//------------------------------// // Chapter 68- How we became friends! - Sugarcoat! // Story: The normal life of Nitpick Bittersweet // by Ryusun //------------------------------// I remember when everything started for me before I was a Champion Leader! During my days of middle school, I was under the tutelage of my predecessor, Dusty Silverwind, learning the ropes of her trade to become her successor and continue the legacy of pride! All to protect and serve Crystal Prep’s reputation! I admired her! She was my source of inspiration! Whether it was in academics, sports, or even electronic games, she was the best! She was invincible! During the previous Friendship Games, she crushed her CHS opponents in tennis, academics and chess, becoming Cinch prideful student and the first middle school student to participate in them. When she ascended to high school, her predecessor simple had no chance against her and bestowed to her the throne. And my duty towards her to continue the legacy of Crystal Prep Academy was… It was to dethrone her in a competition! It was a certain September 19th, Thursday, when I overheard that a certain thorn in the Champion’s group was being hospitalized that day. It was seven in the evening, and my task was to inform my superior of what had happened. When I entered her office, I saw that a thunderstorm fell upon us. If it weren’t for Crystal Prep’s autonomous power system, there would have been a blackout that day. “Candie Sugarcoat! Why did you come back here?” A thunder bolt raged in the heavens. “Only key personnel must stay after school hours are over!” She didn’t turn around while speaking to me. Her eyes must have been admiring the thunders of the sky. “Lighting Dust has been defeated.” “Just as I thought it would happen. I’m still surprised that a brute like her became a part of our legacy. Who defeated her? And how?” “In a street fight. It seems that new bloods were the ones to put her down and her silly gang while at it.” “How many?” “Two. Unscratched.” “Impossible!” She turned around and saw me with her rounded, silver eyes. “Not matter how skillful the fighters are, when outnumbered against such odds, they wouldn’t get out of it clean! That tall chimpanzee is strong enough to become the best athlete of our school!” “My sources are top notch, Champion Leader! That I guarantee!” “I don’t doubt about your competence regarding this kind of investigations but it sounds too farfetched to be true!” “I know. This kind of outcome leaves the Champions with a bad fame!” “Certainly!” She walked towards me and put her hands on my shoulders. “You are to be my successor soon, Candie Sugarcoat! In glorious competition we must fight to prove who the greater student to lead our social class is! Like I did once before you! This is the only way to ensure that our lineage stays strong! To improve with each generation the standards that the world demands from Crystal Prep Academy!” “What do you wish of me, Champion Silverwind?” “You must prove to me that you can eradicate the coming turmoil that Lighting Dust’s news will ignite in our proud community tomorrow! Social media is truly a cancer to occurrences like this these days!” “It can also be a valuable tool if used in our favor!” “Always the cunning one you have been, my apprentice! I was right all these years when I chose you to be under my wing, despite that you were still a middle school student! You have been very helpful!” She started to pack up her things. The time to leave the school was nigh. “But next year I won’t be around anymore to guide you! Starting November, I will go straight to a pre-college institution from of our school! So I only have a few weeks to be at your side before you prove to the school that you will eventually become superior to me!” “I will not fail! Tomorrow at first hour, I’ll investigate who were the troublemakers that did this to Lighting Dust!” “If you manage to get them on your good side, do it! It could prove useful for you to have powerful soldiers following your commands!” …. …. “Obviously that didn’t happen as she wanted! That stupid gal of Silverwind was simply too arrogant to foresee what was coming! Just like her successor!” Heavensbane gave me a cocky smile while softly punching my arm. “Shut up, Heavenbanes!” I mumbled between my teeth with frustration. “What happened next?” Sparkle spoke. “Well… next day!” …. …. I had found the names of my targets before school started. The right hand of Dust was so easy to persuade when I told her