The whole ordeal with Nibbles had been super over dramatic and annoying and Tria was ready to get back to chilling with her friends without judgement from Jura. Everything turned out alright, it always did, and yeah Nibbles was gonna be in the hospital for like a week to recover from the virus, but he wasn't dead. And anyways, they had that mini meeting with Stryker to hear about whatever the hell that evil guy was up to, so Jura should've been wasting his energy on that instead.

He was still all shaky the morning they were heading up to go see Stryker, which was pretty funny. It was probably the lack of his emotional support vivosaur that had him all messed up. Tria was definitely glad she didn't need someone to make her feel normal, because that would really put a damper on all her solo wandering.

"Dude, stop being such a pussy," Tria said, elbowing her brother a couple times while they stood in the elevator, "we talk to Stryker all the damn time, it's not a big deal."

"Yes it is," he hissed back, pushing her away from him. All it managed to do was crack Tria up. "He's an important guy, you should treat him like it."

"No thanks," she said, and then the elevator door slid open and she was very proud to have the last word in that argument.

Stryker was sitting behind his desk and he seemed pretty happy to see the two of them, which is why Tria wasn't at all nervous during these meetings. He liked them, he wouldn't care about them saying weird things as long as they weren't too weird.

With a grin, Tria strode out of the elevator, and Jura followed behind her. If he wasn't so much taller than he he'd probably just hide behind her the entire meeting, actually, which was kinda funny to think about.

"Eyyo," Tria said, barely waving her hand.

"Glad you two could make it," Stryker said, which was just more proof that he didn't give a shit about how they acted, "we've gotten more information on Dr. Blackraven's current plan."

"Hell yeah," she said casually, and Jura glared at her for a second.

He cleared his throat and stood up a little straighter. "Uh, w-what'd you guys find out?"

"Professor, why don't you explain it?"

Goddammit. Why couldn't Stryker do it? He could explain it like a normal, Tria-intelligence person.

Prof. Little, always excited by the opportunity to talk, had his eyes light up. "Of course!" he said, straightening his weird little bow tie. "Essentially, we performed a thorough investigation of Dr. Blackraven's cell in San Freezin."

What the fuck, Tria thought to herself, what the actual hell was that name.

He continued. "We did a basic visual examination of the cell and found nothing. However-" he leaned forward a little bit, like he was expecting them to be excited. Tria really wasn't "-when we did an infrared scan of the cell, we found extremely complex equations on just about every surface."

"Huh," Tria said, and Jura gave her an incredulous look.

"Huh? Just huh to that?" he said, putting his arms out. It took him a couple seconds to realize she was grinning at him because he'd just had that outburst in front of Stryker, and then he froze and slunk back to his original position beside her.

She smacked his arm lightly. "Not everyone's a big baby like you."

Stryker looked a little concerned, but he didn't actually say anything to them. Again, there was literally no reason to be all nervous around him, he wasn't doing shit. Little, however, didn't seem to care that they'd interrupted at all and just picked up where he left off.

"Anyways, by working through all the equations, I've deduced that Dr. Blackraven was working on a theory for time travel."

Tria laughed. "That's so stupid, what the hell? Five years in jail and that's what he's going with, alright buddy."

"This is Dr. Blackraven, he's surely planning something awful," Stryker said, clearly trying to convince her this was serious business. Tria just rolled her eyes.

"Seems like if it worked we wouldn't even be talking about this, right?" she said, and no one answered immediately so she knew she was right.

Prof. Little actually seemed intrigued by what she'd said, so that was a bad sign for her. "Well, no one really knows how time travel works, no one's done it before. Some theorize changes in the past result in alternate timelines instead of changes in the future, however-"

"Alright shut the hell up," Tria said, putting her hands on her hips, "I'll be serious, okay? Just don't get all philosophical with me."

"Tria that doesn't mean anything close to what you think it does," Jura said, further increasing her frustration.

