Happy new year, and happy new decade!
Before we begin with this chapter, here's the list of people who reviewed since the last update that I want to thank:
AO3: hk201, DancouMaryuu, seakard, x_uve, PJSam, The WildeHopps Protection Agency (answering PJSam's question while I was offline), usernamesweretaken, 93PenguinImperator, TheJokerMan
DeviantArt: YoshiFan30, Fail-Seeker, Cimar-WildeHopps
FFN: Cimar of Turalis WildeHopps
And as I always do, I want to extend my thanks towards the people who helped out by beta-reading this chapter: J Shute, Ansem
Let's get this show on the road!
TEMET NOSCE
Yep... this was a situation I didn't think would happen.
Unlike Juliah, who merely shared Carrots' face, the Commissar's mannerisms and posture were much closer to her.
It was almost like looking into a mirror, except the reflection was much darker.
She was blocking our escape route – and believe me, I know even a little bunny can make themselves appear big enough to do it – and from behind, we were cut off by her Subjugats. We knew Bogo was on his way with a TUSK team, but who knew how long that would take?
We needed to stall until they got here. We had to get Uppity-Hoppity to talk.
"Well, I never thought I'd meet myself," Commissar Hopps said. "I'd introduce myself, but you already know me."
"I don't think we do," Judy scowled.
Commissar Hopps looked very much like a dark reflection of Judy. Her armour was very similar to Judy's duty uniform, but it was darker, with golden epaulettes on her shoulders. There was a baton attached to the back plate of her torso armour. Where Judy's police badge hung on her breast plate, Commissar Hopps had an upside-down star badge – the insignia of Domare Dominatio.
"And this… fox…" the Commissar remarked, using the word with a disdain that Judy would never have, "is your partner? I don't remember that in our past."
"And I don't remember the enemy coming back to meddle," Nick retorted.
"'The enemy', eh?" the Commissar raised an eyebrow, her eyes flicking to the rifle Nick was holding. "You couldn't be from the same place as us, could you?"
"No, I don't think so," Nick answered.
"Well, who knows?" Commissar Hopps shrugged. "Maybe you came from that flea-pit they built outside the City."
Nick's hackles raised. Judy noticed and placed a paw on his.
"Hey, Nick, cool it a bit," Judy said lowly.
"Am I sensing some 'inter' thing going on here?" Commissar Hopps grimaced. "I thought I had better taste. Disgusting…"
"Enough!" Judy yelled. She reached for her belt.
"What are you going to do? Get the pawcuffs out and arrest me?" Commissar Hopps raised an eyebrow in curiosity. "You might have a hard time explaining how you arrested yourself."
"You're not me," Judy growled.
"I am, just without your weaknesses," Commissar Hopps shot back. "I want what you want, just a better version of it."
"And what's that?" Judy's eyes narrowed.
"I want to make the world a better place," Commissar Hopps answered.
"For who, exactly?" Nick pressed.
"Not for your kind, fox," Commissar Hopps sneered.
"That's why you are nothing like me," Judy shook her head. "I want to make the world a better place for everyone."
"A dream," Commissar Hopps scoffed, "with no reality. You can't deny the true nature of the predator: savage, bloodthirsty, waiting to maim and maul."
"I'm dreaming?" Judy argued back. "You're delusional! I've known prey who are much more like monsters than most of the predators I know!"
"Oh, yeah?" Commissar Hopps raised an eyebrow. "How are those scars on your cheek, Judy?"
Judy unconsciously raised a paw to her left cheek.
"Carrots?" Nick asked.
"Aw, did she not tell you why she hates foxes deep down?" Commissar Hopps taunted. "I might not have to bear those scars, but I remember it just as well. Tell me, why did you never tell that fox you're with about what his kind did to us?" The Commissar added the last part as if she already knew what she was talking about, which struck Judy as odd – even if the future unfolded as Nick had told her, there was nothing Judy knew of that would have resulted in her truly hating foxes.
That didn't mean that Judy didn't know why Commissar Hopps had picked on foxes particularly. It stood to reason that if the Commissar knew about Judy's past, she would also know about the root of her original fear of foxes.
