Chapter 12: [Insert simple title pertaining to character development]


A/N- It's occurred to me that most of what I've been doing has been, more-or-less, directly pertaining to the case. And while I feel it's good to keep the story moving, advancing it regularly, I also have an appreciation for authors who can throw in a more subtle twist, take things off to the side a little, draw away from the main narrative and ease the tension a little before things get intense. And rest assured, the next few days for our trio willbe intense. We've reached the point in the story where great revelations will be made, villains will start to appear, and trouble will start to find our heroes.So without further ado, the comic relief.


"I'm sure you looked very strapping in that scout uniform, Red," Nelle jested, trailing a gentle claw along the base of his right ear. When Judy had offered to go to the Presinct to report on their meeting with Mr. Big and set up all the necessary paperwork to get their stake-out approved, the two vulpine had decided to make a day of it.

After offering Nelle a treat of ice cream and a walk through the park- which she graciously accepted- Nick had sent a quick text to his brother to ask what he was up to. Jimmy had texted back a short while later explaining that he was 'looking into some stuff', and that it would require a trip to their parents' house. Nick didn't need to know what his brother was looking into. Stopping by their parents house after a decade away would almost certainly mean he'd be there all night. Their mother would insist he stay for dinner, and their dad would offer a few beers, which Jimmy, being Jimmy, would of course accept, and thus Nick had his apartment safely to himself for the night. So after they'd reached the far end of the park, they got a cab and headed back to his home.

Nick's two months at the Academy had allowed him to save up some cash. As a cadet, he'd been making decided less than he was now as an officer, but he'd also been staying in the Academy barracks, so that money had no place to go, and when he got out he'd had a couple grand saved up. More than enough for the down payment and a couple months' rent on a decent apartment. Nelle had not yet seen this apartment, so when they got there, he let her take a look around while he took a frozen blueberry pie out and put it in the oven. They'd met on the couch to watch some old black-and-white slapstick comedy, and she'd ended up asking him why he'd decided to become an officer.

Ten minutes later, he'd finally gotten through explaining his early mindset of 'wanting to help the world', and his attempt to join the Junior Ranger Scouts. "I'm sure six-year-old you would've been very impressed with nine-year-old me in green," he remarked with a little laugh, trailing the claws on one paw through the soft fur of her tail, which she'd draped across his lap. "Unfortunately, that little escapade wasn't to be, and the rejection ultimately set the tone for the next two-thirds of my life. Then some crazy little bunny-in-blue comes along and drags me into her investigation. I mean, literally dragged, by the tie." He grinned, and rubbed his neck.

"Truth be told," he continued, "I didn't really think much of Judy at first. Naive little girl, got lucky and managed to step into her little fantasy world, with no idea what that world was really about. So… I did my best to make it harder for her. Laying the bitter truth on her didn't work, so I went along with her scheme, and helped her in all the least helpful ways I could. Thought taking six hours at the DMV to get a single plate number would break her off, but if anything it made her try harder. We nearly got iced and chased by a nighthowler-crazed panther in the same night, but she just wouldn't stop. Honestly, I kinda started to admire her dedication. I saw in her the same thing I'd wanted for myself all those years ago. Hell, I spent so long pretending I was exactly what every fox is expected to be, I'd almost forgotten I'd once tried to be something different.

"Judy helped me remember who I really was, or at least who I'd wanted to be. I stood up to Bogo that night because I'd finally realized Judy was right. My dreams got shut down and I let them die. She didn't. She kept pushing, and we actually solved the case." Nick paused, let his head drop back and closed his eyes a moment. Nelle took the opportunity to trace the bottom of his muzzle, earning a contented growl from the red fox.

