AN: Chapter four! This is going a lot better than I thought it would. That's a good thing, I think. Anyways I don't own Fossil Fighters.
"Eenie meenie minie moe," Pauleen said, her finger skipping across her companions' heads. "Catch a Smilo by the toe."
Dina watched her friend's hand go round and round. She scowled. With the entrance fee to the Caliosteo Cup being expensive even by Rupert Wheatley's standards, the four intrepid teenagers had decided to pool their strongest Dino Medals and randomly decide who the person to compete would be.
But that meant there was a twenty-five per cent chance – No, she reminded herself, thirty three per cent now that Todd's out – that she would be competing. Only thirty three. That wasn't much to go on, and even though Dina didn't particularly enjoy Fossil Fighting, she had to be better than Rupert. Had to. And this was the only way she felt she could show that.
Still, she managed a smile as she found the voice to chant along to the game. "If it hollers, let it go," she chorused, albeit dryly. "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe."
"The colours of the flag are red, white and blue," Pauleen said. "And that—" her finger landed on herself— "means—" on Rupert— "not—" Dina— "you!" She was pointing at herself again. Her face fell. "Oh well," she sighed, "I'm out. Darn it, digadig!"
"It's OK," Dina consoled her. "I'll make sure to win for you!"
Rupert glared at her. "Don't get too ahead of yourself, Batterbits. This game isn't over yet."
This game . . . ? It took Dina a moment it realise he meant their little session of Eenie Meenie Minie Moe. Then she shook her head. That's stupid, and so is calling someone "Batterbits". Nobody ever even buys the orange ones!
"Eenie meenie minie moe," Pauleen began again, her dejection forgotten. "Catch a Smilo by the toe. If it hollas, let it go, eenie, meenie, minie, moe! The colours of the flag are red, white and blue."
Dina sucked in her breath.
"And that means . . ."
Rupert's eyes narrowed and Dina felt her own do the same.
". . . not . . ."
Dina crossed her fingers behind her back.
". . . you!" Pauleen jabbed her finger at Rupert. "You're out, Wheatley!"
Dina pumped her fist in the air and Rupert's face twisted into a scowl. Typical, read the look on his face. I'm going to murder someone for this.
Still, he managed an impassive expression as he pressed his Mapo Dino Medal into Dina's hand (and promptly jerked his own away as if he'd been burned). Then he quickly resumed his place behind Todd, away from the horridly common Dina Madison Clarke and her not-as-rich-as-she-could-be best friend. Dina rolled her eyes. The male percentage of the world was hopeless.
"Will you be entering in the Cup, young lady?" asked a nasal voice from to her left. The speaker, a pimply teenaged boy in an ill-fitting Fossil Centre staff uniform, narrowed his eyes at the ginger, who recoiled slightly as she nodded.
"Eyes on the prize, Dina," hissed Pauleen. Dina recomposed herself. Even if men were hopeless, and even if Rupert was Rupert, she had business to attend to.
And so Dina attended to her business; for four straight days, day and night, she battled. And battled. And battled. Took the odd water break, and battled some more. It was incredibly tiring.
The team she and her companions had put together wasn't the most conventional, nor was it particularly prone to following the orange-haired fish lover's orders. This fact did not pass unnoticed by the media. All the reporters at the Cup seemed to talk about was the Amargo who disregarded the rules to attack the opponent Fighter in hope of an easier victory, or the Stego with the tendency to attack solely out of turn.
But despite the fault in Dina's stars (and her team), she made it successfully to the final round. It took place on the Thursday of that week, in chilly, secluded Illium Village, way up in the northernmost part of Caliosteo. Dina and her gang were left with no way to get up there other than a very suspicious tour bus, which was being driven by a boy no older than them who had decided purple was a good colour to be wearing with his yellow-orange hair and almost attempted relieving Pauleen of both her wallet and her Dino Medals, but had received a stiletto-heeled kick to the face for his efforts. Still, they managed to reach the arena without too much trouble after that.
"Er, bye then," said Dina to Pauleen, Rupert, and Todd, standing awkwardly with her hands in her pockets. She had on her good winter coat for the occasion, along with tall black boots and a drab grey dress. Among the population of the village, and even her fellow adventurers, in their practical neon-coloured snow gear, she felt like a mourner at a hip-hop convention of sorts. Or perhaps a wedding.
"You'd better not lose," Todd instructed her. "We're pretty much doomed if we don't get the prize money." He'd become less hostile towards her over the past few days, but he was a devout Rupert fan through and through, and what – or who – Rupert didn't like, the little brown-haired boy scorned with a passion.
