Prof. Little's lab was just as weird as Jura remembered. He'd been in it a few different times but nothing about it felt like he was actually supposed to be there. And, unfortunately, the only person there to distract him from this was Yamamoto, awesome.

He seemed pretty uncomfortable with their little group of three plus Nibbles barging in like that, especially when Penny just straight up yelled, "Nibbles is dying! You have to help him out!"

"Uh-" Yamamoto barely managed to say before Tria interrupted him.

"He passed out and everything, he's like legit doing awful," she said with this dumb little grin that implied the current sequence of events was really cracking her up.

Jura cleared his throat. "Alright, let's, uh, calm down a bit so we can get an answer here."

Yamamoto looked pretty grateful for that.

"Well," he started, pushing up his glasses, "Um, Prof. Little's still in his meeting with Stryker, but this seems drastic enough that we can take him to the sick ward."

"Sounds good," Jura said quickly, and he started off in that direction. Yamamoto fell in beside him.

"The, um, the only issue is we just had a vivosaur and its fighter come in who were mauled by a rogue, and we don't have that big of a staff here."

They reached the hospital room about then, where Jura came to a full stop after feeling his heart drop. He looked over to Yamamoto. "Oh, so no one's gonna… look at him for a while, then."

He nodded slowly. "Yes…"

"Well then you're gonna have to do it!" Penny said, popping up beside Jura. "He's gonna die otherwise!"

Yamamoto flinched. "What!? I can't do that, I-I work a minimum wage job, I'm not qualified!"

"You've worked with Prof. Little for a while now, you have to have some idea of how to help," she added, a lot firmer this time. Jura felt mildly relieved that she was randomly this passionate about Nibbles, it was nice to know he had friends backing him up.

For a moment, Yamamoto appeared conflicted. He stared forward, clearly thinking over what Penny had said. Then, taking a deep breath, he looked back to Jura. "Alright, well, I guess I'll do what I can. We can't just let Nibbles suffer like that."

Jura sighed loudly. "Oh, thank god. What're we doing, then?"

"Let's get him to one of these open beds."

By the time they had Nibbles situated, he'd woken back up and was coughing again. Yamamoto was feeling him in random places, mostly around his throat, but still seemed pretty confused. Eventually he stood back, put his hands on his hips, and said, "Well, the best I can figure is he has Vivosauritis."

Jura blinked. "What's that?"

"It's a virus that only vivosaurs get, hence the name. It attacks the respiratory system," Yamamoto said. His eyes narrowed. "There's not much we can do, though. It's a virus, you can't take an antibiotic for it."

And just like that, Jura could feel panic settling in again. Mind racing, he shuffled through every single home remedy he could think of and then paused on a specific thought. "O-oh, um, is there, uh, any way we could boost his immune system to help?"

His eyes lit up. "That could work!" And then Yamamoto was picking up a book off one of the nearby shelves and flipping through it. After a few seconds, he flicked the page he was on and set it down on the bed for everyone to look at.

There was a lot of very small text and two large pictures of some weird eels. They didn't seem very special, though, eels were inherently weird. Jura started skimming the caption only to be cut off.

"Okay, these are an extinct species of eel," Yamamoto said, pointing at one of the pictures, "There's been a lot of research done on these in recent times, and they're extremely nutritious. If we could get fossils for these, probably like three, we can revive them and feed them to Nibbles to help him through this."

Tria laughed. "Imagine getting brought back to life just to get munched."

"Alright, don't talk like that, I don't wanna feel bad about this," Jura said nervously. His sister just stuck her tongue out at him, and he ignored it and turned back towards Yamamoto. "Yeah that sounds good, where can we get these?"

"Just about anywhere," he said, pushing up his glasses, "they're hard to find, though."

Jura didn't love the sound of that. "How hard?"

Yamamoto shot him a nervous look. "Most fossils are in places we can't go for safety reasons, and those far enough inland don't preserve well. You'd need a lot of manpower to locate fossils we can revive."

