Haru sometimes gets coffee at Tim's, when he happens to feel like it on a random morning, or when he needs to be up long enough to finish out a guiding session with June. This morning it's the first thing.
Yeah, good idea, though they don't have very long to jog before the victim caromes into view and then is shunted away again by a bumper with a loud DING.
And Cara jets off past them, switching between using her eyes and her power to find more victims on the move.
(She took a noticeable chunk of backlash, grabbing them at this distance, but she'll be able avoid getting more by making further transfers at point blank range, now that she has momentum to work with.)
"Thanks, will do." (she quashes the desire to justify her sudden decision over comms - they can debrief after.)
Scan scan scan. What can she see?
She can't see an immediately obvious way to get down into the basement, so - dungeon monster first.
She fires her raygun downwards, and grabs the tiny pinball with her power right away, shunting her momentum into it and then back out, so she's flying directly towards it instead.
She inhabits the same world-shape she used at the gun range as she hurtles towards it, ready to catch any pinballs it fires at her.
The shots stop about a meter from Cara, momentum stolen to hasten her arrival.
When she's almost close enough to the alien to touch it, she pushes all of her momentum into the monster, slamming it into the ground with an absurd amount of force.
...ugh. She looks away from the slime. coward, coward,
"Just took out an alien that was shooting at me. I found someone in the underlayer - I think the dungeon intends to launch them like a pinball. Should I try and find a way down there?"
Hmmm. Can she?
Sweep sweep with her power. Is there anything moving underneath?
(She'll start jogging towards the spot above where the pinballs-and-victim were as she does this)
-Oh, that'll work. When she can sense a pinball almost below her, she takes a running jump and then pulls it upwards, tracking its momentum and position.
This gives her a good estimate of its thickness, which she relays to Haru.
"Okay, I don't love this idea but I can drop through the floor and get the victim out of the mechanism. The thing is I can't get them through the floor, so we still need a route. Can you bash through it? - I've gotten our first person through the portal and I'm on my way to you now."
"I think I would need to get a lot of momentum from somewhere, it feels really sturdy at a touch."
...she looks around. She's surrounded by human-sized pinball bumpers.
Hmmm.
"...can we ask one of the victims if getting knocked around by the pinball bumpers hurt? Because I might have an idea for where to get a lot of momentum."
"I was talking to the person but not about that and I'm not going to go bother the medics about it now. I would assume it hurts and even if the victims have protections against it we don't."
"Alright. Then I don't think I have an easy way to break in, so we need to find a route. I'm going to see if I can figure something out..."
Sweep sweep with her power. Have the pinballs near the basement victim moved at all?
Yep, they're in a row with a few pinballs and one of the pinballs has been chambered and launched.
"Where are you now?"
She tells him, and then adds "The person underneath is in a pinball launching mechanism, which has to connect the basement layer to this one. I'm trying and trace the path a launched ball takes to find it."
Where did that ball go? Has it moved up to this layer?
With a known direction she can expand her range outward very far, as long as she keeps the overall volume small. She's going to keep trying to find that pinball while she waits for Haru to catch up with her.
(It might end up taking a while, though, because she's having to constantly reposition her domain in search of a moving target.)
She feels - less backlashed than she was after they woke up snuggled together during awakening week, but not by much.
After a few seconds, her eyes refocus, and she leans into him. "I thiiink I found the way down there?" She points further 'up' the pinball machine. "The launched pinball is now moving towards us from that direction; if we head that way, we can trace its path backwards and get to where it was."
She frowns. "It's pretty far in, though."