How could something so terrifying also be so beautiful?
Officer Judy Hops had seen fires before—the frequent campfires she had had with her family at Bunny Burrow, even the larger harvest fires to burn off chaff from the farm. But the fire struggling to emerge from this run-down tenement building in front of her was a different beast altogether. Thick oily smoke billowed out of windows, while flickering orange and purple flames erupted from widening gaps in the structure, licking eagerly at the external walls as they reached for the sky. The flames were a living thing, a predator licking its chops—
Bad analogy. She blinked her watering eyes and once again peered up from the street just in front of the building. Amidst the flashes of orange flame she could pick out another flash of orange, a tail attached to a fox working his way along the ledge.
"What does he think he's doing?"
Judy turned to look at the elephant dressed in fire gear approaching her.
"We arrived just as the fire was starting and tried to help evacuate. But all stairways on the third floor were blocked or locked. My partner climbed up the outside to see if he could rig-"
Another portion of the wall collapsed, followed by a puff of heat as flames poured out the new opening. Judy felt her fur stand on end as she unconsciously backed a step away from the building. If the heat were this intense here, what would Nick be feeling right now?
"You cops should've waited outside until we arrived-"
"No time. There's lots of people trapped on the upper six floors and you guys took nearly five minutes to get here."
"We're here now. Stand back and let the pros do their job, don't complicate things further. Hope your friend makes it."
The elephant unceremoniously shoved the young bunny back and gestured to his companions to bring the hose. Judy hated the nickname elephant firefighters gave themshelves-"firephants"-but she had to admit that it made sense that elephants dominated the fire departments in Zootopia. It sure came in handy to have a trunk that could squirt water thirty feet without relying on pumps.
Several firephants were already squirting water with their trunks into the bottom floors, while a large red fire truck finished putting down its stabilizers and began extending its white ladder to reach the higher floors.
Judy turned back, scanning for Nick's tail again, well-camouflaged among the other orange flames. The fox had something cradled in his arms, and was looking around for some foothold to move down the building.
She saw the ladder stop with a jolt. The firephant that had been operating the controls from the cab was jumping out, running to assist the others in pulling out hoses. Judy ran to him.
"Hey, would you possibly mind moving that ladder over toward my – "
"Move!" Shouted the firephant as he hurried away, dragging the hose.
The superheated air from the fire was now distorting her view of the building behind. She saw Nick edge down the ledge toward the building corner, still clutching the bundle. The bundle moved and she saw a small paw reaching out. Part of the ledge above Nick fell, most of it crashing next to him, but a few chunks knocking him on the head. He swayed, fighting to keep his balance.
The firephants seemed outnumbered by the hoses they were struggling to attach to the dilapidated hydrants sitting on the corner. Well, if they weren't going to use the ladder, maybe—
She hadn't finished the thought before she had hopped into the cab and grabbed the controls. One of these things should rotate—
"HEY YOU! OUTTA THERE!"
No time to explain, just lock the door and roll up the—
A large round foot pounded on the window, cracking it.
Ah, here was the spin control, and here was the extender. The white ladder was now rotating around toward the corner where Nick was standing. If he could just reach it and grab it…
She hadn't finished THAT thought before she was squeezing though the gap of the cab window opposite that of the angry firephant and scurrying rapidly up the gantry. Daylight vanished into nocturnal gloom as the smoke above her blocked the sunlight. In less than a minute she was the same height as Nick, riding the ladder as it swung ever closer to him. Nick hadn't seen the ladder yet; the thick smoke had probably blinded him.
"NICK! She shouted, holding out a paw toward him.
His ears pricked, and she snapped his head around, eyes roving quickly. Almost immediately they bored into her own. He flashed his familiar grin, as if this were all a little lark, but then he frowned and spoke. Judy, now only ten feet away on the still-moving ladder, was able to hear him say
"Hey Carrots, where's the brake on that thing?"
Oh yeah, she should have thought of that earlier. Too late now.
The ladder swung into the side of the building just after Nick was able to leap onto the frame. The collision of the ladder with the wall threw him off balance, and he shoved the swaddled baby in his arms towards the bunny, before he lost part of his grip and hung from the railing by one hand.
The ladder calmly ripped along the front façade of the apartment building, leaving a huge gash through several apartments. Several heads poked through the gap from now well-ventilated living rooms.
