“Okay, check it out.” Bugz closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and focused intensely. She held the flower up to the sky for Feng to see. The sun, emerging from behind the clouds, cast a golden light on everything around the lake. The flower turned toward the sun and back again toward Bugz. Suddenly another flower grew from the same stem, then four, then eight, then sixteen. Within a few seconds, thousands of flowers poured from Bugz’s hands. When she threw the flowers into the air their petals collapsed in on themselves and re-emerged in duplicates and triplicates. As they continued multiplying, they clumped together and formed a massive red flower two stories high. This giant flower composed of smaller flowers turned, pulsating, toward the sun. The smaller flowers ran continuously down the surface of the giant like a waterfall as the bustle of activity continued to grow and grow.

“I prefer roses,” Feng joked. He couldn’t quite hide the impressed look on his face.

“Shut up, you’ll make me laugh,” Bugz said, her eyes still closed. “The Floraverse is powered by an engine that is modeled on organic chemistry, right? But it’s also geometric. Everything is a reflection of smaller things. If you connect with the smallest life-forms, you can bring them together to form bigger ones.”

Bugz opened her eyes and broke her spell. The mega-flower collapsed, sending petals down the length of the shoreline. In an instant, the two were standing on a red-flower beach.

“Pretty cool. But I don’t see how you beat Clan:LESS with that.”

“And that’s why I always beat you guys. Every. Single. Time.” Their eyes met. Bugz suddenly felt nervous.

“You didn’t beat us, it’s not over. We’ll win in the end.”

“God. Typically neo-alt-right garbage. You can’t admit defeat. Even though you claim to care about uncovering the truth.” Bugz shook her head. “Weren’t you trying to conquer this place?”

Feng paused and looked at Bugz’s moccasins. “I guess you did win.”

Bugz smiled.

“It’s one thing to make flower crowns or whatever,” Feng said, trying to downplay Bugz’s mastery. “But how do you make things like the Thunderbird and the underwater panther?”