The Fox and the Rabbit Reloaded.

Chapter 5 - All the Little Things

Judy pushed through the door to the female locker room open and kept her ears perked. She breathed a sigh of relief at the sound of no water running and no feet shuffling across the tile floors.

The morning rush usually didn't last much beyond 6:30 or 7 a.m. as shifts were beginning or ending. It would pick up again in an hour or so, but right now it was the sweet spot between shifts. It suited her just fine — she really was in no mood to deal with anyone right now. It didn't matter if they were all 'happy for them,' as Nick said, it was still embarrassing to have something so personal be so exposed. The betting was especially egregious, and she felt a seed of disgust growing in the pit of her stomach. She narrowed her eyes as she padded down the rows of lockers.

"How much you want to bet Clawhauser is the ringleader..." she muttered to herself.

Her thoughts were interrupted as she saw a water fountain and her thirst suddenly came to the forefront of her attention. She hadn't had anything to drink since just before the concert last night, and given the night's activities, she felt on the brink of dehydration. Thankfully, it was a standard multi-tiered unit with the second-to-lowest level at her height. She leaned over and started gulping down the cold, crisp water, sighing with content as the dry mouth she'd had since she woke up disappeared. It was good; she could feel herself beginning to unwind already.

She had the presence of mind to stop herself before she drank too much. It was never a good idea to load up when going to exercise, but it would be enough for now. She stepped back, sighed deeply, and smacked her lips in satisfaction.

"Whooo... that's better," she said, and turned and headed to her locker.

The row where hers was located consisted of the smaller kind where each had top and bottom doors. These were mostly used for those who didn't have a regular locker and just needed a place to store clothes or items temporarily while they worked out. For her, they were the perfect 'full' size with the bottom ones just at her height. She flipped the series of built-in combination dials, and once open, shrugged out of her t-shirt. She held it in her paws for a moment looking before ducking her head down to delicately sniff. She didn't really smell anything. She smelled herself, of course, and some of Nick but it certainly didn't stink like the chief and Hogg had implied. She furrowed her brow at the shirt.

"What does shame even smell like?" she grumbled and hung the shirt on one of the hooks, wriggled out of her shorts, and hung them as well.

She had a few sets of workout clothes in the locker; one fresh, two others not so fresh that she had yet to take to the laundry. Not wanting to soil the clean pair, she pulled out one of her dirty ones. She was apparently in desperate need of a shower, if the chief and Hogg were to be believed, and she was still half-disheveled and felt pretty grimy. It had been a few days since her last shower, which normally wasn't an issue for her Usually, just a quick dunk now and then to get the day's dust off was all that was needed, but after last night... well... they had been all over each other, mixing each other's scents for hours.

She wasn't dumb. She knew everybody had oils in their fur and were constantly exuding pheromones of one kind or another. Nick certainly did have that distinctive, light, foxy musk to him that she personally found pleasant. She figured her scent must have been pretty foxy, which would mean Nick smelled pretty rabbity in turn. She sighed. She so looked forward to a nice, long, hot soak. And shampoo. Lots of shampoo, she thought. She finished pulling on a snug fitting black tank top and blue shorts then headed for the entrance to the gym.

The gym was on the second level of the ZPD building. It was around two hundred feet long and half that wide, with a tall arched ceiling to accommodate the larger members of the force. The room was slightly curved as were the outer walls and windows that overlooked the street along the backside of the building.