Deep underground, in the Secret Control Room, Rex Tuxedo stood at his glowing map. He was small, even for a Velociraptor. But he wore a very serious tuxedo and very important sunglasses, and every dot on the map was exactly where it should be. Then — BONK. Someone sat on the Big Red Button. Every single dot went dark. Rex stared. The map hummed. The map blinked. The map stayed completely, utterly blank.
Rex picked up his clipboard. He straightened his bow tie. He clicked his tiny spy pen three times. A spy who doesn't know where anyone is, he said quietly, is just a raptor in a tuxedo standing in the dark. He stomped up the stairs and out into the jungle. Stomp, stomp, stomp through the moonlit trees. The jungle smelled like wet leaves and something sweet — berries, maybe. Rex flicked on his pen-torch and checked his clipboard. First missing dot: one Stegosaurus, last seen near the northern berry bushes.
There she was. Stella the Stegosaurus, wedged completely inside a berry bush. Her back spines had gone in perfectly. They would not come out. Purple berry juice was dripping off her nose. She was not asking for help. She was simply staring at a beetle on a leaf and pretending everything was fine. Rex held up his clipboard — flat, smooth, and exactly the right width. He slid it gently between Stella's spines and the branches, one side, then the other, and walked her backward, step by careful step. She popped free with a sound like a cork.
Second missing dot: one Triceratops, last seen near the eastern waterfall. Rex heard the rushing water before he saw it — cold spray prickled across his snout. And there, just visible through the white mist, was a large pair of eyes peering out from behind the falls. Theo the Triceratops had walked in thinking it was a car wash. He had been too embarrassed to come back out. Rex waved his clipboard like a signal flag. Theo shuffled forward, blinking. His horns had a very clean shine. He fell in behind Stella. Stomp, stomp, stomp — three of them now, moving through the trees.
Third missing dot: a whole cluster of Ankylosaurs, last seen — well, they were supposed to be asleep. Rex heard them before he saw them. A deep, rhythmic BOOM BOOM BOOM shook the moss from the tree trunks. In a moonlit clearing, twelve Ankylosaurs were doing an enormous stomp-dance, tails swinging, feet thundering, faces glowing with total joy. They had simply forgotten to tell anyone. Rex let them finish the song. It seemed like the right thing to do. Then he raised his clipboard like a conductor's baton.
Rex checked every name off his clipboard. One by one, the dots on the map blinked back on. Every single one. He hung up his sunglasses on the little hook by the door. He straightened his bow tie one last time. He wrote two words at the bottom of the page, pressed his tiny pen-torch off, and stood in the quiet hum of the glowing map: Mission complete.
