Late morning, Saturday, November 8th.
Not everything about dungeoneering is about fighting monsters and cracking cores. Sometimes, the most heroic thing you can do is help someone who was inside of an underground service tunnel when the earthquake hit leave said tunnel.
Which is good, because Lina is basically useless at the fighting monsters and cracking cores of dungeoneering. But she is good at locating people, at least so long as they've got enough brain function to be on some level aware of anything.
So she's here with Lucas, who is good at things like "first aid" and "getting people to a hospital really fast", and they are picking their way through the rubble.
Well, there's a person trapped in a half-collapsed tunnel. This is a problem that can either be solved via a work crew and optionally some heavy equipment(which can't be refueled until the streets get taken back) or one(1) esper and their guide.
The mind in this tunnel is trying not to pay attention to her stomach(and failing) and trying to not pay attention to their neck pain(and failing) and also trying not to pay attention to the fact that their phone battery is down to 6% and soon they won't have any e-books at all.
Their attention keeps shifting back and forth from the e-book to the rest of their situation.
"Okay, there's someone just a bit further that way. They don't seem to be injured or anything so it should just be a matter of getting them out."
How's the rubble looking? Can he clear a path to them by teleporting these rock chunks here into a neat stack over there, or is he going to need to get more creative?
The main problem is one central chunk. If you could manage to shift that, you'd probably be able to move most of the rest by hand. The quarters are so tight that it'd be hard to do it and it'd be pretty tricky to break it up without power tools or a pickaxe and room to swing it.
Thankfully, you don't have any of those constraints.
Zworp. That middle chunk is now laid flat on the floor over there, and any pieces that threaten to fall when that one is removed can form a little pyramid on top of it.
They scrabble for where they dropped their phone in fright. "Sorry, sorry, you just - it's fine!"
"Glad you're doing alright!"
He could move the rest by hand, but honestly a few rocks isn't a huge expense with Lina right here. Zworp zworp more debris goes in the tidy pile over there.
Then it's not long before they're clambering out. "Thanks so much, I had the emergency lights, and I had my phone, but I was getting a little claustrophobic."
"An extremely valid response to getting trapped in a tunnel! I'm glad we were able to get to you before you were in there too too long." She offers a hand to help them over the uneven terrain, then gestures to one of their DRT entourage.
"Todd here can lead you out, and when you get there there's a whole relief station set up with first aid and hot beverages and snacks. You should be able to charge your phone there, too."
"I'd kill for a water. Even one of those gross esperades. Again, thank you both so much..."
Todd checks her over for symptoms as they walk, making sure she's oriented and not in pain and not dangerously dehydrated and ...
"Happy to help!" Handoff concluded, Lina waves goodbye, then begins venturing further down the service tunnel, senses extended for anyone who might be paying attention to anything. As they walk, she and Lucas hold hands, guiding off his burst of debris-clearing with her ongoing sensor drain.
Huh. That's an odd mind. Two odd minds, actually, and a third that isn't paying attention to much.
The two odd minds are focused intently on retrieving their [f̵͍̄ô̷͖ọ̸̒d̴̛͉].
Well that doesn't seem normal. In fact the focus on [f̴̙̑ó̸̟̆o̵̫̿̄d] kinda reminds her of dungeon monsters she's encountered before?
She waves over the DRT squad and says quietly, "There's something weird up ahead, I think it might be some kind of breached dungeon monster? More than one of them..."
"Like more of those Menagerie critters, you think? Are there any people nearby them?"
"Feels a little different from those... maybe? But they were each different from each other, so hard to say really. There's two that have got that same weird-feeling fixation on something I can't really make sense of that a lot of monsters do, though. And there's another with them that could be a person, or maybe another monster, but it's like really zoned out, maybe barely conscious."
"If it's more Menagerie monsters and a person with them, we can't risk startling them like we did with the last one. We'll have to find a way to get them separated first. Keep us updated if any of them move or start doing something different."
The DRT goons get serious. Most of their job is calming civilians and doing firefighter-adjacent tasks.
But they're also soldiers. Weapons come free, safeties are checked. "Can you guide us to them, ma'am? And keep their attention off us, if we find them?"
"I can take us to them, and I should be able to keep their attention off of us. It'll be easier because they haven't noticed us yet." Not perfect, because monster perception is weird and harder to interpret, but they should be much less detectable at least.
