After what had seemed like an eternity, the constant pitching and rolling of the floor beneath him ceased, tossing Connor against the steel confines of his prison. The wolf let out an involuntary whimper at the sudden blow to his muzzle, but it was lost in the fabric gag that had thwarted his previous attempts to bellow for aid. It had been torturous to hear the gust of wind and the thunder of tires each time another vehicle had rolled past the innocuous van as it trundled out of the city with its dubious cargo; each time it had raised his hopes. That against the odds, one of them might take an interest in the delivery van, and fling its doors open to find the timberwolf strung up for slaughter in the back. Each time, those hopes had been dashed, as the sound of tires rose up in his ears, only to recede into darkness, as the mammals continued on their happy way, oblivious of their part in the murder to come.

By now, Connor had lost track of the time that had passed since he'd been bundled off into the absolute darkness of the van's storage space. He'd even managed to make some peace with his situation, drifting off into the partial comfort of sleep as his passage continued.

Now that he'd finally arrived though, Connor rapidly found himself losing the confidence of his cell, as the doors were flung open.

With a silent yelp, the timberwolf struggled to protect his eyes from the sudden burst of light, shutting them tight as his assailant grappled with his bound limbs, and tossed him unceremoniously out of the van.

As Connor landed in a pile, he realised he did not even know what his tormentor looked like, and he struggled to turn about, praying to catch even a glimpse of the face he'd be condemning once he passed from the world, but the deadly rasp of steel stopped him cold.

'Stay. Still.' The command was not barked with fury; it was a simple, flat tone devoid of any emotion.

It was also a command Connor obeyed for about three seconds, before he spotted the sharpened blade in his peripheral vision. Immediately, the timberwolf went to tear at his restraints, but the figure's reaction was instantaneous. A sharp crack resounded through his skull, and Connor fell limp in a daze; the fight having departed his sorry form.

'I warned you to stay still,' the said the voice, without a trace of annoyance for the escape attempt, 'Now hold still.'

The blade came closer, and the wolf closed his eyes, trying to whisper his mother's and father's in the vain hope they would hear his love so far away. Even then, the gag defied his efforts, and he began to cry at the unfairness of it all. Why me?

He was still posing the question to the clouds when he felt the duct tape binding his hind legs fall away. A second later, his forelegs were unbound by the sharp edge, and he felt a rough shove against his back, sending him sprawling into the dust once again.

Instinctively, he went to tear the gag from his throat, and the moment it was free, he belted out a howl for aid.

'I don't think anyone's coming,' his kidnapper mused, a slight grin splitting his features, 'it's just you and me, howler.'

'What do you want from me?' Connor begged him, drawing his gaze up to meet the creature, and immediately wishing he had not. The flashlight he had used to blind the wolf was lying discarded on the ground, leaving the pair in pitch darkness, yet Connor's eyes could pierce the void with ease; a gift he most sincerely wished to be rid of as soon as he looked skyward.

'You ever had a bad day? A day which you just need to...unwind from?'

Connor did not reply; he did not like where this was headed, as the criminal spread his paws. It might have offered some consolation, were it not for the fact there was a rifle tucked in the grip of one such paw.

'Well it's been a shit week, and it's been an even shittier month, so I figured we're looong overdue.'

'You're just going to shoot me?' Connor couldn't help but bark the obvious question, 'you're just going to kill me because you had a bad day?'

'Who ever said I was just going to shoot you?' For the first time since he'd opened his mouth, the deranged mammal injected an emotion; horror. 'What do you take me for? A psycho?'

Connor was not entirely sure how he was supposed to answer that question, although he very quickly got his answer when the smirk returned.

'No, no no no no; we're going off on a hunt, my friend. And being the sporting fella I am, you get an hour on me.'

The timberwolf's face began to fall as he realised what was about to happen.

'If you reach the road, you walk. Flag down a car, walk back to Zootopia; I don't care. You win. But if you let me catch up…'

The hunter took a heavy step forward, and in the same instant, Connor realised that he himself had crawled back least six feet in utter terror.

'Well...you lose. Now off you pop; I've got to take this call.'

In no small measure of disbelief, Connor watched his kidnapper pop open a sat phone before his very eyes, punch in a series of numbers, before raising it to his ear. After a moment, he began to speak, only to turn a concerned eye on the wolf that continued to stare at him aghast.

'I'd get moving, pup. Clock's ticking.'

Then, without paying Connor a second thought, he went back to his phone call, leaving the battered, cramped and terrified timberwolf to find his way.


