The thought I always had with the Vulpon, and the reason I always rode so recklessly, was I would never have a passenger to think about.

I wouldn't be risking anyone else's life but my own. I believed the theory she disproved, that I would never know someone so content with my daredevilry that I could share it. That I could be at peace with someone having the same lust for life requiring the mortal gamble. But there we were. Barreling through South Canyon road on a cloudy morning. Rays of light shining down on morning dew. It felt something like how I always imagined the Isle of Malle race would. She had convinced me, somehow, not to change the single seat bodywork of my Fastback into a normal two seater. Something about how she liked holding on to me from the front, and looking at the world behind us fading away. That she didn't need to look forward, and loved the uncertainty of where I was taking her.

It was just us, in our little world as it churned into a rolling dipping right becoming a left. My foot tapped up on the descent before the apex, and I steered to the wall to go into a hard, thirty five degree angle left and away from it on the ascent. Something I had no business doing with knobby tires but could pull off and was. Her gleeful shouting over the rev'd up engine, and we climbed up the hill as I leveled out just a little too close to comfort to the brick wall keeping us on the cliffside. So I slammed on the throttle. I broke traction perfectly, the back tire spun with the slightest hint of just enough control. The tail sliding out, but I had it where I wanted it, all the while she screamed in joy to the rollercoaster ride without rails.

I stood up, looking back at the smoke trail and black line etched into the apex of that asphalt. I had pushed out to the left, almost to the double yellow and into the oncoming lane. I flung my body right and steered left to bring the Vulpon back to the right side of the road. Traction regained as I sat back down before another hard angle. My head so close to the wall as I leaned us towards it. But I didn't target fixate, I just recentered the bike as I balanced ourselves back over the gas tank. One of a series of beautiful impossibilities made real. Ahead for both of us was a long straight of rolling dips and small crests. A tap down, and we sped toward a ray of light a long straight as the alarm struck Four in the AM on our phones.

Being woke up becomes a waking up and I awake with a second blink and there she is. On her side with her cheek on my left arm. Those big beautiful blues staring into my half lidded orange-ish browns. Her smile working me up, she rolls her head up in a bunt into my arm. Chin up, and her vision's upside down. Just the most perfect, afterglow look on her of comfort and I hate the fact it won't last. I want it to last, but this is not our tent anymore. For the next five hours and fifty nine minutes, it belongs to the silhouettes on the other side of the nylon entrance. Because Eight hours is no longer possible with this amount of people. We dress and join the rest of the upper level as the old guard shuffles out their tents to hand privacy to the new.

I can only look to the Vulpon I just dreamed of riding with her as she asks me to stoop down, before she wipes away the dried crust from the corner of my eye. I groggily let out a softly purring growl like mewl and she adores it for a moment. "Boy, the sounds you make, I swear~." and I smile with her, splayed ears as I think about the dream for a moment, considering aloud "We didn't talk about last night's meeting." for her to think on.

"...Told them your idea about the gangs handling savages?" and I'm proud to tell her, "Downtown and Tundratown were already considering that after Lupe. So after all I did yesterday, the six of us got it through."

"Good... Like I said, if they can't join security up front, they can at least do that."

"And they can roll hard. Just need security to hand them off to cops after that, if that's what the Commission's gonna do."

...I didn't want to take this turn.

Eva looking to me with a little tremor in "They're really gonna hand them off to the cops?" but I've got to remind her, "You saw what Lupe did. Imagine what a bigger pred could do." We have no space to contain someone turned into a something. The best we can do with Downtown's gear is muzzle and snare.

What a pitiful thing to wake up and get dressed for, Eva lamenting in a sigh that "...We should've talked last night after dancing." but I'll try to turn it back around in "Toby's in charge of the prey protesters with the herd, now."

She'll give me a searching look with "They ever decided on a name for themselves?" and yeah, but "It's a stupid one. He had better ideas but they all went with Prey4TheHerd."

The wordplay is so dumb, she has to give off a disbelieving smile when I follow up at "With a four for the for!"

"Oh my god, that is just cheesy enough to be a prey idea, Did they really go with that?"

And yeah, this is ingrateful, but "They're prey folk, what the dang ol' hell you think?"

My snicker, her chortle.

"They at least learned something from the camp movement right?" because all the good gesture in the world amounts to nothing the method's a repeated failure.

"Everything Toby's telling me says they're better about weeding out false flaggers and plainclothes. Those Buffy ass Buffys are being kept in check about as much as they can with virtue signallers." and I can't even believe this, hesitate to even mention it, but "...Supposedly, Toby even got Buffalo woke up and off his fumblr." and it's enough to stir a shock in her.

"...That prey savior boy?" with a cocked brow, "Dropping his Prey Savior act?"

"It's what Toby said!", sure, yet she's still got to dismiss it in "I'll believe it when I see it!"

But it "Hopefully won't come to that... Said they got a plan in case the cops try to raid."

One they've kept to themselves. "Does the Commission know?"

"Told them already. Only thing we don't know, besides what Toby's got in mind for when that happens is..."

The obvious. So long overdue by now, the waiting makes it inescapable. The eventuality from her of "...When it's going to happen." to finish my thought. Bring it all back to the worry no soul can ignore any longer.

"It's gotta be soon." I tell her, "After yesterday it's just a matter of time, they only made the protesters move out the park of Lupe. Rounded a few up when they started fighting themselves about it but that was it."

The high of taking this place can be celebrated long after we've been evicted.

They can't take that.

But they can take the station back and they will.

We can hold on to it for as long as we can, but the waves are coming from the horizon.

What we knew would happen is becoming visible.

And when it happens, the house will win. Take back all the chips we've earned at the table. And all we'll have for it, is a story. A legend. A myth...

But we have what we have. Right now. I can't let the future sway me.

Looking back, I find my change of topic in the Vulpon I've been unable to not ignore. Yet it brings me back to the dream, the joy of it, those details I'm starting to lose. So I'll hold on to what I have left of it in "...I had a dream of us on that bike. We need to ride it bike after all this. "

I say that, and the reality of what All This is sinks in a little. To go along with the doubt of if we even will have that chance, after All This. She caught what I was thinking. That we will miss the good times in this station. But they and the victories we shared won't change a thing about the wish we're starting to feel.

"What if I had my own bike?" to let me ward it off.

Brighten me up when I'm not against it, just need to confirm "You want one?" so I can get "Sure, I mean, what's even out there I could ride?" and I'm beaming at the promise.

Even when there's not much, I'm joyous, immediately thinking "Susagi, maybe. They make Rabbit sized bikes and they had some hot two strokes in the 70s."

"Two stroke?"

"Means it's smokey, burns oil with the gas. But that don't make it unreliable... You'd probably need less rebuilds with it than I would with my Tea Sipper's set of wheels. I'd even teach you how to do it yourself." I say that, leaving her to think "You think I wouldn't try to learn on my own?" but all it was, was that "...I'm just saying I'd be there in the wings for when you did, trying to pay you back for all you've done for me when it's the least I could offer."

Sappy enough, the genuine truth of it can't be mistaken. We just blush, the two of us in an embrace that wouldn't mesh if her practiced maternal wasn't as strong as my blooming paternal. It goes without saying, but if we ever consummated in the house of the lord, I would not hesitate to take her surname over mine.

Maybe Belette wouldn't get mispronounced as often as Fuchs, but I'm thinking too far ahead.

When all those same thoughts flowing through her head don't count as much now as "What happens, now?", the tone of the question bathed in the littlest touch of fatalistic optimism. And as Eva holds my hips in her looking up to me, I am reminded by that Laika lung over my shoulder, of the truth I uncovered yesterday.

"...Have you noticed what we started here?" I ask her, answering her question with my own question and the cheeky plan on my face to answer mine. The curiousity on her face as I decide not to tell but show, making our way to the escalator and down to the ground level.

Another Red Fox and his Stoat boy sitting on his lap. The silly, grateful smile on him as his weasel gives me that content smirk of possessing a lover twice his height.

A middle age couple of that Polecat from before, adoring on her same species male as he gives it back to her in kind. Telling stories to each other about the struggles of their youth and wishing they had found each other sooner.

A Dhole and her Clouded Leopard female, caught in an embrace as they kiss delicately. Blissfully at peace with showing their love in the open and they jog my memory, but without recollection of where I remember them from.

Alfredo on break with another Iberian Wolf. A coffee in his and her paws as one sits crosslegged in front of the the other. His smile seen behind her head as she lays it on his shoulder.

Two Brown Bears that look like Ussuri and Kamchatka, him holding her paw as they stand at ease with the rest of Security.

A mildly anorexic Maned Wolf and her likewise boy pouring his heart out for both of their sakes.

An African Wild Dog and his grateful Brown Spotted 'Yeen laying on her back as he croons some John Leopard from on top of her. Easing her mind of doubts, because what began yesterday is still fresh enough to not be believed just yet.

An Egyptian Wolf and her Arabian boy, hugging his girl from behind as they watch the crowds. An undercurrent of doubt about the world around him, before his lover slips her paw behind her own hip and reassuringly to his own. The momentary frailty in him as he realizes he doesn't have to be a perfect Lupine.

That Bug Burga Cheetah couple again, dancing slowly to the Rhythm & Blues they feel pouring out from an iPaws and set of speakers. Him licking at her face as she grinds a twerk into his lap. She only catches me taking their picture after the fact, and I could swear, I'm reading those lips as telling me Thank You when I take another.

Moment after moment with their own magic that doesn't get lost when me and Eva look back at them on this screen. The kind of photos I think I always wanted to take all that time ago when I was too scared of being harassed. On Friday nights of going nowhere, just wandering the streets looking for something beautiful as ugly situations ran through my head. When I just wanted to catch pedestrians in the act of captivating me. But all those photos I've just taken have all the more meaning than the ones I never did. That Mule Deer with the wizard like regard of his phone. That Chital in the paiseley suit. Those were just mammals. These are love in all it's shades. The love me and Eva inspired through all the pouring out of our hearts we made the station endure before succumbing to that capture.

