Prologue:
While the winds were picking up as the rainclouds slowly moved in a young bunny sat on the hill that was close to her families burrows. The scratches on her cheeks still stung from the rubbing alcohol, that her mother had used to clean the wound up that she had gotten from the fight with Gideon. Judy Hopps thought back to the fight feeling still upset with Gideon and wondered if she would end up having to arrest him in the future if he continued to be the abusive animal he was today.
Hearing footsteps approaching where she was sitting she quickly sat up a little straighter and looked over her shoulder. The steps belonged to her father as he climbed the hill. "Hey, Jude how are you feeling?" She could hear the repressed worry in his voice. It would have been a miracle if he hadn't been worried seeing as the moment her mother and he found her the first thing they did (after freaking out over the scratches on her cheek) was marched over to the Greys to give them a piece of their mind.
The elder foxes had been confused by the angry bunnies but soon were as enraged as they were. It was fair to say they had not been pleased to see what their son had done to the Hopps's daughter and they were more than forthcoming to assure Stew that young Gideon would be punished severely for this act.
Somehow Judy didn't feel happy with how things had turned out. Okay, Gideon had received his punishment, but looking back it was fair to say she hadn't done anything to prevent the fight and as such should have been made to carry some of the blame. She tried to smile while she looked up at her father. "Just looking at the stars dad I'll come in in a minute."
Stew smiled back at his daughter and looked up at the stars himself taking note of the incoming clouds and making a mental note to check the fields next day. "I hope that today showed you how dangerous the life of a police officer is. If you become a cop, you just won't be facing small criminals, but also murderers that will want nothing else than to end your life. Then there are the predators that you will have to contend with."
Judy sighed. She loved her father, but his overprotectiveness was stifling at the best of times, and with her cheek hurting she was not really in the mood to be lectured on the dangers of being a police officer. The bunny knew she was very young and even at her age, knew there was more to being a police officer than what she had read about in all the detective novels and information books. There also had been many thoughts about it, and the possibility that she could get hurt had been one thing that had been front and center when choosing her path in life. However, she was Judy Hopps and when she got determined nothing would hold her back.
She looked up at her father again. "I'll think about it dad, but I want to make the world a better place as a police officer."
Her father looked surprised as he gazed back down. Then his features softened while he considered the chance she would see this through. "That's all I'm asking honey. Now let's go home I'm sure it's almost your bedtime."
"Okay dad, I'm right behind you." The bunny stood up and dusted herself off. As she took a last look at the stars she remembered the fight with Gideon and what she said to her friends. Those words were as true now as they were that afternoon and while she walked behind her father she repeated them in her mind. 'I don't know when to quit.'
Nick Wilde opened the suitcase and took a last critical look at the rug he had toiled over for many days to make. He had always known that Mister Big was not a nice mammal, but when he had asked Nick for a fur rug to intimidate certain visitors he had scared the fox half to death. The fox closed his eyes and shivered while his imagination ran away with him. This because the act of skinning a mammal for his fur was brutal by itself and was made only worse seeing as there were very few ways to do. The only two ways he could get hold of a genuine fur rug was to end a mammals life and skin the victim or go to the graveyard and wait for a burial to take place. Then after the burial was finished dig up the body to remove the skin from the corpse.
Both options were horrible, and therefore it was lucky that Nick had found option number three that would give him a rug that was not genuine but would be real enough to please mister Big. The local hospitals always had to shave the fur away from wounds and in crisis, it was still faster to do large patches. The resulting amount of shaven hair got collected in containers divided by species for use in the production of fur suits for mammals that due to illness or medication side effects had lost all of their furs. Some of the containers were extremely large, but luckily for Nick, there had also been several smaller ones, and the fox had been quick to grab one of those to produce a rug from that.
As Nick finished checking the rug, he had to admit he had done an excellent job of making it look authentic, but what worried him was that the document accompanying the container had listed the species and the places where the fur originated from. The fox had not been pleased when he read that most of the hair in his container had been 'harvested' from the backside of a skunk. If he hadn't been so frightened to be caught, he might have bothered to read the documentation beforehand and could have grabbed a better container, but with all the security personnel around the place, it had been amazing that he had managed to grab one at all.
