"You made a solid effort out there, skaters," Tracy said, as she popped past the changing room. The assembled skaters were busy removing their protective equipment and skates as training had halted. "But we should probably take five and have a rest. You were starting to get a tad sluggish on those last few laps."

Zipp seemed baffled. "Shouldn't we be fitting in more training? We are, after all, training for the biggest event on the roller calender. We should be honed, our minds steeled and focused!"

"None of which will be the case if we don't build rest and relaxation into the schedule," Tracy reminded her. "The brain and body benefit from rest periods or a change of pace- after all, it'd do none of us any good if any of you tore a muscle, would it? So long as this whistle hangs round my neck, you're taking rest periods."

Hitch, who was next to Tracy, glanced at the trinket attached to the whistle. "If the whistle indicates you're the boss of the rink, what does the charm mean?"

Tracy sighed, and sat down. "That belonged to an old team-mate of mine. It's also a reminder of one of the worst days of my life when it comes to this sport. Think of it as my albatross, if you will."

"I've never seen an albatross that looks like a star!" Izzy said.

"The metaphorical albatross," Sunny explained. "It's a way of saying somebody is carrying a burden around."

"Or a bird-en, you could say!" Izzy said.

There were several groans at the bad pun before Sunny continued. "But why carry a memory of such a day around with you at all times?"

"The same reason Canadian engineers wear a ring made from part of the first Quebec Bridge," Tracy replied. "It's a reminder to me of what not to do. I found the hard way I was a much better coach than a captain."

"When did this happen?" Argyle asked. "I don't remember a disastrous performance at the Derby."

"This was after you'd gone off to university," Tracy explained. "Back in those days, the Hunslet Hammerheads were on a roll, and on the back of our win against the Darlington Dynamites we suffered two blows. First was Argyle leaving for university. That was fine. His life was pulling that way anyway. But the big shock was when our captain, Streaks, retired unexpectedly and decided to appoint me the new captain.

"He handed the stick he always carried as a lucky charm to me, and asked me to take good care of it. Given we'd won so many times before, although admittedly not always in consecutive years, the pressure was on me to keep up the streak. I'm sorry to say the pressure got to me."

Out on the Falmouth waterfront, work on the amusement park continued apace. Many of the rides were now finished and had completed their mechanical checks, and now riders were getting the chance to experience the rides first hand as a sort of soft opening. True, the facilities weren't quite as developed as many would have hoped, and not all the food stands had opened yet, but there was enough to allow people to have a reasonable day out.

Misty wandered about the park, looking at all the rides. They varied dramatically in size and shape, and truth be told Misty was somewhat frightened of some of them. She'd never really been to a place like this before, as Opaline had not seen the value in places where people could let off steam and forget about their troubles for a while.

She watched as the main roller coaster was winched up the lift hill then dropped down the first drop. Misty simply watched, knowing she didn't have the courage to hop onboard.

Misty sighed. "Why am I so scared of everything? It's just a ride, after all. It's built to comply with loads of safety standards and rules- after all, I'm more likely to slip on a banana peel than get injured on a ride. The board at the entrance said so."

She glanced about, then had an idea. "Why not work my way up to it? A ghost train seems like a sensible start?"

So she went and joined the queue, and within a few minutes was sat and secured into one of the cars. And as it got on its way, she was soon immersed in a spooky landscape of a haunted house, haunted by the soul of a child who was mistreated by her parents and took her revenge one stormy night.

The train rattled past one of the first scenes, showing the girl's father refusing to let her come to a party he'd organised to celebrate new year. "No, you wretched creature!" he said. "You will not go anywhere near the party! Now go to your room before I give you something to really cry about!"

Misty winced. This was hitting rather close to home for her. Perhaps this hadn't been such a good idea after all.

After a trip past some enormous spiders (for some reason) the ghost appeared again- but it wasn't the girl. It was the last person Misty had been expecting to see.

"Miss me, Misty?" she said. There was no denying it. Looking back was Opaline Arcana.

Misty shrieked and backed up as much as she could. "NO! GET AWAY FROM ME!"

"You can't escape me, Misty," Opaline taunted, jumping to another screen. "I'll always be here!"

Then the train reached the finale, where the ghost started tearing the house to pieces in an attempt to prevent the riders from escaping. Only, as before, Misty saw Opaline.

"Who said you could leave?!" the voice demanded. "You can't escape me, Misty! YOU'LL ALWAYS BE MY PLAYTHING!"

Misty only seemed to blink out of it when the train returned to the station. "Excuse me, sweetie, but are you OK?" asked one of the ride operators.

