Three Months A Fox

by WildeNick

Picking up just seconds after Nick is crushed at the ZPD presser, follow him on a 3 month journey of self-discovery and survival of 'The City Gripped by Fear'. Along the way there are more attacks, protests, a new mayor, and a deviously unfolding plot to turn Zootopia against predators. While he will inevitably end up under a bridge with Judy, this is the story of how he gets there

25. Predxit

…

Day 46

…

[znn com/breaking-alerts/rss/]

-BREAKING ALERT: Savage Spotted in Pawlantis

-Predator Crewmembers Rotated Off ISS: ZASA Claims Transfers 'Routine'

…

[znn com/news/preyxit-possible-predxit-demanded]

:Preyxit Possible While Predxit Demanded

By Davis Treeseeder

With seemingly no end in sight to the deadly onslaught of savage predator violence, manifesting itself in multiple attacks per day, many Zootopians have had enough. In what economists and sociologists are calling 'Preyxit', estimates range from the tens of thousands into the hundreds of thousands of prey mammals packing up and leaving the city. Falling confidence in the ZPD's ability to provide safety, and in the failing economy to provide stability, many see few reasons to stay. Experts predict that this pattern will continue to expand and as more and more mammals leave, even greater numbers are expected to follow.

Not everyone is prepared to migrate, however, and the daily peaceful protests outside City Hall have begun to coalesce around a single demand: Predxit.

"Why should we leave? They [predators] are the problem. They should leave," said one protester who chose not to be identified.

Another, carrying a sign reading 'Predxit Now, Hayworth Now', had this to say when asked whether she thought predators should be removed by force: "Absolutely. They have been terrorizing us [prey] for thousands of years. We should have forced them out a long time ago."

Faced with the prospect of mass migrations out of Zootopia, unsubstantiated reports have begun to circulate that the Angartha city council has begun considering travel restrictions for Zootopians. This coming on the heels of rumors that the alleged savage attack in Pawlantis was committed by a Zootopia City native. If Angartha is successful, other cities would surely follow.

…

[pouncehart com/headlines/rss]

-Preds BANNED from Space!

-Unconfirmed Reports of Pawlantis Recidivism Event Remain Unconfirmed

…

[pouncehart com/anti-pred-violence-spreads]

:Anti-Pred Violence Spreads

By Wexley Rhodes

An anti-predation demonstration outside City Hall this morning turned violent after clashing with a smaller group of counter-protesters. Around 1000 mammals in total showed up for what became a riotous brawl.

No longer content with the cover of darkness, mammals wearing masks and clad in all-black clothing were seen to jump several predators and brazenly beat them in the street to the uproarious applause and cheering of the crowd. Some escaped with only minor injuries, while others were not so fortunate.

In a shocking video captured by a citizen journalist, a lynx was bashed in the head with a bike lock by a still unidentified black-masked individual. The victim was taken to one of the downtown triage clinics, where he received several stitches, and remains in stable condition.

Several hours after it began, the ZPD declared the gathering an unlawful assembly and forced the remaining rioters to disperse; burnt trash cans and broken windows left in their wake. The ZNG was not called in, but many questioned why the ZPD did not intervene sooner. Multiple officers, who refused to be identified, claimed that they had received general stand down orders from the office of the Mayor, but official sources stated that all ZPD officers had acted in accordance with standard operational protocols throughout the event.

…

…

…

The pitched ring of the steel wrench clattering hard against the cold concrete was nearly as violent to Nick's sensitive ears as was the stream of profanities flooding out of Finnick's muzzle. He'd winced at the first sound, but over the last few days he'd become inured to the second.

There had been no shortage of clanging or cursing during that time, as the two foxes labored to repair the newly rediscovered Mustang. With the pawpsicle markets still closed, pretending to be mechanics had become their newest hustle, though, in retrospect, it seemed that they had only succeeded in hustling themselves.

Nick's mechanical inclinations did not go very far past the basics, but his generalized cleverness and problem solving abilities worked together to squeeze a little more mileage out of the things he did know. Finnick was quite a bit more knowledgeable, but still nowhere near enough to get them to a point where the car would start, let alone run reliably. Most of Finnick's knowledge had been gathered through trial, and mostly error, while tinkering with his van. Nick wasn't entirely convinced that those skills necessarily transferred to this project, the Mustang being a far more refined beast to be dealing with, but it was better than nothing, and they were hardly strangers with making do with what they had.

Though, if he was being honest with himself, Finnick was the only reason that they had made any progress at all. An overabundance of self-confidence in his acumen, and a reckless tenacity had driven the project much further than what Nick had originally imagined possible. It was becoming more and more likely that this wasn't just some lost cause to pass the time with, and that there really could be a functional sports car at the end of their journey.

