"Hey, who let the kites on?" one of the other mascots had said a few minutes ago - it was hard to tell who with the heads muffling everyone's voices.
Corrie looked over to see a group of people clustered at the other end of the pitch, each of them clutching - were those kites? Some of them looked awfully weird and non-kite-shaped. Freddie the Falcon, who was unofficially in charge of today's practice, cocked his head the same direction to see out his costume as best he could, and after a moment spoke up: "Oh, right. Pitch manager said there was some kind of meeting here today, a club or something, wouldn't get in our way. Sorry, it slipped my mind."
Some of the mascots grumbled at that on a variety of subjects - they liked to keep their routines secret before using them, they'd been hoping to take their heads off for a bit of a breather, did a club being there make it a public gathering and if so were they allowed to be talking right now, why couldn't these kite people find an unoccupied bit of moor in all of Britain, who flew kites on a regular basis anyway. For once, Corrie didn't join in - she was hoping they'd end practice early to avoid the newcomers, but she didn't want Freddie, the oldest and most experienced of the mascots, to think she was just whinging like the rookie she was.
It was Corrie's first offseason as a mascot, not counting last year, which didn't really count as she hadn't officially got the job then. The teams were still training, but a little less often, and right now a handful of the mascots - the ones whose teams were in the European Cup - were still busy traveling about with the team, showing up at photo ops, things like that. So this time of year the crew liked to get together and practice all at once, helping each other out with routines. It was only the third time they'd met like that this year, and it was helping her a lot, but it was sunny out and hotter inside the costumes than for people just dressed normally.
So basically, wanting to end early was just whinging, well, that and wanting to hurry on to the showers and then the muggle pub where they all liked to meet after their "aerobics class". She was looking forward to a bit of relaxation after working yesterday's festival. But no luck - Freddie held up a wing to stop the complaints and said, "Fine, if you're going to be a lot of babies about it-"
"Wah," and Herpes.
"-then take ten - okay, fifteen and we'll get back here for a pow-wow, less pushups and more brainstorming, eh?"
The mascots agreed, and split off in all directions with good grace, some heading back to the locker room to take off their heads, some going for a drink of water. Corrie stayed on the pitch and parked herself on the edge of the grass, watching the club. The kites were kind of cool once you saw them in the air, really. One of the kite-people, who didn't have theirs in the air yet, was heading her way. There was something odd about them, but she couldn't put her finger/paw on it.