The fox sighed. The rug looked okay and it was better than nothing. Nick was a lot of things but a murderer or graverobber he was not so getting a real fur rug was not happening. Checking himself over in the mirror he brushes away some lint from his shoulder and looking at himself practiced his smile al the while repeating his mantra that had sustained him all his life. 'Never let them see that they get to you.'
It was a calm peaceful evening even though a storm was raging inside two kits sitting on a bench overlooking the meadow in front of their houses. As they looked out over the fields the girl's parents were loading up the family car as several moving mammals took care to load all the families furniture into a van. The young red panda girl and a skunk boy sat next to each other while they both looked like the world was ending. The girl spoke up after several minutes of silence had passed. "Dad says I can make friends again and you could come over to visit from time to time." The last part was done in a hopeful whisper as she desperately tried to hide the sadness of their approaching separation.
The little skunk boy nodded sadly. "Yeah okay." He wanted to say more, but his mind couldn't form the words he needed. She was moving to the other side of the city, and he couldn't even tell her that it would not be the end of their friendship. And deep down he knew she wouldn't be on the other end of the world, but it still seemed like an enormous distance to the five-year-old.
The little girl red panda looked sadly at her friend. "I don't want to go." She leaned over and softly kissed his cheek. The skunk jolted a little, and as he looked up in surprise, he again tried to form the sentence he needed to tell her. Make sure she knew how much she meant to him, but as he opened his mouth to speak her father finished packing their car. He called to the girl to come over so she could say goodbye to the neighbors. Her mother gave the final directions to the moving mammals that had loaded all their stuff minutes before.
The skunk still wanted to say something, but nothing came to mind. Racking his brain for something sweet to say was a line that his favorite hero had said when in the show a similar situation occurred as the hero's friend moved away also. "If you ever are in trouble call for me and I'll come help you."
The red panda smiled at that and gave a small nod. As she was about to reply, her father called again. "Cindy honey it's time to leave. So say goodbye to Joe and come here to say goodbye to the rest of the neighbors." Her eyes opened in horror, and she saw her distress mirrored in the eyes of her friend.
He rallied trying not to break down in front of her and managed to give her a weak smile. Again a quote from a movie came to him that sounded good to him. "We will meet again in the future so we won't be saying goodbye, but till we meet again." And at that last sentence, his front cracked. The red panda saw the tears forming in her friend's eyes and couldn't keep her own in anymore.
With tears streaming, they hugged as her parents looked on. After a couple of minutes, the red panda moved back and stood up giving the skunk a shaky smile and wave as she walked away.
The skunk looked as the red panda family said goodbye to his own and entered their car. The girl looked back at him and gave a final wave as the car started and drove away. Suddenly his whole body shook, and he dashed. He ran as fast as his legs could carry him. His destination a hill that was a small distance away. If he could make it there before the car passed, he could see her one last time.
It would not change the outcome, and she would still be gone, but at that moment he would do everything to delay, even for a second, the inevitable parting that was happening.
As he reached the top and saw the taillights of the car slowly disappearing in the distance he became aware that he hadn't made it in time. The skunk had given everything he had, but it was clear that it hadn't been enough and with that realization, another followed directly behind that everything was now over. The love he had felt for her was one of the things that he had been afraid to confess to her and now he would never be able to. As the storm raged on inside of him he fell to his knees and cried.
The red panda girl was crying as her father consoled her. She had been lied to!
The girl and her father had taken a shortcut through the alley next to the pizza place to make sure the pizzas were still warm when they got home, but had been threatened at knifepoint by a robber demanding her father's wallet. Her dad had put himself between her and the robber making sure she was covered before reaching back and giving the robber what he asked for.
For a moment the robber looked pleased, and the young panda took notice that he was a skunk. It indeed was strange to see a skunk do something like this as the only skunks she had known where her best friend and his parents who were all honest mammals. As she pondered what had caused this skunk to resort to stealing it looked like the robber would go away, but just as the robber was about to leave he lunged and stabbed her father in the leg.
