World Cup 49: The RP thread

[The Babbage Islands]

Today I am without words to describe how I feel. Magnus Svoboda, my teammate, mentor, and dear friend, is dead, taken from us all so soon.

He was a patient coach, an exemplary footballer, and by any standard a good man. My heart goes out to Melody and the kids, to Cathy Trillium who also lost a husband in the plane crash, and to the extended families of all three who died.

Perhaps tomorrow I will again smile. On this day I will simply remember.

[The Babbage Islands]

RP cutoff for the Newmanistan zone quarterfinals.

Today's sponsors, Imperial Brightonburg Airlines of BrightonBurg and publishers Jane Valentine LLC of The Babbage Islands, express their condolences to the families, teammates, fans and friends of the late Magnus Svoboda, Valgard Snorrasson, and Ross Callahan.

Favourites? Or underdogs? See what Margaret has to say.

[Cassadaigua]

Kiersten’s Space

Well, we did it again! Now the reality of where we actually are in this tournament is really setting in as we are now just three wins away from potentially winning the World Cup. There isn’t a lot of people outside of Cassadaigua who believe that we are real for though as they point to our ranking as a reasoning of why the likelihood of us running off three more wins is slim to none. What they don’t take into consideration is the heart and character of a team. Maybe things have fallen into place for us. Maybe it was good that Dancougar beat The Archregimancy by two instead of one as we did, or that Bostopia prevailed in group E to give us an opponent close to us in the rankings as opposed to having to meet Candelaria And Marquez. Some people will call us opportunistic overachievers who are ready to get slaughtered at some point, and other people will call us the team of destiny as things align for us. Furthermore, some people like to make a connection with me since I play for the Tundra Falls Mariners professionally that the spirits are seeing over us to get us to the proving grounds. Maybe that is why the horrific atrocities that occurred at the Holy Empire-Milchama match because the spirits were away and seeing over us against Bostopia. I don’t know if the stars are aligning for us or not and we will have to beat some Stars in order to get more clarification of that.

I think a lot of the world wanted to see a Bostopia-Sorthern Northland quarterfinal. Maybe that’s what fate was supposed to have been, but we aren’t exactly sorry for preventing you from seeing that match, and we’re sure that Sarzonia feels the same way. It was a pretty good match I think for us as we really caught Bostopia on their heels at the start of the match. They couldn’t keep us as maybe they were too glad to not have to be playing Dancougar and thought that we would just roll over for them like good little girls. Ha! Nice try, Bostopia. Quite simply, we dominated this match from start to finish in what may have been our best effort of the entire campaign. The statisticians told me that possession was 69-31 in our favor and that we were credited with fourteen shots on target while they only managed three (and none in the first half), meaning they should be pretty grateful that they got a strong game from David Brightwell in net or else we could have really have won this match big. Really though the margin of victory doesn’t matter at this point as our two first half goals were enough to comfortably win the match. Shannon Myers and Hannah Barton were the goal scorers in case you forgot, scoring in the 8th and 21st minutes. We may have been guilty of playing too conservatively in the second half I suppose, but it doesn’t matter.

While we were doing this, Sarzonia was preventing the other half of the world’s more desirable quarterfinal from happening as they won in penalty kicks. Naturally, we have all watched that match now as we prepare for the Stars and it was a pretty entertaining match, but the better team did win. Sorry world, instead of Bostopia-Sorthern Northland, you get Cassadaigua-Sarzonia. For us and the Stars, this works just fine. We don’t really have a lot of history with Sarzonia, but we Cassadagan sports fans have seen the name of their nation many times. We have competed in the many of the same tournaments throughout the years and even though actual head-to-head matchups haven’t been that frequent (there have been some though) I think each of our fan bases have a pretty good idea of what the other nation is all about. Franz Braddock will have his Stars ready for action and there will be no way that we will be catching Sarzonia looking ahead the way we feel we did with Bostopia. They are a nation who’s athletes are known for having a high work ethic, much like we do and it should be a great game. If it ends in victory, we will then think about what may lie ahead.

To conclude the blog, I would like to express my condolences to the friends and family of Magnus Svoboda on their tragic loss. Also to the friends and family of Ross Callahan and Valgard Snorrasson for their losses as well. It’s been a big story here in The Babbage Islands as these were not only well known public figures, but also good and honest people. Our match with Sarzonia is at the Callahan and Babock Arena, and it was named in honor of Callahan’s parents. There will be a somber mood when we hit the pitch and we just would like everyone to know that the thoughts and prayers of the Cassadagan soccer team and Cassadaigua as a nation, go out to you.

The Cassadagan soccer team will wear black wristbands during the match in honor of these men who have passed on.

[Newmanistan]

It's time for a RP Cutoff. Any surprises in store? Well, there are never any surprises when you go to the Hardwood Furniture Family of stores. They have 214 locations throughout Newmanistan, and the price you see is the price you pay with no added fees.

What did Margaret plan 3 hours later?

[Sarzonia]

Before the World Cup began, Sarzonia's national football team thought their aim by the time the quarterfinals took place would be to show the world they were built for sustained success. They'd shocked football prognosticators in World Cup 48 by advancing to the semifinals despite beginning the World Cup proper with the world's No. 24 ranking.

However, in the hours leading up to the match between unexpected quarterfinalists Cassadaigua and Sarzonia, the team's legendary focus was a bit off.

Instead of eying the Guitar Hero set in his locker, team captain and forward Matt Lynch was passing black armbands to the other players. He and manager Franz Braddock had discussed the reason for it. Like their quarterfinals opponents, the Stars would pay tribute to the memories of Magnus Svoboda, Valgard Snorrasson and Ross Callahan, who died in a tragic plane crash that was the talk of everyone in The Babbage Islands.

Even though Sarzonia ended up the winners in penalty kicks yet again after playing to a 2-2 draw through regulation and 3-3 through the end of extra time, the match was the last thing Braddock wanted to talk about as he walked into the media room.

"First of all, on behalf of the entire Incorporated Football Federation and the Sarzonian national team, I wish to express our condolences to the families of Magnus Svoboda, Valgard Snorrasson and Ross Callahan," Braddock began. "Former IFF chairman Dave Wilson is en route to present cheques to the families of all three men to help with funeral costs and everything associated with running their lives.

"In addition, I have received word from the office of Sarzonia's Vice President for Health and Athletics that President Jay Tyler and First Gentleman Brian Patrick have sent their condolences. They will provide $1 million to a memorial scholarship fund for the children of the three men, and for their friends, to attend any institution of higher learning of their choice. Also, they have announced that Sarzonian flags will fly at half staff until the end of the week."

As for the match itself, Sarzonia battled back from deficits to their Cassadagan opponents three times, through the suddenly hot George Morrison, Ettore Salivani, Jr. and Zack Wilson. Those three, plus Lynch all scored on their penalty kicks, with Lynch's goal in the penalty round giving Sarzonia the only lead they would have the entire match.

Goalkeeper Cody Taylor started the fourth round of the penalty kick battle by diving to his left to snuff out Meaghan Bateman's shot attempt, just before Lynch's goal. Then, he correctly guessed that Stephanie Reeves would fire a shot to the middle of the goal whilst expecting him to dive either to his left or his right. He cradled the ball and the Stars were through to their second consecutive semifinal.

Unlike the Round of 16 match against Sorthern Northland, the Stars did not exult in victory. Instead, they gathered in a low-key hug. When a credentialed Babbage Islands reporter came down with a microphone to interview Lynch, he explained to the crowd the reason for the team's subdued reaction.

"We are profoundly sorry for the losses felt by the families of Magnus Svoboda, Valgard Snorrasson and Ross Callahan, and the Babbage Islands family as a whole," he said. He turned and nodded to a couple of depth players who unfurled a banner that simply said "Sarzonia Honours You".

The fact the Stars would face Candelaria And Marquez for the second consecutive World Cup semifinals fixture was almost lost on the team. However, the Stars to a man or woman all agreed that there were far more important matters on their minds.

[Cassadaigua]

Kiersten’s Space

Well what can one say? We are done after a wild game with Sarzonia, losing on penalty kicks as you all know. Sure we are disappointed that we will not realize our greatest dreams, but the atmosphere on the field today showed that there is so much more in the world then a soccer game, even a World Cup quarterfinal. While most of The Babbage Islands still struggles to get over the loss of those who perished, for a little while both ourselves and the Stars gave the fans a fantastic show and plenty to be excited about. We were not victorious tonight, but I believe we have showed that we can play competitively with anyone in the world and may be in good shape for the next world cup. For me, I will be 35 in four years. I’d love to return, but my legs will have the final say on that.

Sometimes when you lose in a late stage, it can be hard to see the team that beat you continue to progress through the tournament, but I will be rooting for Sarzonia and so will most of us. They are a very classy nation, as evidenced not just by the Mike Sarzo Memorial Trophy they host, but also in how they reacted after the win. They were well aware that this was not the place for a wild celebration. We shook hands with them, and in many cases exchanged hugs as each of our teams saw today that there is so much more out there in the world then this game that we play. Had we won, our response would have been subdued as well.

[Daehanjeiguk]

[quote="Daehanjeiguk";p="1254089"]World Cup 49 Qualification - Group 11
MD1: v 3-1 [237] Teletropis (@ Seobanya National Football Stadium, Malnira - 50,000)
MD2: @ 4-1 [161] Shivat (@ Shivat?)
MD3: v 0-1 [36] Silexhara (@ Seobanya National Football Stadium, Malnira - 50,000)
MD4: @ 2-0 [227] Arkinesia (@ Arkinesia?)
MD5: v [∞] Bye (@ HA!)
MD6: v 5-1 [74] Palmouth (@ Munhwa Football Stadium, Yeiseong [formerly Hanseong] - 56,000)
MD7: @ 1-2[53] Queer Poco el Mono Ara (@ Estadio de Victoria, Ambrose - 62,000)
MD8: v 1-1 [176] Wajirka (@ Munhwa Football Stadium, Yeiseong [formerly Hanseong] - 56,000)
MD9: @ 1-4 [15] Kosovoe (@ OH NOEXZ!)
---MQ---
MD10: @ 4-2 [237] Teletropis (@ ohnoz!)
MD11: v 1-0 [161] Shivat (@ Potala, Lasa - 37,000)
MD12: @ 3-1 [36] Silexhara (@ some Audioslavian ruins, ohnoz!)
MD13: v 1-1 [227] Arkinesia (@ Potala, Lasa - 37,000)
MD14: @ [∞] Bye (@ HO!)
MD15: @ 4-2 [74] Palmouth (@ mimes, roflol)
MD16: v 3-2 [53] Queer Poco el Mono Ara (@ Munhwa Football Stadium, Yeiseong [formerly Hanseong] - 56,000)
MD17: @ 3-0 [176] Wajirka (@ we didn't blow it up! yay!)
MD18: v 2-1 [15] Kosovoe (@ Gwangdong Imperial Sports Complex and Stadium, Gwangju - 80,000)
PQ: v 2-2 [7] Sarzonia (@ Gwangdong Imperial Sports Complex and Stadium, Gwangju - 80,000)
PQ: @ [35] 4-1 Taeshan (@ Atlantea Coliseum, Atlantea - 590,000)
World Cup 49 - Group D
MD1: v 2-1 [20] Akbarabad (@ Loudon Stadium, Loudon - 85,000)
MD2: v 1-2 [2] The Holy Empire (@ Samseong Stadium, Putnam Lake - 78,020)
MD3: v [14] 2-0 Jeruselem (@ Tundra Falls Proving Grounds, Tundra Falls - 55,000)
R16: v 3-2 [5] Starblaydia (@ Centralia Stadium, Centralia - 75,000)
QTF: v 3-5 [4] Valanora (@ Tundra Falls Proving Grounds, Tundra Falls - 55,000)

MBC Sports

LOSS! And a Date is Set with WC50![/b]

TUNDRA FALLS - And despite the massive amounts of posters posted up by the Newmanistan FC, the Imperial Academy of Foreign Affairs, and some random chaps picked up from Dancougar, the match did turn into a massive shouting war between the Vanorians and the Han, and it was of all people started by them dirty elves. Apparently fed up with the fact that they were being called "Valanorians" after several attempts to beat them in the quarterfinals (this being the 1093rd try in as many World cups...), they decided to counter with their own unimaginative battle cry: "BEAT THEM NEWTS!"

At first, we thought that it was designed to be an insult against the Newmanistanian (or Newmanistani? or Newmani?) fans [and despite the fact that Newmanistan had earlier beaten Valanora in their first group stage match], but it didn't make sense when the Han were playing them. Moreover, 60% of the fans in the stadium had no clue what a "newt" was. As it turns out, 90% of all statistics are randomly made-up on the spot, and this was perhaps no exception to that (blame the Dancougarite interns...). Nonetheless, some random Han chap pulled out one of those pocket electronic dictionaries, looked up "nut", and got a particularly insulting response. As a result, the Han fans started with their "BEAT THEM VALANORIANS!" chants. As it turns out, "BEAT THEM NEWTS!" is a far superior chant, simply because it uses fewer syllables in all (three, as opposed to the seven syllables required to utter the "Valanorians" chant). Nonetheless, you couldn't dampen the enthusiasm of the Han fans, who started up a campaign to begin a special cheer group, called the "Nuts" (they later changed the spelling once they discovered what the Vanorians were really saying - it was still pretty insulting, I suppose, to be called some random quadripedal amphibian) who were devoted to cheering against the Vanorians whenever and wherever (this includes those Yongsan FC matches back at home - I'd imagine that their visas to visit Valanora have been since revoked ad perpetuum). And this comes at precious moment when the travelling fans are starting to fractionate into different factions - the "Geezers", composed of those random old folks from WC36 and beyond; the "Veterans", soldiers who have nothing else to live for; the "Geeks", random mathematics students who spend every waking moment watching the Han play football (either that or tabulating random mathematical conundrums devoted to footy statistics); the "Girls", girls not to mention...; and the "Imperials", titular individuals who really shouldn't mingle with the common folk but do.

In any case, while the Han might have been cheering their hearts out at the Vanorians, it was a clearly different story on the pitch, where the style and depth of class evident in the Vanorian side showed in an impressive 5-3 loss. While Jeong Ji-Hun and a Kim Mi-Hyeon brace helped reduce the deficit, there was no denying that the elves were clear winners on this day, with a midfield packed with Laborious Hawk and Espy va Drake totally hunting out the ball all around. And giving credit to the Han defense, they tried their best, but it seemed that this was the limit for those limbless wonders. And what was probably their last match ever, the Imperial Armed Forces Veterans gave their beloved fans a hearty farewell bow at their end of the Proving Grounds. This was perhaps the most exciting match in the Proving Grounds (besides that gory show put on by those random deities just days ago here) for Newmanistanian fans in ages, and so while the Han might be etched into hearts for all of the wrong reasons, you can't deny that there was a special touch to this team that everyone will carry away for a long time.

And so... what's four years for some is just another year for the Han. But rest assured, if we can get this far after two years of war, losing our capital in an EMP strike, suffering thousands of deaths, millions of casualties in the crossfire, and perhaps many more years of soul-searching as this new Han Empire takes back to international affairs... we can do anything.

Goal Summary
18 -Jeong Ji-Hun (2)
8 - Kim Mi-Hyeon (3)
6 - An Pil-Rip (3)
4 - Pak Tae-Hwan (1)
3 - Yim Dae-Jang (1), Go Song-Ji (1), Kim Ha-Run
2 - Pak Myeong-Gyu
1 - Seo Jeong-Ho, some SLANI beach ball


===GWANGJU===

Kim Byeong-Ji was back in the Han Empire soon after that loss to Valanora. It was an urgent message that got him on the first flight back to Gwangju. And while he could spy some of the odd construction going on down south near the planned new capital, his mind was fixed upon that cold room, where he'd seen the Prime Minister many times before (twice, to be frankly precise... that's not that much, eh?). He slowly approached the Prime Minister's desk who immediately recognized him.

"Kim Byeong-Ji!" he said, raising once again to greet with a handshake. Kim was still a bit confused by that sort of custom.

"Right... have a seat!" Jeong said, returning to his chair. "I've got some news about you and Jang."

