AN: Hello to all of you who made it all the way here! I haven't gotten an less new to this in the three minutes it took me to remember how to make a new document, so I'll just say Fossil Fighters is NOT mine and get on with some actual writing!


Bottomsup Bay was discovered in 1723 by a man named (Colonel) Alfred Bottomsup, hence the bay's name. Story says that Alfred took one look at the choppy grey water, rocky cove beach, and sky-high cattails through his telescope one day and decided to call the place home. His troops helped him build a small collection of houses a few hundred yards from the water, and thus the bayside town of Bottomsup was born.

Now, nearly three hundred years later, Bottomsup had changed considerably. A great many new houses had sprung up during the years to accommodate the town's population of nearly one thousand, along with a handful of mom-n-pops, a few schools for children of various ages, and most importantly (in Dina's opinion, anyway), a bustling boardwalk.

That's where she and Pauleen were now: slowly meandering down the worn wooden planks separating Bottomsup from its bay with their pickaxes over their shoulders, a fine layer of sand on their shoes and cattails in their faces. Pauleen had a tub of curly fries and Dina a tent, two large backpacks, several large boxes, and a shovel (for "really, Dina, you are a lot better at carrying things than I am! That's the only area where you've got me beat, isn't that great?"). Still, she felt rather content. After all, she had managed to drag Pauleen into one of her many Get-Dina-Into-College schemes, gotten to visit her hometown for the first time in ages, and was getting to go to the beach for school.

"Curly fry?" Pauleen asked after a while, waving one of said fried potatoes in her redheaded friend's face.

"You know me so well," Dina replied with a snort. Unfortunately, Pauleen wasn't nearly as well-versed in how to eat junk food without use of any of one's appendages – and Dina didn't even know where to start. So the two of them resumed their walk in silence.

The Digadig girl made another stab at conversation a few steps later. "Do you think Luke still works at the surf shop?"

"Dude, he practically owns it. Of course he does."

"Think he's still dating that Kerry chick?"

"You mean you don't follow his Tweeter?" Dina paused, leaning against the railing. She snickered into her hand. "They got engaged."

Pauleen burst into a peal of giggles. "No way!" she scoffed, her eyes bugging out. "Wow, really? There go all my childhood hopes and dreams."

"Didn't they disappear when Luke and Kerry started dating in the first place? Or back when he started middle school? Or—"

"Alright, alright, no need to rub it in."

Silence fell again. Pauleen, mock-mopey over the disappearance of her childhood hopes and dreams, began to fall behind, so Dina trekked on without her. A few long strides brought her off the uneven planks of the boardwalk and on to the rough sand of the beach.

She took a few steps further out, away from the boardwalk, and set down her various oddities with a sigh. Running her hand through her hair (and immediately regretting it), Dina knelt down in the sand, tugged the tent out of its funny little bag, and set about trying to set it up.

Dina had been camping before. Many times, in fact. She'd thought she'd be ready for this part of the assignment: after all, she's been helping her parents hold the tent poles and light marshmallows on fire more times than she could count.

But she'd never been camping when it was this windy. First the bag was sent flying, and Dina had to sprint after it and tackle it into submission, only to find all the little screws and things that had been in the bag were rolling every which way over the sand, finding their way under the boardwalk, into holes, and even into the water. It took the "experienced camper" almost five minutes to find them all.

Then the tarp was off to who-knew-where, flapping noisily as it streaked across the beach. Dina broke into a sprint again as she chased after it, zigzagging back and forth with her arms outstretched until she finally managed to wrap her fingers around a corner of the fabric and bring it down from its short-lived freedom.

Luckily, the poles were easy enough. The tide was out, so the sand was damp and easy to work with. Dina just stuck the poles through their designated holes and stomped them into the ground – no great amount of effort was involved there, thankfully. The rain fly had been balled up in a backpack pocket, so putting that up was another easy job.

By the time she was done, Pauleen had made it almost completely off the boardwalk. Dina waved her over.

"Hey," she called, "the tent's up!"

"I can see that," Pauleen shouted back. "What now?"

