All Homo (Part 2)

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AN: So, not sure what to do, Cimar asked for a follow up to his earlier story All Homo, in which Nick, Judy and the rest of Zootopia were turned into humans (or, as they end up calling them, Homon's). Fair enough, but this follow up idea soon kinda ballooned out XD. This is the first of three new chapters, following the original. In case you wanna re-read that to remind yourself, feel free. Given time I'll probably move All Homo 1 up so they're all in a row.

But for now, enjoy.

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"And today marks the fifth anniversary since the mysterious 'Switch' as it were, when all mammals in the world mysterious transformed into one, never before seen, species…"

There was a soft fizz as the TV screen went to static and faded out, before the call of lights out had the cell block plunging into black.

Dawn Bellwether kept on staring out of her cell at the hung up screen even after it was plunged into darkness.

And with that?

She settled onto her cramped bed, perfectly sized when she was a sheep, but now decidedly awkward given that she'd been… Changed.

Homom's… That was what they'd settled on.

Homo first, latin for the same. Then the scientists had chosen Sapien as the second part of the species name. And somehow, after that, Homo mammals became homom and that was that.

And she hated it.

Sure, some might say that she actually had a very pretty Homom form. White if a little tanned skin, not that her long time locked in the cells had done it any good. To some degree, being furless had led to said skin becoming adaptable, changing its tone so that enough sunlight hit it to synthesise vitamin D.

At least that was what was what she'd heard, after the numerous cases of rickets coming out of the nocturnal district.

Still, it was a stupid species. They got too cold basically whenever there was a slight breeze, their legs were too long, they couldn't eat hay or grass but naturally they loved pred food. Then there was the fact that biology had decided that, rather than going with the heat cycles basically every mammal had, this species had poached a stupid one used by about four species of bat and one species of shrew. Because of course. The ideal mammal was naturally the one where the females of the species had to take a few days every month off because of some stupid, stupid cramps and a lot of blood discharge!

She grit her teeth, rubbing her still aching stomach area.

There was only one upside to it all she could certainly think of, but even that couldn't wash away the shear principle of the matter.

And what really made her angry was that a few prisoners who had that going on when they were switched were able to get out to hospital for it, and didn't even try and make a run for it!

Oh sure, maybe they thought they were dying back then, but now?

Boy, hadn't they missed the opportunity.

Just hadn't they.

Regardless of their failings, even the benefits of this species that those on the outside talked about had no real use here. So what, this species had incredible endurance in hot weather conditions and the magic of tri-colour vision. Wooo hooo, that annoying former vixen down in Cell B9 and her former vixen friend in D7 now had head hair in a colour she'd never get to experience before.

So what…?

She still couldn't tell them apart, just like before. Two red furred foxes to two red haired mammals.

No advantage in that at all.

Well…

There was one thing.

These crappy old cells, much like this same crappy female prison that she now very much regretted throwing out the funding for a rebuild for, had one glaring flaw.

They were still run by mammals.

And with ongoing chaos caused by the many, many, knock on events, well…

With a life sentence?

Slowly, Bellwether shimmied up to the door, leaning closer to the locking mechanism. It wasn't fancy or computerised or anything, rather a bunch of old electric relays and motors handled in the control room. Nothing wrong with that, after all in the age of cyber crime and hacking, having a system where a single flick of a keyboard could open everything all at once was not the best of ideas.

But, keeping track of which doors were open or not was a slightly different matter. Back in the olden days, just seeing that the door was closed and the lever in the control room down was enough. But a few clever inmates and a few faulty locks meant that an additional monitoring system, using electrical contacts to complete a circuit, had been installed.

Still, a long time ago, and arguably faulty as well.

Buuttt… A red flag always meant an investigation.

And Bellwether's door monitoring system had become quite the font of unreliability in the last few months, oddly enough.

The ex-sheep smiled as she leant in and tipped cut off shavings of her odd flat claws into a space between the contacts and then made a quick stop by way of her sink. A few more preparations were made, before finally Bellwether went to bed.

Keeping an eye on everything all the time.

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Five minutes later she smiled as she heard the sounds of feet coming down the terrace, the grin growing ecstatic as she heard a slight bit of conversation strike up with one of the inmates.

She knew exactly which guard had come down to give this all a look.

She coiled her legs, ready as ever, as the tired former antelope reached the door and, groaning, gave it a look over.

Dawn, sleeping head facing the door, let an arm slip down and pulled up a metal rod she'd prepared, hooking it up against one of the bed supports and locking it in place, tight.

