Jessica's implication that Penny might be [i]dating[/i] caused the girl to let out a choking noise and fumble her next swing, sending Excalibur halfway through a nearby tree before she managed to stop it. 

As one the peasants stopped and turned as one to scrutinize Jude for a few uncomfortable moments before one lifted his stumpy little arms in the air and squeaked, "God save the queen!"

"No one is the queen!" Penny said quickly, spinning around and catching the other peasants with the arms midway up and their mouths halfway open. They flopped their arms down under her stern gaze, disappointed. Whether it was that their King was still queenless or simply that they'd been cut off before they could start a good chant Penny couldn't know. Her gaze softened when she turned it to Jessica, empathizing with their shared lack of social experience. "We just met today. I mean, right?" She said, briefly looking to Jude for confirmation. She had enough self-awareness to know that she could have run into this guy somewhere before all this and just not payed him any mind at all. If you pointed out some of her classmates on the street Penny would have a hard time giving you their names.

"The point is, like, I didn't know anybody here and a dude who's going to stop me from picking on a little girl and a girl whose idea of evil is loitering and coming up with tough sounding nicknames are a pretty solid draw in terms of people I could have met before we all got thrown into the deep end together." She hoped they were picking up what she was putting down, but turned and kept working so she wouldn't have to see their faces if they took it the wrong way. "Especially if the deck has dudes like that like Goodfella we beat up in it."

She kept hack her way through the underbrush before they came to a familiar looking bubble machine. It wasn't the most valuable piece of salvage they could have found but it could have its uses as crafting material, especially with the use of her companions epithets. "You guy think you could do anything cool with this?" She said, walking up to it and setting her peasants on standby around it. If either of them gave the word the peasants would carry the bubble machine wherever they were told to.

In the quiet that followed, though, she could hear the noises creeping into the clearing. A distant audio distortion, and a distant voice. There was a choice, but then again there wasn't a choice. After all, broken machinery wasn't in the habit of getting scared and moving away. Penny made her way to the south, not so fast as to leave her companions behind fast, and cupped her hands around her mouth. "Hey!" She called back, listening intently for any call back as she made her way further toward the voice. "You're going to be all right, just stay where you are."

[@Octo][@Kafka Komedy]