Hello everyone!

I just want to quickly take the time to welcome you to the first bonus chapter of my Zootopia story, When Instinct Falls!

Alongside that, I think you all know what else is coming. That's right: More music! Check this one out!

Davy Jone's theme song

Yup. That's it.

If Vladzotz had a theme song, it would probably be this. Davy Jones is actually an inspiration for Vladzotz's personality, so that's a bonus! The song starts out really slow, but trust me, it turns really intense in later on. I recommend perhaps listening to it as you read, if you're into that kind of immersion. :P

Without further ado, I present to you chapter 50 of 'When Instinct Falls', Inferno.

Enjoy...

"It is through the eyes of our enemies that we become whole." - Anonymous

It took the bat's eyes a full minute to open. His world felt hot, and confined. The smell of smoke filled his nostrils.

Vladzotz pushed up with his bony wings, lifting his battered body off of the floor; The required effort strained his muscles and forced him to groan uncomfortably. He felt a hard and rigid weight pushing back against him from above, and he reasoned that it must've been part of the collapsed roof that had buried him in this wooden tomb. The bat's skin felt both incredibly hot and incredibly cold at the same time, and he knew without thinking that he had suffered some burns from the fires around him.

He grit his teeth, and tasted the metallic flavor of blood in his mouth. He breathed in, but coughed horridly, causing the blood in his mouth to spew against the floor. Vladzotz licked at his lips, and could feel the smoky aura clouding the air around him. Having been pinned beneath the collapsed boards, he had been lucky to not inhale any noxious gas floating higher up in the air. If he were to escape, he knew that he would have to be quick, for if the fires didn't kill him, the toxic gas from those fires surely would.

Looking down at the spot where he had been laying unconscious, he struggled to remember what had happened. His mind was drowning in confusion and pain, and many of his short-term memories were too blurred to be recalled. But, there were a select few that stood out, and even in his condition, rage flared up inside of him like a growing flame.

"Fox... You... You did this... T-to me." Vladzotz coughed horribly. "I will find you... One day."

The bat had no clue where the fox was at this point in time, but once he escaped this hellish prison, it would only be a matter of time until they crossed paths once again.

That much he was certain of.

So, he set his sights on just that: Escape, and preparing his body for the grueling task of finding a way out. Vladzotz had lived too long and seen too much to quit now, and the bat couldn't rest until his mission was complete. He took in a deep breath, holding back tears as his chest and spine seared with pain. The bat suppressed his rage and squinted his eyes, dragging one foot along the ground and setting it down in its proper position. He did the same with the other, and pushing up with his arms, ordered his body to stand using every ounce of will that he could muster. Chilling pain gripped the bat's shoulders and squeezed against his spine, and he hissed in a mixture of pain and relief as he felt the remnants of the collapsed ceiling fall from his back and clatter against the floor: He was free from his prison.

The hardest part was over, and now all he had to do was put one foot in front of the other until he found a way out.

Vladzotz took a few careful steps forward, but staggered to the right; His legs buckling and dropping his weight, causing him to slam against a nearby wall and slide halfway down before his claws dug into the boards, bracing him, keeping him from falling back down. Vladzotz growled before heaving himself off of the wall and staggering to his feet. With his fangs bared and his two red eyes shining bright with malice, Vladzotz limped for the only exit in sight; A doorway to another room where a flickering orange glow poured in. He slowly approached the room before entering it, all the while keeping his gaze focused to the front of him, if only to prevent himself from blacking out.

Looking around at his new environment, the bat noticed that the ceiling was no longer visible, having been cooked to a crisp by the roiling flames visible through thin areas in the otherwise dense smoke. From the hole in the mansion's roof, Vladzotz could see the soothing blue glow of the Nocturnal-District's glow-worms, and he then realized that the opening was his only way out: He had not the energy in his legs to walk around and search for a terrestrial exit from this hellish mansion, so he only hoped that his powerful wings would be able to carry him to safety.

The clock was now ticking, and he knew that the whole place would come crashing down sooner later, and if he was still inside when that happened, there would be no hope for him at all. Grinding his fangs together and growling deeply, Vladzotz spread his wings, filling the room with leathery darkness. Just as he prepared to jump up and attempt to fly out, a white-hot sensation of pain radiated from his left wing the exact second that it stretched to it's maximum point. Retracting his stinging arm, Vladzotz examined the flaps of skin that webbed between his fingers, and growled in anger: Portions of the skin that made up his left wing was in tatters, with strips of flesh dangling loosely between long rows of bony fingers, and tiny holes peppering themselves throughout the spots that weren't completely shredded. There wasn't much left. But still, he refused to give up: His left wing may have been in tatters, but he reasoned that there was still enough skin left on it to support his weight as he tried to flap away.

