The thing with challenge bouts is that they’re messy. Skaters who’ve never played together are thrown into a team and expected to think of and implement strategies on the fly. They’re definitely a show, although when you’re at Rollercon they’re barely a blip on the radar of most: not when they could be watching top-tier teams fighting it out using strategies they’ve practiced to death and could do in their sleep.

It is, however, a perfect chance for an assortment of derby’s finest skaters to get thrown into a mix and see how they do.

Which is how, amongst other well-known names of derby, Seulbear and Jendukie wind up skating against each other. They’re jammers both of them, and skate for opposite teams: Seulgi on the black team, representing the east coast, and Jendukie in white for the west.

Out of all the challenge bouts of the weekend, this one has been promoted to 60-minute status as it winds up the Sunday evening entertainment. A hefty crowd has formed, consisting both of simple spectators and derby girls with some time to kill (or a teammate to support).

The whistle blows and there’s thirty seconds until the first jam of the bout.

Both girls have the star on.

Seulgi smirks as she skates past her opposition: the other girl is crouched in low derby stance, feet staggered one in front of the other resting steadily on her toestops. Seulgi, obnoxiously, gets as close as she can to sitting on the other girl without doing so.

Five seconds is called, and then the whistle goes.

Seulgi has no trouble navigating the pack, the wall of the opposition offering her a giant hole which she barges through. The two blockers slam shoulders and hips slightly too late - Seulgi’s got a leg and shoulder past them, and with some carefully timed hits she opens that gap enough to jump through.

There’s a whistle, and she glances in to catch her jammer ref sweeping her hands low in front of her body, making a cross.

Not lead.

Seulgi’s brow draws down sharply in frustration, and then she notices Jendukie skating off a few metres ahead of her. The girl is pumping her arms rapidly to keep up speed, however she does take a moment to gloat, waving at a section of the suicide zone as she passes by.

Hopping up onto her toestops, Seulgi sprints forward, using the burst of speed to gain on the girl. Then, in a perfectly timed sweep, takes her legs out from under her.

Jendukie slams into the ground and slides out, nearly tripping a referee. In a jerky motion that goes from head to hips, Jendukie calls the jam off.

As the whistles start up, Seulgi transition stops and smiles at the girl. She receives a death stare in response before the shorter brunette is skating back to her bench, long, brunette braid whipping out from underneath her helmet.

Seulgi is smirking self-satisfactorily, handing the back to her benchie and sitting down on one of the plastic chairs provided.

Through some act of divine intervention, or convenient benching, both Seulgi and Jendukie end up jamming alongside each other nearly every single time they jam during the first half of the game. The small brunette has such a fire that Seulgi can’t help but toy with her, skating backwards when she gets lead just to engage Jendukie chest-to-chest, or trying to knock her down and out just as she breaks out of the pack. Seulgi is quick to learn, however, that Jendukie has a mean counter on her, and is nearly knocked off-balance herself from one particularly solid hit.

The game is fairly even the whole way through the first half. When they change benches at halftime, Seulgi picks up her water bottle and skates over, narrowly avoiding a swerve from Jendukie. Whilst Seulgi is considering that she may have actually upset the other skater, Jendukie tosses a smile over her shoulder - a hard, challenging one, but a smile nonetheless.

“Put me on with her.” Seulgi mumbles to YoungMi, their benchie for the day and fellow skater with Seulgi’s league.

“Who?” YoungMi asks, turning to look at the opposite bench. “Fourteen?”

Seulgi follows her eyes, then nods. “That’s the one. She’s fun.”

YoungMi shrugs, tossing the jammer Seulgi’s way. “Go nuts, I’m sure no one else will fight you for her. Just do me a favour and stop eye-ing so much on the jammer line, got it?”

Seulgi snorts, pulling the cover over the top of her helmet. “Whatever you say, Mi.”

The second half starts and the crowd has grown, all of them fired up at the close score. Whenever one team puts a few points on the board, they’re met next jam with the same thing from the opposition. It’s a constant tug-of-war between the two of them, Seulgi and Jendukie especially.

There’s one jam in which Jendukie winds up in the box for a back block, and the crowd starts a rousing power jam chant. YoungMi is waving her hand wildly in a ‘keep skating you ’ gesture, and Seulgi is determined to do just that.

She skates low to the ground, and puts all her force into driving the opposition blockers forward. Her own blockers, on the other hand, stand to the sides of the track, leaving her with as much room as she wants to get through the white team. Seulgi pushes and pushes until a call of “no pack!” comes out, and the blockers are forced to let her through for a sweet five points.

As Seulgi rounds the track, she spies Jendukie standing up in the box, on the brink of being let out.

“I got your point!” Seulgi calls to her as she passes, mimicking the referee signal for five points, hand up and fingers splayed.

Before Jendukie has a chance to get back into the pack, Seulgi has jumped through a gap in the white blockers and has called the jam off.

Jendukie remains on for that next jam, and successfully throws off their pattern of being on at the same time. As Seulgi sits on the bench her blockers form their strategy for the next jam, but her mind is solely on the game being played out in front of her.

That Jendukie - Seulgi has never seen, nor heard of her before. She has no idea what league she comes from, only that she’s playing on the west team. So she’s from the other side of the country - what a great shame. Seulgi wouldn’t mind coming up against her again. Her body was a little powerhouse: she had an almost stocky build but she could get so low to the ground she was nearly invisible. One second Jendukie was against the inside line, next she was weaving between the legs of the blockers on the outside. It didn’t hurt that her outfit of the day was a white top and a pair of very nice fitting compression tights. Very nice fitting indeed.

Seulgi herself dressed in more of stereotypical derby style - the way people envisioned when you said you played the sport. Thigh high socks, torn stockings, and a pair of pink booty shorts that matched her hair almost perfectly. Although many skaters were now opting for the athletic look, Seulgi quite liked the vintage derby style. And besides, it gave her a use for all her torn work stockings.

It took a few jams for their pattern to change back so that Seulgi and Jendukie were jamming at the same time - and the first time they were back out together, Seulgi got a penalty of her own. She got to watch Jendukie transition and skate past her, waving the whole time.

.

The next time they saw each other on track, Seulgi was wearing the pivot so that the newbie jammer could bail if she needed to. Plus, it gave Seulgi the perfect opportunity to keep jendukie firmly stuck in the pack. She was bracing with another skater on her team (Maddy? Marley? Something), smirking at Jendukie as she moved the younger girl side-to-side.

Jendukie never made it out of the pack the entire jam, and Seulgi didn’t miss the mouthed curse word directed straight at her.

God, if that body didn’t do her in, it was that attitude. Seulgi had a thing for feisty ones.

“So this is probably our last jam.” YoungMi noted, glancing over her shoulder at the projected scoreboard. “Knock ‘em dead, Seulgi.”

They met together on track as they had at the very start of the bout. The crowd were yelling and clapping and beating their feet on the ground, but Seulgi was simply looking at Jendukie. “Ready?” She asked, smirking.

Jendukie rolled her eyes so hard Selgi feared she might have gotten lost staring at her brain, and then the jam started.

They both spent near a lap stuck in the pack, and then Jendukie burst through.

.

-----------------------------

Read the rest on my BlackVelvet Tumblr blog! It's called BlackVelvetShipShots. Here is the url: https://blackvelvetshipshots.tumblr.com/. Enjoy!