Between Senjen and Jess, there were two very different reactions to Pclendafuun. Jess turned her head and tried to subtly avoid eye contact, while Senjen stared in fascination. Sometimes, he felt like it took him more effort to understand organic species, but he was someone wiling to put in that effort. At times, he was jealous of Ruknar’s ability to pick up on signals that people may not have even known they were putting off. It was, quite literally, natural for her, and it even extended to Utaysi. He would probably have quite a few questions for her about Pclendafuun, after all this was over. Senjen was more than familiar with the fact that they were burrowers at home in the ground, given that he had been living in one of their ships for years, so he supposed it made sense that they might have some kind of connection with dirt and minerals.

Before long, the event runners called the participants to their positions, and naturally, they ended up following Ruknar to where they needed to go. For Senjen, it was mostly the way he looked around and how long he spent taking in all the novel details he observed that gave away his excitement. Curiosity was something that Ruknar would have seen in him from the moment they met. Right now, that curiosity was directed at sizing up their competition. He tried to get a sense of how confident they seemed, though he suspected that many of them were not so competitive as himself. This was, for most, more likely a casual and relaxing sort of competition.

Nevertheless, Senjen was focused. “Okay, so I don’t think we need a vote to safely say that Ruk is our team leader. What will we need to do first? Do we need to build something? I can help Jess with that. Or do you need help more? My frame is at your command.”

“Hold the reef a moment…aren’t I the team leader, since we’re celebrating me?” Light ventured.

“Do you know what we’re doing?” Ruk asked simply, hitting perfect contrapposto from the opposite side of a large raised patch of soil.

“...No…” QV weren’t very facially expressive beings, owing to their evolution in near total darkness. But Light pushed the boundaries of what it meant for a fish to pout. His colours were simpatico.

“Ok, shall i show you the ropes on this one?”

“...Yes…”

“Alright then. Listen up everybody, please.” The Tekeri gestured to the three metre square of ground they had gathered around.

“Here is our patch - we can’t plant anything outside of this square. Round one requires us to grow four plants at once so we’re gonna need you to tend one of them, Senny. Since Jess is our master builder this time, I’d recommend you pick a nice, sociable Human plant.”

“How can we grow plants with no spores?” Light asked.

“Ahh, now here is where it gets expensive. Those vending machines sell seeds for most every type of flora in the known galaxy.” She pointed to a holo pad mounted on a thick base with a little door and container underneath about thirty metres away. “They sell gardening accessories, growing media, the works too.”

“It seems quite unfair for those patches to be so close to it.” Light regarded the robed horticulturalists on the patches next to it.

“They’re probably members. Figures. We should go check it out; make our choices.”

“Okay, okay…” Senjen began, tapping a claw against his own arm as he sorted through a search of native Earth plants. He filtered them down by a few criteria that came to mind as a few ideas started to pop into his mind.

Senjen had been staring off absently into space while going through the searches, but he perked up the moment his idea solidified. “There’s, um...firethorn, maybe roses? For the judging on this, does strictly size matter, or does what we do with the plants also count? If there’s an artistic portion, I might have an idea. Maybe we can put together thorny, toxic, and otherwise hostile plants that can survive each other? They’re hard to work with for anyone else, but they won’t even slow me down. And probably not Plcendafuun here either, now that I think about it. If they appreciate artistic statements, then putting together an arrangement of plants that are beautiful to the eye and dangerous to the touch is, um...well that’s ‘artistic’, right?”

Senjen seemed to dismiss his own doubt. “If we want to stand out, then we should play to our strengths, right? Do what the others can’t.”

Pclendafuun responded to Senjen before Ruknar could even blink.

“Aesthetics and artistic message are considered by the J-J-judges when scoring entries.” He seemed more confident now.

“Ooh, I wonder if they have any Grabglove spores - they like grabbing fish that clean their scales on spinereef. Maybe it will like these…rose thorns ” Light wasn’t an avid gardener, but had very fond memories of Grabglove from his infancy. He used to play around the deep spine reefs with shoals of other juveniles. They’d flit in and out of range of the grab glove arms, delighting when they would snatch at their tails with their brightly covered ‘mouth’ flower.

“G-g-grabglove is statistically uncommon in this tournament - that may play well w-with the judges if it grows properly.” Pclendafuun offered helpfully.

