South Dakota, United States of America, -67,809,345, late afternoon
A lone Triceratops horridus wandered the desolate plains. Normally Hell Creek was full of life and water, but there'd been a nasty drought as of late and everything had dried up something fierce. What plants had survived had long been eaten away, either by his own species or by others; the animal himself hadn't eaten in weeks, and it was starting to show in his ribcage.
His herd was long gone. Tyrannosaurus rex, driven to desperation by the lack of water, had attacked the rest of his small herd of twenty-five in a mad attempt to ingest the water in their bodies so they would not thirst to death. Due to the drought weakening his herdmates, the carnivores' plan had worked far too well and they'd all been eaten away.
Something behind him snapped. The Triceratops turned around and saw a Tyrannosaurus, brown and beige and nasty all over, looking as gaunt as he did, crouching behind him. The theropod rumbled the same horrible low sound they always made when in deep thought while gazing intently at him, a dried-up bush crushed under his foot having given away his arrival. The ceratopsian lowered himself to the ground, making sure his horns were facing his adversary's stomach. They were still for a very, very long time.
Then a bright light materialized between them, and a strange animal stepped out of it. She smelled like a mammal, but she walked upright and was huge, easily the height of an Ornithomimus velox with the neck stretched all the way up. She wore large, strangely-colored leaves on her body and two thin, clear, circular rocks over her eyes.
"Oh, you poor dears," the mammal tsked. "I can help you, if you like. Your bodies will live out their lives here, but I can copy your minds and take you somewhere better." From within the folds of the leaves she retrieved a strange-looking rock that hummed with energy. "Will you accept?"
Both dinosaurs stared at each other, then turned to face the mammal. She might be an enemy, but she might also know where to find water. She smelled like she was eating well, after all, given that she was olfactorily two months pregnant. The Tyrannosaurus broke first, lumbering over and sniffing at her furry yellow crest; the mammal smiled and pointed the device at his eyes. It hummed, snapped, flashed, and then it was over. A flat leaf popped out of the device, bearing the visage of the Tyrannosaurus, only...why was he a different color in that image? Tyrannosaurus were brown and beige, not blood red and flower yellow.
The Triceratops snorted as the woman did the same for him, and then...it was like he was seeing his own body. He was still alive, of course, but he was also alive somewhere else, at the same time as he was outside he was being compressed into the leaf– no...card.
His mind began to fill with new ideas, new knowledge, words. He saw his scales change color, the orange on his head overtaking the varying greens on his body and becoming far brighter. Now he actually understood what was happening to him: the mammal, no, the human, was a creature from the distant future, and she was making a clone of his mind with her device and putting it into a brand new body, hence the change in color. His old body and original mind would still live here (or more likely die here seeing that the theropod still looked rather hungry), but he would get to live on in a whole new time period.
The card finished production. The woman smiled and disappeared in a flash of light. The original animals, the truce now over, lunged at each other. The duplicated minds would never see their old bodies again; perhaps that was for the best, if the blood splatter on the ground was any indication.
Sanjo City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, Saturday 9/8/2007, 12:31 AM
Max Taylor was up late, reading from a picture book about dinosaurs in his bed. "I know birds are dinosaurs, but it's just not the same," he sighed as he read the last page, which depicted the K-T impactor descending upon a hapless group of Hell Creek megafauna. He put his fingers on the depiction of a Triceratops prorsus trying to avoid getting trampled by a fleet of fleeing Edmontosaurus annectens. "What I wouldn't give to see a real, living Triceratops."
As if on cue, a bright light materialized outside his window before landing in the nearby forest. Max blinked, trying to determine if he was seeing things. A few seconds later, a loud THOOM! rushed out from the forest, sweeping the trees back. "Was that...a meteor?" He got out of bed and made his way to another bedroom. "Rex, did you see that?" he called inside.
Rex Owen, Max's best friend and currently roommate while Rex's uncle Gideon was in Canada on a paleontological dig, opened the door. "What's going on, Max?" he groaned sleepily.
"I think I just saw a meteor outside, and I think it landed in the forest."
"A meteor? That'd explain the house shaking," Rex surmised. "We'll check it out tomorrow, it's late and your mom will get mad if she catches you up."
