Somehow this has ended up being his life.

All right, what are they looking at here?

Agents have fairly uniform copy ("I strive to provide the best possible working environment and negotiate ideal contract terms for espers I represent" and such). There are also specialties, which are less bland - Juggernaut probably wants a combat esper agent. All the finer grained information seems to be classified as an agent's "interest": they might say they are "interested in" psych backlashes, international deployments, media appearances, field teams (where a pair or group of espers are reliably deployed together, either for power synergy or because they can't last five minutes without a guiding partner on hand), rapid emergency response, bespoke loot handling procedures, etcetera. All of these people will take a phone call for personal fit check!

"Media appearances," she groans, when they run across that one. "Okay, okay. Do I want someone who's interested in psych backlashes? I hear 'interested in psych backlashes' and all I'm getting is like, 'I love it when I get to represent someone so crazy they can't tell I'm scamming them', but that might just be my cynical and untrusting nature talking."

"As far as I can tell you don't even get crazy crazy on backlash, you just get, like, miserable. But maybe you still want to start with somebody who's interested in psych backlashes? Just because there might be something we're missing about how that plays out?"

Do any of these people list an interest in... what would they even say... forthright communication? Strong personalities?

Nobody says outright that they have an interest in that quite so specifically, but there's one who gets more specific than "psych backlashes" and says they're interested in "altered states that create impediments to communication, and routing around those creatively". She also represents June Yamanaka.

That looks like a start. He passes her number to April.

April will grudgingly accept that this process requires phone calls. Ring ring.

"Phoebe Gallagher speaking, how may I help you?"

"Hi, I'm April, I'm a new esper looking for an agent. You sounded promising because I'm really cranky and blunt as a person and my backlash makes me even crankier. I don't know what dealing with that is gonna look like but it probably needs dealing with."

"Sounds like it! Are you cranky and blunt but want everybody else to politely get out of the way, or cranky and blunt and you want the bumper cars version of life where you bonk into other cranky bluntness?"

"I dunno, kind of between those? I don't want people to start fights with me for no reason but I don't want them to bullshit me either? I also have a, uh, best friend slash PA who can probably help translate between me and anybody who doesn't like my cranky bluntness."

"That’s useful." She knows a cat who could use one of those. Poor Paula. "Are you planning to be public with your backlash?"

"Good question. I haven't decided yet, so I guess I'm at least not starting out public with it? It's going to be hilariously obvious that it makes me cranky, but I don't know if that means I might as well write down 'it makes me cranky' even though that's not technically what it does..."

"No shortage of backlashes that do that as a side effect. How about your power?"

"Invincibility kinda-sorta shading into superstrength in a weird way. The lady at the powers testing place gave me a Melee 4 and said that if I didn't end up hitting 5 she'd eat her hat."

"Ooh, invincibility, fun. Anything besides the power and backlash that might point you at some dungeons over others? With a power like that you probably don't park within the province, so it'll matter if you speak other languages, hate spiders, can't legally travel to Europe, had a bad breakup with a DRT guy..."

"I'm pretty bad at languages, I have, like, shitty high school French but I wouldn't want to count on myself to run a dungeon with it. And I really want to, like, have some kind of mentoring situation or something before I totally launch myself into the deep end dungeons-wise, it seems crazy that as far as I can tell I could just sign up to run a dungeon right now if I felt like it and nobody would stop me even though I awakened last week and have no idea what I'm doing. But yeah, with a power like mine, in the long term I should probably end up going wherever they need stuff punched to death even if they have to assign me a local DRT guy as a translator or whatever."

"Oh, you for sure shouldn't run one by yourself right now. I'd get you a dungeon buddy for your first few. Translators can't handle everything - if a dungeon wrecks comms and you can't make anyone else invincible and you run into a vic, you can talk to them if you can talk to them and can't if you can't. But, loosely, there's combat where you cover a victim's exit, and combat where the vics have all been extracted but there's a boss monster guarding the core, and I'm guessing you're the second kind?"

"Not that I've ever tried either, but in powers testing when I went hard I kind of tended to... make anything I touched into shrapnel... which is not something you generally want to be doing if you're trying to rescue somebody..."

"Plus most psych backlashes are awkward with the customer service aspect."

"My entire personality is awkward with the customer service aspect. But the backlash does make it worse, yeah."

"Do you have a partner yet?"

"I have a line on some people I can guide with, but no primary, and it would be cool to find one."

"You don't need me for that, the mixers wouldn't be much good if you had to already have an agent to get into them since they mostly serve to stir new espers into the pool, but if nobody's recommended that you hit up some mixers yet, I'll be the first. You should know that I won't represent any two espers who are partnering or forming a field team. You can work together but if you're outright partnered, it's by default a conflict of interest - it's possible to get a team agent but I'm not one. You can see the list of who I'm already working with on my Maple profile."

"Yeah, I took a glance at the list and didn't recognize anybody. I'll check out some mixers if I see any in reach, but do agents help people find partners if the mixers aren't cutting it?"

"Yup. It's going to be faster, if you authorize me to disclose your backlash at least to other agents in my network - lets all the other people who really need to keep theirs under their hats get matched up with you when their agents can't let it go any farther. If you've got, say, depression, and somebody else has mania but it's private because they are using their secret identity to distance themselves from mania-related misbehavior during hellweek, their agent will know about the mania - almost nobody will serve as an agent for an undisclosed psych backlash - and then I can say 'hey folks, I've got a depression, what have we got that puzzle-pieces up with that?' and they can go 'this one!' without telling me more."

"Makes sense, yeah. Okay, you don't suck to talk to and I really want to get on the road with all this, how do I sign up?"

"I don't suck! Can I get that framed?" laughs Phoebe. "I can send you some forms if you give me your email. Most of them are optional or can be put off for a very long time if you're not in a hurry to accomplish what they enable, the essential ones are 'Identity' and 'Esper Boilerplate 1C'. Unfortunately, that second one is long. We can go over it in my office or on the phone or while texting or whatever works best for you if it threatens to explode your brain."

"I will autograph you a little card you can put on your wall if that's what floats your boat. My email is kalendae at quickmail dot com, that's K A L—" She can spell the whole thing if Phoebe needs her to.

"Gotcha. Forms incoming. Is Kalendae your codename?"

"Nope, I took Juggernaut, my new ID's in the mail and everything. I should probably get another email for esper stuff but this is the one I already had."

"Ooh, that wasn't taken? And yeah, pretty good idea to get a work email, separate work phone number - it can be the same device, I use the Careerday doodad to have account switching on mine and it supports different settings and logins and app availability on the work account in addition to just having the second number."

"That sounds so convenient and also it's definitely gonna have me fantasizing about running away to be a lumberjack after two minutes trying to set it up. I'll deal, I'll deal. Thanks for the rec."

"No problem. Is this a good time for me to meet your PA and figure out what they're on top of versus what I should be picking up? The roles sometimes blur a little."

"Sure, why, not, I'll pass him the phone. Sean, say hi to my new agent."

"Hi Phoebe, I'm Sean."

"Hi Sean! How's the gig treating you?"

"I'm gonna be honest, it's been pretty wild. Kind of ended up with the job half by accident. I think I'm doing okay at it, though."

"What's it been looking like in practice?"

"I don't know how much of the whole story you want, but the short version is, when neither of us has any idea how to do something that needs doing, I take point on figuring it out, and when April needs a phone call made or a snack grabbed or whatever and doesn't want to deal with it, she says 'Sean, go do the thing' and I go do the thing."

"There's a story? I'd love the story."

"So I got some wild texts from April and showed up at her house to find out what was up. She was having a really rough time, and I ended up staying over for a few days to help out. Then the house fell down, and we found out 'a rough time' was 'awakening' when an esper pulled us out—Aumento, don't know if you've heard of him. He ended up wearing her as a backpack for the rest of his search and rescue shift, because their compatibility is decent enough that it made awakening halfway tolerable for her and let him get more done before needing to go back to his partner. And he was working the medical barge too, because he can heal people, so April was like 'great, I'll be your teddy bear,' and I came along for the ride in case she needed help with anything. Then the PA thing just kind of happened naturally from there."

