Howdy! I decided to follow The Redemption of Gideon Grey with something decidedly more lighthearted and a little… well, let's just say I've never tried a story like this in terms of format. It'll be interesting, that's for sure, but I'm excited to tackle it!

I'm also excited to do my take on Bobby Catmull, who is too pure and too good for this world, clearly, from the 15 seconds we see of him in Zootopia, I mean, duh. (If you're not already familiar, he's the cougar at the beginning of the film who's responsible for all the musical cues during Judy's skit at the festival.)

Anyway, hope y'all like Behind the Music because it's loosely modeled off that. Loosely. Except a little more episodic. Eh, whatever, you get it.

Bobby Catmull, Rock God

Ch. 1: You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

He could hear Judy Hopps in the next room over, and she was livid.

This was relatively normal, though no one liked to admit it – least of all those closest to the bunny, him included. She had a… what was the word… well, she was very particular about every little detail of her skits.

It was cute at first. In fact, he could remember the first one as though it were yesterday, not four years ago. Judy, police officer; , astronaut; , actuary. Innocent enough, if not a tad bit shocking to the rabbit's parents, but who could tell a wide-eyed kid that some far-off city's mantra that anyone could be anything did not always actually ring true?

As time pressed on, the plays became more expansive, complicated. Storylines were added, a larger cast assembled – shoot, there were rehearsals prior to the day before; they never used to do that – but it all came back to one important plot point: Judy Hopps was going to be a cop one day, in Zootopia or wherever, and she was going to tell you about it via a rollicking musical number and accompanying interpretive dance.

With music Bobby Catmull, perhaps against his better judgment, had just changed ever so slightly.

"—the day before the festival?! What is he thinking? Is he thinking?"

"Now, now, Judy, breathe a sec, just – oh gosh, please don't go in there—"

This particular iteration of Judy – 13 years old, still a tiny thing but finally growing out of her diminutive younger bunny stature, often slapping one of those gold sheriff stars given to children by actual salaried cops onto her belt loop as though she dared you to question her career path – had a penchant for barging unannounced into rooms behind previously closed doors, so Bobby was prepared.

Even if he had to gulp down a lump in his throat in the process.

He swore later it happened in one fluid motion – door busted open (possibly closer to off its hinges than it ever had been before, but they'd let the school janitor deal with that later), a blur of gray fur rushing across the band room floor, then a rabbit appearing standing atop the back of the grand piano she knew she would find him sitting behind.

"Bobby." There's a maniacal look in her amethyst eyes.

"Judy," he offered back, knowing full well what's coming.

The rabbit shields her eyes against the warm glare of bright lights in front of her, one of which has been bumped directly into her line of sight.

"Can you—"

"Aw, my bad there, I am most definitely in the wrong," drawls a voice from behind the light source. There's a rustling noise as someone scoots forward to readjust the fixture.

Judy Hopps shakes her head. "No, no, it's f—"

The stoat in front of her whips around, and Judy can practically see down the back of his flannel shirt as he rears his head back before—

"For crying out loud, Marcy, you'd think you'd never worked a live set before, I swear!"

"Well, look, see, the thing is, I bent over to pick up my soda, and this ol' tail must've…"

"You brought an open soda onto my set?! For your sake, Marcy, it had better been worth it, because if one drop finds its way onto my equipment, I'll get someone else to stand behind one of my cameras and press 'record' faster than you can say, 'Pupsi, for those who think young,' because you sure aren't gonna make it out of your twenties in this industry if I can help it. Argh. Cut! Did no one cut? No one had—" the little animal begins jumping on his director's chair, comically oversized as it is; even Judy would find it spacious, "the foresight – to think – hey, maybe I shouldn't – be – recording – this?!"

Suddenly the lights previously shining directly onto her face are dimmed considerably, enough for Judy to, after a few gracious blinks, to see past the director's chair and its tiny occupant. Marcy the horse is cowering behind her camera while a badger, whose name she thinks is Julio, Julian, something like that, has hopped from his own camera to her defense, squaring off in front of Manny Armine, one of Zootopia's most esteemed journalists and documentarians of his time.

The noise causes the bunny to shift uncomfortably in her seat, and she has half a mind to text a certain fox and ask him if it's not too late to back out. Her paws slip to her blue dress shirt, which she smooths absentmindedly, her mind wandering to the last time she can recall being in public like this without her uniform. She concludes it's been a good while.

