What's this? A new chapter out in just over a week? Madness!

Or, motivation. Take your pick.

Thanks again for all who read/favorite/follow this story; you guys are awesome.

Thanks also to Selaxes, Combat Engineer, and PixeLPaladin for the reviews!

And without further ado...

"Are you sure that this is our man?"

Carmelita sighed, rubbing at the growing pressure in her temples. The headaches had been coming more frequently as of late – one of the side-effects of the stress of her job. When she'd first arrived in Zootopia, she'd impressed the likes of Lionheart and Bellwether with her dedication to policing, tracking down and apprehending criminals with a passion, even though it hadn't been her job at the time. With their influence, she'd managed to set up Zootopia's first and primary security force, quickly employing many stalwart and dedicated likeminded mammals, who let nothing come between them and accomplishing their assigned tasks.

Not even the five crimes in progress they passed along the way to their assigned task.

It was this single-minded drive which had, if not directly caused, at least added to Carmelita's current stress with their employ. They were good at their jobs, true, dedicated and loyal, but lacked any form of initiative outside of following orders. Their negligence in following up on un-directed means of inquiry and investigation had inadvertently led to such situations as the one that she was in now, which in turn meant that she was no closer to tracking down that one blasted criminal who had led her to the subaquatic city in the first place.

It also led to her making use of sources outside of her employ, such as the one currently standing in front of her desk.

Her cousin gave Carmelita his infuriating trade marked smirk, half-lidded emerald eyes momentarily dropping to the photos spilled across her desk. There were days when she wanted nothing more than to wipe that smirk off his face, but no matter how many lectures on civic duty she gave to him, he'd always twist her words about, and when wordplay was involved, Carmelita had never been able to beat Nicholas Wilde.

The tod merely shrugged, looking back up at his cousin. "If my source says that he is, then that's good enough for me. That, and the photo's do look pretty damning."

"And that source would be…?"

If anything, Nick's infuriating smirk grew even smugger. "Think of him as a concerned citizen who wishes to stay anonymous." If there was one of Nick's traits that Carmelita actually found admirable, it was his strict adherence to his odd code of honour; never once had he given up a source who had requested anonymity, no matter what threats, bribes, or pleas were made.

"Very well." Leafing through the photographs on her desk, Carmelita couldn't help but shake her head. "Por los sacerdotes… It's all here, alright." Covert photographs had been taken of a series of handoffs throughout the city – nervous business owners or clerks handing over wads of banknotes to one of a group of meerkats, or, in one case, the money being taken from the till as who could only be the owner was pinned to the wall by a fierce looking boar. The other photographs were less blatantly incriminating, but when paired with the others, still fairly damning – the meerkats, either solo or in combinations of their group, meeting up with and handing their briefcases over to a weasel at various points around the city, but primarily down in the Warren. Looking up at her cousin, she stood from her desk, the grating screech as the chair scraped over the floor adding to her already throbbing headache. "On their own, these won't be worth the paper they were printed on in court, but they give us probable cause. Let's give this Mister Kleftis a visit, shall we?"

As she made her way to the door, Carmelita suppressed a smirk of satisfaction as she saw her cousin's expression twitch.

"You don't expect me to come along, do you?" He hurried to catch up to his cousin before the elevator at the end of the hall closed behind her. "You do realize that I'm not working for you, right?" Carmelita merely maintained a neutral expression until the door opened once more.

Claws clacking against the hardwood floor as she strode towards the exit of the precinct, Carmelita barked at her various subordinates. "Higgins, Antlerson, Glidewell, McCloskey, you're with me!"

The two of the hippos in the office shared confused looks, before turning to the Inspector. "Which one of us, ma'am?"

"Both of you." The vixen paused at the doorway to the street, looking back at her cousin with a smirk. "And if Detective Wilde tries to not take part in the raid, you have my permission to place him under arrest."

"Under what charges?" Bearing a bored expression, Nick casually sat on the desk of one of her officers. "You've got nothing on me, cous'."

"Breaking and entering, as well as trespassing." Carmelita's smirk grew as Nick's jaw dropped, a bewildered look of confusion clear on his normally impassive face. "Several of those photos were taken inside the stores, after hours, if the clocks in them are anything to go by, and since you won't tell me who took them, I can only assume it was you."

