Tiebreaker
Bate / Ellie / Gordon / Alba
"Gordon, you ready?"
"Yep, ready as ever. Alba?"
"Yeah."
"I'm ready too."
"Okay. On a count of three. One, two..."
The ball flies across the net before Bate reaches the end, and even if Gordon winds up griping at how that's cheating, it doesn't change the fact that he still scored a point. It makes him beam to see, and he knows right then that this game is going to be good.
"Not bad for a first timer, huh?" He says to Ellie, just barely turning his head to look her, and from behind she snorts and shakes her head in a way that shrieks fond exasperation.
"Pay attention Bate, he's liable to sock you with it next time when you aren't looking."
"Yeah, I bet he could- Ow!"
The ball does indeed sock him, right in the center of his face between the eyes. It leaves a burn that smarts him from brow to lip, and as he reaches up to rub at the affected area, he hears a familiar laughter that only makes him heat up with a righteous indignation.
"Yeah, I bet you'll be laughing when I bruise!"
Ellie can only sigh as the game of volleyball that they were supposed to be having devolves into a squabble thrown across the netting. When she looks over at Alba, standing on the other side, she can only shake her head and roll her eyes, one hand resting on a hip.
It had been Alba who had suggested the game in the first place. Coming to the beach had been a planned group outing for the past week, and the weather had been wonderful. The sun shone bright, beating down on all of their backs with not a cloud in the sky, and to Ellie's left she could see the ocean stretching out in a glimmer of blues off into the horizon. Picnic baskets sat to her opposite end, still yet unopened to hold onto their appetites after breakfast. They'd been planning to eat after this.
Now, though, she wonders wryly if they'll get a chance to do anything until sundown. Those two were best friends and by Nova they could certainly argue like ones.
Alba sees that, and Alba feels impatience just as much as Ellie does, because Gordon and Bate with both get interrupted by a crass call of, "Can we just play, already?"
Gordon freezes, as does Bate, and she's rewarded with an awkward shifting of both and the sounds of embarrassed agreement as one tosses the ball back to the other and gets in position. Honestly, men...
With Bate's acquiescence, Gordon makes the first move. Hovering back a bit, spectral hands at the ready and keeping aware not to float too far high, he throws the ball up and smacks it deftly. It'll be Bate who manages to catch it, bouncing it back up in the air enough for Ellie to scamper over to try and hit it. It's a bit of an unfair advantage, Gordon can probably see immediately; he can float, Ellie can't. He has spectral hands; Ellie doesn't.
Bate sees it too, because he's darting up right to the net the moment Gordon manages to hit the ball back over the netting, hopping up and slamming it in Alba's direction where she just barely manages to miss it, enough that the ball actually bounces off of her hand with a quick glancing sting.
"Did you see that, Ellie?" Bate beams, looking over at the squid at his side. "Another point for us!"
"Bate!" Gordon sounds exasperated, "The last one doesn't count, and you hit the ball too hard!"
"Yes, it does, stop being so-"
"I saw, Bate," Ellie says, and again another look in Alba's direction, another shake of her head. "Let's keep going."
It's a recurring pattern that quickly establishes itself over the course of the game. Bate and Gordon, although they try to keep it lighthearted, continue to slip up into something that is only marginally less than aggressive and even that fast begins to lose the pretense of civility. Ellie and Alba both manage to get a few hits in, but whatever hopes they might've had of scoring any points are dashed by the fact that both of their partners seem to deem it fit to come to their rescue.
Bate is excited whenever they score, and he is equally just as angry whenever they don't. Gordon is his mirror, exuberant and frustrated, coming to Alba's defense and smacking the ball with enough force that, more than once, it hits hard into the sand and lets up a spray. Bate returns it in kind, not to be outdone. And each time, they both look to their partners, checking them over, prideful and expectant.
Each time Bate scores, he gushes. Each time Gordon scores, he glances over at Alba excitedly before the game draws him back in.
The women could both deal with it up to then, because at least they had been getting a few hits in even if they hadn't been scoring. But by now the men have all but muscled the game away from them. They aren't even getting a chance to run, much less a chance to hit the ball.
"I can do this, Ellie, I'll show you-"
"Bate hits hard, Alba, I'll take care of it-"
It becomes a one on one game, essentially. Neither are very surprised, and both can take a few guesses as to why.
"I'm going to go sit down. You two have fun, okay?"
