Welcome to Gaia! ::

Aya heaved a sigh as he rolled to his side, watching some birds not too far from where he was resting pick at the ground. He wondered if there was some food there or if they were just as bored as he was. Probably the food...birds were either looking for food, eating food, pooping, or sleeping. They were never bored. He wondered what it was like to be a bird, free to fly wherever you wanted whenever you wanted. Not to say he couldn't walk anywhere...but...flying seemed more fun!

He finally rolled to his feet and moved to get his Kikombe shell that he'd borrowed from the main pile by the playing fields. Ever since he joined, he knew he wanted to be a player. He was huge for a wild dog and he wanted to use that to his advantage. Not terribly light on his feet, he figured he'd be a better defender than anything else. He still needed some shell skills, though, and now when he walked somewhere he took a shell with him.

Batting the shell back and forth between his front paws, he headed over to the practice fields to see if anyone was out and about. No one had recruited him yet, but he didn't blame them. He really hadn't had a chance to prove himself yet. While he wasn't the smartest wild dog out there, he was definitely strong and quick for his size. Again, not very agile guy, but that wasn't his game. His bright idea to start his own team was going slow but...well. He had interest from Aka, one of the hybrids, so that was good! He just needed a goalie.

Once he got to the practice field, he hummed to himself and began going through the drills that he watched the cubs do. Front right, back left, front left, back right, repeat. Over and over until his paws hurt.

A voice made Aya look up from his drills, and he stepped on the shell to keep it in place. His tail wagged just a bit as the leopard approached, a friendly air about him. That was one thing Aya loved about this pride...there were no mean creatures anywhere! At least, none that he'd seen. His time in the rouge lands with his sister had made him think everyone was rude and cruel, but the Kikombe was proving him wrong every single day.

"Hello," he said in return, wagging his tail a bit harder. "I think I've seen you around, too.' The leopard looked familiar to him, at least. He recalled a new addition to the pride just a bit after himself, and if he was thinking this was the leopard he had seen, then he knew he had a feisty guy on his hands. The one thing he remembered was that the other male seemed to love competition even though he still didn't have a perfect grasp of the game. To be honest, though, Aya was no professional either.

"I'm Aya," he returned, a grin on his face. "I was practicing a bit, yes! I want to get a team together, but I don't think anyone would want to play with me if I'm bad, so I need to get better first. You're more than welcome to join. It's more fun that way!" That, and Kikombe really wasn't a solo sport. Having someone to practice with would help them both in the long run.

"So, are you a player?" he asked as he batted the shell to Kala to warm him up a bit.

Aya wagged his tail as the leopard pawed the shell around a bit. He seemed to be a natural...but felines were far more used to manipulating things with their paws than canines were since their claws were much more integral to their hunting and - in Kala's case - climbing trees. The question made him nod and he reached out with a paw to stop the shell, carefully going through his agility training again.

"Yes...I'm not really good with shell control, though," he admitted sheepishly. "Too fancy for me. I'm really good at stopping it, though," he said, lifting his head up in pride. "So I specialize in goal tending. My sister is a trainer so she spends a lot of time kicking shells at me," he said with a weak laugh. Sometimes he was sure their 'training' sessions were just an excuse to try to ding him in the head with a shell, but hey. What didn't kill you made you stronger, and as far as wild dogs went, Aya was pretty darn strong. He was still fairly small next to a lion, but among others of his kind he generally stood head and shoulders above the rest.

"Do you have a position you like?" he asked, pressing his toes against the edge of the shell to tip it back before kicking it, sending it hopping over to Kala again. "You seem to have great control of the shell...you must be great!"

Aya gave a little bark of laughter as Kala downplayed his talents. "It's like the shell is on a vine that's tied to your paws. Look, you haven't messed up once," he pointed out. His own paws were very tiny in comparison to the leopard and he didn't have the dexterity of the feline, so his own skills he had gained by practice. Kala was ahead of him in skill and it seemed he hadn't been practicing for months, or, if he had, he was downplaying it quite a bit.

"I bet you'd be great at that, being offense," the wild dog agreed. "It comes so naturally to you. What do you know about the game? Or...what questions do you have? I might be able to answer some of them," he offered, tail wagging happily. "I'm trying to keep up on the rules and things since the goalie is kind of the...the rock of the team. They can see the whole playing field at once, where the other players might be focused on just a tiny part, so the goalie calls out to them if they see players on the other team being sneaky or doing plays."

Aya's tail continued to wag while Kala spoke, and he tilted his head to the side slightly as he listened. He nodded slightly and panted softly, a grin on his face in the process of cooling off.

"Well...that's the bare bones of the game," he said happily. "So you've got the basic idea down, at least! There's lots of other little rules...like...you have to stay on the field. There's marked lines in the dirt that, if the shell goes out, the play is dead and the team that kicked it out has to give it to the other team. Let's see...what else..."

He laid down as he thought, a little hot from all his training. There was a pool not too far off that he'd go to get a drink from when he was done talking with the leopard. "You're allowed to bump and hit other players, but not too much. If it gets focused on the fighting the game is stopped and either one or both players will have to sit out for a while. The worst part is, if just one player goes out, the team can't put someone else on the field so they have to play down one player! It's really easy to score for the other team that way," he said a bid morosely. "But it's good if you're the team that's up a player. So you can get hurt sometimes...that's why I like being the goalie, too," he said with a sheepish smile. "Players can get in trouble for hitting a goalie because they're supposed to stay in one spot. So generally, goalies don't get hit."

"Oh no, you don't have to be good at it," Aya said with a shake of his head. "There's only roughhousing. But if two players get agitated at each other they can go at it for a little bit, but they're both penalized for it. And if one wants to fight and the other doesn't, then there's no fighting. But if you play a clean game you won't get into any scrapes."

He tilted his head before getting up and grabbing a stick with his mouth. He dragged a line in the dirt and counted off three paces before drawing another. From there he drew two more lines within the marked off area, one third of the distance both times.

"That long," he said after setting the stick down, patting the first segmented third. "There are three periods, each lasts as long as the shadow of the sun takes to pass from the first mark to the second. Then you get a little break to regroup, then start at the next line, and so on until all three periods are done."

Aya's ears perked up as Kala spoke and he glanced over the leopard's shoulder as if he could see the cubs. His tail wagged just a bit as he glanced back a Kala, mouth open in a happy pant.

"Of course! I'd love to teach them," he said with a little nod. He loved pups and cubs and, while he never had raised any himself, he liked the idea of being able to led a paw when he needed to.

"Come back any time! I'll probably be around here," he said with a laugh. He kicked the shell back towards the goal after giving a little nod. He was glad he'd met Kala...maybe he could get the leopard on his team if he couldn't find someone else. He certainly seemed like he had the passion!