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 Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 7:29 am
Backdated to early April. It was a Monday.
Maisie didn’t mind Mondays in Destiny City. It meant she had to go to school, but that was fine. It wasn’t like she had anything to do at home. Dad was always working, and when he wasn’t working he was moping, or being weird, or moping and being weird. There was only so much time she could spend indulging his moping and his weirdness before Maisie needed to get out and do something.
Only she didn’t have a lot of friends to do anything with. Just Brooklyn so far, but she couldn’t text Brooklyn every time she got bored. That might get annoying. Maisie didn’t want to be annoying. She wanted to be cool.
So it was Monday. The school day came to an end, and instead of going home to do her homework or figure out what the hell she was going to eat for dinner if Dad decided to mope at the office instead of moping at home, she stopped by her favorite coffee shop to grab another drink.
She was leaving with her oreo chocolate chip frap when she collided with someone on their way in.
“Oh, oops, sorry,” she said, paying more attention to the uniform than the person’s face.
Maisie was still trying to learn all the local uniforms. She hadn’t worn one at her school back in Raleigh. She knew Crystal and Mags, and she was pretty sure Hillworth had green pants, but there were too many different schools for too many different things. Apparently Destiny City had to have a weird school system on top of all the other weird things that apparently went down there.
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Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 7:32 am
“Maisie,” he said in surprise when she ran into him, dropping the notebook he’d been carrying in his arm, his pencil rolling off to the side. Over his shoulder he had both his backpack for school and a second bag for his baseball gear.
He was in his Azure baseball uniform, because while he could have just changed while he was at school, he wanted to get home before it got too dark.
“Still blue hair, huh,” he said because he apparently couldn’t think of anything else in his panic. He thought about saying that it was nice to see her again, but that was probably going to get an ew from her. As if seeing him wouldn’t get that reaction. She’d made it abundantly clear that she didn’t like him before.
“Guess it matches your uniform,” he continued to dig his own grave, knowing that he was probably better off just keeping his mouth shut.
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Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 7:34 am
“Oh.”
This guy. Riker.
She’d told her dad she ran into a guy named Riker. Even that hadn’t been enough to pull him out of his moping. Dad, people are literally naming their kids after your nerd show characters? Isn’t that cool?
It wasn’t cool. Not at all. Maisie refused to accept it — mostly because Riker had been a jerk to her last time she’d seen him. Or, well, he’d gone back and forth between being a jerk and not being a jerk. It was annoying. Why were boys so annoying?
“It’s you,” she said, stating the obvious.
So he played sports. It figured he was a jock. Maisie didn’t really have anything against jocks, except that they always seemed to be the most popular kids at her old school, which was aggravating, ‘cause half of them weren’t even all that good. They could do whatever they wanted and not get into any trouble. There was even a rumor the football coach let his athletes watch porn in his office.
Ugh.
Maisie let out a huff and tossed her hair.
“We don’t have to stand here and chat,” she told him. “Go get your gross coffee.”
She moved around him. She was tempted to step on his notebook as she went, but she avoided it at the last second, juggling her drink and her phone so she could dig into her prada bag for her earbuds.
Unbeknownst to her, a tube of lip gloss fell out while she was rummaging. It rolled next to Riker’s pencil.
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Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 7:37 am
Well, he didn’t get an ew, so he supposed he would take that as a positive thing. He sighed as she tossed her hair and huffed and looked down her nose at him before insulting his made up coffee choice and moved around him.
“Very lady-like,” he mumbled to himself as he let her pass and knelt down to collect his book and pencil and--
Was the lip gloss hers? It seemed like it was the same color she’d been wearing. Not that he was looking at her lips at all! Well, maybe he was looking at her face, but that was what you were supposed to do when talking to someone, right? Okay, maybe he was looking at her lips a little, if only because he was waiting to see her sneer at him.
“Hey,” he tried calling over his shoulder, but she must have put in her earbuds or was ignoring him. He was tempted to just leave the tube there, but…
Maybe he could try and drop it back into her purse without her noticing.
Quickly, he pushed his way back out of the coffee shop to find out which way she started walking, and turned in that direction to follow her.
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Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 7:39 am
Maisie only put in one of her earbuds. You never know when a creepy weirdo was gonna start following you. She had to be prepared.
She wasn’t prepared.
She turned down a side street to try and take a shortcut to the nearest subway station. There was an empty dirt lot to her right, surrounded by a chain link fence and littered with random trash. A sign on the fence seemed to indicate that the lot had been bought up and would be under construction soon, but Maisie didn’t bother to see what it was going to be. She was too busy getting a look at the strange creature staring back at her from beyond the fence.
It just stood there, motionless eyes locked on her. It looked sort of like a big, bipedal lizard, kind of scale-y, with greenish-gray flesh marred by oozing gashes, and… very big teeth. And claws. And eyes that looked hungry.
