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Erytheia had watched the wild card round from a distance.

He had signed up for this competition, but now that he was seeing the competitors, he was having second thoughts. He had never actually tried arm wrestling before and wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to now.

The knight had already signed on with Cybele. He couldn’t back out now. Besides, it was friendly competition, right?

That still didn’t calm the pit in his stomach when he sat across from Anser. The senshi seemed so confident. Erytheia tried to reflect some of that energy back, but it was clear he was nervous.

“Erytheia of Cosmos. I’m ready.”

He locked hands with the senshi and hoped for the best.


✪

Eternal Sailor Puck

Grinning at the mischievous gleam in Tjilaki's eyes, Puck clasped his hand around hers...

And found his arm pinned to the stone table without so much as a blink from the other Senshi.

Puck stared at her in utter astonishment. "Well done, luv," he finally managed, a wry smile crossing his face. "Well done indeed. You better serve it to your opponent in the next round, yeah? I'll be cheering you on."

With that, he changed his grip to a handshake and stood, then wandered off to the sideline where a few others, including one of those deep space Senshi, stood watching. He may have lost, but he was still determined to have fun!

Knight Tanais of Mars

The wide-eyed expression the other knight had given her might have swollen her head, just a little, and boosted her already robust confidence in her own skills. Pushing her knuckles to the table and the match was over, unfortunately taking her away to make room for the next opponent. Tanais sent her off with another broad grin and a little salute. Maybe they'd get a chance to chat sometime and exchange names for real, rather than just listed on a board. Always good to know people, yeah? Especially pretty girls.

Cheering from the sidelines filling her ears, Tanais turned towards the woman sliding into the vacated seat and offering up a lovely arm. This one glowed, nearly distracting her from the pair of big blue eyes... and tiny hat. The knights grin gained teeth as she clasped hands with her, making just a little bit of a show of wrapping her fingers in a tight grip.

"As you wish, Lovely. As long as you do the same! I do like a challenge." She laughed.

That laugh faded as the pair set to and the strength in the slim figure across from her turned out to be far more than she was expected. Smile turning into a grimace of concentration, dark brows knitting together, she strained against the pressure until she felt her own hand hitting the surface under the them. This time, the laugh was far less flirty and far more surprised... and pleased.

"Nice work!" Tanais said as she offered her hand again, this time to shake. "I should be grumpy I lost, but how can I be mad when I lost to a pretty woman? It was a pleasure."

Chibi Senshi Fragaria // Senshi of Strawberries

Today had already started out as a disapointment for her. Fragaria couldn't believe how badly she did in the hunt. It was like she was a newbie, she knew after that she needed to practice. Since her technique just wasn't right. It wasn't like when she gamed she never seemed to miss a single shot in destiny or call of duty.

She was quickly awoken from her strategy thinking, when she heard her name called. She quickly walked over towards her place a took her seat. That was when she was surprised to see a girl around her age. Another chibi! Which was a first for her. Not at all what she expected.

"Nice to met ya! I'm Fragaria," she said with a smile. She had to think for a moment, but really her parents only had one rule. She couldn't meet strangers online without her manager. Since she was a pretty popular gamer, she knew she had to be cautious. Other than that though, her parents didn't really check on her much. They were great parents, but they gave her her space. Which when you game like she does, she definitely needed.

"My parents actually don't know, but it sounds like you have some nice daddies. They worry about you which is important," she said kindly. "Well I wish you luck, but I will say I don't go easy. I look tougher than I am." She meant that in the kindest way possible. She just didn't believe anyone should take it easy on someone. Didn't really make it a fair game in her opinion. She quickly readied herself

BiggerinTexas

(Basic) Sailor Farbauti [spectating]

Farbauti……sort of didn’t know what he was doing here?

Well, no, that wasn’t completely fair. He knew that he’d had today off work. He knew that he’d gone and done the grocery shopping—something that he, as Vanya, didn’t usually quite bother with, but……well. That had been before he’d acquired a roommate. Despite the fact that Vanya got a pretty wide and healthy variety of food in the neglected, forgotten, or refused orders that he got to take home from Nagisa’s, Winston……didn’t seem as easily satisfied as Vanya was. With, like, anything. Ever.