The bat grit his teeth even harder and steeled himself for the coming onslaught of pain that would accompany his attempt at escape.

Vladzotz lept into the air, performing a sort of mini-jump as he beat his wings down with all the strength that he could muster. The bat's shoulder muscles fatigued almost immediately, and screamed silently to relax. Stinging pain shot through both of his wings, and his body went limp in mid-air. Gravity then took over. He only dropped five feet or so, but to him, it felt like the farthest fall in all of his life. Landing hard on his chest, Vladzotz's back arched as he roared in pain and anger. His guttural wretches cracked and trailed off to a hoarse groan, and he sank back down, lowering his muzzle until he was laying spread-eagled on the ground, just like when he had first awoken.

He simply lay there, boiling tears streaming down his face, barely able to move: He knew that some of his ribs must've been broken from the fall, since the prickling sensations of pain in his chest seemed to emanate in greater quantities than ever before. The room vibrated around him, coupled with the thunderous roar of crumbling stone and wood. A blast of heat then swept over the vampire bat, and he felt stinging licks of pain splash against his back, limbs and neck, and from the agonizing sense of pain that radiated from those points of contact, Vladzotz knew that he must have been burned.

He was almost tempted to give up. For so long, he had been drowning himself in grief and despair, and now, his home was falling to pieces because of his mistakes. As much as he blamed Nick Wilde and the ZPD for what had happened, he couldn't deny that it was he himself would had started this fire. And now, he was paying the price for it.

But there was one thing that kept him going: His desire to live. His very life was on the line, and he knew that if he didn't flee from this burning maze sooner or later, then he would perish, as his family had before him. The irony was almost nauseating. In a life full of pain, they were one of the few things that made him smile. They may have been gone, and for as much as he tried to honor their memory, he knew that nothing could change that. At least he knew that his Lucy would be waiting for him, if he survived this...

A sudden burst of adrenaline surged through the bat, his primordial survival instincts kicking in at full power.

The throbbing in his ribcage couldn't be a deterrent - Not if he wanted to live.

Vladzotz tied a rope around his consciousness to prevent himself from blacking out, knowing that if he did, there was a chance that he would never wake up. Lucy needed him, and he wanted to live - That was all the motivation that he needed. With clenched eyes streaming tears, and bared fangs dripping blood, Vladzotz raised his body up off of the ground and struggled to his feet and wings, fending off a combined wave of sickening pain and rage as he stood up. Steeling his mentality, Vladzotz attempted his previous maneuver once again, and succeeded; Flapping his wings half a dozen times and lifting himself several feet off of the ground, and flying up nearly half-way to the opening.

A moment later, his arms gave out from sheer exhaustion, and he fell once again, only this time managing to plant his claws into the wooden boards of the wall just below the opening in the roof. Ragged and covered with soot, the bat's wings ached and stung as he carefully pulled himself up and readjusted his grip against the wall. The rising smoke made it hard to breathe, but he dared not let go of his hold on the wall, knowing that he would never be able to climb or fly back up if he fell back down to the ground once again.

Meanwhile, the smoke was accumulating, sinking lower and lower, and would probably suffocate the bat before the building caved in and crushed him out of existence.

Gathering the pitiful stamina that was left in his aching muscles, Vladzotz sucked in a lungful of air through his nostrils to combat the stinging pain in his mouth and throat, and then swept one of his wings in front of him, his claws digging into the boards of the wall. Then, putting one wing in front of the other, Vladzotz dug his large talons into the wooden framework of the walls, pulling himself forward and closer to the opening above. His body ached like it never had before, but he would not die today.

The injured bat clambered up the wall until he made it to the rim of the opening, which was nothing more than a twisted mess of melted wood and brick. Hunched over and panting madly, when the pain level was under control and he was fit to move again, Vladzotz jumped off of the rim, spreading his wings and taking to the sky of the Nocturnal-District, his form hidden in a massive smokey cloud. After tiring his wings out from flapping so hard, Vladzotz steadily spread his wing-span until he was gliding easily.

A rumble resembling thunder shook the bat's hyper-sensitive eardrums, coming from the direction that he had came. Vladzotz tried craning his neck around to gaze back at his crumbling mansion, but a sharp knob of pain in his nape prevented him from doing so. Flapping even harder, the bat eventually gripped against a large stalactite that was hanging down from the roof of the Nocturnal-District, using his feet to hang upside-down from the pointed tip of the stalactite. As soon as his grip was fastened to the rock, the bat swatted his wings around, putting out the small amounts of fire that had been ablaze upon his fur and flesh. He then looked down at what was once his only home.

