carl@fire

"Annie's on her way back," Carl said.

"Okay, now jump over that spike pit, but you gotta bounce off that moving spike ball and use your…"

"Now what?"

"H-how did you do that?!"

Not for the first time, Bobby gawked with her mouth open as Vol casually completed a tricky-looking platforming section on her first try. After a few races, during which Vol had demonstrated her complete dominance of the game and set lap records on every course, the girls had come upon the idea of having this legendary gamer play a slightly older, procedurally-generated platformer named Castle Knight that they'd both been eager fans of a few years ago.

It was the sort of twitchy, reflex-based game that Carl had never particularly enjoyed, having felt the time investment required to truly gain mastery wouldn't transfer efficiently to anything else while providing only a short-lived satisfaction in exchange that was likely to fade swiftly if he ever thought about how much time he'd invested in an endless single-player game.

Castle Knight was also reputed to be one of the toughest games in existence due to its scaling difficulty curve as the player progressed. Despite this, Vol was playing with a relaxed manner which gave the sense that if she somehow hit one of the many, many instant-death spikes, fell into any of the instant-death pits, or even took damage, it was more likely to be a problem with the game than any fault of hers.

She'd begun to use both hands once she'd switched to this game, though rather than being due to the difficulty, it was necessitated by her hands being too small to effectively press all the buttons in the required combinations while also steering around with the joystick. After some initial complaining about not having any idea where to go, Bobby had been appointed her navigator, having apparently watched other people play the game a fair amount, which gave her an idea of where to go in the maze-like castle.

"Uh, do you need to call or anything to get food delivered?" Carl asked, again breaking into the constant game-talk that was flowing through the room.

"What? Nah, don't worry about it. Hey, I can just bounce straight up these spikes with my sword. Why didn't you say that before? It's way faster. Urgh, why's there a wall here?"

Carl decided to take her advice. He'd had a pretty stressful day, and it was nice to just sit back on the couch—though he'd actually decided to copy Vol and lie down after Sammy had grudgingly gone upstairs to focus on her homework and Driver's Ed program—and hang out. Watching Vol play this insane game was vaguely reminding him of time spent over at Tim's house when they'd been much younger, since Tim had always preferred to play the hardest games he could find, and sometimes it ended up being more fun to watch than to actually play.

"We're back," Annie called.

Carl thought about sitting up, but he was kinda in the zone. At some point over the past ten or twenty minutes, he'd managed to slip into a state of near-total relaxation, which was just what he'd been…

Fine, he'd just woken up, having invoked his low rank Dad Nap skill to enjoy a short rest while retaining the ability to leap into dad-action at a moment's notice if his Dad Sense detected even the slightest blip—which it hadn't on this occasion.

"How was yoga?" he called back while rubbing his eyes.

"Quite relaxing," Mina replied. "What's this feast that's been set out?"

"Uh, Vol, did you bring all this?" Annie asked, sounding confused.

"Yeah, just got it out," Vol said while she dashed around some kind of giant, crab-like boss, pelting it with slashes of her sword. "This game's sort of interesting. Think I fought one of these once, actually. Slimier than it looks. You said it keeps getting harder forever?"

"Yup," Bobby said. "Past a certain point it just gets impossible though."

"I guess we're eating now?" Annie called, still sounding uncertain. "Sammy, dinner!" she called more loudly into the hallway towards the stairs.

"'Kay!" Sammy shouted back.

"I think we're gonna have to pause this for now," Carl said.

"Pause?" Vol said.

"It's the button next to your right thumb?" Bobby said.

The word "PAUSED" came up over the screen.

"Huh," Vol said. "Smart. Okay, let's eat." She flipped backwards over the arm of the chair, landing on her feet and stepping towards the kitchen in a single motion.

Carl frowned. While he wasn't one to discriminate in any way or say that someone couldn't do something based on their appearance, he wasn't accustomed to seeing someone display that sort of raw athleticism after also displaying such prowess in video games. Then again, as he thought it through briefly while shepherding Bobby into the kitchen as she gawked again at Vol, it maybe made sense that she'd kind of virtually acquired the muscle memory from playing New Era so much? Was that a thing?

It seemed like it might be a thing, and he didn't really know enough about how any of it worked to make an accurate assessment. Might give them something to talk about later.

"This is…really generous? I mean, thanks, Vol," Annie said, standing next to the table in her yoga pants and top and looking at the spread in amazement.

"Wow," Bobby said.

Carl was the next to start admiring the spread that his friend had laid out while he'd been asleep. A plain, white plate and bowl were set out at each of the six seats along with a utilitarian fork and knife atop a cloth napkin. On every plate lay an identical, mouth-watering strip steak that resembled the sort he'd expect to see at a top tier steakhouse. Each bowl contained a vivid, verdant salad that he imagined must have been assembled fresh with produce that was just harvested—or gathered, since he wasn't really sure what the right term for that was. The pitcher of juice was gone, but a medium-sized corked bottle was placed behind each plate, each with a purple label that branded it "Victory Fizz" with the slogan "Tastes like winning!" underneath in blocky, gold letters with a dragon roaring behind.

"Yeah, sure," Vol said in her usual nonchalant way. "Bringing dinner's just a normal thing best friends do."

Annie shot Carl an incredulous glance, which he didn't return since he was already more or less used to how ridiculous Vol could be, even if this was his first time seeing it in the real world.

