The next day, at school, he decided to root through the storage room in the gym. Dodgeball was definitely not a game he liked to see played. Mostly because it was pathetic watching the bigger, faster kids nail down the smaller, dweebier kids, but also because it reminded him too much of his life.

He hit paydirt when, near the very back and covered in at least three layers of dust, he found an old volleyball net and supports. It had been a popular recreational sport on his homeplanet, but he hadn't been able to find another planet that had it, or knew it very well. Seeing the net he was slightly intrigued, and pulled it out, setting it up carefully on the gym, stretching the net taut.

There were five flattened balls underneath an equally dusty old-fashioned soccer goal, so he filled them up with air using the pump that worked the footballs. Luckily, although the balls were very old, probably older than he was, they were still good and had no obvious leaks, and he practiced a couple of serves before the bell rang and students began filing in.

Several of their eyes widened in mysticism, while several other students nodded, grinning with eagerness. So the sport wasn't dead here. Good.

"Afternoon, guys," he said, checking everyone's name off as they walked through the door. "Sit down the bleachers and we'll just wait for the bell."

The bell rang again, and once more the kid rushed in late. "Stoppable, you're late," Shi said, not glancing up from his clipboard as he marked the kid tardy. "Again."

"Uh—did Mr. Bartlet tell you my name?" the kid asked, freezing in his tracks when his name was called.

"No, I just don't forget names or faces. Sit down, Stoppable, so we can get started." He set the clipboard down neatly on the first bleacher and stepped back, eyeing them. "I don't like dodgeball. Too violent," he started, ignoring several snickers from the jocks in the class. "So, how many of you already know how to play volleyball?"

Five raised their hands; Possible was one of them. "Great. Um, Hunter, Possible, get up here and we'll demonstrate some basic moves." The girls seemed surprised that he knew their names, but got up.

He picked up a ball and said, "For those of you who haven't played before, the object of the game is to get the ball on the ground of the other side. You can hit the ball three times when it's on your side. Likewise, there are three basic moves: the pass, set and spike, preferably in that order." He tossed the ball up into the air and passed it, then caught it. "That's a pass. You want to cup your hands and hit it with your forearms. Directing it will come with skill." He tossed the ball up in the air and set it, his fingers lightly pushing off the old, leathery surface. "And that's a set. It's mostly used to help people spike the ball on the other side of the net. Hunter, help me demonstrate a spike. I'm going to pass you the ball, and you set it to me."

She stood up by the net and he tossed her the ball, letting it go high enough for her to get her body underneath it. She set it, not very well, but he was already running towards the net and had leapt, meeting the ball at the highest point he could jump and slamming it down, his hand making a nice, meaty smack as it connected. He had made sure that he lowered his jumping height to compensate for what was normal in this gravity, but even then, when he landed the kids, even the big jocks, were silent. Maybe his idea of normal was a little off.

"I'm not expecting it to look like that, but don't be shy when coming up to the net. You can't, however, touch it, and, for you bigger guys, reach over it. Safety hazard. I don't want any broken fingers to take care of. Okay, Hunter, Possible, show them what a round of pepper looks like, and we can start with that."

The two girls squared off, although it looked more like a volleyball match for real instead of a warm-up, and he could sense some real animosity between the two. They showed what pepper looked like well enough, and after he had taught the three serves he sent the rest of the class off to practice pepper, then he formed up the class into four teams and got them playing.

He taught the next class volleyball as well, then took down the nets and set them back neatly in the storage room.

School had ended by that time, so he pulled on his battered jacket, helmet under his arm, and went out to his bike. Several boys were staring at it, and Shi wondered how they had missed it from the day before. He eyed it from a distance before going over, relieved to see that nothing had happened to it. Finch would kill him if something had.

"Dude, is this yours?" a big blond boy in varsity letter jacket asked.

"Sure." He straddled the bike and pulled on his helmet. The boys backed off, all except the kid who had questioned him. The boy, Brick Flagg, if Shi remembered correctly, was staring at the older man's brawler knuckles, which Shi had on the handlebars.

"Dude, what happened to your hands? They're all scarred," he said.

Shi grinned. "Guess I partied a little too hard when I was younger." He hoped the kid wasn't so thick to realize that several of those scars were actually scabs, and pretty recent. They were still healing from the little pick-up run he'd had to do for Finchy-boy, a pick-up run that had turned pretty nasty, although luckily none of the toughs there had guns. Shi had taken pity on them and so hadn't shot them with the weapon he always carried, but had beaten them up to teach them a lesson.

"Sweet," Brick said, but Shi ignored him and slammed his visor down, revving the bike and executing a neat reverse turn, and then he was gone, zooming down the road, Possible once more staring at him, although she had been close enough to her parent's minivan that she had to have heard the conversation, but far enough away that she hadn't see the scars on his knuckles.