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Anabel frowned. "That's messed up, buddy," she said, but--to be honest, she was more afraid of the monsters and whatever the mirror wraiths were. They couldn't be reasoned with, and Anabel could reason with the best of them if given the inspiration to. Having someone trying to actively kill her was definitely inspiration. She chewed her thumbnail, watching someone settle in with their back to a wall. At least no one was trying the most proactive way of catching their opponent.

"That's probably a risk of the war, anyway," she said. "Like, Babylon and Europa both say Chaos can't be reasoned with."

And then the round ended, and people were flooding back in. "You went so fast, Horatio," said Anabel seriously. "I didn't see you get tagged even once." Maybe the other cats were going easy on the kitten? But… somehow… Anabel doubted it. All cats were rewarded with careful behind-the-ear scritches. "If I'd known there would be cats, I would've brought cat treats too," she said, a little embarrassed. "Can I give you guys an IOU?"

---

"I was hiding in one of the tight turns on the top level," said Elke, a little red in the face at his compliment. "At least our scores are pretty even?" It looked like Chris had shot more than she'd been hit, though… looked like pushups were in someone's very near future. The others were still filing out, so it looked like everyone had a minute or two to get settled in and get something to drink. Elke sidled over to the water coolers set up on the snack bar and poured out a cup for Chris and a cup for herself.

She shrugged uncomfortably at the talk of education. "The only reason I graduated high school was because my mother sent me to a boarding school in Switzerland," she said. "And I didn't dare henshin up, because… you know, six years of this, but I was never alone, so..." because henshining up where no one could help you was a really stupid move? She'd learned that herself, as one of the first twenty senshi to awaken. Of course, having an entire Court at her back hadn't helped her…

No, she wasn't going to think about that. "I speak Mandarin, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Persian Farsi," she said. "It is a gift." 'Gift' was the right term for it, probably the only term for it. It wasn't like she'd done anything to earn her uncanny facility with language. What she really wanted here, she thought, was a subject change. And he'd provided one ever-so-neatly.

"I thought America had abolished mandatory military service," she said. Why talk about her? Elke was boring. "So I suppose you're talking about a different sort of draft?"

---

"Alright, good job everyone," said Kaatje, "except you, Mr. Gallo, you of the shooting people not your teammate. You get pushups. Twenty of them, please, right here." She pointed to a relatively clear area within her line of vision. "The rest of you, good job! Part of the responsibility we hold as superpowered combatants in a war for what is basically the soul of our world is knowing who our target is. We've got the metaphorical guns. Civilians don't. So, the burden for keeping them alive is on us. When we choose to prioritize something else above the survival of those who can't defend themselves, we have to do it in full knowledge of what we're trying to do."

She cracked her knuckles, and said, "So, now we move into the second precept of active combat: Understand First. This is a little more noodly than just seeing first. It's important to get the drop on your enemy, but it's also important that you know what to do with the information you gain. If you're a Page or a Scout and you come up against a General, you need to get away or call for help, not try to strike up a conversation." At this, Kaatje went dead serious.

"The Negaverse is not your friend. The Dark Mirror is not your friend. Their end goals are nothing more complicated than your death or your corruption. If you approach them offering an hand in friendship, you are much more likely to get your hand chopped off than grasped in welcome." She took a deep breath through her nose, exhaled through her mouth. It calmed her shaking, a little. The thought of any of her wingmen being so ******** stupid as to try to befriend a Negaverser or Dark Mirror senshi was as terrifying as it was rage-inducing. "They are not allies. They can never be allies. This is not up for debate; this is fact."

Kaatje took another deep breath. "Though, there are Negaversers and Dark Mirror senshi who are generally nonviolent and safe to engage. So! For this exercise, I am going to mark you with a different color chalk when you walk through the door into the arena. It will wash out with a wet paper towel, so don't worry about your clothes. I checked." She ducked down into the bucket of chalk by her feet, and held up one stop-sign red and one lime-green chalk piece. "Red means you are dangerous. You will have a laser gun. Green means you are not dangerous, and you won't be armed. You and your partner will work together to avoid red-marked pairs. There is no penalty for failing to evade them, other than possibly getting shot, and me giggling merrily. Red pairs may, of course, shoot other red pairs; they have to avoid them, too. For the best advantage, you will communicate silently. Near the entrance, there are pamphlets sharing tactical hand signals."

