Open Play: Ladies, Goals, The Everything System in-between

Chapter 75: [75] "The Last Session"

Friday morning.

Luc was the first one through the gates. He had been in the Porsche before seven, the engine warming up in the dark outside Juliette’s apartment building.

He drove in silence. No music. No phone calls.

The training complex car park was empty except for Henri’s silver sedan, which was always there before everybody else... atleast of recent. The coach lived inside his own anxiety. Luc had made peace with that.

---

The session was the last before the match.

Henri kept it sharp and short. Forty minutes of technical work, set piece rehearsals, and a fifteen-minute rondo that Luc used to sharpen his first touch passes. The Physical Conditioning Buffer was doing its quiet work in the background. His calves were loose. The little bruising and fatigue from Montclair had faded to nothing.

He felt, for the first time in weeks, completely intact and ready for the match ahead.

Hugo ran his warm-up lap at full pace without any visible compensation in his stride. Juliette, who arrived the latest, watched from the touchline with her clipboard and said nothing to Hugo, which was franckly the best possible result.

"His ankle is fully recovered," she told Henri during the water break. Her voice was professional. "He’s match fit."

Henri made a note on his tactical sheet and immediately stopped looking a little less anxious. That was a weight of many things on his mind.

[System Notification]

[Objective: Score a hat-trick against AC Nord]

[Reward: System upgrade... alongside the obvious, your Ligue Alpha season continues and your Legacy begins]

[Penalty: If you score fewer than three, TES will no longer intervene on your behalf.]

"Forever?."

[You’ll be on your own wherever you end up]

Luc was working shooting drills in the far end of the training pitch while the rest of the squad finished their set piece rehearsal.

He hit twenty balls with his right foot. Fifteen with his left. The outside of his boot, the inside, the laces. Low and hard, then bent, then driven flat. Each one placed with deliberate precision that didn’t come from talent alone. It also came from four months of exploiting The Everything System.

Idriss appeared beside him without saying anything. He picked up a ball, placed it on the same spot Luc had been using, and drove it hard to the near post.

It was clean. Very clean.

"You’ve been working," Luc said.

"Didn’t need you to notice." Idriss placed a second ball. "But yes."

They finished the drill together without speaking. Two strikers who had started out as rivals and ended up as something the squad had started to describe as the most dangerous attacking partnership in the league.

---

Henri blew the whistle at 10:42.

He gathered the squad at the center circle. His usual expression of suppressed terror had been replaced by something more.

"Fontaine plays at noon today," Henri said. "We play at six. I don’t want to hear his name again between now and full time tonight. Not in this building, not in this dressing room, not on this or any pitch."

The squad was quiet.

"Nord will defend deep. They will pack eight, nine, sometimes ten men behind the ball. They are not here to play football. They are here for pure haram." He paused. "We have done this before. We know what it takes to break a low block without Hugo. Now we have Hugo. Which means we have no excuses."

Hugo, standing at the back of the group, gave one short nod.

"Play your game," Henri continued. "Not Fontaine’s game. Not the wager’s game. Our game. The one we’ve been building from nothing since August."

Mateo, beside Luc, crossed his arms. His captain’s armband was already on even in training. The last time he would wear it here.

This was his final training session in the black and gold colours.

The squad broke for the changing rooms.

Bastien caught Luc near the tunnel entrance, he had this distinctive jaw clench when he had something tactical to say and wasn’t sure whether it was worth saying.

Luc had noticed.

"Their keeper," Bastien said. "The 38-year-old. He comes off his line on any ball played into the box. He’s been doing it all season, Hugo showed me some clips."

"Hugo told you to tell me?"

"Not really. He said you’d probably already know."

"I do." Luc kept walking. "But I appreciate it."

---

The mighty saturday afternoon arrived. A day that contained something important at the end of it.

