"You'd better hope we catch this lady because I swear I'll kill you if we don't."

So Violet was pretty mad about the BR Brigade thing still. It'd been like five minutes, but like, Tria was kind of over it already and it seemed unreasonable of her not to be as well. But no, she was getting dragged to the garage to go chase after some rando.

What a lame way to end her race day.

It didn't take long to get to their buggies. Violet shoved Tria towards hers and glared at her. "Get in that stupid thing, I'm gonna ask the clerk which way what's-her-face went."

"Yeah, whatever," Tria grumbled as she opened the door. She hauled herself in, watching with a bit of amusement as she took in his stressed Violet looked. This was pure karma, she loved it.

"Winding Road!" Violet yelled as she walked by, only to be abruptly stopped by Lucky running up and hugging her. This just kept getting better.

"Hey, I heard the bad thing happened," Lucky said, eyes wide, "Is that what you're taking care of right now?"

Violet gave him a dry look. "Yeah, I can't imagine how you guessed that."

That didn't seem to discourage him in the slightest. "Can I come help? Please?"

He looked so innocent and excited, and Violet just tilted her head back and groaned. "I don't even care anymore. Sure. Who gives a damn?"

Tria snorted and leaned her head out the window. "Hey, hurry up dude, we got a criminal to catch!"

"Tria, just shut up," Violet said flatly. She trudged off towards her buggy with Lucky giggling in tow.

Maybe Tria was having a little too much fun in this situation. She didn't really care, though, her brain was kind of bad at being serious. Not being serious was way more fun of an option.

They headed off down the digsite, which was generally pretty uneventful. It seemed like the BR Brigade was probably way at the back, so the drive there was more boring than anything. Hopefully they caught up to Olga so there was at least a fight at the end of this, that would be a little enjoyable.

Once they started getting up near that back corner Tria wasn't super familiar with, Violet came to a stop. Obviously Tria didn't want to talk to her, but she knew she had to, so she pulled up beside her.

A few seconds later, her radio flickered on. "Okay, Tria, we need to be very careful going up here," Violet said, and Tria snorted.

"Yeah, no shit," Tria said, cracking a grin.

"Bloody hell, Tria, this is serious! She's a convicted felon!"

Unfortunately, that only empowered her awful brain, "Damn, and you brought Lucky?"

There was a pause. "...Alright, let's go get her."

Feeling way too victorious for something that stupid, Tria started driving up the hill in front of them. Sure enough, near the end of the clearing was a pretty big purple bone buggy. Definitely suspicious.

"I got this," Tria said, hitting the gas and flying right up to Olga's assumed vehicle. She hit a button she thought connected her to Olga's radio and yelled in a very non-threatening way, "Hey, bitch! Gimme my trophy back!"

"Ah! You caught up fast!" Olga replied in a voice that implied she was smirking. And Tria thought she was super nice before, geez.

"Obviously we did, you can't just steal something that blatantly!" Violet said, but she sounded more tired than angry at this point.

Lucky decided to chime in. "Yeah! You gotta at least be sneaky!"

Tria just laughed as she heard Violet sigh.

"Well, if Tria wasn't speedy driver, I wouldn't have stolen trophy," Olga said rather plainly, but she still sounded all cocky. "You children forced hand."

There was a static-y sound that kicked in and then a few dino gears flashed into the air. Two formed into rather normal vivosaurs, an oloro and a jiango, but then the third morphed into a strange-looking gorgo. It had a fierce, primitive glare in its eyes, and its purple patching was replaced with jet black.

So that's what a real dark vivo looked like.

Despite all this, Violet didn't seem phased by the vivosaur. "Children?" she said, mildly distressed, "I'm 26! I have a kid!"

"You do have a kinda squeaky voice," Tria said, looking through her vivos.

"And you're super short, Mum!" Lucky chirped.

Violet just groaned in reply.

"Whatever, fight time!" Tria yelled, selecting Morton to send out. She hadn't used him in a while, it'd be fun.

The large vivosaur morphed onto the battlefield, his massive size almost dwarfing all three of their opponents. Lucky cheered and sent out Morgan, his ajka, who was basically an ant next to Morton. She looked fierce enough to make up for it, though.

"Your turn, Mum!"

Taking a deep breath, Violet picked out her vivosaur. It materialized on the field about half the size of Morton, bright yellow, and gave off the impression of a duck, so a paraloph.

