DISCLAIMER: Claire is mine. That's all.
Chapter 9
That afternoon, we were all gathered in a back room in Mickey's; Coach had something to show us. I was standing against the wall next to Fulton - Charlie was sitting in a chair next to our mom, and Tammy had taken the seat next to him; I had decided not to get involved. Coach picked up a green and purple jersey and turned it around, showing it to us. It had a duck in hockey gear on the front of it, and 'Ducks' in yellow block letters outlined in purple along the bottom. I smiled, proud to have a name for our team. And I admit, I liked the jersey.
"The Ducks? We're the Ducks?" Jesse asked in a tone that expressed he hoped Bombay was joking.
"Man, what braindead jerk came up with that name?" Peter asked, somewhat rhetorically.
"As a matter of fact, I dd," Bombay answered, ignoring the rhetorical aspect to the question. "But I didn't have a choice," he continued. "We're being sponsored."
"By who, Donald and Daisy?" Averman asked in his somewhat sarcastic, mostly just joking around way, doing the kind of thing that only he could pull off. His comment caused laughter to break out amongst the rest of the team.
"Hey!" Bombay called us back to attention. "You don't wanna be Ducks, you'd rather be District Five, some stupid number?"
"Better than some stupid animal," Peter countered. His comment caused some 'ooh's to surface in the room.
"I'll have you know, Peter, that the Duck," and, yes, he said it just like that, "is one of the most noble, agile and intelligent creatures of the animal kingdom."
"But they're wimpy," Connie protested.
"They don't even have teeth!" Guy joined in, helping his girl. I'm starting to sound like Connie… but it's so obvious that they like each other, I can't help it!
"Neither do hockey players!" Bombay shot back. I giggled at that one, and Fulton grinned down at me and just shook his head.
"Have you guys ever seen a flock of ducks flying in perfect formation?" Bombay continued. "It's beautiful. Pretty awesome, the way they all stick together. Ducks never say die. Have you ever seen a duck fight? No way! Why?" Here he dropped to a whisper. "Because the other animals are afraid." He picked his voice back up to where it had been during the rest of his speech. "They know that if they mess with one duck they gotta deal with he whole flock." He had started almost waddling around the room, and it was taking all of my might to suppress my pulled off his coat to reveal a jersey, and gasps ad groans surfaced around the room. That's when I lost it and started snickering to myself. Fulton was trying his best to ignore me, but every now and then I saw a snicker xcape him as well.
"I'm proud to be a Duck, and I'd be proud to fly with any one of you." Bombay started to wrap up his spiel. "So how 'bout it? Who's a Duck?" We all stayed where we were in silence for a moment, some honestly on the fence about it while others just didn't want to be the first to pledge their allegiance to an aquatic bird.
"I'll be a duck." Fulton was the first to step forward. I nodded right after he did so.
"Yeah, me too." Charlie said at the same time. The two of us joined Fulton in getting our jerseys as the rest of our teammates started to come over as well. As soon as we both had a jersey that had the name Conway across the back, Charlie and I stepped to the side to compare. I finally took a good look at the jersey in my hands. The letters across the top were fashioned the same way as the letters that read 'Ducks' on the bottom of the front of the jerseys, as were the numbers. I had grabbed the topmost Conway jersey, the one with the number 96 on it. Glancing over at the one Charlie had grabbed, as he looked at the one in my hands, I saw the number 69. We shared a look, and swapped jerseys without a word being exchanged between us. I was suddenly extremely excited for our next game.
A/N: So I'm not sure how much you guys are enjoying this, and if you're okay with waiting between chapters then I'll take more time to write them. (What I'm trying to say is I'm getting like zero reviews so I'm probably going to wait until I get at least two or three reviews before posting another chapter. So yeah.) Also, I published another MD story, so go check that out if you want. I'm not sure whether or not I'm going to leave that as a one-shot, so there may be another chapter of that in the future.