Carl finished off another expertly prepared chicken breast fillet—lab-grown, since it had gotten to the point that he couldn't tell the difference and had been deemed safe by every study that wasn't organized by one of the crazy anti-tech groups—in one of his glass baking dishes, taking a moment to nudge a slice of tomato back towards the center of the cutlet. He was making great progress, that was for sure. If he was still logged in, or in another world, as it was maybe called now—though he was going to get a second opinion before he ever used that phrase given that he really couldn't imagine many people using it, despite what Vol had claimed—he imagined he'd be seeing those annoying blue status windows popping up constantly to inform him that he'd gained levels in some chef or cooking class or whatever, cheapening the hard work he'd put into making dinner for his family by reducing it to a numerical value that obviously wasn't gonna be able to express how much love he'd crammed into it with his dad powers.

He finished sprinkling cheese on top of the final cutlet, completing the task of prepping the chicken so he could throw both dishes into the oven at a later point. For now though, he put the lids on the dishes and stacked them on a shelf in the fridge which he'd previously cleared off while unloading the dishwasher. It was time to—

The front door opened.

"The red one!" he heard a voice whisper loudly in a near-squeal. "Definitely the red one!"

There was a shushing sound, and Sammy emerged into the kitchen a moment later while the sound of someone climbing the stairs in heels—probably Rebecca—echoed from the same direction. Unlike her impractical-dressing aunt, his daughter had chosen an elegant skirt with a dad-approved length—well below the knee—and a cute-looking blouse along with sneakers, all of which were were straight out of Annie's work style.

"Hey, Sammy," Carl said, drying his hands on a towel after giving them a wash in the sink using house-recycled water. He turned around and held his arms out to receive…

Well, it wasn't exactly the hug he'd been waiting for, but Sammy didn't use her flying tackle hugs for just any occasion. They were something he, as the best dad ever, had to earn each and every time, and even though he'd been sort of gone for a couple weeks, to her it was just an average day when he'd been home earlier than usual, which, while maybe for an average dad was amazing, wasn't at all amazing for an amazing dad like Carl Weathers.

"Hey, Dad," Sammy said, wiping her bangs out of her eyes with barely-disguised glee.

"How was practice?" he asked as he turned his attention to the pot of potatoes cooking away on the stovetop.

"Uh, it was great!" his daughter said. The brief statement was a clear departure from her usual minute-by-minute retelling of basketball team happenings when he asked on other occasions—which was obviously every occasion, since he always asked in order to make sure she knew that he cared and was interested.

In other words, something was definitely up, and Carl was going to get to the bottom of it, though based on the small clues he'd already gotten and his unparalleled powers of deduction that Dad Mode Six was granting him—obviously known as Daduction—he was reasonably sure he knew exactly what had happened.

"Good, good," Carl said, using a fork to prod one of the potatoes even though obviously they weren't going to be ready yet. "I imagine you got some great drives in."

It was another flawless use of Making Misleading Statements.

"Wha…" Sammy went silent for a moment. "Ugh, I can't believe she told you!" she moaned. "I'm gonna—"

"Who told me what?" Carl cut in, executing a Confused Innocent Stare as he turned around and set his prodding fork down on its prodding-fork-holding plate in the process. "I just thought you'd be practicing your lane drives with Hanna after how you said your last practice went."

His sixteen year-old daughter's hands remained on her forehead, and an expression took over her face that he usually described as Uh-Oh.

Carl crossed his arms and leaned back against the counter as he looked down at her. "Is there something someone should have told me?" he asked, Speaking Slowly For Effect.

It was even more obvious to him by now that Sammy had either partially or completely skipped that day's practice in order to go test drive some very expensive cars with Rebecca. While he couldn't entirely fault his daughter for succumbing to the bad influence that was her "cool" aunt, he absolutely wasn't going to tolerate any sort of lying about it.

He'd leave it to Annie to deal with the Rebecca component of this episode since he didn't want to get in the middle of their relationship, but that meant he had to do his part and follow up here.

Sammy's hands dropped to hang limply at her sides, and her eyes started to water. "It was just one time, Dad" she said, almost, but not quite meeting his gaze. "Aunt Becca said she'd take me to see some awesome cars since I was getting my permit soon, and she said missing one practice wasn't gonna…" She pressed her lips together.

