I am a mammal with clear convictions.
Quique Sowtien~
Read more at topics/convictions-quotesWhen you live in a big city, this means you always have a place to go during the day. Be it in an official compromise that you can't afford to miss, or some kind of pleasurable experience you can't wait to experience.
There are always places to go in a big city. The Hopps family have realized now that they were there. It was amazing how many people there could be for one to go in Downtown alone.
From bars to arcades to cyber cafés, there were all kinds of places where a bunch of bunnies could go if they had free time on their paws, as they stayed on the city to be sure they would be able to help their mother if those two enforcers overstepped their boundaries.
They might not be very keen on having to deal with a pair of mage foxes, or any other mages for that matter, but they were on call if their mother needed them. Meanwhile, they were finding ways of spending their time on the big city.
Including a few of the males of the group, who found a charming place hidden in Downtown called "Honey Buns" and that had a very nice all-bunny, all-female staff that catered for the male clientele.
Harry was not among them, however. He refused when they asked him to join, saying that he had other places to go.
It was not a lie.
He had another place to go: the house of a certain vixen to talk about magecraft.
In the last few days, Harry had been visiting Sophie Wilde's house and spending the days there with her, hearing her talk about magecraft, answering his questions while the bunny drank from each of her words and looked at her with the amount of attention that a student would pay to a teacher during the most interesting lecture ever.
Because this was the most interesting lecture ever. It was only that Sophie was not aware of that...
As far as she know, this was all out of pure curiosity of the bunny, who wanted to know more about magecraft out of his own curious mind and didn't wanted to bother his mother by asking it to her. It took some convincing, but Harry had picked the same acting lessons as his sister Judy did, and he paid far more attention to them than his sister ever did.
"So, the magic words can be said in any language?" Harry asked to Sophie once she was done explaining. "Not only in Latin or another ancient language?"
"There is no need to be in any ancient language." Sophie explained to the bunny. "You can say it in Latin, in Swahili, English, Spanish, heck you can even say it in Klingon if you want."
"Really?" Harry said, surprised by the last part, because it seemed that Sophie didn't said it as a joke, but that she was being absolutely serious as she spoke it to the bunny. "But, doesn't magecraft needs to be precise? I mean, don't you need to speak in a certain type of language with the right intonation to create the desired effect from the predetermined structure of magecraft and produce a specific effect? Like in the 'aspiro' spell and on the one you told me yesterday, 'fulminis'?"
Sophie looked at the bunny for a few moments, and then she said:
"Harry, do you know what those words mean?"
To that, Harry nodded.
"Yes, I can speak Latin. Taught myself." Harry said, not wanting to brag, but kind of proud of the achievement. "'Aspiro' is a Latin word that means 'breath', or 'breathing'. 'Fulminis', I turn, is the Latin word for 'lighting'."
"Exactly." Sophie said to the bunny, "I also know what those words mean, because I learned Latin at the same time I learned English, just like I learned Hebraic and Sanskrit. That is the reason why it works for me to cast my spells."
Harry looked at Sophie, and then the vixen explained:
"Harry, chants are not meant to be said to the world. They are not magic words that cause something to happen whenever you speak them. If anything, they are a form of self-hypnosis."
"When you are saying a chant, is like repeating something to yourself to help you remember something you forgot. Think of it like humming a song to yourself while you are playing an instrument, so your fingers will move and play the right notes." The vixen continued, "They are a way of making your own mind work on the desired effect by associating that specific effect with a word or a phrase, allowing you to recall it by saying the word out-loud, as a form of activating the magic circuits by reflex."
