Chapter 82

“I’m okay!” she said. “And the score’s a little closer now!” Back on the ground, a new two-point ball dropped down. It was accompanied by the three-pointer that had been batted away by the Goalie Bear. “I’ll take those!” Captain Ashlan said, grabbing both balls. He’d happened to be standing exactly where the balls came down—luck was on his side. “It’s seven to ten! We can work with this—we’ve got the momentum!” “Heh heh… You think this game’s that easy?” A rich, sultry laugh sounded among the foliage—drifting to their ears from the direction of the human team’s goal tree. “The score may be seven to ten, but don’t forget we have the ten-point ball and every chance to widen the score gap again.” The divine and the human teams squared off right in front of the flower. Six on six. The god team’s furious flurry of passes had allowed them to evade the humans and get all the way up the tree, forcing the humans to make a last stand right in front of their goal. “This is as far as you go!” shouted Blaze’s vice captain. He was covered in mud after being knocked around by the treants’ attacks while trying to protect the others. “We have the two- and three-point balls. If we stop you from dunking that ten-pointer, we can turn the whole thing around!” “As I think I just said, it’s not that easy. Go now, Treant!” “Hnngh! Everybody, evade!” As one, the six apostles got ready to move. They’d experienced the treants’ special move, “Over-stompy,” several times already. The creatures could only run in a straight line, but they smashed through anything and everything in their path. If the humans knew they couldn’t block the move, the only thing to do was get out of the way. However… “Huh?” The apostles, diving to the left and right, went wide-eyed. Because the treants didn’t charge. “Hah! Just because I shout out the name of an attack doesn’t mean they’re going to use it, does it?” A dryad kicked off a branch underfoot and started picking up speed. The human team had politely jumped aside, leaving the path to the goal clear. “Treant’s Over-stompy has a thirty-second cooldown. One might have expected you to notice that by now.” “It was a bluff?!” They’d been completely had. They’d learned that the only thing to do was avoid the treant’s charges, and the dryad had turned that knowledge against them. Nymph, the faerie: Weak but able to fly. Special move: Wind magic. Dryad, the tree-folk: The most nimble and agile of the players. Special move: Grass magic. Treant, the tree spirit: The most powerful but also the slowest. Special move: Charge. Goalie Bear, the Beast of Defense: Combines strength and agility, yet only plays defensively. In short, the humans had a good grasp of the makeup of the divine team—or one might say, they had been given a good grasp. They had never imagined that there would be a mind game at work where what they knew was used to throw them off. “What a shame for you.” The dryad flung the ball at the goal, and the humans, who had ducked out of the way to avoid the treants’ body slam, could only watch helplessly. “That’s a ten-point goal!” the meep cried out. “That makes the score seven to twenty, with the god team breaking away again!” Elapsed time: Seven droplets in the nectar clock (= 7 minutes. The time’s-up whistle will sound after 30 minutes.) Divine Team: 20 points (10 points × 2) Human Team: 7 points (2 points × 2; 3 points × 1) A thirteen-point difference, all told. So much for narrowing the gap—it had grown wider. That fact made everyone on the human team anxious. Which was precisely when Fay shouted to the meep, “Substitution!” This was the only possible moment. Before the human team’s morale was completely shattered by an overwhelming point disadvantage, it was time to change players and give everyone a chance to get their heads back in the game. “Captain Ashlan! Four people, please!” “You got it. Defense, we’re subbing out four of you!” Four members of Team Blaze who had been savaged by the treants’ attacks went to the sidelines. In their place, Fay, Nel, Leshea, and Pearl stepped onto the court. Everyone was already on the same page: Namely, that overcoming a thirteen-point deficit wasn’t going to be the work of a moment. More to the point, there’s the question of how we even do it. We can’t just fling ourselves desperately at them. To beat these gods, we need a plan that’s better than theirs. “Anita!” Fay called before he was even on the field. “Can you jump down?” “What?” “The ten-point ball is incoming!” Anita gasped. “Y-yeah, no sweat!” she said, and then she leaped from the god team’s tree. She was in a free fall from fifty meters up, the height of a ten-story building. Then she hit the ground. There was a massive cloud of dust, out of which sprang Anita, unharmed—and holding a yellow ball high. “I got it! I got the ten-point ball!” In this game, a new ball dropped onto the field after each score. They always fell at center court—and at that moment, most of the gods’ team members were up in the human tree. Meaning their goal was as good as wide open. “So you noticed?” A dryad descended the tree’s trunk as smoothly as if it were sliding down ice. “In this game of basketball, when an opponent scores against you, you immediately have a chance to get the same score back.” The human team had substituted four players. In: Fay, Leshea, Pearl, Nel. Out: Four members of Team Blaze. “All right, run, guys! Pearl!” Captain Ashlan heaved the two-point ball. Pearl caught it. “Fay!” she called, passing it on to him. “Good stuff, Pearl!” Fay caught the ball with one hand, then made for the gods’ tree. The gods have a plan. Although Fay wasn’t sure yet, he had begun to have an inkling of what that plan was. If he was correct…well, then the humans were already pretty cornered. Worse than it looked from the score. They needed a plan that was better than the gods’. This game is a quick showdown, just thirty minutes. I was able to throw together a plan, but just one. There won’t be time to make any adjustments midgame. That was why he had to keep it secret—the instant the gods saw through his strategy for turning this game around, everything would fall to pieces. He couldn’t let them know what it was until the very last second. What was more… Right now, I’ve got the two-point ball, Captain Ashlan has the three-point one, and Anita has the ten-point one. The humans are holding fifteen points’ worth of balls! And with only the Goalie Bear guarding the gods’ goal flower. If they could sink all fifteen points, not only would they make up the difference in the score, they would even pull ahead by a couple. “H-hey, wait up! This ten-point ball is just too heavy!” Anita said, breathing hard. Even with a Superhuman ability, lugging a twenty-kilogram ball along was never going to be easy. “Anita, pass it to me!” “Treasured sister Nel?! O-okay, it’s all yours!” Anita flung the ball, which arced through the air… “Heh heh! I’ll take that.” …only to be intercepted by a green hand. It was a dryad, getting some serious hang time. “Wha—?!” “Maybe I should have warned you that I don’t have to come down to the ground.” There, over Anita’s head, the branches of the great tree crisscrossed crazily, vines as thick as ropes interweaving to form what looked like a spider’s web in the sky. The dryad was coming at them from above, crawling from vine to vine and from one of Yggdrasil’s branches to another. “This game takes place in three dimensions.” This, indeed, was another difference between the games humans played and those played by the gods. Human games like soccer and basketball took place in two dimensions, width and length. But this game added a third dimension: height. “Give me back my ten-point ball!” Anita yelled. