Guardian Blue - Season 1

Episode 24 - Seeker

Judy took her paws off of her ears where they had been pinned down and securely cupped tightly to her head.  The dust and smoke cleared and she found herself looking at a hole in the wall.  Yeah, if the city found this, there would be hell to pay.  Skye said patching it up would not be a big deal, and based on the condition of this tunnel no one spent much time down here.  They were literally a thousand feet beneath the city.  Skye had lugged a portable generator down while Judy and Finnick carried the electric jack-hammer.  It wasn’t very large or powerful but they were not opening up an entire street.  They just needed a hole big enough for a medium mammal to crawl through.  That exact opening was what they were looking at as the dust cleared.

“Alright… Shovels then?” Judy asked.  She looked at her phone.  It was almost four in the morning.  The heavy work had been done, and she knew the other two, like her, had not slept.  They were getting very tired.  No one complained, however.  When Judy told her friends what she was trying to do, both mammals wholeheartedly supported her.  They did even though she had made sure to tell them what the possible punishment was if they were discovered.  The deal was that they made the hole and that’s all they had to do.  The real risk was beyond it, and Judy would not allow either of them to take that risk.  They were to pack up the tools, all of it ‘borrowed’ from Skye’s uncle’s shop, where she had fostered her mechanical inclinations, and head back home.  Finnick’s primary role had been transportation, since Judy lacked a car and Skye’s had been totaled.  Finnick insisted on coming down to help, however.  He had been particularly useful in removing the debris as they cut through the wall.  Then he was even more helpful in pushing away the dirt as Judy took a turn at the shovel.  She got about two feet in and gave the task to Skye.

Skye was deceptively strong when it came to unyielding upper body endurance.  Running wasn’t her thing, but she could use her arms and back efficiently enough.  She made it another two feet in half the time.  All were hot, tired, and uncomfortable, but no one complained.  Judy replaced the batteries in her head-lamp as it was growing dim.  She took the spares out of her backpack. 

Her pack included water, rope, some hooks in case she needed to rappel into the ‘cauldron’ and two pulleys in case she needed to haul something slightly heavier than her out.  Skye took some time to explain the mechanics of that in a way Judy understood, and for that she was grateful.  Most of the backpack was, however, filled with a rolled up black sealable bag.  As dark as it felt carrying it, it was acyually the bunny's best case scenario.  She looked at it a moment and sighed again, hoping that all of this was not just a pointless career ending mistake.  There was a chance he wasn’t there.  There was a damned good chance that he really was just lost.  But she couldn’t just... know about this and still not try. 

“You’re up Finnick!” Skye passed the little fox the shovel.  The spade itself was almost as tall as him.  He looked incredulously at Skye.  The white vixen smirked at him.  In the past few hours they had become pals too.  Judy felt better that folks were brought together by Nick’s passing, not pulled apart.  She still felt deep regret for the hurt she knew would be done to Vivienne when she didn’t show up for the funeral.  Perhaps if this worked she’d have a chance to make that up to her and really say goodbye at the mother fox's side.

Judy took the shovel again, despite her sore shoulder, and in only a couple of minutes she hit the end of their dig.  She almost fell through the hole as the spade cut through.  Pushing their way the rest of the way into the other tunnel was easy, and Skye got the hole widened enough in less than half an hour.  Finally, they stopped and the vixen began echaustedly gathering the tools.  Judy looked back to her friends, dusting off her somewhat sore paws.  Digging was not easy, but it was done.