Disclaimer: Own Big Time Rush? Umm...nope. I'm still waiting to hear back from my lawyer.

Guet: Thank you so much :) I'm so happy you enjoyed it! Unfortunately, you're not going to be able to see how the game goes for awhile. I'll explain in the author's note. Thank you, you're so sweet :) And thank you for taking the time to read and review, I really appreciate it!

Thank you to everyone who has already read, followed, favorited, and reviewed this story! I was blown away by your responses to the preface and it made me want to get the first chapter up as quickly as possible :) So thank you!

A/N: I have a new rule: I can't post new multi-chapter stories when I'm in a hurry. When I posted the preface, I was in a rush because I had to get ready for work, and I forgot to mention something super important that might've saved some confusion. I know that with a lot of prefaces and prologues, they basically act as the very beginning of the story. The preface for "Power Play" isn't like that. Basically, it's the beginning of the climax, kind of a sneak peek at what's going to happen, if you will. The majority of the story will be spent building it's way up to that point. That being said, there's going to be a lot of stuff going on before we reach that point. This first few chapters might seem a bit slow, but the story's pace will pick up pretty quickly.

I also want to mention again that there will most likely be opinions and characters who you guys don't agree with, due to the subject matter. I mean, it's a battle of the sexes, so of course there's going to be views that not everyone likes. That being said, there will be character development, so opinions may change as the story goes on.

One more thing: I told a couple of people that I was planning on updating yesterday, and that clearly didn't happen. Things didn't exactly work out in favor of updating, and I'm sorry that you guys had to wait an extra day. Anyway, I think that's about it :)

Enjoy the chapter :)

Chapter One – If You're Going to Do An Expose…

Katie's POV

I sighed in boredom as I sat in the classroom the high school used as their newspaper's headquarters. I completely blamed my mom for my current state of monotony. If she hadn't insisted that I get involved in an extracurricular program outside of ice hockey, I wouldn't even be here. But oh no, colleges just love variety and the more extracurriculars the better, so hey, why don't you sign up for the school newspaper?

That had been about how my conversation with my mom had gone at the beginning of the year when she had come up with the bright idea that hockey just wasn't enough to plump up a college application. As she had pointed out, I was in my junior year of high school and I needed to start thinking about getting into a good college, preferably one here in Minnesota so that we wouldn't have to deal with any out-of-state tuition fees, and so that I could come home on the weekends.

I had a feeling she was already dealing with empty nest syndrome.

And it was just going to get worse for her. Kendall and I were going to be heading off to college at the same time, and we didn't have any younger siblings. And that was why she should have never had twins. Totally her fault.

I draped one leg over the other as I tapped my pen against my notebook. It was the first day back at school after winter break, and the newspaper's first order of business for the new semester was assigning topics to their writers. So far we had distributed the lunch menu – it had gone to a poor little freshman who was even shorter than me – and the "politics", which basically just meant sitting in on the occasional school government meetings and then writing about how the treasurer couldn't stop the student body president from going over the school's budget. And everyone knew it had happened – those fancy-schmancy vending machines didn't just magically appear, and the automatic flushing toilets and weird Asian style heaters probably weren't zapped up by a fairy. And I may have sucked at math, but even I knew that there was no way in hell the school treasury had the money for all three things, and that was just assuming only the first floor girls' restroom had been outfitted with those amenities.

I mean, seriously. If you're going to spend money on a restroom, the least you could do is make sure music is playing over speakers and maybe get an air freshener or too. Ooh, and couches to rest on while you're waiting for one of the stalls to open up. That was what we needed. Not toilets that decided to flush themselves just because you had shifted a little.

What a freaking waste of money.

"Okay, next order of business," the head of the newspaper, Missy Carlyle, spoke up. "Who's going to cover the sporting events?"

"Katie should do that," our resident nerd/jackass, Thomas Wainwright, replied. "Since she already plays girls' hockey."

Every guy in the room snickered in unison at the phrase 'girls' hockey', and I rolled my eyes. The boys at this school were so immature. Oh, wait, it was high school – of course they were immature. What else could you expect from a bunch of teenage boys who thought snapping a bra strap counted as quality entertainment?

"I'm the captain of the girls' hockey team," I gritted out, my fingers clenching a little more tightly around my pen. More snickering followed my statement and I sucked in a breath, puffing my cheeks out so that I looked like a chipmunk, before releasing it with a sharp whoosh. Like I needed this crap on the first day back at school.

