carl@fire

"We'll get back to this later," Carl said in a low voice, looking around the table to make sure everyone knew—though mostly looking at Vol, who had once more kinda proven herself to be a bit of a loose cannon with how she brought up stuff that, while it wasn't like he was gonna keep secret, was maybe not anything he'd been prepared to be talking about right now—what he meant. "And I'd appreciate it if you could keep the cursing to a minimum around the girls," he added quickly while continuing to stare at her.

Vol gave him a confused look, and Mina had brought her hands up to cover her mouth but was now lowering them, but it was too late for him to say anything else.

"Hey," Bobby said as she wandered in with her bag over one shoulder, looking much less zombie-like than she had earlier and still wearing her shorts after coming straight home from Badminton Club.

"Welcome home, Bobby," Mina said, waving to her with a shy smile.

"Hey, pumpkin," Carl said after having shifted his focus back completely into being a dad.

"Wow, you really do have more daughters," Vol remarked.

"Oh, um, hi, I'm Bobby," Bobby said when she noticed Vol.

"Vol," said Vol, giving a casual wave.

"She's a friend of mine," Carl added.

Bobby's forehead creased. "Vol… Like the mouse?"

Vol's head cocked as her brows dropped in confusion. "Huh?"

"Uh, I mean, well, there's the type of mouse called a vole?" Bobby said, shrugging her bag up higher onto her shoulder as her expression turned a little awkward in an adorable way.

"Oh. Huh." Vol looked like she was thinking about it for a moment. "Nah, actually, my name's originally pronounced Wol, short for Wolcatia, but the sound's changed because of the language switch."

"Your name's actually Vol?" Carl said, having imagined that it was a name she'd made up to go with the theme of the city she spent a lot of time in and get that shopping discount.

"Obviously I'm gonna use my real name, Carl," Vol said in an exasperated tone, turning her head to give him an exasperated look. She moved her attention back to the new arrival. "Huh. Got good balance," she said, giving the girl a short once-over. "What're you training for?"

"I'm in my school's badminton club," Bobby replied. She shifted from one foot to the other, taking on a puzzled expression. "You can tell I have good balance just by looking at me?"

Vol shrugged, then nodded. "Yeah."

Bobby slowly moved her confused look to her dad then her mom. "I'm gonna go shower," she said after a moment. She looked to Mina. "Wanna play something when I'm done?"

Mina's sudden grin was ecstatic. "I've love to," she said, sounding like she was poorly trying to conceal her excitement in a really cute way.

"'Kay, be right back," she said, already turning to go.

Vol took a drink from her glass. "Could probably be a decent fighter with some training," she said, grabbing one of the remaining pieces of cheese off the plate.

"I don't think she needs to worry about that," Annie said in her Deciding voice.

Carl wasn't about to jump in and point out that his daughter likely already was doing some kind of fighting in New Era, especially given how prolific she apparently was in PvP—which was something he'd been meaning to talk to her about based on how opposed to the idea Annie was—having continued to wait another few seconds until he heard footsteps on the stairs, at which point he said somewhat quietly, "Hold on, go back to the part where you were talking about Ir'alith's mom being…"

Vol continued to chew another piece of cheese she'd grabbed while staring off into somewhere, almost like she didn't even know he was talking to her, and then she turned suddenly to look at Mina.

"If we might return to our previous topic?" Mina said, her tone anxious and her smile fading.

"Oh. Uh…" Vol rubbed her forehead for a moment before she looked to Carl. "What were we talking about? Memory's sort of weird today."

"Ir'alith's mom?" he said again.

"Right, obviously," she said, now sounding a little annoyed. "Uh, what's to say? She was gone for a while, and then it turned out she was just being really fucking weird and hiding from everyone."

"Hiding," Mina repeated.

"Yeah. I don't really know the details, but Sateus did this thing, and then she stopped and was sort of more normal," Vol said, punctuating the statement with a refill of her glass from the pitcher. "How's this stuff so fucking good," she muttered.

"I believe I'd like to think for a short while," Mina said quietly, getting up from her seat and moving with increasing speed towards the stairs.

"Huh," Vol said as she watched the girl leave.

Carl thought about saying something like he would've if she were Sammy or Bobby, but he was still working on figuring out how he was gonna be the best dad possible for Mina, and he wasn't totally locked into a mindset for it yet after his earlier revelations, and by the time he reached this point in his thoughts, she was already gone.

Annie leaned forward over the table. "So… Ir'alith's mother was calling herself a 'sex doll'?" she asked with a toothy grimace contorting her face.

It was definitely a weird thing to consider, that's for sure.

"Yeah. Weird, right?" Vol said.

"Yeah. Weird," Annie said, her grimace changing more to confusion as she looked to Carl.

"So, uh, they're like, a happy family again?" Carl asked to try and jog things along since he felt like they were really spending way too much time on what was a weird kinda thing that wasn't entirely his business, even if it did relate to his friend, but it was like, a really weird personal matter that Ir'alith's mom would run off—though he kinda vaguely recalled maybe having a conversation about this at some point in the past which he… No, it was just too long ago and too brief to remember exactly, though he'd somehow gotten the idea that the woman in question had passed away—and hide away in a VR game calling herself a sex doll.

"Probably." Vol shrugged. "Seemed happy enough."

"Well, good for her," Carl said as he rubbed his beard, now trying to deal with the awkwardness of recalling the suggestive words and acts of the doll—who was actually Ir'alith's mom—and also how she could shapeshift, which was apparently a thing—although, as he continued to remember, he was really wondering how she'd… Was there some way for players to read each others' minds?

There was a lot going on here, and, while he considered Ir'alith a friend, it was objectively the case that they hadn't actually spent much time at all being friends compared to how much time he'd spent with Vol—who was actually here—or even axe-dad, and he wasn't too interested in going back over whatever totally bizarre weirdness had happened with her mom, especially considering how even more weird it was when he further recalled that he'd bought her at an auction.

It was too freaking weird, and his mind was rebelling, so Carl shelved it for now. "Hey, Annie," he said, preparing to change the topic, "what do you think this juice tastes like?"

Annie tilted her head and, after a moment's pause, frowned down at her half-full glass. "It's… I was thinking earlier that it's a familiar flavor, but I don't actually recognize it at all. Is it… I mean, it's safe to be drinking, right?" she asked Vol.

"Safe? Yeah, we've been drinking it for a long fucking while. Carl's probably had four or five glasses."

Annie looked at him, then looked down at her glass and shook her head. "Whatever," she muttered before she raised her drink to her mouth.

The sound of the front door opening again reached the kitchen.

"Hey," Sammy called, followed by the sound of the front door shutting.

"Carl, how many kids do you have, anyway?" Vol asked.