carl@fire

"Uh…" Carl blinked, continuing to stare at his game-friend, who looked exactly like she'd looked in New Era down to her choice of clothes and shoes.

"Vol?" Mina exclaimed.

"Mina, hey!" Vol said with a wide grin as the girl darted forward to give her a hug.

"I know it's not been long, but I've missed you," Mina said.

"Yeah, uh, definitely hasn't been long. Practically yesterday, really." Vol returned the hug somewhat awkwardly.

"How… Uh…" Carl's mind battled to keep up with what had just happened.

"We'd just prepared to enjoy a light meal," Mina said, pulling back. "Would you…" She looked back up at Carl. "It'd not be a bother were she to join us, would it?"

"Uh…" Carl blinked one more time, finally having to just cycle to the next batch in his ring buffer of thought processors while the active one stalled out. "Yeah, yeah, sure, c'mon in," he said, stepping away from the door.

But how did she get here?

She'd just randomly known where he lived?

He was forced to cycle to the next thought processor as the second one also hit a blocking instruction type that didn't seem to be implemented.

If it was someone else, he'd have grown alarmed, but if there was one person who'd absolutely been looking out for his interests lately, it was his friend, Vol. To an almost incredible degree, really, he considered as he recounted all the different things she'd done for him lately, though mostly thinking about how she'd kept his in-game coffee stores well-stocked.

"Nice place," Vol said as she entered the house, looking around. "Sort of smoky outside though. Weird."

"Uh, yeah, just that time of year," Carl said. "How'd you get here anyway?" he asked. Peering out the still-open door, he realized that there was no car in sight, though that wasn't necessarily unusual considering the prevalence of self-driving taxis these days.

"Well," she said, nudging the door shut behind herself, "I got here, and then I had to spend a while talking to Annie, and—"

A message indicator lit up in the display of his glasses, and he put himself on Auto-Carl for just a few seconds while he read it since he recognized that the sender was Annie.

"Everything okay there?" the message read.

He thumbed the auto-reply option for "All good!" on his phone's touchpad before returning to the increasingly-weird present.

"—to move some points into a language skill, and I wandered around for a while, uh, you know, just normal wandering around things, and now I'm here," Vol finished.

"I'm incredibly envious of your capability with skills," Mina said with a frown.

"Eh. Useful sometimes, not that useful other times." Vol leaned to the side and looked past him. "We're eating now? Smells…" She tapped her chin. "Maybe good? Familiar, but I can't place it."

"Yes, that's a splendid idea," Mina said, clasping her hands together, "I'm famished."

They both started for the kitchen, and Carl fell in behind them, still spinning his thoughts around.

"So… You…know Annie?" he said slowly.

"Yeah, we're acquaintances," Vol said.

"I'll prepare a sandwich for you," Mina said, striding over to the fridge to pull out the chicken.

This was definitely one of the weirder turns of events that he'd experienced. He'd never previously met anyone from the online games he'd played when he was younger, but now, in just the past day, he'd met two people from a game that he'd only played to go fishing for short periods of time—though he admitted the whole thing had gotten a bit out of hand lately with regards to his playtime, and he was absolutely gonna shut that down before it became anything resembling a problem, even if it wasn't really affecting anything due to that whole time scaling thing that he still didn't have a great grasp on and probably wouldn't until Roger got back to him.

"Thanks," Vol said, looking around the kitchen. "Huh. This is easier than I thought it'd be."

"What is?" Carl asked.

She'd really talked to Annie to find out where they lived? And Annie had told her? That didn't seem like…

Although maybe if he reframed it as Vol, a friend of Mina's, asking to check up on her friend…

It sort of made more sense that way? He worked it over in his mind, and it did seem like maybe Annie might—

"Uh, just…normal friend things," Vol said. "Don't worry about it. What're we doing now anyway?"

"Having some lunch," he said, now heading to the cupboard to grab some glasses so he could pour some—

"Oh, okay. Uh, I brought drinks?"

Carl turned to look just as Vol set a large glass pitcher of orange liquid on the table and took a seat.

"Some weird juice," she said, looking pleased with herself. "Good though."

He paused, and his eyes focused on the pitcher.

"Another matter of which I'm quite envious," Mina huffed, now bringing the completed trio of sandwiches to the table and setting them out in their places. "Carl, please sit. I'll retrieve cutlery for us."

Bringing the cups he'd grabbed out of the cabinet, he made his way to the table, setting them down next to the plates. "You…brought juice," he said slowly.

"Yeah." Vol started pouring from the pitcher into the glasses. "There's a bunch of them, but this one's probably my favorite. Maybe. Tough choice between this and another one."

Mina set a fork, knife, and napkin out for each of them before sitting across from the short-haired woman. "If it's a favorite of yours, I'll have high expectations," she said, immediately taking a sip from her glass. She made a pleased sound as she set the cup back on the table. "This is quite nice."

Finally, Carl sat down, though he continued to stare at the pitcher, which he was pretty sure his friend hadn't been carrying when she'd arrived. She also hadn't been carrying any sort of bag, which meant that it was almost like…

He couldn't explain it.

At the same time though, Mina hadn't said anything about it, and she didn't seem even a little surprised, which seemed like it meant that he'd missed something, and if he asked, it'd probably make him seem pretty clueless for having missed it. She'd probably just set it on the ground next to the door when she'd knocked, and he'd been so surprised to see her that he'd focused too hard and missed it.

