Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Disney, least of all Zootopia (yet)

The drive to the mall was intense to say the least. Nick's car had been modified with a light system that allowed him to use his own car as if it was a police cruiser.

That being said, he did still overdo it on the speed. Judy was sure at every corner that this was going to be the corner that they would not round completely and hit one of the buildings close to them. It also surprised her that they took back alleys and connection tunnels in order to get to their destination. She had long since given up on trying to figure out what kind of route this was and whether or not they were actually driving towards the downtown area. But then they reached the downtown area in record time and this was where the frustration began.

The city center was crowded and there was traffic everywhere and even with flashing lights and a police siren they were slowed down considerably.

The fact that they had mutually decided to stay silent during the whole duration of the drive after the explosion had happened was not really helping either. But still neither of them dared to speak in fear of thinking to much of what had happened. And she knew what was going on in Nick's head. She knew that he was blaming himself for not being faster and not preventing the explosion. She did the same after all even though they were not talking about it.

The questions were haunting her, had mammals died?

If so how many?

Had the climate wall been badly damaged?

If so then what would happen to the city now?

Zootopia depended on the climate wall in order to accommodate all these different species that called the city home so loosing that system would spell disaster.

But more importantly for her: What if the media blamed the FPM?

This would be a disaster and she had no idea whether or not the FPM could recover from such a blow in its current state.

It was vital that they found rock solid evidence that the FPM was not involved as soon as possible.

The car came to a stop just as she finished that thought, "alright Carrots let's go and find ourselves a beaver!"

Judy just nodded and they both exited the car and entered the mall before them. It was one of the better known malls for both predators and prey due to the fact that it was rather expensive and as such allowed only the "sophisticated" prey to be here. Which was a fancy way of saying that predators did not mind to be seen with prey as long as they belonged to one of the wealthy founding families or as long as they practiced one of the more desirable professions such as being a doctor or something similar.

"These damn hypocrites",she cursed under her breath just quiet enough so that Nick could not hear her.

The inside of the mall was weirdly designed. There were separate walkways for predators and prey just like out on the streets but hardly anyone used them since the shops catered to both species anyways. More important was the layout that had lots of vertical play so to say.

There were multiple stories and the difference in the stories was that they got smaller the higher you went. Allowing big mammals like bears and such to remain on the ground floor while small mammals like rats and shrews would use the highest levels since they were perfectly sized for them.

This also made it easier to track certain mammals since it was unlikely that a shrew for example would shop on the lower floors in a shop that was designed for far larger mammals.

Which meant that they would need to look for Felicia on the middle floors where the smaller mammals like Nick and Judy herself would go as well.

This made the whole search thing a lot easier, if they had been looking for a mouse instead then this whole thing could have gotten real messy.

Because, seriously what kind of mammal would be dumb enough to endanger others by going into an area that was definitely not build to support the size of said mammal, she could not even imagine anyone in his or her right mind being that reckless.

So they went to the middle floors. The mammals there were predators and prey alike but both groups had one thing in common, they stared at Nick and Judy who were sticking as close together as they could so that neither of them would get lost. It was weird for Judy to get this much attention in the open like this since she normally tried to avoid being the center of attention, attention was the last thing that she as an FPM operative needed when out and about after all.

The mall itself was really pretty and the stores were bustling with life. What surprised her most though was the sheer amount of prey that were around since she always thought that prey were miserable wherever you went. But considering the fact that you needed a certain amount of wealth to even consider coming here made it very clear that there was a healthy amount of rich prey in the city as well.

It took them about ten minutes of just walking around to notice that they might needed to enter shops in order to find Felicia since she was not out in the open. And so they did.

Most of the stores were clothing stores or jewelry stores which made going into the latter as just the two of them rather awkward when other mammals started to notice them. One shop owner even called them out as being an affront to nature, obviously believing that they were some sort of interspecies couple, and wanted to throw them out of his store. He refrained from doing so however when Nick flashed his badge and explained that he was searching for a witness.

This lead to the owner of the shop to be actually helpful, who would have thought, when he revealed to them that Felicia had actually been in this shop and that she had talked about looking for new glasses after buying a necklace.

This made their job considerably easier since there was only one shop that would sell glasses to small sized mammals like Felicia.

And so they made their way over to that shop and surely enough Felicia and her bodyguards were there.

It was the first time that Judy ever actually saw Felicia, even though the news coverage back in the day had been huge, probably to give prey the illusion that the government actually cared about them, but this was only Judy's theory and she had no evidence for that.

Felicia was a pretty plain beaver and it showed in the way she was wearing her summer dress and her red thin framed glasses while talking to a store clerk. There was something special about her though and sadly so, it was not something desirable that set her apart from all the other beavers out there.

