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The Competitors: Kress, Borgick, Midnight, Stan, Ellenell 

The Assistants: Blue, Marigold, Carl, Gareth, Burgandy

--- Kress & Blue ---

Kress collapsed backwards into the sand exhausted. Blue was about to faceplant into the pile of sand but Kress quickly hurled himself to his feet and stopped her. "What? I\'m tired same as you? Can\'t I rest on the comfy looking sand piles? Sure we had to send Timmy out for more a few times but we\'re done right?" Blue snarled. 

"Blue… you were about to fall face first into a pile of sand. A pile of very fine sand. You ALSO need to breathe. Can you see how these two things conflict with each other," said Kress. 

Blue\'s eyes widened in horror as she realised the fate Kress had just saved her from. She rolled out of his grip and landed back down on the sand. It wasn\'t all that comfortable but god she was tired. "Sorry about that… and thanks. I\'m just… god I\'m so tired. I can\'t believe we got it all done," groaned Blue. 

"Heh, we had to do a few of the houses ourselves so Timmy could finish off the roads and the trench but it was worth the effort. Even if we had to do some careful running back to get more sand mixes. Still, I can live with that," said Kress. 

"Urgh, I\'m so unbelievably glad I\'ll be forced to take tomorrow off. I need a fucking break," grumbled Blue. 

"Sorry for asking you to join in. I didn\'t realise you were that tired," offered Kress. 

Blue waved him off… but she was too tired to actually raise her hand so it was somewhat awkwardly swished through the sand instead as she said, "Don\'t worry about it Kress. I could\'ve said no, and this was a lot of fun. Exhausting as all heck, but fun. I didn\'t realise sand could be so sturdy if it was packed tightly enough. I just hope those last few houses we rushed a bit to get done will survive the judging," 

"Well technically we still have like… a minute left," pointed out Kress. 

"Nope, I am sleep. Do not bother me with that," said Blue jokingly.

--- Borgick & Marigold ---

After much trial and error, and way too much effort on their part, Borgick and Marigold had managed it. A CANNON. The first real breakthrough was asking Timmy to make some large but bendy sticks. This let them build a wireframe for the cannon. Then, Marigold and Borgick worked together to really pack the sand down into slightly curved sections that were literally hammered into shape. Sure they had to use something that was technically a shovel or a bucket…

But they got around that by asking for a bucket, shaped like a hammer, and then asking for a shovel that perfectly fit the hole in the hammer. Then they had… well a hammer full of sand. It needed to be packed down as well and it was a little awkward to use but they managed it.

While they were hammering everything into place, they sent Timmy out to go get some grey sand. The plan was to force that into a spherical shape and pile it up next to the cannon as fake cannonballs for the display. They also added in more wood as the base of the cannon and made it seem more realistic. Well, other than the sand, but hey it did have to be a sandcastle after all. 

Borgick and Marigold were under no delusion that this was a winning play. Not after four hours of working on it. Heck, they\'d worked out it probably wasn\'t a winning play after two. Despite that? Despite all the troubles? They\'d agreed it was worth it. Marigold agreed because she didn\'t have any better ideas, especially not two hours in. On the others hand, Borgick stuck with it because of passion. He was hoping that his clear love and passion for this project would help shine through. 

--- Midnight & Carl ---

After the first hour Midnight and Carl had immediately gotten to work making a larger sandcastle. They could see that Marigold and Borgick were making a cannon, and that Gareth and Stan were… dealing with issues of excessive amounts of sand. At least before Thyme hid all the progress. This spurred them on further. With seemingly no competition for the castle idea they were marching ahead. 

They\'d split their duties. Carl and Timmy worked together making the new, castles, while Midnight focused on adding in the little details. Carl, sadly, never realised that Timmy was completely capable of flipping the buckets by himself without the shovel trick, but what system they did have WAS working so really it was fine. Timmy and Carl would both hold the shovel against the bucket while grasping at the sides. Timmy even had an extra long handle on his side to help out. Then they\'d flip it together. 

Now, unlike Kress and Blue there were a few… mishaps in the construction process. They ended with four castles. Two larger then the original, and one smaller. The largest one being… only a touch larger then the previous size. The main reason for this was that Carl and Midnight simply didn\'t have the experience working with sand that Kress did and that led to a few… mishaps. 

Midnight, luckily was spared from them. Unluckily, this was because he saw Carl\'s failures and resorted to carving things very slowly. This meant the smallest castle had almost no details, and the largest one was somewhat lacking compared to the other two as well. This was mostly a result of a few collapses during construction. Carl and Timmy managed to work together to put things back together… mostly, but the repairs did look a bit wonky in places. Perhaps if they had more time or experience it wouldn\'t have happened. But really how noticeable was it?

--- Stan & Gareth --- 

For Stan and Gareth the first thing they had to do was obviously remove all the excess sand, but then they had an idea. What if they just rolled with it? So instead of building a castle they decided to build a sunken temple. The first part was digging out a hole in the centre that would allow them space to build. It went… alright. Really they should\'ve just asked Timmy to help earlier. Once that was done things went swiftly… until the ground to a halt again. Building a temple was hard as it turned out. They also didn\'t take the time to mix any water in either, so they were building a temple with dry sand that they\'d compacted. 

Still, they did EVENTUALLY work it out. Once they did, they had Timmy perform several jobs, such as mixing in some water for a better foundation. Compacting the sand, and digging it out in a few other places. Once that was done, they got to work properly making the temple. It was very… triangular, but with a lot of effort… by Timmy… they were able to get the inside carved out with little pews and everything. 

Of course the fact that sand flowed down over the temple and covered part of the entrance wasn\'t great. Especially not when the only reason it happened was because they were trying to get out of the hole they\'d dug themselves into. Aw well, they\'d do better next time. Perhaps stairs?

--- Ellenell & Burgandy --- 

Ellenell and Burgandy sat down. There was still fifteen minutes left on the timer, but they were content. Once they accepted the use of extra non-sand materials? Things went wonderfully. They\'d built one main tree, and then connected it to four other smaller trees. The main trunk and the limbs were all made out of stone, with divots in them. That took up most of Burgandy\'s time and effort. While she was doing that, Ellenell was slathering on sand, some darker brownish sand that Timmy found, and then carving it up to make it look more like real wood. Timmy, on the other hand, was dealing with the other non-sand bits. Timmy added the real leaves and built out the bridges that went from tree to tree. 

The houses were a bit of a pain, and had involved all three team members working together to get them right. Ellenell thought they could\'ve perhaps done more… but Burgandy had really struggled to get the full-sized trees done in time. The level of fine control of her mana was simply beyond what she could normally. She wasn\'t a mage, and it was only with a lot of patience and even more shortcuts that they\'d managed it. 

When all was said and done though? Ellenell and Burgandy could look at the trees with pride. Perhaps they could touch up one or two things, but if they did? Well that ran the risk of ruining something, and with only fifteen minutes left on the clock it just wasn\'t worth the risk. "So, how do you think we\'ll do in the final rankings?" asked Ellenell. 

"It really depends," said Burgandy, thinking on it for a moment. "We can\'t know for sure what the judges are going to be looking for… and with Kress around we might be in for some tough competition. I mean, he was definitely prepared for this… BUT that doesn\'t mean  he\'s GOOD at building sandcastles, just that he\'d correctly guessed we would be," 

"I suppose we\'ll just have to see," mused Ellenell.