I do not own Zootopia, that belongs to Disney. This a fan work made solely for the sake of amusement.

"Let It Go, It's Happytown"

Chapter Ten: Gentleman Jack

By: Gabriel LaVedier

Happytown was an unfriendly place, had been for decades. Normal Zootopians avoided it unless they needed some service from it, or had more toughness than brains. Recent happenings had had overtures directed at the average Zootopian. Short commercials, online ads, radio spots. Some little business or another being touted as new and exciting, a cheaper alternative to Sahara Square or some other big thing. An exotic, wholly alien vacation location, just a quick tram ride away. Like most cheap offers for a bad product, volume was key, in numbers and decibels. It was like insect reproduction, numbers kept the species alive.

For every scam there was a sucker, and advertising was the law's preferred method of swindling the rubes. That was how a nebbishy-looking beige-wooled ram found himself walking through the streets deep in Happytown with a phone in his hand and the GPS on the screen. Even within his own city he had on his hapless tourist gear. A tacky t-shirt from a Meadowlands mall, khaki pants, a black bum bag packed with items, and a red visor from the same mall as his shirt.

"Come on, come on. No Zoogle street maps? They have the whole city in there! What's an Eyetooth? Ugh this thing..." The ram kvetched, poking at his phone with the soft pads under his hooves. His coverage was spotty the more he got near the tall buildings and he had to find clear sky for more of his bars to come back.

He looked as out of place and square as he really was, practically doing the dance of the out-of-area dork. He held his phone up, dropped it down, turned it around while his trotters clattered along the cracked sidewalk. He was probably far away from the card house he was looking for, probably too late for the buffet. He was sure he had heard a buffet being offered. They had buffets in Sahara Square. Expensive one. Happyton was cheaper but he had to get there.

He had to survive to get there, he had at the back of his mind. It might have been in a commercial, but it was still Happytown. He knew what that meant. All his neighbors had warned him not to go. Even if the commercials said to go, it was madness. They had predators there. They had immigrants there. It was dark and dirty and scary. He had said he was cool enough to make it. He was strong, better than all his bleating neighbors. He could make it. He was a big mammal, brave.

All alone, wandering through the middle of the place, casting his horizontal pupils around. Why did Zuber not bother dropping him right at the place? Stupid goat, dropping him off at the entrance to the place and leaving him with a GPS that did him no good. The maps were probably accurate but he had no way to get good route information. He'd leave a terrible review as soon as he got out of there.

If he got out of there.

While waving his phone around he found a break in the buildings, an alley that gave him more bars and got his GPS working properly. The little shaft of bright sky allowed the illumination of what was usually a dark alley. Grim, ugly, dirty. Some idiots had talked about how great the whole experience of Happytown was. Fly-filled, stinking garbage and a dumpster was hardly great tourist visuals.

One other visual that interrupted things was a woman. Some kind of cat with tufted ears, dressed in badly damaged cheap clothes. She looked like a working lady or a stripper. He was entirely unfamiliar with that kind of thing. He only saw them walking out of those sleazy clubs. He had signed the petition against them but they never seemed to close. They would, he was sure.

He wanted to pass by and not do anything. But he was a natural busybody. He looked down with his best judgmental stare. "Hey! Tourists are here now! You can't just sleep out on the street! You must have a place. Go there!" he gingerly reached out to nudge her with his trotter.

The cinnamon bobcat sagged, eyes wide and staring, pupils huge, her mouth open and tongue out. A needle was jabbed into her arm, while her fist was clutched tightly, having strained at the end of her life.

The ram, out of his element and beyond his capability, let out a huge, sustained, piercing shriek that rang out through the streets and off of the buildings pressing in around him.

The shrieking of actual police sirens replaced the shrieking of the out-of-place tourist. The screaming had brought one of the rare beat cops, which had then brought a more proper police response. The coroner, squad cars, and the dedicated liaison, Officer Louis Wulfberg.

"Great... a tourist saw this spoor," he said, rubbing his forehead. "Bad enough Happytown gets this kinda thing. Now it's scaring off those Meadowlands wimps. At least it's nice and easy to call."

"You should know better than to say that," Sherlock said. He and Hermione were suddenly there, with the white stoat looking on the woman with horror, pity, and recognition. "You know what comes of that..."

