Ice Time And Dinners Part 2

Posted on Tue Feb 1st, 2022 @ 11:53am by Senior Chief Petty Officer Victoria Aries & Lieutenant Commander Brandon Pratt
Edited on on Tue Feb 1st, 2022 @ 11:53am

2,342 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Christmas Vacation
Location: Holodeck One, Fairmount Resort, Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada, Earth., Sol.

Brandon and Victoria were dead in the middle of the third round of the game. The brawl on Lake, or so it was turning out to be fully animated now. Two teams, each with five players.

Pratt wore a dated Winnipeg Jets jersey #21 with a matching official NHL toque out on the cold pond. Quick-to-strike action early on had seen Pratt body checking a lineman, putting his complete ease and control of the force of his large, strong, broad shoulders and muscles into his lean-in on the ice hard. Pratt hits the other male player, crashing the two to a halting physical mass on ice. Pratt forechecked control of the puck, setting up a scoring opportunity. No bacon for him!

Then, a striking assist saucer pass from Victoria’s teammate to her, landing a connecting slap shot to Brandon’s net, causing a sun burner! Brandon was later body checked by Victoria’s teammate number #07 Devonshire.

Three rounds in a standard Federation Hockey game. The high-stakes hockey game had lent to a noteworthy 1-1 tie. The first to score was Victoria! She surprised Brandon with a 3-on-2 breakaway earning a goal. A score to the upper left corner above Brandon’s goaltender in the net on the pond. Aries received a suicide pass firmly executed from her team from across the pond.

A last-minute power forward placed Brandon and Victoria’s goaltenders outside their nets. The two hand-fisted holographic ice hockey teammates on the ice with each other. A brawl had erupted on the small pond!

Uniform tops, gear, and attachments were all over the ice strewn about. The third period erupted into a fight between Brandon and Victoria’s power defenseman McElroy 05. Both had given each other a virtual holographic bloody nose.

With mere minutes remaining in the last period, a tie game remained. Both teams were empty, and Pratt and Aries had slashed their trusty, worn, old-replicated hockey sticks. They were skating hard along with the rink up and down back and forth. The small rink offered enough to make countering circles of passing and relevant if wild gameplay for Hockey on the tiny little pond. Both Victoria and Brandon’s sticks cracked. Slashing and high sticking down the pond. Breaking all kinds of rules as they tussled forward and with each other for the puck along for a scoring chance.

The net was mere feet away from a good shot as both tangled with sticks only to have the time run out! The lights on the ice turned from white to a bright red as the alarms flashed a tie game. A 1-1 game. An irrelevant void!

Brandon and Victoria are unable to stop their forward momentum, entangled. Victoria falls to the ice trapped with Brandon’s stick, bringing Pratt along with her into the net.

"Okay, you can get off me now." Victoria muttered from where her face was mashed into the netting. It was a few seconds before the pressure eased and she was able to extricate herself, pounding a fist into the ice as she backed out of it, "I had you. I HAD you!" She barked at him, "And the refs weren't about to call an interference and award me a penalty shot, were they? OF course not." She glanced at the closest one and glared at him as she got back to her skates, "Overtime, or straight to penalty shots?" She demanded, pushing off and away from Brandon, emotions running high, but she wasn't angry with him, just at the situation.

Brandon nodded and then sniffed behind his visor and coughed. Pratt’s hazel brown eyes laser-like locked in in Victoria. “You know. If I win, do you have to follow through with this? Are you sure? I will not be easy on you, Vic.” Brandon knew Victoria was a good player, a hearty player.

"I don't want you to be easy on me." Victoria flexed her stick against the ice, then tapped it against the boards, "If I'd wanted you to go easy on me I'd flash you and then zip around you as you stared at my tits." She flashed him a wicked smile that was marred by her mouth protector.

