It's a fine time, yeah; she doesn't want to mingle yet but she can handle one person.

(Yay!)

"Hi! I'm Reve, local dungeon esper," she says with a bright smile. "You from around here?" (She certainly looks young enough to be local, and for this to be her first mixer in the area.)

"We live out east," she agrees. So it depends on what she means by local.

"Oooh, Spokane area? I was there for a dungeon, once, it felt like being in a different state entirely." She pauses a bit. "Wanna test compatibility?" She holds up her hand, palm-out fingers-spread.

"Closer to the Tri-Cities. -- that's why I'm here." She starts to reach her hand out, and then stops, remembering something. "I'm Foreshadow."

"Oh! Makes sense." Right, codenames. "Ooooh, Foreshadow is a good one - I'm Hourglass."

"I went through quite a few ideas before I found that was free, but I like it. Hourglass is pretty too. You do -- something with time? -- I'm a precog."

Ooooh, precog! "Yeah, I can make zones of slowed time! It comes in handy a lot, in dungeons."

(...She keeps her hand held up, mildly self-consciously.) 

Right, right. "That sounds really useful too." Poke?

Oh! That's nice. (Plausibly a bit less than the backlashed white-haired man earlier, but she didn't touch him for very long and she still doesn't know his name, so.)

That is nice. "Oh," she says, blankly.

(Ophira doesn't have backlash; Zara sat with her until she was clear, after testing.)

Awww. Reve smiles.

 "-wanna hold hands?" her mouth says, before her brain can catch up and evaluate whether or not this is a reasonable thing to say.

Foreshadow blushes! But takes her hand.

Reve blushes too! Though it doesn't stop her from smiling. (Compatible handholding!)

"Are you looking to do dungeon work?"

"It seems like the thing to do? If I can warn people, stop them from getting injured or worse..." she shrugs. "It only tells me bad things, and I can only do a few minutes out without -- the backlash cost isn't linear. Dungeons seem like -- the place it's most often true a minute's warning would make a big difference, even when I don't know more than that there's a problem."

Argent dug up a study on DRT casualty rates (it was investigating how various equipment choices help, but that wasn't what she cared about as much), and -- she knows combat espers don't tend to live to fifty.

(...Reve is a combat esper, probably. ...she is not going to unpack that right now.)

"Yeah, that'd be really useful! Advance warning for ambushes, or if we've gone the wrong way or there's some other kind of danger we're not aware of..." Reve trails off, slightly lost in thought.

"I'm not sure if I could tell if you'd gone the wrong way for a victim unless it's dangerous -- for them or for you -- but I think I could do -- ambushes, traps..."

Shrug. "They had some mice, for power testing, and I couldn't tell how they were going to hurt them, but I could tell which, usually. And where, sometimes, in the maze." (She does not sound very happy about this method of power testing.)

Oh. "I'm sorry. Power testing can be rough, sometimes." She squeezes Foreshadow's hand, gently.

"They had me test mine on fish and rats, too, but I think it just confused them."

Squeeze. (They euthanized the one that was hurt badly and survived. She asked. Day would think that's better, probably. She doesn't know if she does.)

"That seems... better." (...she abruptly feels bad for combat espers with more directly harmful powers.) "I don't know how else you'd test mine, except for having me sit in on a lot of dangerous situations and see what I caught, and..."

Maybe if she'd awakened another time, she would have pushed harder for that. "You can't use it as well, then."

"Yeah, it wasn't so bad." (Reve shifts her arm a bit to increase skin contact.) "I'm not sure how else you'd test it, either, if it only really pings on danger." She sighs. "You'll be able to help a lot of people with it, though." (Including Reve, maybe, if she wants to do dungeons together,)

"I hope so! -- sorry, we were talking about dungeons."

"It's okay! But yeah, an early danger warning would be really good in dungeons... my power is really good in that kind of situation but only if I react quickly, I was in a spider-themed dungeon yesterday and  they kept trying to jump us from above. My neck was sore afterwards from spending the entire time looking up..." 

"You can -- pause them in the air enough to move? That's cool. Other than the sore neck."

