As soon as they realize this, they call for a sensor and a precision combat esper.  Disrupting the assembly could potentially be an extremely traumatic event for the hapless victim inside of it.

Victim triage is in her wheelhouse. Hopefully this will not end up being one of the ones that turn into an emergency. 

She shows up in a self-driving car with blacked out windows with a van in tow. The several guys in the van are there to set up a cordon within the dungeon for her to work in, and then stand outside the cordon and make sure nobody barges in when they shouldn't. Also to haul her out to her partner if necessary.

Her partner is installed in the guiding tent.

It's the Confluence.  Sinkhole is extremely willing to travel for a good dungeon, and she happens to qualify as an extreme-precision Melee esper.  She rolls up in a regular self-driving car, which sticks around long enough to be unloaded.  She doesn't carry a lot of equipment, and most of what she does carry is what she'll be carrying into the dungeon.

She goes through her usual checklists, dons her equipment, and begins asking around to find where Secours is.

She's not backlashed yet so she's waiting outside her cordon meeting the DRT personnel so she can identify them as 'already known about'. This will make it easier to identify the victims as 'people she hasn't met'..

She's wearing a hat that covers most of her hair, but it's meant to make it harder to identify her outside the dungeon not in it. To make it harder to doxx her and/or follow her home. That was more important when she was siloing in her parents' basement instead of a private address not officially associated with her but the habit persists. She also has a set of expensive esper-grade noise cancelling headphones currently around her neck.

Carol, on the other hand, is wearing quite a bit less in terms of identity personal protection equipment.  She's got a DRT-standard helmet, with four flaxen braids leaking out of the bottom of it - two at her temples, two at the back of her head.  She's got a tank top, elbow pads, and a MOLLE rig with pistol, along with bags packing various kinds of equipment.  They're labeled, but the narration can't be bothered to rigorously define what all might be in Carol's vest at any given time.  For pants, she's wearing a set of practical, fluorescent orange cargo pants with reinforced knees.

Perhaps fittingly, it takes her a minute to recognize Secours.  The hat helps quite a bit.  Once her target coworker has been identified, however, Carol strides right up.  "Good afternoon.  Secours, right?"  Carol offers a handshake which, if taken, is a firm and professional two-pump.

She'll take a handshake, since again she isn't backlashed at the moment. 

"That's me. Sinkhole, yes?"

(Her English is lightly accented, but fluent, she grew up in Montreal which is extremely bilingual, and additionally polished her English after awakening)

"That's me!  I used to say 'all my life' when someone asked that kinda question, but I've only been Sinkhole for a couple years now.  How are you today?"  She looks pretty cheerful, considering she's about to be tasked with rescuing people from a literal torture dimension and fighting the torturers.

That gets a small smile, "I'm well, thank you." She mostly looks serious. 

(Her job is very self-actualizing and gives her a sense of accomplishment but her backlash causes enough stress that it's hard to be really cheerful about it)

"Compatibility was pretty much nothing, here.  Not bad, not good.  Same for you?"

(Carol would similarly self-describe as 'satisfied' in life rather than 'actively happy', but the dungeons really aren't a problem for her.  Somedays, they're the highlight of her day.)

"Same, yes.  I don't normally guide with strangers anyway, my backlash makes things...logistically complicated and it's a bit much to ask from most people. My partner is waiting outside."

"No sweat, I just make a point of checking," Carol chirps.  "I'm ready to get to work if you are?"  I don't love social pleasantries like this, but Daddy always said that if you skip 'em, you're missing out on the monkey-signaling.

"It's a good habit to check I think.  Yes I'm ready. Normally I just mark the victims on the map software but that is not so useful for this one, so I will just have to let you know when you get near one of the boxes with victims inside."

This will involve more comms use while backlashed than she prefers but so be it. Her partner is waiting outside and she knows her limits well by now.

“I can work with that.  My backlash is annoyance.  I’m pretty good at managing it now, but I might get curt the more power use I rack up.” I shouldn’t have to, this dungeon is pretty small.  But.

"I prefer comms use be kept...functional in any case." Also she actually doesn't get tone of voice because her incoming comms get run through a Morse code translator because it's more comfortable not to have human voices piped directly into her ears once she starts racking up backlash. Which is another reason she prefers to keep conversations limited, morse code isn't as high bandwidth as speech. She's tried using AI voices but the new software is too good at sounding natural and the older software isn't good enough at accuracy.

"Functional.  Okay, you got it.  Anything else I need to know about your requirements?"

