Author's Note:

Well, um, sorry? That was a much longer break between updates than I had intended, I sincerely apologise for that. Long story short; Assignments, Exams, a week of intensive volunteering, then getting thrown into a full-time internship alongside my other job kind of took most of my time and energy from the past couple of months. I had been meaning and hoping to find time in amongst all that to write, but its only really been over the last couple of days that I have been able to.

I do want to thank those of you who took time out of your own schedules to message me and make sure I was alright. I really appreciate it, and it is largely due to the promises I made you that this chapter is going up now. I said it would be up before Christmas, and as this is the last free moment I have before the candy canes hit the fan, up it goes! Sorry that it's not a Christmas themed chapter at all, but I had to go with the story line as it was. Still, I hope you'll find this one enjoyable to make up for it! Thanks for hanging around, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter if you have the time!

Chapter 26: Preparations

Judas woke to two sets of conflicting messages from his body. On one paw he was extraordinarily comfortable, like he'd found the perfect sleeping position and temperature, and even the barest movement would destroy his bliss. On the other, his bladder felt fit to burst.

'Damn it!' he groaned internally as he mentally prepared himself to lose the supreme bliss he was in. He opened his eyes.

The soft cream-coloured fur of Nicky's neck greeted his gaze, and her musky scent broke through the sleep-addled barriers of his brain, waking him up faster than the discomfort below. That it was Nicky's fur, he had no doubts. He'd gotten so used to her appearance after having lived with her the past week, that her colourings and features had become almost as familiar as his own. At least that's the reason he let himself admit to.

The strip of lighter fur drew his eyes downwards without conscious thought. He quickly flicked them up again, flushing furiously, when he noticed her purple blouse had slipped low during the night. Instead, he resolutely fixed his eyes on the underside of Nicky's chin, where her head disappeared above his own. Belatedly, he realised the supreme comfort he felt was far more due to the pretty fox curled around him than to the blankets or the bed keeping out the chill of the room.

He stifled a groan as a stab of pain from his bladder again demanded he move. The problem was that he wanted to move even less now than he had before. Here he was, in the arms of his closest friend, finally getting unrestricted time close to her. No emotional walls. No teasing. No distrust. It was something he'd been wanting for a very long time. Longer, even, than he'd known the smarmy fox. There was nothing sexual in his desire, but rather it was a hunger for the affection and intimacy that came only with the closest of relationships. The type of love that he'd been longing for, for most of his life.

It was a love that parents can ever truly supply, not that he'd lacked their love at all either, but the sort of love that can only ever come from another mammal that one sees as an equal and the closest of friends. That Judas was feeling this affection for a fox, and not another rabbit was an irony not lost on him, but also a thought that didn't scare him as much as he might have thought it would. After all, foxes had once fed on rabbits as a primary food source, and he had once been attacked and scarred, both physically and mentally, by a fox. Most rabbits, and indeed many prey species, would look on in shock at his current position. Some would probably even call the police, given the recent increase in distrust between groups.

But all Judas wanted to do was to curl up in Nicky's arms, and return to sleep. And that made the protestations of his bladder all the harder to ignore and resist.

After just a few painfully short minutes, Judas let out a quiet groan and set about timidly extracting himself from his foxy enclosure. He ducked his head down from Nicky's chin and slowly began inching backwards, shivering slightly as the cool bedroom air rushed into the space between them. Nicky obviously felt it too because she whined quietly in her sleep.

'Bad move…' Judas realised too late as Nicky's arms quickly tightened, suddenly dragging Judas back into the vixen's tight embrace, mashing his face up against the soft fur of her neck. If he thought her scent was strong before, now, with his button-nose pressed deep into the fur of Nicky's chest, it was entirely overwhelming, and all conscious thought seemed to fade into a world of warmth and comfort.

That is, until a warm and wet sensation snapped him back to reality.

"Nicky!" he hissed in surprise, his one free ear springing to attention, flicking the vixen's cheek in the process. His other ear was trapped in her mouth as she gently gummed the sensitive appendage in her sleep. "Nicky!" Judas repeated, a little louder this time, and gently pushed on one of the arms encircling him.

"Mmmgghh," she gurgled, shifting slightly and tightening her grip even more. Judas started to worry that he might not be able to make it to the toilet in time if she continued to pull him tighter. Nicky's tongue began to trace around the edge of his ear, sending shivers down his spine.