"I see," Kim said, unsure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

"I've heard some preposterous stories about you from Jang Yong-Hwi, and while I'm certain to think that you've got proper grievances against your boss, I'm afraid that I can't quite let you have your old job back."

Kim Byeong-Ji was well aware that this was the case. After all, he'd seen the quality in Lii Chong-Sun. He wasn't as upset about that as he was then, but the fact that he was replaced at all irked him the most. "You must concede that the decision was ill-conceived, though," Kim said.

"I've taken a good look into it, and I've got to say that the decision was by the books," Jeong said. Kim couldn't believe his ears. The Prime Minister agreed with Jang? "There was a legitimate reason to believe that you wouldn't have as good as a quality tenure as Lii Chong-Sun could had in the World Cup, considering your World Cup expertise..."

"But I was the one working on the books with Lii! He was spending most of his time building up rapport with the team! Can't you even give me one ounce of credit for my effort?"

Jeong humpfed with a bit of condescension. "And there is the matter that you've had a nasty run of tacit insubordination."

"Because of poor leadership by the IFA? You can't blame me that Jang Yong-Hwi is a dunce!"

"Right, I can't." Jeong said. "Well, all said, you didn't have as good a record as you could have had, by the book. Your boss has some authority to govern the decisions in the maintenance of the national football team, and merely brushing them aside without proper consultation is not something easily ignored."

Kim couldn't believe his ears...

"But I believe that there is a good call for a change in management, as the management style advocated by Chairman Jang cannot make for a competitive national football team internationally."

He really couldn't believe his ears.

"That's why it has been the express decision of the Board of Directors of the Imperial Football Association to select you, Chairman Kim, as the next Chairman of the Imperial Football Association."

He realllllly couldn't believe his ears. "Wha??" he uttered with a smackering of disbelief.

"I think you've demonstrated ideal qualities that the IFA needs in a leader, and despite your record, you've got reasonable claim that the leadership at the top needed some invigorating fresh air. I think the Board of Directors was right in selecting you as the next Chairman, because you seem to know what sort of things the IFA needs in order to maintain a competitive outlook in future administration. We want to keep going to the World Cup, right?"

"Yes, absolutely," Kim replied.

"Well, you can still help get us there. Just... a little differently now."

Kim had no words to say. Up until this moment, he had been imagining that it was all a really bad dream. Now, he couldn't say what it was, and the emotions of the moment simply flushed his face with tears. He tried holding it back, but it was perhaps the right emotion to show for the time, as it was a long battle. But at the end of it all, he embraced the Prime Minister, and graciously accepted the Board of Director's decision, who had by then come in from around the corners in the room (they wanted to surprise him apparently); and yet after all that had happened, he had but one question to ask:

"What about Jang Yong-Hwi?"


===DANCOUGAR===

And in the queue in front of the Dancougar Intern Service, the intern clerk checked all of the application data. "So you're a Mister 'Chang Yeung-Huy'? Wanting to apply for an intern job in Dancougar?"

"That's right. Preferably in the FA. As you can see, I have immeasurable experience in the arts of Football Association administration and the works. I'm a perfect candidate."

"Well, we'll see what we can do. It says that you're not a citizen of Dancougar?"

"Right."

"Would you like to apply for citizenship while you're on application for internship here?"

"Yes."

"Right." The intern clerk, who probably didn't know a smattering of civil, immigration, and legal laws concerning what he was doing, filed the application in a file cabinet and turned back to Jang Yong-Hwi with a bright smile. "You've been accepted! Congratulations!"

[Qazox]

QSPN.com/Qazox/World Cup XLIX

When you face the #1 team in the world, as Qazox did today, you need to 100% healthy and 100% prepared. Qazox was prepared, but not healthy as a rare case of Vidikan Flu struck the Pheonix over the past few days and Candelaria And Marquez took full advantage, scoring 4 goals in the first 30 minutes of the match, Danny Adams scoring the first two in the 13th and 19th, as Qazox back-up keeper Tyrone Davis looked over matched. The Candelariasians added the third off the foot of Jesse Nakatsuru in the 25th and closed out their scoring binge with a goal from Jhanna Young in the 30th.

Qazox' only goal came off the foot of Erica Hansen in the 56th minute.

Despite the loss, Qazox should remain in the top10 in the next KPB poll, and be once again a contender for the title at World Cup 50.

[Candelaria And Marquez]

The Albrecht Herald Online>Sport>Football>WC49
300: Prepare for Glory…?
By Morgan Fattori

As variations on a theme of ‘You Only Win When We’re Spewing’ resounded around the Capital Stadium, and the fourth and final World Cup 49 quarter-final drifted towards a mercifully premature final whistle; Candelariasian supporters and pundits alike had cause and time to reflect on one of the most increasingly self-evident realities of modern international football – Andy Le Lan is one seriously lucky bastard.

Effectively all over after half an hour, the match itself was a low-key and somewhat sombre affair hardy fitting for the occasion of the Big Blues’ three hundredth match at senior level. It might nearly have been so different – with widely held expectations back home that C&M would be flayed alive by Dancougar like so many chinstrap penguins; plans were already afoot for a celebratory pre-qualifying friendly against high-profile opposition to mark the milestone. One must appreciate the CAMAFA’s forward planning, though the leakage of such preparations is rather less encouraging and indicative of the current state of uncertainty and lack of leadership along Brewer Street in the wake of Quentin Vokolos’ tragic suicide three months ago.

As it was, Qazox were a by no means inappropriate opposition for such an anniversary, as C&M’s first ever adversaries on home soil. Back then, the subsequent two-all draw in Albrecht was something of a giant killing, but the passage of time has long since placed any potential rivalry between the Big Blues and Pheonix comfortably on the back burner – a friendly played on neutral territory in Trilan aside, their last meeting came during World Cup 37 qualifying. Candelariasian development since then has been pacier, with the Qazoxians struggling to live up to expectations – least of all their own – and aiming in Charleston to make their debut semi-final.

Under almost any circumstances, C&M would have gone into the match as favourites – but the course of the finals so far has seen a dramatic shift in mentalities. The Candelariasian travelling support’s own expectations have moved, once more, away from the nervous anticipation of victory and towards the boisterous stance of the against-all-odds underdogs. Though the game could only feature even odds of eleven against eleven, at least for an hour or so, the homoeroticism was marginally less blatant, and we really don’t have a problem with the Persians; commemorative banners unfurled pre-match were suitably Spartan in nature – spartan, indeed, as the wholly muted celebrations marking that three hundred figure. There was the rather more important concern of a World Cup quarter-final at stake, after all, not to mention the manner in which the loss of Magnus Svoboda, Valgard Snorrasson, the Babbage Islands gridiron star, and Ross Callahan continued to cast a pall over the game and the tournament.

For now, the country and global footballing community was – if one might be slightly flippant – all tributed out following the previous day’s quarter-final; but the trio’s presence, or lack thereof, continued to be keenly felt. Christian Fernández Montes would ultimately lead Candelariasian acknowledgments of Svoboda post-match, little more than a fortnight after the Cafundó do Juta custodian’s stellar performance against the Dover City played the major part in handing C&M a one-nil opening day victory against the co-hosts.

By the time the team sheets were delivered however, it soon became apparent that the Qazoxians were suffering – relatively speaking – losses of their own; with a first team decimated in spirit if not literal accuracy. Kallie Jaus’ initial selection came as a shock to few, with rumours of a severe flu bug running riot through the Qazox camp steadily emerging for several days, but it left tables well and truly turned – and, as it would turn out, the game little more than a training exercise.

With an twenty year-old in goal, and the rest of the side peppered with no less inexperienced youths, an understrength Qazox were always likely to struggle badly against a C&M team with everyone still available, but it soon became apparent that even those selected to start were among the walking wounded. Never has a World Cup match been so punctuated with coughing, sneezes, snuffles and slightly self-indulgent groans. Tissue paper soon littered the field like autumn leaves; substitutes sat shivering on the bench in heavy coats as their marginally more active colleagues traipsed around the pitch wearing two or two shirts. Fran Holcombe threw in the towel after barely more than ten minutes, Mike Chalmers after twenty. Those who survived were rather hardier – but none could hope to deal with the inevitable Candelariasian blitzkrieg that would follow.

That is not to say that C&M would have things entirely their own way. Erica Hansen, up front for Qazox, even managed the first shot on target forcing Fernández to concede a corner; but the possession statistics soon settled in the eighties in favour of Le Lan’s side and Danny Adams’ opener was not before time, the Petardos striker dribbling home on thirteen minutes after running onto a Jhanna Young pass just outside the area. Tyrone Davis, to the youngster’s significant credit, got a hand to the ball but succeeded only in palming the shot further into the back of the net.

It was Adams’ first finish of the tournament proper, and no doubt prompted a significant sigh of relief from Le Lan and his staff, but the understandable weakness of the opposition made his belated achievement rather academic. His second goal was rather more valuable however, a long distance strike that would have found a willing home in any match, though Sean Paulson and Oudette Fjari were still guilty of failing to close the forward down.

Adams would have further input not long after, jogging comfortably past Fjari once more to cross into Nakatsuru, the Albrecht FC star side-footing home for a carbon copy of his equaliser against Dancougar. Five minutes later, on the half hour, it was an otherwise quiet, if effective, Jhanna Young’s chance to shine, exchanging passes with Nakatsuru and then Koviljko Randjelovic to run into the box, evade Paulson’s perfunctory challenge, and spurn the onrushing Adams to put away a fine shot of her own from an awkward angle for her own second finish into two games.

And that, ultimately, was that. As Adams and Lee McKenzie missed decent opportunities in the half’s dying minutes, the in-running betting began to favour a cricket score and one began to wonder quite what the point of even carrying on was. Le Lan certainly sent such a message with the withdrawal of Adams at half-time, eager as he was to save the striker for a now inevitable semi-final meeting with Sarzonia, while Nakatsuru would also go off soon into the second period. If C&M could, in truth, take anything from the game it was the Scorpions midfielder’s link-up play with Young – the pair showing signs, as against Dancougar, of developing an understanding just when it was needed most. McKenzie also performed well enough, and looks set to keep his place ahead of Jameson Aldren, while the defence displayed few wobbles with Fernández instead taking the blame for a lapse in concentration that allowed Hansen to pull back a consolation effort.

The Qazoxian supporters cheered their stricken heroes and heroines to the last, albeit reserving a minute here or there to mock the Candelariasians’ good fortune – and one can certainly take their point. What, when all’s said and done, were the chances of C&M facing two sides left battered by medical complaints, back to back, in the knockout stages of the World Cup finals? Especially given the Big Blues’ own entirely tentative and stuttering form?

Quite considerable, some might suggest, for lady luck and Andy Le Lan have travelled hand in hand for quite some years now. It was the Champions’ Cup where Le Lan made his name on the global stage – years after achieving the relative ignominy of guiding the national team’s under-21s to a mere third-place finish at the fourth Di Bradini Cup, and the Scorpions’ own first international trophy at Globe Cup 5 – with two titles in three calendar years. No Albrecht fan will forget the two seat-of-one’s-pants campaigns the manager and his team would put them through. A goalless draw at home was needed against Ad’ihani side Mountbatten Junction even to make the knock-out stages of TQCC12; three times would Albrecht need to come back from behind against Yuba United in the second stage; away goals against Sept-Onze; and a nervy final in Oldbridge was settled only in the seventieth minute. Two years later, the Scorpions needed a late equaliser at home to Raynor City to avoid a group stage exit – before that still legendary semi-final clash with Petardos S/A saw Le Lan’s men two goals down on aggregate with just ten minutes to spare. Albrecht duly managed not just two but three goals in the game’s dying stages to book a place in the final. Just three games later, Le Lan resigned to take the C&M job.

Under such conditions, if half the Sarzonia squad don’t get themselves bitten by badgers or laid low by mumps it’ll be a ruddy miracle.

C&M could certainly have scored more against Qazox, but the loss of Ogus Kures on sixty-five minutes, leaving Le Lan’s side with ten men, would both even up the game and leave it at walking pace. The Green Island man’s withdrawal appears precautionary, first and foremost, with his international management insistent that he has a better than 50/50 chance of starting against Sarzonia, but absence certainly left his team-mates well aware of the need not to overexert themselves, and could be as thankful as their Qazoxian opponents for the Krytenian referee’s decision to blow his whistle at ninety minutes exactly.

The Stars, after all, have scores to settle ahead of the rematch of the World Cup 48 semi-final, with a general feeling in Sarzonia that their side was unable to give of their best in the game’s later stages following a gruelling earlier campaign. C&M will be well aware that, in comparison to their own stroll in the park, their next opponents were taken to penalties by Cassadaigua after coming from behind on three separate occasions – just days after another set of more than a hundred and twenty minutes’ football against Sorthern Northland. If history is repeating itself, it is certainly playing into Candelariasian hands.

For all that, huge doubts remain over the true capabilities of Le Lan’s team, who have arguably not shown their best football since falling to defeat in the last World Cup final. Many neutrals – and more than a few Candelariasians, for that matter – may well favour the world’s seventh-ranked side over its third, and perhaps, one might tentatively suggest, that in itself is a sign of Le Lan’s very special brand of genius at work, that a team bursting with genuine world-class talent in almost all departments is perceived to be living on their nerves, scrabbling through to the final four with all odds stacked against them. Perhaps C&M’s form, from those back-to-back defeats early in qualifying through to nervous draws in Group E, has all merely represented the most visible part of Le Lan’s great plan to lull us and the footballing world into a false sense of insecurity, where expectations are artificially dampened and his side can be left free of pressure to burst into life in these final two matches.

Or perhaps – just perhaps – he’s just very, very lucky. But if he can guide his hesitant charges through to yet another World Cup final, it won’t matter a jot either way.

World Cup 49 – Quarter-Final 4
@ Capital Stadium, Charleston

Candelaria And Marquez 4
Adams 13 and 19
Nakatsuru 25
Young 30
Fernandez 6, Archer 7, Davies 7, Plunkett 7, Wilkinson 7, McKenzie 7 (Aldren 64min, 7), Young 7, Kures 6, Nakatsuru 8 (O’Airmeadhaigh 64min, 7), Randjelovic 7, Adams 7 (Macanás 45min, 6)

Qazox 1
Hansen 56
Davis 6, Hulin 5, Simpson 5, Paulson 4, Holcombe 3 (Fjari 11min, 4), Franks 5, Palin 6, Werth 5 (Gillispie 71min, 6), Kuhlman 5, Chalmers 4 (Johnson 20min, 4), Hansen 7

[Alasdair I Frosticus]

THE HOLY EMPIRE HERALD

APOCALYPSE WHEN?
Victory over Kelssek brings Annihilation of Ordinary Reality One Step Closer
Newmanistan and Babbage Islands React to Tundra Falls Incident
Dreamed Realm Cuts Contact With Ordinary Reality

By Anna Comneno

Several thousand football fans went to a ritual sacrifice last night - and a football match broke out. Contrary to all expectations, Kelssek not only conquered their fear of the now-notorious Aztec footballers, but more than held their own for 120 dramatic minutes, taking the lead twice before falling to penalties. Equalisers from Mictecacihuatl and Xochipilli - the latter a dramatic 85th minute howitzer from 25 metres - answered efforts from Sinclair and Crawford. The Aztecs never looked like losing the penalty shootout, though much confusion was caused when Kelssek's final, failed, attempt became lodged in Mictlantecuhtli's ribcage, forcing the referee to call for a new ball.

When queried about why the Kelssek squad had been left unharmed after the match, Mexica captain Quetzalcoatl stated that they saw no need to sacrifice a team that had played their hearts out (at this comment, the Plumed Serpent seemed surprised that none of the reporters laughed), and that they would be coming for all of them soon enough anyway, just as soon as this pesky World Cup thing was out of the way.

Meanwhile, the inevitable fallout from the Tundra Falls Incident gathered momentum as both of the co-hosts reacted to the on-field slaughter of the Milchama squad by condemning the ritual sacrifice. The Newmanistan Football Association demanded compensation, while the Babbage Islands authorities threatened to decertify the team - an action which HEFA had itself only failed to undertake the previous day due to a paperwork error. Both hosting nations threatened to arrest the Aztecs if there was a repeat incident, leaving some nations wondering why the Mexica pantheon weren't arrested after the first incident.

