He woke up.

"Morning, master," the doll whispered in his ear.

He squinted at her and grunted. She was naked again and had begun stroking his face with her tail, but he wasn't…

He grudgingly admitted that it felt pretty good.

Fine.

"Get off me," he rasped, his throat dry from lack of coffee.

A moment later he was in the bathroom.

Freaking game.

Too realistic.

All the wrong ways.

Awful.

Everything was awful.

The doll hugged him when he left the bathroom, and it was awful. "Leaving again, master?"

"Coffee."

"I'm gonna miss you. Will you be back soon?"

"Coffee."

"Okay, I'll keep guarding 'till you get back. Am… Am I doing a good job, master?"

"Coffee."

"Yay! Thanks, master! I love you!"

"Coffee."

----------------------------------------

He settled onto a stool and began the awful process of waiting for his coffee to arrive.

An awful amount of time passed.

Someone sat down across from him, and it was awful.

The awful person grunted.

He grunted.

They sat and wallowed in the awfulness of pre-coffee time.

A steaming mug of ambrosia was placed on the table in front of him.

He blinked, and it was empty.

He squinted. Yup, the mug was definitely empty. He felt his brain activating.

"Huh. Three days in a row."

He looked across the table.

Vol was sitting across from him, again wearing her face bandanna and a simple t-shirt that might or might not have been different from the one she wore the day before. She took another sip from her half-empty mug.

"Three?" he said, nearing full readiness in his thinking abilities.

"Today, yesterday, day before yesterday," Vol said, ticking her fingers.

"Guess so," Carl said. He stretched his arms over his head. "Can I get another cup?" he called to the shop owner.

The older man grunted and brought over the kettle.

He reached into the pocket of his new pants to grab coins, but the shop owner waved his hand once he'd finished pouring. "All paid."

Did I… He fished around in his pocket, feeling roughly what he imagined to be the right number of coins.

"Found your cock yet?" Vol asked. She sipped her coffee under her bandanna.

Carl blinked.

"Third name?" she said in a too-innocent tone.

He stared for a moment, then started to chuckle. "You've got a real one-track mind," he said, shaking his head. He took a drink from his mug.

"Well, it's our third meeting, and you cleaned yourself up." She leaned forward. "Rethinking my offer?"

"Nah, can't say I am," he said. She's totally just messing with me. "And it's Carl Maximus Weathers now."

She laughed loudly, squeezing her eyes shut. "A little too fucking obvious, isn't it?" she asked once her amusement had tapered off to mere chuckles.

Would've figured she'd be too young to get the reference. Carl shrugged but was unable to resist grinning along with the fellow movie-lover. "Didn't say there were rules to it. Maybe I should've just made it 'coffee'." Ah, shoot, I should've said it was Low-Risk. Perfect chance. Eh, don't wanna go changing it after I've already started telling people this one. Just gotta hope nobody starts inspecting me to see whether it's the real name of my character. Assuming that's a thing. Should've checked out more of those voice commands…

"A sword's a sword, as they say," Vol remarked, her shoulders still shaking slightly.

"A sword is a sword," Carl repeated, shaking his head in response. Gamers are on another level. I kinda missed this though. She's sort of ridiculous like Tim—always bringing up random, inappropriate stuff.

"So how have you been spending your time, Carl?" she asked. "Is it okay if I call you Carl? I'm gonna, even if we're not gonna be thrusting your Maximus inside me."

Carl snorted, spilling some coffee back into his mug mid-sip. "You always like this so early?"

She tilted her head. "What's time got to do with it? If I wanna do something, I'll do it. Probably."

Makes sense. She's just playing to have fun, that's for sure. No second life here. "Fair point. Carl's fine, Vol."

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"Don't be whiny. My name's not important," she said with a sip of her coffee for punctuation. "So how do you spend your time when we're apart, Carl?"

Pretty nosy today. Carl frowned, his Dad Sense flaring. "You first."

She raised her eyebrows. "Me? Nothing interesting about how I spend my time. I'm nobody. But you're not from here, right? Must have some stories to tell."

"Humor me."

Vol finished her coffee and set the cup on the table. "Fine, fine. What the fuck did I even do yesterday…" Her gray eyes moved up and to the left. "Yesterday, I bought you coffee and accused you of having lost your cock while I ate. We parted, and I went to check that church we talked about. Listened to people there babble on about this and that for a while before I left. You were right. Waste of time. Really boring. Walked around the city for a while to see if anything was interesting, had a fun argument with some victory-seekers near the arena, ate something, watched a couple battles at the arena to see if it would be fun, got bored, met one of the fighters who lost and fucked for a while…"

She shrugged. "Not that interesting, but I'll keep going if you want. Or maybe you want details?" she asked with a playfully raised eyebrow.

Carl blinked at the full-featured accounting. Huh, so that's an average day in the game. Sounds about right for someone who's maybe not particularly combat-oriented, I guess. Just wander around and have fun. He sipped his coffee. Maybe it was a false alarm. She did buy me coffee yesterday, even if she does have a kinda Tim sense of humor.

"What do you think?" she said, pumping her eyebrows up and down. "Ready to tell me a little about Carl Maximus Weathers?"

"Well," Carl said. "I went fishing at the bridge like I said I was going to. Caught a bunch of fish there, then I went and sold 'em for a bunch of money to this guy up in D-four—"

"Capiton?"

"Yeah, him." He took another sip of his coffee. "Um, went back home, then we decided to head up to the track to do some racing—"

"We?" Vol interrupted, her brows furrowed.