It was the fact that the remnants of her being abused by her captors were clearly visible to everyone. There was for example a thick scar running down the left side of her neck and snaking over towards the middle of her back in a wavy curve. Beavers normally had very thick fur and so the fact that after all this time the fur had not completely grown back and allowed the scar to remain barely visible meant that this had been one hell of a wound back in the day.

The second thing that was easily noticeable was the missing piece of tail that made her stick out like a sore thumb. It truly looked just like if a larger predator had taken a bite straight out of her tail and naturally it had never grown back, which left her with a considerable bite shaped hole in her tail. Judy really felt sorry for the poor girl. She hated the old prey families in the city for siding with their oppressors, yes. But that did not mean that this poor girl deserved to be scarred like this for life. She had done nothing wrong, it was not her fault that she had been born into this family and she had done nothing that was objectively bad that would warrant such cruelty from anyone. So Judy felt like she actually deserved her pity.

Another thing that Judy noticed right away was the fact that there was only one predator guarding Felicia, a tough looking badger with a huge scar on his forehead that went over his left eye which was so cloudy that it could only mean that he was blind on said left eye. He was openly carrying a gun and was wearing a three piece suit which, combined with his scar and his eye made him look like an action movie villain. The other two guards were some smaller kind of deer. They had no visible weapons except their antlers, which was normal since prey were not allowed to carry any form of weaponry, and despite being a smaller kind of deer, they both had to crouch in order to fit into the room which looked fairly uncomfortable and honestly pretty ridiculous. And she could see from the smirk on Nick's muzzle that he thought so as well.

They were wearing suits that fit the one the badger wore as well and naturally they were eyeing Nick and her with utmost suspicion.

It was Nick that ultimately broke the ice.

"Miss Holz?" This caused Felicia to turn away from the store clerk that had just presented her a new frame for her glasses that looked really similar to her old one and face Nick. Before he or she for that matter could say anything though they were interrupted as the badger stepped between them.

"May I inquire what your intentions towards our young mistress may be?", he asked in a weathered voice that made him sound like a grizzly old movie villain even more.

Nick only smirked and answered,"you may." He then took a few steps closer so that he was standing really close to the badger before him. "I am here because," Nick reached into his pocket which made the badger go for his gun and point it at Nick faster than she had been able to even see, but Nick just keep his cool while he produced a badge from his pocket and showed it to the badger who now visually relaxed but still did not lower his gun for some reason."I am Officer Nick Wilde and I was sent by the ZIS in order to question Miss Holz about the events of her kidnapping. Because we have reason to believe that the same mammals that were responsible for that incident are now involved in another incident. We also believe that the cooperation of Miss Holz is paramount to solving this case and therefore if you do not cooperate I have been authorized by my superiors to arrest you and Miss Holz for obstruction of justice in the name of special agent Hunter. And we both know that there is no coming back from that." The badger faltered and lowered his gun and Nick walked past him in order to address Felicia."So Miss Holz if you would come with us to a more secluded place." He looked at the store clerk, "maybe a backroom?" The clerk just nodded in response, clearly frightened by the prospect of possibly being arrested and Nick just turned back towards Felicia which looked at him quite frightened herself. So Nick continued with his professional routine,"since this case contains a lot of sensitive information that is not supposed to be available to the public yet."

Felicia nodded and the fear was spelled all over her face while she fidgeted around with her paws too which was an obvious tell of her nervousness, not that anyone would need a tell to tell that she was nervous.

This lead to the store clerk leading them towards his counter or more precisely towards a door behind it. When Judy however started to follow Nick, she was stopped by the badger who put his paw on her shoulder with a grip that felt like her shoulder had been put into a steel clamp."And where do you think you might be going?"

She saw that Nick wanted to jump in and help but she had an idea of her own, "I am his assistant.", this made the badger look at her with suspicion."Why would the ZIS or the ZPD employ you? They are not allowed to employ prey."

She nodded,"not as an agent or a full time worker no. But we know that Miss Holz has had problems with predators ever since that...well...traumatizing event. And so they asked me to assist officer Wilde in order to reduce the stress for Miss Holz."

The badger eyed her for a moment longer and then let her go. "Am I to believe that we,"he pointed at himself and the other guards, "are not allowed to be present when you and your assistant question our mistress?"

Nick nodded ,"yes that is correct. That does not mean that you can not guard the room though."

The badger nodded in turn,"understood."

And Nick vanished into the room that Felicia had already entered. With Judy following suit.

She really hoped that this conversation would be the breakthrough that they wanted, that they needed.

Authors Note:

So here it is the first half(?) of the next chapter.
I really wanted to go on but if I started to go past this point then the chapter would have been around 5k words long and I try to keep them to a max of 3k words. So the rest shall follow. And we will finally get some violence (YAY![I waited so long])
But splitting a chapter always means changing a chapter so this might not be two chapters but three or in case of another chapter that I wrote right at the beginning of this story 5, who knows.
And since I am on a roll I am going back to writing directly now.