Do not mistake this for ashes.
Do not think the motes of me
will lose their gold to gray
before catching something
that has been waiting forever for this.
After a few stolen minutes struggling to empty herself of the morning's misery, Kalypso drew a fierce bracing breath and surged back out into the communal area. She looked neither right nor left, and made it to the training room's locker room before anyone could stop her, and never mind the hot tongues of Flares nipping at her heels.
Within, four Dominions in various states of undress very immediately began minding their own business.
Once more, Kalypso very carefully avoided looking at anyone as she opened her locker for her court shoes. In the sudden deliberate hush of the room, the so-faint spring-launch of the needle in the blood test was painfully audible. She was the first into the gym, lurching out of the locker room with her right shoe only half on in her rush.
She was pounding out warm-up strikes against a wall when the men finally trickled out of the locker room. Xigbar's harsh voice came from some overhead speaker as the three who were going to be peppering stepped onto the court. "Get yourself warm. Five minutes."
A wall was less ideal a partner than a human, so when Redford approached her with a ball in hand and an inquisitive quirk to his eyebrow, Kalypso tossed her ball into the cart and passed his toss back to him.
It was just a warm-up, and yet sinking back into the rhythm of a back-and-forth pass soothed her immensely. A minute of forearm, and then Redford switched to overhand. She mirrored him, and they moved into a smooth pattern of short, short, long passes, gliding toward and away from each other like they'd done this a thousand times before.
It was a lovely feature of these little meditative moments before the playing really got started. Any two people who played could do this, could know exactly how to move, what came next, how to step into the exercise without any extraneous explanation or introduction. Redford's sets were lovely, as they should be-the ball rose in fell in nigh identical arcs from each of their hands, soft and inviting.
Two minutes of that and Kalypso was aching with a hunger that wasn't going to be sated, not by shagging or feeding free balls while other people got to play. "Pepper?" she asked, as his overhead pass floated up from his soft hands.
"Sure," he answered, and in a wash of gratitude, she set him back instead of hitting, giving him the first swing.
He took the courtesy. Kalypso didn't have to move in either direction to pass it-she only had to sink beneath the ball, draw the power out of it into herself. Controlled, firm, clean-very much a warm-up strike. Her pass arced back to him. It would have bounced clean off the top of his head if he hadn't set it back to her.
She gave him back the same sort of hit he'd given her, measured and precise. They ticked through another minute of this smooth pepper before once again, Kalypso was riddled with hunger for something more. This time, she didn't say anything-but the ball left her hand with more sting behind it than any time previously.
Redford passed it. "Oh?"
"Can't forget the 'up' part of 'warm up'." Kalypso set him, then pressed her toes hard against the inside of her shoes, feeling for the floor. What would he-
His hit matched hers, scaled up in power just like hers had been. Kalypso took it, arms pulling much more heat off the ball than before.
When they were playing, Dominion chemistry felt…good was the wrong word. It felt correct. It was the difference between watching a flood obliterate a bridge and a waterfall careen down a canyon. One of those was terrifying, while the other was beautiful. As she put more and more strength behind her hits, Redford matched her, and as his intensity and his exertion grew, she basked in the banked fire of their mutual chemical glow.
Carefully. She basked very, very carefully. No need to broadcast anything.
"Right, go time. Cu Chulainn, setting. Duibhne, Abarai, opposing, half courts."
"Hitting focus?" asked Duibhne, looking up at the speakers as he ducked under the net.
"Whatever you want, so long as you work at it."
"Helpful as ever," muttered Redford. "Downs or serves, boys?"
From their arrangement on the court, Duibhne and Cu Chulainn both looked toward Abarai. Kalypso remembered his supposed weakness. Worthless reception. "Downs," said Abarai, bent over in half-readiness, his hands on his thighs.
No one said anything to that, Kalypso noticed. This was apparently not the group for cutting commentary; she would've thought maybe Cu Chulainn might throw a jab, but no. She and Redford went to opposite poles, opposite sides of the net. Redford would be hitting down balls over the net at Renji, Kalypso at Duibhne.
Duibhne, wordlessly, took a few steps back. Yeah, yeah, her down balls were not going to clear the net quite as cleanly as Redford's. At least he hadn't offered her a chair.
Redford slapped his ball. She wasn't even playing, and yet the sound set a little thrill over her skin. Dammit, she wanted to.
Abarai braced for the pass. It was awkward-his broad, powerful body hunched inward toward the point of contact in a way that it shouldn't. A good pass should take energy away, not funnel more into it. Nonetheless, it did work on a down ball-the ball bounced off his arms toward Cu Chulainn, who had lolled back away from the net a lot farther than a setter ought to be.
