Alex Reynard

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Chapter TWENTY-THREE

Toby walked away from Junella feeling like if he never saw her again for the rest of his life he'd be fine with that.

When he returned to the car, he found Zinc up on the roof, repairing the windows by squeezing some kind of liquid glass out of a big toothpaste-type tube. "Ey, chief. What'd boss-lady wanna talk to you about?"

Toby opened his mouth, but nothing came out. There a million angry words he wanted to say about the skunk, but there was no point in throwing a tantrum at Zinc, who'd done nothing to deserve it. Toby shook his head and sulked past the canine.

On the other side of the skatecar, Piffle had a hand over her eyes to keep from accidentally observing Doll as she pulled the remaining bits of window glass from the hamsterfly's arm. Toby strode past both of them and climbed up into the backseat without a word. He remained silent while the others prepped the car for departure.

A few moments later, a black skull appeared outside his window. George looked rather chagrined. "I do apologize, Sire Toby, if I have inadvertently caused ill feelings by my actions. I was only doing as I believed just."

Toby looked at him for a moment, but then saw Junella nearby and looked away.

Junella saw him as well. His expression didn't change hers. For a moment she considered giving him a word or two of consolation, but knew better that he wouldn't listen. Instead she called out to her partner, "Good going, Zinc, but we can fix the rest of the windows in transit. Get George hooked back up and help him get this big stupid thing up on the roof. If we don't want anymore acid pies up our ass, we gotta move!"

***

The remainder of their journey through Polycoria was uneventful, save for the occasional beast bumping into the skatecar or being chased away from it by George's fearsome snorts.

This was good, because Toby wanted nothing more than to brood in silence for a while. When Piffle entered the back seat and saw the mood he was in, she'd tried to put her paw on his arm to console him. He flinched away. The hamsterfly silently whimpered at not being able to help. But she respected his desire for alone-time and went back to reading her pamphlets.

When one is bedridden during a long illness, one has time to think. When one's body is so ruled by ill health that one ends up spending close to 62% of their lifetime in a single sterile room, then one has lots of time to think. So Toby had gotten plenty of practice walking down the spiral staircase deep inside himself to see what he found there. When there were no playmates around, he'd hold imaginary dialogues with himself. And as he grew older, these sometimes became arguments.

It wasn't just what Junella had made him witness that had his guts tied up in knots. It was the utter frustration of not being able to deny her reasoning. He wanted to let himself get upset and say she was completely wrong. He wanted to dismiss all of it. She was just cruel, and a big jerk, and she didn't know what she was talking about. It would have been so easy to ignore all her words and just retreat into the comfort of moral certitude.

But because Toby had grown into such a self-reflective mouse, he couldn't.

Well, yes, technically he could. But he'd know it. And it would shame him.

So he forced himself to pick up her logic and examine it from every angle like a Rubik's cube. He couldn't dismiss it just because he wanted to; that was immature. So where was the flaw? His gut knew she was wrong. But where?

He couldn't find it in himself to blame George, that he was sure of. For one, even without knowing much about nightmare constructs, he'd seen how wild ones acted. George was the pinnacle of thoughtfulness and compassion compared to them. A bit of fierce behavior was forgivable sometimes. And too, he'd only done what Junella had asked of him. She was the one who came up with the idea to trample Rither's limbs and let him hobble away in agony.

What else could they have done with him? Assuming Junella was telling the truth about the cops in Ectopia Cordis, Toby had no other ideas. If they'd let Rither go, maybe he would have turned around and whipped out some other hidden sonic weapon that'd blow up all their heads. Or maybe he'd flee into the woods and go right back to killing and robbing innocent travelers by tomorrow. Maybe just leaving him there to be captured by the Bozos would have been enough. But Toby had seen those twisted creatures with his own eyes. Could he honestly say that having one's limbs broken would be a less desirable fate?

How many other people had Rither flung off the cliff, just like he would have done to Toby and his friends? They had to stop him somehow, right? The good guys stopped the bad guys from hurting innocents, that was how it worked. But they never did it so cruelly.

'And the bad guys keep coming back the next issue,' a voice inside him said.

Toby grimaced, not wanting to admit that was a fair point.

