"So, the council is gonna terminate me if I don't catch this guy. I need your guys' help," Sarah pleaded to Ethan, Benny, and Ellie.
"We'd love to, but the team needs us, too," Ethan pointed out.
"Exactly. Who else is going to keep their benches warm, or tape their sticks for them?" Ellie snickered, receiving an elbow from Benny. "Not true."
"Sarah, we'd really like to help, but we have the team to think about," Benny explained.
"Fine. Next time there's a monster in your closet, call someone else!" Sarah shouted, stomping out of the corridor away from the three of them.
"What is up with you two?" Ellie asked, earning a weird look from the two boys. "I mean, seriously? You both said yourselves that you don't do anything on the team; you really need to help her out."
"Why can't you do it?" Benny suggested. "You're smart, and the council is kinda scared of you, so it's a win-win."
"Okay, you know the council hates my magic guts, and I'm already trying to help her," she explained. "We just need you two."
"Or, you can both keep sitting on the sidelines like sore losers for a team that didn't even need you in the first place. Later." Before Ethan or Benny could say anything else, Ellie walked out and tried to catch up to Sarah.
------
As Ethan stood by the locker rooms, he saw Benny walking by the corridor. He sped up to catch up to him and shoved him into a neighbouring hallway next to a set of stairs. "Okay, okay, ow!"
"Something's wrong with Bolts," Ethan began. Benny looked at him, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion. "What do you mean? He played better than ever today."
"That's the point," he said. "I got a vision from him on the ice... and I don't really think he's a 'natural'."
Ethan pointed to the stairwell and saw Bolts downing motor oil on top of his helmet visor, trying to drink it. Benny only shrugged at the jock, saying, "Looks like a normal jock to me."
"Trust me. There's something up. It has something to do with that gem on his mask," Ethan continued, pointing to a giant red diamond on the front of his helmet. "I just don't know what it-"
"-Dude, it's obvious!" Benny realised, somewhat joking. "He got a hold of some magical steroids and became the most awesome player ever."
"How do you know that?"
"Because, it's exactly what I would do."
"There's gotta be something more to this," Ethan told him. "We should look up more about that gem and-"
"-Hey, boys!" Coach Steiner greeted from the opposite side of the hallway, making his way towards them. He came up behind Benny and smacked him hard on the shoulder, not noticing Benny's slight whimper when he got hit. "Good game today!"
"Thanks, coach. I always give about a hundred and eleven percent-"
"Yeah, yeah, that's nice." Coach Steiner simply ignored Benny and decided to pay more attention to Ethan, smiling at him.
"Ethan, you had some brilliant ideas today. Do you mind to stay back for a bit and share more?" Coach Steiner asked. "I'd sure love to pick your brain."
Weird phrasing. "Oh, yeah. That'd be cool, but Benny and I... did have that homework we had to do," Ethan said, trying to get Benny to notice that he'd rather not stay.
"Hmm?" Benny questioned. "What homework?"
Ethan's eyebrows raised as he continued, "You know, our gemistry homework?"
"Oh, that," Benny smiled. "El and I can take care of that; we've got it covered."
Ethan smiled, but it was a hard smile. Only a smile that Benny was familiar with: the smile that would kill him one day. Coach Steiner grinned and pat Ethan on the shoulder, shuffling back down the hallway. Once he was out of earshot, Ethan started to question.
"Benny, what the hell was that?" he spat.
"Oh, relax. He might know something about Bolts." Benny extended his arms out, wondering why Ethan never got any of his hints. "Ohhh..."
------
"Let's solve this thing," Ellie began, flopping into the magic room chair and opening the spellbook. Benny walked into the room with an apple in his hand, taking a huge bite as he leaned onto the counter.
"If you take a bigger bite, you're gonna choke," she commented. His mouth was full when he defended, "Bet."
She flipped through the book while talking under her breath, "Athletic ability, athletic ability..."
"Is that a spell that cures athlete's foot?" Benny questioned. "Awesome."
Ellie's concentration was broken when she heard her phone ring on the table. "Could you get that? I'm gonna keep looking."
Benny picked up her phone once Ellie left the room with the spellbook in her hands. "Sarah! Did you know there's a cure for athlete's foot?"
"Well, did you know your buddy Bolts isn't a huge jock?" Sarah asked. "Of course. Ellie's looking through the book right now."
