Yeah, another story to sidetrack me...sorry about that. Seriously though, life has been rather heavy for the past few months, getting out of school, reluctantly searching for a job, learning guitar, starting too many computing projects and then not finishing them, writing, eventually, the idiot who keeps doing that will feel wasted and unfulfilled and lead a path full of disappointment, but I suppose I'm too jaded to care. Anyhow, I'm back, and kind of with a new story...but don't worry though, I'm developing a schedule, now I shall no longer be sporadic, or at least I hope. I've decided going months on end without stories, trying to distract myself from boredom is stupid, especially when I actually do have things I could do. So unlike every other time before in my entire life (I'm kind of not joking there), I'm going to push myself into this schedule, no matter how upset, happy, mad, or some other insanity I get, cause if I can keep a schedule, I know I shall be more consistent and will stop making so much disappointment, time to get off my lazy dumbass and do something. So here we go, my plan for next month are as follows:

6/29/16 - Finish Prologue of this (if this is not out by then, I will explode)

7/1/16 - Finish Chapter 10 of TiR

7/5/16 - Finish Chapter 10 of VS

7/9/16 - Finish Chapter 1 of Krossos Zoa

7/13/16 - Finish Chapter 1 of A Fox's Progress

7/17/16 - Finish Chapter 1 of this

7/21/16 - Finish Chapter 11 of Trust is Recieved

7/25/16 - Finish Chapter 11 of Viking Seige

7/29/16 - Finish Chapter 2 of Krossos Zoa

If I failed to follow that, I could use someone to slap me.

Anyway, now that I've covered that (and sort of just advertised my entire profile), lets get to writing, so here is ALoEM's Prologue. (Acronyms are fun)

Oh and if you get the name, internet cookie to you, cool hipsters. :P

And I don't own Zootopia, and that's final.

Prologue

So if you've ever been if stuck in a hospital, you know how it feels when you're lying in bed, taking in the sanitized "clean" smell. If you haven't had that misfortune, it's about equal to being covered in garbage: its smell and taste just seem to invade you. Add some morphine and the smell never leaves you. And the first few nights might be fine, but it doesn't take long before you'd rather jump out the window then smell like the hospital. All in all, not a very fun experience.

But maybe you're wondering why I'm here. What could a sixteen year old red fox do to get stuck in this horrible place? Well lets see, first I was kidnapped, then I was drugged. Then it gets hazy, but the doctors has told me I was badly beaten. From what they said, I should be covered in bruises. But I'm not, even if my mind and the hospital thinks I'm suppose to be in pain. And I know that from the morphine

There is something else I recall though, a cage, being opened and being dragged out by something about my height, maybe shorter. That's the most I can recall before four days ago. And today my parents are suppose to visit. My mom's already been here twice. Hopefully my dad comes... That be nice. But what I would really like is something to get this goddamn taste out of my mouth, and this smell out of my nose… It's killing me.

Anyway, that's what happened so far. Some jackass, took me, drugged me, caged me, and got me put in a goddamn hospital. How fun.

I wake up to beeps going on around me. I wasn't surprised; after a week and a half in a hospital, you learn the sounds never stop. I kind of wish I had something to listen to aside from this neverending assault on my eardrums. Hell, I'd listen to pop music just to get it out. Anything just to stop it.

Suddenly silence...that can't be good. I force my eyes open in a panic. The next beep took much longer than it should have... Pretty sure that's not a normal thing. A quick glance at the machine, it barely moved. And then, out of nowhere, it made a breakneck pace of beeps, much faster than the original rhythm. The nurse, an antelope, practically barged through the door.

By the time everything got settled it was obviously darker outside. The room's clock was busted so I never knew. Anyhow, I was shaken up, and the nurse almost had to hold me down, and after listening to her try to soothe my frantic near-struggle, I became calm.

It was all in your head. The monitor didn't stop, it didn't slow, you were just distracted. But it's fine, nothing really happened. Maybe I can keep that mantra up till I believe it.

