Chapter 58

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AN: As mentioned previously, I'm currently side-running this with a small fic I wrote after watching Guardians of the Galaxy V3. It's called Beautiful and Forever, watching the movie first is highly advised but either way hope you enjoy.

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"That's the picture I saw," Carmelita said, nodding.

"I presume so," Kozlov nodded in agreement. "Duga One is the most well known. I would not be surprised if some mammals in back of car know exactly what I'm talking about."

"So this thing, your steppe eagle," Judy began, nose twitching. "It… It really does sound like aliens or something, I'm sorry but…"

"Shhhhhh…" Kozlov said, hushing her. "Maybe it was, at start. Maybe not. Who knows? I'm not one here who knows most."

"I, but…" Judy said, pausing as she looked up at Po, the panda shrugging. Her gaze then turned to the older member of his species, then the vixen up front. "What the…"

"I first came into it… Discovering 'Sizogo Orla', like he did," Carmelita said. "As did Jorin, chasing something else until…"

"-And you were going to tell us this when?"

The vixen turned back, calmly looking at her. "Remember our first time driving back from the airport. When I said there were many things classified by INTERPOL. Things we felt too dangerous for mammals to know? That I said, and you accepted, would be kept from you?"

"And how long did you know that whatever this was," Judy said, "was involved in our case here."

Carmelita let out a long sigh. "Full disclosure. I originally came to this city due to a different item being flagged up, one thought unconnected to this case but, due to some scientific analysis, confirmed to be in some way connected. I came to ensure it was being safely held, which it is at the Zootopia Natural History Museum's research wing, and then arrange its transportation back to INTERPOL headquarters. At first, your case was a cover. One I could certainly put a lot of effort into, given how quick and easy my original goal was. But soon, we began releasing the connection and…"

"You did," Judy said, her brow knitted. "If you'd have told us, how much easier would this have been for us all?"

The fox cop up front stared back before shrugging. "I'd have pulled rank and we'd have gone to pick up Kozlov here instead of interviewing your academic friend, in doing so getting the bear far earlier… But also being completely unavailable to ward off that wolf who almost blasted himself into your fox's apartment."

"I…" the bunny began.

"Believe me," Carmelita stressed. "There are some things mammals are better off not knowing." She slowly turned to Kozlov. "As we are likely going to find out sooner, rather than later."

The bear slowly nodded. "Many things happened while getting Duga-2 up and running. First, I did not give up my search for the talisman, as they called it. While Jorin worked on complex radio systems, I thought back to what those mammals had said at the tower of silence. One thing rang out. Their own Talisman, wherever it was, was kept in a cavern. With enough space around it for… Whatever it might be required to do. When they took the one that my brother and his friends found, they headed north. Then returned. They likely chose to hide it somewhere, again. And I would find it. Needle in haystack search, yes. But, with a little thinking?"

He tapped his head. "Where would they take it to? Simple. With no ability to make, they need place already ready. Big, open, sheltered, remote. A cave. Where would they learn of such a cave? Simple! They in polytechnic? They go to library. So I return, I look for books and records on caves and such in local area. To the north. I find just one source. One book. Search narrowed down, but still needle in haystack. So, I asked around at stations and towns again, for the mammal who went. Ones not local to area so older mammals may still remember. I soon find which group of caverns. I ask mammals living in forest about traveller here long ago. I soon narrow down to select few caves. And so, every time I could for next few years I would go in with metal detector and search." A warm smile grew on his face as he turned back, looking at Nick. "You ever think I was best spelunker in TundraTown mafia? No?" He shrugged. "Not big surprise."

"So," Po said, "You found it? Like buried treasure? Okay, that's cool!"

"Da," Kozlov agreed. "Took a few years, but I find it! I find it in dark cave, buried by light covering of sand, and when I see it…" He grit his teeth. "So long since I last saw it. So much pain. And here I am, full circle. The root of my journey, back again. Of course, I do not take right away. I had theory, why it could 'speak' to me as it did to cult, but did not speak to those I remember holding it." He sighed. "Skin contact. It needed skin contact. Keratin, in hooves, enough of an insulator…" A growl began echoing around the vehicle interior. "If only my brother, or Androvna had…" His paw slammed into the dash, Nick almost snarking something about damaging police property but just about holding back.

