Chapter 15: Game, Set, & Match

The score was tied. On the opposite side of the beach, the "friendly" game of volleyball going on was not proving to be so sedate.

In fact, it was on the verge of becoming downright aggressive--if Miss Dorothy Catalonia had anything to say in the matter, that is.

"Miss Relena, we didn't realize you had such hidden talents in the athletic field. You just keep getting better and better. I am impressed." The dripping with honey goo words that slither from Dorothy's mouth were almost too much to take. Between her "witty" comments and the heat in the broad noon sunlight beating down on her head, Relena could feel rather faint. Should she just give up the match?

But the thought of the resulting snide commentary and gloating, accompanied by the smirk that would no doubt emerge from Ms. Catalonia's face was more than enough to make Relena Darlian want to beat her--and win the game.

However, that didn't exactly seem to be the same premise Relena's volleyball partner was playing with. Really, if one didn't know how dogged and tenacious Quatre R. Winner was--especially when he was challenged--one might come to the conclusion that he was, well, letting a lot of the balls that had come his way slide.

Oh, well.

Relena lets that particular ponderance go as well as she prepares to serve the ball in her hands to the opposing team.

That just means I have to try even harder! The next point wins the game.

Relena smiles in determination across the "net." Duo had gotten tired of posing as the net. He literally swore up and down that both Hilde and Dorothy were purposely smacking the beach ball straight into his head.

It's amazing what Duo Maxwell could think up of string and buoys when he was anxious to get out of "work"-- and away from the pair of vicious girls. He scurried away after making the makeshift net as fast as he could go from them.

Now, at first Hilde didn't welcome being partners with Dorothy Catalonia--but when Miss Relena had kindly taken the sheepish looking, Dorothy berated Quatre under her wing, there was no other choice.

And Hilde was stuck with the blonde vixen whether she liked it or not. For better or for worse and though Hilde was loathe to admit it, it looked like, in this game, it was for the better.

Dorothy was proving to be quite a go-getter.

She could sure belt those balls across the net--even if she's got a rotten personality.

Hilde thinks to herself, smiling at the opposite pretty blue eyes of Relena who was about to serve the volley directly at her.

Hilde could intuitively tell that the ball was seconds away from slamming into her court...

Relena's delicate, soft girlish palm slaps the ball at full speed right towards her opponent...

"Thank you, Miss Relena." Dorothy intercepts Hilde's ball to Hilde's frowning chagrin. Swift as the sunlight trickling over her pale shoulders, Dorothy takes aim at her own target across the net. Intense competitive fire burns in her misty, indigo eyes as she goes in for the kill.

Quatre Raberba Winner was directly in her sights. He had stayed thus far pretty laid back and intimidated. He had let Relena do all their team's work.

So let's see what you're made of, Quatre Raberba Winner.

If Dorothy's eyes could cackle, they would be.

"En garde!" Dorothy states, staring Quatre down in the eye as the ball zings across the net towards him. There was challenge in her every movement and eyebrow, aimed at him...

A challenge Quatre Winner takes up. Relena was pleasantly shocked to find her heretofore inactive volleyball mate rise to the occasion. His own aqua eyes squint in determination he had kept dormant in the game up to now.

And Quatre makes a valiant dive at the purposely hard spiked down ball. His willowy looking little hand smacks it so hard that Relena was afraid the air volleyball might burst.

But no, it did not. The ball went shrieking across the net, through the air and...

SPLASH!!!

Right down smack in the water before Dorothy Catalonia's amazed face. Water splashed up all over her golden leopard bikini and torso, and up to her previously taunting face. She slips, attempting to counter it, but instead goes down into the water.

"SCORE!!!" Hilde, even on the losing team, couldn't help but get excited out of Dorothy's embarrassing defeat.

Besides, she looks so darn funny all wet and dripping! Just look at those wilting eyebrows!! Ha ha ha!!!

"We won!!" Relena happily sings out. Her exuberant innocence was her most beautiful and gracious feature as she splashes up and down, clapping at the victory.

"Quatre, you were wonderful!" Relena congratulates her friend giving him a friendly sweet hug around his neck.

"Well...I...." Quatre looks down with a blush. He wasn't quite certain what had gotten into him. He had been determined from the start that he wasn't going to play very hard. After all, this was just a friendly game he was participating in with the girls on a pleasant vacation. It didn't really matter who won or lost. It was just him, with Miss Relena, Miss Hilde, and....

Her.

Her and her beautiful, challenging indigo eyes...

