Disclaimer: I still don't own Big Time Rush or anything recognizable in this.

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A/N: Hey, less than a month since I last updated this fic! I'm getting better ;) Also, Jatieluv told me last night that I needed to update this, so...that has something to do with the new chapter as well. But hey, the important thing is that this is getting updated, right? Right.

So, this is another chapter that goes into detail about hockey practices. I did as much research as I could, but I probably still got stuff wrong, so go ahead and point it out so that I can fix it :) Anyway, I think that's about it.

Enjoy the chapter! :)

Chapter Five – Practice Makes Perfect

Katie's POV

"I can't believe you talked me into getting up this early on a Saturday morning," Jo grumbled as we walked into the girls' locker room. We were both holding to-go cups of coffee, but Jo looked even worse than I felt – probably because I was pumped full of adrenaline and anger. She looked like she had literally just rolled out of bed, and she probably had done just that seconds before she stumbled outside to warm up her car.

"You agreed to it," I reminded her, taking a sip of my coffee.

"I know. Which makes me think I must be crazy. What teenager agrees to getting up before nine on a Saturday morning?"

"Lots of teenagers."

"Yeah, well, not me. It's eight-o-clock, for heaven's sake! It's too early for intense training."

"So start off with yoga or Pilates," I suggested as we walked over to our lockers.

"Great, thanks, you just solved all my problems."

I flashed her a bright smile. "I know, I'm so good at that."

After we left James' lake house the night before, I managed to get a hold of the other girls on the team to let them know what was going on. Most of them were irritated with me and pissed at the guys, and that pissed-off-ness won out, so they agreed to meet me at the weight room this morning at eight.

Regret was probably catching up to them by now that it was morning and some of the anger had worn off. I knew I was beginning to feel the pangs of getting up at six-thirty on the weekend. As outraged as I had been the night before, a dose of reality had set in this morning.

I didn't want to admit it, but the guys might have had a point. There were reasons as to why men and women didn't compete against each other during sports like hockey or soccer. Hell, women didn't even play pro football. And it wasn't that women weren't athletic, it was just because – like the boys had pointed out – there were physical differences.

But I hadn't been listening to reason and logic last night. I had been hearing Coach Benson's words echo in my head, followed by the boys telling me I wasn't good enough because I was a girl and small. While I knew that wasn't what they had meant, it was like a fog that I couldn't seem to find my way out of the night before. But now it had cleared away and I was blinking in the bright light. And it had sunk in that it was eight in the morning, I was in a caffeine-induced haze, and while I was still pumped to go, some of my enthusiasm had worn off, as had some of my confidence. The boys had a lot on us – power, strength, speed, build. It was going to be tough to beat them. But not impossible. I wasn't giving up just because the odds were against us. I was going to make James pay for calling me a little girl, for insinuating that he could crush me simply because he was huge and I was tiny, because he was a boy and I was a girl. That was just unacceptable.

And really, it wasn't like I had any other choice but to challenge him. He had insulted me. He had said my team wasn't as good as his. I had had to do something to prove him wrong, and he had agreed to it. This was his fault as much as it was mine, if not more. And then there was my darling brother, who hadn't stood up for me, not to mention Carlos, who had agreed with James, and Logan who had tried to show off his brains by saying that girls weren't as good at hockey. Those boys needed to be taught a lesson, and I intended to do just that.

I changed into my workout clothes and headed to the weight room. Mandy, Stephanie, Allison, and Kristen were already there.

"Morning," I chirped as I tossed my coffee cup in the trashcan by the door. "How're you girls feeling?"

"Like we woke up way too early on a Saturday morning," Kristen responded, crossing her arms. "I love you and everything, but seriously? Who the hell agrees to a bet that involves people who aren't even there?"

I ducked my head. "Apparently James and me."

"Right. So, what, is this about you two flexing your captain power?" Mandy wanted to know, looking just as irritated as Kristen.

"No!" I cried. "This is about the boys thinking they're so much better than us just because they're more powerful. I mean, come on. Half the girls on this time are taller or almost as tall as Carlos or Logan, but who's more respected around here?"

"Carlos and Logan," Allison replied.

"Exactly. The boys are used to always winning, and they're used to never having to fight against girls. We have to give them something to struggle with, because otherwise they'll keep acting like they can walk all over us. Look at yesterday during hockey practice. Look at the exposés that Missy is making us write," I added to Kristen. "Speaking of which, how did the interview go with Nate?"

She pursed her lips. "Let me put it this way. He walked out with cranberry muffin all over his face."

