Despite everything, Mei Lian was still yelling about beating the crap out of Kowloon, so clearly she hadn't been stabbed that badly. She was even trying to get up almost immediately, but then there was actually a lot more blood than Jura expected and he yelled a little bit.

"Holy shit, Mei Lian!" he said, body all tense and frozen up. He was a gosh dang wreck already, so yeah this absolutely demolished his mental state. Jura just kinda stood there and stared blankly while everyone rushed over to her.

"I'll kick his ass!" Mei Lian yelled, vaguely trying to push herself up. Liu Ren scooped her up like she was a sad little cat.

"You need to get fixed up, dear," he said, sounding more tired than worried. Still a little worried, though. Mei Lian made a 'hmph!' sound that was way too on the nose for her.

"Mei Lian, you got stabbed, obviously you have to get medical attention!" Becky added.

She got this dumb little glare on her face and crossed her arms. "It's not that bad, I could take him!"

"Alright, that's enough of that," Liu Ren sighed. He looked over towards Jura. "I'm going to take Mei Lian to get stitches, can you and Becky go after Kowloon?"

Taking a deep breath to sort of calm his nerves, Jura forced out a quick, "Y-yeah, sure."

Liu Ren just nodded in his direction, then turned over to Becky. "Call Hanzo, it'll be the fastest option."

"Will do!"

He headed off to the infirmary, Mei Lian complaining rather loudly the whole way out. Jura still felt like he was in a haze of panic even though no one else really seemed to be. Did Mei Lian get stabbed often enough that this wasn't terrifying?

Becky grabbed his shoulder and he jumped. "Well, that was awful. Let's go catch that guy before my anxiety catches up with me."

Jura exhaled loudly. "Okay, thank God, I was worried this was normal."

"Mei Lian's a little unstable, you have to stay calm with her," Becky said, laughing nervously at the end. "She'll be fine. Probably. Hopefully."

She cleared her throat. "Anyways, let's go get Hanzo."

"Right," Jura said, trailing after her, shoulders all hunched up. "Who, exactly, is Hanzo?"

They stepped outside and Jura immediately walked into someone. He stammered an apology, took a couple steps backward, and stared at the absolutely bizarre teen he'd stepped into. He had extremely long hair, almost touching the ground, that started silver and turned purple about halfway down. What the heck.

Jura blinked. "Is this Hanzo?" he asked, rubbing one of his arms reflexively. Becky rolled her eyes.

"No, come on!" she said, tugging at Jura's arm. The boy laughed softly.

"Oh, I'm Elric," he said simply, looking straight up at Jura, "and you're Jura!"

It was around then Jura noticed that Nibbles was growling and realized he'd managed to block him out in his panicked state. Whoops.

He glanced off to the side. "Oh, um, okay? We're kinda in the middle of something, though."

"I'm aware!" Elric said, a little smirk on his face. "It's alright, though, everything will work out. Just keep an ear open about cells!"

He patted Jura on the arm and then walked away.

"What the hell does biology have to do with this?" Jura said to no one in particular. He looked over to Becky half expecting an answer only to see she had some sort of firework now. Holy crap a lot was going on right now. "Wait, hold on, what's that for?"

"Hanzo," Becky said nonchalantly. She pulled a lighter out of her pocket and lit the fuse on it. "He's extra, you have to get his attention like this."

Jura stared in horror as the fuse went further and further down while she was still holding it. "Don't you put that in something? Like, isn't that dangerous?"

She shrugged. "Not really, it's just a bottle rocket. Sean and I shoot 'em at each other all the time."

"What?"

There was a sharp zing! and the little firework was gone in an instant. A couple seconds later an extremely loud pop followed, a small amount of smoke left in its wake fifty or so feet up. Jura squinted at it for a bit.

He felt a faint gust of wind and looked back down, yelling when he noticed there was a person in front of him.

"I arrive!" they said, arms folded neatly. It was a ninja guy, awesome.

"Hey, Hanzo," Becky said. She pointed at Jura. "This is one of the new Wardens, Jura. Jura, this is Hanzo, he's also a Warden."

"Nice to meet you? Maybe?" Jura said, rubbing the back of his neck. "This isn't the best situation to meet someone in."

Hanzo nodded solemnly. "Yes, I imagine something is wrong if I was called. What's happened?"

Becky sighed. "Long story short, Mei Lian got stabbed by some jackass in the BR Brigade, we gotta go catch him."

