Long time. (For Combat Engineer)

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"Smell anything, Sergio?"

Feet trotting on the hard ground, bones and chitin residue snapping under his hard hooves, the grizzled one-eyed boar gave a double snort back.

Pulling her gun from her hip, Judy Hopps nodded in agreement and stepped forward, her ears up and scanning. All the better as the sandy wind whistled through, its rusty hue clouding their vision. They all knew that they liked to hide in this. It was their second-best time to latch on, other than in their sleep of course.

A finger went down to adjust the spiked guards in her ears and nostrils, before snapping back as the sound of a piece of metal sheeting tipping over rang out. "Halt!"

"H-h-hello?" came a voice, peaking out amongst the sounds of the ruined city.

"I'm Lieutenant Hopps, Chief Scout of the Last Zootopia caravan. We're looking for the remains of the city, we think we can find supplies in there. Raid the old climate works, set up better generators and desalination. We come in peace."

"Are you taken?"

"No," it spoke again. "Are you?"

"No. You could be lying."

"So could you…"

There was a long pause. "We can take you to be tested."

"You could be taken."

"We could… but we could not. It's up to you."

Sergio gave a snort, the bunny beside him looking up and giving a quizzical look. He begin to raise his paws, but any explanation was cut off before it could begin. There was a slight scrunch of moving metal and Judy looked over to see a knobbly kneed camel teen standing up, hooves in the air.

"Come with us," she said, the camel taking a step forward before a shot exploded down between his legs. He jumped up screaming, before flinching away as he saw what was hit. It quivered and it chittered, and the slime from its pale white skin was foaming out in a last ecstatic act as its mortality flickered away. Their eyes were all fixed on its mandibles, small yet indescribably sharp and cruel.

"Come on," Judy said, still holding her gun. "Just keep your distance."

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"Okay, just put it over and…"

Judy waited on, still a bit nervous, as her paws were covered with boxes and shielded from her view. A moot point given the blindfold put on her head. The technician on the other side leant in with a small instrument, its tip raised to a red-hot heat. The bunny winced as one of her toes was touched. Then a finger. Then she felt a patter on her sides. Then a tapping. Then a tickling that had her laughing. Then a stroking. "You're clear," she was told, before stepping out, joining the camel girl as they walked on into the encampment. Gaunt faced prey mammals stared back at them, with hope and fear in their eyes. It wasn't long before they reached the command tent. Judy and Sergio sat down next to Pronk, the last of her ZPD crew to make it this far.

"I hope you've been busy!" he shouted. He was loud, always loud, both before and after he lost his best friend. "We've got a turned horde following us and the main body will be here in a day or two at the earliest!"

The bunny groaned. They'd been fearing that. "What can we do?" she mumbled. "I was hoping we might find tools, supplies, maybe even a secure encampment or something."

"What, to fight them off from!? We barely have a bullet per mammal!"

Sergio grunted in agreement.

"I know!" she said. "But if we could find a place to defend, to hit them back with spears, or…"

"We're starving! We can't do that!"

"Which is why I hoped we'd find stuff to get agriculture going! Or food supplies! Or something!" she yelled back, before turning away, slamming her fist on the overturned apple crate. "Ever since they turned up, we've been running. I… Where can we run too next. I thought… I thought that Zootopia's ruins might…" She paused, sighing, slumping down and rubbing her head. She gave a gaze to the young camel survivor. "If you have any idea where we can go, please tell me."

"I was going to the happy place," he said.

Sergio oinked while Pronk groaned. "Yes! Let's all go to the happy place! Where they never turned up and pawpsicles grow on trees and…"

"-There is a happy place!" he shouted. "Near the old city. It was once a part of it. We met a mammal from there, she said they never fell, and they're okay and…"

"-Yeah! As if," Pronk groaned. "Listen, let's just pack up and keep marching, eating grass as we go and…"

"-Wait," Judy cut in. She stood up, turning to him. "Happy place? Do you mean Happytown."

He paused, thinking. "-She called it a happy town," he said.

"It was always called Happytown," Judy said, a smile coming over her. "It was a poor area close to Zootopia, but if they survived…"

"-Woah, woah, woah!" Pronk yelled, shutting her off. "Firstly, if this even is Happytown we're talking about, it was a screwed up Pred slum. That place was a burning trash heap filled with mammals that could tear each other apart even before the brain parasites arrived. And now he's saying that they, of all the places and mammals, survived. Oh no, oh no, no, no, no! Impossible."

"I…" Judy began, before her patience ran out. "Who knows? It was the Rainforest District that was swarmed first, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," Pronk said, crossing his arms. "That was where the lab developing new bugburger bugs was."

