AN: OhmeinGott I'm writing a story! I can't believe this!
OK, I have no clue what I'm doing but I've seen other people do it so...
Disclaimer: I don't own Fossil Fighters!
At four years old, children in the Calisteo region begin studying palaeontology. It doesn't matter who they are, or who their parents are, or what they want to do in life, when students in a preschool class reach the average age of four, their teachers start to fill their heads with dinosaurs.
It starts out simple, of course. "T-Rex was mean, it ate other dinosaurs!" and "Brontosaurus was nicer, it ate leaves!" are common lesson summaries. But by eight, many have already successfully completed their first official fossil excavations. By ten, the average Caliostean has an encyclopaedic knowledge of every Vivosaur and dinosaur in the book. And at fifteen, every last one of them takes the test.
This year, fifty of them passed the test.
This year, fifty of them became Fossil Fighters.
And this year, four of them became the best.
(That is, they would. After one of them woke up and stopped snapping at her teachers.)
"Miss Clarke?"
Through her half-lidded eyes, the "one" in question glared at the mass of teenaged girls hovering about her head, groaned, and buried her head in her arms again.
"Miss Clarke?"
"Absent," she mumbled. "So absent."
The teacher taking attendance huffed loudly and stepped up to the tired girl's desk, rapped her on the head with his pen. "Clearly not, Miss Clarke, as you are sitting right here."
"Oh," drawled another girl from behind the first one, "don't mind her. She's just cranky since she broke up with her boyfriend of an entire three months yesterday."
"Pauleen!" roared the first, whirling around in her seat and shooting her friend a withering glare. "Who made this your business?"
Pauleen ignored her. "And between you and I, Professor Diggins, I think she may be a little bit hung—"
Faster than an ornithomimid after three Red Bulls, the first girl was out of her seat with her heaviest textbook poised over the second's head and a murderous look in her narrowed brown eyes. I will hit you, said the expression on her face. I will hit you very, very hard if you don't choose your words carefully.
"—up," Pauleen finished dumbly. "Hung up. On . . . schoolwork! Yeah, that's Dina. Too busy for her own good." She gave a little laugh. "Had she been as pretty and brilliant as I am, this would so not be a problem, but . . . ah . . . well, you know."
"Hm," mused Professor Diggins, then resumed taking attendance. Dina could feel him drilling holes in her head with his disapproving teacher stare as she sat back down, but kept her head down. She was tired, darn it, and didn't particularly want to make eye contact with anyone in the classroom anyway. Feeling satisfied with her mental assurance to herself, she brushed a curtain of tangled orange hair in front of her face and slowly closed her eyes again.
Little did she know she'd actually fall asleep, of course. As in, real sleepage. With real droolage. She probably wouldn't have noticed at all had there not been another rap on her head from Diggins's pen, harder this time, and sharp cry of "Miss Clarke, for the last time, wake up!" (causing her to do precisely so).
Oh my gosh, she thought, hands flying to her face and coming away sticky with the aforementioned spittle. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh! Could this morning get any worse?
The sound of the classroom door creaking open snapped Dina out of her reverie, only to bring her attention to the sight of the Wheatley Palaentology School for Girls's principal come striding in, suit immaculate and face bitter as always. Dina paled.
Yes, said the snarky side of her head, this morning can get "any worse".
"Girls," Headmistress Flynn began, making pointed eye contact with each one of them. Her face visibly fell when her gaze came around to Dina's perch at the back of the drafty room, wrinkling her nose at the ginger's rumpled uniform (laundry wasn't Miss Clarke's top priority), messy sidecut (neither was hair-brushing, and her ex had managed to convince her that being half bald was low maintenance anyway), and altogether disheveled appearance. "I'm terribly sorry to interrupt your class—"
"Oh, it's fine, we were still taking attendance anyway!" Professor Diggins scrambled to reassure her. Headmistress Flynn did not look like she wanted to be reassured.
"—but I come bearing exciting news," the elderly woman went on through gritted teeth. "As you may or may not be aware, it is tradition at the Wheatley Schools that first-year students kick off the year by planning and executing their own official digging expeditions."
A wave of "oohs" and "aahs" swept through the class. Headmistress Flynn allowed herself a small, smug smile. "And the planning part shall begin today. You will be spending the rest of the day in the library, doing any necessary research and ultimately deciding where you will be digging . . ."
Dina wasn't sure if the headmistress's voice trailed off or if she herself zoned out, but she did know that the prospect of fancy expeditions and fresh air wasn't nearly exciting enough to keep her awake: her eyes were closing again almost immediately. It didn't take long for her head to start sliding down towards her desk, and her fingers, interwtined with her knotted hair, began going slack. Dina felt her eyes slide out of focus . . . but her vision sharpened again at the word "pairs".
So we'll be working with partners . . . oh, drat. She sucked in her cheeks. Please don't say that the pairs're already assigned!
"We have, of course, already assigned the pairs."
Then pretty please don't say I'm with Lena!
"Anna Heilbronner will be with Claudia Hirsch . . ."
Please not Lena, please not Lena . . .
(Lena was Dina's roommate.)
". . . Finch Hawkins with Camilla Nast . . ."
Please not Lena, please not Lena!
(Lena was very annoying.)
". . . Sadie Cook with Amerine Wittman . . ."
Pleeease not Lena?
(Also, Dina doubted Lena knew how to say a sentence that didn't consist of the words "shut", "up", "and", "go", or "away".)
". . . Mary Shultz with Sierra Lexington-Gray . . ."
I'll do anything!
(Dina did not like Lena.)
". . . Dina Clarke with Pauleen Digadi—"
"Oh, thank th'lord!" Dina found herself exclaiming, flopping backward in theatrical relief. Headmistress Flynn eyed her quizzically.
