Read, review, comment and criticise as you see fitting.
I do not own Galactik Football, which belongs to Alphanim. I do not make any profit from writing these fanfics, (except in the mental release sense).
Most of the information I have acquired about Planet Shadow and the Shadows as a team has been obtained from the official website .com and its official A-Z of Galactik football.
Enjoy part two :)
Theme song for this chapter? Supermassive Black Hole by Muse
Monday came way too early.
Ebony had arrived that morning at five am, moved into her new bedroom and appropriated herself a place in the locker room, with the air of a tornado ripping through the house. A tornado that had dowsed itself in over-expensive perfume and was set to usurp everything in its path- just like every other natural disaster.
Ugh, newbies...
It was dark that morning when they began training. It was always dark on the Shadows planet when they began training.
Planets made of obsidian rock that float on the outskirts of massive black holes tend to be dark.
Sinedd glared at her, the vain little cow, preening at herself in the glossy green glass of the pitch. He hadn't stared at himself half as much when he first got his training uniform.
They were only running passing drills so he hadn't gotten the chance yet to come through on his threat of "really making her laugh" but he that didn't mean he didn't plan to.
"Come on! Come on! Faster, all of you! Nice work Kai! Pick it up, Nilhis! Sinedd! Keep up the pace!"
Artegor's orders just never stopped coming. Sinedd felt his reedy, thin voice vibrate against the microphone on his cheek and every vibration just made him want to push himself harder.
"No one is better than me," became his mantra as he wove skilfully around his fellow players. A carefully calculated pattern that he could do in his sleep but it needed a unique effort every time to give that same fierce level of performance that the Shadows were famous for.
Daunting pressure for anyone.
A shrill siren echoed out across the pitch.
"Ok, that's enough passing sessions for now," Artegor announced. "Split into your usual teams and practice your one on one tackling. I'll fill the opposing goal with a clone. Ready?"
The team panned out.
Sinedd raked his gloveless fingers through the spikes of his fringe and let another wave of adrenaline pumped fatigue wash over him. It was early in their training session but he felt drunk without a drop of alcohol. His head felt heavier than lead and his legs, like wet towels.
Nothing he couldn't tough out though.
The team panned out to their usual spots- aside from their new member.
"So, where do I go now?" she asked, playfully tugging on Nilhis' arm. The Shadow's female midfielder was only too happy to dissolve into giggles and whisper childishly with her new fellow player.
It personally made Sinedd sick to see a perfectly good, serious player reduced to the psyche of a bubble-headed girly girl by that disruptive little newbie.
"It's a female conspiracy," Fulmugus grunted to Sinedd as he assumed his new position.
Sinedd, in turn, couldn't help but laugh a little. It was clearly a case of sour grapes: Nilhis had another girl-player to hang around for once and so Fulmugus was feeling the bite of the lack of attention she normally lavished on him.
"She's probably really pretty by their standards," Sinedd though offhandedly as he surveyed the pitch in front of him, including the white-haired, red-eyed player... that the captain behind him secretly lusted after.
And had been lusting after for the last two years or so, Sinedd recalled, with a smirk remembering what Kai had told him.
(Well, the Shadows weren't so "share-y, share-y" they could just as well get bitchy if they wanted to).
The whistle sounded. Play began.
Like dancers, the wraith-like players flitted across the pitch. The ball ricocheted between them like a silver coin.
Each time, Sinedd pushed himself harder. Every single time the ball came between his ankles he felt like he had to prove himself worthy to hold it there. Hang on, prove himself? No. Sinedd knew he was worthy- at this stage he'd have to be- and was more than deserving of being next to all his fellow players on the pitch.
Well, almost all of them.
Ebony stuck a pass from another brown-haired player and swung around an attacker with the same "fluid clumsiness" she had brought to her trial. Watching her play was awkward but for some reason, still worth watching all the same.
Nilhis got the ball of her in a single, effortless kick and slid past to land a perfect goal in the clone-keeper's net.