Storming out of the precinct after the small group, Nick glared at his cousin's back as she and her force made their way through the streets of Zootopia. "That's blackmail, and you know it."

"Hardly." Carmelita smiled as they passed deeper into the city; everywhere she looked, businesses were thriving, mammals were happily chatting with one another, or going about their business. Those that saw the city's Chief of Security with her staff quickly got out of her way, eyeing the group as they passed. In all, law and order prevailed above all else under her supervision. "Think of it as ensuring your protection." Opening a side service door, Carmelita led her troops off the main thoroughfares of Zootopia, instead taking the shorter, less well known paths. Several of her officers had to duck under the pipes overhead, a dull thunk echoing down the hallway as Antlerson failed to spot one in the low lit gloom. "You're an informant for us, Nick, and I'd hate to have Kleftis' goons take their revenge on you while you're wandering Zootopia defenseless. This way, I can keep an eye on you while ensuring your safety."

Dripping water and the thudding of footsteps were the only sounds to fill the hallway for several seconds before Nick once more spoke. "I see how it is." Carmelita fought to supress the rising of her hackles; Nick had spoken in a tone of voice she'd long ago learned meant that she'd lost this verbal sparring match. "Forcing me to join you against my will by threat of force while you're on your way to arrest someone for forcing others to pay him against their will by threat of force. Quite the hypocrite you've turned into, cous'."

And just like that, the good feelings she'd had at seeing Zootopia vanished. "Quiet," she snapped, her tail bristling, "we're getting close. Don't give us away." She instantly regretted looking back over her shoulder to see if he understood; Nick made an over the top zipping motion across his mouth, before throwing the most unprofessional, cross-eyed salute the vixen had ever seen.

While the Warren could never claim to be a lively place, evenings in the oldest district of Zootopia found the halls mostly barren of life. Residents with families tended to stay in their quarters, finding what happiness they could with one another, while those in bachelor apartments tended to get what little sleep they could before their next day of either sixteen-hour work days at less than living wage, for those who were fortunate, or fruitless job hunting, for those who weren't. Those that braved the halls at night travelled either very quickly to their destination, or in groups for fear of the less-than-savory characters who made the Warren their home.

Which is how, late one evening down a side hallway, no-one noticed as an access panel was booted open, allowing a uniformed vixen to jump out into the hallway, pointing her pistol first one way and then the other before barking out "Clear!"

From the opening behind her poured a small flood of similarly garbed guards, several of whom almost entirely filled the hallway. As the force made their way deeper into the Warren, the last member of the group spoke up.

"Right, because my logic will draw attention to us, but the parade? Never!"

"What did I say, Wilde?" Not bothering to decipher the grumbles at the back, Carmelita stopped just before another junction, glancing down both corridors; aside from the zebra child who briefly poked her head out from her family's quarters before being drawn back in, the door shutting with an audible clang, the coast was clear. Closing her eyes, Carmelita briefly drew up the mental map that she had of the city, recalling as best she could where her quarry would be. Looking behind her, she signalled for one the hippos, the gorilla, and the moose of her entourage to take the left path, while she, the other hippo, the Bengal tiger, and Nick would forge straight ahead.

Apparently not getting the numerous messages about remaining silent, Nick chose this time to once more speak up. "As much as I love touring the slums at midnight – and I don't. At all. In the slightest. Thought you ought to know – why are we here now?"

"Quiet!" Rounding the corner, Carmelita spotted the rest of her troop rounding the other end of the hallway. Nodding at McCloskey, the two groups converged on the open doorway halfway down, from which the last strains of music could be heard playing. Signaling for the Higgins brothers to stay posted at the corners, she quickly peered around the doorframe.

The establishment was far more popular than she had been led to believe. When her attention had first been brought to the actions of Mister Kelftis several weeks earlier, initial scouting had reported that the bar that he primarily operated out of was little more than a sodden dive, patron only to those who were tempted by the cheap prices of his even cheaper alcohol. Since then, Carmelita had spent more of her energy keeping tabs on Kleftis himself and his associates rather than his base of operations; an error in judgement she vowed never to make again, looking through the crowded establishment.

