After a half hour or so of chatting in the stands, starting with filling Mina in on Sammy's basketball history, then moving on to talking about architecture again as the blonde girl rattled off assorted facts about various famous structures—which Carl definitely needed to start reading up on so he could hold up a conversation and avoid seeing her brief, almost unnoticeable frown of disappointment when he hadn't known or been able to speak to the exact logistics of how equipment for constructing a half-mile tall building was transported around—before arriving at some game talk, during which both girls expressed great admiration for how Vol managed to maneuver around in Castle Knight before they'd left.
Now, however, it was just past tip-off, and Sammy was confidently gesturing for Hanna, the team's point guard, to pass the ball to her. The action itself wasn't unusual—though given how far away she, the team's center, was from the basket it was odd in that sense—since Sammy was a team player, and an aggressive one at that when she got in the zone, but it wasn't the attitude she'd been displaying as much since she'd begun starting on the varsity team, maybe owing to her nerves. Nerves that, while they may have existed before the game, were definitely not in evidence now as she caught the ball and began her approach.
The girl guarding her was roughly the same height, but she had a long, dark braid hanging off the back of her head in contrast to his daughter's short, blonde hair. From a glance, it seemed like they'd be evenly matched on a physical level, although the team introductions had named the dark-haired girl as both a senior and the other team's captain, which meant that there was a vast, two year gap in experience which could potentially play a role—though obviously it wasn't like just being older meant she was better than Sammy Weathers, a girl so focused on the game that she occasionally took naps with her ball.
The two faced off for a moment, and Sammy's shoulders rose and fell. She drove hard to the right with her guard playing close, pushing for the corner, likely to set up a pass while she got further inside. After three lunging steps, taken with unmistakable determination to reach that corner, she halted abruptly and brought herself to a stop mid-step, taking a slow dribble as though she was about to take a shot. The change of pace occurred at the exact moment her guard had put weight fully onto her rear foot while backing up, and the other girl hopped backwards a step in an attempt to push off and close the distance, but she lost her balance in the process, sprawling out onto the floor.
Carl stared with his mouth open. Naturally he recognized an ankle-breaker, having gotten into watching NBA games for a number of years in the course of researching sports to support his daughters in case they turned out to be athletic, but he'd certainly never seen one so intentionally executed in a high school game like this, let alone by his own daughter. He was on his feet cheering before he even realized it, and his daughter had taken a half-second to look down at her fallen opponent before driving the lane for an easy layup against the stunned remains of the other team's defense.
"Yeah, Sammy!" Bobby yelled in excitement, accompanied by Mina's equally loud cheer and Annie's matching shout.
A timeout was immediately called by the other team—likely while they tried to figure out how they were gonna deal with playing against such an amazing future pro athlete like his daughter—and Sammy's teammates gathered around her, patting her on the back and reaching up to ruffle her hair while she grinned.
"She's got good instincts," Vol remarked as she pulled up on the step next to their bench. "Took fucking forever to find you guys, but I didn't get bored."
Carl turned at the sound of her voice. "Hey, you made it!" he called across Annie, feeling glad that it was this game in particular his friend had randomly showed up for.
"Yeah. Said I would," Vol said. She moved up a row and sat behind them, easily finding a spot in the sparsely populated Away seating section. "Got a little lost when I found the place," she continued, leaning forward, "but then I ended up finding Sammy, and she was sort of reminding me of myself when I was just starting out in the arena, so I talked to her for a while and taught her how to unbalance her opponents," she finished, pointing between him and Annie to the girl who had taken a spill moments earlier.
Carl frowned and looked back and forth between the court and his friend in confusion. "You just taught her how to ankle-break?"
"Ankle-break? Nah, just capitalizing on sloppy footwork."
"I think he was asking whether you managed to teach her that in the last… How long ago did you get here?" Annie asked, seeming to be mirroring his own thoughts on the matter.
"Eh, it took a few tries, but it was a little interesting to see how she'd use it," Vol said with a wave of her hand.
Carl shared a look with Annie. On his side, while it certainly seemed like a near-impossible feat to be able to teach a sixteen year-old a skill like this in less than a half hour, given what he'd seen of his friend's raw physical capability—like the one time during their first time hanging out together when she'd done a move where in the middle of walking, she'd abruptly laid down on the ground, which, while it was clear that the game probably could help with some stuff, seemed like it indicated an almost impossible degree of coordination. On his wife's side, he saw mostly confusion and disbelief, which was more or less what he'd expect from someone who didn't know Vol too well given how ridiculous she was always being.
The game resumed, and play swiftly moved down the court. Sammy kept up a medium distance guard on her mark, but the ball was dumped to a girl who fired off a three pointer with practiced ease.
On the team's next offense, Hanna again passed the ball to Sammy, but a noticeable change had occurred. This time, the tall girl guarding her was keeping her distance, likely after being advised by her coach to give her space.
"Noobs," Bobby said, shaking her head.
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"Basketball's sort of interesting," Vol said some time later.
Carl was having a blast watching the intense, riveting game. His daughter was playing with a confidence he'd never seen before, and it had spread to the rest of the team, transforming a game where, according to Bobby, they'd been seen as the underdogs into one where it wasn't one-sided, but also it didn't seem like a blowout—though obviously, as a dad, it didn't matter much to him whether Sammy was going to win as long as she was having fun.
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"You like it?" Annie called over her shoulder.
"Mm. Sort of remi—"
"Wait, you've never seen basketball before?" Carl interrupted. He could understand Mina, a girl who was clearly pretty sheltered from most stuff—but definitely not the right stuff—not knowing much about the game, but Vol was well into being an adult, and it seemed absurd to him that anyone past a certain age with access to the internet wouldn't have at least some idea of the game.