She opened the door to the ready room. "Let's get started. You get five minutes to review the book. Then… Thirty minutes on the clock, all lights on."

At least this time there was music. Last time had been way too eerie.



Please look in the spoiler to see the color for your team. NOTE: One half of a pair can be found, while the other manages to hide. This is how we're explaining disparate scores between same-team groups.

For this round, please roll 1 10-sided die! Points go as follows:
1-3: Whether bad luck or bad communications, you got spotted by a lot of red pairs. Like, all of them.
4-7: You didn't do too bad! You avoided most of the red pairs, with the exception of like, one or two.
8-10: Whether great luck or great communications, if you got spotted by anyone with a red mark you managed to get away fast enough to avoid getting shot. Nice!

The next post will go up on May 17th! Remember, if your stat is Teamwork, you're getting one point for this round. If your stat is Wisdom, you're taking three points!

Cats, you are continuing to play tag! Your rules are here.



You may continue to roll for the round immediately preceding the current one. So, no more warmup round rolls! (This is to make records-keeping easier on me.) Thank you!

Talia had exchanged polite introductions with her partner, warmed up and undergone the first challenge adaquately. Lucky for her it was a stealth mission- she could stay perfectly out of sight and succeed completely.

She hid a smile as one of the other "recruits" was forced into pushups. She was thankful that wasn't her!

When Kaatje approached her with the chalk, Talia's face scrunched up in disgust. "Um, that color reaaaally doesn't go with these shoes, so if you could just-"

No care was taken as the girl marked her with an ugly red color, completely clashing with the very cute cream outfit she'd set out for today. Well now Talia was mad. When she was mad, Talia could do ANYTHING.

Including shooting down nearly every person she saw in sight, and avoiding all shots her way. A marred, unfashionable Talia was one that wasn't to be trifled with. "Mary you better get revenge for my shoes too!"

Ash all but preened when the young woman sent the others off to play tag, leaving her behind to monopolize her affections and perhaps get to play with some lovely tech. Green eyes watched the little cream cat rush off, but she felt no inclination at all to join her. Rushing about like that... Ash enjoyed her freedom to move about as she pleased, but she preferred to do it at a far more leisurely pace. Rushing led to getting dirty, which was just not an option.

Standing, the silver cat padded over to Anabel to settle beside her looking outwards, sitting neatly and letting a purr rumble in her throat.

"Oh, don't worry about cat treats, Darling." She said dismissively, flicking her tail behind her. "I don't really care for them all that much. Now, give me a package of pocky, and I am one contented kitty." A bit of a giggle broke from her at that and her purr rumbled deeper.

Arian had mentally filed away the name Buyan as they had pretty much been moving into the warm up stage so there hadn't been more time to do much of anything else but in the small moments where he and Buyan were waiting for everyone to file back out of the arena he said "By the way, I meant to ask earlier - but do you know of a Neptune Knight called Nysa by any chance?" Although it had been a while since Arian had seen the elegant turquoise-haired Knight had been one the first Knights that he, or rather Athene had met. They had even ended up being part of Polaris' Celestial Shepherds together.

Once everyone was out of the arena, Arian was relieved that he didn't have to do extra push ups although he felt a little sorry for Chris who appeared to have been the only person to accidentally shoot someone who was not their partner. He couldn't help but nod when Kaatje had mentioned that Pages and Scouts who had the bad fortune to come across a Nega-General needed to get away or call for help, it being something that he agreed with, although he had looked solemn when she had moved to talk about Nega-offices and the Dark Mirror.

