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Alejandro Leaf stared at a photograph of a smiling young girl surrounded by friends and family. A caption was written beneath the image in pink marker- “Aly’s Quinceañera.” She remembered when the photo was taken. She remembered the dress she’d been wearing, the park they’d gone to. She remembered the laughter of her cousins, the pride of her parents. What she didn’t remember was the girl at the center of the photograph. The one everyone said was Alejandro Leaf.
All the records she found and the memory of everyone she’d asked agreed- until the Wyatt Masoning, she had been about as normal of a human as you could get. The sole dissenter was her own mind. In her memory, it was a vine she'd had wrapped around her cousin's shoulders, not an arm like the photo showed. It was a pitcher plant she'd caught her brother making bunny ears over, not a human head. The face in the photograph was that of a stranger.
With a sigh, she folded the photo back up and tucked it back into her bag. Just another reminder of what Blaseball had taken from her. It wasn’t that she wanted to be human—as far as she was concerned, she’d always been a vaguely person-shaped mass of vines sprouting from a pitcher plant, and she was fine with that—but the idea that something as fundamental as her self-image had been altered felt like the grossest of all violations. She tried to avoid thinking about it, for the most part, but being in Los Angeli always brought those uncomfortable memories back.
“What’s wrong, Aly?” Mags Banananana said, sitting down next to her. “You look all...” she wiggled a hand. “Wilty. Figured you’d be happy to be back in LA, aren’t you from here?”
Aly sighed. “I’m not from here, Mags.”
Mags’ brow furrowed. “You're not? But I thought-”
“I'm not from the Los Angeli. I'm from Los Angeles. But that city-” she gestured out the window towards the numerous rifts in the sky. “got Shattered. It doesn’t exist anymore.”
The first few days after the Shattering had been the roughest. Even after she’d been freed from the chaos of the Wyatt Masoning (and lucky enough to reclaim her name,) she wandered the streets of cities she didn't recognize, trying in vain to find her home. Los Angeles- Los Angeli now, she supposed- was utter chaos. Everywhere she turned, rifts tore through familiar streets, buildings, and landmarks, replacing them with fragmented offshoots of alternate realities.
Just trying to get home from the stadium was an ordeal. Every few steps, she'd pass through an invisible rift and find herself in another LA, one that was already strange and unknown without the madness of the Shattering. She'd have to backtrack, find the rift she'd come through, and find a new path--or else find her way back to the stadium and start anew. It took her most of a day to travel just a few blocks, only to find a family that didn't recognize her and discover the extent of what the Wyatt Masoning had done.
“Oh.” Mags glanced around the bus, trying to find a way to change the awkward subject “Um... at least Hex seems happy!”
Aly glanced over to the other side of the bus, where the coyote had her paws and snout pressed up against the window, tail wagging frantically. “...good for her.”
The bitter scent of rotten peanuts filled the air, and Aly’s vines curled in on themselves instinctively as she stepped out onto the field. The bits of peanut shell still incorporated into her pitcher started to itch, as they usually did during Peanut weather. She glanced behind her and saw Jessica Telephone tense up, eyes going wide for a moment before her face crinkled in disgust.
The Lift maneuvered their way through the cracked and broken peanuts littering the ground as they made their way to the visitor's dugout. Most of the debris was small, little bits of shell or individual nuts, but Aly found herself tranfixed on one mostly-whole shell sitting just outside the dugout's entrance.
She'd spent more than two years in that shell, drifting in and out of a nutty haze. She only heard bits and pieces of the outside world through the shell, but she got enough to piece together that despite its lofty goals, the Snackrifice had accomplished nothing. All they’d managed to do was give the fans a fancy new Pitching Machine to make money off of.
Whenever she was lucid enough, she'd push against the shell, strain with all the might her vines could muster, but it never did anything more than tire her out. As time wore on, those lucid periods grew further and further apart, and the voice whispering in the back of her mind grew louder and louder, until it was a deafening roar that subsumed her own thoughts in a storm of greed, pride, and wrath.
Leaf stomped on the shell, grinding it to dust beneath her cleat.
As the visiting pitcher, she didn’t have much to do in the first half-inning, so she spent it sweeping out the bits of peanut that had already accumulated in the dugout, dumping them into the garbage and feeling a bit of satisfaction as they vanished. A quick double play followed by a ground out wrapped up the top of the inning quickly, and Aly headed out to the mound, where a familiar face greeted her.
Felix Garbage stepped up to bat, smiled widely and gave a little wave. “Hey Aly! Been a while!”
Aly's grip on the ball tightened. Right. She'd forgotten hearing that the Tacos and Millenials had made a trade in the last election. He wasn’t wrong, it had been a while—she hadn’t seen him since leaving New York.
Schneider Bendie pushed open the Apartment's rooftop door and stepped through, Aly following behind them.. “Hey, Doc!” they called out. “Come here, got someone for you to meet.”
On the far side of the roof, a figure turned to look- a man wearing a laboratory and bow tie, who would be on the short side if he wasn't hovering a foot off the ground. “Oh, did we win another blessing?” He asked, starting to head their way. “I heard something about birds, but...” his voice trailed off when he saw Aly.
