Duran-kun and Kiyo-chan's Omake Theater

(featuring the Kuga-Fujino family pets)

Midori Sugiura eyed the shelf of rock with a critical eye.

"No, not there!" she called out. "We're trying to fracture that section off and expose the interior of the cliff face. If you blast there, you'll risk damaging the main body of the mesa and the specimen we're trying to reach!"

The student who was placing the charge stopped before connecting the detonator to the explosives.

"Well, you said to put it at the top of the split, here," he protested.

Had she? Midori thought. She wasn't always as precise as she'd like, after all. No, she decided on further reflection, this one wasn't her fault.

"Yes, but not that far in! Over there," she said, and pointed to a spot about fifty feet away, "where those two fractures meet. If we use the natural forces at work on the rocks, we can save weeks of hard work in a couple of minutes!"

The student looked at her dubiously.

"Are you sure this is a good idea, ma'am? Shouldn't we check with Professor Sasaki first?"

"Of course it's a good idea! You do want to see this dig produce results before the next term starts at university, don't you? When the professor gets back from town, we'll have the greatest discovery in paleontological history ready for him!"

"Whatever you say, ma'am," he sighed.

"And stop calling me ma'am! Do you think you're young enough to be calling a seventeen-year-old 'ma'am'?"

"No, I'm definitely not...ma'am."

Midori ground her teeth together and was about to offer her opinion of mouthy, wiseacre kids when something else caught her attention.

"Aaagh! Naoko, not that end! Haven't you ever hooked up a blasting cap before? Whatever happened to the days when student radicals practiced for blowing up the administration buildings until they could build bombs in their sleep before getting too stoned to remember where they left the fertilizer?"

Thirty minutes later, though, they were all back on the desert floor, well away from the mesa. The dynamite had all been prepared to Midori's satisfaction and the wireless detonator was ready to send its signal.

"This is what you've all been waiting for, boys and girls!" she crowed. "On the count of three: one...two..."

Midori's phone ruined the moment by commencing to play "Here Comes the Bride." Since that was her ringtone for Professor Sasaki (who considered her a fine graduate student and his first choice to go blazing into some archaeological site alongside him in defiance of local warlords, drug-runners, or terrorists, but as yet stubbornly refused to dance the horizontal mambo with her), she said a few things in Arabic that would have mortally offended the Professor's camel and answered the phone.

"Yes, Professor?"

"Midori, I just wanted to let you know that we'll be back with the supplies in half an hour. How are things at the camp?"

"Oh, it's going great! We got all of the charges set, and I'm at least eighty percent certain it'll work just like I drew it up. Though seriously, I don't know what they're teaching kids these days. Most of them get positively nervous around dynamite!"

"Dynamite! Charges! Midori, what are you doing?"

"Getting ready to break off the cliff face, of course, just like we went over last night. Did you have too many beers? It's like I always tell Youko, it's one thing to be hung over but when you start having memory loss it's time to cut back on the booze, seriously."

"I remember it very clearly! I remember telling you that it was a bad idea! That it was probably illegal under U.S. law! That we shouldn't do it under any circumstances!"

Midori had to hold the phone slightly away from her ear due to all the yelling.

"Yeah, yeah, I remember. Sort of. But seriously, Professor, that temper of yours isn't safe. You could be looking at a heart attack if you're not careful. I figure it's sexual frustration; it's been way too long since you last took a tight, toned grad student out for a little ride and—"

"Midori! If you don't get those charges unhooked right now—"

She'd later argue that it was completely his fault. If he hadn't called her at an inopportune moment she wouldn't have had to tuck the detonator under her arm to answer the phone. And if he hadn't startled her by bellowing, she'd never have flinched and reflexively squeezed her arm against her body.

Midori watched the two-hundred-foot-high cliff face slowly cascade down, crumpling under its own weight like a pretty girl's dress sliding to the floor (and really, it was his fault, too, that she kept thinking in metaphors like that one).

"Um...it's kind of too late for that?" she volunteered. "Look, I've got to go. See you when you get back, sweetie!"

She hung up the phone and shoved it back in her pocket.

"Really, it's not like the time I fired that RPG at those guys from the Foreign Legion," she muttered. "He has no sense of proportion."

The students who, prior to the explosion, had been hanging on every word of the commotion, were no longer listening. They were staring out at the mesa as the desert winds whipped the dust clouds away, revealing what had lain underneath the fallen rock.

"W-what is that?" mumbled the mouthy kid, binoculars at his eyes. Midori lifted the field glasses she wore on a strap around her neck and looked for herself.

There it was.

The cliff had started to fracture where the fossil had been embedded in the rock. Possibly it had been the fossil itself that started the split; geology was not Midori's strong suit so she didn't know. Either way, the explosion had cleanly knocked off the rock cover and she was staring at a flawless skeleton; at the bony-plated legless body; the long, whiplike tail; the articulated necks rearing up thirty feet or more; the six skulls with their fin-like bone crests.

She let out a loud war whoop.

"Woohoo! I told him! I told him it was there! Look at that, an absolutely perfect specimen! The ultimate apex predator of the late Cretaceous, Lernaeasaurus Regina!"

~X X X~

Shizuru was lifting her teacup to her lips with her customary grace and elegance when Kiyohime's six heads shot bolt upright and six throats emitted loud hissing squeals. Startled, the brunette fumbled her cup and splashed four fluid ounces of her favorite beverage down the front of her cream-colored shirt.

"Kiyohime, what's wrong?" She sprang off the sofa and knelt by the hydra, who was quivering, six pairs of frightened eyes wide and staring. She scooped Kiyohime into her arms and hugged her close, gently stroking along the length of her necks. "It was a only a bad dream, girl, just a bad dream."

Shizuru looked back over her shoulder at her girlfriend.

"This is your fault, giving her that leftover pizza before her bedtime."

"I thought she liked pizza!" Natsuki protested.

"Yes, but with pepperoni, sausage, onion, garlic, anchovies, jalapeno, and black olives?"

Natsuki looked over at Duran.

"This is the last time I let you pick the toppings."

~X X X~

A/N: This omake was done for the Mai Universe Carnival of MUses, for which the March/April prompts were "dinosaurs" and "sleep"; I chose to use both in the story. The title is based on the TV Tropes trope for misuse of dinosaurs in media, "Somewhere a Paleontologist is Crying," and of course the translation of the title for Higurashi. As for Kiyohime's Latin genus/species name, it's a reference to the Labors of Hercules...