Like I was just thinking, my time's up, just like is the case for every other mammal in this room… how does the senator still look so calm and collected?
Honestly, I think it's more a mask than anything else.. The mammal's made a career staying stone-faced, so I've heard, even when the Mayor fired him for refusing to back down fifteen or so years ago. Nobody ever found out why, heck, the official reason given was that he resigned, but we all know that that was garbage, especially since the news about it came in a bulletin from the Mayor herself.
Over the course of the last few weeks, though, I've been piecing together the missing bits and bolts… he didn't resign, he was fired, and probably with a cannon… hell, I know the Mayor's basically a dictator, no, screw it, she is a dictator, but she's covering something up that's bigger, I think, than anyone here realizes, and hell, it's no long jump from there to connect the gaps and reason that that's why her guards are at our door here, and yep, there's the tail, snaking around my legs… I'm more of a coward than I'd like to admit, a regular scaredy-fox, yup yup, and the fact that my current predicament involves presumably armed guards, lots of them, banging at our door, I'll be seriously shocked if we make it out of here without my having a wet stain down the front of my pants… it would be great if we didn't, though, yeah, that would be nice, Nicholas.
"So is anyone going to open that door or not?" Judy asks, and I can see that she's trying to put on a brave face, just like the rest of us, but well, it's as obvious as can be that she's faking it, and hell, aren't we all?"
"Not until they break it down we're not," Bogo says. "They'll arrest us, but there's nothing they can do until we open that door…"
"That makes no sense, Senator…," Judy says, her tail flicking softly, anxiously behind her back. It's adorable, but I'd never tell her that, I know bunnies hate being called cute or anything like that… where is my mind right now?
"My point is, Miss Wilde, that they're not going to break it down, because I would arrest them on the spot. We're going to be fine. I'm going to open the door and let us arrest them. You have to pretend that those collars are real, kapische?"
"Yes, sir," all of us chime in unison while the mammals on the other side of the door continue their banging… it's hurting my ears!
"Alright, alright!" Bogo calls out, as much to us as to the mammals pounding on the door outside. "We're coming out!"
With that, he goes and opens the door, and sure enough, a whole flock of sheep come pouring in, hounded along (no pun intended nor any offense to any well-meaning sheep in the world… I don't know any well-meaning sheep, though, and as a matter of fact, I don't honestly know any sheep at all… case in point, I'm terrified right about now…. and the stun guns that are being pointed at my head aren't helping anything. I'm hoping that my bladder doesn't decide to let go right about now, that would be baaaad.
No freaking pun intended this time around, and I can't help but gulp as the flock surrounds all of us, smirking in approval when they notice the collars around everyone's necks but Mom's. In other words, we're looking pretty freaking screwed just about now… and the rabbit, no wait a cotton-pickin' minute, that's not a rabbit, that's a hare- is speaking to Chief Bogo, and what the flying fuzz, there's a fox with him and she's not wearing a collar!
"What's going on? Judy asks me, her voice, already low, dropping to less than a whisper, and even I have to strain to hear it.
"We're getting ourselves arrested again, what else?" I whisper back, and I see a smile creep onto he face.
"Hey, I never said I was a good kit, you know. Let's make a mess!" she whispers back, but unfortunately for all of us, and for the sheep pointing guns at our heads, the rabbit and fox hear us… are these two our 'savage winter' that's supposed to come and save us? They don't even look like they're armed, and heck, I bet even me, as scrawny as I am, am stronger than that darn hare.
"So I take it's these two that need extraction first?" the hare asks, casting a sideways glance at the fox at his side, and she nods, pulling a badge out of a pocket somewhere on her person, from where exactly I can't catch it, the badge wasn't there one second and there the next.
"What do you think, Jack?" the fox, a vixen by the sound of its voice, says before one of the sheep, a scruffy white ram with a belly that bulges out of his shirt, holds up a hoof to his face.
"Oh no you don't, Jack," the ram says, holding up a hoof to the hare's face, which 'Jack' just pushes aside with a snort.
"I'm sorry, Mister Ramses," he says, grinning the largest, most sardonic grin that I've ever seen, "but this is official ZBI business. Step aside, or I won't hesitate to report to your boss that you tried to prevent members of the Order from being brought in. I don't think she'd like that, or am I wrong and maybe she would? Let me see, I'll give her a ring right now if you want to double-check," he says, pulling an ancient flip phone out of the pocket on his suit, and now that I think of it, if he's with the ZBI, what's he doing wearing a suit? Aren't all rabbits and hares field agents?
Pun not freaking intended.
With Jack's words, complimented by the smarmy grin on the vixen's face, the ram, Mister Ramses (now that's an awful pun) drops his weapon, and he waves a hoof at his co-conspirators to drop his weapons. The only problem is that he's switched the stun gun out for another gun, a pellet gun and oh scat I know what those have in them…
"Everybody run!" Mrs. Wilde shouts, but Doug just laughs, a cruel thing that sounds more like a maniacal bleat than anything else.
"Rule number one, Wilde," he smirks, levelling the gun at her, "always have a backup plan!"
"So what are you going to do, Doug, kill me?" Jack asks, and even he can't hide the fear in his voice.
"Oh, of course not," Doug says, whipping around and painting cream fur blue, "she is."