The next morning dawned over Royale City with a patriotic blush of maple-coloured sunlight. Parade music drifted faintly through the air—though no one could say quite from where—and a flock of clockwork geese performed a synchronized salute outside MONARCH Headquarters before resuming their slow surveillance glide over Moosie Lane.
Inside MONARCH HQ, beneath vaulted stone archways, polished mahogany beams, and the ever-present undertone of distant syrup distillation, the War Room glowed with tactical elegance.
A globe in the corner hummed quietly as its internal light rotated behind an aged parchment map, casting shifting shadows of British Columbia across the wall like a topographical prayer. Rotary phones buzzed in harmony with the clatter of coded chatter. Somewhere, a typewriter clicked with the ferocity of a nervous poet.
At the centre of it all stood Assistant Director Banks, calm as a chessboard mid-match. Her slate-grey suit was crisp enough to etch granite. Her expression hadn’t cracked since 1987. The only items on her desk: a half-finished cup of lukewarm coffee, and a stack of dossiers stamped URGENT...ish.
She looked up.
Slowly.
The team entered.
Or rather... stumbled in.
Redd marched first, boots thudding heavily and leaving a faint trail of pumpkin pulp across the parquet floor. His toque was tucked under one arm like a ceremonial helmet, and the air around him shimmered with heroic intent and faint nutmeg.
Squire trailed behind, hay in his hair and the lingering scent of warm cider clinging to him like remorse in flannel form.
Big Joe ambled through the side entrance, entirely unbothered. He paused at the mission map. Then, very deliberately, took a suspiciously large bite out of its lower corner.
And then there was Soash.
He sauntered in with his usual bravado — one sleeve of his velvet jacket singed, the other bedazzled with glitter, hay, and what might have been candy corn or party shrapnel. His grin was unbothered. His hair, defying both physics and recent explosions, still had volume.
“Reporting for debrief, darling Banks,” he declared, bowing deeply — as if the War Room were a ballroom and she a duchess awaiting a dance. “The witch is foiled, the patch is secure, and I — once again — am tragically underappreciated.”
“Mm.” Banks didn’t look up. She didn’t have to. “And yet, once again, you’ve turned a simple recon op into what local radio is now calling ‘The Royale Rumpus.’ Congratulations.”
She tapped a file with one long, immaculately kept finger.
“The phrase ‘Pumpkin Fiasco’ has officially overtaken ‘budgetary discretion’ in today’s press clippings.”
Squire raised a cautious hand.
“To be fair, ma’am… the witch was OGRE.”
Banks turned slowly and gave him the kind of stare that could silence bagpipes.
“Is that supposed to reassure me?”
Big Joe sneezed.
A single seed shot across the room and plopped directly into her coffee cup.
She sighed.
Big Joe smiled.
Without a word, Banks reached beside her desk and flipped a brass-handled switch on a panel labelled CRITICAL PROVINCIAL SITUATIONS.
The globe in the corner flickered to life—not with holograms, but from a dusty slide projector rigged behind it. A series of red pins began to glow faintly from within, illuminating a troubled cluster around Vancouver Island.
The mood shifted at once.
“Enough with the fall festivals,” Banks said, her voice cool and clipped as an October wind.
“We’ve got a real problem. And I need every last one of you—yes, even you, Soash—to take this seriously.”
Soash straightened. Or at least adjusted his posture to appear artistically serious.
“I can try,” he said. “But I warn you: my default setting is dazzling.”
“Sit.”
And just like that, the next mission began.
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“I’ve just had a deeply disturbing phone call,” said Assistant Director Banks, folding her arms with the finality of a courtroom gavel.
The team stiffened. Every agent in the War Room braced instinctively, like squirrels spotting a snowplow.
“From Mr. Thorne.”
The OGRE COO.
A collective shudder rippled across the room like a prairie blizzard. Even the lights flickered, as if the wiring itself had heard that name before and wanted no part of it.
Redd inhaled sharply. Sandy made a face like she’d just stepped in something bureaucratically foul. Squire leaned forward, half-curious, half-panicked.
Only Soash remained unaffected—leaning back in his chair, legs crossed, sunglasses firmly in place, humming the theme song to one of his own unauthorized memoirs. His smile was smug, nostalgic, and undeserved in a way only available to men who’d once parachuted into a garden party by mistake and somehow turned it into a diplomatic success.
