Chapter 3: The Sangshank Redemption
Sahara Square
Southeast Zootopia Small Mammal Penitentiary - Solitary Confinement
No Clue
Lucy Sang was starting to think that her ancient ancestors were complete idiots with the whole "hiding in a dark cave" lifestyle. The concept lost a lot of its appeal around the point when she realized that there was absolutely nothing to do. At least back in her attic, she had free food and her art to keep her occupied. Here in the cramped confines of solitary, she was pretty much limited to three things: sleep, shit, or glare angrily at the bars as if hoping to melt them through sheer spite.
The third option got old pretty fast, number two was, well, number two, and that left her curling up in her appallingly-tiny bed, trying desperately to sleep.
It didn't come easy, and not just because of the complete lack of comfort. She still had the mysterious note from "LB" curled under her wing and she still had no idea what to make of it. Unfortunately, there was little else to occupy her mind right now and so it began to wander.
What could it even stand for? Little Benny?
Lucy blinked as there was suddenly a small pig standing in her cell. His name was apparently Benny, so said her subconscious.
Uh... Large Benny?
The pig immediately grew several sizes in an instant... yet was somehow still standing in her cell.
Pigs are dumb anyway. How about... Limp Bovine?
The pig promptly turned into a very thin and sickly-looking bull.
Oooh, this is fun! Let's try... Lying Bitch!
The bull turned into a wolf. A female wolf who leaned down towards her and said, "You are not going crazy right now."
Oh guano, I'm hallucinating, aren't I?
The wolf immediately disappeared.
"Aw, come on, I was enjoying that!" Lucy moaned, falling back onto her pillow.
She huffed. How long had she even been in here? It felt like hours since she had been brought in. It had to be nighttime by now. Right?
The sound of the door unlocking made Lucy bolt upright. Several burly rats in guard uniforms stood in the doorway. All of them were armed with pistols. "You're coming with us," one informed simply.
"Uhhhh..." Lucy wanted to come up with a smart retort, like one of those heroes who got falsely sent to prison on TV. But instead, she just said, "Okay."
What else could she do? They were armed, she wasn't. It was simple logic. Lucy stepped out of the cell, almost immediately being jabbed in the back as if they thought she needed convincing to leave this hellhole. If she was lucky, she'd be heading back to her original cell with Ci-Ci, and could at least have a full-sized bed again.
She internally shuddered as she realized just how far her standards had fallen already.
But it soon became apparent that she was not being taken back to her cell. The guards took her right past the cell blocks, jabbing her again when she expressed confusion, and led her further down the hall towards a much larger room, absolutely enormous by her newly-lowered standards. But really, it was just the communal showers.
Lucy was miffed. You aren't exactly a rose garden either, guys.
That's when it hit her. The showers were already running, and the room was full of steam.
The blood drained from Lucy's face. She'd seen enough movies to know what was going on. The steam would ensure that the cameras couldn't see into the room, so whoever had taken her from her cell could do whatever they pleased. And now I'm going to get murdered. This is the worst ambiguous time of day ever!
Shower Room
Still Ambiguous
She almost had to echolocate to see who was waiting for her in the steam. It was an old rabbit lady. Really old, with knobby knuckles and fur fully grayed from head to toe. The wrinkles on her face were visible through both her fur and the steam. She sat on a stool, leaning her chin on folded knuckles and gazing at Lucy with an unreadable expression.
"Hey, do you guys mind telling me who this...?" Lucy looked back over her shoulder to see that the guards were already gone. That was another red flag. This rabbit was in a prisoner's uniform, just like her, but anyone who could exude that amount of influence over the prison staff, if indeed they were the real staff at all, was not to be trifled with. She had better approach this one with caution or she might never make it back to her cell at all.
"Uh... hi." The rabbit did not react. "Are you, uh..." She wracked her brain desperately for an answer. "Lanky... Bunny?"
The bunny laughed, but didn't smile. "So you're at least clever enough to guess. Good. I am La Bruja."
She didn't say it like it was supposed to mean something, or as if Lucy was supposed to recognize it. It just sounded like a simple introduction one might give on the first day of school. It creeped Lucy out, but at least she knew what the LB stood for now. That would've gotten really annoying if it was dragged out for much longer. "Okay... I'm Lucy?"
"Why do you phrase it as a question?"
"Uh... I don't know?"
La Bruja sighed, rubbing her temples. "You are not going to survive in prison without help."