"Just, don't try and barge in while I'm working. Or into the guiding tent when I'm taking a break."

She pretends to take notes on an invisible piece of paper.  "Don't...enter...guiding...tent...during...guiding, got it."  She smiles sunnily at her fellow esper.  "I think I can manage that.  Do we have a briefing waiting for us, or was the summary enough for us to get started?"  Honestly, it doesn't get simpler than this.  Go in, find people, get 'em out.  Kill anything that stops me.

"They're not doing a formal briefing for this one, I don't know if they've updated the electronic record in the last half an hour, I have been getting my setup...set up."

"Well then, I'm ready to start whenever you are.  Let's get these people out."

"Radio check?"

She fusses with her headset for a minute.

"Good copy, five by five.  How copy?"

"Good copy."

Thumbs up.

"Alright.  See you in a little bit, then."  And she strides through the antechamber of the dungeon, confident and fearless.

The air is cool and pleasant.  The room is spacious and well-lit.  In front of Carol is a rapidly moving conveyor belt, with dozens, perpaps hundreds of arms.  As Carol looks on, various glass tubes insert themselves into each box, inject some kind of liquid, and then retract.  If Carol didn't know better, it would look like a moderately quirky assembly line for a strange factory.

Given that Carol does indeed know better, it's something out of a dystopian nightmare.

"Direct me, please.  Nearest victim to me?"  She's in game face now.  Before, she was smiling and dancing the social dance.  Now, she's focused.  Her hand drifts to her combat knife for a moment.  Caresses the handle.

Her workspace consists of a cubicle made of several boards and a heavy curtain for entry,divided with a screen translucent enough that she can see well enough to teleport people to the other side of it. It's anchored well enough that it's quite difficult to knock it over. The other side has a lighter curtain to make it easier for people to get in and out quickly since if she's teleporting people it probably means they need prompt medical attention. There's guys watching both doors and another guy hanging around. They're mostly there for her peace of mind, really. 

She reaches out for people in front of her. Even without having identified the rescuers beforehand it's not hard to find the victims, they're twisted into very noticeably uncomfortable poses. 

Translating her senses into units isn't trivial but she's had practice by now.. "About a hundred and fifty meters ahead of you, and to the left. I'll tell you when you get there. Ah, you can substitute "yards" I think."

"One five zero meters ahead and left, copy."  She gives the assembly line a wide berth, some of those arms look like they could be nasty.  She makes sure her bodycam can get a good look at the liquids, in case they're relevant somehow.  Some of them are clear, some of them look green and maybe a little viscous.

Carol's power is focused on destruction.  It comes with a little preview of the future, which she can accept or reject.  And she asks her power, how do I absolutely destroy one of these tubes?

Take your knife and slash the tube at this angle.  In the future-according-to-her-power, she can feel her hands moving, sees the knife shattering two of the the tubes.  It breaks like safety glass, or something close to it.  The clear fluids that spill out in her vision look like water, while the green looks kind of sludgy.

She doesn't act on this vision.  Letting her power guide her hands racks up more backlash than just a peek, and frankly there's no reason to smash random tubes.  So she doesn't.  Instead, she follows the conveyor belt through an interminable liminal space.  There aren't any lights in this hallway, so she navigates with a red-lensed shoulder flashlight and esper eyesight.

Nothing attacks her.  Really, it's just a dull grey metal corridor and a conveyor belt with coffin-sized boxes on it.

This room is looking almost as miserable.  Coffin-sized boxes spin on a labyrinthine conveyor belt assembly, across the room.  It's a miracle of dungeon bullshit that the boxes haven't been dumped out.  It looks like the boxes are being 3-D printed/filled with a black foamy material that hardens in seconds.

"One more check, please."  She thinks it's been about a hundred and fifty yards, but of course it'd be too inconvenient to bring a tape measure.  Or marked yarn skein.

"Two metres, directly ahead."

"Two meters, copy.  Let me know right away if something hurts a victim."  It probably won't work that neatly with my own precog ability, I only get a flash, but.  How do I destroy this crate completely?

Stance up, and throw a spinning back kick.  The crate wall shatters, the remaining crate falls on the floor, splinters further, and the victim cries out.  The arms of the assembly line reach for her as the vision cuts out.

She doesn't act on it.  Instead, she looks at the assembly line.  Arguably her best power is her ability to destroy things, but it's not exactly what she's known for.  It's an undisclosed power.  What she's named for is her ability to make an extremely strong sticky trap.