It wasn't because of the 'not being friends part', because he had been around long enough that it would have been hard not to get that part, however he wasn't so sure about the part about engaging non-violent Dark Mirror senshi and Nega-officers just because they were non-violent. It was one thing to intervene and put a stop to whatever they were doing if they were hurting people and/ or causing trouble - Arian, as Athene didn't have a problem with that and tried his best to do that anyway, however he didn't think that he would be able to personally attack someone for the simple reason that their aura indicated that they stood on the opposite side of a war that he had never signed up for. He kept his thoughts to himself however.

Then he realised that Kaatje was announcing the next exercise and he made note of the mentioned pamphlets on hand signals, moving to snag one for him and Alexis to look over after Kaatje told them to get started. Five minutes didn't feel awfully long, but Arian thought he managed to get a few of the gestures down. All too soon however it felt like it was time to go back in and their colour markings.

He hadn't been too sure about being designated red, since he remembered that red meant that they were supposed to be dangerous and could shoot and be shot at, however he didn't think he did too badly once in - at least it felt to him like it went better than the previous exercise had, particularly in the avoiding being shot aspect.



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"I'm not a fan of cat treats" Liryn admitted. Actually he wasn't a fan of cat food period. "I love fish though, real fish." In fact he was particularly partial to prawn or a nice bit of salmon. He tilted his head and purred as Anabel scritched behind his ears just right, scritches being another thing he was particularly fond of before adding "Those potato chips from earlier looked interesting though."

It looked like they got to play tag some more and Liryn scampered back in with a cheerful "Catch me if you can" to Snowball and Horatio once the arena door opened up again. He had the hang of the game now and thought that the second time round definitely went better than his first attempt.

Eliza

Chris scored an 8!

“Wait really?” Chris nearly sputtered, staring at Kaatje incredulously for a few moments before drawing in a breath and shrugging as he pushed himself away from the wall where he rested. Out of everyone, he was the only person to manage to shoot someone else? At first he tried looking around for some kind of score board or something that would prove that be the case — yeah, he’d told Elke that he was horrible at the game, but he thought he’d been exaggerating. Apparently not.

“Hubby-what? Well, I guess I’ll just have to score better later tonight,” he said, shooting Paris a teasing grin after she finished with her peck, then lowered himself to the ground to do his pushups. “No kidding,” he grunted at Paris’s observation in regards to their drill sergeant, pausing at the top of a push-up to frown. “No way in hell are you calling me ‘mister’. And what if you didn’t take my last name? I could have had a completely different last name than you!” Or maybe he just liked to grump.

Regardless, he finished his push-ups and even indulged Paris with a couple one-handed push-ups when he hoped no one else was watching, before getting back to his feet and taking his place beside his partner. He didn’t know why she seemed so nervous and uncomfortable about their previous topics, but he tried not to let her know he noticed. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with whatever she had to do, although he thought it kind of silly to keep track of how long they were doing this… Then again, he often forgot important holidays, so he wasn’t really a good person to ask on the subject.

“Baseball,” he continued their conversation once they’d managed to get out of the next round without being hit (to his knowledge). “Sorry, I’m so used to talking about it, I forget it’s not all that common. I’ve been pitching for DCU for the past four years… I’m hoping to get into the Majors one day…” But leaving the city, and those in it, was going to be difficult.

“You know Finn?” he glanced at her in surprise, before figuring it wasn’t all that surprising. “I’m sure he’s fine,” he said confidently, glancing up at the scoreboard he hadn’t noticed until now. “Not bad, you guys,” he called over to Paris and Lily, impressed with their scores, before turning back to Elke. “And if he ends up with any points, it’s probably because he’s jumped in front of someone else getting hit,” he suggested with a small shrug, before taking a step towards the other team. “Have you met Paris and Lily before? Paris, Lily, this is my partner, Elke,” he gestured, figuring the more people who knew each other the better.

Finn thought he and Maggie did pretty well, all things considered! He lost sight of her a few times and got caught as a result, but on the whole... well, it was a big improvement over his performance on the warm-up and the first round, so what position was he in to complain, really?