Chapter 2 Deputies
Written by RedPen
Artwork by RedPen
Judy stepped out, leveled her pistols, and began to shoot, each round flying with calculated precision.
One shot went straight through Gideon's shoulder, knocking him down, and the other bandits shrank quickly out of sight, none daring to present their eyes lest a bullet find the space between.
Nick saw his opportunity and vaulted the wall, rushing to close the distance between him and his foes, taking shelter behind the corner of the saloon's raised veranda. He got there just as Judy's guns went dry, and she vanished behind the chimneys as a barrage of return fire bit holes in the roof around her. She fished in her shotpouch for her pair of pre-loaded cylinders, and was just about to swap them out when Doug's rifle announced itself again, his shot skimming just over her head and reducing much of the chimney stacks to powder. The force knocked Judy onto her face, and while she held onto her guns, the cylinders and ammunition slipped out of her paws; she caught just one spare round out of the air while the rest tumbled off the roof beyond recovery.
"Grits and gravy," she cursed.
Down on the street, Bucky had spotted Nick's advance, and he emerged to fire upon the fox. But Nick was close enough now that his shotgun was a proper threat. He snatched it from his backsling and swung it towards Bucky. Thundercrack was a name rightly earned; its bark sounded like some ancient weathergod casting careless bolts of lightning. The kudu was lucky to be moving quickly already, leaping out of the way while the buckshot tore shreds out of a pile of canvas bags. Bucky kept sprinting to the left, diving onto the porch of the hardware store to shelter behind a cluster of barrels while Nick's second shot burst in the deck's fretwork.
From behind those barrels Bucky began to reload his empty pistol while, high above, Judy slipped her last round into one of her chambers. She looked to where Bucky had vanished behind cover, and then looked directly above him, where a sign announced the store to be Franklin's Hardware and Convenience. The proprietor had gone to some length to ensure the visibility of his business; the sign was lettered in an elegant white script, standing out against a black-painted background, and it was bound around its circumference with iron. The whole thing was cut in the shape of a giant hammer.
With a held breath, Judy pointed her gun at it, eyed down the sights, and let off her last shot. It struck one of the chain links holding the sign, and the hammer swung down on the axis of its other joint. The head of the hammer slammed into Bucky with a thud, lifted him off his feet, and hurled him through the glass window of the store in an explosion of shattered glass.
"Convenience indeed," Judy muttered.
Doug was snapping open the breech of his rifle to reload it, and while he did so Pronk stepped from behind the ramparts of stacked luggage with two of his three eponymous guns in hoof, and began to discharge them at the roof, forcing Judy to duck the sizzling rounds that passed overhead.
His coach gun was spent, and Nick didn't like his chances of reloading before Judy caught a bullet, so he snatched his revolver from its holster and, rushing into the open, fired it at Pronk. His aim left something to be desired; four of his shots went wide. But the fifth struck Pronk's hoof, knocking his pistol away, and he slumped to the dirt roaring in pain.
By then Doug had chambered a round, and he brought the barrel of his rifle about in a sweeping arc. But Nick did his best work at close range; holding his shotgun by the barrel, he swung it like a shillelagh, striking Doug's rifle and throwing his aim out. The shot whizzed down the street and blew the weather-vein off the top of the general store with an almost comical metallic twang.
Nick swung his revolver around to finish the job, but Doug was not going down so easily; he blocked Nick's arm with the barrel of his rifle, and then brought the butt of his weapon up in a blur, striking Nick solidly on the muzzle. He was thrown tail-over-head and landed with a clatter on a crate of sarsaparilla bottles. When he managed to open his eyes, and to chase the flashing stars out of his vision, Doug had drawn a glimmering bowie knife and was advancing with cold murder in his eyes.
Judy could see Nick was in trouble, and she bit her lip; she had nothing left with which to help him. Just two empty guns, and…
Her face became resolute - eyes narrowed, paws balled into fists by her side - and she took a deep breath to slow the rattle of her heartbeat. Then she rushed down the slope of the roof before springing off and flying through the air like some grey-furred meteor, some wandering satellite caught in the Earth's irresistible pull and drawn to the ground fast enough to set the very air aflame.
She hit Doug in the back hard enough to rearrange his spine. She drove him into the ground, and he went tumbling over and over like a runaway cartwheel until he rolled through the opening of the blacksmith's shed, where his head collided loudly with an anvil. He lay still, arms and legs outflung like a sleeping drunk, a bruised lump swelling proudly on his forehead like a prize beet.
