Proofread by Hawktooth . Merry Christmas, everyone!

"Imagine; coming up over a rise, you see your platoon over yonder in the distance, you wave at 'em and they shoot ya! Now that's a bad day."

Red Hollard, Adventures in Odyssey: Sergeant York Part 4 of 4

In his years as a con mammal, Nick had made a habit of dodging responsibilities with speed and elegance fit to make the fittest of his ancestors proud. As fast as one situation placed demands upon him, he'd create or slip into another to get out of it. As long as nobody caught up with him, robbing Peter to pay Paul worked pretty well for someone as unscrupulous as he.

The whole picture looked pretty different now that his conscience had woken up from its coma.

"Just so I'm clear, do we have a Plan B if she hangs up?" he asked.

Catano folded her arms. "We go through the usual channels," she replied cynically. Lowering her eyelids slightly, she added, "Which, to be clear, would take a whole lot longer, give away our digging, and cut you out of the picture, so I suggest you do this right."

Nick hid a grimace while simultaneously deciding that this was not the best time to gloat that she had just indirectly admitted he got things done faster. "Okay, no pressure."

Judy laid a paw on his arm. "You'll be fine, Nick," she urged as encouragingly as she could.

It was a pretty feeble bluff. Neither of them was even trying to pretend that she could back it up or had any way of knowing how things would play out. Still, it offered a modicum of comfort if nothing else.

Catano waved one index claw in a circle. "Can we get on with this?" she asked impatiently. "We have terrorists to stop, remember?"

Oh, yeah, thought Nick sarcastically. Just save the city from a bunch of psychos with mind-warping drugs. No pressure or anything.

He ran a search of his contacts, acting even to himself – as best he could – as if this were just an effort to make up with an ex.

'Yeah, that's it, Wilde,' he told himself as the number appeared on the screen. 'You're just trying to make things right with her because you were a jerk… and you need a favor. Nothing unusual.'

"If I don't make it, tell my mom I love her," he joked, trying to break the tension.

Judy smiled at that, and it dawned on him how good it felt to be able to make that joke with a straight face and an un-knotted stomach. Truth be told, he didn't know if he'd ever cracked that one. Maybe once upon a time when he was four?

'Good, good,' he self-coached. 'Focus on the funny. Focus on the good happy mom vibes. Just forget the angry, very angry girl you stood up who would like very much to bite…' he stopped. 'Okay, that is really not helping.'

Maybe he was worrying for nothing. Maybe she had gotten over it by now. She was a nice enough female; probably found some decent guy and settled down a long time ago. Heck, she might not even remember his name.

Swallowing hard, he punched in the number. The phone rang a couple of times on the other end before he got an answer.

"Hello?"

He gulped one last time and almost swallowed his tongue. "Uh, hi," he greeted, trying to play it smooth. "Mesha?"

She sounded confused. "Yeah, who is this?"

Here goes nothing. "It's me. Nick Wilde."

"Nick Wi-" she stopped, and the silence that followed was worse than any tirade.

She remembers my name.

He'd been bracing himself for a blunt 'Goodbye' cold enough to freeze over Sahara Square. Instead he got a decidedly irked, "What do you want?"

Biting his lip and reflecting that this was at least better for their plans than outright rejection, he decided to open with the helpless sap routine. "Listen, I know I was a jerk the last time we met."

"Or didn't meet."

He put his ears back and raised a paw to his forehead. "Right. I'm honestly really, really sorry about that. It was wrong to stand you up, and I was a self-serving creep for doing it."

It was true. He really did feel guilty about stringing her along and then dumping her out of the blue. It had become a habit when he felt a relationship was growing into too much of an attachment in one direction or another; a kind of cruel and self-loathing way of reminding himself that he and he alone was running his life. In a way it was the romantic equivalent of what he'd pulled on Judy at the ice cream parlor. Thus far he'd tuned it out, but now like many other things it was playing on his conscience like an out-of-tune bagpipe player kicking him in the tail for being so naive.

And here I'm trying to sweet-talk her into helping me con her boss, he thought, his lunch all but curdling in his stomach. I'm going to have a lot of apologizing to do later on.

During the scant second it took him to think of all this, she was silent. "You're actually calling to apologize?" she asked at last, voice lilting up a touch.

Oh, great. There was that tone in her voice of a female getting her hopes up. Evidently he'd been wrong about her settling down with some guy more deserving. "Well, yes," he said, surprised at his own sincerity. "But, uh, I should be honest…I also kind of need a favor."

