The Fire Triangle, A Zootopia Fanfiction -- Part One: Fuel - 49

Disclaimer: Zootopia stories, characters, settings, and properties belong to the Walt Disney Co. This story is written under Fair Use Copyright laws.

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The Fire Triangle-A Zootopia Fanfiction

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Part One:

Fuel

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Chapter 5 -Aftershocks

(Continued...Pt. 3)

"There they are."

Finnick pointed through the windshield and Nick Wilde squinted through a pair of narrowed eyes. Yep...there they were, Judy Hopps, with Conor Lewis leading the way. As soon as she spotted the van she waved-but cautiously; she understood that her partner was trying not to draw attention.

Surprisingly enough, Conor's insistence on keeping his name out of everything had yielded a dividend; he could come and go as he pleased without being pestered by the press-and so Nick had press-ganged...err, recruited the young silver fox to serve as their messenger and go-between.

Nick knew he'd have to talk to the media eventually, but not yet, not at least until after he saw Judy.

Yeah, riiight...while it certainly made good sense to see her before doing anything else, deep down the red fox knew that he was stalling. Like every other member of his species, he'd always been chary of reporters, and since joining the ZPD, his natural-born caution had spiked by a factor of 3. (In this, he was hardly alone. As crime writer Joseph Wombat once noted, "Cops in general trust the press about as much as they trust politicians, judges, lawyers, psychiatrists and the Red Army.")

It was for this reason that Nick had made Finnick park his van around the corner from Courthouse Square and sent Conor to go and fetch his partner. (Although Erin might have seemed the more obvious choice, Judy would almost certainly have some questions for her sister, and Nick wanted to postpone the exchange until after they were inside the vehicle together.)

Sure enough, when the van's right-side cargo door slithered open, Judy took one look inside and then her ears shot skyward and her nose began twitching like a seismograph. "Erin, where have you been? You missed Jack La Peigne, he wanted to meet you before he left."

This prompted nervous glances in Conor's direction from both Finnick and Nick.

The bickering that had erupted back at the produce stand had petered out quickly once they were on the road. Why argue about Jack La Peigne when the big bunny was long gone? Out of sight, out of mind, as the old chestnut went; by the time the courthouse clock-tower finally hove into view, the atmosphere inside Finnick's had become almost convivial.

Now here was Judy, bringing up the big rabbit's name once more and threatening to start the squabbling all over again.

It didn't happen; Conor's face remained as impassive as a stone sphinx, and for once the hormone fairy seemed to be cutting Erin a little slack.

"Awwww, I'm sorry sis," the younger bunny told her, looking properly contrite, "If I'd known Jack wanted to meet me I would have waited, but I wanted to show Conor around the Burrow a little before he left. There's more to this place than just the Carrot Days Festival y'know."

"Yeah, I never knew BunnyBurrow had a shopping mall." The young fox chimed in earnestly, bringing a sly smile to Nick's face. Not only were the two young mammals NOT arguing again, they were even on the same page.

"Okay, never mind," Judy said, pulling herself into the van and sliding the door shut behind her, "Step on it, Finnick; we need to get to Pawvidence Memorial right away."

For a moment, Nick was confused. The hospital; was someone else hurt? Had the Harequateline really all burned up or...?

Then he remembered.

"Is it your Uncle Terry?"

"Yes that right," Judy nodded, before adding quickly, "He's okay, he just woke up in fact. Everything seems to be back to normal, or that's what Dr. Honeybadger told me."

Nick felt his ears working back and forth.

"Then why...?"

Judy sighed and then her ears and shoulders slouched earthward.

"Because he's asking for us."

When they got to Pawvidence Memorial Bunnyburrow, Finnick quickly made the announcement that he would be staying behind in the van.

"No point in my tagging along; your uncle don't know me from Yota." He told Judy-as if that was all the explanation she would require, (and in fact, it was.)

Exiting the hospital's parking garage, they heard a low, rumbling cannonade, echoing somewhere beyond the hills to the west. Looking away towards the source of the discordance, Nick could see a battleship-grey anvil-shaped cloud, peeking over the top of a ridgeline; things were about to get noisy and wet in the tri-burrow area.

The kettledrums sounded again, and he hoped that it wasn't an omen of things to come.

Judy, as always, viewed things through a more pragmatic lens than the fox, hoping the storm would bring more rain than lightning. (After nearly a week of bone-dry weather, the Burrow badly needed the former and didn't WANT the latter.)

