11:50 P.M.
SWAT units lined up along the edge of the rooftop blocks away from Pruitt Building, setting their sights on the Joker's final hideout. The squad captain informed Commissioner Cluck, "Sir, we found the missing hospital bus."
"And we have a hostage situation," Cluck confirmed, and he used a pair of binoculars, setting the lens on the mask-wearing thugs barricaded by the windows. "It's a shooting gallery. Why would he choose a spot with such good windows?"
The squad captain filled in the loop, "We have clear shots on five clowns. Snipers take them out, smash the windows, a team repels in, and moves in by the stairwells. Two or three casualties: max."
Cluck nodded at the strategy, "Let's do it."
"It's not that simple, Commissioner. With the Joker, it never is."
A female voice sounded behind Cluck, and he turned to see Judy and Nick, their faces brimming with suspicion that the clown would throw some kind of metaphorical wrench into the equally metaphorical machine. Cluck raised an eyebrow, "Not that simple? What are you talking about?"
Judy glanced at the windows, "The clowns haven't even moved. Surely they can see us from there."
Nick suggested, "There's always a catch whenever we play games with the clown. Like she said, with the Joker, it's never that simple."
"I won't have my first day in office be marked with letting those people kill each other!" Cluck's voice was sharp, and it shocked the duo as he approached them. "What's simple is that every second we don't take him out, those people on the ferries get closer to—"
"That won't happen!" Judy snapped.
"Then he'll blow both of them up!" Cluck grew tense.
"We need five minutes alone!" Judy shouted insistently. "Give us time, please!"
"No! There's no time!" Cluck argued. "We have clear shots!"
Provoked to action, Judy and Nick stood at the roof's edge, preparing for their break-in. The police commissioner attempted to stop them, even pulling out his gun, but he dared not to shoot.
"Garnet is in there with them! We have to save Garnet! We all have to save Garnet!"
No answer. Instead, Judy fired a hook from her grappling gun, extending a wire between both buildings. She and Nick held on and glided their way towards the Pruitt Building. Cluck didn't say anything, momentarily at a loss for failing to stop his wildcard allies. He turned to the SWATS and ordered, "Get ready. Two minutes, then we breach." He then turned away frustrated.
In mere moments, a rabbit and a fox sliding down a rope made their descent to a one story-sized window frame, in the process, shattering the glass and knocking down a hapless clown thug, who uncharacteristically, unlike others, mumbled beneath his mask.
"Lucius, I need picture," Judy conveyed, and she put on a special set of goggles, letting her long ears slip through before attaching them to her eyes.
"Okay, we have POV on Alpha, Omni on Beta. It looks like clowns and hostages on two floors. A SWAT team is on a stairwell, another on the roof."
Moving her head around, Judy instantly imaged the whole of the building, detecting silhouettes of SWATS, hospital hostages, and masked thugs in a mixture of blue and white.
Meanwhile, Nick could hear muffled words coming from behind the clown's face. "Strange. The moment we set foot in here, none of the clowns even pulled a trigger. Unless…" He then scrutinized the weapons the other clowns nearby wielded; they turned out to be blank of ammunition, duct-taped to their paws/hooves. "…they're not clowns at all." Cautiously, Nick took the edge of the mask in his paw and pulled it off. The clown's face that was revealed belonged to Peter Moosebridge, the reporter whose status as a hostage was made public earlier that day. The moose had wide eyes and a look of panic, as well as a strip of duct tape covering his muzzle.
"Carrots, the SWATS are targeting the wrong people!" Nick's mind raced as he reassessed the situation rapidly. "The clowns are the hostages!"
"Wait, what?!" Judy's eyes widened. "That means the doctors are actually the Joker's—"
At that moment, blasts sounded a floor below the duo, and yelling sounded as the SWATS began their raid, oblivious of the danger lying ahead. Fearing for the worst, Judy made a radio signal to Cluck, "Commissioner, this is Hopps! We're targeting the wrong people! The clowns are the hostages!"
"What the…?!" Peering through the windows, Commissioner Cluck realized a few seconds late that by the time the SWAT teams bombarded the floors, surprises were laid in store for them.
"IT'S A TRAP!" Judy's voice cracked through Cluck's device.
And it happened!
Flashing mischievous grins, the doctors brandished their weapons and fired, the unsuspecting SWATS unable to escape the slaughter. If guns weren't plausible enough, they even activated booby traps, from flying spikes to explosive trap doors to poisonous gas. Within the confines of Pruitt Building, the SWATS were torn down in numbers, and the kill count increased.
"Dammit…" Cluck felt shaken to his core, and fear began to take root in his heart. The Joker knew they would come. He picked up his radio and desperately made a call, "All units, be advised! Pruitt Building is a death trap! We need reinforcements, on the dou—"
A loud noise stopped him from finishing his sentence. He and his associates were all interrupted by a blinding flash of red and yellow erupting from below the rooftop. Explosions began popping up from the asphalt surrounding Pruitt Building, consuming the reinforcing SWAT teams before they could provide backup. First the streets, then the avenues, and then the buildings. Soon, the entirety of Savanna Central was covered in volcanic pops. And then Tundratown. Sahara Square. The Rainforest District.
"No… It can't be…" Cluck stared fearfully at the scene.
