Rolling With The Times: Things That Go Bump (Kitayama/Totsuka, PG)
Title: Rolling With The Times: Things That Go Bump
Pairing: Kitayama/Totsuka
Rating/Warnings: PG
AN: With some new up-and-coming teams hot on their heels, Yokoo wants to make sure that her team doesn't let down their guard.
Rolling With The Times: Things That Go Bump
The warehouse door is heavy enough that it requires all of Yokoo’s weight to open it, but the collective gasp she receives when she flicks on the lights is well worth the effort. Her team stares in wide-eyed silence for a long moment.
“Holy shit...” Nikaido says, and she looks like someone’s just given her a personal skate park to play in.
Maybe Yokoo has. The warehouse is full of ramps and platforms and poles, palettes stacked up well out of the way against the walls.
“What... but how...?”
“I called in some favors,” Yokoo answers, understanding Kitayama well enough. A benefit of working for a technical theatre company, Yokoo’s got enough contacts in the right places to arrange for something like this. She’s been here on her own every night for a week, testing her skills, but they’ve got the place for another three.
“Awesome,” Nikaido says, and Yokoo grabs her by the arm as she starts forward.
“Helmet first,” she says. “Don’t even think about touching your skates before you’ve got protective gear on.” She doesn’t need any broken necks on her conscience.
Kitayama kindly helps her drag the door shut as the others go to dump their bags in a corner and pull on their pads.
“Wakka...”
Yokoo turns to look at her, and Kitayama is smiling.
“This really is awesome. Thank you.”
Yokoo nods. “You’re welcome, then.”
Kitayama might be their team leader, but Yokoo is usually their head trainer, and she’s going to make sure they’re ready for the season. The Fire Beaters are the best, after all, and she plans for them to stay that way.
Nikaido is already ready and bouncing on her stoppers by the time Yokoo and Kitayama join the rest of the group. Despite her clear excitement, though, she stays away from the obstacles as instructed, waiting impatiently for Senga to finish pulling on her skates.
Tamamori is the only one who doesn’t look entirely enthusiastic.
“Why are we doing this?” she asks, eyeing a nearby ramp suspiciously.
“Because if you’re comfortable on this,” Yokoo explains, “then you’ll have no problems at all on the banked track. If you’re fine with running and jumping and sliding and stuff in here, you’ll be a lot harder to take out in the game.”
“I suppose,” Tamamori says, but she doesn’t look entirely convinced.
She looks even less thrilled when she falls on her ass on the first obstacle of the course Yokoo has set out for them. Tamamori doesn’t say anything as Miyata helps her back to her feet, but her pout is mutinous.
Even Fujigaya only makes it through half the course, and she’s one of their best skaters. She seems a bit startled after her fall, but then sets a look of determination on her face. “Alright,” she says, addressing the entire team. “Let’s do this. We don’t go home until everyone gets through without going down.”
“Maybe a little much on the first day,” Kitayama points out as a chorus of groans from the younger four echo around her.
“It took me a few days,” Yokoo adds, “so maybe we should give everyone at least a week?”
“Explains your bruises,” Fujigaya says, and looks pointedly at the large one on Yokoo’s left forearm, but she agrees.
They break up into pairs or groups to practice.
“Wah, this is scary!” Miyata says from the top of a ramp, clutching at one of the support poles. “It’s really steep!”
“Ugh, just do it,” Tamamori says. She rolls her eyes, but reaches out a hand for Miyata to hold anyway. Miyata ends up on her ass anyway, but Tamamori’s grip keeps her from going down as hard as she would have without her.
“Tama-chan~,” she says, looking up at Tamamori with gratitude, her eyes wide. Tamamori just tsks at her and hauls her to her feet.
Nikaido and Senga aren’t having much better luck on their ramp, either. Neither of them are great with heights, and despite all their bluster, once they’ve scrambled to the top of one, they both promptly sit down. The top of the platform is only about a meter high, but “it looks a lot higher from up here,” Nikaido whines. She slides down on her backside like a toddler.
