Hayden’s stomach gurgled, still unsatisfied as the rest of the team situated themselves around the ultrawide television screen. She brought her knees to her chest, sitting beside Cece on the couch, and contented herself with looking at the screen. It was one of the amenities Julian had really invested in, at Hayden’s insistence. In Doctor Sivana’s lab, all she had was an old boob-tube CRT that had seen too many years and too many hairline fractures across its rippling screen. That, and a soggy cardboard box full of the same VHS tapes that only worked some of the time -- Jurassic Park and The Land Before Time were the most reliable, fortunately.
But here, Julian had spared no expense. They had surround sound that made Hayden feel like she was in the movie, with dino roars and Ric Brucesson’s dulcet tones filling her ears and her whole body. In the lab, the TV was an escape, an excuse to mouth along the words she’d heard a hundred times with Doctors Grant and Sattler and ignore the rattling screams emanating from the rest of the laboratory. Here it was a little slice of heaven, a chance to get swallowed up by the gentle couch fabric and enjoy the company of friends who were much less likely to stick her with a needle of patent-pending super-juice.
Mostly friends, anyway. To Hayden’s mind, friends had to be equals, partners, in a way. Otherwise you were just showing your pity for the creature in the cage, and Hayden had already gotten plenty of that from Captain Marvel. It was a perspective she was increasingly certain most of the team didn’t share -- the way Hana’s eyes passed over her and her dissected nuggets as she skirted around what exactly 7 Minutes In Heaven meant, the way half of the team pestered Jules about her inclusion in the first place, and especially the way they pretended they were being all sly about it. Even the way Cee tousled her hair set Hayden’s fingernails to dig into her own palms. I’m not five, she wanted to scream.
Then Skeets, the golden butler-bot windled into the tower, uncertain on his own thrusters. He hardly started babbling about his mission before Hayden disappeared from the couch, zipping between team members and bounding for her room.
She tore apart her box of dino nuggets as she ran, wordlessly dropping cardboard scraps in her wake that curled and folded themselves into the shapes of miniature dinosaurs. They would each take the form of a team member’s favorite dinosaur (or stated least favorite, in Julian’s case) and go to them, tugging on their pant leg or otherwise working their way into pockets or riding atop shoulders. It was rough at best, a pale imitation of Eilidh’s ability, but it was a way to get a sense of the team, vague impressions and feelings even from a battlefield away… When it worked. If nothing else, the cardboard dinos were good luck charms.
“Mission time, hell yeah!” She said breathlessly to Red as she twirled past him and gave him a slap on the shoulder, passing on a papercraft T-Rex. Past him and a dozen feet down the hallway she tore into her room, banging the already open door against the crack forming in her wall for the umpteenth time. She bounced over her otherwise plain claw-scarred bedspread (it had originally been dinosaur themed too, but a few sleeping transformations had now turned three sets of sheets to ribbons) and crashed into the pile of mostly clean clothes that constituted her wardrobe.
She scattered her clothes to the four winds searching for her costume, already kicking her way out of her jeans in anticipation. If she got ready fast enough, she reasoned, Julian wouldn’t have the heart to try and kick her off the mission. Finally, her mitts closed around the kevlar-scales that covered the fabric of her Dino-Man outfit. Go time.
This suit was the same as the one she had always worn, but this time with kevlar weave of Julian’s design instead of plain fabric, now that Captain Marvel wasn’t around to take bullets for her. As a plus, it could stretch to accommodate her transformations, or at least the most reasonable ones. It was, as the color-scheme-picker website had dubbed them, cretaceous blue and a fierce jurassic green, plated over with anti-stab scales of the same color that formed the structure of the costume. She wore a domino mask, but without the typical white microfilament that hid the wearer's baby blues. Instead, if you looked into Hayden’s eyes, a pair of slit saurid pupils looked back at you.
Roy was already in costume when she returned -- she must’ve lost time digging through t-shirt mountain. She looked his costume up and down. It was Roy’s own handiwork, an impressive construction of brilliant color that put the childish simplicity of her costume to shame. Her cheeks flared with red as she admired the tones in his costume, the way his shoulders curved like a taut bow, how his ‘Rainbow Raider’ voice sounded so much deeper...
“Fear not, raider of rainbows, Dino-Man is here to back you up!” She proclaimed, voice cracking as she tried to match Roy’s depth and bombast. She remembered herself and a hand came up to hide her blush, but she peeked back through her fingers at Roy.
There was flash across her mind and a warmth against her ankle. She looked down to find a cardboard dilophosaurus circling her feet, looking up to its master for guidance.
“Aw, did Hana leave you behind, little guy?” She said, scooping it into her cupped palms, “I guess you ride with Dino-Man today.”
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