<font color=silver>Coach Pierce</font>
December 02, 2012 3:34 PM
Quidditch Final: Aladren vs Pecari by <font color=silver>Coach Pierce</font>
Frankly, the results of the year's second game stunned her. It wasn't that she had thought the Pecari team was bad . . . inexperienced, certainly, but not bad . . . but she had expected her own Crotali to win. Granted, Pecari had the only seeker in the school who had ever bested Arnold Carey, but there was tradition and five years of history that clearly indicated that the only way Aladren did not face Crotalus in the final was if Aladren faced Crotalus in the qualifying rounds.There had been a small delay between when Ms. Owen caught the snitch and when Amelia had blown the whistle to end the game, because she had needed those seconds to process, deny, grieve, then finally accept that Mr. Princeton had not been the one to catch it before she could announce Pecari's win. Neither graduating captain this year, then, would be playing in the finals.
And now the finals were here. It was a lovely day in late spring. Warm weather, but cooler than it had been all week (it had reached 85 on Thursday and 91 on Friday before the thunderstorm ran through last night and cooled things down) so it felt refreshing and comfortable in the mid seventies today. There were still a few clouds in the sky, but there were blue patches overhead and she didn't expect to see any more rain today. No, the greatest problem for the players would be the gusting winds that hadn't really gone away yet.
No doubt the spectators would appreciated the air movement, especially if the sun did start to warm things up again (not an unexpected turn of events in the Arizona desert even with the weather charms to protect them from really high extremes), but the intermittent winds were strong and unpredictable, which would no doubt wreak havoc on the Quaffle, probably carry the snitch about in even more unpredictable randomness than normal, and even the bludgers wouldn't be entirely unaffected by the larger gusts. Even just flying in a straight line would prove more difficult than normal with the wind rising and then dying down to nothing only to pick up again with no pattern or regularity.
She almost felt bad for Pecari, with its fairly new line-up, playing against the seasoned veterans of Aladren under such conditions.
The two sixth-year captains were giving their pre-game speeches to their teams and she let them finish before calling them to her. "This is the final game of the year, with Aladren, led by Captain David Wilkes, facing off against Pecari, led by Captain Sophie Jamison. Please shake hands." Neither was graduating this year, so there would be no desperate attempt to reach for a final show of glory this match, but both were no doubt eager to show what their team could do. Aladren had its title to defend and Pecari would surely like to prove that what they could do once, they could do again.
As the captains return to their teams after the handshake, she released first the snitch, which flew up, got dragged to the right as the wind picked up for a moment, then flew off, seeming to disappear between one blink and the next. Next, she let out the bludgers which flew up without interference from the day's weather, and finally she picked up the Quaffle. Standing between the two teams she held the red ball aloft and concluded her usual remarks for any spectators that might be tuning in for the first time, "Game begins at my whistle and ends when a seeker catches the snitch. Three. Two. One. Tweet" The whistle blew and she threw the Quaffle high into the air, thankfully at a moment when no wind was blowing to give either team an unfair advantage.
OOC: Welcome to the final. You should all know what you're doing now, but rules are posted here. Have fun posting!
Subthreads: Here to win, again by <font color="blue">Arthur Carey, Chaser</font> with <font color="blue">Russell Layne, Chaser</font>, Asst Capt. Amira Thornton, Pecari, Asst. Capt. Amira T., Beater, Pecari, <font color="tan">Waverly Canterbury,Chaser</font>, <font color="brown">Mellie Goodwin, Chaser</font>, <font color="blue">Captain Wilkes, Keeper</font>
It's undeniably shiny, the thing that I Seek... by <font color="blue">Arnold Carey, Seeker</font> with <font color="tan">Rupert Princeton, Beater</font>, Preston, Beater, <font color="tan">Jade Owen, Seeker</font>, <font color="blue">Preston, Beater</font>, <font color=silver>Coach Amelia Pierce</font>
Watching attentively by <font color="blue">Jay Carey, Alternate</font> with <font color="blue">Anthony Carey, Alternate</font>
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<font color=silver>Coach Pierce</font>
Quidditch Final: Aladren vs Pecari
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<font color=silver>Coach Pierce</font>
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<font color="blue">Arthur Carey, Chaser</font>
December 02, 2012 11:27 PM
Here to win, again by <font color="blue">Arthur Carey, Chaser</font>
He was quite sure that if he had bee offered the chance to fix the Final, Arthur would not have seen the benefits of playing Pecari on his own and would have instead picked either Teppenpaw (which they’d never suffered a humiliating loss to) or Crotalus (out of a sense of honor and tradition), but since he had not had that chance and events, independent of him, had occurred the way they had, he was actually very pleased they were going to play the Wild Boars again. Things between him and Arnold, like things in general, really, had not been quite right since midterm, but the closer they had come to the game, the more petty matters of trust and loyalty and illegal spells had seemed to lose their grip on his brother’s attention. He could always count on Arnold to be easily distracted by Quidditch.He could not say the same of Jane, who he’d been startled to see among the crowd moving into the stands just before the teams gathered, since he knew she never attended the games. There was no mistaking her, though, and that made him a little uneasy, though, careful of the shaky unity once more reigning between him and his twin, he did not mention it to Arnold. Not that he was completely sure Arnold would process it even if he did; he was going to some effort to act like his usual manically cheerful game day self, but Arthur thought he was a little tenser than usual. He had beaten Jade Owen since that one day when she had beaten him, but not in a Final. This, if Arthur was not mistaken, when his brother really planned to decide which of them was better.