Alba calls herself out first, but for all of Gordon's concentration, he almost doesn't notice. It's when Ellie deems to follow her with a few words of her own that the game slows enough for both boys to look off to the side where their girlfriends are beginning to set up the picnic blankets. Gordon is embarrassed a little bit, but seeing Alba sit down and watch him rapidly displaces the feeling in favor of fire in his core with the expectant gaze now levelled on him. He’s got something to prove to her, now.
Bate is much the same. Ellie seems still exasperated but amused in the same measure, sitting down and waving at Bate with a little phantom smile gracing her features. He feels a little bit bad in truth, that she's left because of him.
But then he sees Gordon, still floating across from him, still waiting, and his mouth purses as his brow furrows. He needs his skills now more than ever, because Ellie isn't playing anymore. She's watching, and he needs to be the best at this, to win against his rival, to make her proud. And by the looks of things, Gordon is thinking much the same.
"Hope you like the taste of sand!"
"Not before you taste it first!"
And off they go, throwing the first ball and diving for it with a finesse and an aggression that seems oddly out of place for a friendly game of volleyball on the beach.
It rapidly turns into mayhem, but a controlled kind of mayhem that doesn't result in more than sand kicking up every which way. They pull out every stop in the book they can think of, using abilities and skills acquired earlier in life through past experiences. Gordon smacks at the ball with spectral hands that reach higher than the rules probably allow, and in turn Bate uses his wings to fly and bat it back. He even flies higher to get the better edge, although Gordon can match him with that just as well, being able to float.
Bate uses talons, wings, leg kicks, anything he can think of that will hit the ball without destroying it outright. He uses aerial maneuvers and some of his training in the army to toss the ball farther and faster than Gordon can reach, a clear breach of rules but neither of them care about that now. Gordon tries to give as good as he gets, knocking it with spectral hands, at one point just throwing it around the net rather than over it, and yes that's a legal move Bate, don't argue, he scored that one.
It’s a constant back and forth, a balancing act that they take part in despite the mutual desire to win. They don't know how long they go about it. Neither of them are able to pay attention to things like that right then. Bate's only concern is winning, feeling Ellie's gaze on his back, eager and expectant. Losing is not an option, and he will win if it takes him the better part of the entire night.
Gordon doesn't say anything, but his eyes express the same sentiment. Alba can be no-nonsense, and he doesn't want to waste her time watching her boyfriend only to see him lose. He has a lot at stake now, he thinks, besting his best friend and rival, getting to witness her expression light up with his victory. He can't afford to lose this either, not now.
Ellie and Alba watch them less with expectancy and more with a fond weariness as they continue, because although neither of the boys are aware of it, by that point they've been playing for at least three hours. A generous estimate, because neither of them have a watch, and by the way the sky is beginning to turn, Ellie can bet that it's been quite a bit longer than that. And still, nobody's won.
"Do you think they'll ever stop...?" Ellie murmurs, possibly for the third time since sitting down. She's got a glass of juice in her hand, plucked from her picnic basket when she got tired of waiting. She thinks it might have a few flecks of sand in it, but she can't be sure...
"Probably not." Alba replies, sloshing her own drink in her hand without much care. Most of it is already gone, and to her side a sandwich sits half-eaten on her plate. "You know them. Always wanting to make us happy."
"It's sweet, but..."
"They're liable to tear a hole in the beach at this point."
It's true. With all the glances and grazes the ball's made, a good chunk of sand has kicked up. Alba bets they'll hit dirt if they're given a few more hours.
"We should probably stop them."
"Probably." A beat, before Ellie hears Alba chuckle, fond and amused. "Or maybe not."
Because Bate, in his bid to finally get the one-up on Gordon, grabs the ball, flies himself upward, and with a great push of force, throws it with his weight straight downward onto Gordon himself, rather than to the goal. Whether throwing out of frustration or lack of attention, it's hard to say, but Ellie might guess the latter because Bate falls straight down into the netting with his momentum before his wings can carry him back aloft.
It devolves quickly. The poles twist and turn crooked with his weight and the netting seems to tangle into his form in an instant such that he looks stuck almost in a ball of yarn. His struggling only seems to make it worse, and at the end he can only offer a frustrated yell.
Gordon manages to avoid the spectacle, even seems proud of himself for just a second at the idea of finally winning before he realizes that something is hanging from atop one of his spikes. In the cacophony, he'd barely noticed how the ball disappeared, and so when he reaches up to pluck at whatever is hanging from his spike, he comes back with the deflated remnant of what had once been a volleyball.
