The white frond uncurling from the sun

metastasizes

and makes me brilliant

with malicious life

The door to the training room didn't actually lead to a training room, quite. Kalypso was met with a locker room; eight lockers sat against the wall on her right, while the room dipped deeper to her left, into individual curtained changing units. So they were only mostly throwing her to the wolves, good.

The lockers were numbered. Nearest the door she'd entered, "S07" loomed out of the blue paint in black block shapes. They counted down, until farthest from her was "O".

The insult of it hit harder, now that she'd met those men. It was one thing to read about herself in the Nike Drive paperwork, where everything was either sparkling sales pitch or clinically remote analysis. It was something else entirely to walk into a room full of what should, on the court at least, be equals, and see seven sets of eyes settle on her and read 'Object Zero.'

Still. She could be an object if it meant she got to play. And if they really were unfazed, mostly, by Lamb chemistry in their midst, then that means they would play too, their way. And she could soak up the taste of their way of playing, sink her teeth into their game, and tear off her share.

She could be an object if it meant she got to eat.

Their lockers weren't secured. Hers was-by, of fucking course, a blood test lock. It meant none of them could fuck with anything she put in there, which was nice. But it might also mean that she had to meet certain chemical standards before they'd let her open it. She'd have no way of knowing whether or not there really were such conditions until the day it locked her out. Infuriating.

Inside, shorts, shirt, shoes. She'd come dressed to train-and they weren't offering her sleeves or pants here, so good thing she had. She did change her shoes, out of basic decency, since they'd offered.

At the end of the locker room, another set of individually curtained stalls, these with showers. Kalypso could not imagine ever showering in here. Did they think she would want-

Well, of course they did. They would think 'she's a Lamb-she's never wanted anything more'. Maybe this whole shared changing space hell was intended as a nicety. Kalypso's jaw ached from so much clenching.

Stop thinking, she told herself, tugging tight the knot of the shoelace. Stop thinking. Play.

The door beyond did not have a lock. Kalypso stepped out, into the bright gym, where the squeak of shoes and the gunfire bang of the ball against the court promised her relief.

"Wider!"

"Whatever you say."

The crack of the hit and the boom of its landing, three inches from the wrong side of the line.

"Tch-wider, you fuck."

The hitter was wide-eyed and snarling at the blue-haired libero setting him. Across the net, the blocker's gaze caught on Kalypso as it moved between Jawface and Drill-bit. "Ah-hi."

That outside was hung up on line-shots with a single blocker? He was tilted, good grief. Kalypso made a directionless sort of motion in acknowledgement that she'd been spoken to and made for the ball cart.

"Tch-" No Flare was going to stop her right now, no matter how hot it was, no matter how furious its Dominion. "You, set me. Get off my fucking court," the jawbone hitter was snapping that last bit at the teammate who'd been setting him.

"Let's pretend we don't know who he's talking to," said the man with the drill-bit eyes. Those eyes were boring into her. His grin, still crooked, matched the conspiratorial tone of his drawl.

"She's not even warmed up yet," protested the velvet-poison blocker.

She was, at least physically if not in a technical sense. Kalypso had done warm-up cardio and stretching before leaving her room-but it was true that she hadn't touched a volleyball since arriving here.

"Your sets are shit," came the snarl from behind her. "Hey. If you're really a fucking all-rounder-"

"Absolutely not." There was a bite behind the blocker's interruption that sizzled across Kalypso's skin. Great. Once more, two Flaring Dominions in a tussle, and her waltzing into the middle of it. At least this guy at the ball cart wasn't lashing her with his chemistry. "This is your problem right now, Jaegerjaquez. You don't get to abuse somebody on their first day. You don't need a third projection victim."

"Who's a victim?" said the setting libero, cheerfully.

Great, just fucking wonderful-now he had an acrid spit of Flare roiling out of him too. Could Dominions just not rile each other up, for once, just for one damned day, please?