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. Treant?” The dryad flung the yellow ball high into the air, toward a treant, the ten-point fruit once again in the possession of the gods. “Master Fay!” Nel bellowed. “I need to borrow that two-pointer!” Whack! Nel kicked the two-point ball so hard that she left a footprint in the ground. It tore through the air with tremendous momentum, impacting the ten-point ball the dryad had thrown. The ten-pointer bounced off its trajectory like a billiard ball. “What in the world?!” As the gods watched, the ten-point ball smacked against the trunk of the great tree, then bounced toward the ground—right at Pearl, who could only look up at it and say, “Huh?” “Pearl, grab it!” “Nowaynowaynoway I couldn’t possibly!” Pearl cried, wheeling backward as fast as she could. An instant later, the twenty-kilogram ball slammed into the earth where Pearl had been standing, kicking up dirt like a meteor strike. “Nel?! If I’d tried to catch that, there would be a big hole in the middle of me right about now!” “E-er, yes, right… Sorry, I was thinking from my own perspective. But at least we didn’t let them get the ten-point ball from us!” “Myah-ha-ha! Did you think Dryad was the only one following you?” “What?!” Nel looked up, but she didn’t see any nymphs anywhere—not in the sky and not on the ground. “Yikes!” Pearl blanched. The earth at her feet exploded upward, and a treant, carrying the nymphs, emerged. Before Pearl could do anything, it had its tendrils on the ten-point ball. “Digging underground is a strategy, too! …Hey, Treant, what are you doing?” “Eeeeeeeeeeeek! Wh-wh-wh-what do you think you’re doing, you shameless tentacles?!” Thus the ten-point ball was stolen away. Yet for some reason, the treant didn’t appear satisfied with that; its tendrils continued to entwine themselves all around Pearl. Particularly near her chest… “These slimy pseudopods are slithering right between my clothes!” “I get it!” Anita clapped her hands. “The treant is convinced that you’re still hiding more balls under your outfit, treasured sister Pearl! Two fabulous globes!” “They’re not baaaaaaaallls!” Pearl gritted her teeth—then she pointed at the ten-point ball in the treant’s tendrils. “Why, you… The Wandering, activate!” “—?!” The nymphs, the dryads, and the treant abruptly stopped when the ten-point ball disappeared out of the treant’s grip and was replaced by the two-point one. Where had the other ball gone? “Great work, Pearl. Shift Change is going to be a real asset in this game!” Fay now had the yellow ball, and he set off running. Pearl’s teleportation ability, the Wandering, included Shift Change, which enabled her to swap the positions of any two objects she had touched within the last three minutes. She’d simply traded the two-point ball Fay had been holding for the ten-point one in the treant’s grip. Unfortunately, Fay’s Arise didn’t make him super strong. He could try to run with the twenty-kilogram ball, but the god team would catch him easily. Leshea is the physically strongest one among us. But Nel is better in terms of the overall competition—and she’s used to dribbling a ball. In Fay’s estimation, it would be harder to get the ball away from Nel than Leshea. So he shouted, “Nel!” “Just leave it to me, Master Fay!” She deftly caught the ten-point ball from Fay with her feet and set off down the field. The other human players had all carried the balls—only Nel moved it by dribbling it with her feet, with incredible speed and control. “She’s quick!” gasped a dryad, who tried to grab Nel but caught only empty air. All three nymphs unleashed wind magic in succession, but Nel dodged each blast like it didn’t matter that she was maneuvering with a ball that weighed twenty kilograms. This was the fruit of Nel’s single-minded focus on developing her athletic abilities. “Hmph! All right, I’m a little impressed,” said a nymph. However, the treants were poised to lunge. “You won’t be able to dodge this, though! Go on, Treant! Show them what you’re best at!” That would be the treants’ special move, Over-stompy. All three treants, accelerating to tremendous speed, headed for Nel as she kicked the ball along. They formed an invincible front that nothing could stop. Yet despite the oncoming wall of treants, Nel just gave them an easygoing smile. “You only ever go in a straight line. All I have to do…is get out of the way!” In an instant, she recognized the direction of their trajectory and simply picked a new path. She dodged the first treant effortlessly. Then she did the same with the second—no, she tried to, but something caught her ankle. “Grass?!” she cried. “Excellent, grass! Hold her there!” a dryad said. It was grass magic, manipulating the vegetation to wrap around Nel’s ankles. She crumpled ignominiously to the ground. Then she found a treant’s massive body looming over her. “Now, Treant, bat that ball away!” “I think not!” No one watching would have imagined that it was possible to avoid the treant’s body slam in that moment—until Nel launched herself up into the air. With bare feet. She’d shed the shoes and socks the grass had grabbed on to and leaped out of there. “Wha—?! T-Treant, stop! Emergency sto—” But by now, the treant was like a runaway train, and it wasn’t stopping. It raced past where Nel had been standing until it finally slammed into the first solid object in its path—the great tree of Yggdrasil on the god team’s side. There was a sound like an explosion. The tree shook violently, and the treant finally came to a halt. “Now, that is some power,” Nel said, going a little pale at how close she had come to total destruction. The treant’s blow had been strong enough to shake even Yggdrasil. If it had hit her, she would have been out of action; no doubt about it. Just then— “Nel, behind you!” Leshea shouted. “Oh, shoot!” Nel said, going even paler. There were three treants, and she’d dodged only two. By the time she noticed the last one charging from behind her, it was nearly upon her, a cloud of dust billowing behind it. She would never make it. Everyone surely