For a moment, it didn’t move. Maisie took a breath and tried to will her heart to calm down, told herself it was probably someone’s discarded dinosaur statue. Maybe some place nearby had decorated with a zombie dinosaur theme last Halloween and dumped this thing here because it was broken, or someone stole it and–
Did it just blink?
Maisie took a step back.
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Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 7:39 am
Maisie took a step back right into Riker who was trying to gently place the lip gloss back into her purse without her noticing, but ended up losing his balance because she bumped into him right as he was taking a step.
“s**t,” he hissed, the extra weight on his back causing him to throw his hand out to catch himself before he actually fell onto his a** or back or whatever.
But not just that. He caught sight of what she saw.
“What is that??” he hissed in horror, scrambling to pick up his notebook and pencil again.
And then it jumped, perching itself on the top of the chain link fence which rattled and banged against itself from the sudden movement. The creature snarled at them, but it was like a high pitched whine more than anything animalistic.
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Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 7:41 am
She would have whirled on Riker and shouted at him for stalking her, accused him of being a creep and stomped off before he had the chance to explain himself, but she was too busy being absolutely terrified to do more than stare at the creature as it–
It jumped. Onto the fence. It just–… It was on the ground staring at her, and then it was up on the fence and… sort of ********>...” Maisie wheezed.
She couldn’t breathe. She stumbled back, nearly tripping over Riker who was in the process of picking up whatever it was he’d dropped.
“Oh, ********, it’s a dinosaur.”
It couldn’t be real, right? Dinosaurs were extinct. Jurassic Park was just a movie. No one in real life would be stupid enough to–
Actually, scratch that. Plenty of people in real life were stupid enough to try to bring dinosaurs back into existence. Was that the sort of thing people did in Destiny City? Did someone really take inspo from Jurassic Park and decide, sure, why not, nothing could possibly go wrong?
Maybe it was an animatronic. Like, a really life-like robot.
When it was done snarling, the dinosaur cocked its head to the side, fixing them with another unblinking stare.
Then it threw itself at them.
Maisie screamed.
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Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 7:43 am
“No!” Riker shouted. He didn’t have anything with him. He couldn’t reach his bag in time to get his baseball bat. All he had was his pencil that he’d reached for.
He shoved Maisie out of the way, using his stupid pencil to try and block a dinosaur as Maisie called it.
But it wasn’t a pencil. It was some weird, shimmering, but very dull blade. No, it wasn’t a blade at all. It looked like some kind of letter opener that could be found in an antique mall.
Apparently the dinosaur was a lot lighter than it looked, because he shoved it so hard that it was pushed back against the fence, hissing and spitting.
Riker was no longer in light blues and dark grays of Azure, but instead black and red.
“What the hell??” he stared down at himself for a few moments, but didn’t keep his eyes away from the crazy dinosaur for long.
“In my bag!” he called to Maisie, hoping maybe she’d grab the bat while he used… whatever weird energy was suddenly making him feel stronger.
Shoving the dinosaur away hadn’t been without sacrifice of course. His new white shirt sleeve was already stained red where claws sliced his arm.
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Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 7:44 am
Maisie thought maybe they should run. Maybe they should head back the way they’d come, where there were more people.
Okay, actually, maybe leading this thing toward more people wasn’t the best idea. Except then they could try to get lost in the crowd. If other people got hurt in the process, it wouldn’t really be their fault, would it? More people were probably going to get hurt anyway. It was a freaking dinosaur! It would just keep killing ********, ********, ********, we’re going to die!”
Then Riker had to go and… do something. Get between her and the dinosaur, and… change clothes? How did he do that? What the ******** was going on?
“What the ******** is going on?!” she shouted.
He was Riker, that annoying kid she’d met at the coffee shop, the one who made fun of her name and her hair and her school, who’d probably make fun of a bunch of other things about her if he had the chance, but it also wasn’t Riker. It was like he was someone else. Like a superhero!
Oh, God, there were dinosaurs and superheroes? And Riker was one of them?!
“You’ve got to be ******** kidding me,” Maisie whimpered.
She grabbed Riker's bag. Maisie ripped at it, trying to get at something, anything that might help her defend herself.
She gripped the bat. It was one of those metal ones. Aluminum? Maisie didn’t pay all that much attention to sports, hadn’t even held a bat since… God, she couldn’t even remember. Back when she was a kid and played wiffle ball in the backyard?
The dinosaur howled and snarled at them again, then came forward and reached for them with its bloody claws.
Maisie swung.
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Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 7:46 am
Maisie swung and actually managed to land a hit! But the contact must have startled her enough to make her let go of the bat, which ricocheted and hit Riker in the leg.
“Ow!” he yelped and lifted his leg to hold it where it had been hit, hopping up and down in an almost comical way. Except for the fact that the stunned dinosaur was not just pissed.