'You were saying?'

'I've been trying to get ahold of you for the last hour!' the voice on the far end of the phone screeched, 'What in the blazes are you up to, and why on earth are you using a sat phone?

'Well, as a law abiding citizen, I'm aghast that you'd suggest I should start answering calls when I'm at the wheel. And the reception up here leaves much to be desired, to answer your second question.'

'Hang on, where on good earth are you…' the voice on the other end trailed off. When it returned, it was positively seething with barely contained fury. 'Two, do not tell me you're doing what I think you're doing.'

'It keeps me in shape.'

'Haven't you heard of a shooting range?!' the phone nearly exploded, and Two was forced to hold the phone a slight distance away from his ear, lest he go deaf amid the barrage of expletives. After a safe time had passed, and his supervisor had run out of breath, he replaced the phone.

'When you can get a paper target to move, duck and think, I might take you up on your offer. Until then, there's only so much it can teach you.'

'You really, really need some constructive hobbies, Two.'

'Sports,' Two corrected the voice, 'sports, not hobbies. Hobbies are the little niceties you eggheads get up to on a desk. But you didn't call me to chat about my life decisions, did you, Socrates?'

There was a brief silence, and the hunter was forced to prompt the conversation along.

'How did you screw up this time, Soc?' he asked in a terribly patronizing sing-song voice, 'Come on, spit it out.'

'An hour ago,' Socrates seethed, laying particular emphasis on that particular passage of time, 'we had a breach.'

'Digital?'

'No, one of ours.'

'So you did screw up.'

'He torched the files at the Overlord site, and worse made a damn copy before fleeing the site.'

'Your pets at least try to stop him?'

There was a huff on the far side of the phone, and Two took no small measure of pride in his little victory.

'Two of them tried to apprehend him; one...missed the door, and the other managed to get his head crushed under the same door..'

'Softies, one and all,' Two chuckled, and as he did so, he could hear the bristle of fur on the other side of the line, as Socrates' fur ruffled up in irritation. It only amused Two further as he probed further, 'what about the others?'

Another moment of shame.

'He put the barracks on lockdown; he...sealed them inside.'

'You trainning eggheads to outwit your security staff?'

'Are you finished?'

For a moment, neither of them spoke, as Two shuffled his eyes from the phone to the darkness of the woods that surrounded him; his amusement at Socrates' failure dying as he registered what was being asked of him once again. He could still see Connor, whipping from tree to tree as he eyed the hunter, ever wary that he might suddenly betray their agreement.

Two hundred and fifty yards, Two guessed. Not an easy shot, but neither was it anything he had not done before.

'How long do I have?'

'We think he wants to go public,' Socrates sighed, 'give or take three hours, it'll all be out. Twelve hours tops.'

'Twelve is optimistic,' Two sighed, his prospects of a calm weekend now in a shallow grave, 'three it is then. When this is over, you owe me a vacation.'

'I can't decide when the bad guys rear their heads,' was the only reply he received on that account. 'Your equipment and an update on the target will be waiting at the drop.'

'Some overtime pay at least? Two asked as he raised the rifle up to fire. By now, enough time seemed to have passed that Connor no longer feared a round passing through his back, and he was hightailing it in a straight line.

'Idiot,' Two cursed; it would be too easy. 'You owe me overtime on this one, Soc; you're making me break a promise.'

'I'll take that into consideration; just handle it.'

The phone call went dead, leaving just the hunter, and his prey.

'Well,' Two whispered with a grin, 'then again, I did just say I was the sporting sort. Never did say I was always a good sport.'

With that twisted reasoning putting his conscience to rest, he pulled the trigger.


'ZPD! Stop!'

'You'd think,' Nick managed through ragged breaths, 'she'd have taken the hint by now.'

Judy didn't respond, as she cleared the overturned dumpster in a single bound, and landed at a full sprint, her eyes narrowed on the silhouette tumbling through Zootopia's alleyways.

After nearly three hours that morning trapped in the confines of a civilian cruiser modified for covert surveillance, the weeklong stakeout had finally paid off, with Judy and Nick finally bearing witness to the long awaited meeting between the slim built racoon, and his unnamed dealers.

Nearly ten days prior, it had all started with a typical arrest for drunk driving, until the pair had discovered not one, but ten sachets of Andromol in a beaver's backseat. After securing a confession for the dealership of a Class A painkiller, Chief Bogo had let the pair loose to tear Sahara Square apart. Thankfully, that had proven far easier than either of the pair had anticipated, since the beaver; already cracking under the prospects anything exceeding five years in the hothouse, had decided to cooperate. Namely, by throwing his partner; racoon by the name of Slick, to the rabbit and fox.

