Tango

Botany

"And . . . that would be the last one, right?" Vespera asked a small, rodent female technician beside her once the last competitor had disappeared from the meeting room. The woman had joined the Governess in her office as the latter checked in on the race's progress through a small monitor on her desk. She nodded her head in response, but Vespera did not turn her gaze away from the device as she turned it off."

"No malfunctions with these yet, either?" the Governess continued, and the rodent girl took a look at some notes before shaking her head again, though she didn't understand how a blind creature could take note of the movement.

"Good," said the owl woman nonetheless. "In that case, we'll be sticking with these for the remainder of the competition, if you don't mind," she continued before getting up from her chair and walking over to the other end of her office. "Now, if you would please take your leave, I'll be meeting with Nah'yair in a few minutes," she said as she opened the door to the main hall, and held it open as the small rodent took a small bow and left.



Meanwhile, back by the giant tree, a certain Desoakian crossed his arms as he continued to stare up at the smiling demoness. "Well . . . hello again," he said, and Chi couldn't help but burst into a short laughter.

"Hello to you too darling," the demoness responded while waving her fingers at him in a coy manner, and the Desoakian couldn't help but smile back at her. "Now, do you plan to stay there all day," she asked, tilting her head at him, "or will you come closer so I can help you in?" after which she stuck an arm out of the tree and reached down to offer her hand to him. Hernando let out a faint chuckle and didn't hesitate to walk forth and take a hold of the offered hand.

"I think I'll take the latter, thank you very much," he answered, and let out another chuckle once the female stuck her tongue out at him in response. "Just try not to be pulled out by my weight," he added, and the demoness replied by almost effortlessly pulling him up, just enough for the edge of the hole to be at his reach.

"You were saying?" she asked in time, and stuck her tongue out at his bewildered attempts to hold his fedora hat in place while simultaneously holding on to the bark to keep from falling back down. However, he simply let out another chuckle before finally climbing into the hole.

"I said don't get dragged out by my weight," he ironized, "and it seems like . . . you . . . succeeded in . . ." he started, but trailed off as he got up to his paws and looked around at the inside of the tree.

The first things he noticed were a large number of bright, colorful lights floating and flying around, and the ridiculous amount of empty space they did so in. He first thought of comparing it to a cathedral, but the space would be more accurately described as approximately half a dozen of them, with space to spare for several naval ships to fit in at the least. And that was horizontally.

As he looked up, he noticed that the bright lights he saw moving were just barely enough to illuminate part of the space around them, helped by some still dots in the distance that, he didn't take long to realize, were simply more holes in the bark like the one he'd used to climb in.

He looked down next, and nearly jumped when he saw a millipede at least the size of his calf had gotten dangerously close to him. A feminine giggle next to him let him know that his surprise hadn't gone unnoticed, and temporarily distracted him from his thoughts of shooing the bug away. However, it didn't take him long to go back to that train of thought, and quickly crouched down to wave at the bug to go away, despite the female's fits of giggles beside him. Fortunately, the millipede just kept on its way, right past his right paw, and he stood back up just in time to see Chi lift her gaze towards the lights.

"This is a beautiful sight, Hernando; don't you think?" she asked before stepping forth and away from the bark. "If only we could stay and look on at this spectacle forever . . ." she said before shaking her head. "However . . . I do know what happened to Symphony in your last match, I'll have you know," she said as she turned to face him, and he suddenly felt a knot on his throat as something -perhaps her glare- told him that Symphony was the name of the creature he'd left under a rock the previous round.

"Huh, do you, now?" he asked, lifting a hand to scratch behind his head, and she nodded a bit in response; but she soon resumed her inspecting of the space around her, and didn't say another word on the subject. However, her silence did nothing other than unnerve him, as he had no idea why she'd said those words to him if she wasn't going to point a finger.

"And . . . what do you plan to do about it, if I may ask?" he insisted, but she didn't make any visible attempts to answer his question this time. Instead, she merely let out a soft sigh.

"I don't think our teleporter is on this story of the tree," she said, and the sudden change of subject caught him off-guard.

"Uh, pardon me?" he asked, mentally rewinding the last few seconds of their conversation and trying to figure out when they'd changed subjects.

"I said, I don't think our teleporter is on this story, darling. You've got bigger ears than mine, so one would think you'd have reasonably good hearing!" she said, chuckling along the length of her last words, and he couldn't help but fluster in embarrassment. 'Change the subject,' he thought to himself, and it didn't take him long to figure out where to divert her attention to.

