Chase

Judy rounded the corner, hot on the tail of her guy. Their chase had lead through the south end of an industrial complex, long alleys and tall buildings clumped together in grids. She raced past a bank and around an insurance firm and straight into a large, deserted back lot. Nothing there but a full dumpster and dead lamppost. For a second she worried she'd lost him, and then the click of a metal door falling closed alerted her to the building he'd disappeared into. She burst in to find a narrow service stair well, all metal and dark and winding. Her perpetrator was racing above, halfway to the third floor. Judy bolted.

"Wilde, my guy's headed to the roof of the Weston Insurance Firm," she said into her handset, "either we're gonna run out of room real quick or he knows something I don't know."

"Hang tight, Hopps," Nick's voice crackled on the little radio, obscured by sounds of jostling and feet hitting pavement and his heavy breathing. "I'm almost there. Don't start without me." The last part came out rushed and just faintly scolding.

"10-4."

She got all the way up to the roof, gaining slowly but surely on her target. He'd violently slammed the door to the roof entrance just seconds before she got there. She threw the door open only for the swishing sound of about five somethings, sharp and streaking straight for her, caused her reflexes to jump and slam the door shut again. There was a dull crack on the side of the door as the weapons hit useless against metal.

Judy froze, all momentum she'd accumulated ground to a halt, her paw still gripping the door handle, trying to catch her breath. That was a little close.

She didn't know how long she sat inside the stairwell, ear to the door, waiting for the tell tale sound of movement somewhere on the open roof outside. When she finally did pick up something, it was in the opposite direction, the sound of running echoing louder and louder through the stairwell below.

"Carrots," Nick climbed the last few steps, filing in beside her at the top. "What happened?" He was breathing heavily from all the running, but otherwise looked alright.

"He started tossing spines," she explained.

Nick winced. "He's gotten desperate."

"What happened to your guy?"

"Getaway car," he said, "Francine picked up the trail on Harbor street."

"You think they'll try to come back for porcupine?" She nodded at the door, or rather what was behind it.

"There's no honor among thieves, Carrots, you know that." Nick gave a quiet little laugh, "I almost feel sorry for the guy. Buddies took off with the loot. Got himself trapped on the roof of an eight story building. Poor sap."

"I can't hear anything," Judy commented. "What if he found a way to climb down?"

"Seriously?"

"Well, what would you do if you were him?"

"He could be waiting for you to open the door so he can take another shot. How good is his aim?"

Judy's nose twitched, worried, if only for a second. "Well, we aren't gonna find out waiting on these stairs." She pulled herself up.

Nick reached over her, paw on the door, holding it back for a moment. "Slow this time, okay?"

"Okay, okay," she waved him away, "by the wall," she instructed.

Nick stepped back, pressing himself against the far wall, huddled in the narrow bar of safety between the wall and the frame of the door. Judy did the same, as much as she could with her paw still gripping the door handle.

On the count of three, she yanked the thing open. They braced themselves for an onslaught of flying spines but nothing happened. Judy removed her cap, tossing it out into the void of the dark roof to test it. No response.

"See anything?" She whispered.

Nick peeked tentatively around the doorframe. "No," he leaned out further, "No, he's not there."

The two moved carefully out onto the roof, flashlight in tow, scanning the empty rooftop. It was the most agonizing and slow minute of her entire evening. Chases she could handle. Chases were fun. Chases allowed you to spend the excess of adrenaline instead of letting it grow into a writhing mess of nerves inside your stomach. This slow, creeping around in the dark, waiting for something to happen thing, was torture.

"He's not here!" She started to hiss, growing agitated. They had waited too long.

"That's impossible!" He shouted, loud and a little hammy. When she leveled him a concerned look he silently mouthed 'Play along.'

"Oh, where could he be?" She said, paw to her chest, matching his twinge of overacting.

"He couldn't have just flown away."

They split. He took the right side around to the front facing the deserted street, she took the left and the back. Peeking over the roof's edge she became grimly aware just how high up they were. The wind was noticeably more active and cold against her ears. The walls stretched beneath her, little divots marking the rows of office windows almost disappeared with the skewed perspective. Her light barely reached the bottom, a vague little spot on the blank sidewalk.

Her ears perked. Something metallic groaned and creaked, and all of a sudden Nick was calling for her. "Hey, Hopps. Eureka."

She rushed over and followed the path his flashlight created down the front of the building. Squinting painfully against the sudden light was her porcupine perpetrator. He was standing on the narrow ledge created by the building's front marquee, both arms and stomach were spread flat against the wall, as if he could cling to the seamless steel better that way.

"How's it hangin', pal?" Nick leaned forward, one foot braced on the slab of concrete along the edge of the roof.

"You aren't gonna take me, copp'r," the porcupine spat back.

Judy stared down at him. "We've got you on counts of armed robbery, evading arrest-"

"In a minute, Hopps, I think his mind's a little occupied at the moment."

