by Paul Cude
Even from their not so great angle on the television, the three friends could still make out the devastating damage to their team's captain, who it had to be said was in pretty bad shape. As well as the half a dozen puncture wounds on his neck oozing blood, about twenty percent of his body's scales were as black as night, most still smouldering. That trip beneath the lava looked as though it had really taken its toll.
"They should ban him for life for that!" screamed Tank at the television. "It's bloody disgraceful!"
"You're right of course," chipped in Richie. "But it was bloody clever on his part."
"WHAAAAAAATTTT!!!" screeched Peter.
"Think about it for a second," said Richie, all cool, calm and calculating. "If you were in his position and you knew that you could take out Steel, run down the clock and win the game for your team, and all that it would cost you would be a ban for the next match - wouldn't you do it? Wouldn't you take one for the team?"
"No I bloody wouldn't. Not like that!" objected Peter, furious. "I can't believe you would say such a thing."
"Calm down Peter. I'm not condoning what happened, only saying that from his perspective he did the right thing to win his team the game."
"Yeah... well, it's not over yet, is it?" spluttered Peter, trying to rein in his temper.
"Oh that's right," replied Richie. "Tell me, just how are the Warriors going to win now?”
He turned away, returning his attention to the screen, knowing that she was right, it was all over. He just... didn't want it to be, that's all. As the three friends watched, the referee banished the Gipsy Kings player that had committed the foul, issuing him with a one match ban at the same time. The crowd roared with approval at the player missing the final.
Steel looked in slightly better shape than he had a few moments earlier, thanks in the main to his teammates. As he recovered from the brutal tackle (more like assault actually), the players around him helped lick his wounds, quite literally in fact. Flamer, Cheese and Silverbonce all attended to his smouldering scales, dabbing them with their own wings and giving them a good lick once they were fully extinguished. As the others did this, Zip concentrated on the puncture wounds around Steel's neck that had been inflicted by the Gypsy Kings player. Carefully licking Steel's neck, he made sure to leave a thick coating of saliva. Although this sounds kind of gross, dragon saliva contains a whole host of natural antibiotics, acting much quicker than any tablet a human would take. Even in their human disguises, dragon saliva still provides a potent form of healing, able to cure a wide range of ailments.
With Steel now compus mentus, the ref informed both teams that he had awarded a penalty to the Indigo Warriors. Cheers rose from the crowd, but only really from the Gipsy Kings supporters. They knew that with the clock almost run down, this would almost certainly be the last action of the match, meaning the best the Warriors would be able to do, was to lose 3-2. With realisation dawning on Steel and his teammates, the depressing reality of having lost washed over all of them. Except Silverbonce, who looked... like he was up to something. Steel was the team's assigned penalty taker, so it was he who hovered with the ball, ready to strike on the referee's command.
But play hadn't started yet, and so when Silverbonce asked if he could recheck Steel's wounds to make sure he was fit to take the penalty, the ref gave a resounding yes. Flying over to Steel from off to one side, slowly circling him, Silverbonce made it look as if he were verifying his fitness. Steel had absolutely no idea what was going on, but the wily old mouth guard was clearly pitching an idea to his injured captain. This went on for a couple of minutes, until finally the referee lost patience with the two players who were, by now, quite animated. Calling both players over, the ref gave them both a verbal warning for time wasting and made it clear in no uncertain terms that he expected the penalty to be taken as soon as he restarted play.
Nobody had any idea what had gone on between the two players, but because one of them was Silverbonce, the Gipsy Kings players were all looking mighty nervous, even though they knew it was impossible for them to lose the match. The ball could only score one 'pure' hit. Even if it was played in such a way as to hit one tooth and then rebound and hit another, the second hit would not count because rebounds are illegal and don't count towards the goal tally. With the Gipsy Kings players all in the Indigo Warriors’ half, Flamer, Cheese and Zip all drifted between them and the penalty area.
Hovering just outside the area, the referee was almost ready to restart play.
