Chapter 1 - The Lesser of Two Evils

A/N
General: For those comments I received for the last chapter (and, of course, favs/follows) all I can say is: thank you, each one of you means a lot to me, and... Sherlock has been here XD. As before, for any concerns, comments, confusions, errors that can't be forgiven, feel free to PM me

Attention: I must state that I have an omission in writing that results from having two versions of Prologue (here and on Deviantart), an omission that I'm unable to correct in any other way than by explaining it here. Here what that's about. When the second guy (from the Prologue) chases the first, he follows him to the rows of houses, chooses the house and entering it, finds an elevator. Goes down, believing (rightly so) that the first went there. That's it. This chapter is pretty much where Prologue left off. Enjoy:)

Disclaimer: I do not own Zootopia or any concepts related to it, both old and new, everything presented here is for entertainment purpose only and I don't claim it as my own. What I do claim are word constructions below and some of OCs who are basically all introduced in this chapter.

"I'm done. You can let her go now."

Let go. Those words, slow and cautious, rang out so nicely in her head, but the solace they brought her was briefest moments of silence long; so brief that her rapid-beating heart couldn't even begin to hope. Besides, the grip on her body, not that didn't loosen up but became even tighter, or it was just in her mind.

"Let her go?" came the response in form of wondering, before the voice of the feline coming from right behind her ears went from amused to serious, making her stomach twist on so sudden change, and the words she heard. "I know you're smarter than that. Then you know why I can't do that. Wouldn't I be at risk of arriving at the wrong place? This way, if she means anything to you, you'll do as I told you... This very moment!"

Somewhere in between, a shout could be heard, 'Moment!,' and from then on everything was only a mass of commotion and noise. A jerk on her arm and body towards the dusty device that had lit up, the whiteness of that light like collecting everything around her. A cry of dread escaping her throat, the desperate feeling of her world being ripped out of her paws. And then, everything stopped.

She was standing, un-breathing, her eyes wide opened, like afraid of closing them and having the risk of familiar sight going away: the sight of the dim room she called home, and the friend of hers with that bewildered, petrified expression on her face that must have mirrored her own. Alone. The stranger had vanished together with the light.

She blinked, and the sight didn't go away. Her friend's arms welcomed her.

"What happened?"

"I-I don't know," her friend replied. "Think I managed to shut it before you... but I... I don't know. What matters now is that you're alright, and we can figure this out. I can, you sit down and try to relax. I'm so sorry you had to go through this."

It's alright, it's not your fault she thought, couldn't say, because she didn't feel alright, not even when she sat, more fell into a chair and moments passed by. Before her eyes was always that weird, spotted feline whose species she couldn't determine, his voice, the conversation he had been having with her friend all while using her as negotiation material. Finally, excruciated by the question what if? that was constant in her mind, she shuddered, withdrawing in herself, and tried to divert her attention and find something else to focus on, her friend for example.

She couldn't remember the last time she had seen the old cat that serious and upset. Ever since the intruder had left, she had been pacing their living space, the only part of the spacious room that was free of any scientific stuff her friend liked to clutter on every other place. Her face, always so soft and joyful, was now hardened in pondering that much that her wrinkles seemed deeper than they actually were, what made her laugh lines, she had a lot, almost invisible.

They were in a heavy but not uncomfortable silence, disturbed only by steps of one of them. That lasted for a few long minutes before a sound pierced the silence. The alarm that failed to alert them the first time went off again this evening, announcing yet another uninvited guest in the elevator. Her ears perked up automatically to the sound, while her friend seemed oblivious to it.

"You hear that?" she said, her voice filling with panic, but her friend was too deep in thoughts. "Yami? Do you hear that?"

On the mention of her name, Yami finally snapped. An answer came in form of another set of ears going up, and then swift motion towards the door.

Before she could catch up with the world around her, she found a metal ingot in her paws and was standing by one side of the door, face to face with Yami on the other side, who, wordless, was pointing at her own ears with one finger, another on her lips.

And indeed, after a few seconds, she could hear the sound of the elevator door opening and the footsteps all too clearly. They were overall light, but some muffled, untypical tone followed each and was confusing that quite excellent hearing of hers, and disrupting all her attempts to evaluate the height of the intruder. Fast and firm, accompanied by heavy but also muffled panting.

Preparing herself mentally for what she understood she had to do, she gripped the ingot in her paws tight, raised it and waited. Footsteps were coming closer. And closer. She could almost feel someone's presence on the other side of the half-opened door. She closed her eyes and forced herself to focus because her being was too distracted with fear. Almost there. And...