"Even so, I would not risk it just then. We studied our enemy, saw how fast he can fly, planned out and waited. And then, when he was far away, when it near high summer, I go. I place it using metal pliers into insulated, sound proof box. We flee, via helicopter, down south. Into main city. I wait. He not coming. I move it slowly, closer, to military base close to Duga Two. Still, he did not come. Still, we wait. Duga Two work fine as radar, but over the years, we realise there was problem."

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Duga-2 Radar array, 1980.

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"So, it doesn't work," Kozlov said, pausing as Jorin slammed his hoof on the table.

"It does work," he said, gesturing to the maps showing the detected routes of Sizogo Orla over the last few years. All detected by the Duga system. Leaning forward, Jorin threw his paws out and around to the many spots and lines across the centre of the country, detected by the first prototype system. He then pointed at those across the Warsaw pact and the countries in Western Europe, Duga One had spotted it at a reduced but still consistent level. Their little group would look through the data, locate and find the blips consistent with their enemy, and jot them out into the familiar broken arcs and lines.

That was for the 'cover' system, for the main system though…

A few lines in the south of Alaska. One or two over Japan. Apart from that…

"It does work," Jorin said. "As well as any other system. It's just that when it comes to what breaks their stealth system, it does not happen here… Or, rather, over the ocean."

Kozlov paused, looking back over the map. There were two, three, tiny potential detections over the water, but only one was verifiable with other detections further along. "Then why… Why is it being detected there? Huh?"

"I don't know!" Jorin grumbled. "There is no real reason, there…"

"Most of them are in the South of Siberia. In places occupied by mammals," Kozlov mused. "Maybe it is something to do with mammals?"

"What?" Jorin asked. "Its stealth system makes a noise, so if near mammals…"

"No," Kozlov said, pausing as he began grabbing at the map, looking through…Staring at the areas not too far away, trying to see if there were any… "These three lines here," he said, pointing to a long one, a gap, a tiny one, a gap, then another long one. "They're all from one flight, Da?"

Peering over, Jorin nodded. "I think," he said, beginning to shuffle through the papers before finally returning with a report. "Yes. Also a good number of detections moving to the north and west of Beijing. He was heading right towards the north of Meowmar, though I think the main aim was somewhere further west in the Himalayas. He was just avoiding the gobi desert. If we look at the return path…" He began, shuffling through.

"Hang on," Kozlov said. "Can you get us a plane?"

Jorin looked at him for a second. "Of course I can get us a plane? Why?"

The bear shrugged. "We follow route, trace it, see what we can see."

A smile grew over Jorin's face. "Wait for our eagle to go hunting far away, then let's go for it!"

"And so, a few days later, we took to the air, going north then turning onto the route. Not quite as low but good enough."

The plane sailed through the cold air, engines buzzing as the propellers pushed them through the sky. The skin rattled, they skipped up and down slightly as they pushed on, their breath hung ever so slightly in the air, the fan heater struggling to warm the cramped interior up. Kozlov, leaning against the window, felt the rattles and vibrations rumble into his head as he kept an eye out for any clues while Jorin, underdressed for how much colder it was even just a little bit up, did his best to avoid showing his shivers. "Are we following the route?" the bear asked, turning ever so briefly away from the thin, steaming up glass.

Checking his map and notes, looking to the pilot, the syrian wild ass nodded. "Yes, right on…"

"Go a little south," Kozlov advised, "So I can see what is right under."

Jorin looked to the pilot and nodded in confirmation and the plane tilted a little, shifting south just a bit.

"Very good," he said before pausing. Slipping off his light shirt, exposing his thick white belly fur, he placed it on Jorin and smiled. "Also very good."

"I could manage."

"Da, da, you say," he said, turning back to the window. "How far are we now?"

"Coming up," Jorin said, stretching up and over the seating to get a good view. "Ah there's the river. So, given how we're a bit south, it should be starting abooouuuttttt now!"

Both of their heads snapped over to the land north of their flight path, the bear leaning forward and Jorin undoing his belt and half standing up to get a good view over. Peering on, Kozlov took it all in. Taiga forest, spreading endlessly. The odd river cutting through. The long scythe of a high tension electricity line running alongside…

Kozlov began to smile, a chuckle growing in his throat. One quickly joined by Jorin, who the bear turned to look at. "More common around mammal settlements, Da?"

"Well," Jorin said, sitting back down so his ears weren't splayed against the rattling metal roof. "Let's look to the breaks first, see what happens then."