There was an upside, though. They weren't in an awful little communal hangout lounge. They were on a court.

Kalypso had been lifting a ball for herself out of the cart, but now she dropped it. Despite trying her best not to pay him any attention, she was aware of those drill-bit eyes honing back in on her, blinking. "Aww, hang on. We'll be good."

The fool-that was unkind, it wasn't really so foolish a guess out of him, considering the moment and the tempers and the chemistry pooling between all of them, her own doubtless as much a part of this wretched stew as theirs were-thought she was backing out, turning tail, thinking better of showing up.

His mistake. Kalypso never thought better of anything.

She was ducking under the net and stalking into a perimeter defense position on the right wing. To the place guarding the line, where tilted Jawface was targeting.

"Oy. What the fuck?"

"Go on," she said, her eyes on the ball Drill-bit was tossing between his hands rather than on any of the men.

"Uh-Ixora," said the blocker in front of her, which was unfortunate because she wanted to play, not talk to any of them. "You sure you don't want to run some warm-ups first? I'll-"

"I'm sure. Go ahead. Do your thing."

"You bitch," said the hitter.

Nothing particularly nasty was in those words; nothing about his general, all-directions-hostile Flare changed, really. His eyes were differently wide now. The frustration in them had ever so slightly abated, squeezed sideways a bit by surprise. Those words very much changed the Flares of the other two, though.

"Hey, now." The ball that had been bouncing lightly between the libero's palms went still.

"That's out of line, Jaegerjaquez." It had been a coping mechanism, mostly, assigning this blocker that darkly poisonous containment label, but he was absolutely proving it accurate now. He'd turned toward her initially, but now he was swinging back toward Jaegerjaquez-what an absurdly well-suited name-with malevolence glowing out of his eyes.

She did not want to put herself in the middle of three angry Dominions, but for fuck's sake, would someone just throw the ball already. "Either shut up and hit or get outta line and I'll do it."

There was a single beat of thunderous silence. Kalypso expected it to be broken by Jaegerjaquez either 'tch'-ing or charging over to put her through the floor-instead, the resonant thump of the ball against the floor was what broke it. Drill-bit had bounced the ball toward the outside hitter and was stepping back from the ball cart, one side of his mouth once again starting to curve upward.

Now they got the 'tch'. Jaegerjaquez slammed the caught ball between his hands, snarling, and tossed it in a soft arc toward the setter.

Now.

Yes.

Go.

Kalypso glided backward off the attack line, backward and right, sinking low in readiness. The set left the libero's hands-high, slow, a 1-step tempo-and in front of her, the poisonous blocker tracked it, his adjustments tiny and fluid, snakelike.

He was positioned like the right blocker would be if the two-man block were sealing off the middle, leaving the line open. Kalypso slipped into the jigsaw emptiness left behind, which was, of course, the line that Jaegerjaquez was aiming for, the point of this whole exercise.

The point for him. The point for Kalypso wasn't anything so technical. What she wanted didn't have any such constraints.

The jawboned Dominion slammed himself upward. The Flare boiling off him roared toward her, and her own chemical response answered.

These were the only moments when that hateful chemistry was hers. Fire out of him, fire in her. For this moment, hanging there ablaze, that Dominion was metal cut into a key. Her key, because she seized it. Turned it.

Ignition.

He hit for the line, and she wasn't just there to meet it. She was a perfect plane of reception, grounded against the lightning of his strike. He hit hard, oooh what a hit, and she moved with it to soak all of its momentum into her legs and arms, hips and shoulders instead, all of it nullified and rendered soft and dead except for exactly as much as she graciously allowed it to keep. The ball floated off her arms, and when it hit the floor in the would-be setter's spot, its gentle backspin killed a bit of its bounce.

"Wasn't that a kindness," drawled the libero. As Kalypso slid back up toward the attack line to reset her positioning, he reached for the ball cart and slid it under the net toward her side of the court. "Don't spoil him, gal."