It was inevitable that Arnold was going to do something stupid. Arthur did not doubt that for a single moment. He was never reasonable, Arnold, and he was never less reasonable than when he thought he had something to prove, that his honor, or reputation, or whatever term Arnold applied to it, was on the line. Arthur was just glad that the Pecari Beaters were both younger and less experienced than his brother. Otherwise, he thought there was a good chance they would have lost, and that even if they’d won, Arnold would have required more time with the medic than usual afterward, which would hardly be a good way to end things. Better than the alternative, of course, but still not ideal.
He listened politely, if, between his brother and knowing that she was out there and that he probably would not like the reason why, not as attentively as he might have otherwise, to Mr. Wilkes’ speech, for a moment being struck by the thought that the year after next it would be Arnold speaking to them all and wondering how on earth that was going to go, and then looking nowhere in particular while the captains shook hands. He had never really known what to do with his eyes during that moment, when glaring at the other team felt ridiculous but there was really nothing that he was supposed to, or indeed could, do. It presented him with a problem he couldn’t figure out what the best answer to was, and which, therefore, was really uncomfortable for him.
Happily, though, it was a moment which really only did, usually, last for a moment, since the captains were hardly going to stand around and exchange banter. Surely, he thought, even Mr. Wilkes, in his unrivaled sobriety, could not be that unusual. There had to be limits, at least for someone who was capable of getting into Aladren. There just had to be. It would damage Arthur’s entire concept of – well, perhaps not the world, after some of the people who had managed to get and stay in his family – at least his concept of Aladren if that was not so.
When the handshake was over, his eyes went to his broom as he got on it and waited for the whistle, which was obligingly swift to sound and set them all off into the air, Arthur himself getting the Quaffle first. Since he had done that in the last game as well, though, and it had been, if not an outright disaster, at least a tremendous headache to deal with for the Aladren Chasers, he did not feel too energized by that, or too sure, this time, that it was a predictor of what was going to happen in the game. Usually, he thought he was surer of their chances no matter what the circumstance, but in the course of this academic year, he had gone from thinking that he knew what pessimism was and that he possessed exactly the right amount of it to knowing that he in fact had known nothing at all before September and thought that he might still have plenty to learn.
Hard evidence, though, was far more valuable than either optimism or pessimism, and hard evidence from the Crotalus game suggested that while the Pecari girls were not, all things considered, bad Chasers, neither were they on the Aladren team’s level. With that thought in mind, he was careful about it as he looked for an opening to pass, but confident as he did throw the ball toward another blue uniform, aiming, in spite of the wind, for the first really, fully planned move of the game.
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<font color="blue">Arthur Carey, Chaser</font>
Here to win, again
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<font color="blue">Arthur Carey, Chaser</font>
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<font color="blue">Russell Layne, Chaser</font>
December 03, 2012 3:54 PM
Excellent plan, my friend. by <font color="blue">Russell Layne, Chaser</font>
Russell had been as surprised as anyone, he thought, when Pecari beat Crotalus for the final; he didn’t expect any of them to admit it if Mellie, who had gotten mad at him when he suggested the idea, wouldn’t, but he would not have been at all surprised if the Pecaris had experienced their own moment of shock when Jade caught the Snitch. Pecari beating Crotalus…well, it was like Pecari beating Aladren. It was one of those things that just didn’t happen, until the day that it did.With that in mind, Russell didn’t assume the game before him was going to be easy. He couldn’t help but think that it would be easier than it would have been if they had played Crotalus again – he was pretty sure that in his seventh year, there as a good chance that the Crotalus and Aladren teams were going to take to the field to play the final game of the year and then just implode sometime in mid-play from the depths of their determination to beat each other – but it wasn’t going to be easy. Pecari was going to want to win this, and all it would take was one lucky Bludger at the right moment, the way it had been the last time these two teams (in name, at least; the Pecari lineup was very different now) had made it to the end here. That wasn’t really his business, since he was a Chaser and really expected his part of the game to be easier than usual since he wouldn’t be surprised if one Pecari Beater just covered Jade while the other concentrated on attacking Arnold, but he thought about it anyway, just to kill the time, he supposed, as they waited for things to get underway. The waiting was always one of the hardest parts.
