one-shot
The Uniplanetia Garden was the largest collection of flora in the sector and as such was visited by sentients of many species on daily basis.
Drosz was a new guard with barely a week on the job under his belt, in that short time he had managed to annoy his boss and ridicule himself in front of his peers...
He had called for a "life or death emergency" when he spotted a bipedal walking in the Nightshade wing of the garden, without a protective suit.
Once the medical team, senior guards and his boss showed up it turned out the bipedal in question was old man Jiro the gardener, walking stick in hand, making the rounds.
He was a Deathworlder, who was uniquely skilled to tend to the wing, since nearly all of the deadly plants hailed from his home world of Earth.
After apologizing profusely Drosz was assigned to the Nightshade wing, a beat no one liked since you had to do it in a hazard suit or risk painful death.
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Drosz had started to get used to patrolling in the suit, the beat was relaxing once you got used to it, specially since very few people went to the trouble of visiting the wing, the mandatory suit was a great deterrent.
In the few cases visitors did show up old man Jiro was as polite and professional a guide as he had ever seeing, he couldn't help but chuckle inwardly as the gardener started every explanation with his trademark: βThis here you see...β
But today something felt wrong, four visitors were about to enter the wing and they looked... Odd, not in the way they dressed but in the way they moved.
Drosz called it in, he would much rather risk further ridicule than his or Jiro's lives.
He was given a single reply: βLet the old man deal with it, we'll be there in fifteen minutes don't get in his way.β
Every fiber of his being told him to do something but before he could move old man Jiro winked at him and locked him in the corridor leading to the wing. He had to watch helplessly as the gardener lead the four on a tour of the flora of Earth...
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Kaes'o'kas was a Misoran, 7 feet tall, reptilian predators, he lead a small crew of highly skilled thieves and assassins. When he heard of the Uniplanetia Garden he saw it as the perfect way to use their thieving skills to improve their assassination tools.
*Dozens of deadly toxins, so rare no one
... keep reading on reddit β‘
Having trouble finding any textbooks or databases on the above. Any class of secondary metabolite and any plant clade would suit me.