At the reception desk, they learned that Judy's Uncle had been moved from the ICU to a private room on the second floor. "Dr. Honeybadger wants to keep him under observation for another 24 hours before we let him go." The ocelot in charge told her.

"Oh he'll love that," she observed to Nick with a sour-persimmon expression. Her Uncle Terry had always hated hospitals, and never failed to share his misery with all and sundry whenever he was laid up.

They found him sitting up in bed, talking to Judy's mother, while Dr. Honeybadger hovered in the corner. There were no IV tubes or bags that she could see, but a network of thin wires was tabbed to various points along his body and just over to the left of his bedside, a flat-panel monitor was keeping constant watch on his vital signs. Judy wondered for a moment why there weren't more family members here, and then remembered that Carrot Days was over and it was Monday again, time for everyone to get back to work; (that...and this WAS Uncle Terry after all.)

The moment he saw her, his ears went up and his arms went out.

"Judy...Nick..." he started to say, but then Bonnie interrupted.

"Erin...Conor? Why don't you kids go wait outside?" she said, making a small gesture with her paw.

Judy tensed, expecting a thumping foot and a protestation of, "Mommmm!" But Erin only nodded reluctantly-or that was how she was trying to look; even her mother could see that it was only an act, (but not her uncle, which was the whole point of the charade.)

"Ohhh-kay Mom," she said, and then turned beckoning for Conor to follow her out the door.

As soon as they were gone, Terry picked up where he'd left off; holding out his arms once more.

He hugged Judy and then shook paws with Nick, (wiping his paw on the sheets afterwards-a fact that did not escape the red fox's notice, although he pretended otherwise.)

Then Terry took hold of his niece's paws.

"I didn't...hurt you did I? You...or Nick?" He swallowed hard and looked like he was about to turn on the waterworks, "Or little Cotton?"

At the mention of her baby sister's name, Judy glanced over sharply at her mother, who responded with a tight little head shake. No, Cotton wouldn't be coming to visit her uncle, thank goodness.

"We're fine Uncle Terry," she assured him guardedly, feeling her nose beginning to twitch again. For a second or two, she tried to stifle it, but then thought, 'why bother?' She was in a hospital room after all and if her uncle noticed, she could always put it down to the sting of disinfectant. Nonetheless, there was something going on here, a play behind the scenes that she couldn't quite grasp. Nick Wilde could probably have figured it out, but right now he seemed to be completely wrapped up in himself; in fact, he hadn't said a thing since they'd come in here-and Judy was fairly certain she knew the reason why. "Seriously, we're all okay." She said to her uncle.

"Thank goodness," Terry Haredigg buried his eyes in his paws for a moment and let out a half sob, "I-I can't believe it happened to me again...right in the middle of Carrot Days. I thought the first time was awful, but...Oh gaw, just when I thought I'd put it behind me..."

At once, Judy felt her ears trying to slam backwards. "Why you bloodsucking...!" NOW she understood her uncle's game...and what a jerk! Not even conscious for three hours and he was already trying to lay another guilt trip on her mother. 'Just when I thought I'd put it behind me...' was his way of reminding Bonnie, none too subtly, that if she hadn't dared him to eat a Nighthowler blossom when they were kids, he wouldn't have gone savage yesterday. It was enough to make Judy want to grab a pillow and push it over his face until he stopped moving. Her only consolation was that for once, her mother didn't seem to be buying into it

An idea blossomed in her head just then...Yesss, and it just might work, too.

She turned and spoke to Dr. Honeybadger.

"Doctor, is there any chance my uncle might have another savage episode?" she asked.

"No worries, Officer Hopps." the doctor told her, with what assumed was her version of a smile, "I checked him out myself; there will be no further flashbacks."

Judy looked at the floor for a second and then back up at the honey badger, appearing to choose her words carefully.

"Doctor, please understand that while I have the greatest respect for your abilities, let's face it, Nighthowler poisoning isn't something you see every day in Bunnyburrow. For that sort of thing, the facilities here at Pawvidence Bunnyburrow are...um, adequate at best." She pursed her lips and pretended to look away for a second. "So...I'd feel a lot more reassured if you could check him out at the LPN Toxin Lab, just to make sure."

Judy knew about that facility from the Savage Predator Conspiracy-it had been there that Emmitt Otterton and the rest of Doug's victims had received their final treatment-and she also knew what kinds of tests her uncle could look forward to when he got there; the kind that would be grounds for a seven-figure lawsuit, if the ZPD ever tried to employ them as interrogation techniques.

