The MVP

25





Week Thirteen: Ionath Krakens at To Pirates



PLANET DIVISION

SOLAR DIVISION



11-0 y. Yall Criminals

9-2 x. Vik Vanguard



9-2 x. To Pirates

9-2 x. Bartel Water Bugs



7-4 Wabash Wolfpack

7-4 Jupiter Jacks



7-4 OS1 Orbiting Death

7-4 Texas Earthlings



6-5 Ionath Krakens

6-5 Bord Brigands



5-6 Alimum Armada

6-5 Neptune Scarlet Fliers



4-7 Isis Ice Storm

6-5 Sheb Stalkers



4-7 Buddha City Elite

4-7 Jang Atom Smashers



4-7 Themala Dreadnaughts

3-8 D’Kow War Dogs



3-8 Coranadillana Cloud Killers

1-10 New Rodina Astronauts



2-9 Hittoni Hullwalkers

*1-10 Shorah Warlords



x = playoffs, y = division title,* = team has been relegated Where possible, standings now reflected head-to-head tiebreakers for teams with identical schedules.





QUENTIN NEVER SAW her coming, but he sure felt her when she arrived.

For the second time that game, the blitz of All-Pro safety Ciudad Juarez landed from the blindside. She hit so hard it rattled his teeth, bounced his brain around inside his skull and made his bones jam together in ways that defied nature.

Quentin slammed into the red turf, rattling his head (and his teeth) all over again. He tried to draw a breath but could not. Was he dead? Was he dying? More importantly, had he fumbled? He felt the ball pressing into his stomach, which was part of why he couldn’t breathe — he’d landed on it, knocking the wind out of him.

He hadn’t fumbled. And if he knew that, he wasn’t dead. The dying part, though … of that he couldn’t be sure.

Whistles blew, signifying the end of the play, then blew again — Coach Hokor had called a timeout.

Quentin’s heads-up display flipped down, but only halfway: Juarez’s hit seemed to have broken his helmet.

“Barnes!” said Hokor’s chest. “Get your lazy ass up!”

“Coach, if I’m dead, I have to tell you that heaven is not as cool as I’ve heard.”

“Barnes! You’re not dead, I can see your chest moving. Get up!”

Quentin started to push himself up. Tentacles wrapped around his shoulder pads and helped lift him. He found himself staring into the four armored eyestalks of Ciudad Juarez, the second-most-lethal player in the history of the GFL.

She stood there in her iconic uniform — blood-red jersey with the white-lined black numbers, blood-red leg armor with white-lined black stripes running from her hips to her armored black shoes. She had a small Ki skull and crossbones logo above each tentacle, where her shoulders would be if she were another species and actually had shoulders.

Her blood-red helmet had a single, white-lined black stripe down the middle. She’d personalized her uniform in a rather morbid way: one eyestalk had seven lines of black tape wrapped around the blood-red armor, one line for each sentient she’d killed on the field.

“Godling,” she said. “You did not die!”

“Not yet,” Quentin said. “But if I don’t make it out of the locker room alive, you can put another notch in your helmet.”

“If you die after the game, please tell the football gods that I was the one who delivered you to the Gridiron of the Immortals.”

Gridiron of the Immortals? Well, that was a pretty cool concept of heaven.

Was he really standing here making small talk with a player that had killed seven sentients?

Quentin gave her helmet a friendly slap, then forced his battered body to the sidelines where Hokor was waiting. Along the way, Quentin looked up to the scoreboard:

Fourth quarter, 0:10 to play, To 42, Ionath 40, fourth-and-15, Ionath’s ball on the 50-yard line.

This was it — a trip to the playoffs hung on the next play. Quentin tried to ignore the pounding in his head. He stopped in front of Coach Hokor.

“Barnes! Listen carefully. We just received the score from the Wabash game. The Sheb Stalkers shut them out, seven to zero. That means if we win, we are in the playoffs! Now, we need fifteen yards or more on this next play or we turn the ball over on downs and miss our chance. We get the first down, call our last time out, and kick it for the win. What play do you think will work?”

The Wolfpack had lost? Quentin stared at his two coaches. No, wait, that wasn’t right … he only had one coach — but two of them wavered before his eyes, splitting and merging, splitting and merging.

“Coach, I think we need to kick it.”

“Kick it? That’s a sixty-seven-yard field goal attempt, Barnes! We need to go for the first down. Are you really that hurt?”

