"You're maybe more interesting than I thought," Vol said, holding the door open for him.

"Oh?" He walked out and started in the general direction of D-five.

"I wanna meet your driver," she said as she caught up.

"Ehh…" Not sure I'm comfortable with her meeting Mina. She's maybe a little too fragile to be dealing with someone this…weird. "I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Well, you won't even show me your face," Carl began, "you're kinda loud and, uh…explicit…" I guess maybe it's mostly the face thing. I know it's a game, but someone who won't show their face just seems—

"I'll show you my face," Vol said. "That was the earlier deal, wasn't it? And I can be quieter if I want to."

He looked at her with skepticism. "Okay, then take your bandanna off."

"What?" She shook her head vigorously. "No, I meant somewhere private."

"You're really that afraid of being recognized?"

"Uh, well… No, obviously not. Why would anyone recognize me?"

Carl sighed.

"It's not like I've really given you any reason not to trust me, right?" she wheedled. "I helped you out with a lot of things, didn't I? And I convinced you about your stats! Just think what you might've done if I hadn't! You could've really hurt someone! That's something people care about, right?"

The words brought him to a lurching stop physically and mentally, and his eyes widened. I really could've. He pressed a hand to his forehead. All those times I was patting Mina or giving her a hug… His hand dropped to cover his mouth. And she doesn't have any of the filtering enabled, so… His thoughts went tumbling around in his head. I mean, she would've said something, wouldn't she?

Vol stood next to him with an expectant look on her face.

Carl chewed on the corner of his lip. Gonna have to be a lot more careful. Wow, that could've been really bad. He let out a breath. I guess… Gah, I hate to give it to her, but Vol's kinda right. "Fine," he said, still feeling some intangible reluctance even despite all the things his companion-for-the-day had done so far, which, as he considered the facts, were actually pretty substantial, ranging from paying for that helmet-crown he would've had to spend a ton of time grinding for, forcing him to learn how stats worked, teaching him a little bit about how punching was supposed to work, dragging him out to fight a bunch of cool-looking monsters even though it'd been a kinda roundabout method that he didn't enjoy until he got deeper into it, helping him look cool in front of those random adventure-y guys on the way back to the city, navigating around the city and saving him tons of time asking around for where things were, and generally just being pretty helpful even if she was sometimes a little annoying.

The more he thought about it, in fact, the more he felt his opinion shifting. She even drinks her coffee black. Maybe a face-bandanna's kinda silly to be getting worked up over.

"Great," she said, showing more restraint than he'd expected. "Mm, I should get her a gift for our first meeting," she said, tapping her chin. "I'll think on it."

"A gift?" Carl started walking again. Nice day out. Actually, it's always pretty nice here. A little too hot, but there's no smoke, so I'll take it.

"Personal question."

"I guess you bought me coffee yesterday."

"More importantly, I pointed out you were missing your cock."

"Still can't believe that's a thing." Carl started across another street, but he was suddenly jerked backwards by a hand on his wrist. "Wha…"

A car raced around the corner of the nearby cross-street and nearly ran him over, followed swiftly by a second car.

"Urgh, drivers," Vol said, raising her right arm to give them both the finger.

"Uh, thanks. Weren't you all excited about racing yesterday though?"

"I spent the afternoon—well, after that gladiator and I managed to separate ourselves—at the track watching more races. It's less exciting than I thought. So slow. How can anyone enjoy it?"

Carl chuckled. "That's a quick turnaround."

"I really thought it was gonna be different, but it's just low tier arena matches while moving. There's no significance to driving skill, you just have to be able to drive. None of the stronger gladiators race either, so the fighting's not particularly interesting. And they've got so many of those stupid things everywhere showing closer views of everything that you can barely see the fucking race!"

They crossed another street in a bubble of space among the other people walking around.

"So if it was faster, you'd be more interested?" Carl asked.

"Maybe. Can't imagine it being fast enough to get interesting though."

Carl grinned. No way she's seen a car as fast as Mina's.

"Getting tired of walking," Vol said. "If you think you can manage running without running into anyone, we—"

"Yeah, probably not," he interrupted. "I'm not—"

"Then we'll do it the other way," she said, tugging him to a stop. "Where're we going?"

"Uh… You know where Pertinax's shop is in D-five?"

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"Protectives? Yeah."

"Our base is over by there."

"Okay. Let's do this…" Vol dragged him by one hand out into the middle of the busy street and looked up in a direction that he imagined was vaguely where they wanted to be going. "See you soon," she said, swinging him off the ground and into the air.

This time when Carl went flying high into the air after being hucked like a frisbee, he wasn't even surprised. Getting a little ridiculous. He looked around, but there was no sign of Vol, of course, because she always seemed like she was taking some secret, better route whenever they went anywhere. He crossed his arms over his chest as he looked down at the city he was continuing to rise over. Pretty windy. Still faster than walking, I guess. Not sure I really would've enjoyed however much longer it was gonna take. We didn't even get out of D-one. Ugh, and Mina's got her first race today, so I should definitely be there sooner than later in case she's getting nervous.

He shook his head, squinting as he continued to get closer to the suns, the smaller of which was higher in the sky at the moment. Yeah, I guess I was wrong about Vol. She's kinda weird and annoying sometimes, but she means well. Has a fun perspective on things too. Not really a person I'd ask for advice, but it feels like I'm benefiting from hanging out with her. Pretty good deal all around.

The frisbee-like man felt himself start to descend and frowned. The familiar roofing of Pertinax's giant forge came into view, and he started to tip to the side. Must be some kinda actual physics bug. Character model is too big or something so I always tip over when I get too high up or whatever. He sighed. So stupid.

