Dresden Academy

Who: Marina, Cinna, Carly, Tina, Prof. Olivier, and the cheerleading NPCs
What: Cheerleading practice is going "great" after all the tensions Carly's stirred up and things quickly denigrate.
When/Where: Thursday, March 8th. The quodpot field.
Rating: NSFW (extreme language and cat fighting)


Marina was about to punt Carly in the back of the head.

If it weren't bad enough being a general bitch to everyone all the time anyway. Carly seemed to have perfected the art of taking out her social frustrations out on all of them at practice. "Have you always been this useless?" she asked one of the younger girls. "From the top until Rachel gets it right."

Marina groaned and rolled her eyes toward Tina. "From the top until we all want to kill her in the bloodiest most terrible way," she whispered behind a very obvious hand. She didn't even bother hiding her disdain for Carly anymore.

"Who died and made her boss?" Tina agreed, slightly annoyed at the way Carly was acting like she was free of errors and was in charge of all of them.

Cinna flopped down beside the two of them and ignored Carly's instructions, choosing to stretch some more instead. "Probably the same person who shat in her cornflakes this morning."

"And who gave you the day off?" Carly announced loudly when she noticed the group of girls pretending to stretch some more.

Olivier was coaching today, but she was sitting further up in the stands, far enough that she didn't get the gist of what was occurring on the field. Had she known the girls were quickly heading toward mutiny she would have intervened.

"We're getting warmed up, your highness," Marina shot back.

"Wouldn't want to get a cramp mid-jump and kick your big nose in, would we?" Cinna pulled a face and turned her back on Carly to finish stretching with the others. "It's in our business so much it's amazing we avoid it at all, right?"

Tina let half a giggle escape before clamming up. No need to get the Practice Nazi even more worked up than usual. She bent down to grab her ankle and stretch out her calves and hamstrings. "Well when it's not in everyone's business it's usually somewhere up Hawthorne's ass," she whispered down near the other girls. "It's amazing we ever see it."

Carly folded her arms across her chest and stared at them foully until they finished. She was so entirely sick of this insubordination. What was the point of being a captain if the girls continued to not listen to you?

Marina dragged out her last bit of stretching as long as humanly possible. "How's that going, by the way?" she asked Cinna politely. Their teammate had a rough week of it when they all got back from break, but she seemed better now, oddly enough after the shitstorm Shell and Carly caused on their journals.

"All's good!" She replied cheerfully, taking a particularly long time to wiggle the kinks out of her neck and back. "Aaron actually texted me like 'oh so I hear you're single again, wanna do something' and I was just like... oh gross, are you serious? Ew."

Tina pushed herself up off the ground and leaned on Marina for support. "Eeeew! He's such a skeeze."

The look on Cinna's face was nothing short of pure agreement. "Right? I was like, uh, no bitch. You drag your ass back to Sandra or did you forget you ate her face in front of everybody? 'Cause you know what she's like. They might as well be married now; she's got their twins' names picked out already." Even having finished stretching, they were just completely ignoring Carly now.

Marina groaned. "Honestly, I don't even know why I make the pretense of boys anymore. They're all skeevy thugs or hornballs. Or both."

Carly cleared her throat extra loud. "If you're busy enough to stand their gossiping, you might just better practice your basket tosses." She was properly irritated now and turned her attention away from them to yell at Lyanna and Brenda some more. "No, jesus. Really? If you're going to start crying Lyanna Birch, you might as well run your skinny ass off to the locker room and make a proper go of it. And turn in your uniform while you're at it. I'm so sick of this shit."

"YOU'RE DOING GREAT, LYANNA!" Cinna yelled without even turning around to see. Carly was just being a giant bitch, and really what those girls needed was a bit of encouragement, not constant bitching because they didn't meet Queen Asshole's instantaneous high standards.

Lyanna sniffed from across the track and wiped her tears on the back of her hand. Brenda patted her on the back and offered to toss her in the air again for another performance jump. "I got your back," she whispered, but quietly so Carly wouldn't hear and start in on her as well.

Marina had just about enough of this crap. "Leave it alone, Carly," she said loud enough for everyone to hear. If Olivier didn't resolve this before the end of practice Marina intended to say something; maybe they could band together and demand that Carly be removed from her captain position. She was a good cheerleader (Marina was loathe to admit), but a horrible leader.

