"It all hinges on whether I'd be socially competent enough to be invited to D&D."

"Oh, no, that's like a given, provided you didn't somehow buy a +3 charisma bonus in this timeline. Mostly it depends on whether I overthink the potential consequences of inviting you."

- actually now she really wants to drag him to a comic shop. Maybe they can find him some less questionable friends. Of course, this would make her really superfluous to him, so maybe she can wait until Zana's been here a week and he's already all attached to her staying alive.

"And on whether I overthink the potential consequences of being invited!"

"Our alternate selves have it rough. - have you ever actually played D&D? I guess probably not. But it's pretty great."

"I've wanted to but, unfortunately, paralyzing social anxiety."

"Right, yeah, I figured. Maybe sometime, though? I'm sure I can find someone else in the world who isn't much more terrifying than I am."

He does not say, "I think the fact that I'm paying you is the active ingredient here."

He says, "probably!"

"Alright. Cool. I'll think about it."

She gets Shelly to buy her a plane ticket and flies out for Kentucky the next day.

It's sort of stressful. She does, it turns out, live in one of the eighty percent of universes where her parents aren't willing to resort to force to keep her away from Connor and Zana, and where Connor and Zana follow her home even when their home has recently moved and their grandparents think that Karen should sit down and talk about this until she changes her mind. She doesn't live in one of the universes where this seems like a foregone conclusion afterwards. Her mother says a bunch of stuff that she wishes had not been said in front of her kids, but sometimes that's life. Mostly it means that Connor figures he shouldn't ask any more questions until Karen has had a day or so to get over being asked unfair questions.

He changes his policy when he sees the house. She totally would answer questions at this point, but Zana has declared it a castle and torn off toward it, and she knows from experience that it's usually a bad idea to put off dealing with Zana.

Zana rams into the front door and falls down. She does not cry, because then people will think that her attack on the castle was an accident. People think a lot of things she does are accidents now.

Lev has definitely not been pacing next to the front door for the past hour because that would be weird. Nope. Total coincidence.

"Hello! I assume you are Zana."

"I am a DRAGON," she informs the weird man inside the castle. He is probably not a king because kings mostly have beards. Maybe he's a prince or a butler or a squire, he looks like he could maybe pull off being any of those. "I am here to take over, if that's OK."

"What do we say before entering people's houses?"

"PLEASE."

"Oh no! My castle is being taken over by a dragon!" Lev says, stepping to one side to let them in. "What am I going to do?"

"You will have to go to the TALLEST tower and ONLY come out when the army saves you," says Zana. 

"But I don't have a tower," Lev objects, "tall or not, and I don't know where I can find an army." 

"Then there is NO escape. You have to listen to the dragon now. The dragon wants SNACKS."

She looks at Karen. Karen looks at her.

"The dragon wants snacks PLEASE."

"Hm. I'm not sure that I can feed a dragon. I'm pretty sure dragons eat knights, but all I have are these chocolate chip cookies."

"THIS dragon eats cookies. Also knights. But I am adaptable."

"Well then. I guess you will have to come in and have some cookies! --Hi, Karen."

"Hi! I brought you this very energetic dragon. Also Connor, Connor's still coming up the walkway."

Connor is in fact looking in the front door by this point, looking pretty suspicious of everything.

"Nice to meet you, Connor."

"Hi," says Connor, more neutrally than he probably has to.

Lev is a grown-up 25-year-old who should definitely not be terrified of an eleven-year-old.

(He is absolutely terrified of an eleven-year-old.)

"I'm going to go see how our dragon is doing."