Jura was a big fan of masked fossil battles, he wasn't at all embarrassed about it, it was just dumb fun. He thought everyone involved in that whole process was super cool and deserved all the fame they got from it. That being said, the thought of being out in front of thousands of people in something that was gonna be highly publicized for sure was really freaking him out. Masked fossil battles were awesome, yeah, but not when he was in them.

At the very least, the constant stress of his stupid job was making having panic attacks a little harder. So, instead of just having a meltdown, Jura was just very frustrated and a little scared the entire time Sean was giving him the lowdown for the next day.

They ended up meeting in Sean's office the next morning, though it didn't feel like the morning because Jura was on Asia's time still and it was pretty close to when he was supposed to go to bed there. There was a very basic plan figured out already, but it wasn't anything past 'show up and win' so some additional discussion was needed.

"It ain't a big deal," Sean said, patting Jura on the back. "No one's gonna, like, even give a shit about ya'."

"Yeah, everyone's gonna be watching Sean," Becky added, "I've done stuff like this with him before, no one's ever talked to me afterwards."

Jura squinted at her. "That doesn't seem right, though? Like, tabloids are a thing."

Sean laughed. "Bro, you're 16 and a dude, the only thing tabloids, like, care about are chicks that hang out with me."

"So Becky, then?" Jura said flatly, mildly surprised when he saw how horrified Sean looked.

"Fuck, Becks, you're not, like, a minor anymore!" he said, running a hand through his hair.

Becky just sighed. "Well there you go, Jura, everyone's gonna be too busy asking if I'm banging Sean to stare at you."

For some really weird reason, that actually did make Jura feel better.

"Yeah, no, that ain't catchin' on,'' Sean said really fast. He looked like his soul was draining out of his body. "I'm just tellin' everyone you're my sis, I ain't, like, riskin' ship content."

Jura shrugged. "I mean, that's fair, but also what the hell are we doing today?"

"Right, right, you got anxiety." Sean rubbed his hands together and immediately moved on from that weird life crisis. "Just show up and fight like normal, dude, like, leave the flashy shit to me'n Arse."

That made sense, that made sense. Sean and Becky seemed calm about all this and that was a good point. Realistically, yeah, it was just a normal fossil battle tournament, he'd been in a million of those. This would be better, actually, because no one would be focused on him.

Finally, Jura took a long, slow breath. "Alright, I guess that sounds okay."

Becky blinked. "Wait, really? That fast?"

Ouch. Jura just laughed awkwardly. "Yeah, I mean, like you guys said, no one's gonna be watching me."

"Exactly!" Sean beamed. He shot Jura a thumbs up and added, "So, like, we good to go?"

"Yyyeah, I think so," he managed after a few seconds.

Sean lightly smacked him on the shoulder. "Hell yeah, dude! Get goin', then!"

Jura felt his gut wrench up a bit from that. He still had a right to be freaked out, gosh darn it. "Right, yeah, we'll, uh, we'll meet you there."

He glanced down at Nibbles, who reassuringly rubbed against his leg, then back up to Becky. "Yep, uh, let's go."

She vaguely waved at Sean. "Yep! See ya' there!"

Once again, Jura was on edge wading through the giant crowd in the fossil stadium. He thought last night there were a crap ton of people for Dino Gigante but holy crap, yeah, no. This was way closer to the crazy claustrophobic situations he'd envisioned tournaments to be like, so this sucked a lot. He kept telling himself no one was gonna care about him with Sean and Becky there but god it wasn't working. There were a ton of people, it seemed like someone would care.

He tried to shut his brain off despite the massive crowd overwhelming all of his senses and focused on just keeping up with Becky. She was walking pretty fast through all those people, which now made sense with the b-list celebrity family member but was still annoying. He hoped Nibbles was keeping up alright because if he checked he'd probably lose Becky.

When they finally emerged in the back room for the tournament, Jura found himself gasping for air. Thankfully, Nibbles had kept up and was happy to rub on his legs to cheer him up. He bent over and pet his vivosaur's head for a few seconds.

"Well, uh, now what?" Jura said slowly. He looked around the room for something to focus on other than Becky but unfortunately the most interesting thing was a table with some water bottles on it.

Room temperature water, gross.

