Carl came awake to the smell of extremely strong coffee and smiled. He felt around the table next to himself and encountered a still-warm mug. One sip of Super Coffee later and he was super awake.

He looked around. Vol must've stopped by with this. Wouldn't have guessed it when I first met her, but she's really thoughtful. His eyes took in time displayed in the corner of his HUD. Wow, slept really late today. He pushed his chair upright and took another sip as he glanced around the room more thoroughly.

Aww, did she come down here to sleep closer to me? Carl suffered slight cuteness overload damage from the Dad Moment as he spotted Mina fast asleep on the floor nearby, holding the scarf he'd given her up to her face. She's so freaking cute.

He stood up and set his coffee down on the stone table next to his sunglasses, activating his Dad Stealth as he crept closer. When he came into range, he activated a peak-level skill he'd honed over years of extreme and continued training, Sleepy Carry, in order to pick up the sleeping girl without waking her. He carried her over to the stairs and started up, once more taking a small amount of cuteness overload damage when she murmured in her sleep and turned her head to burrow into his shoulder.

Carl set Mina down gently into her chair, firing off a Hair Stroking Lullaby to ensure that she'd continue to sleep so she'd be all rested up for her big race. He smiled down at her with satisfaction. Dad skills really do come in handy. Never know when you're gonna need 'em. He headed back downstairs. Definitely didn't imagine I'd be logging into a game to be a dad here. Don't wanna give it up, but this is definitely the last day. She's gotta stand on her own two feet at some point, and I think this race is gonna be that point.

Upon reaching the main floor, he puttered about with his Super Coffee as only a dad is capable of doing.

First he checked over the car, which seemed to be very car-like and well-made. He was especially pleased that so many of his safety-related ideas had been incorporated once more, ranging from blinkers for turn signals to actual rear view mirrors on both sides of the car as well as the interior. Mina had designed mechanism for a sliding shelf with an attached crank to create movable windows, and she'd also created a schematic for ratcheting adjustable seats, enabling them to be repositioned for comfort—something he imagined was entirely for his benefit after how cramped he'd felt in the last car she'd made.

Next, he decided to take a shower, prompted when he discovered pieces of stone or whatever in his beard and also that his shirt had lower durability remaining than he'd thought. He walked over and pressed on the bathroom door, but it was firmly shut. He frowned. What the heck. He pushed a little harder.

"Wait a few minutes if you don't mind, Carl," said the core.

Carl frowned more deeply as he looked around yet again, spotting the black core on his shoulder once more. "What do you mean wait?"

"We are…using that room," said the core.

Carl pressed his ear to the door, but he couldn't hear anything. The heck's a core doing with a bathroom?

"Sorry, Carl, I didn't expect you'd want to use it right now," the core said.

"No, uh… It's… I guess it's okay?" These things can be so freaking weird sometimes. "Where'd you go anyway? I was looking for you."

"Oh," the core said in its surprised old lady voice in a way that he imagined required it to rock backwards slightly in its librarian's chair behind the book counter to fully capture the effectiveness of the tone. "Well, that's… Thanks, Carl, it's nice to know I was missed."

Carl wasn't sure that was exactly what he'd meant, but it was true that he'd kinda missed the core in a certain sense, specifically the sense of…

Alright, maybe he hadn't missed the core that much, now that he thought about it more, and maybe he hadn't even really noticed it was gone once the weird core replaced it, but it did…sort of…feel a little…reassuring…to have it back? Maybe?

"Absolutely, partner," Carl said without missing a beat. "How am I gonna run a dungeon without you?"

The core quivered slightly on his shoulder. "I missed you too, Carl!" it chirped.

He decided to circle back to showering and changing his clothes to ones with higher durability at a later time—feeling suddenly glad that Vol had persuaded him to buy a bunch of extra stuff the time they'd gone clothes shopping—opting for something different that he was sure was going to pass time quickly. "Core, what's it like to be a dungeon core anyway?" he asked as he sat back in his unbelievably comfortable chair.