Despite his inverted vision, Vladzotz was still able to see his home just fine from all the way up in the cavern's surface: Castle Fangpyre had completely collapsed, and was now nothing more than a smoldering ruin of charred wood and melted brick. Vladzotz was a brutal and unrelenting mammal, but the sight brought tears to his red eyes; The salty droplets streaming down his forehead and falling from the tips of his fuzzy ears. His age-old home was gone, and behind the veil of smoke and flame, the bat could see the rows of police cars that were piled up in the streets. He couldn't see them in great detail, but knew that they were there from the blurry flashes of red and blue that dotted his vision.

Vladzotz wasn't certain on whether or not his arch-nemesis had survived the fire, but he did know of a way that he could find out: His vision may have been lackluster, but the bat had a very special ability, a sixth-scent that made his species the ultimate predators of the night, able to sense what other mammals could only imagine: Echolocation.

Breathing in steadily, Vladzotz closed his eyes and sectioned off all of his senses with the exception of his sense of sound. He compressed his tongue against the back of his throat, ignoring the stinging pain that accompanied it, before quickly flexing his jaws and uttering a high-pitched clicking sound. Vladzotz listened very carefully, waiting ever-so patiently for the sound waves that ricocheted off of the ground far below. His ears twitched slightly, and in his mind, the bat was able to make out the forms of around two dozen or so police officers, most of them searching through the wreckage of his fallen mansion.

Keeping his jaws ajar, Vladzotz clicked multiple times in a row, intent on forming a better image of what was happening down below. Echolocation was useful as it was, but tricky at the same time: He had to keep clicking, because once simply wasn't enough to form a coherent idea of what his sound waves were bouncing off of. It was like taking a single picture: He knew what the environment around him was like in that single moment in time, but if he wanted to get a better look, he's have to click more than once, almost creating a sort of slide-show for him to judge the movement, distance, and shaped of the things around him.

When the sound waves had bounced off of the cavern below and returned to Vladzotz's waiting ears, he felt himself muster a full body shiver: He sensed the outline of a small creature, he wasn't sure what, picking up a tiny metal object from the wreckage of his home. The bat's eyes flew open, and he knew without a doubt that someone had discovered his locket. Closing his eyes, he clicked again and waited for the returning sounds.

Upon sensing them, he came to the conclusion that whoever had found his locket was now looking inside of it.

Rage began to build inside of him, but it soon dwindled, only to be replaced by sorrow. He knew that there was no way that he'd be able to recover his prized-possession. The world needed to think that he was gone. And so, with tears quietly streaming down his face, Vladzotz released his hold on the tip of the stalactite, spreading his wings and gliding off into the dim-glowing cavern sky of the Nocturnal-District, which the bat knew would soon be erupting with cheers upon learning the knowledge of his supposed death.

3:04 A.M ; Somewhere near the Meadowlands...

Pain wracked across his shoulders and neck, each flap nearly causing the bat to black out.

It had been roughly a half-hour since he had escaped from the burning fires of his own mansion, and he was feeling no better than when he had first awoken surrounded in flame. Now, Vladzotz was steadily gliding over the mountainous landscape that surrounded the entrance to the Nocturnal-District, which he had fled just minutes earlier. Looking down on the land below him, Vladzotz could see the lights of cars and other vehicles as they drove down the winding roads that led to and from the city of Zootopia, the sky-line of which Vladzotz could see in the distance, just above a ridge of towering green mountains.

Slowly lowering his altitude, he was soon enough flying just a few dozen feet above the surface of the road. His wings were tired, aching, and stinging with pain: He knew that he could carry on for only a few more minutes before exhaustion finally surpassed his motivation to live, and he would fall to the ground. He had to find a car large enough to support him, and he would land upon it, resting as the metal machine carried him the remainder of the way to Zootopia.

But then what? He was one of the most wanted criminals in the entire land, and the ZPD had a bounty on his head that exceeded thousands of dollars. Even if he went to a civilian hospital, or begged assistance from random mammals he encountered, if they didn't recognize him as the crime-lord of the Nocturnal-District, they would surely be too frightened to bother lending aid: Most mammals on the surface had never seen or even heard of bats before, and would no doubt think he was some sort of monster.

His options were as limited as his stamina was low: He had to make a choice with both.

