Five

Credit where it's due: in a roundabout way, Nick insisting on being a jerk actually served as an excellent motivator for her. Not only did it strengthen her resolve to live her truth and not care what anybody else thought, but she was fuming so much that she didn't have any disk space left on her mental computer to pay any heed to the terror that surrounded her. What inexplicable force had hurled those rocks at her and Nick? What was the source of that unbearably dreadful feeling that had overwhelmed all the boys? Who cared? She was on a mission here.

…A mission to where exactly, she couldn't tell you. She was just following the old platform in the direction she'd heard the crying until she finally reached its end, at which point she veered towards the set of tracks on her left, the one the rocks had been thrown from.

There was a little iron gate blocking off the small set of steps for each track; it wasn't a gate that you could unlatch and open, this was something rigid that ZTA workers were supposed to swing themselves around to bypass. She began to do likewise, but stopped herself halfway around and let herself hang there over the tracks for a moment like someone leaning off a streetcar. From here, she spat on each of the rails below to make sure none of them sizzled when moisture was applied to them; nope, they seemed fine, these tracks were no longer electrified. With that established, she had no more reason to hesitate, and down the dark tunnel she went.

"...Hello? Little girl? Little boy?" she called out. Of course, the distant sobbing had stopped again shortly after Nick's tirade; if it turned out his yelling had scared the kid so much that they were too afraid to even cry… oooh, that fox would have H-E-double-carrot-sticks to pay.

She was beginning to regret ever inviting him to join the police, lamenting that she'd ever let herself grow endeared by that vulpine charm that he now freely admitted was a façade, something he'd put on for years and perfected just so he could network and get business done. And that wasn't evil of him or anything… she was just annoyed with herself that she'd apparently been the last one to realize it was fake. Hey, good on him that he eventually told her the truth, but… Nick really didn't care about others, did he?

Which wasn't even to say he didn't want to care about others; she'd seen him try to, and that was much more credit that she'd have given him when they'd first met. But it seemed very clear to her now that Nick was so used to not caring about other mammals as a survival mechanism that now that he was trying to be caring, he just didn't know how to do it well. Judy really did believe that it wasn't Nick's fault that he was such a jerk, kindness was a skillset he'd been actively incentivized not to work on and now he had a lot of catch-up to play to get to a respectable level, but unfortunately for him… she just didn't have time to wait around for him to figure it out. The last thing she needed now was him holding her back.

Rather than weeping, what Judy could hear down there was the rumble of faraway subway trains, barreling down the plane of reality; these disused tunnels were still connected to the modern system, and although after the Nighthowler Crisis the actual tracks had been unlinked and the switches disabled so that no train could wind up here from the extant lines, the sound could still travel down these decrepit old tubes. But if she hadn't known that offhand, she could understand completely if somebody were to get freaked out by the distant sounds of machinery chugging along, as if the ghost of that ill-fated train itself were screaming down the tracks to run them over. But as it was, she only heard these trains for a few seconds before they faded away as quickly as they'd begun, never seeming to draw much closer.

She just hoped she was going in the right direction.

-IllI-

"...CARROTS!? …JUDY!? …I'm sorry, alright!?" I mean, I'm not, but this won't be the first time I've had to lie to save my ass.

He too was finding himself so preoccupied with anger and frustration that he hardly had time to think about being afraid down there. Yeah, what he'd said had been harsh, he'd known that even as he was saying it, but he'd been very careful to only say what he meant - hell, he'd stopped and corrected himself for accuracy at one point, for Christ's sakes - and he really did think she needed to hear all of that sooner or later. And he most assuredly wasn't open to being convinced that her smacking his expensive property out of his paws (and his only source of light, no less) before storming off was in any way a more mature decision than what he'd done. Absolutely not, good intentions be damned. Maybe she had a right to feel hurt, but he had a right to be angry.

