Survival Of The Fittest

((Steven "EXTREME STEVE" Dodds pregame START))

EXTREME STEVE stuck out his bottom lip and tried to blow his hair out of his eyes, but failed. He brushed it away with his hand instead, and the sweat on the back of his wrist traded places with the sweat on his forehead. It was a pretty warm day even for the middle of September, and he had worked up a pretty good sweat from getting all of the equipment unpacked and set up. But if he could get enough of his classmates to show up, it'd totally be worth it.

He'd come up with the idea for skateballing in a roundabout way while trying to brainstorm ideas for new videos. He'd started with skateboarding, because skateboarding was an essential ingredient for any good concept. Bails meant likes, and likes meant shares, and shares theoretically meant subscribers. But just skateboarding by itself wasn't enough. It was cool, but it wasn't extreme. So it had to be skateboarding-plus. Skateboarding plus basketball? Doable, but it'd be hard as hell to dribble, and he doubted he'd get enough people willing to try it. Skateboarding plus baseball? Not a terrible idea and you'd get way more home runs, but you couldn't skate on a baseball diamond. Skateboarding plus paintballing? He'd had to mull it over a bit to see if it was actually a great idea or just one of those ideas that sounded great but was actually stupid when you put it into practice. And after a few days of thinking about it and sketching up cool logos for it in his notebook, EXTREME STEVE had determined that it was an actual, bona-fide, Class-A great idea.

So he'd spent the last few days buying up old skateboards from secondhand stores and borrowing as much outdated paintball gear as he could afford on his meager budget, and now the abandoned lot where kids played paintball sometimes was about to experience an evolutionary revolution, baby! The rules for skateballing were simple - you had to have at least one foot on the deck whenever you fired a killshot or it didn't count. Other than that, standard paintball rules applied. He wasn't sure how many kids from school would be extreme enough to give something like this a shot, but he'd hoped that the promise of peripheral YouTube stardom and being able to brag to their future kids that they had played in the first-ever inaugural skateballing match would be good enough selling points. With any luck, a ton of them would show up and they'd have the next ice bucket challenge on their hands here.

All the decks and the paintball gear were ready to go, and all they needed were the players. They'd definitely be coming any minute now. Any minute. Definitely.

[Iliya Polaris continued from With Great Awkwardness Comes Great Responsibility]

It was a fine day to dick around and do nothing in a currently unused paintball lot, which is exactly why Liya was here. But, horror of horrors, someone was using the paintball lot for... something.

She shaded her eyes with her hand and squinted, from some distance away. Liya was never particularly good with faces, but she'd definitely seen this dude with a surfer-ass tan and haircut before. Liya was never particularly good with names either, but she was pretty sure he had some really boring white suburban dude name. Something he was probably overcompensating to hell and back for with all those skateboards and paintball equipment and probably an instagram or a youtube or some other social media, the kind that Liya opened up and scrolled through to tiredly laugh at how fucked humanity was. Wait a minute,

Skateboards and paintball equipment?

The most reasonable idea that came to mind was that he was holding on to that equipment for some other people, and there was no monumental stupidity going on here. Occam's razor or whatever dictated that as the most likely answer. That being said, there were no shortage of weird and monumentally stupid ideas in the world, so.

So, she walked on over. Gave the guy a halted wave with two fingers, along with an eyebrow raised in curiosity.

[Evie McKown was more than a little bit disturbed, now she is here]

Skateballing. Even the name exuded a certain cool energy, the sort of cool that a late-90s/early-2000s movie with a nu-metal soundtrack might have, but cool all the same. The kind of cool that goes hard, or pops off, or perhaps is simply epic. So right up Evie's alley really, she'd always been a sucker for the over-the-top and wacky, her father had brought her up on a healthy diet of Doom, Iron Maiden, and superhero comic books after all. So for the occasion she'd chosen an appropriate soundtrack for her travel, most likely to the mild concern or confusion of anyone else on the bus as the high volume she preferred inevitably leaked out of her headphones.

SIX, SIX SIX, THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST!