"That won't work," Judy answered, her paw falling from her cheek to her side. "I put it behind me. I never hated foxes, but I was scared of them, for a while. But Nick… he showed me that foxes aren't dangerous. And Gideon…? There's always going to be history between us, but he showed me that even someone who was bad in the past can change for the better. The only ones who have shown me different… is your kind."
Commissar Hopps' nose wrinkled in disgust at her counterpart's words.
"You might look like me, and you might remember some of my past, but you're not me," Judy continued. "I would never think about doing the things you have done. You're a criminal, simple as that, and you are under arrest."
"I forgot how black-and-white I saw things as," Commissar Hopps sneered, "how much of a goody-goody I was before I learned the truth."
She snapped her fingers and the Subjugats started forward.
"Kill them both," Commissar Hopps ordered the Subjugats as she leaped atop the cruiser.
The Commissar's crony Subjugats closed in on us. Carrots might be a good fighter, and I might be a scout from the future, but we were outnumbered. Even if I could set my gun to stun, I couldn't fire enough shots off before we were killed.
Sometimes, playing by the rules sucks.
"Got a way out of this one, Slick?" Judy asked as she drew her dart gun, aiming it at the charging Subjugats.
"I can't set this to stun quick enough, so I'd have to kill them," Nick replied, indicating to his rifle.
"I don't even know if these darts would affect them," Judy said. "And I'd have to reload after each one, so…"
"So, we're pretty much screwed?" Nick said.
"Yup," Judy nodded.
"Maybe…" Nick thought for a moment. An idea came to him: "What do you do when a pack bullies you?"
Judy gave Nick a surprised look, but that was soon replaced by a firm determination.
"Take out the leader and the pack falls," Judy answered. She turned her attention back to the Commissar who was watching atop the cruiser.
"Bingo was his name-o," Nick grinned. "Go get her, Carrots, I'll try to hold off Larry, Moe and Curly over here."
Judy gave a quick nod, before firing a dart at the Wolfard Subjugat. The dart struck the Subjugat's leg and it dropped to the floor. As it did so, the implant blew. The Subjugat was dead.
"Is he…?" Judy asked.
"Looks that way. Now go!" Nick raised the rifle and pointed it at the remaining Subjugats.
Judy leaped towards the cruiser, fists clenched.
Well, I kind of knew that might happen – which meant our agreement not to kill them was pointless.
Of course, I was busy dealing with my own problem of still being outnumbered by Subjugats, so the story at this point is just what Carrots would tell me later on.
"Are you serious?" Commissar Hopps' nose wrinkled as Judy landed on the cruiser.
"Deadly," Judy replied. "You're under arrest for conspiracy, terrorism and slavery charges."
Commissar Hopps leaped from the cruiser as Judy lunged forward to grab her. Judy followed her back down to the ground.
"Just come quietly," Judy raised her clenched paws.
"If you're deadly serious," Commissar Hopps reached for the baton attached to her back, "then I'm deadly serious too."
Pulling the baton free, Commissar Hopps swung it as Judy, who leaped over the swing. Landing, Judy went for the taser on her belt, hoping to end it quickly, but the Commissar swung the baton at Judy's paw, sending the taser skittering across the ground. She swung again. Judy grabbed the Commissar's wrist.
"You might have changed things when you solved the savage mammals incident, but history can still be changed," Commissar Hopps said through gritted teeth.
"Yeah, it can," Judy answered, pulling the Commissar forward, "by making sure you can't ruin it."
She aimed a knee at the Commissar's chest, but she caught it and spun Judy over. She jumped on top of Judy and shoved a paw straight into her left cheek, much like Gideon had all those years ago.
"Seem familiar?" the Commissar remarked.
"No, the bully is a bunny with my face," Judy responded. She swung her legs up over her chest and kicked the Commissar back.
"If that's the best you can do," The Commissar said, picking her baton back up and flying towards Judy. Judy raised her arm to block the blow. An audible crunch came from the contact with her arm and Judy cried out in pain. The strike had broken it.
Meanwhile, Nick was doing his best to stall the two remaining Subjugats. He had fired warning shots at their feet, which had the opposite effect to what he had intended: the lion and cape buffalo were now charging him.
"If you guys are gonna die when we stun you, and you're just gonna ignore orders to stand down, then there's no point going easy…" Nick raised his rifle to point at the Delgato Subjugat's torso.