"Not every crime is a conspiracy," Louis snapped, sucking in a breath and slowly releasing it, eyes closed and ears slightly back. "Sometimes crimes happen without being part of your caseload. Most of the time. Including here. Especially here. Happytown has crime, and you know it."

"Non... non.. not this, not this time," Hermione said, softly but with a clear passion in her tone. "I know her, I know this queen. I spoke to her, I had a... tete-a-tete with her. She told me things, things of a suspicious nature. There was a mystery, there were things she was not saying about a man, a dangerous man. I... I cannot prove or provide anything but... she was alive, she was reluctant but she and the ones of the street, they related to me strange secrets they only just knew..."

Louis huffed, but looked down on the dead bobcat with a softer expression. "That's not very specific. This is an overdose as far as we know. That's all it is. Why would she be killed and how would that tie into these other murders? Was she a witness or a participant?"

"I only know they were afraid," Hermione whispered. She couldn't look away. The thought came back to her again, more haunting than before. One bad influence, a missed chance at being Sherlock's understudy, a mistake in budgeting and it could have been her, slain to keep a secret. "There was a male who did not buy their affections. He took it, as some sort of right. Someone in a limo. They do not have managers nor pimps. But they are afraid of M. Limo."

"You know this is something different. Look at her face. Look at her clothes," Sherlock said, pulling out his glass and focusing on the areas he mentioned. "Bites on the clothes, clothes that look like they were completely ravaged. Blunt, flat. Herbivorous. You have seen herbivore teeth, I am sure."

"Dad's teeth always looked so different from mine. Nancy had mom's teeth and dad's horns..." Louis mumbled, leaning down more to look at the clothes and the other marks. "I don't need a glass. Rough tears, swelling on the face and body, a little blood on the lips. This still could be just a rough customer. Bad night, gets sad, goes for some artificial happiness."

"Un moment, C. Wulfberg..." Hermione said, popping an earbud in and messing with her second-paw recorder. "Oui... oui, listen to this..."

"But, that's for regular folks. Charlie was more about giving bucks for food or cigs, and Red used a little for... medicinal purposes. But Charlie jus-"

Louis nodded his head slowly. "You're saying she wasn't a complete niphead? Just because this girl told you so?"

"They had no reason to lie to me. And I know what these kind look like. They fail at selling themselves," Hermione asserted. "Too many twitches, cannot control their claws, scratching, losing fur from grooming too much. Not all who know abuse, abuse; we must see things here we cannot ignore."

"I don't know if you're making my life a living Desolation or getting me the big pension and gold buttons," Louis said with a puff of breath and another look down at the cinnamon bobcat. "I want to say this isn't your case and I can. I'll tell you if it is but there's no connection I can actually sell to Bogo. Even if this... Limo guy rules the ladies of the night..."

"And gangs," Hermione quickly added.

"No... you can't be serious," Louis said with a pained expression.

Hermione listened to her recorder again and played it again. "He never says how, no one really knows anything, but keeping him happy makes cops and problems go away. You ask the vicemongers and some of the dumber gangsters, they don't know how they do what they do. Ask the wrong dealer and you might end up on the wrong end of some claws. Not all the dealers work inside Happytown, for Happytown. They all pay something to someone. Mr. Limo picks up everything. We don't have pimps, but we have... requirements. He picks up a lady, and they go... somewhere. Nobody has ever seen. It's all blindfolds and Fifty Grades of Prey, for real." She motioned to the bobcat. "C'est elle. She knew much. Too much?"

"Hearsay," Louis said, more quickly than he intended. "I'm sorry but it is. Even with the words of the victim there's the possibility that it's all coincidence. And the Mayor will gladly raise high squeaking over this, accusing the whole department of tinfoil hat insanity."

"The thread is present, but tenuous, fine as spider silk with not the same strength," Sherlock noted with a shake of his shaggy head.

"You love your poetic spoor," Louis grumbled, shaking his head slowly. "Sorry. This is stressful. I wasn't anything special. Dad was a construction worker, mom's still a socialite, but she's got a face like me. We're all just nobodies. Why me?"

"Why am I here? I should have been in the monastery, I could be an enlightened lama like Master Bajja. Forces far beyond us move us. We control the tiny sphere of our own lives but in the darkness beyond our little island of light, those live," Sherlock said, standing and replacing his glass. "We control those things within our reach and never forget that. But remember as well, you will be singled out, for reasons unfathomable to you. For no reason at all. You were chosen. Now control what you may."

