Tria was trying her best to exude confidence as she rode up the elevator with Mei Lian. She was always confident, obviously, but she wanted it to be tangible so Liu Ren was more likely to notice. How dare they assume she wasn't as helpful as Jura, she could do stuff just as well as him.
The door slid open and there was Liu Ren. He was doing something on his desk and started to turn towards them once he heard the door moving.
"Ah, Mei Lian, I see you've got-" He came to a full stop when his gaze rested on Tria "-one of the twins."
Mei Lian shifted her feet. "Yeah, apparently Jura's helping out in America right now."
"I see," Liu Ren said, and Tria huffed.
"You don't need his help, I'm way better at fights'n shit!" she said, crossing her arms smugly.
Liu Ren took a deep breath. "Yes, um, I'm sure you are."
Wow they weren't even being that subtle, Tria was kind of impressed.
"Well, you're here to help, so you can help," he continued, crossing his arms behind his back, "I have a general idea about where we can find some cosmonium, but I'll need some assistance with retrieving it."
Tria grinned. "Hell yeah, I can kick someone's ass for ya."
"Me too!" Mei Lian said, her grumpy attitude vanishing almost immediately.
"Thank you," Liu Ren said, but he didn't sound very enthusiastic. "Hopefully we won't be fighting anything, but just in case, make sure you're ready before we leave."
"Oooo, that's vague," Tria said, only half-joking. "Why're you being vague, dude? Are we doing something illegal?"
Liu Ren just sighed. "No, we're not doing anything illegal. We're going to a location in Lantern Lake that I would prefer be kept secret."
"Sounds sketch," she said, then aimed some finger guns at him, "I'm in."
"Good," Liu Ren said. He seemed mildly annoyed with her reasoning, but he wasn't saying anything so Tria could vibe with that. "We'll meet at the waterfall in Lantern Lake, then."
"Sounds good, dude," Tria said. She then just turned and walked over to the elevator because hey, he'd said everything she needed to know. And he wasn't telling her not to do that, so she was probably fine.
As soon as she stepped into the elevator Mei Lian slid in next to her. It was very sudden and deliberate and she was staring at her with her usual hyperactive look so Tria was hoping that meant she was over Jura not being there. The door slid shut, they started moving down, and Mei Lian immediately said, "So what's Jura doing over in America?"
Goddammit.
"He wanted to go see some wrestler dude over there," Tria said, rolling her eyes. "I don't really get it myself, it's like kiddie shit."
"You mean masked fighter stuff?" Mei Lian said and Tria felt like she was gonna vomit. Why did so many people know what that was?
She just kinda scoffed. "Yeah. That."
Mei Lian tried to casually look off to the side. "Soooo he went over to America to go see a famous guy, then?"
Tria shrugged. "Yep."
"Not to avoid anyone?"
"No one but me," Tria said with a smirk. Mei Lian just laughed awkwardly.
"Okay, alright, good to know."
Tria gave her a weird look, mildly confused, and then just shrugged it off. Mei Lian was a bizarre kid, she was gonna ask totally out of nowhere questions like that and have weird responses. Plus Tria was dumb as hell so she honestly couldn't do much better.
"'Kay, whatevs," Tria said as the door slid open. She stepped out, Mei Lian still keeping pace with her, and decided that she might as well pry a little bit since she was there. "So where the hell's your dad taking us?"
The younger teen blinked. "We're going out to the waterfall, remember?"
Tria rolled her eyes. "No, dipshit, like what's at the waterfall? What's he need us for there?"
"I dunno," Mei Lian shrugged, making Tria groan mentally. "I mean, he's just super secretive sometimes. But like, we'll find out in like 10 minutes?"
She just whined. "But I wanna know nowwwww."
"Well I don't know anymore than you do!"
Tria stuck her tongue out at her. "Whatever, dude. Guess we have to actually hurry if you can't tell me what Liu Ren's being all weird about."
Also she was getting bored, not that she'd say that to Mei Lian because she was actually insane and might kill her. Or start crying, both were equally possible. So, without warning, Tria just took off running towards the garage and assumed Mei Lian was fine to catch up. She probably was, and anyways she wasn't stupid, they'd all end up together later.
