Six

"...But what does your mommy look like!?" Judy begged.

"I thought you looked like her," said the voice whose origin she could no longer see, "but you're not my mommy."

Somewhere along the line, the officer had stopped trying to run. Not due to her lungs stinging or her legs hurting - well, actually, scratch that, it was because her legs were hurting, but not due to fatigue, rather because of getting banged up after repeatedly tripping and falling on the rail ties. After a failed experiment with trying to run on the rails themselves like a sprint across an endless balance beam, she allowed herself to dial it back a bit and just walk. Besides, it seemed like the little bunny girl wanted Judy to keep her distance anyway and was doing all she could to see to it that our heroine never drew any closer - though how she was managing to keep moving so fast, Judy hadn't the foggiest. Evidently this child had been down here a while if she could move that fast in the dark without falling or hitting something.

"But… I can't help you find your mommy unless you let me know what she looks like!" Judy repeated for the umpteenth time.

"...She's a bunny… like you and me," the girl answered from the darkness.

No duh, Nancy Moo, Judy found herself thinking. But she understood that this was clearly a very, very young child who didn't grasp the urgency of her own situation, so the officer reminded herself to be patient.

"But what else?"

Every now and then, Judy's flashlight would catch a glimpse of the girl down the tunnel, passing over her as she waved her phone back and forth across the pitch black, only for Judy to not be able to locate the child again when she tried to point the light back at where she thought she'd found her. Sometimes the girl had her back to Judy, walking away; other times she could be found standing like a statue, staring at her. But in any case, she was never in the same spot twice.

"My mommy says don't talk to strangers," was all the girl had to say.

Well, unfortunately for Judy, the girl's mother had raised her a little too well. But as frustrating as it was trying to get information out of the little bunny… every time this innocent kid mentioned her mommy, Judy just felt crushed. She couldn't help but feel this girl was pulling on motherly heartstrings Judy hadn't previously had a reason to use, and that just made her more determined to reunite her with her real mommy.

The officer wanted to remind the child that she was a cop and she was sworn to serve and protect, but she'd already said that about a dozen times, and for all she knew, maybe the girl's desperate mother had had bad experiences with cops and had already instilled a distrust of police in her daughter. This line of reasoning was clearly going nowhere, so Judy tried a new approach:

"...Tell me why your mommy felt like she had to go… find 'The Fox'."

"Because he keeps scaring us." The bunny girl might have been getting farther away, because her voice was starting to echo a little.

Judy was already envisioning giving Nick a good yank on the tail after all this. "B-but he didn't mean to scare you! I promise, I know him!"

A moment passed before she heard a reply: "...Are you friends with The Fox?"

And it took another moment for Judy to be able to answer that question. "Uh… yeah, you could say that."

The voice was echoing louder now: "...But The Fox is mean. I don't like The Fox."

"Yeah, he can be mean sometimes…" Don't I know it? "...But… he's nice, too! …Sometimes. H-he can be your friend, too! He'll even say he's sorry!"

"...I don't wanna be friends with The Fox," came the echoing whimper. "The Fox is scary."

Alright, Judy could see what the little girl was getting at: the friend of the scary monster must also be a scary monster, too. She was kicking herself for not realizing sooner that that would be how a terrified child would parse that. So she tried something similar but distinct:

"What was your mommy planning to do once she found The Fox?"

It seemed like the little girl had to wonder about that herself before answering.

"...She's gonna fight him."

"FIGHT him!?"

"She's gonna make him stop scaring us."

She wasn't proud of this, but Judy found herself chuckling just a little at the idea of Nick just standing there and ruefully taking it as a mama bunny tried to kick his butt. But the chuckle didn't last for long.

…Somehow, someway, she suddenly envisioned him raising a paw to a lady much smaller than himself. And not in a simple self-defense sort of way like deflecting a punch; Judy still wouldn't be the most comfortable with seeing something like that, but couldn't call it unreasonable. No, something had planted a sequence in her head of a female rabbit repeatedly socking that fox, followed by him backhanding her, hard enough to knock her down without her getting back up.

Where was this thought coming from? She'd love to know herself, then she could tell the intrusive thought to go away. But as it was… before that evening, she'd never have thought Nick would ever do such a thing. Now, for reasons she couldn't even pretend to understand… she suddenly wasn't so sure. And she didn't like that.

"...How will she fight him?"

"...She's gonna make him stop scaring us."

"Well… I can find The Fox and tell him to leave if that's what you need me to do! He'll listen to me!"

The girl didn't answer at first.