He rested his hands on his hips. "I see, that's not ideal. Mei Lian's hard to fight in general, let alone stab. Our opponent must be quite skilled."

Jura, feeling a bit left out, said, "Yeah, that guy's crazy. Who keeps knives in their sleeves?"

"Good to know," Hanzo said, "The BR Brigade is full of crafty troublemakers, they're like foxes with opposable thumbs. Understanding their tricks is vital to defeating them."

"Suuuure," Jura said slowly. The analogy made sense, it was just weird and unnecessary. He realized he was rubbing his arm and stopped.

Noticing he was starting to lose Jura, Hanzo took a couple steps towards the garage. "We must hurry if we are to catch him in time! I saw a suspicious buggy headed towards Autumn Gardens on the way here, that must have been him."

Jura got that one just fine. "Oh, uh, yeah, let's go."

Autumn Gardens was a pretty little spot. Lots of oranges and greys, and of course plenty of rogue vivosaurs wandering around. Jura supposed he needed to come back later to check it out a little better, but of course at the moment he was mostly thinking about catching that BR Brigade dude.

Nibbles was fast asleep in the passenger side of his buggy, all worn out from the tournament he'd just been in. Guess that meant he was using a different vivosaur for fighting later, that was alright. He'd done a good job, he deserved a rest.

As Jura followed along the large bends in the paved road, he heard his radio crackle to life.

"Jura," he heard Hanzo say, and he turned up the volume a bit, "we must hurry if we're to apprehend Kowloon. I have a trick to catch up with him but you'll have to make it to the coordinates I'm sending first."

"Yeah, okay," Jura said, glancing over to the pinging spot on his map. That wasn't too bad of a trek, and the location was on the main road. Nothing too stressful.

"Excellent!" Hanzo said, the faintest hint of excitement in his voice. He hung up.

It only took about ten minutes to get to the spot in question. All Jura had to worry about was avoiding an f-raptor and a Japanese ptera that kept swooping down at him. The ptera was actually super scary, but Jura was trying to downplay it mentally to keep himself composed. It was barely working.

By the time he'd pulled up, Becky and Hanzo were already there waiting. Jura decided to try to not acknowledge that to avoid getting all embarrassed and simply said, "Okay, now what?"

"Are you ready?" Hanzo said over the radio. For some reason, the way he asked that made Jura a little nervous.

"For what?" he said, voice shaking a little. Becky laughed.

"It's fine, we're just gonna surprise Kowloon," she said. Jura trusted Becky a little more, he could believe that. She was reasonable like him. Well, except for the fireworks thing earlier, but that didn't really count.

Jura swallowed. "Alright, well, if that's all, I guess I'm ready."

Hanzo shot him a thumbs up over the video thingy. "Good! Let us pursue our enemy!"

There was a flash over Hanzo's buggy and a small thalasso materialized in the air. It trilled and started to vaguely circle around the three of them, it's wings flapping once in a while. For some reason that was putting Jura on edge.

"Kaito! Ninja Tornado!" Hanzo said, and the thalasso flew off into the dig site. Jura didn't like where this was going.

Moments later, a ginormous shadow was cast over the three of them. Immediately Jura stuck his head out his window, his eyes huge as he took in the massive pterosaur that had followed the thalasso back to them. It had a white underside and light orange limbs, which he attributed to a hopter. Its massive 40 foot wingspan, more than twice that of the thalasso's, almost blocked out the sun from Jura's perspective. He immediately went back into his buggy and rolled the window up.

"Hey, Hanzo, uh, what the heck is happening?" Jura said, desperately waiting for an answer. None came before a huge gust of wind rattled his buggy.

Despite not wanting to really know why his buggy was shaking, Jura took a peek through the passenger side window. Every so often he could see the edge of a wing pass by, four or five different ones, actually. One was the hopter, one was the thalasso, and then there were two or three, which were hard to tell apart, that belonged to ptera JP's. All of them were starting to make a huge tornado form.

"Oh, what the hell?!" Jura squeaked, grabbing Nibbles from the other seat. He could feel his buggy floating off the ground and that was weird, that was too weird. He was gonna freaking die.

Burying his face into Nibbles' back, Jura squeezed his eyes shut and hoped and prayed this wasn't gonna end with him dead, because it really felt like it was going to. Feeling his buggy twist around and bob up and down reminded him of one of those games with ragdoll physics. Everything was moving around way faster and way less naturally than he was used to.

