Dragons Games Update Chapter 9-3

3748 word update

The sun blazing into his eyes, Jim jogged out with his team, sports shoes digging up the home turf beneath their feet. The crowd cheered as the set up, but the spectators were just as excited when the Trojans marched out from the visitor change rooms.

The crowd erupted as the kick-off commenced, the volume of hollers and woops rising and falling, but never quiet fading. Neither of the teams held back, the tackles just rough enough to daze anyone unfortunate to be caught in them, but not as violent as to start a punch-up, at least not yet. Jim felt his nerves getting the better of him as he watched Gavin get piled on – what if he got anotherconcussion and missed the finals?

But then he heard someone call his name from the sidelines, Jim turning to see Cassidy, Kendra, Sasha and some of the drama gang calling his name, and all his worries melted away. With them watching, he felt like he could do anything, and he did, spearing the ball up the field and bringing the offence within twenty meters of the try line.

Matty made a play, launching himself like a diver off a board through the defence, the referee blowing his whistle to signal a score. As Jim took charge of the following goal, he could literally feel his ego swelling like a balloon as he delivered a swift, accurate punt between the posts. On his victory run he slid past the drama club on his knees, kicking up the dirt as he held out a hand, high-fiving each member until ending the slide with Cassidy’s claws over his fingers.

The game was as thrilling as it was fun, because as Jim scored the next couple goals without missing a beat, his girlfriend and the crowd cheering him on, he felt untouchable. Not only had he passed an exam he’d once thought he would fail miserably at, but he’d scored with the love of his life, and his new drama club friends heralded him as their saviour. He’d always loved showing off, but now he had physical proof that backed up his deeds, and that just made the boasting a whole lot sweeter.

Were they up on points because of Jim? Who could say? But he was in the zone right now, and as long as he was around, there wouldn’t be any more ties or golden points, he’d make sure of it.

The Mythics offence moved from side to side across the field as the Trojans gave it their all, the ball changing hands as the sets tallied up, and the timer ticked on. When halftime arrived the Mythics were up two points, but Mr. Bahril still chewed out the boys for every little mistake they made during the first half.

“They’ve got a slowpoke in the left centre,” Mr. Bahril said, Jim spitting out an orange seed as he chewed away. “Focus that dinklefoot down, and don’t hold back. The next time you boys are in this locker room you better be winners.”

With that new strategy down, the Mythics doubled down on the attack, singling the slower player out and pushing the tackles towards him so he’d get tired faster. Some might consider that mean, but you didn’t care about your opponents when it came down to the finals, especially if Mr. Bahril was your coach.

Isaac managed to snake his way through to the try line next, shouting many a dick joke as he celebrated, but the following set was rough. The Trojans fought for their own try, and their following goal put them up by two. The lead would switch sides once every ten or so minutes, until the final five minutes arrived and Jim scored a field goal that brought the scores to a tie.

With only minutes to go, the Mythics made a play. Gavin took the lead and speared into the Trojans, Jim, Isaac and a few others sprinting along his flank as they pushed up the field. They were pushing from their own try line up to the sixty-meter mark, but the Trojans were making it difficult to get to the halfway mark. Jim’s longest field goal was forty-two meters, and he remembered how it had been mere centimetres away from coming short of the posts. He’d never made a kick further than that, only in his free time had he managed to up it a few meters, which was much different when he wasn’t under pressure and being watched by hundreds of people.

Three tackles up and they’d reached the fifty-meter mark, Mr. Bahril screaming from the sideline to set the ball for Jim, who moved his hands from left to right at waist height, the classic sign for no.

“Heads up Jimmy!” Isaac shouted, punting the ball perpendicular to where the posts were. A dozen boys looked up into the sun as the ball arced, then fell to the ground, each one trying to get their hands on it first as they jumped to meet it.

Jim pushed off one of the Trojan players’ shoulders, planting a foot on Matty’s stomach to propel himself high into the sky, defying gravity to any onlooker. The bumpy, leather surface of the ball scratched against his chest as he cradled the ball like a baby, the young man going wide-eyed as he realised he now had to come down from this feat.

He hit the ground rolling, with approximately three seconds to do something before the Trojans drove him into the dirt. He just managed to read the number forty spray-painted onto the grass nearby, before he dropped the ball to his boot. He couldn’t get completely upright in time, so it looked like he was squatting while jutting one foot straight up in a kick. Isaac would later comment that he looked like he was in the middle of doing the can-can.