It snarled and squealed at them, and when it launched itself at them again, Riker jumped up to kick it in the face.
He actually jumped high enough to kick it in the face. How, he had no idea, but he was just as startled when he landed back on the ground. He seemed to have extra strength, extra jumping… what even was this?? His heart was racing too fast for him to try and figure it out beyond wanting to stop the creature from hurting anyone.
“Try hitting it again. Hold onto the handle tightly,” he encouraged, using his foot to nudge the bat in Maisie’s direction.
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Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 7:49 am
“I was holding it tightly!”
She wasn’t going to apologize. She didn’t exactly have the time. The dinosaur was fast, and it was vicious. Maisie would very much like to find whoever it was that decided to bring a dinosaur back to life and hit them in the face with Riker’s bat.
What was Riker even doing anyway? And how was he doing it? Where did he get super powers from? Was he bitten by a spider? Injected with some sort of serum? Had he been like this before they even met? But then why did he seem so surprised by it?
Was it a fluke? Was he going to lose his powers as suddenly as he’d gotten them and leave them both defenseless?
Maisie managed to grab the bat again before Riker’s nudge sent it rolling too far away. She wrapped her hands around it, tighter this time, and tried to emulate the stance her cousin took when she bothered to watch his games. Which wasn’t often. Talk about a snooze fest.
The dinosaur crashed onto the sidewalk from Riker’s kick. Maisie lifted the bat up high and brought it down as hard as she could on the dinosaur’s head.
She screamed while she did it.
God, why didn’t she just run?
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Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 7:55 am
The dinosaur was there and then suddenly it wasn’t. It was just… dust. A big cloud of it. Riker coughed and waved his hand in front of him to try and keep himself from breathing it in, and then quickly turned to Maisie to make sure she was okay.
“Did it hurt you? What the hell was that thing? Did it just… disappear?” he grimaced, looking around them to see if there was anyone else, for one. There wasn’t. And to make sure that thing--
“I could feel it,” he said suddenly, realizing now that it was gone that it had some kind of presence, but he had no idea what that meant. And he took a moment to look down at himself again but… He shook his head because it was weird.
“Nice swing. You didn’t break a nail, I hope.” It was a joke! Maybe now wasn’t the time.
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Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 7:58 am
Maisie was still screaming when she drew the bat back up.
She’d hit the dinosaur. She knew that. She’d felt the bat connect. The impact sent a jolt up her arms, sent her careening back a bit, made her squeeze tighter, afraid the bat might slip out of her hands again.
Then the dinosaur just… burst. Like a puff of smoke or a cloud of dust. It was gone. Poof! Maisie stared around, eyes traveling from here to there, searching for any sign of it. What if it appeared again? Would it jump from behind?
Maisie whirled around the check, but it wasn’t there.
She stopped screaming to breathe. And breathe. And breathe. She took many panting breaths, willing her heart to stop pounding so hard. She was going to be sick from it. Her heart was going to leave her chest, rise up her throat, and splatter onto the pavement with a pool of vomit.
“Oh, God, just shut up,” she said weakly.
Maisie dropped the bat, let it clatter to the ground so she could do literally anything else with her shaking hands, only she had no idea what to do, so she just stood there staring at the spot where the dinosaur had vanished. Then, when that offered nothing, she looked at Riker and his superhero clothes.
“What are you?” she asked with a bit of accusation in her voice. If he was a superhero, shouldn’t he know these things?
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Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 8:00 am
Riker grimaced as Maisie just… wasn’t taking all of this very well. He supposed he should be a little freaked out about everything too. And he was! But he wasn’t going to puke.
He took a step away from her just in case anything came up.
“Why should I know? I’ve never seen this before. It just… happened,” he frowned, and winced when he lifted his arm. The red had soaked up his sleeve, and he put his other hand over it to try and stop whatever blood was still trying to leak out.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what that thing was. But I’m glad you’re not hurt,” he admitted, because it was the truth. And she helped him, so that was a plus.
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Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 8:03 am
“Things like this don’t just happen!” Maisie insisted.
They didn’t. She would’ve heard about them. Superheroes and dinosaurs weren’t things people could keep secret for long. Rumors spread, people talked, there were cameras everywhere. The evidence always came out. Like when cops did shitty things! In this day and age, with the sort of technology normal people had at their disposal, good luck keeping it on the downlow.
Yet, there’d definitely been a dinosaur. Maisie hadn’t imagined it, so either it was the first dinosaur to roam free, or somehow, some way, no one was talking about them.
Destiny City was weird, but it couldn’t be that weird.
Could it?
“This isn’t like a random accident or s**t you’d expect to hear on the news! That was a dinosaur! Or something! And you’re some sort of—... whatever, a superhero! Or a super-something! What’s your alias? Doctor Dapper? Finely Dressed Boy? Who does superhero things in a suit, anyway?”
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