Fearing that she swang the stick too early, she was grateful to hear the hit, but it was a sharp, metal sound, a total opposite of what she had expected to hear. Her eyes shot open and her gaze fell down to the ingot. It was captured in a much larger, what looked like paw, but sturdy, not mammal-like. More like skeleton's. With such sudden, new idea, she jolted her head up the slender figure only to meet the grey, predatory face under the hood, and the two eyes that were, as she realized later, wide in surprise.

For a few long moments, she could only stare in creature's face while slowly growing to be aware of the cold tip of the gun on her left temple. Few long moments passed before he finally spoke, breaking the eye contact, and she felt the gun sliding down.

"I'm not a fool," he said.

And then collapsed to the ground before her feet.

"You alright?" Asked Yami who emerged from behind his back with a syringe in her paw.

Eyes still locked to the mammal lying unconscious, she could only nod affirmatively.

"I'm not a fool either," she added, victorious. "Come on, we need to restrain him before he wakes up."

They dragged him together towards the nearest wall and leaned him to it. Then Yami crouched beside him and started looking at his face, tilting his head as she liked.

She also, herself, took time to observe the newcomer but from a decent distance.

Not without surprise, she realized that the mammal lying down was a boy, of not more than eighteen or nineteen at best, by her judgment. A grey wolf, apparently. After shorter examination of his face that she could describe with one word - strange, she let her gaze fall down the tall, skinny figure dressed in all grey and black not different than his fur, to what enthralled her the most: his paws in long sleeves lying on his body. As she had noticed before, there was no fur on them, no flesh either, and from the fingertips and where should have been claws, up the fingers and the palm, disappearing under sleeves his paws were of some more solid material without reflection, like steel. And the gun in the right hand. Starting to feel some sort of unrest, she raised her gaze to his face once again and couldn't help but get a feeling like he looked a bit sad in some way. Maybe in a way the line of his mouth ran downwards and his facial features looked at tense even though he was unconscious. She remembered he had piercing eyes.

Yami suddenly stood up. Seeing that, she asked her what she was doing.

"I can't believe who we got here." An old face with two glowing eyes turned her way for a moment, not answering her question.

"Wha- Who?"

"My Gosh, " she exclaimed, continuing to get excited over him. "He's like a gift from heaven. Oh, thank you heavens. Wish I believed in you."

The thought of the one before their feet being a gift from heaven unfathomable to her, she decided to keep quiet, knowing that she would not get any proper answer from her friend right now.

"All grown up..." she continued more for herself, with a puzzled smile on her face while circling around him. Then, like spotting his paws right then, she crouched down again and took one of his paws. "But what happened?"

After a while she went up again, letting him go.

"We don't have to be afraid of him."

"Wait, we won't tie him up?"

"Of course not," she replied while walking over to her desk and sitting down, "We are going to convince him to help us-"

"We are?" she interrupted.

"-Chances are on our side if he doesn't feel trapped."

Finally, her friend had been answering questions, even if not all. She was used to that state of hers, knowing it was good enough to just let her work and solve problems on her own. She didn't know when the newcomer was going to wake up so she chose a far spot to sit to and maybe continue the book that laid abandoned for the time she needed to deal with the two intruders.

He wаkened to an awful pain that started to spread in his head and pulse in his temples. He frowned, his eyes still closed, and raised his paw to support his forehead. Feeling his own cold touch, he was waiting, hoping pain would fade soon.

"Yes, one could expect a bit of a headache after the thing I've given you."

A voice that rang in his ears the next moment felt worse than any pain, making him forget about it and stopping him cold. The wave of fear went through him, the first thing on his mind to back away from the source of voice as far as far as possible. Some solid surface behind his back prevented all his attempts, what only increased his fear, escalating in panic. The second thing his panicked mind could do was to try to draw the pistols from the places up his steely wrists - it was the only conscious self-defense mechanism he had, and was failing, when but the same soft but stern voice cut him.

"Woah, easy there. You'll get nowhere going that, I've disabled your… toys. I can give it back though if you behave nicely."

Maybe for the first time then he opened his eyes up to the sight of the speaker, and that sight helped him relax his nerves the slightest bit. Still pressed with his back to the wall like cornered by angry sharks, he waited as his memory started to return. He remembered the elevator, coming down here, the lighten room he entered, then what was supposed to be hit and an unexpected threat. He started searching the room with his eyes and, finding the small rabbit who had attacked him in a chair several feet away from him (she obviously felt ill of ease from his gaze), moved his eyes back to the speaker.

