Jura was well aware that he couldn't go sleep for at least two hours, probably longer, and it was draining at his will to go on. His anxiety wouldn't let him get any rest until he checked on Mei Lian and made sure she wasn't dead, and then he had to go give the whole spiel about what went wrong with stopping Kowloon to Liu Ren, so yeah. There was a lot he had to get done.
Since Hanzo had other things to do, they were talking to Liu Ren first. This was the more stressful of the two options, but Jura didn't want to take up someone's time unnecessarily. Hopefully it would go quickly.
"Kowloon escaped," Hanzo said, making Jura sigh in relief. He didn't have to talk, thank God. "It was my fault, truthfully. I was so eager for battle, I let him wriggle away like an eel down a laundry shoot."
Liu Ren smiled faintly, probably at that insane simile. "It's quite alright, Hanzo. Both of you performed to the best of your ability."
"Th-thanks," Jura managed to stammer out, immediately regretting saying anything. He really hadn't needed to say that, they were gonna think he was weird now. Time to change the subject. "U-uh, um, how's Mei Lian?"
"She's fine," Liu Ren said, "just needed a few stitches. Kowloon didn't get his blades in far enough to do any internal damage."
Jura blinked. "That's, uh, decent of him, I guess?"
Liu Ren crossed his arms. "Perhaps. I'm more concerned about why he wanted to steal that trophy, a stabbing is a bit much for something so simple."
"Huh," Jura said, glancing off to the side. Gosh he needed that nap soon, this wasn't clicking very well in his head.
"His teammates weren't much help in identifying his motive, either," Liu Ren continued, "They were mercenaries he'd hired for the tournament."
"The trophy must have been extraordinarily important, then," Hanzo said, nodding slightly. "We'll have to look into its origin."
"Indeed," Liu Ren said. The room fell silent for a moment, and Jura felt his skin prickle a bit. Long pauses in conversation freaked him out, he never knew if he was supposed to fill them or not.
Then, finally, Liu Ren cleared his throat. "Alright, I think that covers everything. Thank you for your work today."
"Yeah, sure thing!" Jura said. He knew when to be as positive as possible still, at the very least. Hanzo just kind of nodded. "We're, um, we're good to go, then?"
"Yes, of course," Liu Ren said, grinning. Jura nodded vaguely and immediately fast-walked to the elevator. He noticed Hanzo beside him a couple seconds later and hoped his tensing up wasn't noticeable.
They stood in silence as the door slid shut and they started moving downwards. Jura glanced over to Hanzo, swallowed, and stared forward again. He hoped he would say nothing and anything at the same time.
They reached the lobby and the door opened back up. Jura let out a sigh of relief, took a step forward, and heard Hanzo say, "I hope you don't mind, I registered you as a paleo pal."
"What?" Jura said, turning his head back towards him. He stared for a moment, frozen in place upon seeing Hanzo wasn't there anymore.
"Feel free to call me if you need assistance," he heard from in front of him. Jura whipped his head forwards again and there was still no one. Gosh freaking darn it, today was weird.
He waited in place for any other comments and, after about a minute, concluded no more were coming. Time to go finish his last thing keeping him from sleeping, making sure Mei Lian was alright. He took a deep breath to calm his nerves a bit and headed towards the infirmary that split off from Prof. Little's lab.
"Nibbles, I can't handle much more of this today," Jura grumbled, glancing down at the small vivosaur. Nibbles just kind of stuck the tip of his tongue out of his mouth, not really in a mocking way though. It was just cute and oddly comforting.
They walked into the lab, through the door not hiding the thing Nibbles had been in, and went past a few doors down a hallway. Eventually they reached the end of the corridor, which opened into the infirmary. Most of it was for vivosaurs too injured to heal in their medal form, but there was a small section for Wardens and critically injured civilians who needed treatment and couldn't wait for the hospital. And sure enough, in that corner, Mei Lian was sitting on a bed looking extremely grumpy.
Jura glanced around the room as he moved towards her, not wanting to make uncomfortable eye-contact while being too far away to talk. He took in the different vivosaurs being patched up, ranging all the way from a sucho getting some slashes on its leg flushed to a saichan getting the club on its tail bandaged after apparently getting part of it snapped off. Today wasn't that bad of a day, honestly. He could still remember the day he and Tria had to come by after the gorgo attack, a sungari was there that had a good portion of its left wing ripped off.
Eventually he knew he was within earshot of Mei Lian, so he looked forward again and shot a shy smile in her direction. He noticed immediately that she'd already been looking at him, which was a little weird until he remembered she'd been in there for a few hours. She was probably just excited for a change in scenery.
"Did you get him?" Mei Lian asked, eyes wide. Jura felt himself reflexively tug at his bandana.
"Uh, n-no, he, uh, got away. We beat him in a fight, though," Jura said, hoping that would be enough. Judging by the little scowl she got, it wasn't.
Her hands clenched into fists. "I'm gonna kill him with my bare hands if I see him again," she said, and she smacked one of her fists against her bed for emphasis.
