A/N: This is a submission to ScienceFiction 's Proximalympics contest, and it is one of a pair of twin stories that tell the same tale, but from different POVs. Its sibling can be found in jinnis book "#SciFriday", chapter "Basic Rule".

Day 1: Wimot Milking

The wimots on the playing field looked peaceful under the orange light of Proxima Centauri.

Milking these animals wasn't easy. They were skittish, quick, and ticklish, and they kept their seven-teated udders hidden away in a protective body fold.

But Tom had trained for months-never with a real wimot but in simulations, back on Earth. He was as ready to milk the creatures as the crappy VR of his homekit would ever make anyone.

He stood at the field's edge, together with his fifty Terran teammates. They were recruited from all races populating the slums of Earth, shipped in an FTL vessel to Proxima b, and dumped here to lose.

The Proximalympics were a farce, a plot to humiliate Terra, to show it its place at the bottom of the food chain, in an event broadcast all over the known universe.

The team of Proximen athletes stood silent, in a single row of muscle, black-yellow dyed hair, and arrogance. They were human, too, but they were experts in these bizarre sports-the wimot milking, the hornutting, and the bogfrog racing.

No one expected an Earthling to win.

But he would teach them better.

Crown prince Oswal's speech had droned on for hours now, his amplified voice making the eyestalks of the wimots twitch. He talked about peace and unity of humankind, but for all his talk he was no better than his father, Emperor Maximo, whose riches and powers were the spoils of a ruthless exploitation of all inhabited planets except Proxima b.

Oswal raised his fist and praised humanity's united conquest of the universe, a gesture magnified by the huge screen behind him.

Anger burned hot in Tom's chest. The day after tomorrow, after having won the games, he would stand face to face with that man.

And he would kill him.

"... may the best man, or woman, win." The final words of Oswal's speech were answered by a cheer from the crowd on the bleachers.

As one, the Proximen athletes banged their fists on their chests. "Proxima first." In measured steps, they approached the wimots.

"Let's milk these three-legged cows." A woman next to Tom brandished the cup that she was supposed to fill.

The first ten members of each team to return with their cups full would proceed to the next round.

She dashed off, running towards the closest animal.

The wimot's secondary eyestalks watched her approach while it's two primary ones were still concentrated on its tongue tentacles searching the ground for delicious queue-combers. As she came into the animal's reach, it suddenly turned on its single hind leg and struck out with a forepaw, sending her flying.

The incident was recorded by the inquisitive drones hovering over the field.

The crowd exploded with laughter.

Tom identified an animal whose primary eyestalks were closed, indicating their owner to be slumbering. The slit of its udderbag, just below the twin navels, was closed tight.

Tom approached slowly, then lunged forward and got hold of the animal's forelegs. Human and wimot tumbled to the ground. He landed on top of it, face to face with four surprised, green eyes.

"Euk!" it said.

He was still holding its forelegs, knowing about the damage its claws could do. But the beast was as powerful as it was resourceful. It poked one of Tom's eyes with a tongue tentacle and kicked his buttocks with its hind leg. He was thrown off but managed to pull the animal after him.

He landed on his back, with the wimot on top, raising a claw to strike him.

In his panic, he threw both his hands against its paunch and felt his thumbs sink into its two belly buttons.

"Nnnnk." The wimot relaxed. It's udderbag dilated and the purple milk gland slid out.

Fighting his utter surprise-udder surprise-he quickly retrieved the cup from his jacket and got hold of one of the teats. He hadn't known that poking a wimot's navels had such an effect.

Filling the cup with the amber fluid took mere seconds.

From the corner of his eyes, he noted a Proximan athlete watching him with a disdainful sneer. The man wore a short, lime-colored kilt exposing a pair of muscled, hairy legs. Tom thought of the spring-loaded carbon dagger implanted in his forearm, the one he planned to stab Prince Oswal with. Was that guy a snoop, suspecting him?

The wimot twitched, awaking from its stupor. Tom jumped away from it, careful not to spill the milk.

The animal's eyestalks quivered. "Ook." Hopping on its hind leg, slowly at first, then faster, it bounded off, its udder still outside, flapping with each bounce.

When he returned to his team's base, only a handful of his mates were already there while most of the Proximen had finished their milking.

Day 2: Hornutting

Hornutting was a team sport. Hitters of one team would use elastic golf clubs to propel the iron-hard nuts of the snockshoddler tree over a field, to be caught by their teammates on the other side. Each caught nut scored one point for the team and one for the catcher. The members of the other team were positioned on the field. They tried to catch the nuts by throwing spinspikers into their trajectory. Spinspikers spent most of their lives in the pee-yellow waters of Proxima's oceans. If given the right spin, they extended an array of diamond-studded horns, hard enough to pierce the nuts.

Each spinspiked nut would earn its thrower and team ten points.

Tom excelled in the game. His VR training paid off. It had to-only the best three players of each team would be allowed into round 3. And he had to be one of them.

To get to Oswal and to kill him.

