"You cannot speak on behalf of others when you have no mandate to do so." - Jean Marie Le pen
11:00 P.M
As soon as the elevator doors closed behind him, Nick's mind lept into the prospects of a thousand different scenarios.
While his mate, Judy, was intent on exploring the upper floors and rooms on Jack's level, Nick had decided to play his own part by busying himself with the lower floors of the building, Sector-A included. The fox honestly didn't expect to find anything very big or insightful, but since he had had those exact same thoughts running through his head the minute he discovered the phantom-profit, he chose to keep an optimistic attitude as he picked his way across the many cubicles and offices of his jurisdiction at Sector-A.
Time dragged on, and as it did, Nick found himself pondering about very trivial and unimportant things. He could safely admit to himself that he was bored at the moment, because ever since he'd first stepped foot into Sector-A, he'd seen nearly every inch of the entire floor since day one: He deduced it to be free of most incriminating evidence.
And so, if he was going to play his part in the case even more, he's have to do some exploring of his own.
So what was a fox to do? Easy answer: To go where no fox had gone before.
Nick reared the northern-most corner of his current sector, and was met with the sight of a long, straight hallway, at the end of which stood a set of doors labeled Sector-B.
In all his time working under Jack's management, he'd never set foot behind the doors that separated Sector-A from Sector-B: It was an understandable situation, since his job had never called for it as of yet, and he himself had never gotten around to it, simply.
But now, nothing stood his way except his own determination. He jogged down the length of the hall, ignoring the snores of one unfortunate bunny who must've fallen asleep doing overtime. When he reached the set of doors, he pushed upon them and set foot inside Sector-B.
So what was it like in there?
Well... Exactly like Sector-A. It was nearly indistinguishable, with the only real difference being a slightly different layout and structure in regards to the many cubicles.
Nick didn't know what compelled him to explore this new area: He still didn't expect to find anything useful or interesting. Honestly, what were the chances of him coming across something in this entire building that would prove Jack as guilty of his accusations? That didn't stop him from continuing his snooping though, as he immediately entered the new quadrant and began looking around. For what, exactly, he did not know, but he kept his eyes peeled out for anything that he might be able gather insight from.
There weren't very many workers around at this time of night, and that fact allowed Nick to creep around with relative ease, as he didn't have to worry about anyone interrupting his efforts. As expected, he didn't come across very much at first. He edged along the cubicles, stealing glances inside the offices and occasionally looking at the various stacks of papers piled haphazardly around the whole sector.
Ah, what am I even doing? I ain't gonna find squat if I just keep skulking around like this. I need to look in a place of higher ranking... He mentally chided himself.
The fox did a full one-eighty; Scanning the environment around him and searching for anything of significance. His gaze eventually settled upon a larger office on the other side of the room. He jogged over to doorway and analyzed the bale that was embedded in the wall just to the right of the entrance. Reading it to himself, it read out as;
Office Coordinator: Keane Thompson
This must be the office of Sector-B's coordinator! I doubt they're as talented and insightful as me, but I'll give them the benefit for now! After all, I am breaking into their office!
He chuckled to himself as he tried against the door, pushing the handle down and pressing his weight into the door. Unfortunately, and not very surprisingly, it was locked.
"Great." He mumbled aloud.
All of a sudden, Nick felt a reverberating and repeating vibration in the right pocket of his undercover-issued suit pants. He tucked his hand inside and pulled out his phone, which displayed a picture of Judy, with her number just below it. He mashed the accept button and brought the device up to his ear.
"What's up, Carrots?" He near-whispered.
"Nick, get out of the building. Now. Meet me back at the hotel as soon as you can!" Judy's voice responded.
"What? What's wrong, Whiskers? Did something happen?" He asked, his voice rising slightly in volume.
"Yes, and I'll explain as soon as we're out of here and back at the hotel! Besides, I t-think that I just got all the evidence we'll ever need... We can't discuss it here!"
"Ah, okay." Nick stammered briefly. "I'll see you soon then." He hung up and promptly stuffed his phone back into his trouser pocket before making his way back to the exit.
I wonder what got Carrots all riled up... She sounded pretty worried. I should probably pick up the pace. His thoughts pressed.
As he made his way back through Sector's B and A, eventually reaching the very same elevator that he had used to come up to the floor with, he contemplated with the idea of Judy having found something important to the likes of their investigation. Granted, she did mention something about having all the evidence that they would ever need, whatever that meant. He chose not to dwell on the thought for very long though, since he knew that Judy would explain all of her findings with him soon enough.
When his elevator reached ground level, he immediately set out towards the street. Conveniently enough, he spotted Judy hurriedly pacing down the length of the street on the opposite side of the road. He saw her with a single paw raised, waving down a taxi as it approached her.
