As Nick's eyes rolled back into his head, and his eyelids seemed to slam shut, they, confusingly enough, seemed to simultaneously fling themselves open, and his eyes rolled back into a normal state.

He looked around. He seemed to be in a forest, with snow covering the ground around him. He was laying in the snow on his side. He felt the cold snow wetting his clothes, which, oddly enough were a t-shirt and black shorts.

He pondered where exactly the clothes had come from, because he knew he didn't own any pale clothes, let alone black shorts of all things, and he definitely had not put them on that morning.

That jogged his memory, and caused him to wonder if it had actually happened.

A conformation seemed to come in the form of a piece of paper, which had been placed in front of Nick. He pawed the paper towards his body, and read it.

Dear Nicholas,

If you're wondering if our little deal actually happened, it did. So have fun and get that case solved, unless you wanna stay like that forever!

'Sincerely', Yours truly,

Damien

P.S. Vaccines wont work :)

The page had the same pentagram from Damien's office, made of wood, pressed into the bottom of the page.

Nick figured that the note had been well enough evidence to say that he'd actually been brought back, and he began to stand up. But something was wrong. When Nick tried to stand on two legs, his body wouldn't let him, like he didn't have enough strength to stand. Instead, it seemed like his body wanted to move on all fours, like a savage animal.

Nick began to say something, perhaps an "oh, fuck" or "What?". Instead, a panicked whimper came out of his muzzle. If he'd been panicking before, he was really panicking now. He crawled up onto all fours, and, to his horror, it felt right, like he was meant to move like that.

Needless to say, just because it felt right didn't mean it was right, to Nick, and the fox's panic had nearly reached it limit at that point.

If you had been watching the fox from a different perspective, it would definitely look odd. A savage fox, trying to stand itself up, trying to say something, with only panicked whimpers and snarls coming out.

Very odd.

And in all of his panicking, he also managed to notice that he had apparently lost his opposable thumbs, which to put it simply meant one thing; He looked, moved, acted, and talked- or at least what was left of that, was like a savage animal. Nick understood what this meant; Everyone, at least at their first glance, would be scared shitless of him. This presented a new problem:

He was going to have to, probably, do this by himself.

Without full usage of his hands, without the ability to speak, and while everyone's first reaction to seeing him would be panic.

It was at that point, that Nick realized that Damien was more of an evil demon, than a helpful one. Of course he'd be evil! He's a demon for fuck's sake! The fox groaned audibly and dug his claws into the cold winter dirt.

Well you're going to have to start somewhere Nick. You've got to find Judy. And fix yourself.

Maybe fix yourself first.

Unfortunately, we don't always get we want, and, to Nicks apparent happiness, when he actually checked his surroundings, he found that he was still in a forest. A forest, to his luck (and/or Damien's personal choice of where to throw him back in), seemingly right next to the abandoned construction site where he recalled dying only hours before.

He padded towards the large building, which was about 7 floors. The buildings were meant to be low rent housing, as part of one of the new mayors plans. Unsurprisingly, it had been a failure due to rising gang violence, making it unsafe to work in the area. The gang violence had eventually been quelled, but the damage was done, and so the buildings were never finished.

As he neared the front entrance, he began to smell a very familiar (and comforting) smell; Judy, a could recognize the smell from miles away. But he could also smell something that worried him just as much as Judy's smell comforted him: Blood. Of course he couldn't tell who's it was, but guessing by the fact there were no more cars in front of the building, as much as he hoped, a thought in the back of his head was telling him it was Judy's blood, and that it wasn't exactly from a papercut.

Nick entered the building, following Judy's scent through the building. How high did they bring us? He climbed up the stairs leading to the higher floors, Judy's scent, and the smell of blood becoming clearer. He had reached the 5th floor when he heard pained breaths, and spotted a blood trail leading down from the 6th floor stairway, and into a large room almost directly across. He quieted his padding, and the breaths became quieter. He moved closer to the empty doorway. At this point, the smell of blood and Judy was definitely telling him that she was in the room. He could hear the sound of a doorknob being shaken, like it was being forced open. He quietly padded through the dark doorway, and was thoroughly relived in what he saw.

Judy was looking at him.

Or at least the doorway.