But how could I have missed the beeping that had been pounding me for over a week. It's not like someone playing drums, it doesn't just miss a beat. And I know I didn't imagine it missing the beat. So either something is wrong with me, or that machine. I'll have to hope the machine is faulty.

It was around midnight, or at least it seemed so, when I decided to ask a night shift nurse to check the machine. It took several tries to get her to do it, but eventually she gave in, explaining that it was a heartbeat monitor. She told me while she went through a checklist about what she heard happened to me and what I'd been through, seems I was in horrible shape when I arrived. Nearly critical it seemed if what she said was true. By the time she finished, I had a pretty good image of what I looked like coming in, and then she said nothing was wrong with the machine. She then proceeded to ask why I felt the need to check it. Lying wouldn't have been worth it, so I told her it slowed down a lot for a good few minutes earlier.

By the time I told her about the slow machine, she was confused. She then said the machine had only speed up today, it went rather fast, much faster than a stable fox like me could manage. So she decided it was a good idea to replace the machine on that account, and pulled in a different machine and told me that specific one should be good. Feeling exhaustion overcame me, even though I've been resting most of the day. I promptly faded to black.

I woke slowly to my mom sitting at my bedside Seeing me wake turned her rather grim face to a saddened smile, one I kind of wish wasn't related to me. She was always the best person I knew, but seeing her look of distress, leaking through despite how much she tries to hide it, it hurts. At that moment, I'm not sure I'd admit it, but I really wanted to hug her, the tears in her darkish blue eyes tugging at my heart.

"Mom," I say, unable to bear the sadness of her face. "Could I have a hug?"

She then leaned over, and we embraced each other. I buried my head in her shoulder, and tears fell from our eyes.

It felt so good being wrapped in my mother's arms. This hospital, that cage, all those theres that weren't home. I finally felt safe in my mother's arms, even if I should have felt embarrassed. After that experience, all I wanted was to be with my mom and dad for a while. It felt like years of hell before I'd ever return, like I was shipped out to war or something. I know it's not comparable, but this pain, it's just how I'd describe the feeling when I return home from the horror of war. I'd never felt so alone before, and I never wanted to again. With my mother's arms around, I finally didn't.

It took us awhile, probably an hour, before we finally finished sobbing into each other's shoulders. A nurse had been in the room twice to check the machine, but I hardly paid her mind. We eventually finished. I hesitantly pulled back to the bed, a bit of pain in my stomach, but ignored it well enough and continued to sit there. My mother was a bit more joyous now, enough to make me smile.

There's one thing through all that though that stuck out. I had missed my family, I had missed my friends, I had even strangely missed school. I guess you never really know what you have till it's gone, or feels gone. I mean it hurt a lot, the physical pain was a lot. But the emotional pain? That was much, much stronger. The fear and sadness from thinking I was never going to say goodbye when I died, not to anyone, and I'd be alone to top it, that hurt way more.

To be blunt, I'm not sure what happened, I just seem to be waking up at probably around midnight, if the black sky out the window means anything. I suppose I must have fallen asleep while mom was here, because that's the last thing I can recall. Or maybe the morphine is messing with my head again, I don't know, but something is off. There was this suffocating weight to the room. I decide to ring for a nurse, maybe fresh air will help. It took an hour for someone to come to the door, and it after about a minute of standing at it, they finally bursted in. And then the weight left. The nurse asked me what was wrong, and my reply was a hollow nevermind.

The rest of the night was spent watching the sky outside get brighter. After three hours of watching the sun, a nurse walked in asking about breakfast. They said I should probably eat so I could eat later, they said it would help with the pain and the morphine. Except I honestly felt neither, I'm not even sure they have morphine in the dispensing machine. Anyhow, I was really hungry, and I couldn't care less about it being hospital food, I just needed something. So I told her I would like a large bowl of cereal.

It took a bit for the nurse to return with my cereal, but when she got back, I gulped the whole thing. I asked her about getting another one. She was utterly stunned but told me she would and walked out.