"Yes, there are rituals, powerful ones, that require specific words to be said in a specific way and in a specific order, but we are talking about high thaumaturgy at this stage. This is not how regular magecraft works." She explained, while the bunny looked at her with all the attention of the world. "You are not saying these words to the world. Not even to the people around you. You are saying them to yourself. They don't have to make sense to everyone, but they have to make sense to you. You can't just say a bunch of gibberish and expect it to make magecraft work. It will only work if the words you are saying when casting the spell have a meaning to you. Even if they sound like gibberish to everyone else, those words need to have a meaning to you. The greater the meaning, the greater will be the effect they have, no matter what kind of spell you are trying to cast. That is why the same spell can have many different incantations, depending on the mage who is casting it. Because different mammals will use different words to cast the same spell, always choosing the ones that have the greater meaning to themselves. Or, as it is usually the case, the ones that suit best their personal tastes. In my case, I used incantations on Latin because they sounded better for me, and because I have an affinity with the language for having grown up learning it. Although I actually prefer to cast my spells in Hebraic and Sanskrit, and I translated this into my shortstacks."
She said, showing to the bunny the flashcard binder she had, which reminded Harry of the ones his older siblings once used to study for college. He saw the writing in there, which he assumed were complex spells written in the languages the vixen just described, and it was not hard for him to deduce that she used the writing on the cards as a shortcut to cast spells really fast without even having to say any words herself.
Harry wondered if he could try something like that...
"Mrs. Wilde, I'm so glad that you are willing to talk to me about magecraft." Harry said to her, a smile on his face as he spoke to the vixen. "Seriously, you've been a life saver, I had no idea of whom else I could go to teach me."
Sophie looked at the bunny.
"Teach you?"
For a single moment, Harry panicked, mentally yelling a curse to himself. However, he was quickly able to think of a solution.
"Well, you are kind of teaching me, aren't you?" The bunny said to her. "I mean, you are telling me how things work for magecraft and how it would work to cast spells if I were a mage. That's basically what teaching is, right?"
Harry gave Sophie his best friendly smile. The vixen looked at him for a few more seconds. For a moment, Harry panicked, thinking that he might have given himself away in that brief moment of panic when she called him on his strange choice of words. He could, however, sigh an internal breath of relief when the vixen nodded and said that he was right.
"Still, I wouldn't call it teaching." Sophie said to him. "After all, when we talk about magecraft, a simple explanation is not enough for you to actually learn. Magecraft is a lifelong process. You need weeks of instruction, at the very least, even to perform the simplest of spells. It is not the kind of thing you can just grasp after a single lesson."
"Not even if you're smart?" Harry asked her, "I mean, if a person is smart enough, then maybe they could be able to get the gist of it from an explanation. It was how I learned most of the things I know. I paid real close attention while they taught me, and then I just figure out the rest."
"You can't 'figure out' magecraft." Sophie said to the bunny. "You are talking about something that makes use of a powerful energy inside your own body to force reality to shift. A single mistake is enough to produce disastrous results, even when you know exactly what you are doing. For you to just 'wing it' with magecraft is a sure way to blow your own arm off, burst into flames or, worse yet, hurt the people around you."
There was something about the way Sophie said those words that made Harry feel a shiver going down his spine. She sounded like she know exactly what she was talking about. And that was enough to get him thinking.
"So... if I played with spells while trying to figure out how to use them, all by myself, without any supervision from another mage..." Harry said.
"You could make a mistake, lose control of your own circuits and cause a catastrophic chain reaction that could destroy your own body. Or at least a part of it." Sophie concluded.
Harry's nose twitched as he heard she say that.
He... had completely failed to think of something like that.
He didn't thought of any possible accidents that could happen from practicing magecraft all by himself. Well, he kind of did, which was why he came to Sophie in the first place. However, he never considering that just playing around and experimenting with the one spell he already knew could actually be dangerous on itself.
Man, he should have thought a little better about things...
As Harry thought those things, Sophie had her eyes on him. She was paying close attention to his reactions. To the way his muscles tensed. To the look on his eyes. To the way his nose was twitching...
"Harry." She said, causing the bunny to look at her again. "There is another thing I'd like to explain to you about magecraft."
She then extended her paw to him.
"Would you give me your paw, please?" She asked, and Harry was confused by it. She told him it was just for the explanation, and so Harry decided to do it.
