Synope

When news of the Sornieth Summer Games had reached the clan, most had politely declined. Okay, all the ones she'd asked had scampered. Something about her attitude...

Earlgrey, the clan leader was Ice through and through, but she'd always craved adventure. If he wouldn't lead, she could. Not everything he could do she could do better, but he respected her more than he feared her, which made him reliable, and less likely to frown upon her decision to enter the whole clan into the competition, even if the whole clan was, so far, just her.

Synope had, at first, been the only member of the clan who'd grasped the idea that fencing had nothing to do with building a fence. In retrospect, even that they hadn't been keen on...

She wasn't particularly good at building fences, but she knew one thing when it came to blades: avoid the pointy bit, aim it at the adversary, and if you're lucky they'll get off your ship before you have to use it.

(Admittedly she'd helped rebuild parts of the ship that had been damaged by misuse of cutlasses and the like, but that did not qualify her for what she considered to be a more leisurely type of fencing.)

When she'd heard of the Summer Games, she'd rejoiced. Nature territory was easy enough to sail to, there'd be plenty of competition just to find a place to leave the ship and find it still there in the morning, almost too easy.

She had a ship to sail there with, all she needed was a crew. It was day one, and she still had a ship to sail with. And no crew.

Maybe aiming the pointy bits of various implements at her fellow clan members hadn't been the right way to convince them, but not all was lost: she could still discourage other crews.

There were a few more categories she thought herself capable of entering, she'd just need two dragons to tag along for the bog-sketball, and she had just the two in mind... Hopefully... Well, she'd have to sail there and back, but a stern-worded postcard could do the trick!

In the meantime, she'd have to pick a blade. There was one hidden in her cane, but she didn't think that qualified...

It had taken less effort than Synope would have thought to find teammates for the basketball team. Sevayen, who'd somehow completely missed the Summer Games talk prior, had actually volunteered once hearing about it, and Zelus had mostly shown an interest for the net the basket was technically made out of. He'd slept through the announcement too, but at least he was well rested. A little too well rested, especially for a snapper...

Synope wasn't entirely sure how they were supposed to get anything off the floor between those two, but if they could manage to be imposing enough to force the others to make detours, maybe she could grab the ball when needed and score.

Was using your teammates as a springboard frowned upon? She'd have to find out before the referee waved for them to come forward. She supposed it would be best left for the gymnastics competition, although she wasn't sure she wanted either of them to participate in that one, and she wasn't keen on it herself. They'd cross that beam when they got to it...

She shook off the leaves that had fallen from some trees that were providing shade for the participants, and was about to tell Sevayen to please try to make himself presentable before realising it was just what he was wearing... Well, this was a sports competition, not a beauty contest. His many eyes, she realised, might actually be an advantage... Yes, that was a better idea than the springboard one...

She cleared her throat and Zelus looked at her, bewildered.

"There's only one basket!" He looked intimidated, and was trying to make himself smaller, which is harder to achieve if you're a snapper.

"That one's technically ours." She pointed out. "That's the one we don't want anything to go through that doesn't come from us, okay?"

Zelus nodded, clearly still unsure about the rules but willing to follow her as long as she went first. Sevayen looked meditative. Now wasn't a time for meditation. It wasn't one for mediation either. Synope shoved him in front of her, struggling somewhat, and made sure Zelus followed as they went up to meet the other team. They look better prepared, but then again, they all did...

This was a bad idea, Synope knew. A really, really bad one. Unfortunately she didn't have a better one, being far more at ease on water than in it, and only diving if whatever she was on was more dangerous than whatever she was diving into.

But there was something about the 'latest recruit', a newborn snapper who'd managed to, somehow, swim onto her ship, and demand a hug while absolutely soaking wet, that made him irresistible. Baby snappers were the worst. She'd babysat a few in her time, well, supervised was a better word for it, and they were really hard to resist.

The little one was very keen on water, not so much on expending his vocabulary. So far, all she'd gotten out of him was wa'er, 'ood, and cuddle.

"Da'!" He said excitedly, pointing at the pool over which a diving board stood at what Synope considered to be perilous heights. The Games were known to accommodate all breeds of dragons, but there'd never been a mention of how old a dragon had to be. Come to think of it, a smaller snapper was perhaps a little less likely to empty the pool of its content, and less expected to pirouette like a ballerina in the air. And again, Nacre was her only available competitor.

His only distinct advantage, relative size aside, was that he sort of looked like water. That and his enthusiasm. Most other competitors looked stern and focused. Strangely enough, Nacre was focused. On the water.

"'Iny!" He pointed out. There were colourful ripples in the pool after the competitor before him breached the surface at an angle that couldn't have been pleasant. Would the kid actually be alright?

She'd checked that he was, in fact, orphaned, before enrolling him, although she had a feeling Earlgrey would expect her to actually at least help raise him, but some snappers had joined their clan recently, and she knew they, mostly, kept to themselves and probably wouldn't mind showing the ropes, or paths, to the new recruit. Baby. Child. Whichever.

In fact, if the snapper who'd occasionally acted as her second in command came back before the end of this, he could both look after the kid and take part. Win-win for her. Maybe not for the clan, but it was only day three and she'd already reached the 'it's not about the game, it's about the fun you have playing it' stage of her competitiveness waning.

She never 'gave up', and was really bad at admitting any kind of defeat, but she could manage her expectations. Like hoping for the cutie to come out of this not traumatised by it, although she feared that the only trauma that could come from it was him asking to go again and being told no. She was very good at telling people no, but not to baby snappers.

"Wa'er!" Nacre exclaimed as he plunged forward. Synope winced, eyes half closed, mouth wide opened as he spun in the air, gleefully flailing in what was definitely gymnastic-adjacent fashion.