The fox sprinted over to her, nearly getting himself run over in the process. He heard Judy's voice pierce his eardrums as she spoke aloud to the taxi driver;
"Yes, I need to go to the, uh, the Hotel Alexandria, please." She requested to the grizzly bear driving the cab.
Nick nearly laughed out loud at the notion of Judy, tiny as she is, attempting (and thankfully, succeeding) to wave down a taxi as large as this one. He didn't see any other small-mammal taxis though, so he figured that she must have been desperate to as try and hail this one.
"What, are there no bunny sized cabs 'round here?" Nick heard the bear ask gruffly just as he placed his paw on Judy's shoulder.
Gees, this is like Jumbeoux's Cafe all over again! Nick mentally concluded.
The bunny glanced apprehensively in his direction before her face melted into a look akin to that of relief.
"Well, you got a fox tagging along too, so I think you can spare the extra weight and just drive us to our destination... Isn't that right, Alaina?" Nick stated, turning towards Judy.
The bear donned a confused look before he grumbled audibly. "Fine... Get in the back, you two."
"N-er, Felix," The bunny corrected herself swiftly. "Oh, you have no idea how good it is to see you." She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him in an embraceful hug.
After a few seconds the bear spoke out again, his patience obviously wearing thin.
"Come on now... I don't got all night, you know."
And at that, the fox and bunny hauled themselves into the too-large backseat of the taxi, and were then on their way back to the Hotel Alexandria.
As the taxi glided down the surprisingly (and conveniently) sparsely-populated streets, Nick took to pressing Judy about her findings.
"So fluff, what's the big idea with uh..." He stole a tenacious glance at the taxi-driver, choosing his next few words carefully (and rather simply) so as to not arouse suspicion.
"All this?" He concluded, lightly waving his paws around in the air for emphasis.
"Just hang-tight for now, fox... I'd rather not discuss it here.." She said before sparing a glance out of the taxi window and into the night sky.
Nick stroked the hair on the end of his chair with his paw, pondering about his mate's choice of words and rather peculiar actions. Eventually settling on holding his tongue for the moment, he leaned back in his seat and gazed out the window for some time, directing his thoughts elsewhere for the majority of the journey back to the hotel.
Soon enough, the taxi-driver began to pull in to the curb of their hotel, bringing the vehicle to a stop at their new destination. He swiveled his head around and spoke aloud;
"That'll be 18.75, ma'am..." He began flatly. "You two look awfully familiar..." He said with a look of distrust. "Were you both ever in the news at some point, or somthin'?"
Judy hurriedly pulled out a twenty dollar bill and tossed it up front as she opened the door.
"Keep the change, thanks for the ride, never been in the news before, bye!" She replied very quickly before stepping outside and hurriedly walking to the hotel entrance.
Meanwhile, Nick just chuckled and shot the driver with a lone finger gun before exiting the cab and following his mate back into the hotel lobby.
When the two of them had finally reached their room, and Nick shut the door with finalizing effect, the fox immediately walked up to Judy and scooped her up, bridal-style.
"Alright dumb-bunny, show me whatcha found before I give ya a full-body search myself!" He said whilst wiggling his eyebrows and donning his favored half-lidded smirk.
The bunny squirmed in his grasp and dropped to the floor, landing on her feet before whirling around and facing the fox.
"Nick, this is serious! T-this is not good, not good at all! We need to show chief right away!" She said while she felt around her waistline for what Nick presumed was her phone.
"Come on fluff-butt, do we really have to go to buffalo-butt right now? I mean we just got back, anyways!" Nick complained as he undid his tie and threw it on a nearby table.
Judy, instead of retrieving her mobile-device from her pockets, instead brought out one of her zip-lock bags, and using a pair of tweezers, pulled out a strangely shaped object.
"Nick, tell me what this is." She said as she jabbed a finger directly at it, hovering it directly in front of the fox's face.
"Uh, a century-old potato chip?" He responded innocently.
"No!" The bunny nearly shouted. "It's a scale, Nick! A pangolin scale!"
The fox gazed in sudden realization at the shield-shaped item that Judy carefully held between the tongs of her tweezers.
"I found it in Jack's office, hidden beneath his keyboard. It didn't just fall off Shahaz's back for me to find it on the floor... Jack was keeping this for a reason!" Judy continued.
"Whoa whoa, hang on a second... How do we know that this even belongs to Shahaz? I'm pretty sure he's not the only pangolin running around out there." Nick retorted.
"Come on, Nick! Don't tease! And I mean seriously, how many pangolins do you know, huh?" Judy took a deep breath before resuming her explanation.
