A resort had been booked out for both teams to stay in, but it would be around an hour and a half's bus ride from the airport in Perth. However, being in a city that most of them had never visited meant no one minded the drive. Everything was new and exciting. Kun and Jordyn, after chatting for a while on the plane and watching "Rise of the Guardians" together, had both fallen asleep. Later on, Jordyn had been editing her photos once again, and Kun hadn't liked to disturb her from her work. Once they were on the bus however, everyone was feeling talkative.
"That movie was actually kinda funny," said Jordyn, realising they hadn't discussed it much before falling asleep.
"It was," Kun agreed, smiling. "I love the Santa, what's his name again?"
"North, I think," supplied Jordyn.
"Yeah that's it," the Argentine nodded. "It's so dumb but it's funny."
"I thought you'd like it, I know you like silly things," Jordyn grinned.
"What does that say about you then?" He smirked.
Jordyn rolled her eyes at him playfully.
"I'm silly too I guess. Do you think it will be weird spending so much time with the Liverpool squad?"
"Well not for you, you know them through your brother, I would assume."
"I do," she nodded, "but I mean for the rest of you?"
"I think we'll be fine," he smiled. "It's a big group of people who love football all together, what could go wrong?"
"I could think of a few things," Jordyn smiled. "You ready for the beach tomorrow?"
"Of course, I love the ocean," he nodded. "The waterways in Australia are mostly very beautiful, from what I've heard. In Argentina there is so much pollution, it makes me sad. That's why I think this 'Waters of Healing' mission is so important. I want it to be just as big in South America one day."
His eyes sparkled with passion as he spoke, and Jordyn nodded seriously.
"Brazil is very similar. Maybe you can promote it there yourself one day," she mused. "You'd have a lot of influence in Argentina, right?"
"Sort of," he nodded. "Our government is so corrupt though. But I want to try."
"It's a good passion to have," she told him. "I'd love to be able do something for Brazil... there are out of control fires burning down the beautiful Amazon rainforest, which is so important for human life on this planet. But the government don't care, because they can farm the land and mine the resources and make money."
"It's sad isn't it," Kun nodded. "One step at a time, I guess."
They arrived at the resort, a circular, sandy coloured building which was essentially a ring of units with two swimming pools in the middle, tennis courts, mini golf, spas and saunas. The Liverpool squad hadn't arrived yet, so it was quiet and peaceful. Everyone, of course, wanted to jump in the pool immediately, but Pep sent the lot of them to unpack and go to bed.
"Do you know how late it is here?" He said. "You need to adjust to the timezone as soon as possible, we're jumping straight into activities tomorrow. I want you out here in the lounge by 9am tomorrow morning, okay?"
Everyone reluctantly dispersed to their individual appartments. The units were in groups of four, each group defined by the central staircase that wound past each room. Jordyn was in the same group as Sergio, Gabi and Raheem, and the four of them made their way up the stairs a little sleepily, before parting ways.
Jordyn was awoken at half past seven by Kun and Raheem.
"Gabi's still asleep, we want to prank him, can you come take photos?"
"What?" Jordyn mumbled sleepily, rubbing her eyes, and trying to focus on Raheem, who had spoken. "How did you guys get in here, anyway?"
Raheem repeated his statement, ignoring her question, and Jordyn finally understood.
"Oh yeah, let me get dressed and grab my camera," she grinned. The Brazilian was always up for a prank. She shooed the two of them out of her room, and dressed in a pair of swim shorts and her City polo shirt. She slipped on her flip flops, and then went out to the living area, where her camera was plugged in, charging. She picked it up and put in a new card, before turning to Raheem and Kun, who were waiting excitedly.
"Alright," she nodded. "Lead the way."
The three plotters made their way into Gabi's unit, and Jordyn could see he was still fast asleep. She took a few shots of her fellow Brazilian's sleeping form, and a few of Raheem and Kun pulling faces beside him. Then watched as they took a bucket from the bathroom, filled it up with water, and poured it over his head.
