Maybe progress?  "That'd be fine by me.  Do you have a blanket or something we can use?"  Down, girl.  She's going through some shit.

"Yeah, there should be one under the seat here somewhere..." She rummages for a moment and pulls out a woven throw blanket and hands it to Sinkhole, then starts wriggling and pulling her pants down towards her knees. Heh. When I was her age, I'd have been mortified to be sitting in my underwear in front of a bunch of DRT guys like this. Feast your eyes, fellas.

With some careful handling, she manages to get her pants below her knees and refasten her knee braces without either of her knees or her shoulders popping out. "Getting these the rest of way off is gonna be a little tricky right now. If they're in the way, probably better for you to do that part, or I can get them in a bit."

"I'll handle it, it's okay.  Backlash is a real bear." Sinkhole is maybe a little pink-cheeked, but she's perfectly competent to help another girl out of her pants.  With a DRT squad twenty feet away.  She'll wriggle Pinion's pants down.  A few more ticks of backlash pile up as she counterfactually checks Pinion's ankles, then she tucks Pinion's feet in.  "Okay.  I'll get back behind you now?"  Hmm.  Should have given her my jacket, that wou-no, Carol.  She probably hasn't gotten a year of therapy in the last ten minutes, she's still going through shit.  Do you have the attention span of a methed-out fruit fly?

Aw, cute. "Thanks, sounds good."

Then Sinkhole will resume her previous position behind Pinion.  Her own pants are rolled up to the knees and rested over Pinion's thighs.  Then she wraps her hands around Pinion's tum.  Maybe a liiiittle higher than before.  "There we go.  Nice and cozy.  Lemme know if you need me to move, okay?"

Pinion rests her hands on Sinkhole's again. "Will do. This feels good to me right now." It dooesss, guiding is so good. God she misses-- nope nope not finishing that thought now. That can be a Later Thought. Right now she is here with Sinkhole, who has been an excellent teammate, and they are going to stop so many cars from terrorizing the passengers and pedestrians of San Diego.

Sinkhole doesn't get as fidgety as some people whom she could name but will not.  But she's not immune to the temptations of the fidget.  She's got her left hand full, but her right hand's fingers entwine with Pinion's, and her thumb grazes over the edge of Pinion's index finger over and over.  "Have you been an esper long?" 

She laughs. "I'm 38, and I awakened when I was 18. I think at this point I've officially lasted longer than The Average Dungeoneering Esper. How about yourself?"

Her thumb freezes for a few seconds, before it resumes its petting motion.  "You, uh, you don't look it."  I guess I shouldn't be surprised, espers age pretty well.  "I figured you were older than me, but - I'm nineteen.  Awakened about two years back, started doing dungeons, and I haven't stopped since."

"Heh, thank you. The years have been kind to me." Well, mostly kind.

Aw, she's a baby. Damn competent for a baby though. 

"You and I followed a pretty similar trajectory, sounds like. I actually wasn't too keen on dungeoneering to start, but I met my partner - Starfist - at basically the first mixer I ever went to, and his power was very much combat-oriented. So I sucked it up and gave it a try. Turns out I'm decent at it, at least with the right supports. Mopping up breaches like this is definitely my strong suit, though. In a dungeon, I'm solid combat support, but my mobility is terrible. Out here, I have home-field advantage."

Sinkhole was keeping track of the Toronto Tragedy for completely professional reasons.  She's aware of what happened.  "Oh."  She pauses for a few moments, and her hands tighten on Pinion, ever so slightly.  "I heard.  I'm sorry."  It feels pretty petty to complain about Tim's power, now.  Even it can't save everyone, much as he tries his best.  Burns himself alive keeping the rest of us warm.

Ugh, the "oh I'm so sorry for your loss" song and dance. She's getting so tired of it. Obviously what else can you say, but. It seems it's the only conversation she ever has, these days. It's her own fault for bringing it up, really.

"Yeah, it's. Been hard." Think of something else to say. Don't just leave her hanging on a downer like that. "He and I were a good team for a long time." That's not really better?? "I could tell you all kinds of crazy stories from when we were your age." Do I actually want to do that? Augh. "But I'm sure you've got some crazy stories of your own!" There! Now shut up!

Okay, that's a change of topic if ever Carol's heard one before.  "One or two.  And since you're my captive audience..."  She trails off, playfully squeezing Pinion just a li'l baby bit.  "So no shit, there I was..."  She begins a (slightly exaggerated for comedic effect) story about how she and a previous partner went through this one catacomb dungeon.  Carol's a reasonable size for her height, but she didn't have any problems with hooked chains hanging from the ceiling.  Her partner on the other hand, kept getting clonked on the skull, hooked by them, and generally inconvenienced.  After the third time he got hooked, he decided that getting shot by a poisoned crossbow trap was more likely to happen if he got hooked.  So he shrugged out of his vest, stripped his shirt off, and promptly been swooned over by this sweet little old lady.

(She needs to get more funny stories.  Since she started running dungeons solo, it's hard to find things that happen in a dungeon amusing.)