"Wow. I'm glad you both made it through the whole worm situation all right in spite of the collapsed house. Are you expecting to stay on as her PA indefinitely or do you have something else you'll want to pick up once she's more established?"

"The PA thing is working out pretty well for me! I'm pretty sure I'm gonna stick with it."

"Great. If I can get your contact info too that's the kind of thing I need to have socked away."

"Sure sure." He can spell his email too, but it's just his first and last name. He also volunteers a phone number.

"Great. The usual breakdown of tasks - and we can rejigger this no problem, but to start out - is that my job is to hook April up with anything work-related that deals with espers-in-general, and your job is to hook her up with anything that deals with either people-in-general or April-as-a-person. I get her dungeons, mixers, a silo if she doesn't want to just silo at home, an Ablinger Passport login. You get her takeout, bring her taxes to an accountant, hire the cleaners, tell her partner that she needs to reschedule their guiding sesh because something's running long, go through a checklist for any gear she's bringing to a portal. And you let me know, unless she does it herself, if anything she's got going on is going to affect the dungeons-mixer-silos-etcetera thing."

"Okay, sounds pretty workable."

"It seems like, at least on whatever amount of backlash she's toting at this moment, she's comfortable speaking for herself, but if that ever changes, one of the forms I'm sending specifies to what extent she wants to authorize you to interface with what things for her."

"Yeah makes sense. She's not backlashed at all right now, hates carrying even a little any longer than she has to, but when she was awakening it was basically 'Sean, make sane life choices for me, thanks'."

"Proof of concept! Is there anything I ought to know about you besides that you're April's right-hand man?"

"I dunno, not that I can think of? We go to the same high school? Went, I guess, I don't think April's going back and so probably neither am I."

"How old are you two?"

"She's seventeen, I'm eighteen."

"Well, conveniently for her an awakened esper is approximately emancipated in professional contexts even if they're not eighteen yet ever since Warner versus Cloudy Day. If she's going to want your help with those forms I should probably let you go, the second one really is a lot."

"Sure thing. We'll be in touch."

"Great! I wish you both a very not running away to become a lumberjack with the paperwork."

"Thanks, I appreciate it. Take care!"

"You too, Sean!" Click.

Okay, how bad is this form.

It could be worse. Not very much of the "use your response to section 17-J to complete the Appendix and sum its result with your State Identificatory Numeral String to apply to questions 6-14 in 24-B according to your Respondent Category in the presence of a Notary thereby Fulfilling the Ancient Prophecy". It’s a very long form but consists of things April should probably know, like her name. Phoebe or some other Maple operative has added annotations that float, stickynote style, in great numbers in the margins, clarifying each question that may have confused any previous esper ("'name' is optional if you want to go full secret identity even with us, but means if there is ever any question of who you are with the bank, you are likely to have to appear at their main office in person and demonstrate your power"; "OK to skip this"; "if this is complicated you can skip it and clarify in the free response field in the next question").

With the help of the annotations

(and Sean)

she will, somehow, make it all the way through this form.

She does give her name; she isn't even sure she wants to conceal it in general, so concealing it from her agent seems like a bit much.

There are more forms for things like authorizing Sean to do stuff, setting up a custom loot share arrangement if she doesn't like the default one, and more things she doesn't have to deal with right away. Formally signing on Phoebe as her agent apparently has to take place in person in the office so they can make sure she is a real esper and not someone fucking around - one of the agents is an esper with a bad power.

Then, once the forms are over with, they can head over to Phoebe's office. (Sean is authorized to do all the stuff. She doesn't see any point in holding back on that front.)

One of the stuffs he can be authorized to do is make decisions on her behalf over her stated objections, because this is relevant for some backlashes. Is that really for sure how she wants it?

Listen, disembodied voice of the paperwork annotations, it worked out pretty well the first time.

She doesn't really think she's going to get that illucid again, it seems like the main problem was that she had no idea what was happening and as long as she knows what's happening she's in the clear, but on the whole she feels better if Sean has full permissions to rescue her from whatever deranged backlash hole she might get wedged into than if he doesn't.

Legit! That is why that option exists! She will need to designate an emergency backup quorum who can fire Sean for her if he goes nuts - some people do, like, "if my agent, and my sister, and my partner, all agree, or if an esper testifies that I'm at zero backlash and I say so, then my assistant/handler/support person can no longer exercise this power". The law is pretty tetchy about people completely signing away custodianship of their lives, at least if those people are espers who can relatively easily fuck off to another country and deprive their previous one of their services.

Once they've got those jots tittled they can sign the agent contract and she's got herself a Phoebe in her corner, who has tentatively lined up Rhombus to buddy her in starter dungeons, as long as the schedule works for April's temporary guiding partners to meet up afterwards. There's a mixer in New York City soon she should probably hit, but Phoebe can try to sift for someone a little more discriminatingly with backlash info.

"So the thing is, this stuff doesn't exactly come with labels. I spent all week crying, when I was awakening, but sometimes I'd be laughing instead. It definitely does something to my emotions, I think it magnifies them? But I don't think it's just 'magnifies emotions' exactly."

"What makes that seem inexact?"

"Mmm..." She's chewing on that question.

Sean suggests, "If it was just making you more upset you wouldn't have cried for days. You hate crying too much for that. It was making your feelings stronger but it was making you express them more too."

"...yeah, you're onto something there."

"Huhhh. First person to pop into my mind is already partnered up but I'll have a look around. Do you care about gender, do you care about age, if you care about those things is it because you also care about what kinds of guiding they are up for..."

"I haven't tried, uh, spicy guiding, but filtering for gender won't make a difference to that anyway. Don't think I care much about age either."

"Be aware that backlash is absolutely terrible for a pregnancy," says Phoebe, "yet does not substitute for conraception, worst of both worlds. So watch out with the spicy guiding unless you've got a plan. We'll send you to some mixers, see if we can find you anything with the right countervibe, I'll look around in various files. Anything you can think of which might conceivably have a magically right countervibe that would drive you up the wall with either its direct presentation or its accommodations? Sometimes the opposites-attract thing is a mess."

"Hmm... I don't have a problem with people being unnaturally chill, I'm pretty sure... it's kinda hard to think of what else might fit."

"That was the already-partnered to pop into my head, but it's unlikely that's all that'd do it for you. Other things I might be on the lookout for based on your description there are... agoraphobia. Anything that leaves somebody unexpressive, such as because they're mute or because they become very intensely focused on something else OCD-style. Physical backlashes involving retaining water in one way or another, or varieties of fatigue or sleepiness like Aumento in case that's a pattern."

"I was also pretty compatible with what's her name, the Korean healer lady," she offers. "With the pain backlash. Sucks to be her, I'm glad I could help."

"Interesting. If you hit a mixer before I find someone that data will be handy too. Okay to mention your thing to other agents? They all know what side their bread is buttered on, I've never had a leak that way."

"Yeah, seems probably fine."

Phoebe would like her signature on that but this form is very short and has only one field.

Yeah okay she can sign another form.

"Sorry about all the red tape. It is there to protect you and it also sucks, like vaccines."

"Hah! Yeah."

"Here's all the upcoming mixers in the Great Lakes deployment region plus the north half of Eastern Seaboard and a big Vancouver one, I'll send you a digital copy too. Your power classification qualifies you for twenty-four Ablinger network credits for this purpose courtesy of the Canadian government, they want you fieldable soonest, you can get bagels while you're in New York but the credits are for attending mixers and getting home again. I will email you the Ablinger network usage instructions. Both of you, actually read it and actually follow it. She has the secondary power 'more money than God' and spends it on liability insurance and lawyers and if you call a teleport that bypasses the safeties and wind up in the Gulf of Mexico then likely as not you are the one who will owe her a lot of money for the damage to her business's reputation for calling the wrong marble or whatever."