"But no pressure or anything," Pauleen scrambled to add. Rupert remained silent.
"Haha," said Dina weakly. She wasn't one to worry about losing, not usually, but Todd was right: a lot depended on her winning the prize money and getting them their submarine. "Well, wish me luck."
None of them did.
Dina kept her back straight and her chin up as she walked into the Fighter Station, the sound of her heels clicking across the marble floor echoing in the empty lobby. At first she wondered where everyone was – with it being the finals, the lobby should have been packed, and there was usually a staff member of some kind to lead her to where she needed to be or who she needed to meet, besides – but with a start she realised she must have been late. She hurried to the common room.
It too, was empty, deserted except for a slim figure in mauve on one of the benches. This must have been her opponent.
Dina approached the figure, who looked to be a girl around Dina's age, with carnation-coloured hair in two neat ponytails and a crisply ironed explorer's uniform, complete with a pink pith helmet. The ginger did her best not to show her distaste, but mauve was not a colour that looked particularly good on anybody, especially not when paired with pink.
"Hello," said the girl. "My name is Rosie."
Dina reached out to shake the hand Rosie didn't offer. "Dina," she replied. "Congratulations on making it this far in the tournament."
"Save your congratulations for when I win," Rosie sniffed. Dina narrowed her eyes, but said nothing.
"What happened to your face, by the way?" the pink-haired Fighter asked. Dina turned to one of the reflective chrome walls and scrutinised her reflections, cold eyes skipping over the thin lips and sunken cheeks she'd always hated until they reached her left eyebrow, which was marred by an ugly mass of scar tissue. Dina grimaced. Bean, her ex, had really been a bad influence, and after convincing her to shave half her head, he'd somehow gotten her to get several piercings. A few weeks ago, she'd realised just how ugly the one in her eyebrow was, and had tried ripping it out – to entirely too much avail. She'd needed seven stitches.
"Ninjas," Dina said offhandedly. Rosie didn't believe it at all, and the two walked down the hall in silence.
However, the topic of the scar she'd probably be stuck with until senior citizenship had made Dina feel incredibly self-conscious, and she kept stealing glances at her reflection, mentally cursing her choice of dress (she looked like a teacher), her hair (Rosie's hairstyle really was more practical), and a million other things on top of that (These shoes make me look prissy, she thought, and next to Rosie and her healthy complexion I look positively cadaverous). She mollified her mind by reminding it that Rosie had decided to wear mauve on a day other than Halloween.
The doors opened with a soft hiss, and whitish fog from the arena's smoke machines began seeping into the room. Dina nodded at Rosie and Rosie glared Dina, and the two stepped out onto the field.
Dina wasn't really thinking as she slid her hand into her pocket and pulled out three Dino Medals, despite the seriousness of the competition. She didn't have a strategy, either, and she hadn't eaten breakfast. Her mind had been almost completely blank all day.
But, she found, the Dino Medal part wasn't much to worry about. Even though it was technically cheating, Dina had always had a bad habit of stealing a glance at her opponent's Medals before battling, and this time, her opponent's Medals were all rimmed with red. Fire types, she thought. She looked at the Krona, Mapo, and Amargo Medals she had in her hand. Should be easy.
Some famous model-y person, a blue-eyed blond whom the announcers called Duna, received the honour of firing a rhinestoned pistol in the air and starting the match. Rosie and Dina let out their Vivosaurs at the same time, Rosie still managing to be dramatically prissy despite the heat of battle and the cold of the arena and Dina wishing there weren't quite so many cameras trained on her face.
The battle, though not as one-sided as Dina had originally thought, wasn't as hard as she had feared, either. Both girls lost a Vivosaur on their opponent's first attacks (Dina lost Pauleen's Amargo and Rosie her Maia), and after that they ended up chip, chip, chipping away at the opposing team's LP, using low-FP attacks and hoping for critical hits (of which there were almost none).
The audience was growing bored. Dina could feel it. The anticipation in the air had turned into restlessness and the excited quiet that had originally blanketed the crowd was often broken by idle chitchat. The Fighter Station staff brought out folding chairs and water bottles for Dina and Rosie once they'd passed the half-hour mark, and after an hour, a few people were calling out for them to cancel the match.
That's when the stadium lights went out.
The audience members who hadn't been talking began doing so, and those who had spoke louder. Uneasy mumbling and cries of "Who turned out the lights?" (often followed by a nervous snicker and hundreds of annoyed sighs) filled the air. One staff member had sprinted past Dina and down the hall, loudly fiddled with something for a few moments, then shouted, "We can't even get the emergency lights on – the fuse box is gone!"