Quentin thought back to all the times he’d lied about his injuries. He wanted to do that now because he wanted the ball in his hands. He always wanted the ball in his hands, but this wasn’t just about him — the entire season hung on the next play. If he saw two coaches, he’d see two receivers and two defensive backs; he couldn’t trust himself to make an accurate throw.


“Coach, I think I got another concussion. I can’t shucking see straight.”

Hokor stared at him, the softball-sized eye suddenly flooded a deep red-violet. “Barnes, are you telling me that you can’t play this down?”

Quentin instantly started to say he could, that he’d been wrong — but he had to think of the team first. “Kick it, Coach. It’s our only chance.”

Hokor looked out to the field, as if to count how long the kick would be when he already knew.

“We can put Montagne in,” Hokor said.

Quentin nodded in her direction. Her right arm dangled limp. Feeling proud of her for being so tough seemed like he was betraying John, but she was tough, and he was proud.

“She dislocated her arm mid-way through the third quarter,” Quentin said. “She can still block, but no way she can throw. And I don’t think we can rely on Goldman for a play this big. Arioch’s already hit four field goals today, including a sixty-three yarder. He’s hot. Kick it.”

Hokor threw his hat to the ground. “But it’s a sixty-seven-yard kick! That would be a franchise-record field goal! Morningstar has never hit from that far away!”

Quentin looked down the sidelines, saw Arioch and waved him over. The tiny kicker jogged up. He seemed to be neither concerned nor in a hurry. He stopped in front of Quentin and Coach Hokor. Was Arioch chewing gum? The guy didn’t look stressed — he looked bored.

Quentin put a hand on the kicker’s shoulder pad. “You think you can hit this?”

Arioch chewed. He looked to the ball sitting on the 50, then to the goalpost, then back to Quentin. “Whatever,” he said.

Coach Hokor reached down, picked up his little hat, then again threw it to the ground. “Whatever? A trip to the playoffs rides on this, Human! Can you or can’t you kick it?”

Arioch chewed. He repeated the process: look to the 50, then to the goalpost, then to Hokor. He shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

Hokor’s eye swirled a bright green. He turned and grabbed Quentin’s arm. “Barnes! Snap out of it. You always want the ball in crunch-time. We just need one more first down, then he can hit the kick with ease. Get back in the game!”

Quentin started to shake his head, which caused the pain in his head to suddenly ratchet up a notch. Then, his stomach pinched, and he threw up so fast he couldn’t even get his hand up to block it.

Quentin opened his eyes — he’d thrown up all over Coach Hokor the Hookchest.

The coach blinked his softball-sized eye. Black now swirled alongside the green. Hokor reached down, picked up his little hat, then used it to wipe vomit from his now-wet fur.

“Kick team!” he screamed. “Get on the field!”

Arioch looked at Quentin. Arioch pointed at Quentin with his index fingers, thumbs sticking straight up in the double-gun gesture. “Pow-pow, big fella.” The kicker jogged onto the blood-red field, casually swinging his arms as if he were a little kid playing in the summer sun.

Pow-pow, big fella? Was it too late to run the play after all? Yes, yes it was — when you throw up on your coach, that’s a hint and a half it’s time to sit out a play or two.

Quentin watched the kick team line up. Every sentient in the stadium stood, over a hundred thousand of them, mostly Ki and mostly wearing the Pirates’ signature color.

Blood-red fans.

A blood-red field.

And on that field the blood-red-clad To Pirates.

It didn’t matter that To had already clinched a playoff berth — no one wanted to enter the playoffs following a Week Thirteen loss.

The teams lined up. The battered and bedraggled orange-clad Krakens settled in. Yitzhak — his jersey a spotless, blazing orange as usual — knelt down on one knee seven yards behind that line of scrimmage. Beyond Yitzhak, Arioch stood two yards back and two yards to the left. He leaned forward, just a bit, waiting for his moment.

Yitzhak extended a hand toward Bud-O-Shwek. Bud-O waited two seconds, then snapped it. The ball sailed back as the lines clashed. Quentin saw Ciudad Juarez sprinting in from the side for the block. Zak caught the ball and placed it as Arioch shot in and kicked.

BLINK —

All sound faded away. All pain was forgotten. The tumbling ball sailed high, its brown and white surface lit up by stadium lights. It seemed to scoot to the right, surely heading wide for a miss, then it slid a little left. The ball reached its apex, started to descend. It was heading for the right goalpost. Was it long enough? Would it pass inside that post or outside of it?

Closer, descending …

Closer, again angling right …

The ball passed inside the goalpost, just above the upright.

Just to the left of that post, a black-and white-clad Harrah ref raised two mouth-flaps straight to the sky.