"Now we just wait for Sean to get here." She shrugged. "Could be a little while, who knows with the crowds."

"Oh yeah, he has to actually interact with them." Jura laughed at the end of that sentence but he wasn't exactly sure why. "Just based on that alone I could never do this stuff."

Becky grinned. "Yeah, I get that. Sean's crazy extroverted, which is basically necessary to handle a billion people being stupid about you. Like, I'm extroverted and these crowds-" she vaguely gestured towards the door "-drive me insane. Sean just loves people."

"Someone has to, I guess," Jura said, which made her laugh. He rubbed one of his arms and looked over at those warm bottles of water again.

A sudden increase in volume right outside the room made Jura look towards the entryway. In came Sean with his mask on and Arsen, his nychus, trotting along beside him. Both of them seemed pretty confident, which was definitely a welcome presence for Jura's anxiety-ridden brain. He sort of sighed and smiled weakly in Sean's direction.

"Greetings, comrades!" Sean grinned, crossing his arms. His tone and general vibe seemed a lot different now, so apparently he really did need to get in character.

"Hey," Jura said.

"Ready to go win this tournament?" Becky added.

Sean shot her a thumbs up. "'Course! With the three of us on a team, we can't lose!"

Wow he sounded cheesy as hell. That was the primary audience of children talking, Jura knew, but holy crap he forgot how much of that talk he tuned out while he was watching masked fossil battles. He hoped he'd be able to not lose his mind listening to Sean's crappy one-liners.

"Right," Jura finally settled on saying. "So how many rounds is this tournament, again?"

Becky pat him on the back. "Two rounds, then we fight Dino Gigante."

"Easy money!" Sean said, throwing an arm over Jura's shoulders despite being way shorter than him. "We'll blow away the competition with our wondrous teamwork!"

Becky laughed. "Alright, get out of here with that goofy teamwork stuff."

He grinned and ruffled the top of her head and Jura stood there and just felt really out of place for like ten seconds. Then Nibbles did some of his weird bark sounds and drew him out of that weird mental state.

Arsen's crest flashed upwards in response to Nibbles' sounds and he moved closer to the smaller vivosaur. Nibbles backed up behind Jura's legs as the raptor leaned towards him, sniffing occasionally. Just as Nibbles started to growl, Sean grabbed Arsen by the back of his neck and pulled him away with a surprising amount of restraint.

"Chill out, buddy, he's not as socialized as you are," Sean said with a smile. He pat his nychus on the back a couple times, which made him snort. "Anyways, let us go onwards to face Dino Gigante together, friends!"

Holy crap. Jura squeezed his eyes shut and just nodded. He could kind of, sort of, see where Tria was coming from now with the kid thing. However, he wasn't gonna give in to her crappy attitude that easily, and gosh darn it they really needed that cosmonium. Time to be an adult even if he wasn't one.

Then there it was, the announcer was giving the intro to the tournament. Jura stared over at the speaker automatically. They were giving Dino Gigante's intro first, which made sense. He was the reigning champ, after all, and anyways you just didn't do a return debut before someone else's intro, they'd get absolutely no attention.

Jura could feel his chest knotting up in anticipation as the faint sound of the crowds cheering leaked in from the stadium. He was jolted out of his fear trance when Sean's hand clasped his shoulder.

"Before we go out there," he said with a grin, "add me as a Paleo Pal."

Jura blinked. "Why?"

Sean shook him playfully. "I only fight alongside friends, obviously!"

So it had to be in the most literal form of that saying, apparently. Jura pulled out his Warden license. "Yeah, alright, fair enough," he said.

A few taps later, which was a lot faster than Jura expected given Sean's previous attempts at using technology, he was Pals with Sean. He didn't really have time to say thanks or process that at all, though, because all of a sudden Sean perked up and said, "We're on!"

Jura panicked and froze immediately, "W-what?"

"Don't think about it, just start walking," Becky said quickly. She grabbed his wrist and started dragging him towards some doors that Sean was already headed down.

It took a few seconds, but Jura started walking on his own. "Wait, um, we're not going out in buggies?"

Becky laughed a couple times. "We're not doing real masked fossil battles right now, but this still has to resemble them."

