McHorn unpacked his case carefully, as always, placing the dark red cloth onto the table neatly. He took out the battered can of his homemade polish, unscrewed it and sniffed at the dark mixture inside, then placed it next to the neatly folded cloth on the table. He lifted the cloth and dabbed at the polish lightly.

He began to polish his horn.

The usual discussion began.

"He never does it on the day shift."

"Or whenever there's another rhino around."

"He should have the decency to do it in his own home!"

"Should he- does he need to be discreet about it?"

"Someone needs to say something."

"What? To Bogo?"

"Are you kidding? No, just… someone needs to let him know how weird it looks."

Judy and Nick sat amongst a huddle of other officers in the briefing room, everyone sitting in mortified fascination as the rhino went through his usual routine. Their expressions were a mix of curiosity, horror and confused arousal. No-one had any clue if what he was doing was inappropriate, but the care and pleasure the rhino took as he buffed his horn seemed to go beyond simple grooming into something much seedier.

Francine stared intently as the cloth polished his horn to a glossy finish, unable to tear her eyes away. Snarlof, in contrast, was glaring straight ahead and pretending he was completely unaware of the rhino, betrayed by a flicker of his eyes every so often as he stole glances at the show. Delgato leant casually on the desk, his chin in his hand as he watched the meticulous actions of the rhino, his eyes narrowed in lazy contemplation; each swish-swish of the cloth was already well ingrained in minds of every cop watching.

Nick turned to Judy, 'You guys are unbelievably weird.'

Judy's eyes reflected the furious movements of McHorn, unable to tear herself away from the sight, as she responded out of the side of her mouth, 'You should hear what they say about you.'

A few of the officer huddled together with them muttered a quiet chant to Nick, 'One of us, one of us.'

"I think it's kind of hot," admitted Francine, her eyes still fixed on the rhino across the room.

"Francine!" gasped Snarlof indignantly, he couldn't have looked more appalled if the elephant had held him down and spat directly into his mouth.

The McHorn Routine had been discussed quietly among the night shift for weeks, ever since the rhino had asked to be moved to the shift, but no-one had come to any firm conclusion on whether the rhino was just grooming himself or was doing something questionably indecent. Everyone could talk to rhinos, and everyone could talk about rhinos. But talking to rhinos about rhinos was where they all suddenly got embarrassed. Especially when it was about their horns; after all, everyone knew what they said about rhinos.

"Just look it up on your phone, there's gotta be somewhere that talks about this kind of stuff." Suggested one of the many wolves in the precinct.

"Me? Not a chance. Who knows what that might bring up; my wife checks my search history and once you search for this stuff they get you on a list and never stop sending you stuff."

"Oh yeah? How do you know that?"

The wolf became increasingly quiet as he mumbled an excuse the no-one paid any attention to; everyone was making a mental note to clear out their own search history. Not that they had anything to be ashamed of! It was just, uh, just to be safe.

Right.

There was a brief moment of silence as everyone tried to avoid anyone else's gaze.

"You need to go and talk to him, Wilde," said Fangmeyer.

"Me? I'm not talking to him, I barely know the guy; any of you would be better."

Delgato straightened up in his chair and turned to face Nick with a stoic expression. "You're an alright guy, Wilde, but we've cut you a lot slack because Hopps just wouldn't shut up about you. Now there are rookie jobs and you're the rookie; go and tell McHorn to stop doing whatever the hell it is he's doing.'

His tone wasn't aggressive, but it clearly said that it wouldn't take no for an answer. Judy shrunk down a little in the chair beside Nick as her part in his treatment was mentioned and the officers surrounding them exchanged grins and chuckles.

Nick had his mouth half open in an automatic protest but reined it back in as he realised how futile it would be. Just like any gang, the bad jobs trickled down and Nick knew the difference between paying your dues and standing your ground. He wouldn't let anyone push him around, but he did want to be accepted by these people; if that meant talking to a rhino about his weird public horn-buffing kink, so be it. There'd be a new rookie eventually.

He slid off the chair and made his way over to the rhino, throwing a glare over his shoulder at the watching crowd that they patently ignored.

"I mean, come on, look at the shine he's gotten on that thing."

"Francine!"

