It was hard to get back into the swing of things. Jura had thoroughly enjoyed just hanging out and relaxing, so it really sucked having to focus and get all stressed out again. It wasn't the worst thing ever, though. His undercover mission was in a fossil battle tournament.
So he headed over to Asia's stadium, a bit surprised by the amount of people milling around. It made sense if he thought about it, there was a full-scale tournament happening, but he wasn't used to so many people being around for his fights. He hoped he didn't panic because of it.
Speaking of panicking, Jura felt someone full-body grab him and barely managed to keep himself from screaming. It took him a few seconds to realize it was just Mei Lian hugging him, and that didn't help him relax much at all.
"Hey, Jura! Ready for the tournament?" she said, letting him go finally. He exhaled softly.
"Uh, yeah. Wasn't expecting it to be so busy, though," Jura said, rubbing the back of his neck.
Mei Lian rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I haven't seen any of these people before, there's no way anyone knows me!"
Jura gave her a very confused look and she groaned in a very frustrated way. "Ugh, my stupid dad won't let me do the cool undercover stuff because 'I have anger issues' and 'everyone knows who I am'," she said, making air quotes with her fingers and everything.
He took a slow breath. "I mean-" he began, double checking that she wasn't glaring at him, "-you did get in the news last week for kicking the door off your buggy."
"One time!" she said, and Jura glanced off to the side for a moment. He had trouble believing that was the first time, but also he didn't want her to direct her anger at him. He cleared his throat.
"Well, uh, I'm pretty sure you're allowed to be on my team if you're quiet and don't come out during any of the rounds."
There was an immediate improvement to her mood. "Really?" she hugged him again and Nibbles did some growling in his defense. "You're the best! Who else is coming with?"
"Uh," Jura said slowly. He'd made some major assumptions when inviting said third person and was really hoping Mei Lian wouldn't freak out about it. "It's, uh, it's a surprise."
She gave him a weird look and then shrugged. "Okay, I guess."
Crisis avoided. Feeling a bit less anxious now, Jura decided he should probably get ready for the tournament. He could get excited for that, at least. Obviously looking for suspicious characters was number one on the list of priorities, but it would be fun to do a little fighting on the side, keep it lively.
The only downside was the tournament didn't allow vivosaur switching between rounds and he really, really wanted to use Nibbles since he'd gotten that new form. It was just a matter of his anxiety; he was all stressed out that his little buddy would get hurt and have to keep fighting. He hated overextending Nibbles, but it was fine, he was tough. They'd probably make it through just fine.
They headed into the garage together mainly because Mei Lian was very excitable and kept going off on rabbit trails about every little thing that went through her mind. It was kind of fun, in a way. Jura liked having company around that actually wanted to talk to him. It was definitely going to make the undercover work a bit harder, though.
Upon stepping into the main area of the garage, Jura's gaze floated over to the person leaned up against their buggy. It was Becky, obviously, he'd invited her. He had his fingers crossed Mei Lian was gonna be normal about it as he grinned and walked over to her.
"Hey, glad you could make it!" he said, waving slightly. Nibbles trotted up to Becky, who grinned and scratched the top of his head.
Becky looked up at Jura and laughed vaguely. "Oh, yeah, Leon said I needed to get out of the office for a few hours."
That sounded sort of interesting, but he wasn't nosy like Tria and didn't want to pry at it. So, he just sort of mumbled, "Ha ha, yeah, fair."
"Becky!" Mei Lian swept her up into a tackle-hug, beaming.
"Hey! Haven't seen you in a while, Mei Lian!" Becky said. She patted her on the back a couple times and Mei Lian let go of her. "How've you been?"
"Awesome!" she said, and Jura stared off at a wall for a few seconds. Gosh she was really good at lying.
"Good to hear! Ready to go, uh, hunt down the BR Brigade?"
Oh, shoot, darn it. Jura could hear the veiled amount of intensity coming from Becky. He wasn't sure why he'd thought a BR Brigade mission wouldn't set her off, this was gosh darn Becky. That meant all three of them were gonna be weird in some way during the tournament, and it wasn't like he could tell one of them to leave because that would be super awkward.
And then someone over the intercom was saying they were up for the first round, so apparently he was just dealing with everyone now.
Jura was pretty glad he was in his buggy, all things considered. It added a degree of separation from the super huge crowd that was way bigger than what he was used to. Plus Nibbles was standing out in front of his buggy and wasn't with him for moral support, so yeah, he was glad he wasn't out there.
He could see Jiao-long pacing back and forth off to the left, his tiny body a little purple bobbing blob. It was kind of funny to think he'd been so terrified of Mei Lian's v-raptor back like a few weeks ago, considering how small it was. Well, maybe turkey-sized wasn't that small, but in comparison to something like a u-raptor, he wasn't that bad.
