Nick was silent for a moment after Bogo spoke, and as Judy watched him her own elation at her promotion started to fade. Judy could see his jaw working silently as he seemed to try to summon a response, and just at the point she thought he might say something that would get Bogo's temper back up again he simply sighed and shrugged his shoulders.

The gesture should have been a casual and nonchalant one, as though suddenly being the first fox to join the City Guard was no different from Bogo offering him a second canteen of water, but Judy thought she saw a certain tension in his back. "Well, I guess you've really got me over a barrel," Nick said, and there was something sharp and biting under his friendly tone, "I don't suppose I'll be able to resign when this is all over?"

Bogo seemed to be studying Nick carefully before he replied, and Judy had no idea what was going through the buffalo's head. Relief that Nick hadn't made a scene? Disappointment that he didn't seem to consider it the honor it was? Whatever the case, his words were coolly neutral. "With a full military pension, should you wish," he said.

Nick smiled, but it didn't touch his eyes. "Then let's make sure I live long enough to spend it," he said, and after a gap that struck Judy as carefully calculated to straddle the line of insubordination added, "Sir."

Bogo nodded dismissively. "I'll see to it you both receive fresh uniforms before your audience with the queen and princess," he said, rising from his desk and striding to the door of the carriage.

He paused for a moment, one massive hoof on the knob. "Don't go anywhere," he said.

"Aye sir," Nick said, giving Bogo a lazy salute at the same instant Judy replied crisply with "Yes sir."

The hint of a frown seemed to touch Bogo's features, as though he was already regretting his decision, but then his massive face became implacable once more and he was gone. Judy turned to Nick, about to ask him how he was feeling, but he spoke before she could. "Congratulations on the promotion again, Carrots," he said, and there was what seemed to Judy like genuine warmth in his voice, "You have to be the youngest commandant ever, right?"

"Actually, no," Judy replied, trying to match his cheerful tone, "Three hundred years ago, the head of the City Guard made her six year-old son a general."

Nick barked out a laugh, a smile creasing his muzzle. "My, that must have been quite the thing to see."

"It didn't work out very well," Judy admitted, which was selling the historical details a little short; that particular head of the City Guard had never had the chance to spend her military pension.

"Like appointing a fox as a captain, maybe," Nick said.

"Nick..." Judy began, reaching out and grabbing his paw in hers, "You'll be great."

Judy didn't think she had ever seen him doubt himself. He was always so confident, to the point of being obnoxious at times, as though he knew that everything would work out in his favor. Even when he had told her the story of what had set him on the path of becoming an alchemist, even when he had spoken of his lost idealism and his mistakes, there hadn't been quite the sense of vulnerability.

He favored her with a weak smile, squeezing her paw. "What's a captain supposed to do, anyway?" he asked.

Nick, of course, had certainly never been to the academy; he might not have ever even seen it. Judy realized just the sort of position Bogo had maneuvered Nick into; the fox had been given a job he had no idea how to perform and if he chose not to do it he'd be labeled a deserter and imprisoned. Nick's choice had been made for him, and Judy felt a touch of shame for taking so long to realize what he must have grasped instantly. Her excitement over her own promotion, at having her own abilities recognized and rewarded to such an extent, was no excuse, particularly once she began her new duties as a commandant. Whatever those ended up being.

But she could answer Nick's question, at least, for all the comfort that it would give him. "Alchemists always join the City Guard as captains," Judy said, "Most of them don't go to the academy, either. Not for all of the training, anyway."

Nick arched an eyebrow. "So I'm not as special as I think I am?" he asked, and while there was his usual mocking sense of humor in his voice Judy thought there might also be some relief.

Judy laughed, rolling her eyes at him. "You're very special," she said, rubbing her paw fondly along his arm, "Just not when it comes to being an alchemist in the City Guard. Normally, you'd start by being a guard at Oztoyehuatl's Jail—"

"That'd be a bit ironic," Nick interrupted, shaking his head, but Judy plowed on.

"—for at least a few months to get you trained on how the City Guard works."

"Something tells me that's not going to happen this time," Nick said.

"Probably not," Judy admitted, "Most likely you'll just be assigned to a commander as an adviser and to perform any alchemy they need done."

Nick's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "That sounds oddly cushy for a military role," he said, and Judy shrugged.

"The City Guard has a hard time recruiting alchemists," she said, and Nick nodded.

"So they make it as undemanding a job as possible," he said, "I'm not going to be very popular with the rest of the City Guard, am I?"

"Well..." Judy said, trying to hedge her words.

