"Great idea. I've been going through shirts so fast today - the lizards try to steal your clothes if they aren't having any luck eating you, and I had to bite through my shirt so I could see past it while he was trying to get it over my head." She helpfully gestures the location of the resulting hole.

Tim bursts into laughter when he sees the hole's location.  "Man, welcome to the club.  It's like the dungeons want us to wander around in a loincloth and a smile."  Tug the shirt off, toss it vaguely in the direction of the hook.  Then he'll lay back on the DRT-standard cot and await April's impending flop.

April pulls her own shirt off and flops very cozily. "Best pillow."

Well, he flushes a bit but it would be really stupid silly to look away from April's curves until they're landed directly atop him.  Right?

"You keep saying that, I might have to believe it."  She's lightly squished into his chest.  And he knows that she likes scalp scratches, but does she have an opinion about back scratches?

Those cozy mumbly noises sound pretty positive!

Sounds like he's getting a good grade in Emotional/Backlash Support Body Pillow.  He'll just relax and leave little red fingernail trails over April's back while he does it.

And April will go "mrrrrerowwrrrrrrmmmm" in an increasingly contented tone of voice.

"If I can't find a local partner soon I'm gonna end up flying to - what was it, Vermont?" she jokes. "Either that or Korea, but at least in Vermont I speak the language. I guess there was that blue girl, compat wasn't bad there, I should follow up with her... knowing my luck she's from Australia, though."

He hums thoughtfully.  "You're welcome to come by, even if it's just for a month or two.  We've got the superstrength class, we've got pretty decent food, and I heard a rumor that the best pillow in the world lives in Vermont.  I think the blue girl was partnering with Traceless.  They looked pretty chummy, anyway."  He pauses, realizing that he's not being Sufficiently Supportive.  "Not that that's a - you know, instant DQ, I've got two primaries myself."  He takes a break from scratching April up and squeezes her instead.

"I bet it'd be a real good idea for me to take your superstrength class even though my thing isn't quite the same. And I think Sean would like it too. Just for the heck of it, you know. I guess that and if we're ever partnered for another medical barge situation, he'll really like being certified to not break stuff in the superstrength pit."

"Yeah, it's obviously not exactly the same, but the idea of it is," he adopts an ethereal, spaced-out tone,  "Learning mindfulness and body awareness.  Which applies to your power the same as mine."

"Yeah. Maybe I will, then, while I'm hunting for partners. Do you know when you'll be heading back?"

"A couple days, maybe.  Sara, uh.  'Convinced' me to take a break.  It's been relaxing, but I was starting to get a little bored."

"When Rhombus fucked off to her next dungeon she was like, remember to take days off! I forget if she said 'when you're my age' or if I just imagined that part."

"Oh, uh, yeah.  Taking days off is important."  If I didn't take days off, I'd never get to practice.  "How old is she, anyway, she looked thirtysomething?  I didn't really get a chance to talk to her with, the uh.  The everything."

"Your guess is as good as mine, I didn't ask. Older than me, that's for sure."

He grunts in acknowledgement.  "I could look it up, I guess."  (He does not, in fact, look it up.)

Reasonable of him, as he is far too busy being Best Pillow.

And April is too busy not bursting into tears, an important duty.  "So, you think you're going to do a lot of captures?"  He switches it up from scratching April to giving her a mildly terrifying backrub.  Normal people use leverage to get at deep knots.  Aumento can burn backlash for the same purpose.

Truly the best pillow in all the land. "Captures suck, I swear wrestling that one lizard backlashed me worse than almost the whole rest of the dungeon combined. Like, not literally, but it feels like it. ...I might still do 'em though. Just gotta get better at monster wrestling."

"You think it's about sustained pressure, or power usage, or something?"  He nudges one of her bra straps aside in pursuit of a knot.  It's probably fine, April's pretty chill considering her backlash.

Yeah it's totally fine. "I think it's like - most of the time, I can keep my power pretty low and only push it up when I'm trying to smash something. If I'm lifting an entire lizard over my head, I have to keep it higher than that for as long as I want the lizard to stay over my head, like, continously. I was running high during the boss fight too, but in the boss fight all I had to do was grab the boss and then start breaking stuff until it dropped, it was way faster than packing that lizard into the dryer, especially because I was trying to get the damn thing in there intact."

"Hmmmmm.  I think I should be able to show you some tricks, maybe?  Like, if I'm smashing a door, say, I can keep my power usage low by only using it after I've set up for the kick and turn it off once the kick landed.  If that makes sense?  But when you're wrestling a lizard, you've gotta keep on using your power constantly and you can't let up or it'll, uh, steal your shirt, apparently."

"I got the shirt from your super-shorts people but that might've been a mistake, the lizard couldn't have blinded me with it if it'd popped instead of stretching," she says, snickering a little. "But no, I literally had to use my power continuously to lift the lizard - I guess I could've dragged it instead, but I was worried I'd break it if I did too much grabbing as opposed to shoving. So I hoisted the poor guy up and hauled it, and if I'd turned my power down I wouldn't have been able to walk holding up that much weight."

"Yeah, sorry, that's what I meant - that you can't try efficiency tricks if you constantly have to wrestle a lizard, but our powers are similar enough you might be able to use some of my efficiency tricks on stuff that isn't a laundry lizard.  Words are hard, though."  Especially for me...

"Words are hard," she agrees. "Yeah, okay, I see what you mean."