"Is something terribly the matter, Miss Clarke?" the woman asked. "Are you feeling quite the thing?"
"N-no ma'am," the orange-haired teen stammered. "N-not at all."
"Then shut up and stay put!"
Dina did as she was told, and the principal continued her journey down the list. Lena was to be paired with Isabel Eddings, a preppy girl with a vocabulary almost as limited as her partner's. Dina didn't think she could possibly care less, despite her relief about being paired with Pauleen (or rather, not being paired with Lena) – but she didn't think she'd be going back to sleep, either. As Headmistress Flynn asked for questions and vetoed Sadie Cook's plea for an option of hiring people to do the actual work part "since it's so official and all," the tired girl felt her mindset shift from ditzily cranky to something composed and professional. Mentally, she patted herself on the back. She hadn't been this calm since testing, meaning she was not only over the drama of the previous week, but also totally ready to tackle life's many challenges and overcome even the hardest homework.
"Oh, and Miss Clarke," called Headmistress Flynn on her way out the door, "I'd like to see you in my office after lunch."
She was, however, going to need more coffee.
"What did she want to talk to you about?" Pauleen asked as she and Dina mucked about the school's cavernous library. "Was it about your hair?"
"Enough with my hair!" the ginger exclaimed in response. "Just because I make fun of it doesn't mean you get to." She paused to give the librarian an apologetic glance and exhale sharply through her nose. "Besides, it's starting to grow back."
Pauleen's delicate features twisted themselves into a smirk as she pointed out that it really wasn't. Dina and her decidedly less dainty face scowled. Then she pulled a hair tie off her wrist and instructed her friend to close her eyes as she shook out her hair and pulled it over head in a sloppy excuse for a side ponytail.
Hmph, she thought, triumphant. Take that!
"And even if it ain't growing back – which it is," Dina informed the Digadig girl, "now you can barely notice that fact that I have no hair on one side of my head."
"You look stupid" was Pauleen's only comment. Scowling even more, Dina whipped out her compact, scrutinised her reflection, and tugged a lock of hair out of the unfortunately floofy mess upon her head. Blowing the hair away as it came to rest in front of her face, Dina demanded, "Better?"
"Eh, sure."
The two moved along down the shelves, Dina knocking books over and Pauleen picking them up behind her. Their falls echoed in the large room, and the librarian, despite all her old-lady-niceness, visibly tensed in anger every time Dina sent one of them clattering down and skidding across the library's black granite floors. Dina felt almost glad that her footsteps, at least, were mouse-quiet.
They stopped at a small table flanked by two weathered grey armchairs in the reading area, under one of the large Plesiosaur skeletons hanging from the ice-coloured ceiling. It was covered in scores of ancient, yellowed maps, but the reading area was mostly empty. After all, most students had already decided upon locations for their excavations.
Dina and Pauleen sat themselves down and began thumbing through the maps.
The ex-punk couldn't speak for her friend, but she wasn't finding anything useful at all. Most of the maps weren't even accurate, forget interesting; the interesting ones all seemed to map deep-ocean trenches or the plains of faraway countries. Dina loved geography and exploring, just like any other girl, but she doubted they'd be allowed out of the region for this assignment. And if they were, Pauleen probably wouldn't want to leave anyway.
It didn't take long for either of them to set down their papers and stare at each other with arched eyebrows, faces the epitomes of boredom. Pauleen cracked a smile.
"Coffee break?" she asked.
"Are we even allowed out of here until we finish working?" Dina countered, sagging back into her seat.
Pauleen shrugged in a "True That" kind of way. Then her face brightened.
"So, what did old Flynn want to talk to you about?"
Dina shrugged, too, but hers was lazy and almost halfhearted. "Career choices," she said nonchalantly. "She wants me to go into palaeontology."
"You mean you don't?"
"Nah, you know me. I was never interested; my dad was the one to sign me up for the test in the first place. I've always liked fish better. Wanna do marine biology." She paused to stretch and yawn. "But she's being, well, Flynny about it." Another pause. Here she pulled a random map from her pile and shook out its creases, then narrowed her eyes at the spidery wrioting scrawled in the corner. "Hey," she began, "how would you kind doing me a favour?"
"Will it involve strenuous mental activity, large amounts of money, or members of the Wheatley Palaeontology School for Girls' faculty?"
"Er . . . no . . . ?"
"Then I'm in. What is it?"
Dina grinned, and pushed the map over the table. She pointed a slender finger to the middle of the vast expanse of blue watercolour covering the old paper with a flourish, then looked up at her long-time friend, smile still plastered on her face. "I'm going to prove old Headmistress wrong. This excavation, my friend, shall be my college degree." Dina lifted her finger off the paper and crossed her arms smugly. "We shall be digging in Bottomsup Bay."
"Ooh!" Pauleen leaned over the table, her smile bigger and brighter than a street lamp of incredibly considerable size. "I'm so in."
Dina's spirits soared. She hadn't expected it to be so easy. A million wordless thoughts of rainbows and butterflies and kittens danced through her head at a million miles per hour, and she could feel them bubbling up in her throat as a bout of triumphant singing and perhaps victorious disco-dancing – until her brain kicked in and reality chased all the kittens away.
"You're just agreeing so you can see Luke, right?"
Pauleen waved airily. "Maybe. But you should be happy I agreed at all."
Dina arched an eyebrow.
"OK, OK, I'm doing this just to see Luke."
Dina rolled her eyes. "I thought so."
AN: Yeah, this is pretty bad I'm not going to lie. But the second chapter should be better, and if anybody is actually reading this they're in luck because I already posted it! Since nothing happens here but I needed it out of the way, I figured I'd write some actual plot too. Thank you for reading!