Copa Rushmori 44 - Everything Thread

[Naixi]

Part 1 | Part 1
Part 2 | Part 2
Part 3 | Part 3

Arms flailing, Hao Hing Tan, better known as Tan Sifu, was thrown violently toward the floor of the prison cell by an army of bad-tempered guards. Only a swift and acrobatic leap from a cot made it possible for David Irving to catch him before he hit the concrete floor hard. One particularly large, stupid, and bad-tempered guard spat into the cell after him.

"Miss me with that namby pamby healie dealie shit next time, fuck face," he thuggishly shouted at Tan Sifu, cheeks the color of a ripe strawberry. "Maybe in your time they put up with weird homo stuff. Maybe next time you can put a sword up your butt and nobody bats an eye. But that's not the time I come from! No way. I like girls."

"All I did," Hao Hing answered with difficulty thanks to a bruised rib and another wave of abdominal pain, "was offer you an herbal remedy for heartburn, because you said you ate something that gave you heartburn. I was trying to be kind."

"Pizza! I ate a pizza! Two pizzas, you stupid fuck! Bet you don't even known what pizzas are!"

"Sergeant," a woman's voice called out coldly from far enough down the penitentiary hallway that neither David nor Hao Hing could see her, "leave him alone. The Jade Wheel have plans for him... very unpleasant ones, in fact. You needn't worry that he has it good. That either of them have it good."

"Come on, Yen Khe, gimme a break. You just KNOW they're gonna get put in front of some libtard Naixese judge who will give them about a week in the slammer."

"You haven't heard the news, sweetie?" she answered patronizingly. "Naixi doesn't have courts anymore. They were abolished a few days ago. Something about a needed change because another Celestial Councilor got killed."

"Wait, so who puts these two fucks on trial?"

"Nobody, babe," the woman's voice answered again. "They're gonna get dumped in the ocean twenty miles out and left to drown."

"Oh. Yeah, okay," the hulking oaf muttered stupidly, his knowledge of current affairs brought into severe disrepute. He spat into the cell again, and left.

"Fatso is back, I see," Hao Hing said, taking a deep breath and shakily moving to a sitting position on the floor. He tossed his disheveled braid of black hair back over his shoulder, making a mental note to fix it later.

"Yeah. He came back while you were gone. Sounded like he was on leave or something. Maybe he beat up another prisoner and went too far. Or maybe not. Maybe he was just on vacation. Either way... you offered him herbs for his stomach?"

"He was complaining about heartburn! I'm obligated to help!"

"Tan," David said, shaking his head with exasperation and climbing to his feet, "you've got to work on that soft spot for your enemies."

The pair had become cell mates here at the Hub, and despite having nothing in common, had quickly ascertained that they had fallen afoul of the same powerful forces. Though one was a Golden Person, and one was not, and though they were temperamentally really very different, they were nonetheless natural allies... somehow. For the curious thing was, shortly after introductions, Hao Hing had mentioned something about an Imperial law he didn't have much respect for, and David, innately an expert on global statecraft, had asked which empire was the issuing authority in that case.

"This... one?" Hao Hing had replied, baffled.

"Naixi? The Celestial Empire?" David had wondered.

"Never heard of it. It's just 'the Empire.' Because we are ruled by the yellow-robed huangdi."

"Not the Celestial Councilors?"

After a few minutes of confused back and forth like that, they realized that the reason they couldn't come to common terms on quite where in the world they were was because they couldn't quite agree when they were. Hao Hing, a sifu and martial arts teacher, had been arrested by the soldiers of the Golden People in the street of the capital of the Old Land in the autumn of the year 1850, on the grounds that he had burned down a gigantic opium emporium. Meanwhile David, an ex-intelligence operative for the Golden People, had been taken captive by a small gang of strange mercenaries (led by his brother) after having nearly his whole leg torn off by a Naixese devil... in 2023. How could it be that they were sharing a cell?

After Hao Hing had used his remarkable healing powers, applied through various chi pressure points on the body, to bring David back to full health, the two had begun to work on a plan for escape. They didn't need to know how two men from almost 175 years apart had come to meet, but that was truly a secondary concern as both appeared to be in the sights of powerful enemies dead set on seeing them executed.

The first big breakthrough had been David sharing that he'd heard his captors mention that he was being dragged off to something called the "Hub." That had rung a bell for Hao Hing. He had been, at least in his younger years, a member of the Confucian traditionalist sect known as the Guiding Hand. While there, he had heard tell of shady people within a number of secret societies abducting victims and dragging them off to something called "the Hub." All Hao Hing knew about it was that is was far underground, so he and David agreed brute force wouldn't work to get them out.

Their plans were interrupted when David had been dragged out of the Hub in the early morning one day, though. He was blindfolded, then taken down a very long hallway that sounded like it was made out of concrete. David reckoned it was the same one he'd been taken through when he was taken to the Hub. At last, his captors had thrown him through a doorway and torn off the mask. Seemingly within seconds, he had been shoved into a car while thousands of cameras flicked and flashed in his eyes.

The car left the camera-wielding journalists in the dust, and David had blinked as they rushed through the streets of Qiawutian he'd once been a free man upon. After a short trip, it was back out the car, mug for more journos, and get shoved into a packed courtroom.

That, apparently, was all the preparation he'd be given for his arraignment. With ninety seconds to spare before it began, in the wood-paneled hallway outside the courtroom, a shoddily-dressed Naixese man had said to him "hey, so if it looks like I've been crying all day, it's only because I drank salvia-infused everclear I bought on the black market this morning. Don't tell the judge. And so I can't get my eyes to stop watering. Anyway, I'm your court-appointed lawyer." Seconds later, he was on camera, with the whole country of Naixi watching, he was on camera being accused of orchestrating the bombing that killed a Celestial Councilor.

But here's the thing. Fred had told him, as his accomplices were dragging him off to the Hub weeks before, that Chen Mo had been wrong. He really had done the deed, though his explanations for why had been more than a bit opaque. So David had just made a snap decision to just blurt it out before the cameras: that his brother was guilty of the assassination, but that he was being framed. He was David Irving, not Fred Irving.

That caused a stir, and soon he was being shoved back into the car. His captors seemed very angry with him. The blindfold was tied back on long before they began the long march down the dark, damp concrete hallway again.

Just a few short days later, the roles had been reversed. Hao Hing was dragged from the cell by Fatso and several others in the early hours of the morning and hauled down the long, wet, dark hallway. While he also emerged in David's modern-era Naixi (or so he assumed it was, as the dress, technology, and culture of the place he saw when the blindfold was removed was unrecognizable to him), it wasn't in busy Qiawutian.

Instead, it was in the cold, mountainous hillside of Naixi's northeast. His captors, all grim-faced, black suit-wearing crooks, unceremoniously threw him into a corrugated metal shed of some kind. Hao Hing noticed with sorrow that there were several bodies lying on the ground outside the shed.

Inside, they'd made him change clothes. He was handed a strange blue one-piece item Hao Hing could barely figure out how to wear. Three of the crooks - Fatso not included - did the same. With the final addition, a yellow hard hat for each of them, they'd fiddled with some unfamiliar black mirror and, subsequent to a series of musical tones issued from an unseen instrument - a xylophone, perhaps? - a massive bulkhead in the floor had swung open.

Hao Hing and the other yellow-hat-wearers descended a long circular staircase. At the bottom, in a large chamber full of crates and boxes of wildly varying sizes, with labels fashioned in some weird black bar coding that Hao Hing was totally unfamiliar with, they'd identified a huge coffin-sized black thing. It was very heavy to carry, but at the insistence of the head "worker," they all managed to get it onto a cart.

One of the other men had warned Hao Hing as they navigated this underground labyrinth: "when we activate this thing, be ready to run." That is, in fact, exactly what he and the other three men in yellow hats had done the instance the head guy gave the go-ahead. They all rushed back onto the train... or... cart... thing, and tried to get away from it as soon as possible, while it tick-tick-ticked away down at the bottom of the vault with weird blue cauldrons. "Vats," Hao Hing had overheard one man call them.

At any rate, the series of deafening booms they felt through the floor as they all ran back upstairs to the shed with the circular hole in the floor were terrifying, and gave Hao Hing plenty of motivation to run. They sprinted away from the shack through the misty mountain rain, and met up with the rest of the men. Hao Hing hoped, as they had put the blindfold back on him and led him back into the concrete hallway, that he'd been cooperative enough for them to listen to his next argument for release.

"Bollocks," David said when Hao Hing relayed the tale after Fatso had lumbered away out of earshot. "They wanted you on camera and they got you."

"What?" Hao Hing said, baffled.

"The way you describe the size and security of that place? And the fact that there were thousands of glowing blue vats? That can only mean one thing, Tan. You just blew up the NGP."

Tan Sifu simply stared at him. Those letters meant nothing to him.

"There were cameras in there. Security cameras. You don't know what those are, I know. But a camera captures an image. A picture. A life-like picture. They have that picture now, of you, carrying the weapon that blew up the NGP and probably Nai Jian... another Celestial Councilor. They're trying to stitch you up, too, mate. And it sounds like without courts in Naixi to hear our case anymore..."

"I can swim pretty good, David."

"Yeah? Good. Me too."

"Can you fight off a mutant octopus, though?" the voice of the still-invisible Yen Khe coolly asked with a sneer from just down the cell block hallway. Clearly, while Fatso had strolled out of earshot (to find some lunch, perhaps), the woman in charge of the Hub had not.

[Graintfjall]

Græntfjall – 3 (3)
Ásólfur; Hermione, Friðjón, Asbjørn, París; Rebekka (57’ Benjamín ), Hrútur (65’ Danny ), Kæja (c) (13’, 26’, 45+3’ pen.) (57’ Varða ), Sara V; Amandara (48’) (79’ Glóa ), Járngrímur (65’ Tóbías )

San Isidro Labrador – 1 (0)
Berrocal* (83’)

* Based on SIL's CR43 roster, can be edited.

Legacy at stake ahead of tough quarterfinal

Kæja Finnvarðsdóttir was at her magical best against the admittedly modestly ranked opposition of San Isidro Labrador as Græntfjall swept aside any thought of a return of the ‘Round of 16 curse’ at Copa Rushmori 44. Returning from suspension, the Snow Wolves captain notched up a hat-trick of scintillating goals in a little over half an hour, only for the third to be wiped off for a handball in the build-up after a frustrating 4 and a half minute VAR delay; that she had to wait until just before the half to ensure the set was complete, and did so from the penalty spot, only slightly took the shine off the achievement. She subbed off early in the second half, the Snow Wolves failed to maintain the tempo and conceded a soft consolation effort in the dying minutes, but the result was never in doubt. The crowd in Qiawutian got to see Kæja put on an exhibition of football, but as a competitive game, the match was over before the half-time drinks rush. The next encounter at the Sha Dadao should be very different, as Græntfjall meet Eura in a continuation of a burgeoning rivalry.