Judy shook her head, looking around for something to pull the man up with. Why was it no one agreed to come quietly, even once they've been caught fair and square? She had her baton, but that wouldn't be nearly long enough. The standard issue pawcuffs had an adjustable chain, made to accommodate a variety of mammal sizes, but even that looked too short to cross the distance they needed.

"We'll have to send for rope or a net or a crane or something to get him down," she told Nick. He reached for his handheld radio to call it in.

"You aren't gonna take me," the porcupine said again, a little shakier this time.

"Sir, what's your name?" Judy asked, leaning with both arms braced on the ledge.

"None of your goddamn business."

Judy could literally feel her patience slipping. "Sir, this will be a lot easier if you choose to cooperate. You're in a very dangerous spot. I'd rather take you to the ZPD as a person than a pancake, okay?"

As if it heard her, the sign started to creak, an ugly, foreboding, metallic noise. It rocked suddenly. Porcupine started to scream. They couldn't afford to wait for any back up.

In her growing panic Judy almost didn't notice Nick go for her cuffs until he'd already snatched one end from her and locked it together with a cuff on his own set. He yanked out the chain to it's maximum length. She could almost hear him scolding her in her mind. Not long enough? We've got two sets here, dumb bunny. Multiply.

She held her end of the linked cuffs tight and leapt off the ledge at the porcupine, just as the marquee sign started to peel away from the wall.


Joke

Chief Bogo was halfway through handing out assignments when a small giggle drew his attention to the front of the bullpen.

Hopps was attempting to cover a huge grin behind her fist and Wilde was staring straight ahead, unblinking, fighting back a smile that kept fluctuating in size as he tried to push it back. Both were failing.

"Hopps! Wilde!" The chief barked. "Something you would like to share with the class?" His arms crossed over his chest.

"No, sir," Hopps muttered, fist still obscuring her face. She straightened. For a second she looked like she'd regained her composure and then a bubble of giggles overtook her. She covered her mouth with her paws and glanced conspiratorially at her partner. The fox's shoulders started to shake. And then his eyes screwed shut as he started to giggle along with her.

"What's so amusing?" Bogo demanded.

"Sorry, Chief," Wilde chuckled. "It's kind of an inside joke."


Decaf

"You're the intern, right?" Nick sidled up to the young zebra. "Manky…?"

"Marcus," the zebra corrected him.

"Close enough. Here, hold this," he handed off an empty paper cup of what was once coffee. Marcus furrowed his brow, confused.

"Pro tip, kid, you see that rabbit," Nick pointed across the reception hall to Judy in the middle of a very animated conversation with Clawhauser. They made something of a pair, bright eyes and wide grins. Clawhauser's head bobbed up and down along with Judy's persistent hopping.

The zebra turned back, still missing the point. "Yeah…"

"The rabbit always gets decaf. Understood?"

His eyes rotated from the bouncing rabbit and back to the fox in giant aviator sunglasses. "You mean coffee?"

"Now you're catching on. Repeat after me," Nick leaned in, enunciating every word like he was teaching a proverb to a child. "The rabbit. Always. Gets. Decaf."

"The... rabbit always gets decaf?" Marcus repeated.

"Or we are all doomed."

The zebra stared at him blankly until Nick gestured that he should keep going. "Or we are all doomed," Marcus finished in a confused monotone.

"Very good." Nick straightened, clapping the younger, yet larger, animal on the knee. "Carry on, kid. And don't forget." He started to walk away, adding "I have faith in you, Mark," over his shoulder as an afterthought.

Marcus stood alone in the foyer looking very bewildered for several minutes.


Defiance

"You can't take me off the Gibson case," Nick cut into the chief's office, skipping straight to the point.

Bogo lowered the report he was skimming onto his desk. "Officer Wilde, do come in," he said in a tone of voice that indicated he'd much rather the fox do the exact opposite.

"Chief, you can't take me off. You can't reassign me," he repeated. It was the most fiercely serious Bogo had ever seen him, admittedly not a high bar to reach, but still.

"Wilde, if you think I'm putting you on a stakeout mission you are out of your blooming mind."

"I happen to be quite good at stealth, thanks."

"I happen to not really care."

"Listen, if this is about the 'can't help myself' comment the other day, you should know I was at least seventy-five percent joking," Nick wobbled one paw back and forth to show it could go a little ways in either direction. Typical Wilde snark was starting to creep back in.

"Last I checked," Bogo began, very slowly, "I am still the senior officer in this precinct, am I not?"

Nick let out a groan, visibly deflating. "I didn't say-"

"And it is my responsibility and discretion to assign officers where and when I see fit, is it not?"

"That wasn't my-"

"And you are, as of this moment, a rookie officer, are you not?"

"Do you just like interrupting-"

"So, can you explain to me, how we have come to this situation where a rookie officer barges, unannounced, into the office of his superior purporting to know better who should be assigned where?"

Nick's response was definite and immediate. The verbal equivalent of stamping a foot to the ground. "We're partners, sir. You can't split us up."

