And this would make four...
(A song for this chapter? Battlefield by Jordin Sparks- {because the lyrics particularly suit this chapter and not just for the obvious pairing either. There's more than one type of "love" implied here ;)})
They argued about everything.
And that wasn't even breaking their promise to Artegor in the slightest. If he never saw or heard them bickering, it was hardly any threat to their positions on the team and no threat to their coach's mental state.
To put it simply:
"What Artegor didn't know wouldn't hurt them."
Their "progress" was rocky on the pitch and even worse behind closed doors. Neither could resist the chance to take a nice stab at the other whenever they got the chance. They squabbled over everything- from team tactics to the way the other ate and from use of the common room to what TV programme they watched after training.
Watching them fight had become a great source of entertainment for the other players. Fulmugus and the team would delightedly turn off the TV and grab a front row seat every time they could sense one of their rows about to start.
The funny thing was that they never actually got involved in the arguments or tried to resolve them. They just watched like any good audience would, laughing and joking at intervals.
The two were up to tear at each other like rabid wolves when they wanted to, whenever, wherever, regardless of whom their audience was. That evening was no different.
It was a chilly afternoon on planet Shadow. The black hole Obscurantis that gave the Shadows their flux was in its second cycle, sending winds piercing across the sparse, rocky landscape.
The players were sprawled out in the common room before practice, enjoying the last of the artificial heat and swapping the latest gossip they had picked up around the planet.
All, the players that was, except for Kai who was locking wits with a Rykers girl in a game of online chess and Ebony who was gazing out the open window, enjoying a cigarette.
The other players (strictly excluding her buddy Sinedd) never complained about the smoke or the smell, being used to all kinds of poisonous gas they had been born amid on their planet. Besides, they weren't even tobacco cigarettes either- they were speciality rolls. One of her fingers was gently looping around the silver chain she wore around her neck and the others cradled the white paper tube.
She never mentioned what exactly was in them, (or why it was so necessary that she had at least two a day), but the black clouds that poured from her nostrils and lips at each drag and floated out the window in wispy tar-coloured puffs reminded Sinedd of their own flux, the smog. He glared at her hazy silhouette from the rim of his cyber-magazine, trying to quell the urge to go over there, snatch the cigarette from her hand and stub it out on her milky forehead.
He didn't need to.
As if his eyes could say that alone, the moment she caught his gaze, she crushed the roll between her fingers and flicked it out the window. It may only have been his imagination that a spray of pink blush had splayed across her cheeks or that her pupils had dilated to twice their normal size but either way, something about her looked weirder than usual.
"Back in a sec," she announced to the room, smoothing her track-suit as she stood up.
Sinedd raised an eyebrow. "Going to shower, loser? You'd need one after stinking this joint up."
A few players chuckled in response.
Ebony opened her mouth, perhaps to retaliate, but before she could, something small and plastic slipped from her pocket and clattered to the carpet beneath them.
Ebony shot to the floor to grab it but Sinedd's eyes were faster than her outstretched hand.
And those violet eyes widened- catching sight of what was written on that tiny canister that she tried so eagerly to hide.
"Metholine?" he snorted aloud. "Isn't that a drug? Like an illegal drug?"
The other players stopped laughing and stared.
She ran her fingers back through her tousled curls and shoved the canister back into her pocket.
"I need them."
"Oh yeah, I bet you do...I bet Artegor would love to hear how much you "need" them."
Ebony's voice became reedy. "He knows that I have them already."
"Oh really?" Sinedd questioned, trying to pierce any bluff she may have been trying with him. Experience with all varieties of foster-family and social worker back on Akillian had taught him to recognise a good liar.
"Yes really. I have them as prescribed painkillers. Without them, the smog would probably drive me as insane and loopy as you."
Something in Sinedd hit a chord, like a piano wire being slowly wound to breaking point. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Ebony gave a cruel cackle of laughter. "I hear you every single night, crying out in your sleep and writhing on the pitch when you think no one's looking! Harris! It's Bleylock!" she mimicked. "He's coming back! Who's Bleylock? Your boyfriend?"
The other players were reduced to sheer silence.
Sinedd stood up, lip curled in contempt and eyes dangerously narrow. "So that makes you nosy as well as a stalker, a lousy player and a junkie," he sneered. "You don't deserve to be on this team! Your daddy had to buy his precious little princess a spot here, didn't he?"
"I deserve to be here AS MUCH if not MORE than you do! And for the record, at least my "daddy" cares about me! While I haven't seen sight or sound of your parents! Don't they care about you?" she taunted.