pictured Nel flying helplessly through the air. Except one person… “Don’t give up, Nel! Catch!” “…Excuse me?” The shout came from Fay, who took what was in his right hand and threw it with all his might. To be specific, he threw the meep who’d been serving as referee. “The ref is absolutely neutral! Which makes them an invincible shield—even the gods don’t dare lay a hand on them!” “Whaaaaaa—?!” “What in the world do you think you’re doing?!” Shouts from the divine and the human teams almost merged into one. When the treant saw the meep come flying in front of it, even it looked shocked and screeched to a halt. With much murmuring, the entire divine team stood stock-still. “I thought so. That’s the secret trick to winning this game!” Fay said. “Not allowed!” the meep cried, accompanied by its whistle. The entire forest of Yggdrasil went silent. “This is a contest between the humans and the gods. I, the referee, am a third party!” “Right, exactly. Which is why you make the perfect shield—” “Interfering with the referee is outside the bounds of play. Hence, a penalty! The human team will give all the balls they are holding to the gods’ team.” “Faaaaaay!” Anita came charging up to him. “Wh-wh-what do you think you’re doing?! My treasured sister Pearl got you that ball despite being bound hand and foot!” “It’s all right, Anita. It was just a little something I wanted to try. I figured it couldn’t do any harm.” “It’s…what? You mean this was all within your calculations?” A most unexpected answer, no doubt. The pink-haired girl stood there with her mouth hanging open. Fay just said firmly, “This penalty is a small price to pay to keep Nel safe.” “Er— Ahem. I thank you, Master Fay,” Nel said with a big sigh. “I’ll repay you by playing my heart out.” “All balls will be given to the gods’ team, and then we will restart! Both teams, please go back to your own tree,” the meep instructed. The teams retreated to opposite ends of the court. “Restart!” At the ref’s (that is, the meep’s) whistle, both sides ran for center court again. The human team, of course, was focused on getting back some of the balls that the divine team now monopolized. Whereas the gods’ team… …threw the two- and three-point balls into the air. “Tee-hee-hee! You want these balls?” the nymphs taunted gleefully. “Then take them! Here you go!” Lifted by a gust of nymph wind magic, the green and the blue balls spiraled into the sky. In that instant, with the entire human team looking up, the gods took advantage of their lapse in attention to make a push toward the human tree. They had just one ball between them, the ten-pointer. “What do they think they’re doing?! Did they really abandon everything but the ten-point ball?!” Anita shouted, the confusion evident in her voice. It wasn’t possible. The gods’ strategy seemed to be to commit all nine players to moving just the single ball. That worked out to only 1.1 points per player. “That’s not nearly efficient enough! They literally had the two- and three-point balls in their hands, and they gave them up… Why would they do that?!” “Ah,” Fay was heard mumbling to himself. “Now I get it.” It fit the points calculation he’d been doing in his head. Suddenly everything made sense: why the gods would give up the other two balls. If that was what they were planning, then he could understand. And if so… …then from the very moment the game had restarted, with zero minutes elapsed since the restart, the humans had already lost. Fay didn’t have time to feel bad about it. “Pearl!” he yelled, pointing at the two balls in the air. “Can you get up that high?” “Y-yeah, I can do it!” Pearl nodded, and then she disappeared. She’d jumped into a golden portal, teleporting herself instantly thirty meters into the air. She was already reaching out both hands for the balls. “I’ve got them…! And now I’m falling, I’m falling, I’m going doooowwwnnn!” “Welcome back to terra firma!” Leshea said, catching Pearl as she and the balls reached the ground. Now it was the humans who had the two- and the three-point balls. “Leshea, Pearl, I’ll leave those balls to you! I’ll go on defense!” Fay called, and then he left the girls where they were and went running. He looked way up into the humans’ great tree, where a battle was developing near the human goal flower. Captain Ashlan and his players were squaring off against the onslaught of gods. “All right, you’re in the way! Blow away, little ones!” “I don’t think so! Tempest!” the mage Zechey said, meeting the nymph’s wind magic with a gust of her own. As the two gales neutralized each other, dryads dodged left, then right along the branches. Meanwhile, all three treants climbed slowly but inexorably upward. “Grrr! This is bad!” Captain Ashlan’s expression was stiff. The last time they’d been threatened with the treants’ Over-stompy, it had turned out to be a bluff—the attack had required a cooldown period. This time, though, those tree monsters were coming at them for real. “Hee-hee-hee! All right, Treant, do it!” The nymphs giggled. All the humans present flung themselves toward other branches—all except one. “Nel?!” “You got the better of me last time,” said the black-haired girl, standing firm in the face of the wall of treants bearing down on her, charging so ferociously that Yggdrasil’s branches shook. “But Nel Reckless will not be outdone by the same opponent twice!” “Whoa, hey, hold on! What do you think you’re—” “Outta my waaaaaaaaaaaaaay!” Nel bellowed, not at Captain Ashlan, but at the runaway train that was the treants. Up came her right leg. Over-stompy was a divine attack, capable of blasting through anything in its path. But it was up against Nel’s Arise, Moment Reversal, which could kick anything back the way it had come—even the power of the gods. Moment Reversal precisely reversed everything about a motion—its direction, its force. And now it reversed the treants. Or rather, blew them backward and straight into the nymphs and dryads, who were caught completely off guard. “Never seen that before!” “What are you doing, letting her kick you, Tr—hwoof?!” All nine of the gods were slammed into Yggdrasil’s trunk hard enough to make the great tree itself tremble. Even they wouldn’t be getting up too soon. “Th-that was incredible, Nel!” Pearl said. “Yeah, way to go!” added Leshea. They had only been half-watching the battle at the human goal—because they had been climbing toward the divine one. But they still had to reckon with the flower’s last line of defense. “Rooooarrrrr!” The Goalie Bear came flying at them. Pearl, however, was already on the move. “You’re making this too easy, Mister Bear in the Woods!” A golden warp portal appeared. Until that moment, Pearl had used Teleport only to run away—but now she did something very different. The portal showed up directly in front of the Goalie Bear, and the charging animal, too late to change direction, plunged through it— “Rawr?” —and