"Um . . . " Dina stood up and dusted herself off, then spun around with her hands on her hips, surveying the horizon. The dull water of the bay stretched almost as far as she could see, but the brilliant gold and orange light of the sunset was shining through the cloud cover and giving the bay a little more oomph. "I don't kno—"

"Trick question, we're going digging!" trilled Pauleen, running up to the water's edge and flinging her sundress in the general direction of the tent, leaving her standing in just her bikini despite the cool October weather (and the undoubtedly frigid October water). Dina opened her mouth to protest, but thought better of it. Pauleen was impossible to argue with, and besides, she didn't seem to feel cold. Dina remembered the winter they'd first met, when all the other little kids at Bottomsup's little ice rink were huddled together like penguins in layer upon layer of winter clothing and Pauleen had twirled past in a frilly ballet costume and lacy tights, totally unscathed.

So we are, Dina thought, shrugging off her coat, kicking off her shoes, and picking up her shovel. Slowly she made her way down to where Pauleen stood, shivering with each footfall. The sand was colder than her rain boots let on, and even her full-body wetsuit wasn't impervious to the wind.

"What's the plan?"

Dina smirked. "You, the great and mighty Pauleen, are asking little old me for a plan? You haven't already thought of one?"

Pauleen's face flushed. With her red face, pink hair, and multicoloured bikini, she made a stark contrast to the grey of their surroundings. "I didn't feel like planning today" was her lame excuse.

"Whatever," Dina laughed. "OK, so . . . let's start simple. We'll go find a few small things, like ammonites or trilobites, and use that for a 'study' of the kinds of animals that lived in the shallower areas of the bay. That shouldn't take long." She paused to look at Pauleen, only to find the Digadig girl staring at her like nothing stupider had ever happened to the world. She groaned. "Don't look at me like that, Pauleen. I know we know all about the fossils here. But the teachers don't know we know, so we're doing this for easy A's. Capisce?"

"Fine," Pauleen huffed. She flounced into the deeper water, her body language screaming "Better Than You." Dina rolled her eyes – Pauleen wasn't the easiest best friend in the world – and waded out after the pink-haired Fighter.

Bottomsup Bay was known for being rich in all kinds of life, and Dina was finding tiny shells of tiny dead animals in almost every scoop of mud she brought up from the bay-floor. After a good forty-five minutes of digging, it became a sort of game between the two teenaged girls: they'd plunge their shovels into the mud at the same time, and then race to see who'd find something and bring it to shore first.

Even with the rush of their game, Dina soon fell into a steady rhythm. She became so wrapped up in her work she didn't notice Pauleen shout her name in alarm – and was promptly crashed into by a motorised rubber raft. She flew backwards onto the sand.

"H-hey!" she spluttered, coughing (the boat had hit her square in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her). "What was that all about?"

"Excuse me?" demanded a tremulous male voice. "What do you mean? You were the one who got in our way!"

Dina looked up to see the speaker, a slight, mousy-haired boy in a green coat and pants, stomp her way and glare at her with watery blue eyes.

"I don't know who you think you are," he continued hotly, "but I'll have you know—"

"That's enough," another male voice cut him off. Its owner stepped off the raft and strode up to stand beside his partner. This boy was taller, with paper-white hair and catlike yellow eyes. His glare was catlike, too, and with his tailored red jacket and shiny boots, his appearance was the very image of snootiness.

Dina hated boys like him. They got their driver's licenses illegally early and drove to school in sports cars they got with Daddy's money, and bribed the teachers to get better grades than they deserved. They were vain, rude and pompous, and always more than a little narcissistic. Boys like him would use their last drops of water to slick back their to look good as they died of dehydration in the Parchment Desert.

"I'm not going to yell at you," he drawled. "Nor will I resort to violence, or make a scene in any such brutish way . . . like Todd here." He shot his partner a withering glare, which the smaller boy didn't seem to notice. "But I am going to have to tell you to leave. We have work to do here."

"So do we," said Dina coolly, pushing herself to her feet and sizing the two boys up. They both seemed to be around her age, but she didn't think that would pose a problem if it did come to violence (or any other such "brutish" thing). She was certainly bigger than the one called Todd, who stood at 5'2" and couldn't have weighed over ninety pounds, and while the snooty one was tall and broad-shouldered, with the lean kind of build that came from hoity-toity gym memberships, Dina was fast and she hit hard.

"We're with the Wheatley School," said the snooty boy.

Dina grinned. "So are we." Before either boy could say anything to that, she gestured to the tent and her pile of fossils, crossed her arms, and narrowed her eyes. "And we got here first."