He noted the lime-kilted Proximan eying him. That guy had to be a snoop, a member of the POOP, Proxima's Official Observation Police-a ruthless organization of the Emperor's family to seek out and eliminate any political opponents.

One of the hitters hit a nut extra hard. Tom held on to a spinspiker while he walked backwards, keeping an eye on the projectile, when his foot hit an obstacle. He stumbled. In an attempt to regain his balance, he threw the spinspiker backward, over his head. It didn't help, though, and he fell.

With a curse, he got up and glanced towards the Proxima catchers. The lime-kilted Proximan was bent over, bleeding.

Tom's spinspiker had hit the man's abdomen.

Serves you right, POOP snoop.

Even without that incident, Earth's team would have lost, and Tom spinspiking lime-kilt had cost them fifty points for foul play. Still, Tom was the best catcher and he qualified for day 3.

Day 3: Bogfrog Riding

Bogfrogs were cow-sized frogs with duck feet and a red-green-patterned skin. Tom had trained riding them in VR-but one thing VR hadn't prepared him for was the animals' smell, a mixture somewhere between rotten eggs and gasified marmite.

He clutched his saddle-a tiny seat to be placed on the bogfrog's shoulders, right behind its head.

Tom quietly placed himself behind his steed. Then he ran, gaining speed. As he met the bogfrog's inclined, ramp-like back, he clambered up, all the way to its top, placed the saddle and swung its belt around the animal's throat to catch and tie its other end.

The startled bogfrog jumped and nearly threw Tom off, but he held tight and managed to stay on top. Then he grabbed the small horn projecting from the back of its head, and the animal relaxed. This horn was like the beast's control stick. Push forward to make it go, pull back to stop, left or right for directions. It almost was as if the bogfrogs' nut-sized brains were happy to release control to someone more capable and less smelly.

His teammates were still struggling to get their steeds saddled while the Proximan were ready to go. The POOP snoop was among them. Today, the guy's kilt was neon-orange.

For a moment, they locked eyes.

He'd have to get rid of that man.

When Tom's teammates finally managed to saddle and mount their animals, a hush fell over the spectators. The whir of the camera drones and the occasional soft hiss of a bogfrog fart were the only sounds to be heard.

The race would take them across the marshlands of the palace gardens. They were infamous for their hawk-sized mosquitos, arm-long leeches, and treacherous mud holes, and they could only be navigated on bogfrog back. The turrets and towers of the imperial palace gleamed in the sunlight about three kilometers away. There, Prince Oswal was waiting.

Waiting for his death.

The sound of an exploding swamp melon, kicked by the head referee's foot, announced the start of the race.

Staying in his saddle, avoiding tree branches, and trying to find a way through the boggy landscape took all of Tom's concentration. It was not long before he had lost sight of the other athletes.

He stopped before a mud hole, breathing hard. The frog's jumping and its smell had made him nauseous, and he threw up.

He heard laughter beside him.

"Not used to real sports, Earthy? Not what yer really here for?" It was the POOP snoop, wearing nothing but a sneer, dyed hair and his orange kilt.

And the man knew.

Tom steered his bogfrog closer to his adversary. He had to get into striking distance. "You're not the regular athlete, either, I know."

Suddenly, the snoop jumped from his saddle and threw himself at Tom. They fell, hit firm ground but rolled, grappling with each other, into the mud hole.

They thrashed and fought, just to end up stuck in greenish mud, up to their chests, out of reach and glaring at each other. A drone circled over them like a vulture, its blinking camera light telling them that this scene was now a life broadcast to billions of humans in the inhabited universe.

"Great," Tom said and sank a bit deeper. He glanced at the drone. "They won't send us help, will they?"

"Nah, everyone's on their own. Even snoops." The man sneered as the mud reached his nipples. "It's the rules."

"Serves you right." Hatred ran hot through Tom's veins. "No more snooping for you."

The Proximan frowned. "I didn't. Ye're the snoopy here. But now, ye're paying for trying to stop me." The mud lapped at his collarbone.

"I'm no snoop. I just wanted to put this..." Tom made a Vulcan salute with his right hand, the gesture triggering his carbon dagger to spring forward. "... into your imperialistic Oswal's chest." The pain in his pierced palm was excruciating, but the bloodied weapon looked spectacular. Tom's chin was at mud-level now.

The Proximan's eyes grew wide. Then he fumbled below the mudline and retrieved a bubblegum gun, the most deadly weapon in the galaxy-but its muzzle was clogged now. "This was meant for Oswal, the treacherous humanist, too. Seems we had the same goal." With a maniac's laughter, his face sank beneath the surface.

"Yeah. The same goal, but obviously for different reasons." A strange feeling of sadness took hold of Tom as he stared at the Poximan's bubblegum-gunned hand-sadness not for dying here, and not for having failed in his plans, but for not knowing the man who had died with him.

"I'm Tom," he said, and the mud closed over his head.

The drone hovered over the mud hole. Two hands were still projecting from it-one adorned with carbon dagger, the other holding a bubblegum gun.