7 Coming Clean

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First, the next chapter of Life is a Highway is coming along nicely and is almost finished. I hope to post it next Saturday or Sunday. Second, there are only two chapters left after that max, maybe only one, it just depends on how long and involved the chapter gets.

THIS is going to be a long-er chapter, but there was really no place to really break it off, so enjoy.

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Waking early, in the arms – well arm - of her fox, Judy is amazed at how the past month or so has had so many emotional swings – the joy of being accepted into the ZPA, the disappointment of ending up pregnant by some buck she can barely remember, the horror that she'd hit and possibly killed another mammal because of a lapse of concentration while driving, the heartbreak of being completely disowned by her parents after sticking up for a predator – a fox of all mammals, and finally the absolute joy of finding out that not only did the aforementioned fox not totally dump on her, but is actually seriously interested in her as a possible mate. The same mammal that accepts her for who she is rather than rejecting her for what she is.

For the second time in her life, Judy is lying in bed with a male other than a younger sibling. At least this time it's a male of her choosing, one that treats her like she feels she should be treated. A male that has already shown more compassion for her than most of her family ever did, including her parents. A male that is not only willing to support but actually fund her dreams rather than make fun of them. A male that is willing to accept her and her as yet unborn kits, even though they are of a different species than him and were produced by a seeming rape.

As a gentle smile crosses the does lips, Judy's attention is pulled from her musings by a gentile tapping sound.

Slowly opening one eye, Judy notices her sister Debra peeking around the corner of the door.

"You okay there Judes?" whispers the grinning doe.

"Yeah … all things considered, I'd have to say never better." admits Judy softly, giving a contented smile back.

"Ummm, there's someone here who wants to ask you something …" continues Debra cautiously.

"Who mig-" begins Judy until another doe cautiously steps into view "YOU! I knew that you'd probably be the one to help Nick with his rehab, but what could you, of all mammals, possibly need to ask me? You, my chief tormentor in high school! The inventor of the infamous 'Jude the Prude' phrase…"

"Fluff … Judy … give her a chance, at least find out what she wants … second chances, remember?" gently asks a now awake Nick.

Turning and giving her new boyfriend a quick glance, Judy sighs and turns to face Darci, with Nick giving his doe a gentle reassuring squeeze.

"Nick's right, if anyone needs to be giving out second chances, it's me. What do you need Darci?"

"I – I just really wanted to meet your fox. Deb told me how he helped her injured shoulder with his Reiki, then she mended fences with me and asked me to work on Danni, he's doing better by the way. I – I really wanted to ask you if I could ask him to help me to get my level two certificate."

"So, it is all about you then?" asks a now highly skeptical, and more than slightly jealous Judy. "And his name is Nick, not fox." she adds.

"My apologies … Nick. And yes, it's for me, but only a little." admits Darci "It's mostly for my patients. Deb made me realize that I can incorporate it more along with the rest of my therapy routines."

"You do realize that you'll need to inform your patients that it would be a voluntary and not a mandatory service, don't you?" asks Nick.

"Of course. I plan to include the option in the new informational material that I actually need to order anyway, especially once I attain my new level." admits Darci "But thanks for bringing it up and reminding me."

"Then I have a treat for you, all three of you in fact." snarks the todd.

"Which would be … what?" asks a now curious Judy.

"Well … anticipating the fact that Reiki masters might be in kind of short supply around here," he continues, looking straight at Darci "I called an old acquaintance of mine, and he'll be here tomorrow afternoon at around 12:30 or so. If any or all three of you would like to participate, schedule about a two-hour block to receive your Reiki training. That would include Judy, Doc Deb and ..." as he indicates the one doe in the room that he hasn't a clue as to who she might be, other than another Hopps doe, according to his nose.

"Darci!" quickly answers Judy "This is another Hopps doe, Darci. Nick, Darci. Darci, Nick. Sorry about that … what?" as she notices his larger than normal grin.

"I already knew that she was one of your sisters Fluff." as Nick points to his nose.

"Stupid fox nose …" Judy grumbles half-heartedly, folding her arms across her chest.