Not that the captain’s speech was exactly one of the highlights of his life, either, David being David, but as long as the ‘let’s go maim people’ incident was not repeated, he preferred it to the rest of the time that happened on game day before the actual game began. No matter how late in the day the game was set to start, he ended up spending all that time restless and useless, feeling as though he had too much time to just sit around in but not time enough to really do anything else. Having three other members of the team among his roommates did not help, either, though he guessed he should still be grateful that he was not Josh, who got to be stuck in the middle of them all without even being able to really empathize with the anticipation. Bad enough to be, even now, still kind of ‘the new guy’ without having that to deal with, too.
He didn’t see the other fifth year as really the kind of guy who cared much about fitting in with the rest of them anyway, though, and if he was, he had truly done an astonishing job of hiding it for the past two years, so maybe it wasn’t a good comparison to draw at all. Russell didn’t know, and it was only something to momentarily distract himself with before David started talking. Once he did, Russell dropped the matter, along with how the Pecari Beaters were going to treat Arnold and everything else except his role in the game, which was to get the Quaffle as much as possible, keep it moving between him and the other Aladren Chasers, and try to score with it, but essentially just keeping it away from the Pecari Chasers. That was his job, that was his function for the moment, and that was what he was keeping his attention on right now.
Kickoff came at last, after David had spoken to them and then Coach Pierce announced the crucial details for the audience, if anyone didn’t know for some reason, and Arthur caught the Quaffle first. So far, so good. Russell didn’t feel any particular need to be have the honor of carrying the Quaffle first, especially since he remembered more than a few games where the person who had done that had then promptly lost control of it to the other team and never gotten it back for the rest of the game. He just wanted to have it for a while at all, to do his part toward getting them to Sophie Jamison and a triumph for the Chasing group.
Soon enough, he got that chance. Arthur passed the Quaffle, and Russell caught it, and the game kept moving along toward the Pecari goals, as smoothly as things had seemed to go at first, for the maybe five minutes things had gone at all, for the Pecari Chasers during their game with Crotalus. Except, maybe, for the wind; he didn’t really remember the weather conditions from that day except as ‘cold,’ so he wasn’t sure how the wind compared. Still, though, it did make completed passes just a little more impressive, for those who knew the game or were in it.
It also reminded him to be cautious, though, because in the end, though they had lost the game, Crotalus had managed to get the Quaffle away from Pecari in the end and keep them from scoring, or even trying to score. Pecari could very well mimic that move. He didn’t want them to do that. Precision was hard at high speeds in the wind anyway, but Russell did the best he could to maximize the chances of completion as he made his pass toward another of the blue-robed chasers on the Pitch, not wanting to lose the ball to wind or the three girls from Pecari. That, on the second move, would look bad; no one would remember it later, especially if Arnold did his job right and caught the Snitch as usual, but Russell thought that he would remember it, and he didn’t want to do that, either.
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<font color="blue">Russell Layne, Chaser</font>
Excellent plan, my friend.
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<font color="blue">Russell Layne, Chaser</font>
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Asst Capt. Amira Thornton, Pecari
December 05, 2012 2:12 PM
Not your best plan, though. Was it? by Asst Capt. Amira Thornton, Pecari
Amira had her doubts about the day of the Pecari/Aladren Final Game. Her stomach was oddly in knots. Was the fourth year actually nervous? (If she was, she wasn’t happy about it.)Merlin’s Beard, whats the matter with me? she thought. It wasn’t that she was untrusting of her team, she trusted them, (well most of them), with her life. We play Aladren… The butterflies inside her stomach took flight so fast that she was nauseated. Ohmygod… I’m going to throw up… She rushed to the bathroom and dinner from the night before exploded into the john. She’d made it just in time. Eww… That was gross! she added to herself as she wiped her face off and gargled some sink water to get the taste of acid out of her mouth.
“Eww…” she muttered softly to the bathroom wall in front of her. I don’t even want to know what I look like right now… Her mind raced almost as fast as her heart as she looked in the mirror. Amira’s red hair stood out even more than usual against her now pale, clammy skin and she groaned. It would be today, wouldn’t it… Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but today…
“Merlin’s Beard…” she said ass he realized the heat that was coming right off her forehead. Damnit… After the game I‘m going to have to go see Medic Bailey, the girls won’t give me a choice… Mir said to herself as she pulled her hair up better, tucking in the flyaways. “I can do this… I can do this…” she repeated to herself over and over again as she slowly got ready for the game as the rest of Pecari House started moving around out of their beds.
The fourth year walked out of Pecari House and down hallways to the front door. The door opened and the air hit her like a ton of bricks. It was warm for late Spring, but it felt like that day was cooler than the rest of the week to Amira’s hands. Her head, however, felt like it was right next to a heater. The heat and the warm gusty wind made Mir a little dizzy and she caught herself on the doorjamb. “Oooh… That was not okay…” she whispered, when she caught her breath again. I have to play… There’s no reserves… I have to… she closed her eyes and took in a deep breath in from her mouth, and let it out slowly through her nose. A tear fell from the corner of her right eye, and she stifled a sob. Why does this always happen when I feel like I’m going to throw up…? she asked herself as she opened her eyes back up again to see the blue patches of sky above her. She hiccupped, and pulled in a deep breath again, letting it out even slower than before.
