Life's Full of Little Surprises
Disclaimer: I own absolutely none of the 'Mighty Duck' characters or the rights to the "Mighty Duck" franchise, that honor belongs to Disney. So I would appreciate that I wouldn't get sued over something I don't own.
Summary: Dani's life couldn't be going better. She has finally made it to the Olympics, doing the sport she loves the most. But... after arriving in Minneapolis, Minnesota things change. First she is constantly badgered by her brother, then she falls for one of his friends, and, of course, there is always a stalker!
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PrincessH- Thanks. I am glad that you think that the last chapter was good. If it interests you to know, what happens on Tammy and Fulton's date will be explained in this chapter (if you couldn't tell by the title).
Also, thank yous are due to Lilmonkey1507, BrokenAngel1753, and M u M m I e I m I s S y O u.
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Dani sat in the hot makeshift classroom, fanning herself with a fan that Eve had brought back from a trip to England several years ago. Eve had given it to Dani as a present and Dani took it almost everywhere. Dani looked over to Tommy as Ms. Sims shook him awake. "Tommy! Wake up!" Dani yelled as she threw an eraser at his head. "Ms. Sims, could you let us go for fear of our lives?"
"Unfortunately Dani, despite the fact that it's about 100 degrees in here, I can't let you go this early." Ms. Sims replied in her very loved Boston accent. Dani sighed, why the hell was the heat up this high? It was only September. "Come in." Ms. Sims called to the knock on the door.
"Oh, hello everyone." Dean Buckley's familiar voice said as he entered the room, "I see that you have all realized our current problem." Dani raised her eyebrows and began fanning herself again. Tammy had been holding an electric fan the sprayed water up to her face. "We, um, I have been told that the heat in this room will not go off and we can't turn on the air conditioning."
Dani rolled her eyes and mumbled, "Nessuna merda, Sherlock. Già abbiamo provato. (Italian: No shit, Sherlock. We already tried.). He left with his apologies and Dani turned back to Ms. Sims, "Can we at least go down the ice. It's cooler down there."
"Look, I'll do this," Ms. Sims replied, "I'll give you all ten minutes, just ten, to go back to your dorms and change into something much cooler. Then I will pull out the portable board and we can go sit outside the door, is that alright?"
"Ms. Sims, has anyone told you that you are a total godsend?" Tammy asked as she stood and spritzed water in her face again. She grabbed a hold of the scruff of Tommy's shirt pulled him up, "Ten minutes starting now?"
"Now." Ms. Sims replied, pointing her index finger downward so that she was pointing to the ground.
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It was finally over! The hockey practice from Hell was over, done, finished. After two hours of pure pain from Orion, all of the Ducks lugged themselves back to the locker room, "When did coach get pissed at us?" Guy asked as he collapsed on a bench.
"Don't ask us." Connie and Julie replied as Connie fell next to Guy and Julie dropped in front of her locker.
"I think I know." Max said. Everyone turned to him for an explanation, "From what I have heard, Becky's physical therapy hasn't been going that great for a while, and the doctors haven't been helping with raising anyone's moral." He sat down and began massaging his left forearm, "I think that Dani has been doing most of that."
"Leave it to Dani to try and do something against doctors." Dean sighed. Max laughed and nodded, everyone else didn't get it, "Dani has never really liked doctors. From the time she was little all doctors have ever done was screw up what she had going for her and try to break her down and put her on ten million different kinds of medicine. She just doesn't like them." Max nodded in agreement as he began to change.
By the time everyone had changed, they all felt much better, but ready to leave as quickly as possible. They walked to the exit but ran into each other when Adam blocked their way out, "Cake-eater! What the hell?" Fulton asked as he pushed Adam out of the way. "Oh, the cake-eater parental figures." He added when he saw what Adam had stopped for. "Hello Mr. and Mrs. Banks."
"Hello kids." Mrs. Banks called back.
"Mom, dad," Adam replied, shell-shocked, "What are you doing here?" He looked from one to the other with questioning in his eyes.
"Monica and Ana wanted to come for some reason." Mrs. Banks replied. She cast an unfamiliar glance over to her husband, "Don't do anything." He tried to protest, causing everyone in the vicinity to be confused. Well, everyone but Adam.