Judy was far from the first mammal like herself that Nick had met in his life: the naïve archetypal goody-two-shoes who put all their chips on being book-smart and none on being street-smart, thinking it would be enough to cruise through life with that alone and getting destructively frustrated when they found out they were wrong. Someone who had always been at or near the top of their class in school but was nevertheless still a child, still young and impressionable, so that when those teachers (who couldn't have been that smart themselves if they were spending their lives as glorified babysitters) told her and those like her outright that yes, her life would be easier with a mind like hers and that she deserved the utmost praise because she was so smart - stopping just shy of saying you're better than others BECAUSE you're smart - she, trusting her elders, believed them. Then a sense of intellectual superiority spreads into a sense of moral superiority - because if they're so smart, all their opinions surely must be the wisest ones - and then this child becomes an adult who's spent their whole life reading pages instead of reading faces and freaks the fuck out when strangers aren't automatically following her righteous leadership without needing to be asked. And that's what had happened just a few minutes prior.

He pitied her, really, and all others like her; he really didn't believe it was her fault that she was the way she was. When she was young, she'd been misled by adults she'd trusted - not even that they'd lied to her, they just weren't that wise about the world either, adults who likewise didn't understand the importance of social acumen and reading the goddamn room… and the fact that these adults spent most of their waking hours interacting with definitionally immature people probably wasn't helping unskew their perspectives. He'd concede freely that Judy was much, much less inept in this regard than she'd been when he'd first met her, but if the fact that she'd honestly expected him to agree with everything she said without question was anything to go by, she still had a lonnng way to go, and this was neither the time nor place to explain to her why her methods were ineffective.

Nick found himself quietly hoping he'd come upon Judy in a… moderate state of trouble. Nothing that would actually threaten her life or anything, but just enough peril that she'd be grateful to see him again and might give him the apology to which he felt entitled. Diet danger, if you will. He wasn't proud realizing he wanted this, but awareness of this didn't make the desire feel any less real.

-IllI-

At a certain point, Judy had the pattern of stepping between the steel rail ties down to muscle memory, and while she could admit in retrospect that it may not have been the wisest decision, she used this opportunity to stop pointing her light on the ground before her to focus instead on the walls and ceiling, since after finding no clues on the floor, she figured she ought to literally cast her sights higher.

But there were neither phantoms glaring down at her nor any system of levers and pulleys that could create an elaborate ruse; no clues towards what was causing mammals distress down here, be it something spectral or mortal. And if it turned out that there really was something utterly insidious down there with her, she almost would have preferred it.

The arched walls were completely barren save for the emergency nooks for ZTA workers to duck into if a train approached, every couple dozen feet. Walls, nook, walls, nook, walls, nook, et cetera, et cetera ad infinitum. It was almost hypnotizing, like driving the straight and narrow roads out of Bunnyburrow, nothing but farmland around for as far as the eye could see with no external stimuli. And absent the wailing of a youngun and the assault of stones, she was starting to feel about this place much like she had just looking at its entrance before going downstairs, like it was a place where she didn't have to fear the living nor the dead, but rather fear that she was going somewhere that nature was not meant to exist. But before too long, she was reminded that natural things had indeed made their way down there - for better or worse.

It began with her feeling the floor begin to dip beneath her, and then, just as she was getting the inkling to look down:

Splash.

"...EEEEEEWWWWWWW!"

Well, there was that backed-up drainage system Nick had mentioned. She'd found herself near where the floor beneath the tracks sank towards an overflowing mammalhole cover.

Gripping her phone especially tightly to make sure she didn't drop it in the pool of raw sewage, and not being able to see her feet through the opaque semifluids, she very carefully tried to maneuver herself to the edge away from the funnel of f- no, no, I'm not gonna make that alliteration, that's disgusting, even I have my limits. But hey, if reading this is making you physically queasy, don't worry; as much as the bunny was feeling the same way, she soon had something else to occupy her mind:

Splash, splash, splash.

