The time is 6:46.  Tim has six missed calls, four texts, and an irate mother who is just praying that he's knocking up a highschool sweetheart that he never told her about.  He told her where she was going.  It's probably fine, he probably just lost track of time or rolled his ankle again or something.  But.  It could be something else.

She'll call 911.

Tim's a good kid.  He's been working on the EMS team since he was sixteen.  Not what anyone would call a charmer or a genius, but that boy will work like the Devil prods him every time he stops.  Good head on his shoulders, and everyone knows he was gunning for Eagle before he decided to join the EMS team.

Well, ma'am, I think we'd all agree that Tim's in a high-risk category.  Right?

Er.  Right?

Great, then we can dispatch a search team immediately.

Tim's well-liked.  He's not what you'd call popular.  But his Scoutmates remember the one who brought extra Chex Mix that one time everyone got lost snowshoeing and had to wait six hours to be found.  The EMS team, well, everyone in the local emergency response team knows Tim's face, anyway.  Some folks love to hike in the woods and would love an excuse to run search and rescue instead of going into work.  For some reason, rural upstate Vermont has a lot of folks who enjoy the great outdoors.

Pretty soon, a good-sized search team is scouring the mountain.  GPS is pretty crap around here, but they know he's somewhere in this park, and they see his pieceashit truck he was gifted for his seventeenth birthday.  It shouldn't be too hard.

The time is 11:55 PM.

Tim is cold.  He's also sleepy.  If he were awake, he'd know that those two are a bad combination.  If you're cold enough, you get tired and you never wake up again.

Of course, it's June!  He's not at risk of frostbite.  He scrunches up a little bit, curling himself into a ball.  With an absolutely Herculean effort, he crawls back into his jacket.  It's a windbreaker, really, and won't keep him actually warm.

Crawling into his windbreaker: eight minutes.

Zipping up the windbreaker: gets it halfway up, then dozes back off.  eleven minutes, most of which are spent trying to get the stupid zipper started.  If he were awake, he would remember that this windbreaker also has buttons to help with waterproofing.

The time is 3:25 AM.  The date is June 17, 2036.

Everyone here loves what they do to an extent.  You certainly don't work for lousy or no pay to rescue dumbass teenagers who think they're immortal, tourists who wouldn't know a sleeping bag from an iron bog, or look for toddlers whose parents "just looked away for a second, I swear" if you don't love the outdoors, helping people, being a big damn hero, or have a deep-rooted sense of civic pride that borders on the obsessive.

Frankly, search and rescue is a lousy gig.  Let's say you have ten people searching.  You can't search solo or Nightmare will get you, or a broken ankle in the dark will.  So that's five teams.  Realistically, one team or possibly two will be running the infrared drones.  So that's three to four teams to cover dozens to hundreds of miles.  Maybe if dungeons weren't around, they'd have more resources, but as it is it's mostly volunteer.  Bigger parks might have more budget, but they don't.

So if the victim is found, there's a one in five chance that you're the one to do it.  If the victim is found in-person and not by a drone, that's a one in four chance.  Odds are strong you're not going to get the glory, but sometimes you do get to see a corpse.  Not often, less if you use the IR drones.  More if there's a dog available, but Maise passed on last year.  But if you do search and rescue for ten years, the odds are better than even you'll find someone who didn't make it.

Today's a good day for Mary.  Mary's been a troop leader for a long time, and was a little sad to see Tim decide that he had something he wanted more than being an Eagle. But he's a good egg, even though he's from away, and she'd be sad to see him go.  Getting old is shit.  I need to leave all this crawling around in the dark for young kids.  My eyes aren't what they used to be.  Thankfully for Tim, her eyes and ridiculous flashlight are enough to help spot a sleepy teenager wearing hunter orange.  "Think we got him, George.  Tim, is that you?"

Z_z

"Son?  Can you hear me?"

"Don't move him, George, what if he's got a broken neck?"

