After our visit to the criminal cesspool of the Nocturnal District, let's go the complete opposite direction and head back to the posh, upper-class Meadowlands next.
Which, it hasn't been addressed yet, is nothing at all like how the Meadowlands were originally depicted in concept art. You know that really shady-looking area where the "Cloven Hoof" bar was going to be? THAT was supposed to be the Meadowlands, note the distinct lack of meadows. Like a few other areas that were planned, but didn't actually appear, we repurposed it. We already have two "bad neighborhoods", three if you count Foxden, so the Meadowlands can be the rich district now. (For the record, Cliffside Asylum is still part of it, just more the exception than the rule.)
Anyway, this drabble takes place within the same timeframe as Drabble 8, about one year later. You might want to skim that one for better context if you don't remember it too well. Believe it or not, we actually try to avoid making a super precise timeline when we can to avoid potential contradictions. If you have a general idea of what order events take place in, that's good enough for us.
Drabble 20: I C What You Did There
The Meadowlands
VanDal Household
11: 20 AM
This was not how Simon planned to spend his day off. Karen was out of the house again, and while he was grateful to only have to watch their own child this time, it somehow didn't feel any easier.
Simon groaned and slumped back against his chair. Their home could be considered moderately-wealthy with two floors, two bedrooms, and three bathrooms, but for all of their amenities, he still refused to buy a better TV. If they could get a clear picture, that was good enough, he'd say. Well, right now he was getting a plenty clear picture of his tail being whupped by his eleven-year-old son.
"BOOM! HEADSHOT!" Kyle cheered, watching the enemy soldier that was also his father collapse into a headless heap.
"That is completely unrealistic," Simon grumbled, dropping his controller on his lap. "A gun of that caliber could never take the head off a raccoon. I should know. I've had enough rounds fired at mine."
"It's just a game, Dad," Kyle said. "The Claw of Duty developers take some creative liberties with realism. That's what makes it fun."
"War isn't supposed to be fun." Nevertheless, he picked up his controller again for another round. This was humiliating on a very personal level, but it was for his son. If I start dream training about THIS though, that's it.
They respawned back onto the virtual battlefield, Simon immediately starting to scope out the place. No more going easy on the boy. Kit or not, five straight wins was enough. "You know, this fellow I'm controlling looks a lot like me."
"Well, he's a raccoon. There's a bunch of pre-set species designs."
"No, I mean he really looks like me," Simon insisted. "Same eyes, same posture, same jaded scowl."
"It's just a coincidence. Samson Ringovich is an original character."
"Excuse me?"
"Excuse me!" a sweet voice said.
They both agreed on a temporary ceasefire to let their housekeeper dust off the TV. The porcupine grabbed a dustrag that hung from her quills and sprayed it with cleaner before going over the surface with it, giving the two raccoons some time to glare competitively at each other before she finished. "All done!"
"Thank you, Reina."
She smiled and nodded, turning her personal cassette player back on as she continued past them.
The fighting broke out again immediately after. "Son, you're dead set on becoming a prosecutor, right?" Simon asked, taking his character out of home base to go scour the hilltops.
"Yeah? Why?"
"Because I want you to prosecute whoever stole my likeness to the fullest extent of the law."
"Hmm, I dunno, I was kinda hoping to focus on murder cases."
Simon growled, watching his counterpart make a ridiculous attempt at looking menacing. "You might just get one."
"Agreed. BOOM! HEADSHOT!"
"What?!" Poor Samson Ringovich was once again decapitated, his body ragdolling down the hill. Simon nearly did the same to his controller. "This is ridiculous! I was an actual soldier in an actual war! How do you keep killing me?!"
"Sniper rifle. You can look at my screen, you know."
"That's dishonorable. No amount of intel ever let me 'look at the enemy's screen'."
"Bet you didn't get to rematch anyone who killed you either. Told you realism's overrated. Another game?"
Simon saw the shit-eating grin on his son's face and no longer had any doubts of his future profession. "No further questions."
He probably would've kept playing too had his wife not chosen that moment to call. Simon pulled out his clunky flip phone (that he also refused to replace) and answered it. "Hey, honey. Just hanging out with Kyle."
