"I implore you. Try. Try to make the world a better place. Look inside yourself and recognize that change starts with you. It starts with me. It starts with all of us."
No more words lay on her script below, but Officer Judy Hopps needed no such thing. Her early days of acting in school plays had more than prepared her for a simple speech in front of graduates who, as much as they claimed the contrary, had not the slightest idea of what their future would entail. Her speech was the first piece of advice they would hear for a while on behalf of the ZPD. After the ceremony, there would be no time for extra pointers or lessons, what with how quickly distress calls and reports come in. When she heard the jubilant cheers and thunderous claps, she imagined the future-officers appreciated her time.
Still holding her finishing expression - a widened, toothy smile - Judy peered out into the crowd. Only a year ago, she had been one of them, eager to have her badge pinned on her new uniform. At her graduation, Mayor Lionheart singled her out as the ZPD's first rabbit officer thanks to the Mammal Inclusion Initiative. How quickly it turned from a dream come true to a fervent obligation when he assigned her to Precinct 1, the heart of Zootopia. Such an accomplishment affected Judy as it would any rabbit from the countryside who found themselves waddling in a rampant city. With her idealistic mentality having been fed by her feat, Judy had anticipated perfection in her future. As it turned out, the degree to which she was wrong reflected in her own decision to mention it in her speech. Life is simply more than a bag of fresh carrots. She learned the hard way, and tried earnestly to pass it down to the newcomers.
Judy's eyes made their way through the crowd until they caught the mammal whom she hoped had understood her speech to the fullest. Amongst the elephants' flailing trunks, on which her vision couldn't help but feel tempted to shift, she maintained eye contact with him and her final point replayed in her mind a tad more desperately.
Change starts with you and me. It starts with all of us.
The fox she gazed upon, the soon-to-be Officer Nick Wilde, stood out from the crowd primarily in magnitude and color. His surrounding fellow graduates' grey, yellow, and brown fur provided a sharp contrast to his reddened frame that was too difficult to ignore in spite of the blue matching police uniforms he wore like all the rest of them. Aside from the teeth, which Judy figured he, as many predators would, was purposefully not showing, his smile mirrored hers.
He looked as though her speech had struck a chord in him. This had been Judy's goal all along, having even refrained from showing him her script prior to the ceremony in an effort to maintain the spontaneity upon hearing it. Even though they had been staring at each other for an eerily long period of time, Judy didn't want to look away. The longer they stood there, no matter how highly the stage between them elevated her, the more confident she felt that their time as partners in the Zootopia Police Department would be all the more fruitful.
But Nick serious' timer was nearing its end. His sincere smile slowly fell victim to the grin he always gave Judy when he knew he was annoying her. Judy set to roll her eyes exaggeratedly. The others' probably wouldn't notice amidst their celebrations. Suddenly, she felt a gaping hand place itself upon her left shoulder. Her gaze into the crowd broke, ears slightly twisting outwards, and she turned and saw a purple-skinned hippopotamus. If she had not been standing on a stool to reach the podium, he would have towered over her. On it, she managed to reach his neck's height if she kept her ears upright.
"Ahem. That will be all, Officer Hoops." His booming voice distorted his polite tone.
The rejoicing and residual chattering from the graduates and audience died down. Glancing into the crowd for a final time, catching the faces of those who had grown impatient, Judy turned to the hippo, replied, "Sorry! Right," and hopped off the stool. Landing feet-first, she quickly trotted to the back of the stage, where two mammals had occupied the middle and leftmost seats available. As Judy jumped just high enough to situate herself on the white chair, the jittering feeling arrived in the aftermath of her speech. She had been well-prepared, but the natural, instinctual questions knocked on her door. Did she mess up somehow? Did the graduates understand what in the name of cheese and crackers she was talking about? She sat with it for a while, and realized that the worst case scenario was likely. They had been waiting all morning for this moment, and inspirational her speech was, but they may have been too excited to listen as thoroughly as she had wished. The burly hippo had taken her place on the podium, started calling out names, and one by one the new officers walked on stage to receive their badge. A pattern emerged. Name-call, pause, brief applause. A firm, yet innocent voice cut off Judy's train of thought.
"Officer Hopps? If I may, that was quite the wonderful speech you gave!"
Seemed as though at least one mammal other than Nick had at least pretended to listen. Judy promptly turned to the two mammals, both female. She wasn't sure which of them had complimented her, but replied in hopes that the same one would respond.
