Sunderance Chapter 25 Part 1: Scout's Honor (Patreon)

There were five items on the table.

The most openly familiar was the bottle of Meerkat single malt scotch, aged twenty-five years in an oak cask. Lovingly crafted for the more sophisticated alcoholics with the money to spend on it, the unassuming label looked no different than the swill that would cost a meager fourteen Bucks to the casual observer. But as anyone who knew anything about the fine art of drinking knew, the price tag on this particular bottle was not for the timid nor for weekend drinkers. Which made the shot glass sitting beside it, filled to the brim with the fragrant and precious amber liquid, all the more offensive. Especially for those who understood that the small amount in the glass – which came to a value of one hundred and thirty Bucks - would go untasted.

There were sunglasses there as well, which were also of an expensive brand. Not a ‘name brand’ as most thought of them, such as iCarrot or Snarlbucks, companies who were able to charge insane amounts of money for half-assed products based on their name alone. This was the sort of branding that one went to when they were willing to spend real money on something high quality, something that was known in certain circles to be the best for the right price. They were very good at what they had been designed to do - keep bright light from hurting the eyes of the wearer. And they were just as effective at their true purpose – keeping those eyes from being seen.

Between the bottle and the glasses sat the armaments.

The holster was custom made to fit the owner, in the same way a good suit was custom fitted for the one who would wear it, with special modifications made for the types of arms it would be carrying. The cured mantis leather held with no engravings that identified the creator, and there were spots on the edges of the holster itself that were rubbed smooth and darkened with the signs of long-term use. Not a throwaway item, however, as the leather was oiled and cleaned on a regular basis.

Currently in one holster nudged up against the sunglasses was a SP-01 Phantom handgun, heavily modified. It wasn’t the most expensive gun on the market but it was easy enough to modify, acquire, and maintain with a reliable semi-automatic, single action, and – not entirely legally – fully automatic firing options. Rather than the standard polymer, however, the gun had been outfitted with a custom tempered steel frame and textured wooden grips. This both increased the handling in trained hands and allowed the gun to fire hot longer in a drawn-out fight. With sights that were configured with rear straight ledges to allow for one pawed close-range operation, a carefully shaved hair trigger and an eighteen round magazine, it was the perfect firearm for a mammal that needed to be prepared for anything.

At the rear of the holster was the baton. It was something of an enigma, as weapons went. Not exactly the most popular or deadly weapon available. Too long and thick to be easily concealed, prompting the customization of the holster to allow for easy carry. The damage it was capable of against mammals with such thick bone structures as under-prepared tiger assassins were in part due to the fact that it was heavier than it looked. The polished wood exterior was a guise, one that hid the carbon steel core that added weight to every impact in paws that understood how to use it effectively.

Every one of the items on the table seems to spell out some part of the mystery of the fox who sat across from her, a mystery that she needed to be spelled out in terms that would allow her to understand what part he had to play in Zootopia. It did matter that no one seemed to know who he was, except for the most powerful people in the city. One of whom, from what she had already guessed from the delivered cars and polar bear entourage, was the biggest crime boss in the city. Then there was a mysterious information broker who lived in a technological marvel under the city-owned DMV somehow, followed closely by a pimp who had managed to maintain the only brothel left in the city and apparently supplied arms. And then there was the Administrator herself, who was almost as mysterious as Nick from her tower on high. Not only did they all seem to know him, but they all also seemed to react to him with equal parts respect and affection.

She needed to know why. She needed to know why, just as much as she needed to know why the baton sitting on the table bore the same mark that had been written in blood as the dying act of a very powerful General and member of the Council.

“My name is Nicholas Piberius Wilde,” he began, breaking the silence so suddenly that she flinched slightly, her nose twitching as she watched him uneasily.

“The Wildes,” she murmured, feeling a roiling in her gut as she remembered the story that had rocked the entire city and beyond. Affluent, well-liked, and just entering the political theater in a bid to bring change to the city. Mr. Wilde was in a bid to run for the seat of Mayor while Mrs. Wilde had put herself into the race for a seat on the Council. It had been a decade after the events that the case had crossed her desk, in the form of a cold case that was likely to never be closed. “That can’t be right. All of the Wildes are dead.”

“Missing, technically,” he corrected, taking the one hundred and thirty Buck glass of scotch and placing it in front of him. He rolled the glass between his paws slowly, looking into it as if seeing the past in the ripples with his ears pinned flat against his skull. “Presumed dead. My parents are dead, of course. Butchered by what the ZPD liked to call ‘a politically motivated assassination’ while I hid in the closet. The assassins weren’t looking for us, obviously. They were only interested in my parents.”

“Us.”

She said this not in the form of a question as she remembered browsing files of the missing Wilde children. Speculation had ranged from sold into slavery to simply in hiding, though the most popular opinion was that they were dead and the bodies had been disposed of more carefully. Dead kits tended to drive investigations to last longer due to public sympathy, after all. But the cold case file had been something she had seen in passing and even now she couldn’t remember if the name of one of the missing children had been Nicholas. Though now, obviously, it was.