Nick had been hoping that his unnaturally good luck would be on his side today, but this certainly didn't bode well. He still hadn't run into the chief yet and had almost convinced himself that the overwhelming sensation of terror he'd felt outside the precinct had been an overreaction; the buffalo probably had the chance to vent most of his frustrations on Wolford, Nick would probably get off with a bit of a reprimand.

They have a word for people as detached from reality as you.

Shut up, he told himself as he found himself beside McHorn, the rhinoceros not so much as sparing the fox a glance as he continued with his ritual.

So how the hell am I supposed to ask him about this?

"Hey McHorn, night shift, am I right?"

He considered giving the rhino a playful nudge with his elbow, but realized he wouldn't be able to reach any higher than his knee, so he settled with a shrug he hoped suggested that they were all in this together.

McHorn didn't so much as glance at the fox, merely continuing to buff his horn.

"Go away, Wilde."

"Sure thing, buddy, sure thing; it's just, the guys were wondering-"

"Ain't gonna talk about it. Ain't gonna stop. Just get used to it."

Nick still had a paw raised and mouth open as if to argue and quickly realised there was no point. The rhino spoke with the stubbornness of a rock wall; he wouldn't be convinced. Nick nodded and took a step away before pausing and shifting his weight back towards the rhino again.

"Uh, just one thing: are we supposed to be embarrassed?"

McHorn finally finished his buffing and pulled the cloth from his horn and flicked it with a fluttering crack into the silence of the briefing room, clearly happy with his work. He finally shifted his gaze to the small fox beside him, gave him a wide grin and shrugged.

"Yeah, so, he's not going to stop," said Nick to the eagerly awaiting crowd when he got back over to them, eliciting a cacophony of groans, chuckles and sighs. The huddle broke up as the officers made their way to their own seats, the topic of conversation finally moving on. Money was exchanged between several officers as a series of wagers Nick would rather not know the details of were concluded. A few pairs of eyes followed Francine as she made her way over to chat with McHorn.

Nick settled back into the chair beside Judy, still a little bemused by the whole situation. "Y'know, if you told me a year ago I'd be gossiping with a roomful of cops about a rhino buffing his horn I might have believed you, but I certainly wouldn't have managed it happening this way."

"Feels good, right? I still need to have you over for that Cop Movie Marathon I have planned; you've been putting it off for months," Judy added a little reproachfully. "You'll see that this is just all part of the cop lifestyle, it'll make sense then."

Nick threw her a sardonic look, then flicked his gaze back over to McHorn who had just finished putting away his kit, "Exactly what sort of movies do you have, Carrots? Should I bring a chaperone?"

Her face scrunched up in a disapproving pout, her ears pressed down her back and gave him another slight jab on the arm, something that was becoming all too familiar and (he had to admit) all too deserved.

The door at the side of the room opened and Higgins made his was inside, calling them all to attention. There was a brief flurry of activity as everyone settled down as Bogo entered the briefing room.

He made his was over to the lectern, dumping an ungodly amount of paperwork on the surface and briefly skimming the first few pages before pulling out a single sheet.

He looked up and directly into Nick's eyes, the first acknowledgement that there was anyone else in the room, or even the whole station.

"Delgato, Snarlof, you're on your usual route through Tundratown tonight; be alert, there's a joint benefit being held by the Herd and Lionheart campaigns, raising money for the Zootopian Orphan Trust; you know how punchy these folks get when someone tries to out-donate them."

The entire time he spoke his eyes never left Nick's. The buffalo didn't even seem to blink and Nick was too terrified to, certain the chief would pounce on that brief moment between his eyes flickering closed and open again.

Bogo continued on his briefing, never looking at another officer to make sure his orders were acknowledged or even consulting his rota of officers for the night to see who was doing what, seeming to arrange the entire shift through memory. As the briefing went on, the rest of the cops began to realize something was wrong. Some were intelligent, some were dumb, some were average, but that wasn't really important to a cop; what they relied on was their instincts that told them when things were wrong.

The already quiet room became more quiet as everyone tried to avoid drawing the chief's attention. As names were called up, they scurried up to receive the file and quickly made their way out of the room; a few even spared looks of sympathy for Nick as they walked past the desk.

Finally, they were alone in the room. The rabbit, the fox and the buffalo.

"Wilde." The chief inhaled the entire room. "Nick Wilde, officer of the law." The blast of air from the bison raised Nick's eyelids and sent Judy's ears fluttering.

