notharry | Set the Stage: Chicago Sports Night

Set the Stage: Chicago Sports Night

A college basketball game wasn't really the sort of thing Haley usually showed up for. She wasn't, strictly speaking, much of a sports fan. Too much else to worry about. College sports, particularly local ones, were even lower on the scale than your typical one on television-- not that she could watch those, anyway.

But she had to pay the bills, and she was here as a consultant. A hundred bucks for a couple hours watching some kids play and assuring her client that there wasn't actually any magic going on was an easy hundred bucks. So she'd found herself a seat as far from the electronic scoreboard and announcer's booth, reined in her magic as best she could, and even bought a cheap little churro from the kids selling them for fund raisers or whatever it was. All she cared about was it was food, it was hot, and it was tasty enough to distract her from how stupid it was to expect magic in sports.

Except there was magic going on. She'd never actually seen anyone use magic on a basketball court before, or really in any other sport to be honest, but that's definitely what was going on. Nobody else really seemed to notice. "Great, now I gotta talk to the kid," she muttered, and slipped out before halftime-- to the squeal of a speaker trying to die, as she walked past-- to loiter outside the locker room and wait for wonder boy to come out, after the game. She might've looked a little creepy in the college hallway, in her long black coat and port pie hat, but at least she didn't have her staff or blasting rod or anything. That would just have looked weird.

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"Hells bells, I've smelled worse than a sweaty teenage boy," Haley points out with an eyeroll. "But you go get cleaned up, sure. Just don't disappear on me. I'll find you, and if I have to do that, neither of us will like it."

... Diplomacy is not her strong point. She attempts to soften it with: "This is important."

That sounds enough like a threat to draw a concerned look from Grayson, silently asking if Reo would like him to call security. Reo, however, is too busy giving the woman a politely puzzled look to notice.

Americans, he is thinking, certainly are direct.

"I don't plan to disappear," he says. "I should only need twenty minutes." Usually he takes longer, but there isn't as much time for his full regimen after a game, and he can trim it a little shorter to find out exactly what he has done that is so very important. It's obvious to him by now that this woman isn't just a fan. He knows what fans can be like, and she doesn't have that air at all.

To show willing and make it clear that he doesn't intend to make himself difficult to find, he adds,

"My name is Reo Mibuchi." Western-style introduction, given name first; he's gotten used to that.

That's a polite word for Haley Dresden. Direct. She'd like it, maybe even laugh, if he'd said it out loud. Since he didn't, she just gives a slightly lop-sided grin and answers, "Haley Dresden. I'll be out here, unless there's somewhere else you want me to wait, instead."

Reo smiles back, saying,

"You may prefer to wait outside by the front doors. There will be more security in the hallways now that the game is over."

Because, as Haley herself is demonstrating, not everyone who lurks outside locker rooms is a harmless, excited fan.

"Sounds like a plan, I'll be out there." And with that she tips her hat to him, as if she were a gentleman of some sort, and turns to prowl on out to wait.

While she does, she also grabs her staff. Just in case things get hairy, during this conversation. You never know, and it's better to be safe than sorry. By the time he gets out again, she's leaning against the wall just outside the doors, tossing the length of carved wood from hand to hand restlessly, and watching the street more than the doors she's hoping wonder boy will come out of.

The hat tip makes Reo smile as he nods back, deciding on the spot that he quite likes this woman.

He showers as quickly as he can while still being thorough, curtailing his post-shower routine. The only things he spends any extra time on are making sure the clothes he changes into are neat and unwrinkled (it's only polite to make yourself presentable when going to meet someone) and putting on some eyeliner.

(He loves eyeliner, and he loves that so few people in American cities even look twice when he wears it. Even his teammates, steeped as they are in the concentrated machismo that comes with playing sports, have accepted this part of his post-game routine as inevitable.)

As he's finishing up, Grayson comes over, looking serious.

"You sure about this, Mibuchi?" he asks. "She practically threatened you."

"I'm sure, Captain," he answers. "I won't go anywhere I don't know with her." He's curious, not stupid.

Grayson still doesn't look especially thrilled, but: "Okay. I guess you're a big boy, you can take care of yourself."

Reo smiles. "Yes. But thank you for your concern."

He makes it outside twenty-two minutes after going into the locker room.

"I apologize for keeping you waiting, Ms Dresden." (A couple of weeks into the semester, a female classmate corrected him earnestly on his use of Miss for unmarried women, and he took the correction very much to heart.) "Thank you for your patience."

She looks amused at the formal address and the apology. "You're a polite one, aren't you." It's not a question, and she doesn't give him time to answer, either. "Apologizing when I'm the one bothering you. Well, all right. I'm here because somebody thought you were using magic out there, on the court. Can you tell me a little about that?"

No point in waffling around, after all. He has to be aware of it.

