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The following is a work of fanfiction: there is no intent of this author to violate, transgress, profit from or infringe upon the Copyright and Intellectual Property (IP) rights of the parent Copyright or IP holders of characters, events or locations belonging to the same which may be contained within this work. To reiterate; this is a Derivative Work meant to be used under Fair Use as described in 17 U.S.C. § 101 and § 107.

All language is either through Google Translate, or the site 'Bits'n'Bob-stones'

The Sons of Efrafa

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Sweet! Care package from home! Show me the flayrah! * Let's see; Mr. Alvaredo's arepas, those would go nice with, Aha! Smoked river trout and hummus! Narn-ni marli-fa. OOHH! Aunty Adame's Lokum! Frith-rah bless you, beautiful Hombarli. What else, What else, What else! A letter from, Con-ni-fa? Huh.

"Hello Rah-roo." Jeez, you haven't called me that in ages.

"Your last letter home spoke of you reconciling with your Owsla Buyuk, and his offer to teach you our history and culture." Yeah, I just had to get a Letter-of-Reprimand (LOR) and be withheld from promotion for six months for 'Excessive Force'; no such thing with punks like that, but thems the rules; You pays yer dues, you takes yer chances.

"I have lamented that you would ever take interest in your heritage again, after falling in with those Vair-li pretenders." Go ahead and rub it in why don't you.

"I urge you, accept his offer! I could never have hoped that you would be able to walk on the plains of Issus where Ephraim Stihrath-rah led our people to freedom from the tyranny of the Nemean Aslani kings of Purrsia, nor seen the Kilic Methrah-Hain (sword song) in all its glory or leapt the flames or walked the ancient ways of Efrafa. I weep that I could not give you these things; and yet my heart sores even to Frith-rah, knowing that you shall have them, your birthen right as Efrafan." Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry!

"Your letter also spoke words of shame and doubt, that you felt yourself a disappointment; this is not true! Your mother and I may have been disappointed in the choices you have made in the past, but never in you. You have always been worthy, you just had to realize it; and now you do." -sniffle- Hraka! -sniffle-

"Go forth, young Son of Ephraim, and seize your place in this world." -sniffle- M'saion! -sniffle-

Chapter 4

With his new-found acceptance, both of himself and by Owsla Buyuk, Jacob soon found it easier to open up to his friends. He also found, once he set aside his anger towards Zootopia, that Hornblower could be surprisingly insightful if still somewhat aloof. This newfound open camaraderie was what led him to gather his friends at a picnic table outside the base library to share in a soldier's most prized possession: the home-made care package!

Horace came out of the library to join everyone, arms laden with books. As he set them down on a clear space between himself and Boyan, he noted the feast with interest and some slight melancholy. "What is all that?"

Jacob grandly gestured to each item: "Corn flour arepas, hummus, Turkish Delight and smoked trout; as fresh from home as air-mail allows. Help yourself!"

"I get the rest of it, but I can't see how you can eat that; it's fish!" Horace stated with mild distaste.

"Yes, it is; and I can eat it like this!" Jacob replied while scooping a healthy portion of smoked trout onto one of the arepas and taking an exaggerated bite.

Desperately seeking support for his position, Horace looked aghast as Tereasa delicately nibbled a portion of fish and arepas.

"They're not Kippers, but they're not bad at all. Would your mother be willing to part with the recipe?" asked Ms. Brisby.

"Oh, Marli-fa didn't make that; she made the hummus. The Bjorson's made the smoked trout. They live on Upper Canal Street like, a block from the Castorman Mill and furniture factory, so it's real easy to get the wood scraps for smoking. The trout they catch in traps in the canal. It's a whole cottage industry; between little things like that and the community gardens, Foxborough and VT Commons are relatively food self-sufficient. Beats the hell out of the bland crap they gave us in the ZPS (Zootopian Public Schools)."

"Language, please." Teresa stated primly.

"Sorry, but there's no other way to describe it." Jacob calmly retorted.

"You can still do better." Tarsa commented between bites.