Misty looked up, and pushed the lapbar away from her as she shook like a leaf. "I d-d-don't know," she stammered, and started for the exit, continuing to quiver as she did so.

"My first practice went fairly well," Tracy continued. "My team-mates seemed to enjoy the fairly relaxed lesson plans and atmosphere, but some of the moves were proving to be too complex to follow. One that Streaks had left behind was called the Triple Haymaker, which is very difficult to explain but will make sense when you look at a diagram."

"I know that move!" Sunny said. "From memory it got modified to eliminate the trotrod turnaround and replace it with a plow instead."

"Correct," Tracy replied. "But this was before that, and critically things were going wrong again. Everybody was getting frustrated, and this was producing a lot of bad vibes. And then, I lost the very thing I had promised to keep hold of."

Misty sat on the bench overlooking the sea. She'd bought a box of donuts to help calm herself down. These were her favourite comfort food, and helped her stay focused on the tasks at hand. The jam was especially nice in these ones.

She sat back and sighed. "Maybe scary rides aren't my thing."

As she watched the sea, a voice suddenly spoke.

"Look at you, getting scared at a little haunted house."

Misty jumped, and looked over. "Who's there?"

"Over here!" said the voice. Misty looked over her shoulder and saw a ghostly version of herself there, only the ghost had red eyes rather than green, and had a very cruel smirk on its face. "You're such a baby, you know," the ghosly Misty taunted. "You're a complete coward. Look at how many times you bailed on riding the Wild Blue Wonder!"

Misty buried her face in her arms. "I'm not a baby!"

But the ghost Misty simply smirked some more. "Says the girl whose cries way more than a girl your age should. Like it or not, you can't run from yourself, Misty."

Misty looked at the ghost. "SHUT UP!"

"Ooh, I hit a nerve," the ghost said. "Like it or not, I'm you."

Misty grabbed the box of donuts and ran off in another direction.

"You're not getting away that easily."

"What happened?" Izzy asked.

"I'd misplaced the lucky stick," Tracy explained. "Sport is very supersticious, and if you lose your lucky item you can be in for a world of hurt. Such as the yips."

"What are those?" Pipp asked.

"It's something that means you forget how to do something you should have on muscle memory by now," Tracy explained. "And given my leadership it proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back."

"Leadership isn't always easy," Hitch said. "True, my status as Sargeant of the local CCF gives me a lot of authority- but also a lot of responsibility. Those boys depend on me, and I depend on them. But it's not the three chevrons that give orders. I do, and even if I misplace it I still need to do my job."

"Well said, Hitch," Tracy replied. "But it didn't help when we entered the competition. We got knocked out in the first round. I knew I'd let the side down, so I formally resigned as captain and hung up my skates professionally. True, I still crack them out if I want to have fun, but the professional sport just wasn't for me anymore."

Argyle looked stunned. "Why didn't you mention this when we last met? If we were a player down I'd happily have come back!"

"That wouldn't have been fair on you, expecting you to tramp all the way up from Bristol just for a competition," Tracy said. "But I think coaching is really the future for me. I can't really live this one down."

Sunny then spoke up. "Tracy, you achieved so much incredible stuff in your career. You shouldn't let your entire life be defined by one mistake. True, I've done silly things-"

"Ain't that the truth," Pipp said dryly.

"OK, no need to pile it on. But I've learned from them and grown as a person. Who knows? Your greatest glory could be just around the bend."

Tracy smiled. "Thanks, Sunny. You kids may be new to the sport, but you've got drive and determination, not to mention a lot of courage. Now go get some rest- I've got some paperwork I need to do, and we'll resume training tomorrow."

"Falmouth Pleasure Beach is hosting a soft opening," Zipp said. "How about we go to that?"

Misty had bailed from the line of another ride, and was currently hiding behind one of those boards with holes cut in it that featured a silly picture on one side.

"There she is!" said Sunny, who walked over to Misty. "How are you doing?"

Misty looked up. "Not great," she replied.

Hitch looked up. "Fancy a ride on the Wild Blue Wonder? It looks so good!"

"It's got ten inversions!" Zipp said. "Including a cobra role! I've never done one of those before!"

"Hopefully nobody barfs!" Izzy said.

Misty sighed. That sounded even less like a reason to go on it. "Sorry guys, but not yet. I'm working my way up to it, so I think I'll go on these teacups."

As Misty joined the line, Sunny looked worried. "Are you sure you're OK, Misty?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'll be fine," Misty said, although her tone of voice suggested she hadn't even convinced herself. "You guys go have fun!"

Pipp handed her something. "Here's a FastTrack if you change your mind."

