Chapter Forty
Picking up Speed
With unclearness of curiosity, Judy edged closer to the fox of grins. "False advertising?" she repeated, "How?"
"Look at it this way, Carrots. Say some billionaire bought-out the Hopps Family Farm and turned it into... say, like, a bakery or something, right?"
"Yeah. That's one hell of a big bakery, but go on."
"I know, it was the best I could think up at short notice. Anyway, if they did that but didn't alert the proper authorities that the company had changed paws, then all the paperwork would still say that the Hopps Farm was still a farm."
"So, if they then started selling bread instead of farm produce—"
"They'd be guilty of false advertising, yes."
"And if they're only using Erkin as a legitimate front to cover up a drug-shipping enterprise," Judy pondered aloud, "it's not likely they offer an all-that-professional service for fixing light bulbs."
"My point exactly. The problem we have is finding a way of seeing what service they do provide, without letting on about the raid tonight."
"How long do we have?"
"About twenty minutes. Why, you got an idea?"
"Yeah," the rabbit said in the foam of thoughts, "we just phone them and ask for some repairs. Create a semi-difficult job and if they turn up and can't do it, we'll ask why. If they turn up and can, you distract them and I'll snoop around in their van. If they refuse and don't turn up at all that gives us the ammo to make some further inquiries."
"But, Bogo said we weren't to let them know we were raiding them later. Wouldn't making inquiries raise their suspicions?"
"That's the beauty of it. You see, if they decline service, we can make a 'citizen's inquiry'. They won't even know we're cops."
"Hopps," the fox said, leaning back on the desk behind him, "how do you even remember all this stuff? I took the police exam too, you know. But even I don't know half of all the sub-clauses and provisional exclusions you do."
"Nicky," she cooed sweetly, "when you were taking your police training exams, did you learn the information because you had to, or because you wanted to?"
"Because I had to... like any sane person has to."
"Not me. I read up on it because it interested me."
"You are so weird sometimes."
"Like you're any better."
"Me?" he chuckled, "What's wrong with me? I'm not the one who enjoys revising and having exams."
"True though that is... you're still the weirdest predator I've ever met, for one, simple, reason."
"And what might that be, prey?" he mocked, crossing his arms with the playfulness of a kid.
The rabbit stepped closer, reaching up and taking the fox by his tie, hence, pulling his head down level with hers and whispering into his ear, "You've got a thing for rabbits."
Nick couldn't fight-off his grin, thus, revealing his rows of teeth and sending a tremble down Judy's body. "On contrary, my carrot-eating friend, I have a thing for but one rabbit."
"Oh... if that's the case," she breathed slyly, worrying the fox who knew that mischievous tone... "how do you explain the box of rabbit-porn under your bed?" Nick's world hung slack. He knew she had seen those mags, but damn he wasn't expecting her to outright say it. His mouth wrenched open as he struggled with an answer, while Judy's freshness grew by positive degrees with every moment.
"Erm... F-Finnick asked me to look after... no... I found them in a... they... I never saw them before."
"You never saw them before...?"
"No," he stated nervously, drawing an 'x' over his heart with his claw. "God as my witness."
"Is that your final answer?"
"Erm—"
"After all, you still have fifty-fifty and phone a friend open to you."
"Carrots, stop mucking me about and—"
"I'm sorry, that's not the answer we were looking for. Perhaps the next contestant will have better luck."
"Judy—"
The fox was cut off by the crackle of Hopps' police radio, "Hey, guys! Am I interrupting anything?"
"No, Clawhauser," Nick called, hurriedly grabbing at the radio, "you're not interrupting anything. It's good to hear from you. How've you been? Anything interesting been going on? Tell me everything! We've got plenty of time." Judy scowled as her weariness rose to glare at the fox and his pathetic attempt at getting away from that subject. But she couldn't be mad at him, even if she wanted to.
"Well, ughm," the cheetah stuttered, "that's— that's a lot of questions. I'm not sure I've got the puff to answer all of them without a donut or two in between."
"Well, don't worry about it, Claw," Nick assured, casting a cautions eye towards the rabbit, "you just take all the time you need."
"Clawhauser!" Judy piped-up and pulled out her own radio. "We're a little short on time here. What is it you need?"
"Oh, right, right, right! Sorry, yeah. I managed to find the paperwork for the Erkin van you requested. Some idiot had filed Erkin under R instead of E."
"I through that was part of your job?" Hopps clarified and the line lingered silent for a time.
"My... my recycling bin tends to get quite full."
Both Nick and Judy shared a baffled glance. "I might have misheard that, Ben," Judy desperately guessed, "it sounded almost like you said your recycling bin gets quite full."