"Alright, alright! Gang up on me, why don't ya. Help me out here Fivel!"

"I CAN SEE ETERNITY!"

Tarsa picked Mousekewitz up from the piece of Turkish candy he was devouring and handed him off to Boyan, while setting up a small portion of trout in front of him. "No more sugar for you my friend. Have some protein."

"What is this! You're all prey mammals, you can't eat fish! Well except Tarsa." Horace exclaimed.

Jacob set his food down and looked pointedly at Hornblower. "I have been many things in my short life, but I have never been anyone's victim; and besides, I fail to see what that has to do with eating cooked fish."

"What? I didn't say victim, I said Prey Mammal." Horace commented with a confused look.

"I think he means herbivore, Emanuel…" Teresa interjected, "…and in that you are mistaken Mr. Hornblower; Ms. Shahrubah, Mr. Mousekewitz and myself are omnivores, so this is actually quite normal for our collective diets. Yourself, Mr. Hippelov and Emanuel here are the herbivores."

"My mistake then, but it still doesn't explain Jacob. You don't see Boyan eating fish, do you?" he gestured to his fellow ungulate.

"Is Ramadan, I must fast until sundown." Boyan said while keeping Fivel away from the Lokum. "Could I impose to save some of this?"

"Oh, certainly! I think the Arepas are Halal, it's just corn flour, salt and water cooked in vegetable oil." Jacob replied while separating some of the food for Boyan, much to Horace's shock.

"I can accept that you choose not to partake, but why do you think Boyan and Emanuel should not?" Tarsa asked while looking at Horace.

"They're pre… herbivores! They can't eat meat, we can't digest it!"

"Yeah, the ZPS said pretty much the same thing while trying to get all us 'Happytown rabble' to tow the Zootopian line of 'Anyone can be Anything', as long as you keep to your species niche." Jacob replied with some bitterness.

"That isn't what Zootopia is about." Horace defended. "The Polis was founded on the principle that every mammal can live at peace with one another; that the shackles of the old world nationalist ideologies are largely responsible for every conflict in recent memory."

Jacob sighed. "With time, even the finest silver tarnishes. Zootopia gave up on those principles when they elected Tannerman in '48. The whole shock-collar business wasn't straightened out until the Confederation Continental Congress passed the Universal Mammals Rights Act of '64."

"'The Amerigon polis should be a collection of communities where every member has a right to belong. It should be a place where every mammal feels safe on his streets and in the house of his friends. It should be a place where each individual's dignity and self-respect is strengthened by the respect and affection of his neighbors. It should be a place where each of us can find the satisfaction and warmth which comes from being a member of the community of mammalkind. This is what mammals sought at the dawn of civilization. It is what we seek today.' Lyon B. Johnson, 36th President of the Amerigon Confederation of States."

Everyone turned to look at Fivel in surprise.

"What? Bachelor of Science, Poli Sci., class of '11 University of Phoenix."

"Well," Ms. Brisby said after a moment, "…now I know why you have not sought further personal education. Why then are you two here?" she indicated Jacob and Horace.

"Business Management." Horace pointed to his pile of books.

"Anger Management." Jacob held up a copy of the writings of St. Thomas Equinus.

The next two months saw an easing of Jacob's relationship with Sgt. Adame and Owsla Buyuk; though there remained a certain level of professional detachment due to the superior/subordinate relation Jacob shared with them, time spent off duty studying Efrafan culture and fighting techniques resulted in an almost sibling familiarity between Jacob and Natalia.

"You're quieter than usual today. May I ask why?" Natalia inquired while their car idled at a street corner.

"Just a lot on my mind." Jacob said absently. "Horace suggested I read 'Meditations of Marcus Aurochius', and he's right; Stoicism has got a lot of good thoughts on mastering one's emotions, understanding where they come from and how they affect you, as opposed to just trying to bury them in some masculine pseudo-stoic display or wallowing in them like a Pagan. That, and Tarsa just got her transfer orders; between the unrest with the Nasiri in southern Purrsia, her brothers ordination as a Zoroastrian priest, and her mother's health issues, she's decided to take a posting in Tehran."