"Nice work Nilhis! You'll need nicer work than that for a real goalie though! Ebony! More aggression please! Don't make me or my players regret letting you on this team!"
"Too late," muttered Sinedd under his breath.
Fulmugus laughed. "We wouldn't have had a choice anyway...," he added, striding over to his new position. "Politics and such."
"What are you babbling about? Politics?"
"Yeah," Fulmugus replied, nonchalantly staring ahead as the two of them crouched. "Remember when Coach was asking about blondie's father? Well, turns out that her daddy is a member of the council of Shade and a diplomat at the Obian Moon talks."
"Wait!" Sinedd hissed, watching the next ball materialise in Kai's hands. "Her dad is one of your kind? Then why the hell doesn't she look-...?"
"Her mommy is from your home planet, Snow-balls. The council of Shade fund the Galactik Football team here so..."
A tiny speck of curiosity for the fact that she her heritage did indeed lie with Akillian roots but that was nothing compared to the anger that suddenly hit Sinedd like a ton of cement bricks.
"Her daddy bought her way on to this team? Fucking hell..."
Smog burned around players and they crouched further in anticipation, watching Kai leaning back to throw from the goal.
His eyes somehow found the girl, he now had a full blown reason to despise. He thought of all the troubles he had gone through to get where he was, all the hardships, all the restless training.
And now that thing gets in because her dad simply said so?
Sinedd pulsed forward with the smog, appearing above the pitch, right over the ball in mid-flight. His stomach clenched as he dropped down through the air , whistling downwards and catching the ball against his shins in one blast of the black, toxic flux.
He bit his lip and sucked air through his teeth, just to quench the starved and dry feeling in his lungs. He dribbled past one player, then two.
He disappeared with the smog a few inches from the penalty box and before Kai could even blink in his team-mate's direction, the ball was spinning in the back of the net with a tail of smog shimmering behind it.
"Good work Sinedd. Keep it up."
He high-fived one of his fellow players and shot a glare at Ebony, who was fiddling with a little silver chain around her neck, eyes diverted.
"See? That's skill. You don't belong here if you can't pull off a move like that," he sneered into the back of her neck as he passed.
She turned to him, smiling. "Mind if I borrow it, sometime?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I'll take that as a "no" then."
"Sinedd! Ebony!" Artegor shouted into the mikes. "Stop chatting and get back to your positions!"
The ball was stolen this time, by Nilhis.
She wrestled for a moment with Fulmugus and then swerved past him to get to mid-field, streaking like a black and neon green comet. She dodged a tackle and swiftly passed to Ebony. Sinedd's eyes narrowed. "Ok, then...let me show you what football players really play like..."
He crouched and went in for a tackle, forcing her under his silhouette. He was a good head taller than her and intimidating in size, not to mention ruthless in trying to wrench the ball from her control.
He could hear her nervous, quickened breaths each time she spun around to stop the ball from becoming his and she could hear his ragged, deep ones.
But neither was going to give it up easy.
"Ebony! Pass it!"
"I don't need to," Sinedd heard her mutter into her ear-piece.
He gave a cruel laugh. "Oh? Is that right?" Another stab at the ball under her foot. "Well how-?"
For a brief moment, green eyes met violet over a coyly turned shoulder. Then the girl before him dissolved into a haze of black.
Sinedd whipped around, only to see her re-appear right above the penalty box with the ball in her possession. Her kick was weak in under the pressure-loaded gravity that she clearly wasn't used to, but it still soared into the net just an inch out of Kai's grasp.
Ebony landed, her legs in a deep bend and smiling childishly in Artegor's praise that was pouring through the intercom. Nilhis gave her an admiring punch in the shoulder and despite the annoyance of being scored against, even Kai looked grudgingly impressed.
Sinedd snapped his jaw shut and stormed over to her in fury. "That was my scoring technique!"
"Well, you said you didn't mind if I used it."
