Breaking (New / Old) Ground: The Astroturf is in Shambles
Made on: 18 Aug, 2023
Rating: General Audiences
Word Count: 1,195
Characters of Focus: Yunie, Abu-Zaid
Setting: Between Fall Ball and the start of Coronation Era
Metadata: Sports, (I get that this IS fan fiction about a sport but this is very much about said sport), (That and Yuniesky being annoyed)
Warnings: None.
Summary: The start of Abu-Zaid's (very long) blaseball episode and Yuniesky's (very long) headache.
Beginning Authors Note: slightly inspired by the Angel Beats! baseball episode (ep 4), why on earth are those high schoolers that good at baseball? I don't think gorilla militia skills translate quite like that…
“What do you MEAN you haven't played before?! How on earth did you even get a contract?”
And secondly, Yuniesky thinks, how did this not turn up before they got dragged out to the field to help Abu-zaid practice. They're even in the correct positions for this, with Yuniesky on the mound and the other pacing around the plate across from them.
“I just signed the paperwork,” local menace to Yuniesky in particular says, not even looking bashful about the nonsense they're putting them through, “nothing special.”
“The ILB doesn't just let anyone sign up!”
Abu-zaid ignores Yuniesky, who's very close to throwing their arms to the air and dumping this problem on someone with more patience, in favor of looking to the dugout where Conditional sits on their dolly. The Monolith had insisted on seeing this go down — Yuniesky is still not sure how Condi actually sees anything (if they even do), even after asking all they got was more questions, and they're in favor of ignoring that headache for now— so Yunie had to roll them out here.
"Hey, Conditional! Do you know if they just let anyone sign a contract?"
Yuniesky does, somewhat begrudgingly, have to give them points for actually looking at Conditional when asking this question instead of blanking looking at them like they could answer in the monolith’s place. Thank you, higher ups at HQ, for giving them such low standards. Ugh, Yuniesky has been dealing with them too much because of this transfer, if that’s the first place their mind goes to.
The flitbit on Yuniesky’s wrist that they recently took apart and reassembled crackles to life.
Conditional, through a severely bit-crushed text to speech voice, says "Pretty much yeah colon end parenthesis."
Yuniesky does not glare at Conditional for not taking their side, instead taking all their energy to resist pinching their brow in exasperation.
“That cannot be right.” Yuniesky says in the most defeated tone they can muster, before tacking on, “And don’t use Conditional as a stand-in for a search website.”
Abu-Zaid ignores that, swinging their bat around absentmindedly like it’s fate that someone will get a head injury today and not just a probable chance. “Anyways, are we going to start practicing or what?”
If Yuniesky was a bit less annoyed at this entire situation and not currently drowning in sweat — why did whatever-god-that-created-the-sun make it be like that in Texas and why hasn’t the entity already been dragged into traffic — they would perhaps take a moment to think rationally about the prospects of having a person who knew nothing about the sport trying to take a literal swing at it. Then would have probably shrugged the problem into the eagerly awaiting lap of Ivy, who could ramble for hours about every gods blessed rule that’s been documented inside and outside of the currently missing book on top of actually being not-rusty in pitching. Or any other member that has actually seen active play. Or anyone else at all.
Yuniesky only thinks rationally for half of a second before asking: “You at least know the concept behind this, right?”
“Of course!” Abu-zaid puffs out their chest in a common show of dramatics, “Hit the ball, score points. I mean, blaseball episodes are such a staple! How could I get by without knowing that?”
In what universe is blaseball knowledge such a common topic, much less the vague insinuation that Abu-zaid probably meant that as a life or death situation, knowing them, for civilians? Practically all of the dangerous nonsense only happens to players or, barring that, only a person's metaphysical self. Actually, you know what, with what Yuniesky has heard of previous Abu-Zaid exploits that's not something they want to know the answer to. Also, staple of what? The American lifestyle? Unfortunately, Yuniesky is pretty sure Flootball has that spot taken already.
They’re resolutely ignoring the episode part of that sentence.
“That’s good enough for now,” Yuniesky says instead, “Let's just see how this goes and then go from there.”
