Suburb!! Your powers are requested for a post-apocalyptic themed acid rain dungeon.

"You should go. I only have a little backlash remaining and I'm sure I can find someone else to hold hands with or whatever to guide it the rest of the way here."

"Are you sure?" He knew that Lawrence wanted to be really careful and conservative while working the confluence because of his newness, and absolutely did not want to push him into doing something he's not ready for.

"Yes. I appreciate the concern but I've gone to esper mixers before. I'll be fine."

Lachlan nods and leaves the hotel.

Lawrence will put on decent clothes (a white T-shirt and khakis) and leave the hotel room. There is food being served here. So he doesn't have to eat the leftover Menagerie bait for dinner.

He makes his way over...this is a surprisingly better selection than he expected for 'there is literally several disasters going on at once'. He supposes there are rich esper tastes to satisfy.

The dining room's pretty empty.  There's one blonde esper who glances up at him, sizes him up as a potential threat, and promptly dismisses him as 'not a dungeon monster'.

It's kind of funny how important socializing is, to be an esper. At the beginning, at least. He prefers to eat alone, but...

"Hello, I'm Lawrence. Can I eat here?" he asks, hovering near where the blonde esper is sitting. Wow, her hair is gorgeous. He kind of wishes he got a really beautiful hair color from his awakening...though he does like that he doesn't look obviously like esper too.

"Sure, go ahead.  I'm Sinkhole."  She sets down her fork and offers a hand to shake.

Shake!

Wow, they're really compatible. Or, he's really compatible with her. Not as much as Lachlan, but she is way better than anyone else he's tried.

"I'm very compatible with you," he says matter-of-factly.

"Yeah.  Same."  She's going to gently-yet-firmly pull him down next to her in the booth.  "I think you have a load on?"  She has a little bit, too.  But with this level of compatibility, she won't for long.

Lawrence will allow himself to be pulled!

"Yes, I have some. I'm glad to hear that it's symmetrical."

Well, if Lawrence allows himself to be pulled, maybe he'll allow her to wrap an arm around him?  Only one way to find out.  "Me, too.  Finding compatibility is tough."

Lawrence kind of tenses, but then relaxes. "It is! What brings you to California?" Or maybe she lives here? She looks American. But everything he knows about America is from cultural diffusion. 

Wuh-oh.  "Uh, too much?"  She pulls back a little bit - she doesn't let go, she just doesn't squeeze so much as she had been.

"No, you're fine. I'm just not used to people touching me in general...I'm new."

"Ahhhh.  I was always kinda cuddly.  Just tell me if I get to be too much, okay?"  Tentative squeeze again?

"I will!" Lawrence does not mind squeezing.

Neither does Carol!  It's why she does it.  "Anyway, I'm here for the cars, mostly.  I can do sticky traps."  A barely-perceptible bit of backlash blips up as a purple blob of sticky goop the size of a coin appears in front of Lawrence.  "I worked on slowing the cars enough to let other espers do the rest.  Mostly Pinion."

Pinion...he really needs to memorize esper name. And codenames. There's an app for that, he thinks...Presumably Pinion has a slowing related power.

Lawrence wants to touch the purple goop but it might not necessarily be safe. So he doesn't.

"I do movement control. I've been capturing Menagerie monsters. My power works on the cars too but it's very expensive to me to do so...it kept me and my team safe walking across the road, though."

"I heard we got some hotshot S-rank kinetic esper to wrap up the cars.  But you know how people are about that sort of thing."

"...I'm sorry, I don't actually know how people are about that sort of thing. I've only been an esper for a little over a month." Lawrence begins eating. He has a really bad tendency to just talk and not eat if there's anyone to talk to (hence his preference to eat alone), so he has to consciously remind himself to consume food.

"Oh, you know.  People just talk, especially about interesting stuff.  And bigshot kinetic espers are pretty interesting, especially when you've been dealing with these damn cars all day."  Carol eats lefty, unwilling to give up her new guiding buddy.  Past Carol was a showoff idiot who made her day mildly worse for the sole purpose of showing off to a twelve-year-old child.

Lawrence is right handed so it works out!

"I see." He doesn't, really. "Who are they planning to bring in? I don't know much about the Western esper scene." He also doesn't know much about the Eastern esper scene, but he doesn't need to say that.

"Hadn't heard that much.  I don't try to keep track of all the espers, there's too many of us."  As long as 'Aumento' isn't on the list, I'm good.