Louis sighed, looking down at Red. "One connection. One simple connection between this queen and your cases, you're in on this. But you need that first. I need to get under the mayor. Chief Bogo and Commissioner Oliphant can't protect me or keep this running forever, the big shield is going to crack eventually."

"We will do our part, all we can, C. Wulfberg. This was always too much," Hermione said, continuing to look down on Red. "She was not pure, but she was innocent. Workers for a man performing some act of vice were not worthy of death. And Charlie... he was pure. M. Gyag, we must find something. Viens, vite!"

"Mlle. LaBelle..." Sherlock slowly shook his head. "We have other jobs, jobs which pay us and have strong evidence. Those must get attention. The bucks across out palms are the sealing of a promise made to someone. It is a duty we undertake on our honor."

"Monsieur..." Hermione huffed out the word, looking up at Sherlock with a hard stare. "Monsieur... they... deserve..."

"They do," Sherlock said, firmly. "I have said you are my student; my understudy, by your words. I gave you wings, as my venerable master did for me. Surely he thought me too untrained, but he held some assurance that I would land from my stumbling fight. You investigated on your own, found something interesting. We may be under that onus, but only one need follow. Find what you can, connect these threads. Give me something, anything. Fly, and bring word back."

Hermione nodded sharply, instantly rushing off, clicking away on her high heels. Louis shook his head as she made her way off. "She's best off if this is nothing but a wild sturgeon hunt. If there's nothing to find she'll run around soothing her righteous indignation, get tired and come back."

"Infantilizing my student... is it cynicism or malice from you?" Sherlock asked.

"Spare me," Louis huffed. "She's morally indignant, not thinking right. This isn't how criminal investigation goes. She only thinks she has facts."

"I only thought I had facts," Sherlock casually said.

"You did have facts. We know it. Now," Louis said, heavily emphasizing the last word. "That's when you act."

"So then... you cannot know she will find nothing. Should she, we will act. And only then," Sherlock asserted with a sharp nod of his head.

o o o

Hermione had no clue where to find clues. Yet she had, in the back of her mind, an inkling. The same place, visited twice, could bring forth new information if things changed. Things changed. Had they been any other workers she would have presumed no one would be there after the death of one of their own. But they lived in a grim and practical world, no matter what happened, no matter the climate, their health or who died to the street, they had to work. Work with all their might, or starve and suffer.

They were all arrayed out again in the lowering light of evening. Minus Red. They were subdued, distant, performing poses and doing their usual routine actions without thought. They were all empty-eyed robots, contemplating things deeply as they normally never did. They knew death. But it was a new kind of death that faced them, that they had to consider. They considered it and it consumed them.

The coyote with the clove cigarette hanging from her lips had taken the position Red had held, an unspoken, de facto leader. Her blank eyes grazed across Hermione, executing a slow blink, the glowing tip of her cigarette going brighter as she pulled in a drag and let it puff out of her nose to cloud her face. "It was him," Clover said with another breath of smoke. "He came to take his cut, his fillet of sole. He took what we somehow owe him. He was supposed to give her back. He was supposed to give her back..." Her sharp teeth sheared through her cigarette, the little nub of cloves and paper falling to the sidewalk, cinders sparking. "He was supposed to give her back!"

"And he did," Hermione said, evenly. There were no set rules for rage. She could only do what felt right. She approached with a mild, upright stance, hands behind her back, ears high, meeting the anger and pain with confidence. Steely assurance. "Battered, beaten, ravaged by un fauve, un sauvage. Then... she was removed, and made to look like she destroyed herself. But we both know this was not the case, oui?"

"Red stood front and center for a reason," Clover asserted. "She was locked into the place, she chewed the cat grass, but she wasn't stupid. Even if Mr. Limo took her away and did his worst she'd just have a story to tell. Maybe he knew that. Maybe he didn't want even the smallest thing getting out."

"Not a sou... why, why was she a threat? She would say nothing," Hermione mused, tapping her cheek.

Clover had been extracting another cig from when she came across a little rectangle of cardboard, the shock making her gasp and drop the little cylinder of paper. "Th-the card!"

"Card?" Hermione asked, turning to regard the coyote.

Clover fumbled in her small bag again and pulled out Sherlock's card, which Hermione had given out the other day. "Here, this. Red didn't really carry a bag, she didn't have much to carry around. She always just shoved her money and stuff into her clothes. I saw her stuff it in there... and then..."

