Chapter Fifty-Seven
Suits of Superior Suitability
'T' minus 48 minutes and counting...
The sun touched down upon the still lake around the city of Zootopia. In the dim light of a small, old fashioned oil lantern, the frame of a shaggy, black dog slouched in a faded, green armchair in what appeared to be a weak doze. The coal-fueled, iron stove that kept the small shack lit had started to burn out, darkening the small room and allowing the bisque chill of night to blow in through the gap beneath the door. A tattered, black ear twitched as footsteps approached the shack outside. They stopped close by to the window, and then voices were heard.
"Has he moved?" came the first voice. It was pushy and arrogant, one that Shuck knew it well.
"No, boss," came the second voice. It was for sure the guard, who had been posted outside his door since Nyilas left.
"Has he made any trouble?"
"No, he nodded off a few minutes after you left."
The first voice snorted. "Old mutt. Step back from the window. I'll show this flee-bitten mongrel what he gets for sleeping while I'm around." Shuck heard the grunt of an object being thrown and opened his eyes. He'd been awake and knew what was coming, but that didn't mean he could prevent the rock, which was thrown, from smashing through his window. The sharp rock hurtled through, crashing the glass, and caught the dog on the snout. A tooth was knocked loose. Shuck didn't care; the brick had knocked his lamp. Throwing himself down on the floor after it, the seadog caught the oil lantern the second before it hit the floor.
The dog snarled at the sound of laughter from the outside and pulled himself back up on his chair, placing his lamp safely back on the table, as the door opened with George the Coyote stepping in, and smiling down at Shuck in disregard. "Lovely hovel you have," he jeered with a once-over of the smashed glass. "I like the 'open' design of the window here."
Shuck spat blood towards him. "How's your paw healing, bastard?"
"Better than your face," George shot, nodding towards the wide cut torn into the hound's snout.
"Jus' a scratch. You try getting your face caught up in the support hooks of a stormsail during a Beaufort Twelve wind. Then let's see who's the one howlin' in pain... as your eye's being slashed open by a metal hook, thrashing about in your skull with all the force of the sea."
George resisted, but couldn't help but cringe at the image. "That's... that's how you lost your—"
"Aye, that it be. Sounds funny, but I didn't even notice it at the time."
"Too stupid to realize you were feeling pain, I guess," George retorted, forcing himself to recover from the image in his mind. "I bet you only realized you'd lost an eye after someone pointed it out to you... on the floor."
"One eye though I have," Shuck mentioned calmly, "it'd still be more than enough to take you down in a fight."
George whistled through the window. The gray polar bear, who was stood guard outside, appeared with an assault rifle in his paws. "You're in no position to do anything," George declared, "not with the power my master has pawed down to me. Not with the strength I have amassed against you. No person, large or small, can stand against the force of my will. You least of all."
"Ach, stop your prattle. You don't know nothin' about facing up to 'ardships. You've never faced up to real danger, and when I get out of here, I will come for you. And you will burn before I'm finished."
The coyote scoffed. "Burn?"
"Like a Christian-turned-candle under the reign of Emperor Nero."
"If you mean to say I will burn in Hell, mutt," George shot, "then you can rest assured I'll be sending you there by express first!"
"Not Hell," Shuck clarified. "To believe in Hell means to believe in a god. And if there were a god, there'd be some justice in the world. But the fact I'm still alive, after all I've done to the lives of good people, disproves all of that."
"Perhaps," George cut in, snidely, "the Almighty was just waiting for a fitting end for your miserable life."
The hound turned to the polar bear in the window, who was sneering at him, and then moved his eye at George, and held the coyote's glare firmly through his single, piercing eye. "Whatever end befalls me, you will burn... I just want you to remember I said that. You will... burn."
...
With the concentrated efficiency of samurai preparing for battle, the officers of the ZPD changed from their usual blue uniforms and into their kevlar raid armor. The equipment was of a standard-issue size, but designed to be able to adjust to the wearer's specifications. The normally spacious male's changing room was packed with a throng of officers, who were changing in anxious and moody silence. The large door swung open a little, and Nick Wilde slipped inside. He glanced around at the other memmle undressing and then pushed the door shut behind him — with quite some effort, seeing as the door was around eight times larger than he was.
With a final, two-pawed shove, the door clicked into place, and Wilde re-picked-up his heavy case of issued equipment, and made his way forwards, trying his best to keep his eyes to himself. Wilde was used to navigating the bustling crowds of Zootopia's streets, but this forest of large legs was something quite different.
Making cautiously further into the room, he looked about for a relatively safe place where he could change, aware that keeping check of near-by foxes was the last thing on the other officers' minds right now, and that potential trampling was a very real risk. In the dim and overcrowded changing room, making his way safely around was no easy feat. Wilde felt sudden movement behind him. He ducked rapidly as a broad tail rushed past overhead with enough momentum to knock the small fox off his feet. The owner of that tail was not even aware of what it was doing to the unlucky fox.
