Let us all celebrate the arrival of the one and only Reegreeg! She wrote this chapter! On with the chapter!
*Lexie's POV*
Oh, typical, I thought. The people sitting at this table had kids with them.
I hate kids.
Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm Lexie, Lexie Madison Knight. I usually go by Lex. Fifteen years old, orphaned, totally broke, good tan, narrow frame with a decent amount of buffness, hazel eyes, shoulder-blade-length honey-blonde hair — everything about me practically screams Completely Ordinary Fossil Fighter. Well, maybe not the totally broke part. But working at a café fourteen hours a day doesn't exactly leave me a lot of time to go digging for gems. I barely have time to train my vivosaurs.
And I already used my yearly two weeks of vacation to pop over to the Caliosteo Islands, enter the Super Cup, and fight my way through the first couple of rounds, which was really not my best strategy ever because now I'm holding half the tournament up.
So...anyway...me. Well. I'm going to go ahead and warn you all right now that if I don't know you, I hate your guts and I am cooler than you in every essence of the word. Also, I can totally beat you up. And I will enjoy doing so, because with others and their revived dinosaurs most people describe me as something of a sadist. Which is an understatement, being sadistic is what I live on (except for when it comes to animals that aren't humans). I love the Muppets, my favorite's Gonzo. I swim like a dolphin (because fish are overrated) and I love competition. Except for those rare times when I lose, which is when my sadisticness does not actually bring joy to my competitors. And...(oh look, that cloud is shaped like a cupcake!) I'm both lactose- and gluten-intolerant, so my diet largely consists of nothingness. I can stuff my entire fist in to my mouth (translation: I have the attention span of a goldfish).
I have this goal in life (many goals, actually, but this is my main one), to prove to everyone that even though I'm dyslexic, I'm still smart. So what if I'll probably never be able to quote Shakespeare? Compsognathus was three feet long. The blue whale is larger than any dinosaur that we know of as of this present moment. The longest dinosaur name is micropachycephalosaurus. DINOSAURS ARE THE ANCESTORS OF BIRDS.
See? Who needs old writers from a gajillion years ago with and ugly collars? Dinosaurs, and their flying/swimming reptile friends, are what matter in the world.
Plus, I know sign language. Learned it in the third grade when we all figured out I couldn't pass notes with my friends. Take that, Romeo and Juliet.
But as much as I know, as strong as my vivosaurs are, I'm stuck here on Vivosaur Island, at Café-o-Saurus (they have both WiFi and dino-themed food) in this green apron that clashes horribly with my geranium-pink short overalls and hides the Gonzo print on my white (though not only white, I spilled coffee before) T-shirt, with cookie bits and sugar cubes stuck in the treads of my floral-patterned Doc Martens. I'm forced to wear a name tag emblazoned "Lex-o-saurus" and I'm not allowed to use my cell phone unless I receive a call.
My life sort of sucks.
Back to hating kids and cleaning tables, I guess.
It was a normal and stupid and boring day at the café. Three people sent their orders back, saying that the dinosaurs weren't cute and chibi-fied, so they wouldn't eat or drink what was placed in front of them. I was challenged to a Fossil Battle by some fat little eight-year-old who said if he won, I would have to pay him for everything he ordered. He threw such a big tantrum when he lost that I ended paying anyway. And of course, the table near the window farthest east on the second floor was covered in spills, stains, enough crumbs to feed an army, vomit, sugar, paper, and mysterious globs of green goo that I could only hope wasn't snot.
I had two hours left of work today. That wasn't much. I could do this.
One of the globs rolled off the table and fell dangerously near my boot, and I thought, Maybe not.
Suddenly my phone started ringing. Confused, I dug it out of my apron pocket and flipped it open to answer (a clam cell phone, I know). It was a number I didn't recognize, but a voice I did.
"Well, howdy there," said the unmistakable voice of Joe Wildwest. "You're Lexie Knight, right? Fossil Fighter?"
"Call me Lex, most people do. Uh..why're you callin?"
"Well, Lex, the reason I called ya' up here is 'cause we have some new twerps runnin' 'round stirrin' up trouble. My old Patrol Team ain't answerin', so I figured I'd round up some new recruits ta' search fer 'em and stop dem varmints from messin' up the Caliosteo Super Cup. Think you could help out, pardner? Already got one girl one the job, a fine fighter, maybe you've met. Her name's Melissa Robins, or summat like that, but she goes by Molly."
"I've heard rumors," I say, twisting my ponytail around my finger. "But I've never met her in person. Anyhoodle, yeah, I can help out."