"I'm checking for a pulse, Mary, and we'll have to move him eventually.  Son, are you okay?  Did you hit your head?"

z_Z

Tim is dutifully called in.  He's boarded, collared and hiked six miles out of a state park.  There's occasional grumbling about getting an ATV, but as one exhausted searcher points out, an ATV wouldn't have gone up that trail ANYWAY unless it could fly.

When he's examined by his coworkers on the EMS team, they're baffled.  He's not injured.  He's a little chilly, but he's not cold, it's June.  The worst thing they can tell is that he has four ticks which are removed and dropped in a bottle of isopropyl alcohol which is very clearly labeled TICK GRAVEYARD.

Mysterious coma?  Nothing obviously wrong with him?  Blood test looks fine, reflexes are fine if sluggish?  Responds by mumbling or occasionally squirming?  Send him to Montpelier.  Maybe he's got Mad Cow disease.

Huh.  This one's weird.  Blood panel comes back fine.  He's just sleeping.  Maybe half of the time they can get a response out of him.  Pupils are responsive.  Is he literally just asleep?  It's not an allergic reaction.  He's not responding much to sternum rubs, just a squirm and a mutter if it's a really aggressive one.  Oh.  He ate something.  Well.  Let's...let's get this taken care of.

Maria Alicia Delgado, confirmed tiger mother, encounters little difficulty getting the Copley Hospital staff to put this one down as an esper awakening.  No, she isn't an esper, the father isn't in the picture, he's back in the old country probably unless he died sometime in the past nineteen years.  Look, you don't have anything on him, right?  There's no smoking gun in any of the tests, he's in the peak of health, if anything he looks a little defined since the last time he took a selfie at the waterfront.  It's an awakening.

The Copley Hospital staff are bemused and will insist on running up the bill ordering more diagnostic tests.  But fundamentally, they can't really do anything for him but wait it out.  After the third day of everything looking fine except for the part where he WON'T WAKE UP, they throw in the towel and stop ordering diagnostic imaging and blood draws.  He's put on a feeding tube and cathetered at the other end.

Z_z

The next four days pass.  Tim gets fed through a tube.  He occasionally makes like he wants to pull something loose, but frankly a toddler could outmuscle him in his present condition.

The time is 3:23 PM.  The date is June 23, 2036.

Tim begins to stir.

As anybody will tell you, people don't like unexpected things in their noses.  The natural reaction to having something in one's nose is to rip it out.  This has traditionally been a very well-adapted reflex.

When you have a nasally-placed feeding tube, this is NOT a well-adapted mechanism.  The style this hospital uses has an inflatable "bubble".  It's inserted into the nose, inflated and left there.  This way it can't be accidentally jostled out of position.

What happens when you pull on a tube with an inflated bubble keeping it in position?

If you're a normal person, your ability to feel pain will override your reluctance to have a tube sticking out of your nose.

If you're a young person who is still orienting, used to powering through leg lockdowns and cramps in class, you (hopefully) have the ability to differentiate between pain and injury.  Pulling on the inside of your nose is incredibly painful.  It is not, as far as Tim can tell, going to injure him.  It's just a plastic bubble, and it's just a nose.  He's had the full strength of a former cop turned jiujitsu instructor squish his nose after escaping a rear-naked choke.

If you're a young person used to powering through pain with the ability to increase your own personal strength and durability, you reflexively boost yourself to the maximum.  You rip the tube out of your nose.  Of course, the "deepest" part of your tube is in your stomach.

Tim's muscles are souped up with adrenaline and superpowers.   Peristaltic muscles don't like it when things try to struggle against them, and Tim's have tightened down.

This particular nasogastric tube is not rated to stand up to a panicking teenager.  It is particularly not rated to stand up to a panicking teenager capable of bench-pressing a car.  If Tim had not also reinforced his body with his newfound power, it might have torn his nasal cavities up but come loose.  Instead?

It breaks.

Tim's current status:

Gagging
Naked
Attempting to get up, despite the best fight two blankets can put up
90% awake
Panicking
WHAT THE FUCK IS IN HIS ASS
WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK IS ON HIS COCK?????