If the geopolitical aspect of the rivalry is fairly one-sided – officials in the United Federation have routinely expressed bemusement at the White Winter Queendom’s hostility – the footballing aspect is alive and well. Recent meetings have included a 3–3 tie decided 6–5 on penalties at Copa Rushmori 42, and a 8 goal thriller at the most recent World Cup. Græntfjall hold the balance of recent results, but Eura carry more history, prestige, and experience. And for Græntfjall’s captain, the meeting holds extra piquancy: after a difficult freshman year in Eura following her high-profile move to Bastion, she followed up with an exceptional sophomore campaign that earned her MVP honors. Yet on the streets of Eura, her face is being plastered over on advertising hoardings for the forthcoming Euraleague season with a singular visage: Felixe Vetiver. Vivimania is coming, the subject of a move to Spartangrad that blows Kæja’s out of the water. In the shadow of perhaps the most popular player in world football (and one whose name Eurans can actually pronounce) Kæja will face another battle to prove herself all over again.

In their most recent encounter in the group stage of World Cup 94, the Snow Wolves benefited from another Kæja hat-trick as they decided that conceding three goals to Eura was no bad thing if they scored five themselves. Continuing to depend so heavily on just one player, though, is not a viable strategy forever, especially when faced with a team of Eura’s level: from marauding fullback Ana Mason and talismanic centerback Jack Menard to the offensive sparks of Alex Sharp, Sophie Singh, and Kate Archer, Eura’s team is bristling with talent across 11 positions and the bench. Everyone in blue-and-white, including those thus far showing fairly modest form at this tournament such as Hermione Hui and Hrútur Melkíorsson, will need to step up. And they will need to do without the services of winger Rebekka Kajsdóttir, who sustained a toe injury in training and has been provisionally ruled out for the game.

For manager Ingþór Auðbjörnsson, the game will also have important implications. Still in the process of contract discussions with KG after his deal for three cycles concluded, his tenure has seen Græntfjall rise to briefly occupy the world #1 ranking, make three quarterfinals and two semifinals at World Cups, two finals (one victorious, one lost on penalties) and a quarterfinal at the Copa Rushmori, and claim two Eagl’e’s’ Cup titles. So when presented with a temporary contract extension by KG, he could have been forgiven for accusing Græntfjall’s football authority of ingratitude. In truth, the indecisiveness is a two-way street: it is rumored that he himself had been considering moving on had World Cup 94 had a different outcome (either a group stage exit, or a win in the semifinals) for the Snow Wolves. As it was, the fourth place finish left his own decision-making in limbo as much as it did KG’s.

There is a scene in the popular Græntfjaller romantic comedy “500 Days of Winter” (in which a young woman deals with a relationship, its breakup, and its aftermath, all while working to foil a terrorist plot to explode nuclear weapons under the Alpine Tundra) in which the protagonist is confronted with “Expectation vs. Reality”. Invited to a party hosted by her ex-lover, a split-screen narrative plays out: on one side, her expectation, the two reconnecting in their old intimacy and reuniting in love; on the other side, the reality, as she is revealed as nothing more than a workplace acquaintance, her ex in a new relationship and engaged to be married. In reality, her ex did nothing wrong, extending a friendly invitation to a party: the problem came from the wildly unreasonable expectations of our protagonist. It’s a bleak, poignant bit of cinema that anyone who’s been through a failed relationship can relate to. (The ending, where she is eaten by a kraken, is possibly less relatable to non-Græntfjallers.)

It’s easy to imagine World Cup 94 playing out on a similar split screen for Græntfjaller fans. (And also probably for all non-Banijan fans, but no one ever accused Græntfjallers of not being self-absorbed.) Memories of World Cup 91 and the victory on home soil were too potent and strong not to recur as the World Cup finals returned to the White Winter Queendom. The reality, of a failure even to defend their bronze medal placing from Chromatika, was a disappointing bathos. (Accompanied by, for those who had witnessed Græntfjall go from unranked newcomers to World Cup champions in just 10 years, a score played on the very tiniest of violins.) The problem was not the reality: a fourth place finish in a World Cup, a semifinal appearance, after an undefeated group stage and triumph over tough Round of 16 and quarterfinal opponents, was wholly laudable. The problem was the unreasonable expectations. (And the fact that Banija are completely fucking OP.)

The dichotomy of expectations and reality is the cross that Kæja and Thor have to face. Græntfjaller expectations were raised sky high when they won the World Cup and Copa Rushmori in the same cycle; ever since, the team has produced a record that any (non-Banijan) team would happily take, yet it hasn’t quite been good enough for the baying public. Kæja has emerged as a genuinely world class player, just a working class girl from Altendalur with doubts about her size and mentality, proving herself again and again against the world’s best, and yet it hasn’t quite been good enough for the fans. The legacy of captain and coach will be closely intertwined as they take to the field again in Qiawutian. And they will be taking on just 11 high quality players from Eura – but also the expectations, realistic or not, of 140 million people back home.

Also in the paper:

• NEWS: Prime Minister goes into labor; follow our live-blog for indefensibly intrusive reporting
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• RELIGION: Cardinal Jannik Eyjarsson to visit Quebec and Shingoryeo
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[Tikariot]

The tension is almost palpable in the locker room of the Sha Dadao stadium in Qiawutian, the scene of the impending quarter final between Tikariot and the hosts, Naixi. Mathias Vercauteren is sitting on one of the benches in the corner, looking at the hustle and bustle and the different pre-game rituals of some of the players. He closes his eyes as the last few weeks pass before his mind's eye. What a whirlwind it has been, starting with the end of the previous TPL season and how he had managed to push Annika Nurmsalu, a national team player, to the bench after scoring goal after goal. And then, as the transfer window approached, his agent had called him to let him know that there apparently was interest from a Mytanar club to maybe sign him.

He hadn't believed it at first, after all he didn't even have a full season as a starter for Miruan yet, but then he saw the rumour coming up on the internet as well. Arthur, his agent, had asked him if he was interested and he didn't even know what to say. His agent set up a meeting with them anyways, and it all sounded very intriguing, a chance to play in Mytanija, one of the most successful leagues internationally, and a nice raise. They had signed a Græntfjaller keeper and he was to partner up with Stipe Mlinarevic, and they were talking about trying to challenge Atletik, the top dog in the 1. Prvenstvo. Then, it was meeting with Miruan and they didn't want to let him go. They were even considering letting go Gary Conway, one of the most prolific strikers in the league, and they were offering him an improved contract as well.

He was torn between an exciting opportunity to play in Mytanija and the loyalty he felt toward the club he had been part of for so many years, graduating through their academy. The next part was that the club, Liria, was accusing Miruan of holding him hostage by not letting him move despite having agreed personal terms. That was not a lie, but also only part of the truth. Obviously, Miruan were not keen on losing their biggest and brightest talent, and he knew that part of it likely was a part of their negotiating tactics.

Then, suddenly it all went quiet and he wasn't sure what was happening, until he received a call from Miruan coach Owain Davies, wanting to meet. He didn't know what it was about, but when he arrived at the club house, Davies told him that Liria and Miruan had agreed on terms and that he wanted to be the one giving him the news. Not even Arthur had known. He was worried how the reaction was going to be, losing a talent like him, but Davies was surprisingly positive, wishing him all the best in his new endeavour. After that, his teammates and other officials congratulated him as well. He had expected some animosities about him leaving or some jealousy, but they seemed genuinely happy for him to get this opportunity.

He called Arthur after that and hearing his agent's incredulous tone of voice was priceless. Two days after, he was on a plane to Prizren to sign the contract and when he arrived at Stadion Prizren there were at least 15- to 20,000 fans waiting for him, which was another mindblowing experience.

Shortly after, he got yet another call, this time from Brian McAllister, the Tikariotian national team coach, letting him know that he has been nominated for the squad for the Copa Rushmori. Then, against Southwest Eastnorth, he was in the starting eleven for the first time and it was like in a trance, as if life was still moving at hyperspeed around him.

"Hey, you ok?"

Adrian Grimaud's voice shakes him out of his memories and he snaps back into the reality of the locker room, with just a few minutes left before they will walk out into the stadium for the match against Naixi.

"Yeah, just trying to process everything, it's all happened to fast, you know?"

Grimaud smiles. "Yes, that's how it sometimes goes. You might be stuck somewhere for years or within two months your whole world gets turned upside down. You're doing an amazing job, take it all in and go with the flow. Don't try to think about it too much or you'll cramp up."

Vercauteren nods. "Thanks. I've just never been in a situation like this. You look so relaxed, how do you do it?"

Grimaud laughs out loud. "Age. Experience. When I was your age, I was just like you, but with time you'll find out that all the excitement and stress don't help. You start to overthink and analyze everything. You get a ball and try to make a conscious decision of how you should shoot it, or maybe lay it off or take another step. By the time you figure it out, the ball's long gone. Not saying you shouldn't think at all, but trust your instinct. I've seen you play last season and you just did what you felt was right and more often than not, it was. You don't score 23 goals just like that."

The older striker gives him a strong clap on the shoulder. "You can do this."

Vercauteren smiles. "Thanks, Adrian, this means a lot to me."

"Come on, let's go and enjoy the atmosphere. You never know, people around here might not like us that much anymore after the game."

Grimaud is looking down at him with a dead serious look on his face before cracking up. "Let's kick some Naixi butt!"

He holds out his hand and pulls Vercauteren to his feet, who gives a determined nod. "Let's make them unhappy!"

[Cabo Azure]

Succession, pt 6
Besides winning her gold medal, passing her year nine exams felt like the biggest accomplishment in Princess Solveig’s young life. Not that she did especially well on the exam–her Portuguese left a lot to be desired, and she'd never been the best student, focused as she was on being a world-class athlete. Her best subjects were Terranean, math, and science, while her worst were social studies and humanities, made worse by the fact that the tests were imported from Lusitania and assumed an understanding of that dialect rather than the Azurean she'd learned.

The exams were held in late spring, to allow students from Cabo Azure’s pastoral outlying islands to finish school before the peak herding season. The perpetual fog had burned off from around the medieval buildings in Portelo, and in the evenings she could see the green flash over the sunset from her bedroom window. A few days after the exam, Manuel–that was how she thought of him now, not King Manuel or His Majesty–began making preparations for a trip to the outer islands aboard his yacht, and Solveig prepared to depart to spend the summer with her parents in Sao Simone.