"Ha ha ha ha, hee hee hee!! Look at Dorothy, Duo! Come see! You look like a wet rat, Miss Dorothy!" Hilde could no longer contain her teasing laughter.

Indeed the water dripping down her face and flattened platinum blonde hair was a sight that could make a cat laugh.

Hilde wished Duo was there was to see it. Snooty proper Senator Dorothy Catalonia, looking all soaked and drenched, even caused Miss Relena's courteous mouth to twitch and let out a stumbled giggle as well.

The only one who wasn't laughing at Dorothy's piteous state was the one who had caused it. Quatre quickly wades over to where she was standing and shivering in a shocked, mortified state.

"Miss Dorothy! Forgive me, I--" Quatre begins to apologize profusely to her shock of wet hair.

"--lived up to your name, Master Winner. It's about time. You were beginning to disappoint." Dorothy's voice comes out sullenly from somewhere beneath her hair. She closes her eyes tightly for a moment. Something inside her desperately didn't want to meet his sea of aqua.

Not right now...not yet.

"And congratulations to you too as well, Miss Relena. Let's hope this victorious winning streak stays with you in all your competitive bids." Dorothy finally lifts her head towards Relena. There was a knowing smile in her politically intuitive eyes as to what the Vice Foreign Minister had in store for the next upcoming days.

Dorothy then haughtily throws her defeated head up in the air at Quatre and stomps off. She was unsure of both her feelings and her footing, she trips over Duo Maxwell's buried-in-the-sand form as she goes.

"Watch where you're steppin'! OUCH!!" Duo's loud yelling could be heard across Catalina Island.

The pleasant afternoon was quickly waning. Relena and Hilde joined lonely looking Miss Po, who had indeed gone for a swim but without her Chinese partner, as their last hour here comes to a close.

"It's so sad when you have to leave such a pleasant, pretty place as this." Cathrine Bloom finds herself just as she had been before, as if in deja vu, but now the opposite.

She and Dorothy Catalonia were, both inexplicably leaving one another unquestioned as to how they each ended up drenched and wet, and were both undressing out of their little swimsuits and into more regular traveling clothes.

"I always feel that way when the circus has to leave someplace behind where we laughed and played and had fun with all our new friends." Cathrine, the circus girl, muses, trying to take her befuddled thoughts away from the "fun" she had this afternoon on the beach that her still palpitating heart didn't understand.

Oh, Trowa! How am I going to face you?

Cathrine shakes off the uneasy anxiety as she finishes blow drying her freshly showered head and with with a dazed smile, offers the golden dryer over to its similarly showered owner.

"A circus? I suppose there could be some similarities. I DID entertain several clowns today, I'm sure." Dorothy dawdles in drying her hair, comparing most if not all the male visitors on the island today to clowns.

That is, of course except for the one who really is one.

"That Trowa Barton of yours is really quite a well-mannered man for a clown, if you don't mind my saying so." Dorothy only added that little last politeness by political rote. She had been accustomed to speaking her mind ever since she was the tiniest child--and getting away with it too.

"And extremely good looking too." Dorothy herself muses now, gazing out her balcony, leaning over, inconspicuously, in her black velvet bathrobe, to take a peek at the tall man who was just returning, at full stride. Against the sunsetting sky, he was quite a figure to behold. His firm, yet artistic jaw was set, an agile, yet thin muscular form, tall and stately--the chestnut shock of hair was alight with the last rays of sunshine, and reminded Dorothy so much of that strong, heroic prince from her childhood fantasies...

"--if you don't mind my saying so..." Dorothy whispers again, noting the way her little circus girlfriend hops up, somehow knowing that Trowa was nearby. Her nimble feet trip over to Dorothy, peeking over her shoulder, clutching at the velvet arm, hiding a bit, so that, childishly, foolishly, she would not be seen by him.

Foolish child. If you're in love with him, why don't you just admit it...?

Even Dorothy's ever-so-practical mind could not keep her own heartbeat from skipping out of place for a second or two from the next sight she sees.

Although, by no means of the imagination, was the sight of smallish, scrawnyish, skinnyish and short, Quatre R. Winner, one bit as breathtaking as his predecessor, Mr. Barton, in swimwear, however, there was something quite...interesting...about him.

And though Dorothy Catalonia watched his yellow hair catch fire in the basking sunset and wanted desperately to find out what that "something interesting" was--

She was absolutely terrified, and determined to never know.

And so, both young women, both in total denial to what their heart's were telling their stubborn minds, look at each other. They steel themselves to face those certain men again.

Not a single word was spoken. Each had a different tact on how to handle the situation. Both decided now what to do, despite their fluttering hearts...