Chapter Summary
Eh, some stuff. Not everything can be coherent.
Chapter Notes
Warning: Written and posted raw.
He hated these plastic Wonder Nines the department made them carry now. All plastic, no soul. Zig Zaires and Locks, they were fine, they were useful, but he so very much loved his old Combat Model Magnum.
It was well enough he did not carry it today, he would not want to risk loosing it. He looked at the otter in front of him as he leaned on the cage door, Emmet Otterton, Florist...husband...monster.
Sitting pretty, demanding a lawyer like it was something someone who did what he did deserved. The cement still clung on everyone in the squad...
"I have been a officer for more twenty-four years...and I thought I had seen every cruelty imaginable..." He sighed, as he pulled his department issued Lock from his holster, and placed it by Otterton's side.
"What-what are you doing?" Came the simpering, coward...coward...disgusting...
"Pick it up." He ordered, darkly as he reached down for his backup. The Schmidt and Weston .32 Bodyguard, it was his ankle piece, he had carried it with him for twenty years on the job. It had saved his life more times he could imagine.
"What?" Shock, disbelief, like this couldn't happen to a animal. His victims probably thought the same thing. He hated animals like that. He pulled back the hammer of his small backup piece.
"It will be your word against mine...you reached for my gun...I had to defend myself...now pick it up..." He growled as he pressed the cold steel between the otter's eyes, and his LT popped the strap of her own sidearm.
Cold steel in his paw...
Detective Sergeant Nicolas P. Wilde took a breath.
Cold steel, that's what the lads called it. The long construction rail that some animal had beaten into a make shift trench spike. Knuckles and a sharp enough point. His was already in his paw, a tiny piece of shite revolver he took off a dead officers in his other.
He lost his rifle days ago, there would be no replacement.
A charge, a mad charge against a enemy offensive that was breaking through line after line.
The corporal, that smart funny bunny lass that should have been baking some pies for a husband and minding her warren was screaming at the section. There would be no cowards, no retreat. They would be the last line between the predatory fascists and the city.
That smart funny lass, who saved his life more times than he could count. Who's life he saved in turn.
"Private Wilde! Are the lads ready?!" She screamed over the artillery that blasted overhead.
Fangmire and Snarlov were the last of the lads really, of their squad. Both prayed to the Creator. He had no such illusions that a god had time for mere soldiers like them.
"As we'll ever be!" He returned, pulling down his flat plate helmet.
"It's almost time!" The corporal replied, opening the pocket watch with a click. It seemed to sound out like thunder, she passed the thing to him. The two of them, doing the work of four dead officers and NCOs.
They were running out of time...they were no cowards.
Private Nikolai P. Wilde took a breath.
He was a coward, a coward and a fraud, and he wasted his life. Scams upon scams. Criminality. It was so easy, so very easy.
To trick the animals. The citizenry. Those of power and influence. He built himself a empire. It was worth it all.
Oh so easy it was...but...there were things he could never unsee. Things that demanded to be told. Things that demanded blood.
The madness. The greed. The shame...he should never have opened his door to them...but in the end, he corrected his mistake.
His tutor was there, his guide, the rabbit that set him on a path of redemption. She held his paw as they put the needle in.
She, a Sister of a sacred order held his paw. The paw of a liar, a thief, a killer...of a animal on his death bed.
It was okay, but he was so scarred. He had done wrong by the Creator, who asked all animals love one and other. Who created everything with love and caring.
The Creator was a vengeful and jealous parent though, and he could see forgiveness from Her perhaps.
Even if he did not do it in her name...what he did...at least it could be seen as her work...
He turned to the Sister.
She'd see to it the work was finished. That lives would be cared for, his money put to use...the work would never be over.
Former Hedge Fund Manager Nicky P. Wilde took a breath.
It was not over.
Smoke and dust was still in the air, first responders one and all. If there was a secondary blast, they were all dead...but it didn't matter.
What mattered was getting to work.
"WHERE IS MY STRETCHER!?" He screamed over his shoulder, the whipchord thin cheetah by his side blubbering as both of them were wrist deep into the guts of some Cape Bull.