She had never met an alchemist who was a member of the City Guard in her brief time as a cadet and then an ensign—and now a commandant, which seemed almost impossible—but from what she had heard they were usually looked down upon as being snobby, elitist, and condescending jerks who shirked their fair share of the worst jobs that needed doing. "Ah, well, at least I'll know how to deal with that," Nick said, "If everyone started looking up to me I don't know what I'd do."

His voice had its usual good humor in its full measure, and he smiled suddenly. "Just don't ask too much of me, ma'am," he said, tipping Judy a wink.

"What are you—" Judy began to say, but Nick cut her off.

"Or should I call you 'sir?'" he continued, "See, this is the stuff you'll have to teach me as my commanding officer."

Judy simply blinked at him for a moment, and then she realized what he was getting at. Her new rank of commandant made her immediately superior to captains. And Nick was a captain. And— "You think Bogo is going to assign you to me?" she blurted, her eyes widening.

Nick's smile gained a touch of wickedness. "Why not?" he asked, "He knows we can work together. We'll just have to see how well I work... under you."

He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, leaning over to all but whisper his last words in Judy's ear.

Judy felt a rising blush spread up her head and into her ears, which seemed to be burning. "Nick—" she protested, but he was put his arms on her shoulders, staring into her eyes.

"I'm yours to command, ma'am," he said, his voice full of mock solemnity, and he leaned in for a kiss.

And then the door to the carriage opened and Bogo re-entered.

Judy sat bolt upright so quickly that her chair nearly tipped over, and Nick simply straightened up in his seat as he turned to face the desk again, his paws primly folded in his lap. The smile on his face could have meant anything.

If Bogo had noticed anything he gave no sign of it, although Judy felt as though her embarrassment must have been plainly visible in the flush of her ears. "Your new uniform," Bogo said bluntly, thrusting a bulky package into Nick's paws.

He turned to Judy next, giving her a significantly smaller one. "Yours may be somewhat too large," he said.

"I can alter it if needed, sir," Nick said cheerfully.

Judy didn't believe for a moment that Nick was actually going to properly buckle down to authority, but she supposed he did have the talent for altering clothing twice over, both as a tailor and an alchemist. Bogo simply nodded. "You'll have twenty minutes to get ready," Bogo said, "I have some preparations to make."

"There's a curtain you can draw to separate the carriage," Bogo said, pointing it out, and while his words were seemingly devoid of emotion Judy couldn't help but hear an unstated "If you want to."

Still, he did leave, further cementing Judy's idea that the buffalo wasn't much of a conversationalist. Out of a sense of professionalism—and the thought of what might happen if Bogo, or even worse the queen and princess, entered the carriage to see her kissing Nick—she drew the curtain and started changing as quickly as she could. Bogo had been right that the replacement uniform was too large, but it wasn't quite as bad as it could have been. The trousers were about three inches too long and the sleeves of the tunic were similarly overlong. Her new breastplate, to Judy's great surprise, was actually perfectly sized for her, although she had expected it to be the piece that would fit worst. The package Bogo had given her hadn't included replacement rank insignia for her torc, and she supposed that her commandant emblems really would be given to her by the royal family. Otherwise, all the package had in it were her new feathered bracelets, and she put them on before calling out to Nick. "Are you changed yet?" she asked.

Nick answered by drawing the curtain back. "Red's not my color," he said, pulling at his collar, "And I don't know how you can stand these tunics."

His disdain for the uniform was obvious, but Judy couldn't help the slow smile that spread across her face. His uniform wasn't quite the same shade that most of his fur was, but it seemed to emphasize the litheness of his frame. His steel breastplate suited him far better than anything she had ever seen him wear, helping to give him a sort of seriousness he normally lacked. He looked… dignified. Commanding, like a mammal to be respected. "You look very nice," Judy said.

"That was never a question," he said, smiling, "Here, let me help you with those hems."

He rummaged through his bag on the floor of the carriage and emerged with nothing more than a needle, some thread, and something that looked like a tiny two-pronged fork. "I thought you'd use alchemy," Judy admitted as he set to work, kneeling down to tackle her trousers first.

She watched as he worked, handling his tools deftly in his paws with the speed and skill of what must have been long practice. "I'm saving my strength for that," Nick said, nodding his head in the direction of Bogo's desk.

On it, she saw, Nick had placed an unrolled piece of cloth covered with a complicated pattern, at the center of which rested his bronze torc. Off to the side was a gleaming torc of pure gold, and Judy realized that she had been paying too much attention to how well Nick's new uniform fit him to notice that he wasn't wearing one. The package Bogo had given Nick must have included a new torc appropriate for a member of the City Guard, although it was completely lacking any rank insignia. "What's wrong with the new one?" Judy asked.