Yes. Extremely epic, and entirely on theme for how she pictured armoured skateboarders pelting each other with paintballs in her mind. Perhaps not quite what an onlooker might expect from a girl of her age, though. Maybe being in an international hub for witchcraft and adjacent gothy behaviours made it a little more normal, however? Either way, the journey to the old paintball lot wasn't a long one. Soon enough she was back under the pleasant early-autumn sun and seeking out the host of today's caper. After some walking, Evie spotted Steve in the distance, and someone else she couldn't yet quite identify. Someone about her height and build, and as became apparant the closer she drew, with a similar fashion sense too. Evie herself had opted for just a t-shirt and jeans given the day's weather, similarly confounding the typical onlooker with HAIL SEITAN emblazoned in bold across her chest above an inverted pentagram flanked by knife and fork, like a dinner plate. Well she thought it was funny. Anyway. She eventually identified the other one as another girl from their high school, Liya Polaris. Kind of cute, and verifiably into girls, but even if Evie had been ready to come out herself yet, well, she was kind of weird. Evie was only really nominally Christian, but her instinct was still to mistrust actual, sincere paganism. Plus Liya came across as kind of stubborn and opinionated, quite at odds with Evie's endless desire to get along with everyone and be liked. None of this managed to completely prevent the closeted disaster from checking her out just a little. Just the slightest horny-teen-boy-type look.

So back down, let the rhythm take control, rhythm ta--

Pause. Flick the power switch off. Slide the headphones off, lengthen the band just a touch, hook them around her neck. A motion so familiar to Evie she did it without any conscious thought after deciding it was time to do so.

"Extreme Steve!" she called out with a big wave, speeding her stride up to more of a canter to close the last of the distance between them. "And Liya, right?"

((Madeleine Molliqaj continued from The Last First Day Back))

Madeleine had never gone skateboarding. Or paintballing. So she really didn't have an idea on what to expect from EXTREME STEVE's combination of both, but it sure sounded like it'd be a blast! But, it also sounded like it'd be horribly unsafe. And while she didn't know too much about EXTREME STEVE, or just Steve because calling him that all the time in her head was kinda dorkish, the nickname didn't give off the vibe that he was observant of safety. So while yeah, she was here for the 'skateballing', she was also here to make sure people didn't fall and bust their heads open!

As Madeleine turned the corner, she scanned the two other people assembled there. She didn't really know them that well, only through what she'd seen of them. Only four people (players?) seemed a little low, but she didn't actually know how skateball worked, so maybe that was the ideal number of players!

"Hi!" Madeleine was just wearing some of her older, more plain clothes. If she was gonna get paint all over herself, it didn't make sense to wear something expensive or cute, so something more practical would do.

((Mitch McDuffy pregame - START))

Airsoft goggles? Check.

Skull balaclava ala Ghost from MW2? Check.

Old white hoody that'd make the perfect canvas for a Jackson Pollock painting? Check.

Custom Spotify playlist with all the best songs from the Tony Hawk games? Double check.

When Mitch recieved a message about Steve's stupidly dangerous idea for a new video, his only response was to send back a gif of Morty going "You son of a bitch, I'm in."

Sure, there was a part of him that thought it'd be way cooler if they used airsoft guns instead, but paintball worked too. Hell paintballs might even look a bit more photogenic, add a splash of colour to really sell the action. He almost wished they had some proper slo-mo cameras, really capture the moment when some poor bastard gets splatted in the chest right before they wiped out.

He'd show up at the abandoned lot fashionably late, as per tradition, though thankfully from the look of things the mayhem hadn't started just yet. Steve and Evie were there of course, along with Liya being her usual polarising self, and... Madeline, right? The eastern-european chick? Not the kinda girl he expected to appear in one of EXTREEEEEEEEME STEVE's videos, but hey, the more the merrier.

"What's up bi-" he'd exclaim whilst finger pistoling everyone, adjusting course at the last second when he realised his usual greeting probably wouldn't go down well with the current dude-to-dudette ratio. "-iiiiiiiuuuuuuuuuuddies! So, uuuuh, hope we didn't have to bring our own skateboards?"