"Good morning!" Kun yelled at him, as he awoke with a jump.
"Aaah!" Gabi exclaimed, suddenly wrenched from his dreams.
He glared at the two of them, and then at Jordyn, who was laughing just as much.
"You don't know what you've started!" He said adamantly, "This means war!"
"We love a prank war," Jordyn grinned.
"Let me see the photos!" Said Raheem, coming over to peer over her shoulder at the camera. The other two crowded around as well, as she clicked through them.
"Brilliant," Gabi muttered.
"They really are," Kun grinned, giving Jordyn a quick hug. "Thank you Jordyn."
"You're welcome," she returned his grin cheekily. "Now I really need some breakfast."
"A couple of the guys are on it out at the barbecues," said Kun. "What do you want? There's sausages, bacon, eggs, fruit... all sorts of stuff."
"Wow, really?" Said Gabi, perking up. "Lets go then!"
"Put some clothes on first Gab," Raheem laughed, gesturing to his pyjama shorts with Brazilian flags all over them. Gabi pouted.
"Alright," he conceded. "Wait for me."
Once Gabi was ready, the four of them made their way down to breakfast to greet the others. By this time they had fifteen minutes before they needed to head up to the lounge at 9am, but there was still plenty of food available. The morning was pleasantly warm, and the team sat around the outdoor eating area by the pool, discussing what they thought they'd be doing today. The Liverpool squad had arrived late last night, and were enjoying breakfast with the others. Jordyn greeted her brother happily, and he gave her a warm smile.
"It's been a while since I last saw you," he said. "You had a good flight?"
"Yeah, really good," she nodded. "You?"
"Yeah, slept the whole way," he smiled.
"Hey Jordyn!" Trent Alexander-Arnold and Joe Gomez joined the Van Dijk siblings. "How's Manchester?"
"Cold and rainy," the Brazilian shrugged, with a smile. "Who cares, we're in Australia and it's summer!"
"You're right about that," said Trent. "Hey, take a photo of us here?"
"I don't have to, I'm not your photographer," she poked her tongue out at the scouser cheekily.
"No, you're ours now," said Kun, appearing behind Jordyn and slinging an arm casually over her shoulders.
She laughed, turning to meet his gaze.
"You want a photo too?"
"Yeah, me and Nico," he said, giving her puppy dog eyes.
"Okay then," she said, smiling at him.
"You're in high demand, apparently," Virgil grinned at his sister.
He wasn't blind to the fact that Kun and Jordyn fancied each other just a bit, and it wasn't the first time he'd noticed it. He was like any other older brother, naturally a little cautious, but preferred to let Jordyn handle it by herself unless she decided she wanted his advice. It had crossed his mind that the two could be soul mates, but he hoped his sister wouldn't do anything silly before she knew for sure. It was uncommon, but some people did chose to pursue a relationship with someone who was not their soulmate. However, if you were already in a relationship before knowing, finding out that your soulmate is someone else could cause heart break and emotional trauma. It was a delicate business.
Before long it was time to go, and after slipping upstairs to retrieve the rest of her camera gear, Jordyn joined the rest of the two teams in the lounge. Pep was excited, that was easy to tell. He bounced impatiently on the balls of his feet as he waited for the stragglers to show up, and Klopp was grinning as the two discussed something together eagerly.
"I wonder what two massive intellects like them are discussing?" Mused Jordyn, watching the two of them.
"Probably talking about what they had for breakfast," said Kun, with a smirk. "Don't give them so much credit."
"Sorry for having respect for my boss," she retorted, but Kun only grinned at her.
"Alright, listen up everybody!" A male Australian accent spoke from the front of the room, and everyone turned to see the tall, brown haired youth with skin tanned from the sun. "My name is Dan, I lead the 'Waters of Healing' foundation with my two brothers and one sister who you'll meet later on today, but it is a real honour to meet you guys as well, especially the Liverpool players," he winked, as everyone laughed. "Sorry, City, you guys will meet my other siblings in a bit, the eldest and youngest are City fans. Anyway, hope you've all had a good morning so far?"
