In the Montana Badlands, days after the incident that left an Ingen worker injured severely, a team of paleontologists were excavating a dinosaur fossil.

Shape of a dromeosaurid, definitely one, as they scraped the dirt carefully.

Lily sat at the cluttered pick-nick table holding a sandwich in one hand and a pencil in the other.

She was drawing a sloppy looking velociraptor, the pencil led scratching against the notebook paper in short strokes.

She wasn't the best artist, but she wasn't horrible; though she wanted to take classes to improve her skills.

Though, Lily wasn't sure when she'd actually have the time to take any such classes.

She and her father moved around a lot depending on where Alan found himself employed, though Montana tended to be rich in dig sites; hence was the reason their house was in said state.

In her eleven years, Lily had been to a number of different schools, and found she prefered the familiarity of paleontologists to teachers and open landscape to classrooms.

Though she went anyway, as per her father's instruction and her dream of someday being a paleontologist.

"Hey, Lily!" someone called. She looked up while chewing a mouthful of her lunch and spotted Jared, a young paleontologist who sat under a tent that shaded a computer system that had been acting finicky all day.

Once Jared saw he'd grabbed her attention, he waved her over as he pushed away from the table.

Almost everyone on sight adored Lily, especially since she helped out with whatever needed helping, and stayed out of the way when she needed to.

She was shockingly mature for her age, and that earned her a good dose of respect. "The computer's rebooted; we're gonna try again!"

"I'll go get my dad!"

Once Lily had retrieved her father, she went about finishing her lunch before joining all the other paleontologists around the computer screen as Jared told Ellie that the results of shooting the radar into the ground should be near instantaneous.

Sure enough, the screen clicked to life and wobbly, fuzzy shapes began to appear.

"This program is incredible… a few more years development and we won't even have to dig anymore," Jared was murmuring as an image of a velociraptor skeleton came fuzzily into view on the screen.

Alan, who had removed his hat and sunglasses, leaned up against the tent pole. He scoffed quietly and crossed his arms.

"Where's the fun in that?" he inquired. He earned a snicker from the rest of the paleontologist, and a fond squeeze of the arm from Ellie, who smiled brightly at him.

Lily stood to Alan's right, a notepad and pencil in hand with a fresh page to write on at the ready. Alan got her to take notes on occasion, since her handwriting was much better than his; that, and she was just good at writing quickly.

"It's a little distorted… but I don't think it's the computer."

"Mm… post-mortem contraction of the posterior neck ligaments," Ellie listed off, approaching the screen. She pointed to said marks, eyes narrowed to see the tiny details.

Alan playfully nudged Lily's shoulder and waggled his fingers down at her notepad, which was beaten around the edges and coated in a fine layer of dust.

"You got that?"

"Post-mortem contraction to the posterior neck ligaments, yup," she repeated as she wrote them down.

Alan winked at her and flanked Jared on his right just as Ellie did on his left. He bent at the waist and stared at the radar image on the screen.

"Velociraptor?" Ellie inquired.

"Yeah––in good shape, too. It's… five, six feet high, I'm guessing nine feet long. Look at the extremities––" he cut himself off when the screen fuzzed into static as he tapped the screen. "What did it do?"

"You touched it," Ellie laughed as the image reappeared. He touched the top of the computer again and the screen delved into static again.

Ellie, laughing harder, nudged Jared and smiled over at Lily, who was biting her lip and smiling. "Dr. Grant isn't computer compatible."

"It's got it in for me…" he muttered under his breath distastefully. He refocused himself and pointed to the raptor's talons. "And look at the half-moon shaped bones in it's wrists… No wonder these guys learned how to fly." There was a sense of whimsy in his voice, admiration.

He had written an entire book about dinosaurs and birds, and how he thought they were related, how he thought some of them had turned into birds. A resounding chuckle echoed around him. "No, seriously. Alright…"

Alan turned to face his comrades and Ellie and Lily moved off to the side, having heard this speech many times before.

Many times before. "Well, maybe dinosaurs have more in common with present day birds than they do with reptiles. Look at the… pubic bone––turned backward, just like a bird. Look at the vertebrae, full of air-sacks and hollows just like a bird, and even the word raptor means 'bird of prey.'"

"That doesn't look very scary!" exclaimed a young voice from the edge of the group. Everyone turned to see a young boy, maybe around Lily's age, standing not too far away. He looked deeply skeptical of Alan's theory, eyes narrowed under the bill of his baseball cap.

Alan turned slowly, returning the look the boy was tossing his way.

The other paleontologists stepped to either side, allowing their site-leader and mentor ample space to step forward; because if there was one thing they could be sure about, it was the fact that Alan wouldn't leave this matter lie. "More like a… six-foot turkey!"

"A turkey…" Alan murmured as everyone around them chuckled with amusement. Ellie nudged Lily's side with her elbow and smiled.