That they did, coming up to it. Instead of a sudden stop in the line, it just slowly edged towards them and then under them, travelling across to the south. "Probably out of range," Kozlov noted.

"And when it's below the threshold…" Jorin clopped his hooves together. "It just goes. Like the gold leaf electroscope experiment."

"-The what?"

"Tchhh, what did they teach you at school," Jorin scoffed.

"At KGB apprentice program? Not that. Plenty of other things though, yes you should worry."

"Ha," the equid laughed, pausing and looking forward. "We should be coming up to the brief re-emergence very shortly, we should be able to…"

"-Ah, and there is our little one!"

Jorin looked forward and nodded in agreement. Soon they flew over the next high tension wire, this time going dead perpendicular to the flight path. "It was only a few seconds of detection," he said, "and we got the height… -We can work out the range that these can fritz up Sizogo Orla. Maybe work out how different rated lines interact, whether it makes different ranges or something."

"I guess that makes sense," Kolzov agreed, turning down to the map. "And soon we'll start up again."

"Yes," Jorin began, looking over as well. "Very shortly in fact, I mean where could it…" Pausing, he turned to face the south. "It's the same line as the first."

The plane shook in the air, the pilot protesting, as Kozlov shuffled over to look south. Looking into the sun's glare and, under the shielding of his paw, he spotted the first line coming back up. Soon they were over it, and after that it edged out to the north.

"Hahaha," he said, tapping his brain. "Where would you be without me, huh?"

Jorin smirked. "Radar station in Tahjikistan. Where would you be without me?"

"Ughhh, you're going to hold that over…"

"Da," he smirked. "Da I am."

With a groan, Kozlov settled into his seat as the plane turned around and headed home.

"Of course, knowing what caused our mysterious flying craft to break its stealth did nothing to help us monitoring it over the ocean. And, unless major industrialisation were to come to Kamyakta peninsula or ocean for that matter, nothing would change. As it stood though… I would come up with another great idea. In least likely place. A few months later, we had day off, so went into local town to relax, shop for thing in military officials department store, where things queue for you! And have fun, in normal way. Good food, good drink, a good movie."

The pair slowly shuffled into their seats at the back of the cinema house, settling down and relaxing. Even though the place was only half empty, they were far away from the front. Cinema, like theatre or means of production, was for every mammal, none higher or more important than the other, and in that grand endeavour citizens of all sizes would share the floor. From the smallest mice at the front, to the largest bears and others at the back.

The pair sat down, slowly bringing out the filo pastries they'd purchased from the concession stand and tearing into them, all as more mammals began filtering in. Children jumped and screamed, laughing, while their parents, mostly mothers, hushed at them and directed them to their appropriate seats, often with hard wooden booster seats in paw.

Kozlov grumbled just a little as an amur leopard mother let her cub jump over the benches, laughing and hopping as he went, before walking on all fours along the back rest.

"Oy! Get down!" He shouted, as Jorin yelled out.

"On two paws or nothing."

The boy took note of the equid over the ursine and went up onto just his back feet, arms and tail out to try and balance him as he wobbled, his body began buckling, and he tumbled down to the ground behind the seat.

A harsh scold came out from his mother, who reached over and grabbed him up by the scruff before he could even start to wail. Instead, the expression on his face was that of the most self conscious mammal in the world, trying to vanish from existence as he was held like a babbling infant and then scolded for acting just like one. His mother then dropped him down and turned her glare to Jorin, huffing at him for encouraging her cub to act out and hurt himself.

The ass stuck his tongue out at her and told her off for ruining the fun.

And with that she sat down, all as other parents and children came in for the Sunday matinee show.

"You should have known it would be kiddies thing," Jorin said, looking up at Kozlov. "So don't expect it to be sour faced propaganda bit. Cheer up. Have fun."

The bear gave a huff as Jorin reached into his coat. "Does Pyotr want his cigarette?"

"Maybe later," he grumbled, as the ass stuck one in his mouth regardless and quickly lit it up. A breath in, a blow out through his nostrils, quickly joining the slight cloud growing from the other partakers in the hall.

"These new ones are really good."

The polar bear shrugged. "I'll still save up for my cuban cigars. Quality, not quantity."

"Seriously, try it," he said, the bear relenting and savouring the taste for a second before nodding.

"Okay, that's a fair bit better than usual."

