carl@fire

Carl clomped down the stairs on his bare feet, observing that the feel of the smooth wood underfoot was enjoyable and the added safety that came with the absence of the frictionless surfaces of socks was something he appreciated.

He'd taken a couple minutes to reflect and then change back out of his work mindset, additionally making sure he was back in a more appropriate mood that he was satisfied with in order to go back to being with his family.

The kitchen was empty save for Annie, who was doing some grading at the table, just as she usually did whenever she had a few minutes to spare. She'd always believed that a great teacher should be able to go over test material with her students while it was still fresh in their minds, which meant she strove to get all her quizzes and tests graded for the following day.

"Important work call?" she asked as he walked in.

"Uh, well, it was Charles," Carl said, scratching his beard. "Charles Massey."

Annie slowly set her red pen down and turned in her chair. "Oh. That's unusual, isn't it?"

"Yup. He wanted to explain his reasoning on some stuff. And he, uh, kinda confirmed that maybe I didn't mishear Gab this afternoon? Though it's still pretty hard to believe."

"That's great news, Carl!" she said with a pleased smile.

"Yeah, well, I'm not really sure what'll be left for me to actually do if all those changes go through, but it'll be nice to have the headcount to actually get some stuff done instead of just barely being able to keep up with tickets." He supposed he'd have to play it by ear a bit, since this was just going to be too weird to think about before it happened.

He took a look around the kitchen. "Oh, you already cleaned up? I was gonna…"

"Um, no, Vol said she'd take care of it, and when I looked away for a second, she'd taken care of it?" Annie looked confused by the events she was recalling.

"Huh," Carl said. He was pretty surprised that Vol had really gone the full distance on this dinner, but then again, he was also just surprised that she'd showed up at his door in general that day, so that was kind of keeping with his friend's consistent way of doing surprising things when she felt like it.

"Okay, okay, but we gotta go!" Sammy called from the den, causing him to immediately reorient his thoughts.

"Fiiine," Bobby said in the same tone she used whenever she was getting interrupted from something she wanted to keep doing.

Annie shut the folder of papers she'd been working on and slipped it back into her work bag. "Game time," she said. "Is… Did Vol say anything about coming to this, or is she leaving, or what?" she said quietly.

"Let's f—go, then!" Vol said. "Gonna see what this basketball game's about."

"I…" Carl began, in that moment delving deep into his thoughts to determine how he felt about that, during which time he used some of the energy he'd stored up to invoke a mid rank skill, Rapid Cognition, to aid him in sifting through various factors which would sway him in one direction or another, such as how likely it seemed for Vol to cheer for Sammy—very—and how likely it seemed for Sammy to want her to go—also very, judging by how quickly his friend had managed to achieve "cool" status with the girls—and then obviously not leaving out any possible risks that might be involved if she went—probably some cursing at some point—as well as the really obvious, more practical question that he arrived at.

He frowned. "How's she gonna get there?"

It was a simple fact that neither of their cars could seat six people, which was the number of people currently in the house and the number of people who needed to get from the house to the school where the game was happening. They could take both cars, sure, but—

"I'm gonna look around the city for a while," Vol said as she wandered in to stand next to them. "I'll meet you there?"

That was the great thing about Vol. Any problems that came up always seemed to get resolved really quick and with minimal hassle.

"Alright," Carl said with a shrug, wondering how she was planning to go looking around before the game but then also remembering that they always had to get to the place super early since his daughter was one of the players who needed to warm up with her team.

"I'll see you around," she said. She gave a wave, then walked to the front door and left without another word.

If it was anyone else leaving like this—which was a kind of weird thing to do after barging in, hanging out all afternoon, and then providing a luxurious dinner worthy of any Steak Enthusiast—he'd have been surprised, and he'd probably have thought about it more.

This was Vol though.

If there was one person he imagined could do just about anything without it seeming unusual or out of character, it was probably Vol.

He looked to Annie, then to the girls, who had already assembled in the hallway near the door to the garage, talking in low voices while they put their shoes—or in Mina's case, boots—on. Sammy had changed into her jersey and shorts, while Bobby and Mina were both looking adorable in their jeans and hoodies, with their hair pulled into matching ponytails with matching scrunchies—not that Sammy wasn't also looking adorable, of course, because she always looked adorable, but she was also wearing her basketball uniform, which meant that she looked more like a future pro athlete to him at that moment.

"She's always like that?" Annie asked, staring after Vol.