At that moment, Carl had a full understanding of the situation, as revealed to him by years of experience being a dad as well as even more years that he'd spent in a constant state of research and learning about being a dad.

When Sammy got in Trouble, there were Consequences.

Usually it was Annie who set the punishments for the girls' transgressions, though there was always a discussion beforehand for some of the larger problems—like when Sammy had lied about studying after school a couple years back and instead had gone to watch a movie she was definitely not old enough to be seeing, also coming home way too late at night without even calling that same day, barely in time to let Carl gracefully decommission his pending search and rescue taskforce prior to its deployment—but when necessary, Carl was absolutely able to play the bad cop.

When he wanted to be, Carl was the best at being the bad cop.

As such, it tended to be the case that any time there was the option of a punishment from him or Annie, the girls would choose Annie whenever possible, which suited him just fine.

His daughters were just way too cute for him to be playing the bad cop too often.

"So you didn't go to practice today," Carl said, throwing down a Dad's Disappointed without hesitation.

"No, no, I did!" Sammy said, nodding vigorously.

Carl inclined his head slightly while narrowing his eyes and squinting the tiniest amount.

"I went, and I got there before anyone else, and I did all the warmup laps, and then I even did extra suicides, and Coach said she was really impressed, and then—"

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"Alright, alright, slow down," Carl said in an attempt to defuse what he was suspecting might be a slight misunderstanding. "So you went to practice, and you worked pretty hard from the sound of it, and then…"

Sammy sniffled a little and scrubbed her eyes. "I told Coach that my aunt was in town for the week and that I wanted to leave early, and she said it was okay just this once because of how hard I've been working, so I left, and Aunt Becca drove us over to the dealership, but she said you'd probably get mad if I said anything, so…"

Carl sighed. This was the usual amount of headache that Rebecca brought when she visited. It was mostly harmless fun, but if he wasn't the type of dad to get all the facts before reaching a conclusion and taking action, things might turn out differently.

"So if I call Coach Franklin now, she's gonna tell me what a hard worker you were today?" he asked.

"Uh-huh, definitely," Sammy said, nodding rapidly. "I'd never skip practice, Dad!"

The best dad of all time rubbed his beard. "Well, I don't know what you're getting so upset about then, sweetie. Sounds like you had a pretty good afternoon."

Sammy blinked at him, and her mouth slowly dropped open. "What?" she said with a disbelieving blink.

Carl shrugged. "Would've preferred if you'd let your mom or me know first, but you didn't let the team down, you didn't go off totally unsupervised, you got home at a normal time, and you didn't try to lie about it. Not really sure—"

"So you're not gonna ground me?" she asked with a hopeful look in her eye.

"Not this time."

"And…we're still gonna go get my learner's permit this weekend?" she pleaded.

"Well, about that," Carl said slowly, watching his daughter's face fall. "I was checking some stuff out, and I found some interesting requirements. Did you know in order to get a learner's permit, you have to have finished or be enrolled in a Driver's Ed program?"

"I… What?" Sammy said, her expression changing to despair. "Really?"

Carl nodded. "Also gotta pass a written test at the DMV when we go."

The look on his daughter's face at that moment informed him that she absolutely hadn't done any research of her own and had just expected to show up at the DMV and get handed a card or something, which wasn't at all how bureaucracy or real life worked. No, in real life, there were Forms, there were Processes, there were Procedures, and attempting to bypass or circumvent any of them was just Not Going To Happen.

While it was surprising to him that things hadn't changed in virtually any way since he'd gotten his own learner's permit way, way too long ago to even think about using concrete numbers, it was the DMV, which also made it entirely not-surprising at all.

With all that noted, it was important to ask the question: Were these facts going to prevent him, Carl Weathers, the best freaking dad ever, from making good on the promise he'd made that real-morning to take his daughter to get her learner's permit over the weekend?

"But…" he said, drawing out the word.

Sammy's hands clenched and raised slightly, her whole body going taut.

"You can probably pass the test if you study a bit, and I already enrolled you in an online Driver's Ed class that you can start toni—"

"THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!" Sammy squealed as she dove at him, giving him the sort of hybid, half-tackle hug that resulted from not having enough space for a full run-up.

