the last time he was asked about his guiding limitations flashes to the forefront of his mind.  But he can be a professional, and that can go on the list.  “C’mere, I’ve got you.  Just - just relax.  You’re so damn impressive out there, you know that, right?”  Tim murmurs a litany of reassurance and compliments as he waits for his partner to get his breath back.

Small smile, "Marsi. You as well." 

And then she will stop talking for a little while and focus on breathing. 

Tim relaxes, bit by bit.  Sara gets an extremely indirect view on how their patient is doing: when he’s doing poorly, Tim zones out slightly and his backlash ticks up.  When he does well, his backlash goes down and he gets fidgety.  During one of the lulls, he winds up taking notes on his phone.  Does Sara get a glimpse?  He’s not making any efforts to hide it.

At least the man is still alive?

Meanwhile, she will catch sight of his screen out of the corner of her eye and sort of idly observe.

TODO:

Develop beam power
Cut down artillery piece?  Not practical?  check.
Sensing - better detection?
guiding(grow up)
Shirt - confirm when breathing better.
Stress test vs giant crab?  How???  Feed it car??  Animal testing???  No.

-she giggles when she finally manages to actually parse the first one, and then averts her eyes. She has been doing her best not to look at his lists, since they seem to be at least partly private. 

"I don't think you can spontaneously develop a bean power," she says, though. 

“Oh.  Uh.  I mean.”  He offers her the list to read if she wants, even if #3 and #4 are objectively mortifying.  “I do a lot of thinking this way, if I write it down I can’t forget it later.  Maybe being able to fire a mortar from the hip will get me a beam rating.  I can already jump super high, that could get me a Mobility rating.  And if I can do more fine sensoring, maybe I can get a better rating there.  You know?”

"Oh, hm." She reads! 

"...grow up, Tim?" She peers up at him, concerned. "It is okay to be uncomfortable with things, you know." 

“Emotions are stupid.  Not, like.  All of them, right?  And it’s not like I can get rid of them.  But you can’t let them do all of the driving, either.”  He shrugs, and this bounces the Sara slightly.

The Sara is fine with being bounced, though her breathing does stutter briefly before resettling. 

"That's true, but if it's a problem you keep encountering then there are probably deeper reasons for it, and just pushing yourself won't fix it. And in the meantime, if I push you to do something you don't like then it will strain our partnership, so there is that as well." 

“It’s…not a problem…exactly?  Um.  Can…I write you a rain check?  When I don’t have a guy trying to go into heart failure?  I can show you my office after this.”  Then, in an espers-only murmur to Sara’s ear: “When we don’t have an audience.”

Hmm. She nods. 

"This isn't the time, I suppose," she murmurs back. 

Back to the list, then: "You had a question about a shirt? My shirt?" 

“Oh.  Um.  Well.  It…tore?”

"Oh. That's okay, a crab got it when we were picking him up, so it was a loss anyway. It's annoying, trying to juggle protection and guiding access," she huffs. "I don't want to go unprotected, but if I cover up too much then it's hard to get at enough skin in an emergency." 

“Tell me about it.  It’s why I like these vests so much, you get pockets and protection but they’re comfy.  But, er.  I actually meant.  Touching your skin.  Um.  Through your.  Hole.  Shirthole.”

Tim is at esper volume for the second half of that sentence.

Slowblink? 

"As in, through the... Torn open hole? Or through the neck, more generally? Or, um..." No, she is confused. He's gonna have to actually ask his question. 

“Er.  Yeah.”  Look if he knew what he was asking he wouldn’t have to think about it!!!  His partner asked, so he’s answering to the best of his frankly terrible ability.  He doesn’t need to look at his partner, does he?  He can check on the crabs?

Still crabby!  Still hojillions of crabs out there!

There sure are crabs. There are also, however, awkward conversations that need going over, at least briefly. 

"You are... Allowed to touch my shoulders if they are bared and we are in a dungeon? Hm." She hms properly, thinking.

"We need to actually discuss this, but. For now, for this dungeon? Please do not touch my breasts on purpose, but otherwise you may touch anything above the waist for guiding purposes. Below the waist, anything that would not be covered by a modest bikini, you may touch. So, I am not bothered by you reaching for the skin inside my shirt, and you may do so through the neck of my shirt, as well, if you need to.

"I would appreciate a heads up if you do so, however." 

A strangled “okay” barely escapes his lips.  He hates, hates haaaaaaaates having principles.  But one of them is that if someone reaches out to you, you take the hand.

”Er.  I’m fine with anything.  Not above mid-thigh.  Or below my hips.  Touches, I mean.  Um.”

I would rather fight that crab for my life than have this conversation.

She nods, "Okay. We can stick to that, until we can talk about it somewhere not in a dungeon when we are backlashed."

She- hesitates. It's awkward, but- well, the confluence could come any day, if nothing else, and it is better to have said it now than leave him not knowing her preferences if something happens- 

"My only exception there is, if I am in danger of dying from backlash, you may, if you are comfortable doing so, go- as far as needed. Or, if you can call Evelyn, she can have Luc contacted urgently, and he has similar permissions." 

Srgtthyrdchkpkfsqevhiyfbudcbjyy

Tim.exe is no longer responding.

After a few seconds of reboot procedure, Tim recovers his ability to speak.  “Um.  That’s.  Yes.  Same.  Don’t let me.  Um.”

Poor Tim. She hadn't known he could get that red.

She nods, "I won't let you die. I won't go further than necessary, though. If we have enough time that just skin contact will do it then that is all I will do."

She's not going to break his trust, when he had said he wasn't ready for anything like that. 

“Thanks.”  His power has informed him that he is not bursting a blood vessel in his face.  So.  That’s good.

”Um.” Tim literally anything else. “How’s your backlash doing?”

Yes they should absolutely change the subject! 

She considers the question, "I think- well, better? I think I could go back to it, if you can keep up buffing me? You?" 

“Maybe twenty minutes more?  Um.  I want to zero out before we start again, I think.  Since this is an endurance event.  Normally it’d be fine, but…”. Vague gesture at their patient.

"Yes, that seems like a good idea to me too. I could definitely be closer to zero." Especially if he will be distracted keeping the victim from dying. 

Therefore: more snuggling? 