"That makes sense."

Hm...is this impolitic to ask in America? He'll lead with his own information instead.

"I'm Filipino, but I'm with a guild in Korea. Quasar Guild."

"American, here.  Boston, on the other side of the country."  She pauses for a second.  He doesn't know Boston from a hole in the ground.  "Uh, it's a few hours north of New York, if you're familiar?"

Her purple sticky trap vanishes.

He expected it but it's a little sad. Would have been nice to get a secondary guiding partner.

"Yes, I'm familiar. It's not confusingly named, fortunately. I remember when an American friend talked about going from New York to Washington and I was like, 'You drove across the whole country!'"

"Yeah, I uh.  Had a friend who said the same thing.  Washington this, Lincoln that.  Roosevelt the other thing.  We're not that creative, as a nation."  She leans forward and begins to reach for Lawrence's left hand.  Then remembers her manners.  "D'you want to put your arm around me?"

"My complaint about it is more about repeating names. I don't mind New York because it at least puts 'New', so it's differentiated from Old York. Naming something after someone is fine, but don't do it more than once without adding something. It's confusing."

He looks as Carol moves her hand and stops moving her hand. "Yes, if you wouldn't mind," he says, and does so. He does it gingerly.

She stretches forward a little, her shirt rides up enough that his hand might land on skin, rather than shirt.  If he wants.

"There's thousands of Washingtons.  Counties, the state, streets, avenues, probably boulevards..."

He will not change the trajectory of his hand to hit shirt rather than skin.

"That's a lot. I actually have no idea what the importance of Washington is in American history. He's a Founding Father, I think? I only have cultural diffusion to go off of. We name things after Rizal too but...less. Or at least, it seems to me. We do have a very big problem with epal in general...uh, this is a Filipino thing where politicians will plaster their name and face on public goods so they get the credit for it."

Oh god, he's discussing politics at the table. What a conversational blunder.

"He was the first President, he uh, set a bunch'a political norms about being first among equals.  But yeah, we kinda do that too?  Makes me think of how in Egypt, pharaohs would scrub their predecessor's names off monuments and put their own on.  I guess we don't change."

"Maybe that's just the nature of politics," he says. Okay, figure out how to exit..."Are you a combat esper?" He thinks she is but he's not sure.

"That's me.  Killing things and breaking stuff since 2034.  You?"

Two years experience, then. "I am too. But I'm being very conservative with my workload and dungeon deployments because I have very little training and experience. And I want to learn how to better use and be more efficient with my power." How does the sticky goop work in combat? Does it just entrap things? Maybe if you get submerged in it, you drown...

"What's your power like?"  As he begins to speak, she shifts a little bit.  Her shirt just happens to ride up a little, and settle back down over his hand.

Lawrence notices but makes no motion to stop it.

"I can make dungeon monsters move. Go here, go there, stop, et cetera. It's really useful for the Menagerie monsters. It doesn't work on all of them — it didn't work on Volcanic Range's.

I can't hold it for more than a few seconds or it becomes really expensive, though. So I have to be creative and economical with my use of it."

It's not just monsters it works on, is it.  She shivers a little.  "Making them fall down seems like it'd be efficient.  Since they'd have to get back up, and it only takes a second to fall.  And every time you make them stand up, you can make them f-fall back down again."

Uh oh. He should maybe workshop his wording. It clearly affected her...but like. His power is in fact objectively frightening and there's only so much spin he can do to it before he starts saying false things.

"It's very contextual. Tripping them or making them fall works. I also have them stand still so that you can get a clean shot. I can also have them let go of someone if they're holding a victim." He's not mentioning how he can order monsters to kill themselves. "I can only do one at a time so it's terrible at swarms. Better at large singular monsters."

"It's really difficult to make something like an SOP for it, because dungeons and dungeon monsters are so varied...it works on psychic monsters too, I forgot to say that. But I haven't done much testing beyond that. I might get deployed to a significant psychic dungeon at some point because I have a psychic sensor power too. It detects minds and their...I call it 'shape' but basically I can differentiate individuals. And their level of consciousness, like if they're awake or sleeping. I can't read minds, though, only know their location." Slight smile.

"Oh, you wouldn't need to hold it still for me."  She wriggles for a second and pulls a silver dollar out of a pocket.  She closes her eyes.  She flips the coin and backlash spikes once - she snatches it out of the air, eyes still closed, and slaps it down onto the back of her other hand.  One more spike of backlash.  "Heads."