So, she did the next best thing she could think of to keep things moving. "Fine, okay, Blackraven wants to time travel, what else?"

"Right," Prof. Little said as he rubbed his hands together, "to time travel, he needs to make a time gate, and to make a time gate, he needs a massive amount of energy and the extremely rare outer space metal cosmonium."

"Hence the mega electromonite fossil and the trophies," Stryker finished, still managing to look grim despite all the weird crap Tria was doing.

Jura took a deep breath. "Wow. That's, um, a lot. So what, exactly, are we doing about it?"

"He has to activate the time gate at places where there's an existing warble in the time-space continuum," Little said. He took a piece of paper off his clipboard and set it down on Stryker's desk so everyone could look at it. Tria decided she wasn't gonna question science jargon anymore to get her through the damn meeting finally.

On the paper was a basic map of the world with little spots circled on it. There were a lot in the Americas, like a lot. Prof. Little then pointed at America and said, "As you can see, there are a lot of warbles in America, and they've got the smallest staff out of everyone."

And there was their assignment.

"So we're just helpin' Sean out?" Tria said, glancing up at Stryker. He nodded.

"Yep, head over to America and help them investigate wherever they send you."

"That ain't bad," Tria said. She paused to look up at Jura, who just seemed tired. "Right? Not bad."

He shrugged. "Yep, not bad."

Stryker grinned. "Excellent, head over there as soon as you can!"

Tria did a mini salute because why the heck not and then dragged Jura over to the elevator.

It was around 7 at night when they made it to America. Thank god it wasn't like midnight or something, watching Sean and Becky be exhausted was more sad than anything. Instead, everyone was just hungry from working through like two meals looking for warbles, so they got grumpy Wardens instead of tired ones. Leon was also there, so he was like 10 times grumpier than usual.

"They gave Asia, like, three fuckin' new Wardens from the last group a' newbies and, like, who'd we get?" Sean said, leaning way too far back in his chair. "Just, like, this asshole."

"Right?" Leon said, completely serious. "We're all workin' our asses off over here and Asia's got Wardens comin' outta their ears."

Tria puffed her chest out. "You got us now!"

Leon scoffed. "You guys're basically one person helpin' here, it ain't doing much."

"We do, like, appreciate ya', though," Sean said, shooting a finger gun at her and Jura. "But yeah, one person ain't, like, cuttin' it today."

He sighed really loud and sat back up, his chair legs smacking against the floor. "Anyways, whatevs, let's, like, get you guys doin' some shit."

It was then time for the painful moment of watching Sean try to remember where he was supposed to send them. He glared at the paper on his desk which also had that map with circles on it and looked both lost and extremely frustrated about it. Finally, he just smacked his desk lightly and got his phone out.

"Fuck me from two hours ago," he grumbled as he tapped around on his phone for a second.

Leon looked over at the twins and said without a hint of sarcasm, "Yeah, he does this a lot."

"How the hell is he in charge here?" Jura whispered once Sean started talking to whoever he called.

"Becks does everything," Leon said, shrugging.

"-Yeah obviously I didn't, like, mark shit off, Becks, I'm dumb as hell."

"Geez," Jura said flatly.

Tria just laughed. "Yikes, dude."

Finally, after like five minutes of listening to Sean lowkey argue with Becky over the phone, he just randomly pointed at them and said, "Starry Falls, yeah! Go, like, snoop around there." He paused and added, "Thanks, Becks!" and then immediately hung up.

"So we're checking out Starry Falls? Like, together?" Leon said, side-eying Jura and Tria.

"Yep," Sean said, very deliberately pulling a pen out of a drawer and crossing out some of the warbles on the map. "And don't, like, be a little bitch about it, dude."

Leon rolled his eyes. "Yeah, whatever, Chief."

Sean tapped the pen against the side of his head a few times. "Oh, yeah. You see any trippy shit, you gotta call for backup. No throwin' hands with shady dudes. Cool?" He shot them one of his ridiculously nice smiles and, before anyone could respond, said, "Cool."