"...Hello?"

"...The Fox is never gonna leave this place."

What does she mean by that? "Uh… yes he will! Why wouldn't he?"

"...Where would he go?"

"...Home?"

"But this is his home-"

"AAAAAH!"

The girl's voice suddenly came from right behind her once again; just as before, this startled Judy, and just as before, her reflexive screaming scared the little bunny girl twice as much, inspiring her to run away crying back down the tracks in the direction they'd just been walking from.

"Hold on!" Judy pleaded yet another time as she pursued the little girl once again, careful to move quickly but not too quickly. Jeez, talk about déjà vu all over again… but how did she wind up behind me? Nevertheless, that wasn't even the strangest thing about that interaction, so the officer saved her breath for a different question. "What do you mean this is his home?"

"He thinks we don't belong here," the girl answered, curiously without much hesitation this time. "He… he doesn't want bunnies here, he thinks this belongs to foxes."

Judy almost stopped in her tracks when she heard that.

It made sense now: the child couldn't put it into words, but she was filling in the blanks about Nick judging by what she'd been told about foxes, presumably by her mother. And what her mother had probably told her about foxes was that they were meanies who thought they were superior to rabbits, seeing lapines as uppity little shits who needed to know their place and stay out of the vulpines' way. That was certainly what Judy herself had been taught, and something she'd seen proven correct growing up with Gideon Grey in her life - true, he later found therapy and baking and Jesus and turned his life around, but some adult in his upbringing must have conditioned that fox to think his species had dominion over hers even as a kit; mindsets like that don't come out of nothing. There were undeniably foxes out there who saw rabbits as pesky lesser-thans worthy of scorn, Mama Bunny must have taught that to her baby - maybe overblowing the number of bigoted bullies, maybe not - and now that they heard Nick screaming, mother and child alike assumed he was one of those. It just made too much sense.

"No, no!" Judy begged the girl. "Y-yeah, some foxes are mean like that… but this one isn't!" …I think. Goshdarnit, Nick, you stupid fox, you traumatized this family! If I weren't a cop, I could just about kill you…

Then something unexpected happened: Judy's light caught the little girl, but this time she didn't lose sight of her just as quickly. And the child was standing perfectly still, staring straight at her, not looking afraid this time, but looking… solemn.

"...My mommy knows The Fox better than you do."

And off the girl ran again.

Wait, so now the mom is someone who has a history with Nick and has a bone to pick with him!? Judy thought as she tailed the girl. 'She knows him better than you do,' EVIDENTLY if she recognized his voice! What does she know that I don't? Did he…

She almost tripped again when she had the thought.

Did he use to be one of those foxes, and her mom knows it? Oh, Nick, what the HECK did you DO!?

Now, does Nick Wilde seem like the kind of guy who might have once been a vulpine supremacist? Maybe not, but hey… when your child says something alarming, you believe them implicitly and ask questions later. And this little girl needed a mother right now.

Perhaps against her better judgment, Judy ran.

-IllI-

"Heh… so you came down here to go ghost-hunting?"

Over in the parallel tunnel, the tods had eventually run out of lyrics they knew and just started shootin' the shit. But that was no problem to them; they were quite enjoying each other's company.

"Ah… yeah, yeah, yeah," Nick answered with a smile doing a shoddy job of hiding embarrassment. "Laugh at me if you want-"

"I will!" vowed The Stranger cheerfully. "But I know you're gonna take it like a champ, ain't ya!?"

Nick chuckled nervously, but it wasn't forced this time. It was weird; he'd historically been very skeptical of any mammal who seemed more effortlessly likable than himself, always having assumed they must be faking it just like he was - after all, with enough effort, you can make anything look effortless. He'd been projecting. But with this guy, Nick didn't feel even an inkling that The Stranger was putting on a face, he totally bought that he was this impossibly affable. And Nick didn't even care that he was feeling uncharacteristically weird and awkward around him, because for whatever reason, the old fox still got a kick out of Nick, and our hero was loving every minute of it. Not only the relief of not feeling pressured to be the cool one, but getting to enjoy the presence of someone he thought was pretty cool - a rare occurrence indeed. Combine that with how The Stranger made him feel genuinely seen and appreciated for who he was and… honestly? Gun to his head, Nick in that moment would probably say he trusted this homeless guy whose name he didn't know with his life.

