V M Behind the Curtains

[Xander Dust]

Xander was sitting on the floor of his apartment, his arms hugging one of the table’s legs. He was sure he was gonna fall through the floor, the idea of feeling gravity still a strange concept. It was unbelievable how much one took for granted the perks of being alive. Still, the gravity was turning Xander’s mind into a dizzy soup, so he remained in place for a while. The entire world was full of sensations – the compactness and smoothness of the floor’s tiling, the heavy stink of abandonment in the air, the many colors and lights coming from the windows’ badly closed blinds. It was too much. He kept on tight, holding that table’s foot.

No one would believe gravity could feel so heavy, as obvious as that sounded. The way his new body was laying on the floor, he had to exert strength to keep himself afloat. He got too used to being a formless ghost, and Xander was hating the idea. He didn’t want to die, and having to confront that truth weighted on him more than this stupid gravity trying to make him fall.

But slowly, his head stopped feeling like a whirlpool sucking itself up. His muscles lost strength, not needing to hold his own weight like that. The bright lights lost their intensity, falling into a dim environment. The air still stank of a place closed for too long, but it wasn’t overwhelming anymore. He took a deep breath – Xander felt his chest expanding and contracting to hold and release said air. It felt gruesome, in a way.

He put his hand over his chest. There was no heartbeat. His heart sank. Xander never thought he would feel bad over such a mundane automatic action. But it was a reminder that this body wasn’t his, it wasn’t truly alive. He was still dead, and the murder had happened.

Yes, the murder. He had to do something about it! He couldn’t let them get away with ruining his life like that. They took everything from him, and all for a stupid watch, which wasn’t that stupid, as it was a nice gift his father had given him, but still... Was his life less worth than a watch that didn’t even work? Xander shook his head. It was unacceptable.

He needed it back.

But he had to figure out a few things first. His body felt heavy, and using its strength to lift it up was such an unnatural move. He tried to raise his arm. It was like pulling strings behind a puppet. His entire body felt like that. Each twitch, each move. He had to think carefully how he wanted to force this new vessel to obey him. First, he hugged the table’s leg again. Then, he tried to pull his body up from that pose. He failed, his body fell back to its initial position. Next time, he tried to force his legs to do the heavy lifting. It worked better, but soon he lost his balance and fell again. Is this how babies felt? Which is why they needed years to walk? This was humiliating. He knew how to stand up. Why was it so hard?

He tried a few more times. At some point, he almost did it, but his new brain felt out of balance now, everything spinning in place. He didn’t fall to the floor though, letting the table hold his weight this time. But slowly, the objects around him stopped moving, the gravity stopped screwing him over, and moving his body started to feel more natural, enough to attempt to walk. First lift one leg, then lean forward, then let that leg land and hold his weight. Rinse and repeat.

Achieving walking proficiency took less time than trying to stand up, which he was grateful for. In no time he could walk just fine, that weird sensation that his body wasn’t his own still on the back of his mind, but easier to ignore.

He explored the apartment. Everything was dark, as every window had its blinds mostly closed, but it was enough light to see. The entire place was a mess, everything out of place or directly laying on the floor. Chairs knocked over, curtains half falling, decorations broken, even the furniture was skewed out of place. There was a thin layer of dust over everything as well. The lights didn’t work, and neither did water come out of the faucets. Xander didn’t want to open the fridge.

He sat down over his old bed, his hands over his head, his fingers in between tufts of hair. It still felt so unreal. Did he actually die? He knew, for a fact, that he did. He even remembered the weird unexistence of a mind without a body to control, but yet, here he was. At his old apartment.

Everything was thrashed, but he felt no need to tidy it up, no want to touch anything. This was his space, exactly as it should be, as much as it pained him to find it in this way. He knew that touching anything would incite his ire. Why, he didn’t know. But everything must be preserved. He didn’t want to know what would happen otherwise.