The anger and fear she felt had been like nothing she had felt before. It wasn't fair! Her father had given him his wallet! She grabbed for her father al the while screaming. It was then she remembered the promise and called for him with all her might. Quickly looking around to see from which direction he would be coming she looked down the alley the robber disappeared in. Sadly the young skunk she expected never appeared the girl felt the bitter feelings of betrail. Alerted by the scream of the young girl a couple of wolves came running into the alleyway and, seeing the predicament the father was in, rushing to their aid.
As the male wolf reached her father, he grabbed his thigh and put pressure on the wound as the red panda's pants darkened with blood. It was clear that he was in a lot of pain and as the mate of the wolf, that was putting pressure on the leg called the police, the young red panda broke down. Any other time she would have known what to say or what to do, but torn by the betrayal, and the real fear gripping her over the possibility of losing her father, she just froze up and started crying her eyes out.
The dad looking up saw his daughter breaking down shaking in fear, and while the wolf kept the pressure on his leg, the skunk managed to crawl over a bit to grab her in his arm as he softly soothed her. Another couple that had taken the same shortcut through the alley found the four mammals and jumped in to help. As the night fell on another day, the child cried in her father's arms as he tried his best to console her al the while with the sound of sirens filling the night sky.
In an underground bunker, several mammals were observing a kindergarten class filled with orphans.
"Do you think this will work?"
"According to the first findings not only will it work, but if done correctly will lead to mammals that will follow an order to the letter."
"If the world finds out about this they will have our heads."
"Then let's make sure the world doesn't find out about it."
The city of Zootopia received a shock when they found out that not only had predators started to go wild, but the mayor at the time (a predator himself) had actively been kidnapping the ones gone savage to hide this. After the press conference, the officer who had brought this all to light gave the city a reason to start tearing itself apart, and it was only through the laws put in place by mayor Bellwether that it wasn't allowed to go any further.
A couple of months went by where the city, while not tearing itself apart, was not the happy place that anyone wanted to live in. Just as it seemed that the laws that had been put in place to keep mammals from fighting each other were about to fail. The same police officer came back and with the help of the mammal that had helped her before, exposing the previous mayor, blew open a conspiracy that the current mayor had constructed to remove the predator population from the city.
Again the city reeled from the shock, and it was only through the combined efforts of the hastily elected major Swinton, the ZPD, local community leaders as well as stars and celebrities like Gazelle that emotions kept in check and the situation didn't evolve into total anarchy.
Major Swinton started a campaign of total disclosure. Several boards of inquiry were started up to go over everything former mayor's Lionheart and Bellwether had done during their time in the office. Everything they ever brought forth, approved or signed into law got studied with a level of scrutiny that would make the Spanish Inquisition seem like relaxed stoners. Any law or rule that looked even the bit suspicious got temporarily repealed until it was clear if the proposal was approved in good faith or with nefarious intent.
The ZPD in the meanwhile enforced the martial law that Swinton had placed over the city till things calmed down. Any signs of trouble starting were enough to see the ZPD respond with as much force as they could muster and it was such a show of force that they only needed to do it three times to get the message across. The ZPD also made sure to keep a specific bunny officer and her fox assistant out of the public eye for their protection.
The local community leaders met up with Swinton several times a day and through them, the mayor could keep a tap on how things were progressing in the city and what was needed to alleviate the concerns of her citizens.
Last but not least were the outreach from stars and celebrities. They held events to bring predator and prey populations together again and by showing the mammals what the shared instead of how they differed slowly started to heal the rift that had formed between them.
As our story begins the before mentioned bunny and fox have been partners for a year. The city is again peaceful. However, some scars remain. And several mammals have just graduated from the Zootopia police academy. Under them, several smaller officers that got a chance through the mammal's inclusion initiative (and show what a little mammal can do) wanted to make the world a better place themselves. Sadly this new batch will be tested as darkness starts falling over Zootopia once again.