EXTREME STEVE was impressed with the extremely good turnout so far. He'd given Liya a wave when she walked over - after all, she was the first person to respond to the invite. Sure, he didn't actually remember inviting her, but that didn't mean he hadn't done it. She was kinda hot, in that gothy punk sort of way, so he was completely down with her being a part of this. He'd invited the entire cheerleading team too, but it seemed like they were all running late.

And Doc was here too! That was a definite plus, since skateballing would probably be heavy on the casualties. "Eyo, Doc!" he called out in greeting as she approached. He didn't get her shirt - pretty sure Satan spelled his name "S-A-T-A-N" and he seemed like the kind of dude who would get honked off pretty bad if you misspelled his name. But hey, Evie would probably know better than him.

Then there was the tall girl with the long hair. Something with an M. Madison? Maddison with two D's? No, he'd definitely have remembered that. Montana. Mallory. Melodie. Melanie. Well, she was M Girl now, until he figured it out. He shot her some finger guns to let her know that she was totally welcome.

Aww yeah, and Mitch was here! Dude had come dressed to play. EXTREME STEVE swung up a hand for a high five, realized Mitch was still too far away, and turned it into another finger gun. "Hell naw, bro. I wouldn't ask people to bring their own decks. People can if they wanna, but I figured more people would show up if they didn't have to chip in their own stuff."

Things were definitely ballin' now. There was a solid girl-to-dude ratio, some excellent peeps for guaranteed fun times, and... uh, no sign of Leslie, who was supposed to be filming. Or at least he was pretty sure that he'd asked Leslie to come today. He'd have to double check his outbox to make sure. Worst case, they wouldn't have a camera crew. That's what the knockoff Go-Pros he'd scrounged up in the electronics store bargain bin were for!

"All right, I think we might as well get things started, then anybody who shows up late can just dive in," EXTREME STEVE said, placing his hands on his hips confidently. "The rules of skateballing are simple - get shot with a paintball, and you're out! But the skate part is what makes it tricky; if you don't have both feet on the board while you're shooting, the hit doesn't count! The board's gotta be moving too, that way nobody goes for a turret strategy."

He pointed to a motely collection of old skateboards that he'd raided from neighbors' garages and yard sales, and the paintball guns he'd rented. "Everybody gets a paintball gun and a board, and a Go-Pro to wear for filming. I figure we'll do a free-for-all to start, if a few more people show up we can do teams. Any questions?"

As more people approached... Steve, was it? and his collection of sports equipment, Liya quickly figured there was some kind of event going on. Whatever it was, she hoped they accepted drop-ins. She returned a glance to the girl wearing that "HAIL SATAN", sorry, "SEITAN" shirt, her name was Lily, too fucking similar to her name, she mumbled a "hi" in response to that one painfully wholesome girl from the model UN what the fuck was her name, and finger gun'd right back at Mitch.

As Steve explained the rules, it dawned on Liya that this was exactly what it looked like, yet more - apparently they were filming this too. She clicked her tongue at this information. Liya wasn't in a hurry to immortalize herself and her tomfoolery on social media... but wasn't that inevitable in this digital era? Might as well embrace the cringe (the good and fun and cool kind of cringe, not some of the fucking shit the conservatives of the school had the gall to post).

She picked up one of the paintball guns from the... well, it wasn't a pile, it was a bit to disheveled from that. She hefted it up and it hopped in her hand, and she let out an amused "ha!". "None here, I'm in."

Mitch and... some other girl, who seemed familiar to Evie for a reason she couldn't quite put her finger on just yet, arrived as well, by by then her attention was more firmly on their host. She hit Mitch with the double finger-guns so as not to be rude, but focused on the rules. The rules, as it turned out, were not particularly complex. so that was good.

"No questions, chief!"

Pausing briefly for a closer look at Madeleine to again try to figure out why she looked familiar, Evie approached the sports pile and set about gearing up. In retrospect, paying attention to exactly what Steve's idea had been might've been wise, that way she would've worn a less expensive, less white shirt to paintball in. But hey, too late now. Still not sure who the other other tall girl was, Evie ultimately decided to give up on putting details to the face. She'd figure it out eventually. Or not. So first, GoPro, apply directly to the forehead. Paintball gun, apply directly to hands. Last, select a board. That last one had the young brunette chewing her lip with some degree of concern: she'd never really been a skater, she'd made some abortive attempts to learn, years ago, but like many things that didn't quickly come easily to her, Evie had given up on it and found other interests that gave her fewer injuries and more immediate gratification.