"Then came the press conference," he carried on after taking a moment to enjoy the vixen's touch. "You know the one. She'd just handed me a ZPA application, the key to becoming what I'd always, deep down, really wanted to be. Then her interview shattered the whole optimistic mirror I'd been looking through. I mean, I know now that those reporters had basically baited every word she said there. As I said, she was naive. She gave exactly the interview the press wanted her to give. But at the time, I thought those words were how she genuinely felt, and it crushed me. But… Well, in the end, she surprised me again. When she showed up under the bridge I'd been calling shelter, I thought she was gonna just drag me along again. The last thing I expected was for her to admit she was wrong, and beg me to help her fix her mistake. She showed more humility there than I've shown in my life, I think. It… It moved me. And it worked. We fixed it, found out Bellweather's scheme, and… Well, you know the rest." He chuckled softly, and took a deep breath. "A little over two months later, I got my badge. Real nice, shiny one, too. I like to think it brings out the mischief in my eyes."

"That's good," Nelle remarked with a little laugh. "I like the mischief." She reached up and turned Nick's muzzle so he was facing her, and their eyes met for a moment, emerald and sapphire locked together. Nick leaned in, but just as they were about to meet, the oven started to beep. Both foxes paused, and after a moment Nick let out a dry chuckle. He gave Nelle a quick peck on the lips, then got up to get the pie out.

"So you got my story," Nick remarked as he lifted the pie out of the oven and onto a wood trivet on the counter. He pulled out a knife and cut out two slices, then pulled out two small plates to put them on. "Tell me about you. I'd like to know how exactly you came to be a private detective."

Nelle, who had been watching with eager anticipation as he took out the pie, smiled softly and shook her head. "I don't think it'll be anywhere near as fascinating as your story, but okay. Let's see..." She paused, taking her time to think about how to tell her tale, until Nick had arrived back at the sofa. She took the plate he offered her and took a bite, savoring the rich, sweet flavor, before she set the plate on the coffee table and started to speak again. "Just like you, I guess, it goes back to when I was a kid. I, uh… I have an eidetic memory, if you know what that means."

Nick's eyes widened a bit in surprise. "You can recall vivid details with precise accuracy at a glance, right?" It had seemed strange that she could glean so much from seeming to just casually flip through a case file, but that would definitely explaining.

"Exactly right," Nelle confirmed, smiling softly. "I also lean toward hyper-observance, though a few details do tend to slip past unless I really focus on something, so it's not perfect. Anyway, as a kit I practiced my talents by seeking to find the truth of pretty much everything that happened around the house. Whatever happened, I wanted to get to the bottom of it. I discovered that dad's cook was romantically involved with the girl who worked at the baker's down the street. I found out where the neighbors' boy hid the magazines he stole from his dad's 'secret' collection. And..." She took a deep breath, and slowly let it out. Her eyes closed, and she kept them closed while she spoke. "I found out about my mom's condition and what it meant when I was seven. I locked myself in my room for a week, refusing to come out until dad explained to me why I was gonna lose my mom and why I couldn't have any siblings. I knew what was happening, but that only made it worse, knowing I couldn't do anything about it."

Nick sat silently through this all, watching the vixen recall a tale that must have been infinitely harder to relive than his Junior Ranger Scout experience. And he'd thought he'd had it rough growing up. When tears started to flow down through the fur of her cheeks, he moved over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "You said at lunch… Sixteen years is a long time to move on. But you haven't, have you? It still hurts."

Eyes closed tight, Nelle let Nick embrace her, and leaned against him a little. Slowly, she shook her head, then gave a little nod. "It does hurt, Nick. I miss her. I'm… I'm not okay, whenever I think about it… I can't..."

"Shh, shh, easy Snowflake," Nick murmured softly. His paw came up and softly brushed between her ears, down and around to her cheeks, brushing tears away from one, then the other. For a while, he just held her there. He didn't care that their pie might get cold; he didn't care that her tears were falling onto the nice shirt his dad had given him. She needed comfort more than he needed warm pie and a clean shirt.