Unusually, Silverbonce remained by Steel's side as he prepared to take the penalty. There was no rule that said he couldn't do that, it was just... unheard of.
All glued to the television, Peter, Tank and Richie thought the last few minutes had been amazing. Even though their heads were telling them that the game was over and that their team had already lost, their hearts had been buoyed by Silverbonce's involvement in whatever was going on.
As everyone looked on, the referee started play. Steel drew back his immensely powerful tail, with the ball nestled on the very end, looking as though he were about to shoot. The Gipsy Kings mouth guard tensed, ready to try and save whatever was thrown at him. Powering his tail forward quickly, just as he was about to release the ball, Steel slowed his tail right down, and flipped the ball up in the air in front of Silverbonce.
You could have heard a pin drop in the stadium, that's how deathly quiet it had become, with almost everyone wondering what the hell was going on. It was the same back in Salisbridge, with the three friends sitting on the floor, gawping on an almost professional level, their mouths hanging open like tunnels awaiting the next train. Now that the ball had been played, the Gipsy Kings players on the half way point of the arena surged forward to try and get back and make a difference. It was a big ask. As the ball reached the apex of its trajectory, it started to fall. As it did so, Silverbonce started his forwards roll, bringing his tail up over the top of him, looking to make contact with the ball. For all intents and purposes, it looked as though he was going to slam the ball straight down into the lava. It was absolutely bizarre!
Just a split second before the flat, scaly, open side of Silverbonce's tail made contact with the ball, the cunning old mouth guard rolled his tail around, bringing the full force of the serrated edge down on to the middle of the laminium ball. Dragon eyes all around the arena nearly popped out as the shining silver ball split neatly into two, revealing the many layers inside that had gone into producing it.
As the two halves of the ball tumbled apart, Silverbonce ducked out of the way of Steel's onrushing tail, which even though he couldn't see, he knew was on its way, rushing towards the broken ball. A resounding 'THWACK' echoed around the stadium as the Warrior's captain made contact with the two halves, sending both spinning towards the Gipsy Kings’ mouth, both on totally different courses. Rooted to the spot, the bemused Gipsy Kings mouth guard watched helplessly as the two laminium ball halves flew past either side of him, each hitting the outer tooth on either side of the goal mouth.
The giant scoreboard signalled two goals for the Indigo Warriors, making the score 3-3 flash up all along the side of the rocky wall below the spectators. The game was a draw. The Warriors had won.
The arena was still deathly silent. Crowd and players alike could not believe what they'd just witnessed. As the seconds passed, Warriors fans started to process exactly what had happened, and that their team had just made it through to the final. A muted round of applause and a little shouting started off in one corner, which slowly gathered momentum, eventually making its way to every other part of the stadium in only a matter of seconds. Unlike anything it had ever experienced, the rocky ceiling of the subterranean cavern started to shake and shed small rocks that plunged into the lava at high speed. Cheese, Flamer and Zip belted over to Steel and Silverbonce to celebrate the unlikeliest of victories. Gypsy Kings players surrounded the ref, pushing and shoving, complaining that the goals shouldn't stand. Ignoring the furore, the referee, from the lo
ok on his face, was clearly having another conversation with the match arbiter, who remained hidden in the depths of the stadium somewhere.
As both sets of fans and players realised that the referee had not signalled to end the game, the noise died down to virtually nothing. Crossing his wings in front of his body, and then sharply opening them out and pointing to the expired clock on the wall was what should have happened. It most certainly hadn't yet, with a telepathic discussion clearly still going on about the legality of the goals and whether or not the result should stand. Both teams drifted in separate huddles, waiting for over forty seconds, which seemed to the players like more than one lifetime. Finally the referee returned his attention to the present, finding the eyes of all the players and most of the seventy thousand strong crowd, fixed firmly in his direction. Steam rose from every part of his body as he realised the massive implications of the decision he was about to give. A massive expansion and constriction around the scales in his neck and throat seemed to indicate a massive 'GULP' on his part. Resigned to the fact that half the crowd was going to love him, with the other half wanting to lynch him, he turned towards both sets of players, crossed his wings in front of his body and pointed towards the clock. The double goal stood.
