A Lead Role in a Cage

by J Shute Norway

An AU to Zootopia: The original plot. Nick never escaped from the ZPD after his arrest. Instead, he's to be put through the grinder of the courts and jails. But he isn't going down without a fight, and even from inside his cell he'll inspire those who've had enough. But there are mammals who despise him everywhere, and they aim to seize each opportunity to destroy him. (reuploaded)

4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4:

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TO: gregoryhuvertung zmail. com

FROM: melonymelody bamboo. co. zt

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Dear Grima,

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Yesterday was fun, wasn't it?

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'(ʘ)˾(Ѳ)'

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Anyway, play and rest are done so onto work, though in this case there is little that I think is required of me, is there?

I still remembering watching Nick's trial like it was yesterday.

The revelation that there was some conspiracy against predators… The news that the savage reversions, which had so damaged our cause since they started, were being induced by terrorists using chemical weapons… The fact that Predators all over felt that Nicholas Wilde would be freed, only to then find that they planned to try him anyway. God damn it, I was pissed, and I bet that it was simmering and boiling so much more powerfully under the skin of every one of our collared brothers and sisters. I was certain that this would be the beginning of something new; a flammable vapour in the air just waiting for the one spark to set it off.

I was running around prey neighbourhoods, trying to get mammals to sign the petitions to give him a pardon. I may have only got a hundred signatures after all that mind numbing, back breaking, often humiliating work. But it would have been worth it just to get a tenth of that. I handed the prey petition to the mayor, at the same time the pred one was handed in too. I remember how my heart sank when she brought out the petition signed by mammals who were against it, who wanted him to face the full force of the law or more, to be tried as a collar thief like his parents were.

At the end of the day, all you need is for ten percent of the prey mammals to be jerks and you'll never get anywhere with pred rights. The mayor just shrugged and said, 'democracy', before we moved on. Looking back, I can at least find solace in the fact that, together, our petitions did come close to matching their one.

I watched the proceedings on a livestream to see if the spark would come from there. I could only feel the pressure grow as Nicholas was slandered and insulted, the fact that this was a kangaroo court bare to see for anyone who bothered to look.

And that speech.

That speech…

I don't think it'll win any awards, but it was good to see someone grab those who ignored the obvious and then thrust their faces in it.

I'm not sure how much difference it made in the long run, but it did feel good to hear.

It felt damn good.

Don't you agree?

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TO: melonymelody bamboo. co. zt

FROM: gregoryhuvertung zmail. com

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Dear Melony,

You understand you're preaching to the choir here?

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I remember the packs of wolves and coyotes standing on the cobbles of Lunus square, blocking the city hall and courts. I made my placard and fitted it onto my back and joined them. It may have been a more awkward affair out in Zootopia, but here so many prey understand that the heart and soul of Canidaea is in the heart of the canine family. They understand the evil of the collars and, for every predator there, there was a prey as well.

We advanced forward on the day before the proceedings, singing the old songs sung when predators and prey first tried to forge a true peace, us following in their paw steps as we tried to finish the job. The sky was a ghostly pale blue, ribbed with herringbone clouds. It had rained in the small hours of the morning, so the bright early summer sun was sparking off the drops which hung on the budding trees on Wolfe's mount.

Oh Melony, you should have seen us as we advanced up the hill. I was at the front, and was one of the first to see the fake collar some prey punk had tied around the general's neck. I charged forward, with half a dozen others, and we were up there tearing the thing off. We ripped it down to the chain and padlock, and then we were calling out for anyone who could pick the lock.

A wolverine girl, with a beaver in tow, stepped forward and together we lifted them up and they uncollared old James, just as he should be. I still have that picture. Whenever one of the few remaining speciesist jerks in our part of town tries to rattle on to me about how pred and prey were meant to be separate, I always flash that little number out. The only better one I ever got was of the pair afterwards, the beaver sticking her paw under the wolverine's collar, so that for once she could kiss her love without hurting her at the same time. I still have that one too, and if and when the couple are ready to come out (and they tell me so), I'll be posting it about at twice the rate.

But, in the name of unity, the UMC troops came in and began breaking us up. Well, at least our local cops came first to warn us. If they were still allowed to carry keys, I'd bet that every collar would be removed by that evening. Instead, we quickly dissipated before the troops imposed on us from afar, to make sure we keep this injustice going, arrived. However much we want the collars gone from our part of the world, that lot, from the speciesist seven (or the terrible ten, as some say), want to make sure they're enforced globally. Fortunately, we got out before they arrived to water canon us.

