Everywhere he looks, he can see hundreds of people gathered. Everyone is chatting excitedly amongst themselves. Why wouldn’t they be? This is the big event. And it’s starting now.
He jogs in place for a few seconds to warm up his legs. Behind him, the shadowy faces of his teammates silently cheer him on. He isn’t going to let them down now. Standing ten feet back, his coach gives him a nod. This is his moment.
“Are all the racers in position?” an amplified voice booms out. The silence of everyone at the line confirms the question, no words needed. The crowd cheers in anticipation.
Then all falls silent when the man in orange stands in the middle of the field. His arms are held out sideways. In one hand, he holds a red flag. In the other, he holds a small firearm. In his mouth is a shiny black whistle hanging around his neck.
The tight feeling in his gut flares up, and adrenaline courses through his limbs. His body is so wound up it feels itchy.
Suddenly, the referee gives his whistle three short blows.
TWEEEE
TWEEEE
TWEEEE
There is a pause.
TWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
The referee raises both the flag and the gun over his head.
Silence.
The flag swings down and the trigger is pulled.
BANG
He springs forward with all his might and falls face first in the mud.
As far as mornings go, Night Chase was having a pretty good one. Unlike the day before, he had not slept through his alarm. A delicious breakfast of cinnamon oatmeal and pineapple had him hopping to a merry beat. Quite literally, in fact; as the lavender-skinned boy with burgundy-colored hair clad in a gray t-shirt and jacket made his way down the sidewalk, he couldn’t help but hop on one foot the whole way.
“Well, somebody got up early for once.”
Night pivoted on his foot and looked behind him. A sky-blue girl with white and blue hair was jogging to catch up to him.
“Min!” Night cried. “How ya doing?”
“I told you not to call me that,” Minuette smirked, giving Night a punch in the shoulder.
Night’s grin widened. “I don’t care,” he replied simply.
Minuette gave him a blank stare. Immediately, Night’s cocksure grin vanished and a bead of sweat rolled down his face.
“Do I need to ask mom to give you a root canal?”
“N-no ma’am. Um, M-Minuette, ma’am.”
Minuette gave Night a wide grin and draped her arm over his neck. “That’s what I thought,” she laughed. Night found himself laughing too.
Minuette was Night’s closest childhood friend. They’d been close since first grade, when everyone had cooties and boys and girls voluntarily segregated themselves from each other. Night thought the whole “cootie-phobia” was asinine, and Minuette’s mother was a doctor, so, though it wasn’t her specialty, she knew a thing or two about germs. Opting to play with each other instead of the groups, the two had been best friends ever since.
Though the two enjoyed playing jokes with each other, Night discovered in the third grade that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. During a normal checkup at the dentist’s office, Minuette’s mother pretended that Night was going to need a root canal and told him about how much it would hurt. Then she strapped him in the chair and produced a mad scientist’s fantasy of horrifying drills and picks. Night had been hysterical, and once they revealed the prank, Minuette’s family had no intention of ever letting him live it down. Even though he knew better now, Night couldn’t help but get panicky whenever anyone mentioned the dreaded surgery.
As Minuette skipped down the road, practically dragging Night by the neck along the way, she suddenly turned to him in confusion. “Say, Night? Where’s your drawstring bag?”
Night slid out of his friend’s grip and readjusted the strap of the backpack on his shoulder. “Oh, that? I decided yesterday to start leaving it in my locker. That way I can’t forget my shoes in the morning."
“Oh, no,” Minuette bemoaned. “Now how am I supposed to harass you for forgetting things?”
“Ah, don’t worry,” Night laughed. “I’m sure you’ll find another way. You always do.”
As the two entered the grounds for Canterlot High School and approached the statue in the center, Night finally walking on both of his feet, he suddenly had an epiphany.
“Hey, Minuette?” he asked, staring off into the sky.
“Yeah?”
Night jerked his head in her direction and grinned. “Can I see your homework?”
Minuette threw her hands into the air. “Are you kidding me?!” she cried, exasperated.
“Of course I am!” Night laughed. “C’mon, give me some credit. You know how good I am at math.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Minuette mused. “Maybe I should let you copy my answers. Then I can report you to Principal Celestia’s office and tell her about how you think she’s-”
“Finish that sentence, and I will end you,” Night warned, having stopped in his tracks and pointing his finger at Minuette in a threatening manner.