"I guess," Jura said, rubbing his arm. That was gonna make it even easier for people to stare at him.

They finally walked out into the light of the stadium and Jura squinted in response to it. He noticed almost immediately that Arsen's personality had changed quite a bit. The previously hyperactive and friendly nychus trotted next to his fighter with a stern look and his crest down, which gave him a surprisingly fierce appearance.

Dino Gigante was standing on the other side of the field, his arms crossed and his styraco, who Jura knew from assorted types of media was named Vicente, standing behind him. They were quite the intimidating pair even if styraco was on the smaller side for a ceratopsian.

They had to wait a few minutes for the crowd to get the screaming out of their system, then Dino Gigante raised one of his hands to signal for silence. As the crowd gradually went quiet, he pulled a microphone out of nowhere and said, "Well, well, well, looks like you showed your face after all, amigo! While your return is certainly grand, you have quite a ways to go before you may battle Dino Gigante!"

Sean laughed. "My old friend, your tournament will be a breeze for me and my associates! After all, the Flying Smile Kid is a true warrior of justice!"

Jura was really glad his slowly onsetting panic was overshadowing this cheesy dialogue because otherwise he would've been scared and annoyed.

"Is that so, amigo?" Dino's mask covered his entire face but Jura was getting the feeling he was smirking under it. "Well, let's hope your teammates mustn't carry you through these battles!"

A glimpse of light caught Jura's attention and he looked up to see dino gears flashing to life overhead. He yelped as three vivosaurs came crashing down in front of them, only realizing a few moments later that no one else was surprised. He looked back over towards Dino Gigante and saw the masked fighter had stepped back and three other fighters now stood behind the three vivosaurs.

The tournament was starting now, okay.

Arsen wasted no time jogging into the field, his head held high, and Bentley flickered out seconds later. Jura suddenly felt super embarrassed about not noticing the cue to fight and yelled to his vivosaur, "l-let's go, Nibbles!"

His tiny vivosaur ran next to his teammates and glowed up into his much larger, horned-nose form. Seeing his partner ready to fight put Jura at ease long enough to breath and look over their opponents. A sucho, amargo, and u-raptor stood before them, the sucho being the largest vivosaur of the three. As a water element, it also posed the biggest threat to their team with two fire vivosaurs.

Jura gulped and decided to look over at Sean with the hope that his confidence would rub off on him.

He was trying to stay lowkey and in-character, which was important given this was his first public appearance in three years. Despite all that, Sean was definitely rusty at these sorts of performances because it was really obvious, to Jura at least, that he was absolutely ecstatic to be there. He dramatically pointed at the amargo and said in a restrained sort of way, "Arsen, cusp 'em!"

The nychus took off running, his head lowering slightly as he charged towards the red sauropod. He jumped when he was within range of the amargo, his jaws snapping shut around its elongated neck. As the larger vivosaur groaned, Arsen used his momentum to vault off of it into a backflip. He was trying to be flashy, but unfortunately it opened him up to the amargo swinging its head back and jabbing him with the spines on its neck. Arsen managed to twist off these spines without too much trouble, which allowed him to fall to the ground and land on his feet in a relatively graceful manner.

All his fancy footing was immediately disrupted by the opposing u-raptor spatting out a fireball at Bentley, who grunted as it seared his side. The big allo shook himself a few times similar to a dog as cinders scattered around his feet. Jura gulped at the sight and turned to Nibbles.

"Get the, uh, the amargo with a saurus tackle!" he called to his vivosaur, who snorted and scraped a foot across the ground. Nibbles charged the amargo, swinging his head up and catching the base of its neck with his horn. The sauropod staggered backwards, its smaller size allowing it to land on all fours before Nibbles could move out of the way. It pushed off the ground and slammed its head into Nibbles' chin and he stumbled around and struggled not to fall over backwards.

Jura scratched the back of his neck. "Oh, wow, that backfired."

"Don't worry, we'll get 'em!" Becky grinned, "Finish it off, Bentley!"

Bentley's head slammed into the amargo's side, his momentum knocking it off its feet and shoving it into a slow collapse onto its side. The sauropod groaned as it crashed to the ground and flashed away into its gear, leaving Bentley to snort and trot away with his head held high.

