carl@fire

"Uh…" Carl slowed as he approached, and his brows drew down. Gotta imagine if Vol was here, then she'd just be down here waiting, right? The idea made sense to him, but then he reconsidered it in the context of that person being Vol. Maybe not. Can't really imagine her waiting around for anything. His frown changed to a grimace. She's definitely not a resident here though with how much she talked about that last place being her city. "Well, I think—"

"We're going to enroll," Rebecca said, striding up to the desk. "This is Ocexius Tower, home of the famed magic academy, isn't it?"

"Obviously it is," the man behind the desk said in a tone so condescending that his too-immaculately-oiled-and-styled mustache might have said the words. "Would a mundane academy have such a magnificent entryway?"

"Yes, I'm sure it's the most magnificent entryway," Rebecca said, throwing an eye roll into her tone.

"Hold on, I'm just gonna wait here," Carl said with his hands held up in front of himself to indicate that he wasn't going to cause any trouble. Don't wanna have this turn into one of those comedy routines where we miss each other because she's expecting me to wait here while I'm expecting her not to wait. She'd definitely come down to check every so often if she was already here. Or, knowing her, probably someone's gonna run up and notify her, and she's gonna be on the roof throwing cars or something. The reminder brought a small smile to his face. That was pretty—

"No you will not!" the mustached man said authoritatively while slapping his hand against the surface of his spotless desk just as authoritatively. "The grand entryway would be less grand if it had people idling about. If you've come to visit, state the name of the resident you intend to visit, and they will be informed of your arrival. If you've come to enroll, state the desired term and proficiency for which you wish to be educated, and I will administer a test to ensure that you do not waste the time of our esteemed magisters."

Carl blinked at the man's outburst. Wow, that's a lot. He looked back to survey the uncluttered, open, theater-sized room that was apparently just the entryway of the tower, noting that the doors had silently closed behind them and the place was lit by a warm glow from some lamps high overhead. They really care about appearances, I guess? Seems kinda extreme. And annoying. Game's really feeling like a chore today to stay logged in.

"As I said, we're going to enroll," Rebecca said, fixing desk guy with a look that Carl liked to call The Annoyed Teacher after having seen Annie use it to great effect on the girls many times. "As for the term…" She glanced over and up at him. "I don't imagine I'll need more than two or three days. And—"

"Our shortest term is one month," desk guy cut in.

"A month, then," Rebecca said, now sounding distinctly annoyed in a way that reminded him of Annie when her patience was cracking.

"And, ah," desk guy craned his head over the desk, making a point of looking down at a certain pair of bared feet. "I think I'll be needing to see proof that you're able to afford our—"

Rebecca gestured to the desk, and a burst of blinding light flashed.

When Carl opened his eyes, the top of the desk was tightly packed with orderly stacks of gold coins, each stack maybe a dozen coins high. He blinked, then turned his head to his annoying, bratty sister-in-law. "That was pretty cool," he said with reluctance. "How'd you do that?"

Desk guy picked up a few of the coins, his eyes bulging, and began inspecting them thoroughly.

"I…have some skill in Light magic," Rebecca said, showing a pleased smile.

"These are real coins!" the man at the desk exclaimed.

"I hope I made a magnificent enough display of conjuring them in your grand entryway," Rebecca said with a smirk.

"B-but, but…" the man spluttered, clasping a coin between two fingers of his left hand and twisting his mustache with two fingers of his other hand. "You can't do that," he said finally. "That's transmutation, not magic, and it's not—"

"I wanted to enroll, not be told what I couldn't do," she retorted.

Carl nodded along. Kinda reminds me of Vol. Better when she's on your side than when she's against you. Still not really feeling like this is changing anything so far except showing how much she apparently plays the game. Creating money with magic has to be pretty high level. Or transmutation—whatever the guy said. Maybe it changes my view of her a little, I guess. Never knew she had any hobbies besides being annoying.

