Nick Wilde (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thethinzooline) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
legionworld2016-04-18 05:49 pm
thethinzooline) wrote in legionworld2016-04-18 05:49 pm
Entry tags:
Nuke It From Orbit, It's the Only Way To Be Sure
Who| Closed to Nick and Judy
What| Panicked running around in the vents
Where| The vents
When| After the diplomacy/disaster plots.
Warnings/Notes| N/A
Nick Wilde really wasn't the kind of person that could be called a coward. After all, he was a police officer. He'd helped uncover an evil conspiracy. He'd done some pretty courageous and daring things.
He'd done a lot of those things partly in a blind panic, but he'd still done them!
Most importantly of all, when it had really counted, he'd worked through his fear and come though when someone else (namely Judy) was relying on him. Like when she tried to get him to leave her behind and get the evidence of Bellwether's conspiracy to Chief Bogo. He hadn't considered leaving her behind for even a second.
When someone else needed him, whether it was his partner or -- now that he was a cop -- a member of the public, he knew how to tamper down on the wild terror and the self-interest and do the right thing.
Waking up by himself, on the other hand, in a hospital bed, surrounded by terrifying aliens, was not really an ideal situation for him to be his most heroic. Nor was waking up with the world's worst case of vertigo. The bright lights of the hospital room made his eyes water and looking at them felt like he was staring straight into the sun. And ugh, the smell! He had a sensitive nose but it usually wasn't this sensitive. He could smell everything. He could smell people, for instance, but they were all wrong. Some of them were in need of a good washing and others...they didn't even smell like people at all. And the acrid smell of disinfectant was threatening to choke him.
"Sir, I need you to get back in bed."
"And I need you to stop screaming, creepy Moon Person," Nick begged, in a voice so quiet he didn't realize it was a whisper.
"Sir, please--"
"You really don't have to yell."
"I'm not yelling, sir, you need to get back in bed, I promise we can explain --"
There were things in his ears -- was that what was causing the creepy alien's voice to be so loud? Like hearing aids when he didn't need any? Nick ripped them out but all that did was turn the strange rubber-faced nurse's words to nonsense. Nonsense in stereo.
Now the terrifying alien can scream total gibberish at you instead of screaming words you can understand. That's an improvement.
Nope nope nope nope, he wasn't doing this. He wasn't staying here with a rubber faced alien screaming in his ears in nonsense talk. He wasn't sure where he was going but Not Here seemed best.
Cut to an hour later. So far, in his little sojourn through the vents, he'd stymied multiple attempts at capture, including one where he lured two of the rubber faced people into a section of the vents and locked them in. After kicking one of the lights in the section he was in to break it so it stopped stinging his eyes, he was resting, curled up with his tail pressed against his body for warmth. The hospital patient scrubs he was wearing were awfully thin and the air in these vents was chilly.
He needed the rest. He was already exhausted. He was only a small, eighty-pound fox, and poison gas hit someone his size a whole lot harder than someone with more mass. Not that he knew it, but he really needed to be back in his hospital bed.
That was why tiny backup had been called in, to find him and get him to go back to Medbay.
What| Panicked running around in the vents
Where| The vents
When| After the diplomacy/disaster plots.
Warnings/Notes| N/A
Nick Wilde really wasn't the kind of person that could be called a coward. After all, he was a police officer. He'd helped uncover an evil conspiracy. He'd done some pretty courageous and daring things.
He'd done a lot of those things partly in a blind panic, but he'd still done them!
Most importantly of all, when it had really counted, he'd worked through his fear and come though when someone else (namely Judy) was relying on him. Like when she tried to get him to leave her behind and get the evidence of Bellwether's conspiracy to Chief Bogo. He hadn't considered leaving her behind for even a second.
When someone else needed him, whether it was his partner or -- now that he was a cop -- a member of the public, he knew how to tamper down on the wild terror and the self-interest and do the right thing.
Waking up by himself, on the other hand, in a hospital bed, surrounded by terrifying aliens, was not really an ideal situation for him to be his most heroic. Nor was waking up with the world's worst case of vertigo. The bright lights of the hospital room made his eyes water and looking at them felt like he was staring straight into the sun. And ugh, the smell! He had a sensitive nose but it usually wasn't this sensitive. He could smell everything. He could smell people, for instance, but they were all wrong. Some of them were in need of a good washing and others...they didn't even smell like people at all. And the acrid smell of disinfectant was threatening to choke him.
"Sir, I need you to get back in bed."