Of course, he enjoyed every aspect of this display out on the pond. It was on equal footing and not in his very department if it was at least on the holodeck. “At least this time…” Brandon had circled and ended up at the ice center. “You’ll know where you stand on and off the ice in my department.” He popped on his chewing bubble gum and blew a snap. Brandon had been riled up with the scuffles with the other players and Victoria on the ice. Not so much Victoria, but more competition-wise in the end.

The battling and scuffling. Yeah, that felt oddly sexual tension charges for Pratt, he felt. As well, his testosterone had been mixing. His body became charged evermore with a burst of pure adrenaline and energy.

He slapped his large puffy hockey gloves hard on top of his helmet as he chewed on his bubble gum, breathing inward and sniffling as it was cold. Pratt chewed, his cheeks red and out from the gameplay and the scuffling outdoors.

He liked the chewing feeling as he played his game. Not Victoria’s. Never her game! Aries couldn’t possibly understand it nor respect its gameplay. Respect its athleticism for it as much as he could. “No, it cannot be Victoria. Definitely, not.” Brandon mumbled to himself grumpily. The hulking often teddy bear, now agitated.

She'd turned and was skating backwards slowly as she watched him, trying to gauge what he was planning on doing. A centerman defending the net she was no defenseman, definitively not a goalie, so there was going to be a challenge defending this. She caught his look, "What? What're you staring at?"

“Nothing, nothing. Just get to the net already!” Pratt beamed a look and slapped the ice downward with the bunt of his hockey stick, making noise to “hurry up Vic! Hurry up, Vic!” He chanted loudly, deep from his throat, bellowing loud as he could. After a moment, both their eyes locked. Victoria was in the net, and she had indicated she was ready.

Like a Jigsaw back and forth, making his formation along with the hardtop. Pratt power, gaining ice momentum; hard is Pratt’s face muscles, his jaws clenched. His calculations of Victoria’s coverage to the circumference around her goalie net. Too and thro like pistons, Brandon charged downward the rink. Reno was in the net, Pratt quickly hitting ‘left post’ along in his skating, setting a confusing puck, saving enough space between him and any spots in between for his left-hand slapshot execution on Victoria.

Any thoughts of her as being a date had passed at this point. She had wanted to play hard and down! Pratt was going to play rough.

Laser eyeing as Brandon sent the puck upstairs, forward net facing left side above her.

Her stick flew up, her eyes tracking the puck as she'd backed further into the net, deflecting the puck up and over the net. She grinned in triumph even as her eyes glared at him. Did he expect her to fall for that trick? He'd not even been serious about that shot, and that offended her.

Brandon didn’t say anything as he skated onward and circled, his eyes watching as Victoria had looked thoroughly angered and looked burning now more than ever.

Victoria gathered the puck from where it had settled down behind the net and slowly began to bring it back up to the red line before starting to take a wide stretch of a wide turn, watching as he settled into the net. She really was a one-trick pony when it came to playing, but shootouts were one of her strengths and she switched from forward skating to backwards while keeping the puck dragging forwards, stickhandling.

Pratt slides up to the hockey net. Not personally the best Goalie. But he had figured he would be well enough to try and guard his shootout and own net goalie techniques he had developed and learned from his athletic coaches, friends, and league.

Easing back into the net, as he eyed back toward was the red net line, the coveted gate of a bragger. Edging his large black and silver blades back and forth, giving a bit of a kick, Brandon had hunkered into a spot crouched halfway in the net. Brandon slapped his right-hand goalie stick downward, getting a sliding and blocking feel. Every catch, every ice had its sense. Folding forward to knee pad block and repeated as he warmed, he eyed ahead.

The following played out as perfect windows of light. Seeing Victoria skate forward, her head focused ahead, unable to see her face totally, as Pratt began to entrench himself into his net position, unsure of what she would do, take and or pull off her goal?