The Imperial government has not responded to the comments from the co-hosts, but has meanwhile taken the ultimate step of totally cutting off contact between the Dreamed Realm and Ordinary Reality, except for the SBIS trans-dimensional panopticon, which at least allows the Empire to monitor the gathering storm. Officials from ISPI denied that contact had been cut to protect the Empire and Archregimancy from the now seemingly inevitable destruction of Ordinary Reality, stating only that they were 'following the situation closely' before cryptically adding that 'not everything is as it may appear to be', and that 'we have two good men on the ground working to resolve the problem'.

Juan Tzimisces and Simeone Di Bradini, for what it's worth, did not return to the Dreamed Realm before the closing of all portals, and are still reported missing.

[Valanora]

"Any updates on the situation in Green Island Lieutenant?" Tobias asked from the headquarters of the Military Council. He was taking a momentary break from his investigations of the Valanora Sporting Council to assist in Military Council while General Galamirmyr was attending the birthday of his nephew.

"Not yet sir. All we know for sure is that the deranged half kind has invited the leader of the mainland for some sort of meeting. The Dark Bows believe it is a trap for the President, but our information is shady at best. In any case, I believe that if it was a trap, then there would be no way that the powers that be over in that forsaken country would let their president walk right into it. When one looks at their history of cover ups and campaigns of misinformation, it is obvious that they have a very good intelligence program, one that would know far more easily than us at this late hour if their leader was being set up." the short and slender young male replied to Tobias. He was odd for a military man, as they tended to recruit among the more taller or muscled of the country, but Menadirien Aldaloth was neither, and quite young for a man of his rank. At barely over five hundred years old, he was at a position of command when most his age were still squad leaders or sergeants. He had shown a great strategic mind and a perception among his class that was higher than most.

"You forget though, Sam is indeed a creature of both races now. He has all the benefits of both and none of the weaknesses, even if he is quite mad. Also take into account that before our own criminals put him in his current state, he was an official within that government. He might know just the right buttons to push and what appearances to fake to lure the president from the safety of Albrecht to Green Island. As we are all quite aware, only Zapata remains safe on the island." Tobias paused and thought about the implications of the words he just spoke. It seemed awfully convenient for San to have left Zapata so unscathed compared to what he was doing to the rest of the island, and how he had thus far avoided confrontation with the small elven contingent that made its' home in the city. Perhaps he was far brighter than everyone was giving him credit for, as Lady Orome would surely be able to convince the Senate to intervene on the island should Vanorian citizens be seen as in danger.

"As you will sir, but I still suspect that the Candelaria And Marquez intelligence network would have at least leaked something if there was truly any danger. It's not as if they along with M.O.R.T. are totally infallible, and our agents would be giving us more than we already know."

"Never underestimate an enemy Lieutenant, nor a friend. People will always find ways to surprise you, even those individuals whom you are sure you know the most intimate details of and their entire personality make up. There is no rational to every decision, even in our own wizened race, we still make decisions of the heart and not of the mind. To think you have a person or the world figured out is naive and dangerous, I hope you realize this. You have a bright head on your shoulders lad, you're station and status are proof of that, but you still have a lot to learn. Even I, even our Great Leader, and even those wise members of the Senate are always learning, always aware of the changes life and people bring. You need to be as well, for you could be on the council yourself one day if you can take these lessons to heart." Tobias said as he patted the young elf on the shoulders.

In the background all of sudden there was a sudden out pour of hooting and cheering from where the lower ranked officers lounge. The two moved from the strategic room and down the hall to the lounge to find the twelve or so officers dancing around and celebrating with wide grins on their faces.

"We won!!! We defeated those who would insult us and mock us! We won, we won, we won!!!"

Tobias smiled, then shook his head, before finally letting out a weird sounding sigh.

"Looks like I need to get a plane to Newmanistan..."

[The Babbage Islands]

I can't believe I got through the memorial service. I'm used to writing, and speaking. But that eulogy was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Magnus's bishop, speaking after me, was inspired. Perhaps a call from God helps at times like this.

The football world goes on, of course, and it's all down to four teams in the World Cup. In Pocono City we'll see Valanora's elves and The Holy Empire's Aztecs. No doubt after the outrage in Tundra Falls the Newmanistani fans will be solidly behind Valanora. That's an odd twist, after the Rockets stunned them on opening day. But the Valanora eleven hasn't lost since under their new manager, and I doubt they'll be easily intimidated by the Empire.

On the other hand, The Holy Empire are defending champions and playing like it, at least whilst the match is ongoing. I see The Holy Empire in the final after an extra-time victory. There was no hint of trouble after the Kelssek match, so perhaps a lot of extra security won't be needed. But I'm sure it will be there. And should Valanora advance, bet on a heavy security presence in Gernsback for THE's bronze medal match.

Here in Gernsback it will be Sarzonia against Candelaria And Marquez. We opened against CAM when they were still finding their form, and lost a well-played 1-0 match. But after riding out an uneven group stage they played like the pre-qualifying #1 seed in a 2-1 win over current #1 Dancougar, then beat a fine Qazox eleven convincingly 4-1. Nobody's in better form right now.

But don't count the Sarzonians out. They were also unbeaten in the group stage, albeit with two draws, and just notched two penalty-kick triumphs over Sorthern Northland and Cassadaigua. If it gets to extra time you really have to like their chances.

The Babbage crowd will be largely behind Sarzonia, I think. We played in their showpiece Mike Sarzo Memorial Trophy this year, and their immediate reaction after the plane crash surely won them many friends here. My head says Candelaria And Marquez . . . but I'm going with my heart this time. The Holy Empire versus Sarzonia in the final, after a pair of extra-time thrillers.

Smile!

[The Babbage Islands]

RP cutoff for the semifinal.

Brought to you by the Law Office of Greene, Browne, and Whyte, our friends from Secristan!

Did Tegan get it right?

[Candelaria And Marquez]

La Isla Verde… Green Island. It had been propaganda from the off, Morton knew, since before even the nineteenth century, since before her own ancestors – before any Candelarian’s ancestors, save a handful of more recent migrants of Marquezian origin or, of course, the Kolan’s – had arrived here. We’re all green and that, its very name shouted. Come on over, risk life and limb on the journey. It’ll be… nice. Green. Yeah.

By all accounts, those first fishermen established Zapateros in early January, more the two hundred years earlier. The name of la Isla Verde popped up in Iberian literature at much the same time. Was it snowing then, too? Morton wondered. Was it really a White Island? Had they been lying, right from the start? A verdant, green paradise, in an archipelago devoid of human habitation, just sitting their ripe for our colonisation?

They just wiped the snow under the proverbial doormat, those first settlers and the money men who backed them, didn’t they? The snow and the natives, rubbed out of history as though they’d never even existed. Never mind the gnomes and bears and aliens and monks from an alternate dimension, and the damned, damned elves. For more than two hundred and whatever years, this country – my country – has just been one big lie.

And given that, the President wondered, why did the giant screen blaring Sam Mc O’Neil’s smiling face hurt her so much. A vicious, mad tyrant the Prime Minister of Green Island might be, but at least he was real. Insane as his Plans were, at least they existed. He’d never lied to his people… Oh, lied by omission, sure. The pointy ears thing had never come up for one thing, as far as Morton knew. But had he ever looked into the keen little faces of the thousands of inbred, ill-educated, relentlessly rural people who looked upon him as something a little less than a god, and actually lied to them?

Is that why I hate him so much? she mused. Because, when all’s said and done, he’s no worse than I am? Because he’s better?

A large chunk of snow fell from the top of the screen and thudded to the ground, but the giant pixelated face carried on regardless, its now familiar mantra. It’s going to be wonderful, but we can’t achieve this without you…

“Lying bastard,” one of Morton’s aides muttered alongside her.

The President shook her head. “I wouldn’t say so,” she told him, distantly. “Wonderful is a matter of perspective. It’s all… full of wonder out there, so they say. And… all that other stuff, what is it…?”

“Every fisherman, every school teacher, every school pupil, every farmer, every crofter,” he mouthed along bitterly, in time with the great dictator, “You’re all going to have a role to play…”

“And he’s right there, too. Not much in the way of unemployment on Green Island, these days. A very model for job creation, some might say.”

“Oh, anyone can create jobs in the state sector, ma’am. Especially at gun point… Besides, he’s not talking to them, he’s talking to them,” the aide added, waving a hand towards the distant, misty shores of Marquez. “There’s no-one here, we’re atop a cliff, the nearest village is half a mile away… And look,” he continued, pulling gently on the President’s arm and leading her around to the other side of the screen, “It’s on this side, too. Angled towards Marquez.”

Morton frowned. “But… that’s daft, surely. The coast is miles away, no-one would be able to see the screen from over there, never mind hear it, and… Ah.”

“Ahh.”

“That’s the point then, isn’t it? The look of the thing. He knows he can’t reach Marquez like that, but his stupid citizens believe he can, and that’s enough. They actually believe he’s reaching out to the rest of the Candelarias… My God…”

“Like I say then, lying bastard. I spent time in Green Island, y’know, before all this kicked off. Out here in the sticks, too. Take it from me, this place was always just one big powder keg of stupid waiting to go off. It just needed the right spark…”

“And that spa… spark was m… me,” a weak but loud voice interrupted, a few metres away. “Well… You an… and me. Couldn’t have do… done it without you…”

The aide reached out and gripped her arm again, but Morton shrugged him off. “What excellent hearing you have, Prime Minister…”

“Is you see… seeing these,” Mc O’Neil said playfully, pointing to his ears.

The President took a step forward, her sensible shoes crunching over the snow. It was the only sound, save the low hum of the paused screen, and the keening seabirds overhead, and the hesitant breaths of her own armed men – and Mc O’Neil’s, she had no doubt – but safely ensconced out of eyeshot.

If we’re being entirely honest, a car alarm was going off somewhere in the distance as well, and it was actually bloody noisy all things considered, but let’s not spoil the mood.

“You came alone, then? Now there’s a surprise…”

The aide groaned inwardly. “Ma’am, I’d really recommend not antagonising the ma–”

“Nonsense, dear bo… dear boy. Nothing wrong with a bit of banter betwee… between old chums, is there? I have my guards, of course…”

“As do I. But no-one’s going to shoot anyone, are they, Sam? Or… egg them, or whatever it is yours do. You wouldn’t have called me here just for that.”

“I might have do… done. I am mad, you know.”

“So they tell me.”

“You’d question it?”

“I’m mad, if you read the Gassett Candelariasian every day. Stark raving bonkers, leading Candelaria And Marquez to its doom. There are depressingly partisan sectors of every country’s press, aren’t there?”

“Not mine,” Mc O’Neil grinned. “One of the great advanta… advantages of being a despot. You should try it sometime,” he added, before coughing heavily and banging violently at his chest. “Ahh, that’s the stuff!”

“Because you see,” Morton continued, “I was also told that you were dying. Where as you’re plainly in fine fettle.”

“Oh, never better! Do I look a sta… a state, Robyn? From one leader to another?”

“I’ve seen you looking better. Telegenicity is overrated though, isn’t it? Look at me, I got elected and I’ve got wonky teeth and a luxurious ‘tash. Our people – our mutual people, Sam – can be counted upon to look past appearances, if nothing else. Thank heavens for the Unionist Party and their politically correct propaganda, eh? Where would we be without them?”

Smiling weakly, the Prime Minister reached out a frail hand to steady himself against the giant screen. “Where, indeed? How are your approval ra… ratings, these days? The last I heard, Vicente Macías was a dead ce… cert to oust you from office come the next elections.”

“It’s a marathon not a snickers, Sam. Oh, and the Social Democrats are coming up on the rails, too. Van Dijk’s a divisive figure, but certainly engaging. Can’t count her out.”

Mc O’Neil nodded. “Mm. I watched her big speech at the last SD&GP confe… conference. ‘Winning the War on Tolerance’, wasn’t it? Is she mad?”

“Oh, who knows these days… it’s all a matter of perspective. Apart from the Mental Asylum Party, of course. They’re distressingly sane, they really are. What do you want, Sam?”

“No!” her aide hissed, “Keep him talking, we mi–”

“Have you ever been loved, Robyn?”

Morton swallowed. “Happily married woman, Sam. Thirty years, next Thursday. Feels longer.”

“I’ll be sure to send a card. Not what I meant, how… however. Your country, does it love you? Your people, do they? A woman who transformed the MLP ba… back into the Nasty Party? Who came to power because people were scare… scared of being blown up again?”

“I don’t need their love, just their support. As long as I get things done, as long as enough people believe in what we’re doing, I…”

“And what are you ‘getting done’? How many of tho… those manifesto promises have you kept? Finding the job harder than you expect… expected? Because I’m getting things done, Robyn. I’ve transformed the ent… entire island in a matter of months. The buses run on time, you know, everyone says so.”

“I don’t think you care about the buses, Sam.”

“No. No, you’re right. But they love me for it. And you knew that, when you put me in charge here.”

“You bribed me!”

“You could still have said no. But you knew you’d failed Green Island. Not just beca… because of the massacre. You knew there was nothing more you could do for this place! No mere hu… human could hope to keep a steady tiller on an island that had learnt to believe in talking bears! All those fluff-brained farmers you despise so much, you knew an urban girl like yourself cou… couldn’t begin to understand them. You let them down so, so badly, and you needed to wash your hands of them. I offered myself, you took it. I’d imagine you lie awa… awake screaming at night, don’t you?”

“If I failed them, Sam, what have you done? Dozens flee by boat every day! Zapata’s bulging at the seams now that we’ve taken it back from you. You’ve killed a lot of people, and I know what you’ve done to so many, to so many children here, Sam. It’ll take decades for the island to recover, assuming it ever really does. You’ve failed these people so badly!”

“I was wanted. You don’t know what that’s like, either. No-one wants you! Not even your supporters, they’d just as soon as see Obiols in the job, or Tanter, or Cove. But the people of Green Island were tired of being ignored, tired of being left to rot! They wanted change, Robyn, they wanted hope! And I gave them that! Hope for the society we would build! The centre of the sporting world, Morton! And they lapped it up! They loved it! They loved me! They’d been crying out for me for years… they just hadn’t realised it.” The Prime Minister issued another hacking cough, and dabbed at his lips with a tissue. “For the first time in my life, I was truly wanted here. Me. Half-elf me. Mad Sam Mc O’Neil…”

“Bully for you. And did you deliver? Your great plans? You didn’t call me here just to talk, Sam. And you knew there’d never be a peace treaty, not now. We’ve gone too far for that. What do you want? It’s bloody freezing, and I’m missing the sem–”

“The semi-final, yes. Again.”

Morton stared at him. “This is what it’s about, isn’t it?” she whispered. “It’s football. It always, always comes back to football…”

“I should hope so, it’s been seventeen hundred words already,” Mc O’Neil commented dryly. “It’s not a fluke, is it? I thought it was, once. But your tiny little islands, there’s something… special here. Something I thought I could emulate. And better.”

“And you’re jealous?” Morton asked incredulously. “You think your little project’s never going to come off? Pains you, does it, that our team’ll have Young and McKenzie in it, or else Aldren, all Green Islanders performing in blue? And they’ve not been indoctrinated, or mutilated, or pushed beyond their limits, and drained of everything that makes them human, either! Our system works! Yours was never going to!”

“You really do know, don’t you?” Mc O’Neil said quietly. “Some of my aides thought you were just grandstanding. You knew all along what we were doing here, my successes, my… failures. And you didn’t try and stop it.”

“I did. Eventually…”

“Too little, too late, some might say. And what does that make you, Robyn? What will people say when they find out? You’ll think they’ll believe you, when you say you never knew? And that once you did, you made every effort to save them? Do you think that’ll fly, Robbie, once the public sees them. Or do you think you can possibly keep all this quiet, too? Really now?”

“I’m not leaving you in power, Sam. Your forces have fallen, your empire’s crumbled… We’ve beaten you.”