"Thanks, Vol," he said. "Really cool of you." Judging by the appearance of everything—excluding the soda, which was a brand he'd never heard of—she'd pulled out all the stops, including the ones that people would usually put on their wallets, so he'd at least offer to cover some of the cost at a later point.

"What's for—Whoa, where'd this come from?" Sammy said as she skidded into the kitchen on her socks.

"Vol was nice enough to bring dinner for us," Annie said.

Sammy's face scrunched up, and she looked to Vol. "Really? I didn't hear anything get delivered."

"Maybe you were just focusing on getting your homework done," Annie said, now having fully regained her footing. "I think a big thanks is in order."

"Yes, thank you, Vol," Mina said, smiling at the older woman.

"Thanks, Vol," Bobby said after, followed quickly by Sammy.

"Don't f—wait around or it'll get cold," Vol said as she took the nearest seat, which was coincidentally the one Rebecca had been using.

Carl wasn't about to start sharing any comparisons that might be made between the two women, but, personally, he imagined that someone like Vol was probably gonna be a way more awesome role model—minus the cursing, obviously, though she seemed to be making a strong effort to tamp that down—than someone like Rebecca. And it wasn't like he was just saying this because of how freaking good these steaks looked—though at this moment he was feeling a little overwhelmed by the regal appearance of the steak he was sitting down before, coming to realize that this was the kind of steak he'd expect Tim to be raving about, since his friend had always had a thing for exceptional steaks, and this one he was about to eat looked to be perfection itself.

"Whoaaa, is this really steak?" Bobby asked while she chewed.

"It's like… I don't even know," Sammy said after she'd taken a bite. "It's like I barely even have to chew it!"

Carl sliced into his own steak, watching as juices spread out in the incision that he was creating with hardly any effort.

"Wow," Annie said, seeming stunned after taking a bite.

"This is marvelous," Mina said.

"Mmm," Carl added when a piece of the perfectly-cooked, perfect cut of steak finally reached his mouth. He wasn't exactly a Steak Enthusiast, being the case that he enjoyed a good steak once in a while but never craved it or even really thought about steaks unless there was one directly in front of him, but he considered at this moment that if he was able to have this exact steak whenever he wanted, he would not only jump aboard the Steak Enthusiast train, he'd get certified as its driver—though he knew there was a specific word for such a role which he couldn't call to mind at this exact moment—and probably never disembark.

It was a damn good steak.

It was so good that he'd just been kinda sitting in his seat, dazed, after surviving a single bite of this divine cut of meat.

"Whoa," he said, catching his bearings over the course of several blinks.

Then he took another bite.

"Carl, you have to try this salad," Annie said. She was staring down at the bowl in front of her.

He was reluctant to disembark from the Steak Enthusiast train at this point, but it seemed that the locomotive was pulling up to the next station at the behest of its conductor, so he decided to get off and stretch his legs a bit.

Salads were something that Carl was well-accustomed to. In the course of maintaining a strict diet, not to mention ensuring that Annie was able to eat how she wanted for her own dieting preferences, he'd frequently enjoyed salads of varying types. There was the leafy type, the chopped greens type, the mixed veggies type, and so on.

This was definitely the leafy type just based on its appearance, but it had little in common with others of the sort. The greens—and non-greens, because there were some bits of colorful stuff he didn't recognize scattered about—were just more… Well, he didn't know the exact word to describe it, but this salad just looked healthier somehow. And as he tasted a forkful now, he decided that the taste matched the appearance. It felt like he must be getting healthier to a tangible degree just from a small sample.

Also, he wasn't entirely sure he could identify a single component of the salad now that he looked more closely. The green, leafy stuff was green and leafy, yes, but it didn't look like any lettuce he'd ever seen before, with the creases forming odd, almost designed patterns. What he'd thought were cucumbers had tiny blue seeds that were visible if he looked closely, and the carrot slices tasted completely different from carrots.

It was both delicious and weird, but he heard the all aboard bell ringing from the Steak Enthusiast train and had to hop back on before he got stranded in the weird forest he'd stopped at.

"It's really good," Carl said as he stuck another chunk of steak in his mouth.

"It's sooo good," Sammy added, having clearly jumped aboard the Steak Enthusiast train with him.

There wasn't much talking for the remainder of the eating part of the meal, which didn't last very long; while it was rare for Carl to fully focus on the food during a dinner with his family, today was definitely an exception.

"This soda's so fizzy!" Bobby exclaimed at one point with a confused grin just before she tipped her bottle up again.

Mina lapsed into giggles immediately after she'd tried it. "How strange!"

Not about to be left out, Carl twisted the cork off his own bottle and began to imbibe.

It really was incredibly fizzy.

If he had to put words to it, this Victory Fizz soda seemed to have an almost impossible amount of carbonation in it, to the point that it was tough to even know if he was actually drinking anything. The feeling of the carbonation was different than usual as well, more lazy—almost playful—in its sense of being bubbly, for lack of a better way to describe it. Despite this, it still had the same thirst-quenching property he expected of a beverage, so he chalked it up to being some new form of novelty drink.

He shook his head in amusement as he turned the bottle around to admire the label. Did it really taste like winning? Maybe. He wasn't entirely sure what winning tasted like, but he imagined it might taste like this great meal he was sharing with his family and friend after a really stressful day.