"Nah, we don't have bask—"
Carl surged to his feet. "YEEEAAAAH, SAMMY!" he cheered after his daughter got a hand on and blocked a shot.
"Gotta the best she's ever played," Bobby said.
"She's so skilled!" Mina exclaimed.
"Vol, what did you say to her before the game?" Annie asked. "Besides, um, teaching her that ankle thing."
It was a brilliant question to ask, and Carl was once again amazed at his wife's cleverness. Obviously if they knew what kind of pep talk worked this well, they could adapt it for future use. He wasn't about to pass up this kind of opportunity.
"Told her there's victory to be had just in playing the best she could, and if all she thought about was losing, she'd lose even if she won."
"Huh." Carl thought about it, and the more he thought about it, the more he realized it might be a great pep talk. He filed it away to think on more later because right now he needed to cheer again.
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"Great game, Sammy," Carl called as his daughter raced up the steps towards them in the emptying out gym. He rose to his feet.
The score had been much closer than he'd expected from the outset, with the other team rallying in the second half and pulling off a narrow win.
Despite her loss, Sammy beamed up at him. "It was so fun!" she said, balling her fists at her sides. "I wish every game could be like that!"
"You've played with such finesse and skill!" Mina said in a rough voice. She'd grown increasingly excited as the game continued, getting riled up by the tenacity of both teams as the score swung back and forth. Now, a short while after the end of the game, her voice had grown ragged from cheering so much, but she smiled like she was having the time of her life.
"Good hustle, Sammy," Annie said. She'd begun to fade towards the end of the game, with yawns that came more and more frequently, and it took her an extra couple seconds to stand up and give her still-sweaty daughter a hug.
Sammy spread her grin around to all of them quickly before turning to Vol. "It really worked! I can't believe it worked!"
"Obviously if I teach it to you, it's gonna work," Vol said lazily. "You could be a great fighter someday."
"No, none of that," Annie said, coming back to full alertness.
"Just saying she could, not that she has to," Vol said with a shrug. "I think…" She got up and started to stretch. "Gonna go do some exploring—see if I can find anything interesting. All this hanging out today's just what I needed. Feeling more me than I have in a while. Thanks," she said when she'd stepped down to their level on the stairs, giving each of them a look.
"Uh, hold on a sec," Carl called as she started down the stairs. "Meet you at the car," he said, squeezing past Annie and giving Sammy a big hug that lifted her off the ground while he told her how awesome the game had been.
"Bye, Vol," Mina called. "Please come visit again soon!"
"Cool meeting you, Vol," Bobby said.
"Wait, you're just gonna leave now?" Sammy said. "But you never told me how you learned to do that, or—"
"Eh, it's a long story," Vol called back over her shoulder. "Not that interesting." She reached the floor and kept walking even as Carl sped up to catch her, picking up one of the basketballs that rolled into her path. She twirled it in her hands, then tossed it casually over one shoulder without breaking her stride. The ball sailed through the air, traveling most of the way across the court to sink into the basket without touching the rim.
"Hey, nice shot," Carl said when he did catch up, amazed at both the odds of her throw as well as her apparent strength at having lobbed a ball with one hand across the court like that with no wind-up.
"Just muscle control," she said in a dismissive tone, looking up at him. "This was relaxing. I sort of…" She turned to look forward as they pushed through the doors and into the lobby. "You ever feel like you need something, but you don't know what it is, and then you get it, and you didn't even realize how much you needed it?"
"Yeah, I think I know what you mean," Carl said, figuring that description accurately covered the feeling he had some days when he got home after a long day of work and was totally worn out, then got a big hug from one of the girls which picked him back up.
"Thought you would," she said. She pushed through the door to go outside and came to a halt after a few more steps. "Think what I needed was something different. Something new. Can't be bored if there's a lot of interesting things around. Maybe."
"Makes sense," he said, watching somebody who should probably have been in a self-driving car try to back out of a space in the parking lot over the course of a dozen starts and stops.
"I'll see you around," she said. "We'll hang out again soon."
"Huh?" He turned to his side to look at her, but she was gone. He looked to both sides, then turned around, but there was no trace of her anywhere, which was a really weird thing considering he was positive she'd been standing right next to him a second ago, and it wasn't like there was anything nearby that she could've even hidden behind since they were just standing on the edge of a sidewalk in the middle of an open space without even any corners nearby to stand behind.
He scratched his beard as he stood in place, and his family pushed through the doors a short while later. He'd been planning to offer to cover some of that dinner, but the opportunity kind of hadn't come up, and then she'd just vanished, almost like…
Well, if he was going to compare it to anything, it was almost like what her in-game teleport skill looked like. That was obviously not something that was realistic to be considering as a possibility, but he'd never been in this kind of situation before where he'd been standing talking to a friend and then suddenly they weren't there anymore.
"She left?" Annie asked when they got closer.
"I…guess?" he said, still feeling pretty confused as to what had just happened.
His wife let out a deep sigh. "Well, it was nice seeing her, wasn't it? I've never really gotten to get to know any of those friends of yours."
"Is she gonna come hang out with us again soon?" Bobby asked. "I wanna see if she can beat the Castle Knight world record."
"I wanna learn more cool basketball stuff!" Sammy clamored. "She was so good at teaching! It was like she was… I don't know, talking directly to my brain or something."
Mina just smiled fondly at the other two girls, which gave him a great feeling of satisfaction at seeing how happy she was.
It had been a weird day, but it definitely wasn't a bad one.