"It came out... doubtless she never noticed as she was..." Hermione winced, trembling at the thought of what had happened to the bobcat given the marks left on her body. "And they... they thought that she had loose lips because of that card."

"They didn't know her... they didn't care she was a mammal..." Clover spat on the ground as she pulled out a cig and lit it with slightly trembling fingers. "She would have kept her mouth shut. You remember the spoor she gave you just for asking questions she didn't even think would get real answers. I'll bet she saw something, she wouldn't just lie there like a frozen fishstick. That blindfold musta come off."

Hermione thought about all the things Sherlock had shown in his glass. The swelling from punches, thinner marks from something like a whip, teeth marks from the broad teeth of a prey creature, pulled clumps of fur. "It did. I saw her body. She did not stay still. She did not stay blindfolded. Elle a vu. I cannot say what, but there was something. Quelque chose... a bedroom, a face, some kind of clothing that she could tell about later. They know of Sherlock now, and now we are in danger. But that is our matter. All of you... will you..?"

"We'll survive," Clover said with a puff of smoke. "We always come through all this spoor. Maybe minus one or two. But you can't kill off the oldest profession. We'll be fine. We'll still be here. We'll always be here so long as it's a job we can do to keep hunger off and a roof over our heads." With a last puff of smoke the coyote turned away to go back to her spot.

"Bon chance, princesse de la rue... you are better than most everyone here. You see so far..." Hermione sighed and clicked her way off. She would find no other information there. They were all too stunned and no one would know anything anyhow. They had given up the precious few bits of information they had, and her hunger for more had cost someone their life.

There was nowhere else to go. She had learned something new, as she had hoped. But it was far from useful. She knew they knew. The monster, the savage, this Mr. Limo that had hurt an innocent. He knew them, and would put a target on their backs... on their foreheads, he was so bold.

No one would help her. The ladies gave her what they could; their lives were precarious, they understood that. They were afraid yet completely practical. There was no greater threat than merely living, but Red had thought she could protect her petites colombes. She had. With her own flesh she had taken them away from danger, putting anger and fear onto her and onto Sherlock.

Hermione slumped slightly, into a more conventional weasel posture, especially in Happytown. Stoat that she was, she was another class of stretched-out mammal. She hunched, her hands reflexively rubbed each other, pressed up by her chest. She couldn't maintain her haughty pride.

Haughty? In the back of her mind she really considered her attitude. Though she was sure she was another wretch in Happytown she was defiant. Even if she never broke out of the place, never went anywhere beyond the border, she thought she was better than the place. She wanted to be better than the place, to prove that it could not get her, could not break her. It would not break her... she thought.

The cases they had worked were deep looks into mammalian depravity. But it was so normal. Those that have little stealing from those tho have less, mutual beatings, assaults of a terrible nature. It was disgusting, it was upsetting, but it was inside. Everyone knew what everyone thought, what everything meant. They all understood. It was crimes of single layers, crimes with comprehensible scope. Inside.

She never had to think outside the border.

He came from out there. M. Limo came from the puffed-up, pompous place past the unspoken barrier. No one understood out there, unless they had escaped. Nicholas. Duke. So few others. The ones with them had been informed. Perhaps they knew, not understood but they knew, could claim more ability to comprehend, if loosely. M. Limo didn't understand, but he did not need to. He only needed to take, to know there were mammals there that could be basely used. Resource units. Things, to be exploited.

That's all any of them were to mammals outside. To many mammals on the outside. Certainly, not all. Frightening monsters to scare their children. Gangsters to frighten up more money for pet causes and police. Poor little broken-winged colombes to weep their crocodile tears over...

Hermione sighed. She was just as bad. Though their power and pride made them worth mistrust she was no different form them, an ugly mirror of their hate for insiders. When Gazelle wept her tears over their plight she did not act in ignorance. She echoed the pain of her own husband, and his friends, those who left. Those who evaded the come-ons of the stripe-bedecked posers, stalking and stinking up their street corners like popcorn.

Her mind became too divided as she thought. Her precious mind, her little gray cells, were powerful. Too powerful. Sherlock warned her often that thinking deep and long was like striking out in the snow. Light flurries did little but the full fury of a storm blinded any hope of far-seeing. She had heard from an otter once that it was the same in the sea. Clear and crystalline in the shallows but murky and all-consuming the deeper the water became.