"Nicky, please!" he spoke up again, even louder this time, "I really need the toilet!"

Finally, the vixen began to wake up, slowly uncurling from the rabbit and stretching out her limbs, a series of pops and cracks accompanying her movements. Judas felt a pang of remorse that he couldn't wait around to watch what he knew would have been an incredibly adorable moment, and a chance for him to get back at her for all the times she had called him cute. Instead, as soon as her mouth opened in a wide yawn, he sprang free of her grasp, noting with mild disgust the string of saliva that still connected his ear to her mouth for much longer than he thought reasonable.

But even that thought was pushed aside as he reached the edge of the bed and he had to funnel all his concentration into walking on his mildly throbbing leg, and not wetting himself as he crossed the short distance to the bathroom. He barely made it.

By the time he re-emerged from the bathroom, having taken a few minutes extra to wash his ear clean of saliva, Nicky was already at the doorway, looking only partially awake as she shuffled past him, pulling the door shut behind her without a word. Within moments, Judas heard the familiar splashing sound of someone using the toilet, and moved away from the door with a mild blush colouring his ears.

He hobbled carefully into the kitchen, enjoying the freedom of not having to use his crutches all the time any more, but still cautious about over-extending himself. The wound was already throbbing slightly with the memory of yesterday's exertion. Although the physio had told him he could start walking on it, there was a point where it could be too much to soon, and he was wondering if making dinner, and doing the dishes might have been pushing it a little.

He flipped on the kettle and retrieved two mugs from the cupboard and Nicky's plunger from the dish rack. It hadn't taken long for him to get used to Nicky's morning dependence on coffee. She never really seemed to wake up properly until she had a steaming mug of black coffee in her paws. He'd also realised that she wasn't fond of the instant stuff either, much preferring the richer taste and aroma of brewed coffee. He poured some ground beans into the glass beaker as he'd watched her do many times, and then filled it up with the boiled water. He threw a teabag into his own mug and topped that up with the remaining hot water. No coffee for him. The caffeine would probably send him through the roof.

By the time Nicky finally trudged into the kitchen, looking only marginally more awake and with her fur half-heartedly raked into place, her coffee was ready, and Judas wordlessly passed her the steaming mug. She grunted appreciatively and held it up to her nose, inhaling the rich scent of the fresh brew. Judas smiled as he watched Nicky's reaction to the coffee. First her black nose twitched back and forth over the dark surface of the liquid, hungrily drinking in the vapour as if trying to prevent any of it escaping. Next her mouth twitched and stretched, slowly forming a wide smile while her eyes drooped shut, but with less a sense of sleepiness than when they had been open.

Tenderly, she raised the mug to her lips, puckering them as she gently blew out over the surface, sending ripples dancing merrily across it. Her eyes cracked open again, and Judas could see her emerald irises gleaming out from under her eyelashes as her tongue darted out for her very first taste. She recoiled it with a hiss that was as much pain as it was pleasure. Judas rolled his eyes and suppressed an amused chuckle. When he'd asked her before why she always tasted her coffee when she knew it was still too hot, she'd replied that any good coffee was meant to be too hot to drink immediately. If it didn't burn at the first sip, you could never enjoy it properly while it was still hot. Judas thought that was a little ridiculous, but like many of Nicky's habits, this was one of her idiosyncrasies that he was learning to live with.

"See something you like, Carrots?" Nicky smirked over the rim of her mug, finally sounding more like her normal, snarky self.

"Oh," Judas chirped, trying to fight the growing, and now familiar, blushing in his ears, "I'm just admiring your little wake-up ritual there." He poked his tongue out at her, then took another sip of his green tea.

"Hmmpf!" she snorted, "Well, at least I'm not drinking that stuff!" she jutted her chin forwards at his mug of green tea. "That stuff tastes worse than most medicines!"

"What's wrong with medicine?" Judas asked.

"Of course you would say that," Nicky rolled her eyes. She blew on her coffee again and her tongue tested the temperature again. Finding that it was not quite as scolding anymore, she took a proper sip, sighing in appreciation as she swallowed.

"Sooo," Judas said slowly, breaking eye contact.

"So," Nicky confirmed gravely.

"This morning?"

"Well, I was thinking we might need to start talking about what's going to happen while I'm at the academy," Nicky answered, either ignoring, or not noticing the look of confusion in the buck's face. "I was kinda thinking that you might be able to stay here while I'm away, if you don't mind tha– What's up, Fluff?" she asked, finally noticing Judas' bewildered expression.

