Carl and Daniel Bautista develop an alliance that begins with a shared loss on the Third Floor and becomes indispensable on the Iron Tangle. Carl and Princess Donut kill the creatures responsible for the deaths of Bautista’s relatives; Bautista later supplies information and organizes stranded crawlers while Carl works out a way to reach them. Their cooperation continues after Bautista joins Katia Grim, although his commitment to her sometimes puts him at odds with Carl’s plans. By Faction Wars, the two men can fight in the same operation, disagree over Katia’s safety, and still recognize one another as family.
The Third Floor: a debt born from loss
Carl encounters the Bautista name before he meets Daniel. Near the former circus, he finds the bodies of Grace, Nica, and Lea Bautista, killed by lemurs that have become part of the circus’s defenses. Carl and Donut later kill the lemurs. At the time, Carl cannot know whether any member of the family survived. The discovery becomes personal when Daniel approaches them near the end of the floor and recognizes their televised fight at the circus.
Carl has already found another sign of Daniel’s presence: the dead neighborhood boss called the Divider. The dungeon identifies Daniel as its killer. When they meet, Daniel is a level 18 Tigran swashbuckler carrying multiple neighborhood boss markers. He has survived and fought effectively without Carl’s help. Their first conversation therefore does not establish a leader and a recruit. It brings together two crawlers who have been dealing with the same local dangers on different routes.
Daniel is pursuing a quest involving Miss Quill, but Carl and Donut’s actions have already caused her death and frustrated his objective. Carl apologizes for that unintended interference. Daniel’s more urgent concern is the fate of his family. He asks about the circus, and Carl confirms both the deaths he witnessed and the killing of the lemurs. Daniel explains that five sisters and cousins died in the attack, another cousin died afterward, and he is the last of a large family. He thanks Carl for avenging them even though Carl cannot undo their deaths or answer Daniel’s anguished questions about the Tigran body he chose.
The exchange gives their later alliance a specific foundation. Daniel offers Carl help if he needs it, while Carl treats the offer as coming from a bereaved survivor rather than simply a powerful crawler. They briefly share information about stairwell locations before the Third Floor’s final emergency separates the groups again. Daniel subsequently arrives with other crawlers at a stairwell Carl has reached, and Carl claps him on the shoulder as Daniel descends. Their next sustained contact depends on dungeon chat, not on remaining in one party.
Information shared across the Iron Tangle
On the Fourth Floor, Daniel contacts Carl from a Desperado Club. He carries a message from Imani, who wants to speak with Carl about Brandon and Chris. He also warns that people at the club have discussed hunting leaderboard crawlers for bounties. Carl learns from Daniel how numbered transfer stations indicate Desperado Club and Club Vanquisher locations. The message combines a personal connection, an immediate threat, and a usable rule of the rail system. It shows why Daniel is valuable to Carl even while their teams are far apart.
Carl initially has only his own route and fragmentary reports from other groups. Daniel’s information helps convince him to add more crawlers to his contacts and gather observations across the Iron Tangle. The need is practical: no one team can inspect every line, station, portal, or monster before the floor collapses. Carl and Daniel continue trading location details while Daniel moves with his own group. Their relationship becomes one of reciprocal reporting rather than a standing assignment in Carl’s party.
The danger of depending on incomplete reports appears at Terminus Station. Daniel tells Carl that the station itself is a city boss, a mimic that has swallowed crawlers from a large group and is attacking those still on the platform. Carl warns him away from the trap, but Daniel’s situation forces his group toward another possible exit. At a neighboring station, Daniel uses his last purple Voca Nye to stop the Kravyad NPC from hypnotizing crawlers. The NPC then threatens to kill herself, which would close the employee portal. Daniel’s updates give Carl the details needed to understand that the group’s remaining routes are failing.
When the Kravyad dies and the portal closes, more than 150 crawlers without the required souvenir hats cannot simply walk through the other portals. Trains also stop arriving. Daniel plans to take his people toward the abyss on foot. Carl tells him to send those who have hats through and to look for a path to another station, but that advice leaves many people exposed. Carl’s private assessment is that Daniel’s group may be trapped beyond his reach. He nevertheless continues looking for a way to bring them back.
Daniel helps map the stranded population rather than waiting passively for rescue. He reports a route to the Mindaro line for his group and passes along the locations of other groups near different colored lines. Carl uses that information to plan separate trips with rapid response carts and their front-mounted portals. Daniel and Katia identify serious problems in Carl’s first design: damaged track might stop a cart, and a portal could deliver survivors into a trainyard full of wreckage and enemies. The revised plan sends one cart to clear monsters from a line and another to collect the crawlers. Daniel also describes the widening tunnels near the abyss, information Carl needs to judge whether people can evade the first cart.
The rescue remains hazardous after the plan is revised. Daniel’s people fight their way to the correct station, losing nearly fifty crawlers; others are pulled into the abyss or die when a gangway collapses. A cart intended for his group does not arrive, partly because Carl’s warning system and cart timing fail. Carl, Donut, and Katia ride out to find them. On that journey they accidentally transport the Terminus Station mimic to Trainyard E. When Carl finally meets Daniel near the abyss, roughly six hundred crawlers are gathered there, and Daniel warns him that the mimic is too dangerous to confront casually.
