Frozen Over: An MCU Story

Chapter 11 - Semi-Normality

2024, New York

With their earbuds in their ears and their backpack hanging over their left shoulder, Clover excitedly made their way to the ice rink to get ready for their next skating session with the kids.

These days, it was different, though. During the blip, as people had come to call it, a bit more than half of Bradley's group of ice skaters had gotten dusted, leaving the rest of the remaining children to grow up and go into more advanced ice skating programs.

Bradley had started training a new set of kids in the five years that half the world had turned to dust, and although it wasn't exactly easy training 10 kids without Clover, the dirty blonde haired coach had gotten through it.

Coaching only got that much harder when the 7 kids who had gotten dusted came back. Now, Bradley was gonna have to single-handedly coach 12 10 to 11 year-olds. But lucky for him, he now had his professional assistant coach back, Clover Pine.

When Clover told Bradley about their powers, they had come to truly embrace their ice generating abilities, as they now felt they didn't need to hide it so much. They excitedly opened the arena doors, entered the ice rink and called out to their friend.

"Hey, Brad!"

Bradley glanced over, standing outside the locker room with his black ice skates already on.

"Glad you could make it, Clover." He greeted the young adult.

"I wouldn't miss an opportunity to skate on an actual ice rink instead of the floor of my apartment." Clover replied, putting one of their feet on the bench.

Using their powers, they generated ice skate blades made of ice on their one shoe, then on the other shoe. This method was one that Clover found much easier than bringing in ice skates. Clover stepped on the ice, letting themselves drift along the ice while Bradley still waited for the kids to emerge from the locker room.

"So I heard Steve Rogers is on the moon." Bradley said.

"Did you now?" Clover asked, raising an eyebrow. "Where's you hear that from?"

"Clover, it's been all over the internet. Everyone is saying that Captain America is retired and on the moon." Bradley chuckled.

"Uh huh..." Clover hummed, doing spins on the ice.

"So is it true?"

"You think I'd tell you?"

Bradley and Clover chuckled, when there was a huge set of footsteps, and the young ice skaters all came out of the locker room with their skates on.

"Oh good, you guys are ready." Bradley remarked. "Alright. On the ice, kids. One at a time."

One by one, each kid stepped on the ice. First was what remained of the kids that Clover had coached in the past, those kids being Claudia, Aviana, Lorraine, Chantel, Kelsie, Russell and Nettie. The seven kids all approached their beloved assistant coach.

"Good to see you kids again." Clover said.

Then was the new group of kids that Bradley had been training by himself. Clover had learned the kids' names in the month or two they've been helping with coaching upon their return. The names were Berniece, Aaron, Andy, Jezza and Emmie.

"Hey, how come you get less kids to coach than I do?" Clover jokingly asked their friend.

Bradley smiled at them.

"Because you know those ones better than these ones, Mx I-can-make-ice-out-of-my-bare-hands." He chuckled.

"Ha ha, hilarious." Clover rolled their eyes and smiled.