"Ahhh, wait a minute, I don't think..." her uncle started to say, but Judy quickly shushed him.

"Now now, Uncle Terry, don't you want to make sure that this can't ever happen again?" (After his performance of a moment ago, there was only one answer he could give.)

"Well...yes," he sputtered, "But Dr. Honeybadger just said..."

"Noooo, I think your niece has a point Mr. Haredigg," she answered, stroking her chin thoughtfully-and making it abundantly clear that she didn't much care for Judy's uncle either; quite the feat on his part considering that that they had met only yesterday...and for most of that time, he'd been unconscious. (It was also pretty obvious the good Doctor was eager to get back to Zootopia, ASAP...and Judy had just provided her with a tailor-made excuse)

"I would call the facilities here a little bit more than adequate," she was saying, "but still, they're nothing like we have back at the LPN Facility; you're certainly right about that, Officer Hopps...and this IS an unprecedented occurrence, after all." She extracted a cell-phone from the pocket of her lab-coat, at the same time shifting her gaze to Judy's Uncle. "Mmmm, I think at least one more round of tests back at Meadowlands is in order, Mr. Haredigg ...just to be sure. If you'll excuse me for a moment, I'll go and make the arrangements."

"I don't..." Terry started to say, but this time it was Dr. Honeybadger who cut him off.

"You shouldn't be gone for more than two days at most, Mr. Haredigg. And don't worry about the charges, they're covered."

And with that, she was out the door.

Judy watched her go and then turned to her uncle, smiling brightly.

"There Uncle Terry, once those tests are taken care of, you can finally stop fretting about 'it' ever happening again."

"Thank you," the plump rabbit answered in a wooden voice, and now HE was the one that looked like he wanted to smother somebody.

Judy's mother meanwhile was biting her lip and hugging herself, as if desperately trying to hold something back.

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"Is it me, or were you glad to get out of there?" Conor Lewis said to Erin as the elevator door opened.

She led him inside and pressed, 'One'.

"No, you're right fox; I'd rather go get braces than have to hang with my Uncle Terry, for even half an hour."

"Uh-huh, so what's the guy's problem?" the young silver fox asked her.

"He's a leech," Erin answered, with a small shudder, "You know the kind, always asking you for favors and then he pays you back with excuses."

"Yeah," Conor nodded knowingly; he was familiar with that type all right.

Erin shuddered again.

"He probably only asked for Judy to come and visit him because he wants something from her," she said, looking more disgusted than ever.

"I-I-I don't think that's gonna happen," the young fox told her, with a note of cautious hope in his voice, "From what I've seen of your sister, she's nobody's easy touch. And Nick's in there too, don't forget. If had to make book, I'd bet Uncle Moochie's not getting anything out of her but a pawful of air."

The door opened and the two of them stepped off.

"Yeah, I know," Erin sighed, "But it's still a pain....and then there's my mom." She went on to tell him the story of how her mother had dared her Uncle Terry to eat some Nighthowler when they were kits. It made Conor's ears vanish into his scalp.

"Aw for crying out in pain," he half groaned, half growled, "When he bit the heck outta your mom's arm like that, it should have squared things up then and there."

"I know, right?" The young, white-furred bunny answered with a thump of her foot. "Stu Junior must have told mom that at least a hundred times, but she still can't say no to my uncle."

"Ah, bummer." Conor shook his head. It was all he could think of to say, and so he opted for a change of subject. "Anyway, this is your turf Erin; any good places we can hang near here while we're waiting?"

She stopped, looking thoughtful for second and then turned to him.

"Ahhhh, nothing within walking distance, and I don't think Judy's going to be too long anyway," she finally said. "Prolly the best thing to do is..." her words were cut short by another short volley of thunder. The storm seemed to be moving away now, but it might have only sounded that way because they were indoors. "Best thing to do is go wait in the van with Fin...what?"

Conor didn't seem to have heard a single word she'd said. Instead he was staring over her shoulder towards the hospital's front entrance. Erin turned around, and almost instantly her foot started beating a tattoo again the carpet.

"Awww, sweet cheez n' crackers!"

Pawvidence Bunnyburrow's front walkway, which had been deserted when they'd arrived, was now thronged with reporters....and the only thing keeping them out of the lobby was a bevy of muscular orderlies, all of them larger species.