Carly rounded on Marina like a feral beast. Of course it was going to be the pink haired freak who started it. "You have nothing to say about it and Lyanna's problems are none of your business."

"They are when her problems are entirely related to your bullying," Marina retorted. "Do what you want off the field. Be the biggest, nastiest cunt in the universe. I'll call you out on your shit there too. But this has got to stop here. You have no right treating these girls like your personal diapers to shit all over any time you get the urge."

Cinna sat up with interest. Marina was completely right of course, but she'd jump in the fire by her side to get at Carly any opportunity she got. So, of course, she chimed in. "Seriously. Have you even noticed that we all suck just a little harder from your influence? We don't even want to work for it when all we get out of you is more shit."

Oh god. Tina settled uncomfortably behind Marina. She'd side with her buddy, but she really hated confrontation and it didn't take a Champlain to know that this wasn't going to end well.

Carly bristled, unwilling to deflate in front of them. "I wouldn't have to be such a cunt if you skags would just do the fucking routines and do them well. It's like working with the special olympics on ice. I should be getting points toward charity work."

"You are such a self-aggrandizing twat," Marina yelled back. "And you're the worst fucking captain we've ever had. If I didn't love cheer so much I'd quit just to spite your fat ass."

Tina was actually quite offended by Carly's statement, but not for the reasons Carly would have hoped, and spoke up. "Have you actually seen special olympics figure skaters? They're elite athletes. They could flip circles around you."

"A chihuahua with ADD can flip circles around Carly," Cinna snorted. "She doesn't actually do anything at practice except bitch the fuck out of everyone else for not doing anything either."

"All she ever does is yell at me," Brenda added timidly. "She's never actually shown me what to do." Lyanna looked as though she was going to burst into tears again.

"Fuck you bitches," Carly pronounced. "It's not my fault if you need your hands held all the way through everything."

Marina snorted in derision. "The problem here, Carly, is that you're just a waste of a person. There's not even a point to trying to fix you. You're so utterly broken it's beyond us and this just isn't worth our time." With that Marina turned her back on Carly and smiled at the other girls. "I'm walking up the bleachers and I'm telling Olivier it's either me or her. Anyone who wants to join me is welcome. One way or the other, one of us is off this team."

"Oh seriously." Cinna joined Marina. She didn't want off the team at all, but she wanted Carly to get a good hard kick in the pants over pissing off the whole team. Brenda pushed Lyanna up as well, and the four of them faced off the others.

Tina groaned. This was getting so out of hand. "Ina, come on..."

"No," Marina said simply. "I'm not going through this every afternoon. Not anymore. This isn't worth that to me."

Carly balled her fists at her sides, entirely silent and wondering how much of a bluff this might actually be. Did Marina really think she could walk up to Olivier and hand her such an ultimatum? "Don't even drag them into this. You think Olivier is going to bow to your little bit of pressure. She's going to keep me, Marina, because I didn't start all this shit."

"You didn't start this?" Marina asked as if Carly had just said the stupid thing she'd ever heard. With that she marched her way off the field and up toward Olivier who was frowning at the girls once she'd looked up from the pile of Charms tests she was grading. There were not enough hours in the day for the amount of work she had and not enough pay in her wallet to deal with an angry Marina Beauchamps clanking her way up the bleachers.

Cinna ran after Marina gleefully with Lyanna and Brenda trailing after. Tina winced and rubbed her face before finally dragging herself after the rest of them. There was no way she was standing up for Carly.

Professor Olivier put the papers she was doing on the seat next to her with a weighting charm that would keep them from flying away if a breeze kicked up. "What's up, girls?"

Carly trailed behind the pack, ready to defend herself if need be. That and she wasn't about to lie down and let Marina railroad her off the team. "They've decided they'd rather quit the team than cheer with me," she announced so they wouldn't need to.

Marina nodded sharply. "So I have."

She sighed. These girls couldn't have a civil sitdown if their lives depended on it. "What's the problem this time?"

"She's confusing being a demanding captain with being a gigantic bitch," Cinna said bluntly. Lyanna's eyes widened and looked as thought they were about to fill with tears again.

"I'm a tough captain," Carly interjected. "You don't have to like me. You just have to do what I say."

"You're a cruel, spiteful bitch and you're not the least bit worthy of the title of captain," Marina shot back.