was forcibly transported to a branch thirty meters away. In other words, nowhere near Pearl and Leshea. The goal flower was wide open. No matter how strong the guardian of the goal might have been, a beast charging straight ahead was as good as powerless before Pearl’s warp portal. “How do you like that? Behold my unprecedented ability to think on my feet!” “Way to go, Pearl! That was perfect! Other than the patting-yourself-on-the-back part!” Leshea called. Then she flung both balls toward the undefended goal. They dropped toward the flower… “It’s a double score!” the meep announced. “It’s now twelve points to twenty, the human team making big strides closing that gap. How will they follow up their—well, now! Looks like big things are happening over there!” The meep pointed toward the human tree, where all nine members of the divine team lay in a veritable heap. “Look at those eyes spin! Everyone who got caught up in our good treants’ deflected charge is down for the count!” “Lady Leshea!” Nel shouted, so loudly that they could hear her from all the way in the human tree, a distance of a good hundred meters. “Catch!” There was a sound like a cannon blast—it was the impact of Nel, a hundred meters away, kicking the ten-point ball. Boom! The yellow fruit came rocketing through the air—until Leshea caught it one-handed and slammed it into the still undefended goal flower. “We have an upset! It’s twenty-two to twenty, with the human team ahead!” Elapsed time: 18 drops in the nectar clock (= 18 minutes). Divine team: 20 points (10 points × 2). Human team: 22 points (2 points × 3, 3 points × 2, 10 points × 1). They’d made up a huge chunk of the score to turn things around. Both teams, human and divine, however, were laser-focused—for in this game, the moments after a goal was scored were the most dangerous of all. This was when new balls were supplied. And at that moment, most of the members of both teams were up in the trees. They would have to get down to the ground before they could grab the new balls. The defining difference between the humans and the gods at that moment was how they got down. “Heh heh! I think I’ll go ahead! You humans can take your time climbing down the trunk!” The nymphs could fly—and all three took off toward the ground. “Treant! Follow us!” The treants jumped down next—they might have left a crater in the ground where they landed, but the treants themselves were unharmed. The gods were on the forest floor in the blink of an eye, whereas the humans… “Leshea!” “I’m on it!” Leshea leapt down, her vermilion hair billowing, and landed softly on the ground. Someone else followed her, diving from a height of almost fifty meters. “Wait for meee, treasured sister Lady Leolesheeeaaa!” Thoom! A pink-haired girl slammed into the earth, throwing up a massive storm of dust. “Sorry to keep you waiting, treasured sister! I’m here to help you get those balls!” “Yaaa-ha-ha-ha! You’re too slow, humans!” chortled the nymphs, who already had the two-point ball. One treant, meanwhile, held the three-point orb in its tendrils. And then there was… “We’re all over these!” The nymphs and treants looked up, waiting for the ten-point ball to hit center court. The human team was never going to make it in time. The gods would secure all the balls before Leshea and Anita could get anywhere near them. “Come on down, now…” “Anita!” The nymphs stretched their hands toward the sky—but Leshea picked up Anita and lifted her into the air. “Uh… Treasured sister Leoleshea? Wh-why are you holding me up? Wait… You’re not planning to—” “Go get that ten-point ball!” “Huh? Wait, wait, wait, yaaaaaaaaahhh!” Anita split the air as Leshea flung her skyward as hard as she could, faster than a speeding bullet. She was a human missile! “I don’t know how to stoppp!” Anita did, in fact, grab the ten-point ball out of the air. Her momentum then sent her rocketing across the field, toward the divine team’s huge tree, with which she collided with a tremendous bang. Creak! It was enough to cause the trunk of the great tree Yggdrasil to lean and make a very unsettling noise. “Great work, Anita! You got the ball!” “I…I’m flattered by your praise… Cough!” Anita said, buried in the ground with the ball in her hands. Even with the protection of Iron Heart, she looked the worse for wear after her encounter with the great tree. “But if…if you’d be so kind as to never do that again…” “I’ll bet if we did that one more time, we could knock Yggdrasil’s sprout-tree right over!” “What would that accomplish?!” So the human team had the ten-point ball, while the gods held the two- and three-pointers. Was a competition heating up to see who could get all the balls? Many members of the human team steeled themselves—but the battle never came. They were in equilibrium. Attack and defense by the two teams had turned into a seesaw game. “Give me that ten-point ball!” “Nymph wind magic incoming! Blow it back!” Captain Ashlan shouted. Zechey was already jumping out in front, firing off a magic burst of her own. The dryads snapped their fingers even as Zechey moved. “Grass, catch her feet!” But the boy with the gravity magic was already reacting. “Go—gravity times seven!” A black magical diagram appeared, encompassing the entire field. A zone of exceptionally heavy gravity sprang into being, and the grass roots that had sprung up were pushed inexorably down again. “Arrrgh! So obnoxious!” the nymphs cried angrily. “Treant, smash ’em all away!” The massive gods began to accelerate directly toward the human team, but the nymphs cried out again when they saw the black-haired girl standing in the way. “Whoa! Hey! Emergency stop! That’s the one human you can’t—” “Too late!” Up came Nel’s left leg—and the power of Moment Reversal within it sent the treants and the nymphs tumbling far, far backward. The balls, knocked out of the hands of the treant Nel had kicked and the dryad that treant had slammed into, went flying and then rolled toward the human team. “I’ve got the two-point ball!” someone on the human team called out. “The three-pointer’s mine!” Ashlan said, picking it up. “This might just work… We might be able to do this!” He clenched his fist. The human team now had possession of all the balls. “There’s nine minutes left! This is where it gets serious, folks. If we can score fifteen points, that puts us at thirty-seven. Then we just focus on the three- and ten-point balls!” Thirty-seven points would put them within spitting distance of victory. They had to score fifty points to win, and if they could close out the game using the three- and ten-point balls, then they could forget about the two-pointer (meaning they wouldn’t have to devote any of their players to dealing with it). Meanwhile, the gods’ team still had just twenty points. For a team that was lagging behind, even the two-point ball was a precious source of points. They would have to commit