While Nick was more partial to restraint rather than more injury, especially given his current state, there was a price to be paid for throwing such caution to the wind, as was the fennec's style. As had already happened a dozen times, and that was just counting today, the smaller fox had overextended himself on the wrench, and when the bolt he'd been working to loosen had finally broken free, or more likely the wrench had slipped off, he'd rammed his paw full force into one of the many metallic hazards inside the engine compartment.

Nick had chided him enough for it today, so he held his tongue and attempted to keep his expression neutral. However, his traditional smugness had indelibly tainted his reputation long ago, and his silence was par for any remark he could have dreamed up. Using one of his much less practiced traits, he attempted to be supportive.

"Need some help?" he asked casually, already reaching for a clean rag in anticipation of the new abrasions that he knew his friend had just garnered.

Finnick didn't respond, and continued to grumble to himself, but Nick took that as an affirmative. He put down the piston head he was cleaning and strolled over to Finnick.

They were both pretty filthy with grease, but Finnick's white sandy fur showed the grime a lot more than Nick's dark red did, while Nick's formerly white chest wrap gave grungy testament that he hadn't entirely avoided getting his paws dirty, either.

Nick stepped up to the engine compartment and looked inside. It was mostly empty, save for a frustrated fennec, and he could see through to the floor below. The wrench had fallen through the opening and bounced out from under the frame, so he bent down to grab it.

"Which one is it?" he asked as he looked back under the hood.

Finnick, still grimacing, didn't say anything, but pointed to one of the rusty bolts.

Nick peered in at it and lined up the wrench.

Whether karma had made a mistake, or was just setting him up for deeper disappointment later, he couldn't be sure, but the car just so happened to be dwarf class. It would still have been drivable at a standard size range, but he wouldn't have been surprised if it had turned out to be an undriveable titan or micro class. As luck would have it, though, the vehicle's scale was a perfect fit for his own.

This meant that while Finnick could easily scamper about the insides of its workings, Nick's interaction with the vehicle was limited by the exact same constraints as any standard-sized mammal working on any standard-sized car, causing the angle at which he was forced to reach his arm in to be decidedly awkward, particularly with his injuries restricting his movements. Even so, at almost three times Finnick's mass, any disadvantage he had in leverage was more than offset out by the amount of force he could apply to the troubled fastener.

The bolt broke free, but Nick had been ready for the suddenness and his knuckles did not suffer the same abuse that Finnick's repeatedly had.

Nick pulled his paws out of the way and Finnick got to work unscrewing it the rest of the way. He pulled it free, then looked up at Nick as he fidgeted idly with it between his digits.

"What now, Slick?" Finnick asked expectantly.

Nick cocked his head and skewed his ears slightly at the question. So far, the leadership he'd exhibited during this endeavor could have been described as passive at best, and Finnick, being most familiar with auto mechanics, had been the one who'd taken most of the initiative after they'd decided to try and fix it up.

'Fixing' it was what they were calling it, but in Nick's opinion, if it had needed any real fixing, they probably would not have made any progress at all.

Upon finding it last week, Nick had been far too exhausted to explore the space properly. After they had finished unloading his things from Finnick's van, he'd remitted himself to hours of staring at the ceiling in John's office, overcome by a fatigue so fierce it hurt, and an agony so deep it kept him awake. The next day, Finnick had returned and they'd begun the initial survey of the discovery.

The lost room had two manual garage doors that led to the outside, but both had been locked from the inside, and had prevented Nick from entering during his previous investigations of the warehouse's exterior. After a liberal application of oil, and trying out only four of the many keys in John's desk, he'd freed the rusted padlock. Opening the doors had allowed in some much-needed fresh air and more than enough daylight to switch their nocturnal vision back to full color.

It had just looked like a chaotic mess of parts to Nick, but for Finnick, the underlying order had quickly become clear to him, and he realized that whoever had abandoned this project previously had already gone through most of the difficult steps in restoring it.

What Nick had mistaken for a full car during the initial finding, had only been the frame of one. The wheels had been removed and the whole thing was up on blocks. Other than it being in desperate need of a wax, there was no evidence of any rust infestation, and under the dust, the paint was still a rich red and the chrome a lustrous silver.

Checking under the hood revealed another critical component that was missing, but that part, along with the missing tiers, was quickly located by Finnick, and was in pieces scattered across a nearby workbench. A handy engine hoist hung from the ceiling, and seemed eager to lift the cylinder block once more.

At first, Nick had viewed the disassembled mass cynically and had been quick to relegate the project as something too far over their heads to even attempt. However, where Nick saw an irreparability, Finnick could see a puzzle begging to be put back together.