"We—Uh, yes, yes, of course," the man at the desk said, pulling open a drawer and scrabbling around in it. He set the piece of paper with a fancy header that he retrieved on top of the coins and produced an ornate pen that he began to write with using a flowing cursive. "The master-level course, I should think," he murmured.

"You can really make coins with magic?" Carl asked.

Rebecca's smile returned at the question. "I could teach you if you're interested."

"Nah," he said with a shake of his head. "Uh, I mean, no offense, but I was just curious."

She stuck her hands on her hips and pouted again, which was another thing he wasn't really used to seeing her do. "Carl, how will matters improve between us if I'm the only one making an effort?"

He frowned, but he was spared having to answer when desk guy spoke again. "I'll need you each to sign here," the man said, gesturing to the paper he'd been writing on which, upon closer-but-not-that-close-because-Carl-didn't-really-care inspection was an admissions document with a pair of lines for new entrants.

Rebecca snatched the pen from his hand and scribbled something that might've been a name on the top line, then offered up the pen for him to do the same on the lower line, which he did in his usual precise way without a second thought, honed by decades of routine.

"Excellent." Desk guy retrieved the paper, and his eyes glowed momentarily before an exact duplicate of the document appeared. He folded it crisply, and it then floated up to hover in front of Rebecca. "You'll be residing in a room on the seventy second floor," the man said in an approving tone. "I'll look forward to—"

"No, we're gonna need separate rooms," Carl interrupted with finality.

"Absolutely," Rebecca agreed.

Desk guy frowned. "I'd like to fulfill this request of yours, but there's only a single room available on the seventy second floor, and it would be unseemly to grant you rooms on a lower level now that I've already said—"

"Two rooms, got it?" Rebecca said, managing to loom a little despite her relatively short stature, even if she was slightly taller than Annie.

Desk guy's expression soured. "Very well, though it's unseemly of me to do so…" The paper floated back to him, and he unfolded it, removing a thin metal key from inside. He opened a different drawer in his desk and inserted the key into a spot, then removed a pair of keys from another spot and placed them methodically onto the paper before re-folding it and floating it up once more. "You'll be on the sixty eighth floor," he said with obvious displeasure. "My deepest apologies for this slight."

Rebecca snatched the paper out of the air. "And how are we to get up there?"

"The more skilled students and magisters—and the archmages—would use the lift there," said the man at the desk, gesturing to a small hallway nearby that disappeared around a corner, "which has stops every ten floors. The rest," he said in a tone like he was talking about people who were beneath him, "use the stairs." He pointed to the gold-inlaid door next to the desk.

Carl grimaced. That's gonna be a lot of stairs. He turned an expectant look to his sister-in-law, hoping that this was maybe going to be one of the times when she'd be making an effort so he wouldn't have to climb up all those stairs, and she certainly had a thoughtful expression on her face like she was considering whether she could magic them up with the lift—which he imagined was like a magic-powered elevator, because obviously a regular elevator would've been too easy and not annoying enough to fit into New Era today—but then she frowned.

"I don't think my magic will help us with the lift," she said, tapping the folded paper against her palm. "It's a lot of steps, but—"

"Hold on, I have an idea," Carl said, having just had a genius idea after recalling a sort of similar experience and tutorial he'd gotten from Vol, who really was an amazingly great friend that had taught him so many valuable things. "C'mon," he said, waving for her to follow as he headed towards the hallway with the lift. "Uh, thanks," he called back to desk guy, realizing that this must be a guy who absolutely loved accounting-type stuff and maybe played to realize his dream of owning a hotel or something—which, now that he thought of that concept, sort of reminded him of… Well, he couldn't remember the name since it was a while ago now, but there was a guy he remembered from that stupid first city who had definitely been in the hospitality business too.

"Where are we going?" Rebecca called after him, sounding confused.

"Got an idea depending what the lift's like," he said, continuing to walk along the narrow stone corridor. He rounded the corner, and the lift came in to view. Yes! He mentally pumped his fist. As he'd hoped, the lift was just a round disc of stone in a shaft, and, he supposed, someone skilled in using magic could probably just levitate it up however high they wanted. "Yeah, this should work," he said with a nod to himself.