"This is what we started." I tell her. With a smile as I look to her wide eyed face over my shoulder as she asks a perfect "...You're saying we started this?"

"Think about it, what you wanted and what you did to me. You asked me what happens now and I didn't realize it until yesterday but... It's been happening. Everything we've done is playing out in everyone else here."

And she's connecting the dots, the profound depth of what I was so hesitant about being for her, that so many here are now becoming for others. Leading up to the profane coming from her in "I wanna smash you so hard right now." that gets me laughing.

But she's not kidding.

Her right paw shifting my head to the left and she leans her head in for a nip of the side of my muzzle. I'll take that animalistic hint, leaning down until I'm cradled in her over me. Her sinking lips into mine, locking our teeth together and holding my mouth hostage. I don't know how far she's gonna go. I don't think I'd stop her if this ended in a dressing down. She's the best kind of reckless to mirror my own and I'm just letting this happen. All of it her and none of it me up until that moment my radio blares out Ralph's voice calling out my name. When I'm not lost in her anymore, and I'm suddenly aware of no weight in either paw.

"Where's my-"

"Laika? I don't know, I just found this other one by you on the ground. Speaking of You, what the hell you been? Last I heard, you crashed Buffalo's party and got on the news."

Oh hell, no, that's not who I think it is and he did not just pull a Wally on me. "That ain't..." trailing out of me as I go from looking up to her and straighting back up to pan my sight forward to "Aahhh, get the freak outta here, it is!"

Jager God Damn Impisi. In a glorious Hyena fit of giggling because that's what they default to before they dip into laughing. Throwing a paw out and I slap my grip into it for him to yank me forward into a standing before him that becomes him grabbing me up in a hug.

Forget where I been! Where the heck has your mo fuggin' self been since Friday?" Holy god all mighty, I've missed this clownshoe so hard and I'm just now getting it.

"Damn dude, I don't know, how about with my Clan scared like crazy that if I went out the cops would spot me and start asking about yer whereabouts!"

That smart mouth of his, delivering the reminder of how nervous and scared of the world he's always been. He lets me down as I tell him "Ah, hell, forget the cops, Your skiddish azz should've gone out when you had the chance!" and he's got no defense in "I know, it only got worse... It got so much worse." and I can feel it in him. That personal experience he's remembering. That hint that among the scores of preds that were chased and attacked by longnecks, he was one of them. "Owen, report back, you there?" Ralph on the radio, and I go to grab it while holding eye contact with Jager as Eva comes up behind me. "Here Ralph, got distracted. What's the business?" with it to my mouth.

"New Face wants to see you." The code word we settled on for Burney Humbert. "We're waiting in the break room and got a sitrep on something else." and I'm reminded of the interview. Fabienne's finally getting to come back here.

"Alright. There in a sec." I tell him. The reunion cut short, just like my love scene and it's all gonna have to wait. I'll leave Jager with Eva so she can give him the catching up I should be dishing out, and I make my way from the terminal to the ground floor to the hall and that open door as Ralph converses with the defector, joined by others that came before him, those from Savannah Central's and Tundratown's packs that had somehow managed to join us after Lupe did. Their looks to me, and he turns.

Seeing me but still not believing me, "I can't get over the fact it was you." comes from him in near pride that's almost paternal.

"That same damned Fox I didn't arrest that's done so much good I could've nipped in the bud." with a scoffing laugh at a past life's duty to uphold the laws that were built to impoverish the impoverished all the more, and hold back all the mammals already held back.

How quick he was to come to terms with it all "When I saw it was you and your lady I pulled the rookie away from I guess I saw divine intervention in the coincidences." at the time, when I all I have to say might come off as ungrateful, but I want it to be about the insight that "But you weren't talking about us when you said there were good people that had their lives ruined by the news."

He gets it, and "No. I saw a good male that did everything he could, keeping a lid on a riot my daughter could've got caught in."

The implication sinks in hard and fast. My stillness in contrast in Ralph's double take in "You didn't say anything about a daughter." and Burney's matter of fact "It wasn't relevant until he made it." as it dissolves into the lamentation "Her and my future inlaw weren't allowed by my landlord to live with me and my ex disowned her for marrying out of species."

Even a cop's own daughter... Something that hurts Ralph bad enough he's got to offer it. "Alright, give me their names, I'll make sure they're moved back here with you."

Burney almost doesn't think about it. Then he does, opening his mouth and saying nothing. A conflict brewing in him and it's just about leaving him offended. His hurt more for circumstance than the kindness as he reminds Ralph "...I appreciate that, but what are you gonna do for everyone else's daughter and son here?" to let us know where he stands.

Ralph halfway gets it, with no offense taken, when he tells the cop "It's the least we can do, no sweat off our brows." and it's everything Burney can do to hold his fort.

"No. I never put family before duty before. I'm not about to put her over everyone else's child is out there now. I love her. But I'm an honest cop. Have been. Always will be. If I can't protect everyone's blood out there the same as mine, all the good I tried to make on the force means nothing."

Decades of his life running through my head in an instant. The turmoil of his personal life, the burden of his duty. The trauma of having not been there for his family pouring through my head. Ralph's feels it, too. He's about to say something else and Burney cuts him off at the intersection of interjection and interruption.

"If you want to still do it for some other cop's son or daughter, I can't stop you. Thank you. The offer means a lot. But don't let me catch you making it to me again."

And Ralph will leave it at that, bringing it back to me with a look in his eyes that says it all: "...Speaking of cops, I guess." I lament. Knowing now this was part of the reason Ralph made that offer for Burney in the first place.

"Hopefully, they don't know that we do, but they finalized plans this morning. But it doesn't make sense."

And I knew this was coming. It's just the confirmation that hurts me, makes me wish Eva was here to hold my paw when I ask him "How does it not make sense?"

The reason why, is Ralph's "They've evacuated the building around us, rooftop monitored that, but the talk makes it like they're not sending in enough riot cops to round us all up."

That doesn't... "How many riot cops?"

Do they not have enough? Are they not going all in to test and gauge us?

"Like I said, talk not numbers." Ralph tells me, but it doesn't add up, makes me feel like... "That's gotta be misinformation." A thought finished by "Like they know we got insiders and are trying to bait us." and Ralph follows up to "...The other packs are aware of that and they've already told their officers to get out as soon and quietly as possible."

This threat looming over our heads, Burney can soften it with "The new mayor doesn't know how to run a police department and she's got Bogo under her thumb. Bogo wouldn't do this, he'd go all in, but Bellwether's been so heavy handed, this sounds like what she'd make him do."

And I'm reminded by that of what he told his Rhino rookie yesterday, about the Sheep cop that couldn't arrest me being fast tracked above Burney's own rank, but we're out of time. It's moved too fast for this, what Burney didn't want to call me up for as the Alpha's radio and my own make it known. "Big Purr, here. We got Fabienne coming in for the interview." Time for our defector cop to be a reluctant symbol. He tells me "We'll walk and talk." as Ralph calls it in that "Burney's on his way now." and we're walking out. The three of us, with Savannah Central's past cops in tow for escort.

His uniform must've gone through the drier with a little starch, but it's not up to his standard. "I should've ironed. I look like a damn security guard." and a fellow former, a Yukon, tells him "You'll look fine. I think everyone understands we're not a laundromat." He gets that, leaving it as such because with him looking back to me, he's still got to say what he does before he goes live.

"Do you believe in God, Owen?" coming from him in such a way that demands I hold back from my usual smart mouth'd When It's Convenient. He deserves better than that. I have to genuinely answer him.

"I think somebody up there has gotta like me for me to be where I am."

"Well I'm a recovering Catholic. I wasn't kidding when I said it was divine intervention that had me pulling you out of another fire." He tells me, as a Wolf by the door opens it and we enter the station.

Eva waiting for me outside with Jager recognizing the bear beside me and nearly bolting out his fur. A cheap laugh by the bear at his expense. Eva embraces me and I needed it, as she explains yesterday's events to Jager and Burney continues.

"Anyway. I was ordered with my partner Telt to check your girlfriend's place. We never got told how they pinpointed the location..."

Aetobatus Laticeps. Bellwether's illegal use of an Eagle Ray and Traffic Cams. Making me tighten my grip on Eva's paw. Making her reciprocate as he continues.

"...But I saw your girlfriend on the other end of the bridge. While I was waiting for Telt to finish turning her shipping container upside down looking for her. I nearly ran for her. Almost called it in because I knew I couldn't catch her at that distance."

I'm angry yet relieved at the same after-the-fact time. Eva's grip trembling in hindsight fear, with the two of us only getting an inkling of where he's going with this as he continues.

"But then there was a little voice in my head. I've gotten it before. Went against my better judgement back then but I listened and it turned out to be right. So I listened again. Told me not to call it in or pursue. Like it just wasn't her time and you both needed mercy. More than what my gut told me about Lionheart's Fox hunt for you being a farce."

So it wasn't just Espada. "You knew?" from Eva gives her back "I think we all did. We never got orders for the pig, but all the witness testimonies said we should've been going after him or the Elk more than Owen. It was such a small incident anyway. Left us asking why. Couple of days later, I was there at Cliffside with Officer Hopps and it all made sense."

That damned... No, I'm better than that. Whatever she is, that's beside Burney's point. The one I've got to let sink that at least some of the cops are reluctant villains. That I shouldn't be demammalizing them, when he wasn't the only one to question orders. Just the first to go against them, and maybe, after Fabienne's done with him, not the only one. He already tried once, but as adamant as the commission was in the meeting last night with him, he still made it clear that he was gonna plead with his fellow officers on live TV.

"Guess you needed to know that, but that's not what I wanted to talk about." he tells me, and I can't fathom "What was it?" but in a brief pause, he puts it back together. To what he was gonna say before he let slip his daughter's here.

