The A team picked up rackets and balls left unattended on a picnic table on the way and confronted the natives across a stern line that divided predator from prey, though none might say which was which till the set had ended. Andit took the racket in his ungloved left hand and served. Meanwhile, Master T leapt over the pond from wave to wave, or rather from stick to twig as he clarified later when he and his comrades reminisced over the encounter, and recovered from the rowboat a standard racket for himself and oars for Musashi, who had evinced a familiarity with such tools. He jumped back and joined his partner in position across from the FGer and the other, much larger, FGer, who claimed the honor of the first serve by firing a tennis ball out of a ventral turret.

The twin battles defied description, but here we are. Boxer Andit's spins could not be anticipated nor Arrarix's smashes answered, yet their opponents did both. The skills of the locals, honed by hours of tennis play both manual and auto and augmented by mechanically meaningful equipment, surpassed that of the outsiders by as much as Aerywe Beruvo's popularity exceeded that of Cadmos.

“Did you hear something?”

“I heard our main character, the primary representative of Commandment of Hero in this collaboration, try to escape this story rehearsal with a halfhearted distraction.”

“That doesn't sound like me, but my collab version does feel a little different.”

“I, too, perceive myself to be more irritable here in Holy Legend Army, perhaps owing to the loss of my accustomed Flood element. I must apologize if I seem testy.”

By even more than that however did the pure stats of the outsiders exceed those of the natives, and not only in Attack, which every officer, crusader, and most other characters judged to be the king, queen, and president of stats. Let's Do It With a Racket! competitors trained and bought shoes to achieve foot speeds lower than Andit and Arrarix enjoyed by default. As far as listed stats, the most marvelous plays and counterplays emerged from Arrarix's low but present INT score. Very low, but unquestionably present. The score swung back and forth depending on which side served.

At the other court, the skill advantage went to Master T and Musashi, less from experience and more by default. The Haetae let no ball pass it except the lowest-arcing, but its returns landed within the lines only by accident at first. Lacking hands, only the destroyer's curved hull could deflect the balls, which might have drawn complaints from opponents stricter in their interpretation of the rules than a samurai dual-wielding oars and a man too mysterious to sign in at the desk. Its computer systems analyzed the incoming tennis data, adjusted, and soon rivaled its commander in ability, who herself improved as they played.

The M team accepted every point scored by either side with equanimity while the eyes in their impassive faces bounced around faster than the balls, taking in everything about the sport, the court, and their enemies. They placed their shots to take advantage of the crew member's hesitant backhand, her partner's altitude limitations, and the slight tilt in elevation where the court had been built.

The A teamers improved their technique quickly by copying their opponents' movements, but the local girls had something special that outsiders could never imitate: tennis ults. Arrarix and Andit may not have known the particular term for it, but when the competitors stopped moving in the middle of rallies, posed, and flashed, they knew some meter or other charged out of sight. All the warning in the world helped them not at all when the natives unleashed super smashes, super serves, or super lobs. Maybe the super lobs. A super lob is still a lob, after all.

The super moves baffled the strangers, but they were not the sort to remain baffled when it came to battle. Even when tennis balls exploded across the net and passed too quickly for the eye to perceive, their keen competitive senses felt the wind caused by the ball motion and sent the information to their 130%-active brains to calculate a response, all subconsciously. Challengers those two had left battered and beaten before, Ulrik for instance, or the Lithness Gramlin, would not have been surprised to observe Boxer Andit see a tennis ball that could not be seen and return a serve that could not be returned. The ball passed between the two astonished competitors, who did not despair at the lost point but rather gripped their rackets all the sweatier.

Meanwhile Musashi, intent on his own match though he was, did not fail to register those occurrences, which he glimpsed through peripheral vision. After learning the courts and balls of Let's Do It With a Racket! could withstand not just normal wear and tear but the impacts of special skills, he adjusted his next serve to incorporate his S3. The ball disintegrated when his dual oars struck it, or so a watcher naive to the ways of tennis and crusading might think, if someone who matched that description decided to watch a tennis match involving a crusader to broaden his horizons. Musashi used the flats of the oars instead of the edges to propel the ball, which survived that first impact, the second on the FG side of the net, and the third against the Haetae that set the destroyer listing off course, forcing it to fire its thrusters to readjust and foiling its attempt to keep the ball in play.

That success would have ensured eventual victory for M team except for two factors. First, the Haetae adjusted both its position and its projections to defend against further S3s. Second, as impressive a spectacle as spaceships at low altitude made, their purpose in their home game was support. Crew members constituted the core of Furious Galaxy's might, and they had skills of their own. Wild skills, the kinds of skills possible in the sort of science fiction that scoffed at the recent idea which claims the inclusion of psychic powers in a story transforms it into fantasy, as though L****** and F********* were not classics of the genre. The woman from FG concentrated during the next rally, her eyes altered in appearance to resemble the night sky, and the ball lurched left and right in ways not even the Haetae's systems could predict, much less Musashi and Master T.

The sun, breezes, and sights of Let's Do It With a Racket! reinvigorated all its visitors, erasing their stress but not their cooldowns. Special skills affected a point here and there, while the rest of them those eight heroes of the court scored by the might of their muscles hidden under straining skin and streams of sweat. The two contests continued, the teams matching each other point for point, innovation for response, and no watcher could say who would win, for there were none.

None until some, for a battleship, bored with hovering while the crew had all the fun, performed a sensor sweep and found the intruders. It alerted its crew, a quiet alert, a subtle little klaxon that could have passed for an everyday sort of tornado warning. The Furious Galaxy crew members paused their sets and spread out to encircle the strangers. Those most behind in score ran out first, followed by ones doing better who failed to invent reasons tennis should be considered more urgent than the defense of the empire.

The lakeside warriors kept playing as the end came closer. Though the approaching defenders hid their advance as long as possible by sending their ships above cloud cover, the artists had not designed the terrain around the lake with subterfuge as a priority. Crews closed in, frigates dropped down, and still the eight played. Both games were tied, after all. The crews shouted at the intruders to lay down their oars and kneel with their gloves behind their masks, and the eight played. The competitors ignored the outside world, as did the officer, the character, the crusader, and the slayer. Only the Sixth Eminence woman responded. She smiled at her opponents, said a word to her Haetae, and served.

The destroyer vented gases in a circle around both courts. The defenders screamed and retreated, a reaction which would have interested safety inspectors if any had happened to be present. What did they put in those ships, they might have asked. How fast will your skin melt when exposed to those emissions, went another possible question. The crew members stayed back and waited for the roiling white and gray clouds that rolled up higher in the sky than the Haetae itself to dissipate, unable to see and afraid to smell. The only sense they had of the situation past the gas came from hearing the ploks of balls and rackets, which assured them their quarry had not escaped. Then, however, silence, and when the obstructing emissions disappeared, they could see nothing but three tennis players stretching and toweling themselves under a destroyer not capable of looking pleased with itself.