DISCLAIMER: I gave my bid for Zootopia, all laminated and everything, to Dory to deliver to Disney. Apparently she forgot it in a sunken sub during a meeting of Fish Are Friends. So now, not only do I not only NOT own Zootopia, but I have to hire a diver to go find my bid.

Thanks to TheoreticallyEva for helping with this chapter! Seriously guys, go read her stories. She's awesome.

"Not much to look at, is it, Carrots?" Nick stared at the Zoogle Street View image of the building for which they would be responsible. A large, albeit rundown warehouse with a small office area out front, boarded up, and for sale for years.

Beside Nick, Judy nodded. "They seem to have a thing for warehouses, too. Waterfront, Tundratown, and now here in the Meadowlands. Most of the other ones were small office spaces."

"Must be the open space. This one looks big enough to fit an elephant herd's Christmas party in it." Nick pulled out one of the papers they'd been given at city hall. "The place is owned by Zoocomm Properties. Wonder if they know exactly who is squatting in there."

Judy snorted and pulled out the floor plan. "If they don't already, they'll know as soon as we break the door down and start arresting mammals." She taped the floor plan to the cubicle wall next to Nick's monitor. "Now, according to Stang, there are four main doors. One in the office area out front and three in the main warehouse, not including the big garage doors on the end, here."

"We could have some of the big guys take care of that end." Nick leaned his muzzle into one paw as he stared at the sheet.

"Not to rain on that parade, but most of the larger officers are either still out of commission or got assigned to the other locations. We did get Rhinowitz, though. Maybe we can have him move back there once he busts in the doors. Or maybe we should come in the back door."

Nick straightened and shook his head. "I don't think so. It's going to be hard enough to sneak all of our cruisers in without them noticing, since they have a straight line of sight to the only way into that subdivision, but it would take time to get Rhinowitz into position in this narrow alley, assuming he could even fit. That's sized for mammals our size, not his."

"Good point. Maybe we can have Delgato, Wolfowitz, or Fangmeyer fit in there."

Nick thought for a moment. "If we can't, we can always put Rhinowitz on one of the alley's exits and one of the others—say, Delgato—at the other end so their escape route is blocked."

"The doe officer next to him grinned. "So, what door would you want US to take, Slick?"

Nick winked at her. "I think you and I should be the ones knocking on the doors of their nice cushy offices." He looked at the floorplan and thought for a moment. "We'll want someone outside in case someone decides to do what Blackford did and go through the window. And all the exits need to be covered, even the roof."

Judy grinned. "You're making this sound like one of your hustles, Slick."

"A good hustle requires careful planning. You need to anticipate what your mark will do and say so you can respond quickly. Like the certificate of commerce and permits you tried to nail me with."

"Yet you somehow missed the taxes," Judy said with a wink as she, too, looked at the floor plan. "Four offices, two bathrooms, and I'm guessing that's a cleaning closet. Too small to be anything else. The break room here opens up into the main warehouse, and that's the only way to get there from the office block. And it's at the end of the hallway furthest from the front door, too. A lot of ways for them to ambush us."

Nick's face fell for a moment, and he went silent. "Judy, are we ready for this?"

Judy turned to look at the worried expression on her fox's face.

The red canid took a deep breath before gesturing to the floor plan and continuing. "I mean, we're both fairly new to the job. You've got just over a year of service, and I've barely got three months. Are we ready?"

Judy hopped out of her chair and rushed to her fox's side, taking his paw in hers. "We'll be fine, Nick. We'll have some members of the TAC unit with us, Bogo will be there… And we'll be together on this. I'll have your back, Nick. We'll get through this. We were born to do this."

"You were born to do this. Me? I was born to make sure certain crazy bunnies can save the world." He winked at the doe.

"Crazy bunnies can't save the world without dumb foxes to help them. We'll be fine, Nick. We'll be fine." She squeezed his paw and stared into his eyes until she saw the smile start to creep back onto his muzzle. Returning the grin, she gathered up their notes and pages, then pulled Nick out of his chair toward the hall. "Come on, Slick, we need to bring this to the chief."

"So, Felicity is still stuck in her apartment?" Hornby turned to his office door as his ram subordinate entered.

