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yurishippingolympics2024-07-16 11:56 pm
a1c0bb) wrote in yurishippingolympics2024-07-16 11:56 pm
Entry tags:
Competing with her job for her attention
Her ex is more talented, more attractive… competing with (the idea of) her ex and feeling inadequate about it
A character competing with herself - she can always do better, she can always accomplish more, but at what cost?
Who can fall in love faster?
"Mm. Sorry, babe," and Sara Berry pulls away from her boyfriend, hair somehow still perfectly intact: "I'm not really feeling it today."
"Aww," says the boyfriend, leaning back and running his hand through his hair. It has not survived as well as Sara's. "Are you okay, darling? You've been…"
"I'm fine," Sara snaps. The spike in audio makes Julie's headphones buzz with static for a second; instead of pulling them off she leans forward, trying to analyze Sara's expression on the live surveillance camera footage. There was a flash of anger there, Julie's certain, but it's gone as fast as it came. "I mean… I've just been stressed lately, Adam. Sorry. You know how being student representative is."
"If you say so," the boyfriend says reluctantly.
Julie smiles to herself. She knows how being student representative is. She's the only person who tied with Sara on the entrance exam.
"And I definitely have homework to do still," Sara says, biting her lip. "Sorry. I wish I could spend more time with you…"
"It's fine," says the boyfriend. "I get it. Just… let's hang out sometime, yeah? Properly?"
"Of course," Sara says, batting her eyes at him.
Julie leans back while they say their goodbyes and considers the girl on her screen. Sara Berry. Eighteen-year-old girl genius, popular, attractive, loving boyfriend, plus a rich family — well, rich father, anyway. Absolutely and utterly perfect.
Julie has her serial killer. She's sure of it.
The door closes with a click behind Sara; Julie's fingers dance over the keyboard, switching main perspective to cameras #56 and #58, and —
Sara is staring directly at her.
If she were anyone else, Julie would have startled. But she is J, greatest detective in the world, so she leans closer.
Sara's eyes are glacier blue and flinty with rage. She swipes a hand through her waves of blonde hair, fixing some infinitesimal flaw that Julie hadn't even noticed, then clenches her fist.
"What's wrong, Sara?" Julie says. Can't resist, really, even though Sara can't hear.
"I know you're watching," Sara hisses. "Who the hell are you?"
I'll be the one to bring them your head on a platter, Julie thinks but does not say. She is meant to be objective about this. Not that she's been all that good at objectivity recently.
Sara keeps staring for a moment, then turns away with a huff. There's an apple near her feet; she kicks it, apparently at random, into the only blind corner Julie's cameras have, less than ten square centimeters large. Interesting.
"Whatever," Sara mutters. "I have homework to do."
Julie chews on her thumb. Sara, ever-perfect, stays true to her word: she pulls out her math notebook from her backpack and starts scribbling.
A minute ticks by. Then two. The silence is practically deafening. Sara resolutely does not look in Julie's direction again.
Julie leans back and stares at the ceiling.
Q: Why did Sara Berry tell J that she knew about the cameras in her room?
A: There is no way for J (me) to utilize her knowledge of the cameras as proof that she is Kira. She could claim that she found out from her father, despite the recent strains in their relationship that they are both attempting to conceal; Richard Berry does not practice particularly safe cybersecurity protocol. I will have to bring up the matter at work (though I am, of course, always at work). She could also have noticed on her own, given her tendency towards paranoia — she could have killed the other candidates for student representative through heart attack, but instead she meticulously researched several obscure methods of suicide to make it look as though they had been attacked by another, thus successfully hiding the fact that Kira killed them from afar. No one knows that Kira was behind the Wittermore High murders. No one except me.
Of course, this is all assuming that Sara is Kira. There is every possibility that she is an ordinary young woman — charismatic, conventionally attractive, and brilliant beyond belief, but still ordinary — reacting to hidden surveillance cameras in an ordinary-young-woman sort of way.
The probability that Sara Berry is Kira is 5%.
The probability that Sara Berry is Kira is 100%.
Julie opens her eyes again and watches Sara stretch and eat a potato chip. (The no-fat kind. Why would she do that to herself?)
"Kira."
Sara doesn't look at her. Of course not; the audio is one-way. She can't hear Julie at all.
"What's your move?" Julie murmurs.
She watches Sara bite her lip. Watches her eyebrows furrow as she scribbles another equation, no doubt in perfect cursive.
