I'm going to have to apologize for this right now: After this next chapter, updates will be sporadic, as I've no internet for the time being. That said, I'm also getting a bit of writer's block and conflicting ideas for A New Face in Town, and am going to begin one or two other stories to help focus the ideas and not muddle the stories. ANFiT will still be my priority, however.

~ óÓÒò ~

Nick groaned and rubbed his sore side, cursing the white gauze bandages that were taped to his fur. He was sat in a white hospital bed, waiting for the discharge papers to be released from the hospital. The sun was low on the horizon, the day almost having completely gone by as he was tended to by nurses.

After having passed out in his car, Nick had awoken to find himself being bandaged by a doe in a white gown. She informed him that he had been taken to the hospital and given an IV to help him from losing too much blood as they removed the shards of glass from his skin. Afterwords, he had been kept for several hours while Chief Bogo organized search teams and had a team analyze the video that Nick had taken the night before.

The footage was dimly lit, and hard to see much, but it was evident that a wolf sporting a green shirt and black vest had been outside his car at one point. The van that drove past bore the markings, size, and design of a SWAT vehicle from Savannah Central. The audio was also rather clear, and Bogo was surprised to hear the voice of Lucas from the same district's SWAT saying to take Judy and leave Nick in the car.

"This doesn't add up," the cape buffalo muttered, Nick nodding in agreement when they had watched the video. It was reviewed several times after that, before the chief left the fox alone in his bed with promises to return with word of his dismissal and word of where Judy was. In the meantime, Nick occupied himself by counting the ceiling tiles, staring out the window to watch cars go past, or count the beeps the hospital equipment gave off. Multiple times he lost track and had to start over, before switching to a different 'activity'. It was the best way he could avoid his anxiety over his friend.

This was until a jubilant shriek of his name sounded from the hallway, and he suddenly found his vision to be filled with gray fur. "Well hello there, Fluff," he muttered through Judy's arm, his own finding their way around her. Relief flooded him as he felt her squeeze him closely, before letting go and boucing back a step with a wide smile.

The state of her concerned him, however. Her clothes were torn, and white bandages were visible beneath the holes, as well as a square gauze pad that was stuck to her left cheek. Frowning as his ears fell, Nick set a paw on her head. "What happened to you?" he asked, the frown growing deeper as she looked away from him slightly.

He listened in silence as she explained about her and Dust waking in the makeshift interrogation room, the words exchanged that she understood, and how they managed to get out. The timing of the panther and bear's arrival nagged at him, but he was still relieved that Judy had been the least hurt of them all.

"So, where is our friendly neighborhood vigilante?" he asked.

Chief Bogo stepped into the room, holding a manilla folder in one hoof as he stared at the two. "Your friend Robin is currently in the O.R.," he said. "Given the damage he sustained, he'll likely be here for several days."

"Indeed," came another voice, a beaver walking into the room behind the chief. He was dressed in a white lab coat and matching pants, a clipboard in his grasp as he pored over it. "Significant blood loss, a cracked rib, a second degree burn, among others... We'll need to keep him overnight at the very least." The beaver looked up to the officers before him, holding out a free paw. "Doctor Woodsworth," he said, grinning as Judy and Nick shook it. "A pleasure to finally meet you both, officers. But I regret it being in these circumstances. Thankfully," he said, lifting several sheets of paper off the clipboard, "You're both essentially free to go.

"Officer Hopps, you just need to rest your leg for a day or so to keep the brusing down. Officer Wilde, the same goes for you, as you need to recover some of your lost blood and give your body time to properly heal those cuts." He looked up to the chief. "I trust you'll enforce this, sir?"

"Of course," Bogo snorted. "I know when to tell my officers to rest." He then followed up with a small grumble that Nick couldn't catch, but it made Judy's ears perk and brought a smile to her face, and thus his.

"Very well then. I hope to see you again soon – preferrably outside the hospital," the beaver said, before nodding a goodbye and walking out into the hallway. Judy then looked up to Nick and gently punched his arm – thankfully, she stood on his uninjured side.