"You're really interested?" the core gasped.

"Core, I wanna know everything," Carl said. Cross-discipline training was, he believed, an important part of challenging himself with new knowledge and perspectives to keep his mind sharp and broad, like a something that was sharp and broad.

Like a sharp pizza peel maybe.

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

"Good morning, Carl," Mina called with a yawn.

Carl turned his head to look back over his chair. "Oh, hey, sweetie. Sleep well?"

She walked over, rubbing at one eye, and gave him a lingering hug from the side around his shoulders. "I did," she said warmly.

Carl returned the hug with one arm, narrowly evading a critical hit of cuteness overload damage that might have caused him to respawn.

Mina drew back and looked down at him. "You're…feeling alright?" she asked as she unwound her hair tie from around her wrist and pulled her hair up and through it.

"Yup, slept great. Ready for your big race?"

"I believe I am?" she said hesitatingly. She shook her head. "No, I'm quite certain that I am."

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Carl grinned. "Those noobs aren't gonna even know what happened with how fast you're gonna be going."

Mina's eyes crinkled as she smiled brightly. "Yes, those noobs certainly will not win today."

Carl mentally pumped his fist. She even knows you can't let the noobs win!

"I'd like to bathe, then perhaps we can share breakfast?" she suggested, already edging towards the bathroom.

"Sounds like a plan," Carl said, giving her a thumbs up.

She showed a happy, toothy smile before she turned to enter the bathroom, shutting the door behind herself.

Carl settled in for a wait. She might be like Bobby with not letting the noobs win, but she and Sammy could be twins with how much they both sleep and how freaking long their showers are.

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

"Ready?" Carl asked.

Mina took a deep breath. "Yes. I've verified that all the components are functioning as they should—"

"You triple check?"

"I've quadruple checked," Mina said, her hands tightening on the steering wheel.

There were a lot of Dad Moments that Carl was proud of, and this was one of them: the first time any of his daughters were more cautious about something than he was.

"Sounds like you're on top of things," he said with deep approval.

"There's naught to do but to drive to the track, I suppose," Mina said. She paused for a little while before the car started easing its way out of the workshop. Once outside, she turned right and began driving towards D-four.

Carl watched out his window as the front of the workshop solidified into a solid stone wall behind them. "Dungeon cores are pretty cool," he remarked. "Kinda wish I had one at home to handle house stuff. Sure beats a garage door."

"Would… Would you tell me of your home and family, Carl?" Mina asked quietly after driving a few more blocks.

Carl grinned as he thought about it. "Well, let's see. We've got a good-sized house, around four thousand square feet. Er… I wanna say that's a little under four hundred square meters? Anyway, there's a basketball hoop in the driveway for Sammy—she's sixteen—and a two car garage.

"When I go inside, Annie's usually home in the kitchen or the den reading. She's… Well, she's the best is really all I can say. She's a little prickly about some stuff, but she's thoughtful, and caring, and she always tries her hardest. I'm sure you'd get along great if you ever met.

"Sammy's—when she's home—usually in the den watching basketball or talking to her friends online while she does her homework. Spends most of her time running around playing basketball though, so she's not home quite as much lately. She's usually pretty open about stuff. Likes to do these like, flying tackle hugs—she's almost as tall as me—and it's a bit of a struggle not to fall over sometimes.

"Bobby's—she's thirteen, almost fourteen—home a little more than Sammy, but she spends a lot of her time hanging out with her friends in-game here, so she's usually up in her room. Annie gets kinda triggered any time she plays for too long, but I don't mind it. She's a little more reserved than Sammy, but she's kinda more laid back too. Likes to hang out with Sammy and read while she watches a game. I still let her ride around on my shoulders sometimes, even though she's probably too old for… You okay?"

Mina sniffled again and wiped at her eyes. "Y-yes, I'm quite alright. Your home sounds beautiful, Carl."