"Are you two going to start arguing about Tom Reily again? Because if you are, just tell me so that I can leave and not have to hear it all over again." Both of his parents looked at him in shock and Mr. Banks mumbled something about eavesdropping. "I wouldn't exactly call it eavesdropping, considering the entire neighborhood probably heard you." Adam's friends gaped at him, his mother sighed, his father was grinding his teeth together, and his sister, who had no idea what was going on, walked up to him cheerfully.
"Hi Adam!" She exclaimed as she hugged him around his waist.
"Hi Monica. Becky, Ana." Adam replied to Monica and the two girls that had followed her into the room. The waved to him and he noticed that all three of them had blue paint-covered hands.
"I swear, if one more person touches my stomach... I'm going to have to start breaking wrists!" An irritated voice called from the direction of the ice.
"Jeannette?" Max and Dean asked at the same time. Through the door and there she was. The godmother of all the Portman children and best friend to Alyssa Portman since the age of two. Her trademark curly, burgundy hair was tied up in a messy ponytail and she was pregnant. Wait a minute, pregnant? What?
"When the hell did that happen!" Dean yelled, catching Jeannette's attention, as he pointed to her large bump.
"You... watch your mouth. I don't want to have to tell your mother all sorts of horrid details when I get back to Chicago. Details like penalty box stripping, for instance." Max gazed at Dean and tried not to laugh. No one had told him about the penalty box stripping!
"Jeannette! You look great. Have you done something with your hair?" He asked innocently, hoping that she didn't tell his mother about that particular story. Wait a minute, what was she doing here and how did she find out about that? She gestured her hand in front of his face, efficiently cutting him off.
"I am here until Friday, on a person favor to your mother." She replied, "So, just be a perfect angel until I leave and we will be just peachy keen." She was defiantly pissed off about something, she never said peachy keen in her life.
"What did Alan do this time?" He asked, catching the gist of his godmother's anger. She slammed her hand on a table and seethed for a moment. He jumped back at the sound, she had never in living memory been this angry at something, she was the nicest person that anyone could ever know.
"Jeannette!" Dani called, it was obvious that she had heard the slam and had come to who's ever rescue that she needed to, "I just made a lot of Chocolate-Coke cake, want any?"
"Sure." Jeannette said before stalking off and muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, "Stupid hormones."
Once she was gone, Dani turned back to Dean, "You idiot!" She hissed at her brother's perplexed expression, "How long have you been out of the Chicago grapevine?" She asked, exasperated.
"A while obviously!" Dean breathed, trying to keep in his anger as he pointed in the direction that Jeannette had left. Alan had left Jeannette a good amount of time ago, thank god! Alan was the worlds biggest 1900's asshole who thought women were no good for anything other then cooking, cleaning, and sex. He had broken off their engagement when Jeannette refused to leave the Rink and the Portman's behind.
"Look, Alan found out about the baby almost three weeks ago and the bastard of the universe then decides, 'Hey, this kid ain't mine,' so Jeannette just got a court order for a paternity test. He just wants to try and get out of child support. Jackass."
"Really?" Dean asked as his anger rose, "Excuse me, everyone, I have to go and kill someone."
"Or you could just let your mom kill him." Leah said as she walked up behind Dani, "At least that what she said you would say, so we had to tell you that." Dean raised his eyebrows, "Yup, she said that." Then another subject popped into her head, "Are the ex-Varsity really that stupid, or was that a one day thing?" Dean was taken aback by this question, "They hit on me about three hours ago, it was disturbing."
"They are all stupid, all of the time." Dani said, cutting off any explanation that Dean had been planing, "Except for Scooter, he's okay. All of the others have the I.Q of cooked cabbage."
"Cooked cabbage?" Ken asked.
Dani sighed and held her hand limply in front of her face, "Cooked cabbage. Limp, can't do anything." She hit her hand back and forth, "Not pleasing in any way." Dean fought to keep in laughter while everyone began to get the joke.
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Tammy slammed the door to the room that she was sharing with Gia and Dani, causing Dani to flinch as she spoke on the computer with her cousin, Sage. "Did the date not go well?" Dani asked as she looked up and saw that Tammy was covered with what looked like orange milkshake.