He considered holing up in some abandoned warehouse somewhere, but knowing the ferocity of his own wounds, he brushed that thought away: He needed medical attention, even is it wasn't up to hospital standards. He continued pondering his new predicament for a few more minutes until the light of an eighteen-wheeler passing below him jarred him from his ceaseless thoughts.

The sides of the truck's cargo-hold were painted over with bright red words; Sahara-Square Sundries

The bat's eyes widened and his ears twitched in sudden realization: This eighteen-wheeler was part of the fleet of trucks that shipped Shahaz the Stinger's illegal goods back and forth between the various districts. Smiling wide to himself for the first time in what felt like years, Vladzotz figured that Shahaz could help take care of his injuries and assist him in his recovery. He and the pangolin crime-lord had done business in the past, and had even worked together to create the Sahara-Square Sundries shell company.

An old memory tugged at the back of his mind: One that caused him to growl with hatred and disgust.

He remembered loaning money to that pathetic vermin of a mammal, Jack Savage. He remembered how the rabbit had lost all of his money, and had yet to deliver full compensation for his recklessness. Vladzotz would take great pleasure in visiting the rabbit businessman once again. But first...

Vladzotz aligned himself with the truck, and dropped atop the roof of the cargo-hold, his body thumping hard against the white-colored metal. He hissed as another wave of pain encompassed his torso, each of his individual broken ribs throbbing in pain and discomfort. The agony was relentless, and he almost blacked out, but quickly pulled himself back into consciousness: He had no intention on dying today.

Lying still on the cold, smooth surface of the truck's roof, Vladzotz clicked his jaws together and activated his sense of echolocation. He listened closely for the sound waves, and grinned when they returned to his waiting ears. He gathered that the Zootopia border to the Rainforest-District was growing closer with each passing second. Of course, if he were to get to Shahaz the Stinger's compound, he'd have to pass through two other districts just to reach the Sahara-Square, where the pangolin's compound was situated.

Gritting his teeth together, Vladzotz slowly and carefully raised himself up and took to the night sky once again, all the while breathing in rapidly to negate the growing pain in his aching chest. The bat understood that if he were to reach Shahaz's compound, he'd have to do it in the least attention-getting way as possible, which happened to be flying across the mountains in the Rainforest-District, and cutting across Savannah-Central to reach the Sahara-Square. If he had lain across that truck the entire drive through the city, then he would have undoubtedly been noticed by civilians and perhaps even policemammals: He could not allow that.

And so, he took to the safest route, and continued flying across the land, his stamina rejuvenated from his brief period of resting, and his sights set on the Sahara-Square

4:37 A.M ; Above Sahara-Square...

Vladzotz had continued his flight across the city of Zootopia for nearly an hour and a half at this point.

His body was bursting with unbridled amounts of pain and exhaustion, and it took every ounce of his will to stick to the skies: He knew that he was almost there.

The bat kept is fangs bared and his eyes peeled wide open in an attempt to keep from passing out. He concentrated on things that made him feel happy and alive: His family, his locket, and slaughtering mammals that got in his way.

He imagined what he would do the the conniving fox once he got his claws on him again... A burst of adrenaline surged through him, reigniting his sense of ambition.

For roughly ten more minutes of agonizing pain and boiling rage, the bat kept on flying until his destination was in sight. He flew over the massive air-conditioning walls that separated the Sahara-Square from Savannah-Central, and as he did, spotted the dim glow of Shahaz's compound in the distance. He smiled with glee and picked up his speed, despite the gnawing pain in his abdomen, back, and wings. He chuckled maniacally to himself, and began descending in altitude as he approached the ware-house.

Out of the blue, the adrenaline rush that had been coursing through his veins had abandoned him, and when it left, a wave of exhaustion settled over his mind and body with such intensity that he felt his heart slow down, his wings cease to beat, and his eyes close shut: He passed out cold in mid-air, some ten feet above the sandy ground and another twenty yards from the compound.

The last thing he saw as he went down was a pile of wooden crates and sandbags, quickly approaching as his body plummeted right towards them.

6:11 A.M ; Location unknown...

For the second time that day, the bat's eyes took nearly a full minute to open and focus to his new surroundings.

Wait...

His vision felt lopsided. Sitting up, Vladzotz raised his wings to his face and patted down at his left eye-socket: Nothing but pain and lumpy tissue hidden beneath a veil of bandages and cloth: Vladzotz was missing his left eye.