"I was meaning earlier this morning," he clarified, "when we woke up." His ears were drooped along the back of his head as he tried to hide the blush in them. 'It's almost becoming a permanent feature,' he noted dryly to himself. 'If I'm not careful, I might have pink ears for the rest of my life!'

Nicky stared at him blankly, not seeming to understand what the rabbit in front of her was talking about. Judas sighed and forced himself to look her squarely in the eyes and to ignore the storm raging in his stomach.

"You know, when we slept togeth— NEXT to each other!" Judas nearly shouted in panic at what he almost implied. "We slept next to each other! Not together! Not that that would have… But! Your mouth! My ear! The cuddling… Toilet!" Judas clamped his free paw over his mouth before he kept babbling madly.

Throughout the entire episode, Nicky's face went from mild confusion, to concern, worry, then a mild panic. Well, mild when compared to Judas' own. Then, slowly, she turned her head to look back to the couch. The couch where she had spent the last week sleeping and was now very conspicuously empty of pillows and blankets. More quickly, her head swung back to the kitchen bench where a pair of dirty wineglasses stood, still with a few drops of red liquid staining the bottoms, next to a rather large, and very empty, bottle of wine. Her head then snapped back to the corridor leading to her bedroom, where Judas had been sleeping, and also, where she had emerged from just a short while ago.

Her panic-wide eyes darted to Judas faster than the rest of her head could follow, and for a fraction of a second, Judas wondered if she might have given herself whiplash. Her mouth fell open, and Judas could see her tongue running along behind her top row of teeth, stopping at a point just off to one side. Slowly, almost fearfully, she reached a paw up to the gap between her pointed canines, and then came away with a few strands of grey-black fur. Judas' paw absently travelled up to the ear Nicky had been sucking on in her sleep.

"Well," Nicky breathed quietly to herself, gaping at the strands between her claws, "that explains the furry Pawpsicle."

"What?" Judas asked in confusion. Nicky's attention snapped back to Judas, and to reality.

"Judas! I— We didn't—? Your ear? I'm so sorry! I—"

"Slow down, Nicky!" Judas interrupted, mildly surprised at how calm his voice came out. "I'm good. You're good. We're good, right?"

"Wh-Yes!" she spluttered. "But your ear? Are you sure it's okay?"

"Of course it is!" Judas rolled his eyes, and took a longer draught from his mug. The tea was cooling off quickly. As if on cue, Nicky seemed to remember her own mug, and took a large gulp, but her eyes remained fixed on Judas. "Besides," Judas forced a playful smirk, "if anyone's earned the right to chew on my ear, it's probably you. You know," he added at the vixen's blank look, "after what I did to yours." Nicky reached up to her own torn ear instinctively at Judas' words, and instantly he knew he shouldn't have opened his mouth. His smile fell away at the slight slump that Nicky's shoulders took on as her fingers traced the jagged edge.

"Sorry, that was too far," Judas mumbled.

"Hey, it's not your fault, remember?" Nicky stated, pulling her arm down and squaring her shoulders again. Judas nodded solemnly, not because he really believed, or agreed, with Nicky, but because it was what she needed to see. They both finished their drinks in an uncomfortable silence, and Judas hobbled back over to the couch. His leg was really starting to throb now, and his limping was becoming more pronounced. Nicky followed him over and passed him a couple of over-the-counter painkillers. His course of more powerful medicines had finished a few days prior, and now he was trying to avoid having to take pills if he could avoid them. He tossed back the pills without a second thought and swallowed them dry. Nicky sat down next to him in silence, staring blankly out the shuttered window. The sunlight streaming through the gaps was enough to tell them both that they had slept until at least midmorning.

"I bet it was weird, though," Nicky finally broke the silence. She picked at some imaginary dirt under her claws, purposefully avoiding Judas' eyes.

"Hmm?"

"Having me chew on your ear in my sleep." She stopped playing with her claws and glanced nervously across at the Judas. "That's gotta be up there in your list of weirdest moments, right?" She picked up the remote and flicked the TV on. It seemed to Judas to be an act performed more out of habit and the need to do something, rather than the desire to actually watch anything. He relaxed slightly.

"Oh, definitely weird," Judas laughed, and before he could stop himself, he added, "But it actually felt kind of nice." Nicky spun to look at him again with a look of shock on her face, and his ears once again burned in embarrassment. 'Yep,' he thought in chagrin, 'they're definitely going to turn a permanent shade of red.'

