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Ice. Dancing. Gerbils? Just the sound of it was too cute to imagine, then once Fellah made his way to the rink and saw all the adorable critters, he just didn't know what to do with himself. He for sure had to get one for himself some day, they'd do great out on the farm. Maybe he could even train them to help with the harvest.

Excited to watch the adorable things wriggle around out on the ice, the redblood quickly filled out the forms, and picking a pair that he thought would do well. They had a certain dynamic that the redblood thought would really work well when paired together. Plus the way their names rolled off the tongue together was a bonus too. He was confident in Ginger and Jazzercise, no matter the outcome he would still wish he could bring the darling things home.
After making his decision, he sat down on the sidelines with the two gerbils, watching them and trying to encourage them to get along since he'd be having them work together for the duration of the festival. He hoped that they would play off of each others strengths and weaknesses enough to earn some solid points.



Later on in the night, Fellah caught wind of some buzz over tracking a winterbeast. While perhaps not the most seasoned explorer, the redblood did get out quite a bit while searching for new crops to cultivate.
Who could say if anything would come of the adventure, none the less it was worth a shot!
Luckily for the redblood, he came to Bloodfest with his trusty wagon and PapaBuff, lazily grazing at some grass on the outskirts of the event. "Hey Papabuff, ready for an adventure? They say there's a winterbeast out there somewhere. Got an idea of where to head, shouldn't be too rough for ya." Fellah said, hitching up his lusus to the wagon, while making sure he had enough supplies. He never left the hive without a good supply of produce and breads.
As soon as everything was secured and ready, Fellah and Papabuff tore off towards a little area on the map marked "F 7." It may not be the most glamorous looking area, but working on the farm one learns that some of the best harvests come from the most meager looking crops.
Used to plains and flatlands, Fellah hoped they wouldn't run into anything that Papabuff couldn't handle. Though if there happened to be some cliffs or rock face, the redblood had dealt with that in the past. He just never much liked leaving his lusus too far behind.

Kolako had always wanted gerbils since the moment she'd seen them scuttling around Bloodfest. There was a booth with little figurines Kolako wanted to go to but Papion kept telling her she couldn't because it was too inappropriate?? Which she didn't believe, pff, they were just comfy pillows!! The events looked cool anyways, and-- Oh mi dios, were those gerbils?? She'd only ever heard about the cute things or seen them in billboards by the advertizing companies-- never did shw think she would see one of the fluffy, cuddly things in real life! Papion would normally eat them, but this was a formal event, so he was not about to eat company owned material, yeah? She instantly bounced over Papion carefully stepping afterward, watching his charge as she began to cuddle with a gerbil. They were so soft!! And fragile. And tender? Oh man, no, no, she wasn't Papi, she wouldn't eat them! They were too cute. She quickly picked two of her favorites-- The Milkman and Twinkie Heart. One was adorable and made these big round eyes she fell in love with, and the other was so energetic and happy, it reminded her of herself, a little! They were definitely the cutest ones of the bunch!!

As soon as she heard there'd be a hunting game, Austri jumped at the chance to join and prove her worth, donning her sturdiest yet comfiest camo clothes. The greenblood seemed prepared for anything at this point, and with an eager smile, she was off to investigate!! Austri trekked through the terrible conditions-- Well, not really. Staglebro was bringing her around, complaining about being there, but Austri couldn't care less. If she won this, she'd have medals, the actual beginning of a real life story. Austri sighed dreamily, oh man, this was like a dream come true! She was actually on the way to stardom! "Bro. Bring me here," She demanded, but Staglebro just eyed her a little curiously. She was a devious lil' thing, and whatever she had planned was sure to be interesting and RADICAL-- So he complied to her demands, trotting a little before being thrust into the air, wings wide and powerful. Austri clung tightly to her Lusus, feeling cold winds pulse through her clothing as the rose-- And then, as soon as the spot was found, immediately fall. Staglebro was trying to scare her!! But Austri would not be fooled. As they dove down, the kid simply held on tighter, giggling loudly until the winds grew tender and they slid to a stop directly near the spot. Austri slid off, stumbling slightly before catching herself and standing at attention.

Operation Winterbeast hunt was a go.

It had taken him quite a while to finally decide but Cerpin was certain that he had picked the very best of the bunch now. Two gerbils with very different personalities but they shared one thing in common, they were freaking adorable. He pondered how to get them to work in unison but came up with nothing. The purpleblood would think on the matter as he went through the rest of the booths and be prepared for tomorrow.

He could imagine his team soaring across the ice, leaving all the other gerbil couples behind in the dust. They would twirl in perfect harmony and maybe if he was good enough, he could train the beasts to like... sing or something. Cerpin was a visionary and he would go down in ice dancing gerbil history if he could help it. Perhaps what his gerbils needed to set themselves apart from the rest were a pair of snazzy costumes? There was that weird doll booth, he'd go steal some materials from there after this.

Briefly he wondered if Tevini was going to sign up for this event as well but decided against asking her. After the last booth he'd dragged her to, it might make their relationship even more strained when he totally won and kicked her a**.

Well, this years gerbil-themed event wasn't a huge team effort like Leeroi had anticipated, and it was a weeklong event. If he was the type of troll to think things through he might have noticed this glaring conflict of time earlier. But he wasn't, and now he had a decision to make. He could only pick two gerbils, after all.

