Carl's relationships with other crawlers develop from a small circle of people trying to survive the early floors into a coalition whose members can plan, fight, and make decisions without standing beside him. Princess Donut is his constant companion. Katia Grim becomes a trusted partner before building a life and team partly apart from the Royal Court. The survivors of Team Meadow Lark give Carl allies whose first obligation is to vulnerable people in their care. Later cooperation with Li Jun, Li Na, Prepotente, Florin, and others depends less on membership in one party than on shared information and the willingness to undertake a particular risk. The relationships are also strained by decisions Carl makes privately, by dangers he cannot remove, and by the other crawlers' own commitments.
Donut: partnership and separate judgment
Carl enters the dungeon with Donut because he has gone outside to retrieve her. He initially speaks and acts as someone responsible for a cat, but her new ability to communicate makes that arrangement inadequate almost at once. Donut can argue, choose a course of action, and attract attention Carl cannot control. They continue to travel together, yet their work is divided: he devises improvised attacks and handles many physical risks while she supplies magic, social initiative, and a public identity that soon exceeds his. Calling their bond simply protection misses the occasions when Donut identifies a social danger or states a preference Carl would rather set aside. Their continued partnership requires him to treat those judgments as consequential.
Their first-floor association with the Meadow Lark survivors tests that partnership in front of other people. Donut speaks for the pair on Odette's program about remaining with the group for the moment, while leaving the next floor open. That statement is a choice about their obligations, not a permanent merger of teams. During the crisis involving Jack and the residents, Donut tries to intervene, Yolanda shoots Jack, and Imani must face the aftermath. Carl and Donut remain together through the disaster, but the event places their decisions inside a community that will bear its own losses. Their fame also makes private distress into entertainment: the broadcast of the incident is edited for viewers while the people involved are still processing it.
Donut is especially important when Carl's instinct is to decide what someone else can safely know. She notices when he is keeping a plan from her, and she has friendships of her own with crawlers he approaches primarily as tactical partners. Their disagreement over Katia's problems on the eighth floor illustrates the difference. When Imani says Katia needs help with an addictive substance, Donut initially rejects the characterization; Carl recognizes the danger but must also confront how little either of them can solve by deciding for Katia. The bond between Carl and Donut is strongest when they can challenge each other without requiring agreement on the first attempt.
Meadow Lark: care beyond the party
Carl's connection to Meadow Lark begins with people who cannot simply run at crawler speed or abandon one another at a stairwell. Yolanda and Imani distribute food and help the residents meet basic needs while Carl and Donut plan around the floor's threats. The care workers are therefore partners in a joint evacuation, not a burden attached to Carl's adventure. Brandon and Chris contribute building and transport work; Imani and Yolanda keep the residents organized. Their different priorities affect the plan itself. A route that might be tolerable for a small combat party can be fatal for residents who need carts, time, and escorts.
The first-floor elemental disaster leaves the relationship marked by a death Carl cannot reverse. Yolanda's attempt to stop Jack comes too late to prevent the catastrophe, and the surviving group must descend without her. Imani's response to the replay of Jack's death is not an abstract objection to violence: she has lived through the event and watched it turned into a program. Carl's later respect for her is grounded in that shared history. She has seen him take risks for strangers, and he has seen her continue to tend to others under conditions in which caring is dangerous.
On later floors the relationship becomes more reciprocal. Imani and Elle operate with their own team, relay observations, and help investigate dangers while Carl and Katia follow other routes. On the fourth floor, Carl aims to reunite with Imani, Elle, and Li Jun's people at a guarded station; the groups remain separate until the route permits it. Imani also advises rather than merely obeys. In the eighth-floor discussion of Katia's drug use, she speaks plainly to Carl and Donut and offers help. Her authority comes from practical care and a willingness to say what the pair do not want to hear. By the ninth floor she is part of operations planned across several positions, including a contingency with Donut and Elle at the naga stronghold.
Katia: trust without possession
Katia enters Carl and Donut's orbit on the third floor as Hekla's contact, visibly uncertain in the form produced by her transformation build and far below Carl's level. Her class and altered appearance make an immediate reading of her abilities unreliable. Carl nevertheless brings her into dangerous work, and she is with him and Donut when the failed spell threatens a wide area. The escape requires Katia and other crawlers to follow a rapidly changing plan rather than wait for a safer opportunity. By the time Carl, Donut, Mongo, and Katia appear together for an interview, she is part of their immediate group and exposed to the same public scrutiny.
Their cooperation on the fourth floor is built through tasks that neither could complete alone. Katia participates in navigating the train system, while Carl's contacts with Imani, Elle, and Li Jun's party turn the route into a joint operation. The prospect that Hekla knows details of Carl's contacts makes him wonder what Katia has shared. That suspicion matters because Katia entered the group through another powerful crawler's circle. Trust does not erase her previous ties, and Carl cannot assume that every message crossing those circles has the meaning he fears. Li Jun, Zhang, and Li Na later volunteer beside Carl when a dangerous plan needs additional crawlers, giving the relationship with Katia a wider setting of teams that choose cooperation without surrendering their identities.
