(Note I used to have some music lyrics before each chapter, but after fan-fic suddenly deleted one of my stories, I've removed them. They're still on the A03 version though).

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Chapter 2:

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Wandering down the main street, Nick passed a number of Café's that were either overpriced, didn't serve his kind (as evident by the 'No-preds', 'No-Chompers', 'No-Foxes' or 'We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone' signs in the window) or both. If you were well off, you could always put your money where your mouth was and avoid serving the occasional pred who may come past. A few business owning prey mammals were so proud that they would even continue to turn down business in hard times, even if it meant them risking bankruptcy. Of course, most owners of bad establishments would become desperate enough to give in and serve preds, so that was okay. Bad news was that the food would likely be terrible and drinks overpriced. Being a man around town, so to speak, Nick knew a of a few places that possessed at least some semblance of value for money and, as per Friday evening tradition, he and his friends met up there to complain about the week's woes.

In the middle of the litter filled side alley, shaded in gloom by the surrounding buildings, were several scattered metal chairs and tables with the odd ragged parasol sticking out of the centre. A few sets of mismatching cutlery were laid out, holding down the single sheet of laminated paper that served as a menu. Even the condiments, all in seriously uncool plastic containers and bottles, seemed more than half empty. Grabbing a chair each, Nick and his two companions settled down before a fourth and final mammal appeared.

"Nick! Finnick! Benny!" came an enthusiastic shout from afar that sent three pairs of ears up and three sets of smiles growing across three muzzles, as a stocky Honey Badger jogged up to the fourth chair and sat down. Fur ruffled up, all unkempt and dirty, she was the epitome of a gutter punk. She was dressed in her favourite baggy beige cargo shorts and grimy camo vest combo, while sporting a pair of orange safety glasses, several earrings, a plaster on her snout and a red bandana tied around her head. Even her 'hair' didn't escape the look, with her head's stripe of white fur styled up into a short squat Mohican. For all her looks, however, Honey Badger was the bubbly, crazy, emotional glue that kept this quartet of mammals together. She was there to lighten their day; to give the three boys a chance to feel the softer feelings they all possessed but were unable to express in this cold, hard world and to engage their minds in 'stimulating' conversation. Ever excited at seeing the three, her collar shone with an orange warning light as she settled into her seat and grabbed the edge of the table, before rapidly shuffling and pulling herself forwards until she could rest her elbow on the dinner cloth and lean forwards in anticipation.

"What's new?" She shot out eagerly with wide eyes and erect ears, as if she was waiting for every precious second of time she could spend with them. Her head darted about from friend to friend, eagerly awaiting the news.

"Honey, you asked the same thing when we met this morning at your place for breakfast," Finnick began, his usually threateningly deep voice now laced with weary exasperation. "Nothing is new…" he sighed, "nothing is ever new and you know it."

Honey, still smiling and unfazed, immediately took her gaze off one friend and looked over at another, her face turning to Clawhauser who merely sighed.

"I'm your roommate Honeybun," he said meekly, avoiding eye contact. "If Finnick doesn't have anything new, I really don't. Can we just order our burgers and be done?"

Honey smiled before laughing, any semblance of volume control gone. "Well that's just fine Benny Boy! Shoot in there fast stuff and bring out the booty!" Honey continued to laugh, finding simple joy in life and her companions, while slapping her leg with exuberation and pointing into the shop. The others looked on, their eyes widening with worry, and began to lean forward with half outstretched arms and raised palms, ready to calm and comfort.

"Honeybun…" Benjamin Clawhauser started, his voice laced with concern and urgency but still far too late to stop the inevitable. Friends would always have many words to describe Honey: quirky, unbalanced, energetic, emotional, accident prone… it was why they loved her. But as she gestured and laughed, ever the energy bubble and all too excited, the inevitable sounded out with a hushed Buzz…

Her face flinched down and her jaw and eyes welded shut from the light punishment, a mere pinch compared to Nick's earlier incident. Honey fell silent for a moment, the raised shoulder on the side with her collar unit slowly lowering down while the three boys looked on silently and sorrowfully. Her now unfocused and suddenly tired eyes, previously darting about with energy, began flicking here and there before dropping down sadly as she began sniffing, breaking the silence. From across the table, Nick could see Honey's eyes begin to glaze over with tears as Benjamin Clawhauser got up to silently comfort her, his chubby arms and paws wrapping around her much smaller form while his flabby cheek gently rubbed against hers.

