The noise of her scooter across the pavement was all she cared for at that moment.
The rhythmic tik-tik-tik of its scuffed-up wheels as it rolled across the rough surface below, carrying her with it as she swiveled it around the flat area of the local skate park, all occasionally broken up by sharp swishes as she pivoted the whole scooter around its front wheel.
A full hundred-eighty degree turn wasn’t too much to her at this point, mostly just serving as a fancy way to turn around, but at least it did help to practice for the whole three-sixty she wanted to go for…
“Alright, Dash said she believes you can do it…” Scootaloo muttered to herself as she prepared to go for that elusive maneuver another time, “And that means you can do it!”
Taking another deep breath, she crouched down on her scooter a bit as it continued forward at a moderate pace, then pushed down with her legs to jump as high as she could, using her hands to pivot the scooter all the way around back towards its original position so she could land back on—
“Gah!”
—Almost on it.
Only a small part of her shoes correctly hit on top of the scooter, the rest carrying on downward and leaving her body completely off-balance. Luckily, she had enough experience (and bruises) to know what to do here; toss the handle of the scooter away and bring her hands forward to help stop her fall.
Thump!
“Ow…”
Picking herself off the ground, she glanced across her arms, left exposed by her orange short-sleeve t-shirt, before turning her attention down to her legs, which her only partially covered by a pair of athletic shorts, leaving her left knee open to get scraped across the pavement. Luckily, it was only mild, and there wasn’t any blood coming off it, but it might’ve still been best to get a bandage to cover it.
It had been worse the last couple times she flubbed that move, but it was still annoying and kind of embarrassing that she couldn’t get it down, and she really hoped nobody saw it…
“Hey, Scootaloo!”
She immediately froze. She knew exactly who that was.
Letting her head hang down a bit, Scootaloo otherwise didn’t move, not wanting to see the boy that she could hear walking towards her to see the blush on her face.
“What’s up, Rumble?” She called out back to him, trying to keep her embarrassment in check before she shook herself and pushed herself up to stand, grabbing the handle of her scooter along the way.
“Nothin’, really,” Rumble replied casually, and Scootaloo turned her head to look over at him, and saw he had his skateboard with him and hung under an arm, which made enough sense given where they were. “You tripped again, huh?”
Scoot sighed and looked away, muttering an embarrassed reply, “Yeah...”
The other teenager scoffed lightly and admonished, “I keep telling ya, that scooter is way too unbalanced to actually trick with.”
Huffing in annoyance, Scootaloo shot back with a sharp look, “I know, dork! I ain’t trying to do ollies on it!”
“Well, yeah, but can’t you just use an actual board?” Rumble responded with a curious head-tilt, pulling out his own skateboard and standing it upright on the ground, keeping a hand on its top edge. “You know, either Dash or I could teach you how to use it.”
Rolling her eyes, Scootaloo was thankful for the offer, especially coming from him, but... “No matter how many dozens of time you offer that, I’m still keepin’ to this. I’ve already told you how important it is to me...”
“I know, I know; I’m just saying is all,” Rumble replied, holding his free hand up to show he wasn’t trying to offend her, “It’s just, you can do a bunch of stuff with boards you can’t with that scooter. Plus, using one of these,” He twisted his skateboard a bit with the hand on it, and gave her a smirk, “Will make you look a lot cooler than using your kiddie-school scooter.”
Scoot huffed indignantly; if Rumble wan’t trying to offend her, he was doing a pretty bad job at it. “I’m pretty sure doing tricks on this would look cooler than all the hundreds of ollies or whatever people have seen on skateboards, y’know.”
“You wanna prove that?” The boy said with a challenging grin, leaning towards her in a way she only kind of wanted to pull away from.
Still, though, Scootaloo wasn’t about to back down from somebody challenging her scooting abilities, and stood her ground, staring back at his face and channeled her inner Rainbow Dash to retort confidently, “Heck yeah. What’re you willin’ to lose?”
Rumble’s grin just grew a bit at that, and he swiftly said, “Let’s say for about a week, loser’s gotta do whatever the winner wants, yeah?”
“‘Anything’?” Scoot asked back, pushing down the faint worry that possibility gave her, and ended up sounding slightly excited by the other possibilities.
“Well, anything that ain’t straight-up insane, at least,” He replied with a casual roll of his eyes. Pulling back to stand straight up, he turned his head to the main pit of the skate park to their side, “Each of us got three tries here; coolest-looking trick out of all of ‘em wins.”
