what's another night on mars? {Judy}

[Nick Wilde]

Nick had walked by a few buildings as he'd made his way around this place. For the most part, they were all in various states of disarray, and he hadn't even been going inside of them, just walking up to the windows, dusting off the glass, and shining his flashlight inside before moving on. He wasn't even sure what made him actually go into this one, but once he pushed his way through the door, he had an inexplicable urge to explore the whole place. Regrettably, once he made his way into the lower floor, he could see that he wouldn't be going any higher; the upper floors were visibly collapsing. If he were still a fox, maybe he'd take his chances; he was pretty fast, and might be able to dart around up there, but he wasn't nearly comfortable enough in this body yet to be sure he wouldn't just fall to his death as soon as the floor wasn't steady. 

It was light enough in here that he didn't need his flashlight, so he got out his baton instead, just using it to poke at things, and so he didn't have to deal with his weird hands being empty. Somehow, they seemed even weirder if he wasn't holding anything. He pushed at a broken chair, kicking it out of his way, and turned in a slow circle, trying to take in every possible detail he could from the building around him. There were so many colors that he had no way to describe in his own mind, and they didn't compensate for all the things he couldn't hear or smell, but they definitely gave him enough to focus on as he walked deeper into the building. 

There was a loud crash somewhere off to his left, and Nick flinched, reaching instinctively for his radio before reminding himself that it wasn't going to do any good. He hadn't been able to bring himself to take it off, though, no matter how useless it might be at the moment, because it was his only real connection to the world he'd left behind. For one brief moment, Nick thought to himself how different his life would be if he'd never met Judy Hopps, if he'd just kept running all his little scams around the city. He certainly wouldn't be here poking around an abandoned building in a weird furless body wondering if he was in fox purgatory or whatever this place was. 

It took him about two seconds to decide he still wouldn't change any of it. She was here somewhere, and he was going to find her, even if he had to look through every single building in this weird semi-abandoned school place, even if he found out at the end that she'd never been here to begin with. He would find somebody who knew how these portals worked and he'd just go through another one, and however many it took until he tracked her down. It wasn't optional; she'd believed in him when nobody else had bothered, and as far as he was concerned, he owed her that much. 

He moved closer to the area he'd heard the crash, and held his baton out in front of him, ready to viciously poke anything that jumped out at him. Despite his readiness, when a bird fluttered up and out of the debris, he jumped about a foot in the air, sinking back against a somewhat dilapidated table as the bird flew off out of the door he'd come through. This was going to take forever, he thought. But still...he wasn't giving up.

[Judy Hopps]

People needed food. Well animals needed food, and thus far people had proven to be similar enough to animals in all the ways that mattered. They had (some) shelter; they were working on answers; that really left getting a steady source of food together. Thus, logically, the next task that Officer Judy Hopps, who seemed to be determined to be some sort of One Rabbit Cleaning Crew (patent pending), would work on was hacking free the Mess Hall.

Said Mess Hall lacked light, which was a bit of a problem. Judy did have her light (and her phone, but she was saving that thing's battery), but she'd thought she'd solved the problem by locating a switch. Unfortunately, someone had stacked several chairs beneath the switch, or left them there, or whatever. The reasoning hardly mattered: the reality was that there were chairs and vines that Judy now balanced upon while attempting to hit the switch.

She slipped, sending them clattering against one another. The loud noise made her flinch, but she managed to balance on the one. Thankfully she was still fairly small, and balanced enough to perch. Judy nodded, confident that was one more obstacle overcome. She turned to the light, only to pause.

Had her radio just squawked?

She'd kept the thing on, more out of habit than anything else. They were working on power, hence her determination with the light source, and she'd already procured some chargers (though none for her phone just yet). So she'd kept it on. And now she swore she'd heard it squawk. She reached for it, only to pause, shaking her head.