"Hey… hey… Honeybun…" Nick began to say softly, leaning forward with an outstretched paw, ready to comfort Honey too.

"No Slick… leave me alone for a mo'!'" she quietly shot back in what was almost a growl, her mood having suddenly shifted to a carefully tempered anger.

"I got shocked too today… the Jerks ran over my tail…"

"Yeh so…" she meekly lashed out, before burying her head into her paws as she began bawling, tears beginning to flow through her fingers and her words becoming mumbled and hard to decipher… "then we're both… naughty mammals aren't we Slick?"

"You're not naughty Honey," he said, desperately trying to calm Honey down as her collar went once more into the orange.

"I… I am… I am naughty…" Honey began wailing, like a young kit, as even Finnick began to look on with concern.

"Honey Badger!" Nick almost shouted, his concern evident as he leaned forward, his collar warming up into orange.

"Is a… Is a… Bad Mammal!" she replied back between guttural sobs, while her friends' ears drooped down in sorrow.

"No you aren't!" Nick shouted, drawing the stares of all three companions and thankfully pulling Honey out of her nose dive towards another, significantly more painful, shock. He looked into her eyes, his gaze firm and uninterrupted, and spoke firmly, clearly and truthfully with just a small hint of comfort added in, like a father or teacher would do. "Honey, you are the nicest person I know. You are not naughty, not bad, whatever your stinking collar tells you. The only bad mammals are the ones who make you wear it, okay?"

Honey's breakdown slowed somewhat as she looked up and nodded, smiling for a moment before it faded again, as she began fumbling and messing with her collar, shifting it back and forth an up and down. The eager eyes, and spirit, of before still seemed lost, and she looked around for comfort.

"It's like you always say Honey," Clawhauser said, his arms still hugging her and his eyes turning to meet hers. "The only bad mammals are those pesky sheep."

Honey paused for a second, before launching herself back at the rotund cheetah. As her metal chair skidded away, she embraced him and snuggled up into his clothes and fur, her head half burying itself in his flab and fat. As Clawhauser stroked her head and mumbled soft 'there there's', the size difference meaning his warm paw cupped around her head like a helmet, she breathed in his comforting scent with a deep breath before relaxing and smiling.

"Yes…" she quietly said, regaining her composure as her head rubbed some more against the orange fur, "very baaa-d mammals."

As she chuckled and the three others groaned at the joke, a set of coffees came out and they began to drink, finally content that they could enjoy Friday night like normal.

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"I never asked you Slick…" Honey said, while stuffing her face with a greasy cricket burger. "what's new with you today?"

Nick leant back with a wide, smug grin on his face and glanced at his companions, looking from left to right and back again. "I got Clawhauser and myself that weekend job in Little Rodentia!"

"Chez-E-Cheese?" enquired the cheetah, looking over at Nick.

"One and the same," he shot back, "starts tomorrow at 11:00 sharp."

"Good for you little Bro", harrumphed Finnick, as he finished downing a can of soft drink almost his own size and looked over. "Meanwhile, I'll be lying in and catching my beauty sleep!"

"Not so fast, short stuff," came the smug reply as Finnick turned and scowled, his collar flashing orange.

"What?!"

"I have a hustle planned out for you and Honey to do"

"And when was I consulted?"

"Never."

Finnick growled slightly before smashing his empty can onto his head, flattening it and releasing some of his pent-up rage before his collar could trigger. Sighing, he looked up to Nick and spoke. "Give me the low down."

