The overhead lamps of the Larken Center Stadium cast a sickly, jaundiced glow over the floorboards. Set three commenced. Players took their marks across the faded boundary lines.

  One crucial element felt completely off the moment Divers stepped on court.

  The Larken Silvereye side of the net heard no commands, now submerged in eerie quietness. Sasha Sinnott kept her jaw clamped shut.

  During the brief intermission minutes ago, a bitter clarity had settled over the Larken captain. Looking at the exhausted, panicked faces of her teammates huddled around the bench; the truth tasted like ash. Her tactical mind processed the game at a star level, formulating flawless solutions to every problem the Divers presented. Yet her teammates were normal humans who possessed standard limbs and average reflexes.

  Screaming the correct answers at them only induced terror. A paralyzed player staring at the right spot on the floor caught zero volleyballs. The heavy influx of commands bred hesitation, turning manageable plays into embarassing errors.

  Sasha swallowed her pride and discarded her defensive blueprints. She chose a simpler, albeit agonizing, path. She would let her teammates play on pure instinct. Let them swing without the burden of complex mathematics weighing down their shoulders. She would carry the boulders alone, absorbing the entire physical and mental load so they could find a moment to shine.

  TWEEEEEEEEET!

  The referee signaled the start. Sarah Lemear stood at the Port Osea baseline and hammered a heavy jump float. The leather danced erratically through the stadium air, diving maliciously toward the far left corner of the Larken court.

  Sasha Sinnott moved, abandoning her assigned right-side pocket, sprinting across the backcourt recklessly. She covered a massive expanse of territory in three long strides. Her knees hit the floorboards. Then, she initiated a long, friction-burning slide across the varnish, throwing her arms out to construct a desperate platform.

  Thwack.

  The ball collided with her wrists mere millimeters above the painted boundary line. Sasha absorbed the momentum, popping a beautiful, high-arcing pass toward the setter's zone.

  Using the residual energy of her slide, she immediately scrambled up. Her sneakers gripped the hardwood. She roared, "Set me Roa!" Demanding the set with her raw vocal.

  The Larken setter received the pass and pushed the leather toward the right pin.

  Sasha charged, initiating her trap. She approached with a highly unorthodox rhythm - a subtle stutter-step delayed her forward momentum, warping the timing window completely. The maneuver presented a lethal dilemma for the Port Osea Divers. Committing to their blistering synchronized tempo meant blowing past the contact point, leaving the net wide open. Hesitating to match Sasha's weird cadence meant surrendering their entire offensive flow, giving the Silvereye defense crucial seconds to breathe and reset. A masterful, double-edged sword forged in the air.

  Across the white tape, a primal alarm rang inside Himeko Nakamura's chest. Partially obscured by the backcourt traffic, the path the opposing captain took felt incredibly dangerous. Himeko sensed how Sasha was trying to mess with Divers' established system.

  She made an instantaneous decision. Himeko aborted the Divers' synchronized launch sequence. She severed herself from the blue wave surging toward the net. Her eyes tunneled entirely onto the green jersey numbered 32, focusing on her every movement. She tracked the delayed approach, matching the stutter-step, syncing her own biological metronome beat-perfect to Sasha's manufactured chaos.

  Sasha planted her feet and exploded upward. Himeko launched directly opposite her.

  The two captains collided in the upper atmosphere of the gymnasium.

  Sasha hovered at the apex. She cocked her arm back, her vision scanning the anticipated empty space. Her stutter-step should have cleared the airspace entirely.

  A massive shadow swallowed the arena lights.

  Himeko was right there. Her arms extended, fingers spread wide, sealing the exact corridor Sasha intended to exploit.

  Panic flared in the Larken captain's eyes. In a split-second act of desperation, Sasha dropped her hitting shoulder, contorting her torso to slice a wicked cut shot past the blockade.

  Honed by two grueling months locked in a cage with Kevin Marvant. She had memorized every conceivable biomechanical twitch a human body could perform in mid-air. The subtle dip of Sasha's shoulder broadcasted the new trajectory in high definition.

  Himeko clamped her hands down. She invaded the new swing path before Sasha could even follow through.

  Sasha swung.

  BOOM.

  Himeko's palms rejected the force completely, slamming the ball straight down. It traveled vertically, crashing into the faded varnish directly between Sasha's descending sneakers before bouncing back up.

  TWEEEEEEEEEEET!

  "1-0! Port Osea Divers!"

  For the next three rallies, Sasha Sinnott threw her entire arsenal at the Port Osea captain. She launched a blistering attack aimed perfectly down the sideline. Himeko shifted effortlessly, constructing a dense barrier that swallowed the leather whole and spat it back onto the green side of the court.

  2-0.