As they get closer, she lays out her game plan:
"The maybe-a-person mind in there seems pretty out of it. Hard to say if sudden noise or movement would jolt them awake, or get no response, and it's risky to test. So what I want to do is create some kind of mild, ongoing stimulus, one that shouldn't be enough to startle anyone, but distinct enough that I can use it as a distraction." She starts some music playing from a small portable speaker, esper-quiet, then reaches out to the minds over there.
[Music is the most interesting thing. Music is fascinating and if you heard any you'd be so engrossed you wouldn't even notice whatever else might be happening around you. Especially not any people. People are so completely boring and hold no information worth having.] she wills at them, then, carefully monitoring them for any changes in attention, slowly notches the sound up.
They're - confused? There was [f̴̙̑ó̸̟̆o̵̫̿̄d], but it's not - [relevant/interesting/a priority] anymore. But there's music. Maybe that's where the [f̴̙̑ó̸̟̆o̵̫̿̄d] was.
It's not long before a pair of DRT operatives come around the corner. They must be from another outfit - their equipment is subtly different. And one of them is wearing a DRT-standard balaclava, while the other is wearing a respirator.
One of them has the stripes of a DRT captain, while the other is marked as a lieutenant. Neither of them register the presence of the espers or their team.
...There weren't supposed to be other teams working this sector, were there? Weird.
"Hey," he calls out to the operatives, quietly because being less interesting to the monsters nearby is not quite the same thing as imperceptible to them. "There's some monsters nearby, probably Menagerie, and a possible civilian with them. Watch out."
Meanwhile, Lina is a little distracted, unhooking the speaker from her belt and then rolling it across the floor towards the corner.
The captain and the major both cock their heads a little towards Stash, but don't actually respond. He's not that interesting, and they're hoping that the noise will bring them closer to their [f̴̙̑ó̸̟̆o̵̫̿̄d] that mysteriously vanished.
(their responses are nearly-identical, as is their walks, stances, everything)
"Huh?" Oh huh, more DRT guys. Where'd they come from?
She reaches out to assess their attention.
They're focused on the music. There really isn't much that's interesting aside from it.
The fuck?? Those guys are interested in [f̷̨̺̊ŏ̴̙̳̌̊o̶̙̼͕̊́̇̎͠d̴̋̒̈ͅ]?? And music??
She scans around. Yeah the monster minds that were over there before sure are right here now, inside those DRT guys!
"What the fuck? Those guys aren't people, they're monsters!"
Well that's not great, considering they are neither of them combat espers, and had no reason to be armed for a search-and-rescue mission. Should have had Lancet come along for bonus guiding after all.
Maybe the DRT guys can handle it?
"Captain? Sir?" One of the DRT ops waves, his weapon lowered. "I'm sure this is all just a misunderstanding, we can get it sorted out at the station."
They don't respond, instead investigating the music box. The squad leader looks over at Lina, looks at the captain and signs to his squad. He and two other operatives take up an overwatch position, while the remaining two operatives get out their zipcuffs.
It turns out that when zipcuffs aren't actually all that interesting, it's hard to avoid becoming zipcuffed. In a flurry of action, the two dungeon-monster-people are zipcuffed into a hogtie position.
Oh good they didn't have secret giant mouths in their torsos or something.
...or at least haven't manifested them yet. Thank you Lina for keeping them distracted.
...wait, do they even have normal mouths? "I'm gonna try taking their masks off, one sec." Unlike everyone else here, he can teleport to a safe distance if this causes them to manifest secret giant mouths in their torsos.
The balaclava comes off just fine. There's a perfectly normal-looking mouth there. It's closed, though. And the monster is wriggling around, trying(and failing) to escape its zipcuffs.
Okay this feels kindof weird. They just look like normal guys. They're not really acting like normal guys, but that could just be Lina keeping them distracted. Do they have nametags or anything identifying on them at all?
Lina meanwhile is peering around the corner in search of the third mind she sensed.
"Smith" and "Ortiz". Ortiz doesn't look particularly Hispanic, but it's not like that's disqualifying on its own.
One of the normal DRT types speaks up. "Hey, that's not right." He points at the epaulets. "Look closely, that's not how our signifiers are supposed to look. And here - those aren't actual patches. They just look sorta like 'em."
"That's a scarily-good fake. If some dungeon's making impostor DRT monsters that even real DRT have to look closely to tell the difference, we should radio that in ASAP. Don't supposed you already have some kind of code phrase protocol you've all trained on for situations like this?"
"Guys there's a whole other person down this way still! Can you like, pick those guys up and take them with us or something?"