Even so, it taken well over a week to catch the slippery racoon in the act, and even that was only thanks to the ineptitude of the dealers themselves. For while Slick quickly lived up to his name, never quite giving them enough of an excuse to pounce, his employers seemed relatively content that no one was about to rain upon their parade, with one even as far as to exclaim the raccoon's name as he slunk quietly up to the criminal antelope.

Then again, Judy remembered thinking to herself, maybe their confidence came from the fact they'd managed to get their hands on several dangerous, and absolutely illegal, machine pistols. It had not been hard to spot the tell tale block of metal sticking upright from the back pocket of the antelope as he'd turned about to head back home, but there was a grave difference between spotting a threat, and dealing with a threat. After all, a rabbit and a fox armed with gas operated tranquilizers and a shotgun with sixteen rubber cartridges had rather dismal odds if they were to simply knock on the front door.

But knock they did, though only after sending out a report to Chief Bogo, who made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that they were to hold down the perimeter until SWAT arrived.

And when the time finally came to knock, it was with the full five thousand pounds of Officer McHorn.

In fact, it was quite anti-climatic in Judy's assessment. After pacing to and fro for yet another half an hour, waiting for backup to arrive and praying that no one would see it fit to depart the crime scene, sweating over each horrendous possibility, Judy had been preparing herself for each manner of hell on earth as they did away with their civies and returned to the comfort of the uniform. Some warning; some lucky shot finding its mark: all those possibilities played through her mind again and again, as the armored truck rolled up a street away, and offloaded Delgato, Fangmeyer, Grizzoli, McHorn and four others she did not recognise, though their uniforms did identify them as members of precinct four.

But drugged out of their minds or not, no mammal was still quite ready to pick a fight with eight thundering officers donned in full riot gear, particularly when the leading Rhino had run through the door, and kept running through two more walls, sending half of the dealers sprawling into the ground before they had a chance to fumble for their weapons. The fight left them as soon as the flashbang denied their sight; the screams 'ZPD!' confronted their ringing ears, and the feeling of cold steel snapping around their paws as the officers pulled them to the ground.

Naturally, Nick and Judy, being far smaller than their compatriots and having yet to technically qualify for SWAT details, were left behind in the initial charge, and by the time she'd even stepped through the doorway, Judy's 'fight of her life' was already over. A disappointment Judy could scarcely contain, as she found herself reading rights once again, and overturning the usual hiding spots for the contraband they'd arrived for.

In retrospect, Judy's frustration was hardly surprising. After her first case had unfolded into a practical conspiracy at the city's highest levels of authority, it was only natural that her expectation for criminal drama was elevated to quite an extreme. An unrealistic extreme, that had Judy practically begging for any and all action after what felt like eight months of parking duty.

Of course, Bogo had tried to keep the pair occupied after gladly eating humble pie in the wake of the Night Howler incident, but frankly, there were only so many 'exciting cases'. Coupled with Judy's near-fanatical attitude, and that supply had dried up with alarming haste.

Others, Nicholas Wilde included, were fairly content with the calm that followed: the ease of the ordinary day that did not involve someone actively trying to kill you. But Judy Hopps was another story.

So when one of the perps had decided to play for freedom by throwing a packet of the vile powder into Grizzoli's face, Hopps was naturally the first one out the window in hot pursuit.

Thankfully, the deer was not in top form, and with Nick just a couple of meters behind her, the gap was closing, as the desperate criminal dove into an alleyway in the hopes that overturning a couple of dustbins would deter her pursuers.

Naturally, they did not, as Judy cleared the obstruction in a single bound, and landed without breaking her stride. For a moment, she considered pulling the tranquilizer pistol holstered on her belt, but she quickly discarded the notion as soon as it materialised in her head. The dart loading mechanism permitted only one round to be loaded at anytime, and it could be a right pain to re-arm the weapon at a full sprint if she missed.

Of course, one of the SWAT detail's magazine fed armaments might have circumvented that issue, but its usage on a fleeing criminal who posed no foreseeable danger to the officer was a dubious area at best. And while Judy might have bent a rule or two in her various pursuits of justice, she definitively drew the line at inflicting grievous bodily harm just because she'd gotten tired of running.

'Nick!' she shouted, scarcely tilting her head back to meet her partner's eyes, lest the doe manage to pull some vanishing act in the brief moment it took her to relay her plan, 'double back and get the car!'

