Description
Panel One: Narration: "Next Day Tuesday Afternoon: PE / Practice" Wide shot of the school gym. There are students milling around, running, walking, playing basketball or kicking around a soccer ball. Cal is there, standing on the sidelines. He's wearing a medium blue tshirt with a few white and grey feathers printed on the front right corner, with white shorts, socks, and platform sneakers. "I've never been in a gym class before," he thinks, while he holds his arm nervously. "What am I supposed to - " He is interrupted by a call from off-panel, "Hey, Cal!"
Panel Two: Shot from behind Cal. "Thank God!" he thinks, as he waves and says, "Zane!" Zane jogs towards Cal, with the usual big smile on his face. His hair is tied up in a ponytail, and he's wearing minimal eyeliner with a short line drawn down from the outside corners. Zane is wearing the school's rugby uniform; a polo shirt that has a black body with two wide red stripes near the top, and white raglan sleeves and collar. His uniform shorts are black with a red stipe up the sides, and he has black knee-high socks with red stripes near the top.
Panel Three: Long shot of Zane and Cal as they walk and talk on the sidelines. "You play rugby?" Cal asks. "Yeah, I'm on the team," Zane answers. "Cool!" says Cal, "My dad liked rugby. I don't play, though." "Do you play any sports?" Zane asks. "I like archery."
Panel Four: View of the gyms from outside. There are two of them, with the entrance of one turned to face the side door of the other. They are very modern-looking; obviously much newer than the rest of the school buldings. It's raining heavily. "Did you know we have a range? I'd show you, but..." Zane says. Rain SFX: -SHAAA- "I know!" he continues, "Let's go watch the fencers practice next door." "Fencing? I've never seen a swordfight before!" says Cal. The word ballons are labelled with their names.
Panel Five: Cal and Zane talking. Zane has a sly grin on his face and nudges Cal's arm with his elbow as he says, "Oh, you'll love it! Swordfighting's hot." "Heh," Cal smiles and gives Zane an incredulous look. "If you say so."
Author Note
Cal's first experience with gym class! Luckily, Zane is there to help.
Art-wise: Oof, crowd scenes kill me every time! They take forever but they're worth it. Also, when I started this, I had no idea that I would have to learn about different kinds of sports teams uniforms?! I don't know why rugby players wear striped polo shirts, but whatever, I'll run with it. The uniforms were initially going to be just red and black, but that looked "off" to me, so I tried with the white shoulders and collar, and that looked a lot better. Zane's almost unrecognizeable without his goth getup, (it was so weird to not put any fishnet on him) but with practice cancelled due to heavy rain, at least he had time to put on some eyeliner.
But why rugby? After much pacing, I figured that American-style tackle football wouldn't really be a thing anymore. Lots of players routinely suffer concussions and life-altering injuries even with the armor, and producing all the gear is very resource-heavy, anyway. Flag football is low-contact and a lot safer for people on the Outside, so that's survived.
Rugby players learn how to avoid hurting themsleves and other players, so while it doesn't look it, it's much safer! Not to mention that the lack of any sort of padding leads to... Self-calibration when it comes to tackling. With close contact being part of the game, it's hardly played on the Outside. Small games between trusted friends, but that's it. Carriers don't have to worry about catching anything, so they're fine. It's very popular with Outsiders as a spectator sport, and league games are well-attended by both groups (with separate seating, of course).
- Bran