Nate Anderson smirked at me. "They couldn't have found someone…ya know…a little taller?" He held his hand up to show his point and I got to my feet, walking over to him. I grabbed his hand and pinched the web between his thumb and index finger.

He yelped. "Ow! Mrs. Carrison, Katie's hurting me!"

Mrs. Carrison, the newspaper supervisor, blinked over at us. She was pregnant with her first child, who was due in late April, and she had spent most of the meeting so far pouring over baby clothes catalogs and mothering magazines. "Oh. Well, tell her to stop."

Kristen, one of the girls on the hockey team, leaned forward with a wicked grin. "Yeah, Nate. A big strong man like you should be able to deal with someone who's so tiny. What's the matter? Kat got your tongue?"

It was a running joke through pretty much the entire town. My full name is Katherine Claire Knight, and growing up my brother and fathered would call me Kat a lot. Even though I usually went by Katie, and Kat was reserved more as a nickname, it somehow stuck, and by the time I reached sixth grade a lot of people – namely the boys and a couple of bitchy girls – thought it would be hilarious to come up with as many Kat puns as they possibly could. Now, in eleventh grade I pretty much embraced it, since it was normally used by my friends and family. My best friend, Kyle Margolis, took it one step farther – he called me Kitty-Kat when he wanted to annoy me.

Nate glared at Kristen, before turning back to me. Since he was starting to look slightly murderous, I let go of him and went back to my chair, sitting down neatly. "I think I made my point," I said coolly, crossing my legs once more.

"Yeah, you're violent," Nate retorted, rubbing his hand.

"Aww, did I hurt the big tough guy?" I covered my mouth with my fingers, pouting sadly.

Alex Gregory rolled his eyes. "Okay, let's move on and get back to the matter at hand. Who's going to cover the sports' events?"

"Well, if I'm doing it, then I'm going to need someone else to do it as well," I said. "Because like the nerd jackass said, I'm on the girls' hockey team so I can't write about that."

"What? You don't want to write about how the girls' team gets crushed?" Thomas spoke up.

Why wasn't it legal to strangle people? Aren't there special cases like this where it's not considered immoral? People would probably thank me. I might even get a thank you card and a basket of muffins for my contribution to humanity.

"We don't get crushed," Kristen responded calmly, moving her pen against her own notebook page. I could see her writing "JERK!" and "WE NEED DUCT TAPE!" in capital bubble letters. She underlined the part about duct tape and I smirked. That was my girl. She always had my back. "We crush the opposing team."

"Then how come we never hear about that?" Nate wanted to know it. Someone else to strangle.

"Because we're not the boys' hockey team, so no one gives a crap," I told him. "Now, if we suddenly grew dicks and shot up a few inches, people might actually care."

Mrs. Carrison glanced up from the Baby and Me magazine she was looking at, but couldn't seem to register anything about the conversation.

Nate shrugged. "They must have not been very crushing defeats."

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever. Anyway, is anyone else going to handle the sports' section with me? I mean, we do have more than a couple of sports," I pointed out. "Besides hockey, we have football, soccer, wrestling, and basketball."

"But soccer season doesn't start until spring," Thomas said in his most obnoxious voice. "And football season ended in December. So that just leaves hockey, wrestling, and basketball for the time being."

"And soccer. Because we're going to have these positions for the rest of the semester," I reminded him, jabbing my pen in his direction. "You want to cover the school sports with me? You can do all the girls' teams," I added sweetly.

"I would love to do the girls' teams."

The boys all smirked and high-fived each other, and I realized the innuendo. Damn it! Why did it always have to be about sex with teenage boys? Couldn't they just have a regular conversation once in awhile without having to bring their other head into the mix?

"Well, you're not doing the girls' hockey team," Kristen said mildly, still scribbling insults in her notebook. "Because if you even try, we'll beat you so hard with our sticks you won't be able to have children. Kay? Kay."

I glanced over at the poor freshman girl. She had to be completely freaked out by this conversation. But instead of staring at us with bug eyes, her elbows were resting on her knees, her chin cradled in her hands as she watched the show. Then again, she had been in high school for the past few months. She was probably used to the threats and innuendos that came with being around teenagers, namely boys ranging between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Dangerous ages. Very, very dangerous.

