After that nice little picnic with Nate and Penny, Jura decided his week was going to be spent just relaxing. He had been an anxious mess for literal weeks and he deserved some time to himself to rest up and get his confidence back. Besides, if he was gonna be fighting in a tournament in a few days, he needed to be sharp-minded to keep an eye out for the BR Brigade.

So he wandered off to breakfast around noon because darn it he deserved to sleep in and eat when he wanted to. Just as he'd finished getting his food, he noticed Mei Lian sitting by herself looking a bit miserable. Guess he was gonna go sit with her then.

It wasn't that he didn't like her, she was alright company. They'd definitely had a bad start, but Mei Lian was extremely chatty over messages and generally nice, so putting in a little effort to reciprocate it wouldn't hurt. It would be a bit easier if she wasn't almost as bad as in-person interactions as he was.

"Hey," Jura said as he walked up next to her. "Can I, uh, sit with you?"

Her eyes flicked up to him and then lit up. "Oh, uh, yeah! Absolutely!"

He set his plate down and settled in beside her, taking a long drink of his apple juice. Nibbles scrambled up onto the seat to his left, munching on a couple pieces of bacon. Today seemed like it would be pretty serene.

"Have, um, anything fun planned for today?" Mei Lian said first, gaze back on her food.

"Not really," Jura said, shifting slightly, "I just figured I'd take it easy. Sit around a little, maybe do some exploring, whatever sounds good."

She nodded vaguely. "That sounds nice."

"Yeah," he said, and suddenly came to the realization that maybe he needed to say something else. She still seemed weirdly bummed, though, so he cleared his throat and added, "Do you, uh, do you maybe wanna, uh, hang out too?"

"Huh?"

He flinched when he noticed she was looking right at him. "Like, um, not to go digging or something! Just maybe walk around together, you know? I don't really know what's, uh, what's fun to do around here."

Mei Lian perked up a bit. "Oh, sure! Yeah, I know a bunch of fun things we can do!"

She stood up and Jura started to get nervous. "I'll be right back!" she said, and bolted off.

Jura looked down at Nibbles. "Oh boy," he said, and Nibbles tilted his head.

"Where go?"

"I don't know," he said, and sighed. At least he had food to distract him.

By the time he'd finished his breakfast and was about to go put his tray up to be washed, he noticed Mei Lian walking back in and felt some of his tension dissipate. She was wearing something different now, though, so that was kinda weird. It wasn't anything crazy, just denim shorts and a t-shirt, but maybe that's why it was so strange. He hadn't seen anyone in totally average clothing in a while, everyone had wacky themes in the fossil parks.

"Uh, hey," Jura said slowly.

Mei Lian seemed to pick up on his confusion. "I just wanted to get out of my uniform! It's all fancy and extra and would make people think I'm on duty when I'm not!"

He nodded. "That's fair."

They stood there for a couple seconds in silence and then Mei Lian clapped her hands together. "Right! Um, well, we could go to America! I picked up a nice routine for relaxing when I was there for those couple weeks."

Jura glanced down at Nibbles for a quick check that he seemed down for the idea. His little vivosaur looked content, so he shrugged and said, "yeah, sure, sounds good."

They ended up getting ice cream at the American branch which was surprisingly normal. Jura was starting to think they were going to have a totally normal hang out day with zero stress but then they ended up at a chain link fence and Mei Lian was shoving her cup of ice cream through one of the links so something had clearly gone wrong.

"Aren't we not supposed to go in there?" Jura said, and Mai Lian scoffed. She stood up all the way once her food was through and looked over at him.

"You've got a vivosaur on you, take it easy! This is just for people without one," she said, tapping the 'no entry beyond this point' sign. "They can't have a bunch of civilians just mulling around a dig site."

"I guess," Jura said. He watched as she rather easily hoisted herself up and over the fence and came to the sudden realization that he was going to have to do the same thing.

He scooped up Nibbles, who let out a nervous growl, and looked at him apologetically. "Sorry, bud," he thought and said, "okay, here comes Nibbles!"

