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Sunset's Isekai

by Wanderer D

Chapter 47: Let's Gopher a Drink (Zootopia — Movie Pt. 6)

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Sunset's Isekai
Let's Gopher a Drink (Zootopia — Movie Pt. 6)
By Wanderer D

"Sorry, Sunset," Judy said, turning to face her. "But I think it's too early for a drink. Nick and I need to finish our shift and investigate a few things before we have the time for that."

"Listen," Sunset said, "I know a lot of stuff was said that made no sense—"

"It didn't!" Judy interrupted. "It was mumbo-jumbo! Ludicrous! You were talking about spirits and you made one of the most powerful animals in the whole of Zootopia tremble! And you claim to be a bartender! And people say you're royalty! I don't want a drink! I want the truth!"

"I could use a drink."

Sunset tried not to laugh at the look Judy gave Nick.

"Don't worry, I have non-alcoholic drinks too," she assured the rabbit. "Good selection of teas among other things… I'll make sure everything is compatible with your diet."

She could see Judy's indecision slowly crumble, beat by her invitation and her curiosity.

"Is this… going to make sense?" Judy finally asked.

"In a weird sort of way, yes, I hope," Sunset answered honestly as they stepped out of the police car. "It might just get a but stranger before we get to the making-sense part."

"Joy."

Judy watched as Sunset pulled open her door and motioned for them to step in. But there was already a problem.

"You really have a bar."

"Yep!" Sunset replied, grinning.

"This area is not zoned for bars."

Sunset blinked, slightly baffled. "Okay? I'm… not really using it for business in this world."

Judy pretended that she hadn't heard that last part. "We'll have a talk about that when we're done talking about the main issue."

Sunset laughed uncertainly. "Um. Sure."

Having established a certain, reassuring normalcy to the situation, Judy stepped forth into the bar, and as she did, she slowly realized that there was no way this place should fit as it did between the other two houses unless some really weird architecture had gone into the development of the adjacent buildings too.

"Um… Carrots?"

She knew that tone of voice. That was the tone of voice Nick used when she was going to hear something she was not going to like. "What is it Nick?" she asked while Sunset made her way around the bar to pull out a couple of menus.

"You might want to take a look at this."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before turning around and looking at the wall that Nick was pointing at.

"Is that a horse?" Judy asked. "But… what's wrong with its body? Is that a horn?"

"That," Sunset's voice came from behind them, "is an anthro unicorn named Twilight Sparkle, she's a rock singer."

Judy's eyes slowly widened as she took in the different posters and pictures. More than once she saw a creature that had the same hairdo as Sunset. One was another unicorn, another was a cat, another was some sort of… demon, like out of a fantasy novel…

Slowly what she had put together while talking with others came together. She gulped, turning to look at the wolf, who was smiling at her. Suddenly that smile was less friendly in her eyes. "Y-you're not really a wolf, are you?"

Next to her, Nick slumped and sat on one of the tables. "Unicorn?" he managed to squeak out.

"Yep," Sunset replied. "Originally. Depending on the world, sometimes I change to fit better with the locals, but my original species was really a unicorn, and then I became a human full time."

"This is too much," Judy muttered, sitting across from Nick slowly, still taking the place in. It was calming in a way, with its design, but at the same time she could feel, deep inside, that this was not natural, that this was completely outside of her experience, and that being a cop didn't matter here.

She was completely out of her depth. Much more so than she had anticipated. They were basically at Sunset's mercy. On some level, she now understood what made Mr. Clawhorn so nervous around the wolf—unicorn.

The thought of their earlier encounter with the lawyer, reminded her of why she was here and she slowly felt her conviction return, even though she wouldn't be surprised if Nick and Sunset could smell her fear.

If she did, though, Sunset showed no sign, giving her one of the menus, and the other to Nick, who was pressed against the wall, ears back.

Judy forced herself to take a deep breath and look down at the list of beverages. She blinked. "Wait, you have carrot juice from Bunnyburrow?"

Sunset grinned. "Locally sourced!"