that I would find a way to expel them from school if she didn’t cooperate with me. That and wearing the Champion vest helped my aura of authority. If there was a time to act, it would be during lunch time. But one couldn’t do her activities with an empty stomach, so before the storm, I had breakfast with my… friends. “Is your cousin all right, Zap?” Sunny Flare asked while giving her a candy. “I heard it was pretty bad for her!” Lemon Zest gave her a concerned look “She is okay! But that dummy came to school still injured on the head!” She bit her sandwich a little nervous. “I better go and check on her!” She finished her food on one go. I rushed my food and drink, hitting my chest to help swallow the source of nourishment to my stomach. “Wait for me, Zap.” We walked together to the exit and she took my hands, to my surprise. “I heard that it was the new guys that did that to her!” “I know! It seems that your cousin ganged on them with that little group of troublemakers on the first place!” I remember her face of distress… it was troublesome seeing her like that. “Oh Sugarcoat! I don’t know what to do! At this rate she is going to be expelled!” “As long as she doesn’t do anything outrageous inside the school nor does something that could damage its image… and hers! She will be alright! I… promise!” “I knew I could trust on you!” She hugged me and I patted her head with the little tenderness I possessed. “Please, Please! Talk with her! You both are Champions! I know she’ll hear you out instead of me!” “If she didn’t hear you out and you’re her family, what makes you think she’ll listen to me?” Zap was about to cry. I sighed with tiresomeness. “No promises!” She hugged me even harder, smiling. I made a quick tour with Zap to Dust’s usual spot in the school and when we exchanged stares, the environment turned hostile. “Champion Sugarcoat! What a pleasant surprise to see you around here!” She said with a cocky smile, trying to hide her headache with a supposed cool stance. “Dust. You should consider speaking only when asked to.” “Cousin! Sugarcoat is here to help you!” “Really?” Dust’s eyes turned brighter. “I mean! Oh yeah? I don’t need her help!” “Give me the details and if you are innocent, you won’t get into trouble!” “And what if I’m guilty?” I could feel Zap’s pressure at that time. Still… I promised. “You will step down as a Champion leader. I won’t give full details to Cinch about what happened. With that, you can keep studying here with Zap at peace!” “No way! I worked hard to get this position!” “Listen, you tall bag of noodles for brains! You don’t have many options on the matter! Accept… or die! Your choice!” Giving me a face of reluctance, combined with Zap’s concern about her, she nodded in agreement to my offer. She gave me the full detail of what happened. Obviously I deciphered her lies. Combining what she said with the version that her right hand told me before classes started, it was clear that she was guilty for abusing her authority. But according to law from our prestigious school, spoken evidence without tangible ones were useless. She didn’t know that at that time, so I needed to find a solution to take advantage of that. But I didn’t give it enough thought at that time. I needed to find the two possible threats to the school before it could start a trouble. …. …. Sparkle raised her hand. Her usual signal to ask permission for something hasn’t changed at all. “Ask.” “Why it was important for you to stop Nitty and -!” Oakwood quickly hid her face behind her Victorian fan. “YOU TOO?” “Oh! Someone can get angry!” I said with surprise. My aristocrat partner quickly recovered from her impulse. “I am so ashamed of myself right now, Miss Sparkle! But the way you say that nickname is so… what should I say? Pure! Yes! Childlike! You make it sound so sweet that I find it so amusing!” “And funny!” Heavensbane said. “HRMMMM!” “Answering your question, let’s put the answer with the following example: Imagine that you belong to a community that is protected by a group that is in charge of keeping order and peace against all threats! Imagine that said group failed miserably in its task recently or that it exist a corrupt element within it! Imagine that said shameful information arrived to you! What would you think of said group?” “I would lose faith in them!” “Exactly! So before a snake may exist to poison the integrity of a whole, it’s best to look out for the nest and crush the egg before it hatches! At that time, I thought that Bittersweet