GGTTP 1 - 1 Merciless Dominance

“GOOOOOOOOD EVENING, SPORTS FANS!”  Coach Lysenko bellowed as he burst into the dressing room.  The team looked up, unenthused.  Most were still sporting bandages and heavy bruising.

“Does he always have to say that whenever he walks through a door?”  Peregrine Pine-Cone mumbled quietly , more due to facial swelling than any desire not to be heard.

“I forgot to lock the privy door this morning,” shuddered the team’s apothecary, Donna De Niro.  “Any door, anywhere...” she lamented, dabbing a poultice of bread mould gently onto the gash across Peregrine’s  nose.

Lysenko looked tense, like a man who’d just taken on a Blood Bowl team as coach only to realise that perhaps they weren’t as much of a dead cert for the league title as he’d been led to believe.  He was very convincing in the role because that’s exactly what he was.

“What happened out there, champs?”  He clapped his hands together as he paced up and down along the benches.  “Where was my magic?”

From somewhere near Tarquin Rickman, he could have sworn he’d heard someone cough something which sounded suspiciously like “up your arse”.  He pressed on regardless.

“Where were my touchdowns, eh?”  He looked to each of their sullen faces in turn.  “Hoffman?  Where were you?”

“I was in the dug-out!” he scowled.  “Knocked out!”

“Oh.  Right.  But you, Peregrine!  Where were you?”

“I was lying next to him!” he snarled, through gritted teeth.

“Doing what?” the coach snapped.

Pine-Cone sneezed, spraying nasal blood across his own knees.  He shrugged at the coach, who seemed to accept that as an adequate answer.

“But Glorfindel!  Glorfindel!” moaned the coach.  “Glorfindel, where were –?“  he looked around the dressing room.  “Actually, where is Glorfindel?”

“He’s in the infirmary!” piped the apothecary.  “And he will be for the next three weeks!”

“What?  But he can’t be!”  Panic flashed across the coach’s face.  “I need him!”

“Well, perhaps you should have thought of that before to sent them in to play without any armour.”

“Their armour is their wits!” Lysenko explained.

“And scant armour it is too!”  She looked around at the eyes which were all suddenly upon her.   “No offense,” she shrugged apologetically.

Lysenko knew she was right.  He’d throw his team against their Dark Elf cousins, hoping that they’d be able to withstand their armour and their spikes, but Merciless Dominance (he should have taken a clue from their name, he knew now) had brutalised them effortlessly.  At one point, most of the team had been rendered unconscious – mainly by the mysterious mercenary Witch Elf that the Dominance coach had hired.  She had been so cruel and malevolent that he couldn’t help thinking that even the Dark Elves had seemed a little more at ease when she’d managed to get herself killed by falling over one of her own broken stilettos.

But still, Lysenko had been calling out “GET IN THERE!” and “HIT HIM!”, even as the Wood Elves were taken one by one out of the game.

He had to admit though, it wasn’t like they had actually lost the game.  A draw was okay, considering.  In fact, a draw was damned lucky, really.  If the Dominance hadn’t been so happy to hang back from scoring while they pummelled the Wood Elves, they could have won a crushing victory.  Instead, they had relied upon sneaking  a win at the end, which happened to backfire completely when Medusa, their remaining Witch Elf, managed to fumble the ball in the last seconds.  Though the fans (and Glorfindel) might not agree, Lysenko thought they’d gotten off pretty lightly.

If Glorfindel hadn’t have –

The coach turned pale suddenly and he felt beads of sweat prickling his brow.

“Three weeks, you say?”  He wrung his hands together, looking desperately at the apothecary.

“At least!” she declared.

“But that means... he’ll be out of the next game!”

De Niro nodded.

“Against the Pants!”

She nodded again.

“Can’t you do anything... you know... medical?”

She shook her head.

“Oh gods!”

The rest of the team shifted awkwardly in their seats as Coach Lysenko began to cry.