Some say that prey should have natural reservations about having physical contact with predators. Harry, however, never considered himself to have those kinds of problems. He certainly never had any problems with the predators back home, and he certainly didn't had any problem with Sophie. He gave her his paw without any problem, and his nose didn't twitch at all when she gently grasped his paw with both of hers'.
"This one is..." Sophie said to him, "How mages can find others with magic circuits."
Now that made Harry's nose twitch.
"There are many methods to be able to recognize another mage." Sophie said, still holding his paw on her own. "Highly experienced mages should be able to tell apart a mage from a non-mage with a single glance, or sometimes just from the smell, if you believe the stories. But, I never had this kind of perception. It is not always that clear."
"But, there are ways in which you can detect the presence of active magic circuits." She said to him. Her grip on his paw tightened, and Harry could see her paws were starting to glow.
"One of those ways..." She said, and Harry could feel her paws becoming warm. "Is to make your own magic circuits activate while you have physical contact with another mammal. And, if this mammal has open magic circuits of his own..."
Then Harry's own paw felt warm and tingly in a familiar way. He looked at it, to see familiar lines glowing on his arm.
"Then the resonance will cause this person's magic circuits to activate as well..."
Harry pulled his paw away. For a long moment, he and Sophie only looked at each other, as Harry's paws glowed softly in a greenish-blue light, before his circuits turned off, causing the glowing lines to fade.
"When did you realized you had open circuits?" Sophie asked. She didn't sounded angry or hostile in any form, but her tone and expression were serious as she looked at the bunny, who was soon answering.
"On the night after my siblings and I talked to you for the first time."
Then Harry pretty much explained everything to her. How he found out by accident that he could do spells by accidentally using the wind spell she showed to them. How he figured out all by himself how to turn his magic circuits on with the image of a snowflake forming, and how he had experimented with the wind spell and figured out a few tricks, before he had the idea to come to her to have her teach him magecraft.
"So, you have been using what I told you about the spells and magecraft as lessons?" Sophie said to the bunny. "And you practiced it all by yourself?"
"Yeah." Harry admitted to her. "I practiced the aspiro spell all by myself and I did became quite good at it. And yesterday I tried to fulminis spell, and it worked like a charm! I tried it on an old paint can I found on that alley, charred it pretty good."
Sophie looked at him for a few moments with a neutral expression, before saying:
"That's impressive."
"Thanks." Harry said to her, his chest puffing out with pride as he heard his teacher say that. However, he deflated as soon as she said her next words:
"It's impressive that you didn't got yourself killed."
Harry looked at her, while Sophie looked back at him with a very serious expression.
"Harry, using magecraft in a practical way is much more different than hearing theory. It is like trying to use a gun after only being instructed how to use it once. We are talking about actually activating your circuits and applying a complex formula to them to cause an effect to happen." She said, "You know the amount of margin for error that exists in magecraft? Do you know how easy it is to make a mistake that will cause severe consequences?"
"Magic circuits are complex." Sophie explained to him, "They are so complex that you need to know exactly what you are doing when you pass your magical energy through them. Of course, just activating them is simple. You do so and they will conduct magical energy like they are supposed to, but to actually control the magical energy into them? That's much different."
"If you make a mistake, the magical energy will go out of control and it might leak out of your circuits and into the rest of your body. Into your flesh and muscles, but mainly into your nervous system, and none of those things were meant to conduct magical energy at all. As a matter of fact, they reject this kind of energy. The warmth and tingling you feel when you activate your magical circuits is your own flesh rejecting the magical energy. Only magical circuits are meant to contain and conduct it."
She sighed, putting a paw over her eyes.
"Harry, you have no idea of how much danger you put yourself into. If you had made a single mistake you could have caused your magical energy to go out of control and reacted in a violent way. The lightning spell you caused could have turned on you and electrocuted you. Heck, even what you did when training aspiro was dangerous. The magical energy could have leaked into your flesh and your body could have rejected it so violently that the components of it could forcibly have separated from each other from the reaction. Your entire face could have literally exploded!"