"You're getting in your own head, Hopps," she said, rolling her shoulders. Unfortunately this meant sliding, and she had to hop higher on the chair as it scraped across the floor. She kept balance, perched atop a chair and blocking a light switch. "Rabbit reflexes," she mumbled, twisting and trying to hit the switch now. Maybe she could brush her shoulder against it? See if that got it going?

[Nick Wilde]

The noises kept coming from off in one direction, and Nick pressed onward. Something was making noise back there, something bigger than a bird. Hopefully it wasn't a bird that turned into a gila monster or something incredibly weird like that. He wasn't counting anything out in this place.

Edging around a corner into a darker area, he felt a little nervous; he wasn't particularly eager to get attacked by something that was in here trying to...what, eat? This looked like an eating place. Things got touchy about food, even nice animals sometimes got a little territorial over their meals. What if it was a violent criminal hiding away in here? That would be just his luck. Nick wished desperately that he had backup. But hey, he thought, if it was a vicious burglar or something, they didn't know he didn't have backup. And they didn't know he didn't have any way of contacting anyone else. He grabbed his radio.

"This is Officer Wilde," he said, definitely louder than he would have needed to even if his radio was working. "I hear you, dispatch, confirmed that there are twelve additional officers en route, I will wait to engage the hostile until-" He stopped talking as he finally came into an area with a lot more chairs. Across the room from him, a bunch of them were stacked up, and standing on one, there was...a person. Probably not a vicious criminal, but Nick tried not to judge things on first glance.

"What's going on here?" he said, because it was the only thing he could think of to say. He had the horrible feeling that this was a continuation of his purgatory experience. It was just...developing further. She was going to turn around have a face that was only teeth, or something like that. Maybe he should just be glad he hadn't been wearing a muzzle yet. Although now that he'd thought about it, this place would probably bring it up just to mess with him.

[Judy Hopps]

Was that a voice? Judy frowned, tilting her head to the side. It almost sounded like familiar jargon, like someone calling in a code. Was that something about hostiles?

"You're imagining things," Judy mumbled, twisting again. She just heard police protocol because she wanted to hear police protocol. She had to fight the urge to take a quick glance down at her belt, where she still wore that radio (along with other things; out of uniform but definitely not out of tools). Again she focused on leaning, brushing against the switch just as:

What's going on here?

Judy jumped. She didn't quite mean to; it just sort of happened. One moment, balanced precariously on a chair getting a light. Next, right up in the air, spinning and awkwardly landing. Judy almost fell, but caught herself on the wall (rabbit reflexes), soon she had her baton out and pointed toward him. "I should be asking that!" she said, before swallowing and coughing, steeling her nerves a bit more. "I mean, it's obvious, right? I'm here doing some basic scouting. We're going to need food,' she tapped her baton against the wall, "and this is where they kept it," she jerked her head toward him. "What about you? Why are you here?" He did look a little suspicious. Judy had managed to hit that switch up enough for lights to start flickering.

And yes, they were quite creepy. Good on you for imagining that.

[Nick Wilde]

Well, at least her face wasn't all teeth. He should probably be thankful for the little things. She didn't look like a nightmare, or like she was about to shift into something else awful and horrible. He hadn't meant to startle her, either, but apparently he had, and she was pointing her baton at him, before almost immediately moving on to answer his question. Nick tried to follow her logic; it wasn't that she was talking incredibly fast, or saying things that were hard to understand, but his brain was still putting in overtime trying to get comfortable in this body.

"Food, right," he said, nodding. That made sense. Although... "You know, if there's any food in here, I'm not sure it's gonna be in any condition for eating. I'm here because I heard someone moving around, thought maybe somebody was in trouble."

He glanced back at her baton as she tapped it against the wall, fingers closing tightly around his own where it hung at his side as the lights started flickering eerily overhead. As much as he missed his night vision, he wasn't sure this was a lot better. "Are you a cop?" he asked, nodding towards her baton. There were plenty of reasons she might have hold of a police baton other than being an officer herself, but he couldn't help wondering. She wasn't wearing a uniform, but then, the only part of his uniform Nick was currently wearing was his pants, and without the shirt and jacket, they didn't really stand out.

