"Selaxes" over on Fan Ficiton Net has started a quasi-WWII Zootopia story. Of course it has a Nick and Judy in it. And I couldn't resist doing an additional bit. He did a rewrite for FFN to fit the main narritive. This is my initial draft.


Well I got them off my tail just in the nick of time. Thank the Maker for these low clouds. Now, can I throttle back enough before the engine over-heats? And the answer is no. I've got enough altitude to parachute out, but I Really don't like that idea. Nothing is on fire and I still have full control. Lots of fairly level farm land below to land on. Well, away from that town over there. And something without any obvious activity or farmhouse near by. And no one has shown up below the clouds to try and find me. With all the smoke they must have thought I was going to crash, but didn't confirm. Sloppy.

Goggles firmly in place. Let's jettison the canopy. Wuff, forget how noisy the slipstream is even without the engine. There's a nice little plot ahead. Some lines of trees for cover afterwards. Harnesses tight, gun sight out of the way. Might as well disconnect the headset now too. Crank down a little flap. Flair it out and looking good...

Oof! Still upright and nothing broke or caught fire yet. Get out and look around. No one around yet. Guess I don't need my flying helmet, though it could keep my head warmer than my hat. But one must look their best. Get the survival kit. Awfully skimpy, but there isn't the expectation for being off in some wilderness with these missions.

A last look at my ride. Yellow 4 served me well. Last eight of my twelve kills in the thing. Now it will be someone else's tally. And where to go from here?

Officially, I'm supposed to 'raise havoc and fear in the population'. Not as though simply being an enemy aviator, a dreaded predator, dropped in their midst isn't going to cause enough of a fuss. But burning barns and random murder of civilians was not how we were taught before the New Order came to power.

Veterans of the First War talked about how fallen aviators of both sides were offered tea, at least, before being taken off to the cages. Now there is talk of lynch mobs. Well, given how there's Really Bad Things happening, I can't quite blame them. But I'm not about to give anyone special cause to bring me to that kind of nasty end.

Well, head East and South, make the coast, maybe. Steal a boat and on to freedom. Like in the movies. Or just scare the locals, be the boogeymammal for a few days before my luck runs out.

---

Rain again. Can't stay dry enough, nor warm. The only blessing is that the trackers can't follow me, and no one likes being out in the wet, so making some small progress cross-country without being noticed. The trackers, this last time was a pair of wolves, 'race traitors' according to the New Order, are not very good. Watched them from a distance. Spent too much time arguing about what they were sniffing. Or were they sabotaging the effort ever so slightly? Where did their real allegiance lay?

Or was it just wishful thinking? Can't seen to keep a useful though it my head. These damned 'vitamines', pep pills, have helped keep me going, but are going to burn me out. Got the shakes all the time now, and can't seem to sleep, even if I wanted to. And so hungry.

If I wasn't an 'Officer and a Gentlemammal' and not fully indoctrinated in the New Order, would have taken one of the locals a time or two already. But the idea of eating a 'someone' rather than a something... What kind of a hypocrite am I? The improved rations this last year didn't come out of nowhere.

The New Order has been shrewd so far. While on the one hand, they trumpet the supremacy of the Predator and the natural order of things, but make sure that the logical extension of that is kept a bit camouflaged. Ground meats and rich broths, and no bones, the sources kept carefully ambiguous. Won't do to have a former neighbor on your dinner plate.

Heard talk that some infantry field units don't bother with pretext anymore. 'Choice morsels' don't make it to the cages. What have we become? Damn these 'vitamins', get me all mentally squirrel-caging on this. Stuck in a hole, waiting for a chance to scamper another few kilometers, but can't sleep, don't dare on the one hand, can't with this chemistry running through me.

----

How many days has it been? Lost count. Even with the 'vitamins' there have been black outs, chunks of time lost. Feel so sick, so hungry. So weak. Like a kitten with the wheezes. A barn. Take a chance; get out of the rain, just for a few hours....

---

'Belle! Do you smell that?"

"What?" The little brown Girl sniffed, then sniffed again, "Ewwu!"

The older Grey froze. "Belle, be very quiet, and get the others, there is Someone in here."