Harry's paws reflexively went to his muzzle, as his nose twitching pretty fast.
"I... would not want that to happen." That was the only thing that Harry could think of saying, as the mental image of his whole face blowing up now took practically all of the space of his mind.
"I thought so." Sophie said to the bunny. "Which is why you need to stop this."
Harry looked at her.
"By 'stopping this', you mean, stopping practicing all by myself?"
"I mean, stopping practicing at all." Sophie said to her, all seriousness of the world on her face. "You need to abandon magecraft."
That was something that Harry didn't wanted. Not when he was still excited about learning as much as he could. He tried to talk to Sophie, to tell her that it would be safer if she was teaching him. That she could oversee his practice and could point to him the safest way to do it. However, it seemed that Sophie was not willing to do it.
"Mrs. Wilde, come on!" Harry said to her, "You're the only person I can go to at this point! I certainly can't go to my own mother, she would never listen to me!"
"And with good reason!" Sophie said to him, in a way that made the bunny jump back on his chair. Sophie recovered from her outburst, and she spoke to the bunny in a more controlled manner:
"Your mother has her reasons to want to avoid her past. She renounced magecraft a long time ago. And so did I."
She looked at the bunny.
"We left the moonlit world because both of us were tired of it. Of all of the intrigue and betrayal. Of all of the pressure and the unreasonable standards. We were tired of the violence..." Sophie said to him, "We left because we didn't anted to yourselves, and definitely not for our kits."
Harry looked at her, as she looked straight on his eyes.
"We made the decision to leave the world of magecraft behind for a peaceful life we could never have as mages."
"Well, I didn't!" Harry said, looking at her, and the vixen could only look back at her.
Apparently, it was his time to surprise Sophie with an outburst, and she was quite taken aback by how the bunny exploded with her. Harry, knowing that he had exploded, recovered, and then he spoke:
"I have been looking for something to do since I was still in high school." Harry said to the vixen. "Mom and Dad never had enough money to put all of us through college. Most of us are just going to work on the farm one day, we all know that. But, I never saw myself working on the fields... That never felt right for me."
"I wanted to follow my own fate." Harry said, "Like Judy always did when she said she would be a cop no matter what. I wanted be like that. I wanted to find my own way. The one thing I knew I was supposed to do. The one thing that I was born to do."
"I tried a lot of professions, but none of them felt... right, you know? None of them felt like the one thing I was supposed to be doing." Harry explained, remembering all of the professions he came to learn, and how, despite being great at all of them, none of them felt like it was right for him.
"But then... I discovered I could do magecraft."
He rose his eyes, meeting hers' once more.
"I realized that I was a mage. I was super into it! I mean, I was freaked at first, but after the shock passed I was into it for real." Harry told her. "I was like, 'hey, I'm a mage!', and the more I thought about it, the more it felt like it was that one thing. That one thing I was supposed to do. Back when I was practicing with the wind spell, it felt so natural. More than all of the other things I tried. Like it was something I was supposed to be doing since the beginning. It just..."
There was a pause, and then he said:
"It felt right."
"I know that you and Mom both have trouble with being a mage. I know that you two think it is a thankless life, but I want to give it a try." Harry told Sophie. "Seriously, I never wanted to try something as bad as I want to try being a mage. I want to try it, at least so I can be sure it really is the thing for me. To see for myself if this life is for me or not."
"After all, the only one who can decide if this life is for me or not is myself, ain't that right?" Harry said. At this moment, Sophie could only look at him for a long moment.
There was a heavy silence between them, and Harry decided to break it:
"I mean, I already showed that I have talent, didn't I?"
A few more moments of silence, before Sophie spoke, in a soft voice:
"Yes. Yes you have."
And she continued:
"To be able to learn how to perform a spell from a single explanation, not only once, but twice, that demands a level of skill that goes beyond what is considered normal and crosses the line into true genius."
