Yuri Shipping Olympics

Hunger Games

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The Great British Bake-Off

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Paralympics

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asaphida

Words: 496
Fandom: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Ship: Adora/Catra

(they're playing goalball, which is a sport for Paralympians in the VI class [visual impairment]. I've been to matches and love it but never actually played myself, [nor do I play... any sport] and I didn't have time to do the level of research I would typically have done for something this specific, so that's my disclaimer vis a vis representation of goalball here.)

Adora's been dreading this match ever since they landed.

"You're at a massive advantage," Coach tells her while her eyes are patched. Usually, the shift from light and shadow into solid darkness helps Adora focus, get into the zone. Today she's too busy thinking about the first game they'd ever won, when Catra helped her peel the eyeshades off because her hands were shaking too hard. We're going to conquer the world doing this, Catra had said, victory and glee in her voice, and at seventeen, Adora could only think about how much she wanted to kiss her.

"Grayskull," Coach says, always able to tell when Adora's attention wanders.

Adora fidgets with her elbow pad. "It's been three years since I've played with them."

"I've been watching them all season. Whoever their center is, they're playing the same game they always have." Coach finishes taping her right eye and raps the goal for Adora to anchor on. "You know that team inside and out, but they don't know what you've learned from us. Capitalize on that."

On the court, fingers braced on the raised line, Adora isn't as sure anymore. She can't hear the voice she's expecting, but the refs haven't called for quiet in the stadium yet, so she doesn't know what's being lost in the sea of noise. The horn goes, and silence falls, and Adora listens.

As soon as the ball chimes, Adora knows who's thrown it. Light footsteps on the run up, ball skipping fast and loud down the court, like it's announcing that Catra's here. Adora barely snags it before it goes past, heavy rubber hitting her arm hard.

Every time the Horde has the serve, it's the same, and it's almost always coming for Adora. The refs take a safety time out after less than ten minutes to mop the sweat off the court, and Adora feels like it has to be all hers.

"I know you defected," Glimmer says, "but I didn't know they wanted to kill you."

Adora grimaces. "One of them does."

A couple balls get past Adora's teammates, so she should be grateful when she takes the third hit directly to the stomach. She's not. She has the textured ball in her hands, goalposts firm against her back, and she's supposed to serve back the way she's trained - strategic, targeted, going for the weaker left wing.

This throw has all the fire she has behind it, all of the frustration and anger and desperation. Adora tried to bring Catra with her, but she wouldn't go. Catra still hates her. Nothing Adora says or does or wants matters, and Adora's angriest at herself for not being able to learn that.

The ball bounces loud, and the whistle blows when it goes out of bounds. When Coach calls time to ask her what the hell she thinks she's doing, Adora doesn't have a good answer. Across the court, over the music and the crowd murmuring and the cleaners' shoes squeaking on the floor, Catra's laugh rings out, clearer than bells.

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Byzantium Blue vs Green chariot racing

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sapphicam

Influencers who want the same brand deal

Edited Date: 2024-07-17 05:17 am (UTC)

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Betting pool

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Battle of the bands

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Gunning to snatch up the same deal on Black Friday

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Dance off!!!

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Rival food truck vendors

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Rodeo

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sapphicam

Rival restaurant owners / chefs

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Well now you step inside but you don't see too many faces
Coming in out of the rain to hear the jazz go down
Competition in other places
Ah but the horns they blowin' that sound
Way on down south
Way on down south
London town

- Dire Straits, "Sultans of Swing"

Edited Date: 2024-07-17 05:18 am (UTC)

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Three-legged race

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and a short one to close out the night

//

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Winter mutters.

Weiss, barely six, gives her a double thumbs up from the sidelines. Cinder, tied to her leg, just looks at her weirdly. “I didn’t talk you into anything, Schnee.”

“I was talking to my — you know what, never mind. Are we going to do this?”

She grins, strangely sharp-edged for a thirteen year-old. Pretty eyes, Winter thinks distractedly. “Oh, you have no idea. You’re good at running, right?”

Winter draws herself up, puffs out her chest. “Fastest person in my age category five years in a row. Why?”

Cinder just rolls her eyes, bracing her hands on her knees. Winter’s skin tingles where her fingers brush her thigh, tingles when she looks up through her hair and her eyelashes and smirks. “Think you can keep up?”

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Leaders of rival nations locked in a war

Edited Date: 2024-07-17 05:24 am (UTC)

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Student council elections

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“What,” Winter says flatly.

Cinder grins over at her and finishes putting the poster over the front of her locker. It’s an ugly thing, really, but she’s proud of it, because she’s seventeen and she’s got nothing better to do. “What?” she echoes innocently.

The newspaper in Winter’s hand crumples into a ball in her fist. She glares at Cinder like she can unwind her, like she can peer through to the truth of her and figure out a ploy, a trick. “What,” she repeats, “are you doing?”

“Oh, this?” She gestures towards the poster on her locker and the dozens like it, covering the whole hallway. “My campaign.”