Her thoughts had always been necessarily shallow. This invasion, this intrusion of outside mammals, like an infection. Though they thought of Happytown as diseased, she knew they were a hardy survivor, yet a delicately balanced ecosystem. It needed help to shed the vestigial garbage, not someone coming in siphoning off healthy parts.

It was something wholly new. She was not used to such and it would drive her mad if she persisted. She needed facts, needed a trail to follow. She had had trails, at the start. All made of blood and burned bodies, her neighbors sacrificed to the evil force outside that used M. Limo as a catspaw to rake in money and flesh. Surely he was not the peak of the mount. Too flashy in the execution of horrid things. He might be suave and classy in more prominent and public life, but would hide all things when it came to his activities.

Her wandering thinking had taken her all around the heart of Happytown, not leaving her lost, per se, but leaving her outside of her usual haunts. She was away from the ladies of the night, but in territory that was not her own. She could care for herself, Sherlock and her own inclinations had trained her in the ways of protection. But she would have greatly preferred to avoid using such. Better security than practice.

"Merde..." She softly said, clicking along the street on her high heels, her second-paw tiramisu dress swaying wildly in time with her rapid motions, her pace naturally settled into the one she had while following Sherlock. She had come back to her erect pride, upper body slightly twisting in time with her steps, her clutch pulled tight against her body.

Her body had no intent, her motions had no desires besides merely traveling. But hungry eyes read intent where none existed. Predatory gazes always misinterpreted innocent acts, gluttony coloring the world into the sickly shade of their own selfish desire. It saw nothing and turned it into something. Turned the clip of her high heels and the sashay of that long body under the second-paw dress into something suggestive, overt, seducing. Her indifferent natural motion was an active call for attention.

Carnal hunger in the mysterious figure mixed with a somehow deeper gluttony, a hunger not to spend the cash on hand but to earn more. The two fought, tore at each other, ravaged each other. The skulking shadow oozed its way across the street, an oily stain against the spotty lights of the neglected segment of the city. The voice from out of the inky blackness bundled up against any trace of the light. "Hey there... brand new. Not welcome over with the other pieces of meat? Out for a late night date? Need better corners for that, better real estate. Not thinking too good tonight, weasel snack?"

"Hermine," Hermione quickly snapped, almost reflexively, ignoring the implications. She clicked on, trying to decide if she should be personally offended or offended for the kind women trying to eke out their daily bred from greasy scum like the creature sliming his way along by her. She could practically smell his waxy oils and the fruity spray he used to keep himself from stinking like someone who went too long without a good scrub.

"Whatever exotic scat you call yourself, just an extra tin in your hand. Albino weasel is just one more opah steak on the shelf. But, you're on your own. Enterprising. Maybe you wanna party. I got what you need. What all you street-skittering skirts need. Maybe you need to take the edge off. You look mad. That'll give you wrinkles. Can't sell a face or anything else that looks like a prune. You must be sour enough to have wrinkled up the money-maker. Some good green should relax you up. A taste for a taste. We can trade."

The voice undulated like a wave of bile, slithering across her ears, making her feel unclean just from the sound of it. It was disgusting. But worse, it was blatant. He had no airs of illusions. He was another vicemonger, but not a wholesome survivor like the women. He was a leech and proud of it. A purveyor of poison that relished his stock of ill-will. He used his spoor as currency to buy favor, it seemed. Depressingly, that meant it had worked sometime.

Hermione seethed, but did not know enough to risk taking him on. Yelling at him, releasing her rage, would not help if she miscalculated a species imbalance. She needed calm, as Sherlock tried so diligently to teach her. When he wasn't there with his incense pipe, droning for long moments of idleness to his throat-singing music and his humming bowl he was with her, cross-legged, eyes closed. Chanting soft words in that mysterious language of his, in her mother tongue, or in silence, contemplating the empty blackness behind her eyelids.

She breathed in slowly, and released it as a long, even breath. Her little gray cells started to work again, freed from the shackles of anger and hurt. She truly contemplated the mysterious figure. Offering her drugs. Knowing the women of the night. He was watching for them, watching to feed needs he was sure they had. Vices he could profit from. Or that he could use against them. She was sure Red had been a victim. Someone had wanted it to look like the consequence of an immoral life. Another self-destruction. A 'suicide.' An 'accident' in dark buildings with precarious environments and shoddy wiring or flammable garbage. Neatly packaged, neatly sold, artificial to the core. A story they wanted spread, a story that the outside mammals would lap up, savoring the mendacity that fed their prejudices and smug sense of moral superiority. It was easy to lie about folk they hated.