"Yeah, good call. We should get Zoe in on this too, she'll freak." Rex nodded and closed the door, and Max went back to bed. But he was so excited! A meteor hunt!
...he sure hoped that the alien conspiracy weirdos didn't beat him to it.
Same day, 8:09 AM
"You know I'm not a morning person," Zoe Drake yawned the following morning as the trio trudged into the dense forest.
"Come on, guys, we're the D-Team," Max scoffed. "The D-Team is all about adventure."
"Yeah, unless that adventure starts before breakfast," Rex groaned. "And why are you of all people skipping food?"
"You'll regret saying that when we find that meteor," Max retorted.
"I'm already regretting coming here, it feels like we've been walking forev–" Zoe stopped and noticed something. "Hey, guys, look at this."
The boys turned and saw the impact site. The impactor had blown a hole into a tree and knocked many of its neighbors down. "See? Told you," Max said smugly. He lit up the horns on his visor so he could see inside the hole.
"Be careful, Max. That meteor could still be super hot," Zoe warned him.
"Exploring dangerous stuff is what the D-Team is all about. D for danger, as they say."
"'Dumb' also starts with a d, and so does 'dead'," Rex snarked.
Max ignored him and stuck his head into the hole. "Got it!" He pulled out a bunch of stony fragments. "It must've broken up on impact. Wait...these aren't meteor bits. Meteors are like, metal and stuff. These just look like regular old rocks." He squinted at them. "One of them has a lightning bolt painted on it, and the other one has a flame. That's...really weird."
Rex spotted something on the ground and picked it up. "I found something too, but this one has a painting of a gust of wind."
"And this one has leaves painted on it," Zoe added, picking up a fourth. "And it's got a switch stuck to it too, as a matter of fact all of them do. What the heck is going on here?"
"I don't know," Max replied, "but let's find out. Try turning the switch."
"Max, if I die, I'm telling your dad." Zoe did as she was asked, though, and rotated the switch. She was engulfed in a greenish light, while Rex was covered in a white one and Max was covered in red light from one stone and yellow light from the other stone, their glows mixing into a vibrant orange. "Um...okay?"
Max went back to the tree and found an egg-shaped capsule inside, clearly broken open from the impact. Colorful cards spilled out of it onto the wood. "Hey guys, there's more stuff in here!" he said as took the cards out. "It's trading cards! With dinosaurs on them!"
"Trading cards? What kind of meteorite has trading cards in it?" Rex asked incredulously. "And how have they not burned up?"
"No clue, but look! Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus!" He showed them the cards, then noticed something. "Hey...they have symbols on the back that match the stones'. Maybe they're supposed to be put together?" He shrugged and picked up the Triceratops card and the lightning bolt stone. "Welp!"
"Max, NO!" Rex protested, but it was too late. Max swiped the card across the stone like he was scanning a credit card, and in a flash of yellow light it turned into a real, living dinosaur.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" the ceratopsian roared before cracking something in his neck. "Eeh! Sixty-seven-point-eight million years will give you such a crick in the neck!" He blinked when he saw the nonplussed humans standing before him. "Uh...hi."
"IT CAN TALK!" Zoe shrieked. "Max, give me the stone!" She grabbed it from Max's hands and fussed with the switch, eventually turning the animal back into a card. "WHAT THE ACTUAL CRAP! THAT WAS REAL!"
"I KNOW!" Max replied, ecstatic. "I wonder what happens if I swipe it the other way!" He snatched the stone back and swiped the card in the opposite direction than he did before.
Materializing as a small animal resembling a plush toy, the Triceratops staggered on his feet. "Okay, I'm...small. Huh. This presents a challenge."
"You can talk!" Max exclaimed.
"Yeah, side effect of the thing that made me a card. Name's Chomp, how you doing?" the now-named Chomp replied. Zoe fainted dead away.
"I'm Max, the girl's Zoe, and that's Rex!" Max replied as he introduced them. "That's so cool! How'd you get here?"
"Some lady went back in time, copied my mind, and made a new body for me out of holograms and stuff, nothing big," Chomp explained with a shrug as if he hadn't just dropped a major bombshell. "She said that she'd be taking me and the others to somewhere nice, but...I haven't seen her for while. Did she forget?" He turned around and saw the busted tree, his beak somehow contorting into a frown. "Maybe not."