The wind gusted around her, blowing the door shut onto her. “Ow…” she said, as she moved away from the door, letting it close all the way as it seemed to want to. She walked slowly down to the Pitch and to her team, doing her best to listen to Sophie’s speech and keep her head on straight at the same time. Merlin, I really hope I don’t throw up right now… Or at all during this game… she thought to herself as she wiped sweat off her forehead and another tear from the corner of her eye at the same time. Merlin, they’ll all know soon if this game doesn’t just start already… she thought. She knew she was pale and clammy, she’d only hoped the other’s hadn’t really noticed. Thankfully, Coach Pierce started talking soon after, hopefully before the others could figure out she was sick.
Sophie shook David’s hand and returned to the rest of the Pecari Team as Coach released the Snitch first, then the Bludgers and lastly, she stood between Aladren and Pecari holding the Quaffle. Mir closed her eyes tightly and held onto her broom handle tightly too as she felt a little bit dizzy again. Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as the first time, but it is what it is. The whistle blew and the Quaffle flew high into the air, both team‘s players flew up around it.
It hadn’t been decided which Beater would take watch over the Seekers and which would take the Chasers, however, it was almost as if Rup had read her mind, maybe Jade’s too. Jade and Mira had never had such friendly feelings towards each other, she wasn’t sure if they ever would. Rupert probably read that. He went after Arnold right after the Quaffle throw, so Amira, in her flight, went right for the Chasers.
Arthur Carey of Aladren, got the Quaffle first, and she was right on him, still pale and clammy, but for some reason the air helped her feel a little cooler at least. She didn’t see a Bludger yet, but that didn’t mean one wouldn’t show itself to her at some point soon. The wind blew her a little bit off-track, but the off-track blow did help her to find a Bludger. Holding up her bat with one clammy hand, she held her broom with the other and with one eye on the black ball and the other on Arthur who looked like he was going to pass the ball. Moments later, he did just as she thought he would when the ball changed hands into Russell’s. It was almost perfect, the way the Aladren Chasers usually were in each game. It didn’t matter who they played against, they were still the same way. But sick or not, its not going to stay that way. It’s not… she thought, anger boiling her temperature up even higher than it already was.
Amira wasn’t stupid, maybe she was relatively new at Beating on a team, just as she’d been relatively new at Chasing the year before. She was flexible, knowledgeable in all areas of Quidditch, she had worn many hats over the years. Even though the one she wanted most was the Seeker hat, she could play anything. I can do this… I can… Being sick isn‘t going to stop me. Pecari can still win…
Russell took the Quaffle further down the Pitch, closer to Pecari’s hoops and Sophie, but Amira, sick or not, wasn’t going to let it get near enough to Sophie to risk anything. Russell made the move like he was going to pass, but before he could even release the Quaffle, the black Bludger was enroute to the spot where the ball met Russell’s arm. She wasn’t trying to hurt Russell, persay. She was more interested in stopping Aladren’s Chaser, whichever one he was throwing to, from getting the red ball. So why not use the black one to hit the red one off course in this wind…? she thought, as her bat hit metal, sending it right at the Quaffle, knocking it out of the line of the Aladren Chaser who was trying to catch Russell’s pass, hopefully into the hands of one of Pecari’s Chasers…
It didn’t matter to her if Mellie, Ann or Waverly got the ball after that, but she hoped beyond all hope that one of them was able to get it in the wind…
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Asst Capt. Amira Thornton, Pecari
Not your best plan, though. Was it?
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Asst Capt. Amira Thornton, Pecari
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<font color="blue">Arthur Carey, Chaser</font>
December 05, 2012 8:41 PM
It still seems to be working to me by <font color="blue">Arthur Carey, Chaser</font>
In spite of the wind, which he knew could be even more of a problem for him than for his brother in spite of his greater weight because of what it could do to the Quaffle, Arthur was pleased to see that he and Russell were working together as well as ever, working around the stumbling block the environment was trying to put before them and keeping the Quaffle in Aladren possession. Another move or two, and they would be able to threaten the Pecari goals, and then things would really begin….As Russell began to pass the ball back toward him, though, Arthur heard a whistle that didn’t exactly match the wind a second too late to do anything about it, and was in the middle of swearing when it clipped his elbow as he pulled the Quaffle in, the half-furious, half-resigned exclamation cutting itself off in the middle because of the impact. In addition to the usual pain, the exact spot hit meant that unpleasant, almost tingling and at the same time almost numb, shocks went both up and down the rest of his arm, nearly making him, as he twisted his shoulder instinctively in an attempt to shake off the feeling, drop the Quaffle as he tried to pull it closer to him at the same time.
