Now, before I talk to these mammals, I need to get a few facts worked out in my head. Missus Wilde is saying that there have been enough revelations given out for today, but really, she's deflecting. Mom may not have taught me how to pick things up, but, and as much as I hate to admit it, I've managed to learn a few tricks, and among those are a few that I think are going to come in handy, and well, I also have a nose, I could smell that they were lying.
What the flock is going on here? I have a few of the facts down pat, but as for the rest of this whole deal? Yeah, right!
Let's see here, what do I still need to know? Well, being able to think straight's kinda a prerequisite for that, and all of a sudden, I'm feeling paralyzed in fear, so, yeah, no, that's not going to happen any time soon. What is going to happen, though, is Judy calling out to the group of mammals who are flocking around the door (no pun intended, ha ha).
"Hey, you guys!" she says, paws on her hips, determined grin on her face. "Leave us alone, okay? What did we ever do to you?"
"You're upsetting the order of things!" One of the mammals, a rabbit, shouts, and the rest of the group shouts their agreement. "Yeah! There's a way that things are suppos'd to be, an' ain't neither of you two fitting in t' that!"
"And you guys have a problem with that why?" Judy asks. "I am the way I am, I like looking like this, and I don't care what you have to say, so if we can go know, that would be just great, okay?"
"NO, not okay!" a different mammal, a hare, says this time. "Foxes are dangerous, don't you know that? What're you doin' lookin' like one?"
"More or less, I was born looking like this. The eyes are tinted lenses, the teeth were the way I had them fixed when they got knocked out years ago. What's wrong with that?"
"It's different, don't you understand that, and different is never good, don't you understand?"
"You're asking a rabbit who thinks of herself more like a fox than a rabbit whose family fled from Zootopia away from Bellwether to understand that different is bad? I don't get it, okay? I've always been different and I always will be. If you can't accept that, that's your own problem, but I don't need to have it with you. My friend's kinda trying to heal, and it's dam near impossible to do that with all of you yammering out there…"
"And that's our problem why?" a sheep asks. "You shouldn't even be here in Bunnyburrow, predator!" he snarls, and it takes me by surprise, because, well, he's a sheep, and well, I thought that sheep weren't supposed to be vicious. I guess I was mistaken...
"Yeah," I retort, "but I am, and there's nothing you can do about that, I'm not going anywhere!"
"Oh, you're not?" the same sheep nearly snarls at me. "You know that the proper place for a fox is jail, don't you, or did your parents leave you on the streets to fend for yourself because they were too damn poor to take care of you? That sounds about like something foxes would do, so did they? Is that why you're such a freak?"
"Really?" I ask, feeling anger flare up and trying with all my might (and succeeding, thank Karma) to stay calm, because the last thing that this whole situation needs added to the mix is an angry fox, let me just throw that out there now. I've had enough of these dam stereotypes, and yet, the whole problem is that, no matter what I do, I'm just going to enforce what these flocking mammals think, no matter what I do or how calmly I treat the situation, I'm just going to be an angry fox, so what do I do now? Especially considering that I see the flashing lights of a police cruiser coming up the road through the glass panes of the lobby windows, over the heads of the throng of mammals?
I hate to admit it, but my instincts, both the set of fox ones that I was born with and the rabbit ones that I've picked up, are telling me that what I should be doing are two completely opposite things, and I can't do both. The fox that I am says that I should stand my ground and fight, while the rabbit in me says that I should flee and hide.
It's a little frustrating, to say the very least.
Of course, I can't have any time to think, because there are sirens coming up the driveway, the flashing lights of those same police cruisers following them as they do, and I feel an icy fist start to settle in my stomach.
Why can't anything go right in my life for once? I think. I've had enough of this scat.
"Who called the police?" I ask. "And seriously, we didn't do anything…"
"Better safe than sorry, haven't you heard that predators have started to go savage again? How can we prove that neither of you will, either? Haven't you heard that it's in their biology? That all predators are just like ticking time bombs waiting to go off? Haven't you ever felt like you're just going to go off?"
"Can't say that I ever have," I say, fighting my dam hardest to stay calm.
"But what-" the sheep begins, but then he's cut off as he's pushed out of the way by several TUSK-uniformed officers barrelling in through the doors, and I gulp.
"Well, this isn't going to be good," I mutter as the officers fan out around the lobby before one of them, a large bull rhino, speaks up.
"What the hell is going on here?" he asks, and then the lobby descends into chaos once again.