Jura cleared his throat. "Maybe, uh, maybe that's not the best idea, considering what happened today."
Mei Lian glared and him for a moment then looked away from him and crossed her arms. "It wasn't that bad, I just had to get like 10 stitches." She lifted her shirt up for emphasis and Jura, who had absolutely no experience with these sorts of injuries, cringed at the sight of the wounds.
"If you say so," he managed after a few seconds. She seemed a little surprised by that reaction and pulled her shirt back down.
"Whatever," she said, "I gotta kill him, he totally made me look all sad and pathetic back there."
Yeah, that was kind of what Jura figured. "I think-" he said, very slowly because his anxiety was kicking in, "-that maybe you should, you know, maybe talk to your, uh, your dad about this."
She seemed a little surprised about that response and immediately turned her gaze over to a wall. "Whaaaaat? Why would I do that?" she said, clearly nervous.
Jura rubbed one of his arms. "Well, I think I was, um, a little obvious that you got into that fight just to, uh, to show off."
Mei Lian shifted slightly so she could hug her legs, but in the casual sort of way you'd do it to make it less obvious. "I was just trying to get your trophy back."
"Well, yeah," Jura said, "but you were getting it back to impress your dad, not to just get it back."
"Oh," Mei Lian said.
"Yeah…"
An uncomfortable silence settled in and Jura suddenly felt a huge amount of guilt settle in that was begging him to further explain what he'd said. Like maybe if he talked enough and kept arguing his point she'd openly agree with him about this. So, without really thinking about it, he added, "I mean, it'll probably suck a lot, but I feel like if you just tell him that you've been all frustrated it would help at least a little bit."
She shifted her legs slightly. "I dunno, I'll think about it, I guess."
That wasn't a great response. However, it was positive enough to make ending the conversation feel okay with his anxiety. He'd covered what he wanted to, sort of, and she was sort of open to it so that was fine. Jura looked off to the side.
"Alright," he said, "I, uh, hope you feel better, then."
"Thanks," she said vaguely.
"No prob."
He walked off with his hands in fists and mentally scolded himself for sounding like an idiot.
Jura woke up to Nibbles coughing. It mostly caught him off guard because he didn't know reptiles could cough, but it made sense that they would in hindsight. It wasn't like a normal cough, either, like he'd inhaled some spit or something, there was very much so stuff moving from that cough. It was wet and gross and jolted him awake.
He sat up, looking to his small, red vivosaur who was sitting at the edge of his bed. After a couple more hacks, Nibbles returned his stare and smiled. He seemed happy enough, all things considered. Jura blinked a couple times, rubbed his eyes, and blinked again to make sure he was seeing Nibbles correctly.
"You okay, buddy?" he asked, pulling the blankets off of himself. Nibbles just nodded.
"Yeah!" the vivosaur responsed, and he hopped off the bed. Jura wanted to say something else, but Nibbles did in fact seem fine so he guessed it was alright. He'd probably know better, anyways.
"Alright."
He slid out of bed and stretched, and immediately felt a pang of knots hit his chest. Today was talk to Stryker about what happened and also Tria coming back day. He was mostly stressed about the Stryker thing, but Tria also sucked in general so that wasn't helping. He'd had a nice break from her and man he wished it wasn't ending.
It took him about half an hour to get ready. Just like appearance-wise, though, mentally he wasn't anywhere near ready but that was alright. He had a bit longer to get prepared still thanks to breakfast.
That didn't end up being all that interesting, though. Jura just walked in, got some food, sat by himself, and thought about absolutely nothing the whole time. He just had to turn his brain off for a bit so the stress didn't do him in. Then, finally, 11 rolled around and he took a deep breath. Meeting time.
Then, finally, as he was walking towards the elevator, he saw the World Gate open up and sure enough, there was Tria, right on time for once. She saw him almost immediately, much to his despair, and jogged over.
"Hey, dude! Bet you're glad to see me!" she said, but at least she had the decency to say it sarcastically.
"Hey, Tria," he said, and she laughed.
"You can at least try to sound happy to see me. I didn't wanna leave Europe but here I am, sucking it up."
Jura rolled his eyes. "Whatever, let's just go get this meeting over with." He started towards the elevator and Tria trailed behind him. "How'd your assignment go? Mine went pretty bad."
"Yeah it sucked pretty hard," Tria said. She stopped beside him as they waited for the elevator doors to open. "Me'n Dahlia barely got to hang out during the race, and then Violet got super pissed at me because I 'wasn't being observant'."
Jura vaguely glanced at her. "I mean, you're not very observant."
"Yeah but I don't need someone following me around and pointing it out."
The doors opened and they stepped in. "Well-" Jura said, stretching his arms to quell the nervousness tightening up his muscles "-I'd say things went better for you than they did for me. All the battling was fine, and then we had that BR Brigade loser come and stab Mei Lian."
Tria's eyes lit up. "Mei Lian got stabbed? Damn, that's way more exciting than anything I got! I'm like super jealous now."
