what's another night on mars? {Judy}

[Judy Hopps]

The description had Judy snorting down a laugh. Definitely not the time to start laughing, but she couldn't quite help it. She'd thought something fairly similar herself, after all, and she still hadn't quite figured out what advantages these hoo-mans had, with their lack of hair. Fortunately they had weird foxes and gurgling fridges to consider. This stranger had her back, and was willing to figure out things with her, which were steps in the right direction. Who knows: Maybe Judy actually better understood this place than he did.

Judy reached up and pulled. AS she did, she heard a loud, gooey, schlerking noise, like trying to pull a large foot out of the mud. Almost immediately it yanked back, and Judy found herself all but slamming into the fridge. She bounced off and back, just as the fridge started to shake and bounce and gurgle all the louder.

"Yeah," she said, reaching down for her club, "I don't think that's another student, unless the students are suddenly gooey," the door was starting to bubble, with this weird greenish, blackish, brackish goo starting to ooze out and around, and something was definitely pushing against the door now.

[Nick Wilde]

Nick yelped, muttered a soft holy flocking sheep under his breath, and jumped back too, still holding his baton out in front of him as if goo would be afraid of a stick. Probably not the most useful weapon, now that he came to think of it. "Oh, if that's a student, I do not want to know what kind of games they play at recess," he said, backing away slowly. "What is that?" He was breathing a little quicker now, and glanced back over his shoulder to make sure he wasn't going to step on anything. He was not going to die like a fox in a horror movie, tripping over something stupid in the dark and getting eaten by the hideous monster. If there was one thing Nick knew, it was that the fox always died first.

"What do you think?" he said, looking to Judy for her opinion. "Fire? I bet fire would scare it off a little. But can we get fire in here without burning the place down? I'm not looking to get arrested for arson, I've worked way too hard to go down for that."

There was definitely something oozing out of that door now, and something starting to push like it wanted out. Nick made a worried urgh sound. "If that gets much more aggressive, though, I'll chance it." He looked around, scouting out elevated surfaces just in case they needed to get off the floor. "You can tell them it was all me, don't worry."

[Judy Hopps]

"Some sort of living food creature?" offered Judy. She wished she could focus her ears, hear it, or even smell it a little better... though given that the room was becoming more rank the more that fridge opened, perhaps that was a good thing?

"Fire?" Judy repeated, eyes going wide. "We can't just burn the school! There's plants everywhere!" Even the higher ground that the stranger was looking for had plants growing around it. True, there were less here than there were other places, but that didn't change the fact that fire was all kinds of a bad idea. "There are people here with magic and swords,' she looked back at the fridge, which thudded, the door seeming to jerk as if ready to burst off and launch at them at any moment. One more good solid blow and they'd be facing whatever was inside, and given that they pretty much had flashlights and batons, that didn't put them in a great place.

"We're just scouting," Judy said, looking around. "we should find a way of getting out of here. Maybe just seal that thing in. Then we can tell better prepared people how to handle this, or come back when we have, I don't know, a fire extinguisher or something. Something that won't burn the entire school down,' she shot the strange a quick look at that, hoping that she'd made it clear that arson was not the answer. When was it ever the answer?

The fridge thudded as if to answer the question, starting to almost bounce, which was rather impressive given its size.

[Nick Wilde]

Nick wasn't exactly fond of fire himself, and burning down the school probably hadn't been the best idea he'd had, but he was also pretty scared of whatever the heck was about to burst out of the fridge. He also found himself borderline ashamed at her reaction to his suggestion, and discovered that his face felt hotter than before. Oh, great, he was probably having some kind of allergic reaction to slime, or something.

"Sealing it in and coming back with something to fight it sounds like a plan to me," he agreed readily, taking another quick step back from the fridge, which looked like it might be coming towards them at this point. "That is so uncool," he muttered, shaking his head. "Yeah. Let's get something to fight this thing. I do not wanna die of slime. I can't even reason with slime." Nick was good at talking his way out of things, but he didn't think he could con a giant blob of slime, that was beyond even his capabilities.

He could feel his gigantic heart thundering away in his chest, and he wondered briefly if a hoo-man had ever died of their heart exploding, then thought that he really wouldn't like to be the first one. Backing towards the door, he pressed himself up against one of the counters.