Oh well. Julie stretches herself, pops a sugar cube into her mouth.
Tomorrow is her first day of university. She can't wait to see what Sara's face looks like when she finds out there was another student representative after all.
this is sort of a weird homage to the fact that i first heard the ballad of sara berry through this death note animatic which remains the single best death note animatic i've ever watched
There are three truths Kiyomi knows in life:
- Some people deserve good things. Some people do not.
- You must be better than the rest.
- Do not give them a single opportunity to call you hysterical.
She is now considering a fourth:
- Misa Amane cannot fucking play the violin.
"What's wrong, Kiyomi?" Misa bats her eyes at her, leaning against the door of the music practice room. Kiyomi can hear Mendelssohn wailing in agony from the other room as his Violin Concerto in E Minor is methodically butchered by some auditioning first-year. (They have thin walls here.)
"You can't fucking play the violin," Kiyomi informs her.
"That's weird," Misa says, hefting her case in one hand. "Because I could swear I could!"
"No you can't." Is it Opposite Day? Is reality playing a cruel trick on Kiyomi as karma from a past life? "You're a singer. You do vocals. You've never touched a string instrument in your life."
Misa smiles at her, eyes creasing into half-moons. "Oh, silly Kiyomi. I've been taking violin lessons since I was a kid! And piano too!"
"Play something, then," Kiyomi challenges, sounding remarkably calm if she does say so herself.
Misa pretends to consider it, casting her eyes up to the ceiling. Then she smiles again. It's somehow wider this time. "Hmm… Nope! I'll leave it a surprise."
"I swear to God—"
"Girls!" Ms. Kitamura pokes her head in from the larger music classroom. "Keep it down!"
"Yeah, Kiyomi," Misa says, eyes widening in faux-concern. "Keep it down."
Kiyomi Takada is not a violent person. Misa just inspires violent instincts within everyone, surely.
"I would've expected this from Amane, but not from you, Takada," Ms. Kitamura says, looking between Misa (grinning like the Cheshire Cat) and Kiyomi (who immediately schools her expression back to assured calm). "But I'm sure it's just nerves."
It's an out. A humiliating one, but regardless. "Yes, I'm sorry," Kiyomi says. "I suppose I am a little nervous."
Ms. Kitamura's smile is sympathetic. "We all have our off days. But I'm sure you'll get that first chair position!"
Kiyomi Takada does not have off days. She can't afford them; see list item #3 on her four fundamental truths. But she puts on her best polite-and-slightly-abashed smile, and nods.
"Hang on," Misa says with a frown. "Kiyomi-chan! You didn't tell me you were aiming for first chair!"
Of course she's aiming for first chair. What else would she aim for? (Also, Kiyomi-chan?) "It's only a goal," Kiyomi lies. "I'd just be happy for the chance to play."
"Oh, good!" Misa's frown turns into a beatific smile. "Because I'd like first chair too."
"You what?"
"Oh, Amane," Ms. Kitamura says in blissful ignorance to Kiyomi's ongoing crisis, "I didn't know you played the violin."
"THAT'S WHAT I—" Kiyomi coughs. "Apologies. I meant, I was surprised too."
"I'm a woman of many surprises," Misa says, and shoots Kiyomi a finger-gun. "Ehe!"
"Well, good luck to both of you!" Ms. Kitamura smiles at them both warmly. "May the best player win, am I right?"
"Absolutely!" And Misa honest-to-God winks.
"Thank you," Kiyomi manages before Ms. Kitamura is gone and she can slump against the wall in relative peace.
It lasts about three seconds. "By the way," Misa pipes up, "I'm going right before you."
"Are you now," Kiyomi says.
Misa's eyes widen again. "Ooh, is that some hostility I detect, Kiyo-chan?"
Yes, because Misa is exhaustingly bright and boundlessly annoying and the only person alive who somehow manages to see through Kiyomi's facade like it's air. Kiyomi feels — dangerous around her, for some reason. Like any chirped hello or swished pigtail could set off a chemical reaction within Kiyomi that would level all of Tokyo if she let it. Like if Misa ever jumped off a bridge, Kiyomi would do it too just to show her she could do it better. Like —
Misa makes Kiyomi feel alive.
God, Kiyomi hates her.
"I'm sure you're imagining things, Amane-san," she says at last, tilting her head up to look at the ceiling. The fan spins round and round. "Why would I have any hostility towards you?"
