Fic: The Beautiful Game
Aug. 11th, 2011 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalIt was generally agreed by historians, that the races under the thumb of the Varn Dominion decided humans were dangerously insane when Rugby was first demonstrated to them. When Australian Rules Football (classified as "Assault With Intent to Maim" on most worlds outside of the Human Federation) was shown off, they realized that humans might also have a shot at throwing off the Dominion's yoke.
Take an oval shaped chamber one hundred meters long and twenty wide at its midpoint, with a thirty meter ceiling. At either end of the oval place a two meter wide goal pit in the wall. From the ceiling and sides of the chamber hang living trees, of force grown hardwoods, ranging in length from three to twenty meters. At the bottom of the chamber, make sure the ground is filled two meters deep with thick brown mud.
"Why mud?" Nan had asked the First One.
"It's soft to land in, and you'll do anything you can not to," he replied. The First One leaned back in his seat of honor at the stadium's midpoint, which looked like a cross between a lounge chair and a gilded throne. He himself looked rather like a Traitor Lord from a Time of Subjugation drama, wearing black leather pants and a white shirt open to the navel, completing the look with a beer mug in place of the traditional goblet of wine. The harem of does sitting back on low chairs and cushions around the dias, giggling and laughing among themselves, were traditional too, Nan had gathered.
"I've heard about Treeball, but I never thought I'd see a game played," she said, watching as the two teams of twenty ferin each hopped out onto the branches to the loud cheers of the crowd.
"It's a ferin sport," he replied. "For ferin only, we don't show it off. We work damned hard trying to act civilized in front of the other races. If they saw a game of treeball that would all be for nothin' and they'd just call us animals."
"So why play it?" Nan asked.
"Because we're ferin. Neither here nor there. We're civilized, but not like the other races and not all the time. Treeball is a way to let off steam when being civilized is just too damned much." He stood up and raised his beer mug as the teams settled into position, a hidden directional mic echoing his words around the stadium. "Remember the rules!" he shouted.
GET THE BALL IN THE GOAL!
KEEP THE BALL OUT OF THE MUD!
DON'T SHOOT THE GOALIE! the crowd shouted back.
"'Don't shoot the goalie?' You don't seriously mean that…" Nan began to say, her voice drowned out by loud buzz over the speakers. Then the First One fired off his bion to strike the net holding the oval ball in a net above the playing area..
Forty hyperactive, athletically inclined ferin collided with each other at that moment, in less than an organized offense/defense and more like a barely contained street brawl. The players wore a minimum of padding, just light helmets with knee and elbow pads. Nan winced as she saw four separate ferin vector in to try and snag the ball out of the air, colliding with each other, the ball flying away to be snatched by a doe, who bounced off a tree branch only to be struck by a bion blast from an opposing player. One of her teammates grabbed her tail and swung her up in the air so she could grab a branch and regain her breath, while the general melee for the ball continued, partially hidden in the shaking tree branches.
"Oh, I get it," she said. "You can hit an opposing player with bion, but not to hard, otherwise you run the risk getting stunned by the back blast down the link. So it's better to use light blasts to gradually wear down your opponents and not fatigue yourself."
"You got it, Coach," the First One said. There was an appreciative/sympathetic Oh! from the spectators as a buck slammed against the plexiglass safety wall, missing a branch on his way down to splatter in the mud.
"How do you win?"
"When a team scores ten points the game ends. Or whoever has the highest score if everyone is knocked loopy before that."
Nan thought she saw a sort of pattern emerging from the chaos. Does favored snatching the ball from the air as it was passed and charging for the goal, dodging bion blasts all the way, while the bucks ran interference to help or hinder her depending on which side they were on. Play was paused briefly at a warning blat from the sound system, as one buck slammed sideways into a tree branch and had to carried off the field with several broken ribs.
"Who do you think will win this one?" she asked as play resumed. Nan was having a hard time telling the teams apart now, with the colors on the shredded jerseys barely visible under layers mud and blood. The spectators weren't having any trouble though, tracking the unique bion signatures of the players even through the branches blocking their sight.
The First One took a long pull on his beer, then said, "When it's all of us ferin together, united, cheering for one another, we all win."