Well. This was not something he would have liked to see happen so early in the game. Injuries were inevitable and he regarded them as such, but so early in the game…that was not things going well. Trying to force his face out of the twist it had gone into after the impact, he focused on covering ground, aiming to let one of his teammates have the first shot at the Pecari goals. He would be all right, he thought, but at the moment, he was also sure that Sophie Jamison would best him in the one-on-one contest Chasers and Keepers engaged in, and a failed goal would both do nothing for the team and would possibly earn him a negative response from his teammates later if he tried it, and rightly, since only phenomenal arrogance on the level of what Edmond had accused him of would make him try to shoot so soon after getting hit when there were other options….
The thought of his distant cousin made him grimace again, for a completely unrelated reason, as he looked for a good opportunity to pass and then, once he thought the way they were all moving was about to present him with one, made the extra effort to feint in the direction he did not plan to go before he passed in the one which he did, hoping to throw off any Pecaris who thought they might smell blood in the metaphoric water. Then, of course, all he could do was hold his breath and stop just short of crossing two fingers as he saw whether or not the tactic was going to work out as he wanted it to.
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<font color="blue">Arthur Carey, Chaser</font>
It still seems to be working to me
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<font color="blue">Arthur Carey, Chaser</font>
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Asst. Capt. Amira T., Beater, Pecari
December 06, 2012 2:25 PM
Think again... by Asst. Capt. Amira T., Beater, Pecari
Amira’s forehead felt slightly cooler thanks to the wind, but she was sure that when she went back inside her fever would jump up even higher than it ever had been before. Amira’s normal core body temperature is below the normal 98.6 degrees. Generally, hers sat somewhere near 97 and at this time, she was sure it was somewhere over 102 by the feel of it. Her clammy hands were starting to slip on her Beaters bat, so she switched hands fast, wiped her clammy one on her robe and switched back, doing the same thing with the hand that held the broom handle as well. Her back hurt and it felt almost like she had been hit by one of those 18 wheeled trucks she used to see out in Oregon on the highways.With both her hands now slightly less clammy and the air blowing through her hair (thankfully), cooling her head and neck, she spotted the first Bludger which she hit right towards Russell’s passing Quaffle. Her hope was that Mellie, Ann or Waverly would get the Quaffle from there, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen.
Arthur Carey got in the way, AGAIN. However, Amira didn’t find that a problem at first. When the Bludger hit, it hit his elbow and a weird smile was etched on Mir’s mouth. When she realized that whether he was hit or not, he still had the ball pulled into him, she cursed herself for not hitting the black ball harder than she had. Damnit! she thought to herself as she flew faster towards the Bludger (and Arthur), wondering where her Chasers were.
Arthur tried to cover ground and get back towards Sophie again from what seemed to her like mid-Pitch. Oh no you won’t… she thought as she flew faster and faster than she really should have being sick and all. But she wanted to win this game, and if she wanted that win she was going to do just about anything to get it!
Amira flew below the Chaser, and just behind him for a few feet, then flew out in front of him to startle him, hopefully enough to drop the ball into waiting hands of one of Pecari’s Chasers. She didn’t hit him or touch him in any way, so that was not, nor could not be considered anything bad, could it?
When Arthur passed the ball anyway, just before she flew upwards, right towards her, the Quaffle hit off her arm that held her bat and her clammy hands almost dropped said bat. Almost. Thank goodness she caught both the bat and moved the ball downwards and away from Arthur (hopefully from Russell and Kitty too…), at the same time, but she wasn’t too sure just yet.
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Asst. Capt. Amira T., Beater, Pecari
Think again...
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Asst. Capt. Amira T., Beater, Pecari
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<font color="tan">Waverly Canterbury,Chaser</font>
December 06, 2012 5:34 PM
Trying not to be too flustered by <font color="tan">Waverly Canterbury,Chaser</font>
Quidditch had been a whirlwind since Waverly's first match in which Pecari won. She had been dizzy with excitement and disbelief. It was clear that she hadn't expected Pecari to win, though she had definitely hoped for it. And now they were in the finals against Aladren.If she was completely honest with herself, she was a little bit afraid of playing against Aladren. Aladren seemed to win the cup every year and, besides being sick and tired of them winning, it almost felt like a tradition now. However, they had beat Aladren before and Waverly didn't doubt they could do it again. Hopefully.
Lucky shoes on, though worn and somewhat muddy now from practices, and her Quidditch uniform, she rushed out to the pitch and arrived a few minutes early. She walked onto the grass with her teammates and listened to Sophie's speech as she took several deep breaths, nodding to show that she was listening. It was much windier than she had expected, though she was used to the Arizona weather since she had grown up here. She redid her hair from a ponytail to a bun, satisfied with it not getting into her face.
Finally, the whistle was blown and she watched her teammates all fly up into the air. Tentatively, Waverly rose up. She was much more comfortable on a broom now, but she still didn't expect the gust of wind to throw her off course already. She held onto the broomstick for dear life, trying to push her way back to a comfortable position. Though the gust made its way through, she was still a little shaky. Waverly finally rose a little higher, but the other players were already up and doing things. This was already frustrating.