Junella had said this wasn't a storybook. Was that where he was getting all his ideas about 'good guys' and 'bad guys'? There was certainly truth to that. With all the time he'd spent in his bedroom, he'd barely interacted with the outside world except through fiction. In movies and books, good guys didn't torture their enemies. They didn't kick them when they were helpless. And only rarely would they kill the bad guys outright. Though yes, this was probably done more often so there could be reoccurring villains, rather than for any real moral principle.

If you have the chance to stop a bad furson from hurting innocents, then shouldn't you do that? Whatever it takes? Is it justifiable to be cruel to the cruel, to prevent greater cruelty?

Now that he thought about it, Toby realized that hero characters actually did kill their enemies rather a lot. But specifically, the waves and waves of disposable henchmen. Always dressed identically. Sometimes even in masks. So you cared less when the hero shot them or cracked their necks.

The more Toby thought about it, the more he began to realize some disturbing truths about the portrayals of 'good' and 'evil' he'd seen throughout his life. It wasn't that heroes never killed, they just didn't kill in certain ways. Bloodless kills were okay, because they could show that on TV. Getting shot just made you fall backwards, clutch at your chest and grunt. No messy red sprays everywhere. Heroes could kill henchmen by the score like stepping on ants, so long as it was a 'clean' death. But then, didn't those henchmen have lives of their own? And families?

Was it really being a 'good guy' to slaughter the employees but spare the boss?

The knot in Toby's gut was tightening. Thinking about all the avoidance of messy reality he'd seen in fiction made him realize that maybe he had no idea what the real world was like. And certainly not this nightmare world. But Junella did. She'd been surviving here for how long? Maybe she really did know better than Toby. Maybe he really did need to see what she had shown him. Maybe he did need to learn from it.

So why did he feel such an instinctive revulsion to it?

'Well, obviously, no one likes to see cruelty happen.'

Toby felt the blood drain out of his cheeks as he suddenly realized something incredibly damning about himself. 'Would I be feeling this disgusted if I hadn't stood there and watched it happen? If Junella had done exactly what she did, and just told me about it afterward instead of showing me... Would I have cared less?'

The answer was a painfully unavoidable, 'Yes'.

It hurt to admit that. His cheeks burned and his chest felt tight. But no one can run away from a truth that's inside them. At most, you can put up walls to keep it away temporarily.

What if everything he was feeling had less to do with Junella, or Rither, and was more about himself?

What if... What if he wasn't mad at Junella for what she'd done, but for making him witness it? For forcing him to acknowledge it? For involving him?

Oh hell, that was an ugly thought. He searched his heart, trying desperately to disprove it. It made him feel so shallow and self-centered. Did he really not care about the rabbit at all? The more he asked himself, and the more he tried to force himself to, the more he realized that all he was receiving back was a void. He didn't care.

And why? Because that heartless, cold-blooded thief had tried to murder him and all his friends, that's why. Rither had done the same to countless others. Toby could imagine himself inside the car, falling over the cliff, time slowing to a crawl as he watched the ground speed towards him. He remembered the paralyzing terror of going over the waterfall, so intense his brain had blacked him out rather than feel the crush of impact. And what if he survived? What would it feel like to stare out the broken window at the sideways ground, his limbs a tangled mess, feeling the weight of his friends' dead bodies on top of him?

Toby was reminded of the golden rule: Treat Others As You Would Like To Be Treated Yourself.

Well, didn't that apply both ways?

Why didn't it also mean to treat others in the way you see them treating others?

Toby was not by nature a vengeful furson, and likely never would be. But he could feel a candle flame of fury inside of him as he thought about what that rabbit had put unknowable other people through. He still couldn't bring himself to call what Junella had done "good", but he could acknowledge that, compared to the cumulative terror and pain Rither's victims had gone through, it was probably nowhere close.

So what then made Junella wrong for doing it?

Was it... Toby squeezed his eyes shut, chasing elusive thoughts... Was it that he believed she had no right? That it was wrong to declare yourself judge, jury and executioner?

But then, who else?

She'd ruled out handing the rabbit over to authorities ('And why is letting a cop punish someone less wrong than doing it yourself?' Toby thought, but that was perhaps getting too heavy.) If Junella was right that no one else in this world was around to put a stop to people who preyed on others, then why not her?

