Dragons Games chap 10-2

2332 words update. Changed the previous jokes because I wasn't happy with them. I like the weak password joke but it seemed a little out of place. Tough decisions I know. 

“Take a good look, Jim,” Erich said. “This’ll be the last time those sponsors look in your general direction after we kick your butts.”

“Money’s always involved when people have to look at you, Erich,” Jim shot back, Erich grumbling as the Mythics laughed at him.

The referee blew his whistle, the two teams taking up their positions for the last showdown. The sponsors had the front row seats to the game, their shoes practically touching the sideline. They’d get a clean look at Jim’s face since he was a wingman, although not in this first half, since the orientation placed him on the opposite side. It’d be the biggest spotlight in his life.

Gavin set the ball on the ground after losing the coin toss, moving back a few paces to set the kick-off. His boot met the ball with a loud smack as he sent it high into the air, the game beginning with a loud roar from the crowd. In a moment the ball was framed by the lens flare of the corner field fluorescent, and the crowd went crazy as it landed and bounced into the hands of a Spartan.

The Spartan sprinted into the Mythics defence, pounds of muscle colliding in a clash of bodies as he was tackled to the ground. The Spartans passed the ball down the line with practiced discipline, each player catching the ball neatly as they gained ground.

The ball was coming up to the sideline, forcing Jim to meet the tackle himself, his muscles burning as all his strength met the Spartan’s own. Their team wasn’t just called that for a reason, each player had the body any personal trainer would be proud of, but that advantages wasn’t exclusive. Jim had taken Mr. Bahril’s training to heart, and Cassidy had often delighted in his muscles even before their more intimate encounters, so he never lost his focus when it came to keeping in shape.

He brought the Spartan down after a moment of struggling, the stands loud with cheers and boos from the home and visiting team supporters. As the play went on, the Spartans moved the ball back to centre, Jim rushing to get onside, the tackles counting up, the Spartan’s coming closer to the posts.

Twenty meters out, and the Spartans pushed for a score. One of them slipped through Gavin and Matty, neither of them reacting in time to intercept, the Spartan gunning it for the try line. Jim sprinted like his ass was on fire to tackle him, but the Spartan offloaded it to Erich, who was too far away for Jim to do anything but watch him score.

“First set, first score! BOOYAA!” Erich called, hugging his teammates as they celebrated. Jim couldn’t believe it, it was a rare thing indeed to lose so hard on the first set of tackles, and the fact it was this game of all games made it worse.

“You didn’t even earn that,” Isaac yelled from the side, shaking his fist in Erich’s direction. “That number six did all the running, and you pinched the try!”

“Just like how I pinched your mother’s breasts last night,” Erich answered, and now it was Isaac’s turn to fume as the Spartans jogged happily back to their positions for the turnover.

Jim prayed for their kicker to miss, but fate was out having dinner tonight, and the Spartans were a full score ahead and it had only been a few minutes. He could just make out Mr. Bahril on the other side of the field, bouncing up and down as he shouted at the closest Mythics. Those were definitely not the happy kinds of jumps.

The sponsors watched the fuming coach from nearby, looking a little concerned. Jim could just make out one of them taking a pen and writing something down on a little black book. They were probably thinking Erich was some sort of saint, and the Mythics a bunch of clowns.

The next kick ended in the hands of Isaac, the young man charging up the field, targeting Erich as they met in a brutal tackle. The Mythics worked their way past the halfway point, one of the centres sending a kick down to the right side of the field on the fifth tackle.

The Mythics on that side sprinted to catch it, hoping to gain a free set, and one of them caught it, the supporters cheering and crying with joy as he barrelled into the Spartans. Their celebration was short lived, however, when the ref called him out for being offside, and the ball was changed over.

As the offence and defence moved up and down the field like a metaphorical tug of war, Jim found his brow drenched with sweat, even as the frigid air turned his lungs to ice each time he breathed in. The Spartans were making them work for every meter, every push met with a rock-hard defence even Francis, the biggest guy on the Mythics, was having trouble getting through.

Gavin took charge of the coordination, like a general commanding his troops as he organised a push, the Mythics targeting a player out to get them tired quicker – a simple but tested tactic – using Jim to gain more ground when there was an opening. The Mythics, nor the Spartans, never shut their faces for more than a few seconds as they played for the ball, supporting each other as they tried to outwit and outmanoeuvre the other team.

Jim faked out his direct opponent during a push, passing the ball off to Francis, the try-line wide open for the big guy to make a run for it.

Two Spartans made to bring him down, but he was a freight train of mass they couldn’t stop, and the three of them fell like a sack of bricks over the line, the sweet sound of the whistle signalling a score for the Mythics.

After their own share of celebrations, Jim set up for the field goal, his nerves getting the better of him when he realised the sponsors would be watching him in these next few moments. He’d never experienced stage fright before, but they said there was a first time for everything, and he blamed his failure on that when he missed the posts, the kick curving too far to the right, the ball dropping into the front rows of a few disappointed fans.

“It’s not that much of a deal, chin up man,” Isaac tried when Jim hung his head, patting him on the back. Jim didn’t want to let it get to him, that was a staple in any sport, but a part of him wouldn’t stop nagging about it.

He looked up at the timer as the teams reset, guessing that Cassidy and the club would be starting their play right about now. He wondered how they’d end up doing.