"Others?" Rex questioned. "The other card..."
"Yeah, he's also real. Terry and I came together. Careful around him, he's really...enthusiastic about fighting, shall we say." Rex gulped while Max's face lit up even further.
Same day, Zeta Point, 8:20 AM
A brown Tyrannosaurus roared at others of its kind in a Roman coliseum before lunging at a blue-scaled opponent. Dr. Z cackled at the simulated sight. "When this dinosaur stadium is complete, my ultimate goal will finally be realized! The name of Dr. Z will go down in history!" he said. He turned around to face Ed, whom he'd charged with programming the simulation. "But why only Tyrannosaurus? Yes, it's my favorite dinosaur, but I want to be king of them all!"
Ed winced. "I didn't have enough time to make more models before your presentation deadline, sir." Dr. Z growled at him. "But with some minor adjustments to the model's proportions I can add Daspletosaurus and Tarbosaurus reasonably fast!" the blue-haired man added hastily.
"Well that's a start, at least," Dr. Z conceded. The conversation was interrupted by a magenta and gray Dilophosaurus wetherilli bursting into the room. "Confound it, Breeze! I just had that door fixed!"
"Sssssseth wishes to ssssssee you, Dr. Z," the theropod hissed.
"Well, alright, but only because it's Seth. Don't tell him I said this, but he gives me the willies."
"Underssssssstood, Dr. Z." Dr. Z got up and marched his way out of the building to the beach, Ed nervously following him. Breeze led him to the aforementioned mad scientist, pale blue hair blowing softly in the wind as he looked upon the open ocean in disapproval.
"How are the repairs on the time machine?" Dr. Z asked.
"They're coming along, but I've discovered we're missing some parts. We'll have to have them fabricated," Seth replied stoically.
"I'll have Zander start on that. And my cards?"
"Most of them are still here, thank goodness for that. Helga may be over-the-top, but her suggestion to keep them as cards in egg capsules did keep most of them onboard. Unfortunately, your more...prepared specimens were lost, scattered around the world with few ways of locating them." Seth noticed something in the Dilophosaurus' demeanor. "What is it, Breeze?"
"Ssssssomeone'ssssssss here that shouldn't be," Breeze hissed. "Ssssssomeone ssssssmall." She sniffed at the bushes and hissed again. "Rod and Laura, we know you're in there. Show yoursssssselvesssssss."
"Aw, man! Busted!" Rod griped as he and Laura left their hiding spot in the bushes. "And just when we got away from Helga!"
"Laura, what do you have in your hands?" Dr. Z asked sternly.
"Nothing, Grandpa," Laura lied.
"AAAAAAAAH HELP THERE'S A GORGOSAURUS AFTER ME!" The aforementioned Zander raced onto the beach, a magenta and gray Gorgosaurus libratus hot on his heels. He crashed into Ed and they landed in a heap. "Oh, hello Ed, fancy seeing you here."
"Hello, Zander," Ed replied casually. "Snakepit's chasing you, huh?"
"Snakepit was made to chase Zander," the tyrannosaur replied with a grunt as he came to a stop. "Laura made Snakepit chase Zander for own amusement."
"This! Isn't! A toy! It's a complicated piece of equipment for scientists!" Dr. Z bellowed at his granddaughter as he snatched the Alpha Scanner out of her tiny hands. The screen on the device started blinking an ominous red. "Huh? What's this?" He brought up a map of Japan with two glowing dots on its southeast. "What does this mean?"
"Two cards have been found, sir," Seth explained. "Remember?"
Dr. Z grinned. "Ah, so the tracking program actually works! Let's go find those cards! Breeze, you're going with Zander and Ed first thing tomorrow morning. Bring Ursula too, you might need a third set of hands."
"Hands that Ursula won't like getting dirty," Ed muttered. "Not after how hard we crash-landed in 2007."
"She did complain ever so much about how the impact ruined her nails," Zander agreed.
"Yeah, and you'll be nailed to the Backlander's waste chute if you don't start packing NOW!" Dr. Z barked. His minions hastily got up and scrambled back inside. "That's the problem with hired help," the old man muttered to himself. "Their help is never of a higher quality."