"This better not take long, I had plans for tonight, dammit," Leon grumbled as he climbed up into his buggy.

"What plans're those?" Tria said, leaning out her window, "sitting in your room alone?"

Leon snorted. "Ha ha, very funny. I had a date, dipshit."

Jura, from the passenger seat, straight up laughed. He leaned over Tria and said with more confidence than she thought possible, "Yeah, sure, 'a date'."

"You guys're hilarious," he replied flatly as he got buckled in.

"Real talk, dude," Tria said, grinning, "who agreed to go out with you?"

He smirked at her. "None a' your business."

"Wow, okay."

Leon then rolled his window up, which was kind of a power move. It annoyed Tria more than anything, though. She flopped back in her seat and crossed her arms. "He's so lame."

"Yeah," Jura said, and then very slowly added, "why are we still here?"

Ah, shit, she was hoping he wouldn't ask.

"We're uh, waitin' for Daisy," she said, trying her best to sound like she didn't care that he was about to yell at her.

He narrowed his eyes. "Daisy? She's eleven, Tria, we can't bring her to deal with the BR Brigade!"

She was really glad he worded it that way. "Technically," she said, smirking a little, "we're not supposed to fight the BR Brigade, we're supposed to call for backup."

"Tria, shut the hell up, you know you're just doing this to piss me off," Jura said, sighing and looking forward again.

"She was super helpful the last time we went out with her!" Tria said, trying really hard not to crack up. Not because Daisy wasn't helpful, but because this would technically be the second time she'd help them with something BR Brigade related. "We're just, uhhhhh, helping her get Warden experience."

It was at that moment Tria heard someone say, "Sorry I took so long, y'all!" and she had to suppress the laughs even more.

"Hey, kid," she said, leaning back out the window. Daisy was just standing there looking all innocent and excited.

"Thanks fer bringin' me along!" she said, eyes bright, "I'll try ta help y'all out the best I can!"

Tria smiled. "Hell yeah, dude. Just don't, like, fight anyone we don't fight, we're just supposed to be recon."

"That's right!" Jura added from next to her kind of desperately.

"Can do!" Daisy said, and she ran off to her buggy.

Jura let out one long, loud sigh. "You suck, Tria."

"Hell yeah, I do."

Starry Falls was super nice, it was warm even though it was the middle of the night. Tria could dig that, she liked having her window down when she was driving. Apparently it was always dark in Starry Falls, hence why there was a warble, but also Tria didn't really care.

The only downside to it being dark was they had to drive through pretty deep undergrowth with their headlights on, which was more difficult than anticipated. And it wasn't like the spot they were headed to was close to the entrance, nope, it was just about as deep as you could go in the dig site, so they just struggled for like an hour through plants and water.

After what felt like years but was actually an hour, they popped out at a clearing and Leon immediately slammed on his breaks. "Hold up, guys."

"What's up?" Tria said, barely interested. She'd had enough of pitch black, boring driving for one day.

"Those buggies look sketch to anyone else?" he said, and Tria blinked like ten times because how the hell did he see three buggies with their headlights off when it was this dark out.

"Now that I know they're there, yeah, they look sketchy as hell," Tria said, squinting. She could just barely make out the shape of one buggy, let alone three.

Jura elbowed her and gave her a little glare. "We're calling for backup, remember?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I know, Leon's calling. Right, dude?"

There wasn't an immediate answer, which wasn't a great sign. The only sound coming in response was button mashing, and then Leon yelling, "Son of a bitch!"

"Oh boy," Tria said flatly.

"What's, uh, what's going on, man," Jura said. His voice was shaking, which was super funny.

Leon grumbled something under his breath, hit a few more buttons, and then said, "They're jammin' my damn radio."

"Well that's not good," Tria said, barely phased.

"Guess we got no choice now, we gotta beat their heads in," Leon said, but he didn't sound too upset by the idea of that.