"...If it wasn't for you trying to stop a riot? I could've lost everything I got left on this earth. Cops like Rhineheart are ready to kill. Espada's not around to make sure they'd be brought to justice even if I could live with myself. It could've been her. The same as it could've been someone else's daughter."

And that's what starting to make him emotional. Tearing up, on the verge of a pathetic whimper.

"And it all came down to you. That Rhino could have pulled your head clean off your shoulders and yet you stood against him like a martyr. That's when I knew I was, was on the wrong side and that god damned little voice was right, I saw her with you and it all made sense and just... Just thank you. Everything you both did, hell I'm gonna like scat now going up on TV Damn Me."

I'm doing it without a thought, unbuttoning my silk shirt I got back from Toby because "Here, here's my shirt, come on, you need it." and it's all I got. "Not the shirt off your own back, don't kid me." and it's making him cry a little harder.

"What do we look like Goats?" wasn't meant to be a joke. But it's what he needed to laugh to put a plug on his eyes. "Nobody's kidding anyone here. Take my damned shirt." and it's all he can do to choke out "You wise ass piece of... Lord, thank you." as he takes the balled up fabric from me, and I'll do it intentionally now to get him ready for the camera while he brings it to his face.

"Me or him?" and a muffled "For crying out loud, both of you! Jesus... Not him, you..." as the two of us laugh and he dries his face off.

"...Ok I'm taking it back that you weren't one of those good mammals that the news ruined his life. You are. Didn't think you were when I said that but I know you are now... God, Fuck the news..." comes out from him as he hands the damp shirt back to me, looking to me as a Northwestern former says "Burney? Eyes forward." to get him looking towards...

Oohhhh...

"I would use the same terseness with regard to your own occupation, but my upbringing taught me better than that."

Fabienne Growley. Behind the security line, camera on her shoulder. Leering at Burney with about half the intensity she gave Don Lemming. Letting me know she's only half as upset as Burney stares petrified of the one thing a Cop has historically feared as much as Internal Affairs or the Chief. A news reporter.

Scornfully dressing him down with her eyes before breaking character with a grin.

"I'm just taking the piss here mate, I'm working for the devil and I know it!" and the relief of weight coming off him can be felt. Laughing ensuing between the two of them as I stand there to ingest it all. As much beside myself as he is beside me as he offers an "Officer Burney Humbert." and an "I didn't mean that. I been through a lot and-"

"And I'm a professional. I know who I'm working for and can't begin to imagine what you're going through."

She's not having it. Because she understands that "It's a long story Ma'am." and the kind where she has to ask "On camera or Off camera?" so he'll get she knows what she doesn't know, and what she does know is the respect she still has for him. That we all do. Sticking his neck out on a limb the way he did that'll guarantee he's facing trial after all this.

"Off... Whatever you don't piece together during the interview, I can tell you in private." because he'll choose to hope. Because that's what his faith is all about. To keep in mind that he's been rewarded in his faith so far and be ready to see where it'll take him.

"Off camera it is. My mother was a devout enough physician, she raised me to first do no harm." as she breaks eye contact and sees me. Pulling the card out and holding it over my head in pride. A "Speaking of Cameras..." from her segues into my good news. I ask her if "You got another one for me?" and she pries one out of her blazer pocket for the exchange.

Disbelieving that I've "...Been that busy, boy?" when the truth is "Only since yesterday but... I knew what you had to show the city when I found it." I tell her.

Vague enough to have her question "What was it you found?" but I won't spoil the surprise or distract from business. "You'll see. You got an interview to do, now." from me, as that Kudu from before walks up to the security line behind her.

She looks to me one more time with a "Thank you for everything, Owen." get a "It's the least I can do. Hippocratic oathe and all that jazz, right?" from me as I walk off to join Eva and Jager, watching as a Lion in Security behind Fabienne reminds her sound guy of the no prey policy. He knows, testing to see if his boom will reach over the line. He and Growley know they can't do this on the other side of it because of the cops on the other side of the road and how sensitive the interview is, but she's looking at this and knows it won't fly. "Kazi, I don't think that's gonna work." from her leads to "I don't know what else is unless... Ok, what if I set this and then hand it over to somebody in the station?" and a defector Great Plains cop volunteering.

A beautiful little scene to leave behind me and Eva, putting my damp shirt back on, Jager following behind us. His looking back behind it with a "...That was actually the bear cop from Marula." that makes it known how dumbfounded he is. But the ridiculous has all just become so matter of fact that I can barely offer "Yeah. That gumshoe hippo of his was outside yesterday, too." with any real sense of amazement.

"And that was the Snow Leopard chick from the news?"

"Well, yeah." I guess Eva didn't get to that part.

"You know her?" comes from him like it's another bombshell. Eva volunteering that it was "Accidentally. Don Lemming nearly started a riot with Owen, she came up to make amends for it and take over for him."

"...And Owen's the only non-wolf in the committee."

No. Not the only, just the first "For now. Keep it hushed, but I pushed last night to have have representatives from Sousten and your Clan join too. They agreed."

And Eva's surprise that "You didn't tell me about that!" makes it no way around the sin that "I forgot... Had a lot on my mind, I was trippin' something fierce."

"...I know." Eva tells me, knowing she was on the same boat as I was.

All the while Jager's quietly losing it to his assumption in saying "My friend's a god dang hero."

No, just no, "I'm not a hero. I've just come a long way." I tell him with a shake of my head. Wrapping my arm around Eva in a making up attempt. I fill the gaps of the past month she wasn't privy enough to tell my friend. All the while trying to keep him from having his jaw hit the floor too hard. I don't want him to.

Ultimately, about an hour later, I just have to work it down to the analogy I'm not comfortable with: "It's like with my Vulpon, Jager... It doesn't matter that it's a Vulpon. Doesn't matter that I poured my heart into it up until Eva came to me. Doesn't matter that it's still got a lot of me. I stuck with it, it brought me here, but that's not what mattered... It's the Journey... Destination, outcome, whatever, but not the glory. I'm as amazed by it as you are about me. But don't be. I don't want laurels. I don't think the bike would, either." Not Eva, either. Doesn't matter to her that she saved me from my own doubts.

She just wanted me. Because what all this is, is only just that "All that mattered was it serving a means to an end."

The same as I met Eva's own end of having The Right One.

And "That ain't heroic, it's just purpose. What I always wanted. To just do something with myself. Not even... This. Just something." with a subconscious look to Eva. It's just that what something ended up being has still floored him. That thing I've come to closure with, and given closure back in kind. Amazing but insignificant to what me and Eva found in each other, like the Vulpon never could. And all I've left unspoken, Eva's caught on, knowing that hidden layer to what I said and reeling me in by my shirt collar for a kiss. Jager's losing it somewhere in the background. Let him.

Sometime later again, I'm on the grass under a rail bridge.

Eva in my lap facing me as Andrew joins the circle, beaming in pride with his Sousten set girl in tow. He makes it everyone accounted for, besides the token prey boy I'm messaging on the IM App of his gifted phone. I look away from it, watching Andrew make Wally and Jager drop their jaws at the reveal of his lover, looking like something out of a magazine. Features so fair that by common standards and gilded comparisons, lesser males would covet her. Cheeks so perfectly balanced and fleshed out that they contrast against Eva's wide bones and the mildly sunk valleys against her teeth. With one darting look from Andrew's Girl, I can tell she's perfect for him. Real in her depth. I can appreciate this girl from afar for she means to Andrew, without the thought to covet anywhere in my mind.

I fell in love with who I fell in love with, and I'm hers and she's all I've ever wanted. I was made for Eva, as clearly as "Name's Rene." was made for Andrew, him and Rene waiting on us to introduce themselves to her. But I'm occupied with admiring Eva. I've left the ball in the court of our mesmerized friends and they've dropped it, leaving it up to her boy to fix an awkward moment.

"Ok well that joker azz 'Yote is Wally, and the Brown Spotted is Jager. And that girl on Mr. Big-Woof-Wanna-Fight-About-It's lap is Eva Belette."

He should leave the class clown act to me and Wally, but he still gets a laugh from me and Rene. But it's time for one I can appreciate when I protest with "Ok first thing, we established this last time that I already got a girl on it so just get right the fudge off and second..." Wally's guffaw and Jager's gigglefit are so bad as Rene chortles, holding Andrew because he needs it that I gotta ride out the laughtrack that Eva compliments with a snicker and polite shift to keep me in check. "...Second, I don't know what the heck ever I forgot because I'm distracted because Eva But My Name is Owen Conrad, dag nabbit, act like you know." Now the laffs are at both of our expenses as he relents on the unbecoming sly.

"Ok, his name is Owen Conrad Dag Nabbit, MY BAD!"

Oh my "Freakin' gosh darn I'ma doing it.", so bothered now by the gaggles at my expense I'm bothered enough to attempt a getting up that Eva nips in it's budding with a "No you don't~." and a double whammy with a bite and a grinding of her tush that subdues me into a feeble mess of

"okyouknowwhatonsecondthoughtnevermind"

Ohhh, this tear in my heart butcher with a smile, making me look so bad when I was just about on the rebound again. It's making them freaking lose it in the laughs at my expense and all I can't do anything but curl my toes and put my paws over my face under her grin over my neck with it's scruff in her teeth.

"...Andy, you sure that's the same boy the cops were after?" cuts deep from Rene and the humbling gives way eventually, just not soon enough. We settle down, messaging Toby en masse and giving way to huddling around Andrew, his back on Rene's lap, her back against the wall.