Not that he was chipping in to buy the extra food that they apparently needed.…… Getting upset with him probably wasn’t fair, when Winston hadn’t even been on Earth for a whole month yet, and he’d needed to let his ankle heal from the injury he’d sustained when he’d landed.…… But at the same time, Farbauti had offered Winston a place to stay under the assumption that they might mutually respect each other as senshi. Just as they could give Winston a human glamour, the Mauvians could hook him up with a fake human identity so he could work. Vanya knew they could do that, because Soren, who was also Daedalus, had a normal human job. And Winston’s ankle wasn’t messed up anymore, so……???

Instead, Winston had taken over Vanya’s bed. Without even asking if it had belonged to anyone, much less to Vanya himself. Vanya had been sleeping on the futon since he’d brought Winston home. In the apartment that he paid rent on, where he was currently the only person bringing in money.

………On reflection, Farbauti felt like maybe it was fair that he’d needed to get out for a while.

Going to the Crystal Hearts Gallery with Taiki had been nice? Really, really nice, actually. Most things with Taiki were really, really nice in a way that Vanya wished he could have enjoyed more but also instinctively distrusted because there was no way that it could last. Things this nice did not happen to Vanya, nor did they stay in his life for very long, and he couldn’t let himself get too used to them because sooner or later, everything would come crashing down and they would go away.…… The Crystal Hearts Gallery date had also been a week ago by now, though, and the indications of Things going on that had led Farbauti to follow a princess he’d never met all the way to this place (apparently called Cybele)? They’d been too exciting to resist.

Watching from the sidelines of the arm-wrestling, he recognized………almost nobody, honestly. Kaifeng and Helene, he knew because Muri had talked them into helping Farbauti get Achird back to the apartment so that they could power down and nobody’s secret identity needed to be compromised while Muri was still working on leaving the Dark Mirror Court.…… Farbauti probably needed to leave them alone, right? Aside from how both halves of that couple seemed very busy with their arm-wrestling matches, the fact that Farbauti and Helene were both the senshi of Saturnian moons didn’t, like, mean anything? Maybe Farbauti kinda wanted it to? But he didn’t even know what it would have meant, or could have meant, and anyway, Helene and his Squire had better things to do, yeah?

………Yeah, that made the most sense.

Most of the others present, though, Farbauti couldn’t have named if his life had depended on it. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to meet them, either. Several of them were already Eternal senshi or full Knights, and plenty had similar glowing marks to the ones that Taiki bore as Aokigahara, meaning they were Transcended. That was nice for them, and offhand, Farbauti could imagine some of the others he knew joining those ranks someday: Fang, probably (Farbauti didn’t know how Transcendence worked, but whenever he thought about what a senshi was supposed to be like, he thought about Fang being so brave and selfless, so it only made sense, in Farbauti’s mind, for Fang to someday get the shiny, glowy special thing); Muri, once he stopped being with Chaos (again, everything Muri seemed to do as a senshi struck Farbauti as aspirational on a level he could never hope to achieve, and Muri would probably be one hell of a senshi and dazzling everybody left and right in due time); Asmodeus, whom Farbauti hadn’t seen in a while and didn’t want to bother or annoy or anything, but she’d still saved him, that night with the one Negaverse lady who’d wanted to starseed him, and that meant something to Farbauti………

Those glowing marks probably meant the assorted Eternal senshi and Knights who had them were too cool and too important for Farbauti to go bother, though. Best to stay away from them, and to watch from the sidelines while knowing he would never be anything like them. Having a magical destiny starseed clearly didn’t make him special—the sheer number of senshi present seemed to undermine the very idea of any individual senshi being inherently special—and it wasn’t as if Farbauti brought anything unique or important to any hypothetical table.

……Oh, but he did recognize somebody else.

Farbauti didn’t know her name, and he hadn’t seen her since the sleep-center battle? But it was hard to mistake somebody who had to be nearly seven feet tall, with Marge Simpson blue hair and Minion-yellow skin (Grieve).…… He glanced back at the arm-wrestling competitors, and at Helene, whose match with some green-haired senshi (Ametkhan) sure did seem to be going? Maybe Farbauti could have waited and then just……gone to cling at someone he’d met before, who may not have been the nicest person and sort of seemed to rely on Kaifeng as a social buffer? But Farbauti knew with a reasonable degree of certainty that Helene was a good person who wouldn’t, like, throw him off a roof for funs or anything?