She was looking at Harry in a curious way as she said those words.
"You must be the most talented mage I met in over three decades."
For a long moment, they both looked at each other. Harry had the hope that Sophie's next words would be that she would teach him, and that she would help him become the mage he was supposed to be.
However...
"You should probably leave." Sophie said to him in a soft voice. Harry blinked as he looked at the vixen.
"Please, don't be mad, but I won't be talking about you with magecraft anymore." Sophie said to the bunny, "I'm doing it out of respect for your mother. Because I know how she feels. Because I understand her feelings. I know why she doesn't want her kits to delve in magecraft."
Harry looked at her crestfallen.
"If you want to come to visit, to talk about other subjects, then you are more than welcome to come see me. I'll listen and I'll receive you with open arms. I do enjoy the company." Sophie said to him. "But I'll not be the one responsible for initiating you into being a mage. Actually, I suggest you completely forget everything about magecraft while you still can. If not because I'm asking, then do it for your mother. Because, believe me, she will have a much more peaceful life if you stay as far from this world as possible."
Harry said nothing in return. He didn't felt like there was anything to be said there. With his ears down, the bunny got up, thanked the vixen for receiving him and giving him some attention, and then he made his way in direction to the door.
Sophie wished him a good day as she closed the door behind him, and then she let out a sigh.
She didn't thought that giving someone else the advice of giving up magecraft would ever feel so hard.
But again, it was hard to tell someone to give up a newly-found dream. Especially if this someone seemed so invested into this new dream as Harry Hopps clearly was.
However, she knew that this was something that she needed to do.
She would probably do the same if it was her own son.
She knew that she certainly would not like finding out someone was teaching him how to be a mage behind her back...
Sighing, she walked back to where she and Harry were, to clean up the plates of the food and tea they were having, completely failing to notice the small bird that was perk on her window, looking at her with white, empty eyes before flying away.
Harry was feeling down now. He saw the only way he had to learn magecraft close the door right on his face.
He stopped in front of the building, and looked up once more, at the window he knew that was Mrs. Wilde's apartment.
He thought of maybe going up there and asking her to reconsider. However, he decided against it, as he was afraid that it could make things even more uncomfortable between the two than they already were.
All he could do was sigh and go his way.
As he did, a vixen with white fur and a purple dress had her eyes on him. She watched as the bunny walked away from the apartment. A small bird with white empty eyes landed on her shoulder, and the vixen soon was caressing the little bird, which did not reacted to the vulpine's touch.
All the while, she had a smirk on her muzzle, exposing her blackened teeth as she looked at that adorable bunny who looked so sad and like he needed someone to come and help him...
Back at the Manechester mansion, Yahya Maenechester, the patriarch of the family, was sitting on his office, as he worked.
He was looking over some archives related to some recent cases. Yahya had always been a workaholic, as he was the type who dedicated himself fully to his work whenever he had the chance, and he much rather keep working than taking a vacation.
This was a point where he could certainly sympathize with Officer Hopps, as he heard a lot of how dedicated she was to her work at the ZPD. Yahya could certainly admire her determination to make the world a better place, as well as her skills. If she had been reject by the ZPD, Yahya believed that he would have probably reached for her to join the Beastar Corps. She certainly would have been a good addition to their ranks. So long as she could keep professionalism with a potential partner...
His ear twitched as he heard the door to his office opening. He didn't stopped looking at his documents as the mammal in question made their way into the room. He didn't had to stop readying them to look in this animal direction to know who they were. One of the advantages of having a 350° degree vision.
"May I help you, Ms. Foxgrove?"
Marcy looked at him, before saying that she was only "trying to find the game room 'Chandy-boy' told her about".
"This house is pretty big." Marcy said, "Not as big as the one I grew up in, but still big."
"I can imagine." Yahya told her, "If you want, I can get one of the servants to help you find your way."
"Nah, I'm good." The hybrid said in return, "I could find my way back on that huge-ass mansion when I was fourteen, I'm sure I can find my way around this one."