"Actually, one question. Anyone bring a first aid kit? I foresee a lot of wiping out in our futures."

((Leslie continued from idk one of the Halloween party threads))

"Got you... covered, holmes," Leslie said to Evie, panting and partially out of breath with sweat glistening on his face not obscured by the helmet, as he showed up out of nowhere yet close enough on his bicycle. He gave (sigh) Extreme Steve a finger wave and Madeline a kinda awkward wave as he passed her. He braked to a crawl and then an eventual stop; the tires squeaked on the pavement slightly.

"Sorry.... late..." He started to fish through his backpack, not paying much attention to anyone else.

Gotta say, it was real surprising Steve managed to con people into actually coming, let alone some girls and... well, actually it wasn't really much of a surprise Mitch wanted in, too. Leslie kinda thought about just blowing his slightly cryptic "old paintball Park. SKATEBALLING! bring camera!" wall of texts (a time? a day? never any details with this dude) off, but knowing him, it would've been a good call to actually come for legal reasons. And safety reasons. The later was probably more important, which was why he stopped to get one of those superstore el cheapo first aid kits on his way over.

Leslie found what he was looking for and pulled out the case for the slightly scratched Handycam that still somehow worked despite being like a decade old at this point, either through technical engineering or black magic.

"Gimme a.... sec...."

"i'm good," Madeleine said, grabbing a paintball gun and a scratched up skateboard that had one of the guys from KISS on the bottom of it. Klinton would have probably loved this kinda thing, but he was in soccer practice today, and soccer practice was one of the only things that could have drawn him from the allure of paintballs and skateboards.

Madeleine was becoming quickly aware that she had no idea of how to skateboard or paintball. Klinton played those Tony Hawk games with the skateboarding, but doing all that grinding and flipping seemed like it'd just end with a trip to the emergency room for someone who'd just started. Even with their safety equipment, which Madeleine was busy strapping onto her, it seemed like something she'd rather avoid.

"Oh, wait, uhm, what do we do when we get knocked out? Do we just get off our skateboards?"

Even if she had no idea what she was doing, this was gonna be fun!

Mitch would flinch internally when he saw Liya lift her paintball gun up, years of sitting through airsoft safety talks finally paying off as he quickly scrambled to put his goggles on, eyeing up those skateboards before glancing down at the pile of shoddy paintball masks Steve had amassed. 

"Sup bro" he'd say with a casual head-tilt as Leslie arrived, evening out the dude-to-dudette ratio as he swaggered on over to the paintball masks and picked a pair up. The rules all sounded simple enough, but he couldn't in all good consciousness leap wholeheartedly into this foolhardy endeavour without the addition of a few extra pro-tips...

"So, uh, just got a couple more things to add to that!" he'd say, lifting the masks up into the air. "When it comes to paintball, rule numero uno is if you're around a gun, you wear one of these badboys! Last thing any y'all want is to end up with is the nastiest black eye you're ever gonna get..." he'd say, tossing them out to the two nearest competitors before grabbing another pair, handing them out as he continued.

"Secondly, try not to aim for the head to begin with! Dunno if headshots will count or not, that's up to my boy Steve here" he'd continue, giving Steve a hearty slap on the shoulder. "But even with these masks on, getting shot in the face SUCKS! So try to avoid headshots if you can, same goes for aiming for the, uh... Valuables..." he'd say, briefly gesturing towards his crotch.

"Lastly, try to avoid shooting anyone whose too close, getting hit point blank with these puppies hurts like a bitch. Granted, odds of that happenin' with this game are pretty low, so..." he'd continue, ending his sentence with a shrug. After which he would then fetch one of the skateboards from the pile, a gnarly looking red-and-black board with Deadpool on it. Fuckin' A...