Like ten minutes later, Tria was headed out to Lantern Lake buzzing with excitement. She wasn't in the mood to drive a normal speed out to Liu Ren, especially because Jura wasn't there, so she just floored it the whole way there. A couple rogue vivosaurs dived out of her path, so she thought Dahlia would be proud of her. Most of the drive was through water, though, so it was just a bunch of not being able to see with occasional vivosaur screams. Still fun.
She arrived at the waterfall pretty quickly and was absolutely pumped to drive under it. In all honesty, she'd wanted to go under it before but Jura threw a fit about it and it never happened. But here she was now, no impulse control present, permission granted by a higher up; today her dreams were coming true.
So, feeling absolutely giddy, Tria eased under the pouring wall of water and broke out laughing at the thunderous reverberation it made in her buggy. It was so loud, it was so loud. She couldn't even hear herself laughing. After a solid minute of hearing nothing but the roar of all that water smacking against the roof of her vehicle, Tria figured she'd gotten all the enjoyment she could out of that and finished driving all the way through.
To her surprise, Liu Ren's buggy was already there just chilling. She'd beat him to the garage by a longshot, there was no feasible way he could've got there first. But, unlike Jura, she didn't really give a shit about the logical reasoning behind that and just pulled up next to him like nothing weird was going on.
She'd barely come to a stop before Mei Lian's buggy came screeching in next to her, so clearly ditching her had been a totally fine plan. Then the monitor flashed on and Tria squeezed her eyes shut as Mei Lian yelled, "Okay, I'm here! I made it!"
"Good job," Tria said.
"Right," Liu Ren said, seemingly unphased by his daughter's yelling. He was probably used to it, though. "Now, I'm sure you're both wondering why I brought you here."
"Yep," Tria said, staring in front of her. There was just a whole bunch of rock, although granted it was a whole bunch of rock sort of curved inwards.
"This is actually a secret entrance," he continued, leaving Tria to blink a few times, extremely confused. She couldn't even see where a door would be. It was cool, but mostly confusing.
Of course Mei Lian was hyped about it. "Oooo! So what's behind it, huh?"
Liu Ren gave them a knowing smirk. "Well, why don't you look for yourself?"
He said something in Chinese, waited a little bit, then said it again. Nothing was happening. Tria was just feeling more and more confused by the minute. After a few more tries of whatever the hell he was saying, Liu Ren just laughed and said something else. And with that phrase, whatever it meant, there was a rumbling and a rock-on-rock scraping sound and then the wall in front of them shifted backwards and slowly slid to the side.
Seated behind the still-moving door was a large, open cavern with a shallow pool of water. As the wall got further out of the way, an extremely large jade statue came into view. Its coiled body was in the shape of an Eastern dragon, which seemed way more lifelike than any carved jade statue Tria had ever seen before. Then again, by her own admission, Tria was white as hell and probably shouldn't've been weighing in on what was considered an ordinary jade statue in China. She kept her mouth shut. About the statue, anyways.
"Oh shit," she said automatically.
The door finally clunked into place, leaving the entryway wide-open for them to drive through. Liu Ren went in first and they quickly followed behind him. Tria was getting kind of excited now, this was super mysterious.
"This place is so cool!" Mei Lian said, her eyes all bright and cheery, "Like, what's up with that dragon statue? It's awesome!"
Liu Ren chuckled softly. "Impressive, is it not?"
As they drove through the small amount of water and arrived at the base of the statue, Tria finally realized how absolutely massive it was. It had to be at least 50 feet tall, it towered way over their heads. Something about it was so imposing, other than the sheer size of it. It just had a certain vibe.
"It's of an Earth Dragon, by the way," Liu Ren added a moment later. Tria didn't know what the hell that meant, but it sounded cool so she was down.
They sat there a little longer, still mildly in awe of the giant statue. Then, finally, Tria said, "So why're we here, again?"
"Look at its jewel," Liu Ren said, sounding a lot more serious all of a sudden. Tria's gaze shifted to the four-taloned paw-foot-thing clasping a large, greenish orb. It was kind of sick. "See how it glitters? I'm fairly certain that it is cosmonium."
"Oh, yeah! It looks like Jura's trophy!" Mei Lian said, which made Tria attempt to remember what hers had looked like. It probably was similar, she'd been too busy thinking about hanging with Dahlia to actually pay attention to the trophy she'd won.
Tria shrugged. "Could be."
Liu Ren pulled out some weird little metal thing. "I'll use the cosmonium detector from Prof. Little," he said while poking around on the device. A few moments later, it started beeping really loudly and really obnoxiously. "Just as I thought, it's cosmonium!"