Finally, it was the sucho's turn that Jura'd been super worried about. He stared at the crocodilian vivosaur in horror as it snarled, took a step towards Nibbles, and proceeded to crouch down as a faint glow rippled down its body. And then that was it.

So it just used a charging move. Still a little scary, but not as bad as he'd been expecting.

Sean shot Jura a thumbs up with one of his bright grins. "Don't worry about the sucho too much, I got one, they ain't too scary."

"Uhhh, right," Jura mumbled as he rubbed his arm.

He just got laughed at as Sean gave him a light shove. "Ah, you'll get used to it," Sean said, turning back to his vivosaur, "Give 'em a root canal, Arsen!"

Somehow, his nychus knew whatever that meant and took off in a pretty fast run towards the u-raptor. The opposing raptor was about twice the size of Arsen, so when it started to move out of the way Arsen easily outsped it, turned, and leapt at it feet-first. His crest flashed upwards as he collided with the u-raptor's side and his sickle claws locked into its skin.

The force of his impact bowled over the u-raptor, leaving Arsen to ride its body down and then roll off of it. His nails dug into the ground so, as he slid to a stop, he was in a slightly crouched position with his crest up and his tail feathers fanned out in a very picturesque way. It was definitely a flashy pose on purpose.

Jura laughed just a little bit through his nervous haze. "Nice," he said mostly to himself.

The u-raptor clambered up to its feet not much later, its gaze shifting over to Nibbles who was still struggling to get his balance. U-raptor was not a particularly fast vivosaur thanks to its large size, but it didn't need to be when it ran at a basically stationary Nibbles. It jumped and kicked his chest, its claws slicing through Nibbles' scales as he was thrown backwards and crashed down on his back. He flashed down to his usual tiny form as the u-raptor landed on its feet and let out a satisfied snort.

Nibbles struggled to stand back up but Jura scooped him up and carried him back over to their teammates. "Ow," said the small vivosaur, shifting around so he was more comfortable in Jura's arms.

"Rest up, buddy, we've got a couple battles to go," Jura said, drawing a sigh from Nibbles. He hoped his vivosaur would last through this alright, it might be a little embarrassing if he overworked Nibbles just doing three consecutive fights.

"Alright. Bentley!" Becky said, snapping Jura out of his thoughts. He looked up to see her allo throwing the u-raptor, which crashed against the ground and flashed into its gear. That felt good to watch happen, at least.

Arsen had been scrabbling with the sucho, apparently, as his feathers were all scuffed up on one side and the sucho was still bearing down on him. Without any needed instruction, the nychus leapt at the much larger vivosaur and landed on its head. His sickle claws slashed all over its face as he tried to hit an eye, but the sucho shook him off and spun around, slapping Arsen with its tail and launching him.

His arms seemingly flailed for a few seconds and then all of a sudden Arsen righted himself midair and landed with relative ease. His nails scraped the ground and left some decent grooves in the dusty field and he finally slid to a stop next to Sean. He fluffed up his feathers and did a full-body shake.

It was pretty impressive that Arsen could take such a powerful hit from a vivosaur with not only an elemental advantage, but a charged up attack stat. Jura figured it was probably because he was trained for real competitive battles, not just Warden skirmishes, but it was still pretty impressive.

The sucho turned to pursue Arsen, but was interrupted by Bentley's feet slamming into its ribcage and smashing it against the field. It shrieked under Bentley's weight and flickered into its gear, which the allo kicked away with his toe before lumbering back over to Becky.

"Nice job, Bent!" Sean said, smacking the allo's leg as he went by. Bentley snorted in response and lowered his head so Becky could scratch his nose.

Jura glanced over to Arsen, surprised to see he was preening his feathers in a very casual fashion. His teeth were working through his breast feathers with ease, making him look a little goofy with his chest puffed up so high. It was kind of weird, Jura thought, how relaxed both of them were. They must've been very used to this sort of routine.

Sean tapped a water bottle against Jura's shoulder. He wasn't exactly sure where he'd been keeping that. "He thirsty?" Sean said, gesturing towards Nibbles with the bottle.

Nibbles answered by opening his mouth and saying to Jura, "Yeah! Yeah!"