"Get out, that way, I'm right behind you," he said, waving a hand to usher her out of the kitchen area. "Swear I won't light anything on fire, just go, I got your back. I'm gonna try to push over one of these cabinets behind us, maybe slow it down a little."

[Judy Hopps]

Judy nodded, glad that the stranger saw the wisdom in her plan. They definitely didn't need to take undue risks: this thing had probably been living here for years; it could wait a few more days while they told someone with magic or a better weapon what was going on. Heck, they could probably work around it in the meanwhile.

"Yeah, I definitely don't want 'Judy Hopps, died of slime attack' on my tombstone," agreed Judy, nodding. She turned, getting ready to spring and start moving. Thankfully she still had some of her rabbit agility, and they were definitely in the need of some agility. She'd already hopped over a table and ducked around some vines by the time the stranger had started waving her off.

"well, whatever you're going to do, do it in a hurry!" Judy said, pulling to a stop. She wasn't about to let him leave that far behind her. The fridge was shaking, and finally the door burst open, slapping against the side. Something brackish and blackish and green oozed forth, looking like it was made of what appeared to be some sort of unsightly gelatin substance. Magically preserved food hovered about it in a highly disturbing manner, and it sort of slurped its way forward, moving far quicker than something made of cobbled together food and leftover magic had any right to move.

[Nick Wilde]

Nick was perfectly willing to let this thing exist for a few more days, but it seemed the thing wasn't particularly interested in just existing. Well, he thought, that made sense. They'd come in here and poked at it and upset it, it was probably their own fault that it was coming after them now. Sometime in the distant future, he was going to look back at this and be pretty embarrassed at how he had handled this whole situation...if he made it out of this, anyway.

He had a plan. He really did. He was going to push over the lightest-looking cabinet into the path of the refrigerator, and then he was going to jump over the one beside it and hightail it out of there. And then a revelation struck, just as he grabbed hold of the edge of the cabinet and pulled.

Judy Hopps.

"Wha-" Nick jerked his head up and around to look back at her, and the cabinet fell towards him, just as he'd intended it to, but his reaction was delayed. He jumped to the side, just in time to avoid getting his foot crushed under the cabinet. Unfortunately, he jumped the wrong way, effectively trapping himself between the fallen cabinet and the slime thing. Well. That wasn't good.

He scrambled back, jumping onto the counter next to him, just as the slime thing reached out with an...arm? Appendage? Nick wasn't sure what you called limbs on a slime monster, but whatever it was, it had his foot and it was not letting go. And it was pulling on him, probably trying to pull him in so it could digest him or something, and the suction was much stronger than he had expected it to be, and the counter wasn't stable at all. It rocked slightly as Nick grabbed at the edge, and he was pretty sure another couple good tugs from the slime thing would send him toppling back into it. He needed something to get better leverage, and he looked around, trying to find something, anything he could grab that would let him pull himself free. Chairs. Tables. Judy. Vines. Vines!

"Throw me the end of one of those vines!" he said, squirming up onto the counter as far as he could.

[Judy Hopps]

"Oh c'mon!" Judy cried as she watched the cabinet fall, not quite believing their poor luck. First to find a place that should be filled with food (and Judy thought she did see good food lingering at the edges) instead filled with vines and a monster. Second to accidentally unleash the monster. Third to have to flee instead of fight said monster. Now this? Really? Was Fate just screwing with them?

Well, Judy wasn't about to let the bad luck win. Before the stranger had even said anything, she'd sprung into action. Technically Judy could've escaped: the stranger's fall would've bought her plenty of time, and he might have even survived. But Judy was more the type to run toward danger. Which she did now, slipping and sliding, her haste making her just a tad sloppier than she probably should have been.

Thus Judy landed roughly on a table near the stranger. She skidded, swinging down and lunging for a vine. It took her a few swipes to snag one, and then she had to lean back, putting her whole body into unearthing it. The whole while the gelatin monster (likely made from J E LL O) slurped their way. The vine popped, and Judy was flinging it the stranger's way, hoping it would actually land close enough to be useful.

[Nick Wilde]

Nick flailed a little on top of the counter, but managed to grab the vine that she threw, and with one good tug, pulled his foot free of the gelatinous mass. He tumbled back over the back of the counter towards where Judy was standing, rolling into a crouch next to the table she was on top of. That was close, he thought, way too close. He'd almost become like...food for food. A snack's snack. Not an ideal situation.