"You know who I don't envy?" Nick asked rhetorically in an attempt to entertain his new friend. "Ghost-story writers. Bonus points if they're writing, like… the Halloween special of a non-horror TV show or something. Because… do you make the ghosts 'real' in your story or not? Because the polls have been done, the Animerican public is split almost exactly fifty-fifty between mammals who do and do not believe in ghosts, and most of those people think the opposite group is so stupid for believing what they do or don't that they won't even trust their judgment on anything. But wait, there's more! Add in everyone who does believe in ghosts but would think making them unambiguously real in a fictional non-horror universe would be incredibly tacky, and then the ones who don't believe in ghosts but who'd say 'c'mon, it's fiction, it's for fun! Let your ghosts be real, don't be boring!' …and congratulations, cowboy, you've just maximized the guaranteed number of people who're gonna hate your decision and think you're dumber than a box full of shit no matter what choice you make!"

The other tod just nodded along with a soft smile, seeming like he had listened and found the younger fox's monologue fascinating but not necessarily funny.

"...Do you believe in ghosts, Nicky?" the older fox asked with a skeptical smile.

Oh, the officer would have had fifty different ways to answer that question at fifty different points over the past hour. But by then, he settled for a

"Pfft… oh, I don't know!" he laughed. "God knows we had an argument about that-"

"We?"

Nick's tongue froze as he realized he'd neglected to actually explain who he'd come here with. "Uh… y-yeah, I thought I'd mentioned. Um…" What was he gonna call her? Friend? Female friend? Acquaintance? After that ridiculous fight, he had no idea where they stood. "...I was with a coworker of mine before, uh… before they chickened out and left."

The Stranger seemed very intrigued by that. "Hmmm… multiple of ya, eh? Miracle then that the cops didn't find ya."

The officer tried not to look too surprised by this. Well, then… however long ago this guy had met him, apparently it was before he'd joined the Force - a testament to this guy's memory that he remembered him after all these years, but curious that this fox seemed to be the last mammal in Zootopia to hear the news.

And he wasn't gonna hear the news now. "Yeah… I know I was walking down this tunnel to get away from the fuzz, I dunno why they ran towards the fucking cops to get to the exit."

Now that got a decent laugh out of The Stranger. "Heh… stupid and cowardly, that's something I'd expect from a rabbit!"

…Nick hoped his new friend's fox ears weren't so powerful that he could hear him gulping. Did… did this guy know? Was he just playing coy for whatever reason?

Well, whatever he was playing, it wasn't coy as his chipper mood suddenly deteriorated. "Argh… goddammit, now I'm angry!"

"Uh… why?"

"Just thinking about bunnies! And the fucking audacity they have saying they deserve to be treated equally when… th-they've gotta know they're born to die, right? Or are they actually so stupid that they genuinely don't realize that they were put on this earth to be a food source for more important species?"

Well, this conversation had certainly taken an interesting turn. But Nick still had enough of his social wisdom to know his best bet was to play along. "Uh… I guess it depends on the bunny?"

The Stranger just scoffed. "I mean, even by prey standards… like, in school they taught you that back in the Primitive Era, a lot of species had entire litters of kids because they could assume, like, preemptively that most of them would die, right?"

"..."

"They taught you that, right?"

"...Yeah, but we used to do that, too-"

"Used to!" the scruffy fox corrected. "But ninety-odd percent of species evolved out of that once our brains turned on and we didn't need to do that anymore. And while, okay, sure, fine, us former litterbugs might still have higher rates of having twins and triplets and shit, rabbits and hares, though? Two of the very, very few species where more than half of modern pregnancies produce multiple live offspring. Combine that with the fact that they, actually factually, still premeditatively get themselves pregnant over and over again to have even more kids like every species did a hundred, two hundred years ago when we expected all our kits and cubs to die in the factories and coal mines they worked in…" He trailed off for a moment and shook his head in frustration. "...There's no natural reason for them - intentionally or unintentionally - to be having that many children unless they weren't all supposed to make it."

…For the first time since he'd met this guy, Nick felt kind of awkward and uncomfortable - and not in the 'outshined by someone cooler than you' way. But nevertheless, he felt he oughta say something. "Well, uh… I-I know a lot of them are really religious, sooo, uh… may-, uh, maybe it's like a Quiverfull Movement kind of thing? They, uh, they're trying to take over the world by outbreeding us!"

The Stranger rolled his eyes. "Sounds about right. Crushing us with sheer numbers and no strength or strategy would be the only way they'd ever get any power in this world. I mean, what would a world run by rabbits even be like!? They're the antithesis of leaders! Their only natural skill is running away really fast from conflict… and then living in poverty with the irresponsible number of children they can't afford to feed and clothe because they were either too stupid or too goddamn negligent to stop having unprotected sex! What a pathetic excuse for a species: no brains, no brawn, no balls. Pfft," he scoffed, and for a moment he seemed done with his rant.