But he was still mad at his murderers. He still couldn’t believe Allison and co would have the audacity to pull off what they did. They were bad people, and deserved to be punished, but could Xander do it? He could barely walk, how was he going to confront four guys, who may carry lethal weapons?

It took a while until Xander felt he could pull off his own stunt. Days, given the sun’s cycle of light and darkness. He couldn’t feel the time pass though, his mind spacing off at times, until he realized it was nighttime already. But in those pockets of consciousness, he would train his new body. Try to run, to jump, to then move into more sophisticated maneuvers, like handsprings and backflips. He used to be a gymnast when he was younger, he knew he could still do these stunts. He fell on his face many times, but he didn’t care. The goal of getting his watch back and kicking Allison’s ass allowed Xander to try again and again, lifting himself off the floor as many times as it took.

During that time, he discovered a few things. He was right to think his body wasn’t fully his, as the thought of not being himself manifested directly upon it, his appearance shifting at a thought command, something that gave him a few spooks everytime he passed by the mirror. He had to feel like himself to look like himself, he found out.

The other discovery was that the necklace he carried was as malleable as his body. It had a beautiful decoration hanging in the middle that looked like a blade, and when Xander thought of it as a blade, it became one on his hands. The necklace would still be there, but he could summon this knife as another thought command, which Xander thought was pretty handy in his situation. He didn’t care if he lethally harmed his murderers – they deserved to know what it felt like.

Eventually, he felt ready to confront his killers. He wanted to. He needed to.

But there was a problem. He couldn’t force himself to cross the open door of the apartment. He was ready, as ready as he would ever be, and yet, something pulled him to stay. This was his place. His resting place, even if the body was no longer here. He couldn’t do it, and it felt so stupid. Was this another quirk of being alive but not quite? He had to get over it.

He imagined the watch, or “Timeless Watch” as the thugs had called it, which was a dumb name in his opinion. He imagined it in his hands, touching it, feeling its cold metallic surface gently press into his fingers.

He needed that watch back. More than he felt tethered to this place. And thus, with a huge determination, Xander left the apartment.

 

[Jack Savage]

Along the cobblestone road and through the mist and rain, the cabcart drove. Its wooden wheels ricketed, its brown texture stained with dark pools and sprinkled with gravel. The horses that pulled it forth whinnied and snorted and spat, their hooves clopping imperceptibly against the distant shimmer of the rain. The driver lazily slapped the leftmost horse with a leather crop along its flank, earning a mere grunt from the struck mammal and a sharp, sympathetic wince from his passenger in the back. Only a lantern, a rusted copper tin with muddy glass that did nothing to block its luminosity, revealed the painted letters and symbols along its doors as it traveled alongside the various apartment complexes that adorned the street.

As the cart neared the end of the intersection, its passenger raised a little hand and spoke, quiet and with a drawl. “Stop here, please.”

The driver snapped taut the reins in his hands, and both the horses and the cabcart stopped.

“Thank you, pardner.” The passenger said as he dropped a few spare coins into a small bucket next to the wooden seat. He gave a polite, but curt nod over to the driver before opening the cabcart door and stepping back out into the Erde Nonan city, the light of the lantern bathing him in yellow that sent a twinge of nostalgia running through his small body.

He gazed up at the apartment before him as the cabcart started trawling back from where it came from. He lifted his long ears up and bit his lower lip in concentration. Aside from the cabcart and the occasional flapping of sails and murmurs along the nearby space dock from errant dockworkers and the old sailors that no doubt frequented it, the whole area was surprisingly quiet.

Jack had never expected such a city to be so silent. Back home, before he came to this strange new universe, he had heard tales from visitors to Harefield about Zootopia and other glimmering, shining cities, where climate walls hummed deep into the night and mixed with rumbling of cars underneath the glowing street lamps. They were places that always moved, always sang, always had some sound to it that was so inescapable as to be a part of its atmosphere in much the same way oxygen was to the whole world– to remove it, according to the visitors, would be to destroy what made Zootopia what it was.

