Nephara 4 - 3 Commonwealth of Baker Park
(4-4-2) 1 - Mercator; 2 - Stride (18 - Longship 80'), 5 - Thorn (c), 6 - Brosch, 19 - Muscadin; 13 - Saroszi, 4 - Shone, 21 - Moxham (8 - Chalk 86'), 11 - Strongbow; 9 - Bastable, 10 - Metzger (23 - Lovelace 74')
Goals: Muscadin 7', Bastable 26', Strongbow 37', Moxham 66'
The match itself went deceptively quickly. In a flurry, almost.
It opened in near-disastrous fashion. Two minutes in, Westmoreland set up Missy Tilton on the edge of the box. Roxelana Thorn was wearing the armband, with Close given a break from the rigours of the tournament. She slipped. Tilton sensed blood, her posture opened, she fired... and Mercator flung herself far, flicked out her wrist, and sent the ball spiralling wide.
All forgotten five minutes later. Muscadin, somehow, was the furthest forward, breaking through the middle. Through power and persistence, Metzger managed to flick down a cross to her. He was
expecting Bastable, probably, but Muscadin was there, and buried the half-volley past Gordon.
Bastable would put Nephara back in front after Tilton had made good on her second big chance, and a howitzer blast from Strongbow made it 3-1 by the end of the first half. The Commonwealth edged the second half, nails were bitten, and Metzger wrenched something in his shoulder with yet another selfless and brutal assist laid on for Moxham. But Nephara were through.
There was a point at which you stopped looking back, you started looking forward. For the next step was the Final itself.
For Daniella Strauss, that point came when she returned to the hotel. She didn't remember what she'd told the squad. Something vaguely uplifting but with an undertone of menace should they ever threaten to slip control of a match like that again.
She returned back to the hotel. Had the... experience synthesiser or whatever, the chubby girl, Sutter, take her bags up for her. She had to keep limber. Wasn't getting younger, and anyway, she had to get ready for Montag, the awful non-swearing man, to harangue her.
It never came, despite her lounging around in the main room, sinking a couple of cocktails, target on her back. Some guy got an autograph.
Eventually, she went back to her room. Slumped down on her bed, and, huh. Sounded like... crinkling, behind her ear?
She sat up. Blinked, squinted at her pillow. White note on a white pillow.
Helpful, at her age. She picked it up, and squinted at the sharp, staccato lettering in clerkly blue pen.
Job nearly done. One more.
Finish this right.
- M
"... Huh."
The next day, they returned to their training schedule. Life as normal. Nobody really wanted to talk about what was coming next, to confront it.
Eventually, it became too big to swallow. Excitement in some voices. Others were tentative, perhaps a little overawed. Training didn't go as well as Strauss would have hoped for; neither trait was positive.
Then the night before, over the dinner table - brown rice and flayed chicken swimming in oil, the only lubricant tolerable to the nutritionists - Aristide Metzger shared his own thoughts.
"I asked Fabian what kits we'd be wearing on the night."
Bastable, his strike partner, supplied him. "Yeah?"
Metzger nodded, mouth full of rice, then swallowed. "Yeah. Well, they're listed first, and they wear blue and white. So apparently we're in a bit of a chimera. The terracotta aways, right, the shirts and socks--"
"Right."
"-- but with the black shorts from the home kits. There's an alternative set with white numbers instead of green, just in case of... well, this."
"It's bullshit," opined Saroszi, taking their seat across. "Blue and green shouldn't count as clashing."
"Yeah, well, they do. And they do kinda clash, anyway. They can blur together."
Acatha Feldman nudged him in the spine as she passed with her bowl in hand. "Don't forget the 'keepers, eh? What's Hesterine wearing?"
Metzger swallowed again, heavily. "Dunno. Di'n't ask."
Muscadin snorted. "Like it matters for you, Acca, you'll be in the jacket all day anyway--"
"Hey, if I cared about your opinion, Vivi, I'd ask." Feldman sat with a grunt. "I think it's a chartreuse. Why d'you care, anyway, eh?"
"Huh?"
"No, not you. Ari. Why were you asking Fabian about the kits?"
They all waited patiently for Metzger to swallow again.
"Well. See, I've got this technique, right--"
"Here we go..." muttered Saroszi.
"'Positive. Visualisation.' So what I do, right, is I take what I want to see - me scoring a goal, tomorrow night - and I visualise it."
"Positively," suggested Feldman.
"Right! So I'm there." Metzger gestured in a pseudo-camera way. "In the red and black kits. I've seen the stadium. So, I'm in the stadium. The Republicans, I know what they look like too. And I see it, me, scoring the first goal in the final. And tomorrow, when I get into that position... Rowena, you'd best be paying attention--"
"Huh?" Strongbow's voice chimed in from the next table over.
"-- 'cause it's you with the cross, and when that swings in, I'm seeing myself scoring it now, right. So when it
happens. it'll just be... swhoooosh."
A pause. Saroszi gave Bastable a what-the-fuck look. Bastable gave Saroszi an I-know look.
Feldman ripped off the bandage. "Swoosh?"
"I'll just ram it home." Metzger clicked his finger. "Just like that. 'Cause it's already happened, in my daydreams. Positive. Visualisation."
A while later, Saroszi and Bastable wound up taking their bowls back to wash up at the same time. "Did you hear that shit?" Saroszi prompted.
"You know I did, Monako. I was right there."
"What is he on?"
Bastable smiled tightly. "On a goal drought, love. Does funny things to the mind. But hey; if there's a chance it works, I'm not getting in the way. You want him to lock up when the chance comes his way tomorrow?"
