It's a Wonderfox Life IV
Written by BeecroftA
Artwork by pyocolaxsama
"Now?" Nick was taken aback by the urgency in Clawhauser's words. "What's the hurry?"
"They overheard you mentioning night howlers! They're calling Bellwether now, she might order you killed!"
Nick gasped.
"Also, there's something else in here you have to see, and it that might really convince you this time!" Clawhauser added.
Nick did not like that prospect, but he was willing to try anything to end this nightmare now. "Okay! Are you going to vanish me out?"
"Sorry, I can't! I can only vanish myself! But…" Clawhauser reached into a pocket and pulled out a set of keys, "These should work!"
Nick was incredulous. "You need to use keys? I thought you were a ghost!"
"Not exactly, I have substance, I just can't be seen or heard by anyone other than you. Oh! And before we go-"
Clawhauser produced a black remote device identical to the ones Jesse and Bogo had used. "What say we take off that collar?"
Nick nodded eagerly. The cheetah pushed a button:
BZZZ!
"AHHH!" A short zap from the collar shocked Nick, making him flop to the ground.
"Sorry!" Clawhauser mumbled sheepishly. He looked at the remote more closely this time, and pressed another button. This time the collar gave a click, and Nick felt sweet release similar to the removal of the muzzle as the box and strap fell off his neck and onto the ground with a clatter.
"That's great, thanks!" breathed Nick as he rubbed the indented and singed fur where his collar had been.
After a few tries with the keys Clawhauser unlocked the cell and popped his head out, looking left and then right. Satisfied no one was around, he gestured at Nick. "Okay!" he whispered.
And the fox and cheetah pair sneaked out of the cell into the white corridor, trying to make as little noise as possible. After they were halfway down the hall Clawhauser ran ahead and looked around the corner. "We're good!" he hissed at Nick. Nick tiptoed over, and they kept going. As a couple tense minutes of this went by Nick noticed two things: Clawhauser made no noise as he walked, and he seemed to have possess better stamina than the Clawhauser he knew; his Benji would have been well out of breath by now. It was probably something to do with his being a ghost.
But a solid ghost? Nick was having a lot of difficulty wrapping his head around the concept.
"Okay, we gotta follow this corridor, take the next left, and then the second right," Clawhauser whispered in the softest tone possible.
"Uh, Benji," Nick breathed back, "If no one else can hear you, you really don't need to whisper."
"Oh, right!" Clawhauser piped up. He ran up to the left turn they had to take, and poked his head around like before. "Okay, all clear!" He called to Nick. Nick started forward, but then a door opened behind him and a black ram in uniform came out-
"Hey you!" barked Woolter.
"Run, Nick!" Clawhauser yelled. And Nick took off.
"Officer Whitewool to dispatch, we got a rogue fox on the loose, subduing now!" The pursuing ram pulled a shock collar remote out of his pocket, he pressed the button-
And nothing happened.
"HA HA!" Nick taunted as he raced down the corridor and ducked around the corner. He could hear Woolter calling for backup on his radio, but he ignored it. He kept running, he saw Clawhauser up ahead, waiting for him at the second right. He put on an extra burst of speed-
"Halt!"
Nick barely dodged in time as former-chief Bogo jumped out from another hallway beside him and snatched at him. Nick kept going and Bogo followed, limping heavily with the leg on his pants in tatters and his bad arm now dangling uselessly at his side.
"Chief Bogo, I swear I'm not the enemy here!" Nick called back, "They're behind all this; they killed Clawhauser!"
He caught a quick glimpse of a shocked expression appearing on Bogo's face and Woolter catching up to them as he turned right at the next corridor. Clawhauser was up ahead, holding up his keys with one paw and holding a door open with the other. "In here, Nick! I'll run ahead and distract them!"
Nick raced up and flew through the doorway.
"And Nick – I'm really sorry for what you're about to see!" Clawhauser hissed. Nick closed the door to a crack and watched the cheetah run up ahead and turn another corner, and then he heard a loud clanking noise that sounded like a fire extinguisher hitting the floor, signalling the two pursuing officers to come after him. Nick shut the door completely just before Woolter and Bogo came charging around the corner. He locked the door and pressed his ear to it, listening closely. He heard hoofsteps running away from him for a moment, and then they came back.