She looks where she wants the glob to go - right on the assembly line.  It doesn't have to last long, just enough for her to carefully push the crate off the conveyor belt.  Do any of the arms of the assembly line have anything to say about this?  They probably do, right?

They do!  The assembly line had ignored her until she interacted with their crate.  Now, the nailgun arm that had nailed the crates shut is firing nails at her.  Nozzles designed to expel goop is turned on her.  Arms designed to grab and manipulate are split between an attempt to grab and manipulate her and the dropped crate.

Okay, she was slightly peevish before, but as the nails ping off her armor and her flesh, she's getting mad.  The nails are costing her the most backlash, but they're not actually the problem.  The goop is going to slow her down until she can't move, and then the dungeon will rip her apart.

She asks her power how to destroy the goop-spewers firing at her, then accepts its answer.  The blade makes short work of the goop-spewers.  Then she shoots the nailgun armature, and finally takes down the grappling arms.

From Secours' perspective, this takes about fifteen seconds of radio silence.  For Sinkhole, it was a small yet highly eventful eternity.  "Status check on the one in front of me?"

"Confirming that the box you just knocked off the conveyor contains victim. Conscious. No acute injuries."

"Copy."  She takes a moment, acknowledges her irritation that Secours phrased it that way.  Sorry, lady, next time I'll just keep it on the fucking kidnapper conveyor belt and let the dungeon take the vic right out from under my nose.  After a moment of living the annoyance, she takes a breath and smooths it off her face.  She still is irked, and that's a fact about Carol McCleery, not about Secours.  But the dungeon victim doesn't need to take the brunt of her feelings.

One carefully-applied crowbar later, she's helping the victim out of a hole in the crate.  It's actually not that easy to help the poor guy out, the fit is really close.  Almost like a second skin.  "Hey there, buddy, you had a tough day, huh?  You alright there?"

"I'm not great.  My frigging neck feels like it's going to fall off, the ceiling arms cranked it.  You got some painkillers?

"Painkillers and a DRT medic are just a few minutes away.  The sensor who found you says you don't have any acute injuries."  Which means you're just whining.  "C'mon, let's get you out of here.  Let you work out some of the kinks, maybe.  That box didn't look comfy."

As they stroll out, she calls back to Secours.  "First vic en route to base.  Neck pain, prep for that.  Everything else as you described it, he could use some OTC painkillers and esperade to wash them down."

"Victim en route (she pronounces it as 'root' of course), copy, Notifying the support staff."

She switches channels long enough to relay all the relevant information to the support staff. 

The support team acknowledges this.  When Carol enters the beachhead, they take responsibility for the patient, and have an OTC painkiller on tap for him.  He washes it down with a purple esperade, and exits the portal, never to be described by the narration again.

“Backlash check?”  She’s professionally neutral.  Gotta keep tone totally even for this kind of thing.  Even though she’s annoyed at having to work with another esper for this one.  At least she only has to regulate her face around other people.  The dungeon doesn’t care if she’s cranky.

"I can do three or four more like that. Depends on the distance."

"Copy.  I'm heading in, I'll ping you for a check in a minute."  She feels like jogging in, but it's stupid to jog in almost every dungeon.

Okay, creepy assembly line dungeon.  How are you feeling today?

Insofar as dungeons can have feelings, 'angry'.  There's definitely a hostile vibe to the movement of the mechanical arms where there wasn't before, and Carol is going to have to navigate under nailfire in order to move from point A to point B.  Nails would be a problem for a normal human without armor.  Carol, with her power and also her body armor, is not that concerned about nails but all things equal prefers getting nailed in a civilian context rather than a dungeon context.

She's not an amazing shot for a combat esper, but that's still quite good.  Once she's shot down the nailguns and goop-throwers in the first room, she checks in via radio.  "I'm in the first chamber.  Nearest vic?"

"Two hundred metres, at your two-o-clock."

"Two zero zero meters, my two o'clock.  Copy."  Let's see...that's...Another creepy liminal hallway!  Her favorite!  She loves creepy featureless, largely unlit, metallic hallways.  Not.

And she can wait. That's fine. She prefers when her job involves several hours of mostly-waiting quietly, rather than ten minutes of frantic activity followed by many hours of miserable recovery time. In the worst instances she has had to let her backlash go chronic because letting somebody touch her would have been dangerously stressful. And possibly caused her to panic badly enough that she decided it was better to teleport elsewhere, to somebody less likely to insist on touching her, in spite of her aversion to using her power at that level. She wears a location tracker when she's going to be backlashed, just in case. (It sucks, but it's for her own safety.)