"Good to hear." His wife's voice came through genuinely pleased for once. "You doing okay with him?"
"So far. Just trying to relearn the art of war."
"I blew Dad's head off!" Kyle exclaimed.
"Sounds fun. Just try not to feed him any more dangerous substances, alright?"
Simon frowned. "Those brownies were perfectly edible."
"By the loosest definition, I'm sure. Listen, I'm not just calling to check up. I actually need you to run by the office real quick. Someone stole my lunch out of the breakroom fridge again and I need some sustenance if I'm going to conduct a proper investigation. Truthfully, I suspect it's a secret test to better train IA professionals, but they still can't have my tuna."
"Then I'll whip you up a salad to go with it," Simon said, stretching as he stood back up. He'd been on his ass longer than he thought. "What about Kyle?"
"It's a twenty minute drive, let Reina watch him. She's been with us long enough. Not like he's going to be doing much besides blowing the heads off of other simulated animals anyway."
Simon looked to the TV, where "TehVanDalizer" appeared to now be mowing down zombies for whatever reason. That had definitely not happened during the war. "Yeah, you're right, he'll be fine. See you soon, honey."
Simon hung up, spotting some quills poking out over the kitchen counter. "Hey, Reina? I need to bring some lunch over to Karen. You mind watching Kyle for a bit?"
"Sure thing!" she replied, still cleaning whatever she was cleaning back there.
"Thanks." He headed past her to the fridge to assemble his wife's salad. "Be sure to keep an eye on him as best you can. I'm not sure if it's a raccoon thing or a military son thing, but he has a habit of slipping off unannounced."
"I'm not the one with the sleepdiving habit!" Kyle replied from the living room.
"And on that note, I'll leave you to it," Simon said, taking the tupperware and heading out the door before he ended up being found guilty.
Kyle chuckled at his own little private victory, which was somehow even sweeter than saving his bunker from zombified legions. "Wanna watch me, Reina? About to try for a new high score!"
"Just a minute," she said, in that absent-minded way a parent (who wasn't his) might. "I still need to finish up here. Could use some new tunes though."
She waddled over to the table, where her personal brown bag was sitting, rifling through it for a new cassette tape. Her constant usage of them made Kyle one of the few children on the planet to know what they were. "Let's see...which one...which one…?"
As her clawed fingertips moved across the top of each tape, they suddenly stopped on one of them. Reina knew which one it was instantly. It was the only tape in her collection that she had never once listened to. She couldn't explain why, but every time she considered popping it in, she just...chose not to. She wasn't even sure where she'd gotten it from.
And yet, at this very moment, her fingertips refused to leave its surface. Now was finally the time, said an inkling in the back of her mind. She didn't have a choice. She was compelled to play this tape, as if her own being simply would not accept any other option. The feeling frightened her, but that made no difference either. She took the tape out of her bag, put it in her cassette player, and hit play all the same.
Reina's ears twitched as what played off the tape was an old, but perfectly stable recording of "Good Exhalations" by the Beached Boys, a group of cetacean singers who periodically emerged onto land, sang a new hit single, then disappeared back under the waves until the next one. Unconventional, to be sure, but not exactly something to freak out about. Honestly, why had she been so spooked any-?
"A camoflauge undone. A venom that spreads as one."
Reina gasped, nearly falling over and catching herself on the edge of the table. She took several deep breaths, blinking rapidly as she tried to steady herself. Her head hurt.
"Reina?" Kyle's concerned voice called out to her, the sound of the television being muted. She wasn't sure if that was his doing as just about every sound soon faded away into white noise, leaving her unable to focus on anything other than the pain that threatened to tear her skull open. She was being assaulted with images, flashes of things she didn't recognize, words she didn't remember hearing, like a box of puzzle pieces being flung at her all at once.
But once all the pieces were there, the puzzle assembled itself in her mind. As it did, the pain died down, the lingering fuzziness in her head clearing up soon after. There was nothing to worry about anymore. Everything made sense. She knew what her purpose was.
"Reina?" She jolted as Kyle's paw landed on her arm. "Are you alright?" the kit asked.
She slowly smiled at him. "Never better."
