Commission Story 11: Zoopers/Aquaphobia

AN: Ages ago, Cimar was discussing a potential new story idea (called Zoopers) with me and I was helping him iron out the kinks and get the general plot into place. (During the big meetup we all had with Zeig in france, we even discussed ideas and stuff). For this fluff file, he asked me to do a potential scene taking place a while after a major event in it. Enjoy.

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"Ready, Nick?"

Judy looked up as the fox mumbled slightly, not really liking where this was going. She felt a little quiver in her heart, and reached out to hold his paw.

"Don't worry," she said. "I can hold onto your paw and get you out. Just like how you got me out of it."

"Fluff," Nick spoke, looking back. "While I would like the excuse to give you mouth to mouth, no thanks."

She rolled her eyes. "I did CPR, Nick, not mouth to mouth."

"Yes, my ribs are still making that pretty clear," he noted, before trailing off. "Thank you though."

She nodded, as they stepped around the corner and into the empty ZPD training pool. The smell of chlorine was in the air, Nick's eyes narrowing. "Okay, is chlorine water worse than salt water for me, because if it is there is no way I'm even going to try and de-shadow in that given what doing it in the sea did to me." He may not have remembered the objectively scarier part of the incident, but he had some nasty memories of waking up feeling confused, in pain, terribly thirsty yet bloated at the same time, all while loads of IV drips fed into him.

"It's not about you shadowing and deshadowing Nick," Judy reminded him. "In the future we could try with fresh water, but for now we're just getting you used to normal swimming again." She paused and then smiled. "I thought your whole schtick after you fell out with your brother was that you wanted a normal life."

"What I want and what I get are two very different things," he noted, as he reached the edge of the pool. He held back, trembling a bit, before closing his eyes and breathing in and out again. "Right then. This is just like being a little kit…" His paws gripped the ladder, and he stepped down the rungs. "-Splashing in a paddling pool with him…" He froze as one paw touched the surface. "All your parents are hanging out by the grill…" Judy placed a paw on his. "-As he talks about his great-great-great-great-great-grandmother the dread pirate." He slowly stepped down and in, the water rising past his waste. "You've got this." He breathed in and out as the water rippled at neck height. Judy smiled and jumped in, sailing straight to the bottom as if she was made of lead. Nick watched her stroll up to his front, then suddenly bob up and out, standing ramrod straight. The water was at her knees, her feet hanging below her, while she swayed a little from side to side. "Show off," he snorted.

"Physics," she replied, smiling a bit.

"Yeah, but still a show off."

She shrugged. "Yeah, you're right. I mean, it is a bit of effort to have different masses in different areas all at the same time, especially if those are small areas. But the way I see it, I'll eventually be able to localise the counterweight area into the souls of my feet, letting me walk on water."

"As if your ego wasn't stoked enough already," he snarked.

Judy smiled. "You're in the water, aren't you?"

Nick looked down and smiled. "Yeah," he said, smiling a bit. His eyes narrowed and with a flick of his wrist something fast raced through the water, a cloud of spray kicked up in its wake. "This isn't so bad after all." He leant forward and began a leisurely paddle down the length of the pool. Judy then floated up, out of the water, concentrating until she was at a stable height just above it and following after him with a breast stroke. Her paws at their most forward, they thinned and widened out into huge fans as she pushed herself onward, then shrinking down again as she brought them forward again. She repeated the process as she sailed alongside Nick, her zeppelin to his ocean liner.

He looked up at her again. "Stoking that ego again" he snarked.

"You know you love me," she replied back.

"Yes," he said, smiling. "Yes I do."