Me: yes. Summer's ouuuttt! I'd dance... but... -turns around suddenly-This chapter has... -turns around suddenly. Sprained ankle messes me up- ...suspense. ow...
Todd: duh duh duh. -walks over to my fallen form-
Me: .~.ll
Todd: duh DUH duh DUH duh DUH duh DUH. -steps closer-
Me: …
Tod: DUHDUHDUHDUHDUHDUHDUHDUHDDUH DUH! DUH! DUH! DUH D-gets slapped in the face by a frying pan-
Me: WINNER! -prances around some more- No... wait.. dododoooooo... -drops to the floor- SUSPENSE.
The Alone Champion
Chapter 8: Nice Facade Mask
"Dina, you're gonna love my dress! It's super perfect. I can't wait until round two of the Cup!" Todd and I are walking through a shrouding cover of leaves. We will arrive in Jungle Labyrinth soon. I am hoping to find a nice vivosaur here; Torn and Trikko are busy shouting in the back of my head, and I wish for a friend that could help stop their never-ending war on... what is at the moment "The Effects of Todd Wearing a Dress."
I smile nonchalantly as he continues, dark brown eyes shining brightly like stars. "But then again, Joe Wildwest, amazing as he is, had to go and give you another full week to prepare! I love you like a sister Dina, but seriously. A week? Is he out of his mind? Er..." Todd shoots me a sidelong glance, the stars in his eyes burning fervently. "You don't think he heard that, do you?"
Our gazes tear around the green barrier of leaves that encompass our steadily forward path. Personally, I already enjoy the appearance of Jungle Labyrinth, for the vegetation is soft on my bare feet. As accumulated as I am to a bare-footed life, help from other biotic factors is greatly appreciated. After ensuring our safety, I turn back to my foster brother and flick his beige hat over his head into a more secure position. "I... s-saw no one..."
He puffs out a breath, brushing stray, brown curls from his dark eyes. "Thank the Ancient vivosaurs for that, then. I don't wanna look bad in front of him!" The way Todd emphasizes how fearful he is of letting a well-known fossil fighter see his silliness has always been a laughable argument he has with himself, myself usually nearby. While we continue the mostly-peaceful stroll, I continue my long-lasting attempt in quieting the loud voices-in-my-head.
What is... what is your... um... obsession... o-over Todd... a-and d-d-d...dresses? I mentally squeak. The shouts that have buzzed by my ears for the whole of the morning merely cut for a moment before their intensity levels roar in my hear once more. With a squeak, I crawl into their hot shouting match again, this time with a higher volume, or at least as I as I go, which still is not impressive by any standards. Y-you two! Somehow, my squeak of a tone catches the two pairs of eyes.
Lucky for my now-tired voice, the vivosaurs turn their heads to me. It's actually very important. You see, Torn here thinks Todd is a fine boy. But I know better, because I'm the almighty tricera that was once less than skin with a head fossil, but only the fossil itself! Fun fact, orangehead: there are four types of bones to collect for each vivosaur, being the head, which is the only thing you need to revive the vivosaur, the body, ribs-and-stuff goes there, the arms, and the legs. Collect them all! He tosses his blue-scaled, fanned face into the air, tan stripe in the middle collecting a slight sheen. But my tricera is abruptly butted-out of the scene.
Obviously, states an adventurous, down-to-the-earth voice I know well, Todd is being nice to Dina since she doesn't have much of a reason to laugh. Plus, he's Todd. I once saw him eat half a moldy banana peel. Fun fact for you, ya dumb butt: mold on a banana doesn't make certain people sick. Like that guy.
Trikko explodes back at my dimetro easily and coldly, glaring back at the dilated, yellow ovals with ease. That's exactly what I'm talking about here! He eats moldy banana peels, in the name of Ancient A-
I don't care about what Ancient you want to curse over-
Shut up, you good-for-nothing, red-faced... over-grown human! Even one of that vile Todd's species, moreso!
I'm a dimetro, smart guy.
I was insulting you, and you can't insult me with my own l-
Please, you both, be qu-quiiiett... My hands have risen to my temple. Their screams have infiltrated my sense of movement, and now I see that my bare, pale, pale feet have stopped themselves in the pathway. With the information I have, Todd must be up ahead somewhere. He tends to not notice when I stop. He also tends to walk rather slowly when I stop for he knows he has forgotten something. Somehow, Todd never remembers that it is I he is missing of. Sometimes I wonder what is behind those brown eyes of his.