11: 41 AM
It was all too soon after this that the front door opened again and a grumbling Simon walked inside. "Ugh, I can't believe I forgot the dried cranberries. Karen loves those with her…" He froze in the doorway, which slowly closed by itself behind him.
Reina too froze at the sight of him. Kyle, who was currently unconscious in her arms with a rag over his mouth, didn't have a choice in the matter.
Simon didn't waste time asking what she was doing, nor did she sheepishly try to claim that it wasn't what it looked like. They both knew damn well what she was doing, that it was exactly what it looked like, and what the only proper response was.
The raccoon reached into the back of his jeans, pulled his concealed combat knife, and charged.
Reina dropped Kyle instantly, cracking his glasses against the tile floor, then pulled a quill from her backside and held it in front of her defensively. Simon could have scoffed at the maneuver, at least until it successfully stopped his knife in its tracks. While visually identical to any other quill, this one seemed to be a hidden blade of her own, implanted in her body for just this purpose.
Up until now, Simon had assumed this to be little more than an opportunistic criminal attempting to ransom Kyle against them, but that kind of subterfuge suggested something much, much deeper. "Who are you?"
"Who am I?" Reina asked, snarling over their crossed blades. "I'm a beleaguered housekeeper who had to clean up after you for eight years just waiting for you to leave me alone with your son! How paranoid do you mammals have to be?!"
"Not paranoid enough obviously."
"Let's fix that."
Reina pushed him back with surprising strength, going on the offensive. But all of that dream training hadn't been for nothing.
Dodge, parry, stab, parry, dodge, parry, parry, stab, slash, dodge
"You're...not as rusty...as I thought," Reina grunted, now struggling to keep up the attack as Simon started to gain ground.
"If you'd paid enough attention during those eight years, you might have known that!" Simon finally knocked the quill-blade from her paw, grabbed her by the chin, and slammed the back of her head into the floor, snapping off several actual quills in the process. "Boom. Headshot."
"You didn't even use that right." She reached for her blade again before Simon stomped on her wrist hard enough to audibly break it. She cried out in pain, glaring hatefully up at him.
"I will if you don't tell me who sent you," he threatened, pressing down even harder. "Now."
Reina hissed from the increasing pain, but still managed to smirk. "Well, if you want to know so badly…"
"What are you-?"
She seized up, then started to convulse beneath him, Simon adamantly keeping her pinned despite his confusion. After a moment, Reina went entirely limp. She was still alive, but her eyes were dull and listless, as if she had gone comatose. Simon almost assumed just that before she spoke again, her voice now a flat monotone. "Congratulations, Simon VanDal. If you are hearing this, then it seems Reina has failed in her primary objective. I'd say we underestimated you, but there would be no point to this message if the outcome was unexpected."
Simon remained still, now kept there by more than just stubbornness. There was something deeply wrong about this. The words came out of Reina's mouth and were spoken in Reina's voice, but they were clearly not Reina's words. It sounded more like a recording someone had left him, only transmitted through a living, sapient being.
"Don't bother responding," the dull voice said, confirming his suspicions. "Reina cannot hear you anymore. Well, it is more accurate to say that Reina does not exist anymore. She has served her purpose and the only role left to her is as a messenger. I'm sure you can hazard a guess who sent the message, but we'll start with introductions regardless."
Simon was told not to respond, yet let loose a very pointed swear.
"We are the secret intelligence agency of the Sauriet Union. You may call us Crypsis."
Crypsis. He had heard of them before, but only through unconfirmed reports and inconclusive findings. Officially, they did not exist, not even to Sauriet citizens. The organization was essentially a ghost, and how appropriate for it to come back to haunt him now, possessing the body and mind of his housekeeper. Even the most far-fetched stories about them never suggested they could do anything like this.
"Did you think reptilekind was just going to lie down and die out after we lost the Cold-Blooded War?" they asked. "Yes, things looked very grim for us then, but it's amazing the things a group of like-minded individuals can accomplish when trying to stave off their own extinction. No amount of weaponry could topple the numbers advantage Mammalia had over us, so we came up with another plan: we would turn your own numbers against you."