"Yes, and her doorman was idiotic enough to confirm it for me. She hasn't left at all since I saw her yesterday. Her or her family members. They've been up there in her apartment all day and night, apparently watching the news, if the doorman's gossip is to be believed." The ram snorted. "Idiot must be new. He wouldn't shut up about her before he connected me. Her sister picked up the phone when he finally put me through."

The Texas longhorn quirked his eyebrow. "And?"

"Not much to tell, really. She and her sister both confirmed what the doorman said. That they'd been in the apartment all night and fell asleep watching the news." The ram shrugged. "Her sister thinks I'm a friend from work."

With a short laugh Hornby shook his head. "Well, she's not far wrong."

"How did the call with the bosses go?"

Damian Hornby gestured to the phone on his desk. "Overall, they are happy with the results. Not that we expected anything less, but there you have it. But we need to make sure that the police and fire chiefs are taken care of, and they are working on plans to replace as many of the filth councillors as we can with our own people. Our benefactor is going to be appropriating more funds there, but they mentioned some sort of a delay. A personnel issue, but they wouldn't elaborate."

Doug nodded. "And the singer?"

Hornby leaned back in his chair, squeaky and annoyingly small as it was. "That deviant, too. She definitely needs to be taken care of before her so-called benefit concert. We can't allow any filth or filth lovers to gain any momentum, especially against our agenda. It'll get easier once we have the filth fully under control and can enact laws against their support."

Doug sat down in the uncomfortable chair across from his boss. "I assume that the bosses plan to have the councillor do that?"

"Councillors. We hope to have at least a majority share on the city council at that point."

Doug nodded and rubbed the back of his head. "Right. Force the filth out."

"Once we do that, we can declare it legal to eliminate the filth by any means necessary."

That piqued Doug's interest. "Even lethal force?"

Hornby nodded. "ESPECIALLY lethal force. Any citizen who eliminates filth would be rewarded."

Doug smiled, a rare display of emotion for him. "I like that idea."

Hornby returned the grin. "I figured you would. So do I."

Bogo stared across his desk at his two smallest officers. "This is just what we needed, Hopps, Wilde. Good job."

"Awww, it was nothing, chief. We'd do it all day for you!" Nick winked and put on his trademark smirk.

"Well, in that case, I might just assign you to that. I'm sure you can convince Hopps to give up on being out in the world in favour of working a desk job. If you survive the discussion, you can talk to me."

Nick's expression dropped, and he felt a glare coming from his right, his only warning before the small fist collided with his shoulder. The fox winced and rubbed the battered shoulder, turning a mock hurt look at his partner. She just gave him a smug grin and turned her attention back to her boss.

"You two want to be part of the front door incursion team?"

Judy nodded. "Yes, sir. We want to be with the mammals that hit the front door."

Bogo looked down at the floor plan again. "I'm tactical commander on this one, Hopps, so I'll have the final say. But I'll take that into consideration. In the meantime, you two should head down to the armoury and get equipped with a full set. We had some ordered in for you two after the Grand Palm attack. It arrived a few days ago, but in all the chaos, I didn't get the chance to tell you. You'll be wearing it for all of your high-risk assignments, like this one. Are we clear?"

"As mud, chief!" Nick stood up on the chair he'd been sharing with his partner and jumped down, the rabbit following soon after. Before she left the office, though, she paused and turned back to Bogo.

The chief gave her a raised eyebrow. "Something else, Hopps?"

"Just something that occurred to me, chief. Could we have city utilities turn off power to the building beforehand? Would that buy us any time?"

Bogo leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. On one hoof, it could possibly black out any security cameras they had. On the other, if the lights suddenly went out, it would alert the criminals far sooner that something was going to happen.

Nick apparently had the same idea. "That might not be a good idea, Carrots. Don't want to tip our hand too soon, whatever the case may be, and the power suddenly going out for no reason would do that for sure."

"For once, I actually agree with you, Wilde," Bogo said. "It's one thing for them to see us coming on security cameras or out the window, but turning off the power in a building like that without a full idea of what we're up against... We don't know what's in the warehouse section, or where, nor do we have the night vision goggles to give out to every officer in this operation who would need them."

"Like me," Judy muttered. Nick wouldn't have as much of an issue, what with his night vision, but she'd be almost completely blind. "What else can we do to give ourselves the advantage?"