She had also said we, so he wondered how many people there were around here, how many people were counting on her to find them food. Hopefully not too many, he thought, looking around again. This place definitely didn't look like it had any food in it that he would be interested in himself.

[Judy Hopps]

"Yeah, I thought that too? But there's been reports about supplies that are magically protected, and we're holding out hope," offered Judy, shrugging. The other guy didn't seem overly aggressive, and the way he spoke didn't make him sound all that selfish or anything either. Judy wasn't quite lowering her baton just yet, but she didn't see any reason to be rude. Sure, he wasn't some scared bat creature like Bartok, but that didn't mean he wasn't someone she should be respecting and helping.

Judy slid off the chair as the stranger asked his next question. "I used to be," she said, shrugging. "I guess I would still be here if they're fine with it. Kind of feels wrong to just assume I'm one here without knowing enough," she scanned the stranger again. It occurred to her only after her automatic response that he'd seen the baton and jumped to cop. Not police, not guardsmen, but cop. That meant he'd heard of police before and knew terminology.

"So--" she began, ready to introduce herself when a loud noise sounded from behind the doors. Judy jumped, again launching several feet. As she did, she twisted, now standing almost shoulder to shoulder with the stranger and facing the door. "Cheese and crackers!" she spat, eyes wide. "Did you hear that?" she looked up at the stranger. Surely he had, right?

[Nick Wilde]

Magically protected food. Well, that made about as much sense as anything else in this place did, Nick supposed. Magical food wasn't any weirder than foxes that turned into deer, or portals through time and space that showed up in your city and transported your partner off to who knows where.

She had a good point about the police thing. He hadn't really run into anybody yet to make him feel like he shouldn't be carrying out normal police procedure as he was exploring these buildings, but he also had shed his uniform top a while ago in favor of the t-shirt he wore underneath it, and had it tucked the uniform shirt into the back of his pants instead, so maybe they had come to the same conclusion on that front. This wasn't his city, this wasn't his territory. Heck, this wasn't even his body, what business did he have parading around in uniform like he knew what he was doing?

"Yeah, I get that," he agreed, his eyes still darting around the room, trying to take in what he could of their surroundings in the flickering light from overhead. "Kind of feels a little weird patrolling somebody else's city." He peered up at a spot on the ceiling. "Even if there doesn't seem to be much of anybody here anymore."

The noise from the door seemed to startle both of them. Nick tightened his grip on his baton, and turned to face the door alongside her. "Yeah, I..." He paused for a beat, looking back at her, then to the door, then back at her again. Cheese and crackers he thought, what were the odds that he'd come all this way and find somebody else who said cheese and crackers when they were excited? He couldn't help it, he laughed. He tried to suppress it, because it was probably not a good idea to laugh at imminent danger, but the snort escaped anyway. "Sorry," he whispered, "sorry, let's go check it out."

[Judy Hopps]

Judy would definitely have agreed with Nick's assessment; this didn't quite feel like her city yet. Patrolling still felt natural, and she still wanted to help, to protect these people, to do what she could to make the world better, but it still felt a little off just assuming her role as a police. Maybe that was why she was pushing herself to explore and help out: if she could really do her part, then maybe she could earn that position again.

Which meant facing down the door. She heard the laughter, and she shot the stranger a quick glare. "Right," she said, rolling her shoulders. "I'll go first," she volunteered, not seeming to care about the fact that he was about a foot taller and likely broader. She simply reached down and pulled out a flashlight, clicking it on. Another thud sounded from the door, and Judy felt that urge to turn and sprint away. Her ears may be gone, but she was still a rabbit.

She was also still Judy Hopps.

So Judy moved forward, grabbed the door handle, and pushed...

...and nothing happened.

Well, not quite nothing. Judy scrambled against the floor for a bit, flailing awkwardly with her feet sliding. But the door certainly didn't open. It had been stuck with plants for quite some time now: it wasn't about to just swing open because a tiny ex-rabbit pushed it.