"H-Hey," she protested weakly. "I've been doing okay so far. Got my uniform, made a new friend, even if she kinda smells, made it through lunch, survived my hallucinations..."
"You picked a fight with a tasmanian devil on your first day."
"And... won?"
"See, now that time it made sense."
Yeah, this sounds pathetic even to me. "So... you want to help me then? Why?"
"Perhaps because you're young and inexperienced, and I feel a matronly urge. Perhaps you interest me, and I see a use in you that you don't see yourself yet." La Bruja shrugged. "I'm not inclined to tell you, since you have no other options. You have nothing to negotiate with. Would you like my help, or not?"
Her business savvy was blunt enough to make her father proud. "Well... I wasn't really planning on joining a gang..."
For whatever reason, that got the biggest laugh out of her yet, a throaty cackle that brought to mind images of her namesake.
Then it stopped abruptly. "It is a yes or no question, Lucy Sang."
A chill ran down her spine, pretty impressive for how hot it was in here. She knew her name. And if she knew her name, there was a very likely chance she knew everything about her. Even from behind prison walls.
It was fear that motivated her decision more than anything. She didn't know if she wanted to be La Bruja's "friend", but she damn sure didn't want to be her enemy. "Yes... I would like your help. Please."
"Good." She nodded curtly. "You may go. I'll meet up with you in the morning. The guard outside will take you back to your cell. Your cellmate has been worried for your health."
"How do you know what she-?"
"I believe I told you to go."
She went.
Mess Hall
9: 18 AM
At first, it didn't seem like much had changed.
The next morning saw Lucy and a very relieved Ci-Ci returning to the mess hall for breakfast. The usual slop was provided and consumed, the mongoose shoveling it down like it was her last meal. Lucy herself nibbled at it a bit too, having grown hungry enough to ignore her much higher standards. And there was no unwelcome visit from any angry tasmanian devils this time. Everything seemed normal, or at least, as normal as things got in prison.
Oh, except that the rabbit was here now.
It was almost insulting. La Bruja was in the same uniform as the rest of them, eating the same food as the rest of them, not at all the image of the intimidating figure who had somehow managed to get her pulled out of solitary and into a private meeting in the showers. If anything, her ability to act so normal now was even more unnerving.
Ci-Ci seemed to be clueless about... well, a lot of things, but particularly her. She just kept eating away, almost nonstop, not so much as glancing up from her meal. It couldn't possibly be that good, could it? In any case, Lucy hadn't told her anything. La Bruja didn't explicitly say to keep her mouth shut about their meeting, but she sort of got that vibe out of it. She wasn't an idiot, except for perhaps so readily agreeing to her terms without knowing that much herself.
Finally, La Bruja spoke. "So..."
"DON'T KILL US PLEASE!" Ci-Ci blurted. Lucy noticed several other prisoners getting quickened heartbeats as they tried to avoid giving sympathetic looks.
La Bruja raised a wrinkled eyebrow. The look she gave was more baleful than a hay farm.
Ci-Ci flinched. "I'm sorry for interrupting!"
She looked away from her, back to Lucy. "So, I assume you're staying quiet because you think I want you to keep your mouth shut unless spoken to. That is a good instinct."
"Um... thanks?" She was also keeping her mouth shut because she was apparently horrible at talking to this lady. Come on, Lucy, she's just an old, hobbled rabbit. She's not that scary!
But clearly she was, and judging by the reactions all around her, she was one of the only mammals in this room who hadn't been aware of that yet. Even Ci-Ci, having been doing her absolute best not to make eye contact up until now, was evidently smarter than her for at least pretending to be ignorant. Whereas Lucy had willingly signed her soul away to the local prison bogeymam with little provocation. "What exactly is it that you're expecting from me?" Might as well just come out and say it.
"Lots of whining. Sheer, unadulterated horror at the things that happen in prisons, and generally being a pain in the neck."
Lucy almost rolled her eyes, before realizing that might get her killed. "I mean... what do you want me to do?"
La Bruja's face did not betray whether she was just messing with Lucy or not. "I want you to do whatever I tell you to do. Today, you're going to pick up a few important things for me. I signed you up for a few of the work programs around the prison. I'm going to give you a list of stuff I want, you're going to get it all. Sound fair?" Her tone made it clear that she really didn't care how it sounded.
"What kind of stuff?"
"Yes or no question."
"Er, y-yes."
"Good." La Bruja reached into her pocket and passed a folded list across the table to her. "Consider this a test. A paper test. Pass, and you will be given more important duties in the future. Fail, and..."