Jager can't believe it: "You're kidding me, Toby's really leading up pro-herd protestors?" Those outsiders genuine enough to advocate for us. It's not a far cry from his past of following protests, it's the fact he's sticking his neck out. Fact making Wally answer back with "I know, right? The heck got into him? Skiddish azz prey boy went from getting shook at the thought of going to jail to asking for it... Hey Andy, you know anything about-"

He does, but he can't be reached, right now. Wally and Jager look to him leaning his head into Rene's chest as he trades his licks from below with hers on high. No regard for decency. Clueless and without a care about their laughs in their background, the same now as I saw him yesterday. In love so pure it drowns the world out. And in this moment on repeat, I'm remembering that dream, of just me and EVA on that bike in our own world. What she started that I saw through with her, there. What Andrew exhibits before onlookers as I do as I see, kissing Eva, crashing my tongue into her teeth. Because what inspired me has come full circle. In what Eva inspired, and I what I inspired because of her.

If it weren't for the helicopter flying just low enough to not be ignored, the moment would be perfect. I want her forever on a never ending interstate through the mountains and the forests. The image of us leaving this city bereft as not beggers but lords, the thought of us to float out of this town like two ghosts over a parallel twin, it's overwhelming me, overwhelming me so much I can't stand it.

I want now what may never be, the reminder of that in the chopping thwoosh of a helicopter overhead. But as I break off the caressing of my lips with hers, I can sing this lullaby.

I can moanfully coo some notes, the ones she will know immediately as we burn up to the anticipation of what I'm about to do before it's done.

"Bro, what're you-" from Andrew, answered by Eva's lustful coo along at the tail end of that bridge to that song we know, the song I want us to live out, when I sing to her that decree.

"Next year we'll go traveling, our escapades so baffling, our sovereign love returning to the see-eea..." The world beyond us almost dissipates behind her smile so warm and caught off guard.

The beat is almost skipped when she follows my "We'll be Miles from Winnesota then, writing letters we won't send, for no words shall contain what will bee-ee~!" and she leans into it now, that great pouring out of her heart over my own, like the violins in our heads as they pour out of our mouths as we spill it forth:

"Well your sweet voice and my rough palms, when darkness prowls, we will dance through bluffs and fields and orchards with the moo-oon!" over the world around us. As though we could ever drown it with our love to make right all it's wrongs. The helicopter and the dismissive laughter.

The wishing we wish through the serenading hope in our tongues as we aspire to make real that "Yes next year we will leave this place, leave summers kiss as just a taste, falls warm embrace is coming to us soo-oon!"

Because she knows it as well as I do, now. We both know that after yesterday, There remains no question left that our singular answer can't solve: Our union. In it, forever the solution for our woes here in our coils. The whatevers of before and now and after are no challenge for the fact we now know.

"OHHHWE'VE GOT EVERYWHERE TO GO! YOU SHOULD SLEEP I'LL SEE YOU IN THE MORRNNIINNG!"

But for all that will be, then, the world is forcing me to stay here Now. With it's shadow of a helicopter merging into the shade below this bridge, our friends no longer as able as we were to not look towards it as it slips menacingly into the line the sun has drawn between what's beyond the bridge and what lays below it. The world has injured me with such cruelty, that it would snuff out the deeply rolling waves of a crescendo I was not allowed to feel through it's completion. Shaken in the whiplash of having an outer body experience, only to have myself battered back into it. I will make one last effort, to kiss Eva and wish this would be over, now. But This is not done.

It's forcing Kurt's paw, to have him project his voice through my radio that "It's happening, Owen. Get with us by the station entrance because they're giving the order."

A kiss broken before it got started, and the dread is creeping in. The same as it is for everyone else because they're reading me. They're making that connection between the chopper overhead, the words from the radio, and the look on my face that I know what's happening. For a moment, something was given to me. But only to have it taken. The same as what I must fear, that what we have right now in the station is about to be cruelly taken and not replaced. I feel it coming. The cold war wind blowing through my bones.

"Owen, was that Kurt?" from Andrew and an "Order? What order? You mean the damn cops?" from Wally as they and Jager look to me with weariness like mine. Rene and Eva knows what this is, they can see it in my face when I look to everyone with no way to sugarcoat the sorrow in my eyes.

"Yeah. That was Kurt... The cops are giving the order to disperse." and it hurts that it is so.

Jager's reeling, the symptom of the lack of past experiences with the law that's left Andrew cold enough to only just say to himself "...They're finally doing it..." while Wally's rhetorical "Disperse?" contrasts the fact on his face that he's scared enough to show he knows.

All of it coming down to Eva's bittered sigh, holding tight because she's so tired of the cops, when she has every right to never see one again.

And Rene to make it known "You mean leave the station? Because I just got here yesterday. And I ain't going anywhere, with or without Andrew."

And Wally brings it all back around with a challenge in the nervous tone of a disbelieving "Hey Oh, they expect us to go where? Their own shelters? They dropped the ball. We didn't have anywhere to go until you and Andrew made the first one out of here. They can't just take this from us, I don't care how much revenue they're losing out of public transportation!"

But the fact they're gonna try is all that matters. The pain in this, when we need what we have, because of the venom injected that we're about to lose it. The unfairness of it all, when however much the Wolves and I had no legal right to make this station a refuge is a moot point. When it's not about what they did and didn't do, nor what made us attempt what we accomplished. When all it could ever boil down to, over their fire, is about what they want and what they're gonna do to take it. With no concern that they forced this as much on themselves as they did on us. The anger in all of us that I'll manifest with my tongue, when the radio beckons me again.

"Owen, do you read me? It's Kurt, they're giving the order and we need you!" and I grimace in my reply when I tell the radio "Copy, Kurt. I'm coming."

Because I want a rewind. I want to take it all back and burn the candle at both ends to undue every cruel jagged edge in my life that brought me to the point that I could always almost reach the grapes. Because every time it feels like I finally got them, the world has to take them. Now, Eva has to feel it through my touch, trying so hard to make the wordwine that's become bitter just a little more sweet when I tell her "You should sleep, I'll see you in the morning..." and she can only frown. Getting off me, my girl will let me get up to do what must be done, when "I'll see you guys in a bit." is all I've got left to give. Because I'm turning inward as I walk away from them, scenarios in head of how this'll go.

Trying to hold out for hope when I can't think of any way it'll end good. Because as Burney's Rhino revealed yesterday, they got rapsheets and ongoing investigations on half of us. And like Burney himself just told me earlier, they are motivated enough to kill. It doesn't matter anymore, that some of their pred partners has blood here, or at they themselves are here themselves. The same as it not mattering for the few that care about it, that they care enough about us as their fellow mammal to support is.

Because it doesn't matter if just maybe all mammals got one big soul we're all a part of. They have their orders, the public has it's fears, the mayor her scheming, and we've got the cross to bear for the sin of everyone else not knowing what they do. This will never be allowed to end with us leaving of our own free will, to reenter a society that has finally god damned stopped hating us over our god damn teeth because god dammit, we would have chosen differently if god gave us nothing else but the one option that'd make this all so fucking right, GOD FUCKING DAMMIT, I JUST WANT THIS SHIT TO FUCKING END AND I WANT TO BE A REAL LIVE BOY, JUST LET ME BE A REAL LIVE FUCKING-

"NNNOOO, NO I CAN'T DO THIS BY MYSELF ANYMORE, I'M NOT GOD DAMN SUPERMALE!" I'm howling and just aware of the outside world enough for a moment to hear Eva scream my name in "OWEN, OWEN YOU GOD DAMNED COWARDLY IDIOT, WOULD YOU QUIT CLAWING AT YOUR HEAD FOR ONE SECOND TO JUST LISTEN TO YOURSELF!"

I'm trembling... I've made it a grand total of fifty feet, and I had stopped, given everyone behind me enough time to catch up and watch me. As I dug my claws into my head and had a nervous breakdown so overdue it's no wonder it took this long for me to have it.

And I'm turning, my eyes to the love of my life that is completely, entirely, perfectly and forever done with me trying to make due without her and is fully committing, when I need her the most, to try to make me just live, and live in spite of how much the world doesn't want me to. I've made her cry, because this might've been the last time she could ever seen me, and I'm so used to doing it all alone by my loathesome lonesome that didn't see what I had. When It's finally fully dawning on me that I am precisely here, exactly right now, because of her. Her and everyone behind her, those people in my life and the others that couldn't be here today that have sailed me so far that I barely recognize what I was, just to spite it all and relapse into the scared, cowardly pred the world wanted me to be.

And I will speak the truth of every last sailor here and elsewhere, as those here look to me to tell them "...I'm done with doing everything on my own. I can't ignore the fact I need you anymore, when I've put you all through enough of me trying to survive on my own. I need every one of you more than I have have before. Eva, we can't lose each other again. I've put you through enough and I don't want to lose you again, not to the cops, not to death, no-god-damned-anybody, I want to die with you, get arrested with you, any bad freakan thing that comes now, I can't live through it without you and if, if one year from now, we're gone from this piece of scat city, I wanna do it with you BECAUSE WHATEVER I DO, LIFE OR DEATH, I WANNA DO IT WITH YOU BECAUSE... AUH, CHRIST...!"

She's tearing up over these words she'll say for me, when I need her to the most, that she will speak for every last one of the souls that've touched my own when she reminds me of her truth.

"...That's all I wanted to hear you finally say. All I wanted you to do was say you needed me. That life or death, whatever you do, you'd let me do it with you so I wouldn't have to lose you again..."

This is what it's come to, me having gone through all the lessons without having absorbed the curriculum.

That she would fight tooth and nail against heaven and hell for me and that there is nothing she will not face to stand by me, when all her life had led up to her being convinced by Eva to go to some Fumblr Warrior's all inclusive party to meet me.

Dancing to Los Lobosinos until I jumped out a window.

Waiting for me by a river because a stranger told her to.

Singing me the gospel of a song the world will never listen to and the radio wouldn't play.

Getting punched by a cop and breaking a bottle on his head to stop me from being tased.

Everything she's done and I'm only now getting to the truth of what I felt yesterday.

The give and the take of taking the weakest thing in me and beating the world with it.

The same thing she has given me, and will be ready to do for all time.

To hold on when you get love so you can let go when you give it.

To do what must be done without any thought to the probability of success or failure.