(Metaphorically, of course, but the chief had the unnerving ability of making you feel the full force of a metaphor whether you liked it or not.)

Nick now knew the feeling of terror he had felt outside the precinct was indeed silly.

He had been nowhere near scared enough.

He'd passed through that level of worry that involved gibbering, screaming and tearing at your fur; he'd arrived at that odd level beyond terror, a strange sort of twitchy normality.

"Yes, sir?" breathed Nick, one of the last ones he would ever take. It was exquisite; how had he never noticed before?

"People find you charming, Wilde."

"Yes they do, chief," there went another one. He hated to see it go.

"Specific people," said the bison.

"Everyone's specific, sir," quipped the fox in a startlingly daring attempt at suicide.

The bull smiled and denied him such an easy release, "Specific people, indeed, Wilde. Specific people. Specific people also happen to include every member of the Civilian Review Committee who were so charmed by Officer Wilde's demonstration of what a real police line-up might entail."

Wilde felt his spirit fighting its way back into his body, feeling a desperate strand of hope.

"The Civilian Review Committee," continued Bogo, "who was desperate for an officer to liaise with on any AND all matters which involve interaction with the department. They were so happy to hear you volunteered, Wilde."

"I'm so glad you received my request for the position, sir, I was worried it hadn't been passed on to you," Nick heard his mouth say, bypassing the brain entirely; it was desperate for survival and had the most practice in keeping him alive anyway. The rest of his body watched on in awed silence. The kidney's in particular were very impressed and wished they didn't have all the go-betweens between them and the mouth.

(The other organs vetoed this burgeoning romance in favour of keeping the kidney's well away from the mouth or, indeed, any areas it might suddenly spill out. That didn't sound healthy.)

The thud of documents on the desk woke Nick from his hallucination. He clutched at them like a drowning fox on flotsam.

"I'm proud of you, Nick. Proud," stated Bogo and Nick felt the overwhelming love and fear that one felt for any god within his temple.

"Hopps, good catch on the Plaza case," said the chief in his normal gruff briefing voice. "Here's the file; Jones wants to talk to you too."

Judy stared at Bogo blankly, almost unaware of what the buffalo had said; she had the strange sensation that some sort of brutal attack had just happened here, but she just couldn't tell what it was. A psychological mugging, perhaps. She blinked as she realised a file had been dropped into her paws. When she looked back up she saw Bogo's figure disappearing through the doorway.

She looked back down at the file for a dazed moment then let out a woop of triumph and jumped off the chair and under the desk, darting towards the door. Nick stumbled after her in a daze, a few papers sliding from his collection as his mind reassured him that he had in fact survived the encounter.

Judy zipped across the foyer towards the administration section, her nose buried deeply in the case file and oblivious to the world outside; a few of the larger cops stumbled as they struggled to avoid crushing the bunny as she almost literally walked underfoot, throwing mild curses after her that bounced of the shell of her utter focus.

Nick carefully balanced the large stack of documents as he followed his partner to their desks. The pile was huge and he doubted anyone expected him to actually read it, well, Bogo probably did but the worst was over; now that he was out of the presence of Bogo his usual instincts kicked in and he already was working of a series of plans to offload this new responsibility. It felt like a small part of him was desperately trying to warn to not do this, but he dutifully ignored it.

(They say that new mothers have to block out the trauma of childbirth in order to be able to even consider doing it a second time. A thousand generations of mothers had nothing on Nick's ability to ignore those parts of reality that just didn't fit his mind-set. This probably wasn't healthy.)

When he arrived at their desks, Judy was already pouring through the case file, a wide grin on her face as she practically vibrated in excitement. He heaved the mountain of paper and cardboard onto his own workspace and watched as they slowly collapsed and spread across the surface in a tiny avalanche. He stared for a long moment, considering briefly how long it would take to clean before deciding that he'd never needed the desk anyway and writing it off.

He moved behind Judy and peered over her shoulder to examine the file alongside her. She whipped her head around as she felt his presence, whacking against his snout as he received a faceful of bunny forehead that sent him into a daze; the bunny, in contrast, was so excited that she hardly noticed.

"The cameras, Nick!"

Clutching the side of his jaw he sidled back up to the side of the bunny, making sure he wasn't about to get another smack to the face as he mumbled, "The what?"