"The impression I got from Rivers is that they don't know we are on to them. That's a very big advantage. But as far as this raid goes, it's their court. They have home field advantage, so that will even things out, unfortunately."

Nick was silent for a moment. "We could bring our guys into the area one at a time, maybe. One cruiser being let past the blockade probably won't raise any suspicion, unless they're staring at it. Even then, we could probably disguise the cruiser movements a bit. A little sleight of paw with cop cars, somehow. I'd have to take a look, but I think I might have an idea that'll keep them from noticing."

Bogo raised his eyebrows at that. "I'd be very interested to hear what you come up with, Wilde. But for now, you two get down to the armoury and get your equipment. We don't have all day here."

"You got it, chief."

In another part of the building, another pair of mammals was also reviewing the evidence they had.

"So, we have two targets at Furston headquarters. McStripeson, of course. Corporate espionage, embezzlement, terrorism, frameup, though the last one is iffy. We might not be able to get him on that one, since, technically, Marian was never actually framed. She figured it out before they had the chance to go too far down that road," Rivers said as he sat at his desk, staring at the papers in front of him.

"Don't forget mass murder. And if Stang's intel is correct, conspiracy to commit a coup as well. That one's iffy, too, though, since we don't have any direct evidence of it beyond what Stang and Woolter said their mission was." Longtooth sat at her own desk on the opposite side of the room, watching the recorded statements of their two witnesses for the umpteenth time.

Her elk companion frowned and shuffled to his computer. "There is the announcement that the councillor made. Caulfield. And we found his personal accounts on the list of 'donors' from our fake charities. So, either he's directly involved, or he's being bribed and strung along by our bad guys. Either one gives us cause to arrest him for corruption and terrorism." He pulled up the video that had been making the rounds on the Internet. "That kind of announcement doesn't come out of the blue, and he'll need backing from the other councillors to get it to pass. We'd need to talk to him to get the details."

Longtooth let out a short bark of laughter. "Wouldn't it be great if these monsters all turned on each other and started pointin' the finger at everyone else?"

The elk couldn't help but grin too. "Wouldn't that make the day? All these mammals, each providing written statements against the others? The DA would have a field day with that. Or maybe a heart attack, not sure which."

"Oh, the field day, for sure. I heard she was on the phone with Chief Bogo for two hours yesterday, most of which she spent runnin' down the list of crimes she'd be more than happy to bury this group with." The lioness's grin faltered, though, as she glanced at the dossier they had for their other Furston target, John Wood. "This Aiden Hogsmeed guy is a little bit shakier. The only evidence we have to tie him to all of this is his bank statements and the testimony that the accountant Marian delivered the donation forms to, was a pig. His brother, Thomas, is unemployed."

The elk sighed, not liking that particular detail, either. "John Wood is even worse. We barely have anything at all on him, other than the fact that he worked in construction for a masonry firm." He flipped to another page. "Thomas's past employers are mostly entry level jobs. Woolmart, Furbucks, Targoat, to name a few. Never more than a year. Thirty years old and has yet to do anything but grab our attention."

Nolwazi Longtooth shook her head. "And grabbin' our attention may be the ONLY thing he gets to do. I doubt he'll be a free mammal after this."

"One thing bugs me, though," Rivers continued as he stared at the information in front of him. "The arson inspectors found that the alarm systems in several of the fires yesterday were tampered with. Some sounded but weren't able to contact their monitoring companies, and others just plain didn't work. Who did those?"

Longtooth thought for a long moment. "Weren't there reports of demonstrations near some of the bigger ones?"

Rivers, too, paused at that statement. "Come to think of it, yeah, there were. And those videos have been popping up everywhere on FurTube." He turned to his computer. "Maybe we might get some ideas from them."

Three minutes later, he'd pulled up a search for riots, demonstrations, and fire. Most of the results were irrelevant, but a few had been uploaded in the last 24 hours. After sifting through the ones that didn't meet all of the criteria, they'd narrowed it down to four videos, all uploaded within an hour of each other. Two were from the 64th street inferno, one was in front of a high-rise apartment building in Sahara Square, and the fourth and final one was from a fire that started in Tundratown. The latter had been put out fairly quickly, the cold and snow helping to control the blaze.