"Hey," he shot, trying not to yelp, spinning and reversing with his tail that broomed the ground behind him. Then, Nick felt a tingling sensation in the furs on the tip of his tail, the tingling of something directly above it. The fox snapped again and pulled at it, trying to move it from beneath the lowering, gigantic foot; before, it— "Gah!" Nick yelped and held his breath for the incoming anguish. A broken tail was an unfortunately easy thing to attain, and unimaginably awful as hell; not something the fox exactly wanted on the night of a raid. But, luckily, his swift reactions had saved his tail from being crushed, and it was only the hairs upon the end of his bushy, red foxiness which were caught.
Nick glanced around himself, his nerves on high alert as he checked to make sure no one else was about to step on anything vital; hence, turning and whistling up towards the large officer, whose foot was currently pinning his immobile. "Mind giving me back my tail, pall?"
"What?" Rhinowitz said, glancing distractedly and looking below him. "Oh, sorry Wilde," he muttered, turning away again and lifting his foot for a brief moment. Wilde grabbed his tail back with greedy care and sent a wary eye towards his tree-trunk-like leg. He looked nothing like the sly, care-free person he usually put himself up as being. His red appendage held nervously in his paws, his oversized bag on his arm, his eyes darting this way and that between the crowds of large officers. He looked more like a cub on his first day at school, and he felt like it too.
Deciding speed would work better than caution in this scenario, Wilde increased his pace and made his way across the room in swiftness, ducking beneath tails and sidestepping legs easily, while allowing his innate celerity to guide his movements. Reaching a small clearing by the far side wall without further incident, the fox glanced around once more, just to check he was clear, and put his case down on the ground. He flicked it open and looked over the gear inside, turned away from the crowd to stare at the wall and began unbuttoning his shirt... trying to ignore the fact he was in a room full of people, and pretending he was just alone inside his apartment instead.
It wasn't that Nick exactly minded undressing in the view of others... just not in a room packed mostly with people four times his size and a dozen times his weight. He was just glad that putting the armor on didn't involve total nudity, the size difference between himself and Officer Rhinowitz the rhino, in particular, was something he really didn't need to know about, let alone see.
The fox slipped off the tie and shirt that he usually wore and exchanged it for the t-shirt in the bag, which was tighter, and with less unnecessary material hanging off: shirt tails, collars, anything that could get caught-up in the raid armor that had the pieces of a chest plate and a visor helmet within the provided kit.
...
It was the visored helmet which worried her. Not only was it bulky and restricted her movement and field of view, but the thickness and heaviness, it flattened her ears down against her head, more of less defining her from about seventy percent of all the subtle and distant sounds she could usually pick up on. Judy looked back down towards the piece of chest armor and tugged against it again, as she tried to get it to sit right. Not having to deal with a room full of people, she had managed to dress quickly into her gear. The sensation of wearing the armor made the rabbit oddly aware of everything about herself — the temperature of her breath as it left her mouth; the rise and fall of her chest and how it pushed against the hard surface of the armor; the feel of the floor beneath the pads of her feet; the beating of her heart; the blood pumping around her every part of body.
The armor had put it all into perspective. This was real. This was happening, to her. Wilde was right. Up until now, she had been able to put it off — keep it in the back of her mind — while she focused on the task at paw: the corpse in her room, the investigation at Reg' House, the infiltration of Erkin. But now, keeping thoughts of the raid at bay, by focusing on the here and now, was no longer working... the raid was the here and now. A little faintness taking hold, the rabbit supported herself up against the wall with her paw, staring down at the floor, taking a deep breath in and pushing it out of her, slowly. It was a stress-relief technique she had discovered back in her time at the academy.
Tonight was going to go just fine, she reminded herself. There was nothing that could go wrong. She and Nick were going to be guarding a staircase too unstable to be used by anything larger than Nick, while the rest of the officers would deal with the actual fighting. More so, this raid had been arranged by a person enormously experienced in pulling this kind of things off. They had the intel, the advantage of surprise and all the people power they needed to pull this off. It was going to be fine… just fine.
Judy's eyes rose. In the white tiles upon the walls of the fememmle's changing room, she could see the reflection of her own nervous face in the pale surface. She watched herself for several brief moments, taking in all the details of her own features, which somehow seemed so new. It was like she had never really looked at herself before, never really appreciated what she had. Taking another breath and fumbling down on her lip, her face hardened.
Standing to attention with her shoulders back and her head held high, the rabbit lowered to see through visor of her raid helmet. Judy Hopps saluted herself smartly in the reflection, and marched swiftly from the room of change.
...
Shuffling his body, Nick tried, mostly in vain, to get the chest armor to sit in a comfortable position. After several failed attempts, he decided it was never going to feel right, since most of the sense of 'wrongness' was simply his uneasiness at the prospect of what this armor entailed. His breath teetering on the verge of shaking, the fox tried to control himself, as he slid the straps for the harness support in the hoops and g-clamps of his armor, pulling it just a little tighter than it had to, be for the lack of trust to it somehow slipping out. The armor was heavy and difficult to wear. It felt as unnatural as bathing fully dressed. It also slowed his speed and incapacitated his movements.
