S03E07 - No Time to Die

"No Time to Die" is the seventh episode of Season 3 of We Can Fix Pawbert. It picks up minutes after "Dead or Alive", with Leodore Lionheart's commandeered train running for City Hall and Luther and Pawbert hidden in the rear compartment, twelve cars behind him.

Synopsis

Luther and Pawbert Lynxley are hidden in the rear maintenance compartment of the twelve-car train Leodore Lionheart has commandeered for his march on City Hall. Twelve cars separate them from Lionheart at the front, and they start working forward. Thirty minutes of fighting clears six of them, Luther mostly bare-pawed while Pawbert improvises weapons and beats a lynx with the training Luther gave him. Car 6 holds eight of Lionheart's best. A coyote's taser drops Luther, Pawbert saves him with that same taser, and the two fall back to Car 7, where Luther says only that stopping Lionheart is personal. Told that two mammals are stalled behind him, Lionheart judges them harmless and orders no pursuit. At Dead End Station, Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps overpower the guards left at Lionheart's broadcast setup and recover a manifest of paid agitators listing fees, arrival times, and scripted chants. Chief Bogo masses ZPD at the Savanna Central Line 3 exit, but Lionheart has cloned the train's transponder and diverts at Agave Avenue onto Line 5, switches again at Oasis Hotel onto Line 1, and surfaces on the far side of the same station. His army floods the platform, and Luther and Pawbert batter open the car door they find locked from outside. Lionheart's people take City Hall room by room, and the ZSI wolf assigned to Mayor Brian Winddancer knocks out the mayor's aides and opens the safe room. Lionheart drags Winddancer to the press room and goes live to the city.

Plot

Luther and Pawbert are hidden in the rear maintenance compartment of the twelve-car train Lionheart has commandeered, running hard through the ZTA tunnels toward City Hall. Luther is already hurt from the fights that got them aboard, and Pawbert's shoulder is grazed from the junction. Through the compartment window Luther counts the layout: twelve passenger cars between them and Lionheart at the front, where the controls are. He decides they will work forward on foot and stay quiet for as long as they can. The stolen ZPD service weapon goes into his waistband rather than his paw, because the report would carry the length of the train and tell everyone aboard what he has.

The first cars go quietly. Luther puts down a jackal and a stoat in Car 12 before either can shout, and Pawbert arms himself with what the car offers: a fire extinguisher bracket wrenched off the wall and a loose pole from a dismantled luggage rack. Car 11 turns loud when a honey badger spots them and roars a warning. Luther chokes the badger unconscious while Pawbert drops a raccoon with the thrown pole, then finds a lynx charging him. It is the wrong lynx, but the right shape to put Cattrick and Milton in the car with him. He fights on Luther's training instead, blocking the first swing, ducking inside the second, and sweeping the lynx off his feet. He knocks him out with a strike to the temple rather than kill him. Luther gives him one word of approval, and it is enough to steady his paws. Car 10 is the only car where the gun comes out; two of the four mammals waiting there are armed, and Luther drops a serval and a wolverine before Pawbert's thrown bracket stops a mongoose reaching the far door.

From Car 9 forward Luther fights bare-pawed. Five of Lionheart's better mammals have barricaded that aisle with seats torn out of the floor. Luther orders Pawbert back and goes over it alone, clearing the car at the cost of a knife cut to his arm and repeated hits to the same ribs, and Pawbert has to put down the last of them with a torn seat rail before he can run for the door. Car 8 holds six, and two of them decide the fight is not worth it, backing into Car 7 and locking the door behind them. Luther kicks the lock apart. Car 7 costs him a knife in the side and a baton across the temple, and when it is finally clear he takes one step toward Car 6 and his knee gives out. Pawbert gets him into a seat. Luther has been fighting for thirty minutes. Six cars are cleared, half the train, and the other half is still waiting. Pawbert argues for stopping and calling for backup, and Luther refuses; pressed for a reason, he says only that stopping Lionheart is personal. What Pawbert reads under the exhaustion and the pain is guilt, but Luther will not explain it and tells him it can wait.