As he had explained it, the difficult part of any restoration was the disassembly, cleaning, and sourcing of replacement parts for the engine. It appeared that most of that had already been done, and despite having been so close to the harbor for decades, the garage had done well in protecting the parts and the elements had not spoiled them. In theory, it was going to be as simple as greasing and reassembling the components. That was, if all the requisite pieces were still present. The only way to know for sure, though, was to try and start building it.

Events had gone relatively smoothly at first as many of the parts seemed to fit together in rather obvious ways. Selecting which bolts and screws secured them together had been slightly harder, but followed a similar pattern. Late in the second day, much of the initial work on the engine had to be undone, as constructing some parts of it out of order seemed to preclude the possibility of constructing other sections of it later.

Old, and highly detailed technical manuals had also been found among the parts, but attempting to understand their contents presented nearly as much of a challenge as any of their physical tasks. Some aggressive Zoogeling had assisted in deciphering them and soon the two foxes had gotten back on track and had been successful in avoiding similar pitfalls since.

As it stood from Nick's lay-perspective, it appeared that they might be in the home stretch. The engine, while still outside of the car, looked like he imagined an engine should, and after Finnick had spent the morning preparing all the internal connections, mechanical and otherwise, the frame was now ready to receive its heart.

Nick pondered all of this as he thought over Finnick's question.

"I figured we'd put the engine in the car?" he replied indecisively.

"We have the tools to do that," Finnick responded with gruffness tinged by disappointment. They'd both become invested in the project.

"Do you know what we would need?" Nick asked.

"Not exactly," Finnick admitted with a frown and droop of his ears. "You don't happen to know any mechanics, do you?" Finnick questioned half-jokingly.

"I know everyone," Nick replied with a smug smirk. The response had all the qualities of a reflex, and he realized that he'd spoken before he'd really thought about the question.

He hadn't lied; he did actually know a mechanic. He'd met one very recently, in fact. Part of him wanted to believe that the contact had been lost when his phone had been smashed, but he knew that the replacement he'd purchased yesterday had successfully downloaded backups of his data from the cloud and that if he pulled it out now, and began typing the letters 'S-K' into the search bar, the top result would surely be the name 'Skye' addended with a 'lips' emoji.

She'd entered her details into his phone during one of the intermissions to their more memorable activities on the night he'd first, and last, seen her, but he had completely forgotten that she'd done that until now. At the time, she'd commanded that he give her a call someday, but he doubted that this was the particular context in which she'd imagined him taking her up on the offer.

Zoogle and their own ingenuity had taken them as far as it was going to, and if Finnick wasn't even willing to pretend he knew what to do next, then there really was only one option available if the project was to continue. It had done a tremendous amount of good for both of them, but especially Nick, to have had something to keep themselves occupied with during the past week, and neither was ready to have the venture be over quite this abruptly.

"Well then, give him a call," Finnick instructed as he hopped down from inside the engine compartment, and walked out from under the frame.

Nick couldn't help but chortle in nervous amusement. Finnick was going to have a heyday with him when he found out who she was. "Yeah. Sure thing," he replied with slight unease.

…

There were very few sectors of the economy which were not having the life smothered out of them by the Savage Crisis, but it seemed that the automotive services industry was one of the few managing to keep its snout above water, and unlike Nick and Finnick, some foxes actually had gainful employment as their primary source of income. Waiting most of the day for Skye to get off work was no bother for either though, who, after scrounging up some lunch, had enjoyed the afternoon in a dried creek bed near the warehouse, sunning themselves while blissfully drifting in and out of consciousness.

Nick's ears roused before he did, and articulated to target the sound of a vehicle coming down the road. It was still probably more than a mile away, but he could hear it clearly. The service road to get to the warehouse only went to this one place, making it unlikely that someone had turned onto it by mistake, and its gravelly constitution made a distinctive crunching noise under the weight of auto tires making it easy to distinguish it from other vehicles passing by on other roads. Undoubtedly, it was Skye.

As his thought processes spooled back up, his capacity to feel dread initiated slightly before his ability to suppress it, and the feeling made him physically ill for a brief moment before he was able to regain control of himself. It was the purer form of the dreariness he'd been experiencing regarding her arrival since the moment he'd texted her the address, after she'd accepted his request for assistance.

His current apprehension had the same roots as the reluctance he'd had before revealing his sanctuary to Finnick when he'd been forced to move. That had been more than a week ago and doing so had not hastened any of the current world-ending calamities. He still couldn't quite shake the notion that he had done something wrong, but the knot in his stomach had become more acclimatized to his agitated state in the days since it had happened.

During that time, he'd done a fair bit of introspection as to what exactly it was about this place that made him feel safe, and why he suffered from the superstition that inviting any other mammal into it would risk breaking that magical property.