After a while, she did settle down, the tears slowing, then stopping, and with a soft sniff she looked up to him. Slowly, she leaned up and placed a soft kiss on the side of his muzzle. "Thank you, Nick..." she murmured quietly. "I think… You are what I've been looking for, for a long time. Like me… You want to help the world, but you've had a hard time getting to where you can make a difference." She placed another kiss in the same spot, then continued on. "And you're a good mammal. You're better to me than anyone else has been since I moved to this city. That… That means a lot to me. Thank you."

Nelle sat up straight again, though she still maintained some degree of closeness to the red fox, and wiped her cheeks with the back of her paw. "Where… Where was I?" she asked.

"Something about having an 'eidetic memory'," Nick jested.

"Right. I guess since I told you that I can't pretend to not remember..." She rolled her eyes, and gave him a coy smile. "With my memory, my parents always said I could be something very few others could. Namely, I could be anything I wanted. It became very clear, when I started digging into every mystery surrounding my life, what I wanted to be. But then, when my mother passed..." She closed her eyes again, and for a moment Nick worried that she might tear up again, but then she just took a deep breath, let it out and carried on. "After that, I sort of lost focus. I'd known it was coming, but it still shook every part of my being. I didn't think I could go on being the same person I had been. So instead of my countless investigations, I buried myself in studies, going through class after class, digging through book after book, hoping I'd find something new. The more I engrossed myself in schoolwork, the more it seemed to me that nothing I sought to do seemed like it was quite right for me.

"I became oblivious to the world around me. Nothing mattered except that I prove that no one around me was smarter than me. I had to know more than anyone else in the room, and that led to me missing some of the most obvious things. I didn't realize that a business colleague of my dad's was coming by the house more often as the years went by. I didn't notice the way my dad lingered around her. I didn't notice the way she lingered around him. I went through school, graduated top of my class, went to university. Six years into college, I opened Fuzzbook one day and saw that my dad… He'd remarried. Two months previously. And I'd known nothing about it. That was the big epiphany for me, when I realized that I was so intent on learning everything that I actually knew next to nothing."

"The big thing I felt then… It was betrayal. At first I felt that my dad had betrayed me by going around my back with his new wife. Then I felt like he'd betrayed my mom by taking a new wife. Finally… I settled on the realization that I'd betrayed my mom by not using the gifts she'd spoken so highly of, by wasting a decade closed off from the world. I, uh..." She chuckled and shook her head. "I dropped out of college the next day. I had a bachelors degree in criminology, an associate's in business, and I was fourteen credits shy of my second bachelors. When my dad found out, he demanded that I come home and talk to him about it. I went home. I talked to him about it. That was the first time I ever raised my voice to him. I blamed him for losing mom, for replacing her, and for letting me fall into such a state of depression. I told him I wanted nothing from him and nothing to do with him, and I left."

"And… That's when you came to Zootopia," Nick guessed. The timeline added up; She'd have been about twenty-four or twenty-five at the time, and she'd told him she'd been in Zootopia a little over four years.

"Right on the money, Red," Nelle answered. "I walked to the station and got on the first train that came through. I used what was left of my scholarship money to cover a few months rent on an apartment, and got a job at Cicero's. Took me a while to find out I got that job because the owner recognized my name. The next couple years went by pretty quick. It mostly seems like a blur now. I spent most nights serving tables. The tips there were great; Cicero's caters to the city's wealthiest mammals, after all. I think a good deal of my tips were because customers were impressed by my service. Others… Well, I think they mainly liked my… Uh..."

"Lower-tail region?" Nick cut in, providing a delicate euphemism when her explanation stalled out.

"Nick!" the arctic vixen exclaimed, giving him a playful slap on the chest. Her tone seemed more amused than scolding, especially when she asked, "Should I assume you've been checking out my 'lower-tail region'?"

"It is a very nice 'lower-tail region'," the red fox answered indirectly, grinning wide. A coy smile from the vixen met a mischievous smirk from the tod, and after a moment their muzzles came together, lips meeting in a long, tender kiss.