"Well, come on, Slick! We need to get back to work!" She said, starting to walk from the room.

"Not so fast, Hopps," the chief said, stopping her in her tracks. She turned around with ears raised, looking at the massive buffalo curiously. "You two are coming with me to the Precinct to get this mess sorted out, not back into the field," he stated. Her nose twitched with something that could pass for confusion. "I need to know more about what you witnessed in that room. And you," he said, turning and pointing to Nick. "Need to come review the footage with us again. We may have something of lead." With that, the mammal turned and started stomping out of the room, leaving Judy and Nick to follow.

"Sir, what about Du- er, Robin?" Judy asked, following after.

"Officers Trunkaby and Rhinowitz will watch over him until we're done. If he's conscious in time, we'll come back and speak with him about what happened. As it is, we've secured the building where you two were held – an old aparment building that was in the middle of being renovated before it was condemned for demolition. The mammals we found there are in the holding cells now." The buffalo didn't bother turning around as he nodded to the receptionist on his way out. "We are missing Lucas, the wolf, and several others though. They may have woken up and fled before we arrived on the scene."

Nick nodded grimly and kept to Judy's side, paws in his pockets as he squinted against the late afternoon sun as they exited the hospital and began walking for the chief's cruiser.

~ óÓÒò ~

The ride back to the precinct had been mostly in silence, with the only real interruption being the crackling of the radio as various reports flowed to and from the ZPD. Nick was on the far side of the passenger side door, Judy beside him, as the seat was large enough for the both of them. Nick had insisted on sitting on the outside of the seat, the memory of last night's crash still fresh in his mind. The idea of Judy being hurt, even as little as it was compared to himself and Dust, filled him with anxiety. As it was, it took a great deal of effort to not take the little rabbit and hold her in a protective embrace.

His dreams – or rather, nightmares – last night were partly to blame; they were filled with amethyst eyes devoid of their spark, and a limp gray form. The nightmares had woken him on several occasions as he rested, and was part of why he had turned his mind to such monotonous tasks for distraction.

It was a relief when they did reach their destination, though the drop from the cruiser to the ground was less than kind to the fox, his leg and side burning with pain as he hit the ground from over a foot up. Judy had jumped down to help him up, and the reynard gave her a small smile of thanks in return. Bogo held open the doors as they went inside and to the tech team assigned to review the video Nick had taken with Judy's phone.

The video had yielded no new information. It was too dark to see the license plate or any distinguishing features of the van, save the "Savannah Central SWAT" on the side. The 'lead' Bogo had mentioned had turned out to be a lack of information on a brown wolf in that particular district's SWAT roster.

"We've contacted the training center," one of the technical team members said, a cougar with hazel eyes. "They say that the only brown wolf they've received in over a year was sent to Tundratown." This caused the team to begin a search for where the wolf had come from, in hopes of uncovering more on his identity.

After a half hour with the team, the three left for Bogo's office.

Nick and Judy both relayed their retrieval of Dust's package, but the fox fell silent after telling their chief about the car wreck. He remained quiet, a somber expression on his face, as Judy began to briefly detail the 'interrogation' she and Dust had undergone. It nagged at him that the other fox and wolf had spoken in a different language frequently enough to confuse Judy, but he kept himself from voicing this until she was done.

In the end, the chief was staring down at the two smaller officers with his hooves pressed together. He took a massive sigh, pinching his nose as he leaned back. "So we need to talk to the fox," he groaned. "Very well. We'll wait until tomorrow, and go see him first thing in the morning. You two are dismissed – go home, rest up. But try to take it easy. I don't need the doctors hounding me, too."

Nick and Judy nodded and hopped down from the chair, quietly walking out of the office.

~ óÓÒò ~

Nick opened the door to his aparment and yawned, stepping inside. The walk back had been one filled with silence, a thick air of something unidentifiable hanging between him and Judy as they walked. The only real talk they had made on the way was to decide that it would be best for Judy to come to Nick's for the night, so they could help one another with their injuries.

