"Sure, why not."

Vol's eyes crinkled as she smiled under her bandanna. "Great. What're we doing first?"

Hm. Got probably four or five hours until Mina's up and I have to check in. Race is at eighteen. Kinda was hoping to get this helmet thingy in time, but it's sounding like this is gonna be just like the thing with the shoemaker and take a while. I guess if I'm gonna be spending time with her, I might as well get to know her a bit more. No rush. She could end up being cool like Ir'alith. Ugh, I gotta figure that out at some point, don't I.

"How about some of that bacon and eggs you got yesterday to start off," Carl said.

"I was hoping you'd say that." Vol turned her head towards the shopkeeper, who was setting a plate of those same bacon and eggs onto the countertop for an old man. "Bibulus, two eggs with extra bacon!"

He held up a few fingers, likely to indicate how many minutes it would be.

"Why me?" Carl asked when she turned back.

"Mm?"

"I mean, if you wanted someone to follow around, it could've been anyone, right?" He pointed to the shop owner. "You could've stayed here and learned to make coffee or something."

Vol snorted and gave him a look. "Carl, I can make coffee. But nah, I wasn't gonna make the same offer to anyone else." She went silent for a short while. "That's all I'll say about it for now."

"Kinda weird, isn't it?" Carl said. "Is this a thing people do here?"

"Doubt it. Who's gonna give someone who walks around barefoot this many marks?"

"Hey, I bought some boots."

"Oh yeah? What happened to them?"

"Well, they're still being made. I think."

"You think? Who'd you order from?"

"This really gruff woman back in Charus City. Ugh, now that I think about it, I'm not gonna be getting back there anytime soon, am I…"

"You mean Old Ingrid?" Vol asked. She raised her left foot, displaying a plain shoe made of soft-looking leather. "Does great work. Smart ordering in advance with how busy she is."

Carl gave her a confused look. "You know her?" There must be some kinda fast-travel thing if people are going back and forth. Going in one of those slow cars would take like, at least a few weeks…

She leaned back a little. "Well… I suppose I've been there," she said, seeming reluctant to answer.

"How much did you pay?" She charged me like… Was it thirty or forty thousand? Can't imagine paying that much for—

"Five million coins," Vol said.

Carl's mouth fell open a little, and his eyes drifted again to the edge of the table.

"I was impatient," she added. "And she was busy."

"That's a lot for a pair of shoes."

"It's so worth it though," she said, sighing dreamily. "Feels like they're fucking my feet every time I take a step. That's fucking in a very good way, obviously."

"How old are you?" he asked abruptly. She curses more than anyone else I've met.

"Twenty seven. You?"

"Forty nine," Carl replied. Ugh, really feeling my age for some reason.

"Not bad for forty nine," she said, her eyes moving over him. "Just saying."

A plate of bacon and eggs came in from the side and was set down in front of him.

"Other one in a minute," the shop owner said on his way back to the kitchen area.

"Thanks?" Carl picked up his fork and speared a chunk of egg and bacon.

They sat in relative silence, interrupted only when the second plate arrived and Vol joined in the eating.

"That was pretty good," Carl said. His fork and knife lay together on his cleared plate.

"Gets me feeling human," Vol agreed with a nod.

He looked across the table. I really can't get a read on her. She's sort of just…weird. "You don't have any friends you could be playing with?"

"Do you?" she countered.

Ugh. Carl grimaced. That actually hurt. "Fine, maybe no personal questions."

Her eyes crinkled. "Agreed."

He sighed. Yeah, I should give at least one of them a call when I get out. Or maybe just send a mail. Harder to avoid doing something simple like that. "Alright, I guess we should get going." He began the process of standing up.

"To where?" Vol followed suit.

"If getting a helmet made is gonna take a while, we should head over there soon." He squinted as he always did upon stepping outside.

She followed him out of the breakfast shop. "Probably a day or two, depending. Walking or driving?"

Stolen novel; please report.

"I was just gonna walk…"

Carl turned to look down at her, noting her eyes set in what he thought he'd identified as a grimace. Harder to pick out expressions with that thing over her face.

"Too slow," Vol said. She walked out into the street just in time to halt a car heading in a northerly direction. "Two hundred marks if you take us straight to the north D-one entrance," she called to the driver, a middle-aged woman.

The woman's eyes bugged out. "S-sure!" she said with some amount of excitement.

Vol tossed a coin to her and hopped up onto the back of the car, sitting just over the rear wheel. She gestured to the empty passenger seat, then tossed a second coin forward.

Carl frowned at her. Not super safe sitting back there. Eh, whatever, not my problem. He carefully climbed over the side of the doorless car. "Thanks," he said. Pretty convenient way of getting around if you've got a lot of cash. Don't even need your own car.

"Don't mention it," the driver lady replied. She pulled away, almost immediately turning left. "It's a short drive for a couple hundred marks!"

That's about as much as I made in all those hours of stacking pottery and helping at that sewing shop. Carl grimaced deeply. Kinda got some good thinking in, but I probably shouldn't have wasted time like that.

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

"Here you are," said the woman, pulling her car to a stop a little ways off from a gate that was being guarded by a pair of gladiators, one holding a spear and shield, the other with a two-handed sword strapped to his back.