"Where the heck did they come from so fast?" the young bunny demanded in rhetorical frustration. It seemed as if every media outlet from ZNN to PawStory had a reporter out there. More than a few had brought camera-mammals with them, and at least two had come equipped with mobile broadcast vans.

"Well you know who they're here for, right?" Conor's question was every bit as rhetorical as hers had been, but she answered him anyway.

"No, I really have no idea," Erin gave him one of her patented looks, "DUH! They're here to talk to Nick, who else?"

Conor ignored the jab.

"Right, and you don't have to be Hercule Pawrot to guess he was gonna have to show up here, sooner or later." With an ever-so-slight movement, he angled his muzzle in the direction of the hospital entrance. (Being from Zoo York, he wasn't nearly as surprised by what was going on out there as she was,) "Five bucks says of those guys outside slipped somebody an envelope to pass the word if they spotted Nick..." He stopped abruptly and pointed through the door with his ears standing at attention. Okay, NOW they'd caught him by surprise, "Holy foxtrot, they even got a podium set up out there, look!"

Erin looked, and Conor shook his head. Even for a jaded kit like him, this was stepping over the line. Trying to Shanghai Nick into giving a presser, "What's next jerkweeds, you gonna foxnap him or something?"

"We better warn him." The bunny-girl next to him said, reaching for her cell phone.

"For sure, but let's get out of sight first." He answered, once more nodding discreetly at the entrance, "Those media guys ain't dumb and if one of 'em spots you on your cell right now, they just might figure out it's your big sis on the other end." He put his paw behind his back, aiming with a thumb towards the elevators, "And you better believe they know she's in there with Nick."

"Yeah, good thought," Erin nodded, and the two of them slipped quietly around the corner.

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"Nick, you can't avoid it forever." Judy waved her arms as if signaling for a cab to pull over, "Sooner or later, you're going to HAVE to talk to the press."

He stabbed a finger in the direction of the elevators.

"That's not the press downstairs Carrots, that's a lynch mob."

The call from Erin had come right as they were leaving Uncle Terry's room. (For once, he'd been as happy so see his niece go as she had been happy to take her leave.)

For all the rest of their visit, Nick hadn't said two words, which was most unlike him but not entirely unexpected. What was surprising was that now he wanted to sneak out of the hospital without even trying to talk to the media. Judy had been nearly floored; though the red fox had never enjoyed sparring with the press, he'd never gone out of his way to avoid it ...until now. Even for him, this was way beyond normal behavior.

"You don't have to go face to face with all of them Nick." she pointed out. "You can pick a small group and see them privately, or even offer one of them an exclusive. Heck I'll bet you anything Bill Diggs is out there. He'd never miss a story like this."

Diggs, a European badger handled the police beat for the Zootopia Times-Post. A former cop himself, he was the few members of the press trusted by the ZPD rank-and-file. He knew the life, he spoke the language, and if you gave William Herbert Diggs something 'off the record', you could count on it never seeing the light of day.

But even that suggestion seemed to be too much for Nick.

"Uh not now, Carrots, maybe later," he said, by which, Judy understood he meant 'never', and then he reached up, waving a finger and trying to get the attention of a passing orderly. "Excuse me, is there...?"

"...somewhere that my partner and I can talk privately?" Judy jumped in line ahead of him.

"Yeah, there's an empty room down the hallway there the hippo answered pointing back down the hall, the way he had come. "Number 222."

"Carrots, I really..." Nick started to say, but she was already dragging him in the direction of the doorway.

"All right Nick, what wrong?" she demanded as soon as it closed behind them, paws on hips and nose twitching, "This isn't like you. As a matter of act, you've been acting like you got caught with your paw in the carrot-cake dish ever since we got here."

He attempted to wave her off.

"I'm fine, Carrots...just a little stressed out from yesterday is all."

Judy folded her arms, her expression unchanged.

"But what's wrong, Nick?"

The red fox blinked and then he stared.

"What the...? Didn't you hear me Fluff? I said I'm okay."

She began to tap (not thump) her foot.

"But what's wrong, Nick?"

He waved his arm as if warding off a wasp.

"What are you supposed to be, a skipping CD? I'm fine, dangit!"

"But what's wrong, Nick?"

"I'm Fi..."

That was as far as he got before his ears wilted and his tail sagged.

"No, I'm not," he admitted in a near mumble.

Judy responded with a small, tight nod. After all this time Nick should have known better than to try to fool her. Still, she hadn't liked having to prod him...but then she liked even less to see him in such a state.