She didn't even finish the sentence before she abruptly got up from the table and walked away.
"Well, that wasn't foreboding at all."
"What did you do?" Ci-Ci whispered, so quietly that she was probably afraid La Bruja's rabbit ears might still pick her up. "You joined up with her?"
"She had a bunch of guards take me out of solitary and bring me to her!" Lucy defended in an equally hushed tone. "I didn't exactly have much choice in the matter. Who is she anyway?"
"I don't know."
"What? Then why are you so freaked out about her?"
"No one knows who she is really," she clarified. "All we know is that she got brought here a few months ago, and ever since then, things around here just seem to... go right for her. Whatever she wants, she gets. Whoever she wants to see, she sees them. And anyone who questions it, they just sort of... vanish. Poof. Now we don't question it anymore. Understand?"
So... don't do exactly what I've been doing? "I understand. Now."
"What I don't get is why she's so interested in you. No offense, but you just got here and you haven't even done anything that bad." She squinted at her suspiciously. "You were telling the truth when you said you were innocent of that murder, right?"
"Yes!" Lucy said quickly. "I'm innocent, I swear!" She realized she had said that a bit too loudly and then did swear.
Ci-Ci's cautious expression faded instantly. "Okay, good! But still, really weird that she's interested in you then."
"Sure is," Lucy said dryly. "Maybe that list will clear things up." She picked the list up from the table and unfolded it. "What's this? A guard uniform? A pickaxe? Oil? Bolt cutters? Could this be...?" Her eyes widened. No way...
"Oh cool, she's planning a prison break!" Not only was Ci-Ci back to being her usual, excitable self, she was also back to being loud.
"S-Shut up!" she hissed, looking around frantically. By some miracle, no one else seemed to have heard her. Lucy breathed a sigh of relief. That was close.
And if La Bruja really was planning a prison break, then she was suddenly far more motivated to work for her. Once she was free, being stuck in this place with her and the rest of the psychos was a reality she wouldn't have to worry about anymore.
Lucy looked at the first item on the list. Alright... delinquent shoplifting skills, don't fail me now.
Laundry Room
10: 00 AM
Her first job for the day was in the laundry room. The best place she was going to get a guard uniform without stealing one off of an actual guard, which was unappealing for a number of reasons.
The space was relatively cramped, with a single row of washing machines lined up against one wall and dryers on the other. There was only one way in and one way out, which was naturally being guarded. The prisoners were each working one machine and taking clothes from a basket next to them. There was more than a fair share of guard uniforms inside. The problem was getting one out of here with the actual guards watching their every move.
Lucy was quickly getting sick of the constant feeling of being watched around here. It's just laundry, guys! Are you afraid I'm going to mix your damn whites with your reds?! The thought of the color red made her slightly thirsty, but she thought of the other, very undrinkable liquids in this room, and quickly shook it off.
That did give her an idea though.
Having a perfectly sizable uniform in her claws, Lucy went through the motions of adding detergent to the machine… and added just a little too much. As in, the entire bottle.
With the screams of panic the guards let out, one would think a terrifying beast had suddenly burst into the room and not just a very large explosion of bubbles. Chaos erupted as some of her fellow inmates chose to make a break for it, or settle old grudges with their prison rivals, or play around in the pretty bubbles. But Lucy had a different objective. Still holding on to the uniform, she closed her eyes against the stinging bubbles and opened her mouth just enough to echolocate her way around. Her sonar didn't pick up the bubbles, and so the many vague shapes moving around in the cloud suddenly became clear as night.
That led to another problem. She had the uniform, the guards were distracted, and she could maneuver around freely, but that didn't change the fact that the exit was being guarded, even more heavily-guarded now, in fact.
For that matter, where exactly was she even going to bring this uniform once she got it out of here?
For that matter, why just steal a single uniform anyway, without even specifying the size?
I… I didn't think this through very well, did I?
As if sensing her conundrum, another shape emerged from the bubbles and approached her. Even without echolocation, those two big ears were hard to mistake. She was fairly certain the rabbit hadn't been working this job.
Before Lucy could even get a word out, La Bruja snatched the uniform out of her claws and looked it over briefly. "Adequate. Next."
She casually slipped back into the bubbles and disappeared, even from sonar.
And Lucy still had to clean all of those bubbles up afterwards.