It made sense, it was getting dark, and since there were no lights in the unfinished building (duh!) it made it even hard for Nick to look where he was going. Judy had a scared expression on her face. That confused Nick. Why would she be afraid of me? I guess she can't see me, but she can still smell me, right? He wondered, and kept on wondering, and moving forward until-

"Stay back!" The rabbit said, pointing a ZPD-Issue tranq-guns at him.

He couldn't believe it. Judy was literally pointing at tranq-gun at him, and he hadn't even made any aggressive movements!

He padded closer to her, and to his surprise, Judy pulled the gun down. Confusion began to fill her eyes, which was then replaced with hope. "N-Nick?" She asked, her voice shaking.

Yes! Its me, Nick! Your partner! Nicks eyes opened wide with happiness and surprise. Its Nick, your best fri- He was cut off again (common occurrence in this event, I guess?) when Judy again raised her gun back into a shooting aim, aiming it at Nick. The hope disappeared and was replaced by fear.

You know what? I've got a good idea.

Nick whimpered, and Judy's face changed from scared to a confused He lowered his head, not knowing how much Judy could see. He padded out of the room, and stopped outside of the door. He heard the sound of a gun hitting the floor, and tensed his body. God, I hope this works. He sprinted into the room at full tilt. Judy tried to lift her gun, but Nick expected this, and slapped it out of her paws.

Judy shot backwards, wincing in pain, and Nick began to stalk towards her, looking her over. She didn't look good. Her neck looked like it had been choked, and her leg looked absolutely horrible and bloody. The rest of her body barley looked better than the leg. Her uniform was torn, and he could see bruises beginning to form.

He kept on moving towards her, his stalk turning into a less-threatening walk as she shut her eyes and turned her head towards the wall. Nick could smell her fear, and that was the exact opposite of what he wanted to smell. So he was gentle with his next movements. He gently placed his paws on her shoulders, and realized a major flaw in his plan.

In Nick's moment on focusing on getting the gun away, he failed to note one thing; the fact that one of her legs was effectively useless, and that she at least looked too weak to walk out. So he did something that he wouldn't expect himself to do: He put his teeth on the scruff of her neck, and lifted. She wasn't easy to pick up, and he almost struggled to keep her up, but he persevered and got used to holding her as he brought her down the stairs.

He failed to notice when she opened her eyes early on, but he did notice when she began to struggle in his hold. The mixture of her weight and her struggling (which was quite strong for her condition) annoyed him.

I'm was trying to bring you downstairs to help you, and you're trying to escape? Really?

So as you can guess, he was incredibly annoyed when she managed to roll out of his bite and nearly onto a stair. He shoved her down mid-flight and glared at her angrily. Her eyes went wide in fear, and Nick flipped her over and bit on her scruff, harder now.

And as soon as he heard the cry from Judy, his mind seemed to shift itself back into place, and his annoyance disappeared, replaced with worry. He checked Judy's neck to make sure he hadn't bit her neck too hard and cut it. When he picked her up again he made sure not to bite as hard as he'd bitten before.

He felt guilt for biting too hard as he traversed the building, and every time she'd had a pained breath, he'd stop and check her over, but he usually failed to find any new wounds. Unfortunately, Judy had given a lot of pained breaths, which lead to the entire climb down turning from a 5-minute climb to a 15-minute decent.

In the 15 minutes of stop-and-go descending, Nick formulated the final step in his plan.

When Nick and Judy reached what would be the lobby, he padded towards the front door and placed her wall next to the doorway. Why didn't Nick bring her outside? First off, he knew it was getting cold outside, and the sun was nearly down at this point. Secondly, Nick knew there weren't any people living around the buildings. Even with the large amount of houses, he knew most homes were abandoned, especially the ones around him. He figured he could probably carry her to a not-so-abandoned house, or a payphone.

So he had to stop her when she tried to drag herself out of the building, but he knew he couldn't be forceful, so he pulled a move he'd taken out of Judy's book before.

He gently placed his paw on her back. He'd would've liked to rub one of his fingers in a circular motion to really grab her attention, but considering his semi-savage state, he couldn't exactly do that. She turned her head towards him, and he smiled inwardly, but outside he gave Judy the puppy dog look, pursed lips and all. It must have worked, considering the rabbit dragged herself back to the fox.