Yuniesky prepares their stance. They might not have played as a pitcher since their brief time in the mlinor leagues at least half a decade ago, but they can remember how to do this well enough to do a simple, easy-to-hit throw.
Abu-Zaid, on the other hand, is holding their standard bat like they're going to stab someone with it in a couple of minutes. It reminds them, weirdly enough, of that time Yuniesky saw some Lovers players fencing each other in a parking lot. It wasn’t even a stadium parking lot, Yuniesky was just in town to pick up some lunch when they happened across the two and recognized the uniform.
The chance of someone getting a head injury today is going up right before Yuniesky’s eyes.
“Why on earth are you holding your bat like that?”
“How else would I hold it?”
“Like every other person does? There’s no way you're going to get enough swing on that. Can you at least put both hands on the handle?”
Abu-zaid does, and then holds it back a bit at Conditional's additional prodding. Well, at least the monolith isn’t taking the other’s side on this. Small mercies.
Yuniesky starts to wind up, then stops half way through. Unfortunately, curiosity has bitten them once more. Curse humans' fervor for knowledge.
“Why were you holding it like a sword, anyways?”
Their arms, still holding up the bat, get a bit in the way of shrugging, but Abu-Zaid makes a solid effort of it anyways. “On a recent adventure Chester and I had to deal with a curse sword for a bit. It was pretty neat! I mean, I hate dealing with the ‘fight against the darkness’ all of a sudden when I’m just trying to get ice cream, but the end with the big castle popping out of an abandoned cave was really cool.”
“Huh…”
Just like that, Yuniesky is reminded as to why they need to stop questioning anything that Abu-Zaid does or implies. They’re going to get their entire worldview rearranged by accident one day by the dolt. Until then they’re not going to think any deeper about anything they say.
“No more stalling!” Abu-zaid says brightly, breaking through their thoughts, “Throw the ball!”
“Alright, sure.” Yuniesky says before lobbing the ball at the other.
There’s a flash in Abu-Zaids’s eye, which is insane to be able to see anything like that from so-and-so feet aways. A flurry of movement, and then the ball’s sailing over Yuniesky into left field where Chester is currently… Napping? Sunbathing? Whatever the mech does while loafing around outside.
How on earth, Yuniesky thinks around Abu-Zaids extremely loud cheering, How on earth did they get a hit on the first try. Yuniesky had to practice a lot, after they first fell, to get back to something passible. Why did they have to do all of that, go through all of that trouble, when apparently the blaseball gods can just decide to imbue random people with skill.
“Great.” They manage to say anyways, “Good job.”
They can feel the headache behind their eyes growing by the second.
Alternative ending / Omake:
Ending Authors Note: Thanks for reading!
This was inspired by
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
trope_of_the_month’s September prompt (First Times), although I’m not posting this under the comm or officially affiliating (in the loosest sense) this with it since I took the words quite literally and this doesn’t really fit under the trope or anything like that. So it would feel too disingenuous for me to do that haha, but since it’s a new comm I wanted to point it out anyways! If it piques your interest, give it a look! :DThis is also why this is being posted in not-september haha
Extra Queries:
Q: Sun? Shouldn’t it be horizon weather?
A: I usually write it like that, but for the purpose of a joke the sun and the Suns in the game are different. Horizon weather is localized to stadiums during play, also for the purpose of a (different) joke. This is proof that you can change how I think about anything in this game as long as I find it silly enough.
Q: Speaking of Suns, Didn’t Namerifeht make the Suns? Why does Yuniesky not know what god made the sun?
A: Namerifeht only made the Suns that were made for the purpose of blaseball, the actual sun that the earth spins around is a different thing. See Above Answer.
Q: Aren’t their stats the same?
A: Overall, yeah: 3 stars. I don’t remember the specifics since numbers are slippery in my mind and I don’t have a screen shot of that. I was going to have a joke about how Conditional is actually mostly responsible for that rating since Yuniesky tends to get struck out, but I couldn’t fit it in. Point is that AZ just doesn’t have to work for those stats, haha.
Q: How is this before Coronation starts? Abu-Zaid didn’t fall.
A: Just Accept It. (...There was a couple of hours between the team reveal and play, IIRC…? (<-- reaching))