"Slow down Judas!" Nicky giggled. "You're making a huge mess! Do you know how long that's going to take to clean up?"

"Sorry," he gasped breathlessly, glancing up at her with an embarrassed smile. He forced himself to slow his rhythm.

"That's better!" Nicky sighed. Judas only grunted quietly in time with his movements. 'Always so enthusiastic, isn't he?' she thought happily to herself. "That's great!" she added aloud. "Perfect! Now… put your fingers in it!"

"M-my fingers?" Judas asked uncertainly, still short of breath.

"Yes! Your fingers," Nicky snapped, but the smile was still evident in her voice. "Get them right in there, you need to make sure it's moist enough! That's the only way you'll know if its ready."

"Are you sure—Woah!"

"See!" Nicky sighed, letting go of Judas' wrist. "That's much better isn't it?"

"Wow! It's actually quite warm!" Judas exclaimed in surprise.

"Well, what did you expect?" Nicky rolled her eyes. "It has been getting quite the workout!"

"True," Judas snickered.

"I think it's ready," Nicky announced calmly. "Put it in."

"Are you sure?" Judas asked dubiously. "It looks a bit small."

"Oh, don't worry," Nicky grinned, "It'll get a lot bigger!"

"Alright then…"

"Great!" Nicky chirped happily. "Now, come on, get moving!"

"Don't worry, Nicky," Judas rolled his eyes. "I know how this part works!"

"Then what are you waiting for? Hurry up!"

"Gee! Someone's rather impatient today," Judas quipped. "What's the big rush?"

"I'm hungry, Judas!" Nicky drummed her fingers on the benchtop. "And there's nothing quite like a fresh loaf of bread to hit the spot! So, get that dough in the oven!"

"Roger that, Chef!" Judas chuckled, opening the oven, releasing a wave of heat into the kitchen. He slid the half-full tin of bread dough onto one of the shelves. "There," he announced, straightening up and clapping his floured paws together. "Now the clean-up, right?"

"See? Now you're learning!" Nicky laughed, gathering the used mixing bowls together and carrying them over to the sink. She scraped a small clump of raw dough from the inside of the bowl and quickly popped it into her mouth. It was floury and tacky, and not nearly as tasty as it would be once the loaf was cooked, but as she'd told Judas, she was hungry.

She turned the tap on and begun filling the sink, tossing Judas a damp cloth to start wiping up the mess of flour he'd made when kneading the dough like a madmammal. He caught it with a grin, and got to work.

"So," Judas said, "name the precincts." It was a pattern they'd begun to develop ever since Nicky revealed the good news that she would be leaving for the academy. She would teach Judas enough to look after himself and keep her apartment running while she was away, and he would do his best to prepare her for the gruelling assessments.

"Oh, please!" Nicky scoffed. "That's a schoolkit's question! Precinct One, the City itself. It's where you work, and where I'm going to work too!"

"Don't get too far ahead of yourself, Slick!" Judas teased. "You've still got three months at the academy to get through!" Nicky snorted derisively in response. "And the other four?" Judas prompted.

"Precinct Two; the icy Cross-Cut Mountains to the north-east, covered in snow for more than half the year," she recited easily. "The fishing villages scattered along the cliffs and shores provide most of the region's fresh fish. The crime-rate is rather low of course, most mammals are more concerned with keeping warm and getting their work done than committing crimes."

"Well, aside from a few drunken brawls," Judas added with a wry smirk.

"Well, aside from that," Nicky rolled her eyes. "Further west is Precinct Three; The Moors." She listed a few statistics on the population and crime-rates. Judas nodded.

"Then, Precinct Four," she continued with a smile, placing the last of the clean dishes in the rack for Judas to dry. "The Burrows. Breadbasket of Zootopia, and where everyone's favourite Bunny-Cop hails from."

"And also where the ZPA is located," Judas added seriously, and Nicky nodded in agreement. It was now less than two weeks before she'd be leaving for the Academy, and she was beginning to feel a little bit nervous. The lessons Judas was giving her ahead of time were helping, but every day the move was coming rapidly closer. She listed off a few more facts about the second most heavily populated district in the city-state before briefly discussing the more temperate south-eastern Fifth Precinct.