“And I’m dying. Vidikan Flu, you know. Can knock you for six at the best of times, but I’m not a healthy man. I’ve not been looking after myself…”

“Not been taking your supplements, hm?”

“Ha! When I die, Robyn, everything here will collapse. And it’s the people who’ll suffer in the long term. I need to know that they’ll be looked after, that they’ll be given what they really want. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. And I know you can deliver me that, because the status quo suits you just fine, doesn’t it? Because if the public find out what you’ve allowed to happen…”

“Oh, this is so much bigger than me, Prime Minister. If I have to take the fall for this, then I will.”

“I don’t believe you. I’ve seen you at work, Robyn. All these months – well, years, really – you’ve successfully kept your country in the dark about so many, many things. Even after the fae became the Kolan. You didn’t need to uphold the old ways, but you did, because it was in your best interests! And you stuffed the Kolan into little Gordon Bay City and threw away the key. I doff my hat to you, Madam President. The Ministry does too, I’ll be bound. And my dear, silly people need to be protected… from the Candelarians, from the Vanorians, from themselves. You’re the only one with the guts and the foresight to do just that, my dear. We both failed this place, neither of us could deliver what we promised. Green Island is yours, Robyn. Don’t let her down again.”

Mc O’Neil contorted his face into a momentary smile before turning on his heel and walking lightly away across the snow. A less perceptive woman than Morton might not have noticed the swans that appeared overhead as he disappeared over the crest of a hill, but her attention was soon drawn instead to the rustling gathering pace around her. She held up a hand.

“No thank you, chaps. We’ll have no more bloodshed today, I think.”

“That’s it, then?” her aide muttered incredulously. “After all this time, the bastard just trots off into the sunset and we get this blasted island back? You don’t think that’s a wee bit suspicious? Or at least unforgivably undramatic…”

“He knows what he’s left us with. Besides, I have a funny feeling he won’t be going too far…” With a yawn, the President clapped her hands together with a thump dulled by the surrounding snow. “Gosh, it’s proper chibbly, isn’t it? Julian, put a call into Frampton, we need a Ministry presence outside Zapata at the first opportunity. Major? Increase sea patrols tenfold, no-one enters or leaves Green Island without my say-so, or yours. Likewise Zapata – establish a perimeter, Environmental Protection banners, accredited personnel only… There’s much to be done, gentlemen…”

“We can start by taking that bloody great screen down, I should think.”

“No. Not our first priority,” Morton told him briskly. She motioned towards her officers still crouched behind the convenient bush, who pottered off after her down the hill. The President’s aide stayed staring thoughtfully at the Mc O’Neil’s giant paused head.

“Did anyone else notice he stopped wheezing about five minutes ago?” he wondered aloud, before sighing and giving the screen a sizable kick for good measure.

***

High on his perch, Sam Mc O’Neil watched Lee McKenzie and Jhanna Young belt out O, Sweet Nation as though their lives depended on it, repeated more than two dozen times as every screen in the room focused on the World Cup once more. A mosquito settled companionably on his shoulder.

“I couldn’t do it. All my work, all my technology… I couldn’t do what the CAMAFA have managed for decades. Not yet. Not here. This wasn’t Green Island’s time.”

“It’s not anywhere’s time. It never should have been. Never again.”

Mc O’Neil pressed a button on his plinth, which wobbled around slowly to face the newcomer, a bedraggled figure knee-deep in the fetid swamp that was the Prime Minister’s office. “I thought you’d come. Did you swim, perchance?”

“I walked.”

With a groaned, the half-elf heaved himself off his seat and stepped down to the ground with an unpleasant suck. “I’ve looked forward to this, you know. Meeting you, for the very first time. In so many ways, John, you’re my… inspiration.”

“Word got around. At the asylum. Those who’d escaped from you, they told me… they told me what you’d been doing. To the children.”

“Oh, not all of them,” Mc O’Neil told him with an airy wave of a hand. “But there have been… incidents, I will grant you. But in all these months, John… all these years, thanks to our spherical friends over at the Ministry, I’ve never created anything quite as special as you…”

He reached out and ran his brittle fingers over the man’s jawline. “You were the pinnacle I thought I could emulate. I was wrong, John. You’re one of a kind, you always were.”

“Not any more. Morrison, Jones, Vokolos… they paid for their sins, but at least they never allowed history to repeat itself. Morrison swore to me it would never be allowed to happen again. But I’ve seen them, Mecquinion. My brothers and sisters… And now you have me to answer to.”

“Yes. I rather thought it was you behind their ‘suicides’. Particularly given what happened at the asylum a few months ago. I did the math, as our cousins on the continent would say.” He put his head on one side. “I could scream for help, of course.”

“Your guards are dead. I saw to that myself.”

Mc O’Neil shook his head sadly and dragged himself back up his chair. “I’m dying as it is, John. I’ve got weeks, they think. Possibly not even that. Allow me this one courtesy, eh? Watch the semi-final with me, you’d like that…”

“They are as much a disgrace as you are. No. Not after what you’ve done.” The man’s placid features began to change as he clenched his fists, his eyes narrowing and upper lip pulled back into a derisive sneer. “No… You have to pay for this! Right here, right now, yo–”

“I think not,” the Prime Minister said with sudden cheerfulness. “I’ve failed this time, but there’s so much to be done, don’t you think? I do have other means at my disposal, after all. And Beatrice is such a demanding mistress…”

With a final wave, Mc O’Neil jammed his finger towards another button and flickered out of sight, John’s fists pounding the empty leather seat an instant too late. Throwing his face to the ceiling, he unleashed an inhuman roar as, one by one, the screens around the Prime Minister’s office slowly switched themselves off.

[Newmanistan]

Will we have a repeat of the last final, or will Sarzonia crash the party? Find out after this cutoff presented by Spikewear; your number one option in Newmanistan for all footwear products. They are now looking to expand internationally.

The other half

[The Babbage Islands]

RP cutoff for Valanora-Sarzonia!

Brought to you by Chronowire Communications: Bringing the world home.



Countdown: Four, three, . . .

[Sarzonia]

[OOC: I'm first going to RP the match against Candelaria And Marquez, then I'll RP the match against Valanora.]

For the Sarzonian national team, playing 240-plus minutes of football in back-to-back matches with everything on the line eventually caught up with them. Having to battle from behind against a Cassadagan side twice in regulation and once in extra time, then having to make every penalty shot to keep pace during penalties before advancing finally wore out the Stars.

Sure, they sliced their halftime deficit in half with a laser strike courtesy of suddenly torrid midfielder George Morrison, but could get no closer. When the final whistle sounded and Candelaria And Marquez had secured a 2-1 victory, many of the assembled Stars players collapsed in a combination of disappointment over their loss and pure exhaustion.

The look on manager Franz Braddock's face when the match had gone final, however, was one that was unfamiliar to Stars supporters. Unfamiliar since the team he'd inherited had never missed the World Cup Finals. Unfamiliar since his team had advanced to back-to-back World Cup semifinals. He quickly shook the hand of his Candelarian counterpart, taking care to show that he was a good sport, then jogged off the field.

What he would tell his lads and lasses as they finally assembled in the dressing room was something that was unfamiliar for a Stars manager to say.

"Let's not forget what happened tonight," he said. "Or what happened the last time we faced them. Ladies and gentlemen, we have met our new nemesis."

When he walked up to the podium in the media room, he began his speech by saying, "first of all, congratulations to Candelaria And Marquez. They fought hard and with style.

"One of the interesting aspects of bringing a team back into the World Cup after a long absence," he said, "and no matter how you count time, 13 Cups is a long absence, is what happens with rivalries. When Sarzonia left the footballing scene, their main nemesis was Rejistania. They also had rivalries with Bedistan and Starblaydia.

"Now, Rejistania have left the footballing scene and Bedistan is no more," he said. "We may have lost some rivalries, but we have since established some new ones. We now have a new nemesis in Candelaria And Marquez."

"Does that mean you're now rivals?" Travis West of The Woodstock Daily Mail said.

"We're not their rivals until we beat them in an important match," he said. "They're our rivals, however. Two consecutive semifinals losses to the same team will do that."

"Coach, what will you do for the third place match against Valanora?"

"You'll see," Braddock said. "Unlike the previous semifinal, we have something to play for now."

"What's that?"

"Show improvement," he said.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As Sarzonia prepared for their third place playoff match against Valanora, West brought to Braddock's attention an unusual item.

Nearly everyone in the world was well aware of Valanora's dominance of the world footballing scene. After all, they'd won three World Cups in four cycles, and when Sarzonia faced Valanora twice during World Cup qualifying, the elves were the world's top ranked side and two-time defending World Cup champions. They were often the team that even the most fearless of sides were afraid to face.

Not Sarzonia. And certainly not when West's item came up in discussion.

Sarzonia had an unusual distinction among teams that have faced Valanora more than once. They were one of the few teams in the world that had never lost to Valanora. In Sarzonia's final World Cup prior to their 13-Cup absence, the Stars defeated an up and coming footballing nation then known as Elves Security Forces twice on the way to qualifying for the World Cup finals for the 12th consecutive time. In Sarzonia's first Cup back from its long absence and The Great Isolation, the Stars were an unranked side facing the world juggernauts. A 2-2 draw at Bryan Marshall Memorial Stadium may have raised a few eyebrows, but a 3-3 draw in Valanora with the Stars still fighting for a shock World Cup finals appearance turned many heads.

"That match was nearly the shot heard around the world, football wise," Braddock said. "A victory for Sarzonia then would have been the biggest upset in World Cup football history without a doubt."

Now, the Stars and Marauders were facing each other under drastically different circumstances. Valanora's last World Cup championship happened in World Cup 43, just before the Stars returned to the world stage. They were ranked third. Meanwhile, Sarzonia were back among the world's best teams again, ranked seventh. Neither team was where they originally wanted to be, but both teams would give it their all.

Only one thing was absent, however. When the usual starting 11 save for Carletta Ryan took to the pitch, they did so without Braddock. They would have no way of knowing that Braddock was attending meetings related to the Svoboda Cup and was trying to organise further relief efforts from Sarzonians to the families of the plane crash victims. Instead, former Isselmere-Nieland manager James Potherington was getting an opportunity to try his hand as Sarzonia's national team manager for the third place fixture.

Sitting right next to Potherington was Diogo Avarel, the onetime lieutenant of Braddock's who was now being leaned on rather heavily for the experience he had with Braddock's offence. The two assistants would soon find that what they had in common was vastly different from what was different between them. Surely, if Braddock had a change of heart and decided to retire, Potherington would have no problem naming Avarel his assistant.

But that was a task for another day. In the present, Sarzonia jumped out to a 3-0 lead and held on as the Marauders tried in vain to rally. When the final whistle sounded, the normally dour Potherington did something his Ernes seldom allowed him the opportunity to do. He smiled. Broadly.

He could have smiled as he watched the Stars offence flow like it hadn't since he'd set foot in team headquarters. He could have smiled as he saw forward Matt Lynch end a regulation-time slump with two goals and an assist to the still torrid Morrison. He could have smiled at the sight of thousands and thousands of Babbagians joining the Sarzonian supporters in cheers of support in what was far from a neutral crowd.

But most of all, he smiled at the thought of a strange streak without a loss to Valanora continuing in part due to his efforts. It wasn't the prize the Stars wanted, but it was a prize they would accept in the hopes that they'd be back at it for World Cup 50.

[Alasdair I Frosticus]

Following the recent Aztec victory over Valanora, and the seemingly inevitably annihilation of Ordinary Reality by the all-conquering Aztec footballers, it may seem useful to reflect on what oneirologists believe is the main Aztec motive in the conquest of that reality.

The Aztec reality featured an empire continually at war, with an eye always open toward expansion. While there is no doubt that the gaining of further territory was a goal of the Aztecs, an equally important goal --and arguably the main, motivating goal -- for warring was to capture enemies that could be used for sacrifice.

An Inescapable Fate
Let us say that you are an Ordinary Reality mundy captured by the Aztecs. What sort of fate might you expect? First of all, it was not uncommon to be a sacrifice right there on the battlefield, after which you would be cooked and eaten. The rest of your unhappy comrades would be herded back to the Aztec capital - possibly a rebuilt Tundra Falls.

The next step in your tragic fate would be to be fattened up while waiting in a wooden cage. The fatter you are, the more of you there is to eat when your appointed time comes. Next, at a signal from a priest, you would be led up the side of a pyramidal temple. The altar before you and the river of blood running down the steps of the temple would leave no doubt in your mind as to your ultimate fate. Hysterics at this point will do you little good as you are secured face up on the altar. The priest, the last person upon this earth that you will look at, wears a feathered cap and is covered in ceremonial black body paint. The tired priest has had a long day, but the downward thrust of his knife is purposeful and unhesitating, as if he has performed this ritual act a thousand or more times before. The knife is plunged into your body. There is a cold shock. Then the cutting begins. Your heart is cut out and grasped by the hand of the priest, who then lifts it up high for all to see. The heart is at the center of all such ceremonies and is used to appease the sun god, and is now formally offered to the sun god.

Your value as a victim of the Aztecs does not end here, however. Your body is kicked down the steps of the pyramid, and there received by men at the bottom who will take it away to be butchered. Your head will go on one of the skull racks that line the central plazas, perhaps to be eaten later by the priests at their discretion, but probably not before the skin is stripped off and made into leather. As for the rest of you, at least three of your limbs will go to the person who bravely captured you. They are his by right of capture. However, this is assuming the capture was done unassisted; otherwise others will be on the scene to lay claim to your limbs. Your limbs will then typically be used as the main ingredient of a stew, along with pepper, tomatoes and so on, and served at a banquet held in the honor of the person who captured you.

Conclusion
While abhorrent to the mundies who will be eyewitnesses to these displays of human sacrifice and cannibalism (some of whom will end up in the pot themselves), it was not without a practical side: shortages in game, periodic droughts and famine and overpopulation will all be motivating factors to the practice of cannibalism.

The need for sacrifices might ultimately be a very relevant contributor to their undoing, since it would prompt the Aztecs' enemies to more readily ally against them. But by then, it might well be too late.

[Candelaria And Marquez]

[ooc: Might be a tad disjointed, this, Sarz went and trumped me original version, so he did. Bless ‘im.]


The Albrecht Herald Online>Sport>Football>WC49
Here we go again…
By Morgan Fattori

In the event, the Big Blues against the Stars in the World Cup semi-final proved a match without significant incident or controversy. Perhaps a harsher referee than Jehoepe Rilin would have shown Ricky Archer a second yellow card for his ill-timed, fifty-third minute lunge on Matt Lynch; perhaps his assistant might not have flagged so early when Jesse Nakatsuru was put clear through on goal by Lee McKenzie – an offside call that would later appear unjustified, for all that the Albrecht FC star still had a huge task remaining to score.

The sixtieth minute brought a minor dust-up between Jacob Davies and Tim Rodney – for which both or either could easily have been booked, and one or the other missed the World Cup final as a result – while the thirty-eighth saw Andy Le Lan, in a rare show of anger, and not to mention petulance, warned by the fourth official about his behaviour following a likewise tight, if ultimately entirely fair, offside decision going in Sarzonian favour.

Certain neutrals, therefore, might be compelled to complain of the game’s dullness and general lack of talking points, but such people should be placed up there with the fluff-brained addlepates who have taken in recent days to loudly informing the rest of us that global warming can’t be happening because it’s snowing in the middle of winter. For the rematch of the semi-final of two years ago surrendered nothing in drama, nor in international football of the highest quality.

You don’t need the likes of me to tell you the result, and Candelariasian eyes are already firmly placed on Tundra Falls and understandably so, but it would be wrong of us to immediately discard from our minds arguably the best C&M performance of this entire campaign. Sarzonia certainly played their full and proper part and, on another day, might well have claimed victory. Le Lan had Christian Fernández Montes to thank, once again, for a string of saves between the fiftieth and sixtieth minutes as Franz Braddock’s side ratcheted up the pressure; the Cafundó do Juta player having firmly put both his struggles during qualifying and drop-off in form during the second half of the Cafundelense domestic season behind him to re-emerge as one of the world’s most outstanding shot-stoppers.