“Ok, ok, what could I grow?” Ruk raked the moist, loamy soil with one taloned foot.

“Ooh, what about Creeech? Its smell is so potent that it can make you pass out!”

“An interesting c-choice!” The Tindrel chittered. “Creeech developed symbiotically with scavengers who would eat the sleeping prey, leaving some of the flesh at the base of the plant as an offering.”

“Thats right, buddy!” Ruk clicked.

“We have a special announcement. Mokhtar Brobdingh AgriKem have just sponsored this round, offering 50% off their BioBurst range to any gardener who successfully seeds an unwanted companion in another team’s patch. The round starts in ten seconds. Good luck!”

“Hmmm.” Light cast a suspicious eye around as a wave of murmuring rippled across the dozens of patches around them. Teams of all sizes conversed urgent together.

“What is BioBurst?”

“It kills plants. Useful for next round.” Pclendafuun chirped.

A klaxon sounded, and it seemed like every single gardener under the giant shrub that day rushed to one of the dozen terminals placed strategically around the allotments.

Soon enough, it seemed that everyone was contributing something, and Senjen couldn’t help but to be proud about it. “Alright, we’ve got something here, see? We’ve got a plan, we’ve got experts, I can be your labor. Now let’s just stay cool under pressure and get it done.”

“You just need a sturdy bit of scaffolding for your plants, right? Don’t much matter what kind of materials they’ve got on hand, I’ll get it together. Just show me where to find it.” Jess remarked. Naturally, she did not bring a full set of tools with her everywhere. The most she had in her pouch were a few useful multitools for spot repairs, but for a job like this, that would be more than enough. Senjen could tell that Jess had been somewhat ambivalent going into this, but now that her contribution was now focused on an engineering challenge, he could see she was getting more invested. Putting together solutions with scraps was second nature to her, so he felt she would be up to it.

Something Senjen had not expected came along with the announcement that they were about to begin. Not only were they allowed to interfere with other plots, but they would be rewarded for doing so. That opened up a whole new angle to this competition, and he had only a short time to think about it. They needed to go get their seeds, and their plot was not exactly the closest to any of the terminals. Someone would have to take a short walk...right past several other plots. He realized there was actually a way to turn the competitors’ privilege to their advantage. “I guess I’ll go-, wait, actually…”

Senjen leaned in closer to Light, speaking softly. “Might be able to get tricky with this suit of yours. Why don’t you go get the seeds? You could eject seeds from the suit at any angle as you’re passing by. Could be hard to notice. You could sprinkle a few over the competition on the way back. I’ll keep watch here.”

“Over there, be careful!” Ruk pointed to a ramshackle old shed about ten metres away. The doors were thrust open and a dozen gardeners were jostling for position to rifle through piles of rusty materials inside.

Light made a noise like a saucepan bubbling over at the thought of being involved in a plot.

“Ok! But what does the Tindrel want?”

“I shall a-c-company you to ensure your protection and a satisfactory selection.” Pclendafuun squelched across the grass to his side.

“Alright, let's go!” Light patted the Tindrel’s faceplate tentatively before wobbling quickly towards a terminal. The QV’s old suit provided a gait approximate to a very intoxicated biped to blend into the flurry of activity. The Tindrel followed so close behind as to be actually touching.

“Ok Senny, I need your help to prepare this soil for a strange mixture of plants. Take some of my homebrew and mix it EVENLY into this area here. Then we need to create a basin in the middle for Light’s horrible grabber to seed from, coating it completely in the stuff Pclenda threw back up, ok?”

Ruk knelt down with an auto-trowel before recoiling as a small shower of tiny seed pods tickled her beak and clinked off Senjen’s head from above. She looked up to find a tiny drone whizzing to the next patch.

“Hey! Alright, do all that while also getting rid of those seeds!”

Jess seemed undeterred as she followed Ruk’s direction over towards the shed. It was crowded, with no shortage of competition for the best materials. Many of the others were much larger than her and had arrived sooner, so they were naturally occupied with struggling against each other for the materials they wanted. Jess, meanwhile, was a new arrival, small, and easy to miss among the crowd. Easy to forget. As much as it went against her nature, all she had to do was to stay quiet and squeeze through around the fringes of the crowd. There was no way she could compete for the most obviously useful materials without drawing unwanted attention to herself, so she focused her attention on the less obviously useful pieces. It would be easy to take a look at her and assume she was just settling for whatever she could get her hands on, but in this place, she was right in her element.