"Wow, that's harsh, I feel like ending up in the Gulf of Mexico is punishment enough."

"I know, right? Apparently it's worth it to her to establish that any problems are user error and not her deciding to drop people in the drink. So don't make user errors."

"But there are safeties, and she doesn't drop people in the drink if you use the system properly?" Sean clarifies. "If you have to be super smart about asking for the right teleports or she'll sue your parents for raising a kid who was dumb enough to land himself in the ocean and drown, I think we'd rather just get in an airplane."

"There are safeties but experienced users can shave off a couple minutes in an emergency if they skip checking in with the site attendant, don't scan the QR code, or hit the 'return trip' shortcut instead of manually entering their departure and destination points, any combination of those - you get somebody who goes from Mexico City to Dallas and then along the spoke to Austin, then tries to go straight home while backlashed and a bit out of it, and the marble that'd take them to Mexico City from Dallas does not do that if they're in Austin when they ask. Sometimes the shortcuts need to be there when seconds count. They don't for mixers, don't touch them, do it the long way."

"Yeah, okay, makes sense."

"You do get to keep the credits if you find a partner before you hit all these mixers. I expect you to be incompatible with Rhombus, for instance, but when you meet her for dungeon-buddying, check anyway, why not."

"Oh, yeah, definitely."

"I am going to email you various pamphlets about things like what is normal in a guiding partnership, what your rights and responsibilities are with dungeon response crews and victims, and work/life balance. Let me know if they suck, they revise on a rolling basis based on feedback. Most likely your main reaction to everything in all of them will be 'holy moly, people do that?' but since the answer is yes, best to warn first."

"Oh boy. Yeah, I'll read 'em."

"Are you a morning person?"

"I basically tolerate waking up in the morning?"

"Rhombus is the top combat esper in the city and often doesn't know in advance what dungeons she'll be doing the next day, because something can always emerge that needs her more than whatever old news is on the docket by default. But she prioritizes mentoring newbies highly, so, by default, she's got an eight a.m. slot tomorrow where she'll do a dungeon that appeared day before yesterday with you. They pulled the vics out by teleport because they were all in laundry machines, but the monsters remain a problem for a core search, so it's a pretty clean example of a combat-not-rescue deployment. It's always possible for the dungeon to grab new folks, so you might get surprise tutoring in that too, and it might run away, in which case we'll find you something else. Welcome to dungeoneering, it's always a bit hectic. I'll email you the report on it but I can also go over it with you here and now since you don't have practice reading those."

"If I gotta get up early to hit a dungeon with Rhombus, I'll get up early. Please do show me how to go over a report."

Sean is also interested.

There are camera-onna-stick photos, first of all, and these days they have other onna-stick readings including some that let them annotate the photo with sizes. These washing machines and dryers in this dungeon laundromat are four meters tall, apparently. Air quality test, radiation, basic physics normalcy, all green; decibel level is in the "wear overears" zone but not the "have a relevant power" zone. Monsters are six meter tall lizardfolk who wear a whole lot of clothes, and when idle exchange clothes and victims between the washers and dryers (victims were not folded, but they sometimes fold the actual clothes). They were not hostile to the camera-onna-stick, so unattended equipment is probably not going to come under attack, but are willing to injure victims who temporarily escape their clutches (the laundry machines are as painful as you’d expect but their injuries from that don’t last). A few tried to breach but were shot and retreated; subsequent information says they are washing the blood out of their clothes.

"Getting spun around in a giant laundry machine sounds absolutely godawful, I'm glad they got everybody out."

"Yeah, it's no picnic. Most dungeons are picnickier than this one but you're not gonna see those because they don't need you."

"Welp. 's why I'm doing this at all, really. Dungeons fucking suck."

"They super do! Rhombus'll see you at eight at the portal. Anything else you want to go over?"

"Can't think of anything. Thanks for not sucking."

"I'll try to keep it up."

"Appreciate it!" And they're off.

Back to the hotel to set an alarm for bright and early the next day...

...and stagger out of bed and check if the dungeon's still on and then go there.

Dungeon is still on! When April arrives, Rhombus is drinking a bottle of Gatorade and frowning sadly at the DRT snack stash (they're not expecting vics, but the DRT have to eat too). "Morning, Juggernaut, I'm Rhombus."

The bizarrely expensive car she climbs out of is a bit at odds with this being her first ever dungeon. "Hi, nice to meet you, I have no idea what I'm doing but I'm gonna do my best to figure it out."

"That's the spirit. You fed and hydrated? What can you tell me about your power, what kind of gear do you need to fuck shit up and live to fuck more shit up another day?"

"Fed and hydrated, check. My power does invincibility, and it can kinda sorta act like superstrength for some stuff. In powers testing I could mostly not destroy stuff if I handled it really gently, but I kind of expect any gear I carry is gonna get smashed at some point."

"What does sorta acting like superstrength look like?"

"If I brace myself and push something it gets pushed whether it likes it or not, and same if I grab something and crush it, but I can't, like, throw something super hard?"

"Huh. So I think you can probably solo this. I’m going to hang back, make comments, defend myself but not you, and let you wreck some laundry lizards. The likeliest way that this changes is if your backlash sneaks up on you. What's my cue that it's time to pick you up and get you out?"

"I will almost certainly get fed up and call it off myself before I start weeping uncontrollably, but if it sneaks up on me that's what it'll look like."

"Okay. Were you into espers before, do you know what my power is?"

"I wasn't but I had time to look you up. Slicey forcefields?"

"Yup. My big limitation is that I do not have great range so I have to let things get pretty close before I can decapitate them. I wear a rearview mirror," she puts this on, "and carry a spare, and I armor up," she starts putting on various Kevlar, "and under that I dress per dungeon so for this one I will be wearing what I would wear to a laundromat. So, you know, nothing I like very much, because anything I liked got worn and is being washed. Never wear something nice to a dungeon." She gestures at her plain outfit before resuming covering it in armor. "Edges of my forcefields are very, as you say, slicey. Might or might not beat your invincibility, and we can try it if your invincibility covers your hair but I wouldn't risk it with fingernails, and even if you win at rock paper scissors, no point courting the backlash. Give them space when I'm using them to fend off monsters that go for me."

April is wearing an outfit she ordered from Tim's super-shorts people. It looks pretty basic. "The thing I'm really wondering here is actually whether you get a backlash kick if I stand on one with my power up - do they do you worse when something shoves on them, in general? My power's great about being gentle with whatever I'm standing on or bracing against, but it's still doing weird stuff with forces and it could end up mattering whether it's cheap or expensive for you to give me a boost toward a laundry lizard's face."

"I pay for the forcefield existing in an area for an amount of time. If it matters what it's doing that versus, I never notice it, but my backlash is pretty ignorable till it tries to kill me so it might be any change. You can platform off 'em if you aren't going to slip and slice your foot off. They're not slick, but they're very smooth, like glass."

"I am probably not gonna slip and slice my foot off, but still maybe something we should save for if we end up specifically needing it for some reason."

"Does it cover your hair? We can try slicing some of your invincible hair and see if you want to trust your feet with it. I usually make them very small, for efficiency, not a whole stairstep."

"It does cover my hair." She separates out a lock. "Where do you want some invincible hair?"

Teeny forcefield right there. "If I may? I get a little proprioception with them, which is why I can platform on tiny ones and not slice off my foot. That and grippy boots."

Power on, thumbs up.

Will It Slice?

No way nohow.

"Great, you are an excellent candidate for platforming if you need it." Forcefield gone. "And since your hair doesn't tell me: do we taze each other?" Hand.

Hand! "Kinda nothin' on my end."