……But Farbauti also didn’t want to press his luck by imposing on Helene too much. So, he slunk off instead toward the enormous, yellow senshi.…… Someone else seemed to be having a similar idea (Puck), but……? That was okay, maybe? The guy looked like he’d slept on the floor of an old-growth forest the night before, and while he had the lower-back wings of an eternal senshi, he lacked the transcended markings that made so many of the others present feel so intimidating. Maybe things would be fine? With the new people?? And meeting them???

As Farbauti sidled up next to the very tall, alien senshi, Farbauti instinctively bowed his head and let his shoulders hunch in around him.…… Should he say something first? Or wait for her to address him if she decided he deserved that? What if there was some kind of social custom or other on her planet that she was used to and he didn’t know it??

“………Hi?” Farbauti willed himself to say it, but could not will himself to do so with his whole chest. If he sounded timid, well, there was a reason for that, and it was that everything scared him. As if this gesture could protect him from anything, Farbauti crossed one arm over his chest and rubbed at the other one’s elbow.…… Please, he wanted this to not go terribly??

Squire Halle of Lysithea

"My butt was not kicked," Halle corrected from behind Almere. "It was a respectable loss." Still, he called out to Mechelen, "C'mon! Just try and show me up!"

Dering, Squire of Lysithea

“No,” Dering insisted quickly, and withdrew his arm. He rubbed at his wrist instinctively, not because it hurt but because in the face of nervousness he was prone to fidget. “Please don’t apologize! You deserve your win! I know I’m not really good at these things, I don’t know if I’ve ever actually arm wrestled anyone before today. But I’ll try to get better for next time.”

He smiled again, hopefully in such a way that he could convince her that it really was okay!

The pressure was off of him, and suddenly he felt like he could breathe again. He wasn’t embarrassed to have lost to her, and his shoulders even relaxed. “It was really nice to meet you, Perdita. I hope we run into each other again sometime!”

He rose from his seat, a little eager to disappear into the crowd. “Good luck in your next round!”

He might have lost, but it looked like Reims had won his round, so he could still cheer for him! And Perdita!

Dumuzi, Page of Pluto

This was going to be ******** easy.

Dumuzi was known for an overconfident way of looking at a lot of feats of physicality. He had a lot of reason behind that, of course. His own record as a civilian tended to factor into what he was able to do as a knight, even as a page, he figured. For one, he discovered really quickly just how quick being a page made him in addition to his natural speed. When Richtersveld tried to keep him in sight for just a normal patrol where she was watching over him too tight, he was gone within a second.

Or at least, what felt like a second. It probably didn't help that Richtersveld didn't go running well, ever, he would give her that. At least Nemyi would sometimes try to join him for a jog, but there was still only so much they could do against someone who literally ran as a professional sport.

And now he had these powers on top of it?

He guessed this wasn't about a race. This wasn't like He-Man, where he had to get over ... over ... over ... damn, what was the word his sibling would use? Something about cucumbers, right? Cumbering? He didn't know, but whatever. He told himself that the reason why he ended up losing that. He refused to think it was anything else at this point. Did he really lose to a knight or a cat? No. It was because he had to make sure a snake that was all angry or whatever didn't try biting someone else's puppy. Probably important to make sure that didn't happen, right?

Anyway, not important.

The fact that he was able to haul all of that around was just proof of his strength, and that was just the recent start to all of it. He still went to the gym to work on his fitness. Still regularly lifted weights. Still regularly hauled heavy things around. And while he wasn't a bodybuilder, being able to run around at his height and weight still required a considerable amount of strength behind it.

It resulted in him strolling up to the table with a smirk and a sway that belonged to someone who knew he had already won. Because he had. How could he lose? How could he lose against someone else at a physical competition again? Especially since this time he was powered, and that he hadn't decided to not be powered up unlike nearly everyone else there? Now he was on the same level as everyone else. And that meant that the power ... dis ... differential that his sister reminded him existed was no longer relevant. He was adjusted to who he was except with some plutonian magic or whatever the hell. Not that he had magic yet. His sister did.

Lucky--

Katerini seemed determined to not lose, which was cute. He flexed a bit to show how muscular he was in comparison, a reflection of his overconfidence coming right to the top. It was perhaps unfortunate for him that he was so confident that he would win that her trying as hard as she did against him and somehow besting him was almost certain from the start.

It flustered him, angered him, and he ended up stomping away versus being angry at some woman who didn't even know him.