Carl started running. He wasn't about to say he was an incredible runner or anything, but he knew how running worked and did some miles every week on the treadmill. Sure, nobody was going to be calling him Carl "Running" Weathers, but he was capably running along at what he felt was a pretty quick pace until he looked to his side and saw Vol running along just a tiny bit ahead of him, at which point he started pushing himself, picking up speed to at least catch up since she was so close, and it felt like maybe this was actually gonna be way more competitive than he'd thought.

Vol glanced over as he pulled up alongside her with his accelerated pace. She moved slightly ahead again.

It was a race now.

Carl—

"You're a little fast," Vol called out, coming to a decelerated stop as she tagged the rock.

Carl, distracted by her call and how fast they'd apparently reached their destination which had been pretty far in the distance what seemed like only a few seconds earlier, tripped over his foot and went flying, crashing through the stupidly soft side of the big rock and landing on his chest on the other side. This is starting to get really freaking annoying. He stood up and dusted himself off yet again with a scowl on his face.

"You said you don't know how things work?" Vol said, giving him an odd look. "What sort of things?"

"Well, like how skills work—"

"What's to know? Everyone just guesses as best they can based on the names. It's like a lottery."

The words gave him pause. I guess… He rubbed his beard as a new idea crossed his mind. Is it maybe actually a really smart idea? I mean, if you give the players a ton of info, then they start min-maxing everything and the game's sort of ruined. But if it's all super vague, I guess it's frustrating, but everyone's in the same boat, at least for a while? Is FE really thinking at that level? He pressed a hand to his forehead as he teetered on the brink of the realization that maybe the game was way more competently designed than he'd imagined in a very subtle, devious way.

"What else?" Vol asked, knocking him out of his ruminations about what an unbelievably genius idea it would be to just not give players any info at all about how things worked but simultaneously make the game so realistic and with such limitless possibility that they felt like they had to keep playing and figure things out for themselves.

"Uh…" Carl let out a slow breath. "Well, the whole magic system's pretty hard to use—"

"Fucking magic? You're trying to… Almost nobody here can use magic, Carl," she said in a greatly-amused tone.

"I mean, it's easy to do something like this," he said, concentrating enough to make another ball of water in his hand, "but like, making portals? How's that even work?"

Vol stared at his hand. "You…can use magic."

"Just a little," he said, shaking the water off his hand to splash over on the side. "I mean, my friend Ir'alith's way better at it than—"

"Ir'alith, you said?"

"Yeah, why?"

"And you're friends?"

"Yes?"

Vol rubbed her forehead.

Oh right, I forgot she's super famous-ish.

"You're more interesting than I thought," she said. She crossed her arms. "And you still don't know how things work."

"Should I?" Carl asked, feeling distinctly like he was missing something.

"Now we have to get to the challenge," Vol said, starting off in a random direction. "Can't pass up this chance."

Carl followed after her, his longer legs closing the distance after a few steps. "What chance?"

"The chance to see something really fucking interesting, obviously!" she said, pumping her eyebrows up at him.

"Like what?"

"Not telling."

"C'mon, stop being so mysterious about everything."

"What do you say to another race? That last one was close. I'll answer all your questions if you win this one."

"Fine."

"We'll run in that direction. First one to the tall rock that looks like a cock wins."

"Wait…"

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"Onetwothree!"

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

"That was even closer."

"What are you, showing off some running skill?"

"Huh?"

"Huh?"

Vol started to chuckle. "Don't worry about it. Welcome to the challenge of Sateus." She gestured to the odd, billowing fog that was rolling around to the left of the very phallic-shaped rock they'd just reached. "I imagine at least one of us is gonna have some fun here."

"Uh," Carl looked skeptically at the fog. "What's this about?"

"You'll see, you'll see," she said, waving for him to follow as she set off towards the mist. "Trust me, I think this is gonna answer a lot of questions for you."

"And how's that?" Carl let out a sigh and started following her again, even though it really seemed like all he was doing was following her around this morning despite their deal being that she was going to be following him around, which he supposed was sort of his own fault since he hadn't really had a great idea of what he'd been planning on doing that day when he'd made the deal. Also… Kinda fun so far? Definitely different, that's for sure. Like a little adventure. Which is definitely gonna help me get that extra thinking I need to be able to figure things out.

"Hard to explain," Vol replied without looking back. "But you're curious, right?"

The fog blew around his feet, feeling vaguely cool. He couldn't see too far ahead now, with the fog growing increasingly dense and obscuring everything starting a few paces ahead. "You're not like, gonna try to leave me in here, right?" he called.

