DISCLAIMER: I had my bid to own Zootopia all ready, but then Hades threw a temper tantrum, and incinerated it. So I still don't own Zootopia

Thanks to my editors GusTheBear and TheoreticallyEva for keeping me in line!

Captain Declan Tony stared across his desk at the two ZPD detectives. "Can I help you two?"

Nolwazi Longtooth looked at her partner. "We've come across some…irregularities. We were hoping you could shed some light on them."

The wolf guard narrowed his eyes. "Is this something I need my lawyer for?"

Shawn Dancing Rivers shook his head. "Not unless you need a lawyer to help us understand what's going on. We just need to know about standard procedures here. Is it standard procedure to assign only one guard to solitary mammal showers?"

The guard captain nodded. "It has been for a while. We don't have the staff to allocate more. Budget cuts by the city four years back forced my bosses to lay off almost half the guard staff. Admin staff also took a hit, but I'm not sure how those numbers match up. Most of the senior guards got let go, and the few we've been able to hire since have all been rookies. We're a max sec prison with minimum sec guards."

Both detectives glanced at each other, eyebrows raised. It was true. Four years ago, Mayor Lionheart had cut funding to the penal system, as part of an effort to redirect funds for his various "initiatives". Many of those initiatives had been questionable or even outright despised. Purchasing a private jet for the mayor's sole use was one. The director of the penal system had attempted to appeal the cuts to Lionheart and Bellwether, and mammal rights activists.

Rivers turned back to the captain. "What about ordering that guard to abandon his post to deal with a fight?"

"Another side effect of the budget cuts. Sometimes, we have to make unpleasant decisions like that. We had only a few other guards in the area, and they all responded, too. I assume you mean Westfall, though?"

The two ZPD detectives nodded, and the wolf captain sighed. "Seems like a good kid, but he's a bit wet behind the ears, and he questions his orders, a lot."

"OK, that's fair. What about tranquilizin' the suspect? It seems rather unconventional to wait until he's actually IN solitary to put him to sleep."

The wolf sighed. "It's been a long time since we've run drills for that kind of thing. Never any time, with so few staff. Besides, he wasn't resisting and was disarmed, so we didn't."

Longtooth frowned. Even with the staff shortages at the ZPD, they still had time to train, in the training rooms, at the ranges, or at the academy for the annual reviews. She didn't know how the Department of Corrections handled things like this, but she couldn't make it compute in her mind. A look at Rivers told her that similar thoughts were going through his head. Something wasn't adding up.

The elk spoke. "Fair enough. We'll let you know if we have more questions."

The two left the office and headed out of the secured area and to their cars. "I don't like it, Shawn. Something about this seems off. It seems too sloppy and too convenient, but I don't know why."

The elk nodded. "I can't put my hoof on it, either, but part of this almost seems like it was a botched assassination. Either that or a really sad, sorry string of coincidences."

"Yeah… But that's still a bit to coincidental for my likin'. Lion with a grudge gets wind that an inmate in solitary is indirectly the cause of your family's death, so you decide you're gonna kill 'em. And then, the night you are ready, a fight breaks out, the one guard sent to break up that fight, and it gives you the perfect window to do the deed?" Nolwazi shook her head. "Just too much, but I really don't know what it is that's really bugging me about it."

Rivers smiled and patted Longtooth on the back. "Well, we won't solve this in one day."

"That only happens on TV."

"Right. We should let lab services do what they do and look at that later. I am curious, though—what did the suspect mean when he glared at you and mentioned 'attacking his pride'?"

With a sigh, the lioness leaned on her cruiser. "You know groups of lions are called prides, right?" At Shawn's nod, she continued. "For most of us now, that's just a fancy way of sayin' our family. Dependin' on who you ask, that might just mean your immediate family, or it could mean your entire extended family. The more traditionalist groups, though, do call for sometimes harsh repercussions if someone attacks—either physically, verbally, or financially—a member of your pride. Some of the reprisals could be in a grey area, but I don't ever recall it being used as an attempt to justify a case of murder. The courts sure wouldn't see it as justification."

"What about you?"

The lioness blinked and narrowed her eyes at her partner. "What about me, what?"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to offend. I was just curious what pride meant to you."

