Zootopia: Grind To Halt (WildeHopps)

Chapter 22 - This Isn't Murder, This is the Real Thing (Finale Part 2 of 5)

"He's not dead sir." A trembling ferret hid behind his quivering hands, twiddling thumbs, not daring to stare at the fox in next to the window. The fox smacked his lips distastefully.

"You would've thought the death force rid his hide of existence, but my own fucking son is like a cockroach. He won't die." The fox growled, the sky a deep dark, night blue. In just one minute, the sun was to vanish, and hell was to ensue. He was going to release the finished serum into the air, and every predator was to become a mutated monster from the fiery depths.

"Guess I'm going to have to do this myself."

Razor Wilde was insane, and not because he was clinically crazy, but just because he was fucking evil.

He wanted to have the creatures everywhere, tearing apart prey, because why? Why because their was no fucking reason, he just wanted to. No deep, interesting story of his life, he was just evil. Satan incarnate.

"Besides, Stupid Ferret,"

Razor lifted his paws, and the ferret squeaked. It already started into a monstrous paw.

"It isn't murder,"

He swung with one giant sweep, and his throat lay wide open.

"This is the real thing."

¤ ¤ ¤

Everything was so dreamlike for Nick, like he was stuck in some sort of feverish. He was just being moved from place to face, his body felt so it, his senses so clogged, and vision so bright and blurry. Some things he could pick out where bent covered with a blanket in the back of a pickup truck, the rattle of the engine, a squaking woman at the drive through restaurant.

Then he fell asleep to the bumping, shaking pickup truck.

Next, he awoke in the same feverish, sickly state, but to a bright gas station sign above him, he could barely read it, the angelic voice of Judy arguing with her parents again, crying, and then the truck restarted, to continue on its long journey once again.

For another three hours, they drove, until the finally reached the outskirts of Zootopia, the modern district. Nick felt the car pull into a parking lot, and faintly opened his throbbing eyes.

They had arrived at a Hyatt, a sort of contemporary esque-hotel with an absurd amount of rooms in an absurdly tall building.

Nick closer his glazed eyes, giving into the creeping sleep that returned to his sick body.

When he next opened them, he was inside a cool, almost completely dark room, tucked in cool, soft bedsheets. The faint whirr of the air conditioner was his only friend right now, and the soft glow of the blue moon delicately painting everything in its pale light.

The curtains gently swayed with the cool wind of the air conditioner billowing out of its box near the window, and outside, fourteen floors below, lay the pool, the palm trees, and calm of night time silence.

Where was Judy? Where were her parents, and her brothers and sisters?

And... Hadn't he died? Or... Was it some sick dream? No, impossible, he felt what it was like to be dead... He remembered it too well. It was too real... Surreal... He couldn't talk, he couldn't speak, no matter how much he tried yelling. The consuming Grey was everywhere, and he was floating through it forever...

Then God bring him back to life?

No, that's a little crazy... Even for how mind boggling everything was right now... But was it? His mom and brother returned in some weird limbo to guide him on a mission... And said it was God's doing.

So was this, crazy? No, this was real.

This was it.

This isn't murder.

This is the real thing.

Nick closed his eyes, returning to the icy clutches of sleep.

¤ ¤ ¤

Nick reopened his eyes, and it was the same situation. He awoke to find nobody was here. But in the same dim blue light, he could see a lot of bags now packed into the corner of the dim room.

He had only fallen asleep for a couple of minutes, and reawaken to fin his heart racing, temples throbbing with pain, and feet twitching. A massive wave of nausea spilled into his stomach, and his high feverish feeling made him yelp in some distorted groan-growl.

He dragged out of the bed, stumbled through the dark on the icy carpeted floor, into the bathroom, where he flicked on the light, and it stabbed the back of his eyes and mind like a knife. His head ached worse now, and he moved to the left, where he put his gigantic paws on the toilet bowl, and spilled his guts out.

Wait.

Gigantic paws?

Nick quickly flushed the toilet, and looked into the mirror, where his heart sunk.

There he was, extremely tall, muscled out, muzzle elongated, teeth sharper and larger, face animalized, and hands completely monstrous.

But he could think all on his own. Like... This was him now. Forever, possibly. He could think rationally, but just like in purgatory, where he was dead, he couldn't talk. This time, it came out a distorted garble, a monstrous growl.

His green eyes burned bright, and dense sweat covered his fur, his fever growing higher... But it didn't bother him.

He stared in awe at himself. He was... Awesome. Horrifying, sure, but he felt so, strong. Powerful.

He wrinkled his muzzle back, and revealed he could wrinkle it back an abnormal amount, almost completely revealing an inch and a half of his entire gumline.

There where his now enormous fangs the size of piano keys, smiling like a devil back at him.

This feverishness... Was it because he was morphing slowly and slowly into this all day? Was it because... He wasn't turning into it quickly like before, he was... Turning into it permanently?

No, that was a scary thought. Being this forever... What if Judy didn't want him anymore?

No.... That couldn't be... But it was true, it could be.

He was a freak. Forever.

This wasn't the murder of his soul...

This was the real thing.

He could never stop it, how could he have ever known? Nobody helped him, there was nowhere else to go. He was surrounded by the evil, he was a weapon, a fiend.

This isn't murder, this is the real pain.