At the very least, they don't use live rounds.

Unlike the 'peacekeeper' forces that have occupied Katavulpia for the last century or so.

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It wasn't as if we planned to change the world or anything. We knew that the congress didn't dare let us try going without collars, lest the corruption spread. Why else so harden access to the keys for our doctors and police? But still, we turned up because we wanted to. Even if it was a futile gesture, it was a gesture. And I think that is the main thing.

I hoped that Nicholas Wilde could see us somehow. Know that he was not alone.

And so, thanks to the miracle of time zones, I was up at five that morning to watch the first day of the trial.

And you are right Melony. It may have been a kangaroo court (as well as a trial specifically designed to give him a guilty verdict as fast as possible), but listening to someone finally say it like it is was most definitely satisfying.

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---

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The court house was silent as Nick was brought up to the stand. They'd let him wear a suit and tie, rather than a humiliating prison uniform, while no chains bounded themselves to his limbs. Recovered from his injuries, all the stitches and tubes removed, he stepped up under the watchful eye of the officers behind him. Finding the most comfortable step of the stand to rest on, he planted himself there, giving him a view over the assembled mammals.

To his left stood a jury of fourteen mammals, all prey. A moose, a deer doe, a small armadillo and a ram with black wool were all sat down, with ten bunnies sat around them. Nick remembered the last ones as they were shown on the news, their fox-tasers and repellent proudly holstered on their belts. He remembered the judge too, who towered over him to his right. The massive red kangaroo jack looked down at him with a view of contempt, his nostrils flaring as their eyes met, before Nick looked away. His gaze passed over the crowd of assembled mammals in the seating areas, many of them taking notes on what was going on. Closer to him was his lawyer, who was looking away with dread. The prosecutor, meanwhile, looked on emotionlessly, even though the impala had only just got down from scathing and slandering him with every word he'd spoke. Dangerous, savage, rebellious, untrustworthy, greedy, arrogant… They'd sailed all over his head, Nick not caring one bit at this point. At this one moment in time, he didn't care what any of them thought. Instead, all he cared about was what he thought.

He swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so fast that it seemed to be over before it began. The room was silent for a second, before he cleared his throat and spoke.

"I would like to thank you up here for calling me to speak," he said, smiling as he fidgeted with the scrappy grey tie they'd afforded him. "I always thought of myself as a people's person, and so maybe I should be happy to be called up here, to challenge my skills of negotiation to the limit? Maybe I should be excited that I've finally found fame and, although not fortune, the knowledge that, whatever happens, after this I won't be moving back into a damp and leaky apartment that most self-respecting fungi would turn their nose up at."

He swept his gaze around at the courthouse, palms up, open and level and his smile and eyes wide open; and then he planted his paws on the edge of the stand, leant over and got serious. "But I'm not happy to be up here," he said, before letting an edge of sarcasm into his voice. "You want to know why? You want to really know, oh members of the jury who I remember so proudly waving their speciesist weapons when they were sworn in?"

He paused, letting a few of them squirm meekly, before carrying on.

"As far as I can tell, my innocence was proven when it was found out that I was targeted. When the ZPD discovered the proof that Jorge went savage, not due to some fault in his genes or lack of self-control or primal reversion, but because of a small dart fired at him. A dart with traces of his blood on it, and traces of chemicals which several biologists have proven to cause uncontrollable rage and anger in any mammal hit, prey or pred. He, and all those that went savage, have been provisionally released or are being released, from what I've heard. So, hooray! Case closed. Let's accept that I had nothing to do with what happened to him, that I didn't cause or lead to it, and thus all say let it be."

His arms waved out open and wide, and he couldn't help but look at the scowling figure of the judge and give him a wink. "Maybe we could all gather around a campfire and sing kumbaya!?"

The kangaroo's nostrils flared up again, the hot breath of his snort drifting over Nick, who then turned back to face the jury. "Only whoopsie, we wouldn't go back to that would we? Because all you prey mammals out there who still want me jailed can't accept that us preds don't need collars, can you? You can't even accept the idea that there's a possibility we might not need them? Can you?"

The prey mammals waiting in the stand looked at him, and each other, with confused looks on their faces. For all Nick could care though, they were looks of guilt. "Because," he slowly said, anger beginning to drip into his voice. "That would make you realise that you… are… the… bad guys!"

