DD 204 Ch 21

The entire class sat together on a dungeon floor filled with classic goblins. We were taking a break, and Des was sitting in my lap as she typed away on her CID. 

"I can't believe Crimson gave us an essay," Taylor threw her hands up in the air. "I'm trying to become an adventurer, not some sort of writer. Sorry, Penny." Taylor corrected herself.

"No, it's fine." Penny blushed again and glanced at me before focusing back on her CID and typing out more of her essay. 

Des wiggled in my lap. "Well, for her star student, it wasn't too hard." Des glanced at me angrily, and I flashed her a smile.

I had fought monsters until liminal speed had built up incredibly high, and then I typed out my essay in what appeared to be about 1 minute and 20 seconds. Everyone else was still busy working on theirs. 

Crimson had not only forced us to learn, but then she had sent us into the dungeon and made us actually practice what we were taught.

"Did the shaman throw fire, or was it shadow abilities?" Selene looked up at me for the answer. 

I was confused. "Fire, definitely fire," I said.

Candace perked up. "It was purple fire," she clarified. "The best person to ask would actually be the tanks," she glanced over at Myrtle.

"It burned. It was hot," the earthen guardian answered simply. 

"Purple fire with certain fire elemental properties, but perhaps may have others as well," Candace said aloud as she typed. 

"God, can't we just say it's fire or shadow?" Another student groaned. 

"Being correct is important," Candace seemed to be deeply enjoying the essay. The blonde was always the straight-laced nerd. "What if someone has a severe weakness to fire and or shadow and comes up expecting to be able to roll through this because we put the wrong one? By saying there are certainly fire elements and possibly others, they then can proceed with the due amount of caution that may save their life." 

I slowly turned my head to the others in the group. "I think what she means is that we have to be as precise as we can be in our descriptions. These could get used by anybody." 

"No one's going to use this," Taylor shook her essay angrily in the air. "Who's going to use an essay written by a bunch of students? We should be grinding the dungeon. If I had two more levels, it wouldn't matter if this area had fire or shadow damage. I could stun lock the shaman to death." 

I rolled my lip inwards, avoiding chuckling at her frustration.

"Is this funny, Ken?" Taylor turned back to me after hearing my strangled laugh. 

"No, not at all," I replied with a straight face.

She narrowed her eyes before throwing her hands up in the air once again. "This is stupid," she growled out before seeming to work through her annoyance and going back to writing. Clearly, her grades still mattered to her.

"Taylor, we're in school. What did you expect?” I asked.

“We're in school for killing shit," she said, making the class laugh. "I expected to kill shit, not write essays. I can't believe Crimson is forcing us to do this."

"I bet it wasn't Crimson," Charlotte murmured to the side. Bun-Bun was taking a snooze in her lap while she typed away with one hand while, absently petting his fur. "If I had to bet, the headmistress is the one making us write the paper. Crimson is just the vehicle through which we're getting the assignment."

"That makes it so much worse." Taylor flopped down on the ground, apparently giving up on writing. 

"If it's any consolation, Crimson's the one who actually has to grade them..." I hesitated, letting them all fill it in with their own thoughts.

Personally, I was fairly certain Crimson was going to end up throwing all of these out. I couldn't even imagine her trying to sit down and grade this many essays.

My brain tried to reconcile the image before it just pitched the whole idea away. 

Yeah. There was no way she was going to take the time to grade each and every one. Perhaps, and this was a big perhaps, she'd give them to the headmistress to grade herself.

Actually, the more I thought about it, the more that seemed like the most plausible option. I glanced at my CID and pulled my essay back up, realizing I might have to refine it a little further. Mostly, I had slapped one together, meeting the word count, thinking Crimson wouldn't look any farther.

"Oh, so Ken is going to do work." Taylor squinted at me.

"Been doing work this whole time," I refused to take the bait. "Now, if you would get back to work," I squinted back at her, only for the fighter to move her hand like it was a mouth in mockery.

"You really should get back to work," Candace said. "If nothing else, you're distracting everyone else."

"Ouch, that hurts," Taylor said. However, she did get back to work, using a projection from her CID to write her essay.

I got lost in my own work, subvocalizing each word and carefully making sure it was a passable essay.

Somewhere along the line, Des slipped out of my lap and began working with Penny.

