Author's Note:

This is a story about the life of a raccoon living in the big city. Like his best friend, a certain fox we all love, he finds his life's journey has taken him down a road that he did not wish to travel. He has become exactly what society expected him to become, a crook. In the following chapters, he will find redemption, friendship, adventure, and love.

I am new at writing fan fiction and would not have written a story if I had not seen the movie Zootopia. The events in this story begin several years after the movie. Thank you Disney and I hope you won't mind my writing about the little world you created

I do not own the rights to Zooptopia or any of its characters. This story was written solely for the reader's enjoyment and without any profitable purposes. The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this story are fictitious. (Does this legal disclaimer make you happy Mr. Moleinger?)

And so our story begins….

Chapter 1: A Fall From Grace

The slim raccoon stood just over three feet tall and was dressed in a cheap brown suit, with a medium blue shirt and a bright yellow tie. The whitish and medium gray fur on his face highlighted his species' telltale black furry musk that surrounded his brown eyes. He was good looking for a raccoon and he had a mischievous smile that some could even call sly. Jake Runnel stood silently and watched all the different species of mammals moving along the sidewalks of Broadview Street. They ranged from tall giraffes to the smallest mice, all rushing to and from their daily work or errands. The late afternoon sky was clear and the sun shone behind the tall modern buildings, casting shadows onto the ground below in the heart of the city's central business district. As his eyes scanned the crowd, he smiled and thought about how he could easily pick a pocket or two for some fast cash, if he was still doing that kind of work. Then shaking his head, he crossed over to Green Street. The raccoon kept reminding himself that it had only been just a few weeks since he was released on parole, after serving eighteen months of a six year sentence for burglary. If you get caught coon, your tail will be back in the slammer, he thought to himself. Besides, you really don't need the money…yet.

His mark on the night he was caught had been the Field Brothers Auction House and his plan was to burgle some rare antique jewelry. Why did I even take a job for such a small amount of cash? He pondered. Why did you even trust that weasel? The heist started fine and everything was going like clockwork. He had disabled the burglar alarm, broken into the building, and begun to work the old fashioned dial lock on the vault. Just as he heard the last tumbler click, the weasel shouted and climbed back up the rope to the roof. He was left alone to face a very large police tiger and his wolf partner.

As he crossed Green Street and entered into Central Park, a large expanse of greenery located in the heart of downtown, he pondered how he went from an aspiring college student to a crook. Jake was born twenty-seven years ago in a run down section of the city called Happy Town. His hometown was an old mill town which had, like so many little villages and towns, been swallowed up by the ever growing expanses of Zootopia. It's worn and seedy neighborhoods had become home for many of the city's so called less desirable citizens, such as foxes, badgers, opossums, weasels, coyotes, and raccoons. His neighbors were the type of animals that were stereotyped by society as being shifty, lazy, and dishonest. He was told while growing up that "coons" like him can only do menial or dishonest work.

Growing up as omnivore in the city was tough, although Jake had to admit that raccoons didn't face as much discrimination as those who society called the "true" predators, such the felines and especially the canids. Wolves were barely socially tolerated by the prey community, only because they were often employed as bodyguards, security guards and even policemammals. At the bottom of the list and facing the most bigotry, were both the coyotes and the foxes. The coyotes were considered untrustworthy because they live within their own tribal packs and follow their own traditions. The foxes were always considered shifty and dangerous, a species to be avoided. The election of the city's first "true" predator, Mayor Lionheart, was a reflection of how the city was changing. But his arrest during the so called Missing Mammal Crises was a major setback to interspecies relations.

"Damn Jake you've really screwed up your life," he mumbled to himself as he leaned against a tree. His mother and his twin brother had died of complications during childbirth. It was a sad fact that when he was born, most predators did not have the same access to medical care as prey mammals. Both his mother and brother would have probably survived if they had been in a hospital instead of a clinic. His father was Richard Runnel, who he called Pop, and he worked for the Zootopia City Sanitation Department. Pop would often talk in dismay about the things others tossed out. He would also salvage televisions, toasters, and other electronics and bring them home to repair. He would then sell them to one of the local pawn shops to supplement his merger salary. Jake enjoyed tinkering with his father and together they would spend hours repairing some discarded device. They even built a computer from scratch, following a schematic he found in a book from the library and software his father found in the trash. Of course, they could not afford the internet.