"The security footage is missing! From midnight on it's just not there! And not just last night," she flicked through several of the pages, elated, "Nearly every night for the last few weeks has blocks of footage missing."

She slammed the folder onto the desk and looked up, a smug smile spreading across her face as her nose twitched in excitement. "I knew there was something strange going on." She spun in her chair to face Nick again, causing him to flinch but managing to avoid a collision this time.

"Do they know what happened to it?" he asked.

She took another glance at file, "Nope."

"Can they recover any of it?"

Again, she glanced at the file, "No, probably not."

"Can they tell us anything useful?" pleaded Nick, seeing their weekend quickly vanishing.

"Nope! Well, not yet, they're still working on the system. Come on!" She threw the file at Nick and leapt out of her chair and began to race for the doorway.

"Where?" he called after her, trying not to drop the file.

"Jones wants to talk to us!"

Nick flicked through the file as he followed Judy slowly, in no hurry to meet with the weird coroner boar again. As Judy had said, there was footage missing from the office's security for weeks. All late at night and lasting anywhere from thirty minutes up to a couple of hours. It was something, but the IT guys hadn't been able to confirm who had tampered with the footage or how they had done it. They were still working on it but they apparently weren't enthusiastic about finding anything.The report suggested it was cleanly managed operation.

When he finally arrived at the doors to the morgue, he was surprised to find the rabbit dithering outside. Arriving beside her, Nick raised a questioning brow as the bunny looked up at him, a hint of worry in her eyes.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

She nodded at the door and waggled her ears slightly. He didn't think she realised how silly she looked doing that. Silly in a good way though. Cute, he supposed, though he knew better than to throw that word around casually. He refocused on the door and perked his ears, trying to hear what was throwing off his bulldozer of a partner.

All he could make out was the faint sound of a conversation; it was too quiet for him to hear the details, but it sounded friendly enough to him. Again, he turned to take his cue from Judy; seeing him look to her, she sighed and pushed her way into the coolness of the morgue.

As Nick followed her inside the sounds of conversation abruptly halted. Jones and Michaels had been sitting on two stools around the body of a capybara, their lunchboxes on either side of the corpse as they seemed to be enjoying a working lunch.

Michaels looked over his shoulder at the two of them standing in the door and then turned back to mutter something to Jones. While inaudible to Nick, it made Judy wince slightly.

The pale ermine cleaned his things and made his way to the door and past them without a word. It wasn't that he was seemed particularly hostile to either him or Judy, he merely acted like they didn't exist. Nick's stare followed the little mammal as he walked down the corridor, wondering what Michaels' problem was before his attention was pulled back into the morgue.

"Bogo said you wanted to see us. What's the corpus delicti?" asked Judy eagerly, already bouncing back with her trademark enthusiasm.

Jones looked at his half eaten sandwich, "Tomatoes, mostly."

"Arthur," whined Judy.

"Don't try to be so fancy then, girl."

The boar's face was split by a grin and he took another large bite before putting his lunch away and motioning for them to follow him as he went deeper into the room, chewing as he went.

Nick had no idea how the boar could stand eating in this place. The smell of disinfectant and decay alone was making him twitchy.

"I'm not sure if it had anything to do with this particular case," continued the boar around his sandwich, "But it was strange enough that I thought you'd get a kick out of it, Hopps."

Like all multi-species facilities, the morgue towered over Nick and Judy as it sought to accommodate all sizes. Examination rooms were furnished in plastics and stainless steel which combined with the harsh lighting to give Nick a headache. He managed to catch glimpses of bodies laid out in side-rooms or behind curtains, lending the stark cleanliness of the morgue an aura of eeriness.

They passed the body of an elephant laid out on a reinforced steel examination table, his chest already open but the body was unattended. Nick almost screamed in terror as some unholy creature emerged from inside the elephant's chest cavity. He was milliseconds away from grabbing Judy and fleeing to the armoury to stock up on weapons when the creature gave him a cordial nod and clambered down the side of the body, shaking a few red blobs from its feet as it made its way over to a small notepad and started to jot down something.

Nick's eye readjusted and realised that it was groundhog wearing some sort of mix between a wetsuit and a hazmat suit. The thought that this was a daily job for her terrified Nick even more than the thought of some unknown creature climbing out of bodies. This was just a regular mammal and she climbed into bodies on a daily basis.

