After about a minute of awkward silence, Nathan went to knock on the bathroom door Lannia was behind. "Geez, Lannia. Did you fall asleep in there or something?"
A second later, a slightly muffled "Really Nathan? I've only been in here for a few minutes" could be heard.
"Well hurry up! You've got two mammals waiting for you."
"Two? Who else is there?" Lannia had almost asked if Judy was finished, but according to the plan, the rabbit would've come in to get her herself when she was done. If Nathan was asking her to come out, then something must have happened that brought up the need for the cover of him waiting for her.
"One of your teachers, Mr. Jackson. He wants to talk to you about something or other."
Why was Mr. Jackson here? Did he know they were looking into the drugs? He must have overheard them at breakfast. They were screwed. …But Nathan was still using the cover story. Maybe they still had a chance? "I'll be out in a moment," she replied. She waited for a bit before opening the door, partially because she didn't want Mr. Jackson to know that she had been waiting just inside of it, but mostly because she needed some time to gather her nerves.
Just before opening the door she almost took a final deep breath, but remembered that she was in a bathroom and stopped herself just in time. At first, Mr. Jackson was blocked by the open door and she could only see Nathan, but he was revealed as she stepped further into the hall and let the door close behind her. "Isn't it a bit weird for you to be waiting outside of the bathroom for one of your students?"
"Probably yes, but I don't have anything else that I need to be doing right now."
"...Alright… what do you want to talk to me about that's so important, anyway?"
Mr. Jackson glanced at Nathan for a second before replying. "I prefer not bringing this kind of thing up in class to avoid putting any of my students in the spotlight, but I was looking through the class's grades and I noticed that you were missing your station security paper. You might want to get that in before the end of the grading period."
It was exactly the opposite of what Lannia was expecting, and though startling, it was also immensely relieving. "I… uh, I'll look into that…"
She was hoping, and somewhat expected, for him to leave now that he had said his part, but he didn't. "You seem distracted. Is something the matter?"
And just like that, Lannia's short-lived relief washed away. "Uh, no, not really. Just… thinking."
"Are you sure?"
Lying didn't seem to be working. But what could she say? It would have to have enough truth that it would seem genuine, but she couldn't just tell him about what she was worried about, either. Even if his apparent concern was genuine, she couldn't just say 'what has me worried is that we're currently investigating you for drug dealing and you seem to know about it.'
Maybe… it was at least worth a shot. "Err… Well… It's just that you usually seem pretty gruff in class, and I didn't really expect this… out of you…" Lannia trailed off in at least somewhat genuine embarrassment.
Mr. Jackson let out a sharp huff. "Don't get used to it. Just get that paper in."
"I will, Mr. Jackson."
"Good." Without another word, the wildebeest turned around and left back the way he had come in as Lannia and Nathan watched him, dumbfounded.
"...That was not what I was expecting…" Nathan said, almost in a whisper.
"...Yup."
"Soo… when are you going to write that paper?"
"When… Oh! I already wrote it, I just didn't remember to turn it in! It was due yesterday, but I completely forgot about with all the other drama with him right now," Lannia replied. A moment later, she noticed a light on beneath the closet door. "Speaking of forgetting things, how long has Judy been signaling for?"
"Uh, just now, I think. Yeah, It definitely wasn't on when Mr. Jackson left."
"Damnit, I was hoping that I wasn't the only one to forget something," Lannia joked.
Nathan got up from his position against the wall and went to open the closet door. Lannia half-expected another mammal to come down the hall and interrupt them yet again, but fortunately they remained alone.
"I want to know what all that was about, but I want to tell you what I found more," Judy said, "...But we should probably be somewhere else when I do."
The 'somewhere else' that was settled on was Nathan's bunkroom, as Judy and Lannia's bunkmate Carina was currently reading in their room. The rooms weren't exactly intended for gatherings, lacking any furniture besides two double-layer beds, but they were relatively private compared to other locations. The group didn't have to worry about Jack arriving and interrupting them, and Nathan said that their other two roommates never arrived back at the room earlier than ten minutes before curfew. That left them at least forty minutes free to discuss Judy's findings.
The second that the door closed behind them, Lannia was excitedly asking Judy what she found. "Was there more fur? Was the note gone? Oh! Was there a new note?"
Just wasn't quite as bubbly as Lannia, but she wasn't unenthusiastic, either. "First things first, there was fur, but not the helpful kind. Just the residual stuff in corners that you find everywhere that hasn't been recently cleaned."
"You're smiling, so there must be more to it than that," Nathan observed.
"There is. The fact that there was fur means that the closet hasn't been cleaned in a while, even though it's full of cleaning supplies. If there was any fox fur, it would still be there. I did some research, and it turns out that foxes are kind of notorious shedders, so if the fox was there, I would've found some fur."
"How do you know that none of the fur was from the fox?"
"Foxes shed in clumps, like what we found in the alley. There were only single hairs in the closet."
"Alright. So what, the fox isn't part of the drug thing?" Nathan asked.
