A/N: A side story that I'm working on alongside my main title 'The Dragon of Nimh'. This story is a stand-alone title that is completely separate from my Saga of Spyro series altogether.
Not only will it be my first story written in a modern-day setting with modern-day elements, but it's also my first piece of fiction that focuses on Original Characters within the Main Cast, rather than all crossover work. So I'm hoping it'll be an enjoyable read and not a complete mess.
Zootopia and all characters belongs to Walt Disney Pictures.
Legend:
"Speech"
'Thought'
"Emphasized/Magical Speech"
"Deep/Draconian/Demonic Speech"
*SOUND EFFECT*
SIXTY-FIVE MILLION YEARS AGO:
It had been like any other day. At least that's what it would've thought, had it the ability to think sapient thoughts.
To the small nameless mammal, no bigger than the modern-day mouse, there had been nothing about that day that had been out of the ordinary. Rest in a half-dormant sleep with half a brain awake during the night, wait until the sun rose before daring to venture out of the burrow, and scurry about in quick alert bursts to catch bugs and anything else it could find to eat. All the while keeping eyes, ears, and nose alert for the predators of tooth and claw; every rustle in the brush was a reason to flee. Every roar in the distance a reason to freeze. Every pair of gleaming reptilian eyes a reason to fear the dark until the day it died.
That had been its existence ever since it was born. All it had ever known. All its small, primitive rodent brain was capable of even comprehending.
Eat. Run. Hide. Survive.
It was halted in its forging when the potent smell of blood hit its nostrils, the sharp metallic smell causing it to instinctually freeze. Such a smell usually meant predators, if not now then eventually, as they were always drawn to the scent of a potential meal. It waited, instinct telling it not to move a muscle…but as time passed, and the only sound there was to hear was the wind whistling and the birds singing in the distant trees, said instinct died down, and the mammal slowly made its way forward.
Pushing its way under the leaves of the ferns that covered the prehistoric plain, it discovered the source of the smell: the massive form of a dead Triceratops laid unmoving at the base of a hill, its back broken against a large stone outcrop piercing the earth from below. It had slipped on the wet ground, which had been muddied by the morning dew, and took a fatal tumble down into the rock at just the right angle and speed for its own weight to break its spine. Blood seeped from the dead titan's mouth, nose, and even its eyes, running down its face and forming a pool of blood around its head, which a swarm of flies had already started to gather around to feed on the literal mountain of meat, ripe and ready for the many hungry jaws the smell was no doubt already attracting.
It would not be wise for any smaller creatures to stick around, should they be spotted by the owners of said jaws.
The ground suddenly shook with a distant thud, rumbling through the earth and causing the mammal to whirl around mid-air. Another impact shook the ground again, this time slightly stronger. Then another stronger thud followed…then another…
Animalistic realization hit the tiny animals full force, causing its body to instinctively freeze on the spot, not daring to make so much as a single peep. Its wide eyes darted about in panic, looking every which way, while its nose wiggled with every sniff it took. Then the overwhelming presence of a predator arrived in the area, so powerful it nearly made its heart seize out of sheer terror.
*BOOM!*
A large, scaly, three-toed foot crashed on the ground mere feet away from the tiny mammal, the sheer force of the impact throwing it off the very ground and sending it tumbling several yards away. It scrambled frantically to its paws, disoriented from the blow, and scampered away as fast as its legs could carry it from the monster said foot belonged to.
The Tyrannosaurus Rex hadn't even noticed it had almost stepped on one of the scurrying fur-covered creatures as it made its way to the dead three-horned dinosaur. The mighty carnivore's nose had picked up the scent of blood almost the moment it had been spilled, and it had been tracking the scent ever since. Its gleaming eyes stared at the carcass in hungry anticipation; it was rare to find an unclaimed kill that was so fresh, so this was a treat it was going to fully enjoy. Stepping up to the carcass from around the rock, it eagerly tore into the soft underbelly of its meal, its eight-inch-long teeth easily sliced through the tough muscle, allowing it to rip off entire slabs of bloodied meat and swallow them whole in single bites.
It would feed well today, as far as it knew, and that made it a good day as far as it was capable of comprehending.
The Rex was so fixated on filling its belly that it didn't notice the sudden change in the air; the sense of on-coming doom for the entire world.
It was the sound of the birds that had altered it that something was wrong, and it raised its head in confused irritation. Entire flocks of birds and pterosaurs filled the sky in a single panicked flight of fear, screeching over and over in terror with each other; a sign of danger that all animals understood to a degree. To a fully-grown male Tyrannosaurus Rex, the largest and strongest predator to ever walk the earth, this meant nothing: there wasn't anything in all the world the King of the Dinosaurs had to fear. So, when nothing appeared to happen after a few seconds, it simply gave an animalistic snort before returning to gorging itself.