Big Joe, oblivious to executive politics, was nudging a rubber ball across the parquet floor with his antler. Each time it rolled, he blinked in awe, as though rediscovering Newtonian physics one gentle push at a time.
Banks continued.
The Dominion Bowl,” she said — pausing just long enough for the room to hold its breath — “is cancelled.”
A beat.
“Or should be. Or will be. Or... might be.”
Redd’s jaw hit the desk like a falling axe.
“Canada’s greatest sporting tradition? Nay—the world’s?! Cancelled?! Because of OGRE?!” He rose to his full patriotic height, chest puffed like a ceremonial parade goose. “This is no time for hesitation! I shall march directly to OGRE Tower and push it over! Let’s see how their precious air conditioning fares beneath the boot of JUSTICE!”
Squire raised a hesitant hand. “Technically, sir, OGRE Tower is built on hydraulic—”
“Exactly!” roared Redd. “A squishy foundation—just like their ethics!”
Squire glanced at Sandy, then back at Redd, eyes wide. “Uh... is this a new phase, or...?”
Sandy didn’t blink. “This might be the first time he’s proposed actual building destruction,” she muttered. “We may need to log that under ‘escalated metaphors made real.’”
Soash lowered his sunglasses slightly, raising one eyebrow. “Well. Someone’s syrup bottle just boiled over.”
Even Big Joe stopped nudging his ball. He blinked once. Twice. Then slowly shuffled behind a potted fern.
Banks didn’t flinch. She just stared at Redd like someone watching a weather report that called for patriotic thunderstorms and parade-float hail.
This wasn’t new. This wasn’t even unusual.
She didn’t look annoyed.
“Let’s put that in the maybe pile,” she said crisply.
Then she turned back to the war table with the calm of someone used to filing skyscraper-toppling plans under ‘Miscellaneous.’
“OGRE,” she continued, “has acquired the stadium through what appears to be... legally binding community partnership paperwork. Filed under something called ‘Heritage Athletic Synergy.’”
There was silence as they took it in.
Sandy squinted. “That’s not real.”
Banks reached across the table and held up a laminated clause from the MONARCH bylaws—complete with OGRE’s corporate logo, two gold stars, and an official-looking coffee ring.
“Unfortunately, it is,” she said. “Recognized. Ratified. And—thanks to a 1962 amendment—eligible for commemorative postage.”
“So they’re running the whole thing?” Sandy asked, arms folded like steel cables wrapped in skepticism.
Banks nodded grimly. “Event management. Broadcast rights. Mascot selection.”
Big Joe grunted. Low. Ominous.
“But,” Squire said, his voice tilting upward with desperate optimism, “there’s a loophole. There’s always a loophole.”
“There is,” Banks confirmed.
She bent down and, with a sound like a crypt being opened, hoisted a tome from beneath the table. It landed with a thud that could register on seismographs. The cover read:
Dominion Bowl? Operational Guidelines
Revised 1930. Unchanged Since.
“The King,” she said, “has taken... an interest.”
Eyebrows rose like flags at a sunrise.
“OGRE, for the sake of optics, has agreed to a trial run of the day’s events. A full-dress rehearsal. We provide oversight. If any part fails to meet official standards—” she tapped the book—“we can shut the whole thing down.”
“You’ll stage a football match,” she continued, matter-of-fact. “Here in Royale City. Two teams of junior agents.”
She turned to the whiteboard. On it, neatly stencilled in permanent marker:
Team Dominion
Team Maple Might
“Redd and Squire, you’ll coach Team Dominion. Soash, Sandy—you’re Team Maple Might.”
Sandy didn’t even blink. “Oh good,” she said flatly. “The battle of unqualified enthusiasm versus me... babysitting Soash. Again.”
Big Joe nudged his rubber ball. It rolled across the floor.
He gasped.
And Banks, not missing a beat, added, “Big Joe—you’ve been specially requested by OGRE to serve as the game’s official referee.”
Big Joe froze. The ball rolled gently into the corner.
He gasped again. Louder. More awestruck.
“Questions?” Banks asked crisply—already knowing that questions weren’t the problem.
Everything else was.