The Ranch

Salty Smack Talk (4)

While Abel works on the marble building puzzle, Sherlock and Pierre take the other piles and discuss between each other, but the room's small enough that everyone can hear.

Sherlock hypothesizes," The most likely case is to use these natural materials and convert them into products using the mini machines."

"There's four holes in one of the desk drawers over there. Above it had symbols carved into the wood. I think they go in there when we're done."

There's four machines and four objects split between the two. Sherlock, with the help of Kai's occasional instructions, presses a grape into a wooden torcularium and converts olive into oil using a millstone and a bag.

Pierre was left with an easy and an annoying job.
The easy job is grinding grains into flour. The hard job is weaving a small bit of wool using a miniature loom, but in fact, they have the advantage with their small child hands. The other adult contestants get even more infuriated.

"Hello? Over." A sudden sound from the walkie-talkie draws the team's attention.

Kai picks it up," Do you have a question, over."

"Yes. About the map, what are we supposed to highlight? Over."

Kai comes up with something on the spot," The task is to draw the borders of the regions in that area of the map, which is a part of Italy, over."

"And the pins?" Having forgotten, he quickly adds," Over."

"That wasn't a part of the question. Is that your second question, over."

"No no. That'll be all for now, over." And the conversation ends. Who knows what they'll end up doing.

"Why'd you tell them it was Italy?" Pierre questions Kai.

"The more familiar, the more likely they'll be to immediately write something down." Kai goes back to working on his puzzle.

He finishes it before the three at the desk and feels the sudden urge to show off. "Ah, what a genius I must be. How hardworking am I, supporting my whole team like this."

"Shut it idiot." Abel spouts, frustrated with his own puzzle.

"Solve your puzzle first, then come talk to me." Kai snickers purposefully.

Abel sneers while focusing onthe marble piece in his hand, "And catch whatever plague makes you so overconfident? No thanks."

"I dare you to say that again you scurvy dog!" Kai raises his voice angrily. From an outsiders perspectives, it looks to be the start of infighting, but the team knows it's just playful banter. Something Kai's found as entertainment recently.

"Leech." The corner of Abel's mouth hooks, looking up at Kai.

"Ha! That's the best you've got?" Kai laughs. When they had decided on the team name, as a challenge Kai decided to only use pirate-related insults.

A small smile emerges on Abels face, releasing the stress he had over the frustrating puzzle and relaxing his fingers.

Kai knows when to quit when he gets the stink-eye from Sherlock. He quiets down to go help Lucien with his puzzle to find it completed.

"Eh? You already did it?" Lucien nods and Kai pats him on the back," Nice job!"

A little while later, the opponents comes back to the comms device, saying it's not working. Kai sends him back by basically expressing his stupidity for not being able to solve it with the clues given, but overtly.

The team on the balcony can only facepalm or hide from the cameras watching their expression.

After he finishes messing around, Kai checks on the desk group's progress, "Ohhh it's House of the Faun and that one's The Lupanar of Pompeii."

"...why didn't we make Kai do all the work." Abel complains annoyed just listening to Kai's voice.

"That would indeed have been the smarter choice." Sherlock agrees.

You can see hears turning in their heads, coming up with their own forms of torture for after the tournament ends.

"Ah the sweet taste of karma." Pierre comments, still focused on his own torture, that is, weaving with a miniature loom.

Kai can tell where this is going, immediately going into suck-up mode," Wow you were able to piece that together all by yourselves. You really shouldn't work so hard, here I'll help you." He starts piecing together parts using the image in his memory at a much faster speed than Abel was working at, only lowering his amiability towards Kai.