[Nick Wilde]

He definitely deserved that glare. They were here in the middle of an investigation, there might be something terrible and dangerous and threatening on the other side of the door, and he was snickering for reasons she probably couldn't even begin to guess (because they were dumb reasons). And then he was smiling because she wasn't making any progress on that door, but gosh, she sure was trying, wasn't she?

He stepped up next to her and threw his weight against the door with her, wincing slightly at the impact. His shoulder was still a little bruised from busting his way out of the room that weird portal had spat him out in.

"I really hope nothing's waiting on the other side of this to eat us alive," he commented, straining. "That would really suck, coming all this way and then getting eaten by some kind of monster outside the school cafeteria, you know?" It was very like Nick to try and be snarky while he was in the middle of a potentially life-or-death situation; that was just how he coped with the stress of it, but probably this girl didn't know that. She probably thought there was something desperately wrong with him, barging in here, laughing at her turns of phrase, joking about dying while he was trying to break a door down. The least he could do was introduce himself.

"By the way," he said, giving the door one last good push, "I'm-" He didn't get to finish his sentence because the door burst open at that moment, and with a loud yelp, he tumbled out onto the other side.

[Judy Hopps]

"Would be kind of ironic to get eaten to death in the cafeteria," offered Judy, shrugging slightly, which meant her shoulders knocked against the door. Even that had her laughing, even if the laughter was a little more on the nervous side of things. She could appreciate quipping some, she guessed. It kind of reminded her of Nick, who would probably make a snide remark in the face of death. Some of him had rubbed off on Judy, after all. That's what happened when you faced death a few times.

The stranger pushed, and Judy tried to match. The pressure must have worked, because soon both were tumbling into the Mess Hall proper. Unfortunately for Judy, she'd been pressed up against it with her back, meaning she rolled paws over ears into the room. She could feel bits of grass and whatnot clinging to her, and she began flailing.

A wet, gurgling noise made her pause. And she turned, peering into the dark. Some strange noise was coming from the cold storage area... where the power had been turned off. "Is that... is something living back there?" she asked, trying to squint through the darkness and wishing she still had her rabbit vision. At least the endless carrots gave her decent night vision, though it was a shame the flickering lights she'd managed in the earlier hall didn't offer much here.

[Nick Wilde]

Nick put out a hand to try and catch her, but he was already falling himself, coming down hard on one knee and hissing in pain as his kneecap impacted the floor in the hall. He got back up to his feet as quickly as he could, giving a distinctly canine shake as he tried to clean the debris and dust off of his clothes. It just didn't work as well without the whole thick coat of fur, and he resorted to brushing off his pants with his hands.

"You alright?" he asked, reaching down for his flashlight again. Just when he'd thought they might have some decent lighting, here they were back looking into the darkness. "Sorry about that." He flicked his flashlight on and pointed it into the darkness, trying to figure out what it was they were dealing with here. There was a truly awful gurgling noise, and Nick frowned. "What...what was that?"

Nick was torn. He didn't want to run away, although backing away from the gurgling noise certainly seemed like the best option about now. He wasn't about to run off and leave this girl to deal with the situation by herself. But also, if he got eaten by a wild...gurgling thing...he would never find Judy, and he would never be able to report back to Zootopia, and...well, that would truly suck. He looked over at her, trying to get a read for how she was approaching this.

"What do you think?" he asked. There had been a time when Nick preferred to work on his own, when he was determined to not depend on anybody or ask anybody for advice when it came to deciding a course of action. But recently, since he'd been partnered with Judy, he had found that it was nice to have somebody to get a second opinion from, to either verify that you were doing the right thing or call you out when you were about to make a huge mistake. "Is backup an option?"

[Judy Hopps]

Judy waved off the apologies, before bringing her paw to her lips. Whatever that was, it didn't seem to quite realize they were here just yet. The more noise they made, however, the less likely it was that they'd remain hidden from the creature's awareness. It kept right on gurgling, and that unnerved Judy. What sort of thing gurgled? Probably something magical, and Judy really didn't want to let her imagination run wild.