The night before she left, Solveig made her way to the king’s apartment carrying sweatpants and a towel draped over one arm. The king’s bathroom had a bathtub set into the floor, and she had made up her mind to use it before she went back to Sao Simone. She started a bath and sat on the edge with her tablet while it noisily filled with water. When she looked up, someone else was in the room with her. Solveig screamed, nearly tipped over into the bath water. It was Princess Veronica–Ronnie–dressed in a silk bathrobe, red hair in a bun on the crown of her head.

“Oh my God,” Solveig said, “Oh my God, oh my God. I’m so sorry, Veronica. Really. I’ll go.”

Ronnie took a moment. “Solveig,” she said, “It’s okay, sweetheart. You can use the tub.”

From deeper in the apartment, a voice sounded. “Ronnie?” It was a woman’s voice, rough-edged but full of compassion. “Is everything okay?”

“Fine, baby,” Ronnie called back. “Solveig’s in here.”

A few minutes later, Solveig was seated in the king’s living room with Ronnie, now dressed in wine-colored sweats and a gray tank top, and a dark-complected woman she introduced as Marissa, her girlfriend. Marissa had an athlete’s built and cropped black hair in a tight fade. She brought a bottle of wine and three glasses from the king’s kitchen, pouring one for her and Ronnie and a half-glass for Solveig.

“You seem so young,” Marissa said, sitting on the couch beside Ronnie, looking at Solveig. “To already be crown princess and a gold medalist.”

Solveig delivered her stock answer: “I’ve been fortunate.”

“It’s okay, honey,” Ronnie assured her cousin, “It’s just us girls here.”

“It’s a lot,” Solveig admitted. She found herself transfixed by Ronnie, who looked so different than she had before, in either her uniform or in royal regalia. Solveig was reminded of the figure skaters she’d competed with and against, the transformations they underwent when they came off the ice. It stood in distinct contrast to her siblings, who kept the same persona whether they were King Manuel and Princess Alexandra or Manuel and Alex. Of all the royals, Solveig had spent the least time with Ronnie, besides Queen Charlotte.

“How is school?” Ronnie asked, breaking the reverent silence that had fallen in the room. “What are you doing now that exams are over?”


“I’m spending the summer with my parents in Sao Simone,” Solveig answered, “I’m excited to see them, but they both work, so I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do.”

“Playa Silva’s nice,” Marissa offered. “Lots of restaurants, shops, and there’s always the beach. I could spend all day at the beach.” Ronnie and Solveig shared a look. “What?” Marissa asked. “What’s wrong with the beach?”

Ronnie cracked a smile, and suddenly chaos ensued as Solveig fell apart with giggles while Marissa grew increasingly distraught looking at them.

“Not everyone has your complexion, dear,” Ronnie said, still smiling. “Some of us”–she indicated Solveig–”burn easily.”

“There’s a reason I chose an indoor sport,” Solveig said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I’m getting a sunburn just thinking about the beach.”

“We’re going to be in Sao Simone in a couple of weeks,” Marissa said, changing the subject. “I mean, we’re there all the time, but we’ve got something going on in a couple of weeks. Are you familiar with the Donzola de Pólvora?”

Solveig nodded. The “Gunpowder Maiden” was a merchant ship that had sunk centuries ago off in shallow water off the coast of Sao Simone. Its wreck had been rediscovered, salvaged, and studied, and lately been turned into a maritime tourist attraction. Amateur scuba divers from all over Rushmore paid for the half-day tour.

“We’re diving it with a couple of buddies,” Marissa continued. “I know you don’t dive, but it’s mostly an excuse to spend a day on a boat drinking Macaricas. You in?”

“I’ll have to ask my parents.”

[Eura]

COPA RUSHMORI 44 – ROUND OF SIXTEEN
Eura 2–1 Gnejs
Scorers:
Archer 44, Woodman 57
Lineup:
1. T Hammond
2. A Mason
4. J Menard
27. M Pearce (sub Bedford 82)
3. M Taylor
6. J Gates
8. O Vincent (sub Brown 67)
12. D Barnes
7. A Woodman (sub Doherty 89)
14. K Archer (sub Sherwood 90+2)
10. S Singh (sub Miller 74)

---

emplor.eur/main/sport/football
WOOD YOU HAVE DONE IT?
Goal-hanging Woodman controversially seizes the moment

Eura beat Gnejs 2-1 to advance to the quarter finals of the 44th Copa Rushmori, but only after Directus left winger Adam Woodman dubiously took credit for the winner.

Qiawutian’s Paodao Shuibian stadium played host to the Falcons and the Dandelions as they did battle for a place in the next round. Gnejs opted for their full strength line-up; Eura were not messing about either, resting Quentin Phillips and Alex Sharp but otherwise deploying all of the big guns. Dean Barnes would start after an injury scare against Zenic, his hamstring having been tweaked, only to recover quickly in time for this game.

Barnes made a bright start to the latest of his very fine performances for the national team, creating early havoc down the right while seeking opportunities to set up Sophie Singh and Kate Archer in the middle. Three of his crosses found them in goal scoring positions but nothing manifested. The Union’s footballers were just too solid at the back under the leadership of defensive general Hibiskus Andersson.

On the opposite flank, Adam Woodman was less involved, doing a lot of good running but not much football. Once a wonderkid, the now veteran Directus player – Barnes’ teammate and mentor – is nearing the end of an international career where he has racked up plenty of caps and goals, but little silverware beyond a single Cup of Harmony.

His quiet first half was only interrupted by a 30th minute opportunity where he bypassed Lennart Horndal with a mazy dribble, shaped up to shoot before Andersson could tackle him, and promptly fired the ball with his left foot into the inside of his right, skewing the ball away and wide. It might have been a moment if deep regret for Eura. But it would be quickly forgotten in the 44th minute when Archer turned in the latest Barnes teaser.

Gnejs had not managed a shot on target up to this point. Sods law would strike regardless – their first genuinely threatening foray forward in first half stoppage time ended with Phaedo Svensson casually chipping Tom Hammond, who had rushed too early, after being played through on goal against a dozing Euran defence not operating an offside trap.

Conceding this close to half time can unsettle any team and Eura suffered a predictable post-break wobble as the Dandelions got forward. They likely believed this would be their one chance to get a lead. Yet these five minutes of peril quickly came and went, and once Gnejs had let that opportunity pass they sank into a deep defensive posture in search of the lottery of extra time and penalties.

This was obviously a mistake and they would be soon penalised. It was Barnes at work again, completely flummoxing Horndal, who really struggled on the night after being switched back and forth from flank to flank. The winger then exchanged a quick one-two with Singh to bypass another two defenders, and instinctively hit a first touch pass to his left that stretched an already strained Gnejs defence to its limits.

Two red shirts were now effectively through on goal. They were Woodman and, charging forward after seeing a gap, centre back Martin Pearce. The ball ultimately fell to Pearce a few yards out of the area. As he closed in, history repeated itself from the Gnejs equaliser but with the roles reversed; Samuel Wijk burst off his line much too soon and threw himself into a slide that would have seen him sent off if he’d made contact with Pearce.

For a bulky defender, Pearce moved pretty good. He danced past the flailing onset of Wijk, taking the ball with him, and stunningly found himself facing an open goal. It was set to be a truly glorious moment for a player of lower status within the squad who did not normally score. He steadied himself and kept a cool head to pass the ball (seemingly) into the net.

But as it rolled luxuriously toward the goal line, Woodman rushed past the defender as he began to celebrate. With the ball just a couple of feet from the line Woodman chose to rattle it into the back of the net, maybe the most disproportionately powerful finish of his career. Woodman celebrated quietly in the context of a recent paucity of goals, as Pearce stood watching with confusion spelled out across his face.

When a VAR check was flagged, the confusion gave way to an explosion of anger. Pearce accosted his apparently selfish teammate and the rest of the team were forced to abandon any celebrations to intervene. Thirty seconds of pandemonium was brought to a close by captain Jack Menard pulling the two men apart himself, forcing them to simmer separately as the VAR check was conducted.

Officials suspected Woodman’s sudden advance may technically have been offside. Eventually they determined this was not the case and finally awarded the goal. The mood was soured now – the Euran players got on with the job without fuss and Woodman returned to being a lonely figure, as both social media and the mainstream press back home immediately descended into a national debate of Team Adam versus Team Martin.

Despite the drama, Eura held on to their lead with an air of composed professionalism. Pearce and Woodman shook hands for the cameras as the game ended, but they could not hsve looked more reluctant to do so. Woodman’s isolation as the players walked off ahead of him seemed to tell a deeper story. As Eura head to the Sha Dadao stadium to face a tough quarterfinal against Græntfjall, it is unclear if Woodman will be in the squad at all.

[Naixi]

QUARTERFINALS

Quarterfinal 1 @ Sha Dadao in Qiawutian
Græntfjall 2–4 Eura

Quarterfinal 2 @ Sha Dadao in Qiawutian
Naixi 0–0 Tikariot (0–0 AET) (5–4 pen.) * scorinated by Quebec and Shingoryeo

Quarterfinal 3 @ Huangse Migong in Chumeichang
Cassadaigua 2–3 Sargossa

Quarterfinal 4 @ Huangse Migong in Chumeichang
Cabo Azure 1–0 Mytanija

Semifinal Fixtures
Eura v Naixi (Sha Dadao in Qiawutian)
Sargossa v Cabo Azure (Huangse Migong in Chumeichang)

EDIT: Fixed Quarterfinals 2, 3, and 4, which were wrongly labeled as octofinals, and changed the city of the Huangse Migong from Qiawutian to Chumeichang for Quarterfinal 4
EDIT 2: Fixed spelling error in word Chumeichang on Quarterfinal 4

[Cabo Azure]

Succession, pt 7
The boat left before dawn with very little pomp and circumstance, despite the fact that it was carrying two Azurean princesses. The two princesses didn’t look very regal, Princess Solveig decided, though they stood out from the others in the boat; the captain, who was a middle-aged bearded Azurean man, and Marissa’s friends, who were both tall, short-haired, and well-muscled young men. Somewhere in the course of the morning, Solveig realized she’d seen both the men before; they were frogmen from the Coast Guard’s elite underwater demolition unit, who were also in the rotation for royal security. If she was embarrassed to have her security see her in compression shorts and a sports bra as she pulled on her wetsuit that morning, she was doubly embarrassed not to remember their names.

Gui and Tomas, as they introduced themselves, seemed to take it all in stride, calling Ronnie by that name and teasing her by constantly asking where the diving bell was, an echo of a previous incident to which Solveig was not party. Marissa seemed at ease with them as well, verbally sparring and referring to incidents in their shared past, while Ronnie stayed mostly quiet, blue eyes fixed on the horizon as the boat sped out of Sao Simone harbor. Of the group, she and Solveig were by far the least experienced divers; while Lieutenant Commander Veronica Fonseca was a capable mariner, she didn’t dive for a living the way Marissa and the boys did, and Solveig had spent the past few weeks frantically leveraging royal contacts to get her solo dive certification in time to join them underwater.