"You look like a boy who's first love is moving away." She said, smiling sympathetically.

Jacob chuckled, "And you'd be right."

"Truly? Your first love was a Purrsian vixen?"

"No, my first love was a Wallachian vixen who lived in our neighborhood; Zabrina Alescu. She's related to the Adame family who sponsored mine for entry into Zootopia, back before the last round of plant closures across the river in Haresburg. Zabrina was a good seven years older than me, but you don't care about those things when you're 12. She's quite beautiful; tall, graceful, fur the color of forests in autumn and a tail that almost begged to be stroked. Say, you mentioned you had a daughter."

Natalia held an amused expression until the last, at which she took on the aspect of a protective mother. "Yes." Her smile was all teeth and unspoken maternal warning.

"Huh, good to know." He understood Natalia's message.

The car's base station radio interrupted any further conversation. "All units, all units; domestic dispute reported at D-202 Isirgan Square of Yeni Mahalle. Be advised, possible shots fired. All units respond, over."

"Juliet-Tango 117 responding; ETA three minutes!" Jacob automatically responded, hitting the lights and sirens as Sgt. Adame screeched into traffic.

A search of the address on the car's computer showed the location to be the residence of the Aksoys, a family of Golden Jackals with a history of domestic calls. The father, Mahzun, had recently been released from prison; he had been arrested for assault against both his wife, Naz and their son, Alp.

They heard screaming coming from the front room of the home, even over the noise of the patrol car as they pulled up. Jacob and Natalia both readied their FN-FiveSeven's before advancing on the house. As they stacked at the front door which was slightly ajar and the sound of violence and the crying of a child from inside built to a crescendo, Jacob looked to Natalia, who nodded and raised her weapon; they couldn't wait for additional units to arrive.

Shouldering the door open, Jacob crouched low ready to spring forward and swept the room, while Sgt. Adame stood immediately behind and swept high; to the left, an entertainment center lay toppled over an as-yet unidentified canid, while an albino jackal pup of no more than 10 cried and called to his mother. He lay against the couch to the right, bleeding from the head. Straight ahead was a male jackal of medium height, only slightly taller than Jacob or Natalia: he was beating a wailing female jackal with the pommel of a knife while screaming insults at her. When the two LEOs simultaneous yelled, the male swiftly turned with the female in claw presenting her as a shield while pressing the knife blade to her neck.

"Back off! Throw down your guns or I'll slit her whore throat!" Mahzun screamed even as tears poured down his face.

Natalia kept her weapon leveled on him. "It doesn't have to be like this, Mahzun; let Naz go and we'll -achoo- we'll talk about this."

"NO! No talk! My wife bears me a devil son, I am scorned in the community, I am sent to prison for trying to drive the devil from them! When I come home I find her in bed with some stranger from the Base! Now you come to My Home and tell me I must submit? No, you will submit! Throw away your guns, NOW!" His agitation had reached a fever pitch, and now both Jacob and Natalia could smell an odd floral scent mixed with tobacco.

"Alright! We are -achoo- lowering our weapons; just let her go." As Natalia raised her guns barrel away from Mahzun, she tapped Jacobs' shoulder in one of the Efrafan silent signals: Strike at the first opportunity.

As Jacob moved to clear his weapon, Mr. Aksoy seemed to notice him for the first time.

"I see now! Malak Al-Maut (the Angel of Death) is come to claim his due! Here; take her and her devil spawn back to Iblis where they belong!" As he said this, staring straight at Jacob, he poised the knife to plunge into the side of his wife's neck.

Before Mahzun could do more than prick Naz's neck, Jacob threw his now empty service pistol at the deranged jackal. The sudden motion caused him to startle and take the blade from her neck and step back, slightly unbalancing himself. Jacob crossed the distance in a flash; by the time Mahzun realized the ruse, Jacob had seized his weapon arm and yanked him away from Naz. At the same time Natalia had also crossed the room, and before the jackal had finished falling, she tackled him to the ground. They had him restrained after a short struggle, and one blow to Mahzun's head to stun him into compliance.