and this griffonian at my side would become a threat to the balance of power in the institution… and, well…” “We didn’t care about such things so her struggles with us were pointless!” Gilda gave me a soft punch on my shoulder again. “Stop that.” “UH! Someone is getting angry!” “Pfff. Shut up.” “Even so, if there was really a danger to the school, it was smart and brave of you to act like that, Sugarcoat! You always make this kind of things look so easy!” Sparkle’s eyes glimmered. “I know. No need to praise me.” “Yeah, please don’t, Sparkle! Sugarcoat is overrated as it is!” “You big piece of - !” “My intellectual friend…!” Oakwood gave me a warning tone. I crossed my arms with annoyance. “Where was I?” …. …. Thinking that I had the necessary tools to take them under my grasp, I decided to confront them after classes instead of lunch break. From afar, I looked at them talking with each other. Their eyes had a certain bright and lively aura that was… warm. But that didn’t matter! I made my appearance when most of the school population had already left the academy! “HALT!” I raised my hand with authority. “Who is the brat in front us?” Bittersweet asked to Heavensbane annoyed. She just shook her head without a care of who I was. ‘Huh, their eyes turned neutral. Curious.’ I thought at the time. “My name is Sugarcoat! I’m the second in command of Champion Silverwind of the third class! I came here to discuss official Crystal Prep business with you in her behalf!” “Great! Another of your type has come!” Heavensbane said pissed off. “Look, what happened to Dust was her fault, understand?” “Crystal clear!” “What a lame pun…” Bittersweet said. “It wasn’t intended.” I arranged my glasses. “Nevertheless, Dust has everything against her, as you do!” “What do you mean by that?” “Look, you are new blood in this institution, meaning that you haven’t been in Crystal Prep Academy since the middle school! You don’t have any idea how things work around here! There are protocols you must follow and rules that must be obeyed! We can do this the easy way or the hard way. You should consider your current options carefully.” “Let’s see!” Bittersweet was scratching his hair. “What about we disappear from the radar and you let us spent the next three years on this school in peace?” “Yeah! We aren’t here to cause trouble! We just want to enjoy what little is left of our youths! Living the good life! You know! Games, gym!” “Laughing at Dust’s misery!” They both laughed at that. “I can’t allow you to do that?” “Why not?” “Because you are possible threat to the school, so I must eliminate it before it becomes a cancer to it!” “You exaggerate, gal! Let’s go, Nit! I’m hungry!” They gave a step forward. “I haven’t finished speaking to you!” My voice filled the place. My authority would not be denied. “Listen, you pair of idiotic buffoons! I know that you sent many people to the hospital in bad condition! I know that you committed acts of vandalism and there are witnesses within the school that are willing to talk! If you don’t want to be expelled from this place, I suggest you to don’t fool around and meet my demands! If you work for me when I become a Champion, I’ll make sure you receive a good treatment! Perhaps I could arrange that you work under Moondancer and be Hall Monitors starting next January! So, with that said, when do you want to start your training?” They looked at each other with faces of confusion. At that time, because of my inexperience with their attitude, I thought I was successful at intimidating them. They even put a silly smile on their faces while rubbing their hands with fear… or so I thought. “Hey! Hey! We didn’t hear some parts of your speech very well!” Bittersweet said with a stupid voice. “Ah, yeah! You were really afar from us… could you… get closer and repeat what you said? Pretty please?” Both of them winked their eyes. “Of course.” I slowly approached them, triumphant that my plan was going as planned. As soon as I got them under my service, I would have used them to kindly ask Dust to step down so a new Champion of the lower class could be chosen. Perhaps Zap would have ascended and became my teammate, and together we could have put in order the might of Crystal Prep for other two or three years. But the closer I got to them, the closer I was about to discover what waited for me wasn’t that kind of glory. The air around them was becoming heavy, their eyes slowly turned piercing, frightening, able to extract my valor and crumble it into pieces. As