fandomhigh | SHENANINGANS, Wednesday, May 13th, 2020

Good morning, Fandom! It was time for the start of the third annual Summer Shenanigans, and Anakin had been secretly prepping for this since last year! (If you think that means he had a stockpile of intensely ugly t-shirts, YOU WOULD BE RIGHT. Give yourself a prize.)

There were bleachers set up for watching the events, food vendors hoping to get you to eat a variety of things that may or may not have any business being deep-fried and put on sticks, and big screens showing various parts of the island, which was definitely a hint that the games today weren't just centered in the park today.

"WELCOME!" Anakin yelled through his bullhorn at the appointed time.

Yes, he knew how to use a bullhorn. He just preferred to make it boom and squeak like that because he was kind of mean.

"Today you will be put into four teams of seven," he said, "and you will be conducting an obstacle course around the island! When your name is called, please collect your t-shirt and briefly say hello to your team."

And complain about your t-shirt color names. Pretty in Spring Turquoise wasn't close to being turquoise and the rest of them were pretty much the same color with different names, so excellent quality control there, Anakin.

"Then you will spread out to the appointed areas. I will shoot off a flare that Beaker--" Beaker meeped and waved, "--had absolutely no part in testing, and that will be your signal for the first group to begin their task. Fastest team back to the park here wins."

There was a pause.

"You win nothing but bragging rights because we've all learned from the fish incident two years ago. If you're new, well, just trust us. No one needs to win a fish." He coughed. "Anyway! Names! Listen up!"

Team Sweet De Crocus
1. Cait
2. Grog
3. Shuri
4. Beaker
5. Alluka
6. Astrid
7. Kitty

Team Fresh Eggplance
1. Nina
2. Stark
3. Wayne
4. Juillene (and Camden)
5. Sabine
6. Alara
7. Ulysses

Team Lake of Aluminum Crab
1. Duke
2. Elli
3. Liam
4. Alexis
5. Summer
6. Freya
7. Tahani

Team Pretty in Spring Turquoise
1. Mae
2. Julius
3. Iris
4. Amaya
5. Shunsui
6. Rosa
7. Rey

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The subtle-est!

"Just about anything," Jules said. "Though- not those yellow fruits." They were fine on their own, but she didn't much care for mixing their sweet taste with the savory that was the rest of the pizza topping she knew of.

"You don't like pineapple on your pizza?" Julius asked. Then shook his head. "It's okay, Jules. You're allowed to be wrong sometimes."

“It’s too sweet!” she argued. “Plus, I didn’t even know what it was, the first time I had it.”

She hadn’t actually known what pizza was, either. Shh.

"The sweetness offsets the savory!" Julius declared. "So you can better appreciate the umami of the sauce."

"The what-now of the sauce?"

She'd picked up a lot in her year of being here, but Japanese loanwords were not on the list.

"The...kind of rich and savory flavor," Julius explained. "You get it a lot in foods with a lot of glutamates in it - like tomatoes and cheese, for example."

Nerrrrrrrrrrd.

"And a glutamate is?"

STOP USING WORDS SHE DIDN'T KNOW, JULIUS, GOD.

"An amino acid?" Julius tried.

"Uh huuuuuuh."

"Uhh. Okay. Amino acids build up proteins," Julius said, trying to remember undergrad science gen eds. "Like, these big chains of animo acids make up a protein. Proteins do...a whole bunch of stuff, really. But uh, glutamates are amino acids that provide a lot of flavor."

That was...mostly right. He was pretty sure.

"I see," Jules said. She... kind of did? But mostly she just didn't want to seem stupid, coming as she was from a world where nobody knew about things like amino acids and glutamates.

Thank God Julius wasn't trying to flirt right now. He'd be even worse at that than he was at just regular talking.

"Err, yeah," he said. "Anyway, for decades, everyone thought that the human tongue could only taste four flavors and then the Japanese pointed out that umami was the fifth and that's the savory taste we get from glutamates."

Jules nodded along with the explanation, cheerful expression fading somewhat as she thought about how interesting Luke would find that.

“Japanese? Those are the people of another kingdo-“ she paused, correcting herself. “Country?”

"Yup, from Japan," he said. He thought about bringing the map on his phone up again but. Seemed safer not to. "On the other side of the world from America and Canada."

She sighed. “Either your world is much, much bigger than my own or there’s parts of mine that exist that I’ve never even heard of,” she admitted.

Julius shrugged. "Still, how cool is it that you're visiting another world?" he asked. "That's not something I'll ever get to do in my life, most likely."

Oh Julius. Sweet summer child.

“I suppose,” she admitted. “Still, it’s certainly not where I thought I’d be,” she shook her head.

"Same," Julius said, a little fervently. "I'm still not quite sure this isn't a fever dream."

“Been there, done that, this place is far less terrifying.” And then, after a moments thought, she amended: “Usually.”

"...Usually?"

YOU WERE DOING HIM A CONCERN, FREN.

“Well,” Jules drawled. “Last summer, the island kept changing every week? Sometimes it was fine. Other times? It’d be full of creepy things trying to kill us. I think whatever was causing it got fixed, so it shouldn’t do that again at least.”

Though they were only halfway through the first week, so it was too early to be entirely certain!

"...When do we find out if the island is going to change into a murder island?" he asked.

STILL CONCERNED.

“Probably by next week? But I’m sure it’s fine!” Jules said brightly.

"Next week?" Julius sputtered.

"I'm sure it's fine," she repeated, trying to sound soothing. "A bunch of people fixed the... whatever it was."

Not before they'd all turned into toys for a week, but shh.

Re: Hail to the Winners!

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