"Yeah, that's nothing exciting and not even bad enough I should tell you to poke my secondary, but we don't need gloves to be able to help each other out in there, so that's nice." She cracks her knuckles. "All right, pretend I'm not here till I complain about something and do this here dungeon, Juggernaut."

"You got it."

To the dungeon! How are the laundry lizards doing?

The laundry lizards feel that this laundromat is a closed-membership operation and when they detect intrusion the four nearest ones rush her! They're big! Some people kind of choke and panic and flee when something big runs at them, in the manner of infantry breaking at a cavalry charge when told very sternly not to do this. Is April one of those people?

She instinctively ducks, and then laughs at herself a little, comes up with her power on, and meets the leading lizard with a bear hug to the leg. How little power usage can she get away with and still make lizard go crunch? Let's find out!

The lizard is big and scaly and made of meat! She can squeeze its leg off if she tries slightly harder than that! (She may feel a bit of blood spray behind her as Rhombus dispatches one that went for her instead.)

She tries slightly harder. Crunch goes the lizard. And now she'd better follow up by smashing its face in, which is conveniently easier when it has fewer legs to stand on.

It falls right over! They've got long tails but it was not expecting to be less one leg such that it was braced for it. This other lizard has objections to the back of April's head, though, shaped like teeth, and this one is - actually trying to steal her pants?

The back of April's head barely notices the teeth, but the teeth definitely notice April's head.

Her pants go streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetch when grabbed, which is pretty comical but not slowing her down any, especially when she flares her power briefly to put her fist through One-Leg's skull. Right, now to turn around and tackle Bit Off More Than It Can Chew - in fact, literally tackle, in the sense where she charges straight into its shin with a bone-cracking powered-up headbutt.

Has she noticed that she's got lizard blood and, now, brain matter, ALL over her clothes? The lizards take exception to that. More of them are coming. They make laundry machine noises.

Yeah, turns out dungeons are kind of gross. Anyway, now that Bit Off has bit it, she's coming for you, Attempted Trouser Thief.

Attempted Trouser Thief REALLY thinks she should not be dressed like that. Or at all. However, it cannot persist in attempting to enforce this opinion when it doesn't have a head any more. Here come more lizards!

"We could stand to be making more progress in exploring at the same time," Rhombus remarks.

"...mmm, yeah..." It does seem that her lizard-related to-do list is growing faster than she can shrink it.

She looks around. Besides an ever-increasing pile of dead giant lizards, what has this place got going on?

Rows and rows of laundry machines! They're huge and they're stacked two high so she can't trivially see over them, making long aisles, washers and dryers. This doesn't leave quite enough clearance with the ceiling that she could walk along the top of a bank of appliances, though she could crawl if she wanted. There's spots at the far ends of the aisles she can see along with her enhanced esper vision that look more like (respectively) a drycleaning setup, an ironing station, coin-op vending machines for detergent and dryer sheets, and a table at which clothes are getting folded and stacked by a lizard who is thus far unperturbed by esper presence. There are a couple more lizards who are at this moment more intent on laundry than on combat, though they do keep showing up according to some inscrutable dungeon algorithm.

Hmm. (She kneecaps another lizard.) So if she proceeds along the wall looking down all the aisles as she passes them, what else is there to see?

She can see inside the washers. They're frontloaded and about half are full of whirling clothes at various stages of the cycle.

It must have really sucked to get caught by this one.

Is all the fancy stuff at the far end of the aisles, or are there folding stations on this side too? Is there more fancy stuff besides what she's already seen?

Nearish the portal off to the left there is a LIZARD TRYING TO EAT HER FACE but also a machine that might be a mockup of the kind that can take cards and dispense quarters. This dungeon is going for a kind of old fashioned aesthetic that way.

Lizards trying to eat her face, yeah, yeah, she's seen 'em. The great thing about the ones that bite her is that they're conveniently putting their heads in range of her fists.

Feeling increasingly in need of a quick rinse cycle, she proceeds down the aisles, looking along each one and trying to get a sense of the available laundry-related activities and any oddities of layout. Is the lizard laundromat truly just a big rectangle? No lizard laundry office for keeping lizard laundry paperwork? No lizard laundry broom closet to hold lizard laundry janitorial supplies? Why is she critiquing this place like it's a movie set?

It's not a rectangle, it's more of a T-shape with the portal at the junction. It does turn out to have stairs, though! Some go up and some go down.

April (punches another lizard to death and) arbitrarily chooses Up as her direction of initial exploration. The backlash situation isn't bad so far; if she were in powers testing she would've asked for a guiding break but that's because she hates her backlash personally, not because it's super impairing at this level.

Rhombus silently follows her, occasionally dropping a lizard that comes at her.

Upstairs is smaller than the main laundry floor! It has some more machines but it's also a tailoring shop. Some lizards drop the lizard-sized bridal dress they're altering to try to murder her!

"Damn, that actually looks pretty good," she comments. "If you're a lizard. Kind of a shame they don't get to finish it." Anyway she murders them right back. Anything else interesting around here or is it time to check the basement?

She gets some blood on the dress. A lizard who was not dissuaded from sewing immediately seizes the nearest bottle of unlabeled dungeon chemical to try to get it out of the fabric. It sizzles when it touches blood and smells papery. Is April interested in sewing machines? Unlabeled dungeon chemicals? Bolts of fabric leaning on the rack of dryers and a huge shelf full of ric-rac and beads and spools of thread and other notions?

...she's kind of interested in the beads, actually. Are they weirdly huge because everything here is built to giant lizard scale? Do any of them look like they would make a cool necklace if she grabbed them and successfully got them out intact?

They go all the way down to seed bead size! About half of them don't actually have holes that go all the way through.

Aww, c'mon, guys, get your act together. No wonder they're so cranky if their sewing supplies don't even work.

Five seconds has already been too long to spend on looking for a souvenir, so she grabs a chunky blue bead and tucks it in her extremely stretchy pocket and then heads out. If her angry lizard fan club follows, she will happily keep punching them to death.

The one that is trying to get the blood out of the wedding dress does NOT like that she stole a bead and dies about it.

Man. Dungeons are kind of depressing.

Better not dwell on that, though, gotta keep on an even keel or the backlash'll get you. How's the basement doing? Is it by any chance full of angry lizards?

The basement is full of angry lizard. Just one. This one has a lot more spines and small clawed wings and barbed elbows and a real serious claw situation and she has interrupted it breathing hot linty laundry-smell air on the boiler among all the plumbing it's ?maintaining? down here that maybe relates in some way to the washing machines or maybe doesn't. It roars like the sound of a rock set to Sheets and Towels.

"Oh, cool! Boss monster!"

With a skip in her step, she goes for it. Which body parts will it unwisely allow to stray within her reach?

Claws first and dryer-vent-breath a moment later!

She grabs a claw; it turns to powder in her hand. The dryer vent breath actually feels kind of cozy. Why's she so chipper? Backlash probably. She makes a second grab, aiming to get behind the claws and do some damage to its lizard hands.

It moves pretty fast. Its tail whips around to go for Rhombus and comes back half a tail. It is powerless to crush the Juggernaut in its foreclaws! It is powerless to bite her arm off!

"Some cores live in boss monsters," calls Rhombus where she's hanging out at the bottom of the stairs. "So don't wade right into its ribcage or we might have to run for it."

"Got it!"

When it tries to bite her arm, she swings for its head with her other hand, but misses. Hmm.

How about she gets a grip on the nearest lizard bit (turns out that's a hand), pulls it closer, and grabs farther up its arm? Can she reel in the lizard? Kinda seems like she might be able to reel in the lizard!

The lizard is pretty heckin' confused about this and roars loud humid heat at her.

That's nice. Anyway she's gonna grab its face with one hand and punch with the other.

Her fist goes through its skull like it’s made of soap bubbles. It drops, leaking liquid detergent.