they looked down at me with such menacing eyes, I started to realize that I completely underestimated their power. Normally, people like Dust or your average bully would bark too much for their own good. Always speaking and gloating more than they could actually manage in real life. Others… just look at you… from above… And enlighten you with the true meaning of terror that you foolishly got into the Lion’s den. Perhaps the little difference in height helped a little… …. …. “What did you do to her, Gilda?” Twilight asked frightened. Her dog trying to get inside her shirt in fear. “We threw her in a trash bin!” “…what?” “I was going to omit that part, Heavensbane…” “Yeah, Sparkle! Nit and I-!” “SHUT UP! You will exaggerate what happened… I can’t believe I am going to tell this to Sparkle!” …. …. So I was grabbed from behind by Heavensbane and tied with a rope that was nearby the school’s sport supplies. Then I was thrown to one of the trash bins of the place and left for dead there. Bittersweet didn’t lay a finger on me. Something about the Gentlemen’s Code. “Well, that's it! Let’s go grab something to eat!” “Sounds good to me!” As soon as their steps couldn’t be heard, I was there, inside a trash bin, tied, confused and worst of all, hungry for cookies. I wondered if my approach was too soft. Perhaps I chose the wrong words. Or perhaps I acted too quickly and chose the wrong location. Also, I started to think of the possibilities of what could happen to me in that moment. I could have been thrown to a garbage truck by mistake and being crushed to death by its mechanism. I could have been humiliated by them using social media and my face becoming desecrated, not able to make public appearances for at least five days. Or perhaps someone could have just opened the bin, throw some garbage on me by mistake, laughed at me for a few moments, and being rescued after such humiliating display. I must have had incredible good luck back then. Indigo Zap had soccer practices that day and it was her turn to clean up the bins. She released me and was worried about what leaded to my current situation. I told her to not to worry and I retreated for the day to my home to reevaluate my options. Obviously, I thought of another way to persuade them. So during Saturday afternoon, after classes were over, I looked for them again, face them and ended up in the trash bin again. …. …. “…” “Don’t pity me, Sparkle!” “I’m sorry!” URRGH! I HATE YOUR ‘I’m sorry’ CRAP! …. …. But I’m not the one to give up so easily. I tried again on Monday and I ended up in the trash bin. I made another movement on Thursday and I ended up in the trash bin. And finally on Wednesday, after numerous failures, I decided to challenge them to a little mock test of mine. It was simply really, if they managed to get a better score than mine, I would quit my endeavor! But if I win, they would obey instead! Economy and Microbiology were my forte at that time! I could never lose against them! I lost… miserably, I might add. Bittersweet managed to ace his test of Economy while Heavensbane dethroned me in Microbiology. “This can’t be happening…” I said baffled. I thought they cheated at first… But deep inside, I knew it wasn’t the case. Both of them folded their sleeves before they started, and even sat on the floor so I could see that they hadn’t a cheating devise on them. “BWAHAHAHAHA!” They both laughed with mockery at me. …. …. “They managed to beat you, Sugarcoat?” Twilight was nearly speechless. “I learned weeks later that Bittersweet had a knack to squeeze his monthly income to maximum efficacy to the point of having the gift of becoming a bank accountant himself in the future! Seriously, Sparkle! If you ever have trouble with money, he can tell you how to stretch seven dollars for four days!” “In my case, Grandpops always taught me during my youth how to identify and use many different kinds of stuff in the wild! One day, during one of our trips through the forests of the Motherland, he made a mixture of wild berries and some plants to make a refreshing beverage that quenched our thirst!” “But that doesn’t have anything to do with learning biology correctly!” “SHUT UP, SPARKLE! It works for me! Also, I took an interest on the pharmaceutics and food fields because my protein shakes are made thanks to them, so I studied in my free time about that stuff… One day for sure!” “I’ll never buy food supplements researched by you.” I said. “I still can’t believe you lost…” This girl… “Where was