hi its anna!

So when Carl entered the Desperado club for the umpteenth time on the fourth floor and smelled cigarette smoke for the first time since the last time he smoked he almost thought the AI was playing a trick on him. There was no way the dungeon AI made up someone or something that smoked cigarettes. The only possible way he was smelling a cigarette was that another crawler still had a pack from the surface.

He turned to a booth in the far end of the club and saw you sitting alone, sure enough, smoking a cigarette. He was at the table before he even realized.

He didn’t even know what he was going to ask you. He had this instinctual need to just be near the smell of it. Of you. And he thought he was over the addiction. How wrong he had been. 

Before he even thinks he’s asking, “Hey, can I sit?” a guff voice asks you.

You look up to see Carl. The Carl. Like blow-shit-up and run Carl. Carl with the talking-fucking-cat. 6th place on the leaderboard Carl. You almost dropped the cigarette you were smoking from shock. 

“Uh, um, yeah. Of course. Please, sit.” you hold your hand out and gesture to the seat across from yourself in the booth. 

He sits down immediately and just stares at your face. No, not your face, your mouth. You feel the pink creep into your cheeks. 

Carl is a handsome man. The first time he popped up on a recap episode you thought he was attractive, and then he kept showing up. Recap episode after recap episode and your crush grew more and more every time he was featured. You couldn’t help it. The deep and gravely voice, the sleeveless jacket that showed off his very muscular arms, the whole no pants thing, and the constant underlying anger that he harbored for everyone and everything. You couldn’t lie to yourself. It was hot. It was very hot. 

But, he was with this new Katia woman. She showed up in his and Princess Donut’s party this floor and you had assumed that she and him were seeing each other. It isn’t uncommon for crawlers to start seeing each other, it wasn’t like living in a dungeon could stop attraction between people. Just seeing a buglike creature and a person completely covered in vines making out in the corners of the Desperado wasn’t really what you wanted to witness after dealing with an insane subway system and demon monkeys, but you live in a literal dungeon now so you can’t be that surprised.

Carl’s voice pulls you out of your thoughts, “any way I could bum a smoke?” 

So that was why he was staring at my mouth, you think to yourself. You reach across the table and hand him the cigarette you were smoking. He’s hot, but not hot enough to give him an entire cigarette.

Before the world literally ended you were sitting on a bench at a scenic overlook in Minnesota, you had just opened a brand new pack, hadn't even taken a cig out when everything crashed down around you. Thankfully there was an entrance about 50 feet up the road from where you were and you entered with only the clothes on your back and a brand new pack of cigs. You were the most thankful for the smokes as you had already replaced all your original clothes with items you’d gotten from prize boxes. The AI really liked to give you clothes for some reason. 

Carl took the cigarette from your fingers and put it to his mouth. Oh my god I just indirectly kissed the 6th best crawler in the entire dungeon. You giggled to yourself.

“What’s so funny?” he asked you.

You froze, looked around quickly, and thankfully saw two crawlers on the verge of a fight over a blitz stick, you pointed to them and Carl looked over his left shoulder. “Those guys are literally fighting over a blitz stick and I'm sitting here with the number 6 crawler in the dungeon and he’s asking to bum a smoke off of me. I’m laughing at the complete irony of it.”

“The shit some of these guys would do for a blitz stick is beyond me” he mutters to himself.

“Yeah, like you don’t hit a blitz every once and while. I saw how fast you came over here for one of my smokes.” you sarcastically respond. There is no way this man doesn’t smoke blitz sticks. You even smoke one from time to time, too scared to think about the time when you run out of your cigarettes. 

The blitz stick was nice. It was almost too nice. The damn thing's ability to show you a non-existent memory of what your life would be like if the dungeon was never made, it was horrifying. You tried your best to not go near them, but the thought of running out of your cigarettes made the pull to smoke them even stronger. 

Carl looked you dead in the eyes. “Never. Not once. I will not go near them. I’ve seen what they can do to people and I will not let a damn drug break me.” He got real quiet after that. You weren’t expecting that from him. 