Reo had been prepared for her to say Call me Haley, because Americans are (in his considered opinion) a bit obsessed with being on first name basis with each other. He'd thought he was ready for that when he left Japan, but he really wasn't; he can just about handle it with people his age, but his sense of etiquette screams in protest at the very idea of addressing, say, a woman who is his elder and whom he has just met so familiarly. So he's relieved that she said no such thing, but that only lasts for a second before he's confused instead.

"I'm sorry," he says slowly, "I don't always understand American slang. May I ask you to explain?" Other players have groused before about how that's some magic trick shit, but the phrase "using magic" hasn't come up before, and he's not sure he understands precisely what she means.

Hey, respect is something Haley doesn't get all that often. She'll take it where she can get it.

But it takes a lot to get it out of her, back. She snorts at him. "You're joking, right? That thing where your opponent freezes so you can take the shot. Hell's bells, just how you move. There's magic in that. Literally. Did you just think that was normal?"

It isn't that Reo doesn't believe in magic. There is a years-old, well-worn tarot deck in his dorm room, and the only times it's steered him wrong is when he misread the cards. If that isn't magic, then Reo would like to know what it is.

But the magic there is in the cards, in the workings of the universe. Reading them is a learned skill, not an innate one. Plus, there's the same problem Haley herself was grappling with before the game began: what on earth would magic be doing in basketball? Reo loves basketball, but it's a mundane activity. There's talent and hard work and passion in it, yes, but not magic.

He tries not to look skeptical to an impolite degree, wishes not for the first time that English had layers of formality built into it the way Japanese does, and answers as carefully as he can.

"What I do with that shot is disrupt my opponent's - ah, equilibrium by moving just so. It disorients him so he can't move."

He has been told more than once by his teammates here that that doesn't make any sense, but he doesn't see why. It isn't as if there's any better explanation.

(Even if Ms Dresden does seem to think otherwise.)

"Basketball is - different in Japan. We learn it differently and some of us create plays that American players - don't have."

Not many of them, it's true, but some of them. Reo's time in America has led him to doubt very strongly that the Generation of Miracles could have happened here.

"Have you ever been disoriented, wonder boy?" Haley asks, though it's rhetorical and she moves on with her point immediately. "You can move just fine. Usually you wind up moving in circles to try and get your bearings. Even if disorienting is all you're doing, moving 'just so' to do it isn't something most people can do. That's the magic, right there. I know what I saw, out there, watching you."

Reo is still working hard to modulate his tone as he answers; it's starting to make him sound a bit stiff.

"With all respect, Ms Dresden, every player on the court was doing things most people can't do. We have all worked very hard for years to be able to do those things, and hard work and talent produces results that can look - impossible to those outside the sport."

Ignoring how many of those very players seem to think that the things Reo can do are impossible. Their arguments don't make Reo feel obscurely offended, for reasons he can't quite pinpoint, the way Haley's does.

"Kinda like how most people can't do this?" Haley fishes her silver pentacle necklace out from under her shirt as she speaks, and as she finishes the question, she applies a little bit of will to it. It starts to glow with a soft, blue light. Her voice is deadly serious when she continues, no hint of mocking or sarcasm this time. "Magic is my job, Mister Mibuchi. You can look me up in the phone book later and see. I'm under 'wizards'. And believe me when I say, if any other wizards caught you doing what you just did on the court, they'd probably have you arrested, tried, and maybe even beheaded. You come pretty damn close to breaking the Laws with some of that shit. That's why it's lucky for you it was me and not one of them."

That feeling of offense evaporates under the onslaught of words, almost too fast for Reo to follow and certainly too remarkable for him to absorb immediately, and the glow of that pendant.

It's - well, it's one thing to believe in magic in the abstract, with no stronger a confirmation than a sense that he was right to do a tarot reading for this day or that situation. It's another thing entirely to see it made tangible, right here in front of him.

It takes an extra moment, but enough of what she said sinks in for Reo to be sure he's missing nuances. It happens all the time; his English skills are good, but English is a complicated language even before one introduces things like dialects and accents and all the things that happen to a language when it isn't frozen in a textbook for ease of consumption.

Finally, he manages a sentence he never would have expected to hear himself say in any language.

"It's only basketball!"

At least he's not denying it outright despite seeing it in front of him. That happens sometimes. It's a good sign that he's suddenly taking this seriously, too. "It's forcing your will on another person, who has no way of defending himself," she corrects. "Confined just to your game, it's not so bad, sure, but magic never stays confined to one part of your life once you start using it. Before long, you'll be doing it to get good parking spots, or get good jobs, or get women. Or men, whatever." Since the other guy on the team had said she was barking up the wrong tree, and all. Haley wasn't one to judge that sort of thing, given her own preferences.

"And the worst part is," she finishes, "you probably wouldn't even realize what you were doing. But it'd still be against the Laws, and it'd still get you in a lot of trouble."

There's no chance of missed nuance in that blunt statement, nothing that might have passed Reo by that could change its meaning to anything less horrifying. He tries to resist it, but he can't; he knows exactly what she said, he knows she means every word, and he never has been any good at lying to himself.

