The one most relaxed in the presence of so many enemies turned out to be Becca, as she casually ignored all the initial stares.
Following after her, she would occasionally wave and greet one of the Mox that were staring. The most unexpected thing is that they would usually wave back with a cautious smile. He blinked as he glanced around, careful not to stare at anything that might get Lucy mad at him. Behind him was Katsuo, looking quite on-guard and sharp-eyed, and behind him was Spares, looking quite unimpressed with the world.
"Hey Betty. Hey Yumi. Hey 'Ronica." Becca called out in rough order to three girls at a side table as they walked by. They raised their brows and raised their cups in return. Feeling a bit awkward, David raised his own hand in greeting as he walked by, waving it slightly.
They simultaneously blinked, smirked, and giggled as he did so. He wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing. He kept walking and scratched his cheek awkwardly.
Eventually the greeter led them to a table on the side that was enclosed in a booth, and they sat down. He made sure that Tanaka and Becca were on the inside, in case he needed to protect them from a sudden attack. They were a bit squishier than himself or Spares.
Bored, Becca tapped at the table and opened the holographic menu to scroll through. He blinked.
"Becca, you know these chooms?" He asked directly, making sure to be polite. Becca hummed in response.
"Used to be a Mox bouncer, shooting gonks, getting handsy and whatnot. Had to stop because Pilar got handsy one day and I had to blow off his stupid hands."
"You were kicked out of a gang?" Tanaka asked.
"No, nothing like that. I just didn't want to have to shoot bro again, even if the gonkass deserved it."
"Pilar actually got handsy?" He could see it, but he also thought that Pilar wouldn't have done something quite so… Impolite? He internally cringed remembering how he was.
"Ah…" Becca looked away. "Well… she was into it, but the rules were pretty strict."
Oh.
Somehow that sounded more and less believable than before. He nodded in understanding and noticed that there was a waitress coming up. She was… dressed exactly like the greeter was, so he angled his gaze a bit farther up than normal.
Oh neat, they have rafters.
"Heyya~ Are you ready to order drinks?" The waitress with the long black hair asked, putting a pinkie up to her lips.
"Uhh…" He hadn't even looked at the menus yet. Quickly he pressed the button and glanced at the options.
…what were these names?
Becca ordered first. "Can I get a Slutty Strawberry?" She said without a hiccup. He glanced over, but Spares was already ordering too!
"Big Booty Butter Pecan." She spoke emotionlessly. Stunned, he was caught off guard as Tanaka ordered immediately after.
"...Rope-Play Red-Bean please?" He said, reading off from the menu slowly to make sure he got the game right. The waitress turned to him, and panicking he read off the first name he glanced over to see.
"Uhh… Poppin' Cherry?" He questioned more than ordered, but the waitress smiled in confirmation and skated away. With that temporarily resolved, he turned to Becca.
"What are these drink names?" He asked. Becca raised a brow and grinned at him.
"Still adorable, huh Davey? Never heard of this place before? They're pretty big." She leaned back and raised her hands up to rest her head against them. "It's just their advertising or whatever. All the flavors have dirty names. Did you forget we're in a titty diner?"
"Well no, I didn't forget but… " He thought the drinks would be normally named, not this. He scrolled through the extensive list of drinks and read through them. Virgin Vanilla, Oral Oreo, Painal Pistachio, Cunnilingus Caramel, Rough-Riding Rocky Road, Dildo Dragonfruit, Pimpin' Pineapple, Cunny Candyfloss, Tomboy Tangerine, Futa Fruity, Grape Rape, Succubus Sundae, Cowgirl Chocolate, Cream Pie, Cheesecake, Milfy Melon…
There were so many of these. It was impressive in an abstract sorta way.
"Don't forget to look at the food menu, we're eating here too, aren't we?" Becca announced, and he pressed the tab to the food section hurriedly, wanting to be prepared for the waitress coming back. He was somewhat disappointed to read off the names here. Scop Burger, Scopdog, Fries, Onion-flavored Rings, and so on. It was a very functional food menu. He supposed he couldn't blame it for that, it was more than adequate.
Soon enough, the waitress came back, setting down for decently sized milk-adjacent shakes, and asking for their food orders. After ordering a round of burgers for everyone, they started sipping the drinks.
It tasted… fine. It wasn't bad by any means, but it wasn't particularly stand-out in flavor. It tasted like he was expecting a cherry flavored shake to taste. He was starting to notice a trend with this place, outside of its advertising, it was pretty average overall. He guessed there was a reason he had never heard of this company(?) beforehand.