There was a general consensus of noise indicating that yes, they had.
"We're going to be heading down to the beach in a bit, today we are shooting a few short clips we'll be able to use to promote what we're doing here, but you are on holiday of course, so the rest of the day is yours! We'll explain everything a little more once we get down there, but for now, the beach is walking distance, just down the road, so I'll speak with your managers here and then when you're all ready I'll lead the way."
It was a two minute walk to the beach, although it took a little longer than two minutes to get two teams of footballers organised, but eventually they arrived at the expanse of white sands, and green ocean that was Silver Sands Beach. There was a series of pavilions set up for them where they were able to place down their bags. It seemed a little weird seeing the mix of sky blue polos with dark red ones, Jordyn thought, but figured she'd get used to it. She'd somehow been lucky enough to have her brother's team here with her team, and she wasn't complaining. She'd missed Virgil since she'd moved to Manchester for work.
Dan introduced the teams to his three siblings. The eldest was the only girl, a short blonde haired blue eyed girl named Natalie, who was wearing a City kit. The two youngest were both boys, the elder named Philip, with brown hair, freckles, and a Liverpool kit, and the younger with the same complexion and taste in football teams as his sister, who's name was Jonah. Natalie explained their idea for the day.
"We're going to split you into groups to create a series of video clips that we can use to promote our organisation. We're looking for a fair bit of input for you guys as well, we have the basic idea for each clip but we're hoping you will be able to flesh it out a bit. Some of them involve challenges we want the people who watch the videos to get involved in, some of them are more about raising awareness regarding the importance of saving water. In our country in Australia it's obviously very dry, and particularly here on the west coast there's a lot of advertising focussed around that, but in other parts of the world it's not such a big issue, and we want to change that."
"Having clean water to drink and to clean with is something we quite often take for granted, I think," said Philip, "But there are places in the world where water is so scarce that it is under military control, and the people who live there receive water rations per day. We actually use more water than they get per day just to flush the toilet once, which is scary to think about."
"Anyway," said Natalie, with a smile, "Today is about having fun, you guys are on holiday as well so once you've completed your promotional video and filmed it you have the day to yourselves, so let's get started!"
"Oh, and before we forget," said Jonah, "Can I have the photographers with me please, if you guys don't mind? We'd love to have your help."
Jordyn joined Jonah over to one side, along with Liverpool's photographer, a young girl around Jordyn's age named Lia. They left the players to be divided into groups by Dan, Philip and Natalie. Once the three of them were acquainted, and Jonah had gotten over the fact that Virgil Van Dijk's sister was Manchester City's photographer, he gave them a brief overview of their task for the day.
"If you two could help us to film the clips, that would be very helpful," he said. "We've got a few different camera angles to work with. Jordyn, if you could work with the close up shots, and Lia, you can follow the action with yours. We'll have a stationary camera set up at the front, and I'll be using the drone to capture aerial footage. Sound good?"
"Sounds good," Jordyn nodded, glancing briefly at Lia, who was also nodding in agreement.
"Awesome," said Jonah, smiling at the two girls. "Thanks for your help. I'm just going to get the drone set up, I'll leave you to play around with the cameras we're recording with to get the hang of them."
