Zapped by an Apple | An Appledash College AU Fanfic | Human Characters

⓶ 『 Distracted 』

Rain dribbled a ball atop her knee, decreasing in focus with each bounce. The checkered sphere rolled to the side and fell to her feet. 

     "UGH!" she expressed her irritation with a sigh and an aggressive punt. The ball soared across the field and the mesh of the net hugged it as the goal-tender fell to the sod below. She had just scored by accident. 

     "Nice kick Dash! Right on!" a teammate with blonde pigtails rasped. The praise lifted Rain's spirits briefly, and she trotted confidently to retrieve her ball before the coach whistled the warmup to a close. The players all gathered mid-field and stood in a messy circle, their navy jerseys muddling into a splotchy ocean among the viridian grass. 

     "Alright Mustangs. As I'm sure you all know, we have our first exhibition game this Friday. I expect all of you to come to the field ready to win. Am I clear?" The head coach, a short, stocky woman with a deep voice and dirty-blonde hair huffed. "Yes Coach Fire!" the players yelled in unison. Rain only joined during the latter of the sentence, causing one of the other players to cast her a curious look. She was usually the loudest and the most involved of them all, so her lacked attention was considered to be quite bizarre by all who happened to notice. 

     Why would AJ have a note with my name on it?  She quizzed internally, What if I was hallucinating and it wasn't even my name at all? But I can't be wrong! I saw what I saw, letter for letter! R-A-I-N. It just doesn't make sense--ARGH! WHO CARES! IT'S JUST LECTURE NOTES! 

     Rain assumed the odd position of the last in line for each drill that day, and missed about 30% more of her kicks than usual. Finally, during water-break, one of her closest friends approached her quizzically. The shaggy-haired hoyden rested a hand on Dash's shoulder, startling her out of her dazed thoughts. 

     "Hey Soarin," she relaxed once she realized who had come to sit next to her on the bench. "Hey dude. How are you doing?" her teammate answered. 

     Dash hesitated. "I'm fine, I guess. What about you?" she forced herself into an unbothered, monotone 'bro-voice', but understood far too late that it was a bit of an overshoot. Soarin smile-frowned and squinted sceptically before mocking Rain's low-toned response, "I'm good bruh," and then returned back to her normal octaves to continue, "...Seriously though, I don't mean to mess with your game and all, but you're acting...different. You have been acting more and more so every week." As much as she tried to be cool as to not cause any anxiety in her teammate, Soarin sounded concerned, and Dashie abhorred it.  

     "What are you talking about Soarin? You couldn't score top-corner to save your life this practice, and now you're harping on me? Give me a break!" she retorted. 

     Soarin gasped, "Hey!!! I missed three shots. Three! Besides, that's normal for me. You on the other hand, I've never seen you miss so many--" Rain rolled her eyes and shoved Soarin aside before rejoining the practice. 

    It took extraneous effort to maintain the bare-minimum focus for the remainder of the Mustang's drills, but much to her relief, Rain managed to pull-off a fictitious normalcy for the second and final hour of practice.  

     For once, she was gladder then ever to finish up and go home. 

___

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Yes, Soarin is a female in this. I know he is a dude in MLP FiM, but the team here is meant to be a woman's soccer team, and I wanted to include Soarin as a side character in the context of sports. She also isn't really the same character other than in name, since I've adapted many side characters to differ from their originals. I hope that is okay! 

Thanks for reading this far. I hope you'll stick around and enjoy some more of my writing ;)