"We can help with that!"

Recognizing that as Roland's voice, Jura blinked a couple times and looked in the direction it came from. There he was, only he had Dahlia and Leon with him.

"That was a little dramatic," Roland laughed, rubbing his arm, "we've been here for a few minutes, that seemed like the best time to butt in."

"What're you guys doing here?" Jura said, more relieved than anything.

Roland smiled nervously. "Well, um, I saw you guys run in here with Nibbles and I figured you could probably use some help, so I fetched everyone. Except Nate, but he didn't wanna come."

"Yeah that checks out," Tria said with one of those vague, 'that was barely funny' laughs.

"Eh, we don't need 'im, anyways," Leon said, crossing his arms with a little smirk.

Dahlia laughed. "Hell yeah, me'n Tria can get all those fossils by ourselves!"

Jura let out a long, loud sigh. "Oh thank god, you guys're the best."

Leon rolled his eyes. "You guys've been doing alright work, we gotta pay you back for it," he said, clearly trying not to sound too grateful, "Now what's this about finding three fossils?"

"These are fossils you can find all over the world by bodies of water," Yamamoto said, standing up a little straighter in the presence of more people, "so basically look everywhere."

"Me'n Dahlia'll go check out Europe!" Tria said, jogging over to her friend and throwing her arm around her shoulders.

"Hell yeah, we will!"

"I'll check out America, that's my turf," Leon said. He paused to elbow Roland. "Why don't ya' tag along'n back me up? I'm, uh, allergic to seafood."

Roland stared for a second. "It's a fossil, though?"

"Even worse," he replied, somehow managing to sound serious. Roland didn't want to argue with Leon and just kinda nodded.

"Awesome!" Penny said. She looked over to Jura. "We'll go check around Asia, then!"

Jura nodded and Yamamoto picked up his book. "Alright everyone, come look at this fossil picture quick and head out!"

Surprisingly, Jura and Penny weren't checking around Paradise Beach for the ancient eel fossil. Instead, Yamamoto suggested Lantern Lake. It did have a lot of water, so that sort of checked out, but also the eel was an ocean species. Jura figured it was probably best not to question it too much.

They'd been given a specific part of Lantern Lake to check out that was most likely to have the fossil, so they'd driven all the way to the back of the digsite and were just looking around. Despite having seen a picture of the fossil, Jura wasn't super sure what they were trying to find.

"Are we just gonna have to dig up everything we find?" Jura said slowly. He was already feeling all nervous and tired because of Nibbles, this was just compounding the awfulness.

"Maybe?" Penny said over the radio, and Jura sighed.

"This is gonna take forever."

Jura drove alongside one of the walls of rock and stared vaguely as he pressed his sonar over and over again. He supposed the sonar knew what was revivable and what wasn't, so technically speaking the eel fossil would probably be under the same classification as jewel rocks and such. That didn't really prevent him having to clean a lot of stuff, though.

"Hey Jura?"

He blinked a couple times but didn't look away from the rock. "What's up?"

"I think that titano ate some of an eel fossil!"

"What?"

That got him to look up. He stared out of his window and cringed at the sight of that massive sauropod moving a whole lot faster than it should be. It wasn't right next to them, but it was close enough that Jura was worried it could run over towards them and crush his buggy and him in a heartbeat. He gulped.

"O-oh, I see him."

He wasn't sure what else to say besides that. Neither was Penny, apparently, because they sat and stared at the rampaging vivosaur for a solid 10 seconds. Finally, Jura took a breath.

"Well, uh, I'm guessing there're fossils over there," he managed. "We, uh, should probably head that way."

Penny nodded. "Yep. We're gonna have to fight that titano, too, even if it is all hyper-charged."

Despite all the stress, that made Jura laugh a little bit.

