Chapter Text
Kairi ran through the hallways, a little embarrassed that she’d gotten lost in this ugly maze. Sam might’ve known this place by hand, but the keyblader kept getting turned around by the identical looking rusted hallways. How was this ship still spaceworthy? By all accounts, this much rust and aging would’ve meant a one-way trip to the space junkyard, but this ship was strangely functional despite how much it had aged.
Indeed, the rust on one of the cameras didn’t stop it from showing the young girl and her distinctive keyblade to the wrong rabbit. Frank was past the point of questioning how the meddling cat turned into a meddling human or how she’d gotten here, he just wanted to remove at least one of all these new problems, NOW.
INTRUDER! INTRUDER! REMOVE IMMMMMEDDIATELY! INTRUDER!
And now Kairi’s path was blocked by angry looking robots charging towards her. The same ones she’d seen behind Captain Algar when the Sylenceas was in her prime, only they were as far past their prime as the ship. Or at least they looked rusted and brokem… the claw that rushed at Kairi’s feet was fast, and the impact it made when she jumped out of the way was hard.
Flower Shoot! An energy blast smacked right into the first robot’s chest, making a big dent in the metal. Kairi half-expected the aged machine to fall apart at the first blow, but that wasn’t wholly the case. Whatever was making these machines decay wasn’t actually making them weak, at least not in a way that made sense to Kairi.
A taser suddenly rushed out at Kairi, but the keyblade batted it aside and countered with a powerful Blizzara! The machine froze over, still shouting about destroying intruders. The Keyblader shook her head clear and readied her Keyblade against the remaining robots; even with the machines being much stronger than they looked, this was nothing she couldn’t handle.
—
Apparently Mowgli was the ‘heavier weight’ Bagheera had carried before, judging by how he straddled the panther’s back. Judy probably wouldn’t have added too much more weight, but she elected to walk herself this time as they walked through the hallways of the starship. She was still very nervous around the massive panther, and she was determined to stay beside Bagheera’s teeth and paws instead of ahead of them.
“This is…far too quiet,” Bagheera murmured, “If Frank knows about us breaking out, he’d send more of his guards.”
Judy’s ears were much more sensitive that the panther’s, and she could pick up the sound of a distant electric battle, metal on metal smashing against each other, “I think they’re being sent somewhere else…and whoever they’re fighting is giving them heck.”
“You’d think that little furball would keep as many of them around him as possible,” Mowgli murmured.
“Well…being protected by bigger things than you can be a double-edged sword,” Judy chuckled, glancing back at the shrimpy little human, “You feel smaller around them, they’re doing all your fighting for you, so it’s not really your strength…you know what I mean?”
The young man-cub folded his arms and pouted, “Of course I don’t.”
“Oh, you do,” Bagheera giggled to himself as they turned another corner.
Judy wasn’t expecting to see the Zootopian Natural History Museum on the way to Frank’s lab, but here it was. The hallway had been designed to present the history of Zootopian life, from ancient mammals with very long teeth to the modern civilization of Judy’s homeworld. Bagheera wasn’t particularly interested in the standing skeletons himself, but the small human riding him couldn’t help but look around curiously.
Judy recognized a lot of the exhibits; the models of three sabertooth rabbits with spears surrounding a feral fox, a comparison of a sheep skeleton on four legs and one on two legs, and a rather detailed list of predation habits…this must’ve been Bellwether’s intended exhibition that Frank had taken from Zootopia. But why drag it onboard this ship…?
“He keeps saying we’re not real animals. He keeps calling me a cartoon, Bellwether!”
To prove that they were real to…who? The spaceship’s captain was Judy’s best guess, and the humans he was planning to show off this ‘zoo’ to. Judy had to admit that the idea of creatures living on entirely different planes of existence would be a hard pill to swallow without proof, but there had to have been a better way than mass kidnapping.