Oops. Maybe I shouldn't have talked about that as much with how her family is? Carl grimaced. Not really sure—

"Your daughters, Sammy and Bobby, are happy, I presume?" Mina asked.

"Yup. Especially lately." Carl scratched his beard as his mind wandered. "Sammy just won her first two varsity basketball games with another one coming up tomorrow, and Bobby's getting ready for some kinda big in-game raid on Friday. Sure, they fight a little sometimes, but usually they get along great."

Mina stayed quiet for a while as she navigated through the city, and that got Carl back to thinking on another topic he'd been considering for some time. I'm positive Annie would love to hear from her sometime. She came from a kinda tough background too, and there's nothing she likes more than helping kids out. Yeah, I mean, with something like this, she'd probably get mad at me if I waited to ask first, wouldn't she. No chance she'd say no, and she'd just be upset that I didn't trust her enough. Which means…

"Hey, Mina, I know you've been having a pretty hard time with stuff with your family and…other things," he began, "how would you like to have someone to talk to about it? I mean, I know a lot of that's gonna be hard since I'm a guy, so I was thinking maybe I could give you some contact info for Annie, and then you'd have someone better to talk to? I'm sure she'd jump at the chance to help out however she could."

"Um…" Mina pressed her lips together for a moment. "You… Do you truly believe she'd like to speak with me? I'm…"

"How about this," Carl said. "Inventory. I'll give you her contact info, and you can decide if you wanna use it. How's that sound?" He pulled a piece of paper and a pencil out and started writing on it, beginning with Annie's name, then a phone number with the international prefix, then an email address. He tossed the pencil back into his inventory and dismissed the window. "Here," he said, folding up the paper and sticking it into a convenient alcove between them. "If you want someone to talk to who's really great at listening, I'm positive she'd love to help."

Mina sniffled once more. "Thank you, Carl," she said, her voice thick with emotion. "Truly."

Carl felt his eyes misting up. "Yeah, don't, uh… Don't worry about it."

She giggled a little. "It seems you've not been entirely unaffected by your time spent with Vol."

"Yeah, maybe not," Carl said, smiling slightly as he recalled the times his friend had said the same thing to him. "She's a real character, isn't she."

"She is. Are you aware she's called you a side character behind your back?"

"Ugh." Carl pressed a hand to his face, but he was unable to prevent himself from chuckling. "Such a stupid joke."

"I assume she considers herself a main character?" Mina asked, now showing a small smile of her own.

"Something like that. Doesn't help that I got a Side Character class while we were walking around one day. She actually fell over laughing at me."

"I'm sure I can imagine it. Likely with her usual tendency towards profanity."

"Huh, guess I kinda just got used to it. Almost like a verbal tic with her."

"Perhaps."

They continued on for a time.

"Hey, do you think I should invite Ir'alith?" Carl asked after having a moment of inspiration. Haven't talked to her in a while either. Wonder how she's doing anyway.

"I…believe she'd prefer that you not," Mina said. "I don't imagine she'd be likely to enjoy it, and she's quite busy."

"Yeah, good point." Probably still off doing whatever raid she was doing the last couple times with her other friends. Should still give her a yell at some point maybe. Or maybe not, I already tried a few times and she's been busy. Don't wanna make a nuisance of myself with how famous she apparently is.

The car drove in silence for a short while.

"Um, perhaps this is a poor time for it," Mina began, "but do you know in which direction I should be steering us?"

Carl looked over at her in alarm. "What?"

"I've a grasp of the general direction of the first district, but we've nearly reached it now, and beyond that I'm uncertain."

Why's everyone always assume I know where I'm going? Carl frowned. "Guess we'll just have to ask the gate guard. Don't worry, I had to ask for directions to get to the lake yesterday and it was super easy."

Mina let out a breath. "Oh. Well, that's quite reassuring."

"You don't need to worry about anything today, Mina. Just focus on your race, okay?"

"I'll do my utmost."