A/N: Last chapter! I completed a story! Whoda thunk it! If you enjoyed this, keep an eye out for my other story, a collaboration with Erwin Rommel98. It is much more serious and spookier than this one.

And please, PLEASE for the love of god, review! I have no clue how well I'm doing. Even if you just say 'Nice' or 'trash' I'll be happy.

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Nick, Judy, and James waited in the lobby while Tanya had X-rays taken and was checked over by a doctor. Nick and Judy were busy chatting away when Nick noticed James acting slightly off. He seemed to be scanning the area, looking everything over. Nick gestured for Judy to look and she noticed it too.

"Everything alright Agent Miller?" She asked. He was a little stunned by the question.

"Yeah, why?" He replied genuinely.

"Oh, you seemed like you were watching for something."

"Oh! No that's just a habit of mine. I like to study what's going on around me sometimes," he said. Judy let out a 'huh' and nodded her head in understanding.

"See anything interesting?" Nick asked.

"Well… there's a pipe leaking in the ceiling over there. That wolf sitting in the corner is spooking me a little, looks like he could have a weapon in his sweatshirt. And that zebra is being a little too lenient with her child. That kid is gonna cause problems." He said, watching the young zebra running around. The two officers were amused by his observations.

Nick and Judy continued their small talk, and James decided to pull out his phone. Tanya had sent him a text saying that she would be out soon. He hoped she didn't have any serious issues. Although it isn't the worst thing ever, dealing with Tanya when she is sick or injured is not a desirable situation.

Suddenly he noticed something, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. It was beginning to bow. A look of concern grew stronger on his face as he watched the young zebra move closer to the leaking pipe. He bolted over to the foal and picked him up, quickly pulling him away right as the ceiling collapsed. The mother was shocked and James set the boy down next to her.

"Wow! That was amazing! Oh, thank you so much!" The zebra mother said to him.

"No problem ma'am." He replied, smiling.

"Gosh, I should pay more attention…" She said dejectedly.

"All's well that ends well," James said with a smile and a shrug. Just then, Tanya came out into the waiting room with her arm in a sling. She saw the pile of debris on the floor and the water and deduced that it was a burst pipe. She continued walking, Nick and Judy standing up, joining James in walking towards her, the four converging in the middle of the room.

"How's everything looking?" James asked, cringing while looking at her sling.

"Well, aside from severe bruising it's looking pretty good. The doctor said I should wear this sling just to avoid any strain on my pectoral. That, and good God does it hurt to move my arm."

"Well, that's good. You still up for conducting the search?"

"As long as we don't get into any physical encounters I'm fine, yeah."

"Great. Let's get moving." James said. They all left the hospital and made their way to the abandoned buildings between the two towns where most of the sightings occurred. It was dusk now, and the fading sunlight gave everything a warm reddish hue.

They both parked on the side of the street and got out of their vehicles. The eerie silence of the tiny ghost town was pervasive. They could only hear the occasional breeze through the forest, and the sound of each other's steps. Nick and Judy took directions while Tanya was laying out the plans.

"So, I'm thinking we split up, Judy with me and James with Nick. Let's look over these buildings and see if it's made a home here, or at least moved through here. Then we can split up and check the two wooded areas. Sound like a plan?" She said.

The three of them gave a nod and each team took a side of the street to check the buildings. Judy and Tanya started checking alleyways first, while Nick and James went into what seemed to be a restaurant and bar. While they were searching, Nick realized he was growing more and more anxious by the minute. He was starting to shake and James noticed this.

"What's wrong?" He asked, knowing full well from personal experience what was wrong.

"It's just this spider… I can't stop worrying about it. What is it going to do to us? It's a nearly perfect predator I can't imagine it'll go down easy…"

"I know the feeling. But you know what? Me and Tanya deal with things like this all the time. This isn't gonna be any different from the other monsters we've tracked and killed. We're gonna find this thing and we're gonna kick its ass!" He said with passionate intensity.

He knew that things like this were pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but in the moment they were pretty damn helpful. Nick smiled and let out a small laugh, agreeing with James. His shaking started to die down.

"That's the spirit. Don't worry, there's four of us, highly skilled and highly trained professionals at mitigating danger, versus one brainless beast," He said. Nick agreed and they continued searching, finding nothing in their current building. Nick was feeling quite a bit better after his little pep talk with James. He had quite a bit of respect for James given position and experience.