The blocker, who'd bent to pick up her passed ball, caught the cart, aligned it where the setter would be. "Would have been out," said that poison-haired blocker remonstratively. Yes, yes, a blocker would resent that, but already this was a selfish drill, and Kalypso needed to play.

"You're blind," hissed Jaegerjaquez through the net. His blue eyes were huge, murderous, accusatory.

The word came out of him with enough Flare to make her throat tighten and her head throb. Clearly he thought it would sting. Clearly he wanted it to sting. Too bad. Kalypso turned her shrug into a settling, a sinking back down into readiness for the next one. "Or maybe I just don't care."

"Bitch," hissed Jaegerjaquez, and this time, neither of the other two bristled in defense. The blocker bounced the outside another ball; he tossed it, and once again Kalypso slid back to the sideline. This time, warned by the now-targeted malice in the Flare steaming off him like a heat mirage and by that extra forward impatience in his jump, she got an answering extra step back just in time. He would not have hit her in the face even if he'd been on target-as it was, she was backed up enough to take it clean and low, even if it did mean stepping a solid foot out of bounds this time. Her pass thumped into the ball cart.

"Yeesh," muttered the libero.

"Not helping, Cu Chulainn," said the blocker. Ah, yes, Redford had said some kind of name that sounded something that sounded like that.

"You're getting worse the longer we go," the libero, Cu Chulainn, said to the clearly livid hitter, utterly disregarding his teammate's low warning.

"Is he?" It was sheer spleen, her speaking that question to the room. Idiocy, spiteful idiocy even, especially because the whole gym would hear it as a taunt even if it was true. "I'd say aiming to hit it where I'm not is an improvement already."

Cu Chulainn blinked. The blocker looked like she'd just electrocuted him.

"The fucking mouth on you," hissed Jaegerjaquez. "Gimme the ball, Duibhne."

After a moment, the blocker reached for the cart. As he did so, his gaze latched onto hers as she stepped back up into her reset position. "Don't push it," Duibhne said to her, voice low but harsh. The tension in his face told her he'd decided this was her fault. Splendid. Hits getting passed, her fault? She'd accept that blame, no problem. "Leave him the line."

It was an order, not a request. She did not like that. "Does pity satisfy him?"

Kalypso saw his eyes harden, knew he had read her defiance and was angry that her reaction was not matching her chemistry. "If I were you, I'd be hoping it does."

Her heart thudded against her ribs. Her whole body flushed, her breath caught, her knees moaned to fold, her lungs betrayed her as they filled with awful chemistry instead of air.

Oh, this bastard.

The Lamb plays well, so let's threaten her. The Lamb is not afraid, so let's choose a blade from among our number and show her exactly how we can sharpen him on her bones. If I were you, I'd be hoping it does. He might as well have told her to get on her knees and open her mouth.

She would let her own chemistry suffocate her before giving him that. Him? Hah. He couldn't hold a candle to the Garden's-

Something of how badly that threat had backfired must have shown on her face, because that poisoned Duibhne blinked, and tried a different tact. "Not-you pass well, it's not-just, once, okay?"

He was keeping his voice very low. Across the net, two dark gazes were fixed on them, but they couldn't hear him. Kalypso did not keep her voice low. "Why?" She did not care about the answer. He wanted to rake her across her own biology, fine-she was going to force some humiliation out of him in turn.

"He needs this."

She blinked.

She'd thought previously, when she'd seen this man scan the room before he'd come to train, that Duibhne was still considering which of the other Dominions he would align himself with. He'd chosen Jaegerjaquez? A hitter who couldn't manage an in-bounds line hit against a single blocker, who was giving him the line? That was certainly a choice.

Weren't they supposed to be top talent?

But her bafflement was once again being subsumed by a stranger realization, that right now, she was an aside to this Dominion. Just like she'd been to Axel and Abarai earlier, in fact. She was a complication, as any variable would be, to their real agenda. Introducing her to the situation did not distract them from that, no matter anyone's chemistry.

