Disclaimer: Zootopia stories, characters, settings, and properties belong to the Walt Disney Co. This story is written under Fair Use Copyright laws.
The Fire Triangle—A Zootopia Fanfiction
Part One:
Fuel
Author's note
Okay, now here is where the revised storyline REALLY begins to diverge from v.1.
(I like to think I got Nick and Judy right this time.)
Chapter 1 – With This Ring
(Continued…pt.3)
"You KISSED me! What did you have to kiss me for?"
Judy was staring up at Nick with a mixture of shock and puzzled surprise.
For several seconds, the fox was unable to respond or even look at her; his expression was one of uncharacteristic contrition
"Now Carrots," he said, making and short stopping motions with his paws, "let's just calm down and pin this conversation to the wall…"
Her eyes seemed to grow by two sizes.
"Pin...wall? What in the name of sweet cheese n' crackers are you talking about, Nick?"
Before the fox could answer her, Judy glanced past him and spotted a bubbler drinking fountain about six paces away. Ignoring him for the moment, she pushed her was past and made a mad dash for the water, covering the distance in two leaps and a bound. The fountain was at least a head-and-a-half too high for a bunny to reach, but Judy Hopps wasn't about to quit now. Jumping up full force, she grabbed the bubbler's rim like a basketball hoop and plunged her face into the basin, blubbering and gurgling and splashing water over the edge.
A few seconds later she came up for air, spitting water and sour words.
"Ick…Yuck! Carnivore breath! Bluhhhh!"
When she shoved her face back in the bowl, it looked to Nick as if his partner was almost attempting to drown herself.
The splashing went on like for almost a full two minutes before Judy finally finished and hopped back down to terra firma. When she hit the ground, the first thing she saw was Nick Wilde offering her a pawkerchief. She snatched it out his grip as if taking back a stolen item and began to rapidly dry her face, angrily at first but then at a slower, more measured pace.
And then at last, the bunny cop looked at her partner again; her anger seemed to have mostly cooled—but her confusion was still running at high revs.
"For crying out loud fox," she said, staring up at him as if he'd suddenly sprouted a third eye, "What the HECK did you do that for? Everyone and their third cousin must have seen it."
Nick spread his paws wide, pawlms open and, pointing towards the ground.
"I…I'm sorry Carrots, really I am, but it was all I could think of right then."
Judy's ears fell back and her nose began to twitch. She had been expecting one of his 'clever-fox' comebacks, but instead he sounded genuinely apologetic.
She decided to tone it down a little.
"All you could…think of? Nick, I don't understand what you mean. Help me out, okay?" "
He sighed and began to chew on his lip.
"Uhm, didn't you see what happened back there, Judy? Didn't you notice that hippo, moving to block the door?'
Judy thought hard for a second. No, she hadn't seen that; Nick had been in her line of sight. But she had seen the hippo moving away from the door after…hey, wait a second!
She put her paws on her hips, regarding the fox with one eye wider than the other
"Just a minute, Slick. How could you have seen him? You had your back turned."
His answer was both simple and immediate.
"I saw him in one of the mirrors, Carrots. You know; the ones on top of the display counter."
Judy could have kicked herself over the rooftops. The mirrors on the counter…DUH! She'd forgotten; the Rafaj Brothers didn't sell only engagement rings, there were also earrings and necklaces.
Taking advantage of her momentary disquiet, Nick hastened to continue, "Yeah, and it looked like that one jackal was reaching under the counter to hit the shutters. I had to do something, and fast!"
The good news was that the last of Judy's anger melted away at this news; the bad news was that it was immediately replaced by a rising sense of panic. Her nose began to twitch even more rapidly and she could feel her heart hammering in her chest.
She blinked her eyes shut for a second and drew in a short, hard breath; she would NOT give in to it, period!
"All right Nick," she said, "Give to me straight, do you think they were onto us?"
The fox moved quickly to reassure her.
"Noooo, if that had been the case, Ahmed would have just asked to see the ring again and then cancelled the sale as soon as he had it back; it's what I would have done. No, they didn't make us, but they knew something wasn't right." He looked away for a second, growling and kicking at the ground with his heel, "and it was my fault…DUMB fox."