"Swell! I'll organize a helicopter ta pick ya up right away. Ya still on Vivosaur Island?"
I nodded, and remembering nods are silent I said yes out loud. Joe said something about being short on choppers and sending me one that was originally on its way to Ribular Town, which had someone in it already, and then something about meeting my partner in anti-crime early. After a minute it became clear he had forgotten about me, so I hung up and took my apron off, marching downstairs.
"'Scuse," I said to my manager, who was standing behind the counter and refilling the coffee machine (we're very short-staffed). "Please give me my paycheck for the month now, please, and...here." I slid the apron over to her. "I quit."
"What!?"
"Got a new job just now, in the Caliosteo Fossil Park," I said, worsening the half-lie by sticking my tongue out at and flipping the bird to an old lady sipping tea in a booth by herself. "And I'm leaving now. But since my paycheck's due today anyway, you should just fork it over now. In G. Just in case."
"I-"
"Or I will inform Joe Wildwest and his angry vivosaurs that you do not want to make the world a better place."
That was it — the coup de grâce. She opened the cash register and gave me fifteen thousand G in bills, gaping at me as I turned to go.
Once outside the café I turned to the window and flipped the bird again, laughing as I skipped away to the middle of the Fighter Area. Looking up I could see the rapidly approaching shape of a Caliosteo Fossil Park helicopter. I grinned. Things were looking up. No pun intended.
4 hours ago
Like Joe had said something about, there was a girl who looked around sixteen already sitting in the helicopter as I opened the door, one of her hands resting protectively on her medal case. I sized her up.
She looked around my height, maybe half an inch shorter, and unattractively skinny. She was pale, too, which is odd for Fighters who are often out in the sun. She had dark pink hair, but brown roots, so it was obviously the work of everyone's friend Mr. Hair Dye. The one eye I could see was a clear yellow and I couldn't help but wonder if that was the work of Mrs. Contact Lens. She wore an extremely short blue shirt and yellow shirts, bright pink socks and unnaturally white shoes. Her right arm was covered in metal plates and her left one bore an expensive-looking silver bracelet with a large peridot, topaz, aquamarine, ruby, and diamond dangling from it. Like I do with most people, I hated her immediately.
Before stepping in, I just so happened to drop my Smilo's Dino Medal, letting out the white-and-grey (used a silver fossil) saber-toothed tiger just in case I needed to attack her. Or terrorists. Can't be too sure.
"Hi, are you Melissa Robins?" I asked, deciding to forego her preferred nickname of Molly. She said nothing as I sat down, but nodded slightly. "Well, I'm Lex, and I hear we've been drafted to save the Super Cup together. Now, can I lay down some ground rules before we start?"
I didn't wait for an answer, but started ticking the rules off on my fingers. "One. I don't do this whole 'working together' beeswax, so unless either you can beat me and my vivos up or Joe somehow forces it out of us, you're mainly gonna be my guest star. Two. Before we get started on saving the world, we need to work out who will be getting the credit for saving the world, and that will be me. You can be known as the understudy savior of the world, vice savior of the world, associate savior of the world, back-up savior of the world...really, the choice is yours. Three. You will not speak unless spoken to, unless we are fighting, in which case, seriously, make it interesting. Because most fights are so boring these days. Four. You-"
I never got past rule three, actually, because then Melissa got up and threw a punch at my face.
I jerked to the side but her fist grazed my chin, the metal plates making it hurt more than it should have. I kneed her in the jaw as a response, and I withdrew Smilo and sent out my rank 20 Paki, who started strangling her with his tail. It was really fun, especially the look on her face when Paki popped up. Like she was scared or something.
After a lot of punches and elbows and knees and bites and kicks (dang, that girl could kick), I managed to pin her to the back of her seat with my knee in her stomach, and I smirked.
"You can do better than that, can't you, Melissa?" I asked. "And by the way, you've been spoken to, so feel free to insult me back."
She glared at me and pushed me back onto my own seat, ripping a piece of paper from a notepad and scribbling furiously on it until giving it back to me.
I'm sure it said something really horrible, but I didn't even bother trying to read it. I knew it would just look like "hishatde I htea ouyedi" or something like that. I just dropped the note.
"What's the matter, Melissa?" I asked in sign language. "Cat got your tongue?"
She thrust another note at me, but I already knew the answer. She was mute. Which made not getting along with her one heck of a lot easier.
That's chapter 2! Keep reading and reviewing!
