fandomhigh | Roller Derby, Danger Shop, Monday afternoon after classes

Roller Derby, Danger Shop, Monday afternoon after classes

The Danger Shop had been set up to look like a roller rink and there were plenty of pairs of roller skates in various sizes and even more safety gear waiting for everyone when they showed up.

"Hey everyone," Zeela said, from where she was pulling on a pair of skates. She was already wearing a helmet, padding over her knees and shoulders, and a pair of gloves over her normal clothes--which, unlike her sisters, involved casual pants and tops. No fancy dresses or froufrou for her.

Which probably explained why she was the head of the roller derby club and they weren't.

"Sorry to disappoint, but we're not making costumes or coming up with cute names today," she explained. "That part is fun, but it's not the most important part of roller derby. We have to get good enough to earn the personas and the costumes! Right now, we're not a roller derby team--we're a bunch of high school kids with roller skates on." She gestured to the piles of gear. "So, today, we suit up--Mr. S. insisted we all wear safety stuff before he would even make the magic room work--and we start learning the rules and learning to be a team."

But without all the trust falls and stuff. That was more teamwork than Zeela was prepared to handle. "Also, we should probably do intros and everything. This school likes that."

[Open for interested folks who might not had made the club fair, too!]

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With violence!

Sparkle

Raven Darkholme

Surreal SaDiablo

Isabelle Lightwood

Bay Kennish

No roller skates without safety equipment! More of Mr. S's rules.

Aw, lame. Sparkle gave his best stinkeye to the big blue guy, but pulled on his safety equipment all the same.

This was a whole lot of safety equipment. Like, a whole lot. Even football players only wore helmets (as far as Raven knew, anyway). Raven was having a bit of trouble working out how all the pads were supposed to go on, over here.

Maybe she could just sneak off and mimic them?

Surreal had gotten a letter from Sadi, which had simply stated she had to be at this location, at this date and time, as a 'reward' for not ditching her meditation classes. As if she needed a reward from that bastard prick.

As Surreal listened to Zee, however, an absolutely wicked grin was spreading over her features. She had seen bouts of this 'rollar derr-bee' on the tee-vee. Sadi had given her free license to maim, and he wasn't even going to be able to complain about her being too rough. Perfect.

Sadly, without cool personas.

Name, year, experience skating.

"Umm, I'm Zee. Kinda hope most of you figured that out already. I'm a junior and I've never skated before in my life. But how hard can it be?"

Zeela would be very appreciative of the safety equipment later.

"I'm Sparkle, and I won't wait until we're on skates to check you into the boards if you laugh," he announced, crossing his arms over his chest. At least he was straightforward, right? "I'm a junior, and I've never been on rollerskates, but I can rollerblade and ice-skate, so it can't be all that different, right?"

... Right?

"Isabelle Lightwood, junior, and I've never skated."

But she said that like someone who thought this was only a minor inconvenience, because she was going to rock at it.

Sadly for anyone who didn't like confidence that bordered on smugness, she was probably right.

Zeela was going to try not to hold that against her later. Try.

"I'm Raven." She waved. "Uh, I'm a sophomore, and I've done a little bit of skating, but not too much."

Mrs. Xavier would stop her if she spotted her skating. It was "too common".

"Surreal," she waved absently, working on her skates. "I like watching this on the tee-vee, and I can ice skate decently. And I will most likely enjoy checking people in to walls with unnecessary roughness."

There was a reason that Sparkle and Surreal were friends.

"Hey, I'm Bay. Senior," Bay offered, flipping a wave at the other attendees. "I had those Fisher Price skates that clamp onto your shoes when I was little, but that's about as advanced as my skating ever got."

"Okay, so at the most basic, roller derby is played by two teams of five members simultaneously skating counterclockwise on a circuit track. Each team designates a scoring player to be the jammer; the other four members are blockers. One blocker can be designated as a "pivot"—a blocker allowed to become a jammer in the course of play. There's this whole designation thing with helmets, but we're gonna cover that later."

"An entire match takes place over two thirty minute periods. Point scoring occurs during jams: plays that last up to two minutes. During a jam, points are scored when a jammer laps members of the opposing team. Each team's blockers use body contact, changing positions, and other tactics to assist its jammer to score while hindering the opposing team's jammer. So, the jammer has to be fast and agile, the blockers have to be tough. Our job is to figure out who here is best for what position. Questions?"

Don't worry about how you're doing. Better than the club leader who's never put on skates in her life.

This might be harder than she thought. Huh.

Ow.

Zeela was finding that she could barely skate a few feet without landing on her butt. Why wasn't there butt padding, Mr. S, huh?