Mowgli squinted at one of the skeletons, which almost resembled a cat somewhere between Berlioz and Bagheera in size with teeth shaped like bananas, “Are these hunting trophies?”
Right, you’d know what skeletons look like, Judy shook her head. “No, these animals…died long ago. We found their bones buried in the dirt and…put them together so we could imagine what they’d look like when they were alive, years and years ago. And how we look on the inside.”
“…Huh. Seems silly.” One of the skeletons had been arranged to show how it belonged in the body of a rabbit, and Mowgli was surprised to see that Frank and Judy’s teeth were actually quite sharp under those furry faces. Then again, those long finger bones with sharp points definitely didn’t match up with her paws.
“Can your brother fight as well as you, Judy?” Bagheera asked as they approached the door to Frank’s room.
Judy wasn’t sure how to take that particular compliment from the panther, so she tried to answer the question, “He’s not a fighting rabbit, no. He’ll probably hide behind what robots he has and use his taser…” Her eyes fell on a pile of shattered bones swept into the corner, too thoroughly broken to have been done by accident, “...but rabbits can be surprisingly dangerous when cornered, and he’s no exception.”
“Understood,” Bagheera nodded just as they approached the lab door.
Judy mused as she pressed the buttons on the keypad. No big riddle on the name number, 06-11 for FranK. One good thing about her older brother becoming a criminal, she knew enough of his quirks. She just didn’t know what he was capable of.
The muted blue office was obviously built for something much taller and haphazardly retrofitted for rabbit’s size. Judy recognized the signs from when she’d gotten her first oversized office, homemade stepladders made of filled boxes and open lower cabinets. The only thing Frank didn’t care to climb was a tall metal barrel in the corner of the room. No, the only thing he felt compelled to climb was the table in the center of the room, holding some black gun at the intruders, something bigger and nastier than his usual taser.
Frank had perched himself on the table, an oddly large white labcoat draped around him like a cape. The rabbit sneered at the intruders recoiling at the sight of his weapon, “Surprised you’re getting along so well with a killer, sis. Desperate times, right?”
Judy’s eyes flickered back at the growling Bagheera and her cold-blooded brother, not sure if the natural predator could be judged against someone who had to know better, “You wanted to… kill your own family. Why?”
Frank frowned furiously, the paw holding the gun shaking in rage, “When your documentary hit the news, we had a hilarious game of ‘Spot ourselves in the background’. I got mixed up with everyone from Gary to Bob to freaking Abigail. Everything I did, everything I put effort into, everything I was better at - and I’m destined to be nothing more than a single bunny face in your wallpaper before becoming 06-11 in the family records. Not unless I do something…”
Judy’s caught a glint of metal coming from the barrel of the gun…no, not a gun. A syringe.
“ Interesting.”
Frank laughed and spun the gene splicer in his paw around, thrusting the syringe right into his shoulder. Bagheera and Mowgli squinted in confusion…did he just attack himself? Why would he do that?
But then a truly ugly sound started burbling from inside his body, something growling and gurgling and groaning as Frank began…swelling? His arms, chest and paws swelled up like balloons, everything inside him getting bigger and bigger. A suddenly massive paw crushed the syringe into the table, sharp claws suddenly popping out and scratching into the table. Frank let out a loud roar of pain, revealing a mouth full of sharp teeth that either hadn’t been there or hadn’t been that sharp before. The rapidly mutating rabbit convulsed and suddenly fell off the table, a fuzzy grey maelstrom lying behind the desk.
“Ahhh…ahh…aaaaand now I’m too interesting to fffade into your background, sis. ”
When Frank finally stopped swelling and stood up, his new body looked…well, like a rabbit’s head on a bear’s body. His small grey body had swelled up to where he was almost Baloo’s size, with sharp claws on the end of his paws and his nasty smile now full of sharp teeth. While he had the foresight to put on an outfit designed to handle his abrupt bulk shift, the outsized labcoat still didn’t fit right on him. All things considered, he looked rather ridiculous. But there was no denying that he had made himself a lot bigger and stronger, giving himself sharp claws and teeth to hurt anyone who’d try to threaten him.