Kitayama tackles a set of stairs. She has no trouble at all going up, taking them quickly on her stoppers, but going down proves to be another issue altogether.
“Ow!” she yelps, twisting so that she lands on her side instead of directly on her back. “Aahhh, fuck.”
Yokoo skates over to help her. “You okay?”
Kitayama rolls to kneel on a step, rubbing her hip. “Fucker. This is kind of dangerous.”
“Um... yeah,” Yokoo says sheepishly. She prides herself on being responsible. It’s one of the reasons it took her a full week to call everyone over; she’d realized how dangerous it was pretty quickly after her first few falls. It probably wasn’t smart of her to practice there alone, and she knows it. “Maybe we shouldn’t try it by ourselves. Fuji-chan!” she calls. “Can you come help spot?”
Fujigaya already has a large red lump rising on her shin when she skates over, just under the edge of her rolled up sweats. “Stairs aren’t so fun, huh?” She gives Kitayama a wry smile, having given up on the stairs herself for the time being.
Using Yokoo and Fujigaya for balance support on either side, Kitayama makes it down the six steps in one piece. She does it again. And again. And yet again. But no matter how many times they walk her down them, she refuses to let go of their shoulders.
“The skates are too big for the stairs,” she explains. “I have to have my foot all the way back on them to fit, and I can’t balance enough to step down like that. How the hell did you do this again?” she asks Yokoo.
“Um. Backwards,” Yokoo admits. “On my stoppers.”
Kitayama stares. “What? So why the hell have I been trying this on my wheels the whole time?!”
“You’re doing all right,” Fujigaya encourages, but Kitayama just gives her The Eye.
“I thought maybe if we helped each other we could figure it out,” Yokoo says.
But switching places so that Fujigaya’s trying it only proves that it doesn’t work. “Can’t balance!” she confirms, clutching frantically at Yokoo’s wrist to keep from falling. Kitayama grabs her by the waist to hold her up.
“You kind of can?” Senga calls over, and they look up to see Nikaido gliding away from the bottom of another staircase.
“You went down that forward?” Kitayama asks, suspicious.
“Yeah?” Nikaido rolls over to them. “Why?”
“Show us,” Fujigaya demands. She hops down off the side with Kitayama’s help and Nikaido clamors up in her place.
Nikaido does make it down facing forward, but it’s more like controlled falling than anything else. She leans so far forward that there’s no way she can stay balanced, but compensates by moving her feet fast enough to keep them beneath her. She brings her skates down at an angle, hitting the corners of the stairs with her center plates and letting her momentum carry her down. Once she hits the bottom, she’s able to regain her balance on flat ground well enough.
Yokoo is impressed. It’s certainly one way to improve their skills, although it’s a lot less controlled than she’d like. “You definitely can’t stop, right?”
“Not at all,” Senga says, joining them. She hops up to demonstrate her own method, which differs from Nikaido’s in that she does actually hit the stairs with her wheels, tilted forward so that her feet slide backwards with each step. She pushes off the step above her foot with her rear wheel, but it gives her so much speed that she has to skip steps and it’s more like jumping the stairs rather than going down them. She falls forward when she hits the bottom, catching herself with her forearms flat on the ground so she doesn’t endanger her wrists - Yokoo is glad she’s taught them something - and popping back up with a smile.
“Well, I’m still working on it.”
Nikaido snickers.
It figures that their two youngest found a way to deal with the stairs first; they’re the most acrobatic in the group (and also the most likely to take stupid risks).
They probably won’t have to deal with stairs on the track, but the more comfortable they feel doing anything in their skates is a help. Also, some of the tracks they compete on have stairs separating them from the locker rooms and hallways. Most players just put their skates on at track level, but it would be helpful not to have to change just to make a quick run to the bathroom.
Kitayama contemplates the stairs and then gives them another shot, hopping her way up on her stoppers and then hopping back down the same way.
“I’m fine with not breaking my neck,” she says by way of explanation, and Fujigaya nods, then copies her example up and back.
“Looks a lot more dignified, too.” She glances over to where Nikaido and Senga have moved on to a low, narrow beam.