Other than knowing that Nick slept somewhere, Finnick still didn't know about John's office, nor what it meant to him, and the plan was to keep it that way. It was John's office that was the most important thing to him here, and he had been projecting its novelty onto the entire warehouse. Now that he had been forced to think about it, or justify it to himself, he wasn't positive which, the rest of the warehouse was now no more than a building to him. There was something to be said about the protection that it provided to his secret place, and the fact that a layer of defenses had been breached still bothered him, but much less so than when he imagined the same thing happening to the office.

As much as he hated to admit it to himself, whether by magic, or worse, pure sentimentality, the office was important to him, as it had been important to his father. It had been one of the few constants in his life and he used it as a rock to ground himself. It was also his weakness, and in these dark times, he was beginning to regret that he'd become so attached to it.

He'd been trying his best to keep it out of his head, but if he was being honest with himself, Mr. Big had violated those defenses long ago anyway, even if he had only recently become aware of the transgression. He had gotten used to the idea of Finnick, Mr. Big, and a sleuth of bears knowing where the warehouse was. In time, he'd get used to Skye knowing, too.

He shook off his ruminations. Given the pitch of the approaching engine and increasing volume of crunching gravel, she would arrive any second now. Over the past couple weeks, he had fallen into a more casual state of mind with Finnick, and he needed to psych himself up if he was going to be interacting with someone else. Not that his outward appearance would be any less nonchalant, it would merely be more intentionally so. After all, he had a reputation to uphold.

Getting up from their lounge chairs, Nick gave a full-bodied stretch with his arms above his head, groaning contentedly as he did so. He and Finnick climbed up out of the gulch just in time to see a dust cloud and green-bodied pickup truck approaching the bridge.

"What did you say his name was?" Finnick asked as they watched the approaching truck from the side of the stone bridge.

He'd had enough time to restore his smugness, and in his mind, he had converted the potential embarrassment of her identity into something he could be proud of. Namely, that his list of contacts included foxy vixens. Nick chuckled again and said playfully, "I never said."

Finnick would have his curiosity satisfied momentarily as the green truck pulled up next to them and the passenger side window rolled down.

"I'm looking for a scraggly fox. You seen any around here?" Skye called out through the opening.

"Just us, I'm afraid," Nick replied back smoothly.

She chuckled, then looked him up and down. With a sarcastic sigh she replied, "You'll do."

Nick grinned and then pointed over at the warehouse. "You can park inside."

The two foxes hopped into the bed of truck and she drove into the warehouse, parking next to Finnick's van. Finnick didn't say anything, but glared at Nick suspiciously. Nick's silent reply was merely a contented grin. They hopped back out and walked around to greet her as she stepped out.

While it had been her aggressive style that had originally lured Nick in, she had a rugged beauty that did not do her any disservice. Even after working all day, her ears were still perky and her snow-white fur was still fluffy. Drawing from previous experience, Nick knew it to be very soft as well. This was all despite wearing overalls smudged and stained with grease and motor oil. Nick hadn't anticipated that he'd have to work this hard to keep the baser parts of him in check, but the more animal part of his mind was trying to push exhilaration past his façade. Not so much that he couldn't control it, but enough so that he was more than aware of it.

Part of him felt a pang of guilt at his attraction towards the vixen, and he paused to consider its meaning before roughly pushing the thoughts away and dragging himself back into the moment. He fixed a practiced, but false smile on his muzzle as he prepared to more appropriately greet the new arrival.

Her expression as she stepped out of the pickup had initially been excitement mixed with anticipation, but as she began stepping towards him, she slowed and her expression changed. She cocked her head slightly and sniffed the air slightly, and looked regretful to do so.

Nick wasn't exactly sure what the problem was, but her question keyed him in on it immediately.

"Makers above, Nick, who did that to you?" she asked with a combination of grief and anger as she took another step towards him.

Nick, slightly taken aback, hadn't given much thought to what he looked like for quite a few days, and Finnick wasn't usually the type to offer comment. He quickly realized that his scent must have been pretty off due to the healing process that his body was still going through, but he hadn't really been giving much focus to that, either.

For the most part, his damage was covered by fur. There were some spots on his snout that that had been defurred during his incident, and he had originally covered the spots with medical tape. He'd been able to stop doing that a few days ago as the patches there had already begun filling in with fuzzy undercoat. His muzzle fur was pretty short anyways, and he guessed it would grow back fully within a few weeks.

His left eye socket was still a little black around the rim, but that was mostly covered by fur as well. His open shirt did reveal a chest wrap that went the full length of his torso, but even under that, all damage he had suffered was internal.

Taking a discreet sniff, he concentrated on his own scent. He had to admit, it wasn't pleasant. It was obvious to anyone with a nose that he was recovering from some sort of trauma, and that he was in pain. He'd been too wrapped up in experiencing it to realize what it smelled like. There was no plausible way that Finnick hadn't been able to smell it too, and Nick tried to keep back a growing embarrassment. Sometimes he hated being a canid.