"That well, huh?"

"You have no idea. Anyway…" she sighed. "Yeah, I get it. I get why you want to do this. I just wish you'd checked with us."

"I don't even know if I want to go through with this," Mandy spoke up. "I didn't sign up to play against a bunch of stupid boys. I signed up to play hockey."

"But it's girl power!" I insisted, as Jo walked into the room.

"It's not just girl power," Jo stated. "This is about getting the boys to shut up just for five minutes. This is about getting them to stop bragging and exaggerating that they got with a girl at some stupid party last weekend, or shoving tampons in our lockers whenever we're mad at them, because it must be 'that time of the month'."

"I have never had a tampon shoved in my locker," I told her.

"Lucky you. Jett Stetson and his crew do it on a regular basis. They think that they couldn't possibly do anything to piss us off, and that if we're mad at them then it must be us, not them. And I'm sick of that. I'm sick of boys acting like they have every right to be rude to us and to walk all over us. None of the boys even apologized last night when it started becoming obvious that we were upset. They just kept repeating the same stuff over and over. It was like they couldn't believe that we were mad, like they couldn't understand why. And they don't get it. They don't know what it's like to be a girl hockey player in this town, in this school. In Bear Lake, the boys' hockey and football teams are worshipped, and our hockey team is second-rate entertainment. And who the hell wants that? We're not respected. We're just there in case they get bored for a few minutes."

"You know what I'm tired of?" Allison said. "I'm tired of boys judging girls because we either don't put out, or we do. If we do put out, then we're easy and not worth more than a quickie in a school restroom. But if we don't, then we're prudes and they don't want anything to do with us anyway."

"Who said that high school boys make sense?" Kristen asked with a sigh. "And this is all pretty general. Not all boys are like this. The good ones aren't."

"But some of the good ones do have problems," I pointed out. "The guys we argued with last night are some of the good ones, yet look what happened."

"I get that. And I'm going to make sure we win this damn thing. I just want to remind you that we're not going to war against the entire male population. Just a select few."

"Come on," I sighed. "Let's get started. The other girls will be here soon."

I hopped on the treadmill and plugged into my iPod, starting with a nice, basic walk to begin with, before slowly increasing the speed. Five minutes later I was running full speed, focusing on the way the soles of my sneakers thudded against the treadmill's belt, on how my heart was pounding while I worked on keeping my breath steady, on the way The Donnas blared in my ears as I kicked the speed up a notch.

The other girls showed up within the next five minutes, and I smiled a little. At the very least we had team spirit, right?

I was taking a long gulp of water when Alexis approached me from where she had been working with the free weights.

"What's up?" I asked her, capping my bottle.

"Did you and James decide on a date for the first game?"

"Not yet, we need to do that."

"Okay. Can you two just make sure we don't have any official games around that time?"

I nodded. "Yeah, definitely.

"Thanks. And you know this could be really dangerous, right? Especially if the boys insist on bringing in the whole body checking rule."

I sighed. "Yeah, that's occurred to me."

"They are a lot bigger than most of us."

"I know. But I don't think any of the boys are going to want to hurt us, so we'll have that going for us."

"Wonderful, we'll have their charity to depend on."

I pressed my lips together. "Trust me, I'm aware that this isn't the ideal situation. But it might not even be that bad, especially if both sides play a clean game."

"Then let's hope they decide to play fairly, because otherwise we're going to get trampled."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"I'm not worried about myself, Katie. I'm worried about the rest of you. They won't touch me. But come on, you and Camille are both tiny. And none of us are over 5'10. And for all we work out, we're not built to be as bulky as the guys are. Physically we can't defeat them."

"But mentally we can. We just need to figure out a strategy that works. But right now we need to get into even better shape so that we can do this."

"Okay. And you should let Coach Carter know. She might have some tips for us."

"Fuck that. She can coach us." I brightened up at the thought. If Coach Carter was coaching us for the games against the boys, then we really might have a shot at winning. She was excellent at strategy, and she always knew where our weaknesses were and how to fix them.

Alexis grinned at me. "Even better. Maybe we really will kick their butts."

We high-fived, and headed over to the free weights, discussing the different techniques we could use for this.

It was almost ten-thirty by the time Jo pointed out that it was probably a good idea to move onto actual training before we wore our muscles out.

"And we get tomorrow off, right?" she added as she pulled on her hockey jersey while we were back in the girls' locker room.

I nodded. "I don't want us to end up drained."