She's at the entrance of another factory.  She can see the assembly line trivially, and as she comes into their line of fire, a nailgun starts firing nails at her.  She darts smoothly back out of their line of fire, and only receives a nailed combat boot for her trouble.   "Bearing from my position?"

"Twenty metres, ahead and right."

She pauses, thinking.  “Are there any others in the room?”

She crossreferences her map software for a minute. "No."

"Copy."  Her power wants her to be in melee.  The backlash cost of her 'path to destruction' power scales up significantly as distance increases, and if she tried to destroy something a hundred feet away she'd probably die of apoplexy and also chronic backlash.  She'll have to rely on a steady eye and esper reflexes to shoot the stapler and goop arms.

They put up resistance, and she winds up having to fall back and de-goop herself, but it's not a tough fight.  Her combat knife and a little bit of her power are sufficient to destroy the remaining manipulator arms.

God, it feels so good to just kill these things.  That stupid fucking black shit is basically epoxy.  I'm probably going to lose this outfit, again.

Time to put on her customer service face.  "Hey, can you hear me okay?  I'm going to put the box on the floor, then let you out, okay?  It might be a little rough, but I've got you, okay?"  She tries to be gentle about it, she really does.  But if you don't have the strength of ten men on tap anymore(fucking DELGADO), it's hard to move a coffin single-handedly without dropping it at some point.  

The coffin begins making muffled noises after it's dropped.

"You'll be alright, I'll have you out in just a jiffy, okay?"  With sufficient mini-crowbar and an eye for destruction, many things are possible.  One of those things is 'getting this whiner out of their box before they start crying about it'.  "Hey, there we go.  You doing okay, hon?"

"Oh my GOD I thought I'd be stuck in there forever, thank you, thank you, please, just help me out of this foam..."  This particular victim will help contribute assist aid be enthusiastic about getting Out Of The Box.

Stop Goddamn wiggling, you stupid little bitch, you're going to wind up with a broken fucking finger..  "Hey, easy there, I've got you.  Hold still, I don't want to prybar your fingers, okay?"  It takes a bit longer than the last one, but the vic is extricated.

"Next vic in tow.  If the arms don't start regrowing on the way back, we should get an DRT escort so we can wrap this up faster."

"Copy that. I'll relay it." She does that.

Given that the route back stays clear, Sinkhole feels pretty good about leaving a team, so long as they stay away from the uncleared area.

Yeah, it seems like a tolerable risk.  This dungeon isn't nasty, exactly.  It's not great!  But most of their concern is a victim getting whisked, not injuries to personnel.

Yeah.  Sounds great.  You can have the hard parts(victim wrangling), Carol can take the easy parts(killing and destroying).  "Okay.  Next vic?"

That's a lot of injuries. The victim isn't under more strain than the others but seems to be handling it very poorly. She thinks it's dislocations rather than breaks but it's quite a few of them. 

She doesn't swear into the radio. It's unprofessional even if your conversation partner won't understand most of the swear words you're thinking because they're in French. 

"Uh, I think this one needs medical evac." She's already sending a request to the support staff to have somebody check external comms to see if they've had a missing person report with joint problems or something.

Not that anyone told them!  Actually, one of the new guys points out, "We received a report twenty-three minutes ago of a potential match.  Ehlers-Danos Syndrome, really awful joints looseness, joint pain.  History of spinal issues, according to the notes.  Does that check out?"

"Checks out, yes. Going to need a body board."

She thinks, "Normally with this many injuries I'd just grab them right now, but I'm concerned that..naively removing them from the box might result in further injury. Better to remove them very carefully manually, get them lying down and then retrieve them from there."

Does the medical team concur? She's learned  things about first aid over the years but she's not actually the expert.

(She's also keeping Carol looped in of course)

"It sounds like the boxes are pretty hard to get people out of, so it's probably worth just leaving them in the box.  We'd like five-minute checkins if possible, and if the condition worsens or leaves, you can always get them later."  The odds are pretty low that they see another vic this badly-off.

Sure, I'll carefully pick up and carry a seven-foot-long shipping container.  Ugh.  "I'd prefer a pallet jack from the loading bay be brought on, if we can manage that.  That and ratchet straps."

"I can do five minute check ins, yes." The guy is in really quite a lot of pain (fortunately she doesn't experience it as remotely equivalent to being in pain herself), even though he's semi-conscious at best but she doesn't think anything is life-threatening. 