Using what little he had left of his true sense of sight, he took to examining his new environment. He was in a small, but spacious L-shaped room with strange patterns lined into the wallpaper. Peculiar markings drawn in paint were plastered in random spots around the walls, including symbols that resembled stars, eyes, and the sun itself. The room was filled with hundred of candles varying in size, color, shape, intensity, and yes, even smell.

The bat was lying atop a mountain of throw pillows as diverse as the candles. At first Vladzotz wondered why his shirt was missing, but the claw-marks on his chest reminded him that he had purposefully torn off his own shirt back when he was trying to kill the fox in his mansion... That seemed like days ago, thinking back on it...

Now, his chest and abdomen were bandaged up in wraps upon wraps of cloth and other tissue. His ribs still hurt, but the rest of his body was surprisingly lacking in pain.

"Oh good, you're awake." A sandy and raspy voice grumbled from behind the bat.

Carefully twisting his vision to the behind of him, Vladzotz's line of sight came to rest on the form of a pangolin, hunched-over in posture as he sat broodingly in a small stool just behind the mound of pillows that the bat was lying atop. The pangolin had his beady eyes locked onto the bat, and he stood up from his stool upon locking vision with him.

"S-Shahaz?" Vladzotz wheezed slowly, trying to pull himself to his feet but ultimately to no avail.

"Silence, Fangpyre. You best not wear yourself out. Save your energy, my friend." The pangolin replied flatly.

"W-where...?" Was as far as the bat questioned before sputtering into a fit of horribly painful coughs.

"This is my office, Vlad. Welcome to Sahara-Square Sundries. The workers heard a crashing sound outside, and when they went to investigate, they found you laying unconscious in a pile of broken boxes and sandbags just a few yards away from the entrance to the ware-house. We brought you inside and tried our best to patch you up: You were bleeding all over the place, and your wings had some really nasty burns on them. Oh, and you're missing your left eye. That we couldn't fix."

"Fix?" Vladzotz murmured softly.

"Yes, fix. We stitched up some of your cuts, put cream and bandages on your bruises, and wrapped your eye in some cloth as well. Lucky for you, we had just recently received a shipment of opium concentration from Al Catpone's jungle hide-out, and were able get some morphine out of it. We injected you so that the pain wouldn't be too bad when you woke up, but don't get too comfortable, because we don't exactly have very much of the stuff. It'll fade, and the pain will return. Enjoy this peace while it lasts."

Shahaz's tongue poked out from his narrow muzzle, wiping away at his snout before retracting with a wet slurping sound. He reached over to his left side, which was out of Vladzotz's line of sight, and soon pulled out a pouch of dark-red liquid attached to a hypodermic needle, which in turn was pricked into Shahaz's left arm; Stuck in the small gaps between his scales. He pulled out the needle in his arm before removing the pouch from the needle's stalk. The pangolin then poked the bag with one of those brightly-colored, twisted sippy-straws.

"Drink." He simply requested, holding the bag above Vlad's face. "You need to drink."

"Is that... Your-"

"Yes, Vlad: It's my own blood. Now drink."

The bat drank deep from the bag, completely draining it before settling back down into the mound of pillows and sighing heavily.

"T-thank... You." He wheezed, watching Shahaz as he maneuvered himself around Vladzotz and made his way towards the room's exit.

"You're most welcome, my friend. We crime-lords have to stick together, yes? Now rest. I have some business to take care of downstairs. I'll be back in a few minutes."

And at that, the pangolin swung open the door and exited the dimly lit room, leaving Vladzotz alone with his own shattered thoughts.

He soon fell asleep, his mind free of dreams, but full of eagerness for the future.

Hey Everyone!

I hope you all enjoyed this lovely bonus chapter! It took quite some time for me to make, but I'm highly pleased with the outcome!

Be sure to drop a review telling me whatcha think! Do answer this: Do you feel sorry for Vladzotz at all? What did you think of the chapter?

I might actually make more bonus chapters like this one in the future, detailing certain events, places, people, and so on. We'll see! :)

Oh, and for the record: You'll actually be learning who this 'Lucy' character is quite soon - Chapter 62, to be precise. Stay tuned for what's to come!

I'm also proud to announce that When Instinct Falls has reached a whopping 1000 (give or take) followers! That's amazing! If I could give each and every one of you a firm hand-shake and a pat on the back for your efforts and support, I would definitely do that. Alas, this is a digital message, so a simple thank you should suffice.

Thank you all so much. :)

'Till next time...

Peace!

PS: Do keep in mind that the events in this chapter take place right after chapter 24, and before Nick and Judy go undercover in Jack Savage's company.