As the two sat, Nick began to think about why Judy had been acting so different around him. He hadn't attacked her, nor had he showed any actual signs of killing her, but she had seemed to be scared shitless of him, or at least until he'd brought her downstairs. He could understand why she was scared of him at first,

I mean, if you saw your dead partner, savage, and right in front of you, you'd be scared, he pondered, looking at the rabbit. but why had she not tried to talk to me as a partner? I guess she'd think I couldn't understand her, but she didn't seem to even think it was me in front of her. How different could I look? She hasn't even said my name once since... No, she probably couldn't even see me. He sat there for a few minutes, lost in his thoughts, and nearly missed the telltale whine of police siren becoming louder in his ears.

He looked at Judy, uncertain. How could the police have known where they were? The two hadn't brought phones, nor had they told anyone where they were going when the left to station. They still had the looks of uncertainty on their faces when they heard the sirens stop and the sounds of cruiser doors opening and closing. Like earlier, Nick picked Judy by the scruff of her neck again, and began out of the building cautiously, just in case it was a trap.

It wasn't a trap, but the yells from the officers, who he didn't recognize (who eventually turned out to be rookies, surprise, surprise) set him into a minor panic.

"What the hell? What's that fox doing!?"

It made sense, he wasn't that well known in the ZPD. It did confuse him that none of the other officers, especially some that had weren't rookies, recognized him.

"Holy shit, he's savage, look at his eyes!"

Again, it made sense. He'd seen the eyes of savage animals before. They were normally narrow slits, but it did come to him he hadn't actually seen himself, or, in this case, his eyes.

"I thought everyone got a vaccine for that!"

Oh shit. There actually had been a vaccine for Nighthowlers that had been developed after the Nighthowler crisis, and it had been mandatory for all mammals, aside from mice and other very small prey mammals, and considering Nick looked decent, it'd make sense that he would have a vaccination for it. That meant yet another problem; if he was taken to the hospital to get treated, it wouldn't work. And when the doctors found out that he couldn't be treated, he would never get out of the hospital. To put it simply, he couldn't get medical help, and he guessed it wouldn't be very easy to make friends in the state he was in.

"He's biting Officer Hopps!"

Nick looked down in panic. It definitely looked like Judy was being bitten by him. Weirdly enough, it looked like she was opening her eyes, and her body was limp, like she'd been knocked out. Had he don't something to her? She looked fine, aside from the snapped leg and beaten body. Ok, maybe not that fine

"Shoot him!"

No, no, no, He spotted Judy's eyes shoot open in surprise, and he almost beat Judy to open his maw to let her roll out.

"Wait! It's okay, he didn't eat me! He's fine!"

It felt nice to hear Judy's voice fighting for his safety, but the fox knew the argument wouldn't work, and for good reason. He was literally savage, and standing in front of multiple officers, who were mostly rookies.

Nick missed what one of the officers said next, but it must have been something to set off the lot of them, considering that he heard a chorus of safeties being undone. He began to move backwards cautiously.

"Just don't shoot! I'll explain." The rabbit pleaded.

At that point, Nick was backing towards faster and faster, his body tensing up, getting ready to run at full tilt to get away.

"I'm sorry Hopps, he's savage, we'll have to."

And that's my cue. He thought as the Wolf aimed at him. He shot towards Nick, but Nick was faster. He sprinted into the building, searching for an exit leading to the forest. He could hear shouts from outside, and the sound of pawsteps echoing through the empty rooms.

He finally found an exit, and ran. He could hear the yells from behind him, but he kept on running. He could feel the cold Tundra town air nipping at his summer coat, and he kept on running.

By the time he'd stopped running, the officers were out of site, and he was in an empty part of the forest, by a river. He looked around, and saw what would be the bottom portion of one of the massive air-cooling systems that allowed Tundra Town to be so cold. Nick smiled. A way to get out. The fox knew the perpetrator would definitely not be in Tundra Town. He padded towards the river, which had almost frozen over. He was going to get a drink from it, but stopped out of shock when he saw his reflection.

Sitting there was a fox, looking almost exactly like Nick himself, albeit more menacing, and with one defining feature he remembered from Damien:

Cold, crimson red eyes, glowing in the darkness of the night, and lit up by the not far-off lights from the conditioning wall.

Alias's note: I'm sorry.

Seriously, I'm sorry I didn't get this chapter out faster. I had time.

apology accepted?

I hope so.

(Seriously though, enjoy this 2800-word chapter)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go sleep for 5 days. (School yo)

Anyways, Alias out!