The Ultimate Test

Copyright 2011-2013

Hello everyone. Ratchet McCloud here. I'm back, and this time I have a Mighty Ducks: the Animated Series fanfic. Well, actually, the first two chapters originally belonged to lovexbeautifulxlife, but she agreed to let me adopt it. My chapters start at chapter 3.

Author's Note: I have made a few cosmetic changes to the adopted stuff, but it has largely remained unchanged from its original form.

And now, on with the story.

Chapter 1

*Mallory's P.O.V.*

This morning, I woke up to the worst pain possible, and it was located around the stomach area. Feeling fine yesterday, I thought nothing of it as I got out of bed and got ready for practice. While walking to the ice, the pain escalated even more, making it difficult to walk most of the time. Nosedive noticed this and grew very concerned.

"Hey, are you okay?" he asked as he placed an arm around my shoulder.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I replied, trying not to alarm him, "my stomach hurts; that's all."

"Are you sure?" he asked, obviously concerned about my well-being, being my fiancé and all. "You don't look okay."

"Yeah, I'm sure." I said with a weak, reassuring smile.

"Okay," he replied, "but let me know if you're not. You don't need to go to practice, you know."

I only nodded, trying not to focus on the sharp pain that was pounding my stomach. Nausea started to set in, making me not feel like eating any breakfast. We walked to the mess hall instead where we found the others eating breakfast before practice. My hand on my stomach, I walked towards them, ignoring the pain. Duke then turned around to see who was there with them.

"Hey, you guys." Duke said. Then he saw my hand on my stomach and wincing in pain. "Mal, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." I replied again. "It must be something I ate."

"I hope so." Dive said, leading me to the table, he prepared his and my breakfast.

Breakfast was uneventful and painful for me. I barely ate anything due to my stomach not agreeing with anything that I put in it, which resulted in me excusing myself, going to the bathroom, and throwing up. Again, I thought it was nothing. Once breakfast was done and over with, it was practice time. We walked down to the locker room, only making my pain spasms go in and out moderately.

Mandy, our coach, decided that I had to sit out today's practice after what happened at breakfast. She took my place instead, which made me a little hurt and devastated. I had never missed a practice before and now I had to. The team checked up on me quite often to make sure I was okay. I felt fine while I was sitting down but my stomach was doing flips, making me sick. I had to excuse myself from the sidelines to throw up in the bathroom again.

Before you say the cliché "she must be pregnant" line, I just need to make it clear that I'm not. I had my you-know-what a week ago so now you know that it's not that. This just came up like a bomb going off and I'd suffered worse pain than this. I mean, come on, I'm a military girl; I've been through quite a lot.

I sat back down on the benches, ignoring my pain again as it is slowly got worse and it was moving quite rapidly from the center of my stomach to the side of it. Me not being a worry wart, I laid down on the bench, hoping that it would go away.

Again, my teammates would skate up to me to make sure if I was okay. Nosedive then stopped practice and sat beside me and gave the loving comfort that he has been showing me since early this morning. He didn't want to leave me alone and let me suffer through this pain on my own.

Since we'd gotten together, these are the things that I love about him: his determination; his strength; and bringing out the warm, soft side of him that no one had seen before. He never pushed me into things that I wasn't ready for and vice versa. I guess he took a few pages from Duke's book about relationships. That's another thing that I love about him.

Dive rubbed my back as I winced in pain again; it was growing stronger than ever, even when I coughed while I threw up. I felt hot as well… this wasn't me at all.

"Dive, can you feel my head for a second?" I asked him.

Silently, he placed his ungloved hand to my forehead to feel if I had a fever. It stayed there for a while, not a good sign.

"You feel warm and you're sweating quite a bit." Dive said sympathetically.

I groaned. It was something that I didn't want to hear. He laid my head on his lap and stroked my hair as he called the others. My gut feeling was now telling me that this wasn't something I ate, but I didn't know how serious it was. When Dive laid me down, my back started to hurt and the nausea kicked in again, but I didn't feel like throwing up at that time.

Once the rest of the team was called, they gathered around me to figure out what was the matter.

"Mal feels hot and is sweating. Now she's complaining about her back and the pain on her side getting worse." Dive was saying to the team.

I felt tears forming in my eyes, threatening to fall on my face. I had never been in this much pain before, it was hard for anyone to tolerate and yet it was difficult for anyone to comfort them. I just wanted to curl up into a ball and just cry in pain. But I thought to myself that I needed to be stronger than this. It was hard.

Tanya walked up to me, took her glove off and felt my forehead to feel what Dive was feeling, to see if yes, I was burning up or his hand was just cold. When I saw the look on her face, my face fell.

"We need to get her to the ER and fast. If I'm correct and she has these symptoms of severe stomach pain, fever and throwing up, it can mean that she might have appendicitis."

"A what?" I asked, freaking out a little bit.

"Appendicitis. Means that your appendix is inflamed. If not caught in time, the appendix can rupture and you can die." Mandy replied.

"How did you know about it?" I asked her.

"I went through the same thing and mine had to be removed. I was sixteen at the time."

"You need to get to the hospital fast before it gets worse." Wildwing told me.

Instead of me walking, Dive carried me in his arms as we all walked to the Migrator.