"And wasn't that company owned by a beaver?" Judy asked, before shaking her head. "Besides, it wasn't a predator doing whatever bio engineering created those things, was it? If Happytown still stands, they could give us shelter, they could give us the only chance we have of withstanding that horde."

"Yeah," Pronk scoffed. "And then what? Do you really think they would have kept their collars on or maintained all this time? They'll be bare necks, Hopps. In a post apocalypse. They're already hyped up and on the verge of de-evolving, one whiff of prey in the air and…" he clicked his fingers. "Chomp. The end. At least if I'm a brainwashed zombie I'm still sort of alive."

Sergio began making some grunts, before waving his hoofs up in the air. Judy looked on and nodded, before turning back to Pronk and smiling. "Two-one."

He groaned, hitting the table. "If you want, go lead a scouting party and see if it's true. There's a hill nearby we could camp and rest on. Might give us some chance when they come."

"Can I come too, to the happy place?" the camel asked, an air of hope in his voice. Judy looked at him and nodded. "Sure, we'll just get some proper armour on you first."

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It was nearly dusk as they approached the old predator neighbourhood. The diversion around the inlet had taken it out of them, and all the while they could hear things off in the distance. Infected. A few spare glances saw mammals with horrific injuries who somehow were still walking, their skin bloated or bursting in places with new parasites. Those were the easy ones to spot. The hard ones were the recents. Where a worm had burrowed in as they slept, hijacked them, still had access to their memories and did its best to act casual. Those worm things were intelligent, and they'd have their host grow a couple of new ones on their back before forcefully infecting those closest to them.

By the time they'd worked it out it was too late. The masses panicked, the infected ran out, charging for others, and Zootopia had fallen.

Except here…

They looked up to see a rough built wall ahead, its front littered with spikes to stop climbers, its top lit with lights and armed with blade launchers. Judy held her paws up as they trained themselves on her. "I'm not infected!" she shouted. "We're leading a refugee caravan. We're out of supplies, exhausted, being chased by infected. We deserve common mammality here. We need your shelter."

There was a long pause, before a mammal shouted back. "We'll put you through the tester. Come on in."

A small door opened and in they walked.

"Paws up."

Judy did so, handing over her weapons to the young wolf in question before ridding her ears of their spiked guards. Her fears were allayed greatly as she saw that he still had a collar on. It seemed that after all this time they still knew what was for their own good. Honestly, it was a bit surprising, but she wasn't about to look a gift giving horse in the mouth.

The test followed much the same as their one did. Testing their involuntary reflexes, something that all infected lost as a side effect of being taken over.

"What's that thing on your neck?" the camel asked.

The wolf looked at him and cocked his head. "How old are you?"

"Thirteen," he said. "How old are you… Also, what are you?"

"I'm a wolf," he said, smiling. "Twenty." His paws went up and Judy blinked as he unlatched his collar, before holding it out to the camel. Judy blinked again. He could just take it off! And he was giving it to that camel boy who…

"You don't need to put it on!" she shouted, making the camel look at her in confusion. "You don't need it." She then turned to the wolf, frowning. "You know full well that only predators need those."

There was a long pause, before the wolf began to growl. "Oh, you're one of those, aren't you?"

"One of what?" the camel kid asked. Sergio was shaking his head.

The wolf sighed. "I was very young when the fall came. After it, we all wore special collars like that. It monitors our heartbeat, you see. And when a bug tries to burrow into our brain, it injects us with a paralysing drug to stop us fighting back. But, here's the important thing, we still panic. And these collars detect that, and shock us, and that shock makes the bug think we're still moving and makes it run off. Even if it tries to go on and latch our brain, the shocks running through it mean it really struggles to take control, while the noise we make wakes others who can help us. Most of the time they give up or get pulled out, the rest of it the mammal dies and takes it with it."

Realisation dawned on Judy's face. Their collars had protecting them from the fall.

The wolf shot her a warning glare as the camel pulled it onto his neck and clasped it shut, the green light going orange. "That's a warning light, if you get more excited it goes red and zaps you. Of course, you could press this button here and…" He did just that. The button went off. "-And in a minute, it'll give you a beep. Press it again to keep it on standby."

But then they made them so they didn't protect from savages…

"Of course," the wolf carried on, "there were collars before these. Different collars…"

He was cut off as a door was pulled open, an old tiger poking in. "I heard there was a Judy Hopps here."

"Yes," she said. "Emissary for…"

"Shut up," he ordered. "The mayor wants a word with you. He's very interested to hear that an old friend has returned."

"An old friend…" she began. One of her old squad mates? The Chief!? "Who is it?"