Senjen, by this point, was getting focused, especially once Ruk started giving him more concrete tasks. He made notes of her instructions as she gave them, then tried to picture what their plot would need to look like by the end of it. “I’ve been meaning to ask, how exactly do we get an aquatic plant to grow alongside terrestrial ones? Doesn’t it need to be submerged, or is there some way around that?”

The question was soon interrupted by the first attempt made on them at sabotage with a drone. It certainly spread a lot of seeds, but it did not seem to impact Senjen’s confidence in the slightest. He brushed away the seeds caught in his frame, away from the patch, then laughed when he returned back to Ruk. “Ha! They should have waited until we were done prepping the soil for that.” To take care of the seeds would be easy enough for him. He could just scrape away the whole top layer of their plot, since they were going to be replacing it anyway with their own medium.

Senjen took a few minutes to carefully remove and replace the soil per Ruknar’s instructions. Since they had not yet grown anything, Ruk could easily help with that step personally. Though, as he was working on it, he was already looking around the area and thinking on the next part of his own schemes. As they were finishing up with the soil, Senjen leaned in close and whispered into Ruk’s ear. “Keep watch over the plot for a moment. I’m going to try something.”

Turning himself towards one the plot of one of their neighbors, Senjen gave a laugh. “A drone, really? You’re going to have to try better than that.” He flicked a single one of the invasive seeds in their direction. He did not know, nor care, if that group was responsible for the drone, nor if it made him look like a fool to pretend that they were. If it did, all the better, because what he really cared about was the fact that Light and Pclendafuun were soon to be passing by their plot on the way back, and he would prefer their attention to be on himself.

“In my knapsack is an oil I’m gonna need Light to coat the Grabglove in - it tricks plants into thinking they’re underwater. Stiffens their stems too, so they can take structures alongside terrestrial flora.” Ruk said evenly. She was concentrating now, in a doctorly trance just like on the wards. She gave Senjen a disapproving look when it was clear he had sabotage in his heart, but she didn’t stop him. She merely nodded and shooed him away with her trowel.

“Don’t be long.”

The Human who stood to face Senjen from the patch he approached had a thick metal bar through the bridge of his nose. Attached to it were blue tinted lenses that covered each eye. Black adaptive tattoos shifted across much of the pale skin left exposed by their short sleeved half-zip jacket and cargo pants. He pointed a gardening fork at Senjen and shot back in a language his translation package struggled to recognise.

“Tuang fulugwab, huttu wannai! Bek tu yowah petch afor I stick you, robot!”

“Eh, eh! Bek tu work!” A large woman with dark braided hair shouted at Senjen and the man indiscriminately from across the rival patch. The man ignored her, jabbing at the Utaysi accusatorily.

-

Light encountered a solid wall of gardeners before he could actually reach the terminal. He wobbled around them in his suit, trying to squeeze through.

“I just need to get to the terminal… Hey!” He pushed back whenever he was jostled, but didn’t understand the dynamic enough to go further. That is until Pclendfuun politely tapped him on the back with one leg.

“Please a-a-llow me.” Light moved aside and the Tindrel simply parted the crowd with his face plate, moving slowly but implacable. Evolved for higher pressure and constant exertion, his species was far massier than the other species.

This manoeuvre attracted a large outcry from the waiting queue of competitors and the jostle increased dramatically, but Light and Pclenda reached the terminal. They tapped it to access the interface virtually. The Tindrel completed his order immediately and a small hatch opened up in the delivery compartment. He grabbed the large seed pods with his tongue then waited placidly for Light to make his much more hesitant purchases.

“These prices are a rip off! Lets try another terminal!”

“We do not have time. T-t-think of the prize monies.”

Light reluctantly placed his order and grabbed the collection of baggies from another open door.

“Ok, let's get out of here!” The noise inside the arena was increasing steadily.

