SOL Day 11 - Dilemma

You are not stupid. You have been shaken up by all that’s happened, and things have been weird… but Annette isn’t exactly subtle. She’s obviously cranking FUTA up to an 11. She wants drama.

As you walk out of the admin building and down to your waiting ride, you have a lot to think about. Somewhere along the line, it stopped being about football for you. When you were young you had a passion for it, and you were good at it. But it became something else. Winning and being good made you feel good, but that wasn’t about the game, it was about feeling good. It was also about girls. At some point you stopped winning to win, and started winning to be a winner that girls would find attractive.

Despite that… there’s still a part of you that doesn’t like Annette’s obvious lack of respect for the game. FUTA was sold as being mainly about football with some spicy stuff sprinkled in to get people to watch.

But this feels like it’s the other way around: that drama is the main priority, and football is just the setting for that drama.

She’s trying to use you to blow up Pink Team, and you’re sure it would be naïve to think that she isn’t doing the same thing with all the other teams. She’s probably picked out someone on each team and told them the same thing. She must be counting on a leak. There will be a leak.

This coming week will be chaos.

Annette didn’t tell you exactly what the criteria was for being MVP, but you know enough about the game to guess how FUTA is likely to score it. You can tailor your playstyle with that in mind, but… other players will be doing that as well. It’ll be a battle royale of grandstand plays. You really will be competing against your teammates if you take that approach.

You get some breakfast, then get another ride to a big department store. You just need somewhere you can walk around and think. You’d like to do it outside, but it’s raining hard and will be all day.

In the department store, you wander aimlessly. You still haven’t put prison behind you. It wasn’t long ago that you had gray walls and a shitty uniform to wear. Here, the store smells like perfume, it’s full of cheerful people, and there’s all kinds of nice things at your fingertips… although you prefer shopping in Spain.

You find yourself looking at swimsuits out of habit. Instead of picturing other girls, you picture yourself, wondering how the other players see you now. You know that most of them don’t know about what happened, but still.

You feel like a loser. You aren’t the captain. You’re a defender. The captain is Riley, and she’s hooking up with another attacker. There’s this sense that they are the cool kids and you are nobody. It’s not the worst feeling in the world, but it’s pretty horrible.

Pink Team will be in trouble if rumors of this system get out.

Your heart feels like you’re nobody, but your head knows that you are one of the best if not the best player on your team. You have a good chance of making MVP and taking the captain role if you get serious about it.

Or… maybe you could warn Riley. There might be a way to get out in front of this, and even get an advantage as a team. That would be a gamble, and even if it worked, Riley would probably get the credit for it.

You stare at the swimsuits without seeing them, your thoughts on the week ahead. You have to commit to a course of action… half-assing either one will definitely result in failure.

Play smart and try to take some power back? Or try to warn the team?