Would you be a moon for me,
if I found the perfect place to stand?
Inhale-could it be my blood would answer?
Could it abandon me, as I turn?
"Right." The door to the meeting room closed, sealing Kalypso in with all seven Dominions. The massive screen with Xigbar's face was the only light source in the room, but it was plenty. She'd tried to tuck herself into shadow, but there wasn't much to hide in. "Now that a particular laggard has finally seen fit to join the rest of the class, let's lay out the obvious, shall we?"
Kalypso did not bristle. It wasn't like she'd laid in bed and atrophied.
"There's more of you than fit on a court. Nothing strange about that, on a team-but you lot aren't a team, as far as I can see. You're an eclectic mess of narcissists that can't seem to figure out what you're doing here. It's sad."
Oomph. She couldn't help a quick sidelong glance around the room to see how these men would take that.
They didn't like taking it, obviously, but none of them had gotten their hackles up. No furious Flares came surging out of anyone, which was a relief to her already pounding head. On the opposite side of the room, the murderous miasma with Yang's coin eyes at its center didn't get any more murderous than its apparent default. No 'tch' came out of Jaegerjaquez. Still at the same seat at the now-powered-down hologram table, Redford's chin didn't move from his hand, nor did his low-grade smolder of a Flare intensify.
In fact, the only one who reacted at all was Duibhne. He nodded, his face a study of stern agreement.
So either Xigbar's assessment was so true none of them were even mad about it, or Xigbar had choke chains on them all. Kalypso assumed it wasn't the latter, because surely even outwardly subordinate Dominions would still be having chemical tantrums, no matter how powerful the foot on their throats. Kalypso couldn't speak to Xigbar's own capacity for Dominion ball-crushing; she'd never met him in person. A lovely turn of fate, that-chemistry couldn't wreak havoc on her through a screen.
"Here's the good news. You don't have to be a team. Ain't the point. So, kids, I don't care if you fuse into a cute little polycule or if we have to carry half of you out in body bags. No skin off my back either way. The point is to see if we can leverage you against each other and get better volleyball out of you for our trouble. So you have choices: you can work out a way to work together, or you can play like selfish assholes, or you can pick a victim and pull their spine out through their mouth-just get better at the goddamn game. That's the point here.
"What I am going to nip in the bud right now, Ixora-" Kalypso startled, shocked into an instant cold sweat by seven heads swiveling toward her, "-is this avoidance shit. We're here to see if your proximity matters. The whole project is dead in the water if you ice over on the court and then skitter back into your separate warren immediately. That goes for all of you," Xigbar added, unexpectedly. "The Lamb in the room isn't the only one with an exploitable chemical response. Every one of you has a reaction when any of the rest of you step into a room. That's an edge, whether it's an edge up or an edge you slice yourself open with. Lea."
"What." That flat response was utterly devoid of the practiced smile Axel had kept so immaculate during her first encounter with him. He was leaning against the closed door, looking at Xigbar expressionlessly.
Kalypso, hopefully surreptitiously, pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. She had never seen a Dominion keep such an even expression while Flaring like that. He had gone from neutral to vicious so fast, and if her chemistry hadn't clued her in, she'd have had no idea just how dangerous he'd gotten from one heartbeat to the next. Her legs started to shake. She pulled them tighter to her chest. At least he wasn't looking at her anymore. That Flare was directed entirely at the screen in front of them.
"You wanted in here, so show the fuck up. Yang."
The redhead in the opposite dark corner from Kalypso did not move or speak to acknowledge his name. For once, Kalypso had a hard time picking out his golden eyes through the darkness-Axel was kicking off enough chemistry to fog her vision.
"Doubtless you're finding just as much satisfaction in your wasted time as Lea is. I'm delighted for you."
Christ, thought Kalypso hysterically. Was this what team meetings meant? This guy flips Dominion switches from a distant safe room and sees who goes on a rampage first?
For a mercy, Yang did not blossom into new heights of asphyxiating hostility. Either Xigbar had missed the mark, or Yang had his teeth too deep in some other Dominion tantrum to care about fresh taunts.
"Duibhne."
Kalypso could not help but shoot wide-eyed apprehensive glances toward each of these men as Xigbar called them out. It was a sort of gallows fascination, irresistible for reasons completely beyond chemistry, a will-they-won't-they sort of anticipatory dread.
"I appreciate that you're trying, but for pity's sake, try with your brain."
"Sir." Duibhne's mouth tightened. Kalypso battled back a wince.