If Judy Hopps's nose had only been twitching a moment ago, now it was practically doing the shimmy; Nick Wilde's vulnerable side was something you saw only about as frequently as a total eclipse of the sun
"Your fault?" she said, "what do you mean, your fault?"
He sighed again and fessed up.
"I forgot and called you Carrots right before I put the ring on your finger; that's what set them off."
Judy groaned; she couldn't help it. Yes he had—and it had flown right past her. Nick had been calling her Carrots for so long now that she'd not only gotten used to it, but had even come to see it as a term of friendship.
But to an outsider, to someone who didn't know any better—and especially to a pair of old-school mammals like the Rafaj brothers—Oh yes, Nick calling her that would have raised a red flag all right.
And now Judy understood something else; Nick hadn't just happened to be looking in that mirror when things began to go south—or at Ahmed al-Rafaj. He had realized his mistake and been on the alert for any trouble.
She began to rub a pensive finger against her chin.
"Soooo, you thought that if you kissed me, it might make that pair of jackals so mad they'd throw us out of the shop without realizing what they were doing?"
"Uhmmmm, welllll…yeah." Nick was shuffling his foot and looking at the ground again.
Judy eyed him sternly for a second, and then she laughed and punched him playfully on the arm.
"Ow!"
"Then quitting beating yourself up already, CLEVER fox." She waved a paw around them at the street, "It worked; we're here outside the store and we've got the diamond. Your idea worked!" Something in the Judy's throat caught up with her just then and she coughed twice and cleared her throat into a fist.
"Only do me a favor, Slick," she said, regarding him with a jaundiced but good-humored eye, "Next time brush your teeth first, okay?"
Instead of heartening the fox, Judy's words had the exact opposite effect; now he looked as if he was fighting off a heart attack.
"N-Next time…? You mean…I… Kiss you again; are you serious, Fluff?"
Judy nearly tripped over backwards. Oh good, sweet… Had she really just said…? Now she was the one making stopping motions with her paws.
"Wha…? No Nick, no…I didn't mean it like that, I…"
Her Mea Culpa ended abruptly when she saw that Nick Wilde's jadestone eyes had turned to sly, narrow slivers and that the corners of his mouth were trying to curl upwards.
"Oh har har…very funny," she half groaned half grumbled, folding her arms. Whoa, it hadn't taken him very long to revert back to his old habits, had it? "You're impossible sometimes, you know that, fox?" she told him.
Nick hunkered down on his knees with that famous big smile on his face.
"And you wouldn't want me any other way, rabbit."
Judy looked off to the side for a second, tapping thoughtfully at a cheek, playing the old game.
"Would I want that? No I guess I wouldn't." she said, and then offered back the pawkerchief he'd given her. When Nick tried to reach for it, she flipped it over his eyes, "Psyche!"
"I may have deserved that." The fox told with faux solemnity, stuffing the kerchief back in his pocket, but then his expression sharpened and he was looking past her shoulder. "Heads up, Carrots…company."
Judy turned and saw a scruffy, red wolf in torn jeans and a faded tank-top coming towards them, pushing a shopping cart stuffed with various items of no practical use.
"Hey, 'scuse me folks" he said, raising paw in gesture of hail-fellow-well-met. His voice was like a cinder block being dragged across rough concrete; his eyes appeared as nothing more than puffy slits in his head.
Nick slipped on his mirrored sunglasses and Judy's right paw went back to her hip—but neither one made any kind of effort to wave away the approaching street-mammal.
Pulling his cart up beside the fox and bunny, the wolf flexed his fingers on the push-bar for a second, but instead of making the standard plea for spare change, he angled his head in the direction of a produce-truck parked in a nearby alley—and in so doing, revealed a coil of wire plugged into his left ear. (Judy could also see that the items in the shopping cart included a tac-vest, pepper-gas, and a trank-dart gun.)
"If you two are done with your little spat, you're wanted in there right now," the wolf told them, his voice both low and edgy. Without waiting for an answer, he turned and shambled on his way.
Judy and Nick regarded each other for a second and then bolted for the alley. The bunny took three steps and made the rest of the way in a couple of bounds. Nick tried to drop down on all fours to keep up with her, but then whoops…Sahara Square, bright sunlight, hot pavement, ouch!
