Divine Celebrity 114 (Patreon)

“It was a nice session, right?” I said as I entered the locker room, following the team, after three hours of extremely exhausting training without a break. 

It was a sign of my confidence and my control over the new team that I didn’t expect any retaliation — as much as it was a sign of their exhaustion. 

“Shut up, Coach, or we’ll kill you,” Marcus said, the only one that was feeling confident enough to actually talk back, and even then, without any actual heat. 

I was more interested in their attitude. There was nothing like painful, grueling training to erase their unearned confidence coming from the resignation of the dean. 

“You better be quick, then, we have a strategy meeting in fifteen minutes,” I said, the collective groan echoing in my ear. “Alright, twenty minutes,” I said as I opened my bag, and pulled out my fake Staff of Hermes, and triggered the Recovery aura, moving to the next stage of our training.

The biggest advantage, it allowed me to radiate it to a decent range rather than requiring touch.  

As I triggered the aura, I kept my focus on Arthur, wondering whether he would notice the presence of the energy. His sensitivity to the effect, especially when it was something less intrusive than the overwhelming trick of the German Professor, had some implications for my future strategies. 

He didn’t react to it, and neither did the other players, at least not consciously. Yet, they started to walk around faster, more briskly, the exhaustion losing its impact faster than usual. 

It took a couple minutes for Arthur to notice my new object, and I needed to raise it up only once. His eyes widened as he noticed that, but managed not to say anything before he raised his phone and took a photo of it. 

I deliberately gave him a good angle, as it was part of the objective. I needed him to have a good view of the show. It was the whole point of going all that trouble to fake an artifact, after all. 

He only moved toward me after he took several photos — to his credit, doing so in a way I would have failed to notice without my Traits. “Hey, Coach,” he said. “What’s that?” 

“A gift, from my teacher,” I answered, doing my best to look absentminded. Then, I froze, like I realized that I had made a big mistake, but wanted to hide that fact. 

Creating a fictional person for them to search for was a useful strategy. 

“Really, it looks old. Is it valuable?” he said as he reached toward it, and I jerked my hand away. 

“Sorry, but it’s my lucky charm,” I said, doing my best to sell a panicked impression. 

“Really,” he said as he looked at it seriously. “You believe that stuff.” 

I just shrugged before wrapping it with a thick fabric and starting to move. “See you all in the meeting room, we need to go through the tactics…” 

***

I had a son t smile on my face as I watched the players arrive at the large meeting room, this time none of them late. None of them even cut close, showing that the morning treatment had been enough to resolve their issues. 

 As they gathered, my hands were dancing on the keyboard, assigning the necessary videos to each screen, ready to leverage the expensive infrastructure arranged by our unfortunate old Dean. 

I looked at the players, each hulking and muscular, yet their forward-leaning posture was enough to put even the most enthusiastic nerd to shame. “After our warm-up…” I started the meeting, the statement earning a line of a chuckle, “I have managed to get a preliminary understanding of our capabilities, and let me tell you. I’m impressed.” 

I was glad for Leadership, as it helped the statement to work as a source of a moral rather than a condescending delivery. 

“Now, let’s talk about the best way to leverage the strategy,” I said. “We’re going to rely heavily on zone coverage for defense, and run plays through the center for offense,” I explained. “We’ll be playing with a simplified playbook, ideally less than twenty plays that everyone needed to memorize, but I’ll have some special schemes assigned for each player. Now, about the first play…” 

As I explained, I couldn’t help but shake in amusement. It hadn’t even been a month since I had first here in this room as a new backup, hoping to impress Coach Bill so that I could have the opportunity to take the field for just a few plays, hoping to farm some intent. 

I certainly didn’t expect to be sitting in the position of Coach Bill, handling the session. And, as an added benefit, there was no Spencer here to create annoyance and try to make the offensive players happy in a vain attempt to relive his glory days.  

After pulling a whiteboard to the center, I started going over each scheme one by one, drawing each group one by one before focusing on explaining them more in detail, and sixty players that filled the room listened in rapt attention. 

Once again, I enjoyed the irony of the focus they were able to exert as I went through the details of the schemes, enough to put them into the top position of their classes if they were able to display such an effort. 

Unfortunately, the process was not as efficient as it could be. With the management of the school in shambles, the coaching staff was completely gone, and I was trying to do the job of about twenty people. With my Traits, I was confident in my game plan — the problem was, communicating the details. 

For most players, it took nearly a season for them to efficiently learn the playbook, and even that required endless practice combined with the careful coaching of their position coaches. And, I needed to teach all in one grand session, which was hardly comparable. 

Even with the extremely simplified playbook I had put together, it was a difficult task. I didn’t have great hopes for this session. The most I could hope was to give them a general breakdown so that they could self-study further, while identifying the hopeless cases to focus on.

Would that be enough, certainly not, but at this point, that was all I was able to do in preparation? I didn’t expect any of that stuff to actually bring me victory, not even close. I just hoped to avoid a horrible blowout.

I would somehow find a way to handle the rest during the game day. 

Of course, I could always go and visit Doctor Williams, hoping to see if I could come to a deal that I could use to remove my concussion report — as I had much more confidence to win the game if I was on the field. 

Unfortunately, neither the meeting I overheard, nor my own limited yet memorable adventure implied that Doctor Williams was easy to reason with, especially from a position of weakness. 

No, I much preferred to take the risk based on my own abilities, and continued to explain our simplified playbook. “And here’s another zone scheme we’re going to use when we see them line up with their receivers spread out,” I said as I moved on to the next play. 

“Isn’t it the same play that we have seen earlier, Coach?” one of the new players asked, which came from the basketball team. 

“No, it’s not,” I said as I quickly draw another. “Look, here, I expect the interior linebacker to stand a step to the left. Now, do you understand the benefit of it?” I asked. 

He shook his head. I might have taken a note to explain it later, but I could see that he wasn’t the only one that was looking blankly at the schemes I had developed. “Look, let’s draw two simulations to see how such a strategy impacts the run plays,” I started, trying to explain the difference between the two without confusing them even more. 

“What about man coverage, wouldn’t that be more effective?” another asked. 

“Technically, yes, but that requires more coordination,” I said. “Let’s assume that the play broke down, and one of the receivers moved to the left, who would be responsible to chase him?” 

“Naturally, the cornerback one,” he answered. 

“Good,” I said. “But what if the tight end had cut to the left at the same time while his assigned man was blocked by one of the linemen. What then? Who would be the assigned to the receiver then?” I asked, and rather than answering, he pulled back. 

“Sorry,” he murmured. 

“Don’t worry about it, it was a good question. The biggest problem with the man coverage schemes is the challenge that comes from how to handle the more complicated schemes of attack, and unfortunately, we don’t have the time to teach every single of them right now. Maybe after a few more games,” I said. 

The team nodded, much more relaxed now that they realized asking questions didn’t result in a painful follow-up — unlike how it worked while training on the field — and allowed themselves to relax. 

And, while they were enjoying the show, I was enjoying a benefit of my own as well. 

[Teaching I, Acquired]

An unexpected benefit, but certainly not an unwelcome one. Maybe, I wouldn’t have needed to cheat too badly to avoid a spectacular defeat.