"Alright that's pretty sad," Jura said flatly, "Someone else gets stabbed and you think that's pretty cool? Come on, man."
"It is!" Tria said, and then the door opened up and they both went silent. Jura almost had a heart attack, the argument hadn't let him brace himself for Stryker and Prof. Little.
Without much hesitation, Tria stepped out and Jura followed after her once he'd managed to swallow once. Stryker looked friendly enough, but Jura was too stressed from how badly his mission had gone to really care.
"Ah! Hello, you two," Stryker said, smiling definitely not in an 'I'm mad' way. Jura relaxed almost immediately.
"Howdy," Tria said reflexively.
"I've heard about your performances from Drake and Liu Ren," the Captain continued, still sounding positive so it wasn't killing Jura too much. "It's unfortunate that you couldn't stop the theft of those trophies, but given you were up against the top brass of the BR Brigade, I think you performed to the best of your ability."
That was exactly what Jura wanted to hear. He perked up and hoped it wasn't too obvious so he didn't look silly.
"However," Prof. Little added, making Jura stressed out all over again, "we did discover an interesting link between those trophies."
Geez oh Pete this was a roller coaster of emotions.
Stryker seemed to notice he was panicking and said rather simply, "Yes, both tournaments were held by Paraec Industries."
His smaller companion was mildly annoyed he was interrupted, but Jura was grateful for it, "Parsec Industries is known for its deep-space engineering technology. The metal they used for making the trophies is known as cosmonium, which is only found in meteors as far as the scientific community knows, and has no known purpose other than having an interesting color."
"Hence the trophies," Stryker said. "We aren't sure what the BR Brigade wants them for, but it's probably not great."
"Huh," Tria said, and Jura hated how bored she looked.
Realizing he had to say something to make himself come off as responsible, Jura tensed up a bit and forced out, "S-so, uh, what're you guys doing to investigate?"
That didn't elicit any major reactions but it made Jura feel better.
"Well," Stryker said, hands folding behind his back, "at the moment we're investigating Dr. Blackraven's cell. We're hoping we'll get a clue about something from that."
Something clicked on Jura's mind, which surprised him since he thought he was too panicked to do any amount of thinking. That weird guy from the day before had said that really cryptic thing about cells, maybe he'd been referring to this? Maybe. There wasn't really a way to be sure based on the information he'd been given.
"We good here, then?" Tria said, jolting him from his thoughts.
Stryker nodded. "Yes, you're free to go for now. We'll be getting news on the cell tomorrow, so swing through here again about the same time then. Hopefully we'll have a plan together by then."
"Sounds good!" Jura said, doing a weird little wave that he immediately regretted.
Tria started walking back towards the elevator and just said, "sick."
Once again they were heading back down to the lobby, only this time in complete silence. They'd gotten all the bickering out of their system at this point, it felt neutral to stand next to each other again. Then, breaking the silence rather suddenly, Nibbles started doing more of those really gross coughs.
"Holy shit, is he dying?" Tria asked, nudging Nibbles with her foot.
"No, knock that off," Jura said. He pushed her just enough that she stopped prodding at his vivosaur. "He said he was fine earlier."
Tria snorted. "Yeah, take the literal animal's word for it."
He didn't have a good comeback for that.
Nibbles continued to cough even after the elevator doors slid open, which drew the attention of many onlookers in the lobby. One of them happened to be Penny, who rushed over almost immediately.
"Oh my gosh, is something wrong with him?" she asked, kneeling down to get a better look at the small vivosaur. Nibbles let out a couple grosser than usual coughs.
Jura shifted his feet. "I'm, uhhhh, I'm not really sure."
It suddenly became apparent that Nibbles was losing his balance as he started to stagger back and forth a bit, all the while still coughing. It was such a violent fit, Jura hadn't expected it to escalate so much.
"He looks pretty bad," Penny said, and Jura cringed.
Then, without warning, the coughing stopped and Nibbles fell over. It looked like he'd passed out, that wasn't a great sign. Jura yelped and scooped him up.
"Well, crap, now what?" he said, voice shaking.
They all fell silent for a couple seconds and then Penny's eyes lit up. "Oh, I know! Let's take him to Prof. Little!"
Jura blinked, thought about for it a second, and realized he didn't have any better suggestions.
"Yeah, okay."
Hey guys, I know I haven't updated in a hot second lol, I wanted this chapter to be like wayyyy longer but then I got busy so now I'm just posting it like this so you actually get something to read ha ha. It hasn't actually been AS LONG as it seems since my last update, for those of you reading as I post it probably wasn't noticeable but I did rewrite the first chapter in like late June so that WAS an update but otherwise yeah that's been it
In the future I'll probably focus more on fixing up earlier chapters while I'm busier just bc I don't have to completely come up with new stuff. I'll probably be changing up some plot points and stuff but nothing TOO major to the the overarching story so no one's gonna have to reread it if they don't want to enjoy the rest lol