And after all my own final admissions, when I need all I can get, she will not be the only one that won't have me going quietly alone to that uphill battle they would still face with or without me.

Jager putting it nearly as good as Eva's own words when he admits to me "You ain't a hero. There. I said it. But I done missed enough of your hellraising. Call it just doing what you gotta all you want, I missed Buffy's party because pride but I'm not about to miss this. If you've given the cops all the grief everybody says you've given, this is gonna be you doing them the best you ever have."

Andrew has to remind me that "Owen, all the times I doubted your crazy, it's always come back around to what you did being the thing that had to happen. You were right every time. I'm through with you showing me better... I'm going with you both. If you're gonna be in the crosshairs and have your pelt on the line, I need to be there with you."

Wally could make a wisecrack, and he wants to, but Andrew has spoken for everyone. The looks they're giving me, reminding me that I've come this far because of them. They've come this far because I allowed it to happen through me before, and they need me to take them forward, now. With Eva beside me, holding to me to blow away the cremated remains of the doubt that she will refuse to let linger in me. Because it was good to burn it. I have been burned by Eva, and by all of them. It has felt good for their fire to burn away all the world's illness from my body. All that bitterness.

I'm in Echkart's hell. Eva and everyone I've ever known, has absolved my soul. In this firestorm, having burned away every god forsaken thing that the world's ever wrought on me.

And if I am crying right now, it's only because of the freedom I know now. From myself. From the land my knees rest on as I hold Eva like I did in that alley when the Wolf Cop let us off with a warning.

I made a lot of mistakes... But one of them was never, ever relying on someone to help me when I least deserved it. Because that was when they needed to help me the most. As alone as I used to be, as solitary as I'm supposed to be, defined to be, my survival has always been in everyone around me.

All of my crazy, boldness and courage was all a gift others gave for me to give back. That weakest thing in me is my strength. To make me like...

"Let the waves dash themselves against the rocks." I tell myself.

Letting come what may, because the waves have always battered the rocks. They have shattered themselves against them, and have always faltered. Because what may someday finally succumb to them has endured longer than civilization has been.

That is how this is gonna go. How I am going to go forth, now. With Eva beside me, and all my friends. The same as the Commission and every last predator in this station. As the rocks on that beach that will give testament until we no longer can to the very spirit of the hope to gamble with the will to withstand.

"Let the waves dash themselves against the rocks... Let them come against us and falter..."

And as we go to that beach, I think of the times I've had to go solo. To take what was wrought alone. Without the defense I have now.

When even with how impossibly well I took that malice, that what we're facing now cannot be faced by any one mammal. By myself without them. What must be attempted now can only be in the kind of solidarity Burney revealed when he decided that no son or daughter should be placed over another. And in the kind of will that only Espada could have shown, in his challenging of society's cruel notion of what is Just, and to decide for himself what must be Punished and Nurtured, and how they must be so. Eva's strength in her weakness to fight all the world sought to render unto her, and Woolsey's bravery to hold within him that fool's belief for the hope in sacrifice.

Everyone around me has held the answers to all my questions. Those teachers will have their lesson through me, today. Eva holding my paw. Andrew looking down in pride at what Gonz gave back to him. Wally rubbing his paws together with a smirk. Toby, on in the IM app of the phone he gave me. Messaging me what I already know. The cops are making moves. I reply back with an I Know, pocketing my phone as I tell everyone "Toby just confirmed it from outside. It's happening." and the PA comes alive with it's announcement.

"Attention. Blue Alert. Riot Police are forming up in Watering Hole Park and we have been ordered to leave Zootopia Central Station. We are not going home. The city has gone too far in it's panic and we have nowhere else to go. This is a peaceful refugee community. Do not provoke the cops. Do not make the first move. If today ends with casualties, it's got to be on them. All Security forward. All Medics, up front. Unit 2 on standby. Everyone with children, volunteers will be moving you for safety. All non-essential members of the Herd, back away from the front calmly. Evacuate to the hallways, terminal and upstairs but do not panic, do not trample. We are going to try to keep the peace, but if we can't maintain order between the herd and the cops, they are going to attempt an eviction and mass arrest. We've come this far. We do not have to lose it today."

What I felt in Woolsey's apartment complex isn't here. These are the stakes, yet in a thousand thousand clouded out faces glancing to us in the hall, that panic isn't setting in. A thousand voices abounded in the shelter that is Our Central Station's ground floor. Ours, not theirs. Eva taking me by my sleeve to be my leading female, through the light of these spirits I decipher as having the hope one would have at the end of all he or she has ever known. That the world and all it's surrounding us of it's hate had made no difference. That all the dreams we lived in to walk alone through was never at any point all for nought.

That against all the terror and abuse, the darkness we sought to end in spite of what it would've liked could never nullify the truth that we were meant to live for so much more than at it's own expense. It does not make any less the shouting of panic that has every right to, but makes the shouting back of faith for defeating what will never be all the more meaningful. That what is about to come has never made a difference before, and won't now, will not ever. I feel alive, alive like Mouflon Stevens, I feel it glowing in the room, that prayer that though the world we were given has spurned us, that all that we had always wanted for it was our meaning. Not those past genocides, nor the attempts at our enslavement or the reduction of our mammality to submammality.

Only the wish and the attempt. Only, and only just, that though fate has sought our misery, resolve or surrender, that it was always our potential that had the meaning. Not success, nor failure. That will to struggle for our most basic dignity. To contribute. To become whole. All these mammals that could have never faced this alone are the same as I am. They have seen through the examples around them that bold determination to become their own dreadnoughts. Because to be one is neither qualified by size nor exemplified by power. All that has ever mattered in the truth of the concept was the ability to be indefatigable. That ability to withstand that the Wolves have shown them, the same as they have shown me.

Those same Wolves between us, the crowds and the divide between that I will now cross in a rush. Because Eva and everyone else have told me what they wanted, and I have calmed down. To become an impossible soul that is finally done with my mind becoming a ruinous wreck.

I will get it right, this time.

And I will know that I can, because all that is certain is not impossible to overthrow.

I finally, Fucking Finally, I Finally understand that.

I come before the Commission behind their lines as we cross empty tiles so renewed, not changed, that I am like the Phoenix embroidered over my shirt.

"Just tell me they know what they're getting into!" is all Kurt's asking of me. Yelled over the chaos of the security lines as they lock arms.

It goes without a question I can't harbor. "They have always known! They need me to need them back!" and I cannot tell if it's either or both of those two and the delivery that's widened his eyes or Ralph's. But even with me, they are not going to just stand beside me. Andrew knows where his contribution is, and waves to Rene, with Jager and Wally following suit, as he enters into the furthest line back. All of them locking arms without instruction from the others beside them.

And what more could he be asking, is what Bogo must be thinking when he tells us this from behind his row of pieces: "I repeat to all civilians in Zootopia Central Station,you are taking part in an illegal assembly. You are being ordered to leave the area immediately and return to your homes. All persons seeking housing are advised to report to your District's refugee shelters."

But I am not scared anymore. What I already know is happening, making itself known to me beyond any doubt, will no longer have control over me.

Because Eva is holding me, and Andrew is looking back to me in pride and gratitude. Making me secure enough to have me consider what I can do against Bogo, what injury to his order to carry out can possibly be so intimate as to wound-

"Burney!", opposite of me and outside the huddle of delegates, staring towards his former partners.

"Owen, what about him?" from Ralph when it's so obvious that "If Downtown has a Megaphone, it needs to go to Burney!" and I do not have to explain why. Him and the pack delegates overhearing know it immediately.

"You got it, it might buy us time, Raul, if you got one of your pack to spare and got a megaphone-" "

Yes we do!" that Iberian tells him, immediately grabbing his radio to command his reserves as Burney recognizes his name being declared to shuffle through Alphas. "What about me?" and Ralph answers "We have a megaphone and we need you to-"

"This is a direct order by the Chief of Police! Failure to comply will result in your arrest! You are trespassing on and blocking municipal property! Leave the area immediately and you will not be arrested nor charged!"

"Burney, can you do it?!" is my plea for him to see the charge we're giving him. "All I can do is buy time but I'll try!"

"Perfect! Ralph, has Brent already cut the camera lines?!"

"Troubadour? He's cut them but they have battery backups, they're still rolling!" which means they've already seen what defenses we've got. However many Riot cops they've got to face us, even if they didn't get enough, they've factored in the defenses they've seen. But because of that, we can still add more, with it being too late for them to change their own plan of attack.

"What about the Hyenas and Wild Dogs?!"

Kurt's attention and Ralph's "What about them?!"

My awareness of how quick we may lose the defenses we currently have and a declaration that "If they're gonna join the committee, they need to pull their weight Now!"

"Pull their weight, you mean make them send their guard prospects up here?!"

"Exactly! We need every able bodied up front right now!"

"Owen if we use them now we won't have them to replace our own for next time!" from a Tundratown delegate and his logic falters on what I am seeing.

"If there is a next time! The stronger our show of force is now, they'll be intimidated that much more if there ever is a next time!" and I won't have Ralph's "Owen, the hell's come over you?!" because with what we're dealing with right now, if that's what he's thinking about, "Whether or not they ain't sending enough riot gear to get us all doesn't matter! It's everything we can do right now or it's not a damned thing at all!"

I am asking so much. But it's only because, through Eva stepping up to defend me, that "You had him join all of you for a reason! If you're not gonna hear him out now then why did you let him in the commission in the first place!"

As bold and unapologetically uncalled for as it was, I can't correct her. But none of the Alphas can make this call. I can see as much in them. The same as Kurt being unable to dismiss the inaction of his fellows. So he'll make it himself. Changing the frequency on his radio as Raul nearly says something as a Eurasian hands him a Megaphone, and gives it in kind to Burney. It's left up to Ralph for him to question what Kurt is doing. And all he can say for himself is "I wanna see what happens next!" before hitting the send button, as Ralph tries to stop him and several Alphas stop him in kind.