Then the sky turned a fiery red…long shadows stretched across the entire continent…and the Tyrannosaurus looked up again, this time to the sight of a massive ball of flame and rock slowing descending across the sky, the sheer blaze of fire reflecting in the dinosaur's blood-red eyes.
It was an event that had been set in motion for eons: From the depths of space, most likely knocked from the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, a massive asteroid over twelve kilometers wide had been on a slow yet steady collision course with Earth for many, many centuries, most likely even before the Cretaceous Period had begun. And now it had finally come: to mark the end of the longest legacy of life the planet had ever known.
The asteroid slammed into what would've been known as the Yucatan Peninsula at an angle of roughly 30 degrees. The impact gouges out a crater over a hundred and twenty miles wide and sends an incandescent plume of fire and vaporized rock across the globe at speeds close to ten miles per second. Within minutes, everything within hundreds of miles of the impact site was outright incinerated. In the far north, plants and animals suffered a different fate; some would be burned to ash by the intense heat, while others would succumb to earth-splitting shock waves generated by the collision. And anything larger than a modern-day sheep that survived it all would starve to death due to the thick layer of smoke that completely blotted out the sun and plunged the world into a plant-killing darkness that would last for several months.
The Tyrannosaurus, the mighty King of the Dinosaurs, stood tall over the dead Triceratops, stared straight into the approaching wall of flame and ash, and gave one last long, bellowing roar of defiance before it was banished into oblivion.
It would be long after the shaking had finally ended before the tiny mammal finally crawled out of the hole it had hidden in, finding itself partially coated in ash as it stepped out into a world turned to white. Where was once a vibrant, life-filled forest was nothing more than a desolate wasteland: the sky was filled with smoke, filling the sky with a thick black overcast that would last for a long time. Puffs of ash fell from the smokey sky like giant snowflakes, covering the ground in a blanket of white and grey. What trees that hadn't been completely uprooted and tossed like twigs had been completely charred black, coated in white ash, with every piece of green plant-life outright erased into soot. The only sound to be heard was the haunting whistle of the wind through the skeleton forest, not a single bird song or bug chirp to be heard. And to the left of the hole was the Tyrannosaurus Rex itself, laying across the ground in a twisted pose and burnt to a smoldering crisp, having taken the full force of the blast. What remained of its eyes stared blankly into nothingness, while its jaws hung open in an eternal roar of silence.
The mammal sniffed the air cautiously, but no signs of life could be detected; only the potent stench of burnt flesh filled the air, the smoke rising from the rex's blackened hide and blowing in the wind. The king of the prehistoric world was dead. Along with the rest of the titans that once ruled the world.
The Age of the Dinosaurs was at an end.
But the sheer weight of this fact held no meaning to the primitive-minded mammal. With the shaking gone, the monster dead, and no signs of danger to be seen or smelled, its mind slipped out of its haze of fear and returned to the instinctual norm. It would be hard to find suitable food under the ash, the smokey remains masking the smell and movement of the burrowing insects and worms that made up its normal diet, but while the world had changed, it had not.
It began to dig through the ash and charred dirt, clawing its way past the burned layer to find food that survived beneath it. The ground beneath the layer was still wet and living, and the smells of numerous food reached its nose, prompting it to dig deeper with even more gusto.
Being partially buried in the earth, along the pitch-black cover of smoke above that completely blocked out the sky, insured that it never saw the second asteroid entering the atmosphere.
Compared to the original, this one was little more than a pebble, no bigger than the Empire State Building. It had been breaking apart long before it even reached the planet's orbit, leaving a long trail of rocks and dust behind it as it followed the first. And entering the atmosphere only increased its destruction immensely, dozens of chunks breaking off and burning away into harmless dust as it fell...until the truth about it was revealed.
The stone cracked and broke away to reveal the asteroid's true form: a massive glowing crystal of otherworldly appearance, with a shape akin to a giant blade. It's glass-like surface remained pristine as its rocky casing tore away, untouched by the flames or the friction. From deep within the crystal shimmered a brilliant, aurora like glow of all color of the rainbow, that flowed out in large ropes of energy, pulsing with colors of red, blue, green, pink, white, and many more.
The little mammal had no clue of the outright-magical phenomenon taking place overhead until it soared across the sky and crashed into what would've been north-eastern Canada in another time, thousands of miles away...
...and unleashing what future mammal-kind would know as 'The Wave'.
The physical impact of the crystal wasn't nearly as destructive as the first asteroid, only taking out a diameter of fifty miles around it. When it hit the ground, however, the mysterious glowing energy inside it reacted violently with the force, flashing violently in bright beams of multi-colored light, before exploding force in a great wave of energy. The appearance of the wave was akin to that of a great Aurora, flowing outwards in a wide circle in all directions, forming a wall of this power that travelled across the world at speeds of over three hundred miles per second, stretching out to envelop the entire circumference of the globe.
