"Thank you," he says, then, with his pointer finger, boops the purple blob.

He doesn't want that finger back, does he?  It's not going anywhere.  It's like he's been superglued to the table.

.. after a few moments, she'll let him go.  "It's pretty neat.  Good to set something up, or for captures.  No good against fliers, of course."

Wow! It's really really sticky!

"It might be useful for Menagerie, if all the cars have been taken care of. I've been capturing flying monsters where I could because it seems like it's my comparative advantage. Though I prefer to bait the monsters with food too, because it saves on backlash."

"Yup.  'You're mainly limited by your rate of backlash accumulation'," she quotes.  "It makes to use tricks like that to save you recovery time.  But really, I don't think I'd be that good for Menagerie.  You don't even need to be an esper to catch those things, it just helps.  And I think combat espers are bad for catching Menagerie monsters."

"Hm, I mentioned it because you could use the sticky traps to make it safer. Even if the monster got activated, it wouldn't be able to attack if it's immobilized. I agree that a regular combat esper with say, beam powers, wouldn't have a significant advantage over DRT."

She shakes her head.  "No, I mean - they trigger off quick movements, right?  And I've got a pretty healthy startle reflex, or I'd be dead by now.  I hear a car alarm going off, I look too fast to see the problem, and it goes for my throat."

"Ah, that makes sense. What kinds of dungeons do you tend to work on? I wonder if our powers would or could have any special synergy...Sadly, it doesn't seem like that's the case but maybe there's some creative way to put them together that's better."

"I solo most everything.  They put me in dungeons where all I need to do is kill everything, and then I do it.  It's easier if there are fewer monsters, but I manage okay.  Wanna see my latest capture?"

Wow. Maybe that's just what it's like, when you're a high level combat esper.

"Yes, please. I've been emailing Traceless about monster capture, which is a big part of why I'm so excited about being here."

Then she'll unlock her phone and show him some gorgeous glassquitos.  Most of them are varying shades of blue, but there's a few red ones as well.  The other colors are underrepresented.  "Got 'em in Spain.  Like I said, I travel a lot."

"Wow. It's so beautiful! Are you keeping it or — I'm assuming you sold it to someplace."

"Yeah, I can't keep anything alive.  Wouldn't be fair to the little fellas, you know?"

"It's really sad when a dungeon monster is cute and beautiful like that. Even though you know they're dangerous and have probably killed people." Oop, that topic is kind of heavy, maybe he shouldn't have opened that...

She shrugs.  "Yeah, a little.  Every dungeon is unique, but they're like balloons.  And we're in the business of popping them.  It's a shame, but they started it.  We'll finish it."

He wants to ask what her opinion is of the idea of dungeons being conscious or sapient...but he stops himself before he makes a third conversational blunder.

"You said you traveled a lot — you accept deployments worldwide?"

"I do.  Almost anywhere they'll pay to have me.  I'm thinking about heading to Seattle, next.  Story as old as time.  Girl meets boy.  He's got a primary, though.  I'm keeping my options open."

Flirtation?  From Carol?  Surely not.

"My best wishes to you. I wonder how it changes the dynamics, when you can move around more easily like that...it's less flexible with the guild system in Asia. My partner isn't actually in the same guild as me — he's in the Singaporean military."

"It's pretty flexible.  As long as I can find someone who's willing to guide me, I can go anywhere I want.  Canada, Spain, Italy once...it's nice."  It's a little lonely.

"I've never contemplated traveling before I was an esper. The visa requirements and cost made it impossible. But now, I suppose I could, if I felt like it. I can afford teleports now. Well, traveling for pleasure, anyway.

Are espers in other places very different? Culturally, I mean. I'd imagine so, but then again, we form our own population and we travel around a lot. And our nature means we have to reach out to others..."

"Yeah, a little.  I think Europeans are more open-minded than Americans, in general?  Maybe a little nosier.  But I run most of my dungeons solo, so."  And I shouldn't talk to anyone backlashed.

"Running a dungeon solo sounds really scary...I'm kind of lucky that my power and backlash is such that it's typically better for me to have a team. My backlash is difficulty moving, by the way." He's guessing for her...mania backlash? Akathisia?

"It was at first, but you get used to it.  Or I did, at least."  It helps to be able to walk into a room and know in your bones that you can kill everything in it.  "Annoyance, here."  She sounds so normal, talking about it like a regular esper with a regular backlash!

"I can imagine."

Uh oh, is she getting annoyed with him? He doesn't expect her to be hostile — he doesn't think she'd have lasted this long as a working esper otherwise — but she has a combat power and Lachlan doesn't.

"Could be worse.  Pinion's backlash is she turns into a, uh, 'jellyfish on crutches'.  Dislocations all over the place."

Well, she's not backlashed right now, anyway.  

"Oh dear. Well, you needn't be so gentle in handling me, even though I do turn into a jellyfish too."

Oh no that came out more flirtatious than he expected —