His collar went orange from the satisfaction of seeing their shell-shocked expressions and, knowing he didn't want to give them the joy of seeing him shock himself, he stood back and leant against the edge of his stand. "So instead, you still decide to throw me into this nice, and I mean nice by the way, no veneer or anything, dock and say that I still need to be punished," he said, back in his happy go lucky voice with just a slice of savage sarcasm thrown in.

Deciding that he'd focussed on just the jury for too long, though, he turned and beckoned to the whole crowd in front of him. "Punished for what, I might ask? Be punished for the fact that, as a medical professional, I broke the oaths I took and did some very catchy 'gross misconduct'. The fact that, as someone who took off predator's collars, I didn't take the 'reasonable precautions' to make sure that said preds wouldn't stream out and cause a riot. Be punished for the fact that I grossly endangered the public..."

"It seems the fox can listen," the prosecutor said just a bit too loud, sending the entire courtroom into a mix between a murmur and a giggle. The judge, pounding down his gavel, silenced them and gave Nick an ill-tempered look, telling him to carry on. He nodded, and let a bit of inviting warmth into his voice as he continued.

"I understand that in order to feign your sense of innocence and moral superiority, you have to dress up said charges with fancy names. However, let me tell you what my real charges are, charges I'm all too happy to admit my guilt to."

The warmth in his voice vanished and, for the first time, anger truly began to show as Nick raised his voice. "I am a fox, a mammal that society has irrationally decided to hate. Guilty! I am a predator, a group of mammals who are mistreated and robbed of their emotional freedom, from rage to joy to love to sorrow. Guilty! But, far worse than those two, I am a fox, a predator, who dared to try and create a fleeting glimpse of what it was like to be an equal! And I am so… so… guilty of that, that the guilt covers me. It drips off of me. And I wouldn't have it any other way!"

The courthouse, even more speechless now than it seemed before, was almost in thrall to Nick's words. Trapped before them, like a deer in front of headlights, unable to turn away as more came. Nick, meanwhile, was no longer angry. Instead regret, melancholy, pain and nostalgia and hope and sadness and a hundred other emotions entered his voice. "To have that… glimmer of passion and joy," he began, stuttering as he tried to put his feelings into words "To feel things so strong, so fantastic, I cannot put them into words here."

A soft hum of a collar going up to orange filled the room. A tear flowed down a red furred cheek.

"To do all those things that you all decided to take away from us, and that you take for granted every second and every minute and every hour of your lives… It is… it is…"

"Something completely irrelevant to this case, Mr Wilde!"

Nick snapped out of his mood and looked up to see the judge looming above him, his stern face the thing from nightmares. Taking a deep breath in, Nick tried his best to clear him head. A foot paw patting on the floor, a few shakes and pinches of the bridge of his muzzle.

Finally, the mask went up, and a sly and smiling fox looked forward and spoke. "I see that you want me to get back onto the charges you're brought against me?" he asked, waiting for a confirming nod from above. A tiniest of ones came, and the fox carried on.

"Fine," he said, paw on his heart. "I am a medical professional, technically, and I do remember the Hippocratic oath. It's fitting that it's called that, as it's a nice describer of all those other doctors who swore to do no harm."

He revelled in the confused murmur that washed over him. Eyes closed, head tilting back, he soaked it in before letting his trusty sarcastic voice take over. "Let me suggest something that might blow your minds. That I don't expect you to believe, though I don't expect you to believe anything that comes out of the mouth of anyone unfortunate to be born a vulpine. What… if, I was the one doctor in this city not breaking his oath? The one doctor who had decided to not do harm? The one doctor who actually isn't permitting or conducting, 'misconduct'."

This time it was a roar of confusion. The prosecutor was up, and objecting to it all. "This is madness you're talking about and you know it! How on earth you could every leap to such a twisted logic I don't…"

"Do you know the suicide rate for preds is ten times the rate of prey!?" Nick shouted, cutting off the prosecutor just as the gavel came down to silence the lot of them. Both he, and the mammal below them retreated, before he repeated his question.

"Do you know the suicide rate for preds is ten times the rate of prey?"

The prosecutor didn't answer. Nick scowled, though he stilled breathed deeply, carefully balancing and controlling his emotions. "Did you know that we're far more likely to die of heart failure? We have far higher cases of raised blood pressure and all else?"

