Tim took another big bite of his sandwich to mask his staring. Now that's a total lack of a gag reflex. And also probably a shredded mouth and throat if she was a regular human. He glanced to his side, and Emma met his eyes out of the corner of hers, raising her eyebrows briefly before looking back to her salad that she was continuing to pick at.

"There's some kind of scoring system," Vol said as she worked. "Too fucking complicated for me to remember then, and I definitely don't remember now, but stamina was a big factor. I think." She paused and frowned for a moment. "Or was it? Might be thinking of something else. Memories all get a little same-y after a while. Ask Sateus if you wanna know. I'm bad at explaining things anyway."

Tim chewed. I'm curious, but also I'm really curious. There has to be some kind of point to this tournament overall, doesn't there? The competitions are fighting, magic, fighting and magic, thinking, and sex. Why would gods compete like this? Don't they have things they're supposed to be doing? Or do they? Nancy, I don't know if I ever really appreciated your efficiency in gathering information until this exact moment.

"Perhaps I shall," Emma said in a noncommittal tone. She poured herself more wine, stopping when her glass was half full.

Vol dunked her latest slice of whatever she was eating into the yolk and drove it around with her fork before repeating her previous eating process.

"Good?" Tim asked, not quite grimacing but also still holding the rest of his sandwich over his mouth in case he was grimacing more than he realized.

Vol tapped her chin. "Mm. Nah, not really. The spikiness was good and new, but the rest of it was boring." The plate and its contents turned to ashes, and she again waved her hand to blow the remains away before sliding her last remaining plate over. The final dish held a bowl with small purple fish swimming around in an orange liquid. She stared down at it with a frown.

"Have you intentionally chosen the strangest foods you were able to locate?" Emma asked.

Vol looked up in confusion. "How else would I do it? Have you seen this fucking place? Obviously I'm gonna try everything while I'm here, starting with the most interesting things."

Several gulps of wine disappeared from Emma's glass. "Naturally. How foolish of me for imagining that alternative criteria for selecting a meal might exist." A moment passed, and then she squeezed her eyes shut and stretched, raising her arms and arching her back, which drew Tim's unwilling gaze to her emphasized, ten-out-of-ten chest once more. "Oh my," she said as she returned to her normal seated posture, pressing a hand to her mouth to stifle a yawn. "I've endured a considerably arduous series of days, and I'm still feeling somewhat lethargic. I've a mind to take some rest in my quarters. If you've a need for me, you'll find me there." She stood up gracefully and stepped out of the table's bench seat, resting a hand on Tim's shoulder briefly to steady herself before she padded around them and strutted towards the stairs with a slight bounce of her eleven-out-of-ten hips in each step.

Tim's eyes lingered on her as she departed, mesmerized by the slight sway of her blonde hair. Trustworthy or not, she's still handling things fairly well considering she basically got kidnapped to come along, even if she did have a choice. And it was nice of her to grab silverware for me, even if it's probably just an act given the other dynamics, assuming I believe that warning. She's clearly not as shy and helpless as she's seemed sometimes if her brief fight with Vol was anything to go by. Ir'alith's probably right. Wouldn't be worth getting involved no matter how attractive she is. No, no, what am I thinking. Might be in another world, but still no hitting on anyone here if I'm supposed to be some kind of appointed leader. Even if they look like that.

"This is a really weird one," Vol commented, drawing his newly-resolved attention back to the table. She had a fork in one hand and a spoon in the other and was looking between the two utensils. "How the fuck…"

"Hm." Tim assessed the fishbowl on her plate. "You're really going to eat that?"

"I have to, don't I?" Vol asked. She gave him an earnest look. "What if it's really good?"

"I…guess…that's a good point?" Tim said, wishing he had another sandwich to cover his skeptical expression with. Emma might not be trustworthy if I believe what Ir'alith said, but she wasn't wrong about Vol's eating preferences. Pretty, but weird.

"Maybe I just drink it? Is it a drink?" she said as she returned to looking at it. She dipped a finger in and brought it to her mouth. "Mm. Maybe."