He never spoke to them at the time, but if he did, knowing what he knew now, he’d tell them that perhaps that meant Zootopia and cities were annoying places to be in. He smiled as the glory of silence washed over him. He took a moment to adjust his tie and stuff his beige, striped shirt back into the rims of his torn jeans–they always bristled against his dark-grey fur, but it was worth it for the professionalism alone– and fished out a piece of loose-leaf paper out from his pockets. Unfolding it, he then looked it over to make sure his directions were correct: “Gryphon Apartments. Room 2C. Murder. Coins beneath. Find them.”

He hadn’t even bothered to get those coins, he remembered. The moment he had processed the tip, he was already out the door and heading his way here. He had no intention of waiting any longer, either. Thus, with a tranquilizer gun in his belt and a thick, black bag strung over his shoulder, he began to steadily walk towards the entrance of the apartment. He resisted the urge to hop or skip or do anything that could break his calm, stoic facade even as his every step got him closer and closer to solving his first ever case for Savage Investigative Services, the Crossroads newest private detective agency, led and starring the sole service agent, Jack Savage, a hare away from his fields, and all without needing to go through those ridiculous police training courses again in THIS world. That would have been most annoying.

Soon, he came across Room 2C, a room placed near a set of staircases on the top floor of the apartment. Its red door looked like it hadn’t been touched in ages, with dust flaking off of its bronze knob and a “FOR SALE” sign plastered over its peephole. It towered over him, this wooden door. The doorknob wasn’t a big issue, seeing as it was only about head-height, but the girth of the thing was humongous in comparison. He’d probably have to use both paws to open it if he wanted to. Not to mention, of course, the sign itself, which he couldn’t even reach to tear off. It was yet another element that made him wish he was back in Harefield, where things weren’t so big, where doors were sometimes smaller than him rather than the other way around.

Nevertheless, he was going to have to break into the room if he was going to begin solving this case. Before he did that, however, he had a plan. A quick glance down the hallway revealed a variety of other doors on both sides of 2C. He marched along and knocked on every door he could find, starting from the leftmost side of the hall and looping back along its right. After a long string of echoing knocks followed by disappointing silence, he made his way around to 2D, where he was finally greeted by the sound of approaching footsteps almost as soon as he had stopped knocking on the door. He braced himself for the inevitable reaction to his appearance.

“Who is it? I’ve got a gun, so don’t try to rob us!” A woman said as she cracked the door open a bit.

Jack didn’t know what kind of anthromorph she was– didn’t he hear something about a ‘human,’ or was it an elf?-- but he didn’t need to tell to see that her face was covered in a kind of makeup that didn’t seem physically possible to maintain. Her face had a perfect smoothness and plumpness to it that didn’t seem altogether natural. Her eyes were covered by a thick, black set of glasses that had jewels glimmering along its rims. Were they real or synthetic, he wondered? Which would be sillier? Either way, he wrinkled his nose and tried to maintain his smile.

“Oh, uh, pardon me, ma’am.” Jack said, his ears instantly falling despite his best efforts to prevent such a maneuver. He stepped back, hoping to give himself more distance between him and the strange humanoids that stood before him, but unfortunately, they were not so easily swayed.

“Oh, what a cute little thing!” The woman said. “Dear, look, there’s a talking bunny with a funny accent outside! He's got a tie and everything!”

“Ma’am, please don’t call me cute. Or call my accent funny.” Jack replied, tapping his foot against the hardwood floor beneath him.

“Oh, take a compliment, why don’t you?” The woman replied, pouting. “It’s not everyday someone comes by with some actual manners, you know.”

“You said there’s a talking–” A man said as he approached from behind the woman. His face immediately lit up upon seeing Jack. “Oh my goodness! That’s such a cute little bunny! He’s got a bag and everything!”

“Are you delivering mail or something?”

Jack’s paws gripped tightly around the leather strap of his bag; the strap creaked and snapped taut from the motion. He forced himself to smile.

