DD 204 Ch 26

After Rodger put down the phone, I grimaced. "I'm afraid I'm not much of a deterrent. They are not my biggest fans at the moment. What were they threatening?" 

His face dropped, realizing that might have been putting oil on the fire. “He said my safe zone was going to be destroyed if I didn't listen to him and sell it to recoup my debts.” Penny’s dad stared back with a blank expression.

“I would like to see him do that," I laughed. "With the UG having built in here, I'm sure they would absolutely react should the SJS come and smash the place up." 

Penny's father had fire in his eyes as he nodded along with me. "I would like to see them try. But, for helping me, why don't…” He paused and glanced away before continuing. “Why don’t you and Penny use the safe zone for a date or something?" He waved a hand, clearly uncomfortable as he avoided eye contact.

"Daddy!" Penny jumped and wrapped him in a big hug.

He seemed torn between receiving his daughter's affection and offering her up for a date. "I just want to make sure you're happy, baby girl." He soaked up the hug for another second, acting as if it was the last one he'd ever get. 

"Thank you, sir," I said more diplomatically. "I hope you'll excuse me when I don't jump up and hug you." 

"It's quite alright," he said through pursed lips. "You and Penn go enjoy." He pulled a card out of his CID and handed it to Penny. "Just show that to any of the restaurants and your meal will be free. Never call your father stingy again." 

I smirked.

The man was in crippling debt, but somehow still had enough credit for the date. Part of it didn't make sense, but also his debts were not at the scale of a dinner. It wasn’t going to make much of a difference how good he was with his money.

"Thank you, Daddy, we're going to have a wonderful time. Right, Ken?"  Penny asked.

"Right, thank you, sir." I gave him a nod. "I'll remember your generosity. And if you don't mind, I would like to formally ask to... I'd formally like to say that I am dating your daughter and tell you that I will take wonderful care of her." I hesitated and just decided that it was a done deal.

Fayeth wouldn’t mind and this was what everyone seemed to want, myself included if I was honest.

There was a slight twitch in the corner of his mouth. "Happy to hear that." It did not feel like those were the words that he wanted to say, but he said them nonetheless. I had a feeling the words he actually wanted to say were far harsher. 

"Alright, then we'll be off." Penny grabbed my arm and dragged me away from the awkward situation. 

"What?" I asked. 

"I feel like every time you and my father are in a room, the vibe gets tense."

I couldn't help but agree with her. But it was definitely her father's fault and not mine.

***

"So, my dad's paying. Feel free to eat up," Penny said with a giant smile on her face as we sat down in the bar.

"I mean, the more I make him pay, the more he'll have to loan from me, right?" I smirked and Penny laughed.

"I would say my father is comfortable with debt. He would say it's just a part of business." She told me.

I shrugged, not exactly disagreeing, but neither agreeing. Sure, debt was a part of business, but debt still made me healthily uncomfortable. It certainly wasn't something I would seek out. 

"Ooh, they have hydra meat," I said, glancing at the menu. 

"Is that a particular favorite?" Penny asked over her own. 

"No, it just brings back memories." I put the menu down, already making my decision. "What about you?" 

Penny hummed. "I think I'm going to go with something lighter," she offered after a moment of thought. "The hydra is tasty, but it's always a little tough." 

The waiter came over and Penny quickly ordered a salad, garnished with some type of fish monster on top. 

"I did not peg you for a salad eater," I said as the waiter took our order away. 

"I try to think of food more as fuel than anything else. Otherwise, I'm fairly certain I would be giant," Penny chuckled. 

"You? Giant? No way." I fought the statement.

"No, I'm serious, Ken. I..." She sighed. "I may have been a little pudgy once upon a time." 

"Impossible. I can't even picture it." I told her.

Penny laughed it off. "Yeah, I was young, but I was definitely a porker." 

"Well, then let me be the first to congratulate you on certainly overcoming that physique." I offered. 

"Thanks." She blushed and looked down, unable to meet my eyes for a moment. "What about you? What was young Ken Nagato like?" 

"Stupid. Mostly. I think all kids are stupid." I stated.

Penny groaned in agreement. "Every time I look back at my childhood, it's like, why would I even have done that?" 

“Example?" I prodded with a big smile.

Penny thought for a moment and then shook her head. "There was one time I was asking a guy out…"

I waited for her to continue.

“The problem was that I had been psyching myself up in the bathroom prior and Clarissa had overheard.” She said.

"Oh no," I gasped in appropriate horror because teenage girls were a certain kind of vicious. Honestly, I wasn't sure how we survived as a species sometimes with how mean teenage girls could be to each other. 