Because he wasn't a setter, of course. Cu Chulainn's set was the libero's leaping set. He was in the air before the attack line, tossed up a standard little 2 set-
Abarai transformed the second the ball left his arms. He roared through his approach and hit that set like a hurricane. The sound of the impact cracked through the gym, but Duibhne was there. The pass was high, and didn't travel far, and Cu Chulainn had slid under the net the moment his feet had touched the floor again. He set from well behind the attack line, thanks to that iffy pass-another high 2-and this time it was Duibhne searing up to fire it like a bullet back over the net.
Abarai tried for it. The plane of his arms clipped the ball, and it careened off to hit the wall.
So it was gonna be like that, huh. Kalypso slapped her ball while Redford went to shag. Duibhne took her down ball with more grace than Abarai had. "Two," he called, and once more Cu Chulainn's jump set fed the middle a high ball.
He was lighter on his feet than Abarai, and his hit had all the same precise finesse that his blocks yesterday had had. He hit at Abarai, not at any part of the open net but directly at where the defense was waiting. Ugh, thought Kalypso-but then again, if they wanted this drill to actually last long enough to make the rallies worth anyone's time-
Abarai barely got a hand on it. Rather, he had no choice but to get a hand on it, given the way Duibhne had targeted him, but all that tension knotting him up-Kalypso could feel his chemistry hissing and spitting and flooding him with entirely unhelpful stimulation-made his pass wild.
It went up, at least, which was better than rocketing off sideways again. Cu Chulainn got to it, probably because he was expecting as much. The libero got himself a solid two-thirds of the way around the ball before getting off a forearm set. Good boy. It was out-of-system, obviously, and off the net, and nonetheless Abarai hit it like a train.
Duibhne's high pass gave Cu Chulainn just enough time to get back to it. Once again, Duibhne hit directly at Abarai…who promptly blew the pass.
Yep. That was gonna be the pattern for this. Kalypso went running for the loose ball. Behind her, she heard Redford's slap, then strike. Then a "Fuck," from Abarai, and Redford calling, utterly without inflection, "Ixora."
Visualizing frame-by-frame in her mind what had just happened-Abarai did not make that difficult-Kalypso spun around to toss Redford the first ball she'd gone to shag, and then went for the one Abarai had just gotten embarrassed by.
Another rally of similar caliber. Cu Chulainn was working hard, Duibhne was functioning, and Abarai was not giving up for all the good it did him. It wasn't exactly inspiring, but there was grit there, in two out of the three at least. What would it take to get Duibhne out of his well-oiled rut?
Lacks initiative on offensive, overreliance on set plays.
Cu Chulainn could force him into it if he set creatively, but the passes he was dealing with from Abarai's end were not really giving him time for that. He was the best part of this drill, Kalypso thought, watching the libero land from his jump set straight into a fluid slide beneath the net, into a mad agility trial in pursuit of yet another wobbly Abarai pass. Unflappable, indefatigable, dealing with whatever was thrown at him with-well, he wasn't transforming the drill into anything, but he was sustaining it. Basically single-handedly. What he might do with somebody who made plays-
And just as she thought that, Cu Chulainn set Duibhne from behind the attacking line, and as the middle's gaze flashed up and back to track the set coming from behind him, Abarai moved.
He burst forward out of his defensive crouch smooth and silent as a hunting cat, reached the net, and exploded upward just as Duibhne went airborne.
Too late for the middle to change his course-was it? Perhaps not, but this was Duibhne-the middle could only make the smallest adjustment to his hitting angle. He made the right change to avoid getting stuffed, but not quickly enough to get a clean bounce back and reset. Instead, the ball cracked off the top of Renji's block into a high deflection.
Cu Chulainn went from a defensive ready crouch on Diarmuid's side, waiting for the block to come back, to an absolute laserburn sprint beneath the net toward the falling ball. "Ay," Kalypso heard him growl as he flashed past, his Flare firing like afterburners.
He caught it with a fist, sending it high behind him. High, and far-very nearly to the net.
Abarai landed-and burst upward again, his shoulders opening and his Flare boiling off him with visceral triumph. Duibhne had started to fall back to defend as he had before, and didn't have time to get back up for the joust.
The ball hammered down into the floor at the attack line, uncontested.
"All right," Kalypso hissed, electrified.
For half a second, Abarai's eyes slid toward her. She was at the pole nearest him, his side of the net-his Flare was light and rippling, like a warm wind off fresh water.
Now, she thought to herself, anticipation its own sort of Flare inside her chest. Now we've got ourselves a drill.