They moved over to the couch again, and Judas quizzed Nicky on several details relating to the legal system of both the state and the Federation as a whole. Nicky felt that she managed all the questions rather well with only a few minor corrections and additions from Judas. Not once did she feel the need to open any of the legal texts scattered on the coffee table. It helped that she had made herself familiar with most of the intricacies of business law back as a convixen, but this was much wider reaching than anything else she had previously encountered. Her rights and restrictions as a beat-cop, when and where she could or couldn't intervene, the limitations of her jurisdiction and many more regulations than she felt were mammalianly reasonable swam about in her head, and she fought to wrestle them into some semblance of order.

Eventually Judas held up his paw, halting Nicky mid-sentence as she described the instances in which the Federation military police could take charge of an investigation. "I think that's enough, Nicky," he smiled. "I think you'll do really well with the theory part of the training. You seem to have a natural ability to memorise endless slabs of information." He snorted, "To think that I spent three years at University studying all this, and you memorise most of it in under two weeks!"

"Well, I have a good teacher," Nicky smiled winsomely. Judas snorted again, but the smile returned to his face.

"Silver-tongued devil."

"Don't you know it!" Nicky shot back, before clamping her mouth shut, her eyes wide in surprise at how that could've been taken. Judas hesitated just the briefest fraction of a second as he made to stand up, and then pretended he hadn't heard her. Nicky fought to keep a frown off her face. Ever since the morning the other week when they had woken up tangled up together, 'And with his ear in my mouth,' they'd both retreated to an awkward distance, both avoiding the subject like the plague. It saddened her that there was a new barrier between them now, but what upset her more, was that she was not doing anything to try and break it down again. It was a subtle barrier, but it was a barrier all the same.

Nicky glanced up again to watch as Judas made his way to the kitchen to refill his glass of water. He still had a slight hitch in his step, and briefly she wondered if he'd ever be fully back to his original self. 'Probably not,' she admitted sullenly to herself. 'Then again, can anyone ever truly return to who they were before something like that? Would it even be healthy?' She absently reached up to feel the edge of her ear again. 'Things happen. We learn from them. Life goes on. Not backwards.'

She returned her attention to the buck. He was standing in front of the fridge, his glass clutched tightly between his paws, while he stared fondly at the letter stuck to the fridge with a magnet. It was one of both their favourite things to look at, reminding them of the changes and surprises that life sometimes brings. Her acceptance into the ZPA had seemed to kick Judas back into high gear, and he almost always had a gorgeous smile plastered to his face. Seeing it always brought a matching one to Nicky's own muzzle. But as she watched, Judas' brow furrowed, and his smile slowly vanished.

"Uh, Nicky?"

"Yes? What's up?"

"I, uh, I think there's been a mistake on this form?"

Nicky's heart seemed to skip a beat. "Sorry?" she asked, standing up and making her way towards the rabbit.

"It says here that you're only 26? But that can't be right, can it?"

"Excuse me?" Nicole narrowed her eyes, and if Judas heard the drop in her tone, he didn't seem to register the danger he was in.

"Well, you're older than that right? Aren't you, like, 32?" he was still looking at the letter, and so missed Nicky crossing her arms, and the way her tail began to twitch from side to side in agitation.

"And what makes you say that?" Finally, Judas seemed to notice the change in her demeanour, and his ears shot up in alarm and his nose began twitching instinctively. Not in fear of the predator across from him, but the even deeper-seated fear of being on very unstable ground with a potentially angry female. She watched him gulp as he carefully considered his next choice of words. She began tapping her claws on her arm, waiting impatiently for an answer.

"But I thought…" he squeaked. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Your tax form?"

"My tax form?" Nicky asked in confusion, softening her glare only marginally. Judas nodded emphatically, almost sloshing water over the rim of his glass.

"Yes! Remember when I blackmailed you…" he cringed, but Nicky felt she knew where he was trying to go.

"The city's official documents listed me as 32, didn't they?"

"Um, yes?" he confirmed tentatively, one ear and one eyebrow raised while the other side remained drooped. Nicky's face softened into a smile once more. Judas was just too cute sometimes to remain angry at for long, especially when the mistake wasn't really his own.

"Ah. I see."

"So?"

"So, what?"

"I don't get it, Nicky! What do you mean, 'I see'? One set of those official documents are wrong, and all you say is 'I see'?"

"Yep," she chirped, peaking into the glass oven door. The bread looked ready, so she pulled on a pair of oven mitts and opened the door. A hot blast of air rushed out, carrying with it the unmistakeable scent of freshly baked bread. It set her mouth watering.