"Cuddle?" He asked with pleading eyes as he exited the pool. Out of his limited vocabulary she'd hoped he'd ask for food, she'd kept some snacks ready and managed not to eat them all herself. They'd be a little damper than anticipated, but she doubted the snapper would mind. He was a good kid and, at that age, still smaller than her.

"Fren'" was all he added. If anyone asked Synope why there was water on her face, she'd pretend it was from the dive.

Heilyn had finally joined them again, to Synope's relief. He could do some competing while she looked after Nacre. Well, she wasn't too enthused about that, and Nacre was really impressed with the imposing Snapper, so now he would compete and snap-sit. He didn't seem to mind, intent on showing the "little one" a few tricks.

Snappers weren't necessarily thought to be the best dragon breeds at most of what athletics entailed, but Heilyn had been around long enough, and perhaps more importantly as far as his fitness went, worked with Synope long enough, to have learned to run fast, jump with precision, throw things the referees probably wouldn't want to hear about with high accuracy, and walk home on occasion, the long way around. Occasionally many of those things at once. He wasn't a grudge holder.

He didn't feel particularly ready for this, any more than he usually felt ready for whatever Synope got him into, but so far it'd turned out alright, and this time his continued existence wasn't even on the line, and he had a young one cheering him on!

He had no idea where Synope had gone off to, he hoped she wouldn't expect him to walk home, it wasn't as far from here as home once had been, but he didn't think the little one would enjoy it. He did know a guy who knew a guy who could probably get them out by sea if push came to shove, but you weren't supposed to push anyone when athletics were concerned.

With the athletics gone, Heilyn found himself a bit out of breath. That probably happened more often than he realised, merely because he rarely had the chance to become aware of it before something else came up.

In spite of his imposing stature and expected heaviness, he could manage Gymnastics, he supposed. The beam wasn't much harder than walking on the sides of the deck because somebody had spilled something sticky on it, again. He'd used questionable ship parts as springboards before, not always on purpose.

"If a Snapper falls in a forest, does he make a sound?" They wouldn't find out today, at least not from Heilyn, he knew how to stick a landing. Also not always in places he should, but then again Synope was responsible for about 90% of those, and the remaining 10% tended to be somebody else's fault too. If he had a say, things would be tidier on the ship, but if the only dragons allowed on the ship were tidy ones he'd be sailing alone. He wasn't keen on that.

He looked at the competitor before him playfully twirling a ribbon in the air, and realised that was actually a skill he had. Learned from that one time Synope had sent him to learn flag signalling. The main issue was that he was the only dragon he knew, other than those he'd learned from, who knew the signals, so it hadn't been much use so far... until now!

Violette wasn't the dragon you'd first think of if your mind were to conjure up the image of an archer, but she mastered the recurve bow in ways that had helped Synope enough times before that she'd thought to ask her.

She took great care of her equipment and wouldn't shoot just anything. She gathered her own material for what were mostly makeshift targets, at varying distances. She'd mastered the art of telling just how far they were, how to adjust her bow and hold herself to make sure that the arrows hit the target, as close to its centre as possible, rather than its surrounding, which tended to be stone, a material arrows didn't tend to like encountering at great speeds very much.

At first she'd found the idea of the competition not that appealing. Her only objective was to beat her past self, she wasn't that interested in measuring herself against others, not used to having competition. But there was something about Synope's offer...

Moreover, Nature territory had the distinct advantage of offering far fewer stone walls for arrows to crash into, so she was less likely to lose some, although there could always be mishaps, and if there was one thing she enjoyed about her home setup it was not having to hunt down the arrows that had manage to enter right below the grass, barely visible...

There was only one way to avoid that though: focus. She took a deep breath, feeling the familiar weight of the quiver and the gentle rustling of the arrows in it, before facing the target she'd been assigned.

70 meters. A bright, even target, fellow competitors focusing on their own postures and bows... She wouldn't do it every day, but she was definitely going to enjoy this, after all!

Wrestling did tend to come naturally to Synope. In theory, she wasn't the type to start fights, but tended to end them. In practice, she did start quite a few.

There usually wasn't a referee though, and although she'd gone through the rules fairly thoroughly, she wasn't sure she wouldn't end up using moves that weren't allowed. But she had to take up this task. There was no one else, for one, and it was a matter of honor.

After Violette's performance the previous day (Synope knew nothing about archery, but Violette seemed happy with her results, so she took it to mean it had gone well), she felt like maybe there was hope for the clan as a whole, even if it was just made up of 6 people when it came to competitors. Which just so happened to be the required number of players for a volleyball team...

But tomorrow was another day, for now she had to quieten her thoughts, and trust her instincts... She wasn't easily intimidated, but this was a tad too far from her comfort zone...

Mastery of the sport was very much not what had led the team to the event. That was Synope, whose grasp of the rules was only a bit loser than her grasp on the ball her talon were almost piercing through. She knew the theory, had explained it to the best of her abilities to the other five dragons that had shown any willingness to represent the clan. (And that was counting the newly grown snapper they'd adopted on the way!) It really was about the friends you made along the way, she supposed.

Zelus had managed to get over the inspection of the net and all three snappers had positioned themselves as agreed. Violette and Sevayen, having the advantage of extra eyes, even more so than Synope, were out front alongside her. This could go either way. Well, technically it could go in a variety of directions, and should...

"Don't overthink this." Synope said to herself. No one else was overthinking it. It was the last day, the last day away from home, in a new, for some intimidating, place. They'd enjoy that and the closing ceremony and try not to go overboard either in the celebrations or the boat.