He was still processing the fact that she was, unless she was playing some horrible trick on him, the person he'd come here to find. But the more he thought about it, the more obvious it became. She wasn't lying, and he knew it because she was Judy. The tenacity, the detective skills, even that look she'd given him when he'd suggested lighting things on fire, it was obvious, now that he knew. And if he knew who she was, she should know who he was, but this seemed like such a weird time to just blurt out by the way, it's me, Nick. They were still in danger, they were still being chased by that thing, although he hoped he'd delayed it a little by penning it in with cabinets and whatnot.

"Come on, come on," he urged, starting back towards the door they'd come through. "Let's get out of here, I guarantee we're faster than that thing if we're out in the open." With any luck, he thought, the thing wouldn't want to follow them outdoors, and they'd be able to unravel this whole situation a little more.

[Judy Hopps]

He rolled, and Judy hopped. She landed next to him, still thankfully light on her feet. She grabbed to help him get moving, and started that way herself. "We should be," she agreed, glancing over her shoulder. The creature kept moving ,but it kept moving slowly. It reminded Judy more of a slug, or maybe some kind of strange horror movie monster. Monsters she could deal with though, and just thinking that made her grin almost viciously.

As they got closer to the door, however, she realized about what the stranger did: they could probably outrun this, but what if it got free? She whirled, almost skidding into some plants. "We've got to make sure it can't get out," she said, looking around. "Put some stuff in the way: we're going to need time to bar the door."

Which of course meant that instead of doing the sensible thing and heading out, Judy was now heading toward the creature, all five feet of her. And she was shoving whatever she could at it, almost flinging stuff. Not that it mattered: anything that connected mostly just slorped into the creature, adding to the bits and pieces sticking out if it like quills. "Crackers," spat Judy, glaring at it.

[Nick Wilde]

Yep, that was Judy, alright. Rushing back into danger to make sure the thing couldn't hurt somebody else. Nick watched as she threw objects into the blob, and his heart sank a little. Because here she was, not even a bunny anymore, just being Judy, making him feel like he had to be better, too. He couldn't just run away and leave her, he'd come all this way to find her and she was his partner, bunny or not, in Zootopia or...wherever the heck this was, and she was right (as usual). If there were other people here, Nick didn't want them getting sucked up by evil jello just because he'd been too afraid to stop it.

"Yeah, I got you," he said, grabbing at a chair and hurling it at the blob of gelatin. He watched the blog suck the chair in, as the whole mass of it wobbled towards them.

"Hey," he said, a thought coming to him, "do you think...if we put enough stuff in it, maybe it won't be able to hold together enough to move anymore? Like, you know, if you're making soup, and you put too much solid stuff in it, it's not soup anymore, and you can't pour it into anything because it's just liquid around too many things to carry?" He picked up another chair, and got ready to throw it. "It can't possibly just lug around every piece of furniture in this room, right? At some point it'll run out of pieces of itself to wrap around things."

[Judy Hopps]

The chair sucked in, and Judy started grabbing bits of trash, just hurling, trying nearly everything at this point. She was growing increasingly frustrated: not liking that she couldn't, they couldn't, somehow solve this puzzle in front of them. Perhaps it was just that pressing urge to do something, to keep surging forward, to help people around here. Or maybe there was a bit of Judy was was frustrated about being a rabbit cop who'd done her job and landed in an even bigger mess because of it. Not that Judy Hopps would ever bear a grudge toward some sort of magical world or anything.

The stranger's comment had Judy pausing midthrow. "That... could work," she allowed. The thing wasn't exactly moving fast to begin with, after all. "If nothing else, we might be able to get it so loaded that it couldn't move--but could it just squish through? What's even--" Judy shook her head. "We'll leave figuring it out to other people. Let's just run around and throw things and see what happens."

She flashed the stranger a grin, then all but hopped over to a chair. She gave it a kick, watching as it slorped into the creature. With a whoop, Judy threw her arms into the air, already looking for the next thing. Unfortunately, the creature had now focused on her, and started slurping her way.

[Nick Wilde]

Nick got rid of another chair, then strutted over to a table. Maybe in his actual fox body he wouldn't be able to pick up a table, but this body had a few things going for it, now that he'd been able to spend a little time in it. He could totally pick up a table. And he did, a little awkwardly, but it was a small table, and he managed it, turning it onto its side and folding the legs in before sending it rolling towards the gelatinous creature with a solid push. It sort of fell over when it was almost there, but it made it far enough that it ended up floating in there along with everything else.

