carl@fire

Carl followed Annie back into the kitchen.

"Let me, um, does anyone want a snack?" Annie asked, moving slowly towards the refrigerator.

"Might be interesting," Vol said, still sitting in her seat across from Mina.

"I'd not decline," Mina said with a cheerful smile.

Noticing that the juice pitcher was now nearly full, which was considerably more full than he'd remembered, Carl paused in the process of retaking his seat. "Weren't we almost out of juice?"

"Nah, don't worry about it," Vol said with a wave of her hand. "Obviously I'm not gonna run out. I'm not a fucking noob."

"I'd thought of an apt description for the taste a moment ago, but it's vanished, and I'm unable to form the thought again," Mina said, frowning cutely.

Carl settled into his seat, but he wasn't about to jump right into more juice-describing attempts. For a while now, he'd been meaning to take care of something—more than a while, really, but his afternoon had just been such a disaster that he'd kinda forgotten about it—and he had to do it now so he didn't forget about it. He pulled his phone's touch sensor out of his pocket, going back to the message he'd gotten from Tim earlier on the AR display of his glasses, and started composing a reply.

It wasn't like he'd been ignoring his friend earlier, he'd just been busy. And distracted. But mostly busy. Also, he'd been a little worried about getting drawn into any kind of game talk with Tim that might've taken time away from work earlier—though really that time hadn't been good for anything except getting more and more stressed, to the point that even right now he was still feeling really stressed out about everything just from thinking about it, which was definitely something that more of this great, indescribable, refreshing juice would help with while he thumbed his way to a reply and let his friend know that it wasn't a big deal, and they could virtually hang out some other time.

Also, a name like Drake Storm sounded like lore, which was for noobs.

"Vol, it's nice to see you again," Annie said, slicing up some type of sausage and cheese over at the counter. "How, um… How have you been?"

"Eh, mostly bored," Vol said. "Was doing this competition with all the deities and their champions for a while. Great food, but I really thought I was gonna lose my mind towards the end with how fucking bored I was getting. Glad to be here instead. Didn't realize it, but I needed some time to hang out."

"With…deities, huh," Annie said, managing to continue the conversation about as well as Carl felt that he could've considering his own lack of knowledge about most things that were game-related.

"Yeah, not trying to brag or anything, but I thought it was gonna be interesting, and then everyone was really weak, and there was no challenge, and it was… Eh." Vol shrugged.

"I'd not heard of your involvement with any deities," Mina said, taking on the sort of confused expression which let Carl know that this was probably something important.

"Champion of Sateus," Vol said in bored tone. "Think he's just enjoying wasting my time at this point though."

"Who's Sateus?" Carl asked, realizing too late that he'd probably just asked a question about lore, which ugggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

"Carl, how the fuck do you not know who Sateus is after being in Onyxfell for that long?" Vol exclaimed.

He grimaced deeply, though he attempted to cover it with a drink from his glass.

"Sateus is the god of victory," Mina said in a patient, tolerant sort of way he really appreciated at that exact moment.

"He's so annoying too," Vol grumbled.

"Wait, he's like, an actual guy?" Carl asked, now feeling like maybe there was a slight chance that he wasn't getting deeper into some kind of lore nonsense that he didn't care about.

"Uh, well yeah, obviously he's a guy," Vol said.

Annie set a plate filled with cubed cheese and meat along with some square crackers down between them all—which she'd probably gotten from the Strategic Snack Reserve in the back of one of the drawers—then took up a seat on the other side of Mina and started filling the glass she'd brought over with orange juice from the pitcher. "That's really… Um, well, it's really impressive, Vol," she said in the same I'm Happy For You Even If I Don't Know What You're Talking About tone she used with the girls sometimes. "How did you get involved in that?" She took a sip of juice and frowned, then stared down at it.

"Thanks. Just happened one day," Vol said in a very Vol way of not-describing something. She grabbed a few crackers, a few pieces of cheese, and a few slices of sausage and began feeding them into her mouth one after another.

"Yes, thank you," Mina said, giving Annie a bright smile. The girl, on the other hand, gathered a couple pieces of cheese and meat and began slowly chewing one of each as a pair, looking like she was pleased with the taste, which was a fact that immediately got stored away as a Dad Notes entry.

Carl wasn't entirely sure how he felt about the idea of people apparently being able to play as some form of religious icon in New Era, though as he considered it more, it was sort of maybe like being a guild master in some ways, and maybe the game even gave out cool additional powers for anyone who reached that level, which was a neat idea, but it was still weird to think about. He absently grabbed a couple things off the plate to eat while he thought about it more.

"Where'd you get this from?" Annie asked just before she took another swig of her drink.

"At that competition," Vol said, which really just explained everything about where she'd been that she could so casually drop by, since obviously if the company was going to be hosting some big tournament for the power-gamers, it'd have to happen somewhere vaguely near the office so company people could get out to see it—which further explained why so many people from engineering were out, not to mention the great timing of finishing the expansion just before the event so everyone could feel free to go off and watch without missing any work—and he imagined it had totally ruined the day for everyone in upper management when he'd discovered part of the full extent of Gary's craziness earlier.