I narrowed my eyes suspiciously at the warlock. "Are you cheating?"

"No, but Penny is a writer," she said with a smile. "She can probably make sure that I didn't screw up."

"I’m sure that’s exactly what you’re doing," I teased, "if nothing else, you can worm your way into Penny's lap as well." I gave Penny a solid nod, "You have to be careful of her."

Des stuck her tongue out. "Yeah, be very careful of me. You never know what shady things I'm going to get up to. It would be best, honestly, if you just kept me in your lap." She tried to jump into Penny's lap, only for the frost knight to weasel out of the way.

But as she dodged Des, Penny ended up jumping into my lap.

I turned back to the two of them, trying to figure out if it was planned or not, but ultimately giving up and letting Penny settle in.

"Well, since you're here, why don't you help me instead of Des?" I asked while the warlock chuckled.

"Oh, I see what you're doing. Trying to steal my proofreader." Des said.

"I'm just keeping her safe from you," I shot back, not missing a beat.

"Oh, yeah, I can do that," Penny ignored the back and forth, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and leaning back against me so that she could pull my CID around to get a good look at what I had written. There was an almost audible silence in the group. Penny's act of pulling my CID forward also had the unexpected effect of me wrapping my arm around her chest. 

"What?" I asked, noticing the stares from the surrounding women. 

Selene gave a big thumbs up. "Way to go, Penny!" 

The Frost Knight ducked her head. "I don't know what you mean." 

Candace narrowed her eyes. "Well maneuvered." The blonde gave her a nod of acknowledgement. 

Selene, however, turned to Des. "I don't suppose you're doing anything when we get back. I'd love to grab some coffee with you." 

"Uh-uh, uh-uh," I wagged a finger at all of them. "We aren't doing this." 

"Doing what?" Des blinked at me as if she was simply innocent and everything. 

"Des, your fake innocence attempts never look quite right on your face." I informed her. She couldn’t really pull off innocent with her seductive charms.

She gasped. "I'll have you know, I am completely innocent of whatever you are accusing me of doing. Penny is a wily woman. So wily, in fact, that we should keep her in our party and have lots of fun with her." 

I pursed my lips and looked at the woman in my lap who, on the other hand, could pull off an innocent look. I cleared my throat and looked away. 

"Whatever, what's done is done," I said, trying to stop making a big deal of the current situation. If I knew anything about my classmates, the more fuss I made, the more they'd make it into a bigger deal. Sometimes I wished there were other men in our class to take some of the heat off of me.

"Like he said. What's done is done," Des said, winking at the woman in my lap. 

Penny cleared her throat. "Need a comma here." She tapped at my CID and pretended that nothing unusual was happening and went about editing. 

"Oh yes, that makes sense," I said, playing along and making the change.

The entire class settled back down. Des and Penny's maneuver was successful, and it seemed everyone had to begin working on their essay anyway. 

At some point while Penny was on my lap, she managed to snag my free hand that wasn't hovering the CID in front of her. Her thumb brushed the back gently, casually, as if it was just a way for her hand to idle. 

"You know you don't have to do that," I said. 

"Do what? We're just studying." Penny replied.

"I mean the tricks." I told her.

She shook her head. "You're all caught up in your head. I do have to do something like this," she insisted. "If I don't, you're never going to make the first move." 

I wanted to argue her point, tell her it wasn't true at all, only to have to admit to myself that I was having trouble getting out of my head.

"All right then, you made the first move," I said, signifying that it was up to me to make the next.

My brain finally started to process the situation, and I realized that I needed to stop being quite so passive. Really, whether Fayeth was with us or not had nothing to do with Penny and I. Penny was interested in me, and I was interested in her. Denying the fact did neither of us any good. 

Penny bit her lip and nodded.

"As for you," I turned to Des, "no more setting Penny up and creating situations." 

"But it worked," Des pouted, rapidly blinking her eyes to look cute.

"Yes, and our party is full," I emphasized the words, staring Des down, daring her to refute. 

"Of course the party's full," Des rolled her eyes. "Full of love."

"Not how it works either," I echoed back. "Just don't do it again."

Des nodded with no sense of commitment to the nod. She was absolutely going to try again. And maybe a third time after that. Des was nothing if not insistent.

