Skilled or Skill Issue?

Irene pushes her way through the hole the museum doors used to occupy and stands in the grand entrance hall for a moment, before immediately making toward a set of incongruously bright-painted signs advertising “Games and PRIZES!!!”  A green oviraptor, Myrtle, trails timidly behind the iguanodon, and behind her is another iguanodon, his chest and undersides patterned in dark green.  Davor, the second iguanodon, pauses just a little longer to appreciate the scene.  The other side of the entrance hall holds a tantalizing glimpse of bones and long-dead creatures, but he follows Irene, ducking into a wing that holds mechanical wonders instead.

This room is even grander than the entrance hall, with large flying machines- airplanes, Davor distantly recalls- parked along the ground and smaller ones hanging precariously from the ceiling.  Along the wall nearest them are humans, and Davor does a double-take.  No, these are just their clothes, thick fabric and helmets shining like a beetle’s carapace.  Evidently what they wore while flying.

Irene makes an impatient gesture with her tail, and Davor moves on.  Among the airplanes are booths, games fashioned after the kinds found in a human carnival.  Dinosaurs of all types and colors weave between them, and it’s quite clear that Davor, Irene, and Myrtle aren’t the only Atlanteans drawn by the festival.  Myrtle sticks close to her larger companions to avoid being trampled, eyeing any nearby carnivores nervously.

Irene is already grumbling.  “It’s obvious no one took our grand stature into account,” she mutters to Davor.  “Look at these games!  Only a hatchling could play them!”  She gestures to where a group of utahraptors fish plastic ducks out of a pool with hooked rods.  Myrtle is the perfect size for the game, and she gazes curiously at it, but Irene nudges her back.

“Surely there are some games here that would suit us,” Davor murmurs diplomatically.  He can see a therizinosaurus, even taller than they, on the far side of the room, and he points with one thumb-claw.  “Perhaps over there.”

With a huff, Irene follows him.  The therizinosaurus smiles as they get close.  “Hello!  Lovely morning, isn’t it?  I have here a version of the classic bobbing for apples game, just sized a little more appropriately for creatures like us,” she calls, winking at the two iguanodons.  Irene draws herself up, looking proud.  The therizinosaurs gestures in front of herself with a wing, at a large pool filled with water and pumpkins floating peacefully about.  “If you remove all the pumpkins in the time allotted, you get put on the leaderboard!” she points with her other wing at a list of names scrawled on top of what used to be an info board for a nearby airplane.  “No hands, no claws, no feet.  Just your mouth.  Got it?”  The trio nods.  “Alright- go!”

Irene dives immediately for the pool.  She’s a competitive sort, and the thought of having her name visible to all who come to this game after drives her forward.  Davor approaches more slowly, taking a moment to plan whether he wants to grab the body of the pumpkins or try to pick them up by the stem.  Myrtle gamely hops up to the edge of the water, but she can’t even reach across the pool, and the pumpkins are large and heavy for her.  They slip away from her grasp, until she finally manages to snag a stem in her beak and drag it away.  Davor is sedately and methodically grabbing pumpkins and depositing them next to him, while Irene flings them from the pool, heedless of the damage she deals the pumpkins in the process.  One breaks open against the plane’s wing, and the therizinosaurus attendant frowns a little.

A moment later, she calls out, “Time!” and the three participants sit back.  The pool is empty, the final pumpkin clutched in Irene’s jaws.  She grins triumphantly around it, though her chest heaves from the effort.  Davor’s pile of pumpkins is smaller, and Myrtle had only managed to remove the one.  The attendant dutifully writes their names down and moves to clean up the pumpkins.  Irene practically prances away, trailed by her two companions.

“What a wonderful game!” she crows, all earlier annoyance forgotten.  “What shall we play next?”  Myrtle stops next to a high striker game, gazing up at the bell mounted on the top.

An anteosaurus leans around the game.  “Why, hello there!  Care to test your strength!” he calls.

Irene stares down at him and the game that barely reaches past her chest.  “I think I’d break it,” she remarks drily.  “Come, Myrtle, you’re too light to make an impression on that thing anyway.”

She starts to turn away, but Myrtle’s quiet voice stops her.  “My lady, I’d like to try it,” the oviraptor states.

Irene frowns, but Davor speaks up, “Let her play.  She’s here for games too.”  Irene just rolls her eyes and waves a foreleg in response.  Get on with it.

Myrtle happily moves up to the machine.  In the past, humans used a hammer to show off their strength, but the anteosaurus instructs her to simply jump onto the pad.  She crouches, calculates a moment, then jumps, arcing high into the air and slamming both feet into the lever.  The puck rises high in the machine, but not quite high enough to ring the bell.  Irene scoffs.  “See, I told you-”

“Actually,” the anteosaurus interrupts.  “She did quite well for the oviraptors I’ve seen.”

Irene huffs at being interrupted, but looks over Myrtle appraisingly.  “Well, that’s surprising.  Good job,” she says.  Myrtle looks first surprised, then beams at the praise.

They move on, Irene complaining about having to duck under the suspended airplanes.  She nearly trips on the carnosaurus that hops out in front of their group.  “Step right up!” he calls, “Care to test your aim?”

Irene stares down at him, annoyed.  “Test it on what?” she asks.

The carnosaurus gestures with his tail at the “booth” behind him.  It’s not a full wooden construction like the others, rather a set of bottles balanced atop an airplane wing and a ball sitting on a pedestal in front.  “Knock over all three bottles with that ball, and you win a grand prize!  Hit the ball any way you like, tail, wing, even your snout!  But you only get three tries.  Think you can do it?”

Davor sticks his head past Irene’s shoulder.  “Grand prize?  What do we get?”

The carnosaurus winks.  “It’s a mystery!  You only find out if you win!” he crows.

Irene’s curiosity is piqued now, and she drags her companions into the competition.  She measures the distance between the ball and the bottles with her eyes, before electing to swing her tail at the ball.  She completely misses, hitting the wall behind the airplane.  The attendant sets another ball atop the pedestal.  Irene swings again, and a third time, but completely misses.  She snarls with frustration, stamping a foot on the ground, but she cannot take a fourth turn.

Davor is next.  He tries a different strategy: smacking the ball with a foreleg.  His first swing falls short, the ball bouncing off the front of the plane’s wing.  He pauses, recalculates, swings again.  The top bottle flies off, shattering against the ground.  Davor perks up, but the attendant shakes his head.  “Must be all three,” he asserts.  Davor tries a third time, but the ball goes wide.

Myrtle is the last chance for the group to win the prize.  She steps up to the pedestal, then glances back at the two iguanodons staring down at her, the carnosaurus attendant standing just a little too close by.  She sweeps a wing at the ball, but misses it entirely.  She tries again, hitting the ball, knocking it only a few feet.  Irene groans in annoyance, and Myrtle makes a startled meep sound.  She gets two more attempts.  She needs to make it.

But she doesn’t.  Only on her third try does the ball get anywhere near the bottles, and even then it only bounces past.  The attendant sweeps it off the floor.  “Sorry folks, you’re out of chances!  Guess you won’t see what the prize is.”

Irene turns away, muttering, “It probably doesn’t even exist.”  She whips her tail, angered, before saying more loudly, “Come on.  This festival is rigged, let’s get out of here.”  Davor sighs, but doesn’t protest, and Myrtle only follows along meekly, head bowed in shame, as the three dinosaurs head toward the exit.