"So, um, game plan," he said, rubbing his hands together. "It's just us, and that thing's probably extra strong because of the eel fossil, so-"

It was at that point Jura noticed the titano was heading towards them. Like, in a full gallop, straight in their direction. He squeaked and smacked his buggy monitor to send out whatever vivosaur was already loaded, he didn't have time to think this over.

Shrike flashed into the air, her wings flapping a couple times quickly to help her gain her bearings. Penny shot out her hypsi, Alto, a few seconds later, forcing the titano to slide to a halt as it approached the two of them. Geez oh Pete their vivosaurs were pathetically small next to that titano.

"God, we picked some bad types," Jura said flatly. Alto was fire, Shrike was water, and the titano was water. He didn't know if Penny had another vivosaur, though, and when he thought about it he didn't have an earth vivo, but using water to fight water just felt less efficient.

Penny just made a scoffing sound. "We've got this! This titano doesn't stand a chance against two friends on a mission!"

That sounded cheesy as hell, but Jura was trying to find any excuse not to have a panic attack so it worked.

"Alright, soothing song, Alto!"

The small hypsi started to do a little swaying dance as she sang, her voice growing in volume until the titano started shaking its head. It grunted a couple times then focused on Alto, clearly aggravated. With a snort, it whipped its tail around super fast thanks to all that extra energy it had.

Alto made a weird yip sound and managed to hop out of the way, her size actually working to her advantage. The titano returned to its original position, barely phased that it'd missed. Jura swallowed hard and looked up at Shrike.

"Uhhhhh, um-" his brain was barely functioning with all the anxiety buzzing around in it, "-middle spear, I guess."

Shrike chirred and did a loop in the air, then dived at the titano. Her beak scraped its side and forced out a deep, rumbling growl. That left a visible gash, so clearly that was a pretty good hit.

"Nice one!" Penny said, and it just barely got Jura to smile a little bit. "Another soothing song, Alto!"

Once again, Alto bobbed up and down and trilled. Her squeaky voice filled the air, and the titano whined and scraped its feet on the ground, the vibrations clearly bothering it. Jura had to admit, he was getting a little bothered by it, too.

"Why're you, uh, spamming that?" he said, struggling not to sound rude. He was getting too tired from the stress to really control his tone, though.

"Boost skills, remember?" Penny said, and Jura blinked a couple of times. Oh, right, those were a thing. And yeah, if he checked the meter, soothing song filled it up a lot. He felt a little embarrassed.

"Right, yeah," Jura said, and was immediately interrupted by the titano attacking Alto again.

It went for the same, rapid spinning move, its tail flying towards the hypsi. With another panicked chirp, Alto just barely ran out of the way, the wind from the titano's tail whipping her feathers. This time, the titano seemed a bit frustrated it'd missed again.

The other bright side to Penny only using soothing song meant that he had a bunch of fp at his disposal.

"Paralysis ripper!"

Shrike flew up past the titano and turned rather suddenly, her wings folding up against her body briefly as she fell in a dive towards its head. At the last second she spread her wings out and came to a sharp stop. The resulting blast of air momentarily blinding the titano, letting Shrike drop down on its face as it groaned and moved its head back and forth. Her bristle-y feathers stood on end as her claws dug into its skin, and a bluish energy sparked across the titano. Then, she kicked off its head and lighted back into the air, soaring upwards and out of the titano's reach.

At that point, the once-speedy titano's movements were becoming slower and stilted. Shrike has definitely paralyzed it, and hitting its face seemed to have done something to its eyesight. Whatever had happened, it was clearly dazed.

Penny cheered. "Awesome! We're so close now!" She rubbed her hands together and grinned. "One more soothing song, Alto!"

Alto's sharp song pierced the air yet again, making the titano straight up start growling. It started to wind up for an attack, but before it could, Alto's eyes lit up and she charged forward. That was the boost skill kicking in, then.