"Oh, uh, for sure," Jura laughed awkwardly. Sean grinned and poured some water into Nibbles' mouth. "I don't think I've, uh, ever thought about getting them water before."

Sean shrugged. "It's endurance stuff. We're not doing sh-" he paused and cleared his throat "-anything, really, so we have to do something to help."

"I guess that makes sense," Jura said, his voice sort of trailing off as he watched Sean pour water on Arsen's head. The nychus switched between tilting his head up to drink and just letting the water run down his feathers.

Looking to his right, Jura saw Becky was also giving Bentley water and just felt like an idiot. Sure they were tournament regulars, but geez it seemed like common sense in hindsight. He awkwardly pat Nibbles on the head and hoped neither of them were judging him for missing the memo on bringing water.

After a couple minutes of chilling, very clearly to give their vivosaurs a moment to rest, their next three opponents walked out brandishing dino gears. Sean perked up upon seeing those fighters and gave Arsen a gentle tap with his boot, which made the nychus look forward, put his crest down, and trot back out to the battlefield.

And, of course, Sean went back to his little performance. "My glorious return won't be interrupted by you fiends!" he said, flashing his bright grin. "We have the power of proper dental hygiene on our side, after all!"

Jura had to try super hard not to laugh at that.

Some brief trash-talking ensued and then their opponents sent out a cerato, a peltas, and a penta. They were all rather small vivosaurs with the penta being the largest of the three, so that made Jura feel a little better about sending Nibbles out against them. His battle form was much larger than all three of those vivosaurs, after all.

Nibbles sighed and jumped out of Jura's arms, his body glowing and shifting into its larger form as he walked up beside Arsen. He looked tired, and they still had two more fights to go. Jura smiled and gave him a weak thumbs up hoping it would improve his morale, which just got a frustrated snort out of Nibbles.

"Nuke that cerato, Arsen!" Sean said. Arsen stood up straighter, took a step backwards, and spat out a fireball that splat against the cerato's head. It hissed and shook its head around, scattering ashes into the air.

The cerato, which was only slightly larger than Arsen, growled and charged the raptor in retaliation. It bore down on Arsen without much difficulty, given that nychus was more of an ambush predator by nature, and snapped its long fangs into his neck. While not much larger, the cerato was able to whip its head with enough force to tear through some of Arsen's skin and send him staggering to the side, blood staining his white feathers.

Time to be helpful. "Get the cerato with a, uh, saurus tail!" Jura said, pointing at the small theropod with a shaky hand.

Nibbles flared his nostrils and jogged to Arsen's aid. It took him a few seconds to get up to speed and then he was sliding to a stop and whipping his tail around to smack the cerato and send it flying. Its body crashed to the ground but it managed to pull itself back up after a few seconds, albeit in a labored manner.

Off to the side, the peltas crouched down as a silvery sheen flashed over its body. It suddenly looked slightly metallic, so that was probably a sign it's defense was increasing, awesome.

"Nice one," Becky said, giving Jura a friendly pat on the shoulder, "now go finish it off, Bentley!"

A rumble echoed from the allo's throat as he ran towards the cerato, who struggled to move out of the way thanks to its injuries. Bentley jumped and smashed his feet directly on top of the cerato's back, effectively crushing it into its gear.

Bentley was immediately rewarded by a blast of energy from the penta which knocked him sideways. He was sturdy enough that he didn't fall over, but he did stumble around for a few seconds until he regained balance.

"Arsen, smack em' back, partner!" Sean said, triggering his vivosaur to scamper through Nibbles' legs and towards the penta.

The nychus got into a pretty good trot and jumped at the penta, his feet slamming into its face and landing so he wouldn't get impaled by its horns. That sort of elicited a nostalgia feeling in Jura, seeing as back in the day Arsen was pretty well-known for attacking vivosaurs in just that sort of way. There was a reason he had scars all over his legs, and it was super cool to get to see that in person.

The penta threw Arsen off after a little bit, but he just did a backflip and landed on his feet with ease. He was, however, taken off guard by the peltas. It charged at him the second he hit the ground and slammed its back against his side, and thanks to its massive weight the hit knocked him over bodily.