Longtooth's look softened. Intellectually, she knew her partner hadn't meant anything bad by it, but she seemed to be having a little trouble controlling her temper lately. "Sorry, Shawn. For me, it's more somethin' for my immediate family. I don't hold to the traditionalist views that anyone who sleights my pride needs to be strung up or blackmailed or somethin'." Her expression darkened. "Traditionalist families sometimes call us traitors for supposedly lettin' mammals who supposedly slight us go without repercussion."

Rivers nodded. "I can see why that would be a bit of a sore spot for you, so I'm sorry if that was insensitive."

"It's fine, Shawn. We're good."

The elk clapped his hooves together. "In the meantime, I'd say it's time to clock out. See you tomorrow?"

The lioness nodded. "Yep."

The two parted ways, stepping into each of their respective cruisers and heading back to Precinct One. Longtooth returned her cruiser to the garage, surprised to see a pretty white vixen there, writing notes down on a pad of paper. Come to think of it, she'd seen the vixen around the precinct a few times. She looked busy, though, and Nolwazi was already late ending her shift, so the lioness headed upstairs, clocked out, and went to the subway station.

The trip home was quiet. That late in the day, and with the city still recovering, there weren't many mammals taking the subway. No one with whom to make small talk, even if she wanted to. Her apartment was a short walk from the station, one she'd done a hundred times since she'd been brought in to investigate Eric Wolford's death. In her old precinct, she might have driven her own car, but she'd found that parking in the downtown core was more trouble than it was worth, so she instead elected to take the subway.

It almost felt routine to her now, and she wondered if she even wanted to return to her home precinct once the crisis was over, now that she had friends downtown. Not that she didn't have friends at Precinct Nine, Sandy Ridge, and she had a few on her Furbook, but it was almost just a friendship of convenience. Those were the mammals with whom she worked, but it didn't extend much beyond that.

The lioness stared into her empty apartment, then decided that, in light of the sideways day she'd had, her evening would be better spent elsewhere. She quickly changed clothes into something more casual, then turned and left.

Jared Antlerson, a six-month rookie on the force, was nervous. He'd never been summoned to the chief's office before. It almost felt like he was walking a gauntlet. The chief was intense and intimidating at the best of times, and that's just when he was in the bullpen with fifty other officers. In person, in his office, Antlerson figured it'd be even worse. He'd been standing outside the closed door for a minute or two now, and he was no closer to finding his courage now than he was then.

He raised his hoof to knock only to be stopped short by the gruff voice within. "I wondered when you'd get around to that. Enter."

The white-tailed deer froze, then swallowed and reached up to pull the handle and open the door.

Chief Bogo sat behind his massive desk, staring at him. "Frosted glass is a great way to know when someone is standing outside your door and not doing anything. Have a seat." He gestured to one of the hard, uncomfortable-looking chairs in front of his desk.

Antlerson picked one and climbed up, sitting down to face the intimidating police chief.

Bogo let the silence extend a bit. "Do you know why I called you here?"

The deer shook his head. "No, sir."

The chief nodded. "OK, fair enough. As a dispatcher, what is the first rule of our radio etiquette?"

"Keep it clean, sir. Civilians may be listening in."

"And the second?"

"Keep it professional. No small talk, sir. We may be tying up the airwaves for something far more critical." The deer wondered where this was going.

"Very good. Those two rules are very important to the department, especially as dispatchers. On one hoof, anything we say over the radio is considered a public conversation. Anyone who wants to listen in can. On the other, if you are making small talk and you tie up the radio for too long, an officer in need of backup may not be able to request it. Understand?" The chief regarded the young dispatcher.

Antlerson nodded vigorously. "Of course, sir."

The chief sighed. "The problem I have here is that I received a report that your conduct over the radio concerning one of our officers comes into conflict with at least one of those two rules, and it also breaks our rule here at the ZPD about the fair and equal treatment of all officers." Bogo himself had implemented the rule after his own failure with Officer Hopps, and her then-civilian partner.

The white-tailed deer frowned. "I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand."

Bogo stared for a moment, then turned to his computer. He clicked a few times, probably pulling up some sort of document. "I have a report from an officer about some remarks you made concerning Officer Wilde, or, as you have consistently referred to him, 'that fox'."