Minuette stopped and looked at Night. The two were motionless as they stared each other down. Then the corners of Minuette’s mouth twitched into a sly grin.
“...hot!”
“RAAAAAAHHH!”
Night dropped his backpack and charged. Minuette squealed with laughter as she turned and ran. Night followed closely behind her, but never ran at full tilt. He knew he could catch her whenever he wanted, but there was something fun about prolonging the chase.
Minuette continued to flee from her assailant into the grass. Night saw this and decided that now was the perfect time to catch her.
“You’re dead!” he yelled as he broke into a sprint, his arms stretched out.
It didn’t go as planned. Minuette knew that Night was coming in for the tackle at that moment, so she juked to the side and ducked. Night went stumbling over her harmlessly. At least, it was harmless for her. Night watched in horror as he went careening over Minuette and toward another student, his momentum rendering him completely helpless to stop himself. The girl turned, and her eyes went wide. Night plowed into her hard.
“URK!”
“AAH!”
Taken completely by surprise, the girl was knocked off her feet and slammed into the ground. Night realized that they even slid across the grass a short distance, covering the arm of his jacket in grass stains.
“Oww…” Night moaned. His momentary deliriousness was instantly replaced with alarm as he looked at the girl he’d just run over. “Oh, crap! I am so sorry! Are you okay?”
“Nngh…” the girl groaned, forcing herself to open her eyes. They were wet, and her face was clearly pained.
Night’s heart sank. “Oh, crap,” he half-whispered. “Did I hurt you?” Night reached under the girl’s back and helped get her into a sitting position. Now that she was upright, Night could make out some of her features. She had large, soft pink hair, held with a white butterfly hair clip, that flowed gracefully over her shoulders and the side of her face—at least, it would if it hadn’t been dragged through the ground.
Her outfit was fairly simple. She wore a white top with a green skirt that almost came down to her knees. She had on some cute knee-high boots that matched her skirt, and she was carrying a yellow backpack. It was strange, but she looked… somewhat familiar.
“God, Night, what have you done?”
Night shook his head when he heard Minuette’s voice. He focused on the girl in front of him who was rubbing her right arm, which had been pinned under her body when he brought her down. He saw a trickle of blood run between her fingers and down her arm. Night ran his fingers through his hair in panic.
“Oh, my- I- I am- I am so sorry about that,” Night stuttered. “Are you okay?” he whispered.
The girl nodded painfully, which just made Night feel even worse. “Hey, do you want to go to the nurse?” he offered.
The girl met his eyes. “Um… if that’s alright with you,” she muttered.
Night nodded. “Yeah, no problem.” He stood up and helped the girl to her feet, then wrapped her arm around his shoulder. He turned his head toward Minuette. “Minuette, I’ll catch you later, okay?”
Minuette nodded. “Yeah, I’ll see you. Hope everything’s okay.”
Night nodded in response, then began walking the girl toward the school building. “I’m really sorry about this,” he told her. “I just- I feel terrible.”
“It’s fine. You didn’t mean to,” she responded.
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
The two continued walking in silence until they reached the nurse’s office in the school. Nurse Redheart took the girl into the back and thanked Night for helping her there. Even though Night insisted that he was at fault and deserved no thanks, the nurse paid it no mind and offered to take him in too. Night declined, so she wished him well as he made his way back outside to retrieve his backpack and eventually make his way to his first period class.
English class was always a basket of roses. Night sat in the center of the room. Three desks to his left, two to his right, two in front, and two behind. This had the unfortunate effect of making him called upon almost every time whenever a question was posed. Fortunately, there was rarely any need for the teacher to call on students in English, so it wasn’t too big of a deal, but it still irked him.
It was still another five minutes before the bell, so the chatter in the room was unrestrained. Night wasn’t lucky enough to have the class with anyone he knew particularly well, so he usually used this time to read a book. After all, he was dying to know if Peter Johnson would be able to return the lightning bolt to its proper place.
The noise, however, made reading difficult. With only a page read after a grueling effort, Night closed the book and glanced around the room. Ms. Cheerilee had just entered the room and was setting up some papers for class. A guy with light green skin and white hair walked past her desk and placed an apple on it, as was his tradition each day. The desks to Night's left were half-filled, although the ones in the back row were always empty.
