first proof
[Blaseball, Gen, 2.2k words]
She hits the ground hard enough to hurt, and immediately has no idea where she is or how she got there.
After a beat, she realizes she also has no idea who she is.
With that disturbing thought sinking into a pit in her stomach, she pushes herself up into a sitting position and looks up, rubbing her aching head. She's in an empty room, pretty big, with benches running down the center and rows of lockers lining the walls.
She puts a hand on a bench (and, oof, a few inches to the left and she'd have hit her head on that. Ouch.) and leverages herself all the way to her feet. Okay. Something about the place feels familiar; at least, she recognizes it as a locker room. She thinks she's been in locker rooms before. But not this one. At least, she's pretty sure.
Wandering closer to inspect the lockers, she notices something strange: they all have placards on the front, that seem like they may have once had names on them, but the markings seem like they've been… erased, somehow. Weird. Letting her fingertips run along the wall, she wanders down the row of lockers. It's all more of the same, until she gets to the end and finds one that's different.
The last locker in the row has a placard with a name engraved in it in all capital letters: STEALS CHARK.
[read on ao3]
Acting on instinct, she reaches out and opens it. Hanging prominently on a hook is a teal striped shirt, with CHARK emblazoned across the back. She pulls it out and tries it on, buttoning it up over her tank top.
A perfect fit.
Huh. Okay. She peeks her head around the edge of the locker door again to get another look at the placard. Steals. Sure. She can be Steals.
The locker has other equipment in it – a glove, a bat, cleats, all pristine and untouched. Steals ignores it for now and leaves the locker to go further explore the building, leaving the uniform shirt on.
It takes a while, but Steals is pretty confident she manages to find her way into every room in the clubhouse, and after tracking back and forth over just about every inch of the building, determines that she is absolutely alone.
It's a little unnerving. The clubhouse is eerily silent; every room feels like it's just been sitting there, waiting, but for what, she doesn't know. Her, she guesses. She wishes fervently that she could remember how she got here, and why.
She's alone for a long time.
She familiarizes herself with every inch of the clubhouse, and then starts messing with stuff just for something to do. She drags every chair she can find into the locker room and builds an elaborate fort, and then knocks it down for the satisfaction of destroying it. She finds a fridge full entirely of energy drinks and mixes them all together in a bowl to make a horrific concoction that leaves her with a pounding headache. She pries the wheels off a swivel chair and glues them to the bottom of a pair of cleats and does tricks off the benches in the locker room. She falls and hits her head, and then does it again.
She drags a basket of balls out into a hallway and sets up targets, and then tries to hit them. Then she tries it again, this time while skating. She falls again. She doesn't care. There's nobody around to see.
It's at least two months before she hears the crash and skates into the locker room to see a man laying amidst the wreckage of her chair fort. He looks up at her, blinking. She stares back.
"Hi," he says.
"What the fuck," she says back.
"A little help?"
She skates a little closer and helps extricate him from the chairs. Once done, he stands in the middle of the locker room, rubbing his head as he looks around. She keeps staring at him.
"So," he finally says, conversationally. "What team am I on this time?"
"What?" she asks.
"Y'know," he says, gesturing unhelpfully with one hand. "Team. Last time I was on one called the Baltimore Crabs. You've still got the Crabs here, right?"
"Uh."
"Nevermind." He sticks a hand out. "Hi, I'm Thomas Marsh."
She blinks at the hand in her face, then slowly takes it. "Steals Chark," she says. "I think."
The man – Thomas – hums, nodding in understanding. "It's your first time, right? It's always tough to remember, the first time."
Steals furrows her brow, crossing her arms defensively. "My first time doing what, you weirdo?" she demands.
Thomas turns away from her, moving around to explore the locker room. "Jumping universes," he says casually, coming to a stop in front of a locker. Steals warily slides up behind him, and then gawks as she sees that the placard that definitely used to be blank, now says THOMAS MARSH. He pulls it open, and hums again. "Oh! The Pies. That's cool. I've always liked Philly." He takes out a shirt identical to Steals's own, but with his own name on it, and pulls it on. "The colors are the same. Nice. It's so annoying when the colors get switched around."
"What are you talking about?" Steals bursts out. She can't believe that she's seeing another person for the first time in – well, as long as she can remember, and he's some… weirdo.
Thomas smiles apologetically. "Sorry, kid. This isn't my first rodeo. Or blaseball team."
"Blaseball?" Steals shoots back. That word… something about it pings in the back of her head. Like she should know what it means.
Thomas hums again, rifling through the rest of the equipment in his locker. "Yeah, blaseball. It's a sport. Kind of. Anyways, it's what we're here to do. Though I guess games won't start until the rest of the team shows up."
That gets her attention. "You mean there are more people coming?" she asks. "Are they all gonna be as weird as you?"
Thomas throws his head back and laughs. "Kid, knowing blaseball players? Depends on the universe. But they could be much weirder."
As it turns out, Thomas is right.
It's just the two of them for a while, again. They find an equilibrium: Thomas doesn't stop being weird, and tells her stories about other universes that she's, like, 80% sure he's just making up. But he helps her set up more targets in places too high for her to reach, and doesn't laugh at her when she falls on her face trying more skate tricks, and tries her energy drink mixes with a straight face, so Steals guesses he's all right.
And after another few weeks, there's another crash in the locker room and the two of them come running in to find, of all things, an old man in a wizard hat and robes staring up at them.