Lannia replied to that one. "No. It just means that the fox didn't go into the closet. It could still be delivering the drugs to the campus, and someone else brings them to the closet. Or maybe it's in on some other part of the operation, maybe there's more than just this drop point. Also, have we ever actually confirmed that it is drugs that are changing paws? I mean, that's definitely what the note looked like, but it never actually said it."
"It's definitely drugs," Judy confirmed. "There were six half-liter bags full of white powder that certainly wasn't flour."
"Why didn't you say that sooner?"
"I was getting to it. You asked about fur first, so that's what I started with. Plus, there wasn't any interesting detective work that I could boast about involving that. It was just kinda 'Oh, hey look, drugs.'"
"Fair enough, I guess," Lannia replied. "So, what now? We've confirmed that there really are drug deals and that the closet is used as a hub for them, and we know that the fox doesn't go in that closet. But what does that actually mean for us?"
"Uhh… I'm not really sure…" Judy said. "Maybe… no… I have no idea."
"I mean… we could watch the closet and see if anyone goes in or out…" Lannia proposed, though she didn't sound like she was fully behind the idea.
"We can't do that with all of our classes, there's not enough time," Nathan said.
"Jack it is, then?" Lannia asked.
"I mean… I don't really want to ask him to hack into an instructor's computer, especially if he's innocent…" Judy wrung her fingers, "but I don't really see another way to find out, either…"
"It's not like Jack would mind doing it. He'd probably jump at the opportunity."
"I suppose… Alright. We'll ask him."
The discussion shifted to much more mundane matters while the group waited for Jack to get back before curfew, hoping that he would arrive before the other roommates. When a knock on the door came from a point much too high for it to have been Jack, they knew that he had not. Judy and Lannia went back to their room just down the hall, mildly disappointed. Nathan wouldn't have any trouble giving him the message, but they had wanted to have an actual discussion.
In the end, Jack didn't find anything incriminating on Mr. Jackson's personal computer, nor was anything found on the working security cameras near the area where the found the fur or the building with the drug drops.
Instead, there were mysterious gaps, sections an hour in length simply missing from the cameras' feed. They weren't even at the same time of day, week, or month. The only pattern that Jack could find was that it never happened on a Monday and that no even hours were missing, only odd ones, for some reason. There was a pattern, but it wasn't nearly concrete enough to make any predictions on when whoever it was would be there next.
After a week of hoping to find something, but still having no developments, they decided that they weren't getting anywhere as they were. There was no more evidence pointing to Mr. Jackson, and with the strange bout of kindness shown to Lannia in the hallway, they decided that he was probably trustworthy.
Even though they were handing him the cased, they were still too nervous to tell him that they had suspected that he was behind it. Judy and Lannia had a bit of fun coming up with a cover story to explain how they got the information, and this time Nathan joined them after seeing how effective their plan was in the hallway.
After passing the case to him, Mr. Jackson berated them on not bringing it to security sooner and gave them all a day of cafeteria clean-up duty. Immediately after, though, he commended them on discovering it and finding out as much as they had on their own.
When Lannia asked him if he had found anything about it at the end of class three days later, he said "We value confidentiality among our cadets, so I'm not actually allowed to tell you if we have found anything. Also, we found them."
"But didn-"
"Nope. I'm not allowed to tell you."
"Oh! Oh. I see." Lannia grinned and turned to leave the room. When she glanced back before closing the door behind her, Mr. Jackson was already looking down at a tablet on his desk, seemingly absorbed in his work.
Nathan was the first to stir from the group's mutual reminiscence. "Were they really all that glorious? I mean, we didn't really find anything out."
"No, we found plenty of stuff out, we just never found out who did it," Lannia replied.
"But wasn't that was kind of the point?"f
"Well, we did do kind of a lot, and it was fun," Judy joined in. "Plus, we impressed Mr. Jackson. I'm counting it as Glory Days."
"Eh… Yeah, I guess you have a good point. We were just students after all. All the stuff after the academy never actually felt quite as… intense? As that. It was all just following orders, mostly."
"Exactly. Back then, we were on our own."
"Ending was still a bit anticlimactic, though…"
Judy's thoughts strayed away from Nathan and Lannia's continued talking, mostly agreeing with each other at this point, when another thought came.
That was me.
What do you mean, that was you?
I meant what I said. That fox that you were looking for at the academy was me.
Author's Notes: This flashback scene went on a bit longer than I had intended it to, and it didn't really tie in that much with the rest of the story, so I got a bit stuck for motivation on it. A few days ago, though, I had an idea of how I could end it in a way that could tie it into the rest of the story so well that it would like that was what I was planning all along, which will all be explained in the next chapter, along with at least some of Nick's backstory.
On a completely separate note, I've been reading {Of Clocks and Calendars} by Jericho_Pryce, and it instantly became one of my favorite stories in the fandom. Normally I wouldn't gush about other people's works like this in my authors' notes, but this one is just so good. I highly recommend that you read at least the first chapter and not just take a look at the summary, because after that, you'll want to read the rest. Even a friend of mine who said "I don't think I'll like the premise, but the prose is great" switched their opinion to "I love it all" after they finished the chapter.