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Boscha dodges the swinging blade and sees the prised insect. Its resting on a vine, itself lashing out. She dives across the field and sets the plant alight.
Every noise is replaced by an ethereal droning. She covers her ears, but the noise echoes inside her skull, inside every atom. She sees drain away until reality is nothing but black outlines on a white plane. It doesn't change when she closes her invisible eyelids. She doesn't understand when the frames start bending and breaking, until nothing remains.
Boscha grumbles at the alarm clock waking her up. Sure, she didn't particularly like her dream, but she dislikes the fatigue in her eyes more. Still, she powers through her make-up routine. She sits at her vanity and stares at her iconic birthmark, an eye in the center of her forehead. "You are fearsome. You are ferocious. You are going to be better today than yesterday." She repeated her mantra three times, then heads out to school.
"Hey Bos!" She snaps to attention at her locker, and sees Willow and Amity approaching. A smile graces Boscha's face as she sees her crush. "You ready for the big game?"
"Hey Willow! Well, I'm as ready as I'll ever be. Home field advantage, perfect weather--" She doesn't get to finish her thought as a meathead shoves her against the locker on his way through.
"Watch it three eyes!" The meathead laughs. Willow doesn't like letting people get away with bullying, but she knows Jaxon. More importantly, she's got a flower delivery to his mother after school, and that nothing will hurt him worse than his mother's disappointment.
Still, she knows she can't do anything major yet, so she does what she can. "You okay?" At Boscha's confirmation, she sweeps her friend in a hug. "I'm glad to see you've changed though. A month ago you'd be getting called to Bump's office about now. Probably alongside Jaxon, not against him."
Boscha frowned at the reminder of how she used to be. 'Better today, better tomorrow'. She grabs her books and heads to class.
The morning drags on without incident, and she takes lunch with Amity. "...and that's how we got together!" Amity laughs, holding Luz's hand. Boscha rolled her eyes, and stares at Willow. She feels the urge to confess again, sparked by her friends getting together, but stamps it down. 'Why would she want to be with me? I haven't really changed."
"Congratulations you two! So, date night at the game tonight?" Boscha smirks. She honestly doesn't care if her friends come. She doesn't play for attention. She plays for the adrenaline, the bloodlust, the pride.
"I don't know about them, but my dad's are planning an afterparty, if you wanna hang out?" Willow brings up. Red ringing the Korean girl's cheeks, she continues "I know you've been trying hard to be a better person, and, well."
A smile reaching her eyes, a smile ear to ear, Boscha vigorously shakes her head.
Bright light glyphs shine onto the field, a ever-mobile crowd circling her, kids talking and walking and running and adults going to concessions and restrooms and seats and new angles. Sure, Boscha doesn't play for the attention, but being at the center of it is definitely a plus.
With 30 seconds on the clock in the third quarter, and a noticable lead, Boscha leads her teammates to a final score before mercy rules come into play. A rough charge against the enemy quarterback. That's the plan. Boscha does manage to get him on his knee, propped up on one leg. Then, Skara and her linebacker tumbles into Boscha, and the pile falls on the quarterback.
Specifically, as she figures out when she feels the bone shatter, or when a scream that will haunt her forever is expelled, onto his upright knee. His leg below the knee is entirely shattered. He's screaming like a baby, or a high schooler who's leg was broken in several places. Panicking, she helps the on-call paramedics load him up as Volunteer Nurse Noceda puts on a basic bone repair glyph on his leg, which burns something horrible. Then he gets a painkiller potion, enough to stop the screaming. She tries to do something, anything to help, but all she gets is Skara telling her it's not her fault as she sits on the bench, numb.
As the ambulance rushes to the hospital, knowing the glyph only helped prevent intensive surgery, Camilia and Luz sat next to Boscha, waiting to hear what's going to happen. "He'll walk. Too early to say if he'll play sports again, but he'll recover enough. Not that it changes that it wasn't your fault."
"Listen to my mom" Luz says. "I saw the play. The rival linebacker jerked Skara towards you guys. You collided, and, well..."
"It was my plan. He would never have been in that position if not for me." Boscha starts crying. 'I never changed I never changed I never changed. How do I face Willow now!?'
Luz, though, seems to remember something unrememberable. "Is a plan that didn't take into account something completely unpredictable going wrong because of said unpredictable event the planner's fault? Or is it the fault of the chance? You said he'd never be in that position, but what if you three collided and landed on his leg sideways? It'd still be broken, it would still be your plan, but that's because your the planner."
Boscha wants to listen. She really does. But through her tears, all she can really understand is Camilia's comforting hand rubbing soothing circles on her back. "I'm not going to pretend that I processed any of what you said, Luz. But thank you both. I need this."