High pitched laughter at an unheard joke erupted from a door just to the right of Nick and he found himself speeding up, pressing close to Judy as his eyes darted about warily.

Poor Judy, she's probably terrified.

He looked down at the bunny, only to find her looking up at him with a confused and irritated expression that asked, "What the heck are you doing?" (Not many people can manage this look; a "What the hell are you doing?" look is easy, but Judy somehow managed to remove even that mild profanity from her gaze.) Despite the look, she didn't push him away, merely rolling her eyes and continuing after Jones.

See, she's a bundle of nerves, thought Nick as he looked around to make sure no-one was creeping up on him. He shuffled behind her bravely.

Jones finally ushered them into an examination room of his own; the body on his table was covered with a sheet, but it was clearly the wolf they'd met last night. The boar fussed around for a moment, searching fruitlessly until he lifted the sheet and grabbed a clipboard that was resting on Ishkar. Nick caught a brief glimpse of the wolf before the sheet was lowered again; he was just as dead as he had been in the Plaza, but it looked like Jones had at least tried to clean him up a bit now that his examination was finished.

"So, our friend Charlie here went out the window pretty easily, no signs of a struggle, all damage seems to have been done by the fall…"

He ran through a litany of checks, each time ruling out anything that could be responsible for a deeper investigation. Judy's foot began to beat out a drum on the floor as she struggled not to grab the clipboard out of the boar's hands.

Jones looked up briefly at the sound and smiled, but refused to move any faster as he ran through a litany of toxicology reports that meant little to Nick, he only knew that no red flags were being raised.

"I'm waiting on a few more toxicology reports, but we've ruled out the standard stuff and I'm not expecting much from them. But the one weird thing," stated the boar, drawing it out theatrically as he moved towards the wall, "was that Mr Ishkar seemed to have quite an interesting history." He flipped a switch and a light hummed to life, illuminating a series of x-rays all along the wall. Judy and Nick moved closer to study them.

"I've seen a couple of folks like this in the past, but they usually don't work in an office environment."

Judy stared at the x-rays and seemed to be making as much sense of them as Nick was.

"What is it?' she asked as she turned to face the boar.

"This wolf has had nearly every bone in his body broken. Well, not every bone, but easily over half and several of them multiple times. Some are kind of recent, some go back years, decades, even."

Judy and Nick exchanged a look of discomfort.

"You think it could have been abuse?" asked Judy.

The boar shrugged, "A lot of it would have happened when he was a teenager, sure. But it's been going on a lot more recently than that."

"Doesn't rule it out, though, does it?" continued Nick sombrely.

"Sure, I guess," conceded the boar, "But I don't think Ishkar was the kind of guy you could push around easily. If he wasn't dead, I'd say he'd be one of the healthiest people I've ever met. Organs were top-notch, musculature was hard to beat. That, and…"

"And?"

"Well, I'd say that he knew how to fight. There's a few clues we can pick up in this kind of examination; toughened knuckles, sharpened claws, excellent care for the incisors. I'd say the wolf knew how to handle himself."

"But you say some of the injuries were recent, so maybe he wasn't that good?" suggested Nick.

"Or maybe he was just up against people who were better?' considered Judy.

The boar shrugged again, "I'll leave that up to you two to work out. One other thing though, with this number of breaks it's pretty unlikely that all of them are going to heal right. But this guy…"

Jones paused to scan the numerous x-rays again.

"He may have gotten the crap kicked out of him on a daily basis, but at least whoever was taking care of him did a good job. It's rare to see such consistently good patchwork."

Nick and Judy left Jones with Ishkar as they made their way back out of the morgue, Nick's previous fears dampened by the new mystery presented to them.

"So, an office worker with the body of a brawler and the bones of an abuse victim…" Judy worried at her bottom lip as she mulled the new facts over.

"That apparently goes to his office in the middle of the night when the cameras mysteriously shut off," added Nick.

"Looks like we'll need to get more of a background on who exactly Ishkar was."

"Back to see the Herds? They weren't the most helpful last chance we had."

"No, I think we have someone who might have a better idea of what he was up to last night." Judy took out her phone and pawed through it before holding it up to Nick.

Nick groaned as he stared at the picture from Ishkar's wallet; perhaps one of the last people to see the wolf alive, Hadley the liger.

A hybrid.