"Icky," she comments, shaking goo off her hand. "I should probably take a real good shower the minute we get out." Anyway, if she glances around the room does it look like there's an Obvious Core to be had?

It’s not sitting in plain view. Could be in the plumbing or a hamper or something. Probably too big to be unobtrusively in the pocket of the hanging-dry dragon-sized sweater-vest.

"Mm. Not sure whether to see if I can find the core or go sweep up the lizards and let somebody else do the core hunt," she comments.

"With your power you should basically only be hunting cores in dungeons that are too dangerous for a normal person to step into even after you've killed everything that moves. It's not worth your time to do anything a squad can do, once you've got a couple dungeons like this under your belt. A squad can take a lizardperson, but maybe not six of them, so on our way out, make sure there aren't six of them but don't sweat it if you miss one and don't worry about how a new one might climb out of a dryer. If the core's in that dragon there they might take a while to get it butchered with a chainsaw and find it, but a chainsaw costs no backlash."

"Huh. Yeah, okay, makes sense." Up to the main floor she goes.

There are more than six lizard monsters left because some of them were pretty intent on their washing and didn't attack.

It's objectively pretty sad that she has to crunch the ones that are just sewing, but she's trying not to dwell on sad things. Crunch crunch.

"If you ever bump into Traceless he'll pitch you on live capture, he's got - he's invested in? something like that - the monster zoo up on the lake. I think these are too big though."

"If Traceless can tell me how live capture is supposed to work with a power like mine, I'll consider it. It would be really cute if the monster zoo got a laundry lizard, but yeah, I have no idea how you'd hold one long enough to make that happen."

"It'd be awkward to even get it out of the portal unless you got a lizard-sized coffin to force it into position." A monster comes at Rhombus from behind and she spots it in her rearview and blocks its advance with one palm-sized vertical square and causes its head to fall off after its momentum has been arrested, without slowing her walk.

"You are very cool." Lizards, lizards, lizards, and not a drop to drink. Don't drink lizards.

"They're making a documentary with some of my best drone footage in there, I look even cooler with dubstep in the background."

"Hah! Yeah, I bet!"

Liiiiizards? Yep, lizards. How about this way, are there more lizards?

There's one! It's trying to get its giant lizard socks out of its giant lizard fitted sheet before putting them all in the dryer.

"Man, are we sure we can't order up a lizard coffin?"

"Your call, you're approximately soloing this."

"Man..."

She eyes the lizard. Man, it's just trying to do its laundry...

And a bunch of the rest of them were just trying to sew their bridal gowns, or whatever. She already slaughtered those. What makes this one different? Just the fact that she's thought of a different approach? What exactly does that say about her?

Does it matter what it says about her? She can't go back and change what she did then, but if she knows what she wants to do now, then she should do that now, whether or not she feels bad for not thinking of it earlier.

Dangit, imaginary Sean, when did you get to be so wise.

"I wanna at least try the lizard coffin idea," she decides. "And I can grab a shower while I'm out there." She needs one pretty badly. "They have those, right?"

"Showers? Yup, some people came out soapy."

"Yeah. Okay." She heads for the portal. "...Does somebody already have info on how big these guys are or should we drag a lizard corpse out there to measure?"

"They're about four meters high and I don't have a weight but humanoid monsters yea big are going to be at least six hundred kilos, likely more."

"Guess we'll see if that's enough for them to order up a box."

Is it?

The DRT does not have a process for ordering a box rated for a live lizard, she can do that herself or make her minion do it. Also they have to kill it if the core turns out to be too hard to find, and guard it while they're looking and looting, and that comes out of her paycheck even if she doesn't have a monster after, capisce?

"Sure, sure."

She knocks on the window of her car.

It rolls down.

"You are, like, shockingly disgusting right now."

"I'm about to have a shower. You are about to order me a lizard box. Don't break the bank but it should be fast and it should be good." She repeats the lizard specs.

"We're not keeping one in the hotel room."

"Ha ha. See if you can email what's his name about it, the monster park guy, you know what I'm talking about? Just in case he has advice. Though he might not have advice very fast."

"I'll see what I can do. Go shower."

Thumbs up.

The shower is available to her. It's kind of shitty because it is a portable shower - the pressure's bad and the temperature's only good if you like your showers kinda tepid - but it's a shower. It helps that the lizard blood is kind of soapy.

With the amount of lizard juice on April right now she would be grateful for a garden hose if it was what they had.

Sean... calls Phoebe first, actually, in case she has advice. This seems like something that's kind of in between the PA thing and the agent thing as she defined them.

"Phoebe Gallagher speaking."

"Hey, it's Sean, I'm with April at her dungeon and she wants to catch one of the giant lizards. Needs a big box to wrestle it out the door in, they're that big apparently." Such were the lizard specs. "Is that the kind of thing you'd have a line on? If not, do you think you could get me in touch with monster park guy so I can ask him?"

"Give me one sec to poke my head into his agent's office, he's a Maple too."

"Sure thing."

Since Sean does not have esper hearing he is not privy to the following exchange but Phoebe then pops back on the phone properly: "Paula says the Ontario Monster Park website has most of what you need and if you need anything else I can give you Traceless's work number as he is expected to be backlashed right now and likes taking phone calls then."

"Cool, thanks, can I have his number just in case and then I'll check out the website?"

"Sure thing." She rattles that off a moment later.

"Thanks a bunch, bye!" Now to see what their website has to say about packaging giant lizards in a hurry...

The website section about performing captures assumes that he specifically wants to sell a monster to the Park, but this includes things about their requirements for the cage it's transported in complete with links to manufacturers. They're willing to repackage monsters if an appropriate esper is available, but this comes out of the purchase price. If he is worried about the ultimate fate of the laundry lizard should it come to reside at the park, they have an explanation of how they try to learn the needs of each monster and make them comfortable, with a whole sidebar about how monsters are not animals and if the zoo enclosures are smaller than zoo ones, this doesn't bother most monsters, which typically aren't scared of humans and are native to incredibly bizarre conditions that tend not to leave them a ton of room per individual because dungeons are limited in size and usually have high monster density.

Accommodation quality is not by any means his top priority here, but it's kind of nice to hear about it. All right, how far can he get wading into this list of monster cage manufacturers on his lonesome? He'll call Traceless and ask for help if he needs to, but he wants to at least go into that call with a question more specific than 'can you please tell me what the fuck I am doing, because I don't know'.

It's not a long list especially if he narrows it down by rush orders.

Then he will be calling up one of these places and inquiring after a rush order on a lizard coffin, faithfully reproducing April's description of the lizard specs and also making it clear that it should be Monster Park compatible. (Where else are they going to put it, after all?)

The official position of Ontario Monster Park is that it would love to encourage a thriving monster zoo ecosystem for more research and educational opportunities but for the time being, yeah, where else are they going to put it. NonceMakers Ltd. can get him a lizard cage built and tested in four hours and delivered in another two.

That's probably about the best they're going to get. He'll take it.

By this point April has successfully showered. "Lizard coffin update?"

"Six hours to lizard coffin."

"That's a while, but so it goes. I'll see what Rhombus thinks." Where's Rhombus?

Rhombus is making out with her husband in a tent but pops her head out when she hears her name.

"Hey, so, six hours to lizard coffin. If I'm gonna come back to wrestle a lizard into it anyway, and I'm trying to leave at least one lizard alive in there to stick in a coffin in six hours anyway, does it go back to being more reasonable to look for the core myself?"

"Yeah, it does, but I can only maybe afford to stay that long, they might send me to Banff or someplace suddenly any time. Can you wrestle a lizard nondestructively?"

"Well, I can wrestle an egg with a smiley face on it nondestructively, but eggs don't fight back. I can go find out. And I've got an idea of who to call about it if I can't."

"You could try getting your chosen lizard into a dryer that’s not running to avoid the DRT getting into a fight with it while they loot."

"Oh, good plan, let's try it. If you're up for going back in?"