"What? This?" he asked casually as he looked down and brushed his chest wrap. "It's nothing," he said with a wave of his paw.

He realized that he probably should have thought about putting on some scent masker beforepaw, but it was too late for that now, and there was no way around her having found out about this. Though, the fact that he had lied about it signaled to her, and to Finnick, that he did not wish to discuss the matter further. Bringing up another mammal's scent when they did not want to talk about it was generally considered rude, and this cultural rule was typically respected out of the understanding that the situation could easily be reversed at any time.

Nick knew she meant it out of concern, not malice, so to lighten the moment he added, "If you think this is bad, you really should have seen the other guys."

She smiled at him, then with a note of deadly seriousness warned, "Well, next time, you tell them they'll have me to deal with if they touch your face again."

Finnick shook his head with silent mirth, and received one of Nick's elbows to head for his efforts.

After some brief introductions to Finnick, Nick introduced her to the car; she was very pleased to meet them both, but her eyes lit up far more upon falling on the top-down Mustang. To be fair, it was a car of legend, but Nick couldn't help but feel like he had been bumped down a few notches on the vixen's list of priorities now that she'd glimpsed the chassis.

Finnick took charge of giving her the tour of the garage and bringing her up to speed on the list of tasks that they'd accomplished over the past few days. She was impressed, and, given her engaging lines of questioning, knew her way around a garage.

Nick found himself experiencing a rare bit of jealousy at the situation. It was something more primal than anything else; the result of seeing another male getting attention from the only female in view. The more developed part of his brain wasn't overly concerned about the situation and efforted to ensure that his outward appearance conveyed that as much as possible. None of this was to say that he was uninterested, but showing it wouldn't confer him any additional advantage.

Having her here to at least look over some of their work was of benefit all on its own. She had been impressed with their progress and had pointed out many things that they had done right, and a few of the things they had done wrong, some which could have been 'bad', as the vixen had put it while regaling them with terrifying tales of pistons shooting out of hoods, exploding manifolds, and vehicles turning into flaming coffins in an instant.

One critical element that she did confirm was the theory that someone else had already gone through most of the leg work of getting the car prepared for a restoration, and that if it hadn't been disassembled and stored the way it had been, it likely wouldn't have survived its lengthy stint through the decades.

She also had some idea of what the antique machine was worth; a number which had Finnick wearing a rare grin, and one which Nick did his best to quietly file away into the depths of his mind and avoid fantasizing about it.

There was no reason to doubt that she was a capable mechanic, but if there had been any in either his mind or Finnick's, all trace of it was wiped clean the moment she got to work. Skye had no reservations when it came to taking charge and giving out orders, which Nick and Finnick followed dutifully, if only out of a concern for the unspecified consequences for disobedience implied by her confidence.

It was all paws on deck as they worked to put the Mustang back together. The professional tools, experience, and fresh enthusiasm that Skye brought with her made everything seem almost easy. As opposed to the random fumbling and improvisation of the past week, there was now a deliberate and definitive plan of action to follow.

…

It wasn't quite dark yet, but indigo was creeping into the vista as dusk approached. Among the many extravagant luxuries, compared to Nick's previous frame of reference anyways, that Skye brought along with her was a portable generator and set of shop lights. While each predator had the natural capability of working in the dark, much of the needed nuance in the visual details were lost when light was removed, to say nothing of their perception of color, which was much more important now that they were finalizing the wiring.

During the last few hours the engine had been successfully installed and all its fluidic, electrical, and mechanical connections reestablished, possibly for the first time in nearly thirty years. Shocked surprise vaguely described Nick's and Finnick's reaction when the engine had been turned over for the first time, though Skye had been much more optimistic in her work.

There were no lions under the hood, but the engine still purred at idle, and roared when gassed. By all accounts, they were finished, but there were still several details that need to be ironed out and none of the nocturnals saw any reason to stop just because it was getting dark outside.

One limitation that could not be ignored, however, approached even faster than nightfall. To preempt this catastrophe, Finnick had left to pick up some gator wings and other refreshments from Dusky's about an hour ago and was expected to be back at any moment.

While they waited, Nick had been pushing his damaged shoulder tendons to the limit by waxing. It was worth it, though; even under the artificial light, he could see just how brilliantly red the paint really was. He could only imagine how much more striking it would be in proper sunlight.

"Hey, Nick babe?" Skye called out from the driver's seat. After putting some finishing touches on the dashboard connections, she'd been testing and calibrating the old fully mechanical tachometer.

Nick shook his head slightly with a small smirk on his muzzle. She'd been talking to him like that all night and if he was being honest with himself, he wouldn't be able to say that he didn't like it. He hadn't known her long, but from what his expert mammal reading instincts were telling him, in the same way that he couldn't help being sly, she couldn't help being flirty.

