Nick yawned loudly as reclined back on the bench of the park he and his rabbit were visiting. The majority of the day had been uneventful, with nothing notable or out of the ordinary happening for them to make note of. The same applied to the rest of the week prior to this moment.
"You tired?" Judy inquired, having heard how loud he had yawned a second ago.
"No, Fluff," the fox replied. "It's just… there hasn't been anything exciting happening the last few days."
The doe nodded. "I agree with you on that, but I don't think there's anyway we can fix that. It's not like something crazy and unbelievable is only a few paces away."
The vulpine chuckled as he looked back at her. "Yeah," he said, "you're right."
Just then, as if it were meant to happen after such a remark was made, the two heard a humming sound coming from somewhere in front of them. While it was probably distant, it sounded powerful against their sensitive ears.
"What is that?" Nick grunted as he rubbed a paw over his head. "It's drivin' my ears crazy."
"I don't know," Judy said, "but it's hurting my ears too. What is that, some sort of frequency?"
The tod pointed over to a thick patch of fallen pine needles a couple yards away. "It sounds like it's coming from over there. We should check it out."
Judy followed as Nick started to make his way to the spot in which he believed the ringing sound was coming from. The closer they approached that area in the park, the more audible the tone was.
"Just like you said," the doe remarked when they stopped near the pile of pine needles. "It's like the ringing is under these."
The fox bent down and started to sweep what was scattered on the ground, hoping to find something. He uncovered a patch of dirt that looked like it had been dug up at one point or another, noticing that something was glowing rapidly from underneath.
"Better see what's buried under here," Nick said to himself out loud, proceeding to place his paw on the glowing spot of dirt.
"Nick, wait!" Judy said cautiously.
As soon as he touched that spot in the ground, he and the doe found themselves being blown onto their backs by some invisible force. The two got up a moment after this happened, looking at each other with nothing but utter shock.
They both ran up to the spot in which they were standing not even a few seconds ago. The dirt that appeared to be burying something was uncovered, revealing an object that stuck up from out of where it had once been placed. The object in questioning was small and spherical in shape, and appeared to be a light that blinked quickly on the top of it.
"Uhh…" Judy muttered in confusion. "What is that thing?"
"Don't go near that, Carrots!" Nick suggested as he placed his paw on the bunny's shoulder. "We don't know what that thing could do. It just flung us in the air a little bit ago."
"It's not like it's some alien," the rabbit said.
"But what if it belonged to some flying saucer, Fluff?" the fox asked. "No one stops to think about the possibility of other life out there with better technology. I read about in a magazine once."
"Didn't you just say to me that you wanted something crazy and unbelievable to happen? Well, this is it."
The vulpine sighed, knowing that he didn't have a way to stop Judy from getting a closer look at this unknown thing that stood before them. "Alright, let's go up to it."
The fox and rabbit made their way up to it, getting a good inspection of it. The object appeared to be made out of some sort of metal, if their guess was correct.
Nick slowly stepped up to it and grabbed the foreign object in his paw, holding it delicately like it would self-destruct if he handled it too roughly. "I don't understand-"
A second later, he did understand what it was. The screen on the front of the spherical thing illuminated the way his phone did when he turned it on, and a series of numbers appeared on it.
"Please state your destination," a voice interacted from the device.
"Definitely some kind of contraption," Judy said, stating the obvious. "But these numbers on its screen…They look like they're supposed to represent the day, month, and year it is. There's even one over here that can go to the exact second."
"So what are you saying?" Nick inquired. "This is supposed to be some sort of object used to move through periods of time?"
The rabbit shrugged her shoulders. "Anything's possible. Besides, I've read enough sci-fi books growing up to know what time travel devices look like, and this seems like the type."
"We'll see about that, Carrots," the fox said with disbelief. He tapped on the tiny screen of the sphere where the icon that displayed the time of day. "If you turn out to be right about this, then this thing'll send us back five seconds into the past."
Nick pressed the button below the device's screen, and it started to make a sound that implied that it was powering up. He looked over at his bunny before they both found themselves being zapped away from where they stood. The park, void of any other visitors at this moment in time, was completely silent. That stillness was broken, however, when they reappeared, this time a short step away from where they first left.