Winter inhales sharply, looking incensed. “Okay, first of all — that’s not — you can’t just campaign by putting pictures of your face all over the school and calling it a day. What do you want, Cinder?”

“Want?” she tilts her head, hums. “Why? I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re doing —” Winter takes a deep breath, dropping the newspaper. Someone passing by the corridor kicks it away and it disappears into the crowd. “Why are you running for treasurer?”

Cinder eyes the blank space in her hand, the page in the newspaper where she knows Winter has written an eloquent essay applying for the same position, and shrugs. “Just felt like it.”

“And your qualifications are?”

She spins around, propping her hands on her hips. “Who the hell needs qualifications for a high school student council?”

Winter’s jaw works. Cinder loves it when she gets wound up. “Not you, apparently.”

“Exactly.” She kicks away a stray bit of paper that appears under her foot and prays to G-d it’s one of Winter’s stupid newspapers. Who even runs for treasurer through the newspaper, anyway?

She glares at Cinder for a moment longer, wordless, and finally settles on spitting out, “Well, good luck. I’ll see you around.”

She nods once, turns on her heel, and marches away. “Sure,” Cinder says to her retreating back.

From:

scallioncreamcheesebagel

Predator vs. Prey

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Cinder likes to think of herself as generous. She’s certainly a hell of a lot better than most of the other werewolves in her territory; she gives Winter a countdown, a boundary, a way out before she starts to hunt her. Still, when she circles the whole perimeter of her land — chasing off Roman along the way, because he hasn’t got it in his head that she could kill him yet — she finds evidence of Winter’s presence everywhere. Her tracks burned into the forest floor, her scent clinging to branches and bushes. She isn’t even running.

So, when she catches up to Winter in the moonlight over a creek, she has to admit she’s disappointed.

“Come on,” she says, stepping out of the shadows, “I thought you were faster than that.”

Winter doesn’t turn. She’s facing away, bent to touch the water in the creek, hair turning silver in the moonlight. Almost ethereal, almost ghostlike. “I thought you were generous.”

Cinder sighs. “‘Generous’ doesn’t mean ‘lets you go’. I gave you a head start and you just started — what, wandering? What’s that about, huh? I thought you wanted to live.”

Her jaw sets. “I’m not your prey.”

“Oh,” she purrs, “you are, darling. You’ve only lived this long because I let you.”

Winter’s head turns over her shoulder, eyes sparking fiercely in the moonlight. She’s wearing an awful lot of white, and it really works for her, despite the general excess of mud in the woods. “I could kill you with one blow.”

Now, that’s cocky. Cinder takes a step closer; Winter, predictably, starts backwards. The heels of her boots dig into the water. Who wears heels in a forest? “You really have no idea, do you?” It’s meant to sound accusatory; it comes out a lot hotter than she wanted it to. Winter noticeably flushes, shoulders hiking up to her ears. “I let you run because I thought you had decent instincts. It turns out I was hilariously wrong.”

Her lips curl up. She gives Cinder an assessing look, like she’s the one with the power here. “And what makes you so confident that you could kill me?”

Cinder grins, flashing her fangs. “Oh, a few things.”

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Superhero/supervillain who are basically just putting on a show by this point

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Winter gasps for breath, tightening her fingers around Cinder’s wrists. She blinks dust out of her eyes — it doesn’t help — and searches for the curve of her shoulders in the half-light, the outline of her silhouette against the sun.

It should be easy. She’s right on top of her; her hands are digging into Winter’s throat, her breath is coming hot and fast next to her ear. If Winter could let go of her wrists, she’d find Cinder at the end of her fingertips, brushing up against her body. She blinks harder, trying to focus, and finds her vision blurring harder, her —

“Oh, shit,” Cinder’s voice says next to her ear, humming low and even, “I think you have a concussion, babe.”

“Not —” She gasps again; Cinder’s hands let up a little. “Not just a concussion. Are you invisible? It doesn’t — it doesn’t make sense. What are you doing?”

“Oh.” The hazy outline of a form flickers in front of her, taking shape underneath so much dust and smoke. “There you are. Better?”

Winter groans. “Much.”

Cinder winks at her. The effect is rather muted. “I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”

“Well, you did.” She lets go of her wrists, scrabbles for purchase on the wall instead. Her hand finds the hilt of her sword embedded between the bricks. Convenient. “Did it look good, at least?”

Cinder’s voice lowers to a purr. “Spectacular, darling.”

“Ugh. Well, that’s something.”

The outside world filters in slowly, then all at once. The sound of crowds moving around the building shifts and bursts into detail; sirens wailing, people shouting, Weiss ordering people out of the way as dust drips from the puncture mark the two of them left. Despite herself, Winter grins hazily up at Cinder; she’ll get a talking-to when all of this is over.

Cinder grins back. The world swims under her — she’s being lowered down the wall, sliding through brick after destroyed brick. “Feel like giving in yet?”

Winter coughs, shakes her head to clear it. The aura is already doing its work. “I’m nowhere near done. Would you like to concede?”