Jacob stepped away from the fallen assailant once they had him properly restrained, while Natalia was still fighting through her sudden hay-fever. He collected his weapon and began reviewing the scene; Alp had moved over to cradle his mother's head in his lap, she apparently fell unconscious from the abuse. Jacob's memories of his own father surged forward, and he was forced to pause and take a deep breath. Even as the urge to turn his wrath upon Mahzun rose, one of the passages he had recently read rose with it: "If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it." After a moment, he was calm again; the anger was there, but he was its master, not its slave. Now he turned his attention to the canid under the television. He seemed familiar, but not someone Jacob knew. Checking his injuries, and scanning his chip, he found the individual was a dingo named Walter Brek, one of the infantry mammals from Anzac. He was alive but unconscious with several shallow cuts to the face and abdomen, as well as a broken jaw. In moving the TV off the fallen mammal, Jacob noticed that Pvt. Brek was, in fact, quite naked. A quick glance to Naz and Alp confirmed that she was as well, seeming to confirm at least one of Mahzun's ranting statements. Now, he needed to check on the rest of the Aksoy family.

As he approached the pair, he was startled when Alp began throwing things at his feet, precisely seven things, mostly coins and broken pieces of glass. Jacob remembered it was a tradition to fend off Malak Al-Maut. Alp was curled around his mother's head as if trying to hide her from Jacob. It was then he saw a small boney spike coming from the back of his head. Another of Mahzun's rants made sense now, as traditionally the Seear Singhi were seen as magical in nature. In the predominantly Sufi community, it would be seen as the mark of the Devil.

"Be at peace child." Jacob soothed. "I am not Malak Al-Maut come to take you or your mother to Shaytan. I am a soldier, called Jacob Emanuel Raibert. You may call me Emanuel. Can you tell me your name?"

"Alp." The terrified child's voice was faint.

"And you are, heroic that is, trying to protect your mother as you have. Will you let me help her now?" Jacob asked as he knelt before the child at eye level.

Alp nodded and so Jacob set about providing what first-aid he could until the EMT's arrived.

The drive back to the station house with Mahzun in the back was peculiar, to say the least. When they went to load Mr. Aksoy into the patrol car, Natalia made every effort to keep him as far from her muzzle as physically possible. At first, he thought that, like him, the idea of having to touch such a contemptible person was personally distasteful; then the wind shifted, and she began sneezing again.

Jacob took control of the prisoner. "Are you alright Sgt.? Should I call a medic over?"

She waved him off. "I'll be -ACHOO- fine! Damned addict. I'm just allergic to -sniffle- his drug of choice."

Jacob sniffed near the still addled Mahzun. "I can smell that he's been smoking something, but it's not Nip or Hash; what is it?"

"Cigdem Sheesha." She said with some disgust.

Jacob looked at Mahzun curiously. "Tobacco mixed with pulped Crocus? I don't remember anything like that being in the local narcotics brief."

"It's not a controlled substance, though it should be. -achoo- It's used in a lot of religions as an incense; supposed to strip away the 'falsities-of-the-flesh' or some Hraka. It really just makes you susceptible to suggestion. Use too much, however, and you start to lose higher reasoning; you become paranoid and violent like this animal." She said that while they loaded Mr. Aksoy into the back of the car. Once inside, Natalia rolled the front two windows down and turned the A/C on to full.

Jacob stood next to the drivers-side door. "Do you want me to drive? You can stick your head out the window as we go."

She handed him the keys. "You just want to see me pant."

He smirked and waited until she was on the other side of the car to respond. "Careful now; you know I like vixens. What would your family say?"

"Cheeky kit! Just get us back to the station and I won't notch your ears for that remark."

"Yes ma'am."

Upon their arrival at the base, while Natalia began filing the appropriate after-action reports Jacob secured and processed Mr. Aksoy.

"Afternoon, Jacob!" greeted Sgt. Tannhauser, a grey wolf from the Weimar Republic. "What joy have you brought me today?"