"Get out of the way already." The sudden, new voice successfully quiets the roar in my head. I stop holding onto my forehead and turn around to face the person. I could already tell they are feminine by the cold, frigid voice, but now that I look at her, she is obviously female. Her light, light blonde hair is short and to the shoulders, bangs kept underneath a jagged-patterned headband. She has slightly-tan skin and darting, squinted, yellow eyes. She has on a thin-strapped, beige jacket with short sleeves and numerous pockets. She also dons black pants.. "What, did you hear me or not?"
I shake my head slightly. "N-no; I... I heard you." She seems to snarl upon noticing my docile and soft behavior. Oh... oh no...
The girl squints her eyes further, mouth upturned into a jagged sneer. "Then move already! I don't have time for this!" Looking at her mouth, I can tell she wishes to speak more, but a long, incoherent moan interrupts our wintry-voices conversation. If only the girl could let her voice thaw slightly we would speak at the same level of sound. Instead, she shoves against me, thin, straight hair neatly brushing by my face.
"I'm done with you."
Another moan, this one louder and severely twisted. "I... Icould... help... t-too-"
"Ugh, he's such a drama-queen, that..." The blaring, yellow orbs fleck upon me. "Why would you want to help?"
"Because … um... I-I c-an. And if... if I do, m-maybe I can... g-grow to... to know you... b-b-etter?" With the help of a stubborn tricera, I had located the smudged, dented, white fossil beneath her slightly-tan fingers. Not only that, but he had nicely told me that there were two of that same neutral vivosaurs wedged in her hand, as if trying to hide them from me.
In response, the girl turns around and glares at me, this one spiking her yellow eyes menacingly. "I don't need any help, you stupid girl. I'm fine on my o-" The moans intensify, so she hurries onward. I follow, despite her angered growling. We lead off into a clearing, green creepers and bushy trees surrounding every corner except for two different pathways. In the light of the morning sun overhead, I can detect that a slumped figure, rock-like and brown-clothed by a similar fashion to the girl, is moaning loudly on the forest ground. His spectacles are dangling at the nose. Graying hair crawls out from beneath a brown hat. He is a nice stage of portly. Not to be rude, for I sense this is the fat of an more elderly man. And it is a quite calming fat, especially when compared to the balded man I would... I would rather not remember so easily.
"I need... a spud... or my delicate stomach will... aghhh!" The man moans and squirms in his fallen-over position, and over the wailing, I sometimes can hear the loud ache of a stomach. "Melon... ugh... spud..." He is truly hungry, for his stomach seems to be talking. This worries me. But while I scramble towards the grasses to the side, pickaxe in hand, searching for a "melon... ugh... spud..." the other girl is glaring at the older man. Why is she glaring at a fallen, elder sire? Oh... I wish I could speak with this female more... she seems intriguing, somewhat like how I had felt about Rupert, and what roams the vast expanse of my mind now.
With a growl, she retorts to him, furiously pushing her hair over one, slightly-tan shoulder. "Professor, you should know better than that! I told you to remember your lunch. Heck, I even put it in your hands! How did you possibly forget it?" Her tone, still icy, is scrabbling upon the elder sire. My heart noisily sets off a tizzy at these adhered words.
Hopeful, my pickaxe digs into the exceptionally-grassy area to search for this key-to-the-man-and-his-stomach until I have unearthed enough dirt for the brown particles to cake in my sides and consume my pale feet as I sit on my knees. I grow into the job of digging, running my fingers through this trove of treasures until I locate the pearl. Quickly, I chop off the roots of the green, oval-shaped plant and wrap my fingers against the soft membrane of the spud.
"Give it to me!" Blindly I toss the spud, shifting awkwardly on my toes and struggling to regain a regular sense of breath when a light thud signals that the girl has caught this precious life source. After the hole is filled with dirt again, I stand up, brush myself off, and cannot help but stare. This somewhat-portly, beige-suited man has flown into the air, achieved a back flip, and landed on his feet. I am now afraid of old men...