"Fair bit better?" Jorin asked, pausing as the screens darkened and the projector began warming up. "I'd say our farmers have finally stepped up a level, and…" He paused, reading the back. "Ah, our new friends in the newly re-christenned Zebrabwe supply this stuff. Well, good on the rebels for taking over and joining our side. It's ours now."

Kozlov nodded. "Freedom for the oppressed natives of the country, and good quality tobacco for you. I hope the lives lost putting our guys in charge is considered well spent." He trailed off a little as he saw the screen beginning to play, only for the reveal that it was an advert giving Jorin the signal to reply.

"Not really, it's the Maoists who got in there," he said, shrugging. "Who would have guessed? Those who paint farmers as the embodiment of the proletariat and rightful vanguard of the nation won over those who paint factory workers as the embodiment of the proletariat and rightful vanguard of the nation, in a country that has a lot of farms and not many factories."

"I suppose there are upsides," Kozlov said, smiling. "As they are Maoists, we can now make fun of them all we want with no political repercussions. So, I advise you enjoy those things while you can. They're time limited."

"By what?" Jorin asked.

"The usual. How long it takes for them to introduce their agricultural reforms."

The wild ass gave a half groan, half chuckle, sucking in another drag before blowing out.

"You know," Kozlov pondered. "When we achieve world socialism…"

"Soon may it come."

"Da, but slight problem. Once everyone adopts socialist agriculture, who will we import our food from?"

Jorin paused, scratching his head. "They'll figure something out."

"They'd better," the bear said. "For your sake. You need that stuff, I can just go fishing."

"Until the solidarity laws, of course," Jorin reminded him, before staring forwards. "Anyway, from those with the broadest shoulders to those with the highest need. If the farmers don't farm enough for everyone, guess who will be the first to not have enough! Sounds fair to me."

Kozlov chuckled a little, only to pause, frowning at the display on the screen. A new advert was on, a variety of mammals working hard, playing, living, sleeping, all with dark chains hanging off of them. Every day at work, more were hung on, even as some of the older ones rusted off. Grease rubbed off onto their fur and whatever they did, they were uncomfortable, awkward, a constant slight taint on their existence. "This is life…" they sung, six strapping wolf performers in just their work trousers arranged like dancers, three either side of a set of steps, swinging hammers over and down in a performance of work, their chains ever present.

"As it always has been," a mother bunny said, sweeping around to reveal her kits with the same burden.

Strange performances like that kept going on as Kozlov groaned. "The mammal who makes these gets too much money. Too many resources. He has a simple job to do! Who does he think he is?"

Mammals dressed in white with ribbons hanging off of them danced in, the bear wondering if they, mostly elegant long legged gazelles, were from the bolshoi theatre. He genuinely wouldn't be surprised. Jorin, munching some more of his pastry, shrugged. "Some mammal from the Estonian SSR I think. They get the transmissions over from the Capitalist west and…"

"Urgh," Kozlov groaned, as they came in and unlocked the chains, the mammals now standing up and beaming freely, unburdened. "That explains this nonsense." Even so, he had a hard time thinking it did given just how much longer it carried on and how much more nonsensical it got. Flashes in and out, strange cuts of mammals spliced together singing about being freed. Clean. Weird mammals doing weird things in weird costumes, then a scene styled with an aesthetic straight out of a party palace mosaic, then back to even more mixed up weirdness. Finally, it came to an end, a picture of a roll of toilet paper being placed down by a paw in the most anticlimactic ending ever. "Toilet paper delivery has been reported. Supplies now in the shops near you."

Almost immediately the theatre was filled with the noise of mother mammals getting up in a hurry, pulling out their protesting kids as they hurried off towards the door. Whatever the next advert was, no-one could hear, amongst the excited adult chatter, childish wails of it not being fair and wanting to watch the movie and not stand in yet another line, and the brief, harsh, oft physical chastisement for being such a bother about it.

Kozlov and Jorin watched as the last of them hurried out, amidst a clatter of footsteps and harsh 'Because I say so's' and 'And that's that.'"

The pair looked around the now almost empty place for a second as the end of the next, even more bizarre, advert played out. "Soviet Radio Sokol 308" it said, as mammals waved long ribbons across the verdant countryside, rippling waves down them or trailing them as they ran into scenes of workers on the job or families in the home. "New units delivered to your local general store."

Kozlov turned to Jorin. "We're staying here and that's that."