"Judy? Hel-lo, Commish, you good?"

She snaps back to attention. The stoat is eying her, his breathing slowing with each passing breath. She swears he had turned a shade of red rather than his usual cream-colored appearance, but he's back to normal, for now.

"Hi! Yes. Sorry, I didn't know how long… that was going to take."

Manny raises an eyebrow, taking a seat on the edge of his chair. "Just some amateurs to deal with." He points a paw at her, and back to himself. "Not like us, of course. Not you and I. Me, of course not, but Judy – I can call you Judy, right? My secretary should have asked, but I just don't know what he does most of the day – but I feel like we're friends, no? Good? Anyway, I do this for us because – well, important folks such as ourselves, we've got plenty on our plate and time is money. You've got to get back to the precinct, I'm sure, and I've got more interviews for the first episode. Nicholas Wilde – you already knew, of course – plus Mr. Catmull himself sometime this evening. Someone named Lauralynn Woolridge is coming by—"

Judy's ears perk up. "Mrs. Woolridge? My old schoolteacher?"

"Right, that's it, the chaperone."

"I haven't seen her in years. Didn't even know she was still alive." She leans back in her cushioned chair, head resting against its back. "Maybe I'll stick around…"

Manny studies her for a moment as though she's certifiably insane, but lets it pass, donning a carefree grin. "Riiight, right, yes, of course, anything for you, Judy! Whatever you do with your time is your business and your business alone. Now, my business," he presses his paws against his chest, "is to finish this picture on schedule and on budget, and I like to think I'm mighty good at that, s'long as my staff," he shoots a look at Marcy, who has returned to her spot behind her camera, "cooperates. So on behalf of them, I apologize for everything wrong they've done and may continue to do while they try to reach sniffing distance of our level."

"No, really, it's fine…"

"Right-o," the stoat snaps his fingers, and his crew – a small one, led by a pair of camera operators with a few others standing around, including a crocodile assistant who works the clapperboard – snaps to attention. "Let's roll."

And as Judy notes the return to a live set, Manny regresses into a soothing, conversational tone. "So. Not one of your proudest moments that day, yeah?"

The rabbit shrugs. "I was… growing up. We all were. And I still had this crazy dream of becoming an officer, but it kind of, I guess, because my life there for a while."

"Not the innocence it once was."

"Well, I just mean that… by then I felt like I had to prove myself to everyone in town. I'd been telling them for years that I wanted to move to Zootopia, join the academy, make them proud. But it felt like half of Bunnyburrow thought it was still a phase I'd grow out of, when in reality by then I was more determined than ever because, you know, 13 years old, that's when they start hammering careers into your head."

The stoat taps a pen against a pad of paper and sighs. "Which makes you not the most pleasant of bunnies to be around."

"Not during festival season. It was the only time I felt like I had all this free time to remind everyone that one day I was gonna make the world a better place, and darn it, they were gonna listen to me." She smiles meekly. "But I lost sight of what actually mattered."

"Teenagers," Manny grunts.

"You're not wrong."

"And Bobby, he was your resident musician?"

Judy folds her paws in her lap. "Ever since the first one, when we were 9. A one-cat band. At first it was mostly just him pounding away on the piano our music teacher lent us or turning on a cassette player, but he kept with it. Miles ahead of us in music class, that's for sure."

Chuckling, the stoat motions with a paw to Marcy, who, as far as Judy can tell, focuses the shot even closer on the rabbit's face. "So, then what happened?"

Sharla, a sheep who had been one of Judy's best friends since kindergarten, flopped her ears close to her head, defeated. Despite her spirited attempt to corral the rabbit onto the schoolhouse auditorium stage to practice their play (by then 20 minutes long for reasons she could not surmise) rather than bother Bobby, who was hard at work on some last-minute alterations to the musical accompaniment, her chief error had been the mere mention of the cougar at all, since he had historically become a meticulous composer who would have completed his composition days ago. Judy knew something was up immediately.

And that brought them to the scene of a bunny who was halfway into her cop uniform – with her policeman's cap, a badge-adorned shirt… and gym shorts, for the time being – staring down a cougar who had practically holed himself up into a myriad of pianos, Catsios, xylophones and even a high-backed organ that rose like a jagged mountain around him.

"I reckon you're here about the music." Bobby did not stand, but if he had, he would have nearly come to the rabbit's chin, despite her height boost, given his marked growth over the past few months toward a stature that would one day find him towering above Judy and Sharla both.