He turns to face me, moving the glasses on his eyes. "Oh, why, hello there!" He waves as the girl covers her eyes with her palms, groaning rather grotesquely. "Thank you for that! I am Nigel Scatterly, and I forgot to eat breakfast this morning! I guess the relishing taste of that delicious melon spud brought back my old routines, eh wot?" He turns around to face the girl, her slightly-tan palms still covering her light yellow eyes. "And that's Dinu: my assistant. Stubborn, eh?
"I own a museum over Vivaldi-Isles's past. I've already got murals and different sculptures that depict the Ancients- what's with that face? How do you not know the Ancients?" I stare blankly, cheeks considerably warming. "They're the vivosaurs that first lived in Vivaldi-Isles and created all vivosaurs! And the vivosaurs that now live in this world as spirits- both good and bad! Anyways... Dinu, where was I?" Groaning, she uncovers herself and whispers into his ear. "Oh, right! So, after that, I suddenly stumbled upon this doodad called a Calio Slablet! I even found a decoder on the one I had first obtained! Which was, to my luck, the first Slablet. Er... Dinu, do you have your pickaxe with me? I forgot my shovel at the museum, also. Oh, dear," he mumbles when his blonde assistant shrugs, open handed. She must have left her own tool somewhere, also. "Er... what's your name again?"
"Um... m-y name?" I whisper, pointing at myself with pale fingers.
His round head sweeps the clearing, which is empty besides a lone figure that has fallen down earlier whom I had not noticed behind Professor Scatterly. He is slumped over and wears a light green jumpsuit. O-oh, Todd... "Er... yes. I believe so, lassie."
My cheeks burn lightly. "D-Dina."
"Ah! Dina! What a feminine name for a female like yourself!" I decide not to ask what he means by that, especially since my hair is not down or curled and I wear a patched-up, oversized, blue jumpsuit. He could not mean the glove on my left hand, either. It is black and the threads are falling apart. He continues anyways. "Eh wot, if you could come... right in front of me..." Professor Scatterly mumbles, his hands clasped over a strange, circular, clunky machine. "My Calio-Slablet-Locator has detected one here. Be a dear... Dina?"
I awkwardly move in front of his portly, shorter body and lean down. My orange bangs brush against soil as I carefully maneuver the pointed, metal top of my pickaxe into the ground. The dirt is brushed away the longer I bash my pickaxe into the tangled grass. Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunkthunk.
Scrape, scrape- tick. A solid, rectangular shape emerges from the submerged earth. With a girlish squeal, gloved hands reach down, push me aside, and latch onto the rectangular shape immediately. I sneeze, dirt covering my face. The portly professor continues cooing over his new success until remembering that two girls are still staring at his cheeky face. "It's the third one, Dinu." He remembers the girl that helped him retrieve the gray rectangle. "Er... I'm excited. Dina, I know you didn't exactly mean to do so and help me, but would you like to hear what this historical figure has to offer?" I blink again. Sneeze. "Okay then!"
Professor Scatterly clears his thick throat and, adjusting his dust-collecting specs, starts to recite. "'We do not want Zongazonga as our ruler anymore. The others protest with the vivosaurs and shout each time the ball-of-sky rises and sets. They do not stop. And yet he does not fail in his heavy reign. In fact, he states that his old Vessel is too much. He wants another...'"
He turns the slab around, revealing crude writings in what appears to be shaky lines that seem to craft a few pictures, and a few pieces even somewhat resemble words. "'Another tournament will be held soon. His dead-ones will be given to everyone to use once more. There cannot be a winner. The others still speak that there is a way to stop him. They say the Wisp has brought a gift to use. They say peace is inevitable...'
"And sadly, that's where the slablet ends. Hmm..." Professor Scatterly scratches his head awkwardly with his stout hand. "I also have the first one, Dina. But not the second. I'm sure Dinu wouldn't mind hearing it again." The glare his assistant is currently forging tells me otherwise, but I would rather not pipe up at the moment. Besides, this talk of historical protests and "dead-ones" sounds quite... interesting.
"O-kay!" The Professor pulls out a similar-looking slab from the backpack laying nestled in the grass beside him.
"'We have always lived under a king for as long as even the eldest elder can remember. He has always been Zongazonga, though his appearance changes. People say he is followed by a Wisp everywhere he goes. As peaceful as he seems, he is not peaceful. He is not good. He is a monster, so they say. I missed the last Vessel, but they told me what happens. It is bad. And there is another one supposedly happening soon.'" Once again, the portly elder turns the rectangular, gray piece around. "'We need to stop him, but the people are afraid. They tell me he is too powerful. He is unstoppable. Not even my acquaintance, named Ignosaurus, could help. He says we must live. There will be a chance. Someday.'"