To his right, though, he could make out a distinct conversation. He stole a glance and saw a gray-colored guy talking to a cyan-colored guy. They both had jet black hair and were wearing jackets, which kind of annoyed Night. Jackets were his thing.
The two were talking about girls, unsurprisingly, though the gray one kept referring to his girlfriend as “boo,” which was just bizarre. Suddenly the conversation shifted to the tan kid with brown hair sitting behind them.
This kid was new to the school. Very new, in fact—he transferred here just last week. At first, Night thought he might have found the first person who was quieter than he was, but once the two in front more or less dragged him into their little circle of friends, he talked a fair amount.
The bell rang and the class quieted down. Ms. Cheerilee started her lesson on some grammar rules that Night already understood. Bored, Night laid his head on his desk and watched his teacher with a glazed expression, eager to get out.
“So you think you’ve got it this week?”
It was now lunch time at Canterlot High School. Night Chase looked up from his seat and saw a guy standing at the opposite side of the table. This guy was a medium brown color and had curly black hair. He sat down and looked at Night expectantly, sipping from a carton of milk.
“Oh, hey, Tonal.” Night scratched the side of his head. “Probably not,” he admitted. “The last two practices have been less than stellar for me.”
“Hey, come on Bro, don’t say that. You always give Ace and Blitz a run for their money.”
“Still haven’t beaten them,” Night rebutted. “But why are we even discussing this? Cross country’s a team sport.”
Tonal Groove took a bite of his apple. “That it is. But it’s not competing with your teammates. The idea is for you to push each other to become better,” Tonal explained.
“Yeah, teamwork and camaraderie all the way,” Night scoffed. “You’re not in the top three, you don’t know how tense it gets.”
“Hey-!”
“Right. Sorry. I know. No disrespect. You’re our lead backup and tiebreaker, you’re vital to the team,” Night apologized. He leaned back in his seat, chewing on a bite of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “So, any idea what coach will have us doing for practice?”
Tonal looked to the side in thought. “Well, we did hills on Monday and speed yesterday, so probably distance today.”
Night tilted his head. “Eight miles?”
Tonal nodded. “More than likely.”
“That, I can get behind.”
There was some commotion going on somewhere in the cafeteria, louder than usual. It was odd, but Night decided to pay it no mind.
Night looked down at his half-eaten lunch. “Hey, so… how are you and Mistletoe doing?”
Tonal beamed. “Oh, great! It’s cool seeing her every day in band, so we’ve got it easy until the football season ends. Well, I mean, band is hard, but-”
“Yeah, I got it.” Night gave him a thumbs-up. “So’d you tell her that joke yet about how her hair’s supposed to be white instead of red?”
Tonal rolled his eyes. “Bro, come on. Not only are you the only person who knows the difference between holly and mistletoe, but you're the only one who thinks it's funny.”
“Well, the fact of the matter is, that simply isn’t true. I learned about the two from-”
Night’s words were suddenly cut off when he found that he couldn’t breathe. An arm was wrapped around his neck and held firmly in place against someone’s torso. His assailant pulled him back, making him hang out of his seat.
“You jerk! Apologize right now!”
While Night was flailing and trying to pull the attacker’s arm off his throat, Tonal jumped out of his seat and ran around the table. He grabbed the person behind him and finally yanked the arms from around Night's neck. Night coughed while cool air poured back into his lungs.
Night stood and turned around. “What the hell was that?” he shouted. He found himself looking at a blue girl with multicolored hair.
...No. It couldn’t be.
“Rainbow Dash?!”
Rainbow regarded him with a glare. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
Night stared at her incredulously. “What are you talking about?”
“You know damn well what I’m talking about! Why’d you hurt Fluttershy like that?”
“What? Girl, you’re crazy,” Tonal interjected. “Night didn’t hurt anybody.”
“Oh, and I suppose I’m making up the fact that she was taken to the nurse? Or that she’s bruised and looks like she was dragged through the mud?”
Night’s eyes widened. “Oh, that.”
Tonal turned to Night, dumbfounded. “Bro, what the-?”
“That was an accident!” Night cried. “You really think I meant to do that? How stupid can you be?!”