"Snakepit agrees with assessment, even if it is bad pun," Snakepit quipped.
Same day, Sanjo City, 8:45 AM
"You're saying these are real dinosaurs, Max?" Spike Taylor asked his son. The D-Team had reconvened on Max's porch to talk to the man for some more insight.
"Yeah. Chomp's real." Max confirmed. "Terry's real too, or so Chomp says."
"'Says'?"
"Yo," Chomp said as he waddled over. "Your bench is fun to chew on, by the way." Spike gaped. "What? Was it something I said?"
"More that you can say something at all," Rex said slowly. "The only dinosaurs that are supposed to talk are parrots and ravens."
"My existence proves that's for the birds. Well, and for me too now, but who's counting?"
"So the cards turn into talking dinosaurs...or the other way around, I suppose. And what do these cards do?" Spike asked as he picked up another set of cards with a different back design.
"Those are move cards," Chomp explained. "They give you superpowers."
"Why?" Zoe asked incredulously. "What is this, a videogame?"
"Dunno, all I know is what they do and how they're sorted by clade. Marginocephalians like me, we get electric powers. The littler theropods shoot air everywhere. Big theropods like Terry, they're fire-breathers. Well, except for the spinosaurs, they're water-shifters like the sauropodomorphs. Bit weird, that."
"And the other stones?" Rex asked. "I'm guessing there's six in all?"
"You're correct. Ornithopods do plant stuff, and thyreophorans throw rocks and stuff. There are also normal-type cards that anyone can use, they're basically just judo flips and the like. But I'm guessing I'd have to be full-sized to use a move card."
"This is a huge discovery!" Spike exclaimed before realizing something. "If news about this spreads it could create all sorts of pandemonium. We might be in danger from all sorts of poachers and politicians."
"And Mom wouldn't like it either," Max agreed.
"Time for breakfast." As if on cue, Max's mother Aki came onto the porch. "Zoe, I didn't know you were here."
"Uh, yeah, I just got here," Zoe lied.
Aki spotted Chomp. "Well now, who's this cutie?" she asked. "He's such a unique-looking dog."
The kids exchanged a baffled look before Rex answered. "Yeah, I guess he showed up here. I, uh, I don't think he has a home."
"Yeah, he followed Max home. So what do you say? Can we keep him?" Spike asked, making big puppy-dog eyes.
Aki couldn't say no to the face her husband was making. "That'll be fine. But you'll be the one taking care of them, Max. Your pet, your responsibility."
"I will, Mom," Max said politely.
"Okay, let's eat breakfast before it gets cold. Zoe, you're welcome to join us if you like," Aki said as she walked back into the house.
Once she was out of earshot, Zoe whispered "Max, is your mom really so stuck inside her own head that she thinks that your clearly reptilian houseguest is a dog?!"
"Looks like it," Max sighed.
"Big oof," Chomp supplied, earning some strange looks from the kids. "Hey, don't look at me like that, it's not my fault that meme doesn't exist yet."
11:18 PM
Spike was hard at work reading the stones in the D-Lab along with his coworker Reese. "Future technology..." Reese murmured. "I hope we're not creating a paradox by doing this."
"Whatever, let's just get these DinoShots done," Spike replied. "If there are other dinosaurs, and maybe even other prehistoric animals, out there like Chomp says there are, then they could be in big trouble. Someone brought them here and gave them superpowers, and the sooner we get them away from the prying public, the better for us and for them. But something bothers me: why give them superpowers at all?"
For once, Reese didn't have an answer. And that troubled the both of them even more. Little did they know how soon their answer would come to them the following morning in a very literal way.
Sea of Japan, Sunday 9/9/2007, 9:19 AM
"Destination dead ahead," Ursula announced from inside a monstrous-looking submarine. "Prepare to surface."
"Aye, aye, Captain," Zander and Ed declared as they started to raise the sub, only to hit a ship passing above them.
"I didn't say to surface yet!" Ursula yelled as the sub began to fill with water.
"Humanssssssss," Breeze groaned. She decided that she'd have better luck going it alone.