"If you say so." Yahya said to her, "You can go your way then. If you don't mind, I'm in the middle of reviewing those documents."
However, Marcy didn't left right away. Instead, she looked at the horse for a few moments.
"Something on the matter, Ms. Foxgrove?" Yahya asked her, and that was when Marcy said:
"You really want me to leave, don't you?"
The way she stopped made Yahya pause and turn his face to look at her.
"Well, like I said, I'm in the middle of something, and it is better to work without distractions. I'm sure you understand."
"Oh, is that so?" Marcy asked him, "It has nothing to do with me being a hybrid?"
Yahya looked at her for a few moments.
"Did you spoke with Horne, by any chance?"
"Well, I might have." Marcy said to him. "And I also watched your son. He is pretty rude towards certain types of mammals, isn't he? I wonder who he learned it from..."
"I'm not responsible for how my son acts." Yahya said to her. "Adrian is an adult, and any opinions he might have regarding hybrids he has acquired on his own. I might have taught him lessons I believed would help with his future, but I never tried to force any kind of belief on him."
"Not even your own?" Marcy said to the horse with a raised eyebrow. "Not even if those believes were part of the 'lessons that would help his future'? You realize you are kind of contradicting yourself, don't you?"
"What point are you trying to make here, Foxgrove?" Yahya said, as he looked back at the hybrid with a neutral expression.
"Just trying to figure out if you are as much of a scumbag as some other members of your family." Marcy said to him, crossing her arms over her chest as she looked back at the horse.
"You referring to Adrian?" Yahya asked her, "Or to Angus?"
"Well, both of them are pretty crappy mammals, that's for sure." Marcy said to the horse. "One of them is a scumbag who seems to see my brother like a trophy he can conquer and that he will probably throw away as soon as he gets bored of him. The other one is openly hostile to Ben and to anyone else who acts or looks in a way that he doesn't likes. Like myself, for example."
"I learned some of the Clawhauser mind-reading magecraft." Marcy said to the horse. "Not enough to read others like a book like the rest of the family, but enough to know how someone is feeling when they look to someone. And I have to say, your son might keep his composure most of the time, but he certainly shows a lot of hostility when he looks at me. As well as a decent amount of disgust."
She looked at the horse, who had a neutral expression as he heard what the hybrid had to say.
"Something similar I felt coming from you on certain occasions." Marcy concluded, and Yahya looked at her for a few seconds, before saying:
"Are you feeling this coming from me now?" His expression was truly neutral as he said those words. "Because I'm pretty sure I'm not feeling that."
"You are not." Marcy said to him. "Not right now. You don't show it when you look my way. But I noticed that it comes from you when you were looking at Ben and Gabe. And then at Wilde and Hopps. And, more recently, at your grandson after he kissed Ben and when he was shamelessly flirting with him during lunch."
Yahya said nothing, but one of his ears did twitched.
"But, I didn't felt any of it when you saw your nice grandson interacting with Ben." Marcy concluded, "It doesn't takes a rocket scientist to figure out you are not in favor of interspecies romance."
Yahya looked at her, and then he said:
"Well, you are not completely wrong."
Marcy looked at her as he spoke that.
"Figured as much." Marcy said to him, smirking at the horse and flashing her fangs at him, to what Yahya showed no visible reaction. His mind was also calm, as far as Marcy could feel, making it clear that the horse was mostly unimpressed.
"Don't go making assumptions, Foxgrove." Yahya said to the hybrid. "I'm fully in favor of integration between species. I just am of the opinion that, when it comes to romance, mammals should limit themselves to the same species. Interspecies romances very rarely work out, if ever."
"Mhmm." Marcy said, looking at him with that same look on her eyes. Yahya could see that she was still judging him.
"Talking from experience, Manechester?" The hybrid said to him, "What, did a lioness you liked when you were a teenager turned you down in front of the entire school?"