As the others walked away, Misty closed her eyes.

"You know, constantly running away from them isn't helping your case."

Misty opened them again to see the ghost version sitting opposite her, smiling evily.

"How did you get there?"

"I'm a ghost, I don't need to obey laws of space-time. But constantly running off from them only proves what we already know- you're just a pathetic crybaby!"

Misty lunged at the ghost- only for her first to pass through her and slam into the hard plastic of the ride vehicle. "Oww."

"You can't hurt a ghost, remember?"

Misty had similar trouble on the dodgems, seemingly avoiding crashing into other riders. As she looked up to see her friends on the coaster, there was suddenly an impact to the right. Misty looked and, to her lack of surprise, the ghost was driving another car.

Misty just hit the accelerator and drove off. The ghost laughed evilly.

This kept on happening through the day. On the slide, whilst walking through a mirror hall, and even when trying to buy a drink.

"I'm always here... I'm always here... I'm always here..."

Eventually, Misty lost her patience. "SHUT UP AND LEAVE ME ALONE!" she yelled.

"Miss, are you feeling OK?" asked a voice. Misty glanced about to see that her doppelganger had vanished, and everybody was staring at her with odd looks.

Misty quietly shuffled out of the queue and left.

Misty eventually gave up on trying to do anything, and just sat there motionless, watching the trains of the Wild Blue Wonde roar up and down the track.

"Face it, Misty," said the voice, indicating her ghost was back to play. "You're not brave enough to ride that. You're not brave enough to do anything. That's why you'll always be alone."

Misty blinked, and just then something seemed to have been awakened inside her. "Enough is enough!" she said. "I'm not going to let my fear hold me back any longer!" She reached into her pocket and dug out the FastTrack. "Let's do this."

The ghost looked surprised as Misty marched forward. "Surely you can't be serious!"

"I'm serious... and don't call me Shirley."

Misty presented her FastTrack at the line and was shephered into the line. Once she was at the front, to her surprise her friends were about to board.

Sunny leaned over to the ride operator. "Could you hold a seat for our friend? She's in the FastTrack line."

The ride operator beckoned to Misty to come over. "Car three, next to the guy with green hair!"

Misty took her seat and pulled on the seatbelt, followed by lowering the over the shoulder restraint over her head. Once everybody was onboard, the ride operators did a safety check and dispatched the train.

The ghost seemed to be in a state of panic. "No, you can't do this! This is too scary! You could die!"

Misty just ignored them and looked ahead. If nothing else, the ghost's predicament was giving Misty a distinct sense of schadenfreude.

Once the coaster had cleared the first lift hill, it dropped into a steep drop, which ended in an inversion. The train hammered into it, and through the upside down portion, and down again.

Misty whooped in excitement. This was nowhere near as bad as she'd anticipated.

The ghost didn't seem to be having fun, though. "I FEEL SICK!"

The train then hammered through a set of barrel rolls before executing a tight overbanked turn, before dropping into another drop underneath a scenic element.

Misty glanced about and saw the ghost no more, but all too soon the ride was over. As it pulled back into the station, Misty was grinning from ear to ear.

"Enjoy that?" Hitch asked.

"Sure did!" Misty said. "Let's do it again!" Sure enough, she had conquered her fear of roller coasters.

Author's Note

This is an adaptation of the third Kenbucky Roller Derby comic. The title is taken from the Monkeynaught song of the same name. It also incorporates the plot of the Tell your Tale episode Emotional Rollercoaster.

The first Quebec Bridge was built in 1907, and was built in a great hurry without the required safety checks to save money; the design's weight far exceeded its carrying capacity and the dead load was too great. The resulting structure collapsed during construction, claiming the lives of 75 workers. Since that day, Canadian engineers have been given a ring made from that bridge at graduation, to act as a permanent reminder to never let hubris or cost concerns get in the way of safety.

The two rides in this chapter are inspred by the Curse at Alton Manor at Alton Towers and Colossus at Thorpe Park. The Curse at Alton Manor is a classic haunted house attraction, showcasing an old house haunted by the spirit of a child abused by her parents (hence why Misty finds it a little uncomfortable). Colossus was the first rollercoaster in the world to feature 10 inversions, and although this record was later beaten by The Smiler the coaster is still beloved. It even received a comprehensive refit recently, allowing it to run for many more years.

Misty having a FastTrack is meant to resolve a plot hole in the original episode regarding Misty queuejumping, as queuejumping in this manner would get you thrown out of a park in real life.

The finale of the chapter combines elements of the episode and one of my own memories, namely the moment I finally overcame my fear of roller coasters.