Recent times had been hectic, to say the least, in Zootopia. There were two mayoral changes within a month, the previous mayors both being involved in political conspiracies. The ZPD was placed under public scrutiny after a press conference with Her Eloquence, Judy Hopps, who didn't seem to learn how to get facts straight before spewing nonsense on live TV. Then, word spread about how Her Eloquence resigned from the force, despite being heralded as a heroine throughout the city. Next, after resigning, she and her low-key boyfriend Nick Wilde truly solved the mystery involving predators going ham and tearing up wherever they went. And to top it all off, apparently the ZPD was accepting foxes into their units now, as Wilde turned from a life of crime without a badge to a potential onewith a badge.

Since the biggest problem the city had seen in recent years had been extinguished, the denizens of Zootopia decided to launch a large-scale celebration at the local sports stadium. A social symbol like this was a beacon of hope for predators and a sign of relief for prey.

And a gold mine of opportunity for a specific criminal.

An orange tabby cat stood perched on a monument, getting an adequate view of downtown Zootopia. It was evening, just when the city was turning on its lights. The sky was pink as the sun was setting in the west. Despite it being in the latter part of the day, that didn't seem to improve the flow of traffic, where it seemed as though rush hour was every hour. The air smelled of smog and the atmosphere was filled with drivers yelling at each other over car horns.

I love dis place.

The tabby cocked his head northward and pulled a telescope from his hoodie pocket. He closed one eye and looked through the scope with the other. There it was; the First Bank of Zootopia, its front entrance dimly lit, practically inviting those of the tabby's profession to make a...withdrawal. And tonight was a great opportunity for him; with the huge celebration going down in the southern part of the city, security would have been emphasized there, which meant fewer officers to intervene with what was about to go down. Ironic, since he had a cop to thank for this.

It wasn't difficult to acquire this information; the city had been buzzing about the event weeks before that day. Posters were set up from corner to corner, advertising a special performance by pop singer Gazelle. The tabby could never understand how mammals would have been excited about that, but he reminded himself: Gazelle wasn't a star because of her singing.

He stuffed the scope back into his pocket and put on black gloves, a black cloth over his tail, and pulled his skull cap down, the cap doubling as a balaclava. He concealed his dark purple eyes with a pair of sunglasses. These clothes complemented the black hoodie, cargo pants, and foot pads to really give him a look of a cat burglar, in more ways than one.

He threw his hood over his head and trotted to the edge of the monument's rooftop. He looked down. It was at least a ten story fall to the ground. He mentally scoffed at the ridiculous height as he analyzed the distance between the building he was on and the next building. The latter was lower, so a horizontal jump mixed with downward gravity would have given him ample distance.

The tabby moved back, then got a running start towards the edge of the roof. He bounded to the other building, his arms up in his descent. He executed a forward roll as he landed on the other roof, then immediately resumed running. The next building was a bit higher up, so the tabby leapt onto an air conditioning unit to compensate for the added height. He kicked a foot up against a wall on his right, then sprung forward to reach the next building.

He was about a block away from his destination when his ear twitched. Aside from the hardly-executed tonal pitches from Zootopia's pop icon and four-on-the-floor beats from down the city, he heard a sound that sent chills to criminals across the world: police sirens. It was doubtful that someone called the fuzz on him for suspicious activity while on city rooftops; people rarely looked up in this city. He followed the sound of sirens until he found a collection of ZPD police cruisers speeding southward. Further investigation revealed that the cruisers were heading towards the stadium. It appeared serious; at least six or eight cruisers were surrounding the perimeter of the stadium.

Whatever was going on there, it was only helping out the tabby in more ways than one. The stadium incident would shift more police attention there than to what was about to happen a few miles north. Fate certainly seemed to be on his side that day.

The tabby jumped from building to building until he reached the edge of the block. The bank was set up right in front of a three-way intersection. From where he was, the tabby needed to cross a street to reach the bank. One would have thought he needed to descend to the ground and traverse a crosswalk in order to achieve this task.

