"How come whenever there's a popular franchise they always have to put it on ice?" (Chapter I)
words in Red are in Japanese
Ember
“Alright, who’s next for hockey tryouts?” the large, beefy woman with deep purple skin, many scars and a missing arm and eye looked at the clipboard. “Emi...Hay...ke...kee.”
“It’s pronounced Hah-ki-ke, Tempest. And I go by ‘Ember’.” I replied sharply
“Wow,” said Tempest’s ‘assistant’: a short, pudgy man with white hair that looked and sounded suspiciously like Michael Peña and Stitch had a baby (of course I saw that movie, shut up.) Grabber was his name, I think. “Um, I think you’re in the wrong class, Martial arts tryouts are...”
Tempest promptly smacked her assistant across the face. “Was that really necessary, Grubber?”
“Yeah, I realized it was racist as I was saying it,” Grubber said, groaning.
“What’s sad is, that wasn’t the first racist joke he’s made today.” Tempest then turned back to me. “Anyway, as I was saying before my assistant made those...highly inappropriate comments. Have you been on the Shadowbolts before?”
“No, this is my first time trying out, but I’ve been practicing for about...half a year.”
“Alright,” she put her clipboard on her knee and wrote some things down on her paper. “Show us what you can do, Ember.”
“Gladly,” I smirked as I strapped on my helmet and slid onto the ice, gripping my stick as I quickly and sharply maneuvered around the cones set up towards the rink, coming to the goalpost on one end and catching the puck, keeping it close to me like I had trained myself as I maneuvered around more cones to the goal post on the other end, focusing on it as I briefly made my shot.
Ca-clint.
“Splendid,” I said to myself, looking at my made shot. I turned around to Tempest who was writing a few more notes on her clipboard.
“I must say you’re impressive for a rookie, although your maneuvers around the ice a little bit rigid, you are a pretty fast skater and pretty good at keeping the puck. With a little training and a few drills you might actually stand a chance,” she said, coldly as usual. “I’ll let you know if you got it in a couple weeks or so, but don’t get your hopes up, Ember.”
“Thanks...I guess.” I unsnapped my helmet, not sure how to take that remark. “And they say I’m cold,” I muttered under my breath as I walked off the surface and headed out.
“What do you mean I’m not good enough to make the team?” I shouted.
“You’re barely half the size of the other girls that showed up for tryouts, half of them could practically knock you down by flicking your forehead with their pinkie, not to mention that they’ve probably been skating way longer than you.”
“Why’d I even ask?” I told myself “Dad, you saw me on the ice, and Tempest said I was really good.”
“She said you were impressive for a rookie, which I do not necessarily agree with, personally I think you were...flawed on the ice.”
“Way to be supportive, dad.”
“Look, Ember, the Crystal Prep sports programs are really tough.” he said trying (and failing to sound sincere."
“Wow, dad, I did not know that, idiot.”
“LISTEN TO ME!” my dad sighed, though still loud as usual “I just don’t think you’re ready for the Shadowbolts, you’re still too young and for lack of a better word...weak for them right now.”
“I’m Sixteen, dad.”
“My point still stands! You go in thinking you’ll wipe the floor with everyone but then you get yourself badly hurt like that incident with Garble.”
“That was three years ago, dad.”
“And what’s changed between here and now?”
“Well, I...ugh.” I gave up, not wanting to argue with someone who wasn’t going to listen to me anyway “I’ll be in my room,” I groaned as I walked away.
My step-father, Torch was a British military man who married my mother when I was around 12 while stationed in Japan. My ‘real’ dad had just died of cancer two years ago, and, aside from insisting I learn English, Torch was a nice enough father figure at first, if a bit over-dramatic and loud, but then Mom died in a car crash when I turned fourteen, and he left the military to take care of me and moved us here to the suburb of Canterlot, Ontario. Three months after moving, I got into a brutal fight with a street tough named Garble trying to protect my one of my friends. Though I wasn’t permanently harmed in any way, I was still injured pretty badly and, as you can tell, he hasn’t been the same around me since.