"It... it does. And it gets kinda distracting when it's full of cardboard donuts boxes. I can't think straight, and cleaners only empty it once a day and it gets quite full, and—"
"Alright, Claw, we get it," Nick cut in. "You can blame the cleaners for doing the paperwork wrong. We'll believe you."
"Just, please," Judy said, "we're pressed for time enough as it is. Just tell is what you found."
"Right, yes, sorry, yes. You guys pulled them over for a faulty rear number plate about three months ago. You filed an official warning and sent them on their way. You left a report of the stock they were carrying. Looked like boxes of electrical components, soldering equipment, circuit boards, wires, computer monitors and other miscellaneous, electrical equipment."
"So nothing out of the ordinary?" Hopps asked.
"I don't know," the cheetah chuckled, "what do they do?"
"They provide and repair electrical components to other businesses," Nick answered. "Office blocks, apartments, all that. They do bulk order stuff, you know? I think they even provided the ZPD with a few printers a while back."
"Well," Clawhauser's voice crackled in reply, "in that case, I can't see anything in the report here that looks out of place."
"And when did you say this was?" Judy asked with tall ears.
"Seventy-eight days ago."
"Just over two and a half months," Nick recounted to Judy, flicking the radio off. "So Erkin wasn't owned by dataDyne at that point."
"So we can assume they were a legitimate business back then." The rabbit flicked the radio back on. "Okay, Claw, anything else we should know?"
"Ughm, I don't think— yes! Yes, Bogo asked me to pass on a message. Well, I say asked, he kinda just shouted, but anyway." The duo heard the cheetah fussing with sheets of paper, mumbling to himself under his breath. "I mean I put it here so I could find it, so why isn't it here now? Is it under the box of chocolate-coated— ah, here it is! A-hem, 'please ask Hopps and Wilde to go to the university if they wouldn't mind, please'."
Judy glanced to Nick, skeptically. "Bogo said... 'please'?"
"Not exactly, no. That was just my interpretation. Actually, his exact words were: 'tell that rabbit and her shifty fox to get their tails down to the university pronto, before I dump their arses in three weeks parking duty'."
"Okay," the rabbit said, standing, "we'll be leaving in just a moment. That should give us plenty of time to—" The rabbit drifted off as she looked about at herself... at the two very high stacks of paperwork which littered the tops of two large desks.
"Hopps?" the radio crackled, "Are you still—"
The rabbit flicked the radio off. "Sweet cheese and crackers, Nick, what do we do? It's gonna take us an hour just to put this stuff back!"
The fox sought about at his surroundings. "Leave it to me, Carrots."
"Leave it to you?" she repeated, almost shouting with worry. "What do you mean leave it to you?"
With nothing more than a wink, the fox stood, turned and paced from the room, to which Judy began shouting at him in fury as he slid past the door and into the corridor, "Nicholas Wilde, you get back in here and help me with this!"
"Take a breath, Hopps," the fox called from the doorway, "count to ten, relax a little. You won't do yourself any favors getting stressed out like this. Just wait here, and I'll be back in just a sec'."
The rabbit plopped herself down on a chair and crossed her arms to the disbelief of her indignation.
...
Judy's ears pricked-up at the sound of voices approaching from down the corridor. That was Nick's voice. "So, Marvin, how's it hanging?"
"You probably ought to know, I'm feeling very depressed."
"Well, I've got something that'll take your mind off it."
"I doubt it. I have an exceptionally large mind."
"Come on, mate. You'll enjoy it!"
"No I won't."
"You will. You'll find yourself with a whole new life stretching out ahead of you!"
"Oh, no. Not another one."
The door swung open, and the weary-looking porcupine-security wondered into the room... followed by an even more weary-looking fox who was forcing his voice to remain cheerful as he spoke, "It's full of excitement and adventure and other wilde things."
"Is that a pun?"
"Yeah."
"How horrid." Marvin took one sweeping look of the mess. "Yourself and the rabbit have to go and you don't have the time to clean up the paperwork yourself, so you want me to do it... is that it?"
"Yeah," Nick answered glumly, "you got it straight..."
"Well I wish you'd just tell me, rather, than try to engage my enthusiasm. Because I haven't got any."
"Okay..." Folding his arms, the fox let out a long, sorrowful sigh as his head lowered jadedly down to his chest.
"I'm not getting you down at all, am I?"
"No, Marvin, you're fine."
"I wouldn't like to think I was getting you down."
"No," Nick repeated, "trust me, it's—"
"I wouldn't like to think I was getting anybody down."
"You're not," the fox repeated, coming close to a whimper, "but please, could you just make a start on the paperwork?"
The porcupine took one small step into the room, before, turning back to the fox. "You sure you don't mind?"
"No," Nick reassured again, "it's just... that's life."
"Hello again, Marvin," Judy entered brightly as he came in, "thank you for—"
"Life? Don't talk to me about life."