"Since when can you use the smog!?"
She snorted. "That? I've been able to do that since I was a kid. Why? How long did it take you to pick it up?"
"That's enough small-practice," Artegor announced. "Now let's try your official positions versus a holo-team."
Sinedd and Ebony gave each other one last angry glare before reluctantly dispersing with the other players.
"The line up is as follows. Kai in goal...Tarth and Xerxes on defence...Fulmugus and Nilhis in the mid-field ...and Sinedd and Ebony as strikers..."
"No way!" Sinedd blurted out angrily, despite knowing that this situation would be inevitable anyway. "No! I am not playing beside that!"
Ebony glowered at him. "Fine then, more room on the field for me!"
"The two of you will bloody-well play beside each other if you want to continue playing with this team! I'm the coach, I make the decisions of who plays where and I decide that you two are playing together! So play nicely or so help me..."
"Fine, fine," groaned Sinedd. "Just stay out of my way."
"As long as you don't get in mine," came her irritated reply as the two of them turned to face the goal.
"Now we'll have to play two friendlys before the start of Blitz, as etiquette dictates. I'll be arranging one for you in the upcoming week. For now, let's see how you all handle our friends, the Lightnings."
The pitch shifted and suddenly, tall, sparkling, blue players appeared before them. The holo-Lightnings walked to their places, led by a grinning holographic Warren. Sinedd had a brief mental tryst, remembering the ferocity this smiling, gentle giant had brought with him in the sphere when faced with Rocket. It sort of proved that the right kind of pressure could turn anyone totally feral on the pitch. Even "role-models" like Warren.
Sinedd sauntered over, standing opposite the Galactik god's hologram himself. He stared straight into those plain blue eyes and broad azure shoulders and reminded himself why he was better than them. He had worked harder. He deserved this.
The ball materialised between them.
The two crouched again, like wild animals ready to pounce.
One...
Two...
Three...
The ball rocketed upward, the two players in its wake.
Sinedd scored, about ten minutes into their practice game.
The ball was hurled from the goal and Nilhis battled past Warren to secure ball control for the Shadows.
The holographic players were nothing in comparison to the real thing but the Lightnings' flux, the Charge, was real enough to be a bitch to play around.
Fulmugus dribbled around the Lightning's steely defence and sent a pass flying up front.
"Got it."
"I got it!"
What happened next did well and truly deserve a replay on Artegor's screen. Sinedd made an epic leap for the ball, fuelled by the force of his flux but Ebony had already disappeared and reappeared in mid air at his side.
THUMP.
The two players collided in mid-air, Ebony's shoulder deciding to get intimate with Sinedd's ribcage.
Smog exploded around them both as the ball spun in the air above their heads. In the confusion, they fell back to earth and crashed down into the green glass below. The other players walked over hesitantly at first, to check if the two, grunting, groaning players were still conscious. But they were sent back, reeling and trying to bite back laughter after taking one look at the state they were in.
The pair were lying on their backs in a heap on the pitch. Ebony's head was nicely positioned in Sinedd's lap and somehow Sinedd's legs had become neatly threaded between hers.
Both of them took a minute or so, nursing their newly formed wounds and looking around blearily to realise what it was exactly that their team-mates found so funny.
Sinedd let out a cry of indignancy and shoved her away from him, staggering to his feet and roughly grabbing Ebony's arm when she managed to get to her feet too.
"What the hell was that!?"
"It's called "getting the ball" last time I checked!"
He growled through gritted teeth. "That ball was mine. Stay off my side of the pitch!"
"Your side of the pitch?" She let out a harsh, over-exaggerated shout of laughter. "Sorry, but I don't see your name on it! And besides, I was at the ball before you was!"
He took a step towards her, hissing into her face like a cobra, his violet eyes narrowing. "You stay out of my way or you'll regret ever stepping on to this field..."
She shuffled back a little but her tone was taunting. "Is that a threat?"
Suddenly a siren blared, signalling the end of training.