Antlerson didn't know what to say.

Bogo turned to face the deer again. "This isn't the first time, either. The reports go back to just before the Rainforest attack. I just haven't had the chance to deal with them until now."

The deer knew he was in trouble. He tried to keep it professional, but he didn't like foxes, didn't trust them, and he certainly wouldn't be anywhere near them, given a choice. He swallowed. "Sir, with all due respect, I don't trust Officer Wilde."

Bogo shook his head. 'Why is it that whenever someone says "with all due respect", they really mean "kiss my ass"?' He took a deep breath and kept his temper down. "And has Officer Wilde done anything to make you not trust him?"

The deer couldn't answer that without sounding speciesist, and he knew it. Instead, he tried a different tactic. "I'm sorry, sir, I won't let that kind of unprofessionalism happen again." Maybe that would appease the chief.

It didn't. "I also have a civilian complaint filed against you on behalf of a Gideon Grey, for speciesist remarks. Says you assumed that a mammal was being harassed by Mr. Grey, despite no such harassment taking place and no evidence of such. One of our own signed off on the complaint as a witness." Bogo decided that the deer didn't need to know that it had been Judy's sister that had made the initial complaint, and it was Detective Longtooth herself who had signed as a witness.

"I don't know who a Mr. Grey is."

Bogo sighed. "It doesn't matter. The point is that the comments you made regarding the mammal were speciesist, and mammals noticed. Worse, not only were they civilians, they were also visitors, and you were the first mammal they had contact with." The cape buffalo leaned forward. "Mammals look to the ZPD for community leadership, protection, and safety. They look to us to be impartial and to uphold the virtues on the badge. Trust, integrity, bravery. When they see or hear us making speciesist comments about foxes or any other mammal or species, it reflects poorly on us, and it's a violation of those virtues." That was a lesson he'd learned the hard way, courtesy of two mammals who were now his valued officers.

Jared Antlerson swallowed heavily. "I can…try to do better."

The cape buffalo's expression hardened. "I'm sending you for additional training to address this issue. Until then, you are reassigned to records. Once your training Is complete, we'll see where things are and we may reconsider you for the dispatch desk. Is that clear?"

Antlerson's mouth dropped open. "But sir, I…"

Bogo's expression grew even more angry, and he stood up, glaring at the smaller mammal. "I said, is that clear?!"

The white-tailed deer shrunk in on himself. "Yes, sir. Perfectly clear."

Bogo adopted a sweet tone of voice. "Good. Now get going. I'm sure the recruits would love the help. Dismissed."

Antlerson knew better than to further antagonize the chief. He was boxed in, and he knew it. He didn't like the fox, but he didn't go through six months of academy training to piss the boss off and lose his job because the chief wanted to play nice with the untrustworthy canids.

The deer headed down to records, stifling the grumbling he wanted to do.

Marian sighed as she hung up her phone, then crossed yet another job listing off. Three pages of them, and so far, two and a half were filled with her marker's red ink. It had been the same everywhere she called. We don't hire foxes. We're not hiring at all. That position is filled. Always an excuse, most of the time not even bothering with pleasantries. It had been the same for online applications, her resumes falling into a black hole.

She'd struggled with them from the beginning, ever since she'd gotten back into her apartment and access to her computer again. How do you put almost twenty years of work for Furston down, now that they were public enemy number one? All that on top of the fact that she was business enemy number one.

Even restaurants wouldn't even hear her, and that had been a field she'd been able to count on, working two jobs all the way through community college, her marriage to and subsequent loss of her husband, up until Nicky was a teenager and she'd gotten the job at Furston.

She knew what she was getting into, though, when she handed over the evidence on her boss to her son and his mate, then provided both a written and verbal testimony to the police. Getting hired was hard enough as a vixen, but whistleblowers were seen as even lower mammals than that. Not by much, though. A fox whistleblower? That wasn't heard of, but she was willing to bet that some mammal resources directors probably considered bird poop to be more valuable.