…

"That's you," Nick accused. "That's you and your collars harming us…"

The prosecutors mouth opened, but he never got the chance to use it.

"Murdering us!"

…

"I was doing no harm," Nick said quietly, with a little shrug, before starting to climb back up. "I was doing more than no harm. I followed the oath I swore to the letter and broke no law, all to try and lance the wound of harm you caused us. Only now, because someone didn't like it and they chose to act, I'm being held responsible for his actions!"

A sharp turn, and he faced the jury. His collar went orange, as his control slowly went, grief beginning to return to his voice. "I created something wonderful! Something magic! Something so powerful and so beautiful that I'm having to hold back remembering it now… I don't want to get a nasty shock for feeling too nostalgic, do I?

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A deep breath, though his collar stayed orange, and he carried on. He wasn't shouting anymore.

The pain had taken over.

"But it's hard. Harder than you can know. Remembering children being children for the first time in years, playing and clapping and being happy. Seeing their dull eyes, weighed down by their wretched collar, spring back open as it was removed. The adults too! So many of them would grab their kits and cubs and pups and spin them around, smiling just as much as them. I saw lovers kissing in the corners and older preds, coming off kiddie rides, find somewhere to walk off and cry, grieving for what they missed in all those stained years…"

The hammering of the gavel shook Nick out of his speech. Looking up, he spotted the judge peering down at him, his eyes betraying how little he cared. "I've put up with this for a long time Wilde, longer than for most. But however much you try to paint yourself as the victim, you are a dangerous mammal. That bear was a dangerous mammal. You knew that. Every pred knows it but refuses to accept it, or lies about it to try and draw us prey into a trap. And what better trap than making us feel sorry for inherently dangerous children…"

"Dangerous…?" Nick whispered.

"I won't repeat myself," the judge scowled.

"Dangerous you say? Well that's high praise from a mammal whose kick could cave my chest in," Nick replied back in a cheery charade of a voice. "It's praise from mammals over there in the jury, armed with weapons that could fry me or blind me, and are certainly open about being willing to use them. It's praise from those megafauna's who can both deliberately or accidentally reduce my height to that of a mouse. It's praise from those with horns that and antlers that they love to bash against each other's, or who perform the majority of crime in this city."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the jury squirm. Turning around to face them, he dropped his gaze on the horned sheep who was about to speak, and cut him off. "It's called ram raiding for a reason, you know?"

The woolly mammal's jaw hung open, while Nick turned to face the crowd, arms wide open like a preacher. "Did anyone ever prove that I, and every other pred, are dangerous? That we need these, things…" he said, gesturing to his orange collar. "The only evidence that I've ever seen turned out to be thanks to these darting's, so… null points prey mammals! And don't trot out that 'just to be safe' call that I've had hurled at me all my life. Or at least, if you do… Collar every mammal species with a higher violence rate than the least violent pred. Ban cars too? What about stairs? People fall down stairs, just to be safe shouldn't we abolish them? Collar or remove everything more dangerous than your average uncollared pred, after actually bothering to find out how dangerous that actually is, and then we can talk."

.

There was a cough, the prosecutor rising. "What does this have to do with the charges you are actually facing," he asked.

"I thought I just explained it to you all?" Nick replied. "I was under a moral obligation to do what I did. Tell me, those in the crowd, if you were in my place would you be that different?" Turning around, he faced the jury and looked at the ten bunnies there. "Bunnies of the jury, I bet you have dozens of children each," he asked slowly, savouring their confused and worried looks. "Don't you...?"

The gavel hammered down as he flinched once more. "I will not have you threatening my jurors in court, fox!" he screamed. "Yet alone their families. I'm tempted to have you thrown back into your prison uniform!"

"I wasn't threatening them?" Nick explained. "I was testing a theory…"

One of the judge's eyebrows rose, and Nick carried on, turning back to the jury. "A dozen bunny children, over a hundred bunny grandchildren. A thousand bunny great grandchildren and then over ten thousand and a hundred and a million, oh my!? Where will all the food and housing space come from? It seems we have a problem, don't we?"

