Well, I certainly wasn't expecting that sort of twist, and combined with Mrs. Wilde's news, it seems like things in Zootopia have been a hell of a lot worse than I had ever imagined them to be. What's wrong with this system? Also, Judy seemed kinda surprised when she heard her mom mention those little details, but I can't imagine that she'd never been told. Or if she wasn't ever told, there has to be a reason, doesn't there? There has to be a reason. There's always a reason.

So then, the question I have is why? Why, why, why? That's the whisper of thought that keeps floating through my mind as I'm sitting here. It's two days after Judy came over, and my mind has been swimming this whole time. Is it possible that she was never taught anything about it? I mean, I've heard that Mayor Bellwether's administration is harsh, but nearly three decades of outright censorship? I can't imagine that that's quite legal, but then again, it isn't fair, and so what else is new?

That question I don't even need to ask, really. I know the answer, I did a project on it, but wouldn't the same laws apply to Bunnyburrow as they would to Zootopia Central? I wouldn't know, as I've never lived there. No one I know has ever lived there, in fact, except for-

Oh, duh. Mister Lionheart. He told us about himself when we first had him- seventh grade Zootopian History and Government. Even back then, he was a take-action kind of mammal, never content to let the world just pass him by, but instead always advocating for advancements in every facet of society. He had a reputation for being honest, even if it infuriated the masses. He wasn't going to lie to them, not after their experiences under Mayor Swinton just after I was born.

Now, this is just secondhand, but seeing as it came from the Zootopia Intelligence Agency, I get the feeling that although things are going to be pro-government skewed, it's going to be a fuller and more honest account of the details than any other place I can find. Let's see…

I grab my computer from under my bed, where I keep it stashed. I won it years at a raffle, with tickets that I had bought with money that I had made selling lemonade for summers upon summers upon summers upon summers. Although it might seem a bit weird, it's very difficult to make much money running your own lemonade stand in this podunk of a town. Yes, that's a real word, and yes, there really is a town in Deerbrooke County with the same name.

But back to the topic of a lemonade stand- when every other family of the hundreds of thousands that inhabit this town has one, it's nearly impossible to make a profit. Chances are, you'll lose money, but that hasn't ever stopped me from trying.

I boot up the computer, and once I'm on, I head straight for Zoogle to check out the facts. I search "fur trade Zootopia," and as luck (or perhaps Chaos) has it, the fourth article is a Zoo York Times article entitled "Hair Ewe Are: The Disgusting Truth About Our City's Underground." I click the link, and begin to read:

Hair Ewe Are: The Disgusting Truth About Our City's Underground

Published February 21, 1997

John McCormack

For the longest time in our city's history, it has been fashionable to wear fur, as most mammals consider it a compliment to the fact that mammalian species are like no others. Mammals, after all, are the only types of organism that have fur, and mammals flaunt the fur they have. It has also been a style accessory since the advent of the production process for synthetics for mammals to wear fur.

It should go without saying that most mammals assume the fur that they wear is then, of course, synthetic. I know that I myself, had I not been tasked with writing this report, would have never assumed that, if I had seen it before, that such things were occuring in our city. It is something that this reporter is certain of that this process is rather morbid, and sensitive readers should exit here. If, however, you wish to continue, be warned.

With all systems, there are leaks, and one of particular notoriety is the fur trade in this city. Unfortunately, the majority of mammals in this city go daily unawares that most of the fur that they wear comes not from chemicals and plastics, but instead from actual animals. In rare cases, a live animal will give their consent to be shaved, and their fur used in the production of clothing, but the majority of the fur that becomes clothing comes from the city morgues, where mammals are shaved…

At that point, I stopped reading. How would any same mammal feel if they found out what I just did? This was filthy and disgusting, and here I was thinking that I was in a story that went well, and here I am finding out that this world's filled with a whole hell of a lot of nasty mammals? Yeah, there's a problem here. No, scratch that, lotsof problems here, so what do I do now? That's probably the only easy question I've had all day- it's time to form a to-do list:

One, email Mister Lionheart,

Two, call Judy and get her in on this,

Three, try not to get grounded again,

and Four, go to a school board meeting where they're probably going to decide to get rid of me for good,

all without not being arrested. Yay, fun. Oh, sweet Celestials above, am I going nuts? Probably, but criminality can't be let go. No, it can't be ignored any longer. I open up my email, and start to write:

[To: Leodore Lionheart

From: Nicholas Hopps

Re: Censorship?