“So, Princess Solveig,” said Gui as Sao Simone receded from view and became a blip on the boat’s radar. “How are you feeling about all this? Are you ready to rule us?” It was a question she’d been asked many times before, but rarely so candidly. From the way Gui’s dark eyes were fixed on her, she knew he was attentive to her answer.

“Why, are you planning on slacking on the job?“ Solveig asked, deflecting. Tomas fell out laughing, hands gripping his bulging quadriceps, but Gui stayed looking at the younger princess, who decided to give him a straight answer. “Not yet,” she said, “But I know I will be. I’m in no hurry. Manuel is a great king, and I hope to learn everything I can from him before I take the throne.”

“Good answer,” Gui said, approvingly, then to Ronnie: “She’s better at this than you are.” Ronnie flipped him off, and Gui returned his attention to Solveig. “I’m from Portelo,” he said, “My grandfather protected Reinaldo I and II, back in the days when the Pretoriani was a lifetime appointment. He prefers Manuel.”

“Why is it no longer a lifetime appointment?” asked Ronnie, interested.

“Couple of reasons,” said Tomas, “Mostly political. At the time, the Pretoriani were separate from the Coast Guard and the National Guard, and their leadership reported only to the King’s seneschal. They all tended to be drawn from the same families, with the idea being that if you knew the family, then you knew whether they were likely to be reliable. Over the years, as the older guards got tired of standing post all the time, they started dreaming up administrative posts for themselves until only half the Pretoriani were under arms at any given time.”

Gui picked up the thread. “And when the assassination attempt against Reinaldo II happened, a lot of those administrators were implicated as part of the faction which wanted to put Abigail on the throne. Reinaldo disbanded the Pretoriani and used Sao Simone cops as his personal security, which actually worked fairly well.”

“So how did we get from cops to frogmen?” Solveig asked, referring to the elite Coast Guard detachment of which Gui and Tomas and, assumably, Marissa were all a part. Ronnie and Marissa had turned their attention to the conversation, with Ronnie nodding along approvingly as her friends and security attaches educated her little cousin.

“DSM was actually created by the Gang of Seven,” answered Tomas, using the initialism for “Destacamento de Segurança Marítima”, the official name for the frogmen detachment, which was intentionally bland. “They were paranoid that either Cassadaigua or Nephara or Eura or somebody was going to come over the water and kill them in their beds. They created the DSM with the idea that we would scuttle their ships before they could make it.”

“They were also terrified of us being developed as assets,” Gui added. “So they rotated us out every couple of years. You’d do your time on dive status, protect the Gang members, then go back to the main force. They sent us to different commando schools, too, depending on who they were cozying up to at the time. The result was a robust, professional force with a lot of different skills that was integrated into the wider military.”

“If you say so yourself,” Ronnie interjected.

“If I say so myself,” Gui agreed, then, nodding at Marissa: “You seem pretty satisfied with the end result, Your Highness.” Ronnie showed him her palms in a gesture of surrender.

“That’s the one thing you boys missed,” said Marissa, grinning and sitting beside Ronnie on the gunwales, so close their legs were touching. “Rotating your security back into the fleet makes it less risky to sample the merchandise.”

Ronnie turned an unflattering shade of red while Gui and Tomas laughed. “Keep going to your social things in Quebec, Solveig,” she said, “Make friends outside the palace. Don’t be like me and spend all your time with the frogmen. It’s not good for your health.”

[Sargossa]

He glanced around again and, admittedly not for the first time in recent months, smiled to himself. It was still all so strange. A little over a year ago Adrian Rodríguez had been in the colours of S.C. Motril in the Liga-S2, having lumps kicked out of him by a burly pair of centrebacks on a cold night in Huaral. He’d had the last laugh that night, he still remembered it. A deft turn between those said same centrebacks and a low drive into the bottom corner of the net. It had been the only goal of that game, one that had taken Motril above their hosts in the table. But their playoff aspirations were fading away, despite Rodríguez’s regular heroics.

What a year it had been. Away games in Huaral, Viesca and Torrienté seemed a lifetime ago. Back then he wouldn’t have been able to locate the Celestial Empire of Naixi on a map. Geography never having been his strong point. Yet here he was, in Chumeichang, its cultural heartland. Where intellectual debate mixed with vibrant liberalism and, close by Xuanwuyan Zhu in the northern environs, shocking poverty. Not bad for a boy from one of the Sargossan capital’s poorer district. A boy whose most exotic trip prior to the Copa had been a lad’s holiday to Xinzó, the gambler’s hotbed nestled like an exposed gemstone in the hot heart of the Incan jungle.

He wasn’t wearing the colours of S.C. Motril either. Now he was in the darker blue of the Sargossan national side. And those somewhat agricultural defenders of Liga-S2 were a whole world away. Instead, right there, marking him was the towering form of Anaximander Scales. The man mountain with more than a century of international caps to his name. The captain of Nephara. Beside him was the much slighter figure of Vetta Roback, the guile next to her captain’s grit. This wasn’t so much a step up as a voyage to another planet.

All his short career Rodríguez had been told he was a bit special. Truth be told, he was quick, but not the quickest. Strong, but not the strongest. A decent header of the ball, but not the best. What he did have was a shot like a sniper’s bullet and an uncanny knack for being exactly where needed to sniff out a chance. A fox in the box. They were already calling him El Zorro while he was breaking goal scoring records for the Sportivo Soluca academy sides. Those same instincts served him well while he was toughened up by two years in Motril, scoring thirty-seven times along the way. Then came the defining season. The first in the yellow and black of Sportivo’s senior side. No one, not Rodríguez, not anyone, expected it to go quite so well. The young striker just couldn’t stop scoring. Another thirty-seven goals, this time in as many games, as Rodrigo Defederico’s side lifted the Liga-S title. Naturally, an international call up wasn’t long in following.

Which is how Adrian Rodríguez came to be here, at Xuanwuyan Zhu in the city of Chumeichang on the Naixese coast. Well over thirty thousand fans were in the stadium, including a few hundred who had made the trip from the Greater Republic. Significantly more than had seen the Corsairs’ final group game in Fuzaidai. Indeed, the eleven brave Sargossan souls who had made the arduous trek to Gongren Jinku were in attendance again. With slightly more ease and comfort this time, as guests of the Football Federation. And they were enjoying a pretty good match, as last sixteen encounters go.

Rodríguez, and strike partner Pablo Alarcón, had been enjoying a great tussle with Scales and Roback. They’d both been prevented from scoring themselves, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t made their respective marks. Rodríguez had won the foul off Scales that had resulted in his club teammate Elías Pozo curling a glorious freekick into the top corner to give the Corsairs an early lead. It hadn’t lasted too long. And Rodríguez couldn’t help but admire at how Ravil Kulesza bullied his way through the Sargossan defence to stab home an equaliser. Rodríguez was working hard but Roback’s uncanny read of the action meant chances at goal were at a premium. All across the pitch in fact The Cormorants were exerting their authority. From his vantage point Rodríguez had an excellent view of his teammates being hunted down in packs by Nepharan players in their changed white and beige-ish strips. It was one such moment of pressure that forced the interception that started the quick break that ended with Bellona Sebold clipping the ball passed Antonio Reyes.

But, buoyed by the words among themselves and some heavily accented encouragement from the coach, the Corsairs’ struck back. Rodríguez jostled with his marker as the corner was swung in. But his marker was an old pro at this. And also massive. He felt just enough pressure on his shoulder to kill his attempted leap dead, while not risking any kind of reprimand for impeding. Not that it mattered, as into the space just in front of him appeared Nicolás Riesgo, rising like the cost of existing in the UK, and powering a header into the net. A potential quarter-final place was in sight once again.

As much as Rodríguez respected Pablo Alarcón, he couldn’t help but feel a small surge of excitement as his strike partner’s number went up on the fourth official’s board. On in his place came Jesús Blaya, alongside whom he’d enjoyed that very fruitful season with Sportivo. ‘Get on his shoulder,’ Jesús had said. ‘I’ll find you.’ They just needed that one moment of opportunity to knock. It knocked. With around five minutes of normal time left Sargossa were enjoying a decent spell of possession. Pozo and Fernando Moruga were knocking it about with aplomb. Blaya dropped a little deeper to connect with the midfield trio, taking Vetta Roback with him. Moruga fed Blaya who, without looking, instantly swivelled and side footed the ball into the space between the Nepharan defence and their goal. That was the moment. Rodríguez twisted away from Scales and ran to meet it. He could hear the laboured breathing of the big centreback in his ear as he watched the passage of the ball. Blaya had weighted it perfectly and he took it in his stride. Suddenly only Chary Longstreet was ahead of him.

It was at these moments that time seemed to slow just a little. The noise of the crowd was gone, Rodríguez was simply aware of the target and the long, languid strides of the keeper who was racing forward to meet him. The permutations went through his mind in an instant. Should he attempt a chip? Try and go around her? Did the angles favour an early strike? Perhaps, but he’d have to do it right now. He did, cutting across the ball to send it wide of the onrushing keeper. It was wide enough to beat Longstreet but, for a horrifying moment it looked wide enough to beat the goal as well. Until the ball kissed the inside of the post and rolled over the line.

He wheeled away, arms stretched either side in a celebration that had become his trademark. He wasn’t entirely sure why he started doing it, but it had earned him another nickname. El Cóndor. He rather liked that one. The condor’s flight was ended prematurely though, under a pile of his own teammates. Rodríguez wasn’t entirely sure what happened next. There had been five minutes of normal time left on the clock. And then six minutes of stoppage time that had felt like sixty. Tackles were made, balls were hacked into the stand, bodies were thrown in front of everything that looked like a Nepharan. Somehow they made it through.

It was surreal, as he went among the Nepharan players, most of whom were on their haunches. Customarily, this was not the moment they exited tournaments. He commiserated with the likes of Scales, Demeter Constantine and Bravura Harper. Players he had spent so many hours watching on television. Now he’d scored the goal that had beaten them. An arm wrapped around his shoulders. He looked into an aging face, a rare smile etched upon it. ‘Not bad kid’, Slavko Jelic said to him drily. ‘Not too bad at all.’ The veteran Mytanar had seen it all before but this was all new to Rodríguez. They'd just beaten one of the biggest names in global football, and their reward was to face another one. Cassadaigua had beaten Nyowani Kitara across the city earlier in the day. They would be Sargossa’s quarter final opponents. Another nation whose past greats had graced the sticker books of his not-too-distant youth. That opening day draw with Stvoto Latoli seemed a long time ago know. Suddenly Rodríguez was aware of how tired he felt. There would be some among the squad who’d be angling for a night out in the city to celebrate. And it probably wouldn’t involve many museums. For Rodríguez though, he just wanted to get on the coach, give his parents a call and then maybe get some sleep.