"Alright, I'm focused again!" Violet said, smacking her hands together once.

Tria grinned. "Sick! Let's beat this weirdo up!"

"Yeah!" Lucky yelled, definitely getting a little too wound up, "get it, Morgan!"

The little ajka snorted, winding up as she took aim at the dark-colored gorgo. Then she charged it as fast her stubby legs would carry her, jumping and slamming into the side of the gorgo with a surprising amount of force. It staggered slightly, clearly injured from the tackle. Morgan pushed off of its side and slid when she hit the ground.

She'd barely landed before the oloro caught up to her and flopped down right on top of her. Morgan squirmed around, huffing after a few failed attempts at escape.

"Oh we got this," Tria said, leaning back in her seat. "Morton, let's go with a seismic smash to finish off that gorgo!"

She started pressing her attack up button like crazy as Morton reared up on his hind legs. Hopefully this would be enough, there was no reason for it not to be.

"Seems like that's gonna hurt Morgan, though," Violet said flatly. Tria scoffed.

"Nah, she'll be okay. Watch."

Morton's front feet hit the ground and a huge shockwave tore up the earth, knocking the gorgo off its feet and destabilizing the other two vivosaurs. As the oloro was jostled around, Morgan was able to slip out from under it and make a mad dash for safety. Morton's back legs came down and another wave of quakes hit the vivosaurs.

He teetered back and forth between feet, each impact rattling the ground. The last one swept up the weird gorgo, forcing it back down into its gear. One of the aftershocks made the oloro crash onto the ground and also flash into a gear. Tria whooped.

"Alright, take notes guys," she said, dramatically dusting her hands off.

"You're insufferable," Morton rumbled, and Tria laughed.

"Hell yeah, I am."

"I guess that worked," Violet said, rolling her eyes. "Whatever, smack the jiango, Meg."

The bright yellow vivosaur trotted towards the blue vivosaur, carefully picking her way around the upturned ground to avoid tripping. She slid to a stop and, rather unceremoniously, socked the already-disoriented jiango across the head. It whipped its tail around reflexively and managed to nick one of Meg's arms, who hissed one reply before trotting back out of range.

The jiango, who definitely couldn't see straight anymore, dug its front feet into the ground. The dirt bulged as something traveled through it seemingly after Meg. However, the lump suddenly jerked to the side and zig-zagged around a bit before a jet of water erupted from the ground right under Morgan, flipping her into the air briefly. She grunted, stood up, and shook off in a very dog-like fashion.

That really got Lucky excited for some reason. "Payback time!" he said, and Morgan hurtled towards the jiango. She slammed into headfirst, managing to bowl over the much larger vivosaur out of sheer determination. It flashed down into its gear as Morgan stood rather menacingly over it.

"There!" Tria said, pointing accusingly at Olga's buggy, "now gimme my damn trophy back!"

The static that started before the fight cut out and Tria heard a little 'tch' sound come in reply. "Ah, you're not run-of-mill fossil fighters," Olga grumbled, "you are Wardens, yes?"

"I'm not!" Lucky chirped, and Violet just sighed loudly.

"Well, message is for other two then!" Olga replied in a much nicer voice than expected. She cleared her throat. "Dr. Blackraven says plan will succeed! You can't stop him, his brain too huge!"

Tria blinked. "Whatever, dude, can I have my trophy?"

"No."

And Olga floored it in reverse and vanished through this weird flickering brown hole that disappeared after a second. Everyone fell silent for a moment.

"Fucking hell! A warp portal? Really?" Violet said, indignant. Lucky burst out in a fit of giggles immediately after. "Alright, that's it, we're heading back. I can't handle anymore of this today."

Before Tria could make fun of her, Violet just drove off, leaving literally everyone, including her vivosaur, behind. Meg rolled her eyes and trotted off after her fighter. Apparently they were just going back now. Sort of anticlimactic.

"Drakey, I'm telling you, I think today shortened my life by a decade."

"Th-that's, um, u-unfortunate," Drake murmured, patting Violet on the back. She was short enough that despite him being all hunched up in his chair, she could still dramatically lean her head on his shoulder while standing.

She sighed loudly. "God, we can't even track her, stupid self-destructing evil technology."