A moment of silence followed during which the red fox's gaze seemed to focus on everything in the room but her.

And then finally, his eyes met Judy's again.

"Everyone seems to think I'm some kind of big hero, Carrots...only I sure don't feel like one. That trick with the fireworks...even if I had expected it to work-which I honestly didn't-I never would have thought it'd work out like THAT. Setting those planes on fire? You better believe I didn't see that possibility." He looked away into a corner again then back at her. "I didn't stop the Guilford brothers Carrots, Fate did-or God, Karma, Dumb Luck, whatever you want to call it. Picking the right number on a roulette wheel doesn't make you a hero; it only makes you a winner." He pointed towards the door, "If I go down and try to take credit for last night, it's going to feel like the biggest hustle I ever pulled...and I don't want to do that." His eyes found the floor again, "I-I can't."

Once again there was silence in the room, but this time less awkward and more portentous. Then Judy said, "Nick, look at me."

He raised his head stutteringly, like a theme-park mammalquine not getting enough power.

"Okay," she said, "Tell me something: If that fireworks business was such a shot in the dark...why'd you even want to try it in the first place?"

Once again, he blinked at her.

"What...? You know why Carrots, the Guilfords were coming and I didn't have time to think of anything else. And even then it was only a last resort."

"Uh-huh." Now she lifted an ear, "And just how did you know the Guilford brothers were coming, Nick? Who told you?"

He gave that bewildered look again.

"Nobody told me Judy, I..."

All at once she was in his face with a raised finger.

"That's right fox...no one told you; you figured it out for yourself. Oh, you may have had some help in finding the puzzle pieces, but at the end of the day YOU'RE the one who put them all together. "

She lowered her finger and took a step back. "Maybe you're right, maybe bringing down those planes was just a piece of dumb luck." She moved towards him again and took hold of his paws, "But figuring out those planes were coming, sorry Slick, that's all on you." She smiled and gave them a little squeeze, "And not only that, you made everyone believe your story; no one thought you were hustling them, that's something else in your favor. Oh and speaking of hustles, did the Guilford Brothers just happen to come in right over those fireworks, or did you haves something to do with it?"

Nick looked at Judy for a long moment, as if he were seeing for the first time. She watched his back straighten up and his ears following suit. Okay, that was good, but there was still one more demon to exorcize.

"But you know what really makes me proud Nick? Even after what happened with that fire-hose yesterday, when you realized what the Guilfords were planning you never hesitated and you never doubted yourself-not for a second."

She saw him wince as if she'd jabbed him with thorn. Just she'd suspected, the fire-hose episode was still eating at him; that was why he'd kept to himself while they'd been visiting Uncle Terry.

"It takes a lot to come back from your mistakes," she said, "Believe me, I know." She did not elaborate and did not need to; both of them knew she was making reference to her press-conference fiasco from two years previously.

And speaking of the press...

"You can do this Nick. You can face those reporters; I know you can. Because you ARE a hero, and you know I'd never tell you that if I didn't think it was true.

His response to this was a noise that might have been a growl, a sigh, or possibly all of the above.

And then he gave her that guilty-little-fox-cub look again

"Carrots, I just don't think I'm ready..."

Judy sighed and tried not to thump her foot. "Oh-kayyy Nick, then we'll do this the hard way."

She fetched him a glare that could penetrate tank armor.

"Nicholas Piberius Wilde, you get that bushy-tailed fanny perpendicular and go talk to the press right now!"

He began to wither again.

"Judy please..."

She spun him around and pushed him towards the door, planting a foot in his backside for good measure.

"You heard me fox, MARCH!"

When Nick got to the front of the hospital the number of reporters waiting to talk to him had increased dramatically if not exponentially. Almost immediately, he saw an axis deer tap his camera sheep on the shoulder, at the same time aiming his microphone in the red fox's direction. What happened next reminded him of the fireworks barrage last night. In the blink of an eye, another mike was pointing at him, and then another and another...and then it seemed like a thousand microphones were tilting in his direction. It made him wonder, for a wry moment, if he should ask for a blindfold before... 'Ready...Aim....'

He glanced nervously over his shoulder and saw that Judy Hopps had shed her 'stern schoolmarm' fursona and was offering him a thumbs-up. And now off to the side, visible to him but not to the press contingent, he could see Conor and Erin were also watching him. The white furred bunny's nod was encouraging, but the young silver-fox's flinty gaze and half smile held a message that couldn't have been clearer if he'd chalked it on a picket sign, 'Better you than me.'

