Football

Sunny lifted her head to the Earth's Sun allowing the warmth to seep into her skin. Despite what Krill said, Earth was very nice, and it didn't have so much ash in the air as her planet did. It was nice, and bright, and warm. It smelled nice too, mostly from the brightly colored flowers that made her mouth water. Adam looked at her a little funny every time she turned to quickly snack on one as she walked by, but she didn't mind. It almost surprised her that the human didn't eat them since they seemed to eat everything else.


Granted, she hadn't taken to these walks simply to eat the earth flowers, but because she thought it would be good for Adam. It had been a month or two since the prison fiasco on Noctopolis, and he was slowly returning to himself. She had been reading up on the proper way to help a human heal mentally and determined that he needed sunlight, friends and something to do, so walks with her and Krill were the best option. Plus it had the added bonus of being something Krill liked, which was a miracle since, when it came to earth he often didn't like anything.


They turned onto a road shaded under tall over-arching trees. To their right, the ground behind the trees was manicured grass with a playground covered in tiny humans, and a surrounding park dotted with blankets and other human lounging in the sun. It was a truly alien scene to her, and the atmosphere was like nothing she had experienced. They received some wide eyed open mouthed states as they walked past, especially from the children, who ran over to get a closer look trailed by their equally curious but somewhat worried parents.


Adam greeted them politely as they passed by the park, and onto the stretch next to a chain link fence behind that being a set of bleachers which looked out onto a diamond-shaped filed Adam said was used for baseball. After that was a soccer field covered in more human children, one group wearing bright green and the other wearing purple. Adult humans cheered their spawn from the perimeter of the field.


They passed beside another wide open field.


That's when her attention was diverted by a sound. A human voice barking a sharp guttural call. SHe turned her head just in time to see a group of humans crouched in two parallel lines facing each other. As the call was given, the man in the middle front tossed the ball backwards to a teammate standing behind him. The rest of the human responded violently and quickly bellowing war cries and slamming into each other with violent force knocking each other to the ground when possible.


A human at the end of the line raced out behind their opponents ducking past a larger human barreling towards him. The human with the ball fell back and then lobbed the thing into the air brown highlighted against eggshell blue. It flew in a tight spiral before arching towards the ground. The running human reached out with both hands and leapt forward arms wide. He caught the ball, though sloppily, and cradled it against his chest just in time to be plowed into by a human from the opposing line. There was a sharp burst of blue around the man's head and shoulders as the two men hit the ground, the rest of the human came to a grinding halt


"Jackson! What did I say about head shots."
The human without the ball staggered to his feet, "He has a force field, so it's not like it matters."


"Just because he has a field doesn't mean a concussion isn't possible." The leader explained in annoyance.


Adam had come to a halt ahead realizing that Sunny wasn't next to him anymore. She felt him rather than saw his as he came back to stand next to her watching as the humans returned to their lines once more, "Should have known you'd like it." He muttered to himself a slight smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.


"Which human game is this one." Sunny wondered.


"A dangerous one." Krill determined wincing as the humans plowed into each other for a second time."


Adam accompanied sunny onto the grass as she moved a little closer, "Football..... Or I guess American Football depending on who you ask. It was almost banned at one point once they realized repeated concussions were bad for the brain."


"No shit." Krill muttered.


He kept going, "But people couldn't let it go, so instead they just made better protective technology."


"So what you're saying is this sport was killing people because of how violent it was?"


Adam shrugged, "Less killing people and more giving them degenerative brain damage, but I digress."


Krill looked up at sunny with annoyance, "Tell Me I am wong, but the fact that it hurts people didn't make you more excited.... Did it?"


Sunny shrugged.


Krill groaned.


There was a clattering as the human rammed into each other. One was violently plowed into the ground, and the group went silent as he didn't get up. His friends knelt next to him, "You ok."


The man gasped and through heavy breathing, "Shit.... I.... I think I pulled something." With looks of concern, his friends pulled him off to the side to look him over.


Of course Krill being Krill couldn't help but wander up shadow darkening the humans who looked up and jerked back in surprise at the strange alien watching them. Then their eyes moved upwards to where Sunny stood sun glittering of her bright blue armor.


Adam approached with a smile, "Sorry, but my.... Friends were interested in your game."


The humans blinked in surprise, "No.... apologies necessary." one of them stammered craning his neck back to look up at Sunny.


Krill pointed to the downed human, "I am a doctor." Eyes still wide the humans slowly moved to the side So Krill could get closer ordering the padding removed so he could get a better look.


The human leader walked up to Adam and Sunny. He was tall, taller than even Adam was making him only maybe five or six inches shorter than Sunny, "Shit.... You're a Drev, right.... Damn your tall."


She looked down at him with amusement, "On my planet, I am actually very very short, human. My brother is over nine feet tall."