They found no signs of the creature in the buildings they had checked, and their side of the street had far fewer buildings than Judy and Tanya's, most of them having no apparent entryways given they were boarded up. As they looked over the outsides of the buildings it became more and more apparent that it had been in the area. They waited in the street when they were done looking things over.

Judy and Tanya were finishing their inspections of the outsides of buildings and reached the same conclusion; it had definitely passed through the area. There were claw marks all over, and some of the alleys even had blankets of silk covering the corners. They continued to inspect the buildings on their side to be sure it wasn't actually in the town.

They had checked all of their buildings and were in the hotel when Tanya noticed James and Nick waiting in the street. She stuck her head out of a window on the third floor.

"You guys see anything? We found plenty of evidence that it's been here!" She shouted.

Nick and James laughed at her silly communication method.

"Yeah, we found some webs and claw marks on our side too!" James shouted.

"Oh! Good!... What should we do now?"

"Weren't we gonna split up and check the forests?"

"Oh yeah! Yeah, let's do that!"

"Ok. Which way do you guys want to go?"

"Eh, I'm indifferent! Hey Judy! Hopps!" She shouted, hoping to see if she had a preference. Shortly after, Judy stuck her head out of the 4th-floor window, above and to the left of Tanya, who looked up to her as she spoke. Nick facepawed. it was getting a bit ridiculous.

"Well, if nobody can make up their minds, let's just got to the forest closer to Steven's house!" She said. Tanya looked back to Nick and James and they just shrugged.

"So we'll go to the forest to the west and you two will take the east?" James said.

"Sounds like a plan!" Tanya replied. James turned to Nick.

"Let's go kick some eight-legged ass."

"I'm ready as I'll ever be."

Judy heard the exchange and laughed. They sounded a little over the top but she understood the need to be a little over the top. She wasn't exactly enjoying thought of running into a 5-foot wide spider either. She went to the stairway and made her way to the bottom floor, where Tanya was waiting for her.

They nodded to each other and walked into the street. It was dead silent, and the sun had set. The only light was from the city and moon, and it was only enough to make outlines visible. They began walking into the brush and it quickly became pitch black under the thick canopy of trees. Judy pulled out her flashlight and the beam swept through the darkness.

The two stuck close together as they searched for some sort of large hole that would be the beast's burrow. They crept along, placing each paw ahead of the other carefully and thoughtfully as to not get entangled in the brush. After what seemed like an hour of finding nothing, Tanya spoke up.

"Should we call James and Nick? We clearly haven't seen anything. Maybe they're in trouble…" She said, still inching along through the foliage, clearing the plants out of the way with her good arm.

"I don't know what to do really. Is there any sort of precedent for this kind of thing?" Judy asked.

"I don't…" Tanya started as she tripped on a vine. She fell straight into the ground, Yelling as she fell and landing on her chest. She rolled onto her back wheezing and Judy knelt next to her.

"Oh God, are you ok?" She asked, not knowing what to do.

"Yeah I'm fine, just hurt a lot…"

"Yeah, I'd imagine…" She said, trailing off. Her ears shot up and a terrified look spread across her face. It quickly faded and was replaced by a confused look.

"Do you hear that?" She asked. Tanya looked at her, concerned.

"Please tell me you don't hear that damn thing…"

"No I… I don't think it's the spider, but I hear something… it's like someone is shouting into a pillow…" She said. Tanya began standing up, Judy helping her up the best she could.

"Where is it coming from?"

"Somewhere over here…" Judy said as she began wandering towards the muffled voice. They tread carefully, and as they got closer to the sound, Tanya started to hear it as well. Judy could almost make out what they were saying.

"It sounds like someone yelling for help…" She said as her flashlight swept over a large hole in the ground. It was about ten feet from them and they both froze when they saw it. It was the burrow. They got closer and the shouting had stopped.

"Is there someone down there?" Judy yelled. Tanya heard something but Judy heard exactly what they said.

"Don't worry we're gonna get you out of there!" She yelled as she jumped down, waiting for Tanya to follow. Tanya looked for a second, wondering how to get down. Then she remembered she was a snow leopard and simply jumped down. She landed with a soft thud next to Judy.

The walls of the burrow were lined with the spider's silk, and it stuck to their paws as they walked along. They made it about 20 feet in when it widened out into a slightly larger room. In it, there were two white balls of silk stuck to the walls. One of them looked like bubble wrap, and the other was smooth like a hornet's nest. Tanya figured one of them to be a pile of eggs.

