The Z-Files 1 (Patreon)

@Piedunk has been asking for some Nick and Judy fanfic for a while, so here's our favorite fox and bunny pair as Fox and Scully (sounded kinda close to bunny).

———

Dana Judy Scully padded her way to the basement, past the records room, down another flight of stairs, through a disused boiler room, two dusty storage rooms, and to a closet with a flickering fluorescent light. It wasn’t an office; it was an oubliette—a place they had tossed Nicholas Mulder so they could forget about him. The tiny space was crammed full with a cheap metal desk, two ancient chairs, four locking filing cabinets, and a smattering of trophies. Pinned to the walls, Nick had collaged a thousand photos from hopeless cases, so they covered every square inch not consumed by his favorite poster.

The poster—the only thing approaching a decoration—was a grainy black and photo of a bull being levitated up toward a hovering flying saucer. Splashed across the base of the image, bold, capital letters spelled out “I want to believe”.

When Judy entered the office, she stopped in front of the poster and stared at it for many long seconds before addressing the single, red-furred occupant, “Why are they abducting him butt-first?”

“Hmm?” asked Mulder without looking up from a computer that went obsolete at least twenty years earlier.

“The cow on this poster,” she asked, “why is he being abducted butt-first, fox?”

“I have a name,” Nicholas said, finally looking up.

“I’m aware,” said Judy, her face impassive.

The fox sighed. “He’s being abducted butt-first for three reasons,” he explained. “First, bovines have broad, heavy chests, and the few physicists who have studied abductions feel that it’s likely that a tractor beam designed to lift smaller mammals would have a very difficult time grabbing hold of such a large muscle mass.”

He sat back in his seat and sipped from a black coffee mug. “Secondly, it’s a reference to the case of Charles O’Dell who was allegedly abducted in the winter of 1957 and not seen again until the summer of ’58. When interviewed by local authorities, he claimed to have been abducted butt-first … before eventually recanting that he had been abducted in the first place.”

Mulder said nothing more, so the grey bunny stared at him with purple eyes before lifting her hands. “And the third thing?”

The fox smiled and set his mug back down before returning his attention to the green phosphor screen. “It’s funnier that way.”

Judy groaned. “Why did you message me?”

“We have a case!” the fox said with a grin.

“No, we don’t,” she grunted. “You don’t have cases. You have…”

He perked up when the rabbit’s voice trailed off. “I have what?”

“I don’t know,” grunted Judy in frustration as she flopped onto the cracked, teal Naugahyde covering the office’s guest chair. “Diversions? Distractions? Anything to keep you out of the bureau’s fur.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, bunny,” he grunted, tapping a few more keys on his keyboard.

“I have a name,” she said.

“I’m aware,” he replied with a grin. “But we do have a real case. Six bodies aboard a transport ship—spotted by the coast guard and tugged to Zootopia harbor.”

Judy frowned. “Is the entire crew accounted for?”

“Yup,” said Nick, “all six of them.”

She shrugged. “Ghost ship. Sounds like a case for the coast guard, not the FBI.”

“Died of hunger, died of thirst, then yes, I’d agree with you,” Nick said, “but the entire crew had been strangled.”

“I stand corrected,” said Judy. “That does sound like a case for an FBI agent. So, why are you on it?”

Mulder frowned at the slight. Eventually he sat back in his chair, the springs creaking loudly. “I suppose because the only suspect we have has been dead for five thousand years.”

# # #

Mulder shone the flashlight this way and that, examining every dark corner of the ship’s hold while Scully read through records in a manilla folder. “Is there a reason,” he asked, “why you’ve been hassling me non-stop since being assigned as my partner?”

“Because I don’t want to be your partner, fox,” she grumbled, “and I don’t know who I could have pissed off to get assigned to you.”

Mulder ducked low and aimed the flashlight behind a pallet. “And that’s my fault because…?”

Judy was silent a long time as she flipped between photos. Mulder was pretty certain that she wasn’t going to answer at all, but she surprised him. “I’ve read your files, fox. What you do…” her voice trailed off and she returned to her photos for a while, “it isn’t investigator work.”

“No?” asked the fox. “What is it then?”

