#but lets say crooked cop decided to.... pawn it off

[bluerosefox]

Possessed Pearl's

You know how in some ghost stories sometimes its not a person or a land that's haunted but the items?

Well what if, when looking for a mother's day gift for his mom, Danny is looking around a pawn shop and finds a necklace, it's missing some pearls but it's just enough to pass off as a decent gift. Danny humms but decides against it and goes to leave it....

That was until he gasped out blue frost and spots a ghostly woman appear out of the necklace with a somber smile. She isn't as seeable as the other ghosts in Amity though, meaning she doesn't have enough ectoplasm on her own (that might change the longer she's in Amity and around Danny though) and that right now only Danny can see her.

And Danny well... hes been doing his hero gig for a bit now, might go and ask if there was anything he can do to help.

And later Danny's good deed... bites him back. Oh boy. Because now he has the Bats looking into Amity Park... Wait what do you mean Martha is now strong enough to be seen?!

[zarpaulus]

Zootopian Eclipse Ch. 3

Farcasting wasn’t much like physical travel.  You sat down and let an Ego bridge grab your head, waited a few minutes, then suddenly found yourself in a different body on a different world trying to adjust to your new skin.  Nicholas Wilde had done it dozens of times and there was still that awkward transition period, especially when sleeving into a radically different morph, like the lion he had ordered this time.  Usually he could play it off in some way, especially when his cover mandated pretending that he was sleeving his birth species, in this case he decided to go with anger, considering the justification.

“Are you kidding me?”  He shouted as he waved a blurry hand in front of his face.  “This sleeve is half-blind.  What are you trying to pull here?”

The clouded leopard working the desk sighed and informed him, in as bored a tone as he could manage, “you were willing to purchase a Flat with genetic defects.  In this case the defect happened to be nearsightedness.”

Nick squinted at the display on the table, “I paid 3000 credits for this thing.  If it can’t even cross the street safely it’s not worth 2K.”

He was pretty sure he could tell the clerk was rolling his eyes at him.  “You were informed that the sleeve had genetic defects, I cannot offer a refund based on what you think it should be worth.  But tell you what, I’ll throw in Ecto lenses with vision correction for free.”

He tried to see the contact lenses on the nanofab tray, they wouldn’t be worth even a tenth of what he paid for the sleeve.  But with a Flat morph that didn’t even have basic biomods, much less mesh inserts, they’d be needed, and he could tell that this drone was too bored to sway.  Where’s a sympathetic half-crooked cop when you need one?  The thought came to him, unbidden, but he couldn’t quite place its origin.  Seeing that it couldn’t be helped Nick groaned and took the Ecto lenses and bone transduction speaker, he’d just need to get the eyes fixed during the next step of the con.

As he applied the Ecto parts his muse came online.  A grey rabbit with stripes appeared in his field of view.  [I hope that’s you.] Jack said without prompting.

[Who else would it be?] The fox in a lion’s skin muttered subvocally as he tried to adjust his mic.  [Are we still on with our appointments?]

[Ethel Otterton hasn’t said anything to contradict our appointment time.]  The AI bunny replied.  [But Badgerson is getting a little impatient, he wants to see the sleeve as soon as possible.]

Enthusiastic customers were generally the best to sell to, but sometimes they got a little too insistent and screwed up the whole timetable.  The bodysculpting he had in mind usually took some 12 hours, on top of the eye fix that he’d need before pawning this sleeve off.  [Ask Ethie how quickly she can do it, and get the eyes functional.  Send whatever specs you can pick up if it’ll help.]

Nick set off down the habitat’s torus towards the cosmetic surgeon he had made the arrangements with when his muse chimed again.  [She says she was expecting the body bank to pull that kind of crap, that particular Furotic subsidiary doesn’t really have the best Rep you know.  She might be able to cut the bodysculpt down to eight hours, and she has an idea for performing the vision correction on the space elevator ride down.]

[Knotting Hypercorps.] He commented.  [Doesn’t matter if they’re Consortium or Mustelidian.  They’ll still screw you over with technicalities instead of straight-up scamming you.]

[Like you haven’t resorted to weasel-words in the past.]  Nick couldn’t quite remember why he’d set Jack to be so mouthy.

