Ansaru’s boys yelled: “Yeah!” Dellian and his team let loose their signature call—a hooted warble they’d developed over the last couple of years, which to their ears sounded magnificently savage.

Alexandre smiled tolerantly. The light strips ribbing the arena walls turned gold. Dellian felt the gravity start to reduce further as the arena’s spin slowed. All the boys swayed about like seaweed in a current. As always, falling gravity made him feel bizarrely light-headed. The referees both threw the flagballs upward. All four of the flashing globes soared up toward the axis.

Gravity reached about five percent. Alexandre blew the whistle.

Dellian’s muncs crouched down fast, thrusting their clenched hands into the center of the ring they were forming. Dellian hopped onto the platform of stumpy hands, squatting down. The cohort read his every muscle movement perfectly; he jumped as if he was trying to power himself all the way to the planet below. The muncs flung their arms up in perfect synchronization, slim flower petals bursting open.

He rocketed upward, body turning a half somersault, as he headed for the first polyhedron—and a hexagonal surface that was angled just so. Drawing his knees up almost to his chin. And hit-kick. The power bounce. Soaring toward the polyhedron two up. The air around him full of flying boys. Tracking them and the flagballs, trying to project where they were all going. Then the muncs were rising, from above an impossibly hefty bird flock startled into the air.

Dellian saw which of the Ansaru boys was going defensive on one of their flagballs. “Intercepting a D,” he yelled.

As he thumped down onto the next polyhedron, he altered his angle and bounced on a good interception course.

“Mallot, take Dellian’s D-2,” Tilliana called. “Yi, snatch it.”

The Ansaru defender saw him coming and curled up. Dellian rotated around his center of gravity, drawing his legs up, ready for the kick.

They collided hard. The defender tried to grab Dellian’s feet (technically illegal; you could only bump opponents, not grapple), but Dellian used only one foot, which gave him an unexpected slant. The defender’s hands swung through empty air. He made good contact on the boy’s hip, sending him spinning away to thud into a polyhedron, which whirled him off along a horizontal trajectory.

Yirella zipped past him as Mallot struck the second defender. She bounced accurately off a polyhedron and streaked straight toward the yellow flagball. Dellian’s cohort caught up with him and formed up in a globe cage of tense limbs with him in the center. Together they bounced off a hurdle, four munc legs kicking to give extra velocity. He rose toward Yirella, providing cover.

The arena light strips flashed violet for three seconds. Dellian grunted in dismay. The cohort bundle read his micro-flexing and twisted, legs rigid, arms extended so they spun slowly—ready.