…That hadn't been her. She hadn't taken that many steps. And unless her enormous ears were failing at their express purpose… they'd come from behind her.

And this most assuredly did:

"...Ma-ma?"

Her brain didn't give her the choice to think about it; almost as a reflex, her head turned around as far as it could go. And there, standing in the puddle with her, was a wide-eyed little rabbit girl.

"GAH!" Judy yelped as she jumped in place, losing her balance and landing backwards in the water as a result.

But the little girl didn't scream back; instead, she just covered her face and began weeping anew as she turned and started running away.

"WAIT!" Judy cried out as she struggled to her feet and escaped from the liquid. "I-I'm sorry! I, I didn't mean to scare you!"

She looked down at her phone for a quick moment; it had gotten moisture on it, but it was still functioning, so she hurriedly wiped it dry and pointed her light at the child.

The little girl had stopped running, but was a few dozen feet away and didn't look interested in coming any closer. "I… I thought you were my mommy," she sniffled, "you look like her from behind."

And as Judy looked at this strange child, who couldn't have been more than three, four, maybe five at a push, the officer couldn't help but think this little bunny girl looked a lot like a few of her baby sisters. "No… I'm not your mommy," she explained gently, "...but my name is Officer Judy - I'm a police officer! I'm here to help, I can help you find your mommy! Now… can I ask what your name is?"

But, holding back more tears, the little girl just said, "...I don't know where my mommy is… I want my mommy!"

Every word that the child said made Judy's heart sink lower and lower, but she forced herself to stay strong for this poor thing. She tried taking a step closer very slowly, but she hardly even got one foot in front of the other before the little girl flinched.

Therefore Judy put her foot back for now. She took a moment to get a better look at the girl at the end of her light. The child was so far back that it almost looked like the darkness beyond was wrapping around her at the edges and extremities, but Judy could still make her out just fine. The girl was wearing a pink t-shirt under a pair of little-kid overalls, the chest of which was emblazoned with the logo and likenesses of… The Piggles? Jeez, that was a throwback; was that show even on anymore? Hey, maybe it was a hand-me-down in a big bunny family like her own.

…Or maybe it was purchased from a thrift store, by a struggling single mother, which if any kind of parent would bring their child down an abandoned subway tunnel, it'd be one who's flirting with homelessness. Oh, Nick, Judy thought to herself, you're gonna feel like such a jerk when you realize the kid was real.

"Do you… know where your mommy went?" the officer continued. "Did she say anything?"

And the little girl actually nodded a little. "She said she had to go stop the fox from scaring us."

"THE FOX!?" Judy could barely stop herself from saying it out loud, let alone not say it so loudly. "Wh-what fox!?"

Bashfully, the girl answered: "...The fox."

…Oh, Nick. Nick, you stupid, mean-spirited son of a gun. There was an actual mother and child taking shelter down here and his hooting and hollering had scared them. And no, the fact that they probably hadn't actually seen him wasn't a logical issue for her; having grown up in an environment that had instilled in her a certain… wariness about those of the vulpine persuasion, Judy knew that a lot of rabbits and hares could just sort of tell when a fox was around. This girl's mom probably heard Nick's voice and felt confident assuming his species by vocal timbre alone, and combined with her motherly instincts, Mama Bunny probably wasn't gonna wait for him to find them first. Stupid, stupid Nick.

"Wait," Judy urged, softly but firmly, "I know the fox! He's… foxes don't realize sometimes how scary they are! But he's a cop, too! He's a good guy! And after we find your mommy, we'll… I'll make him apologize to both of you! For scaring you!"

She was taking a few slow steps towards the child, but the child was taking a few slow steps backwards in turn. Or at least it seemed like that; Judy was focusing on the girl's eyes, not her feet, but the girl nevertheless didn't seem to be getting any closer.