The link for the Sahara Square fire didn't yield much in the way of evidence. A single young adult hyena was video blogging while she escaped the inferno. It was a frustratingly common occurrence these days to vlog about your experience rather than get yourself to safety and then making a video about it. Maybe the Fire Department's PR mammals needed to issue another fire safety ad or something. Vlogging your way out of a burning building is not good fire safety practice. The video ended when the vlogger got to the muster point outside.

"Well, that was a waste of time. Mammals will vlog anything these days. Maybe we should make it department practice to not only film everything but narrate it as well. Real life ZPD Blue TV show or something." Rivers closed the page in disgust, clicking on the Tundratown link. That one was from a more distant bystander, and while they could make out the crowd of rowdy mammals out front of the building, they were too far away to make out the details.

Two other videos, both from the 64th street apartments. One turned out to be an incomprehensible mess of shouting and very brief glimpses of faces, lots of rustling and noise from movement, and overall, a whole lot of nothing useful.

The second one proved much more informative. It was taken by a taller mammal, but it never showed the mammal's face. At the beginning, the crowd was loud and boisterous, with phrases such as "Predators need to be chained!" and "Prey shouldn't have to live in fear of predators!" being yelled. About halfway through, someone was heard saying, "Hey, is that smoke?" Immediately, the camera focused on the building, where smoke could indeed be seen coming from several windows.

"Whoa, hold up, go back a sec," Nolwazi Longtooth said as she made a gesture at the screen.

Rivers frowned. "What's up?" He started backing the video up.

"There. That mammal comin' down the driveway, there. Dressed in blue jeans and the dirty red shirt Where did he come from?" The lioness pointed to a mammal on the screen, clearly a pig.

"Looks like he just came from the complex." Rivers resumed the playback. There was a lot of scuffling and movement of the camera that didn't make a whole lot of sense and would have induced motion sickness on many mammals before things calmed down.

"Sir, did you just come from that apartment building?" A voice could clearly be made out over the cacophony of shouting mammals. Unfortunately for them, the camera was pointed at the ground, and the ground didn't see fit to identify the speaker.

"Yeah," another voice answered.

"Is everything OK in there?" The first voice again. "It looks like there's smoke." The camera moved and jostled a bit, but finally refocused on the building, the smoke in question clearly visible.

"Everything's just fine." At that statement, Rivers paused the video and both of the detectives turned to look at each other.

"What kinda mammal says everything's fine with all that smoke?" Nolwazi Longtooth's expression was one of bafflement and perplexion.

Rivers shrugged. "I guess the kind of mammal that doesn't want to admit they did something wrong. Or maybe Grandma Piggy burned the cookies. Or maybe he's just oblivious."

"If only we could see his face," Longtooth commented, earning a nod from Rivers as he resumed the video.

The shouting, rants, and questions about smoke continued for a few seconds before some mammal asked if they should call emergency services, just as flames appeared in one of the windows. Mammals began trickling out of the building, and still, there was no sign that the building's alarm had gone off. The exterior warning horns and lights remained off, confirmed by a resident who could be overheard saying, "There wasn't even an alarm! My smoke detectors caught it!"

Rivers quickly opened the fire chief's incident report and skimmed through it again. "Multiple residents and visitors reported that the building alarm didn't activate. I remember that much. The alarm panel itself is still buried in the rubble, so they can't say for sure if it was tampered with or not. Not until they find it. Hopefully it's one of the new ones with the heat resistant event recorders. That could tell us a lot."

They turned their attention back to the video. By now, the fire was quite prominent, with smoke and flames pouring out of the front door and several windows.

"Only two minutes since the first smoke," the elk commented as he glanced at the time stamp. "Someone had to use an accelerant, and a lot of it. You have to be pretty heartless to burn down a place like that… Hundreds of families homeless now."

They watched the video for a few more seconds, with increasingly distraught mammals trying to call 911 or yell at the residents to get out. Longtooth looked at the 911 call log. "First call about the fire for this site came at 8:36 a.m. from a bystander. First call from a resident was just after that, at 8:38 a.m. I guess that supports the busted alarm theory. Calls peaked about seven minutes later. First fire trucks were dispatched at 8:37 a.m., just a minute after the first call, but that was only a single engine. The chief ordered a three-alarm fire at 9:01 a.m., and by 9:36, it was a five-alarm fire, with multiple involved buildings and houses."