"Learn to be rich in your soul and not your wallet," Pop would say when Jake would whine about not having something he wanted because it cost too much. "Find a job you like doing, a loving mate, have kits, and you will be happy in life." But Jake wanted more, so when most of the other kits in school slacked off or dropped out, he just doubled down on his studies with the goal of getting one of the very rare college scholarships for predators.

Still lost in his thoughts, he pulled out a pair of cheap aviator sunglasses and snapped them open before placing them on his snout. He shoved his paws into his pockets, like all raccoons he was very dexterous with his paws. The raccoon was also a natural problem solver and found a job during his senior year of high school working as a locksmith for Mr. Otterswell, an elderly otter who was amazed by Jake's ability to open any lock, big or small. But Jake also quickly learned about the prejudices of others, when they would turn him away after showing up on some job because they did not trust a "crooked coon".

Working part-time for Mr. Otterswell after he started attending classes at Central Zootopia University was tiring, but he needed the meager income. It was a perky young female named Sonya who saved him from his despair. Ah, sexy Sonya, he sighed to himself. He had met her during the last semester of his freshman year and she just overwhelmed him with her enthusiasm for life.

"Buck up, Jake!" she would often tease, as her paw gently stroked the fur on this cheek. She was a red panda from the Little Amir Neighborhood and had a shapely red, white, and black fur covered figure with soft green eyes.

"Damn I miss those eyes," Jake muttered. Sonya's family was in the restaurant equipment supply business, with a store on Fifth Avenue near the temples. Her older brother Lee taught martial arts in a nearby gym, and welcomed Jake to join his classes. The raccoon quickly becoming proficient in the Red Panda version of pressure point fighting called Varma kalai and a type of stick fighting called Eskrima. Lee said that masters of these techniques could incapacitate even a war elephant and the red panda had once brought down a drunken angry tiger that was terrorizing others in a bar.

But it was Sonya's grandfather who fascinated Jake. "Stop and think boy!" the aged red panda would proclaim, as they sat for hours in a modest little tea-house located in the flower garden behind Sonya's home. "There is more to this world then you see. Observe and study before you act, because everything you do will change the world in some small way." At first Jake scoffed at his statements and tried teasing him with the certain confidence of an untried youth, but the old mammal would just smile. "To be young and know everything must be nice boy," he would reply and then he would add. "But what will you do when you're old like me and come to realize you were wrong?"

By summer, Jake began to spend more time with Grandfather and Sonya. He learned to meditate, relaxing both his mind and body. However, Sonya's sweet feminine scent would often distract him from reaching his goal. But by the start of his junior year, he had begun to learn to control his emotions by meditation and Grandfather was pleased. Sonya's father however was not pleased in Jake's continuing interest in his daughter. "Do not presume that my daughter is for you raccoon," he would snarl at him. "She will be the mate of one of her own kind."

Jake would then storm out into the garden, where Grandfather would just smile and simply state, "Fate decides who we become, not my son-in-law."

"Fate really did decide," Jake mumbled to himself as he stared at the traffic along Herd Avenue and teared up as he remembered that terrible day. He was called out of class by the Dean of Students, who asked to see him in the hallway. As Jake stepped out of the room, the Dean tenderly placed his hoof on his shoulder and told him that his father had been hit by a car. By the time Jake arrived at the hospital, his father had passed away. The cost of the medical bills and the funeral took what little cash Jake had left. He could not afford college anymore and Mr. Otterswell did not have enough work to hire him full time. Unable to find a decent paying job, he soon could not pay his rent and ended up living in a cheap rundown motel on River Street which had become a flop house for the working poor. River Street is a rough area of the city populated by street mammals, prostitutes, drug addicts, and the homeless. In his grief and despair, he pushed both Sonya and her grandfather away.

That's when the weasel and the badger approached him. "Look buddy, you're great with safes and alarms," Phil Wessley quipped. "We can get rich quick, I'll find the marks, Joey will be the lookout, and we'll knock them over at night. Then Jakie, we will split the take three ways."

It was an arrangement which Jake's talents excelled at, but also an arrangement made with the devil. He knew he was good at burglary and safe cracking and over the next few years he worked Wessley's jobs, but soon sought greater challenges and began to rob some of the mansions of Zootopia's rich. As the cash rolled in, Jake found himself wandering further under the scrutiny of several of the city's crime lords. But try as they did, Jake spurned their offers to join their gangs. They did however, get to both Wessley and Joey, who set him up and he was left to be apprehended by two of ZPD's finest officers, Richard Fangmeyer and Alan Wolford. Although he did have some cash stashed away throughout the city, he could not get to it and ended up with a public defender. The trial was quick and he found himself packed off the penitentiary.