He clears his throat again. "Not only that, but there's a picture on the back, depicting of what looks like a meaty biped in flames!" He turns the slab around to show me a face of dark, brittle features with stick-like teeth. It is engulfed in an orange color. With that settled, the Professor salutes to me rather comically, his potbelly jiggling. "Well, it appears I must go. Dinu, try to make some friends and I'm sure your pickaxe is nearby. Tallyho!" And the beige-suited, portly elder is gone.
Dinu stares at me coldly, her mouth turned down into a frown. She lightly adjusts her patterned headband. "What are you looking at?" she finally grumbles, icy voice still troubling. "I'm not fighting you, don't care what the heck he told me. Although I'll probably..." Dinu lowers her cold stare and voice, departing into the stifling amount of greenery without giving me another glance. A piece of my conscience wishes I meet her again, for a battle or even simply a... talk? But if Professor Scatterly is as scatterbrained as the name implies, then there is a possibility. A chance I am liking the odds of.
"Oh... oh my gosh! There you are!" The ball of green jumpsuit erupts into an energetic boy with a beige cap trailing the wind behind in which he has to stoop over and recollect before continuing his mad dash with one hand trailing behind while the other holds his hat in place. "I found what I was missing!" Face now mixed into a palette between hues of red and pink, I wave back to my friend. He responds by running into me and bowling us both into the springy grass. "Huh..." Todd whispers, breath rushing over my cheek. "I'm starting to see what you like about the grass."
We untangle rather quickly. "Dina, I can't believe I forgot to tell you!" He loudly slaps his tan forehead. "Pauleen's so mean! She threw my shoe out our window! I found it in the fountain this morning! She's, like, so mean, Dina!" I quietly laugh in response, but do not insult the girl whom I have yet to meet. "Oh. I fainted. See, these guys were screaming about a monster!" We have begun a steady stroll towards the trail on the left, casually stooping over to dig up fossils that pass us. "And, well, I freaked out, because it made the biggest noise! You missed it!" A sudden growl, not unlike the yowl I had faintly labeled as a starved stomach, rips through the dig site. "Oh gosh."
gggggGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGHHhhh...
That must have been the monster Todd ran into earlier. What a peculiar being it must be. The voice is somewhat mechanical rather than favoring the natural scream. What could this lead into..?
Before I can ask Todd what he thinks, our path leads into a heavily-rooted, densely-forested, light-filtering chamber. Thin trunks surround us that we could step through at our leisure. Our little duo leads up to the tree-topped area. I turn to ask Todd about the mechanical screech, but another sound beats me. "Will! Run faster!"
A tall body smashes against me before continuing onward, still screaming to his buddy. Another figure slumps into my foster brother before turning around, still panting. "You're too" -he coughs loudly- "too fast, Bill!"
The first man returns, who appears to be wearing overalls and a yellow t-shirt. "Oh, come on, Will! That vivosaur nearly ate us! We either hurry or die! Especially..." His voice softens to a whisper, but grows louder. "Especially those teens over there. They're dead. Might as well hope we can escape soon!" The two return to their unsteadily bubbly jogging and rapid panting, curving around the path again.
"Ur... Dina?" Todd has lowered his voice to a quavering, hushed whisper. "Suddenly, that peel... ugh..." Before he can tell me what is exactly wrong with his stomach, another scream emerges. But this one is human-like and promises war.
A dark face pops in front of me, wide, green eyes staring. "I will kill the monster!" it declares. Strands of hair the color of bubblegum slide over her eyes. Bushy, pink puffs of hair spring from her head and into the air. There are yellow highlights on the ends. "And you too, Dina! Todd thinks you're perfect!" This is one of the moments that my skin wills to pale, but cannot any further than it already is. "Yeah! Scream already!"
In response, a blur of blue explodes into her side. The horns on his nose cut at her dark skin, thankfully missing her to-the-chest, red tank top and strange, grass skirt. Hey! You can't hurt Dina! I have her taken! Growling loudly, my tricera holds his head down in the makings of a headbutt.