"Carl, what's going on? What… Oh," Rebecca said in an odd tone. "Um, wow, I think I just blanked out for a sec."

He turned back to her and found her rubbing her temples again. "So… It seems like you're pretty strong? I was just gonna jump," he said, pointing up the well-lit shaft. "With how you pushed open that door, I figured—"

Rebecca's eyes had grown wider and wider as he spoke, and she looked back and forth between him and the uppermost part of the massive magic elevator shaft. "What?" she exclaimed. "There's no way I can jump that high!"

"Really?"

"Definitely not."

"Huh." Carl rubbed his beard, peering upwards.

Rebecca shifted her posture, then patted her side. "Am… Am I sweating?"

Carl sighed. "Yeah, so freaking annoying, isn't it?" Though in-game showers do feel pretty awesome.

"Oh," Rebecca said, now looking confused. She brought a hand up and pressed it to her face. "I think… I think maybe I need to lie down…" She wobbled a little on her feet, leaning heavily against the wall after a moment.

Some kinda brain link feedback? "Maybe you should log out," he suggested, both because she was looking decidedly unwell and because he imagined any attempt at improving their annoying relationship to something less annoying was going to be a pretty annoying process, which wasn't how he wanted to be spending the brief time he was going to be on now before he logged out and went home. "And actually, who's watching the girls if you're in here?" he asked now that he'd thought about it.

"Annie's home?" Rebecca said.

"Huh, I guess maybe…" The idea made sense to Carl the more he considered it given how his wife had been home early the past couple days.

"If you're going to jump up there," Rebecca began, tilting her head to squint upwards before looking back to him and shifting a little against the wall, "you could just carry me? I did pay for it, so…"

Carl frowned. "Yeah, but I didn't even wanna—"

She let out a sigh of exasperation. "Carl, I'm trying here, but it's like you don't want to work this out. Annie would be disappointed."

The words struck him like a physical blow as he imagined Annie standing with her arms crossed, frowning up at him while she asked why he was being difficult with something that had been bothering her—and him by extension and proxy—for so many years. "Uh, yeah," he said sheepishly, "I guess maybe you're right. So how…" He trailed off as his mind shifted towards considering the exact physical mechanics of how her suggestion was going to have to work. This is gonna be awkward. "Gonna do a test jump real quick," he said to try and stave off the inevitable. Maybe I'll come up with a better idea…

He crouched and jumped without another word, imagining that probably jumping as high as he had when he'd been jumping over those walls with Vol was going to be enough—and how high had he tried to jump those times again?—recalling too late the more important advice Vol had given him about not jumping way too high, except it was already past the point when he could've jumped less high, and as he continued to ascend, he recalled the final point of why he hadn't done any jumping in a long while, namely that he tended to land on his head when he did so.

Numbers were painted on the wall next to large platforms with doorways every so often, and his jump peaked just past the number fifty, which was less than he'd expected. He landed on the accompanying platform before he could tilt too far to the side and caught his balance with a couple steps. Game's kinda awesome with this stuff though. Imagine just being able to jump around like this in real life. I bet I could make it to the office in just a few jumps.

He peered over the side of the platform. Pretty long ways down. How am I even gonna… He frowned as he thought about it more. I'm gonna have to carry her and jump? If it was Annie or one of the girls, or even Vol, it'd be no problem, but… His frown deepened. Feels weird. She's been kinda weird today too. Gonna have to talk to Annie when I get out and see what's going on. Maybe something happened.

As he continued to try and escape what was seeming like an inevitability that he'd have to carry—which…was that like a princess carry, or was it like a piggyback, or how was that supposed to work?—his sister-in-law up here even though they didn't even have the kind of relationship where it might be considered normal for them to give hugs in greeting or parting, his thoughts escaped their confines and raced back to a seemingly unrelated portion of his mind. When he followed, he discovered another, even more brilliant idea.