All Mixed Up and Turned Around

Snff. Snff. The scent was stronger now. Koda could smell something distinctly animal when he heard Colleen speak, and that put him at ease at first. When he ventured a little closer and finally got a glimpse of her, though, his ears pressed back and fear momentarily took hold of him. Colleen was very distinctly animal. He couldn't argue that much. Yet the way she walked was very much screaming 'hunter' to the young cub. He scrambled back a few steps and let a small startled cry escape him. He'd never seen anyone like her before. Not in all the time he had been alive, at the very least. Who was she? Where did she come from? More importantly... why was it that she sounded so sweet and concerned for him?

Hunters didn't ever communicate with bears, Koda reasoned with himself. If she was a hunter, then she was doing a very good job at putting on a concealing element to herself. His heart rate slowed ever so slightly, and Koda hoisted himself back onto his feet to investigate further. She didn't look scary. Heck, she didn't smell scary either. That reasoning made him feel a little more comfortable. Perhaps not his usual sort of jovial sort of Koda comfortable, but comfortable enough to take a couple of hesitant steps closer.

"Uh-huh," Koda answered after a moment. He did need help. Both him and his friend Kenai. Actually, it was a good thing that Kenai wasn't there right then. He might not have liked that Koda was doing something as bee-brained as he was right then. Honestly, though? Koda's mother would have liked it even less than Kenai. She would have chuffed at him and scolded him for days for trusting someone so unlike an animal and yet... like an animal.

"I'm lost," Koda managed after a minute. "I was trying to get to someplace with a friend of mine. We were getting close, I'm pretty sure. But... now I can't recognize anything." His head tipped down in mild shame in admitting that much. He should have known the way better than that. Maybe riding on those mammoths had been their downfall. Maybe trying as hard as they had to avoid the hunter from that ice burg was what lead to Koda losing track of where they were supposed to go. Koda wasn't even sure of that anymore. The world had gotten all weird. New smells, new sights, new places... no closer to the Salmon Run as a result of it all. He wasn't sure if Colleen would understand, but he'd try to help her if she needed it.

"The Salmon Run. That's where I'm trying to get. So I can find my mom," he explained. "And so my friend can get to where the lights touch the mountains."

Well, she was making progress.

Maybe.

Possibly.

Judy wished she honestly had a better idea of whether that was true or not. She'd been hanging around the pub, which seemed to be the home base of the nefarious Gilded Wings, for what was getting on for a month now; but either she wasn't in the right place, or someone didn't entirely trust her. Judy had expected that, once she got brought into the Wings, she would have seen a whole other side to their operation, one based around lying, cheating, stealing, and generally just being nasty. It was pretty textbook; criminal organisations put on a legitimate front, but beneath it, they were festering slime pits of depraved activity.

So why, despite having had her paw shaken and been at least unofficially welcomed into the group, had she not seen any evidence of the sort?

Sure, every so often, shady dealings would go on between the clientele; but more often than not, the actual leaders of the Wings seemed to have no particular say in that. And though such sights caused Judy's foot to involuntarily start thumping with impatience to burst in on the underhanded activities, she forced herself to keep that instinct in check. She was supposed to be undercover here, after all.

But other than that?

Nothing, it seemed. If she truly was in the Wings headquarters, they seemed far more interested in keeping the pub running smoothly than anything else. There were even children around, children who moreover seemed to be put to no work more sinister than ordinary day-to-day chores. Occasionally, someone would mention scouting, or gathering information, and Judy was sure that had to relate to their less-than-legal deeds... but the fact that they were doing such a good impression of keeping their collective noses clean confounded her.

She could guess, only, that Gideon had mentioned to someone that she was actually a cop, and that they were deliberately distancing her from their main activities as a result; but if that was the case, why let her keep hanging around at all? They weren't even trying to feed her misinformation; unless the whole pub was one big sham, and the so-called Gilded Wings here were just normal people who she'd been led to believe were part of the criminal organisation? It seemed about as likely as anything else, to Judy - and considerably more likely than some of the other explanations she'd considered.

The bunny shook her head, frustrated. She hated feeling so in the dark, where something that ought to be clear was absolutely anything but; and it was for this reason that the undercover officer had decided to excuse herself from the pub for a while. Maybe things would seem clearer once she got out of the Snuggly Duckling, got to take a bit more perspective on the whole thing... at least, she hoped that would be the case. After skulking in the underbrush near the inn for a while, in the hopes of seeing something going on she wasn't supposed to - once again, with no joy - Judy had simply let herself wander a little.

She told herself she was looking for clues she had been missing.

She'd been making her way through the forest for a while, when voices abruptly reached the bunny's ears. Judy stopped short, ears perked and nose twitching slightly, hopeful that she was about to stumble upon the break she needed... only to realise that what she was hearing was a lost child and a stranger attempting to help him. Not the key to this whole convoluted case that she was seeking.

All the same, Judy decided, she should make herself known. She had a soft spot for kids, anyway; and it would be nice to just have an ordinary conversation with someone, without constantly trying to second-guess whether she was dealing with a dangerous criminal or not. Plus, maybe she could even help; she couldn't quite catch the whole context from here, but judging from the adult's tone, she didn't seem to have an exact answer... and while Judy admittedly didn't know this part of the world well herself either, it was better to try and offer what she could. Changing direction, she approached the pair.

"Hey! I couldn't help but overhear you were lost; maybe I can help?"

She waved to get the pair's attention as she approached, suddenly feeling, for perhaps the first time that month, like she was back in her element. This was what she loved the most: helping people, making the world a better place. Violet eyes quickly took stock of the unlikely pair; a canine who might well have been from Judy's own part of the world - at least, she was fully clothed like a sensible animal, though Judy admittedly didn't recognise her specific species - and a young cub who was... bear in more than one spelling of the word.