Carl changes the evacuation route again. Rather than send Daniel’s people through the cart portal into the mimic’s new location, he distributes enough hats for them to pass through the larger abyss portal to another trainyard. Daniel is visibly relieved. Later, after the group has moved, he embraces Carl and Katia and thanks them. Katia has suggested that the rescued crawlers return their hats to Donut, and Daniel helps carry out the gesture. The scene marks a real rescue, but not a claim that Carl solved the Iron Tangle alone: Daniel kept hundreds together, supplied route intelligence, fought to a usable position, and helped the survivors move onward.
Their conversation afterward also exposes a limit in Daniel’s fighting style. He shows Carl one of the stuffed Jaxbrin figures he obtained from Miss Quill’s apartment and explains that removing its tag summons a creature. Some of the figures behave unpredictably, and he is consuming a finite supply. Carl urges him to train with his sword rather than rely on sponsor replacements. He also worries that some members of Daniel’s group are falling behind in level. Daniel acknowledges the problem but says they are doing what they can. Carl’s concern extends beyond getting the group out of the abyss to its ability to survive the next fight.
Katia’s separate team
The Fifth Floor changes the shape of the alliance. Daniel explores a dangerous region of his own bubble and later clears its castles, although most of the crawlers there do not survive. When Katia decides to leave Carl and Donut’s party, she tells them that Daniel and some of his friends have agreed to join her new group. Carl is surprised to learn that she and Daniel have been talking since the Iron Tangle rescue. Katia describes Daniel as lost and in need of the group. Carl wants her to stay, but he accepts that she has made a decision and gives her a weapon for the road ahead.
Daniel’s place beside Katia does not sever his relationship with Carl. It does change the terms of their cooperation: information and help now cross between two parties whose leaders can make different choices. On the Hunting Grounds, Daniel supplies a stuffed creature for a false Donut used in Carl’s counterplan against Lucia Mar. The decoy allows Carl’s team to draw an attack onto a summoned substitute while the real Donut stays away from that strike. Daniel contributes a tool from his own unusual inventory to a plan devised elsewhere.
Carl visits Team Katia’s personal space before the Butcher’s Masquerade and finds Daniel sorting Jaxbrin figures for subtle variants that their descriptions do not reveal. The conversation turns to Daniel and Katia’s romantic relationship. Daniel is nervous that Carl might regard him as a rival for Katia’s affection; Carl tells him he thinks of her as a sister. Donut’s surprise and objections make the disclosure awkward, but Carl does not claim authority over Katia’s choice. Daniel’s relief matters because it removes a feared personal conflict without making him subordinate to Carl.
Disagreement over Katia’s safety
On the Eighth Floor, Katia’s crisis tests that understanding. Carl is trying to complete a time-sensitive operation tied to her attempt to escape the danger posed by the Crown of the Sepsis Whore. When he asks Daniel where she is, Daniel says she is asleep and unwell in the Desperado Club and urges a delay. Carl presses for details because he believes access to the club may be lost during the next phase. Daniel resists the questioning and asks him to leave her alone. Carl then contacts Imani, treating Daniel’s reassurance as insufficient in light of Katia’s condition.
The confrontation becomes direct when Carl reaches Katia. She is vomiting, shaking, and burdened by numerous adverse effects. Daniel, Imani, Elle, and Louis are with her. Carl insists that the operation proceed within the available window; Daniel argues that it can wait until a later opportunity and physically stops Katia as she tries to rise. Katia tells him not to handle her that way. She chooses to go with Carl, and Daniel leaves in anger rather than watch what he believes may kill her. The disagreement is about an immediate risk to someone both men love, and Katia’s own decision remains central to the outcome.
Their conflict does not turn into a permanent split. During Faction Wars, Carl’s plans depend on allied units operating at separate positions, including Katia and Daniel alongside Florin. Florin reports that he is taking them and the remnants of a battalion to keep a western retreat corridor open while Carl handles another threat. In a later operation against the nagas, Daniel guards the Shanty Town exit while Zhang and Li Jun hold other doors. The arrangement preserves the auras and routes needed for Carl’s plan. Daniel is again a participant with an assigned tactical position, even while he and Katia are privately arguing about what she should do next.
At the Reaver castle, Carl and his allies confront passages that change as they advance. Daniel sends summoned figures into the shifting honeycombs and reports their positions to Katia as she revises the map. The work links Carl’s assault to the particular skills of Daniel and Katia: his mobile scouts reveal movement that her map can track. Daniel survives the castle’s destructive aftermath and helps move the injured Louis. Their shared campaign has progressed beyond the train rescue, but it still works by passing precise observations between people with different capabilities.
Katia’s final Ninth Floor ceremony brings their personal disagreement back into view. Carl urges her to take the orchid that can remove her from the active crawl; Daniel disappears during the preparations, and Carl messages him because time is running out. Daniel returns with cybernetic parts that Katia had prepared for the body she would regain. He has finished them in the crafting room and helps fit them after her hidden injuries become visible. His absence was an act of preparation for her future, not an attempt to prevent the ceremony.
Afterward, Daniel speaks to Carl before entering the stairwell. He admits that fear and anger over repeatedly losing family nearly drove him toward a jealous or harmful response. He also says he would not hurt Carl, whom he calls a brother, and gives him a warning about the Kimaris figure Carl possesses. Carl responds by clasping his shoulder. The exchange recalls Daniel’s first disclosure of family loss on the Third Floor, but their bond now rests on much more than gratitude for the dead: they have coordinated rescues, shared tools and intelligence, disagreed over Katia, and continued to act on one another’s behalf.