Car 6 holds eight of Lionheart's best, and they have had time to set for him: a jaguar, a margay, a caracal, a painted wolf with a chain, two coyotes, an ocelot with a pistol, and a serval. Luther kicks through anyway. He gets the jaguar's paws off his throat, works through five of the eight, and is still on his feet when the coyote with the taser finds him and puts him on the floor. Pawbert throws himself at the coyote with no training and no plan, wrestles the taser away, and uses it on its owner. Luther drags himself upright and hammers the jaguar down. The last coyote looks at seven mammals on the floor and at a wolf who is bleeding from everywhere and still standing, then retreats into Car 5 behind another locked door. Neither of them can follow. Luther's legs go out from under him, Pawbert catches him, and they fall back into Car 7 and stop there.

At Dead End Station, Nick and Judy come up out of the tunnel and take down the three guards left on Lionheart's broadcast setup. Judy tases a tapir, Nick shoots a radio and then a pistol out of an ocelot's paws, and when a mongoose draws on Judy's back Nick puts a round through his shoulder rather than his chest. All three live. Judy radios Chief Bogo that Lionheart has already left by train, and Bogo answers that ZPD and ZSI are both stretched to nothing and that he will mass what he has left at the Savanna Central Line 3 exit, where the Inner Loop surfaces. Searching the command center afterward, Nick opens a folder on a folding desk and finds a manifest: names, photographs, addresses, and a payment amount beside each entry, with instructions telling every one of them when to arrive at City Hall, what to chant, where to stand, and how to look like an ordinary citizen. The rally has been written in advance. Nick pockets it.

At the front of the train, in the executive car he has fitted out for himself, Lionheart is told by a nervous panther aide that two mammals have fought forward through the rear cars and stalled at Car 7. He decides that anyone stopped short of Car 6 is no threat to his arrival and forbids sending anyone back for them. The route display behind him updates twice: at Agave Avenue the train leaves the Inner Loop for Line 5, and at Oasis Hotel it switches again to Line 1. Further back, Judy reaches Pawbert on the kudu's phone, learns that Luther is hurt and they are out of the fight, and tells them to stay aboard. Luther apologizes for failing to reach Lionheart, repeats that it is personal, and again refuses to say why. Both of them feel the train change tracks, and neither knows where it is going.

At the Line 3 exit, Bogo has his formation in riot gear waiting on a train that never arrives. He refuses City Hall's request for units, because everything he has is either on that platform or digging mammals out of ZCF, and Fangmeyer finally says out loud that the train should have been there by now. A ZTA dispatcher goes to the raw switch logs instead of the transit board and finds that the train's transponder was cloned and the real train diverted at Agave Avenue. Then Delgato calls in from elsewhere in the station complex: the train is unloading at the Line 1 exit, on the far side of the same station, and Lionheart is already moving on City Hall. Bogo sends every unit he has, minutes out of position.

On the Line 1 platform, an okapi, a capybara family, and an elderly elephant with a newspaper are waiting for an evening train when the doors open and dozens of armed mammals pour out in formation. Lionheart steps off last and walks his army up into the street. Luther and Pawbert find their own door immobile, held from outside or locked remotely, and throw themselves at it until the frame cracks and the mechanism tears free. Luther makes three steps on the platform before his legs fold. They start for the stairs with Pawbert carrying most of his weight.

Nick and Judy reach the plaza to find it already full, hundreds of mammals chanting Lionheart's name under waving signs. Nick reads the crowd the way he used to read a mark. The chant leaders are spaced too evenly, roughly one louder mammal every thirty feet, and their faces match the photographs in his pocket. He counts at least thirty planted agitators and takes the rest for ordinary citizens who got swept along. Bogo's convoy is five minutes out and Lionheart's advance team is already inside the building, so the two of them push into the crowd toward the entrance.