Sure would be neat to have fucking Delgado here.  Pick up the guy, carry him home, fix his problems in minutes.  Worried about injury, just reinforce the vic!  Then bounce him down a flight of stairs, since he's 'too buffed to get hurt!'.  A slight tinge of dissatisfaction can be heard in her voice as she edges out a curt, "Copy that.  Have your folks ready."

And she can carefully monitor the victim's condition while directing Carol. This is going to be more backlash intensive than the previous times, but still well within safety tolerances.

She hustles through the corridors.  In theory she should be guarding the DRT team and walking with them, but it's not exactly a high-danger dungeon and this civvy is a priority.  Doctrine allows for deviations from doctrine, as counterintuitive as that may sound.  And it sounds like he's going to get his arms ripped off if they wait too long.  "Location check, relative to me?"  Sure would be fucking neat if she'd get out of her hugbox and point things out for me.  But sensors are 'too precious to risk'.  Not like me, I'm not precious enough to keep safe.

She has to cross reference her map again "Moved to another room. To your four o clock and a hundred metres away."

Great.  Love it for me.  "Four o'clock, one zero zero meters.  Copy."  She looks at the room, does some mental geometry, and realizes following those directions is going to lead her into a wall.  Unless she spontaneously discovers the ability to tunnel through unidentified dungeon metal, that's a non-starter.

She picks the hallway that looks closest, only to find that it's a 'storage facility' for coffins.  "Confirming, zero vics near me?"  It's perilously close to breaking her rule about not questioning her sensor, but she doesn't know Secours from a hole in the ground, and awakening isn't gated behind a room-temperature IQ.

"Confirmed." She's mildly annoyed but trying to keep a neutral tone of voice, to avoid starting an argument. They ain't got time for that. Plus it involves unnecessarily engaging with human contact.

"Copy."  Great, there's fifty of these fuckin' coffins in here and not a single one with a vic in. Great.  She frowns, then attempts a different hallway.  This one leads to a different assembly line and - Oh.  Fuuuuuuuuck.

GOOD NEWS!  You found your victim!

Unfortunately, he is currently in the arms of an assembly line, which is carefully stress-testing his tolerances.  He is not having a good day, although he also may not be conscious right now.  It's really not clear.

None of this tag ever crosses Carol's conscious mind.  She's too keyed up on adrenaline to think in words.  But.  If she were to verbalize, this is what would come out.

Firstly, she can't shoot the goop arms or the nail arms.  Her vic is right the fuck there, sitting like a useless lump.  Worse than useless, really, since he's getting in the way.  The grabby arms ABSOLUTELY CANNOT be shot, because they're grabbing her victim.

Secondly, she needs to take out the goop arms.  Those aren't interacting with her victim, so that's great.

Thirdly, same with the nails, but she needs to be extremely careful not to let the victim get nailed.  She can get nailed a little, she can take it.

Fourth off, she needs to not get grabbed by the manipulator arms.  Because if she does and they're strong enough to hold her, it's all over.

This time, the fight takes about twenty-five seconds.  But she experiences closer to a minute and a half.  She's constantly picking and choosing what potential futures she wants to inhabit, .613 seconds at a time.  She rejects any where the victim cries out in pain or gets more injured than he already was, and one future where she gets nailed in the earlobe.

She's pretty fucking backlashed.  Not so much that she can't cope, but she's not currently experiencing the normal suite of human emotional responses right now.  Which is exactly what she wanted.

She hates how fucking gingerly she has to retrieve the vic from the remains of the assembly line.  It's a real pain in the ass, when she could just sling him like a sack of potatoes.  But no, Ehler-whatevertheshititwas has to get in the way of clearing this pieceashit dungeon.

"Last check on vic, before we board him?"

"Unconscious but stable. Medical team is on standby." Hopefully they have an actual ambulance waiting for him outside the portal but shes' leaving that aspect to the medical team.

Thanks, I never would have realized he wasn't talking without you.  Best Sensor to date.  "Copy."  It's frustrating that the medical team needs her to stick around and get this poor schmuck boarded and collared, but she does it, silently stewing in her own dissatisfaction.

Deep breath.  Let it go.

"Okay.  Next vic?"

"Currently in a storage room. On the other side of the place."

Yeah she's kind of annoyed about this one too.

"That's the closest to my position?"  Carol's backlash-induced irritation is aligned with what she would have felt anyway.  A little tinge has made it into her voice, which isn't a great sign.

