Rainbow Dash tilted and tussled the soccer ball with her hands onto the grass floor, trying to settle it just right. If she was going to practice free kicks, she was going to do it correctly. She got up up off her knee, backed up, and looked at her target.
The goal was a few distances away- Rainbow had no trouble practicing close up free kicks, so today she was trying to figure out far away ones. Usually, her coach would direct her to lob the ball in like a horizontal corner kick into the air so possibly a teammate could deflect it into the goal as a header or something, but she was alone today.
She backed up a few meters, then started to run at the ball, gaining momentum. She locked her right foot, bending it a bit and making sure her foot was pointed at where she wanted to shoot and swept her left foot, kicking the soccer ball with power, hunching over it to make sure it was controlled power as well as powerful. She let her kicking foot cross her body after she connected the kick and did a skipping motion, hopping on her locked right foot, as the power left her foot and kinetic energy moved into the soccer ball.
Rainbow tracked the shot, watching the soccer ball spin laterally. If she kicked it incorrectly, the spin would have been different and probably gone out of control. So far things were looking good, but just as she thought that, in a split second the ball made an irregular curve and shifted a far right. Rainbow’s intention was the hit the upper right corner, but the ball was going a little bit more than that.
The ball’s curve had caused it to hit the outer post and it bounced from the amount of power kicked into it, flying backward and up and over Rainbow Dash.
She gave a loud “Argh!” and pulled on her hair. That was a huge summary of her whole week. Dash would be doing well in something, but then totally bust it. During practice, she’d attempted to make a chip over the other team’s midfield to pass it to her outside midfielder, probably someone like Fleetfoot, and she kicked it too much and it went out of bounds. Or she’d time she ran on a corner kick incorrectly and get there too early and awkwardly try to backtrack, or get there a second too late and either the goalkeeper caught it, or someone else, (probably the other team) had gotten it before she did.
Usually, Rainbow would brush that mistake off and try to make things better, but no, things haven't so far been much better. Everyone would start to get annoyed and be hesitant to pass to her- and that was just from all the mistakes in one practice! Coach usually had positive things to say, but she wouldn’t let so many mistakes slide under the radar, either.
And she couldn’t forgive herself. She was so bothered about her performance and was anxious about the big game next Tuesday. Canterlot High vs Fillydelphia Magnet High.
Not only was the name intimidating, magnet in the name referring that people from all over the world are attracted to that school, “like it’s a magnet” getting elite players from like out of country, it’s also where her ex-teammate Lightning Dust transferred.
Rainbow Dash was walking back to the locker room when she came across that thought, and her whole body grew tense.
Lightning seemed cool to everyone at first, and was a proven excellent player, but totally had her morals for other people wrong and thought she was the best and she could only be the best. After a while, Rainbow and her seemed to clash, not go together, and it got so bad that Lightning decided to transfer, saying that she needed a,"better challenge anyway”. Rainbow silently vowed that she would do whatever it took to show Lightning Dust how good the Wondercolts truly were.
And for that, she would need a win.
“But I can’t make a win happen if I don’t get things together,” She murmured.
“I’m sorry, what?” A new voice came behind her.
Dash’s eyes widened at the voice, she got caught talking to herself when she thought she was alone. “Sorry, uh I was-” She stopped at who was talking to her. “Soarin?”
Soarin flashed his usual goofy smile and shoved his hands into his pockets. “That’s my name! What’s up?”
Don’t freak out about the game, he doesn’t need to see you failing like this. I’m the captain of this team. I need to handle this on my own, Rainbow frantically thought. She opened her mouth, made an awful attempt to speak, too flustered about things to speak, and then just ultimately blushed and turned away. Greeeeat job, Captain.
That raised a red flag in Soarin’s mind. Rainbow wouldn’t act this way usually. “Hey,” Soarin made her turn around, her lip was bit and she tried to make an embarrassing eye contact with him. “You don’t seem to be yourself. You’re acting like Fluttershy or something.” He frowned and tilted his head. “What’s seriously up with you?”
“Is it okay if we talked about it maybe? Like over there on those benches?” Rainbow Dash made a motion to the far side of the field. She knew Soarin wouldn’t leave her alone.
Hopefully, he didn’t find her pathetic after this.
They walked in silence, and Soarin stole a quick glance at Rainbow. She was walking forward, face scrunched and eyes focused hard at the benches as if she was making sure it was still standing on this Earth still. Her face was in a hard frown and her eyebrows turned down as if she was...angry? What was she angry about? Maybe it’s her resting face? He tried to think but just didn’t sound right.
Was it her rough week? He did recall her performance a little lower than usual, but that seemed like it was only a piece of it. Was something else actually causing that?
He was contemplating so much he didn’t realize he had arrived at the benches where they pointed out where to sit.
“So,” Was all that came out of Dash’s mouth as she plopped down. “I really rather not talk about this but,” She almost made a cringing face. “I really feel conflicted.”
Rainbow Dash talking about her feelings? Soarin wanted to joke about that, but he felt her serious and uncomfortable tone and wanted to make things easier for her. “Conflict? About what?” He paused for a bit before he slowly made another question. “...Or who?”
“It’s a lot of stuff YOU wouldn’t understand,” Rainbow suddenly sharply snapped. Soarin widened his eyes and Rainbow froze and hung her head. “Sorry, It’s…”
“Go on.” He softly whispered.