Why did it feel wrong for a furson to decide for themselves to take another's fate into their hands?

And again, did he actually think what she'd done was wrong? Or did he just not want to have to think about it? Didn't he eat meat sometimes, without thinking of the nonevs dying at the slaughterhouse? Hadn't he already known she'd killed people before? Hadn't she flat-out admitted it? Hadn't she killed HIM a few times!?

Well, yes, but that was different. That was in a state of panic, and to heal him. But he couldn't continue to push aside the fact that he was riding in a car with a very dangerous furson. Two of them actually. It was easier to not think such dark thoughts about Zinc since he was so friendly.

'So what do you expect of them?' Toby asked himself. 'You hired them because they were tough enough to get you to Anasarca. What did you think that meant? Did you think you could just put off confronting it forever? Just turn your head and whistle every time they had to hurt someone to keep you safe?'

Junella had said that the rabbit wouldn't have gotten his limbs broken if he hadn't chosen to intrude upon her life. Yet Junella wouldn't have even been there to have her life intruded upon if Toby hadn't hired her.

The mouse clutched at his head and felt like it was about to crack in half like a smashed pumpkin.

Everyone else in the Fearsleigher was silent. Even George kept his eyes glued to the road ahead. Zinc avoided the tension around him by falling back into his magazine. Piffle did the same by brushing Doll's hair over and over and over.

Junella sat in the front and looked up in the mirror at Toby's tormented expression.

'What have you done, you stupid skunk?' she thought.

***

Several minutes later, Junella asked George to stop the car. They were passing another deep ravine, and Junella got out to unhitch the tuning fork from the roof and send it tumbling down out of sight with a kick. It fell hundreds of feet into darkness and vanished. After a moment's hesitation, in went the rabbit's handheld fork too. Junella had been planning to test it out to discover its properties. Maybe keep it, maybe sell it. Now she just wanted all traces of the incident gone from her sight.

She climbed back in the driver's seat and asked George to keep onwards.

***

Travelers approaching Ectopia Cordis will always have a good, clear view of the city. Not only due to the it's height and brightness, but because of what immediately surrounds it on all four sides:

Fifteen hundred square miles of parking lot.

This lot is so big, its dimensions actually exceed those of many terrestrial cities. But its size has a purpose. Not only is it impossible to drive anywhere within the city on anything larger than a moped, which means people gotta park their vehicles somewhere, but the massive open space gives EC's gunners a wide line of sight to spot and shoot the living hell out of any nightmares that creep close.

Realizing this (and remembering their approach to Coryza), Junella suggested that maybe George should make a pit stop as soon as they crossed the border. Polycoria's tundra ended abruptly at the beginning of the paved lot. All of it ended. The snow, the road, even some of the trees were sheared in half. It looked like someone had drawn a god-sized laser along the edge.

Even this far out there were a handful of cars around. Rusting hulks, so full of cobwebs they looked like they were born of the stuff. No one would be retrieving them any time soon. Their tires and electronics had been stripped long ago.

George stopped at the first spot he came to and let the Fearsleigher come to a bumpy rest.

Junella looked into the backseat. "I thought we might wanna stretch our legs a bit."

Toby was as still as a statue. Like he hadn't heard a word the skunk said.

Zinc caught his partner's drift, nodded to Piffle, and they both exited. Piffle brought Doll, hugging her.

Junella bit her lip. She moved an inch towards Toby, then an inch back, then forward again. Then she simply looked at him for a while.

"Still hate me?" she asked quietly.

The mouse had his arms crossed. His posture was as closed off as if he had police barricades surrounding him.

But his eyes met hers for a split second, then glanced towards the seat next to him.

She was glad to see this. She stepped carefully through the interior and plopped onto the faux-leather in the back. Mindful to keep a foot of space between her and her client.

Outside, Zinc, Doll, and Piffle took a walk amongst the derelict vehicles. Inside, Junella and Toby sat and stared at the carpeted floor for a minute or two without speaking.

Neither one wanted to be first to break the silence, but eventually Junella traced a finger across her grooves; a soft hiss of static.

Toby's ear twitched in her direction.

"I... I think I might actually be sorry," she sang in a whisper.

