"You met Annie?" was really all Tim could say.

"Yeah, yesterday. Or was it today?" Vol thought about it, then shrugged. "Ir'alith and I saved her from this cheating Char. That fucking guy was so annoying." She speared another glob of brain on her fork. "Here, try this and tell me if you think it needs cheese," she said, moving it across the table towards him.

"Uh, no, I—" As he opened his mouth to decline, the fork darted forward and deposited its payload in his mouth. The urge to gag struck him immediately, but it faded just as quickly once he unwillingly tasted the chunk of meat. "Oh," he said as he started to chew. It…really is sausage? Pretty good too, once I ignore… That's messed up. It looks so realistic!

The brain-shaped sausage meat was delicious. It was spicy and salty in the correct ratio, and the meat was just chewy enough without feeling like his teeth were bouncing off of it. With a sense of deep regret, he had to give it a five-point-six, subtracting a number of points for its presentation.

Not sure what this says about me as a person, but I'd eat more of that. He looked speculatively at the sausage. Just going to think of it as sausage. "It's missing something," he said slowly. His eyes gravitated to the bag of Victory brand chips. "I bet that'll do it," he said, pointing to the bag. "Needs something crun… Something normal amounts of crunchy with it."

She reached over and retrieved the bag. It crinkled in her hands, and she turned it over repeatedly, frowning more and more as the crinkling continued. "What is this?"

"Pass it here," he said, holding out a hand.

She handed over the bag of chips, and he pulled it open smoothly, managing not to shred the bag despite the increased strength that his time fighting had sort of helped him get used to. "Potato chips," he said as he set the opened bag down on the table. This place really does have everything. And the branding…

"Huh." Vol reached in and grabbed one between her fingers. She examined its ridges for a couple seconds before bringing it to her mouth. There was a series of smaller, more reasonable crunch sounds. "Mm."

Despite his better judgment, Tim grabbed a couple chips and used them to scoop up a piece of sausage. Yeah, that's perfect. He did not, however, revise his rating.

She mimicked him, and her expression brightened. "Yeah! That's it! Good thinking!"

Alright, what was I going to ask before I started eating weird things? He took another bite of his turkey leg. "So you met Annie," he repeated. "And she knew Carl was here?"

Vol crunched down on another bite of chips and sausage. "Maybe? Didn't ask. We rescued her, and then she just wanted to take Carl's daughter and go back to their world, so that was it."

At this, Tim couldn't help himself and he gawked. "Carl's daughter was in your world?"

"Yeah," she said, continuing to eat with increasing speed now that she'd found a rhythm to the process of taking chips out of the bag with one hand and spearing chunks of sausage with the other. "Mina's from my world. Carl rescued her from something or other, and then he spent a lot of time being a father, but they're not really related. She's smart. Was gonna be Sateus's pick instead of Emma—her sister—but she's in Carl's world now, so we didn't get her."

Tim set the remains of his turkey leg down. Alright, that's enough for now, I think. Can't handle any more. Brain feels like it'll explode if I keep finding things out. "Wow, that's… I hadn't heard about that."

Vol had abandoned the remaining sausage and was now solely eating the potato chips. "These're good," she said, sounding amazed. "Potato chips, huh?" she muttered. Then, in a louder voice, she said, "Yeah, well, that's all just normal stuff Carl's best friend would know. "

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Sure seems like it," he said absently. The sense of panic he'd been pressing down on since he arrived was slowly bubbling up now, and he could no longer delay its eruption. "Listen, uh, it's been great chatting with you, but I'm still feeling sort of tired from…you know, traveling across all those realms. I'm going to rest up for a bit." He pushed himself to his feet.

"Okay," she said just before she ate more chips. "It was fun talking. Maybe we'll do it again."

"Yeah, maybe," Tim said as he wandered towards the three-point-seven stairs with his thoughts swirling around like the giant dirt cloud from earlier in the day. He made it to the staircase and started down in silence, taking a series of slow, deep breaths.

Once he was back in his room with the door shut, he walked over to the bedroom and fell face first onto the bed, bouncing slightly from its springiness, which he rated as an eight-point-three at that moment. He flipped over after a few seconds, and then he started to laugh. "What the fuck am I doing here?" he said between chuckles.

Somehow, the entire situation seemed funny now, and the realization made him laugh harder. He'd been dragged to another world. Naked. As his character from New Era. Because his best friend Carl somehow couldn't make it. He'd then been dragged to a different world to fight in some grand tournament against people chosen by actual gods.

Also, gods existed! And there were lots of them!

His companions were: a formless, possibly all-powerful god that refused to let him go home, a blue-skinned alien-demon woman who was probably strong enough to kill him by breathing on him and had a massive crush on his best friend, a blonde young woman who could've been a supermodel on Earth and was possibly scheming towards unknown ends, and a dark-haired woman whose strength and brain he couldn't understand.

Also, Carl had been hanging out for some time in another world, he'd adopted a girl, and she'd gone back to his home with Annie, who had apparently come there yesterday and somehow needed rescuing.

And he'd talked to Carl just the previous night, and everything seemed to be going great for him as usual, which meant…

He didn't know what it meant, but it was fucking hilarious, and he couldn't stop laughing.

Four-out-of-ten meltdown, all things considered.

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

Leader, huh? Tim lay on the bed watching the ceiling after he'd gradually finished laughing for the second time. He felt a sudden weariness settling in that reached down to his bones, combining with the continued dull aches from his sparring session and the newer twinges from laughing hysterically. What am I supposed to lead? This isn't a competition with any team fighting that I've heard of, and I don't really have the experience to do that over anyone else here. Not the kind of thing I'd want to take charge of without knowing what I'm doing. I can bluster through that when something new comes up at work, but here I'd just end up dead.

I also can't imagine anyone getting into trouble if we're just locked down in whatever this place is. Everyone seems like they've got their own thing. Ir'alith's probably just going to stay down in that weird outdoor room, Vol's going to do whatever she thinks is interesting—probably eating everything she can see—and Emma… Alright, I don't know enough about her yet to guess, but she didn't immediately strike me as the impulsive type. What could possibly go wrong? And even if something did, what the fuck am I supposed to do about it? I don't have any special authority or anything, and I'm definitely weaker than everyone but Emma. Though even that's something I can't be sure of.

He sighed and rubbed his hands over his face, taking care not to accidentally poke himself in the eye again with the short claws at the ends of his fingers. How many rounds is this tournament thing anyway? Is it twelve hours between every match? I could be stuck here for… The thought was depressing. Vol did say that everyone was much weaker than her last time she fought here, but I'm like a baby compared to her or Ir'alith after what I saw earlier.

Can I really survive this?

He took a deep breath, followed by a second. The drowsiness from eating so much was starting to kick in. Freaking out more isn't going to help. I'll take a quick nap, and then I'll get more training in. No more panicking once I wake up. Boardroom face. I can do this. I always do. He pulled himself up to the top of the bed, feeling suddenly too tired to bother undressing or even getting under the covers. Time: set alarm for three hours.

A small timer appeared in the corner of his vision just above the clock. No way I'll sleep that long, but I don't want to chance wasting time that I might need. Definitely need a mental reset now. Just a short break, then I'll get on top of of all this…

Tim closed his eyes, and years of sleep budgeting took over, sending him quickly into dreamland.