"Don't stop me now! Don't stop me, I'm having a good time, I don't want to stop at all."

As the last strains of music came from the band behind her, underneath her smiling exterior Judy felt sick. She hated lying; to herself, to others, it didn't matter. And singing these songs, songs of hope and joy and the wonders of life while trying her best to look like she meant it felt like she was lying to all the mammals who listened to her.

True to expectations, her contract had also vanished from her room, and along with it all hopes that the band had of getting away from the Siren's Call. They'd wracked their brains, trying to come up with a way to escape, but short of burning down the Siren and likely the entire Warren around them, they couldn't do so without discrediting the band, and doing so would surely sink any chances that they had of getting hired elsewhere.

And so, for the past week, the band played on, and she sang her lies. Smiling out to the audience, she bowed, wishing them a good night. Only one thousand, eight hundred and thirteen more days to go… unless Alex changes the contract again.

Passing behind the bar, where once again both boars were working tonight, Judy stopped, hand on the door handle to the bands room. Leo almost bumped into the bunny, but managed to shift his weight and feet in time to avoid stepping on their singer. "What's the matter, love?"

"I'm going to try talking to him again."

Sighing as he shook his great maned head, Leo cast a pitying glance at her, sliding open the door as he did so "It's not going to do us any good."

"It's better than sitting around doing nothing!" Knowing that it wasn't the lion in front of her that she was angry at, Judy bit her tongue on what she was going to say next. Looking up at her friend, she took a breath. "Sorry, but it's true. He has to listen to reason! What sort of animal thinks that what he's doing is okay?"

"Alex?" Cameron looked back at Mac as he stopped by the band room door.

"Alex." The other wolf affirmed, before the two turned to Judy.

"Alex."

Mouth pressed into a firm, thin line, Judy glared at the backs of the wolves as they vanished into the band's cave. With a huff, she spun on her heel, storming past both Matt and the two boars. Judy was halted as the door to Alex's office opened, spilling forth the trio of meerkats who had become semi-regular visitors of Alex. The two in front ignored Judy as they made their way out from behind the bar, while the third eyed the bunny as he passed.

Judy returned the favour. So much so, that she failed to notice the weasel behind her until he spoke up. "What do you want, my little… chickadee?"

Suppressing a shudder, Judy was about to give her 'boss' a piece of her mind, but chaos erupting from the front room threw her plans asunder.

Having visual contact on three of her targets emerging from the back, Carmelita sprang into the room, pistol drawn and pointed at the trio of meerkats.

"Zootopia Security! Nobody move!"

Of course, nobody listened. Nobody ever listened. The late night patrons of the bar, for the most part, panicked and stampeded towards the door. The meerkat in front joined the panicked throng, disappearing out the door to the bar before Carmelita could stop him, while the other two scurried back behind the bar.

Carmelita smirked as she heard surprised shouts ringing from the corridor; while she had asked for nobody to move, she hadn't expected it, and found that two hippos backed by a moose and a tiger did a fairly good job of clogging the corridors, ensuring that no witnesses or criminals could escape. While that dealt quite neatly with the troubles outside the bar, there were still those within to deal with.

"McCloskey!" The vixen barked at her lieutenant. "Cover!"

The gorilla nodded as he forged through the thinning crowd and gripped the edge of a table. He strained for a moment, cords in his neck bulging as his muscular arms wrenched at the table, but in a matter of seconds the bolts securing it to the floor had torn loose, and he flipped the table onto its side.

The cover came not a moment too soon; with the last of the patrons having vacated the premises, the two boars behind the bar appeared over the counter, opening fire on the security force with a pair of .45 caliber submachine guns that they'd had stashed behind their cover.

Carmelita felt the thud of each bullet as it ate away at the table. Blind firing over the top of the table, the vixen heard her lieutenant cry out. Glancing at the gorilla, the ape merely hunkered down deeper behind cover, grimacing at his superior as he clutched at his arm. "It's but a flesh wound, ma'am!"

"So, is this how all of your plans turn out, or just ones that involve me? Because if so, I'm flattered, but there are easier, and less painful, ways of getting rid of me."