"Well, care to explain it to me?" Judas asked, his tone more tempered as his eyes fixed on the golden-brown loaf that Nicky upended onto a wire cooling rack.

Nicky drew in a deep breath of the heavenly smell, and let it out again in a long sigh. "You know how I told you that my Mom was stuck in some rather crappy jobs when I was younger?" She gently prodded the softly yielding crust with one claw. Pleased with the feel of it, she continued, "Well, after my encounter with Stephanie and the other girls from school, and several other boring and depressing incidents, I decided that I wasn't going to end up like her. I didn't want to be trodden all over by every other bigoted mammal that thought foxes were lower on the food chain than them." She steered Judas back towards the couch, ignoring the way both their noses seemed reluctant to leave the warmth of the kitchen.

"I decided that I was going to make my own path, and if I was using those who thought they were beating me, all the better. However," she chuckled lightly, thinking back to the spunky and fiery young vixen she had been, "that's rather a tricky feat when you're just a sixteen-year-old schoolkit!"

"I bet," Judas smiled thinly. Nicky could practically see the wheels turning in his head, and the sympathy he was trying to hold back, knowing that Nicky wouldn't want it. The effort mattered more to her than she expected, and she had to clear her throat to continue.

"So, I struck out on my own. I dressed myself up, and did my best to look older than I was. It was surprisingly easy, really. You move around a lot, dress the right way and take on small jobs, like waitressing at a café, and all everyone sees is the 22-year-old you claim to be, not the scared kit inside."

"Waitressing? Really?" Judas asked with a smile. "I never would've picked you for that kind of a girl!"

"Ha! Yeah, ironic, I know, especially with how much I blamed my Mom for settling for much the same kind of work." Nicky sighed again and wondered for a moment what her mother was doing these days. She realised she'd probably soon need to make the effort to reconnect with her. 'Not just yet, though,' she told herself.

"Anyway," she continued, snapping back to reality, "I needed money to support myself as I took some online beauty courses, and many places are willing to pay cash to a mammal who just needs the money, and can't be too fussy about the amount. Eventually, I got enough shady qualifications to fake my way into the business world, and if my official records said I was half a dozen years older than I actually was, who was I to care? I knew the truth, and that was enough."

"Until now."

"Until now," Nicky confirmed quietly.

"But surely someone's going to find out, right?" Judas asked. "I mean, it's all there on your official documents. Surely someone at the Academy will notice?"

"Oh, don't worry about that!" Nicky laughed lightly. "I've taken care of all that when I went to speak with Interim-Mayor Bogo and Recruiter Adams." Judas raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Bogo gave me amnesty from that little oversight when I explained the situation to him. While martial law was still in effect, he had the authority and power to permanently change or erase my records. I'm going into the academy a clean mammal!"

Judas gaped at her. "He what?!"

"He gave me a clean record," she repeated with a smile. "Not that there was ever really anything on it in the first place, but he made it so there could be no legal objections to my acceptance."

"But—but why? How!?"

"Oh, he's really just a big softie when you get to know him," Nicky smirked. Judas didn't look convinced. "Fine," she sighed, "I cut a deal with him."

"What kind of a deal," Judas asked warily.

"Funny thing really," she grinned leaning back with her paws behind her head, "he seemed to think he was getting the better end of the deal in the end."

"Nicky," Judas asked slowly, "what was the deal you made."

"One," she listed smugly, "that I wouldn't reveal to the media that he nearly fired the first rabbit officer, and the one who cracked the Savage Mammal case."

"We solved that case, Nicole. We did. Not me, us," Judas corrected her sharply. Nicky ignored him.

"And two, that if I graduated within the top ten percent of the class…" she paused to take a drink from the glass of water on the table, not caring that it was Judas', only that she was testing his patience.

"Yes?" he demanded impatiently. Nicky gave him her slyest grin.

"That I would get to be your partner."

The shout of joy and surprise that escaped her friend almost deafened her as he launched himself across the short space between them. 'Hmm, maybe Bogo was getting the easier half of the deal,' she thought wryly to herself as Judas both giggled and sobbed into her shoulder, his arms wrapped tightly around her waist.

A.N.

So, things are finally going to get a bit of a move on now, and next chapter we'll finally re-emerge into the world at large in what should again be a fun-filled adventure. Until then, so long, and Merry Christmas from the (mostly) hot and sunny Land of Aus!