"Bobby, it's almost Halloween," started Judy.

"Uh huh."

"You know Halloween, right?"

"Sure do."

"Scary movies, loud bangs out of nowhere, that saw thing you use—"

"A singing saw, Judy. Singing saw. I used it two years ago. It's a saw that makes noise. Sings. Singing saw."

Folding her arms across her chest, the rabbit glowered at him. "So imagine my surprise when Sharla here tells me you changed the music…"

Sharla did not speak but mouthed the words, "Sorry, I tried," to him, circling a hoof around her ear in a gesture Bobby recognized immediately.

"…when we're a day from showtime. I want howling wolves, Bobby. Those sound effects you recorded from that haunted house we went to last year. No heroes, Bobby. No heroes."

"It wasn't that much of a change, really."

Manny slides a paw under his chin. "Oh?"

The cougar pulls his sunglasses down the bridge of his muzzle, allowing the cameras their first look at his eyes since he sat down. Normally, the stoat might have expected a weariness there, or perhaps cold, distant disillusionment in a gaze that looked past its intended target into wherever – oblivion, maybe. He was used to that. Zootopia's elite, especially the older artists, actors, musicians and the like, possessed that quality, wore it like a badge of prestige.

Not Bobby Catmull. There is a playfulness in those golden eyes, a happy-go-lucky nonchalance that the director assumes rarely leaves him. He seems a little tired, sure; he is a long way from Bunnyburrow, that was ages ago. And yet it is as though those golden eyes, which sparkle with the tiniest flecks of lighter yellow against the set lights, are still seeing the world for the first time.

"Well, yeah." Bobby straightens himself in the same chair Judy Hopps and every other interviewee used that day, propping an arm against its back and crossing a leg over the other knee. "Look, John Catpenter, right?"

"I know John well. We play bridge once a month."

"Of course you do. So, listen, John writes this amazing score for Howloween, and it's all on piano. Like, no overused, cheesy sound effects from the supposed classics, not even that prominent a string section. Instead he uses this creepy piano melody – remember? Dundundun-dundundun-dundun-dun, so on and so forth, creepy as all hell, a lot with a little. Boom, he makes millions."

Manny shrugs. "Well, it's a great film, too."

"Exactly. But that's my point, man. He could be minimalist because he didn't need these sweeping, grandiose movements, right? Anyway, that was my point to Judy. We didn't over-the-top cheesiness. The script she wrote was fine. You know what would make it even better? Well, listen to this piano melody –" he fingers the notes with a paw as though he is playing it right there, eyes closed in blissful remembrance, humming an ethereal, clinking melody – "and tell me if you don't think this is better than howling wolves. Isn't that a little offensive anyway? Howling noises? I mean, yeah, they do it all the time, but it's not… it's not scary anymore, is it? That's old-timey, man."

"The script. Talk about the script."

Bobby continues to hum the melody from the skit piece, composed so many years ago, as though he thought it up yesterday.

"Er, Mr. Catmull?"

"Wha? Oh, right, right. Judy's play." He grins, pressing the sunglasses back over his eyes. "OK, so, get this: Hopps wanted it to be this Halloween-themed skit, which I guess made sense because the Carrot Days Festival was always in the fall – everyone's already drinking pumpkin spice everything 'til they puke, so why not knock 'em over the head with a little more spooky holiday cheer? Of course, Judy – she probably already told you, but she always did this – cast herself as the police officer who scolded the other schoolkids about not staying out too late, and then she roped Gideon Grey into playing the… I guess he was supposed to be Frankenstein's monster?"

Sitting down on the edge of his chair, the stoat ponders this for a moment. "Gideon Grey. Class bully, right? Back then?"

"Do you count someone shoving a cougar's head in a tuba being a bully? Not that I'm speaking from personal experience." He waves a paw dismissively. "But Mrs. Woolridge, she made everyone from class get involved that year – Gideon included. Team-building exercise or something, and plus these skits had about five minutes added to them each year it seemed like, so we needed more bodies." Laughing, he adds: "Think Judy's casting choice was her form of payback, if you ask me."

"No comment," Gideon Grey groans, slapping a paw against his face. "Can we… y'wouldn't mind skippin' to the next episode, would ya?"

"Ugh!"