And lo, when she reveals the coin - it is in fact heads.

"Wow! Is that — are you a precog or is that a sensor power or telekinesis..."

He's kind of confused why she used her power twice...maybe she used it once to catch it and another time to know what face it'd have?

"Precog, yeah.  Short range, but it's good enough I can hit anything in range."  Destroy anything in range.

Ah. Well, now it's Lawrence's turn to be frightened! It's really not surprising, though...can you be a combat esper without a frightening power? Killing is the job of combat espers, after all.

"Sorry, short range in time or in space?"

"Both.  It's like, half a second, and the cost gets worse the further away I get.  I carry a gun because I'm not an idiot, but I don't use it as my first-line option.  Most of my work is done with a knife.  Or my hands."

"I do carry a gun too — does your power bestow strength as well?" Or does it just tell you weak points?

"Knew you were a smart one.  It does a little bit of strength and toughness, and I've got the sticky traps.  They're the cheapest thing I can do, basically free.  Surprised you didn't try it, most people do."

Smile. "I didn't know if it was — safe. Not that I was expecting you to do something unsafe, but...I didn't know what it or your power was like."

"Mm.  Still smart."  A purple blob shimmers into existence on the table.  It's smaller than the silver dollar.  "Feel free, if you want."

"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 —

"Well, I do most of my work close-in, with my hands.  What kind of handling do you need, when you're backlashed?"

"At low levels of backlash I can have trouble doing effortful movement like climbing or carrying heavy loads, if I'm already tired. At moderate, I can only stand and I need to be helped or led around to walk. I try to stop working before or at that point. At high, I stop being able to support my own weight. At very high, I stop being able to breathe. But I don't become more...fragile or anything like that. Even at high backlash I'm equivalent to an unconscious person in terms of handling."

"Should be manageable."  She goes from flirty to thoughtful.  Well, that was an opening, and he didn't take it.  He's been a little - reticent?  Shy?  I guess I need to clarify a few things.  "Do you have a preferred guiding strategy?  I'm pretty flexible, usually."  Heh.  Both kinds.

"Oh. I...don't do fluid guiding. At this time. So, cuddling, wrapping limbs, both awake and asleep."

"Alrighty, that's fine."  Her body language shifts a little - less 'cozy cuddly' and more 'professional cuddly'.  I'd ask about exceptions for emergencies, but if he can't breathe on his own, kissing won't make anything better...  "Don't let anyone pressure you otherwise, okay?  I'm fine with fluid guiding, but that doesn't mean you have to."

"I won't, thank you.

I regret that I don't have any cool demonstrations of my power. The closest thing I can do is use it to see if there are any bugs around...which is less useful than you think, because it's line of sight only and is blocked by significant obstacles. I can turn it any which way, though. And it works in 4D."

Down, girl, do not ask him to snap your fingers.  He's not even into fluid guiding.  "Line of sight, or line of effect?"

"Sorry, I might have been using English wrong. What I mean to say is that I can only sense things that have an unobstructed or largely unobstructed straight line from my body. It's fine if the line is very small or has to pass through a hole. My movement control power is also constrained likewise. Is that called line of effect instead?"

"Oh, no, you're fine.  That's line of effect - line of sight is if you can see it - through windowpanes, or whatever.  But it sounds like you'd be stopped cold by a thick enough pane of glass?"

"Oh — yes, I would be. I'm not obstructed by water but by glass, yes. And I don't need to see the target to affect them — if I was looking away or if there was a curtain separating us, it would still work."

"Makes sense.  It's a very good power."  Probably worse than mine, but mine's, well.  Different.  They're good at different things.

"Thank you. I was assigned A-rank in the Asian system. But you don't use the letter ranking system for espers here, do you? I kind of don't like it — it feels reductive. But there's value in knowing rough power levels within an esper type, I suppose. I'm Psychic 4, Psychic Sensor 2."

"Melee 3, Control 2, Psychic 2, here.  Yeah, the Asian system seems - very general?  Who's a hotshot, who's not, that's about it.  The Western system's pretty fine-grained."

"There do exist cases where the Asian system is...I don't want to say more accurate, but...exposes more of an esper's usefulness. I met an esper at a mixer whose power did temporary alterations of the properties of matter. Like, turning steel flexible like cloth, sewing it, then letting it revert. She was classified Control 1, but she was B-rank, because her power was really useful when working with rare dungeon materials. Her name is Hata Chieko.