Then, all of a sudden, the wind cut out and the very distinct sensation of falling kicked in. Jura felt his stomach go uncomfortably fluttery and the sensation rose up all the way into the base of his chest, similar to one of those giant roller coasters but way, way worse. His buggy wheels hit the ground and, as he was briefly thrown into the air despite his seatbelt, his head shot back and smacked against the back of his seat.

Holy crap.

"Ouchie," Nibbles said, scrabbling out of Jura's grip. Jura grumbled slightly in agreement.

"Geez oh Pete," he said, stretching his arms. With the adrenaline wearing off, his entire body hurt from tensing up so hard.

Jura flicked on the radio as he stretched his back. "What the hell, guys! Give me some damn warning next time, holy shit!"

"I didn't think you'd wanna go along with it, sorry," Becky said, and Jura rolled his eyes.

"I don't care! I've never been more stressed in my life!"

Hanzo scoffed. "We have more important things to deal with," he said, and Jura looked up from the monitor. There was a crazy looking buggy outside, and Kowloon was standing on the hood of it. Ah.

The overwhelming urge to puke suddenly hit Jura, probably from the tornado thing screwing over his sense of balance. He popped open his car door and jumped out, completely ignoring the part of him scared of Kowloon as he panted on his hands and knees for a bit. Nibbles hopped down next to him and patted him on the back.

"Oh, shit, are you puking over there?" Kowloon yelled from his buggy. Jura didn't feel like responding. "I guess that'll just make beating the shit out of you way easier, huh?"

Still not feeling up to words, Jura just vaguely waved his hand dismissively in Kowloon's direction.

"Jura, pick a vivo! We gotta stop him still!" he heard Becky yell from way over to the right of him. With a groan, Jura managed to sit up and throw his head back dramatically.

"Nibbles… Nibbles can you do it?" he grumbled, leaning back on the step for the buggy. "You know how to do it, right?"

Nibbles sighed and jumped up on the step. "Yeah," he said, scrambling in. About thirty seconds later a dino gear shot out of the buggy, flashing into Jack. Gosh freaking darn it.

The mangy Alxas yawned as he materialized, his claws scratching at a bald spot on his thigh. Kowloon laughed, a hand resting on his hip.

"That's your vivosaur? The transforming one from the finals was way more intimidating than that!"

Kowloon held his blades out from his sleeve, a white-rimmed gear wedged between two of them. He had a sinister smirk on his face as he brandished it above his head. "That zino I used in the tournament was stolen, it was pathetic. This vivosaur, however, will tear you apart, limb from limb."

His arm spun in an extremely dramatic fashion, tossing the gear into the air and releasing the vivosaur in a bright flash of feathers. It looked like a zino, not in the sense that an alxas or segno did, but that it was anatomically a zino. The only difference was that its skin was stained a bright purple-pink and its eyes were cruel and empty. This was definitely more in line with the dark vivosaurs Jura had heard of than the ones he'd fought previously.

Kowloon tossed out another couple of medals which he was a lot less dramatic about, but seeing as these were more normal-looking he probably didn't see the need. The diplo and peltas joined the weird pink zino on the field, both seeming much less menacing in comparison.

A few seconds later Becky and Hanzo's vivosaurs appeared, Becky's allo being the only one Jura recognized. The other vivosaur, which he assumed was Hanzo's just because it made sense, was a small ceratopsian he recognized as a mihu. It had a little katana for a horn on its snout and was a rather pleasant black with gold highlights.

"JURA! JURA!"

Oh yeah, Jack was out. He hadn't missed this.

"What?" Jura muttered, slowly getting back up to his feet. It was fighting time, he had to at least be standing for that.

"WHO'S THIS HOT LADY?" Jack replied, aiming a claw at the weird zino that towered over him. Jura felt himself squint out of confusion.

"What?" he said, staring at the zino himself. It didn't seem particularly female or hot.

"JURA RIGHT THERE. THE HOT LADY IN FRONT OF ME," Jack persisted, gesturing towards the zino more obviously. Jura felt very exhausted by the situation all of a sudden.

He looked over the enemy team and decided that he could probably redirect Jack. Hopefully. He aimed a finger at the diplo. "Alright, uh, just ignore her! Let's go for a slashing upper on the diplo."