A red, reptilian vivosaur blooms into a fiery size beside him, sail blowing like a wind storm fuels him. Sorry. He shrugs his scaled, quadrupled shoulders shyly. Missed my cue by a bit. I'd never let any bitch hurt her, though. Don't you get any ideas, masky.
I bet you wish your eyes could grow like that Dinu girl's, eh?
Shut up, you damn-
"Ohmygosh! Are those your vivosaurs?! They're both ugly, fat creeps!" The pink-haired girl steps back hastily, dabbing at the cut on her side. I wince at the crawling blood that sticks to her skin. Now that she is further away, I note something else about the girl. A mask with small spikes to the side and the widest array of mismatched, twisting, overlapping patterns over brown wood covers the whole of her face. Pauleen. This is Pauleen, then. "They're so-"
I am not fat! Just stout! And Trikko cuts into a rampage, leading towards the screaming bundle of fluffy, pink hair as his blue head raises to the earlier wound. I squeak lightly and lunge on top of my tricera, covering his fanned face with my pale hands. His sudden movements slowly unfurl, and the water vivosaur stops. He grunts in a half apology, half why-did-you-not-let-me-kill-pink-hair-girl.
Torn flicks his tongue out, narrow face pinched into a smirk. I know when to ignore insults, girly.
Trikko slowly and methodically shakes his fanned, pale-and-blue face, the horns hastily deporting blood spatters. You are a sad, sad dimetro. I'm a male.
Finally, my vivosaurs know to quit, and fall into their medals, fire and water respectively. I scoop them up and quickly shove them into my pocket again. "I... I am d-...dearly sorry, Paul... P-Pauleen. They... u-um... have a... have a m-mind of their... th-their o-own, as I am sure you know, and-"
"Your. Tricera. Hurt. Me."
"I... I know... T-rikko is abit of... ofa-"
"Hah! I thought you were a prissy little kid! Then you pull out this gruff guy and he's like 'Grr grr I'm not fat' and you're all 'Whee!' and then you land on him and he's like 'No let me kill the girl' but you're like 'Then she'd be dead and she's so cool!' and the tricera shut up. Oh my gosh we should be friends! And you're vivosaurs are so cool! Wanna trade?" She notices my stiffening. "Oh come on! I'm kidding, kid! You crack me up~"
Todd wakens from his silent thinking. "Ugh. See, Dina? See what I mean? Pauleen's terri-"
"T-todd... I... ummm..."
He moans. "Besides yourself! You're always like 'Everything is totally my fault!' and dad's like 'Random Dina found: must kill her' and then you go 'I am so terrible' and dad and mom go "Hah! Hah! Hah!' and then they sit on you." He sees through my blank expression cheerfully. "No. They never sat on you. I'm trying to make your childhood joyful, Dina! Stick with it!" My cheeks instead grow hot, face stifling. "No? Didn't work?"
Pauleen laughs loudly. "Gosh, Todd! You're so bad at everything! You're gonna make Dina cry or something! And that wasn't funny." She sidles next to me, a grass skirt slim around her waist rustling. "I'm totally with Dina here if she cries."
I do not cry in Jungle Labyrinth. At least, not now. Instead, I laugh weakly, neither committing to either of Pauleen or Todd. The roommates merely shrug. I can feel from the air that they are about to toss themselves within an ongoing argument that has not been resolved but another earsplitting screech, louder than the last one, rustles the grass; turns the world into a stifling silence; rattles the trees; burns down my ears. I flinch at the noise, but will not cry. No. This does not scare me, though my heart skips beats with a trill. Does not scare me. Odd, though. Not scary. Loud. I do not... l-like loud.
It appears that my foster brother does not agree, even though the pink-haired girl next to me has flinched in excitement as I had. Todd sinks to the grass, moaning loudly. "Ugh... that banana I was talking about... it was all moldy... and brown... and the peel... ugh... sorry, Dina..." This means that my foster brother has to stop here. I nod solemnly in response.
"G-get b...etter..." I lightly tap his head before continuing along the rooted trail. Now that my fossil case is full, I will have to move on without digging up any more. I do not mind, for the thumping of my exhilarated heart merely wishes to fight the beast, something that may be close. I am not sure. The hunt is on- officially. My vivosaurs chatter at the thoughts squeezed thick within their conversation. They carefully analyze the situation, thinking steadily.