“Like you have any dignity,” Kitayama says, grinning, and then ducks away quickly when Fujigaya tries to smack her.
“I’ll kill you,” Fujigaya rages, and Yokoo has to jump in front of her.
“Ladies, ladies!” she says, laughing. “Come on!” She sends Fujigaya off to check on Miyata and Tamamori’s progress and drags Kitayama off to work on a ramp. Kitayama has a lot more success with that, doing fine until they move on to one with a jump immediately following.
“We’re gonna be here for a while, huh?” Kitayama shakes her head, picking herself up from the ground.
“Probably.” Yokoo only manages the jump one in every three times herself, but at least the fall is more of a sloped slide and not all that painful.
That’s probably why Miyata and Tamamori are still working on their ramp. Miyata seems to be doing okay. Their ramp is set close to the stored palettes and she crashes into them a handful of times before she can manage to slow her momentum coming off the ramp enough to turn. Tamamori doesn’t have a speed problem, but that’s possibly because she’s still refusing to come down a ramp without dragging a toe stop behind her.
“It’s too fast!” she says when Fujigaya tries to convince her to go down on both sets of wheels. “I’ll definitely crash.” She glares at the boxes stacked in front of her, dented from Miyata’s numerous attempts.
“We won’t let you crash,” Fujigaya says, trying to convince her. “We’ve got you.”
She and Miyata manage to coax Tamamori down on her wheels, holding both of her hands so that she can keep her speed to a minimum, and eventually working up to waiting with outstretched arms at the bottom for her to grab on to.
“Try it on your own now,” Fujigaya says, and leaves them to it.
Miyata positions herself directly in front of the ramp, hands out for Tamamori to grab on to, but the angle is definitely all wrong to catch her, and she ends up as more of a buffer between Tamamori and the boxes, squashed into her own dented section by Tamamori’s momentum.
“Ow...”
“Sorry,” Tamamori says and pushes herself off of Miyata, but her hair is pulled back under a sweatband and Miyata can see just how red her ears go.
“No worries, Tama-chan,” she chirps, entirely pleased, and she’ll let Tamamori crash into her as many times as she needs to. “Let’s try again.”
Yokoo goes to check on Nikaido and Senga next, once she’s made sure that Fujigaya and Kitayama are playing nice again. The only way to successfully cross the balance beam is to keep their skates perfectly straight - the beam is the exact width of their wheels. It’s next to impossible, as Yokoo knows from trying, but that wasn’t her point in asking for it as an obstacle. She wants the focus to be not on keeping their balance, but on recovering it. Keeping balance on a track isn’t all that difficult, but regaining it once a rival has tried to knock you from your feet, well, that’s a bit more challenging. Yokoo hopes that the low beam can simulate some of that feeling, since it’s easy enough to fall off of, and low enough to catch themselves, if they do it right. Nikaido and Senga are most definitely not doing it right, since they keep landing on their hands and knees.
“Problems?” Yokoo skates to a stop next to where Nikaido is sitting on the floor.
Nikaido glares at her. “How the hell are we supposed to do this?! There’s no way we can get all the way across it.”
Senga proves her point by choosing that moment to topple off on her attempt. She crashes down at Yokoo’s feet without crying out, well used to the falling already.
“We definitely can’t,” she says, looking up at Yokoo and shaking her head.
“What exactly are you trying to do?” Yokoo asks.
“Get across it,” Nikaido snaps. “Like I said. What the hell else are we supposed to be doing?”
Yokoo smiles. “Well,” she says, “I said you had to get through the course without falling.” Her smile turns sly as she gives up her secret. “I didn’t say you had to stay on the obstacles.”
“What?!” Nikaido scrambles to her feet, indignant. “So then what the hell is the point?” she wants to know.
“To be able to keep going without falling,” Yokoo explains. “No matter what.”
“So what,” Senga says, “We can just skate around them, then? It’s like a trick question.”
“You can’t skip obstacles,” Yokoo says. “But it doesn’t matter if you fall off them as long as you don’t fall down. Just get back on and keep going.”
