He hisses nastily at Dixon-Hart and then leaps off the truck's hood to fetch his phone.

Summer, you are fantastic, thank you for distracting Cricket.  I hope.  He gives her a thumbs up and an I-owe-you-one look.  He furtively glances around, making sure Cricket's no longer around.  Great, I've got a minute or so.  "Okay, everyone withing shouting distance knows that Cricket's not going to win any friendliness competitions anytime soon.  But he's also the top 4D navigator.  And it's pretty much impossible to get dungeon materials out of there unless you have a durability power."  He pauses for effect, letting the 'and those are pretty rare' go unspoken.  "Right now, you have a choice.  You can have Dixon-Hart stay on-site, or you can have my help stripping the dungeon.  I got the core, I don't have to do anything else.  Make the call."  No promises about what Cricket might choose, though.

The CO pulls Dixon-Hart away for a soft conversation - away enough and soft enough that Tim doesn't get to hear the details. It ends with Dixon-Hart leaving.

(Cricket's phone is not kept soft; Tim can hear Traceless's voice going "how's my wonderful kitty, did you save everybody -")

Well.  That was tons of fun.  It's not, actually impossible that Dixon-Hart made the right decision.  He doesn't think so, given that there were other options on the table, but if it was moments away from breaking containment a flying knife could have been a disaster.  He hopes Dixon-Hart doesn't lose his job, but he also hopes that Dixon-Hart gets busted down to handling D-rank dungeons for the next while.

... probably not.  The issue with the Confluence is that you need all hands on deck, and it can be extremely tempting to keep bad people around who save lives on net despite being bad at their jobs.

He's woolgathering in an attempt to put off a hard conversation.  "Want to face down Cricket's wrath together, Summer?"  He offers an arm for guiding, and definitely not for moral support purposes.

She links arms. "He's on the phone, do we gotta?"

"Yes yes I saved everybody but they didn't send my capture to the warehouse and when it snipped a wire in its cage some dunderhead panicked and ran it over with his truck."

Esper-quiet, he murmurs to her, "He won't be on the phone forever.  Sadly."  Little mischievous grin, just for her.

"Shit! Where in the process was the first problem, like, did they call a courier at all or should I follow up with the warehouse folks to see what happened after that?"

"I don't know if they called. They didn't tell me about having run into any problem till I came out of the dungeon just now and it was crushed. They were hard to catch without wrecking them but I wanted to get you one."

Tim steps obtrusively into Cricket's line of vision.  "May I butt in, please?"

"What," says Cricket flatly.

"Is that Aumento? Hi, Aumento."

"Yessir.  Hi.  I think the issue might've been with the logistics side on this site, specifically.  When I ordered Cricket's dinner, someone put it in a cooler and didn't tell anybody about it.  There also was a real issue getting anybody to get me a box for the, er, deceased knives.  Wound up using a cardboard box which is the sort of thing that works for an hour, but.  Probably not for two.  The scanner and shovel turned up fine, but those are DRT-standard.  The issue seemed to be, uh.  Localized?  Localized, around weird orders."

He'd been wondering why a cardboard box would be the best somebody could do, and some of the pieces are starting to come together.

"A caged monster isn't that irregular, but maybe they weren't expecting the warehouse to accept it till the core was destroyed - did you guys get it -"

"Yes. New York has a Lootbox franchise, they'll take a small monster with a live dungeon and just kill it themselves if the dungeon gets away!"

"Right, but that's Lootbox, New York has like half a dozen other dunmat warehouse companies and I think those don't, maybe someone didn't know."

"I'm really not thrilled with how one of their guys treated Cricket, either.  I'm planning to lodge a complaint through Bill, and if that doesn't have some changes we can, uh.  Verify. I'm never coming back here and I'm planning to explain why."

"New York gets more dungeons than anywhere else in North America short of Mexico City, you can blacklist specific DRT squads without writing off the whole metropolis. Your call, of course. What'd the guy do?"

"Um."  He's put on the spot for a second, but mentally rallies.  "He was acting like...Cricket wasn't a person?  Wouldn't talk to him, directly, wouldn't take him seriously, that kinda thing?  He was just - being a jerk, generally, to the guy singlehandedly responsible for keeping me alive in a dungeon."  Who is also a dungeon monster kitty.

"You could have easily stayed alive in the dungeon without me. You just couldn't have accomplished anything of value."

"Unfortunately speciesism is an unsolved problem and if we tried to follow up on it every time we'd wind up with some combination of gutting a mostly functional system or wasting our time. I really want to find him his own PA to go with him to every dungeon and run interference but it's not a matter of just putting out a job ad."

Neither response makes Tim happy.  "I...suppose.  And, Cricket, I think I have to disagree with you.  You could have pushed me kata or ana and I would have had no way to get back to the portal.  I trusted you with my life in that dungeon, and I appreciate what you did."  Also your fur was even more beautiful in there.

"Don't be maudlin. Me not being a murderer isn't the same thing as me keeping you alive." He starts licking a paw.

"Do you want to catch another one? I can have Tess send another cage and call Lootbox herself."