'Carrots, this isn't the time to be a hero!'

'I'll keep her moving northwards; head her off at Oasis, and she'll have nowhere to go!'

She'd lowered her volume in the hopes that the culprit would not have heard the trap, and with the growing distance between them, it took Nick a couple of seconds to fully register Judy's plan, but after a moment of hesitation, he spoke back into the radio piece on his chest.

'Doubling back now. I'll see you at Oasis.'

Judy was tempted to reply, but it was at that moment the deer thundered to a halt, only to kick another dustbin right for the rabbit's head.

A last minute dive for the ground managed to stop Judy from being turning into a paste, as the metallic barrel tumbled inches above her ears and continue clattering back down the way she'd come, even as the dealer snarled at the persistence of her pursuer.

'Stop!' Judy tried again, already back up to a sprint by the time the words had left her mouth.

Quite predictably, the doe did not oblige, instead choosing to crash through a nearby window with an inglourious leap that turned into a rather painful thud on the far side.

'Nick,' Judy snapped, hitting her radio as she skidded to a halt, 'subject's just entered a warehouse; street south of Oasis. She might be trying to cut through the buildings.'

'You want me to head her off at the square?'

'Only place she'll come out, Nick,' Judy grinned, as she primed herself for her own jump, 'I'll see you in a couple.'

'Be careful, Carrots,' the fox warned, 'Don't be no dumb bunny.'

'You know me, slick,' Judy returned in the same easy tone, 'don't worry, Nick; I'll be fine.'

With that, she propelled herself forwards, clearing the broken shards of glass with ease as she dropped into the dark.

Their criminal deer was nowhere to be seen, but she'd been galloping hard for a good couple of minutes, and she was breathing hard; sucking oxygen in at a prodigious rate in ragged breaths: breaths that betrayed her as Judy advanced through the confines of the warehouse.

A door opened somewhere ahead; shrieking against metal as its unoiled hinges protested against their treatment, and then a series of smaller creaks. In the heat of the pursuit, her quarry must have crashed through the door at a run, and then realised her mistake, although Judy had no idea why she believed quietly closing the door would somehow compensate for the first crash. It seemed illogical, yet truth be told, she herself might have made the exact same mistake if a relentless hunter were on her tail.

The next warehouse proved just as empty as the last, and by now, the doe's heartrate was stabilising. That was not to say she was invisible, for a clumsy doe she remained, knocking against crates and loose items as she went, and cursing her misfortune, unaware of the sharp ears that were closing in.

But it was when Judy entered the third structure that she also realised she was not alone. Voices were rising, from the very same direction the trail led.

'...cops here? Are you out of your damn mind, you stupid-'

'What was I supposed to do? I can't go back-'

'You could have bitten the bullet and not screwed us over! Now what the hell are we supposed to do?'

Crouched behind a crate that was of sufficient size to shield her from wary eyes, Judy was able to make out a trio of figures. One, which coincidentally matched the silhouette of the doe she'd been pursuing only moments earlier, was on her knees, head bowed and mewling in shame as if she were about to be decapitated by the hulking rhino she faced. Meanwhile, another, who looked to fit the build of either a panther of jaguar, was pacing to and fro, clearly in deep thought as his companions continued to argue.

'How far behind were they?' The rhino seethed, his fists already bunched up to react to any unfavorable response.

'I don't know,' the pathetic creature at his feet lied, 'there were only two of them. A fox and a rabbit.'

'A fox and a - bwah!' the rhino exploded into a raucous belt of laughter, until he choked on his own spit and broke into a wheezing cough, somewhat spoiling his stature as the group's muscle. 'ZPD's standards must be dropping,' he managed to splutter out once he'd recovered.

'Does it matter who they are?' the feline figure snarled, 'long as they're the fuzz, we're boned if we stay here.'

'But what about-' The doe had begun to draw breath for a question when the feline had flipped popped open a lighter, and touched the naked flame to the edge of the crate he'd been standing over. should

'Now then,' he sighed, 'we really should be going.'

'What about her though? Cops are going to be looking for her.'