"So anyway," she gave a dramatic sigh. "I asked him out, and he said yes. I was ecstatic. But then once I stepped away, Clarissa swooped in and asked him out as well." 

"That doesn't sound good," I said, already bracing for impact. 

"Understatement of the year. She was one of those vapid hot things, you know, with the long faded blonde hair. She would have fit right in with any crowd of mean girls." Penny told me.

I took a sip of my water rather than comment, letting her continue her story. 

"Anyway, I don't really blame her. He then dumped me about two hours later, not knowing I had heard the whole thing. It was mortifying. As it turns out, I was not the only one who had heard the whole thing and it was on everyone’s lips by the end of the day. Again. Mortifying." 

"As it should be. What's his name again?" I pulled out my CID as if to take notes. 

"Stop it. We were kids. We were stupid. Now, I told you a stupid, embarrassing story and you have to tell me one.” She sat back, clearly waiting.

“Nope, never made that deal." I held my hands up in surrender. 

"I told you one. You tell me one. That's the universal rule." Penny teased me back.

"Well, you have to tell me the rules before you ask me to play the game." I said, giving a long pause before conceding to the rules.

"To go along with your theme," I began, "there was a point where I, too, was in high school going to dances. I remember getting this girl I was kind of attracted to, really she was the friend of the girl that I had a crush on, but she was cute too."

"Oh no!" Penny covered her mouth.

"Oh, it's not that kind of story. I just remember on the drive home I thought it would be great to drive real fast, real manly reckless driving, right? I didn’t realize that she had been drinking a little too much. My fast driving caused her to puke all the way down the front of her dress."

Penny covered her mouth again, breathing in deeply. "No!"

"Yeah, I can tell you that date did not have a happy ending.” I laughed. “She and her friend ended up hating me for it.”

“Nor should it, especially because you're the one who made her throw up." Penny declared.

"I wasn't the one who chose to drink," I defended my position. I would die on that hill.

"Uh-uh. When she got in the car, you knew her condition, and you should not have driven like that." Penny told me.

"Is that so?" I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair. "Perhaps she should have known I drove wild, thus shouldn't have drunk so much."

"Nope, your action was second, thus you should have taken her into consideration. That's my final answer."

It was tense for a moment as Penny and I stared off across the table at each other, only for Penny to laugh it off a second later. "But what does that matter? That was ages ago, and you certainly are smart enough not to do something like that now."

"Oh, yeah, of course," I hurriedly agreed. "I mean, for one thing, if you're drinking, I'm drinking," I chuckled. "We'll go down together."

"Romantic.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm.

“Though, to be fair, I will hold your hair." I offered.

"That's so kind of you. And probably necessary now that it's a little longer." She pulled at it, and I knew it was something she was conscious about. So a compliment wouldn't hurt. "I do like what you've done with it."

"Really?" She asked, shaking her hair out and sliding it over her shoulder so that it draped down just to the top of her bust. "I think it looks good. I had kind of been keeping it short, because I worried that it would get in my way. There were a few times when I was training with my father that the longer hair wasn't great. My mother always hated it when I cut it short."

"Well, it would look great either way, because you take wonderful care of it, and not to mention," I gestured at her, "you would look great in any hairstyle."

"Wow, you're really buttering me up," she teased.

"All the better to slide you home," I squinted at the bad phrasing. "That one didn't work as well as it did in my head.”

“Want to try again?" She smiled.

"No, the moment's passed, it's never good to go back to an old joke. Some things are one try only. Like asking that guy to the date, or making the decision whether or not to drive fast." I said hesitantly. "And other decisions. Like asking the beautiful new tank of our group to go on a date with me." I flashed her my best, charming smile.

"Well, you at least managed a good recovery there." She giggled.

I wiped my brow, “Phew, I was worried I had somehow managed to mess that one up too."

"No, I think that joke landed, at least well enough," Penny waved a hand.

Any further joke was snuffed out by the waiter arriving. Somehow they always had that effect of silencing the table. We hadn’t been talking about anything sensitive, it just felt weird to continue the conversation in front of them. They were a sudden third wheel.

Our conversation subdued as we made idle chatter about the dungeon while we settled into our dishes.

"So, what do you think those SJS idiots are going to do?" Penny asked.

I shrugged. "They aren't going to do anything. If there's one thing I've learned, they're a lot of hot air. Well, when they aren't hot air, then they try to bring the lawyers in to blow even more hot air." I chuckled. "I'm sure they might make a fit, but I doubt they'll do more than that." 

Penny nodded thoughtfully, taking another bite of her food. She was eating quite daintily at her salad. It reminded me of the strange, false expectation some people had that they were supposed to somehow eat politely on the first date. I wondered if Penny would prefer a big, fat steak instead. 

