"Aaaaah—!"
A faint scream suddenly echoed from the distant woods, causing Carlo to flinch.
He immediately snuffed the air, but detected no scent of humans.
Is the distance too great? Is it a stranded tourist? Or someone up to no good?
Should I... go check it out?
Carlo lowered his head, looking at the clutch of Parasaurolophus eggs, and hesitated for a long time.
Forget it. I'll deal with it if they actually get close.
He slowly rested his head on the ground and closed his eyes to conserve his strength. Between the Indominus rex and the chaos of yesterday, he hadn't rested at all. Even with his heightened stamina, he couldn't help but feel the weight of fatigue.
Chirp~ chirp~
Feeling a familiar presence near his snout, Carlo knew the "Little Dentist" had arrived. He obligingly opened his mouth, letting the small scavenger perform its routine dental maintenance.
…
"Climb! Get up the trees! Now!"
Darius led Brooklynn and Sammy as they scrambled toward their temporary campsite, a herd of panicked herbivores hot on their heels.
Waiting at the site, Kenji and Yaz saw the commotion and immediately scrambled up the nearby trunks to join them.
"Aunng—"
A herd of Stegosaurus thundered through the clearing, smashing the building materials Kenji had painstakingly gathered into splinters.
"Oh, noooooo—!" Kenji wailed.
"That was... intense. I guess that's why they built the original camp in the trees," Brooklynn remarked, panting. Once the dust settled and they had a moment to breathe, the conversation turned back to the necessity of a shelter.
"We can't go to Main Street; the T. rex is nesting there," she noted with a touch of bitterness. "Mountains, grasslands, jungle... the whole island belongs to the dinosaurs now. Which idiot let them all out, anyway?"
Sammy offered a quick word of comfort: "We already sent the distress signal. We just need a safe place to hide and wait for rescue. Simple, right?"
"Yeah, real simple. Right up until we get flattened by a dinosaur," Kenji muttered, his morale at an all-time low after seeing his hard work destroyed by a bunch of plates and tails.
Darius thought for a moment before suggesting, "Hey, what if we build the shelter like a treehouse? Brooklynn?"
Brooklynn looked up, confused by the sudden call-out. "What?"
"You've definitely filmed videos of people building shelters, right?" Darius asked.
Kenji had a lightbulb moment and beat Brooklynn to the punch: "Oh yeah! Don't you just make videos for a living?"
The low-EQ comment immediately riled her up. "Excuse me, I know how to do plenty of things besides filming," she snapped. She sighed, rubbing her forehead. "But yes... in my 'First Time in Amish Country' vlog, I did help raise a barn."
"Cool," Darius said, impressed.
Yaz, ever prepared, pulled out her sketchbook and pen. Beyond her athleticism, she was a master of quick sketches and ink drawings. In no time, she had drafted a concept.
"Like this?"
She showed the hand-drawn design to the group, earning immediate approval.
"Perfect. But we definitely need a lookout tower," Darius added.
"We need bunk beds to save space," Sammy chimed in.
"And a place to store food, somewhere the dinosaurs can't reach," Brooklynn finished.
Yaz listened to the suggestions, her pen flying across the paper as she adjusted the blueprints.
With the plan set, they began scavenging materials from the ruins of the original Camp Cretaceous treehouse. However, Darius soon noticed something off.
"Guys?"
The group gathered around him, except for Yaz, who stayed back due to her injured left ankle.
Before them lay a section of the collapsed treehouse, but a wide path had been cleared through the debris, as if something massive had crawled out from under the wreckage.
"The Giganotosaurus from the Primeval Zone... is it still alive?" Darius whispered to himself. They had witnessed the clash between the Indominus rex and the Giga, but after the Giga vanished from sight, they had assumed it had fallen to the hybrid.
"D-Darius... maybe we should find a different spot?" Kenji stammered, the memory of the Giga's overwhelming presence sending a shiver down his spine.
Darius considered this for a moment before turning to the others. "It's okay. There aren't any large herbivores here, so he has no reason to come back. Maybe we should set up some bells as alarms to keep dinosaurs from sneaking up on us."
Just like those Ankylosaurs that collect branches, he added silently to himself.
…
Crack... crunch...
The eggshells shifted as the cracks widened. A tiny Parasaurolophus snout poked through, letting out its first cry to the world.
"Eeng!"
"Eeng—!"
The older Parasaurolophus calf nearby seemed thrilled, chirping back and running in circles.
Carlo glanced at it and used his tail to gently push the calf away from the crate of eggs, ensuring it wouldn't accidentally trample the newborns.
He lowered his massive head, letting his warm breath wash over the shells to encourage the hatching young.
Soon, the second, third, and fourth... like bamboo shoots after a rain, cracks appeared across the clutch. One by one, the little ones caught their first glimpse of the sun.
"Eeng!"
The first hatchling finally scrambled out. It was covered in slime, looking a bit like a miniature Xenomorph emerging from a host.
Carlo had zero experience raising young. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to clean the slime off them.
After a moment of thought, he used his sharp talons to dig a shallow pit in the dirt and nudged some lake water into it.
Then, bracing one side of the crate with his foot and using his tail as a ramp on the other, he slowly tilted the box. The infant Parasaurolophus slid gently down his tail.
He leaned in to check if they were "deceased." Confirming they were very much "not deceased," he used his snout to gently nudge them one by one into the makeshift "bath" he had prepared.
The older calf, having waited patiently, trotted over to inspect its new siblings.
"Eeng—!"
"Eeng!" x8
The babies chirped back in a chorus. Carlo watched them, already pondering the next step.
What's next? Eating? It's probably eating.
Carlo tried to remember what the mother Parasaurolophus used to eat. He "borrowed" a bunch of leaves from a nearby tree and placed them in front of the little ones.
The older calf happily tucked in, but the tiny infants just stared at the foliage, looking confused and helpless.
Carlo sighed internally. I guess it has to be this way.
He tore off a mouthful of leaves, chewed them thoroughly into a soft pulp, and spat it out for the infants.
This time, the babies finally started eating.
Carlo breathed a sigh of relief, reaching for more leaves as a final thought crossed his mind: I'm definitely going to need the Little Dentist to clean this up later.