Nick reached behind himself as he tried to tighten the harness support, but the plates in his arms locked up and prevented him from bending his elbow fully; thus, he was stopped from being able to reach around behind him, and his struggles continued in strain to the reach of the distant straps that needed tightening. Grunting, the fox's arm dropped as he gave in. Then he felt movement behind him… something was touching his back, and the straps on his harness and armor started to tighten on their own accord.
"Cheers, Wolfard," Nick thanked grimly, recognizing the scent.
"No trouble," the wolf said. "So, is this... I guess this is your first raid? With the ZPD, anyway," he added.
Nick glanced sideways towards the wolf. He had been stupid to let that slip out earlier. "My first with the ZPD?" he asked, just for the sake of saying something, "Why put it like that?"
"Oh," Wool gave weak exclamation of surprise, "just cause of the way you implied you'd had raid experience before. And then made up a hasty excuse of reading about it beforepaw to cover for what you'd said. There, your straps are all secure. Could you give me a paw with mine? Ughmm, no one else here has fingers small enough to do it."
"Sure," Nick said, trying to keep his voice level as he spoke to the one person in there he knew supported them. "This too tight?" he asked as he did the first strap.
"That'll be fine," Wool confirmed as Wilde worked on the other straps. "So, did I ruse you out?"
Nick smiled thinly. "You're a smart officer, Wool," he said, leaning into the wolf's ear. "Too smart. If you're not careful, I might have to have you killed…"
Wolfard chuckled. "Yeah, I'm sure Hopps would approve of that behavior."
The fox raised a brow. "Oh, I'm sure I could sway her over to my point of view. I could probably even get her to do the murder for me, with the right pretext..."
"I don't doubt it, mate. Sometimes I think that girl'd do just about anything for you." Wolfard turned to check the fox, as he finished readying-up his raid armor. He faced the fox with a warm smile, while Nick stared down at nothing on the floor, a distant beam on his face as he thought about the rabbit of his dreams. "So, come on," Wolfard abruptly interjected through the thoughts of niceness, "open up! You been in a raid before or what?"
Taking a breath, his smile leaving, Nick scurried his head about the room. "Look," he said, only now replying in earnest, "I know I don't know you exactly that well, but I think I can trust you enough not to have to be so careful about what I say. The people around us, however..."
"I get it," Wolfard muttered in quietness. "Some of them might take it the wrong way. Yeah, I understand."
"Exactly," Nick acknowledged. "But still, since you figured it out, I guess you deserve to know. I'll tell you about it later. Alright?"
"You'd better tell Hopps at the same time. I wouldn't tell her a thing myself if you didn't want me to, but if I figured it out, she will too. She suspects already."
"Course she suspects," Nick muttered. "It's 'Judy! She always knows what's up."
"Huh, yeah. Going back to what you said about murdering me, what would you actually do if you went through with it, and Bogo assigned Judy to be the one to hunt you? Assuming she could be convinced to work against you, that is."
Nick grinned to himself, fiddling with the pad on his arm. "Hightail it out of the country, change my name, dye my fur, pretend I'm just a small wolf and pray to God every night she never hunts me down."
"I bet you're not even joking, are you," the wolf laughed. "I bet you really would leave the country if Hopps was after you."
"Are you kidding me?" Nick exclaimed with his paws going for his head. "Have you seen her when she gets her teeth into something? I'd have to go into hiding for at minimum sixty years before she'd admit defeat."
Wolfard chuckled, trying so hard to hold in his laughter that it was almost painful. "Can you imagine it? Judy Hopps at eighty-five years of age, and still absolutely dedicated to law enforcement."
"Actually, I can... I really can."
Wolfard hummed easily at the fox. "Unless she ends up 'dedicated' to something else, that is."
Nick blinked at the wolf, and his joy started to falter. "Wh— how do you mean?"
"Well," the wolf drew with a wink, "she's been wearing an interesting perfume these last couple of days. So either her mom just happened to buy her a bottle of oddly fox-scented perfume recently, or... well, heh. Enough said, I think?"
Nick stuttered at the wolf. It was the sudden change in topic which had caught him off guard. "Wool," he said, after a moment, "I— I don't know what you're getting at, but—"
"No, no. Of course you don't," he mocked, while observing Wilde in amusement fit for when one knew secrets unraveled. "Anyway," he continued without digging his claws further, "we'd best be getting on with things. Wouldn't want to still be getting ready when Bogo gets back, would we?"
"I, ughm... no," Nick said as Wolfard started gathering up his things, trying not to laugh openly, while the fox cleared his throat, scratched at his neck and started doing the same distractedly beside him.
Hell, he knew. Nick couldn't deny to himself, but what was the point, he had figured it out. The guy was too smart after all. Maybe he really would have to have him killed… Owh, what was Judy going to say…
Author's notes:
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