All as the correctional officer rapped the reinforced plastic cell door. "Hey, thing's acting up again. Up against the wall."

Groaning, Dawn looked up, giving a grunt as she walked over to the far side, hands on her head. "You'd think maintenance would figure out what was going on, huh?"

"Yeah," the guard grunted, bringing out her key and manually opening the door up. "It's that Lang girl, probably remembers that time you were a sheep and she a wolf and just does a bad job."

"She's getting out soon, isn't she?" Dawn asked as the plastic enclosure slid open.

The clippings that had fritzed the sensor fell out, lost in the darkness, just like every time before. "Yeah, back to her biker pack or whatever, which means hopefully their lady alpha or whatever will stop breathing down our backs. But she's literally the only prisoner we've had who stuck her paw up and wanted to go into maintenance." She ducked her head down out of instinct and walked in, glancing back up to see if she could see any fault. "So her being gone doesn't…"

She was cut off as she entered the threshold, suddenly finding her legs pulled back and the top of her body falling forward. The side of her head hit the ground hard, she saw stars, and then she saw Bellwether throwing a pillow onto the floor, push her into it, pull something tight around her neck and, foot on head, start cutting off the air.

…

"Hey, hasn't Vanessa been gone a while?"

There was a pause as the guards looked over at the one who'd raised it, before looking up once more at the time.

"It's… Ten minutes," another said, before pulling up his radio. "Uh, Vanessa? Vanessa?"

Silence followed before he cursed. "Shit, cameras?"

They looked around. "I got nothing," one of the mammals said, as a guard with a particularly round face and blonde hair walked over to the other bank. "No, and Bellwether's door is still open. Reese, Hornstadt, get your guns and come with me."

"Yes Swinton," they both replied, before racing out of the control room and down onto the terrace. The eyes of various mammals looked out at the racket from their cells as the former pig led her two mammals around to the empty cell and turned in and… "Crap!"

She tripped over, managing to brace herself with her arms, her eyes going wide. "Shit! Vanessa."

The entire cell was painted red from the struggle, the guard and the 'new Bellwether' lying collapsed down, knocking each other out in the struggle. Swinton managed to get back up, finger coming out and pulling down her guard's uniform, feeling for a pulse. "Still breathing!"

She then grabbed her radio. "Emergency! We got…" She blinked as the lights across the cell block flicked on. "-Bellwether set up a tripwire and attacked Vanessa, both fighting each other out. She's injured but still alive. Bellwether, I don't know…"

"Med team coming in," came a call. "I'll get the main hospital. Air ambulance?"

"I…" Swinton began. "Well if they send it then why not?" She put down her radio and slowly moved her colleague into a recovery position, grimacing as she saw her bruised face, hair matted all over it and absolutely covered in blood.

"-Bellwether the same," came a voice from her side as he looked over before turning to the door, a wire of some kind hung tight across the doorway at just above ankle height. "How did she get a tripwire up?"

"Prisoners can always hide things, smuggle them," Swinton began, as he went over and felt it.

"Hair."

"Huh?"

"It's her hair, weaved into a long thin rope," he said, feeling it. "Feels wet too, so I bet she hung it in her sink, across…" he went over. "Yes, it's one of those plugs with bars. She just looped it around, making us think it was gunk from shedding or…" He grimaced, before turning and kicking the convict for good measure.

There was a pause, before he turned back to face Swinton. "I won't tell if you won't tell."

She didn't have time to rebuke before the medical team raced in, stretcher in paw. Vanessa went on the first, getting pulled out towards the (regular) ambulance that was pulling up at the prison gates. The various guards and officers cleared a path, opened the doors, and swung the bloody-faced officer into the waiting ambulance, seeing it off.

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The prisoner was cuffed to a bed in the prisons own medical ward.

Sure, someone would probably argue down the line that if things were fair and equal, both would get the same treatment. Either they were both in such critical condition that full medical treatment was needed, or the prison medical unit was of good enough quality for the both of them.

Of course the prison officials knew that A: a guard and the most hated (still) mammal in Zootopia were very different types of fish and B: to hell with it. She'd hurt one of them!

Calls were made, reports were being filed, already angry rumours were said to be flying through her old cell block of a two-week lockdown which, somehow, had spread to the neighbouring cell blocks too.

"I'm telling you," one of the guards huffed, rubbing his chin. "It was always morse codes with lights and stuff. That's how they get it between the blocks."

