A.N.
Nick Wilde likes to grab this story and run with it whenever his turn as viewpoint character comes up. This time he ran for 11,000 words, so I decided to split the chapter at a natural break point. The last part just needs a final edit, and will be posted soon! I know this one took awhile dear readers, I appreciate your patience!
My thanks to Panoctu, seakard, HawkTooth, and Guests, for their kind reviews of chapter fourteen. You might not be able to take the influence of Zootopia out of our fox, but let's see what happens when you take the fox out of Zootopia! (A tiny but loved subsidiary of Disney's empire)
Tinbuzzard11
Chapter Fifteen:
Out of the Frying Pan
One of the better things about Kristen's dig was the stand-in fur dryer. It was a quality unit, just big enough to fit a fox, even though the skunk was a full head shorter than he was. She took her grooming seriously, and had spent the better part of an hour on it this morning before she departed—with a last alluring wave of her tail. No doubt about it, Nick Wilde had a flirt on his paws.
He'd been friendly and appreciative while they shared the breakfast she'd whipped up—then had gone right back to bed as soon as she'd left for the day. He'd been too emotionally overwrought and physically sore last night to get a decent sleep and needed to make up the deficit. Nick turned off the dryer, left the bathroom, and walked over to slouch on her sofa wearing only his newly fluffed fur. It was good to feel relaxed and unconfined, and he had a couple more hours of solitude as the kitchen clock showed just two-thirty.
Time to see if he'd been kept in the loop. Carrots had sent him a simple text last night when she'd arrived in Bunnyburrow; now another had come this morning after he'd gone back to sleep. This one was full of codes, so 'Tilly' had decided to practice her communication skills with him. His magic card revealed that Jack had already gotten a tour of the Hopps farmstead, which likely meant she'd gotten some temporary relief from parental expectations. Her partnering with Jack had just delayed the inevitable, eventually they would have to find out that she'd actually chosen their worst fear as a mate.
The rest of the text further explained all the codes. Ex-mayor Lionheart had also been taken away into federal custody, and the wolf professor from that unfortunate find back East was now missing. The last line was plain—check the paper. That would have to wait, Kristen didn't subscribe, and he wasn't about to go out after one. That's what TV news was for. Nick got up to raid the fridge and make sitting through all the irrelevant stories bearable.
A key rasped and clicked, then the front door swung in. He barely had time to flip his tail up in front of himself and hug the tip with a paw. "Uh, I…" He looked closer, "Mom?"
"I see you've made yourself quite at home Nicholas!" his mother said after she'd quickly shut and locked the door behind her. She set a walking stick he'd remembered seeing as a kit against the side of the kitchen counter, then found a spot for her sun hat and a large drawstring bag. Her infirm grandmother camouflage had actually worked on him momentarily. She continued to inspect him for a few awkward seconds, then walked over unconcernedly and gave him a brief welcome nuzzle—to his rigid discomfort since she'd come right up and slightly leaned in against his tail.
"Mom, please!" Nick wriggled out of her grasp and hurried away to get dressed, followed to his temporary room by her admonition, "Just your shorts Nicholas, I need to groom you!"
That sounded ominous, since he'd already managed to comb himself out reasonably—given the residual soreness in his shoulders. 'Nicholas' also demanded more compliance than anything else would have.
When he returned, his mom had ditched her shawl and set several items out on Kristen's dining table. There was an ID, a credit card, two paperback books, and several grooming products… He was about to get a makeover, and she was smiling.
Nick picked up the ID card—it wasn't even a driver's license—to look in dismay at a noticeably older fox. One with some decidedly uncool reading glasses on his muzzle.
"What kind of a name is Rafe?"
"It's yours Mr. Holcroft. Best cooperative match we could find in the community and agent Jack approves! Now sit here." Mom positioned a chair and he automatically sat. She pulled another over and sat facing him close enough that their legs overlapped. A pair of polished surgical scissors appeared in one paw, and she picked up a book in her other to study its back cover. He could see his new name on the front, underneath the title 'Forgotten Summers'. The background art was the silhouette of a pair of foxes against a rural sunset.
He took and opened the other copy. It was signed, and his incipient dread was confirmed as he scanned a few pages. It was a sepia tinted homage to a past bucolic life that had likely never existed, with various anecdotes and some moderately decent sketches. Something that would try to obscure the realities of life for foxes with comfortable fantasies.