“Naw, naw, not at all. I came to ask y’all some questions I need answerin’.”

“Awww, anything for you, dear. What can we do for you?”

Jack pulled out the loose-leaf containing the tip and held it out. “I got this from my office today about a murder right next door. I figured, as the neighbors, you mighta got some info that the police didn’t get.”

The woman frowned. “Oh, that place? We called that in, like, a week ago or something! I told you those ruffians were up to no good!”

“Yeah, I know. A bunch of hobos, they were.”

“Hobos?” Jack asked.

“They were shouting a bunch about some watch they wanted, and some other kid was screaming back at them. We were already calling the cops because, you know, a bunch of hobos were liable to start robbing the place when we heard a shot go off. We heard things bumping around and falling in there, then they all ran out of that door as fast as their legs could carry them.”

“Didja check on that kid at least?”

“And go near where those punks were? Not a chance! I’d probably get an infection, being so close to them. My constitution isn’t what it used to be…”

“Er, wha?”

“My wife gets allergies when particularly dirty individuals walk too close to her. It’s all the mud, you see, and they get so aggressive with her.”

“They do! There’s this one hobo that I keep finding near the dumpster, and he keeps looking at me whenever I walk past! I should get the cops on him too, one day. He’s probably been eating the caviar we keep throwing out…”

“Pardon me, but these punks… do you know what they look like? Where could they be?”

“Probably where punks like them always go? Dumpsters, alleyways, maybe that bowling alley place?”

“Bowling alley?”

“One of them said something about wanting to go bowling after they got out.”

Jack’s ears flicked up. “Interesting… and where is that?”

 

[Xander Dust]

There they were... Those jerks. Some of them were sitting, another was standing with his back pressed against the wall at the entrance of the alleyway, chatting and drinking cans of something among themselves. Sometimes Xander could hear their laughter resonate throughout the street. Such decadence and rubbish displays, people like this should be rotting away in prison, not enjoying themselves while everyone is oblivious to their criminal antics.

Xander needed a better plan than just showing himself and trying to get something out of the fight. That already didn't work, back when he was still alive. He had a knife now, but that wouldn't earn him more than a single win against the four of them. However, if Xander could badly injure the asshole who pulled the trigger, he would be happy, but he didn't want to put himself in extra danger if he could avoid it. Could his new body withstand a fight? It still felt alien and uncomfortable to pilot. Was it a problem if he got injured? Could he get injured at all? Maybe he was a super zombie and didn't need to worry about such issues, but maybe it was also less durable than a real body and getting in a fight was a bad idea. But Xander didn't care. He was gonna dish some whoopass on these assholes regardless.

He disguised himself as one of his professors back when he used to go to school. She was a lot taller than most people, with a thin frame of a body, prominent cheekbones, and huge glasses. With that, Xander walked to the group of thugs sitting on the alleyway, to not bring himself any extra attention before his time.

His heart would've been beating at a hundred times per minute if he had one, Xander thought to himself.

As he passed them by, time slowed down. The jerks didn't pay any attention to Xander's disguised form. But as he walked by the guy who pulled the trigger, Xander summoned his new dagger and sank it with all his strength at that guy's arm. He screamed, and the others stood up from their sitting positions, their cans and cigarettes falling to the wet pavement.

"What the fuck is this?!" One of them yelled.

Xander's disguise quickly faded, to bring back his usual form. He took the dagger back and sank it again at his chest this time, the move too quick for any of them to react any further. Xander took the dagger again, and his target fell to the ground in pain, to which Xander kicked his body with as much strength as he could muster.

"You?!" Another of them said. "What are you doing here?!"

The thugs surrounded Xander. Two of them grabbed him by his arms. One of those took away his dagger, although it disappeared in a puff of pink smoke as soon as it left Xander's hand.

"You think you can just walk by and attack Orwen like that?" The guy in front of Xander said.