A hard punch to his shoulder, not that he minded. Even as the ass kept on talking. "I could make a better radio receiver in my sleep, believe me," he said, as the news began playing. Loud trumpets came rang out, the globe spinning and then focussing on the great eurasian landmass, a shining red star glowing behind the globe. "Truth! The news of the world, reported to you the common mammal."

Scenes then changed to show helicopters flying over desert landscapes, soldiers at the ready, and then tanks and armoured divisions pushing down the roads through the mountains. "The latest update from Afghanistan," it spoke, as the scenes changed to show a central plaza in the capital, newly deployed forces at the ready. "Brave soviet soldiers continue in their defence against the counter revolutionary insurgency in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan…"

Jorin lifted up his pastry. "Want some?"

"It has grass and stuff in it?"

"Of course."

"Then no."

"The revolutionary government, brought into power by the will of the united working class, has been at great threat by the dispossessed feudal landholders and religious zealots who opposed its valiant reforms. From abolishing bondage debts the peasants owed to barbaric landholders, to the redistribution of excessive land hoardings away from their rule, the common mammal has only seen benefits from the introduction of Barxist theory to this formal feudal, backwood, monarchist realm. It no longer matters if you are male or female, predator and prey, our laws and charity has offered the formerly oppressed a new glorious dawn of prosperity. Yet terrorists and insurgents, fueled as always by the opiate of the masses religion, in this case the bigoted and nonsensical islamb, have been misled by their former masters, along with foreign imperialists and prospective colonisers, into fighting against their own self interests."

Scenes changed to show helicopter footage of some kind of skirmish, mammals in rags shooting down from their secure positions in the hills only to see the helicopter above them and begin to flee, a hail of bullets following them. "Brave Soviet forces, who arrived on request of the democratic government that seized power in the Tahr revolution, have acted to help enforce key reforms such as equality between men and women, predator and prey and the ongoing destruction of the class system. Our comrades have performed bravely and admirably, helping to protect the new, equal, democratic, fair and prosperous Afghanistan for its new citizens." Pictures of male and female mammals co-mingling in the city, or swimming in a newly built pool, were played, all the while Soviet soldiers stood guard and kept a careful watch over. A following scene showed a school, predator and prey being taught about working together, that the differences between them were just lies to cause division, and that other countries would paint predators as evil hunters that required extermination, or prey as meek lesser mammals deserving of oppression. They then stood up, together, happily chanting. 'Let us work together to abolish the differences between predator and prey.'

"Yet," the narrator continued. "This act in the aim of common decency in benefit of mammal kind was vehemently opposed by numerous foreign nations, who acted with the same level of outrage as would rightly be burdened on their own extractive tyrannical colonialist ambitions, such as the war in vietnam which proved futile against the will of the common mammal. Unlike there, the common mammal in Afghanistan is on our side." Pictures showed cheering crowds inside the capitol. "The deluded and dangerous hill tribes, landlords and religious zealots, along with their puppet forces, are kept in check by regular air patrols. The will of the common mammal is on our side. And the alignment of Western powers with the rich, the greedy, the cruel, the species supremacists and those who mislead innocents into such with the superstition known as islamb will not be forgotten."

The scene flashed to the opening ceremony of the recent olympic games. Neither Jorin nor Kozlov had managed to get any tickets, but they'd watched and listened eagerly where they could. "In return for their boycotting of our games for this critical act, the state has already announced a boycott of their upcoming games in four years time. Of course it is known amongst all intelligent and well read mammals in the world that our nation is in the right here. We are on the side of the common worker, the poor mammal, against false divisions such as religion, gender or species, ones that abound and continue to cause strife and misery in the foreign nations that condemn us. Indeed, the common citizen can rest easy knowing that in this nation, they are the vanguard of progress against exploitation and darkness. Here mammals are no longer misled. Here mammals are no longer exploited. Here we have abolished predator and prey. There are only mammals, citizens, comrades."

And with that, the news ended, the polar bear and wild ass, who'd both moved forward to a nice middle seat, raising their mostly eaten food. "Ura," Kozlov said lightly.

"Here here," Join followed on.

There was a flick of the screen as a blocky coloured title showed up. 'Soyuzmutlifilm'. And then it changed to a film of a wave coming into a harbour, an ever increasing drum beat growing. Jorin and Kozlov blinked, looking at each other, suddenly starting to shake and tremble, giant grins on their faces. Ones that only grew as the waves crashed against the harbour, an excited brass band adding to the rendition and the camera changing to show a wolf in a white and blue sailors shirt, captains cap, long black trousers with flared ends and a pipe walking along the quay, each sweep of his foot letting the hanging ends brush away the leaves covering the ground.