"C'mon, Judy, cut it out…" Sharla started, following the bunny into the outer hallway as she stormed from the music room. Bobby followed hesitantly, but at a distance.

The rabbit turned on her heel, raising a finger, shouting, "Sharla, tell me why I shouldn't be upset. Really, please. I'm all ears, and there's a lot of 'em to go around."

"Look, you put Bobby in charge, yeah?"

She bit her lip, paws on her hips. "Unfortunately."

"And he's been in charge of music since the first one."

"I don't need a history lesson, Sharla."

The sheep stomped a hoof against the tiled floor. "Listen, Judy. Think back to that first one. Bobby did his thing and it turned out great. Do you remember the sounds he made when I announced to the world I wanted to be an astronaut? Those laughs may have been coming from the crowd because that's such a hard-to-reach job no matter who you are, but it was his timing, his talent, too. It's been like that every year since, and up until last year you didn't care what he did."

Judy said nothing, simply eying the cougar as he joined them in the hallway.

"Since then… Judy, look, you've gotten kinda crazy with these. I didn't want to say it, but…" she took a deep breath, straightening herself and balling her hooves, "you've become a control freak. Everything's gotta go by you first – and for what? So you can make sure everyone knows you wanna be a police officer one day?"

She pointed at the door beside them, which led to the stage. "They already know that. We already know that. And Bobby changing some music isn't gonna change that. In fact, I reckon it might improve on things. Right, Bobby?"

The cougar stepped forward and gave a quick wave. "I should've told you, Judy, but… well, you know. But you gotta trust me. Music's my thing. You know that."

"You're better than the rest of us, that's for sure," Sharla admitted, and Judy noticed her eyes flutter ever so slightly as she said it. "I mean, it's your dream, right? Hall of Fame?"

"Psh," Bobby said with a laugh. "I'll never compare to the masters. But a plaque would be nice one day." He extends his arms and creates a frame with his paws. "To Bobby Catmull, for always being righteous."

"No one uses that word anymore," said Judy finally, offering a meek laugh.

"You said no one listened to Jerry Vole anymore either, Judy, but I'm just full of surprises."

"Carrots said that? About Jerry Vole? When she was 13?"

Manny rubs a paw against his temple, massaging it as though it were highly malleable dough. "Mr. Wilde, we really don't need you for this episode after all, honestly."

"And miss hearing all the stories about Fluff when she was still livin' on the carrot farm? Manny, my man, you don't understand, this has been the –"

"Best day ever, Nick, we get it," calls Judy from off-screen.

"Hey, pipe down, Hopps, we're rolling."

At this, Manny glances up at Marcy, who shakes her head decisively. Julio has already packed away his own camera.

"So, anyway," the fox exclaims with a half-lidded gaze, all smiles, "what else ya got for me? I can riff on this all day, baby. Judy won't talk about these skits anymore, not since her parents showed us the videotapes. You're giving me primo access here, buddy. I don't even get this at home."

Manny is able to hide a quick eye roll. The stories are true, he thinks. Can't have one without the other butting in.

"Anyway, I'm sorry, Bobby." Judy held out a paw. "It's just the stress. I swear. Truce?"

The cougar, towering over her now where once they were much closer to the same height, knelt onto one knee and extends his own paw. "Truce." They shook. "It's done, by the way. The music. D'you wanna hear it?"

Judy smiled. "Absolutely. And I'll do my best not to ask for any more howling wolves."

"Howling wolves, no. Howlin' Wolf, on the other paw… you ever hear of him? Boy, if Mrs. Woolridge ever starts teaching us about blues music, you're gonna want to—"

His voice faded away as he and Judy walked back into the music room at the schoolhouse, and soon an eerie piano note could be heard throughout the building, which the old janitor, Mr. Murrs, said to that day turned him off of scary movies forever.

The next day, the auditorium was packed as it often was, the schoolwide talent show lining up with the first evening of the Carrot Days Festival. Judy's class went last, and though they were appreciative of the slight change in motif – rarely did the class' skits end up topical depending on the season, even though they had always been near Halloween – there was an audible laugh among the crowd, and a thin smirk from Stu and Bonnie Hopps, when Judy appeared in her usual policewoman attire.

But it went off without a hitch. Even Gideon got into the spirit, though his role was little more than a few nondescript grunts and a couple minutes of chasing his classmates around the stage ("And this is different from usual… how?" Gareth, Sharla's younger brother, asked later).