“You’re wrong about me, dad, just you wait.”
Rainbow Dash
“Ah, nothing like the feeling of hockey season, isn’t there, kiddo.”
“Yep,” I cringed slightly as my dad put his arm around my shoulder. “Plus, I heard that the team is getting a new coach this year, so that’s something to look forward to, I guess.” I sighed before looking to dad. “You know, you don’t have to come to my tryouts, it’s not like I’ll actually need the support,” I smirked to myself at my potential awesomeness.
“Hey, anything to make up for not being there during the Battle Of The Bands. Sorry about losing in the semi’s by the way.”
“Eh, don't worry about it. It was...kinda my fault. It’s for the best you weren’t there.”
“If you say so…” he said as we entered the Canterlot Community Center.
“Look, I’m gonna head to the locker room to get my gear on, you can head over to the ice rink. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Ok, good luck.”
“I don’t need it.”
Even though Canterlot High is a relatively big school, because of it also being a middle school, there isn't a lot of room for things like a swimming pool, ice rink or tennis courts, and thus the community centre was built a few miles away to provide those things for the school as well as publicly, which explains why there are Canterlot High leaderboards and memorabilia everywhere.
The ice rink was no different, with the surface having a baby blue tint, a Canterlot High logo on center ice, and both the plastic dividers between the rink and the seating and the surface itself covered in those fantastical embellishments the school seem to love, complete with a mural on the back wall of pegasi flying against a blizzard, fighting some ghost horses that, according to sunset, were apparently called windigos. (despite the fact that last I checked, windigos were furry werewolf-like creatures that ate human flesh)
“What’th your name?” a white-haired girl with sunglasses, tealish skin and a lisp addressed me, before looking up from her clipboard at me and saying to herself, “Never mind.”
“Look, do I need to do this?” I said, rolling my eyes.
The women sitting next to her, whom I recognized from my St. Cloudsdale days as Spitfire rolled her eyes. “Don’t give me that, Dash. You have to try out just like everyone else.”
“Ok, ok fine. You know I’ll make the team anyway.”
“Right,” she said begrudgingly. “Just do the damned drill.”
I grabbed my stick and made my way onto the ice-surface, maneuvering around the rink, curving around the cones up to the goalpost on one side, shooting 7 lined pucks into the goal, and quickly went around the cones on the other side of the rink and came up to the other goalpost, once again shooting 7 pucks into the goal. Once I finished the drill I looked to Spitfire and the other girl. “Awesome, right?”
Spitfire rolled her eyes. “You’re good, Dash, as usual. But you missed a few shots.”
I looked over to the other goalpost, seeing that only four of the seven shots made it in. “Uhh, that’s not usual for me.”
“Right…” Spitfire turned over to the woman with the lisp. “Put her on the list, Fleetfoot. And excuse us as I’d like to talk to her outside for a moment.”
“Kapish,” she said.
Spitfire then promptly stood up and walked over to the door, gesturing me to follow her, which I did, though I was a little confused as to why she wanted to talk to me. She brought me to the hallway outside the rink and looked down on me, eyes narrowing out of either respect or suspicion, or maybe both.
“Rainbow Dash?”
“Yes.”
“I understand you are a very skilled and determined athlete, and I respect that. I have a feeling you’re going to be a very valuable asset on the ice.”
“Why thank you…”
“I’m not done!” Spitfire said sharply. “You are also very self-centered, disloyal and selfish.”
“That was years ago, I’ve changed since then.”
“I doubt it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dash, I saw the video of you at the Battle Of The Bands AND that terrible ‘Awesome As I Wanna Be’ song you wrote.”
“It’s not terrible.”
“Yes, it is, and you know it. Anyway, I’m not gonna let you turn this into another ego trip for you. Iron Will may have let you gloat like this is a one-man show, but I run a tighter ship here, and if you’re not gonna be a team player, I’m not gonna put you on.”