[Naixi]

Part 1 | Part 1
Part 2 | Part 2
Part 3 | Part 3

Technically, they were looking at an empty lot. Technically, there was nothing but dirt (well, more accurately, mud) ahead. Technically, the structure that had been put up on this site by the Golden People some forty-five years ago had been blown up during the Naixese Independence Conflict, when urban fighting swept through Futengma.

And yet, a miserable, rotting old church - its bug-infested shell of wood still somehow adhering to its skeleton of stone - nastily frowned at them through the persistent rain. It was very much there in front of them... no mistaking it. This accursed city was home to many truly wretched and abhorrent structures, but this thing, adorned with a crooked cross atop its steeple, had to be near the top of the list.

"The city records say this old church didn't survive the bombings twelve years ago, and the neighborhood only plays host to the homeless and indigent now. The police - national or local, take your pick - don't come out here to check. If they knew it was here, they'd come to tear it down, of course... it's a symbol of the oppression of the Naixese people. They don't, though, so naturally it makes an ideal safehouse for the Guiding Hand. The Ascended can't bother you if they can't use their remarkable record-keeping and technological capacity to find you in the first place. Many things, we in the Hand believe, are worse in the modern world, not better."

Grandmaster Kwai's comment was clearly meant to put Xiao Bo at ease. She had been scowling irritably since she'd walked into that cave entrance in the year 1850 and walked through an underground labyrinth, only to find that her escort party (a group of Guiding Hand monks), who met her on a stone bridge across an underground river in a massive cavern, were taking her to a very different... well, time. She hadn't been warned that these wicked magicks - ones that took her 175 years into the future - existed.

On the Grandmaster's other side, Guo Feng brushed the raindrops off his eyebrows but kept his mouth shut. He, too, had told Kwai that he wanted it explained to him that you could simply take a stroll through a set of underground caverns, some that looked artificial and some that looked natural, and emerge in a different temporal reality. He'd been Kwai's loyal student for years as a youth, and had once been considered among the most promising students at Kwai's school... and his reward was to have a profound secret kept from him. It was also, of course, quite upsetting that his Geloso-brand suit was being subjected to the muddy streets of this horrific neighborhood. "Grandmaster," he finally whispered with horror, "where have you taken us?"

Grandmaster Kwai looked at Guo Feng sternly before replying. "I believe I have already told you, son."

"And yet still the moral thrust of my question remains un-answered. Why here? Have things really gotten this bad for the Hand?"

Kwai nodded. "I'm afraid they have, Guo Feng. While you have been amassing ill-begotten wealth in the Financial District, the Ascended, and their agents inside the Naixese government, have been hard at work. Our influence, I'm sad to say, has been waning. We control fewer and fewer feng shui sites. The ones we do still control are either in an awful state, or are as yet unknown to the Ascended."

"Or both," Guo Feng replied caustically.

"Or both, yes."

A dim green light appeared above them, just barely visible through the late-evening darkness and rain. It was coming, Xiao Bo observed, from the bell tower of the dreadful old church. She'd only seen a structure like this once before, on a tiny island settlement she'd raided once during her days as a pirate. It had been a tiny colony of Golden People who had apparently been quite devout. She and the other pirates had, Xiao Bo was ashamed to remember, killed them all.

"There's a green lantern lit up there," she said, pointing with her cutlass and drawing the attention of the two men. "What does that mean?"

"It means it's safe for us to enter. Come on," and Grandmaster Kwai stepped forward, over the patchy stones and burr-wielding weeds of the path to the church's front door. Behind and around them, other figures, most dressed like the Grandmaster, in simple tunics and loose pants, began to step out of the shadows of the night as well. They entered through the creaking front doors.

In the sanctuary, there was no place at all to stand where a waterfall of dirty rainwater wasn't plunging through holes in the roof. Surely, Xiao Bo and Guo Feng thought simultaneously, this wasn't where Grandmaster Kwai planned to host his summit?

"Down those stairs there," the Grandmaster said softly. Just inside the front door, there was a set of worn marble steps leading down. "Be careful, they're slippery when they're wet."

Xiao Bo, a veteran of maritime voyages and wet ship decks, had no trouble with them. For Guo Feng, there was a scary moment or two as his expensive dress shoes refused to grip to the stone. "Might I recommend a more durable pair of slippers, Guo Feng?" Kwai asked pointedly.

"I have my own already, Grandmaster," Guo Feng answered politely. "I ought to have brought them, I'm sorry."

They were the first three down the stairs. The basement level of the church wasn't rainy, though it was by no means dry. A pair of lonely lanterns, glowing with eerie teal light, were all that lit the tomb-like space. Other members began to file in behind them. One bearded old man, who looked at first glance to be about 90 years old, was shivering terribly when he reached the bottom of the staircase. Another member kindly wrapped him in a blanket.

When it seemed as though all of the members had at last arrived in the catacomb, Grandmaster Kwai moved to the center of the room, holding a lantern, and began.

"Hello, brothers and sisters. It has been quite a while since our last general membership meeting. The reasons for the long lapse, are, I'm sorry to say, probably obvious. The Golden People are gone, and our government claims to promote the traditional Confucian values of the Old Land, but I'm sorry to say the reality is that the ethics of our contemporary juncture are as poisoned as ever, we the Guiding Hand are as weak as ever, and the Ascended are better equipped than ever to seize control of the Naixese state. I think most of us have been in agreement for months that a last stand is in order, but few of us know where to begin.

"As I said the last time we all met, the death of Celestial Councilor Zhi Hong at the meditation center we controlled was not only an attempt by the Ascended to harm our public image, but the first step in a power grab within the institutions of government themselves. The recent death of Celestial Councilor Nai Jian is, I believe, a second step in that direction. Other officials, be they members of the executive or legislative branches, are sure to be the next targets.

"How can they be stopped? What means can be used to obstruct the Ascended? Well, I feel the first step ought to be ascertaining who these heinous killings are actually being orchestrated by. Because, I'm sorry to say, the government-controlled media will be releasing a report tomorrow morning that will accuse the Hand."

A few members gasped. The Grandmaster carried the lantern a few feet to his right and knelt down on the damp floor, reaching into his satchel for a rolled-up piece of paper. He stood back up, unfastening a clasp on the paper as he resumed his speech.

"The media have, of course, long suggested that our ownership of the resort where the bombing of the meditation center took place is proof positive that we had something to do with the first assassination. They will now embellish their case by saying that a former member of the Hand, a founder of a martial arts school and self-declared 'sifu' Hao Hing Tan, was one of the four men who killed Concilor Nai Jian Xu. Tan Sifu is, of course, innocent - we doubt he knew what he was participating in, and even if he did he was almost certainly under extreme duress.

"Now, I believe based on my cursory glance around the room that all of us, with the exception of my two guests, here," he said as he gestured toward Xiao Bo and Guo Feng, "have top-level intelligence clearance? Zhi Xin, would you confirm that for me?"

A young man in a black tunic, who clearly took his duties very seriously, scanned the dark room. He completed his task, and turned his austere face back to the Grandmaster and nodded silently.

"Good. I perhaps should have had you do that before speaking of the Ascended!" A few members chuckled, but their laughter was empty. They were nervous about the dark days to come. "But better late than never. I am obligated to speak the following words with discretion, and as such must instruct the two of you," he said, clearly speaking to Xiao Bo and Guo Feng, "to never repeat the words you hear tonight to anyone. Not even the words you say, yourself," he said to a confused Xiao Bo.

"Xiao Bo, will you step forward?"

She did, but kept one hand on her cutlass and the other on her black powder pistol. She didn't trust these people.

"This is Xiao Bo Sen. Xiao Bo, do you mind telling us what year, to the best of your knowledge, you were born in?"

"1828," she replied.

A few more members gasped.

"Yes," Grandmaster Kwai continued, "as some of you might have guessed from her appearance, Xiao Bo is a Netherwalker."

Xiao Bo didn't know what that meant.

"Under Quan Lo's supervision, Ms. Sen was sent here, to the Contemporary Juncture, because she knows Tan Sifu personally. Is that correct?"

"It is," she said, stepping out of the shadows and hearing someone wince as she stepped into the pale green light, revealing the long scar on one side of her face. "Tan Sifu is a good man. My dear friend and I, who were trying to escape from the Golden People because... well, because we were pirate wives. I don't know if pirate wives exist in your time, in the future. But... look, all you really need to know is that he sheltered us when no one else would. He's a better person than I am."

"And you feel duty-bound to help free him?"

She nearly replied with the truth: I'm trying to free him because I want him to help me kill the Captain who took my best friend from me. I'm trying to free him because he knew how beautiful her little girl was. I'm trying to free him because I believe that if I told him the story of how they died, he'd go on a rampage for justice, too.

She did not say that. "Yes, that's right. Duty."

"But Quan Lo told you something else, did he not?"

"Oh, yes," she said, remembering the details of what Quan Lo had said seconds before sending her down into the mouth of the cave. "There's another man being held with him, at a place called the Hub. I don't know where that is. But there's another man being held with him, a Golden Person named David Irving. He knows the man who really killed your Huangdi... or whatever you call them here. Anyway, he knows what really happened, because the assassin is his brother. Fred Irving. Fred Irving is... Ascended. Or something like that."

"It's more accurate to say that he is a member of the Order of the Wheel, which is group subservient to the Ascended, who are... of a different origin. But yes, Xiao Bo, that's right. Fred Irving is behind all of this. And he appears to have taken his own brother prisoner and had him framed for the assassination of Zhi Hong Xu. The killing he himself committed."

"Okay... one second. I still don't understand how any of this is possible," she said, overwhelmed. "How did I... time jump... to here?"

"I agree," the heretofore silent Guo Feng said. "Respectfully, Grandmaster, you owe me - us - an explanation."

"Very well," Kwai answered with a sigh. "I assumed this would have to come out. The Netherworld... or, as we sometimes call it, the Inner Kingdom... is a series of winding underground passageways linking a web of caverns, some of which are very large. The raw power of chi has created the space, poking holes in the space-time continuum and allowing travel between different times, or 'junctures.' Xiao Bo, you and Tan Sifu come from what we call the 'Past' juncture, a time when the Golden People had only just begun the process of settling the New Land. Today, in what we call the 'Contemporary' juncture, the New Land is known as 'Naixi.'

"Various passageways within the Netherworld allow travel through these portals in time, but as is the case in each of the two junctures themselves, much of the real estate is under the control of a global conspiracy called the Ascended. Only a few portals are controlled by a variety of other factions in what has come to be called 'the Chi War,' so named because all relevant factions wield the power of chi in some way or another. The Guiding Hand is one such faction.