"That's it!" Artegor shouted. "All of you, out and into the showers! Nice first day, Ebony..."
Sinedd wiped a last stinging drop of sweat from his upper lip and massaged a fresh bruise on his neck, absent –mindedly before turning back to the girl beneath him with the air of a school-master about to punish a naughty school-child.
"I mean it, bitch. Stay off my side of the pitch and if you ever pull a stunt like that again..."
"You'll do what? Get jealous because Coach just favours me over you?"
He snarled. "You're not even worth the effort. Mine or his." With that he shoved past her, digging his elbow firmly into her shoulder.
He needed to beat D'Jok this time and cement himself into the eyes of the Zaelion Galaxy as the all-star he truly was.
And that wasn't going to happen if blondie was still on the team. Maybe he couldn't change Artegor's mind, but he could sure change hers....make her want to leave.
He smirked to himself, thinking about it.
The players stepped on to the hover-craft, to take them off the training field. Sinedd pertly leaned down to Ebony's ear, his nose just brushing one of her perfume scented ringlets.
"And by the way," he whispered. "I would appreciate it if you didn't try to inhale my flux again. It's not for kiddies and you're going to have hell on this planet trying to survive your own..."
It was times like this that always left Ebony wondering why the hot guys were always either assholes or psychotic head-cases...and why it was that she always got saddled with both.
She couldn't let him get in her way though. She had to be here. She couldn't let Papa down, not this time.
She sat on the edge of her bed, shelled of her jersey and looking at a photo of the alien man who looked nothing like her, who didn't really know a lot about his own daughter at all.
Ebony sighed and checked the television phone. She was due to check in with him in an hour.
A sudden lustful burning erupted in her throat again and this time it was too strong to resist.
Ebony ripped the drawer of her bed-side open.
"As if I don't have enough to worry about...," she muttered, scrabbling around through heaps of paper. "Papa breathing down my neck...fucking staying on this team without that (cute) jerk in my face...staying bloody thin- why don't these fucking Shadow's players ever eat?-....and now my hair is a mess..."
She fumbled for a tiny canister of pills and held it up to her eyes.
Her body had been screaming for its fix ever since she had used the smog on the pitch. She knew using that little talent she had inherited from her native father would set off the cravings but...oh well.
She wrenched the lid open and siphoned out a coveted little white capsule.
She held it up to her lips, just touching its smooth little underside, like Persephone and her pomegranate or Pandora and her box. Bordering on the edge of sin.
Without giving it a second thought, she slapped the pill into her mouth and swallowed it straight down, savouring the sweet, sweet artificial happiness it brought. The wonderful, artificial smog that pulsed down her throat.
"Ebony?"
She snapped herself out of it to see Nilhis at the door. "You coming to the common room?"
Ebony ran her fingers through her hair and quickly stashed the canister back in the drawer. "Oh, no. I have to call my dad and well, I'm not feeling that great to be honest."
Nilhis gave her a nod and a smile. "First day is always hard."
Then the skeletal Shadow was gone.
"That was a close one," thought Ebony, just before the television phone began to ring.
Somewhere in the bowls of the Oeon Planet that Genesis orbited, a man in a purple suit sat in a seedy apartment, watching television.
"Arcadia sports here! With me, Callie Mystic! Well, football fans, I have some hot new gossip for you! Following the suspension of Shadow's striker, Sheirk, for...erm...complications with the Xenon team, it seems Artegor Nexus has recruited a new player! As for the identity of this new striker, that is unknown, he could hardly out-shine the rising star that is Sinedd! This year the former-snow kid, star of the Shadows will play..."
The man's grin grew as an image of the jet black haired Shadow prince was flashed across the screen. The wrinkles embedded into the man's forehead arched under his grey hair and every few minutes he glanced down to check that the metal cases at his side were still there.
Then back to the screen.
"Ah Sinedd...my old friend...we'll be meeting again, sooner than you might think..."