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Nagomi Meng stood in front of her closet, applying athletic tape to her shoulder and knees. Her closet was cluttered, and her nearby dresser much the same: hats, socks (so many socks), merch, jackets, books, sheets, and so on. One tended to accumulate things in Hades, much the same way it seemed to accumulate souls in its strange, interstitial space that had once been a true afterlife. Precious few things were clean and well organized – her two blaseball uniforms (home and away) were a matter of necessity, and her kayaking and swimming gear were kept separate from the creeping sprawl. When one is married to a river, one keeps such things in high esteem.
“Twelve centimeters, medial and lateral, just like McDaniel showed you.” She muttered to herself, carefully sliding her thumb over the fabric of the tape to smooth it. “Six centimeters, stabilize both sides of the deltoid and over the top…”
It was a ritual, now, her personal start to the waking-sleeping rhythm everyone in Hades fell into (with their own variations, of course), the kind of rhythm that had stabilized her through the last eight seasons. But, well, things just seemed to be going to hell in a hand basket these days.
Nagomi flexed lightly, testing the tape on her left shoulder to see how it felt. Her arm wasn’t shot-shot, but trying to restrain the Crabs’ offense was like trying to hold back the tide. Just a few days ago, and still recovering – holding them to two until the seventh was a major achievement, alongside her shutting out Elvis Figueroa the week before.
It didn’t feel like enough.
Her best ERA and W-L in three seasons didn’t feel like enough, either.
Maybe it was the fact that as she headed for the door, she wasn’t sure where she’d be going when she left her apartment. It wasn’t like she could go to Moody’s like she- well, like they all used to.
A pause by the door to lace up her skates – Orange at the top, fading through red to black at the bottom – gave her phone time to buzz.
> Paula Mason 🔥: REMINDER it is bowling night tonight at the Ninth Pin Lanes!!
> Richmond 💦: 👌✍🎳👀
> Mummy: Cannot make it tonight, I have a prior engagement as you can see on the gloogle calendar.
> [. . . ]
Nagomi had been ignoring this conversation all morning, in part because she still didn’t believe P. Mason when she claimed “bowling” was a real sport.
> REN MORIN: Hey, anyone wanna go for a walk?
Apropos of nothing, just like Ren’s moods often were. Compared to some of the recent transplants, Nagomi had a bit of a soft spot for Ren. He had an easygoing air perhaps afforded to him by his false three-dimensional appearance, or perhaps it was just how he really was, and the matrix helped put normies at ease? In spite of her meddling with parallel universes in her speed running tech, Nagomi didn’t want to try thinking about it too hard.
> You: By the Styx?
> REN MORIN: I’m closer to the Acheron, meet you by Charon’s?
> You: Deal
Laced up, finally, Nagomi made her way to her door, slid down the railing of her stairs, and skated down the street to meet up with Ren.
--
When she arrived, Ren had found the time to nap on a bench off the bike trail, a half-finished box of fish and chips from the place across the street on his “chest”. One eye half-opened as she approached, a feline grin.
“Ankles holding up?”
Nagomi paused, leaning on a lamppost to catch her breath. Ren wasn’t always the most conscientious, but he seemed to have an uncanny eye for the things she neglected about herself. The skates were supporting her ankles well enough, but without thinking she’d put on short socks and they were digging into her calves a bit. More importantly, though, her eyes followed the fast food that transitioned from his chest to his lap in a flicker of visual static (like the aura from a migraine, rather than her pixelated glitches) since his “hands” were occupied with pushing himself into a sitting position.
“Holding up, but my stomach isn’t. Mind if I finish your lunch?”
“Be my guest, I don’t particularly care for the more fried bits.”
The began in silence, and Nagomi appreciated it almost as much as she thought Ren did. The presence of the Styx on her right was comforting, its soft rush a hand on her shoulder she could listen to for hours. The food also bolstered her spirits a little.
“So,” Ren began purposefully, padding along beside her as she coasted to a trash can and dumped the box.
“So-“ She began, before she could react to his speaking, then stopped and grinned apologetically. “Go ahead.”
“No no, I’m sure it was important.” Said Ren, indulgently.
She grimaced. “I was going to ask if you’ll ever cave and let P. Mason try to show you what the hell ‘Bowling’ is.”
