When Nick and Judy entered Precinct One it was buzzing with activity, nothing unusual, but there was an enormous sense of urgency about it. "HOPPS WILDE!" Nearly screamed Bogo as soon as he saw them. "Report to my office immediately!"
Nick and Judy looked at each other. Judy was dressed in a black jacket and pants paired with a violet shirt, and Nick was wearing a green suit with a green tie.
Bogo was hunched over piles of work and paper. "How would you like a hell of a first case to cut your teeth on?" He asked, not even looking at them. "Gang violence and arms trafficking."
"What happened?" Asked Judy, all business.
"At around one in the morning, Savannah Central gangs East Savannah Pride and the Westside Spots entered into a brutal gang war," he explained. "Bad enough in itself, but even worse were the weapons," he explained, handing them each a file. "They were all using military-grade assault rifles, shotguns, explosives and so forth. Both sides."
"God damn…" muttered Nick. "Street Gangs with that kind of firepower… Not a pretty picture."
"Dozens of gang members dead, massive property damage, this is priority one!" He emphatically stated. "normally I would give you two something smaller, but City Hall wants our best! And given the racially-charged nature of the crime, and your impressive history, City Hall wants you two working with Wolford and Fangmeyer," he explained. He sighed. "A lot of innocent mammals were hurt and killed in the crossfire, and a lot of property damage occurred. Given that these were two predator gangs, prey mammals are getting scared, and Prey Supremacist groups have been emboldened. Given how much you two have done to heal those particular wounds, you'll be the lead detectives on the case, with Wolford and Fangmeyer assisting and mentoring you."
He leaned back in his chair. "I wish I could give you two something simpler and less public, but I agree with Mayor Swinton that you two may be the best way to mitigate the fallout from this."
"Wow, you agreeing with Mayor Swinton?" Asked Nick. "I'm pretty sure that was in the bible as one of the signs of the apocalypse."
"WILDE SO HELP ME GOD..!" He took a deep breath to calm himself. "I am not in the mood for this today."
"Nick will keep a lid on it," promised Judy, shooting a glare at him.
"I'll hold you to that," he said after a pause. "And yes, while I don't usually agree with Mayor Swinton on quite a few issues, but the two of you maintaining such a visible friendship and partnership has done a great deal to mend the wounds of this city caused by Bellweather." He left out the decades of oppression before that, as he felt it went unsaid. "But if this boils over, it could be terrible, especially if the prey animals start getting caught in the crossfire."
The duo nodded and got up to depart his office.
"By the way, you have a new car, unmarked, department issue," he told them, tossing them a set of keys. "Don't wreck it, and report to Wolford and Fangmeyer in the Savannah Central Happytown. Major Crimes is also getting involved, they're providing an office for the detectives on this case to use. Got it?"
"Yes sir!" Replied Judy, snatching the keys and walking off with Nick in tow. As soon as they were out of the office, she turned to Nick. "Hey, don't judge me, but what's a 'Happytown?'" She asked, then flushed at his gob smacked look both of them gave her. "Don't judge me! I've never heard that term before!"
He sighed. "Okay, you drive, I'll explain."
They found the car, a nice black car that was the perfect size for both of them. Nick got in the passenger seat and Judy got in the driver's seat.
"Okay, Happytowns… bit of a sore subject, probably why you've never heard of them. You probably know of them as 'Predator Protection Districts,'" he told her. "Basically, they were sections of various districts that were fenced off and used to corral predator populations during the days segregation. After it was outlawed, probably around the time you were born, the fences came down and some of the predator populations moved out. The areas are still overwhelmingly populated by predators, however. And the only prey mammals that live there are either criminals or too poor to live anywhere else," he explained. "There used to be on in every district, but some of them have been gentrified in the decades since Pred segregation ended. The only ones left are in the Rainforest District, Savannah Central, Tundratown and the Nocturnal District, with the latter being the largest."
"What are they like?" She asked, remembering what she had heard about them in school.
"Dangerous, mostly. The police don't have much presence in the Happytowns, hence why the gang problem is so huge there. Lot of young predators who have more balls than brains, and a city that doesn't like them a whole lot."
Judy said nothing as she drove. Then she thought about something. "Bogo said it would only be bad if prey species started dying," she pointed out. "Isn't that kind of speciest?" She asked, confused.
"Ehh… Not really," explained Nick. "Said like that, without context it sounds bad. But what he meant was that if innocent prey mammals start getting killed in the crossfire between two predator gangs it will give prey supremacist groups a TON of ammo to fuel their anti-pred rhetoric," he explained to her. "He meant that things are already bad, but if that happens, we'll be out of the pan and straight into hell."