'I hope you're not insinuating what I think you're insinuating, Brutus,' the second figure snapped. Those words seemed to put the frantic doe at ease, for about three seconds, before the figure Judy could now clearly identify as a panther rounded about and clapped her hard over the head, dropping her to the ground unconscious, next to the flaming crate. 'Why they'll find her here, just had a teensy bit of an accident-'

He was still finishing his sentence when he was sent flying into the very same crate he'd just set alight, as a little grey projectile shot out of the darkness and smashed into his chest. The panther shrieked as he felt the fire touch his fur, but it was a youthful flame that had yet to grow, and the impact only snuffed out its brief existence, killing the flames where they lay. Furious, he snapped upright, only to find himself face to face with the diminutive form of a grey rabbit in the blue uniform of the ZPD. A rabbit who was holding an elephant tranquilizer in his direction.

'ZPD,' Judy stated bluntly, keeping a careful eye on the rhino brute that accompanied the panther, 'you're under arrest.'

'How terrifying!' the panther mocked her, as he scrambled back to his feet, 'I'm no genius, but that's a tranq pistol. You might dart one of us, but then you'll have to deal with the other two.'

'Back away from the crate, turn around and interlock your fingers,' was the only response he got, eliciting a slight grin from the panther.

'Or what?'

'Or I dart you, then I dart your friend, and then you spend upwards of twenty years for trafficking a class A painkiller in bulk.'

'Twenty years?'

'Depends,' Judy shrugged, 'that's if your judge is lenient.'

'And how about you? How much would it cost for you to be lenient?'

Despite his arrogance, Judy could not help but notice the brief flicker of terror as her face split into a scowl at his words. He certainly had good reason; an elephant tranquilizer was not immediate, and the brute impact of a tip designed to pierce through thick hide was an unwelcome experience at best. And arrogant as this panther was, he was smart enough to realise that perhaps pushing an armed bunny too far would herald a painful future.

'I'm not taking bribes,' she snapped sharply, 'I'm taking you in.'

The panther's head drooped in shame, his head slowly shaking from one side to the other.

'This could have gone so well.'

'I'd say,' cooed a third voice: a soft, rasping tone that came with the sound of steel scraping against a leather sheath. A voice that was coming from somewhere directly behind her. 'ZPD's standards really have dropped. So the million dollar question: what do we do with her?'

To punctuate the question, Judy felt a light touch against her vest. It was small enough to be the tip of a knife, and despite herself, she was unable to keep a cold sweat from breaking out. As Major Friedkin had so bluntly put it eight months prior; taking a ballistics vest to a knife fight was another effective way one could wind up 'dead' in the blink of an eye.

And while Judy had often assumed the polar bear's continuous motivation of the coffin to be a tad exaggerated, it was one thing to laugh at it in the classroom, and another to know it was not a training partner who did not really want to end a life. Plant in the infirmary for a weekend, maybe. But kill? If anything, it would be bad PR.

Strangely, Judy observed, this voice seemed to be coming from directly behind her, as opposed to above her. Unlike most of the criminals she'd hunted though, this one was of a relatively similar size, if not smaller than her, judging from the direction of the voice.

It was all Judy needed to make her decision as the now-grinning panther gave her the green light.

'What do you think?' he asked, setting the crate alight once more as he relayed the wish she could have seen a mile away. 'Gut her; knife wound won't mean jack once she's all burnt to a crisp.'

The touch of steel withdrew to gather up momentum for a strike, and it was at that moment Judy made her choice. Snapping into a jump from a standing position, she did not quite get the same height she might have been capable of, but it was enough to take her over the deadly blade. In the same moment, she'd rounded about with one leg extended to it's full reach.

She had just enough time to realise the fourth criminal was actually a rat, for about a second before the flat of her foot snapped across his face, and dropped him to the ground in the blink of an eye.

But as her eyes departed the rhino and panther, their courage returned just long enough for them to dart forward.

The rhino, who had aimed to simply crush the grey impediment underfoot, missed Judy completely, sending up only ripples of dust before he felt a sharp agony rip into his arm. Then, before he could draw the words for a reply, he lost all feeling in his legs, staggered dimly for a few more seconds, and crashed in an uncontrolled heap to the side.

Judy, on the other hand, was already kicking herself before the panther took up that duty. She had meant to tranquilize the lighting faster attacker, but in the heat of the moment, there had not been a great deal of time to take aim, and all she could do was brace as she spotted the blur of motion approaching her tiny form.

She could not be sure if the resounding 'crack' was from crate she'd been catapulted against, or her own bones protesting the treatment they'd been prescribed. Yet there was little time to give it further thought, once the panther caught up with the ball of fur he'd punted a good couple of meters.

As the panther's paws dragged her upright, Judy rammed her knee up into his clenched paws, driving a wedge between the two limbs. It weakened his grasp, certainly, but with bruised or even cracked ribs, it probably did more harm to Judy than the desperate feline, as he clenched with a vice-like grip in an effort to hold on to the squirming rabbit: a grip that threatened to break whatever ribs remained intact.

