Wrangling teenage emotions is hard enough on good days, but what if on bad days they could manifest as giant flesh and blood monsters?
Pacific Rim meets Friday Night Lights as knee-jerk rebel Sage Sawyer is forced to join her high school "tourneytub...
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Tonight, Talia sits installed in the benchpen again. She'll never quite get used to sitting here, but at least her foot is starting to hurt a little less than before. She still has to wear the cast, though. Her head is giving her some trouble again, but this can't really be helped. She simply tries to ignore it.
Spread before her, The Warren appears like a mountainous region, with peaks rising up before the wondering crowd. An inspired choice by the groundskeepers and the umpire, Talia must admit. Both teams' cities are scattered all over their turfs, mostly hidden behind rocky outcroppings and overhanging cliffs. Jockeys race their tubs over the difficult terrain. The burgundy and brown of the Jupiter Jackalopes mixed with the orange and white of the West Glancing Hammers.
Already, this game has been going on for far longer than any of the previous Jackalopes' contests this season. Thirty minutes and still the mountains have managed to stymie both teams.
This has forced Coach Wu to order Peter to manifest more and more humors. Everyone knows it's a risk, every humor is worth twenty points, but apparently it's a risk Coach Wu is willing to take. On the plus side, if any one of those humors gets pacified by the Hammers, it won't end the game. The Hammers would have to pacify all three. Besides, Peter is getting in a lot of practice manifesting tonight.
So Talia can see Coach's reasoning.
Still, her stomach has stayed in her throat all game.
Three of Peter's humors are busy battering themselves against the mountains of Hammers turf, unable to get through their earthy masses to the tantalizing scattered buildings of Hammers city. All three of these humors are around tub size; jackalopes with gleaming antlers. Talia supposes they aren't the most original things in the world, but they are effective. They even share a certain ferocious adorableness. Two Hammers jockeys are completely preoccupied by the jackalope humors, keeping them away from the majority of their buildings.
The Hammers third jockey, a thaumaturge/engineer hybrid seated behind the yoke of a tub called Queen Dreaming, is desperately trying to pacify even one of Peter's humors. Talia can see into this opponent's cockpit, where a girl in orange and white is expertly controlling her craft. Queen Dreaming flips and flops and rises and jukes all about the court, the jackalope humors always only inches from its metal grasp.
Talia is actually rather impressed.
This Hammers jockey seems to know what she's doing.
"I'm pretty sure she's the only competent jockey on their entire team." Artie laughs beside Talia.
Talia nods her head nervously in agreement. "Doesn't mean we still can't lose, though."
While the two siblings are speaking, Queen Dreaming's own humor, which looks like the front of an oversized bulldozer fused to the body of a particularly muscular buffalo, tramples through Jackalopes turf. It tosses its sharp metal bucket to and fro, dangerously close to both buildings and tubs.