  Sasha adjusted her approach, loading her jump for a heavy power swing before attempting to feather a delayed tool off Himeko’s outside pinky. Himeko perceived the trick mid-flight. The Osea captain yanked her hands away at the last microsecond, leaving Sasha to slap the ball completely out of bounds.

  3-0.

  On the fourth attempt, Sasha abandoned finesse entirely. She channeled every ounce of her frustration into a brute-force spike aimed dead center into the blocker's chest, hunting for a breakthrough via pure kinetic energy. Himeko clamped the airspace shut like an iron vault. The rejection cracked through the court with the sound of a detonating firecracker.

  4-0.

  Sasha landed heavily on the varnish, her chest heaving. She stared at her reddened palms, then lifted her gaze through the white mesh toward Himeko. The reality of the matchup was understood: Himeko Nakamura was simply the superior duelist. In a raw clash of reflexes, verticality, and power, the Osea captain was stronger than Sasha herself. Engaging her in an aerial dogfight guaranteed continuous failure.

  Despair threatened to creep in, a cold shadow nibbling away Sasha's confidence. Biting her lips, she violently pushed it back. Even if Himeko built a house of solid concrete, Sasha just had to find the window.

  Sasha closed her eyes, forcing her mind into painful overdrive. She activated her peak strategic vision, cranking her processing speed to maximum capacity. A torrential flood of sensory data rushed into her synapses – positions' sequences of Osea's backline, the approach patterns of Willow Vance, the precise spacing between Jules and Sarah in the synchonized attack. The sheer volume of incoming information created a sharp pressure right behind her temples. A fringe headache bloomed from the extreme concentration.

  Sasha bit her lips, forcing it back down, zoning in more every moment before the next whisper. The physical gymnasium dissolved from her view. A glowing, three-dimensional network mapped itself across the darkness of her mind. Threads of causality linked every single player on the floor. Player A steps forward, pulling Player B to the left, exposing Player C on the right. Chains of causes and effects sprawled across the grid. Sasha ran the simulations at lightning speed, letting the branching possibilities bloom and wither in her head within milliseconds.

  Snapping out, she inhaled the hot air of the stadium.

  Thousands paths to victory on this court, Sasha thought, embracing her core philosophy to quiet the pounding in her skull. I only need to run on one.

  Sasha walked past her setter, Roa. She reached out, tapping the girl's shoulder. Leaning down, Sasha murmured a rapid string of syllables directly into Roa's ear, her eyes dead serious. Roa's eyes widened slightly, absorbing the command, before she responded with a nod.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  ...

  TWEEEEEEET!

  Sarah Lemear punched a serve across the tape. Sasha tracked the trajectory, abandoning her offensive positioning to drop her hips deep in the backcourt. She dug her platform into the ball's path.

  Thwump.

  The reception popped up clean, a pristine arc floating directly toward Roa's waiting hands.

  "Roa! Send it!"

  The exact millisecond the leather left her forearms, Sasha exploded. She initiated her approach run at a reckless speed, chewing up the floorboards with a frantic cadence designed to trigger absolute panic. She charged the right antenna like a woman possessed.

  The Osea captain's hyper-tuned survival instincts screamed. She mirrored Sasha's sprint instantly, tracking the Larken captain step for blistering step across the hardwood.

  Sasha launched herself toward the stadium rafters. Himeko ascended with her, throwing an airtight, towering roof over the anticipated hitting lane. Both captains hung suspended in the dead air, bracing for the inevitable collision.

  The ball never arrived.

  Down on the floorboards, Roa pushed the set entirely across the court. A horizontal laser whistled toward the far left pin. The Larken outside hitter arrived in a massive vacuum of empty space. Zero blockers occupied the zone. She wound up her arm and hammered the ball straight into the unprotected varnish.

  BOOM.

  The referee blew the whistle.

  "Point, Larken Silvereye. 1-4."

  Sasha returned to the floorboards, weary satisfaction spreading across her features. The sequence demanded an absurb level of commitment and precision. Had she paused to gather her balance for even a fraction of a second after digging that serve, the lie would have completely unraveled. A delayed run would have telegraphed her role as a mere decoy. Himeko's finely tuned senses would have smelled the deception immediately, allowing the Osea captain to hit the brakes and shift her block toward the actual threat.

  To fool a star blocker with senses as hyper-tuned as Himeko Nakamura, a simple feint held zero value. Half-hearted approaches or lazy arm swings broadcasted deception instantly. Sasha knew Himeko would process muscle tension, eye tracking, and breathing patterns before the setter even touched the leather.

  Selling the lie required Sasha to throw herself at absolute max effort, as if she was truly the hitter of the play.

  Sasha Sinnott weaponized her own biology. On the very next Larken reception, she dug her heels into the floorboards and exploded forward. She flooded her veins with adrenaline, forcing her own mind to believe she was receiving the ball. Her eyes widened with actual ace hunger. Her arm cranked back, readying for a full approach. She launched herself into the stadium light.