"Oh! I bet…" Tim's words trailed off as the beautiful, dark-haired Italian-looking woman brought the head-sized fishbowl to her six-point-eight lips and tipped it upwards, rapidly emptying the entire thing into her mouth. She showed no signs of chewing, nor did she swallow, and the container was completely empty after several seconds. She set it back down on the table and stared at it.

"…you're supposed to boil it first," he finished after a couple seconds. This is honestly too weird. Carl, you have weird friends here, buddy. Powerful, beautiful, but very, very weird.

"Yeah, that makes sense," she said, starting to nod slowly. "Smart. Then the fish get cooked and you have soup." She looked up with a questioning expression on her face. "Think I should get another one and try it? Just to make sure?"

"I think…you should do whatever you're going to enjoy the most?" he said since he had no idea how to answer a question about drinking a second bowl of fish. She's… I don't even know. I can't get a read on her at all. Ir'alith's totally quiet and serious at all times—except when she's talking about Carl. Emma… If I believe Ir'alith and piece in what I've seen, then she's definitely plotting something. If I don't believe her, then she seems more or less like what I'd expect from a twenty-something, normal, otherworld human girl who ended up getting brought along with this crazy group, I guess?

Vol's all over the place though. I don't have even the tiniest clue. If I was going to guess though, she's probably the one I'd say is most likely to get into whatever "trouble" Sateus was thinking about.

"Eh. Not trying to farm levels in aquarium," the unfathomable woman said nonsensically. "Gonna go get more food." She swiveled on her seat and hopped up, starting towards an aisle of shelves.

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"I might get one more thing," Tim said before he stood up and followed after her. "You excited to be back here again?"

Vol let out a disgusted noise without looking back as she walked with purpose. "Definitely not. Worst fucking timing. I was about to—Well, I was… I was doing some really normal friend things with Ir'alith, and then Sateus decided he needs me to save the world again right now and the whole thing was ruined. So fucking annoying."

That's a lot to unpack. "Saving the world, huh? Must be tough."

She grabbed a plate containing the skull of an unknown creature with the top cut off and the brain exposed. "So tough," she agreed, continuing onward. "Was a little fun the first time, but the second time was so boring. And then the other competition had so much time where I was stuck in his stupid citadel here waiting for my matches. Urgh." She grabbed a plate with a stack of frosted breakfast pastries and touched it to the first plate, where it stuck and remained suspended in the air as she kept walking.

Now that's a handy skill to have. Even if her choice of foods is still… Putting the resulting thoughts out of mind, Tim continued surveying the plates that he passed without finding anything that caught his fancy. Kind of amazing how much I can eat in this body. Feels like I'm back in high school eating after football practice. Those were the days. Just come home and power through the first edible thing I laid eyes on.

"So… How do you know Carl?" she asked, her train of floating plates having grown to five while he was distracted by his thoughts, adding a pasta dish with what might have been sea urchins on top, a platter of chocolates, and…

Is she switching to desserts now? That's a whole cake. Wait, how is she even eating this much? He eyed the woman ahead of him, but she looked just as gorgeous as she had every other time he'd checked her out. Is she not actually eating it or something? "Uh… We grew up together," he said, forcing himself to stop ogling her ten-out-of-ten butt as she walked in front and again reprimanding himself for it. "Met while we were in school and started hanging out. Been friends ever since." I think this is it. He reached out and snagged a plate with a big turkey leg off a higher shelf. I didn't know I wanted it, but now I can't avoid the novelty of it. Plenty of time to get adventurous later.

"How long ago was that?" Vol asked. She came to a stop abruptly, causing him to almost walk into the last of her hovering plates, and stood in place, frowning down at a dish containing an unopened bag of Victory-brand potato chips. "What the fuck's this?" she muttered before she added it to her collection.

"Uh… Probably around…" Tim grimaced. That's one way to make me feel old. "Maybe forty years or so?"

She turned around and started back towards the table, and he had to move more quickly than he'd anticipated to keep up. "That's a lot of time," she said with her brow creased. She looked up at him with a smirk. "But Carl and I fought a giant machine together. You ever fight a giant machine with him?"