Ellie and Alba are stuck frozen for a good few seconds as things fall apart in front of their eyes. Bate doesn't seem to stop struggling until he's well and truly tangled up, crowing out his irritation. And since it doesn’t seem like he’s going to be escaping on his own anytime soon, Ellie eventually stands and sighs. "Well, someone will have to get him down from there..."
"Good luck."
Ellie jogs for her boyfriend with a quick huff as Alba watches on, dodging past small holes where the beach has been peppered with them over the course of the men's longwinded game. Bate, now still, now sullen, looks at her with an expression that seems both pitiful and endearing, blush heavy on his face. He averts his eyes quickly and she hears him mumble a small apology as she quickly gets to work trying to undo the netting.
"You know, you don't have to impress me, Bate," She murmurs, half in concentration as she works. "Honestly, you two can be so single-minded sometimes..."
"I wanted to make you proud..."
"You goofball," And she can't help the way that her voice comes out in a laugh. "You make me proud every day! Whether you win or lose a volleyball game, it doesn't matter to me."
“But…”
Ellie can't see the way Bate looks right then. Stuck staring at her back, he can only watch her with something unreadable to his face as he turns her words over. Eventually, he manages to smile his assent after it feels like an age has passed, watching her work with his face almost aglow with embarrassment and affection both.
"...Okay."
Just off to the side, he can see Gordon is there in the distance, giving Alba the remains of a volleyball that had lasted far longer than it had probably meant to, embarrassed and sheepish. It's a shame they never got to figure out who won.
But then again, he thinks as he watches Ellie reach out and take a talon to begin cutting up the netting, maybe it really doesn't matter.
"Yep, ready as ever. Alba?"
"Yeah."
"I'm ready too."
"Okay. On a count of three. One, two..."
The ball flies across the net before Bate reaches the end, and even if Gordon winds up griping at how that's cheating, it doesn't change the fact that he still scored a point. It makes him beam to see, and he knows right then that this game is going to be good.
"Not bad for a first timer, huh?" He says to Ellie, just barely turning his head to look her, and from behind she snorts and shakes her head in a way that shrieks fond exasperation.
"Pay attention Bate, he's liable to sock you with it next time when you aren't looking."
"Yeah, I bet he could- Ow!"
The ball does indeed sock him, right in the center of his face between the eyes. It leaves a burn that smarts him from brow to lip, and as he reaches up to rub at the affected area, he hears a familiar laughter that only makes him heat up with a righteous indignation.
"Yeah, I bet you'll be laughing when I bruise!"
Ellie can only sigh as the game of volleyball that they were supposed to be having devolves into a squabble thrown across the netting. When she looks over at Alba, standing on the other side, she can only shake her head and roll her eyes, one hand resting on a hip.
It had been Alba who had suggested the game in the first place. Coming to the beach had been a planned group outing for the past week, and the weather had been wonderful. The sun shone bright, beating down on all of their backs with not a cloud in the sky, and to Ellie's left she could see the ocean stretching out in a glimmer of blues off into the horizon. Picnic baskets sat to her opposite end, still yet unopened to hold onto their appetites after breakfast. They'd been planning to eat after this.
Now, though, she wonders wryly if they'll get a chance to do anything until sundown. Those two were best friends and by Nova they could certainly argue like ones.
Alba sees that, and Alba feels impatience just as much as Ellie does, because Gordon and Bate with both get interrupted by a crass call of, "Can we just play, already?"
Gordon freezes, as does Bate, and she's rewarded with an awkward shifting of both and the sounds of embarrassed agreement as one tosses the ball back to the other and gets in position. Honestly, men...
With Bate's acquiescence, Gordon makes the first move. Hovering back a bit, spectral hands at the ready and keeping aware not to float too far high, he throws the ball up and smacks it deftly. It'll be Bate who manages to catch it, bouncing it back up in the air enough for Ellie to scamper over to try and hit it. It's a bit of an unfair advantage, Gordon can probably see immediately; he can float, Ellie can't. He has spectral hands; Ellie doesn't.
Bate sees it too, because he's darting up right to the net the moment Gordon manages to hit the ball back over the netting, hopping up and slamming it in Alba's direction where she just barely manages to miss it, enough that the ball actually bounces off of her hand with a quick glancing sting.
"Did you see that, Ellie?" Bate beams, looking over at the squid at his side. "Another point for us!"
"Bate!" Gordon sounds exasperated, "The last one doesn't count, and you hit the ball too hard!"