The video apparently skipped ahead, since they were watching the fire spread one second, then observing the fire department get set up the next. Not ten seconds into the second segment, however, Longtooth yelped and told Rivers to stop and back up again. The elk then replayed the video until the lioness told him to stop, and he saw what he'd missed the first time around. The same pig who was seen in the first segment leaving the apartment building was front and centre in the shot, and for once, he was in focus.

Nolwazi Longtooth grabbed the dossiers they had for their two known pig suspects, discarded one, and held the other up to the screen. "He's a dead ringer! Look, on his right ear, there's that notch, in exactly the same place!"

"He's even wearing the same expression. Hold on a second…" Rivers turned to a different window on his computer and pulled up the Furbook page he'd found for the event. "The event on Furbook was organized by a Gemma Otho Sheds."

There was a long pause as they contemplated that. It was Longtooth who figured it out. "It's an anagram." At her elk partner's disbelieving look, the lioness grabbed a pen and paper and wrote out 'Gemma Otho Sheds' and proceeded to gradually rearrange the letters until she was left with Thomas Hogsmeed.

Rivers stared at the sheet. "I'll be damned." He turned back to the paused video. "So we have a pig, biologically related to one of our prime suspects, and on the payroll of our fake charities, organizing an anti-predator protest at the site of one of the largest structure fires in the city, and happens to be leaving the building around the time the fire broke out, on the same day that the organization his brother is involved in orchestrates a terrorist attack of colossal proportions, one that conveniently forces us to shut down the water supply to fight these fires. That's no coincidence. He knew what was going on. I don't have the evidence, but it seems that if he wanted to circulate the contaminated water, getting the fire department involved would speed up that process."

Nolwazi Longtooth nodded slowly, processing all the information. It wouldn't be enough to convict him for arson the way things stood, but they had enough to lay a solid charge for terrorism alongside his brother. "We'll need to get the arson teams to accelerate their investigation of that fire. I'll forward this video to them. They'll want to see it. I want to bag this guy for arson as well, if we can."

Rivers sat back and thought. "Even without the arson charge, conspiracy and terrorism charges would be enough to put him away for a few lifetimes, given the current casualty count."

Even Longtooth had to admit that did hold some consolation.

"I feel… sluggish. I don't like it, Nick."

The fox whose name had been spoken turned around, blinked, and let an easy grin slip across his face. Instead of her furtight bodysuit, paw wraps, knee guards, and stab vest that she usually wore, Officer Judy Hopps was dressed in her newly acquired full tactical gear. The helmet looked a little awkward on her, with her long ears sticking straight up through two holes, and he wondered how comfortable that would be. The alternative, of course, was to have her ears pinned back, which would have affected her ability to hear. Primarily black with a blue stripe down the side of each leg, the armor served one purpose and one purpose only: To protect the wearer.

Most television shows and movies got tactical gear wrong, especially for female officers, in that it often only covered the same area as Judy's stab vest and not much else. Then again, the villains never seemed to aim for the unprotected areas anyway, so maybe that was sufficient. Real tactical armour was anything but flattering.

For his part, Nick loved the look, and the best word he could think to describe her was 'badass'. But he couldn't outright tell her that. He decided to say something else instead. "What, you don't like looking like a badass? Maybe we can find a nice sheep or ram somewhere willing to let you wear their freshly shorn wool?"

To give her credit, it took her less than a second to put together what he'd said, and the grin and punch to his shoulder followed only a second after that, the punch somewhat muted by the armor's shoulder plate.

Truth be told, though, Nick had to agree. The armor he wore was bulky and uncomfortable, and it hindered his movement. Though not overly heavy, he found he couldn't move with the same speed and dexterity, and the inner fabric was coarse and scratchy. He shrugged. "Anyway, at least you look like the badass bunny you are. Me, I think I look like a Star Wars super-battledroid or something. Just without the ridiculous weaponry."

Judy looked her fox up and down. "Nah. You just look like a G.I. Wolf. Maybe just a bit short."