Nick leapt up onto his chair and merrily straightened his fine tie before speaking out, "Many of the elephant sized ice cream stores sell giant jumbo pops for fifteen dollars. Now, you and Honey can melt those down in Sahara square before refreezing them into medium rodent sized pawpsicles in Tundratown. Sell them at two dollars a pop before flogging the sticks to a rodentian building supplier and BAM. Lotsa money." Nick continued to smile as he brushed his paws together and sat down, looking from friend to friend. Finnick seemed resigned to his fate while Honey was smiling with widening eyes, curiously preoccupied with a magnetic knife and its companion fork. Ben, however, leaned forward.

"Uh… Nick, two points," he said, his voice tinted with concern. "One, isn't it dangerous to go into Tundratown?
I mean, the polar bear Mafia…"

"The Mafia!?" Nick interrupted, one of his eyebrows pulled up in curiosity. "What kind of problem would they have with us freezing some stuff in a field?"

"I don't know?" Clawhauser replied with a shrug, "but we've all heard the stories, haven't we? About what their Don, Kozlov, does to those who cross his path."

"I heard that an arctic fox who tried to hustle him a single shot of Vodka… a single shot! He got turned into a still!" Honey suddenly piped in, barging into the conversation like a bull into a china shop.

"Doesn't sound so bad," Nick replied with a smug grin, "so how did Kozlov dispatch him? Did he shoot him or…?"

"Alcohol poisoning!" Honey interrupted.

"Still not that bad," Nick shrugged.

"With the fox's vodka…"

"If it's really that bad, then it was that stupid fox's fault for giving it to a mafia boss…"

"No…" Honey groaned, "the vodka from the fox-still… thing. There was a leak."

There was an awkward silence before Nick gave a muted chuckle and pinched the bridge of his muzzle, his eyes rolling up as he grabbed his burger in his paws. "Yes Honeybun, we've all heard the stories about Kozlov… I've also heard that he's father of the year material in private and will do anything to please his son. But I don't think we'll run into any trouble with what we're doing."

"And if we do, we can give him some of the pawpsicles!" Honey eagerly suggested, her fist and a finger raised up and a smile across her snout as she glowed with pride from her idea.

The sarcasm recognition failure at least managed to put a smile on the muzzles of her three friends, before Clawhauser spoke up again.

"So, that's number one. But number two, why do we need all this extra money anyway?" he curiously asked. "Financially we're all fairly OK now."

Finnick and Honey nodded in agreement as Nick merely sighed. "Yes… Now," he began to say bitterly, "but one thing I know about prey mammals is that they'll take every chance… every opportunity… every avenue to make our lives more miserable. We just need to ensure that we're ready for them."

"Ready for what?" Clawhauser asked, "I mean it's not as if the new gazelle tickets will be priced differently for preds and prey. She likes us… she has those cool tiger backup dancers."

"Remember the collars," Nick shot back, his voice sharp and his collar, currently held between his thumb and index finger for emphasis, glowing orange. "First they gave these things out free…" he grumbled. "Then it was means tested, with not so poor families paying some money. Then we all had to pay, but not the full amount. Then it was the full amount. Then it was the full amount plus low rate VAT. Then normal rate. Then LUXURY rate. What next, a collar duty? All for something terrible that parents are forced to buy for their poor ignorant kids and put on them despite knowing how much misery it will cause them."

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- In an office, on the other side of town–

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The office suite was old, definitely close to two hundred years or so. Rich and fluffy rugs lay on the darkly stained floorboards, the texture on the wood long lost after years of varnishing. Numerous fine paintings were lit up by the daylight, which shone in from the spectral flower garden outside via the huge sash windows on the far wall. In front of a fine mahogany dresser stood a pig. Dressed in stunning clothes, the height of current fashion, Mayor Swinton stood looking at the mirror as she applied her lipstick. Pursing her lips, she sighed a bit as she took the stick off and looked at her visage. The immaculate clothes, the neat and orderly jewellery, her manicured hair, her pink skin and nose free from any blemish. Her proud eyes dulled slightly and she huffed, muttering out three disappointed words. "Still a pig".