Snorting, Jack charged towards the diplo, claws scraping on the ground as he went. Someone could've interpreted it as purposefully dramatic, but Jura knew Jack was just having trouble keeping his balance. He was an idiot like that.

A couple bits of mistepping later, Jack managed to do a jumping swipe at the diplo. He caught its chin and flung it upwards, forcing the massive vivosaur to stumble backwards to try to regain its balance. That seemed to do a good amount of damage.

Kowloon, still being dramatic, swung his arm around and aimed his blades at Hanzo's mihu. "Zinodious, claw strike!"

The massive body of the weird zino started to move, her muscles rippling as she started to charge. The mihu held its ground as the giant vivosaur bore down upon it, golden claws raking its sides. With little effort, the mihu went flying and tumbled across the ground on impact, barely managing to slide to a stop as its nails snagged the ground. Jura stared at the blood on its side and tensed up.

"Ooo, that looks bad," Becky said from her buggy. "Bentley, go finish off the diplo."

With a sharp growl, Bentley ran at the towering sauropod that had yet to catch its balance. He leaped at it, kicking the diplo's side and knocking it over. As the massive vivosaur fell to the ground, it flashed down into a gear. Alright, this was less scary.

"What, you think that means anything?" Kowloon said, putting a hand on his hip. "That's just a support vivosaur, Zinodious doesn't need its help."

"I have trouble believing that," Becky said plainly, and Kowloon frowned.

"Whatever, I'm just here to kick your ass." He pointed at Hanzo's mihu again. "Peltas, twin strike!"

Realizing that would probably knock out the mihu, Jura hauled himself up into his buggy and managed to hit his LP Recovery shots before the peltas made contact. The initial tackle knocked Hanzo's mihu back, but thanks to the support shot it took the attack well. The peltas spun around, whipping its tail against the mihu's face and drawing out a pained hiss. It was still standing, though.

Jura kind of wished he could hear Hanzo from where he was at, but seeing as he was on the other side of Becky's buggy, what little sound was traveling over was drowned out by the sounds of vivosaurs fighting. It wasn't the end of the world, though. There wasn't some grand scheme they were trying to pull off, it was just a turn-by-turn fossil battle.

Hanzo's mihu slammed its horn-blade into the peltas' back, pulling Jura out of his mildly grouchy thoughts. The peltas managed to knock it off with its spiked sides, inflicting a bit of damage in retaliation. That sort of seemed like an opening.

"Jack, get the peltas with a dual claws!" he said, hoping Jack's general incompetence wouldn't mess this up. The alxas wobbled as he charged, but at least his claws weren't dragging this time.

His foot dug into the ground as he slid to a stop in front of the peltas, claws brandishing before swiping and spinning. Jack laughed wildly as he raked his nails across the peltas' back, then circled around and delivered another slash to its face. With a sharp cry, the peltas flashed down into a gear.

Jack cheered. "ALL RIGHT!"

"Yeah, good job," Jura said lacklusterly. Gosh he was tired of this screaming.

At least Kowloon seemed just a little nervous now. He was barely letting it show, but the way his eye was twitching showed definitely more than frustration.

"Yeah, Zinodious doesn't need that one either!" Kowloon yelled, doing one of those dramatic arm swipes, "We've got solo power!"

Indeed, Zinodious was looking pretty healthy. It wasn't exactly obvious, but it seemed a dark aura had settled around her. Not like a giant cloud, just like a slightly hazy filter that would make someone with glasses think they were dirty. Jura, however, did not, so he just rubbed his eyes to make sure he was seeing that right. He was.

"Face ripper on that stupid mihu!" Kowloon said, and Zinodious took off like a truck. Jura shot off another LP recovery before those giant claws sliced across the mihu's face, slamming it against the ground. It let out a little squeak as it pushed itself back up. Jura was thoroughly impressed at its resilience.

"Why's he got such a hate boner for Hanzo's mihu?" Becky said way more casually than Jura was expecting. "Bentley, drop kick it!"

The large blue theropod got a running start before leaping at Zinodious from behind. His feet slammed between her shoulder blades, knocking her down onto her stomach before he jumped back off. As Zinodious struggled back up to her feet, Hanzo's mihu leaped into action and slashed its horn across her face. She hissed as blood leaked from the cut.