---

“You know I don’t like this, right?”  The otter doctor commented as she waved a scan wand over Nick’s temporary sleeve, fur wet from the vat of nanobots that had reshaped it.  “It’s not just the scam aspect, I know it’s for a good cause.  But you of all mammals would know the history my family has with that lion.”  She pointed at the reflection of the rebuilt feline in the mirror.

“Think of it another way Ethie.”  He replied, momentarily surprised at how different his voice sounded now.  “You’re swindling a fan of the dirtbag politician who locked your dad up like a dumb beast.  You could consider it revenge.”

“That’s a stretch and you know it Wilde.”  Ethel pointed accusingly at his face.  “The Consortium only allows Furotic to operate this habitat in Mares space because we (mostly) play by their rules.  If your little fraud jeopardizes our position here…”

“What?  Just because some rich kid was tricked into buying a defective Flat that he thought was a heirloom morph of Leodore Lionhart?”  He gave an approximation of the ex-politician’s signature smile.  “You know that the Hypercorp council considers Furotic’s competition the only reason FauxFur hasn’t amassed enough capital to buy a seat, and they definitely don’t want that.”  He switched tones, making an effort not to subconsciously mimic the “public official voice” he was familiar with.  “Anyways, you said you had an idea for fixing the eyes on the way down?”

“Yeah, just let me get my field kit.”  She flowed off the table to gather a few odds and ends and stick them in a bag before they left.

---

They hopped a quick shuttle from the Furotic station to the port at the top of the Mares space elevator.  Nick was relieved to see that customs was fooled by the fake ID nanotats Ethel had changed, they now traced the sleeve back to a dummy company supposedly based in the LLA whose owners weren’t interested in public attention.  The elevator was far shorter than the one that had fallen over Ark, but it would still take nine hours to reach the surface.  He led his otter companion past the crowd of workers going back down to the surface at the end of their shift and to the private cabin Jack had hastily booked for them.

Ethel looked around the cabin, it had two lion-sized beds and an entertainment center on the other side of the room.  “Nice and roomy.”  She commented.

“Yes, well, most pairs who book the same cabin are the same size.”  The temporary lion grunted, sitting on the lower bed.

“I can’t imagine this was cheap.”  The otter commented, tapping one of the walls with a claw.  “Thin, but still.”

“Yeah, but if we play our cards right this will still make a nice profit for us.”  He laid back and stared up at the mattress above him.  “Assuming you manage to fix these stupid eyes like you said you would.”

The semi-aquatic weasel hopped up on the bed and started laying out her tools on Nick’s chest.  “Yes, about that.  This procedure might be a little old-fashioned, it’s going to be messy, not cheap to clean up without leaving evidence.”

“You an-caps are all about the money, aren’t you?”  Nick sighed.

“Don’t insult me,” Ethel replied, pulling out an inhaler.  “I’m an anarcho-mutualist, we just acknowledge that society isn’t quite post-scarcity yet.  Which means that the free clinic where I volunteer in my downtime can’t run in a vacuum.”

Nick rolled his eyes back and said something softly but audible to his muse, “Jack, share the formulas we got from that friend of Finnick’s with her as soon as we have mesh access back.”

“Oh good,” Ethel said.  “You Vermin are always coming up with new drugs, aren’t you?  I could probably find some use for whatever you’ve got.”  She passed him the inhaler.  “Now, remove your Ecto lenses and puff this.”

Nick carefully slid the contacts out of his eyes and set them aside on the desk before inhaling the offered drug.  In seconds the residual aches from the bodysculpting that he hadn’t even paid attention to vanished and his mouth involuntarily formed a nervous smile.  “Grin?  Ethie, how much is this going to hurt?”

In response, the otter plunged a pair of claws into the lion-sleeve’s corneas, the drug removing the pain but Nick still had to suppress a scream of surprise.  She scraped at the eyes for a few seconds before she was satisfied, then his dim vision was completely occluded by a nanobandage, its nanobots tingling across his face.  “It should be done by the time we land.”  Ethel Otterton stated before clambering off somewhere.  “Hope you had a good audiobook downloaded.”