As that guy leaned closer to punch Xander, Xander kicked him as hard as he could straight in between his legs.

The two holding him pressed hard, forcing Xander to fall into the wet pavement, and started kicking him all around his body. So, the pain circuitry was working, which meant it hurt like hell to be attacked like this. But while he was being assaulted, Xander summoned his dagger back and managed to sink it into one of his attacker's legs. He rolled away from the other guy, and while both of them were distracted, he stood up again in an awkward motion, as if someone pulled the strings of a puppet to force it to straighten up.

There was a red smoke coming from Xander's face that obscured his vision a bit, but he didn't care. He went straight for the guy still standing, and by dodging a punch, he sank his dagger into his chest, bringing it back into his hands all bloody.

The guy who Xander had kicked in the nuts earlier was standing again, and came forward to tackle him back into the pavement. He started punching him back and forth in the cheeks.

"You think you can just walk to us like that, huh?! You son of a bitch!"

Xander snatched one of the punches in midair, and with his other hand, he stabbed his attacker's arm. But the dagger wasn't solid, for some reason. It sank too easily, and its blade was semi transparent. There was no blood either. However, the guy's arm lost all strength. He grabbed his paralyzed arm with his free one, as if trying to make it move. Xander, meanwhile, took out the knife and stabbed the guy in the belly, this time, with the blade as it should've been. More blood splattered as he pulled the dagger away.

With that, Xander pushed the guy away from him, so he could stand up again. All of them were on the floor with various injuries. Xander himself wasn't free of pain, but he had won. He gazed back at his first target, who was sneaking away inside the alleyway. Xander walked up to him, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, and slammed him into the wall, holding his dagger at his neck.

"What do you want?!" The thug yelled.

"Oh? You don't know what I want? Think, you dumb asshole."

"Hey, that was nothing personal!"

"I don't care. You're going down, just like you left me to rot."

"Don't kill me! I-I'll do whatever you want me to!"

"Oh, really?" Xander raised his eyebrows. "Give me back that watch."

"The watch? I don't have it."

"Then I'm killing you."

Xander leaned closer with his dagger.

"Wait wait wait! I know where it is. Our boss has it. But I don't know exactly where he is– Wait wait!" The guy's neck was as stretched as thin as it could possibly be. Xander's blade was touching it now. "He'll attend a party! 1756 Klaus st., the bigass penthouse there, this saturday. You can find the boss there."

"And if I don't?"

"I'll pay you!"

"I don't care about that." Xander said, as he slashed the guy's neck.

"Hey!" Another voice said. There was a really small person at the entrance of the alleyway... A bunny man? "Stop right there!"

Xander fled the scene as fast as he could.

 

[Jack Savage]

“Stop right there!”

The teenage delinquent looked his way, blood dripping from the blade of his dagger. It only took that momentary glance for Jack to recognize him, and when he did, all of his righteous, furious anger spilled away to wide-eyed shock. That was him. That was the kid he was investigating the murder of. Yet, here he was, alive, standing in the middle of a dirty alleyway and surrounded by the beaten, bloodied, battered, and broken bodies of the gang Jack had been directed towards. The coincidence was impossible to forgo. This attack was not a mindless assault, but total vengeance. He had to stop it before it got worse.

No sooner had the criminal turned tail and fled did Jack Savage, too, leaped forward and began sprinting after him. His feet bound across the concrete of the alley, allowing him to jump over the fallen gang members blocking his path. What he had heard Xander Dust– the kid that had been so gruesomely murdered and yet, here he was, brought back to life and committing a gruesome murder of his own– briefly discussing with one of them no longer mattered to him. Instead, all he saw was a knife-wielding maniac running away from him. It was a chase scene, the first he had ever been in. He committed the feeling to memory: the jagged rankling of his fur as adrenaline pumped through him, the burning of his lungs as he heart pounded with excitement, the eerie surreality of the world around him as he flowed to the soundtrack of distant groans, skidding shoes, and echoing crowds.

