Summer Splash Challenge! Taylor Vs. Adrian: Event 1!

Taylor responded to Adrian's smirk by yanking on her arm, forcing Adrian to extend her arm a little more while keeping her own arm locked in a tight triangle. She turned her arm to chop into Adrian's wrist, and tightened her grip like she was going to pin her arm and crush her hand. Then she faced her whole body at her goal, the pad that she was going to slam Adrian's hand against the second Lukretia said go.

She drew deep breaths with measured urgency and constantly adjusted her weight to get it just right. Her smile was gone. She wasn't even paying attention to Adrian, only to the hand in her grip and the pad where she had to put it.

Lukretia smiled as she felt the shifting of the girls hands in her grip. She glanced between them one more time before she pulled her hands off the girls in one flourish.

"Schtarten!"

Adrian's smirk quickly vanished as she attempted to re-adjust the positioning just before Lukretia started them off, Adrian's normal fairly-light grip suddenly becoming a lot tighter as she tried to push down the blonde, or at least, endure the initial barrage

Taylor stacked her shoulder behind her wrist, and the moment Lukretia said the word she began to strain against Adrian with everything she had. She pulled on her handle and grit her teeth and used her weight to keep her hand from budging even an inch. Slowly, more slowly that she would've thought, she began to inch Adrian's hand toward defeat.

Despite Adrian's best efforts, Taylor's arm was going no-where. Or at least no-where in the direction the former cosplayer wanted her arm to go. She was struggling just to keep it in a deadlock, and even then she found her arm slowly going backwards, barely an inch or two but she definitely felt it. Gritting her teeth (And crunching down on the gum piece) she tried to dig up whatever wells of strength she had, and pull it back to the center.

Taylor kept her head down while she struggled against Adrian, the effort making the slender, solid muscles in her arm stand out. She kept her breathing fast and steady, and when Adrian rallied her progress stopped, but her arm still didn't budge an inch.

She hazarded a glance up at Adrian, at the strain on her face as well. She looked up again, just long enough to shake her head at the girl.

Goddammit she thought to herself, her rally had at least stopped Taylor's progress, but it hadn't given the former cosplayer any progress at all. The strain of the effort clearly visible on Adrian's face, if not Taylor's. It was time to plan B.

When Taylor took her second look up to shake her head at the brunette, Adrian would puff out her cheeks. It was a long shot but hopefully if Taylor had gotten enough of a glimpse and remembered what Adrian used to do a lot, the subtle placing of the gum piece in her mouth before it started, making sure not to open it even when stressed. Taylor should have known in the back of her head that she had something in her mouth, and hopefully for Adrian, would make the natural assumption that while Adrian said she had turned over a new leaf, the old Adrian was still there, pulling one of her old tricks out of the bag to screw her over. Too bad for her that it was just a bluff, no green mist in Adrian's mouth, just a bit of gum. The mist would have got her DQ'd and probably punished anyway.

She didn't need much, just a moment of shock or surprise, get Taylor's head out of the game and force her on to the defensive, giving her enough time to try to slam the blonde's arm down onto one of the pads.

Taylor caught it out of the corner or her eye, and without thinking her brain told her to duck. She closed her eyes and started to drop down to dodge the incoming face-full of green mist, but it didn't come.

She caught herself in time to keep from losing outright, but suddenly Adrian was winning. Her arm was bent back forty-five degrees, and she was left desperately working to keep it from dropping the rest of the way. She felt stupid. Leave it to Adrian to find a way to cheat without getting disqualified, even in goddamn arm wrestling.

"Rrrrrrrrgh!" Taylor snarled. She was so going to enjoy beating Adrian's ass. For the time being it was all she could do to keep Adrian from finishing her off.

Result! Her master plan had worked, and Taylor couldn't complain about it because she didn't really do anything apart from playing some mind games which was totally a legitimate strategy, she hoped. It seemed legit enough anyway, with victory within reach as she reapplied her focus, managing to get Taylor half-way to defeat off the split-second distraction. Now she just had to push her down the rest of the way from a much better position and be insufferable about her victory in this competition, despite describing it as dumb.

As Taylor's arm inched back toward failure, her face gradually changed from a look of extreme effort to a look of pain. Her arm was stretched out, and the bicep and tendons that held it together were pulled to their limit. Her hand moved slightly toward the pad, and then stopped, and while she panted for air, eyes closed and teeth clenched, she managed to hold it there.