"No."
"Then leave it. Trust me. You know, a couple years ago when I was scoreless in, like, eight, I had this funny thing with shoelaces..."
While the leftback was Close, the strikers were closer. Emotionally as well as physically, the centre-halves were closest of all. It took one kind of intimacy to admit, as Ilyana Brosch now did, that "I'm worried about tomorrow," and another kind of intimacy to do so from the vantage of Roxelana Thorn's shoulder.
Thank God, Thorn thought.
It isn't just me. "You? Worried? Get over it. It's just another game, Yana."
"Yeah, uh, that's. You don't need me to tell you that's bullshit, Roxi." Brosch shifted under the covers to look better at her, nestling an elbow painfully into Thorn's midriff. "Come on. I want to hear you say it."
"You-- ? Ugh, fine. You're right. Yes; tomorrow makes me nervous. The expectation's choking me, we're expected and expecting to win, what if we don't, what if we don't specifically because of something I do. That about the size of it?"
Brosch allowed herself a smug smile. "Just about."
"But it's... the night before." Thorn plucked a hair out of Brosch's face. "This is where we're meant to get nervy, and not sleep enough. I was bricking it before the NFX game, and what happens? Clean sheet, easy win. I play, bluntly, like a God. Same will happen tomorrow."
"You really believe that, huh?"
"I've got to. Only way I'll be worried is if I can't get to sleep at all, but, well... I got you here. Keeping me warm." She pinched at one of Brosch's cheeks. "Like a little teddy bear."
"Oi! Hey!"
"I'll miss you, you know?"
Brosch blinked at her, startled. First the pain, and then to blindside her with feelings? "It's a tournament affair, Roxi." And that meant no strings attached, no regrets. Sometimes it even meant no kissing, were one sufficiently able and willing to compartmentalise.
"I know! I know. I'm not saying it becomes anything more than that. It's just..." Thorn shifted. She didn't deal well with feelings and tenderness. Or honesty. Her emotional palette generally extended as far as 'stoic, butch' and 'angry, shouty'. "We work well together," she said, feeling how lame the words were as she said them.
Brosch only snorted. "Try again."
"No, you know what-- okay. Uh. No, it's that... ugh. Look. After this, right. We should be... friends."
"... Friends."
"Stay in touch. You know?" said Thorn, hopefully.
That only made Brosch giggle, which was an odd verb to attach to a bull-necked, inked-up 6'1" defender. But when that subsided, she said, "I know."
"Oh, good. 'Cause I don't."
Brosch snorted.
They settled in against each other, for a time. Thorn idly stroked at the ridges of Brosch's spine.
"We'll be fine tomorrow," she said, at last. "Better than fine. We'll win."
The squad rocked up at the Kapytaal early. The hedge wizard Solitaire lead the way from the bus to the stadium, still loyally bearing her censer, warding away any arcane energies innate to Mriin that might have designs on the players. Already, they could hear the fans on the street, gathering, burning flares. Some of the images hovering around social media were spectacular.
They trained. Just another game, they told themselves. Every reason to go at them 120%, but that was every game. This was just another game. Play the way they should, and they'd win it.
What to tell the lads? Strauss tossed around ideas with her assistant, Brightwater. She'd been plotting since last night. Had plenty of thoughts, cobbled them together. But when the lads finally took their positions in front of her...
Chills down her spine.
She forgot everything. This was it. Time to improvise.
No room for doubt with the XI. Rule Theriault could probably have picked it for her. Mercator between the posts. Stride and Close either side of Thorn and Brosch. Shone covering for Moxham in the centre. Saroszi and Strongbow on the flanks. Bastable and Metzger up top. Strong names for world-class talent. Nephara would be playing four-four-fucking-two.
And all of them were watching her. All eleven. All twenty-three. All the coaches. All the staff.
She liked to think she cut a dignified figure. A tall, lean, proud figure, raven hair fading to grey, age only enhancing the fey quality of her fine features. She didn't need to clear her throat. They were watching.
She began.
"It's been over forty years since we first came onto the scene. Nephara was a backwater, they said. These Marchers, yeah, too corrupt, too much infighting, too
insular. Just gonna spin their wheels.
"Nobody says that now; we have our reputation because of what those early sides did for us. Baptism of Fire: ours. Regionals: first time of asking, two more in the next few years. Qualifying: got there nice and early. Cup of Harmony: yeah, we'll have that, too. The big show, that took some grinding. Some noble failures. A few more managers discarded. But we got there in the end, too, didn't we. And the best winning record in history, so I'm told.
"See, what Cormorants do is we win. We seize the fucking day, every fucking day. This is what defines us. Not our kits, not our tactics, not our bloody tattoos. We are champions. Others, maybe, took that for granted. Look at the trophy cabinet. Enough silver near the top to weigh the thing down, but last couple decades... look a bit dusty. Maybe we forgot who we were.
"There's been eight Nephara managers since we came into the WCC. And the Old Man's died, since. In all that time, that old, crusty bastard Rule Theriault's been there. He knows who
he is. And he's been waiting for this. He's been waiting for what we've got- that gold star! Point to it now, lads. Kiss the damn thing. And the silver and the bronze for good measure.
"You'd better believe he's been working long and hard to get one of his own. Been close before, closer than you'd believe, closer than I did 'til I read the history books. But
we have the star he covets. And we are gonna go out and burst that fucking dream, lads. This is our fucking stage. This is our fucking time!
We are champions!"The squad answered in a roar that shook the stands above.