"Yes, it does, stop being so-"
"I saw, Bate," Ellie says, and again another look in Alba's direction, another shake of her head. "Let's keep going."
It's a recurring pattern that quickly establishes itself over the course of the game. Bate and Gordon, although they try to keep it lighthearted, continue to slip up into something that is only marginally less than aggressive and even that fast begins to lose the pretense of civility. Ellie and Alba both manage to get a few hits in, but whatever hopes they might've had of scoring any points are dashed by the fact that both of their partners seem to deem it fit to come to their rescue.
Bate is excited whenever they score, and he is equally just as angry whenever they don't. Gordon is his mirror, exuberant and frustrated, coming to Alba's defense and smacking the ball with enough force that, more than once, it hits hard into the sand and lets up a spray. Bate returns it in kind, not to be outdone. And each time, they both look to their partners, checking them over, prideful and expectant.
Each time Bate scores, he gushes. Each time Gordon scores, he glances over at Alba excitedly before the game draws him back in.
The women could both deal with it up to then, because at least they had been getting a few hits in even if they hadn't been scoring. But by now the men have all but muscled the game away from them. They aren't even getting a chance to run, much less a chance to hit the ball.
"I can do this, Ellie, I'll show you-"
"Bate hits hard, Alba, I'll take care of it-"
It becomes a one on one game, essentially. Neither are very surprised, and both can take a few guesses as to why.
"I'm going to go sit down. You two have fun, okay?"
Alba calls herself out first, but for all of Gordon's concentration, he almost doesn't notice. It's when Ellie deems to follow her with a few words of her own that the game slows enough for both boys to look off to the side where their girlfriends are beginning to set up the picnic blankets. Gordon is embarrassed a little bit, but seeing Alba sit down and watch him rapidly displaces the feeling in favor of fire in his core with the expectant gaze now levelled on him. He’s got something to prove to her, now.
Bate is much the same. Ellie seems still exasperated but amused in the same measure, sitting down and waving at Bate with a little phantom smile gracing her features. He feels a little bit bad in truth, that she's left because of him.
But then he sees Gordon, still floating across from him, still waiting, and his mouth purses as his brow furrows. He needs his skills now more than ever, because Ellie isn't playing anymore. She's watching, and he needs to be the best at this, to win against his rival, to make her proud. And by the looks of things, Gordon is thinking much the same.
"Hope you like the taste of sand!"
"Not before you taste it first!"
And off they go, throwing the first ball and diving for it with a finesse and an aggression that seems oddly out of place for a friendly game of volleyball on the beach.
It rapidly turns into mayhem, but a controlled kind of mayhem that doesn't result in more than sand kicking up every which way. They pull out every stop in the book they can think of, using abilities and skills acquired earlier in life through past experiences. Gordon smacks at the ball with spectral hands that reach higher than the rules probably allow, and in turn Bate uses his wings to fly and bat it back. He even flies higher to get the better edge, although Gordon can match him with that just as well, being able to float.
Bate uses talons, wings, leg kicks, anything he can think of that will hit the ball without destroying it outright. He uses aerial maneuvers and some of his training in the army to toss the ball farther and faster than Gordon can reach, a clear breach of rules but neither of them care about that now. Gordon tries to give as good as he gets, knocking it with spectral hands, at one point just throwing it around the net rather than over it, and yes that's a legal move Bate, don't argue, he scored that one.
It’s a constant back and forth, a balancing act that they take part in despite the mutual desire to win. They don't know how long they go about it. Neither of them are able to pay attention to things like that right then. Bate's only concern is winning, feeling Ellie's gaze on his back, eager and expectant. Losing is not an option, and he will win if it takes him the better part of the entire night.
Gordon doesn't say anything, but his eyes express the same sentiment. Alba can be no-nonsense, and he doesn't want to waste her time watching her boyfriend only to see him lose. He has a lot at stake now, he thinks, besting his best friend and rival, getting to witness her expression light up with his victory. He can't afford to lose this either, not now.
Ellie and Alba watch them less with expectancy and more with a fond weariness as they continue, because although neither of the boys are aware of it, by that point they've been playing for at least three hours. A generous estimate, because neither of them have a watch, and by the way the sky is beginning to turn, Ellie can bet that it's been quite a bit longer than that. And still, nobody's won.