Gulping, he tossed his little red vivosaur over the fence. Nibbles flailed and squealed before he was caught rather easily by Mei Lian. Jura let out a sigh of relief when she put his vivosaur down; that went way better than expected.

"Alright, your turn!" she said, and he took a deep breath. Time to look like an idiot.

He put his foot in one of the bottom links, grabbed above his head, and started to struggle up the side of the fence. Gosh she'd done it so fast and it was taking him forever just to get to the top. His arms were aching by the time he slung a leg over the top and paused to catch his breath. Then he brought his other leg over and tried to drop like she had to at least look a little bit less pathetic.

There was a ripping sound and shortly afterwards he get jerked to the side. A sharp pain filled his back as he hit the ground bodily. "Ah, shit!" Jura hissed, pushing himself back up into a sitting position very slowly.

"Oh my gosh, are you okay?" Mei Lian asked, hands hovering over him. He groaned.

"Yyyyyeah, I think so, um-" His eyes drifted downwards and he noticed the large rip in his shirt. He looked up at the fence and saw a strip of fabric caught on one of the wire bits at the top of the fence. Of course. "Guess I need to get a new shirt…"

Mei Lian picked up her ice cream rather nonchalantly. "Alright! Well, shake it off! The worst part's over!" she said and took a couple steps back. Normally Jura would have chewed her out, but actually she wasn't Tria so no he wouldn't have. He didn't know Mei Lian all that well, there's no way he could yell at her without feeling awful.

His hand was pushed and he glanced over to see Nibbles pressing his ice cream cup against it. He exhaled loudly and took it, shakily rising to his feet. She did say the worst part was over.

So he trailed after Mei Lian, eyes wide as he took in the huge canyon below them. They were walking along the mountains in Goldrush Canyon, and man were they high up. One slip and he was plummeting to his death. Good thing the pathway was flat.

Eventually they ended up at Mt. Dinomore, right over the heads. Jura sat down, and noticed to his horror that Mei Lian was sliding down the side of the hill. He tried to yell but a terrible voice crack came out instead as she disappeared from his sight. He was running to the edge in seconds.

"Mei Lian!" Jura yelled, pausing when he noticed she was just a few feet lower than him. She was seated on the head of the triceratops, which still looked terrifying.

"What?" She said, and rolled her eyes when she saw his panicked expression. "C'mon! It's not that far down!"

He stared at her for a second. "Yeah, but if you slip you'll die. Like, that's not even a question."

Mei Lian smiled and patted the rock. "Just come down here you big baby! I'll make sure you don't fall."

She seemed sincere enough, and he had given her free reign to pick where they went.

His foot touched the rock and he felt his heart pounding on his ribcage. Slowly he turned around, arms still clinging to the outcropping behind him. Mei Lian was staring at him expectantly.

"It's just a few feet! This whole vivo's head is like ten feet wide, Jura!"

He gulped and took a hesitant step forward, and then another. As soon as he was next to Mei Lian he lowered himself down very slowly, eyes wide. She patted him on the back once he'd settled a bit.

"There, that wasn't so bad!" She chirped. Nibbles trilled from beside him and he almost toppled over.

"Geez oh Pete!" Jura hissed. Nibbles broke out in chittering laughs as he settled in beside him.

They sat there in silence for a few minutes, just eating their ice cream and enjoying the view. It was basically the perfect temperature with the light breeze, the sky was blue, it was sunny- Jura didn't think the weather could align so nicely. He heard Mei Lian take a breath and glanced over at her.

"Since it's just us and I don't have to feel like a moron in public-" she said, very desperately forcing a smile despite what she was saying "-I wanted to, uh, properly say sorry about the gorgo thing!"

She sounded so unnaturally cheerful it made his skin crawl. "It's fine, don't worry about it," Jura said as soothingly as possible.

Her eyes squeezed shut and she grinned shakily. "No, it's not! I'm gonna explain to you why it's not because it was over something super petty!"

Jura paused. That sounded concerning.

"Okay, so-" Mei Lian said after a moment, a bit less perky this time. Thank God. "-That gorgo had been hanging around for a few weeks, right? It was bothering civilians a ton, and all the Wardens my dad sent out couldn't touch it."

