Disclaimer: I DO NOT own the Fossil Fighters video game series.
Author's Note: Sorry for my long-time-no-updating, my few fans. I'd go through thanks and everything, but I have six chaptes pending for you. Here they are, coming up.
Chapter 6: The Golden Mole Monster
"Hi, welcome to Ribular Town," a young woman said, walking up to Duna and Hunter. She was a strawberry blonde, and was wearing a green-blue uniform and golf hat. "My name is Stella, and I'm head of staff here on Ribular Island. Are you here to register for the Caliosteo Cup?"
"Uh, yeah," Hunter said, pealing his eyes off of a blue version of T-Rex Lord.
The woman nodded her understanding. "Head for the northernmost part of town square. You'll find the Fighter Station there. Talk to the receptionist on duty and she'll get you all registered."
She left without another word. Not even slightly panicked by the presence of the monsters.
"I don't understand," Hunter said, heading for the station with Duna. "She didn't even seem to notice, let alone care about those Elders."
"Most of these people probably still believe that there's nothing wrong with them," Duna reasoned. "They probably just think they've discovered some new super breeds or something. Like I said, the fossils they're revived from are pretty much just beefed up versions of the red fossils."
Just then, another boy about their age stepped in front of them, flipping a Dino Medal up in the air and grinning at Duna, not trying to hide it as he swept her body up and down with his eyes, freezing on her chest and legs. Hunter didn't pretend his jealousy.
"Hey, you two must be just entering the tournament," he said. "What are you two, siblings? What's your name, sweetheart?"
"Trinity," she said, "and this is my boyfriend, Hunter."
The philanderer turned his gaze to Hunter, raising an eyebrow. "Like, the Hunter, the Master Fossil Fighter from Vivosaur Island who's gone undefeated for five years straight?"
"That's me," Hunter said, an edge to his voice.
"Heh. Well, th' name's Phil. Phil Anderson. I'm a bit of champ where I come from myself. Hope to see you in the tourney, Hunter. Try not to get knocked out before I can knock you out myself, 'kay?"
He waltzed on, whistling as he went.
"What a douche bag," Hunter said.
"Don't worry, baby," Duna said, going full incognito since they'd earned the attention of some passersby. "He's not really my type."
She kissed him on the chin, taking his hand and leading the way to the station, Hunter dazed by how oddly erotic the display was.
FFAFFAFFA
"Okay, you're all signed up," the receptionist said after she registered the four friends.
"Thank you," Rosie said happily, taking her new ID, everyone else following suit.
"A staff member should be by soon to inform you on our various rules. Have a good day."
The four friends went over to sit down on the couches in the reception room, the lady at the desk announcing through a speaker that registration would be closing soon.
"Anyone else having a, 'Now what?' moment?" Holt asked, sitting on a love seat with Rosie across from Hunter, who sat in an armchair with Duna on his lap. He avoided her gaze as he realized what the intimate position was causing to happen with his intimate parts.
"More like a, 'How long until this guy gets here?' moment," Duna said.
The friends laughed, then laughed some more as a trio of kids about 14 rushed into the station, trying to get registered before registration was closed.
"Hey, Hunter," Rosie said. "Kind of reminds you of us back when we had our first level-up battle, doesn't it?"
He nodded his head. "You failed, like, three times on the cleaning test alone."
"Twice!" she corrected, but was unheard as her friends laughed. Hunter noticed a staff member coming their way.
"Hello, everyone," he said. "My name is John. I'll be teaching you various things today, including our park rules, how to have a proper Fossil Battle, and how to clean and revive a fossil."
"You can skip the last two parts," Hunter said, producing his T-Rex Dino Medal. T-Rex was easily the most difficult vivosaur to clean, and far from easy for any rookie fighter to handle.
"Oh," he said in astonishment. "I would assume you are amongst the few who have arrived to this tournament with any prior knowledge to vivosaurs then. I suppose that makes my job easier."
"So, what're the rules then?" Holt asked.