Jura huffed. "We're not fighting anyone! We can totally bring Daisy!" he said sarcastically, and Tria just stuck her tongue out at him.

"Ah'll be fine, pard!" Daisy said, suddenly reminding everyone that she could hear everything they were saying.

Tria, who didn't particularly care that she could hear them, said, "Hell yeah, dude, she's fine."

"I hate you so much," Jura muttered and once again, Tria just smirked.

"Alright, it's fine, the kid's fine, let's kick their asses," Leon said sharply.

He drove into the clearing like immediately after that, so Tria just floored it to purposefully smack Jura against his seat. After he whined, she went back down to a normal speed and pulled up beside Leon, who was already yelling at the shady guys. "What're you dirtbags doin' out here?"

"Ah, shit, it's the fuzz!" One of the shady guys yelled over the radio. Clearly he didn't know they could hear him.

"We can't let 'em get to Dr. Blackraven!" another one chimed in, and before anyone could react they were shooting out dino gears.

An angato, ampelo, and giganto materialized in the clearing. The angato looked tiny next to the massive ampelo and giganto, which were approximately the same size. Each of them had some slight discoloration to them, though, which marked them as dark energy tainted. The angato had some black spots down its sides and part of its sail had been stained a pink-purple color. The ampelo's bright body was interrupted by some black streaks in its white striping, and the giganto has a few spots where its green was splotched with black.

"Hey," Tria said as she started sifting through vivosaurs to send out, "since we're chillin' together again, wanna go with Racer?"

Jura blinked a couple times. "Uh, sure, I guess."

"Hell yeah!"

Racer burst onto the field, the large tarbo shaking his feathery pelt as he stretched his legs a little bit. It'd been a hot second since they'd used him, no wonder he was tense. Leon's ptera, Scout, flashed out beside him, followed closely by Daisy's hypsi, Annabel.

"I still can't believe you brought her," Jura grumbled, and Tria just smacked his arm in response.

Daisy was up first, which was kinda funny just because she was 11 and there. Her hypsi looked absolutely pathetic next to all the much larger vivosaurs, excluding Leon's ptera but he was flying, but it still seemed ready to roll.

"Vaultin' upper on the, uh, giganto!" she said to Annabel, who took off in the massive carnivore's direction.

The tiny hypsi jumped with all her might and smacked bodily into the giganto's chin. Its head flew backwards and Annabel flopped back down to the ground, pausing to shake herself off before sprinting away from the upright giganto. On her way out, the angato snapped its jaws around her tail and chucked her a good 20 feet. While Annabel scrambled back up, Scout was on the move.

"Flyin' peck on that giganto!" Leon said, and Scout shrieked and dove.

He jammed his beak against the giganto's head, further throwing it off-balance and dealing a bit of damage. Then, the ptera circled back around, his momentum still going strong from his speedster ability. Leon called out another attack for him.

"And middle spear the angato!"

Scout dove once more, his wings tucking against his body to speed up his descent. The angato didn't have much time to dodge, and subsequently had its side grazed by Scout's beak. He flew back out of range of the angato as fast as he'd dive-bombed it, leaving it standing there with a nice gash in its side.

With such an aggressive start on their behalf, everyone was a little tense once the ampelo's turn hit. The sauropod knelt down and tensed up, it's body briefly enveloping with a whitish glow. Then, after a couple seconds of that, it stood back up and the glow dissipated. Tria squinted, looked down at the battle monitor, and saw that it'd just boosted its defense. "Okay, sure, bud," she said, shrugging. Wouldn't've been her first choice.

Now it was their turn, and Tria was seeing that the giganto was in range of an attack from Racer. She grinned and leaned out her window. "Racer, fuck up that giganto, dude!'

The tarbo rumbled and charged the larger theropod while Tria spammed the attack up button because she wanted that thing to die. Unfortunately for them, their opponents hit the giganto with an LP recovery, and Racer's jaws clamping around its neck and shaking it around didn't send it back into its gear. In fact, the giganto wriggled out of Racer's grip and threw its head back, letting out a roar that shook the ground.