Few ‘keepers could have been expected to stop Zack Wilson’s deft second-half volley from Laura Grover’s flick-on, in a move easily worthy of winning the match for Sarzonia, but Fernández not only palmed away the shot but gathered it too and avoided conceding a corner. As well he might have – with Sarzonia earning corners into double figures across the ninety following early near successes from Carlos Bocanegro’s right-footed inswingers. The Stars got their goal from one such, Fernández punching and Davies attempting to hoof the ball comfortably clear of the box – only for George Morrison, the Albrecht FC winger who is currently nothing if not torrid, but in a good way, to pick his spot, ignore the crowd of bodies in front of him entirely, fire home with pinpoint accuracy.

Fernández will always struggle with concentration issues, so we should perhaps be thankful that C&M’s final opponents are unlikely to offer him a chance to rest easy and…

But let’s not focus on the final just yet, shall we? There’s Danny Adams’ opener to talk of yet, a highly perceptive diving header coming after big George Maxwell had cleared off the line from Jhanna Young’s smart shot from just outside the area. Quite how Adams can control anything coming off that unruly mop of his is one of the marvels of our age, but as one of his side’s relatively elder statesmen he deserved his moment of glory, careering down the pitch ahead of his colleagues to scream his guttural jubilations into a pitchside microphone – a favoured celebration of his for Petardos S/A, though the special message this particular occasion carried was drowned out by the roar of the Candelariasian travelling support arrayed in front of him.

It was by no means against the run of play, C&M dominating the opening ten minutes with Adams himself and Koviljko Randjelovic both forcing Cody Taylor into good saves, but the Big Blues soon found themselves in a real struggle to hold onto their lead. Le Lan’s men and woman will have to watch that against the Holy Empire, being unable to afford the slightest complacency in the event of taking an unexpected early advantage, and…

But let’s not focus on the final just yet, shall we? There’s still the second half of the semi-final to talk of, one which finally displayed the best of this flexible 4-5-1. At no point during the second forty-five did Jordan Hawker truly look likely to be overrun, benefiting as he was from the close support of Nakatsuru and Young, the latter of whom in particular showing her innate skill and cultured mind alike when forced to hold her line rather than plough on forward. Hawker is certainly a player more inclined towards flicks and tricks than the more solid Ogus Kures – a feature that makes him a liability according to some, but which undoubtedly makes him a more natural companion for his no less talented midfield compatriots.

We have to spare a thought for Kures, of course. Ruled out after a pre-match fitness test, the Green Island holding midfielder appears unlikely to start in the final despite declaring himself fit enough to do so. He won’t be the first in his position to miss out, even from the Candelarias – Ben Zec will always have cause to curse the needless yellow card that left him watching the World Cup 45 final from the sidelines – and, having sat on the bench as Francesco Avola played two years ago, he can consider himself doubly unfortunate, but…

But let’s not focus on the final just yet, shall we? Because, fine a performance as the second half provided, it failed to produce a Candelariasian goal. It could have done, and the creation of goalscoring chances has to be the ultimate barometer by which the positive development of football teams are judge, but C&M were none the less forced to cling onto what proved to be Jhanna Young’s forty-fifth minute winner. The side-footed finish was expertly taken; the build-up textbook – as Young overlapped with McKenzie to receive Nakatsuru’s ball through the legs of Maxwell.

Le Lan very nearly made a sizable mistake indeed when, with fifteen minutes still to play, he chose to bring Randjelovic to the bench in favour of an extra defender – Bocanegro making the most of Nakatsuru’s inexperience down the left to cross for Lynch, who bypassed newcomer Carlo Gaggioli with ease but could produce only a tame final effort. It was C&M who were able to press late on and keep the ball in the Sarzonian half, and by now Sarzonian hearts – and their aching limbs, following two sets of penalty shoot-outs prior to the semi-final – were well and truly broken.

Okay… Now let’s focus on the final, shall we?

In truth, in-depth debate on tactics for the Proving Grounds would be largely pointless – for one thing, Le Lan’s eleven looks nothing if not settled, for another the Holy Empire have shown consistent signs of being only barely short of superhuman. Yes, they have been twice taken to penalties in their last two games – particularly auspicious for the Big Blues, given Sarzonia’s journey up to yesterday’s clash – but they continue to carry an air of destiny and inevitability that Le Lan’s side, scraping as they have into the final once more, cannot hope to counter. All we can ultimately rely on is a reliable defence and an exceptional attack – with Jordan Hawker, anchoring the two, suddenly thrust into arguably the most important role of all.

Historically, these two nations’ achievements are something short of exceptional – with Liverpool England and Bedistan (or Liventia and part of Paripana, for the youngsters among us) having likewise faced each other in finals three times at World Cup 8, World Cup 26 and World Cup 27. Few would have predicted that we would be back so soon, however; with Davies, Oliver Wilkinson, Randjelovic, Adams and Young all preparing for second World Cup final appearances despite their relative youth. Even Adams, the eldest outfield player in the squad barring the seemingly forgotten Josh Belmore, looks to have at least one good campaign left in him, as the striker’s game moves away from relying on pace – and whether Le Lan is still at the helm or not, this is a squad capable of competing at the highest level for years to come.

Yet we can’t forget how we got here. The politicos may be most keen to reap dividends from the diverse make-up of the eleven – with two Outliens and five Marquezians (three of them Anglo, one a Squornshelan refugee), with the ethnic quotient kept alive by Albrecht’s Nakatsuru – while the primary concern of the fans will be how on Earth to make the historic final – with the journey between the Babbage Island and Southumbria long enough as it is (One Big Island may be many a splendored thing, but it really ain’t one big island), and Newmanistan itself by no means a regular destination from Albrecht international. But we mustn’t, in all the excitement, forget our recent history – the last-ditch attacks when all hope appeared dashed, the triumphs against adversity, the shock defeats and glorious victories, the…

Yeah, alright. Let’s just shut up and watch us in the World Cup final again.

World Cup 49 – Semi-Final 2
@ The Great Dome, Gernsback

Candelaria And Marquez 2
Adams 9
Young 45
Fernandez 8, Archer 7, Davies 7, Plunkett 7, Wilkinson 7, McKenzie 7 (Aldren 74min, 6), Young 8, Hawker 8, Nakatsuru 8, Randjelovic 7 (Gaggioli 83min), Adams 8

Sarzonia 1
Morrison 60
Taylor 7, Crosely 6, Maxwell 7 Davis 7 (Ryan 61min, 6), Bocanegro 8, Grover 8, Salivani 7 (Tremblay 77min), Rodney 7, Morrison 8 Wilson 6 (Crandall 77min), Lynch 7

[Candelaria And Marquez]

Martin wrapped his palm around the cold door handle as it shuddered beneath his grasp. He shut his eyes, and swallowed once more.

“Just to stress again, er, Mrs President, this isn’t… these aren’t the worst, you know? We have to keep them in special facilities, in case… Well, they could hurt themselves, you know? Or others. And some of them really can’t be left in direct sunlight, and there are others who need special… nutrients, and…”

“Thank you, Mr Davies. Let’s just get this part over with, please.”

Martin risked a sideways glance towards the Minister for Remedial Teaching, who returned it meaningfully, and coughed.

“Again, ma’am, we really don’t have to do this right now. There’s so much else to think about, maybe this just isn’t the right time fo–”

“Thank you, Peter, but if I don’t do it now I never will. You can wait outside, if you’d rather,” the President added generously, “I know you’ve got a little girl at home, it might be difficult for you…”

“I’ll manage,” Frampton said stiffly. “Davies, if you’d do the honours, then?”

Morton held her breath as Mc O’Neil’s Secretary of State for Home Affairs and Transport slowly opened the door.

The walls… She’d always remember the walls, because it was marginally better than remembering any of the rest of it. Much of it was painted in a suitably patriotic green, though stripes of other colours broke the monotony alongside little handprints – some in red, she noted, and some in brown, and tried not to think too deeply about either – and large cut-out figures. Winnie the Pooh and Micky Mouse shared wall space alongside minor characters from Candy & Mark* and several multicoloured puppets she couldn’t recognise. Other figures, however, were clearly footballers – Ug-Ug and Simeone Di Bradini she could make out, standing resplendent in their golden kits and very, very flat; others failed to ring any bells though their colours suggested origins in Dancougar, Jeruselem, even Ariddia… No Candelarisians, mind.

And there was the big, smiling face of Sam Mc O’Neil, of course. Always, there was Sam Mc O’Neil.

She forced her eyes downwards, and found that there was relatively little to see. A small boy, a thin but rosy-cheeked child of perhaps eight or nine, stared up at her from behind thick glasses, but he was seemingly the only one.

“Mr Davies…?”

“They, um… They’re not used to strangers,” the man said weakly. He cleared his throat. “Um… Kids? Would you like to come and meet the Pres… the… meet this nice woman?”

A shuffling followed, as perhaps two dozen small bodies revealed themselves, coming out from behind chairs and under tables and slipping uncertainly in from the rooms beyond. To her credit, the President held onto her lunch.

Green Island was hardly famous for its ethnic diversity, particularly outside Zapata, but every colour under the rainbow appeared represented here. Green was a popular choice, blue less so, and while pink, white and brown were all present and accounted for there was something less than natural about the colouring exhibited by three or four of them. Morton’s eyes focussed on one little girl, who was indeed quite the smallest child the she had ever seen to walk for herself. Spotting the President looking at her, the girl took a step back and tugged nervously on the fur of a larger boy behind her, who reached out and put a comforting, skeletal hand on her own tiny arm and fluttered his wings to make them take a more protective stance.

Girls were certainly well represented – one was as tall as she, but shockingly thin; another grossly rotund on a level that would make the average documentary maker for TTO2 mutter at least a ‘blimey’ under his breath. A small red-haired girl clutching a stuffed panda might have passed for normal, were it not for the double J breasts, but another was…

“Is that a boy or a girl?” Morton whispered.

Martin hesitated. “Er… Broadly, yes.”

“But human? Because I know all the species in Gordon Bay off by heart, and… Hello,” she offered, feebly, as the grotesque child smiled at her. Morton did her best not to flinch. “Well. It has been lovely meeting you all,” she said with hopelessly forced jolity, her attention taken by a muscle-bound boy and a girl who could just about pass for normal, sans the anime eyes and foot-long nose, staring hopefully past her down the corridor and towards the light outside.

Grateful for an excuse to turn away from them, she looked towards Davies. “Do they… get out, much? See the sunlight?”

“They’re dealt with on a case-by-case basis. You have to appreciate, these are the ones who we… not we, as such, but who have been deemed, by others, let me stress, to still, potentially, have some… use. If they didn’t, they’d be…”

“Dead?” she whispered.

“I… Yes. Let’s go with ‘dead’. To be honest, they tend to upset the other children, but…”

“Let them out. Just for a bit. They’re not going to run off, are they?”

“Some of them can run faster than your average Olympian,” Martin protested quietly, but he knew he was beaten and nodded towards Frampton. “Also, some of them have certain… special needs, you know, and…”

“No doubt you can see to them directly,” the minister told him, and took his President’s arm. “Perhaps if we should…?”

“Yes… Yes, please… Of course.”

She followed him back outside the room, down another of the Field Street Stadium’s anonymous corridors and towards a another rather more full of noise, motioning to him to stop just outside the door.

“Are you alright… Robyn?”

“I wasn’t quite prepared for that, that’s all… But, most of the children, they’re… normal, yes? They’re alright?”

“Up to a point, from what I’ve seen today. Overly athletic, one might suggest. Uncomfortably toned, but no worse than you’d see at your average CMSC academy, or Vera Khapsaev’s school, or such forth. Their mental health’s another question entirely, of course, but there are about thirty of them within the grounds here, I’ve got some of my people monitoring them now. Their usual carers as well, although in the long term…”

“We shouldn’t dispose of them so easily, Peter. Their carers, I mean. And teachers, and such forth. We’re going to need their insight.”

“Martin Davies and his ilk as well? These people are criminals by any definition, ma’am.”

“And they’ll get what’s coming to them. But for now you work with them, Peter. We’ve no idea how deeply Green Island’s loyalty to their former dictator lies, if at all. They’ll prove useful to you, providing you watch them like hawks.”

“Oh, great. Another job to worry about…”

“Peter, if you’re not up to the task…”

Frampton groaned. “Of course I am. We all are, but we’re stretched enough as it is, and you’re giving the Ministry an entire island to control!”

“Just until we can establish a new civilian government. Besides, you’ve had a whole bloody archipelago to control for the last few decades…”

“You know what I mean. This is different, Robyn, and I just… I just hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for. The M.O.R.T. are a law unto themselves at the best of times, and if they think Green Island needs… attentions, beyond what you personally feel appropriate, they’ll go ahead and institute them.”

“You’re the Minister, Peter. The buck stops with you.”

“I hope to God you’re right,” Frampton muttered beneath his breath, and opened the door. Morton followed him in, to meet voices raised in frustration.

“Joe, it’s a bloody jaguar!”

“It’s a humanoid being, more or less, that might taken on aspects of a jaguar, Tess. And we’ve clearly observed that that occurs only under particularly stressful circumstances. As long as Le Lan tells big Jono Plunkett not to mark him too tightly, we’ll have nothing much to worry about it that regard.”

“What about the giant bunny? Or the snake, for that matter…”

Morton coughed politely. “Sorry, what…?”

“We’ve reached the final, ma’am,” a young man she recognised only as one of Frampton’s people told her morosely. “Two-one, Adams and Young.”

“Oh. Well, jolly good. Brightens up the day, a little.”

“Oh, you think so? Have you any idea who we’re playing against? Ma’am.”

“The Holy Empire, isn’t it? I got a text… Better that than the elves, surely?”

“Oh, elves are easy,” the one called Joe told her dismissively. “We can do elves with our hands tied behind are backs. No, ma’am, we’re dealing with bloody Aztec gods! I mean, I know they reckon the Proving Grounds’re full of spirits, but this is just ridiculous…”

“Oh.” Morton wiped her hands over her face and yawned. “Um. I can’t say I’ve really been following… Hang on, I saw five minutes of one of their games only the other day, and I’ll be damned if there were any go–”

“We’ve been showing the games as-live, two days after the international broadcast. Been a bloody nightmare to keep out mention of that fact out of the public consciousness, I can tell you. Had our CGI guys replace their physical forms with ordinary looking players, the odd Neanderthal… it’s just about worked up ‘till now.”

“Can’t you just do that again, then?”

The young woman identified as Tess shook her head. “We had edited schedules made available to all broadcasters, newspapers and relevant websites almost as soon as the draw was released. We knew the Frosticans’d be a nightmare, so to speak… But everyone knows what day the final’s on! Thousands of people are travelling out there, for heaven’s sake. We can’t mess about with that, but our guys need at least twelve hours to turn hummingbirds and bloody great skeletons into fine, upstanding and thoroughly human members of the international footballing community, and even then it’d be pretty shoddy work. Any layman watching at home would at least be able to spot the odd stray pixel.”

“O’course,” the one called Joe interjected, “There’s a school of thought that reckons they’re going t’bring about The End of All That Is, or something of that sort, so it may be all rather academic in the long run.”

“Or they could kill each and every one of our players and feast on their marrow.”

“I hear they’re lethal from short corners, an’ all. Either way, there’s no way we’re going t’be able to cover that up. Unless we go in for doppelgangers, o’course… Matt!” he called out, towards an older man at the opposite end of the room, “Phone head office, will you? See if they can’t look into rounding up twenty-three professional look-a-likes? If worst comes to the worst, y’know, we’ll just have Le Lan send ‘em out instead of the proper players, right? Better that than the proper ones get their limbs chopped off for stew.”

And that’s the Ministry, Morton thought. Frampton and half a dozen… kids, really, most of them. Standing between us and… and… and whatever it is we’re so damn afraid of.

