Not a Monster 3: Realizations and Revelations

by Dreamscape

A Friend on the Field

The early evening was hot, and the sun still rested high in the sky above. The bright green field before me was only recently mowed, a slight pleasant scent of it lingering. The perfect white lines which divided its space into a functional soccer field were vibrant and recently added as well. Rainbow Dash stood in its center, expertly kneeing the ball up into the air before catching it in the crook formed by her foot and ankle, and then repeating the process. Her apparel was much more appropriate than mine. She wore a blue jersey with bright yellow stripes going down its sleeves and sides along with the matching shorts for our school’s team, the Wondercolts, along with what looked to be a newly purchased pair of white soccer cleats. The shorts were, of course, rather short and extremely well fitted to her slender yet toned legs. The jersey was a bit more baggy, but still small enough to vaguely accentuate her upper body, its form very well built mainly due to the extent of physical exercise she performed on a daily basis.

I, on the other hand, wore an old white t-shirt I had most likely had since my freshman year of high school. Small holes were torn from its sleeves and lower near its bottom. With the threat of grass stains and mud, I was in no way wearing one of my good shirts. Along with that, I wore a pair of even more ancient black gym shorts from my early middle school days. They were much too large and baggy when my mother first bought them for me, and somehow, even after all those years of growth, they still seemed too spacious. Finally there was the pair of shoes I wore everyday on every occasion. I honestly had no others besides them. They were already getting somewhat worn out after close to a year of use.

Even wearing such a small amount of clothing, I could feel my body temperature rising from the intense sun glaring down upon me. I had hoped earlier that day that it would cloud over or at least the breeze would pick up. Of course it didn’t. “Come on, hurry it up. Let’s play already,” Rainbow whined as I approached.

“I’m conserving my energy for the game,” I joked, quickening my walk ever so slightly.

“Oh yeah, well you’re gonna need it,” she said both proudly and teasingly as she placed the white and black ball in the center circle on the field. I came to a stop a couple of feet before her and scratched the back of my head nervously, my hair warmed by the sun. “Ready when you are. Actually no, I’ve been ready.”

“Uh, alright,” I muttered, looking at her curiously as I stepped into the circle and tried my best to mirror her position.

She chuckled at what I assumed to be my absent gaze. “You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?”

“Um, no, not really,” I admitted with a shrug.

“Well, good thing it’s just you and me. That’ll make things a lot simpler. When I say go, we both fight for the ball. If you get it, try to get it in the goal, the one behind me, not you. If I get it, try to stop me from getting it into your goal. You can block the goal or try to kick the ball away from me before I get there. A goal is a point. When I, er, one of us gets one, we’ll just come back to the center and start over since we can’t really do much else without a team. Sound good?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Before I even had time to run through the short sequence of rules she had given, “GO!” rang through my ears. My body stiffened from the sudden surprise, and I didn’t even have a chance to react. Before my body even began to move in the slightest, she was already at least ten feet beyond me and speeding towards my goal at an unbelievably quick pace. Energy rushed through my leg muscles as I sprang into action, taking an awkward leap which I hadn’t even planned on performing before chasing after her at full blast. To my surprise, I caught up to her rather quickly. Though my breathing and heartrate were already increasing.

What false inspiration I had gained from catching the athlete soon dissipated as I tried to take the ball. Every time I extended my foot in its direction it was either blocked by her own foot or leg or expertly dodged by her rather graceful, face paced maneuvers. I was so concentrated on breaching her blocks or outmaneuvering her in some miraculous way that I had no time to notice how quickly we were still inching towards the goal until it was too late. With a swift kick the ball disappeared from my view and I heard a soft whoosh as it smacked into the back of the net. I stumbled to a halt and looked at the goal in astonishment as if having to assure myself that the ball was in fact inside of it. “Heh, you weren’t even trying,” Rainbow teased, giving me a pat on the back as she strutted off to retrieve the ball.

I clenched my fists together, wondering if the girl was mocking me on purpose. I then moved on to assuring myself that yes, in fact, I was trying incredibly hard, her skills were simply much greater compared to my rudimentary knowledge of the game and my lack of practice within it. I sighed before convincing myself that I could at least try somewhat harder.

Of course, this did me no good, besides the fact of exerting myself that is. We returned to the circle again and again, and each time Rainbow Dash would expertly take the ball before I did. I was sure she barely even had to try with even my greatest efforts to steal the ball for myself. Even when I did, on the rare occasion, manage to attack the ball first, I normally ended up kicking it away from myself in a panic, or she would take it from me before I was able to move a few feet in the direction of her goal. I was growing more and more winded and fatigued with every movement I made, along with feeling more enraged after every goal she made. I wasn’t only feeling heated from the anger though. The sun seemed to be growing even more intense the longer I was exposed to it. It was hard to realize how much I was sweating with how focused I was upon the game and my anger towards it. That was until a gentle breeze pushed its way through the dampening fabric of my shirt, cooling me just slightly. It was at that moment that it all hit me. Walking back towards the center circle, I stopped and let my upper torso slump forward as I panted heavily, my lungs on fire. The pain inside them made me feel as though I was going to fall forward onto the ground.