Nick propped himself up on one elbow, cursing at the fragments of glass and the soda stain on his vest. Then he looked at his partner where she lay spread out in the dust. "That was one hell of a mulekick, Carrots," he said, and then he saw Pronk rising to his feet behind her, his third gun in his good hoof and pointed directly at them.
"Tell the Devil it was Pronk what sent yeh," he spat, and he fired.
Nick had spent a lot of his life rolling in the dirt, trying to avoid getting stepped on by bigger mammals who couldn't see him, and wouldn't have cared if they could. A sad existence, but fine training, as it turned out, for this moment.
He was already rolling when Pronk's bullet slapped the ground by his shoulder, close enough that he could feel the heat off it. He snatched up his dropped pistol as he travelled over it and managed to fire it the right direction. Luck was on his side for once; his one remaining bullet cut a trench in Pronk's thigh, and he went to one knee. By then Judy was back on her feet, and she rounded on Pronk, jumping into the air so that she stared him level in his gawking eyes.
Now, rabbits weren't strictly known for headbutting, but they weren't strictly known to be deputies either, and it turned out rabbits were pretty darn good at all sorts of things most wouldn't wager on. Judy smacked her forehead against Pronk's so hard that he went cross-eyed and slumped to the ground, out cold.
Nick got up, shook the dust off his clothes, and went over to look at the downed kudu. His mouth was hanging open, tongue lolling out; he looked almost amused, as if laughing silently at the manner by which he'd been thwarted.
"You alright?" Nick asked Judy.
She rubbed her head, wincing. "That one's got a skull like an iron bar…"
The snap of a cocked hammer silenced them both, and they stared as Gideon emerged from behind the carriage.
There was a black hole in his left shoulder, but his right arm was fine and more than able to the task of pulling a trigger. His eyes cut between Nick and Judy, both frozen still as statues. When Nick dared to eye one of Pronk's dropped pistols, Gideon shook his head.
"Nuh uh," he muttered, his voice hoarse with hurt. "You budge so much as an inch and I'll shoot this here rabbit right in her purty head."
The barrel was so close to Judy that she could smell the soot in it; could see the rifled grooves curving into the blackness and the glinting cap of the chambered bullet nestled within, just waiting to go off. Her nose twitched.
Nick held still; so still that when it was clear Nick wasn't going to so much as breathe too heavily, Gideon said, "Alright then. You pair turn out yer guns, turn 'round, and walk that'a ways. Walk right off down that street, and we'll be on our ways too. No one's dead yet, and no one has to die."
Bellwether emerged from where she'd been hiding underneath the wagon, and commenced to boil over like a pot left on the fire too long. "Gideon! What in tarnation are you playing at?! You shoot the pair of 'em right now, yah hear?"
Gideon's frown grew more acute; it seemed he'd done the calculations - bad at math as he was - and come up with poor odds that he'd be able to shoot both Nick and Judy before one of them put him down. But he was clever enough to figure that neither one of the deputies wanted to see their partner dead, and he banked everything on it. He waved his pistol to remind everyone who had the power right now.
"Go on," he said. "Guns in the dirt and you start walkin'. It's that or you start eatin' lead."
"He'll shoot us in the back," Nick whispered to Judy. "Don't do it-"
"Another word out'a you an' you'll have a big hole where the back of yer head used to be," Gideon warned, his cold blue eyes darting back to Nick.
Judy did the maths. They were long odds. But there was nothing else to be done; they'd come to the end of their tether, and that rope was coming undone quickly. They'd found themselves in this situation before; their plans, whatever they had amounted to, crumbled through their fingers, and them left to wing it and hope for the best.
Well, if you can't do something smart, do something dumb, right?
Judy reached up, quick as a snakebite, and plugged the barrel with her finger.
Gideon's eyes bulged; Judy might as well have just announced her intention to strip naked and dance the fandango in a vat of cold custard. He stared into her unwavering purple eyes, blinking in stupefied confusion.
"What are you doin'?"
"You ever shot a gun with a blocked barrel before?" Judy asked.
Gideon's dumbfounded look went nowhere. Behind her, Nick's face was just as confused, and more than a little horrified. Bellwether started throwing a fit, as if the desert heat was driving her crazed.