“Ugh. Why didn’t you just say so in the first place, then?” Nikaido is frowning, but she skates back around to the start of the beam. “Kaoru, move.”
Senga gets up to stand with Yokoo away from the sides of the beam and Nikaido tries again. She rolls forward on one foot, switching to her other foot as soon as the first starts to go off, but her then her second switch isn’t quite on target. Instead of flailing to maintain balance, she lets herself tumble to the side, just barely catching herself, one hand briefly touching the floor to keep her on her feet. It’s hardly graceful, but she’s back up on the beam in seconds, only to fall off the other side, where she also manages to recover.
“Ooh, nice work, Nika!” Senga calls, and Yokoo echoes her encouragement, watching together as Nikaido trips her way on and off about three-quarters of the beam before finally falling to her knees.
“Fuck,” Nikaido gasps, bracing herself on her hands and letting her head hang down as she tries to catch her breath. “That’s really hard!”
“Yup,” Yokoo admits, but gives her a smile wide enough to show her fang. “Keep up the good work!”
Kitayama tries not to feel too superior about her skating skills, but she’s one of the best and she knows it, so sometimes it’s hard. She’s grateful for these times, then, when she’s shown just how much better she could be. Over just the last two days, she’s started to redevelop a whole new sense of balance.
She’s got a whole new set of bruises to go along with it.
“Whoaaa,” Totsuka says when he catches her getting dressed for work in the morning. “What have you been doing?”
Kitayama knows she looks pretty bad; she’s been wearing her pants suit to work since her stockings don’t completely hide her bruises. Her pajamas cover her well enough, and Totsuka’s used to seeing a few bruises here and there, so the ones on her arms passed without comment. She ducks her head as Totsuka comes over to inspect her.
“New practice regimen,” she explains, and lets Totsuka tilt her chin up.
“Is that what this is from?” he asks, running a finger gently along the bruise on her forehead. Kitayama had thought he hadn’t noticed; it’s fairly light and if she leaves her hair down her bangs mostly cover it.
“Ah... yeah.”
Totsuka leans in to kiss it, and Kitayama smiles.
“How’d you get this?”
“Didn’t catch myself fast enough,” Kitayama says. “Yokoo has us up on ramps. I’m used to the floor being level with my hands...” Here she gives Totsuka a wry grin. “...And not sloping up to meet my head.”
Totsuka looks worried. “You didn’t give yourself a concussion or anything, right?”
Kitayama shakes her head. “Nah, I got my head back mostly in time. It was just a small bump.” The edge of her helmet had also taken most of the impact. “We’re being careful. You know how Yokoo is.”
“Mm,” Totsuka agrees, although he still seems concerned. “Just... no serious injuries, okay?” He brushes a kiss across her mouth. “I like my girl in one piece.”
Kitayama smiles and follows when he moves to step away. “I promise to stay fully functional,” she says, smirking with insinuation, and then leans in to kiss her boyfriend good and hard.
“Gotta get dressed,” she says a few moments later, leaving Totsuka blinking as she grabs her pants and pulls them on. “Gonna be late.”
She’s only mostly functional when she gets home from practice that evening, refusing to admit to being in any pain until Totsuka tries to roll her onto her back. “Ow, wait,” she says, grimacing. She curls up on her side, face buried against his chest in embarrassment.
“What?” Totsuka asks, trying and failing to pull away so that he can see her face. “What’s wrong?”
“...I think I bruised my tailbone,” Kitayama mutters, and pokes Totsuka when he laughs.
“Poor baby,” he says, but she can feel him relax, and then he’s stroking a hand through her hair. “I thought I said you’re not allowed to break yourself.”
“Not broken,” Kitayama argues. “Just... slightly battered, maybe.”
“I don’t want people to think I’m abusing you or anything!”
Kitayama looks up finally and smiles. “No one would believe me even if I told them you were. I think it’d be more believable if I were abusing you.”
“Ngh,” Totsuka grunts, “Maybe.” But he smiles, and leans forward to kiss her goodnight. “...Stupid roller girls.”