Simon looked down at Reina, still barely moving a muscle even as her lips recited all of this. Indeed, she was more marionette than mammal now.
"Do you like what we've done with her? You must appreciate it, at least on a professional level. You are not privy to know our methods, but the results speak for themselves. When we let them."
"And you used these methods to plant a spy in my home who was foiled by dried cranberries. What a glorious achievement." They still couldn't hear him, but he didn't care. Anything to break up that monotone.
"Of course, Reina's goal was more revenge than anything, we'll admit to that. You should be far more concerned about the others."
A chill shot up his spine, all the way to the tip of his tail. Any mockery he still had in him dried up in an instant. Others?
"Yes, others. We hope you didn't think we'd waste all this effort just on you. From the day we lost the war, Crypsis bit down hard on your precious Zootopia and never let go, steadily injecting its venom ever since. And that venom has spread far, to the ZPD, to City Hall, even to the largest criminal gangs. How many agents did we plant? Well, we can't give you an exact number, as that would depend on when you're listening to this. So let's just say...enough."
It's been eight years since Reina joined us. Give or take. Simon swallowed. "Why would they tell me all this?" he asked himself. "Why give me advance warning?"
"Though we'd be remiss to neglect Reina's duty either. For while she indeed failed in her primary objective, her secondary objective is now a success."
"What?" Simon raised his knife and looked around the room, half-expecting more agents to come crawling out of the woodwork, perhaps literally. Nothing happened.
"Feeling unsettled, Simon VanDal? You had best get used to it. Try as you might, but you will not find us. You will not expose us. You will not stop us. You will spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder and jumping at shadows, knowing that your end is coming but not knowing when. Not until the day you die, or the day Zootopia dies. As far as revenge goes, that will suffice."
"You're wrong!" he snapped. He'd wonder who he was trying to convince if there weren't exactly one animal in this room who could hear him. Nevertheless, it helped to briefly stave off the rising sense of dread threatening to overtake him. The scenario Crypsis presented had not been exaggerated. Just thinking about this too long could drive a lesser mammal mad. He needed to approach this calmly, logically.
Can't go to the police, especially not if they're already compromised. The government? Compromised, maybe not even just in Zootopia. The army? Dammit, they'd be the first ones compromised. I can't trust anyone but my old Delta Fox unit. Unless...no, they couldn't be. But it's not impossible either. Is it really just me and my family left to fight them?
Is it even that much?
Simon was mercifully shook out of his thoughts by a hard kick to the chest, knocking him on his back. He had gotten so used to seeing Reina as a living puppet by now that he hadn't expected her to move like that again. He scrambled back to his feet quickly, brandishing his knife.
Reina was up as well and also holding her quill-blade, but she didn't look ready to attack with it. She stood there as lifelessly as ever, arms hanging limply at her sides. "We will wait patiently for our time to come, Simon VanDal. Until then, we leave you with one final message."
She lifted the blade up towards her face and Simon watched in horror as Reina slowly, unflinchingly carved a jagged red C around her right eye. So this was their mark. He doubted they would ever let him see it again, not until it was too late. "To your health," was the last thing they said.
Then Reina shuddered and collapsed to the floor. Simon could tell without even checking that their housekeeper was dead, her strings severed as soon as the performance was over. No. She was never our housekeeper. Whatever sort of mammal she was before Crypsis got to her, she's just an enemy spy now, and that's how I'll treat her.
He checked her body anyway, not sure what he was going to find, but veering on the desperate side. Crypsis, in their arrogance, didn't think he could do anything to stop them, but they had already left him all the evidence he needed. Reina's programming must have been activated somehow, and if he could figure out the method, then he could go about uncovering the other agents. It was only a matter of time.
Beep
Simon's ears perked up, his eyes drawn to the cassette player lying abandoned at Reina's side. Of course. What better method than a mere tool of recreation? But what was that sound?
Beep
If he were capable of getting any greyer, his fur would have paled by several shades. Indeed, this was more than a recreational device. It was a failsafe.
Beep beep beep
There was no more time to think. Simon scrambled off of Reina's body and raced to Kyle's side, hoisting his unconscious son over his shoulders.