The one who had, apparently, knocked him out on such a treacherous way - from behind was an old woman, a cat almost twice his size, now on his eye level because he had been sitting. She was one of those fluffy, little and extremely rare species of wild felines in her later sixties at best. Her discerning eyes even among dark fur multicolored with various tones of greys, looked at him somewhat from above, maybe wanting to appear authoritative.

Feeling out of danger and even ashamed for his previous fearful behavior, he visibly relaxed and found himself able to utter a question.

"Who are you... And what have you done to me?" he asked, and then barely getting to finish the first two questions, remembered something more important than all questions he had asked, and raised his voice while suddenly straightening in sitting position. "Where? Where is he?!"

"Wait," the cat stretched her arms towards him, trying to calm him down or prevent him from getting up, he didn't know, but it worked, "You know I should be the one questioning here since it was you who broke to my property, but I can let you get away this one time. No need to worry, he's not here anymore."

"Your property?" he was confused for a moment, "Wrong, I've followed him here and seen him enter this place..."

"That might be true, but you have no rights or knowledge to claim anything else. This is my house and he, as well as you are just intruders."

"No difference. Tell me, where is he?" he asked, growing impatient in the fear of losing track of the one he wanted.

"I can tell you, but you must ease up first. What's with that temper anyway? No one's going to run away."

He drew a deep breath.

"Tell me."

"Better. And I have told you, he's not here. And before you ask, yes, I can show you where he went."

Such a sudden turn in conversation caused initial surprise and confusion in him as he realized he was completely free, while for that time the cat had already turned her back to him and started walking. If they meant to hurt him, he knew, there were already plenty of chances for that, but still, everything seemed so off that it demanded caution. With the corner of his eye, he noticed the rabbit getting up and waiting for him to go first. All while walking through the room, it didn't go past him that she kept the distance from him.

"Oh, I've forgotten your other questions," the cat said, turning around and pausing her steps for a brief moment.

"My name is Yami," she pointed at herself, "And Dana over there. You've already got to meet her," he could hear her laughing even though she was turned with her back to him again. Strangely enough, he didn't have such a strong desire to introduce himself, and noticing that no one expected that from him, made an internal sigh from relief and continued walking.

He used that walk as a chance to survey the place he was in and try to ease his almost always present feeling of dread and constant danger that made him glance over his shoulder all the time. He noticed how, what looked like living room turned into a huge workplace divided into sectors full of all sorts of stuff, which he couldn't even name all: machinery, wires, boxes, sacks, some chemistry compounds, and bowls, canisters, and even a few ancient, written out chalkboards, and papers or books - a whole library. Not everything was even organized: some things were placed on shelves or tables, while some laid scattered around in an order known to the creator only. More than once he had to watch his steps, sometimes avoid sheets of papers, go around a cluttered shelve, all the time watching the low ceiling in which he could bump his head every now and then. In his mind, he clarified the fact he learned while coming down there - ever since he had stepped out of the elevator, it smelled of moisture and mold, and the air was stuffy and too heavy sometimes for his sensitive nose.

"We're here. He went here."

Expectant to be showed a secondary elevator or back stairs or some, any other way, he was confused to be stopped in the middle of the room, without any visible way out.

"Where?"

"Here."

For that here she must have earned an irritated look because she smiled and corrected herself.

"I present to you, the time machine."

If her expression was not so serious and he had not seen the things around that could convince him he could expect something like this, something extreme, he would probably be laughing. Indeed they had been living in the year 2063, but it still seemed too much. Now it only left him doubtful, as he waited for so needed explanation. He was looking suspiciously at the cat, the 'thing' they were in front of and she was motioning at, and back to her.

"I've made it when I was younger. Much younger," she started what looked like a longer story. "As an attempt to test my intellect and compete with other scientists of my age. Back then, they all debated over a way to transport a living soul from one place and one time to another, of course, desirable with a body too, by using acceleration and space compression. Anyway, they are still debating, while I found another, more natural way for such transport. By the time I finished the prototype, I realized it held too much power to be used, or even known of, so I destroyed all the papers, all data and every sign of such a project. Now I regret not burning machine along. By the unknown way to me, the one you're looking for dag out the information and knocked on my door."

He let a few moments pass in silence while he collected his thoughts.

"I fail to see how that concerns me."