"Hello?" Judy called out. The nest shaped one started rustling and a muffled voice came from it.

"Oh my God, I thought I was gonna die. I heard someone scream and started yelling… Get me outta this thing!" It said. Judy and Tanya rushed over to unwrap whoever was inside. They estimated he was around the size of a fox. Tanya started carefully cutting through the silk with her claws, Judy peeling away the layers.

Eventually, they reached two legs clad in brown jeans and Tanya started grabbing and ripping the silk apart. They kicked their legs out to reveal two cream, brown, and black paws. Tanya grabbed them both in one paw and pulled the mammal out. It was a cat in a plaid shirt, with quite a lot of blood on his shoulder and back. Tanya laid him down on the ground and the two brushed off the webbing that was still stuck to him. They instantly recognized who it was.

"Steven?!" They both said, shocked. He looked at them confused for a moment.

"Well, yeah… who did you think It was?"

"Anybody but the guy who got attacked by a giant spider four days ago! How are you not dead by now?" Tanya said. Steven figured that was pretty reasonable.

"Ugh, God, four days?" He said, staring off into space as the two looked him over for injuries. He had a very significant puncture wound on his left shoulder and a second, smaller one on his back just below it. They had been bleeding at one point but they had long since stopped. His fur was matted and crusty all over.

"How do you feel? What did it do to you?" Judy asked, being more trained for this sort of thing.

"I feel pretty ok... I was having trouble breathing for a while but not now. I can't really use my left arm either, it hurts too much. The damn things jumped on me from the bushes and one of its fangs went right into my shoulder, way into my shoulder, I think it hit my lung. I think the other fang got my back a bit. Then it dragged me in here and covered me in this liquid. God, it was so itchy... I couldn't really move for a while and I felt like I had the flu but it didn't eat me and just wrapped me up…"

"Sounds like it tried to eat you but couldn't… why isn't it in here?" Tanya said.

"It hasn't been in here since it wrapped me up, I don't know when that was but it's been a while… I kinda fell asleep a lot in that web ball... it was pretty comfy."

"Well let's get you the hell outta here in case it comes back," Judy said. He was well enough to walk on his own and they began walking to the exit and one by one jumped out, the three of them all naturally excellent jumpers. Tanya took out her phone and called James.

"Hey, we found the burrow. Get this, Steven was in it. He is alive and relatively well…"

"That's amazing! Did you deal with the spider?"

"No, apparently it hasn't been in the burrow for a few days. Have you guys found anything?"

"No, but we've still got a bit of ground to cover. We heard you scream earlier but we figured something just spooked you."

"Oh. Yeah, I just tripped and fell."

"Yeah, that's kinda what we-" James began, interrupted by Nick yelling "-OH SHIT! Tanya get back to the town we need some backup!" He yelled as he closed his phone to run. The two of them sprinted away from the 8 legged beast that was now chasing after them. It would dart and lunge at them, breaking branches off of trees as it went.

They ran for their lives, James not having time to pull out his gun. They dodged through bushes and trees and eventually made it back to the group of abandoned buildings. Judy, Tanya, and Steven saw them emerge from the forest down the road from them. They turned and started running straight down the street, the beast following them.

"Cover us, Tanya!" James yelled. Tanya frantically pulled out her gun, not used to using her left paw. James saw that she was using the wrong paw and grabbed Nick, shoving him into his suit, and pulling his suit over his face as she shot. The bullets flew around him, and a few grazed the spider. Her aim was terrible, and when they realized it wasn't going to stop, the three rushed into the old hotel, James Sprinting in after them. James and Tanya slammed the door and two huge fangs smashed straight through the thick wood.

They all started inching away, James pulling Nick out of his suit and practically throwing him to Judy and Steven. Tanya reloaded her gun and James pulled out his. They started dumping rounds into the door but the creature was still pounding into it, very much alive. Tanya was out but James had one more magazine, and he loaded it as the creature broke a hole in the two doors where their bullets had weakened the wood.

He started carefully aiming for its eyes, but it was moving to fast. Every time he shot, the bullet would just get embedded in the thick chitinous shell. He had one round left, and he intended on making it count. The other 4 were backed into a corner, Tanya trying to shield the rest as it finally smashed through the door. It got into a threatening pose for a second, its front legs reared up, exposing its underside. The giant fangs dripped with venom.

