There's an old story about a great flood; a flood so massive and all-encompassing that it wiped out almost every living thing on the planet. Supposedly, it had been sent by the gods as punishment for the constant warring and bloodshed between the mammal clans. In their wisdom, they'd agreed that the best solution was a clean slate.
To their great surprise, or so the story went, the impending doom actually brought mammals closer together. In the face of almost-certain extinction, all the species of all the lands forged an unprecedented alliance. Together they built a great Ark that would ferry a single tribe of every species to safety. Many mammals found themselves frighteningly close to the kind of species they'd normally have avoided at any cost, but for the sake of survival, the peace held. The relentless downpour lasted for two moons, and when the sun finally broke through there was only water as far as anyone could see.
Judy's grandmother had told her the well-worn tale of the Great Flood about a hundred times. The kindly bunny had loved to gather her grandkits together and enthrall them with such stories in front of the fireplace. She remembered the part where the predators fished for food, and in doing so learned that they didn't need to kill their fellow mammals. She remembered how the prey learned that they didn't need to fear their predator friends, and that when the waters receded they helped forge the peace that had stood for thousands of years.
It was a good story, but that's all it had ever been; a story. She hadn't believed that there could be a flood so utterly disastrous, sweeping mammals out of their homes and turning the streets into rivers.
She hadn't believed that; not before today.
Perched carefully at the top of a lamp post, all the waterlogged bunny could do was watch the raging torrent rolling down the hill and thank the gods that Little Rodentia wasn't in its path. Just up the road, a twenty-foot geyser had erupted where there had once been a fire hydrant. The storm drains were overflowing up and down the block and – worst of all – both the front steps and stairwells of her apartment building had been transformed into the next best thing to waterfalls. She winced as the torrential waters carried another mammal's belongings out the door and added them to the swirling debris rushing toward the bay.
The sound of shouting grabbed her attention and she spun around to locate its source. If a mammal was in danger, she still had a duty to do everything she could to help them. When she spotted the yelling mammals, however, she just watched with a vague sense of bewilderment as Bucky and Pronk rode an enormous log down the frothing waters, hooting and hollering with joy the whole way. As they passed her by, Bucky actually waved to her merrily. "C'MON IN, BUNNY! THE WATER'S GREAT!"
"GET OFF THAT THING, YOU IDIOTS!" She shouted back. "YOU'RE GOING TO GET YOURSELVES KILLED!"
"IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD, BUNNY!" Pronk reminded her, his arms wrapped tightly around Bucky's waist as the pair plummeted into oblivion. "LIVE A LITTLE!"
Shaking her head, she pushed the issue of her neighbors' obvious insanity to the back of her mind and refocused on the situation at hand. Unless she was mistaken, the rushing tide that poured from the building across from her seemed a little less Armageddon-y than it had a moment ago. As if on cue, the roaring tower of water that marked the former fire hydrant's location also began to recede, and after a few minutes had reduced itself to a barely noticeable trickle.
A wave of profound relief rushed through her; it was as though the gods had heard her prayers and finally decided to reign back the surging waters. As they began to taper off in earnest, the street slowly – too slowly for her, if she was being honest – began to empty of water. Eventually, she felt it was safe to climb down and take stock of the damage. Adjusting her position on the lamp post, she was just about to slide to the ground when she glanced across the street and beheld a truly chilling sight.
Directly across from her, framed by the slightly-damp lace curtains of her second-floor window, stood Judy's landlady. Glaring at the soaked bunny, the expression on the pangolin's face could only be described as apocalyptic. Her eyes burned with the fires of hell itself as she menacingly raised a single claw, leveled it on the bunny, then slowly drew it across her own throat.
Judy decided, quite reasonably, to give the older mammal a day or two to cool off. Conveniently, that would probably be enough time to murder a certain fox and dump his body in a shallow grave somewhere.
Making her way down from her perch, she couldn't help but shudder as her feet sank into the thick layer of grimy mud that coated both street and sidewalk. Doing her best to ignore the wet sucking sound that accompanied each step, she carefully made her way down the road and glared angrily into the highest branches of a now-crooked tree. "NICK!"