"And I need you to stop screaming, creepy Moon Person," Nick begged, in a voice so quiet he didn't realize it was a whisper.
"Sir, please--"
"You really don't have to yell."
"I'm not yelling, sir, you need to get back in bed, I promise we can explain --"
There were things in his ears -- was that what was causing the creepy alien's voice to be so loud? Like hearing aids when he didn't need any? Nick ripped them out but all that did was turn the strange rubber-faced nurse's words to nonsense. Nonsense in stereo.
Now the terrifying alien can scream total gibberish at you instead of screaming words you can understand. That's an improvement.
Nope nope nope nope, he wasn't doing this. He wasn't staying here with a rubber faced alien screaming in his ears in nonsense talk. He wasn't sure where he was going but Not Here seemed best.
Cut to an hour later. So far, in his little sojourn through the vents, he'd stymied multiple attempts at capture, including one where he lured two of the rubber faced people into a section of the vents and locked them in. After kicking one of the lights in the section he was in to break it so it stopped stinging his eyes, he was resting, curled up with his tail pressed against his body for warmth. The hospital patient scrubs he was wearing were awfully thin and the air in these vents was chilly.
He needed the rest. He was already exhausted. He was only a small, eighty-pound fox, and poison gas hit someone his size a whole lot harder than someone with more mass. Not that he knew it, but he really needed to be back in his hospital bed.
That was why tiny backup had been called in, to find him and get him to go back to Medbay.
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"Besides, I've never really seen the point in giving up when there's no good reason." And she had a much higher threshold for that than most people.
The pair eventually hobbled their way into the hospital room.
"Here we are, one hospital room, and one bed, that you should probably getting into right now."
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That was when the nurse came in, a woman with no nose, giant insectoid eyes, and purple skin. She had telepathic earplugs in her hands and moved to put them back in his ears.
"Aaah, what is wrong with her face? She's touching me, why is she trying to touch me, what are those earplug things?"
Nick immediately scooted away from her, and in doing so, accidentally slipped off the bed again and landed on the floor near Judy, on his back.
Graceful.
The nurse babbled something in that language he couldn't understand.
"Judy, can you understand what she's saying somehow?" Obviously, she had to have some way of communicating with them if she knew what was going on. "Because if you can, can you tell the no-muzzle lady speaking in terrifying alien gibberish to please place the whatever-they-ares on the bed and not try to touch my ears, thanks? Nothing personal, but until I'm used to this place and everything in it, and know for sure that no one is a horrible alien monster that's going to unhinge their jaw and swallow me whole if I let them get too close, there's going to be a very strong no-touching policy in place."
He didn't like when strangers touched him anyway, even under entirely normal circumstances, and that was when they were normal not-terrifying mammals.
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"Ma'am, I'll take them," she said, holding out her paw. There was more babbling from the nurse, apparently some sort of disagreement.
"I know it's your job, but Nick's not going to let you do it, and I can't really blame him."
Yet another string of annoyed gibberish issued from the nurse's mouth. Judy crossed her arms, giving her a no-nonsense glare.
"Ma'am, you tried to shove them into his ears without even giving me a chance to explain what they were. You really should've known better."
Reluctantly, the nurse handed over the plugs, and, after Judy thanked her, gave an annoyed huff a marched out the door.
"That was a lot harder than it needed to be." Judy muttered, turning back to Nick.
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Even when it was an annoying pain in the tail, she looked out for him.
Nick weakly got to his feet and climbed into the bed again, then he pointed to the ear plugs, more willing to accept them now that he'd be accepting them from Judy's hands.
"So what are those? I thought they were the things causing my hearing to be too loud, like hearing aids when I didn't need any, but I also stopped understanding everyone when I yanked them out of my ears the first time." He didn't watch a whole lot of sci fi but he watched enough to know some basic ideas. "Universal translators?"
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She walked back over to his bedside, still holding onto the plugs.
"It might be a bit easier if I put them in. If that's alright?" she asked, before firing a small smirk at him.
"I swear I won't unhinge my jaw and swallow you whole."
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Then he sighed, smiled, and leaned over so she could reach his ears better.
She could put the dumb things in his dumb ears. (She was the only one he trusted to jam strange technology places, honestly).
"If you're really a brain parasite, this is free shot number two. That's all you get, though."
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It's almost immediately followed by a quick hug.
"I'm really glad you're here. I was worried I'd have to deal with all this without you."
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But he hugged her back, gratefully. He was glad of the same thing, that he didn't have to deal with it alone -- and he was glad she didn't have to deal with it alone, either.