"If you turn out to be right about this, then this thing'll send us back five seconds into the past," he repeated as a result of what just occurred. He went to press the button a second time, but was stopped when Judy grabbed the device form out of his paw.
"I can't believe that just happened," Judy muttered. "We literally just went back in time and ended right back up in the present."
Nick retook hold of the contraption and held it up in the air like the lion cub in a movie he had seen before. "Do you know what this means?" he remarked in amazement. "We can go to any point in time we want and do traveling in a way no one else can. I could even go back and meet my hero in history, Robin Hood."
"We can't just use that thing willy-nilly, Nick," the doe warned. "You remember the famous saying: With great power comes-"
"Infinite possibilities," the vulpine interrupted, nodding his head. "Yeah, I'm aware of that one."
"Great responsibility," Judy corrected, finishing the remark she wanted to make.
"You need to stop worrying so much," Nick replied. "As long as it's in the paws of mammals that are trustworthy, which it is, nothing drastic is going to happen." He looked at the sphere once again and tapped on it once again. "Now, let's go back to this particular date."
The two were then zapped away from the serene park and straight into a large crowd of mammals. Loud music being performed live pumped all around them, and colorful lights flashed in rhythm to the tune. They looked at their surroundings and realized they were at a Gazelle concert. To be more specifically, the Gazelle concert they went to after they both became members of the force.
"I can use it to relive some of the greatest moments I've had with you," Nick said to the rabbit beside him.
The lagomorph put a paw to her chest and smiled. "Awww, Nick..."
A few seconds after she said that, they found themselves being zipped away from this particular moment in time and back to the park. Back to the present day.
"Hold up, I got another idea," Nick said once they got back, choosing not to say what he had planned just now.
The spherical object hummed before it sent them back to five years ago. They now stood on the streets of Sahara Square, near where the fox used to acquire the Jumo Pops that made his famous pawpsicles.
Nick looked around for a brief moment, glimpsing over to see his past self walking slyly down the sidewalk, making his way over to them. Pointing in that direction, he said, "Look, Carrots, it's me! We should go talk to him."
"Nick, I don't think that's such a good idea," Judy responded. "You're probably not supposed to see yourself from the past."
She turned her head and realized her fox was not standing beside her, and was currently walking up to his past self. She sighed under her breath and ran up to him.
"How's it goin', my mammal?" Nick said to the version of himself from the past.
The past Nick grinned back at him and said, "Not too bad. The day's been a pretty good one."
The present Nick pointed to him and responded, "Is that a lime-green Pawaiian shirt? Looks really nice."
"I know, right?" replied Past Nick. "Just got this one a list bit ago.
"Nice." Present Nick chuckled at his past self, holding a paw up in the air. "High-four!"
The two Nicks proceeded to slap paws together. As soon as they did so, however, they found themselves being unexpectedly shocked by some sort of electricity. Bolts of blue energy coursed around the two foxes and also the device, and they found themselves being merged together. They shouted in confusion, their voices sounding distorted, before the sensation came to a stop, and everything was back normal.
Judy stepped back with her mouth agape, knowing inside that there was a possibility something like this would happen. Those books she read growing up taught her that you shouldn't do what Nick just did, and that was talking with your old self.
Nick and her were brought back to the park they started from a couple seconds after that occurrence. The doe made a mental note that they were probably only good for a brief moment of time travel using this device, as it didn't let them stay any longer than that.
"He probably tricked me with a joy buzzer," Nick sighed. "One of my classic tricks I used to pull and I fell for it. Not sure how my past self did the whole nearly-fusing-together stunt, though."
"That's because you shouldn't interact with the you from the past," Judy said as she thought out loud. "It probably puts too much pressure on the space-time continuum. At least, that's what happened in the one book I read."
Suddenly, the device that was in their possession started making a noise that didn't sound right. The numbers on its screen started to tick on their own at a rapid rate, going backwards by a great number of years until they all read the number zero. It was as if it was short-circuiting or something.
Nick's eyes widened as he looked at what was going on. "That doesn't look good," he mumbled aloud.