Yahya flinched. His eyes hardened and, for a single moment, Marcy could feel an intense beam of hatred pointed straight at her coming from the horse. However, Yahya composed himself, the beam of hate reducing, but leaving some bitterness and lingering resentment on its wake, and then he said:
"I'm stating a fact."
"According to who?" Marcy asked, "You?"
"You might say whatever you want, Foxgrove." Yahya said, "But I can show you a number of social studies that indicate very strongly that romantic relationships with someone of a different species from one's own are often more likely to fall through than if you had a relationship with someone of the same species."
"I don't really trust those kinds of information." Marceline said to him, and Yahya said back:
"Nature did not intended animals to mate outside of their species. That is a fact."
"It also didn't intended for us to mate with the same gender, and you see the amount of gay and lesbian couples out there." Marcy stated.
"Yes, I am aware." Yahya said to her, "And I do have my opinions on those as well."
The feeling coming from his mind made it clear that he had, and they were not of the positive kind... However, he seemed not to be so hostile as his son towards the subject.
"I don't condone those kinds of relationships." Yahya said to her, clarifying, "I don't go around telling others not to have them if this is really what they want to do. But, if you ask for my opinion on the matter, I'll greatly discourage you from having any. I just don't believe those relationships can actually have any future. At least, none where both parts are truly happy."
"Now that's harsh." Marcy said to him.
"It is life." Yahya said back, and there was silence between the two of them, before Marcy eventually spoke:
"Okay, you are a jerk like I though. Not as much as your son, but still a jerk."
Once more, Yahya expressed no visible reaction.
"But, there is one thing I didn't expected." Marcy said, causing Yahya to look at her with a little bit more of interest. "For a guy who is not in favor of interspecies couples, you are pretty chill with hybrids like me and Horne."
"Should I not be?" Yahya asked, to what Marcy shrugged and said:
"Is just that most bigoted jerks are pretty consistent. When they say that interspecies marriage is a bad thing, they also say that hybrids are a mistake that should not happen."
As expected, Yahya had an answer for that.
"I'm not an unreasonable mammal, Ms. Foxgrove." The horse said, "I'm not one who thinks it makes sense to penalize children for the irresponsibility of their parents."
"Oh, right." Marcy said, "You are one of those guys who think that hybrids are just poor victims, aren't you? Just poor bastards that came into existence because perverts fooled around and now they are poor little sods who don't belong anywhere?"
"I'm just saying that I don't have anything against hybrids." Yahya said to Marcy. "Children should never be held responsible for the decisions made before they were even born. A five-years-old should not be treat as a criminal because his father committed a crime. A child should not have to suffer only because they were born from a sexual assault, from a poor decision on the part of their progenitors or, in your case, from an extramarital affair."
Marcy looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
"Well, look who is the one making assumptions now." Marcy said to him, "What makes you think I was born from an affair?"
"Chandler told me what you told him." Yahya told her. "Born outside of wedlock, and your mother was a servant on the Clawhauser household. It doesn't takes a rocket scientist to figure out the details."
Yahya leaned forward, resting his hooved hands on the table as he looked at Marcy.
"Now, I don't know if this was a purposeful misbehavior from the part of Mr. Clawhauser Senior, or if it was simply the result of a poor decision that he came to regret later." Yahya said, "However, the fact that he had an affair with one of his own servants, betraying his wife in the process, is certainly reprehensible. It certainly speaks something about his character. However, we can also assume positive things about him, considering that he took you in after your mother's passing, showing that he was, at the very least, willing to take responsibility for the child he sired. However, holding you accountable for his infidelity would never be a reasonable thing to do. You certainly won't hear me doing it."
Yahya was saying the truth. That much Marcy could tell. Yahya had been nothing but honest with every word he said up until that moment.
And that actually made him a bit more of a jerk.
"Okay, I already know that I won't change your mind about the whole 'interspecies romance is trouble' business." Marcy said after sighing, "But, there is one thing that I want to say to you."
She looked Yahya dead in the eyes.