"Oh wow," Jura said, cringing slightly as Arsen pushed himself back up. He wanted to be helpful, especially because Sean and Becky were more experienced with this sort of battle, so he looked over at that scary penta and said, "Let's, uh, get the penta with a saurus tail, Nibbles!"

Nibbles turned towards the penta, who really wasn't that far away from him, and took a couple heavy steps forward. Then, tensing up his left leg, he spun around and whipped his tail across the penta's face, throwing it into a semicircle. The penta, however, recovered pretty fast and took off in a trot after Arsen. It took one big bound and slammed its horns down on the nychus, which somehow still didn't knock him out.

Arsen getting beat on so hard and staying up was starting to make Jura feel like he did a really crappy job training his vivos.

Thankfully, the battle wasn't over yet so he didn't have a ton of time to dwell on that. "Drop kick the peltas!" Becky said, redirecting his thought process a bit.

Bentley once again did a running leap, his feet crashing down on the peltas' back. What Jura wasn't expecting for the vivosaur to disappear under Bentley after only one attack. The allo snorted and turned towards the penta rather casually despite just KOing it's opponent in one shot.

"Excellent work, compadre!" Sean beamed. With one vivosaur left on the opponent's side, he turned to the penta and added, "Show 'em your pearly whites, Arsen!"

Arsen fluffed his feathers up and did a quick full-body shake before sprinting at the much larger vivosaur. Given the size of the penta, it couldn't get going to avoid Arsen biting its leg and yanking his head back to adequately rip through its skin. The penta groaned and shook Arsen off, but the nychus still had enough energy to jump up and bite the side of the penta's neck.

Surprised, the penta let out a very deep yelp and started trying to shake Arsen off. His serrated fangs aided in keeping him latched on, which only made the ceratopsian more enraged the longer Arsen continued his grip. In its panic, the penta blasted a burst of neutral energy from its horn that, by complete accident, clipped the side of Bentley's head.

As Bentley lowered his head to rub the seared skin with a hand, Jura realized the penta was adequately freaked out and probably easy to hit. He was getting a bit better at picking up on openings now, which was pretty important given the whole Dino Gigante thing. So, he cleared his throat to make sure his voice didn't crack and said, "Saurus tackle, Nibbles!"

Nibbles growled and scraped his foot on the ground a couple times for dramatic effect, then took off running with his head lowered and his horn aimed straight for the penta. Said penta didn't seem to realize what was happening until Arsen kicked off its side and bolted off, leaving it open for Nibbles' horn to hook underneath the penta's own horns and throw it backwards. As it crashed to the ground, Nibbles' nails sunk into the ground, a reddish glow overtaking his body. The light migrated towards the horn and moved up it, changing into sparks of energy that crackled off it in random bursts. Then, a flash of lightning burst off the tip of his horn and zapped the penta.

A deep rumble left its throat as it tried to pull itself back up to its feet, electricity surging through its body. Then, its legs gave out and the penta crashed to the ground, its body flickering away into its gear. Nibbles shook away the remaining sparks from his horn, lifted his head up, and beamed at his KO.

Jura jumped slightly when a warm burst of excitement went off in his chest. It was a welcome break to how nervous he'd been feeling. "Great job, bud!" he said to his vivosaur, who lumbered back over to him and butted his head gently against him.

Unfortunately, his enjoyment was short-lived, because after Nibbles lifted his head back up Jura could very clearly see Dino Gigante standing in the place of those three fighters they'd just beat up without too much trouble. He stared at him, feeling that cold panic wash back over him and make his chest clench, and then sighed.

Even when Tria wasn't there, he wasn't allowed to have fun for very long.

OH my gosh, finally updated, sorry for the delay guys! I really wanted to update multiple times over my break but instead I got Extremely Depressed, lived in a constant state of anxiety for weeks on end, and am now on meds! :') But I'm feeling a lot better now and motivated all over again, so hopefully I can get back to more regular updates!

I am back in college now so naturally updates aren't gonna be CRAZY often, but I've got a smaller class load this semester so we'll see? Only have to attend classes 3 days a week, so more time to write if I'm responsible with my homework ha ha. Anyways, thanks for reading guys, again sorry about the like what three month wait, I'll be trying to update at least within a month ha ha

(Adding the phrase fossil fighters frontier so this actually comes up when searched)