He would have. If he was a chump.

He eyed a telephone pole near the building he was on and made a small hop towards it. He landed on the pole with perfect balance, his arms extended out to the sides to maintain it. He scanned the street below him. Nobody was aware of his presence. He nodded before lightly stepping onto the telephone wire, testing its strength. The wire hardly bent under his weight. He jogged across the wire like a trapeze artist on a tightrope, maintaining superb balance.

The wire led to the bank's rooftop. The tabby walked up to a large vent set up at about chest level. The grating was nailed shut. He reached into his backpack and produced a hydraulic spreader. He inserted the spreader between the grating and the vent, then pulled the handles away from each other. The grating came right off. He grabbed the grating before it hit the ground and gently set it on the rooftop, where it would look as though it fell on its own.

He looked inside the dark vent, aided by his feline ability of night vision. As confirmed before, there wasn't a fan to obstruct his path. Then he climbed into the vent feet first. The vent curved downward, so he used his hands and feet to slow his slippery descent further into the bank's ventilation system. He reached a flat part of the shaft, silently stepping onto it and lying prone. The shaft was too small to stand or crouch in.

The ventilation system was a nearly impassable labyrinth for someone unfamiliar with it. Fortunate for the tabby, he had gotten his hands on blueprints for the system. He knew the quickest path not blocked by a fan was only a few hallways away from the vault.

Left. Right. Right. Left. The grating was the only thing standing between the tabby and the hallway. From this point he could see an office of some sort. No personnel were inside. He took out his spreader and opened the grating as silently as he could. He pushed himself out of the shaft and landed on the carpet with a silent roll. He had taken out his pistol, a .45 caliber Glock 30 fitted with a suppressor, during his descent. Crouching, he swept the room, bringing his pistol around. He kept the gun up as he exited the office.

The office's exit led to a hallway. He turned left, moving quickly, yet stealthily. He expected guards to be around someplace, but the absence of them wouldn't have been surprising. It had been years since somebody last tried to rob a bank, and the longer an organization went without incident, the more lax the security became, and the easier it was to grab the loot.

He went through two more hallways without incident. The vault was just around the corner. The tabby looked to his left and right to ascertain once again that he was in the clear. He clicked a button on the side of his shades. Nothing looked out of the ordinary when he looked at the circular vault. No infrared lasers. They were making this too easy, he thought.

He stepped to the vault and looked at the numeric keypad beside it. He grabbed a flashlight that shone blue instead of white. With this, he detected the four most commonly used numbers on the keypad. If the guards were smart, they would have changed the codes more often. The highest amount of oils were found on the "3" key, followed by the "4" key, then the "1" key, and the "6" key. The tabby tapped in the code "3416." The keypad beeped twice, and the red bar over the LCD screen turned green.

The mechanism within the vault clicked. The tabby turned the large metallic knob and opened the vault. Behind the balaclava he produced a wicked grin, anticipating a large take awaiting him on the other side.

Alas, there was nothing. The shelves were completely clean. If one were to look at it, one wouldn't have thought there was money in there at all. Somebody had come in here and gathered every last cent. The tabby didn't know if it was one person or a team of people who got in and took the dough. What he did know was that if...no, when he found the party responsible for stealing the money first, somebody was going to catch some hands!

Cursing to himself, he closed the door and headed back the way he came in. Then the lights shot back on, followed by a shrill bell alarm. How did he get discovered? He entered the right code and everything! As far as he knew, there were no guards around who could have saw him! He had no time to wonder as he heard multiple footsteps coming up the stairs toward the vault.

He ran to the nearest window and held his pistol by the barrel. He shattered the window and leapt out. In his short descent, he did a forward somersault before landing in an alleyway. He made no hesitation to run to the nearest fire escape ladder and climb up to a rooftop. He didn't stop until the bank was hardly within his view.