She's as noted blissfully unaware of tone of voice but she can make a guess on this one. "At the moment, yes. If we're lucky the next will come back around the front by the time you're done with this one."

"Copy."  Nothing for it but to make her way into an extremely full storage room.  And, perhaps unsurprisingly, there are manipulator arms.  Thankfully, no nailguns or goop-throwers this time.  "Still in here?"

"Yes. At your eleven o-clock, slightly above you."

Love that for me.  Right next to the grabbers, and it's not in a position where I can knock it away.

For these, she doesn't use her path to destruction.  She uses two hands, one combat knife, esper coordination, and one elbow.  And several months of knife-fighting class.

Perhaps twenty seconds and one sore forearm later, they're dead and she's still alive.  "Hey, hon, I'll be with you in a second, okay?  Just gotta get you out."  Fucking grabbers.  That left a mark for sure.  Nothing broken, at least.  

Muffled probably-affirmative noises.

She prybars the vic caaarefully out.  This one's less lively than the enthusiastic one, which is mostly a good sign.  "Hey, hon, you okay?  I've got'cha a snack bar, and some water?  Or you can have some of my esperade if you promise not to tell the medics."  She winks, like it's their little secret.

"No, please, - I mean, thank you.  I'm - I couldn't drink another ounce.  Can we get out of here, I have to go so bad, I'm so sorry!"

The freed vic just about books it for the exit.  Their escort has to trot a bit in order to catch up.

"Should be two more, by my count?  Do you need a break?"

"I can do one more but not two more. I think it makes more sense to take a break now." Going in again for exactly one person feels like a disproportionately large hassle.

She could do two more an emergency. It wouldn't even be that bad as emergency measures go.  But you have to save emergency measures for emergencies or you'll run yourself into the ground.

"Copy.  Say when ready."

She's not so badly-off that she can't keep up a good face.  She jokes and laughs with the rescue squad, playfully 'apologizing' to the looting team for not leaving them enough to work with.  But she makes her way back to her guiding tent, alone.

And the mask drops off her face like wrapping paper coming off an eight-year-old's Christmas gift.  She doesn't sulk.  That's not her style.  And she doesn't have a local guide, so she can't even guide in her fucking guiding tent.  She's just saving everyone else from having to interact with her while she's got a load of backlash on.

And she can walk her ass out to the guiding tent, after one of her helpers ensures she doesn't have to walk through or close to any knots of people.

At this level she lies on her stomach on the bed with her legs loosely tied to the frame to discourage her from reflexibly kicking her partner if he accidentally moves too fast for her and her partner sits with his bare legs on either side of hers. She attempts to ignore him, and listens to soothing music.

She'll be in for about twenty minutes of this until she feels like she's had enough guiding to cover her for the remaining victims. 

When summoned, Carol takes a moment to fix her face, as it were.  It's so fucking annoying that she doesn't want anyone to get hurt by her inability to exercise basic emotional control, that a fucking teenager might be expected to have mastered.

But she can do her fucking job, even though she's irrationally pissed-off by the color of her own tank-top that she picked out for herself this morning.  "Next vic?"  Her voice comes out very Customer Service.  Can I get you anything else?  Have a nice day!  The falseness makes her want to gag.

Next victim is on the packing line, having been around at least once already. It actually is closer then the last one at least.

Fantastic.  She can't say that she loves it, right now.  But she can't find a reason to be annoyed at the fact that this vic is convenient, which is basically the same thing.

Now she just has to try and slide this poor schmuck caaaarefully off the - 

That's MY [FOOD]!

The vic's coffin whirrs off through the assembly line.

"Eat a DICK!"  Are her sticky traps enough to stop that assembly line?  They are?  Great.  She doesn't bother for subtle, she spends a bit of power to throw a bargeman's kick into the coffin.

Thunk-CRUNCH.

"Hey, sorry about that, hon.  I'll have you out in a few moments, okay?"

The figure who(slowly) emerges from the coffin is an EXTREMELY PISSED older woman, perhaps in her sixties.  "Young lady, I don't know what you think you're doing doing rescues, but you need to go back to training.  I could have been killed by your little stunt!  Now help me up out of here, my hips don't move like they used to."

Excuse me for trying to save you from getting whisked off into the dungeon, never to return, she very carefully doesn't say.  Next time I'll leave you in here, she doesn't respond.  She counts to five in her head. 

"Hello?  Is your backlash a stroke, or just muteness?  Get me out!"

