Editing LotS/The Story/Talia's Team/Eye of the Dragon

<font size="3">'''Eye of the Dragon'''</font><br>
[[File:LotS_Quest_z11_a1_q2.jpg|none|Eye of the Dragon]]
I had my team! Pretty impressive, huh? It was awesome to be the leader for a change (no offense, captain...). But with great power comes the ability to make great screw ups and get yourself run off the planet. If we got smashed by the Megas, I knew everyone would blame me. And angry thugby fans are worse than death squads. At least death squads don't try eating your organs while you're still alive...
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I had to win. And to win, I had to turn us all into an ass-kicking team. That meant hard training.
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"Are you ready to rock!?!"
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Screaming Barracuda's voice blasted from the stadium's sound system. It was just the Sian Dragons on the pitch, and the stands were empty. So it was sort of like being at a concert where everyone had forgotten to show up.
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"If we say no," Lucia asked, "will that stop her?"
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"No," Virgil replied. "She played a gig on Cythera once. A punk in the audience shot her in the arm before we grabbed him, and she still carried on playing."
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"I said, are you ready to rock!?!"
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Barra didn't wait for an answer. She just started singing. Or screaming. With her, they're kind of the same thing. The others gathered round like they were going to lynch me.
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"What the hell is this?" a Niflung yelled. I couldn't tell which he was, since their big blond beards and long hair made all the men look the same.
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"There isn't really a thugby match, is there?" Kai, one of the kung fu students, asked. "Tricking people is the only way she can get them to come to her damn concerts!"
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I waved for Barra to quiet down. Her guitar made this big wailing twang like she was pissed, but she stopped.
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"It's part of our training," I explained.
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"Great plan. We'll hate life so much that we won't think twice about getting killed in the match." Lucia... I don't know why she bothers with that garrote. She could just cut people's throats with sarcasm instead...
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"I call it Music Montage Theory. It's something I discovered when I was watching old movies. Back in those days they used inspirational songs with power chords to distort space and time -- so people could do a ton of training really quickly."
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"That's ridiculous."
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"Uh-uh. I asked Professor Mycroft about it, and he said my theory was as brilliant as I was."
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"I see..."
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"So, let's do some training!"
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I gave the signal before anyone else could argue. Screaming Barracuda hit Wailing Doom's strings and sang.
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"Killer! I can see it in your eye!
Killer! People cross you and they die!"
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The rest of the session went by in a blur. I figure that means my Music Montage Theory was right! Or maybe it was the concussion they say I got in tackling practice...
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There was definitely some running. You've got to be fast in a thugby match, so you can run with the ball without anyone smashing you -- or catch one of their guys if they have the ball. And you can't just be fast in straight lines, like a sprinter. You have to be able to change direction and get around people. That's why I brought in a bunch of SWAT cops with riot armor and shock sticks, and had them chase everyone.
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You know how quick I am. Lucia too. And the others ended up doing great as well. Nothing like an electric shock up your butt to make you go faster. Sure, Guan ended up getting fried a bunch of times. But that's what he gets for eating dim sum all day...
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I don't remember exactly how the tackling drills went, but for those I brought in Raiyama. I couldn't persuade him to join the Dragons ("There is no honor in thugby!", his subtitles said), but he agreed to help us train. Good thinking, huh? If you can bring down a sumo wrestler in a battlesuit, or survive being tackled by him, you've got it made.
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For the scrum, I got Wilex to help out. TALOS built these training bots for thugby players, but no one ever used them. You know how most people are about robots. And it didn't help when one of them broke a player's spine at the demonstration (don't worry -- they fixed the bug and the guy's back). Anyway, he said we could have a bunch. For scrum workouts they all sort of combine by locking their bodies together. Makes them really tough to wrestle with, so it gives you a great workout.
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He helped out with our catching work as well, by taking an anti-air gun and converting it to fire thugby balls instead of shells. Nothing like having a storm of footballs flying at your face to make you think fast. Some of the others ran for cover. And at first the kung fu guys kept parrying them aside instead of grabbing them. But most of us got the hang of it. They said I even jumped into the air, sprang off Virgil's shoulders, and grabbed one that was like twelve feet in the air. Wish I could remember that, because it sounds awesome.
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We trained that hard every day until the match. Most of us had to spend our nights in healing tanks to recover, but it was worth it. And I had Screaming Barracuda's best tracks pumped into the tanks to keep our fighting spirit going.