They were zapped away through time once again, and this time they were uncertain were they ended up. Everything around them was completely dark, with no signs of light or anyone else in sight. It felt as if he and the bunny were now floating through somewhere without gravity.
A moment later, they saw two beams of colored light, one of them green and the other one purple, coursing by. The beams got closer to one another until they ended up colliding in each other. This resulted in a monstrously loud boom that echoed around them, followed by a flash of the brightest light.
"Wow, that was a big bang!" Nick said to himself, his ears ringing.
"We've gone back to the very beginning," Judy shouted from nearby, barely audible to the fox.
The vulpine looked down at the time-traveling contraption, realizing the numbers on it were randomly ticking forward from where they were. He looked at Judy and told her that something was about to happen again, and they braced for what was going to occur next.
They were then transported to get another moment through time. They were now in the middle of some untouched portion of land, the grounds below them leading to some mountainous area in the distance. There was a loud stomping behind them that shook the ground, and they turned around to see what it was.
Nick became completely frozen, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open. Judy's reaction what he saw was quite similar as well. Stomping its way towards them was a humongous dinosaur, roaring as it started to pick up speed.
"Run," The fox and rabbit both said in unison.
And that was what they did. They tried as fast as they could to escape the prehistoric giant, but it simply followed them. Nick glanced down at the device, seeing it was trying to transport to another date once again.
The dinosaur approached where they stood, ready to stomp them with its massive foot. Before it could do this, the two disappeared unharmed.
Where they reappeared next looked like it actually had civilization further away from where they were. However, the field in which they stood was not a peaceful one. They heard the exploding sound of a cannon being fired, realizing they were standing in a battlefield from history.
They suddenly saw two lines of mammals in colonial uniforms running up one another, ready to fight for their land. Lucky for Nick and Judy, though, they manage to be zipped away before they ended up in that battle.
Where they returned was where everything started. Once they were back at the park, standing by the hole they discovered the device, they both decided to catch their breath. The screen of the sphere he held onto was ticking its numbers anymore, implying that it was possibly running out of power.
"That... was... AMAZING!" Nick remark giddily, smiling widely despite the peril they had just experienced.
"I'm thinkin' we better give this thing a break," Judy suggested. "Better yet, why don't we just put it back where we found it."
"I thought you enjoyed thrilling experiences like that," the fox replied.
"Yeah," the rabbit responded, "but not the kind that involve messing with time."
Nick pointed around the park. "Take a look around. Nothing disastrous happened just because did a couple jumps through time." He looked at the object he was still holding, gave it a tap and watched as the numbers appeared on it again. This time they weren't just randomly changing themselves. "Why don't we just do a couple more stops? Always wanted to see how they built that colosseum back then without the tools we have today."
Later...
The streets of Zootopia appeared to be in a state of chaos, and the sky was a deep red color. Either way one looked, it was like clusters of history had collided with one another and appeared here.
A cavemammal ran down the sidewalk with a club in his paw, nearly bumping into a wolf dressed in a Grecian tunic. In the opposite direction stood a vixen who appeared to be a queen from a different century, and she stood in confusion as she gazed at everything happening. Nearby was a cheetah in a knight's suit of armor, looking up to the sky and retreating as he saw something. A dark-colored hole opened up in the sky, and something huge fell from it. The pyramid sculpted in ancient history landed directly in the road with the largest thud, and the sounds of distant car alarms going off followed soon after.
Nick simply stood beside Judy as he watched all of this happening before him. "You know, Carrots, you were right," he admitted with a heavy sigh, sounding surprsingly calm despite what was going on. "Shouldn't have went back in time as many times as I did."
"You think?" Judy replied.
Author's Note: APRIL FOOLS! :D
Been looking for an opportunity to write something new that was overall silly, and today was the perfect opportunity to do just that. Please don't take this too seriously, as this was just meant to be something fun for April Fools' Day.
Also, if you're looking for some great stories that involve Nick and Judy traveling through time, I'd recommend giving Old Goat's A Fox in Time series a read if you haven't yet. :)
Even this story of mine was on the much sillier side, I still hope that you enjoyed reading anyhow. As always, your feedback, whether good or bad, is gladly appreciated.
'Til next time! :)