Tria covered up her ears as the soundwave blasted everyone, leaving Racer to stagger away shaking his head. Scout was knocked out of the air and got disoriented enough that he was having trouble getting off the ground, and Annabel was now running in small circles. The opponent's vivosaurs weren't much better off, with the angato also getting knocked into a bad stance and the ampelo now confused and teetering around a bit.

"Geez oh Pete," Tria muttered.

Leon also seemed pretty pissed. "God, that's annoying," he said, glaring at the giganto.

The giganto then ran at Scout and spun around, hitting the ptera with its tail and throwing him back into the air. With a bit of flailing, Scout managed to keep himself airborne, but he still appeared pretty sore from getting nailed like that. Leon just sighed and smacked his face against his steering wheel.

"Screw this gorgo, god," he muttered.

Daisy looked nervous about going now with her vivosaur confused and moving around weird. She rubbed her arm as she said, "Err, try another vaultin' upper on the giganto."

Annabel vaguely looked up towards her fighter, then ran at the opponents. However, as she got closer to the giganto, she swerved to the left and threw herself into the side of the ampelo. It let out a surprised groan and staggered to the side, which was actually pretty impressive. Annabel rolled over its back and flopped to the ground. She slowly picked herself back up and trotted away from the ampelo.

"I, uh, guess that werked out?" Daisy said hesitantly.

Unfortunately, with her guard down like that, the angato once again took advantage of the situation and snapped its maw around Annabel's entire body. She let out a little squeak as the much larger vivosaur shook her around and threw her against the ground. It took a couple seconds for her to get back up, and at this point it was almost surprising she could keep going after all this.

"She sure is resilient, huh?" Tria said, a slight laugh to her voice.

"Durn right!" Daisy chimed in. She was more at ease now, so that was good. They hadn't completely scared the crap out of a kid yet.

Leon grinned. "We got 'em on the ropes now for sure," he said, crossing his arms all smug, "Scout, get that ampelo with a flyin' peck!"

Despite the confusion, Scout flew right at that ampelo and pecked it on the head a few times. Then, flapping his wings super hard, the ptera pulled away from the sauropod and got lined up for a second attack. Two speedsters in one battle? Hell yeah.

"And finish it off with a middle spear!"

Scout's wings folded in and he dropped, his beak driving straight into the ampelo's chest. He basically impaled the ampelo, which forced it to flash down into its gear as he blasted through the area it had been before. His body rolled around in the air a few times and he was circling over the battlefield to join his teammates.

"Nice one, dude," Tria said casually. She looked at the angato, which didn't resist Racer's attacks, and decided she wanted to nuke that thing. "Yo, Racer, hit it with a hammer down!"

The feathers on Racer's spine stood up as he shot towards the angato. He slid to a stop next to it as he reared up, and before it could get out of the way, threw his head down, blasting wind from his mouth. The force of the attack slammed the angato into the ground, and it let out a pained cry as it vanished into its gear. Racer straightened back up, snorted, and then lumbered away from the giganto.

"Hell yeah, good hit, Racer!" Tria yelled out to him, to which he flicked his tail.

Now alone, the giganto had a bunch of fp and was looking real mad. It huffed and ran at Scout, one of the vivosaurs which it had an elemental advantage over, flames licking its fangs. The ptera tried to fly out of the way but was snagged on the wing, yanked backwards, and chomped on a few times. Scout shrieked as he was chewed on and the giganto didn't seem to be letting go any time soon, so things were starting to get stressful.

"Shoot! Annabel, get in there'n help him out!" Daisy said, and her confused hypsi stumbled towards the giganto.