The impact point was so far away that the mammal didn't even feel it, but it could feel 'something' rushing towards the area at incomprehensible speeds, like a massive tsunami crashing across the land. It stood alert out of its digging hole and starred towards the blackened horizon for a few seconds before it rushed toward the hole to take shelter again, but this time wasn't nearly fast enough:
It hadn't even gotten halfway back to the hole before the massive, all-encompassing wall of rainbow-colored light washed over it with a pulsating force, sending the tiny creature crumbling to the ground, curling up on itself as it underwent an outright supernatural transformation.
Pain unlike anything it had ever felt before coursed through its body, the alien energy crackling across its fur and through its body in several colors. Its blood boiled as the genetic material within it was consumed by the energy, the very strands of DNA within their cells pulsing as it was infused with the energy, changing it in ways mere evolution would take eons to accomplish. Its brain was roaring with activity it had never felt as nerves grew and changed, creating new neural pathways, altering old ones, and firing with more power than any other creature before it. Its body thrashed and buckled as something other than instinct drove it to grab its head with its paws. It squeaked loudly for something...anything...to come and end its pain. To relieve it of its torture.
Then, in the burst of power that would change the course of history for all time, the spark of its very first true thought broke forth:
HELP ME!
It had cried out alongside the thought that thundered through its skull, as if trying to shout it out for someone to hear. To express what it was thinking and feeling to anyone. It continued to cry out with these thoughts as it writhed in the ash, its claws clutching its head so tightly that its scalp began to bleed.
But the pain did not last forever: over a few minutes that felt like an eternity, the violent transformations slowly faded away as the energy dissipated from within, the sensations of its body and brain being torn apart following soon after. It laid there, curled up on itself and covered in soot, panting heavily from the experience it had been forced through; the intense activity in its brain calmed to a tolerable 'glow', for lack of a better term, and its senses slowly began to clear from the pain-riddled haze. With a bit of effort, it managed to roll over onto its stomach and push itself up onto its paws, standing on wobbly legs that felt much heavier than they normally were.
It looked about the landscape wearily; the painful wall of colors was gone, with very little signs of it ever being there in the first place remaining. The leafless trees remained standing and charred, the ash on the ground remained thick and undisturbed, and the darkened clouds of smoke stretched across the horizon. A heavy, lifeless silence continued to hang over the landscape, the vibrating pulse of the wave long gone from sight and hearing range.
And with that, the danger was again gone, and thus instinct took back over, and the mammal gingerly returned to the hole it had been digging out and started again. With a few more digs, it found a large grub wriggling in the dirt, disturbed from its dark world, and snapped it up hungrily. It seemed that the cycle of life had returned to normal.
Eat. Run. Hide. Survive.
Except…it wasn't just that anymore.
Whenever the right external stimulation came around, random things would pop into its head without warning or meaning. Things that had nothing to do with survival, bursting like little sparks in its brain before disappearing again. From that day forward, every now and again, it and every single mammal across the earth would experience the first primitive form of independent thought. For its current generation and the couple generations following it, it wouldn't be much more than bits and pieces of image and sound, making little difference to how they acted upon instinctual nature.
But these tiny little thoughts in these tiny little creatures were but the first stepping stones of the path to true sapience, and freedom from the shackles of animalistic simplicity. And in several million years, their many, many ancestors of all shapes and sizes, of predator and prey alike, would rise up on their hind legs and take their place as the new rulers of the earth.
While the small rodent was eating away at its meal, its new thoughts bouncing around in its head, another effect of the Wave was taking place deep within the body of the dead Tyrannosaurus. Far deep inside it, where the flesh had been shielded from the wrath of the flames and thus was still alive and squishy. Just like with the mammals of the world, the still-living cells of all the dinosaurs across the world were transforming as well; the DNA within crackled and glowed with the rainbow-colored energy as it was mutated and altered into something new. Something different than what the mammals had gone through, but none the less borderline-supernatural…something greater…something stronger.
But it was something that was not to come: with the main organism dead, it was only a matter of time before most of the transformed cells succumbed to lack of oxygen and withered away to dust, what potential for super-evolution they provided joining the dinosaurs in extinction.
But some of the transformed cells, as if sensing their death approaching, underwent a second metamorphosis of self-preservation. Mere seconds before the cells entered cell-death, the energy within altered its own state into a physical one: the form of a thick amber-like fluid that seeped from the membrane, enveloping the cells completely. Then the amber flash-calcified, turning into a solid substance similar in appearance to the crystal from which the wave originated from, sealing the cells inside.
Over the millions upon millions of years mammals would evolve from the tiny mouse-like rodents into the many numerous species that would come to call the world home, these cells would remain preserved and waiting, along with all the genetic material within them. Awaiting the day they would live once again.
Be it by whatever means presented itself in the future.