Phew. Thank you Sinkhole for taking the bait. Probably I'll want to tell stories, eventually. But... when they come up naturally. Not because I couldn't think of anything else.

The "no shit there I was" story is a noble esper tradition. Pinion makes sure to ooh and ahh and gasp at all the appropriate parts, and the punchline genuinely gets a giggle out of her. Reminds me of that time when Connor... okay, fine, brain, you win.

"Hah, rescuees can get real frisky sometimes. There was this one time when..." She regales Sinkhole with the tale of a dungeon that was mimicking an enormous cruise ship in a storm. Tons of little identical hallways like in a hotel, but rocking side to side crazily like a boat. They were doing a sweep for kidnappees, who were just locked in various cabins, and found one girl who was mega seasick and had spent the time til they got there puking into the ensuite toilet. They got her cleaned up and gave her some water and started escorting her to the portal. On the way out, she took out her phone and started taking a bunch of pictures. She claimed she just wanted photos of the dungeon, but conveniently they all also happened to have Starfist in frame. Especially his arms. And his butt.

"It wasn't even an interesting looking dungeon! Most of it literally just looked like hallway!"

Sinkhole is the model of professionalism and decor when she states, "Oh, no, I'm sure those photos went on the LAC database.  Definitely."  Then she giggles into the back of the headrest, and therefore the back of Pinion's neck.  "I gotta admit, it's a little annoying when they make a pass at me while we're in a dungeon.  I don't mind them looking, but I'd rather save anything more than that for downtime."  

"Right? I understand if they have a little trouble keeping their eyes at 10 and 2 - I mean, I too have seen espers and sometimes it's a struggle! And I get it, when people are in a dungeon they're not generally at their most tactful. But could we please all just keep our mouths respectfully shut? I don't need to hear about how you would treat me if I was your girl. Like seriously dude, I'm just trying to do my job, which is saving your life, by the way."

"Right?  Like, I get it, we're all hot.  But you're in a dungeon!  There are dungeon monsters!  I'm here to kill dungeon monsters, and it's not like a civvie is bulletproof the way I am!  And even if the monsters don't go for civvies, I don't want to split my attention between monsters and whatever an abductee has to say that isn't, you know.  Relevant to getting us both out of the dungeon!  And it's a whole ethics problem, if you hook up with someone you pulled out of a dungeon."

"I have coworkers who wear a bodycam every time they go in a dungeon. Partly so that they can review the footage later, see if there's any areas for improvement. But partly so that if some vic propositions them, gets rejected, and then comes out of the dungeon with a sob story about how the awful esper refused to rescue them unless they performed sexual favors, they won't get blacklisted from dungeoneering for life. It's such a stupid situation." The worst part is there really have been espers who did that. What if we didn't burn the trust people have in us to protect them, hey?

"I just wear mine for the cool videos I get."  She snakes an arm out and lightly draws an X on Pinion's right collarbone.  "Right there, on my vest strap.  I'm not really - specced for rescues.  I do it sometimes, but my customer service gets pretty bad once I get backlashed.  Monsters don't care if I cuss at them, they're the easy part."  Her hand returns to its previous position, maybe a little higher than it had been before.

"Yeah, arguably I should wear one, it's good practice and it's not like it would be hard to mount to the chair. I just don't like the idea of being recorded constantly." ("Arguably" in the sense that she has gotten into arguments about it before, several times. Connor was a big believer in them.) If I had worn one, maybe I would have more videos of him. She sighs. "I can only really do rescues on a team or in dungeons where I can take my chair, and even then, showing up looking like this does not inspire confidence in rescuees that I'm capable of getting them out in one piece. Most of my time in dungeons has been on melee support, crowd control, managing environmental hazards, that kind of thing."

The inching upwards is fine, Pinion's no longer so backlashed that a hand on her ribcage poses a serious threat to her structural integrity.

"Well, you'd be able to carry more than almost any other esper out there.  And this thing looks like it'll go on every surface that isn't literally vertical.  But it's not really all that rare for an esper to be on a timer because of their backlash.  Yours is just - dramatic."  She gives a slightly-nervous chuckle.

The vibes are still a little off, here.  "What do you do for fun apart from invade alien dimensions?"

"If I stick to things that are person-size or smaller, the backlash rate is really so much better, too."

"Outside of dungeons, I like to go backpacking, bouldering... cross-country skiing, in the winter. When I can, I like to help out with the local youth community theater, doing stuff like building sets and props, or showing the kids how to do it. I'm trying to learn to crochet, but I'm pretty shit at it."

"Awwwww."  That's sweet of her.  "Have you graduated past the Scarf Phase of crochet?"

"I've mostly been doing these little crochet animal kits, they're really cute. But they tend to come out pretty lumpy and lopsided when I make them, so far. Should I be worried about the Scarf Phase?"

Sinkhole drops into her best 'shell-shocked survivor' impression.  "It's terrible, Pinion.  You start making a scarf and then you don't know when to end it.  It consumes you.  You're stuck adding just one more foot...forever.  If you're lucky, someone sees the skeins coming out of the windows and calls the fire department to break you free of the curse."