"I can slow things down a fair bit, yeah. It gave us time to react and it made our pyromancer's flames a lot more efficient - I have that kind of effect on a lot of powers that cause problems in an area, slowing stuff down in the danger zone for allies to handle." She's not so useful alone, but that's okay. She likes being part of a team.

"...do you have a usual team you work with, or does it depend?"

"It depends! I go where I'm needed," she says, trying to sound a bit cool, and then mostly ruins it by adding "or, uh, where my agent thinks it makes sense to send me. She's got a pretty good sense for what kinds of powers and dungeons I work well in." Pause. "I have a guiding partner, but she doesn't do dungeons. ...or mixers, usually, she's at home catching up on her fanfic."

...slow nod. "What are you looking for, then?"

"Ah, here? Finding someone I'm compatible with to dungeon together would be awesome; I did that for a few months with Scarlet Inferno, when I was just starting out, but then she had a grandkid she wanted to dote on and retired to do that." She sighs fondly. Those were good times.

"I expect I would be staying near the portal." I'm not sure I'd be any better for that purpose than your current partner.

"Yeah, that makes sense. I'd still be interested in trying out working together, if you wanted?" It would mean Kani could stay home sometimes, if they can make it work, and she'd really like that.

"I'd be interested in trying," she agrees. "...I should probably sleep on it before I decide anything," she adds, reluctantly. "But it seems like our powers would work well together." And you seem really nice.

Reve nods enthusiastically. "No need to decide now!" She slips her free hand into a pocket and pulls out a business card to offer. "Here - this has all my contact info." 

"...I don't have those," she says as she takes it, sounding a little embarrassed.

Awww. (hand squeeze for the new esper). "They're handy! I didn't have any either, for my first few mixers, I kept forgetting to write down to do it afterwards," Reve says. "If you give me some contact info, I can send you a link to the place that I get mine from, they have a cute little webapp for designing them..."

She's! Had other priorities!

...though frankly she's surprised Marie hasn't decided she needs them yet. Probably Marie as yet does not know that esper mixers are Like This apparently, she's not sure she mentioned it.

"I'll mention that if I message you," she says, lightly, because she's not supposed to just give out contact information. "I bet one of my friends would love the webapp."

She nods agreeably. "Sure. You can also probably find similar services if you poke around, I bet there's plenty, but my agent liked mine."

(There was a time when the if in "if I message you" there would have been pretty distressing, to Reve, but she's grown a lot in the last two years. Dungeons can be scary. Potential friendships, even ones that would be useful for her espering career, just aren't, not in the same way.)

(Foreshadow sounds like she wants to, which may also help.)

"Probably. She clearly hasn't, yet, though."

(It does help, yes!)

"I suppose mine didn't either." Shrug. 

After a few moments of silence: "...what made you decide to do dungeons?"

"I wanted to help people."

She pauses. "...Grandma got taken, when I was young, and it took a while for them to find her. It was... hard for her." (Hard for Reve, too.)

"Oh." It's Ophira's turn to go solemn. "I'm glad they found her."

"Yeah." Reve sighs. "Me too." Hand squeeze. "Thanks."

”...we never got any dungeons. But... when I was little, one of my friends -- there was an electrical fault. She was in the hospital for a while." The adults wouldn't tell them how close it had been, but -- that's an answer too.

(No dungeons - well, they're far out in the countryside, that makes sense.)

"Oh, gosh." Reve places her other hand over Foreshadow's, gently clasping it. "I'm glad she's okay; that must have been scary."

(Yeah. She knows they're much more common and also less likely to kill you, in the city, but it hasn't really sunk in properly yet.)

It's funny; she knows there isn't anything different she could have done that would have helped. She got plenty of lectures about how it wouldn't have been better if she was hurt instead, and -- it hadn't been like Uncle Hal's heart attack, where if they had found him earlier --

But her younger self had been so convinced she should have done something different, and some of that stuck. She supposes... "I think it was the helplessness that really got to me." She squeezes Reve's hand back, and shrugs slightly.

"Yeah. That's... relatable." She'd tried to go out looking for grandma, when it happened; her parents had made her stay inside. "Well, we're not helpless, anymore." 

"Yeah. We can help people."

"We can help people!" She's grinning. 

"Yeah!" She bounces slightly.

Eee! Smile bounce bounce. (Reve likes Foreshadow!)