She looked up at the photo of herself and her late husband, hung on the kitchen wall. She was pregnant with Nicky at the time, and they had both been working extra hard—her at the diners and him doing whatever handimammal jobs he could – to save up enough money so that they could both take just a couple weeks off when Nicky decided it was time to come into the world. That plan had been dashed when Jonathan had gotten sick, then died before Nicky'd been born.

His loss had devastated her, but she'd barely had time to mourn him. She'd buried herself in work to try and keep the books balanced, and only taken two weeks off when Nicky'd decided to arrive—thankfully, he was perfectly healthy, though she'd almost lost him as well. The next thirteen years had been a blur of trying to raise Nicky between two full-time jobs that just barely covered the basic needs.

It had gotten easier with the regular job at Furston, but by then, Nicky was a teenager and didn't spend as much time around home.

There were times she wished she could rewind the clock and try to do things differently, especially if she could find a way to bring John back. However, all in all, with Nicky back in her life and able to be the fox he always wanted to be—and with a supportive mate at that—she knew that things were pretty good these days.

Now if she could just figure out what to do next for work. The settlement from the McStripeson case would last about nine months, so she had time, but it'd be nice to have that as padding in case something happened.

A knock at the door roused the vixen from her thoughts, and she made her way down the hall to the door, peering through the spyglass before unlocking and opening the door for her son and his rabbit. "Nicky! I didn't expect to see you two today! Come on in!" She hugged them both, then led the two into the apartment and to the kitchen.

"We just got off shift and decided to come see if you wanted to get dinner or something," Judy said. "With the restaurants open again, Nick here has a hankering for some food we haven't had a paw in preparing."

"I think you mean destroying, Carrots."

Judy cringed. "That, too."

The vixen laughed. "Don't tell me you two still haven't gotten the hang of cooking."

Nick grinned. "Well, we're doing better, and out of the two of us, I'm the one that doesn't manage to burn something every single time he cooks. I swear, our food bills are higher now that we're cooking from home than they were when we grabbed takeout from that deli." He frowned. "Too bad it closed completely. I liked that place."

Judy nodded, looking sullen. "They're saying about half the restaurants in the city are closing. Just couldn't pay the bills."

"Same with hotels, Carrots. I overheard the chief talking to the mayor about that yesterday." He turned back to his mother. "So how about it? Want to join us? Give those restaurants some hard-earned business?"

Marian thought for a moment. "Actually, why don't we have dinner here? It'd be nice to cook for company again, and it's been pretty boring around here. Daytime sitcoms and sudoku puzzles only go so far."

"I have no idea how you can watch that stuff, Mom. It's all overacted melodrama. Dumb husband tries to fix the house and burns it down. Female gets pregnant and the two argue like kids until the female beats the guy for not supporting her." Nick shuddered. "At least we were able to watch Pawflix while we were on med leave." He turned to his bunny. "What do you say? Homecooked meal instead of dinner out?"

The doe nodded. "That sounds good!"

Marian held up a finger. "On one condition."

The two younger mammals looked at Marian expectantly.

"Judy, you have to help me in the kitchen." The vixen smirked.

Nick snorted. "Are you really that desperate to get out of the apartment, Mom, that you'd be willing to burn the place down? She can set fire to water!"

Marian glared at Nick. "I think I can keep her from burning down the place. And thank you for volunteering to help me do that. Why don't you go grab my cookbooks, and I'll see what I have in the pantry?"

Nick's ears and tail drooped, and Judy couldn't help but laugh. "I think that's a great idea, Marian!"

Shawn Dancing Rivers hadn't intended to stay as long as he had at the bar. Just some time to catch up with a few of his Tundratown colleagues and see what had been happening in the frozen district. A few of the junior detectives over there were suspecting that Big was up to something, but they didn't know what. Call it a hunch, they said, but they didn't have any solid evidence to go on.

The elk bull had just left the bar and was waiting at the bus stop when he saw her. His partner, walking into the same bar he'd just left. Making a quick decision, he headed back over to the door and pushed his way inside.

Looking around, though, he didn't see any sign of her. He frowned a moment, looked again, then turned and left. Maybe it was another lioness he'd seen, and his mind was playing tricks on him. She wasn't in the same clothes she'd been wearing at the precinct, after all. He knew she lived in Sahara Square, but not were, exactly.

