They had landed on Omega 9 a couple hours ago upon request of those planeside.

They disembarked at the designated landing zone Catpain Vir at their head Sunny and Krill at his right and left with a chosen group of the crew following behind. Upon seeing sunny, the massive crowd parted and scurried out of the way whispering and fidgeting. Sunny either didn't notice or didn't care.

Captain Vir glanced around the crowd of assembled species, "What do you think this is all about?" He wondered at Krill.

"Couldn't tell you Captain, looks kind of like a fair."

The man nodded absently.

Sunny craned her neck over the crowd, as tall as she was, it wasn't hard, and she pointed with an outstretched claw, "There, sir."

Just then the crowd parted and a pudgy little Anthraky trundled forward, stopping to stare up in awe at the human, and the towering Drev standing behind him. He took a step back towards the crowd.

"Captain Vir, of the USPC and adjunct of the Galactic Assembly, what can I do for you?"

The small creature swallowed hard glancing at Sunny before continuing, "Well, we had hoped to call in your services for extra security. The Omega 9 race tends to become a little rowdy, and....." He glanced at Sunny, "We thought that a crew of humans would be a lot of help."

"Race you say, what kind of race." The human's interest was piqued. Krill did not like the sound of that, he had that sound of a human that was about to do something stupid.

"Oh, well, it is a perilous all terrane team race that-" Krill groaned internally, knowing the human had been hooked at the word 'perilous' "Goes for hundreds of miles, each leg of the race is timed and at the end all the times are compounded to find the fastest team."

The captain had an odd grin on his face, "What are the rules?"

"You will have a five-member team of a single species, no motorized equipment is allowed for use, otherwise, you can get from point A to point B in any way you like. The entire team is expected to preform each leg of the race. If someone is injured, you either find a replacement or drop out."

The man grinned, "So, are you still accepting teams, or has that closed?'

The creature blinked in surprised and looked the human up and down, "I uh, if you can get ready that fast, than I suppose."

The Captain Grinned, "Awesome. The rest of the crew would be happy to help with security."

He left the small creature dumbfounded turning towards his ship with the biggest grin.

***

Captain Vir patted Sunny on one of her large arms as the Drev sulked by the starting line, "Maybe Next time Sunny." Krill did not understand in the slightest why she would want to join these humans in this stupid venture, looking down the sheer face of the cliff, he really didn't understand how they planned on getting down without dying. All of the other teams were lined up there too using their intervening time to make tight harnesses of rope and elaborate pulley systems, but the humans were standing there in nothing but helmets and jumpsuits as if they planned to toss themselves to off the cliff.

As the starting horn was readied, the humans moved back a bit forming up a tight line. Sunny took a glance over the cliff and down towards the distant red flag that was there target, marking the next checkpoint, and the start of the next race. She turned her head back to the humans, and then looked down at Krill, "Where is their rope?"

Krill gave a deep sigh, "Knowing them they have some OTHER insane way of getting down."

She lifted her head and watched as they pulled their goggles down over their faces.

"Ready!"

"Set!"

"GO!"

The rest of the teams began quickly setting up their descent systems.

And the humans, they began racing towards the cliff's edge. Sunny yelped in panic, and jumped forward and catch them, but they had gone past her. Captain Vir, hurled himself from the Cliff. Onlookers screamed as four other humans followed.

Sunny and the others raced to the edge glancing over expecting to find the human plastered on the rock face below.

To her relief, and mild annoyance though, she found the humans gliding in a tight formation towards the distant flag. Canvas flaps connected their legs together and their outstretched arms buoying themselves up on currents of air. Sunny watched in wide eyed awe, she didn't know humans could fly.

Sunny turned her head to look at Krill who sat, unperturbed back at the starting line. Eyes narrowing she marched over, "You knew that was going to happen."

Krill looked up at her with his wide hexagonal eyes, "No, I didn't, but humans don't often hurl themselves from cliffs without a reason."

Over to their side, Sunny heard two of the race proctors listening to each other, "Is that legal?"

"It wasn't motorized." The other said, trailing off, "This will skew the scores for sure."

They sighed, "I guess that's what we were asking for when we let humans enter."

***

They took a shuttle down to the base passing the two other teams, on their way down. Sunny stared out the window with wonder staring up at the sheer cliff-face Humans weren't afraid of falling.

They landed at the red Zone to find the humans unzipped from their suits and lounging around. Still slightly worried, Sunny ran over to the captain and began feverishly examining him. He seemed surprised, "Sunny, what the hell are you doing?"

She stepped back sheepishly. She wouldn't know what to look for anyway, she wasn't a doctor.