"Anyone got some pointers for how to not suck?" she asked from the floor.

"You could try falling down less," Sparkle chirped from where he was... making his way across the floor. Ish.

Look, the going was slow and he was pretty crappy at this, but at least he was still upright. Rollerblades, these things were not.

Edited 2013-09-23 19:53 (UTC)

"And you could try shutting up more," Zeela said, cheerfully flipping him off while dragged herself to her feet again. "You're the last person to talk about not sucking, you know."

One of the ways she meant that could almost be a compliment!

Hey, Sparks was going to take it as one!

"Jealous," he accused with a smirk on his face as he managed something that could almost be a very brief glide across the floor. "I'd give you more pointers, but I'm pretty sure all that sucking speaks for itself."

"Is that how you plan to help us win our matches?" Zee asked, hugging the wall while she tried to keep her feet under her, where they belonged. "By sucking?"

Kids, stop being so sixteen.

"Noooope!" And now his chirping was a bit of a singsong. "By staying on my feet!"

Ass.

"I'm gonna make you our jammer," she threatened. "Just so there's another whole team looking forward to taking you down."

Which was technically a penalty move, but WHATEVER.

"Hey, if there are people like Surreal blocking, what do I have to worry?"

... Also, Isabelle. That would be slightly less reassuring in the long run.

"I can jam. You doubt my jammability?"

That was not actually a word. Sparkle did not actually care.

"All the times we scrimmage when she tries to take you down for practice?"

That's right, Sparkle. Fear your own teammates.

... Yeah, he was doomed.

"I'll get really good at skating really fast."

And not even because of Surreal. Isabelle was on the team.

Raven started out sort of slow and casual -- that was how ladies skated, after all, when they managed to sneak skating past their rather overbearing foster mothers -- but as she found her footing, started picking up some speed.

And then more speed. And then more.

At some point, she was going to remember that she didn't know how to stop.

That was fine! After all, there was a conveniently-place Zeela trying to pick herself up off the floor. Maybe that would give her some incentive to instantly figure it out?

Or, well, it'd help her stop. One way or another.

"In coming!" Raven called, hoping that said conveniently placed Zeela might manage to conveniently get herself out of the way. Perhaps flailing her arms would help? "Oh crap!"

And that would be Raven tripping over poor Zeela with a rather undignified squawk.

Note: flailing arms didn't actually help much.

See? This was important information to know. Windmilling arms != stopping power. Zee was going to make a note of that.

Later. After she pulled herself out of the floor. And out from under Raven.

"Points to Mr. S," she mumbled. "Safety gear. A++ Would use again."

Raven nodded into the floor. "I'm a convert," she said. "Though I'm wondering now if there's enough of it."

"I'm going to ask for butt pads next week," Zee said. "Because right now, I'm pretty sure mine is a rainbow of colors it's not supposed to be."

"Full body padded suits," Raven suggested. "For tripping over each other."

"Railings," Zee added. "Having something else to cling to would be nice."

"Maybe that's what the audience is for?"

How many people were supposed to get banged up in this game?

Bay did .... okay. Ish. Or at least, she was doing okay as long as she kept going very very slow. When she sped up. she went down hard.

She was also having another problem.

"Okay, how do we steer?"

"That's advanced skating." Maybe Bay could ask Raven? "I'm still working on how we stand. This looked a lot easier that day in class."

You know. That class she was not in. Whatever. It was hard to remember this stuff after the sixth time she'd ended up kissing the rink's floor.

"Class?" Bay frowned, not remembering Zee having been there, but shook it off. "Yeah, but those girls are, like, professionals. Of course they're way better than us."

That'd be Zee and Mr. S when they ping in.

Edited 2013-09-23 19:00 (UTC)

Well, her elbows and knees were fine, but her pride and bottom had taken a bruising today. Zee might not be in the most cheerful mood, but she's around to talk.

Jono had developed a small twitch in his left eye, every time Zeela referred to him as 'Mr. S.' Which, he imagined, was exactly why she was doing it.

He still wasn't certain how he'd been talked into this, except that he was pretty sure this was somehow his own fault for taking his class to see roller derby in the first place, so he was standing to the side of the rink with his arms crossed over his chest, making certain nobody did something stupid like try to learn to skate without safety equipment on.

I probably don't need this much OCD. Sorry!

I don't think you have to really worry until your OCD's OCD has OCD.

... I've done this before.

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Roller Derby, Danger Shop, Monday afternoon after classes

Sign in

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Arrive, Get Ready, Listen to Zee

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Introduce Yourself

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Rules of the Game (Week 1)

Skate

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Talk to the Club Leaders

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OOC

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