As he grew nearer, seeming to be diving with incredibly accuracy towards the street just outside the forge, he saw someone waving up at him. Is that Vol?

Indeed, the short-haired, face-bandanna-wearing woman was standing in the middle of the road, probably tapping her foot based on her posture, and obviously waiting for him to land. She threw her arms into the air in a clear "What are you doing?" gesture, as though he could do anything at this point other than continue to fall.

Carl grimaced. Convenient way to travel, but this is gonna destroy my clothes. Actually, shouldn't running super fast do that too? He pondered the question as he continued downwards.

"Fuck, Carl, learn how to land!" Vol yelled. She held her arms out in a ring, and he fell perfectly to land inside them as though he'd been a basketball thrown at a hoop. She flipped him onto his feet, marking the first time he'd managed to reach superhuman altitudes without landing on his head, which he hoped could maybe become a trend since it was really stupid that he was the only one who couldn't freaking land on his feet when he jumped or was thrown across the city like a baseball.

"Game's garbage," he grumbled.

"What, no thanks for my amazing aim?" Vol quipped.

"Yeah, yeah, thanks," he grumbled, trying to get his bearings now that he was on his feet again and not flying through the air, which he reluctantly admitted to himself had been totally freaking awesome, and he'd do it again in a second if he had the chance.

She reached over and patted him on the shoulder. "Don't worry, Carl, I'm sure there's plenty of people who can only land on their fucking faces," she said, starting to snicker towards the end.

"Not funny," Carl grumbled. He was in a grumbling mood now, and nothing was gonna change that.

"Alright, so we're gonna be unhappy when we go back to see your maybe-daughter driver," Vol said, affecting a wildly serious furrowing of her eyebrows. "Don't wanna seem like I'm ruining the mood."

Carl fought it, but he let out a single chuckle as a result of her efforts. Before any more could break past his grumbles, he turned and started grumbling towards the workshop entrance.

"Ooh, this is the place?" Vol walked alongside him while maintaining her scowl. "Nice. Must've cost you if you bought it."

"Just rented for a month," Carl grumbled. He put his hand on the door, feeling a niggling in the back of his mind like he was forgetting something important, and grumbled the door open.

"Welcome back, master!"

Carl froze with one foot inside the workshop, recalling only now that there was definitely a reason why he didn't wanna bring anyone back here, and he absolutely couldn't—

"Hi!" called Vol, slipping around him and into the workshop, her head swiveling around rapidly. "I'm Vol."

Mina was halfway under the car doing something or other, the bottoms of her overalls sticking out along with her ever-present boots. "Welcome back, Carl," she called. "I've almost finished with this…"

The stupid sex doll was at least wearing her clothes as she sat on the floor next to Mina's legs with an assortment of tools spread out around her. "I missed you, master!" she exclaimed with a bright smile, though she didn't pop up and try to hug him or anything.

Carl shut the door.

Vol looked up at him and whispered the word "master" to him with raised brows.

Everything was awful, and the game was garbage.

Those were just facts.

"Bandanna," he said in an attempt to distract her.

Vol shrugged. "Sure." She reached up and untied the bandanna, pulling it off her face.

Carl wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but it wasn't as dramatic or exciting as that. She had a normal-looking face. Pretty, sure, he supposed, though her face wasn't as pretty as Annie's or Ir'alith's, and she certainly wasn't as cute as Sammy, or Bobby, or Mina. She had a chin, and a mouth, and cheeks, a nose, and all the parts of a face that people had.

"Carl, don't stare like that or I'll blush," she said with a smirk that he could finally see was most definitely a smirk. "I'll leave it off for a while as long as you can control yourself."

"Oh, do you wanna fuck master too?" the doll asked excitedly. "Maybe if it's both of us we can get him to say yes!"

Vol started coughing and laughing simultaneously as she looked between him and the doll, which was the worst thing ever, and he didn't even know why he'd thought the freaking thing could ever be useful in any capacity.

"Time-out," he said, pointing to a random corner.

"No time-out while I'm continuing my adjustments," Mina called. "Phonia, pass me that spanner I was using earlier."

The doll carefully picked up a wrench out of all the tools and slid it under the car.

"So, master," Vol said, clearly fighting a losing battle against continued laughter. "Anything you feel like explaining before I get the wrong idea? Though I think it's pretty fucking hard to misinterpret that." She lapsed into snickers again, which really made him regret this whole thing because…

Carl had an idea. "You mean you don't recognize her?" he asked.

"Let's see," Vol said, her gaze becoming more critical despite her chuckles. "Gold and purple hair, horns, weird eyes, pretty enough legs that I'll fuck her if you don't… Nope, I'd recognize someone like that if I'd seen her before."

"She's, uh…" This was going to be a stretch, but Carl was going to attempt it because the alternative was admitting that he had an in-game sex doll. "She's role-playing with this whole master thing. She's just Mina's workshop assistant. Likes to tease me a bit even though I try to get her to stop."

"Right…" Vol said, seeming like she was considering the possibility.

"Nope, I'm master's sex doll!" the stupid, annoying, idiotic sex doll chirped. "Master keeps saying no, but he really wants me."

Carl put a hand on his forehead and closed his eyes while he let out a slow breath.

This game was the worst.

There were times that he'd thought it was maybe not the worst, but he'd been wrong.

The game was the worst, it was garbage, and whoever had thought of—

He felt something pat his arm. "If it makes you feel any better," Vol whispered, "I'm really fucking jealous."

Just when Carl was wishing that literally anything would happen that might distract from or otherwise break up this situation, nothing happened.