My final words echoed in the heavy silence of the room: 'We will win on pure contrast.'
The team looked up, their eyes wide with surprise. The heavy, defeated air in the room seemed to lift, replaced by a flicker of my own stubborn anger. The thought of forfeiting was fully gone. My plan was completely absurd, but it wasn't a plan of surrender.
Gilda was the first to break the silence. She looked down at her giant, intimidating axe, then back up at the team. A slow, dangerous grin spread across her face. "Aggressively nice," she rumbled, as if testing the words on her tongue. "Alright. I can work with that."
Her acceptance seemed to break the spell.
Pip, who had been looking utterly defeated, now had a tiny spark of his old, nervous excitement. "So... we're still going to be a spa? But... a spiteful spa?"
'Precisely,' I replied.