Mowgli gingerly got off Bagheera’s back, letting the strongest predator in the room move around freely. Judy also moved herself, trying to flank her outsized brother while she thought up a fight plan. She thought about her boxing opponent, while Bagheera thought of the larger animals he’d hunted back in the jungle.
“We are going home, Frank,” Bagheera growled, drawing the mutant’s attention from either of the weaker animals.
Frank snorted defiantly, “Nobody’s gonna tell me what to do anymore. ”
“How childish ,” the panther snarled as he circled the grotesque bunny, “You’re nothing more than a prey trying to play predator.”
“I’m not trying to play anything!” Frank snapped, picking up the table and tossing it at the panther. The sleek black cat leapt out of the way, letting the table’s edge get imbedded in the tank behind him.
Bagheera pounced, realizing there would be no more talking. The panther’s claws embedded into Frank’s large body, digging through the labcoat and cutting into his thick fur. Frank roared in pain and swung his arms around, managing to get a good blow on Bagheera’s face and knock him off with surprising strength. The entire room rattled from the impact, sending several of the audio tapes clattering to the floor. Mowgli was quite surprised to hear them speaking, but there were more important things to think about.
Frank shook off the initial pain and tried to pounce onto Bagheera, scraping his new claws against the wall. Bagheera would’ve chuckled at his enemy’s aim, but with how deep the scratches went into the wall, any ‘better’ aim would be a serious threat. The panther took another swipe at the mutant’s leg, cutting just enough that Frank kneeled down in surprise and pain. Mowgli suddenly decided to contribute, jumping on Frank’s back to grab his ears and pull them back hard.
“EEEEEEYAAAGHHHH!”
The bear-rabbit howled in pain and reached back to grab the young cub, yanking the boy off his back and throwing him at the nearby wall. Bagheera moved without thinking, leaping to catch his young ward before he slammed into the wall. The panther’s furry body managed to cushion Mowgli from hitting the wall at full force, but it was a hard enough impact to knock the wind out of Bagheera’s lungs. The two of them landed on a tangled mess of cables, some of them still plugged in. The panther winced as one of the cables pulled his leg at hard, sharp angle it wasn’t meant to go.
Frank took advantage of the momentarily stunned Bagheera, binding his huge paw up into a fist to smash down on either Mowgli or Bagheera. Suddenly, Judy leapt out of nowhere and used her legs to push Frank’s fist into his own jaw. “GAAAAH!”
The rabbit would’ve congratulated herself for pulling off the same trick she’d used against the police trainer, but Frank spun around a lot faster than the rhino and wrapped his other paw around his sister’s body. “Real CUTE, Judy!”
Judy winced in pain as the fist tightened around her, her legs kicking furiously but only hitting air. Bagheera tried to pull his paw free from a tangle of multicolored vines and Mowgli was only just able to pick himself up, but Frank only needed a few more seconds -
CCCLANG!
Something hard slammed directly into Frank’s back, startling him into dropping his sister. Judy wheezed the air back into her lungs and ran to help Bagheera free his hurt paw from a loop of cable. Frank spun around to see what new problem had decided to introduce herself…
Standing in the lab doorway was a human girl in a pink-and-black jacket. Frank almost didn’t recognize her, until that weapon flew back into her hand, the same weapon that had destroyed his drones in Zootopia. “YOU!”
“Nice to properly meet you, Frank!”
Judy’s ears perked at the sound of the voice, and her eyes blinked at the sight of the weapon in her hands. Same voice and weapon as the cosplayer she’d met, even the same outfit…
“Kairi?!” Judy exclaimed, “Weren’t you a cat before?”
“Long story,” The girl confirmed her identity before pointing the end of the strange flower pole at Frank and firing some strange energy at Frank’s face.