"Sorry, ma'am.  I don't have the equipment I'd need to get you out safely.  I'm going to call the DRT right away for you, so you can get out as soon as possible."  Her voice is sweet.  Saccharine.  It's all fake.  She turns on her heel and jogs off.

"Wha - ?  Don't just leave me!  Hello?!  HELLO!?"

If she were unbacklashed, she might feel guilty.  She might feel guilty, later.

She doesn't, right now, and she has one more vic to find.  "Vic is secured.  Elderly, needs assistance getting out of the coffin.  Likely a two-man job, possibly three.  Last vic location?"

"Copy that. Last victim end of the feeding line, four hundred metres and counting."

She tries not to dwell on whether dungeons are people, because there lies a potential brain meltdown, but it seems to be moving the victims faster. She thinks it might be mad.

Half a fuckin' kilometer.  Great.  She begins trotting at a reasonable clip.  Not enough to tire her out, it's the home stretch.

Carol, on the other hand, couldn't give a running fuck at a rolling donut whether dungeons are people or not.  They started it.  She'll fucking finish it or die trying.

About halfway there, she slows down.  "Bearing check?"  No point chasing this thing on that side if it's on the other side of the Goddamn dungeon again.

"Your two-o-clock,  two hundred fifty metres."

"Copy."  Carol does some more mental geometry, then calls in again.  "Did the vic move?"  She keeps trotting toward the vic and sure fuckin' hopes that the dungeon doesn't want to play keep-away with her for the next hour of her life.

'Yes, You're still gaining on them for now, but if you can you might want to pick up the pace."

"Copy."  She's going to turn a trot into a slightly resentful jog.  Wish this was a nice round-town jog, where I don't have to worry about a dungeon getting tricky.  We still haven't even found the core yet.  About two hundred meters later, she decides she needs another check-in.  "Bearing check?"

'One-o-clock, seventy five metres."

"One o'clock, seven-five meters.  Copy."  She slows down as she gets closer - there might be defences.  It's hard to tell, sometimes, whether a dungeon is really beaten or playing possum.  She should be almost there.  "Bearing check?"  She hates not being able to communicate more effectively than this while backlashed.

"Eleven-o-clock, twenty metres."

She's tense, they're down to the wire but this dungeon has been trickier than most.

Carol's tense, but not on account of the dungeon.  The dungeon has been pretty straightforward for her.  Except for the rescues.  She's really fucking annoyed that she'd lost her partner just as his DRT partnership had taken off.  It would be REALLY not-irritating to have three superpowered DRT muscleheads to move these stupid Goddamn coffins without knocking them off the assembly lines.  She's strong, but she's not four hundred pounds on an overhead lift strong.

She turns the corner and immediately retreats under a hail of nails.

That's a lot of arms.  "Core room found, most likely.  Evac team, standby in the previous room."

"Core room found, copy. Can you handle it or do we need backup? Victim is still in the room I think, but probably won't be there for much longer." Unless the dungeon decides to use them as a human shield but babies are usually not that clever. 

"Should be fine.  Standby."  She could give a lot more useful intel if she weren't tightly controlling the number of opportunities her friggin' BACKLASH has to get out from under her thumb.  And that's another thing that pisses her off!  She can't ever let go because what if she needs to communicate something!  UGH.

She takes a popsicle stick from her vest.  Throws it into the line of fire of the nailguns, where it lands, un-nailed.  Not just movement they care about, then.  Maybe.

Okay.  She can reach that stick in less than half a second.  She pulls out her combat knife and asks her power:

How can I destroy that popsicle stick completely?

The answer, it seems, is to reverse the knife into an icepick grip and fall onto the stick, point-first.  The stick cracks into thirds, while nails rain down into her helmet and shoulders, and goop-guns attempt to goop her limbs as best they can.

Needless to say, she discards this future instantly.

Fuckin' figures that they 're all pointed at me.  And I can't just do a smoke grenade, because I don't want to choke our Goddamn vic to death.  And I'd have to get a gas mask, so I don't choke, either.

She thinks about it for ten seconds, then decides that the only way out is through.  Dungeons don't stick around forever, and this one could choose to bugger off at any given moment.

Her precognition, such as it is, only wants to be used for destruction.  Not for control, not for protection.  She's only good at killing monsters and breaking things.  It's why she's never used it to its fullest potential in a spar.

But a half-second of precognition is still extremely useful if you can route around its appetite for destruction.  She throws down a handful of popsicle sticks on the approach to the absolute mass of manipulator arms hanging from the ceiling.