Pairing: Kitayama/Totsuka
Rating/Warnings: PG
AN: With some new up-and-coming teams hot on their heels, Yokoo wants to make sure that her team doesn't let down their guard.
Rolling With The Times: Things That Go Bump
The warehouse door is heavy enough that it requires all of Yokoo’s weight to open it, but the collective gasp she receives when she flicks on the lights is well worth the effort. Her team stares in wide-eyed silence for a long moment.
“Holy shit...” Nikaido says, and she looks like someone’s just given her a personal skate park to play in.
Maybe Yokoo has. The warehouse is full of ramps and platforms and poles, palettes stacked up well out of the way against the walls.
“What... but how...?”
“I called in some favors,” Yokoo answers, understanding Kitayama well enough. A benefit of working for a technical theatre company, Yokoo’s got enough contacts in the right places to arrange for something like this. She’s been here on her own every night for a week, testing her skills, but they’ve got the place for another three.
“Awesome,” Nikaido says, and Yokoo grabs her by the arm as she starts forward.
“Helmet first,” she says. “Don’t even think about touching your skates before you’ve got protective gear on.” She doesn’t need any broken necks on her conscience.
Kitayama kindly helps her drag the door shut as the others go to dump their bags in a corner and pull on their pads.
“Wakka...”
Yokoo turns to look at her, and Kitayama is smiling.
“This really is awesome. Thank you.”
Yokoo nods. “You’re welcome, then.”
Kitayama might be their team leader, but Yokoo is usually their head trainer, and she’s going to make sure they’re ready for the season. The Fire Beaters are the best, after all, and she plans for them to stay that way.
Nikaido is already ready and bouncing on her stoppers by the time Yokoo and Kitayama join the rest of the group. Despite her clear excitement, though, she stays away from the obstacles as instructed, waiting impatiently for Senga to finish pulling on her skates.
Tamamori is the only one who doesn’t look entirely enthusiastic.
“Why are we doing this?” she asks, eyeing a nearby ramp suspiciously.
“Because if you’re comfortable on this,” Yokoo explains, “then you’ll have no problems at all on the banked track. If you’re fine with running and jumping and sliding and stuff in here, you’ll be a lot harder to take out in the game.”
“I suppose,” Tamamori says, but she doesn’t look entirely convinced.
She looks even less thrilled when she falls on her ass on the first obstacle of the course Yokoo has set out for them. Tamamori doesn’t say anything as Miyata helps her back to her feet, but her pout is mutinous.
Even Fujigaya only makes it through half the course, and she’s one of their best skaters. She seems a bit startled after her fall, but then sets a look of determination on her face. “Alright,” she says, addressing the entire team. “Let’s do this. We don’t go home until everyone gets through without going down.”
“Maybe a little much on the first day,” Kitayama points out as a chorus of groans from the younger four echo around her.
“It took me a few days,” Yokoo adds, “so maybe we should give everyone at least a week?”
“Explains your bruises,” Fujigaya says, and looks pointedly at the large one on Yokoo’s left forearm, but she agrees.
They break up into pairs or groups to practice.
“Wah, this is scary!” Miyata says from the top of a ramp, clutching at one of the support poles. “It’s really steep!”
“Ugh, just do it,” Tamamori says. She rolls her eyes, but reaches out a hand for Miyata to hold anyway. Miyata ends up on her ass anyway, but Tamamori’s grip keeps her from going down as hard as she would have without her.
“Tama-chan~,” she says, looking up at Tamamori with gratitude, her eyes wide. Tamamori just tsks at her and hauls her to her feet.
Nikaido and Senga aren’t having much better luck on their ramp, either. Neither of them are great with heights, and despite all their bluster, once they’ve scrambled to the top of one, they both promptly sit down. The top of the platform is only about a meter high, but “it looks a lot higher from up here,” Nikaido whines. She slides down on her backside like a toddler.
Kitayama tackles a set of stairs. She has no trouble at all going up, taking them quickly on her stoppers, but going down proves to be another issue altogether.