"I don't know," Misa says, putting a finger on her cheek. "But that's why you're interesting."
Kiyomi blinks.
"I'm interesting?"
"Well, duh," Misa says, rolling her eyes. "Don't play humble, Miss Refined To-Oh."
"Shut up," Kiyomi says without thinking.
Misa grins. "See? That's when you're interesting."
Kiyomi — doesn't know how to reply to that, at all. She fumbles for a safe topic.
"Aren't you going to practice?"
Misa looks down at her case as though seeing it for the first time. Then shakes her head. "I think I'm better spontaneous. Don't you?"
"I don't know," Kiyomi says. "You don't fucking play the violin."
Misa laughs. "You're funny, Kiyo."
"W-well," Kiyomi says, her face heating despite her best efforts to keep her heartbeat stable: "I'm going to practice."
"Yay!" Misa claps her hands together.
"…I was going to tell you to leave," Kiyomi says.
"But I came in here just to listen to you play," Misa pouts.
"You what?!"
"I mean," Misa says, "you sound really, really pretty considering you're someone who hates me."
"Oh," Kiyomi says weakly. At some point in this conversation she retrieved her violin and bow from her case despite having no memory of doing so. "Er. Thank you?"
Misa beams. "You're welcome!"
The Mendelssohn has quieted by now. Some pathetic fool who took the "you can play anything!" tip from the audition poster literally is now playing "Happy Birthday" next door.
"I'm not particularly good," Kiyomi says, as she rests her bow upon the strings.
"Oh, don't lie, Kiyo," Misa says. Her smile is sharp. "You think you're brilliant."
Kiyomi, for once, doesn't deny it.
She just closes her eyes and starts playing.
WAHHHHHHH I LOVE THEM OMG theyre so in love <3
HERE I AM WITH SKYLANDERS YURI, NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS COULD I HAVE PREDICTED THIS
Ship: Cynder/Whirlwind from Skylanders, link to ao3 fic here!
Ship: Cynder/Whirlwind from Skylanders, link to ao3 fic here!
“Ugh, fuck you,” Winter says for the third time.
Cinder puts down her knight with a decisively smug-sounding clunk and smirks at her. “No swearing during the match, babes.”
As if to prove her point, Ozpin fixes Winter with a particularly reprimanding glare. She winces apologetically, focusing back on the board in front of her. “Point taken. You didn’t have to do that, and I wish you hadn’t.”
The space where her piece used to be blinks whitely at her. Maybe she should have gotten more sleep. Across the table, against the backdrop of her towering work friends, Cinder contemplates the board with her head in her hands and a widening smirk that Winter really doesn’t like the look of. “Oh, dear,” she says sweetly. “You’ll just have to try harder, then.”
Just to be pedantic, Winter moves a bishop. Cinder isn’t playing to win; that much is clear — she’s playing to fuck with her, to see what she can do to push her buttons. The success comes from the reactions she draws out, the chaos she manages to cause. Anyone who understands chess can see that.
Anyone who understood chess enough to stop giving a shit would fight fire with fire. The thing about that, though, is that no one wins, and Winter has long since decided that if she can’t even do that then she might as well quit entirely.
“Ooh,” Cinder hums, “clever.” She kicks Winter’s shin under the table as she moves her own bishop, seemingly aimlessly, and props her chin back on her hand when she’s done.
Okay, yes, she’s definitely just intentionally fucking with her now. Winter grits her teeth as she makes her move, taking Cinder’s bishop and tucking herself between two of her own pawns. It’s a fairly defensible position, and it’s —
“Check,” Cinder announces for her.
Winter sits back, folding her arms. She regards Cinder over the top of her glasses, waiting for her to move next. “Well?”
//
Strangely enough, she wins, and it rings hollow. Winter finds Cinder outside the old classroom they’ve been using for matches and stands beside her as she kicks up dust.
Cinder glances up expectantly as she approaches. There’s no sign of that competitiveness in her expression now, only patience — she tilts her chin up at Winter and it feels almost like a peace offering. “You play well.”
That’s — not what she was expected to hear. Winter falters, searching for a response.
“I — um. What was your strategy there?”
Cinder grins. There’s no malice behind it, but she tends to do everything with a menacing air. “Fuck with you, obviously.”
“Why?”