Bogo leaned back in his high leather chair, letting the fox stew for a moment. The crisp uniform and challenging glare did nothing to distract Bogo from remembering the circumstances of their first meeting. He hadn't changed really, in Bogo's estimation. Just months out of the academy and he was still scrawny and short and didn't know when to shut up. He was hardly the personality type one would expect from a police officer. A good officer, at least the ideal, was strong, thoughtful, spoke only when they had to, brave, loyal, sense of propriety, knew how to take orders. A good officer respected the system they were tasked to uphold. Bogo didn't have to know Nick Wilde very well personally to know that he did not.

"Wilde," he began carefully, "are you aware of why you were assigned to this precinct?"

He shrugged like the answer was simple and a little irrelevant, "Because of Judy."

"Officer Hopps requested you, yes. And while she has fast become something of a VIP around here, she is not much less of a rookie than you, and hardly has the authority to pick people."

Bogo wished he could've snapped a picture of the fox's face at that exact moment. Ears back, head tilted, blank confusion dawning suddenly into realization.

"You were assigned to this precinct because I asked for you," Bogo explained. "Would you care to guess why?"

"Because if Judy decides to run straight into a fire I'm the only one that can talk her out of it."

Like a man truly of few words, Bogo said nothing, only tipped his glasses down his nose to stare at the fox over the thin frames.

"Fine. Because if Judy decides to run straight into a fire I'm the one that's going in after her."

"You aren't going to cite your own success?" Bogo said, baiting. "How high you ranked at the academy. The Bellwether case."

"Since we were speaking rhetorically I figured I'd skip straight to the point, sir. You need me to keep up with Hopps."

"I do, do I?" Bogo crossed his arms, challenging. "She was a pretty good officer even before you came on the scene, y'know."

"I know it."

"She's smarter than you."

"Statistically someone would have to be."

"She's lived her whole life with the aspiration to do this job. She eat, sleeps, and breathes it."

He didn't have anything to say to that. He just shrugged lamely.

"Wilde, you wouldn't know this because I don't care to talk about myself-"

"I never noticed."

Bogo continued on unphased. "But ten years ago, when I was an underling to someone else in this precinct, I did something my chief officer expressly disapproved of."

"Really?" The fox's ears perked up, literally. "Do tell."

"You do not need to know the details. All you need to know is that I defied my superior. And a man's name was cleared and a life was saved."

"No offense, but you really should not narrate stories. Little hint, Chief, it's hard to believe something like that when you don't give any details. Some people, places, and things. Try a couple prepositional phrases here or there-"

"Skipping to the point," Bogo grunted. "I wasn't the most decorated officer. But when the time came, I was appointed the new chief."

"Because you disregarded one order?"

"Because I did the right thing," Bogo insisted. "Even when it would've been safer to keep my mouth shut and follow orders. I thought I would never forget that moment, but-"

But somehow he had. He'd gotten so used to everyone around him taking his opinion as law that it absolutely floored him when a little bunny had the audacity to go over his head and take her own case, when he was in the room no less. But even that act of defiance failed to produce what Nick managed to not much more than a day later. A sense of shame.

"I know you aren't here out of a deep devotion to justice or duty or whatever else provokes a man to take this job. But for whatever reason you signed up, I asked for you. Because I'm not so thick-headed as to assume I'm never going to be wrong about something. And someone here's gotta have the guts to tell me."

"So, wait…" Nick held up one finger, holding on to the thought, "You wanted me for my back talk?"

"I wanted you because you were right. And because you don't look at the system like a damned sacred temple the way the rest do. A little defiance, for a good reason, can be worthwhile.

"However," here he stuck his pointed hoof directly under the fox's snout. "Choose your moments very carefully. I can't have you storming in here every time I need to break up your little slumber party. And I will not hesitate to punish you for insubordination."

"Aww, Chief, you really do care," Nick said, sarcastic but probably not sarcastic enough.

"Shut your mouth, Wilde," he said evenly. "You are dismissed."

Nick gave a slightly lazy salute and moved towards the door. The smug grin was back. Bogo couldn't help but wonder if he'd made a huge mistake.

"And Wilde," Bogo stopped him just before exiting. "You're back on the Gibson case. Get moving."


Caring

Bogo pushed open the door to his office, coffee in hoof, arms full of stacks upon stacks of case files. He immediately froze in shock and horror at the gruesome state of his office.

Some intruder had broke in and strung ribbon after ribbon of pink and red heart shaped streamers all across the ceiling. They twisted, playfully abhorrent, from the motion if the opening door as if they were taunting him. Heart confetti littered the floor. The most indecent travesty of all, a giant stuffed pink bear with a heart drawn onto it's belly, sat smiling amicably in his chair, peeking over his work space with it's unsettling black stitched doe-eyes.

Bogo took a deep breath.

"WILDE!" His bellow echoed throughout the station.

One floor below Judy looked at Nick and Nick looked at Judy and after a silent beat they both instantly broke into a run. They expertly dodged the crowd hanging around the front desk, skirted past the bullpen, nearly upsetting the water cooler in their haste to get to the back door. They burst out of the station and made a break for their car, Judy fumbling at her pockets for the keys as she ran.

"Sounds like the chief got his birthday present," Nick grinned mid-sprint.