She started pecking the substantially larger vivosaur's foot, which didn't attract its attention until some weird blue energy suddenly shot out of the spot she was hitting and made the giganto let out a startled cry. This gave Scout just enough time to pull himself out of its jaws and take flight. The giganto kicked Annabel away and lunged at Scout, going for the same attack it caught it with before. With a few powerful flaps, Scout just barely managed to fly far enough ahead of the jaws snapping shut behind it. He was bleeding from quite a few places but was still able to battle.

"Thanks, kid," Leon said, sounding nice for once in his life, "Now hit 'em with a chaos twister!"

Scout swooped down towards the ground and shot up in a spiral in front of the giganto. The resulting gust of wind knocked into the much larger vivosaur and pushed it back, swirling around its head and disorienting it. Racer, catching on to the swing of things, ran in and swept the giganto's legs out from under it with his tail. With a weird surprised rumble, the giganto crashed to the ground on its side and Annabel hopped on top of it. Before it even had a chance to get up, she started pecking its side, and then the bluish flash zapped the giganto and it popped down into its gear.

Tria smacked her hands together. "Alright, freakin' finally! Good job team."

Their vivosaurs headed back to their respective fighters, definitely in need of a rest before whatever else came their way. At that point, it kinda seemed like they were gonna have to fight some high-ranking members in the near future, so healing was important.

Leon smirked as the BR Brigade goons drove off in some random direction. "We're fuckin' rockin' these perps!"

"Um, now what?" Jura said, and Leon laughed one time.

"We gotta keep goin', obviously! Blackraven's up ahead, we don't got time to pull a u-ie now!"

Jura wasn't fast enough with his response, so Tria just started driving again. "Yep, gotta stop these guys, bro."

He muttered something angry but he didn't say it loud enough for Tria to hear it, so she counted that as a net win. They made it around the curve before it occurred to her that it wasn't just them and Leon out here, despite the fact that Daisy had just helped them in that last battle.

"You good, kid?" Tria said, and she saw Daisy jump a little bit from the monitor.

"Uh, y-yeah, ah'm doing fine!" she said, and Tria just took her word for it because she didn't really feel like asking any further.

"Sick."

The road straightened out and all of a sudden, there were three more buggies coming from the opposite direction. Tria just sighed. Fighting through multiple waves of lackeys was gonna be tedious as hell.

"Damn, more a' these goons?" Leon said, mirroring her sentiment. "Guess it's just part'a the job."

Tria got ready to send Racer back out, only to hear a motor revving behind her. She stuck her head out the window to see what she assumed was gonna be more buggies closing her in, but instead it was some grey-blue buggy zipping by her. The buggy turned left hard and slammed into the three in front of them, which messed up the three buggies more than the one that crashed into them.

"Oh what the hell," Tria said.

The newcomer patched in over their radio, and Jura flinched when he saw the dude's face. "Keep moving, you three!" the guys said, and Jura started blinking really fast.

"Okay, who are you, exactly?" he said, and Tria just stared at him. How the hell did he vaguely know this guy? She could tell by his tone he did.

"Nevermind!" mystery guy yelled, his eyes wild. "Go stop Blackraven! He'll corrupt the space-time continuum!"

Yeah she didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Tria looked between the guy's face on the screen and Jura's and then, after a few seconds, said, "What the actual fuck is going on right now?"

The random guy waved at them. "Good luck!" he said, and then he floored it out of there. The three buggies he'd hit shot after him and left their little group speechless.

"Uh," Leon said after a few seconds, "I guess I owe that guy a soda? He did seem kinda nuts, though."

"I think he's fine," Jura said, but he seemed reluctant about that opinion. "Even if he's not, we're here for Blackraven, so let's do that."

Tria smacked his shoulder playfully. "Now you got it right!"

Bet you didn't think I could do it but it's here, a fast update boys! I'd LIKE to get one more done in the next week but we'll, uh, we'll see lol, I basically used all my free time left from this week to bang this out in two days and as stated last chapter, I got a ton of stuff due next week, soooooo yeah. But I'm enthusiastic!

Don't forget to leave a review ;) Thanks y'all!