"This here," She said shaking the scale. "Confirms that Jack knows Shahaz one way or another... As if the evidence that we already gathered wasn't enough, this should be!"
"Okay, this is great and all, and I'm proud of you carrots, but surely this one thing can't be what made you bring us all the way back here to the hotel, right?" The fox inquired.
The bunny swallowed, her response being nothing but silence.
"Right?" Nick asked again, a slight undertone of concern lacing the roots of his voice.
"You're right... This isn't it." She murmured softly as she carefully tucked the scale back into the zip-lock bag and placed it on the nearby table.
Judy then pulled out her phone, and took some time to scroll through it. There was no communication between fox and bunny throughout the ordeal, short as it was, but it was more than enough to make Nick realize that whatever Judy was going to show him was important.
Eventually, she turned the screen towards him and dropped the device into his paws. On it, a paused video was awaiting it's awakening. Nick promptly pressed the play button, and watched eagerly with hushed trepidation and wonder as the recorded scene played out before him.
In truth, there was nothing to be said. He didn't utter a single word throughout the entire video recording, and when it finally ended with Vladzotz leaping from the window in Jack's office, he carelessly tossed the phone to his left, where it landed atop the nearby bed mattress, bouncing a few times before resting near the base of the pillows.
"Th-that can't be real..." He muttered flatly, his eyes glazed over and staring into the distance behind Judy. "He's d-dead, Judy... We saw him die.."
The bunny winced when she heard Nick refer to her with her true name.
"Nick, what you saw was real: It happened right in front of me. It's clear now that Jack isn't just working with Shahaz... He's got Vladzotz on his tail for some other reason, too."
"How did he survive? That shouldn't have been possible!" He nearly shouted. "Gosh, little cliche, don't ya think?"
Judy sighed and pressed her fingertips to the bridge of her nose, where she kneaded carefully and rubbed away at her soreness.
"I don't know, Nick... But you survived too! You were buried right along with him when the roof collapsed. It isn't that hard to believe that he survived as well."
"But I thought that bats had hollow bones! Shouldn't he have just been smashed flat under all that rubble?" Nick asked with a scowl.
"It might have looked like a lot from your perspective when the roof came down, but from what I saw, just a portion of it fell, and it was only enough to bury you both."
"Gees, why didn't you tell me that earlier?"
"I didn't think it mattered earlier!"
Nick let out a dry laugh, nearly humorless as it was. He whirled around and sat down on the mattress before leaning back and lying down across it.
"Well, even if it didn't kill him, I'm glad to see that he didn't manage to escape without a few scratches, amiright? Gees, and I thought he was ugly before!"
At that comment, Judy stifled her own laugh before collapsing adjacent to Nick, lying down right next to him and staring at the ceiling. After a few seconds of tranquil silence, the bunny turned her head in Nick's direction and stared him down with intent.
"At least he doesn't seem to be after you, though... It looks like he's working with Jack over something... I'm not sure what, though." Judy added.
"Yeah, I wouldn't call that working with though: Flappy-Bat threatened to kill him, it sounded like!" His eyes narrowed seconds later, and he sat up in the bed while eyeing Judy.
"Wait... Vladzotz said that he would punish Jack again... What does that mean?" He asked suspiciously, watching Judy as she sat up and continued to explain.
"Well, I didn't get around to telling you because I didn't think it was important at the time, but when I went to meet up with Jack for our date a few days ago, I found him passed out in his office. He had all these big scratches on his back, and I guess Vladzotz was the one who gave him them, I suppose."
When she finished speaking, she turned and glanced at Nick, and was surprised to see his face scrunched up in confusion.
"Hold on, did you say... Date?" He questioned with narrowed eyes.
At that, the bunny swallowed hard and began darting her eyes around the room. One of her paws found its place on the back of her neck, where she rubbed nervously.
"I walked right into that one, didn't I?"
"You sure did, Fluff. Explain, please." Nick urged with crossed arms.
Judy studied his expression momentarily before formulating her response. He didn't seem upset or shocked in any way, but his brooding stare made her chest ache with regret. He had a stony poker-face, so it was very difficult to tell what his emotions were, at that moment. Since she had no way out, she decided to come clean.
"A while back, Jack asked me out on a date... It wasn't his fault, since he only knows me as my fake identity, Alaina Ryder." She began, pausing with a quick sniffle.
The fox noticed that her purple eyes were starting to become rather shiny.
"I-I figured that it would be a good chance t-to get more information out of him, and to learn more about h-him..." She looked Nick in the eyes. "I'm so sorry I didn't tell you."
She placed her paw on the mattress and leaned closer to Nick, bringing her face closer until her nose was just inches away from his chin.
"Is that all?" Nick inquired, his words lined with a slight sense of sympathy.