"Yeah, more or less," Carl said. "Kinda just does what she wants when she wants."

"Good person to have on your side," she remarked.

The drive over was uneventful. Mina had insisted on sitting in the middle seat in the back, which had further endeared her to Bobby, and they'd spent most of the time talking about the racing game they'd played the night before. Sammy, meanwhile, was already deep into her pre-game preparations, messaging away rapidly on her phone and starting to show off the determined look she got when she was focusing really hard on something.

As usual, his previously-eldest-but-now-middle daughter gave out quick hugs and then dashed off with her sports bag to meet up with her teammates the instant his car pulled to a stop in the school's parking lot, which brought him around to a new thought: how was Vol even going to know where the game was? She hadn't asked for the name of the school that the away game was being played at, and he assumed that she'd be taking a taxi wherever she was going, but it seemed like this was going to be a problem for her. Then again, he'd been upstairs on the phone for a while, so maybe she'd asked and put it in her phone in the meanwhile, which led him to the realization that he didn't even have any way of contacting her outside the game, which progressed to the subsequent thought that it was sort of a weird thing to be thinking about his in-game friend he'd only really met for the first time that day, even if they'd spent a lot of virtual time together before that.

He frowned for just a moment as he worked to tally all the unusual things that had happened that day, many of which had somehow related to Vol.

"I'm quite eager to see Sammy's performance," Mina said in an excited tone, bouncing cutely on her toes in a way that made her seem a few years younger than she was and drawing Carl back into the present with a near-overload of cuteness.

"Gonna maybe be a tough game," Bobby said with an equally adorable frown. "Other team made it to state quarterfinals last year."

"She did claim she'd be facing one of the more skilled teams," Mina said. "Perhaps I've misread her attitude, but it was as though she'd felt daunted by the idea of it?"

Carl's frown returned. Sammy had felt daunted by the matchup? He didn't remember picking up on anything like that. Had he missed it? His eyes widened the slightest amount. He'd been a little distracted today with all the unusual things going on between work and Vol, and maybe he'd been so distracted that he'd missed something as important as one of his daughters feeling nervous about an upcoming event? The kind of nervousness that could absolutely be tempered with one of his great pep talks?

He felt his hands growing clammy at the prospect of having missed a potentially crucial moment in the life of one of his daughters. Sammy had just begun to play as a starter on her new team, and if she didn't play up to her full potential, that could be the kind of setback that had a lasting effect on her confidence if she didn't push past it. Obviously he'd always assume that she'd play her best and not dwell overly on the possibility of a loss, but, as today's work craziness had pointed out to him, he needed to really think about all the possibilities in order to avoid overlooking something that might end up being super important.

And now that he'd touched the edges of that work stuff, a small worry again began to creep into his thoughts. The company was planning to hire some outside contractors, in theory, but what if they couldn't handle it? Or what if they couldn't solve it fast enough, and the whole thing did whatever it was going to do? At some point, that would be his fault for not finding it sooner, wouldn't it?

He wasn't trying to focus overly on that possible outcome, but it was definitely something he was thinking about. Not only was it the sort of bungle that he imagined would have to be career-ending for him if it was made more public—which this sort of Incident Blaming tended to be—but he'd been serious when he said earlier on the call that Bobby really loved that game. Right now he was definitely a cool dad in her eyes, but there was absolutely no way he'd be anything resembling cool if he ended up causing the destruction of what was hailed as the greatest game of all time—no, he imagined that he'd achieve such a total lack of coolness at that point that it'd be impossible for him to even get back to the point of breaking even, which—

"Worrying?" Annie said as she clasped his right hand with her left. She checked him lightly with her hip while they walked behind the still-chatting girls and approached the unfamiliar school's gymnasium.

Carl started. "Uh, maybe a little," he said, not having realized that he'd gotten so deep into his thoughts in such a short amount of time.

"I thought you said everything was good?" She squeezed his hand.

"Yeah, no, it's probably gonna be fine," he said, resolving to focus on the present, when he had to be ready to cheer at maximum power for his daughter.

"You'll tell me if anything else happens, right?"

He held the door open for her as they entered the mostly empty gym lobby. "Of course," he said.

"Okay," Annie said, giving him a concerned raise of her eyebrows. "And we still need to talk more about all that stuff later."

Carl nodded. There was a lot left to talk about, but that could all wait.

He needed to get focused.

It was about to be game time.