Flopping onto the couch, the fox reached out for his remote and turned on the TV, beginning to flip through the channels with an already bored expression. Judy sat on the other end, curling up with a pillow as she looked outside. A small drizzle of rain pattered against the window, the clouds having only broken once both mammals were safely inside the apartment building.

"Hey, Carrots?" Nick said, looking up at her out of the corner of his eyes. A faint, curious grunt was her response. "You hungry? Thirsty? Anything?" he asked. He frowned at her shrug, slowly sitting himself upright with a hiss from the pain his cuts caused. He wasn't entirely concerned, as this was how she reacted when she was in deep thought. "What'cha thinking about?"

She was silent for a moment, before turning to him. "Everything," she said. "About this case. Phraxus. Dust, you, me. What we've already been through, what we could still go through."

Nick nodded in understanding. He had been avoiding those very thoughts, among others, when he was alone in the hospital, and as much as he dreaded thinking of them now, he felt that Judy needed to. "What about it all?" he asked.

Judy turned back to the window, quiet for another moment. "This is all so weird," she stated. "We were really just doing patrol with a side objective not that long ago. Now we're having members of SWAT trying to take us out. And we still don't really know what Phraxus wants," she said. Her gaze turned back on Nick. "And I can't shake this feeling of guilt. Lucas said they had taken someone from him, and now Dust is in the hospital. Half a dozen members of the Savannah Central SWAT are in custody, and so are nearly twenty other mammals from this one event."

"Why do you feel guilty?" Nick asked, his head tilting. "None of that was really your fault."

"It's different for all of them," she said. "I feel guilty for Lucas, because we didn't stop Phraxus before now. Same with the other SWAT members, and maybe the others as well. The wolf, Lesnitsky, I feel guilty for him having to do all this."

"And Dust?" Nick asked.

"He stopped a knife for me," she said. "Lesnitsky was going to stab me in the shoulder, but he took it in his arm instead."

Nick nodded, understanding. Judy was feeling guilty for not being able to stop unfortunate events from happening, despite what was happening to herself now. He reached out, placing a paw on her arm, as she had done to him little over a year ago. A small speech was forming in his mind.

"Judy," he started. "You aren't the cause for all of these things. And there's no way you could've known these things would've happened to prevent them. You said it yourself, life is messy. That's why the world needs good cops like you and me – to help clean it up. I mean, we might not always win, but we just need to give it our all, and hope for the best. Because, in the end, if we've given all we've got, no one could've asked more from us, right? We did the absolute best we could. That's what matters."

Nick pursed his lips, hoping he had said something right. He wasn't one for speeches – that was Judy's thing. He also wasn't one for emotions – that was also her thing. But from the way Judy's ears had risen when he was talking, and a small light had begun showing in her eyes, he assumed he had done something right. The rabbit turned and stared at Nick for a moment, before releasing the pillow and flinging herself to him in a fierce hug. The reynard let out a yelp of shock and slight pain before returning the gesture, laying there for a moment before snickering.

"You know, you're proving my point about bunnies being emotional," he jabbed, giving her a smirk. She didn't raise her head, though, instead just holding him in the hug even longer and muttering "Dumb fox" into his chest. Nick's tail twitched, slightly anxious as the embrace lasted longer than expected. "Hey, uh, Fluff? While I'm not exactly saying I dislike your hugs, can you uh... Let go now?"

Nothing. The fox tried pushing on the bunny a bit to get her to let go, but it only served for her grip to tighten. "Carrots? Fluff? Officer Toot-Toot?" he said, voice filling with a bit of worry. "Carrots, please let go."

Silence.

"Carrots?"

~ óÓÒò ~

Nick watched as Dust stared at the group before him with tired eyes. Chief Bogo, Nick, and Judy were all standing before him in his medical bed and awaiting a response from the question he didn't seem to heard. "What?" he asked, head tilting.

"You told the wolf to ask his sister where your team was?" the chief asked, snorting once the fox nodded.