"Normally, I'd be put off by that kind of remark, but coming from you I think I actually kind of enjoy it," Nelle purred softly. "Anyway… For a few years I stayed at Cicero's. My life settled into more-or-less a simple routine of going to work, sleeping most of the day, and emptying a bottle of wine on the weekends. That all changed… A couple months ago, when I heard a story about our own mayor involved in some secretive predator-abduction scheme. I… Wasn't really worried about the pred-scare, to be honest. Biology classes in college had taught me enough to know that the bunny was talking out her… 'Lower-tail region', and that pretty much all of it was propaganda and a couple weeks of proper scientific studies would fix it all… What did catch my interest were stories of a fox having some part in the investigation. There were no details on exactly what the fox had done, but the reports did make clear that one 'Nicholas Wilde' had been instrumental in solving the case.

"That was what it took to remind me of my childhood dream. And that was my second big epiphany, when I realized I still wasn't doing what I should be. My next day off, I went to city hall and applied for a business license. It took a while to get approved, but for the first time in years, I intentionally used my surname to my benefit. The pred-scare was in full swing, but there's power in a name that goes beyond whatever power there is in fear. So once I got my license, I resigned from Cicero's and opened up my private detective firm. I also had a journalist friend of mine keep an eye out for any appearance of the mysterious Nicholas Wilde."

"A journalist friend by the name of Robert, I presume?" His conman instincts working full-swing, Nick was putting connections together just as fast as Nelle could lay out the hints.

"You presume correctly, Red," Nelle confirmed with a grin. "Martin Jacks runs one of my dad's biggest banks, and myself and Rob practically grew up together. He's almost a brother. Needless to say, he owed me a couple favors, so he agreed to keep an eye out for this fox I'd taken a sudden interest in."

"Stalker alert," Nick teased.

"Shush. As it happens, this fox did make another appearance, when Mayor Bellweather was taken down. And this time there was a picture. Honestly… I wasn't impressed with it. This 'Nick Wilde' I'd heard about looked laid-back, sleazy, arrogant, self-assured and lazy." She grinned at the cry of indignation from the red fox. "But… When Robert asked if I still wanted him watching for the guy, something in me said to tell him 'yes'. I was rewarded when, two months later, Rob told me to turn on the TV to the public access channels. They had a local story going, Police Academy graduations. I didn't even know they broadcast those, but apparently some low-budget news room thinks they're valuable. I'm glad they did. The valedictorian for this graduating class of new officers was none other than Nick Wilde, first fox officer to ever grace the ranks of the ZPD. And I have to say, the change from this fox's previous news appearance was nothing short of spectacular." She slid a bit closer, and walked two claws up along his chest. "I have to say, Nick, you looked damn good in blue."

"So… You spent months having your friend track my presence in the news?" Nick asked curiously. He was starting to form one last connection, but it'd take a little more digging to confirm it.

"You caught my interest, Red," Nelle murmured. It was clear she could see the gears turning in his head. She wanted to know if they'd turn the right way.

"And over the last few weeks, since you saw me in that graduation ceremony… Did you have a crush on me, Snowflake?"

"Could you blame me if I did?" She purred, one claw trailing from along the bottom of his snout, from his neck to his chin.

"Having seen myself in the mirror, that's certainly understandable," he remarked, and grinned when she rolled her eyes. "One more question, though. When you came to Buffalo Butt with this case… It wasn't coincidence that me and Judy got assigned to it, is it?"

"You caught me," Nelle admitted, confirming his theory. She closed the distance between them once more and pressed her lips against his… Just as a brief clip of a Gazelle song started playing on his phone. Judy had put that on there for her ringtone, and he couldn't find out how to change it.

"That… Might be important," Nick growled, much as he wished he could ignore it. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, swiped the lock, and read what was written out loud. "Stakeout set. Meet tomorrow ZPD impound lot for briefing. 5:45 PM."

"Good," Nelle purred, grabbing the phone out of his grasp and tossing it onto the coffee table without moving an inch further from Nick. "That should be the last interruption..." Her arms reaching around Nick's neck, she pressed her lips to his once more.

It was at that moment that James Wilde entered the apartment.