Yeah.  Tim swallows a few times.  “Um.  May I.  Um.” Great um to words ratio, Tim. “Hands?”  He pats the small of Sara’s back, near her waist?

"Yes," she pats his chest, "Thank you for asking; anywhere I said is fine you can touch, right now." 

In that case, Sara will find an arm wrapping around her waist and pinning her against Tim’s side.  By default, her head will probably land above Tim’s shoulder, so that he doesn’t have to think about her looking at him.

She will press her face into the junction of his neck and shoulder, so she definitely isn't looking at him now! She's just breathing and enjoying the guiding and ignoring the sound of scuttling outside.

Cool, great.  Everyone knows that the best partnerships are the ones where you never look at each other.  You’ve got this, Tim.  Shut up she’s literally - no do NOT think about it right now, you will think about it badly.  Do it in the office later.

The guiding is really nice, it’s like Carol again.

Tim’s thoughts chase each other in circles for the next little while, until - 

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty, you think you can chip in a bit?  They’re getting pretty close and we want to do a shift change.  You can come if you want too, Menhir.”  The DRT operative is grinning like she gets chased by crabs for vacation.

Menhir laughs quietly into Tim's shoulder.

"I'm okay," she pushes herself up a bit. "Tim?" 

Tim gives a huge, exaggerated yawn.  “Five more minutes, Ma!”  Then he scoops Menhir up in a bridal carry and squiggles out of the rickshaw.  “Are we there yet?”  An esper with skin-to-skin contact may notice that he’s only cheating the barest bit by picking her up.

Well yes, he's well built and she's not that big!

She's still laughing as he carries her out of the rickshaw, "Unless 'there' is 'more crabs', I don't think so!" 

“Ah, well, there’s more crabs.  So, we’re there!  Time to get out and whack.”  Menhir is offered a Crabwhacker 9000, as is Aumento.

Well, he supposes he can set his partner down.  For now.  “I think I want to keep our heart attack patient near me, he’s been doing well for the last twenty minutes but I’m plastering over his actual injuries with duct tape.  I don’t want to leave him unmonitored.  So maybe we leave him thirty feet away from the crabline and I stay nearest him?”

She takes her Crabwhacker and stretches, "I will take a further position, then," she nods. 

She suits actions to words, and soon they are whacking their way through the horde once again. 

You know, somehow he saw dungeoneering as sexier.  Not that there was zero of that?  But.  Lots of half-jogging backwards while crushing crabs, with the occasional half-naked request that he go “as far as necessary” to save her from her backlash.

With the benefit of exercise to let him just focus, it’s easier to see that whatever would be necessary is probably a shoulder lock followed by tearing their shirts off.  Which sure is perilous!  But.  Surely that won’t happen in a hurry.

He hums as he works. Weirdest job in the world, but I’m glad I got it.  Split the power five ways: himself, Sara, three Dirties, and a splash for the patient.  This is…maintainable for about four hours?  I can work with this.

And this means Sara can keep her endurance at the lowest level, and thus not rack up enough backlash to matter before they get to the portal either! 

...giant enemy crab check? Where is it now. Also, is there a dungeon core anywhere in her range? 

Error crab zero crab: core not found.

The big crab is pretty visible.  It’s pretty damn big, and only somewhat obscured by the “sea smoke”.  It’s also behind three-quarters of a mile of baby crabs.

Well that is. Unsettlingly close? 

"How do you feel about engaging the giant crab once we get the victims out, now?" She calls to her partner over the crabcophony. 

“I feel pretty good about it.  The portal won’t close, and we can leave anytime we want.  It’s not like the little guys can hurt us.  Wanna start taking shots when the portal’s ten minutes away?”

"Fine with me," she agrees. "Test out your wristbreaker once you have a chance?"

“Yeah.  We can do that.  I’d love to put another notch on my belt, here.”

"Mhm! Fuck that crab!" 

But before they can do that, they need to get everyone else out of the dungeon. Thus: shoveling continues. 

Well, for a little while.  When they’ve bought the walkers(and rider) enough time, Tim would like to take a guiding break before it’s Portal Time.  And by extension, Fight the Crab time.

That would probably be smart, yes! Best to go into the boss battle fresh as possible. 

Snuggling in a rickshaw part two? 

Yeah, but please no embarrassing conversations this time.  Just Sara draped over his chest, along with some backlash surfing for the benefit of Heart Attack Guy?

She can accommodate this request. She will hum instead of initiating embarrassing conversation this time. 

Good.  Great.  He can handle humming.  And cuddling.  And occasional bumps in the rickshaw.  And keeping an eye on their victim.  He does zero out relatively quickly, but he wants to be fresh for the boss.

And soon enough, the portal is visible.  The plan is to have the leaving Dirties ditch the rickshaws near the portal, have the vics run out, and let the reinforcements handle the next wave of victims.  Since Aumento and Menhir can tank arbitrarily large numbers of little crabs, they can fight near the portal and bail out whenever.

If the dungeon doesn’t pull any tricks.

Hopefully it is out of tricks, or at least tricks that aren't 'here is more crabs!' 

Sara climbs out of their rickshaw as they approach the portal and takes up position between the horde and the exit point while everyone else gets out. 

Tim does the same.  “This is going to be pretty loud.”

He takes a two-handed stance with his wristbreaker.

BANG.  BANG.  BANG.  BANG…

Does an anti-materiel pistol do anything to a Giant Crab?

Lol.  Lmao.  If anti-materiel weapons were sufficient to kill it, it would have been murdered by DRT already.

"Damn!" Did it wound it at least? She understands this would cause more crab, so hopefully it would be somewhat visible? 

It is not visibly wounded.  If there are scuffs, the scuffs are not visible from here.  It DOES decide it needs to pick up the crabby pace.

It turns out that a Giant Crab can move pretty damn quickly when it wants to.

"...Wrestling?!" She has to shout to him over the sound of Large Scuttle. 

“Fuck!  Let’s do it!”  Tim makes a few rearrangements of his vest, including bringing two shiny railroad spikes out of a pouch and attaching them to the shoulders of his vest.

MOVE MOVE MOVE THIS IS WHAT YOU WERE SAVING YOUR GAS FOR!  GO GO GO!!!