The Road to Hell
11: 00 AM
Once that lemon-scented nightmare was over, Lucy and several of the other prisoners were chained together at the ankle and escorted out to the road just outside the prison. Apparently, there were several leaks in the piping, and the road had to be torn up to fix them. The brackish brown water that sprayed up like geysers did make some nice rainbows though.
Lucy swallowed nervously. In this place, La Bruja wanted her to somehow get a pickaxe. How am I supposed to get something out of here that's like ten times my size?!
That was made clear when she was given a tiny pickaxe, sized for a rodent. It was about two inches long. Huh. Well, I guess she technically didn't say what size pickaxe I was supposed to get. Loopholes rule.
It was actually fairly easy to figure out a way to get the tiny pickaxe into a place where she could hide it. The local government had been extremely lazy fixing the roads, and thus there were potholes everywhere. So she came up with a plan.
"Ow!"
It was a painful sort of plan, one that involved her repeatedly fake tripping over anything she could find and "accidentally" dropping the pickaxe into the nearest hole. Then she would go in to retrieve it, to the annoyance of her chainmates, and move on to another hole as they moved gradually closer to the prison, where she would repeat the process until she could finally claim the damn thing just broke.
On roughly the sixth hole of her homebrew version of Leapfrog, instead of a loud clunk, there was a dull thud. La Bruja emerged from the hole, holding the tiny pickaxe. "Good enough. Next." Before slipping down into what was apparently a very deep tunnel.
Lucy had to stand still for a moment, her eye twitching as her mind tried to comprehend what she'd just seen. And what, naturally, no one else had. She gave up quickly. "Guard! I dropped my pickaxe down a deep hole!"
The guard rolled his eyes and climbed down into the hole to look for it.
She wasn't sure if he ever came back out.
Kitchen
12: 00 PM
Item #3 was oil. That was literally all it said.
Thankfully, she was next sent to work in the kitchen, where it would be pretty plentiful. Given how vague her directions had been thus far, Lucy was almost tempted to just grab a teaspoon of the stuff and see how La Bruja reacted, but her self-preservation instinct was a bit too strong for that kind of blatant smartassery.
In the midst of boiling a pot of miscellaneous gruel, and in an actual apron and furnet on her head at that, Lucy ducked under the stove and opened the cabinet.
A very large plastic container of oil was sitting right there in plain sight, but even if La Bruja decided to pop out of the oven or something, she wasn't even going to attempt to smuggle that monstrosity out.
What caught her eye instead was a glass bottle of the stuff being used by another inmate, a scraggly squirrel working on some fried bugs in a pan. He seemed to be paying it far more attention than it required. The food, not the oil. Must have been a cook before he was arrested. Probably an interesting story there, buuuuut… I don't care right now.
She waited until the squirrel looked away, searching a row of spices for the perfect seasoning no doubt, then reached over and cranked his stovetop's burner to max.
It couldn't have been that way for more than a few seconds, but the squirrel's reaction was predictable. "My life's work! It's ruined!"
While he was sobbing to himself, Lucy swiped the bottle of oil he was using and opened her cabinet to stash it in.
"I'll take that." The bat jumped as La Bruja reached out from inside the cabinet and grabbed the bottle. "Next." She closed the door behind her. Lucy immediately opened it again, but the rabbit was gone along with the bottle.
The much larger oil container was still there though.
Lucy growled to herself and closed the door.
Exercise Yard
1: 00 PM
The last item on her list was a pair of bolt cutters. Unfortunately, this was also the point when they stopped working entirely and were let out into the prison yard for exercise. She doubted she'd find anything like that out here.
Wait a minute... I'm outside! And not in a chain gang! These idiots didn't put anything on me to keep me from just flying out of here! So long, suckers!
Lucy nearly took off right then, until she realized that they did indeed have something on her.
The cross-hairs of several guns being pointed from the watchtowers.
She lowered her wings. Right... so how about those bolt cutters?
She ignored the sight of the many inmates working out around the yard and instead focused her attention on the nearby tool shed. That seemed like a good place to start, but it was, like so many other places, locked up tight.
Great. She was actually going to need to be a little social for this one.
She flew over to the nearest tough guy, a scary-looking woolly rat covered in fur markings and probably some kind of disease, who was actively lifting a pair of dumbells back and forth. He would do. "Hey, you're pretty good with those, huh?"
He grumbled.
She looked down at the nearby weight rack. "Mind if I join in?"
He grumbled.
"Thanks!" Lucy grabbed one of the weights in her talons and made a show out of flexing her leg muscles as she practiced with it. "Oof! These things are tough! You must be pretty tough yourself to handle them!"