"Basic stuff, really," John said. "No fighting, cursing, or spitting, for the most part. However, in Fossil Battles we have a couple of unique rules. Instead of the usual way of determining which side goes first, which is usually given by disadvantage in the vivosaurs' LP or Rank, we instead determine the first move based on which team has the highest Speed sum. And, any of your medals may now be Ranked up to 20, instead of the usual cap of Rank 12, allowing growth room even for Master Fossil Fighters and allowing the extensive Caliosteo Cup to be filled with repeatedly improving Fossil Fighters. Your medals will also be reverted to Rank 1."
"That's not fair," Rosie muttered.
"That it then?" Duna asked.
"Well, I was supposed to give you four a freebie fossil rock to clean, but it was meant to be for your cleaning and revival lesson, and a medal for your Fossil Battle lesson. Ah, well, I suppose it would be unfair to leave you at any sort of disadvantage. Here, take your pick."
He laid out four medals and four fossil rocks on the table. The friends looked over the medals, shocked to not recognize any of them.
"I can see you're unfamiliar with some of Caliosteo Fossil Park's most unique vivosaurs," John said, seeming proud to have found something the teens didn't know. He picked up an air type medal, decorated with a green tyrannosaur with feathers. "This one here is an aerosteon, or Aeros. As you can see, it is an air type. Aeros is a close-range attack class vivosaur with abnormally high LP for its class and breed." He placed the medal down again and grabbed another one, a water type with a sauropod that had rows of pearls down its sides. "This here is a toba titanosaur, a popular vivosaur amongst our more fashionable fighters. Like most sauropod breeds, Toba fights from a distance with high Attack and LP." This time he grabbed a fire type with a red, four-legged version of a spinosaurus. "This here is definitely our most unique and difficult to use vivosaur, a dimetrodon, or Dimetro, for short. It's capable of moving quite fast despite its sluggishness, and though it is officially designated a weak vivosaur physically, it is exceptionally difficult to overpower." He picked up the last medal, an earth type parasaur with an almost unicorn-like horn extending from its forehead. "Last but certainly not least we have Tsintao, the tsintaosaurus. Though it hits relatively hard, this vivosaur's low LP and Defense make it best as a supportive vivosaur with adept healing skills."
"What's in the fossils?" Rosie asked.
"The station doesn't do appraisals," John said. "Apologies."
"Hmm, well, I pick these ones." Rosie grabbed Toba and the fossil rock closest to her.
"Any objections?" Holt said, grabbing Aeros and the next closest rock.
"Not really my style, but it'll work," Duna said, retrieving the Tsintao Dino Medal and one of the two fossil rocks before her.
"I know I'm a legend and all, but do you guys really think this is fair?" Hunter asked, retrieving the last medal and fossil rock.
"Now that you four all have your fossil rocks and starter vivosaurs, the cleaning room is through the door to the right of the reception desk," John said. He started to walk off, but stopped, remembering something. "Ah, yes, just to let you four know, those vivosaurs you've received are all red boned. It's not really important, but I figured you'd like to know." He continued on, oblivious to how important the red bones really were.
"Is it okay if we use Elders?" Hunter asked Duna, examining his new Dino Medal with fearful fascination.
"An Elder is an Elder," she said. "Though, red bones are only juveniles, and it's uncommon that their lifespan is long enough so that they might develop golden or even silver bones. If they do, though…we'll just have to wait and see."
"What's that guys?" Rosie asked.
"Nothing," Hunter said casually. He didn't like how good he was getting at lying. "We're just excited is all."
Rosie nodded her head in swift agreeance. "Hey, I'm dying to see what's in these fossil rocks. Why don't we go clean them?"
Duna shook her head. "I saw those kids from before go in there not long ago. They're probably rookies, so they'll probably take a while."
"Think again," Holt said, nodding his head towards the cleaning room. They were walking out the door, examining glistening new medals in their hands.
"They've got talent," Hunter noted. "Like, my kind of talent. Looks like my new rivals are little more than half my age."