Thomas snapped his fingers like he was disappointed. "Oh, darn. How will I ever go on?"

"Okay, seriously, who's doing what with what?" I broke in. "We need to get this thing figured out, Kristen and I both have hockey practice in half an hour."

"Yeah, like the rest of us want to spend our afternoon bickering over who's covering the girls' sports teams," Thomas snorted.

"Okay," Missy let out a deep breath, clearly trying to figure out how the hell she was going to get the meeting back under control. "I say Katie covers the guys' sports teams. Or she and Kristen can both cover them. Katie, you can do hockey and soccer when it starts back up, and Kristen, you can do basketball and wrestling."

I groaned. "Do I have to cover the boys' hockey team?" I tried to stay as far away from the boys' hockey team as was humanly possible. Half of it had to do with the captain of the team. The other half had to do with the standing rivalry between the girls' and boys' teams. It just wasn't worth trying to deal with them most days.

Missy nodded. "Yes. That's my final decision. That work for you, Mrs. Carrison?" she added.

Mrs. Carrison's head jerked up from the catalog she was now paging through. "What? Oh, yes, of course, whatever you feel is best, Missy. By the way, do you guys think this nursery set is adorable?" She held up the catalog to show us a nursery decked out in a soft shade of blue with a white crib and a mobile of stars and a moon.

We quickly assured her that it was beyond adorable before Missy called us back to order. She continued to split up the different subjects, assigning Thomas to cover the girls' sports, before saying, "I want to spice up the paper a little this semester. And since sports and athletes are such a big part of this school's morale, I think we should do a special segment on them."

Kristen and I both grinned at each other. Boo yeah! We were getting a special segment done about us!

"I'm thinking since the boys' teams have so much riding on them, we should do in-depth exposés about their players," she continued on. "It would be good for school spirit and since it's our job to promote school spirit behind-the-scenes…"

"Um, yeah, that's great," I spoke up. "But what about the girls' teams?"

"School spirit doesn't ride so much on whether or not they win the games. There isn't a lot of interest with the female athletes," Missy told me.

"Uh, Missy? You're a girl. Are you seriously against this?"

"I want to make sure the paper is read," she responded hotly. "And as much as I don't like it, female athletes don't generate a lot of interest, at least not in this high school."

I opened my mouth to tell her that she was stupid, but then it sank in. She was right. And that was just something I was going to have to live with, just like her.

"Fine," I gritted out, the word sounding painfully forced. "We'll do it that way."

"Good. So, you and Kristen can do the exposés on the hockey and basketball teams."

"What about wrestling?" Kristen piped up. "And soccer?"

"Yeah, I suppose you should do one on wrestling, and Katie can do one on soccer."

"Okay. So, it's just for the boys' teams? There definitely isn't going to be one on the girls?"

Missy shrugged. "If we need a filler then yeah, we should do one on one of the girls' teams."

Clearly she hadn't grown up hearing about women's lib. And she had probably never heard the song "I Am Woman". But weren't there other girl power songs? Hadn't Jordin Sparks done a song like that? And what about Little Mix? And did she even hear the way Thomas and Nate had put down the girls' hockey teams? Now would be the time to make them do an article on the teams, the same way she was making Kristen and me do one on the boys'. If nothing else it would have shut them up for a couple of days.

By the disbelieving look on Kristen's face, it was obvious she agreed. But no one else in the school was going to be surprised. I didn't even know why we were shocked. This was completely normal behavior. But – oh God. I was going to have to do an exposé on the boys' hockey team. Someone shoot me now. James Diamond was never going to let me live this down, and Kendall was going to tease me about this mercilessly every time he got the chance.

I hated my life.

The meeting eventually ended and we all began packing up and getting to our feet, stretching out after sitting in the same chair for the past fifty minutes. I slung my messenger bag over my shoulder and waited while Kristen finished packing up. Her wavy blonde hair swung into her face and she was forced to push it back over her shoulder to keep it from blocking her sight.

I ignored the way Nate and Thomas were both swaggering towards the door. Nate wasn't a nerd by any means, but apparently he and Thomas had found something in common – they were both assholes. Alex rolled his eyes and hung back to talk to Kristen and me as the rest of the kids on the school paper walked out.

"Hey," he said quietly to us once Nate and Thomas had disappeared into the hall. "I do agree with you two. There should be an exposé on the girls' teams. I mean, it's only fair, right?"