And though I was reprimanding her, there was no heat to the words. I knew who Des was and I loved all of her.

Des batted her lashes, and I squinted back in challenge as if to say, ‘at least let me think I won for a while’.

Penny settled in a little more, comfortable that she wasn't going to be dislodged. And a moment later, I could tell that she was lost in her editing, less aware of where she was at the moment.

Being so deep in her task actually loosened her up. As she moved through, making tweaks here and there throughout my essay, Penny got more and more physically familiar with me.

First she moved from gently stroking my hand to then placing it on her thigh. Then she switched from letting me make the edits to using her free hand, the two of us making a whole person working on the project. All the while, she kept glancing to the side to get a look at me, only to glance away if we made eye contact.

It became a little bit of a game as I tried to catch her looking at me, as I tried to catch her admiring my side profile. 

Before long, we finished up, as did most of the other students in our class. Penny almost seemed disappointed when I squeezed her thigh and went to gently remove her. 

"We're done, Penny," I reminded her. 

"Yeah, Penny, it's my turn next," Selene batted her dark lashes at me. "Perhaps after learning a little from you, Ken can help me with mine. I'm sure there's errors all over it. In fact, Ken, do you want to spend the night at my place? It might be easier that way."

I rolled my eyes.

"Too strong," Des warned, only for Selene to stick her tongue out. 

"You miss every shot you don’t take, right Ken?" Selene asked.

"I agree with the sentiment, however, I think we need to get back to farming. There's that whole debt that we have." I used my trump card.

"Debt?" Candace raised an eyebrow.

I realized we hadn't told the rest of the class. “The short story is that Crimson and I made a big mess of a Nekorian safe zone. As a result, an Orkai arbiter got involved and essentially slapped us with a ruling that we have to pay the Nekorians for some of the damage. It was not cheap.” Everyone would easily believe it was Crimson’s fault.

None of the class even blinked an eye at that.

Candice whistled. "How bad?"

“Bad.” I decided not to go into detail.

Candice glanced at Des, who nodded in agreement. Apparently, she needed a consensus.

"So what? You're farming a zone to get mana crystals to pay off this debt?" Selene asked. "Why don't we all just pitch in? Felin's our classmate, too. If there was an option, we would have all joined you in that mess." 

Several of them nodded along, agreeing with Selene's sentiment. 

"It's a lot of money, and it's our fault," Wendy added, waving her hand to the side to include everyone. "Ken, I think all of us would love to do something for you, especially after you helped lead us out of the shitshow at the raid. Let us help." The red-haired beast hammer turned, giving a pleading look to the rest of the class as well.

Everyone began nodding. 

"Yeah, if we all pitch in, then it should be a cinch. Felin's one of us," Harley called out with an emphatic nod. 

"Well, if you guys really want to help, the total debt was this," I showed them the message from Crimson on my CID. I watched as several of their jaws dropped and more than a few of them hesitantly looked at each other.

"That was the total. The Nekorians are paying this much, Crimson this much, and we only have this much," I ran through the numbers, realizing I had almost scared them away. 

"On second thought," Harley smiled a little too wide, "perhaps we could help just a little." 

"I thought we were going to help them with all of it," Bonnie argued, giving Harley a pathetic expression.

The bard was clearly warring between impressing one of her healers and parting with all of that money. Finally, she grit her teeth. "Right, we should help our classmates," Harley said through clenched teeth. "Everyone should pitch in. I mean who wants to be rich anyway." 

I knew Harley struggled with parting with money that didn’t go towards pretty pink dresses. But I didn’t feel too guilty. She just needed a nudge in the right direction.

What I didn't expect was Felin's reaction. The Nekorian jumped forward and wrapped the bard in a crushing hug. 

"Thank you, Harley." Felin cheered.

The bard froze up before a steady grin spread across her lips. "Anything for you, Felin." She softened up and returned the hug twofold. "Now, if you have any Nekorian sisters you could introduce me to, I would love to meet more Nekorians." 

Felin paused, putting a finger to her lips. "Probably, but we'll have to find my people and not these others. I have a feeling that we're not going to be too welcome back there." 

"Understatement of the year," I grumbled under my breath, fairly certain that we had abruptly and assuredly worn out our welcome with the cat people.