"I'll try to keep the little ones off you!" Sara unhitches her shotgun, ticks up her endurance, and starts dual-weilding ranged and melee. First to give the victims and DRT space to get out- and then following in Tim's wake as he makes for the boss. 

“I’m giving you the medium stuff!  Shoot me if you need to, I’ll have the good stuff going by the time the boss is in range!”

They’ve practiced ranging his power at least some.  He’s going to trust Sara not to bankrupt him by moving a hundred feet away.  And he charges into the crowd of crabs.

The thing is, shotshell rounds are enough to kill little crabs.  He can clear his way.  He can make it to the big one, more or less.  But a few are coming up from behind him, and he can’t afford to stop and rip the little ones off.

These crabs all walk sideways.  The little ones are trying to clamber on.  The big one?  It tries swinging a massive crusher claw at Tim, with a range of motion that reveals its otherworldly origin.

Sara keeps close enough behind him to keep the majority of the horde off his back, but a few do slip by here and there, to clamber onto him and weigh him down. 

Shooting at his back goes against every instinct she has. She holds off on it for now, until she can be sure he's on 'the good stuff'- and lord that crab is fast-

The thing about jiu-jiujitsu is that it is designed to be used on humans, who can be grappled.  As a martial art, it’s based around the assumption that most fights will wind up on the ground and you should go there on purpose, with a plan.

However.  You cannot usefully grapple a giant crab and take it to the ground, not with Tim’s level of power.

What Tim CAN do is jump eight feet backwards with leg strength several times stronger than a baseline human, then leap forward again.  He makes contact with one of the crab’s legs and squeezes. Harder.  Harder than that.  He wraps his legs around the crab and recruits them, in a deranged cousin of an armbar.

C-c-crack.

The crab’s leg cracks.  The enormous crab-monster decides to write that leg off as a loss.  It braces two of its other legs against Tim, and tears Tim and its leg off of it.  He(and the leg) hit the ground and bounce off.

"Tim!" Sara steamrolls towards him, trying to get to his (briefly, please!) downed form before the boss can!

Oddly, he’s not even disoriented?  He’s used to getting thrown, just.  Not like this.  Maybe the power is helping somehow.  He deliberately chooses not to breakfall, instead he rolls and leaps back up after the fourth full rotation.  He’s only mildly crabbed.  Which is to say, he’s got ten to twenty on him.  “I’m go- YOUR LEFT!!”

Can Sara Block, Parry, or Evade an enormous crab claw?

-she half-turns, dropping both weapons to instead catch the claw on her arms and pumping her endurance up to absolute max- 

She also has the strength of at least ten men.  Probably more.  His own endurance has dropped noticeably, but it’s not like he needs it right now.

The thing about getting hit is that it’s all about where the kinetic energy goes.  Sara can definitely survive the hit.  The question becomes “how far will she fly”.  This is a relatively overhead strike. The kinetic energy is transferred into the ground via Sara’s legs, and between the strength of the earth and Timothy’s augmentation?

It turns out that she can block an enormous crab claw.  Her backlash ticks upwards, but it isn’t remotely critical yet.

She is not going to fly, no. Instead, she is going to shift and pivot and drop the stupid crab claw onto the ground pile of its tiny brethren to her right with an uncharacteristic roar of a noise! 

Well, okay, maybe you can do an elbow pass on a giant crab.  The crab doesn’t stumble, of course.  It has eight seven legs and far too much balance.  But it does scuttle away from her and aim a backfist-equivalent for her.  This one is aimed up towards her torso and face!

-Tim had cracked one of its legs earlier, could she-? 

She aims herself to catch it around the arm, right where the claw attaches, and prepares to squeeze! See how it likes being crushed! 

“FUCKING GET IT, SARA!”  Tim charges after it, trying for another leg, empowered muscles hurling him through the air and -

The Giant Crab can’t necessarily stop her.  It can bodyslam her repeatedly against the ground while retreating from Tim with her wrapped around its appendage.  Tim’s powers are subject to the laws of physics, though, which means that he can’t adjust his momentum.

So if he’s mule-kicked midair by a crab…

…he can’t avoid it, and does bounce back. Shit I NEED to get back, this is DRAINING ME…

He breakfalls this time, and starts to chase the retreating crab -

Unlike Tim, Sara finds being thrown about and body-slammed quite disorienting, even if it isn't exactly hurting her. She ticks on her senses after the second slam, but even that only helps a little when she mostly isn't touching the ground. 

And the fucking claw isn't cracking. Must be made of sterner stuff than the legs. 

So, after the fifth slam, before it pulls up again, she lets go of its arm and rolls unsteadily up to her feet, sensing for her partner's and the enemies' positions as she regains her bearings. 

Tim is quite far away, around eighty feet.  He’s not exhausted, but he’s a little drained-looking.  “It’s retreating!  We can’t chase it away from the portal!”  Most of his words are interspersed with RIPPING CRABS OFF HIS BODY.  His vest is intact, but his pants are a loss and his shirt is largely gone.

No injuries, of course.

He's right, damn it. She isn't out for the count but she is pretty backlashed, and in the circumstances she wasn't keeping great track of her breathing. 

She waves widely to him and then begins wading in his direction, starting her breathing exercises in time with pulling crabs off her clothing. Her pants have been mostly preserved, thankfully. 

The crabs cannot stop them, but they can inconvenience them.  She has a fair number of companions as she wades and/or stomps her way through hundreds of crabs.

He meets her halfway and takes her arm.  A crab that managed to climb onto his face gets ripped off and crushed.  “You okay?” Damn, swatting crabs is worse than mosquito season.

Her hand lands on his shoulder and she enjoys the sensation for a moment.

But, "Annoyed!" She glares in the boss crab's direction, "But fine. You have a crab-" she pulls it off his ear and tosses it after its big sibling. 

“Thanks, they’re fucking everywhere.”  Tim’s doing his level best to swat the little bastards climbing him while holding Sara’s arm.  “Your uh.  Yeah.  We need to get out, I don’t want to do this for the next - ah, shit.”  He slaps at one intent on climbing Sara’s stomach.  “I hate crabs now.”

"I am definitely having crab tonight in revenge." She swats at a few more climbing up his arms. "Let's get the rest off once we're out!" It's basically a sisyphean endeavor while they're inside. 