"Sorry for breaking my word, Carrots…" Nick squeezed the trigger and an energy bolt shot into the Subjugat's chest. The Subjugat gave a brief shocked look before dropping to the ground. Nick turned his rifle to face the Bogo Subjugat, but it charged and grabbed him by the scruff of his collar. The gun skittered to the floor as Nick was lifted higher.
"Die, pred scum," the Subjugat growled.
"You look like Chief Buffalo Butt, but you don't have his sense of humour," Nick snarked. As if to silence the annoying canid, the Subjugat drew its hoof back, but before it could bring it down upon Nick's skull, the alley filled with the sound and light of sirens.
"This is the ZPD! Put down all weapons and get on the ground!" came a booming voice. The Subjugat froze, turning towards the source of the voice.
"Hmph… had to call backup?" The Commissar sneered at Judy. "That's pathetic."
The Commissar took Judy's feet out from under her with a low sweeping kick. Judy landed with a thud, twisting slightly to protect her broken arm from the fall. The Commissar's paw flew to her waist and she pulled a small pistol from a holster, a gun that resembled the one Judy had taken from Doug Ramses' lab months ago, only smaller. She pointed the gun straight at Nick and her finger squeezed the trigger.
Judy reached up and grabbed the Commissar's leg, yanking hard. The shot did not find the mark it was intended to. Instead, the small pellet that had emerged struck the Subjugat. The Subjugat dropped Nick in surprise and then fell down dead.
"You're alone," Judy grunted as she clambered to her feet.
"I can still kill you," the Commissar raised the pistol again, aiming it at Judy. Before she could fire, however, a dart struck her neck and she collapsed to the floor, the gun clattering away from her paw harmlessly. Judy looked up and saw Nick with his dart gun aimed in her direction.
"Hopps! Wilde!" came a booming voice. Nick and Judy turned to the source to see Chief Bogo stomping down the alley. His eyes flitted between the Commissar and the three dead Subjugats.
"What happened?" Bogo asked.
Carrots took care of the explaining, though I did add things in where she couldn't explain, like the fact that the Wolfard Subjugat had just dropped dead when I stunned it.
The fact was that there were three dead, and one prisoner. They'll try to identify them all and the results will show what I know they will: matches for Carrots, Wolfard, Delgato, and the Chief himself.
It meant we had to come up with a plan of action on how to disguise this all.
"You want what from me?"
Badge, stunned at Nick's proposal, was leaning against the doorframe of her computer room. Juliah was sat at the table, staring at one of the monitors though not doing much else. To Nick, she almost looked like a child lost in wonder at something she had never seen before.
"We need you to make it look like the ZPD's mainframe was hacked and DNA matches for these suspects were made to match ZPD officers," Nick repeated.
"You realize just how dumb that idea sounds?" Badge said incredulously. "Why not just let this Commissar talk her way into a mental asylum? I hear Cliffside has spaces."
"That's not going to negate the fact that if they run her DNA, it will match to Carrots," Nick pointed out. "And they'll be running the DNA of the other Subjugats too, so Delgato, Wolfard, and even Buffalo Butt himself would have to answer some pretty awkward questions. Now, I'm pretty sure Carrots could run with a bluff that perhaps the Commissar is a littermate, even though she's not a great liar, but I know that excuse isn't going to fly for all of them."
"They're dead, aren't they? Why would it even come up?" Badge asked.
"Because two cops got involved in a fight that ended with three dead and one under arrest," Nick explained, "and Internal Affairs will be going over everything with a fine comb, especially after that first Subjugat died. They'll want to know! And while I can convince Bogo of the truth, a squad of Internal Affairs mammals might be harder to convince, despite what I can produce as evidence. If we're unlucky, Carrots and I might see straightjackets ourselves."
I guess that worked, because Badge did break in to the ZPD's computer system, laying a trail that led straight back to Bellwether's place. As I said, I started sniffing around. Security footage was sparse – the cameras in the area were knocked out, just as they were during those tech robberies. In the end, I guess we never did find out why they were stealing all that tech, but perhaps it was to horde it for building something. Or maybe they needed the parts to construct makeshift control implants.
Commissar Hopps was charged with masterminding the terrorist attack on Precinct One, and for colluding with Bellwether.