“Hey Judy!” Mowgli’s voice brought Judy’s attention back to the matter at hand, Bagheera’s tied and hurt paw. It was easy enough to untie the cables from the panther’s foot, but Judy could tell it was sprained at the very least.
But there was something else Mowgli wanted to show Judy. There was a lot about everything around him that Mowgli didn’t understand, but he could tell that what was coming out of this broken vine was the same painful stuff Frank always used to hurt him and Baloo…
“Kairi, huh?” Frank rubbed the side of his face where the energy blast had stung him, “Where’s your blue-haired friend?”
“Aqua’s helping someone else you hurt, Frank,” Kairi asserted, “You’re not going to hurt anyone else.”
Frank sneered as he squared off towards the little girl, “Oh I wouldn’t be too sure of thhEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUHHHHHHHH!
Frank screamed as searing pain zapped through every inch of his muscles. Judy and Mowgli pushed the severed cable into his back as hard as they could, giving him a hard taste of his tasers and cattle prods right back. For a split second, his skeleton could be seen lighting up from the inside.
The sparks intensified for a second, and then an electrical explosion of sorts blasted the mutant rabbit away and knocked Judy and Mowgli off their feet. Frank collapsed onto the floor in a heap, his eyes closing in defeated unconsciousness. Everyone else present picked themselves up to assess the situation, Bagheera wincing as he put weight on his twisted paw.
“Um…who are you?” Mowgli pointed to the new girl-cub in the room.
“My name’s Kairi,” Kairi explained before turning to Judy, “We…kinda met in Bunnyburrow before everything went down.”
“That… was you…” Judy glanced down at her mutated brother, deciding that the cat-to-human transformation wasn’t entirely absurd.
“I’m going to help you, but I need you to-”
A furious hissing noise caught everyone’s attention. Forgotten in the chaos, the table that Frank had thrown had dislodged, and the fuel tank it had punctured whistled with dangerous intent. Dark purple smoke hissed angrily at everyone in the room, and an uncanny feeling of primal terror struck everyone present.
WARNING WARNING E-TYPE ENERGY BREACH EXTREME DANGER EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY SEALING ROOM
“Everyone out, NOW!” Kairi shouted. Nobody argued.
The motley group of animals and people rushed out of the lab, not noticing the rabbit-bear mutant blinking as the table dislodged even further and the hissing became even louder…
Kairi was already halfway out the door, staying to make sure that everyone else got outside. Judy was a little embarrassed that Mowgli took it upon himself to carry her out, but she wasn’t about to complain. Bagheera just managed to make a half-jump, half-limp as the lab door closed and sealed behind him, not as second to soon as
BOOOM!
Everyone could feel the tank exploding on the other side of the door, rattling the sealed door but luckily not breaking it open. A collective sigh of relief filled the silence after the world stopped rattled, with a little bit of embarrassed elbowing and muted apologies as Judy got Mowgli to put her down.
Judy took a deep breath and let her head fall into her paws. While she was relieved that Mowgli, Bagheera and Kairi were ok, she still had to acknowledge that her former brother had still been inside with the explosion, “Cheese and crackers, Frank…”
Mowgli wasn’t sure how much sympathy he had, but he remembered something else, “Um…what do we do now? I thought we needed him to get home…”
Kairi rubbed her forehead as reality set in. Sure, between Sam and Captain Howie and everything else on this ship, there would probably be a way to get them back to their home. But their homes were probably still frozen, and she had absolutely no answers to how or why or how to undo it…so much for her hero moment -
No, no, don’t think like that. There’s always hope, there’s always a way. We just need to find it.
“We’ll figure something out,” Kairi managed to declare, “We’ll get all of you back to your homes and families, and things will go back to normal.”
Judy couldn’t help but chuckle, “Yeah, for a given definition of ‘normal’.”
“I for one, am inclined to never think about this again - AH!” Bagheera winced in pain as his twisted paw flared up again.