Harefield had nothing like this. Everything there had been quiet and ordinary. Nowhere anywhere in that town had anything resembling the newscasts that claimed a spike in burglaries or homicides around the world from deadly predators stalking the shadows. The closest thing he had ever gotten to any of that was a lost pet or broken-down tractor or, worst of all, the paranoid delusions of an old hare searching for a fox supposedly scrounging in their backyard farm fields. His failure to complete the police academy rewarded him with peace, with ordinary quiet, which is to say, he was nothing but an ordinary citizen merely pretending to be a cop. He was a cop now, though, and just like a cop should, he would bring this kid to justice before he hurt anyone else.

“Stop! You’re under arrest!” He shouted.

Xander slid to a brief stop just as he reached a curve in the alleyway. Jack stuffed his paw into his holster to whip out his tranquilizer gun. He kept running forward, not bothering to slow down for accuracy or efficiency, and instead simply aimed for a second and squeezed the trigger.

A dart sailed out through the air, screeching like a banshee all the while. Xander ducked forward and ran past the corner. With his absence, the dart crashed into the brick wall where Xander just was, smashing into many shining pieces before splattering its feathered remains upon the ground, another spent syringe to join the litter strewn about.

“Damn it, I missed!” Jack muttered, cringing as he maintained pursuit. It wasn’t the end of the world, even if it was annoying. He still had at least two more darts with Xander’s name on them, and he was going to deliver them personally.

As he ran to the corner, he lifted up his ears, concentrating on the sound of Xander’s footsteps. It had a grating quality to it that reminded Jack of hooves scraping against wood. Or, at least, it did. Somehow, he couldn’t hear it amidst the atmosphere of sound he realized he was getting steadily closer to. The distant murmurs of crowds, rolling cart wheels, and the squawking of Chocobos had now become omnipresent, and every once in a while, he heard the sound of creaking hinges. Was there a shopping street nearby? Was it masking the sound of Xander’s feet?

It was only when he turned the corner did he realize why he couldn’t hear it. Xander wasn’t running. In fact, he had been standing perfectly still the entire time, a trash bin held over his head. The instant Jack was visible, he launched the bin towards him with all of his might before continuing to flee.

Jack yelped, nose wrinkling at the sight and smell of such a massive container. He darted forward and slid forward on his stomach as the bin sailed overhead, raining down pellets and chunks of rotten, half-eaten foodstuffs all over his back.

“Uggggh….” Jack groaned as he quickly got up onto his knees. He rapidly shook like– pardon the potential stereotype– a dog, dislodging orange, soft, ball-like eggs from his suit. “Caviar… is that milk? All over my suit too?”

He didn’t have time to cry over caviar and spoiled milk, though. There was a criminal to catch.

He leaped forward, tranquilizer gun still in paw and thankfully unscathed from the onslaught of produce he had to endure. He ran all the way to the end of the alleyway and stopped at its exit to look around. His ears had not deceived him. The street before him was packed with people walking to-and-fro in every direction, and what a massive street it was! The horse carts that passed through were slow, occasionally stopping entirely to let the crowd of people through on their way to parts unknown. If that wasn’t enough to remind him of the grandness of the city of Arcadia, then the skyboat sailing above, dragged along by a feathery, nostril-flaring green dragon, easily confirmed it. Unfortunately, the one thing he could not see nor even hear amidst the crowd was Xander and his feet.

Grimacing, Jack held his ears up. He concentrated, trying to sift through the random noise before him.

Eventually, he heard something. Boots upon gravel. Someone was running, unlike everyone else. They sounded desperate, panting. They busted into a door– apparently, they thought it was a push door or something. A chime rang out.

Jack looked in the direction of the ringing noise, only to find he couldn’t see jack shit with the huge crowd in the way. With a quick look around, he found a stationary cart nearby. He leaped onto it and listened some more. Only then did he determine the source of the noise: a little shoppe just across the road, looking to take up a whole building with several stories and full of windows. It was a clothes store, with jackets and necklaces and other apparel held aloft on mannequins in the windows next to a crimson door. Instantly, he knew where the criminal had gone.