"Oh, thanks. But be honest, you don't think I rambled, did you?"
"Of course not! It was certainly more inspirational than anything I could whip up at my age. I don't believe we've had the pleasure." The mammal closest to Judy, a snow leopard, held out her hand with a warm smile. "I'm Meliora. I've been asked to fill in as assistant mayor until a new one is elected."
"Good to-wait, what?!" Ears erect, her expression turned bewildered. "You're...Bellwether's replacement?" The Hippo's name-calling echoed over the speakers, filling any moment of awkward silence. Fortunately for Judy, the graduates hadn't heard or paid no mind to her slight outburst.
After a brief, quiet laugh, Meliora replied. "Well, yes, but I'd rather not be associated with her. Surely you can understand what I mean when I say she must have had a few screws loose. Why a lamb would want to smash the minority population even more with one her hooves is beyond me."
"Oh, of course. I'm sorry I...it was the first thing that came to mind." With a soft, remorseful giggle, she moved her eyes to the mammal behind Meliora. "And you must be...?"
The mammal on the seat behind Meliora, a squirrel, tore her concentrated stare off her papers and spoke more softly. "Jacqueline. I'm writing an article for a newspaper." She wore rectangular-shaped glasses and held her notebook so that its back was facing Judy and Meliora, as if she were hiding her writing. Just as Judy needed something to help her reach at the podium's height, Jacqueline sat upon a stack of books on the white chair so that her head was level with Judy's, not including her upright ears.
Judy preserved the smile on her face, yet it was impossible to refrain from showing a hint of curiosity through it. "I don't suppose this graduation ceremony is more important than the others? They are annual, after all."
Jacqueline curved her smile wider and blinked slowly. "Trust me, Officer. I had many choices for the subject of my next story, and I still chose this one."
"Why?" Judy was surprised she had to ask for the reason. It was as if she were hiding a significant piece of information from her.
"Because you're here, quite frankly. It just so happens that the ceremony after which you solve an extremely convoluted and socially destructive case is the same one where a fox decides to enlist for the first time. Coincidence?" She lifted her pen to make a point. "Mind you, the story isn't about the ceremony in particular, more about the events of the Missing Mammal Case and how you out of all the cops came to solve it. Clearly, you've inspired quite a few of us."
"You're…" Judy cut herself off at first, tearing her eyes from both Meliora and Jacqueline. A flushed feeling came upon her. As harmless and beneficial as it seemed on the outside, within her efforts to solve the Case lay questions that she herself hadn't even thought to answer. Ever since the debacle at the press conference, where she not only implied that predators were prone to "reverting back to their savage ways," but almost permanently killed her friendship with Nick, the thought of public recognition made her uneasy. Before she returned her gaze to the squirrel, ears drooping, she urged herself not to say anything before processing it thoroughly. Jacqueline seemed already focused on Nick, and Judy wasn't sure he or she wanted his information out in the open.
As she locked eyes with Jacqueline, Judy tried again. "You're writing a story about me?"
"In a way, yes. The waves of stories about you are bound to be put on paper at some point. I'm just getting a head start before all the journalists still hooked on Bellwether and the art of political deception start moving to you and that of determination."
Judy started to wonder if her ears would fall off. She never considered the inevitable prospect of getting swarmed by the public soon enough.
"It's nothing to be ashamed of," Meliora tried, scratching the back of her head with a bashful smile. "If you can put up with hundreds of questions thrown at you, then you can appreciate how many thankful mammals would give their tails to talk to you. It might pay off in helping you realize that without you, the city of Zootopia would be very one-dimensional, to say the least. All that attention is on you for a reason, after all." Her voice turning more declarative, she drove her main point home. "I'm afraid I only have six months until the last-minute campaign runs its course and a new assistant mayor takes my place. That's why I hope to work in close conjunction with you and the ZPD as much as possible. If you ever need anything, it will be my pleasure to assist you in any way."
If Judy hadn't been so, as she stated in her own speech, glass-half-full, she might have deferred to worry about Jacqueline's implication even further. But Meliora's offer called out to her humble side. A compliment, especially one about the Case, required Judy to reply with humility. Throughout her time in the ZPD, she had always been advocating for cooperation and teamwork. There was no point in doing it alone. Such is why she made valiant efforts, some of which bordered on verge of immoral or even invasive, to keep Nick enlisted in her work.