“I really have been stressed about our game on Tuesday,” She stopped looking at Soarin’s intimidating gaze and looked at her hands instead. “You know, because of how we’re playing the Fillydelphia high school and all. But actually...It’s mainly because of her.”
Fillydelphia Magnet High? Her? Suddenly the answer came crashing at Soarin at the speed of sound. “Lightning Dust.”
Rainbow made a quick glance at his emerald eyes but dropped her gaze once again, and starting fidgeting with her hair. “I really want to beat her, but I feel like all I’ve been doing all week was messing up. I feel like I’m not…” She trailed off and briefly shut her eyes, clenching her jaw. “...That I’m an awful teammate, soccer player, and team captain.”
“Why?”
His answer surprised her and she actually turned to look at him once again. “Have you seen me this week? I’m a wreck. I’ve come and all I’m doing is messing up set plays. I keep on annoying everyone. Coach is yelling at me nonstop. I know none of the yelling personal, but no one should have to be telling to pull it together! I’m Rainbow Dash. I’m the captain! ” Her voice was growing louder and louder. She came to a point where she was right into Soarin’s face.” I’m the leader of this team! EVERYONE TRUSTS ME!” Her eyes were getting dangerously misty.
They were mere inches away from each other, and Soarin now could see how much stress poor Rainbow had. She wanted an impression on Lightning Dust. She was angry about what she did. Now that the event had come, a mixture of doubt came between her and, ‘since she’s Rainbow Dash, the captain, the best, the leader’ she felt like she needed to be perfect. But she was stressing out so much she wasn’t even doing an acceptable performance level to begin with.
He stared into her eyes and slowly formed his answer. “You know what’s wrong here?” He asked. “You’re trying to be perfect. You’re trying to impress someone after they hurt you. You usually have high hopes for yourself. But this problem has struck you differently and you lose confidence.” He was speaking soft and low. “You aren’t perfect- no one is. But you’re stressing about being perfect so much that you can’t even be your usual awesome self! Which is better? Perfect or awesome?”
Silence fell once again.
Soarin sighed. “I know that you know what’s better.”
“Being awesome is much better,” Dash replied. She rubbed her temples. “I just am a little...scared, too. There, I admit it.” Rainbow Dash bit her lip again and knitted her eyebrows together. “Pathetic, right?”
“Being scared? How is that pathetic? You know what being nervous and scared about something tells me?” Soarin gave a warm smile and chuckled. He grabbed Rainbow’s hands suddenly. “It shows me that you are human and that you have a heart, a soul...feelings.”
Her cheeks noticeably turned a few shades redder because of the contact, and she wasn’t expecting what Soarin was saying about her having feelings...it was actually pretty touching. She never heard anyone else say anything to her that way...it felt pretty good and it boosted her spirits much higher.
“Wow..uh, thank you so much, Soarin.” She gave a small smile. “ I actually feel like a million weights have been lift off my shoulders.”
Soarin dropped her hands and grinned, standing up."Anytime, Dash.”
This time when they were walking back from the field, Rainbow wasn’t afraid to talk. She suddenly got super excited and starting talking about different formation changes she was discussing Coach earlier in the week. “I was so nervous, I agreed to everything. But now thinking about it, what if we placed Spitfire in the holding mid spot?” She asked.
They chatted for a while and when they got to the parking lot, it was kind of upsetting they needed to part ways now.
“Really, Soarin, thank you so much for the little slap to the face. I appreciate it so much.” She was beaming now, contrasting that a little less than an hour ago, she was so upset with her internal conflict she had created in her mind.
“Again, it’s no problem. Are you taking the bus?” He asked, and Rainbow nodded in response. “I’m gonna be driving home, so I’ll have to catch you later.”
“Okay, I guess I’ll- OOF!” Rainbow’s words were cut off as Soarin wrapped his arms around her in a giant bear hug. She felt her cheeks absolutely burning up , but then she felt a nice shiver going down her spine. It was totally unexpected, but it was so nice feeling.
He let go of her after a while, flashed another warm grin, eyes sparkling. “Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself next time.” He waved and turned towards where his car was parked.
She stood there, just watching him walk back, frozen in place. She didn’t want to move. She didn’t expect Soarin to do anything like that to her...she never really realized how it felt to be hugged by a taller boy.
Why did that feel so nice? Rainbow Dash self-consciously wrapped her arms around herself, but she wasn’t cold or anything. She kinda was trying to remake the way Soarin hugged her. So nice. That seemed like the only word she could use to describe it right now.
As the bus rolled around to the stop, Rainbow Dash starting thinking over and over about the same topic. However, this time it wasn’t how much she wanted to beat Lightning Dust this time. No, this time, it was how nice it felt that someone genuinely cared about her happiness, and how they took time out of their day to make it nice, to make sure she felt better about herself. She felt the same thought over and over again, but she didn’t feel stressed this time. She couldn’t help but blush. Her toes curled up in her shoes and a happy shiver zipped through her spine and she couldn’t stop smiling when she replayed the scene in her head.
It was an awesome feeling.
Author's Note
Hi, there! I just want to thank you so much for viewing this! If you spot any errors, please tell me!
update 10/23/16: thank you for all the nice comments, I re-read this and noticed my tense used in here were annoyingly switching a lot, and my parallel structures were off, so I tried to fix as much as I could! Still hit me up if you see anything!