“Hey! You don’t think I’m a team player?” I growled defensively, before saying to myself, “You’re wrong about me, Spitfire, just you wait.”
Author's Note
Some might say Spitfire's portrayal here is adversarial and OOC, but keep in mind that this is after RRox but before FG, so her perception of Dash is shaped by her music and her behavior during the Battle of the Bands, which doesn't pain her in the best light. Also, being two-faced is kind of Spitfire's thing so...
also, Ember is full-blooded Japanese cause admit it, you saw it coming
Chapter title is an iCarly reference
anyway, that's my 2 cents, MJP out
Like last time, words in Red are in Japanese
Ember
I stood outside Tempest’s office, looking out the window and anxiously waiting for her to post the team list. All the while watching her and Grubber mess around with their paperwork, talking indiscriminately about schools matters or something.
Soon enough, the moment I have been waiting for arrived, with Tempest coming out of her office with the team listings and posting them on the bulletin board next to her office. Before returning to her office, she eyed me with suspicion.
“Ember, have you been staring out my window all morning?”
I quickly folded my arms and leaned against her window. “What? Of course not!”
She raised an eyebrow. “Uh huh…”
As soon as Tempest was back in her office, I took a look at the listings she had just posted.
Lady Shadowbolts hockey team roster.
Starters
-Yona Kumari (goaltender)
-Gabriella Aquillo (center)
-Indiya Dashelli (right wing/captain)
-Laine Durst (left wing)
-Nora Trails (defensewoman)
-Emi Hakike (defensewoman)
“Alright! I made it in, suck it, dad.” I screamed to myself, accidentally slipping into my thick high-pitched Nippon accent, drawing the attention of a boy walking down the hall, who turned to me as if I were a talking dog or something. Upon seeing him I quickly switched back to my surly ‘American’ voice. “What are you looking at? Idiot.”
Shock of all shocks, the Shadowbolt just stuck up his nose and walked off, pretending he never saw me.
“You’re Emi Hakike, right?”
I looked up from my pork ramen to see a girl about my age (and height), with pale silver skin, blue eyes, and short dark grey hair tied back in a stubby ponytail, styled as per Crystal Prep regulation. She was also wearing a version of the Crystal Prep uniform consisting of a suit jacket, skinny tie and long slacks. She also had a wood pin on her lapel of what looked like a trophy and blue ribbon. It looked homemade, but still very well done for her age.
“Yeah,” I said nonchalantly. "Though I prefer to be called 'Ember'."
“Oh good, I’m Gabby Aquillo, I’m on the hockey team with you.” she excitedly sat down with me, to which I apathetically moved over to give Gabby more room, wincing at her shrill, potentially deafening voice.
“Alright, Gabby, what do you want? A good grade or money?”
“Why do you assume I want either of those?”
“Think about it, Gabby. You go to Crystal Prep. The only reason a Shadowbolt would be friendly to anyone is that they want something.”
Gabby looked at me, shocked. “Hey! That’s a very hurtful, yet understandable, stereotype. We’re not all like that. What if I said every girl in Japan is a boy-crazed nutjob?”
I looked at her angrily. “You don’t actually think that do you?”
Gabby threw up her hands in defense. “Of course not! I was just proving a point.”
“Good, now what DO you want, exactly.” I said, slurping more noodles
“Can’t I just be your friend?”
“Hate to disappoint you, Gabby, but I don’t do friends.”
“Oh don’t be like that. In a place like Crystal Prep, you need all the friends you can get.”
“Sure I do,” I said sarcastically, grabbing more pork and noodles with my chopsticks and shoving it in my mouth.
“You sound like my brother, Gallus, except way less smug.”
“Gabby?” a new, huskier voice called to us.
“Over here, Yona,” Gabby said, motioning her to our table.
The girl who had called for Gabby was an Arab-looking girl with brown hair, she was very large, but not exactly fat per se, but more...what’s the word?...heavy-set. She was also wearing a version of the CPA uniform, hers being a sweater-vest, bow tie, and skirt. Her hair was also tied back in CPA regulation, though her hair was braided and much longer and thicker than Gabby’s.