“I know what bowling is, Nagomi. It’s too loud for how slow of a game it is.” Ren mused. “Like if Blaseball didn’t have any running.”
“You might be better at it, then.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t think it would be any better for you, it’s still about throwing a ball with precision.”
“All the more reason for me to maintain that it does not exist, then.”
They moved in silence for another thirty meters or so, the gentle downhill slope on this side of the Styx allowing Nagomi to coast with minimal effort.
“I’m going to say my thing now.”
Nagomi wondered why Ren was being delicate about this. “If it’s about Frasier Shmurmgle, I’m returning to my spouse, and you’ll have to get Charon to fish me out with a net.”
“It’s not about Frasier Shmurmgle, it’s about the election.” Ren was studiously not looking at her, eyes scanning the hodgepodge of buildings from all different eras that lined the street. The bank of the Styx was the only reason this road was relatively straight and even – often the buildings’ styles clashed in ways that created the harsh geometries Nagomi was known to exploit.
“That’s always a good thing to be concerned about. What, you think they’ll pass Relief? Or is this about the peanut god? The idol board doesn’t have a line, so…”
Nagomi trailed off as Ren continued shaking his head no.
“What is it, then?”
“Well, as you know, I keep an ear to the ground.”
“I don’t believe sleeping on the job applies to that.”
“Appearing to sleep, and not every ear is physical or literal. Fearful Symmetry has caught wind that the fans are going for Composite.”
“So I’m gonna be incinerated on Sunday?”
“I don’t believe so, but you should consider your options carefully anyway. How can you turn this to your advantage? Assuming the fans get what they want, but we’re a rather popular team.”
“Seriously considering dunking myself in Mx. Styx again, Morin. Maybe I’ll come out fireproof.”
“I don’t want to tell you how you feel, Nagomi, but have you considered that you might like a break?”
On reflex, Nagomi snorted. She would’ve folded her arms if they weren’t rather important for keeping her balance. “Why aren’t you talking to Mummy? She’s got the same stars, it’s a toss-up.”
In spite of her snipe, Ren’s words hit. She wasn’t the rookie she’d come in as, and in spite of Richmond’s defensive support, she was struggling to keep up with an increasingly star-rich league. She was getting power crept at splorts thanks to the meddling of the blaseball gods.
“You know she’s better than you, you’ve seen her ERA. The stars on the stats sheets are estimates for a reason.”
Nagomi stopped.
Ren stopped a few seconds before, letting her put her back to him.
“So what, I flunk out of the league and do, I dunno, my best Mike Townsend impression? I can’t do a concept album, I’m a speed runner!”
Ren Morin, noted Tiger (or something doing its absolute best impression of one) playing for the Hades Tiger’s, shrugged.
“Beats me, I just thought you could use a heads up.”
--
Nagomi spent the rest of the afternoon icing her poor abused ankles and doing some much-needed gloogling. It certainly beat having to withstand a battery of questions from Mummy Melcon about various linguistic foibles of Japanese between turns bowling.
No, instead she was researching anything she could find about the shadows. There was a lot about Mike Townsend, a little about Donia Bailey, and some fan drama (who discusses plans like that on Reddit?) about the upcoming Lottery Pick (gloogle turned up 0 results for “Chorby Short”). Not super helpful, but the shadows seemed to be where players went when they got kicked off the roster by other players, or potentially in her case, by the lack of a player.
This kind of research was about half of Nagomi’s bread and butter, or at least it had been before she got dunked head first into Blaseball and had barely found the time to keep her life together between games, much less keep up or attempt to top her records, however unassailable they might be. She didn’t realize how much she’d missed it. Eventually, for Blaseball at least, she’d found a best practice for building up speed for a pitch by clipping into the mound. You had to be careful, nobody could say what’s below Sixth Circle, other than whatever Hiroto had dug out herself, but getting the general batter-ward spin on the exit was easy.
Nobody knew what was down there, eh?
Nagomi was halfway down her contacts list trying to think of who might have other info that could help her before she paused. This was stupid. It was dangerous. It was abandoning her team, for god’s sake.
Then again, maybe the team would do better if Hiroto and Dunlap pitched more often. It hurt to think of herself as a load, but between her grief and her stats it would be lying to say otherwise.