Waverly rose up higher and kept her eyes on the other Chasers. She had watched many a game to know Aladren's tactics and feints. Of course, it was very different being on the pitch instead of in the stands. Things were going really fast already, and Waverly had to rush to keep up. Arthur had the quaffle, and then Russell, and then Arthur again. Well, that wasn't fair. The Pecaris hadn't even had a chance to get it yet. She flew over, but found she was too late when Arthur made to pass the opposite way. Waverly slowed down, put out, waiting to watch a good pass to one of his teammates, but was surprised when she saw the quaffle heading straight for her instead. Apparently that had been a feint she hadn't expected.
She flew forward quickly and snatched the quaffle up quickly and headed over to the Aladren hoops. Her grass green eyes were bright now with the adrenaline running through her blood and her heart was beating quickly as it did every time she had the quaffle in her arm. She was close to the hoops as she dared, but didn't want to be a ball hog. Besides, she was kind of afraid of making the first throw into the hoops.
Waverly remembered, suddenly, one of the moves they had worked on in practice. She looked out for one of her teammates as she neared the hoops and threw it towards the right hoop, watching, hoping, and praying for her teammate to kick it into the middle one. They had practiced this move before and she really hoped it worked.
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<font color="tan">Waverly Canterbury,Chaser</font>
Trying not to be too flustered
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<font color="tan">Waverly Canterbury,Chaser</font>
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<font color="blue">Arthur Carey, Chaser</font>
December 07, 2012 12:31 AM
Just keep trying to get yourself flattened instead by <font color="blue">Arthur Carey, Chaser</font>
At the last moment, when it was already too late to do anything about it, Arthur saw the brown robe, but he was prevented from thinking through the words he would have liked to use to express his opinion of that when he looked again and saw which Pecari player it was. The surprise of seeing a Beater there was enough to startle him.Once that moment was past, though, his expression went from blank to furious as he turned his broom around and contemplated whether or not he could persuade or manipulate anyone in his family into petitioning the Magical Sports people about a rule change. There was a clearly defined rule about how no one but the Seeker could touch the Snitch without a foul being called, so why should Beaters get to interfere with the Quaffle? Or, if the Snitch was to be special, why couldn’t he and the other Chasers have bats in one hand as well? It wasn’t proper, not at all, and he disapproved heartily. If she could hit his Quaffle, he should be able to hit her hea…Bludger, he quickly corrected himself. Mother would definitely disapprove of his first construction.
Still, as they flew down much of the Pitch and Thaddeus woefully failed to damage Miss Canterbury, Arthur entertained fond fantasies about the idea of the Aladren team coming to a game all carrying bats, and then using those to great effect on any available portions of the other team. Perhaps if it were raining; Pecari brown or Crotalus red could look very close to black, wet, as could many hair colors. They could mistake many things for Bludgers. It would be wonderful.
At last, they had covered the whole damn Pitch – if Mr. Wilkes did not have the nerve to have a word with their Beaters about this kind of thing, Arthur vehemently hoped that Thaddeus’ friends would make his life, anyway, deeply unpleasant for a few days for allowing it, since Preston seemed to be with Arnold and that was a bit more important than the goals, he supposed, as emotional as he could get about them in these moments of such great stress – and Miss Canterbury looked like she was going to shoot. Arthur judged that he could probably not save it. He would have to trust Mr. Wilkes.
Evidently, the universe felt like a comedian today. He doubted even a completely unintelligent cosmos could have failed to notice how well Arthur liked that idea, especially in the Final.
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<font color="blue">Arthur Carey, Chaser</font>
Just keep trying to get yourself flattened instead
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<font color="blue">Arthur Carey, Chaser</font>
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5
Asst. Capt. Amira T., Beater, Pecari
December 09, 2012 8:08 PM
She won't be flattened. by Asst. Capt. Amira T., Beater, Pecari
Amira watched the Quaffle fall slightly and Waverly rose up almost as if to meet it. It was amazing the way it worked. She knew it was almost even like an accident, but she wasn’t going to say anything of the sort out loud! She believed in Waverly, in fact, she believed in her whole team. Even Jade.Jade may not be her favorite person in the world, but she had grown to be able to tolerate the girl. After all, how can they work together on the Pitch if they refused to talk to her. How could Pecari win without real teamwork? And, for Jade’s ability, it grew better and better as she worked towards this game. Amira actually had real faith in the girl’s ability to win the game. Sure, she didn’t say it to the younger Pecari, but after the game when she helped to win it for them, Amira promised herself that she’d tell the younger girl she was proud of her.
Amira grinned when Waverly caught the Quaffle and wanted to cheer for her little friend, but also didn’t want to lose her own sense of equilibrium. As it was, she felt warmer and warmer as the game went on and the Pecari chanted in her head, Come on Jade… Catch that Snitch! You can do it! Catch that Snitch! Althewhile, she was watching as Waverly headed towards Aladren hoops. Amira followed her younger teammate to be sure that no Aladren Beater would get her with a Bludger in the process.
