Nick stood motionless in the cargo bay, staring into the metallic blue crate. M'bogo and Gazelle stood just inside the entrance from the passenger area and watched. Only Jack moved, continuing his futile struggle, helplessly trapped by M'bogo's massive arms.
"Y'know," the fox finally quipped, "you bunnies do have a certain reputation. But I never-"
He was interrupted by a terrified shriek that reverberated throughout the cargo bay.
Nick stumbled backward. M'bogo leaned forward, a curious expression on his face, while Jack redoubled his efforts to escape. Gazelle watched intently and lowered her horns. Sherani silently stepped onto the overhead catwalk.
Another shriek, and a mass of fur bounded out of the crate. Then another shriek, and another. A wild-eyed dark gray bunny, completely unclothed, careened around the cargo bay, shrieking as she ran. Taking advantage of M'bogo's momentary distraction, Jack finally managed to kick his way loose. Then he ran after the shrieking bunny.
"Brooke! Brooke! Stop! Please stop! It's okay! Please stop!"
She rounded a corner and slammed into the doctor, who wrapped his arms around her tightly. The two bunnies rolled across the cargo bay floor together.
Her steel-blue eyes stared intently into his. Her trembling slowed as awareness spread across her face, and she asked quietly, "Johnny?"
"Yes, it's me, Brooke," the doctor replied, finally smiling. "It's me. You're safe now."
She wailed, "Johnny, they... they talk to me. They want me to... to..."
"Shh... Shh... They're gone," he said gently. "They're gone. We're safe. You're safe. You're safe with me. You're safe with me." The weeping doe bunny collapsed into his arms and clung to him.
Nick said flatly, "Report."
Jack held the sobbing bunny, and answered, "Captain Wilde, this is my sister, Brooke."
As Jack slowly guided Brooke towards the infirmary, Gazelle removed her outer robe, folded it, and draped it around the small unclothed bunny. The doctor nodded to Gazelle. His sister stared with a childlike fascination at the vibrant silk fabric. At the door to the infirmary, Brooke recoiled, pulling against Jack's gentle, but insistent, grip. When Brooke saw Judy's unconscious light gray form, she collapsed to the floor and sobbed. Slowly, gently, Jack and Gazelle reassured her and lifted her to the examination table. Slowly, gently, her brother checked her vital signs and administered medications. Seemingly terrified of everything and everyone else, she kept looking back at her brother with forlorn, hopeless eyes. Finally, he administered a sedative. Holding her brother's paw, Brooke drifted off to sleep.
Later, everyone but Judy, Brooke, and the weasel gathered in the dining area. Jack stood. The others sat facing him. He took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. The others stared somberly at him, waiting.
"I am very smart," the doctor began.
As the doctor continued, the captain shook his head in disbelief. He had given this arrogant spoiled bunny a chance to explain himself, and this is how he used it? A litany of over-the-top rich-kid accomplishments?
"So when I say that my little sister makes me look like the feeble-minded runt of the litter, I want you to understand my full meaning," Jack continued.
The captain tried to imagine what kind of a hustle the bunny was pulling. According to the doctor, his frightened, helpless sister was supposed to be an even bigger genius than he was. Nick glanced around at the others. To his surprise, they actually seemed to be listening intently to the doctor's story.
"There was a school," the bunny continued, "a government-sponsored academy."
The captain clenched his jaw. So the doctor's sister attended some elite academy. These rich kids, with their money, their academies, their estates, their luxuries-they had no idea what the real world was like.
"I..." Jack paused and pushed back tears. "I got a few letters at first, but then... nothing. For months, nothing. I was busy at the hospital. I assumed she... I never..." He took a deep breath and continued, "Finally I got another letter from her, but it made no sense. She... She wrote about things that never happened, people we'd never met, events that... It was code. It just said... 'Get me out. They hurt us.'"
Sherani finally broke the silence, "How did you do it?"
"Money," Jack shrugged. "Money and luck. Money and luck and... contacts." The doctor described two years of fruitlessly searching on his own, and an unnamed underground movement that had finally reached out to him and warned him of horrifying experiments to which his sister was being subjected. These mammals had offered to help him, but lacked resources. And so, in exchange for a small fortune, he had found himself on Persephone, a fugitive from the Alliance, with nothing but the possessions he had with him, the most important of which was the cryostasis chamber containing his fugitive sister.
"Will she be okay?" Gazelle asked.
Jack paused. "I... I don't know. Her side effects from cryostasis appear to be very mild, even though she emerged prematurely. But I don't know what they did to her, at the 'academy'... and I don't know why, or... I just... I need to keep her safe."
No one moved, not even the captain. Finally, the ram's deep, resonant voice broke the silence, "That's quite a story, son."
The fox stood and strode menacingly towards the bunny. "Yeah, it's a real tragedy. Gets you right here," he said, thumping his chest with his paw. "But here's the reality of the situation: we're drowning in all your trouble. We've got a kidnapped federal officer on board. The Alliance is on our tail. And Judy-" He froze, unable to continue. Then he slowly turned to face the cheetah, and asked quietly, "How much does the Alliance know?"
"I can't say," Benjamin replied. "They had our position. They expected at least one prisoner. I killed the weasel's message pretty quick, so they might not have had much else."
"Or they might have complete files on every one of us. We won't know until that weasel wakes up."
The crew and passengers looked at each other uneasily. The captain addressed his crew. "We need to finish the job. Bellwether is waiting for us. We land on Whitefall, finish the deal, and get out. We keep flying."
"What about us?" Jack asked.
"You get Judy through this, and then you and your sister get off at Whitefall."
"Nick, you know those two would not survive a day in Whitefall," Gazelle stated firmly. "If you throw them out, then I am leaving too."