She laid there as the “stars” above Hades dimmed and the streetlamps sputtered to life, orange and blue filtering through the shades on her window.
--
The soreness was better when she got up, stomach rumbling once again. She wanted something vegetarian – maybe the stir fry place on the corner was still open. Best not to skate again for now, so she grabbed a walking stick from the door (a bat, actually, signed by all of them when they’d made it past the quarterfinals in season 3. She wasn’t above showing off.
The “night” air was cool and damp from the rivers’ flow, it felt good on her skin. As she walked to her destination, she couldn’t help feeling things were different, somehow, in this dimness. It was the same way she’d felt when she glitched her way into Hades almost a decade ago, setting her teeth on edge. Like events were lining up just right for something to happen.
She stopped just past an alley she didn’t remember seeing here before. It wasn’t impossible, Hades wasn’t exactly known for its strict relationship with reality to say the least. The dull neon glow of light from the restaurant’s windows shone in the distance.
> You: Anyone up?
> Zion: It’s not that late.
> You: It’s not that early either.
> You: I may be about to do something stupid.
> Richmond 💦: 😪😰🗳💭
> You: I’m actually not that scared about the election. We’ll handle it.
They could handle it. Who knew, maybe she’d still be around? There was that weird ‘dark Seattle’ thing a couple people talked about. Maybe she could still be with Styx in the shadows if it was just Weird Hades.
> Zion: Stupid how, Meng?
> Zion: Can’t it wait until after the election? I’ll drive you home tomorrow night if you need to be drunk or something.
> You: Not that kind of stupid. Researching tech. I think I hit the sequencing to do some recon in the shadows.
> Zion: Recon?
> You: I’ll be back in the morning.
Nagomi shoved her phone in her pocket, pushing off the wall she’d leaned against. Her stomach could wait.
The sequence to clip down through the alley was trickier than she thought, involving slamming a dumpster lid and kicking off a wall to find the clipping. She had to reset a few times – thank god nobody saw her swinging her bat at the air, too.
Falling below the ground never got old, either. She hit the load trigger just before she was gonna throw up, standing back in the alley as it flickered and stuttered into view. A glass double door in the back of the building, with a humming neon sign.
HOTEL UMBRA
VACANCIES, INQUIRE WITHIN
--
The “morning” came. Then it crept on towards toward noon. Hlomecoming was today. Nagomi awoke, feeling reset. Centered. Determined. This was the way it would happen. No need to manip, the fanbase had it for her.
On the bus out of Hades to Dallas, Nagomi stood, waving down Charon’s grumble about safety. It was a goddamn tour bus, she could stand if she wanted to, even when it became a ferry, seasickness or otherwise.
“Tigers.” She said. Several more team members looked up, giving her enough of an audience that she felt confident enough to give them an apologetic smile. “I’m not gonna hog the spotlight too much, but I want y’all to know if I don’t see you guys after this, it’s been an honor getting two rings with you.”
Ren gave her a supportive thumbs up from his seat, tail twitching into the aisle. Mummy nodded solemnly. Hiroto, who had actually been behind her, took her shoulder, then her hand.
“I know how you feel, ‘Gomi.” She said, forcing a smile. “But we’re going out tonight to have fun, okay? Don’t fixate on election results until they’re fixed.”
Richmond gurgled in agreement, and Randy took the opportunity to crush both of her arms to her sides in a heavy hug. “I know that postseason was hard on you, kiddo.” He whispered. “Never look back.” And thumped her shoulder as well as he stepped away.
There was an awkward pause as the rest of the bus either ignored her (Famous, Peanutiel, Spears), pretended to ignore her (Zion, Dunlap, Usurper), or made smaller supportive gestures (Mummy, Carmello, Ren).
“Siddown already, would ya? Yer makin’ me nervous.” Growled Charon, rapping his fingers on the dashboard to get her attention.
--
Several more hugs were exchanged as they exited the bus into the Dallas heat, heading into the building for hlomecoming where several other teams had already gathered to watch the time tick down and celebrate their ongoing survival.
We already know how this ends. It ends quietly, gently, with celebration and joy. Nagomi Meng opens the Hotel Umbra, becoming the shadow captain the tigers would need long into the future. She would not be alone, even if we could not observe her residents until later.