Yeah, fuck this.  Tim is so done with this goddamn dungeon.  He needs a change of clothing and a shower, he’s covered in crab…fluids?  Do crabs have blood?  And a comb to get the crabshell bits out of his hair.

They make it out.  And Tim immediately begins slapping crabs off his partner.  “Turn around, let me get your back - “

-she does so, dealing with anything she can reach in the front while he handles her back, and then twists and nudges him around to get the crustaceans off him. 

"Anything under your vest?" She is checking under hers, even though she can't feel anything. 

“Uh, no idea…”. Tim takes a peek down his vest, half-afraid to look.  “Okay.  No, just crab blood.  Or whatever crabs have.  Um.  Your hair looks good on you, but.  I think you’re going to need a lot of cleaning.  You have, uh.  Bits in it.  Do you maybe want some help?”

She grimaces as she tentatively runs a hand over her braided crown, "I wouldn't say no. Ugh. I should have covered it." 

“Malditos cangrejos…” He starts to carefully pick crabs out of Sara’s crown.  “I’m never going to look at a crab the same way again.  Being bathed in the blood of your enemies is supposed to be cool.  Not gross and crunchy.”

"I think it is only cool in the stories even if it isn't crab." 

She gives him another once-over for stowaways, and then starts picking a few large bits out of his hair, too. 

"We need the shower tent," she grumbles, "I'm not driving home smelling like crab." 

“Yeah.  They have us isolated so we can deal with our little friends.”  He kneels down in front of her so she doesn’t have to crane her neck to help with his hair.  After a few moments, he asks rather plaintively, “Do we really have to take some of these things alive?  I’m really not in the mood for it…”

She applies her fingers to combing chunks of crab out of his hair. 

"I know," she huffs. "But if they get orphaned they will just be normal crabs. Not evil crab wave crabs. I think I can forgive normal crabs. And maybe they can study them, so we can figure out how to kill the stupid boss crab." 

“I hate that crab.” Mmm, guiding combing.  “It was pretty badass, the way you just noped that claw.  I think we have a good shot at killing it, if we can keep it from running away.”

Comb comb comb, "If we could break more of its legs, maybe all of them on one side, it wouldn't be able to run," and that's something they know they can do. 

“Yeah.  When you had its claw, were you squeezing it with your legs or with your arms only?  I uh.  Kind of.”  Mmm, combing.  “Didn’t see.” Wait, did I finish with her hair?  Uhh.  It’s been a day.

"I could not get my legs around it properly, so only my arms." 

She finishes combing out the larger chunks and ruffles his hair lightly (her hands are covered in crab viscera anyway).

"May I carry you to the showers?" 

“Uh.”  Wha. “Y…es?”

-she snorts inelegantly, "Separate showers, Tim. Unless you want to bathe your underwear too." 

Oh.  Good. “Sorry, I’m a little punch-drunk.  Um.  We can shower separately.  I don’t think anything I wore today is going to see another use.”  He glances over at his LBE contemplatively.  “Maybe the vest.”

"Agreed." Even if her pants are still mostly together, she suspects the smell of crab is unlikely to fade. 

She goes to lift him up into a bridal carry, since he hadn't protested. 

He curls all the way around her, seeking skin like an eagle seeking a thermal.  He’s tired.  Hiking is tiring.  Shoveling snow is tiring.  Fighting giant enemy crabs is damn tiring.  And keeping his power going at high levels on a target over sixty feet away is pretty exhausting.

He’s just.  Not going to do anything that requires effort.  Except cling to Sara.

And sleepily mumble, ”You keep carrying me.”

"Mhm," she nods, holding tight to him as she carries him over to the shower tent. 

The showers are individual stalls separated by waterproof dividers. Inside, Sara attempts to set Tim on a stool in one of them.

He gives a weary thumbs up of appreciation.  “I coulda walked, you know…”. But I’m very glad I didn’t need to.  “I’m just going to dump these in a trash can.”  Will Sara let him close the curtain and shower in peace?

"Of course," she shakes her head, smiling. 

She will, yes. She will go to the next stall and get started on her own shower, in the meantime. 

It won't be the last one of the night, probably. Ugh crab in her hair.

He tried, Sara.  He tried.

Tim has decided the most efficient way to clean himself is to just sit under the showerhead and let the water wash over him.  Unfortunately, he knows from experience that the showers are limited and will run out.  So after a few minutes of mild disassociation he summons the heroic willpower necessary to clean himself up.

“Still in the shower stall?

"Yes," she has unwound her hair now and is working her latest shampooing out. 

“Cool.  I’m coming out, then.”  Tim is blessed with quite a bit less hair, and is sincerely glad he doesn’t own a mustache.  That would have been…problematic.  “I feel better now.  You doing okay?”  Where’s the towel…aha.  Dry off.  Then I can get dressed.

"My hair will need at least one more wash when we get back, but I think I will be out soon." Squeeeeeze the crabby water out and then she rolls it around her shoulders. "Let me know when I can come out." 

“I’ll head out of the tent, come and grab me when you’re done.”  Suiting deeds to words, Tim wanders back out of the tent. Surely there’s - aha.  One DRT lawnchair. Tim flops into the chair and patiently awaits his partner.

Sara arrives about five minutes later, hair up in a ponytail and her backup clothing of lounge pants and midriff-baring tanktop on. She spots him swiftly and makes her way over to climb into his lap and resume guiding. 

"If my hair smells of crabs do not tell me," she mutters into his neck. 

She’s scooped and squished against him.  Tim may not be incredibly experienced with interpersonal relationships, but.  Even he’s smart enough for this one.

He presses his nose against Sara’s scalp.  “Just shampoo.  How easy is taking care of that much hair?”

Yesss guiding snuggle.

"It's okay. It takes longer, but if you do it right it will not get many tangles. It takes me about ten minutes to wash and condition. Usually." 

“That’s not as bad as I’d been thinking.”  He readjusts her position to be a little easier on him.  “You ready to hit the temp silo, or are you too comfy here?”

"I could move. Maybe." Technically. 

He huffs a little laugh.  “I didn’t ask if you could move.  You carried me, I can take my turn.  As long as you don’t suddenly become allergic to guiding.  Just gotta get you into a taxi.”

"Hmmmm... eekoshi. Let's get out of crab range."

