“Calling”

It was mid-day before the ducks noticed the brothers were missing. At first, it wasn’t a cause of alarm, but when neither answered their comm. units, the team began to worry. They broke up into units to search, and eventually, Tanya and Mallory found them—in the gym. Watching the brothers skeptically, they finally decided to call the others for clarification.

At first, the ducks blinked in pure shock. Then, slowly, as reality seemed to creep into their senses, they roared with laughter. On the racket ball court were Wildwing and Nosedive. Sweat saturating his tee-shirt along his collar and down his chest, Wildwing huffed as he threw the ball into the air, then slammed it with his racket. The ball zoomed toward the wall. As it bounced off, Nosedive lunged, but his racket missed the ball by millimeters.

Scowling when the ball rolled upon the floor, Nosedive scooped it up and served. This became the pattern. The two lunged, swatted, and swiped with their rackets, yet in the five minutes the team observed the brothers, neither of them came close to hitting the ball after the serve.

Eventually, Nosedive called his brother a “spaz” when Wildwing failed to hit a ball that smacked him directly in the chest. The older brother then took on the name calling, and “spaz” became the term used when one of them missed the ball—which happened after every serve.

After about twenty minutes, Wildwing actually hit the ball, but it smacked directly into his little brother’s tail. Under Nosedive’s intense glare, Wildwing lazily collapsed to the floor, huffing from exhaustion. Nosedive took the hint and followed suit, laying his head back upon his brother’s stomach.

“Racket ball sucks,” the younger brother complained, pushing his sweaty bangs from his forehead. “Whose bright idea was this, anyway?”

Wildwing chuckled and ruffled his brother’s hair. “Yours, kiddo.”

“Yeah, but you listened.”

“You know, I’m beginning to think this is not our sport.”

A drip of something fell upon the older brother’s head. It was cold, not sweat. He wiped it off his forehead, then opened his eyes. Looking at the clear liquid, Wildwing didn’t understand where it came from until he looked up—and gasped.

Buckets of freezing cold water splashed down upon he and Nosedive, saturating them and making them grunt in protest and push to his feet. Soaking wet, his once hot body now freezing cold, Wildwing glowered at his team, especially Mallory and Tanya, who held the buckets.

The redhead smirked. “Don’t quit your day job.”

The End