Wandering deep in his thoughts, it took Jake a few moments to realize that something was happening on Herd Avenue and that the crowd had begun to run his way. He weaved through the stampede of panicked mammals and saw that a cement truck had crashed into a large black limousine. The street around the vehicle had become a war zone. The bodies of two polar bears lay bloodily on the ground, along with three members of the East Street Rhino Gang. A tall older polar bear in a back suit had his back to the limo and it appeared his left arm was broken. Weaponless, all the bear could do was growl and swipe with the claws of his right paw at a very large knife welding rhino.

Without hesitation, Jake charged into action. Grabbing an oversized shovel from the nearby worksite, he slid under the rhino and drove the shovel's handle into the soft spot between the surprised assailant's legs. The rhino groaned and dropped the knife as he fell to his knees. Quickly, Jake charged from behind and slammed the shovel's edge with all his strength into the back of the kneeling rhino's neck. He had been taught during his martial arts lessons that even a rhino had pressure points which could disable the mammal. He hit the rhino at least a dozen times as hard as he could on a place just under a fold of skin on the back of the rhino's neck. Finally the beast collapsed face first onto the street.

Standing next to the fallen mammal, Jake's ears picked up the sounds of sirens approaching and he tossed the shovel aside. He began to bush off his suit and straightened his tie as he approached the wounded bear. "You okay big fellow?" Jake started to ask before the huge bear collapsed on top of him.

To the raccoon, it seemed like forever before the polar bear was lifted off and he could breathe again. As he struggled to his knees, he felt a pair of russet orange and black paws grab his arm to assist him in standing. "Are you alright sir?" asked a slightly taller red fox in a police uniform.

As Jake looked up, he blinked in surprise and asked, "Nick Wilde?"

"Runnel, when did you get out?" was all the fox could say before the raccoon decked him.

"Wilde you owe me money!" Jake yelled at the fallen cop. He was so mad at the fox, that he did not see the gray and blue blur that tackled him to the ground. Before he knew what hit him, Jake was on his stomach a felt his paws being cuffed behind his back.

"You're under arrest for assaulting an officer!" the rabbit doe yelled as she finished cuffing Jake's paws and then she read him his rights. Because he was classified as a predator, she strapped a muzzle over the raccoon's head.

"Don't Carrots!" Nick protested to the rabbit. "I may have deserved that punch."

As the rabbit and fox began to argue with each other over the arrest, Jake felt a familiar pair of reddish-orange and white paws lift him from the ground. "Sargent Fangmeyer! I can't say it's good to see you again," Jake mumbled through the muzzle to the tiger. The big cat just rolled his eyes and sighed as he looked down at the raccoon.

"Runnel, I see it didn't take long for you to get into trouble again," he replied. "You know the routine, so get into the cruiser." After he opened the police cruiser's rear door and shoved the raccoon inside, the tiger turned to Judy and Nick. "The Chief says that you two are to stay here and take statements from any witnesses. Wolford and I will take this perpetrator back to the station for processing." Nick started to protest again, but Fangmeyer just ignored him as he got into car's passenger seat.

"So you're another fan of Wilde's," he quipped to Jake. His partner, a timber wolf named Wolford, was driving and he just barked a laugh as he pulled the cruiser out into traffic.

"Wilde conned me out of several hundred dollars several years back," Jake tried to say through the muzzle. "He's now a cop and I'm still just another lowlife in the underbelly of society." Jake then perked up and asked, "Hey Stripes, can you loosen these cuffs?"

"I'll take them off when we get to the station and quit calling me Stripes!" The tiger huffed.

"Never mind," replied Jake. "I'll do it myself!" He twisted about for a few moments and then he handed the tiger both the pawcuffs and the muzzle.

"Put those back on!" Fangmeyer yelled. "You need to stop with the tricks! You want to me to taser you for resisting arrest?" His partner, Wolford just kept his eyes on the road and snickered.

"What's the matter Fangmeyer, don't you love me anymore?" Jake whined back, but the sound of a taser being drawn motivated him to quickly put the cuffs back on, but not the muzzle.

