Alas, the VAs’ football team appears unable to maintain their momentum going into their games against Iota and Kinder, losing both games. However, football isn’t in a “win-now” mode, whereas the quiz bowl one is.

Speaking of quiz bowl, Warren announces the following to the high school squads during a quiz bowl practice that’s the only quiz bowl practice the football coach let Pablo go to for the week.

“As a warm-up prior to the season opener, we have scheduled an online pre-season game against an opponent that’s familiar to some of you: BLS. We’re the first part of a doubleheader, with the second part being the math team season opener. Both squads will play one game each” Warren announces to the high school quiz bowl squads.

“I hope it won’t be like last time where we played these exhibition games, and we were playing on collegiate questions!” Pablo has flashbacks of the DCC vs VA fundraiser, where both teams were demolished by the use of Penn Bowl packets.

Vengeance for the HSNCT is at hand. However, Boston Latin also being a top-10 quiz bowl program nationally, if FTPFTC’s preseason ranking is anything to go by, vengeance is far from a given, Nadine starts wondering whether the difference in play between Gerard and Myriam will be enough to carry VA over the edge, whereas Lilina had lingering memories of this missed tossup late in that game triggered.

And, as this practice resumes in earnest, Audrey realizes that her new teammates aren’t nearly as good as her previous ones. Yet, somehow, I wonder how stiff the learning curve is for them. A middle schooler who could score decently at the MSNCT is not guaranteed to make the jump to the high school game successfully. You only need to look at some of these “gifted burnouts” who, in middle school, were good, but crashed in high school, Audrey is left wondering whether she is dealing with the warning signs of gifted kid burnout. And back into non-science topics I go, I guess…

At the same time, Pablo seems to be walking on thin ice as a quiz bowler because of the pressures of football.

“It seems like the football season has depleted your energy. However, we have a total of six opportunities to qualify for the HSNCT this season but, obviously, the earlier, the better” Warren tells Pablo after performing at a lower level than what he was used to in the lead-up to last season’s HSNCT.

“The schedule was given out during one of the practices I missed because of football!” Pablo retorts.

Audrey then texts him the schedule of VA’s quiz bowl tournaments for the season, exclusive of the HSNCT. We might take quiz bowl-State for granted, because we can take for granted that we won’t finish Tal Atkins winless, but finishing in the top 15% at any of the six meets can’t be taken for granted, much less 2 squads, Audrey is then reminded of the struggles of the B-team to even qualify for the HSNCT last season.

“Something’s not right: Audrey might have had a dip in performance during and after the basketball state tournament, and Leesville was her worst tournament last season, but I think football has hurt your quiz bowl game! And more than I would like to admit!” Warren voices his concerns over Pablo starting at Tal Atkins.

“I will step up to the plate once the football season ends. If we don’t make the playoffs, this means I will get up to speed by LQBA Fall Invitational South! However, we cannot take the football playoffs for granted!” Pablo seems almost like begging to stay on the A-team.

The following day, before the doubleheader begins, also played to a crowd that’s far larger than usual for a regular season math game, Susan meets with Audrey, near the entrance to the stadium’s locker room:

“So I guess our math season opener being against Lacassine brought you here!” Audrey tells Susan.

“Don’t go around thinking that I play on the math team myself! I had the impression that even Heather would have been a better mathlete, or quiz bowler, than I would be! My English teacher might be willing to coach a quiz bowl team, but we need to see a quiz bowl game for ourselves!” Susan answers the PF. “I kept hearing from Cora and Heather about how you sacrificed half a travel ball season for the quiz bowl national championship!”

“Heather, a quiz bowler? Where would she fit on the Cardinals’ quiz bowl depth chart had she transferred?”

“Heather would start as a quiz bowler from day one, and probably share the spotlight with me, if there even was a quiz bowl spotlight at Lacassine!”

If Susan feels like Heather would be a better quiz bowler than almost everyone on hand at Lacassine, this means that Heather dodged an educational bullet, Audrey ruminates on the implications of Susan’s statements about Heather, implying that Heather would star on the Cardinals’ quiz bowl team as well as its basketball team.

After the tables are set at center field, and enough of them for the math team to line up on it later on, the quiz bowl team gets seated as the principal introduces tonight’s game and the referee, erm, moderator.

“The first quiz bowl game of the night pits Boston Latin against our B-team. And tonight’s referee, Anna Tessier!” the principal announces over the stadium’s PA system, before introducing the players, with Anna reffing the game remotely, like the Wolfpack is playing remotely, too.