The morning was spent filming, and Jordyn, Lia and Jonah discovered they made a great team. They got into a rhythm with their project. As each new group arrived to shoot their video clip, they'd work through the storyline with the players, and Natalie who had written each of the plot lines, and decide how they wanted to film it. Then they'd try to get it done with as few takes as possible. This was the biggest challenge, especially when Bobby Firmino and Ederson couldn't stop laughing at each other every time the cameras were turned on them. They'd ended up taking five minutes to calm down, because by that time everybody else was laughing with them. Jordyn noticed that Lia and Leroy Sané seemed to be pretty close, and it was kinda cute how he'd turn to see if she was watching every time he did something cool with the football, or how he wanted to see her photos, and compliment her on them. Lia had a visible soul mark on her arm already, but Jordyn was unable to see if Leroy had one as well. She resolved to ask the girl about it later, wondering how Liverpool's photographer and Man City's winger ended up being so close. All in all, it was a pleasant atmosphere, the sun was just starting to really heat up, and it made the water seem beautifully cool.
The final group to shoot their video was Gabriel Jesus, Raheem Sterling, Sergio Agüero, Virgil Van Dijk, Joe Gomez, and Trent Alexander-Arnold. Theirs involved playing keepy ups with a plastic drink bottle. During the editing process later on, labels would be added to the drink bottles to convey the message.
"We've pretty much got Gabi starting us off, he picks up the bottle high up on the beach, and starts playing keepy ups," Raheem explained.
"Then Gabi passes it out of shot to the left, and then we cut to Raz receiving it in from the right a little further down," Virg added, "And so it continues."
"We have Virg and Kun scuffling for it at one point," Joe said, nodding to the two of them. "That should require no acting ability on their part. And then eventually Trent receives it, and he's in the water. He opens it and drinks the water."
"That sounds cool," nodded Jonah.
"The message we're going to have will be something to the effect of keeping the water alive, kinda like not letting the ball drop," said Natalie. "Other people can add to the challenge by taking a video receiving their own drink bottle in from the left and passing it out to the right, we're hoping that if people get on board with it we can make a compilation of them on our channel one day."
"I think we're going to need another pair of hands for this," said Jonah. "Since your shot is so spread out, it might work well to have someone in the water with Trent. Have we got a camera that can handle moisture?"
"I've got one in the bag up there," said Natalie. "I'll go and grab it."
"Harmony could film that part," suggested Lia.
"Harmony?" Questioned Jordyn.
"She's my assistant," Lia explained. "She's taking photos up by the tent, Natalie, could you let her know we need her down here when you grab the camera?"
"Sure thing," Natalie nodded.
"Great. Let's do it then!" Said Jonah. "Jordyn, Lia, you ready?"
Once Harmony arrived, they briefed her on what was going on, and Natalie gave her the water proof camera. The dark haired girl kicked off her flip flops, and went to join Trent in the water.
Jordyn's camera was zoomed in on Gabi's face, and she watched him concentrate on what he was doing, before panning to focus on the drink bottle. The next clip was of Raheem, and Jordyn returned the focus to his face. As he passed the bottle on, he turned to smirk at the camera, and Jordyn chuckled silently. Then it was Kun's turn, and again Jordyn directed the focus on the bottle, before shifting it up to his face, which bore a frown of concentration. He too turned to look right at her and grinned cheekily, before suddenly Virg arrived in the shot and stole the bottle off him. Jordyn watched her brother bounce the bottle in the air as easily as if it were an actual football, before passing it off to Joe. Joe was standing at the edge of the ocean, where the waves were breaking. He was the final player before Trent, who was standing knee deep past where the waves were breaking. When Joe finally passed it on to Trent he caught it with his hand, cracked it open, and drank the water. Harmony was there to capture the splash of the water, and another camera angle as Trent ran out of the water, with the drink bottle miraculously turning into an actual football, (or would do later on, thanks so special effects) to join the rest of the boys on the beach.
"Yes!" Exclaimed Jonah, once it was all complete. "I think we got it first take!"
"I was happy with my shots," nodded Lia, "How did you go, Jordyn? Harmony?"
"Mine look awesome with the water spray hitting the camera," said Harmony.
"I think it's perfect," Jordyn nodded, with a smile. "And I think Natalie is right, this could become a viral thing."
"Let's hope it does," Jonah nodded. "Thanks guys, you're free for the rest of the day!"
~.~.~.~