"What the hell is a Bowl?" Fawz asked, scratching his head as he attempted to follow the conversation from his couch bed on the other side of the motel room.
"You put food in it dipshit." Alex replied facetiously from behind the counter of the dinky room's kitchenette. "You know... you eat like soup and stuff from it?"
Fawz flipped him the bird before turning towards Dieter and the other team.
"Seriously... what's the Bowl?"
Dieter nodded. "Well, it depends. In this case, its the lowest tier championship. So... in short, we've played well enough to warrant a shot at winning a trophy. On the other side however, we sucked to the point where we weren't capable of playing for the Plate or Cup."
"Must be what happens when you shanghai a bunch of guys into playing competitive car crashing with people five times our size," Ilya retorted sarcastically, lounging on a converted easy chair in the corner of the living room.
Lange ignored him. "For not knowing a single thing about rugby, to be competing for any kind of trophy is an amazing accomplishment. I won't sell us short, whether we win or lose we win."
Halvor''s eyes went two different directions as he heard Dieter's paradox. His inebriated mind fought hard and long to try and make sense of how losing could equal winning, but eventually the overwhelming compulsion to repent won out. Perched precariously on top of a stool the crew had borrowed from their adventures at the Black Hole Club, he leaned over and released the past two days of binge drinking into a partially ice machine bucket. There was little risk of him falling, given the sheer amount of duct tape still binding his arms and legs, as well as the copious layers securing his waist to the seat cushion.
"Havlor's alive," Rolf mumbled, tossing a casual glance and errant finger towards the kitchen. "Should we let him loose?"
"Only if you want to spend tonight in the drunk tank with him. You do realize we just narrowly missed the cops last night, right?" Solomin warned.
With raised hands Dieter quieted the team.
"Yes, Halvor is alive... But let's focus on the task at hand. We're playing a hardy Nassaki team. Now, I haven't heard much about them but they are ranked higher than us. However, we have one win on them. I won't argue that we're better, because we're not. We can't be better if we don't even have a baseline to measure improvement from. But we stand a good chance."
"So basically," Hans suggested, "We keep playing the game the way we've been playing it, and hope and pray we have something magical happen to us?"
"There's no praying... Let's be real. We win or lose by sheer luck alone seeing where we stand today. That being said though, we can do what we've been doing and try to learn from the other teams. I think we stand a good chance." Lange concluded. "If we need to start running drills, let's do it. We can do our best to imitate Nassaki and prepare for them."
"Or you can let me out?" A muffled, distinctly female voice muttered from within the room.
Instantly, the team was silent.
"Where'd that come from?" Erwin asked, glancing around in mild panic.
"Bathroom!" Halvor managed to force out in between spurts. "Bathroom!"
Dieter and his crew quickly scrambled for impromptu weapons, fumbling helter-skelter and knocking over furniture. Many grabbed pans from the kitchenette's pantry, whereas Dieter himself brandished an upturned coat rack. The carefully maneuvered into position near the single bathroom they all were sharing, tucked into a corner just off the main living room and adjoining double bedroom of the unit.
"Is anyone still there? Hello?' The same voice asked. "Hello?? Hello!! Come on guys... this isn't funny anymore. Eggplant! I said eggplant! Let me out!"
Kovalenko, the only one of the group who had been in the Army previously, pressed himself up against the door in breaching position. Casting a full-view look, he confirmed all of his friends were in combat positions. With a single hand signal, he ordered the tactical entry.
Dieter yanked the door handle and flung it open, just in time to avoid direct impact from a tiny spitfire hurling forth from behind the aperture. She charged forth, completely naked, and slammed like a pinball into several of the players before bouncing off. Fists, pans, and coat racks flailed everywhere without direction. Liev completely missed with his frying pan, forcing Maksim to duck out of the way at last minute before it went flying through an exterior window and into the parking lot below. The demon herself landed several surprisingly strong punches into Fawz, who had the wind knocked out of him as he doubled over. From around the corner, Halvor hopped as best he could in the stool to come and help. He cleared the transitional metal lip, but caught a leg and was sent tumbling face first into the faux wooden flooring. He landed squarely with a heavy thud and muffled groan.
In an instant, the entire battle was over. All twelve of them were in some way waylaid, either knocked unconscious by friendly fire or otherwise tied up. The woman meanwhile bolted down the hall, failing to account for Halvor. Without realizing it, her feet made contact and launched herself airborne like a ragdoll into Fawz's upturned couch bed. She landed firmly into Alexander's lap.
Halvor groaned, signalling the end of the engagement and pffering their terms of surrender.
