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1. Burning Silver and Red
Subaru Station's premier entertainment complex, Gaming Galaxy — neon everywhere, the bass frequencies of electronic music pressing against the air from all sides. In one corner of it, a pair of genuinely cold sparks were crackling in the warmth.
Today, these girls had come to stake their pride.
The venue for the first contest was the Galaxy Air Hockey table, sealed beneath its signature dome-shaped energy shield.
"you actually didn't tuck your tail and run. i'll give you that." Kanoa Ryud turned her mallet over in her fingers with casual indifference, her face as perfectly neutral as if she'd said something ordinary. "it's not too late to go home and have your mother's milk, though."
Ledea Mace squared up across the table with every centimeter of her hundred and forty centimeters quivering with indignation — twin tails from today's Shutia Selection (the accompanying frills-and-sweetness outfit had been decisively rejected; the twin tails alone had survived the negotiation) trembling with the same energy as her silver eyes, which had gone extremely sharp.
"Save your breath, Kanoa. You'll need it when you're counting your losses. I assumed you'd be somewhere in bed, trembling at the thought of my precision technique — I see I overestimated your self-awareness. Very well. Try, if you think you can, to keep up with my god-speed smash."
A few steps back, the adults observing the exchange wore entirely incompatible expressions.
"My, my — they really are such good friends~. Youth is a wonderful thing, isn't it."
That was Asphi Ryud: Kanoa's elder sister, her blue sidetail drifting gently as she smiled with the unhurried serenity of a guardian at a school sports day.
"...Sis, you can do it..."
Behind her, Shutia Mace had clenched both hands and whispered her support in the smallest voice she owned — and at that exact moment, Kanoa's cold gaze found hers across the room, and Shutia's voice went somewhere it couldn't be retrieved.
Kanoa held Shutia's eye. When she spoke, her voice did not warm or vary.
"shutia. if i win, you become my official big sister. this loud little person doesn't qualify."
"What did you just—?!"
The vein that appeared at Ledea's temple was visible at some distance. She brought her mallet down on the rink with a crack.
"I'll have you know that Shutia is my little sister, Kanoa — not yours and never yours. I will not permit it. — However." Her chin came up. "The odds of my losing to someone of your level are essentially nonexistent. So: challenge accepted. And when I win — I'll be taking Asphi out for a full day at the high-end arcades. Just the two of us. You will stay home. Alone."
Shutia heard this and went the specific shade she went when something had gone very wrong.
"Sis — you absolutely cannot! I object! A private shopping date with Asphi, just the two of you? Absolutely not! That is cheating! That is an unforgivable crime against me personally!"
"Nothing about this constitutes cheating. This is a perfectly standard victory premium."
"It is not and you know it is not! The seat beside sis is exclusively mine, and that is final!"
The Mace sisters' argument proceeded at full volume. Asphi watched it with a tilted head and a smile of increasing warmth, and then — completing a thought she'd apparently had some time ago — she offered:
"My, how exciting. Though I should mention — I'd be perfectly happy to take both Ledea and Shutia as my adorable little sisters, if that would help resolve things~"
"...I beg your pardon?"
Shutia stopped mid-sentence. She stared at Asphi. She went, from somewhere around the collarbones upward, completely blank.
"Now then. Enough talking." Kanoa had already turned back to the table. "watch the screen. all systems: green. ...i'm going to take you apart."
"The sentiment is mutual. Kneel before my precision, Kanoa."
The air machine beneath the dome hummed to life.
And so the five-game series — a battle of pride and sisterly loyalty conducted across every major attraction Gaming Galaxy had to offer — got properly underway.
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2. A Blazing Contest, or: Perfectly, Identically Matched
The matches that followed were intense in exactly the way that mattered and equal in exactly the way that shouldn't have been possible.
Because the thing was: neither of them was particularly athletic.
"HA! Catch my super-velocity ultra-smash!"
Ledea's wrist snapped down. The puck went: ponk. It rolled approximately a foot and a half, rotating gently, and stopped.
"predictable. already calculated."
Kanoa moved to intercept — and swung through empty air with a full-body motion that produced a substantial amount of wind. The puck, ignored by both of them, rebounded off the side wall, struck Kanoa, and rolled directly into her own goal.
"...own goal. calculation error."