Tria wasn't exactly sure how to feel about the scene unfolding in front of her. On one hand, seeing Violet at her wits end and just complaining was satisfying in that she's succeeded at her goal. On the other hand, she now had to watch Violet hang all over Drake for pity and it was super weird. At least Dahlia was there, too, it made her feel less trapped.

Speaking of Dahlia, she was still getting hung up on the sequence of events. "How can you just want a trophy? There's no point if ya' didn't win it!"

"Yeah, kinda defeats the whole purpose of trophies," Tria shrugged, trying her best to ignore whatever Violet was doing.

"Well, maybe she had other evil plans for it," Violet said, really making it hard for Tria to block her out. "Like a collection or something."

Dahlia laughed. "Yeah, really evil, a trophy collection."

Tria nudged her, grinning. "Better watch out, those trophies can get pretty scary."

"A-alright, um, maybe there's, uh, there's another reason," Drake said, nervously looking between his wife and the kids she was glaring at. "I-I guess, I'll, um, look into that."

Violet perked you almost immediately. "Great idea! You're good at research-y things!"

He blushed vaguely while she gave him a peck on the cheek. "Y-yeah, um, sure."

Tria, sick of having to witness pda, cleared her throat. "Can we go now?"

"O-oh, uh, right," Drake said, rubbing one of his arms, "you guys, um, uh, d-did okay today, I-I guess."

He glanced at Violet to make sure she wasn't mad at him. She just seemed mildly annoyed.

"Um, yeah, th-that's it."

Dahlia waved. "Alright, sick, see ya' later, then."

"Same," Tria added, copying Dahlia and following her out into the elevator. Neither of them really waited for a response.

As soon as the door closed, both of them groaned almost in unison.

"Wow, that sucked," Tria said immediately, hands resting on her hips.

"Totally ruined race day," Dahlia said, nodding.

"Right? We already had to not be hyped, why'd they follow it up with that lame meeting?"

The door slid open and they both stepped out.

"Well, it's over now, thank God," Dahlia muttered. She clapped her hands together suddenly. "Hey, we can go hang out at my place now, though! Frett 'n Presco should be off now so we can do some dumb shit!"

Tria whooped. "Finally some good news! Gotta get the Warden act out of my blood, am I right?"

"Hell yeah, dude," Dahlia grinned, and they high-fived. "I'll go round 'em up, see ya in 20?

"Sounds good!"

Dahlia ran off and, before Tria could even think about what she was gonna go do for 20 minutes, she heard Violet say, "Hey, jerk," from behind her. Tria took a deep breath.

"What do you want now? Tria whined, turning around slowly. "I just wanna go be irresponsible!"

"Oh did you stop at some point? I hadn't noticed," Violet replied, and Tria blinked a couple times. Alright, that was a fairly decent response.

Feeling very, very slightly threatened, Tria stood up a little straighter. They were basically the same height, though, so it didn't do much. "C'mon, dude, we both know we don't like each other, you don't have to bs this."

Violet stares for a second and then her stupid little cat smirk came back. Tria mentally cursed, she'd managed to get rid of that for like three hours, it was nice. "Oh yeah, that's a relief. Having to find a normal way to talk to you after how badly you cocked up today was gonna be bloody hard."

Tria didn't know how to respond to that. "Okay, no, you can't just say 'cocked up' like that's a normal phrase!"

"It is?" she said, fairly confused. And then it clicked. "Ah, shit. That must not be American."

"Yeah no shit." Tria crossed her arms. "Whatever, what'd you want?"

Violet tapped her wand against the palm of her hand. "Right, yeah. Drake said I should be sorta nice to you, so I'll add you as a Pal. But, don't ring me, I won't answer."

Tria snorted. "Hey, if I called you, I wouldn't want you to anyways."

"Good, glad we're on the same page."

Tria took a really loud breath. "Right, well I gotta go actually have fun, see ya, buzzkill."

"Me too. God, today sucked," Violet grumbled.

"Yep," Tria said flatly. She paused, realized that she was commiserating, and said, "Anyways, you suck, bye."

Nothing was more satisfying than just walking away after saying that.

Alright I'm decently proud of how long this took to write! hopefully the next chapter goes smoothly, we'll see. I got finals/final projects coming up the next couple weeks, so chances are I won't be able to update for a bit. Such is quarantine classes! My summer job in theory starts in like three-ish weeks but we gotta see if the whole shut down changes plans ha ha