Strategic considerations guided decision-making at the highest levels and whim at the middle levels, but there existed handfuls of heroes at the bottom who despised anything that failed to further their art. Those few cared nothing about either peace or war, but only for challenge. For that reason Boxer Andit one day met Arrarix, Musashi, and Master T at the agreed location in Opuwa with a column under one arm and a statue under the other. The four, a number chosen based on Convergence/Divergence group size and because everyone else had turned them down, raised the statue and knocked it down in the ancient fashion neglected after the formation of Exploring with its corps of professional game-finders. Marking the direction the fallen statue pointed, they rode.

Boxer Andit set the pace, hunched over the bars of his little bicycle complete with a bell that went ding ding. A giant tire rolled behind him, powered by the energetic Arrarix running inside, to the rear of which Musashi rode a motorcycle with two sidecars, one for each sword. Master T stood on the roof of a Model T in the rear that knew what had to be done and drove forward without its driver's involvement. They had piled Ogre UTASes inside it. The procession passed within sight of several sets of options buttons surrounded by splotches of paint and leaning signposts bearing big wooden arrows, all reassuring territorial indicators for travelers not out for trouble.

Those four looked left and right and never stopped till they left paint far behind and came to a raised plane of pavement, a single squirrel high and longer and wider than a prototype mead hall. Nine towers with extending bridges rose at regular intervals to accommodate up to nine ships at once, for Furious Galaxy owned the nearby game and did as it would. The riders skirted the landing facilities including the pad itself, the warehouse, the armory, and of course the bathhouse, not then in use, to reach the Back button and, they hoped, a test of skill.

White clouds, white nets, white pants and skirts! The smell of fresh balls, the plok as they bounced! The blue and green courts of the sports jewel in Furious Galaxy's legendary crown that the hero has to reassemble if he hopes to prevent the resurrection of the demon king, little realizing that same villain had given him the quest in the guise of an old sage slain years earlier, Let's Do It With a Racket!, welcomed all comers.

Dozens of courts, rows and rows of them, and beyond those, sporting goods stores, and then stadia, also in the dozens. Salerno-class frigates, Consolation-class transports, and Iowa-class battleships kept station over those, and more models the invaders could not identify despite their attendance of several briefings where a green archer lectured victims on Furious Galaxy ship classes with the zealotry of someone who knew her audience disagreed with her about the importance of the subject matter and tried to fill the gap with enthusiasm, much like Construction dumping earth into a moat after it decided to add a new wing to a castle.

Most visitors must have preferred the elaborate indoor facilities furnished with clay and grass courts, not to mention seats for spectators who wanted to watch Rein Weissmuller and Seo Yoo-joon compete in a contest other than the subjugation of worlds and stars. A few pairs of competitors could be seen that way and over there outside, enjoying friendly matches, gentle breezes, and breezy chats. None of them seemed prepared to engage in a battle that stripped the thin coat of civilization off the tiger hearts they no doubt possessed.

The invaders wandered the courts, away from the stadiums and the ships overhead that promised an unequal fight if engaged. The wind rustled their hair, except Master T's, and farther out shook the leaves of trees that the natives allowed to grow in areas where the courts became less compactly placed and the vistas more scenic. Instead of uninterrupted playing fields, walkways began to separate them, then fences, shrubs, and statuary. Plaster tennis players in various phases of serving oversaw athletic competitions, or would if anyone strayed that far from the glamorous stadia. Perhaps they had when the game first launched.

The field density lowered even more past that as the wanderers approached a lake. Picnic tables civilized the shore. A rowboat with no passengers floating amid the sparkling waters demonstrated anyone would abandon ship sooner than miss a tennis match. A couple courts here and there stood as examples of what the people really wanted. Which was tennis.

The interlopers, after gazing on that scene and the yet lower frequency of play spaces farther on, started to turn around, resolved to pick a fight with the first characters they found regardless how bright the fires of their eyes flared or how occupied with existing opponents they happened to be, when dots on the other side of the lake became bigger dots, then three big dots and one huge dot. Three people they saw, two of them local girls judging by their tennis whites and the physiques which distinguished Let's Do It With a Racket! from more serious sports stories. The third was a woman wearing a gray uniform enriched by medals and a ring of six circles that marked its wearer as a member of the interstellar nation Sixth Eminence according to their memories of a briefing run by an animated Rare. Behind the three bobbed a Haetae-class destroyer, also of the Sixth Eminence. The strangers recognized it by its small size, bigger than only half a dozen or so courts put together, and its general curviness, a ship shape more appropriate for Let's Do It With a Racket! than that of the blocky behemoths hovering over the stadia.

Four pairs of eyes met three pairs and a sensor suite. The talking, laughing, and bouncing of the natives and the Furious Galaxy crewwoman stopped, as did the search of the four outsiders. All eight walked, step by step, not distracted by any foliage, glittering lakes, or rocks in the way that they should have let distract them if they wanted to avoid a few stumbles, toward a couple courts halfway between the two groups. Boxer Andit and Arrarix, the heroes of the fist and the letter A, drifted apart from Master T and Musashi, the heroes of M and the sword, while on the other side, the crewwoman and her ship split off from the two tennis experts.