I nodded. "Exactly. I don't get why Missy doesn't understand that."

"I think she does understand that, but she's more focused on making sure the paper is a huge hit. She's the first girl and the first junior to be the head of the school paper," he reminded me. "And she's determined not to let her personal feelings get in the way of putting out a successful newspaper."

"If I wasn't writing for the paper, I wouldn't read it after this," I told him. "And I might just tell everyone I know not to bother picking it up – it's sexist and male-oriented."

"Missy's family is also pretty traditional," Kristen put in. "They don't care that this is the twenty-first century. Her mom stays at home and keeps house and cooks while her dad goes to work every day. And they live with her super traditional grandparents, which is probably why her parents are so traditional in the first place. They have her grandparents influencing them."

"Whatever. Aren't you mad about this?" I asked Kristen.

"Try fighting pissed. But we can't do anything about it. It's up to Missy and Mrs. Carrison, and Mrs. Carrison isn't going to be any help until she finally pops."

I groaned. "Whatever. We have to be at hockey practice in fifteen minutes."

She nodded. "Let's go. See you tomorrow," she added to Alex, before following me out of the classroom. We split up once we were in the hall, heading in different directions towards our respective lockers. I tossed my hair over my shoulder as I walked, speeding up as I dodged around a group of football players. They barely noticed me, which I figured was one of the perks of being five feet on a tall day.

I let out a deep breath, followed by a groan as I saw a tall figure moving in my general direction.

Fuck. Like this day hadn't already sucked enough.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't the littlest Knight?" James Diamond called to me over the heads of a crowd of sophomores. "How's the view from so close to the ground?"

"How's the view from so close to the ceiling?" I shot back, reaching my locker. I dialed the combination, hoping I could do what I needed to before James arrived, but I knew I was out of luck once my locker door decided that it would be a really awesome idea to jam itself up and torment me. "Come on, you fucking thing," I hissed under my breath. "I will smash you in if you don't open up within the next three seconds."

The door flew open and I jumped back to avoid getting smacked, before stepping forward. James stopped at the locker beside mine, a smirk on his face. His very handsome face, but that was beside the point. He was hot and he knew it. He was tall, probably about 6'1 or 6'2, and muscular, with chestnut brown hair that curled at the tips around his ears and jaw; large hazel eyes that could pierce you clean through with a single look; lips bitten cherry red; cheekbones that looked like they had been sculpted by Michelangelo; and deeply tanned skin that lacked the orange tone of a fake tan. He was dressed simply in perfectly fitted jeans, a black t-shirt that somehow managed to make his eyes smolder even more than usual, and black sneakers. He looked good, but I wasn't about to tell him that. Not when half the high school female population had probably already made sure he knew how hot he was, as if he ever had any doubts.

Nevertheless, I found myself staring up at him as he blinked down at me, long dark lashes brushing against his cheeks, before those cherry red lips pulled up into a smirk. He was so full of himself.

"So, how was your winter break?" James asked me, spinning the combination lock on his own locker which, you know, just happened to be right to mine. The people who had given out locker assignments must have had a vendetta against mine when we received our locker numbers in freshman year, because I had been stuck next to him since my first semester.

I quirked an eyebrow as I yanked textbooks off the shelf and piled them in my messenger bag. "The usual. My dad took Kendall and me to Ski Gull. I learned how to snowboard."

"Cool. Shane and I wanted to hit Ski Gull this year but my mom decided she wanted to go to Cabo instead."

Show off. Just because his mom was Brooke Diamond, the CEO of Brooke Diamond Cosmetics, the number one cosmetics company in the Midwest…

"Oh, you poor thing. Imagine, going to Cabo for winter break. Where are you going to go for spring break? The Italian countryside? The French Riviera?"

One side of his mouth curved up in an amused grin. "We were thinking along the lines of Martha's Vineyard or The Hamptons."

I slammed my locker door shut. "How will you ever survive?" I snapped.

"I might be taking your brother."

"Lucky Kendall."

James smirked again. "Are you jealous?"

"Of?"

"Him getting go to Martha's Vineyard or The Hamptons with me."

"As much as I would love to go to one of those two places, the fact that you'll be there kind of kills the attraction for me."

"See, this is what makes you such a wonderful locker buddy," James said brightly to me. "That sense of humor." He pinched my cheeks and I smacked his hands away.