"Well at least he's honest about it," Nick told himself, then took a short breath and pushed his way through the door.

All at once, he was nearly bowled over by a tsunami of questions; an unpleasant sensation to say the least, but at least it gave him an excuse to stall for a few seconds.

"One at a time! Please...one at a time!" he protested raising his paws, "I'll answer some of your questions; just give me a few seconds, okay?" To show what he meant, Nick began moving towards the makeshift podium. The uproar quieted to a noisy hubbub as his feet creaked against the hastily erected steps, but he knew the lull was only temporary. As if to emphasize this fact, another grumble of thunder sounded in the distance.

All right, the first thing he needed to do was take control, talk first, before anyone could hit him with a question. Only...what the heck was ne supposed to say? He had no idea.

"All right, tell them that."

He turned to the bank of jury-rigged mikes and cleared his throat.

"Ladies and gentlemammals, you'll forgive me if I don't make any opening remarks. As I think you can understand, I haven't had much in the way of free time over the past 24 hours."

A low murmur of amusement spread through the crowd. All right so far so good, but where did he go from here? Almost as if in answer to that query, he spotted a familiar, striped face in the front row.

"Bill Diggs, I could almost kiss you." He thought, and then pointed at the badger.

Diggs stood up, nodded, and introduced himself. With his natty suit and straw fedora he looked like a relic from the time when reporters used to call in thier stories on land-lines, (using phones with rotary dials.)

"Officer Wilde, I don't think there's a cop..." the badger grinned self-consciously, "...or an EX-cop between here and Zootopia that doesn't recognize that as one heckuva piece of police work on your part. Nonetheless there are a few unanswered questions remaining. As I understand it, you first began to suspect that something was amiss when you overheard a Jerry Guilford's son, Craig speaking with him on his cell phone. Is this correct?"

"Yes, that's right." Nick answered the badger, and yes it was; but that wasn't Diggs' real question, the real one was his next query.

"Then can you clear up something for us, Officer Wilde. How is it that you came to be in that particular place at that particular time?"

If they'd been alone, Nick would have kissed the badger. Bill Diggs had just taken what was essentially the toughest question of the day and turned it into a softball, (and also gotten it out of the way right in the beginning...yes!)

"How did I...?" Nick started to say, preparing to fall back on his tried and true method of answering a reporter's query with a question of his own. No, not this time, he decided...and in that instant, he knew exactly what to say.

"In all honesty Bill, I don't know how that happened." He told Diggs, "But I do know why it happened; I had left the dance because I felt depressed and wanted to be alone or a while." He looked the badger straight in the eye. "Really alone, if you know what I mean." Diggs nodded and began making notes; he knew all right. Not only a former cop, but also, like Nick, of a solitary species, he knew very well the feeling of not wanting ANYBODY around.

It did not, however, stop him from asking a follow-up question.

"Can you tell us why that was?"

"Because of the mistake I made earlier in the day," Nick answered him without batting an eye, "when I and my partner tried to stop Terry Haredigg's rampage with a firehose. I'm sure everybody here knows how that turned out."

Not everyone did remember the firehose incident apparently.

"Terry...Haredigg?" a sheep in the second row asked him. Before Nick could respond, a female impala in a pants suit beat him to it.

"The bunny that went savage yesterday, Walt."

"Oh."

"That's right," Nick said, taking advantage of the break. "Oh and let me say very quickly, I just came from Mr. Haredigg's room and I'm happy to report that he's awake and talking, showing absolutely no after-effects from his, errr, episode."

This was met with a furious scribbling of pens and jotting of notes on tablets....and Nick felt his ears go up. Without even trying, he had steered the presser into safe waters. All he had to do was let things continue in this direction and...

He glanced over his shoulder again and saw Judy watching him through the double-doors...and knew that he couldn't; he would not shy away from what he knew he should say...even if it wasn't what he wanted to talk about.

He turned back to the microphones.

"But...you can get that from the doctors later. Right now...well I'd been feeling bad about it all day and by the time the dance started, the Carrot Days Festival just didn't seem like the place where I belonged...and so I left, just kind of went wandering up into the hills."

He took a short breath and then continued.

"If you really want the truth, I have no idea how I ended up where I did. Maybe I sensed something, maybe I smelled something, maybe it was just pure chance, I don't know. What I do know is that however it happened I was that particular spot right then, I'm very glad and very grateful that things worked out that way."

There, Nick thought, they'd either believe him or they wouldn't; in any case he'd told the truth (mostly.)