"So, I say we work on this for a couple of hours, and then we get food," Camille suggested. "Because, seriously, we're teenage girls, not pro athletes."

"We're teenage girls who want to be pros," I shot back. "But yeah, I think we should only go at it for a couple of hours. No need to wear us down."

A couple minutes later we were on the rink, going through warm up drills and practice exercises before splitting up into two teams. Alexis was our main goalie, but Mandy had been a goalie all through middle school before she had decided to try out for left defenseman. She was better on defense, but she was a decent enough goalie that we used her when we were split into two teams for a practice game. The only problem with that was that we only had ten players, so we could only put five on each team, while during normal games there would be six players out on the ice.

We managed to get the positions figured out, with Natalie facing off against me as the puck was dropped. We fought for it and I overpowered her, skating off with the little thing of rubber. No jokes about rubbers, please.

We were halfway through the play when the rink's door creaked open and just like that, everyone froze. Nothing good had come in the last week from the door opening, and sure enough, a few seconds later the boys' hockey team came down the ramp, all suited up in their pads and gear.

I skated over to the edge of the rink. "Don't you guys have a rink you can practice at?" I demanded.

"We were going to practice there," James retorted. "But maintenance work is being done on it. So we thought we'd practice here."

"Well, you can't practice here because we're already here."

"No shit. But maybe we should practice together," he added sweetly.

"Sure," I replied, just as sweetly. "Maybe we could give you boys some pointers."

"And maybe we could give you girls some tips on how to score."

I raised an eyebrow.

"How to get the puck past the goalie! Sheesh. Someone's dirty minded." He bumped his hip into mine before gesturing his team out on the ice.

"I'm not dirty minded," I called after him. "I've just been around you too long!"

He grinned and waved a finger at me in acknowledgement. "So, did we interrupt one of your plays?"

"Yes," Camille gritted out as she headed towards him. "There should be a rule that you guys have to carry cow bells with you."

Kristen skated over to me, lifting her visor so that she could glare at me more effectively. "Why did you invite them to join us?"

"I didn't invite them!" I cried, outraged.

"You said 'sure' to him when he suggested we practice together!"

"That was a 'sure, since we'll totally kick your ass', not 'sure, we can have a tea party together'!"

"Well, now we have to play against them."

"I know…" I groaned. I really needed to learn how to keep my mouth shut.

"Let's do this. And we better beat them," she hissed as she slammed her visor back down. I did the same with mine and called the rest of the girls' team together so that we could come up with a quick strategy.

"I think what it boils down to," Natalie said quietly with a quick glance over to where the boys were huddled, also planning their defense, "is to keep the fuck away from James, because he could send any of us flying just by body checking us."

"Maybe we should insist we play by the women's hockey rules," Brittany suggested, just as softly. "You know, ban body checking."

"And if we do that they'll say we're weak," Jo hissed. "We can't do that. We'll suck it up."

"And hope they don't kill us," I added.

We strategized for a few more minutes before spinning around to face the boys. We got into position, with Alexis, Jo, Kristen, Stephanie, Mandy, and me on the ice for the first part of the game. After some debate, Kendall and Kristen were put in charge of dropping the puck so that it was fair for both sides. James and I faced each other, ready to fight to the death over the puck. I held my breath as Kristen and Kendall let go of the puck simultaneously. It landed on the ice and James and I immediately began to battle over it. He swept it out from under my stick and began skating down the ice. He passed it to Logan, who in turn faked to his right and instead shot it towards Shawn Polanski, who in turn blasted it back to James. It happened so quickly that I could barely blink before the puck was under a new player's stick. Damn it. They were freaking fast.

I skated towards James, and Kristen and Jo covered me, clearly figuring out that I was about to try to steal the puck from James. Several of the boys shot amused look at us, but the smirks dripped off their faces when I sidled up to James and slipped the puck right out from under his stick. They probably should have warned him that I was coming up behind him.

I shot it towards Kristen, who passed it to Jo, who doubled back and slid it towards me. Same strategy as the boys, and almost as fast.

As I skated the puck towards the boys' goal, I heard a warning behind me and knew James was heading straight for me. He looped around so that he was blocking me, and I swerved to move around him, but he skated towards me. A moment later, I felt his shoulder, hip, and arm slam into mine, and I flinched as my teeth felt like they had just rattled around in my skull.

Oh yeah, that was pleasant.

I growled as he swiped the puck out from under my stick and shot it down the ice towards Logan, slammed it into the net, right past Alexis.

There was a collective groan from us girls, and the boys whooped, cheering loudly.