"How long have you been doing this?"

Reve temporarily removes one of her hands to make a complicated gesture and then the time and date pops up in front of them as a hologram??

 "Two years and two days," she chirps, flicking the hologram away.

Woah. "What's that?"

And, huh, she must have awakened early too. Could she be like this in two years?

Reve, walking endorsement that she is, has a manual gesture shortcut to pull up the infoblurb she's got on commscreens! She does so as she starts to explain. "This is a commscreen! There's a tiny chip in my finger that reads my gestures and projects this hologram, and it's connected with an extremely cool piece of dungeon tech that basically functions as a networking computer at very long range; the one mine is connected to lives in White Star's headquarters, and it's connected to my phone via the internet. It's basically a sci-fi personal computer, I only got it a few months ago and the base software is in Japanese so I haven't done much customization but it's fantastic for helping me keep track of everything I want to, it's so much more convenient than a smartwatch or phone,"

oops maybe that was a bit much.

Reve pauses to breathe and also gauge interest before continuing.

Well, Foreshadow looks curious. "I suppose it would be much harder to break than a phone," for example because you fell of a boulder, "and the holograms are cool, but -- more convenient than that?"

Oh yay! "So for me the big things are that the input is gesture-intent-based (like, literally? It's magically reading what I intend to do when I try and move my fingertip, I can trigger it even if the relevant hand is trapped under someon - something), and the holograms, yeah, which are really configurable - or will be when I spend more time working on the interface, all the base stuff is Japanese with options to for Korean or Mandarin but machine translation is actually really good if you can give it three inputs to work with," she pauses to breathe again.

She nods thoughtfully. "Most of the things I hear about from dungeons are plants." She definitely knows there are other things but Cal and her dad are the main ones who talk about it (okay, technically Argent does too, but it's usually about bacteria she wishes she could get a look at). "Which -- some of them are pretty cool, but not like that."

Oh, xenobotany... "Huh! I don't know much about dungeon plants, specifically, but - have you seen footage of the zoo in Toronto?"

"Some photos, yeah." Argent had thought it was very scientifically interesting.

(...this might also have been the origin of Cal's note that she should ask potential agencies about their policies about ex-dungeon monsters. She's not actually sure.)

"I don't do dungeons that far from home very often, but I've been to Toronto for work once or twice, and I did get a chance to check out the zoo last year, and it was great. Highly recommend a visit sometime, if you're into that kinds of stuff!" Reve is maybe bouncing a bit again.

Awww. "It's really cool, that -- some of them can just survive like that, without their dungeon. And even be friendly, sometimes."

Nodnodnod. "And some of them can even talk! It's - insanely frustrating to think about too much, really, if dungeons weren't constantly kidnapping and killing people we could live in such a beautiful world, but - they sure are constantly doing those things, and people try talking to them all the time, and it never works..." She sighs. "The esper who started the zoo has a really good blog, he's talked about it a bit."

"...yeah."

Handsqueeze.

Squeeze. "You can see the edges of it, with dungeon tech and plants. And ex-monsters." The world they could have had, if dungeons weren't terrible.

(If they were places you could explore, rather than torture factories.)

She nods fervently. "Sometimes I dream about learning someone's awakened with a power that lets us talk to them and make them listen, but..." she shrugs, a bit embarrassed.

Do you think they would?

Even if they listened, they've already hurt so many people...

"It's a nice dream."

She nods. "...yeah."

(siiigh.)

Squeeze?

Squeeze!

(...Reve kinda wants to hug Foreshadow, but that is almost certainly not appropriate, she seems shy. She will get lots of hugs when she goes home!)

...she does not seem to be coming up with another question she wants to ask right now.

Reve also fails to generate a conversational topic. Ah, well! They had a nice talk, and Foreshadow has her contact info.

"I am going to go grab some more food and then I should prooobably meet other newcomers. Catch you later?"

"Hopefully! It was really nice meeting you."

"Likewise!" Reve bounces a bit, and lets go of Foreshadow's hand only slightly reluctantly, because she is An Adult.

(Is she? Ophira is sadly in ignorance of this fact.)

Ophira will let go as well (possibly a bit more reluctantly) and go meet other people.