The Breaking Point

Epilogue

"This one's yours, Jude," the driver announced, parking outside a large mansion.

Jude heaved his bag off the floor and walked down the caravan's aisle. A gentle tug on his cape stopped him from exiting. He turned to face his sister and leaned in to whisper, "It's OK Celia, I'll ask my father if you can stay with us for a while, OK? But you have to do me a favor and wait. The second he says 'yes', I'll come and pick you up."

Celia's arms flapped around her brother and she smiled. "OK, Jude."

Celia let go and watched her brother step off the bus, walk up to the door, and unlock it. He entered and dragged his bag all the way to his room.

If Jude was in his normal state, unpacking would have been his top priority but now, he decided that requesting his sister's stay would be of more importance.

He dumped his bag on the couch and jogged out of his room. He walked down the hall his father's office was located in. The door was slightly ajar but Jude was still polite enough to knock. He raised his fist to the door but a strange sentence stopped him before he could bang on the wood.

 "They've fallen in the trap."

The voice wasn't his father's so he assumed the man was talking on the phone. He turned to leave with the intention of returning later; but the next sentence stopped him dead in his tracks.

"They've lost that precious striker of theirs."

Jude knew it was Axel immediately. He wasn't ever the nosy type but that was beyond suspicious. Of course, his father could just be talking to Coach Travis, but the voice on the other line was too squeaky. Not to mention, what 'trap' would their coach be talking about?

He leaned closer to the door, careful not to make a single sound. He could make out two voices: that of the other man, who talked mostly; and that of his father, giving small, short responses.

"I'll tell you, it didn't go as planned. Originally, Mr. Garshield wanted to injure a random player on Mark's team and then kidnap him once he fell in hospital. This ended up being Axel, although we originally planned on performing the injury during extra time. The Kingdom's new moves had all been tested to make them 65% stronger and more dangerous so that Mac Ronejo would simply have to 'miss' his shot and have the ball hit any random player in Inazuma Japan. Then after, said player was hospitalized, we'd kidnap him. The first part of the plan went unexpectedly well. However, Mr. Garshield was hoping to have them search for their friend in the Liacott Islands but they mistakenly assumed their friend was dead. No problem, though. We've always had backups for these types of incidents. We just decided to transfer the whole program to Japan."

"So the striker isn't dead?"

"Indeed. Some of Mr. Garshield's men disguised themselves as nurses and kidnapped him from the hospital. He'll be arriving in Japan very soon."

"What if they find out?"

"They won't. We have everything planned out carefully. There's a boy on their team-well not exactly on the team, more like accompanying them, by the name of Willy Glass. He's aiding us. He managed to leak in a lot of the team's info. He had most of their matches recorded and sent us the files. Our researchers have used this information to devise the plan used against Inazuma Japan in their recent match."

"Alright, what should I do?"

"We're going to bring Evans down the hard way. We'll make him as weak as possible and then challenge him to a rematch. Mr. Garshield refused to take the tie and he still wants revenge on the boy. If we let him touch his limit, he won't be able to play and his team will lose. Inazuma Japan lost to Argentina's Empire last year because of his absence."