The squad leader pauses a moment then snaps out orders. "Carlos, Lau, guard the prisoners. The rest of you, on me." Many espers aren't formally part of the DRT hierarchy, but if you're disregarding your esper's suggestions, you'd better have a damn good reason. "Lead on, ma'am."
Lina is perhaps a slight exception to the rule, given that her backlash is literally not being able to triage between options even if one of them is biting her in the face. Luckily she is only a bit backlashed right now!
"Around this way, and then I think if we go up this exit to street level they should be somewhere near there?" As they walk, she scoops up her speaker, and eases off the monsters' fascination with music, monitoring the real DRT guys as well for sudden attention shifts that might signal danger. She wants to make sure they're in a stable position there before she's out of sustainable range.
The espers are bracketed by the operatives. One left-front, one right-rear, and the squad leader checking their six intermittently.
It's less than a minute before they see the victim. Staring absentmindedly at a black van just across the street from her.
"Hey, corporal - did you get the memo about the vans?"
"Yeah. I did."
"We wanna radio this in?"
"We secure the scene, first. Any others around, Lampshade?"
There's a rapidly-approaching set of minds. If she strains her ears, she can probably hear the whining noises of a couple of cars approaching.
The victim is now over there, well away from where a car might end up even if it jumps the curb a bit.
Everyone can feel the wake of the vehicles whipping at their clothing, hair, and bodies. It's a bit like having front seats at Le Mans, but with zero safety features beyond Stash's reflexes.
Well. Perhaps not 'everyone'. The victim Stash moved doesn't seem to have any response to 'being ten feet away from being turned into extra-chunky road pizza'. It's not clear that they're actually conscious, aside from the evidence of them being vertical.
He's got EMT training, he knows how to check a patient's AVPU. He'll run down the checklist starting with talking to the patient and going down to sternum rub if he's gotta.
The patient isn't responding to anything. Words don't go in one ear and out the other, they don't enter at all. Touch doesn't respond. Sternum knuckle rub gets a little shift of posture, that's about it.
This here is an Unresponsive Patient.
"Hey Lina, this is the one you said was all zoned out? I can't seem to get them to zone back in again, any ideas?"
Hey there Unresponsive Patient! Have you considered that [that guy right in front of you is really amazingly shiny?]
The patient is tracking the [amazingly shiny] with their eyes now, but putting concepts together is hard. It's like they're disassociating all the way out of their body.
Lina drops it, and comes over to hold Lucas's hand. "That's about the best I can do. They're allll the way gone. You think maybe the DRT mimics have some kinda psychic ability? Or maybe there's some weird monster thing going on with the van? They were looking at the van, before we got here."
He calls out to the DRT. "Something weird's up with the civilian, they're totally unresponsive, possible psychic influence. We should try and find if there's anything in the area besides those monsters that could be affecting them. I think that van seems like a pretty promising first place to look."
"Yeah. Last news was that the vics come out of it eventually." His face is tight with worry. "No other surprises around, still?"
Squad leader here is not being very reassuring or very forthcoming about the whole impostor DRT situation which Lucas has apparently missed a memo on. He double-checks all their insignias and whatnot just to make sure they're all how he remembers them being.
Yup, everything looks legit. No imposters here, just the previous ones.
"Huh." One of the ops is trying to open the door to the van. "Am I going crazy, or does this handle not even do anything?" She's pointing at the doorhandle. On a normal car, this would be a flap that opens when tugged. On this van, it's of one piece with the door itself.
"Huh, yeah. Is that even a real door?" He circles around the van, inspecting seams and door handles to see if there's any way to get inside the van, or even just look inside.
The back is a real door. But - the interior of the van is almost like a child's toy. It has the approximate shape of van, but nothing's real. It's a stage prop.
"The heck is this." Honestly, what was he expecting? The fake DRT squad drives out of the dungeon portal in their completely normal van to go kidnap victims?
One of the ops, seeing Lampshade's gaze, snickers and runs the plates. "Fake plates. Actually, I don't even think they're...yeah, see the edges? These are completely bogus."
"Huh. Not sure if it's more funny or less funny if the plates are fake. Imagine if they were completely real though. Fake DRT waiting in line for registration at the DMV..."
"That'd be terrifying. A dungeon monster that can impersonate people perfectly?" Shudder.
Okay yeah when you put it that way. "This dungeon seems like seriously bad news."