some players to going after it. “We win this with numbers!” Ashlan said. “All right, guys, let’s go. Hang on to those balls, whatever it takes. If we can slam these fifteen points into their goal, victory is ours!” “Hold on, Captain Ashlan,” Fay said, curbing the captain’s enthusiasm. “This isn’t an opponent we can beat by sheer force. Seeing what just happened makes me sure of it. We need to change our plan, too.” “Of course we do! Nice and careful-like, right?” “Right. First, throw away the two- and three-point balls.” “I’m way ahead of you! We start by throwing away the… Wait, what?” Ashlan turned to Fay, flabbergasted. “Fay, I don’t think I heard you right. Because I thought you said we should throw away the two- and three-point balls.” “I knew something felt fishy,” Fay said. He was looking at the divine team, twenty meters away, with their great tree behind them. He said: “How about you drop the act already?” Fwoooshhh. Yggdrasil’s forest fell silent with almost alarming alacrity. There was a chill in the air colder than a winter lake. “There’s been a few of them now. These…deliberate moments. Each time, I noticed something felt off, but this time it was too big to ignore. That’s why I’m sure.” Fay pointed at the human team’s three-point ball and went on, “The ball you gods gave up. Why was the treant that Nel kicked holding it?” “Huh?” Anita turned toward him, open-mouthed. “What in the world are you talking about?! My treasured sister Nel got this from them through her own skills!” “No. They let us have it,” Fay said. The two point ball and the three-point ball—both had come into the human team’s possession when Nel had rebuffed one of the treant’s charges and caused the gods to drop them. “Nel was right when she said she won’t be outdone by the same opponent twice. Could the gods actually be kicked backward by the same technique two separate times? Not very godlike.” Once they had discovered that there was a human who could kick back a treant’s charge, they should have been more careful the next time. “So I started to wonder—maybe you wanted us to have the two- and three-point balls. You wanted us to score goals with them.” “What?! Wh-what are you saying, Fay?!” Anita asked, drawing back and hugging herself. “They deliberately gave us the balls so that we could score? But why would they… Wait… Am I the only one here who doesn’t get it?! Treasured sister Pearl, do you get it?!” “Of course I do!” The golden-haired girl put her hands on her hips and gave a little snorting laugh. “There’s no question. I had a pretty good sense of it from the moment this game began!” “You did?! Then what are the gods after?!” “…………” There followed a very, very long pause. “You don’t have any idea, do you? Fay, I assume you’re not just blowing smoke. But why would the gods actually want us to score?! I don’t believe it! Tell me why!” “They told us right at the start, remember?” Fay said. “They said everything the gods do is rooted in a plan. A strategy.” “Excuse me?!” “Let’s call it the ‘Start Time Zero Minutes Time’s-Up Plan’… Does that sound about right?” The nine members of the divine team stood with their backs to Yggdrasil: The nymphs, floating in the air. The dryads, standing in the branches. The treants, bracing themselves against the trunk. All nine of them, three each of three different kinds of creature, looked toward Fay, and then… “Kya… Kyaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” “Ah… Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” “!” The forest echoed with explosive laughter. The nymphs threw themselves backward as they chortled, the dryads held their sides with mirth, and even the treants, who didn’t speak a language as such, shook with what had to be amusement. That was all the answer Fay needed. Everything to this point had been—not a bluff, but a show. “Phew… I guess they’ve figured us out.” “You see, Nymph? They sniffed us out because you set Treant on before everything was ready.” “Oh, as if you weren’t on board with this idea, Dryad! Remind me again who said, ‘Let’s let them kick us back and give them the balls that way’!” “Ah, well. If they know what we’re up to, then this is where playtime stops…” “…and the real game begins.” The gods smiled, and a collective shiver ran down the humans’ spines. “Yippee! Eight minutes left. Let’s see you fight for it, humans!” The nymphs’ wings shimmered gold, and the instant they saw that dazzling flash, everyone present was reminded: Whatever they might look like, even the smallest of their opponents were numbered among the deities who governed the gods’ games. “Blow away, blow away, blow away all!” “Wind! I call on you to protect u—ahhh!” The wind mage girl let out a cry as the nymphs’ gust blasted away her feeble attempt to resist it. Her spell hadn’t lasted even a second. The pressure from the wind was so intense that they could hardly breathe, the rampaging gale tearing up the center of the field. “What’s the story, Zechey?! You were able to push back before!” “They were just toying with me,” Zechey said, the blood draining from her face. Then she shouted, “Everybody, run! I can’t hold that at bay with my magic!” “Get behind the huge tree!” said Ashlan. They dove for the trunk, and once he was sure everyone was safely behind it, Fay followed them. “Yo, Fay! Tell me what the hell’s goin’ on!” Captain Ashlan bellowed over the roar of the wind. “Can’t you see?! There’s a huge windstorm!” Fay shouted back. Even from behind the trunk of the massive tree, Fay could feel the freezing air that threatened to send him flying into the unknown. Now the gods were truly playing their game. Even the nymphs’ fall to the ground after being hit by the gravity magic must have been part of the act. “Anita,” Fay said. “Do you remember the first strategy you suggested?” “Wha—? Er, you mean…” “Ideal points efficiency!” How many points did they need to score per person? A team had ten players, and together the balls could score fifteen points. In other words, if they could score 1.5 points per person, they would be on the right track. “You had the right idea—in fact, I think you grasped the general outline of the game faster than anybody. And in the opening stages, I think that plan was probably the most effective. Was.” “Y-you make that sound very ominous!” “Didn’t it seem strange to you? Every time we played with peak points efficiency in mind, we naturally started scoring more goals with the two- and three-point balls.” “…Oh!” The human team currently had twenty-two points (2 points × 3, 3 points × 2, 10 points × 1). If, for example, one person scored a goal with the three-point ball, that made their points efficiency three—roughly equivalent to if they scored with the ten-point ball using just three people. So: Could they score a goal with the ten-point ball using three people? No. It wasn’t possible. Because the ten-point ball was the one that both teams