To say she despised having her species used as an insult was an understatement. All around her, throughout the city, were the fruits of her entire life's work. All around her lay the neatly ordered and prepared fruits of civilized mammal society. All around her was the evidence the she, and any member of her species, was and could be the ultimate example for what every mammal out there might become. Yet to some bigots, her species was the exact opposite. Dumb, greedy, messy, able to eat anything and everything while enjoying nothing more than a good naked roll in thick, sticky mud full of who knows what (in hindsight, she had to admit that the last point did have a certain… seductiveness to it?). However well she dressed and presented herself, she had heard of the laughter and jokes that poked fun at her kind and, despite knowing better, she was beginning to subconsciously believe them herself.

"Mayor Swinton…" came a cry from behind a wall, its thick Welsh accent stretching out the last syllable of each word while accompanied by the approaching sound of rapid footsteps. The Mayor merely turned and breathed out deeply, bringing a trotter up to her face as she did so.

"I am the captain…" she whispered to herself, eyes closed, trying to steady her resolve.

"Mayor Swinton…"

"Of this ship…"

"I've got news…"

"I must steer her forward…" her whisper hardened with the final word, showing her inner strength.

"About the budgie…"

"And never look back."

The door at the end of the hall burst open and a rather rotund sheep marched through. His fat wool made him a comical waddling sight, with what would have been baggy clothes on any other mammal straining to cover up the great white mass. "I got good news… and I got bad news…" he said. "Which one do you want?"

The mayor grumbled somewhat, before rolling her eyes. "Bad news first please."

"A second chomper has gone savage!"

She oinked at the news, shrugging as she did so. "Well, it's the police's problem if a pred has decided that civilized life is too good for him, not mine," she said with a hint of contempt, dismissing the news with a bored wave, "Next."

"Well, the new railways through Little Rodentia are making some money, although the bank man says we need to give him some more to pay off the interesting loan."

"And that's the good news?" came the mayors indignant reply.

"Well it is uhhh…" He stalled slightly. "I suppose it isn't… There's not lovely, isn't it?"

The Mayor sighed, rolling her eyes as she walked past Woolly, who had resumed his odd habit of eating shredded paper. "Just put a twenty percent duty on tame collars or something…" she idly suggested, waving at her deputy to follow.

"Won't that make them vile chompers not vote for you?" Woolly asked, evidently straining every synapse in his brain to think critically.

"They don't like me already," shot back the Mayor as she strolled out. Straightening her suit and back, her voice and accent rose as if she were about to give a great speech. "But no-one likes them," she continued, her index finger condescendingly upright and waggling. "They're ten percent of the population while rodent sized mammals make up over forty percent. It's cheap and easy to get the little ones on your side, Woolly. No politician can make everyone happy. No captain has an entirely loyal crew. The smart ones like me understand that and make sure that we're consistent when it comes to who's getting the short end of the stick."

Her speech finished as Woolly, absent minded and lost in thought, plodded after her, closing the great wooden doors behind him.

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-Back at a dingy café-

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"They make all the rules, that's the real rip-off." Nick finished, as he glumly returned into his seat and furiously kneaded his tie in his paw with frustration. Shuffling in a bit, he began flicking through the rest of his paper before his brow furrowed and his collar shot to orange.

"Another Fox Away advert?" queried Clawhauser.

"Yup…" Nick replied sarcastically, before standing up in his chair and putting on his most enthusiastic salesman voice. "For just Nineteen bucks ninety-nine, you can buy the full range of Zootopia's no.1 choice in anti-fox products!" he began, his right paw raised and ready to gesture across the screen like a telemarketer. "Fox repellent, guaranteed to give villainous vulpines terrible tinnitus for two to three weeks… Fox Taser, we doubled the legal voltage limit because we care about you! And, last but by no means least, the old favourite… Fox Away spray… wear on yourself to turn up the noses of thieving Todd's and carry as a spray to make any Reynard runny eyed". Nick finished his sincere pitch before smiling and winking, both thumbs up as his voice's sarcasm turned up to eleven. "What enlightened times we live in…"

Their table was quiet for a moment, bar the slowly munching of food, before Honey gave up on disassembling a plastic bottle cap any further and piped in. "Don't worry Nick, that stuff's just made by a whole load of dumb Bunnies."