It was kind of funny to watch, actually, given how much larger the titano was from Penny's hypsi. The little thing jumped and kicked it in the chest with both feet, a massive blast of fire accompanying the kick that blew Alto and the titano away from each other.

As soon as it finished sliding, the titano snarled and whipped its head forward, finally managing to nail Alto in her descent. It slammed her against the ground and straightened back up, and Alto whimpered for a few moments as she struggled back up.

As scary as that was, the titano was finally getting low on health. Just a couple more hits and they could get the fossil for Nibbles. Jura inhaled sharply and yelled out to Shrike, "Another paralysis ripper!"

She trilled in reply and dove from her vantage point at the titano's face again. This time she didn't bother to stop before hitting it, she rammed into its head full on and raked her claws over its eyes. As she rolled off from the impact, her wings spread out and flapped rapidly and she managed to catch herself about 15 feet down. Jura sighed in relief as she flew safely out of the titano's reach.

"Only one more hit to go and we can save Nibbles!" Penny said, beaming, "finish him off, Alto!"

With a loud shriek, Alto tore across the ground towards the titano again. She leaped and planted her feet into the same spot her boost skill had hit it, which was very obviously burned now. The titano hissed in pain as her nails dug into the wound, and when she kicked off it was just enough to finally push their opponent back and flash down into its gear.

Jura flopped back into his chair. "Oh thank god," he said, taking one long breath, "we can go find that damn fossil now."

It wasn't a super long look around after that. There was a really obvious impression in the rock where the titano had been digging to get the first fossil. With a bit of drilling, they managed to unearth one usable ancient eel fossil that hadn't been munched on by a massive sauropod. Feeling pretty good about everything, although still a bit knotted up by anxiety, they headed back to the lab.

Jura felt like he was carrying a baby with that fossil in his arms, like if he dropped it there would be some extreme repercussions. He was hugging it as hard as he could and walking all slow and weird because gosh darn it this needed to be perfect for Nibbles. Penny was also hovering over the fossil the whole way there, so that wasn't helping his nerves at all.

Yamamoto's eyes lit up when he saw the eel fossil in Jura's arms. "You've got it! Fantastic!"

He took the fossil over to a revival machine on the wall and started punching in some weird codes. Jura didn't really care about that, though, he was more concerned about how Nibbles was doing. The machine hummed to life and he walked over to go see how his vivosaur was doing.

Nibbles was still unconscious and Jura had no idea if that was a good or bad thing. He stroked his vivosaur's side and sighed. He was way too stressed out.

"Looks like the revival worked!" Yamamoto said, and Jura turned to see the wriggling eel the lab assistant was holding. He cringed at the sight of it. "I'll go take this to the hospital staff, they're done with that last emergency now."

"Great?" Jura said, still a little uncomfortable with the idea of immediately killing those eels. He really hated Tria for making this an even worse experience than it had been initially.

Just as Yamamoto headed off with that eel, Leon and Roland popped in with their fossil. Roland set it down on the edge of Nibbles' bed and Jura scrutinized its details just to verify it was, indeed, an ancient eel fossil. Not that he doubted their judgement, he was just scared for Nibbles and wanted everything to be fine.

"I-is it the right one?" Roland said, hands shaking slightly.

"Course it is," Leon said, rolling his eyes.

Penny grinned, clearly trying to lighten the mood. "It looks like ours!"

Jura nodded a couple times. "Y-yeah, I think it looks fine." He glanced over to Leon and Roland and sighed. "Thanks a ton guys, seriously."

Leon huffed. "Ya' don't gotta keep thankin' us, kid, we kinda owe ya'."

"Yeah, but we're friends and I appreciate the support," Jura said, managing a smile. Leon, clearly embarrassed by that statement, muttered something under his breath and glanced off to the side.

Suddenly, the door to the med ward was kicked open and accompanied by a really loud, "Fossil delivery, bitches!"

So Dahlia was back.