This was a great opening. Zinodious was low on health and in an okay stance to deal with, so Jack could probably deal enough damage to finish her off without Kowloon being able to whip out any support shots. He was standing on his buggy, so maybe they were out of the question, but seeing as he was in an evil gang maybe it was a better idea not to push his luck.

Jura called out an attack. "Finish her off with another dual claws, Jack!"

And Jack said, "WHAT? NO WAY, I'M NOT GONNA."

There was a pause. Jura didn't know how to respond to that. "Jack? Jack, you gotta, this is a bad guy."

"NUH UH. YOU CAN'T MAKE ME ATTACK THE HOT LADY."

"What's, uh, what's going on over there?" Becky said, leaning out her window. She looked decently confused, and Jura was mortified he was gonna have to explain that his vivosaur was just horny.

"Jack doesn't wanna attack Zinodious, he, uh, he keeps saying she's hot," Jura murmured, his voice getting way softer near the end.

Becky blinked. "That's a first."

Jura looked back over to Jack, who was now sitting on the ground with his arms crossed like he was a toddler. Gosh this was annoying.

Kowloon cracked a grin. "Having vivosaur troubles, eh? I'm not, right Zinodious?"

Zinodious snarled, rising back up to her full height once again. Without hesitation she threw herself at mihu again, probably vengeful after the slice to her face. She swiped at its head again just as Jura panicked and shot off a couple more LP recoveries for mihu. Unfortunately, there were a couple bangs from Kowloon's buggy as well. Apparently that healed up Zinodious almost completely.

"This is getting so out of hand," Becky grumbled, leaning back in her seat. "It's fine, though. We've got enough FP to just finish this up finally."

Bentley took a threatening step towards Zinodious, nostrils flaring as he got a cruel grin on his face. Zinodious looked up from mihu, her claws flexing menacingly.

"Beastly combo, Bentley!"

That felt like a ridiculously strong move to Jura, so he started hitting attack ups because this battle was really stressing him out and it seemed like Bentley was gonna rip Zinodious to shreds. The big allo lowered his head, tensing himself up, and then closed the gap between him and Zinodious.

His nails raked across each of her arms, forcing Zinodious' huge claws away from himself by pushing her to the side. As she staggered slightly to catch herself, Bentley's tail whipped around and smacked her leg, forcing it to buckle. With a sharp hiss, Zinodious fell far enough for the upper part of her throat to be in range of a bite. Bentley's jaws snapped around it before he dug his feet into the ground and proceeded to yank the much larger vivosaur over himself. Zinodious crashed to the ground back-first and flashed into her gear.

Kowloon stood on his buggy for a second, dumb-struck. Then, he jumped down and, in a rather impressive display of speed, ran over and picked up Zinodious' gear without Bentley snagging him. He was back up on the hood in less than 30 seconds.

"Whatever, this isn't the last you'll see of me! I'll beat your head in next time we meet, that goes for all of you assholes!" Kowloon said before brandishing yet another thing between his blades.

"See ya, bitches!"

He threw the thing in front of him and then, in a burst of black energy, him and his entire buggy had vanished.

Jura stared for a moment, completely incredulous. How did things keep getting more and more insane? Like, everything just kept escalating, how did each event manage to top the fact that Mei Lian got stabbed.

Everyone was just quiet for a moment, too shocked to speak. Then, finally, Becky said something.

"Alright, well, that was the worst way this could've ended," she said, her voice cracking a little. "Time to go back to America and just have the thought in my head that there's a felon on the loose who wants to kill me, awesome."

And there was the anxiety Jura had been expecting. He wasn't sure if he was happy someone else was freaked out too or not. If he was honest, though, he wasn't nearly as worried about getting randomly killed as she seemed to be.

"Yeah," Jura said slowly. All he could think about was getting back and sleeping for a week.

Hey guys here's another update finally! This one's a little longer bc of poor planning but it's fine ha ha, I'm sure everyone's happy for more content!

My job got pushed back due to the pandemic but it's finally starting here soon! Unfortunately I'm on reduced hours bc again, pandemic, so that kinda sucks. But more time for writing I guess ha ha

ALSO just wanted to address this bc I think it's been confusing some people, the reason why it seems like I'm making characters swear way more than other ones is bc I wrote the first like 80% of this fic when I was like 16 and scared of putting swears in, and now I'm almost 21 and I don't mind doing it lol. At some point I'm gonna go back when I do the polishing up on old chapters so the swearing quota will get bumped up for everyone ha ha