He shrugged, and a grin slowly spread across his face as he decided to tease her a little. "Yeah, a few times. We've fought giant machines, tiny machines, bugs, dragons, gods, basically everything." See what she makes of that.

"Shit," she muttered, her smirk disappearing and her brows drawing down over her face again. "Well… You ever throw cars at a castle with Carl? Because I did. We threw so many fucking cars."

Throwing cars at a castle? And that was probably literal about fighting a giant machine, wasn't it. Carl, what the actual fuck have you been doing? "I…can't say I've done that," he said as they came back into the sitting area.

"Yeah, that was just a normal day for me and Carl," Vol said in a smug tone. She brought her plates over to the table, and they all lowered themselves smoothly onto it when she set the one at the head of the train down at one end. "Carl's dungeon brought us to another country in the morning, we did a rebellion thing, and I even killed a queen before we went back." She looked across the table at him expectantly.

"That's…a lot for one day," Tim said. Dungeon? And…it sounds like they overthrew the royal family of a kingdom? More questions for the list. So many more. But for now, based on her reaction I think I can have some more fun with her if I… "Then again," he began, "I remember one day we woke up and got straight into it. We killed six big dragons and a giant, three-headed dog just in a single morning. Was a real slog, and it even took us an hour or two, but we got it done."

Vol crunched down on one of the urchins, her pretty face set into a scowl. "You're not lying," she grumbled after she'd finished eating it, spines and all. "You really did all that?"

"Yeah. You could tell if I was lying?" Tim took a bite of his turkey leg. Mmm, this is even better than I thought. Nice and moist but the skin's crispy.

"Got a skill for it," she said before she took a bite of her pasta. "You haven't lied yet."

Alright, that's good to know. But apparently she can't tell the difference between me talking about doing things in a game and talking about really doing them, which is kind of funny. Almost like we're… Is she trying to compete over who's the better friend to Carl? He took a long swig from his recently-refilled glass of water as he mentally battled the weirdness of the idea.

They continued to eat in silence for a short while.

"I met Carl's sex doll," Vol announced when she switched to the plate with the skull on it.

Tim continued chewing, using the time to process what he'd just heard. What… What does that even mean? "You did?"

She nodded, her face radiating concentration as she held her knife up to the top of the skull. The cutlery began to glow softly, then more intensely, becoming a blazing white beacon. "No way I was gonna be able to cut this with a knife. Need to be really smart to think of this," she said as she sliced easily through the skull with the burning knife, rapidly dicing the entire thing into a series of smaller shapes and generating a small amount of smoke in the process.

It's really weird, but it's fine. This is just a normal thing that people in other worlds do, I'm sure. Not at all gross to be eating…

Vol scooped up a block of mostly bone with a little singed, smoking brain attached to it and brought it to her mouth. She chewed with a colossal crunch that made Tim wince. "Mm." She made a face as though she was undecided on whether she'd enjoyed it while staring down at the plate. She poked one of the middle, brain-only sections with her fork. "Anyway, yeah. Sex doll. I met her."

"Huh." Tim again used his time chewing his turkey, which had started out as a nine-out-of-ten before the latest dish of his companion had lowered the maximum rating he was currently able to give out for any food item, to avoid having to say anything for the moment. "What did she look like?" he asked once he'd thought of something to say in response.

Her brow wrinkled as she chewed her next bite. "This is…" She frowned down at her plate again. "Yeah, it's missing something. Cheese probably. Cheese is something people eat with sausage, right?"

"Sausage," he repeated on reflex.

She poked another chunk of brain. "Yeah, this is a sausage. Fucking guy shaped it to look like a brain and put it in a skull to make it more interesting for me," she said with a chuckle. "Sort of works? But it's still not quite…"

"Uh…"

"As for the sex doll," Vol continued, "actually, now that I think about it, she looked a lot like Annie when I met her."

Tim took a very long blink in response, not even bothering to use his strategy of chewing while he thought about what he'd just heard.