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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The lights of Barnum City choke even the stars themselves.
Sage Sawyer may have originally been born here, but they dazzle even her.
They're enough to make her forget her rage and heartbreak.
For at least a moment.
Sitting in the back of the bus earlier and taking in all the sights and sounds was enough to cause total brain overload. Sage would never show it, of course, but she certainly felt it. She just chose to hold it all in.
As usual.
The skyscrapers - the actual, real life, real size - skyscrapers towering above them all was a sight to behold. The unfamiliar clamor of ten thousand engines and a hundred honking horns, the clanking of the massive tubs of the Barnum City Humor Pacification Brigade as they loped down the designated tub lanes, everything melded together into a full on assault on her ears. Sage put on headphones, but even these didn't really help.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, can drown out Barnum City.
Birchside is the western-most borough of Barnum, so it took the Jupiter convoy a while to even get near here. But as they approached Birchside High, the difference in their surroundings became more and more stark. The buildings stood lower. Older. More run down. Cracked. Weeds growing, entangled amidst their well worn bricks. The graffiti began standing out, vibrant in its expressiveness. Train tracks rose over the pockmarked roads, and every few minutes a train would clatter down the tracks, its lights spilling over low rises and dusty windows.
Here it was: the inner city, home to the undefeated Birchside Barracuda.
By the time the Jackalopes arrived, changed into their uniforms, and hopped into their tubs, Talia has made sure to tell them all, about nine thousand times it feels like, that Nairobi Cain's younger brother Atari plays for the Barracuda.
As if the Jackalopes aren't nervous enough already.
"Alright, kids. Don't go and mess this up for me. I want you to put on a good show out there. God knows who could be watching tonight. It could be Nairobi herself, watching little bro. Let's impress the pants off her." Talia's voice is nervous. Sage can tell, even over all the usual interference of the comm system.
"Way to give us all stage fright, Talia. Real helpful." Peter's voice replies. He's busy maneuvering Jolly Roger into the closest manifestation station in Jackalopes turf. Tonight's terrain is standard fare, with both teams' cities standing at the back of each turf, huddled together at the center. At least the Jackalopes don't have anything unusual to worry about in that department.
As Sage jockeys Storm Zen onto the court, she takes a look around. Unlike most of their previous opponents' stomping grounds, Birchside Arena is an indoor court. Some would say it's rather intimate, but Sage just thinks it's cramped. The old bleachers creak beneath the restless crowd, who sit just ten feet from the court. As for the court itself, it's made of warped wooden floorboards. Sage can even hear the pulsesteel feet of the Jackalope tubs bending and nearly snapping some of them. It's an incredibly disconcerting sound. How the Barracuda have remained undefeated while playing more than half their games in this crumbling dump is a complete mystery to her.