Then Tim will order a taxi and cuddle for a few more minutes while waiting for it.  Then he’ll carry his partner to the taxi.  He’s definitely cheating, this time.

That's fine, they're guiding through it. 

The temp silo is just outside Boston, in one of the suburbs that was built in the past decade. It just looks like another house, from a distance, aside from a taller fence to offer more privacy.

Up close, it's clearly better reinforced, and differently laid out, than the rest of the houses in this neighborhood. 

Inside, one notices that the walls are actually quite thick.  The furniture is sturdy and comfy and covered with easily-cleaned covers.  There are several bedrooms with rather large beds, a quite large hot tub on the  covered patio out back.  There's...technically a kitchen, but it's not really laid out for cooking, more for storing food.  It is stocked with a few staples, but it's really just the basics.

Timothy exits his autotaxi and makes a delivery of 1(one) Menhir.  She can go on a sofa.  And then he can go on the sofa as well, it has been a day.

He heaves a heavy sigh.  "Fucking crabs."

"Mhm." She isn't even using her endurance. She is happy to be squished. 

Tim is not using his power, either.  Tim is using his absolutely nothing.  His brain and body are mush.  He's sprawled out across the couch, his chest on Sara's legs and his head is laid on her stomach.  He's too tired and separately backlashed to even be self-conscious about it.

Maybe he's a little dozy, but he's also hungry...but dozy...

"I am ordering crab legs." 

She reaches around to grab her phone out of her pocket, and opens up a delivery app. 

"Do you want some?"

"That's too much effort for me, and I've already cracked my fair share of crab legs today.  Could you get me a crab roll, and if there's someplace around here that does protein shakes, a banana peanut butter one?"

"Mhm. We have a good part of Boston here." She tracks down some good options and puts in her order. "Just crab rolls? Here," she passes the phone to him to make more selections, if he wants. 

After some consideration, he opts for a seafood taster platter.  And crab rolls.  And a shake.  It's not like any particular delivery person is going to be bothered by making two stops, it's mostly drones these days.  "I didn't realize, but I'm actually pretty hungry.  I'll be starving in a few minutes, when my metabolism wakes up.  Here's your phone back."  Tim returns the phone, and returns to his previous state of flop.

She takes it and, after a moment of thought, adds a few more items to her order before sending it through. 

"...thirty to fifty minutes," she relays, letting the phone fall onto her chest as her head finds the couch cushion. 

"Hnnhhhhhh."  Tim has nowhere else to be and nothing better to do than half-doze on his partner.  He could try to scare something up in the kitchen, but honestly, that's just too much work right now.

Definitely too much work for Sara, when she'd have to escape the octopus on top of her too. 

They can just doze until the drone arrives. 

Then Tim will do his duty as a partner when he hears the whine of a drone's rotors through the open window.  When he returns, he starts sorting everything out.  "This is your crab legs, and here's my shake, and I've got my crab roll...Heh, not much of a sampler platter if it's all in little recyclable boxes.  And then I'm not sure what this is, but I didn't order it..."

"That's my bisque," she reaches for it. 

Tim visibly thinks for a moment about whether he wants to feed it to her.  Decides he's barely able to feed himself.  "Hang on a sec, lemme just..."  He grabs this ottoman thing, and sets their delicious assortment of  calories on it.  "Here, so you don't have to hold it on your chest and spill it all over yourself.  You've showered enough for the day."  He shoots her a very tired grin before starting in on his crab roll.  And maybe a few things from the platter-in-name-only.

She rolls over onto her belly on the couch, reaching to pull the footstool a little closer. Then she opens her bisque and starts metaphorically inhaling it with the provided bamboo spoon. 

"You're not using your endurance to eat hot soup, are you?"  Tim honestly isn't any better, he's absolutely ravenous.  The poor crab roll didn't stand a chance.  He does start to slow down about halfway through the platter-in-name-only.

"Mrph," is Sara's response. She can't talk right now, her mouth is full of delicious soup.

When she's emptied her takeaway bowl she moves onto the crab legs, at which point she is forced to slow down. 

She cracks the first one and sucks the meat out with a smug expression on her face. 

She's promptly handed a couple of napkins.  And Tim can't help but chuckle at Sara's expression.  He's rather full at this point, and is perfectly willing to flop back down.  This time he just tangles up his legs in hers and secures a pillow for his head.

She pats his leg with her butter and crab free hand, and then digs in properly, cracking and monching away.

Eventually she clears the plate, and then she nudges the stool away and rolls onto her back again, unweaving and reweaving their legs as she goes. 

"...crab head in the theatre foyer," she repeats a thought from earlier. 

“I think the dungmat guys will complain if we keep that one.  Did you have any thoughts about how to kill it?”  Tim’s eyes are closed.  He’s not asleep.  But he’s definitely not doing anything else tonight.

"...Rip more legs off, unbalance it, rip its claws off? If we take enough off it must die eventually."

Her eyes are also closed at this point. She is full and exhausted and there are no crabs on her, right? She runs her hands down her front to check. 

Well, what’s that little chunk on her chest?  Could that be a crab?

-she slaps at it!

It's just a piece of crab leg that fell on her!  It's just a mildly pointy little chunk!

Tim glances over at her.  "Mosquito?"

She shakes out her hand, running her fingers over the slight dent in her skin to soothe it. The crab bit she sweeps off her chest and onto the floor. 

"Crab," she grumbles, "It's nothing." 

"Mmmhmm.  M'kay.  So, one of us tanks the crab, the other cripples it?  Maybe we trade off based on who's closer?"

"Hmm... Maybe, but I should tank, yes? Where possible. I should need less of your power to do it, if I use my own endurance as well. That way, you should be able to use more of your strength to crack it." 

Tim looks a little mulish at the possibility of using less of his power on his partner.  "Hmm...I guess that'd make sense.  I'd still want to leave you buffed, since buffing people is...well, it's complicated, but it's cheaper to set-and-forget on someone else than on me."

She nods at the air above them, "Yes, and I think I could not tank it as well without your durability. So we trade off as necessary, but attempt to stick to the roles we will be more suited to?" 

Vague grumble.  "Fine.  I guess that makes sense.  Oh, I should ask - did you see how I broke the crab's leg?"  How could she have missed it, it sounded like a gunshot going off.  "I mean, you probably saw it, but I meant 'get a good look at it'.  Sorry."

