"That doesn't sound wrong? I imagine the makers who seek these name monopolies are mostly doing it for pride and competitive advantage."

"Granted I have no idea if the European dynasty is substantially related to the beverage."

"Reminds me of how the French Fry was invented by just some guy who called them French to sound fancy."

"I didn't know that, is that also true of French toast?"

"I don't know that one."

"Sounds like a job for Google." He checks his phone. "Named after a guy whose surname was French, maybe."

"I sort of feel like only really modern foods will have interesting name origins. Like Jello, or ice cream, or... Honestly I don't know that many kinds of food are really modern unless they're like all in on the artificial sweeteners... Even soda is over a century old."

"Well, older foods might have interesting name origins and just have them lost to history or too familiar to be exciting to moderns. Did you know the word 'lens' comes from 'lentil', somebody invented lenses and was like 'the important thing about these is that they're lentil-shaped'."

"I have heard it joked that English is three languages in a trenchcoat that beats up other languages for spare vocabulary."

"Three? French and German and who else?"

"Latin, I guess? -Oh say, I think I want to go to this one park after this, the one with the old train turntable."

Do you want company - no, that sounds pushy - I hope you have fun - no, that sounds like he's declining to go before he's even been asked - why is getting people to like you so hard. "There's a park with a train turntable? Does it still turn?"

"Google is unclear and I personally doubt it, but I like trains either way. You want to come along?"

"Sure."

The dinner is nice.

It turns out the turntable does still work, but they only run it when the adjoining museum is open (and it's not right now, since it's late).

Dungeons continue to occur, and he continues to be willing to sense at them.

They wind up assigned to the same one after not too long. "I think the personnel outlay they went with here assumes I'm taking guiding breaks and staying here for the long haul unless the core takes days to find," Haru remarks. "Do you have a setup outside the dungeon that's comfy for that without all my gear on or should I just be stopping at the entrance dungeonside to hold hands between rescues?"

"-Uh, I bet I can get a couch delivered post-haste. I haven't really hit high levels of backlash yet and would prefer to keep it that way, so if you could hug me from behind during the initial survey- I have an astrolabe sort of thing and the first shot at custom software- That would be nice. My periodic checks after that aren't nearly so expensive."

"Hugging is super doable. I wasn't thinking a couch, I think people who do onsite guiding breaks usually go with an air mattress, I can ask Paula to get us one? I'll be racking it up steadily as I go past monsters."

"Yeah, sounds good." Deep breaths.

He'll phone Paula while hugging Teddy from behind for the initial sweep. Haru's in tac gear but he can ride up his shirt a little bit and put his cheek on Teddy's neck.

The camera on a stick scouting method didn't attract an immediate attack. Initial scouts noted metal walls and floors, lots of shiny miscellaneous objects, and a somewhat mazelike set of onward passages. Monsters are some sort of giant clockwork birds and clockwork footsoldiers with melee weapons, which did go down to sustained gunfire.

He has his astrolabe-thingy. He can step across to the little sandbag fort to save backlash and start scanning.

He had a computer screen and a joystick with a few dials and direction readout. He taps, marking up a 3d map.

Twenty two people. More than average for new dungeons.

"And some of them are... Moving very slowly? Less than walking pace. As if they're on a conveyor belt or something. Too bad I can't sense physical objects. Maybe I can copy your senses and make a map?"

"Sure thing, you are clear to do that." Is there a map copy for Haru to take with him?

After a bit, yes. He paid a lot more attention to his work setup and does have a printer. It prints a map. The only things on it are the known areas that initial scouting got to before being attacked and identified victim locations with elevation tags.

And Haru does a last minute scan of his checklist, and he goes in.

The metal halls are frequently interrupted with large, high chambers. Many of these have weird steampunky objects in them, sitting on the floor, hanging on walls, often with many sharp blades. There's a lot of copper and bronze. It seems to be aping some sort of factory. The monsters can be successfully made to ignore him.

Teddy looking through his eyes doesn't feel like anything.