I?” …. …. “Listen, gal! I admire your determination! But we had enough of this silly game of yours already!” Heavensbane said. “I’m speaking for both of us when I say that you cannot defeat us on your own!” “That’s right! You simply suck! We even defeated you by your own rules!” “Remember! You thought you could win, but the ones who defeated you in the end was none other than us, Gilda!” “And me!” Bittersweet crouched beside me and caressed my head. “If you understand already your position, then be gone, you little brat! Don’t bother us anymore, and we promise we won’t cause to you trouble in the future! Good luck with everything, future Champ!” He winked at me and both of them were about to leave me there… humiliated. “Wait! This isn’t over!” Bittersweet and Heavensbane stood there in the exit of the room, and after sighing with tiresomeness, he turned around and made a gesture with his hand to follow him. We arrived to the place that started everything: the Trash Bin near the fields of the school. “I’ll give you a second chance to your silly competition!” He grabbed from the supplies three brooms. “Before Gilda throws you to the bin, I always cleaned the mess in it so you don’t get dirty and smelly inside.” He walked to other bins nearby and threw the contents from three of them. “If you manage to clean this one before we do these two, we’ll submit to your demands, okay?” I was desperate to beat them up and accepted the challenge without thinking thoroughly my weaknesses. It didn’t’ take them more than one minute with eleven seconds to finish cleaning their respective mess. I didn’t even manage to use the broom correctly. “And you seriously want us to follow your lead when you can’t even use a broom? Tell me something… do you even know how to do the work of the simpletons and understand the pain of your future underlings?” Bittersweet looked down at me. “…” “You can be the smartest gal of the place, even beat us in almost all the subjects of the school, but we would NEVER follow someone as useless as you! I don’t know crap about the real role of a Champion but I believe she should be able to at least be above-average in everything she does! Including the common stuff outside the school!” They cleaned up my part after saying that. “Come on, Nit! I wanna go home and sleep awhile!” And they left me there… alone. I was mad! Angry! Defeated! My pride about to break into hundreds of pieces! I noticed that their bins had the most quantity of trash inside of them, while mine was only half-full. They even pitied in silence me before their contest began… Two single tears of frustration fell from my eyes. But their words made me realize something! It finally hit me: I couldn’t solve this on my own! Champion Silverwind, as powerful as she was, always put her trust in her comrades to emerge victorious from team-based situations. Crystal Prep may praise individuality and self-promotion, but when it was time to face an enemy, all personal issues disappeared from our minds. We became one in mind and body! Since asking Champion Silverwind was out of the question and Dust was useless, there was only one power higher than me that could possibly aid me in my time of greatest need! The Champion Leader of the second class: Reem Fortunata Oakwood! …. …. “OH! My turn to be part of the story has come!” Oakwood clapped with excitement. “Prepare your butthole for the quantity of mind-fuck you’ll hear from her, Sparkle! Even Nit and I were scared shitless of her!” She crossed her arms. "For a time, of course!" She made a big and confident grin. “I can’t imagine why…” Sparkle… wait, what? “Do my ears don’t deceive me? Did you actually use sarcasm?” I was… impressed. “Uh… I don’t know!” …What an inept. “Something is off! You aren’t friends at this point in the story!” “The ten days hadn’t passed, Sparkle!” I said. “You should consider reasoning your comments before you open your mouth!” An Encore tune sounded from my group’s cellphones. The three of us looked at the message. -Nitpick: I need to vent… want to join me in The Dazzles? -Sugarcoat: We are actually going there as well, Bittersweet! -Gilda: With a surprise! -Reem: It will be amazing! (◕‿-) -Nitpick: Cool! Arbelth, you’re coming? -Blueblood: Of course! -Nitpick: Good! I’ll be waiting there! Lightbulb is coming too. Suddenly, I got an idea. “Sparkle! When we arrive to our destination, please follow my lead! I want you to see something!” “…What do you want me to see?” I gave her my best smile. “The Real Nitpick Bittersweet!”