The sound of sandals over dirt halts me in my dash. "Dina, wait!" So I do, for the girl with pink hair has asked me to. Soon enough, Pauleen shows her masked face to me. "I'm so happy you never asked about my mask. Seriously. Todd thinks I'm, like, ugly. But I'm not! I just have very personal reasons to be wearing this mask here! I am a beautiful girl, totally beautiful! Tell me that you're not the sass I thought! What do you think of me?" Her green eyes bore into me, the rest of her fact hidden by the wood of the patterned mask.
The thought strikes me. What do I think of the mysterious, masked, pink-haired girl? She seems to be arrogant, honestly. But she does not wish to leave me. Her mouth runs fast, yet she does not seem to note what words she uses. "I think... y-you are... afra-"
"I am not afraid! Perish that thought, right now!" As I had suspected, Pauleen is now shouting at me, though she wanted to know what I thought. I do not mind, personally, though my flinching may suggest otherwise, along with the squirming sensation curdled in my stomach. I coil my fingers close and snap the fists shut, mumbling to myself about my fears and wishing they would cease.
"I think you... y-you have p-p-p-retty h...air...and... a-and you c-c-c-...ould b-e beauti-f-ful benea-th... th-th..." I leave my words at that, soon finding myself unable to continue any sort of monologue with this choked-up tone. I do find the green depths to be shining with something, something that seems to eradicate a certain form of beauty, and her hair is truly lavishing. If only I could manage to tell her the aforementioned... My own is plain and dull in comparison, but that may only be true because I lived without much sunlight or, uh, bathing. There is a reason I keep my hair up. Although, even with the fountains always out there, I feel inclined to keep the hair up. I have gone into those fountains, do not get me wrong...
My cheeks flush from the compliments I had given. Thankfully, Pauleen seems to not have noticed, and is still staring at my brown eyes. "Wow. I don't know whether to punch you in the face or kiss you on the cheek," she responds casually.
"Um... I... umm..."
She laughs again. "You kill me, girl!" Slapping her tan, tan leg, Pauleen shouts giddily as we venture further into this plant-filled dig site. I inwardly sigh as her chatter intensifies, warping around how she loves rare vivosaurs but that mine are cool and how much she wishes Todd would choke on that rotten banana with the peel that he ate. While we search onward for this mechanical monster, my heart still pounds in wonder, but I have hidden in the edge of my head, quietly talking to Torn- and to a level, Trikko, also.
RRRRRRRRGGGHHHH...
RRRRR...RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR~!
RRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!
My bare feet miss a step and slide out from my control, smacking against a thick tree root and forcing me over. I inwardly groan at the musty tang of dirt that has somehow escaped into my mouth. Before Pauleen can forget about me also, I skip onto my feet and chase after her fleeting two puffs of sunny-highlighted hair
We arrive into a second sort of a clearing. Finally, where the growling threats us on and on in a never-ending record that rocks around our ears, wrapping us through the loud screeches. I turn around. A rope of corded, shiny metal. I take an unsteady pace back.
Glinting in the forest. Hot breath showers my front. A wide orb of circular, dark gray material. It... it blinks. It blinks at me. My bones freeze over in the sight like ice.
GRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHH!
The claw flashes in front of my stunned body for a flash of a second before crumpling into turmoil. The overriding, loud, trembling shrieks and screams die into low, beeping frequencies. A mechanical tail thumps against the earth floor, hitting the carpet of tangled-together grasses that covers the floor of dirt. The monster is dead; no, it never existed. Only a myth. Only a silly, fake ploy to do... I do not even know what.
"What in the world did those two imbeciles do..?" A man ahead, hair piled up. He steps closer, prior to searching the area and bolting from sight.
Turning around, I spot a pink-haired, masked girl kicking the machine. "I knew you weren't real!" she screams barbarically. I wish to say this was at the top of her lungs, but I have no idea how high her voice can go. That slightly spooks me. "Hah! Die, you fake thing! Die!" More kicking in the background elevates to a higher level. How she manages to do this without close-toed shoes or an immune ability into the feet like I am slowly developing is a question that frets my mind. I would have asked Pauleen herself if a smoky, thick hand had not covered my mouth.