“Oh, sweet.” she walked over to our table with the grace of the old eight-legged cross-eyed dragon mascot my old middle school over in Japan had before sitting down and slamming her lunch tray. “Hi, I’m Yona, I’m the team’s goaltender.” She shook my hand as I winced at her painfully firm grasp.
“I know, I read your name when Tempest posted the list. Now can you please let go of me? I’d prefer the hand holding the stick to not be broken.”
Yona looked down at my hand, before quickly letting go. “Oh, sorry.”
“Like a bull in a f*cking china closet,” I muttered to myself.
Gabby sipped her milk “Yeah, Yona isn’t exactly graceful or subtle...or refined, but dang it if she isn’t tough. She blocks and defends like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Uh, huh,” I said, looking at my noodles, half-interested.
“Yeah, the team’s looking pretty good this year, though I have my reservations about Vapor Trail, the fact that she used to be all buddy-buddy with that hack-fraud Sky Stinger is not a very good sign,” Gabby said, slightly irritated at the mention of this Skystinger guy.
I, however, was confused. “Who the hell is Sky Stinger, and why do you two hate him so much?”
“I’ll tell you at practice tomorrow, it was this whole thing last year,” Yona said. “Honestly, I’m surprised none of them got expelled.”
Gabby just laughed. “I’m surprised they didn’t get a pat on the back and a good job sticker from Cinch. The witch will do anything for an extra point in overtime.”
Yona just waved her fork at Gabby. “I highly doubt Cinch would be that slimy and dubious. Sure she’s uptight, but I doubt someone who runs such a high-end school would stoop to that kind of level. And don’t call her a witch, what if she hears you?”
“She didn’t hear me the last hundred times I called her that. And I will never apologize for calling her who she is, anyone that pushes aside personal Identity ain't getting sympathy from me.”
Yona rolled her eyes “You’re only saying that cause you’re an artist.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Gabby protested, her voice getting even more shrill.
“Nothing, I’m just sayin’,” Yona said.
“I thought Gabby was a hockey player,” I said, confused and slightly annoyed.
“Oh, she is,” Yona said. “She actually has a lot of skills and talents, hockey and art are just her main ones (at this moment at least). Seriously, she’s talented in so many areas it’s almost a talent in and of itself.”
“Yeah,” Gabby piped in finishing off her milk “Crystal Prep is the only place where I can get any sort of real challenge or competition, and that's pretty much the entire reason I’m still here.”
“So you’re one of those Mary Sue types, huh?” I said, before mumbling to myself. “This is gonna be a long season.”
Rainbow Dash
“You mean to tell me that you of all people aren’t the least bit concerned about the new Daring Do book turning into a white savior narrative. I’d expect you to jump at the chance to call that stuff out. Not that I’m concerned about that stuff, but…” I said, walking down the hall with my sort-of-boyfriend-don’t-tell-anyone, Quibble Pants, he was a fairly husky young man I had met at a Daring Do convention last summer, usually he has pale-green skin, bleached white hair, a black track jacket, slightly-worn black jeans, a purple shirt with a speech bubble graphic (sometimes the bubble said something funny like “my other shirt can kill you” or something.) and a purple beanie with the same speech bubble logo.
(Though when I actually first met him he was dressed up as the eponymous adventurer, complete with his hair dyed grey and skin painted burnt orange, and I may have totally thought he just always looked like that.)
Even though he can be kind of a smarmy asshole sometimes, usually he’s pretty reserved and respectful.
Just don’t ask him about The Last Jedi.
“Well, personally, I find ‘white savior narrative’ to be a hollow criticism, at best it’s a cop-out that prevents the story from being judged on its own merits, at worst it implies that one’s race automatically makes a work good or bad and that caucasian people shouldn’t be the ones saving the day.”
‘Well, you do make a good point, Quibble. But don’t you think setting it in Japan might be the least bit...problematic.”