Oh, the M.O.R.T. employed rather more people than just them. Thousands alone monitored CCTV, and all electronic communication between citizens, every hour that God sent. Hundreds of agents out in the field; the heavies who seldom associated with their clients for more than five minutes a pop, and those secreted into communities and the media for decades on end. The scientists and historians and xenoanthropologists and such forth, Candelariasian or otherwise; and the Watchers who made sure the Time Dilation Device was spinning when it was supposed to; and the thousands of Recording Room Girls – and boys too, of course, since the Ministry was nothing if not an equal opportunities employer, but everyone tended to think of them as the Girls – arrayed in front of their laptops and typewriters and papers and slates and stone tablets, recording every facet of the days events on the off chance that the TDD went tits up and made drastic changes to the nature of reality, at least inside the Candelarias, wherein the information contained on a single sheet of paper that had escaped its attentions might be needed to try and somehow turn the world back to something akin to the way it had been before…

It always made her head ache just thinking about it all, never mind acknowledging all the Ministry Men who’d been born and reared within its sprawling corridors back in Albrecht and knew more about the worlds than it was possibly healthy for anyone to do so. Secretly, Morton suspected half of them weren’t even human. Any more, at any rate.

But when it came right down to it, the real brains of the outfit – not necessary its brightest minds, but the ones who had the final say on just about everything – were now arrayed in this little room. A brainstorming committee. It was an unnerving thought.

“O’course, it’d help a lot if we win,” one of them pointed out, dragging the President back out of her thoughts.

“Aye, a good street party can always be counted upon to dull the mind, can’t it? Not that we will, of course.”

“Maybe we should get hold of some gods of our own, fight on equal terms? I mean, joking aside, they’ve torn through just about everyone else so there’s no reason to suppose our lot are going t’catch them on the hop…”

“Not as though they’ve exhausted the pantheon, is it?” Tess mused, tapping away furiously on her laptop. “Anyone know how to call up Centeol, deity of maze?”

“Waaay ahead of you, Tessy. Five ears of corn, grand procession, chucking flower petals about… ooh, bare-breasted dancing.”

“At this time of year? I should cocoa…”

“There’s still other options. Chalchiuhtlicue, goddess of… well, she’s got water features pretty much down pat, by the looks of it.”

“Tends to take the form of a running river, though. Could be worth a try down the wing, I suppose.”

“Coatlicue… Now that’s yer hummingbird’s mum, right? Got t’count for something. Also gave birth to the moon, says here. And the stars.”

“Must have a fallulah like a bucket, poor girl. Never stopped the Dallases, mind you.”

Morton cleared her throat politely. “Is this really helping…?”

“We’re only on the Cs yet, ma’am. Have they got Xipe Totec, Joe? He looks a tough customer… Xiuhcoatl? Patecatl? He discovered them little cacti the giant stoned rabbits rely on.”

“Giant Stoned Rabbits? Heck of a good name for a band…”

Frampton waved an arm in the President’s general direction. “I find it’s best just to let them get on with it when they’re in this kind of mood…”

“Nah, boss-woman’s got a point, Pete,” Tess sighed. “I know we might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, but…”

“Shh! This is Green Island, Tess. It’s practically a national sport over here.”

“Depends what they’re doing with the sheep, Rául. Alright, no god for us, then. Problem is, y’see, ma’am, we could get away with the defence. The defence is easy. They’ve just got bones through their noses and stuff, artificially elongated ears, face paint, that kind of thing. We can put out that they’re from an obscure and untamed part of the Empire no problem, rustle up a few academic papers on their origins and unique social wotzit, couple of beardy-weirdies for the telly. But how d’you pass off a bloody great rabbit in the heart of the midfield?”

“Or the skeleton in goal, for that matter…”

“Nah, he’s do-able. Face mask, right? Like Matteo Corradini used to have after his ‘accident’.”

“And the headdress, Matt?”

“Could have had cranial damage, needs to wear protective headgear. All the rage for a ‘keeper, these days.”

“It’s got feathers in it!”

“Extra padding,” the one called Matt suggested defiantly.

Morton sighed, and gratefully caught the eye of a young man in an impractical hat standing respectfully by the door. She wandered over as he saluted and shut the door behind her after Frampton had squeezed through.

“Anything?”

“No sign, ma’am. There are at least seventeen bodies, all adults, mostly minor members of the Mc O’Neil government, all… not in a particularly happy state. They certainly met violent ends, although we’re having a slightly tricky time of it identifying exactly how. The Prime Minister himself might as well have disappeared off the face of the Earth.”

“No harm in letting him die in peace, I suppose…”

“That’s a little blasé, isn’t it, Robyn?”

“You didn’t see him, Peter. He was in no fit state to worry anyone… Have you checked everywhere, Corporal?”

“Yes ma’am. Including his office, which may I say was one of the more uncomfortable experiences of my life. We’ve sent for a team to fumigate it, assuming the geese’ll let us, and the rest of the stadium appears healthy enough, but I honestly wouldn’t recommend it as a base of operations for Mr Frampton’s government even so.”

Morton nodded. “See to it that the children and their guardians are prepared to be moved. Some of them may need special equipment, I don’t know… Forklift trucks, possibly…”

The man saluted again. “Yes ma’am.”

Taking Frampton’s shoulder lightly, the President turned and bent over the banister that ran along the corridor, looking out over some of the stadium’s training facilities. A few of the more typically proportioned and generally healthy-looking children were kicking balls around, though more than one or two – sensing that the previous regime was on the way out – were enthusiastically playing hide and seek or tag, as though suddenly freed from the football-focused constraints of months past.

“This can’t ever be allowed to happen again, Peter,” Morton said quietly. “Not here, not anywhere.”

“To be fair, we don’t know entirely what said happening was, Robyn.”

“We can guess, can’t we? Not the specifics, I’ll grant you. God knows if those particular children were grown in vats, or fed… heaven knows what. But he was trying to create superhuman footballers, that much is clear.”

“He wouldn’t be the first.”

“I know. He has to be the last.”

They watched the children in companionable silence for a while.

“We’d probably be arrested and banned on the sex offenders register for this, back on the mainland,” Frampton said cheerfully. “Good thing I don’t have my camera phone on me.”

“Pat-a-cake,” the President replied distantly.

“Hm? Oh, no, Patecatl. God of healing and fertility,” Frampton correctly her kindly. “Don’t think he’s on the team, though.”

“No… Pat-a-cake. Those two little girls over there… With all the skipping and clapping at such forth. Seems so… normal. Considering all they’ve been through.”

“If we’re being really pernickety, I think it’s the Zah-p’-t’, Zah-p’-t’, Cobblen’ Man song… It’s practically they’re national anthem here, I should think Mc O’Neil had it on the syllabus.”

“Shows how much I know about this place, I suppose,” she sighed. “We really have ignored it. In some ways, it’s no surprise they embraced Mc O’Neil like they did.”

“Not that they had much choice… Look, I don’t want to speak out of turn, bu–”

“Do you suppose they’re really gods, Peter? Or merely incredibly advanced, or even just monumentally different beings masquerading as such?”

“Um. All three? I don’t know, you’re the regular churchgoer. I try not to think about that kind of thing too much.”

“No, me neither… But isn’t that sad, Peter? There’s a whole multiverse out there, full of so much wonder…”

“And terror.”

“True. But even in our very back garden these days, in Gordon Bay, there’s just so much we don’t understand… Don’t you ever think it’s just awful that there are millions of Candelariasians who deserve, as as… as a human right, Peter, to know even a fraction of what’s out there, but don’t? And the few who do are people like us, people who… ‘try not to think about it’?”

“It’s a crying shame, ma’am,” Frampton said diplomatically. “But look, I ju–”

Morton held up a silencing hand and stared at the girls down below once more. “I’d swear I recognise that child from somewhere… Hey!” she called out suddenly, as a young woman bedecked in the uniform of Mc O’Neil’s training staff passed by them along an adjoining walkway. She stepped forward with head bowed, and managed to squeak a “Yes’m.”

“That girl, on our right… I’m sure she looks familiar. A photograph in some report I was given, I think, but…”

“Eh? Oh, that’s our Alice, your Presidentship, ma’am, sir.”

“That’s a… pretty name,” Morton said weakly.

Frampton’s eyes narrowed. “Alice Young?” he asked the woman sharply. “Jhanna Young’s sister?”

“Yes, sir… She’s one of our special children, is Alice.”

“Oh God, what have you done to her…? She doesn’t look… special.”

“Oh, not in that sense, ma’am. She’s just a proper singular talent, Uncle Sa… er… the former Prime Minister says. Said. Magic in ‘er boots, ma’am,” she added, rallying. “She’ll go far, that one.”

“She can start by going to Tundra Falls. Cheer her sister on in the final. We owe her that much at least… Find one of my people, will you? Arrange a flight at the first opportunity. And there was a brother, wasn’t there? Weren’t they twins? D’you know where he is?”

“Um… Yes?” the woman offered hesitantly. The trio’s eyes met for a moment.

“Right. Fine. She’ll go on her own, then. See to it.”

Frampton waited until the woman had scurried away once more before attempting to open his mouth again. “Look, can I please just say…”

“Go on.”

“Keeping Jhanna Young’s mouth shut up ‘till now has been hard enough as it is…”

“You think we should be keeping the child here? Locked up? What about her parents, are we just going to let them rot away in a M.O.R.T. cell, too?”

“That wasn’t part of the plan, no… Robyn, this is huge, alright? I’m going to try my best, I truly am, but… this isn’t Gordon Bay City! There are barely more than a couple of thousand of humans there, or our humans at any rate, and most of them are pretty happy with their lot. ‘Specially the men, you’ve no idea how much of a boon all those skosgra and seligen turning up was… But Green Island’s big, and there are already heaven knows how many refugees, and it’s not as though they’re spread out or anything! I mean, not the people who still live here. There are whole communities who know what happened, who are still living it, and when they find out what’s been happening to the kids they sent away to football training… The rest of the Candelarias don’t even know about the cult of Mc O’Neil, never mind all the rest of it, and I just don’t know how much longer I can keep it quiet now he’s gone!”

“It’s your job, Peter. You asked me for it!”

“I can keep it out of the media, sure, but people’ll still talk, and we can’t arrest everybody! And when it does get out, properly get out, it’ll be all anyone can talk about. What we allowed to happen here – it’ll be the entire focus of the country, even if we stop the press saying even one word about it…”

“Not if we win the World Cup, of course. People will have their street parties and such forth on their minds then.”

“Momentarily, sure. Not in the long term, though. Oliver Wilkinson lifting that trophy might be on all the front covers, but it’s not what people will really be talking about. And that could spell doom for your administration, Robyn, I hardly need to point that out.”

“No… No, of course not.” Leaning over the railing, Morton laced her fingers and propped her head upon them. “Peter?”

“Hm…?”

“You’ve heard people talking about, you know, a good day to bury bad news…?”

“Of course. What of it?”

“Perhaps this is one? Or the day of the final, anyway.”

Frampton groaned. “Look, I just said… It won’t work, it’s not enough! Not anymore…”

“Then perhaps we should give them something else to think about? Perhaps it’s time the public saw the gods of football for what they really are…”

The minister’s eyes bulged. “Oh Robyn… You can’t seriously be suggesting that?”

“Oh I’m deadly, Peter. Let them see the gods, why not?”

“Erm… Because it would bring about the end of civilization as we know it?”

“It might anyway, if the rumours of what these creatures plan for our world are true. I heard what your people said, it might not matter either way, our entire reality could be slaughtered. And if it is, well… Then after the game I’ll go on television and tell them the truth.”

“The truth? The whole truth?”

“Most of it. Gods, elves, bears, hedgehogs, monks, goblins… cover-ups. Why not? That’d really give ‘em something new to chew over, wouldn’t it? Blow rumours of human rights abuses on Green Island out of the water for a few months, at any rate.”

Frampton gaped at her. “But… I mean, I… After all these…”

“You’ll still have a job, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“It damn well isn’t! Robyn, never mind our government, this could bring down every government! Our whole democratic system, every civil office, faith in the press, our entire damned country, I mean… Do you really want to be the President responsible for that? Now? On a bloody whim?”

“Is that really what we’re afraid of now, hm? Being shown to our entire populace for the lying bastards we are, and always have been? Anderson’s government, and all the ones before, they had an excuse, Peter. They were scared of the fae, of what they’d do if we broke the covenant. Well we know who the fae are now. So do they, for that matter. The Kolan aren’t going to hurt us, their existence is an open secret as it is, these days. The truth is what this country needs, now. Not me, not you, not the infallible word of the Albrecht Herald. If the entire elite of this nation has to be wiped away, and all the abuses committed by your Ministry in the name of national security dragged into the light, and our whole democratic system given a proper seeing to, if that’s what we need to give the people of Green Island their dignity…”

“Their dignity!? My God, that’s some specialist thinking at work there! You’re doing this to save your own arse, and don’t you dare suggest otherwise!” Frampton shouted. “If enough people found out the truth about Green Island, you’d be up before a court of law, and you know it! We both would. This way, with your gods and your elves… people’ll be too stunned to do anything about it for a good few months, for one thing, and wouldn’t trust the judiciary anymore either! By the time they started accepting things, you’d’ve been forgiven and forgotten as just another link in the chain. And as the woman who stood up and said ‘No More!’ into the bargain! You’d be celebrated and, oh… Oh, you’ve really got it all thought out, haven’t you?”

“Are you done?”said Morton, mildly. “You knew this was going to happen eventually, Peter. After the Monument Place incident, we couldn’t hope to keep everything quiet forever. There was always going to be full disclosure!”

“After years of careful planning, absolutely! Pieces of information being released at strategically important times. The meticulous creation of a public image whereby the government, or the M.O.R.T., or the media, didn’t actually know that much about all these non-human species and whatnot up until now… A steady transition into what the rest of the worlds think of as normalcy, with no scapegoats, no-one taking blame, no courts…”

“More lies. And if we’re going to lie to the public, Peter, it has to start and finish with Green Island. For all our sakes. And it has to start with the gods.” She turned plaintive eyes upon him. “I need your support for this, Peter.”

Frampton nervously pursed his lips. “Oh, I don’t… Yes. Yes, alright! You have my support… I don’t want my Olivia growing up in this inane, backward country, I never have… If we can pull it kicking and screaming into the twentieth century…”

“We’ll be heroes.”

“You’re a bitch,” the minister said flatly. “And yes, I’ll go and tell my guys and girls to stand down. I can’t believe we actually about to do this… Shouldn’t you be talking to the rest of the cabinet about his, at the very least?”

“I’m the President. You’re the Minister for Remedial Teaching. It’s up to us.”

“But you know there’s no going back, don’t you? If you do this, if our people sit down in their millions to watch the biggest football match of this or any year and see… and see them. And hear you saying those things… If it all goes tits up, they’ll never be able to backtrack. I mean, they could say you’ve just gone mental, but no-one would believe it, would they? Not after seeing… them.”

“Indeed.”

“There’s no going back.”

Morton nodded. “I know, Peter. I’m counting on it…”

____________

* Candy & Mark is a hugely popular animated television series aimed at Candelariasian children aged 4 to 10, featuring a certain amount of rather generic pre-adolescent crime-fighting, songs, profound insights on modern morality, a relentlessly pro-diversity stance on any and every political issue, a small amount of sex ed, the occasional moment of mildly offensive jingoism, happy little elves, and talking animals. In the latter regards, the programme is arguably the closest thing TV2 gets to subversiveness… not that anyone much realises, of course.

It should not be confused with Candy & Marco, occasional guest stars and personifications of Candelaria And Marquez in the popular Nord-Brutlandese satirical webcomic L’Uomo.

No, really.

[Newmanistan]

Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to Tundra Falls for this World Cup Final. Newmanistan and The Babbage Islands have been honored to bring the competition to you and we hope that you have all enjoyed it, whether or not you got the result for your team you were looking for or not.

It’s a sold out crowd here at the Proving Grounds with the overflow grandstand seating all claimed. Flags from nations all around the world proudly wave, showing the passion of football fans across the globe to come here even if the match does not involve their national team.

This final is sponsored by the World Cup Committee, present members, past members, and soon-to-be members all included. Because it is thanks to them that this match is here today and that the World Cup has now successfully completed 49 versions. It is all of us that have made the World Cup One Big Success.

Final RP Cutoff

And the winner is.....

[Alasdair I Frosticus]

[OOC - for the record, events would have unfolded much the same way whomever had won - though with a different team collecting the trophy. This was the plan from the very beginning]


It was, of course, the end of the world.