Inside, the advance team has already put the lobby security down and breached the interior corridors. What resistance there is comes one mammal at a time, a rhino guard thirty years on the job who plants himself in a hallway and a beaver maintenance worker with a mop, and all of it is put down. Deep in the building, Mayor Brian Winddancer waits out the pounding on the blast door with two aides and the ZSI wolf who has guarded him since the Lynxley case. The wolf steps away from the door, knocks both aides unconscious with trained precision, tells Winddancer that his service is to Zootopia and not to its mayor, and enters the unlock code Winddancer trusted him with. Lionheart walks in, thanks him, and has Winddancer dragged to the press room, where his people have wired the cameras into every screen in the city. Winddancer is forced into a chair beside the podium with his wrists zip-tied behind him. Lionheart adjusts his suit, takes the podium, and the camera light goes red.

Key Moments

• Luther and Pawbert start forward from the rear maintenance compartment, twelve cars behind Lionheart
• Pawbert beats the Car 11 lynx one-on-one using Luther's training, and knocks him out rather than kill him
• Luther fires the stolen service weapon only in Car 10, and fights bare-pawed from Car 9 forward
• Car 8's two survivors break off into Car 7 and lock the door behind them
• Thirty minutes of fighting clears six cars; Luther reaches Car 7 spent
• Luther tells Pawbert that stopping Lionheart is personal, and twice refuses to explain
• Car 6's eight defenders stop the advance, and a coyote's taser drops Luther
• Pawbert tackles the coyote and turns the taser on him
• Luther collapses and the pair fall back to Car 7, halfway through the train
• Nick and Judy clear the three guards left at Dead End Station
• Nick finds Lionheart's manifest of paid agitators, with fees, arrival times, and scripted chants
• Lionheart is told two pursuers are stalled at Car 7 and forbids sending anyone back
• The train's transponder is found cloned; it diverts at Agave Avenue to Line 5, then at Oasis Hotel to Line 1
• Lionheart's army surfaces at the Line 1 exit while ZPD waits at Line 3, and Bogo sends every unit to City Hall
• Luther and Pawbert force open the car door locked on them and follow on foot
• Nick matches faces in the plaza crowd to the manifest and counts at least thirty planted chanters
• The ZSI wolf on Winddancer's detail knocks out both aides and opens the safe room for Lionheart
• Lionheart has Winddancer dragged to the press room and goes live to the city

Key Lines

Locations

• Lionheart's train - Rear maintenance compartment forward to Car 6, and the executive car at the front
• Dead End Station - The broadcast setup and staging area Lionheart leaves behind
• Savanna Central Station - The Line 3 exit where ZPD forms up, and the Line 1 exit where the train actually arrives
• City Hall - Lobby, interior corridors, safe room, press room, and the plaza outside

Items

• Kudu's phone - Carried by Pawbert since the prison gates; Judy calls it and he answers from Car 7
• Stolen ZPD service weapon - Taken off a ZPD officer in the access tunnels; Luther keeps it in his waistband because the report would carry, and fires it only in Car 10
• Fire extinguisher bracket - Wrenched off the wall in Car 12 by Pawbert, thrown at the Car 10 mongoose
• Luggage rack pole - Taken from a dismantled rack in Car 12, thrown at the Car 11 raccoon
• Coyote's taser - Used on Luther in Car 6, then taken by Pawbert and used on its owner
• Judy's taser - Used on the tapir at Dead End Station
• Paid agitators manifest - Found by Nick on a folding desk in the Dead End broadcast area; names, photographs, addresses, payment amounts, and staging instructions. Nick pockets it as evidence

Notes

• Nick's line about liberty dying with thunderous applause is a Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith easter egg (Padmé's observation about the Empire's formation).
• The title references No Time to Die (James Bond). All Season 3 episode titles pun on James Bond, Jack Reacher, or Jack Ryan titles.