“Right about now is when Matt would usually come up with an idea to exploit the enemy’s weakness,” Jennifer said.
“Yeah, I got nothin’,” said Matt’s voice in her ear.
“Cassandra was always the alpha bitch,” Theresa said. “I don’t think she has a weakness.”
“Maybe not her weakness,” Jennifer said, sitting up. “Maybe one that we share. Theresa, use your phone, get online, and play ‘Call Me’ as loud as you can.”
“‘Call Me’, ha!” Theresa said. “We practiced that routine so many times, whenever I hear that song I have to stop myself from— Ohhhhh. Devious. I like it.” Jennifer slowly got to her feet while Theresa ran back to her truck. “Sugarshine, want to play camera pony? Here, hold this.” She passed Jennifer’s phone to the plush alicorn and connected hers to the truck’s data port. She pulled up the song and cranked the volume way up.
“Time to be aggressive. B, E, aggressive,” said Jennifer.
[Background Theme: “Call Me” performed by In This Moment]
As the opening riffs played, Jennifer’s head nodded to the beat. She let the music flow through her and take over her body. When the lyrics started, her arms took the cue and moved on their own, shaking her pom-poms up, down, left, and right in rhythm with the song, producing small wisps of flame from them. She cycled through the well-rehearsed sequence of Ts, Vs, Ls, Ks, diagonals, punches, bow and arrows, daggers, and touchdown motions. She marched ahead towards Cassandra, rather than behind her in formation as they had done many, many times.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Cassandra said as she watched the scene. Even Theresa back at her truck was dancing along, waving around some plastic shopping bags she’d dug out from under the seats. “If you can’t take this seriously, you’re only going to make it worse for yourself!” she shouted. Jennifer just smiled. She could see Cassandra’s arms twitching in time with the music.
“Fighting Spirit Fiery Burst!” Jennifer yelled, launching a fireball just as the song crescendoed into the first refrain. It hit the ground a foot in front of Cassandra, leaving a scorch mark in the pavement.
“Ha! You mi—” Cassandra looked back upwards from where it landed and was interrupted by Jennifer’s high kick, which sent her to the ground. She quickly got back to her feet, but Jennifer had danced backwards and was now out of reach again, and had also resumed the pom routine as if nothing had happened. “What in the fuck was that?” Cassandra demanded.
The song entered the second verse, and Cassandra ran towards Jennifer. She pulled her right fist back and shouted, “Pom-Pom Sub-Zero Smash!” Jennifer, however, easily sidestepped the punch she threw. “Pom-Pom Sub-Zero Smash!”, she shouted again, this time with a punch from the left. “Pom-Pom Sub-Zero Smash!” A right-handed punch again, and this time Jennifer not only dodged it, she danced around behind Cassandra and gave her a hard shove.
Cassandra stumbled, then righted herself and spun around to face Jennifer again, just in time for the second refrain and another “Fighting Spirit Fiery Burst!” This time Jennifer didn’t miss. Cassandra was blown to the ground. Before she could move, yet another “Fighting Spirit Fiery Burst!” hit her dead center, adding insult to injury.
Cassandra pulled herself up off the ground as the third verse began. “Dammit…” she mumbled. She saw Jennifer had returned to the pom routine and shouted, “Stop dancing, you fuck!” Jennifer only smiled wider. “Rally Pride Blizzard Fury! Rally Pride Blizzard Fury! Rally Pride Blizzard Fury!” Cassandra shouted as she shot off a barrage of ice blasts, some aimed at Jennifer, some deliberately aimed around her, in an effort to prevent her from maneuvering. It didn’t work, however, and Jennifer dodged all the attacked, not even missing a beat and making it look effortless.
The song entered its musical bridge, and Cassandra screamed with frustration and fury. She ran straight at Jennifer and lashed out with her fists, punching at her rapidly but without much coordination, and not even remembering to summon any magical attacks from the pom-poms. Jennifer blocked most of the strikes with her arms, and was unfazed by the ones that actually hit her.
As the song reached the final refrain, Jennifer pulled back her fist and shouted, “Pom-pom Flaming Punch!” She hit Cassandra right in the face, the punch slamming against her helmet’s visor. Cassandra stumbled back, but it was followed by another hit to the face from a “Pom-pom Flaming Punch!” Jennifer called out a third time, “Pom-pom Flaming Punch!” This time she struck low, at Cassandra’s gut, causing her to double over with the wind knocked out of her. Cassandra heard her shout again, “Pom-pom Flaming Punch!” However, she didn’t see the uppercut until it impacted her jaw, sending her flying backwards onto the ground.
Jennifer watched to make sure Cassandra wasn’t getting back up, but immediately resumed dancing, and finished on the final beat with a low V flourish. Theresa immediately started clapping and cheering, “Go Jennifer! Woo!”
“So, do you wanna know why you’re down there and I’m still standing, Cassandra?” Jennifer said. “You were fighting the music, and it split your focus. I went with it, and was able to focus entirely on kicking your ass.”
