"There's nothing here," she muttered to herself as she continued to search the area, the flashlight in her grasp leading the way through the night.
Throughout the investigation Judy Stomps decided to undertake, she found herself scoping spots all around the place she swore to protect when she became an officer. After following the clues that seemed to be laid out by the criminal himself, the gray frill-necked dinosaur knew that she needed to be fast to catch who was responsible for what was happening.
The clue that had been left out this time around, the one she first presumed meant this case would cone its close, led them clear from one side of the city to the other. It had been quite a far amount of traveling for this one, and it seemed to amount to no discoveries being made that could point to who or where the unidentified dinosaur responsible for all of this was.
"They we're trying to throw us for a loop to avoid getting caught quicker," she continued to grunt. She knew she wasn't supposed to get so frustrated, but she was sure anybody would have if they were her and this was their responsibility.
Judy now stood in an empty and spacious field which led to the next district. Patches of grass stuck out like sores against the dry dirt that covered most of the ground in which she stood on.
Pebbles and broken pieces of rock could be seen laying around the ground like litter, and the protoceratops reached down and picked one up. In the midst of her frustration, she threw the tiny rock as far she could and watched it fly out only a few yards away. It kicked some of the dust into the air out in the distance when it landed, since the land that stretched onward in that direction was nothing but dirt, with formations of rock and a couple buildings faraway.
"Hey," a certain someone said from behind.
"I know," Judy said under her breath with a roll of her eyes. "I throw like a ceratopsian."
"Actually," the raptor continued, "I was gonna say that I might offer some assistance," the raptor replied.
She ended up looking back at the velociraptor that was directly behind her when he added that he might have something to assist her. When it came to supplying her with help during these moments, he was quite knowledgable with figuring out the clues alongside her.
"What is it, Nick?" she responded, now intrigued.
"You know how they're planning to rip down that land to develop more housing to the west?" Nick asked her. "Well, just beyond that site is a whole bunch of trees that stretch for miles."
"So the fugitive could have went towards there," the protoceratops started to figure in her head, "thinking that would be the place to either hide evidence or stay out of sight.
"I wasn't thinking they'd be in the forest. Maybe some of those empty buildings that've been for lease for a long time would be worth getting a look at."
"So we're in the right district but we haven't searched far enough." The lightbulb went off in her brain, and with that her spirits started to lift up once again. "Nick, you are a genius!"
Nick grinned as he snickered under his breath. "Well, I don't mean to toot my horn, Officer Stomps, but-" he started to say.
"Come on!" Judy said as she started to run. "If we're quick enough, we can make over there but it gets any later."
"You're lucky us velociraptors are quick runners, Fern," Nick remarked as he started to catch up with her, "otherwise I wouldn't be able to keep up with you."
Later...
"I don't know about you," the raptor said, "but us searching this building in the dead of night is making me feel pretty vulnerable to anything. Whatever's lurking in of the shadows could jump out at us at any given moment. You know that, right?"
Judy shook her head as she walked about two inches behind him, the glow from her flashlight casting itself to the ground and illuminating the way. "Just stay close to me and I promise that you'll be safe."
"So, you said you're from the eastern region," Nick said as they walked along, trying to engage in conversation to keep his mind from thinking up every possible fright that could come about. "Ceratopsburrow, right?"
"That's correct," Judy replied. "Was the only one of the twelve children in the family that didn't settle in the fern-farming business."
"You had eleven siblings?"
"Yep, and I was the first one to hatch in the nest."
"Sheesh, and I thought it was a pain to share with one sister. Her egg hatched only a few minutes earlier than mine did and she always acted like she was so much more grown than I was."
"That's siblings in a nutshell," the ceratopsian chuckled as she walked along.
The velociraptor strayed off from where he had been behind her, wandering off to the left a bit near the wall. There was nothing over in that corner that could have helped them out during this search.
Meanwhile, Judy crept forward as she pointed her flashlight in the opposite direction, looking over in another corner of the room they were both in. Other than an old bench and some papers scattered across the flooring over there, there was nothing so far that seemed noteworthy.
The quiet was suddenly ended with an abrupt banging sound, one so out of the blue that it caused to stop and gasp under her breath. The frill on her neck started to rise a bit, an instinct that stayed with her species despite how much dinosaurs had evolved. She quickly turned her head in the direction she heard the sound, shining the flashlight directly at Nick.
The velociraptor squinted his eyes as the light hit them, shielding them with his sharply-clawed hand. "Sorry," he whispered.
"Oh, Nick," the protoceratops said under her breath. "What did you even run into?"
"I was just looking around and ended up running straight into this table over here," Nick answered. "Gonna leave a mark where I accidentally bumped into that."
Judy shook her head. "Try not to break anything here."
"I can't help it that this tail of mine is capable of knocking heavy things over with ease. It's in my anatomy."
