Rising Shards

This game would really put my ability to chill out on the while playing beam chasers. Most of my life's epiphanies and deep contemplations were done while playing. Even in a high stakes game, I could still find a way to find some inner peace. But could I do that while playing against Nikki, P.D., and Risa? Scrungy and Caeda were also there, but I had dealt with the former enough to know how to handle her while playing, and the latter I expected to be really bad at this.

As the teams took our places opposite each other on the court, Chickadee for some reason had a microphone and was wandering around us.

"A thrilling contest is about to begin between the super epic and incredible students of Wildfire Hearts, and the insufferable dorks from Rising Shards!"

"Hold on, I could have been doing commentary?" Caeda asked. "Can we trade?"

My mom grabbed the mic from Chickadee while she was in the middle of her rant about how much we all sucked.

"We're not doing that," She said. "Where did you even get this?"

Chickadee couldn't handle my mom's confidence and backed off. Hopefully that was the extent of her interfering with this.

I'm typically a runner when I play beam chasers. That means I'm one of the team's designated point scorers, focusing on getting the ball through one of the goals cut into the wall. There were a few bleachers to our left and right. Zeta, Oka, and Lillia weren't back from whatever they were doing yet. It would have been nice to have them cheering, but I could do this fine without them, too.

The Matora sisters took their usual defense spots, where they'd be backing me up during the game. Since we each had five person teams, we had enough to have Marmalade as a runner with me, and Roux as the goalie. Since the point scoring was so high up in the wall, a goalie wasn't as vital as they would be in other sports, getting a really long and light staff with a net on the end of it to swat the ball away with. Roux kept making jokes about how silly the staff looked, apparently never having noticed it in all the times they watched me play or when we played a beam chasers console game.

Opposing us, P.D. and Scrungy were the runners, Nikki and Risa were on defense, and Caeda was the goalie. I warned Marmalade plenty that Scrungy could play rough, but Marmalade probably had a good idea about that given Scrungy was suspended every other week for getting into fights. It felt inevitable that she'd end up at Wildfire Hearts, so it fit to see her on their team.

Marmalade seemed a bit nervous before the game, but either chilled out when she got her helmet on, or the helmet hid her more worried expressions. Still, I figured I should check on her while we had a second (Caeda couldn't figure out how to get her boots on right and was yelping about breaking her ankle or whatever).

"You good?" I asked.

"Mhm," Marmalade said. "A bit worried about breaking my own ankles now, but yeah. I think I'm alright."

"We got this," I said.

"I...never mind, it's dumb," Marmalade said.

"What is it?" I hoped I didn't sound too forceful asking, I didn't wanna upset her or anything.

"I just want..." Marmalade said. "To play really well for you."

I laughed, but something about that made me feel really light. She sounded so damn sincere about it. I didn't really know what to say, so I just said the first thing that came to mind.

"Our first of many games together, hopefully."

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