Rivers was worried about his partner. Ever since the attacks, he'd noticed some changes in her attitude, particularly after she'd kicked that deadbeat slug out of her apartment. He'd asked her a few times if she was doing all right, and she usually just said she was fine. Though he had limited experience with the fairer sex, being told that she was "fine" was a sure sign she was anything but. He hadn't pushed, though, and he wondered if maybe he should have.

Shaking his head, he decided he'd call her later to check in on her.

The last two and a half months had been hard on everyone. His own folks had moved out of town to Deerbrooke County but were having trouble selling their old home in Tundratown. Work was better out there for his folks, though, so he could appreciate the reason for it.

Rivers knew Nolwazi's father worked for the Mojave Strip precinct, and she'd spoken of her mother a few times but hadn't mentioned what she did for a living. The elk just knew she wasn't part of the ZPD. The lioness hadn't mentioned any brothers or sisters to him, either, so it sounded like she was an only child. Rivers did have a brother with whom he spoke occasionally, but at the moment, he was overseas.

His lioness partner, however, clearly seemed to be going through a rough time. As a friend, he wanted to help however he could. He just didn't know how yet. And if she was hitting the bars after work frequently, it might be worse than he thought. She hadn't come to work drunk or anything, and she never spoke of a hangover, but there had been signs, in retrospect—especially in her talks with suspects and mammals of interest.

The elk sighed as he boarded the subway for the trip home, thinking how it would be nice to go back, at least for a moment, to the ignorance of the days before the Rainforest attack, so they could somehow solve the case sooner. Maybe give their past selves some tips about what was going to happen, if they could figure out how to do it without causing a time travel paradox or something and erasing the universe as mammals knew it. Or turning all mammals into mutant mythical creatures, such as apes or something.

Twenty minutes later, he emerged on the quiet streets of Tundratown. Of the twelve major districts in the city, Tundratown had been one of the least affected by the initial attacks. Its water system remained uncontaminated throughout the entire crisis, and there hadn't been any cases of savagery in the district that hadn't strayed over from one of the other biomes.

His apartment was on the western end of the district, close to the border with the Rainforest District, and it was here that he finally decided to call Nolwazi. He picked up the phone and dialed.

She didn't answer.

"Now add the garlic and keep stirring, Judy. You're doing great."

Judy did as she was told, watching the simmering, steaming red mixture from the stool on which she stood. The kitchen was built for larger mammals, much like the one she shared with Nick, so the stool was something she needed. The curse of being a smaller mammal.

On the other paw, there weren't flames everywhere, and the smoke alarm wasn't sounding, so maybe she wasn't doing too badly. Between Maddy and Marian, she felt like she had a lot more experienced mammals upon whom to draw. She supposed Marian probably got a lot of experience herself, too, having no help at all after Nick's father died. She'd probably picked some things up in her time waitressing as well.

The trio had chosen a rigatoni recipe for dinner, something Judy had never tried before, despite the myriad of dishes her mother and her army of kitchen rabbits had cooked up in the past. Either they'd never done it in her lifetime, or she hadn't been around for dinner that day. The latter wouldn't be surprising, especially given the number of times she'd snuck out to volunteer at the local sheriff's office over the years.

It smelled wonderful, though—much better than the ashes and inedible sludge that still commonly came from her efforts to make something to consume. However, even she had to admit that she'd been getting better in general. The toaster oven in the duo's apartment was no longer the charcoal briquette factory it once was, and the neighbors were now complaining only once a week about the shrieking device from hell that was the smoke alarm.

Nick had been boiling the pasta and grating the cheese between the odd jobs that Marian had him doing. She directed her kitchen much the way Judy's mother did—like a conductor and their orchestra, or a small band, as the case may be with just the three of them. She had the image of what she wanted in her mind, and Judy just had to do as the vixen told her, much like when Maddy was first teaching them. It was easier now, after a month of lessons and practice.

After a while, Marian decided the sauce had thickened enough and was ready to eat, and the pasta had been boiled. Nick had grated the cheese and was sent to tidy up the kitchen table while Marian and Judy finished the final preparations.

Once everything was set and the meal had a little time to cool, the three sat down at the small dining room table and dug in.