Sinedd's voice reduced to a coarse, fierce whisper, his eyes suddenly intense. "My parents are dead."
Ebony's eyes grew wide, her face suddenly melting like candle-wax and entire body seemed to shrink. "I-I...Sinedd, I didn't...I had no..."
Before anyone could say anything, Artegor's voice rang out across the room on the intercom. "All of you, suit up and report down to the main pitch for training, now! I won't ask twice."
Sinedd shoved Ebony out of the way, giving her a deadly glare as he passed.
If looks could kill...
"That was harsh," Fulmugus panted, jogging back to the side of the pitch to re-join Sinedd.
"Oh come on," Sinedd laughed, the pit of his stomach still burning from earlier. "He's never that hard on you anyway and you scored on each try!"
Artegor liked to take them one on one on days like this and allow the rest of the team to watch from the touch-lines. He would stand in the seating area and coach them from a micro-phone- his idea of a personal touch.
"I wasn't talking about training," Fulmugus grunted back, shooting a quick grin at Nilhis down the line. "I was talking about you and-"
"Ebony!" called Artegor. "You're up!"
"...that was a harsh one, you guys had..."
Sinedd ignored the statement, glaring across at her from the sidelines. Artegor was criticising her again.
"Ebony, your aim is excellent but your actual shooting might just be up to scratch if you put the as much effort into your kicks as you do into doing your make-up...ah! Mr Appex!"
Artegor disappeared for a moment, into the steps of the stand and out of sight.
"More press," thought Sinedd, irritably.
"So do you think she's on something?" Kai whispered to the rest of the group, nodding over to the girl delicately toeing the edge of ball as if she expected it to bite. "Like those drugs...?"
Artegor came back into view, this time followed by three figures.
"Well whatever it is," Nilhis added. "There is something up with...hey, what's the matter with her!?"
Ebony's eyes had gone huge and her face suddenly dowsed itself a burning red. Sinedd delighted in seeing the terror that had suddenly been implanted there...as for the reason...
"That's the Diplomat, Appex. Ebony's dad."
"Carry on!" shouted Artegor, down to her. "And pick it up a bit!"
Shakily, she dribbled back to the goal and managed to send a weak shot into the back of the net with no smog whatsoever. Her eyes looked like they were staring straight through the ball.
Clearly her father's presence was unnerving her to extremes.
"Yeah," Sinedd thought, looping his fingers into his jersey with satisfaction. "Fail. Crash and burn for daddy now, little girl. Show him what a waste of space you really are."
The other players were more interested in their visitors.
"I saw Technoid robots outside! Heh! What are those tin-cans here for?"
"Don't know...who's the girl up there?"
"Probably her sister."
"He's not even looking at her. I don't know why she's so nervous."
Sinedd looked up.
The man looked nothing like his blonde daughter. He was as Shadow-born as the other players on the team and they shared nothing in common other than icy pale skin, black rimmed eyes and long limbs. The younger girl at his side, staring nonchalantly down at her sibling, looked a lot more like him- her hair white and black with a flat nose and red-tinted eyes.
His eyes then fell upon the third figure.
The back of his head...
Grey hair...
A trim purple suit upon squared shoulders...
A pair of glittering eyes and a grin flashing down in his direction....
Eyes that were so familiar...
Suddenly in his mind, those eyes turned green.
Bleylock was standing in front of him again, handing him the golden disc. Telling him to destroy all the fluxes in the galaxy. To stop another war. "Like the one that killed mom and dad....but they said...he was only...using me..."
Sinedd finally regained his breath, temples pulsing wildly in pain.
"Man, are you ok?" asked Kai, clapping a hand to his back.
The eleventh player on the Shadow's team only then realised that he was doubled over in pain and when his vision cleared, all he could see was his own sweating, trembling reflection in the red glass.
He had never been so happy in his entire life to hear Artegor announce:
"Practice is cancelled for now! Return to the main building!"
He could have sworn on the way out, through the stands, he heard someone say his name.
Sinedd leaned into the sink, splashing more icy water upon his face and savouring the silence in the training room bathroom.
The memories unearthed by his row with Ebony, the smog's overbearing power, the isolation he felt from his team-mates and the heat of another intensive training day all combined to break his usually iron self-control and a wild anger suddenly racked his body.
He stared blearily up at his reflection, glaring at every shining drop of water that clung to his pale, sullen face, laced his eyelashes and dripped from his wiry black hair.