"Plus" adds Nick, addressing Debra "you can bring your hubby, because Sifu told me that he'd be happy to spend some time working on him."

The reactions from the three does was a bit of a mixed bag – happy and unbelievable, but mixed nonetheless.

"Sifu … Sifu Mooney? – Sifu Mooney will … I'm actually gonna meet Sifu Mooney!" mumbles a totally stunned Darci as she very ungracefully sits on the floor.

Debra for her part, gives Judy a look that looks very much like she's begging – which Judy gives a slight nod to - and Nick immediately receives a typical bone-crushing Hopps hug.

Judy, with eyes brimming with tears can only stare in awe at her todd.

"What?" asks a now confused and slightly concerned Nick.

"Your compassion and for mammals other than yourself, especially mammals that you don't really know, never ceases to amaze me," admits the doe as she tenderly lays a small paw on Nick's cheek.

Shifting a bit uncomfortably, Nick continues "Fluff … Judy, I know I promised to show you my scars, at some point, especially since Doc Deb here has already seen them and Darci would definitely see them at some point during rehab, but I'd like to provide a bit of backstory for all three of you if you don't mind. It won't necessarily be pleasant, but it needs to be told nonetheless."

With a slight feeling of dread, Judy tells Nick "It's okay Nick, go ahead. Whatever you feel that I, that we, need to know and can tell us, please do so."

Taking a moment to gather his thoughts, Nick begins: "I was born as one of a set of twins to Johnathan and Marian Wilde. Sadly, my twin sister Nicholle died after only a few days of her birth, I never found out why. Growing up as a young kit in Happy Town was not easy, nor very pleasant. As you may or may not know, Happy Town is basically the predator slum section of Zootopia. Undesirable species of predators are more or less forced to live there, especially foxes. Luckily, I guess, mom and dad had a thriving tailor and alteration business on the very outskirts of Happy Town, close to the Meadowlands District.

"Even there, I was subjected to taunting and bullying since I was a fox kit. The lowest of the low. Shady, untrustworthy … thieves and liars, that's the cloud we all lived under.

"Somewhere between my eighth and nineth birthdays, I got to join a Junior Ranger Scouts pack. Things actually looked like I was going to be accepted until initiation night. I was held down, beaten and muzzled by a bunch of prey kits around the same age as me.

"After they dumped me in the alley behind the meeting place, I somehow managed get the muzzle off and to get home and when my parents found out what happened they were furious. The next day they went and confronted the scoutmaster, who had already talked to the other scouts, who claimed that I had attacked them and they had acted out of self-defense."

As Nick feels a light touch on his arm, he sees Judy with tears building in her beautiful lavender eyes.

Gracing his doe with a slight, sad smile and again pulling her close, Nick continues "After the Scouts debacle, I became surly and detached, even from my parents. Since the prey that muzzled me spread the incident around at school, everyone took turns mocking and teasing me so I ran away.

"No one had any idea where I was. Hell, for the longest time even I had no idea where I was. I was eventually found by some unknown busybody and turned over to Kits Protective Services. Since I refused to tell anyone my name, I was simply called John Doe or simply 'the fox'," as Nick made quotation marks with his free paw "and placed in the first foster home that would take me. That worked out swimmingly well – at least for the prey couple that took me in. Shut in a dingy basement 24 hours a day, fed every once in a while, a makeshift chamber pot emptied about once a week was the norm for me for about a month. I escaped from there and went back to the KPS office and let them know how I was treated. Of course no one believed me so off to anther shit foster home I went.

"This went on until I was about twelve. By then I had finally had enough of the system and tried to live out on the street on my own. That's when I met Finn, which is short for James Finnick. For years Finn and I worked a lot of small hustles, with me doing an occasional side job doing numbers runs and money drops for a certain unnamed gangster family out of Tundra Town.

"Then, as fate would have it, one of my solo hustles got me nabbed by an off-duty cop. The cop offered me a choice – go to jail or join the military. Knowing how I'd be treated in jail, I opted for the military. The cop marched me straight down to the local military recruiting office and I signed up for the Navy. I figured it was better than being bullet bait if I was in the Army or Marines, and I didn't figure I had the smarts at the time to go into the Air Force.