gave the most attention to. As a matter of fact, they had both committed more than seven people to the scuffle over the ten-point ball. From an efficiency perspective, it was not going to pay off. “So instead, we naturally started scoring with the two- and three-point balls, which were wide open. From an efficiency standpoint, it would be the obvious play.” “Y-yes, I see what you mean! We’re better at this than they are!” “No, we aren’t.” “What?” “There’s only seven minutes until time runs out—and neither team is going to score fifty points.” “!” Anita made a choked sound that wasn’t quite a cry and wasn’t quite a scream. Behind her, Captain Ashlan, Nel, Pearl, and everyone else who had been listening went wide-eyed as if to say: Oh crap. They’d realized. They saw that the humans were completely cornered. Win Condition 2: If the time limit is reached, the team with the most points wins. However: In order to discourage stalling tactics, the minimum penalty will be enforced if the game ends by time’s up. Points scored by the ball used for the fewest goals will not be counted. And at the moment… There were twenty-three drops in the nectar timer (meaning twenty-three minutes had passed, and the leaf would be full after thirty minutes). Divine team: 20 points (10 points × 2) Human team: 22 points (2 points × 3, 3 points × 2, 10 points × 1) When time expired, it wouldn’t matter to the gods’ team whether the minimum penalty neutralized the two-point ball or the three-point one; they would score twenty points either way—whereas the human team would have to drop the points scored with the ten-point ball. “That makes gods twenty, humans twelve—gods win,” Fay said. “Say what?!” “The gods were never trying to satisfy Win Condition 1 (score fifty points). They were always after a time’s-up victory when the clock hit zero.” The gods’ strategy was the “Start Time Zero Minutes Time’s-Up Plan.” They would execute it by neutralizing the ten-point ball. They let the humans score with the two- and three-point balls so that the minimum penalty would cause them to ultimately lose the ten points. “If I’m right about that, it would explain a lot of the strange things the gods did.” “Tee-hee-hee! You want these balls? Then take them! Here you go!” The gods’ team…threw the two- and the three-point balls into the air. It was true: The gods hadn’t once shown the slightest interest in the two- and the three-point balls. In fact, they had actively given them to the humans. “I’m guessing it’s the same with ‘Mister Bear in the Woods.’ They call it the Beast of Defense, and I think it let us score those goals. I think it was told to.” Let them score their goals with the two- and three-point balls. True, they’d scored once with the ten-point ball, but that had been a shot by Leshea, herself a former goddess, and the goalkeeper probably decided that even it was at a disadvantage in that matchup. “B-but why, Fay?! What would drive the gods to a strategy like that?” “Probably their read on us. They predicted that we humans would hit on the idea of points efficiency—so they came up with a plan to counter it.” Points efficiency plan: Better at actually scoring points. The flipside is that most goals will be scored with the two- and the three-point balls in the interest of efficiency, meaning that the ten-point ball will be neutralized by the minimum penalty. (Vulnerable to time running out.) Time’s-up plan: Focuses on the ten-point ball. Not very efficient, but the ten-point ball will not be neutralized by the minimum penalty, making this plan ideal for taking victory when the time expires. The gods had considered both of these possibilities and settled on the time’s-up plan. Whereas the humans—once they had chosen to focus on points efficiency—couldn’t afford to allow time to run out. They had to score fifty points and nab the victory, no matter what. But they weren’t fast enough. “With this huge gale, we won’t be able to move. Seven minutes from now, time runs out—and that’s checkmate.” “Dammit, Fay! Can they possibly be that strong?” Captain Ashlan said, gritting his teeth. “Look…I know it’s our own fault for misreading the game and falling into their trap, but just pinning us in place with some wind for the entire final seven minutes? That sucks!” “I told you, Captain Ashlan. And you, Anita. It’s going to be okay.” “Uh…is it?” The girl holding the ten-point ball blinked. “Anita, you’ve got the ten-point ball, which means we still have a chance of victory. Give it to Leshea.” “Oh!” Anita’s eyes lit up. The humans couldn’t do anything in the face of the violent wind—but the former goddess Leshea could potentially charge through. “Y-yes, that’s perfect! If my treasured sister Leoleshea can score another goal with the ten-point ball, we can still turn this around!” If she scored with the ten-point ball again, the human team would have a total of thirty-two points (2 points × 3, 3 points × 2, 10 points × 2), and the three- and the ten-point balls would have scored an equal number of goals. Meaning they would cease to meet the criterion of the minimum penalty of “the ball that has scored the fewest number of goals.” The human team would win, thirty-two to twenty. “Treasured sister Leshea! It’s all yo—” “That’s right. I want that ten-point ball!” From out of the gale, one of the dryads came leaping. “Nymph, stop your wind, if you’d be so kind. I’m going to call my friends.” The dryad leapt easily up into the branches of the great tree. In response to its request, the violent wind ceased in an instant. Then the dryad cried out, “My dear little friends… Come on, lemmings!” A great rumbling of countless footsteps shook Yggdrasil’s forest. Whatever was creating the noise wasn’t very large, but there was an army of them, and everyone could feel them getting closer. “What’s coming now?!” Pearl said, bracing herself to fight. At that very moment, something popped out of the underbrush: an adorable little creature that made an adorable little noise. “Squeak!” “Aw, how cute!” Pearl crooned. It was followed by another creature, then another—wild squirrels and hamsters, an army of them, an avalanche, pressing in. “They’re so… Wait, there’s an awful lot of them!” “Squeak!” “Squeak squeak!” “Squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak!” “Noooooooooo!” The human team was overrun by the battalion of squirrels and hamsters, jostled and crushed. They were so cute! They were so cute that the humans found themselves unable to fight back. “Hnngh! That’s a dirty trick! How can I use violence on these adorable squirrels—ahh?! Oh no!” Anita cried out as the ten-point ball slipped away from her. It was followed by the two- and the three-pointers, each of them stolen by the squirrels in front and rolled along by those who followed. They were with the dryad before anyone knew what was happening. “Squeak!” With another thundering of tiny feet, the rodents