"I don't think you're gonna find this one in the book."
Benny jerked his head up when he heard Sarah's correction. "Uh... Ellie!"
------
"The stone on his mask is called the Eye of Zartak," Sarah explained through the phone, with Ellie writing it down and Benny looking through the book. "It resurrects dead limbs and contorts them into whatever shape you put them in."
"He's made up of a dozen dead hockey players?" Ellie questioned. "Gross, but yes."
"Do you know what this means?" Benny realised.
"That we have a crazy hockey monster on the loose?"
"No... it means I'll never be good at hockey!"
Sarah stopped talking for a while, and Benny and Ellie just guessed that she was talking to the grave-robber they stopped at the graveyard. They both heard the grave-robber talking about Bolts, and that they only needed one more part to the jock. A brain.
They tuned into the grave-robber and heard the only words they needed to hear: "Steiner said that he just found a new, geek brain."
"Did he just say a new, geek brain?" Ellie questioned. "...Oh my god."
"Holy shit, he's talking about Ethan."
------
"Ethan!"
Benny, Ellie, Sarah, Rory, and Erica each stepped foot onto the ice, shouting Ethan's name to see if he was still here. "Are you in here?"
"This place is huge," Erica commented. "Next time, join a ping-pong team or something."
"No, I wouldn't. Pongers are animals!" Rory said. Ellie sighed, "And the saddest team to be on."
A loud microphone noise sounded throughout the rink, and Coach Steiner's voice rang through the speakers. "You kids are trespassing!"
"Can it, franken-coach," Sarah shouted. "We're here for Ethan."
"All of Ethan," Benny added.
They could each see Coach Steiner in the pressbox, huffing into the microphone. He looked over to the zamboni door and yelled, "Bolts! Defense!"
All of a sudden, Bolts came flying onto the ice with a stick in his hands. Sarah flared her fangs and hissed at him. "I'm through with playing games."
Before Rory and Erica could stop her, she tried to use her speed to attack Bolts, but her feet couldn't cooperate with the ice under her shoes. Sarah fell and slid all the way into the boards, making the loudest crash in the history of the ice rink. "Vamp speed and ice do not mix. At all!"
"Just find Ethan," Benny told her. Sarah made her way off the ice, and left Benny, Ellie, Rory, and Erica to deal with Bolts.
Rory and Erica made their way up to Bolts first, but he instantly slung Rory into the net behind him, hitting his head on the crossbar. "Did we win?" he questioned.
Bolts turned to see Benny and Ellie, grunting at the sight of them. "Wait, wait, I'm on your team. Remember?" Benny tried to tell him.
Ellie got fed up with Benny trying to talk his way out of him getting his ass busted, so she did the next best thing: got a stick and a puck from the benches and handed it to Benny.
"You take this, and I distract him," she said. "I'll hit him with spells, and then you shoot the puck right at the gem."
"Ellie, you know I suck, right?"
"Hey, cake-eater!" Ellie yelled at Bolts, gaining the frankenstein's attention. "Go back to District 7!"
She began to blast random spells at him, while Benny dropped the puck onto the ice and held the stick in place. "Benny Weir with the puck, he's gotta go top-shelf!" he commentated to himself. He shot the puck directly into Bolts' mask, and the gem flew out into the air and smashed into pieces on the ground.
He threw his hands in the air, grinning at his accomplishment. "Holy shit! I did it!"
"How the hell did you do that?" Ellie exclaimed, going back over to Benny.
"I play too much NHL '94."
------
"It's too bad that Hicks folded the team after Steiner and Bolts 'mysteriously vanished'," Benny said as he, Ethan, and Ellie walked down the hall.
"I mean, the team would suck if they just left," Ellie told him. "True."
"I will miss the status that team gave us, though," Ethan commented.
"Oh, come on. We still have a status-!" Before Benny could finish, the upperclassmen guys from lunch the other day walked up behind him and shoved him into the lockers. He laughed as they continued down the hallway.
After they cornered the hall, Ellie simply pointed down the corridor and made two beams of light travel towards the jocks, and a loud hit was heard. "What did you just do?" Ethan asked.
"I just tied both their shoelaces together," she answered. "Idiots!"
"That's stupid," Benny laughed. "You know what Bolts would say if he were here?"
"Bleh..."
"...Gah."
"Agh..."