"You wouldn't have gotten the puck if you hadn't body checked Katie!" Kristen shouted at James. "We don't body check in women's hockey! And if you notice, she didn't need to slam into you to get the puck away from you."

"She wouldn't have gotten the puck if my team had warned me she was coming up behind me," James retorted.

I snorted. "Please. I'm sneakier than you on your most Mission-Impossible days."

"Keep telling yourself that," he snarled back. "We got a goal, you didn't. We're in the lead, so there."

"Real mature." I rolled my eyes.

"Can we just continue on with this?" Kristen called over to me.

"Right, yeah, let's get going."

The game continued like that. Once the boys realized that we girls were in it to win it, they started playing dirty. We ended up getting body checked on more than one occasion, and before long we were going after them. Slamming into them wasn't quite as effecting since we weren't as tall, muscular, or heavy, but we did manage to steal the puck away from them that way.

Before long, the body checking turned into outright pushing, shoving, and knocking aside. It would never have been allowed in an actual game, but since we didn't have a referee, we could get away with just about anything.

I panted as James shoved me into the boards after I stole the puck from him and scored a goal, a split second before he caught up with me.

"What's the matter?" I breathed out, placing my hands on his shoulders. "Playing dirty isn't working for you?" I pushed him away from me. "Maybe you should give up now before you lose too badly."

"You talk big for such a tiny girl," he retorted, gripping his hockey stick a little more tightly. "But can you live up to it?"

"The question is, can you live up to your boasts?"

"Okay, now you two are talking like you're on a really bad soap opera!" Logan called over to us. "Do you guys have something against talking like normal people?"

We both shot him a nasty look, before skating away from each other.

The next time James stole the puck from me, I threw all my momentum and weight against him, managing to knock him off course while I reclaimed the puck. I yelped when he grabbed my arm, dragging me away from the puck and spinning me around to face him. That was definitely not allowed in a hockey game.

"No manhandling the other players," I told him primly, feeling his fingers clenched around my forearm through my jersey and pads. "You're not playing by the rules."

"Baby girl, I never play by the rules. When are you going to figure that out?"

"Let go of me," I gritted out. He wasn't hurting me, but he was still keeping me in place and I didn't like feeling like I was trapped.

"Make me," he smirked, and my temper rose. We were losing, and I was being forced to deal with an arrogant jackass who was just asking for a swift kick to the gut. Did he really want to mess with me?

I yanked my arm out of his grasp and skated away. "You're such an asshole."

"Really? I've never heard that one before. Going original there, eh, Knight?"

"There are two Knights here," I snapped, my tolerance completely shot. "So which one of us are you talking to?"

"If you can't figure that out, then how did you even get your jersey on straight?"

"Why are you even here?" I demanded as I lunged for the puck. "Don't you have girls to chase? Aren't you supposed to be off, making out with Kaylie?"

He stole the puck from me and skated a few feet before I managed to slip the puck away. "You know, I do have some hobbies besides making out with girls, baby girl."

"Stop calling me that!" I hollered, before yelping in outrage when he knocked my stick aside and sent the puck flying across the ice.

"You don't like it?"

"Baby girl is a term of endearment for most people, but you don't like me, and I know it's a reference to my height!"

"You're so overly sensitive," he tsked. "You should do something about that before you give yourself a heart attack."

"And you should do something about your fat mouth before you get yourself a concussion!" I yelled.

"That's what the helmet's for." He patted it like the show off he was, and I growled. I hated him. I hated him so fucking much.

Fury built up inside me, spreading like hot lava streaming down the side of an erupting volcano, and I growled again as I looked around for something to throw at him. Since I didn't see anything, I skated off after the puck, which was what I should have done in the first place, instead of letting my temper get the best of me. By this time the boys had scored again and Kristen and Jo were both shooting frustrated glares towards me.

"Will you focus?" Jo hissed when I joined her. "You and James are so wrapped up in killing each other that you're not paying any attention to the game!"

"We're not the only ones on the team!" I hissed back, my temper steam rolling its way towards exploding like the aforementioned volcano. "It's not my fault if you guys can't keep the boys from scoring."

"No, but you are the fastest on the team," she retorted, placing her hands on her hips and narrowing her eyes angrily. "So we rely on you to steal the puck from the boys. This isn't just about you and James, Katie. And has it ever occurred to you that James is going out of his way to be a jackass to distract you from stealing the puck back?"