What he doesn't know is how to respond to any of it, or at least any of the parts she clearly thinks are most important. His mind seizes instead on the part she dismisses, the part that she doesn't understand any better than he understands most of what has happened in the last five minutes.

"Watashi wa watashi no gēmudesu," he blurts out.

. . . no. Wrong language. He takes a breath, flips the language switch in his head, tries again.

"I am my game," he says, quietly this time, because it's true. He wouldn't be here, in America, playing on a scholarship he could have gotten from any number of Japanese universities, if basketball weren't a fundamental cornerstone of who he is. If it hadn't been that way for almost as long as he can remember.

"There's no reason you can't still play once you get your magic under control," Haley shrugs, letting the light on her pendant die down and tucking it back under her shirt. "It's all about discipline. And who knows, you might get better at it-- discipline's not exactly a one-game-fits-all kind of skill. Just we'd try to make sure in the future you'd be playing your game without the bits where you're controlling other people. If you're willing to let me help, that is."

Controlling other people.

He doesn't want to understand that, but it's still sinking in, landing in his stomach and making him feel sick.

He always enjoyed the looks on their faces back home when they found that they couldn't move, especially with the homophobic ones, because they always thought that they were going to be the one who would break through it. And when Hyuuga Junpei - who'd looked up to him as a player right up until he realized Reo was gay, then sneered at him like he was disgusting - when he did break through in that impossible game against Seirin, it spurred Reo to work even longer and harder hours on improving his play, and the next time they faced Seirin, he flung Oblivion at Hyuuga so hard that it didn't just freeze him, it knocked him on his ass.

He remembers suddenly how that had felt, what he had thought was a burst of angry satisfaction so fierce it was physical, and wonders what exactly he did to Hyuuga. What exactly he's done to dozens and dozens of players over the years.

(He wants to deny all of it, but he's always been a smart and observant player, and every little discordant thing he's never quite been able to explain, every protest of impossibility from other players and observers, all the little things he didn't even consciously realize he'd noticed - it's all coming together now in his mind to build a picture he can't even begin to deny.)

He's beginning to look almost as sick as he feels; the offer of help feels like a lifeline.

"Yes," he manages, "yes, of course. Thank you."

Haley waits patiently for all that to go through his head, and most of it to go across his face. Then she offers a little grin, trying to look reassuring and pleased. She is pleased, but reassuring isn't really her best expression, not when it's with somebody actually taller than she is. She's better when she can crouch down to get on a youngster's level. Even if this guy probably is only about half her age. "Good kid," she says, and at least that comes out properly encouraging. "We can start any time-- I'd say now, but you look like you could need a little time to get used to things. Going in trying looking like I just hit you with a freight train probably won't help anything sink in, and won't be any good for concentration, either. You wanna meet tomorrow morning for breakfast somewhere, have a talk and I'll fill you in on what we'll both need to do to get this taken care of?"

It's also an offering for him to pick the place. Somewhere public and familiar, so he wouldn't feel cornered or vulnerable-- if he wanted that kind of reassurance, anyway. Haley might not be the best people person, but she'd been doing this a long time, too.

"Good kid" should feel condescending, maybe, but at the moment it's reassuring. Reo may be legally an adult in America, but not yet in Japan, and he's not used to thinking of himself as one, so it's comforting to know that he has one on his side for this. An experienced one, even, who went out of her way to find him and isn't just going to leave him to deal with the bomb she's dropped on his life.

The suggestion about breakfast also reminds him that he'd promised his captain he wouldn't go anywhere unfamiliar with her. That seems distant and almost irrelevant now, but a promise is a promise.

"Yes, ah - do you know Kelly's Diner, about a block from the college? If we meet early, everyone will be too tired to listen."

Because that does seem relevant - this is all supposed to be a secret, after all, isn't it?

"You'd be surprised," Haley says with a wry chuckle. "Anybody who overhears will probably think we're either nuts, playing some kind of game, or else assume they misheard us. But better safe than sorry, too. See you at, say, eight am?" Obviously she knows where the diner is. She's spent her whole life her, and actually has a lot of friends in the area of the college. She's even eaten there before-- with a small pack of college-aged werewolves, no less.

"Yes," Reo says, "eight AM." That will give them hours before his first class, assuming he even goes; he very much doubts his ability to focus right now.

"Thank you, Ms Dresden." He just barely resists the urge to bow, even though his sense of propriety insists that he owes her such a display of gratitude and respect for so generously offering her time and energy to help him. He has no idea what Americans consider appropriate thanks for such a gesture. A gift of some kind? Paying for her breakfast, at the very least.

(It's easier right now, to focus on the more peripheral details.)

[cont here]

Edited 2015-04-23 14:45 (UTC)

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Set the Stage: Chicago Sports Night

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Please forgive my Google Translate Japanese. At least I can promise the pronoun is right?

haha, close enough for me XD

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