6 – Baseball and Bat Wings

Even after all the strange things Conrart had already seen on Earth, Yankee Stadium was overwhelming. It covered as much ground as Covenant Castle, and its three decks held more people than the castle and the city around it put together. And every one of those people seemed to be talking at once; the noise was incredible. Conrart looked around uneasily. The last time he'd seen this many people in one place, he had been on a battlefield and half of them had been trying to kill him.

As Shoma led the way to their seats, they passed several large, loud-voiced men selling things. One had a box full of small triangular flags on sticks; another had something that looked like clouds of colored cotton. Shoma stopped a man whose case was half-full of plastic cups of beer, and bought two.

"Here you go, Conrad," he said, handing over one of the cups. "You buy the next round."

Conrart sipped cautiously at the beer. It wouldn't have met Yozak's standards, he was sure, but at least it was cold. He followed Shoma to a row of plastic seats that were, as far as he could tell, identical to all the other rows of plastic seats, and took the one Shoma indicated.

"It's a shame the traffic was so bad," Shoma said. "If we'd gotten here a little earlier, you could have seen Monument Park, but they close it forty-five minutes before the game starts."

"That's all right."

"At least we made it in time for the opening pitch," Shoma went on. "Well, I couldn't let you miss that! Not at your first baseball game!"

Conrart agreed again, wondering what had possessed him to come here. Shoma didn't seem to notice his abstraction; he launched into an explanation of the coming game that lost Conrart within three sentences. After a while, everyone stood up while someone sang into a crackly loudspeaker. Then most of them sat down and the game started.

Half an hour later, Conrart had decided that baseball was mainly about standing around waiting for something to happen. The only people who seemed to be doing much were the ones throwing and catching the ball, plus whoever was trying to hit it with the stick – the bat, he corrected himself. Some of Shoma's commentary was getting through. Still, there was something very...civilized about this game. Something almost elegant. Julia would have liked it, he thought.

A small boy clambered across them, waving frantically at one of the vendors. There were a lot of children in the stadium with their parents, Conrart noticed. It occurred to him that any child of Shoma Shibuya's was highly likely to inherit his passion for this game, and he began paying closer attention. If the next Demon King was going to be interested in baseball, somebody in Shin Makoku should have at least a passing familiarity with the game.

Shoma seemed to be thinking along similar lines. "You know, I can't wait to bring my kids to a game," he said. "I hope Miko doesn't decide baseball is too frivolous an interest for a Demon King."

"Miko?" Conrart said.

"My wife." Shoma raised his beer in a silent toast, then took a deep swallow. "She gets these ideas," he confided.

"Ideas?"

"Like, she thinks mazoku are supposed to have wings," Shoma said. "But she can never decide whether they're supposed to be angel wings or bat wings. She was really disappointed when our boy Shori was born with no wings at all, even though I told her–"

"Wait, wings?" Conrart stared at Shoma in complete puzzlement. "Why would she think that mazoku have wings? She doesn't have wings, does she?"

"Of course not. But she's human, not mazoku, and she, well, she got this idea about mazoku having wings." Shoma shook his head. "It was the first thing she asked me, when I told her I was a mazoku – 'What happened to your wings?' I told her–"

Conrart's ears shut off. Mentally, he replayed what Shoma had just said. Then he replayed it again. No, he wasn't wrong. He hadn't misheard. There was no mistake.

The next Demon King was going to have a human mother.

The thought bounced back and forth in a mind suddenly empty of anything else, while its owner sat stunned, absorbing the implications. The next Demon King would be half human, half mazoku. Like the men who had died at Lutenberg. Like Yozak. Like him. A despised and mistrusted halfbreed...but who among mazoku could despise or mistrust the Demon King himself?

And the child would be raised here, on Earth, where Julia's dream of peace between humans and mazoku was already a taken-for-granted reality. Where he wouldn't learn to mistrust other people – or himself – merely because some or all of their blood was human.

Maybe, just maybe, such a child would become a Demon King who could teach others that kind of trust.

Lord Conrart Weller was still half-afraid to admit even to having an idea with so much hope in it. Plain Conrad Weller, on the other hand, looked around the stadium at humans and mazoku sitting side by side, yelling and waving little flags in identical displays of support and excitement, and thought that a king who could bring even a fraction of this amity to Shin Makoku would be a king worth serving, with all he was, for all his life.

"Hey, Conrad!" Shoma's worried voice brought him out of his daze. "You all right?"

"I'm...fine."

"You look a little pale. Are you sure you're not feeling sick? Come to think of it, you didn't look too great the other day at the restaurant, either. You know, if there's something wrong with your health, we have really good doctors here."

"Really, I'm fine." Conrad looked up, and smiled. "In fact, I think I've never felt better. Now, remind me again how that 'foul ball' thing works?"

----

In case you were wondering, the Red Sox won. And they made it to the playoffs, but not the World Series. That year.

Next: 7-A Reason To Carry On