Ripper: An Indoraptor Story ✓

Palo Alto

It's awfully...quiet.

There are still humans here Ripper, my mind growled against the back of my skull, almost annoyed that I had apparently seemed so oblivious to their noticeable presence, There they are, a few at most, bustling about like working ants in those hideous clothes, foolishly driving their lazy selves around the world in those ridiculous metal boxes. Glaring their eyes at squares as if the whole world fails to matter in their outlook.

Are you finished?

Humanity is such a pathetic plague, he ranted on, one that I'm still confused about. It's not because of their culture, let alone their worn history, simply it's because they live on, and you cannot seem to eradicate them like a 'real' dinosaur. 

What defines real to you? Aren't the true ones long dead? Aren't we all a product of mankind's arrogance?

Indeed. Yet their prehistoric lust to split flesh from bone still suffices as primitive, something you should learn from if you hope to survive. 

We've been over this, I growled back, thinking deeply of what the child, Belle, would have said to me, They're none of my concern at the moment. Let fate decide their destinies, not I. And yes, I'm no dinosaur, nor am I the monster that I claimed to be before. I just came here to stop Wu, that's all.

You mean 'kill' him?

I bit deep into the gaps of my maw, absorbing the word as if it was pain from an impaled rose thorn, then nodded with a slight growl, Of course. I meant that.

You don't sound too confident.

Oh, but I am, I snorted back quickly, don't hold a grudge against me yet, dear friend. When the dust settles on this town, Henry Wu will be dead at our feet.

He better be, my mind scowled, for your sake. Or everything you've done up to this moment would be worth nothing.

Still I beg to differ, old friend.

A soft breeze brushed silently through the ghostly town before me, sending shivers through my eased scales, relaxing my muscles a bit. It was odd to see the town like this; I once recalled Palo Alto as a thunderous applause of people and vehicles, chugging through the starlight exhausting rotten odors and benevolent sounds like a fractured city. Yet somehow this mighty metropolis was reduced down, enough to allow Mother nature to caress its features and rupture its very façade for the first time. I grew strong against this new ordeal when it turned; muscles working all the more against me as I wandered through. It is the freshness over my skin, that in which made a fine flag out of my spine-like bristles, and the more I absorbed this new intimate feeling, the more concerned I grew.

I question this place. Nothing should ever be this quiet, I whispered to myself, tapping my toe-claw against the smooth and strange bed of black rocks beneath me, Humans are loud and needy. They speak among themselves when the air grows still, why not now? It threatens me to hear this silence. It's like this place is expecting change. I fear something is coming. I sense it.

Can you? My mind croaked back. I closed my eyes and sniffed the air, growling slightly when I came back with a regretful scent.

No. Nothing.

Before my yellow eyes laid a black glossy river of endless darkness smeared outward into the beautifully constructed town of Palo Alto. Tan little patches of lifeless grass popped out from the concrete that surrounded its circumference, all while a sad little weeping willow standing tall above its base waved a solemn goodbye with it's slumped flesh, appearing as if it too neared its final breath. The buildings were an odd jumble of different styles: rickety wooden shops, marble plowed walls, and brick eateries. Everything had been beaten down and baked by the sun's intense heat - and in truth, the sunlight had spilled everywhere. The radiating fire churned the dust that scraped the asphalt, flew against the vivid colors of a summer ghost town, and sprayed the world with the disturbing scents of weakened spices and overripe fruit.