He sent it, the ball slapping off the laces on his boot, tipping end over end towards the try line. For a horrible second he thought it would go wide, but the ball made a distinct gong –sound as it bounced off the left post, swerving proudly through the pair of poles.

Jim had his butt slapped by his teammates as they congratulated him, the stands in a similar state of praise. By the time they’d all calmed down, the ref whistled for a reset, but it was nothing but a formality. There was only ten or so seconds on the clock, the Trojans would have to be lucky indeed to bring up their score at this point, and yet they tried anyway after the set began, Jim had to give them credit for trying.

The siren sounded off like an old Norse horn, music to the ears of Jim and the other Mythics. There was only one more round of the season, and it was the big one, one last game between them and the cup. Even Mr. Bahril’s lips were turned up at the corners, which was a major reaction from the grumpy coach.

“Well done out there, all of you,” Mr. Bahril said, the odd words of praise giving the celebrating Mythics pause, like they’d misheard him. They hurried into the locker room, but not before Jim was snuck up on by Cassidy, the dragoness giving him a tight hug from behind, her tassels still in her hands as they brushed his sweaty chest. The way her bosom spilled over his shoulder blades like dough made his face warm.

“Keep your heads on straight, boys,” Mr. Bahril reminded the team as they settled in the changing room, away from the praises of the crowd just outside. “Semi-finalists aren’t the same as Grand finalists, and there’s only one winner a season.”

“We got this, no worries,” Isaac said, splashing the contents of his water bottle over his face. “We’re a team of badasses, who got this in the bag – bagasses.”

“The Spartans will be saying the same thing,” the coach warned, the team going quiet at the mention of that name. The Spartans were the best team out there, and the Mythics had lost to them more than once over the past few years. Their rivalry was almost dangerous, particularly with the mothers of boys from both teams, who had been caught in screaming matches with each other outside of the matches, the hatred was contagious.

“Well they didn’t have to fight a dragon,” Jim announced, the boys nodding along in agreement.

“They’ve gone through their own challenges, no doubt about that,” Mr. Bahril continued. “I’m fairly confident we’ll have the home turf – the principal’s made sure the campus gets a lot of attention this season – but that’s where our advantages end. I don’t need to tell you all it’ll be no cakewalk, this will be the biggest season yet, for all of us. So I’m giving you all homework.”

There was a groan shared by the Mythics. “Quiet down!” coach ordered. “You’re winners now, yes, but this will help you stay that way. I want you doing personal training at least every other day, keep yourselves in tip-top shape. I’ve got the date of the big game right here, so clear your calendars. You shouldn’t have any exams around this time, but whatever you’re doing you better can it, I don’t care if it’s your cousin’s funeral, save the fifteenth at all costs, maybe even the fourteenth just to be safe. Now go clean up and get yourselves some rest, and well done again.”

As the boys made to get changed, Jim was called back by the coach. “A word, Jim.” When the rest of the team was out of earshot, Mr. Bahril narrowed his eyes down at the young man. “That was a damn fine kick out there, I want you to do that again in the finals.”

“I’ll try, sir,” Jim replied.

“You spend a lot of time with that theatre mob, don’t you?” he went on, Jim nodding after a moment of hesitating. “Don’t tell me your concussion made you soft for theatrics?”

“No, well, yes, no, I just… had a lot of free time, you know? So I thought, why the hell not. They’ve got this amazing play planned for the fi-” He choked on his words, wheezing the number out like it as his dying breath.

“I don’t care about a play,” Mr. Bahril spat, apparently oblivious to Jim’s plight as the young man fought for air. “I’ll tell you this now, there is no room or time for traitors and switchers in my team, Jim. I need… the team needs you for this,” he added. “You’re going to make the game, won’t you? This whole drama or whatever its called, that stays well clear from the field, right?”

“Y-Yeah, yeah it will,” Jim said, repeating himself when the coach appeared not to believe him.

“Good. Very good.” Mr. Bahril straightened his collar, excusing himself as he made for the exit. “We’re counting on you,” he added before disappearing outside.

Jim never said another word. Not when he got changed, not when Isaac slapped him on the ass with his towel, not when the caretaker came round to lock up the change rooms. It was only when his legs took him out into the dusk, the campus nightlights turning on to illuminate the paths, did his linguistic functions reactivate. Which happened only after Cassidy nudged him with her elbow.