He caught up with his partner just as she finished climbing up into the tailgate.
"You okay?" she asked, looking down a worried expression.
"No worries, rabbit," Nick answered her, waving his paws in the air as if to cool them. "I love the smell of crispy paw-pads in the morning. Smells like…dead heat."
Ohhhh boy; Judy could FEEL her eyes rolling upwards and towards the left. "This is going to be another one of those watches, isn't fox?"
She reached down to help him up onto the truck. Nick took her paw in a firm grip and she could tell his burns were nothing that a few short minutes wouldn't heal
"Uhm say Carrots," he said, turning serious for a second, "My breath wasn't really…THAT bad was it?"
Judy tilted her head sideways, and her expression skewed at a crooked angle.
"Let me put it this way, Slick," she said, and then rapped twice on the truck door with her knuckles. "Remember back in the jewelry store, when you saw my eyes fill up with tears? I wasn't faking."
She rapped again and threw the door latch, rolling the door a third of the way open and ducking quickly inside.
"Ouch!" Nick yipped, "Okay, that burns."
He slipped in behind her, closing the door afterwards.
There was no produce in the 'produce truck'; it was a regular rolling cop-shop—at least eight ZPD officers inside, probably more.
On the left side wall of the cargo box, a row of tac-vests were hung in patient anticipation. Opposite these Officer Dan Higgins (a hippo) and Officer Claire Swinton (a pig) were keeping their eyes glued to a bank of flat-panel monitors, all of them displaying surveillance-cam images of Rafaj Brothers Jewelers.
Claire Swinton was easily the newest cop on the team, but she was far from anyone's rookie. A ten-year veteran of Zootopia Corrections, she had transferred to the ZPD after the city had elected to privatize the prison system. She was tough, savvy, and well-liked by nearly everyone who worked with her. Her specialty was surveillance, a skill she'd honed to razor-keenness while working as a correctional officer. Foolish indeed had been the inmate who'd thought he could mule contraband or stalk another prisoner while she was minding the monitors. (It was a skill made all the more exceptional by the fact that pigs have generally poor eyesight.)
Nearly everyone in the trailer was in uniform—with two notable exceptions; the elephant, Francine Trunkaby, and Chief Bogo, the officer in charge. He was dressed in khakis and a batik shirt, while she wore a brightly colored print-dress.
The other cops' reaction to Nick and Judy's appearance was decidedly sardonic. Most of them snickered, a few grinned irreverently, and one or two of the officers just shook their heads. (Francine Trunkaby looked as if she'd just bitten into an unripe persimmon.)
Judy knew why of course. When Nick had kissed her, they'd been standing almost directly in front of survey-cam number one. And just as she had predicted, almost everyone in the command truck had seen it happen; by tomorrow morning, that kiss would be a running gag in every precinct from here to the Meadowlands.
Her partner knew it as well, sighing from a corner of his mouth, "Better get used to it, Carrots."
"I can handle it if you can, fox." Judy whispered back, wanting to believe it. As the ZPD's first bunny-cop, she'd had to endure far worse, at least in the beginning. So why should this bother her so much? She had no idea, but both she and Nick were in for at least two good week of razzing; cops are nothing if not inveterate pranksters.
(She could never have imagined just how much worse it was going to get.)
But then Nick Wilde tapped her on the arm, "Look sharp, Carrots; here comes Big Chief Buffalo Nickel."
Judy looked and saw Chief Bogo making his way through the crowd, headed in their direction. Sullen on even the best of mornings, he looked especially grumpy today.
"You've got it then," the Cape buffalo rumbled stepping forward with his arms folded like a sumo wrestler; it was a statement, not a question.
"We got it," Nick answered with his customary wraparound smile. Judy punctuated his words by holding up her ring-finger.
Bogo nodded and turned a 180, beckoning for the fox and bunny to follow him. At the far end of the trailer, barely visible through the packed bodies, Judy could make out a set-up resembling a doll-house version of the Cliffside Med Lab, the place where she and Nick had finally caught up with the missing Emmitt Otterton.
