For one day. Sunrise to sunset. I'll need to pay them a bit, they're not sufficiently interested in the novelty unless I promise them some shiny things. If you could take over that, that'd be nice.

"Oh, we'd absolutely pay them - have you got a ballpark figure -"

I told them five Shiny Things, which is a unit that makes intrinsic sense to a Draak. A shiny thing is not necessarily one Shiny Thing. Two or three handfuls of semi-precious stones or a bit of gold and silver would cover it.

"...I think the prices of those things vary a lot depending on a bunch of things. Uh, my bracelet is silver, what's that in Shiny Things?"

He peers at it.

That bracelet is worth maybe a tiny bit less than two Shiny Things. It's small, but silver is silver and it's something that would be pretty hard to make which ups the worth a bit.

"Okay, we can swing that. Can we get them on different days each so we don't have to worry about wasting one's time while we shoot with another?"

...I can try to arrange that. I asked Flicker, who I fought in that one video, plus Thorn and Rose who are Emeralds, and Seascale who's a Sapphire. Flicker will be super mad if I beat her again.

"...we usually do choreographed fights. Should we choreograph you to lose that one?"

...I may have more trouble than anticipated getting other Draak to come out here.

"Because of things being fixed?"

Yes. I did not update my assumptions when I visited a movie set and saw how controlled it all is, I'm only thinking about it now.

...Rose and Seascale would probably still be interested if not every move is specified, just outlines.

"All right, I don't know what they'll want to do in light of that. They could probably pay more than two and a half of my bracelet per day, if that helps."

That would help. It's just that I pitched it as 'a regular fight, but on camera in a new place'.

"They might be able to work with that but that's not my side of things. Can I show you where they got permission for you to dig?"

Ooh, yes!

There's a set with a building facade in front of a bit of a hill, and he can dig behind the facade, into the hill, as deep as he likes downward, provided the surface doesn't collapse and he doesn't go too far this way or that laterally.

Huh, that's an interesting constraint. He would like a whole rectangle defined not just left and right, please.

The yellow walks out the boundary for him.

I'll be having fun underground unless you need anything else now. Shout down if you can't see me and want me to come up! I'll hear, unless I'm asleep.

"Okay! I'll tell Meksi where you are when she gets here."

He starts clawing at the ground, tail waving happily.

He makes a surprising amount of progress in a very short time.

...the yellow films it.

Meksi's there about an hour later.

Ruby Draak are very, very good at digging, he brags.

He has a wide gently-sloping tunnel going down a short distance by then! And he's been doing something to the tunnel walls that compacts the dirt into them, slowing the growth of the pile of displaced dirt.

Hello, Meksi!

"Hello! Wow, that's a lot of tunnel for as long as you've had."

I am very strong! I have dug hundreds of miles of tunnels over the years!