retreated. They’d left behind only a battered and bruised human team lying pathetically (if rather blissfully) on the ground. “Grrr! Nasty way to steal our balls!” Ashlan said. “Heh heh! The nectar clock has twenty-six drops in it. Soon enough, it will be full, and this game will be over,” the dryad replied. “Hold it right there, you!” Captain Ashlan leapt to his feet and reached out, but the dryad simply kicked off the branch and flew into the air, then landed nimbly and raced for center court. “Pearl!” Fay shouted, pointing at the rapidly retreating dryad. “Get one of those balls back—I don’t care which one! Then you can trade it for the ten-point ball with Shift Change!” “R-right! But I only have three minutes!” Pearl’s Shift Change worked on any object she had touched within the last three minutes. Either the two- or the three-point ball would be fine—if the human team could get one of them back, they could change it for the ten-point ball. “That’s not much time! All right, people, think about nothing except getting that ball back!” Captain Ashlan shouted, his intensity making the air shiver. “Split up into three groups and go after them!” A nymph, however, was already hovering over his head. “Kya-ha-ha! You sure you want to go running off like that? What if I treat you to another blast of my wind?” “Hnngh! Incoming! Everybody, take cover!” Ashlan said, but Fay countered with: “Hold it. This is one of your bluffs, isn’t it? You’re on cooldown.” He ignored the nymph and took off running as fast as he could. Each member of the divine team had a special skill or ability, but each of those abilities had a cooldown timer. The cooldown for the wind magic is about eight seconds—but for a storm like that, it must be longer! It was an assumption on Fay’s part but not an unfounded one. “I saw the way your wings glowed golden when you summoned that storm.” “Grrrrr! Stupid humans!” The nymphs fumed that he had seen through the bluff, their faces going red from humiliation. “It’s quite all right, Nymph. You bought us more than enough time,” said the three dryads standing in Yggdrasil’s branches. Each of them held one ball—the two-, the three-, and the ten-point seeds between them. Plip. Another drop of nectar fell into the bowl sitting by the field. Twenty-eight drops (that is, twenty-eight minutes) had now passed. “I’ll hold them for the final two minutes with my own magic.” “Hah! We’re not falling for that again! That’s a bluff, too!” Ashlan said, not slowing down as he ran toward the divine team’s great tree. “‘Come on, Lemmings!’ has still gotta be on cooldown, too!” “That was simply a summons to my forest friends. It was no magic spell.” “…What?” “I still have my magic.” Um. That seemed to be a bit…unfair. Before the humans dashing across the field could quip back, the dryad raised a hand. “Green Giant!” The ground shook, much harder than it had at the approach of the rodent army, quaking and bucking as if the very earth would turn upside down. The forest of Yggdrasil itself was thrashing and fighting. “The trees…?!” This wasn’t grass magic anymore—this was forest magic. By the dryad’s intervention, Yggdrasil’s trees were whipping their roots around and stamping the ground like wild horses, without regard for what was in their way. All the trees, in every part of the court. Some of the roots were bigger than logs themselves; a whack from one of them could tear through a car like tissue paper, to say nothing of a human. “One minute and thirty seconds left!” the nymphs chortled. “Kya-ha-ha! And you won’t get anywhere near us!” Could they? Could they slip past the roots to reach their opponents? “Master Fay! We’re out of time. I’m going to go!” Nel said. “Me too!” said Leshea, and both took off running. They evaded a root that came from overhead, dancing neatly out of the way of a strike from the side. They jumped up on one of the encroaching roots and used it to grab on to a vine hanging above them, getting them safely out of the way of the third attack. Forward, forward, ever forward. The two of them ran after the three dryads holding the balls, not pausing for a second in their headlong charge. “One minute left! There’s no damn time!” Captain Ashlan shouted, pointing at the timer. With a plop, the twenty-ninth drop of nectar fell into it. Ripples spread across the surface of the nearly full leaf cup. One drop to go. One minute from now, the next drop of nectar would cause the timer to overflow. They were down to the last sixty seconds. “Hee hee, ha-ha-ha! Now, this is something else! You’re actually avoiding Yggdrasil’s roots! But you’ve got forty-five seconds… Forty-four seconds… Even if you get the balls, you really think you can make it fifty meters to the goal before time runs out? Maybe it’s about time you gave up!” “We’ll be the ones to decide when we give up!” “Dummies!” The nymphs laughed again, coldly this time. “The gods have the right to make you give up. Charge them, Treant!” The three treants appeared from the flora directly in front of Nel and Leshea and plowed toward them. They’d seen this trick before, though. The treants could charge all day long; Nel could always punt them back with her Arise…couldn’t she? “Wha?! They’re so fast!” Nel couldn’t kick in time. The treants came on three times as fast as she’d expected, faster than the speed of sound. They were nothing like a runaway train anymore—more like a cruise missile. “Kyaaa-ha-ha! This is how they charge when they mean it! Didn’t we tell you everything else was just an act?” “Urgh?!” “Ngh…” The wall of treants slammed into Nel and Leshea, sending them flying like leaves fluttering in the air. They landed back in center court by Fay and the others. All the progress they had made with their own desperate charge was undone in an instant. “This isn’t over! We can all run!” Ashlan said. He and the members of his team were all out for blood. “Kya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Wonderful! Good spirit, humans!” Ashlan and his people set off. Some were batted back by Yggdrasil’s roots, shoved out of the way—and in the meantime, a big, fat drop of nectar was forming above the timer. “Nineteen seconds to go… Eighteen… Just kidding! It’s actually thirteen seconds. Kya-ha-ha! You’re all washed up, humans. It’s not enough to get the balls—you’ll have to get them into the goal!” The nymphs laughed and counted off the seconds. With the occasional anxious glance at the looming nectar droplet, everyone else ran as fast as they could, right up until the final second. “Three! Two! One! Aaand that’s all, folks!” …Plop. The thirtieth droplet fell into the timer, and it overflowed. The nectar came pouring out, almost audibly. The undeniable, incontrovertible sign that time was up. The meep would blow its whistle to signal the end of the match. Yes, right at that very moment. Or so everyone thought. “Kyaaa-ha-ha-ha! We win! And what a