It’s a simple enough question. Cinder just shrugs, and when she does, Winter feels her gaze settling on her the same way she feels a blow to the chest. “It was fun.”
Winter starts complaining the moment she walks through the door, much to Weiss’s amusement. She spent most of the journey home from school with her hands curled tightly around the wheel, jaw clenched, and Weiss was ready to dismiss it as average Winter behaviour until she noticed her checking her phone. On the road, no less.
She pads into the kitchen while Winter rants to herself and makes herself a drink. “Absolutely fucking unbelievable,” she hears, “she just keeps doing this. And she has the — the gall to act like she doesn’t know what I’m talking about when I —”
Weiss turns on the sink and tunes her out. When she comes back into the living room, cup in hand, Winter is still ranting. This time she’s pacing in circles, phone in hand; Weiss skims around her as she goes to sit down on the couch and nods along patiently.
“And she — Cinder, she — she keeps looking at me when she comes in and —”
That breaks Weiss out of her polite disinterest. “Cinder? As in, Cinder Fall?”
Winter snorts, switching off her phone. She drops down into the armchair on the other side of the television, folding her arms over her chest. “Cinder Fall,” she confirms, “who works in my office and spends her time —”
“Cinder Fall?”
“Yes? Why?”
Weiss tries to imagine Cinder Fall — fierce, distinctly annoying Cinder Fall — ever deliberately deciding to piss off her terrifying older sister and has to cover her mouth to stop herself from laughing. “What’s she been doing?”
Winter doesn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. She splutters for a moment, folds and unfolds her arms, and eventually settles on shoving them deep into the pockets of her trousers. “She’s just — she thinks she owns the place. She works in my office and she behaves like —”
“The greatest person to have walked the face of the earth?” Weiss guesses.
“Yes,” Winter says emphatically.
Now, that isn’t hard to imagine. “Uh huh,” Weiss says, “and have you told her that?”
She clenches her jaw. “I — well, I believe she generally knows she’s an asshole.”
//
“You know my sister doesn’t like you?”
Cinder, cornered against the fence in Yang’s back garden at her latest party, snorts into her cup. “Jesus, you don’t play around, do you?”
Weiss folds her arms. “She thinks you’re intentionally fucking with her. Are you?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Am I?”
“Answer the question. Or I’m telling her you’re here and you’re being annoying.”
“I’m always annoying,” Cinder says loftily. She sets her cup down on the table next to her and folds her hands behind her head, stretching languidly. “What have I done to annoy your lovely sister, exactly?”
“Everything, apparently,” Weiss mutters.
There’s a moment where both of them pause. Cinder seems to lose her footing and then find it again just as quickly, gaze flickering in the firelight; Weiss finds herself unsure of exactly what she’s supposed to say next, and decides she’s okay with just — waiting for Cinder to move first.
Eventually, she says, “Does she really think I’m targeting her? With my, you know, general annoyance?”
Weiss shrugs. “That’s the impression I got.”
Cinder’s brow furrows. “I’ll call her,” she says, and that’s the end of that for the night.
//
not pictured: the five billion makeout sessions winter and cinder have at the end of every single work day
A girl who is her partner’s attack dog (what is her leash? why did she accept the leash? who is she attacking, or being stopped from attacking?)
A rivalry that neither rival is putting their heart into anymore but carries on from inertia
Giving up on a rivalry
A fierce rivalry between two competitors who are both below average or have a losing record
A sword fight… between LARPers
Edited 2024-07-25 00:20 (UTC)
(Sorry this is another more so for Transformers aha) A fill based off of the old Festival of Five AU by Ladydragon76! Unfortunately the old tumblr post is currently lost to the ether, but the general idea is a race/race or contest is held in name of one of the Guiding Hand from IDW, and that often results in the winner having the excuse to get together with their crush. So let someone go win their girl!!
Character A assisting Character B in creating a portfolio for a competition.
Gym buddies who train for two very different kinds of competitions (think something like weight lifting vs sprinting).
Characters arguing over who's taller.
Playing chicken with God. What made me think of this was my family tempting fate pre-smart phone era with storm clouds that had only been a thunderstorm on the morning radio but got nasty enough to give us funnel clouds that didn't touch down. We finished the golf game LOL
Character A is worried that Character B is giving theirself personal challenges out of their reach/that are putting Character B in danger.
Dealing with the aftermath of losing a major competition.
Dealing with the aftermath of being disqualified from a major competition.
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