Perched on a stool front of this array was a rust-furred coati in a lab-coat and half-moon glasses, slowly nursing a Snarlbuck's latte.
"So you pulled it off?" she queried, setting down her coffee. If anything, her attitude was even frostier than the Chief's. Without waiting for an answer, she held out a paw in Judy's direction. "Let's have it."
Judy reached to remove her diamond engagement ring. For just a hint of a second, she hesitated, wondering what the heck was going on. Why did she feel a little blue all of a sudden? It was only a stupid ring and it had never really been hers anyway.
She shook off her melancholy and passed it to the tech-mammal.
The coatimundi—professional name, Dr. Irene Hocico—accepted the diamond from Judy and gave it a quick examination under a ring-light magnifier.
"Well?" said the Chief, looking over her shoulder.
"Don't crowd me." The coati groused, waving him back while continuing her scrutiny. (Being indispensable, she was one of the few members of the ZPD who could get away with talking to Bogo like that.)
She returned her attention to the ring. "Well, we're on the right track here, however…"
Pivoting on her stool, she reached over to grab a small, metal, pedestal-stand, and set it on the counter in front of her, attaching the ring to a clip on the end, diamond side up. Next, she turned and opened the door of something that looked like a scaled-down, armored microwave oven.
"Medium rare for me," said Nick, prompting Judy to nudge him in the ribs.
"Oh, hush."
Dr. Hocico slid the diamond inside the 'oven' closing the door firmly and flicking a switch beside it. A thrum and hissing sound followed as the air in the chamber evacuated.
When the hissing finally ceased, the coati picked up a joystick and pressed another button on her console; at once a green dot appeared on one wall of the chamber. Toggling the stick with a careful paw, she kept her eye squarely on a display screen, carefully aligning a set of animated crosshairs over a CGI rendering of the captive diamond.
That was just too much for a certain fox to resist and he affected an exaggerated, drill-sergeant growl.
"Put it together, soldier. You'll never win the Medal of Heroes THAT way."
Dr. Hocico looked over a shoulder at Judy.
"Is he always like this?"
Judy's eyes lifted upwards and made a sharp right turn.
"You should hear him when he's rolling," she said—but she was actually trying not to laugh. No, she wouldn't want him any other way.
As if to remind everybody as to who was in charge, Chief Bogo cleared his throat.
"Will this take long, Doctor?" he asked.
"Seriously?" the coati looked up at him, arching an eyebrow, and then, "All right, don't anybody look at the door."
She pulled the joystick trigger. A star-bright flash of emerald light followed, and then a tiny wisp of smoke could be seen, curling off the top of the stone.
"Shame to do that to a perfectly good diamond," Nick Wilde observed, and this time he wasn't joking.
"Not so 'perfectly good' when you consider where it came from, Wilde." Chief Bogo rejoined, capping his remark with a derisive snort.
"Wellll, we don't know that for certain," Dr. Hocico cautioned, waving a finger, "It still might be a manufactured stone."
She swung out a keyboard from beneath her work-table and began to type. The cross hairs vanished from the display screen, replaced by a marching display resembling a rainbow-pattern seismograph. The scroll continued for several more seconds and then froze in place with the results superimposed over the graph.
The data on the screen might as well have been hieroglyphics as far as Nick, Judy, and the Chief were concerning. But there was no mistaking the final, flashing number underneath.
100%...100%...100%...100%...100%...
Dr. Hocico turned and offered Bogo a thumbs-up.
"Congratulations Chief, you have a winner," she said, speaking in the lively tone most mammals reserve for, "Can someone please empty the trash?"
But if Dr. Hocico wasn't particularly excited by the data, with everyone else in the truck, it was a different story. In the confines of the cargo box, the coati's announcement had been easily heard, and now, whoops, howls, and high-fives filled the air; Nick and Judy exchanged a fist-bump and even Bogo had a smile on his face.
It was still there when he pulled out his cell-phone a few seconds later and dialed a number.
