"Wow. Uh, one of the yellows here says you were talking about only some of your friends being cool with scripted performance?"

He pauses digging and pops out of the tunnel, body language all wiry excitement. 

Oh, yes. I pitched it as 'fight on camera' not 'fight to a script'. Rose wants to show off to aliens and Seascale lost a big bet recently, so they'll probably be fine with scripting it for a bit more pay.

"Okay. If they can get everybody on different days they say at the price they'd still like to have all of them come by, Rose and Seascale last, so they can script a simple plot structure around whatever footage they get with the others to string everything together sensibly. The basic idea they're planning on going with is that you're trying to get some object, and everybody else is trying to stop you, and it's best if you win most of the fights but it's okay if you lose a couple as long as you get away to keep making progress."

I see. The object should be big and shiny. And possibly glowing. That should work. I can beat Thorn pretty consistently, but Flicker knows all my tricks. Are the fights going to be in different places, to make it look like I'm making progress?

"Yeah, they're going to have different sets for it and they'd like to time things so they don't have to rearrange the fights in post, in case you accumulate injuries."

...Should I stop myself from healing, to show the injuries?

"Oh, good question. Uh, that probably depends on how much you can heal in a day."

He turns to show his back left leg. Those slightly paler scales were a bleeding gouge four days ago.

"Ooh. Okay, you might need to talk that over with their makeup people, and then it'll probably depend on whether any of the fights leave you with marks they can't easily work into the sequence."

Alright. Are we going to go straight into fighting or am I going to do some other things first?

"I'm not sure, they didn't tell me everything. Do you want to come with me and ask or are you comfy and I should just bring you dinner?"

I should probably talk to the people running this thing, yes? That smells like the responsible thing to do. I can dig later.

"Okay, cool, the offices are over thataway." She leads him to the little three story office building set off across a dirt road from the place where his tunnel is. Greens and greys and yellows come out since he won't fit indoors.

The studio has a battery powered salt lamp they are planning to wrap in gold wire and faceted crystal and use as the object he's going after. They're not going to go too deep into why he wants it, just have a shot where one of Rose or Seascale (since those are the cooperative ones) is showing it off, followed by the series of fights with whichever cooperative one isn't the showoff being last and most elaborate, followed by him triumphantly collecting the pretty object. Then they're going to set it all to a custom soundtrack with heavy percussion; they've got a musician already starting to come up with motifs, though the final composition will wait for all the footage to be lined up.

He is amused at the prize. To any Draak watching the final product, the fact that it is shiny and presumably rare will be quite enough to explain why I want it. I kind of want to keep it afterward, but that's not in the contract. Are you going to voice us or narrate us or what?

"We're probably going to auction the prop," says a yellow, "but you could bid on it if you want it."

"I'm thinking no dialogue, no narration," says a green, "everything through visuals and music."

This is indeed going to go much more quickly than the other one. Alright. I can fly back to the conference tomorrow and talk to everyone again. Though, perhaps Meksi should come with so I don't mess up the schedules.

"I can do that," says Meksi.

Should I do some trick flying or other bits for you, or is it going to be more than enough just cutting together the fights? If not, I'll go dig a bit more and sleep, and head out at sunrise to get everyone else. It might be a good idea to have the Shiny Things pre-prepared.

"I think an intro sequence where you're just doing tricks would work well," says a green. "You can show us your repertoire and we'll see what would be a good order to do them all in and then shoot in good light, it's a little cloudy today. Maybe one of the choreographed fights can have visual callbacks. And matching musical motifs."

"And at the end of the tricks something can catch your eye, and then we can cut to the scene were you see the lamp."

"Yeah, I like that."

"They don't want to pick out their own shiny stuff? I can place the orders if they just want generic stuff in good materials worth about three times as much as my bracelet per day."

Meksi took some videos of it the other day, that's most of my flying tricks. If you want me to do them again I can only do a few now. Trick flying is exhausting. We can put a little flying in the called fights maybe?. Strike from above! I think Seascale's fight should be most elaborate and Rose should be the one who shows off the thing.

...Most Draak don't like the concept of 'shopping'. It seems weird to me, too. As long as it's roughly five Shiny Things for Flicker and Thorn and maybe eight or ten for the other two, they won't necessarily care about the exact contents.

"Okay, I'm on it," says the yellow.

"What has you placing Rose and Seascale in those roles?"

Seascale is the better fighter and I think Rose might be prettier to Amentan sensibilities.

"That can be the tentative ordering, then."

Anything else? Tomorrow I'll go down to the conference and get them all on board with it hopefully.

"- hopefully? What kind of uncertainty are we looking at here?"