“Ow!” she yelps, twisting so that she lands on her side instead of directly on her back. “Aahhh, fuck.”
Yokoo skates over to help her. “You okay?”
Kitayama rolls to kneel on a step, rubbing her hip. “Fucker. This is kind of dangerous.”
“Um... yeah,” Yokoo says sheepishly. She prides herself on being responsible. It’s one of the reasons it took her a full week to call everyone over; she’d realized how dangerous it was pretty quickly after her first few falls. It probably wasn’t smart of her to practice there alone, and she knows it. “Maybe we shouldn’t try it by ourselves. Fuji-chan!” she calls. “Can you come help spot?”
Fujigaya already has a large red lump rising on her shin when she skates over, just under the edge of her rolled up sweats. “Stairs aren’t so fun, huh?” She gives Kitayama a wry smile, having given up on the stairs herself for the time being.
Using Yokoo and Fujigaya for balance support on either side, Kitayama makes it down the six steps in one piece. She does it again. And again. And yet again. But no matter how many times they walk her down them, she refuses to let go of their shoulders.
“The skates are too big for the stairs,” she explains. “I have to have my foot all the way back on them to fit, and I can’t balance enough to step down like that. How the hell did you do this again?” she asks Yokoo.
“Um. Backwards,” Yokoo admits. “On my stoppers.”
Kitayama stares. “What? So why the hell have I been trying this on my wheels the whole time?!”
“You’re doing all right,” Fujigaya encourages, but Kitayama just gives her The Eye.
“I thought maybe if we helped each other we could figure it out,” Yokoo says.
But switching places so that Fujigaya’s trying it only proves that it doesn’t work. “Can’t balance!” she confirms, clutching frantically at Yokoo’s wrist to keep from falling. Kitayama grabs her by the waist to hold her up.
“You kind of can?” Senga calls over, and they look up to see Nikaido gliding away from the bottom of another staircase.
“You went down that forward?” Kitayama asks, suspicious.
“Yeah?” Nikaido rolls over to them. “Why?”
“Show us,” Fujigaya demands. She hops down off the side with Kitayama’s help and Nikaido clamors up in her place.
Nikaido does make it down facing forward, but it’s more like controlled falling than anything else. She leans so far forward that there’s no way she can stay balanced, but compensates by moving her feet fast enough to keep them beneath her. She brings her skates down at an angle, hitting the corners of the stairs with her center plates and letting her momentum carry her down. Once she hits the bottom, she’s able to regain her balance on flat ground well enough.
Yokoo is impressed. It’s certainly one way to improve their skills, although it’s a lot less controlled than she’d like. “You definitely can’t stop, right?”
“Not at all,” Senga says, joining them. She hops up to demonstrate her own method, which differs from Nikaido’s in that she does actually hit the stairs with her wheels, tilted forward so that her feet slide backwards with each step. She pushes off the step above her foot with her rear wheel, but it gives her so much speed that she has to skip steps and it’s more like jumping the stairs rather than going down them. She falls forward when she hits the bottom, catching herself with her forearms flat on the ground so she doesn’t endanger her wrists - Yokoo is glad she’s taught them something - and popping back up with a smile.
“Well, I’m still working on it.”
Nikaido snickers.
It figures that their two youngest found a way to deal with the stairs first; they’re the most acrobatic in the group (and also the most likely to take stupid risks).
They probably won’t have to deal with stairs on the track, but the more comfortable they feel doing anything in their skates is a help. Also, some of the tracks they compete on have stairs separating them from the locker rooms and hallways. Most players just put their skates on at track level, but it would be helpful not to have to change just to make a quick run to the bathroom.
Kitayama contemplates the stairs and then gives them another shot, hopping her way up on her stoppers and then hopping back down the same way.
“I’m fine with not breaking my neck,” she says by way of explanation, and Fujigaya nods, then copies her example up and back.
“Looks a lot more dignified, too.” She glances over to where Nikaido and Senga have moved on to a low, narrow beam.