"Shut it, Wilde!" As the enemy fire cut out, Carmelita cautiously peered around the edge of her cover, only to quickly retreat once more as the gunfire continued. "How much ammo do they have back there?!"

The fox next to her merely reclined against the table, seemingly unaffected by the small fragments of death flying through the air around him. "Did I ever tell you what my favourite kind of whiskey was, cous'?"

Carmelita gave her cousin a what the fuck? look as the tod examined his claws without a care in the world, scratching at an imaginary speck of dust under one of them.

"No?" Nick continued, looking his cousin in the eye. "Thought you might want to know, as my birthday's coming up and all."

"It's six months away! Is now really the best time to be talking about this?"

Nick merely shrugged, his emerald gaze piercing into her own brown eyes. "Shocking, I know, but I've always been a fan of… Fireball!" Springing out from behind the table, Nick rolled across the floor. The boars behind the bar split their focus; one turning to track Nick, while the other kept the officers pinned behind their bullet riddled table. As Nick came up from his roll, however, one paw was engulfed in flame. Pulling back, he wound up in a classic pitcher stance, and threw a glob of fire at the two boars before rolling back across a still upright table, taking what minimal cover he could from it as the hail of lead resumed.

With a contemptuous ease, the boars behind the counter sidestepped the approaching projectile, letting it crash against the back wall.

The back wall where all of the alcohol was kept.

Almost instantaneously, the entire section of the wall was engulfed in flame, with more of the liquid fire spilling onto and across the floor. Smoke roiled up, and the bartenders dropped down, coughing to clear the smoke from their lungs.

"What did you do!" Aghast, Carmelita observed the smoke pouring from the bar's back before turning back to her cousin, livid. "We need them alive!" Her fury only increased as Nick kept his eyes locked on the rolling black waves of smoke, holding up a finger.

"Wait for it…"

"For what?"

Nick's smug smirk was back as he turned to look at his cousin. "You'd think that an open fire in a closed space underwater would be bad, right?" As if on cue, the all of the fire sprinklers in the bar went off; while it didn't instantly extinguish the flames, they were steadily being supressed. The tod brushed the wet fur out of his eyes as he gave Carmelita that smug look she was growing to hate so much. "Shocking how well that worked. Just… shocking."

The vixen stared at her cousin for a moment before gripping the bridge of her nose, drawing a deep breath. "Just so we're clear; I had this all under control, Wilde." Focussing on her other hand, she felt a slight tingle begin to build underneath her fur as she stood from behind the table.

"Of course you did; I was just giving you a helping hand. After all, that's what you brought me along for, right?"

Although she would never admit it, Carmelita was glad that one of the goons from behind the bar poked his head over the counter at that moment; it gave her an outlet for her ever increasing aggravation. Pointing her paw at him, the vixen felt a thrill run through her as a bolt of lightning leapt from her outstretched limb, arching through the air before lancing to the boar. The boar in question stood bolt upright, muscles spasming out of control as his nerves were overloaded, and if the stereo jabbering from behind the counter was anything to go by, the other bartender was also momentarily out of commission.

Intending to apprehend the criminals then and there, Carmelita was drawn short as a great hand wrapped around her arm. "Chief!" McCloskey blurted out, "You could get shocked, too!"

Before she could respond, a whip lashed from behind the officers, wrapping itself around the neck of the visible bartender. The boar could only manage a confused "Glurk?" before the cord pulled tight, bashing his head against the bars sill.

"Well, that's one out of commission."

"Constable Neyla!" Carmelita stood, leveling her gaze at her subordinate. "Why have you abandoned your post?"

Unaffected by her superiors look, the Bengal tiger shrugged. "The others have everything well in hand, and it looked like you could use the help."

"That's no excuse for this dereliction of duty!"

A groggy voice broke into their conversation. "You… assholes!" Turning, the officers saw the other boar on his feet, unsteady, and pointing his gun at them. "Fuck-!"

A great roar shook through the bar as a blur of brown fur burst from a door off to the side. Focussed as he was on the security force in front of him, the boar didn't even had time to turn to the new threat before he was pinned to the floor by several hundred pounds of grizzly bear. "You don't threaten our new friends!" Matt scolded, making a show of displaying as many teeth as he could mere inches away from the boar's snout.