He pointed to another reporter, a caribou in a sport-shirt.

"Officer Wilde, Lee DeNally, ZNBC," he introduced himself while, rising to his feet, "Sir, how did you come to be aware that the Guilford Family owned a crop-dusting service?"

Nick smiled; this was a question he could answer without having to prevaricate.

"Well when my partner and I first arrived at the Carrot Days Festival, it seems we showed up right after the Guilfords had been turned away by security; everyone was talking about it. Not being from around here, I had no idea who Jerry Guilford was and so I asked. That was how I found out that his family owned a crop service-and it was also when I heard about their troubles with Commissioner Fielding over that contract to spray for illegal catnip farms; the one that he cancelled."

More jotting of notes followed and then Nick moved quickly to head off any follow-up. For the moment at least, he needed to keep things moving in the direction he wanted.

"And also..." he said, "When I came across Craig Guilford and his girlfriend later on, they were sitting on the roof of a truck marked, 'Sky-Yote Crop Services.' You don't have to be Stephen Hogging to connect those dots."

"But what made you think that they might be up to no good, Officer Hopps?" another reporter, a mountain lioness asked. "They could have just been parking."

"Was it because he was a coyote?" the sheep from earlier queried.

Nick felt his ears go back and he fixed the ram in his gaze.

"I'm sorry, you are..?"

"Walt Carder, Breitbark News. Was that the reason you suspected him, Officer Wilde?"

Nick suppressed a growl; Breitbark, it figured. He would have to choose his next words very carefully, making sure they couldn't be twisted or taken out of context.

"Oh well, at least he's not from InfoWarthog," the red fox told himself, and then proceeded to speak very crisply.

"Mr. Carder, as I'm sure you noticed, I myself happen to belong to a species that's subject to a lot of undue suspicion. Even now if I walk into store where I'm not known-while I'm out of uniform-I can almost always count on being trailed by a security guard. No one knows better than I do how it feels to be wrongly tagged as a perp, simply on the basis of their species. So the answer to your question is no, it wasn't because he was a coyote."

Before Carder could ask a follow up, Nick turned back to the cougar, becoming much more accommodating in his manner.

"In answer to your question, Graig Guilford and his girlfriend weren't just parking; they were checking out the Big Dance through a spotting scope and a pair of binoculars. Believe me; that would have been enough to make any police officer suspicious, regardless of their species," he shot another glance at Walt Carder, "And as a matter of fact, Amanda Hill is another fox. If I'd been on duty and Bunnyburrow were my jurisdiction, I might even have confronted them."

"In which case, Jerry Guilford might have taken off for the Carrot Days Festival right then," another voice pointed out.

"Yes, but that's not what happened," Nick answered curtly and then pointed to someone else he recognized, Whitney Miner, the ZNN reporter who had interviewed Judy earlier.

"Officer Wilde," the ring-tailed cat asked him, "what is your opinion regarding the ongoing dispute between the Burrow County Sheriff's Department and Mr. Jack La Peigne?"

Nick took a short breath before answering. Okay, now was the time to fall back on rhetorical questions.

"What do I know about the conflict between Mr. La Peigne and the Sheriff's Office?" he said, "Not very much, I've been busy making statements all..." He looked at his watch; whoa, 2:30 already? "...since this morning," he corrected himself, "But I can tell you what I saw last night, and what I saw was everyone pulling together to try and avert the attack, The Burrow County Sheriff's Department, Jack LaPeigne, Chip Fielding, everyone did their part."

"Can you elaborate?" Miner asked him and it seemed like every reporter in the gathering was craning their neck forward. Like it or not, he now had their undivided attention.

"Yes, I can, let's start with Jack LaPeigne. " Nick said, "When I asked him why the Guilfords might be targeting him, he said right up front that it was because he'd served them with that foreclosure notice fursonally, he never tried to dissemble, never tried to deflect. And knowing that, knowing just how badly the Guilford brothers wanted his pelt, it allowed us to deceive them into making their spray run directly over the fireworks battery."

"Yes, how did you accomplish that?" a pig with KZBC wanted to know.

"I had my compatriot send Jerry Guilford a message telling him that was where to find Jack La Peigne." Again the truth...just not the whole truth; Nick could only hope that no one would ask him how he'd managed it or who, exactly, had delivered that message.

No one did, but the follow up question wasn't much better.