win! C’mon, ref, blow that whistle already……! Uh, ref?” The nymphs looked around, confused. The forest remained resolutely silent. No whistle sounded. The meep simply held the whistle in hand, not acknowledging that the nectar clock had overflowed. “…………” “Hey, Meep! What’re you doing over there? You can see the timer! It—” “Everybody, run!” Fay shouted, loud enough to blow away the nymphs’ objections. He was pointing at one very specific spot on the court. “Over there!” “Fay?! What’s this all about?!” Captain Ashlan said. He was just as confused as the nymphs, who blustered, “What? What?! What’s going on? Why are the humans still moving? The game’s supposed to be over!” Nobody seemed to understand what was happening—not the gods and not the humans. Which was why Fay chose that moment to announce to all the players, “Time to check our answers.” Then he added: “There’s forty-three seconds of additional time in this game!” “Huh?!” “Say what?!” All the members of the gods’ team started chattering among themselves. Additional time: A special exception provided in games like soccer in cases where the game time had stopped, such as when switching out players. If the game time was thirty minutes, the clock would be extended by the amount of time that been excluded so that the players could play for the full half hour. “Theoretically, it should be the same in God-Tree-Fruit Basketball—any time lost should be provided as extra time!” Fay said. “…?” None of the nine gods had anything to say to that. In fact, they hardly understood what this human was talking about. What did he think he was saying? The issue for them was that additional time was an impossibility in God-Tree-Fruit Basketball. In this game, the timer was simply always running—that was the rule. Player substitutions took place as part of the game, so there shouldn’t have been any lost time to make up. Yet this human was claiming there were forty-three seconds of it? “Oh, it was there, all right,” Fay said. He looked back as he ran across the field—and pointed to the meep holding the whistle. “I told you then. That was my secret trick for grabbing victory in this game!” “?!” The god team started buzzing again. Those few words, of course, were enough for the wise and knowing gods to understand what had happened. “Human! You used the meep as a shield because…” “That’s right. I wanted to force a stop to the game.” When Nel had been in extremis, Fay had flung the meep at her—and the meep had said… “Interfering with the referee is outside the bounds of play!” It was a moment outside the playtime, officially acknowledged by the referee. With the meep’s outburst, the game had been temporarily suspended—which was when Fay knew that extra time was at least theoretically possible. “We spent forty-three seconds before resuming the game! This match isn’t over!” Every plan had a counterplan. This final strategy, “extra time,” could counter the gods’ plan. Plan—Points Efficiency: Vulnerable to time expiring. (10-point ball neutralized.) (countered by) Plan—Remaining Time Zero: Stall until time expires and use the 10-point ball to win by the minimum penalty. (countered by) Plan—Extra Time: Extend the game time and win without allowing time to expire. There was just one thing: After the forty-three seconds of extra time were up, the clock would still be at zero. That couldn’t be changed. “Kya-ha-ha! All right, I’m a little impressed! But what good will it do you?” “You have another thirty seconds at best of this time you’ve gained. We have the balls. The goal is fifty meters over your heads, and the Goalie Bear is waiting for you.” It was true: The wise and knowing gods also understood how short-lived Fay’s little plan would be. There would be no dramatic comebacks in forty-three seconds. To do that, they would need the balls—and the god team held all of them. “That’s a little problem we solve…like this!” In center court, Leshea’s eyes were gleaming. She grabbed Anita by the collar and wound up like a baseball pitcher. “What? What?! Treasured sister Leshea, may I ask—?” “All right, Anita! You remember how it went last time. Go grab that ten-point ball!” “Noooooo!” “Aaaaaand go!” Anita, fired forward with all the force of a former god’s strength, found herself launched like a rocket—straight at the dryad holding the ten-point ball. The same dryad who had dropped to the ground, assured of the gods’ time’s-up victory. “Wha—?!” It was the first time the bright green being had shown the slightest hint of shock. After an instant of indecision about whether to simply take the blow or try to avoid it, the dryad clutched the ball close and threw itself to the side, using all the quickness of the divine team’s nimblest players. Boom! It couldn’t have been a difference of more than 0.01 seconds. Anita, the human cannonball, shot past the dryad and was buried deep into Yggdrasil’s goal tree, behind the god. “That was a clever way of trying to turn things around, I’ll give you that. And you were this close,” the dryad said, clearly relieved to have evaded the play by a hair’s breadth. “But now you are out of ideas.” “No, that was perfect!” “Hmm?” “Y’know, I’ve just felt like something hasn’t quite been right recently.” Leshea twirled a strand of her hair, red as fire, around one finger, and made an exaggeratedly thoughtful face. “I’m supposed to be a former god, you know? But lately Pearl and Nel have been getting all the glory. And that’s okay, I guess, I’ve just been wanting…I’ve been wanting to win in a way that’s more like me. You know what I mean?” “…?” The divine team did not appear to know what she meant. Look at the situation she was in. What could she be talking about? Crack. That was when a crack ran down the trunk of the great tree of Yggdrasil behind the gods. It started from the point of Anita’s impact and went from there. “But what’s a me-like win?” Leshea continued to muse. “I think it’s got to be something that’s within the rules of the game, but at the last possible second, where I use my former godlike powers to snatch victory.” Crack… Creak… It didn’t stop at a single crack; the noises from the tree got louder and more numerous. “I remember something the meep said. It told us to use the whole forest to achieve victory.” Wasn’t that what the divine team had done? They’d used the grass on the ground, summoned “lemmings” from the woods, and controlled the very roots of Yggdrasil’s trees. The players could use anything and everything in the forest—that was what gave this game its spice. And thus Leshea gave a particularly bright smile and said… “So it’s all right if we knock over your goal, isn’t it?” “What?!” The gods turned and watched in amazement as Yggdrasil’s massive tree began to lean at a distinct angle, creaking all the while. Leshea hadn’t been aiming her human rocket at the ten-point ball—she’d wanted to give the great tree’s trunk one more giant whack.