"Are you ok?" She wondered

"Yes, Sunny, of course I am."

***

The race was very exciting for Sunny, the next part of the Race was mountain terrane, and she watched in admiration as the humans mounted their wheeled steeds and raced through the trees frantically peddling their legs. Even handicapped by ten minutes, they outstripped their opponents, bursting through the trees, catching air over the competition before vanishing into the trees with a soft rustle. The way they maneuvered at such high speeds was miraculous dodging trees and cutting along thin forest tracks, balancing lightly atop the metal frames. The race proctors could do nothing seeing as the contraptions were completely manpowered, though a set of gears increased the speed tenfold.

They traded their 'bikes' for a couple sets of skis on the next leg of the race, one was used to move across stretches of flat snow, while the other pair were used for racing down mountains! Sunny watched in anxiety and excitement, as the humans raced down the sheer icy face sending waves of powder up behind them as they went. Their inhuman counterparts glared from where they trudged through the snow. Sunny wondered if they would ever let her try.

Moving from there, they stopped at a miles stretch of forest. Sunny vaguely wondered if the humans were going to use their 'bikes' again, and, as the race started, she watched as the humans, instead of moving towards the next checkpoint dragged themselves over to the river. She didn't think that was likely to help them much, but was pleasantly surprised when, they forced themselves into metal tubes, and began paddling themselves down the river. Despite the rapids and the raging water, they were making good time allowing most of the work to be done by the rushing water. Sunny herself was very afraid of water, she didn't know how to swim. None of the Drev knew how to swim. There were many streams on her planet, but no bodies of water large enough for a Drev to ever have needed to learn.

The dessert terrain brought things down to a more equal level. The humans had no real clever ways of getting across this terrain, and so, they began the race on foot like the others. The Rundi outstripped them quickly, and so did at least two other teams. Was this the human's weakness? Heat? But as she watched, the humans broke into a steady jog stripping down to their lightest clothing. This steady jog took them through the heat and past teams trying desperately to cool off in in the shadow of sand dunes. The humans seemed to have no need to stop, and with quick sips of water here and there, they began to catch up to their Rundi counterparts. Struggling to the top of a sand dune, they met the Rundi at the top just beginning their descent. The Rundi were moving faster when one of the humans motion for the other's attention.

She couldn't really see what he was doing, but she gave off a short roar of delight as the humans began speeding down the sand, like it was snow, sitting on what appeared to be plastic bags of some sort. Whatever it was, it reduced the friction between the human and the sand, and gravity did the rest. They reached the bottom a few meters before the Rundi and the two battled for first place in the intervening minutes. The humans might have won this leg of the race too if it were longer, and even so, they only lost by a few seconds.

At every turn the humans had a new trick up their sleeve. The upcoming freshwater lake had them paddling across In a single boat using coordinated calls to stroke at the same time as the other creatures swam or floated after, some choosing to instead race around the lake to avoid the water.

Terrain met roadway, and the humans strapped tiny wheels to their feet speeding past even the Rundi on the flat surfaces laughing in that odd way that humans had.

Sunny watched with wide eyes and bated breath turning to look at Krill. Instead of finding him as enthralled as she was, she found him looking disapprovingly over the side of the transport pod arms crossed. The little creature seemed almost exasperated by the humans when he should definitely be in awe.

Sunny frowned.

Krill looked up at her, "What?"

"I could ask you the same thing,"

He sighed, "Do you know just how dangerous all of this is. I mean If jumping off a cliff weren't bad enough, they have to expose themselves to crashing into trees face first, or drowning, or burning to death or something else, and not only that but they have to do it at the highest speeds possible. Ever noticed that Sunny, humans hate being slow, so they make things specifically to make them faster at absolutely everything, and when they don't want to be fast at something, they make a machine that can be fast for them."

Sunny turned away from Krill with the shake of her head and thoughtfully looked down at the humans, who, had dominated the race by about three hours, on their time sheets. Captain Vir graciously declined first place proclaiming that it was hardly fair for the other teams and that the humans were just there to have fun, presenting the prize to the second place team who were just as shocked as Sunny.

She had figured it out.

One of the things about humans that the Drev never took into account. The humans were innovative, if they couldn't do something well, they would design things to make them do it better weather it be machines exo-skeletons or mechanical limbs. The Drev had never through of that, it was all about how warlike a species was, how much armor you could breed into the population, how long can you ake their claws, but no.... what was the point of doing either of those things when you could just MAKE armor, and MAKE claws.....

This entire thing was beginning to change the way sunny saw humans.

Humans were innovators.