We can only be what we are.

"Yes, ma'am," he called out as he looked up from his waxing work on one of the rear panels.

"Is there some sort of trick to this glove box?" She inquired in her sweet musical voice.

Nick put down his cloth and began approaching the passenger side door. "If there is, I don't know it. We haven't been able to get it open either." He leaned his forearms on the side of door and looked in at it quizzically.

"Hmmm," she mused in thought. "There's a crow bar in the job box; want to get it for me?" she asked sweetly.

"Of course," Nick replied confidently with a slight wag of his tail.

He stood back up and sauntered towards her truck. The foxier part of his brain was happy to be of service, proving himself as a provider, while the more rational part realized that she probably had a pretty good track record of getting what she wanted out of poor saps like him. He theorized that he would not have been as susceptible to her influence if their current goals were not aligned, or that he would have at least attempted to fight it a bit harder. As it was, though, her success was his success and it was refreshing to have someone else take charge of his life for a little while. So long as it was not a permanent state of affairs, he had no problem being obedient every now and then.

Finding the pry, he returned to the car and got in the front passenger seat. Looking over to her, he asked, "Now what?"

She put down the indicator she was working on and looked over at the glove box with her paw outstretched. Nick handed her the bar and watched as she carefully stuck it in the space between where the box met the console.

"There is a latch in there," she explained as she maneuvered the tool around the area, "and sometimes it binds itself after sitting for awhile. And the longer it sits, the more difficult it is to break it free." After a few seconds, the crowbar caught on the something that she was looking for. "Gotcha," she whispered. "Mind putting some muscle on this for me, babe?" she asked.

Nick raised his eyebrow skeptically but still complied with the request. She hadn't been kidding about how stuck it was and he put a considerable amount of effort into it with no results. The more feral part of him kicked in a small surge of adrenalin and after one more heave, accompanied by new sensations of pain from his recovering wounds, it broke free, and the glovebox fell open. To Nick's surprise, it wasn't empty.

"What do we have here, then?" Skye asked rhetorically as she reached into the box and pulled out a bundle of folded up paper.

It was a map booklet. The coloring was slightly faded, but overall, it seemed in good condition. It wasn't even dusty. Bold calligraphy on the front proudly proclaimed, 'The Roads of Zootopia'.

"This might be worth as much as the car is," Skye joked as she began unfolding it. The dry pages crinkled under her gentle touch.

Similar in construction to a newspaper, Nick watched as more and more sections of it were revealed. Faded pinks, oranges and yellows marked streets, roads and highways while shades of green indicated the contours of the terrain and blues marked the waterways. He recognized the areas and names as being from the city, but as the pages turned, he grew less familiar with the areas and locations identified. Given how distant they were getting from the city, he guessed that the cover title had been referring to the continental Zootopia, rather than the municipal Zootopia, for which the landmass was named.

While he had neither active nor ironic malice towards the rest of the Union, Nick had always considered himself a true Zootopian, rather than just a Zootopian. The confusion never lasted more than a second, but it was always easy to determine if a mammal was actually from the city, or just from everywhere else, depending on which location their mind jumped to first.

"Hmm. Looks like somebody was planning a trip," Skye called out as she traced one of the roads with a claw. The path was marked with a purplish brown line. Its inconsistent coloring and jagged nature suggested it had been drawn in by paw and that it was the faded remains of decades old black ink.

The current chart they were looking at was scaled out far enough that the city of Zootopia was identified only by a black dot and its name, and only the major roadways were drawn in. The highlighted path traveled eastward, through several of the neighboring counties and then off the page.

Skye frowned slightly and cocked her ears in disappointment, but curiosity resumed unabated when upon turning the page, the trail and faded black line continued. It was two more page turns before the trail finally terminated with a circle around a small town at the northern edge of Angartha providence, a region approximately seven hundred miles northeast of Zootopia.

"Wayward Paws," Skye mused. "That sounds like a cute little town. You ever hear of it?" she asked, turning to Nick.

He was staring at the point on the map, but trying his best to avoid looking interested in it. "Nope," he said with such impartiality that he even believed it himself. It was a lie, though. He had heard of it, but not in a very long time.

…

Day 47

…

Nick checked the time on his phone…again: [5:00 AM]. It had only been four fifty-eight the last time he'd looked at it and four fifty-seven the time before that. A similar pattern could be traced back unbroken for almost four hours now. Staring blankly at the shadows dancing across his ceiling cast by moonlight reflecting off the harbor had filled the gaps in between.

It wasn't so long ago that he was able to sleep soundly through every night, never once being disquieted by reflections on his misdeeds or by contemplations about his predicaments. That was an epoch distant from his perspective, though. He was a different fox back then. Not a better or worse one, but definitely one different from his current incarnation. One that could easily ignore the things he now fixated on.