"What are you waitin' on, you stupid fox!?" she shrieked. "Shoot her in the damned head!"
But Gideon didn't move. He was transfixed by Judy's stare, as if she were some practised mesmer, her violet eyes a swinging pendulum.
"It surely is a sight," Judy went on, her voice calm and level, as though she were discussing something of no consequence. "The whole thing just bursts open, you know? Like a squeezed banana. Bits of metal warped all this way and that."
Gideon's paw began to tremble. The gun followed suit.
"And what about the bullet? Where does it go? Well, if it cain't go forward, it has to go backwards, sure as one and one makes two. It goes right out the back end of the gun. And in the worst case - and when you're talkin' misfires, worse cases is nine times out'a ten - the same goes for all the other bullets in the cylinder. I'm lookin' and I can see five others besides the one you're fixin' to shoot. Can you imagine what six bullets goin' the wrong way'd look like?"
"She's lying to you, Gideon!" Bellwether's voice was on the verge of hysteria. "Pull that god-damned trigger!"
"You're all fib," Gideon stammered.
"Imagine what that'd do to your arm. Six bullets, all at once."
That was all the poor fox could manage. He let go of the pistol and fell prostrate in the dirt, like a penitent begging before an all-mighty deity.
"Oh gawd, deputy! Please don't do it!" he sobbed. "Don't shoot my arm all to bits! I cain't be no one-armed fox!"
Nick and Bellwether stared, complete disbelief etched in their faces, as if Judy had just waved a magic wand and turned the gun into melted caramel. Judy blew out a breath, and then pulled the gun off her finger with a comic pop. Gideon looked up, terror and tears in his eyes.
"Smart fox," she said with a smile, and knocked him behind the ear with the pistol grip. Gideon hit the ground and didn't move.
The spell finally broken, Nick ran the short distance to his partner. "Yeah, smart fox, alright. Smart fox and dumb bunny. Not a word of all that about plugged barrels and backwards bullets is true, is it?"
Judy flashed him the same smile. "Nope."
"Golly, Carrots."
A noise caught their attention, and they turned to see Dawn scampering away from the wagon, running for the horizon as fast as her stubby legs could take her.
"There goes out quarry," Nick said, scooping Pronk's pistol off the ground. "You want me to slow her down?"
Judy shook her head. "She's comin' in one piece." She dropped the gun in her paw, and unlooped the coil of rope that hung from her belt. In a second she was spinning the lasso above her head, rolling it in great elliptical turns. Then she hurled it through the air, where it swallowed Bellwether up. The knot pulled tight and yanked the sheep off her feet. She landed on her butt, before a sharp pull from Judy brought her rolling backwards, right to their feet, where she lay bow-tied like a Christmas present.
"Dawn Bellwether," Judy announced, "by the power vested in me by the state of Zootopia, you're under arrest."
"You two go to hell!" Bellwether spat.
"Only if you'll invite us in first," Nick said with a smirk.
Judy sat on the couch, drinking a mug of sweet tea, and beamed at Nick lying on the living room carpet. He was reading the instruction manual for the twin crib that they had bought at ITREEA. He'd been trying to set it up for nearly an hour at this point, the directions helping little as the confused fox again attempted to find the right piece for the current section. Judy had offered to help, but a sudden episode of their kits doing gymnastics had him gathering her current beverage and asking her to rest while their kits played.
Judy marveled at his infinite patience, and started to think back to their most recent experiences at the arcade. The memory of it had faded much quicker in Nick than it had in her - a consequence of her personal agenda in selecting that scenario, perhaps - and now it was like a dream that only she had been a part of. In time, she knew, the memory would dwindle in her as well, so she held on to those details as long as she could, sorting through them like knickknacks in a treasure box.
The noise. The kick. The sizzle of deadly lead buzzing past her ear. The fear.
She watched as Nick let out a triumphant 'Haha!' as he finally put together the outside of the crib. He turned and offered a thumbs up to Judy, who smiled warmly as he began to put together the bottom. This was what she enjoyed so much. The calm. The safety.
She smiled.
If ever there was something that deserved to be missing from the world, it was guns. She hoped she never laid eyes on one again.
AN: Give it up to RedPen for his amazing story here! You can find all his stories on Ao3 (would offer a link but the site doesn't like those) and his artwork on DA under the name "Technical-Error". So please go check him out as his stories are amazing! And yes, he does have a Pirate one. ;)