"You need to be the best," he told his reflection through gritted teeth. "Pull it together."
For a moment, tears attacked his eyes, but he swallowed them back with vicious determination. He had buried those memories a long time ago and there was no way he was letting them grow back again.
Sinedd lived by two moral codes of his own design:
(a) Take care of number one-yourself- and you come before everyone else.
(b) Don't let the past destroy the present.
He scrabbled around the sink, feeling for a dry piece of tissue paper to dry his eyes with but then stopped and wrenched his wet eyes apart, feeling something strange beneath his fingertips.
"Huh?"
It was a looked like a little necklace...a familiar necklace.
He held the long silver chain up before his eyes, letting it sparkle in the light and cast tiny rainbows against the mirror. A tiny, plain charm in the shape of a star hung from the delicate coils.
"I know where I've seen this thing before," he thought, knuckles whitening around the clasp. "This is that stupid, cheap thing that she wears to all the time..."
Sinedd smirked and dangled the necklace above the drain, imagining the priceless look on Ebony's face when he revealed to her exactly what he had done with her precious trinket.
He slackened his fingers, tempting himself...and then stopped, his dark smile slowly growing.
"No...I have a better idea..."
Maybe it was just a cruel irony that Ebony's room was only down the hall from his, (or just plain cruelty from Artegor's point of view...it just gave the two of them as many opportunities as they wanted to, to complain about each other's snoring/sleep-talking.)
The rooming with the Shadows was different to that on Akillian; as far as they were concerned, there were no "roomies" or "sleepover-buddies." It was strictly one player per room.
And Ebony's door was wide open, a tongue of yellowish light cast out across the hallway.
Sinedd slid past, peering inside, eyes glinting under the dim amber glow.
The room was neat- like Compulsive Obsessive Disorder- neat, the kind you'd see on one of those home decorating magazines. But the bed was still un-made and the wardrobe door was slung lazily open.
Then the room's erratic occupant made her appearance from the bathroom door.
She paced across the room, frantic and mumbling to herself. Sinedd stepped back a little, eyes relaxing.
She was still wearing the vest-top she had been wearing earlier only her lower half was clad in nothing but a pair of pin-striped lilac panties.
She bent over, leaning across the bed to rifle through her bedside table drawer. The vest-top stretched, revealing a bridge of sickly, white skin...with an odd looking little mark....
"So," began Sinedd. "Does daddy know about the tattoo?"
Ebony let out a cry and whipped back around, hands clapping over the swirling black symbol on her lower back.
"You...you pervert! Get out of here! What are you?!"
"The door was wide open, slut. You're the one walking around in your undies."
She turned beet-red and seized a pair of shorts from the floor, dragging them up around her waist and choking out something like: "I'm going to get Artegor..."
Sinedd grinned. "Before you do, you may want to consider a little leverage I may have over you."
"Is that right?"
"Looking for this?"
He dangled the little silver necklace in front of her face, watching in glee as her eyes shot open.
"Give it to me."
She leapt forward.
He leapt back, forcing her to stumble into his shadow.
"GIVE it to me, Sinedd!"
"Watch it, blondie," he sneered. "One bad move from you and I'll rip this thing apart here and now."
She stiffened, folding her arms and biting her lip. "What do you want from me?"
Oh yes. Revenge would be sweet.
"Stay off my side of the pitch in future, quit whining to Artegor about everything-it's pissing me off and if you EVER bring up my parents in a conversation again, you won't live to regret it..."
She frowned. "Fine. Now give it to me..."
"Ah...tell me I'm the best."
"What?"
"Tell me that I'm the best player on this team."
She gaped at him. "You're not serious...there is no way..."
Sinedd held up the necklace around his knuckles, holding it under her nose to intimidate.
Ebony sank her teeth even further into her lip. "Your'ethebest..."
"What was that?"
"You're the best."
"You're the best, what and who?"
"You're the best...player on this team, Sinedd."
He grinned, satisfied with his vengeance and thrust the necklace into her hands. Then Sinedd turned for the door.
"Sinedd?"
"What?!"
"...thank you..."
"You're thanking me?"
"Yes...for finding my necklace...even if you had to be a total jerk about giving it back. But I won't tell Artegor..."
"You'd better not," he thought, still surprised at her sudden (strained and sour) gratitude.
"So thank you...now get out of my room..."
He raised an eyebrow, taking in one last eyeful of her wonderfully embarrassed face before turning to live. "Whatever, weirdo..."