The rabbit's cheerful expression wilted dimly. "Oh—"
"You don't have to pretend you're interested in me, you know. I know perfectly well I'm only a menial public servant." Stepping towards the first tall pile, he began to tediously sort through the masses of disorganized mess. "I only have to talk to somebody, and they begin to hate me. But if you just ignore me, I expect I shall probably cease to exist altogether."
The rabbit blinked with the disability of reacting anyway to anyhow.
"All my life I've been doing this job," he continued. "The first ten years were the worst. And the second ten years: they were the worst too. The third ten years I didn't enjoy at all. And the forth was just awful. After that, I think I went into a bit of a decline."
"But, Marvin," the rabbit asked, "why don't you just quit and get a new—"
"But the real problem is that I'm just so vastly intelligent that nothing can hope to occupy even the smallest degree of my intellect. I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number."
"Erm... five?" Judy humored him in the befuddlement that was transpiring.
"Wrong. You see? It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level."
"Oh-kay... but why—"
"It's the people you meet in this job that really get you down. The best conversation I had was over thirty-four years ago. And that was with a coffee machine."
"A... a coffee machine?"
"It hated me."
"What?"
"It hated me because I talked to it."
"You talked to it? What do you mean you talked to it?
"Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I walked over to the coffee machine and talked to it at great length and explained my views on life and the universe to it."
"And what happened?"
"It committed suicide."
"Well, okay," the rabbit tried again, "but why don't you resign and become a—"
"Do you know what they say to me? 'Don't let drunk people in, Marvin.' When is a drunk ever going to want to come in here? 'Make sure all the doors are locked by nightfall, Marvin', 'Marvin, tidy up this paperwork, can you?' I'm a security guard, I tell them, not a cleaner. But no-one ever listens to me."
Silently, the rabbit started to back away from the room, the door shunting softly behind her.
...
Jogging, Judy caught up with the overly amused fox. "Wilde, you cruel, wicked fox. Dumping all that filing on that poor—"
"He loves it," Nick interjected smoothly, putting his arm loosely around the rabbit's shoulders. "You should've seen the way his little eyes lit up when I told him."
"I somehow doubt that."
"What? It'll be a little excitement for him..." Taking back his arms and unbuttoning the lower few of his shirt buttons, the fox reached underneath his shirt and withdrew his paw, now holding a large, black file... "Especially when he finds out some of the paperwork's missing."
Judy fell out of step, gawping at him. "N-Nick, did you just steal that? How did you get it in your shirt, I was watching you the whole time?! Do you have any idea of the—"
"First off," Nick interrupted, holding out a raised index finger to silence her. "Yes, I did unlawfully borrow this file without permission, but I do intend to give it back. Second, I'm an expert pickpocket; of course you didn't see me take it. And third, yes, I do know the penalty for theft from a government building. But it's never going to come to a court of law, since I just 'accidentally' put it in my briefcase and 'accidentally' took it with me. The briefcase was actually my shirt, I grant you, but still, the most that'll happen is I'll get a slap on the wrists from Bogo."
"But, you can't just take stuff like this, Nick. You need to fill out all the paperwork and—"
"I think poor Marvin has enough paperwork as it is. Besides," he added, slipping the file back into his shirt, "we don't have time for that."
"That's no excuse!" the justice-obsessed rabbit cut in, stepping towards him and shoving her paw into the space between Nick's shirt and his bare chest. "Now you and I are going back to that porcupine, and you are going to apologize for taking this file!"
"What..." the fox breathed, softly... "what are you doing?"
"What do you think I'm doing?" she scolded, her paw rooting here and there across the fur of Nick's chest, "I'm looking for that file!"
The fox's eyes drifted shut. Did she even have an idea of how good this felt? "And for... for that you're willing to do... this?"
"Yes!"
"And if I told you it's slipped into my boxers?" Acting before she had processed the implications, the ticked-off rabbit made as though to shove her paw into his joy department; for half a second, the fox actually believed she was about to reach for it. Then, the rabbit froze, a sanguine blush quickly growing as her bulging eyes rose to meet Nick's coolly calm expression, his rather smirking face mere inches from hers.
She withdrew her paw quickly, turned and marched away, trying to get out of earshot before the fox said something along the lines of, "Aw, was it something I said?" She glanced over her shoulder as she walked, seeing the fox idling in the same position and now quite a distance away, with a pouting, disappointed existence on his exterior.
"Are you coming or what?"
"Erhm, not at the moment," he answered, hopefully, "but put me in a dark bedroom, alone, with you... and I could be."
"What? Nick!"
"Don't tell me you haven't thought about it too, Hopps. I know you have."
Judy stopped dead, half curving to the fox with small amusement taking roots. "Okay, foxy, I admit it. I have thought about it. I'm even willing to admit that I've thought about it a lot."