"Hold still!" Mom set the book down and gripped his muzzle, and used her thumb across the top to pull the skin taut. The scissors came up and deftly snipped off a whisker.
"Hey!" He raised a paw to the insult to his person—and mom lowered it with a look. Her grip tightened in that unbreakable way only a parent could achieve and a second was clipped flush. Released, Nick stared at the back of his book in horror—every flaw of the older fox's physiognomy now jumped out to glaringly illustrate his fate. The fiend-vixen with the serene smile then repositioned him and started to mow shallow swaths across his face—russet and cream fibers from his cheeks and scalp snowed onto his thighs and the floor below.
"What are you doing to my ear!" He knew; there was a bare patch on one of book fox's, and the soft feathery fur on their insides was…sparser than his. That done, mom moved downwards; the precipitation continued from his neck and shoulders. She was humming to herself very softly as she worked, tonal, but not anything he recognized.
"Really mom, you're enjoying mutilating me?" Any rationalization about the need for it wouldn't make this less traumatic—his self-image continued to slough away as the ruff below his neck was thinned out. She worked steadily, at times stopping to carefully comb away the wreckage and contemplate her next harvest. Oh Great Spirit, Nick realized with the finality of a cell door slammed shut—she's collecting a debt! When he'd left home all those years ago, she'd lost a son to…fuss over. He wasn't going to be paroled anytime soon.
"Your benefactor is nineteen years older with thinner and shorter fur than yours," mom said conversationally. "As for mutilation, if you look, he has a small scar on that ear. I ignored that since his is long healed and yours would be fresh. Now turn around!"
He did, and leaned over the back of the chair with crossed arms. "Mom, I promise I'll wear clothes outside! I'm not a fox topiary. This is more than enough pruning." His entreaties didn't change the cadence of her resumed clipping.
"I need to blend this so it doesn't look like I did what I'm doing. Honestly, you're overdue for a good grooming anyway Nicholas. Seems I'm going to have to train your Judy how to care for a longhair."
"I won't be one for awhile, will I?" Nick grumbled as she worked down his back. The trimming paused and he shortly felt mom's paws move along…"No way mom! Not my tail!" He unsuccessfully tried to jerk it away—her gentle paws easily restrained it. He played his last card. "Carrots loves my tail. She'll be really upset if anything happens to it!" The slight whine that escaped him was to no avail, as his mistake was obvious to them both; the scissors made the only sounds for the next several minutes.
"Mom?" he said as he bagged the last of the swept clippings—thankfully a lesser pile than the mountain his fears had imagined. "Why did you risk being seen coming over here in the middle of the day? None of us are safe here until I'm gone!"
"I was careful, I drove around for awhile before I came over. Parked in the garage across the street and took the tunnel. We'd already checked for cameras there. No one saw me." Her smile awaited his comment.
"I assume the Soren's let you borrow something inconspicuous?" He also hoped they'd given her a refresher, she hadn't driven in quite a few years.
"No, I used mine," mom said with discernable pride. She basked in that for a few seconds. "It's a Haviland Hare minivan—an '05 that I bought from them to launder more money for you. Seems appropriate given my new family and friends don't you think?" She gave him the credit card. "Use this, and I'll reimburse Mr. Holcroft as needed. Fortunately for us, he's working on another book and won't be too inconvenienced staying out of sight for awhile."
"Do you want your stack of notes back mom?" Use of the card would add veracity to his alias, but for her safety she needed to do all resistance transactions with cash from now on.
"No, Jack wants you to keep it in case of need. You can always split it with Kristen once you meet up. She'll give you a list of possible places to stay since she was going to look them up for herself." Mom retrieved a colorful ZooRailPass folder from her bag. "There's more than enough on this card for a round-trip and several side ones if you need. We agree that you should leave tonight, and Kristen will follow in a couple of days. "
"She'd better clean this place thoroughly before she does; we have to assume they're going to go through it after she's gone," Nick said. "I'm certain she'll also have an escort on the train whether she knows about it or not." Given the amount of traffic between Zootopia and Concordia, and Tarija's prior suspicions, he felt that was inevitable.
"She knows," mom said. "Jack made certain that we'd both assume we were always under…surveillance." Her slight emphasis of that last word made him worry that she'd become a bit too excited by her new mission in life.
