“In which case the backlash will go back up.”

"Uh, if we are looking at any realistic possibility that you will have to, like, take control of one of the ambuloceti and make it fight another one to keep them off of scuba rescuers, that might put a - timeline - on ideal conversations about whether we were flirting -"

“I was thinking, like, after the dungeon.”

"Yyyyyes but if you wind up badly backlashed and also can't let go of the monsters because they'd eat somebody, can I have an advance directive about that to work with?"

“Oh, okay, advance directive for that situation is yes.”

"Good to know."

“The short version of my side of the talk is ‘I think I like you too much for casual sex to be a good idea,’ but uh one the long version has some important stuff in it some of which I haven’t thought about enough yet to confidently deliver, and two anything with stakes that high is, uh, automatically not casual.”

"...mood."

“I’m not sure which part of that you mean but I find it encouraging anyway!”

"I can go into more detail in the full-length conversation, if you want."

“Sounds good!”

By the time the scuba team arrives she's had a chance to zero out and start afresh; they would like her in the dungeon as direction and backup for their dives, complete with comms suitable for talking to them while they're underwater, and Traceless in with her for guiding and to bail her out if she seems to be getting herself into danger.

Okay. She listens to all the instructions and follows them to the letter.

Down they go, with their lights and their underwater guns and their rescue equipment and their scuba tanks, and the nearest croc swims for them.

She yanks the croc off course.

Hey it was going thataway though.

No.

Well can it make a noise? It wants to make a noise. It wants to go:

brhMMMMMmmmmmm

Oh absolutely the fuck not. She’s not sure that that wouldn’t hurt the divers by itself, but the odds it wouldn’t summon a dozen more of its ilk are…small.

She strips off her shirt and clings to Haru. Modesty can go jump in the jaws of a Hell Crocodilian.

Haru's got gear dangling off various objects he's wearing but he can hike up his shirt a fair bit and hold her.

The crocodile would very very much like to go brhMMMMMmmmmmm and will keep trying pretty hard to do that but she wins, and she can watch through its eyes as the divers locate a drowning victim and have them reeled up to the medics and portal defense team standing with Lucy and Haru on the pontoon.

Lucy remembers that the Big Thing is not allowed to eat the divers, but she has lost track of a lot of moving parts to the situation. Mostly involving agents that are not her.

She lets go as soon as all the rescuers are out of the water.

Well when they're out there's nobody to go brhMMMMMmmmmmm about, so it doesn't.

By that time Haru has put his face on her neck and rolled up his sleeves to the elbows but has not escalated to Advance Directive Kissing. "What's our estimated victim count? I don't know if she's good for two more of those, let alone twenty."

"It's eighteen, but we're getting Rhombus in a few and Turtle and his partner too. How many monsters are there total, does she know?"

"Lucy," says Haru. "How many crocodiles are there?"

“Twenty-five. When there are divers in the water, this one tries to make a loud noise. I think that would make the other ones come.” She can’t quite recall how she reached that conclusion, but she remembers reaching it. “I think I could make it attack another one, if two were here.”

"Is it worse to reach the ones farther away?"

“Nnnoooo, but it’d take longer to get—I can check if some other two of them are closer together.”