"Don't go around making assumptions about others." She said as she looked at the horse. "Don't make assumptions about Lawrence Clawhauser. That man received me on his house with open arms and gave me a future. You don't know anything about him, about the rest of the Clawhauser clan, or about me."
"So, as much as you clearly enjoy feeling like you are right about things, don't make assumptions about things you don't know. It might make more than a few people mad at you."
With that said, Marcy turned around, excusing herself as she said that she was going to find that game room.
"Oh, and since you sees not to like cheating, I would suggest you to take a closer look on your own family." Marcy said to Yahya as she left the office, leaving the horse alone on the silent room.
Yahya though about this interesting female hybrid, and on how determined she sounded.
She reminded him of...
Suddenly, his phone rang. Yahya easily (and gladly) put the thoughts that were coming towards him aside and reached for his pocket, pulling out his phone.
Yahya may have been born nearly three decades before cellphones were even invented, but this certainly didn't meant that he was ignorant towards the new gadgets that came out. He has always been quick to learn how to use new things, as he often kept to date with all of the new technology that could be use to help solve crimes, from GPS tracking to tap-wiring phone calls. Learning how the latest model of the Carrot Phone worked was easy for him.
Although the one Yahya owned certainly didn't had any of the applications that most people put on their phones nowadays. He was one of those who still used his phone mostly to make calls, unlike those children of nowadays...
And he was currently receiving a call from one of the subordinates directly under his command.
"Clawstone." Yahya said, and the mammal on the other end of the line talked to the horse, telling him that he had the results of the investigation Yahya told them to do based on the information he had gotten.
Yahya listened very intently to his report, and once he was done, he thanked the leopard on the other end for the good job, before ending the call. With a sigh, he pressed the button on the intercom of his desk, and a butler was quickly answering his call, asking how he could be of use, to what Yahya said:
"Find Horne and Ogami. Have those two come to my office immediately."
The butler indubitably knew that Ogami and Horne were in trouble only from the way Yahya Manechester said those words...
Zootopia was a big city. So, it should be no surprise that it had its' own airport right in it's outskirts. After all, it was a giant city with a desert, a tundra area and a beach, not to mention the built-in tropical forest. What place could make a better tourist trap than a place that reunited all of the possible vacation getaways into one?
Their primary purpose was to make Zootopia a welcoming place for all species, but the influx of money coming from tourism was certainly welcome for the city infrastructure.
Tourists were certainly among the many mammals who made their way to and fro on Zootopia's Saint Bernard's Airport. However, there were other types of mammals arriving in the city in the latest international flight.
Some mammals were not coming to Zootopia to engage in tourism or another form of pleasure, but to do something very important.
This was the example of a group of four mammals who just made their way out of the plane and into the main lobby of the airport.
One of them didn't seemed too well.
"Instructor Horne, are you okay?" Asked one of the three other mammals, a female, as she looked through the lenses of her glasses at the older female, who was doubled over and breathing heavily as she supported herself on her own knees.
"Lumia, are you alright?" Said another one, a male, "Do you need something? Maybe some water?"
"Honey..." Said the third one, also a male, but this one younger than the last one.
After breathing heavily for a few more moments, the oldest female recomposed herself.
"I'm fine." She said as she straightened herself. "I hate planes..."
That was truth. She truly hated planes. She would never get into one if she had the option. She much rather take any other kind of vehicle (or almost any), or even go walking. However, that was not an option. Not when that information reached her ears.
As soon as she heard that she knew she had to get to Zootopia as fast as possible.
So fast that she didn't had any time to contact the clans to let them know she was going, what meant that now she, and everyone there with her, were basically trespassing on their territory.
What meant they didn't had any time to lose, and needed to rush to do what they must and get out of there before the clans took notice of their presence and things got messy.
"Let's go." The female said, looking at the three other mammals with her. "We have to get those idiots. To the Manechester Mansion!"
The group was soon walking, until the youngest female asked:
"Wait, where is it?"
Oh, dang...