The whole room turned to look. There was Alicia, standing in the doorway, beaming even while panting. In both arms, she held a large parcel.
The cheers and congratulations did not completely end, but once they'd died down slightly, the package was opened. Inside was all of Chase's gear, neatly packed. She wanted to go through all of it right then and there, but time was of the essence. She went straight for the outfit.
After the quickest change of her life (with which she had a bit of help from her friends) she turned to the body mirror. The room finally fell silent.
She raised a hand to her mouth in disbelief. She looked incredible. The uniform was a bright, new, and vivid green and gold, which matched her hair and bedazzled eyes without overpowering them. The top's slim cut fit her flawlessly, and the pleated skirt playfully fell about halfway down her thighs. The word SUNNYCREST was emblazoned boldly and proudly across her chest.
Strangely, though, the most beautiful part of the outfit wasn't how it looked on her. The most beautiful part was how it looked on them.
The mirror captured all the girls crowding around her as well, dressed in the same attire, sharing this moment with her. They were excited for her, happy for her. They looked great, and she looked great with them; seeing how well she fit in with this group was the most wonderful feeling she had ever experienced. For the first time, it really hit her: she was a cheerleader.
Chase finally recognized the emotion she felt when Lindsey had offered to let her use her uniform. It was... kinship. She might have left her mama and papa behind in the cabin, but now... she felt like she was part of a family again.
“She's perfect,” whispered Samantha, giving an awed voice to everyone's thoughts.
Alicia alighted her hands on Chase's stunned shoulders. Standing behind her, the redhead looked over one of them. Their eyes met in the mirror. “You're perfect, Chase,” she paraphrased.
And then, Chase started to cry. Immediately, she whirled around, and wrapped Alicia in a hug.
“Whoa!” Alicia remarked.
“Thanks Leash. Thanks all,” she said, burying her face in her shoulder.
The redhead hugged Chase back as she began to feel warm tears through her top. “Thanks for what?”
“Thanks for give chance.”
…..
As the cheerleaders walked out onto the field, Chase was once again amazed at just how many people there were in the outside world. Seeing the field during the daytime, stands empty, was impressive enough, but seeing them packed top to bottom with people was another matter entirely.
Emanating from this mass of humanity was a loud bellowing, pushing in from both sides of the field like walls closing in on her. At first, Chase was put on edge, but upon closer inspection, she realized that these walls were actually tapestries made up of hundreds of enthusiastic cheers. They were being supported!
They did a couple cheers to get the crowd, and themselves, warmed up. Once they stopped for a break, Chase spotted something that surprised her over on the other side of the field. “Cait! Cait!” she exclaimed, tugging on Caitlin's shirt.
Alarmed, Caitlin turned and looked. “What?”
Some girls in red and white were doing a routine of their own for the people in the bleachers on the other side of the field. “More cheers!”
“Oh. Yeah,” said Caitlin. “Those are Irving High's cheerleaders. They're supporting the other team.”
“That little chunk of the bleachers they're cheering in front of is for the away team fans, and the rest is for our fans,” Alicia added.
Chase had no idea there would be other cheerleaders. She sort of thought Sunnycrest had invented them. She saw something else that surprised her.
“AAAAH!” she shouted, pointing wildly with one hand and tugging wildly with the other.
“What now?” asked Caitlin.
“BIG OINK!” Chase exclaimed, pointing at the Irving High Razorbacks mascot. He was getting up to some goofy mascot antics with the cheerleaders. “Not see so big in whole life! Him eat cheer! I distract, you go for tum tum!”
Lindsey shrugged. “Can we at least let him eat a couple? They're the enemy, after all.”
“Lindsey!” Caitlin scolded. “Chase, that's a guy in a costume. They call it a mascot.”
“We have one too, see?” asked Alicia, gesturing at Calvin the Fighting Cactus, who was currently beating on a large punching bag labeled 'IRVING'. The crowd cheered him on.
Chase tried to understand this. “No oink or stab bush. Just guys in big clothes.”
“Yes, that's correct,” said Alicia.
Chase eyed the razorback for a long time, before turning away. “No fight oink. But if him steal my kill, it your fault.”
“Oh. So that's what this is about,” sighed Caitlin.
The football players came out next, first the Razorbacks, then the Cacti. Light gleamed off their bouncing helmets as they jogged out to thunderous cheers. High up in the commentator's booth, a SWAT sniper trained his scope on the cannibal.
“I have a shot right now, sir,” he announced.
To his left stood McBride, eyeing her through a pair of binoculars. She grabbed a drink from the water cooler, oblivious to the eyes that were watching her. “Patience, Rogers,” he instructed.
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All around him stood six more members of the SWAT team. Three had joined him in looking down at the field below, two more were guarding the door, and one was cleaning part of the sportscaster's face off the butt of his assault rifle.
Johnson was also present, feeling out of place and looking the part. “Why not do it now, sir?” he asked nervously.
McBride smirked. “What, and waste the best seat in the house? Let's at least catch some of the game first.” He pulled up a chair and sat down comfortably in it.
The rookie was mortified. “B... but, Chief!”
Down on the field, Sunnycrest won the coin toss. The crowd erupted in cheers. “We wait until the cheerleaders' halftime performance,” said McBride. “I want to make an example out of her, and for that, she must have the audience's full attention at the moment of her death.”
Johnson leaned his panicked face into McBride's view. “Chief, with all due respect, you weren't there at the movie theater! You don't know what she's capable of! This isn't somebody we can mess around with! If we've got a chance, we need to take it!”
McBride responded with an annoyed frown. “Johnson, shouldn't you be calling the game?” he asked.
Johnson paused. “Er, what?”