Carl frowned. If there was such an event happening though, sure, he wasn't likely to have personally taken note of it—then again, now that he was thinking about it, he sort of maybe thought he recalled hearing about some event at the Coca-Cola Chevrolet Boeing Event Center this week—but he imagined Bobby should've been demanding that they go at some point? Although if he really thought about it, he'd kinda been brushing her off for a long time with anything related to New Era, so…

It was another devastating blow to suffer, but probably his daughter had mostly given up on him, assuming he was always gonna say no if it was related to him getting involved in anything related to New Era. That meant it wasn't coincidental that she'd wanted to have a sleepover tomorrow either just when a raid was happening; she and her friends could raid for a bit, and then they could watch the recording of the event together.

He sighed, feeling a sort of melancholy start to—

But wait! His eyes widened slightly as his thoughts blazed ahead at a speed that was almost too fast for him to follow, necessitating that he cool himself down with more of that refreshing juice.

If Annie already knew that he was playing a little at work—and it seemed like they were on the same page about that, which was great and saved him a lot of worrying even though they hadn't totally finished that talk—then that meant he didn't really have to keep it a not-secret anymore. In fact…

In fact, as he now considered it, he might actually be able to do one of the things he'd always wanted to do, namely a drive-by of his youngest daughter's raid, maybe dropping some kinda legendary dad joke before riding off into the sunset, ideally while carrying or wearing some awesome-looking gear—gear exactly like the Fishing Spear of the Sea God.

Now that was an idea he cou—

"Carl?"

Carl roused himself from his thoughts, realizing that everyone was staring at him. He frowned and played back the last however long, which he'd been on Auto-Carl for as he cogitated at peak efficiency, recalling that they'd gotten into a discussion about various goings-on in Onyxfell somehow—which he'd contributed vague, one-word statements to in the course of appearing attentive—and the question of how he'd met Vol had come up, to which she'd replied that probably he could tell the story better than she could.

"Nah, you can go ahead," he said to his friend. Now that the topic had come up, he was anticipating being entertained by her recollection of it.

"Uh, okay," Vol said. She looked down at the mostly-empty plate on the table for a moment. "Uh… Trying to remember…" She rubbed her forehead. "I think I… Yeah, I came back to Onyxfell, and I was sort of just wandering around the first day trying to see what had changed. Then the next morning I went to get some breakfast at a place I used to go to, and I saw this guy staggering around barefoot with his clothes all torn up. Was a little weird. Mostly because of how fucking early it was. Then the next day I saw him again, and he was even more ragged."

"Hey, it wasn't that bad," Carl interrupted, not wanting Annie to get the wrong idea since she was already giving him a funny look.

"It was a really, uh… Really respectable sort of ragged," Vol said, clearly trying to salvage things. "He looked like he'd… Maybe like he'd been… I don't know, maybe fighting lots of…"

Carl mentally pressed a hand to his face as he remembered just how bad she was at anything resembling lying.

"Well, probably he'd been doing a lot of fighting—and winning, obviously—before I saw him," Vol continued.

"Uh-huh," Annie said slowly and with the kind of emphasis on the second syllable that, even if it wasn't paired with a certain type of greatly-amused expression, would have sufficiently displayed a level of amusement that probably wasn't warranted just from the description of how worn out his novelty suit had gotten after such a short amount of game-time.

"Anyway, we talked for a while, and then he wanted to go fish…" Vol paused mid-word, giving him a slight, smug grin. "Fish battling, because he's probably the best in the world at that," she said.

"And what, precisely, is—" Mina jumped in her seat. "Oh, yes, naturally. Fish battling."

"Yeah, obviously," Vol said, starting to nod and also talk faster. "So we parted, and then we met up again coincidentally the next day, and we went out to kill some really strong rift spawn north of the city for a while, and then we went back to the workshop, and I met Carl's sex doll, and –"

"Wait, what?" Annie said, her jaw tightening and nostrils flaring as she gave him a pointy look.

"Uh, well," Carl began, not even sure how—

"Well," Vol cut in quickly with what he hoped was going to be some sort of explanation that didn't dig a deeper hole—which he wasn't entirely sure was gonna be the case because this was Vol, and she was—

"I said that," she continued, "but what I actually meant was she was calling herself that for some reason—obviously she wasn't actually Carl's sex doll, since that's not even a bunch of words that make sense when you put them together—but she was really Ir'alith's mother, and it's this whole long story, but in the end, they're—"

"What?" Carl and Mina said in unison.

"—back together and probably really happy that Carl was the one taking care of her while she was—"

Annie pressed her fingers to her temples.

"—doing weird stuff, and so really—"

The front door opened. "'Kay, I'll call you back," Bobby said. "I'm home!" she called more loudly.

"—he's a great guy," Vol finished, looking incredibly proud of herself.