The others nodded in agreement. Tina tried to present it fairly and a bit more calmly to Coach Olivier. "It's not a healthy team environment." As you can see.

"Bren's gonna break a leg because she is more interested in yelling and degrading her than actually showing her what to do. And the only high kicks I ever feel like doing anymore are ones pointed at her bitch face."

Professor Olivier held up a hand. "That's enough, Cinna." She could see the argument for both sides, but there was no need to get personal.

Carly folded her arms across her chest. It was a protective gesture and she didn't even realize she was doing. "I show them all the moves, but I'm not going to waste my time demonstrating over and over again because they just can't get it right."

Marina huffed. "If showboating is your idea of demonstrating, sure."

"I'm the victim here," Carly proclaimed suddenly. "They've all sided against me, for whatever reason. It's them vs. me and I'm outnumbered." And not at all outwitted.

"For whatever reason? Are you delusional?!" Cinna couldn't believe what she was hearing.

Professor Olivier rubbed her face in frustration. These girls were not going to let up every lat one of them was out for Carly's blood, and Carly out for theirs she had no doubt. "Carly, it's a captain's duty to demonstrate the moves until everyone has it down. If it were a matter of showing everyone once and then moving on, we'd use an instructional video instead of giving the honor of captain to the senior cheerleader." Carly may be impatient, but she wasn't stupid. She knew this.

"I never thought I'd say this, but Kasey was such a better captain," Cinna barrelled on. "She actually gave a shit about us."

"As if," Carly replied. "All she cared about were cheerleading scholarships and looking good for scouts."

Marina groaned. "You can't let anything go, can you? You hold on to all the little shitty things and bring them up when you feel the need to be particularly vicious." She turned to Olivier. "I can't cheer with her anymore and if that means disbanding the team, then I'm sorry, I just won't and I don't think any of these girls behind me are willing to do it either. She is right about one thing. It's her vs. us."

"What's wrong with caring about scholarships and looking good for scouts? You have to be good at what you do for both, and part of a good team so it worked. We were great under Kasey. What you do, is just shit all over us until we want to quit rather than deal with you. The fuck kind of captain is that." Cinna made a noise of disgust and crossed her arms, ready to chuck it in.

This entire situation put Professor Olivier between a rock and a hard place. Obviously, the team wasn't going to function with Carly as captain. But it wasn't right to strip her of the captaincy because Marina and Cinna were having a fit about it. "Girls, what do you want? What are you hoping to walk away with here? If you don't have a clear and solid solution to your grievance, I don't know what you want me to do."

Marina frowned at how perfectly reasonable Olivier was being. She clearly wasn't going to take a side, not with Carly crammed up her ass and wrapped around her finger. "She can't be captain anymore."

Carly coughed as if she couldn't believe Marina's ludicrous demand. "I want a better team, not like I'm going to get that either."

"What do you want more," Tina pointed out. "To be captain or to have a better team? Because you're not going to get one if you hold onto the other."

"That's not a solution," Olivier told Marina. "That's a demand. A solution is telling me who would make a better captain, and why. A solution is finding a way to make you-- all of you-- work together instead of against one another. If your idea of fixing this is just to take Carly out of the captaincy, then all you have is an unhappy team with no leader to bring it together. That's not an improvement on what you have."

"Anybody," Marina said pointedly. "I'll take anyone over her." But it was starting to sound like Olivier had every intention of keeping Carly on the team. She knew damn well Carly didn't have the honor to step down gracefully when it was clear no one wanted her. "But I'll be honest, I don't know if I can trust her enough to work with her after this."

Carly made a slight ticking noise, almost like a bomb about to explode. The image was pleasant in her head: Marina filled up with shrapnel, Cinna lying in a bloody heap, Lyanna crying over their corpses as useless as she usually was. "I'm not the one who decided to make an issue of this," Carly pointed out plainly, carefully. "You're so gung-ho to shake things up."

"You're such a turd," Cinna groaned.

"Practice is over!" Professor Olivier had had enough for the day, and it wasn't like any of the routines were getting done anyway. "Go away and think about what kind of structure you want for the team, but I can guarantee you that unless you come back with a name there is no way Carly is losing her position. I will talk to Mari-- Professor Morgendorfer, and I think you can expect she will want to talk to you as well."