“Like you have any dignity,” Kitayama says, grinning, and then ducks away quickly when Fujigaya tries to smack her.
“I’ll kill you,” Fujigaya rages, and Yokoo has to jump in front of her.
“Ladies, ladies!” she says, laughing. “Come on!” She sends Fujigaya off to check on Miyata and Tamamori’s progress and drags Kitayama off to work on a ramp. Kitayama has a lot more success with that, doing fine until they move on to one with a jump immediately following.
“We’re gonna be here for a while, huh?” Kitayama shakes her head, picking herself up from the ground.
“Probably.” Yokoo only manages the jump one in every three times herself, but at least the fall is more of a sloped slide and not all that painful.
That’s probably why Miyata and Tamamori are still working on their ramp. Miyata seems to be doing okay. Their ramp is set close to the stored palettes and she crashes into them a handful of times before she can manage to slow her momentum coming off the ramp enough to turn. Tamamori doesn’t have a speed problem, but that’s possibly because she’s still refusing to come down a ramp without dragging a toe stop behind her.
“It’s too fast!” she says when Fujigaya tries to convince her to go down on both sets of wheels. “I’ll definitely crash.” She glares at the boxes stacked in front of her, dented from Miyata’s numerous attempts.
“We won’t let you crash,” Fujigaya says, trying to convince her. “We’ve got you.”
She and Miyata manage to coax Tamamori down on her wheels, holding both of her hands so that she can keep her speed to a minimum, and eventually working up to waiting with outstretched arms at the bottom for her to grab on to.
“Try it on your own now,” Fujigaya says, and leaves them to it.
Miyata positions herself directly in front of the ramp, hands out for Tamamori to grab on to, but the angle is definitely all wrong to catch her, and she ends up as more of a buffer between Tamamori and the boxes, squashed into her own dented section by Tamamori’s momentum.
“Ow...”
“Sorry,” Tamamori says and pushes herself off of Miyata, but her hair is pulled back under a sweatband and Miyata can see just how red her ears go.
“No worries, Tama-chan,” she chirps, entirely pleased, and she’ll let Tamamori crash into her as many times as she needs to. “Let’s try again.”
Yokoo goes to check on Nikaido and Senga next, once she’s made sure that Fujigaya and Kitayama are playing nice again. The only way to successfully cross the balance beam is to keep their skates perfectly straight - the beam is the exact width of their wheels. It’s next to impossible, as Yokoo knows from trying, but that wasn’t her point in asking for it as an obstacle. She wants the focus to be not on keeping their balance, but on recovering it. Keeping balance on a track isn’t all that difficult, but regaining it once a rival has tried to knock you from your feet, well, that’s a bit more challenging. Yokoo hopes that the low beam can simulate some of that feeling, since it’s easy enough to fall off of, and low enough to catch themselves, if they do it right. Nikaido and Senga are most definitely not doing it right, since they keep landing on their hands and knees.
“Problems?” Yokoo skates to a stop next to where Nikaido is sitting on the floor.
Nikaido glares at her. “How the hell are we supposed to do this?! There’s no way we can get all the way across it.”
Senga proves her point by choosing that moment to topple off on her attempt. She crashes down at Yokoo’s feet without crying out, well used to the falling already.
“We definitely can’t,” she says, looking up at Yokoo and shaking her head.
“What exactly are you trying to do?” Yokoo asks.
“Get across it,” Nikaido snaps. “Like I said. What the hell else are we supposed to be doing?”
Yokoo smiles. “Well,” she says, “I said you had to get through the course without falling.” Her smile turns sly as she gives up her secret. “I didn’t say you had to stay on the obstacles.”
“What?!” Nikaido scrambles to her feet, indignant. “So then what the hell is the point?” she wants to know.
“To be able to keep going without falling,” Yokoo explains. “No matter what.”
“So what,” Senga says, “We can just skate around them, then? It’s like a trick question.”
“You can’t skip obstacles,” Yokoo says. “But it doesn’t matter if you fall off them as long as you don’t fall down. Just get back on and keep going.”