"I used to be undecided about if dungeons are people or not. But this? This is planning. Three dungeon breaks in one city, no way there's not someone on the other side of that portal."
"I never figured them to be, since I can't sense them with my power, even though I can sense monsters. Of course, maybe the people part of the dungeon stays in the dungeon dimension or wherever portals go when they're not here, and they're all over there plotting where to put the next portal, and that's why I can't detect them."
"I mean, I always thought the Confluences were a sign that the dungeons were smart. And then there's the bad ones like Nightmare, or Reunion..." His eyes widen and he snaps out, "Stevens, what on God's green earth do you think you're fucking doing?"
"Looking in the van? Seeing if there's anything in there? Seeing if I could find the little label that tells you tire pressure and all that shit?" Stevens leans back out, having stepped partway into the vehicle to search.
While Lina has been chatting Dungeon Philosophy with their detail, Lucas has been radioing in about how they not only found some monsters doing an eerily good impression of a couple DRT guys, they also found a victim under some kind of psychic effect near a weird fake van.
When one of said detail starts to enter said weird fake van he tells the other end to hang on and calls out, "Dude I stayed out of the van and I'm a freaking esper! Maybe don't go in the kidnapping box if you don't want to get kidnapped?"
"Ah, shit, maybe you're right. Anyone got a selfie stick*?"
"Yeah. Carlos has it today."
"Frig. 'We only carry one because there's no point sticking two in a portal', they said. 'Why would you need even one, you're not even on portal duty', they said."
*slang for the camera-onna-stick that people stick into portals.
Lucas pulls a pad of sticky notes out of his pocket and scribbles a message on the top one. Then he vworps the selfie stick off Carlos and into his hand, and vworps the sticky note over to Carlos.
Borrowing the selfie stick for a minute!
—Stash
It's a little showing off, but hey, a guy is allowed to have some fun with his power. "Here you go!" he says, handing it over.
The radio blares out, "JESUS WIGGLEWORT CHRIST! ... oh." Well. I guess that works. I definitely didn't want to leave Lau here all alone, and really didn't want to leave these two...whatever-they-ares here.
"Pffffft." There's some good-natured chuckling at Carlos' outburst, but the corporal corrals his squad before it turns into a verbal firing squad.
Meanwhile, Stevens has accepted the selfie stick with a giggle and a thank-you. She gets good footage of it, and then reviews it. Any shoulder-surfers will see, well. A mattel van. The front compartment has zero ways to enter it. There's a set of restraints on the benches on both sides of the van. (The windows weren't overly tinted, but the restraints definitely were not trivially visible from the outside.)
But there's just - little details that don't add up. No safety warnings, no identifying features of any kind. There's no handles on the inside, and no visible locking mechanism from the inside, either.
(Stevens is going to send this to the Van Experts, AKA Sarah Tsang and Victor Medina.)
While Stevens videos the van interior, Lucas finishes his report. "Alright, we'll wait here until a relief squad gets here to deal with the transferring the van to whatever lab wants to study it. What's our protocol for confirming they're real DRT and not impostors?"
"Hell - uh, verbal confirmation from HQ? Use a passphrase and then - wait, I got it." He points at Lampshade. "She's our protocol. Shit, we're going to have to figure out how to IFF everyfuckingbody in San Diego..." This is a goddamn nightmare. I am not even going to ask if it can get worse.
"Works for me. We got lucky, having a psychic sensor on our squad. Everyone else is going to need to figure out... something, though."
"Uggghhhhhhhhhhhhh. We'll burn that bridge when we come to it. I've never dealt with anything like that, monsters that look like people get bumped straight to a esper team with a psychic or a sensor or whatever." But we don't have enough espers for every squad, let alone for the whole friggin' city...
Yeah he does not envy whoever's job it is to figure that one out. He'll go hug Lina and monitor the victim until their backup gets here.
Oh, and when Stevens is done with the selfie stick, he can give it back to Carlos.
The reinforcements are verified. They dig out some protocols that esper teams use for identifying each other in a psychic dungeon called No-Face. The victim is roused eventually, with zero memory of how they got there.
The van itself is put under armed surveillance. There's debate about whether to move it, but the 'what if it blows up or dissolves into hypnogas' team wins the debate.
(Yet another DRT squad that could have been put to work doing something useful, instead of watching a knockoff Mattel van. Making that kind of decision isn't easy, but the potential knowledge gain is deemed worth it. To mitigate the loss, they call it 'light duty' and only require a four-person guard, plus battery-powered surveillance camera.)