Yup, that must've been it. Not like he was about to make a big deal out of a pitcher of orange juice, he decided as he brought the glass up to his lips and took a drink.

Except it wasn't orange juice. It was orange, and it was juice, but it wasn't juice made from oranges, that was for sure. If he had to describe it, the flavor was… Well, it was a flavor, certainly, and it was able to be described. Maybe like… Sort of…

He took another sip.

It was a more subtle flavor than he'd expected, but it was refreshing, like the feeling that those highbrow cucumber waters were supposed to provide, except real. Not that it tasted in any way like cucumbers, because it didn't—not that he had a problem with cucumbers or things that tasted like them, of course, because he didn't, and he was well aware that many people enjoyed them and that there were various health benefits involved, but he was trying to describe this flavor to himself, and he didn't want to settle on the wrong idea, since that might end up making him think it tasted differently than it did, kinda like if he thought about the flavor of milk vividly before taking a drink of water—and if he absolutely had to compare it to another flavor, then he might say it was sort of like coconut water, except that wasn't really right either, and now his glass was empty.

"Yeah, pretty good," he said as he eyed the pitcher of weird, definitely-describable juice.

"It's weird, right?" Vol said, taking a big gulp from her own glass. "It's… I know what it tastes like, but as soon as I try to describe the flavor…"

"Yeah," Carl said with a nod. He joined Mina in biting into his sandwich while he considered it further. "So, uh, what have you been up to?" he asked to make conversation while he continued to deliberate on the flavor of the juice, which he was absolutely going to be able to describe once he wrapped his head around it.

"Eh. Nothing very interesting," Vol replied, "just some fighting and fucking. Mostly boring." She took a big bite of her sandwich. "Huh. Good," she said while she chewed.

Having known her for not a really long time but still long enough, Carl wasn't surprised by her too-descriptive-yet-not-actually-descriptive answer. "You seem like you're bored a lot," he said, deciding to pour himself another glass of the mystery juice.

"Not much left to be interested by after doing so much shit," she said with a shrug and a stab at one of the potatoes, followed by a bite of it. "Good combination," she said, looking back and forth between the remaining piece of smashed potato on her fork and sandwich in her other hand. "Hot and cold, but sort of same-y flavors." She bit into the sandwich, then chewed a couple times, then added some potato into her mouth and kept chewing.

"Yes, I'd almost prefer it this way, though it was quite nice when heated as well," Mina said as she sliced into a potato on her plate before bringing a small piece to her mouth.

"Huh. Can't…" Vol's brows lowered. "Nah, it's better cold."

Carl continued to eat, but he was beginning to feel like he was forgetting something. He'd been—

"What have you been doing?" Vol asked, her head swiveling between the two of them.

"Kinda normal stuff too," he said between bites. "Mina's settling in, and I'm…"

He sighed in annoyance. For a short while, he'd managed to forget about the Ugggghhhhhhhhhhhh Work debuff that he'd been suffering from for the past however long, but now he'd recalled it, and he was again suffering. "I'm working from home today, so I'm trying to, uh, solve a problem kinda. Actually…sort of…not really the best day for you to visit," he said with a grimace.

"Problem? What problem?" Vol perked up. "I'm great at solving problems."

"Nah, it's just some work thing," Carl said with a wave of his sandwich-free hand. "I was working on it right before we sat down to eat—which was when you got here—and I'm probably gonna have to get back to it right after…"

"Perhaps we might hang out?" Mina said while looking across the table.

"Huh." Vol chewed slowly, and then she took a gulp from her glass. "Yeah, okay," she said after a moment, starting to nod.

While Carl certainly appreciated the option of having someone around to keep Mina busy—not that she really needed that, but he felt a little guilty that he had to keep working while she was still adjusting to everything—he was still a dad—her dad now, actually?—and it wasn't like he wasn't going to ask any questions.

"What kinda hanging out are you gonna do?" he asked in a casual tone.

"I'd thought we might have a nice chat in my qua—room," Mina said, showing a pleased smile.

"Eh," Vol said as she started to frown. "Sounds bor—"

"No, I'm certain it will be quite interesting," Mina interrupted, tilting her head a little.

"Oh. Yeah, okay," Vol said just before she guzzled the remainder of her juice.

Sitting around talking didn't seem like the sort of thing that Vol would normally be doing, but then again, they'd sat around and hung out for a while back in the workshop without doing much of anything, so maybe she'd just decided to have another day of being a more low-key Vol.

"One way or another, I'll probably be clocking out in a few hours, so we can hang out then," he said, now also starting to also feel bad that he had to work after his friend had showed up, even if she hadn't really given him any warning or notice that she was coming, which was actually maybe not that common between friends, but it'd been such a long time since he'd seen any of his friends in real life that he was enjoying the novelty of it and giving the situation a bit more leeway than he otherwise would have. He was still interested in hearing where she'd been that she'd just dropped by like this, not to mention the story of how she convinced Annie to divulge their address, and then also, lastly—and really it wasn't that big of a deal, but he was just a tiny bit curious—there was that pitcher of unknown juice that he still had some questions about, the least of which was where exactly it had come from—but mostly he wanted to know what kind of juice it was so he could get more.

Unfortunately, he was Carl Theodore Weathers now, and he had a freaking job that he had to be responsible for, and, having heard that his daughter was going to be in good hands for a while, he was already shifting most of his dad thinking capacity over to work mode to help with potential problem solving.

Today was a weird day which, so far at least, wasn't nearly as good as yesterday.