The boos were easily eclipsed by the roars that resounded around the stadium. Indigo Warriors players went mental. Flamer leapt backwards into the air, performing continuous loop the loops that seemed to go on forever. Cheese and Zip hurled themselves at each other, bouncing off one another’s chests high up in the air. Steel grabbed Silverbonce's wing and raised it aloft for the fans. This got by far the biggest cheer of the night, almost quadruple anything else. Even the Gipsy Kings fans were cheering, knowing that they had all witnessed something that would go down in the history of the game. Gipsy Kings players had grudgingly accepted the referee's decision and had very slowly flown off to the exit tunnel that was now wide open and filled with journalists and photographers from all the telepathic papers. Now joined by the ecstatic Barf, the Indigo Warriors continued to enjoy their moment of glory, circling the stadium in a flying formation, waving their wings and shooting huge cones of fire from their mouths as they did so.
Peter's house was quite literally rocking from the noise the three friends were making. It was a good job the neighbours were away. Tank had been jumping up and down, using the full force of his very sizable bulk. Richie had been screaming in a very high pitched way, that is until Peter and Tank gave her quizzical looks, and when she realised she'd been doing it she stopped abruptly and began blowing intricate smoke rings with her mouth. Peter, when he'd seen the referee’s signal that the Warriors had won, just pumped his arms in the air, mouthing the word 'yes' over and over again. The three of them were as happy as they'd ever been, with Tank vowing to get them all tickets to the final, no matter what the cost, even if he had to sell his own tail. As they watched their heroes circling the stadium, the television picture suddenly turned to static. Peter and Richie turned to Tank hopefully.
"I think that's it," said Tank, more than a little hoarse. "To be honest, I'm surprised they broadcast that much. I expected it to cut out as soon as the game finished. My best guess, is because of the controversial end of the game, they decided to keep on transmitting, but that's all we're gonna get. Looks like we'll have to wait for the papers in the morning to see anything else."
Peter sighed long and hard.
"That was one of the best nights of my life."
Tank and Richie nodded in agreement. After that, the three friends started going over the game again, re-living all the best bits and in particular THAT PENALTY. They stayed at Peter's house well into the early hours of the next day, celebrating.
14 A Sprinkling of Magic
When Peter eventually awoke, it was nearly lunchtime. His stomach rumbled, not only from hunger but almost certainly complaining about the near fatal combinations of food and drink that he'd consumed just a few hours earlier. Combinations that, while he was sleeping, had produced dragon like amounts of what can only be described as... aroma, challenged clouds of a gaseous nature that, with a will of their own, had floated throughout the house of their own accord, as he was now finding out.
Sitting down at the breakfast table, eyeing two of the aforementioned clouds in the far corner of the room, he sent out his consciousness and broke the habit of a lifetime by commanding it to return with more than one paper. After only four more mouthfuls of cornflakes, he found he had access to five of the most popular telepathic tabloids. Scanning the front and back pages really quickly, headlines such as 'Greatest Game Ever' and 'Controversial Penalty Sends Shockwaves Through The Sport' made him feel warm inside. He spent the next hour engrossed in various descriptions of the previous night's match.
That afternoon he cleaned his home, not something he looked forward to; however, he was something of a stickler for things being tidy and clean. After finishing the housework, he fancied going for a walk. Racking his brain for ten minutes, he couldn't come up with anywhere he fancied going and so after further consideration he decided, for a change, to venture below ground, deep into the dragon domain.