He cannot wait on a vote. "Attention to the leaders of the Hyena Clan and African Wild Dog Pack, any and all able bodied you can contribute to the frontline defense, bring them forward!"

Time alone will tell me if this was right. Time will come soon enough. To prove the fear on these fellow Alphas right or show reward for my boldness through Kurt. We cannot ponder it any further and neither can the rest of the Herd.

"All protesters in Zootopia Central, this is your final warning! Disperse and evacuate from the municipal property you are trespassing on! You have five minutes before I give the order to march! Fail to comply with the dispersal order in that time and you will be arrested!"

And in the space between all these Alphas looking to Kurt, trying to figure what his acting out of turn means to the tension Bogo has just ramped up, I'm looking to Humbert from behind. Paused, staring back at the riot shields and batons facing us, choosing his words and considering their weight before hurling them to his former superior. Then, determined, he lets slip his tongue of war.

"What about the sons and daughters of your officers that had to seek shelter here sir? Are you gonna have them beat their own children? Or are you leaving that to their fellow officers because you knew you wouldn't be able to live with yourself if you did?"

The volleys will begin, now.

"Officer Burney Humbert, you've just exhausted any chance you could have had for my mercy, at the hearings I will be dragging you to personally! All personel, ignore this Benedict Elkold!"

Bishop takes Rook.

"The only traitor between us is the public servant that's going to have his males march against their duty! You are ordering them to disrupt the peace they swore to uphold, against the good people they swore to protect!"

Knight takes Bishop.

"AND YOU KNOW THERE ARE CRIMINALS BEING HARBORED BY THE WOLVES, AND YOU KNOW I HAVE MY ORDERS!"

Queen takes Knight.

"ORDERS THE MAYOR'S OFFICE SAT IT'S WOOLY CRACK ON FOR OVER A WEEK AND WHAT USE IS IT GONNA DO ANYONE TO CARRY IT OUT NOW?! WHEN YOU KNOW HOW BAD IT'S GOING TO BE! WHEN YOU KNOW THINGS WOULDN'T HAVE GONE THIS FAR OUT OF HAND IF IT WASN'T FOR THAT STUPID RABBIT LIONHEART FORCED ON YOU!?"

Rook takes Queen.

"OFFICER HOPPS WAS THE BEST ROOKIE COP THAT EVER SERVED THIS CITY AND BY THE TIME I'M DONE, YOU WILL HAVE EVERY LAST MAXIMUM SENTENCE THE JUDGE CAN THROW AT YOU!"

Knight takes Rook.

"I WOULD LIVE THROUGH EACH AND EVERY SENTENCE THE COURT HANDS ME WITH PRIDE FOR HAVING DONE THE RIGHT THING!"

Pawn takes Knight.

"WE'RE COMING FOR YOU IN FOUR MINUTES AND I AM GEARING UP TO TURN YOU IN, MYSELF! GET READY AND PRAY BURNEY HUMBOLT, GET READY AND PRAY!"

Rook takes Pawn and the game has been called, Burney's king in checkmate. In their parley like chess, Bogo has proven to our cop that the only winning move was not to play at all.

But Eva will see it through with me. Together, and she tightens grip on me as she move forward through the committee. All we have always, only wanted, she has found it. The angle he was going for and the impact he tried his best, tried in vain because our world is a mess, she has found my way.

"BURNEY, THE RADIO ON YOUR BELT!"

I'm seeing what she's seeing now, and his frustration in "WHAT ABOUT MY RADIO?!" is mine to quell because fundamentally, "WHY DID THEY ISSUE IT IF YOU HAD NOTHING TO SAY?!" but they won't hear him, because if "BOGO ORDERED THE FREQUENCY CHANGED THE MINUTE AFTER I LEFT THEIR SIDE, WHAT GOOD IS IT GONNA DO US IN THREE AND A HALF MINUTES?!" then the cops can't believe in his conviction.

"RAUL!"

I will find a way.

"YOUR BOYS ARE HANDLING POLICE SCANNERS, WHAT'S THE NEW FREQUENCY?!"

I will break through.

Raul's shouting to his radio "SOUND DETAIL, WE NEED NUMBERS ON BLUE ON GREEN!" and the seconds are passing, every tick, every tock, a punch blowing through to the trembling core Eva's adorning with her embrace as I start to lose it around her until I finally hear it.

"ONE FOUR ZERO POINT EIGHT FIVE, DIAL IT IN TO-"

"ONE FOUR ZERO POINT EIGHT FIVE, BURNEY YOU GOT IT-"

"ONE FOUR ZERO POINT EIGHT FIVE, I'M DIALING, DIALING, I GOT IT, I GOT IT!"

"THREE MINUTES, YOU GOT THIS, BURNEY YOU GOD DAMN GOT IT, GO!"

But even with it in his paw, his claw hovering on send, in a split second, he has come to an epiphany, looking to me and her like he knows what must be done. Time in such short supply when we could never be ready and I'm losing it, why is the fool not using it, why in the mother of god won't he...

...

...Would he hand it to me of all souls present, would it be me and not himself he wants-

"You know exactly what to say. You know when to say it and how. You have something I'll never have..."

His tears, as he bends over, reaching for my right paw's quivering as he grabs around it, brings it forth, and with my palm out, puts his newfound voice under my charge. How, how, so how very much that declaration of faith is shown and revealed to me at the very moment he fortifies his words.

"There's only one person they have to hear. I am not that person. Do not doubt it's anyone else but you."

Noone has ever seen it as such, that navy blue could be stood before trial by a rogue. But in spite of that, before us is a Ronin, disgraced by his lord, having abandoned the fox hunt to renounce the legitimacy of that rule. I can't think, I can't know, not even come close to believing, and stare blankly at it. The thing I didn't ask for is wrapped in black plastic and staring me straight in the face and the world will have it's day through a radio. It comes so quick and naturally, that these words are not my own. They are everyone's:

"Every cop in the operation against us, My name is Owen Conrad Fuchs! I don't have a say in what you choose today, you know this as much as I know I can't blame you for following your orders! But I'm telling you exactly that because it's your choice to follow them! No matter how much the Chief or the tells you otherwise, no matter how much you've been led to believe differently, what's about to happen and what you'll do about it is your decision to make! Yours and yours alone! You have that power to choose how you're going to live with today for the rest of your life! Are you going to remember standing with us or are you going to remember following orders, doing exactly what you were told and taking part in someone else's war against your fellow mammals!"

It bellows out like Vesuvius over pompeii, "EVERYONE IGNORE WHAT THAT FOX TELLS YOU!" and it will change nothing. Because "IT DOES NOT MATTER IF THIS STATION IS OURS OR YOURS, WHAT MATTERS IS DECIDING FOR YOURSELF WHO DESERVES IT MORE THAN THE OTHER! YOU GET TO CHOOSE WHAT HAPPENS TODAY AND NO MATTER WHAT YOUR CHOICE IS, YOU ALONE GET TO MAKE THAT CALL! WHATEVER IT IS YOU DO, I'M BEGGING YOU, RIGHT OR WRONG, MAKE THE CALL YOU WILL ANSWER TO GOD FOR, THAT YOU'LL KNOW THE PEACE OF HAVING MADE ON YOUR OWN TERMS AND YOURS ALONE!"

It came like a call from on high. Followed through by the howling, roaring, screaming, shouting mess of an ode to joy of everyone that heard me without a radio, where it's not about what the cops needed to hear, but what we needed reaffirmed. It doesn't matter what happens today. It matters that at the end of it all, we can finally be so bold for once in our lives to stand for our will against someone else's. The pride, joy and hope in sacrifice, I'm looking at it in my friends, the alphas and the lines of security that are ready to give without doubt. In a still moment, I'm left in Eva's embrace without a need but a want, asking myself if it did anything for the cops. Regardless of what it's done for us, has my reaching out actually touched them?

The others that our own is looking back with a sorrow as I hand his radio back? Our own cop, that... "I'm not speaking on the commission's behalf, but... They're gonna single you out over everyone else to bust."

I can't see why they wouldn't him to get back, yet he's quick to tell me "I heard them and I know what you're getting at but I'm staying up here." , where Bogo is so much more likely to follow through his guarantee.

When he's got a chance right now to not let it happen, and the Alphas can still let him off the hook with a Tibetan's "...You done your duty up here, you should be with your daughter!"

But he's not going to afford himself that, when "Bogo just made me a priority! If I go further back they'll just bash their way through more of you to get to me!"

Kurt's weighing in at "Burney, you stay up here and we'll be occupied trying to throw cops off you!" and Burney has to double down. "Noone's doing that because I'm holding my own! If you wanna help then help keep them from me killing one! They're not gonna hold back and they're biting off more than they can chew!"

Ralph, now, with assertion in "Noone'll think less of you for getting back." but it's a lost cause. "I can't do that and I ain't doing it. If he's coming for me then the closer I am will put heads between us to crack. I'm not putting any more people on my conscience there's gotta be. I'm staying and you can't make me pull back." is the unwavering resolve that can't be shaken, and that demand of respect we've got to appreciate when it mirrors our own.

As we enter the two minute mark of the countdown to what's coming for all of us.

Big Purr's "Kurt, are you guys seeing this?!" and we're reminded that the lines of security are too silent. What ought to be tension ratcheting up is only shock. Burney, the committee, everyone else taller than me is seeing what's outside and their faces are dismayed, confusion in their ears and eyes, looking from my observation like the sighting of the unbelievable.

Burney beside me, beside himself, so caught off guard he can scarcely comprehend "What's everyone staring at, Sir?"

"Can I pick you up so you can see it yourself?" tells me what he can't trust with his own eyes.

"Yes. Please."

A "Let me climb up to your shoulder." from Eva, Burney's nod, and he grabs me from my sides as Eva gingerly claws her way up one of his. Her on his shoulder, myself hoisted up to see...

"Owen? Is that Buffalo?" comes from my girl, and there is no mistaking that American Bison.