He readied himself for a big leap. “Here goes nothing…”

He jumped across the whole street and landed with a grunt on the wetted gravel. He advanced to the shoppe’s door and, upon arrival, he jumped and thrust his feet into the wood of the thing. It jettisoned forth and slammed into the wall beside it with a meaty crunch. The rung holding the doorbell snapped; the bell collapsed and fell to the carpeted ground with a muted ting. The crowd of customers– a variety of ‘humans,’ many visibly old– all turned their heads back to the door, standing frozen in their spots.

Groaning, Jack reached into his pocket and whipped out his detective badge.

“Everyone down! Now!”

Immediately, the whole lot of humans thrust themselves down onto the floor, hands on their heads and nervously glancing about. The whole store turned silent; only the rush of traffic directly outside the building echoed throughout its interior. It was a quaint little store, with a countertop for the cashier and proprietor on the left and a wooden set of stairs far to the right. Clothes on clothes on clothes hung on hangers and rackets all around the shop. Many of them had a regal, somewhat Victorian sensibility surrounding them; top hats, scarves, golden feathers, dress pants, itchy-looking coats, and a variety of canes hung proudly on display all over. They did, however, look far too expensive, too rich for his taste. His nose wrinkled. He could smell the fresh pressing of their fabrics, the stiffness of their lengths.

His disdain for the taste, however, was not why he was here. A murderer was loose and if he wasn’t caught then who knows who else would be caught in the crossfire?

He narrowed his eyes and lifted up his ears, concentrating on the silence around him. Eventually, he heard shuffling and creaking wood from up above. Someone was moving.

He cautiously shifted towards the staircase, ears alert, his tranquilizer gun aimed forward. As he moved, he passed by what looked to be the proprietor who’s head was buried under a pair of pants that they were hocking before Jack had called for the whole store to prostrate themselves. Jack gave him a light tap with the toes of his feet.

“If you have a phone, use it. There’s a dangerous criminal loose in the store.”

The proprietor didn’t lift his head, but with the way he flinched, Jack could tell that his words startled him. A low groan escaped from his lips.

“Hey, it’s alright. Stay calm.” Jack replied. “Just get to that phone, quietly call the police, and then stay back down.”

His soothing words at least seemed to strike true. He watched as the man began to slowly crawl to the other side of the store before turning his attention back to the staircase. He marched up, pace consistent but volume relatively silent. He cringed as the stairs creaked– if this criminal had anywhere close to his level of hearing, then there was nothing he could do to get the drop on him. He’d just have to be faster than him, stronger than him. He wasn’t going to get shown up like this on his first real chase.

He reached the top of the stairs and turned left to enter the second floor. It was much the same as the first besides the population within it. He heard a lot less people, less gasping breaths, less fear, less faces. He gazed off to his right, searching. He saw a bespectacled man wearing a dark green jacket of sorts and a brown mask covering his mouth. Every once in a while, he coughed, and it made Jack flinch with the way its jagged nature upset his temperamental ears. He hoped the man’s obvious breathing problems weren’t being exacerbated by this terrible situation.

He looked around some more. If Xander was here– and since he heard shuffling, he was almost certain that he was– he certainly wasn’t making it obvious. He narrowed his eyes, frowning.

He slowly shifted his way to the coughing man. He whispered. “Hey… this kid with brown hair and chains along his waist. You see him?”

The man started to speak, only for a coughing fit to once again interrupt him. With a bowed, red-faced head, he gestured towards a nearby racket full of coats, hats, and belts. Among the apparel glimmered a set of chains where a human’s waist would be.

There you are.

He wasted absolutely no time. In his excitement, he forgoed all procedure, all subtlety, all nuance and subterfuge. He rushed over towards the racket and shoved aside several of the coats and scarves and belts.

