Callie's Heroes

PART V: IMPORTANT ADVICE

"Good job, everyone," The Major called as the players left the field.

"We only got three points!" Rowani said flatly. "Three points the entire battle!"

"It's three points we didn't have," Celeste responded, a false grin on her face.

"I don't think I've been spanked this hard in a non-loving way since I was a child," Cheena laughed. She looked up at the scoreboard, watching their score change to 8. Looking at the other number, she just shuddered in embarrassment.

"This is your fault!" the Major whispered down to Reynard. "What were you thinking!" Reynard began to respond, but the Major silenced him with a glare. "Shut up, you drimling!"

"So, what do we do?" Cheena asked the other players. "Ideas?"

"Try to surrender?" someone suggested. "Again? Third time's the charm?"

"Kick them all in the face?" Natala said in response. That got a series of glares and her eyes became downcast as that idea was apparently soundly rejected.

Across the field, the recruit players were huddled around Callie and Pixyl, with Callie drawing furiously in the dirt. "Good news," she said, "we only have one more battle. Bad news, though, we still need fourteen more points. We can do that easily, though."

"Callie, we're exhausted," Jesca said, her voice somewhere between pleading and whining.

"Aww, come now. You're good for fifteen more minutes of play," Koda said, his big bear grin widening as he roughly scruffed his friend's head.

"Well … probably," Jesca grouched. "But we've already won!" She gestured up at the scoreboard, showing the recruits in the lead with eighty-six points. It was pretty pointless to continue the game. Short of them not bothering to take the field at all for the final battle, there was no way that score could be overtaken.

Looking out at the crowd, it was obvious that others had reached the same conclusion. Most of the recruit fans were still there, word having spread of the high score goal. On the other side, though, there was a rapidly-growing patchwork of empty seats. Probably half the camp personnel and visitors had left, not wanting to witness the slaughter, or more-likely, growing bored with it.

Callie was about to snap at her friend to remind her that they needed to get to one-hundred, but heard someone clear their throat. It was Sergeant-Major Natala. She'd come across the field and was waving Callie off to the side for a private conversation.

Growling at the interruption, Callie motioned for Pixyl to take over coaching duties as she stomped away from the huddle.

"Officially, I'm supposed to come over and offer to surrender again," the Dwarf said.

"Uh, no," Callie said flatly. "Like I told the Major, we aren't letting up today."

"Alright. I had to at least ask. I told Celeste you wouldn't accept. But, I'm here because I do want to talk to you about something else, Callie, now that you've got your sergeant's whistle. This is me talking as a high-ranking sergeant, not as a player, understand? This is important."

Callie straightened and got serious. "What's up?"

"Pay attention to your people, Callie. You did a great job of inspiring them at the beginning, but everyone has been playing extra hard for well over an hour now, almost two. They're getting tired and the initial motivation they all had is fading. Tired soldiers are soldiers that get sloppy and get hurt. One of the jobs of a good sergeant is to know their people, and to know when they have to back off a bit."

"You're not saying that just because we're stomping you, are you?"

Natala kept her face firm and shook her head. "No, this is real advice. Many times your soldiers may not have enough to keep going, so you need to always be aware of their status. This is especially true of all the things they don't tell you. They look up to you and want to make you happy. They won't say anything, so you need to, in a way, protect them from themselves. Take a look at Lena, for example. She's completely distracted! When she does pay attention, it's barely for more than a charge or two. This isn't like how she's played in the previous games. A little inattentiveness at the wrong time and she could get injured."

Callie turned to look at her cabinmate. Lena was hesitantly waving into the crowd, a confused look on her face. On the other end of the wave was Juniper, who was standing and waving back with a lot more force. Now that she thought about it, Natala was right, Lena hadn't quite been herself for most of the game. She'd played well, but her focus was transitory before she'd disappear into her own head again. Things had been too busy and Callie had been too focused to really notice, let alone to find a moment to talk.

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"By the time they do finally say something to you, Callie, it's often too late. If you're a well-loved sergeant, which in this case you are, they don't want to disappoint. You can imagine what could happen on the battlefield if you missed something, right?"

"Yeah, I suppose." Callie kicked a clod of dirt, grudgingly realizing how much sense the senior enlisted was making.

"Good. If this were the field, you'd have corporals helping to report this information to you, too, but in the end you always have to be aware of the state of your troops. This is a tiny lesson now, but one I wanted to instill while we had a good example. There's more to being a leader than simply giving orders, Callie. We'll go over this more in the future. In the meantime, watch them and listen to them. Sergeant is a balancing act between getting the mission done and taking care of the people that need to do it."

"Alright. Thanks," Callie said, internalizing the lesson. Looking back over the game so far, she realized she'd been completely focused on pushing the silly goal of reaching one-hundred points, and everyone had been going all out for multiple battles. Callie now couldn't help but see the cracks that had formed in their smiles that she hadn't noticed before.