"Basic training sucked, since everyone still frowned on foxes in general, so I managed to get into plenty of fights. Some I won, some I lost. After around my fifth or sixth trip to the commander's office, I was prepared to be booted out and would end up living on the streets again, this time with a dishonorable discharge haunting me for the rest of my life along with everything else. As I stood at attention, the commander looked up at me and called me to be at ease."

"Wilde" 'he began' "I've noticed that you've been in more than your fair share of scraps. Each time you've made the statement that it's because you're a fox. Is this correct?"

"Yes sir" 'I remarked'."

"I'm prepared to offer you a one-time deal, that I suggest that you listen very carefully to." 'he told me.'

"Your ASVAB* scores are off the charts, and your willingness to scrap for the right reason has given me the impression that you would make an excellent candidate for the Teams. Do you think you'd be interested in trying out after graduation? You only have 2 weeks to go, but I need an answer right now if you're going to be included in the next intake. I won't sugar coat it son, the training will make your harassment during basic seem like kitsplay. The hours will be long and grueling, not to mention extremely dangerous."

"After only a few seconds thought I told him to sign me up."

"The mammal wasn't lying. Hell week was exactly that! We had 118 mammals sign up for that particular intake. Hard-core athletes accustomed to winning and pretty-boys were the first to drop out. Five dropped out after the first hour, with seven more joining them by day's end. Nine rang the bell after the first dip in the freezing cold ocean after carrying a heavy-assed log up and down the beach, pounding through the icy cold surf.

"By the time Hell week was over, only thirty-seven of us were left. After our introduction into Teams basic training, there were only 21 left.

"After I graduated Teams basic and was assigned to Team 7, I thought I was in. Wrong again! Now I was given the choice of specialties to pick up before I could go on an actual mission, so I went for light weapons, with demolitions as a secondary. After those were through, I was still waiting for an assignment so off to sniper school I went, graduating at the top of the list as the youngest ever to do so."

Seeing the looks of awe on the does muzzles as he recounts his background, Nick has to tell them "You have to understand just how dangerous all of this is! Freshly assigned mammals and even hardened veterans are killed just during training. To put it in perspective, more Team members die in training every year than on actual combat missions.

"Anyway, my first several live missions were strictly recon, that is reconnaissance. In and out missions dedicated to gathering intelligence, with little to no contact with anyone. After that, unsurprisingly, we got into firefights, and we ended up in a lot of kill or be killed situations."

With their expressions shifting to being stunned, Nick hurriedly adds "You have to remember, these mammals are the highest trained, deadliest mammals in the world. You fight like you train. If you dumb down the training, mammals get killed for no good reason. Which leads me to my last mission, where I got most of the scars. You also need to remember that this never leaves this room…

"The mission was supposed to be a snatch and grab, a simple extraction. We were scheduled to kitnap a particularily nasty Tailiban warlord from some no-name village in some middle-eastern shithole that I can't name for security reasons. It was a simple mission on paper – sneak in in the middle of the night using only predator mammals like wolves and foxes because of our excellent night vision, grab the bad mammal and whatever intelligence we could find and sneak out. And to answer the unasked question, yes, there are a few prey mammals in the Teams.

"To say that the mission was screwed from the get go would be a vast understatement. We were supposed to take two teams of four on two helicopters, and enter the village from two different directions. One of the birds scheduled to go wouldn't start so we had to wait an hour for the back-up helo to get ready. Then we hit bad weather which set us back another hour-and-a-half. Instead of landing at two in the morning as planned, we ended up being dropped of just before five, just as the sun was coming up.

"We thought that maybe luck was on our side when we managed to enter the village and found the correct building undetected, which is exactly when everything really turned to shit!"

Caught up in the telling, Nick fails to notice the faces of the three does gradually morph to abject concern to absolute horror at the telling.

