Character Perspective: Sullivan

The ring or hoop or whatever the hell it was, was at least three meters in diameter and I couldn’t quite block the entire thing, instead I found myself just floating in the center of it as the others all got into position to start.

After he briefly dipped into the control room, the Commander returned out and handed me a pair of sleek grey gloves that he instructed I slip on. There were small diodes on the end of each finger tip and while it initially felt a bit uncomfortable, I found I was quickly able to ignore the slight sensation of buzzing that they left against my skin.

The gloves were apparently a modification of gloves that the engineers in the shipyard used, only coded to react to the rings in this arena. Instead of having to use my belt, I could instead just reach out a hand and be drawn to the goal. While useful, they did have a proximity limit, and would only work if my hand was within a meter of any part of the ring itself. That said, that wasn’t the gloves only function.

While some other mechanism controlled the hoops while the ball was in play, with a quick motion of the hand I could freeze the ring in position. This, coupled with being able to pull myself to the ring, left me able to really control both the ring and my momentum for moving it across the goal plane.

“Okay everybody ready?” Curtis called out from the center field, holding on tightly to the ball as Novarod and Julio both took positions on the ground underneath him, ready to launch themselves into the girls readied positions floating in a triangle like formation guarding me.

“Quit stalling Cap!” Ty shouted, cracking her knuckles in an overly exaggerated move.

“Let’s go!” Curtis yelled in response and both Novarod and a Julio pushed off simultaneously, darting along either side of the walls and between the gaps of the girls position. Sera was the first one to react as she hit her belt and dropped toward the floor, luckily only a few meters above it and landing just before Curtis reached back and launched the ball forward toward Julio.

Sera was a blur as she pushed off the ground with what I could immediately tell was too much force and she flew past the ball before it could even get into her path. Her arms were whipping wildly as she tried to right herself before she crashed into the ceiling. I couldn’t follow her though as I looked to Julio who grabbed the handle of the ball and hauled it to his body in a practiced motion that stopped it’s momentum before it could drag him too far forward.

Instead of gawking, I reached for the ring and gestured to lock the ring in place as I grabbed the ring and tried to swing my body around it in a similar motion to the way the Commander had done it. I did not however have his grace and only managed a half rotation and found myself on the outer edges of the ring and scrambling as I saw Julio hauling back to throw at the now open goal.

I used my freehand to unlock the goal, a tactic that only worked right now because I was technically on both teams and tossed the ring with as force as I could, causing the ring to start spinning rapidly just as the ball came flying its way. The spinning ring knocked the ball back violently, sending it directly into the floating Vicky who was knocked backwards by the force of the returning projectile.

“I call foul!” Julio shouted and I saw Sera darting from the ceiling toward Vicky. “You’re not supposed to be able to move the goal when it’s being shot on!”

“You okay Vicky?” Curtis shouted down to her. From what I could tell he hadn’t even moved from his centerfield position but was grabbing for the remote on his belt almost instinctively.

Vicky, for what is was worth, seemed like she was okay. Rattled, but okay.

“That had some serious force to it… probably why the goal isn’t supposed to be moving when the ball is flying toward it,” She said rubbing at her stomach as she handed the ball over to Sera. “This might not work… do we just need to do a three on three and have one of us sit out every round to take notes and make it so we can have two goalies?”

After halting the ring, I struggled until I was close enough that my glove kicked in and pulled me the rest of the way to the cylinder and I hauled myself up and into it. Even without the gravity, I found I could set myself onto the ring as if I were sitting and I saw Sera looking over at me with a smile as she held the ball in her hands. When our eyes met, she quickly diverted them back to Vicky.

“Why not have the Commander come in and join us? Then it can be four on four, and Killian can keep practicing to be our goalie? Unless someone else was eager to try that spot?” Sera offered as she looked between the others.

“I could try it but I think I’d better on offense,” Julio said with a shrug and Novarod shook his head.

“I’d rather be on defense or at the centerfield, it’s what I played when I played Soccer back in grade school,” Novarod offered.

“I guess that makes Sullivan our goalie, if that works for you?” Curtis said looking over to me and I just shrugged.

“Well, I’ve gotten to move this thing around for all of ten minutes, I suppose me being the goalie can’t go as badly as our first trial did,” I said with a laugh. “And I guess giving one of us more time to master the ring is beneficial. But only if everyone else is fine with that too, I don’t want to just get the spot because I was the first to say I wanted to try it…”

“Hermano, deal with it, if we lose it’s on you for letting too many goals through dangit,” Julio shot back to me.

Before I could respond the click of the hatch leading out to the control room opened and the Commander came in head first, pulling on a pair of sleek gloves that looked identical to the ones I was wearing.

“Wait, you’re actually gonna come play with us Commander?” Vicky asked, looking up with quite a bit of surprise evident on her face. “And here I always thought you’d just watch us from the side no matter what we did,” she said, pushing herself off the ground and floating up toward Curtis.

“Oh I was hoping you guys would ask, but it had to be your choice,” he said with a smile on his face as he flipped himself over and launched to the other side of the arena and grabbed the extra ring.

“Why’d it have to be our choice? Wait who’s team is he on?” Sera asked looking from the Commander and then back to the rest of us.

“Because I didn’t want any of you complaining that I was showing off to show off, now you all asked me to be here,” the Commander was quite legitimately beaming in a way I hadn’t seen him smile the entire time we had been here so far.

“Ummm….” I heard Ty start to speak up before Vicky quickly added in a shout.

“Commander’s on our team! Honorary lady!”

“Smart choice Second,” the Commander laughed, “Arena, set sixty second timer for start of the round,” he called out and the hatch to the command room shut as the lights began to flash. “Now let’s go ladies, they aren’t going to score so if you guys win, I’ll let you skip morning PT tomorrow.”