Fortunately the opposing team came out before Jiao-long got too frustrated. Nibbles seemed just as relieved as he was, as was Becky's big allo, Bentley. The three buggies rolled up and Jiao-long whipped his head towards them immediately, his head cocked a bit.
A bunch of crackling started up and Jura flinched rather hard, realizing a couple seconds it was just his radio switching on. Oh good the other team was gonna talk to him when he didn't have anyone there for moral support, fantastic.
"So you're the guy with the weird vivosaur!"
Jura wasn't super sure how to respond to that. "Uh, yeah. Nibbles isn't that weird, though."
"His name is Nibbles? Holy crap, that's sad," the guy said back, and Jura barely managed to get out a quick "hey" before the guy started laughing.
"Yeah, this won't be a hard battle."
And then the radio cut out.
"Jerk," Jura muttered, still wishing he had someone to talk to. He didn't actually know if they broadcasted conversations between participants and obviously if Mei Lian went off it would give her away, so it was just gonna be radio silence.
The other vivosaurs flashed onto the field, finally. A US variant igua, a sungari, and an edapho took form. They weren't too different in size, igua wasn't a massive vivosaur, but it was noticeably larger than its two companions.
Jiao Long got all hyped up almost immediately and he crouched down, his tail twitching back and forth. And then he was off, shooting between the legs of the igua and towards the edapho. He jumped, bit the edapho's neck, and dug his talons into its side. And with that the edapho popped back into its medal.
Jura stared for a moment and then smiled just a vague amount. He tried not to be rude or anything to other people, but they'd been rude first and also they couldn't see him. So yeah, he was gonna sit in his buggy and think they were super weak and this was gonna be an easy battle, what were they gonna do about it.
The sungari screeched and started rapidly flapping its wings, dust kicking up around it as it aimed a blast of wind at Nibbles. He tensed his legs, lowering his head and allowing the brunt of the gust to hit his new giant horn. That seemed to lessen the amount of damage he took, and he shook himself off once the gust had subsided.
After that attack the sungari was circling quite a ways off the ground, so Jura decided they were going for the igua. He didn't want to say the sungari was gonna be Becky's problem because that sounded kinda bad, but it was gonna be Becky's problem. A short little thought-command was sent to Nibbles for a saurus tackle.
Nibbles snorted as he dramatically scratched his foot on the ground a couple times. Then he tensed up for a moment and charged forward, swinging his head around to slam the tip of his horn into the igua's chest. It shrieked as Nibbles flipped it over, and it flashed back into a gear when it crashed down on its back. Jura laughed.
Becky's big allo, Bentley, streaked by and took Jura off guard for a second. The running was apparently just for momentum, because as he approached the sungari he jumped. Bentley's jaws opened and he just barely snapped them shut around the sungari's foot. And then gravity pulled him back down and he whipped the pterosaur down against the ground, popping him back down into his medal.
So that was pretty easy.
The rest of the rounds went very similarly, and Jura was starting to wonder if how easily they were taking everyone out was blowing their cover as Wardens. But, on the flipside, he was having a ton of fun wreaking havoc on the apparently lower-leveled fighters who had joined this tournament. It was kind of nice to have some easy, quick battles for once, most of the time they majorly stressed him out. He didn't have to worry about Nibbles being exhausted by the end of the tournament at this rate.
Nibbles did end up getting a little break, though. There was a brief pause in the rounds to get things ready for the final, so they were all hanging out in the garage in the meantime. It was around then he found out Mei Lian was having way too much fun. And of course Liu Ren came to check on them around then.
"Dad! Hey! We're totally gonna win this, isn't that awesome?" she said, rushing over to Liu Ren. Jiao Long trailed behind her chittering.
Jura could feel anxiety creeping up into him as he watched Liu Ren give her a tired look. "You know you're supposed to be looking for the BR Brigade, right?"
Mei Lian tried really hard not to let that comment curb her enthusiasm. "W-well, I can definitely do both! We're kicking everyone's butts!"
"You haven't won yet, there's no use in getting your hopes up," Liu Ren said rather plainly, and Jura started scrambling to put some earbuds in because holy crap he didn't want to listen to the two of them being passive aggressive for five minutes.
In his rush to get any noise in his ears besides that conversation, he just put his music on shuffle and hit some song he hadn't listened to in two years and was forced to sit there and just cringe through it. Old music from an old phase was better than awkward conversations.
Eventually Mei Lian came trudging back over to him and Liu Ren headed off so he turned his music off and said, "I kinda see what you meant now about him."
"We're gonna win this, right? I don't wanna look stupid for telling him that," Mei Lian grumbled, and Jura felt his chest sorta tense up. It really sucked how much talking with her dad killed her energy.
Thankfully, Becky chimed in about then. "Of course we are. You're allowed to be confident about something you're killing it in!"
It was easy to forget she wasn't their age, and at this exact moment Jura was happy she wasn't. He didn't know enough about this sort of crap to be helpful, the best he could do was pat Mei Lian on the back and hope that helped.