"I'm afraid the fox is gonna eat my mommy…" the little girl squeaked, "...I want my mommy…"

"The fox isn't gonna eat your mommy!" Judy assured her. "The fox's name is Nick! He's nice! He's just… stupid…"

But the girl just sniffled again and repeated, "You're not my mommy. I want my mommy!" And off she ran, farther than Judy's light could reach, into the darkness beyond.

"WAIT!" She didn't try to keep her voice down this time. Judy ran off as fast as she could towards the girl without tripping over the rail ties. "WHAT'S YOUR NAME!?"

-IllI-

…Hell, what was his name?

He was starting to lose it. The fox had never been in one of those sensory-deprivation chamber things, but he had to imagine it felt something like this. The loudest sounds in this tunnel were his own footsteps; besides that, silence. With no signs of anything living or dead down there, it was almost starting to feel like an out-of-body experience, like a dream where a character who looked a lot like himself walked along through an empty space. He could imagine watching himself stumble along in the dark from over his own shoulder or an aerial shot behind his head, and he was nearly drawing a blank on what this strange creature's name was.

…No, no, he remembered now, he remembered. He was Nicholas P. Wilde, and and the P stood for Piberius, like Tiberius, named after his mom's first TV crush (much to his late father's chagrin), but the initial T changed to the P to sneakily appease Nick's grandparents, who really wanted their grandchild's name to be Paul.

…Or, wait, was it Paul or Peter? Shit, Peter or Paul, which one was the bullshit name they told Gramma and Grampa the P stood for? It had to be one of those two, because his grandparents were really religious… or, hell, was it Patrick since his mom's side were proud Slyrish-Animerican foxes? Crap, or was it Philip like his uncle on his dad's side!? Which was the fake name his parents used for the Harry S Shruman charade?

Nick had no idea why he was thinking about this, but now that he was, he was freaking himself out realizing how much of his own biography he was drawing a blank on. As he kept venturing aimlessly through the dark, he couldn't help but be struck by how much he wasn't feeling like himself… though he wasn't feeling like anybody else in particular, either.

What was he even doing down here again?

"Hey!"

His foot got caught under a rail tie as he jumped in surprise. "GOD - DAMMIT!" THUD.

Nick groaned in pain as he tried to get himself up, doing so in utter darkness since he'd dropped his phone-light again. But his night-vision was working just well enough to notice a paw reaching out to help him.

A white paw, but following it up its arm showed the light fur give way to vermillion before it ended at the cut-off sleeve of a ratty old canvas coat. And his nose was working well enough to confirm that this was in fact another red fox. Only then did he accept it.

As he got up, he snagged his phone with his other paw and shined it onto the face of his savior, who predictably put his paws up to shield his eyes.

"Oh-! Sorry…"

"Man, I help you out and you repay me by blinding me!?" But the grizzled fox wasted no time laughing to show he wasn't actually angry. "You okay there, son?"

Son. This guy certainly looked old enough to be from the generation who'd call any younger male son. Then again, maybe he wasn't that much older than Nick after all and had simply been prematurely aged by an arduous life. Or maybe this dude just did a lot of meth, it wasn't entirely clear. But in any case, while this fox certainly wasn't Nick's dad and didn't look like he could pass for it anyway, the stranger did indeed have a strangely fatherly air about him… and he did strike Nick as inexplicably familiar.

"Uh… yeah, I'm, I'm alright," Nick mumbled. "Just a little… eh, banged up, but I'll suck it up."

"Good to hear," said the stranger with a soft smile, though it quickly shifted to a scrunched-up look of confusion. Sniff… sniff… sniff, sniff. "What smells like piss?" the stranger asked as casually as one could.

Nick's eyes popped open as he was too mortified to answer. He just tried not to let his eyes wander south and give it away.

"...Is it piss?" the stranger asked, pointing at Nick's crotch. "Is it piss that smells like piss?"

If it were possible for Nick's cheeks to get any redder, they probably would have. "I'm… surprised you were able to pick up on that," he murmured, figuring there was no need to give a straight answer.