He shook his head. No time for that, right now he had to think about himself. Get his head in the game, as Mr. Bahril so often told him.

The teams were desperate to get the scores in their favour, the Spartans having a short lead, but a lead nonetheless, the Mythics doubling down as they tried to even the match out. Any reservations they had about targeting the Spartan with the sprained arm were out the window now, one of the centres landing on the young man’s arm in a way that came off as a little too on purpose, and when the Spartan didn’t get up from the tackle, the ref called for a penalty.

The Spartans coach, a taller and older gentlemen who wore a cap even as the sun had long since disappeared, got into a yelling match with Mr. Bahril right in front of the sponsors when the former accused the latter of foul play, Mr. Bahril flying into a rage even though he was in the wrong. Jim couldn’t begin to grasp how the gears in the coach’s head spun, and maybe that was a good thing.

The teams formed up for the following changeover, the game continuing on as the coaches did their own thing. A substitute was called on to replace Spartan number ten, the man’s arm in bad shape by the way he winced and sobbed as he was escorted off by a medic. At least they wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore, but the Spartans weren’t about to let the whole thing slide, the tackles becoming rougher as time went on. It was just like the game with the Novas, a healthy dose of punches being thrown into the following tackles from both sides, each player playing dumb when the referees gave them warnings.

The minutes began to add up, the Mythics working desperately to find a way through the Spartans line, but they were holding them back at the halfway mark, and a changeover soon followed. Tackle by tackle, the Spartans were getting within spitting distance of the try line, Jim watching as Erich passed off the ball before Isaac could throttle him to the grass.

“Come on ref!” Isaac yelled while everyone chased after the ball. “That pass was more forward than Sasha is with Jim!”

The referee frowned in confusion, but he blew his whistle all the same, Erich having a go at him for playing favourites. The crowd roared their support for the decision, mostly the Mythics side, as there wasn’t much worse to spectators than a forward-pass being let go by the officials.

“We can’t make it this set,” Gavin panted as the team readied to play on. They would be setting up twenty meters from their try line, that was barely any room at all. “Make the kick Jim.”

“What?” Jim said. “From here?”

“We’ll move up as far as we can, we have to even up the scores!”

He was the captain so Jim couldn’t argue, the young man moving into position. Was he crazy? No Jim on earth could make a field goal from the halfway mark, let alone further.

But Gavin was right about not leaving things as a tie. Halftime was almost here and it would be better to draw than to be down on points. They had to try something.

Gavin pushed up the line, saving the tackles by passing the ball off before the Spartans could intercept, Matty gaining a few precious meters as the set began. They juggled the ball between each other, the crowd fuelling the tension in the air as they shouted and sang war cries for the teams. Jim jogged up the sideline, cracking his knuckles in preparation.

“Third, third!” Jim said to Francis, who looked at him blankly for a second before passing the information up the line. When a player said a number from one through six, it meant they were going to kick during that tackle.

It was a very early play, and it caught the Spartans by surprise, Jim digging the ball between the legs of Erich as he recalled all his kicking training. The ball bounced beautifully off his laces, bouncing off the ground like a stone skipping across the surface of a lake, every single Spartan turning around and giving ground as the lines were redrawn.

The Spartans were closer to the ball than the Mythics, one of them reaching his arms out to take it, when the ball bounced awkwardly when it next hit the grass, the Spartan miscalculating where the thing would travel next. It was like the stars had aligned, Gavin racing through the Spartan’s ranks to take possession, giving the Mythics another set at the forty-meter mark when he was brought down.

“More kicks just like that, dude!” Isaac yelled, Jim giving him a thumbs up from the sideline. With more space behind them, the Mythics had room to breathe, and now it was the Spartans who were desperately trying to keep them back. It was no field goal, but a move Jim was proud of.

“Atta boy!” someone said, Jim picking out the voice over the incredible volume of the crowds. His eyes turned towards the couple of booths normally reserved for the more eager campus staff, seeing a familiar face grinning back from the fourth row. Jim wouldn’t have been able to pick out the voice over all the noise, if it hadn’t belonged to a relative.

Jim chuckled as his father waved at him, the older man sitting conspicuously close to a woman beside him, the two pretty much sharing the same seat. Jim had little time to think much on it, jogging back down the field so he was onside.

Jim’s kick put the Mythics on the front foot, and a wave of relief washed over him as Matty broke through on the dummy half, putting the Mythics in the lead much to the disappointment of the Spartan fans.

“Please fuck up the kick again,” Erich said to Jim when the Spartan passed him.

Jim wiped back his hair, wet with sweat, as he set up for the following goal. It was almost the exact same spot where the last kick was, the same distance, but that wasn’t a bad thing. He knew now what adjustments to make, and when he finally brought himself to kick it, he prayed to all the deities in popular fiction that the kick didn’t go wide this time.

“Mollygrubs!” Erich yelled at the exact time Jim kicked the ball, trying to psyche him out by yelling nonsense. He sent it, the trajectory looking abysmal. Please turn, he thought, leaning his body to the right as if that would somehow have an effect on the ball.

Yet perhaps it did, the ball saying goodbye to physics at the last moment, jutting through the air at a rough angle and sailing straight through the posts, Jim matching the crowd’s enthusiasm as he pumped his fists, making sure he pointed and laughed at Erich when he could.