“I’m Anna, I spent three years at Venomous Agendas High before transferring to Kinder, I’m currently a junior at the University of Chicago, studying psychology, and I play quiz bowl for the Maroon!” the redhead, another legend of VA quiz bowl, prepares the first packet. “Don’t be alarmed if the questions of tonight’s games actually feel harder than typical high school questions, but sometimes asking the harder questions early can push players harder!”

Here's my chance to show the University of Chicago what I can do away from the court! Audrey psyches herself up, crossing her fingers that she will actually be able to play her best quiz bowl tonight. And treating this game the same as she would have a basketball game with UChicago’s basketball coach watching.

“Tossup one: The Tungusic peoples are native to the vicinity of this Russian city” Anna starts reading the question.

What the hell are the Tungusic peoples? Everyone in the stadium start asking themselves upon hearing this tossup’s first clue. The second clue also causes the players to roll their eyes, which makes reference to that city’s place in Chinese history, and is almost as obscure as the first clue.

“It was the site of Soviet war crimes trials against Japanese Kwantung Army…”

Audrey buzzes in before the third clue is read in full. “Khabarovsk!”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Fifteen” Anna rules.

What the hell are these questions? an alarmed Susan asks herself after seeing Audrey buzz in. Is that what quiz bowl is about? An arms race of writing increasingly obscure questions?

“For ten points each, answer these questions about algebraic rings. This class of Noetherian commutative ring behaves well with respect to the operation of completion and is also universally catenary” Anna reads the first bonus part to a dazed and confused audience.

Damn it! This is so not the kind of things we as mathletes deal with in competitions! Gerard starts sweating for a few seconds, while the other three give up on answering the bonus part. At the same time, the crowd whispers that the packet might be too hard for high schoolers.

At the end of this bonus, where VA somehow manages not to answer a single part correctly, not even the last part, which was still deemed the easiest.

“Nothing for the bonus” Anna’s heart is sinking after seeing the impact of asking questions that are too hard for their own good.

“Anna, if I may, I feel like you might have mixed up packets!” the principal scolds Anna while the second bonus part is read.

“Please stand by while the packets are being substituted; it appears that I’ve read one of the University of Chicago’s packets for the last ACF Nationals!” Anna realizes her error, and instead reads from a vastly different set of questions, and hopefully easier questions.

For the remaining 19 cycles (Anna deemed the first cycle valid) it’s clear that, while the Wolfpack is stronger than this season’s VA B, Audrey is doing everything in her power to keep VA B from being blown out, and is the best player on either side.

Now I see that Audrey could be a fantastic quiz bowler if given the opportunity. She was made to feel like she is just secondary scoring on a stacked team, like last season’s A-team, Pablo sees her dominate a depleted VA team, with only Gerard and her having any actual experience at the high school level. The other two are fresh off middle school, and it shows, scoring only one tossup apiece, and maybe contributing a little on bonuses. Now that’s my Ballista!

“Boston Latin three hundred ninety, Venomous Agendas B two hundred fifty!” Anna announces the final score.

“Now you have a better idea of how it would feel to be playing in the HSNCT playoffs!” Audrey tells the two freshmen on the team.

“You only know about the stresses of such because of the MSNCT, but while the MSNCT might have questions on the level of high school regular season sets, the HSNCT is only a step above novice college tournaments!” Warren warns the freshmen on the team.

“Here’s our chance to avenge this loss at the HSNCT against them!” Lilina yells at her teammates on the A-team.

While the B-team quiz bowlers are sitting on the sidelines, the A-team has one chance to redeem itself from their loss caused by Lilina’s rash neg on the last tossup.

Driven by revenge, Pablo, Nadine and Lilina are all making sure they play their best quiz bowl on a different packet that feels more like a high school packet. A hard one perhaps, but a high school packet nonetheless. The second game of the night begins:

“Here’s tossup one: Ellingham diagrams describe this class of chemical reactions with oxygen in dry environments” Anna reads the first tossup of the second packet.

Myriam buzzes in. “Oxidoreduction!”

“Fifteen. For ten points each, answer these questions about the Scramble for Africa. Which British foreign minister advocated for a “red line” spanning from Egypt to South Africa?”

“Cecil Rhodes” Lilina answers.

“Cecil Rhodes was very popular among the settlers of this region bisected by the Zambezi River” Anna keeps reading.

“Rhodesia”

“Rhodesia was the theater of these wars against the natives, which established British control over south-central Africa”

Not even Lilina could think of an answer to the final bonus part. Everyone on the team seems to draw a blank. And so do the people in the stadium, powerless over the bonus.

“Time, the answer was the Matabele Wars, twenty for the bonus” Anna rules.