"Right, now that the boring safety talk's out of the way..." he'd say, tugging his Ghost balaclava down over his head and lifting up a paintball gun. "Ten bucks to whoever can pull off a 360 ollie shot!"

Having said his piece and put his GoPro on, he'd flick the record button, wave his hand in front of his face John Cena style, then skate off into the distance to jump straight into things.

All things considered, Skateballing went about as well as anyone could have expected it to go.

Whilst a couple extra faces showed up later, they mostly stuck to free-for-alls when they realised they had no means of signifying who was on whose team, and frankly it was chaotic enough as it was without throwing extra objectives into the mix.

Despite this, for the most part people were playing it relatively safe, gliding along slowly to take potshots at each other rather than trying to pull off dangerous stunts. Oddly enough most folk didn't want to get themselves hurt, though the same couldn't be said for Steve and Mitch, who spent the entire time competing to see who could end the day with the most bruises. Out of everyone, they were the ones throwing their all into it, not caring how many times they wiped out if it meant getting some good footage.

As the matches went on, it quickly became clear that the two kindred spirits had different strengths and weaknesses when it came to the scrappily thrown-together game. Steve was by far the better skateboarder, even successfully pulling off a couple trickshots for every dozen that ended with him falling on his ass. In one particularly vidworthy moment, he'd launch himself off a ramp he set up well in advance, soaring through the air firing wildly like he was Max fucking Payne. He didn't land a single shot, but it made for a helluva thumbnail.

Mitch conversely, was not that great a skateboarder, the closest thing he had to experience being 70+ hours worth of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater reboot. But he had a lot more experience when it came to gun games than Steve, his friend even going so far as shooting himself in the foot five minutes into their first match, whilst Mitch generally landed the most hits out of everyone.

Not wanting to be outdone, Mitch at one point saw the opportunity for his own moneyshot when he happened across a sight that no self-respecting skater could resist: A metal handrail leading down a brick staircase, with one unsuspecting target at the very bottom. With a smirk on his face, he turned to Leslie (who was doing a remarkable job documenting everything on his own skateboard) and uttered a few choice words to the camera. "Watch this, motherfucker..."

At which point, Mitch would kick up and attempt to grind down that rail, firing shots wildly at his target. To his credit, he lasted a second longer than he had any right to, before inevitably slipping and landing right on his crotch, grinding down that metal rail with a high pitched yelp before flopping down onto the concrete floor like a dead fish. As he lay there on the ground, rolling from side to side groaning in pain, all he could do was look back up to Leslie and whimper softly. "Uuugh... Please... For the love of god... Tell me you got that on camera?"



By the time they were all done, Steve and Mitch found themselves sitting back against a brick wall, both resembling Jackson Pollock paintings and covered head to toe in countless welts and bruises. Too exhausted and banged up to move a muscle, other then slowly turn their heads to one another, Mitch smirking and raising his fist to bump it against his bud's.

"So, Skateballing 2 when?"

After strapping on the protective bits and lock-and-loading the paintball gun, Evie wouldn’t have admitted it, but she was apprehensive. She typically confined her crazy risks to video games where she didn’t run the risk of harming anything but her ego.

That was before she saw Steve catch air off a ramp and unload wildly in a display that deserved to be seen in slow motion. Before she scored her own first valid hit, and got so caught up in celebrating that she toppled over into a ditch. Before Mitch rode his groin straight down a metal rail and she counted her blessings that her own scrapes and bruises were so minor.

Nope, by the time all was said and done, and she was slumped in a sweaty, paint-splattered mess and laughing at some choice highlights courtesy of Steve’s cameraman, Evie was very much glad she’d come. Quite an expensive shirt she’d most likely have to replace, but such was life, it had been a worthy cost of admission. Eventually she left the boys to recover, herself much more capable of normal motor functions than they evidently were, demanding updates on when the video would go up. Then she gathered up her things, stuck her headphones back on, and made for the nearest bus stop.

YOU’LL TAKE MY LIFE, BUT I’LL TAKE YOURS TOO!

In retrospect, maybe The Trooper would’ve been a more obvious choice of music on her way down, but no matter, it filled her aching body with some renewed vigour on the trip home.

[Evie McKown will live to fight another day.]