Cricket leads the way back. "You do need to be supporting her weight for her to come along on a slide."

"Yessir.  Okay, Florence.  Ready for me to pick you up?"  She's getting Scooped, but he'd really prefer if she get Scooped willingly.

"For crying out loud, if you came to my place of work I wouldn't ask you if I had permission to do it!"

"Well, I'd hate to startle you."  Scoooooooooop.  "Lead on, Cricket."

Tug tug. (Florence shrieks when the mountains "change shape".)

It is, pretty dramatic, but Tim's ears are not glad that they were part of the esper tune-up.  His are not as sensitive as Menhir's ears, but.  Nobody enjoys shrieking, even through earpro.  And in the meanwhile, he'll just have to deal with mountaineering with zero available hands.  It's a little more expensive in terms of backlash, since he jumps or down up slopes that he normally might have climbed.

Does this kind of jumping provoke more shrieking?

No, that seems fine with her, but she has no useful instincts for how to distribute her weight while he does it.

Honestly, if she doesn't actively cause problems he's going to be happy with it.  He can compensate for awkward landings with increased power use.

The knives are really getting to be annoying when he can't swat them usefully.  Surely the portal isn't far, right?

"It's up and kata of here." Cricket can cover vertically complicated ground a lot faster than Aumento and is laying waste to knives when waiting for him to catch up. "Here, so you can see -" Pull.

(Florence yipes.)

It is pretty startling.  "Got it, thank you.  You're doing a lot of work, clearing those knives out."  True AND nice, perfect.

"The superpower is very helpful for it." Trot trot leap flap. Almost there.

That was basically a compliment!!!!!  Tim wouldn't have expected to get one from Cricket, especially given Cricket's entire everything.  But.  It's enough to put a spring in his step for the final stretch, even with Florence's complaints.

"If you mean to carry her out instead of dropping her I will sit on your shoulder so the knives don't get me."

"Yessir, I think I'd like to carry her out."  Impossibly fluffy kitty!  Impossibly fluffy kitty!!!!

LEAP and then: shouldercat.

(Florence jolts and yelps.)

You know, this yelp is actually pretty valid.  It's...interesting, watching his fur.  And maybe a little dizzying.  He stalls for a moment, ostensibly securing his cargo, then hops through the return portal.

Sure enough, he descends, Florence in hand, Cricket on his shoulder.  Until Cricket decides to fly off, at least.

Cricket glides off during the descent. He has practice using the slow fall from a portal to do fun stalling tricks. Whee!

Yeah, he's not upset with his power at all.  But those tricks do look pretty fun.  "There you go, Florence.  Back on your own two feet.  Support staff are over there, go ahead and check in with them, okay?"

Florence harrumphs and plods off to the support staff to demand additional water and granola bars. A support worker calls Aumento over to pick up an emergency kit for a specific suspected victim of this dungeon, who they've just heard from the bureaucratic grapevine has some health problems, and -

"And will the cat be able to recognize the guy from a picture, in 4D -"

"Wow," says Cricket. "Do you know what 4D means, you stupid idiot?"

"...it means four dimensional, it's just an abbr-"

"And how many dimensions would you be recognizing this guy in, if you met him?"

"Look, I just need to know if you can priorit-"

"Would it possibly be more dimensions than a flat photograph can provide, nincompoop, or are you going to tell me that you can only recognize people from holograms -"

Tim is going to intervene before this turns into a catfight frank exchange of opinions.  He doesn't try to rely on his size to intimidate people, but in this case he's perfectly happy to loom slightly and speak in a slightly louder tone of voice than usual.  "Cricket is the only reason we're able to do a dungeon like this, and he's just as capable of recognizing someone from a photo as I am.  We'll be perfectly fine."  In the meanwhile, he'd like to confirm details on the emergency kit, check that it's moderately knife-proof, and tuck it into his slightly disheveled vest.  Probably not going to last the rest of the day, which is a bummer.  Usually there's only damage on the outsides of these things...

"They say he'll tell people they have asymmetrical kidneys, how should I know if he can see faces -"

"I can see faces. And I can hear you talking about me in the third person. I am a four-dimensional cat, not a third-person cat. Is there anything else besides that you want this guy rescued next?" says Cricket witheringly.

It would be easier to be annoyed at this guy without Cricket being hilarious.  Instead, Tim notes down the guy's description, he'll see about an intervention later.  Bill had impressed upon him that almost nothing was more important than not alienating the completely, literally, irreplaceable native 4D dungeon guide. "I'm ready, if there aren't any operational constraints we need to know about."

"Great." Back to the scaffold. Cricket flies up and waits for Tim to climb.

It's faster, this time.  He's up the ladder in under thirty seconds.  He waves at Cricket.  "See you on the other side," he says, before jumping through the portal.

Cricket follows promptly. "Two hundred feet?" he says. "I have not seen that guy already so I want to get up to the peak and maybe fly a bit higher than that, see if I can spot him."