The distrust swept back in with a vengeance. "What kind of favor?"

"You still work for Olivia Poisson, right?"

Her skeptical tone dialed up a fraction further. "Yeah…"

"Well, I need to get in an appointment with her about a business I'm trying to get started." He almost choked on the lie, good reasons or no.

Mesha's voice betrayed a 'go figure' kind of sigh. "Call the business line when she's taking appointments. See ya."

Shoot! "Wait wait wait wait wait," he jabbered, frantically gesticulating with his free paw. "I'll make it up to you, I promise! I'll make up the date I skipped, too!"

Silence. He checked his phone. The line was still open.

"Dinner, your choice of restaurant," he promised, knowing it was a hazardous offer on two levels: first, the chance that this might somehow get back to Taelia (wouldn't be the first time that happened,) and second, that despite being a raccoon Mesha had some pretty refined tastes in dining.

She also had a refined sense of bargaining. "Two dinners," she countered. "One in advance, the other after you get the appointment. Ditch out for either and you can kiss your business plans goodbye."

He bit his tongue, but what choice did he have? "Yeah, I guess I owe you that much. Two dinners it is."

"Alright. I'm free tonight, so pick me up at eight."

The abruptness took him by surprise. "Wait, that fast?"

"Less time for you to change your mind. See you tonight."

Well, that made perfect sense – in a very vindictive kind of way. "Uh, yeah. Same address?"

"Same address. Bye."

"Bye."

Nick hung up and looked uncertainly around at the others. "Heh. I guess we can scratch that off the to-do list."

Nobody knew what to say to this, but Judy finally shrugged. "Well, at least you're making progress," she offered in an effort to be cheerful.

Catano was less enthusiastic. "Just make sure your social history doesn't botch the case," she advised.

Judy turned to her in exasperation. "Do you always have to be so negative?" she pressed.

"Someone has to," the cheetah answered simply. Then, to Nick, "I suppose you'll want to take off now and get ready for your date?"

Nick looked at the clock. "I can stay for a couple of hours to help out. You guys need an outside opinion on those inspections we talked about?"

Seeing at once the value of changing subjects, Judy pounced on the suggestion. "Perfect."

Catano raised an eyebrow, evidently filing Judy's expectations of Nick away… again.

To Judy's surprise – though she admitted afterward that she shouldn't have been surprised at all – Nick carried himself quite shrewdly through their planning session. It was some hindrance that they weren't actually directing the operation, but as they considered what to recommend to the parties overseeing that aspect he brought all his street-level knowledge to bear. This place was right over a bunch of maintenance and access tunnels that could hide something. That one was in a seedy neighborhood. Another was in such a well-respected area that no one would think of suspecting it, making it the perfect site. Every observation, speculation, and insight was carefully presented so as to mesh with what Catano knew thus far, yet admit to nothing new she might hold against a case for purging his records.

All the same, it wasn't a perfect cover – and Catano was hardly a perfect dunce. "You seem to know a lot about storing and moving illegal products," she observed at one point, probing for a reaction.

Nick shrugged as if she had remarked on his preferences in takeout food. "Yeah, well, when you've been a designated driver enough, seen all the cop movies, binge-watched Breaking Baaad, yadda yadda yadda, you've gotta pick up a few things."

Catano raised an eyebrow. "Really. We're relying on secondpaw beer-babble and the input of a couch potato?"

Nick chuckled helplessly. "Hey, we've all gotta start somewhere. Speaking of couch potatoes, how's Ben?"

It took the cheetah a moment to process the remark. "Ben?" she echoed. "You mean Clawhauser?"

Nick's voice rose in a somewhat triumphant tone. "Ah, you know him. Old friend of yours?"

Clearly this turn of events had stroked the cat the wrong way. "There's nothing to fish for, fox. Now, the investigation?"

Judy observed the banter in reluctant silence. Had it not been for Catano's predisposition towards Nick, the back-and-forth would have felt much like her own with him. How could Catano talk so much like she did, but not share her hopes?

Hoping to distract them both, she looked back at the list of locations. If she took point, maybe Catano would forget about suspecting Nick.

Her plan worked… all too well. Both their heads turned when she let out a gasp.

"Hopps?" asked Catano. "What is it?"

She double-clicked to highlight a particular location, then turned the screen toward the two of them. Both stared, and Nick's eyes widened slightly.