"Which way did he go!? Help me find him!" came the agitated voice of Woolter.
"What, did you, Officer Woolter Whitewool, lose a suspect?" Bogo deadpanned, "What a pity."
"Shut it, cripple!" Woolter growled. There was a pause. "Ya think he's in there?"
Nick's heart skipped a beat, but then he heard Bogo's voice:
"That old storeroom? Last I checked it was quite locked and I see the only key here on my waist, but I'm sure a fox could pick the lock in less than ten seconds."
With a start, Nick realized that Bogo was covering for him; there was at least one other key, Clawhauser had it. He heard nothing for a second, and then the doorknob rattled; clearly Woolter was testing it.
"Fine, he's not in there, let's keep looking!" said the ram. Nick heard the beep and crackling of a radio: "Jesse, start a sweep of the outer perimeter! That fox can't get away!"
Nick let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding in. And then, using his night vision he scanned around the room he was in: there was all kinds of dusty equipment in here; a chalkboard, bed frames, mattresses, wheelchairs, all looking very familiar. And then he looked down and saw what looked like a sewer grate in the filthy white-tiled floor. Nick's eye's bulged with realization: he'd been here before! He and Judy had come through that sewer grate when they broke in here years ago!
He looked back at the way he had just come in; he could have sworn there wasn't a door there before. Then he looked ahead, and spied the same heavy metal door he and Judy used in the past. He walked up and opened it, this time by himself with little hesitation. But to his surprise, instead of the brand new operating room he and Judy had found before he was now in just another cold and dusty room, full of equipment covered in white sheets. Nick moved over to the biggest shape in the middle of the room and peeked under it: it was a low-level operating table, designed for large mammals to be worked on by a much smaller badger-sized doctor, just like he remembered. He mulled this over, and could only come to one conclusion: since Bellwether's goons were running this place there was no one around with actual incentive to try and cure any savage mammals.
Suddenly a loud roar and a crash behind Nick broke the silence, making him almost jump out of his skin. The fox whipped around: there was a glass cell on the wall outside the room, occupied by a naked tiger on all fours. Of course, Nick remembered, this was where the savage mammals were kept. Nick tiptoed over and gazed down the hall of cells, trying and failing not to look at the mammals behind the glass walls. The dimly-lit cellblock was even gloomier than he remembered; heavy scratch marks lined the whole floor, and a stink of sweat and other bodily excretions polluted the air as if the staff were hardly bothering to clean the patients and their cells anymore. The savage mammals themselves looked ragged, scarred and malnourished. Nick had been so scared when he had first seen these poor mammals, but now he felt nothing but sorrow for them. Had they really been trapped here, deprived of sunshine and interaction with others, for over ten years? Nick had never thought about how long the original night howler serum might have lasted in one's system, but seeing it still affecting mammals after a whole decade was truly disturbing.
He inched slowly down the hall, familiar faces from long ago all growling at him: the tiger, a grizzly bear, a black timber wolf-
A sudden ROWR made Nick flinch. There was a black panther prowling in the cell to his right. "Manchas…" Nick whispered. Mister Big's driver, the same panther that had attacked him and Judy in the Rainforest District. And then Nick realized: if Mr. Manchas was here, that would mean…
A higher-pitched whimper of a much smaller mammal then confirmed Nick's suspicions. The fox tiptoed over and looked in the cell right next to Manchas: there, emaciated and scruffy like all the others was Emmitt Otterton, the florist whose disappearance had sparked the case that brought Nick and Judy together. But instead of snarling and hissing like before he was now yelping and scratching furiously on himself, and Nick could see patches of fur missing from his back and legs; the poor otter had mange.
Nick stared like he was looking at a sideshow attraction, his nose pressed his nose against the glass, before he felt a large paw softly touch his shoulder. He looked up: it was Clawhauser.
"Can you help them, Benji?" Nick asked, trying to keep his voice straight.
"I can't help anyone but you, Nick," Clawhauser answered sadly, "I never even learned about all this while I was alive."