"It's him.", a part of an entire wall of arms ending in hooves and locked together. A third wall in front our own, from the last place anyone could expected. That I could've considered. Prey folk, that have swooped in between us and the cops to form their own barrier to supplement our own, the evidence is right there and all I've been left as, is as speechless as everyone else.

This was Toby's big damned plan. And mixed in with it is a Buffalo that has finally figured it out, what he had done to use us and what solidarity he could actually give us. The same as Toby had, and maybe even because of him. "I'm taking back every last bad thing I ever said." about him and that's...

"And that's the Elk, the one I slashed up, he's right there with him!"

I don't get it, I can't, "This was Toby's plan?" from Eva and my "They're really doing joining us?" as Bogo shouts over a megaphone "YOU HAVE A MINUTE AND THIRTY SECONDS, WE'RE DOING OUR JOB WITH YOU IN OUR WAY OR NOT!" and of course Buffalo flinches, of course he's quivering, they all are. But they're not moving. They're not scurrying back off to whatever free speech zone the cops had posted them to.

I can't... "They're really doing this with us! " A mass of big damn prey, all in height greater to most of us, some even equal to Big Purr's elevation, that towering Big Cat I can still see as Burney lets me down, a whistling is let out behind us all and I along with the committee look to see a mass of Hyenas and Wild Dogs coming toward us, the defense we couldn't possibly have had enough of before Prey4TheHerd manifested itself as a mote between Us and The Cops. And now, therein lies in those two legions of brown spots over brown and mottled chunks of red, white and black.

A number looking as great as the Security's own, I'm shook, stumbling backwards from all this outpouring and "Owen,", Eva's calling of my name catches me, like a ball in her mitt as our cop lowers her down beside me.

"We can't just hold the cops off, we got enough now to do something!" flies out of her, so determined to make me see it when I tell her "What are y- We have to, we got enough to hold them off now, more than enough!" that she'll override it with an "And that's why we can't just hold them off, now! We need to do more!"

"We can't-" just a risk here, a thought I can't complete because "Are you not seeing it!?" is so much more important to her and no, I'm not, "What am I supposed to see, Eva?!" at a time like this, at nearly a minute left before the cops march against us, when all I can think of is how long each line of defense may last against the initial wave of riot gear.

She sees that and it's making her so incredibly frustrated, she's practically hurt when she begs me "Owen, we can push them!" and the only thing I can ask, my "How can we-" sends her over the edge to show, not tell, in a shove of her paws into my chest to send me into an offguard falling back.

In that moment before I land in someone's outreached grip, I'm hurt, and wondering why of all times would we start fighting, and it would get physical.

Then I get it.

In a eureka moment as I'm leaning into Kurt's grip behind my fallen down self and I'm seeing just what she demonstrated.

What Ralph isn't seeing, when he yells for someone to get out of here and I shout no, stop, wait and hold on. I can see how it can work, now. With nobody else understanding why she'd go from pushing me to helping me back up, as she offers to help me back up with an offered paw and I take it. I know it, why that kind of relief is in her for what she's seeing. The cops, they're expecting us to stay still, stand our ground and wait patiently as they pick us off little by little like sitting ducks. It's what they want, and what they're not gonna get, can't get, won't get, shouldn't and must never get. Because we don't have to to give it, because my girl has just figured it out. We can do more than hold...

"We can knock them down."

"What?" in the tone of disbelief in a downtown alpha and I've got some 'splaining to do, before they decide to come down on both of us.

"Ralph, Kurt, everyone, do you know what'd happen if everyone still on the ground floor slammed into Security?"

Kurt's wild eyed stare and Ralph's "Security would get pushed right back and get knocked down... " as Kurt whispers "...My god..." and Ralph's "...then the cops would go through them like butter..." drowns out his "...They'd have to charge us at full speed..." until I can barely hear "...AND EVERYBODY UP HERE WOULD GET ARRESTED ..." over "...But if they did, then..."

"...AND LEAVE THE ENTIRE FREAKING HERD WIDE OPEN FOR THEM TO-"

"No, Ralph, he's got it!"

"Got what!?"

We're running out of time enough for me to just shout it and hope it's not heard outside. "It's physics! Deerton's Cradle, but with a wall slamming into another! It'll send them back, if we get even half of the people behind us to push the lines forward, they'll stay intact and it'll send Five-Oh flying backwards, we can do this!"

"THIRTY SECONDS, LEAVE AND DISPERSE NOW BECAUSE THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING!" from outside and Ralph finally gets it, all of the Alphas do, and he lights up like a firecracker, getting it so hard he's screaming what must be done.

"SECOND LINE, BREAK AWAY FROM THE PILLARS, MEDICS FILL THE GAP AND DO IT NOW! HYENAS, WILD DOGS, FORM UP BEHIND THE SECOND LINE ROWS AS ONE BIG WALL, FORM ANOTHER AND EVERYONE DO EXACTLY WHAT I SAY WHEN I GIVE THE ORDER AND BURNEY I NEED THAT MEGAPHONE!"

I'm so terrified of it failing while it's coming together, a gamble so genius that the desperation behind it can leave no quarter for doubt, when Ralph is grabbing his radio and the PA over us crackles to life and all bets are off with the bookmaker:

"EVERYONE WATCHING US FROM THE GROUND FLOOR, ON MY COMMAND, RUN TOWARD US AS FAST AS YOU CAN!"

T minus Twenty, and "TWENTY SECONDS!" will not intimidate us when "WE HAVE A PLAN AND UNLESS WE GET EVERY VOLUNTEER THAT CAN HELP US, IT'S NOT GONNA WORK! ON MY COMMAND, EVERYONE RUNS FORWARD!"

They have to hear this outside, and I can only hold on to Eva and pray, pray so damned hard, and as much as I can, that this is all going to work out exactly like her faith is leading me to hope it will.

I've only got one thing left to know, now.

"If this is it, is this how you wanted it all to end?" from me so I can make sure. "Yes." with all her certainty.

"T E N!"

What will the headline be, tomorrow? A thought I'm losing, as Eva grabs me by the wrist, pulling me towards the medics behind a pillar, "We're too small! We'll be crushed if we stay here!" is her reason and I nearly forgot about what kind of force I pitched that we're about to inspire.

"EVERY LINE GET RIGHT UP ON THE BACK OF THE ONE IN FRONT YOU!" from Kurt rushing to join us, preparing the lines as Ralph's the PA with an "EVERYONE GET READY!" and I jump in sync with Eva. Over the bench and onto the pillar, next to medics with my friends looking ahead at us. To the best seat in the house, where we'll be safe to witness what we're five seconds away from.

The cops are banging their batons against their shields, their Psychological Wardrums falling on deaf ears. We are standing against them and nothing is changing that.

All I have left to think is a question for her. "What happens after this?"

After whatever will happen already has? The most important thing, that I'm looking into her eyes to know, she tells it with all the conviction she gave me on the day she found me by the water.

"We'll live."

"YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE, CENTRAL STATION! FORWARD MARCH!"

Everything or Nothing, Now or Never, Best or Worst and if this is gonna work, Kurt knows "YOU NEED TO PACK YOURSELVES AS TIGHT AS YOU CAN!"

I'm so scared about the timing. They're merging now. Behind Prey4TheHerd's line. Chests against every pair of locked elbows. But the timing has to be perfect. Everyone rushing has to hit against the wall the second the cops have lost momentum. The melee will start by then and riot gear will be leaning neutral, if not back. And I can only hope that Ralph will get it right.

"HOLD THE LINES! LET THEM COME!" and they are, but as they get closer, I'm seeing it behind their plexiglass shields, that doubt about orders, that lack of conviction in really having to do this. I am seeing in them the words I hoped would strike something, and it's this, the one single thing I needed to see, that I needed to know about our chances. Most, not all, but most of them, I'm finding in their eyes the lack of faith in something they can only go through the motions of doing.

At a time like this, all I can do is smile.

When "RRRUUUUUUNNNNNN!" thunders so hard it's shaking me to the core, as faith and hope convene with Ralph.

Everything ounce of those things that Woolsey had to entrust in us, if it's ever going to come to fruition, it's gonna be Now. The enemy is drawing near, and I'm squatting down to hold Eva.

I have learned from my mistake of ever disbelieving, again. She has become my point of reference to get out from between what I've wanted and what I've tried. I just need a sign, and it needs to come from my right. I'll look there now, and I behold...

Everything I could ever wish to come out of what Eva had willed. So great in scale and scope, I am feeling the quaking from under my feet.

"DO NOT SLOW DOWN!" because the most beautiful day I've ever known is about to happen, when what I'm looking at is not a wave, it's not even a tsunami. It is not water. It is a landslide of rocks and boulders and trees and everything else that comes before the volcano around it explodes.

"RAM INTO SECURITY AS HARD AS YOU CAN!" and if I could see the look behind those shields, just how much would they be questioning their orders, now? How much doubt for their odds of victory would they show?

"IT'S PART OF THE PLAN, EVERYONE HOLD THE LINE!" coming from Kurt to the wall, where all of the things that have made us who we are is about to come to a head through the hundreds upon hundreds of doors coming toward us that didn't fly off the hinges but slammed themselves so hard into their sills that they shattered their doorways. Doors flying through everything that's been built around them, crumbling it all to the very foundation. A great, barreling storm of them. So against what the cops expected out of us that they could not possibly understand the crazy, wild eyed thing we're up to when from any sane and clueless perspective, they'll never be able to get through the solid wall they're about to pointlessly crash into to slam against the cops.

"HIT THEM WITH EVERYTHING YOU CAN!" They never could be prepared against an unprecedence, and that's exactly when I'm hearing the start of that violent melee. The pained and frightful screaming as batons roll over the heads and shoulders of and hard knuckled tactical gloves grab at the prey in front of us.