Drat! That’s an even harder bonus part than the hardest history bonus I faced when I last played VA in May! The Wolfpack’s history player ruminates in some room on BLS’ campus, and somehow confuses the VAs’ quiz bowl squads. BLS finished tied for eighth, along with VA, at the HSNCT! The Wolfpack’s history player fails to realize that he played VA B, and VA A was the squad that finished eighth at the HSNCT. Probably because that VA B they played had Gerard replaced by Myriam.

But for all players involved, they, too, seem to feel like it’s a repeat of that very game at the HSNCT, only played remotely and VA is the side with the gigantic (by quiz bowl standards) crowd behind them. Which, unfortunately for VA, is of no use, because most of the attendees are clueless about these questions.

Just as clueless as they will be a few minutes from now, when the math game against Lacassine begins. We’ll be demolished at State, let alone the HSNCT! Susan starts wondering whether getting Lacassine to play quiz bowl again is a fool’s errand.

And yet, going into the final regulation tossup, everyone is on edge. Even when BLS, once again, holds the lead. But a 20-point lead this time.

“Tossup twenty: In this fantasy book, a character invokes the “Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time” to condemn one of the four siblings to death” Anna reads, before Nadine presses the buzzer like a syringe.

“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe!” Nadine answers.

“Fifteen. For ten points each…” Anna signals the start of the bonus.

As the Wolfpack prays that VA A doesn’t get any of the bonus parts right, the VAs seem to be on the defensive since they are afraid the bonus they earned will be just as hard as the one VA B heard at the very start of the quiz bowl night, held at the behest of the math team.

And likewise, they feel the crunch after the bonus proves so hard that they fail to answer the first two parts. So when the third and final part comes, they all pray that the final part is actually the easiest to them.

“Rome started fining people who sit on its Spanish Steps to help fund repairs caused by this phenomenon” Anna reads the final bonus part.

They feel the clock ticking in on them, but while the Spanish Steps aren’t quite as well-known as the Colosseum, in Pablo’s mind, it sounded like a tourist trap. The Spanish Steps must have had a lot of foot traffic if the City of Rome had to fine people sitting on these specifically to fund repairs to it! He starts ruminating before he can hazard an answer.

“Overtourism!” Pablo shakes in his seat, feeling like the crowd has his eyes on him.

“Ten on the bonus, and that’s the game. Venomous Agendas A win, three hundred forty to three hundred thirty-five!”

As the team returns to the locker room, Gerard, Lilina and Myriam get ready to play their math game against Lacassine.

“I’m glad you played your best tonight. However, when football is in season, it seems like quiz bowl is the only time where we can be together, except maybe for schoolwork or weight room sessions!” Pablo tells Audrey.

“If we have coursework to do together. By now you have realized that it’s like day and night for me compared to last season, and I’m forced to buzz in a lot more tonight than I had in previous years” Audrey then kisses him.

“We’ll probably never play a quiz bowl game to this many people again”

And, of course, Lacassine’s math team is getting into position for their first-round game in the Math Madness. About how Lacassine, who’s supposedly the other mathletic powerhouse of the state, is led by a tenth grader called Blythe.

Meanwhile, Nadine leaves the stadium to get ice cream at the supermarket for the quiz bowl and math teams, while the rest of the town’s math team supporters are in awe in the highly competitive level of play of both teams.

And yet, because Trillian seems to play better than even much older Gerard and Lilina. However, Lilina has the excuse of being a rookie as a mathlete, so she wasn’t held to the same standard by the town as such.

Yet, somehow, Trillian scores a perfect 8/8, much like Myriam. And Blythe, too. In the end, after keeping quiet because of the crowd’s powerlessness over the questions, Trillian appears to have captured the hearts and minds of the locals in her debut as a VA.

In the end, after the result of the game is announced, the VA fans, which form almost the entirety of the crowd, the crowd had one thing to say as both teams retreat to their locker rooms. And, from there, home.

“Trillian! Trillian!” the crowd chants as they get to the field to see their math team winning.

"Way to go, Trillian!" Myriam then tries to encourage Trillian after this strong showing during that game, under the crowd's chants of Trillian! Trillian!

It is then that Nadine returns to the stadium with a tub of mint and chocolate ice cream in tow for the quiz bowl team. And some plastic spoons to scoop up their cones of ice cream, so they could eat their sweet vengeance.

“This is sweet vengeance for that game at the HSNCT!” Nadine serves the first cone for the team, followed by Pablo.

After they take their ice cream cones, Lilina and Myriam feel their foreheads cool down.