When he was in the east side of the neighborhood, where crime ran more rampantly, he took off his extra equipment and angrily stuffed them into his bag, which should have been filled with money instead of clothes. Everything had gone according to plan! Lower security, all the equipment he'd brought, and he'd even gone to a fuse box to deactivate cameras at one point! Even so, someone had tripped the alarm right after he discovered that somebody else got the goods. He took back what he said about fate being on his side. The only good thing that happened to him was that he was never seen, but that didn't mean he ran off with any green!

He was still shaking his head in disbelief as he took a fire escape down into an alleyway close to his home. An early retirement wasjust in his reach, and somebody had taken it away from him. The unknown burglar was a true professional, completely avoiding the guards and leaving no trace of his or her take. He or she had a similar modus operandi compared to the tabby's; aside from avoiding guards whenever possible, the burglar closed the vault door and left, so that the empty vault wouldn't have been discovered until morning. If the burglar and the tabby were more alike than that, the burglar would have lain low for a couple days to let the heat die down, while spending money conservatively so as to not raise suspicion.

That still shoulda been me! thought the tabby as he opened his door. Instead of luxury and relaxation, the tabby could foresee ice cream binging and grumpiness in his near future. He slammed the door behind him.

. . .

Meanwhile...

Concerts were never Nick Wilde's cup of tea. He had recently come from a life of trick artistry and deception, which usually involved remaining inconspicuous. This was the complete opposite. People were yelling in excitement over even louder music as Gazelle performed all her hit songs. All the mammals were having the time of their lives, dancing their hearts out and forgetting all of the troubles that had recently arisen.

However, he certainly wouldn't have opted the current situation as a way to crash a concert. He walked down a hallway near the exterior of the stadium with Judy at his side and Officer Fangmeyer leading the way to the crime scene.

The tigress led the duo to a men's bathroom. She grabbed a few blue stockings and gloves and tossed them to Nick and Judy, telling them to put them on. The two felt severely underdressed compared to the other officers; while they were dressed in plain clothes, other officers were still dressed in their uniforms. The two had the night off due to the celebration.

Fangmeyer maneuvered around the yellow police tape and opened the door and let the other two in. Judy gasped when she saw what was inside: a hyena and a coyote lay dead on opposite ends of the room, a series of bloody holes in both of their chests. The two victims' eyes were open, yet unseeing. A wolf officer was taking pictures of the scene as they walked in.

"So, what have we got, Fangmeyer?" asked Nick, breaking the tense silence.

"Looks to me like a double murder, possibly starting off as a standoff. Both suspects were found with guns in their hands. They were sporting colors of opposing gangs in the south side of the Savannah District."

"Any witnesses?" Judy asked, her voice quavering.

"Only one. An elephant allegedly came in here after this shootout occurred."

"Only one witness?" Nick asked. He peeked at the guns in the suspects' hands. "The weapons don't have silencers. Wouldn't somebody have heard gunshots from here?"

"It's difficult to hear anything when you're listening to the concert," Judy pointed out.

"But there was nobody near the bathroom when the crime occurred?"

Fangmeyer shook her head. "No one, from what we've gathered."

Nick brought a hand to his chin, looking at the cadavers. "I find it hard to believe that gangsters would start something like this in a stadium bathroom."

Fangmeyer chuckled. "What, gangsters can't be fans of Gazelle?"

"There's more to it than that. If gangsters love anything more than drugs or, shall we say, comradeship with the opposite sex, it's attention. One of a gangster's fatal flaws is that he won't do anything rash unless it's within a huge public spectrum. They lovehaving an audience. If there were no eyewitnesses, I'd wager the chance of something fatal between the two would have been lowered. On another note, if they acted confrontational to each other, it's more likely to have been with fists than bullets. The security of this place was too good to let someone with a weapon through," Nick concluded.

"Funny you should say that. Two cops were knocked unconscious at the east entrance," said Fangmeyer.

"Did they remember anything when they came to?" asked Judy before shifting over to one of the stalls.

"Nothing. One minute, they were standing in their posts, and the next, all they saw was black," replied Fangmeyer.

"Completely unseen...This seems too advanced for regular miscreants. Something bigger is at hand." Nick perused the bodies once more before asking, "You found anything in there, Carrots?"