On top of the sportscaster's desk, right next to his slumping, unconscious body, was a microphone, just waiting to be grabbed. “People will get suspicious if nobody's calling the game up here. They might even come to investigate. We can't have that.”
Two members of the SWAT team promptly cleared him a spot, lifting the sportscaster out of his chair and setting him down in the corner. “But... but I don't know anything about calling games!”
“What's to know? Just describe what's happening on the field. You have watched football before, right?”
…..
Irving had brought their A game. They were successfully putting points on the board, scoring at least a field goal with each drive, but their defense was their biggest asset. Kirk and the rest of the Cacti offense had to fight for every yard to keep the point difference within one score as the first half approached its close.
A couple days earlier, the other cheerleaders had tried to explain the rules of football to Chase. It seemed highly complicated, and most of the subtleties of it eluded her. Even to her, however, the commentary for this game felt a bit off.
“Oh, okay, they're lining up again! And the ball is passed to... whoa! He passed it through his legs to the guy standing behind him! What a play! There's no way Irving saw that coming!” trumpeted the commentator's box. “Number I can't read the number from here fades back, passes to—wait, oh my god, that guy hit that other guy! Ran right into him! If I didn't know better, I'd say it was intentional!”
She scratched her head with her pom pom as she watched the play. “Thought it good to hit other guy,” she pomdered.
“It is. It's called a tackle,” said Alicia. She looked up at the commentator's box with a frown. “I don't know what this guy is talking about.”
“Why does he keep rambling on about 'the mysterious touchback'?” added Caitlin.
The players lined up for the next play. “This is likely either the first, second, or third down!” realized the commentator. “With less than a minute remaining in the first half, the Fighting Cacti will be hoping to put some points on the board here, but what the fans are wondering is: will we finally see the elusive touchback come into play?”
“The elusive touchback. My bad,” Caitlin corrected herself.
“The school must have gotten some nerd from the A/V club or something to call the game,” deduced Lindsey. “What do you expect?”
Caitlin looked cross. “Now, Lindsey, that's not very nice.”
“Yeah, our school knows better than that,” agreed Alicia.
Once Irving broke up the play, the Fighting Cacti found themselves at 3rd & 10. There were eleven seconds left on the clock, and Sunnycrest was deep in enemy territory. The score was 17-13, with Irving leading.
It was the kind of moment cheerleaders were made for. Alicia knew this and rose unflinchingly to the challenge. Her school spirit was a geyser within her, ready to erupt. “Third and ten, you guys!” she piped to the rest of the girls. “Buckle down and dig out everything you've got! Let's whip this crowd into a frenzy!”
Just the sound of her crisp, excited voice lit a fire under them. They formed up and began to lead the crowd in a forceful, impassioned chant. “First! Down! First! Down! Pound those pigs into the ground!” They repeated this a couple times, with rhythmic hand claps and perfectly synchronized motions. In seconds, every Sunnycrest supporter in the stands had joined in the shouting and clapping, nearly rattling the uprights with their fervor. To the Irving defense, their enemy's offensive line somehow seemed to swell before their eyes.
Snap! Kirk held the ball for just a moment before handing it off to a running back. He easily found a hole in the defense and ran it in for a touchdown.
The stands exploded with so much celebration, you'd think it was a game-winning play.
“Yes!” Alicia exulted. “That was awesome!”
“Sun-ny-crest! Is the best! Sun-ny-crest! Is the best!” chanted Caitlin. The other girls were not about to pass this up, and once they got going, the crowd had to as well. It was glorious.
After a successful extra point, the score was 20-17, Sunnycrest, going into the second half. The cheerleaders' half-time show would have had plenty of pep even if Sunnycrest was behind, but the lead just added an extra dollop.
Once the teams had left for the locker rooms, they were replaced by the school marching band. A large platoon of uniformed boys and girls stomped out, playing brassy, rallying music. Trumpets, french horns, trombones, big bass drums and smaller tenors and snares, flutes and piccolos... for a small school, Sunnycrest had a decent sized band.
They also had a sousaphone. Chase thought its player was being attacked by a giant golden anaconda and almost rushed to his rescue before being stopped by Caitlin and Lindsey.
With heated fanfare blaring, the girls began to run through their flashiest routine. Still buzzing with pride from their team's last minute score, they filled their tumbles and jumps with energy. The crowd was eating it up, their applause already at a fever pitch as the girls segued into their biggest stunt.
“One, two, up!” Alicia called. She jumped into the hands of her squadmates and they lifted her up high into the air. Lindsey and Victoria rose in synch with her, on her left and right, respectively.
One of Victoria's bases was Chase. She didn't quite understand why the other ones were necessary. She'd tried to explain to Alicia during practice that she could easily lift the scrawny waif by herself, and probably 'most of Leash too if want'. Alicia insisted it was a symmetry thing, though. If there were three girls holding up Lindsey then there needed to be three girls holding up Victoria. It was just how things were done.
Just like in practice, the girls hoisted their legs high, and grabbed the soles of their shoes. Victoria felt beads of sweat forming under her blonde bangs. This was it, the moment of truth. She was starting to get a little scared, but she couldn't back down now.
..........
“Now, Chief?” asked the sniper, finger tensing on the trigger.
McBride opened a beer with a loud crack that made the sniper jump slightly. “Not yet. If you kill her now she'll drop the little one. I want minimum civilian injuries.”
One of the SWAT members laughed. McBride grinned and gestured at him with the bottle. “Martinez got it.”
“If not now, then when?” asked the sniper, keeping his crosshairs level. “I think they're almost done with this routine.”
The chief took a sip, to give him time to form his answer. The bottle dropped from his lips. “Right after this stunt,” he replied. “Once the fliers are on the ground, nail her.”