Even when he had apparently made it clear that he never wanted to lay eyes on her again, although it took her a few months to muster up the courage, she knew there was no point in attempting to finish the Case without him. As her ears floated upwards, her response to Meliora flowed naturally and spontaneously, the words coming from within.
"You don't need to thank me. Everything I did was through the ZPD. Even the officers who weren't directly a part of the Case were still a part of it. They could have been off duty when the Former Assistant Mayor was arrested, and in a way, they may as well have been the one putting her in handcuffs. If that makes sense…?"
"It does." Meliora made no efforts to hide her astonishment, her eyes open wide and eyebrows raised. "It is...rare you find somebody with that kind of modesty in Zootopia. Forgive me, but I was worried the talk of your own success would get to your head. You could say I was expecting a little more pretension."
Judy giggled, brushing it off. The same non-patronizing attitude impressed even Nick when they had first met. "It could be because I'm not originally from here. I'm from Bunnyburrow, and as much as I needed to get away from that place, the rural politeness never leaves me to this day."
Her voice was cut off by Jacqueline's slightly audible scribbling. Judy gave only one eye to her activity, and had to consciously keep her ears up. If it was one thing she missed about Bunnyburrow, it was the lack of lingering press. She could have been the first ever bunny to land on the moon. No interviewer or journalist would even bother showing up to Bunnyburrow for anything. Part of her missed it, or at the very least, wouldn't miss Zootopia as much as she believed. It'd be naive of her to claim she truly enjoyed living in her narrow home - if that couldn't be understated any further - and she had to admit that some aspects of the city were only tolerable. But her other half reminded her of the time she tried to move back after falling out with Nick, and how unbearable it was to recede within the site of her family's tradition: grow up to work on the carrot farm you also lived around your entire life. The consequence of handing the favor to her latter half was damning enough. As long as she remained in Zootopia, the press were in for the long haul, and it would stay that way considering her reluctance to move back home.
Her suspicious stare at the journalist briefly turned into one of reserved contempt before she dragged her eyes back to Meliora. "I just hope living in the city for so long doesn't negatively affect my personable side. As an officer I'm always trying to look out for others instead of assert whatever power they may think I have over them."
"Nonsense. Your home will always be a part of you. You just have to remember to think of your family often. They must think of you, I would presume, and I certainly hope you reminisce about your hometown just as much, if not more. As long as you remember your roots, they'll stay under your feet for as long as you're away."
While nodding, Judy's conscience hastily began to dig into the can of worms Meliora had just opened. Managing to surpass it with willpower, she changed the subject. "If I may, do you know who the new candidates are?"
Meliora took a breath, but was interrupted by Jacqueline's all-too-loud pen-click. The latter ignored it, but Meliora chuckled and briefly turned to the squirrel. "It's on the Internet, honey. No need to scribble it down." Before she continued her point, Judy noticed Meliora's smile aimed towards her that screamed understanding and acknowledgement of her fear. At the moment Meliora's lips started to curve, however, Jacqueline would not have been able to see it, for she had turned her back just in time. She seemed an observant and immensely sly assistant mayor.. Judy pondered if Nick would be able to pull that smile-stunt off, but quickly traded the curiosity in for the political intel.
Meliora started. "One of them is-"
" And now for our final graduate ." The speakers boomed louder than before, and the hippo seemed to have raised his voice. " I'd like to invite one of our officers to the stage. It is rare that prospective officers apply with a partnership request before spending at least few weeks at the station, but when we know with whom a graduate wishes to work early on, we see the value in sharing the tradition of becoming partners together." Placing his free hand on the mic to prevent feedback, the hippo slightly rotated his frame towards the back of the stage. He held the last badge case and held it out towards where Judy was sitting " So if we could continue that tradition today, I'd give Officer Judy Hopps the honor of presenting her partner, Nicholas Wilde, with his badge."
As everyone started to clap, Meliora and Jacqueline included, Judy's jaw simply dropped. They couldn't be doing this right now. It had to be a joke. Hoping she would wake up from a dream on the way to the podium, she managed to force a cheeky smile and hopped off the chair, taking the smallest strides towards the hippo who patiently waited for her to take the badge case. Nick had yet to appear on the stage, but Judy knew he'd be walking faster than her.