I have her business card if you want to see. Oh, that reminds me, I can give you one of mine if you'd like."

"Huh!  Yeah, I see how that'd be - a blind spot, I guess, in the Western one?  I, uh, left my business cards up in my room, but I'd happily take yours, and get a photo of hers.  Thank you."

Lawrence will look through his business card case...

"Sorry, I forgot that it was Lachlan that she gave her business card to, not me. I'll have to get it later. Here's mine."

She takes it, makes a point of looking at it carefully, then digs out a wallet and carefully slides it into the 'business card' section.  "I'll just have to make a point of calling you, then."  Aw, shit.  Too flirty.  "I wouldn't mind getting a dunmat that clicks for me, someday.  No idea what it'd do, but it'd be pretty neat."

"I'm not so much a calling person, more a text person. But if you can give me your email, I can send a picture of the business card to you."

...He doesn't really want to think about what a dungeon material that works with his power would do. "A teleporter in our guild has dungeon material batteries. Min Woo-young."

"Oh, yeah, I read about him."  During the Toronto Tragedy.  "He's that big-shot teleporter, right?  Makes more money than God, can teleport you anywhere in the world?"

"Yes, him. He's why I'm able to come here. I can't imagine having that much money. What would you even do with it?"

"Buy a country?  A little one, like Togo?"  She laughs, but - he probably could, if he wanted to.

"Can you do that? Just buy a country? I know you can buy islands...there do exist countries that are just islands...

I thought about starting my own monster park on an island like Traceless's, but I don't have the capital for it. Maybe a decade into my career."

"Probably not, but if anyone could, it'd be him.  I think you'd be in a great position to get another park founded - there's probably a better power for capture, but I don't know what it'd be.  Fly 'em into the cage, close the cage, go home."

"Yes, I think Traceless proved that a monster park can be financially viable on its own, and I think there's enough of a market in Asia for it to be viable. Maybe an island off the coast of Korea or Singapore. One of the uninhabited ones. Might require some construction or earthworking esper work.

I've thought about trying to capture psychic monsters but there doesn't exist anything that could contain them. And they're almost certainly going to die because they're nonphysical and nonbiological."

"I hate the incorporeal ones.  Those are the only ones that really give me problems, if they're not really physical, I have issues hitting 'em."  She pauses, thinking.  "... can your power work on incorporeal monsters, actually?"

"Yes. But it has to — have a mind, or something like that. I think the reason why VR's monsters weren't a valid target is because they were being directly puppeted by the dungeon." Oops that gave out more information than he intended to. Oh well.

Okay seriously do not ask him to demonstrate his power.  She nods, slightly pink-cheeked.  "Makes sense.  Such a shame they chose - this.  Or did whatever they do instead of choosing."

"Who? Sorry, I'm confused."

"Oh.  The dungeons.  I figure they have to be a little - intelligent.  You hear stories about dungeons that trick people, or do something smart, or hold tricks in reserve.  No way they're not some kind of intelligent, even if it's not human intelligence.  You know?"

"Ah. Yes, I agree. I've wondered whether it'd be possible to...talk to them. Communicate somehow. Maybe they can but don't know how. Or don't want to. I don't know how one would go about doing that, though. Maybe an esper with telepathic powers...but I worry this would be bad for the esper..."

"Yeah.  It'd be great if they could just stop killing us.  Or whatever happens when you're in a dungeon and the portal closes."  She's wondered that on sleepless nights.  Someday, she won't have to wonder anymore.

"Yeah..."

Oh no, awkward sad note.

"What backlash accommodations do you have?"

"Not much, really.  I get annoyed easily, as long as I keep the annoyance away from my partner, I'm fine."  I can usually point it at being annoyed that my mouth isn't occupied, but if he's not doing fluid guiding...  "I put on some music I don't like, that sort of thing."

"I see. For me...I've never gotten enough backlash to leave me bedridden. But if I was, which is probably going to happen at least once in the future, then, having food, water, and maybe a bedpan available is good. I don't have any niche or specific needs."

"Makes sense.  Is it a muscle thing, or..?"

"It's more of a mental thing, I think." Should he explain more of his backlash? Hm...

She nods, humming sympathetically.  "Gotcha.  Psych backlashes are the worst.  Well.  Usually."

"I don't know. Psych backlashes have the advantage that they usually don't have lasting effects, unless you end up doing something. Personally, I don't mind my backlash that much." He shrugs slightly.