BLINK —

The sound came rushing back, and with it the pain. Quentin dropped to one knee as his teammates went crazy, jumping and screaming and leaping. Several people thumped him on the shoulder pads, rattling his abused head, and then Doc Patah was there, flying in circles, screaming at everyone to stay away. After a few moments, Quentin felt big hands help him up. Michael Kimberlin, all smiles, guiding Quentin toward the tunnel.

Quentin looked up at the scoreboard.

Ionath 43, To 42, 0:04 to play.

As Quentin let himself be led to the tunnel, he saw the Krakens line up for the kickoff. Arioch hit it low and weak, a squib kick that made it nearly impossible for the Pirates to mount a big return.

The ball bounced twice and skittered across the blood-red field before a Pirates player picked it up at the To 35-yard line. He managed only two steps before a pinwheeling Tommyboy Snuffalupagus slid past a blocker and brought him down.

The clock had hit 0:00.

The Ionath Krakens were in the playoffs once again.



GFL WEEK THIRTEEN ROUNDUP

Courtesy of Galaxy Sports Network



FOOTBALL FANS, meet the 2685 playoff teams.

Ionath (7-5) completed yet another unlikely late-season run, winning six of its last eight games to snag the Planet Division’s fourth seed. And the Krakens did it in their usual dramatic style with a last-second field goal that capped at 17-point fourth-quarter comeback over the To Pirates (9-3).

“We made the big dance last year, but now that’s not enough,” said Ionath quarterback Quentin Barnes. “We’ve come together as a team at the right time. We’re ready for our run at the title.”

In the first round of the playoffs, Ionath travels to top-seeded Yall. The Criminals (12-0) have been called “the greatest team ever assembled,” but in Week Thirteen they had their hands full against Alimum (5-7). Criminals linebacker Riha the Hammer blocked a 26-yard field goal as time expired, allowing Yall to slip away from Alimum with a 35-34 win.

Despite the loss to Ionath, To remains the second seed in the Planet and will host the Orbiting Death (8-4) in the first round. OS1 had an easy 38-3 outing against relegated Hittoni (2-10).

The Solar Division solidified as both Jupiter (8-4) and Texas (8-4) won to lock up the third and fourth seeds, respectively. The Earthlings defeated Bartel (9-3) 35-31 to earn the franchise’s first-ever trip to the Tier One playoffs.

“We did it,” said Texas coach Kate Bailey. “Everyone doubted us, but we’re not done yet. We’re bringing the title back to the world that invented the game.”

Texas travels to Vik for a first-round game against the number-one seeded Vanguard (9-3). Vik wrapped up the Solar’s top seed despite losing 31-27 in a cross-divisional road game at Isis (5-7).


Jupiter (8-4) closed out the season with four straight victories, thanks in no small part to resurgent veteran QB Don Pine. Against Bord (6-6), Pine couldn’t get his team into the end zone, but the Jacks’ five field goals were enough for a 15-7 victory.

“Pretty or ugly, a win is a win is a win,” Pine said after the game. “We’re playing for the memory of Zia and Compton. We’ll see you in the Galaxy Bowl.”

In the first round, the Jacks travel to Bartel to face the second-seeded Water Bugs.

Wabash (7-5) was shut out 7-0 by the Sheb Stalkers (7-5). The Wolfpack would have made the Planet Division playoffs with a win.

“We didn’t score a point,” said Wabash owner Gloria Ogawa. “I am less than pleased with this turn of events.”

In the loser-gets-relegated showdown between Shorah (2-10) and New Rodina (1-11), the Warlords dominated 42-10. Shorah remains in Tier One next season, while the three-time league champion Astronauts are relegated to Tier Two for the first time in franchise history.

“I can’t believe how fast it all fell apart,” said New Rodina owner Barbara Jungbauer. “Two years ago we played in the Galaxy Bowl, and now this. It’s crushing.”

Deaths

Bartel Water Bugs quarterback Andre “Death Ray” Ridley, killed on a clean hit by Texas’ Alonzo Castro and Chok-Oh-Thilit. This is Castro’s first fatality and Chok-Oh-Thilit’s third.

Offensive Player of the Week

Ionath kicker Arioch Morningstar, who hit five field goals including a franchise-record 67-yarder to give the Krakens a 43-42 win over the To Pirates. Morningstar also hit from 63, 60, 40 and 23 yards.

Defensive Player of the Week

Yall linebacker Riha the Hammer, who forced two fumbles, recovered another for a touchdown and blocked the game-winning kick in the Criminals’ 35-34 win over Alimum.