“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.”