"Hey," Thomas says, offering a hand to help him up. "Welcome to the Pies."
Bevan Wise, in Steals's opinion, does not seem like he belongs on a sports team.
"First of all, he's old," she informs Tom, while pouring something acid green and carbonated into her mixing bowl. "Second of all, he's, like, a nerd."
Tom snorts, and obediently holds out his cup for Steals to ladle her concoction into for him to taste. "Give him a chance," he says generously. "At least let him practice with us. See how he does. He says he's a wizard."
"Yeah, he says ," Steals shoots back. "Just like you say you've been to, like, a bazillion universes."
"Which is why I have no problems accepting that he's a wizard," Tom says, then hums. "Do we have anything blue flavored? I think it could use some blue."
The door to the kitchen slams open, and with a "BEHOLD!" Bevan strides into the room.
Steals whirls around, clutching her mixing bowl to her chest, and claps a hand over her mouth. Bevan is wearing the strangest pair of pants she has ever seen in her life, and over his uniform he has clasped a black cape with enormous teal flames licking up the sides. He holds out his arms with a broad grin.
"I have uncovered the secrets of the laundry room!" He declares.
"I can see that," Tom says evenly.
Steals keeps her hand clapped over her mouth to hide her laughter. Bevan's eyes suddenly fix on the bowl in her arms.
"Oh, a potion!" He says, with absolute glee. He strides over, looming over Steals. He has a good foot of height on her. He leans in close to scrutinize her energy drink concoction, and gives a sudden, very loud sniff. Finally, he leans back and plants his hands on his hips. "And a very potent one at that! My compliments on your alchemical skills, Miss Chark."
 "Um," Steals says. "Thanks."
 "If I may, I believe I have in mind some additions that may prove helpful," Bevan says, pausing and looking to her for approval. Raising her eyebrows, Steals nods.Â
 Bevan steps back and raises his arms, and suddenly his eyes start glowing and the lights in the room flicker. He starts muttering under his breath, and the cabinet doors all slam open at once, their contents flying out and circling in the air around Bevan.
 Steals drops her bowl.
 But it, too, starts hovering, and with minute gestures with his hands, Bevan directs various odds and ends to leave the line of ingredients and drop portions into the bowl, the liquid inside stirring itself as they add to it. Finally, with a flick of his wrist the remaining ingredients march through the air back into the cabinets, which all close in perfect unison with a loud thud. Bevan takes the bowl in his hands and his eyes stop glowing.
 He holds it out to Steals with a benevolent smile, and with wide eyes she takes it back. Tom leans around him to dip his cup into the mixture and takes a sip.
 "Whattaya know," he says, giving Steals a wink. "Tastes more blue."
 "Wonderful!" Bevan booms, turning to go with a swirl of his cape. "Now if you'll excuse me, I am off to build a library."
 Tom at least has the decency to wait before telling Steals, "I told you so."
 "This team is so weird," she breathes.
 A few days later, Bevan once again bursts into the kitchen, this time with a burst of teal fireworks. Steals is attempting to shore up the glue on her skates, while Tom flips through a rulebook he founds in a drawer in an office upstairs. It doesn't seem to be written in any kind of language Steals recognizes, but Tom seems to be reading it just fine.
 They both look up at Bevan's overblown entrance, already becoming accustomed to his fanfare. In one hand, held high and triumphant, he's holding a set of… car keys?
 They have a little wizard hat keychain on them. Steals is absolutely certain they belong to him.
"Behold!" Bevan crows. "I have made a wondrous discovery."
"Where'd you get those?" Tom asks, cocking his head.
Bevan shakes them, making them jingle pleasantly. "I was performing a spell meant to summon an item of great personal import, and they simply appeared in my pocket."
"Are you sure they weren't already in there?" Steals asks dubiously, eyeing his pockets. "You have really big pockets."
"It matters not," Bevan says, folding the keys up in his hand. "The true treasure is what they unlock!"
Tom puts his book down. "So let's go find it."
Bevan leads the two of them through the clubhouse to a door that, to Steals's utter bewilderment, she has never seen before.
"What the hell?" she mutters under her breath as Bevan confidently strides up to it. "Where the hell did it come from? Where does it go?"
And then Bevan opens the door, and her breath catches in her throat.
 Outside. There's an outside.
The three of them bump shoulders in their hurry to get through the door, and find themselves standing in a largely unremarkable parking lot, outside a largely unremarkable building, except for the fact that it's definitely too small to be the clubhouse they've been living in all this time, and the large PHILLY PIES sign hanging from the eaves.
And, of course, for the van sitting in one of the spaces just by the door, with a chaotic scene centered on a wizard airbrushed on the side of it.
Bevan holds out the keys and hits a button and, of course, the van beeps and flashes its lights.
Steals's jaw drops.
"Come, my compatriots," Bevan calls, striding towards the van. "Adventure awaits!"
Tom's hand on her shoulder startles Steals out of her silence. "You okay?" he asks, one eyebrow raised.
"I didn't even know there was an outside," she confesses breathlessly. She feels rooted to the spot. It's so much. It's too much.
Tom squeezes her shoulder. She would never admit it to him, but she feels some of his easy confidence leeching into her. She takes a deep breath and feels like she can move again.
"Well, c'mon, kid," Tom says, tipping his head towards Bevan's van. "Let's go see what this universe has to offer."