Obviously you knew that he was a serious man, anyone could see that just by looking at him, even if he did wear a pair of heart boxers (you thought they were cute). You put your hands up in a surrendering motion, “okay, sorry for assuming, man.” You put your hand out to ask for the cigarette back, he had had it for a while and you could see the paper around it start to dwindle, you needed a drag before he smoked the whole thing. You only had 12 left after finishing this one off. 

He had the cigarette pinched between his pointer and middle finger and when he reached across the table to hand it back to you, you reached in to pinch it with your thumb and pointer finger and your palm and two fingers were completely flush against his hand. His very large hand. You figured he was tall from the recap episodes. Even when he came over to your booth you could tell that he was a large man, but you didn’t realize how tall he was until your hand was basically wrapped around his two fingers holding the cigarette. 

You looked up from where your two hands were basically connected to his face, he was already staring at you. You quickly snatched your hand away from him, as he simultaneously took his back, leaving the cigarette with nowhere to go other than to fall to the table. Directly into the gin and tonic you were drinking.

“Fuck” you said now looking down at the cigarette floating in your drink. There was no way it could be dried and now your drink was ruined too. You slowly looked up at him and gave him a taste of his own medicine. “God damnit, Carl.”

He burst out laughing. It was hearty and loud and way too weird of a reaction for what just transpired between you two. You just stared at him as he continued to laugh. It was contagious. You could feel your laugh bubbling out of your mouth, you started to smile and then it burst out of you. You couldn’t hold it in and it just made Carl laugh harder. Your side of the laughing fit ended when you snorted and immediately covered your face with your hands in embarrassment. 

You always hated that small thing about your laugh, as your grandmother used to tell you, “stop with that horrible snort of yours. It is so unbecoming” and of course that only made you laugh and snort harder because who the fuck says “unbecoming.” After Carl’s loud laughter ended, you took your hands away from your face to find him staring directly at you. He was more relaxed now, he was leaning backwards against the back of the booth with his arms crossed and just smiling at you.

“What?” you questioned. 

“Nothing,” he said looking down, “that was just funny, giving me my line right back to me. I wasn’t expecting it. Donut would think you are hilarious.”

“I thought it was very fitting for the moment considering you dropped one of my cigarettes into my drink, which by the way, you now owe me. For both the cig and the drink.” You continue after taking a short pause to compose yourself from the laughter and continue, “I don’t really know how I would ever meet her, or your girlfriend, but if I ever get the chance to meet Donut I would hope she thinks I am funny so she doesn’t light me up with one of her damn magic missiles. Those things are crazy strong.”

“Let me buy you another drink to make up for…wait-” he pauses in the middle of his sentence, “what girlfriend? I don’t have a girlfriend. Is Donut talking to people in the message boards telling people I’m seeing someone? Because I’m very much not.” 

Your eyes widen in embarrassment, “oh, no, she’s not saying anything. I just assumed that you were seeing the woman you and Donut teamed up with, Katia, I'm pretty sure her name is. You guys look super close on the recap episodes so I thought you and her were together.” 

Carl looks at you as if he can peer into your soul, wait, can he do that? I don’t know what his abilities are. Fuck, oh my god, does he have x-ray vision or even a lie decticing ability. Oh my god he has a combo x-ray-lie-detecting ability. He can see right through me. I wouldn’t even be surprised if he did. FUCK, I’m so fucked. 

Continuing to freak out over this man’s possible x-ray vision/lie detecting ability he starts speaking, “No, Katia and I are not together in that way, Hekla asked that she join Donut and my’s party to help her train her skills and abilities up. I see her as an older sister, she is my family.” You go wide-eyed and start to look around the room, not wanting to make eye contact in case he can read your mind. He asks if you’re okay realizing you are actively trying to not look at him.

“Uhh, yeah, just want to make sure you don’t have x-ray vision or you have like a lie detecting ability or like you can’t read my mind or anything.” You bumble out the words.

