Commission story 3: Agents.
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AN: This was a commission for Combat Engineer.
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"I think my winter fur is coming back."
Holding onto the wheel through the shaking and vibrations, Judy spared her fellow operative a glance. Nicholas Wilde, aged thirty-two, Zootopian native. That gave him five years in a collar, aged twelve to seventeen, nineteen-forty to forty-five.
It was then that the coalition had finally defeated the Bellwether regime, occupied the city, and began making it better. She'd heard the reports, known how the occupiers had tried the political leaders and higher-ups, but kept the old police and military lest they become the driving force behind an armed rebellion. Reform it, certainly. Flood it with preds to the point of parity, to try and change attitudes or at least balance out the speciesist ways of many of the old guard, most definitely. But still, there was a distrust in the air even now. He said that it was like night and day with the past, though. From what he remembered. From what he experienced, back when he was a victim of his country's crimes against mammality.
In the aftermath, so many were made to face for their crimes. But some got away. Some with blood on their hooves. That was why they were here, two mousead agents on the other side of the equator, hunting down their prey.
They pulled up into a small town and stepped out of their car. They needed a rest. They needed to plan. The small café they chose was just off the main square and was a holmely little place in the middle of a long set of mis-matched terraces, the only thing connecting them architecturally being the red tiles of their roofs. Nick spared at a glance at some of the graffiti on the dusty peach plaster that covered the wall, practicing his basic Spanish, before stepping inside with his fellow agent. Together, they brought out the files and began to go over them. They had a plane waiting nearby to get them out, they had a map of the next town over, where their target lived.
Things were packed away and food was ordered, an alfalfa salad and a side of fries for her and some rhea ribs for him. Nick didn't feel hungry, he felt sick like he always did before a mission, and he excused himself from the table. The café didn't have a toilet, so he went out to use the public one near the church. Twilight was coming, and the tinny ring of the bells were striking the hour, and as he walked under the trees the fox froze.
His gaze was fixed on the sheep by the pond, feeding the ducks.
He knew that face.
He knew that face from the many pictures he'd seen, that he'd memorised, that he'd been strategizing about how to abduct. He knew him from before though. Long before. His neck feeling tighter, slight flickers of phantom pain coming through, he remembered the look of a mammal who'd stared down at him and his family so many years before. Who'd marched past them as they, chained up, worked with picks and shovels to quarry stone and clear bombsites and to build barricades. Who'd select slackers and nominated them for 'patriotic prey protection'. He remembered his father being dragged off, and when it was his mothers turn he'd fought back. That sheep had nominated him too. That's how he found himself chained to the front of a tank, as it tried to hold off the liberators advance. Others were on front of barricades, or in the windows of key buildings.
He'd been up there two days before a shell hit its tracks, the crew abandoning it, and the foreign forces racing up to take him down. To take off his collar. To treat him, to care for him like he was a prey mammal, to reunite him with his mother…
He didn't know how his father had died, but he knew the mammal responsible. He walked up to him, spotting a little wallet just sticking out of his pocket, and with a deft paw he swiped it before nipping behind a wall.
He was ten paces away when the sheep ordered him to halt, before starting with the slurs. Nick charged, dodging this way and that, just in case the sheep had a gun.
He cut into an alley, the sheep followed, and the prey mammal felt a dart push into his torso.
Freezing, stumbling, his mouth suddenly clamped by a maroon paw, his body went weak as Nick began forcing him back. "Remember me?" he hissed.
There was a slight shake of his head.
"Well I remember you," Nick said. "So do all those you hurt. You thought you could run from justice? I'm sorry, but justice was always going to find you!"
Maneuvering the sheep out, Nick led him back to the car, throwing him in the back seat just as the drugs took full effect. Into the café he went, smiling as he saw the food arrive. He planted down a bill large enough to pay it five times over before looking at Judy. "I've got him."
She nodded, and they picked up their food and marched out. Into the car they went, nibbling slightly at their food as they went. Nick called ahead, before leaning back and cuffing up their prisoner. It was a long trip back for all of them, but justice was going to be done.