"EVVVERRYYTHIIING YOU CAAAAAAANNN!" They don't know, and I can't take my eyes off what they're about to. The truth in these Deerton Cradle wrecking balls, in all their momentum. They fly past us like cannon shells, in those terrible few milliseconds where I can look over her head before they make landfall. I can see the moment of clarity every last cop has to face now. As the wall they're pressing against becomes a sum of the freight train force crashing into them. The evenly distributed power like an atomic bomb, through a wall of bricks breaking the sound barrior. So instantaneously that the riot gear before us could never have been trained before on how to counter, how to defend against, how to withstand if they ever even could.

The power of hundreds of tightly woven bodies and the hundreds more sending their raw kinetic energy forward. Shaking everything against them to the the very core. The wave that came before us. Crushed and shattered and falling backwards into a mist right back into the water.

My entire life has led up to this moment.

Their size, their safety in numbers, their rule of majority and their every last other god forsaken notion of superiority to their weak flesh in armor disguised, it's falling down. Their Pachyderm towers to the sky are crumbling over like the academy of lies that all prey ego was built upon. Because their out of luck theory has been challenged with such resounding, empirical evidence to the contrary, that it can never be believed true again. We've lived through all we had to for a reality feels so strange and untrue. So shockingly much so that for a moment, nobody knows what to do. The prey protestors on top of the fallen down riot gear and the cops that had filed behind it looking back to a tally of predators they were not prepared to face all at once.

There they all are, without a soul among them to figure out what just happened.

But it's time to begin. Isn't it?

"...GRAB THEIR SHIELDS ALREADY!"

The moment before now was the last time. Ralph will follow up Burney's follow up demand to "GET EVERYTHING OFF THEM!" with his own order to "CUFF THEM QUICK AND GET EVERYTHING ELSE OFF THEM TASERS CUFFS SPRAY EVERYTHING YOU CAN AND START CUFFING THEM!" as Bogo stumbles back up and orders his own to assist the riot cops that are out of wind after getting it knocked out of them.

Every one of us in front of me acting on their own as a whole, and the moment we used to fear of having to fight badges is happening. We're living it and we can win. It's not a foregone conclusion anymore that we can't. They're fighting tooth and claw and hoof and horn all the more fiercely for it in a melee crucible where none of us are powerless. No concern of victory or defeat. He sees that, just the same as me.

A riot shield flying through the air.

A taser thrown towards us, spinning like a tomahawk and making me duck to dodge it.

A riot cop Hippo with his wrists behind him, being dragged away by an Elephant, by the back of his vest.

All of these sharp teeth bared under snarling, peeled back lips.

The sound of claws swiping at and scratching into plexiglass.

Our least fearful moment and their own most. They underestimated us. Completely. And as quick as they were to attempt our eviction, I can tell it from Bogo's face that they were not prepared for this much chaos being organized this eloquently. And for as sudden as they came to take us, I can't believe it all the more, when I hear come out of him now.

"FALL BACK!" is so out of the blue that it bears repeating because his own can't believe it.

"ALL OFFICERS FALL BACK!" reverberates so loud and clear there's no confusing it. They're truly being ordered to retreat. With everything we're throwing at them giving no room to argue against it. The compliance is immediate, without any time given for anyone to appreciate it. We're just left confused to watch it as it happens and let them depart from the fight we were certain to lose. They screwed up. There has to be something more to this, but I can't figure what. Their drawing away from us, that defeat in them, the hilarity of a riot cop running away with his hooves cuffed behind his back, though it warrants laughing, there's none being had. They're leaving, more empty hoof'd than when they came and all we can take away from it is too surreal to ingest.

It's only when someone in the crowd finally says "We did it." it that it starts to sink in.

"...We did it?" escapes from me.

"We did it!" is Eva's confirmation and the start of a chain reaction en masse to the recognition that the cops are back on their side of the road. Those three words, like lit matches over a gasoline ocean.

I blink.

We explode.

I've entered a bold new world so deafening, I can feel the shockwave in my guts. In that brief moment where I can count more feet in the air than I can on the ground, I am witnessing history. The narrative to all these exposed teeth have changed. I thought I knew what going to concert would be like several days, ago. I was wrong. All the louder and more violent is this day's celebration than the one before it, when we were just glad this station was a shelter. It's a fort, now. A meaning we have given and proven.

We did it.

Again.

I can't think clear enough, I can barely see, all I can do is feel something so beautiful that I've got no prose so bold enough to do it justice. So powerful, that what ought to be my frustration can only seem like an omnipotent moment's tender, relieving acceptance. And Eva, the love of my life behind it all, her shaking tackle of my frame makes the last chance I had to wax gone for good. Somewhere in the background, Andrew is singing praise. I'm stumbling, she's crying out her laughter and I'm replying with a scream so loud my own ears can't register the full range of.

I am feeling a dozen songs all at once, and all of their instruments, all of those vocals, are each like a unique metaphysical sentience dancing under the fur of my back. I could fly. I think I'm dancing. One moment the world is upside down and the next she's a bullet ricocheting off the back of a bench. I've lost control. I am on electrical fire. I can never change all those yesterdays that have been and gone. I have never felt burning this good and clearly before. Those yesterdays have built up to making This, Here, Now, Today, the greatest day I have ever known. Playing out in slow motion the same as it is for everyone.

The same as it ought to be for Burney, when my feet land one more time, for me to look at him and see his face.

The moment we've been waiting for, for all of our lives, and it's not quite right. In the afterglow of my bliss, I can't make it out at first. But the vision of him is so sobering, that it doesn't take much longer than all too soon for me to know what's happening. That tremor in his grip on the radio. Those wild eyes. All the while everyone continues their celebration around him. Terror has engulfed him, separating him from us by a million miles. There is an evil pouring out from that radio that I can actually feel spreading out that's becoming known to everyone around him. I get it, and know it, that same thing I felt when I looked up from my Vulpon to a traffic, it's here again both in front of me and above and behind me.

Watching me. Addressing him. That fast working venom that in an instant has him screaming and running without grace. Dread has become him. A distillation of fear at it's greatest purity.

"MY DAUGHTER! FOR GOD'S SAAAKE NOOOOOO!" bellows a runaway train as it makes flight past me. Coming off his rails with furious shaking. I know what the most poisonous thing is on the planet. It's just struck me, with venom acting so quick it's frozen me solid. The delegates joining can barely keep his pace as one from each pack all give chase. I can barely move with all of my will until my body becomes a host to something beyond my power. It's taking me forward, the question jabbing like a blade in my neck. It finally lets itself out in a "WHAT'S HAPPENING!?" but the relief doesn't come, this gangrene only threatens to take more when the words come from Kurt.

Because there is noone that can tell the world why it happens in the first place. And wherever it has happened, even with the gangs here being charged to deal with it, there was noone besides Lionheart's lupine cops equipped to handle it. The Alphas discussed what's now a reality to only conclude that what steps we could take would not be enough if it was a contagion. And wherever it's happened, it's going to be in a crowd. With the clearing out of the station's ground floor, it's going to be so tightly packed we might not be able to get there before Death does. What Ralph is ordering Unit 2 to combat, what Kurt just yelled out, has my living body fighting against rigormortis with it's every last defense.

We got a savage. And it's her fiance.

The source of the screaming we're drawing nearer to, getting on the radio with Gonzo to direct the gangs towards. The worst case scenario from within. The perfect uppercut to nullify all we just accomplished.

We don't have time to clear the escalator down to the terminal that Burney is already charging down. A blood curdling Get Out Of My Way from the top of his lungs is not going to the job of his weight and inertia. It's everything I can do to dodge his fallen down tripping hazards as I gain on the Alphas following him. I am starting to black out, reaching the same threshold I went over the whole time the cops chased me that Monday long ago. And I don't think it was Nadine's scream that brought me out of it, or that primal, feral roar of what used to be her lover.

No... I think it was the image. The one anodizing itself into my brain.

Of the blood on her tattered clothes, the look on her face as her father lands successive swipes of his claws into Orson. The tears over both of their eyes and total absence of anything at all behind what used to be his own. As what replaced him shrugs off every other assortment of Gangbanger besides the Wolves coordinating to clear the crowd trying to get away. An African Wild Dog holding his broken and mangled arm. A Hyena girl screaming her heart out for her male and the horrible, limp way it's dangling to send pain so great that he's slumping, with his eyes rolling over as he passes out and becomes silent in mid-wail. The moment that Kurt, having grabbed and taken Burney's taser, has pulled it's trigger and sends lightening through a savage animal. When the flow of electricity funnels into Burney as he grabs at the animal trying to bite his shoulder. The chaos of the tragedy moving so rapidly that I lose track of where I am in the epicenter, as it wildly goes from one direction to the other, surrounded by the multitudes of injured, where there are no medics when they're still coming. The image of every terrible thing happening all at once, like it would have to be depicted by a painter of antiquity, that had to capture the events of a calamity as one singularity. But this is not a painting, and I am not disconnected. I am feeling all of it, all at once, all encompassing and all consuming as all of it happens so intensely, so vividly I might as well be all of them and I wish I was so, so much. If only it was happening to me, as everyone else takes those blows and loses their blood and suffers that agony. If Heaven and Hell could convene with me, to make that deal where it was me and only me and noone else. As the barrier finally forms between me, Unit 2, Kurt and Burney and what his son in law has become. That rabid, lurching hulk as Gonzalo and what's left of Unit 2 takes the opportunity the Cop's uppercut gave them to pull it back by it's clothes and limbs and neck and clumps of matted fur to topple it down on it's back to the ground and hold it down just long enough that Burney can roll it over and restrain it's arms behind it's back. As the medics finally come to swarm over a path of destruction. Like Angels that came too late over the ruinous heap of Damascus.

And it's now, in the cruelest calm, that everything which just happened is starting to register.

With Eva holding me.

Looking up to my shock.

My fugue body standing there for my broken up mind to be left with my eyes. Images burned into my vision of the sky over me. Towards the northeast, to one of the buildings the cops evacuated.

And at a time like this, I'm just wondering why a window was left open.