He blinked in shock and surprise then looked her over one more time noting the double set of arms and the built in padding, "Wow ... wouldn't mind having someone like you on my team. That extra set of arms would be nice." Curiously, he reached out a hand and then paused, "You mind?" Hw wondered


Sunny shook her head, she knew how humans liked exploring things with their hands, and actually found it rather endearing. He knocked on her armor with a closed fist prodding at that which covered her shoulders and her chest with great interest, "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were built for a game like this."


Krill had stepped back from the downed man, "Just a pulled muscle, but you should stay off of it for a week or two." The human sighed dejectedly, but didn't argue.


Their leader frowned, "That leaves us two men down since Dave didn't show up today." He glanced towards Adam and Sunny, and Sunny leaned forward eagerly hoping he would ask.


"How about you two..... Would you want to hop in." he glanced at Adam, "You ever played?"


He shrugged, "Backyard games with my brothers."


The guy turned back to sunny, "What do you say?"


She nodded eagerly, ad the humans whooped enthusiastically. Adam was given the protective padding the other humans wore, and the two of them were talked through the rules as they dropped into line. Sunny found herself standing across from an absolutely massive human, maybe only an inch shorter than her. He had dark skin, dark eyes, a wide smile, and his shoulders were probably wider than hers.


She had never seen a human so big before.


He held out a hand, and she took it, "Never played against an alien before. Should be fun." She chirped her agreement pleased with how personable these humans were. Looking around, she lowered herself into a crouch like the other humans. She didn't know exactly what she was doing, but it was clear to her that her job was to protect her team from the opposite human, or to.... Make sure the ball didn't get any further down her side of the field.... Or at least that's what she thought.


She couldn't be entirely sure.


From the sidelines Krill shook his head with annoyance standing next to the injured human.


Somewhere the human began speaking words Sunny didn't understand. Then the order was given. She and her opponent charged forward at the same time, and before she knew it, she hit the ground hard, hard enough that it caused a slight tremor through the earth. She barely remembered what happened but was aware of a horrible throbbing in her chest, where the human had plowed into her shoulder first.


Another call went up, and the large human loomed over extending a hand down to help her up.


She groaned but took his hand, and he hauled her to her feet like she weighed nothing. It was a strange experience for sure. She had never felt like that around the humans


"You ok Sunny." Adam laughed, "You look like you just got body checked by a train.


She wheezed, "This human is very large."


The rest of the group laughed, the big human most of all. She vowed to give him a taste of his own medicine next time.


And she did too. She probably didn't intend to do it so excessively catching him by the waist ducking and inadvertently causing him to do a full rotation over her shoulder before slamming into the ground. The blue forcefield erupted around his body, and despite her apologizes, he was good natured and gave her a few pointers. She soaked them up like a sponge chirping happily pleased to find a human nearly her equal in strength and greatly outranking her in skill. She Hadn't had a fight like that in a while.


Krill hated the game as expected, but Sunny loved it.


She especially loved watching when Adam, caught the ball, registered a moment of surprise and then was plowed into the ground from two directions. The look on his face was priceless. That was followed by a discussion about how fair it was Adam having a cybernetic leg that, he accidentally (according to him) used to flip over one of his opponents and go racing off down the field.


THey determined it was fair enough considering how many times he ended up knocked over or fumbling the ball when it was tossed to him. Adam good naturedly joked it was his depth perception with only one eye. The group laughed and said that was probably fair.


Krill decided it was a good time to lecture the humans on why they would play a game that was clearly so violent and aggressive after a particularly excessive play where one of the humans ended up squished to the ground under at least four other bodies. However they just laughed and kept playing.


Sunny learned pretty quickly that she wasn't very good at throwing things, her arms just weren't built for that sort of thing, but she did enjoy running people over, so didn't even bother with the ball most of the time.


She did bother plowing into other players as they tried to get to the ball, though, and found herself thrown to the ground on more than one occasion for going after an opposing player with the ball. She wasn't entirely sure she was doing any of this right, but no one corrected her, and when they did it was generally just to tell her what she could be doing better rather than what she was doing wrong.


Not only that, but she was pleased to hear Adam laughing again, not that he hadn't done it in the past month but because it seemed easier than it had been lately.


They played till the sun set, and the two of them were invited back if they were ever in the area. Her tall opponent approached her as the others were packing up and handed her the ball, "You play well." Was all he said before returning to his team. Sunny hummed her pleasure honored that someone as good as that human would acknowledge her in that way.


Sunny like that game.


Though they were forced to endure a lecture on the way home from Krill bout how insane humans were. Where sunny saw a game of strategy and Skill, Krill saw a bunch of raging idiots using their bodies as battering rams to the detriment of their health. It was barbarous idiotic and a reason for the human to beat on each other in an acceptable manner.


They didn't bother correcting him.


There was no arguing with krill when it came to his opinions.


Sunny spun the football in her hands thoughtfully. She would have to look into this game more. Perhaps get herself a team to root for.


She wondered if they carried jerseys in her size.

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