"I'm a bad penny," he said, "You'll never be rid of me."
The truth was they belonged together. Like peanut butter and jelly, cookies and milk, two peas in a pod, and various other paired food items.
When they separated, he held a hand to his ear.
"My hearing problem seems to be not as bad as before. I wonder what that's about."
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He reached into a pocket and held up a pair of sunglasses, walking over and holding them out to Nick.
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"How about that? I no longer want to spend every moment curled up in misery. Definitely an improvement."
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"You are officially my new best friend," he said to the alien. Then, as an aside, he said to Judy, "Sorry, Carrots."
He turned back to the alien. "Hey there, new best friend, what's your name?"
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"I haven't had a chance to explain the Legion, yet."
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"Our scans also registered that you have an ability that will likely allow you to project visual and auditory illusions."
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"Sooo, you're saying that I have the ability to trick people's senses into seeing and hearing what I want. I'm a magical fox. A magical trickster fox."
Nick drew in a deep breath, like he was going to say something, and then in a fit of pique, he flopped onto the bed, turned his back on Judy and Dr. Gym'll, and pulled the blanket over his head.
He didn't really have a way of articulating why this bothered him so much, so he didn't even try.
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There was a time when the rabbit wouldn't have even grasped there was a problem with that. That Judy carried fox repellent and thought calling someone articulate wasn't condescending. She'd grown quite a bit since then.
"I guess that's fairly solid evidence someone is doing this," she spoke with a resigned tone, "and that they're a speciesist jerk."
There was no way something like that was random, and Judy swore that if she ever found them? She was going to kick them right in the face.
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"I think I'll give you some time to yourselves. We can discuss the specifics later and Shvaughn can come by and explain the Legion in more detail."
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Stuffing down anger was a skill that was pretty well-practiced for him. He'd done it countless times all throughout his life. The difference was that this time, he didn't have to. Judy understood. Maybe once upon a time she hadn't, maybe back then she'd been part of the problem, but now, now she understood. She cared.
Her words were pretty comforting, because hey, at least one person was on his side, so after one last deep breath, he pulled the sheets down so his head wasn't covered and sat there, his paws fidgeting on the sheets where they rested.
He still couldn't really look her in the eye, but he found that he could at least talk.
"I want a refund. On the powers."
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"I want to kick whoever gave them to you," she admitted, "And I can kick a lot harder now."
Which, considering how hard she could kick before, was saying something.
"Just let it out. I'm listening," she said, wanting to give him a chance to vent instead of bottling his anger up.
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Just like then, he wasn't really equipped to actually talk about it. With, you know, sincerity. But that she was willing to listen was something he appreciated more than he could put into words.
"There's nothing to talk about. We're in another world, I have superpowers now, whatever gave them to me has a twisted sense of humor, they are what they are. And it sucks. Moving on." He waved a paw vaguely in the air. He tried to sound flippant, like it didn't matter, but his ears betrayed him, as usual. They were still flattened against his head. Still, that he'd managed to admit that it sucked was better than nothing. Thanks to Judy being so understanding, he'd managed that at least, and that was better than pretending it didn't bother him at all.
"What's the Legion?"
Subject change. Maybe he'd talk more about the stupid powers later. But for right now, subject change.
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"They're the people that rescued us. It's a government-backed team of superheroes that protect the galaxy."
"Or they were, anyways," she admitted. "There's still a few around, but most of the team disappeared a little over a year ago. From the same place we arrived in. Which, yes, is all sort of suspicious."
There wasn't much about that fact that wasn't, really. Still, Judy hadn't seen anything yet that indicated the Legion weren't on the up and up.
"I've been keeping an eye out, though, and it seems like they really don't know much more than we do. They said they'd try to get us home, but they need help. They can't do that and protect the galaxy at the same time, and they've asked us, everyone who's shown up? To join the team."
There was something of a glint in her eyes, something that said Judy had already made a decision, and Nick was probably going to get dragged into yet another insane adventure against his better judgement.
"You don't have to join if you don't want to...but I may have been considering helping them."
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"I'm sorry, you want to what?"
Nick gestured back and forth between the two of them, sitting up.
"Did I miss something when I fell through the portal or whatever it was that brought us here?" He patted himself down, as if checking that everything was the same. "Superpowers or not, I don't feel like I've undergone a magical transformation from police officer into superhero."
Nick saw that his police uniform -- now cleaned -- was in a plastic bag on a floating bedside table and he fished around in there.
