It was morning in the ocean when Dory's life changed forever. At first, she had just been swimming. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…

But then! She could swim no more, for a horrible sight blocked her way. Dory screamed. "Gaaaaaaaaaah!"

Floating lifeless in her line of sight… was a corpse! A strange animal corpse. It had a head like the dogs Dory had seen on her adventures ashore. The creature's behind also matched with a dog. But the middle…

The creature's death had been brutal indeed. For instead of a middle section, the creature had a long string of tangled wire. It bent around and around, stretched and twisted beyond recognition.

"What happened to you?" Dory lamented. "Why are you in the ocean? What do I do?"

Wait! Dory knew the answer to this. She needed to call someone to investigate the death. Like… the cops or something.

But who were the cops in this part of the ocean? Dory had been swimming a long time. She wasn't familiar with this part of the water. Who did she tell?

Just as Dory wondered that, she saw a long little worm on a hook. He had just appeared in the water next to her. "Oh, hi little guy! Listen, you've gotta help me out here. You see this poor fella?"

The worm didn't respond. It took Dory a second to realize why. "Oh, are you hurt too? Did you get hurt by whoever killed this poor man? Let me get you off that hook, buddy."

Dory tugged on the hook, trying to wiggle the worm free. Right as she was making progress, the hook began to rise again. "No, wait. Come back!" Desperate for help, Dory bit onto the worm to keep him in the ocean.

It was no use. She was rising out of the water. "Not again!"

"I got one!" Timon cheered. He began to reel in the fishing line. Their morning on the beach in Pixar world was off to a good start. No one had noticed the pair was missing from Disney yet.

Across from Timon on the beach sat Pumbaa, flopped over on his belly. "Uh huh. And how long have we been out here? An hour?"

"I don't see you helping," he snapped back. The line burst over the surface of the water, revealing a small fish with blue and yellow scales. "Well, what do we have here?"

Timon took the line in his paw, lifting the fish closer to his face. The fish was… screaming? "Help! You've gotta help me!"

"Help you? I'd rather eat you." Pumbaa laughed.

"No, please! You've gotta listen to me. There's a dead dog in the ocean. Someone turned its insides into metal strings."

"What?" Timon asked. Was this fish crazy? "Where?"

"Right by where you caught me."

Metal strings? Who would do that to a dog? Timon scratched his chin. Since he and Pumbaa had eaten on the way to the beach, he wasn't too hungry yet. Besides, the meerkat was intrigued.

He filled up a cup with ocean water, set the fish inside it for later, then used his fishing pole to search the ocean for the dog's corpse. The fish's spoken directions were less helpful from land, and the search took Timon several minutes. At first, Pumbaa stuck to the sidelines. But as time dragged on, curiosity got the better of him too, and he sat waiting by the shore to see what Timon would reel in.

Finally, Timon's hook latched onto the dog corpse's metal tail. He reeled it in to shore, bent over to examine it, and declared, "oh. It's just a toy."

Right as he said that, the toy coughed. "No… Slink."

"Yeah, a slinky toy. That's what Timon said– aaah!" Pumbaa screamed when he made the connection. "You're alive?"

"Not… much… longer." The toy dog gasped. "Find…" cough! "… for me." With his last breath, the toy dog begged Timon and Pumbaa to solve his murder. As the last bits of air left his magical lungs, he collapsed in the sand amidst the tangled wire of his insides.

The sight was enough to move Timon, Pumbaa, and Dory to tears. No one deserved to die among strangers like this. Not even a toy.

"You heard the toy. We've got work to do!" Timon announced. He whipped a Sherlock Holmes hat out from under a nearby sand dune. "Come on, Pumbaa. The game is afoot!"

"Does it involve running? I don't like running." Pumbaa grunted after him. The two were in such a hurry to solve the crime, they didn't notice Dory edging her cup back into the ocean.

"Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…"

For Timon and Pumbaa to solve the mystery of the toy dog's murder, they first had to reckon with how the toy had died. Toys could die in numerous ways. From abuse to neglect to a trip on the wrong side of the road.

And that's when Pumbaa had an idea. "The road! This poor man got run over by a car. That's why his slinky was all flattened and bent."

"I see… then when the car saw what they had done, they drove their victim to the ocean for a burial at sea. How cruel."

Timon and Pumbaa traveled to the road they'd taken to get to the beach. The one connecting the Pixar and Disney worlds. The only car they saw was a dark blue color. It was one of the talking variety, with eyes for front windows and headphones over its driver and passenger doors.

"Stop! Stop!" Timon whipped out a stop sign from underneath his hat. Pumbaa ran onto the shoulder of the road, stopping just short of joining their murder victim.

Shocked to see two animals yelling at him, the car swerved to a stop in front of Pumbaa. "What's wrong, officer? Was I speeding?"

"What's your name, car?"

"Brent Mustangburger." The car put his headphones away in his back trunk. "Am I in trouble?"

"Where were you this morning?" Timon began the interrogation.

"I was visiting the jungle in Disney World."

"Did you see any toys on your way to the jungle?"

Brent shook his head. "Toys? No, I don't think so. The sentient ones live in Pixar World. I was in Disney."