"What was your first clue, Dani?" Tammy asked sourly. She dropped her bag on the floor and dug in her dresser and pulled out her pajamas. "I need a shower." She grumbled as she walked to the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. Dani watched, surprised, and then turned back to her computer.
Famousbyrelation- Dani? Dan? Hey, where did you go?
NOTsweet&cute- Oh, sorry, Sage. I have a feeling that Tammy's date didn't go that great.
Famousbyrelation- Who did she go out with?
NOTsweet&cute- Fulton Reed.
Famousbyrelation- Fulton? Dean's friend? As in 1/3 of the Bash Brothers?
NOTsweet&cute- Yeah.
Famousbyrelation- Tammy and a bad boy? Who would have thought?
NOTsweet&cute- Me.
Famousbyrelation- That does not surprise me. But off of that subject, tell me about Adam!
NOTsweet&cute- Wait a minute, how did you find out about Adam?
Famousbyrelation- Dan, if you have to ask that then you are not ready to know.
NOTsweet&cute- I'll take that as Doe, Leah, and Eve have told you some things. More then likely with the help of Keoni, considering he's the only one of that bunch that can do more with signing then the alphabet.
Famousbyrelation- Ding, ding, ding... We have a winner.
NOTsweet&cute- Sage, look, it's very complicated.
Famousbyrelation- First of all, I can't 'look'. Second of all, I better be able to meet him when daddy and I come down during the holidays.
NOTsweet&cute- Sure Sage. But I have to go, it's getting late and I have to be up early in the morning. I'll see you soon.
Famousbyrelation- 'Kay, see you.
Dani closed the conversation and sat there watching Tammy vigorously tug at her hair with a comb. Tammy not only looked completely pissed off, but ready to cry. After ten minutes Tammy threw down the comb and placed her face in her hands, "Do you want to talk?" Dani asked.
"About?" Tammy retorted.
"What happened to ruin your date?" Dani asked, "You don't have to if you don't want to. I just thought that it would make you feel better." She watched as Tammy raised her head and sighed heavily, "Come and sit, grasshopper. Tell me what ails you." Dani said offering the space on her bed for Tammy to sit down on.
Tammy obliged, "What didn't go wrong? He's never going to want to go out with me again!" She mumbled, "It started off great, we met at the Mall of America and then we went to this 1950's style restaurant, kinda like Micky's. Then the waiter dropped an orange cream milkshake over my head, and it only went downhill from there."
"Do tell." Dani encouraged.
Meanwhile... in Fulton and Dean's dorm room.
"After that moron dropped the shake on her, we left without eating and we didn't go to the movie that I had planned to take her to, because she wanted to get back to her room and shower."
"What movie?"
"Does it matter?"
"I guess not. But why didn't you go to the dorm with her?"
"I walked her there."
"Yeah, but you didn't go in and help..."
"PORTMAN! Can we not? I haven't finished." Dean put his hands up in surrender and Fulton went on, "As we were walking back, who shows up but her mother!" Dean cringed, he knew enough about Tammy's mother, "She goes on this wild tangent about who Tammy should be practicing and how she found a skater from Georgia that Tammy would be great with."
"Ouch!" Dean replied, feeling his best friend's pain, "What happened."
"Well, Tammy asked me if she and her mom could have some privacy so I went and waited on a bench. Then Tammy and her mom got into this big argument about her mother's bluntness. Tammy got really mad and said that she wasn't going to be in any type of relationship with a guy that lives halfway across the planet."
"Huh? Across the planet?"
"Georgia, the country that was once part of the Soviet Union." Fulton clarified, "Then Tammy's mom slapped her because she started bad mouthing the D-5 Ducks and hockey in general, Dani, and a lot of other stuff, and Tammy yelled that she was 'so damn closed-minded and didn't know shit about hockey or Dani'. Tammy pulled me away and didn't talk about what had happened. She was close to tears when we got to her room."
"That bitch was bad mouthing my sister?" Dean asked, "Who the fuck does she think she is?"
"The Queen of Sheba or something." Fulton replied, bitterly, "I'm not surprised that Tammy and Tommy are scared of her, she's like the evil bitch-monster of death or the devil incarnate." He sighed and laid back on his bed, "Tammy is never going to want to go out with me again."