"Touch my face again and you'll find my tiny Converse sneaker in your very large ass."

He yelped. "My ass is not large! It's perfectly curved and rock hard!" He turned around, wiggling it at me. He was just lucky I couldn't lift my leg that far up without leaning against something. That didn't stop me from raising the notebook I had yet to drop into my bag and slapping it against his right butt cheek.

"Did you just spank me?" he demanded, spinning back around. "Hey, everyone, Katie Knight just – "

I launched myself at him, knocking him to the ground in the process. You would think a six-foot-two, one-hundred-and-seventy -five pound hockey player would be able to catch a ninety-something pound, five foot nothing girl, but oh, no, his strength apparently failed him in the face of a tiny adversary.

He grunted as I landed on top of him and I covered his mouth with my hand. "You finish that sentence and I will knee you some place that's going to hurt a lot. You won't be able to go to hockey practice after that."

He licked at my palm and I instinctively jerked my hand away before he could do much damage.

Gross. James germs.

He smirked. "You going to spank me again?"

"I wouldn't put my notebook through that again. What?" I added when he scowled. "Did you honestly think that I would touch your ass with my hand? Do you know me at all?" I picked myself up off of him and brushed any dirt or James germs off my clothes. James followed my lead, before glancing around. I did too. Half the hall was gawking at us like we were the Super Bowl's halftime show. The other half were whispering to their friends, probably about how we were going to kill each other one of these days.

"What?" James snapped. "Haven't you guys ever seen her tackle me before? It's not exactly an uncommon occurrence."

That part was unfortunately true. I usually ended up tackling him at least once a month, depending on how much of a jerk he was being and how strained my tolerance was.

The students just shook their heads and turned back to their conversations and lockers, probably not even giving James and me a second look. Which was how I liked it.

"Anyway," James turned back to me, pinning me with those damn eyes before I could escape. "Any plans for spring break?"

I yawned boredly. "The invitations to go to Aspen and Hawaii are just coming in so fast that I can't keep up with them. I'll have to get back to you on that."

"Oh, really?" He took a step towards me and I fought back the urge to move back, holding my ground determinedly. "So who's inviting you to Aspen and Hawaii?"

"None of your business," I retorted snippily. "You'll just have to wait to find out until spring break rolls around."

"Maybe you should convince the people inviting you to come to Martha's Vineyard or The Hamptons," he suggested, moving even closer. I still refused to take a step back and instead looked up at him defiantly. "You know, so that you can show me actual proof."

"But that would involve actually having to see you," I whined. "And I don't want to do that over spring break."

"Tell you what," he reached out, trailing his fingers up and down my arm and I fought back a shudder. His hotness was clearly getting to me because my body should not have been reacting like this. "We have a five day weekend next month. I'm sure you'll be getting plenty of invitations to go to different places. You should have them come up with you to my dad's resort."

"And why would I do that?" I queried, reaching up to trace a finger over his collarbone. I was hoping I could throw him off balance as much as he had managed to do to my poor little female insides, and by the way he swallowed, I could tell it worked nicely. "You have to give me some incentive, Jamie, to spend a whole five days in your company."

"My dad's resort has a Jacuzzi, a heated pool, and a sauna, not to mention twenty-four hour room service. And my brother will be there. It's been awhile since you've seen Shane."

"Mmmm.." I made a big production over hemming and hawing about it, before batting my lashes at him. "I'll have to get back to you about that. I might decide to do something else."

"Like go down to Hawaii?"

"It's got sun and warmth."

"You'll probably get sun and warmth at my dad's resort."

"James, it's even farther north than we are."

"Yeah, but we still get sun here, don't we? And you'll get warmth with the sauna, pool, and Jacuzzi."

"I'll get back to you," I repeated, before hitching my messenger bag over my shoulder. "See you later, James." And with that I sauntered off, smirking at the dumbstruck look on his face.

My day was beginning to look like it might be getting better.

So, that was chapter one. I know there's already a lot of OCs, and I'm sorry if all the different characters get confusing. There will probably only be a few main OCs, though, so you guys won't have to wade through two million different unfamiliar characters. Also, I know the first chapter might seem a little slow, but things will be picking up before long :)

Thank you for taking the time to read this! And if you could take a moment to leave a review and let me know what you think of the story so far, or to ask me a question you might have, I would really appreciate it :)