But then he put an arm around Nick again, just as he did earlier. "...But you know what skills our people have, Nicky Boy? Cunning. Minds unlike any other species. And what feeds those minds? What literally nourishes a sharp brain? Heh… protein. Which comes from meat…"

He gave our hero another shoulder-pat before relinquishing his arm. "For Christ's sakes," the older fox kept grumbling, "chocolate Easter bunnies were invented by rabbits! How the fuck are they gonna complain about how they got eaten back in the day while they're actively encouraging us to devour them in effigy!? HOW!?"

That last word echoed down the tunnel before them like a battlecry through a war-ravaged valley. Nick could practically feel it reverberating through his bones. And when he did, for the first time since he'd met this guy, Nick was feeling a little less than comfy in The Stranger's presence.

But it wasn't because the grizzled old guy was a stark raving lunatic; it was because he was actually making a troubling amount of sense.

"Uh… yeah, that's… those are some mixed signals they're sending," the officer agreed - and it didn't feel like he was just lying to be polite.

The Stranger, however, was still fuming as they walked along. "Man… don't you ever just wanna… grab a rabbit by the ears and pull them apart to see if they just… pop off? Or maybe only one'll come off like a wishbone…"

Nick let out a chuckle, only a little forced. "Ya mean kinda like in those crappy old CGI commercials for Springer's Fox Repellent?"

The other fox gave him a bored look. "Us homeless folks don't tend to watch a lot of TV, Nick…" He shook his head and didn't even look at Nick's embarrassed expression before continuing: "But let's not talk TV, let's talk literature. Speaking of things every red-blooded Animerican learns in school… they made you read To Kill a Mockingbird at some point, right? Hopper Lee?"

"...Yeah? The, uh… that's the book about the little bunny girl whose dad's a lawyer, and he's gotta defend a fox who gets falsely accused of… having his way with a rabbit woman? That one, right?"

"The very same. And you remember that one character… the ram, he's married to a vixen, but the prey in town excuse it because he's the town drunk? Or so they think, but the kids find out that it was actually just Coke he was drinking out of his brown-paper bag?"

Nick nodded just a little. "I think everyone remembers that scene… for whatever reason."

The Stranger kept his eyes looking straight ahead. "He faked a substance-abuse problem because it was the only way for an ignorant society to accept his unpopular beliefs…" Only now did he turn to smile softly at Nick. "...I think about that scene a lot."

Nick nodded again, not knowing what to say at first. He looked down at the tracks they were walking on for a moment, figuring he had to look somewhere or other.

And it was then that he realized that he'd been getting lazy with his phone flashlight. He'd progressively been pointing it lower and lower until it was essentially shining straight down.

Yet he'd had no problem making out The Stranger's face in the dark. Hey, maybe being around this fox really was somehow improving his night-vision, or perhaps his eyes were finally adjusting to the oppressive opacity. But it didn't seem like that was the case; it seemed like there was some measure of ambient light emanating from… somewhere. And maybe it was just a matter of it reflecting off their fur, but… whatever light was illuminating the orb they filled seemed to have a distinct red tint to it.

He thought again about the feeling Chris and Finn had described: a sense of foreboding like you'd feel at the edge of a Happytown alley you just sort of knew not to walk down unless you wanted something bad to happen. Nick still didn't feel that feeling; but he was beginning to feel something similar. He felt something not unlike walking past the scene of a Happytown drive-by a few days after the fact: a sense that something bad had already happened here, and would probably happen again, because that was just the way this place was.

And the way The Stranger was talking, it felt like 'this place' was the world in general: a place where maybe savagery and brutality were indeed natural and we'd all do well to accept it. Nick didn't like that… but for reasons he still didn't fully understand, he felt compelled to follow this old fox's wisdom, uncomfortable as it may be.

Said old fox was still smiling at him, seemingly like he was anticipating a reply. So, eyes down towards the light on the tracks, Nick gave him one.

"Heh… pretending to be fucked up on something to get a free pass on believing something socially unacceptable… maybe keep that under wraps, eh? Otherwise mammals might start faking getting hit with a Nighthowler for an excuse to maul someone!"

And it was only now as Nick looked down at his own feet that he realized he couldn't see The Stranger's next to him.

The old tramp guffawed and paused for a second before asking, "...What the hell is a Nighthowler?"