Rising Shards

”Finally,” Kai said. ”It’s been forever since we’ve played.”

”We play all the time,” I said.

”But like, since I got hurt, we haven’t had enough game time,” Kai said.

I was stretching with the Matora sisters and Marmalade before we started. During the whole incident with me getting taken by Ovie and 09, Kai got hurt fighting off...something, I don’t think she actually told me what they were fighting at that point. That nagging injury had been bugging her for a bit, but she was finally back to game form, and was very pumped about that.

”You all are super good at this, I’ll try not to let you down,” Marmalade said.

”Nah, you seemed like you knew what you were doing a bit ago,” Kai said.

Marmalade chuckled. ”Wait, for real?”

”How come everyone at this school has such self confidence issues?” Kai said. ”We’ll do fine, we can just rock this. Just make sure you’re stretched and ready.”

”Stretched I can do,” Marmalade said. ”Not sure about the ready part, but I’ll try.”

”I’m always ready,” Roux said. ”I utilize an advanced technique where all my muscles are cycling through stretches at every given second. It’s part of why I’m the most powerful Cani.”

”No way that’s true,” Ko said. ”If anyone’s the strongest at this school, it’s definitely me.”

”I meant strongest in every dimension, but sure, limit it to this meager locale,” Roux said.

”I think you two handle all the ego for our grade,” Kai said.

Ugh, I didn’t need this now. I forgot about Roux and Ko having a bit of a beef between each other. Ko and Lillia were close (practically dating but neither had said anything official yet so I wasn’t exactly sure how to classify them), and Roux was crushing hard on Lillia, though I think that was doused a bit with Lillia clearly having no interest in them and the thing with Ko. I understood how that felt, but Roux and I weren’t the heart to heart chat types, so our shared ’crushes not panning out’ situation hadn’t come up yet when we hung out.

Still, Ko’s a romantic moron and had been questing on and off to find someone to win against to earn Lillia, something Lillia had told her was really stupid, because it was really stupid.

”I bet I get more points than you in this game,” Ko said.

”I would clearly win that,” Roux said. ”But if you’re foolish enough to take me on, sure. What are we playing for?”

”Lillia’s hand in marriage,” Ko said, looking absolutely serious. Romantic moron.

”Maybe something less dramatic?” Kai said, smacking her sister on the back of her head. ”Like winner gets to pick the next game for game night. Ooh, actually we should all be in on this, we all want that.”

”I’m down for that,” I said, really wanting to not have romantic drama for one moment of my school life. ”What do you think, Marms?”

”That...sounds cool, yeah!” Marmalade said.

”Fine,” Ko said. ”But at some point you and I are going to duke it out for Lillia.”

”Careful with wagers like that, Matora,” Roux chuckled. ”You may not like the result.”

”Alright, once we’re at ’Roux makes a vague, ominous statement’ it’s time to do something else.” I said.

If our rival team wasn’t here yet, I was just going to do some laps on the beams to get away from Ko BS. But fortunately (or unfortunately I guess), the Wildfire Hearts team had arrived.