Battleball

Good mornings brought the Yabans out.

Blue lined white clouds rose like alpine mountains above Armstrong City, above the pines so deep green under a cloud’s shade that they looked blue like an empire of light occupied by shadows. Mourning doves worked through their three-note call in the hedges. A cicada had started up early somewhere and was working through the problem of being awake. Cars on the through-road hummed in the middle distance moving towards and away the titanic skyscrapers blue in the distant morning haze, and closer in, a single lawnmower started, died, started again. The air was cold in the shade and cool where the sun fell.

Up on the aluminum bleachers of Strawberry Fields, Yulaan and Kevelnege sat across from each other with their arms and legs folded and their eyes closed. The turf below was still half-dormant, the yard-line paint faded from winter, the goalposts dull where they should have been bright. A plastic bag had caught itself on the chain-link behind one end zone and was working itself loose. Nobody had been here since the last game of last fall and nobody would be back for practices for another couple weeks, and for that stretch the place belonged to whoever found it.

Vicente had his coat collar up against the bleacher chill and the slouch of a young man who had agreed to chaperone his little cousin to a Yaban training exhibition and was three-quarters of the way through regretting it, or rather, three-quarters of the way through the pleasurable phase of regretting it that he lived for. Esme was leaned forward on her knees with her hood up and her eyes tracking everything.

Neither of them understood, quite, why the two bollois considered sitting still a form of training. Vicente in particular had views on the subject. And yet the evidence did not lie.

See, the longer they sat, the heavier the air became til the crisp nip of it felt less biting than the invisible bubble of air bending around and violently about, and the cicada stopped its sawing, and the mourning doves went somewhere else, and Vicente, who could not have said why but knew this was some qigong lunacy, found himself gripping the bench. Then the air popped once.

The two fell back as if pushed and both panted and laughed. 

“They’re here!” Yulaan said, looking as she could behind those black bangs towards a warp hole below them. 

It appeared as a ‘hyper-hole,’ best described as a hypersphere perpetually opening itself with a ne’er-before-seen color that neither of the Xaxalpa cousins could begin to recognize, which was a digital-like fusion of violet, black, white, cyan, and navy blue. Four silhouettes materialized within the center, whatever counted as the ‘center’ in a phenomenon this bizarre.

Beyond them all was a football field, which the two bollois had been keen to attend. This wasn’t to watch any football game, however. Rather, upon learning of the sport, Yulaan had suggested they gather Ghojin to show off a game similar to rugby-style gridiron football— and, of course suitably for the Kollidorians, exponentially more violent. 

A gust moved through the bleachers. The plastic bag on the fence gave up and went.

“It’s called Battleball,” Yulaan said the afternoon prior, back at Ramon and Johanna’s home. “My pal Ghojin is actually the equivalent of a linebacker.”

Kevelnege swung around in the computer chair, showing off the Angelfire-hosted fansite she had been browsing, and said, “I’ve watched a bunch of your ‘gridiron.’ I must say that it’s far more tactical than Battleball.”

And now through the warp, Ghojin came walking in clad in her vitakoze armor, which Esme recalled well as the armor she saw on Dragon Ball Z which the other Saiyans and Freeza Force wore, though the Yaban style had stranger hue to it. Ghojin’s armor had the dark violet sleeveless spandex unitard and the sharp shoulder pads, though the chestpiece itself had a peculiar airbrushed chrome silver finish, and Esme also noted that Yulaan would wear the same airbrushed chrome armor, though at this hour she only had the bolyaga without the armor, as did Kevelnege. 

Esme enjoyed seeing this trio together, if only because they were girls like her and television didn’t have many brutal girls, least of all the anime these three seemed to come from, so seeing three wild-haired space monkey warriors in the flesh was a daily treat. 

Standing adjacent to Ghojin was a nagoi Vicente knew named Torgaljin— a towering man with short spiked hair and a thin ponytail down back, and his eyes seemed to perpetually squint. His vitakoze had black spandex shorts instead of the full pants, and his arms were also covered by sleeves, but this didn’t begin to unflatter his muscularity.

His body read of a strength so pronounced that he oozed raw power even without bioelectric voltage. At least to Esme and Vicente.