"How?" Judy asked, exasperated. "How can you possibly have carrots from there?"

"I have a system to support local businesses," Sunset said, sitting at the table. "It works through proxies that obtain the produce or products from local sources through a time-space discrepancy that allows my bar to compensate for unusual diets or if needs be, comfort foods." She smirked. "Some call it cheating; I call it convenient."

Judy dragged her paw down her face, before glaring up at the unicorn-turned-wolf. "A carrot juice, please."

Sunset nodded. "Nick?"

Judy turned to face the fox, but found her voice fading when she saw the white-haired glowing head that had emerged from under and through the table.

"Hey, it's the fuzzy fuzz."

"Dani, please don't scare my guests, they're… overly stressed as it is," Sunset said, completely unperturbed as the creature emerged fully, floating above them.

"Hey, sorry, Sunny. I just forgot something in my room and came back to get it. I'll use one of the backdoors."

And just like that, it flew through the "Employee's Only" door.

"What…"

"That was Danielle Phantom," Sunset said. "Long story, perhaps better left for another occasion."

"Was that a g-gh—" Nick stammered. "A guh-guh.."

"Ghost."

"No." Judy said firmly. "No it was not! It was a hologram. A trick."

"It's the Cell games all over again," Sunset muttered under her breath, although Judy's sensitive ears caught it regardless. "Nick, what would you like to drink?" their host asked in a normal tone of voice.

The poor fox simply shook his head.

"Alright, I'll make you tea. You need to relax," Sunset decided, heading over to the bar.

"Carrots, we need to get out of here," Nick whispered the moment Sunset was on the other side of the bar. "No case is worth this!"

For once, Judy was inclined to agree… but as she gazed around the room, and looked at the pictures of smiling… creatures… she could feel herself calming down. "Nick… look around… I know this is really weird but, does this seem like the type of place where we'd really be in danger?"

She could see his eyes wander around. The pictures spoke of amazing stories behind them, and Judy felt her fear be replaced by honest curiosity. There was a picture nearby where Sunset, in one of her other forms, stood right next to another creature that resembled Rarity. A winged unicorn was with them, and some sort of giant rat creature with strange clothes. Dani was there too, and so was some sort of duck. Birds in her world—it felt so strange to even say that—were not evolved. They hadn't developed into society, much like fish and a few other beings. But in that picture that one was dressed and obviously sentient.

Creatures that looked like reptiles, creatures that looked metallic, or dressing like normal animals, but just a different species. Old. Young. Male, female. Some wore disguises that seemed like out of a comic book and she found herself wondering if they were superheroes from another world.

Nick was calmer too now, having stepped off from the table to look at even more pictures. The whole place had so much to tell. One table had flowers growing on it, another a sign that read "Captain's Table, reserved for Wednesday whenever I get to it". The bar itself was covered in bottles of all shapes, sizes, and colors. A neon sign close to the entrance to the restrooms read "Sunset's Isekai".

It wasn't in her language.

But she could understand it.

There was so much she didn't understand still… but she had never backed down from a challenge. Never given up the chance to learn and get to the bottom of things. And today was not going to be that day.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Sunset placing a large glass of carrot juice in front of her. Judy hesitated just a little before leaning in and sipping the straw. Soon her tongue was flooded by the familiar flavor of carrots. It felt like home. "It's real. This whole thing…" she whispered in awe.

"Welcome to Sunset's Isekai," Sunset said, setting down a cup of tea across from her and waving Nick over back to the table. "This is my little bar in the multiverse. I wasn't going to involve you guys in any of this, by the way, I'm supposed to be taking a vacation—but I guess I should have known better than to deny adventure."

"So you're telling me that these, all of these… are people that you have met?" Nick asked as he sat down and took a careful sniff of the tea before nodding in appreciation at the smell.

"Correct," Sunset said. "Most of them are my personal guests, but some are essentially my family," she said, nodding at the picture that Judy had seen before. "You met Dani and Rarity already. That's my apprentice, Lena, and that's Freya, and that's my mentor and mother-figure, Princess Celestia."