"Yup, I'm good. If you want to poke Luis you can see if that's anything but it's probably not." (Luis pokes out of the tent and waves and offers a hand.)

She'll poke Luis, it's good to be in the habit of poking espers you meet just in case. "That's a meh."

Luis nods. "Oh well," Rhombus says. "Do you want to go in right away or after a mentoring type chat?"

"I am eager for mentoring. Love me some mentoring."

"There is going to be a theme to what I have to say and the theme is 'do the right dungeons and not the wrong ones', sometimes people manage to miss that takeaway.

"While you do your first couple dozen dungeons you should be developing a list of what you're best at - the things you can do that nobody else can substitute for unless they haul in somebody from Mumbai, things worth letting Mumbai borrow you to do - and what you're worst at - conditions that make you less efficient in backlash or time or both, anything that can touch you through or around the invulnerability it's not worth risking you. And you do have to get used to ruthlessly prioritizing not risking your life even when other lives are on the line. Don't let somebody try to dispatch you to a dungeon you are wrong for even if it's literally putting people through a meat grinder. You are worth more than a civvie, not because you're such hot stuff but because your work hours can be exchanged for hundreds or thousands of civvies, and there will always be more tomorrow.

"Strengths and weaknesses! I have my guesses about yours but you'll have to refine them. You're a melee, not a beam, we knew that already, and giving you a gun would be compensating for a gap instead of capitalizing on a specialty, I don't think you need a gun. Insofar as you have any mobility power it's that you're the Kool-Aid Man about obstacles, you don't fly or speed or teleport. So you're wrong for flying monsters unless they'll all come for a visit when you walk in. You're good at monsters that will come to you and get it all over with quick, if I understand how your scaling works - with time and intensity, not with amount of averted damage, am I wrong? - and similarly if I am right you're not good for a long haul in a dungeon where the monsters spread out a lot. Haven't the slightest idea if you're invincible to psychic attacks and you should check that with an esper before you check it with a monster; that information will change this list a lot. ...also, if you might shred a psychic shield as badly as you do your outfit, that would also be good to know. You're nothing special for rescues and might be worse than that if a vic ever got caught between you and a hard place.

"I think your specialty is, one, ground-bound boss combat when they're not too shy, and two, something like multifariously or intensely hostile environments most can't survive, with no vics either because it's the kind of dungeon who doesn't bring any inside or because somebody got them all already, though you might find yourself the best candidate for rescues in a dungeon that's radioactive or something. Find out if you're immune to radioactivity. Find out if you're immune to anything else you can think of. Breathing particle junk, that came up recently! Might be that it can't hurt you while you're powered up but it'd park in your lungs and be a hassle later, there's probably some safe way to check that. Anything that you're not immune to goes on your no-go list. Anything you are, your specialty list."

"I remember there's a healer who specializes in getting crap out of people's lungs, came up for Arrakis, I should get ahold of her to back me up for a test. Psychic stuff is on the list for testing already. I do figure I'm at best gonna be the least bad option for any rescuing I end up doing, I can carry an egg with a smiley face on it around real gentle if I want to but if it comes down to them getting hurt or me it'll be them and I don't love that. I'm not sure yet how good I'll be at long hauls - it doesn't cost much to have my power up a little and a little goes a long way. What kind of psychic shield are you thinking?"

"Like the kind Compos Mentis will put on folks before they head in someplace like Nightmare. To be clear: you are wrong for Nightmare."

"...huh, yeah, that is a good question..." She considers. "I don't know how Nightmare works offhand, if I turn out to be immune to psychic stuff completely does it start looking like a good idea again?"

"Maybe - I think they sent Traceless in last confluence - but they have to book shielders like Compos Mentis or that Korean bigshot anyway. Nightmare is huge and it's all sensor and rescue so the sensors and rescuers need shields."

"Yeah, that does sound like a situation where I suck unless it turns out that for its umpteenth anniversary it decided to come back radioactive on top of all that other crap."

"Yup. The healer you're thinking of is Airmed, she's Irish - locally we don't have a real healer, just Epione who does distress tolerance stuff. If there is a mundane way to wash out lungs that will merely ruin your day, she can make it not ruin your day for cheaper than transit to Ireland and booking Airmed, I bet."

"I'll look into it - I'll tell Sean to look into it for me," she corrects, glancing at the car.

"Epione is an exception to the poking every esper you see rule unless she very clearly telegraphs otherwise, I don't know her deal but the way she and her partner act I'd think it could put her out of commission for a week if you surprise her."

"—I mean I generally don't just walk up and grab people in the first place, but yeah, noted."

"Don't even tap her on the shoulder. Luckily she doesn't have to touch people. Anyway, questions or comments on my spiel?"

"Mm..." She thinks about it. "...could be worth learning to use a gun even if it's not gonna be a major thing for me, just because there's bound to be a radioactive dungeon with flying monsters at some point, or like not exactly that maybe but - if one of the things I do is survive stuff nobody else can survive then sometimes I'll be soloing something that I might not otherwise be specialized for. Right?"

"Most dungeons have a small number of tricks, that's quite a rare one, and you wouldn't be the only radiation-immune esper out there. If you plan to be based in Toronto you might want to see about trying to fill niches me and our other combat types don't cover. Your niche is very close to mine, but not exact - if you can hold your breath cheap for a long time you could do water dungeons, I'm not good at those."

"Yeah, I should test holding my breath too, that's a good one. I should tell Sean all this stuff before we go in so I don't forget."

"Go for it."

Thumbs up. She trots over and knocks on the car window.

"Sup?"

"Buncha good advice you should write down for me."

"When did I become the guy who writes things down around here?" he wonders, already getting out his phone.

She summarizes. "...and I still think it's probably worth looking into guns anyway but I agree it's not that high a priority. Anyway I'm gonna go wrestle a lizard into a dryer now, see you."

"See you!"

Rhombus is waiting for her and they can go back in. Rhombus takes a loot bag for priority movable loot - "it might try to escape," she explains.

"Oh, legit - I'd say 'should I grab a bag too' but I think bags of loot are also not my specialty. They'd come out needing a shower. I managed to wash off that one bead and stash it with my spare clothes, but I don't think the beads are the priority here - am I wrong?"

"Sounds about right to me. They want a little of everything from upstairs and some bits of the boss dragon."

"Cool, I bet we can make that happen. Should we hit that first, or have me try to wrestle a lizard into a dryer first? Maybe loot first so we have it if we need to run?"

"Let's start with the boss dragon, they want some of that and the core's likelier than not in that area, and if we're attacked on the way you can detour to keep that lizard."

"Sounds good to me!"

Once more unto the breach. It is as they left it except that the dead lizards have been denuded and their clothes are getting washed.

"It's spooky how harmless these guys would be if they weren't huge and kidnapping people."

"I have seen people tortured by kittens. Dungeons are fucked up."

"Yeah... yeah, they really are."

Okay, that's enough thinking about sad stuff. Be chipper instead. Anything here to be chipper about? Aaaanything?

"It'll be cool if lizard detergent totally revolutionizes laundry or something, though."

How's the boss doing? Still dead?

Still dead, no second stage. Rhombus nips a few spines of the dragon with small slices and bags them.

While Rhombus is collecting her favourite dragon bits, April checks out that plumbing. Anything big, round, and weird in the area?

This thing in the boiler? It's got dials and buttons and it's slightly slippery.

Noted. "Hey, I'm looking for the core but I realized I don't know... how to tell... when I find it..."

Rhombus looks over. "Oh, yeah, that's it. You're always looking for a ball about that big - that one's on the large side, but about that big - that's on-theme but not exactly like any other thing in the dungeon unless it's doing fake cores."

"Oh, cool. We should haul this back to the entrance, then? I... should maybe not carry it... like I think I could get it back safely but I don't know that I should risk it if there's a better option."