Maybe she should make a habit of carrying spare pairs of pants with her, to hand them out to those animals who seemed not to realise their need of them.

Putting the thought to one side, Judy cleared her throat, gave the child a kind smile. From what she'd gathered of these worlds beyond Zootopia, he probably didn't realise he was doing anything wrong; and Judy was certain it wasn't her place to initiate that conversation. Rather, she just made sure to keep her attention on his face. Not hard to do when, in his four-legged posture, he wasn't much taller than her.

"I'm Judy Hopps. Where was it you were looking for?"

Round brows were pinching aggressively at the bushes Koda indicated his friend had been sleeping behind. A male, apparently. She automatically assumed it was another cub—after all, the schoolteacher knew Three things about this scenario. One: in parts of the Merged Worlds, animals acted savage but spoke and reasoned like Animalians. Two: in the savage days, bears often foraged alone. Three: according to the Zootopian Museum of Natural History, the only bears that were exceptions to that rule were a mother and her cub traveling together. Ergo, this ‘Kenai’ must be a less energetic little tyke.

So when Judy Hopps—the Judy Hopps—popped out of rustling brush instead of a sleepy cub, Colleen was dumbstruck.

In Zootopia, she’d gotten where she needed to go by being the budding expert on the Merged Worlds. Which made it embarrassing every time the war zone surprised her. Very often she found herself experiencing this out-of-her-mind feeling where two things that shouldn’t exist in the same situation cane smashing together like battering sheep horns.

The famous police rabbit from the city Colleen had worked so hard to leave bounding into a war-zone forest to talk to a naked bairn was one such moment.

So Colleen stood there, looking down at the two shorter animals, her once-hip-propped paws dangling uselessly on either side. Their loose hanging matched her lower jaw and wide doggy eyes. Only the cocked ears were lifted like stunned tulips in the morning light.

By the time she came back to her senses, Koda was gesturing at her and rambling about the Salmon Run. Frowning to try and gather her thoughts, the dazed collie placed one paw over her chest. She even shut her eyes and gave a tiny shake of her head as if to block out distractions long enough to stammer, ”I-I’m Colleen.”

In the two-and-a-half heartbeats while her eyes were closed she seemed to see several plans, long forgotten since joining the Enchanted Suns, marching back to the forefront of her mind like an errand-list that needed to be dusted off. This was the policerabbit who’d found Connor. And accused the Mayor of Zootopia of foul play. And then corrected her own mistakes, even though it made her look foolish, when she unveiled the Assistant Mayor as the real blaggard.

Until this exact moment Colleen had not realized that this rabbit had become something of an idol to her. She had seemed so much bigger on the Breaking News reports. ”An’ you’re—Officer Hopps. Um. Wow. I-I cannae believe you’re here.”

She stood up for what was right, for facts, and called powerful mammals out on their crimes no matter what. She was the first law enforcement official to really seem trustworthy and selfless to Colleen, who had grown up on letters mentioning the corrupt Sherriff of Nottingham. And she was the reason Colleen had left Zootopia, in a manner of speaking, in the first place.

But...blinking at the two animals in front of her, Colleen suddenly didn’t know how to say what she’d always planned on saying to the rabbit. She’d joined the Enchanted Suns and given up on finding Hopps months ago. Now, with the war on, and even here, in this bizarre meeting, the criminal gang she’d meant to tattle on from one city district seemed so small. And besides, the important thing was getting Koda home first, right? Colleen tried to rile her mind back up into it’s normal no-nonsense drive, but kept getting interrupted with sudden memories and thoughts patterns marked with the cool colors of her Tundra Town life. So she still stood there, gazing owlishly and stupidly.

"You two know each other?"

It did make sense to a degree, Koda supposed. Colleen and Judy did look like they could have come from the same sort of place. Wherever it was must have been full of animals who wore funny things like hunters did. Unfortunately, it seemed that Judy didn't know where the Salmon Run was either. Maybe it was just a bear thing, he realized. Maybe only bears knew where it was and he was spilling some kind of great secret by revealing it even existed. Koda thought about it for a moment, was briefly considering keeping quiet, then decided that it was too late. The worst that could happen was that Colleen and Judy might show up if he ever figured out where he and Kenai needed to go.

"What's a Zootopia?" Koda decided to ask. That would veer the topic away from what he had been talking about, sure, but it sounded like maybe what the girls were referring to would be far more interesting. Maybe. He wasn't entirely sure what he was getting himself into anymore. Nevertheless, Koda was keen to learn.

"Is it kinda like where you guys are from? It must be full of animals just like you!" Koda couldn't help the excitement. He did like the sound of his assumption. Of course, Judy and Colleen would know better than anyone. They were presumably from there.

"I bet there's all kinds of animals! Like... huh." Koda stopped for a moment. What would a bear that came from where Judy and Colleen did be like? Would they wear those funny things, too? That would be just plain silly, Koda decided. Then again, he'd thought it was silly before he'd gotten to know Colleen and a little bit about Judy. Maybe it wasn't quite so ridiculous after all. A small part of him, his instincts part, did wonder if it was a good idea to be conversing with animals like this. What if they weren't as nice as they seemed? But that thought seemed silly, too. Why would Colleen and Judy trick him? It wasn't like they'd given him any reason to think it was possible.

So, he kept waiting for his answers. All before interjecting the thought he'd let drift away, that is.

"Are there any bears there?" Koda asked. "They must be really different from me if there are."