Rookie to Vet in one atrocity filled lesson.
The Cape Bull was still awake, hooves clutching a cell phone, some random ass video app on it. A dinner plate sized hole should have killed him.
He was screaming for one of the others. Any of the others.
The cheetah was saying something, trying to keep the bull awake, not that it mattered.
Personally he was wondering why it was so important the bull live...the rook could barely pinch the bleed down, he was barely able to tie it off.
One of his trauma surgeons was on sight, he was never so glad to see that hateful hare in his life. She was dragging the stretcher, eight times her weight...
She was a Fighter.
Doctor Nick Wilde took a breath.
Fighter.
He had orders. Capture the rogue asset.
Ten years in Special Activities, ten years since Big found him. Running a listening post out of his high school.
Analogue with tapes and hooked in wires, undetectable by sheer obsolescence.
They had turned his school into a whore house, they did unspeakable things...and he recorded it all.
Because one day, a animal like Big would come and find out what the problems were...and he would be useful to such a animal.
Wild purple eyes were locked with his, confusion, unfocused. Not the eyes of a operator, she was afraid.
She did not know what was going on...this was weird.
Standard knee kick, followed by a attempt to grapple, it was textbook, good. What you'd expect from Special Forces and beyond.
First thing Big told him, was don't get bogged down by being afraid of such meat heads.
They were direct, they were simple, so beat them with technique. A shrew could kill a elephant. All one needed to do was know how.
Counter, clinch, prevent the legwork.
She's got no clue what she's doing. Or is she just that good a actor? No, her body is what is doing this.
She's not just some Spec Ops broken toy, she's something more. He didn't know how, but he felt his ears ring as his head snapped back from a skull that impacted down from the sky hit his nose.
Roll back, he was on his feet. She was amazed at herself. A pen was in her paw.
This was going to suck.
Amazing things a animal could do with a pen.
[Name Redacted] took a breath.
Amazing things an animal could do with a pen.
His meter maid vest was a size too small still, but the hat made up for it. He smiled at the rabbit in front of him, with a booted van and no more re-purposed elephant silk stockings in sight.
Little kid siblings who should have been in school laughing their asses off, as he wrote his little notes.
"It's your word against mine!"
"No. It's your word against yours." He smiled.
Click.
Probationary Officer Nick P. Wilde took a breath.
Click.
He covered wars he liked to have animals know.
War never prepared him for this. He wondered if that was why he was so calm.
He was so unprepared he cracked back into prepared when his brain broke.
There was no smell. No stench...was weird. Thank God for it, but it was weird.
He stood on the edge of a little overhanging shelf built in to the mall structures, a facade he think it was called.
The extra layer that shops had so their store fronts wouldn't be flush against the walls above their doors.
He wondered his little existentialist nightmare as he snapped his pics, each one told a story.
Who was this cheetah? Who wore tattered gym shorts and a wife beater, head band and running spats, but looked to be over four hundred pounds?
Who was this gazelle? Who was holding hands with said fat cheetah even in death? She was quite the looker that one.
Then fire.
He lowered his camera, and looked up, across the way. A rabbit in a rubber jump suit, hazmat suit. Gas mask and thick everything, deadhead proof probably.
A she if the hips were any indication.
Armed to the tips of the ears, and sporting a lot of fire...
She was looking this way.
He froze.
Looking into the eyes of a predator.
Freelance Photo-Journalist Nick Wilde took a breath.
Looking into the eyes of a predator, one exposed their true self.
Coward? Hero? Animal? Monster slayer?
The police girl sputtered, she was dying, and looking up at him.
He who knew no true name, nor a true title, vulpine teeth too long to be real.
She was no coward, a hero probably not, a animal definitely...a monster slayer...no.
A monster now though. She was a fighter, and he could respect that.
The choice was taken, he wrapped his new childe up in a blanket, his red coat billowed behind.
Off to see his Master. Old Bogo working his hands, a parasol shielding her from the rain.
"I found a little lost lamb, may I keep her?" He asked, silly of him, with those orange shades of his.
His master's long ears twitched.
Annoyance extreme.
Involuntary reactions.
Belmont took a breath.
!