Once they had left the scrum, Light remembered the plan. He saw Senjen making a distraction nearby; one of his fortes. Scanning the area, he didn’t detect any attention on him. He quickly opened one of the baggies and dispersed the seeds around his suit. Understanding his intention, it spat them discreetly at patches in all directions. They made a quiet *blop* as they left his suit. Light gave Senjen The Look as he passed by and they arrived back at the patch.

Senjen stared ahead and blinked. Utaysi had other mechanisms to serve the original function of eyelids more efficiently, but they were still included on any standard Utaysi frame for the sake of communication. Their eyes were perhaps their most expressive physical feature, and Senjen’s easily expressed his bewilderment. His translator seemed to catch the meaning of a few words, but he was not exactly sure of what the Humans were trying to say. After a few seconds of silence, he made some effort to salvage the idea that he knew what he was doing. “Um...yeah, yeah. I always appreciate some strong competition too. Don’t think I’ll go easy on you or anything, so uh...yeah. Best of luck.”

Senjen ended up in an unintentionally awkward stare towards their neighbors for a few more moments, but shook himself free when the others returned to the group. He turned back around to focus on his own plot, and hoped that the Human was willing to do the same. It was not like they were going to be having a productive and meaningful conversation, at any rate. Making a distraction for Light had been the whole point, and now that he was back, all that was left was to finish their own creation. He did not do anything too overt to acknowledge Light, but they had both played their part. Jess made it back shortly beforehand with a scattered arrangement of scrap metal. Senjen did not have the faintest idea how she planned to work with that mess, but he did not need to. No small number of the replacement parts he had bought from her over the years were not made for his frame, but she had got them working together regardless.

“Okay, now that all that’s done, I’m feeling pretty good about our chances. What do we need first?” Senjen asked. He sat back in the dirt next to their plot and gave it a quick look over, saving a few pictures of its current state. If he kept saving and updating images of their progress, then he figured he could probably use them as a reference for comparison to look for anything out-of-place if someone tried to sabotage their plot.

“We need to send Light some credits for the very expensive seeds he just bought.” Light half-joked.

“I think we need a frame that supports each of our four plants separately in their own establishment areas, then guides them into the middle so we can make some kind of companion display. What did you get?” Ruk asked Pclendafuun.

“D-d-d-dessous.”

Ruk’s beak hung open slightly. Dessous was relatively well known to people who visited Tindrel settlements. It was tightly controlled or banned in most worlds, but not Korit it seemed. It grew from the muddy lakes deep inside underground caverns before planting parasitic nutrient tendrils that burrowed up to bind with the roots of surface dwelling plants. “That is…actually brilliant. Its deep resin smell will balance the damask and the ammonia… It likes water so we can make one large basin. It’s also myco-heterotrophic, so we could control the growth of all three plants at once…Ok, Jess - can you build a funnel shape in the next ninety seconds? Senny we need a basin half a metre deep in the middle. Then plant your roses around the edge of the funnel base. Light, take this oil and start smearing the seeds. Quick!” Ruk cast an eye at other patches. Some already had plants growing.

Jess did not say anything, nor did she need to. She had her task and her time limit, and she knew how to execute it. She took a rectangular sheet of thin metal and readied it to cut into triangles, stopping only for a moment to get an estimate of the size. Based on what Ruknar had described, she had a rough idea of what she wanted, but she double-checked the measurements with Ruk first before starting in earnest. Once cut, she could bend the metal into a conical shape, using instinct and simple geometry instead of hard measurements. It did not need to be machined to tight tolerances for gardening, so she could just worry about getting it to be good enough, quickly.

Senjen had no idea what Dessous was, but Ruk seemed to like it, so that was good enough for him. He may not have been as much of an expert as her, but he was interested enough in the hobby to be able to follow her directions without needing to be micromanaged. He understood what kind of basin Ruk wanted, so he dug as quickly as he could, though a half-meter deep would take some time no matter how quickly he worked. Pclendafuun had no other task, so they could help with the digging, after which he set to work on planting the roses. He had the instructions for that particular plant up in the corner of his field of view, so he could know how deep and far apart they liked to be planted. All the while, he was recording his perspective as a reference in case they needed to do damage control on some sabotage.

“You know, it’s nice to be able to do this. Back in the ship, I just have a few planters under artificial lights. Now that things are looking up, maybe we’ll be able to get our own place somewhere eventually? I wouldn’t mind having a balcony, or maybe even a whole yard if it’s somewhere outside the city.” Senjen remarked.