"Only the finest, David: Mahzun Aksoy, age 30. Domestic violence call gone almost all the way wrong; three counts Assault with a Deadly Weapon, two counts Attempted Murder, and one count Resisting Arrest."

The stocky lupine whistled in surprise. "That's quite the tally. Would you like to walk him around the building a few times, maybe have him fall down a few flights of stairs?"

Jacob closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then whispered to himself, "If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it."

David's ears perked up. "What was that?"

"Nothing, just some advice from a friend. And no, I think there's been enough suffering in this case; let the courts expose him for the monster he is and punish him accordingly." Jacob looked sidelong at the muzzled and restrained Jackal beside him. "Besides, if I did start hitting him, I'm not certain when I'd stop."

Once finished with processing, Jacob went to file his reports of the events, cross-referencing them with the copies Natalia had sent him. Within minutes of e-mailing his reports to Mendoza and Buyuk he was called to one of the third-floor briefing rooms. After knocking three times, Buyuk called him to enter.

"Sir, Pvt. Raibert reporting as ordered sir!" Jacob stood at rigid attention while observing his surroundings; WO Mendoza and Capt. Buyuk sat at a table under the projection screen, while Sgt.'s Tannhauser and Adame stood to one side. On the table in front of his commanders was a stack of papers which he assumed to be the compiled reports from the earlier call.

"At ease, Pvt. For the purposes of the record, this debrief will be conducted in anglican. We've read all the reports, and they are a part of the official record, so we'll cut the preliminaries and get to the heart of the matter; I've seen your qualification scores, so I know what you're capable of. This is the question: why didn't you take the shot when you had the chance?" Mendoza's mien was stern, but not accusatory.

"At the outset, there seemed the possibility to de-escalate the situation. By the time the extent of Mr. Aksoy's agitation was apparent, Sgt. Adame and I had already cleared our weapons."

"So instead you opted to bludgeon another perp unconscious?" the WO asked with a quirked eyebrow.

Jacob physically bristled, his ears pointing straight back. 'Really, lectured if I don't kill him, and then lectured for too much force?' Before he could verbalize that thought, he took a deep breath and relaxed again. "No sir, I opted to use the resources at my disposal to subdue Mr. Mahzun with minimal trauma to Mrs. Aksoy and her son."

Capt. Kaan spoke up for the first time, "Her son was ten feet away. What trauma were you going to save him from?"

"That of seeing his father killed in front of him; there had been enough misery and suffering in that house. Alp will always live with his physical condition, Naz will live out her life socially condemned as an adulteress, Pvt. Brek will likely be discharged for his injuries and his own adultery, while Mahzun will likely live out the next decade or two in prison. The only positive that has come out of this whole sordid affair is that the annulment Naz has been trying to get for the past three years is all but a done deal, sirs."

Mendoza and Buyuk looked at one another, then to Natalia and David who nodded back.

Mendoza then gathered up the files on the table. "In light of the evidence filed by MCSI (Military Crime Scene Investigators) as well as the testimony of the responding officers and observers, I am inclined to find that there is no fault in your actions in this case. Well done Pvt. Keep this up and we'll see about clearing your UIF (Unfavorable Information File) in time for next years' promotion boards. Dismissed."

Jacob snapped to attention, saluted the assembled officers, about-faced, and marched out of the room to turn in his kit at the end of shift. As he was making his way out from the barracks after changing for a planned evening with Tarsa, Capt. Buyuk called him over.

"Jacob, a moment of your time."

Jacob considered the Owsla for a moment, "Yes, but only a moment. Tarsa leaves soon and I want to make the most of the time we have."

He smiled at Jacob knowingly, "I quite understand, this won't take long. In three month's my old regiment is holding a re-union commemorating the Battle of Edirne where your grandfather served. If you have enough leave saved up, I would like to invite you. We could tour the ancient Cappadocian capital of Efrafa along the way and fill in some of the blanks in your heritage as it were. I would need to step up your training in the interim, after Tarsa has left of course; I don't need you distracted during that period. What say you?"