"Too big," Nick said, shaking his head as he worked at his stitching; he didn't seem to even need to look at what he was doing, "Easier to just transmute mine into gold."

"But yours won't work in Zootopia," Judy protested, "And if you wear it back in it'll—"

"Yes, yes, it'll be a crime," Nick interrupted, waving her concern away, "But that gold one won't work out here anyway."

He looked up at her, smiling slightly. "But I promise I'll put it on before going back through the Middle Wall, if that helps."

"Promise?" Judy asked.

"Is that an order?"

"It is, Captain Nicholas," Judy said, enjoying the way the words sounded coming out of her mouth.

"Yes ma'am," Nick replied, and he winked as he stood up and set to work on her sleeves.

When he was done, he turned his attention back to his torc on the table. Judy had a strong suspicion that the cloth it was on was probably what he had used to make Fernanda's fake torc, considering how complicated the pattern of interlocking circles and triangles was and how difficult it must be to make a convincing fake of something as complicated as a torc with its glowing interior engravings. A thought struck her, and she asked the question that came to mind. "Are you sure you can handle doing that?" she asked before Nick could place his paws on the cloth.

"I just needed a little rest," he said, nodding, "I'll be fine for something simple like this."

He grinned suddenly. "When I got exhausted, I just passed out. You got a vision of me. You definitely got the better deal there."

"And you're sure that this... this other Nick isn't a result of you healing my arm?" Judy asked.

She wanted to believe that the vision had simply been a result of being pushed to her physical limits, as Nick had suggested in Bogo's presence. And it was true that she hadn't so much as heard Nick's voice in her head again, let alone seen the other Nick, ever since that Nick had kicked the real one in the head. "Well, pretty sure," Nick said, shrugging, "I've never heard of anything like that happening with chimeras made the usual way. But if this other Nick shows up again, ask him what my mother's name is."

"Why, what is it?"

"I've never told you that," Nick said, "That's kind of the point. If your vision knows that, then who knows?"

He spread his paws wide in an exaggerated shrug. "Maybe he is real. Otherwise, I guess that's just what happens when you're missing my charming company."

It seemed like a pretty simple way of telling whether or not the other Nick really did have reality to him, as Judy had felt that he did while talking to him. He had been so undeniably like Nick, such a perfect representation of his personality, that it felt as though he had to exist. Having a way to test that, if he ever showed up again, made Judy feel a little better. At the very least, the real Nick wasn't acting like she was crazy, and she nodded her appreciation and then stopped talking to let him concentrate.

The transmutation of Nick's bronze torc into a gold one was not particularly dramatic; he set up all of his focuses on the cloth and added a bunch of assorted junk from the bottom of his bag next to his torc. Judy supposed that it was to make up for the difference in how heavy gold was compared to bronze, and sure enough the little cracked glass vials, empty or with only a minuscule amount of contents remaining, flowed into the torc as Nick altered it. He had the torc finished and around his neck less than a minute before the door to the carriage opened again, and the actual gold torc he had been given vanished into his pack as fast as a magic trick.

Rather than Bogo, it was a pair of lieutenants who entered, carefully looked through the carriage (eyeing Nick in particular with what seemed to Judy a fair amount of suspicion) before turning and leaving. Bogo did enter next, inspecting the carriage for himself, and then he left again. When he re-entered, it was with the queen.

Judy had never expected to see either of them with her own eyes, to be so close that she would be breathing the same air. The queen didn't look quite like Judy had expected her to from official portraits, including the massive one that hung in the academy. Queen Lana was recognizable, certainly, but...

She was shorter than Judy had expected, for one thing. Perhaps it was simply that most of the portraits Judy had seen were oversized, but the queen was nowhere near a larger than life figure. And her features, which always looked so noble and purposeful in official art, struck Judy as seeming more like the kindly aunt of a sheep she had known in Totchli Barony. Even her clothes were far more modest than Judy had expected; if it hadn't been for her platinum torc, with its enormous diamond ornament that glowed with the beautifully refracting light of an alchemical torch, the queen might have looked like a well-to-do merchant.

And then the queen spoke, and her voice more than made up for Judy's disappointment with how she looked. Her voice was regal and dignified, mild and yet powerfully commanding. "Ensign Totchli, Mr. Nicholas," she said, nodding first to Judy and then to Nick, "You have shown great courage."

Judy bowed as low as she could, sparing a side-eyed glance to make sure that Nick was doing the same. "Thank you, your majesty," Judy said, and Nick repeated the words.