Toby looked up. That was the last thing he expected to hear out of her.

The skunk kept on staring into the floor, fingerneedles poking little holes in the seat. Her mouth did not move when she spoke. "At the time, I saw an opportunity to teach you something I thought you needed to know. But maybe you don't. I keep forgetting that you're not staying. You're going home. At least, if we succeed you are. So maybe I don't need to punch all the weakness outta you. Maybe I should just let you be."

Junella put her arms around herself as if she felt a chill. "Maybe I didn't think before I acted. Maybe I coulda just talked to you. Maybe forcing you to look at... that... was a rotten thing to do."

Toby took all of this in. Out of all the things he'd thought about, the possibility had not occurred to him that maybe the mighty Junella Brox might be feeling some doubts of her own. She always acted so sure of herself. Bordering on condescending.

He sighed. He leaned back against the seat and looked up at the grey ceiling fabric. "Maybe," he acknowledged. His voice felt raspy even though he hadn't used it in a while. "Or maybe I did need to see it."

She arched an eyebrow and looked sideways at him.

"Maybe, as much as it made me feel like throwing up, I needed to stop thinking that this is all just an adventure in one of my books. One where the hero goes on a magical quest and stays pure of heart the whole time. Maybe I needed to face the possibility that I've got a picture in my head of what this place is like, a storybook illustration, and you actually live here. Maybe you know more than me."

Junella nodded. "Thank you for saying so." She suddenly blushed. "-I don't mean, like, I know everything. Just..."

"I didn't think that."

She smiled sheepishly. "Right."

Toby put his arms behind his head, still not looking directly at her. Though he could see her in his peripheral vision. "I'm still angry at you, Junella. But I've really thought about it, and I can't help but admit, you are right. About everything you said. It feels awful and slimy and ugly to have to accept that I'm in a place where sometimes hurting someone who's helpless is the right thing to do. That feels SO wrong..." He grimaced. "But then again, I don't even know if it feels like that because it is wrong, or if it's something I'd rather let myself pretend doesn't happen." He had another thought and shot a narrow look at her. “Or maybe because your lesson didn’t exactly have much tact.”

She bit her lip. No denying that.

Toby’s look softened slightly. He was glad to see her showing some acknowledgment of his feelings. "I don't know if you were right to show me that. I honestly can't decide. And that makes me almost nauseous."

She closed her eyes, not wanting to see the conflict in his expression. "I'm sorry for that," she sang. Her voice was as unsteady as he'd ever heard it. "I'm not good with... subtle. I do what I know is right, because I know it's right. I do what keeps me alive. I'm not used to having to defend that. I mean, it's not like I hear a lot of disagreement outta Zinc." She winced at how that sounded. "...Not to imply he's a brown-noser! I couldn't stand him if he was! He's just the kind of guy who goes with the flow, y'know? And we think alike anyway. So he's apt to agree with me because he already sees where I'm thinking."

She looked out the window to where the canine was straining to lift a junked subcompact up over his head, to Piffle's wild applause.

"He puts up with more of my bullshit than he probably should," she added, nearly inaudibly.

"But you..." Junella rested her head in her hand. "I'm not used to this moral dilemma kinda shit. You're damn weird, Toby. My other clients... they either cringe in the back the whole time, or they wanna play cowboy and disobey me every chance they get. You... You make me reconsider things. Jerk." She chuckled.

Toby chuckled a tiny bit too.

Junella looked over and gave him a trace of a smile.

She sighed. "Look, I don't wanna sweep this under the rug. I don't want you to think I'm just trying to make it go away. But we're so close to EC we can see it. I want to settle down in a hotel room. Hell, I want a bubble bath." She leaned a little closer towards him. "So can we... I dunno... go back to normal for the moment? Again, I'm not saying we pretend nothin' ever happened. Just... I hate riding in a car where the atmosphere feels like I'm packed in ice."

He nodded. "I can understand that. And I think that's okay with me. For now, can we agree there's no good answer? There's no 'one of us is totally right and the other's totally wrong'? Can we agree we're different people? REALLY different! And accept that we're not gonna like some of the things the other one does?"

Junella sat up and gave him a genuinely warm smile. "Yeah. That sounds good to me."

She put out her paw for a shake.

