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let's see if cricket and hye-jin are pals
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"Hm. Better to save the backlash, I expect that right before I'm at my limit we'll do a sweep so I can kill as many of the dangerous monsters as possible before you're escorting someone else with less offensive power."

The airplanes can live, and only have the hot air divert them upwards. Actually, she might be able to catch one, with her paper airplane steering practice, but now is not the time for that. Even though a little living airplane would be adorable, it's unfortunately unlikely to outlive its dungeon, and there are eighty people to save.

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"I think the person is in here." Tug tug, here is the hyperbox and the muffled screaming. Cricket starts clawing open the box.

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Yep! Hye-jin will assist pulling open the box with her opposable thumbs and taller-than-feline height, and switches languages.

"Hey, we're here to get you out, everything's going to be okay," she calls, in Korean.

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The person does not reply in words, perhaps because (once they've got the box open they can observe that) their lips are pretty cut up along with the rest of them. It's all shallow papercuts but there are so, so many.

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Yeah. It's not pretty. She keeps the wince off her face, because if she's learned anything from Tae-gun (... aside from all of the sex tricks, of which there are admittedly many) it's that a calm and authoritative demeanor helps with rescues. She is a professional, she is here to save them, they will be okay. That's what really matters, here, not that this is the worst of the victims she's personally rescued and it's actually kind of upsetting to see this much blood. Anyway, she expects she'll see worse when the confluence hits.

"It'll be okay, we're getting you out," she soothes, carefully working to extract them.

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Their clothes are hanging off them in tatters but probably used to be a dress, so it's probably a woman. They cooperate insofar as they can with being picked up.

"Crane," says Cricket, staring.

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The crane is neatly incinerated, Hye-jin not even looking up or otherwise acknowledging its existence. Instead, she's careful to get a sheet of origami paper from a wall, to wrap her rescue in before gently picking her up.

"Okay, ready," she says to Cricket, when her human charge is as ready as she'll ever be for being carried off. (Technically speaking what she says is 'ご準備ができました。', which is a bit more formal than this casual English translation, and implies that Cricket is her superior. A closer translation is 'The preparations are complete.')

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Cricket nods approvingly at the burned crane and leads Hye-jin out to the portal, alerting her to planes and cranes as it comes up and clawing the forthcoming face off of a sheet of paper that is trying to become a new crane before it can do that.

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Hye-jin leaves the planes be, but incinerates cranes as they come. She smiles a little at the clawed crane, and assists with disposing of it once Cricket has ripped its face off.

When they reach the portal, she says, "Okay, I'm going to put you through the portal now. People are waiting on the other side to take care of you." This warning and reassurance given, she extends her arms through the portal, and gently drops the woman through. This still feels a little wrong, but apparently paramedics find the brief floating period after a portal departure much easier to work with getting a patient into position on a gurney than an esper carrying them through. They can converge on the patient from all sides without her in the way, as she understands it.

"I'm okay on backlash for now, I estimate I can probably get through about ten more victims before I need a break." This is back in Japanese, and directed at Cricket.

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"Is your ice guy coming for your break?" Cricket asks, leading her back into the paper maze.

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Hye-jin is a good, obedient esper to take for walkies, and follows her feline leader accordingly.

"I'm probably heading to him, he's more picky about isolation while backlashed than I am. But he might so he can help us catch a crane, we'll see."

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"It's too early to catch one. I think you can slide down this part."

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Sliiide!

"It is, but he can be a bit... High strung? Eager to please? I probably shouldn't have given him the heads up so early, actually, he might take it as an order instead of a request, and show up ten minutes before my projected shift ends, with a painstakingly drawn out plan for crane capture already drafted."

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"Don't they keep him busy?"

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"They absolutely do, but he's a compulsive workaholic."

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"Oh dear. Here's another box." Tug tug.

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She is tugged, and gets on to box disassembly and inhabitant rescue! The paper is razor sharp at its natural edges, but she and Cricket can both take out those edges pretty straightforwardly, Cricket with his claws and her with application of fire and ability to grab paper by not-the-edge with her thumbs.

This being her second origami box to disassemble, she does a much more efficient job of it this time, and soon enough has the victim wrapped in paper and ready to be carried off.

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And retracing their steps. (Cricket has taken to making little claw marks on their routes to make it easy to follow them back.) He hums the opening theme to Frieren.

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!!!!! She will wait until her charge is safely through the portal before commenting, but this does earn a tiny smile from her.

"Have you been watching the anime, or reading the manga?" she asks, after this latest rescue is safely dropped (gently! and with weird magic to break the fall!) through the portal.

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"The anime. I am much better than most five year olds at kanji but anime is easier."

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"I started on the anime, and then wanted more heartbreak of seeing how incredibly stupid Frieren was for missing that Himmel was in love with her, so swapped to the manga," says Hye-jin, cheerfully. "But I watch the anime when it comes out, the fight choreography is just so gorgeous..."

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"I liked the part where they spent several episodes catching a complicated bird."

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"You know, I had some trouble with that arc until I got used to the changed pacing? Catching the bird itself was fine, it was just the babysitting of the blue and red lesbians that I was a little like, why? They still haven't endeared themselves to me, mind, I just respect the overall story structure."

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"Oh, the lesbians were annoying, but I appreciate it when a story pays attention to and respects things like catching birds. Crane."

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Incineration! Oh no, Cricket is such a cat, it's so cute.

"You are an expert in bird catching," she agrees. "I now want to ask you about what hunting different types of bird is like, is that insensitive of me?"

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