"Yeah, me and…my driver," he said, feeling a need to be more protective. "That went pretty well—should be an easy win later today—and then we watched some races, got some lunch, went back…" He hesitated for a moment. Yeah, probably shouldn't bother with any of the stuff about those kids since it involves the doll, even if they're pretty annoying. "Then we mostly just sat around thinking about stuff and working on the car."

"Okay, so your driver seeks victory," Vol said.

"Doesn't everyone who competes?"

"True." She tapped her fingers on the table for a few seconds. "Why though?"

"Hm?"

"Your driver. Why does he seek victory?"

Carl finished his coffee and set the cup on the table. "Not sure I understand. What's the point of doing it if you aren't trying to win, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"Fun?"

Vol gave him a skeptical lowering of one dark eyebrow. "Carl, nobody races for fun alone."

I guess that's true. Everyone wants to win at least a little bit. "More of a…" He frowned. How do I put this. "Sort of like revenge, is maybe how I'd describe it? She thinks by winning at this, she'll finally be able to beat someone she's been afraid of for a long time."

"Huh," Vol said. She stared down at her mug, rotating it between her fingers on the table. "Think she'll win?"

"Hope so." The statement reminded him of an idea he'd had previously. "Hey, you seem like you know your way around the city. Any idea where I could get a custom-made helmet?"

"Mm." She tapped her chin over her bandanna. "Maybe. What're you looking for?"

"I was thinking something with a lot of cushioning on the inside, and it'd come down around the chin like this," he said while moving his hands around to indicate the shape. "You know, like a racing helmet. I guess it'd have to be metal, though not too heavy. And then I wanna get something specific painted on it."

"For racing," Vol mused. "If you're okay with any helmet like that, I know a few shops. Then you could just get it painted. But if you want it custom like you said, which usually means fitted, then that narrows it down. A metal that's light narrows it down even more. And if you want it to be good…"

Hm. Well, if I'm gonna get Mina a cool racing crown it'd have to be custom for it to really be cool, wouldn't it. Not gonna get something that she won't think is awesome.

He was Carl Weathers, and he would never buy anything but the best for his daughters.

I mean, she's not actually my daughter, but she seems to need someone to look out for her now. And she's really cute when she gets all excited about racing. Thought she was gonna pull a Sammy and tackle me when I suggested heading to the track yesterday. "Nah, I gotta get the best. Needs to be comfortable, needs to look awesome, needs to have good defense."

"How many marks you got?"

"Maybe around four hundred?"

"Mm." Vol tapped the table again. "I'll make you a deal, Carl," she said after a moment. "You're interesting. And no, you said you weren't interested, so I don't mean it like that."

"I'm listening."

"A helmet like you're talking," she said slowly, staring over his head, "you'll only get in D-one. If you want the best, that is. Probably cost around five thousand marks, too. If you wanna get it made soon, you'll need to double that—at a minimum—since they're always busy making whatever the fuck all those idiot gladiators and stat-seekers are always ordering."

Carl grimaced. That'd take a lot of grinding out those fish.

"I can afford it," Vol said. She set her hand palm-down on the table and moved it laterally, leaving a dozen or so coins engraved with the thousand-mark denomination behind. "It's just money. Not trying to brag, but that's how it is."

Alright, so she's been around for a while. He rubbed his beard. "And?"

"Like I said," Vol swept a hand over the table casually, and the coins disappeared in its wake. "I think you're interesting. Spend today with me, and I'll buy you your helmet."

Carl blinked. "Uh, when you say spend the day—"

She started to laugh immediately. "This is what I mean!" she said, tipping her head back and laughing louder. "You told me you didn't wanna fuck, but then you act like I'm the one who doesn't get it." She continued to laugh as though it was the funniest thing she'd ever heard, which probably it wasn't since it wasn't really that funny at all, although it might actually be a little bit funny the more he considered how stupid it made both of them seem.

He chuckled. "Alright, alright, maybe that was kind of a dumb thing to say. I've, uh, been dealing with some pretty unreasonable people lately." Understatement, really. Stupid doll's programming is way too focused. Feels like I should tell someone to tone it down, but then I'd have to admit to having one. Ugh.

"Kind of, " Vol repeated, covering her face with both hands while she continued to laugh even harder.

"So… You just wanna hang out today, and then you'll give me enough money to—"

"Nah, I said I'd buy it, didn't I?" she cut in, still giggling a little. "That means I'll take you to where you need to go and pay for it, no matter the cost. We can go right now if you want."

Carl frowned. "Wait, you said spend the day, but you'll pay your end first?" This is one of the weirder deals I've been offered.

"You gonna run away from me in my city?" Vol asked in an amused tone. She folded her arms in front of herself and leaned forward over the table. "That'd be interesting too, in a way."

She's a weird one, that's for sure. He considered it. "So what would we be doing?"

The odd, face bandanna-wearing woman shrugged. "Whatever the fuck we want. I'm bored. If you know what you're doing, I'll follow."

Weirder and weirder. It's like she's just trying to kill time. Well, whatever, people have their own enjoyment from stuff. Guess it can't hurt. An idea came to him. "I have a condition," he said, grinning a little.

"Mm?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Take off your bandanna."

"Mm," Vol tapped her chin through the cloth. "Counter-offer: I'll show you my face if I can meet your driver."

Carl's brows immediately lowered.

"I'm just curious," she said defensively. "You said she's racing later today, didn't you? So I'll be seeing her anyway."

"Maybe we'll table that for now," Carl said slowly. Not gonna just bring random people to see Mina. She won't be up for a long time anyway, so I'll have a better feel for things by then. Can probably just agree to meet up again tomorrow and get rid of her for the afternoon if I'm not getting a good vibe.

"Fine with me," said Vol. "We have a deal, then?"