"Hello, Chief Bogo for Judge Walpole please. Yes, it's important. Would you…? Ah, good morning, Your Honor. Yes sir…yes, we did." His grin widened by nearly an inch, "Even better than we hoped, 100% Positive. You should have the results in your e-mail momentarily. Yes, that's right. Ah yes, thank you Your Honor. You have the number?" He said this while glancing sideways, at the silent specter of a portable fax machine, "Yes sir, that's correct. I appreciate your prompt response. Yes sir, we'll be ready to move as soon as we've got it in hoof. Yes, I'll certainly keep you informed. Thank you again, Your Honor. Good-bye."
He put away the cell and turned to address the group.
"Right, everyone listen up, it's on! We…all right, pipe DOWN!"
The din quieted immediately and the Chief continued with his address.
"We'll have our warrant shortly." He said, nodding towards the fax machine…and prompting another clever aside from Nick.
"Ah, the wonders of modern technology…"
"Quie-ET!" Judy hissed, nudging him again.
But Chief Bogo only nodded. Yes it WAS a great thing to be able to have a warrant delivered right to the scene of stakeout…and in mere moments.
Then he said, "In the meantime, everyone suit up."
The officers immediately begin pulling their tac-gear from the wall. Bogo watched them for a moment and then began barking orders like the captain of a ship.
"Simmers? You and Howell cover the back door. Swinton, notify Howell it's a go."
"Yes, sir," the pig and bear answered together, (Simmers with a notable lack of enthusiasm.) He moved to grab a tac-vest while she hit the radio call button, "Command to Howell, do you copy? Over."
Chief Bogo, meanwhile, was issuing further commands.
"Krumpansky, Delgato, Kobolai, you three cover the perimeter."
"Right Chief," a big Marco Polo Sheep responded…speaking for the lion and rhino as well as for himself.
Chief Bogo barely acknowledged him before moving on.
"Dr. Hocico, I want you to stay with the perimeter team and be ready to move inside that store as soon as the location is secured."
The coati responded with a grunt that could have meant anything. Bogo pretended not to notice, instead delivering another round of instructions.
"Fangmeier, Wolford, Grizzoli and Barrow….you four take up positions by the front door and wait for Officer Trunkaby's signal. Francine and I are going in."
The declaration set off another round of whoops and backpounding…and this time the Cape buffalo didn't interrupt; always good to send the troops in motivated.
But then a small voice piped up from below.
"Chief? What about us?"
Judy and Nick were gazing upwards at Chief Bogo. The fox's expression was soulful while hers was almost pleading.
"You two stay in the command truck," the Cape Buffalo ordered pointing from one to the other.
Judy Hopps recoiled as if Bogo had just backhoofed her. After all the time, and effort she'd put into this sting, he wasn't even going to let her…?"
"But Chief…" she tried to protest and he immediately cut her off.
"I don't have time for explanations, Hopps...stay here; that's an order." He unbuttoned his shirt to check the tac-vest underneath, and then fixed her in his trademark thousand-yard stare. "I mean it."
"Yes sir," Judy answered, regarding the floor; she looked like a beach-toy with the air-valve popped.
Bogo didn't even glance at her; he one last order to deliver.
"Swinton you keep watch on the monitors; the rest of you, listen up. I want this take-down to go fast and smooth, in and done in less than five; is everyone clear on that?"
"Yes sir!" the officers shouted in unison—including Nick and Judy, though with considerably less gusto than the others.
Bogo nodded in acclimation and then went to the door and threw it open.
"Right then—everyone, let's go!"
The floor of the command-truck resounded like a thunder-sheet as the officers piled out. From his place beside the door, Chief Bogo waved them on, offering the odd word of encouragement here and there. ("Get going Wolford! Move your tail Delgato! What, d'you think you're in a sack race, Barrow?")
The last ones out were Dr. Hocico followed by the Chief, and then the door was pulled shut from the outside, leaving Nick and Judy alone with Officer Swinton.
Nick Wilde is just the Easter Egg fox on this one: Early on in the story, he borrows a line from Bolt and later on, another one from Captain Jack Sparrow, following further down the chapter with a reference to Wreck-it Ralph. And then, of course, there's his (obvious) nod to Apocalypse Now.
The Easter Eggs in the first chapter were...
The opening quotes were by Thomas Moore and Lord Byron - as Rich Moore and Byron Howard, the directors of Zootopia
The Rafaj Brothers' name is 'Jafar' (Aladdin) spelled backwards.