“Heya, what took you so long?” she asked. She was out of her cheerleading clothes and in her usual black tank top. “Everyone left a half hour ago, are you alright? You look pale.”

She stopped him, turning him by the shoulders so she could look him over. A touch of worry spread over her features, and she asked him what was wrong. With each word he said, dread crept over her features until he might as well have told her he was coming out of the closet.

“Oh no, no no no no no Jim! You’re joking! Please tell me this is all some big joke!”

But it wasn’t, and she knew that, even if she was saying otherwise. “But what about your part?” she continued. “unless Bernard comes back you’re all we have!”

“Well I can make both the play and the game!” he countered. “What time of the day is the club doing their thing?”

“Late, about seven.”

“Craaaaaap,” he sighed. “Finals are at six thirty.”

“Jim!”

“Well hang on let’s think about this,” he said, rubbing his temple as he considered. “Let’s just… do the play earlier! Yeah! Can’t we do that?”

“Kendra’s already set the time in stone,” Cassidy said. “she had everyone handing out ads promoting the play a few days ago, and the principal already approved the time. We might be able to delay it a little, but not for a whole game’s worth of time.”

“I gotta call Kendra,” he said, pulling out his phone and flipping open the case. As he tapped at the keypad, Cassidy peered over the case at the screen suspiciously.

“You have her number?” she asked, one side of her brow raised.

“She gave it to me right after I took Bernard’s part, for this exact reason I guess, why?”

Before she could answer, the ringtone cut off, and Jim brought the phone to his ear. “Hey Ken’, it’s me, I… Because that’s your nickname, I don’t know. Look, there’s a teenyproblem. We won the semi-finals and… oh right, you were there. Aw, thanks, that means a lot from you. But, uh, the thing is, the game and the play, they… they kind of… what’s the word…?”

“Coincide?” Cassidy offered.

“Right, coincide. Crazy right? So I was just wondering if that’s going to, uh be a problem. H-Hello? She hung up on me,” he said to Cassidy.

She opened her mouth to speak, when they heard distant footsteps, the two swivelling their heads in the direction of the noise. It sounded like an angry elephant was charging down the campus, which wasn’t far off the truth when they saw Kendra turning round the bend up near the science blocks.

The Typhlosion covered the hundred or so meters with remarkable speed, pretty much teleporting to Jim’s side and startling the young man so hard her sheer stopping power almost caused him to topple over. “The hell did you come from?” he asked.

“Bathroom,” she said, her face going tight with anger. “I swear if you’re backing out of the play now I will jump through that window over there.”

“I’m not backing out,” he insisted. He told her what the problem was.

“THE SAME DAY?!” Kendra exclaimed. “I bet the principal knew all along this was going to happen. Well you’re just going to have to bench yourself or something, I don’t exactly have a waiting list I can call on.”

“I can’t bench myself these are the finals,” he explained. “Why do I have to change my timetable, anyway? Can’t you do some shifting?”

“No, I can’t do any shifting, I’ve been dangling this treat over the principal’s head for months now, doing any sort of diverging now will ruin what little reputation we’ve managed to get! I doubt the principal will let me move the date anyway, prick is completely arrayed against us.”

Cassidy’s mouth formed a little ‘o’ of shock at that, but she was quick to interject. “Well if we can’t move the play or the game, we’ll just have to improvise.”

“And how can we do that with this muffin screwing everything up?” Kendra asked, jabbing a claw at Jim’s face.

“Get your stumpy hand out of my face you pear-shaped badger! You asked for my help, remember?” he added, glaring at the Pokémon as she avoided his gaze.

“Both of you, cut it out!” Cassidy interjected, raising her hands in an attempt to calm them down. “there’s a way around this, there has to be. How long does a finals game usually go for, Jim?”

“Eighty minutes, same as regular games,” he explained. “But if it comes down to golden point, there’s a max of twenty extra minutes of play time.”

“So a max of just over an hour and a half,” she said. “if there’s a tie, that is. And Kendra, how long’s the play go for?”

“The last time we rehearsed the whole thing through it took just under two hours, with a short break in the middle,” Kendra said.

“Well that lines up okay,” Jim said. “I’ll just miss the start.”

“Jim, your character is IN THE START,” Kendra reminded him.

“Then write me off until later, the game should be over by eight,” he said. “You wrote the script, just make some tweaks or something.”