“Yes, there are concerns I have that I really don’t want to get into right now, but I think the change of setting might do the series some good, you can only go to Egypt and South America so many times before it gets stale and contrived.”
I’d call him out on the fact that Daring only went to Egypt in one book, but my mind was drawn to something else, namely the hockey team list Fleetfoot had just posted.
Lady Wondercolts Hockey team roster.
Starters
-Barbara Seede (Goaltender)
-Beau Dashelli (Center/Captain)
-Derpy Hoover (Defensewoman)
-Lourane Bird (Defensewoman)
-Sammy Drake (Left Wing)
-Jordan Archer (Right wing)
“Oh, are you kidding me?” I groaned.
“What is it?” Quibble asked.
“Fleetfoot and Spitfire filled most of the roster with rookies and underclassmen.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” he asked with a hint of his usual surly arrogance.
“Are you kidding? We compete against schools like Crystal Prep, we need to be at the top of our game for them, we can’t afford to have a bunch of newbies make us look bad, especially with the friendship games this spring.”
“They'll make the school look bad?” Quibble said with a smirk. “Or they’ll make YOU look bad?”
I raised an eyebrow at him and clenched a fist behind my back, before letting go of it and sighing, not wanting to argue about my ego with the captain of the debate team.
“I...have to talk to Fleetfoot right now.”
“Suit yourself.” he said before turning away and heading to Ms. Inkwell’s classroom.
“Um, Fleetfoot?”
“Yeth?” she asked, looking up from her paperwork at me.
“I have some...concerns with who you picked for the hockey team this year.”
“What kind of contherns?”
“Well, three of them are freshmen.”
“And?”
“I wouldn’t exactly trust a bunch of freshmen to lead this team to victory, especially with the friendship games looming over us this year.”
Fleetfoot laughed a little “Well, that’th why I’m the one in charge of the team and not you.”
“And the other two...well, first of all, one of them is named ‘Derpy’ for crying out loud. And Babs...isn’t exactly someone I imagine when I think of ‘athlete’, I mean, what kind of hockey player works at Carol’s!”
“My fiance wath a Football player and he uthed to work at Bath and Body Forever. We can have different interethts, Dash, and may I remind you also play guitar and thing...well.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but only sighed. “Yeah, you’re right, Fleetfoot. But still, none of the other girls on the roster aside form me are what people think of as ‘athletes’, what about the other athletes in this school, like Cloudkicker or Windbreaker?”
“Well, I think we need to give other studenths a chance on the ithe, we need new faces, and I acthually think these guys are really talented, believe it or not. And may I remind you you’re showing conthern for the girls on the team dethpite never actually theeing them on the ithe”
Once again I tried to protest but I just sighed in frustration as Fleetfoot got up and headed out the door, patting my shoulder on her way out.
“Thee you at practithe tomorrow, Dash.” she smiled smugly, lowering her sunglasses at me.
Author's Note
-What? You thought Quibble Pants spends all day dressed like Daring Do and also somehow looks exactly like her except gender-swapped and with a tan?
I'm disappointed in you.
(also if quibble pants makes another appearance in the show proper, I might have to rewrite this)
-Some might say it's OOC for Quibble to not criticize the white savior trope, but personally, I think having the second or unpopular opinion is kind of a big part of his character
(Plus, it's not the main MLP-verse, things can be different.)
-There was a Blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to the TV show "Victorious" in this chapter. If you don't get it, watch the episode "Prom Wrecker"
-There was also a brief and sly jab at Athletes who sucked as musicians, like Shaq.
-Also for those of you who who don't speak Japanese, Ember's legal last name translates to "spit fire".
-If you couldn't already tell, every chapter title will either be an ice pun or phrase or quote relating to ice.
-And for those readers with a lisp, I'm sorry if Fleetfoot's lisp felt too cartoonish in this chapter. I tried to limit her impediment to soft 'c', 't' and 's' sounds and tried my best to write how it sounded and not play it up for laughs.
Anyway, That's my two cents, Likes and Comments will be greatly appreciated, MJP out.