That sounded familiar. Jura nodded.

She stared at the ground when her gaze met his very briefly. "And anyways, I thought if maybe I could take care of the stupid thing then he'd be, um-"

Jura's eyes flicked back to her. There was the forced smile again.

"-Maybe he'd, um, I don't know, say I did a good job or something."

There was a pause as Jura took in how normal of a thing that was to want. She'd had such an extreme reaction over not getting that? And then Mei Lian was standing up and that really got his attention.

"He tells everyone else they're doing great! It's not fair!" she added sharply and kicked at a loose stone. Jura cringed, his anxiety about how high up they were kicking in hard again.

"I-I mean, he told me'n Tria you do a great job around the parks."

An exasperated glare was shot back his way. "Yeah, but he doesn't tell me that! There's a difference, dumbass!"

An awkward silence settled in as Nibbles growled slightly at Mei Lian. Jura didn't really know how to respond to that. At most he was a year older than her, obviously he didn't have any great insight on her issue. So, Jura picked up their trash and shuffled his feet until he heard Mei Lian sigh really loud.

"God, sorry, that was stupid," she said, trudging back over to him. Jura carefully stood up and tried to think of comforting things to say as they headed back to the ledge they'd dropped down from.

"It's, uh, it's fine. Gotta talk about stuff sometimes, I guess."

She didn't even bother to look up at him before hauling herself back up the rocks. "I never get to talk to anyone besides Jiao-Long, but then when I talk to someone that's not him I just over-share and it's super understandable why no one likes me."

It was so freaky that she could say something so depressing in such a happy tone.

"You've been here a while, right?" Jura said after a moment, You're not friends with anyone?"

He set the trash down and put Nibbles up on the outcropping next to it. Then, he pulled himself up, shoes scrabbling on the rock. That went a bit better than the fence, thankfully, and he made it up after a few seconds. Mei Lian was staring down at him very vaguely.

"No one's anywhere near my age!" she said, turning back towards the path once he was standing up again. Jura took a deep breath. This was something he couldn't fix, definitely not today, anyways. So, he speed-walked up beside her and decided to take the Tria approach to problems.

"That's gotta suck, sorry about that."

Mei Lian didn't answer, but by the time they'd gotten back in sight of the fence, she seemed to have settled down. They slipped back into the park through the Buggy entryway since leaving to a dig site without a Bone Buggy was significantly harder than going back into the main park without one. Then they were back in normal, not as dangerous civilization.

After dodging around the garage attendant to avoid getting yelled at, the two of them stepped into the plaza for Fossil Park America. Jura tossed the ice cream cups in a trash can and, as they started to head back into the branch office, Mei Lian murmured, "Sorry your shirt got ripped."

Jura grinned. "That's alright, I got other ones."

She smiled back. "Well, yeah, I'd hope so."

They both fell silent for a moment and then she waved very uncertainly. "Well, uh, see you around, I guess."

"Oh, uh, yeah, you too."

He felt his chest all clench up when she went through the world gate. She was definitely going back to Asia, too. Why'd he say bye? He could've just corrected her and they could've gone back together. With a sigh, Jura sat down on a nearby bench. He had to wait at least ten minutes for it not to be weird to go through there.

It wasn't all that bad of day. He'd gotten ice cream, got a little adventurous, and now Mei Lian wasn't so scary, so those were all pluses. Avoiding an awkward situation wasn't a bad way to end the day.

Hey wow glad to see so many people excited about me bringing this back! I'm gonna try to stick with this now, it's a fun thing to update and also I've diverted from canon enough already that this isn't so scary to work on lol

Thanks for sticking with me and also shoutout to HunterHQ for leaving a bunch of reviews, they mean a lot! And to answer one of your questions, yeah this is entirely based off a playthrough I was doing/am doing. I deleted the original file like a year ago and had to play up to where my notes left off (literally the end of the parsec cup) and wow this game is hard to speed through.

Anyways, hopefully I can bust out another chapter before I'm back to classes, we'll see!