Over the past few weeks, his only successful recourse to the insomnia had been to wait it out. To give into his wandering mind until exhaustion rescued him from wakefulness, and only occasionally betraying him to the dread of his worst nightmares.

Tonight's insomnia was of a different breed, however. Diverging entirely from the projections that his subconscious usually terrorized him with, this imagining was entirely positive and his mind had sunk its claws in deep, refusing even sleep for fear of losing the sensation.

It imbued him with an impelling force that sent a tingling down through his spine and into his tail. He had done his best to ignore the restlessness all night, hoping that fatigue might be able conquer it too, but that outcome was feeling more and more unlikely every time he looked at the clock.

[5:01 AM]

Nick squeezed his eyes shut in weary frustration, then took a deep breath. He had been slowly giving into the conclusion for hours now: If he couldn't defeat it, he'd have to give into it. He opened his eyes, then sat up in his cot. The wooden floor was cool beneath his feet.

Taking a moment to contemplate whether he was actually going to go through with this or not, he realized that the point of no return had already been passed when he'd sat up. The force that compelled him to action had grown tenfold, feeding on even this small bit of intent. All thoughts of going backwards, of laying his head back down and seeking out slumber once more, felt agonizingly wrong.

He stood up, and it felt right to do so. Taking a moment to stretch felt good, but wasting time felt wrong, and a sense of urgency bolstered his impetus to get moving. Now that his path was inevitable, he needed to get there as soon as possible.

With no time for his usual vanity, he hastily slipped back into his dirty attire from yesterday. Walking over to John's old wardrobe, he opened it and retrieved his running bag. After unzipping it, he pulled several shirts down off their hangers and stuffed them hurriedly into the bag. He opened one of the lower drawers and gave the same unforgiving treatment to several pairs of trousers. What space was left, he stuffed with undergarments, t-shirts, and a set of ties.

He threw the bag onto his cot, then checked the floor beneath it. There was the battery pack he'd been using to charge his phone, and the car charging adapter he'd been using to charge the battery pack whenever Finnick's van was around. There was also his wallet and set of tortoise shell sunglasses. The whole lot was collected and dumped at the center of his blanket, next to the bag.

The dam holding back the tides underwent a progressive collapse. Each bit that he gave in to was another bit that was howling for him to give in more. His movements became more brisk, on the verge of frantic, as the urgency grew stronger. A nervousness suggested that if he didn't do this now, he would be restrained from doing so later. Fear of missing this opportunity dripped adrenaline into his system and induced an itch in his fur that no scratch would satiate.

He all but pounced his way to John's desk. Fumbling through one of the drawers, he was frustratedly unable to find his target. Filled momentarily with dread, he opened another drawer and, to his immense relief, quickly located what he was looking for. The gold embossed letters on the front of the small blue booklet glimmered in the darkness: 'PASSPORT: Zootopia'.

After placing it on the desk, he turned to the bookshelf behind him. He selected three books purposefully and put the stack on the desk too.

Startled by the realization of forgetting something basic, he quickly braced his paws on the desk and pushed hard to slide it several feet forward. He got down on his paws and knees, and felt out the floorboards that had just been uncovered. Identifying the one he was after, he sank his claws into space between it and its neighbor, then lifted the board free. Even night vision struggled to penetrate the darkness below, but drawing on memory, he still found what he was looking for and brought up a silvery briefcase.

Spring-loaded latches clicked as the case opened. In a similar way to how he had freed the wooden board, he used his claws to lift up one of the tightly bound bricks of cash. He looked at it for a few seconds but was quickly compelled to make more haste. He was about to dig out a few more stacks, but after minimal reconsideration, he returned the one he'd taken and resealed the case. Leaving the floorboard ajar and the desk askew, he took the case, the books, and his travel documents to the cot.

Upon stuffing the passport into one of his pockets, his digits contacted the bulky plastic pen and the soft square of fabric that were already occupying it. He didn't have time to think about those things now, but left them where they were and proceeded to retrieve his wallet and glasses and put those in his other pocket. Grabbing his phone, which now showed that it was four past five, he placed that in his pocket as well.

The blanket he tied into a bundle and put under his arm. He swung the bag over his shoulder, then grabbed the briefcase by the handle. As an afterthought, he managed to stretch his grasp on the briefcase handle enough to accommodate the corner of his pillow and pulled that along with him too.

Overcoming his imperative, he took a small moment to survey the office one last time. It felt like he was abandoning an old friend. The room had served him well over the years, but as the walls of his life continued to close in on him, it had recently become more of a prison cell than a refuge.

The moment ended as he was flooded with urgency once more. Locking the door behind him, he hurriedly made his way to the garage.