“Ugh. Why didn’t you just say so in the first place, then?” Nikaido is frowning, but she skates back around to the start of the beam. “Kaoru, move.”
Senga gets up to stand with Yokoo away from the sides of the beam and Nikaido tries again. She rolls forward on one foot, switching to her other foot as soon as the first starts to go off, but her then her second switch isn’t quite on target. Instead of flailing to maintain balance, she lets herself tumble to the side, just barely catching herself, one hand briefly touching the floor to keep her on her feet. It’s hardly graceful, but she’s back up on the beam in seconds, only to fall off the other side, where she also manages to recover.
“Ooh, nice work, Nika!” Senga calls, and Yokoo echoes her encouragement, watching together as Nikaido trips her way on and off about three-quarters of the beam before finally falling to her knees.
“Fuck,” Nikaido gasps, bracing herself on her hands and letting her head hang down as she tries to catch her breath. “That’s really hard!”
“Yup,” Yokoo admits, but gives her a smile wide enough to show her fang. “Keep up the good work!”
Kitayama tries not to feel too superior about her skating skills, but she’s one of the best and she knows it, so sometimes it’s hard. She’s grateful for these times, then, when she’s shown just how much better she could be. Over just the last two days, she’s started to redevelop a whole new sense of balance.
She’s got a whole new set of bruises to go along with it.
“Whoaaa,” Totsuka says when he catches her getting dressed for work in the morning. “What have you been doing?”
Kitayama knows she looks pretty bad; she’s been wearing her pants suit to work since her stockings don’t completely hide her bruises. Her pajamas cover her well enough, and Totsuka’s used to seeing a few bruises here and there, so the ones on her arms passed without comment. She ducks her head as Totsuka comes over to inspect her.
“New practice regimen,” she explains, and lets Totsuka tilt her chin up.
“Is that what this is from?” he asks, running a finger gently along the bruise on her forehead. Kitayama had thought he hadn’t noticed; it’s fairly light and if she leaves her hair down her bangs mostly cover it.
“Ah... yeah.”
Totsuka leans in to kiss it, and Kitayama smiles.
“How’d you get this?”
“Didn’t catch myself fast enough,” Kitayama says. “Yokoo has us up on ramps. I’m used to the floor being level with my hands...” Here she gives Totsuka a wry grin. “...And not sloping up to meet my head.”
Totsuka looks worried. “You didn’t give yourself a concussion or anything, right?”
Kitayama shakes her head. “Nah, I got my head back mostly in time. It was just a small bump.” The edge of her helmet had also taken most of the impact. “We’re being careful. You know how Yokoo is.”
“Mm,” Totsuka agrees, although he still seems concerned. “Just... no serious injuries, okay?” He brushes a kiss across her mouth. “I like my girl in one piece.”
Kitayama smiles and follows when he moves to step away. “I promise to stay fully functional,” she says, smirking with insinuation, and then leans in to kiss her boyfriend good and hard.
“Gotta get dressed,” she says a few moments later, leaving Totsuka blinking as she grabs her pants and pulls them on. “Gonna be late.”
She’s only mostly functional when she gets home from practice that evening, refusing to admit to being in any pain until Totsuka tries to roll her onto her back. “Ow, wait,” she says, grimacing. She curls up on her side, face buried against his chest in embarrassment.
“What?” Totsuka asks, trying and failing to pull away so that he can see her face. “What’s wrong?”
“...I think I bruised my tailbone,” Kitayama mutters, and pokes Totsuka when he laughs.
“Poor baby,” he says, but she can feel him relax, and then he’s stroking a hand through her hair. “I thought I said you’re not allowed to break yourself.”
“Not broken,” Kitayama argues. “Just... slightly battered, maybe.”
“I don’t want people to think I’m abusing you or anything!”
Kitayama looks up finally and smiles. “No one would believe me even if I told them you were. I think it’d be more believable if I were abusing you.”
“Ngh,” Totsuka grunts, “Maybe.” But he smiles, and leans forward to kiss her goodnight. “...Stupid roller girls.”