I was intrigued by a newspaper article that I read this morning:

Insane Man Arrested After Crashing Car and Starting a Fire. On July 20, 2017, 35 year-old George Smith crashed his car into a giant rock causing a fire that caused over six thousand dollars in damages. Smith said that, “ A creature that had the face of a bear, the mane of a lion and the body of a tiger-only it had a black body and orange stripes, with dark green cat-like eyes.” Police found nothing to support this, and Mr. Smith has been put behind bars and is receiving mental help.

To me it seemed that Mr. Smith saw something. Now, if it was a hybrid of animals is unknown, but something happened. So that day I went to my friend and partner in our detective agency, Will Sava.

We started this when we were just 8 years-old and now at age 16, we still try to solve mysteries. I know it sounds corny, however we are pretty good about it.

“Let me guess.  You saw the paper this morning, Ava?” Will said to me.
“Yep, do you have any plans after school?” I said
“Nope,” he said, “then meet me at my house at 3 o’clock. We are solving this mystery!”

After school, Will and I met at my house and then went to the forest where Mr. Smith said he saw the hybrid. There were hardly any trees after the fire from his car cleared them out. We came to the rock that he hit and started to look around for clues. A couple of hours later we were about to leave when something caught my eyes, it was a piece of black fur with an orange stripe.

“This matches what Mr. Smith said it looked like! There was just one thing: It was fake like one that would be on a halloween costume”.
“That’s weird,” Will said.
Swooooosh….
Something moved quickly although we didn’t know where the sound came from, until we heard growling we looked up on the big rock. And there it was, only it looked different. It was slim with silver machine parts. The only thing recognizable was pieces of burned-on black fur with orange stripes and dark green cat-like eyes.
“RUN!” I yelled running back to the car. We ran to the car and the creature followed us running after us. We jumped into the car.
“What was that thing?” Will said, breathing heavily.
I said, “I know it sounds crazy, but I think it was the thing that attacked Mr. Smith.”
“What?” Will said. “Mr. Smith said we saw a living thing, but that was some kind of animatronic!”
“I know, but there were pieces of black fur with orange stripes, burned on it” I said.
“So?” Will said.
“Mr. Smith said that the creature was on top of the car when it crashed and caught on fire, so what if the fire burned some of the fur off and burned some pieces of fur onto the endoskeleton?” I said. While this was happening I was driving through the trees going as fast as I could trying to get out of the forest.
“So then that would mean that the creature that attacked Mr. Smith was just an animatronic? But that means someone had to create and then either code it or control it, but who and why?” Will said.
“That’s the one thing I don’t know,” I said. We were almost out of the forest when out of the corner of my eye I saw a shadow jump from one of the trees, and there it was! With a loud thud the creature was on top of my car. It quickly showed its face by poking its head from the windshield. I started quickly turning left and right to try to get it off, while Will found a hardcover book, rolled down his window and started beating it with the book. It soon fell off, but not before it scratched Will’s face two or three times.
“We need to go tell the police,” Will said.
“No, if we tell them what we saw they won’t believe us,” I said.
“You’re right, we need to find someone to believe us, but who?” Will said. I looked back to the road to see a man walking across the street, and I quickly hit the brakes…