"Oh no… here we go," she said under her breath, stepping forward to follow Alan as he approached the boy.

Lily then smiled and sat herself down on one of the equipment crates, watching as her father placed his fingers to his temples for a moment, pacing forward as he launched into a speech.

"Okay. Try to imagine yourself in the Cretaceous Period. You get your first look at this… 'six foot turkey' as you enter a clearing. He moves like a bird, lightly, bobbing his head. And you keep still because you think that maybe his visual acuity is based on movement like T-Rex - he'll lose you if you don't move. But no, not Velociraptor."

Alan waggled his hand from side to side, dismissing the thought.

The boy rolled his eyes and Alan pointed at himself.

"You stare at him," he pointed to the boy, "and he just stares right back. And that's when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side––thwip!,"

Alan brought the pointer finger of either hand together, swiping them through the air as the boy's eyes widened, "and the other two raptors you didn't even know were there.

Because Velociraptor's a pack hunter, you see, he uses coordinated attack patterns and he is out in force today." Alan began to circle around the boy, both hands casually resting on his hips.

One of his hands snuck into his pocket and curled around the object that sat there.

"And he slashes at you with this…" he withdrew his hand to reveal the raptor claw he'd taken from the dig-site, which was brandished between his fore and second finger, "a six-inch retractable claw, like a razor, on the middle toe. He doesn't bother to bite your jugular like a lion, say... no, no. He slashes at you here," he slashed the claw through the air diagonally, just above the boy's chest, "or here," downwards, from his abdomen to his thigh.

As he bent at the waist to become eye-level with the boy, Ellie shook her head and muttered 'oh, Alan' under her breath. Alan then slowly drew the claw through the air by the boy's stomach. "Or maybe across the belly, spilling your intestines. The point is... you are alive when they start to eat you. So you know... try to show a little respect."

The boy nodded, meeting Alan's gaze. "Okay."

Alan offered him a smile that was filled with amusement before slipping the claw back into his pocket as he walked away.

That speech, that overly descriptive, bloody, realistic story, was exactly how he'd always talked to Lily.

Most of her bed-time stories followed that description in some sort of capacity, helped along with little dinosaur toys and growling sound effects.

She never cowered away or asked him to stop; she even became accustomed to correct what her father said if she thought it was wrong.

And, sometimes he purposely said something wrong to see if she'd pick up on it… more often than not, she did.

The boy stood wide-eyed, mind filled with gory, panic inducing images.

While Ellie made to follow Alan, Lily simply smiled and flipped her notebook shut, hopping off the supply crate. Jared, who was smirking to himself, nodded at her as he tapped away at the keys.

"He ever talk to you like that?" he asked with a chuckle, feeling like he knew the answer. Lily smiled and replied as she backed up with jaunty little steps.

"Only always!"

Ellie and Alan were climbing their way back up the hill as Ellie commented that, if Alan wanted to scare the boy, he should've just pulled a gun on him.

Alan chuckled at the thought then shook his head. His knowledge of dinosaurs could be called his weapon, he supposed.

"Kids…" Alan sighed. He chuckled and shook his head. "And you say you want kids."

"I don't want that kid, but a breed of child, Dr. Grant, could be intriguing," Ellie laughed, gesturing about with her hands. "I mean, what's so wrong with kids? You're a father, that's not exactly the kind of attitude father's have––let alone you. You love Lily with everything you've got."

"Oh, Ellie, look, they're… noisy, they're messy, they're expensive," Alan listed off, ticking the list off on his fingers with the brim of his hat.

Ellie shook her head and whacked his arm playfully.

"Cheap, cheap… Alan, you're a dad!"

Ellie had pulled the card she always used whenever this conversation popped up.

Alan smiled and fiddled around with his hat as they climbed the hill.

He had never actually planned or intended on being a father; Lily had been a complete and utter surprise, but a lovely, beautiful surprise nonetheless.

He loved her something fierce, though he did find it difficult to find ways to express it besides just saying it.

Kids weren't his strong suit, as had just been demonstrated, and he had a bluntness to the way he spoke that many wouldn't find quite fatherly.

But he had raised Lily on his own, and she had grown to love and expect the way he spoke and explained things.

At times it was hard since he didn't know how to be a parent, let alone a single parent, but no one could exactly say he'd done a bad job.

"Yes, I am; and I love Lily dearly and deeply, but she was noisy, messy, and continues to be expensive. Though I will admit she was considerably less noisy and messy than other children."

He smiled to himself and knocked his hat against thigh a few times. "I raised her right. Oh––and kids smell," he added on as an afterthought.

"They do not smell!" Ellie laughed, bending at the waist.

"Some of them smell! Babies smell!" Alan retorted, pointing at the blond haired woman.

"Take it from me, who has raised a child from infancy––babies smell…" He answered.

Until a sudden rush of wind had picked up, dust began flying everywhere.