"Then took a knife for Judy. Then told him to go eff himself, and you know what happened," he said simply. "Can I get my phone now?"

"When we're done," the chief said. Dust rolled his eyes.

"Far as I'm concerned, we are done. I told you exactly what happened, now get me my phone. I need to make a call. We have to find that hard drive." Dust stared at the group with an imploring look. This seemed to work after a minute, the buffalo giving a distasteful expression as he walked out of the room. Several minutes later, he re-entered with Doctor Woodsworth in tow, holding a large bag that held the majority of the fox's items, and dropped it on the fox's bed. Dust immediately opened it up and began rummaging through until he found his phone, punching in a number and holding it to his ear. It took a moment, but he eventually began talking to his contact – Frost, it seemed – and was asking if they could track the hard drive.

Nick and Judy stood at either side of their chief, the air between them feeling awkward. Judy had refused to let go of Nick the night before, up until she and him had both fallen asleep on the couch and woken up in essentially the same position. The resulting morning routine was riddled with awkward attempts at not bumping into one another, more apologies than a moose could give, and a series of conversations that went absolutely nowhere.

Nick's ears raised, alongside his eyebrows, at seeing Dust's eyes widen a bit. His ears, for the first time since they had met, were beginning to press against his head, and his fur was rising. The fox was silent for a good amount of time, before he took a deep breath and ended the call, staring at the phone.

"Is everything alright, Mr. Wick?" The chief asked, the tone in his voice betraying the sincerity he tried to give. The other reynard nodded slowly, before shaking his head and staring up at them. His ears now stood erect on his head, eyes focused.

"I need to leave the hospital," he said.

"I'm afraid we can't allow that," the doctor said immediately. "You've only just recovered from your blood loss, and your cracked rib will take days to heal, not to mention your stitches -"

"I need to leave the hospital," Dust said, tone falling to a growl. "This isn't a want, or a suggestion, or a question. It's a necessity."

"And so is your resting here until we feel you can be dismissed," argued the beaver.

"Why do you think you need to leave?" Nick asked. His tail twitched with curiousity.

"They know I'm here," he said.

"They?" Chief Bogo asked.

"Phraxus," Dust replied. "The group that infiltrated the Savannah Central SWAT, has been stealing Night Howlers, and-" Judy hissed, making Dust pause mid-sentance. "Did you just hiss at me?" he asked, before shaking his head and pointing at the chief. "You. You can get me cleared from the hospital, I know you can. I need you to. I can't stay here."

Chief Bogo looked taken aback, and Nick scoffed. Doctor Woodsworth turned around and looked at the buffalo for his own support. "Sir, please explain to him how he cannot leave yet. It's important for his health that he stay-"

"Where are the papers?" Bogo said. He looked down to the doctor, who held his clipboard to his chest. "The discharge papers. I want to see them," the chief said. The beaver took a breath, about to reply, before clearly thinking better of it and walking from the room. The cape buffalo then looked at both Nick and Judy. "Before the doctor comes back, give me your inputs. You know this fox better than I do."

Nick looked closely at Dust. He had a gauze pad on one cheek, and a wrap around his forearm and side, as well as his shoulder, visible under the hospital gown. His IVs had already been taken out of his arm, just before their arrival. His eyes were filled with fire and determination, yet it was tempered with clear exhaustion. The air he gave off, however, was one of urgency and spiked with fear. "I think," Nick said, thinking carefully about his judgement. "That he has a very good reason to demand leaving."

The chief looked at him, expecting more, but Nick was still thinking. "I think he can leave," Judy said. "If he takes it easy, like us."

The chief grunted in acceptance, standing upright. "I think Carrots has the right idea," Nick said, looking up to see Chief Bogo nod.

"Then we'll let you go if you take it easy, like these two say," the buffalo said, staring down at the bandaged fox. He stared back with a bit of defiance, before nodding in agreement.

"I'll do my best," he said as the doctor walked back in.

