It's been a while but I am back with more volleyball! The game still hasn't started, but that does not mean that shit is not going down already.

Blame Eien ni Touko and thefourteenthdarkone for Mard. They've gotten me to fall in love with him.

Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail. Or Geoff - he belongs to Eddie Izzard.

While Cobra hauled away the pole, Minerva and the blonde - Lucy, Minerva called her? - parted, grinning at each other. "Why don't we get warmed up while we wait for the others to get their asses moving?" Minerva suggested.

"Sure!" her companion agreed, leaving to rummage through a gym bag stuffed under a metal bench. She withdrew a fluorescent, eye-searing pink volleyball from its depths. "Is it alright if we use mine?"

"Yeah, that's fine. I forgot to bring one today."

With that, the pair faced off and began to leisurely hit the garish ball back and forth between them, to the continued befuddlement of the two men observing them.

Sting and Rogue's contemplation on the unfathomable mystery of the unnecessarily complicated friendship dynamics of women was interrupted by the sound of banging coming from behind the automatically locking door behind them.

The one that led to the creepy corridor and abyssal realm.

Sharing a terrified glance, neither of the roommates moved to open the locked door. They'd seen enough horror movies to know better.

"EUCLIFFE!" came an angry shout behind the wooden barricade. "OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!"

With a squeak of surprise and horrified recognition, Sting rushed off towards a man sitting on a folding chair near the double doors that led to the rest of the building. The scarred man glanced up as Sting barreled to a stop in front of him. Carefully, he set his book down so as to not lose his place. "Did you need something, Sting?"

"Key!" Sting panted, throwing a glance over his shoulder at the storage room's door. More banging emanated from within. "I locked Professor Geer in there!"

Startled, the man handed over the small metal object without further comment.

"Thanks, Mest!" Sting yelled, scurrying off.

"For the last time, my name is Doranbolt!" the dark haired man shouted. When Sting failed to acknowledge the statement, he merely rolled his eyes and resumed his reading.

Sting swiftly shoved the key into its lock and fumbled with the handle. Once he had it turned, he flung it open.

Standing in the doorway was a professor that Rogue had only had one class with before, but remembered well. Brutal though the workload had been for that class, Rogue had learned a lot from the literature professor. It was... strange, however. Seeing the serious taskmaster in a dark grey shirt and black basketball shorts was a far cry from the ubiquitous sweater-vest with a jacket and slacks he seemed to permanently dwell in even when spotted off campus. His long, black hair was even tied back in a high ponytail.

He had never seen the normally calm professor quite so livid before, either. But Rogue couldn't exactly blame him - he had absolutely no desire to be locked within that dark and creepy place either.

The older man stared balefully at Sting, who was withering under the professor's steely gaze.

"Eucliffe," the teacher spat, emerging from the shadowed stairwell. "Is this some sort of petty revenge for that essay score from Monday? Because this is not the way to endear yourself to the person who dictates your grades."

"I'm sorry!" Sting cowered, backing away from the other male. "I swear I didn't mean to!"

Mard spotted Rogue, turning to fix him with a blank stare. "Ah, Mr. Cheney. One of my more intelligent students this year. Pity you're a sciences' major; Tempesta and Kyouka have told me good things, however."

Surprised at the sudden praise, Rogue barely managed a, "Thank you, sir." His teachers talked about him?

"What about me?" Sting interjected, excited.

A lazy, cruel smirk slowly spread across the professor's face. "I do suppose it takes a special sort of... genius to turn in a shopping list stained with pizza grease instead of a paper on the Iliad's much lauded Trojan Horse."

The blond flushed in embarrassment. "Yeah, okay. Not my finest moment."

Rogue thought he might recall this incident, actually. Sting had accidentally grabbed the wrong set of papers and turned them in as his assignment without realizing it (in Sting's defense, the true homework had been covered in the exact same pizza stains and the shopping list was a several page long document and almost an essay in its own right). A couple of days afterward, Sting had whined incessantly about his professor actually grading the shopping list in terms of which items were unhealthy and how to budget his finances properly (the paper had even had the following phrase written upon it in red ink, "Regardless of whether I grade this as a shopping list or as your actual assignment you STILL FAIL").

