Guardian | Camp Cretaceous

Happy Birthday, Eddie!

"The prints are deeper by the forelegs..." Azriel observed, crouching by the dead ankylosaur. A destroyed gyrosphere lay off to the side. "The alpha stayed behind to face the carnivore." He touched the deep gouges in its hind legs. "She was drawn away before she could gorge." He stood up and touched his own injury, clicking his teeth.

"Don't say gorge," Yasmina said. "It's an asshole word."

Azriel raised a brow.

"Please don't make light of this," Sammy said emotionally. "She's an animal, and she was killed and left to rot here all alone. This was a waste!" Yasmina should feel sadder about something like this, she knew, but she'd watched people die in front of her before, so she felt somewhat desensitised to this.

And that... that made her feel guilty.

Azriel put his hands on his hips and looked around. Yasmina watched him, wondering what he was thinking. To her, it seemed like there was nothing that could be too much for him to handle, but that was only because of everything she had seen him done these past three days.

"The carnivore is highly intelligent," he said. To prove it, he gestured to the ankylosaur and the broken gyrosphere; as if they could see what he was seeing. "It couldn't penetrate the armour, so it took out the legs, then broke its neck. As I was saying, it was distracted before it could eat. Strange that it didn't come back..."

Maybe some higher power thought it would be funny to have something rustle in the grass right after he said that, but Yasmina certainly didn't. She jumped into the grass with Brooklynn, the others finding their own hiding places as they waited for whatever was in the bushes to show itself. Azriel knelt behind the ankylosaur, the knife looking more than familiar in his hand as he held it in an overhand grip, his eyes darkening by the second.

'No teenager should have those eyes,' Yasmina thought. It was the same look that the man who'd saved her had had in his hazel eyes—the look of someone who was ready to kill or be killed.

The long grass rustled beneath the sound of low growling. Yaz was dimly aware of something clutching her hand, but she put it out of her mind and watched with bated breath as Azriel got into a position which made pouncing easier; he gripped the knife calmly, like he'd done this a thousand times before... but the moment the dinosaur ran out of the tall grass, he dropped his guard and stood up, sheathing the knife at his belt and putting his hands on his hips.

"Now we know why the alpha stayed to fight," he said, looking down at the ankylosaur. "She was protecting the littlest member of her herd." Yasmina sighed with relief and dropped her head, bumping it softly against the grass.

"Bumpy!" Ben cried, leaving his hiding place behind the destroyed gyrosphere.

Yasmina was suddenly very aware of Brooklynn holding her hand. And it looked like the vlogger noticed it, too, as the two of them looked at each other before snatching their hands away quickly. Why did she hold Brooklynn's hand, of all people? Grumbling as she pushed herself to her feet, Yasmina crossed her arms and averted her eyes.

"And drooly, and smelly," Kenji added. "How do you even know that's the same dinosaur?"

"Her big head bump," Ben explained. "Dr. Wu said she's asymmetrical, but he's wrong that it's bad." He scratched its head, and the dinosaur warbled. "And so what if she is asymmetrical? There's nothing wrong with being different—or bumpy, or getting tired after reading a thrilling book! And maybe if her parents had listened to her, she wouldn't have come here and gotten attacked!"

Yasmina blinked at him and leaned closer to Azriel, "Are we still talking about the dinosaur?"

Azriel slid his eyes over to her. "There are some unresolved issues there."