Same day, Sanjo City, 9:34 AM
"Chomp! Don't do that! You'll break it!" Max said as he chased the ceratopsian around, trying to get his frisbee back. The D-Team was in a park overlooking the ocean per Aki's insistence, away from people to avoid causing a panic. Just because Aki didn't know Chomp wasn't a dog didn't mean that other people wouldn't be able to see him for what he really was.
Rex and Zoe watched. "Why hasn't Terry been brought out yet?"
"Chomp says that Terry's a bit aggressive and it's better to release him only when you have to," Rex replied. "Something about how he tends to get into trouble very easily."
They were snapped out of their conversation by someone screaming "What's in the water?"
"It's coming right for us!" someone else exclaimed.
"What is it?!"
"I don't care! Let's get out of here!"
As people began fleeing the park, Max ran over to his friends. "What's going on?"
"Something's heading this way." Zoe said as she lowered her goggles over her eyes and looked at the ocean, a dark shape in the water heading towards the park. "But I can't see what it is." Breeze leapt out of the water and landed right in front of her. "Nevermind!"
"Breeze!" Chomp exclaimed, spitting the frisbee out of his mouth. "It's nice to see you again! I – hold on, why are you a different color?"
"I've been given a few upgradesssssssss," Breeze hissed. "Now come with usssssss quietly, or we will have to make you."
"You didn't have that lisp before. Or be that aggressive. Or call yourself 'we'," Chomp said, something dawning on him in horror. "What...what did they do to your brain?!"
"I'm not sssssssure," the theropod admitted. "But it mattersssssss little. Join ussssssss, Chomp. Join ussssssss."
Spike suddenly appeared, carrying a large pole in his hands. "Oh, wow! A new dinosaur!"
"Dad, stay back! She's after Chomp!" Max warned.
"Listen here, Miss Dilophosaurus! It's nice to meet you! A meeting 193 million years in the making! Now prepare to be snared!" He pressed a button on the pole and it turned into a butterfly net. "I'm coming for ya!" he bellowed as he charged at the theropod, swinging the net at her.
The net was large enough to completely cover Breeze's head. "AGK!" She began hissing and spitting and snarling incoherently as she tried to claw at the net, but the semi-jagged edges of her keratinous crests had caught on the netting, making it rather difficult to remove.
"Run!" Spike instructed, and the kids obeyed, Max scooping up Chomp and taking off.
Breeze eventually got the net over her crests and snarled. "You cannot outrun sssssssomeone whossssse power isssssss wind," she growled before giving chase, moving as fast as the air that gave her her power. They would pay for treating her like that!
"MAX!" Rex yelled as they ran deep into the forest. "Do you still have the Lightning stone?"
"Dad has it in the D-Lab for research, so Chomp's stuck like this!" Max replied. "Why do you ask?"
"Because I kept the other ones on me so no one could steal them!" Rex replied. "You can use the fire one on Terry!"
"You think of everything!" Max grinned.
"Good idea, kid! Wind is super weak against Fire!" Chomp added from under Max's right arm.
"What is this, Pokemon?" Max asked in disbelief as Rex handed him the Fire stone.
"No idea, but it's our only shot! UNLEASH THE REX! Uh, not the kid, that is, he's already out." Max obeyed and swiped Terry's card across the Fire stone.
In a flash of red, Terry materialized in all his nine-ton naked glory. "OH YEAH!" Terry bellowed. "It's time to kick butt and chew bones, and I'm not chewing any of my own bones! Nice to meet you, human kid! Now whose butt do I kick?"
"Hers!" Max said as Breeze ran into view.
"Found you!" Breeze smirked. Then she saw Terry and her eyes widened in terror. "Uh...now, now, Terrenssssssse, don't do anything rash."
"Nah, don't worry, I'm not gonna do anything rash," Terry reassured her with a sweeping of his tiny arms.
"Oh, good."
"I'm gonna do something awesome. Watch this." Terry marched over to where Breeze was standing and stood on one foot. "HIKE!" he yelled as he punted Breeze into the air with his other foot before striking her with his tail like a baseball. Breeze went flying into a disused shed, bringing it down on top of her. "Well, that oughta do it. She should be carded annnnnny second now." Breeze clambered out of the wreckage, battered and bloodied but still alive. "What the–"
"My upgradesssssssss make me a lot harder to ssssssubdue," Breeze sneered.