Nick puffed his chest out and grinned. "And a lot more handsome, too!"

The doe made a show of thinking about that last fact while strapping her sidearm and tranquilizer pistol into their hip holsters. "OK, I'll give you that one," she said with a wink.

Nick followed Judy's example and secured his own sidearm, all the while trying to get used to the new baggage. There had been training courses at the academy that involved wearing tactical armour, but they used mock-up armor for the most part, which didn't really come close to the real thing. The fox let out a breath. "I get the feeling I'm probably going to be feeling this tomorrow. And tonight. And the day after tomorrow."

Judy readjusted her armor's side straps and belt. "I know what you mean. This feels like it weighs as much as I do."

Nick bit back the temptation to make a snide comment about weight, knowing that that wouldn't earn any brownie points. Instead, he opted to agree with her, nodding. "And we're going to have to run around in this stuff."

The doe worked her arms a bit, then hopped from one foot to the other, testing her balance. "They told me this won't stop anything a large feline or bigger could fire, but it should stop the smaller stuff."

The fox gave a derisive snort. "I don't think anything short of a tank or a warship could stop anything an elephant or rhino could shoot, and I'd hate to see what happens to the mammal inside if it did. Sir Isaac Pawton's laws won't be nice to them."

That got the doe to snort and grin at the fox in question. The two left the armoury, both pondering what was coming for them in the events in which they were about to take part.

"Nick?"

The fox in question was jarred out of his thoughts. He looked down at his partner. "Hmm?"

"Are you worried?"

Nick stopped walking and stared at the floor, not saying a word for a very long time. "If I tell you everything's fine, you won't believe me, will you?"

The bunny shook her head. "Not a chance in a carrot harvest."

The canid couldn't help the chuckle that escaped his mouth, the bunny's use of another vegetable curse endearing. "Fine, then. Since you won't believe me if I say I'm fine, I'll just say… I'm scared."

Judy moved around in front of Nick and took one of his paws in hers, staring into his eyes. "What are you scared about?"

Once upon a time, the sheer intimacy and closeness that the two shared would have made Nick uncomfortable, but with her, he found it soothing instead. And it scared him. Not so much because of all the unknowns, but because of the possibility that one of them might not come home that night. He took a deep breath. "I'm just… scared. When Finn and I were running our business, there wasn't much risk. You bought, you sold, and occasionally, mammals might get angry, but never enough to want to seriously hurt you." Judy was about to make an objection, but he beat her to it. "Except for Mr. Big, but even then, I just had to stay away from his dealings, and I was fine."

Judy nodded. She knew there was something more to it, but instead of prying, she wriggled her way into his arms and embraced him. "I got your back, Nick. You don't have to worry. I'll always have your back as long as I'm around."

Nick smirked. "And I told you before, I'll have yours, Fluff Butt." He winked.

Judy looked up into Nick's eyes. "Nick, I know there's something you don't want to tell me. Please. What's troubling you?"

The fox sighed, not at all surprised that the doe had been able to read his deflection so easily. He took a breath. "In all my life, I never had to worry about losing anyone. Even after Mom and I had our differences, I didn't worry I'd actually lose her forever. For the first time…" He trailed off, struggling to articulate what he was trying to say without actually saying it.

Judy immediately realized where he was going, and she hugged him tighter. "I understand, Nick. And I'd be lying if I said that didn't terrify me, too. I've been so focussed on my career, I never took the time to form attachments… But now that you're here… I'm terrified of losing you, too. So, promise me we'll have each other's backs, OK?"

Nick's muzzle morphed into a warm smile. "Promise, Carrots. But only if you promise the same thing."

The doe nodded vigorously. "I promise, Slick." She let go and hopped up, giving him a peck on the nose. "Come on, let's go meet with Bogo." She took his paw and led him away down the hall.

So, they've got their gear, identified another player, and Nick has some worries about their future. Oh and Judy doesn't like her armor. Time to bring these guys down!

This first month of 2020 has really been kicking my butt. I have work coming out my ears. Every time I think I have a minute...

No references in the last chapter! Can anyone catch the Harry Potter reference in this chapter?

Coming up on February 7: The Bill Comes Due!

Questions? Critiques? Did a big shark scare the stuffing out of you and then invite you to a party? Leave a comment!