"Also..." Mard's countenance took a turn for the worse. "You locked. Me. Down there. In the dark."

"I said I was sorry! I didn't do it on purpose! I didn't even realize you were down there!"

Rogue glanced at the restricted, dark space from which Mard Geer had emerged. "How did you not see him?" Rogue wondered aloud. "It's not like you could miss him..." Come to think of it, Rogue hadn't seen him either. Which only made all the bad thriller flick tropes all the more prominent in his mind.

"I was around the corner, chasing a ball," the professor explained, indeed holding said object.

Wisely, Rogue refrained from questioning why Mard had decided to do that in the dark... with no light... in the exceedingly creepy sub-basement.

"Still, you shouldn't have shut the door. You've been coming here long enough to know it locks automatically and people need to get things out of the room."

"Speaking of which, I should probably return the key..." Sting muttered, wandering away.

The two dark haired men stared after the blond as he attempted to rouse Mest - Doranbolt? - from his dispassionate disinterest long enough to take the object back. Mard's eye twitched dangerously. "Did he just... ignore me?"

Rubbing his temple, Rogue apologized, "I'm sorry about him, sir."

With a sigh, Mard waved away Rogue's concern. "I'll see him in class tomorrow..." he muttered, walking to the other side of the gym, rejoining his team.

A moment later, Rogue observed a very intoxicated Cana Alberona stumble into and subsequently drape herself on the teacher for support, cooing all the while at him. Judging by his subsequent flailing and attempts to pry the drunk woman off him, Mard clearly wasn't enjoying the proximity. "Get off of me, Ms. Alberona!"

Sting returned to watch the professor's losing battle with the brunette woman. "Fairy Tail Team B is playing against Tartaros tonight, huh?" When Rogue stared at him, he asked, "What?"

"Tartaros? Fairy Tail... B?"

"Oh... yeah, Professor Geer's team is Tartaros. Uh... lemme think who's on it... Professors Tempesta, Geer, Kyouka, and Sayla... along with the T.A.'s Jackal and Lamy. Fairy Tail Team A is the one Blondie belongs to." Sting gestured vaguely in his fellow blonde's direction. "But they have an upper league team, too. They just call it Team B. Erm..." Holding up a hand, Sting started to count the members as he thought. "They've got Cana Alberona, Laxus Dreyar, Juvia Lockser, Mirajane Strauss, and Gajeel Redfox for their main players, but they have a bunch of others on their roster and kind of just rotate them around every week."

Cana Alberona complained enthusiastically on the other court as a mountainous blond man took pity on Professor Geer and peeled his teammate off of him.

"The teachers," Rogue said, "named their team... Tartaros."

Sting raised an eyebrow. "Yeah? What are you getting at?"

"The people with the power to kill our grades named their team after the Greek underworld."

The blond opened his mouth to reply, but then paused in thought. He shut his jaw, looking pensive. "That's... I mean... What?"

"My thoughts exactly."

Silence fell between the pair.

"By the way," Rogue spoke up, "why do the professors have a team, anyway? I thought only students were allowed to participate in these kinds of things."

Sting shrugged. "The league is separate from the school, although almost all the players are from it. This gym gets rented for these games, and we all have to pay a seasonal fee when we register our teams. Doranbolt keeps an eye on us to make sure we don't burn down the place or kill each other - he's actually a part of campus security. Which is why he has the keys."

"I see. Makes sense."

Jellal chose that moment to wander past the befuddled bystanders with the other metal pole on his shoulder. "Hey, Sting. Rogue! I didn't realize that you play volleyball. Come to join in this time?"

The brunet shook his head. "No, Sting wrangled me into playing scorekeeper."

Smiling, the bluenette shook his head in mild exasperation. "About time we got someone to help out with that. We really can't seem to do it on our own. So thanks, Rogue. We really appreciate your assistance."

"Oh." Rogue shifted uncomfortably. "No problem. Really... It's no big deal."