Actually staring to feel really confident, Scootaloo let it show on her face with a smirk of her own. “Just that? This’ll be easy.”
It wasn’t easy.
Rumble set a high bar with his first grind along one of the straight rails, and even with stumbling slightly when returning to his board, Scoot had to agree it looked pretty cool.
Luckily, she had been practicing more than just that one trick before Rumble interrupted her, and hopped into the pit, using its curved edge to get a quick start. One foot on the scooter, she repeatedly ran the other across the ground to get more speed as she approached one of the short pseudo-speed-bumps in the pit, and then managed to run off of it like a ramp, turning her scooter a half-circle in the air and landing back on the ground going backwards.
Rumble didn’t seem like was going to be able to top that, as he simply hopped over some stairs and flipped his board mid-air. It wasn’t anything to sneeze at, sure, but Scootaloo was getting pretty confident she’d win.
On her next turn, she then decided to do a bit of a wheelie, though on her scooter’s front wheel, and while she was flitting and turning through the messy shape of the pit with the chaotic control she had, arriving at the other end with a grin on her face as she saw the determination on her opponent’s.
Rumble definitely made sure to make his final trick count, as he went to a deeper section of the pit and quickly sped down its curved edge and toward a larger bump than the one Scoot used, jumping off of it and crouching to grab his board mid-air, spinning around about a half-circle before landing on the ground and rolling backward.
Scootaloo pursed her lips in thought and annoyance for a moment, before deciding to go for broke. Going to that deeper section of the pit, and getting Rumble to get up out of it on the opposite side of it than her, she sped down through the pit all the way to that other side, pushing her scooter forward again and again as she went, then finally went up that other side’s edge, reaching down with a hand to grab onto the top of the edge as her scooter kept going up, and she tried to lift herself and the scooter up before letting it all fall back down and land on the edge again, smoothly scooting down back into the pit.
She tried to, at least. In reality, she wasn’t quite strong enough to hold herself steady while up, and collapsed while getting flipped over herself, landing her back onto the top of the edge while losing hold of her scooter, making it fall into the pit as she herself started to fall into it as well!
However, just as Scootaloo was starting to flail her arms in a desperate attempt to keep herself from falling, one of them was grabbed by Rumble, who must’ve ran the short distance over when he saw her stumble. She was left gaping at him in surprise for a moment before she got herself together and put her feet onto the upper ground she could reach, and then pushed herself up, with help from Rumble pulling her up as well.
“T-thanks,” Scoot stuttered to him, feeling the way his grip around her arm was rather warm and not wanting him to let go as they walked a couple steps away from the pits edge.
“Of course,” Rumble replied with a pleasant grin on his face, then gestured to the girl’s scooter, which lay on its side in the pit, and added, “Maybe you shoulda been a bit more careful with that one, yeah?”
Rolling her eyes with a faint smile of her own, she looked back to her scooter in a slightly regretful manner and muttered back, “Yeah, I guess...”
Pausing for a moment, Rumble seemed to notice her hesitation, and placed his free hand on her shoulder, getting her eyes back onto his so he could say, “Guess that counts as a win for me, then?”
Scoffing and swatting away both of his hands, Scootaloo recalled the game they were supposed to be playing and the stakes thereof, and glanced back towards her scooter for a couple seconds, then spat back irritably without looking back at the boy, “Fine.”
“Alright...” Rumble said, and Scoot could feel his gaze on her as he seemed to think about what he would do with his prize, then simply asked of her, “Let’s start off easy; close your eyes for a sec.”
Glancing sideways over at his sly expression, she growled weakly to herself and then did as he asked, deliberately fixing her feet onto the ground to make sure she didn’t fall if she got startled by whatever he wanted to do. It was mostly just a paranoia thing, having just almost fell into the skate pit, but she wanted to--
Suddenly, she felt a pair of lips against her own, and her cheeks immediately burst with heat, almost seeming on fire as she realized Rumble was kissing her!!
Her eyes quickly shot open right after, staring in flustered shock as the boy pulled away from, his own cheeks slightly flushed as well as he grinned back at her, saying, “I’ll see you later at school, then... cutie.” He then swiftly pulled back and went back to pick up his skateboard (he must’ve dropped it when running to catch her), and headed out towards the exit of the park and left Scootaloo to simply stand there dumbly, baffled and incredibly flustered by what had just occurred.
