Novum Initium

Section heading
It is the day of the first mission, the necessary exhibits, holding pens, and whatnot have all been set up as needed for this day, and all the staff are ready for what they have to do. The rescue team for this very first mission consists of Drew, Leon, Adrian, Jack, and Alice. Since this is the very first mission, it has been deemed necessary that all five of the selected 'rescue team regulars' be on board. The target? None other than brachiosaurus. With everyone staying at the park at the ready to do what is needed as things unfold, the rescue team travels to Jurassic North America after a staff meeting has concluded.

After about five or 10 minutes of searching, the team comes across their first worthy Prehistoric Park residents, a small herd of stegosaurus, camptosaurus, gargoyleosaurus, mymoorapelta, and camarasaurus. At first, the gang puts some time aside to simply observe the great beasts. Then they all proceed to start gathering nearby plants to use as bait. While they're doing this, one of the camptosaurus scouts manages to notice them nearby, and she alerts the rest of the camptosaurus, plus all the stegosaurus and both ankylosaur herds, to face them, looking and acting somewhat on guard. After a tense moment, Drew manages, with some help from the rest of the team, to lay a trail of the plant offerings from the portal to one of the large males amongst the stegosaurus. When the stegosaurus starts to eat, Drew prepares to activate the portal while also having the rest of the team gather up all the plants they'd gathered meant as offerings for the onlooking stegosaurs, ornithopods, and ankylosaurs into an appropriate position. Once everything is in place, Drew opens the portal and entices the large male stegosaurus currently eating into going through with some more plant offerings thrown through the portal as bait, the rest of the team likewise doing the same with their own gathered up piles. The large male eagerly charges through the portal to get the snack, the rest of the stegosaurus, plus the camptosaurus, mymoorapelta, and gargoyleosaurus all following close behind him. And no sooner are the four comparatively smaller species all through when the gang repeats their earlier trick to convince the sauropods into going through the portal as well. This first rescue out of the way, the gang returns to the jeep and starts making their way to what will hopefully be a water hole, knowing that they will likely find a massive number of rescue worthy animals there due to them visiting this time period at the time of a drought.

Along the way, the team group come across a lone juvenile male apatosaurus with severe wounds on his back stuck in quicksand. Things only get worse when a pack of ceratosaurus arrives to try to hunt the young sauropod while its trapped. The sight of the large carnivores heading towards the apatosaurus, plus this same pack being briefly waylaid by a combined float of amphicotylus and diplosaurus emerging from a nearby lake and deciding to try to scare them away so they can eat the sauropod instead, the team quickly cook up plans to rescue both the sauropod and all three groups of carnivore. And so, while Drew, Adrian, and Alice work to extract the apatosaurus from the quicksand, Leon and Jack work to distract the carnivores by using airhorns to attract their attention while also constantly running around to avoid getting themselves eaten. This plan very nearly heads south when Leon briefly stumbles and falls as a result of stepping into a dust pocket; prompting an annoyed Jack to put in serious effort to get the ceratosaurus pack and combined float of amphicotylus and diplosaurus focused exclusively on him before then opening the portal in time for all of them to run through when they subsequently come rushing at him all at once. With the carnivores out of the way, the team examines the successfully extracted apatosaurus, who soon turns to be very much still in need of serious medical care. Drew calls Linda over, and the young apatosaurus is subsequently examined, loaded into a truck, and carted through the portal back to the park for the treatment he needs. With the apatosaurus now in good hands, Drew and the gang resume their trip to the water hole.

Later, back at the park, Linda manages to bring in the relatively recovered Arlo. Back in the past, after having rescued so many other animals, the gang finally comes across a valley filled with a larger herd of apatosaurus, several diplodocus, and multiple Camarasaurus. They manage to lead the apatosaurus herd through first with relatively little trouble as the herd moves along to leave the valley for other areas. Then they manage to rescue the diplodocus and camarosaurus herds as well as a small pack of allosaurus when the carnivores come into the picture to hunt. A while later, the gang finally comes across a small group of Brachiosaurus, where the lead male is doing battle with the leader of a small five-member pack of saurophaganax. While Leon manages to briefly distract the carnivores with his vocalizations, the rest of the group manage to hurriedly attract the brachiosaurus herd through the portal, no sooner does the last of the sauropods go through the portal when the saurophaganax return their attention and get enraged at the escape of their prey and the presence of the foreign mammals, at which point, they too end up running through the portal.

With the mission done, target species rescued, and a respectable amount of other animals (with large numbers of both individuals and in types of species) rescued to go with the targets, the gang returns to the park.

Linda, having successfully treated the injured Apatosaurus, who she has named Arlo, places him in rehabilitation. Meanwhile, Drew, admiring the brachiosaurs, is surprised by a visit from Theodore, who expresses awe at the mighty sauropods and suggests that the next mission will come sooner than later.

Continuity notes

 * This story is a follow-on from "The Adventure Begins"; perhaps of note, Jurassic Wyoming was the location Theodore showed Drew, Leon and Adrian in that story. This, combined with his awe as he looks at the animals at the end, indicates that the location is a favorite of his.
 * When Leon attempts to lure the ceratosaurus away from Arlo, Jack gives him an open-mouthed look of shock at the recklessness of his plan. This is actually a stealth start to Jack and Leon's arc for this phase, which will culminate in Devils of the Deep.
 * Linda appears to have bonded quite closely with Arlo the Apatosaurus; this'll be important in future plot points.

Prehistoric Park fanfiction references

 * As the author himself points out, there are parallels between Arlo's

Real-life references

 * The title is Latin for "New Beginning".
 * This mission was partly based on The Ballad of Big Al, the Walking with Dinosaurs episode "Time of the Titans" and the Planet Dinosaur episode "Fight for Life" with several scenes borrowed from those stories; for example, an Allosaurus ambushing a group of herbivores.