"Nothing here, except...a bullet casing?" Judy emerged from the stall, holding said object in her fingers. "It's not much, but what's it doing in the stall?"

"Maybe it rolled there?" suggested Fangmeyer. Nick walked to where the hyena was, where the stalls were to the left of him. He made a finger gun gesture and aimed at the coyote on the other side of the room, flicking his finger up in imitation of a gunshot. Guns discharged their casings on the right, given that most people were right handed. He looked to the ground in his right, and surely enough, all of the casings were there. He walked over to the coyote and turned around, facing the dead hyena. He repeated the gesture and looked to the right. All of the casings were there as well.

He double checked the weapons. They were two different models of pistol. Two different models potentially meant two different styles of casings. He looked at the pile near the coyote, then the one near the hyena. Surely enough, there were different casing styles.

"Lemme see that casing, Carrots," Nick said. Judy obliged. The casing looked like the ones near the coyote. Currently, there were six casings near the coyote, but seven bullet holes in the hyena.

"What are you thinking, Nick?" asked Judy.

"I'm thinking there is a lot more to this case than what we may have thought, thanks to this rogue casing."

"Well, what does that tell us?" said Fangmeyer.

"Look at the piles of casings near the bodies. All of them seem really bunched together, which is strange."

"If the guns were shot in the same place, wouldn't that make sense?" said Judy.

"Even then, the casings would be further apart. I can't shake the feeling that somebody was trying to manipulate the crime scene. Where did you find the rogue casing, Carrots?"

"It was behind the toilet."

Nick snapped his fingers, a smug grin across his face. "It all makes sense now. I think there was a third person in the bathroom when the incident occurred."

Fangmeyer was scribbling notes on a pad when she said, "Explain yourself."

"A third person walks in, carrying two guns akimbo, and shoots the two gangsters inside. They want to pin the murders on the victims, so they move the casings to where they would make the most sense. However, when reforming the piles, they missed one of the casings, which flew behind the toilet. Now, if I was in this person's shoes, I'd want to get the heck out of here as soon as possible. With that in mind, the criminal walks out before there's an eyewitness."

Fangmeyer raised an eyebrow. "That sounds a bit convoluted."

"Well, it makes about as much sense as gangsters having a shootout during a Gazelle concert," Nick defended.

"That actually makes some sense," Judy pointed out. "Assuming the guy's holding the guns akimbo," then the rabbit walked near the entrance and stretched two arms out, aiming finger guns at the victims, "his left gun would have discharged the casing towards the stall, where one of the casings landed out of sight. Now for motive...?" She looked to Nick.

The grin vanished from Nick's countenance. "Yeeeah, haven't gotten that far yet."

The officers' transceivers crackled as a transmission came through: "Ten twenty B at the First Bank. Investigative team, respond."

"A murder and a bank robbery, all in the same night?" Judy asked.

"Think they're connected?" Nick said, half-joking. "Well, Fangmeyer, thanks for the invite, and, uh, give us an update if anything turns up."

The officer wasn't amused. "I'll keep that in mind."

Nick and Judy tossed their gloves in a trash can as they walked to their police cruiser. headed for the next crime scene. They walked through a gauntlet of police officers interrogating citizens who attended the concert. Nick eyed an elephant wearing a few shock blankets as a paramedic tried to calm him down. The fox noticed the rabbit's incredulous look and addressed her about it.

"What?" he said with a laugh.

"You're acting like you've been at this for years," Judy said, rolling her eyes.

"Since I was 12, remember?"

"I mean, doing cop work. The other officers aren't exactly too keen on having you on board."

"Why? I'm good at what I do!" Nick opened the passenger door, Judy the driver door.

"I'm not saying that you're not. But given your...background, per se, it's probably damaging to people's egos. Just try not to get a big head before this is over."

"Heh-heh-heh, all right, I'll try." He held up three fingers. "Ranger Scout's honor."

Judy smiled in spite of herself as she turned on the ignition. "You are unbelievable."