Belle looked in shock to her older sister as a 'someone' could only mean one of those enemy aviators they'd heard so much about. She scampered out of the barn. Judy found a pitchfork, now not the first time she had confronted the unknown with such, and advanced further into the barn.

There he was, and with the experience of seeing Zootopian pilot officer's uniforms, the enemy flyer was so much different. Instead of the browns and khakis, he was all in grey and black, and a wildcat of some unfamiliar species, though little different in size than that Fox. And along with being filthy, he must have been living under a rock for a good while, and smelled of it; he had an additional unhealthy reek.

She did not have a great nose, rabbits were not the most sensitive sniffers, but could tell there was something more wrong. She fleetingly though he might even be dead, his gaunt face reminded her too much of poor old Mr. Cooper. But she saw a little nostril flair. He was still breathing.

"Judy?" Belle was back, and after picking up a shovel, joined her sister. "I got one of the little ones to get the household. Is this one of the Enemy?" Though only a whisper, the cat's ear swiveled. The two Rabbits backed up suspecting he was about to waken. After a moment with no obvious action, they began to relax when he suddenly bolted upright.

Then looked like he was about to collapse again. He wobbled like someone either very drunk or very ill, rubbing his eyes and trying to sort himself out a bit, seemingly oblivious to the pair of approximately armed rabbits before him. After a moment, he seemed to realize where he was.

"So much for a short nap." His voice a dry rasp. He shook his head and looked to the pair rather mournfully. "Oh dear, at least my captors are a pair of pretties." Then with a clumsy effort, attempted a rather theatrical effort to straighten his uniform. "I'm afraid I'm not at my best at the moment."

He shuddered, was it pain, or was he going to get sick? Though he clearly was in a wretched state, Judy was not going to let her guard down. "You can sit back down if you want. But you're not going anywhere until the authorities come for you." She made a point of the suggestion to sit with the tines of her rather fierce looking pitchfork.

The enemy cat considered for a moment, still awfully wobbly, then - BLAM BLAM BLAM. He had a pistol out and fired over the Rabbit's heads. The sudden and rather unpleasantly loud discharge had the two girls drop their tools and hold their ears in painful shock. The Enemy ran, well, more like quickly staggered, to the barn door. He recoiled from the full bright light of day. Glancing around, he headed to the closest line of trees, but stopped after only a few steps, realizing that the main house, and a swarm of rabbits, were also in that direction.

The next likely cover was a far line to the east, and as he turned, there was a BOOM! He suddenly gave a brief dance of pain, as though stung by bees. "Owie! That Hurts!" had it been at some other time, it would have been almost comical. He briefly regarded his right arm, a score of tiny tears in his jacket told the tale, a shotgun blast at far range. He again tried to run, though more obviously a weak shamble, off to the now impossibly far promise of the trees.

He only got as far as a nearby fence. Momentarily considered climbing it, but was clearly too spent. He collapsed, regarding the advancing crowd of bunnies, almost had to laugh at that, bunnies, and where was his pistol? Must have dropped it when he got shot. He then noticed the small stream of blood coming out of his jacket sleeve. That wouldn't do. He groped for the little first aid kit he still had, tucked into his jacket. Maybe he could wrap up his arm a bit? But he was so tired. Maybe he could just catch his breath, close his eyes for a second....

---

"I say let him bleed out!" The elder Rabbit glared at the fallen Cat, half ready to discharge the other barrel of his shotgun into him point blank.

"But DAD!" Young Jeremy was shocked at the notion of not aiding the dying stranger.

"Considering what likely happened to Virgil, simply doing nothing to this one would be a mercy." Stu snarled, thinking of his Son, and the uncounted other sons who had fallen to the clutches of the Enemy.

There was some agreement in the crowd with that, but it was far from unanimous. While the debate continued and the pool of blood on the ground grew, Belle and Judy came up to the scene, still wincing a bit from the earlier gunshots.

"What aren't you taking care of him?" She asked, realizing the impasse.

"What!?" He almost shot you!"

"No, Dad. He very much didn't. He just fired over our heads to scare us so he could escape." Young Belle at her side, though eyes still as big as saucers in surprise, nodded in support.