"Gone?" asked Duna the possible model incredulously. "What do you mean, gone?"
"Gone, as in, ripped out of the wall," called the staff member. "Who—"
"Who did it doesn't matter," said Duna. "What they'll do next is the important part."
Dina silently agreed. Nobody just turned off lights for no reason. They might have been Eco-activists, trying to save power, or they might have wanted to cause a spot of mild disruption, but Dina knew there were only two good reasons this could have been done: Someone wanted a distraction, or—
"Get off me!" came a sharp cry from Rosie's side of the field. "Get off me, or I'll— mmph!"
—Or someone's the world's most obvious thief.
Dina dropped her water bottle and darted over to Rosie, swinging her fists blindly in hoping to hit whoever had jumped the pink-haired girl, but a dancing beam of light from Rosie's phone revealed her attacker had vanished.
"My Medals," she mouthed, obviously not wanting to scare the audience any more but in dire need to get her word across. "They're gone."
Dina nodded in understanding and ran.
Instinct took her down the hall and up several flights of stairs, around several corners and into a series of empty rooms. Finally she caught a glimpse of a purple-clad figure bolting down a corridor and without a shred of doubt in her mind, Dina followed.
When she and the figure came out into the daylight, Dina instantly recognised him as the shady bus driver. She swore under her breath as he ran down the street and she speed-walked after him, not trusting her heels to safely take her anywhere on the ice if she was in too much of a hurry. She shivered, then swore again; while Pauleen may have been completely immune to the cold, Dina was not.
Eventually the ambiguous bus driver burst into a run-down looking warehouse on the outskirts of town. Dina was shivering and paper-white, her teeth chattering and appendages blue, but she caught the door with a numb hand before it slammed shut and slipped inside.
It was dark inside the warehouse. Very dark. So dark, Dina would later say, it made the arena feel like Bottomsup in the autumn – which is to say, blindingly bright. A strip of sunlight had fallen on the dusty floor when the door had creaked open, but it did nothing to illuminate the cavernous space and ultimately disappeared just as quickly as it appeared.
"I did it," panted the voice of the bus driver. "I got the goods."
"Did you, now?" asked another male voice, one Dina sincerely hoped didn't belong to who she thought it belonged to. "Bring them here."
The bus driver did as he was told and Dina could hear the smile in the second voice as it said, "Good job, Joe. Not bad for someone who's been out of the business for eleven years."
"Well," said the bus driver, Joe, with a nervous laugh, "you know what they say – you can't never change a Hadley."
Dina's stomach sank. She knew that name all too well, and not just from gang war and bank robbery stories in the paper.
"That's not usually meant in a good way, Joseph," came a sickly sweet female voice from somewhere above. Dina followed it with her stare until her gaze fell upon scores of silver eyes, shining in the darkness, glittering with malice as their owners stared at Joe and whoever he was talking to.
"Scout's right, it's not," drawled the male voice. "But today can be an exception. After all, it's a very special day."
And Dina, despite herself, couldn't help but wonder out loud, "It is?"
The sixty-something silver eyes that were locked on Joe and the mysterious speaker swivelled around to stare at Dina a the threshold, whose own eyes were wide with apprehension. Everything was quiet for a long, tense moment before the voice belonging to the mysterious male speaker began drawing closer to her.
"Well, well, well," he was saying, footsteps barely audible and eyes narrowed. "Dina. It's been a while, hasn't it?"
"Bernard Hadley," she said coolly, regaining her composure. "I'm sorry . . . Bean." She flashed a smile she doubted he could see and took a few long strides towards him, her heels going click-clack, click-clack in a delightfully ominous way as she glided across the room. "It's been ages."
"All of six days," Bean said, his voice quiet and silky and despicable. "How have things been, Dina, darling?"
Dina bristled. Don't call me that, she wanted to say, but bit it back. Instead she offered another smile and simpered, "Perfectly delightful, Beanie baby. How are things on your end? Are you still trying to con your way into the wills of innocent old ladies, or have you moved on to more respectable crimes?"
Bean's footsteps stopped briefly and Dina could tell he was swallowing back a million insults and trying hard to keep calm and not hit anyone. "I'm afraid I'm still in the business of petty larceny, dearest." He paused. "Although yesterday Scout invited me along for this grand scheme."
"And what, pray tell, are you doing here?" Dina asked. They'd both come to a stop, and they stood in the middle of the room, their gazes locked on each other's eyes and their foreheads almost touching.