Until thirty seconds ago, Nathan had been turning a patient to prevent bed sores.  Then he heard the commotion.  You don't sprint in a hospital, because if you slip and fall you'll never hear the end of it and also become a patient.  He does hustle.  Glance up at the ceiling bubble mirror, nobody's coming, hang a right ah fuck.  It's the kid, whatever his name was.  T-something.

"Hey, hey, you're okay, here, let me help you out of that."  Where the fuck did the NG go?  "You're okay, you've had a rough week, let me just help you..."  This isn't the first panicking patient that Nathan has calmed down.  He'll reach out to stabilize the kid's shoulder before he fa-

Due to Status Effect: Panicking, Tim does not want to be touched.  He is an esper and has done various flavors of martial arts since he was about nine.  He is not at a risk for falling and does NOT want to be touched while Gagging, Panicking, or Fighting Off Blankets.

Tim's left arm snaps up, wraps over and around his assailant's arm.  When it comes up, his arm is hooked under his assailant's right shoulder, his hand is grasping for Nathan's clavicle.

Tim takes a step back with his right foot.  Tim is at the center of the world.  He rotates to the right, and his left arm clotheslines his assailant.

In class, he would have been laughed out.  He only had one underhook, he didn't use opposing forces, his right hand was useless.

Nathan did wrestling in high school sixteen years ago, is off-balance, and is used to confused patients rather than strictly fighty ones.  Nathan is in particular not used to patients who could juggle him.  Nathan is thrown to the floor like a motorcyclist whose motorcycle struck a concrete median.

Nathan's current status:

Broken
Concussed
Possibly screaming?  Nathan cannot tell.  Someone is screaming.
Prone

Tim pants, his body trying to hyperoxygenate his muscles.  He's successfully fought off his assailant and also two blankets.  He's allowed to take stock his surroundings now.  

Tim's Status:

Naked
Trailing a tube?? from his ass?  And his cock????
Very awake.
Full of adrenaline.

"Who the fuck are you?  What do..." is that a doctor.  "Quit fucking screaming, I've been thrown hard...er..."  You have not been thrown hard enough to go through a fucking cabinet door what the fuck, I didn't even use my other hand there is no way.

There's a shocked gasp, audible over the screaming.  Tim's eye shoot up and he instantly recognizes the person at the door.  His maman is there, carrying a cake in her left hand.  He's a little taller than he really remembers being, and from his vantage point he can see that it reads: "Happy Esper Day!"

I was gone for ten minutes.  Ten minutes to pick up the cake.  Her son may be an angry demigod right now, but that does not matter to Maria Alicia Delgado.  She draws herself up to her full(five-three) height and bellows from her diaphragm.

"TIMOTHY BARTHOLOMEW DELGADO, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THAT POOR NURSE?"

Noise level: 92 decibels.  According to OSHA, listening to Maria Alicia Delgado shout for two hours can cause permanent hearing damage.

oh.  oh no.  i just killed a nurse.  okay, don't panic.  you were trained for this.  stop the bleeding.

kneel next to him

check for vital signs

please don't die.

okay.  vital signs are there.

why won't my hands work.

please don't die.

im so tired

please don't die.

When Timothy wakes up, he is almost naked.  No blankets this time.  He is laying on a hospital bed in an empty, unfamiliar room.

Timothy's Status:

Sleepy
Feeling very nice.
Slightly weighted down at the legs?  Not a blanket though?
Wearing boxers

Timothy looks down to see what's holding him down, and the answer is a pair of calloused feet laying on his thighs, just short of his don'tthinkaboutit.   The feet are attached long, creamy legs bulging with feminine muscle.  Whoah...she must train harder than I do.  Tim, of course, looks further up.  Black Lycra short shorts, holy shit, abs, a white tank-top, and a bit of a smirk.

"Hey."  A knowing smirk. He likes what he sees.  This is going to be fun.  "Name's Sinkhole.  But you..." Sinkhole wiggles her feet strategically.  "...You can call me Carol."