The eighth floor makes Katia's independence urgent. Eva places the Crown of the Sepsis Whore on her head before dying, creating a threat that reaches Donut as well as Katia. Katia tells Carl privately that she has found a possible way out and asks him to listen before Donut learns what has happened. When she eventually explains the crown to Donut, Donut's shock is immediate. Carl wants to secure a solution, but Katia weighs what the available boons would mean for her own future, including the possibility of pregnancy and a return to the surface. Her decision cannot be reduced to Carl's rescue plan. Her substance dependence adds another problem that cannot be solved merely by carrying her out of a battle; Imani's intervention and Donut's distress make the need for Katia's own participation unmistakable.
The group that appears to help Carl during the eighth-floor crisis also shows how far Katia's circle has expanded. She arrives with Bautista, Louis, Britney, Tran, Li Jun, Li Na, Zhang, Chris, Elle, Imani, and others. Elle calls the attempt a suicide mission, and Carl had not expected the reinforcements. Their presence is a decision made by multiple allies, including people whose primary loyalties are to Katia or to their own teams. Carl can inspire such a response, but he cannot claim that every participant belongs to him. The reunion makes the shared danger visible without dissolving the separate relationships that brought them there.
Cooperation with independent crawlers
Li Jun and Li Na demonstrate a form of alliance that begins outside Carl's party. Carl first learns about Li Jun and his sister in a mediated encounter, when Li Jun is pressed about what he would do to save her. Later Li Jun, Zhang, and Li Na step forward as volunteers for one of Carl's plans on the fourth floor. Li Jun speaks for their readiness, while Carl asks about the rest of their team. This exchange defines a boundary: the siblings can act with him in a particular operation without making him their commander or severing their obligations to the people with whom they arrived.
Their abilities become more consequential as the coalition grows. On the ninth floor Carl places Li Na at a defensive position and recognizes that her Dread auras work differently from those of another ally. During a later movement through an area affected by her power, he messages her to ask what one of those effects does. Her strength is indispensable, yet it also requires communication and caution among allies. At the floor's end Carl considers using a deadly marking opportunity in a way that would raise his own statistics, comparing it with what Li Na has done, and chooses against killing defeated opponents. Cooperation has not made their moral decisions identical.
Miriam Dom and Prepotente present another limit to Carl's influence. On the sixth floor Carl exchanges messages with Miriam while trying to reach her and Prepotente. Her predicament includes an infected dinosaur and an expanding threat; she believes there may still be a way to contain it if they arrive. Carl consults a map Katia has made and heads toward her location. Miriam dies before the hoped-for rescue succeeds. The system then presents Carl and Donut as having stood by callously, an account that conceals the attempted intervention. Carl later remembers Prepotente sobbing over her death and recognizes the showrunners' use of that grief for a floor finale. Whatever alliance follows, Prepotente's loss belongs to him, and Carl cannot answer it by asserting command over him.
On the ninth floor, however, Carl and Prepotente can work together in a precise operation. Prepotente asks why Donut is absent as they approach a Dagba temple; Carl has given her a separate contingency with Elle and Imani. Katia and Prepotente are with Carl during the subsequent movement, while Bautista, Zhang, and Li Jun guard different doors to maintain the plan. The scene depends on several trusted crawlers occupying separate positions and understanding their assignments. It also shows how a relationship once defined by a failed rescue can become practical cooperation without pretending that the earlier loss has disappeared.
Conditional allies and limits of rescue
The category of ally is least stable around crawlers whose danger or private purpose Carl cannot fully assess. On the eighth floor he fights amid Paz, Sister Ines, and Anton, then learns that Sister Ines has committed murders and that Paz has been imprisoned. The revelations change the meaning of their temporary cooperation. Carl later treats Ines as an active threat when she threatens the stairwell and controls demons. Fighting beside a crawler at one point does not guarantee that Carl can trust that person's next act, and he must judge the immediate harm rather than rely on the earlier alignment.
Florin's relationship with Carl works differently. He has his own team and contacts, and Carl checks in with him separately when the ninth floor opens. Florin helps recruit, reports on the front, and sends Carl both successes and bad news after stopping enemy armor and capturing equipment. Those exchanges are operational conversations between allies who are useful to each other because they hold different positions. At the close of the floor, Florin joins Imani and Jurgen in trying to persuade a distraught Lucia Mar to accept a deal. Carl hopes they succeed; he does not substitute himself for the people who have a better chance of reaching her.
Lucia's situation is an especially sharp test of the coalition's capacity for restraint. Her power and history make her dangerous, and Carl has had reason to fear her since the early floors. Yet the ninth-floor scene presents her crying among people trying to help her leave. Carl's hope for that outcome is separate from any claim that her earlier harm has been erased. His relationships with allied crawlers repeatedly require this distinction: immediate cooperation can be necessary, accountability can remain necessary, and the person at risk may still need a choice that Carl cannot make on their behalf.
By Faction Wars, Carl's contacts have become a working coalition, but its effectiveness rests on the earlier relationships remaining specific. Donut handles an assignment apart from him; Imani and Elle occupy another position; Li Na's power needs coordination; Prepotente questions a missing teammate; Florin reports from the front. Katia and Bautista bring their own group into shared danger. Carl's role connects these decisions and accepts help that he could neither compel nor personally supply. The alliance lasts when its members can pass information, disagree, and act independently while still answering a common threat.