  Himeko bought the performance entirely. The Osea captain launched to intercept, raising her iron wall.

  The ball sailed to the opposite pin. A Larken wing spiker hammered the uncontested net.

  2-4.

  Divers answered back quickly with a quick pipe from Sarah Lemear, securing a side-out.

  2-5.

  The rotation cycled, bringing another heavy jump float. Sasha took the reception on her forearms and instantly hit the ground running. She replicated the exact same desperate sprint and the same full-energy vertical leap, burning massive amounts of oxygen just to act as a decoy.

  Himeko mirrored the approach, committing her entire frame to the block.

  The Larken setter pushed the ball behind her head. Another green jersey scored on an empty net.

  3-5.

  The Osea huddle drew tight before the next whistle. They would need to change back to the default strategy to avoid creating free empty space for the opponent.

  "We need to pull back," Sarah Lemear said. "This synchronized attack leaves the perimeter too thin. Without you anchoring the middle, Cap, the defense is empty."

  Jules Moreno nodded in agreement, glancing across the net. "She is pulling you out of position on purpose. Let's drop the sync tempo. Keep our blockers grounded to cover the spread."

  Himeko stared through the white mesh. Her eyes tracked the Larken captain.

  "Hold the formation," Himeko commanded, rejecting the suggestion. "If we abandon the sync, we surrender our momentum. I will catch her."

  The referee blew the whistle. Play resumed.

  Lisa Denire sent a Larken serve flying toward the net. Willow Vance set up the synchronized assault. Jules Moreno secured the kill.

  3-6.

  Then came the return volley. The Divers served. A Larken defender passed the ball high.

  Sasha Sinnott initiated her sequence. She sprinted hard toward the right antenna. The floorboards shrieked under her sneakers. Her shoulder dipped, signaling a massive power swing. The aura radiating from the Larken captain felt completely identical to the previous three decoys.

  Himeko tracked the movement. She pushed off laterally, chasing Sasha down the length of the net. The Osea captain planted her feet and exploded upward, throwing her arms over the white tape to build the roof.

  Both captains hung suspended in the air of the stadium.

  A shadow of doubt crept into Himeko's mind. The previous empty jumps weighed heavy on her subconscious. Her brain processed the identical approach, the identical timing, the identical facial expression of the Larken ace. Her instincts reached a glaring conclusion.

  Another fake. The ball is going left.

  For a microsecond, Himeko's physical form betrayed her. Her locked shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. The iron tension drained from her spread fingers as she prepared to return to earth.

  Then, Roa flicked her wrists.

  The ball shot straight to the right pin.

  The payload arrived directly into Sasha's waiting hand.

  Himeko's eyes blew wide open. The leather spinning inches from her face shattered her mental calculation. Panic flared in her pupils. She desperately tried to re-engage the tension in her forearms, straining to harden her palms against the incoming strike.

  Sasha swung with unbridled ferocity.

  The spike drove straight into Himeko's hesitant, softened block. The force folded Himeko's hands backward, blowing through the weak seal.

  BAM.

  The ball sheared through the block and slammed violently into the Port Osea floorboards.

  "Point, Larken Silvereye!"

  4-6.

  ...

  On the sidelines, Coach Elena Vance stood completely motionless. Her marker slipped from her fingers, clattering loudly against the floor.

  "First time I have ever seen her like that," Elena whispered to the empty air.

  Mei, standing a few feet away, turned her head. "Seen what, Coach?"

  Elena kept her eyes glued to the court. She watched Himeko land clumsily, staring down at her own hands in total disbelief.

  "Himeko hesitated," Elena replied. "I've never seen her hesitate so obviously before. She second-guessed her own read mid-air."

  ...

  Back on the faded varnish, gravity reclaimed the Larken captain.

  Sasha Sinnott hit the hardwood. Her sneakers screeched against the floor. She immediately bent over, bracing both hands heavily against her kneepads.

  Her chest heaved in violent gasps. Sweat poured from her chin in a steady stream. Her lungs burned, starved for oxygen. The physical toll of sprinting at maximum velocity, generating full explosive leaps purely to sell a psychological lie, was draining her stamina tank at an alarming rate. Executing four consecutive, maximum-effort approaches had pushed her heart rate into the red zone. The scoreboard read 4-6. The match had barely even begun, yet the Larken ace looked like she had just played three full sets.

  The Larken libero trotted over, placing a gentle hand on Sasha's back.

  "Sasha, you okay?" she asked, her eyes scanning the heavy exhaustion painting Sasha's features.

  Sasha squeezed her eyes shut, drawing in a deep breath. She forced her spine straight, lifting her head to look across the net at the stunned Osea captain.

  "I'm fine," Sasha rasped out, swiping a slick layer of sweat from her forehead. "Carry on."