James took aim and fired straight into the mouth. The shot was much louder than the previous ones, and the spider exploded, covering James in a light blue fluid. They all were shocked for a moment, not understanding what had happened.

Then Maria, the kinkajou that had seen the creature disappear into her shed, stepped through the doorway with a shotgun, smoke rising from the barrel. Her denim jacket, metal band shirt, and black pants fit the part perfectly. She was one hundred percent badass at the moment. A huge smile spread over James' face.

"Hell yeah Maria!" He said, a bit of the creatures internals hanging from his horn. She smiled back for a moment before seeing Steven huddled in the corner. She dropped her shotgun, running to embrace him. The two hugged for a solid minute or two. James and Tanya watched with smiles on their faces, while Nick and Judy were incredibly confused.

"Oh Steve, I thought you were dead… I've been looking through the woods since the police came to my house, trying to find that things burrow and avenge you..."

"I'm here Hun, don't worry," he said sweetly. While she had told James, and he had told Tanya, she never told Nick or Judy that she was in a relationship with Steven, since he was 7 years older than her and she didn't want him getting in trouble with the law. After a while, Tanya decided that they had gotten enough time for their little moment.

"Well if you two are ok, we really gotta take Steven to a hospital and clean up this mess. Also, Steven, we are gonna need to have a talk about all this," she said.

"Yeah, I'd say. Who are you two anyway?" He said pointing at James and Tanya.

"I'm Special Agent Tatyana Vecher, A3I. This is my partner, Special Agent James Miller."

"No way… That's so cool!" He said. The agents smiled. They took pride in what they did, and the coolness factor was not to be ignored. They all left the old hotel, Maria and Steven getting into the agent's car. James allowed Maria to come with them to the military hospital after some convincing from Tanya. The agents and officers stopped to talk before parting ways.

"Well, seems like this it for us four. Thank you guys so much for the help on this case," James said.

"Well, thank you guys! We never would have found that thing or Steven if it weren't for you two. And thank Maria too," Nick said, laughing.

"Yeah, she really was a lifesaver there," James agreed. They all waved and turned to get into their respective vehicles. At the last minute, Tanya stopped to get their attention.

"Hey, if you two end up on another weird case, don't be afraid to give us a call!" She said.

"Sure thing!" Judy replied, giving a thumbs up. The agents drove off with Steven and Maria. Tanya called a cleanup team to get rid of all the evidence, making sure to tell them to destroy the eggs. Nick and Judy got back in their own car and they began their drive back to the precinct. They were both looking pretty shaggy when they arrived, Nick's fur ruffled from being stuffed into James' coat, and Judy covered in dirt and cobwebs. Ben immediately noticed this.

"Woah, you two look like you had quite the day! What happened?" He asked, stunned by their appearance. Judy decided that she might as well hit two birds with one stone, given she had decided to pay the bet she made with him.

"We just got back from finding the monster that tried to kill Steven Paradit… It was killed and Steven was somehow still alive in the things liar. I'm not giving you any more details since it's all top secret, but you won that dinner bet fair and square, so you will be eating with us tonight. And for a month, I will buy you dinner. Now, we need to go do some paperwork, but we'll be back soon to pick you up for dinner. Any questions?" She said bluntly.

"Ha! knew it! See you later!" He replied. They were expecting more of a reaction, but Clawhauser was an odd one. They shook their heads in utter confusion and left him to his work. They headed back to their office to fill out the forms that stated Steven had been found and was alive.

They described all the details surrounding his disappearance and his rescue, but they were going to hand the file directly to the Chief rather than filing it away in order to keep it secret. After this, they went to the locker rooms and showered, Judy finding more dirt and cobwebs than she would have preferred. How the heck did I get some in the middle of my back? She wondered as she felt it wash away.

The two left their gear in their locker and put their uniforms back on, heading to the front desk to take Clauhauser to dinner. The three left the precinct and took the subway to a nearby restaurant, Vincent's. They made small talk while eating, Ben never bringing up the Paradit case even once. To him, it seemed that his obvious conclusion had simply been proven true.

But what Ben never picked up on was Nick and Judy's disconnect from the dinner. He never noticed their slight absences in concentration. Nor their anxious glances. While he sat and ate normally, their minds were drawn to distant thoughts. Occasionally, they would look out the window, wondering and worrying.

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A/N: Just a little reminder to leave a review... Thanks...