The bunny breathed in a heaving breath and brought her paws up to her eyes, her ears drooping against her cheeks as she wiped away at her face.
"No..." She replied steadily, with tears beginning to stream down the sides of her face. "Just yesterday morning, he-he-" Her voice cracked as she forced herself to swallow hard.
"He kissed me, a-and I let him!"
The tears were now falling in rapid succession, dripping onto the fabric of the sheets as she stifled heaving breaths in between her regretful sobs. The bunny's conscious was replaying that fateful scene over and over again in her mind. It reminded her of how unfaithful she felt afterwords, and how regretful she was over what had happened.
Meanwhile, Nick's ears had lowered, and his eyes had widened. He wrapped his arm around Judy's shoulder, massaging her opposing arm with his paw in a reassuring gesture.
"A very dumb and emotional bunny once told me that everyone makes mistakes, Judy." He said with a smile.
At the mention of her true name, the weeping bunny glanced upwards and locked eyes with Nick once again.
"Please don't cry, Whiskers." He said as he used his thumb to wipe away at her tear-stained muzzle. "Hey now, it's alright. Oh, you bunnies... Always so emotional."
"You're not-" Judy sniffed loudly. "Mad at me?"
"Naw, of course not!" Nick claimed. "I got nothin' to be mad about, carrots. Now please stop crying, it hurts me seeing those gorgeous eyes of yours filled with tears."
"Oh Nick..." Was all that the bunny murmured in response.
She then promptly took one of her ears and blew her nose with it before letting it flop back against her head. As it did, the mucus-covered fur rubbed against Nick's arm. Careful not to arouse offense, Nick carefully pushed her ear away from his shirt, biting his lower lip all the while. There were a few more seconds of solemn silence before the bunny leaned even closer and grasped the fox in a hug, her paws gripping tight against his suit-jacket.
"Thank you, Nick." She sniffed again. "I'm so sorry that you had to see me like this."
"Nah, it's alright fluff. Besides, I'm pretty much used to it by now." He said with a coy grin plastered across his muzzle.
"Jerk!" Judy mumbled, though she was smiling the entire time.
She then leaned back, taking Nick with her until the two mammals reclined horizontal across the mattress. The both of them just lay there for some time, absorbed in the peaceful silence of the room, the only source of light being the dim glow of the moon, which shined luminously through the nearby window. After some time of simple rest and recovery, Nick decided to continue with their original conversation, since it's topic was of the utmost importance.
"Sooo..." He started off slowly, clearing his throat right after. "I know this might not be the best time, but why do you think Vlad is working with Jack?"
Judy sighed deeply and closed her eyes before responding.
"I'm not sure Nick. Your guess is as good as mine, honestly. It likely has something to do with this repayment of his, and I bet it involves Shahaz one way or another, too."
"Ya think so?" The fox questioned once again.
"I know so." She smiled with shut eye-lids. "Now I think we should get some rest for the night... We got a long day ahead of us tomorrow, and we'll be needing our energy."
"Needing our energy for what, fluff? Another grueling day at the office?" He asked sarcastically.
"Something like that, yeah." Judy confirmed.
Nick nodded his head in seeming agreement and understanding.
"Yeah, I see what you're gettin' at, carrots." He shifted his weight against the bed. "So tomorrow, we'll tell Bogo what we found... But don't be surprised if he sends us back in undercover for a few more days... You know how long it takes him and the comity to organize arrest warrants, and all that jazz, so he'll probably want us goin' in again to make sure that Jack doesn't try anything shifty."
Judy blew air out of her mouth. "Sounds good to me, my sly fox. Now let's get some rest... I'm so tired right now" She said whilst wiping at her still moistened eye-lids.
"Agreed." Nick consented.
And at that, the two of them began preparing for a good night's rest. Despite the eventful day that they both had experienced, fox and bunny alike were both very keen on at last being able to sleep away their problems...
Until tomorrow, of course.
Hey Everyone!
I certainly hope that you all enjoyed the latest chapter, and if you did, be sure to leave a review telling me your thoughts, and to drop a favorite and follow if you haven't already: I'd greatly appreciate that! :D
That being said, I'd also like to bring up one more thing before I bid you adieu: As some of you may or may not recall at this point, Jack Savage was apparently doing business with the mayor, remember? I brought that up all the way back in chapter 26, and haven't acknowledged it since. I assure you, that plight will soon be revealed! I haven't forgotten about her, and soon enough you will all learn about Jack's mysterious meetings with the mayor...
Or lack thereof...
Thank for reading, as always! Stay tuned and alert for chapter 39 of When Instinct Falls, 'Tomorrow's Hereafter.'
'Till next time...
Peace!