"You navigated the Netherworld to find us here, Xiao Bo. So too did Tan Sifu, as a captive of the Ascended."

"So," interjected Guo Feng, who was in the midst of a massive personal revelation but was trying to cover it up, "David Irving went the other direction? He's being held captive in the year 1850?"

"No," replied Kwai. "He's being held in the Hub, which an Ascended-controlled base inside the Netherworld. It contains a large detainment facility that many high-level prisoners of the Ascended are taken to."

"So we'll have to go back into the Netherworld and storm this base?" asked Xiao Bo.

"No. It's impossible. The fortifications around the thing are massive. We'd never recover either Tan Sifu or David Irving by assaulting the Hub directly. But," he said, turning to the room, "we do happen to know something else. Yesterday, a pair of loose lips within the Ministry of Law and Order accidently passed on to an agent of the Hand that the pair are among the test group for the first ever Trial by Ordeal."

"The what?" Xiao Bo asked.

"Even in your time, they still had courts," Guo Feng muttered sadly. (He'd been mulling over his future in Naixi a fair bit over the last few days. As a gay man in an increasingly authoritarian country that had just abolished the entire judicial system, replacing it with a profoundly reactionary medieval torture method, he saw the choice as flight - i.e. leaving the Celestial Empire - or fight.)

"You don't have courts in the future?" she asked, amused.

"Not in this country, anymore," answered someone in the darkness, presumably a Hand member.

"Now you see what we're up against," said Kwai. "The Trial by Ordeal is a brand-new government-authorized form of justice whereby citizens accused of high crimes... 'accused,' mind you... not 'found guilty'... are taken aboard an enormous barge and taken out onto the Red Coast."

"Why's it called the Red Coast?" Xiao Bo wondered.

"Two reasons. One, because highly toxic chemical runoff from a river that passes through this very city, Futengma, caused red algae blooms where the delta pours into the ocean. Two, because the noxious poisons have caused genetic mutations amongst the local octopus populations on the reef... oh, you wouldn't know what that means... uh... the poisons in the water have made the octopuses extremely violent, powerful, and... well... multi-limbed."

"And so if you're in a Trial by Ordeal, you've got to survive the swim back to shore, through all that."

"Correct. Approximately 1600 accused criminals, all mostly enemies of the Ascended in some abstract way, including Tan Sifu and David Irving, will be placed on this death barge in three month's time. The barge will taken to twenty miles out off of the Red Coast and set on fire. The victims on board will have the choice to stay on board or swim back to shore."

"Twenty miles?!" Xiao Bo exclaimed. "That's impossible! Can people swim that far in this juncture?!"

"They cannot," someone else replied grimly from the darkness on the edge of the room.

"So everyone is going to die."

"Correct," answered the Grandmaster. "What we will need, as a result, is a team of Hand members prepared to use this opportunity, however dangerous, to rescue David Irving - and Tan Sifu! - and ferry them back to safety. Should we be able to assist any of the other victims, as well, then all the better, but those two are our top priority. Particularly Irving... what he knows about his brother's activities could save the Hand from destruction. I now ask the broader assembly... those of you who have traveled from all across the Celestial Empire to be here... to volunteer to help. We have three months to devise a plan. The more who offer aid, the better our plan of action can be."

The Grandmaster was met with silence. He made a full 360 degree turn. No members raised their hands or stepped into the aqua-colored lantern light.

"Well, I'm in," Xiao Bo said courageously. "I've come this far to rescue Tan Sifu, I don't need anyone else's help. I've run into a few bad-tempered octopuses and squid already anyway. Let them come for me. The seas took my eye, then my ship, then my best friend and her baby daughter. Let them try and find one more thing to take."

"I insist that you do not go alone, Xiao Bo, your extensive experience on the water notwithstanding. Other members of the Hand will volunteer at once or face censure."

He made a full turn, gazing through the pale green darkness and waiting for others to offer help. It was as though the room was empty.

"To hell with them, Grandmaster," Xiao Bo said brashly. "All I need is a junk."

"I can get you more than that," Guo Feng spoke up at last. "I can get you a bloody yacht."

[Eura]

COPA RUSHMORI 44 – QUARTERFINALS
Græntfjall 2–4 Eura
Scorers:
Sharp 37, Archer 56, James 62, Miller 84
Lineup:
1. T Hammond
2. A Mason
4. J Menard
5. Q Phillips
3. M Taylor (sub Doherty 90)
6. J Gates
8. O Vincent (sub West 45)
12. D Barnes
11. O James (sub Woodman 70)
10. S Singh (sub Archer 45)
9. A Sharp (sub Miller 78)

---

emplor.eur/main/sport/football
SNOW WOLVES DAZZLED BY EURAN COMEBACK
Eura discover their second wind to avenge Græntfjall defeats

We live in an era where Græntfjall is a byword for footballing excellence and huge success. The Snow Wolves run of glory came at Eura’s expense at the Copa before last, and the most recent World Cup. But Eura got their own back in Naixi, coming from 1-2 down to win 4-2 with a thrilling second half display.

Much of the media’s focus was zoomed in on Kæja Finnvarðsdóttir in the buildup to the quarterfinal between these two sides. The Bastion midfielder had just scored a hat-trick against San Isidro Labrador, a feat she also achieved in her team’s World Cup 94 group stage victory over the Eurans. Not just the press in Græntfjall, or even internationally; Euran newspapers and broadcasters were obsessing over how the mighty Kæja could be stopped, and whether the likes of Jermaine Gates and Quentin Phillips could keep up with her.

It was not a fair angle to take. Most of these Euran players have faced her domestically and been competitive, or even got the better of her. Nor was the focus fair on the rest of an extremely talented Græntfjall side. Nevertheless, those who comment on the game are always looking for a narrative, and individual stories are often the easiest kind of narrative to sell. So, she got the airtime, while her teammates resided in the shadows. Only the better quality Græntfjaller outlets took time in advance of the match to mention that winger Rebekka Kajsdóttir was likely to be out for the game.

Come matchday, she was indeed out of the side, replaced by Lotte Leonardsdóttir in an otherwise full strength lineup. Eura’s own drama around an individual – Adam Woodman’s controversial “stolen” goal in the round of sixteen – had been abruptly memory holed in the run up to this fixture, but quietly the Directus veteran dropped to the bench with Owen James coming in. James on the left and Dean Barnes on the right has been the preferred wing pairing of many a Euran football nerd for a couple of years now; what a moment it was for those who live out their lives talking about expected goals (“xG”) on twii.tur. Otherwise, Eura were at their paper full strength, with Phillips and Alex Sharp returning to the side.

The lights of Qiawutian glimmered as the sun set on Sha Dadao stadium, marking the onset of a game that carried a great deal of significance for the Eurans. Glen Merson has had little more success than Sterling Rose, Skorji Oslograd or Lee Sharp in winning games against the reputationally “big” opponents, even if he did manage to finally get Eura over the line in a Cup of Harmony final. Græntfjall were just one of those teams Eura had forgotten how to beat. Overcoming that recent history would lend credence to the idea that the EFA’s faith in Merson, originally a temporary appointment, was more than justified.

A nervous start for Eura did not bode well. Molly Taylor, no doubt thinking she was in the clear, let an apparently harmless long ball bounce back to Tom Hammond just 90 seconds into the game. But Finnvarðsdóttir was hot on her heels and burst pass the complacent fullback, causing Taylor to slip as she struggled to catch up, then guiding the ball all the way to the edge of the box where she instinctively fired off a shot. It hit the side netting. Hammond – and a few billion Eurans – wiped away some sweat from the collective national brow. There would be a good 20 minutes or so of this shaky Euran performance, only occasionally interrupted by a fruitless advance against the impervious Snow Wolves defence.

Græntfjall failed to take advantage at first. This was partially due to some sharp goalkeeping from Hammond. Yet it was only a matter of time before their quality delivered the goods. Finnvarðsdóttir was predictably instrumental, a clever feint drawing a foul out of Barnes in a dangerous position outside of the area. The star of the Snow Wolves might normally have taken a shot. Today she was selfless. She curled a fast and accurate cross to the back post where Benjamín Ísarsson was waiting. Ísarsson rose quicker than a sluggish Jack Menard and headed the ball back across goal. Phillips missed the interception and Hammond flailed, neither of them spotting the 5 foot and 3 inches Sara Vatnarsdóttir inexplicably popping up for a header into the top left hand corner.

It was happening again, though at least this time Merson could take a slice of comfort that it wasn’t tactical naivete allowing the Snow Wolves to pick Eura’s backline apart. There had been no careless bombing forward from Merson’s Falcons. No, they were just better – quicker, with a clearer idea of what they were trying to achieve, and well drilled. Eura had drifted aimlessly since kick off and were being punished for letting their opponents set the agenda. The coach could count himself lucky that Eura, for all their faults, are currently blessed with a crop of strikers with immense talent. Leading among them is Alex Sharp and his 37th minute equaliser, chested down from an innocuous Ana Mason ball lumped forward, then set onto his right foot and fired in from the edge of the box, gave Eura an undeserved lifeline.

Justice was done just a few minutes later when Graintfjall restored their lead. Replacement winger Leonardsdóttir had performed well, stretching Mason to her limits on Eura’s right flank. Mason had gotten within a hairs width of half time without cocking up when she failed to clear under pressure from Leonardsdóttir, instead ceding possession on the touchline very close to the penalty area. Mason panicked and hacked away at the winger. The referee could have easily given another free kick to make the Eurans queasy, but instead he allowed play to continue as Leonardsdóttir found her feet. Phillips square up to her with the intention of blocking any shot, but Leonardsdóttir cut inside onto her right foot before launching a perfect, searing drive into the opposite right hand bottom corner, a wondergoal by any reasonable standard.

Where Eura could go from her was an open question. Memories of the World Cup defeat were fresh enough to make a carefree, attacking attitude seem ludicrous to the casual observer. But Eura had tried abandoning that approach and here they were, a goal down anyway, and with only 45 minutes left to save themselves. Merson made two changes indicating his thinking – Kate Archer came on for a tired Sophie Singh, who was unable to continue her good scoring record against Græntfjall, offering renewed pace up front. In midfield, he pulled off Oscar Vincent (another player with decent history against this opposition) in exchange for Ben West, an attacking midfielder.

As the second half began, it became very clear that Gates was now tasked with containing Finnvarðsdóttir by himself and being the exchange point between defence and attack, with West given free roam to get forward. Initially the plan did not appear to work. The Snow Wolves opened the half with several more chances, and Euran fans might have been forgiven for settling into a “doomer” spiral when Finnvarðsdóttir struck the post from range, no-one closing her down to prevent the shot. This near miss seemed to finally shake Eura out of their stupor. Their passing improved, with a higher tempo, and the Græntfjallers found themselves being pressed while on the ball.