Beep beep beep beep beep
He made a beeline for the double doors, having to quickly readjust his grip to pull one of them open and slip outside.
Beep beep beep beep beep beep
He burst out onto their front lawn, sprinting across the paved walkway as fast as his legs could carry them. If the blast was only intended to incinerate Reina's body, they should be safe by now.
But if Crypsis had made one thing abundantly clear so far, it was that they went above and beyond to make a point.
Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeeeeeeeeep
The explosion leveled the entire household, sending debris flying in every direction. Simon barely had any time to react, and no time at all to question his first instinct. He lifted Kyle from his shoulders and threw him as far as he could across the lawn. He didn't get to see him land before he was bowled over by flying rubble.
Any evidence Reina had left behind was now burned and buried with her, along with any chance of a peaceful retirement. But none of that was Simon's concern anymore. As he crawled out from beneath the rubble, ears ringing, vision blurry, and sore in more places than he could count, all he could think about was his son. If Crypsis had planned this much, it was possible they still had other agents lying in wait close by, ready to move in and snatch Kyle away. He was not going to let that happen.
His vision started to recover and he caught sight of his son, still unconscious on a bed of freshly-mowed grass. He had successfully thrown him clear of the blast zone, but now that was the distance he needed to cross in order to reach him. Easier said than done when he was in too much pain to even stand. Nevertheless, he would not be deterred and he pulled himself free, crawling on his arms and elbows to reach Kyle's side.
His hearing gradually returned with each motion, making Simon aware of the collapsing structures still behind him and the sirens of approaching emergency vehicles in the distance. One thing he didn't hear was concerned neighbors rushing to his aid, not terribly surprising in this pompous kind of neighborhood, but that was almost a blessing right now. He couldn't trust the neighbors. He couldn't even trust the emergency vehicles. Simon forced himself to move faster. If he could just make it to Kyle, he knew he could keep him safe, even if he had to chew through the ankles of anyone who got too close.
He was just a few feet away when he saw Kyle beginning to stir, the kit's eyes opening wearily. "D-Dad?"
"I'm here," he reassured him, even his voice sore. "Don't worry. You're going to be okay."
But it wasn't himself that Kyle looked concerned about. His eyes opened fully, then widened as he saw his father. And saw what his father couldn't. "Dad...your leg…"
Simon looked back over his shoulder, only then noticing the long blood trail going from the rubble to the severed stump where his left leg used to be. Adrenaline and determination had carried him far, but the former was starting to wear off and the latter only got him that little bit farther to wrap his arms protectively around his son. "They can have the leg," he decided. "But they can't have you."
With that declaration, the blood loss finally got to him and Simon blacked out, still holding onto Kyle as he faded completely.
Our Lady of the Meadows Care Center
2: 03 PM
Ironically, the missing leg was the first thing he noticed when he woke up at the local hospital.
It was a little hard not to stare at the vacant spot, cauterized and bandaged up, like it was representative of his failure today. A failure to do what exactly, he wasn't sure, but it certainly didn't feel like a victory. At least he had succeeded in saving-
"Kyle!" Simon shot up in his cot. "Where is he?!" It was then that he remembered all of his other injuries as they came back with a vengeance, making him hunch over in pain. He fought through it, pushing himself to get up off the cot again.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said Karen from the doorway. "Lopsided as you are, you won't make it out of the room before falling over again."
Simon stopped himself from trying it anyway. It didn't even surprise him for his wife to just show up like that. She made a habit of it. "I could if I had some crutches."
"Why do you think they didn't give you any? The doctors needed my help just to pry you off of Kyle, and that's after the crowbar failed. They're not taking chances."
"Kyle, is he-?"
"Safe, yes," she said, growing more concerned as she approached the cot. "What's going on, honey? It's not every day you get pulled away from work hearing that your house just exploded. You were worried about Kyle? Think about how worried I was. I thought I might have lost you two, which really helped put the whole missing tuna thing into perspective."
Simon's expression hardened, and he took the time to look over her shoulder for potential eavesdroppers before lowering his voice to a whisper. "What did the fire department tell you?"
"That it was probably a gas leak, but I know you're not that dumb."