She holds a mirror around the corner, plots her route, and now she just has to execute.  Just like her daddy taught her when he showed her how to climb.

Her power, by necessity, requires her to step forward in the visions to destroy any given stick.  She uses the guidance of the visions to move, but not to actually strike the killing blow against the sticks on the floor.  She discards futures where she's shot more than necessary to move forward, and picks futures where she gets shot as little as possible.  She's pretty sure her power must come with some kind of extra processing ability to do this sort of thing, which is very convenient of it.

Once she's actually in and largely ungooped and only moderately nailed, it doesn't take long before the room is cleared.  When you know exactly how to destroy any given foe, it doesn't take much to actually do it.  As she views the scene of destruction wrought by her hands and her power, she radios back in.  "Core room clear.  Bearing check?"  I am so fucking sick of this place.  If I'm in here for ten more minutes, I'm going to scream.

She crossreferences the map app again "In the next room. To your four o clock, thirty metres."

That's too many rooms for one dungeon.  "Next room, my four o'clock.  Three-zero meters.  Copy."  She jogs a little faster than before - it's not really smart but she wants to be done so badly.  She's tired of this dungeon and she's backlashed to shit after that core fight.  Her moron power is expensive when she's constantly sorting through what .613 seconds will get her what she needs, and it does some durability but she's not a tank and she's been tanking an awful lot of backlash today.

The victim, it transpires, is on a rapidly-moving conveyor belt.  This being the last victim, she's free to gum up the conveyor belt and then slice through some structural components with a combination of precognition and power-enhanced strength.  It stops moving.

"Last victim located.  Rescue team to my position.  Dungeon is clear."

"Copy that."

She gets the rescue team en route, with some guidance towards the end to speed things up a bit.

Once the rescue team is fucking finally on their way, she's done.  She exchanges a few jokes with the DRT squad about insufficient "handle with care" labels on the boxes with the vics in them.  She smiles and she even giggles a little and it's all fucking fake.

On her way out, she consults a list, and picks out a line that works for the dungeon they just ran together.  She adapts it, then reads it off, like an actual human being with a full emotional range might do.  "Secours, I truly appreciate the hard work you put into this dungeon.  Without you, getting everyone out might have taken hours.  You did excellent work today, and I would be pleased to work with you in the future."

This is only a little fake.  She would almost probably feel this way if she were actually capable of feeling this way.  So while it's not the literal truth, it's not as fake as it could be.

"It was likewise my pleasure. I hope the rest of you day is pleasant."

This is a little fake, as she's backlashed enough that interacting with people isn't pleasant but there's no need to be rude to them about it. Politeness is the little white lies that prevent you from taking your problems out on others.

Having successfully executed the Social Monkey Dance, the only thing left is to hop out of the dungeon.  Her part to play is over and done with.  She's all smiles and laughter and it's all fake fake fake, because literally nobody wants to talk to the real Carol right now.

The facade doesn't drop until she's in the autotaxi, and on the way to a silo.  She probably could do another dungeon, but she doesn't want to do a dungeon and lose the ability to interface with society.  So.  She'll get a load of guiding in her, and then evaluate if she wants a second one today.

And she can do one last sweep for new victims just in case, and then climb in the back of her car, after checking the internal cameras to make sure nobody climbed in he car when she wasn't there. This has never happened of course, and at this level of backlash she can cope without the cameras, but she doesn't use up more cope than she has to. Then it's a dark, quiet ride with her instrumental music to her silo. Her partner's car follows a few minutes behind. Some time late, the car drives into the suburban lot, with a small fenced off building, invisible from the road. The address is private, and only she, her partner, and her mother (for emergency purposes) know it. The car parks itself in the underground garage and she checks the cameras in the garage and climbs out. Goes inside. Uses the estroom, gets an Esperade from the fridge and drinks it. Then goes into the silo room itself. It's equipped with a setup that wouldn't look out of place in a BDSM scene, though she tries not to think about it like that and only uses the full setup on very bad days.  Today she just uses the gentle ankle restraints. Presses the button that makes her partner's phone go 'ding'. Opens a stupid phone game to go with her music.  They'll be here a while. Eventually she'll end up sitting in her partner's lap to guide off the last of the backlash more efficiently. By now they've got it almost down to a science and her partner knows when she's ready to move so they only have to have those conversations once per session.

She might do another dungeon today if there's a sufficiently emergent one.