She strode up to their little group, Tria right behind her, and plopped her fossil down next to Leon and Roland's. Then, she dusted her hands off and crossed her arms. "There ya're!"

"So Nibbles doesn't die and Jura doesn't have a mental breakdown," Tria added, grinning, "as funny as that would be."

"Thanks," Jura said flatly.

He turned back to the fossils and felt a huge jolt of terror hit his chest. That second one they'd added was definitely not the right type, the vertebrae were all different. His hands started shaking a bit and he hoped and prayed his eyes were just tricking him somehow because gosh darn it he really wanted Nibbles to be okay.

Yamamoto finally got back from delivering that eel and immediately noticed those two fossils on the bed. "Awesome, you guys found them!" He walked over and examined them, face falling and letting Jura know that yeah, they definitely weren't the same species.

"Who collected this one?" Yamamoto said, pointing at Dahlia and Tria's.

Dahlia got all smug and said in a very tone deaf way, "That's all us, man."

"Th-this is the wrong species!" he continued, and Dahlia gave him the most confused look Jura had ever seen.

"The hell're you talking about? It looks like the damn picture you showed us!"

"It totally does," Tria chimed in with a little glare.

Yamamoto sighed. "It resembles an ancient eel but this is an ancient croonger, guys."

"I can't believe Nibbles is gonna die because you guys are idiots," Jura grumbled and Tria immediately stuck her tongue out at him.

Penny pat him on the shoulder. "He's not gonna die, Jura, two out of three should still help him a little bit, right?"

"That's true, but his recovery will be much sketchier," Yamamoto said, pushing his glasses up. Jura felt himself deflate at that comment.

There was a collective silence for a few seconds. Everyone was just kinda bummed after all that, except maybe Tria. Yamamoto hauled off the next fossil to get revived and people started to disperse. Roland and Penny headed off for an actual assignment, and Dahlia peaced out to do her morning jobs in Europe even though she definitely wasn't going to do them.

"Well, I gotta get back, me'n Becks got shit to do before the park closes," Leon said slowly, glancing off to the side when Jura looked at him. "Hope your little pain in the ass pulls through."

"Thanks, Leon," Jura said automatically. He was too busy processing Nibbles maybe dying to actually listen.

He could hear Leon trudge off and then, seconds later, say, "Nate, what the fuck?"

Oh so now Nate was here, geez oh Pete. Jura wasn't particularly in the mood to hear him complain about Nibbles, so he turned around to yell at him and froze when he noticed he was holding a fossil.

Nate seemed a little embarrassed by the look he was getting. "I, uh, heard Nibbles was sick."

"Yep," Jura said, not entirely sure how to respond.

"I mean, obviously I don't like him, but I don't want him to die," he said, taking a few steps closer.

Jura laughed really vaguely. "Well, uh, I appreciate it."

"What's this about Nibbles dying?" Yamamoto said, sticking his head into the room. His eyes lit up upon seeing the eel fossil Nate was holding. "Oh, fantastic! Let's get that revived!"

Finally Jura managed to take a breath and not feel like his lungs were collapsing.

Alright I FINALLY updated again! This wasn't actually as long of a wait as you think (I said this last chapter bear with me lol) bc I actually went back and finished making updates to chapters all the way up to chapter 20. So like, obv I'm not forcing anyone to reread my entire fic ha ha, these are mostly for new readers (what new readers tho lol) so the reading experience is more consistent with how I ACTUALLY write now. But like I did throw in some dumb little bits of info (mostly with chapters with Sean lol) so if you want some bonus content it's there

I'm hoping the next few chapters will go faster bc I'm at the part I have So Many ideas for, so look forward to that! On the other hand, I'm hitting the crazy part of my semester so we'll see what happens ha ha. I'm hoping for fast updates tho!

Anyways I appreciate you guys a lot, thanks for sticking with me this long ha ha. Maybe throw a review my way if you're feeling it, I like hearing from you guys ;)