ROTWOTA: Book 2 - The Falling City of Anthros

An Unfortunate Police Predicament

All across our short driveway in the neighborhood, there was a police car along with some sort of yellow tape that seemed to indicate that nobody was supposed to enter the house. However, I managed to look through the window at two officers, a deer and a hawk. My father got out and went to ask the hawk officer what had happened and if anything had happened to our mom or even Julie.

As for us, we stayed put until the deer officer came out and told us to come inside. We did as we were told and we went inside the house. Thankfully, when we got inside, we saw very quickly that Julie and our mother were both fine while being accompanied by a fox police officer. Except Julie and mom were looking quite distressed and nervous that police had come to our house.

However, in a matter of moments, everything would take a turn for the worst. "So, I suppose you're all curious and nervous on why we're here, correct?" Asked the fox officer. "Well, yeah, just get it over with." Muttered Jayden. "JAYDEN! Not a polite thing to say at all young man!" Yelled our mother. "Yes! That's just the remark we need when we're investigating a case like this." Said the hawk officer. "What do you mean by that?" Asked our father. "What I'm saying is that at least one of you is under serious suspicion on account of recent events that have recently taken place this very day." The deer cop said with a downcast look.

"Wait a minute, you don't mean?" Asked our mother. "I'm sorry to say this, but we are afraid that some of your very offspring are at the very top of the suspect list." The fox cop explained. "How dare you make such a claim! They would never do that!" Yelled our father. "It must've been humans doing this! Why wouldn't they commit such acts?" Yelled our mother. "Settle down! We know humans are the cause of this espionage, hell, even one of our officers had been suspected to have been killed by one or more of them." The hawk officer said sternly.

"It's all the matter of whether or not they may have some sort of spies on the loose." The deer cop said. "Well if you suspect our kids, then why don't we take this to court?" Asked our father. "We haven't had a suitable court established yet! So we can't take it to court!"  Said the hawk cop. "Exactly! We'll finish this now! Nobody's leaving this house until we get to the bottom of this." The fox cop said with a stern voice as he turned towards us.

"Now, don't worry. Me and my officers, we're just gonna ask you some questions, and if you kids prove your innocence, then you're clear to go." The fox cop explained. Our parents weren't so sure about this, but they allowed it on the term that we'd each be accompanied by them while being questioned, which the officers agreed to.

It started by me being taken to my parents bedroom with my dad to accompany me. When we get settled, the fox officer locked eye contact with me intimidatingly, and the questioning for me began. "Alright, so, Justine." The fox cop began. "She only goes by June." My father reminded. The fox cop just rolled his eyes at him. "Anyways, June. So, I heard that you went with a small group to the medical center to deliver someone there. You said it all happened because the guy you were taking had experienced a shouting pain. Is that true?" Asked the officer. I answered with not words, but rather with a single nod.

"Alright, so when you were at the bus stop, before he felt the pain in his leg, did you see any kind of insect or maybe even anyone around him holding something potentially dangerous that could've pricked him with it?" The fox cop asked. "Well, no, there weren't that many other anthros around but I wasn't able to catch anyone doing this." I explained. The officer then looked puzzled for a moment as he looked down and looked as if he was in deer thought. "Alright, that was a no go, but for now, I'm going to ask some more serious questions." He said.

His next set of questions were mostly all about what I had been doing in the yard for part of the main bulk of the day. Except the officer really sounded like he was dead set on making sure that he knew every little detail about what I had been doing. Regardless, his questions weren't really extremely strange aside from those being mainly about me loading certain goods trains at certain times. However, things would take a turn when the officer began asking me about my encounter with E the night before. And even though I felt like him asking what I had done with E was unnecessary, I answered honestly but dee down I was also a bit nervous about the tone of the officer, as if he had something bothering him.

It was also around this time that I was beginning to get concerned for him. My dad likely caught attention of this and decided to settle it. "Well, before you continuing ask her, I'm pretty sure she'd like to know how he's doing." My father said sternly. "Well, If you want to know, the communication signals between us and the facility E is at hasn't really been working for the last few hours, but we know he's doing alright and hasn't been causing trouble the last we DID hear from them." The officer explained. Thankfully, knowing that the boy we had saved the night before was ok did in fact give me some courage to continue answering his questions. Even my dad gave me a thumbs up and a look that was as if he was saying "don't worry, I got your back."

Soon enough, the questioning was over, but my parents were still concerned. "So, do you have a decision yet? Is she clear of suspicion?" My father asked. "Not yet sir, but we'll give you the results tonight when we return." The officer explained. "And we'll tell you if your girl or any of your other children are safe or not."

As we saw the officers driving away, I should've felt relieved, but I was actually still feeling kinda scared as there was still room for things to go wrong. Jake and Jayden also looked like they had the same feeling as well as I heard that they had both been questioned rather aggressively. Thankfully, our parents and Julie, who had pretty much been declared in the clear, were able to console us enough to get our minds off of it.

However, it just wasn't able to shake the feeling off of my mind.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later that night, I was simply in my room with the others, and everything was peaceful.

Well, at least until they arrived.

At the time, Jayden and I were the only ones awake. We were simply chatting about all that had happened, and Jayden had gotten into the territory of how long it would be before things would spiral out of control and it would end up as a catastrophic disaster. Luckily, Jayden shut himself up when he realized that neither of us wanted to know or even wanted to comprehend such a possibility.

But only a few moments later, we could hear faint sounds growing louder and louder by the second.

We didn't know it at first, but those sounds were police car sirens, and multiple sets of them as well.