Nick slumped back on the bed, carefully feeling the edges of the nanite-infused cloth adhered to his face.  “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”  The otter said nothing.

---

As the car slowed to a halt before making landfall Nick tentatively peeled off the nanobandage, finding that he had 20/20 vision again.  He still needed the lenses to see the mesh though so he re-inserted them, Jack adjusting the corrective settings until it didn’t interfere with his sight.  Ethel was nowhere to be found when he left the cabin, but he received confirmation when mesh access was restored and the drug recipes were sent off.

Waiting for him in the lobby was the buyer, a badger wearing a pinstriped smartsuit set to keep the black and white tastefully lined up with his own coat.  “Ah,” he said upon spotting Nick.  “I see you chose to wear the sleeve down here.  Was that wise?”

“Keeping it warmed up for you.”  Nick replied quickly.  “I assure you it’s safer walking around the passenger compartments than in a gel tank in cargo.”

“But then you wear it out more quickly!”  He shouted in exasperation.  “You know these Flats don’t have even basic biomods.”

“Exactly. You wanted a genuine replica, and so you have it.”  The fox flexed his lion sleeve’s hands experimentally.  “Leodore Lionhart was born before gene splicing so neither does the clone.”

“Hmm,” the badger took one of his outstretched hands for closer examination.  “Seems to be in good condition, and it looks like the photos of my grandmother’s employer.  I’ll need to take it back to my private clinic for closer examination but does 20,000 sound good for an initial offer?”  He gestured over towards a flying car that had just pulled up in front of the terminal.

“Twenty thousand?”  Nick called after the wealthy mustelid walking off towards his car.  “That’s barely enough to break even.  I had to pawn my own sleeve just to afford transport.”  He’d been hoping to just transfer the sleeve at the spaceport’s egocasting facility and cast back home before the mark realized he’d been scammed.  If he was going to insist on using his own home equipment for the resleeve things could be complicated.

“That’s unfortunate,” the badger replied.  “But you understand, I can’t pay a fortune for a morph without verification.”  The door to the car opened as he approached and the suspicious buyer slid across the seat to the far side.

Nick sighed and got into the seat next to him, the cushions molding themselves to his leonine physique automatically.  “All right, but the lender is charging interest by the day, I want at least 40 for the delay.”

“You can’t be serious, that’s enough to buy a Fury.”

“Oh, but Furies are mass produced in a variety of species ranging from,” he paused as his vision blurred for a second.  Was Ethel’s improvised surgery wearing off or something?  “...Ranging from bears to bunnies, apparently.  But you can’t find too many Lionhart heirloom morphs as you well know.”

“Something wrong, Mr. Wilde?”  The badger asked, setting off the fox’s instincts a second later.

“Wait, I never told you that...” his vision blurred again but he spotted the patch adhered to the middle of his palm this time.  “Oh, scat.”

---

The first thing Nick noticed upon waking was that he’d resleeved again, that much was obvious from the cameras he had for eyes and the seams he felt running along his vat-grown skin.  The second was that his sleeve wasn’t male.

“I died again, didn’t I?”  He said out loud with a sigh.  Turning his attention to the one he thought responsible he shouted out, “Switching the sex, very funny Phil!  You know it will only take a week to change back so have your fun while it lasts.”  He stood up, but found his movement arrested by a heavy chain secured to his neck, surprised, he felt a thick leather collar around his neck, and above it a wire mask, no, a muzzle.

Starting to wonder what kind of sick joke his friend was playing, Nick looked around, he was not in Phil’s body bank, he was in a dark and dusty warehouse that he doubted would fit anywhere on the Vermin swarm he’d called home for the past four years.  And aside from the sex this pod didn’t quite feel like his normal sleeve actually.  He held a hand up to a faint stream of light leaking in through a window and noted that the fur wasn’t red but blue, which didn’t mean anything as dye wasn’t uncommon.  Carefully, Nick squeezed a couple fingers through the muzzle’s wires and lifted his eyelid, he could make out part of the serial number tattooed on the inside if he had the right light, and it wasn’t familiar.