"Do you think they'll ever stop...?" Ellie murmurs, possibly for the third time since sitting down. She's got a glass of juice in her hand, plucked from her picnic basket when she got tired of waiting. She thinks it might have a few flecks of sand in it, but she can't be sure...
"Probably not." Alba replies, sloshing her own drink in her hand without much care. Most of it is already gone, and to her side a sandwich sits half-eaten on her plate. "You know them. Always wanting to make us happy."
"It's sweet, but..."
"They're liable to tear a hole in the beach at this point."
It's true. With all the glances and grazes the ball's made, a good chunk of sand has kicked up. Alba bets they'll hit dirt if they're given a few more hours.
"We should probably stop them."
"Probably." A beat, before Ellie hears Alba chuckle, fond and amused. "Or maybe not."
Because Bate, in his bid to finally get the one-up on Gordon, grabs the ball, flies himself upward, and with a great push of force, throws it with his weight straight downward onto Gordon himself, rather than to the goal. Whether throwing out of frustration or lack of attention, it's hard to say, but Ellie might guess the latter because Bate falls straight down into the netting with his momentum before his wings can carry him back aloft.
It devolves quickly. The poles twist and turn crooked with his weight and the netting seems to tangle into his form in an instant such that he looks stuck almost in a ball of yarn. His struggling only seems to make it worse, and at the end he can only offer a frustrated yell.
Gordon manages to avoid the spectacle, even seems proud of himself for just a second at the idea of finally winning before he realizes that something is hanging from atop one of his spikes. In the cacophony, he'd barely noticed how the ball disappeared, and so when he reaches up to pluck at whatever is hanging from his spike, he comes back with the deflated remnant of what had once been a volleyball.
Ellie and Alba are stuck frozen for a good few seconds as things fall apart in front of their eyes. Bate doesn't seem to stop struggling until he's well and truly tangled up, crowing out his irritation. And since it doesn’t seem like he’s going to be escaping on his own anytime soon, Ellie eventually stands and sighs. "Well, someone will have to get him down from there..."
"Good luck."
Ellie jogs for her boyfriend with a quick huff as Alba watches on, dodging past small holes where the beach has been peppered with them over the course of the men's longwinded game. Bate, now still, now sullen, looks at her with an expression that seems both pitiful and endearing, blush heavy on his face. He averts his eyes quickly and she hears him mumble a small apology as she quickly gets to work trying to undo the netting.
"You know, you don't have to impress me, Bate," She murmurs, half in concentration as she works. "Honestly, you two can be so single-minded sometimes..."
"I wanted to make you proud..."
"You goofball," And she can't help the way that her voice comes out in a laugh. "You make me proud every day! Whether you win or lose a volleyball game, it doesn't matter to me."
“But…”
Ellie can't see the way Bate looks right then. Stuck staring at her back, he can only watch her with something unreadable to his face as he turns her words over. Eventually, he manages to smile his assent after it feels like an age has passed, watching her work with his face almost aglow with embarrassment and affection both.
"...Okay."
Just off to the side, he can see Gordon is there in the distance, giving Alba the remains of a volleyball that had lasted far longer than it had probably meant to, embarrassed and sheepish. It's a shame they never got to figure out who won.
But then again, he thinks as he watches Ellie reach out and take a talon to begin cutting up the netting, maybe it really doesn't matter.
-The End-
Artist Comment:
May 22, 2020
-----------------
A small scene from their younger years. Bate and Gordy are such goofs when it comes to impressing their girlfriends. Ellie and Alba are used to it, and find it quite amusing how far they go to make them happy. Even a simple volleyball game can turn into a war zone. XD
So the lovely piece of writing was commissioned by my good friend, Dogblog. (dA- Shadowrealmprincess) She's one of my favorite writers, and it was an honor to have her write something for this illustration. I'm hoping to commission her to write a few more pieces for some sketches I've been wanting to post. ^o^
May 22, 2020
-----------------
A small scene from their younger years. Bate and Gordy are such goofs when it comes to impressing their girlfriends. Ellie and Alba are used to it, and find it quite amusing how far they go to make them happy. Even a simple volleyball game can turn into a war zone. XD
So the lovely piece of writing was commissioned by my good friend, Dogblog. (dA- Shadowrealmprincess) She's one of my favorite writers, and it was an honor to have her write something for this illustration. I'm hoping to commission her to write a few more pieces for some sketches I've been wanting to post. ^o^
Species © Nintendo/ HAL Laboratory
Interpreted characters created from said species © Rhylem
Interpreted characters created from said species © Rhylem