As the Candelarians rose to celebrate their third goal in the World Cup 49 final, a goal which gave them a surely unassailable come from behind 3-1 lead against a bunch of gods with 9 minutes left to play, the apocalypse began.

The sky turned the colour of fire; the rain that had marked the second half turned to ash; the centre circle began to spew lava; and the Aztec gods seemed to grow in size until their terrifying countenance seemed to tower over all of Tundra Falls.

As the harvest of the damned began, and those who were not immediately sacrificed in the name of the dread Aztec gods began to run and scream with terror, as each member of the Candelarian squad - a team who were now paying the ultimate price for their temerity in victory - fell dead to the burning grass, it seemed over.

Ordinary Reality was doomed, and somewhere in SBIS headquarters, the highest-ranked leaders of the Holy Empire's security forces watched the awful consequences of their terrible mistake unfold....

--------------------------------------------------------------

Because it had been a mistake. Even in the Dreamed Realm, people make mistakes, though sometimes those mistakes are more easily rectified - or perhaps not necessarily considered mistakes by those who experience them.

But this time the mistake had been catastrophic, and this time the mistake threatened to destroy an entire reality.

Just what had motivated HEFA, the SBIS, and ISPI to call on the trans-dimensional Aztecs for World Cup 49 may perhaps never be fully explained, not even in the arcane pages of the Codex Frosticus.

Perhaps a reality ripple left over from the Event had clouded their judgement.

Perhaps they underestimated how difficult the Aztecs would be to control.

Perhaps some junior functionary had missed the fourth appendix on incompatible realities on a recently-filed report.

Or perhaps someone simply made a very, very stupid mistake.

Whatever the cause, the SBIS meeting over whether to try and do that mistake had been a long - and particularly passionate one. At the end of it, the Basileus' personal representative to the SBIS high command had cast the deciding vote.

Ordinary Reality would not be abandoned to its fate.

Ordinary Reality would be saved.

The Reality Disaster Protocol would be initiated; the pledge never to interfere in the form and nature of Ordinary Reality would be broken; a deal would be done with the spirits of Tundra Falls, and the Di Bradini curse would be lifted.

And so the High Command gathered in the panopticon to watch.

It was, perhaps, not quite the end of the world just yet.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Tundra Falls. The screams of the dying shatter the air; the blood of the dead congeals across the charnel house of the terraces. Newmanistan seems doomed; all of One Big Island will surely follow.

Yet just as all seemed lost, a grey bubble of nothing arose from behind the Imperial goal. It shimmered with opacity, a no-bubble of un-time kept hidden for two weeks by the protecting spirits of Tundra Falls, who had now become avenging spirits; if both impervious to harm from the Mexica pantheon and unable to harm them directly, they would not see this, their city and nation, fall.

The bubble dissolved.

And there, their grim faces set certain to ignore the unfolding catastrophe around them, sat Juan Tzimisces, Simeone Di Bradini, and Ug-Ug. They each flipped a switch on the side of the impossible piece of machinery that sat between them, a five-dimensional ... thing ... folded this day into three dimensions.

Quetzalcoatl noticed them; he recognised the machine.

The Plumed Serpent, now in his natural form, flew towards them, trying to stop them.

Too late.

Tzimisces, Di Bradini, and Ug-Ug each pulled a trigger, and the reality cannon fired.


-----------------------------------------------------

Space folds.

Time unwinds.

Realities weave and unweave.

-----------------------------------------------------


"And with seconds left of this World Cup final, Basil, the Holy Empire look beaten."

"I agree, Theo. Fielding the same squad for two World Cups in a row was clearly a mistake for the Empire. The Candelarians have the measure of them this time."

"Ug-Ug tries another surging run, but again Davies - who has been simply magnificent - shuts him down. There's been nothing for the Empire since that early goal from Boradiotes."

"It's almost as if the Empire's heart isn't in it, Theo - as if they're trying to atone for some terrible mistake, almost as if they now want the Candelarians to win."

"And there's the final whistle! Candelaria and Marquez gain their revenge for World Cup 48, and this time it looks like Ug-Ug does know how to lose. The Holy Empire's World Cup 49 squad - identical to the World Cup 48 squad, as everyone here surely knows - leave the field to the celebrating Candelarians who are, despite the strangely subdued Imperial performance, worthy winners tonight..."


-----------------------------------------------------------


Ordinary Reality would never know how close they had come to final annihilation, but everyone in the Dreamed Realm knew. They would never tell anyone about their terrible mistake, about how Tzimisces, Di Bradini, and Ug-Ug had saved so many worlds.

Nor did they want to.

And if the people of Ordinary Reality wondered why, for the next year, so many people had the same recurring nightmares of bloodthirsty Mesoamericans tearing the world to pieces, they never talked about about it.

Nor did they want to.

[Candelaria And Marquez]

tl;dr version = some stuff happened, and then didn’t, and never in fact did, everyone went home happy, forebodings of impending evil abounded

“…typically portrayed as suffering with… suffering from… suffering with…? Suffering from…?”

“I really don’t think that really matters much, at this stage. And it’s endemic non-neurological congenital hypothyroidism.”

“Aye, ta. Did that ever mean anything, Peter?”

“You’d have to ask Hernández, I think. Or that pet elf of his. Both of whom are dead, so… God knows. It did the job, anyway. Stood the test of time.”

“Until now.”

“Until now, yes…”

“Alright. …suffering from endemic non-neurological congenital hypothyroidism, semi-colon, the Az-czid were in fact a gnomish race. Under the circumstances I’ve just outline, it was felt necessary t–”

“Felt necessary by your predecessor.”

“Yes, good point… Felt necessary by my predecessor to keep this fact from the general public, despite knowing full well the financial, intellectual and – ultimately – human cost that a deception of this nature, enacted on such an unavoidably substantial scale, would eventually bring to bear. I have no hesitation in stressing, again, that such decisions were undoubtedly undertaken with the most genuine of intentions, ho–”

“Are you sure?”

“It’ll look hopelessly disingenuous if I distance myself from that sort of thing completely. I’d have made the same calls if I’d been in office back then, Peter, and so would’ve you.”

“The general public don’t need to know that though, do they?”

“Yes. They do. We’re dropping the previous administration deep enough into the soup as it is, anything that can make a few of the vigilante mobs hesitate that little bit longer when the time comes can’t be bad. I’m not going to have the murders of any politicians on my conscience, Peter, opposition ones or otherwise.”

“You are though, you know. Even best-case scenario, when people find out the extent of everything… Look, I know I’m supposed to be a complete and utter bastard in my role as Minister for Remedial Teaching…”

“And you’ve really risen to the challenge over the past couple of months, may I say?”

“Thank you, Robyn,” Frampton said grimly, “But would it not be a good idea to warn at least one or two high-profile figures to bunker down for the evening? Or book one-way tickets to Emo and hop on the nearest ferry going east, for that matter?”

The President shook her head. “We can’t risk the possibility of anyone trying to disrupt this. The only people who know about tonight’s broadcast are you and me, your little inner circle at the M.O.R.T., and one or two senior chaps at TV1. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Even if houses get torched? Cars set alight? I’m only guessing, but it can be a nightmare to get a protesting child out of a booster seat in a hurry when a torch-bearing lynch mob are descending upon your vehicle.”

“It won’t come to that.”

“It might. Oh come on, you saw the reaction after the Monument Place Incident, and that was bloody peanuts by comparison to this!”

“Your concern for others does you credit, Peter, but right now – and if never again – we have to consider the needs of the country as a whole, an–”

“PENALTY! Gottabe! GOT to be!”

Morton winced at the scream emanating from the adjoining room and slid her chair back with reluctance. “Oh God, it’s only five minutes since they equalised…”

“Robyn!”

“Coming, sweetheart,” she sighed, and wandered into the palatial lounge, Frampton pottering in after her.

According to the minister, they shouldn’t even have been here. This was the part of Robinson House the public never saw, true, the part insulated like nowhere else from the insanity outside its walls, the part where a dozen or more children had grown up and twenty-nine heads of government had found time to pretend that they were anything but… but it was still the first place where the angry mobs would come looking for her, if it came to it.

Morton had brushed Frampton’s protestations aside. If this was going to be her last stand, it would take place here; in the cold, old house she had made a home. It had been a good few years now since the laughter of the young had echoed through its halls, but there were traditions to observe none the less – a major international football match was on, and she was never going to budge Michael from his place on the sofa, a beer in one hand, one of the dogs demanding attention from the other. Her husband might have been a major player in the laminated nametag manufacturing business, but he was a simple man when it came to his football – no, she’d corrected herself, he was a man when it came to his football – and there were some things she simply couldn’t bring herself to do. It was the World Cup final, after all.

“Good match, is it?” she asked him weakly.

“Mm!” her husband confirmed enthusiastically, through a mouthful of peanuts, “S’got to be a pen, s’got t’be, got to be… It’s going t’be! He just took him out, last man and everythin’! Should be a straight red an’ all…”

“Yes. Er… Who is it we’re talking about, again…?”

“Xiuhtecuhtli. Bastard just totally lost it, it wasn’t as though our Jesse was going t’score again from there, anyway… Mind you, I’d be snappy if I had an overbite like that, poor bugger.”

“Right. Well, let me know if th–”

“…ing to be Adams, placing the ball on the spot… This to take a two-one lead with barely quarter of an hour of normal time still to play… And how decisive could this prove? Danny Adams now… looks Mictlantecuhtli straight in the… straight in the sockets, steps up…! AND SCORES!! DANNY ADAMS, FROM THE SPOT, NO FEAR, STRAIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE… A perfect pen, at the perfect time, Mictlantecuhtli does not look a happy customer…!”

“How can he tell?” Frampton wondered aloud, “He always looks like he’s grinning…”

“Nah, it’s a protective mask, innit?” Michael said cheerfully as he brushed some stray pieces of peanut shell of the startled dog and retook his familiar furrow on the sofa. “You want t’grab a beer, Peter, mate?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the television as Adams and his cohorts were reluctantly shepherded back towards the field of play, “Catch the last fifteen minutes?”

“We’ve really got a lot of work to be getting on with, Mike,” his wife insisted.

“At this time of night? C’mon, luv, the head of state can’t miss her own country in the bloody World Cup final! That’s your people out there!”

“I know,” Morton sighed. (Technically, of course, her husband was ‘Morton’ as well and, indeed, had been so for a darn sight longer. In this household at least, however, there were few arguments as to who embodied the name and who was merely ‘Mike’.) “That’s rather the problem.” She made to turn away, before pausing thoughtfully. “Mike, where did you get all that about the protective mask?”

“Eh? Oh, I dunno. Here and there. It’s the only logical explanation, isn’t it? Ooh… They’ve got t’get it wide, they really have, catch ‘em on the break again and they could wrap this all up…!”

Morton glanced at the minister. “Did you…?”

“Not me. The M.O.R.T. haven’t put out a single shred of information regarding the Frostican team since last Thursday. I suppose… people are just finding their own explanations…”

“…jelovic, beats Xochipilli, can he thread this one through…? Oh, just cut out by Tonacatecuhtli… coolly done, that, but he must know time’s suddenly against his team… Real turnaround this, John, but you can’t say it hasn’t been coming…”

“C’mon luv, people’re going t’want to know your take on a famous victory! It’s the biggest thing that’s happened in this country in, well, eight years… I reckon that big tertiary education shake-up thingy you two have been working on for God knows how long can wait just this one night, can’t it? ‘Specially for a night like this, pass it, Jono! Yeh lanky streak of piss, get it out of yer bloody box!”

“Maybe for the last five minutes, or something…”

“Eh, it’s your funeral. Nobody’s going to take your claims to patriotism seriously, though… Y’know, they really shouldn’t have let that Ug-Ug retire, it’d’ve been a totally different contest if he’d been playing, I reckon…”

“Mike, there are some things that are a damn sight more important that football!”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Hoof it, Jake! Peter, c’mon, knock some sense into my wife, eh?”

“Um, I… I’m not sure it’s really my place to…” The minister frowned. “Gosh, it really is a giant rabbit, isn’t it?”

“He’s a puzzler, that one, I’ll grant you,” Michael nodded, his back still turned on them. “I reckon he’s probably got that thing, y’know, with the fur? Makes ‘em hairy. Probably inbreeding and that, never helps… Dunno about the ears, mind you. Shockingly lifelike really, aren’t thePASS IT, PASS IT! N-N-N-N… YES, LIKE THAT! Get it out to Kov!”

Frampton and the President watched with horrified fascination as Koviljko Randjelovic managed to get a toe on Oliver Wilkinson’s pass only to lose the ball to Huehuecoyotl, the tricky winger out on the Holy Empire’s right; the Albrecht Turkish wide man and Arrigo Portuguese full-back immediately turning angrily on each other. Huehuecoyotl powered forward, only for Jacob Davies to meet him with a perfectly timed sliding tackle, the ball lofted well into the air and the opposition half. The camera rushed in for a close-up of the creature’s face as it roared its distaste, a bead of angry saliva reaching from its snout to its jaw for a moment before bursting repulsively.

“I knew we shouldn’t have bought that HD telly,” the President muttered.

Michael Morton breathed out. “Jesus… Will you look at the fangs on that? Tell you what, I’ve seen some funny dental fashions in some of our afro-caribbeans, but that’s just crazy…”

Morton grabbed at Frampton’s arm and dragged him back into her little office.

“He really doesn’t know anything does he?” the minister whispered. “How the hell has he managed to stay like that after eighteen months married to the President?”

“By being very, very clever,” Morton hissed back. “Him, I mean. He couldn’t have avoided the truth any harder if he’d tried…”

“Are you sure you want him to find out at the same time as the rest of the country? Really?”

“Have you told your Katie?”

“Er… Not in so many words, no. Not all of it. She knows ‘Remedial Teaching’ isn’t all that it seems, but…”

“Well, there’s no time for sentiment, is there? They’ll have to find out at the same time as everybody else, and they’ll have to like it.”

“Robyn, you could tell him now!”

“In the middle of the World Cup final, are you mad? Besides, you heard him – he’s got it all figured out. ‘Dental fashions’, I ask you…! D’you suppose they’re all like that, Peter? Rationalising all this themselves, without even being prompted?”

“In my experience, your average Candelariasian has a quite remarkable capacity for that kind of thing,” Frampton sighed. “Not getting cold feet now, are you? Wondering if it all really matters?”

“No. No, even if they’ve fooled themselves as well as my husband, it’s time, Peter. I can… feel it, you know? I can’t sit on this any longer, pretending that this is normal! That it’s even necessary… My country deserves better, and no-one’s going to stop me from dragging her up by her bootlaces… No matter what!” Morton pulled back her chair and slammed herself into the seat. “Sit!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

The President reached forward and brandished the evening’s script. “Right… Let’s tidy up the bit about the bears, I want to get across just how many difficult decisions we had to make to keep all that under wraps without… you know…”

“Mentioning how you had several Zapatans shot to provide a distraction?”

“Not my finest hour,” Morton nodded, smiling weakly.

Cautiously, Frampton edged his chair closer towards hers, and rested a hand on the President’s. “I do understand, you know? I haven’t been in this brief long, or anything, but I know how difficult it is to make those kinds of calls. You can’t blame yourself, you really can’t, it’s… it’s circumstances, isn’t it? It’s an impossible situation.”

“I know. I mean, I know… you know. And that helps, it really does. Mike’s sympathetic, you know? He listens, but… I could never tell him everything, ever, even after tonight… He wouldn’t understand, the pressure, I… I just wrap it all up inside, Peter, and sometimes, sometimes I just want to scream…”

“I know,” Frampton told her, meaningfully. “I really do…”

Awkwardly, they turned to face each other, their eyes met, and for the briefest moment nothing and no-one else seemed to matter…

“Oh, ATTAGIRL! WHAT A FINISH! What a finish! Oh… OI LUV, IT’S THREE-ONE!”

“That’s nice,” Morton said quietly from the other room, the spell broken.

“Yeah, ten minutes to go…! We’re actually going t’win this, an… Sweet mother of fuck… What the hell is THAT!?”