"Good. You also need to assume that they will soon tag and track your car mom, so don't come here again with it. You're too close to me for them not to do that! Use it for routine stuff—for everything else, go park at the mall and use public…"
"Jack said that too Nicholas! I'll be careful," she interrupted with discernable parental irritation. Her phone gave a message bleep, followed a fraction of a second later by his. It was from Estelle and the codes indicated Skye had landed and remained free enough to communicate that for now.
Mom let out a happy yip. "Skye said she'd send us one of these every twelve hours or so to let us know—always on the hour or half hour." She turned and started to empty her bag—a few more books, a lot of folded clothes, and a small case with a worn set of those reading glasses. He tried them. They were narrow enough to look over without difficulty, so wouldn't be too annoying if he needed to hide behind them.
"This is you now son." She chose a shirt and pants for him. "Go change and put all of your things in here. You're also going to have to practice his signature and read the book! All of it, not just the biography in the back; someone might ask questions!" Mom had her 'do your homework' look that he remembered from so many years ago. Good behavior was unlikely to reduce his sentence by very much if she kept adding to it.
"This itches!" Nick tugged at the snug checked cotton shirt as he returned. Apparently writing about country life had less physical benefits than living it for Mr. Holcroft. At least his height and base coloration had been close enough to those of the older, lankier fox.
"It'll have to do for now. You can always leave the top open—we'll just gray up some more of your chest fur when Kristen comes home with the dye kit."
Gray fur. His worry about Judy reasserted itself. "Mom, I don't know if this might become an issue while I'm gone." He rested his paws on her shoulders to reinforce it. "Judy's parents and family don't know about us being anything more than police partners, and they've even questioned the wisdom of that with her. She's really afraid of what might happen when they find out we're mates, and I'm afraid of how she'll take that emotionally since I won't be there for her!"
"She's in a difficult position Nicholas, she doesn't want to disappoint them, or hurt…" Mom's eyes widened and she lifted her paws partway up to her muzzle. "Do you think accepting her into our family would make them disavow her from theirs?"
"I don't know for sure mom, but I think she's afraid they would. Judy's told me that she'll have to tell them before long, she'll accept the shame and ostracism to avoid totally losing their trust. Accepting me is basically her ultimate betrayal of their values."
I haven't had a chance to talk to her about any of this—since she's already gone—if she's willing to give up her entire family for you, how could we ever question her commitment after that?" Mom had an awed look over the sheer quality of his chosen mate. "If this works out well Nicholas, she will have two families—but she'll never be without any."
Judy had back up. Nick pulled his mom into a welcome, tight hug—it got tighter when he heard her whisper, "You waited so long, but chose so well."
Kristen was already inside and watched them with a bemused expression when they finally let go. "We've got less than two hours before you need to catch the express." She walked over and set her supplies on the table before looking him up and down. "Good job on him Vivian! Shall we run the clock forward some more?"
Nick's patience finally yielded to the folksy overdose as he started chapter six. He stowed Holcroft's—no his book away and glanced at the sleeping young fox next to him. They'd doubled up for mutual support when he'd transferred to this packed full train back at the Oak Hills station. That was where the Bunnyburrow express line had deposited him four hours out of Zootopia. An hour into its run, it would only be another eighteen before this transcontinental express finally made it to Concordia.
He wouldn't be on it when it did. The last major stop before that was Junction City; he'd decided to wait there for Kristen's train and join her for the last leg. That would allow them to exercise their coordination, let him surreptitiously scope out any surveillance on her, and give his new persona its first operational test in a less federal environment.
It would also be a relief to escape early since this part of his journey was already rather aromatic. Forced to mouth breathe to minimize it, he was still assaulted by the scent of apparently every mammal in this car, if not the whole train. Nick wondered how the several wolves on board were able to cope with it. Perhaps the somewhat stifling air was the railroad's way of economizing on keeping the cars warm. He put a paw to the window—it had to be rather chilly outside.
He'd been less crowded on the evening run north towards the seaports of Pacifica bay, as the majority rabbit passengers had yielded him plenty of personal space. Even so, he'd been aware of the absence of Judy's sweet bouquet among all of theirs. When they had made the intermediate stop at Bunnyburrow, he'd not even looked over at the station on the opposite side of the train where most of them had disembarked.
That hadn't counted; he'd hoped to first go there with his mate, invited and accepted—however unlikely it was that wish would be granted by her family. Just to pass through with the knowledge that she was hidden somewhere out there in the darkness felt so wrong, so alone for him. He'd stared out at the dim landscape on his side for a bit, then had waited with closed eyes until he'd felt them move well away.