Swinton sighed. "No…" she said, fidgeting her chin. "Oxam's razor it's smuggled phones."

They trailed off, a silence filling in. "You know… I have a young kid," he said, shrugging. "Won't remember the one and a bit years he was a goat."

The former pig looked up to him. "Point being."

"In a hundred years people will be asking 'why is it Oxam's razor' won't they. Heck, they'll be asking what's an ox?"

Swinton nodded, rolling her eyes before pulling up her phone. She knew a friend down at the hospital and quickly called her up to see if Vanessa was doing okay. She'd have arrived by now. "Hey, Mindi. We had a brawl here, I kid you not Bellwether beating one of our mammals to a mutual pulp. We sent her, the guard, to you. She arrived yet?"

"I… What she look like."

"Normal height, long black hair, sort of…" She rubbed her rounded chin. "-Pointy, features. But not narrow eyes or anything, I…" She sighed, shaking her head. Things were so much easier when you could say pig or sheep or gazelle, she still wasn't used to it at all. "-Oh, but her face was covered in blood, though that'll be wiped off… Won't it?"

"Yeah," came the voice. "Lemme check, uh…" There was a long pause. "Um, I have some bad news."

Swinton gulped. "Yes?"

"Apparently the ambulance has been still by the side of the road for five minutes now…" The hair on the back of the former pig's neck stood up. "They haven't asked for anything, I… We'll send someone out."

"Give me the location," the pig said, standing up. "I'll go too."

The guard sitting next to her looked up, confused. "Why…"

"Because Vanessa is my friend," she said. "And something feels very wrong."

Locations quickly received, Swinton raced off.

All while the chained and beaten up mammal in the prison medical facility groaned and murmured, consciousness alluding her. The prison doctor looked over, studiously. "So, seems like Hellwether here earned some big blunt force trauma in return. Knocked a few teeth out, I…" He paused, one of the guards on the side, the very same who'd come into the cell after Swinton, jerking his head.

"Anything wrong?"

The doctor, finger up, wiped away some of the blood from around her neck, slowly tracing out a long thin line marked in the skin.

"Some dumb Homom thing?" the guard asked.

"No, our former selves were also very prone to getting garrotted. But how?"

"I mean, Bellwether had hair wires made out of her head hair," he guard said. "Made a tripwire out of it, getting Vanessa as she came in in the dark. Tripped Swinton too."

"Okay," the doctor said, nodding along before pausing. "Then how did Vanessa get one to strangle Bellwether?"

"I…" the guard said, before pausing, his eyes going wide with alarm.

All as out on the highway Swinton pulled up by an ambulance in a field, a lone man standing nearby. Jerking to a halt, she leapt out and ran to him. "What happened?"

"I found it like this," he said, gesturing back. "Knocked off the road, one of the nurses waving me down saying she was the only walking survivor. I gave her my car so she could go get to the hospital faster and get help."

Swinton nodded before pausing. "Wait, didn't she have a phone?"

"I… She said there was no signal. She just said it was urgent, needed to get in…"

Swinton grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him frantically. "What was she like?"

"Huh?"

"What did she look like?"

"I… Nurses uniform. Tall-ish, long dark hair, just… Normal female Homom with a bloody face."

Swinton felt the blood drain from her own one. "Shit," she said, as she grabbed her phone, immediately seeing a weak-ish but most certainly there signal. She called back to the prison as fast as she could. "Guys, I think we've got a problem."

All as the tall-ish, long dark haired, normal female homom with a bloody face currently cuffed to a bed in the prison hospital woke up, eyelids flittering as it focussed on the very guard who'd kicked her early. "Malcolm," she whispered, with the voice of a workmate they knew very well. "Something's… Something's happenned… Where's Bellwether?"

Dawn Bellwether was, at that very moment, driving off as fast as she could, dressed in a stolen nurse's uniform with the various stolen prison guards' stuff she had still stashed away, in case they'd turn out handy again. After all, they'd been very handy when she'd chosen to spring them on those poor paramedics seeing to the 'badly beaten prison guard' they'd been attending to.

Sat-Nav somewhat loaded up, she was now racing away to a pre-set up safe house, one her organisation had developed in case they'd needed to flee during the original plan. Well, better late than never! She smiled, wondering what it'd be like for them spooks when they learnt they'd fallen for the old Monte Cristo slash Hannibal Lechwer trick, hook, line and sinker. Her hands tightened around the wheel, and off she raced, a cloud of dust left in her wake.