***

There were these times when time seemed to slow…

Jhanna Young ran onto Koviljko Randjelovic’s pass. Her legs felt like lead, but that didn’t matter – not when each and every other player on the pitch were barely mobile themselves. She valued these times, when the world seemed to grind to a halt just for her, and her mind was allowed to whir away while her body dawdled.

She could score. She could score, but she wasn’t going to, because Mictlantecuhtli was looming up in front of her, and because Danny Adams was in a far, far better position. She could pass to him, and if the pass was accurate and the pitch still played true after all this rain it’d be a simple matter for him to sidefoot the ball into the back of the net for three-one.

She should pass to him. She should pass to him. She could go it alone herself, and perhaps she’d get it on target, and perhaps Mictlantecuhtli wouldn’t get a bony hand to it, and perhaps she’d score one of the finest World Cup final goals for many a year. But how could she possibly trust herself to do that? Not when she’d been having such a bad game…

She’d had a bad game. Now, now after she dragged this side kicking and screaming to the World Cup, now after she’d so often been the difference between going out or going through. They wouldn’t be at the World Cup final without her, and she’d chosen now to have a bad game? Now, when each and every one of her companions had played out of their skin? Now, when they’d carried her through the past eighty-one minutes? Now, when a saner manager than Le Lan would surely have hauled her off? Jesse and Lee had been withdrawn to the bench already… what the hell had she done to justify still being out there?

But of course she’d had a bad game! They were playing against eleven gods! The skeletal lord of the underworld had stood before her throughout; Quetzalcoatl himself had battled with her in the centre of the park. Oh, her team-mates knew what they were up against as well as she – they knew it, but they didn’t believe it. Even the ones who lived abroad, they’d all had a couple of decades of a Candelariasian upbringing. Whatever they knew; for now, when they needed to, they could forget it. If Mictlantecuhtli had to be a thin man in a somewhat inappropriate protective facemask, then he was damn well going to be.

Jhanna couldn’t do that, no matter how hard she’d tried. She’d been – she was – the daughter of a former international footballer, who’d told her everything while she’d still been in her cot. She was raised knowing the truth, like almost no other Candelariasian before her. She’d been at a football club run by elves since the age of fourteen, for heaven’s sake! How could she simply forget? How could she banish the pure terror that coursed through her body every time one of those creatures so much as brushed past her? How could she look the god of the dead straight into the black pits of its empty sockets, and…

She looked the Lord of the Underworld straight into the black pits of its empty sockets. They weren’t empty.

And she smiled. Suddenly… suddenly it was all just a joke! She hadn’t looked at him, not properly looked at him, in all the last eighty minutes, and now he seemed so silly. A living skeleton, a god that feasted on human flesh, playing in goal, in the World Cup final. What a skinny, stupid creature… What a joke. Doctor, Doctor, I don’t think I’m eating properly. Why didn’t the skeleton go to the party? Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road?

He isn’t even a particularly decent goalkeeper, Jhanna thought. Not really. He made a right hash of Jesse’s equaliser. I can see right through you, literally when your cloak swishes the right direction in the wind, and you don’t scare me! I can beat you!

How can I not trust myself to do this? Myself is I’ll I’ve got. You can take away everything else, Peter Frampton, wherever you are… You can take away everyone I love, but I still have my right foot. Oh, I hope you’re watching closely Mictlantecuhtli, you stupid bag of bones. I hope you’re watching, Sam Mc O’Neil. I hope you’re watching closely, Peter Frampton, and Robyn Morton, and Danny Adams – I know you’re watching closely Danny Adams, so you can stop jumping up and down and waving at me to cross to you, because this is my shot, and this is going to be my goal…

I might not have anything else left, but I’ve damn well got this…!

Time sped up, and she struck. The Lord of Mictlan waved a weak hand and dived to his left, but the ball curled beautifully away from him at the final moment and planted itself in the top corner.

Jhanna wheeled away, arms outstretched, the roars of her team-mates and the crowd and Mictlantecuhtli rolling into one. She set her eyes upon the crowd, the sea of blue and green, as they jumped to their feet in jubilation. In the lowest tiers, panicking Newmanistanian stewards parted like the red sea as hundreds of Candelariasians dived forwards towards her, in the hope of the briefest sliver of second spent touching the girl who had delivered them glory.

She’d probably get a yellow card for incitement. She didn’t care. And as she prepared herself to be enveloped by the tide of sweaty Candelariasian bodies bedecked in replica shirts, she turned her eyes to the highest rows of the Proving Grounds and saw them.

Her mother, her father, Alice… They were in the crowd! They weren’t captives any more, they were here, for the final, to cheer her on! They looked drawn, and so far away, but they looked happy…

She let the fans pull her in, trusting that the stewards would soon pull them from her, and…

And now they were tearing themselves away from her, and screaming. Jhanna turned back to the pitch to see Mictlantecuhtli rise up metre by metre in front of her eyes. Her skin began to scold as the cauldron of boiling blood that had been the Tundra Falls sky discharged its hellfire. The Lord of the Underworld turned his stare on Danny Adams for just a moment, just long enough for the striker to fall in agony to the flaming field, player after player following in his gruesome lead.

Pain entangled her ankles like vines as her boots melted away, and she danced backwards towards the stands. Sixty-five thousands men, women and children poured blindly towards the exits, crawling on hands and knees over crushed bodies. Here and there, a few stood stock still, their eyes aflame and turned with adoration towards the mighty gods, their souls corrupted forever more. The rest fled, not one turning to risk a second glance at the young woman standing helplessly at the food of the stands.

Not one… save for the little girl fighting back down the columns of seats.

“Alice!” Jhanna screamed at her sister, flinging her arms forwards and pleading with the child to turn back. For a moment the girl hesitated – a moment too long, as a bulky man squeezed into a scanty C&M shirt pushed past her, thrusting her to her knees and into the plastic shards of a broken seat. Jhanna rushed forward, rattling up the flights of steps two at a time and pushing along the row until she reached Alice and put out her arms.

As she pulled the child close to her chest, Jhanna felt the eyes of the goalkeeper on her back. She turned, to see a grinning skull that filled the sky, and turned her back upon in once more in a final act of defiance.

The empty eyes and twisted, blackened lips of her sister stared back at her, crushing her heart even as she witnessed the little girl’s arms spring forward with unnatural force, slamming into her ribs and sending her careering over the side of the stand to fall with a soundless thud upon the field and break like a toy soldier.

***

The cameras couldn’t cut away to a happier scene. There was no one left to guide them.

“Wha… What are they, what have they…? Is this real?” Michael Morton whispered.

“Yes,” his wife said quietly.

“What… What are they!?”

“Gods,” Frampton told him flatly. “Angry ones, I think. That being their default position, by all accounts.”

The President clutched the script for the post-match revelations tightly to her chest. My God, she thought. I really am going to have to read this… They have to know, now…

“Maybe they don’t,” Frampton whispered, reading her thoughts as the Proving Grounds fell. “At this rate, maybe there’ll be no point. There’s not going to be a Candelaria And Marquez left to tell. There’s not going to be anywhere…”

“There might be! They might be able to stop them…”

“What ‘they’!? The Newmanistanian armed forces? The Rushmore Treaty Alliance? Other gods!? Look at them, Robyn, they’re going to tear this world apart!”

“Didn’t your people say there were supposed to be spirits at the Proving Grounds? Maybe they can…”

“For God’s sake, woman!” Michael shouted, turning on her, “What’re you babbling about!? Those’re just stories to amuse their kids; those things out there are… are real. Aren’t they…?”

“Oh, Mike,” Morton sighed desperately, “There’s so much you just don’t know… I’ve wanted to tell you everything, I really have, you deserved it, but… Sometimes, it was just nice to be able to come home and not have to worry abou–”

“Um,” Frampton offered, pointing insistently towards the static screen, “Isn’t that Ug-Ug?”

“What? Peter, for heaven’s sake, I think it hardly matters now wh

***

“Jhan! Jhanna!”

Jhanna Young blinked just fast enough to see Juan Tzimisces Junior take the ball from under her feet and feed Philotheus Coccino, and focused on Danny Adams.

“Jhanna, eyes on the prize! We’re nearly there!”

The woman frowned. “I… I thought we had nine minutes still to play!”

“We did! We had ‘em! Now concentrate!”

Jhanna nodded and hurried after Coccino. On his day – such as the one exactly two years ago, say – she would never have been able to beat the winger for pace, but this hadn’t been his day. She caught up with him with ease, knocking him off the ball and conceding a quick free-kick, but it was all good time wasted.

She’d had a bad game, of course, with that bloody younger Tzimisces giving her gip all afternoon… but history probably wouldn’t remember that. She wouldn’t remember that. They’d all just remember that, with less than ten minutes to spare, she’d faced down Jorge Botaniates and his, and his… and his perfectly normal eyes, actually, and nice eyes they were too; and struck a delightful third goal.

Ug-Ug powered on forward, Jacob Davies blocked him as though facing a man but half the legendary ancient’s size, the referee put his whistle to his mouth… and the sound was drowned out by the roar of the Candelariasian contingent in the crowd. Around her, her team-mates were dropping to their knees once agai… for the first time. The rain had cleared up almost on the hidden shriek of the final whistle, but you wouldn’t know it for the tears of relief and joy pouring from Danny Adams and Jordan Hawker. Koviljko Randjelovic tore across the field and flung his arms around her, but she soon shrugged him off and marched purposefully towards the bouncing stands behind her.

She had seen them, hadn’t she? When she’d scored, her parents and her sister had been in the crowd…. Hadn’t they?

Jhanna didn’t need to wait long. She caught sight of her father’s eyes, tired but proud, and spotted Alice as she hurriedly squeezed her way past the conga lines, down the steps towards the field. One or twice she threatened to lose her balance completely and Jhanna dived forward, charging up the steps, grabbing the girl by the waist, and spinning her around and around and around.

By the time she returned, most of the Frostican players had left the centre of the field in favour of a quiet corner, but Ug-Ug was still clapping all four sides of the stadium – indeed, his fan club, ever-present like that row of Sikhs at Albrecht FC home games and bedecked in painted shells and other baubles*, provided the only section of the Holy Empire’s travelling support still bouncing up and down and cheering enthusiastically – and offered her a warm grin before trotting off to join his colleagues.

TTO’s Lizzy Capper, a vocal Candelariasian presence amongst the morass of journalists now seething around the edges of the pitch, peeled away from a best-day-of-my-life interview with a blubbering Jesse Nakatsuru to stick a microphone in front of his fellow midfielder’s face. Jhanna hesitated momentarily before Ricky Archer grabbed the offending acoustic-to-electric transducer from Capper’s hand and cleared his throat noisily.

“Yeah, look, this is an amazing day for all of us, and everyone in this squad is so aware of how important this is for everyone back home, but I reckon it’s important too that we take this opportunity to tell everyone, all you millions of people listening back home, about all of the absolute shit that some of our squad have been subjected to, ‘cos we’ve held our tongues for long enough and it’s about damn time that people started to list–”

“Don’t mind Rick, he’s overemotional,” Jhanna interjected cheerfully, pulling insistently on the right-back’s arm.

“Eh? C’mon Jhan, it’s now or nev–”

“Now’s not the time,” she hissed back, “Trust me, please…”

“Damn right!” another voice concurred. Elbowing his way between them, Andy Le Lan grabbed the microphone from Archer’s limp grasp and pinged it once or twice. “Yeah, this is my time, arright? So I just want to say, I am so proud of what my boys and girls have done here today, so proud, and everything we’ve been working towards for the past six years, I can’t fault ‘em. Any of ‘em! These kids, I’ll have you know, they’re going t’be around for a bloody long time, right? This group of players, they can carry on for two, three World Cups yet, so’s you all better get used to ‘em!”

“Alright, thank you, Andy… A clearly jubilant Andy Le Lan, there, an–”

“And another thing, Mzz Capper! Can I just say, you journalists? You’re scum o’the Earth, the lot of you! Two games, we lost! Two bloody games, and you’re on my back, and you’re on my players… How d’you sleep at night, eh? You toady up to the government, write whatever they want writ, but you can’t wait to have a go at us, can you? So don’t go patting yourselves on the back, ‘cos we did this despite of you lot, arright? An’ I just thank the bleedin’ Gods, that I’ll never have to deal with the likes of yous again! I’ve done it, I’ve won the World Cup, and now I’m offski! I’ll take the first big club job overseas I can get me mitts on, and if I don’t step foot in our squalid little islands again it’ll be too soon! Now bugger off the lot of you, we want t’collect our medals!”

“Gaffer knows how to make an exit, doesn’t he?” Nakatsuru whispered to Jhanna Young soon after through his sniffles, as they joined the procession towards the plinth where Lex Panarii and the Emperor Michael guarded the World Cup itself, and collected their medals.

Jhanna nodded. Deep down, she wished she could do the same as Le Lan – take her parents, siblings, cousins… her entire village, if needed, off to some sunny clime and leave Green Island and the Candelarias behind forever. But a national symbol couldn’t run away, and there was still the as-yet uncontemplatable question of her brother’s whereabouts to raise and, besides, there was still payback to arrange. Mc O’Neil and his cronies, and Morton and hers… they’d answer to her sooner or later. And she was going to make damned sure she enjoyed it.

For this one moment however, as the ubiquitous, accursèd ticker tape covered her hair, and as she played her part in helping Oliver Wilkinson lift the cup aloft, she knew that nothing could be more important than football.

***

“I said they should never have selected that Ug-Ug again, didn’t I?” Michael Morton proclaimed. “One cup too many, if you ask me. Not that I’m complaining, of course.”

“Mm. So, can I just go through this again, ma’am…? Nakatsuru, Adams and Young scored, Aldren and O’Thingy got on as subs, and it’d be worth reserving a special word for Ogus Kures, given that he would’ve played if he’d been fully fit.” Frampton paused, and sighed. “You know what, this isn’t really my brief. I’ll give one of the Debbies a ring, get some help on your airtime-grabbing, approval-rating-increasing congratulations-to-our-brave-boys-and-girl-over-in-Newmanistan speech… and see if I can’t remember why I’m actually here while we’re at it,” he added beneath his breath.

“Um, Peter? We might have a bit of a situation here.”

The minister turned towards the President and frowned. Morton’s hands were as black as soot, only shinier, and the piece of paper she held between her fingers was so sodden with printing ink it was in danger of falling apart. The run-off was making quite a mess of the living room carpet.

“Curious…”

“I can’t even remember what I was holding this for…”

“No, me neither… It’ll be the Time Dilation Device, though. It has the occasional hiccup occasionally, when correcting printed dates on pieces of paper, and such forth… I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Are you sure? I’ve just got this… nagging left undone feeling. Ugh,” she added, dashing off into the kitchen to throw what remained of the sheet into a rubbish bin and run her hands under the tap. “And we still need to talk about how we’re going to media manage the Green Island situation, Peter.”

The two men in the adjoining room shared a glance. “Robyn, luv,” Michael sighed, but there was a laugh in his voice,“We’ve just won the World Cup. Again. I reckon your people’d say that’s a good news story worth capitalising the hell out of. Look, they’re probably having a proper knees-up down Robinson Street as we speak… Shouldn’t we go and join them, eh?”

“I think you can afford not to be President for half an hour, in any case,” Frampton added mildly. “Let your hair down… um, if that’s at all possible.”

“Your minister’s got the right idea,” Michael said hopefully.

Morton traipsed back in from the kitchen. “Oh, very well, I’ll go and get me coat… The country’ll still be there for me to ruin tomorrow, won’t it?” she added, with a smile.

And in this reality at least, it really was.

***

Wings outstretched, the goose landed unsteadily on the dark lawn. It held its breath.

It needn’t have bothered. When thirty thousand pillywiggins have identified you as their evening meal, there’s not much point worrying about it. It’ll all be over in a trice.

After a while, one of the tiny creatures currently noshing on the increasingly threadbare bird’s left leg pulled at what was for him a vast sheet of squashed tree, poked one or two of his colleagues, and precipitated a hurried conversation in which the words ‘message’ and ‘invitation’ both came up more than once. Soon, all the inhabitants of the front garden had received word that change was in the air.

A million sharp little teeth glinted in the moonlight.


*Topical reference. Nice.