“It’s not fair! You— you cheated! It’s not fair!” Cassandra whined while she stood up on unsteady feet. The two girls glared at each other, Cassandra looking on the verge of losing her composure while Jennifer was calm and defiant. Finally Cassandra came to a decision. “Rally Pride Blizzard Fury!” she shouted, aiming the shot at the ground in front of her and creating a mound of ice there. She tossed the pom-poms away and called out, “Megaphone! Adoration of the Masses Arctic Tempest Gale!” She aimed that at the ice she had just created, causing it to explode into a fog of ice crystals that covered the cinema’s parking lot.
“Jennifer!” Theresa called out, running towards her.
“Over here!” Jennifer replied.
“Where’s Cassandra?”
“Gone, I think.”
“Should we go after her?”
“No,” Jennifer said. “Later. Right now I need to get those doors cleared. Once Matt gets his ass back here, we have a movie premier to oversee.”
– – –
The sun was just setting as they drove up to the house. “Is this it?” Jennifer asked.
“Yep, this is Cassandra’s address, according to the old squad roster,” Theresa answered.
“This is the place alright, see the ice blocking the front door?” Matt said. They all got out and walked up to the door.
“I got this,” Jennifer said. “Pom-poms! Pom-pom Flaming Punch!” rather than a swift punch, she pushed the pom-pom slowly into the block of ice, letting the fire rapidly melt it. Once cleared, they found the door was unlocked and they stepped inside the house. “Cassandra? We need to talk about this! Hello?” Jennifer called out.
“Looks like nobody’s home,” Theresa said.
“Better check the bedrooms,” Matt said. “I think that way.”
They ventured down the hallway and saw Cassandra’s parents, calling for help from their bedroom, where they were trapped by a pillar of ice filling the doorway. “Oh, shit!” Jennifer said. “Stand back, I’ll get you out! Pom-pom Flaming Punch!”
“Oh thank God!” Mrs. Taylor said.
“Cheer Raider, please, our daughter, she’s always been difficult at times, but we have no idea where all this is coming from!” said Mr. Taylor.
“Yeah, we got a taste of that earlier,” Jennifer said. “Theresa, could you get them to a neighbor’s house or something? It doesn’t seem to be safe here.”
“Right. Please, come with me. Let’s get you out of here,” Theresa said, leading them away.
“Uh, Jennifer, you… need to see this,” said Matt from down the hall.
“What is it?” she asked, walking towards him.
“Cassandra’s bedroom, I think”, he replied, pointing at a doorway.
“Holy shit,” she said as she stepped past him into the room and saw the contents. She pulled her helmet off and took a good look around. The walls were mostly covered with posters of her as Cheer Raider, all defaced in a variety of ways, with the faces scribbled on in black marker and words written all over like “bitch”, “whore”, and “you’re going down”. The rest of the room was littered with various Cheer Raider merchandise, all of it damaged: action figures and fashion dolls missing limbs or heads and scarred by some sharp implement, plush dolls that had been ripped apart or partially burned, the smashed remains of battery-operated toy versions of her weapons, various other cheap knickknacks broken to pieces for merely being branded with her picture. There was even a high school yearbook lying open to Jennifer’s class photo, also defaced.
The only part of the room that didn’t seem angry was the dresser mirror and the wall around it. Taped there were pages torn from Cheer Raider & SABRE Panther coloring books, but with Cheer Raider rendered in Chill Raider’s color scheme. However, these too showed a disturbing progression from pages that had been slowly and carefully filled in, to pages where the applied color was a messy scrawl as if the work of a small child.
“I think she’s got more of my shit than you do,” Jennifer said.
“Not possible,” said Matt. “But, close to it, yeah.”
“What the fuck are you doing in my room?” screeched Cassandra, just before she finished climbing in through the window.
“Oh shit!” exclaimed Matt.
“You, stay out! Pom-poms! Rally Pride Blizzard Fury!” Cassandra screamed, launching a blast that filled the doorway with ice nearly to the top, blocking Matt from entry.
“Oh, honey, I understand now. The reason for all of this,” Jennifer said with deep sympathy in her voice as she approached Cassandra.
“Wha?” Cassandra said, caught off guard by her tone. She tried to back away as Jennifer drew in close, but the wall denied her further movement.
Jennifer lifted Cassandra’s helmet from her head and let it fall to the floor, then looked into her eyes said, “You just need to get laid.”
“What? How dare you! Mmmpphh!” Cassandra’s angry shouts were cut off by Jennifer’s lips meeting hers. She dropped her pom-poms in shock, then put her arms up and tried to push Jennifer away. Jennifer already had her left hand in place groping Cassandra’s breast, and her right hand under her skirt, rubbing her pussy through her bloomers. Cassandra’s moans of protest trailed off and turned into moans of pleasure, her efforts to push Jennifer off of her similarly petered out until her arms dropped to her sides.
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