He grumbled.
"Tough enough to break through anything I bet!"
He grumbled.
Oh, to hell with this.
She dropped the dumbbell on his foot.
He screamed.
Lucy flew back as the woolly rat snarled, glaring at her with murderous rage. And then he charged. Lucy dove out of the way quickly, letting the large rodent run straight past her.
And directly through the wall of the shed.
While the guards were distracted by the other tool out of there, Lucy snuck into the shed behind them, quickly securing a pair of bolt cutters from the shelf.
La Bruja hung down from the ceiling and once again snatched it out of her claws. "Hmph." She disappeared back into the... rafters? As she had been taught, Lucy no longer questioned it.
She walked out of the hole left in the wall, taking care to step over the groaning rat, only to walk clean into a row of guards holding cocked rifles. "Halt! On the ground now, inmate!"
Lucy put her hands up with a sigh. "Guano."
Soon After
Once again, Lucy found herself back in the cramped solitary cell. "Hello psychosis, my old friend..." she muttered under her breath. This place was going to drive her nuts. She'd been here for a day and had already been to solitary twice!
It's actually a bit impressive, come to think of it. Gah! Don't start giving yourself prison cred!
Fortunately for her, the second stay in solitary was much shorter than the first. Or maybe her internal clock was just all kinds of fucked now. Whatever the case, she found herself once again being dragged out by the guards, who still felt the need to shove her around even though they all knew where she was going.
Sure enough, she was back in the shower room minutes later, staring down La Bruja. She didn't even bother waiting for her to say something this time. There was only one thing she wanted to know now. "Did I pass?"
La Bruja was quiet for a moment, just to let Lucy stew. "Other than your somewhat... judicious interpretation of orders," She held up the tiny pickaxe, "You did very well. Clever tactics, though too reckless. We'll train that out of you."
Lucy wasn't sure whether to be pleased or not. She seemed to have passed, but last she checked, all she was trying to do was get the hell out of here, not join some secret prison cult or whatever this was. "Thanks? So… when do we bust out?"
"Hmm?"
"You know, all that stuff you just had me gather. It was clearly the kind of stuff you'd use for a prison break."
"Ah. Yes, indeed it was," she agreed.
"Then when is it?" Lucy pressed, starting to get annoyed.
"When is what?"
"The prison break!"
"Oh, there's no prison break yet."
Lucy froze, her eyes narrowing. "Excuse me?"
"While it is true that the items I had you gather could all be used for such a purpose, that does not necessarily mean they will be," La Bruja explained. "I did tell you this was merely a test, didn't I? What sort of test ends with you walking out of the academy before you've had the chance to be taught?" Before the bat knew it, La Bruja was suddenly right in her face, staring her down again. "Oh no, Lucy Sang, I'm afraid that this is but the beginning of your training. We will leave, but only once I am confident that you will be of use to me on the outside."
She wanted to be angry. Hell, she wanted to be furious, but that didn't keep her from instead being very, very frightened. "O-okay!" she squeaked, high enough to get an echolocation profile of La Bruja. She was even more surprised that none of the guards present in earshot seemed to care about what the rabbit had said.
La Bruja stared wordlessly into Lucy's eyes for a full minute, the entirety of which Lucy was too scared to actually say anything. Then she stepped back and turned away with a wave to the guards. "Take her back to her cell. I'll contact you when I have need of you again, Lucy Sang."
"H-Hey, wait!" she protested, suddenly finding her voice and it refusing to go quietly for once. "You can't just induct me into this bullshit without telling me anything! I still don't even know who you really are!"
La Bruja said nothing for a moment, nor did she turn around, apparently content to just let her get dragged off again. But she finally raised a paw, signalling the guards to stop. Her control over them was nothing short of unreal. "You really want to know, child?" she asked. "Alright, I think you're smart enough to keep a secret, or at least smart enough to know what's in your best interest. Have you ever heard of the Felidae Infernum?"
"...No?"
"Well then, I have good news for you." She turned around, giving Lucy a good look at the sinister smile on her face. "You will soon enough."
She lowered her paw. Lucy was left too stunned to stop the guards from taking her away again.
Happy New Year everyone! I hope none of you are currently falsely imprisoned for the murder of a sibling. If you are, well I hope you are either exonerated soon, or have a very gentle and loving cellmate. January will have an update of either SotH or The Hero Club. Or both. I haven't decided yet. Anyway, let me know what you think of the chapter. I hope you enjoy it.