"Look, see?" He held up his badge. "It still says 'officer.' And also, conveniently, 'police.' In case we ever happen to forget that we are indeed police officers, something that you seem to be having trouble with at the moment." He flailed slightly. "This isn't the Twilight Zone, Carrots. Pawd Serling isn't going to pop out of a corner and tell us we've suddenly made a strange and uncanny transformation into comic book characters. We're officers of the law, not -- not the Clawvengers."
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"This wasn't some sudden decision, Nick. I did actually put thought into it," Judy defended.
"I even asked Officer Erin if she'd put in wold with the Science Police for me, originally, but...they don't need help. Not the same way the Legion does." And above all else, the entire reason she'd become a police officer in the first place was to help people. That wasn't something that had changed.
"And there are kids here. Barely teenagers. 14 might be the age of adulthood here, but I couldn't just leave them to deal with this on their own." She had brothers and sisters that age who would in no way be prepared to handle something this crazy. "It just wouldn't feel right."
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He reached his paws under the sunglasses and rubbed at his eyelids. He could feel that head ache from earlier coming back again.
Ugh ugh ugh. Ugh.
"...They consider fourteen old enough to fight against what I'm assuming are supercriminals or whatever it is superheroes fight?" He stopped rubbing at his eyelids, broke off into a sigh, and stared at at Judy, shaking his head slightly. "Fourteen? Seriously?"
Anyone that thought Nick Wilde didn't care about people either didn't know him, or had only known him back before he met Judy, when he genuinely didn't care about most people. (He was the last person that would've argued that he was secretly selfless and squishy inside back then. It was in there but it had been buried pretty deep).
Now, though, now he cared. Now he couldn't even pretend he didn't care -- or if he did pretend he didn't care he at least couldn't keep up the act for very long.
"How can the age of adulthood be fourteen? How many teenagers are they throwing into this and why is that number more than none?"
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It wasn't that they didn't need help, it was that the Legion needed much, much more than they did.
"Apparently some species of aliens mature faster than others, and they decided making the age limit fourteen was a good middle-of-the-road answer instead of separating it by species. It's not a smart idea, but I think we've run into our fair share of badly thought out laws."
The right to refuse service, for one thing. Good reasons could be given for it, but for the most part many used it to justify discrimination.
"The Legionnaires don't see anything wrong with it because most of them started when they were fourteen." It was an entirely different culture they were dealing with here.
"And there aren't as many teenagers here as there could be. 5 is still too many, but there's other adults here. Including two other cops."
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Nick knew Judy wouldn't be able to sit back and not help them even if it was just just one. Sooo that meant there was no way he was convincing her to drop this superhero thing and be a police officer instead.
And, if he was honest with himself, there was no way he could turn his back on it in good conscience, either. People needed help. The people helping the people needed help. "Serve and protect," blah blah blah. Apparently, it was also possibly the only way the people helping them could have the time to find them a way home, too. And if it was all a scam, some kind of hustle, then it was best he and Judy -- and these two other cops, maybe? -- worked together to expose it from the inside.
Nick sat there for a moment, making his 'GDI Judy' face. She knew the one. He made it about as often as she made her 'Sweet cheese and crackers, Nick' face.
Then he threw his paws up in the air.
"Fine! I guess we're superheroes now." He crossed his arms and slumped back into the bed again. "If we're playing at being Clawvengers, then obviously I'm Iron Mammal. Because I'm laconic." A pause. "And also devastatingly good-looking, with a roguish-yet-classy charm."
Obviously.
"And technically I'm independently wealthy, and most of said wealth was acquired from ill-gotten and immoral gains until I decided to turn away from a life of loose women and self-centered acquisition of money at the expense of others, to a life of heroism and justice."
Another pause.
Nick tapped at his chest and peeked under his hospital scrubs at it.
"I didn't have my heart replaced with some kind of energy generator while I was out, did I? You know, since we're superheroes now? That seems like a superhero kind of thing that could've happened."
He really was only half-joking, it seemed entirely within the realm of possibility.
Especially since Disney owns Marvel.no subject
She didn't mind them, really. They were part of who he was, and she wouldn't change him for anything, but he did have a tendency to go overboard sometimes.
"And I think you would've noticed if your heart had been replaced by now."
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Nick still thought the CG had been amazing on that part. He really had looked like a skinny wimp.
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"That's actually kind of flattering. Who knew you had it in you?" she said, rubbing where he'd flicked, and smiling a bit.
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Lies.
It was meant to be flattery, but he wasn't about to admit that.
"So we're superheroes now. That's a thing. Does that mean we have to come up with stupid hero names and all that?"