Nick became aware that the cadence of the train had gradually slowed, they must have started their climb over the Mammoth Range that separated the Central Valley from the inland parts of the continent. According to the route brochure, this rail line was a famously scenic one through a mountain range four times higher than the peak behind Tundratown. It described breathtaking alpine forests and the matchless beauty of Sapphire Lake that they would bypass just to the north.
Unfortunately, all that would be well behind them by the time the sun rose. It was pitch black outside, and the interior lighting of the railcar wouldn't even let him see stars through the window. So far, the longest trip he'd ever taken had been a complete bust. He'd lived his entire life within the greater Zootopia area, and as he'd left that behind, the rest of the world stubbornly remained hidden to remind him of how truly isolated and uncertain his life would be now.
The reverse was also true. That broader world was unaware of the well-honed skills and savvy of one Nick Wilde. Until he'd met his mate to be, they had only been used to ensure his day to day survival, with occasional help sent off to mom or minor upgrades to his living conditions. Now he had a greater goal, defeating a threat to the kind of world that they all wanted to live in. This would be the defining hustle of his life, conning federal agencies out of the information that would hopefully bring down the conspiracy for good.
His greatest fear was thankfully of no concern for now. Judy was safe at home with her family, watched over by a knowledgeable professional in the form of Jack Savage. Nick would pay his debt to the hare for that by doing everything he could to protect Skye. It was a marvel—a comforting one—that neither he nor Jack would have even a moment of trepidation about the other being with their respective near same species mates.
That arrangement would be quite shocking to anyone that figured out who their declared mates actually were. Jack had the cool spy look nailed in spite of his normally more routine duties, and would be seen as a natural, probably inevitable match for the famous Officer Judy Hopps. He on the other paw, would be the object of intense jealousy if seen in the company of a widely recognized vixen—one that had likely caused numerous Todds to awaken panting and desperate to reclaim their interrupted dreams.
He and Jack shared the—certainly undeserved in his case—blessing of having been chosen by their perfect mates. Excepting the odd obsessed Cheetah police dispatcher; almost no one else would see it that way. One of those might be Kristen. She had somehow remained oblivious to what had quickly become obvious to both couples—and his mother. The flirtatious skunk probably didn't suspect anything due to her behavior towards him—should he keep it that way or clue her in?
That complication would require a light touch to resolve if it wasn't to interfere with their trip's overall purpose. His easiest way out might be to pose as a couple with Skye as Jack had suggested, assuming they were able to meet up early enough. Until then it would probably be safest to talk up the vixen a bit around poor Kristen. With nothing else to occupy him, Nick continued to mentally review possible conversations with her, between others and his new persona, and with Carrots, her parents, and his mom. The track below them had become as aimless as his thoughts, with nearly constant random curves and what felt like a couple of tight switchbacks as they ascended the invisible natural barrier.
He was jostled awake when his seatmate plopped down next to him. It was deliberate as the younger fox then passed him one of the two cardboard boxes in his paws. The graphic on the lid showed that it held breakfast for a mid-sized omnivore, and bright light through the other windows also said morning. Someone had pulled the shade down over his.
"All we get in the cheap seats Mr. H, and they were going fast when I got to the dining car. Twelve dollars." Nick gave him a twenty. He was a college student travelling back from a semester break, and had been courteous towards his apparent elder.
"Keep it, I'm sure we'll want munchies later." Nick perched some inexpensive and lightly scuffed sunglasses on his muzzle before he raised the shade. Mom had impounded his prized aviators along with the rest of his old identity. He opened the box to find some kind of cheese and eggwich, a fruit cup, and two breadsticks that looked whittled rather than baked. It proved to be a rare example of something prepackaged that actually tasted better than it looked.
The next several hours proved to be a monotony of sparse grasslands between repetitive ranges of arid hills and mountains, broken only by the rare dirt road. Their only brief stop was at a town that had likely lost most of its justification with the invention of the diesel locomotive. The few species he saw there all appeared to be native bovids. The grasslands improved once they left and started to follow a valley with an anemic river. Still boring.
His companion leaned over to see past him out the window, then pointed.
