Sequel to the Dina and Todd battle forms post, here are Rupert, Pauleen, and Dino!

280-Character Rebellion: Rupert’s Twitter and Instagram

Rupert opened his Twitter account when he was 13 years old. He’s said it’s his, but initially, it was really just an outlet for FossilDig to advertise itself with a human aftertouch. Rupert spent three years posting nothing personal—though his victories would be plastered across screens as bountifully as his father’s products, they would rarely be showcased in an emotional light. This was an account designed to mask the inhumanity of a corporation, rather than grant it the heart it didn’t have—hence, Rupert’s real voice was muffled by his practiced condescension and unflappable sangfroid.

But following ZZ-as-Joe’s defamation of Dina, things changed. Rupert posted the first tweet he’d ever forgone his father’s approval for, expressing his belief in Dina’s innocence and decrying the putative Joe Wildwest’s speech. Overnight, hundreds of thousands of FossilDig consumers and fighters globally were exposed to a scandal on little Caliosteo. The media went wild. #DinaIsInnocent trended on Twitter hours after the tweet’s release. Interviewers lined up to badger Rupert into explaining his position. Marcus Harrison was utterly furious—this wasn’t a political account, after all, but an advertising account. Rupert, determined to shed his status as a chattel, refused to take the tweet down. Hence, the CEO found himself at a crossroads: for if he ignored the post, the media would notice Rupert’s rebellion against his father. Denying or contradicting it could only serve likewise. Hence, in spite of his dislike for Dina, he could do naught but release an official statement supporting Dina’s innocence.

Whilst his father was distracted with the Twitter scandal, Rupert opened an official Instagram account (@RupertHarrison, as opposed to his personal account, @MapoMapusaurus) without alerting his father to the fact. Though used as a celebrity platform, it’s entirely divorced from company initiatives—having been established during the ZZ/Dina palaver, his first posts were used to showcase his finals match against Dina and then express her innocence. Additionally, he created a highlights reel of the Cup, showcasing the more personal aspects the tournament. Early uploads included photos of the boulder outside Krakanak (‘For all the hardship that taught us all to count our blessings, thank you’), of Todd with a miraculous fossil cleaned perfectly (‘You proved yourself tenacious in round 1, and you’ve only gotten more tenacious as the weeks have gone on’), of Joanie and Princess Pooch at the end of Round 3 (‘We certainly came home surprised a few weeks later... power to you two’), and of his embrace with Dino at the end of the semis (no captions, just raw emotion). Additionally, he’d regram Pauleen’s posts in bulk, and put out the odd political statement. By the end of the week, he’d garnered 5000 followers; in a month, that number had tripled, and his father had caught wind of the whole affair. Though Marcus Harrison was horrified, there was nothing he could do—to this day, he ignores the account as much as possible.

Rupert continues to post frequently to this day, uploading new content near-daily. Amongst other things, he’s used the account to clarify his relationship with Dino (dating), explain that he got possessed by ZZ (and reassure the general populace that for all the health problems that came with such, he’s alright, if immunocompromised), and spam the great unwashed with aesthetic pictures of Mapo. More recently, after the sobering headline that he’d been admitted to the ICU for COVID-19, he uploaded a photo of himself in Icegrip Plateau with the following caption: ‘I live, I thrive’. However pale and haggard he appeared, fans went wild with relief and joy.

have some idols!!!

Pauleen: OH MY GOD, DINO, YOU’RE BLEEDING OUT. WHAT’S YOUR TYPE?

Dino: White hair, chill, has money, keeps me from doing stupid shit.

Pauleen: No idiot, your blood type.

Dino: Oh, that’s easy

Dino: Red

Wuh‐oh

Looks like someone's little plan to take back their vivosaur medals didn't work after all

[Actual thing I said aloud when I encountered the Pauleen, Todd, and Rupert easter egg in Frontier...]

FF Magnitude: "Kids..." (deep breathe) "It's time for you to learn a valuable lesson."

FF Magnitude: "Die."

Todd is considerably hyperopic, and requires glasses. Big, nerd-style, green-framed glasses. They’re inconvenient to wear while fossil hunting, so he generally sticks to contact lenses. Regardless, as long as he’s got something in his eyes (other than tears), once out of the dig site, he’s by far the best cleaner of the main crew of Champions. For comparison: Dina is clumsy, and Rupert’s spent his life relying on machines to clean for him, so he’s hopeless with the hammer himself. Pauleen can clean fairly well, but Todd is an utter automaton when it comes to excavating fossils. Occasionally, he can be seen wearing his glasses in the cleaning room. These occurrences merit boundless teasing from Dina, who always needles him about how nerdy he looks. That said, she respects his abilities - at this point, every member of the gang (on his advice) will simply take their wondrous and miraculous fossils to him, as he’s the least likely to damage whatever’s put in front of him.

In spite of this cleaning skill, Todd tends to freeze when put on the spot, hence why he began with such a losing streak in battle. However, as he matured, he learnt that when strategy disappears, having vivosaurs five ranks higher than the opponent is a sure-fire way to victory. And as soon as he bought his fossil chips, he was never again outranked. This bought him enough confidence to erode his nervous shell, thus allowing him to think more clearly and eventually grow as a fighter.

(For the record, he now doesn’t take vivosaurs into battle unless he’d cleaned them up to rank 8.)

Dina, Dye, and Dissent

Without the aid of litres upon litres of hair dye, Dina is a brunette. However, ever since she was 11, she’s gone to a huge effort to maintain her bright orange hair. In part, it was inspired by the endless kpop CDs Uncle Stryker sent in from his South Korean office. (To this day, she‘s still furious as can be over 2NE1’s breakup, and can sing their entire oeuvre by heart.) However, the motive runs a little deeper than being a devout fangirl – for when she first dyed her hair, she’d just moved schools to escape bullying. Changing her appearance in that way was her attempt to reinvent herself. It worked – she’s been an artificial redhead for years.

However, when ZZ-as-Joe declared Dina a criminal, she realised that however effective a mask might be at obscuring her face, she’d need to go to further lengths to disguise herself sufficiently. Hence, she dropped the dye and cut her hair into a flapper bob. It wasn’t much, but it certainly rendered her less conspicuous. Meanwhile, as the media raged about her ‘betrayal’ and forged story upon story of her BB badness, debate broke out on Caliosteo. Rupert and Pauleen, when interviewed, had the gall and integrity to defend her and deny all claims of her wrongdoing. Although some took heart in their words, the majority scorned them for their presumed malevolence/foolishness. Rupert dug his feet in further – when he and Pauleen were next seen on camera, they both had a single lurid orange streak in their hair. (Marcus Harrison flew into a fit, of course.) Why? Solidarity for Dina, they asserted. Even before Dina’s return to Cranial to confront ZZ, many fighters poured their hearts out to her by dyeing a section of their hair orange.

But one young fighter, already half-stooped in envy and fear, didn’t. Todd was already growing sick of Dina – the words ZZ enticed him to release had been prepared long ago. It’s just that Todd, possibly for self-disgust and possibly for cowardice, had swallowed his feelings and pushed them beneath his other insecurities.