Next to them both was a dark blue-skinned Narakan, and he was an abolian man who fit every stereotype of the Narakans: large and brutish, clad in a slender bodysuit fitted with heavy dank green body armor more fitting for a science-fiction gladiator ring. On his chest was a faded gritty “Q.”

Next to him stood a beige-red-skinned Narakan of a more slender build yet he still had on his arms substantial muscles that he bore unadulterated by a shirt, agitated by his black kung fu pants. On his head were dreadlocks except they had been arbitrarily cyberpunk-stylized with glowing lights and unnecessary “techno” flourishes. Vicente assumed he got his fashion sense from a Mortal Kombat-obsessed cyber goth.

Ghojin grimaced, as Ghojin does, as she said, “This is just a 2 on 2, but watch.”

She and Torgaljin took position, with Torgaljin holding what Esme could have sworn was a crystal skull, with a marble make and smooth finish that made it seem more suitable for the sorts of junkie tobacco stores than a sports field. 

They took positions in a semi-circle formation against the other pair, and squatted in familiar stances, not perfectly matching football linemen and halfbacks but close enough that the Xaxalpa pair understood why Yulaan thought the game similar. 

Ghojin shouted, “Sha!” and Torgaljin tossed the skull into the air and all four began to chase after it as it rolled on the ground. 

The red Narakan caught up to it first and the result of this was the two Abolians turning abruptly and charging. The blue one grabbed Ghojin by her hands and caught her in a test-of-strength standoff, but this left him open for Torgaljin to rush with an open-palm blow to the side that sent him down. Ghojin broke off and chased the red one, and broke his approach of the opposite endzone by surpassing him and delivering a haymaker to his face that spun him around a dozen times before his back smashed into the turf. 

The skull bounced. Ghojin collected it with a swift snatch and lurched to run to the opposing end zone, but the Abolian grabbed her by her ankle and brought her down in an arc crashing against the hard earth. Before she could recover, he brought a foot up against her spine and kicked her into the air. 

She landed face first with a heavy bounce, and pushed herself to sit up and catch her breath.

Yet the blue Abolian had dawdled too much. Torgaljin caught him with a sickeningly loud gut uppercut. Then he extended his open hand and caught the skull as it fell out of the man’s limp hand, and let him fall to the ground with two sporting pats to the back. 

“Good god!” Vicente cried out. “How do you even survive a game like that?”

Yulaan cocked her head, letting her bangs brush along her nose, and said, “Observe.”

Torgaljin hadn’t run more than three steps before the skull shattered and blew away into ashes. He ceased his forward motion and brushed his hands off.

He shrugged at his audience and said, “Match over!”

As Vicente watched on slack-jawed, Yulaan pushed her weight against Kevelnege and said, “See? You owe me.”

Torgaljin then jogged back to Ghojin and they slapped palms and he pulled her up. 

The red Narakan did the same for the blue one. 

Torgaljin had escaped wounds and this fact seemed to frustrate him, like the kid who didn’t get to score at a schoolyard game, while his three compatriots were well bloody or bruised enough. Despite the intensity of the splendid little match, none of them limped or gasped winded. 

“That would have put any of the best players in the NFL out for good!” said an enraptured Esme. The girl had always been so quick to embrace the most dumbass and physical sports she could, even if she herself was cursed by her physique to never be capable of joining in. 

This was a revelation! She knew nothing of martial artistry, and yet this crossover had her as electric on the inside as a high voltage Yaban. 

The cicada picked back up. Whichever one it was, or a new one, it went on again with the mourning dove and the robins.

Vicente, standing back and eyes wide as the bloodied trio passed by, said, “… And I repeat.”

Kevelnege pushed Yulaan off of her and said, “Sometimes you don’t.”

Ghojin pulled herself over to sit on the metal bench and rubbed her mouth, probably moreso to admire the bloody streaks left behind on her wrist— physical consequences of combat, every Yaban’s most prized momentary trophy.

“And that’s the basics. Football meets martial arts, like Scrunt said,” she said as she noogied Yulaan’s moptop hair.

Esme wanted to speak. She opened her mouth to speak. She couldn’t.