Spotting one heading right for Waverly as she reached near the hoops, she flew faster and hit it in the opposite direction, towards one of the blue robed players. She didn’t care which Aladren it was, she wasn’t too worried about it hitting her sister. Andri was on the bench, thankfully not playing first string in this game.
Waverly looked around her, like she had an idea of what she was going to do, and Amira waited as well, with bated breath and an eye both on Waverly as well as in the hunt for Bludgers. Waverly threw the Quaffle towards the right hoop and finally Amira realized what she was doing. She was hoping for Ann or Mellie to kick the red ball into the middle one. It was something they’d practiced at team practices, and Amira hoped it worked in a game too!
She’d seen the look on Arthur’s face when she’d ended up hitting the Quaffle. It wasn’t what she’d originally planned to do, it was just an after effect of it, but she didn’t want anything to go wrong in this game. The look on Arthur Carey’s face told her he could kill her with the anger he felt. She wasn’t afraid of him, but she didn’t want him to stop the game over it all. If he was going to throw a fit, Let him wait till after. See how scary he truly thinks he is… she thought as she glanced around towards the other Pecari Chasers, hoping they understood what Waverly was doing!
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Asst. Capt. Amira T., Beater, Pecari
She won't be flattened.
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Asst. Capt. Amira T., Beater, Pecari
0
5
<font color="brown">Mellie Goodwin, Chaser</font>
December 13, 2012 1:41 PM
I might be soon... by <font color="brown">Mellie Goodwin, Chaser</font>
Over the summer, Mellie had had a long argument with her cousin Alison over whether she was a realist or an idealist. She hadn’t been too clear on what they were talking about for half the conversation, or even really after she looked it up in the dictionary later, but she thought now, starting the Quidditch final, that she might be finally starting to get it. She was trying to be realistic, assuring herself that she was not going to get upset if they lost because the odds were definitely not in their favor in any way, but at the same time was feeling optimistic, thinking that, well…The odds had been against Pecari when they played Crotalus, too, and see how that had worked out.She really wished, as she got ready for the game, that she could pick a side and stick with it, because this feeling of being of two minds was not comfortable and she did not like it. She felt it, in different contexts, a lot this year, about one thing and then another, but it never seemed to grow on her at all, not even like mold. It was just awkward.
She listened to Sophie’s speech, smiled politely while the captains shook hands, and was almost relieved that it wasn’t her or Waverly or Ann who had gotten the Quaffle first. That was, considering how long and vicious any game with Aladren was probably going to be and how good of a Keeper Sophie was, really not that big of a deal, and any of the three of them – especially, she thought, Ann; Waverly was only a year younger than Mellie, but Mellie found herself feeling a little protective of the first year Chaser – might have gotten crushed in the scramble for the ball, because the Aladrens were not known for really worrying too much about who got injured. The Aladrens kept it nearly to the goals, but then Amira and Waverly managed to get it away from them, inspiring Mellie to put her hands together quickly in applause as she turned to get things moving toward David Wilkes.
Waverly moved the ball all the way down the Pitch, something that Mellie would never have had the nerve to do, which she guessed was a good thing since there was an extremely good chance they would have lost the ball if they had passed it around more on their way down, but then she looked at Mellie and Mellie had an idea of what she wanted to do and winced. Trying to kick the ball twenty feet higher was hard enough for her to do without overbalancing even when they were just in practice; with the Aladren Chasers and Beaters around, too, just to add to the pressure….
But here they were, edge of the scoring area, so she gave it her best and hopefully distracted the Keeper further with the roll she went into, kicking while astride a broom being complicated and the effort she had put into it being greater than her balance. She gripped her broom hard with both hands as she worked to get upright again, her heart pounding while she had no idea whatsoever what was going on with the Quaffle even after she did pull herself up again, since her bangs had come loose from her ponytail while she scrambled – how she hated having such fine hair; there was almost no way to make it stay in place indefinitely, much less while upside-down – and had fallen into her eyes, forcing her to take a second to stick them back behind her ears.
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<font color="brown">Mellie Goodwin, Chaser</font>
I might be soon...
206
<font color="brown">Mellie Goodwin, Chaser</font>
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5
<font color="blue">Captain Wilkes, Keeper</font>
December 13, 2012 5:37 PM
Get on with that, won't you? by <font color="blue">Captain Wilkes, Keeper</font>
Now that he was captain, David had learned some interesting things about his own psychology. Two, in particular, stood out to him, and he guessed that those two things were going to be the main benefits he was ever able to assign to the whole captaining experience, as he thought he would eventually be able to generalize them to other things he might have to do at some point. They boiled down to two different facets of a sad fact: he was just not one of nature’s leaders.One of the things which had given him a hint in that direction was that while he had been perfectly comfortable at the beginning of games when he was just a nameless guy at the back of the crowd, he always felt anxious before they went to play now that he was the face at the front of the group. Even against opponents who, in theory, they would be able to scatter like matchsticks put in front of a bowling ball, he was nervous and worried and sometimes even a little sick. He was worried that if he was the person shaking hands with the enemy at the beginning, he’d be the one they blamed things on if they should, through some freak of nature, happen to lose.