Carl patted his heaviest daughter's back, luxuriating in the final hug he'd been awaiting for the past couple weeks. His Dad Energy was fully recharged now, and he was once again ready for any dad challenge that might come his way.

"Carl, who's that gorgeous girl upstairs in Bobby's room? And how come nobody told me Annie was getting work done? She looks younger than me now!"

Alright, but there was no freaking way he'd be able to account for Rebecca or her continued ability to be as annoying as possible at the worst possible moment.

Sammy dropped off him and gave him a confused look, then looked back at her aunt.

The timer for the potatoes went off.

"That," he said, again retrieving his prodding fork, "is Mina. She's a sweet girl who needed help, and Annie and I decided to let her stay here for a while."

"A while" was perhaps not the most accurate description, given that the hushed, rapid discussion they'd had on the topic had used words like "home" and "as long as she wants", but Carl was naturally aware of the fact that this was something he needed to get two teenage girls to be in favor of in order for things to really work, and introducing it as anything but a trial run for now had the potential to provoke a counterproductive response.

Or at least, that might have been a possibility if either of the girls—again, he meant Bobby and Sammy and wasn't engaging in any sort of favoritism—hadn't coincidentally been prodded into great moods, just like how he was now prodding these potatoes, which seemed like they were probably ready.

"Sammy, why don't you go up and say hi," Carl suggested, having lost any possibility of having a good talk about the topic now that Rebecca was here. Sure, he could have started off his talk with Sammy by telling her about Mina, but he absolutely wasn't going to be engaging in any form of favoritism, and that included being anything other than the best dad ever to any of his girls. There was a learner's permit at stake here, and he wasn't about to let something like that become some sort of long-lasting schism because he'd tried to to handle things in the wrong order.

He turned the stove off and dumped the potatoes into the colander he's previously set to one side in the sink, setting the pot on one of the empty burners before returning his attention to the other people in the room. "And don't forget, sweetie, you're gonna need to get started on that Driver's Ed course right away. I mailed the login info to you, though you're—"

"Gonna need to change the password now that it's been sent in plain text, yeah, yeah," Sammy finished for him, rolling her eyes as her excited grin returned. She darted forward and gave him another hug. "Thanks, Dad," she said quietly. "You're the coolest dad ever."

Carl ruffled his daughter's hair, which was apparently the cue for her to break away and walk with increasing speed out of the room.

"And what about my other question?" Rebecca pressed, reminding him that she was still there and hadn't magically disappeared like Vol enjoyed doing, which would've been really perfect.

"Uh, which question was that?"

"Annie's work," Rebecca said as she clicked towards him, for some reason having chosen to continue wearing uncomfortable-looking heels despite being inside.

Really, now that he looked at her, the whole outfit she wore wasn't super practical for being here, at home, with them. She had on a strappy, kinda frilly, sort of low-cut top and a pair of yoga pants which, based on his many, many years of having a wife who wore every possible type of yoga pants given how much she enjoyed yoga, probably weren't very warm and were going to lead to her having to change into something warmer anyway, so what was even the point?

"If you wanted a younger version, I'm right here," she continued in an amused-sounding tone, leaning forward on the counter a short distance in front of him.

Carl rolled his eyes—mentally, of course, since he wasn't about to let Rebecca know that her attempts at annoying him, which had gradually grown more sophisticated over the years, almost certainly as a result of learning what annoyed him and tailoring her approach to better suit him personally in that regard, were absolutely working a little bit—and ignored the latest provocation. In the early years, he'd had some concern—which he shared with Annie immediately—that the younger Strickland genuinely had some sort of weird attraction to him, despite the fact that he was very clearly together with and even more clearly very happy with her sister, but, being the cool-headed, intelligent woman that she was, his wife had agreed with his assessment that the idea of such a thing was completely ludicrous given how obviously annoying she was being, and it was much more probable that she was just being annoying, like she'd always been.

"Well, if we're talking about versions," Carl began as he activated Carl Mode, "then I think it's important to note that traditionally, a product series will use an increasing version numbering scheme to denote the most technologically advanced iteration of—"

Rebecca let out an annoyed groan and dug her fingers into her head.

When he wanted to be annoying, Carl was the best at that too.