The fox stared at her, blinked, then replied, "Well... I guess that's... that's the way it is." With that, he left the dining hall.
Gazelle's face fell as Nick strode down the corridor. Silently, Sherani followed her captain.
In the infirmary, Judy and Brooke lay sleeping on their beds. Jack was writing notes on Judy's chart when the shepherd's voice startled him. "How's she doing?"
He stared at the ram, his steel-blue eyes wide. He finally replied, "I am cautiously optimistic."
"Son, how is she doing?"
Jack's gaze dropped. "The surgery went well... very well... but... but she's still a bunny. Even one bullet, for mammals like us... I... I shouldn't have waited... but I couldn't let them..."
"Son, the past is in the past. Let it go. Today has enough worries. Don't borrow more from tomorrow, or from yesterday." After a pause, he continued, "Did you happen to to notice this ship's name?"
A sad smile on his lips, Jack answered, "Serenity, right? What a joke."
"I don't think so." The doctor looked up quizzically, and the shepherd explained, "To understand the present, you do need to understand the past. Do you have a current encyclopedia?"
"Of course."
"Serenity Valley. Look it up."
In his quarters, the weasel was duct-taped to a chair, his snout wrapped with an improvised duct-tape muzzle. The fox and the cape buffalo stood over him as he woke up and looked around the room. The fox said, "I'm sure you know what kind of day I'm having: certain mammals making my life just a little too interesting. For example, an Alliance weasel who likes to shoot sweet little doe bunnies when he's nervous."
He ripped the duct tape from the weasel's snout and continued, "Now, what I need to know is this: exactly how much did you tell the Alliance before Benji scrambled your call? Bogo here is gonna find out. I don't care how." And with that, the fox left the room.
M'bogo picked up the chair and the weasel together with one hoof. The weasel spoke, "You're in so much trouble. You think this is just a smuggling rap? The package the doctor is carrying-"
"It's his sister," M'bogo said. He started to squeeze the weasel. "A cute little doe bunny. You planning to shoot her, the way you shot Judy?"
The weasel's eyes grew wide, and he started shouting. "That bunny is a precious commodity! They'll come for her! Long after you kill me, they'll come for her!"
"Oh, I won't kill you, Duke," M'bogo said. "I'm just gonna squeeze a little information out of you. Information like, how much do they know?"
Struggling to breathe, the weasel screamed, "They know everything. They know every name... every record... every paw print... every... They know how many... how many hairs... there are... on every mammal... on this ship!"
M'bogo set the chair down gently and sighed. "You are a terrible liar. It's obvious they don't know anything."
"Okay, the truth... just the truth," said the weasel, gasping for air. "This bunny... the doe... She's worth a lot of money. Not just a little, but a lot. You kill me and you get nothing. I mean zero. You help me out, you get... the opposite of zero. You get enough to buy your own ship. And not a flying junkyard like this one."
"Tell me more," M'bogo said quietly.
As his patients continued to sleep, the doctor sat on a bench just outside the infirmary. He stared at a tablet screen, reading an encyclopedia entry. It detailed the Battle of Serenity Valley: the number of Independent troops lost, the number of Alliance troops lost, the significance of the battle as the turning point of the War to Unite the Planets, the duration of the fighting, the key skirmishes, the terms of the Independent troops' surrender, and so on.
"We aren't in there."
His nose twitched briefly, then he stared at the tigress, his steel-blue eyes wide. Sherani continued, "Your history book, we aren't in it. We weren't generals. We weren't diplomats. We weren't... We didn't 'change the tide of glorious history' or... or anything like that."
"Well, you know what they say about history," Jack said.
"What do they say about the smell?"
The doctor looked at the screen again, then back up at the tigress. "The smell?"
"Three months in that valley. More than half a million dead. Most of the rest wounded. Short supplies. Necrosis, infection, disease. Be glad you aren't a pred."
After a moment, he asked, "The captain was with you?"
"Wilde was my platoon sergeant. At first anyway. Within a week, so many officers were dead, he commanded thousands. Platoons, companies, battalions, not that we had time to care about such things. We didn't care that he was a fox either, although the higher-ups sure did."
Sherani looked away, then continued, "But you know the worst part? It wasn't the fighting. It was after the fighting, after the cease fire. Because they left us there. Wounded and sick and bleeding and rotting and dying and nearly mad. Both sides left us there. They 'negotiated the peace' for more than a week. And we waited. And we kept dying. By the time they finally sent in medships, he had a hundred and forty-six of us left. Of our original platoon, just me."
Staring into the bunny's eyes, she concluded, "He lost everything in that valley. All he has left is this ship... this ship and those of us on it. If you get Judy through this, then he'll do right by you."
The doctor looked at the screen again, then looked back up. The tigress was gone.
On the bridge, the fox and the cheetah stared at the console. The captain asked, "How in the world did they find us?"
"It's not Alliance, Nick. It's an older Trans-U, and I'm picking up a lot of radiation, like they're running without containment. Nick, it looks like-"
"Howlers," the captain whispered.
Author Notes:
And now you've met the last member of the main cast. Simon and River are siblings, so naturally Jack's sister Brooke had to be a bunny. But I had already cast Judy in Kaylee's role, and none of the other bunny characters fit, so Brooke is an OC bunny.
Some of the minor characters seemed relatively obvious to me. Badger became an unnamed badger, referred to simply as "the badger". Patience (who shot Nick previously) became Dawn Bellwether. Reavers are similar to the savage predators in Zootopia, but I needed an in-universe name for them. I ended up calling them "Howlers", even though in Zootopia, the term "Night Howlers" was never applied to the savage predators themselves.
The Serenity Valley discussion was adapted from deleted scenes from the original episode. I thought they worked better than the episode's actual scenes, at least in a written format like this.