Sarah and Malice had just left the WSA with their bondmates when they met someone new. She was clearly an uplifted Rottweiler, but she was wearing a badge on her left shoulder that read "Chinese Year of the Dog 2018 Recruiter".
"So you're the two huskies full of confidence for the Year of the Dog Beauty Pageant, yeah?" she asked.
"Yeah, so?" replied Malice, practically radiating confidence.
"Do you know what it's going to entail?" asked the recruiter. At that Malice wasn't as confident. "Typical." said the recruiter, rolling her eyes, "It's that kind of overconfidence that will cost you the Best of Breed Showdown."
"The what?" asked Sarah, not familiar with the term.
"The Best of Breed Showdown is a kind of elimination round based off of television shows like Alpha Dog. It's designed to show the judges both your health and physical fitness levels, and your speed and grace at showing both. Here's the thing though, there are so many dogs signing up for the Pageant that this was put in place mandatorily. There will be seven elimination rounds with those who aren't eliminated in each round moving on to the Pageant proper." explained the Recruiter.
At this, both Malice and Sarah both became worried. If either one of them or both of them fail in any of the elimination rounds, they might let Simon and/or Travis down. Fortunately, the Recruiter was able to sense this and managed to salvage the moment.
"Don't worry, the Animalia School of Modeling and Claw Coliseum are working together to do Zodiac Pageant Prep classes. They're also planning to have it as an after school program."
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It was actually a good thing that there was such a class started at such a time, because there were over 200 dog Animalians, both converted and uplifted, taking part in the Chinese Year of the Zodiac Beauty pageant. With these classes, they were able to learn more about what was involved in beauty pageants as well as how much physical exertion would be needed for both the elimination rounds and the Pageant Proper. Everyone, but especially Sarah and Malice, was confident that these classes would enable them to have a fighting chance.