"Now! This is the end, Kanoa — next shot is—"
Ledea lunged. The mallet slipped from her grip. It described a small arc and struck the dome panel with a hollow thump. The puck, with perfect timing, rolled cleanly into Ledea's own goal.
"Oh no oh no sis that little stumble was the most precious thing I have ever seen — recording, recording—!"
"Kanoa's face when she whiffed completely — she goes so red, it's genuinely adorable~"
From the spectator seats, Shutia and Asphi were conducting their own minor disruption, pressed together and vibrating with second-hand enthusiasm as the absolute spectacle unfolded before them.
The result was a tie.
The electronic tone sounded. The scoreboard showed the same number on both sides. Two players stood at their respective ends with their chests heaving, maintaining expressions that communicated complete indifference to the concept of fatigue.
"hff... hff... you're out of breath, little big sister. embarrassing."
"Hff — hff — your hair... is wilting, Kanoa..."
The grudge was intact. The stamina was considerably less so. The five-game series had barely started.
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3. A Chain of Muddy Contests, or: The Blessed Kneading
The pattern held. Across every game that followed, the results were simultaneously brutal and completely indistinguishable.
The second contest was a full-body Virtual Dance Battle. Predictably, both participants' profound disconnection from physical coordination made itself known immediately. Ledea's footwork turned robotic — each motion clipped, delayed, arrived at approximately the right location a beat after it was needed. Kanoa went entirely in the other direction, flinging her arms and legs with complete conviction in directions unrelated to the music. The screen's evaluation remained near the bottom of its range — BAD appeared with some regularity — but their scores, impossibly, came out within a single point of each other. Draw.
The third was the high-difficulty logic puzzle game Cosmic Cube: no physical coordination required, only pattern recognition and fast fingers. In this, both of them were genuinely and concerningly excellent, and the screens filled with combo sparks as three-dimensional structures assembled at frightening speed. Neither conceded a single point. The clock hit zero before either had broken the deadlock. Draw.
The fourth was Laser Gun Shooting. Their targeting reflexes were comparable; the problem was the recoil, which neither of their arms was built to absorb, and both of them spent the round with a drift that broadened steadily. They hit background objects at essentially identical rates. The penalty scores matched exactly. Draw.
"Sis, GO! — that shaky sidestep just now was the most adorable thing in any galaxy, sis—!"
"Kanoa's serious face when she's working through the cube — so cool, I love it~ Keep going!"
The support section had been generating substantial noise throughout all four rounds. At some point, Shutia and Asphi had begun holding hands.
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Then, a break — in the café adjoining the gaming floor, where the seating was soft and the ambient lighting came from something designed to approximate distant stars.
Four consecutive draws. The series was exactly level. Both participants looked like they'd been physically disassembled and put back slightly wrong.
"hff... hff... you're breathing hard, ledea. undignified."
"Hff — hff — your hair... is wilting again, Kanoa..."
Their respective sisters arrived.
"You did so well, sis! Really, truly — I'm so proud of you, sis!"
Shutia slid in beside Ledea and began running one large hand through her silver hair — a steady, gentle motion, a pat... pat... pat... that contained within it the full weight of a feeling perhaps not entirely proportionate to an air hockey score.
"Mmh... Shutia, please don't shake the head quite like that... I'm dizzy enough..."
Ledea's resistance was considerably more muted than its usual form.
Across the table, Asphi had settled beside Kanoa, and was now cradling Kanoa's face between both palms.
"You worked so hard, Kanoa~ Your face has gone all tense. Let's see — knead knead, squeeze squeeze~"
"nn... mnyuu..."
Kanoa submitted to this entirely without protest. Her expression did not change. She simply sat, unresisting, while Asphi's fingers worked with practiced calm, and the combination of factors involved was genuinely a great deal to witness.
When the cakes arrived — space-strawberry, startlingly colorful — and the cold fruit juice came through with it, the color returned to two faces. By the second slice, the sharpness had come back to two pairs of eyes.
"...I'm operational again. Completely recharged."
"Same." Ledea set down her glass. "Kanoa."
"ledea."
The look between them was the kind that precedes commitments.
"the last game."
"The last game."
The fifth and final contest — everything still perfectly level, everything still perfectly unresolved — was about to begin.