"Thanks again," Carl grunted as he struggled to escape the confines of the topless car that had no door. He tried to stand up, but the angle of the car's floor, his long legs, and the seat made it incredibly difficult somehow.

Vol stood outside the car. "Stop fucking about, Carl," she said with impatience evident in her tone.

"Look, it's hard…" He grew frustrated and tried forcibly levering himself up using the not-door, metal side of the car, but it crumpled and tore away in his hand, and he pitched sideways out of the car and onto the street. "What the heck…"

Vol started cracking up immediately, her attempts to disguise her laughs with coughing having absolutely no effect and honestly making Carl feel like she was laughing at him rather than at the stupid car which was being affected by the same freaking surface durability bug he'd been running into since he'd logged in last Friday. "Sorry, sorry," she said between coughs. She tossed another coin to the woman in the car while he struggled to his feet, not even offering him a hand to help him up or acknowledging his plight.

Carl took his feet and dusted himself off, glaring down at her.

She looked up at him out of the corners of her eyes for a moment, then bent over laughing. "How the fuck did you even do that?"

"It's not my fault," he said sullenly. Game's back to being garbage.

"This is already one of the best decisions I've made in a long time," she said after a few seconds once she'd gotten her breath back, which was really a lot longer than it should've taken and a lot more laughing in general than the entire situation had warranted. "If you're done breaking shit, we'll continue?"

"Stupid game physics," he grumbled. Roger's gonna get a long mail about this the second I figure this stupid networking thing out and stop playing real-today.

They approached the gate with Vol slightly in the lead and Carl continuing to grumble to himself behind her.

"Badge or stats," called one of the young-ish guards when they were a few steps away, a stocky, brown-haired man wearing a leather armor that left his muscular arms free.

"Huh?" Carl said.

"Challenge," called Vol.

The guard smirked, looking to his fellow. "A few every day, eh?"

The other man, who had shoulder-length dark hair and a full-sleeved leather armor, chuckled. "You take this one. I did the last."

Vol started tapping her foot. "Hurry up."

The guard turned around and set his spear and shield against the wall. "Alright. We'll jump. Highest jump—"

"Boring," Vol interrupted. "Let's fight. Informal match, usual rules." She started shaking her right hand out.

The guard, who was probably also a gladiator since it seemed like everyone here loved gladiating, gave her a condescending look. "If you want," he said.

"Whenever's fine," Vol said, gesturing with her left hand for Carl to back up while she continued to shake out her other hand.

Uh, she doesn't really seem like the fighting type? Carl looked her over, taking in her very casual, not-combat-oriented pants and shirt, her dating-sim bandanna, and her complete lack of weapons. Her figure was slim, and yes, she was obviously a woman with various curves in certain places that had no real bearing on anything else, but, while she looked like she was in good shape, she didn't seem as overly muscular as everyone else in the city, which maybe also didn't matter considering it was a game and she could look however she wanted.

"I'll give you the first strike," the guard declared in a cocky tone.

Vol started to laugh. It was a sudden, unexpected eruption of laughter that seemed to initially startle both of the guards then enrage the one who'd accepted her challenge. She turned her head towards Carl. "This was such a great decision. It's so fucking interesting spending time with you!" She snapped the fingers on her right hand, and the brown-haired gladiator-guard crumpled and fell to the ground.

The other guard's gaze pivoted up and down between his fallen comrade and Vol.

"He'll be fine in a few minutes," she said, already stepping over the defeated, unconscious gladiator-guard. "Let's go, Carl." She beckoned to him over her shoulder without turning back.

"What'd you do to him?" he called to her while he followed behind, choosing to walk around the poor guy instead of over him.

"Don't worry about it."

"Was it some kinda skill?"

They passed through the gate. The streets were the same, but the buildings became noticeably more separated out and more decorated, the signs no longer had the same uniform black text, and there were far fewer people about in general, though Carl had mostly been ignoring them while walking around as he tended to do in cities since he was so big and people tended not to mess with him, the exception obviously being if he was traveling with his daughters, in which case every single person was a potential kidnapper to be watched.

"Don't worry about it."

"I mean, you just snapped your fingers and K.O.-ed a guy."

"Yeah, he's gonna be so fucking mad when he wakes up," she said, starting to laugh.

"Can you do it more than once?"

"Not saying."

"Does it work on anyone?"

Vol looked over her shoulder at him while she walked. "Carl. I thought you didn't care about stats and system stuff."

"Well, I don't care, I'm just curious," he said. "I haven't seen anyone else use skills before, and when I got all these stupid classes and tried to look at the skills, they didn't make any sense. Like, I got a Drone class and then I had two skill choices: Drone or Drone."

She snorted her way into another loud burst of laughs. "Drone? What… How did you get that?"

"I was moving some pots and vases and stuff for a while to help out an old lady," Carl said defensively.

Vol kept laughing as they crossed a street, not even bothering to look around or check for traffic. "Why?"

"I had a lot of time to kill." Not sure whether to be annoyed at her or myself for spending so much—

"Get any other good classes while you were doing it?" she asked, turning down a street to her left.

Carl followed along a step behind. "Uh…" Also not sure I wanna say anything with how much she was laughing at just the one class.

She turned around and walked backwards. "I won't laugh anymore now," she said, seeming serious.

She's definitely gonna laugh. Alright, if she laughs, I'll…