Summary:
“Captain,” says Kofi, who does not like Dagmar but still calls her Captain every time. “Where are we going?”
“Away,” Dagmar says, and it is only because Zenith knows the wood of this ship that it knows she means I don’t know. “Far away.”
Or: the Tigers sail out of Hades.
Fandom: Blaseball
Published: 10 January 2022
Word count: 3k
Ao3 link: on currents
Characters: Zenith Sycamore, Kofi Betelgeuse, Dagmar Ocean, Willians Swain
Relationships: Kofi & Zenith
Additional Tags: Short Circuits, Gamma 2, Hades Tigers, Pirates
A/N: This is for the maincord flash fanwork event, with the prompt Short Circuits! Given that I had written about Gamma 1 and 3 guys previously, I thought it would be fun to do Gamma 2. Thanks and love to Nico and Blink for all these characters, but especially Dagmar (Nico's), Zenith (Blink), and Willians (shared custody). Disclaimer that I am not an expert on either swords or sailing ships, so if I used the wrong terminology... my bad.
Content warnings: vague body horror in the last scene, beginning with the monster in the Styx.
“The first thing you need to know,” Willians says, once Zenith is back on their feet and in their body, “is that when Dagmar takes two weeks to speak to you, that’s not personal.”
“Excuse me,” Zenith says, aiming for a question and landing on something closer to a warbling hiccup. “Who?”
“Our captain,” Willians says, explaining everything and also nothing at all. “She doesn’t handle losing crewmates well. We don’t know if we’ll be able to take Orlando with us.”
Zenith is alive. It is organic, or undead, or something beyond convention or comprehension. But the wood is alive. It exists in the natural world. It existed in Yellowstone. Feedback is inorganic, discordant, an unnatural screech, an unwanted alteration. Zenith is not supposed to deal with things like microphone feedback.
And Orlando Fistfighter was not supposed to leave Hades.
“Condolences,” Zenith says after a moment. It tries to take a step forward, but the wood still wants the ground to be Yellowstone, and so it trips over the unfamiliarity. Willians catches it, skeletal hand closing around its shoulder, and it rights itself as quickly as it can. “Thank you.”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Willians says, slow and thoughtful, “but I’d like to know. Are you a tree that came to life?”
“After a fashion,” Zenith says, and does not bother explaining beyond that. Zenith was alive; Zenith was killed; Zenith lived in a sword for years or centuries before someone buried it beneath a tree and the roots took it in and at last, at last, it could move again. Zenith could die if someone broke the sword. This is why nobody knows about the sword, if it can be avoided.
“Hm.” First Mate Swain is dead too, all lichen and bone and permanent saltwater drip. He gives Zenith a considering look. “You’ll fit right in.”
#
The Theseus is not a ghost ship. If anything, the ship is the most alive out of any sailing vessel that Zenith has seen — and it thinks, that in its life, it had seen several. But the crew is about an even split alive and undead: for every quartermaster it meets, it also meets a revenant crewmate. Even a necromancer aboard, a woman named Doom that gives Zenith a far-too-knowing look when it introduces itself.
This is the story that Zenith is told: the crew of the Theseus ran aground in Hades, and were told that they would survive and their ship would be in sailing condition, if only they did the kindness of representing Hades in an upcoming sports tournament. Captain Dagmar Ocean agreed and then discovered that the sport was deadly, but by then it was too late to turn back.
“She doesn’t have much room in her for regret, Dagmar,” says Willians. Their initial prediction was right: in the first two weeks of their time in Hades, Dagmar Ocean has not spoken to Zenith once. She has escalated to eye contact, though, which is likely a positive sign. “Much more room, I mean. She carries plenty already.”
“Regret for what?” Zenith asks, although the answers are not its burden to bear.
Sure enough, Swain shakes their head. “Not mine to tell.”
“What can I do to prove myself?”
Swain shrugs. “Be a part of the team,” he says. “Or the crew. Whichever you’d prefer. Both, if you enjoy exerting yourself.”