Take an oval shaped chamber one hundred meters long and twenty wide at its midpoint, with a thirty meter ceiling. At either end of the oval place a two meter wide goal pit in the wall. From the ceiling and sides of the chamber hang living trees, of force grown hardwoods, ranging in length from three to twenty meters. At the bottom of the chamber, make sure the ground is filled two meters deep with thick brown mud.
"Why mud?" Nan had asked the First One.
"It's soft to land in, and you'll do anything you can not to," he replied. The First One leaned back in his seat of honor at the stadium's midpoint, which looked like a cross between a lounge chair and a gilded throne. He himself looked rather like a Traitor Lord from a Time of Subjugation drama, wearing black leather pants and a white shirt open to the navel, completing the look with a beer mug in place of the traditional goblet of wine. The harem of does sitting back on low chairs and cushions around the dias, giggling and laughing among themselves, were traditional too, Nan had gathered.
"I've heard about Treeball, but I never thought I'd see a game played," she said, watching as the two teams of twenty ferin each hopped out onto the branches to the loud cheers of the crowd.
"It's a ferin sport," he replied. "For ferin only, we don't show it off. We work damned hard trying to act civilized in front of the other races. If they saw a game of treeball that would all be for nothin' and they'd just call us animals."
"So why play it?" Nan asked.
"Because we're ferin. Neither here nor there. We're civilized, but not like the other races and not all the time. Treeball is a way to let off steam when being civilized is just too damned much." He stood up and raised his beer mug as the teams settled into position, a hidden directional mic echoing his words around the stadium. "Remember the rules!" he shouted.
GET THE BALL IN THE GOAL!
KEEP THE BALL OUT OF THE MUD!
DON'T SHOOT THE GOALIE! the crowd shouted back.
"'Don't shoot the goalie?' You don't seriously mean that…" Nan began to say, her voice drowned out by loud buzz over the speakers. Then the First One fired off his bion to strike the net holding the oval ball in a net above the playing area..
Forty hyperactive, athletically inclined ferin collided with each other at that moment, in less than an organized offense/defense and more like a barely contained street brawl. The players wore a minimum of padding, just light helmets with knee and elbow pads. Nan winced as she saw four separate ferin vector in to try and snag the ball out of the air, colliding with each other, the ball flying away to be snatched by a doe, who bounced off a tree branch only to be struck by a bion blast from an opposing player. One of her teammates grabbed her tail and swung her up in the air so she could grab a branch and regain her breath, while the general melee for the ball continued, partially hidden in the shaking tree branches.
"Oh, I get it," she said. "You can hit an opposing player with bion, but not to hard, otherwise you run the risk getting stunned by the back blast down the link. So it's better to use light blasts to gradually wear down your opponents and not fatigue yourself."
"You got it, Coach," the First One said. There was an appreciative/sympathetic Oh! from the spectators as a buck slammed against the plexiglass safety wall, missing a branch on his way down to splatter in the mud.
"How do you win?"
"When a team scores ten points the game ends. Or whoever has the highest score if everyone is knocked loopy before that."
Nan thought she saw a sort of pattern emerging from the chaos. Does favored snatching the ball from the air as it was passed and charging for the goal, dodging bion blasts all the way, while the bucks ran interference to help or hinder her depending on which side they were on. Play was paused briefly at a warning blat from the sound system, as one buck slammed sideways into a tree branch and had to carried off the field with several broken ribs.
"Who do you think will win this one?" she asked as play resumed. Nan was having a hard time telling the teams apart now, with the colors on the shredded jerseys barely visible under layers mud and blood. The spectators weren't having any trouble though, tracking the unique bion signatures of the players even through the branches blocking their sight.
The First One took a long pull on his beer, then said, "When it's all of us ferin together, united, cheering for one another, we all win."
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no subject
Date: 2011-08-11 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-11 07:52 pm (UTC)Actually the last rule was supposed to be TRY NOT TO DIE! but I dropped it for the goalie rule and to keep the Rule of Threes intact.
And the goalie rule was going to be related to gag about using pregnant does for goalies (because nobody would want to risk slamming a ball into them) but I ditched it for being more squicky than funny.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-11 08:08 pm (UTC)And yeah... That last idea is momentarily amusing until you actually think about it.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-12 04:14 am (UTC)