"You might want to have a bag for that in the future." Rhombus has: a bag. She bags the core.

"Yeah - I should think about, and then test, ways to carry something about that size where I can be really sure I won't smash it by accident even if I'm startled and jumpy. I'll try'n remember to tell Sean when we get out."

"Dungeons won’t wreck their own cores but you could trip, all right."

"And I have heard it's a real bad idea to break these things before you mean to."

Trek trek trek to the entrance with the core, then?

"Yeah, we'd have to run for it with only whatever we already had on us, no lizard, no looting, no last pass for last minute vics."

"Which would suck!" Trek trek trek. Are there any lizards bothering them or have they largely given up already?

This lizard near the top of the stairs has just finished folding a load of laundry and launches itself at them over the folding counter.

"Welp."

She almost just crunches it on autopilot, then remembers at the last second that she was going to try something else. Okay, self, that there lizard is a great big smiley-egg, and your job is to carry it gently over to the nearest not-in-use dryer.

It's more than a little odd to watch her catch a lizard more than twice her size and start awkwardly shuffling it along the floor, holding it up with both arms. She'd be having a much easier time if she wasn't trying so hard to avoid breaking any important bits.

The lizard resents this! It struggles mightily! If it can't claw her face can it at least pull her shirt off??

"Oh my god," she half-groans, half-laughs. "Workplace harassment. Buddy, that's inappropriate. I guess I murdered like a dozen of your friends actually." The shirt is going streeeeeetch and if the lizard starts pulling it in a slightly different direction she's going to have to bust out of it completely or it'll blindfold her. In the meantime Rhombus is going to see her bra.

Rhombus is a professional and also Juggernaut is, like, a baby.

The lizard does in fact pull differently when the first kind doesn't work.

"Piece'a shit," she mutters grumpily. "Fine, have it your way." She shifts the enormous squirming burden of the lizard across her shoulders slightly, and bites a big hole in the part of the shirt stretching over her face. "Bleah." Visibility thus restored, at least for now, she stomps determinedly toward what at least looks from this angle like an unused dryer.

The dryer is empty, though its lint screen is not fully seated in place.

If she can see the lint screen that means it's open, which frankly solves quite a few of her problems. Okay, let's do this. She aims her lizard, shuffles determinedly toward the dryer, and (very awkwardly, with considerable huffing and puffing just from the sheer unwieldiness of her task) shoves... the darn thing... in there.

Unless Rhombus can think of a good way to intervene, there may ensue a very silly slapfight as she tries to close the dryer door on it.

The dryer is big, and it does technically have room for the lizard, but it's not an easy aperture to wedge it through (it's slightly smaller than the dungeon portal itself). But it can't make any progress out, and April can make progress shoving it in, so eventually it's mostly in and she can start using the dryer door to help.

"This," grunt, "feels," oof, "like animal cruelty," huff, grunt. The dryer door finally latches. "But I'm pretty sure I didn't break any of its bits, so, calling that a win I guess!" She takes stock of herself. "Wow, I feel like ass! I think I'm still good to keep going, but I'm definitely gonna have to fuck off and get guiding before I try wrestling any more lizards into tight spaces, holy fuck."

"Good remembering to check, though." (Rhombus has collected some detergent, dryer sheets, and quarters. "You want to do that now while you're waiting for your lizard cage?"

"Yeah, if we're good on loot and stuff? If it'd be a good idea to go over the place one more time for stray lizards before we step out, or pop upstairs and put some beads in the sack, I can do it."

"Wouldn't hurt to mop up a couple more lizards. If I zero out they're going to want me on another dungeon, while you wait, but it doesn't really look like you need me in this one. I'll do a few more with you in case of surprises but you're sharp, you'll be up to speed in no time - need a proper full time partner, though."

"Yeah. Let's mop up some more lizards - do you wanna put the core by the portal first? - then I'll go find my kinda-sorta-partner-for-now, get guided, and come back without you to finish the place when I'm less fucked up. Maybe see if he wants to tag along, he's done dungeons before and can probably answer my stupid questions if I come up with any."

"Yep, core by the portal and call in some guys to babysit it. And that's a good idea, get more perspectives."

"Cool cool." They can get the core to the portal, then.

Rhombus demonstrates the calling guys to babysit ritual.

Dungeon portals sure do make life just that little bit more inconvenient.

Okay, time to go smash some more lizards?

There's one left upstairs working doubletime on the dress. "I'm inclined to loot the entire dress if you can get it clear and not get more blood on it."

"I can give it a shot!" What iiiiif she pulls the lizard's tail like a crow harassing a hawk. Probably it won't want to damage its own project just to get at her, right?

It looses its claws from the fabric to turn them against her! Raaaawr! (The rawr sounds like a spin cycle.) Rhombus grabs the dress and wads it up into the bag.

The claws, as per usual, don't have much effect. She backs away from Rhombus a few steps to make sure, and then grabs the lizard's arm and starts breaking things.

The lizard dies unceremoniously.

Ugh, that's so depressing. Keep it together, April.

"We good for now?"

"Yup." Rhombus has swept some random notions into the bag but the dress takes up most of it. "Till you get your box."

"Cool." Back to the portal again, then.

And indeed when they come out Luis is there with a dungeon assignment in Detroit they want Rhombus for if she can be spared.

"No rest for the wicked. You make sure you get a real day off now and again, Juggernaut," sighs Rhombus, redoing her ponytail while she reads the briefing on Luis's phone where he's holding it out for her. "But today is not mine."

"Heh. I'll see what I can do. Take care."

Then it is time for her to:

(1) take another fucking shower,

(2) put on a shirt that does not have one tit bitten out of it,

(3) update Sean on newly acquired sage advice,

and (4) call Tim.

Tim picks up on the third ring.  Faint splashing noises can be heard in the background.  "Hey, April.  How's your first dungeon going, you get the core yet?"

"Yeah, it's sitting by the entrance waiting for us to be done with the place. I wrestled a giant lizard into a giant lizard laundry machine and I should get guided while I'm waiting for my giant lizard cage rush order to show up in a few hours; do you want to come here, or should we meet you wherever you are?"

"Oh, I was teasing you, but I guess I'm shouldn't be surprised!  I should be able to head down pretty quickly, I think I'm just a few miles down the road?  You sound like you're not, ah, backlashed too badly?"  Tim had gotten the address of the dungeon from Sean earlier; he orders himself an OTTO and gets out of the hot tub.

"I'm coasting on the relief of how much less bad than awakening this is but I'd sure hate to wrestle a second lizard right now, I'll tell you that. You sound wet, am I interrupting something?"

"Well, Sara wanted me to take an actual day off, and it turns out her 'endurance' works just fine for extended guilt-trips."  His tone of voice makes it very clear he's joking.  "So I was soaking in the hot tub for a while.  I might get one, it's pretty relaxing."  Various rustling noises come through as he towels off and changes into a dungeoneering outfit.

"Oh sweet! Heck yeah, get a hot tub."

"Oh, well, since..." his voice drops into a lower register for the next two words, "..the Juggernaut says it's a good idea, I'll get it on ASAP."  Rustle rustle.  Click-tap click rap.  "Anything special I need to bring?"

"Nothing special I don't think—unless you think you wanna help me put a lizard in a box in a few hours, and generally tag along while I try to wrap up the rest of the dungeon, in which case bring whatever you'd want to have for that "

"I think I can manage lizard rasslin' if you need it.  You think you can wrestle one without breaking it open?"  Shoe A, Shoe B.  Toe-wiggle.  Treads are still good on this pair, probably 5-6 more dungeons out of 'em if they're not too power-hungry.

"I got the damn thing into the dryer! But it was a real pain in the ass. And more backlash than the entire boss fight. I think you'd be a huge help."

"Sounds good.  I'll see you in...twenty-some minutes?"

"Sure thing, see ya!"