The man gave him one of those oh, come now smirks like one would give a friend they thought was being ridiculous. "You're a fox yourself, ain't ya?" he chided playfully. "We got good canine noses - just like we got good night-vision! That's why I'm so surprised you didn't notice that you walked right past me!"

…Well, as good a moment as any to pop that question. "Yeah, about that… where were you?"

The guy pointed to one of the many emergency nooks. "You really didn't see me?"

Nick had to force a chuckle. "Well, in the genetic lottery, I won big in the Vulpine Cunning and Charisma departments, but perhaps at the cost of special abilities with the five senses!"

Another smirk from the stranger to make clear that he wasn't buying it but wasn't gonna be mean about it. "Ehhh, fox to fox, you honestly don't strike me as too charismatic, slugger. But no matter!" he beamed as he put an arm around Nick. "We'll make a fox outta you yet!"

Okay, fair enough, Nick wasn't feeling very cool and collected in that tunnel, but he did still have his tongue: "But, waitwaitwait… what're you doing down here?"

The stranger giggled through his nose. "Looking for the Holy Grail, y'know?" It seriously seemed like this guy was flexing his own foxy swagger after calling out Nick for losing his own. "C'mon, man, look at the way I'm dressed. I'm fuckin' homeless, bud. You wandered into my stomping grounds."

"...Were you here this whole time?"

"Where else would I have been?"

"I-I mean…" the officer's face twisted up. "Did you hear us screaming from the Banyan Street station? We were specifically asking if anybody was down here."

The stranger stopped smiling, and came to wear a hurt look like a parent about to explain something tough to a child. "I heard the police screaming - us homeless folks don't like the police very much. We mind our own business and they come down here and harass us 'cause they're bored. Even if they don't beat the tar out of us, they'll still slap us with a ticket for vagrancy they know damn well we can't pay. And that, before you ask, is why I was hiding from you… at least until I saw you were another redhead and that I could probably trust you to understand."

Nick just nodded; he understood completely. Except for one thing:

"...So… why'd you sneak up on me like that?"

And the stranger was grinning again. "Because we're foxes, Nick. And unlike other species, we don't pretend it isn't fun to just screw with others from time to time."

Nick let out a weak chuckle in agreement. Alright, so Judy hadn't been completely off-base: there was, technically, a shameless prankster down here, and a living one at that. But he'd been far more on-point; he'd warned her if there had been real mammals down there, threatening them with vulgar displays of power would do nothing to endear them. Ah, stupid Judy. That dumb redneck rabbit, that bunny bumpkin, that-

-WAIT, hold up, did you catch that?

"...How did you know my name?" Nick tried not to look or sound too freaked out.

The stranger laughed again to himself. "...You're Nick Wilde, aren't ya? Everybody knows Nick Wilde because Nick Wilde knows everybody!" And then, still smiling, this guy's face changed to look… just a little bit offended. "...I'll grant ya it's been a while, but… don't tell me you don't remember me."

Jesus, if this guy was trying to tell Nick that he was better than him at manipulating emotions like only a fox could, he was doing a great job proving his point, because this strange man had successfully made our hero feel kind of bad for not recognizing him… especially because this guy did look so tauntingly, implacably familiar. Because the stranger made a fair point: Nick probably had met him before, and he was kicking himself for letting his memory slip.

"I, uh… I'm sorry, man, I do feel like I've seen you before, but… I'm drawing a complete blank." And Nick did indeed look apologetic as he said this. "Could you… gimme a little refresher?"

But the strange fox just laughed the loudest he had so far. "Oh, Nick, Nick, Nick, you poor, poor dear. It'll come back to you! Hell, I kinda wanna see how long it takes you to remember!" He patted Nick's shoulder and started leading them off down the tunnel. "Now c'mon, let's make our primitive ancestors proud and practice your night-vision!"