"Wait, 'story'?" he asked, lifting his gaze to look for a ceiling. However, if there was something above him, he couldn't see it in the contrast between the floating lights and the darkness beyond them. "As in like with buildings?" he tried then, looking back down to her, and she nodded in response before pointing out to something off to his side.

"There, that's a place for you to start the climb," she said, sticking her tongue out to him. He turned around to look at where she was pointing at and soon spotted a ridge that he'd indeed be able to use for the climb.

He turned back around to face her, confusion written all over his face. However, he soon recovered his composture and went back to his tough guy act, crossing his arms in distrust of the female. "And, why are you helping me?" he asked, to which she let out a soft chuckle.

"Since I'm not supposed to be helping my opponent find the teleporter and since I've seen what you can and can't do, I figured I'd at least help you maneuver your way around here," she said, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Also, since you ask so politely, I will tell you this too," she continued, smiling impishly at him: "a tree this large needs to have some sort of inner structure, natural or not, to keep it standing—otherwise, like with any modern building indeed, it would collapse under its own weight, no matter how strong the wood of its walls. What I mean by 'story' is every one of the spaces between each structure and the next since, even if flawed and full of holes, mold and termites, I'm confident that they'll at least somewhat vaguely look like a building's stories," she finished with a teacher's tone, wearing a wide smirk across her muzzle, and flicking her tail about like an excited pup. Hernando however, looked at her in astonishment, as if she'd just spoken the most outrageous thing in the universe instead.

"And . . . how would you know all that, I wonder?" he asked after a few seconds of silence, to which she let out a soft chuckle.

"I'm a botanist darling, and my pet is the only engineer in miles around our home back in Ursion. She's very good at it too, so of course I picked a few things from her," she explained, sticking her tongue out at him.



Meanwhile, inside the Capitol Building, a slender snake-dragon-like female walked towards the Governess' office with her claws clicking on the granite floor below her with each step.

Shortly after the competitors had been sent out, she'd found a history book laying around in the meeting room, still open at the last page that'd been read and with a few small drops of black blood staining the sheet. The book pertained the reign period of the twin dragons, and the page in particular mentioned the relentless hunt of a specific race in the Aleria system that had taken place: an oddly-owl-looking species that held a very close resemblance to the Governess-in-seat.

Nah'yair reached the Office's door within minutes, and found it still open from the technician that had left it just half an hour earlier. She didn't mind it much mind and closed it behind herself after she'd stepped in.

"Good morning, Governess," she said as she did, but her voice gave off deeper tones than just concern about the weather--a thing that the Governess responded to with a soft nod.

"Go ahead, Nah'yair," said the owl as she tapped a pen into an ink bottle, and the dragon dropped the decent-sized book she'd been carrying along onto an empty chair beside her.

"Miss Vespera, Chi Darkfire, the demoness Carlos brought from Ursion, has started doing her homework it seems. And if she wins this match and keeps doing research, it won't take her much longer to figure out the real reason for this race," the dragon started, shaking her head. "Are you sure you want to let this go, and that she was a smart choice for a competitor?" she asked, to which the Governess let out a sigh.

"'Every one of the competitors has a reason and edge to win this race, and to defeat the dragons,' you tell them, Nah'yair. 'Be it strength, speed, resilience, versatility, knowledge, experience, etc, they all have something to lead them to the end,' and yet, I don't think you believe those words yourself," the Governess responded without lifting her gaze from the papers before her. "Chi Darkfire is one more of the herd, one of many paths Aleria can take, and experience is her edge. Restoring her world is what drives her. She'll figure out what's going on here, yes, but in the end that's what'll push her towards the finish line when nothing else can," she finished, to which Nah'yair didn't respond at first.

Half a minute later, she asked, "and if it doesn't?"

Vespera, however, shook her head once again.

"Then it'll be up to you whether or not you want to give her a gentle nudge, a small reminder of what's at stake for her, for us, and for the other competitors, since last night she asked me if I'd help them anyway should she make it to the end. I agreed to it," the owl woman responded, and it was Nah'yair who let out a sigh then.

"I don't know, Vespera," the dragon responded with a jaded voice. "I know I was assigned to you to keep you safe during the twins' reign, and I know I failed my mission, but . . . I also know there's a line to my duties," Nah'yair finished with a more determined tone.

However, Vespera's expression didn't change, and there was no response until the Governess had finished signing papers--at which point the owl woman leaned back on her seat and looked at the dragoness square in the eye. "Then cross it, Nah'yair. She's not the only competitor you should be concerned about."