It was at that specific, fateful moment in Zootopia's history that the city erupted in a sea of flames, tearing the ecosystems down the middle. This was but one of the fruits in the Joker's scheme; he dumped enormous amounts of gasoline in the sewer lines and water supply, the gunpowder secretly stashed in almost every infrastructure until it sparked. The sprinkler systems that once provided nourishing water to the trees in the Rainforest District was now replaced with fire, burning the greens to ash. Tundratown's polar icecaps were converted into a volcano, and within seconds, more than half of the district erupted like a volcano, the ash cloud consuming everything in its vicinity. Sahara Square, in an event mirroring the historic War on Terror, was scarred by detonation after detonation. The clowns, almost pushed to the brink of exhaustion, now rejoiced as they surged forward and pillaged as they pleased.
This was just as the Joker planned. From the safety of the Pruitt Building's top floor, he smiled in satisfaction. He had prepared for this moment. Every calculation was carried out with the upmost accuracy, every bomb, gas, and device placed with extreme precision, and every position was set to be wired at a moment's notice. The only ones spared from the fate of fire were the two remaining ferries, still drifting on the ocean. The game would be over soon by midnight, either way.
Zootopia, the world's greatest mammal metropolis, had been reduced a burning wasteland.
Welcome to a world without rules.
"Commissioner!" Judy shouted to her radio, both she and Nick impacted by the explosions rocking the entire city as well. "Are you okay?! Can you answer me?!"
"I'm fine! Don't worry about me!" Cluck's voice responded. "The Joker knew we were coming. He even knew we'd send in reinforcements! I should've listened to you…"
Judy worried, "But the streets and buildings… The whole city just… exploded!"
Cluck assured, "No need to worry, Hopps. Orders have been issued earlier this afternoon, and all the citizens have been evacuated from Zootopia, except for the last two ferries, and they're still rigged to blow." His voice rose urgently, "Time is short. You have to stop the Joker! If I can, I'll send any backup I have left!"
"Roger! Over and out!" Judy turned off her radio, and she turned to Nick. "Let's go!"
"Right behind ya!" Nick nodded. And thus, the two began their trek upward to the top floor of the Pruitt Building, by far the only place to have survived the explosions. With each floor they passed, they found the captive clowns and released them from captivity. At the same time, they kept an eye on the phony doctors, and before any could act, they swiftly knocked them down before pawcuffing them, leaving them to what remained of the police.
And in time, the Joker was within reach.
While both the city and the building tensed, the predicament regarding the two ferries had still not been resolved. In the Spirit, the Nation Guard grizzly bear presented the results of the vote, "The tally is 964 with, 140 against."
"So go ahead!" a leopard passenger implored. "Do it!"
The captain of the Spirit muttered, "We're still here, which means they haven't killed us yet either. And it's four minutes left…"
At the Liberty, the muscle-bound Ginty stared at the rioting inmates, feelings of slight disgust made visible on his visage.
Just in time, a new SWAT team fortunate to survive the explosions had snuck into the Pruitt Building to deal with what remained of the Joker's henchmammals and traps. The captain relayed orders to his troops, "All right, orders from Commissioner Cluck. Clowns are hostages, doctors are targets."
The Joker stared at a view of the burning city, the crackling ash and smoke rising into the air, before he turned his head to see the river. Three Wild Dogs, the former pets of Pinguino, stood behind the jackal tied to a pipe. It was the presence of Judy Hopps and Nick Wilds that caught his attention. Turning again, the Joker turned to see his adversaries approaching him, their hearts burning with vigor.
"Ah, you finally made it! I'm so thrilled!" he said jovially. "And you brought your fox friend. The more the merrier."
"Where's the detonator?" Judy demanded.
The Joker knew where this was going. With a flick of his knife, the restraints were loose. "Go get 'em!" And the dogs charged forward, their teeth bared, with the intent of killing their targets. Standing their ground, Judy dispatched her Wild Dog easily, and Nick deftly sidestepped his and slit open a nerve. The last Wild Dog, however, made a surprise lunge and pinned Nick to the floor, his jaws snatched at his jugular.
"Hey!" Nick yelled, struggling to fight his adversary. "A little help, please?"
"I'm coming!" Judy went to pry the Wild Dog off her fox friend. It was difficult, though, trying to avoid hitting him in the process. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Joker take something from his pocket, pull the pin out, and toss it into the fight. The sound of hissing gas ensued, and a thick cloud of smoke appeared. And then, the Joker sprung forward from the fog, standing above the two.
A sharp blow from the crowbar in the clown's paw landed on Judy's chest, and then her head. Growling savagely, the Joker rained blows down on the fight indiscriminately. Judy, Nick, and the Wild Dog in his disposal, were all in his way, and all fair game.
Judy tried to focus her willpower between her paws for punching and pushing, and various points on her back and sides to defend herself. Finally, she was able to dispatch the Wild Dog off Nick and sent him flying off the broken stairwell. The Joker's crowbar still struck her over and over. She couldn't anticipate where the blows would land; they were so fast. She couldn't even manage to step away or get a look at the Joker; the blows came so quickly. Her sonar-vision goggles could barely get a glimpse; the blue and white just jumbled.
Finally, they stopped. Judy took the opportunity to stumble, and finally give her counterattack. That's when she saw Nick viciously juggling the clown's stomach and face. After enduring a few blows though, the Joker stunned the fox with pepper spray, blinding his eyes and causing him to scream in pain. He took the opportunity to pull out another small canister, pull the pin, and toss the hissing smoke can across the floor. The Joker turned to see Judy leaping for him with a vigorous cry. Reacting quickly, he raised the crowbar and smacked it across the face, slamming her to the floor.
As Judy recuperated from the unexpected defense, she felt another strike on her side.
"Not good… I might just die here…!"
This might be the end.