"I think you wrapped your arms and legs around it? And then I assume you squeezed until it cracked. I tried that on the claw, but could only get my arms on it. I think it is made of tougher material, too." 

"There's a certain technique to it, it wasn't just my arms - uh.  Do you trust me?  I promise not to break your leg or anything, it's just easier to show you than to describe it."

"Mhm," she will even attempt to move her leg a little. 

Tim wraps his right leg around Sara's left thigh.  He then 'grabs' his right ankle with the inside of his left knee.  then grasps her ankle and places it on her chest.  "So, the thing about limb locks is that you want to force the joint to bend in a way it physically can't.  When I put pressure on your thigh, and I lock your ankle against my chest here, see how your leg naturally extends and straightens out all the way?"

He gives it a squeeze to show that yeah, if he were to lock it in place and apply pressure it would hyperextend and break her knee.

"The trick with these is that you're not just using your legs and arms.  I'm holding your leg in position with my arms.  I'm pushing your ankle towards you with my chest, and I'm pulling your thigh towards me.  That puts pressure on your knee.  When you put it all together, you can break someone's limbs pretty easily, because you're recruiting every major muscle group against their one muscle group.  That's how I broke the crab's leg, I didn't just squeeze it - I used my entire body as a lever and fulcrum."

He's definitely more animated than he was before, and leaves off the pressure once the explanation is given, though he doesn't actually let go of her leg.  She could have questions!

Huh! 

"Yes, that makes sense! And it tore you off with it, because it couldn't get out otherwise."

She wiggles her leg.

"I'm too tired for practice right now, but you should show me again tomorrow so I can try it on the crab myself, if I need to. Maybe that claw could come off." 

"It works better if you're lying down, or if I were upside-down.  But I'd be a terrible partner if I made you move right now."  She can have her leg back, sort of.  Mostly.  He lets go of her calf and lies back down, but he keeps his legs loosely wrapped around it.

This is fine and correct. Warmcozy. 

Sara reaches down and combs through his hair a bit more. No crab bits now, thankfully. Just soft. 

No longer animated by the spirit of Sharing A Neat Physics Trick, Tim isn't long for the waking world.  He makes a heroic sacrifice and rolls into a better position for being petted combed, but he's out almost immediately afterwards.

The combing continues slower and slower for a minute or two, before it stops as she follows him to sleep. 

Then he's going to roll only minimally, since there's no space to roll.  If Sara's a light sleeper, she's going to wake up a couple times.  If not, Tim's up around 7 AM.  His first verbal-ish thoughts are:  mmm.  cozy.  eeeuuurgh, I'm so stiff.  stupid crabs.  still smell 'em.

"Nooooooocrbs," Sara mumbles when he moves a little, one hand bapping gently at him. 

wha?  oh.  I didn't...mean to do that.  Well.  "No, no crabs here, Sara.  You're safe."  He gives himself a tiny boost in case Sara panics on waking up, as Carol occasionally did.  "You're okay.  You want some coffee? 

Her eyes slit open to examine him. No crabs? 

No crabs. Okay. 

"...coffee?" 

"Yeah, coffee.  I'll be back in a minute, okay?"  Tim starts to push himself up to go find where the coffeemaker is.

But how can he get up when Sara is curled around his arm and making a sad sleepy noise? 

Well.  Poorly, that's how.  "You want me to stick around?

"Mmm... Take me with you?" She is in French mode, too sleepy to think of English words. 

She isn't backlashed, just reluctant to give up the comfy guiding feeling. 

"Yes, very well.  Let me go for a moment, please."  Tim takes a knee on the ground in front of the sofa.  "On my back, when you are ready?"

She reluctantly lets him free, and then more rolls than climbs onto his back when he's ready. 

"Mmmm..." Guiding still feels nice. 

Hyup!  Sara has been lifted.  And as long as she clings to him, he can have his hands free to make her his coffee.  He brews a small pot of...French Vanilla, apparently?  And pours Sara a mug.  Two sugar, two glugs of milk.

After three minutes, he does start cheating, but at net-negative levels.  He's getting more than guiding enough from skin contact to cover carrying Sara around the kitchen.

She clings to his back like a possum. 

When coffee is ready, she reaches over his shoulder for her cup. 

He passes it back over to her without a word.  He's happy to assemble a pretty tolerable breakfast - bacon in a pan, eggs on a griddle(with some of the bacon grease used for oil), toast in a toaster.  No jam, but there's butter if Sara wants?

It will have to do. 

Sara eventually climbs off his back and moves to lean against his side, instead, helping with breakfast tasks while she sips her coffee. 

He taps her shoulder then lapses into Dungeon Sign.  You, cover.  Points at bacon.  Tim has eggs to cook.

She signs a quick acknowledgement and takes over the bacon. 

And so breakfast comes lazily together. 

And it's consumed lazily, too.  Tim's in a quiet, thoughtful mood today.  After breakfast, he chooses to do some light tai chi instead of a jog or lighting weights.  There'll be plenty of jogging later on.

Sara, meanwhile, does a little light yoga in another room, settling down where the windows let some morning light in. 

After a solid twenty-three minutes of tai chi, he wanders around looking for wherever Sara went.  When he finds her, he taps the doorframe.  "Hey.  Ready to practice cracking crabs' legs?  We've got about half an hour before we should hit the road."

"Mmm," she's in the middle of transitioning to another pose. She moves into a cross-legged one instead, leaning back on her hands, thoughtful.

"...I'd like to change and get in a shower before our shift," she admits. "Do you think you can take on cracking the legs?" 

"Oh.  Right.  Um.  Yeah."  INCREDIBLY SMOOTH.  "Yeah, we can do that - I mean, I showed you how, you should - right.  Sorry.  My routine got messed up, I.  Forgot."  Tim flees to the first enormous shower and takes a very quick one.  When he's done, he's changed into a pair of orange pants and a dark green T-shirt.

...the mysterious Tim reactions return? Poor Tim. 

Much less anxiously, Sara takes her shower and then dresses in another set of dungeoneering gear in dark colours. 

And then, in what seems like no time, they're climbing into another car to head back to the portal site. 