Bendie gestured towards the man. “Dr. Felix Garbage, Alejandro Leaf.” They glanced down at their phone. “...hold on, I’ve got like a billion texts from Drac.” They started typing out a reply as they walked to the other side of the roof. “A plane? What does that...”
As Bendie’s voice faded to a murmur, Felix nervously adjusted his tie. “So, um... Alejandro, was it?”
“I usually go by Aly.”
“Aly, then. If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly happened after...” he grimaced, clearly trying not to stare at her bits of peanut shell. “You know, how did you end up here?”
Aly shook her pitcher. “I woke up in Battin’ Island wearing a Mills uniform, let’s just leave it at that.”
“Alright, I won’t pry.” He reached out and shook one of her vines with a smile. “Well, I’m glad to have you with us. I know the circumstances of your arrival weren’t ideal, but hopefully you’ll be able to put down roots here.” He winced. “I’m sorry, I swear that wasn’t on purpose.”
Aly gave a little chuckle despite herself. “We’ll see.”
“Put down roots.” Aly glowered slightly at the memory. It had seemed like a nice idea, back during the Grand Siesta. Back when things seemed like they might be getting back to some semblance of normal. Then, barely two seasons into the Expansion Era, the Fans had Revoked her. They didn’t care about her or what she wanted. They didn’t care that she was finally starting to feel at home in New York, or about the rooftop garden she was starting to be proud of. They didn’t even care where she ended up. They just saw an underperforming pitcher, so they’d balled her up and thrown her away like an empty packet of peanuts.
That wasn't even the end of it. Every Election since then, she'd felt a pull, a desire to wander, to Roam. She'd been able to resist it every time so far- if she left, she wanted it to be in her own terms, not due to some lingering curse the Fans had given her as an afterthought. But if her resolve ever weakened, she'd lose whatever home she’d found. As long as she was cursed to Roam, “putting down roots” was an impossibility.
Felix had left New York too, but he had done that by choice. He'd gone somewhere that actually wanted him to be there. Not somewhere the Fans talked about him like a problem to be solved, like... like...
A blast of music from La Taqueria’s sound system shook her from her melancholy, and she pushed the thoughts down. Something about today was really getting under her leaves. For now, she just needed to focus on pitching. The sooner she got her 27 outs, the sooner she could get inside and out of this awful weather.
While the Lift was batting, Aly would sit on a bench in the bullpen where the others couldn’t see her, tossing a ball back and forth to herself. Every now and then someone would come to check on her, usually Stijn or Yusef, but a quick “I’ve just got a lot on my mind right now” was enough to get them to back off. Aly really wasn’t in the mood for conversation today. She pretended not to notice when Jessica Telephone sat down next to her after striking out in the top of the 5th.
“...You feel it too, right?” Jessica asked after a minute of silence.
Aly stayed silent.
“Hey. Leaf.”
Aly sighed. “Yeah. I feel it.”
Another half minute passed in silence.
Jessica let out a deep, slow breath. “Does that mean that it's-”
Aly held up a vine towards Jessica. “Just because we were both PODS doesn't make us friends.”
Jessica scowled. “Sure, whatever. We're not friends. But you're still the only person here who knows what I'm talking about, so we're gonna talk about it.”
Aly weighed her options. She was already in a bad mood and had a killer headache on top of it—she didn’t want to make it worse by trying to be friendly with Jessica Goddamn Telephone. But if there was one thing she knew about Jessica Goddamn Telephone, it was that the woman was stubborn as hell, and trying to dodge that conversation might be even worse than having it. ...And maybe, just maybe, talking to someone else that went through the same things wouldn’t be so bad.
She sighed and set the ball down. “Fine. Let’s talk.”
Jessica leaned forward, lacing her fingers and bouncing her leg with a nervousness that Aly had never seen in her. “It’s dead. Right? The...” The name caught in her throat, and she swallowed heavily. “The Peanut. We saw it die.”
“Yep. Squid snapped it in half and ate it. Seems pretty dead.”
“That’s what I thought, but...” She shook her head. “Then Quitter did... whatever it was they did. Then Bong, and Duffy, and York, and PM. And every time the weather’s like this... sometimes I start to hear things.”
“I know all this. What’s your point?”
Jessica looked over towards Aly. “What if it survived somehow? What if it comes back?”
Aly didn’t remember everything about the PODS. Most of that year was just a peanut-scented blur in her memory. But she remembered Jessica Telephone. Whenever the Shelled One had called them forth, Jess had always been at the forefront, Dial Tone hefted onto her shoulder, fire in her eyes and face twisted into a wicked sneer.
It only got worse during the games. With every supersonic line drive or crushing home run, Jessica would just laugh and laugh, even as the Shoe Thieves screamed in pain. If she wasn’t still constrained by the rules of Blaseball, it felt like she would be swinging the Dial Tone at heads rather than balls.