Zenith does not care to exert itself. But it cares about surviving long enough for its ghostly business, whatever that may be. So it does as Willians suggests. It plays the game. It does the chores. Zenith is not a shapeshifter as such but it has twigs, and the twigs can move, and this turns out to help with some of the finer, more delicate tasks at hand.
On the last day of the season, Dagmar Ocean sits down across from Zenith and says, “I’ve been a poor captain.”
“You have been an excellent captain,” Zenith says. “Just not to me.”
It is a calculated risk of a sentiment, one that it knows could end with a stony face or harsh words or a plea to the gods to send Zenith back to Yellowstone. Instead, Dagmar’s face splits into a grin. Not a particularly kind grin, but a grin nonetheless. “I suppose,” she says. “Welcome aboard. You’ve been earning your keep.”
“I have tried.”
“You’ve been doing well. What do you know about me?”
Dagmar Ocean was once a pirate of the most wicked variety. Dagmar Ocean once did not care about simple things like trust or promises or what happened to other people. Dagmar Ocean now weeps in her cabin some nights for fear of one of her crew burning. Dagmar Ocean made a deal with the devil, and it breaks her heart that the cost may not be hers to pay.
Zenith says, “I know that you want to leave.”
“That’s all you need,” Dagmar says. “Keep working, sailor.”
#
The first season comes to a close. Nothing of consequence happens to the Tigers, or to the Magic, for that matter. Zenith had few friends on its original team. It no longer keeps in touch. Nor does it reach out to Orlando Fistfighter, the one whose place it has taken on the crew.
Games lull, and Dagmar has them work. Games start again, and on the first day, Marion Benton is taken by the feedback.
As it turns out, feedback is strange to watch from the outside. Marion Benton is in one place, and then there is someone else there, tall and dark-skinned, luminescent and livid. There is someone glowing lavender, not somebody that Zenith knows, in a Tigers jersey, and now Marion Benton is in Millennials pink.
Zenith does not wait for anyone else to react. As soon as the inning changes, it approaches the newcomer, branches twisting against the ground with every step, a nervousness that it will not allow itself to feel but expresses nonetheless. The newcomer looks up, still furious, but none of that fury is directed towards Zenith.
“It will be easier,” it says, “but not easy. It will be new, and that is bad and good. My name is Zenith.”
“Kofi,” says the newcomer. “Betelgeuse. If we’re being forthright about it, I should tell you that I don’t particularly want to be here.”
“If I were to be forthright, I would say that I would rather have Marion in your place,” says Zenith, and Kofi does not smile. “And that Dagmar Ocean might not speak to you for a while. For me it was nearly thirty days.”
“Thank you,” Kofi says, sounding not particularly like they mean it. And then they shake their head and look at Zenith again and say, more gently, “Thank you.”
“Of course,” Zenith says. It understands. It was new here once, too.
#
Kofi Betelgeuse was born in Ghana and moved to New York in childhood. Kofi Betelgeuse speaks mostly-fluent English but counts in Akan, something that the whole crew learns to do by virtue of working closely with them. Kofi Betelgeuse is taciturn, but not unfriendly once they have time to settle in Hades. Kofi Betelgeuse is strong, and can take over the duties that Orlando Fistfighter left behind, the ones that Zenith could not.
Kofi Betelgeuse did not know they were a star until they were seventeen. This is a secret that is for Zenith, a product of working late shifts together. Zenith does not need sleep, and Kofi prefers to sleep during the day, and Kofi points at the stars and says “I think those might be my family. I never met them. I don’t even know which parent came from the sky.”
Zenith does not believe in paying these things back in kind. But it does believe in honesty, insomuch as it can afford to be honest. So when Kofi asks one night where the name Sycamore came from, Zenith answers, “Sycamore is the name of the woman that killed me.”
Kofi stops their task, something involving ropes, to look at Zenith. “You took her name?”
“For now,” Zenith says. “I needed a last name for the league.”
“Why did you join anyways?”
Zenith looks up at the sky. Kofi waits. At last it says, “I had so little else.”
“I understand,” says Kofi. “So did I. Are you going to kill her?”