They are!  The car ride is pretty quiet on Tim's part, if not quite so tranquil as their cozy breakfast.  Tim mostly spends it filling out his AAR from the previous day - he should have done the paperwork yesterday, but he was just drained.  Thankfully, laptops exist and work can be done in an autocar.

Oh. After action reports. Hmmmmm fine, she will fill one out on her phone while they go. She'll be reliving yesterday again soon anyway. 

Everything is just about the same when they arrive, the anti-crab cordon, the rickshaws parked outside, the pervasive smell of crab. Sara sighs heavily, then shakes herself and gets out of the car, ready for another day of decrabbing.

The second operation goes about the same as the first.  Tim goes through, buffs Sara, then the DRT ops as each of them comes through the portal.  Crabs are whacked, but today Tim is choosing a different strategy: he's requesting a larger DRT team, a rickshaw driver who's willing to stay closer to the Crabwave, and he'd like to guide with Sara for the majority of the trip while buffing the larger team.  After all, they need to be on their A-game to beat the bosscrab today.

Mhm, shorter shifts of crabshoveling interspersed with enough guiding to keep them close to zero should leave them with plenty of juice to take on the boss crab when it shows its ugly face. 

Sara keeps an eye on its progress throughout their first run, updating Tim when it gets close enough. He could try shooting it again once they're back at the portal? That seemed to aggro it last time. 

Yeah.  Let's try that.  DRT ops, can you clear more of the little guys?  Crabwhackers on the approach to the portal, then shotguns when on the approach to crabs?

You got it, Sleeping Beauty.  Boil that thing for me, you hear?

When the portal draws nigh, Tim's pistol barks.  Only a few shots this time, no point wasting ammo.  Does that draw out the big guy?

It sure does, and a TON faster today!  That crab was sandbagging last time - it takes a little bit to get up to speed, but that is a VERY fast crab.

"I'll engage it," Sara calls to him over the noise, "You be ready to take out a leg!" 

So saying, she puts herself in its way, ready to tank and defend. 

"I've got you buffed, medium-strength!  Don't get grabbed!"

The DRT would like to help clear the incoming Crabwave.  Really, they would.  But since Crabzilla over there is charging, they have to get to the portal faster than planned.  So.  Tim and Sara get a little bit of firepower, more than zero.  But definitely not a lot.  The good news is, the civvies are getting out pretty damn fast, they got good practice in getting people out yesterday.

Sara wasn't sure they could expect help from the DRT at this point at all, so anything is pretty nice. She's going to get covered in the little guys again either way, though, with how focused she is on the big one. 

Speaking of: incoming! Sara readies herself to catch and deflect! 

Well, she sure is getting Crabbed.  She can feel dozens, but the notable one is the one that grabs on to the back of her calf.  It's notable because when she takes a step, her calf muscle bulges and shatters the crab claw as it expands.  But in a few moments, she has to contend with an ENORMOUS crusher claw swiping 'up' at her.  It looks like the aim is to get her into the air!

Oh, okay, in that case she will be dodging that one. Being airborne is very much not in her best interest! 

It also lashes out at her with a vicious kick!  If Sara's paying attention, she might have noticed that it now has eight legs again.  The broken one is looking differently-mottled than the other eight.  But while it's lashing out at her - 

- Tim's circling around behind it - the crab can't see behind it, and therefore cannot dodge him.  He's latched onto a crab leg with his arms, but he hasn't quiiiiite wrapped his legs around it.  He's holding on for dear life, though!

She has enough attentional capacity to notice the leg! She has a split second to decide whether to dodge or catch, and she dodges; breaking legs is not her job right now and Tim needs her distracting it. 

With that in mind, she makes sure to evade towards its eyeline in the hopes it will keep focusing on her. 

It does swipe at her a little bit, but right now it's trying to kick Tim off while not, actually, kicking off its own leg.  It has a limited number of those, and even if it can regenerate spares, it would prefer not.  Can it rip Tim off?

No.  It cannot.  He's dialed in significantly and has both hands grasping the other forearm.  If he can just...manage...There!  He manages to snag one leg around the crab, and from there it's just a matter of physics.  He briefly pulses himself with even more power and - 

CRACK!

This time, he drops free before the leg falls off, or is kicked off.  He's kicked away, but manages to drop bouncing when he's only twenty feet away - comfortably within power distance.

"Yes, Tim!" 

Sara darts in closer to the megacrab, going for one of the other legs! 

The crab isn't really defending itself against her - it's swinging its too-flexible-to-be-natural claw at Tim.  There's a desultory clawwave at Sara.

Tim, meanwhile, is covered in crabs.  He jumps up before he can be carpeted, but one of them has somehow managed to climb in his MOUTH.  He bites down and spits repeatedly, clearly disgusted by the taste of raw dungeon crab.

Oh for fuck's sake fine Sara will actually grab onto that leg, then, gripping one arm with her other like she'd been shown! Can she get her legs around it too? Let's see! 

She can!  As soon as she does, though, the crab sits on her.  Her arms and legs are being crushed between herself and the crab, and the crab is rotating around to face Timothy.  This, of course, means that she's being ground into the sand.  On the bright side, there's not much space for miniature crabs - only sixish are currently climbing on her.

-she swiftly shoves the sand out of her way, making a cavity at the expense of a chunk of backlash. Her power is really not meant for this kind of scale, but it's fine if it's only the once. 

And then she can simply squeeze as hard as she possibly can! 

Sara may or may not be able to hear Timothy screaming.  "SARA!"  She's okay I can feel it with my power, she doesn't need anything more than medium for this, she's fine, running away was a greater threat than just this.  He can see the crab's eyestalks and that means he can shoot the crab's eyestalks, at this close range, he's going to get it eventually.

Bang.  Bang.  Bang.  Bang-and-splat.

Seeing as how the Massive Crab can't crush her like it's grinding salt, it chooses a different strategy.  It leaps in the air.  Admittedly, crabs are not widely renowned for their ability to leap, but five feet is pretty impressive for a crab this size. When it leaps, it pushes down on the leg Sara's holding, ripping it out.  And when it falls down to earth, it's aiming to land foot-first on Sara.

-Sara lands and then she dips down a few meters into the sand, still above the crab line but giving herself some room, and then solidifies a three foot shell of sandstone around herself. That, plus the sand buffer, plus Tim's buff, plus her own endurance- 

Well.  The sandstone is almost instantly demolished.  It smashes down, through the sandstone, into Sara.  Her vest cracks instantly, but Sara’s survivability onion carries the day.