"How are things going with you two?"

Judy looked up at her fox's mother. "We're doing OK. Work keeps us busy most of the time. We're not pulling in overtime hours as much as we were before, though, which is nice."

Marian frowned. "You can't let work dominate your relationship, though."

Judy nodded. "I know. But things are still chaotic, even if the search for missing and savage mammals has been called off. Beyond all the prank and nuisance calls, there's a lot of paperwork and talking to city prosecutors. Even the slimy defense lawyers. Ugh. They make me feel like I have to spend an hour in the precinct showers every time I talk to them. Or an hour in the shower at home."

"What happens that makes you want to take a shower?" Marian was curious. She knew that their line of work lent itself to situations where they had to keep secrets from family, but she wanted to help however she could.

Nick and Judy looked at each other, considering for a moment, then back at the vixen. "They're looking for anything we did wrong, steps we missed, pretty much anything that could be used to get their clients out of jail." Judy shuddered. "Just the idea that one of these monsters could get out of prison makes me sick."

Marian nodded. She knew she was probably more in the loop than just about any other civilian in the city, and the thought of one of those mammals getting away made her ill as well. The very ideology of those monsters seemed almost like something out of a horror novel, or a war.

'Well,' she thought, 'given the number of mammals killed, it might as well have been a war. But maybe this isn't the best topic for dinner.' She thought for a moment. "There must be something else you've been doing, though."

Nick snorted. "Oh, yeah. Mountains of prank and fake savage mammal calls. Carrots here has started getting snarky about those."

The doe snorted. "It's honestly gotten ridiculous. Some of them are paranoia calls, but others are full-on pranks, complete with made-up names. The chief wants us to—his words—'show no mercy with the prankers.'"

Marian shook her head. "Unbelievable. Well, maybe at one point it was unbelievable. Now, though, I think I've had a harsh splash of reality about what unbelievable things mammals will do."

"What about you, Mom? How is the case against Furston going? What about the job search?"

Marian thought for a moment. "Mr. Ford says it'll be a while before the case against Furston will be seen by the court. There is a tone of other cases against them, too, so I'm just one of many. I'm not included in the class action case, so I get my own. You know we won a settlement in the case against McStripeson, and that was even without him being convicted of anything. So, we're hoping for similar results against Furston, but Mr. Ford says that could take more than a year.

"As for the job search… If it could be going worse, I'm not sure how. Even the diners I used to work for when you were a kit, Nicky—even they won't call me back."

Judy's ears drooped at that. "Will you be OK?"

"Oh, between the payout from the McStripeson case and the little emergency fund I have stashed away, I should be fine for the next little while."

The trio then moved on to other topics, Judy regaling the group with stories of what was going on back in her hometown as relayed to her by Maddy. After dinner, they retired to the living room for some TV before the two small police officers headed for home.

Once they were on the subway, Judy brought up something that had been bugging her. "Hey slick, what if your mom can't ever find a job?"

"That might end up happening, Carrots."

The doe cocked her head. "I know whistleblowers have a harder time getting a job, but is it that bad?"

Without a word, Nick pulled out his phone and opened a picture showing dozens of pages of neatly noted job listings and their contact information, all with red ink through the words. "There are hundreds of listings, and all of them are crossed off." He sighed. "Much as I hate to admit it, Gid's offer to work for him might be her only option."

Judy's ears fell flat. "Would you be OK with that?"

Nick sighed. "I don't know. I was without my mother for fifteen years. I finally get her back, only for her to move hundreds of miles away for doing the right thing? I just don't know."

Judy nodded, trying to imagine the scenario for herself. "Maybe my parents, Shawn or Nolwazi or Bogo have some ideas."

A/N

Well some of you may have already figured out what's going on with Nolwazi. Some maybe haven't. Some may have also figured out what's going on with the prison captain.

Hope everyone has enjoyed the last two weeks! I'm actually beginning to wind down the writing phase of AROH! We're almost at the end! Don't worry, this isn't the end of the series though!

A couple people caught the reference in the last chapter. Can you find any in this one?

Coming up on April 30: Dig a Little Deeper!

Questions? Critiques? Did Hercules shot-put your iPhone across the continent? Leave a comment!