?

The judging was not a fast process. And it wasn’t limited to just Sylvie’s exhibit either. The judges were taking the time to question each of the children involved in the projects after thoroughly examining the pieces on display, then using their own expertise (and google) to come up with on the fly questions for the kids. From what Callisto and Lily relayed back, most of the kids struggled to answer the questions. The only one who didn’t struggle at all was Penny, Sylvie’s knew friend, but they were just asking her math questions.

Eventually though, the group of judges made its way to Kat’s station. Kat was poked and prodded more than she thought was entirely appropriate with multiple pens and one clipboard. Kat wasn’t entirely pleased with that, especially not when her tail was jabbed twice. After that Kat had to ask, "Is this all really necessary? I’m not the science experiment, just the model for the wings,"

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Alexander nodded along and added, "Indeed, leave the poor girl alone. I don’t know why you all are so interested in jabbing Kat with pens, but I doubt it has much to do with the science fair,"

*I’m not going to say it was entirely inappropriate. Most of those jabs were poking at the wings, likely testing out stable they are… but the two jabs to my midsection where I’m trying to hold my tail are a bit questionable, and the poking on my horns was just silly,*

The other judges seemed to grumble a bit and step back, but one of the female judges said, "I see nothing wrong with our examination. Nothing untoward was happening, and judging by the weight of the wings, the harness… Kat, I believe you said? The harness itself might be worth looking into as well,"

Callisto stepped forward, "I think you’ll find it is just a slightly modified rock climbing harness," Callisto’s voice seemed normal, but it had an underlying chill to it, "If you want, I can even purchase you an additional copy, it will not be hard. Perhaps if it fascinates you so much, you can take a jump of a cliff and test it yourself?"

The judge glared at Callisto but didn’t rise to the bait, simply huffing and moving away to examine the equations on the board. Before they got to the real questions though, a judge, that same judge in fact, noticed the correction that had been added to the wall, "What’s this?"

"My correction," said Sylvie.

"And how did you discover the correction?" asked the judge.

Alexander stepped up this time, not willing to let Sylvie take the heat for this one, "Another contestant pointed it out to Sylvie, and, they double checked with me before placing the correction over the top of the incorrect equation. It is a minor typographical error,"

The judge glared at Alexander, "You didn’t have the authority to do that,"

Alexander shrugged, "Well I DID authorise it, regardless of whether I should have authorised it or not, the fact remains that I did, and I’m afraid you’ll just have to deal with it,"

"Who even let this upstart on the panel?" asked the judge.

This time, the second female judge stepped forward and said, "Alexander was sent as a replacement for Dr Botnick, who begged off on grounds of being sick today. Alexander is perfectly qualified for judging, and is currently working on his diploma under Dr Botnick. Additionally, it seems you’ve forgotten but the memo regarding the swap was sent out to everyone on the judging panel, and you accepted it as well as I,"

Kat mentally decided it was too confusing to keep the judges straight in her mind, so now, she was naming them. There was Angry Judge, or just Angry, obviously, then there was Sassy Judge who was defending them at the moment, Alexander of course, and two other male judges. One had a fabulous beard, and as such shall be dubbed, Beardman, and finally, the last guy who hadn’t really done anything, thus he was Boring.

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True to form, Boring just ignored the argument that was clearly starting to take shape, he just kept making notes as if nothing was wrong at all. Beardman was splitting his attention between the fight and taking his own notes, looking a bit tired as he did so, while of course, the other three were arguing.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about," said Angry, "I approved of nothing,"

"It was part of the final days checks," retorted Sassy, "You’d be getting alarms about not filling out the forms if you didn’t accept it,"

Angry started to wind up for something else when Beardman smacked his pencil into the clipboard, dragging everyone’s attention back to him, "Need I remind you both that we’re currently being watched by a crowd of people as we judge a children’s science fair? I would expect people in your position to know not to traumatise children. Imagine the paperwork," grumbled Beardman.

That seemed to kill the argument before it could get going, and the judges went back to making notes, until they eventually took to questioning Sylvie. Sylvie was faced with a solid thirty minutes of questions, most of which fielded by Angry who was clearly just trying to catch Sylvie out at this point. Callisto’s glare was looking more and more menacing as the questions went on, even when Kat started to poor calming aura is Callisto’s direction.

Still, Sylvie wasn’t a genius for nothing, she managed to answer every single question without fail, and finally the judges had to leave them alone. "I am going to get us something to eat after that… display," said Callisto with a sneer, not even trying to hide her disdain, nor was she concerned with the fact the judges could definitely still hear here. "What would you like to eat Sylvie?"

"Um… I don’t mind," mumbled the girl.

Callisto sighed and said, "Ok, if you really do not mind I shall see what is nearby and bring some food back. Hopefully I will not be too long,"

Callisto headed off and the judging continued, Callisto was pleased with her decision because when she returned twenty minutes later with a couple of pizza boxes for Kat, Lily, Sylvie and Sylvie’s two friends, as well as spares for those who really wanted some, the judges were still judging.

Callisto, just to stir the pot a bit, handed off one of the boxes of pizza to Alexander and when the rest were distracted, zipping away before she could be caught. Kat watched from afar and had to stifle laughter as Angry did a double take when she turned around and saw Alexander with an open pizza box. Sadly, she did not take the bait.

When the judging was finally over, the judges made there way to the small stage, that was really just a collection of raised boxes, and turned on the microphone. Beardman was the spokesperson it seems, "Greetings one and all, I hope you have enjoyed the science fair. We will be asking contestants to leave the stands up for another hour at least, but officially the fair is over with the judging panel. It took us some deliberation to reach our top three… but first, let’s go over the five honourable mentions, each of which will receive a $50 gift voucher…

"The first of which goes to Alice, for her spectacular model volcano. While model volcanoes are a staple of science fairs, Alice has gone above and beyond making sure that the eruption produced an accurate mixture of fluids, and the details on the construction were stunning. Alas, as it IS a classic, and something seen many a time, we cannot give her a placing finish. Next up is Penny, with her ’Golden Ratio in real life’

"An impressive collection of pictures and observations, as well as mathematical proofs… but it lacks practical applications and is in reality a small project, a well done project, but a bit small in scope when compared to what we were looking for,"

Beardman went through the honourable mentions one at a time, giving general details of why they were interesting and why they didn’t receive a final place. Then, came the winners, "In third place, is Sylvie, with her ’The potential arial capabilities of humans’ exhibit. Sylvie achieved third place due to her dedication in not only providing biological, and mathematical proofs for her diagrams, but making fully realised models, even up to human scale, though fully human scale isn’t flight capable, Sylvie did still detail the necessary wingspan and musculature to change that,"

Kat smiled and clapped as Sylvie went up on stage to collect her bronze medal. *Huh, I didn’t know if Sylvie would get picked as a winner but there you go.* Kat found it hard to pay attention to the other winners, her mind was occupied by Sylvie’s shy smile. Kat did hear that second place went to someone who managed to create a program that generated music based on a Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, something Alice thought was ’very cool’. First place went to someone who managed to build a lego robot dinsosaur… but none of the girls were impressed. In fact, Alice was pretty sure that was just an unreleased lego kit someone had gotten their hands on. Still, the girls were all smiles as they left the science fair later that day.

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