Soon, they were in the Savannah Central Happytown, near where the gang war had broken out. It looked like a warzone. Buildings were scorched and blown out, shattered glass shards was everywhere, spent shells riddled the ground and well over a dozen chalk outlines were spread all over the street and sidewalks.
Wolford saw them and waved them over. "Detectives," he greeted.
"Hell of a mess, huh?" Asked Nick, surveying the damage. "Chief gave us the cliff's notes."
"Well here's the novel. At approximately one in the morning, the Savannah Spots, a Hyena gang were ambushed by the Savannah Central Pride, a gang consisting primarily of lions, with some other large cat species as well. The Pride were expecting to have the upper hand, but the Spots also possessed similar military grade weapons. Whole thing turned into a massacre for both sides." He explained.
Fangmerer approached. "We recovered some of the weapons," she spoke in her baritone voice. "But it's not good. No serial numbers. They haven't been scratched off, they were never there in the first place. So we have no idea where they came from. For all we know they weren't even made in this country."
Judy sighed. "So tracking them from the source is out, but it does suggest that they had help from inside the factory that were making these."
"Or factories," suggested Nick. "They could come from multiple sources. Without the numbers we have no way of knowing."
"You two are the leads in this case," reminded Wolford. "What is your next move?"
"Canvass the area and see if anyone saw anything. Then we track down the gang members and see if any of them will talk," answered Judy.
"And put out feelers for anything suspicious. I'll reach out to my old contacts and see if any of them know anything," added Nick. "Between that and the canvassing, we should be able to find at least one lead."
"Good thinking," smiled Fangmeyer. "You two apply the same level of care and effort to detective work as you did patrol and you'll make fantastic detectives."
"Thanks, Anything else we should know?" Asked Nick.
"Yeah, you'll have to report to the tech department to get some software on your phones. Secure digital dropboxes and the like," she explained. "Way better than lugging around folders full of paper. Bring laptops if you have them as well," she instructed.
"We will. Carrots, shall we begin?" Asked Nick.
"Yeah, yeah…" She trailed off as she looked over the crime scene. When she took it all in it was kind of staggering. Well over a dozen thinking, feeling, breathing mammals, all dead. She had seen stuff like this before, but never on this scale. They usually didn't patrol the Happytowns.
"Carrots?" He asked, waling over to her. "Judy?"
That shook her out of it. H so rarely used her given name. "Yeah, I'm okay," she replied, shaking her head. "Just, shocking is all."
"Gonna be dangerous. Taking on serious gun runners," he warned.
"Scared?" She taunted, smirking. "I could always go it alone and let you stay home and make me dinner while I bring home the tofu."
"BugBacon or I divorce you," he warned. "I'll do anything for love carrots, except eat tofu."
Judy laughed at that, tension flooding out of her body. Nick always knew how to make her relax. "I needed that," she admitted, giving a smile that made his heart skip.
"Sure thing, Carrots," he replied with a confident smirk.
They started knocking on doors in the immediate area and asking if any of the residents had heard or seen anything. The general response was that they were too scared for their own lives to do anything besides cower in fear of the war raging outside.
Meanwhile, Nick made a few calls to various contacts from before he was a cop and none of them had anything immediate for him, but some of them, like Finnick, promised to keep an ear to the ground.
"Now Finnick, there is a finite amount of ground in Zootopia, you know that, right?" He teased
"Up yours Wilde!" Screamed Finnick before hanging up the phone.
"Can you please not antagonize people who might help us solve the case?" Asked Judy, rolling her eyes.
"Relax, Finnick and I have a great back and forth," he reassured her. "You should know this by now."
"I mean, I'm just always surprised when you two act like arch enemies but always come through for each other. Why is that?"
Nick sighed. "Okay, Carrots. Real Talk time," he told her as they got back in the car. "There are exactly two mammals in this entire city that I would trust my life to without a second thought, two mammals that I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that would never betray me. One of them is you, and the other is Finnick."
Judy stared at him when he said that.
"And Finnick feels the same way about me. We fight all the time but that's just us being guys. When the chips are down, we will both always be there for each other, even if I am with 'the fuzz' now."
"Wow, I never knew. I men I knew you were friends, but that's. Wait, only me and him? What about the other cops at the precinct?" She asked. "Do you know something?"
"No," he answered. "But I would definitely be thinking long and hard about trusting them with my life. I just don't know them well enough."
Judy thought long and hard about that as they drove back to the precinct, a bit stunned by how much Nick trusted her.
"Judy," he got her attention.
"Yeah?"
"Be careful on this one. I mean it. We're not beat cops anymore. We're gonna be fighting more than jumped-up street trash." He sighed and took off his sunglasses to look directly at her. "I mean it. Serial Killers, Gun runners, professional killers, this is the big leagues. I trust you to always have my back. Do you trust me with the same?"