Victoria is sliding forward, the bunt of her stick zigzagging and momentum, picking up along the short career. Down the ice, Brandon at the other end, moments ahead… Victoria mentally takes the notes of her game in her head as she practices showing her vulnerable side on her left as she urges more attention, mocking a left net landing.

Brandon is blocking forward with his knee pads and realizing the skating pattern.

She picked up speed once she finally committed to her path, bringing the puck up through her legs from her backhand to her forehand and flicking it with a deceptive shot towards the off-side from the tip of her stick.

Pratt’s larger goalie glove eases into a right-side attack block, leaning as his long, tall frame stretches along as the black puck gets power shot into Victoria’s aim on, but the glove readying to the right place.

Victoria sees Pratt off the second center puck drop of Pratt’s shoot-out between him and Aries. This time Brandon decides to keep it short and quick.

Brandon exploits Victoria and her confidence to overuse her body's ability to exercise, stretch itself, and be an Olympic rhythmic dancer. Yet, using the seam at the right of Vic’s net, getting into a dangerous scoring position as Pratt saunters along too and thro walking the puck down the middle of the ice. Pratt’s ordinary skill for the power play in him, going to the net for a screen, tip, and scoring on Victoria.

Victoria almost got a stick on it, but the pick had come in quickly, lighting up the lamp behind her and she slapped her stick hard against the ice in frustration, the blade snapping off and ricocheting away from the force of it, "Dammit! Fine, fine, you win." She skated around the net holding the shaft of her stick before tossing it away, "Fair and square." She narrowed her eyes at him, then pulled her jersey over her head and tossed it to the side even as she started to undo her pads, "Well, a bet is a bet."

Pratt simply shook his head as he placed his hands at his waist. "Cummon. Vic. Don't be stupid. I said. It's alright. We were just two hockey jocks getting play in. Cummon..." Brandon didn't want to see this happen. Victoria was better than this, and she deserved to be treated like an officer.

"Don't make me, have to make this an order Aries." He growled. Not happy that Victoria was one to always push the button.

"Computer, remove holographic players." Victoria commanded, discarding the pads to the side, leaving her in her lower set of pads and a t-shirt, eyes locked on Brandon's own, defiantly because her blood was up from the competition. Hockey did do this to her, adrenaline coursing through her system and she glided forward and poked him in his heavily padded chest, "You're the one who wanted the bet, you think if I'd scored I wouldn't enjoy the view?" She shook her head without breaking eye contact, pushing him backwards with the pressure, "But if you want to make it an order, Lieutenant," She snarled the rank at him, "Then you don't get to take me to dinner later. Or, Brandon," Her voice grew softer, making it obvious which way she wanted him to choose, "You can give me a good reason not to follow through on a bet for the first time in my life."


Pratt was confused. He was beside himself. “Hunh?” The reply sounded unsure. “Victoria. Look. Whatever you want, hun. I want to make you happy.”

This was the problem. He never understood women, and how finicky and cantankerous they could be. If this were just a buddy, well. They’d easily just say fuck it, and not do it then. But Victoria. “I don’t want you to take this personally. I.. never meant to make you angry Vic.” Brandon’s eyes searched for a reason why she didn’t see it ok to let it go? It was only a skirmish game; he didn’t naturally expect Victoria to expose herself.

She still glared at him for a few moments, then skated a very tight circle first one way, then the other, "I always take hockey seriously, Perhaps I get a bit worked up over it, go a bit overboard." Victoria waved an ungloved hand, "Look, I need a shower and to get back into something more comfortable. Grab one yourself and maybe if you feed the hungry beast, she'll settle down a bit. A nice... Hot... Shower."

Brandon lent a nod and relaxed as he played with the puck and sent it to the end of the rink. Pratt then eased himself to the bench and un-tied his large laces on his skates. Walking off into the snow catching up alongside Victoria…

To Be Continued in Part Three

A Post by Lieutenant Brandon Pratt
and Senior Chief Petty Officer Victoria Aries

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