Chapter 1
"Hmmmm…" Judy Hopps, Zootopia's first rabbit officer, hummed lost deep in thought. The first file she was staring at wasn't proving to be of any help, no matter how hard she willed it to be. She turned to the next one. This one wasn't any better, and neither did the next one, or the one after that, or the one after that, and so on.
She had jumped at the opportunity of a new case, and she thought this would be an easier and simpler case than her first one. What with everything that happened during it.
It wasn't…
Even with Nick Wild, her partner and Zootopia's first fox officer, by her side, plus the intelligence and resources of the entire ZPD she was still no closer to cracking what these strange occurrences and disappearances were supposed to be about.
She took out some more information, thumb-tacked it to the wall, and stepped back. She brought a paw up to her chin as her eyes darted back and forth across the evidence, those eyes kept examining all the facts and photos of whatever evidence the ZPD could find from the different scenes.
She sighed for what felt like the millionth time that day. She rose her paw up to her eyes from her chin and her ears drooped. She shook her head, she had been at this for hours, and every time she thought she was getting somewhere it turned into a dead end.
She picked up the remaining case files and turned around not having even the slightest amount of concentration on where she was going. Because of this, she didn't see the fox until they collided.
Files and papers confettied the floor, after all of them settled on the ground, and Judy stood back up, she began to pick up the scattered case files.
"Sorry Carrots," apologized Nick as he bent over and joined Judy in picking up the mess lying all over the floor.
It didn't take very long to do the said activity between the 2 of them. Once all the pieces were reunited with each other, Judy scanned over them, checking to be sure they all were there. They were thankfully.
"What's this all about anyway?" Nick motioned to the files, noting how distracted Judy was being at the moment. This wasn't the care-free, hyperactive, and ready for action Judy Hopps he knew. Something had to be up.
Judy's reply didn't give any answers, not the ones Nick wanted anyway.
"Let's just say, this might be worse than Night Howlers."
Nick spat out his coffee as though it was made of volcano hot sauce. His eyes widened, and shown a mixture of fear and shock, but mostly shock.
"What!?" he exclaimed so hard that Judy almost dropped her files again. His voice carried the same feeling his face had on. He shook his head briefly, and regained his composure before continuing.
"I-I mean, how is it worse?"
"These cases are disappearances, they happen at night, . And I've confirmed for a fact that they are linked by one crucial detail. A calling card so to speak. It is gold coin, flipped on the tail's side hooked to the door of wherever the victim lived. Not to mention that all the targets are rodents. Or at least they were... Recently, cases like this started coming in from other places, with other spices. Snakes, mice, rats, squirrels, chipmunks, there was even a report about a bunny going missing. Who knows what species might be targeted next."
"Is there anything else they have in common? Something that might give us a lead?" Nick asked hoping that what Judy had explained to him wasn't everything. The good news was it wasn't, the bad news was it wouldn't matter…
Not until it would almost be too late anyway.
"There is one thing… this is one of the coins we found," Judy continued holding up one of the said pieces of gold. "Tell me what you see here."
Nick held his paws up to his chest level, opened, ready to receive the incoming package tossed at him. The package was a gold coin about the size of a half dollar. His paws clutched around the piece of trade currency, and turned it to meet his eyes. He rotated it around, back and forth. He quickly realized what Judy ment.
"A bird face for heads, talons for tails. I'll admit I've never seen this type of coin before, but what does it matter to the case?"
"Take a closer look at it. I've run a bunch of searches about what type of bird it might be. Nothing matched, the face and eyes are too wide for any matches. The talons are also weird, most birds' talons are arranged with three talons at the front, one in the back. This one however, has 2 at the front and 2 at the back. Almost like an X formation."
"Nothing matched this?" Nick asked completely puzzled.
"Nothing," Judy assured sadly.
End of chapter 1. This is my first attempt at a Zootopia story. Tell me what you think guys. (If any of you have read some of my other stories you might be aware of the fact that I don't usually like to continue after the first chapter due to the lack in reviews. Same principle here. So… please review. Please!)