"Can anyone confirm your whereabouts?" Pumbaa joined the interrogation. Both were asking questions they remembered seeing in cop shows.

"Um… oh! I met this rather angry gorilla while I was in the jungle. He told me he was the leader of the gorillas and I was intruding on his territory. He seemed to think I was made by man." Brent scoffed. "As if a man could sculpt a car as fine as me!"

Timon and Pumbaa knew who Brent was referring to. They'd dealt with this gorilla in their own lives. Kerchak was protective and territorial as they came. "Did you take any trips to the ocean today?"

"None, officers."

"Can anyone confirm this?" Pumbaa asked. He scraped his hooves on the road to show he meant business.

Brent started to sweat oil. It was a stinky way to show nerves. "That gorilla! He followed me all morning while I was in Disney! Ask him."

"We will," Timon said. "Thank you for your cooperation with the investigation, Mr. Brent. You may be on your way."

Brent put his headphones back on and drove off. Only as Timon and Pumbaa made the walk on the side of the road did it occur to them they could have asked Brent for a ride.

Pumbaa's stomach growled. "Now I'm really wishing we ate the fish."

"We'll catch some bugs in Kerchak's jungle. It will be fine." Timon reassured his partner out loud. Privately, though, he agreed. This was not the lazy day on the beach either of them had been anticipating.

Yet every time Timon thought about giving up, he remembered the desperation in Slink's voice as he croaked out his final words. Slink hadn't known any of them. He had entrusted strangers with a quest for justice. If it turned out Timon and Pumbaa were unsuited to the task, then there really was no magic left in the kingdom.

The two detectives found Kerchak easily. The irate gorilla confirmed Brent's alibi. Unless toy dogs could hold their breath far longer than regular dogs, Brent would have been occupied at the time Slink met his burial at sea.

After their first theory fell apart, the investigating pair realized they didn't know much about toys. They needed to learn more about the lives of the toys in the Pixar World. The worlds hadn't been connected when Timon and Pumbaa were born. The toys had existed when the bridge first formed as well.

In their research, Timon and Pumbaa learned that Slink had been a loyal friend to his toy companions. Not only had his metal middle helped toys bridge dangerous heights, but it also had magical forcefield abilities.

Unfortunately, this forcefield dog was vulnerable to one other type of toy: dinosaurs. Dinosaurs could eat forcefield dogs. Their new suspect was a dinosaur toy.

Timon and Pumbaa searched the beaches near where Slink had fallen in the ocean. Just as the sun was setting, they came across a group of toys playing on a seaside cliff. They were sitting in a semicircle and watching a toy hedgehog perform a soliloquy.

They burst onto the scene with gusto. "Stop where you are! We're here to investigate a murder!"

The hedgehog paused, confused. "No, you're late. Hamlet was earlier!"

"A murder? Who died?" another toy asked.

"It was a toy on toy crime," Pumbaa announced, using his larger size to intimidate the toy gathering. "Tell me: are there any dinosaurs in your midst?"

"There!" Timon pointed to a blue dinosaur toy sitting in the back. "Stay where you are."

"Me?" the dinosaur asked meekly.

Pumbaa trotted over to her. "What's your name, toy?"

"Trixie." She shrank back. "Who are you?"

"The great detectives Timon and Pumbaa!" Timon declared. "When we investigate your case, it's hakuna matata! No worries for the rest of your days."

"Now for you, Trixie." Pumbaa turned back to the blue dinosaur. "Do you know a toy named Slink?"

"Yes, I do. He was one of Andy's toys." Trixie blinked. "Is he okay?"

"How long have you been near the ocean?"

"We arrived here early in the morning." The hedgehog answered for his friend.

"So you were here this morning. You ran Slink off the cliff and to his death. All because dinosaurs eat forcefield dogs. Case closed!" Pumbaa picked Trixie up, ignoring her protests. "It's elementary, my dear Pumbaa! She and us have a date downtown."

The rest of the toys erupted into anger. "Hey, you can't do that!"

"Just because she's a dinosaur?!"

"This is profiling!"

Timon ignored all their objections. He was confident he had solved the case. All before dinner, no less.

"Don't worry, Slink. We found your killer."

A mile away from Timon and Pumbaa's arrest, Rex sat alone and paralyzed on the side of another cliff face. He had been there since morning.

He'd searched all day. He'd spoken to every fish he could. None of them had found Slink.

It was all Rex's fault. He and Slink had been playing too far in the water on the beach that morning. Slink had gotten caught in a riptide. Rex held onto his friend's back end for dear life, but alas. Slink was an old toy. His springs weren't what they used to be. They'd bent apart in the water, and the next thing Rex knew, his friend of nearly twenty-eight years was nowhere to be found.

"I'll find you, buddy. I promise. Even if I have to search the whole ocean for you.

"Us toys gotta stick together."

A/N's: This was inspired by paulbrodo's algorithmic madlibs on TikTok and IG Reels. He created a Disney/Pixar murder mystery with randomly generated characters. I wrote this fic purely to see if I could turn one of his videos into an actual fanfic. Hope you enjoyed!