'Should have stayed home, cottontail,' she heard, before a sharp pain creased over her forehead as the Panther rammed his notably larger forehead into her own. Twice, before he abruptly cast her aside, tossing her back across the room; right onto the fire that was now engulfing the evidence.

Understandably, Judy was unable to contain a small yelp as she pushed herself off the makeshift pyre, falling into a small, wheezing heap beside the now snoring body of a rhino that wanted her dead, even as the panther approached, holding up her pistol in amusement at its size.

'Too bad, officer,' he sighed, tossing the weapon aside as if it were a toy in his hands, 'you could have lived. Instead you gotta go running into a burning building, going all hero…'

'You kill me,' Judy spluttered weakly, still trying to clear the smoke from her lungs, 'and you land up in the den even longer.'

A snort replied her defiance. 'If they convict me, and how the hell are they gonna do that, officer? No evidence left and no witnesses…'

'That why you start a fire?'

'What can I say?' The feline gave her a knowing look, slightly impressed at himself that the ploy was lost entirely on the hapless bunny. 'I've been doing this a long time.'

'Right, except you're wrong on one thing. I'd be a witness.'

A flash of steel loomed in the panther's hand. 'Not if you're dead.'

'So that's a confession then?'

'What?' Too late, the criminal saw that look of stark terror; of prey pleading for its life, transform into a wolfish grin.

Too late did he spot the orange light glimmering from the back of the cop's utility belt, from a pouch they'd typically store their radios.

And too late did he hear the thunder of footsteps approaching the warehouse door, before it flung open to reveal three silhouettes. A lion, a wolf, and a fox.

Judy had been on the verge of proclaiming her assailant was 'under arrest', but she only got as far as 'you are' before three tranquilizer darts planted themselves in his chest, and dropped him beside the smouldering case of Andromol.

'Please tell me you got it?'

'We got it,' Nick answered, holding up the her orange pen for her to see, before he slipped it back into a pocket as he tried to assess the damage. 'Carrots, you-'

'Thank God for that,' she sighed, barely registering Nick's concern as the adrenaline continued to depart her system, and her eyelids began to feel like anvils. 'I was wondering here if I was just getting the stuffing kicked out of me for no good reason at all.'

'Oh we were listening,' said the fox, in a rather disapproving tone, 'although I have to wonder if that's because you pull this way too much.'

'It's called a hustle, sweetheart.'

'Twenty years,' Nick raised an incredulous eyebrow, 'and never once did I have to get a big cat and his heavy weight pal to smash me into the ground.'

'What about a shrew icing you?'

'First off, he tried; never said he succeeded. And two; that was only when things went really, really wrong. You calling this a success is maybe just a tad disconcerting, Carrots.'

'Aw relax, Nick,' Judy managed to slur, 'Besides, I'm fine!'. Too quickly, for soon afterwards she was beset by another round of pain, and try as she might, it was a poor attempt to conceal it at best. 'Besides, we got them, didn't we?'

She tried letting out a small celebratory 'yay' to persuade Nick of her wellbeing; to just stop him fretting over just a few flesh wounds, but the effort was proving too much, and she slumped back down, defeated by the effort.

'Yeah,' the fox scoffed, checking his watch as he did so, 'perfectly fine. Don't worry Hopps; the ambulance is nearly-'

The words died in his mouth as he realised Judy's big purple eyes were no longer staring back. They were closed, in a manner that might have been serene; peaceful, if Nick just hadn't started screaming.


Author's Notes: So yes, I'm way late on the bandwagon for Zootopia. Never watched it until about a month ago, and so consider this my penance for writing it off at first as a typical disney flick. To anyone familiar with my past work, do not worry! This will be my first fully contained fan fiction, meaning everything is set from within the Zootopia universe. No crossovers, no aliens, no demons, or whatever other weird stuff I've thrashed out in the past; although I'll be expanding the world of Zootopia beyond the movie's lens, you don't need to concern yourselves with things of the absurd nature requiring advance warning.

One slight warning though: the rating may change, as my tendency towards graphic violence in writing is one thing that has not changed.

Finally, please don't hesitate to review! Good, bad; whatever tickles your fancy. Seriously; I'm not going to have a fit if someone points out someone seems out of character, or there is something that just makes no sense; I really appreciate any and all feedback. Every bit of it helps to develop the story into something better! I'll try to push the next update out soon!