Pep Rally

It's pep rally day at Roseville Middle School, and Mike would do almost anything to get out of it. Between a botched escape attempt and a students-versus-teachers volleyball game, the day finally reveals why he dreads these things so much.

Pep Rally
Chapter	11 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	June 16, 2006 (2006-06-16)
Page count	6
Major characters	Mike, Lucy, Daisy, Yashy
Minor characters	Paulo, David, Katie, Sex-Ed Teacher, Flower Girl
Locations	Roseville Middle School
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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Synopsis

Mike notices the cheerleaders wearing their uniforms in the hallway, and Lucy breaks the bad news that today is the pep rally. He begs her to help him escape, but she warns him it won't be as easy as last year and stays put, so he bolts on his own.

Mike's grand exit does not go well, since the staff are on high alert this year. His graceful dive through the double doors lands him in the arms of a waiting Pug teacher, who deposits him back in the bleachers beside Lucy and Yashy.

Yashy asks why pep rallies are such a big deal to him, and the band answers for her — the moment the music hits, the noise physically hurts Mike. He clings to Lucy and screams "MAKE IT STOOOOOOP!!" while Yashy, hearing nothing wrong at all, just yells back at him.

The final event is a students-versus-teachers volleyball match, and Daisy drags the protesting Mike onto the court by his scarf. Lucy declines to join him, so Mike aims for her competitive streak instead, claiming he'll put her to shame out there anyway. It works instantly: "YOU WISH, ASSHOLE!!"

Mike spends the early rallies as a dazed, face-shaped backboard, until he snaps awake and slams a spike into the Pug teacher's face, to Lucy's poorly hidden awe. Once he learns the first team to ten points wins, he smashes out every remaining point single-handedly, landing right next to a blushing Lucy. His reward is a deafening victory fanfare from the band. Lucy then fixes everything by simply asking the musicians to turn it down a little, and they cheerfully oblige. She drags the flattened champion off by his scarf, while he wonders "why.. didn't.. you ask them sooner.."

Mike leaves the court the same way he arrived: by the scarf.

Character dynamics

• Mike and Lucy: Nothing about their status changes here, but the whole push-and-pull is on full display. Lucy refuses to help him escape the rally, then gets baited onto the volleyball court by a single taunt. Her awed "w-wow" at his first spike lasts about one panel before she rules it a lucky shot. All the same, she's the one who notices how much pain he's in, blushes when he lands beside her, and actually rescues him by having a word with the band.

Trivia & observations

• Yashy's little tune in the bleachers, "Too fast for the naked eye~♪", is a lyric from the theme song of the 1990s Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon.
• David's "Taste the rainbow" is the Skittles advertising slogan, repurposed as a dig at Mike.
• Veronica's commentary hails "the debut of the mysterious and wonderful flower girl", and this is indeed Flower Girl's first appearance in the series. David develops a rather intense interest in her come prom season.
• In the original version of the chapter, Lucy was the one who asked Mike what was wrong in the gym. Veronica's commentary explains the rewrite: Lucy has known Mike for years and, being deaf in one ear, would already know about his hearing, so Yashy "gets to be the reader stand-in for now."
• Veronica's commentary on the first volleyball page notes its bold, scribbly look originally came from chalky pencils, a texture she made a point of recreating in the digital remaster.
• Per Veronica's commentary under the final page, the ten-point rampage shows "how bloody good of an athlete" Mike is: "No wonder Lucy always wants to compete and beat him!"
• On Tumblr years later, Veronica named Pep Rally as the chapter she thinks of for Mike and Lucy's "extremely natural intimacy" ("God they're so damn TOUCHY!!!!"), and said she loved how low-key their hanging out is here.

Related chapters

• The Burden of Parenthood: This is the Sex-Ed Teacher's debut chapter, where her unhinged sex-panic persona was established. Her lunging at the volleyball net here assumes you've already met her.
• Show and Tell: Lucy's partial deafness gets spelled out in this one ("deafness runs in the family"). It's the flip side of Mike's oversensitive ears, and the detail Veronica cites when explaining the gym-scene rewrite.
• Off to the Movies: The chapter right after this one picks the brand-new noise problem straight back up, with Mike wincing "Oww.. too loud.." at Daisy's shriek.
• A Different Side: The high-school pep rally that mirrors this one. Mike's friends taunt him about pep rallies again, he suffers in the stands beside Lucy again, and Daisy cheerleads again.