Rainbow charged Night and hit him in the stomach. As she reached him, though, Night reached and grabbed hold of her hair. With the wind knocked out of him, Night’s knees gave out and he fell to the ground, dragging Rainbow down with him. Rainbow shook herself loose from his grip, which pulled a few strands of hair from her head, and reached back with a fist.
“Rainbow Dash! Stop!”
Before the punch could be thrown, a pair of arms wrapped around the violent girl. Through his hazy vision, Night could see a familiar pink hairdo and butterfly clip.
“Fluttershy? What are you doing? He’s the one who-”
“You didn’t let me finish! His running into me was an accident! And he apologized!”
Night felt someone helping him into a sitting position, most likely Tonal. He was vaguely aware of several girls running up to the two in front of him. Not that it mattered. At that moment, the stomping of feet, a flash of midnight blue, and a harsh tone broke Night out of his trance.
“You two,” Vice Principal Luna hissed, pointing at Rainbow Dash and Night. “Come with me now.”
A collective gasp in the room silenced any remaining chatter. Night realized just then that the normally rambunctious cafeteria was now quiet and still. The realization of what the Vice Principal had said only hit him moments later.
“Wait a minute, what’d I do?!” Night cried. Wordlessly, Luna grabbed him by the arm and Rainbow in the other and marched them out of the cafeteria. After a short walk, along which Night stumbled several times, he found himself sitting in a chair with a fuming teenage girl next to him and an angry authority figure across from him. Ah, the Vice Principal’s office. The place that disorderly and delinquent peers frequented for a multitude of reasons. Needless to say, this was Night’s first time seeing it.
“Alright, now would you two like to explain to me what that was all about?” Luna stated.
“Well, from what I gathered, it actually started before first period,” Night explained. “I accidentally tackled some girl into the ground, then after apologizing, I took her to the nurse. Then at lunch I guess she told her,” -Night indicated Rainbow sitting next to him- “that I did that, so she came over and started choking me.”
“I thought you were trying to hurt her!” Rainbow defended.
“And that makes it okay to strangle people?” Night retorted.
“Enough!” Luna snapped. "Now, Rainbow Dash. What happened?"
"Well, when I showed up to lunch, Fluttershy looked terrible," Rainbow recalled. "I had her tell us what happened to her, and when she said some guy tackled her into the ground, I lost it. She described what he looked like, then Pinkie said she knew who that was and pointed to the table where he sits. So I went over and demanded he apologize. Then he taunted me by calling me stupid and pulled my hair. Then you showed up."
"Bull!" Night cried. "You left out the part where you punched me and laid me out!"
“Silence!" Luna interjected. "Whatever misunderstanding there may have been, that doesn’t excuse the poor behavior…”
Night smirked at Rainbow, who glared daggers back at him.
“... from both of you.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yes, Mr. Chase. You too. While Rainbow may have struck you, you further antagonized her and pulled her hair. According to the school’s policy, that’s considered retaliation, and that makes you two equally responsible for fighting. You will both be serving after-school detention this afternoon.”
“What?!” Night and Rainbow cried simultaneously.
“I’ve got soccer practice this afternoon!” Rainbow argued.
“I’ve got cross country!” Night yelled. “Besides, why the hell should I have to serve detention? She attacked me! And I never even hit her!”
“As I stated before, pulling her hair is considered grounds for retaliation.” Luna’s stare became cold. “And I will have absolutely none of that language in my school. Are we clear, Mr. Chase?”
Night let out an annoyed sigh and turned away from Luna’s gaze. “Bet if I was shot, I’d still get in trouble.”
“What was that?”
“Yes, Vice Principal Luna,” Night answered.
Luna nodded, though she clearly wasn’t buying his sincerity. “Very good. I’ll see the two of you here at the end of the day. Go back to lunch. I don’t want any more trouble from you two.”
Night and Rainbow nodded, then turned and left the office. Walking side by side, the two made their way back to the cafeteria, which was already abuzz with chatter again.
“Man, this sucks,” Rainbow moaned.
“Tell me about it.”
The two gave each other a tense glance. They held it for a moment.
Night let out a snort. “See you in a few hours.”
“Yeah,” Rainbow replied. The two then made their way back to their respective tables.