Of course, with that end tied up, it meant that the decommissioned Commissar was our next focus. We still didn't have all the answers. Or, rather: Carrots didn't. As far as I was concerned, the Commissar was a finished end, but Carrots needed to know how she had become so twisted.
Which is why she and I made our way to Mountainside once again.
Judy sat across from her doppelganger, who was dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit with her paws cuffed in front of her and chained to the floor. The expression on her face was defiant. Nick stood outside, watching through the one-way window of the interrogation room.
"I have nothing to say to you," the Commissar stated.
"Why do you remember things differently to me?" Judy asked.
"Remember things differently?" the Commissar scoffed. "I remember your life well enough. When you were nine, Gideon Grey scratched you after you took the tickets he stole back."
"That did happen," Judy acknowledged, "but that doesn't explain why…"
"When you… I… came home, I came home to my parents having been slaughtered… by Gideon Grey," the Commissar explained.
"That… never happened." Judy's eyebrows furrowed.
"It happened! I saw it happen! DON'T TELL ME IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!" Judy's counterpart shouted, attempting to hurl herself across the table. The chains attached to her cuffs prevented her from moving beyond her chair.
"I… came home to find Dad… dead. And Mom…" the Commissar gritted her teeth. "Gideon Grey had her in his mouth. There was blood everywhere… I didn't know if he had killed any of my brothers or sisters… and he did it with such savagery… I killed Gideon Grey with Dad's old fox taser, set it to max…"
"How… can you know these things, if you aren't really me?" Judy asked.
"They gave me your memories," the Commissar remarked. "Before then, we were just empty, meaningless, but once I remembered your past, I knew what I had to do. I would make the world a better place by helping to keep predators from savaging it. So, go ahead. Pity me. Lock me up. But I know one day that they'll show us their true, primitive, savage ways. I'll be here, watching and waiting, and when that happens, I'll tell you that I told you so."
Judy stared at the Commissar for a moment, before pulling her iCarrot phone from her pocket. She flipped through the gallery and settled on a photo, taken after her commendation for her actions during the Night Howler crisis. She was in the centre, surrounded by her mother and father. In the background stood Gideon Grey. Judy had insisted he come along, since he was the one who gave her the clue that led to the unravelling of the Night Howler mystery. Nick wasn't in the shot, but that was because he was at the Academy at the time it was taken.
Judy slid the phone across the table and the Commissar glared at it.
"That's me, with my parents, and Gideon," Judy explained. "Turns out he's come good after becoming a pastry chef. One of the best in the tri-burrows."
She took the phone back, carefully examining the Commissar.
"How long did it take to get that picture made?" the Commissar said finally. "Either those are actors who look like my parents, or you had someone photoshop it together. How dare you try and trick me?"
Judy stared dumbfounded at the Commissar. Shaking her head, she placed her phone back in her pocket.
"If you can't believe the truth…" Judy said, getting up from her seat, "then you are truly lost."
The Commissar had been tricked by a lie in the memory flashes they had given her, but she had bought those lies hook, line and sinker, never questioning whether they were real or not.
And Domare Dominatio had obviously worked on her from that point, twisting her. There was no redemption for her. She was stuck that way.
She truly was something Carrots was not. She was a monster. And Mountainside was going to be her home for a very, very long time.
Sorry this took so long to get out! December has been a ridiculously busy month for me. First off, I left my job of 11 years. Then there was all the final semester deadlines to deal with. Finally, we had Christmas itself. But now I'm back, and I'll be carrying this story on. There's two more chapters, plus one bonus chapter (an 'after-credits' chapter, if you will) to come, so stay tuned for those!
The title of this chapter, temet nosce, is Latin and was inspired by another well-known science-fiction franchise. The phrase 'temet nosce' appears above the doorway in the home of the Oracle in The Matrix. It means 'know thyself', and I felt it was an apt title for this chapter. The original title, In A Mirror, Darkly, is a reference to the Mirror Universe episodes from Star Trek. Commissar Hopps drew inspiration from those episodes, so the title seemed apt when I first chose it, but the theme of the current title fit much better, I feel. Also, it felt too 'on the nose' given I found out that In A Mirror, Darkly is actually the name of two episodes of Enterprise.