The biggest applause, however, came for the cougar who often sat off to the side, banging away at random instruments or pressing play on a recorder, but this time dispensed a spooky piano score from his Catsio that was pitched in such a way that several parents asked later what cassette it had come from, as they wanted to use it for this or that haunted house in the coming weeks.

Bobby smiled bravely. "All up in this noggin," he beamed. "With a little help from Howloween."

"Most of 'em were amazed I'd even seen the movie," Bobby says with a shrug.

"Well, sure, it's not exactly for kids."

"I was 13. I had my own room. My parents moved a TV in there the year before." He flashes a toothy grin. "Third worst decision they ever made. Second was the Catsio and then my learners' guitar. Got both for Christmas. I practically never had a reason to come out of my room anymore."

"And what was the worst decision?"

"The didgeridoo, but I dunno, college was weird."

The festival was in full swing by the time Bobby finally left the schoolhouse, having packed away all the instruments for the night with some help from Sharla, who forced him to agree to a ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl later before running off to meet up with her parents. The bright neon lights of the rides and the midway shone against his face, causing him to squint slightly, finally shielding his eyes with a paw as he watched their twinkling, dancing movements.

"I saw your parents out front," came Judy's voice as she rounded the schoolhouse corner. "In case you were looking for them." She held a cloud of cotton candy on a stick in her paw. "Want some?"

"If you think I earned it," the cougar said seriously, adding a smile afterward.

She thrust the stick into his paw. "You kidding?" she asked as he bit off a small piece of pink fluff. "I never should've doubted you. I never will again."

"Well, to be fair, you'll never have the chance again," he said as he chewed. "This was our last year, right? The high schoolers, they never do this sort of thing. They have their own show the second night, and I don't think anyone does any skits. They leave that to the drama club."

Judy shook her head as she took back the stick of candy. "No, no, I mean in general, Bobby. You're really good at what you do, and…" her eyes shift to the side, glancing down at the ground, "if I want people to take my job seriously, the first thing I should do is not do the same to someone else, right?"

He rested a paw on the bunny's shoulder – straining to do to so since she was so much shorter, but he thought ruffling the top of her head felt… a little patronizing. "It's OK," he confided. "I'm used to it. Sometimes I don't believe in the dream much myself."

"The plaque thing?"

"Well, more than that." His eyes wandered into the distance, out by the baseball field, where a temporary stage had been set up for bands and musicians who would be playing the festival. The sound of a scintillating lead guitar blasted through the manic sounds of the midway beside them. "I kinda… well, playing this place one day, when I'm older, that'd be cool."

Judy cocked her head. "Like, rock band stuff? I thought you were more of a piano guy, Bobby."

He grinned. "Then to quote good ol' BTO, you ain't seen nothing yet ."

"Bobby, that reference flew over my head. Is that another one of those groups our parents listened to? You really need to stop doing that."

Laughing, the cougar began to explain a certain rock band's discography to a bunny who really could not care less, but listened anyway. She felt she owed him that much.

"I think we'll pause there for the day."

Bobby checks the watch on his wrist. "Ah, shoot, you're right. Time flies, doesn't it?"

"That it does, that it does." Manny leaps down from his chair and extends a paw, which the cougar delicately holds. "You've been beautiful, Bobby. A real treasure. I'm looking forward to what we can glean next."

"Same here, Mr. Armine. Tomorrow morning?"

The stoat nods, removes his paw and stalks off to camera teardown; Marcy eyes him worriedly as he approaches.

Reaching into his shirt, he unplugs the microphone attached there, gingerly sets it down on the chair and glances off toward the catering area. There's Judy, he notes, still hanging around the set even at this late hour. Nick Wilde is beside her, laughing at some joke that Gideon Grey has told, seemingly about the pie that was catered, because he wears a look of disgust as he holds a plate containing a piece, chewing. Mrs. Woolridge, the old music teacher, stands nearby, smiling as well but seemingly perfectly content to eat the pie she, too, holds.

Fleetingly Bobby thinks of joining them, but it is late, and there will be other opportunities, he thinks.

He sidles out a back door and into the night, pulling a coat over his shoulders, his dark silhouette disappearing into the back alleyway.

Manny watches him leave from an overlooking window. Julio joins him.

"Don't think we've ever had one of our subjects go out the backdoor," the badger notes. "Or by himself, for that matter."

The stoat shakes his head, grinning. "And that," he says, "is why we're here."

END