It lifts up its foot for another strike - 

And Tim rams into the crab’s raised leg like a meteor.  His wristbreaker is magdumped into the crab’s underbelly and then abandoned.  The crab staggers, from a combination of the tackle and the anti-materiel slugs crashing into it at point-blank range.

Tim’s angling to try and shatter the crab’s fifth leg, but he’s being scraped off -

And the crab kicks him loose again and begins scuttling away.  How does Sara feel about her hideyhole being filled with Crab?

Extremely annoyed! She is able to dig herself out of the hole, at least, and stagger upright (covered in crabs). 

She uses her senses to pinpoint her partner and head in his direction while attempting a rough decrabbing. 

"Tim?!" 

"SARA!"  He's pretty close to her, since he'd panicked experienced a well-calibrated level of concern and rushed to her side.  Sara is bodily lifted fully upright and brushed down.  Really, it's closer to being beaten like dirty rug, there's so many goddamn crabs.  "You OK?"  Tim turns his head to the side and spits out more crabjuice.  It's a silly question - he can feel her abdomen mending in real time, but there's more to being OK than just 'able to escape a portal'.

She wraps her arms around his shoulders, checking (ineffectively) for any injuries where she can, and absently crushing crabs all the while.

"I'm fine," she wheezes, "I'm okay- just a little, um, squished. You?" 

Her backlash, he will find, if he can get a hand on some skin, is pretty bad for a couple minutes of combat. She'll definitely need a break now. 

"Better than you, except for my mouth.  Come here."  He lifts her without any apparent effort, and slides a hand under the back of her shirt for extra  guiding effectiveness.  "You need a break?  I think we've got it beat, we've got a good strategy and we just need to execute.  Next time for sure."

She relaxes into the carry, "Yes, I think so. We will need to think on how to stop it crushing us like it tried to crush me, though." 

Tim constantly has to hold back his power.  Don't hurt people, don't break things, don't backlash yourself asleep, don't destroy your pants.  Don't, don't, don't.  There's nothing in within five miles that he cares about besides the girl in his arms and the portal.

So, he runs.  The strength of his power lends itself to his stride, and he's breathing hard but not panting.  His footsteps devour the distance between them and the portal.  "Don't be underneath it?  Have a way to punish it, when it crushes you?  Jump free faster?"  He's tired like a student up til midnight finishing a final project: not enjoying himself, but he's definitely functional.

"Some kind of... Very tough spike? I didn't have a chance to get free when it dropped its leg straight down, so that won't work. Be more-" she huffs out a breath, wincing as something throbs in her abdomen. 

"I know, I can feel it.  We're almost there."  It's something on the left side...is that a liver, maybe?  And she's going to have the mother of all bruises, or uh.  Would have.  "You'll be okay, I've got you.  Once I'm out, I'm going to give you almost everything I have, it won't take long.  Honestly, it's amazing you're.  Uh."  Not dead.  "You know."

"I- made a shield. Sandstone. Not very tough but. Helped." She is panting between the words, and a little sweat is gathering at her brow. "C'est- it is, is it. Bad?" 

"Sara, you had a ten ton crab tap-dancing on your chest.  It's probably not good, but you're going to be fine.  Just hold onto me, okay?  You'll be alright."  He pushes himself a little harder, and soon enough he's at the portal.  He jumps through, partner in his arms.

"Mm," her breath hitches when he jumps, and again when he lands, but other than that stays steady while she focuses on her exercises. 

She's carefully, tenderly set down on a mattress.  Normally they'd use cots, but cots would be a great place for crabs to hide.  She's not brushed free of crabs while Tim explains that they had a minor injury and need to be left alone for guiding while that's taken care of.  Tim pinches the crabs to death, THEN lifts them off of her.  Once the de-crabbing is finalized, he sits down next to her.  "Um - I really want to let loose on you."  Phrasing, you absolute nincompoop.  "I mean, with my power.  Can I - your legs?"

Sara just continues to breathe while he explains, only blinking her eyes open once it becomes obvious he's speaking to her.

At that point, she pats the nearest Tim part and breathes an, "Mhm."

Well.  Rule #2 of emergency medicine as Tim learned is that you don't fuck their shit up any further than it already is, unless you have to get them to safety.  This...doesn't really apply here.  Because Sara's not going to get hurt any further, not with Tim's power reinforcing her.  And because she doesn't need a doctor other than Tim's power. She's almost definitionally stable.  Heh, stable.  Ugh.  Focus, Tim.  

If this were one of the romance fanfics Carol used to love, Tim would carefully and tenderly unbutton her pants and slide them down her legs.  Given that this is reality and Tim is NOT trying to sexually assault his partner, he instead uses a combination of superstrength and fingernails to transform her combat pants into short shorts.

He then strips out of his vest and shirt and cuddles up between her thighs.  He's only a little red about this.

Concentrating on his sense of her, he can feel where she's hurt.  She's got pretty minor friction burns on her extremities, notable trauma to almost everything in her abdomen.  Looking up a quick guide to anatomy on his phone, he determines, yep.  That's her liver alright.  Wow, is he ever glad that he's got this power.  "Just stay still for me, okay?  Don't crush your poor partner to death, I'm trusting you."

She will not crush him to death, no. She stays carefully still through the pain and ignores the sense of shortness of breath. 

"Need to. Practice reflex," she notes aloud between breaths. "Practice. Landing? With strength." Maybe if she'd been faster to notice what it had been doing, and better at leveraging his strength and durability, she could have pushed off the stupid crab leg and landed somewhere safer. 

"Yeah, we'll do it.  Even in confluences, we'll get days off at some point.  After the confluence, we'll get you fully certified.  Um.  Don't talk if you don't want to, okay?"  It might not be ~optimal guiding~ but Tim has decided the best way to soothe an injured Sara is to pet her.  Not her thigh, because he would perish of embarrassment.  But her calf.  "I mean, you can if you want but - you don't need to do anything.  You did the hard work already."

She gives a pained smile, "Pain is. Temporary," she is attempting to sound wise but it comes off strained more than anything. Pooh. 

"Stupid crab."