"Just be extra cautious. It's very well possible we end up encountering some evidence." Judy pointed her flashlight over to the other corner of the room, making a path of luminosity for the raptor to follow. "I'll shine the light for you, Nick. Follow me."
Carefully following Judy as she walked forward once again, Nick muttered to himself, "And that table was made outta some pretty strong stone. You don't get furniture made that good often in this millennium."
As she stepped through a nearby doorway that led to another vacant room, the ceratopsian brought herself to stop, pointing her flashlight into where she was about to search. Nick made his way behind her and followed her steps as she entered the space. The first thing that caught her attention was the logo that was stamped on a piece of wood in the corner of her eye, which seemed to left here by whoever occupied this building and tried to do improvements to it.
"The Wesayso Corporation?" she said under her breath.
"The mega-corporation's got an interest in about every field there is to know," Nick replied informatively from where he stood right behind her. "Everybody thinks some other companies are gonna try and compete with 'em, but how do you win against that ones that own pretty much every brand?"
Judy kept that in the back of her mind for the moment. "That might have significance, but it also might just be the supplier of the wood whoever was once here was using. Let's keep looking."
The moment she casted her flashlight to the right of her, she then saw something that truly caught her full attention. Scratches could be seen in that direction, a decent amount of the contractor white paint peeled off the wall where they were.
This was exactly the kind of thing that she was hoping to find.
"Someone with long and sharp claws was definitely here," Judy remarked. "But whose claws could they be?"
Nick raised a hand and looked at the claws on it before lowering it. "I might have these sickles for claws, but I don't think someone of my species could have done that unless I jumped into the air. Judging from how high on the wall they are, I'd say whoever left those was probably standing a couple feet taller than us."
"That narrows down on our possible suspects." The protoceratops nodded her head. Just then, her nostrils were unpleasantly greeted with a scent that wasn't the greatest. "Do you smell that?"
"Yeah, I do," the raptor replied, "and it wasn't me."
"Seriously," Judy responded. "That doesn't seem right."
Nick pointed a claw to the left, where a doorway led to a smaller and less spacious portion of the building. "I think it's coming from in there, Stomps."
"Stay behind me," suggested the ceratopsian. "I'm gonna get a look for myself. It's the only room we haven't investigated yet."
"For about a hundred million years, the ceratops genus wandered the grounds in which we stand on," the goat that served as a museum docent continued. "The last of these mighty giants vanished from the earth around sixty million years after they first appeared, when a mass extinction event was caused by an asteroid that wiped out about three-quarters of the plant and animal life in that long-ago era."
"Just imagine it, Fluff," Nick said to the bunny to his right, turning away from the guide that was still talking to the visitors. "What if it were only those things walking around but in a city that was somewhat like ours?"
"I don't know about that, Slick," replied Judy, wondering about the concept that randomly came to his mind as they were in this part of the museum together. "Everything would have be taller than it already is. I couldn't exactly see something like a T-rex having an easy time getting in and out of places like this. They'd keep bumping into things and cause a lot of damage."
That last remark got a chuckle out of the vulpine. "Yeah, you're right about that, Carrots."
"That's something quite interesting to think about," the doe said. "Matter of fact, dinosaurs living in harmony in a city might actually make a good story idea for my sister Julia. She said she was having some writer's block so maybe that'll be something for her to write about."
"Just be sure that if that becomes a bestseller someday, a bit of the credit goes to this fox's ideas as the inspiration behind it."
Judy laughed at Nick's request. "I'm sure she'll do that," she replied.
As the tour guide passionately carried on with facts about the dinosaur, Nick and Judy looked at the humongous skeleton of it that was on display at Zootopia's History Museum. While the other visitors, both young and old, continued to listen what it was he was telling them about, the fox and rabbit simply looked in amazement at how tall the dinosaur would have been next to them if it were still around today.
Author's Note: Hey there, everybody! This was another one of those stories I encountered that was partially written and I decided on a whim to complete. I'm not exactly sure why this one originally came to mind, but I really enjoyed working on it. I've seen some stories in the past where Nick and Judy are in prehistoric times, but don't think I've seen any stories where they were dinosaurs themselves in a city-like environment. With that interesting concept in mind, I thought it would be fun to see what I could create, and that's when I commenced writing on this. :)
While trying to figure out which kinds of dinosaur I wanted Nick and Judy to be, I went through a couple different species before I chose for Nick to be a raptor and Judy to be a protoceratops. I'm not sure why I chose those two in particular, but I thought they would make pretty good choices for that.
Also, I'd be a total liar if I said that research about dinosaurs in particular, as well some facts about them and what they once looked like, didn't go into this story. XD
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this little story of mine. And as always, your feedback, whether good or bad, is gladly appreciated.
'Til next time! :)