Aside from allowing that long range strike, Gates appeared a man transformed since the first half. He was suddenly omnipresent, putting in perhaps the most important performance of the game. Leonardsdóttir and Vatnarsdóttir were tiring after possibly over-committing in the first period, which freed up Taylor and Mason to get forward more and support James and Barnes with overlapping runs. They would be fed either by Gates getting the ball out from the back with endless precision, or a roaming West receiving the ball almost anywhere and rapidly pinging it forward to the wing players in good positions.

This transformation culminated in a 56th minute manoeuvre where West outfoxed Eura’s opposition with a beautiful cross-field switch to Barnes, having received the ball on the halfway line with seemingly few options and three Græntfjallers charging towards him. Barnes had barely offered a threat going forward all game. Now he was alive and kicking with almost a full tank after a quiet first half. He controlled the ball mid-flight at hip height and skilfully brought it down while continuing his forward movement, forcing commitment from Friðjón Manfreðsson (who had no-one in reserve behind him). Manfreðsson was beaten in a flash and Barnes was in behind. He squared up to shoot with only goalkeeper Ásólfur Nilsson, only to selflessly cut the ball back for Archer to run in and finish.

The scores were level, but the momentum had shifted noticeably in Eura’s favour. They had two goals from three shots on target compared to Græntfjall’s two in nine and even the normally ice cool Nilsson was getting edgy. His defenders were catching an earful as Eura regained possession almost straight from kick off and laid siege to the Snow Wolves goal. A real moment of peril was only narrowly survived when Sharp somehow danced through three defenders without any of them landing so much as a toecap on the ball. The latest in the proud Sharp striking dynasty has certainly got the quality to score in such a situation – like Barnes earlier, he only had to get past the keeper. But Sharp was very close to said goalie and tried to compensate by shooting for the corner with a skewed, scuffed shot, which rolled agonisingly wide of the post by just a couple of inches.

Just a few minutes would go by after this flurry of chances before Eura took the lead. It was the least elegant of Eura’s goals, but in the end they all count the same. Barnes threatened on the wing again, leaving Asbjørn Vilbjörnsson in the dust this time as the Brinemouth man came out wide. As he reached the edge of the box, Barnes chose to drill a low ball hard and fast through the gaggle of players crowding the box. Græntfjall had dropped deep in hope of seeing out this period of pressure, abandoning their usual attacking verve. And yet somehow, with seven Græntfjall players in the box against Eura’s two, it was James who would dart in with a perfectly timed run, and less perfectly executed finish, to shin the ball through Nilsson’s grasp from barely a yard out.

The Falcons had a lead and were determined to build on it. Sharp would hit the woodwork before being withdrawn late on for Tess Miller. Woodman also got on the pitch to replace James – triggering a curious response from the cheering Euran fans, who seemed to have forgiven his trespasses quickly. Their feelings about the stalwart on the left flank would only grow more positive when he set Miller through on goal, beating the much higher line the Snow Wolves adopted in the last 20 minutes or so as the clock began to run down. A defence run ragged throughout the second half was powerless to catch and stop Miller. She closed on goal, saw Nilsson coming and made their contest a simple one by thundering a rocket of a strike into the back of the net from outside the area that he could only have stopped with a lucky loose foot or hand.

Brilliant as that goal was alongside Eura’s attacking performance as a whole, the real hero of the night got a thoroughly deserved high note exit. In stoppage time the talismanic Finnvarðsdóttir had dug deep into her reserves of energy and willpower to try and wrest the game from Eura even as time had apparently run out. She was determined not to let her side falter with a whimper, maybe knowing in the back of her mind that being shut down by Gates since half time had been influential in the outcome. With the Euran fans whistling and heckling the referee in hope of full time, Finnvarðsdóttir intercepted a clearance from a corner, which Hammond had rushed out to punch away.

Hammond had lost his balance and was now flat out on the floor leaving what was essentially an open goal. Without hesitation, Finnvarðsdóttir thumped a volley toward goal from all of 30 yards. This correspondent and most in the commentary boxes instinctively blurted out “goal” or a choice expletive as they expected to see the ball rustle the net. It never got there. Instead, the Euran half of the stadium roared in approval as man-of-the-match Gates threw himself into the trajectory of the spitting strike and headed it, probably quite painfully, up and away over the bar.

The subsequent corner was this time collected with ease by Hammond, prompting the referee to finally call time and set off an outpouring of joyous relief from the red and gold faithful. Eura will now gear up to face Naixi yet again, and at the same stadium as this game. As they do so, much focus will again be on the goal scorers and creators like Sharp and Finnvarðsdóttir, and what role they did or didn’t play in victory or defeat for either side. But this game demonstrated neatly that the engine of a team is often the one who makes victory possible. Gates had quietly done his job and carried the day.

[Naixi]

SEMIFINALS

Semifinal 1 @ Sha Dadao in Qiawutian
Eura 2-0 Naixi * scorinated by Tumbra

Semifinal 2 @ Huangse Migong in Chumeichang
Sargossa 2–4 Cabo Azure

Third Place Playoff
Naixi v Sargossa (Huangse Migong in Chumeichang)

Final
Eura v Cabo Azure (Sha Dadao in Qiawutian)

[Cabo Azure]

After years working in football, Sonia Vargas could almost forget her political ambitions. Almost. She still got hot under the collar when she remembered the humiliation of realizing she'd been the face of a doomed campaign, the absolute shame she felt at her own naïvete. What was even harder to shake was the memory of the good she'd been able to do as an elected official. When the Euran foreign minister had planned a trip to Cabo Azure, Sonia and the Wolves had made the most of it, drawing up a trade deal and gift-wrapping for the majority alliance so they couldn't possibly refuse. The provisions of that deal had real implications for Azurean families: everything from cellular phones to apples to tampons was now cheaper, owing to reduced trade barriers with Cabo's behemoth continental neighbor.

This was to say nothing of the knock-on effects of Cabo Azure’s new, more muscular foreign policy. Greater integration with the rest of the Terranean sphere (minus Nephara, of course, which still might have been radioactive for how Azurean policymakers approached it) brought scores of Olastorian, Cenian, and other expatriates to Cabo Azure’s shores, turning Sao Simone overnight into a proper Rushmori city. Of course doing so had enriched the likes of Marisol Silva, who was able to leverage construction equipment and expertise that had been idle ever since the main thrust of construction at Camp Canarinho was completed; and Joaquin Sequeira, whose Air Cometa had added daily flights to Lexington, Bastion, and Cenial, many of them in a more lucrative two-class configuration to accommodate honeymooners and expats.

Economic liberalization also brought social liberation, if indirectly. The cheap flights that brought holidaymakers from Bastion returned carrying women seeking abortions, and hormonal birth control was cheaper and more abundant than even Princess Alexandra could have imagined. Wealthy expats in Sao Simone, especially the Cenians, had more discerning tastes than the average Azurean, and the new Terranean-language media outlets provided a welcome respite from the samey homegrown Azurean channels and websites. Cinemas that previously showed only new-release blockbusters now showed the darlings of awards shows across Rushmore. New cable channels and streaming services showed Electrumite tennis and Euran prestige dramas. One brave network had even paid the blood ransom to carry the Zenith, albeit in a match-of-the-week format.

All the while, Sonia quietly, diligently, worked on football. The qualification for World Cup 93 was a windfall for which her office had proved woefully underprepared; vowing never again, she threw herself into promoting the next Copa Rushmori and was rewarded with a deep run culminating in a heartbreaking finals loss to Cassadaigua. The subsequent failure to qualify for the World Cup and sputtering Cup of Harmony campaign were setbacks, yes, but this run to the final against Eura was almost as good as another qualification. After two years of hearing how their qualification was a fluke, being able to say “back-to-back finals” was like aloe to a burn. Now the streets of downtown Sao Simone were closed, the harbor thronged with pleasure boats, and it was all thanks to Eura.

Eura was no longer the enemy, but it was still the opponent. Sonia had long since learned not to judge a nation’s sporting prowess by its size; otherwise, Cabo certainly had no business competing with the likes of Valentine Z. In her hotel in Naixi, she sat through conference calls, Zoom calls, and a deluge of endless text messages, all of them wanting a piece of the glory of back-to-back finals. Just wait, she wanted to tell them, It’s going to get so much bigger.

[Eura]

COPA RUSHMORI 44 – SEMIFINALS
Eura 2-0 Naixi
Scorers:
Archer 59, Holden 77
Lineup:
1. T Hammond
2. A Mason
4. J Menard
5. Q Phillips
3. M Taylor (sub Doherty 89)
6. J Gates (sub Matthews 85)
8. O Vincent (sub Coates 89)
16. B Malone
7. A Woodman (sub Roberts 64)
14. K Archer
17. T Miller (sub Holden 68)

---

emplor.eur/main/sport/football
EURA FIND INNER STEEL TO REACH FINAL
Disciplined performance as Eura overcome dogged hosts

Naixi’s (in)famous 4-5 win over Eura in the round of sixteen of the last Copa was just the latest in a long line of calamities for Euran football in the post-World Cup 87 era. Thankfully, Eura avoided a repeat in this semifinal, getting the better of the host nation in a tactical and mental triumph for Glen Merson.

After a gruelling victory over Græntfjall that saw Merson’s favoured attacking options give it all, the Euran manager took the calculated decision to rotate on the wings and the strikers up front for this game, while keeping together the core of the defence and central midfield. It was an understandable half-gamble given the effort expended against a similarly high intensity, attacking Snow Wolves side. Bobby Malone and Adam Woodman (his reputation partially restored by his role in the quarterfinal) were drafted in to play on the flanks, while Kate Archer and Tess Miller would form the strike pairing.

Naixi would offer a very different challenge to Eura’s previous opposition after beating the odds once more to make it all the way to the semifinals of their home Copa. A highly defensive side in the mould of the likes of Ko-oren or South Covello, their flat back five and wafer thin central midfield is designed to soak up pressure, wait for an attacking side to overcommit against the blockade, and then take advantage of any mistake to seize possession and get forward behind their opponent’s defence. Eura have had mixed fortunes against such approaches in the past – when they’ve been able to score first, they have tended to look comfortable. In stark contrast, long periods without breaking the deadlock against a side with Naixi’s approach usually brings out Euran frustration and creates plenty of those anticipated counter-attacking opportunities for the opposition.