He reached for it.

"Watch the needles."

"I will."

They shook.

Then Junella did something Toby didn't expect. She didn't exactly hug him, but for a brief moment she reached over and sort of touched her shoulder to his while reaching around him.

He blinked, not sure of what had just happened.

"I don't like having enemies, Toby," Junella crooned. "I don't like being in debt. I like things settled and smooth. I like to feel like I know where things stand. And I admit it, Toby, there's gonna be times when I'll do things that turn your stomach. And sometimes I'll need you to just trust me, no matter how ugly it feels, because I've been through something your mind doesn't even know where it should start being afraid of. But I can tell you this: I know I'm not a hero, but I do try not to be the bad guy. I try not to be worse than I have to be."

He nodded. "Allright."

She looked past him out the other window, to the glittering, whirling city they were about to enter. "Something else just occurred to me. I think maybe I felt an urgency to make you face reality 'cause I knew we were heading here. EC is not like Coryza," she warned. "Coryza's like a welcoming fireplace. This town is like a big fat middle finger. It's even shaped like one. A great big tower of rotating 'Fuck You'."

"So why're we going there?" Toby asked reasonably.

She brightened. "Because it's the best place there is. There's no better stop in Phobiopolis to shop, eat, take in a show, get rich, or get killed. But there's a reason I don't live there." She tried to think of a way to describe it that wouldn't sound like she was afraid of the place. "Think of, like... like a golden treadmill, all covered in diamonds and emeralds 'n shit. Looks pretty, right? But do you wanna have to keep running on it all the time?"

Toby thought maybe he could follow the metaphor.

"I like to do my jobs, then have a place where I can go and relax for a while, get me?" Junella continued. "EC's always spinning. You stop moving, your ass falls off."

The sparkle of confidence came back to her eyes. She swatted the mouse on the arm. "How 'bout we go get a good meal and a good rest? Clear out all this bad air, okay?"

"Allright," Toby said. He thought that sounded pretty good too.

Junella had already popped the door open, but Toby put a paw on her arm. "Hey..."

She looked back.

"Thanks for talking about this with me. I'm sorry if I was too sulky back there. I'm glad we worked things out instead of just being stubborn."

Junella paused with her foot on the outside ladder. "Me too," she trilled. Her voice was actually quite pretty when her song was gentle. "So we're good for right now? We're forgiven and sorry and all that happy horseshit?"

Toby snorted a laugh. "Yeah, I think so."

Together they hopped down to the pavement. George had been standing by, still harnessed up, trying to appear as though he hadn't been eavesdropping.

Toby walked over and patted his side. "I'm sorry I didn't accept your apology earlier. I'll accept it now if that's allright," he said.

Toby would not have thought it possible for an undead charred skeleton's smile to be so full of warmth. "Certainly, Sire Toby. Very good. And thank you."

Zinc and Piffle were meanwhile rooting through the rusty, dusty old cars, chatting up a storm and laughing their tails off. Doll was enjoying a piggyback ride on Zinc's shoulders. Junella stormed over and barked out with a grin, "What the hell kinda shenanigans are goin' on over here!?"

Zinc stifled a chortle (he'd just been telling Piffle the story about him, four cop cars, a grocery cart, and a really big hill), and turned to see his employer and their client looking surprisingly cheerful. "Just the normal kind, Juney. Nothin' fancy. What's up with you? You were both so grim the last few miles, I half-expected to see you walk outta the car holding a stack of raw mouseburgers."

Toby puffed out his chest and seemed very offended by that. "Hey! Why'd you assume if we got into a fight, she'd be the one to kill me and turn me into food? Why not the other way around?"

Zinc stared at the mouse like he literally could not believe his ears. "Are you serious...?"

But then he saw the glint of a grin on Toby's lips.

He slapped his knee. "HA! That was a joke! Not bad, rodent! That's a gasser!"

Piffle giggled too. "Besides, we all know if anyone's gonna be food it'll be me," she said sweetly.

"C'mon ya pack of weirdos." Junella swung her arm towards the car. "We're only a few miles away from civilization. I'm hungry enough to eat George."

He happened to overhear. "Goodness, that would not be advisable! I can only imagine I would taste like biting into a fireplace."

*****

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