"No, no!" Jellal protested, holding up his free hand. "We... we're really quite hopeless when it comes to keeping score. And I think Cobra adds on points..."

"I said," Sting mumbled under his breath. "I fuckin' said."

Glancing away, Jellal sighed heavily. "Speaking of... Cobra!" He walked off, forcing Rogue and Sting to again perform evasive maneuvers to avoid being clocked by the metal pole. "Wrong side! That pole goes in the other slot!"

"Are you kidding me?!" the redhead yelled, lifting the object from the hole in the gym floor. With a grumble, he hefted it and went to the other side to fit it in its correct place this time.

Rogue, upon regaining his feet, pointed at the poles. "I'm curious as to how they managed to get those out of that narrow storage area."

"Oh, they didn't," Sting informed him. Scratching the back of his neck with one hand, he pointed towards a set of doors a little distance away, near where Doranbolt was ignoring the world. "There's another storage area."

Staring, Rogue visually inspected the brightly lit opening, full of space and many different types of sports equipment. "Couldn't the nets be kept in there...?" he wondered aloud.

For a moment, his blond friend stared at Rogue. "I never thought about that," he admitted, sheepish. "But uh... maybe it's because all the nets are in the other room? Or... maybe there isn't enough space in this storage area...?"

Rogue swept his arm out, indicating the vast openness actually available for use in the non-creepy storage room.

Sting threw his arms up in defeat. "I don't know! The gym managers are the ones who get to decide where shit goes!"

"So who's the manager?"

The college sophomore paused. "Um. I guess that would be the program director? Geoff? I think it's Geoff."

"...Geoff."

"Right. Geoff Jeff D'Gioeff. Born on the first of Geoff, Nineteen-Jeff-D'Gioeff."

Was that really the guy's name or was Sting just... making it up? "...Am I supposed to know who that is."

Shrugging, Sting replied, "I dunno. I've never actually met the guy. I went to the Team Captain meetings, which he's supposed to be in charge of, but he never showed. Mest ran the thing instead."

"MY NAME IS DORANBOLT!"

For a man that had mastered the semblance of disinterest to the degree that this individual had, it seemed that Doranbolt was, in fact, paying at least some attention. Enough to recognize that his name wasn't be correctly said.

"Hey, Dory..."

"DORANBOLT, STING. IT'S NOT THAT HARD TO REMEMBER."

Again, the blond shrugged. "What's Geoff like?"

The man stared at Sting strangely. "How the hell would I know? I've never met him."

"Wh... Huh?" It Sting a moment to process that statement. "But you give us updates from him all the time."

Doranbolt shrugged at him. "I get emails from him, but I've never spoken to or seen the guy myself."

Cold chills seeped into Rogue's spine as he and Sting stared at Doranbolt.

Was Geoff a mythical creature?

Did Geoff even exist?

WHO THE FUCK WAS RUNNING THIS THING?!

A sudden shriek from behind Rogue caught his attention. "HEADS!"

Heads? What was that supposed to me-

And then everything went dark.

I feel like I need to separate fact and fiction at the end of these.

First off - Geoff. He's a real person. ...I think. He's based off of Jeff who runs the volleyball program I am a part of. Just like Sting, I have never met this man. I have been a part of this thing for five years, and been to three Team Captain meetings on behalf of my Captain.

I have still never met him, and I really am beginning to wonder if he actually does exist.

The name Geoff Jeff D'Gioff is a joke from Eddie Izzard, a rather brilliant comedian.

The abyssal hole. Yes, it's real. Yes, I have accidentally locked someone in there before. Multiple times to different people. Yes, it's right next to the brightly lit storage area that could totally hold all the supplies but for some unfathomable reason they aren't stored there.

Assume all physical gym details are accurate unless I say otherwise.

The test Sting turned in WAS fictional.

Doranbolt is taking the place of the actual supervisor at my gym. A particularly disinterested individual named Chet. (WE LOVE YOU CHET.)

League details are all true to form, as well. Except for the tiny bits I had to repurpose to work in a college setting.

That is all. Carry on.