“Whoa, you okay?” she called. “Probably shouldn’t push yourself too hard since it’s your first day.”

“I… it’s you… I just… I can’t do it… I can’t keep up,” I pushed out in between my heaving breathes.

“I know, I know, I’m just too good. It’s cool. Here, how about this? We’re definitely not done with our session yet, but I’ll go easy on you. Besides, you need more practice anyways. I’ll show you the basics, and you can try them for yourself.”

“Alright, just, uh, give me a minute,” I muttered out in pain. I was honestly beginning to hate the girl at that point. She was much too self-centered for her own good and seemed much too proud in defeating someone as horrible as I was. Yet, suddenly, that all changed. Rainbow Dash had a softer side after all. No wonder why the other girls considered her such a good friend. I was beginning to understand.

With my hands on my knees, I lifted my head and watched as she made her way to a sports bag she had left on the sidelines. It wasn’t long before she returned, heading towards me with two bottles in hand, bottles filled with glorious water. “Here,” she said, tossing one of the bottles so that it landed on the grass in front of me. “Looks like you need it, and ya know, gotta stay hydrated and all.”

I thanked her much more graciously than was necessary, struggled to screw of the bottle’s cap, and gulped down its contents. My eyes blinked open after the last of the wonderful, lukewarm liquid dripped onto my tongue to see her smirking, one hand resting on her hip as she sipped at her water. I looked at her questioningly, wondering the cause of such an expression. “If you stick with me, I bet I’ll have you fit in no time at all.”

I laughed softly at the statement, knowing it to be much more than true. “Yeah, but I might die or something if we keep going like this.”

She chuckled. “Exercise isn’t gonna kill you. That’s a pretty pathetic excuse if you ask me.”

What, the fact that it was a joke or do you literally meaning dying isn’t a good excuse to stop doing something? I thought to myself before speaking. “Yeah, sure,” I said with a smile.

“Ready, or do you need another minute?” she asked in a rather considerate tone, especially compared to what she had been saying during our game.

“Yes… thanks,” I muttered, finally forcing myself into a standing position rather than squatting like an idiot. We looked at each other and to the glowing field in an incredibly peaceful moment of silence. Something about seeing Rainbow Dash in her element amplified the beauty of her tomboyish, athletic appearance. The small and few beads of perspiration on her face which was flushed lightly from exertion acted as an accessory, fitting so perfectly with her personality. I watched, still completely silent, as she took another drink from her bottle, seeming to conserve most of the liquid for later unlike I had. I knew in the back of my head and even told myself that I had absolutely no chance with a girl like her whatsoever. If I somehow did, we had little in common, and the whole idea of opposites attracting never seemed to be good in practice, even if it was in theory. It was hopeless, yet for whatever reason, I was hopeful. I barely knew Rainbow, yet visions of our soccer exercises warping into some kind of cheesy romantic date filled my mind. These were quickly lost when she snapped me back into reality, but my affections for her continued to grow.

First, she showed me, or at least attempted to show me how to maneuver with the ball as she did. She explained and showed each of her movements in careful detail, and I tried my hardest to listen, understand, and repeat. Sadly, most, if not all of what she was saying went right over my head. My body was much too uncoordinated to perform any of the actions even if I had understood anyways. Although she grew a bit angered on occasion, she was always a good sport, using encouragement rather than insults like she had previously. Well, of course, there was the occasional insult, but I could tell she never fully meant them. Perhaps she had figured out my personality, and well enough to train me like she wanted to. I was sure she would never have been so kind to me if it wasn’t for the soul purpose of achieving her own goal. Otherwise she would have been just as insulting as she always was. The encouragement still felt nice though, and increased my mood even further.

“Alright,” she said with a chuckle after I managed to trip over my own feet and fall to the ground. “How about we move on to getting it into the goal. I think it’ll be a bit easier… well, maybe not so much with me blocking.”

She explained to me that the goalie will anticipate the moves of the kicker, and that I should do the same with the goalie. I needed to see it from the goalie’s view and that was how I could trick her. It sounded good to me as a thought, but it turned out it was something I never ended up pulling off. Even when I tried my hardest to trick her, Rainbow easily blocked my shots every single time. She gave me the smuggest of smirks while doing so as well, knowing how much it annoyed me and how much effort I had put into planning my kicks out. At least I was giving her some good exercise. There were no longer perfect beads of sweat upon her face. Instead there was steaks, her multicolored hair growing damp as well. I was getting a fairly good workout myself. My leg muscles were straining with each of my maneuvers and then my finishing kicks. My legs would tremble whenever I took pause, and I could feel a fiery burn within them.