“I would.” Zenith pauses. They would do it with their sword, untwine it from the trunk, strike her down. They cannot dream but they dreamt about this for their whole undeath, up until the tree. “Or I would find a new name.”
“Which would you rather do?”
“Whichever opportunity presents itself first,” Zenith says, and this is not a joke, but Kofi laughs nonetheless.
#
Repairs conclude on the last day of regular games. The day the Tigers get eliminated from the postseason, Dagmar begins checking everything top to bottom, inside out. It takes five days before she pronounces them to be in sailing condition.
“Captain,” says Kofi, who does not like Dagmar but still calls her Captain every time. “Where are we going?”
“Away,” Dagmar says, and it is only because Zenith knows the wood of this ship that it knows she means I don’t know. “Far away.”
Orlando, now on a new team, has trouble leaving the Hellmouth. Marion prefers New York and its waters that stay the same. Zenith hears these things secondhand, but sees Dagmar’s grief for itself. Their refusals to join the escapade hang like a pallor above the crew with a near-opaque cling. It feels, some days, as though Zenith and Kofi are the only ones able to do their work.
They set sail three days before the elections are supposed to happen. Dagmar is insistent that they need a head start, that the Theseus will not be able to escape on the day of elections itself. And so they set sail. Most of the crew wait until the ship is steady upon the Styx and then retire for the evening. Only Dagmar and Willians remain at the helm. Only Kofi and Zenith remain with them.
The ship pitches as it rushes down the river, surrounded by the water around them, the noise of the ship rats below decks. Dagmar looks up at the sky and says, “Is now a good time to say that I don’t know how to get out of here?”
“We inferred,” Kofi says. “The rest of the crew might’ve done, too.”
“Following the river seems like a good starting point,” says Willians. They seem unconcerned, leaning languidly against the ships railing, with only the nervous flutter of their fist rapping the wood to betray themself. “We’ll deal with forks when we get there.”
Zenith looks at the sky. “Captain, what is the bearing?”
“Northeast.”
Zenith squints. Beside it, Kofi pauses to look up. “Zenith,” they murmur, “tell me.”
“The constellations ahead of us are changing.”
“Are they?” Swain looks up. “I couldn’t tell. This is why we need a navigator.”
“Thank you, Willians,” Dagmar answers dryly. “I believe we’ve just found one. Sycamore—”
“Zenith,” Kofi interrupts, quiet and insistent. “Its name is Zenith.”
Dagmar Ocean is not in the habit of using the incorrect name for Zenith. Still, she looks stricken for half a moment before nodding. “Thank you. Zenith, can you lead us out of here?”
“Yes,” says Zenith, “I can.”
#
It can.
The process is arduous. It takes them most of the night and several forks in the river to even ensure that the ship is heading the right direction. Zenith persists as long as it can, with help from Kofi, calling out bearings and instructions, seeking out tributaries, mapping out directions. But eventually the sun rises, and the Theseus is still halfway in Hades.
“Soon,” Dagmar says, “soon.”
Kofi retires to bed eventually. Zenith would ordinarily go to team practice or go about chores on the ship, but there are no more practices and every other crewmate is doing the chores. So it follows Kofi to their bunk and sits. Kofi asks no questions, and Zenith offers no explanations. This is their way, and it will watch over Kofi. Not out of fear. Simply for something to do.
#
Zenith does its duties. Kofi does, too. They end up working slightly different hours, beginning and ending earlier than Zenith. They have more physical tasks. Zenith maintains the cleanliness of the deck, but mostly it serves as navigator, and mostly at night. It spends time with Dagmar and Willians. It does not make wrong decisions.
#
The static takes the rats.
This is almost an afterthought compared to the efforts to escape, but one afternoon, the motion and chittering goes silent, and the crew knows what that means.
Zenith did not expect to miss the rats. But it does. A constant about the ship has been immutably changed. It does not need to speak to anyone to know that its teammates feel the same, a strange grief in this infinite river.
There are two things that nobody says that Zenith knows to be true. The first is that this makes for an excellent impetus, a good reason to continue sailing as hard as they can. The second is that everybody here is glad it was not them instead.