That was really what kept her from sliding back into perimeter defense positioning when Jaegerjaquez tossed the next ball. It wasn't out of submission to the dominance of a Dominion's order, or fear of another Dominion's reaction. It was just…relief. Gratitude, even-so okay, maybe there might have been some chemistry involved and she was just lying to herself.

No, it wasn't just that.

There was an object of desire, and it wasn't her, and they were working in tandem toward it. And she could, possibly, join them. If they all were pointed together at the same endpoint instead of at each other-

No, that was stupid, why did it matter what they wanted-wasn't she here to play?

She came back to herself, to herself, all her hunger rushing back, but that little moment of yearning had kept her up at the attack line too-

Wait.

The sizzle-snap of chemical attention, the crack of a Flare anticipating triumph-that was not somebody who thought they were being pitied.

Jaegerjaquez's jump brought his arm into view. It shouldn't have-she was out of position, the block-shadow should have hidden it-but there it was.

He wasn't hitting line.

Kalypso burst into the dig zone like she'd been fired by a cannon.

This one was going to hit her in the face. There was no way she could turn a hard cross-court strike into a functional pass, not when she was coming from the right side. There would be no clean clear squaring up to the ball, no grounding herself to convert its momentum. She was just going to be a body flung in its path, an obstacle between it and the floor.

And she was going to be a whole body in its way, not just the long narrow prayer of arms thrust out hoping for a miracle. If her arms could get there, so could her feet.

It was going to be ugly, but she was there, not quite square to the hit and far from grounded but there, an eclipse of the light pouring down the throat of the cross-court tunnel, waiting for the impact of the train.

She was there, barely, when Jaegerjaquez's hand made contact and she realized her lucky mistake.

His elbow flared.

Of course-he wasn't hitting cross-court either. There out to be a middle blocker there too, after all. If a two-man block was giving him the line, they would have sealed off most of the cross-court in return.

He was cutting.

The ball did not blast off his palm and take her head off. It sank, heavy and short, toward the far side of the attack line-and onto the platform of Kalypso's waiting arms.

The pass wasn't too bad. Kalypso, however, was a mess-totally ungrounded, she toppled sideways. Turning that awkward tangle into a roll wasn't hard, but if she'd had her own outside hitter over here, they wouldn't have had an approach for shit. Oops.

"Hoooo, gal." Across the net, that libero's crooked smile was back, and all edges.

Duibhne's eyes slid from the ball cart where that pass had barely landed to Cu Chulainn. "You're in trouble."

The scything grin under those drill-bit eyes gleamed dangerously as it turned on Jaegerjaquez now. "So much for finding the line, huh?"

"The fuck you doing over there," hissed the hitter, glaring at her through the net.

Getting lucky as hell, apparently. "Nice cut."

"Are you or aren't you hitting line?" Duibhne asked, in the tone of someone who feels like he's dealing with fickle children.

"I'm hitting where there ain't no defense, was the fucking intention."

Kalypso realized, with faint horror, that she was grinning. "Good plan."

"Tch." Jaegerjaquez tossed his head, lips curled in a snarl.

"Hey, Ixora, you wanna set?"

A fresh spit of Flare from the hitter as Jaegerjaquez's ire shot toward Cu Chulainn. "Ain't happening. You. Ixora."

"Present," said Kalypso. Sweat was starting to run down the back of her neck beneath her hair. The press of his attention on her was sharpening. It burned. She hated it, unless it meant he'd keep hitting.

"Try that again."

Kalypso focused on the floor beneath her feet, on the strength of her legs and the hot burst of blood that rushed through her, foaming with toxins she hated but could weaponize.

His teeth were bared. Tendons stood out on his neck. The jawbone mask that only she could see gnashed hungrily. Jaegerjaquez didn't care about hitting line anymore. He wanted to hit wherever it hurt her most.

Good. That's what hitters were for.