"Do they now? Kid, you've got a move card on you, right?" Terry asked.
"Sorry, no...and is that really a good idea considering that you can supposedly breathe fire?" Max asked.
"Riiiiight. Collateral damage. Well, in that case I'll just do THIS!" He lunged at Breeze and grabbed her torso with his mouth before shaking her roughly like a ragdoll. Breeze's already severe injuries worsened and she eventually poofed in a flash of white light. "Strongest bite of any land animal, baby," Terry grinned to himself, blood dripping from his reptilian lips as the card fell out of his mouth. "Works every time."
"Terry, you...you...you killed her!" Max exclaimed, flabbergasted at the brutality of Breeze's defeat.
"I did no such thing," Terry retorted.
"He's right, we're basically immortal," Chomp agreed. "No matter how bad our injuries get, even lost limbs and busted brains, we'll all just get poofed into a card. Our bodies get restored little by little over time while we're in the card, and the cards are pretty much indestructible due to time travel hijinks. Breeze will be good as new in a couple of hours...well, minus those mutations that the Alpha Gang probably gave her, that is."
"The Alpha who?" Max asked, perplexed.
Just then, a very wet Ursula stumbled into view, Ed and Zander close behind, and snatched Breeze's card from the ground. "Who do you brats think you are, screwing up our very important mission?" she seethed.
"My name's Max, but who are you?" Max asked.
"If you must know, we're the Alpha Gang!" Ursula declared.
"Imagine your worst nightmare!" Zander said, striking a pose.
"Except you're wide awake!" Ed said, striking a different pose.
"Oh, so Ursula!"
"Zantastic Zander!"
"Ed! I said."
"Did you understand any of that?" Max asked Rex.
"Yep, our lives are officially Pokemon," Rex sighed.
"What do you want with the dinosaurs anyway?" Max asked Ursula.
"Well, that's for us to know and for you brats to find out, isn't it?" Ursula declared. "But if you ever mess with us again, you will find out! Let's go!" She grabbed her brothers by the hands and started dragging them away back to the ocean where they came from.
"What a weird old lady," Zoe said as Ursula passed her and Spike.
"I'm not old! I'm barely in my teens!" Ursula shouted at the girl, causing her to shrink back in fear.
"Don't talk to her like that!" Spike growled. "What did she ever do to you?!"
"We apologize for our sister's temper, she's...sensitive about her age," Zander said politely. "We'll be going now. I sure hope we can get a ride home..." In a flash of light, they teleported away.
Zeta Point, 9:57 AM
"Well, at least the teleporter's fixed," Ed said optimistically.
"And my Alpha Dilophosaurus is lying healthless in a card!" Dr. Z roared. "How is that possible?! The Alpha Dinosaurs were specifically modified for extra strength!"
"They had Terry," Zander explained. "And we were short a few move cards."
Dr. Z's eyes bulged. "Terry?! The second-most powerful dinosaur in my lineup is in the hands of...who's he in the hands of?"
"Some kid," Ursula grunted. "So's Chomp."
"Chomp! THE most powerful dinosaur in my lineup, gone as well!" Dr. Z wailed before quickly composing himself. "No matter. The next time a dinosaur card activates, we'll be ready for them." He grinned darkly, the evil look on his face greatly unnerving his underlings.
Giza, Arab Republic of Egypt, 12:10 PM
Dr. Z wouldn't have to wait very long to make good on his declaration. Hours later that same day, a group of tourists at the Pyramids of Giza was following their guide when one of them opened her water bottle for a drink. She tilted her head back and let the water flow into her mouth. A bit too strongly, though, as some of it splashed onto the ground next to her feet. Specifically, onto an opened capsule containing a few cards and a rock with some water droplets painted on it.
A flash of blue light, and a large gray-and-purple creature, easily almost fifty feet long, rose up out of the sand. The tourists screamed and ran away, not knowing what this bulky, long-armed, long-necked, short-legged, sail-backed, crocodile-faced, web-footed, paddle-tailed monstrosity was. But they actually did know what he was thanks to a certain film released six years ago. They just didn't recognize him, as new fossils of his species that were more than just random teeth wouldn't be found until the following decade.
For this animal was none other than the real face of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, and he was going to make sure that the animals of the Sahara knew it.