"Also," the calmer voice of Leo spoke out as he stepped on the boar's arm that was inching towards his dropped gun, "they are ladies. One does not swear in the presence of ladies." Sparing a glance at the officers, the lion nodded in greeting. "I assume you're here for Alex?"

Squinting at the lion, Carmelita nodded. "Indeed. And you know that… how?"

"Subtlety isn't really your strong suit, cous'."

"Shut it, Wilde!"

As she spared a glare for her cousin, Leo chuckled at their antics. "Indeed. But that's beside the point; he's likely back there." The lion thumbed at the back door. "I haven't seen him since the whole fiasco began, and I don't believe there's another exit."

Nodding her thanks, Carmelita leveled her pistol at the doorway in question. McCloskey and Neyla copied her action, while Nick merely rolled a small flame across his knuckles. "Alexander Kleftis!" The vixen barked out, "You're under arrest! Come out with your hands up!"

The door to the back swung open, and Alex stepped out. "I don't think so, fuzz!" Between the officers and the weasel was Judy, one arm wrenched behind her back, with a pistol pointed at her temple. "Let me go, or the cute little bunny gets it!"

"Zootopia's a small place, Kleftis; there's nowhere for you to go." Carmelita kept her gun leveled at the mustelid, but her officers were wavering.

"And who are you calling 'little'? You're practically the same size!"

"You're not helping, Wilde."

The weasel snarled at Nick. "Watch your tone, fluff but! 'Sides, I can head back to the surface; got me a bathysphere stocked with all kinds of plasmids, just ready to sell! Imagine, 'Kleftis Industries; Evolve Yourself Today!'" Shaking the stars from his eyes, Alex glared back at Carmelita. "So yeah, you're gonna let me go now, unless you want this bunny's brains all over your conscience!"

"Funny thing about those plasmids, mate…" The weasel gasped out an affronted 'Hey!' as his pistol flew from his paw, letting go of Judy in his shock. The weapon flew into the waiting paw of a black wolf, who awkwardly pointed the gun at the surprised mustelid. "They're a wonderful thing!" Mac grinned.

Before anyone else could do or say anything, a furious yell tore through the air. Grabbing the paw that had until quite recently held a gun to her head, Judy slipped backwards underneath Alex's arm. Putting her other paw on his elbow, Judy dropped her weight on it, twisting the weasel's arm behind his back as he fell. Pressing his face into the now extinguished alcohol pooled across the floor, Judy pressed her knee into the small of Alex's back, leveraging his arm a bit further, effectively immobilizing the weasel. "Don't!" She shouted down at her former boss, "Ever! Call me cute!"

The silence of the room was only incomplete due to the groans of the downed boars and weasel. Carmelita's security force, shocked by the sudden change in events, and the band, surprised by Judy's hidden wrath, remained silent for several moments.

"That's what you're upset about?!" Cameron blurted out, breaking the quiet.

A/N.

So, an interesting bit of news...

I'm not going to lie. Throughout this story, I have and will have characters spattered who are loosely based on people I know in real life.

One of them is Mac.

In real life, 'Mac' is a coworker of mine. Outside of work, his primary interest (as far as I'm aware) is music. Interactions with him that I've had made me think that he'd probably be a wolf in Zootopia, and also an excellent 'partner' for a character I'd already intended on having in there, Cam. Hence his inclusion in the band.

The thing is, when I initially wrote him in, A) As far as I know, he's never seen Zootopia, B)Had never played Bioshock, and C) Again as far as I know doesn't visit this site.

Which is why it was a shock when the day after I'd posted his debut chapter, he A) Wolf howled at me in greeting, B) Informed me that he started playing Bioshock the day before, C) used the break room table as a drum kit, and D) brought up the topic of 'the curse' (an inside story that we hadn't talked about in around, oh, a month?)

So, either A) I seriously misjudged him and his interests, in which case 'Sorry, Mac!', B) I know him a lot better than I'd ever imagined, or C) MY WRITING AFFECTS THE VERY FABRIC OF THE SPACE/TIME CONTINUUM!

Or D), the most likely, it is the strangest coincidence that has happened to me lately.

Just a funny anecdote I thought I'd share with you all.