Oh. That hadn't been all that eventful, Tria was a little disappointed. She was expecting some grand adventure the way Liu Ren was being all cryptic about everything. So, being the mature teen that she was, she crossed her arms and slid down in her seat and glared at nothing.
"Whatever," Tria said, trying to sound as grumpy as possible, "just grab that shit'n let's get back."
"It's not quite that simple," Liu Ren said, which vaguely piqued Tria's interest again. She was a fickle being, her feelings about anything were usually anything but concrete.
"You see," he continued, sounding slightly nervous, "this Earth Dragon isn't just a statue. It's been imbued with powerful magic, which has granted it sentience."
There was a pause. "You're shitting me, right?" Tria said, narrowing her eyes.
He had the audacity to be mildly offended that she didn't believe him after saying something so wild. "No, I know it-" he stopped mid-sentence and cleared his throat "-I mean, I've done extensive research on this statue and its history, it is alive."
Mei Lian jumped in almost immediately after that. "Yeah, Tria! He knows what he's talking about!"
"Alright, geez, the statue's fuckin' alive," Tria grumbled. It would generally be more fun if there was a giant dragon involved in this adventure anyways, so she'd let it slide for now. "What're we doin' about that?"
Liu Ren shifted back to his usual serious persona as soon as she said that. "Well, according to my research, I think we should be able to take the jewel as long as we replace it. However-"
Oh shit, this was what Tria was waiting for.
"-there's also a chance the Earth Dragon will awaken filled with a furious rage. Which would be bad, and is why I brought you two along."
"This thing better fuckin' wake up, then!" Tria grinned, getting that disappointed sigh she was expecting from Liu Ren.
"No, no, we don't want that," he said, exasperated. "This needs to go as smoothly as possible, we don't have time to waste fighting a dragon while Blackraven is wreaking havoc."
The responsible defense, Tria's worst enemy. She just grumbled out a 'yeah, whatever' and sat there and watched, hoping for the worst, while Liu Ren started messing around with some controls on his buggy. After a few moments, a claw-thing extended from his vehicle that caught Tria's attention. Did her buggy have that? Could she pick up vivosaurs for funsies with that?
The claw grasped the gem with a surprising amount of restraint for a machine and gently pulled it from the grasp of the statue. There was a slight crackling noise accompanied by the dislodging of the orb, but other than that nothing seemed to be damaged on the dragon's hand. The claw retracted, disappeared into a compartment, and then came back out with an orange gem of a similar size to the original one. This orb was shoved into the dragon's talons and, against all laws of physics, stayed in place as the mechanical claw released it. So anyways there was definitely some magic shit going on.
A few seconds passed with nothing happening. Tria assumed that was it, but Liu Ren spoke up before she could complain about how lame everything had turned out.
"We'll have to wait a few minutes to see the dragon's reaction," he said, making Tria roll her eyes. Of course they had to wait, nothing was fast when you were a stupid Warden. "In the meantime, I'll tell you about some of the history behind this statue."
"Yayyy, history lesson," Tria mumbled.
Mei Lian glared at her for a second, then went back to being all cheery again. "I bet it's super interesting, right Dad?"
"I think it's interesting," Liu Ren said in a slightly defensive tone. Tria rolled her eyes. Yeah she wasn't listening to whatever he said.
So, as Liu Ren started rambling on about war and sages and magic and whatnot, Tria stared at the dragon statue and hoped it would start moving or something. Something cool had to happen, her life had been absolute insanity lately and it really needed to keep that up. She liked the excitement, even if no one else did.
Just as he was finishing up his boring story, which was now focused on polishing that gem they'd removed, Tria noticed that the claws on the replacement orb were moving. At least, she thought they were. And then the ground started shaking and cracks spread up the sides of the statue and hell yes this was happening.
Liu Ren flinched. "Ah. Well, it seems our friend doesn't like his new prize."
And then the jade statue exploded.
In its wake, a massive, twisting dragon hovered in the air. Its underside resembled brown rock which seemed to shed sand with each movement of its long body. The rest of it glowed a green-blue color which illuminated the cave they were in. Despite being enraged by the change in orbs, the dragon was still clutching the replacement in its talons.
"Fuck yeah!" Tria cheered, immediately looking through her monitor for a vivosaur to use.