"Well, that's cutting a bit close to home," he remarked.

Judy wished with all her might that 'close to home' wasn't so literal. One of the farms owned by Pwasson's Passion was located right out in Bunnyburrow, only halfway across town from her own family's farm.


At the back of Savannah Central Mall, mammals of every shape and size milled about. Some sort of special event - about which she couldn't care less - had sparked a number of sales, and the crowd was just at its peak.

Like fish in a barrel, thought Vanya Zarra, perched in an overhead vent. Taking to the ductwork was hardly the most original plan of attack, she knew, but hey, the oldest tricks got to be old for a reason. All things considered, though, she could almost have pulled this job right out in the open. For a place with so much valuable merchandise, her middle school locker had boasted better security.

"Now, let's see," she mused, scanning through the security cameras on a small iPaw's screen. "Hmm, not there. No, nein… nye-oh, this looks promising."

With cold blue eyes she surveyed the screen and nodded. Of course, she should have pegged it from the get-go. Where else would everyone be on this of all days – and at this time too, with all the kiddies fresh out of school?

Dark, crowds, everyone trying to ignore any disturbance… couldn't be better if I'd planned it myself, she mused, switching to a blueprint and casually strolling off through the duct work.

Following the turns on the screen, she easily found the way to her goal. Her excellent night vision made it a joke finding her way as the already dark ducts grew even darker, save for a faint flickering glow up ahead. A bare minute later, she reached a grate and worked it loose, catching it before it could fall and pulling it inside at an angle. She wore gloves, reasoning that even if she would be long gone by the time they pegged her, there wasn't much point in being sloppy.

Now, who's the lucky bulls-eye today? she wondered, gazing by the irregular lighting onto a crowd of mammals. Her eyes quickly singled one out, and she drew back to prepare her weapon. She was more experienced with actual guns, but it took less than a minute to assemble the air-powered shooter and load in its deadly payload. Then it was just a matter of watching and waiting for the right opportunity.

As she watched and waited, her mind drifted over the numerous times she had perched this exact way, watching like a waiting hawk about to make its fatal dive. She'd lost track of the times, save for her first hit some time back. It had been a job for Mr. Big, designed to start a gang war between two upstarts who needed to be... well, kept in their places. She'd been pretty greenback then, her paws shaking so badly she almost botched the whole operation. She'd improved with practice, though, and her 'sisters' had taught her well. This was business. This was life.

Before long, the mammal in question got out of his seat and made for the exit. Sighting along the barrel, Vanya waited until just the right moment, and then pulled the trigger.

Her target grunted, slapping behind his ear where the ball had struck, and continued on his way. A few steps, however, and he paused, jerking and grunting. Other theatergoers turned scowling at the interruption, but their faces turned from annoyance to terror as they realized what had happened… and what was about to happen.

As Vanya dropped a note down from the vent and slipped away, mammals began to chatter, shout, and scream, piling up on one another and clamoring to get to the far entrance. The crowd was already thick and crushing by the time the movie theater shook… with the deafening trumpet of an enraged bull elephant.

Another chapter, and another disaster. Sorry to take so long to get back to you all, but I do hope it was worth the wait. It's a bit of a mixed blessing that winter's arrival has not yet eliminated outside work from my schedule quite as much as I expected, and I apologize for the inaccurate predictions I've made on releases of my stories. I'm trying a new strategy to keep things moving, so we'll have to see how it plays out.

By the way, my apologies if the last scene was too much for anyone. The original concept for Vanya's attack was actually much worse, and even writing this one made me feel... well, honestly it was one of the worst feelings I've ever had; reminded me of a scene in Adventures in Odyssey where Whit, having been exposed to a mind-corrupting device, said it was like he had become pure evil with no regard for human life at all. Having Vanya commit a Night Howler attack was necessary for her path in this story, however, and I hope I did a sufficient job of presenting her actions for the evil that they are.

On the bright side, as some of you know, a friend of mine was kind enough to draw up a ten-page comic based on one of my other Zootopia stories, Rendez-Bleu from the Fox Dens and Rabbit Trails series. Although the fic is a long way from being done, you can find the comic in full on DeviantArt and soon on FurAffinity as well.

Guest Reviews

Guest: As usual I shall not drop spoilers, but that's certainly a valid theory.

Guest: Sure was. I don't mind saying I cried writing this chapter.