Nick's grin began meeting defeat, while Judy advanced with the motion of sultriness-playful. "If it wasn't for my parents' sex after marriage teachings, I would have had you the moment I knew you felt about me the same way I feel about you. I have desired your body, lusted for you, for almost a year now and... Guess what?" She waited patiently for his answer, thus, giving him the chance to quip some humorous little joke which she already knew would never come.
His mouth opened with a sudden dryness; therefore, he licked his lips and forced his mouth to make at least some sort of sound, "W-what?"
"This urge, this desire I feel deep down inside me whenever I lay eyes on you. This aching, yearning drive to take you inside me and to feel your love within me... it's insatiable, uncontrollable, enthralling. I don't know how much longer I can fight it: how long I can resist something I want so bad that it hurts... when all I would have to do is reach out... and take it."
Nick just remained in his muddled state of mind, while she went on with her words of heart's desire. "Tonight, I am going to share my body with you, doing everything I can short of breaking my parents' wishes. I know that probably stops short of doing anything other than just looking and touching one another. But if I had my way, Nick, I would take you home this very second, lock the door, be damned with the world and throw away the key. I would take your body, and I would make love to you again, and again and again. I would hold you against me with love, with passion and with care..."
Now being directly before the fox, Judy reached out and held his paws in gentleness… "And I would never, ever, let you go."
Nick felt a throbbing sensation in his heart and in another part of his body, as the rabbit's words fell softly into his ears.
"But anyway," she changed direction abruptly, taking her paws back and turning sharply and marching away while calling to the fox over her shoulder, "the alternative of course is that you propose to me this afternoon, marry me this evening and we can spend the weekend doing something far more interesting than just touching one another!"
"H-hey," Nick called after her, "what?!"
"Come on, Nick," replied the now-distant figure, "we've got work to do."
"B-but, Judy," he shouted, trotting to try to catch up, "what was that you said? Just before? About... proposing?" Nick's trot became a run as the rabbit picked up speed and started to sprint — sprinting so Nick couldn't see the bright red blush, which had grown all across her face at sharing with him the oh-so-wonderful 'secret fantasy' she had for so long wished might come true.
Marriage.
...
Outside the building, concealed from the scorching heat of day in the shadows of a blind alley, a pair of slit eyes observed the back door to Registry House as it swung open and the figure of a gray rabbit sprinted out, followed, a second later, by the figure of a red fox.
The duo ran, while the sounds of their laughter and their gigglings carried across to the white figure's erect ears. The rabbit reached the car and started frantically trying to pull open the locked door, but the fox caught up and tackled her to the ground, before, pressing his lips against the rabbit's deeply, something that the rabbit didn't appear to mind. This went on for but a moment, before, both mammals leaped up from the still-scorching road and rushed to get into the ZPD cruiser. They got in and the engine swiftly roared in start; hence, the car began rolling down the road.
The white figure moved, while his pale eyes observed as the car was driven around a corner and out of sight. He pocketed his phone and pressed the sequence of buttons he had been trained to press; consequently, His face appeared on the screen.
"Wulf," He greeted, "is everything running according to schedule?"
The albino wolf grunted. "Glad to hear it. Your target is now en route to the university, north of your position. But do not attempt to intervene there. Just keep an eye on them; wait until this evening. Our master wants the fox left alive, so you'll have to wait until they're separated. Given their record, that could take some time."
The wolf grunted again, leaving the shade and starting to move in a generally northern direction, while failing to notice or care about the thickness of the air around him or the burning temperature of the ground beneath. "And, Wulf," He added, "use caution. But do not take too long. As I have explained before, further action cannot be taken against the fox if the rabbit is still alive. Good luck, and good hunting."
The phone went dead.
...
"But I'm quite used to being humiliated," Marvin continued, "I could even stick my head in the public toilet and flush it if you like. I mean if that's what you really want." The porcupine half-turned and addressed the empty space behind him, earnestly. "Would you like me to stick my head in the public toilet and flush it? You're not answering?"
He now turned fully to the realization of the situation. "Ohh, you've gone. Well pardon me for breathing, though I can't say I blame you. I suppose I'll just be getting on with sorting this paperwork, seeing as you can't even bare to— god I'm so depressed." Putting the files back down on the table, Marvin addressed the universe in general.
"Life... loathe it or ignore it. You can't like it."
…
Author's notes:
Hesitance jumps around your mind,
Grooms decision thus chosen blind.
Your thoughts most succulent of snack,
All delivered by luscious feedback.
So don't hide like a tiny shrew,
Thus share that belovable review!
Social Links:
* To use a link just replace {dot} with a full stop/peirod.
- Youtube: youtube{dot}com/c/inlet
- Twitter: twitter{dot}com/inletreal