"Your reward, I'm afraid, is likely to be more of a burden," the queen continued, "But that is very often the nature of life. I shall be asking much more of you in your new roles."

Judy hadn't been expecting the queen to speak so bluntly, and perhaps her surprise showed because the sheep offered her a small smile. "There are some ways in which having more power means having less freedom, Ensign Totchli," the queen continued, her voice as mild as ever, "But I have enough power, at least, to speak my mind plainly. It's something I've always appreciated in Lord Bogo."

She gestured at Bogo, who bowed slightly and then, when the queen's attention had turned away from him, shot both Judy and Nick a look that seemed to promise dark things depending on what kinds of ideas they got into their heads about speaking plainly to the queen.

"I have given my daughter the honor of awarding you your new ranks," the queen continued, "It is important for a queen to appreciate her soldiers, I think."

On her words, the princess entered the carriage, and like her mother she wasn't quite what Judy had expected. Princess Isabel, at least, was significantly taller than her mother, but she didn't seem quite as at ease within her own skin. While every move that the queen made was full of an unconscious and easy grace, the princess seemed unsure of herself in some way, awkward in a way that had nothing to do with her unusual appearance. And she was unusual-looking indeed; Judy had never seen a mammal that had hooves at the ends of their legs and yet paws at the ends of their arms. Even her fur—which didn't seem to really be fur, but something part of the way between fur and wool—beneath her simple yet elegant dress was like nothing Judy had ever seen. "Thank you, mother," the princess said, and her voice was full of the awkwardness of adolescence; Judy got the sense that the princess would end up growing quite a bit taller and fill out somewhat as she aged, but for the moment she was simply somewhat lanky.

The princess carried two long wrapped bundles in one paw and two small wooden boxes in the other, which she deposited on Bogo's desk. "Ensign Totchli," the princess began, drawing herself up straighter and seeming to try to imbue her voice with some of the power of her mother, "Do you swear to serve your monarch and obey her commands?"

"I do, your majesty," Judy replied, bowing her head.

"And do you swear to serve the mammals of Zootopia, to uphold the public peace and to follow the lawful orders of the City Guard?"

"I do, your majesty," Judy said again.

"Then I hereby name you commandant of the City Guard," the princess said.

She opened one of the wooden boxes and drew from it the appropriate rank insignia, which she leaned over to apply to Judy's torc. The princess then pulled the wrappings from one of the long objects she had brought with her, and Judy saw it was the sabre that Nick had made her. "May you serve with honor," she said, and she presented Judy with the sword.

It wasn't the same oath that Judy had sworn when she had become an ensign; it was much shorter. But there was something to its simplicity that the more elaborate oath had lacked, something that had given the words far greater power. It made her proud to serve, and she couldn't help but beam as she stepped aside and watched Nick accept his enlistment into the City Guard. He glanced in her direction ever so briefly before making his first oath, but he did make both. The sabre that the princess presented him wasn't nearly as elaborate as the one that Nick had made Judy, but to her eyes it looked to be just as well made and actually seemed to be sized appropriately to him.

"We have much to discuss now," the queen said, nodding with satisfaction once Nick had accepted the blade, "Please, be seated."

The carriage was easily large enough for it, and once the queen had taken Bogo's chair behind the desk everyone else found a chair and sat down. "Now—" the queen began, but Princess Isabel interrupted her.

"Mother, there is something I wish to start with," she said.

An expression of mild surprise crossed the queen's face, but she gestured for her daughter to continue. The princess turned to face Judy, a look of wonder on her face that made her seem much younger. "Is it true that you're a chimera?" she asked, her eagerness evident in her tone.

Author's Notes:

As was mentioned all the way back in chapter 6, the cells meant to contain alchemists in Oztoyehuatl's Jail require an alchemist to open them, and thus some of the guards are alchemists such as the deer who lets Bogo into Big's cell. Considering that the Betrayer was a fox, Nick is seeing the apparent irony in having a fox as a guard at the jail that bears Oztoyehuatl's name.

In modern militaries a male superior officer should be addressed as "sir" and a female superior officer as "ma'am," making "ma'am" the proper address for Nick to use with Judy from this point on.

The two-pronged fork that Nick uses as part of hemming Judy's clothes is a seam ripper, a real tool for pulling the stitching out of clothes.

Earlier chapter suggest that it's traditional for a mammal to purchase their own sabre upon becoming captain, but then again it's pretty clearly unusual for a member of the royal family to administer the oath. Bending tradition a bit seemed appropriate in this case.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to comment, I'd love to know what you thought!