“Investigators… Serious investigators,” she corrected herself, “would look at this case and come to the logical conclusion that there had been a seventh mammal present—whether an unofficial member of the crew, stowaway, or boarder.”

“And where would our serious investigators conclude that the murderer went,” asked Mulder, “once he finished strangling the entire crew?”

Scully shrugged. “Lifeboat?”

“Accounted for.”

“Swam away?”

Nick crossed his arms and stared at the grey bunny. “A sloth, a fox, two squirrels, an elk, and a hyena were all strangled by what … an otter?”

She scowled. “No, probably not. Transferred to another ship? Marooned himself? Leapt into the ocean to drown?”

“Perhaps,” Nick said as he returned to searching the hold.

“But not you,” Scully sighed. “I know you’re going to turn this into something supernatural, going to say the mummy’s curse did it.”

“Of course,” he said, returning to her side, “because you know everything there is to know about me.”

Judy scowled. She closed the file and pressed it hard against her chest, refusing to reply. She stared at the gold inlaid sarcophagus laying exposed in the open crate before her. “Well, someone opened this crate.”

Mulder touched a rectangular indentation in the rim of the crate. “Well, I’m certain you’ll be disappointed that I’m not fitting your perfect mental image of me, but that’s the sort of mark a crowbar leaves. It looks like the crate was opened from the outside—not pushed open from the inside.”

The rabbit smiled. “Actually, I’m glad you noticed that,” she said. “I was a little worried you’d get all excited, and I’d be left responsible for bursting your bubble.”

Mulder gave her a little smile before turning back to stare at the coffin. “Sure is gorgeous.”

“It is,” Judy agreed. “How old do you suppose it is?”

The fox shrugged. “No idea. The shipping manifest didn’t say.”

They stared a little longer before Mulder reached over the crate’s rim. “Well, let’s see if our suspect is at home—”

“Don’t do that!” shouted a voice behind them.

The agents spun, and Nick shone the flashlight on the speaker. Blinking and shielding his eyes, a canid in a blue sweater vest and red tie stood in a gap between two crates.

“Who are you?” asked Judy when her partner lowered the beam.

“My name is Dr. Jeremy Rashid,” he said with a middle eastern accent. He looked like a coyote but shorter, scrawnier. “I’m from the Zootopia Museum of Antiquities. We’ve come to pick up the sarcophagus.” He pulled out a card and handed it to the rabbit.

“This is a crime scene,” said Judy. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“And this sarcophagus is evidence,” added Nick.

The jackal rolled his eyes. “This is a priceless artifact, and it has to be kept in a controlled environment. It will be destroyed if you stick it in your evidence locker for a year.”

Scully raised an eyebrow. “It’s thousands of years old, right? And you’re worried about a short stay—”

“It spent thousands of years in an underground vault in the desert,” said Rashid. “That’s about as far from the salt and humidity of the docks that you can get.”

The rabbit squinted. “Then why send it by boat?”

The jackal sighed. “That was not my decision. You’d have to ask the director at the Cairo museum. But that’s why I insisted on a sealed outer box, which I see has already been breached. Please officers, the clock is ticking every moment the artifact remains exposed.”

“All right,” Nick said, turning back to stare at the gold inlay.

“All right?” asked Judy.

“Of course,” he said. “Risking the destruction of evidence is even more inexcusable than losing custody of it. I presume you have some paperwork…”

“Of course,” said the jackal with a smile. He pulled a folded sheet from his shirt pocket and Judy read it over.

“Hey doc,” said Nick, pointing at the sarcophagus. “Can you read that cuneiform all over this box?”

“Hieroglyphics,” Rashid corrected him while he waited for Judy to return the paperwork. “And of course, I can.”

“Does it say anything about a curse on anyone who defiles the tomb or something?”

Judy glared at the fox.

“I’m certain it will somewhere on the sarcophagus,” Dr. Rashid said as he tucked the sheet back in his pocket. “They all do. That’s the Ancient Egyptian equivalent of a software license agreement.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BVt-9gpxjgvIBDeHZRkDSwWPE8CTyStjBDV-fWBo-5U/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?