“Win first, balcony later, keep working.” Light grunted, frantically and messily coating his seeds with oil.

In the end, their entry showed a lack of team cohesion despite sparks of genius. The alarming rate of growth caught Light completely off guard, and he neglected to properly wind the Grabglove around the sticky Dessous tree that grew through the middle of the arrangement. It hung morosely from a few boughs with wild bunches of flowering. At one point it grabbed Light’s face and tried to eat him, which he found very funny - distracting Senjen so he’d stop and look at him.

Ruk’s Creeech plant looked very pretty draped over the trees, but absolutely stank of ammonia so as to outweigh the other olfactory elements. She’d spent so much time managing the other three novices that she’d not had the time to perfect her contribution.

They scraped into the next round by the skin of their teeth.

“Well done everyone! I think we thoroughly deserved that.” Light warbled, completely oblivious to the league table that showed how precarious their situation was.

“I enjoyed that, what’s next?”

“Round two is a head to head.” The announcer duly explained over tannoy as roughly half the competitors trudged off the field.

“Teams take each end of the long rectangular patches. The team with the biggest percentage of the patch land occupied by living plants of their choosing at the end of the time knocks the other team out. You have five minutes to prepare.”

Senjen had a hard time keeping track of how well or poorly their group was during in the middle of the first round, as he had been far more focused on doing one task after the next. Only he and Pclendafuun could really handle most of the plants they had chosen safely, so they had to take on a greater share of the labor. Fortunately, he was at least familiar enough with horticulture that he could follow Ruk’s instructions without many misunderstandings, which likely contributed to them not failing entirely. One could tell he was remaining enthusiastic, and it was not until after the end of the round that he finally realized they were not performing quite as well as he perhaps imagined they were. The disappointment shook him for a moment, but he did not let that get to him for long. At least, not outwardly. They were still in the competition, so until they were knocked out, he still needed to have his mind on competing.

Once again, Senjen stayed close to Ruknar as they were starting to get ready for the next round. They had managed to seed an unwanted companion into another plot, so they would have that reward available for this round. He was starting to get an idea of how it would be useful, but there were still plenty of other questions swirling in his mind. “Okay, so head-to-head, then. Sounds like this is all about area, not art, so we just need to encourage the most voracious plant we can. What exactly are the rules here? I gather we’re going to be growing our own plants while trying to kill theirs. Is it going to be all about chopping plants and spreading herbicide, or am I going to have to worry about people trying to get physical with me?” He asked Ruk.

“Its not exactly peak form, but judging by the crowd here today I would not be surprised. Keep your wits about you.” Ruk warned.

“Senjen and I are no strangers to a scrap, I’m sure we’ll be OK.” Light retorted. He was still giddy from having actually won something. He could suddenly see why people decided to make entire careers from competition circuits.

Officials passed by with remote controls. At their command, the soil between two patches was quickly turned fertile and workable by machines within the ground. What was once two squares became a long rectangle. They had been paired with the group of Humans Senjen had agitated in the previous round.

“I can r-r-recommend simulating the creation of defensive items to forestall any actual ph-ph-physical activity.” Pclendafuun said.

“And I’m not going to the terminal again. If we’re thinking of fast-growing weeds, I can send you names for some kelp that ruined many cave systems when I was a juvenile…” Light continued. Their opponents had already started making their way over to the terminal, leaving two people behind to guard the patch.

“Well hey, if that’s how it’s going to be, then I think we have the edge here. If we need someone for guard duty, then you’re in the presence of a professional” Senjen laughed, giving an exaggerated bow. “Most people out there don’t really have a chance of overpowering me. A Tindrel can maybe do it, but the only Tindrel here is on our team. I mean, I’m not looking to hurt anyone over some plants, but I can be a wall if we need one.”

Pclendafuun’s suggestion was not immediately clear to Senjen. “Do you mean defensive items as in barrier plants, a literal barrier, or something else?”

Jess was standing around, arms crossed and looking down at the plot. “If you need me to build something defensive, I can do it. Otherwise, I reckon I’m not going to have too much else to do this round.”