The burgers came a few minutes later, and taking a bite, he confirmed his suspicion. It was a perfectly fine burger, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. It was a burger that tasted like a burger.
He let out a thoughtful hum and he chewed. Looking around the interior of the building, ignoring the scantily-clad women, he noticed that the interior was decent too. It was decently clean, decently spacious, decently well-lit. He might come back here in the future. It wasn't too bad overall.
There was something to be said about a place that was good enough in about every regard. It was a diner, it did diner things, it did them well. He didn't have any particular flaw to point out. He took another bite of his burger, appreciating the averageness of it.
He snapped to attention as he noticed another woman come up, swing a chair around to set it on the floor to the exterior end of the booth they were in, and flopped down in it lazily.
She had blonde-hair with pink glowing highlights running throughout, two oversized red and blue chrome arms, and was wearing heels that looked integrated into her feet. Swirling magenta eyes with bulky smartgoggles mounted on her forehead, a similarly bulky belt, and what looked like coveralls.
Coveralls that were pulled down and tied around her waist, revealing her breast with only two cross-stickies to preserve any modesty. It was a rather provocative outfit, but that's not what made him tense.
What made him tense was that this was the woman he was going to be fighting tomorrow. That, and the subtle glare behind her bright and cheery look.
Smugly, she raised a shake of her own up to her lips and slurped on it loudly for several long moments. He raised a brow at her and took another bite of his burger. He was still pretty hungry, now that he was actually eating.
Spares seemed content to ignore her entirely, Tanaka was glaring at her from the corner of his eyes, and Becca was loudly slurping her own shake in response. He decided to wait until she spoke first, and took another bite of his burger.
Eventually, the other competitor loudly disconnected her lips from the straw and spoke. "Like, kinda ballsy of ya, don'tcha think?" He shrugged and pointed a thumb at Spares.
"She wanted to visit, so here we are."
Spares spoke up at this, blankly defending herself. "Incorrect. You made a statement about the lack of appealing drinks. I made a recommendation of a nearby facility that serves a wide variety of drinks."
He didn't believe that for a second, but he would let her have it. He raised his hands defensively. "My bad, my bad." It was pretty obvious what he was doing, but she seemed to accept it and go back to eating her burger in… individual components dismantled on her plate?
Man, she was awkward huh?
He turned back towards the woman. "Still, didn't know it was a Mox place." He shrugged, it was what it was. No use in trying to cover up a minor mistake like this. The woman didn't seem to believe that, giving a crooked smile and sarcastic reply.
"Oh, you didn't know? When you like, found out, you didn't leave right away?"
"I still wanted my drink." He took another bite of his burger. She giggled at that.
"You're like, totes adorbs for being the boogieman's son and all."
He paused at that, and raised a brow. Tanaka took this chance to speak up. "You're Smasher's kid Martinez? You should've told me."
Deadpanning, he turned to face him. "It's news to me too, Tanaka. Tell you what, I'll let you ask him for the paternity test."
"I wouldn't want to take such a momentous occasion away from you." He replied, graciously raising his drink and taking a loud, regal sip. David cuffed him, forcing him to spill it over himself slightly. Tanaka growled and snatched a napkin to wipe his shirt off.
David turned back to the woman. "No, I'm not Smasher's kid, just his apprentice." He finally directly replied. "I don't think Smasher was even having sex until he started banging Tanaka's mom." He pointed a thumb behind him.
Katsuo burst into a coughing fit. "F-fucking, w-what?!" He eventually got out. Becca patted him on the hand comfortingly.
"I'm sorry you had to learn it this way." She sounded entirely too sincere to not be fucking with him right then, so David ignored the small spat that broke out behind him and kept his focus on the woman.
The woman who had turned around in her chair with her hands raised to her mouth. "Hear that bitches! Not his son! Pay the fuck up!"
There was an outburst of cursing, groans, and hands slamming on tables. He looked over the woman's shoulder and raised his brow. There was a betting pool on that? Seemed a bit pointless to him. It was pretty obvious he wasn't Smasher's son.
The woman swiveled around and casually explained. "There's a big betting pool on why the boogieman decided to pick you up, one of the biggest pots was for 'secret kid' theory."
"What did you bet on then?" He asked, curious about her answer, taking another bite.
"He decided to spare you because he's plowing your mom." she barrelled right through with an immediate answer. He briefly choked on his burger, and ignored Tanaka's 'yeah, feels great don't it fucker?'.