Making his way through the secret underground route from his house, he realised that it had never occurred to him to take a walk for no apparent reason, in the world below ground that he considered his home. Arriving at the monorail station, he'd already decided to catch the first carriage that arrived and follow it to its final destination, wherever that might be. Ambling onto the first silver carriage that presented itself without even looking at the LCD displays to see where it was headed, he watched the different rock formations pass by outside the window, stifling a grin as he did so, knowing that he was in fact heading for Purbeck Peninsula. Six minutes later, he faced out of the carriage as it pulled into the terminus at Purbeck. As the doors of the monorail carriage slid quietly aside, Peter felt the warm air from the concourse wash over him. Making his way through the surprisingly busy plaza, he caught the scent of something... ummm... delicious. Stopping in his tracks, he slowly turned, trying to find the source of the tantalising smell that was assaulting his nose. Looking around, first he ruled out the doughnuts, then the pancakes, then most of the other stalls that he could see. Just when he thought he must be imagining things, he caught sight of a tiny little alcove off to one side, which housed a vendor he was quite sure he had never seen before. Pushing his way through a whole host of dragons who were heading for the main exit, he eventually reached the secluded vendor.
"That smells amazing," announced Peter, licking his lips.
A dark blue dragon, with the most amazing mottled effect Peter had ever seen, looked up from a sizzling hot griddle.
"Can I interest you in one, sir?"
"What are they?" enquired Peter.
"I call them 'Charcoal Surprise'," said the vendor with a big toothy smile.
"And?" added Peter.
"That's all I'm saying."
Peter shook his head, wondering if it were some kind of scam. The vendor looked genuine, he thought, but it wouldn't be the first time some unscrupulous dragon had come along from elsewhere, selling something dubious. The 'Charcoal Surprise' did smell absolutely fantastic though, and he hadn't had anything to eat since his cereal earlier.
"Sure, I'll try one."
"You won't be disappointed I assure you sir," replied the dragon, boosting the heat on the griddle with a little of his own from between his jaws.
Watching intently as the vendor started to make the 'Charcoal Surprise', Peter was keen to know exactly what he'd purchased. Next to the griddle was a small clay oven that he'd neglected to notice up until now. Taking off its lid, the vendor tested the temperature before blowing a stream of bright orange flame into it, to warm it up. Finding it to his liking, the vendor pulled out a big lump of dough from beneath the counter. Placing the dough on the table next to the griddle, the blue dragon started to knead and shape the dough. As he did so, he grabbed a small container from beside the oven, from which he
sprinkled out small dark lumps of something all over the dough.
Peter smiled.
'Hmmmm... there's the charcoal,' he thought.
Continuing to knead the dough, now speckled with charcoal, the vendor finished off by using the backs of his wings to roll the dough flat. He then cast the dough into the oven, sticking it to the curved side from what little Peter could actually see, before the lid went back on. With the griddle sizzling away nicely, again the vendor reached under the counter, this time pulling out two pink juicy fruits, that even the young dragon recognised.
"Oh my god," ventured Peter, astonished. "Are those what I think they are? Giant lau laus?"
The vendor answered with a deep throated chuckle.
"I suppose you thought the sprinkles of charcoal were the surprise?"
Peter gave the vendor a lopsided grin and said sheepishly,
"Maybe."
Expertly slicing the giant lau laus with a deadly knife that looked more like a machete, the dragon continued to talk with Peter.
"Don't worry, most dragons are the same. Most are suspicious and used to the same old things. Pancakes with charcoal, doughnuts with charcoal, fajitas with charcoal. No offence to any of that, but it's all a bit bland for my liking. When I describe something I'm selling as 'Surprise', then I genuinely mean 'surprise', and only in a good way."
"But giant lau laus? They're a delicacy and so limited in supply. Where on earth do you get them? Umm... umm... if you don't mind me asking."
Slices of giant lau lau tumbled through the air on their way to the sizzling griddle, eliciting an unbelievable aroma. Peter's stomach churned and rumbled in anticipation. Pineapple, strawberries, bananas had all been added to the mix, along with the tangy juice of the biggest lime Peter had ever seen. It was a mouth watering cocktail of fruit, one that most sentient beings would have given their right arm just to taste.