The Mustang, every inch of it shining radiantly, still had its top down, and appeared as ready to go as he felt. He dumped everything he was holding over the edge of the passenger door and let it all fall randomly onto the seat and floor.

Quickly, he pulled the chain that lifted the manual garage door. Just as he finished, something else caught his eye. He grabbed the folding lounge chair and tossed it into the back seat as he leapt into the driver's seat without even sparing the time to open the door.

The key turned and the engine growled to life.

There was no point in giving it any more thought. He had to get of here. It didn't matter where, he just had to go. He shifted into gear, and depressed the throttle. He rolled out of the garage without even bothering to close it behind him.

As the first hint of morning light was spreading across the sky, there was no looking back for him. It didn't matter where he was going, only where he was leaving. That didn't mean that he didn't have a destination in mind, though, and as he turned onto a road that took him in the direction of the rising sun, he clicked open the glove box to ensure its contents were still present. Satisfied that they were, he gave the engine as much gas as he dared, and for the first time in a long time, he felt free.

.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.

Hello everyone! Thanks for still being here and sticking with me through these longer waits. I feel terrible about it and am doing my best to pick up the pace!

Also, other than having a chapter be posted, today is a very special day for Three Months a Fox! It was 1 year ago, today, that I uploaded the first 2 chapters! I really cannot believe that it has been a year already, and I have learned so much about writing and about myself during this experience. Thank you so much to everyone that has been on this journey with me, whether you just started last week, or have been here since the beginning, if you have left reviews, or just enjoy it silently, THANK YOU!

I would especially like to thank eng050599 and fatescanner for your help in all this, you are both great friends. Also, if you are still out there somewhere, thank you highwing for helping me out on the first several chapters. You input was invaluable in getting this thing going.

Be sure to check out zootopianewsnetwork com for more great stories being featured alongside this one, and check out and even contribute to the 3MaF page on tvtropes org, where this story can be found by searching 'three months a fox'.

Thanks again!

And for the rest of the notes:

I have been thinking for quite a while now that Zootopia is actually located in Zootopia. That is, the city of Zootopia is located in the country of Zootopia (which is possibly situated on the continent of Zootopia, but I haven't confirmed that). Now this may seem a bit strange and confusing, but let us remember some real world examples: New York is located in New York (city in state), Australia is in Australia (country in contenant), Rome was in Rome (city in empire), and there are hundreds of cities that share names with the counties that hosts them, etc etc. The list can go on and on. It may still seem an odd situation to contemplate the citizens of the city claiming to be 'Zootopian' versus the citizens of other cities equally being able to claim the national identity as 'Zootopian', but meaning (and understanding each other to mean) different things. Yet even this has a readily identifiable real world example. In my home country, we not only share our name with our continent, we almost exclusively refer to ourselves as 'American', even though there are 3 American continents containing dozens of countries, all who could all technically refer to themselves as 'Americans' as they are from the Americas. And like the New Yorkers I have know who feel defensive when they hear someone from upstate claiming to be from 'New York', I too would probably feel the same way if I heard a Canadian say he was an 'American'. As this oddity of naming rights and social conventions has worked itself out over the years in our world, it would work itself out in Zootopia as well.

Obviously, Nick has a date with destiny at the end of this story, so he won't be wandering the countryside for too long, but this trip will give him some time to get out his rut and hopefully get him to realize what it is he left behind. It will also be a chance for all of you to see a bit more of the world, and how I imagine their country is laid out.

There is no reason to explain it all here as I will do that narratively in a coming chapter. Some of the inspirations I am taking for the layout will actually be right out the book Utopia by Sir Thomas More of England. It seemed appropriate to use that as a starting point.

There were a lot of call backs to previous chapters and events here. Obviously finding the car was one. He stated that he recently got a new phone, which if you remember, his old one got smashed at the same time he did. There was the money from Mr. Big, which it may have been a rash decision to take all of it with him, but that, along with the state he left the warehouse in was meant to imply that he doesn't necessarily plan on coming back, even if we all know he will. There was Skye again. Nick's running bag that he keeps inside the wardrobe.

Wayward Paws? Those with a keen sense of astronomy will realize which of the cardinal directions Nick was headed towards at the end, but for everyone else, you will just have to wait and find out. It was named for the Wayward Pines trilogy by Blake Crouch, which I really enjoyed. It was also mentioned that it was near Angartha, a city mentioned in the news articles, and that is the anthropomorphic spin I put on Agartha, which follows our theme of mythical cities, this one said to be located at the center of the Earth.

Canon Check: If you didn't know, to the best of my knowledge there exists only one image of Skye in the abandoned concept art from Disney. It was drawn by Byron and it shows her as a mechanic.

Thanks again eng050599 and fatescanner for editing this again!