He looks at you confused. “Um. What? Where did that even come from? Also, lie detector? Who said anyone was lying?”

You laugh to yourself. “No, I’m just kidding. It was just the way you were looking at me. It felt like you could literally see into my soul.”

He just looks at you for a second. As if you had just offered him your heart on a plate. It was awkward and intimate and unsettling and almost nice to be looked at so intimately. It truly felt like he could see into your soul. He stood up from his side of the booth. You thought he was walking away from you and the conversation, you were up out of your seat before he could take another step and you grabbed his hand. “Wait! Look, Carl, I’m sorry if I made it awkward. I really didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” You weren’t ready for this conversation to be over and you felt like you had ruined this very odd night in the corner of the Desperado Club. He looked down to where your hands were grabbing one of his. 

“GIRL! MOVE! This thing isn’t slowing down and if you aren’t out of the way in 20 feet we’re running you down!” the man yells at you from down the hall. 

You quickly jump out of the way and press yourself to the side of the dungeon wall as the man and his cat speed by you. 

“Seriously dude!?” You shout in response. You cannot believe this. The first person you see that isn’t dead is a man and a talking cat on a motorcycle and now they’re gone. 

You’re trying to find another guild hall door and go in hoping to talk to your game guide. Yulissa was a Fulminar, which you found out is a person sized, elemental creature. She is translucent and made mostly of wind. You quickly learned to not question anything in the dungeon as it just made you even more confused than you already were and you were in a dungeon under the ground. 

The motorcycle thing came to a stop about a mile down the dungeon when you heard the woman, or you guess, the cat speak. “Carl. We must help that poor girl. She looked so shocked to see me! Do you think she knows who I am? Wouldn’t that be wonderful! A fan from the surface! Could you imagine!”

You have no idea how you were able to hear her being so far away, but considering you have no idea how any of this bullshit works, you’re not questioning it anymore. 

“Goddamnit, Donut” you hear the man, who you are guessing is Carl, grumble to the cat.

You hear the motorcycle turn on and drive back to you, “hey, you alright?” Carl asks you.

“Uh yeah, I guess, I mean, I’ve been better for sure considering everyone I know is dead and I’m in a dungeon, now two floors down, surrounded by goblins and weird rats and llamas that do cocaine and fucking rage elementals when some dumbass decides to piss on the walls!” you’re out of breath after that and on the verge of tears.

Carl looks at you like you’ve lost your mind. The cat looks between you and him and says, “Well she needs some help” and you break down into the tears you’ve been holding back since entering the dungeon however many days ago that was. 

“Why does your cat talk?” you say between tears and wiping your eyes, “sorry about that, by the way, don’t really know where that came from!” you try to laugh off your very abrupt breakdown. 

“Excuse me, I am not his cat. My name is Grand Champion, Breed Winner Regional, National Winner Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk and I am Ms. Beatrice’s cat, not this large, foul, no pants wearing man’s cat. He is only here as my bodyguard.” She huffs in response to your question. 

Carl kicks the motorcycle’s kickstand down and swings his leg around to get off of it. “First, not a bodyguard. Second. Hi, my name is Carl. Donut thought you needed some help. Can we help in any way? We were headed east from Seattle when we saw spray painting on the dungeon walls and met up with some guys from an elder care facility. Anyways, now Donut is trying to recruit people because it will get our ‘viewer count’ up or something. I’m just trying to find a pair of pants.” 

You laugh as you look down and see that he is just in a pair of boxers, not wearing any shoes, and wearing a very worn leather jacket.

“Carl, I think she is checking you out.” Donut says as your eyes travel back up his body. You flush in embarrassment. 

“N-No! I wasn’t!” You totally were. You realize he is a very attractive man, tall, muscular, kind, at least you’re hoping he is, which is why you gain the confidence to look up at him and ask, “I’m sorry if this is weird, but I was just wanting to join someone’s party. I’m done trying to do this alone.”

“Oh um, I’m not sure if-”