"You'll see," he said, waving her on. "He remembers you. He thinks you'll remember him, too."

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"YOU! You became mayor?"

Her voice echoed around the room before fading into silence as the red fox turned to face her. He smiled and shrugged. "Anything wrong with that, Carrots?"

"I… You… You're a crook! Two days before the fall I chased you down after you escaped from the Zoo! You had a life sentence! And you became the mayor here?"

He blinked. "My name is Nick, by the way. Nick. Nick Wilde. Mayor Wilde. I like that one. Don't you too, Officer Hippity Hoppity."

"If the world was right, you'd still be in a prison cell," she shouted. "-And it's Hopps. Officer Judy Hopps."

There was some grunting from some side as Sergio began signing again. To her surprise, Nick began signing back. The boar had learnt a bastardised version of standard signing after his injury, but there was enough between them to talk, and given the angle and speed she soon lost track.

"Yeah, he's cool," Nick spoke.

Judy glared at the pig, who shrugged.

"You're not by the way, Fluff."

"And why not!" she spoke. "Because I was still in the right there, you in the wrong, and the apocalypse changes none of that. The fact remains that you're a criminal, and just because the society has gone doesn't mean your debt to it hasn't!"

He glared at her, and she gulped a little as he deliberately pulled his collar off. He'd had enough of pressing the reset button. "Do you know why is was in there for life? All these mammals do. Heck, it was why they elected me as a mayor."

She blinked. There was one specific law that would give a predator an automatic life sentence. "You were taking mammals collars off. You stole a key."

"I had a counterfeit."

"You were running a knot house."

"More a safe refuge," he spoke. "A speakeasy if you will. Only with amusement rides instead of booze. A place for predators to go to, to take their collars off, to actually live! Yeah, how about that to mess up your prey sensibilities? A place in Zootopia where preds could escape the hate from speciesist jerks like yourself, forget that we were being hit by a slow genocide and once… Just once… For a few hours a week, live as normal mammals!"

He stared at her.

She stared back, her nose twitching. "You put mammals' lives at risk from that. It was reckless."

He snorted. "Oh no, no, no Fluff. Quite the contrary. We have had no savages here. No evil hordes of evil preds. When I was just a year younger than that camel boy, I was forced into an emotion sensing torture device that I had to wear for the next two decades. My father tried to resist and they vanished him for it! Because we were preds. Because we were ruled by mammals that hated us for it. And I fought back, I suffered for it, but now that we're free they wanted a mammal to rule them who they could trust…"

"-Yeah," Judy snorted. "A fox."

"Yeah," he said, waving his paws in the air. "We're done here. Take her out."

Judy blinked. "Wait, what?" she asked, as a tiger grabbed her paw.

"I said I'm done," he said, paws up. "Honestly I don't have to take any of this."

"Hey, you listen here, Fox!"

"You're really not helping your case…"

"Those collars saved you."

"Yeah, it just took the apocalypse for it to happen. There's an old fox saying. That's Karma."

"We've got thousands of mammals who need refuge here! Come back and talk to me, now…"

She was shut off as she was pulled back down a corridor.

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"So, these are his terms, Sergio?"

The pig snorted. It was quite simple. The predators would never be forced into collars again. Any prey coming here would have to accept that. They wouldn't take any verbal abuse. It would be a crime for prey to slur them (reportedly Judy would have been given five days working the fields for that, followed by a 'follow up' lesson). All prey would follow the predator rules and be taught in predator schools and taught predator propaganda and, ten years down the line, they'd get equal voting rights. Even then, some 'safeguards' were in place, so one side couldn't dominate the other.

She had to present that to her camp. There would be no negotiations. And as for her?

She'd have to work as his janitor come maid. Apparently, he'd worked as the former for years. She gristle at the pettiness of it.

She and Sergio slept the deadly night away and left for the camp. It would be a long trek back.

She knew there were many mammals who knew nothing of before the fall, or for whom predators were a nothing compared to the horrors unleashed upon them. They'd go. There were others who remembered before that, yet even she was thinking that they would cave in.

If not, they'd need help, and she could go with them.

If they did.

If they didn't?

Her nose twitched.

She'd be having to put up with that unrepentant con-fox for a long time.

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AN: Commissioned by Combat Engineer on the premise: years after the apocalypse Zistopia Judy finds Zistopia Nick running the only safe refuge, and she has to deal with that…

Funnily enough, I had an idea for a sort of similar AU ages back, in which Zistopia would be hit by locust plagues and food shortages, in which Nick and a bunch of others would organise a coup, take over, and begin running a new Zootopia by and for preds… And having to defend it too.

Regardless, an interesting prompt.