After the nurse came back, I gulped up the next bowl and proceeded to wipe my mouth, I'm still feeling empty after that, but I guess it was good enough. The nurse seemed to decide that as well, cause she just promptly left.

That all left me to think, brooding on the experiences. Well, until I noticed the clock on the wall was finally working. So I could actually tell the time, which it said was eleven. I felt content to know the time. When you let days pass you by in agony without a clock, it's much worse to not be able to figure out when it's to end.

But it was odd that the clock was slowing down. The second hand was moving at what seemed was at every second or two, but as I stared at it, it started taking five seconds to move, and the time grew from there. Eventually it seemed to take an hour to move. That seemed odd enough that I actually needed to know what was wrong with that clock. So I made the decision to take out the morphine, I'm pretty sure it wasn't helping me anyhow, it was more often empty, and I have yet to feel any pain in the hospital. The process of taking the needle out of my arm was quick and rather painless, I'm not really sure if it's the morphine though. I take out the rest of the equipment hooked into me and stand up, which is pretty easy seeing as I should be recovering from being beat on and drugged.

I smoothly walk to the clock and poke it a few times, though it barely shifts, so I pick it up and decide to take a closer look. Unhinging the battery plate on the back, holding it in my right paw, I twist what I'm going to assume was the second hand knob. Watching the clock, it seems completely fine, it just didn't work, when it was a moment ago. So I try to put the clock back up on the wall it was hanging from, except I broke the hook on the back so I just dropped it on the chair beside that spot and jumped back to the bed before anyone could notice.

Turning around was shocking, because right in front of me, the clock was floating. I mean it was holding still, not spinning, it wasn't moving at all, it stayed frozen in non-existent ice. And now I'm on the edge of a meltdown, I'm not even... Maybe it's a prank, that makes sense right? I mean I'm not crazy, right? Clocks aren't suppose to be suspended in the air? Maybe I'm hallucinating? I really hope so. Or it could be a morphine-induced dream, morphine does that right? Gives you weird dreams. Maybe if I close my eyes and pinch myself I'll wake up.

I hear crash go off, and decide to open my eyes. There I see nurses of different species and sizes shuffling in, staring either at me or something beyond the foot of my bed. Those staring away from me were looking at a chair with divit in the leather, and a bunch of plastic pieces spread out behind it. Shifting my eyes between the chair and the door, one of the nurses eventually broke out of her shock to actually check on me.

When she asked me about what happened, and why all the equipment was off me, I told them rapidly I took it all off, pulled the things off me and went to look at the clock. I then told them the clock wasn't working and threw against the seat. She gave me odd looks when I started speaking about the freak out I had.

By the end of all of it, I think she suspected I was losing my mind from being caged and drugged for a while. But if the debris left by the corner of the room is to mean anything, that means it happened, and there is no way I'm letting them pull a shrink for that. I'm especially aware I don't need the hospital. I really need to leave, the anxiety of being shrinked is driving me crazy enough. Let's not even mention being drugged for this. So after the few leftover nurses are assured I'm fine, and they stick the useless hospital equipment back in me, the remaining ones left.

This was my chance to at least get out of that bed, I needed that much. I decided to take out all the equipment again and take a leisurely stroll. When I walked the edge of the room to the door, one of the nurses nearly saw me, so I made a quick move to hide behind the door, and the heaviness of being caught struck me... I think. After I waiting a minute for the nurse to come and get me, the suspense was killing me, so I peeked around the corner, and she just wasn't moving. Nobody in fact was, some were even sorta suspended in midair. And now this has officially become the weirdest week of my entire life.

Alright, so I'm actually not sure about this, I've done first person like this before, but that doesn't mean it turned out amazing even in my eyes. Just know that the first person view only applies to this chapter the rest of the story will be third person. And this was mostly a setup to a specific OC, I've been told this has no transitions, which was actually something I sorta did on purpose, but I write experiments, I'm not a safe person, so if it fails, I'd like to know. This will continue no matter though.

Anyhow thanks for reading, if you like this fav and follow, and no matter what review, so I can improve. Spartan out.