Vol laughed loudly. "You say that like you don't trust me, Carl!"

"Should I?" he replied.

They walked a few paces in silence.

"Well, I did just drop a little over twenty thousand marks on a helmet for you for no fucking reason, didn't I?" she said, stepping fully into the fog.

"I guess…"

"Just keep following my voice," she said, the sound coming from in front of him though he couldn't see anything but fog as he walked a few more paces in the direction he'd last been walking. "Not much farther now." The voice had changed position, now a little to his right, and he altered his course, starting to feel a little annoyed at the continued mystery which didn't really seem to have that much point other than being mysterious, though he wasn't particularly worried for obvious reasons. "Watch your step. There's some corpses here."

Carl stumbled over a soft-ish object and grimaced. "You're still not gonna tell me—"

"Here's the thing, Carl," Vol said, her voice now much closer. He felt a jerk on his right hand and stumbled to his right side, nearly losing his footing as a tremendous force impacted the ground where he'd been standing. "I think you're hiding something interesting." He felt something grab his hand again and staggered forward from the sudden pull. There was a high-pitched screech from behind him. "Maybe you know, maybe you don't. But I'm gonna get it out of you one way or the other."

What's she talking about? He felt a sense of urgency rise up within himself, and then he was again tugged hard, this time to the left. An even bigger force impacted the ground where he'd been standing, causing him to lose his balance for a moment.

"Almost got you there!" Vol laughed, the sound echoing from behind him. "We're close now. Fucking fog is so annoying!"

"Vol, this isn't funny. I don't know what—"

"Yeah, yeah, don't worry about it," she interrupted.

Carl felt a push on his back and stumbled forward again, coming into an uneven, rocky clearing ringed by fog with light shining down from the sky above. He spun around to look behind him, but there was only a wall of fog. "Vol?"

There was no reply other than another high-pitched roar as a giant triceratops-thing with way more than three horns, and four eyes, and fangs entered the clearing a short ways away and breathed actual fire into the air.

He sighed. Alright, very funny. I guess maybe it was all just a prank or something. At least that never changes in games. Some people are always gonna be trolling. Kinda disappointing though, she was starting to grow on me.

The tri-quadra-ceratops thing roared again and charged at him.

Carl punched the annoying thing in its mouth like he'd done to the big t-rex, and it splattered into a shower of blood and gore which, helpfully, exploded away from himself and didn't ruin his new clothes that Mina had made him buy.

"I knew it!" Vol exclaimed, appearing out of the fog to the right. "You are strong!"

Carl rolled his eyes. "Uh-huh. Look, you had your fun, but I think we're done now."

"No, I mean, you're strong, Carl," she said, raising her eyebrows. "I just needed a way to prove it."

A second, bigger tri-quinta-quadratops thing with more horns and teeth roared its way out of the fog towards them from behind her.

What the heck was that? Carl watched as the giant monster dissolved and then completely vanished the same instant its head emerged from the fog.

"Like I was saying," Vol continued while she walked towards him and pointed to the exploded monster. "You killed that in a single blow."

Carl shrugged, starting a frown that he felt confident would turn into a scowl soon. "So? You just led me out here to fight some monster? What if I couldn't beat it?"

"I thought you could handle it after landing on your fucking face like that when I threw you over the wall," she said with a snicker. "I don't even understand how you did that. Even gave you a great throw so you'd land on your feet!"

"And how'd you know that wouldn't… Oh."

"I did ask," she said, sounding exasperated. "You weren't joking when you said you didn't know how things work. What, you thought it was some kind of fucking accident when you destroyed the side of that woman's car before? Or when you smashed into that rock and destroyed it instead of getting stopped by it?"

"Well, yeah, I mean, I've been getting—"

Vol growled in clear annoyance. "No, I'm telling you, that's the right way of things, Carl." She rubbed her forehead. "Let me see your stats."

"What?"

"Your stats. Let me see them."

"Nah, I think I'm just gonna go back," Carl said, giving her a disinterested look that he felt encompassed at least some part of how annoyed he was feeling at whatever scheme she'd been plotting at his expense. "It's been fun, but I'm calling off the deal." He turned back towards the place he thought he'd come in by and started walking. "I'll get you your marks back. Thanks anyway," he called over his shoulder.

Vol walked out of the fog in front of him with both hands up in front of herself. "You're upset. I understand, but—"

"Not upset, just disappointed." Carl executed his most powerful skill at that moment, Dad's Disappointed, and let her feel the full force of his dad powers.