Good Sportshumanship

20260307

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

Gus’s cussing at his holo-screen was interrupted with a call from Tim. “Hey, finally got a break. Are you watching the match?”
“Yeah…”
“How’re we doing? Is it bad?”
“What, haven’t you looked?”
“I don’t dare!”
“Tsh.” Gus rolled his eyes. “Well, ye of little faith, we’re actually holding our own.”
“Really??”
“Nah, they’re hosing us.”
“You stinker!”
“Serves you right for not just looking at a sport site, you lazy bum.”
“Humph. Alright, I’m opening it now…”
Gus glowered at the match. “It’s these bloody aliens, man. If you ask me Alph-Centians shouldn’t be allowed to play goalie. I mean, six arms! Six! No wonder there hasn’t been a human in the goalie hall of fame in our lifetimes.”
“Born in the wrong era!”
“That’s right.” Gus said, into his Alph-Centian designed earpiece, using technology unimaginable to humanity until after contact. But of course that was different. “Them and those bloody psychics.”
“Oi! My mum’s psychic, you know.”
“So? I didn’t say there’s anything wrong with them. They just shouldn’t be out on the pitch unless they’re going to stick to hitting the ball with their foot.”
“Mmph. Everyone always says they don’t perform better’n normal players anyway, what with being easy to run interference against.”
“Psh, of course they’d say that. They - aw, fuck! That bastard stopped our shot again!”
“How come ours is never that good, eh??”
“Trust us to get a faulty alien.”
“It was a good shot, though.”
“Not good enough.”
“Mm.”
“It’s how they set up the club system, it’s just not fair. Once you’re in a rut you-”
“The fuck??”
“What?” Gus sat bolt upright, squinting at the holo-screen, trying to figure out the cause of Tim’s indignation.
“Get this, right, I went and looked up an Alph-Centian sport site, right, seeing if we play any of their sports, and there’s this nobhead alien complaining about human athletes running their crummy nonsense game!”
“No!”
“Yeah! Says that since humans evolved as endurance predators we’ve got ‘unfair advantage’ in second halves, and claims that we ‘turn once exciting games into dragged out scrums of attrition’!”
“Well they can take a fucking hike!”
“I’m leaving a comment right now.”
“Send me the link, I’ll give ‘em a piece of my mind too! Unfair advantage, eh? They oughta know about unfair advantages!”

Prompt was “Write a story which includes the dialogue ‘Is it bad?’.”