It was predictable that the game would begin quietly with the Eurans exercising caution and Naixi happy to let the Eurans control the ball to begin with, in anticipation of the coming errors. A pattern set in of probing Euran explorations of Naixi’s lines, without ever committing to a shot, the Euran players instead shifting the ball back and forth along the defence without going anywhere further. Games often become edgy, defensive affairs at this stage of a tournament, and this was no exception. The Eurans had not been in a final for a while and the nervousness was beginning to show. Oscar Vincent summed up the mood in the 31st minute, blazing a hopeful shot over the bar from range after losing patience with the horizontal passing buildup of the few minutes beforehand.

The disadvantage of this situation for Naixi was that Eura were not making mistakes. An almost flawless passing record – exceptional, even by Euran standards – and a lack of real pressure in midfield was giving Eura an easy enough ride to make it difficult for Naixi to force a mistake. It was also dangerous. Their central midfield pairing of Chang and Yuan were chasing a lost cause for much of the first half, and it was obvious in the last ten minutes before half time that they were tiring more quickly than their less overworked Euran counterparts. If this continued the vulnerability of Naixi’s midfield core would be exposed sooner or later.

To the surprise of most in the stadium after a tense and quite dull first half, there were little to no substitutions at half time, and both sides stuck with their tactics and shape. In the 51st minute there was finally a shot on target for Naixi (Yap forcing a comfortable save out of Tom Hammond), and the relatively dominant Eura had only created three themselves. But Naixi’s weaknesses were already wide open and waiting to be seized, an advantage needing to be taken despite Naixi’s defensive discipline apparently making mistakes unlikely.

The key moment was centre-back Dong wandering into midfield in hope of supporting an attack after Naixi had gotten control of possession. She and her teammates were high up the pitch now that they’d been tempted by the taste of having the ball for a bit, very much so compared to their approach beforehand. Jermaine Gates won the ball back for Eura and bypassed a sluggish Dong with an aerial ball forward to Bobby Malone. Suddenly the defence was all over the shop. Naixi poured back towards their goal, having jealously guarded it all game until that point, but Chang and Yuan in the centre couldn’t keep up with their exhaustion coming into play – Eura had crucially exhausted Naixi’s key midfielders.

A soft bit of belly had been found and the Eurans were now going to take their prize. A couple more passes ended with Archer being the lucky player who would get to slam the opening goal home, an ironic kind of counter-attacking strike that Naixi would have been hoping to score themselves. Archer had beaten a desperately unlucky Huang in the Naixi goal, who had almost got a hand to the shot to make an unbelievable save. Later in the second half he would be picking the ball out of the net again, another unfair blow to one of the best players in the Naixi team, who had made several important saves only to be betrayed by a continuous, unavoidable build-up of pressure.

Before that goal came, Gui Fan Ren made several changes in order to take a more forward thinking approach, and this led to a few difficult moments for Eura as crosses came in and at least one shot from Ling required a quick reaction from Hammond to steer the ball wide. It just wasn’t enough, and Eura were living up to their quality on paper in every position on the pitch. As their opponents tired in their attempt to find an equaliser, Eura struck again, this time fatally; two substitutes combined as Trent Roberts exploited the overstretch of an exhausted Yep, who had bombed down the wings in search of a fruitless overlap attempt.

Roberts got into a good position and took on a through ball after Yep had lost it, shaped up to get the ball into the box, and delivered it with trademark precision. There was Owen Holden waiting to finish with aplomb and finish it he did. Eura celebrated with great joy as it became clear they would be ending a long absence from Copa Rushmori finals, though they were keen to commiserate a stubborn Naixi side at the final whistle. Eura now face Cabo Azure for the title in yet another tie at the Sha Dadao in Qiawutian, an opportunity for Glen Merson to seize a second major tournament title of his reign as Euran national team manager. Its been a hell of a journey for the man who was supposed to be temporary.

[Naixi]

3PPO

Third Place Playoff @ Huangse Migong in Chumeichang
Naixi 2-2 Sargossa (4-2 AET) * scorinated by Quebec and Shingoryeo

FINAL

Final @ Sha Dadao in Qiawutian
Eura 1–2 Cabo Azure

[Polar Islandstates]

SOUR CHERRIES
Part vi
A duologue, altogether too public
i - ii - iii - iiii - v - vi - vii.a) - vii.b) - vii.c) - vii.d) - vii.e) - vii.f) - vii.g) - viii
Volume Two
** ** ** ** **

The plane home after a defeat was seldom a happy place to be. Iosef Miroshnichenko had had plenty of those over his managerial career with East Franz Athletic. Not as many as some, but, enough. Enough to know he didn’t like them. There was a leaden silence that hung in the air. A tiredness caused by the inherent effort of travel that, no longer buoyed by nervous energy and adrenaline, dragged on your shoulders and seemed to pull everyone down through the seats of their chairs.

But he was fast learning that the plane home from an unsuccessful tournament was worse still.

For the fourth time in four tournaments, the Terns had gone into the last matchday of a group stage knowing that a win would have put them through and then lost miserably. It was becoming a bad habit. Iosef knew his stewardship was being questioned as a result, and with a silent plane to contend with, he had nothing to do but sit and dwell on the issues before him.

He’d tried to stop doomscrolling. Really, he had. The temptation was simply too strong though, and he’d already spent an unhappy half hour in the departures lounge scrolling through the hashtags on deja.vu whilst his players somehow managed to spend forever in the duty free section of a dry country.

“#MiroshnichenkNO”, “#GetLostichenko”, “Miroshnichenk-go”, “#MirOUTshnichenko”, “#Fraudshnichenko”, “#MiroshnichenkOUT”, and “#Kibosh-nichenko” were all trending in the top ten across the Federation. He had to admit that the last one was at least reasonably creative, but occupying seven of the top ten trends was rarely a good sign. It was an ‘honour’ usually reserved for public figures who’d died, in fact, which wasn’t terribly reassuring given the current political climate.

There was a stirring across the aisle, and Miroshnichenko looked up to see Federico Aalto, his assistant manager, squeeze out of his seat and head down the walkway to the toilets at the front of the cabin. Miroshnichenko glared at him as he went, eyes boring a hole into the back of his head.

Aalto. Hm. He hadn’t been doing much assisting for an assistant recently. If he hadn’t have known better, Miroshnichenko might have been suspicious that he was after his job. Suggestions of tactics to work on were only ever coming during the games, rather than in training, or in meetings. Instructions were being delivered directly to players from the sidelines, rather than through Miroshnichenko. There was no hierarchy anymore, it would seem, and that bothered Miroshnichenko. Even if the suggestions were good ones.

The latch clicked, and the door swung open. As Miroshnichenko watched Aalto shuffle back down the aisle towards his seat, he made his mind up to say something to him.

“You could at least run things past me first, you know.” He muttered.

“Sorry?” said Aaalto, looking up in surprise as he noticed he was being spoken to.

“I said you could at least run things past me. On the sidelines. These tactical ideas of yours, you know?”

“Oh. Well. There isn’t always time,” replied Aalto, not holding his manager’s gaze awkwardly.

“And why do they only ever appear mid-game, anyway?”

“That’s just when I spot them.” Shrugged Aalto.

Miroshnichenko narrowed his eyes. “They seem pretty well thought out plans for something that just comes to you in the middle of a game. That tactical shift against Valladares had three phases to it.”

Aalto felt his cheeks redden, but knew he couldn’t say anything about his late night analysis sessions, or the additional information he was being sent daily by the OO. He opened his mouth to reply but, finding no words, could only close it again sheepishly.

“And what about the direction at set pieces? Where have they come from?” continued Miroshnichenko, his temper rising along with his pitch.

“Look, they worked, didn’t they?” snapped Aalto, realising that as he was unable to defend himself he would have to take a leaf out of his footballing playbook and utilise attack as the best policy.

“Well,” huffed Miroshnichenko, “they worked in that they went against everything we discussed before the game and then threw the opposition off midway through th-”

“They worked.” Interrupted Aalto testily. “Both the tactical shifts and the set pieces. The only reason we were close to qualification on the last day was because of things I came up with.” The moaning about the timing and secrecy, he had every sympathy with his boss about. He hated what the OO had dragged him into. But he was genuinely indignant at the implication that he was somehow lucky in his tactical manoeuvring.

“And what about what I came up with, Federico? What about what the manager wanted? You were quite happy to go along with my ideas when they were our meetings. What changed?!”

“Well it wasn’t working, was it?” answered Aalto, defending himself without even thinking about it. Subversion was one thing, but no honest Saari turned down a good argument when one presented itself. Especially one about competence. Or honour.

“They got us this far!”

“This far? And where’s that, Iosef? The plane home?”

“To the brink of qualification. Four times.”

“To the plane home, four times!” parroted Aalto, louder.

Miroshnichenko’s shoulder slumped. It was a truth he couldn’t deny. A few of the players had noticed the commotion by this point and were surreptitiously trying to get a better look with some subtle leaning. He attempted to take a breath and lower his voice as he continued, desperate to defuse this bomb he’d apparently planted underneath his assistant.

“Okay, sure. I’m not saying they’re bad ideas, Federico. I’m just saying, it would be nice to have them run past me first.”

“So they can look like your ideas?” sniffed Aalto derisively, OO or no OO, he still hated the idea of someone else taking credit for his work.

“Well, our ideas, but... look,” placated Miroshnichenko, “what if you just run them past me first and then shout them from the sideline? I don’t actually care about the shouting. I do actually care about knowing how what is supposed to be my team is being asked to play.”

Aalto considered this for a second. How would the OO react to that chance of appearance? He decided to play it safe for now and just go along with the request. “Sure, whatever.”

Miroshnichenko sighed and shuffled out of his seat as well, before pausing halfway into the aisle and leaning across the head of the seat next to Aalto. “Look, I just think the team should listen to one clear voice on the touchline. I want to work together on this. As a team.”

“And that means I get less input?” retorted Aalto.

“No, not in the least, just...”

“Don’t blame me for your failures, old man,” continued Aalto, “especially when I’m the one trying to drag the Terns into the modern world.”

“I-“

“If you want to continue snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, you be my guest.”

Miroshnichenko stared blankly as Aalto pinged his headphones on and turned to look out of the window at the blue vastness beyond. That could have gone better, to be fair. He turned his head and noticed a few of the players either suddenly snapping their heads back into the centre of their headrests or pretending to suddenly be asleep.

Turning to go to the toilet himself, he couldn’t help but think that some of this was all a bit unfair. The last game was against Graentfjall, for Thor’s sake. So lost in thought was he in fact, that he didn’t notice one of the travelling press pack standing up at the other end of the aisle, filming the whole exchange with a sly grin on their face. The charter plane continued its journey back to Elfsteijn-Hafnarten International Airport, and by the time they landed, Iosef Miroshnichenko would be both front and back page news...

** ** ** ** **
Volume Two
i - ii - iii - iiii - v - vi - vii.a) - vii.b) - vii.c) - vii.d) - vii.e) - vii.f) - vii.g) - viii