Mei Lian, despite being on her dad's side through most of this, seemed just as excited. "Let's kick its ass!"
"We don't really have a choice at this point," Liu Ren said, chuckling a little at the end. "Let's put him back to sleep!"
In the face of an absolutely massive mythical creature, Mei Lian sent out her tiny little v-raptor, Jiao-long, and Liu Ren sent out his tarbo, who was better but not that much better. So, Tria decided to be tactical for once and sent out Morton, who was basically just the biggest vivo she had since he was a sauropod.
Almost as soon as she'd done that, her focus immediately shifted back to Liu Ren's tarbo because wow it looked weird. She had a tarbo, and Racer was pretty much how most all of them looked. But here was Liu Ren's tarbo with a lot more golden plumes and a feathery beard, it kind of reminded her of the dragon they were fighting, in a way.
"Get em, Jiao-long!"
And they were fighting now so the tarbo thing didn't matter, hell yeah.
Mei Lian's tiny v-raptor tore across the ground towards the Earth Dragon. He leapt at it and snapped his small jaws shut around one of its arms, making the dragon roar and shake him off. As Jiao-long tumbled to the ground and started to get back up, the dragon did a loop in the air and swiped his massive tail at him.
With a startled yelp, Jiao-long was whipped across the room and crashed into the pool of water surrounding them. He chattered angrily as he stood up and shook his wet feathers off.
"He took that pretty good, huh," Tria mused aloud.
"'Course he did! Me'n him are unstoppable!" Mei Lian cheered. It took every tiny bit of restraint in Tria's brain to keep from making a joke about her getting stabbed.
Liu Ren was up next. "Tail bash, Yinglong!" he said to his tarbo in a much calmer voice than Tria was expecting.
The extra-feathery tarbo snorted before charging at the Earth Dragon, who turned its head towards the much smaller reptile. Yinglong jumped into the air with a surprising amount of ease and did a flip that ended with his tail smashing into the Earth Dragon's side.
The massive dragon roared in pain as it's body was slammed against the ground. Cracks spread along its rocky underside where it had been hit, implying that yeah, to a certain extent that dragon was just made of earth. Yinglong trotted away from the Earth Dragon as it slowly picked itself back up.
"Damn, nice hit," Tria said plainly. She looked to Morton and thought about how she wanted to hit it that hard. Best way to do that was to beef up. "Yo, Morton, let's go for Titan's Spirit."
She could just about feel him sigh, which was kind of funny. Her titano crouched slightly, a slight glow overtaking his body. Then, with a grunt, he shook himself off similar to a dog and straightened back up. Next turn they were shattering that stupid dragon into a million pieces.
In the meantime, Jiao-long was back to throwing himself with reckless abandon at something like 50 times his size. Tria hadn't seen him even jump at the Earth Dragon, but there he was, scratching up its face as the creature swung its head around. His talons were scraping every part of it they could before the dragon whipped its head downwards and finally managed to dislodge the tiny raptor.
Jiao-long righted himself in the air and landed on his feet. So, when the Earth Dragon tried to sweep him up with its tail again, the raptor easily jumped over the attack. With a sharp snarl, the dragon looped its tail back around and lashed it back and forth behind it.
"Awesome, Jiao-long!" Mei Lian yelled to her vivosaur, who fluffed up his feathers affectionately.
Liu Ren chuckled slightly at the v-raptor, then directed his tarbo back after the Earth Dragon. "Another tail bash, Yinglong!"
Yinglong circled the dragon briefly, the feathers on his back raised up. The Earth Dragon seemed aware of its smaller opponent, but for whatever reason was unwilling to move out of the way as the tarbo once again ran towards it. Maybe it was the cracks to its underside, maybe it was just freaking tired because it'd been actually alive for less than 10 minutes. Whatever the reason, Yinglong did another one of his probably impossible flips and nailed the dragon upside the head with his tail.
Chunks of rock clattered to the ground as the Earth Dragon's face crumbled. The newly exposed parts were made almost entirely of an orange glow, which Tria didn't understand in the slightest. Nothing about this fight made sense, actually, so why was she questioning it now?
She shrugged it off and yelled to her vivosaur, "Fuck it up, Morton!"
Thankfully, Morton was already in range of the Earth Dragon due in part to it being so huge. So, her sauropod shifted his weight onto one of his front feet and, thanks to the boost from Titan's Spirit, pivoted with a surprising amount of power. Morton's tail cleaved through the Earth Dragon, smashing the rock and causing the underside of about half its body to crumble to the ground. Where the stone disconnected from the creature, its body became weirdly blurry and translucent.