“Yes, ‘us’,” he confirmed with a short nod, raising the glass to breathe in deeply once with a look of intense longing on his face before he set it down again and looked at her with sharp green eyes that were surprisingly focused. “A younger me and my little sister, Neveen.”

It struck her like a blow then, in more ways than one. The reason he called her by a different name than what was on record as her legal name. Not something that would be hard to change, and burry with the right connections. Or enough money. It also explained her drive to change the city, as her parents had wanted to do.

“I didn’t call the police,” he said, settling back in his chair in a way that almost managed to make him look relaxed. “Police were for small things, like annoying protestors outside of the gates or a sound in the middle of the night. For something tangible, my father had told me to call a friend of the family who I had always just called Papa. You would know him as Mr. Big.”

“Which explains the polar bears,” she murmured, mostly to herself even though she never took her eyes off of her. He seemed to take her lack of surprise as a cue to the continue.

“Papa… Mr. Big carted us off that night before the police were even called, assuring us that he would do everything in his power to find out who had done it, and make them pay. Young as I was, a part of me believed that he meant to help the ZPD in their investigation, even if that naiveite was short lived. In the end, on both legal and not-so-legal fronts, nothing came of it.”

He grew silent again as she watched him, feeling a deep sympathy that threatened her need to know everything that he knew. Her instinctive desire to tell him that he didn’t need to go on was suppressed by her lawyer’s desire to get to the truth behind what was happening in the city. And to know more about the fox that haunted her dreams.

“Neveen obviously didn’t take it well,” he continued just as she had been prepared to press him to go on. “She didn’t talk to anyone for days. Weeks. For months she just wandered the mansion – Big decided to keep us close at hand rather than sending us to a safe house. Not a lot of mammals are brave enough to try to breach security comprised of the largest predators in the world – looking lost. And I wasn’t helping her, because I needed help myself. I just kept pushing at Papa for more information, demanding to know why he wasn’t do anything. Pretty typical example of the blame game on my part, all of which he tolerated with a benevolent.

“When my sister did talk, finally, it was to ask me why I let it happen. Why I had let our parents die.”

“How could you have prevented it?” Judy asked, her muzzle turned into a frown as she rested her paws on the table to lean a little closer to him. “You were just a kit. How could she expect you to stop what happened?”

“Because I made a promise that I wasn’t able to keep,” he replied, ear twitching slightly before he waved a paw towards the baton on the table between them. Her eyes were drawn to the crest, the image of that crest drawn in blood filling her mind before she dismissed the instant question. It would wait, which it did when he continued. “My father was always big on being able to defend yourself and those close to you, so from a young age he started to teach me to do just that. And me? I was always closest to my sister. So, in typical big brother fashion, as soon as I thought I was a tough guy after a few lessons with father, I started to brag. And it’s not hard to convince a young vixen that her older brother is the strongest mammal alive.”

“So, you promised her you would protect… Who? Everybody?”

“Kits,” he shrugged, leaning back almost limply in his chair as emerald eyes held hers. “We all say and do stupid things when we’re young. Most of the time, it doesn’t come back to bite you on the ass as hard as it did mine. She blamed me for our parent’s death, and at that age, I believed it. I am a little more mature now – though not much – and I know that she was pushing her anger at me because she couldn’t aim it towards the mammals who had murdered our parents, but at the time… I believed it. I’d failed them.”

“Oh, Nick,” she said, ready to offer denial and comfort as she shifted in her seat only to have him wave it off with a testy hiss between his teeth.

“Don’t,” he said simply, causing her to settle back into her chair with an ache in her chest that refused to go away even as he continued in a bland tone.

“What happens when you convince a kit that it was his own weakness that killed his parents? I don’t think that was her intent, but it was the result of her anger. Before long, I was able to convince Big that I needed to continue the training my father had started, by which I meant that I needed teachers. Sparing partners. A gym. I admit that I took advantage of his desire to help me cope and ended up with the best the mob’s substantial money could buy. Still don’t exactly feel bad about it, to be honest,” he said, a brief grin fluttering across his muzzle before it faded away when his eyes became serious again. “I trained constantly. Stupidly, at first. I was belligerent and angry, telling every instructor presented to me that they were teaching me wrong because they weren’t teaching me like my father. I still managed to learn, though.

“This went on for years,” he said, turning his attention to the glass again as his expression went blank and his ears just sort of… Hung on his head. She could see no expression of any kind for a long moment before he continued in a low tone. “During which, Neveen and I drifted apart. I didn’t notice it, because I had convinced myself that everything I was doing was for her. Stupidly. Not even noticing that sometimes we didn’t see each other for weeks at a time, and when we did there was always a cold sort of resentment from her. Maybe somewhere along the way, her anger was less about our parents and more about the brother who had abandoned her? I’m not sure. I just know that one day, Papa came to my room and asked me where my sister was.”

She watched him draw a deep breath as he raised his head and leaned back in the chair, his eyes showing that there was a great deal of emotion in the male even if his expression showed none of it. It was clear then, why he wore the glasses. His shell wasn’t perfect, and he certainly wasn’t the cold and emotionless figure that he often tried to portray. And seeing his eyes, she could hear the strain in his voice when he spoke.

“I never saw her again, until today.”