"The first dude in was a newbie, this was his first live mission … he encountered a female just beginning to start breakfast. A quick burst from his suppressed rifle dropped her like a rock. When we went up the stairs, the warlord caught a glimpse of us and let loose with a burst from his AK, which seemed to wake the entire village. After we triggered a few rounds into him and bagged the body as proof of death for the higher-ups, we gathered as much intel as we could in such a short amount of time, we started back down the steps to exfil, that's exfiltrate, meaning to leave the area.

"With both teams ready to leave the building, we heard a 'THUMP'. The thump was grenade that someone had thrown into the room. One of my guys yelled "GRENADE" and pushed me out of harm's way, intending to land on it with his body armor between him and the grenade. He didn't quite make it, the damned thing exploded right in front of his face, with part of the blast tearing into my left side, arm and shoulder."

Still caught up in the moment, Nick again fails to notice the reaction that the three does are experiencing … Debra, who has seen her fair share of mutilated bodies, from car crashes to farming accidents, is affected but seems to be handling the information overload better than Darci, who is in absolute shock. Judy on the other paw, has a slight green tinge about her face, and looks to be ready to throw up.

"Somewhat dazed, I was looking around for the source of the grenade when I saw a form move to enter the room. I let loose with a quick burst from my rifle, with the rounds zippering the mammal from left hip to his right eye, killing him instantly. It was only then that I noticed that the figure was about a ten-year-old kit.

"After we gathered up the warlord and our dead comrade, the firefight seemed to lose strength, I guess because the villagers were glad to be rid of the warlord. On the chopper ride back to the base, all I could think of before I passed out from blood loss and shock was that I had shot and killed a kit. Even after I woke up from surgery, my mind was filled with shelf-loathing … I had killed a kit.

"While I was still in the sick bay aboard ship, one of the other team members had downloaded the footage from the body cams and contrary to orders showed me a clip form the footage. The kit had been wearing a suicide vest with enough plastic explosive to have literally vaporized all eight of the team members at the time and would have totally destroyed the building as well. One of my bullets had somehow severed a wire on the vest and rendered the dead- mammal switch useless. All of that didn't matter to me at the time, I was still lost in the moment of having killed that kit. I even contemplated eating a bullet until one of the Team members wives thanked me via video call from the States for saving her husband's life. Now he'd be able to see his recently born son, and his son would be able to see his father.

"One of the nurses there knew Sifu Mooney, and introduced me to him, or him to me, whatever. I remember that Sifu once told me that if you can be taught to hurt someone, you should first and foremost learn to heal as well. I've kinda made it a mantra over the years, once I more or less learned to work out my issues with killing the kit, which took a lot of time and effort.

"So anyway, the thoughts of suicide go away, but in the meantime I'm still depressed, and the nightmares and flashbacks begin. I tried to self-medicate with booze with no luck. Never gave a thought to drugs, too easy to get hooked. I talked to a shrink a few times and the nightmares seemed to be a bit less frequent. After talking to my commanding officer, I decided to take an early full pay retirement and 80% disability from my wounds and call it quits.

"After going through the bullshit that comprises out-processing, I ended up back in the States, wondering what to do and where to go, since there doesn't seem to be much interest in hiring a professional killer these days. Then I ran into Finn and he suggested that I get back in touch with my folks. When I asked him why, since I was sure that'd given me up for dead long ago, he had balls enough to whack me upside the head. He told me in no uncertain terms to get my ass to the house and show them that I was alive and had amounted to something after all, that I at least owed them that much.

"I resisted for a while, then Finn heard some vague, unsettling rumors about then mayor Bellwether and her henchmammals darting predators and making them go savage. We tried taking the information to the ZPD but were promptly escorted out of the building.

"Knowing that we had to do something to stop the deranged ewe, Finn and I set up a sort of sting to get Bellwether's flunkies to chase us and try to dart us. After managing to grab the dart gun and get Dawn and her flunkies to chase us, I substituted a blueberry for the chemical pellet, 'accidentally' dropping the dart gun, then faked killing Finn when I got darted and got the entire thing recorded on my phone, giving the entire thing to the cops.

