(A/N) Hey guys, NicKenny speaking, here to launch our latest fic! This one, Interphase, will consist of a variety of one-shots written by the writers of The Freelancer Collaboration, through the various characters which appear in our Project Freelancer Saga series, which currently include Phase One: Genesis, and Phase Two: Betrayal. This opening one-shot, from Arkansas' point of view and, strangely enough, has been written by the fabulous WargishBoromirFan, rather than myself!

Know you'll enjoy this!

My New Obsession

Agent Arkansas

Written by WargishBoromirFan

"I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out." ― Rodney Dangerfield

One of the first things Arkansas had discovered about his new roommate was that, at least while in the right mood and given the right topic, Georgia could be a consummate researcher. Another was that the shorter man hated to "make Ark feel left out," and so he had been ignoring the Grifball factoids bounced his direction with thinner and thinner layers of sarcasm.

"...And the pro league ain't just limited to Earth; there're teams from as far out as Haven that I've come across so far; wanna see if there're any from your hometown?" Georgia leaned backwards from the data-pad he'd been furiously scanning, offering brief upside-down eye contact before Ark returned to his own reading. None of it was the links Georgia had sent him within the past hour, though they glutted his inbox.

Ark's lips twisted into something that might be mistaken for a grin. "Trust me, I know there weren't any local teams. We didn't have the equipment." Or the standing buildings. Or the living people.

"Well, you went to school closer to the inner colonies, right? Some kinda fancy military academy?" Ark shrugged. They weren't supposed to be talking about their pasts. He didn't want to talk about his past. "Surely there oughta've been some sorta intramural there, at least. Probably was one at Tech, too, but I never paid it any attention between the broomball and battle-bot ads." Georgia offered an airy, careless wave as he switched to another video on his data-pad. "Kinda wish I'd given more things a second look, now, but I grew up with football and figured I could play that pretty well, plus, well, you probably had a tougher drill sergeant than our ROTC guys; you know what that was like and Tech wasn't even that serious a program - oh hell, the drownproofing course was pretty damn medieval, but they figured buncha engineers would be goin' for the nice cushy pencil-pushin' desk jobs, military grants 'stead o' frontline work, but where's the fun in that, right?"

"Right." Fun. Georgia had joined Project Freelancer for fun. Maine and Penn had tried to kill each other and Alaska talked to walls, but Arkansas had gotten the crazy one for a roommate. Just remember why you're here, he reminded himself. A meeting of like minds would have been nice, but that was not the goal.

"But may as well check out the minor leagues; see what the spirit looks like without all the merchandising; that's what I can't be bothered with 'bout pro football - you don't get to just see the players play unless you can afford stadium tickets, and when are the likes o' us ever able to even predict when we'll be in town for a game and... huh. Ark?" He'd been letting his roommate's voice wash over him like an excitable but inconsequential tide when Georgia suddenly silenced himself, staring at the latest search result to pop up on his data-pad in near-perfect stillness.

Ark offered him a half-curious "hmm?" out of courtesy, not quite sure whether or not he really wanted to know what had caught Georgia's attention.

Georgia turned in his chair, stood, and brought his data-pad over to Ark. "Even if you look at nothin' else about Grifball, look at this."

There was a video embedded in the article, titled something about "Minor League Game, Major League Riot." It was paused on the image of a surging crowd wading in around a handful of armoured Grifball players, only one or two of them still armed. Many of their weapons had ended up in the hands of rowdy sports fans, including a tall blonde woman snatching away a hammer from some poor unlucky sod on the blue team. Ark hit the play button, Georgia leaning over his shoulder as they watched her deck the player Georgia later identified as the "hybrid" twice with the hefty, shockwave-inducing mallet before another eerily familiar tall blond male pulled it out of her hands and dragged her off the injured player. There might have been some explanation for her actions amidst the noise of the swarming madness, but what audio wasn't overshadowed by other cries had been censored by the broadcasters.

Ark himself had no words. After a long, thoughtful silence and a second viewing, all Georgia offered was a breathless, "I think... I think this might possibly be love."

"And I thought football hooligans were nuts," Arkansas muttered to himself. Later research turned up that some heiress local to the teams featured in Georgia's video had gotten herself a permanent ban from their league, no explanation given as to why, though rumours circled that it had cost the family a pretty penny to keep the minor league quiet. Maybe Georgia's research could be interesting, after all.