"Elise? You alright, Baby?" Owen's question, along with his concerned tone, snapped Elise back to reality as she blinked several times to refocus herself before nodding. She merely hadn't been expecting to see the campers again after what felt like a lifetime. The white-scaled hybrid glanced at Owen as she slowly raised one of her hands and gently tapped one of her talons on the palm; she wanted to make sure she approached the campers the right way. Owen, recognizing this as the same gesture he'd used to encourage Elise to allow guests to touch her hand during her very first show, nodded in approval. With that, Elise carefully laid her left hand on the floor of the fake log whilst producing gentle and quiet sounds more befitting of a creature far smaller than her; the campers didn't know what to make of this, as while seeing the human-sized hand reach into the room they were in was unnerving, the uncharacteristically soft vocalizations made them feel considerably less tense. "Did she put her hand out for us to touch?" Brooklynn wondered aloud in confusion, not wanting to act too rashly, yet intrigued by what the Indominus was seeming to offer. "You got it." Owen confirmed, having deduced Elise was using the same strategy that had worked remarkably well during her first interaction with guests over a month beforehand.
With this response, Darius figured he and his friends were allowed to approach Elise, and despite his reservations, the young dino-enthusiast mustered up the courage to approach the extended hand. Elise, seeing the strategy was working just as it had for the much younger boy all those weeks prior, made a few additional soft croons to further put the adolescent at ease. Darius carefully placed his right hand on the most elongated talon and gently ran his hand down it, amazed at getting to see one of the hybrid theropod's most striking weapons closer than he ever thought possible. The other campers were completely taken aback at the sight before them: just a matter of feet away from them was arguably the most dangerous terrestrial predator to ever roam the planet, and here she was allowing Darius, who wasn't even a tenth of her size, to stroke her talons as she made vocalizations akin to something one would hear from the likes of a house cat, not an almost-50-feet-long carnivorous hybrid dinosaur. Is this really happening? Ben thought to himself in shock as he witnessed Elise seeming to relish Darius' interactions with her. I don't think anything as smart as chimps or dolphins gave me this sort of feeling! Kenji internally mused, feeling goosebumps running across his arms by what he was witnessing. Is this really the same thing that tried to slaughter us a few weeks ago? Yaz wondered, likewise baffled by what she was seeing. She glanced at Brooklynn and Sammy, who both returned the gaze with similarly dumbfounded expressions; none of them had seen this coming.
Darius, meanwhile, had found himself completely enthralled by Elise; there was something in the Indominus' piercing reddish-orange eyes which seemed to hint there was a bright mind at work inside this juggernaut of a dinosaur. It was as if Darius was interacting with an entirely different creature altogether, not the same one who'd repeatedly hunted the campers down with murderous intent over the course of one long day, and despite the arresting nature of this contrast, it made Darius, as well as Kenji, Brooklynn, and Yaz, feel more comfortable letting their guards down as they finally recognized Elise posed no danger to them. As such, Kenji was the next to approach Elise, kneeling before gently touching Elise's scaled hand and becoming enthralled as he ran his hand across the pale-white scales. Brooklynn and Yaz soon followed as well, having been reassured via Darius and Kenji's interactions that it was safe to physically interact with the massive Indominus rex.
While Elise felt a sense of satisfaction at having gotten through to these kids, she noticed there were two left whose body language and scents indicated they were still reserved/not fully engaged. In Ben's case, this was due to the timidness he still suffered from (even if he was doing far better compared to when he first arrived on Isla Nublar), while Sammy was withdrawn due to being tormented with guilt over deceiving her friends due to her being a (reluctant) spy for the unscrupulous Mantah Corp. While Elise had no way of knowing any of this, she knew just the thing to get Ben and Sammy's full attention; the Indominus carefully examined Sammy's top, noticing the flower pattern adorning it; a minute later, a rich shade of pink started bleeding into Elise's grayish-white scales. Just as Elise had hoped, this burst of color caught the attention of both Sammy and Ben, who became flabbergasted by the visual spectacle unfolding before them; the wave of pink started to take shape on multiple points of Elise's body, slowly forming into flower-like patterns, while underneath these 'flowers' the outline of tropical leaves began to emerge as a deep hue of green spread across the scales inside the outlines. By this point, the other four campers had taken notice of what was going on, watching in bewilderment as the Indominus' self-coloring continued until Elise had produced her own rendition of the flower-and-leaf pattern from Sammy's top on herself with extraordinary results; while not exactly 100% accurate to the source material, much of the hybrid theropod's body now bore green 'leaves' and vibrant pink 'flowers' in an extremely similar fashion to what Sammy wore. The adolescent human in question, after snapping out of her awe-inspired stupor, quickly realized where Elise must've gotten the inspiration from. An astonished Brooklynn was quick to wonder aloud, "Is it just me, or did the Indominus just recreate your top on herself?" "I… I think you hit the nail on the head", Sammy responded after a moment of processing what just happened.
As Brooklynn quickly snapped a picture of the newly re-colored I-rex, Owen, who'd been quietly observing the campers meeting Elise, found himself jolted out of his silent train of thought by someone calling his name. Turning his head, he found it was Yaz, who asked, "Are you the the one who managed to stop the Indominus during the mess last month?" "Yeah" Owen responded, though his voice as he said this was quite modest, as if the feat wasn't anything important. A shocked Yaz, after processing this mind-blowing information, then asked, "How were you able to get her to become like… this?", gesturing to Elise, who was being anything but harmful to the rest of the campers. The Navy veteran, had a moment of contemplation, before asking Elise, "Sunshine, you okay if I tell these kids about you and your sister when you were little?" Elise was intrigued by her human's question; in their past shows, Owen had simply communicated to guests details primarily about Elise herself; at this point, the only people who knew about Elise's past besides Owen, Claire, Barry, Lowery, and other Jurassic World staff were Zack and Gray Mitchell, and while Elise did like having a select few humans to confide in, she did recognize the value in telling Small One's story, as it could help in keeping her beloved sister's memory alive. With that, the Indominus raised one of her dexterous hands to knock on the invisible door. Upon seeing this, Brooklynn asked, "Did she just say, 'yes' in sign language?" A surprised Owen responded, "As a matter of fact, yeah"; he hadn't expected someone to recognize that Elise was signing. "If you don't mind me asking, how'd you guess that's what she was doing?" the raptor trainer and Indominus caretaker asked Brooklynn. "I've actually met a few deaf people for my vlog, so I've picked up a few signs", the pink-haired social media influencer revealed, much to the surprise of her friends. With that addressed, Owen began to recall the whirlwind of events that led to Elise finally getting the help and social support she'd desperately needed.