Officials had not yet announced their time had started, but it looked like their opponents were already looking to get their seeds. They needed to get moving too. Senjen might have been more of the muscle in this round, but he still took a moment to think. “I actually know some really resilient plants from Orostro. Not native, but used there. A lot of native plants were lost in the extinction, so they’ve been importing plants to re-seed the badlands and get them to the point where they can support native plants again. They might make a good core to base our plot around, since they’re so hard to kill. Speaking of defenses, though, maybe we should plant some sort of barrier on the edge of their side? Something herbicide-resistant, and maybe hostile like before?”

Surprisingly, out of all of them, it was Jess who actually spoke up right away. “Russian thistle.”

Senjen appeared mildly startled as he glanced back. “Huh?”

“It’s a really stubborn weed back home. It’s hard as hell to poison, for how long we’ve been trying to get rid of it. It’s thorny, hard to handle, and when it gets past a certain point, part of it breaks art and starts rollin’ around in the wind to spread its seeds. I’ve seen them bury houses when they bunch up enough. You could push it right into their plot and make it their headache.” She suggested, shrugging.

Ruk was busy surveying their new elongated plot, raking the soil in sections with her taloned feet. Without looking at them she mimicked a balloon being inflated and then popping as Light and Senjen spoke.

“Y-y-yes.” Pclendafuun answered Senjen’s eventual question. Light looked at him, stunned. Eventually the Tindrel elaborated.

“We c-could c-construct an underground bulwark topped with biocidal soil over halfway, and then defend it. Plants that propagate runners would be beneficial.”

“Are we allowed to build over halfway?” Light asked eagerly

“I did not hear anything forbidding it.”

“Erm… We should get a move on.” Ruk scratched her head as a shower of seeds landed on their plot from another drone.

Glancing up at the drone, Senjen scoffed and threw up his hands. “Where do they keep getting these things? And why do they keep trying that before we’ve even planted anything? That won’t even slow us down. Doesn’t even make sense…” He grumbled, his voice trailing off. “Light, could you go for the seeds with Pclendafuun again? We can get the soil ready.”

---

Since the first round, the team was getting more into the rhythm of working together. Pclendafuun may still have been a stranger, but with them being knowledgeable enough on the subject, Ruknar could coordinate with them reasonably well. It was easiest when they all had their own jobs they could focus on. Senjen was handling planting on the border of their opponents’ side. A Human had little chance of physically interfering with much of anything he wanted to do. If he wanted to plant something, then it was going in the dirt as long as he was standing there to guard over it. If he wanted to rip something up or apply poison, then stopping him was not terribly likely. Whenever the thistle Jess suggested matured enough to form a tumbleweed, Senjen could toss it over into the other plot to distribute its seeds. They were not heavy, but they were more than thorny enough to potentially make them difficult to handle. To counter what he was doing, one would have a much better chance by acting more efficiently wherever he was not.

Senjen was not the one directing their strategy, so he tried to keep his thoughts just on his own tasks in front of him, though in the back of his mind, he did worry about what tricks their opponents might have picked up through experience. He might not even recognize the ways they could get one over on him. Regardless of how it turned out, though, he relished the competition. The prize money was not as important to him as just trying to win.

Light almost forgot how much money they had invested during this competition already; he had a fantastic time. He’d never really given gardening much thought before now, but resolved to give it a go afterwards. He got stuck into the difficult task of directing the weeds they eventually chose in the right direction. It seemed intent on seeding soil outside of the plot, but all this growth didn’t count towards their score and was promptly zapped by lasers hidden somewhere above them.

At one point the weed grew so voraciously that in a moment of lapsed focus it actually latched onto his suit and grew round him. Light laughed, tickled by the sensation passed through to him by the gel. He swivelled to face Senjen, who was on the same side as him.

“Senjen.” The Utaysi didn’t respond immediately.

“Senjen, look.” The weed suddenly grew over the QV’s face.

“Senjen, help!” He thrashed inside the bush.

The Human team realised quickly that they were outmatched physically. So they focused on distracting the fledgling opposition by accosting the weakest links - Ruknar and Light. During the chaos, they planted moso bamboo and Kudzu together behind enemy lines, which then sprouted ferociously and was difficult to remove.

When the round was over, the patch looked like a warzone. Tangled masses of Russian thistle, bamboo and kelp stretched far beyond the patch, with dozens of dead patches and hastily assembled frameworks.