"I think something's alive in there," she said, nodding. "And technically backup's an option. There are knights and wizards here," she readied her club. "But we don't even know what that is yet. The last time something startled me here, it was an adorable bat creature that had recently been turned into a hoo-man. For all we know, that's someone else who got stuck in a fridge and is desperate for help. We have to look."

Judy nodded, taking a few steps forward. "I'll go check it out. You watch my back: there may be something else," strange how every time she was around someone else, Judy felt a sudden surge of bravery. It was so much easier to almost casually stroll toward something unknown thudding in a fridge so long as she had someone watching her back.

[Nick Wilde]

Nick was really not sure what a hoo-man was, but creatures turning into other things, that he had encountered. And he knew what a bat was, obviously, so that just left the one question. "What, um...this is probably a dumb question, but what's a hoo-man?" He was still whispering, and probably shouldn't have been talking at all, but...well, if the gurgle-creature hadn't heard them crash through the door, a little extra whispering probably wouldn't be the tipping point.

And ugh, she was right. If Nick got here and let some innocent student die because he was too scared to confront a gurgle-monster, well, it wouldn't matter if he found Judy because she'd probably never speak to him again anyway. Even worse, he might let this girl and the innocent student stuck in a fridge die. There was definitely no backing out of this one.

"I gotcha," he said, trying to sound more sure about this than he was. "Hey, listen...be careful. I haven't met anybody else around here except for this one really weird fox, so you gotta show me where you found other animals." He held his flashlight and his baton up, and nodded towards the fridge. "Let's do this."

[Judy Hopps]

"Us," whispered Judy back, giving the stranger a slightly apologetic smile. "At least that's what Bartok called it. This strange," she held up her furless paw, turning it slightly, "furless, pink creature. Apparently the portal turns all sentient creatures into one."

She nodded again, before starting to move forward. She'd barely taken a step when the stranger cautioned her to be careful. "A weird fox?" asked Judy. She wanted to stop, to ask further questions. Had Nick followed her in here? And had he somehow not gotten changed? Because a hoo-man would likely think Nick to be quite a strange fox indeed. Judy nodded, determined to ask a little more about that after they'd checked out the fridge.

Judy lifted her hand up, pointed at the stranger, than at her eyes, than at the fridge. Watch out, watch my back, be ready. She crept forward then, easing quietly up to the fridge. "Hello?" she called cautiously. The thudding increased for a moment, and Judy paused, wishing she could perk her ears or even flick them. Hoo-mans definitely lost out with ears. She closed the last few feet between them and the fridge, lifting a hand up to it. She looked to the stranger; no reason to open it without waiting for him. "We're going to opening up, alright?"

[Nick Wilde]

Nick did not know who Bartok was, but hoo-man was as good a word as he could think of for the body he was inhabiting at the moment. "Oh," he said, "yeah, alright, that's way better than 'hairless almost-chimp' or anything else I was going to come up with." So...she wasn't used this body either, huh? Interesting. He wondered what kind of animal she'd been before, but this probably wasn't the time to ask. She also seemed interested in the weird fox, but that could wait, too.

"I'll tell you all about the weird fox after we deal with this gurgle thing, don't worry," he assured her. He followed closely behind her, registering her hand signals without really thinking about it, and nodded in acknowledgment as she motioned for him to get ready. He felt the urge to crouch down - whenever he was worried about something, getting low to the ground was his first instinct, but it was weird in this body, it didn't seem to do as much good.

"Crack 'er open," he said, brandishing his baton in one hand and his flashlight in the other for good measure. "Let's see what we got here." He wanted to say something, give her some kind of message to pass on if she made it out of this gurgle-y situation and he didn't, but it sounded so melodramatic to say If I die, tell my partner thanks for making me a better person. That would sound like he was freaking out, which he definitely was not. Nope. Not freaking out at all.