"Wondered if we'd see one of these groups Mr. H," he said softly but enthusiastically. "There, almost out at the base of the hills." Nick followed his indication to see a fairly large herd of mammals in the distance, intermittently hidden by slight undulations in the terrain as they rolled past. It seemed to consist of a couple of the bigger species, but they were hard to distinguish at this range. A few stood to the side, but the rest appeared to be on all fours!
"What are they doing? There's absolutely nothing out here." He knew parts of the interior could be rather primitive, Mammalian Civ class covered that in high school, but this looked like an early prehistory diorama in Kristen's museum! Nick was treated to a younger version of his own vulpine smirk before the know-it-all student became the teacher. That prompted him to pull out a notepad and pen to play the inquisitive author.
"There's tour companies that set up organized 'Natural Grazes' in designated wilderness areas. Hard to believe," the gangly red fox said, "but some herbivorous species pay good money to wander around in the middle of nowhere and eat grass off the ground. I've taken this ride a few times and saw this before. Had your reaction, so I looked it up online. The Bureau of Natural Resources actually encourages this, since if they rotate through different areas, it supposed to help maintain the ecosystem."
"Isn't that all…rather unsanitary?" Nick asked. He also didn't think there was much ecosystem to maintain around here as he watched it go monotonously by. He lifted the brochure. "According to this, it's fairly high country out here; must get cold at night too."
"I think that's the point. And don't forget the snakes, bugs and weather. I'm pretty sure some of these groups go naked too for the full experience! You know, reconnect with their past, just like your book Mr. H. They just take it a little further!" The fox's grin remained as he held two fingers close together and then slowly shook his head. "You are so not gonna believe this part of it! Remember that pack of wolves? Most got off at the last stop—that place seemed to be a strictly prey town that wouldn't want 'em. I had to ask this one if he knew why?" He pointed his muzzle towards the front of the car where the lone lupine sat.
"Do go on, What'd he say?" Nick started to jot down substantive rather than just perfunctory notes. He'd gotten the impression that his companion was relieving his own boredom with conversation, as he hadn't seen any other foxes on board. He also found this subject quite interesting—and a little disturbing.
"They're predator re-enactors! They're hired to stalk and menace the herds so they can get all defensive like. He said it even requires training and a license to work for the safari company! It seems so wrong to me."
"It is wrong." Both the idea and the word appalled Nick. He hadn't heard that pernicious reminder of when some mammals had hunted others in a long time. "I'd never heard of this before. So they're paying predators to reinforce what we've been fighting against for centuries! Some species still instinctively fear preds, and a lot more live and work with us, but still don't fully trust us. Yet some use us to feed antisocial behavior for profit."
"I don't know if 'use' is the right word. I'll bet they don't have to pay those wolves very much; they probably like being able to howl all they want and act all predatory!"
"That kind of mammal doesn't give a thought about how harmful this could eventually be for them, or for the rest of society. They're reinforcing ancient fears! Then they're others that want to exploit those fears—real or pretend—to remove predators from society altogether. Remember that sheep mayor in Zootopia and the chemical terrorism last year?"
"Sure do Mr. H. Saw a special about that a while ago. That rabbit cop came right out and said she couldn't have solved it without help from a fox! Imagine that! Best media attention we've gotten in a while."
"We could use a little more of that," Nick said with a nod of agreement. He pulled out one of his books and passed it over. "Here, take this; it's signed. Show it around, I'm always looking for new readers." He didn't know how many opportunities he'd have to actually promote Holcroft's work, since he did owe that to his identity donor. He wondered if these books sold better in the cities, or the rural areas they reminisced about.
They settled into silent ennui, as the world around them flowed past and grew ever more barren. Distant high mountains to the south tantalized, then gave way to outright desert and vanished behind them. Nick decided he'd already experienced enough train travel to satisfy any curiosity he'd had, and checked the brochure to estimate how long it would take them to get to Junction City. They were just beginning to cross the Great Salt Desert and had at least five more hours of bright sun and glare from the salt pans to endure. He scowled and pulled the shade down.
Note: I have always wondered what it meant for the various natural ecosystems in the world of Zootopia, when nearly all of the mammals became sentient and basically removed themselves from them. That would have disrupted numerous food-chains, some symbiotic relationships, and thus the livelihoods of many other species-both plant and animal. It also seems natural that at least some species would feel yearnings to return to those environments from time to time-allowing capitalism to thrive.
The next exciting installment for our fox will be—Chapter Sixteen: Into the Fire