The ladder hadn't been facing much resistance from the paper-thin walls of the run-down building, but now it hit something solid with a loud metallic clang, and the ladder abruptly stopped rotating. Nick managed to grab onto the ladder with another hand and hoist himself next to Judy, who was managing to steady herself on a rung with the young baby in one arm. She couldn't help but notice that he still had his sunglasses tucked neatly into his chest pocket. And that his police uniform was still somewhat clean.
A swarm of squirrels, small predators, and other animals emerged from the gash and started descending the rungs next to the two partners, taking advantage of the precarious escape route suddenly available to them. A young ferret paused and grabbed the baby from Judy's arms, barely stopping long enough to say "thanks" before vanishing further down the ladder.
Crouching next to Judy, facing back toward the long horizontal gash stretching along the wall, Nick's watering green eyes met her wide-open ones, and he cracked a small nonchalant grin she was beginning to recognize as a self-defense mechanism for masking fear.
"All in a day's work I guess—"
His smile froze, his eyes seemed to shift focus, and his face shifted into a blank mask of concentration.
"Hold me."
Her heart froze for a moment as she stared at him, nonplussed. Then without another word, he leapt off the ladder.
The world seemed to freeze for a moment as she watched his torso, then legs, and then his long red tail pass by inches away in front of her face. It was a dream-a nightmare—where she too could only move in slow motion, her arm desperately swinging up toward his tail that inch-by-inch was slipping away from her. She managed to clutch the tip of his tail and felt her entire body start to lift away from the ladder. She managed to hook a foot under a rung before she felt her entire body stretch as it tried to absorb the sudden jerk that threatened to pull both of them off the ladder. Turning her head towards Nick, she saw him suspended in the air, paws outstretched, towards a toddler that was falling from the gash in the wall. She watched him catch it before a second jerk stretched every joint in her body.
"Don't let go!" Nick shouted from what seemed a long distance away.
She guessed the fox was twice her weight, but she knew (she hoped) that her legs were strong for her size. She was falling backward, the end of Nick's tail wrapped around both claws, trying to keep her foot hooked around the rung as all three of them arced underneath the thin white ladder. The street below moved into her vision and she saw a few firephants looking, jaws open, along with a few bystanders. She thought she glimpsed a smartphone pointing up before she felt her back start to wrap around the ladder as her heavy load continued to arc around. She felt her back start to creak as it nearly bent backwards at a right angle, rotating the fox and toddler so that they were now rising, rising back up the other side of the ladder…
…and Nick managed to grab another rung, and then the weight receded from her numb arms. She felt her hooked foot slip off the rung, but before she could even feel a flash of fear she felt a furry claw grab her wrist.
Nick, coughing terribly, hauled her up back to the ladder. He was stronger than she had suspected. He started to say something he presumably would have thought witty, but instead continued hacking uncontrollably amidst the river of animals descending down the ladder around them. Instinctively she grabbed the young toddler. It looked a bit like a fox, a bit like a wolf, but was not a species she recognized. The poor thing was sobbing, and she only had a moment to note the visible ribs showing through the toddler's thin body before she clutched it in a firm hug.
The sound of small animals vanishing downward was replaced by the sound of large animals moving upward.
"Nick?" she said, realizing that the lithe form curled one rung up the ladder from her was now silent and unmoving. She struggled to juggle her screaming burden so she could reach up and feel for a pulse. She wiggled her fingers into the soft fur ringing his neck, trying to filter out the noise, the encroaching heat, and her own gasping-
Nothing.
"WHAT IN THE WORLD DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING?!" she shouted at his still form. No response. Then a sound like a foghorn blasted in her ear:
"WHAT IN THE WORLD DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING?!"
She snapped around back toward the firephant, who was yelling at her from just below her position, and snarled with such fury that the enormous mammal flinched and moved a step down the ladder.
"You'd better be a paramedic coming up here to help him, or I'll, I'll…"
She couldn't say another word, as panic robbed her speech. Her sensitive ears twitched as she heard a murmur behind her, almost buried in the roar of flames.
The firephant, silent for a moment, shifted his gaze past her and said,
"Well, what did the fox say?"
She turned around to see Nick smiling weakly at her, through half-lidded eyes. He murmured…
"Hatte, hatte, hatte-ho".