Luc ate the lunch Juliette had left covered on the counter without being asked to. He lay on the bed for two hours with his eyes open, running the AC Nord’s defensive shape across the ceiling of the bedroom.

Their low block. A 4-5-1 that collapsed into a 5-4-1 when any opposition has the ball in the final third. The left back who bombed forward and never fully tracked back. Their holding midfielder who pressed by instinct. The 38-year-old keeper who came off his line like a man trying to prove something to a body that had already retired.

A TES system objective of three goals needed.

The 100% guaranteed goal sat in his back pocket like a loaded round waiting to be unleashed on its next target.

His phone buzzed at 12:11 PM

Valérie:

Paris Royal vs Bretagne. Minute 11. Fontaine just scored. Yes, Open play.

14 – 13 has now become 15 – 13.

"That’s two goals down now. One more goal from him and I’ll certainly need a hat-trick to even draw."

[System Notification]

[Wager Tally updated: Open Play Goals — Beaumont 13 | Fontaine 15]

[Fontaine scored in the 11th minute against Bretagne. Open play. A driven low shot into the far post. Clean and clinical.]

[You now need three goals tonight to win. The guaranteed goal is still active.]

"He was always going to score," Luc said to the ceiling.

---

At 12:43 PM, the second message arrived.

Valérie:

He did it again. That ass.

A header off a corner.

Only an absolute unit of a keeper would have stopped that header.

Two-nil at half time. He’s at 16 now.

Luc sat up from the bed.

[System Notification]

[Wager Tally updated: Open Play Goals — Beaumont 13 | Fontaine 16]

[Three goals needed to draw level. The clock starts at six.]

"Three goals. Minimum."

Fontaine had pulled two goals in the same game. The wager, which had sat at a one goal gap, had widened in forty-five minutes of a noon kickoff.

The guaranteed goal covered one of those three. The other two he would have to create himself, from open play, against a team with ten men behind the ball.

The odds weren’t looking good.

He stood up. Picked up his kit bag from the corner of the room.

Juliette appeared in the doorway in her physio tracksuit, already dressed for the match.

"I heard," she said.

"Yep."

"How are your legs?"

"Perfect."

She moved aside from the door without another word. That was what he needed. Not any long talk and definitely not sympathy.

The drive to Stade Valois took nine minutes.

The December sky had turned dark and starless by the time Luc pulled into the players’ entrance. The car park was already full. The stadium was already loud, voices carrying over the brick walls even from outside.

Thirty thousand people who had come to watch the wager resolve itself on a football pitch.

He killed the engine.

He and Juliette got out of the car and walked towards the facility.

[System Notification]

[Current Arsenal: Predatory Aura ×1 | 100% Guaranteed Goal ×1]

[Balance: 2 General Points | 5 Skill Point]

[TES has one final note: You are not the same player anymore. Give Nord hell]

Luc pushed through the heavy door.

The roar of thirty thousand hit him like a wall.

---

AC Nord arrived at Stade Valois in a single bus.

Their kit bags were carried in by their own players. Their goalkeeper, thirty-eight years old with tape wrapped around both wrists and a face that had seen every kind of professional humiliation a football career could manufacture, was the first one down the steps. He looked at the stadium without any visible reaction.

That was either courage or resignation. Hard to tell from twenty yards.

Their manager was a 44-year-old Frenchman named Revert who had been hired in October specifically to keep them from relegation. He had not succeeded. They had one point all season. He looked like he had stopped sleeping since November.

The away dressing room at Stade Valois was the same functional space it had always been. Nord’s players filed into the tunnel from the comfort the Stade Valois dressing room provided and the word spread quickly through their body language. The pitch was perfect. The stands were full. The home crowd was already chanting one name.

Beaumont!

Beaumont!

Beaumont!

The home dressing room was different.

The noise coming through the walls was the kind that made the fixture rattle more than it needed to. Henri stood in front of his whiteboard and didn’t draw anything on it.

He looked at his players.