As they started walking, it dawned upon Nick that this stranger had never taken his arm off him… and he'd been okay with it. Nick wasn't usually susceptible to other mammals who tried to play themselves off as charmers like he did, he knew better than to buy into it, but something about this guy was just… oddly magnetic. Genuine and not forced. Maybe it was how self-contained this fox was even as he was living in squalor. Sure, the guy was being a little bit of a douche in his unending confidence and refusal to filter himself, but if Nick could dish it, he knew he ought to be able to take it. And honestly… he kinda wanted to. This guy was cool, cool enough that Nick didn't even feel threatened for not being the cool guy himself with him around. Nick didn't know where he was taking him, but he was more than happy to go along with it. And that goddamn rabbit was missing out on this.

"You know what else I heard being screamed down the tracks?" continued the stranger. "I heard someone singing a… this goofy fuckin' song I'd never heard before in my life, for all I know, they mighta been making it up… Was it you?"

Nick chuckled awkwardly. "Uh… y-yeah, guilty as charged! Random '80s song I heard months ago over the speakers in a gas station and it never totally left my head, heh heh…"

The older fox kept smiling as he raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?"

"Yup! Uh… I wanted to sing a song about being in the subway, but… just couldn't think of any others, y'know?" Goddammit, it was bugging him: "Hey, could you maybe, like… gimme a hint about who you are, or where I know you from?"

And the stranger actually seemed to ponder this for a moment. But when a moment passed and he snapped his fingers before grinning at Nick, rather than giving a straight answer… the old fox started singing:

"I aaam the paaassengerrrrr…"

At first, Nick was confused.

"I riiiiide, and I riiiiide, and I riiiiiiiiide…"

…But then he got it: the old boy wasn't gonna give him a hint, but he was going to suggest another commuter-rail-themed jingle. Of course, Piggy Pop, the shirtless swine himself, and his classic tune about riding the train in Bearlin on his way to go hang out with David Cowie. How could Nick ever forget!? He joined in with what words he knew:

"...III seeeee the staaaaaaars commmmme ouuuuuuut toooniiiiiiight…

"Ya knowwwww they looooook sooo goooooood toniiiiight…!"

And the stranger, arm still side-hugging Nick, gave him a pat or two on the shoulder to express his approval.

Just like Nick himself had done earlier, the duo who were not even remotely trained vocalists were fudging some of the lyrics and singing some entire bars and verses out of order, but so what? This wasn't Animerican Idol, this was for fun.

"Aaand evvvvv'ryyythiiiiing waaas MAAAAAAADE forrr youuu an' meeeeeee!

"Alllll of iiit waaaaas MAAAAAAADE forrr YOUUU an' MEEEEEEE!

"'Cauuuuuse iiit ALLLLL beeeeeLONNNNNNNGS tooo YOUUU an' MEEEeEeEeE…!"

And what fun they were having. Nick hadn't a clue why he was feeling such a strong bond with this guy whose name he didn't even know, but hell, if it feels good, ya don't resist it. As they walked along singing through the dark tunnel, The Stranger tugging him along, Nick felt like he was in the ending scene of that Sidney movie about the two homeless guys who discover a lost child in the jungle, the bear dragging the panther along to go crooning as they waltzed into the sunset - except Nick didn't have to be forced along for the ride, he was enjoying this. He felt one hundred percent comfortable in this man's presence, and he hoped he could introduce this guy to Judy, just to make that dumb bunny feel stupid for being such an enemy of fun.

Oh, and the spooky shit that had been happening down there? Didn't even cross his mind.

"Oh singin' laaaaa-laaa, laaaaaaa-laaa, laaa-la-la-laaaaa…!

"Laaaaa-laaa, laaaaaaa-laaa, laaa-la-la-laaaaa…!

"Laaaaa-laaa, laaaaaaa-laaa, laaa-la-la-laaaaa, la la…"