#
When the monster arises from the Styx, there is no time to react, or run, or to call for help. Dagmar is below taking a break, and Willians is below forcing her to do it. It is late enough that the rest of the crew is asleep. It is a fluke, a broken rule, something that should not be happening but is.
Kofi curses, which is enough to make Zenith look up as the monster towers above the both of them. Above the whole ship. The monster does not look like the others it has seen in Hades, or even the others it has seen in the Styx. Instead it looks woven together, a tangle of string and—
“Wires,” Kofi says flatly. “The microphone doesn’t want us to leave. Can you fight?”
The question catches Zenith off guard. “I have not engaged in combat since—” it wants to gulp, a curious impulse given that it has not had a throat in quite some time. “Since my life was taken.”
Kofi shakes its head. “I was a wrestler,” they say, “but without a weapon, I can’t do this.”
Zenith does not carry a sword, a knife, a dagger, a gun, or any other weapon. Zenith stopped fighting after the fight that took its life. Zenith does not know enough about wires or microphones to be of any use.
But Zenith is shoulder to shoulder with Kofi Betelgeuse. The courageous Kofi Betelgeuse.
“Kofi,” it says. “I trust you.”
The wood peels away faster than it was expecting. By the time Kofi turns, most of Zenith’s body has opened up, blooming like a rose to reveal the sword. Small tendrils of fresh wood try to curl around the handle and the blade, but Zenith urges them down.
“Please be careful,” Zenith says, its voice echoing strangely outside of the wood. “I would like to return to my body once this is finished.”
Kofi’s hand closes around the handle. Every brush of their fingertips is a new and strange sensation to catalogue. Zenith can almost feel the glow of the starlight. The blade feels nothing, but the handle… with Kofi there, the handle feels warm.
“I don’t want to break you,” Kofi says, voice oddly choked.
“This is an old sword,” Zenith says. And then, again, “I trust you.”
“Okay,” Kofi says, and shifts to a two-handed grip, Zenith’s entirety encased between their palms. “Do you get vertigo?”
“I do not.”
“Good,” Kofi says. Zenith has seen Kofi work before, seen them dive for catches on the field, seen every muscle of their body finely tuned for a single purpose. And now, as they kneel down, passing the weight of the blade to hand to hand, that purpose is Zenith. Everything about Kofi Betelgeuse is devoted to Zenith.
It cannot see, as such, so there is no clear moment where Zenith realizes that Kofi is finished. The moment of realization comes when Kofi says, with no small amount of uncertainty, “So you’re… in here?”
“I am,” Zenith says. “When I died, my body and blade became one and the same. But I lived on. You are the first to know.”
“The first out of the team?”
“The first.”
When Kofi sets the blade back on Zenith’s peeled-open body, it does not allow itself time to mourn the loss of warmth. Instead it coaxes the wood and the tree into growing again, into the same shape as before. It waits until it feels whole again to turn to Kofi, who is looking at it with no shortage of wonder.
“Thank you,” it says. “Kofi Betelgeuse.”
“Thank you,” Kofi says. “Are you okay?”
Zenith lifts a hand, moves its finger, shrugs its shoulders. The motion is different, but not limited. “I am well enough.”
“Good. Because—” they point out at the horizon. “I think we made it.”
Zenith turns towards the horizon. They had not considered until now that it would look different outside of Hades, outside of the domain of the microphone and blaseball, but it does. The colors are brighter. The stars are, too.
In time, Dagmar Ocean and Willians Swain will emerge from their cabin. They will see the differences. They will celebrate. They will awaken the whole crew, and they will celebrate together, and mourn the rats, and set about trying to reach Orlando and Marion. They will drink and be merry and be loud, and nothing will emerge from the water to swallow them. They will be joyful because they are free from the land of the dead.
But Zenith and Kofi are not joyful, not in that same loud way. Instead they stand and gaze at the horizon, shoulder to shoulder, side by side. Instead, looking at the ocean in front of them, Zenith thinks that the closest word for the emotion it feels is hope.
#