The officials sent drones to assess each plant’s land area before announcing the winners.

“Sunlight Sowers, 47.69% land area. Eswatini Twistahs, 50.95% land area. 1.36% land area unoccupied. Eswatini Twistahs win.”

“We…lost?” Light mumbled, crestfallen.

“Yes, sorry. That was fun though, right!” Ruk was scratched and bleeding from the various thorns and sharp edges in the plot but seemed content with their performance.

“We should probably make way; they’ll want to cleanse this patch. What a sight - someone take a picture of us with it for posterity!”

In the midst of the contest, Senjen felt like he had to split his focus between a dozen things. Poisoning the opponents’ plants, throwing around tumbleweeds, and ripping up whatever plants he could get his hands on that did not belong to them. When light called for his attention, he was, for a moment, suddenly blindsided by the ridiculousness of it all. He was running around in the dirt, throwing weeds at Humans, and now Light had managed to get himself trapped in a bush, inside his own suit. In times like this, there was no other choice but to just stop and laugh.

---

Senjen was less surprised than Light that they had lost. He had been right up front, chasing around the Humans and seeing exactly what they were doing. He saw all their clever tricks, and he could tell quickly how experienced they were. Frankly, what surprised him the most was that there was any percentage of the plot unoccupied after all of that. Even with poisons to kill them, it felt like plants on both sides were always overgrowing what was lost.

Still, Senjen was in about as good spirits after it all as Ruk was. Briefly, he complimented their opponents on their performance, to which they said something he mostly did not understand. He hoped polite waving was the appropriate reply. Jess was the one who took the picture of the rest of their group with the completed plot. She enjoyed the part of the contest that involved “creative” construction, but aside from that, it was clear the others had been more enthusiastic.

---

Given that there was still plenty of time left in the afternoon, the group was not quite ready to call it yet. Though, Senjen supposed they would need to be a bit more responsible about how much they spent from this point on. With how much they had invested at the contest, it was already like they had dined out at a fancy restaurant. Senjen did end up exchanging information with Pclendafuun to leave open the possibility of staying in contact. They had been a good teammate.

It was the Ketlit Market a few levels down to which Senjen suggested they all go next, which was far from an uncommon destination for them. Aside from its plentiful shops and services, there was no shortage of entertainment and restaurants which could fit into most price ranges. Indeed, being that it was Korit, there was hardly a limit on what one could find being sold out in the open. What might be considered black market goods on most worlds might be sold right next to everyday items, and depending on what it was, it could even be just as cheap. For some goods, if they could not be produced locally, they still might need to be smuggled out of their origin world, which could influence the price.

Of course, there was more pulling Senjen to Ketlit today, as part of it was hosting a trade exhibition. This one was a tech show, one of probably half a dozen just in Setia throughout the year. Korit was a melting pot, so the planet ended up as a test market for the new and experimental products of many major corporations. A little microcosm of the galaxy as a whole. Computers, implants, new devices, robots...it was tempting in more ways than one, and this one was open to the public. No admission needed. It had been going on a few days now, and Senjen had almost come out by himself before.

When they came upon the signage for the show, Senjen stopped and looked to the other three. “Do you want to...look around for a little while? We don’t have to buy anything, but it’s...always interesting to see what’s coming up.” He asked. To those who knew him so well, he was failing to suppress his excitement.

Tindrel emotions were usually considered the hardest to read visually. But if asked afterwards Pclendafuun would mention that he was sad to part with his new friends so soon. He resolved to find some reason to get in contact with them again. With nothing else planned for the rest of his day, he stayed behind to watch the rest of the contest. No one properly engaged with him, even when he tried his hardest to make ‘small talk’.

---

Light was very comfortable in the market setting. Even before meeting Senjen and the others he had frequented this area frequently in between freight runs. He swaggered around, still buoyed by fight or flight hormones triggered by the contest, Pclendafuun’s emissions and various chemicals secreted by the plants.

“Ahh…I thought the crowd seemed different today!” Light studied the signage then pivoted to study his robotic comrade.

“Are we doing what I think we’re doing?”

“What’s that?” Ruk asked, stepped in to exercise her hyper-empathy on them both. This included cocking her head every which way in a uniquely avian fashion.

“Is…Is Senny actually going to buy something?”