In the end, the recruit team discussed and then firmly declined the offer of surrender. Despite Callie giving everyone the option to call it a game, some encouraging words from Koda seemed to give the players a bit of a second wind, or at least enough of a gust to see the game through to the end. A few people did switch out, though. For some, they were just too tired. For others, it provided an opportunity for new or less-skilled players to substitute in. Melga, for example, had never played before, despite always sitting with the other spare players on the sideline to cheer the team on when not flying overhead. She'd always been worried her short and stocky stature would be an impediment, and consistently declined the offer to come in. But with the huge lead, it really wouldn't matter if she was lousy, and with a little cajoling, stepped in to take a place on the forward line as a blocker. She was positioned directly against a grinning Natala, who was more-than-happy to throw a little smack towards her fellow Dwarf.

Pixyl wasn't entirely happy about some of their talented players rotating out, and scowled a bit as Callie reminded everyone to relax and have fun. It wasn't really an argument, per se, but it certainly was a bit of a sour disagreement between the couple. Callie made an internal promise to make it up to her girlfriend in some way, or at least talk it through when they had some time alone.

With the less-intense play, the recruit team only managed to score twice more as the battle began to wind down. Once with a long throw by Xin, and a second time as Jesca pushed the ball through, the two scores yielding another ten points. Honestly, they hadn't really tried all that hard. No special plays or crazy plans, for example. In turn, the relaxed defense allowed the camp team to actually score three times, twice for three and once for seven, bringing their score up to twenty-one. But the camp team was tired, too, and they were dragging as much as some of the recruits. Save for one person, that was.

"I'm going to utterly flatten you again," Natala snarled as she squared off against Melga. Across the line, Melga swallowed in worry. Physically, the two were fairly equal in strength and nimbleness, or what could be called nimble for Dwarves. In fact, to look at the two side by side, one might give a slight edge to the Druid due to her younger age and Natala's limp. But Natala was a master at intimidation, and poured it on with extra intensity. Melga, already worried about not playing well, withered under the senior-enlisted's verbal onslaught, indeed being sent sprawling as soon as the whistle blew.

Offering her hand, Natala helped Melga to her feet, still grinning as she slapped her back. "You're doing great," she added as a compliment. The look on Melga's face made it quite apparent what she thought of that observation. Natala then gave Melga another smack on her back to send her scurrying to where Callie had called a timeout, using her new whistle to get everyone's attention and then waving everyone in for a huddle.

"You sure you don't want me to step aside?" Melga nervously asked the rest of the team again as she got close. "The Sergeant-Major is completely focused on me."

"That's good," Callie replied. "Maybe we can use you as a distraction, then?"

"You mean 'bait'," Moka suggested with a grin.

"Exactly! So how can we exploit this? Lena, do you have any thoughts?"

"Uh, whatever you want to do is fine," the Elf replied, still glancing distractedly up into the crowd, where Juniper was now calling out, 'Go, Lenora!'. Next to the Dryad, Vanis was covering his face with one hand in embarrassment, while trying to pull Juniper back to her seat with the other.

"Hey! Lena! Focus or swap out," Callie chided.

Lena shook her head to clear it. "Sorry, I'm here. What do you want to do?"

At this point, the battle was now beginning to wind down, and they only needed four more points to break one-hundred. That would require two scores, unless Xin or someone else managed to get the ball through from range. The Lizardkin was animatedly-intense, just like Natala, eager to reach the goal and claim what she termed 'total victory'. Unfortunately, with several key players rotated out, she'd been under a lot more pressure, taking several hard hits and missing twice on previous long attempts, and chastising herself loudly for it.

The huddle broke, Callie and Pixyl clearing the field as everyone took their positions. They'd used one of their charges for the time out, so this was the last attempt they had to score on this drive, or they'd need to turn the ball over. The plan was simple. Get Xin the ball and keep everyone off of her for the throw.

With the now-common verbal mocking from the Sergeant-Major breaking the relative quiet, everyone focused. Xin looked left, right, and then left again, before blowing a short tweet on her whistle. Koda snapped to the Lizardkin, who then ran to the left. Immediately, the intense Natala knocked Melga to the side and broke through, rushing to intercept Xin. But the Shaman was so fixated on getting a clear throw that she didn't notice Natala coming hard until the very last moment. Catching the barest glimpse of the rushing opponent, Xin did the only thing she could, and threw the ball long, just managing to get it through the uprights as she was brought down in a hard tackle.

"Only ninety-seven," Pixyl said under her breath. "But we can still do this. We still have time."

"Not a lot," Callie said. "If we don't get the ball again, that's probably going to be our final score. But, I actually have an idea to make sure that happens." She quickly waved Koda and Xin over to share. After a moment, Xin's face looked perplexed while Koda roared with laughter, before returning to share the plan with their other teammates.