"So… you really are royalty?" Nick asked.

"Mother-figure, Nick," Sunset said. "Close, but not quite."

"Ah." He didn't sound convinced, and neither was Judy for that matter. There was a lot to take in, and a lot to ask, but more importantly, it seemed that Sunset was now willing to tell them everything they needed to know about the case.

"So Sunset," Judy spoke up. "How about we talk about the case?"

"Really, Carrots?" Nick asked. "The case? With—" he waved a paw around "—all of this?"

"Nick, if we don't concentrate on the topic, we're going to end up here for eternity."

"Right, right," Nick muttered, coughing. "Sorry."

"Okay," Sunset said, nodding. "Ask away."

"So let's start with the box," Judy said, pulling out her notebook. "Mr. Clawhorn said that it was obtained by his firm some time ago. He made it sound like they were saving it, rather than intending to use it."

"Right." Sunset sipped her own tea, before growling. "There are… interdimensional beings that sell things they obtain from other worlds. Sometimes it's inconsequential stuff. Like here… bottles of wine, common food items, etc. Other times it's… dangerous items, like cursed grimoires, or weapons. And sometimes it's actual beings they have trapped somehow. Sometimes really dangerous ones, and sometimes innocent ones. It seems from what Mr. Clawhorn said that this is one of the latter. And one pure enough that they feared it hanging around the law offices could eventually corrupt it."

"So," Nick spoke up, "when you asked why it needed to be taken away instead of just sealed…"

Sunset shrugged. "It's just unusual to find such a creature that would require that level of care. Mr. Clawhorn's ancestors were probably more versed in the multiverse if they felt that was necessary." Her brow darkened. "But that's not all. He said it was from a Deprived world."

Judy felt a chill creeping up her bones when Sunset said that. "I'm sorry, but what does that even mean?"

Sunset took a deep breath and leaned back, glancing at the pictures in thought. "Some worlds have integral beings in them. Creatures that define them. Or that have a unique role in them. It doesn't necessarily mean they're good, but they are definitely pivotal to that world's destiny and fate. A Deprived world is when that is taken away from them by someone from another universe, stripping them away from something so essential that the world… sometimes even the universe they're from originally just can't go on, and ceases to exist completely. Its past and future are just gone, and obviously everyone that lived in them."

"That's horrible!" Judy gasped.

"It's thankfully very rare," the wolf said softly. "Very few universes have something so important in them distilled into a single creature or object. Most of the multiverse simply keeps on going because we are essentially unimportant. It's just that the multiverse is such a wonderful thing, anything is possible—even a whole universe owing its existence to one single thing."

"And that's what was inside that box?" Nick asked.

Sunset nodded. "Which is why it was good that they got it and hid it away." She licked her lips. "I wonder if the poor creature inside of it is even aware of where it is now or what happened to its world."

Judy frowned and took a drink from her juice. The fate of the creature was horrible, but it didn't explain why the museum had been set on fire, or why anyone would have tried to steal it in the first place. "How would they have known that it was in there?"

Sunset shook her head. "That, I don't know. But the report said that nothing else was damaged prior to the fire, right? So it seems that whoever went in there was hoping to just get that one box."

"That means that whoever went there… definitely knew it was there, but if Mr. Clawhorn is right, if it was anyone from Clawhorn and Hoof, all they would have needed to do was step in and get them. It's their property, after all."

"So, how are we going to find them?" Judy asked.

Sunset thought for a moment. "I think… we need to first find our missing misplaced creature. It's probably still around the Museum, and that's why some things are phased out."

Judy had a sudden thought. "Was it… is it possible to store more than one creature like that?"

Sunset shrugged. "Sometimes, but it wouldn't have been the case with this one." She grimaced. "Too important."

Judy smiled. "Then I think I have an idea."

End Part 6

Author's Notes:

One more chapter, I think.

Next Chapter: It wasn't Bunny the First Time (Zootopia — Movie Pt. 7) Estimated time remaining: 16 Hours, 33 Minutes
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