The Zootopian Dream
Prologue
Two years ago, officers Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde saved the city of Zootopia from the Night Crawler Incident – an insidious conspiracy that sought to sow hatred and fear among the city's residents and tear it apart from the inside to install a new, discriminatory species order. Since then, the city has recovered, in spirit if not in fact, because reality is a harsh mistress, and gives and takes on whims decided not by animals, but by fate; and as fate would have it, Zootopia was not freed from the shadow of the Night Stalker Incident when ZPD's heroic duo brought it to the light of day.
The few months after the incident were fraught with peril for the city: Mayor Lionheart had been acquitted of all charges and had been restored to office, but hiding the feral animals from the public for so long and suppressing ZPD's search for them had left its mark. The fact that his deputy mayor was the real culprit behind the disappearances – and its strains on inter-species relations in the city – only made matters worse. Mayor Lionheart lost his reelection campaign in a landslide that year, alongside every council-member who supported him. The new mayor – a cat by the name of Laura Felis – rode a wave of revolution into office. She would open up the city government and make it clear that the old way of doing business was no longer acceptable. Small, prey species would be given better opportunities to advance in civil society and business, and relations with "Outer Boroughs" such as Bunnyburrow, would be improved as the city invested in bringing businesses and residents from these far-flung locations closer to Zootopia's center of power.
Of course, the powers that be have a way of twisting expectations. Within her first month in office, Mayor Felis's new transparency initiative had uncovered that large swaths of the city government were corrupt. The entire Tundratown Chamber of Commerce had been jailed over ties to Mr. Big, the Zootopian Transit Authority discovered that several of its employees were illegally using trains to smuggle counterfeit goods and movies into the city, and the Mammal Inclusion Project – one of Mayor Lionheart's better-thought-out programs – was revealed to have been a little too successful: the MetroTrail expansion was to be completed by a construction company entirely staffed by mice, almost tripling the cost.
Amid the economic and political chaos, the citizens of the city could rely on, above all else, its bedrock – the police department. The first rabbit officer and first fox officer not only have public appeal, but the congeniality of those who wanted to make a difference in the world; and Chief Bogo's steady leadership at the helm ensured that, while the rest of the city sank into depression, the budget cuts to the police force were modest, at best. Officers Hopps and Wilde had to see a few of their friends reassigned to other precincts to cover extra overtime, and had less recruits coming through training, but they still had each other, ever prepared to take on the next big threat to the public welfare.
Unfortunately, being the public face of the police department comes with its sacrifices, alongside its rewards. While they stayed partnered together at headquarters – earning themselves a solitary office to themselves overlooking Civic Center – their popularity and presence made it impossible to conduct actual police work. For the intrepid duo, facing danger and their lives to bring down Assistant Mayor Bellweather, they were confined to the relative safety of Savannah Square, conducting photo ops, and patrolling areas where the media could always sees them.
Through it all, the ZPD was the city's bulwark: always ready, always there; and as the city found itself under a new threat – one that had the potential to reach far beyond Zootopia itself – Officers Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps found themselves to be the only ones who could stop it.
Of course, it never starts off that way.