"Hold on, you used Jack La Peigne as bait?" Yep, THERE was the reporter from InfoWarthog... troublemaking jerk! "Did he even know what you were doing?"

"No...I used his name as bait." Nick corrected the aardvark with a mocking edge to his voice, "Jack La Peigne was actually nowhere near that location; he was elsewhere, directing his security fursonell in helping to evacuate the dance. That's another place where he did his part."

"And the Sheriff's Department?" Whitney Miner asked, shooting an annoyed glace at the aardvark and pig for trying to hijack his line of questioning.

"They were right there, helping with the evacuation as well." The red fox pointed out, "And the plan to use those fireworks could never have happened without their approval. I may have given the order to light off those rockets, but that was only after a Sheriff's Deputy told me 'go'."

Once again, this was the truth, just not the entire truth.

"And what about Chip Fielding?" the ring-tailed cat asked him.

Nick heaved a short breath; at last, another easy question.

"Chip Fielding was the animal who made the announcement that the power couldn't be restored." The red fox answered him, "and he made it while standing center stage; that was practically ground zero folks, and yes, he knew the Guilfords were coming."

"About that, Officer Wilde." A bunny asked him, "Oh I'm sorry Chet Stamp, The Hoofington Post. Sir, what was the rationale behind cutting the power in the first place?"

Nick smiled again, if that question wasn't quite as easy as the last one, it was at least workable.

"We felt it was the best way to get everyone to evacuate without causing a panic. Obviously we couldn't just tell them about the coming attack, and if we'd instructed everyone to leave without giving them ANY reason...well I think you can guess how that would have worked out. Also, dousing the lights took away the Guilford brothers' navigation point. We had to do everything thing we could to stall them while we tried to get everyone out."

He braced himself for what he knew was coming next; HOW did they manage to get the power turned off? The answer to that question, 'with Conor Lewis's help' was one he couldn't give and the covering response, that Finnick had done the deed was somewhat less than credible.

No one asked it. Instead an armadillo raised a pencil.

"Officer Wilde Ernie Ballinger, ZPR. Sir what is your reaction to the news that Jerry Guilford is planning to file a lawsuit against you, for the injuries he and his brother received when they crashed landed into that irrigation pond?"

Nick felt his ears go up; this was news to him. And then his mouth stretched backwards in a long, feral, foxy smirk. "What is my reaction Mr. Ballinger? Let me put it this way." He stretched out his arm with the pawlm turn upwards, and then beckoned with all three fingers in the traditional martial artist's challenge to a fight. And then he said, "Someone asked me a moment ago about the dispute between Jack La Peigne and The Burrow County Sheriff's Department; which one was most responsible for what nearly happened last night? Should Jack La Peigne have put that house under surveillance? Should the Sheriff's Office have acted sooner? I'd like to remind everyone that none of that would have been necessary if Jerry Guilford hadn't been planning to launch that spray-bomb attack in the first place. If he wants to sue me, let him try, I'm not afraid of that coyote...OR his lawyers."

A big drop of water hit the podium then, followed by a boom and a rumble. When Nick glanced upwards for a second, he saw the sky had turned to lead.

Yes, just the excuse he needed. He smiled sardonically.

"Well, ladies and gentlemammals, it looks like somebody up there is telling me that this is all the time we have right now. So, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll just move away from all these live electrical wires before the thunderstorm hits. Thank you and good afternoon."

He hopped down from the podium and scurried back through the hospital's front entrance to where Judy and the others were waiting.

"Well, what do you think, was I okay?" he asked her.

Judy just stared at him goggle-eyed for a moment, and then she threw a fist in the air and whooped

"Okay? Okay! Nick, you crushed it." And then she threw her arms around her partner and gave him a quick hug.

"What the bunny said, you owned it out there, big guy," Conor Lewis agreed, lifting a paw to give his fellow fox a high five.

"Yeah, are you the same fox who was scared to go out there a minute ago?" Erin Hopps was staring with her nose twitching. Outside, behind her, the rain was descending in hogsheads and the reporters were scrambling for cover.

Nick looked from one face to the other, feeling suddenly very tired.

And then, finally, he let his gaze settle once more on Judy.

"Carrots? Let's go home."

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Last chapter's Easter Eggs: reference to the great Mouse Detective and to Goofy's alter ego Super Goof. (He used to toss an old softball over and over whenever he wanted to think.)

And yes, there IS a shopping mall in Bunnyburrow, it's visible in the upper left-center of the title pic. (Concept drawing by Matthias Lechner.)