[SierraHigh]

"A monkey king?" Nixon scoffed, shaking his head. He had a few coins buy what he wanted her, although Nixon was skeptical of many of the goods that were sold in the market. He only bought what he knew would be alright to eat and strayed far from the foreign alien foods despite the insistence of the good effects they'd have on him by their respectful merchants. Nixon knew any of them would do what they could to get a pretty penny out of him, or simply mess him up in an attempt to lose one of the challenges, but he had to be smarter than that so he'd been taking after sticking close to the challengers who consistently won their trials. The consequence for losing was a bit disconcerting, but Nixon had hopes he'd walk out of this completely off the hook and would be returning home to get back to his studies. If only his classmates knew where he was now...

Nixon shrugged a little, eyeing a passing merchant handing out samples of some kind of glowing purple fruit to humans and other aliens alike. While it was tempting to ask for some, the last thing Nixon needed was to be screwed over now. "Yeah, if you ask me, these challenge things are pretty ridiculous. Like, some others here can barely make it up a stairwell without being totally out of breath by the time they get to the top. How are they expected to win?" Nixon laughed crudely. "You'd think that if all these aliens wanted to see people fail, they'd choose the people who were most unfit for this kind of thing."

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Nixon tipped his head. "I was going to see about buying dinner or something for the next few days but I'm gonna hold off." The regular food they provided them back in their holding cells - cells but they functioned more so as mini dorms - was good enough. It wasn't the most delicious thing in the world, but Nixon could live. "Wait until I get more coins and then really buy something good," he grinned.

(Unsure if you were setting up to bring in Vector, so I'll add Za'kara in the next post if you do haha)