The big blue Narakan walked over, and said to the humans with a heavy grunting voice too fitting for his appearance, “Imagine, Earthling, the carnage and thrill of three teams competing for the skull at once, especially in a proper arena!” And he bellowed out a heavy chortle. “Festivals of chaos!” His red comrade joined in on the laugh as the two slapped palms and tensed their biceps, eager now to continue their practice for future games. 

Esme was nearly bouncing where she sat. Vicente on the other hand facepalmed. 

Ghojin snickered and flicked her head to send her long mane of black hair around over her shoulder, and said, “Hey, Quzar, you were at the RAVE Games. Remember the Gosamyrs’ thoughts on it?”

The blue Narakan, Quzar, looked dazed at first and then said flatly, “They will never understand,” and stomped off for who knew what through the warp. 

“Hey, thanks for the demonstration. We’ll be back at it next week!” And she waved her tail at them as they passed through the hyper-hole and turned back to Vicente, Esme, Yulaan, and Kevelnege. 

Her mood-heavy scowl betrayed the scoff she dropped, as she said, “If you’ve ever wanted to see a real version of one of those televised gladiator game shows, you ought to visit Sarrat. The Gosamyrs are the ultimate glam-capitalists.”

Looking into Ghojin’s lavender eyes was like looking into another universe for Esme. The girl wondered what sort of unbelievable cosmic acts of prowess and strength she had missed out on in her thirteen years all because she was stuck here on this dinky little Earth. 

So, she scooched close enough to Ghojin that her jeans rubbed against the Saiyan girl’s spandex-covered thigh and cheekily asked, “Say, what’s the RAVE Games like? How strong ya gotta be to get a spot in them?”

Ghojin wrapped her arm around her suddenly and violently pulled her in, and was grinning in a way that Vicente thought looked unnatural on her. “Oh look here, the Earthling kid thinks she can tussle with Ravers! Heh heh! You don’t gotta be terribly strong to start out. But if you wanna chance to win something like Interplanetary Battleball or Chaosbowl—” she squeezed Esme’s arms at the biceps and triceps, which the younger girl noticed seemed noodle-like compared to the Kollidorian’s definition, which yet again sparked envy to be what they were, “— you’d need to train!”

Then Ghojin let go and turned back to Yulaan. “You finally built the Death Chamber yet?” 

“You bet!” She stood and the other two followed, and all three flew. “We ought to—”

They trailed off, and the Xaxalpa cousins sat there, mesmerized, dazed, confused, and quite chilly.

Esme rubbed her now severely sore and tender arms and said, “I wanna go there.”

And Vicente dropped his head in his hands and said, “Your mom would kill me, no.”

She slapped his hat off and grinned and said, “No, I just wanna watch.”

He caught his hat before it could blow off in the Atlantic breeze, and then slowly turned to Esme, “And I repeat.”

“Aw come on, ‘cuz! Dontcha wanna see all those freaky aliens and demons they got in Yule’s world?”

Vicente looked over towards the spire of Nicolai’s Tower shining in the morning light, and beyond it, the mountain range of storm clouds approaching like an atmospheric tsunami from the horizon. That mourning dove was bothering him now. 

She was right. He lived for the paranormal and that which lived beyond the milky walls of reality. 

God knew what Mr. Kazuma would have said if he brought back some exotic inter-universal creature, or introduced him to a real life Tribble.

And there was his cute little cousin’s biggest bitch move: those puppy dog eyes whenever she wanted him to bring her along to something that would, with anyone else, get them either killed or marked. 

And so he sat and focused. He wasn’t remotely good at this. What was it, centering his breathing? He had figured it out enough to reliably do it, but still felt as if he was pretending to know what to do.

But with enough inner grounding and vitalization of the anja chakra, Yulaan materialized in his mind’s eye.

He could see her specifically utilizing bukujutsu as she zipped above several of the outer city districts towards the cul-de-sac. 

“Yulaan!”

She snapped to focus. “Hmm! Vicente, what is it?”

He sat with arms folded and cross legged, looking to any driving or jogging passerby as if he was just a normal young man ruminating on life.

“Esmeralda wants to watch the next RAVE Games. How lethal would an audience seat be for an E-class type?”

Yulaan thought back, “The audience in a Gosamyrian death-game isn’t anything like the Makai. You’d be safe.

Usually.”