"Later, after a couple of days of waiting for the news to break, I finally said 'what the hell' and knocked on my parent's front door. When mom answered the door she almost had a heart attack. Dad was curious when he heard mom gasp and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me. To say they were stunned would be putting it mildly. Leading me to the living room and sitting me down, they pretty much demanded to know where I'd been all those years and what I'd done with myself.

"After recounting the horrors of the foster homes and the time I spent on the streets, then my stint in the military, the folks asked me if I'd consider staying with them, in my old room even if it was only for a while. They were so happy to finally have their wayward son home, I couldn't possibly refuse.

"After about a week or so, there came a knock at the front door, and dad insisted thatI answer it. Wondering what he could be up to, I answered it anyway. There, directly in front of me, stood the very same cop who had conned me into signing up for the military all those years ago."

'Wilde,' "he begins" 'a certain fennec fox told me you were back in town. If it's alright, I'd like to come in and talk to you for a bit.'

Hoping that the worst is over, all three does hang on every word.

'Unbeknownst to you-' "begins the Chief-" Nick continues.

"The Chief!" interrupts an amazed Judy suddenly. "Chief Bogo was the officer that made you go into the military!"

"You get a gold star Fluff." admits Nick, smirk on his face. "Adrian had been rookie beat cop at the time. He somehow saw the potential in me even way back then. Aaaanyways, he offered me a job as a cop. Told me it would be a waste of my abilities to just sit around and do nothing, or flip burgers or whatever. He'd managed to somehow keep track of me and what and how I was doing all that time through the recruiter. He'd lost track of me after I retired out, and somehow managed to bump into Finn, who told him where I was."

"He had to pull a few strings to get me into the Academy since the MII was just an idea at the time. I guess my success sort of jumpstarted the process, because a year later the MII became law, opening up law enforcement to all species of mammals, regardless of their size … even bunnies." he speculated, winking at his doe.

"Even with my being a lot older and smaller than the rest of the recruits, I managed to set all sorts of records at the academy, especially after taking out a rhino and actually knocking him out in the ring. The only hard part was learning the laws unique to Zootopia itself. The physical part was a snap after my time in the Teams, even with my various injuries and disabilities.

"A year and a half as a beat cop and then after helping to break a major murder case, I was recommended to take my detective's exam. Two years after that I was a sergeant, then another 18 months after that I became a lieutenant.

"Staying with my parents and moving to living in the so-called mother-in-law's cottage they had on the property seemed to quell the nightmares and the anxiety attacks. The security of finally being back home, I guess. Of course it all fell apart when first dad, then mom passed away. Bogo told me to take whatever time I needed … but it didn't seem to help. The nightmares and flashbacks returned, worse than ever. I decided to take a long walk to try and get my head straight, when a beautiful bunny doe with her head not in the game tried and failed to kill me!" he finally finishes, smirk very evident.

"NICK! I did not try to kill you. I told you I was-" begins a flustered Judy.

"It's fine Fluff, I was just messing with you." admits the smiling todd as he places a gentle finger on his does lips.

Taking a long moment to try and absorb everything that they've heard, all three does are quiet.

"Listen Judy," finally continues the now very serious todd "even considering the carnage of the military, there are things I've seen as a cop … things that I truly hope that you never have to see. The victims of grisly murders, the victims of mammals gone savage, mammals that we've found half eaten, the messy suicides, the mammals killed in car wrecks that we've had to pull out in pieces, the victims of kit abuse, the horrors of drug related deaths, please count yourself lucky that hopefully you'll never see those things in a small-town sheriff's office."

"All of the things that I've been subjected to all of my life seem so paltry now." quietly whispers a now demur Judy.

"Nothing is paltry Judy!" says Nick just as quietly but forcefully, again pulling the doe close "No matter how large or small, good or bad, everything that has happened or will happen to you has shaped you into the mammal that you are now. The name calling, the physical and emotional violence and abuse and how you handled them has created the Judy Hopps that I have in my arms … arm … right now, and I wouldn't trade her for the world.

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AN:The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) is a multiple-aptitude battery that measures developed abilities and helps predict future academic and occupational success in the military. It is administered annually to more than one million military applicants, high school, and post-secondary students.