"You want a taste of my hydra?" I offered her a piece, but she vehemently shook her head.

"No. The salad's actually really good." She pointed repeatedly with her fork while covering her mouth as she spoke.

"You know, Penny, the question becomes, what do we do after this? It seems we still have plenty of the weekend ahead of us free. And with Ambrosia taking Felin away, it's just the two of us. I imagine Charlotte and Des, with their families, are going to be quite busy." 

Penny froze while eating, and her eyes drifted up to me slowly. "What is it that you want to do?”

“I definitely don't want to go too fast. That's for sure. I learned that lesson once the hard way." I smirked at her.

"This isn't too fast," she said hurriedly. "You can go full speed all the way home, I promise.

“If you won't puke." I chuckled, both at her eagerness and continuing the joke from earlier. "Well, I do have to ask you, Penny, the whole harem thing, does it bother you?"

She paused, holding a finger up as she sucked something between her teeth as quietly as she could manage. 

"No, not at all. I mean, sure. Sometimes it would be really nice to have a relationship of just one girl and one guy," she gestured around at the tavern where there were other parties.

Many of those groups were clearly also polyamorous amongst their party. 

"Perhaps it's survivorship bias," she said. "But the more I dive the dungeon, the more I see the groups that come out from the depths are increasingly more than just committed to each other as parties, they're committed to each other as families. Perhaps it takes that kind of bond to dive deep within the dungeon. Even Mel had built up a group to protect her. I'm pretty sure those four Orkai were willing to die for her.”

“They certainly were willing to fight over her," I said.

Penny muttered under her breath while shaking her head, and we both laughed into our meals.

"But yeah, it's okay. I certainly knew what I was getting into. It wasn't like you and the rest of your party were hiding your relationships.” Penny told me.

"Well, thanks for being honest. You don't know it, but I have an entire Des-required survey before someone joins," I joked. 

"Oh, I'm sure she has a survey, but I don't think it's the same one you're filling out," Penny raised a suggestive eyebrow.

"Oh God, if she had an actual survey, the things that would be on it." I let my imagination run wild for a moment before I shook my head. "Anyway, how about..." I started to talk, only to be interrupted as the door to the tavern slammed open.

A man with a head wound staggered in. 

"Naga," he cried. "They're coming to the safe zone." 

With those words, he stumbled to his knees as several healers jumped up from their tables, already casting spells on him.

My own meal was forgotten in that instant. I was beside the healing man a moment later. "What do you mean, Naga?" I said, firmly gripping his shoulder to get his attention. 

"I don't know who you are, but that is no way to touch a wounded man," one of the healers scolded me. 

I shot her a patented Crimson glare that I must have got at least marginally correct by the way she clammed up an instant later. "Naga," I said, refocusing on the man that was being healed.

"My party was wiped out.” He stated. Even with the healing, he was still catching his breath. “T-two floors down. We were farming the hydras, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, came like 40 Nagas." 

I frowned at the number. "Were there any matriarchs?" 

The man gave me a strange look. 

"Tall, female Naga, six arms, you can't miss them," Penny said, from the side. 

"Uh, I don't think so?" He frowned, blinking in confusion. 

"Well, that's good if there's no matriarch," Penny sighed. 

"No, that's not good, Penny. I've never seen a group of Naga that size do anything without a matriarch backing them," I said. 

"Oh," Penny made a round shape with her lips. "You think if there's no matriarch in that group, then the group is bigger?" 

"Precisely. You need to get your father. This area is probably too low level for the Nagas that are coming, especially if this guy is any example," I gestured at the wounded man beside me. 

Penny nodded and jumped to her feet, rushing out the door for her father. I turned to look at the group inside, realizing I would have to take charge. 

"You and you, run to the UG. Tell whoever is in charge that you need to see the director for the safe zone, inform them that Ken Nagato believes there is a very real and present danger of Nagas coming this direction." 

The two I had pointed to didn't ask questions. They immediately rushed out to deliver the news.

With the main guild in the UG here notified, the next best thing was to call in reinforcements. I tapped at my CID for Crimson and Des to send them a message, only to get an error in response that my message didn't go out. I frowned and quickly sent it again and again, each time getting the same result.

For whatever reason, I wasn't able to send messages from my CID, but if the UG and Penny's father's guild got the message manually, they would probably send a runner to go spread the message. 

Panic was beginning to spread in the bar, but it wasn't up to me to resolve those feelings. Everybody inside were adventurers, and this was time for action.

I headed out, marching across the safe zone to grab Penny so we could head down and perhaps get more information about the coming Naga. Getting the UG and her father's guild information could be vital for what was to come.