His nose twitched. His fur stood on end.

In an instant, the training, still residual in his blood, kicked in.

He flinched backwards as sharpened steel seared the air and sliced across his forehead. He stumbled back before slamming into another racket and tumbling onto the floor. He cried out in pain, blood oozing out from where the blade had marked him. He felt dizzy, his entire head hurting. He could barely hear what sounded like a struggle very close by. Someone was about to get hurt. Someone else was about to die.

“Stop right there!” He shouted, forcing himself back onto his feet. He lifted his gun up as he frantically wiped the blood from his eyes and face with his other paw. Blinking, he turned to aim the pistol in the direction of the struggle. He couldn’t see much, but he saw red. Red combined with green, mixing and mingling, forcing themselves together. He couldn’t think and didn’t want to think about anything other than the red. The red was all that mattered.

He squeezed the trigger and fired off a tranq round. The red cloth dodged in a way that made it look like it merely fell before ducking and making its way to the staircase. Jack growled as he followed, the pain prickling his mind as he charged down the staircase. The red stumbled, bobbed and weaved, but it wasn’t fast enough this time. Jack completely forgoed the tranquilizer gun and, instead, readied himself for a leap.

Just as the red opened the door, he jumped forth and careened into the bright color. They both fell into a messy heap right outside the entrance. The red coughed like a chain smoker from the hit.

“There we go, don’t move you gosh darn…” Jack groaned, gritting his teeth as he went to pull the red-wearer’s head up, to look into his eyes, to let him know that he wasn’t going to get away scot-free.

“P-Please…” The red-wearer said, coughing his lungs out. He sounded old. He was old.

“W-What…?”

The man turned his head. His spectacles were completely broken. Some glass poked out of his cheeks as he peered fearfully up at the hare. “I… It’s not me…! Please!”

“But you…”

All of his aggression went away as he searched about. How? How did he get tricked like this?

His ears flopped down. “I’m… I’m sorry, sir. I thought… are you alright?”

“My eyes… can’t breathe…”

“It’s alright, sir. Help will be on the way…”

He didn’t hear, nor strain to hear, the rushed footsteps of various patrons moving to leave the storefront, one of whom was Xander Dust, redless and ghostlike in the crowd.

---

“So, let me get this straight…”

The human police chief scratched at a bead of sweat dripping underneath his shaggy, silvery mustache, a loud sigh escaping his lips as he wrote down Jack’s testimony. His stout yet broad-shouldered stature reminded Jack vaguely of photos of Chief Bogo that he had seen throughout his time at the police academy. Despite what some would probably call the chief “fat”-- if they were impolite about it, anyway– he very much was quite stocky, with muscles tightening on his arms and well-defined fingers gripping the pen in his hand and the clipboard in the other, and all it was easy to tell underneath the array of blue uniformed attire and glimmering, Arcadian golden badge.

“You were investigating a completely unrelated case when you heard shouting and fighting in this alleyway…”

He gestured his penciled hand in the direction of the alleyway full of beaten-up goons, where blood lined the brick walls as random officers traipse around without even paying attention to where they were going. Each were gloveless, many had no bags over their feet, and Jack could hardly pay attention to what the chief was saying with how so many of the cops seemed more interested in discussing the latest Discus game– whatever that was– then actually investigating the crime scene.

“... chased the perp through the alleyway and into a clothes store, where you then tackled an old man because he was wearing the clothes of the perpetrator in question.”

Jack maintained his polite smile as best as he could in the face of such questions. “Yes. Let it be known that I believe the perpetrator had deliberately put the old man in harm’s way in order to escape.”

“Right, right…”

The chief slashed a couple pen strokes against the paper in the clipboard before putting it to his chest. “Alright, we’ll take it from here. Next time, let the real police do this sort of thing before you go running off to play cops and robbers.”

Jack’s fur visibly rankled as the chief moved to walk away. “Of course, sir. Of course…”