"Sir, I really do think this is a bad idea," the beaver said, holding up the papers for the chief. Nick watched as Bogo took the clipboard and examined the papers, before scribbling away with a pen in several places and handing it back. The doctor let out a frustrated sigh, before turning to Dust. "Please, please just rest for a few days? And come back in a week or sooner if something happens? A popped stitch, chest pain, anything."

"No promises," Dust said, smiling innocently as the doctor muttered something in defeat before turning and walking away. His expression then fell to one of gratitude as he looked over at Nick and Judy. "Thanks," he said, slowly sliding to the ground. He hissed and clutched his side as he stood up, reaching up to take the bag he had been given and drag it down. It collapsed at his feet with a thump, and he immediately began rummaging around for his clothes. He found them and gave a satisfied nod, shuffling for the bathroom.

He emerged several minutes later, dressed back in his outfit from the previous night. He groaned and rubbed his shoulder with a small hiss, before gathering the rest of his items from the bag. The officers watched on in silence, until he looked around with a sigh and nodded. "Ready," he said.

Nick pursed his lips and turned around, walking on one side of Dust as Judy did the same, the chief leading them outside. When they reached the cape buffalo's cruiser, he paused and turned around. Nick and Judy both turned to keep watch on Dust, who had started looking up at Chief Bogo.

"I'm assuming you're about to tell me that I need to come back to the precinct to tell you what happened?" he said, sighing softly and nodding at the affirmative grunt he was given. "Alright. Lead on."

The four quietly climbed inside of the car, and the ride back to the ZPD being in absolute silence.

~ óÓÒò ~

The remainder of the day had been entirely monotonous. Dust had simply filled in the dialogue that Judy didn't understand, and offered little on the backstory of Lesnitsky.

"He was a courier with me when we were younger. Delivered packagaes of all kinds, sizes, and... Contents. I guess he was working with the police to nail this one customer down, but left me out of it. I took matters into my own paws, and what resulted tore us apart. It was the last run we ever did," Dust said. His tone was somber, but there was no hint of regret in it.

In the end, Nick and Judy had been ordered to take Dust home. A warrant to search Lucas's home would be retrieved within the next day or so, leaving the officers and vigilante just enough time to rest. They were given a simple, black car to use, as a cruiser would draw too much attention. Or, at least, that was what Dust said. But when they pulled into the driveway, he didn't get out.

"I need you two to come back tonight," he said. When given a questioning look by both Judy and Nick, he looked out the window. "It'll take too long to get a warrant and search Lucas's place. Phraxus could easily get it by then. We need to get it tonight." The sense of urgency in the reynard's voice was somewhat alerting, but at the same time, the constant pain in Nick's left half told him he needed to rest.

Judy, however, simple nodded. "If they already knew you were in the hospital, they could already be on their way to get it," she said. "There's no guaruntee that it's with Lucas, either, but..." She looked to Nick.

He just stared back, wanting to argue with her and tell her that it was a bad idea. They all needed rest, and that the warrant would likely be served tomorrow. A few more hours shouldn't hurt, he could argue. But, in the back of his mind, he thought of all the hunches Dust had had so far that had been correct. Judy supported him with this decision, it was clear. And, as much as he wanted to, he knew he couldn't tell her no. Any other mammal would be shot down right now, but the way Judy stared at him with her large amethyst eyes, both expectant and hopeful, melted him a bit.

Something within Nick stirred, and he forced it down to think about later. He sighed, and nodded. "Do you even know where he lives?" he asked.

"Savannah Central, an apartment complex towards the east. Near the top floor," Dust replied. Nick groaned.

"You're going to go with or without us, aren't you?" he asked, chuckling as Dust nodded. His stubborn nature almost rivaled Judy's when she wanted. "Then, the least we can do is make sure you get back in one piece," he said. "We'll be back around eleven."

Dust nodded a thank you, and left the vehicle. Nick turned to Judy, who was smiling, before quietly pulling out of the driveway and turning onto the street. "Thank you, Nick," she said.

"Of course, Carrots. Besides, who could resist you and those cute eyes of yours?"

The punch she delivered made the fox very glad she sat on his good side.