The watching bear and ass held their breath as a ship's horn stole the wolf's attention. He turned to the ship in question, seeing a fox, ass and bear climbing up the steps. Followed by a hare.

Salivating, licking his lips, the wolf spoke "Well, Just you Wait!" and raced off, to the great cheers of the vastly reduced crowd.

"NU, POGODI!"

And so they sat back to watch the slapstick short film, joking and laughing as the hapless wannabe cannibal tried to get onboard the vessel only to be thrown off by the heavily built walrus captain. -For want of a ticket, naturally. After a few attempts to get one, they watched as he scurried over to a stack of metal, hiding there from view, all as a large electromagnet on a crane pulled over and began to cartoonishly suck up the bits of scrap. The wolf stood up, blinking and confused at the sudden disappearance of his shelter, before looking up at the magnet.

Just as something tugged the front of his trousers.

He looked down, eyes widening as his metal belt buckle began to get pulled forward. He tried to run away, his feet slipping against the floor while he remained stuck where he was, until…

The two watchers laughed as his belt buckle was sucked up onto the magnet, him hanging from it, as the crane pulled him away.

Wiping his eyes, Kozlov turned to Jorin. "Ah, if only we could do that to our evil eagle."

"Huh? Get him by the belt buckle?"

The bear laughed, shaking his head, "No, get rid of the bars protecting him or…" He paused, looking up at a confused looking Jorin before waving him off. "No, forget it."

"You mean find a way to turn off his shielding?"

"I… -Forget it, okay?"

Jorin was silent for a moment, only making a brief noise when some amusing slapstick occurred on the screen. "I mean, I don't think we'd ever be able to transmit a frequency with enough power over the area to have the same effect as the high voltage wires… But… Kozlov?"

"Huh?"

"Suppose its radar shielding works on a cycle, as it were," he posited. "When going too close to electrical equipment, that shielding is blocked somehow. Or at least interfered with enough to not work. It widens the gaps in the cycle enough to let radar waves in."

"So?"

"What if we tuned the radar to find the gaps?"

"So what, test different frequencies? See if he lights up?"

"I guess," Jorin said. "But it's a needle in a haystack. Even more so than your hunt for that talisman. At least you got to narrow things down before. We're going blind and we can only test frequencies one at a time. There's a million… billion different ones it could be, and we only know if it's right or wrong when we see our eagle in flight." He closed his eyes, shaking his head. "Stupid idea any… -HA! Splash!"

Kozlov turned back to the screen, seeing the wolf surfacing on the water, very wet as he held onto a chain. One that began rising, the still moody wolf finding himself sitting on the anchor as it was hauled up. A second or two of brooding and he blinked, looking around and realising his situation, his mood vastly improving. Turning to haul himself back onto the boat, his head rose up above the deck line only to meet the walrus captain.

The unimpressed captain looked at him for a second or two, asked if he was after a hare, and then pushed him back in. "Well, Just you wait!" he yelled as he fell, the two shouting it out along with him before he landed with a splash. The short credits began playing as Kozlov turned back to Jorin.

"What if there was a way to know where you're aiming?"

He paused, looking at the bear. "How?"

"The talisman, thing…" He began explaining. "It's a metal not known to science. With strange properties. That can… communicate, feel, with those who hold it. That can resist a drill. Who's to say that it's not made out of the same material Sizogo Orla is? And, if we study it…"

Jorin grabbed his shoulders hard. "Yes, yes I like that!" Standing up, he punched his hoof, only to pause. "But what if Sizogo works out what's going on?"

"Well," Kozlov shrugged. "We plan it very carefully."

"Indeed," Jorin said, beginning to make his way towards the exit. "But yes, this might work. We need to get back to the lab immediately and…" He paused as he saw the main title appear, the title showing mammals in a red western, ready to gun-sling and shoot out. "-It can wait an hour or so." He said, sitting back down again.

Kozlov smiled as they settled down to watch, offering Jorin some of his pastry. "Want some?"

"It's got cheese in it, yes?"

"Of course."

"Then no."

"And so, we started looking back at the little item I had first seen so long ago. Careful, as always. Silent around it, as always. Doing as much as we could to read it, to study it, without provoking any wrath… Either way, we had a lot of guns and explosives in case we provoke its owners fury, as some unknowing university students had with a drill and excited talk so many years before."