"You keep saying 'we,'" sneered Todd, "but who are you here with? Your imaginary friends?"

She felt her cheeks grow hot at that comment, but pressed her lips together and pointed to the bay, where Pauleen seemed to be trying to make herself as small as possible. "Tall, tan, and busty over there," she said. "Unfortunately, she suffers from a rare allergy to jerks like you, so—"

The damage was done before Dina could even finish her sentence. Both boys turned their heads in the direction Dina was pointing, and while Rupert didn't seem like it was possible for him to care less, Todd was jogging down to the surf in an almost trancelike fashion, stammering out "hello"s and "how-do-you-do"s to a confused-looking Pauleen. Dina sighed. When even Pauleen, who became the shyest person in the world when presented with strangers – especially those of the opposite gender – thought a boy was being stupid, the boy in question was seriously stupid.

"She doesn't seem to be allergic," mused the snooty boy dryly. Dina scowled.

"Oh, shut up."

Dina angrily went to unpack her things as Todd and Pauleen made awkward conversation and the snooty boy snooted about. She deftly made her way through her backpack, placing clothes in neat piles and slamming notebooks on top of each other with tight, precise movements. She was just about to begin unpacking Pauleen's bag for her when Pauleen herself poked her head into the tent, her cheeks flushed and her smile devious.

"Guess what?" she asked.

"You drowned that Todd kid?" Dina replied, leaning against the far wall of the tent. Pauleen shook her head.

"Actually, 'the Todd kid' and I came up with a genius idea." She paused for effect. "Since we're all here on our excavations together, we thought . . . "

"Thought what, Pauleen?"

". . . that . . ."

"That what?"

". . . we'd all do the project together!"

She paused again to let it sink in. Once it did, Dina's jaw dropped and her hearing went tinny – because no way was she working together with those kids. No way was she working together with the snooty boy!

She professed her grievances to her friend, explaining her loathing for the snooty boy and her irritation with Todd. She went to great lengths to try and convince the Digadig that the amounts of testosterone they'd be exposed to would interfere with their work and even almost burst into song (Pauleen often did this herself, and Dina found that the antic was beginning to rub off on her). But Pauleen Digadig was having none of it. It would be faster with four people, she said, and Dina owed her for agreeing to do the project here. And in the end, Dina had to agree to a collaboration with the students from the Wheatley Palaeontology School for Boys, however reluctantly.


Night fell quickly after that, as it so often does during the later part of the year. Todd and the snooty boy, who'd introduced himself as Rupert Wheatley ("Yes, my father does own both of the Wheatley Schools, and yes, he is one of the richest, most influential men in the region . . . it's OK if you're awestruck") had set up their tent right next to the girls', and they built a tiny fire between the two tents, where they all sat and roasted marshmallows.

It was intended to be a social activity, the marshmallow roasting, but Dina was making pointed conversation with Pauleen and Pauleen only, and neither one of the boys was talking to anyone at all. Had there not been any marshmallows involved, Dina would be tempted to call the activity a flop (and to proceed and yell "I told you so" at Pauleen and Todd very, very loudly), but the sugar managed to keep her temper in check, if only for the night.

However, marshmallows or no marshmallows, boys or no boys, Dina couldn't help but wonder what she was doing. Sure, she'd gotten out to Bottomsup Bay, and sure, she'd found lots of little fossils to write back to school about, but Wheatley School expeditions weren't something most colleges looked for in marine biology majors. With her lack of experience in the scientific community, Dina knew that she was going to have to make one heck of a discovery if anyone was going to take her seriously.

Eventually, Dina supposed she'd take that when she got there. She had Fossil Fighting to think about, after all. Whether she liked it or not, it was going to be a far more pressing issue in her life for the next four years.

And for the next two months . . . well, then even Fossil Fighting paled in comparison to the issue of boys – namely Rupert, of course. But, looking up at the hundreds of thousands of stars that freckled the night sky, Dina thought that even they could wait.

Then one of them – namely Todd, of course – dropped his marshmallow into the fire and the flames leaped, filling the air with the smell of burnt marshmallow and nearly burning Rupert's face off, and Dina thought, maybe not.


AN: Well that's that! I don't have much to say except that I'm sorry about Pauleen maybe being out of character – I wanted to mix her ego, her shyness, and eventual niceness into one and don't know how well that worked. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get the hang of it in later chapters! Thanks for reading! Katie out.