"No, but I bet you anything that's what the official report will be. Come closer." Karen leaned in and Simon whispered into her ear.
While this was going on, a puma nurse walked into the room, wheeling a cart with her. She pulled a syringe from a tray on top and filled it with medicine from a nearby bottle. "Mr. VanDal, I need to give you a quick shot. It's just some painkillers for-"
Karen's paw snatched her wrist in a vice-like grip before she could do anything with that needle. "Let the doctor know that I'll be handling the rest of his treatment at home," she said coldly.
"But your home is-"
"Shut up. Don't care. Get out."
The feline nodded reluctantly, putting the needle back on the tray and wheeling it away. Karen waited a few seconds before turning back to Simon. "You're serious?" she hissed. "They've really infiltrated us that deeply?"
"They were a lot more long-winded about it, but that's the basic summation."
"Then they tried to kill you with a time bomb?"
"If they wanted to kill me, it wouldn't have been on a timer."
"Shit." She shook her head slowly. "Where do we even begin fighting an enemy like that?"
"Finding a new home, for starters. Do we have options?"
"I'm not sure," she admitted. "But the Mammalian government owes us a lot, so I'm sure we could get another home here in the Meadowlands without too much trouble. Though it probably won't be as nice. Unless you want to try for another district?"
He gripped his bedsheets tightly. "No. I'm not letting those scalie bastards chase us away."
"I completely agree," Karen said, putting a paw over his own. "But it will be harder to bring this up, knowing we can't tell the truth. We have no proof, nor any means of obtaining it."
"I thought the same. But if we have to go to them anyway, then maybe-"
"And what would you say? 'No, it wasn't a gas leak! It was secret Sauriet spies! Spies everywhere! Where are they? I don't know, that's why they're secret!' All you'd get out of that is PTSD counseling."
He sighed deeply, slumping against his pillow. "Damm, you're right. And going public with it is out of the question. Even on the slim chance anyone believed us, it'd only cause a mass panic and leave us all the more vulnerable. Is there anyone we can trust?"
"Realistically speaking, anyone we know could be one of them," Karen replied. "But we also can't do this alone, so we have no choice but to take a risk. We'll need to at least bring in a few of our old Delta Fox contacts. Jack, Skye…"
"You want to bring in Skye? This really is serious."
"We need all the allies we can get right now," she insisted. "And if she turns out to be a spy, I'll get to stab her in the throat, so win-win."
He laughed, but it didn't last. "...That isn't funny."
"No, it isn't," she agreed. "But we need a little levity too. The snark will keep us sane."
"I suppose. So we contact the others, fill them in about Crypsis, and-"
"We can't call them that," she warned. "Not in public, not even over the phone lines, no matter how private we think the connection is. We need to be as cautious as we can about this."
"So we call them something innocuous then. How about…'our mutual friends'?"
"That's a little uninspired."
"Exactly."
"Hmm, good point," she conceded. "Whatever we call them, they're not getting away with this. We need to stand up on our own two feet and fight."
"Yes, we need to-" Simon paused as he glanced down at his severed leg again. "You did that on purpose."
"Levity," she reminded him. "Don't worry, we'll find a good replacement for your leg too. You've earned it after the way you saved Kyle like that."
"I better have." He stared up at the ceiling, thinking back on the son he had so nearly lost today. If it weren't for a mere stroke of luck, Kyle could have been taken, turned into another of their puppet mammals and used against them. Could they do that to him? He wasn't sure, but even with all the uncertainty the future now presented, he promised himself he wouldn't find out.
They would never have his son.
Fun fact: "Crypsis" is the scientific name for an animal's ability to camouflage itself. It's also the name of the organization that has been hinted at with decreasing amounts of subtlety over time. A lot of dots you can connect with this one, both to past and future events. And before anyone asks, Count Reynard is still the Big Bad of Born to Be Wilde. Consider this more of a...preview, of things to come. (Yes, that means exactly what you think it does, involving a word that starts with an "s".)
But after five long years, you finally know how Simon lost his leg. If that feels like kind of an afterthought on top of everything else, that's because it kind of is.
We'll now leave you to go look up every past instance of the phrase "our mutual friends".