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Kozlov stood guard in the lab, looking at the small, so very unassuming item. How many times had he walked around it, looked in close, looked at it from afar, paced, looked away, glared.

He still remembered the excitement and fear when he'd first rediscovered it in that cave. And on the fraught journey to move it from the wilderness and into their control.

Things were looking up in some ways. It seemed with the removal of those at the tower of silence, the mammalian connection between whatever it was that had killed his brother and the leadership of their country had been broken.

Then again, for all he knew the new sable in charge was in with them hook line and sinker. Regardless, he could pontificate on how much Yuri Andsobol knew for forever and a day and it wouldn't make a jot of difference. He was here, he had a task to do, and he was going to make sure it was done.

A few select mammals stood around him, doing the main work. They'd already tried to conduct a spectroscopic analysis, shining pure white light on it and recording what was absorbed, what wasn't, and trying to identify compounds inside from that.

The task had proved both completely impossible and incredibly revealing. As they tried to explain it, any high powered or low powered ray hitting it were reflected out at different angles, often at random, while those that often did reflect back (in and around the visible light spectrum, proving once and for all the thing he was seeing was not invisible) provided completely random and constantly shifting spectral lines.

A further look in using, as Kozlov suggested, a wire running a high level of alternating current to simulate the disruption that had revealed Sizogo Orla to them in the first place revealed more confusion. The quality of high and low powered light they could get back was improved vastly, though as they explained it a majority still got deflected, absorbed, or scrambled. Still, during their brief tests they could detect it on simple test radar, and they could analyse the compounds much further. The result?

A whole mix of elements, many still shifting, but in small and distinct levels. Like they were stepping up and down, swapping between compositions and energy states.

The scientists, entranced, had begged him to go on.

Kozlov refused.

At most, he'd only allow the occasional randomly timed snapshot. He was hoping this enemy, whatever it was, was fallible. Distractible. Enough so that an odd one second itch, a mere isolated incident, wouldn't be noticed. Or, if it was, could be dismissed.

Maybe it was stupid.

Maybe not.

But he remembered what happened to the last scientists who did things to it and paid the ultimate price.

Never again.

Never, ever, again.

Looking at the way things shifted and, after doing enough backdoor favour trading to access some of the rare computers that were available, did provide some major insights. The complex and confusing distortion did seem to have some kind of pattern. And, as the group experimented with radar pulses that started to adjust just a little towards that…

"There!"

Kozlov turned to the crew as they shut the system off, just as they were told to do after their brief runs. The bear could only peer over and smile as he saw the spike that signalled a level of detection. He pumped his fist. Another step forward.

"It took a few months to test, alter, experiment with the full radar system to get it there. We actually aimed to overshoot it, as it were. Make it look like we were experimenting, random, that if he thought we were tracking us… He could dismiss it. Again, foolish, probably. But what can we do but try? And, even if not getting best picture, it work." He held his fist tight. "After so long, it work!"

"Kozlov! Kozlov!"

The bear raced over to Jorin at his workstation, paws grinding against the floor to slow himself down and then turning to look at the screen. Leaning in, nudging his comrade out of the way… "That's Sigozo, Da?"

"Da," Jorin said, his smile growing. "That is the bastard."

Kozlov hung there, breathing in and out, forcing down a swallow as his claw tip moved forward to touch the screen. There, flying north East from the Kamyakta peninsular was a small figure that grew and shrank, grew and shrank, as it slowly made its way across the ocean, ever close to the surface and staying there as it moved out. Jorin made some joke about it either carrying on to Alaska, or carrying on further on its current heading, taking it down across the lakes of Canada, down to Chiclawgo, Haiti, Venezoola and then down to Brazool. "-Going to miss carnival, if that was his plan," he laughed.

Kozlov didn't laugh or smile. He just kept his claw tip slightly pressed against the mystery, the enigma, the murderer, the monster… "Your days are numbered," he said, brow furrowing and teeth gritting. "You thought you could get away with taking my brother, his friends, however many more you have for however long you have all operated?" He smiled, ever so hungry. "No. One day, soon, we will meet. The sky will light up. Mammals will no longer have to fear. And a terrible injustice will be closed, once and for all."

"That may well have been our highest point. How little I could foresee back then. How right those words would be, and how terribly, terribly wrong they would soon be proven."