Flippy and Showoff were already off the table, being that they had already proven themselves losers in front of everyone. Leeroi was going to take home a prize today, and he wasn't going to take chances. No, he had to go with his best trained gerbils, the ones who listened to his commands the closest. And he had to make sure they were a good duo too, a pair with chemistry. He knew just the two.

"TEAM ROCKET SNAKE" Leeroi cheered, signing up his gerbils. Snake, with his slinky body and Rocket, with his... rockets were sure to be an interesting duo on the ice. He was taking a risk regardless. There was no guaranteeing against mechanical failures, but even without their mechanics, Rocket and Snake were capable little things. They could pull this out for Leeroi and defend his honor.




"What do you think of Bloodfest so far, Krampa?" Stemma asked her lusus, idly swinging her legs as she sat perched on his shoulder. "I think it's quite entertaining, I hope we have time for it all!" She wanted to represent her blood color for the festivities, but she even more desperately wanted some souvenirs to bring back with her. And things felt a little bit safer at this queen-approved event. She didn't feel she had to worry about lowbloods as much as she did on a regular night, with things being more organized and secure. Besides, they were channeling their aggression into the games, now weren't they.

"I think if we're tracking this beast down, we should start at higher ground, so we can get a better survey of the surroundings." Stemma suggested, leaning in with the map to direct Krampa to a spot. "Like this spot right here!" She suggested, pointing out the specific coordinates. Even if it didn't provide any immediately useful information, it was the easiest spot to gather general information from.

Krampa nodded gruffly. "I've got the compass, yeah! I know how to use it too, I asked the lady all sorts of questions to make sure I knew what to do, and that we wouldn't get lost!" Stemma answered, assuring absolute the safety of the event.

Donning her very best moustache, a pair of classy shades, and a beret, Lutrin studied the gerbils before her. They wiggled around the pen, clearly ignorant of the potential fame and fortune that lie just around the corner... or the potential humiliation She gave her moustache a twirl, humming deeply. So many choices... so little time. She pushed up her glasses and cleared her throat.

"If we could have your attenshun pleeze," she said, in a vague and untraceable accent. It might have been offensive if were not so unrecogniseable. "Yes, you over zhere. Mmhm... Come here."

As the gerbil waddled over to her, Lutrin bent down down to inspect. She removed her shades. A second later, she clapped them back on her nose, and made a face. "No, not zis one. You are much too cute!" Before standing up straight again, she gave the rodent a pat on the back. Everyone needed a little bit of love, even if they could not make it as a star.

Suddenly, she let out a scream. Tossing her glasses and beret aside, she rushed to the far end of the pen. "YOU THERE! STOP! IN THE NAME OF THE LAW!!" All the gerbils froze where they stood, tiny bodies trembling. Reaching in, Lutrin gathered up two gerbils she had caught nosing each other. She held them high in the air and proceeded to spin.

"You are the winners!!"

"This sounds fun!" Nucleo exclaimed as he looked over the winterbeast tracking booth. He loved exploring and knew that Amonee, one of his best friends, did too. Perhaps they could do it together! He'd never gone on a long trek with the other boy before so this seemed like the perfect chance to do some bonding! Nevermind that after this he'd have to merge with a clone and lose the memory. At the very least, he'd enjoy it right now in the moment! Looking over the pamphlets of information and map, the greenblood happily packed up some supplies and got to thinking. If he were a winterbeast, what would he require to live... ?

"Let's check out a water source." The boy nodded and linked arms with the jadeblood beside him. Now that he'd decided in his head, he figured Amonee would be on the same wavelength. The two of them didn't see perfectly in sync but had similar opinions on most things. It was kind of nice to have that sort of relationship with another troll beside one of his clones. He didn't want to say it felt more real because his clones were real and an important part of him but... it was kind of nice to have a friend that didn't require his energy to talk with. Leading the way, he scanned around until they came across a body of water.

"What do you think?"

Yamashii

It was weird as s**t that this event was being run by ******** Nummcorp, but Alifax didn't really care about that. This...for once, it was an event that was actually kind of, sort of, practical? Or, well, it proved a practical skill. The closest it'd ever previously come was learning to figure out what clothes in a garbage bin were actually wearable, and generally even Alifax stopped short of that in the real world. He didn't like lingering long in highblood-coded areas, and lowbloods were much more practical about which clothes they actually needed to throw out. Finding useful stuff in the trash required too high an effort to utility ratio. He glanced over the waivers quickly and signed, his handwriting a steady, even scrawl.

Anyway, it was kind of stupid that they just wanted a photo of the winterbeast. What, exactly, did it look like? How would they know when they'd found it?

It didn't even matter. Alifax was mostly in this for the profit.

He'd dressed kind of warmly, in "borrowed" FLARP costumes (hey! Frossa had bought way too many for their booth, considering she'd wanted one for every possible size, or something), and of course he was bringing his meteors. He'd managed to salvage a shitty camera somewhere, too. And of course he had a map.

Those, he knew, were essential. Apparently the company or whatever had already picked out five areas of interest. Okay, he'd head out to that one, he thought, picking one that looked like it was near a trail of some sort. Maybe later he could compare notes with someone - he wasn't picky.

Actually, there wasn't likely to be much information near a trail. But on the other hand, it wasn't like they'd even been given a key for this map. For all he knew, the trail could be a ******** river. He'd find out when he got there, he guessed...?