"Much as we all appreciate your zingers," said Redford, his loud drawl an abrupt shock to the room, "this really could have been an email, man."
Kalypso's body went slack with relief. Thank god, the tension was-well, not broken, never broken, but at least back to the usual kind of snarling circling fangs-out Dominion tension to which she was accustomed.
"Cute," said Xigbar drily. "I tried that route, if you'll recall. All that's come of it so far is sulking."
Grimmjow's signature sound of fury came from his corner, which was nearer to Kalypso than she'd have liked.
"If you're talking about that little list of weak spots," said Cu Chulain-he was closer to her than any of the rest of them, having settled onto the stool nearest her, close enough that she could see the red gleam of an eye but far enough into the room that he couldn't look back at her without being obvious about it, "they didn't really give us much to go on, in most cases. And anyway, 's a name missing, ain't there?"
"I gave you plenty to go on, dolt. As for who's missing off it, if any of you are half the players you think you are, you won't need to be told what it is that's holding you back. And if you are that clueless, all you have to do is ask."
Kalypso recalled that list, yes. No, she hadn't been included on it. That appeared to go for everyone-they'd all gotten a checklist of everyone else's major flaw, sans their own.
She hadn't, in idleness, been able to guess what hers might be. That made her clueless, and half the player she thought she was, apparently. Well, she could agree with one of those two points, no problem and no offense taken. For one of them.
"M'kay, then," Cu Chulainn said, his head tilting slightly, his grin glittering blue-white from the light of the screen. "Hit me, Coach. I'm asking."
"Nice try, but I'm not telling. Ask somebody else, bub. They all got your number."
Xigbar waited. Cu Chulainn's grin eroded at its edges, ever so slightly. He did not repeat the question, nor did he look around the room.
"See, idiots, this is my point. You aren't thinking about each other enough. Not enough to be real teammates, real rivals, real enemies, nothing. You need to think about them, Ixora."
Kalypso flinched, then dug her fingers painfully deep into her thighs, staring hard at Xigbar and refusing to even consider all the other eyes that flashed to her in that moment.
"Ain't just your job alone, either," Xigbar told her, "but in theory, you're the first domino to fall here. Pick a favorite, Ixora. Or a couple favorites. Let the lizard brains do the rest."
Bile rose in her throat.
"Ick," murmured Axel from the doorway.
There were several seconds of silence. Xigbar clearly wanted her to fill them, but no power on earth could make Kalypso offer anything to this room for free. Especially after that.
Finally, he sighed, looking irritated but unsurprised.
"Nothing for it but to keep drip feeding you conversation starters, or non-starters, as the case may be." Xigbar's face vanished from the screen, replaced by eight photographs-each of their faces, now. They were arranged in two rows across the screen, along with their Subject numbers; Kalypso's own face was there at the end, on the rightmost side of the bottom row, with a fat block 'O' beneath her image. Kalypso recognized them as photos taken during admission to the Nike Drive program. They looked rather like mug shots, if mug shots were taken in the moments before a crime instead of afterward. There was a very definite reckless hunger in every face, including her own. "You were asked a series of questions during the admissions testing. One of those questions asked you to describe the conditions in which you could visualize yourself performing at your personal best. Some of you," Xigbar added, in a tone of mild disgust, "are terrible communicators. Nonetheless, we made do.
"In the interest of making you lot pay attention to each other, we have crystallized what you each expressed into a single ideal. We have oversimplified you. We have sanded off your nuance and made you nice and digestible for the other seven idiots to swallow."
A word flickered into being below Redford's picture at the leftmost place in the top row, just below his "S01" label.
Magnetism.
Below Axel's picture and the "S06" classification, another word appeared.
Narrative.
"Is this a fucking riddle?" said Jaegerjaquez, blankly.
The rest of the words blinked into place, in no identifiable order of blinking, as if half a dozen people were all plugging in power cables and weren't quite in sync with each other.
Magnetism. Dominance. Challenge. Function.
Reciprocation. Narrative. Stimulus. Rubicon.
"You've got twenty minutes left of meeting time. Yes, Ixora, the doors are locked until then. Twenty measly minutes," Xigbar repeated, rolling his eye as he did so, "and then you're free to go off to whatever waste of everyone's time you like best. Talk about your ideals. Ask about your weakness. Play duck duck goddamn goose. I don't care. Do something so you'll think about each other, in the context of each other, and figure out how you can use your accursed chemistry for something beyond bickering and heart attacks."
The camera on Xigbar blinked out, leaving only silence, eight photos, and those utterly unhelpful 'ideals'.