The fear hit him like a brick then.  He lost all semblance of self-control and collapsed into a curled-up ball, mewling and whimpering in terror as half-coherent memories of torment flashed through his head.  Torments he was certain he would be revisiting soon, why else would he be downloaded into a tied-up vixen pleasure pod?

“Wilde,” a voice purred above him.  “Did you truly believe that you had escaped us?”  Nick cringed as his captor scraped a claw along the surface of a metal crate.  “You should have known better, no soul ever leaves Legba’s clutches.  Have you forgotten the punishments we inflicted upon you so readily?”

“I tried,” the hapless fox whimpered almost inaudibly.  After his liberation from Nine Lives he’d begged the psychosurgeons to excise all his memories of his half-decade in captivity, but they’d been unable to remove them all.  The agonies he still remembered were horrible, but he knew they weren’t the worst he’d suffered.  It was clear his captors intended to remind him of the rest.  “No, please…”

Someone standing on padded feet crouched down next to him and caressed his face with a half-retracted claw.  “Unfortunately, we can’t visit the most exquisite corrections upon you here, and it’ll be another few hours before we can Darkcast back home.  But the boys wanted a taste of what you will suffer.”

The speaker, whom Nick could now identify as a lanky puma, started to lift Nick’s face to meet the gaze of the others in the room whom he hadn’t even known were there.  Most of them were felines of some sort but through the fear he couldn’t identify anything but their hungry stares.  His captor displayed the limp vixen to his friends, and slowly began to walk his claws down his stomach, they felt like searing needles.

Nick couldn’t even dare to move under the paralyzing fear gripping his nervous system.  He was unable to resist as the puma’s claws inched towards his groin.  But, seconds before he reached a more sensitive area, the fear suddenly diminished, as if someone had flicked a switch in his limbic system.  The fear wasn’t gone, but he was no longer immobilized.  [Nick,] a voice in his head spoke slowly, [run!]

The rumbling sound of something large rolling along a stone floor approached and a black metal sphere crashed through the door, slowly rolling to a stop two meters from the nearest thug.  Panels in the sides opened and three arms unfolded from within, all of which ended in weapons.  The shocked mobsters had barely enough time to yell “Cops!” before a burst of railgun fire slammed into them.

Nick took advantage of the confusion to wriggle loose of the puma’s grip, scurrying for the nearest stack of crates, only to be arrested by the chain about his neck.  “No you don’t!”  The big cat shouted, starting to chase after him.  “Nobody escapes from-” He was cut off as his throat exploded in ruby laser fire.

The spherical Rover pushed the toppling feline aside with its clawed third arm, rolling closer to the chained fox.  The synth’s surface rippled and flickered before resolving into the image of a familiar fennec’s face.  “Didn’t they teach you anything in fuzz school Nicky?”

Nick felt his fear start to melt away and slowly be replaced by embarrassment.  “Finnick,” he said, with forced coolness, “nice ball.  Couldn’t find a Reaper on such short notice?”

“Glitter said it would attract too much attention.”  Finnick rotated his railgun arm around and fired a single shot at a thug who was still stirring.  “Want me to cut that chain?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”  Nick held a length of the chain up vertically between his hands and the fennec in a ball sliced it with a quick burst of his laser.  Digging at the tight leather straps on the muzzle he added “this too, please?”

Finnick sighed and swiped with his cyberclaws, shaving off an inch of fur along with the strap.  “The others are outside in the car.  I need to go silence the witnesses.”  He rolled over to the puma and started digging at the corpse’s neck, “like the new look by the way, you should try being a vixen more often.”  Nick tried to wrap his fluffy tail over his female anatomy and dashed for the door Finnick had bashed through.

Outside a four-seat buggy with tinted black windows was parked directly in front of the door, opening a hatch onto an empty seat as Nick approached.  Ethel was sitting in the seat on the other side looking at him with amusement.  Nick jumped in the seat and slammed the door shut behind him.  “Well, you and Finnick are here,” he commented, “I suppose Flash is the car?”

“Hi, Nick,” a voice said from the vehicle’s speakers.  “I, am, actually, just, a, Beta, fork.  How, are, you, feeling…”

“Great, just great.”  The fox replied when the informorph sloth seemed to have finished his sentence.  “I thought I was going to make a big score today, got caught in a trap by my worst enemies, and got found in a compromising position by the rest of my cell.  How could this day possibly go better?”