Suddenly Nick heard a familiar beeping sound to his left. He whipped around and saw: someone was using their code to get in.
"Hide!" Clawhauser hissed. The pair raced back down the hall and hid around the corner just as an electric buzz filled the room and the door opened.
Nick peeked around the corner and watched as a ram dressed in a white security guard uniform walked in, accompanied by a much smaller figure: a brown otter with wide green eyes, wearing a threadbare cardigan and carrying a package under her arm.
"Mrs. Otterton…" Nick whispered. Emmitt's wife, who had set Judy on the search for him when the otter went missing.
"I'm afraid there has been no change, Mrs. Otterton," the ram guard grunted, his voice devoid of sympathy.
"I know…" Mrs. Otterton sighed, "But I just wouldn't feel right if I didn't give him his present."
She sounded so tired, so defeated; Nick felt his heart reach out to her, realizing she must have spent the last ten years watching her husband waste away, never getting better, never even recognizing her. He watched her walk up to the glass of Emmitt's cell, staring intently just like he had a minute ago.
"Merry Christmas, Emmitt," she whispered at the cell door. "I… made you something special this year."
Mrs. Otterton held up the parcel she had been carrying and started to unwrap it in front of the savage otter in the cell.
"Here, Emmitt, look!" she held up a large red and green blanket, handknitted it looked like. "I know you used to love your sweaters, but you won't even wear them now, so I hope this will keep you warm instead."
The ram guard took the blanket from her paws, opened a hatch in Otteron's cell door and stuffed the blanket inside, giving it as much tenderness and care as a bag of garbage. There was a long pause, and then Nick heard little snarls and ripping sounds coming from Emmitt's cell as if he were tearing the blanket apart with his teeth. Mrs. Otterton just sighed, her shoulders drooping.
"Please, please get better soon…" she whispered, "I miss you, the boys miss you, and I don't want them to see you like this."
Her voice was sad, but it didn't crack; if anything it had a resigned quality to it as if she was used to saying this. And then she turned away, clearly unable to watch anymore, and the ram started to lead her back to the exit, gnawing sounds still coming from Emmitt's cell.
"We are doing the best we can, I promise," said the ram guard. But his voice had a lack of sincerity to it that Nick could practically smell. He gritted his teeth in anger, wanting nothing more than to run over and throttle the ram who was abetting Emmitt's incarceration and Mrs. Otterton's suffering.
Suddenly a rowr and a loud BAM emanated from the last cell in line, making both the guard and Mrs. Otterton jump aside. "Back! Back!" the ram yelled, rapping his baton against the glass. "I apologize Mrs. Otterton, Maid Marion is acting feisty today."
Maid Marion… Nick gave a start, and his eyes widened. The name of a vixen… Finnick said a savage vixen had attacked a cop, could this be her?
The second the door shut behind the guard and Mrs. Otterton Nick leapt out of his hiding spot and raced to the cell 'Maid Marion' was being kept in. He had to see her, he had to be sure it wasn't-
And the vixen that met his eyes from the other side of the glass was exactly the one Nick had prayed it wasn't. A vixen in her late sixties, with green eyes just like his but with her pupils now slitted-
"Mom…" Nick gasped, his nose and paws pressing against the glass.
Ellaine Wilde was prowling on all fours inside the cell, dressed in hospital scrubs ragged from clawing and sniffing the ground as if hoping the floor would yield her fresher air. Then the savage stopped, and sniffed the air. Twice. She turned and looked at Nick, her feral eyes staring directly into his own. Nick's heart gave a leap – did she know his scent? Could she, on some level beyond thought and reasoning, recognize him after all?
"Mom…" he whispered, "It's me, Nicky! Don't you know me?"
But Ellaine gave no indication she understood him. She didn't even move for a few seconds. But then-
"ROWR!" the vixen attacked, slamming into the glass between them.
"Mom! MOM!" Nick cried. "It's me! It's your son!"
But this only spurred Ellaine on further and she clawed harder and harder on the glass. The tip of her snout poked one of the air holes and she snapped dirty yellow fangs at him. And Nick could hear other mammals starting to yowl and roar around him, she was arousing them-
"Hey! What's going on here?" barked a voice from the hallway outside.