As the Earth Dragon let out pained rumbles, its body beginning to writhe in a similar fashion to an injured snake, Mei Lian shouted to Jiao-long, "Alright, finish it off with a somersault kick!"
At that exact moment, Jiao-long's ridiculously small stature actually paid off. He weaved with ease through the Earth Dragon's flailing coils and jumped up on its still-rocky neck. His claws scrabbled on stone as he made his way up to the head, taken advantage of a sudden bending of the dragon's neck to leap and slam talons first into its chin.
The added burst of momentum threw the Earth Dragon's head backwards. In its heavily weakened state, the dragon could do little to catch itself, and it's body collapsed to the ground head first. Jiao-long, looking very proud of himself, trotted off of the fallen beast's body.
As soon as the Earth Dragon had stopped moving, the door to Liu Ren's buggy opened and he hopped out. Tria stared as he walked up to the dragon, his tarbo flanking him as they got closer and closer to the creature's head. She saw Mei Lian had also gotten out, which yeah that checked out, she had to follow her dad in case the opportunity arose to show off.
Not wanting to be left out, Tria exited her buggy and casually strolled up to her two companions. As she got closer, she could hear Liu Ren talking in Chinese again, although now that she was thinking about it, Chinese wasn't actually the name of the language people from China spoke was it. Oh well.
Just as she got about 20 feet away from them, the Earth Dragon started moving again. It was very slow and snake-like, so Tria just opted to stand still until it stopped. Gradually, the dragon picked itself back up, opting to coil up like a snake to prop itself up in front of Liu Ren. It was staring right at him for a while, its large, glowing eyes looking him up and down and even flicking over to his tarbo. Then, the Earth Dragon exhaled through its nose and lifted its head up while a weird light spread across its body.
And then it was a jade statue again.
Tria finished walking up to Liu Ren and Mei Lian and, when she was sure she was in earshot, said, "Well, that happened."
"Yes, thankfully that went well," Liu Ren said with a slight smile. "The Earth Dragon has accepted his new gem. Hopefully he will regenerate in his slumber quickly so he can continue to protect this continent."
Oh she'd missed that when she zoned out during the history lesson, whatever.
They all just kind of stood there for a moment staring at the statue processing that they'd just fought a dragon. Then, Liu Ren took a deep breath and said, "Good work today, Mei Lian," and he awkwardly pat her on the back.
Mei Lian looked absolutely ecstatic. She had a big grin and bright eyes and was just, in general, speechlessly happy. This was one of the reasons Tria was happy she wasn't needy because she never had to worry about looking stupid over a compliment.
While his daughter was busy imploding, Liu Ren looked over at Tria and gave her the vaguest hint of a smile. She was proud to find out that, even when she was trying to be helpful, she was still super annoying, because even he was having trouble staying positive with her. Hell yeah.
"Thank you for your help today, Tria," he said slowly, like he had to really think about it. "Feel free to visit this cave and look for fossils whenever you want, just don't disturb the statue."
That caught her attention. "Why, will it wake up'n attack me?" she said with kind of a smirk. Liu Ren sighed.
"No, but as the protector of this land, the Earth Dragon deserves some respect."
Oh, lame.
"Yeah, alright, fine," Tria grumbled. She put her hands on her hips and stared at the statue a little longer. "Well, I guess we better get back with that cosmonium."
"Yes, we should," Liu Ren said. He paused and added, "As thanks for your help, you can add me as a Paleo Pal."
Tria shrugged. "Yeah, okay. Thanks, I guess."
They headed back to their buggies and, as Tria got situated and ready to drive off, she noticed that somehow Liu Ren was already on her Pal list. Which was weird, because she hadn't accepted his friend request on there, huh. Guess that was another thing she was gonna have to ask somehow to teach her how to do.
Alright got another update done finally, next one is def coming after Thanksgiving just as a heads up! I got too much College Stuff going on these last two weeks of the semester to have time to write for funsies stuff. After that I'll be on break for like two months so expect more updates and stuff then!
Also just to clarify this rn, Mei Lian got her vivos when she was like 8 so both of them are named after Yinglong bc she wanted to be cool and match her dad lol, that's why we got so many longs running around ha ha