At the Precinct One booking station, Jake was greeted by a uniformed middle aged female bobcat. "I'm back, Officer Catrina!" Jake greeted her. "It's just wonderful to see your sexy face again."

"Jake, I know you can't stay away from my charms but this is ridiculous!" replied the grinning bobcat

"Well you know I am a sucker for you Cat," replied Jake as he handed his pawcuffs to Officer Fangmeyer.

"You know Jake that it's my job to take those off," growled the tiger.

Jake looked up at him with a smirk on his face and replied, "Sorry Stripes, but I had an itchy nose and couldn't wait any longer."

"Are you going to stay put tonight in the cell?" asked Officer Catrina. "You know that Bogo went nuts the last time you were here and you were caught wandering the hallways."

"I just wanted a cup of coffee," said Jake in a remorseful sounding tone as he batted his eyes at her. "You know I wasn't trying to run away."

"Good afternoon Mr. Runnel," came a greeting from a slightly overweight and much older warthog. "I can't say it's a pleasure to see you again. Please strip down to your undershorts, Chief Bogo wants to know where you hide your picks."

"Ah come on Rudy, I don't have any picks," Jake replied trying to look offended at the warthog. He held up his paws and waved them as if doing a magic act. "It's all in the magic paws."

"Sure Jake," said the exasperated officer. "But orders are orders, so strip!"

"I want to do the strip search Rudy!" begged the bobcat as she winked at Jake.

"Cat, I would love to let you do so, but regulations say he has to have two male officers in the room. Come on Wolford, you're my witness," replied the warthog.

"There goes my appetite for dinner tonight," Wolford sighed as he led the raccoon into a nearby room. Rudy walked behind the pair and made great flourish to loudly snap on a pair of surgical gloves. Jake's ears laid back and his tail bristled at the sound.

The two officers left in the hallway both began to snicker at the voices coming out of the room.

"Watch the tail, Rudy. WATCH THE TAIL!"

"Lean over the table and spread your legs."

"Ow, Rudy that's not right. This is just police brutality!"

"Well what do you know Wolford? It looks like he's clean after all."

"Hey, Rudy can Cat come in and kiss it to make it better?"

"Jake, I am not going to ask Officer Catrina to kiss your ass."

"You've never been much fun, Rudy."

Wolford came out of the room yanking Jake's arm, followed by a grinning warthog. Catrina purred and asked, "Did you three have fun?" She was eying the half-naked raccoon over with a devious looking smile.

"No," replied Jake, his ears were still lying flat and he was gingering swishing his tail. "Rudy's not my type and Wolford bites." All five mammals burst into laughter.

"So officers what are the charges against Mr. Runnel this time?" inquired Cat, as she sat down at the booking station computer.

"Assault on an officer," replied Fangmeyer with a big grin. "He decked Wilde and Judy decked him."

"Little gray menace to society," muttered Jake as he was pulling an orange prison jumpsuit on. "All I saw was a gray streak and then BOOM, I was eating asphalt. I'd file a complaint, but who wants a reputation of being beat up by a bunny?"

Catrina arched one of her brows and replied, "Officer Judy Hopps-Wilde has taken down much larger mammals then you Jake and she is one of our best officers. Did you know she broke both the Missing Mammal and Night Howler Cases a few years ago?"

"Wait a minute, Judy Hoops-Wilde?" the raccoon asked the bobcat. "Are you saying she's married to…Nick Wilde…a fox?"

"Yes and if you got a problem with mixed species relationships, you've got a problem with me!" growled Fangmeyer. The tiger stepped closer to the raccoon and stared down at him.

"No problem, Stripes," stammered Jake. "You've patrolled River Street and you've seen the ladies who work there. If this city is ninety percent prey, who do you think hires vixens like Candy and Trudy, a she panther such as Sheela, or a wildcat such as Meredith?"

"Lonely raccoons like you?" interjected Wolford, he had a big grin on his muzzle and his tail swished happily behind him.

Jake smiled back at the wolf and replied, "Yeah and after eighteen months of being locked up, Meredith was an expensive comfort. Especially since your sister said no." Wolford first chuckled and then play growled before everyone began laughing again.

That night Jake spent the whole night in a small grey holding cell awaiting his hearing in the morning. Although he was tempted to unlock the jail door, just to prove that he could, he knew that he was already in enough trouble. Sighing, he just laid back on the cot and awaited his fate.