I gasped, but narrowed my eyes too, only it was at James. He was high-fiving the guys and he tossed a smug look at me. Why, that cheating fake jackass! He really was going to get kicked in the stomach if he kept this up.

"Okay," I said quietly. "We're girls. We are underhanded, sneaky, conniving bitches. So let's get the underhanded sneaky conniving-ness going!"

"I say we distract James right back," Camille whispered, skating over to us.

"I say I kick him in the stomach," I volunteered.

"Then the boys will scream foul play."

"Hellooo, this is a game, not a day at the mall!" Josh Fensen hollered over at us.

"Whatever," I muttered, "I'll take care of it. Just focus on beating them."

I skated away from them over to James and shoved him roughly.

"What the hell?!"

"That was for going out of your way to distract me so that your little buddies could score!" I screeched. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jo and Kristen wrestling the puck away from Kendall and Shawn. I scooted a little further to my right in the hopes that I could block James from seeing them.

He flashed me a smirk. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You know damn well what I'm talking about! You were going out of your way to piss me off so that I wouldn't notice the others scoring!'

"Oh, is that what I was doing? I didn't notice."

"Yeah, I just bet. You're such a bastard, Diamond."

"Is that the best you can do?"

"You're a lowlife motherfucker who thinks the world revolves around him. You're not even that good looking," I tossed out carelessly. Yes, it was a lie, but I knew it would get to him, and sure enough, his jaw immediately locked up and his eyes hardened.

I had done my job.

I rushed away in time to steal the puck from Kendall and shoot it in the opposite direction towards Kristen, who promptly scored.

"Take it back!" James hollered.

I cackled mercilessly. "Never! Your brother's better looking than you are!"

It was a low blow. James and Shane may have been close, but they had been forced to constantly compete for their parents' attention when they were younger, before Mr. and Mrs. Diamond split up. Mr. Diamond had decided he wanted Shane to move up to Crystal Falls with him, while James had stayed here in Bear Lake with Mrs. Diamond. As a result, James was a little touchy when it came to hearing that his brother was better at something than him.

He backed me into the boards. "You – you – you – !" I could see it in his eyes – he was beyond livid. Angry flames danced in his dark eyes, and his cheeks were fire red, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. And he was stuttering. He couldn't come up with a bad enough name to call me, and I realized how much I must have hurt him. But that didn't make any sense. Yeah, he and Shane were constantly competing, but Shane wasn't even living in Bear Lake anymore. Why was he being so touchy about this?

Nevertheless, I knew I had to say something. He looked mad enough to kill, and I preferred to be alive, thank you very much.

"James, I'm sorry," I said sincerely. "I didn't mean it."

"Dude, come on," Logan called to James. "Calm down. Chill out. Take a breather." He gently pulled James away from me, leaving me trying to figure out what had just happened.

The game continued on, with the boys beating us by several points. We trooped off the ice, but my mind wasn't on the fact that we had just been defeated by the boys. It was on James.

But then James called to me. "Knight!"

Since I was the only Knight sibling who he called that, I could only assume that he was talking to me.

"What, Diamond?"

"We need to come up with the stakes for this bet." He walked towards me.

I sighed as I unstrapped my helmet, pulling it off. I felt exhausted, achy, and hungry, and figuring out my future humiliation was the last thing on earth I wanted to do. "Can't we do this later?"

The look he gave me suggested, um, fuck no.

"Fine. Do you have any ideas for it?"

"Yes. For the first game, whichever team loses has to perform a song and dance routine for the school talent show."

Considering the fact that I was pretty sure that James was the only one in this entire rink who was musically graced, that actually seemed like a pretty fair bet. It would be humiliating for both teams, but at least we girls might be able to come up with something cute or sexy. Unless the boys suddenly turned into N*Sync overnight, they were pretty much screwed.

I glanced over my shoulder at the girls for confirmation that I could agree to this, and they nodded.

"Fine," I agreed.

James held out his hand, before saying, "One more thing." He smirked. "The winning team gets to choose the losers' song choice."

"That doesn't sound like much of a choice."

"Exactly. So? You going to agree with it? Or are you chicken?"

The girls immediately clamored in with screams of "are you nuts?" and "what would we be scared of?"

I took that as a general consensus that I should take the bet. I took James' outstretched hand and we shook on it. He pulled back, and we headed towards our respective locker rooms.

I was really beginning to regret challenging him to the games in the first place.

So, what'd you guys think? Love it? Hate it? Like it? Enjoy it? Let me know, okay? I love hearing from you guys :) And of course, thank you for taking the time to read my crazy story! You guys are amazing!