He enjoyed the looks they gave each other. Making other mammals aware of their own, very real, faults. "Bunnies of the jury, let me ask you if this sounds familiar?" Nick continued. "Slightly reclusive from society species is seen to be doing something that hurts everyone else. With us," he said, pointing to himself. "It was due to bedtime stories passed on by you guys about how we were all evil incarnate. With you, it's the fact that your skill at multiplying means that there's not enough food for everyone else. Bar us preds though, given that we might be allowed to start fishing more in such a situation. But enough side-tracking, what if a load of other mammals decided you bunnies all needed collars to buzz you whenever you decided to uh… do the dirty?"

They began squirming. Squirming so much and he was loving it.

"And what if you hadn't had a dozen children for generations and generations, but it was still done 'just to be safe'?"

He paused, aware of the orange light around his neck. He would not let it, and them, ruin this.

"So," Nick continued. "Going home to the love of your life? Trying to make a good date night… Zap! First kiss, Zap! Aborted first times and semi-virgin bunnies here, there and everywhere! Better put it on the young kids too, I hear they're starting earlier now. You also solve teen pregnancy, so hurray! It's good for you. You can't complain."

He let it all sink in for a few seconds, before he leaned down low and began tempting them. "Wouldn't you want to do something? Maybe open up a small safe haven were bunnies can have just the one or two intimate moments in their continually frustrated lives?"

Was that a nod he saw? Did he even care?

"And wouldn't you hail whoever did this as a hero who could do no wrong? Who may have been bending the law, an evil and wrong law forced on you by mammals who hate you, but wasn't actually breaking it? And, if someone were to poison his patrons with some kind of reverse chill pill, sending them into some kind of rutting frenzy, would you then seek to charge and imprison him?"

They were silent.

"You wouldn't, would you?"

Nick smiled and stood up, turning back to the watching crowd. "And, were this a city an actual Zootopia, then you'd accept it. You'd accept him, or me. You'd free us and join us in ending our suffering…"

"But," he added, "it isn't, and I don't expect you to do this."

"I expect my jury of my 'peers'," he said, giving a wave to the watching fourteen. "Ten of whom waved weapons made to specifically scratch their speciesist itch against my kind, and who spit on my people whenever they can and want, to find me guilty."

He turned up to look at the kangaroo, and gave him a mock wave. "I expect my judge, who boasts on giving extra-long sentences to those mammals brought before him if they have sharp teeth, to send me away for years."

He then turned to the crowd, and the watching cameras. "I expect the media, who love to pile plenty of displeasing adjectives onto anyone who happens to have a collar, to say it is a job well done. I expect the mayor, who likes us as a nice repository for all the bad parts of her policies, to sleep in bed at night without a care in the world, just happy that the little me shaped thorn in her side has gone…"

"But, I will not accept this!"

"I will drag myself out of the pit you want to throw me into by the stubs of my claws! However much you try to beat me down, I will try and drag myself up. You want to steal my life away, I will fight to the death to get it back. And you and your kangaroo court…?"

"I don't accept it. "

He could hear his heart beat, as the judge just looked at him. "What do you mean, you won't accept it?" he asked with a sneer.

"What do you mean I don't accept it?" Nick replied, dusting his paws as he did so. "I'm glad you asked. I am being tried for the crime of resisting my collar. My jurors, have never experienced it. My judge, neither. My prosecutors and defence, the same old story… I will accept and play ball with a court of law if, and only if, it is one that's actually interested in finding the truth and defending what's right; not in implementing some law which is based on what some people once decided was right without bothering to check with those it hurt!"

Turning to face the fourteen mammals who would decide his future, he looked up and down at them before shaking his head. "I demand a jury of my peers! I have that right, do I not! In what world would you call any of these guys, one of whom looks like he wants to skin me right now, my peers?"

Turning back to the crowd, he grabbed his collar and held it tight for all to see. "My peers are those who know what it's like to live a collared life. Who have lived with the burden, and the pain, and the scorn and contempt and the pressure of all your hatred! I demand to be tried by a court of those who know what I've been put though, in the only way that can be done! You have no right to judge me. You have no right to judge us. They are the only ones with the right to do so! Until then, every group of mammals you put me up against and use to slander me has no right to charge me, try me or find me guilty of anything!"

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There was silence.

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"I would say that I'd rest my case," Nick said innocently. "But as I just explained, I don't see the reason why I should even give you one! Thank you."

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And then the crowd, the jury, the judge, the prosecutor and everyone, bar Nick and his facepalming defender, erupted in roars. Nick just smiled, a giant grin on his muzzle and a newly orange light around his neck.