"I thought I was your rival?" Holt said in feinted jealousy.
"If I strived to be better than just you, Holt, I'd lose to a three year-old," Hunter teased. "Come on, let's clean some fossils."
FFAFFAFFA
In the cleaning room, the friends took turns on two separate cleaning machines, the fact alone that there were two machines enough to leave the fighters awed.
Holt and Duna were the first two up to clean their fossils. Holt's turned out to be a gold boned Spinax, and Duna's a simple deltadromeus, or Delta. Duna and Hunter were left ill at ease, finding that the time to see how aggressive the newly revived Elders would be was surprisingly soon. Fortunately, it didn't take much convincing to decide they all revive their vivosaurs after everyone had cleaned their fossils.
Rosie and Hunter were next. Rosie came up with a silver boned maiasaura, or Maia, one of her favorite vivosaurs, and Hunter got a gold boned Tricera. The staff even held a tiny celebration for the find, disbelieving that two gold boned vivosaurs and one silver boned one being revived in one day.
Duna got to go first, the revival of her expertly cleaned Delta going off without a hitch. The lithe, indigo vivosaur was quick to befriend Duna. Her battle form was actually similar to that of deltadromeus, and hunter found that she got along well with them. Perhaps she was their ancestor?
Rosie came next. She already had a Maia, but she was excited to see what difference the silver bones would make. Her revival was also a success, and unlike her usual pink and white vivosaur, this one was dark green and black. Color negative of the normal vivosaur. Though it appeared quite intimidating, it seemed no different than any other Maia.
Holt came after, Hunter and Duna holding their breath as they knew that an Elder would come from the fossil. Unfortunately, for Holt anyway, the revival resulted in critical failure due to a malfunction in the machine.
"Poor Holt," Hunter whispered.
"It's probably for the best," Duna said. "You should probably pray something similar happens with yours."
And Hunter's golden fossil was placed within the backup revival machine. When the door was opened on it, a very un-Tricera-like vivosaur stepped out. It was larger than most ceratopsids, and had black scales with rough, blue scaled armor running down its back. It was almost like a mole, and instead of three horns sprouting from its forehead and nose, one great saber of a horn sprouted down its face and outwards to almost half the length of the vivosaur.
"That's called a Heracles," the staff member running the machine informed them. "It's relatively docile, but is one of the most powerful vivosaurs known. By spinning around like a drill, it can actually burrow through solid granite with its horn."
Hunter promptly had it revert to its medal form, not wanting to take any chances of it going on an Elder rampage.
Duna and Hunter stood at the isolated end of Ribular Town's pier. Apparently, it wasn't too common anymore for people to arrive by boat.
"It didn't seem crazy like you described the Elders to be," Hunter said, examining Heracles' medal.
"Which is why I wanted to wait and see how it responded when it was revived," Duna said. "Revival had odd side effects with the dinosaurs, giving them abnormal powers and abilities. It would seem as though the Elders are actually quite popular here, which suggests they're definitely much more peaceful than their primal forms."
Hunter stuffed the medal into his pocket. "Don't worry, I won't use it if I don't have to. The staff actually admitted that this particular vivosaur is prone to aggressive outbursts, after all."
They stood there in silence. Hunter's arms were folded, and Duna had her fingers intertwined in front of her belly. They weren't standing very close together. They barely looked like friends, let alone a couple, standing there. Hunter was the first to notice.
He wrapped an arm around Duna's waist, pulling her into him. She gasped lightly in surprise, but didn't resist. Eventually, she even laid her head down on his shoulder, watching the red sunset. They realized that this wasn't the cover story; this was them, no longer just friends.
Hunter looked down at the dinaurian girl in her brunette disguise, seeing through the hologram to the purple haired, blue-skinned alien beneath, dozing off on his shoulder.
It was a totally ridiculous thought he was having. It would probably be the stupidest words he'd ever uttered, or perhaps the most meaningful.
He looked away, deciding to keep those three deadly words in his head.
I love you, he thought, squeezing her tight.
End Chapter