Chief Bogo had been insistent on concealing Nick's involvement in the Case over the course of the weeks following Bellwether's arrest. Judy was never entirely sure why. It could have been a personal retaliation for when Nick wounded his ego ever so deeply. He had not only exposed Bogo for somehow forgetting simple subtraction, but also his implicit bias against a bunny cop. As greatly as Judy appreciated Nick's change of heart at that moment - the ignition to occasions like these - it must have made Bogo see him in an even more negative light. But Judy entertained that she should be cutting Bogo more credit. He was the Chief, after all. He must work under some level of objectivity.
If she were giving Bogo the benefit of the doubt, which she promptly realized she should have done in the first place, it helped her better understand why she was taking her dear time to simply complete the walk to the podium. When she mentioned the ZPD gaining its first fox during her speech, facing Nick, her heart rate had slightly increased past the naturally escalated rate from simply talking in front of a crowd. In an earlier draft of her script, the better part of her removed lines that subtly singled him out as a will-be exceptional asset to the force. Until now, she had brutally repressed the feelings, but now that it had been brought to public attention, it was all flowing out of her eyes. The way she managed to even "convince" Nick to help her. How she managed to make Duke Weaselton talk, and how she didn't care that the same weapon she used against him almost froze off her tail all the same. Finally, she knew full well that if any circumstances had been different, she never would have found Cliffside Asylum and, furthermore, the predators Mayor Lionheart had jailed. For a fraction of a second, Judy seemed like the more conniving component of the soon-to-be dynamic duo. If it weren't for this stupid ZPD partnership tradition of whose existence prior to the ceremony she hadn't the slightest modicum of awareness, she may have just scraped by without any potentially tipped-off spectators.
But every optimist calls level-headed, objective thoughts the work of pessimism, and Judy was no exception. Just past the halfway mark, amidst the audience's noises of approbation, her bright side observer kicked in. The skytram conversation played out in her head. Nick's life story - the sole reason why he acted like himself - reminded her how happy he must be at this moment compared to her, even if he would never show it. This was Nick's prime achievement of taking back what he should have been handed as a youth. And so, she could be happy for him. Aside from this, when linking it back to herself, she started to realize how she had fulfilled her life dreams and then some. Of course, she now understood making the world a better place would take quite a bit more time, but leaving Bunnyburrow and moving to Zootopia led to the inception of being a real, not to mention, successful cop. Now she was the reason Nick was one, too. It was a only a wonder why it wasn't as enlivening as she had anticipated.
Nonetheless, as she delicately grasped onto the badge case with a graceful nod, her smile became slightly more real, as fake as it still was. Nick's mantra - the moral of his life story - was starting to make all the more sense.
He stood off near the corner of the stage, almost meekly. It was as if he were too reserved to approach her, and it didn't take long for Judy to acknowledge she would have to walk even further.
Looking into his ecstatic face, no matter how polished and stern he made it seem, fueled her latter side again. The more genuinely glad and overjoyed he was, the less apparent his dark, suspicious history was to Judy. After all, they were friends. She knew it well enough to know that he otherwise would not have signed up for police training as hastily. It was still a matter of wonder to what degree she influenced him, but at this point, she had thought positively enough so that her cheeky bunny side could repress every feeling that was so much as neutral. Judy stared at Nick, smile now fully intact and bright, and peered out into the crowd below the stage before glancing at the badge case and slowly opening it as an explorer might open a newly-found chest with a myriad of delicacies. Integrity, Bravery, Trust , the badge read. The words circled around its center, a simple five-edged star. In her peripheral she saw her own badge on her uniform, and paralleled it with the time Bellwether pinned it on her. At least Nick would be spared the immense irony.
Judy cautiously placed the badge on Nick's uniform, now fully homogeneous with her's and the graduates', and fiddled around with it until she heard a slight click. She glanced at it one final time, as artists might take a moment to glance at their own work, and peered up at Nick before stepping back. Nick's glance downward lingered at the badge for a brief second longer, but faced his partner with what Judy saw as a wider smile. The joyful aspect of it all overcame her that she couldn't help straighten her posture to an exaggerated state and give a salute. There was no possible way the hippo took the time to salute every graduate, if he did at all, but the danger of it seeming as if Nick was the subject of favoritism invaded Judy's mind too late.