Logically, as he tried not to pace while the team got together before their second final against Pecari, he knew that the person they should blame if a game was lost was either Arnold or, if they really had to pin it on a teammate, maybe the Beater covering Arnold, but in his heart of hearts, he was always sure it was going to be him they took it out on if something went wrong. David found life much more pleasant when he wasn’t being blamed for anything at all whether he had done it or not, but he knew his status in this world, and knew he especially did not want to be blamed for something, whether he had done it or not, by, say, Preston Stratford when the other guy looked like he was about ten minutes from going into fully-fledged coffee withdrawals not too long before half the team took the CATS. Just a fact of life, that. And he had to act like it wasn’t a fact at all, which made him that much more worried about it, which made it that much harder to act like it wasn’t a fact at all….
He tried to reassure himself, once they were all there, that none of them had ever decided it would be fun to beat him up yet, but his brain took malicious pleasure in echoing the word yet after he did, and he gave the attempt up with alacrity, instead trying to concentrate on his carefully prepared and memorized speech.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, trying for his most grandiose tones. “Great to see you all, great to see you.”
The other half of what he had learned from two years of captaining, the other key hint that he was not, despite the best efforts of the county Gifted programs of his old school and the camps he’d attended most of the summers of his life and then the highly competitive atmosphere of Aladren House itself, one of nature’s leaders, was that he sucked at giving speeches. If the sense of embarrassment he had when he did it had been even a little less vague, he would, when going through the motions of leadership, have felt very like an actor who had stumbled onto stage without knowing his lines while wearing nothing but an oversized overcoat which turned his gestures into parody and was not, in fact, actually supposed to be his costume at all. He got by somehow, and guessed he must have looked a little more impressive than he felt because no one had rebelled yet, but he felt like a straight-up fool putting on these shows.
“Out there, right now, the enemy feels like he’s on top of the world,” he continued, barreling his way through the embarrassment taking the place of the nerves by sheer willpower, or at least something he guessed would pass for it. The phrase he would have used, if he were being precise, ran something more along the lines of ‘knowing the piranhas will eat me if I don’t manage to call their bluff, so here’s me doing a song and dance to keep them confused for as long as possible while I figure out how to run, as these piranhas inexplicably have legs,’ but he thought ‘sheer willpower’ sounded a lot more snappy, so he stuck with that. “They beat Crotalus, and now they think they’re going to beat us, ladies and gentlemen. We aren’t going to let them. We will play them near their goals, we will play them in midfield, we will play them near our goals, we will play them right up to the last inch of turf – and we won’t have any of that being annihilated stuff.” Churchill, according to his hazy memories of the World War II special he had watched over Christmas, had gone on, but that part wasn’t really, as far as he could parse it, applicable to Quidditch without taking a tone he didn’t want to, and so he started improvising more. It wasn’t like his almost entirely pureblood audience was going to notice.“We will do the annihilating. Thad, Preston, really work on that, huh? Especially on their Seeker. Annihilation, that’s what we’re looking for. Everyone else, too. Go all-out. Play like you mean it. Because we will never live it down if we let these pipsqueaks win.”
On that cheerful note, he led them out, humming the Imperial March to himself. At some point, he had also figured out that once he just started going as far over the top as he could, it helped with the anxiety, which was coming back at this point.
He smiled and shook hands with Sophie Jamison, the game began, the whistle blew, and he reached the goals, turning as soon as he did to face the game, though he was hovering close enough to his goal hoops to have trouble seeing much but that the game was moving in the direction he wanted it to. For a moment, anyway. Then one of the New Girls got the ball and started back toward him, clearly meaning to reverse things.
David didn’t consider this a problem at first. Sometimes, the ball was lost; then it was regained, and since they had a long way to go, he expected it to be regained long before he had to deal with it. Then, though, the New Girl just kept coming, with no sign that his Beaters were carrying out their commission about what to do to idiots who did that, and David began to curse under his breath. Seriously. Annihilation. That was not what he considered a big word. Admittedly, most of his relatives didn’t know what it meant, but that was why he was in the nerd House. They were not supposed to consider annihilation a difficult word. They were just supposed to annihilate anyone who hung a great big sign on her back that said ‘Please, bash my brains in!’
He saw her looking around as she neared the goals, and then throwing, and then, for some reason, Goodwin kicked it, upending herself in the process. David had a feeling he was supposed to be the butt of some kind of joke, but changed course enough to grab it anyway and lob it back toward one of his Chasers. “Jamison’s that way!” he offered, pointing helpfully toward the other end of the Pitch.
OOC: David badly paraphrased Winston Churchill's 'We shall fight on the beaches' speech during his captain's speech. He is running from Winston's ghost very fast, but not half as fast as I am.
16
<font color="blue">Captain Wilkes, Keeper</font>
Get on with that, won't you?
169
<font color="blue">Captain Wilkes, Keeper</font>
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5