"Oh, now, I'm not going to tell you that, Dina." Bean laughed. "Don't be stupid."
"You're the stupid one, Bernard," she spat, and when Joe, confused and seemingly afraid, ambled over to switch on the lights, she tackled Bean onto the floor and punched him hard across the jaw. A ripple of unease spread across the thirty or so other Hadley teenagers (cousins, Dina suspected, though you never knew with crime families) and a few of them, among the older and buffer in the group, began trickling down the stairs leading from their balcony to the warehouse floor. Dina fumbled around in her pocket for anything she could use as a weapon, and her fingers closed around the one Dino Medal she didn't end up using: Todd's Stego. Closing her eyes in a quick prayer the green Vivosaur would behave itself this time around, she threw it hard onto the floor, where the large herbivore quickly sprang into existence.
She raised her fists in front of her face, the Stego lifted its tail in a fighting stance of sorts, and all at once the little Hadley criminals attacked.
It had to be said that Todd's Stego was doing most of the work. Dina reassured herself it was perfectly logical. The Stego was far larger, after all, and stronger, and faster, and a Vivosaur. But Dina also thought she and the Stego made quite a fine team now that neither of them had to follow the rules. She punched whoever came near her, and it used its heavily spiked tail to clobber anyone who didn't.
Eventually Dina broke off from the little circle of defence she and the Vivosaur made in the centre of the room, scanning the room for the stolen Dino Medals and whatever other "goods" Joe had stolen from. It was hard to see anything clearly in the dim, flickering light, but Dina didn't think it would pose too much of a problem. Aside from the many teenagers complaining about headaches and the angry green Vivosaur giving them headaches, the room was empty, and Dina doubted the Medals could have gotten far in the short amount of time they'd spent in Hadley hands.
"Not so fast, Dina," said a voice from behind her. Dina idly turned around to see Bean staggering towards her, a trickle of blood dripping down from his jaw, which was black and blue and swollen. She must have hit him harder than she'd thought.
"Whatever do you mean, Bean?" Dina asked, but she knew exactly what he meant. If people were trying to stop her, she was going in the right direction.
"Just stop trying to play the hero. Let us keep the Medals, and we won't bother you any more. Or better yet . . ." Bean offered her a wan smile, which made his bruised face look like it was going to split in two. "Why not join us? A girl with your resources would be incredibly useful to us . . ."
Dina didn't know what she was going to say to that, but thankfully, she didn't have to.
"DINA!" came a yell from the doors as they were flung open and the sound of thunderous footsteps filled the air. Startled, Dina tore her eyes away from the spot where Bean had been standing to gawk at the doorway, where a throng of police officers, batons in hand, stood blocking out the weak sunlight trying to work its way into the room, and in front of them stood . . .
"Pauleen! Todd! Rupert!" she shouted, forgetting her animosity towards the second two as she rushed to greet them. "Oh my gosh, what— why— how—"
"After a while, they handed out flashlights back at the stadium," Rupert explained, his voice oddly animated. "And after we could see again we saw you had disappeared."
"That Rosie girl told us you'd gone after the guy who'd wrecked everything," Todd went on. "So we decided to go after you."
"There were a few people ought on the street who'd seen you go this way," Pauleen said, "and I thought it looked pretty shady, so we called in the cops for some help."
Dina looked around at the police officers, who had fanned out and were handcuffing the little cutpurses left and right. Bean was nowhere to be seen; neither was the girl he called Scout, the leader of their little scheme, or Joe the Medal thief, but that was of little concern to her. She felt tolerably certain they'd be found soon enough.
"Dina?" She turned to see Rosie emerge from the crowd, her face contorted into a strange expression, a mixture of relief, confusion, and jealousy.
"Hey, Rosie," she said, oddly nonchalant. "Your Medals should be in here somewhere . . . should we continue the battle?"
"Oh, there's no need," said the mauve-clad girl with a flap of her hand. "Actually, since you did all this . . . I decided to forfeit."
"You what?" Dina repeated incredulously, her jaw dropping and her eyes bugging out. "But . . . but that means . . ."
"That's right," said Rosie, taking an envelope from Rupert's outstretched hand and presenting it to Dina. She opened it with a flourish, and pulled out a fancy-looking cheque. Dina's heart skipped a beat. "Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Dina something-or-other, winner of the Caliosteo Cup!"
AN: Yay, I finished! This took a very long time, and it's also unfortunately long, I apologise for that. Also, the ending was sort of rushed. Sorry about that, too.
Nevertheless, thank you for reading, and special thanks to Cottonmouth25, whose comment made me especially happy! Katie out!