Nick's reaction said it all. His posture slouched, and while he maintained his smile, it turned slightly lazy and his eyelids and eyebrows lowered. He did eventually salute back, but Judy predicted a half hour of him ridiculing her for what turned out to be an overblown gesture. It certainly wasn't uncharacteristic of Judy, given how spirited a bunny she was, but that wouldn't stop Nick from bothering her about it. This could one of the rare exceptions, where perhaps he knew it might cause more harm than good in such a public situation. For this one time, he seemed to let her win and he matched her salute.
The deed was done. The elephants sounded their trumpets again, while others rapidly clapped. The graduates tore off their hats and threw them into the air, signaling the end of the ceremony and the start of the reception. Judy broke their locked stare with each other first, glancing slightly down with a sigh, but Nick immediately caught her attention.
"Remind me to never stop reminding you just how cute that was." Now Nick's smile was the most lazy it had been that day. They both still held their saluting gesture towards each other, and it was doubtful anybody could hear them as the sound of residual cheers and new conversation drowned them out.
"Do you want this hand on my forehead to approach your face in a very violent fashion?" Judy kept her smile too, but flattened it. She probably would have glared intently, and maybe even growled, even if her growls never sounded entirely menacing, but Nick had thrown her a curveball insulting her amidst a public spectacle. Struggling to hold her warm, overjoyed expression, Judy judged from Nick's that he knew what he was up to. If this was his version of getting back at her for the Z-Train business, however, she'd have to make up for the disproportionate severity in the joke.
"That'd be perfect. The ZPD would love to see a partnership they just publicly endorsed dissolve as quickly as it formed."
"Heh. Keep calling me cute and I might not care what the ZPD thinks, slick."
"In that case, just make sure to get my right cheek, I happen to have a very strong itch there at this point and time and I'm not going to be the first of us to break this pose while there are still eyes on the stage."
"Well looks like-"
"Officer Hopps!" a familiar voice cut Judy's retort off. Nick's smile widened as his prediction was correct.
Out of habit, Judy peered up as she turned around, recognizing the greater chance of it being a taller animal calling out to her. But from her peripheral, Jacqueline trotted forwards and Judy had to tilt her neck down. "Yes? And please, call me Judy."
"I know this might not be the best time." the squirrel panted briefly, as if she had been trying to catch up to Judy even though she was standing completely still, locked in a ridiculous gesture she herself initiated. "May I interview you?"
AN
I decided to throw the previous chapter out there with almost no context. I didn't want to make the typical formal introduction where I give my life story and discuss how I came to enjoy writing. It's really not at all interesting, either way.
I did want to thank everybody who took the time to read the first chapter, which was technically a prologue although I didn't bother to call it one because of the site's limitations (unless you really can make prologues on AO3, not sure). It really kept my motivation level up to whip out this next one within a week. This brings me to my first main point. In terms of update schedules, I will try my hardest to post weekly. Unfortunately, I can't be sure this will happen every time. Of course, real life comes first, and I'm currently taking a two-semester summer physics course now so I'm busy having the dandiest of times. Otherwise, I'm a slow reader and a deathly slow writer. At my transitional, learning level, I second-guess myself almost every other sentence and am not surprised when ten minutes have gone by with no ability to write, or even think sometimes, at all. I've committed myself to this a month ago, when I realized I might want to try becoming a hobbyist writer who sees the value in improving at the written word. How successful I'll be, I don't know, but it can't hurt to try.
I'm fully aware of the circumstances that surround the creation of this story. It's 2018, far off from the time of this fandom's peak, and Nick and Judy have been written together, regardless of if the ship sets sail, in almost every single way under the sun. For one, my primary goal of this story is to improve my own writing, so a lot of the focus is on sentence structure, dialogue, syntax, etc. This is not to say I don't want to make an enjoyable, emotive story, however. I do believe I have the potential to make something refreshing in this regard, but I'm sure some of what I come up with will have been undoubtedly done before in some aspect. I don't plan to make a traditional Wildehopps story, I will say that. I tagged this story as a Crime/Drama for a reason. As of now, I'm not even sure if I'm going to ship them, which is why I decided to use both the gen and slash tags (and furthermore I'll accept full responsibility if I unintentionally mislead you. Apologies.).
Above all else, I'm hoping that those who decide to read this story for whatever reason enjoy the content but also see what I hope will be a progression in writing quality throughout the chapters. Thank you for your time.
And P.S. Please let me know your thoughts on the chapter lengths. I was groveling over if I should make this longer because I didn't think much happened here, but it takes a while for me to read it, so I'm not entirely sure.