My eyes fill, shadows sloping the edges of the color that should be in my vision. The touch of a vivosaur bite springs over my arm. From across the clearing I can hear Pauleen heavily shouting, her feet thumping. But my ability to hear also dies lower until what I detect is nothing less than a dull roar. The shaking of a man shoving my body back and forth sluggishly brings something back to me. Instint. Urge. Not to scream. Not to cry. But a throb, an ache, deep in my heart, forcing my being into a submission. Placing the light into my eyes again and the listen to my ears. My heart splinters and my breath against the hand intensifies.
DAMMIT, DINA! GET THE FUCK OFF OF MY DINA, YOU BITCH! FIGHT IT, DINA! FIGHT IT!
And I do, kicking wildly and clawing my way from the man. His overalls and yellow shirt stand out to me. My teeth grit together when I note this. Flicking my wrist, I send out my power. Go. Go... g-gogogogo...
They erupt in snarling, blue-and-red masses that fling themselves up against two, thin, hulking figures the colors of blue and green. The floating, flying, dainty vivosaurs respond with loud howls and take for flight. My own snap wildly into the air, missing the feathery creatures by wide berths.
Wait, I whisper. Wait...
The feathery, thin vivosaurs in the air are weak. Frail. If I can hit them with a smashing blow from Trikko or a burst of flame from Torn... I remember type advantages. I know how to stop these pests. Torn, the air... Trikko, water... The two nod quietly, waiting. Straining. Ready.
Swoosh. Feathers straight at them.
Now. Right now.
Bang! The beaked creatures of similar appearances fall gracefully until the green one alights on fire. The consuming, hungry tendrils of hot flame lap against the vivosaurs until each one is merely a disc. They lost. We... won.
The thoughts consuming me, eating at my heart, flutter and falter. Something I cannot recover now. Ever. Whatever happened had escaped years ago with my memory. I reach, grasp; desperately search for what I had felt mere moments ago. But it is gone. They are gone. My stomach growls tenaciously instead, reminding me that I have not eaten yet, though the sun burns brightly at a slant. Rising? Falling? The day had passed by so quickly...
The man -Bill- has taken his burnt medals and runs for an escape, but another man, this one clad in blue, a staff soldier of medieval times, almost, steps ahead, gloved hand on top of the bare skin of his arm. Bill is caught. Behind me, a stream of words from who-is-most-likely-Pauleen nearly pours over the other man as he walks and grabs Will, the other goon. There is also that final one, the one with the up-done hair, but he is gone. He has gone missing. Whatever happened to him is a mystery only two girls that were there know. No one will believe us, though. We may have caught these men, but that other, suspicious one will be safe. Safe, of all things. For a moment, I feel as if that pulsating creature that was in my heart had returned, but if it was, I do not feel it again.
"Agh! This guy bit me! Ow!"
"C'mon, Will!"
"Gotcha, Bill!"
And another voice. "Dina. Pauleen. Todd told me..."
"I told Stella..."
Their eyes widen at the mess inside, of myself almost curled in a ball on the grass, Pauleen screaming and thrashing, and the men in overalls known as Bill and Will in their escapade.
Me: :D I've gotten up two chapters, and summer's only began! While writing this, I had started listening to the live E3 stream on YouTube for Nintendo.
Long story short: it was motivating and EVERYONE THERE IS A THIRD FOSSIL FIGHERS COMING OUT! :OOOO
Anyways, I probably won't expand and add that third, confirmed fossil fighters game unless I want to add to this story (like sequels or something) and even then the chance is slim. Happy as I am that Nintendo was doing this (I broke out in tears TWICE, no lie) I doubt it will be added to this. BUT SERIOUSLY. THE TRAILER LOOKS AMAZI-
Shut uuup me.
Here's a fun fact about this story: I didn't name her Dina because that was what the generic title was; I named my fossil fighters guy Dino, hence the name "dinosaur", so I wanted to name this one Dina, as a girl. I was planning this for years, so when Champions came out and that was the generic name I was like Donkey Kong over here xD.
So. We meet Scatterly! :D Dinu is revealed, my OC that leaffrost101 helped me with, who I thank for that. I just love her evil glares. She and Scatterly will be such an enjoying duo! -clapclapclap- And then we meet Bill and Will, whose names from the game I can't remember, some guy with weird hair, and Todd's eating problem. YAY!
Thankkk youu alll for supportin' me!