After a few seconds she took a deep breath and went back to smiling again. Ah crap, he'd forgotten she could fake being happy that well, it was freaking him out again. Jura stared off at the wall while he waited for his brain to get over it.
Instead of seeing the concrete he was used to, there was some dude in a hat with a really sinister look on his face. Jura felt warning sirens go off in his head, more so than they already were. Ignoring what Mei Lian was saying to help herself keep up the happy facade, he reached over and poked Becky's shoulder. When she looked at him he vaguely gestured towards the weird guy.
There was a pause. "Who's that?"
"I don't know. He looks sketchy, though."
Becky scoffed. "Yeah he does."
"Who's suspicious?" Mei Lian said, and then she spun around in a very obvious way and now the weird dude was definitely staring back at them. He smirked in their direction.
They all made uncomfortable eye contact with him for a solid ten seconds before he chuckled and walked off. Jura took a deep breath.
"So we're gonna, uh, arrest him or whatever after this, right?"
He glanced over at Becky who had her hands on her hips. "Oh yeah, definitely."
Mei Lian smacked her fist against her hand. "I'll knock him out for you guys!"
Becky blinked a couple times, laughed nervously, and then put her hand on Mei Lian's shoulder. "Sure, kiddo."
And the intercom was saying it was time for the finals, so that was a relief. Jura was starting to get a little anxious from all the awkward conversations they kept having. He noticed the shady guy getting into his buggy and felt his pulse increase. Ah, he was in the final. Great.
It ended up being okay. Turns out they were just as weak as the other fighters they'd dealt with, and Nibbles was able to take out the shady guy's zino in one hit. Obviously that dude having a weak vivosaur didn't discount him as a suspect, though, so after all the trophy holding and pictures they were definitely gonna grab him to question him.
Jura had to admit, he was pretty distracted walking out of the stadium with Mei Lian chattering about how great they'd done. He'd tuned out Becky saying they should probably track that guy down in favor of hearing positive things. He wasn't very used to hearing positive things.
Liu Ren flagged them down as they were standing around by the reception desk. Jura took a long, slow breath hoping to shove the anxiety out of his chest, but it didn't work. Mei Lian was still cheerful, though. That had to count for something.
"You performed well today!" he said, smiling. Jura could tell that was mainly directed at him, so could Mei Lian. She seemed a little bummed by that.
"Um, thanks!" Jura said. He tried to grin back. "I'm, uh, just glad the BR Brigade didn't screw anything up for us."
Becky started tapping his shoulder not even halfway through that statement, which was definitely a bad sign. He knew where this was going. "W-what's up?"
"That guy from earlier has your trophy," she said, pointing at the weird guy rather calmly walking by them.
He noticed her immediately and waved at them. "Hey, kiddies, long-time-no-see!"
"Why do you have Jura's trophy?" Mei Lian blurted out, an awful little glare on her face.
Oh no.
The man laughed, leaning up against the reception desk. "Actually, I'm stealing this, so it's gonna be mine now."
He had a mischievous glint in his eye as he tapped the side of his face. There was a little flash around him and suddenly he had a really stupid outfit on in comparison to the all black digging uniform, so he was definitely up to something. The part of his face he'd tapped now had a piece of a white mask over it.
Oh no.
"Oh, great, awesome, this is the worst thing that could happen," Becky said in a defeated tone.
Jura gulped. "W-what? Why?"
"That's Kowloon, he's one of the highest ranking members of the BR Brigade," Liu Ren said, and the guy across from them laughed again.
"Man, no one's called me that in ages!" he said, smirking. "Normally they'd call me by my prison number."
Upon seeing no real change in their reactions, Kowloon rolled his eyes. "Geez, you guys suck. Whatever, I got evil shit to do, see ya losers."
"Hold on!" Mei Lian yelled, drawing Kowloon's smug gaze back her way. "I'm gonna kick your ass!"
"Hey, um, let's maybe not get in a fist fight with a known felon," Becky said, voice shaking a bit.
Mei Lian paused, vaguely glanced at her dad, and then ran at Kowloon.
It all went so fast. She swung a punch at him, Kowloon caught it and snorted, and then there was a flash of silver as three blades suddenly appeared from inside of his large sleeves. He pushed Mei Lian over and stepped back.
"Alright, got that off my bucket list," Kowloon said, wiping blood off one of his knives on his sleeve. "Stabbing a kid. Nice."
He ran off laughing.
So we're all quarantined now, crazy. You'd think that would help me finish this faster but nah, I just started playing old pokemon games and shiny hunting lol. ngl this chapter was a little hard bc I have social anxiety for realsies and writing out these awkward conversations was making ME anxious ha ha
Hopefully the next few chapters will come faster! They'll have less small talk for sure, at the very least. We're getting to the more interesting part of the story character development-wise so hopefully that'll help things go along too!