Nick chuckled, before sighing. "Scared, dumb bunnies who keep plopping out kits and outnumber my kind more and more each day…"

"I mean," Honey enthusiastically continued, "I kept writing to them asking if they could make a sheep repellent, and they came back saying I was craaaazzyyyy!"

The three men sighed, wearily ready to accept the oncoming lecture and too tired to try and protest.

"Cuz' the Sheep are the most vile… dangerous mammals on this earth," Honey continued, hunkering down and firing out her words as fast as she could, her palms outstretched in front of her and moving up and down with each word. "They're the ones who get us to wear these dumb collars, and treat everyone badly…"

Nick, completely disinterested, took apart his newspaper and handed out the sheets. He and Finnick continued reading, oblivious to Honey's rant, while Clawhauser got out a pen and began doing puzzles on the back page.

Honey, meanwhile, was only getting faster and louder. Her arms gestured and shook as she spoke while she stared at each of her friends, oblivious to their behaviour. "Back in the old days… all the sheep ever did was stay in flocks and do the same things as each other. Now they must have had a hive mind, or something or…SWEET CHEESE AND CRACKERS!."

"What?" Finnick asked unenthusiastically, not even moving his eyes from his paper and with no interest in Honey's answer.

"A hive mind… A Hive Mind! This explains it all. All this time, I've been trying to slot the missing pieces together: how they infiltrate the government; how they pigeonhole predators and prey; how their communications and secret societies are never caught… And it's 'cause they never need to send written communication. They're all one mind in multiple bo…JESUS CAPYBARA!"

Honey's sudden revelation shook the three friends from their reading material while Honey's collar, now glowing orange, kept them concerned. Still smiling, she looked down at it and let it drop to green, before looking around and winking. Shushing the other three, she pointed at the device before covering it up.

"Be very quiet, they might hear us," she whispered, her eyes gesturing to the collar. "I have the ultimate proof for this theory. Irrefutable evidence… you guys can't deny it."

"What…?" Nick lazily asked. "Wool circles? Mysterious sheep in black? Pet food unable to melt steel wool?"

Honey merely hunkered down chuckling, before leaning forward and shielding her lips from potential observers. "The plural of sheep…" she whispered, "is sheep!"

"OH EM Goodness," shouted Clawhauser, who stood up wide eyed, his collar orange with his excitement. The sudden outburst drew the others attention, and they fixed their eyes on the now jovial big cat.

"Aaah craaap," Finnick began to drone as he slapped his head with the palm of his hand, "Not you as well."

"Gazelle is planning a new album!" the cheetah jovially replied, grinning as he looked about.

"Let's just pay our bill and go home," Nick wearily suggested as he finished his food, rolling his eyes as he grabbed out a note and slammed it on the table. The others nodded and contributed their share too, before getting up and walking off together.

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"Hey Bro," Finnick said, looking up at his companion as they walked home. "This hustle tomorrow… how do you plan to get an elephant ice cream store to sell Honey and I a Jumbo pop?"

"They won't," Nick clarified. "They'll sell Nick and Finnick a Jumbo pop."

"Wha… You and I! Two foxes rather than one, one of whom is a red-un! That'd make it less likely idiot!"

"Well Finn, we all know how dumb prey are. But while they might not know the difference between a red fox and a fennec, they'll know the difference between a badger and you."

"What on earth you talkin' about Nick. Did you forget your brain back at the…" Finnick paused as he looked up at Nick, a smug grin and wide eyes betraying the latter's mood. "No…" Finnick tried to say stoically, only for his collar to immediately flash orange and his voice hitch up somewhat, actually sounding scared for a moment.

"And I mean, it allows me to show off one of my greatest creations to the entire city…"

"Please, no…"

"Come on," Nick teased, "It's been ages since I saw Mr Toot Toot…"

"AH, HELL NO…" Finnick screamed, followed a second later by a familiar Zap.