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In which Graviton takes a load off
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It turns out that when a quarter of your infrastructure is damaged, half of it is occupied by the newly-instituted Downtown San Diego Motor Speedway, and the last quarter of it was designed for pedestrians, it's actually really difficult to get rescue equipment on board.  They have some.  It's California.  But you can't actually get excavation equipment from Point A to Point B without waiting for a break in the speeding vehicles.

Espers come in a much more convenient form factor, they're much cheaper to teleport across a street, and they don't require either A: diesel or B: electricity to run.

Which explains why Graviton was requested for San Diego.  Her first assignment is one particular building in the northeast section of downtown San Diego that's got a partially-collapsed stairwell and some victims who would really like to no longer be in it.

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She comes bearing a hard hat and steel toed boots. Safety first even for espers. Especially for espers who might fail to react appropriately if they injure themselves. She's done this sort of thing before, when getting a handle on backlash management.

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There's a group of construction workers.  It looks like they've been taking turns rushing equipment across the street, during the breaks between the Le Mans imitators.  Normally, one of them acts as a flagger for traffic.  In this case, he's more of a lookout, because the cars trying to cross the street aren't stopping for anything.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the lookout is the first to notice her coming.  "Safe to cross, miss!  You the esper they sent?"

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She jogs across.

"That's me." She has her ID card for inspection. 

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He half-glances at her ID.  Yep, that sure is an esper eye color alright.  And the rest of her sure looks like an esper, too.  "Okay.  The vics are stable for now, but they took shelter in a stairwell.  Smart of them, the stairwell was fine.  Nothing else was, and we're really not sure how stable it is.  I had a buddy swear she saw Gridshell teleport in, but I'll believe it when I see it.  We got this, though!"  He offers her a friendly work-gloved fist-bump.

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She studiously ignores the guy giving her the eye and returns the fistbump.

"We got this. Let's get those people out of there."

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Whew, good thing he had that ID card to cover him.  He cups his mouth and hollers across the street.  "Right.  CLOSE UP SHOP EVERYONE, LOOKOUT'S GOING OFF-DUTY!"  He continues at a more civil volume once he receives acknowledgement from the Gear Team.  "We'd really love to have a lift bag for this one, but with half the grid being out and gas being rationed..."  He trails off, meaningfully.

The apartment block is a pretty mediocre-looking one.  It was built to house people at a low cost, with aesthetics being a distant fourth priority.  Well, it looked pretty mediocre before the entrance got crushed.  One of the workers is grumbling about how they can't even move rubble out into the street because the cars'll turn a racetrack into a demolition derby.

In summary, it's a bit of a mess.

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Yeah that's a bit of a mess all right.

"So do you think your guys can move this safely if it weighs half as much?"

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"Yeah.  Most of the stuff is small enough that we could lift it if it didn't weigh four hundred pounds a pop.  It's sort of stable, ish, but we can't get the big movers in and if we started breaking shhhhtuff it'd get unstable in a hurry.  Uh, you make stuff weigh less, right?  Something like that?"

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"I have general gravity manipulation powers, I can make stuff weigh more, or fall up or sideways which is what I usually do in dungeons. Doesn't take much extra weight to put most dungeon birds on the ground where they can be trivially shot But for this yeah I'll be reducing the effect of gravity so things will be easier to move. If we were sure of the structure I'd stick any rubble inside to the ceiling long enough to get people past it but it doesn't seem like a good idea to fling it around like that. So you'll have to move it yourselves but I can make it easier."

It'd be cheaper for her to stick it to the ceiling, but that's how it goes.

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One of the nearby workers hollers at her.  "Yeah, we're sure of the structure.  Sure it's not rated for that!"

A colleague smacks him on the back of the hard hat.  "Don't be a dope, you idjit, unless you can do her job."

Lookout Guy puts a hand on his forehead.  "Yeah, he's like that but he's right.  How do you want us to handle it, we've never used an esper before."

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"Get your folks into position and lift on my mark, and then get clear so I know for sure when you're done moving it."

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A forewoman nods.  "You heard the esper!  Get the straps in up top, we're move it real gentle-like.  Folks, we just need you to relax for a few minutes longer.  We've got a real esper here, and she's here to make our jobs easy."  Rescue workers scurry like beetles for a few minutes, then nod at her when they have the first piece secured for the lift and a pallet jack standing by to move the resulting rubble out of the way.  "Say the word, Graviton!"

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"Get ready." She engages her power on the chunk of rubble, "Go!"

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With the aid of two ratchet straps, one six-foot-long prybar, and the strong arms of three sweaty construction workers, the first chunk gets carefully maneuvered onto the floor, then onto the pallet jack.  They get a pretty good assembly line going.  The folks with the straps provide the lifting force, the prybar carefully breaks loose inconvenient pieces, and the three toolless workers provide the delicate maneuvering necessary to keep chunks from going places they ought not go.

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Then presumably the entrance to this building will be cleared in reasonably short order.

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Well, the entrance is cleared.  But one of the rescuees refuses to go anywhere until he's seen everyone's face.  No mask for contaminated particles allowed, he needs to see everyone's ACTUAL FACE!

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Yeah no. She's had safety rules drilled into her skull to resist backlash induced carelessness. He can see her ID. In a dungeon she'd inform him that he can walk out or be carried but this isn't a dungeon and also isn't her local jurisdiction.

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Then he's not going anywhere near her!  She could be one of them!  You can't trust them, they only look like people!

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She'll give him as much space as she can if he'll get out of the unstable building.

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It takes a few minutes of tense negotiation backed up with the implicit threat of physical restraint before they manage to get him out and to relative safety.  He keeps glancing at her like she's the one who murdered his family in front of his eyes.  Hatred alloyed with fear, with a dollop of adrenaline on the side.

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She hopes he gets the help he clearly needs. 

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His hopes are strictly to get away without being abducted.  It takes a few minutes for the coast to be clear - if Graviton has ever wanted to see a DRT van drifting around a residential street with a posted 35 MPH sign, now's her chance.  It's gamely pursuing a pair of electric SUVs and an antique muscle car - by the sound of it, it runs on gasoline of all things.

The occupants look like they're strongly reconsidering their position on continued existence versus escaping their vehicular Hell by any means necessary.  Or at least, that's what a split-second of esper vision suggests.

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She can't really do anything for those poor people right now. Hopefully they'll get somebody in who's rated for stopping cars without squashing the occupants. Or a teleporter. Fortunately she can do something for some people. Even if not all of them are maximally grateful about it.

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Yeah.  Her phone pings at her - is she ready to make it two streets over?  Teleports are available if she can't make it due to out of control vehicles.

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She's ready. She'll attempt to pick her way over on her own (with extreme caution) but she'll accept a teleport if it's not feasible.

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