Kairi moved to the large panther’s side, slightly happy that there was something here she could definitely do. One Cura was enough to fix the damage and restore full functionality to the panther’s paw, much to everyone’s surprise.
“Can you show me how to do that?” Mowgli asked.
“Sorry…” Kairi apologized, “It’s not something I can teach you to do.”
“Awww…”
“Well, whatever you did, thank you,” Bagheera nodded at Kairi before turning to face Mowgli, “Now, as I was saying, once we’re home we’re not going to speak about this. I don’t need any of us declared mad.”
“Can I at least take one of these weird rocks?” Mowgli presented a tiny machine that looked like a tape recorder, “There were a bunch of these, and I think they talk.”
“NO.”
“Darn…” Mowgli sighed dejectedly and pressed one of the buttons. Sure enough, a voice began talking from the ‘weird rock’.
Chief Scientist Notes, Dr. Hebirl. Reports on the energy we’ve been drawing from the moons of this galaxy…
Kairi’s ears perked up, maybe there was some answers in this report.
Entropy Energy or E-type energy is…admittedly an excellent fuel source that acts much like Black Hole Energy. However, the substance itself is incredibly corrosive and very dangerous. As unscientific as it sounds, it just… feels dangerous, like it triggers a primal desire to stay away from it in the back of the mind. For me at least…anyway. Physical contact with the raw fuel causes jaundiced irises and physical deformations that resemble advanced aging, though these effects are not accompanied by the frailty one would associate with such visible decay. Almost the opposite, in fact - probably the same principle that makes our rusted ship work so well. As for the mental effects, a sort of mania seems to overtake the mind, though it’s specific effect varies from individual to individual…
“What’s it saying…?” Mowgli squinted at the talking box in confusion.
“It’s saying that touching the… fuel makes you grow older,” Judy explained the best she could.
“Oh…” Mowgli thought for a second before his face lit up. “Where can I find it? Maybe I can get big and not be a cub anymore!”
“If it were only so simple…” Bagheera sighed.
“I don’t think it’s the kind of aging you want,” Kairi explained with a smile, “It’s more the aging where your face gets all wrinkly, your hair goes…white…”
Her smile evaporated as her face became pale. “And…your…eyes go…yellow…”
GSHUNK
Everyone spun around to look at the door to Frank’s lab. At the top of the door, two sets of sharp claws had pierced straight through the metal, tendrils of black ooze dripping through the new holes. With a noise that sounded like hellish screaming, the claws slowly came down. Black smoke and dripping oil leaked through the lines that were opening up in the metal, as whatever was on the other side…
CRASH
Lost its patience and smashed through the weakened door with one push, sending it flying across the room and opening up a massive hole between it and everyone else. Thick black fluid pooled out of the gaping hole, eating at the floor like viscous acid.
The hands that had pushed away the heavy barrier looked like Frank’s beary hands…at first. Before everyone’s eyes, the fur around them turned bone white and the skin shriveled and shrunk, transforming from meaty paws to giant spiders with daggers for legs. The same happened to every inch of Frank’s mutated body, muscles withering to nothing until he looked like a walking skeleton. His ribcage and spine were visible now, his mutated height making them look like a cobra’s flared hood. The labcoat he was wearing draped over his skinny body like a cape, now stained black as night. Frank’s rapidly aging face had gone past wrinkles and had begun shrinking back to reveal every one of his sharp teeth and make his baleful eyes pop out all the more. His eyes weren’t just jaundiced…they were practically glowing furious orange light, directed straight at everyone in front of him.
He should’ve collapsed to the floor as a bundle of bones, but he didn’t. Instead, he stepped forward with far more power than something this old and withered should’ve been able to. The thing that had been Frank hissed out between his sharp teeth, rasping and hateful and dark, “What. Is. This.”
Aged face. White fur. Yellow eyes. Black cloak.
Kairi breathed the answer.
“Darkness.”