Even though it felt as if I was overheating, I had grown used to the intense sun above us. When it began to sink lower into the sky, I could feel that intensity beginning to drop. The sweat on my body was feeling much cooler than it had. With the world around us tinted in an increasingly orange hue, Rainbow Dash finally called it a day after blocking my final shot. “Impressive,” she said with a sigh of exhaustion as she made her way towards me, the ball in her hands.

“Impressive?” I asked curiously, knowing I hadn’t done anything correctly for our entire time out on the field.

“Don’t take it hard. You do realized you just played with the best of the best, right? Of course you weren’t going to score once, even if it was practice.”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” I muttered, realizing that what she was stating was indeed true, well, a bit over exaggerated.

“With me teaching you, you’ll be an expert in no time.”

“I guess so, but do we really have to focus on soccer?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” Rainbow muttered, almost astonished by the realization. “I just need to get you into shape, not make you some superstar athlete, huh?”

“Yep, exactly.”

“You sure you don’t want to be the next big star on the men’s team or something.”

“Yeah, I’m definitely sure.” The idea of being a strong, popular student with plenty of material girls hanging off of my arms seemed somewhat enticing, but I hated sports and the idea of being so ignorant and cruel like most jocks were.

“Huh, alright,” she said, lifting up her fist with a proud smile. I bumped my own against it and her smile widened into a grin. “You did pretty good out there like I said, and I had fun. You seem cool enough, I guess.”

“You’re not saying that just because you didn’t have to worry or try hard at all to win, are you?”

She laughed. “Heh, nah, I actually think it’s more fun if there’s a challenge. Training you is definitely going to be one.”

“I, uh, well, thanks?” I had no clue whether or not she meant the statement as an insult, a compliment, or neither of the two.

“No problem.” Suddenly, and to my surprise, especially coming from a girl like her, I was pulled into a quick, but incredibly strong hug. As I tried to suck back in the air that was being squeezed from my lungs, I noticed the odd, slightly uncomfortable sensation of the dampness of her body pressing against my own. Along with that, the air that I was breathing in smelled of perspiration covered up only slightly by the deodorant she wore. Although it was odd at first, in a way, it ended up smelling good. Once again, I was seeing, or rather smelling her in her element. The smell, natural in itself, seemed even more natural on her. I was almost disappointed when she pulled away, even if at first I was hoping it would end it as quickly as she could. For a moment, I stared at her, her eyes still as confident as ever but slightly glazed from our workout. I darted my head down soon after, realizing what I was doing. I hoped she wouldn’t notice, even though I knew she had. As long as she ignored it, we could both pretend to be ignorant. I was beginning to like her a bit too much for my own good, considering the fact that I knew it would never work out.

“Well, I enjoyed that surprisingly. It felt good to get my body working like that. Well, it does now, I mean. During, it was horrible,” I said with a laugh, still avoiding eye contact.

“I guess we could start out by doing this once a week, or do you wanna go harder?”

“Yeah, no…” I said with a sigh, letting my body hunch slightly. “I think once a week is plenty for now.”

“For now,” she said sternly. “It’s not gonna stay that way if you want to get in shape, ya know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I’ll think of something for us to do next week. See ya tomorrow,” she said in a rather relaxed tone as she punched my shoulder before turning to leave.

I could tell you that the reason I was so eager to start an exercise plan with Rainbow Dash was because I needed to get in shape, and I did, but I could have easily done so myself without her help. The real reason I had agreed to it was because I wanted to spend more time with her. I wanted to deepen our connection, if we even had one. If not, we would have time to develop one. As I said before, I wasn’t dumb enough to miss the fact that the two of us certainly weren’t a good combination in the realm of dating, but I was still hopeful we could at least develop something, stupidly hopeful maybe. I wasn’t just interested in her in that way specifically though. I was anxious to become her friend as well, maybe get as close to her as I had with Pinkie. I had mixed emotions about how exactly I wanted our relationship to develop, but I certainly did want it to.

Comments

[MLai]

Huh... I wouldn't be able to do what he did this chapter: Build a relationship with an athletic girl by playing soccer/ football with her. Because I foul too much. I'm a terrible fouler. :P

[shy sad jaded shard]

lol what is with him and dam near falling for any who show him kindness? what if big-mac helps him out down the line?

[mutualism_is_nice]

This guy just tries too hard to fall in love with everyone.

[Hoppa_21]

Interesting use of his whole craving for love. Glad though that he is smart enough not to try anything like he did with Pinkie. I mean, he is falling in love with every girl he talks to! He really needs to get that under control. I don't want to see him heartbroken again.