This was originally written for /r/HFY. Including a literal translation of ‘u mad bro’ was a touch I liked, but butchering the title’s grammar, I’m not so proud of. If I were writing this story now, I’d write the entire thing in Latin, and it would take me ten years and I’d never publish it.

The Big Kid On Our Team, or Liberi Magni in Gregis Nostris

When I was seven, I would play kickball after school just about every day in the big field behind Nick’s house, with Kevin and Jimmy and half the rest of the 2nd grade class. And the most fun games were always when there was a big kid on the team. My mom would pick me up most of the time, but once in a while she couldn’t and my older brother Stephen would come by. And sometimes, we could talk him into playing for an inning or two. Those were the best games. Everybody would back wayyyy up and even still, they’d almost never catch the ball before the first bounce. Good times. __

< 2GunBergstresser has joined the White Team. >
< 2GunBergstresser conducebatur Albatum. >
xX_InFeRnO_Xx: LUDES ME!
xX_InFeRnO_Xx: (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)
ArmaV1rumque: @xX_InFeRnO_Xx Esne iratus, fra? (✿◠‿◠)
Ciceroni: inrideo
2GunBergstresser: gl everybody
2GunBergstresser: and maybe save some combat for the red team
< J0hann1sDunsSc0tus has joined the White Team. >
< J0hann1sDunsSc0tus conducebatur Albatum. >
J0hann1sDunsSc0tus: Albati regnebimus!
__

We stopped having free time after school when the Peregrini showed up. School itself was touch-and-go for a bit, what with nobody sure whether the world was about to end or society about to be upheaved or if the Peregrini were about to break out the cookbooks and announce that they were ready to serve. Crop circle abduction stories became super popular, and nobody’s parents would let us play outside for a few years. Things have calmed down considerably since then, thank goodness, but things never got entirely back to normal. __

< The game will start in 1 minute. Please elect a team captain. >
< Alea incipet in una minuta. Sodes allege centurionem Albati. >
Ciceroni: Scio qui allegam.
ArmaV1rumque: Allegere 2Gun!
< PlenaMetAlchimista has joined the White Team. >
< PlenaMetAlchimista conducebatur Albatum. >
xX_InFeRnO_Xx: allegere 2GunBergstresser!
xX_InFeRnO_Xx: In hoc viro Terrae vinces.
PlenaMetAlchimista: *vincemus
< 2GunBergstresser has been elected captain of the White Team. >
< 2GunBergstresser allegebar centurionem Albati. >
2GunBergstresser: gratias tibi ago, u guys.
__

It’s been a dozen years since Slab Day, and the Peregrini turned out to be pretty friendly on the whole. The giant orbital slab with all of the celtic knots and sine waves was a hologram; true FTL still looks like it’s impossible, but a loophole lets them (and us, now) send small numbers of photons at superluminary speeds to different parts of the universe. Once we translated their math and physics and built a few dozen cross-planetary fiber optic cables, contact went about as smoothly as anybody could have hoped. We can’t compete with each other for resources or physical space or currency, and we’re not actually able to kill each other (though that hasn’t stopped some people and some Peregrini from doing their level best), and we have the Internet, so while the philosophers and politicians and scientists haven’t stopped running around like chickens with their heads cut off, the rest of us by and large are getting along. Their physics is at least a hundred years ahead of ours, but Earth was way ahead in some other ways. The Peregrini absolutely LOVE Latin. Nobody quite knows why, but that gave us a common language. Sort of. And their video games were Pong level, at best. They sunk a decent fraction of their entire GDP into silicon nanolithography research just so their computers could run our stuff. And they’re still not quite as good at gaming as we are. __

< The game will start in 5 seconds. >
< Alea incipet in 5 secundae pars minuta. >
< 5 >
2GunBergstresser: gl
ArmaV1rumque: uf
< 4 >
Ciceroni: uf
< 3 >
xX_InFeRnO_Xx: uf
PlenaMetAlchimista: uf
< 2 >
2GunBergstresser: we got this
J0hann1sDunsSc0tus: uf
< 1 >
< Starting… >
< Incipit… >
__

You know, I misspoke earlier, when I say that the most fun games were the ones where there was a big kid on the team. It was true, but not quite sufficient. This one time, my brother showed up at the same time Kevin’s brother Kyle did, and we talked both of them into sticking around for a bit. We had to spend fifteen minutes getting the ball out of the outfield tree branches that Kyle kicked it into, but that just made it better, and the fact that Stephen could lift me high enough to grab the lowest branch helped out a lot.

The best game of kickball I ever played was the one where both teams had a big kid on it.

I’m looking at Red Team’s roster, and their team captain’s name is HandBasketCase. Which doesn’t sound like Latin to me. __

< The game has started! >
< Alea iacta est! >
__

This is going to be fun.