“I thought you Anarchists didn’t believe in money?”  Ethel sniped.

“I’m Vermin, fish-breath.”  Nick replied.  “We don’t use credits with each other, but we do recognize that it’s a useful scam for convincing other mammals to give us useful stuff.  I was going to split my profits between the ship’s upgrade fund and Firewall anyways.”

The backhatch of the buggy opened and Finnick rolled in.  “Guess you’ll be taking a loss on this con now Nicky.  Too bad there wasn’t a gullible little bunny to pay your start-up costs for you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”  Nick replied.  “Anyways, how’d you know I was in trouble?”

The otter sighed.  “Glitter couldn’t get hold of you and asked us where you were.  I said you were in a lion morph sculpted to look like Lionhart, and Flash had a friend in traffic control track you.  Then Finnick mentioned the place was owned by Nine Lives.”

“You, owe, us.”  Flash cut in as the buggy started to drive off.  “There’s, a, backup, of, your, muse, on, my, drive.”  A panel on the dashboard opened, revealing a datajack cable.  Nick groaned, felt for the port on the back of his neck and plugged the cable in.

A loading bar appeared in his entoptic display for a few minutes, then Jack appeared in his field of view looking annoyed.  [Seriously Nick?  You go out and next thing I hear Proxy Glitter is looking for you, then word all over the Eye is that you’ve been captured and I’m playing damage control with your Rep.]

[Damn, how bad did I get hit?]  In the post-scarcity economy of the Autonomists one’s reputation was everything, conveniently quantified by social networks like Circle-A.  Even in the hypercapitalist inner system a low Rep score on CivicNet could kill a deal before it had even started.  And Firewall’s extremely encrypted anonymous network, The Eye, had it’s own Rep system for prioritizing the conspiracy’s limited resources towards those who could be trusted to use them well.  And not, for instance, to let themselves get caught and interrogated for sensitive information.

[I limited the damage to two points,] Jack replied.  [But you owe level 4 favors to each of your cell members, and a second one to Fst_Nml for disabling the Optogenetics module in your current sleeve and draining the syndicate’s local accounts to reimburse you for the failed scam.]

[Optogenetics, huh, explains the whole “paralyzing fear” thing and how it came and went so quickly.]  Those were serious favors, but manageable.  [Let me know next time Finnick needs to hide a body.  How much did Flash get us?]

[20K, average market price for a Heirloom morph like you were trying to pass that thing off as.  Shall I distribute the profits as originally planned?]

[No,] Nick replied.  [Even a small branch of Nine Lives would have had at least five times that money.  Flash probably gave the rest to Firewall already.  Giving it all to Inconveniently Tied should bump our @-Rep up eight or nine points.]  The exhausted vulpine laid back in his seat, willing the sex switch bioware to start the hormonal and physiological shifts to change the sleeve to male.  After a few minutes of rest and staring out the one-way window at the passing Mares landscape he suddenly remembered something.  [Wait, you and Ethie said that the Proxy wanted me for something.  She tell you anything?]

[There was a sealed message for you, but I thought it best if you had a chance to catch your breath before opening it.]  A message icon appeared in Nick’s display, with the flags of Firewall’s security measures.  Tentatively he brought the message up and started applying the keys one by one, password, Ego print, other password, code token…

From: Proxy Glitter

To: Sentinel Kitsune

Agent, it has no doubt come to your attention that a former close associate of yours has recently been re-instanced and indentured to Direct Action.  Myself and a few of my colleagues suspect that she might become a useful asset to our organization.  You are to observe her from a distance and take note of any deviations from normal behavior.

You are not to attempt to recruit her yourself.  You are not to try to liberate her from her indenture.  You are not to initiate contact of any sort.  If she contacts you try not to reveal your identity or your affiliation.

Remember, the continued survival of Transmammalkind depends on operational security.  The Fall cannot be allowed to happen again.

Nick paused to digest the information.  Was he really being asked to spy on Judy?  Something about that seemed to irk him, but he couldn’t quite remember why.  “Well, this should be an interesting mission.”