Eventually, he had cleared his throat out again. "I… I'm almost certain that he wasn't plowing my mom back then." Because she was dead. This answer was a bad one, because she latched onto it.
"Back then, what about now huh?" She leaned forwards with an evil grin.
He glared at her, and sipped his shake. "I don't keep track of Smasher's sex life, or my mom's, thank you very much."
She waved a hand. "Easy cutie, like, I totes get it. I didn't want to be in the house when mama was being gangbanged either." Somehow that statement was less reassuring that she probably meant it to be, because he was suddenly flashed with the image of his mom in that scenario.
He groaned and grabbed his head in frustration. "I didn't want to think of that." He growled out. She paused for once, and scratched the back of her neck.
"Ah, oppsie?" She asked more than apologized.
"Is there something specific you need?" He grumbled, somewhat tired of talking to her now.
"Sorry sorry, two things cutie. Err…" She raised a finger to her lips and started absentmindedly sucking it in thought. "Maybe three."
"The first?"
"Like, the first thing was seeing what you were here for, but you like already answered that." She raised both hands to put airquotes in her next sentence. "Just here for the drinks." Judging from her easy grin, she was trying to tease here.
He nodded, she moved on. "Right, like, so I had a friend a while back. You might know her?" Her tone got low and dangerous. "A totally subby bottom named Vee? Short, blonde, tanned, that ring a bell? Cutie?" She said that last word with a bit of force. "A couple of months ago Smasher smashed and carried them off in pieces. Wanna tell me what happened after?"
Despite the way the sentence was worded, it was not a question. It was a demand for information. He glanced around the now-quiet diner, to see that everyone in the room was subtly paying attention to their conversation, hands near weapons.
They were ready to try killing them over this, huh? It was a good thing that he had the perfect response.
"Vee? Yeah she's over in Japan with her sisters. Do you want her number?" He asked casually.
The woman blinked, not expecting that response. She tilted her head suspiciously. "...yeah, I would."
He forwarded the number and the woman called it as she glared at him.
After a moment, a wave of relief washed over her, and her call began in earnest. Vee was probably pretty excited to hear from a friend she made on the streets again. He got back to his food while that was going on.
Idly chatting with Becca and Tanaka and watching in fascination as Spares slowly tried combinations of individual ingredients of her burger as he waited for the woman to finish her call. She had walked off to have it somewhat more privately, and the diner had settled down again at the unspoken signal being defused.
It would have kinda sucked to have to murder a whole diner of Mox, he was glad he didn't have to.
Eventually, the woman came back. This time the subtle glare was gone, and her smiles a bit brighter. "Heh, sorry about that cutie. A gal worries over her chooms, yanno?"
He nodded with an easygoing smile. "I'm the same way, can't leave someone behind if I can do anything about it."
Becca spoke up with a flat tone. "Davey you strapped yourself into an experimental frame, murdered your way through a Militech army and into Arasaka Tower to get Lucy back. There's a difference between worry and that."
He didn't really have a counter for that, so he decided to awkwardly chuckle and take a sip of his shake instead.
The woman saw this, and raised a smug brow at him. "Alright, fair enough. Like, thanks for the number cutie, I only got one last thing before I'll leave you alone, aight?"
He nodded, she replied.
"Like, wanna fuck after our fight tommorrow?"
He coughed into his fist. Becca immediately started glaring at the woman. Tanaka broke into sniggers.
"Ah, sorry, I have a mainline." He replied, not wanting to be too rude in turning her down. The woman had her own reply.
"I don't mind the audience." She said, waggling her brows. Becca spoke up at this, defending Lucy while she wasn't here.
"Absolutely not."
"Oh, Should we make it a threesome instead? I got a quick-change groin and a Mr. Studd too." She offered coyly.
It was then she turned her shake around, revealing a shake flavor logo on the other side that said 'Buttslut Bubblegum' She shook it around slightly with a perverse grin.
"Right, we're leaving." He declared, grabbing Spares by the shoulder and marching out of the diner filled with now very-amused Mox. His face was probably rather red at this point. Becca stomped out with him, dragging Tanaka behind her, who had broken out into outright laughter.
"Like, the name's Cel cutie! See you in the ring tomorrow~!" She waved with a grin. She wasn't waving her hand though, shaking her rear in his direction.
He regretted glancing back.
Right now his only hope was to somehow convince Tanaka to not tell Lucy about this…
…He was doomed.