Nick barely noticed the voice as a heaving wave of grief crashed through his gut. He felt like he was going to break down, right there, leaning against the glass that housed his now-insane mother.
Clawhauser frantically shook his shoulder, "Someone's coming, Nick – we gotta go!"
Nick didn't protest as Clawhauser grabbed him by the arm and led him past the row of savage mammals into the storeroom they had come in through, closing the door behind them just before more guards entered the cellblock.
Stunned beyond any other feeling he had felt that night, Nick said absolutely nothing as he and Clawhauser went down the mammalhole in the storeroom and started navigating the piping system underneath, using the same route he and Judy had taken to get in ten years before. Soon they emerged from the drain pipe embedded in the cliff outside and shimmied their way down, ghost-Clawhauser doing a better job than the real one ever could have managed. Finally they were back on solid ground right next to the institution, hidden in the shadows. Clawhauser peeped around the corner. "Follow me!" he whispered.
Nick didn't even bother to point out that Clawhauser still didn't need to whisper anymore as the cheetah led him a few feet along the front of the building towards a parked grey van with the Cliffside logo on the side. There were two ram guards nearby but they were standing on the walkway, concentrating on the bridge and not the prison entrance; with a little careful maneuvering the cheetah and fox managed to sneak behind them outside of their peripheral vision and to the van without being seen. Without thinking Nick got in on the passenger's side, and only just realized ghosts shouldn't be able to drive before Clawhauser got in on the driver's side. The cheetah produced the set of keys he had used before, winked, and started the car.
"Heeere we go!" Clawhauser yelled, and before the shellshocked fox could react, the ghost-cheetah pounded the gas and zoomed around the roundabout and down the lamplit bridge over the waterfall, narrowly avoiding the two guards who jumped into the water to escape the path of the vehicle.
"Incoming!" Clawhauser shouted at Nick. And the van drove right through the wooden tollgate at the end of the bridge with a loud CRASH and started looping along the long, zig-zagging driveway. And after a tense minute they were through the ornate iron gates and on South Canyon Way back to the city.
"Sorry! Haven't driven in a while!" Clawhauser stated as he fumbled with the steering wheel.
But Nick had hardly even noticed the crash. It barely even surprised him now that some kind of solid ghost was driving this car and that in spite of the crash there seemed to be no cars pursuing them. All he could see in his mind's eye were the faces of the friends and family whose fates he had learned about in that horrible place. Finnick, Bogo, Clawhauser, the Ottertons, his mother…
Clawhauser looked at his friend consolingly. "I'm really, really sorry, Nick. I had to show you that."
"What… happened to her?" Nick croaked.
Clawhauser sighed in sympathy. "Your mom was the final catalyst in what became the predator collaring initiative. Mayor Lionheart managed to hide a few more victims until Bellwether decided it was time to expose everything, and so she targeted one of the most hated species in Zootopia: a fox."
Nick clapped a paw over his mouth. "No…"
"Yeah. They got your mom while she was out shopping, and she attacked… er, somebody out in a crowded street."
"A cop. Finnick said it was a cop," Nick mumbled.
"Yeah, yeah it was. The ZPD arrested her and Lionheart came forward and gave them a place to keep her until a cure could be found. Of course then everything came out and Lionheart was arrested, and when Bellwether took over she saw to it the people working on a cure were only doctors and scientists she chose, meaning…"
"…Doug," Nick snarled, remembering the yellow-clad ram who had manufactured the serum in the first place. Clawhauser nodded.
The pair drove on in silence for a few minutes, along South Canyon and then under Ficus Underpass and through Acacia Alley. Eventually Clawhauser pulled over and turned off the motor, and that was when Nick looked up and recognized where they were: back at the stone bridge where it had all started. Nick got out and wandered a few steps away, gazing hard at nothing.
"Again, I'm really sorry, Nick," Clawhauser said as he himself got out, "But don't you see now, how things have turned out without you? You've really had a wonderful life!"
"Benji…" Nick whispered, his back facing Clawhauser.
"Yes Nick?"
Nick turned and faced the cheetah, his eyes burning with a new flame, "Where's Judy?"