"Come on now. You desire to keep pursuing that mammal, right? You can. I can enable you that. But..."

But. She earned a questioning look

"I demand from you to be quick and get him before he manages to change the past because we don't know what consequences could that have to the future. Fair enough?"

"I want a grant." he snapped. "Congratulations, you have me convinced you actually got there that... thing that still breaks scientific principles, but how can I be sure that you're not here to cover him up? And how can I know you won't use it against me, as a chance to get rid of me?"

"Oh boy, don't you know anything else but ask questions?" she laughed again, straightening her face in mid of it and cutting her laugh short.

"You may, " she said, "Go ahead and search every inch of this place with my permission to do so. I suggest not, because time is a precious thing which we do not have right now, only if you're quick. That would be the grant he's not here. As for another... She would go with you."

She moved one paw with which she was hugging herself to gesture towards the bunny standing behind him. That he wasn't the only one surprised by what he heard, he could tell by some kind of cry from behind. The old woman ignored it.

"I assure you she means a lot to me and that I wouldn't send her to prehistoric time just because you go there. Well? "

No, he didn't need to inspect the place once again, he had already done that with help of all his excellent senses earlier to ease his fear; now he just wanted to hear what she had to say to his charges. He didn't know what to think about the bunny going as well, though. Thoughtful, he observed at the machine before him.

"There is no way back, isn't it?" he asked, sizing up the dusty machinery in front of him that indeed looked like forgotten, only a few paw prints on the dusty keyboard indicating it was used recently, then looking the cat straight in the eyes. He swore this was the first time she was tongue-tied, but only for a moment, she recovered instantly.

"No, there isn't."

He let a few moments pass in a heavy silence, a few moments of pure expectancy from both females. When he, speaking truth, had already made up his mind.

"I accept."

"But I-" the next thing he heard after a moment of surprise was a scream that pierced the silence. The rabbit whose presence he had almost forgotten about could speak after all, he thought. She rushed towards the old woman, "You can't do this... I refuse to."

"Listen..."

"After everything, you can't just... I can't..."

"Listen to me!" the cat had to put her paws on the elbows of the somewhat higher girl since she wouldn't calm down. It looked almost comical. "I've already made up my mind. You must go. You would have a chance to live in some other place... better place. What can I offer here? A prison for another year or two, then what? Struggle in the world you're completely unprepared for and that is poisoned the way it is? No. You're going. "

And from then on he could only catch muffled speech in between hugs and probably, tears.

Pathetic, one side of him thought, while another side of him suddenly found the time machine so much riveting. Objectively speaking, it looked nothing special, nothing worth so much fuss. It consisted of a set of rings in different positions so that they created a shape of a ball over a platform, a screen with a keyboard in which Yami started typing a few moments later. As a result, the ring lit up with a light so white he had to cover his eyes.

There is no way back, he repeated in himself as if starting to be aware of that fact at right that moment. And there was nothing he had to leave, he thought, nothing to regret leaving. Then why was there that thought in the back of his mind; that feeling that was bugging him, like he was forgetting something.

Forgetting something on purpose.

"Alright, everything's set," The cat's narrating voice snapped him back to the reality, "So the Year 2016 shall it be. Big events, tight jeans, bad music. Spring, April 29th. Try to adapt."

"You know I will be there," Yami continued, this time addressing the girl only while pulling young protegee in what they both knew would be their last hug. "I would be just younger... And much more beautiful, you'll see. But do this one thing for me please, watch over this young man."

"Oh, and two more things. A bit of friendly advice first," came the words instead of goodbye, the cat watching him meaningfully while touching her arm beneath her elbow. "Don't get involved in the things you don't want changed. That and..."

Last words.

"Inanimate things don't travel"

Oh well... He couldn't help but think that when he saw the light coming for him, swallowing it all.

Happy birthday, Will.

(Bonus)

An apartment complex all grey, and so old that the cracked paint on the walls seemed to peel and crumble off the facade as if it wasn't part of it.

Four knocks to the door. They open with a creak, revealing a prematurely old face with bloodshot eyes of a woman who lost everything dearest to her in her life.

Everyone dearest.

-What do you want? - she asks, but then immediately attempts to shut the door, right before the face of the newcomer. -Sorry, I don't work on Sundays.

-I've seen him

The door about to shut stop before they hit the lock, their owner freezes.

- You've seen... Who?

- Your son

The old cat gave a shy smile and stepped into the house, trembling door shutting behind her.