A faint rustling sound followed her words, but no reply seemed forthcoming.
"NICK!" She repeated, a little louder as she felt her temper begin to boil in earnest. "YOU'D BETTER NOT MAKE ME COME UP THERE!"
There was another rustle, then a red and somewhat water-logged tail appeared from out of the leaves. Her dripping wet partner followed after, wordlessly making his way to the ground and nervously turning to face her. He was clearly trying to put up his customary wall of aloof confidence, but she knew him well enough to see the churning anxiety that his behind his quesy smile. "Heyyyyyyyy, Carrots. What's up?"
She wanted to respond verbally. She really did. She knew exactly what she wanted to say and how she wanted to say it. Unfortunately, when she opened her mouth the only sound that came out was alarmingly similar to a snarl.
The cracks in his veneer of false confidence grew wider as the fox took an involuntary step backward. "Easy now, Carrots. Let's just take some nice deep breaths."
Acknowledging that she was – for the time being – too enraged to properly communicate her displeasure, she began to gesture furiously between her building and the pipe wrench still clutched in her partner's paw. Blinking in surprised, the fox suddenly seemed to remember the wrench himself and quickly thrust it behind his back.
"Carrots, I'd just like to say tha-"
Judy suddenly found her voice, as the most important question rushed to the forefront of her mind. Later, when she'd taken the time to sit down and really absorb everything that had happened (and how little time it had taken to happen) she'd realize that it had been the only important question.
"How?"
"Now that's actually a very broad inquiry. I mean, in the grand scheme of things you could be asking about any number of differ-"
"HOW?!"
"Now let's try to keep our heads here." He began to lift his paws in surrender, only to be reminded that he was still holding the pipe wrench. Franticly throwing the offending tool behind a partially-uprooted bush and looking back at his profoundly displeased partner, he seemed to be trying his best to put on a calming voice; to Judy's ears, it was like claws on a chalkboard. "I can see why you'd be upset, but there's no call to start assigning blame."
She felt her right eye begin to twitch slightly and for the first time since she and Nick had become friends, she wished that she'd accepted the fox taser her father had tried to force on her. She was briefly soothed by the fantasy of her partner doing the ten-thousand-volt mambo, then the idiot fox unwisely resumed his rambling defence.
"What I mean is, we could go back and forth all day about who may or may not have slightly exaggerated their level of plumbing expertise, but I don't think that would be very constructive."
For a brief moment, she wondered if this was some bizarre attempt at committing suicide-by-cop. For an even briefer moment, she even entertained the idea of obliging him.
Or maybe she could try waterboarding him. That seemed appropriate, given the circumstances.
"Instead, I...ahem...I think maybe it would be better to focus on the positive aspects of the situation." Nick's voice was beginning to sound a little strained. Perhaps he'd started to realize that the end was near. "F-for example...uh...well, it sure was a first-rate effort all around, wasn't it?"
As his nervous laughter assaulter her ears, Judy spotted a small piece of debris lodged in the mud between them and was struck by glorious inspiration.
"Okay, look. With the benefit of hindsight, I think our best course of action would be to simply acknowledge that mistakes were made and try to...move...on..." He trailed off, shoulders sagging as he finally accepted the terrible and inevitable truth. "I should have just started running, shouldn't I?"
Slowly, almost mechanically, Judy nodded her head.
"It's...it's too late for that now, isn't it?"
Again, the bunny nodded menacingly. Before that day, she didn't think she was capable of nodding menacingly.
"Oh. W-what's going to happ-"
He flinched a little when she reached down, pulling the small item she'd spotted from the muck and holding it out to him. Accepting it gingerly, he peered at the small toothbrush in his paw with some confusion. "I...uh...I don't know what this means, Carrots. Is this a bunny thing? This doesn't mark me for death or anything...does it?"
Scowling, she stepped back and sharply pointed at the scene of quasi-devastation. "You made this mess, Wilde. Now you get to clean it up."