Prologue : The Owners’ Table
Six Months Later
Episode: The Owners' Table
Six months after the final horn of the basketball championship, the Colosseum still carried the faint echo of confetti and celebration. The checkered court remained, the golden dragons still watched from the upper tiers, and the New Jerusalem Parkers were still champions. But no second basketball season had been scheduled. The league office had gone quiet on the subject. Something else was already taking shape.
On a bright morning in the high executive tower that overlooked the Colosseum grounds, the people who actually ran the association gathered in the main owner's conference room.
The long table was already cluttered with tablets, half-empty coffee cups, and a single glowing holographic display that currently showed nothing but a blank field labeled NEW COMPETITIVE STRUCTURE — DRAFT.
Aman sat at the head of the table, fingers steepled. Chiyō Parker leaned back in his chair with the restless energy of a man who had been waiting for this conversation for weeks. Noriko Parker sat with perfect posture, stylus already tapping against her tablet. Jericho occupied the seat nearest the window, arms crossed, expression unreadable but attentive. Several other franchise stakeholders and senior operators filled the remaining chairs—voices that carried weight across both New Heaven and New Earth.
Aman cleared his throat.
"All right. No more circling it. We've delayed long enough. Basketball gave us a championship and a year of chaos. It also gave us proof that the talent pool in the afterlife is deep enough to sustain something bigger. I'm putting it on the table: we build a new league. Full-contact. Structured. Professional. American football rules. Not a tournament. A season."
Chiyō sat forward so fast his chair scraped. "Finally. I've been waiting for someone to say it out loud."
Noriko raised an eyebrow. "You're excited. That's rare."
"I'm excited because it makes sense," Chiyō shot back. "Basketball was beautiful, but it was also... contained. Eleven on the floor at once? Pads? Real trenches? Strategy that doesn't live and die on one man's midrange? That's a different animal. And every single one of us at this table has wanted to play, not just own."
A low murmur of agreement moved around the table.
Jericho spoke for the first time. "You're talking about a full professional structure. Preseason. Regular season. Playoffs. Rosters of fifty-three. Eleven on the field. Separate offensive, defensive, and special-teams units. That's not a weekend event. That's a second life for this association."
"Exactly," Aman said. "And we're not calling it anything that already exists in the old world. This is ours. New Heaven. New Earth. New Jerusalem. One league. Multiple franchises. We pull talent from every city that wants to compete."
One of the senior operators from the New Heaven side leaned in. "And the owners? We're not just writing checks this time."
Chiyō grinned. "We play. Every owner who wants a helmet gets one. I'm already claiming a roster spot in New Jerusalem. Noriko too. Aman, you're not sitting in a box watching. You're on the field."
Aman actually laughed. "I haven't padded up in longer than I care to admit. But yes. If we're doing this, we're doing it with skin in the game."
Noriko scrolled through a preliminary document. "Roster size: fifty-three active. Eleven on the field. Starting quarterback stays the quarterback—no gimmick rotations. We'll need full offensive and defensive depth charts, special teams, practice squads eventually. Training camps. Real preseason. Then a full regular season. Then playoffs. The structure has to feel legitimate or the cities won't buy in."
Jericho nodded slowly. "The Colosseum can be converted. We already proved the ground can hold high-level competition. Other cities will need to upgrade or build. That's a logistics problem, not a dream problem."
A woman from the New Earth contingent spoke up. "Recruitment. How do we fill fifty-three-man rosters across multiple franchises without descending into chaos?"
Chiyō's eyes lit up. "We send invitations. Formal ones. Not emails. Not group messages. Physical letters. The kind that feel like an event when you open them. We identify the people we want—proven competitors from the basketball season, new talent from both New Heaven and New Earth, anyone who's been waiting for a different kind of war. We invite them the way you'd invite someone to something that actually matters."
Noriko smiled for the first time. "Like a summons. Clean. Official. Exciting."
"Exactly," Chiyō said. "We don't beg. We invite. And we make the invitation feel like the beginning of something historic."
The conversation accelerated.
They argued about conference alignment.
They argued about how many teams the first season could realistically support.
They argued about whether owners should be allowed to start or whether they should earn their snaps in camp.
They laughed about who would be the first to get folded on a blitz.
They went silent for a few seconds when someone pointed out that the physicality would be real—real enough that the medical staff would need to be expanded immediately.
Through it all, the core idea never wobbled. By the second hour the blank holographic field had filled with bullet points:
• League-wide professional American football structure
• 53-man rosters
• 11 players on the field
• Distinct offensive, defensive, and special-teams units
• Preseason / Regular Season / Playoffs
• Talent drawn from New Heaven, New Earth, and New Jerusalem
• Owners eligible and expected to participate as players if they choose
Aman finally leaned back.
"Then we're doing it. No second basketball season this cycle. We pour everything into football. We build the league. We fill the rosters. We send the letters."
Chiyō was already opening a new document. "New Jerusalem's franchise name while we're at it. We're not calling it the Parkers. That was basketball. This needs its own identity."
Noriko spoke before anyone else could. "Guardian Angels."
The table went quiet for a beat.
Jericho repeated it under his breath, testing the weight. "New Jerusalem Guardian Angels."
Aman nodded once. "That'll work."
Chiyō typed it in. The words appeared on the main display in clean gold lettering:
NEW JERUSALEM GUARDIAN ANGELS
Beneath it, the first official roster began to populate with names everyone in the room already knew by heart:
Amin Parker
Mary Parker
Prince Parker
Rasheem Parker
Princess Parker
Cassandra Brown
Amirah Campbell
Ameer Chambers
Nysir Parker
...and the rest of the fifty-three, including the owners themselves, the extended family, the complicated relationships, and the new names that had been waiting for a different kind of stage.
Aman stood.
"Draft the invitations. Make them feel like an event. We send them across New Heaven, New Earth, and right here in New Jerusalem. Anyone who receives one will understand exactly what they're being asked to join."
Chiyō was already smiling like a man who had just been handed a new war.
"Super Smash style," he said. "You're invited. Show up ready."
Noriko closed her tablet. "I'll handle the formal language. Jericho, you'll want input on the competitive standards before the letters go out."
Jericho inclined his head. "You'll have it by morning."
The meeting did not so much end as transform into motion. Chairs scraped. Conversations split into smaller, faster groups. The holographic display continued to glow with the new league's first concrete shape.
Six months after the basketball championship, the association had chosen its next battlefield.
Not a second season of what they already knew.
Something heavier.
Something with pads and trenches and eleven bodies on each side of the ball.
Something that would demand every name on a fifty-three-man roster.
And in New Jerusalem, the franchise that would carry the city's hopes already had its name and its first official list of souls.
The New Jerusalem Guardian Angels.
The letters would go out within the week.
The afterlife was about to learn a different kind of game.