They couldn't really make it worse, could they? At least they could slow the thing down, even if it did eventually get through all the stuff they were throwing at it. Nick wondered if the thing could think; did it have a brain in there or was it just moving towards heat or movement or something? What motivated it? "We have to figure out what it wants!" he said, eyeing the thing as it oozed towards Judy. "How does it know where we are, does it hear us? Is it a heat thing? If we can confuse it, maybe we can get it stuck in here until we can get other people back here to take care of it."

He had another idea, which was probably a little gross, but hey, they were dealing with a pretty gross enemy. "Please don't judge me for this," he said, climbing up onto one of the tables. "But you know how if you eat jello and then you put it back in the fridge with the spoon in it, it starts to digest?" Nick wiggled his tongue around in his mouth, working up a good mouthful of spit, then spit it with all his might onto the blob.

[Judy Hopps]

What it wanted? Judy stared up at the thing, made a face, and looked back at the stranger. "You think this thing has wants?" she had to ask. It kept slorping its way toward her, and as the stranger continued, Judy did see that he had something of a point. They at least had to figure out how it was tracking them. She looked around for a few moments while he started with his latest.

"We're fighting a jello monster,' Judy said, glancing back at the stranger, "pretty sure we're past judgement." There! she bent down to grab what appeared to be a lunch tray that had been pushed off a stack. This moved her a bit away from the creature, but not enough to miss the stranger spitting at it. The creature burbled at that, shifting to look toward the stranger. If that did anything, it didn't have immediate effect.

Still, better than nothing? Judy turned and flung her tray, watching it clatter a few feet behind the creature. It did not turn toward it. "Okay, so that's sound out," she said, turning back to the stranger. "And I think if we're gonna use spit, we're gonna need more than that. Shame we don't have a dog around or something," though Judy did shudder. "Ugh, do you think that thing's actually edible?" At least it had started slurching toward the stranger now, which gave Judy time to look around and try to figure things out. Heat was another possibility, right? How could she alter heat...

[Nick Wilde]

"It has to be motivated by something," Nick insisted. "I mean, is it hungry? I would be hungry if I was stuck in a fridge for that long. But it has to be doing what it's doing for a reason, right? Nothing exists for no reason." He could swear the blob looked at him when he spit on it, and he almost felt an urge to apologize to it. If it was offended, maybe it would want to eat them even more.

"I don't know if it's edible," he said, shaking his head, "but I was kind of hoping for like...dissolve-able." It didn't seem like that plan was going anywhere, though, because at most it looked like he might have distracted the thing for a few seconds. He too was thinking about the heat thing; from what he could tell, the creature didn't have eyes, and it hadn't responded to Judy's tray-toss, so it must be tracking them by heat or movement or something. "It was in the fridge," he pointed out. "Do you think it was in the fridge because it likes the cold?" But that didn't explain why it would be chasing their warm bodies around. Also, he was not going to suggest fire again.

"What about sunlight?" he wondered aloud. "Do you think if we lured it out into the sun, it might slow down? It had to be hiding in the dark for a reason, right? Or...do you have anything that could reflect the sunlight from the window?"

[Judy Hopps]

"maybe we just irritated it?" Judy called back, thinking as well. "It could just be some random magic cobbled together. This place is really weird," she saw something in the corner and she grinned. The familiar red canister was definitely something they could use, and she darted toward it now. Though she did have to wonder: if the stranger was right and it liked the cold, would trying to freeze it with a fire extinguisher really help? She supposed she could coat herself in that, but that didn't sound like a great plan either.

"Sunlight might work!" she called back, twisting and looking around. Fortunately enough, there was a window near the fire extinguisher she'd been dashing toward. She skidded to a halt near it, drawing a line of sight from the window to the creature. She looked up and down the hall. There were several windows. Maybe they could use them to hold the creature back?

"Keep it distracted!" Judy yelled, scrambling noisily forward. Emphasis on noisily: the creature turned toward her at the noise .But Judy was focused on speed, not stealth, diving for the extinguisher. She'd start breaking windows soon: they could fix it later with magic or something. Gotta keep thinking on the feet, after all.