Though the earlier contact with the Allied Fox and taken the worst of the edge off of any contact with military predators, having an unambiguous example of the Enemy had the old Rabbit's blood up and Judy knew she needed to talk him down. "Besides, there is a bounty on live prisoners. And likely some military intelligence that can be wrung out of an enemy officer." If she could not play to he father's compassion, she could always count on his practical side.

With the initial rage gone, Stu realized that this dirty and dying thing was not the cause or solution for the anguish he still held in his heart for his missing Son. Too, he looked to the faces around him, and saw that not all the fear there was directed at the stranger.

After a pause, he drew in a loud breath and simply stalked off. But the Enemy was hardly unguarded, along with a whole catalog of farming implements arrayed to strike; elder sister Barbara had the pilot's pistol ready. "This is a really nice piece, wish I could keep it." she mused, though kept a close eye on the unconscious aviator. She was in the Female's Reserves, rather embarrassingly home on maternity leave.

Several of the Hopps clan looked to the Cat. Under his flying jacket he used to have a rather nice formal shirt and the remains of a tie. While the shot gun wounds were numerous and messy it was only the cumulative number that threatened and were quickly dealt with. As Judy and Belle had noticed earlier, along with his simply unwashed pong, he had a nastier and unfamiliar reek to him.

As they examined his possessions, his identity papers said he was a Jon Jonson, a Captain, and they found the last of his 'vitamins'. "That might be what his special stink is from. And how ragged he seems." Barbara explained. "They're a kind of pep pill. One can help keep you awake and alert overnight, or perk you up if you're dragging during the day." She regarded his overall condition again. "I'll bet he's the one they've been looking for since last week, and has been living off them all this time."

Rather than attempt to drag him to the main house or back to the barn, they simply kept him where he lay. The weather was nice for a change and any vehicle that might come for him could as easy approach there as anywhere else.

And in less time than they expected, a military truck appeared, complete with a whole squad of infantry on board, just to make sure. A couple of the troops made the connection between the Hopps farm and the 'capture' of the Fox flyer sometime earlier and there was some small joke about the farm, or perhaps it was one of the Hopps Girls, who was attracting aviator's attentions. There was a bounty for enemy flight crews that would be settled later, as well as assurances that, even as he was The Enemy, he would be properly taken care of. And life on the farm settled back to something approximating normal.

---

So, heaven looked like a hospital room and angels looked like hedgehogs. Could be worse. At least things were approaching normal again. The last, however long it was, must be something like what 'fever dreams' must be like. Little scraps of confusion and pain, nightmares and misery.

But being 'normal' again still wasn't any fun. Still felt absolutely wretched. The shotgun wounds, that must have been real after all, though largely healed, itched something fierce. And there was still the remains of the worst hangover in the world lingering around. But being able to tell night from day and wakefulness from delusion was a major relief.

And there were visitors. A couple of foxes in Zootopian officers uniforms. Still can't quite get over that. No doubt here to ask all kinds of questions. Name, rank, and identity number, of course. And? Obviously, from my outfit, I'm a professional footballer, usually play wing.

Of course I wouldn't know about a '109, 'yellow 4', was that even a thing? Would I know who shot it down? Well if I did, it was likely one of these silly red-tailed fellows. Pesky as flies this time of year. That brought a little smirk from them both.

They press me about what I'd been doing for the week of --- ? Sightseeing? Beautiful country 'round here. Shame about the weather though.

And about the Hopps Barn. You mean the one with the pretty bunnies? Cute enough to eat- And add a frantic, Figuratively! Seeing the level of reaction from them, especially the older one. Got to remember the New Order has really mucked up any number of expressions in very bad ways. No. Seriously, sorry about the poor choice of words! Everyone calms down. Hope I didn't scare them too badly? Of course I wasn't actually going to shoot anyone. What a ridiculous question. I'm an officer, a pilot, like them, not some common killer.

Then out of hospital and off to the cages. Though in this case, it looks like a summer camp that's been hijacked for the duration, cozy cabins with a couple layers of barbed wire fences around the grounds. Rather sullen room mates though. Not how I'd planned to serve out the war, but could do worse.