Then twenty-three minutes later, Aumento exits his OTTO! and makes a beeline for the cordon.  Is April and/or Sean easily visible, or is he going to have to hunt for one of them?

Sean's car is the same rather eye-catching vehicle it's been for all the several days they've known each other.

And April is in there grumbling loudly with the window rolled down. Sounds kind of like "ennyyyeaaaauuuurrrghhhnnnnmmmmrrrrrrrr."

Well, in that case.  He waves at the pair and chuckles a little about April's funny noises.  I shouldn't laugh at someone's backlash, but she's sure working to make it not be tears.  "Hey, April.  Hey Sean.  I hear the conquering hero needs some guiding?"

"Yes please." She hops out of the car, throws her arms around Tim, and although she isn't using her power there is a certain inexorability to the way she marches toward the guiding tent. That's sure some end-of-workday backlash on her, too.

Well, far be it from him to hold up the lady from getting guided.  Will April resist a Scoop?  It's easier than doing an awkward crabwalk or having one person walk backwards.

A Scoop sounds just fine to her.

Then she's carried into the guiding tent with one arm under her thighs and a hand on the back of her neck.  "How'd it go?  I looked it up, you got partnered with Rhombus, right?"

"Yeah! She was supposed to mentor me but there was a lot of 'keep doing what you're doing' and not a ton of mentoring - some, though, I got Sean to write down all the Sage Advice for later." She plonks her face on his shoulder. "It's gonna suck so much to make a career out of feeling like this."

"You've just gotta get a clown to follow you through the dungeon and distract you whenever you start turning on the waterworks."  Soothing neck pets are interrupted by the need to open and then close and secure the tent flap.  Then he sits on the bed.  "Shirt off?" He's like, 95% sure that she wants shirtless guiding but he's always a little anxious about it.

"Great idea. I've been going through shirts so fast today - the lizards try to steal your clothes if they aren't having any luck eating you, and I had to bite through my shirt so I could see past it while he was trying to get it over my head." She helpfully gestures the location of the resulting hole.

Tim bursts into laughter when he sees the hole's location.  "Man, welcome to the club.  It's like the dungeons want us to wander around in a loincloth and a smile."  Tug the shirt off, toss it vaguely in the direction of the hook.  Then he'll lay back on the DRT-standard cot and await April's impending flop.

April pulls her own shirt off and flops very cozily. "Best pillow."

Well, he flushes a bit but it would be really stupid silly to look away from April's curves until they're landed directly atop him.  Right?

"You keep saying that, I might have to believe it."  She's lightly squished into his chest.  And he knows that she likes scalp scratches, but does she have an opinion about back scratches?

Those cozy mumbly noises sound pretty positive!

Sounds like he's getting a good grade in Emotional/Backlash Support Body Pillow.  He'll just relax and leave little red fingernail trails over April's back while he does it.

And April will go "mrrrrerowwrrrrrrmmmm" in an increasingly contented tone of voice.

"If I can't find a local partner soon I'm gonna end up flying to - what was it, Vermont?" she jokes. "Either that or Korea, but at least in Vermont I speak the language. I guess there was that blue girl, compat wasn't bad there, I should follow up with her... knowing my luck she's from Australia, though."

He hums thoughtfully.  "You're welcome to come by, even if it's just for a month or two.  We've got the superstrength class, we've got pretty decent food, and I heard a rumor that the best pillow in the world lives in Vermont.  I think the blue girl was partnering with Traceless.  They looked pretty chummy, anyway."  He pauses, realizing that he's not being Sufficiently Supportive.  "Not that that's a - you know, instant DQ, I've got two primaries myself."  He takes a break from scratching April up and squeezes her instead.

"I bet it'd be a real good idea for me to take your superstrength class even though my thing isn't quite the same. And I think Sean would like it too. Just for the heck of it, you know. I guess that and if we're ever partnered for another medical barge situation, he'll really like being certified to not break stuff in the superstrength pit."

"Yeah, it's obviously not exactly the same, but the idea of it is," he adopts an ethereal, spaced-out tone,  "Learning mindfulness and body awareness.  Which applies to your power the same as mine."

"Yeah. Maybe I will, then, while I'm hunting for partners. Do you know when you'll be heading back?"

"A couple days, maybe.  Sara, uh.  'Convinced' me to take a break.  It's been relaxing, but I was starting to get a little bored."

"When Rhombus fucked off to her next dungeon she was like, remember to take days off! I forget if she said 'when you're my age' or if I just imagined that part."

"Oh, uh, yeah.  Taking days off is important."  If I didn't take days off, I'd never get to practice.  "How old is she, anyway, she looked thirtysomething?  I didn't really get a chance to talk to her with, the uh.  The everything."

"Your guess is as good as mine, I didn't ask. Older than me, that's for sure."

He grunts in acknowledgement.  "I could look it up, I guess."  (He does not, in fact, look it up.)

Reasonable of him, as he is far too busy being Best Pillow.

And April is too busy not bursting into tears, an important duty.  "So, you think you're going to do a lot of captures?"  He switches it up from scratching April to giving her a mildly terrifying backrub.  Normal people use leverage to get at deep knots.  Aumento can burn backlash for the same purpose.

Truly the best pillow in all the land. "Captures suck, I swear wrestling that one lizard backlashed me worse than almost the whole rest of the dungeon combined. Like, not literally, but it feels like it. ...I might still do 'em though. Just gotta get better at monster wrestling."

"You think it's about sustained pressure, or power usage, or something?"  He nudges one of her bra straps aside in pursuit of a knot.  It's probably fine, April's pretty chill considering her backlash.

Yeah it's totally fine. "I think it's like - most of the time, I can keep my power pretty low and only push it up when I'm trying to smash something. If I'm lifting an entire lizard over my head, I have to keep it higher than that for as long as I want the lizard to stay over my head, like, continously. I was running high during the boss fight too, but in the boss fight all I had to do was grab the boss and then start breaking stuff until it dropped, it was way faster than packing that lizard into the dryer, especially because I was trying to get the damn thing in there intact."

"Hmmmmm.  I think I should be able to show you some tricks, maybe?  Like, if I'm smashing a door, say, I can keep my power usage low by only using it after I've set up for the kick and turn it off once the kick landed.  If that makes sense?  But when you're wrestling a lizard, you've gotta keep on using your power constantly and you can't let up or it'll, uh, steal your shirt, apparently."

"I got the shirt from your super-shorts people but that might've been a mistake, the lizard couldn't have blinded me with it if it'd popped instead of stretching," she says, snickering a little. "But no, I literally had to use my power continuously to lift the lizard - I guess I could've dragged it instead, but I was worried I'd break it if I did too much grabbing as opposed to shoving. So I hoisted the poor guy up and hauled it, and if I'd turned my power down I wouldn't have been able to walk holding up that much weight."

"Yeah, sorry, that's what I meant - that you can't try efficiency tricks if you constantly have to wrestle a lizard, but our powers are similar enough you might be able to use some of my efficiency tricks on stuff that isn't a laundry lizard.  Words are hard, though."  Especially for me...

"Words are hard," she agrees. "Yeah, okay, I see what you mean."

Appreciative squeeze, followed by thoughtful silence.  After a few minutes, he speaks up again.  "I've wound up skipping the shirt for the dungeon, just go with the vest instead.  I, ah, don't know if that's something you'd prefer, or a tank-top or something.  I know I'm basically bulletproof, but 'it costs backlash and espers are gated on backlash above all else.'"  The last sentence fragment sounds like he's quoting an oft-repeated phrase.

"I'm not totally ready to give up on shirts yet, but I might get there if another monster pulls my clothes over my face."

"Yeah.  Bramble dungeons seem to like doing that, so.  Heads-up if there are any garden-themed dungeons in your future."  He wriggles a bit to get more comfortable, then resumes petting April's back.

"I guess I'd be pretty good at brambles. Probably wouldn't have to keep my power very high to get through them."