"Nick! How could you even-"
"I need to hear you say it, okay? Just do that for me?" He asked, pleading with her. He had taken off his sunglasses. His eyes with locked onto her, pupils narrowed into slits. "Just tell me you'll be there for me."
Judy wasn't sure where this was coming from and it worried her a bit. Nick never let anything get to him, at least, not in any visible way. She looked back at him. "I promise, I'll be there for you."
He sighed and leaned back in the passenger seat. "Thanks, Fluff," he told her, smiling. "It means a lot to me."
Judy smiled and parked the car. They had a lot of files to go through, they needed to learn who died in the shootout and who these gangs were.
"You go ahead, Carrots, I'll grab us some coffee. I think we're gonna need it."
"Decaf for me!" She called as she hopped off. She had had caffeine exactly once in her life, it didn't go well. She had been up for days, unable to sleep, before brutally crashing.
Nick left and found that the break room was mercifully empty. He put on a pot of decaf for her, and decided that this was a great place and time to let things out. He collapsed in a chair and let out a deep breath. He never let anything get to him. Not in any way that anyone could see. But that crime scene really shook him up. He hadn't seen violence like that since…
He slammed the door on that thought with a shudder. He buried his face in his paws and sagged as the coffee maker bubbled. He was scared, really scared. This was way bigger than anything they had ever tackled in the past. He was scared for Judy and himself. But mostly Judy. She was eager, energetic and had a tendency to dive into things headfirst. That had gotten her a bit hurt in the past, but now that they were working much more dangerous cases, he was worried it would get her badly hurt.
Or worse.
He sighed and grabbed the pot of coffee and a rabbit-sized mug. After grabbing them both coffee, he took a moment to reapply his nonchalant demeanor before he joined her in the office in the Major Crimes Office. It was nice, clear walls that doubled as transparent marker boards, and another, traditional whiteboard in the center of the room in front of a large table. "Perks of the job, huh Carrots?" He asked as he looked around the place while handing her the mug.
"This is just because this case if being filed under Major Crimes," she reminded him as she took the mug. "Okay, we have a lot to read and not a lot of time in which to do it. How about you take the Spots and I'll take the Pride?"
"Divide and conquer, huh? Works for me."
They split up the files and began skimming through them. Soon the only sound was the scratching of pens as they wrote notes on the sheets of paper, broken only by the sound of a sip from a mug.
Mayor Swinton reclined in her chair as she spoke on a phone. "Last night went extremely well," She spoke into the device. "How about Tundratown? Is that all set to go?"
"Of course," replied a heavily-modulated voice on the other side. "The deal will go down on schedule next week. After Tundratown and the Nocturnal District are in flames, we should be all set to begin phase two."
"And then into a future where everything is coming up Swinton," She remarked with a smirk.
"Of course, I trust my money is on the way?"
"I'll make sure the drop is completed as discussed," she promised. "I was skeptical when you approached me, but I really like how this is all coming together."
"I am a businessman, Miss Swinton. And I know an opportunity when I see one. Lionheart was too straight and Bellwheather was pause. "Are you sure about the detectives working the case?"
"Relax, I have a pair of rookie detectives who got lucky once. By the time they even start to get a sniff of anything going on, it'll be too late," she brushed off his concerns. "Anyway, I have to go. Talk later?"
"I'll be in touch." The line went dead.
"Weirdo," she scoffed before looking over her desk. She picked up a file. Big, black letters covered the front. "Tactical Utility Servicemen in Kevlar." She smirked at it and put it down.
"Everything is coming up Swinton," she repeated softly before serving herself a drink out of an expensive crystal decanter. She swirled it around, hearing the ice cubes clink against the matching tumbler before taking a drink of the outrageously expensive scotch.
"'Bout time too."
Author's Notes
And here is chapter two, more setup for what's to come, these chapters are getting a bit easier to write as the fic goes on and I start to get some momentum behind me. Please leave reviews, I love them so.
As for having multiple Happytowns, I probably aren't the first guy to come up with that idea, but it makes sense to me. Predators live in all kinds of climates, and shoving them all into one place just wouldn't be practical. I doubt that Fennec Foxes and Polar bears could live in the same environment, whatever it was. So multiple "Happytowns" was the idea I decided to go with.
And as for what "TUSK" stands for, I shamelessly ripped that off from MaveriKat, who is writing one of the greatest works of fanfiction I have ever read called "Fox Point" right here on fanfiction . net. It's a Zootopia/Sly Cooper crossover and it is go amazingly good you guys. Go and read it.