Link upon link connected across Hermione's brain, in a manner not unlike Sherlock's mysterious mental powers, with perhaps less polish. She was only an understudy, after all. Mysterious forces did not act for nothing. There was no room in the ecosystem for too many cleaners. Carrion-eaters could only exist side-by-side if there was enough flesh and if there were no pressures stopping them. In blind nature it was possible for scavengers to be varied. Under the watchful eye of the monster ruling these events his agents would act with impunity, them and only them.

"Oui, monsieur... un fête..." she said slowly, her pace steady but her eyes casting to the side. "We will have the... good times? Comme le laveur dit, laissez-les bon temps rouler..."

"Quit spittin' that mush-mouth frog-fried spoor, just tell me if you wanna party! You new meat is always so tender before you dry out and turn into drapes. What do you need? Not sure what you weasels need. Little ladies don't last very long. Someone'll pipe through you and toss you in a dumpster," the figure said with a hideous mirth, letting out a callous laugh.

There was a moment of consideration, her natural inclination to a dour disposition fighting with her sensible consideration. She had need of something from him, but not the bulge in his shadowy nethers or the swells of packed poison arrayed around his lumpen body. "Oui, c'est amusant..." She was not going to put her fist through his teeth. She needed to extract something from this creature. "So you... you always know what, ah... we need? When we click along the streets we are like music to you, calling out. Every step the song of la sirene?"

"I told you to knock off that français scat!" The smooth, callous character turned even more coarse. He had lost his polluted unctuousness, that street-level suavity giving way to split seams on his disguise, a crack in the mask over his real malevolence. No admixture of slime and cocksure boldness. Only the rage within, the hate and petulance boiling beneath the surface. "Just tell me you wanna party with what I got for you! What kinda junk do weasels need to party?"

"We... have many needs," Hermione said slowly, thinking about what kind of common drugs those like her kind used. "We... we are like cats. Cat grass... oui! Cat grass. For the ladies like me. Those who walk the streets..."

Wheels clicked in two heads. The gears were grinding in two skulls, both sides acting against each other, with both knowing they were in a war without it being a mutual battle. She acted against him, but presumed he did not know she was moving to corner him. He knew.

"Cat grass... yeah, makes sense. You've got them needle teeth. I've got plenty of that," he said, digging into his coat and pulling out a little self-contained hypo, looking a bit like an epipen. "Always got party packs ready to go. Lemmee have an arm, weasel."

That was the clue, too late for her to do much. She could have pretended to inject herself. But he wanted to make sure she was drugged. "So quick..." Hermione reached for her clutch, trying to surreptitiously reach for her phone. To call whom, she had no idea. Sherlock. Officer Wulfberg. Just the police. In Happytown? Madness.

"Hey! Come on! Let's have some fun!" He stabbed at her arm, overcorrecting but still managing to arrest any motion away from him. She staggered on her heels, the first time in her life she had ever stumbled so terribly. She was tottering on her heels, dodging the stabs of the object, seeking a way to escape from him and avoid being pushed to the wall on either side of the street.

"Non! Arrêt! M'aide!" Hermione shouted, putting all her musteline skills into the task of desperately dodging and dashing in different directions, always into the bulky body of the less mobile but more massive body of the dealer.

"Who's paying you? They wasted their money! You're not moving in on this job, you're not skilled enough. There's only one master of this places and it's not whoever thought you'd get in," the figure cried, finally scoring a lucky hit, the needle sinking deep into Hermione's arm, a quick push forcing lukewarm liquid of an unknown composition.

Hermione shrieked in shock and fear, yanking her arm away and knocking the object away from her arm, too late. Her mind immediately felt odd. Shrouded with thick layers of mental cloth, while her heart raced and muscles twitched. "M-m'aide..!" She tried to cry, the sound muffled and echoing in her ears. She had a vague impression that the figure was out to give her another dose of something. Noises crashed in, shouts, words, empty words. Her eyes saw shadows. The stranger figure running off, while a different silhouette closed in toward her. Such familiar horns, such a familiar shape. Familiar.

She slipped into the darkness feeling less afraid.