"We're on the same team, Judy. Under-estimated. Under-appreciated. Aren't you sick of it?"
As the world came back from its momentary blurr, the fox and the rabbit found themselves...somewhere. An exhibit, a circular room depressed into the ground.
Her body wracked with pain from the hard impact. In a cruel twist of fate, the suitcase had flown in the opposite direction.
She looked over at her dear friend. His eyes, like her's, were sorrowful, doughy, defeated, something she had thought she would never see on his face.
The cold silence was soon accompanied by the happy tapping of cloven hooves, and the laughter of the little ewe as she arrived at the precipice of their prison.
She had appeared so innocent, so sweet. So...
Cute.
A chill ran through the bunny's soul.
"Well, you should have just stayed on the carrot farm, huh?" the sheep gloated, enjoying her newfound power. "It really is too bad. I...I did like you."
Of course she did. They were kindred spirits. The same struggle, different solutions.
"What are you going to do?" Judy shot back angrily. "Kill me!?"
"Oh-ho no, of course not," Bellwether chuckled. Then she took out the pellet gun with a venomous grin, encapsulating the sadistic glee of her empowerment. "He is!"
In an instant she pointed and shot. Judy closed her eyes as the blue blur whizzed past her face, only to hear a grunt from the hard impact.
Nick had fallen, a stain on his neck.
"No!"
She scrambled over to Nick's side. She placed her hands tenderly on his back.
"Oh Nick!"
He winced and grunted as his body convulsed.
Above, she could hear Bellwether speaking. What was she saying?
"Yes? Police! There's a savage fox in the natural history museum! Officer Hopps is down! Please hurry!"
Judy could hear the sardonic mockery in her faux 'damsel in distress' mannerisms.
The dispatcher could not.
Judy Hopps looked back over Nick, knowing he was losing lucidity by the second. "No, Nick! Don't do this! Fight it!"
Could he even understand her?
"Oh, but he can't help it, can he?" Bellwether said, voice syrupy and sardonic. "After all, preds are just 'biologically predisposed to be savages.'"
How cruel to use her own words against her.
Judy knew cruelty was an indulgence the meek little ewe had been denied far too long.
Then a growl. Deep. Visceral.
The fox's eyes shot wide opened, showcasing a new sinister yellow, his teeth bared.
He was gone.
The bunny scrambled back. She got to her feet and turned to run, but she knew not where.
The horrible growling followed behind her.
Ahead was a stuffed bunny mannequin. Coming upon it, she tossed it at her assailant with all her mite.
It hit and impeded the fox with a yelp. But for how long? She did not know, she kept running. There was tall grass ahead, could she hide? Her heart pounded, her mind was filled with desperation, every system in her body was working in overdrive.
She backed in as deep and she could, fleeing through nature like her ancestors, and turned. It occurred to her the foolishness of her endeavor. She must have still been quite visible, to say nothing of a fox's sense of smell. She could clearly watch the fox, her sapient friend just a minute ago, viciously tearing the stuffing out of the artificial rabbit.
Was this how it felt to live thousands of years ago?
"Viscous predator, and meek prey!"
The bunny looked around frantically, but no exits were possible. All was in vain.
"Gosh! Think of the headline!" Bellwether gloated. "'Hero Cop Killed by Savage Fox.'"
Finishing with his toy, he turned to her, teeth bared and a horrible growl.
At this point, Judy knew her doom was inevitable.
A poetic fate. Trapped in an exhibit that mirrored the terrifying past, dying with the sheep that represented the darker side of empowerment; The meek little ewe who had turned the world upside down, when Judy wanted only to give it an innocent little push towards equilibrium.
She looked up at her grim reaper. If she was going to die, she would at least die with dignity.
"So that's it, prey fears predator, and you stay in power!?"
"Pretty much," replied the Mayor, pleased with the succintness.
"It won't work!" she protested.
Back in Bunny Burrow, the predators had seemed invulnerable. On top. The heroes in every action movie. What every bunny secretly aspired to be. Prey did not hate predator, they just-
"Fear always works! And I'll dart every predator in Zootopia to keep it that way!"
At long last, after two-thousand years, the hierarchy had been inverted. The predator would become the prey. Just not in her case.
A strange noise: half-growl, half-roar, startled Judy out of her thoughts. She yelped, and turned her attention.
He was even closer than she realized, his fangs bared and nose twitching, waiting to tare into her flesh.
Her dreams would end the same way they had started: with a fox.
He had been her friend, her only friend since coming to Zootopia.
"Oh Nick!" she whimpered pitifully.
If there was a God, she could only hope He was merciful.
Another chuckle came from above. "Bye-bye bunny."
He got so close.
Then in an instant, he lashed out and grabbed his jaw firmly around her neck.
She let out a scream.
Fangs in her tender flesh, Judy Laverne Hopps was leaving the world KIA.
Her final moments passed, thoughts fading, of the world she left behind.