The hands around her throat vanish entirely. Her feet brush, then sink onto the floor. Winter settles back against the wall as Cinder steps away, sucking in deep breaths. “In your dreams, babe.”

From:

Seeing who can stay awake longer during a movie marathon

From:

missiletoe

Ship: Mitsuaya from The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't A Guy At All, link to ao3 fic here!

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A scripted competition that everyone but the competitors thinks is real

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Cinder has never had any issues with making pushing someone into a locker look real. The issue, though, is that Winter hasn’t.

She stumbles a little as Cinder’s hands fist in her shirt, stumbles again as she’s pushed backwards. Her shoulders meet the metal of her locker and she jolts, looking less like a bullied teen and more like she’s surprised Cinder looked her way. That won’t do.

“Come on, Schnee,” Cinder mutters under her breath, pressing into her, “you’re an actor, aren’t you?”

People in the corridor are starting to look their way. Winter clearly notices this; she stiffens under Cinder’s hands, making a show of shoving her away. The fact that Cinder’s hands are still wound into her shirt seems to catch her by surprise. “Hardly,” she snaps, muffled by the sound of Cinder’s own yelp as she rams into a notice board.

//

They sell it.

Cinder keeps kicking Winter’s leg under the table when she answers questions too stiffly. It’s not very subtle, but Ozpin is too Ozpin to notice. If Ironwood were here it would be harder; he seems to know Winter better, and he hates Cinder a whole lot more.

Eventually, he sighs and gives in, glaring at them over steepled fingers and the tops of his glasses. Cinder flashes Winter a smug grin that she mostly pouts at. “Well, I can’t think of any way to discipline the two of you that wouldn’t just be giving you what you want. So, Miss Fall, is there anything you’d like to say to help your case?”

She runs through the script in her head, searching for appropriately snide phrases. Winter gets there first.

“With all due respect, sir, she hasn’t been transparent about her motivation. She’s at least partially frustrated with me for being better at —”

Cinder kicks her under the table. I was getting to that. “You’re not, first of all, and that’s not it. It’s —”

Her head whips around so fast that it nearly comes off. She might be a shit actor, but she’s got a fairly intense glare. “Shut up.”

“Okay,” Ozpin says loudly, “alright, girls. Miss Fall, if you would?”

Cinder shrugs, settling back in her seat. “I want a rematch. Please and thank you.”

He raises an eyebrow. “At?”

“Fencing.”

The other eyebrow goes up. “If I recall, you won the last match.”

“She cheated,” Cinder snaps, which is technically true, if only because both of them were cheating.

“You cheated, which is why you won,” Winter says loudly. Her hands dig into the fabric of her seat, hard enough that Cinder swears she claws out parts of the stuffing. “Sir, I have to agree with her request for a rematch. If she won’t even be gracious about winning then —”

“You started it! My G-d, would it kill you to be normal for two seconds?”

“The national matches are scholarship-winning, Cinder, and you would know enough to care about that if you —”

//

They get the rematch.

From:

A scripted competition that only the competitors think is real

From:

twyrewolf

Rival Guild/Raid leaders in the Race for World's First

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Fighters competing to see who can take out the most enemies

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“Well, we’re fucked,” Cinder announces.

It does seem that way. Winter looks around the clearing, feeling instinctively for her sword. No one has made a move yet — not them, not the Grimm, who seem intelligent enough to wait — but she could get the upper hand quickly if she just —

“Nope,” Cinder says, shifting until they’re standing back to back. “None of that. We do this the old fashioned way.”

Winter snorts before she can help herself. “What’s that? Laying down and waiting to die?”

The hand pressed against her forearm burns hot suddenly. Winter yanks her arm away, hissing between her teeth, and Cinder laughs. “The old fashioned way,” she repeats. “Whoever takes out the most Grimm wins.”

“Wins what?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says, and moves.

//

Something cold and wet splatters across Winter’s back. Already covered in dissolving Grimm fluid, she yelps and flicks her own handful of black liquid back at Cinder over her shoulder. It used to be half of a Nevermore’s eye; it dissipates into steam before it gets very far.

“Gross,” Cinder says, but she doesn’t sound particularly offended. “How many was that? Like, twenty?”

Winter looks down at the Nevermore corpse. “This is my twenty-fifth.”

The woods are mostly silent now, save for the occasional rustle of branches in the wind. What they did to attract so many Grimm to one spot is beyond her, but she supposes it must be something to do with lingering traces of Salem’s mark on Cinder’s body. She’s too tired to give it much thought until it becomes a pattern.

Cinder looks up at the sky, tracing the path of the sun. Winter watches her jaw work as she thinks, flicking more Grimm fluid off her hands. “It’s not too late,” she says eventually. “If you hit fifty by the end of the day I’ll take you out on a nice date in the next down we come across.”

“You’re just saying that because you lost,” Winter mutters. Cinder laughs.

“Oh, miserably.”

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Shapeshifter/magic duel

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