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In which SecoursStan is vindicated
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This dungeon isn't a big one, exactly.  It's not even incredibly dangerous.  What it is is a series of three assembly lines:

In the first assembly line, abductees are forced into carefully-crafted form-fitting Dungeon Styrofoam Containers.  The positions are not comfortable for the occupants of said containers.

In the second assembly line, abductees are fed and watered, via careful and insistent bendy straw inserted in through a hole in the container.

In the third assembly line, abductees are stretched, often to the physical limits of their bodies.  Arms, spine, legs, individual fingers, neck.  Everything gets quality tested.  After quality control, the abductees are repackaged and sent to the first assembly line, only to be put in a different painful to awkward configuration.

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As soon as they realize this, they call for a sensor and a precision combat esper.  Disrupting the assembly could potentially be an extremely traumatic event for the hapless victim inside of it.

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Victim triage is in her wheelhouse. Hopefully this will not end up being one of the ones that turn into an emergency. 

She shows up in a self-driving car with blacked out windows with a van in tow. The several guys in the van are there to set up a cordon within the dungeon for her to work in, and then stand outside the cordon and make sure nobody barges in when they shouldn't. Also to haul her out to her partner if necessary.

Her partner is installed in the guiding tent.

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It's the Confluence.  Sinkhole is extremely willing to travel for a good dungeon, and she happens to qualify as an extreme-precision Melee esper.  She rolls up in a regular self-driving car, which sticks around long enough to be unloaded.  She doesn't carry a lot of equipment, and most of what she does carry is what she'll be carrying into the dungeon.

She goes through her usual checklists, dons her equipment, and begins asking around to find where Secours is.

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She's not backlashed yet so she's waiting outside her cordon meeting the DRT personnel so she can identify them as 'already known about'. This will make it easier to identify the victims as 'people she hasn't met'..

She's wearing a hat that covers most of her hair, but it's meant to make it harder to identify her outside the dungeon not in it. To make it harder to doxx her and/or follow her home. That was more important when she was siloing in her parents' basement instead of a private address not officially associated with her but the habit persists. She also has a set of expensive esper-grade noise cancelling headphones currently around her neck.

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Carol, on the other hand, is wearing quite a bit less in terms of identity personal protection equipment.  She's got a DRT-standard helmet, with four flaxen braids leaking out of the bottom of it - two at her temples, two at the back of her head.  She's got a tank top, elbow pads, and a MOLLE rig with pistol, along with bags packing various kinds of equipment.  They're labeled, but the narration can't be bothered to rigorously define what all might be in Carol's vest at any given time.  For pants, she's wearing a set of practical, fluorescent orange cargo pants with reinforced knees.

Perhaps fittingly, it takes her a minute to recognize Secours.  The hat helps quite a bit.  Once her target coworker has been identified, however, Carol strides right up.  "Good afternoon.  Secours, right?"  Carol offers a handshake which, if taken, is a firm and professional two-pump.

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She'll take a handshake, since again she isn't backlashed at the moment. 

"That's me. Sinkhole, yes?"

(Her English is lightly accented, but fluent, she grew up in Montreal which is extremely bilingual, and additionally polished her English after awakening)

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"That's me!  I used to say 'all my life' when someone asked that kinda question, but I've only been Sinkhole for a couple years now.  How are you today?"  She looks pretty cheerful, considering she's about to be tasked with rescuing people from a literal torture dimension and fighting the torturers.

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That gets a small smile, "I'm well, thank you." She mostly looks serious. 

(Her job is very self-actualizing and gives her a sense of accomplishment but her backlash causes enough stress that it's hard to be really cheerful about it)

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"Compatibility was pretty much nothing, here.  Not bad, not good.  Same for you?"

(Carol would similarly self-describe as 'satisfied' in life rather than 'actively happy', but the dungeons really aren't a problem for her.  Somedays, they're the highlight of her day.)

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"Same, yes.  I don't normally guide with strangers anyway, my backlash makes things...logistically complicated and it's a bit much to ask from most people. My partner is waiting outside."

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"No sweat, I just make a point of checking," Carol chirps.  "I'm ready to get to work if you are?"  I don't love social pleasantries like this, but Daddy always said that if you skip 'em, you're missing out on the monkey-signaling.

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"It's a good habit to check I think.  Yes I'm ready. Normally I just mark the victims on the map software but that is not so useful for this one, so I will just have to let you know when you get near one of the boxes with victims inside."

This will involve more comms use while backlashed than she prefers but so be it. Her partner is waiting outside and she knows her limits well by now.

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“I can work with that.  My backlash is annoyance.  I’m pretty good at managing it now, but I might get curt the more power use I rack up.” I shouldn’t have to, this dungeon is pretty small.  But.

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"I prefer comms use be kept...functional in any case." Also she actually doesn't get tone of voice because her incoming comms get run through a Morse code translator because it's more comfortable not to have human voices piped directly into her ears once she starts racking up backlash. Which is another reason she prefers to keep conversations limited, morse code isn't as high bandwidth as speech. She's tried using AI voices but the new software is too good at sounding natural and the older software isn't good enough at accuracy.

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"Functional.  Okay, you got it.  Anything else I need to know about your requirements?"

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"Just, don't try and barge in while I'm working. Or into the guiding tent when I'm taking a break."

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She pretends to take notes on an invisible piece of paper.  "Don't...enter...guiding...tent...during...guiding, got it."  She smiles sunnily at her fellow esper.  "I think I can manage that.  Do we have a briefing waiting for us, or was the summary enough for us to get started?"  Honestly, it doesn't get simpler than this.  Go in, find people, get 'em out.  Kill anything that stops me.

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"They're not doing a formal briefing for this one, I don't know if they've updated the electronic record in the last half an hour, I have been getting my setup...set up."

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"Well then, I'm ready to start whenever you are.  Let's get these people out."

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"Radio check?"

She fusses with her headset for a minute.

 

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"Good copy, five by five.  How copy?"

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"Good copy."

Thumbs up.

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"Alright.  See you in a little bit, then."  And she strides through the antechamber of the dungeon, confident and fearless.

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The air is cool and pleasant.  The room is spacious and well-lit.  In front of Carol is a rapidly moving conveyor belt, with dozens, perpaps hundreds of arms.  As Carol looks on, various glass tubes insert themselves into each box, inject some kind of liquid, and then retract.  If Carol didn't know better, it would look like a moderately quirky assembly line for a strange factory.

Given that Carol does indeed know better, it's something out of a dystopian nightmare.

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"Direct me, please.  Nearest victim to me?"  She's in game face now.  Before, she was smiling and dancing the social dance.  Now, she's focused.  Her hand drifts to her combat knife for a moment.  Caresses the handle.

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