Kendra went to retaliate, but her rant began with a sigh that dragged on for a few seconds. “I’m going to get an aneurism at this rate,” the Typhlosion muttered. “I guesswe might be able to delay your character’s appearance, but there’s still not a lot of room for error. What if your game goes to overtime?”

“Maybe you can make the break in the middle a bit longer?” Cassidy suggested. “That could buy us some time.”

“Some,” Kendra agreed. “You and your Mythics will just have to make sure it doesn’t go on for that long. And what if you don’t show up, Jim? Hm? Say you win, won’t there be a speech or some sort of reward ceremony? We’ll be standing on that stage like idiots waiting for you.”

“Ah I’ll just skip it, it’s all fluff anyway. Don’t worry,” Jim insisted. “Just trust me, whether we win the finals, or lose them, I’ll be there.”

His heartfelt words seemed to move Cassidy, the dragoness watching him with her eyes full of adoration. The look was reflected a little in Kendra’s expression too, but the Typhlosion was quick to compose herself.

“Fine, fine I’ll ‘trust you’,” Kendra said, digging her palms into her eyes as she sighed. “This is way too close for comfort. Three hundred and sixty days and we’re stillout of time…”

She huffed to herself and without saying goodbye, turned away and headed back to the campus. Jim watched her go, feeling much the same about their situation, as if he didn’t have enough things to split his attention on.

“You okay, Jim?” Cassidy asked, touching him on the arm.

“I’ll make it on time,” he assured.

“I wasn’t talking about the play. This final is your lifelong dream, right? If you can’t make the play, for whatever reason, I won’t hold that against you.”

“I’ll make it happen, but thanks anyway,” he said. “I was actually going to ask you about that too,” he added, looking sheepishly up at her. “This is a pretty big thing for me, you’re right, but it’d be all for nothing if you weren’t there as well, Cass.”

“Me?” she asked, blinking at him.

“Yeah. Before we met, you… distracted me.” He felt his cheeks going warm but he pressed on. “It’d really mean a lot if you’d come cheer me on, even for just a little bit,” he added when he saw the Garchomp hesitate.

“Jim,” she began, saying it like she was about to start friend-zoning him. “I’d have my makeup done by the time your game started, and I’m in one of the first scenes.”

He felt his chest tighten at that. He knew all too well of their time constraints, but a part of him hoped that if he could split his time between the game and the play, then maybe she would too. “I know, but,” he stuttered. “but I’d still like to see you. When I saw you and the others out there today, I felt like there was nothing that could stop me, and I need that edge during the championship, I need you… you know?”

“Oh Jim,” she sighed, squeezing his hand in one of hers. “I… maybe I can make it,” Cassidy considered, Jim perking up as she went on. “If not before the game, then maybe during it. There’s a big gap near the middle where I’m not in the play, including the break. I could use that time to come down and watch.”

“Really?” he asked. “So you’ll come down?”

“I will,” she said.

As they shared a hug, Jim felt that with those two words, the finals would be a sinch, and he could devote a bit more time to his lines so he didn’t stuff up the play.

“Jim?” she asked.

“Yeah?”

“Really it’s… if you can’t make the play, it’s fine. Kendra will have a fit,” she added with a nervous laugh. “but I don’t want you, I suppose, sacrificing your game for our play.”

“What are you saying?” he asked, pulling back so he could look her in the eye.

“I just… you’re doing your sports and you’re also doing Bernard’s lines, it’s like… You don’t have to prove anything to me, you know that don’t you?”

“Well… yeah…” He wasn’t sure how to answer that. That might have been part of his reasoning, but not all of it.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know how else to put this,” she said. “All I’m saying is, don’t throw your game away for anything. Even me.”

She looked away, clutching one of her horns in a way that came off as discouraged. “What’s gotten into you?” he asked, oblivious to whatever was worrying her. “if you need to talk about something, I’m right here.”

“I know,” she said. She chewed her lip in thought, only building up the courage to look at him after a minute. “I know,” she repeated. “I’m just being silly, I need a hug Jim.”

She didn’t wait for an answer, Jim cupping the back of her head as she rested her snout on his shoulder. As he wondered on her strange behaviour, Mr. Bahril’s words played through his head like a flashback: there is no room or time for traitors and switchers in my team.

He made it sound like he was choosing, so was Cassidy now that he thought about it, but he didn’t have to choose, he could make this work, he could make sure both his team and Cassidy’s club made it through the year. There had to be a way, and he’d do his best to make it work.

For her.