Aly laughed, low and mirthless. “I bet you’re happy about that, huh?”
Jessica recoiled, aghast. “What? Why the hell would I want it to come back?”
“Because you liked it,” Aly spat. “I was there, I saw you. You liked how strong it made you feel. You liked being able to go up against the best and crush them. It’s not enough to be 'Superstar Jessica Telephone' anymore, is it? You want that back, don’t you? That power?”
“That thing was in our heads, Leaf,” Jessica snarled, standing up. “It twisted our emotions. I liked it because it wanted me to like it. I had to watch my brother die, again. And it made me laugh.” She bent down, face inches from Aly’s pitcher. ”And don't try and be all high-and-mighty. It made you do the same messed up things I did. At least I didn't choose to be there.”
“What?” Aly tried to rise to meet her, but her vines had entangled themselves around and within the bench without her realizing, holding her in place.
“You could have stayed out of it,” Jessica continued, voice dripping with vitriol. “I didn’t get a say in being an Idol, but you all campaigned for it.” She tilted her head to the side, mouth twisting into a snarl. “So. Was it everything you hoped for?”
The bellow of an Umpire calling the third out broke the tension. Jessica turned away, picking up her glove and heading out into the field. “Get yourself untangled. We have a game to lose.”
Aly stormed up onto the pitcher's mound, seething with rage. Stupid Jessica Telephone. She has no idea how good she has it. Felix was already waiting at home plate when she got there, and greeted her with that same little smile and wave he had for each of his last four at-bats. Aly felt the sap boiling in her xylem as she glared toward Felix. What right did he have to be so chipper? Like this was all just some game. Like they weren’t all trapped here in a hell they had no escape from.
But it was just a game to Doctor Felix Garbage, wasn’t it? He’d been lucky. He hadn’t had his city fractured and his very identity ripped away. He hadn’t been tricked into sacrificing himself in vain, then kidnapped and enslaved by an angry god. He hadn’t been forced out and cursed to never find a true home just when things were starting to look like they might finally be getting better. Well then, Aly thought, the taste and smell of peanuts intensifying, reflecting in on itself through the Infinite fractals around her until it became an all-encompassing nutty rotten bitterness. Maybe it’s time somebody SHOWED HIM HOW THINGS WORK AROUND HERE.
The ball and glove dropped from Aly’s grip as her vines slammed into the ground, stretching and growing with unnatural speed as they rushed through the earth towards home plate. Felix looked at her, confused, and opened his mouth to say something, but before he could dozens of leafy green shoots erupted from the ground around him. Terror flashed across his face and he let out a brief scream before the plants rushed inward to envelop him, dragged him to the ground, and started to squeeze.
Red clouded the edges of Aly’s vision as she stared at the writhing mass of stems and leaves at home plate. The patches of shell on her pitcher burned white hot, but she felt no pain. She felt Felix struggling against the plants, but with each motion they stiffened, solidified, until he wasn’t pushing them away so much as banging against them. She could hear screams, shouts, and a familiar, deep, rumbling laughter. It took her a moment to realize the laughter was coming from her. FOOL, her mind echoed. YOU WILL LEARN-
Something rushed past her, and she felt a sharp flash of pain as her vines were severed inches above the spot they dug into the earth. Whirling to the side, she saw Gerund Pantheocide skidding to a halt, her claymore gripped tightly in both hands as she swung it back into a ready position. Aly’s body turned towards Gerund, a bolt of rage shooting through her, before she felt a quartet of strong arms wrap around her and haul her backwards into the air.
“Aly, please!” Stijn cried, gathering as many of her vines as he could into his arms. “This isn’t you! Snap out of it!”
She writhed against his grip, her vines tried to extend, but he was too strong, and Gerund had switched to a shortsword and was slicing off any new growth. Eventually, the pounding in her mind began to subside, the red faded from her vision, and she went limp in Stijn’s arms.
He laid her gently on the ground, then knelt down next to her. ”Are you okay? Is it gone?”
Aly’s mind spun. What... had just happened? Was that how the others had felt? Had she really just...
Pushing Stijn away, Aly drew herself back to her full height. “I’m fine.” She looked over toward home plate, where McDowell Mason and Yummy Elliot were tearing away the mass of rapidly-browning peanut plants around Felix- but instead of their teammate, all they uncovered was a giant peanut shell, gently bobbing in midair a couple feet off the ground. Yummy stared at it wide-eyed, and McDowell hung his head for a moment before grabbing it and slowly pushing it over towards the Tacos’ dugout.
Stijn moved to follow her. “But Aly, you-”
“I said I’m fine,” she spat. She walked back toward the mound, gaze shifting over towards the Lift. Most of them were looking back at her with pity, but not surprise. This wasn’t the first time they’d seen one of their own Shell someone. Gerund refused to meet her gaze, silently cleaning sap and peanut butter off her swords. In the outfield, Hex was trembling slightly, tail tucked between her legs. The only one who seemed unbothered was Jessica, staring at her with intense, focused eyes and an expressionless face.
Inside Aly, that cold rage started to boil again.