Dear Mister Lionheart,

I've come across some extremely disturbing news as of late, and I was hoping that you might have the answers. I've heard tell that you used to work in Zootopian politics, and I was hoping that you might be able to explain a few things to me. What's been going on here at home has left me wondering who I truly am and what the heck I'm supposed to do now. Please reply soon,

Nicholas Hopps]

I have only to wait five minutes before my laptop pings with a reply notification. I open up the email, and there are only four sentences:

[Dear Nicholas,

It's not safe to talk here. I live at number 117 on Pine Street. You know how to get there, right?

Meet me in twenty.]

Okay, then… There's something that's not right about this whole equation, and I don't think it's Mister Lionheart.

"Mom? I call. "Can I go for a bike ride?"

"Sure, but whatever for?" she calls back.

"I need to talk with a teacher about something. Something important."

"What kind of something important?"

"I'll tell you everything when I get back, I promise, but not now. Pleeease?" I beg, hoping she'll give, and my request is granted.

"Okay, Nick," she says, sighing, "but be careful, okay? And be safe! Wear your helmet!"

"I know, Mom," I say, "I will. You don't have to worry about me so much. I'm a teenager, I think I know what I'm doing."

I hear her snicker under her breath a bit, but then she says, "Yes, okay. Have fun, dear." With that, I dash out the door and run over to the shed, unlatch in, and hop on my bike, completely uncaring that I haven't put my helmet on. After fifteen minutes of biking as hard as my legs will push me (and that's saying something, considering I run the thirty-two hundred for the track team at school), I reach Mister Lionheart's house. It's not much, just a small one-story clapboard painted a peeling sky-blue.

I knock on the door and wait the few seconds it takes Mister Lionheart to reach the door. He's dressed in a bathrobe the same color as the house, his fur is unkempt, and he looks like he hasn't slept in days. "Come in, Nicholas," he says, "would you like something to drink? You look like you sprinted over here."

"Well, not really, but I did bike, and if you've seen that thing, let alone tried to use it, well then, you'd understand why I look even more like a disheveled mess than usual. I came over because I wanted to ask you for some answers, and maybe something for my stomach, because ever after hearing Mrs. Wilde tell us about- well, I think you might know what I mean, Mister Lionheart."

"If by that you mean what goes on in the undergrounds of the city, then yes, yes I do. In fact, when I worked in the city, that was what I was most determined to do away with- an animal's fur- or worse- being taken without their consent? I know that there were rare exceptions, but the majority of the time, well, no. And most mammals have no idea, either, and unfortunately, this little topic is the least serious of all the issues that Zootopia has going on under the surface. There are much worse, but this is the most disgusting of them all. I'd honestly rather not discuss that here, but-"

A knocking sound interrupts our conversation, so I run over to the door to answer it. I get the feeling that it's Judy, and what do you know? On the other side of the door stands one of the only friends I have, one with green eyes.

"So, Judy," I say, "I take it that Mister Lionheart got ahold of you, them?"

"Yes, he did," she replies, her voice hard as steel and yet cracked, like she's about to cry. "I came as fast as I could. This is way bigger of an issue than I could have ever imagined. I mean, I'd never heard anything about any of this until a few days ago, I swear, but it makes absolutely no sense to me. I can't imagine how I wouldn't have ever heard of it, because I lived in that city for all but the last few months of my life, and I never heard anything about it. Of course, I suppose that my mom could have just decided to not tell me because she wanted me to feel safe, but I think I would have felt safer if she'd just told me when I was younger, because then I could have gotten my mind wrapped around the whole thing. I just...I...I…," she trailed off. "Just...how?"

"I unfortunately think that I have the answer to that, and that same answer goes for why I left that city."

"Oh?"

"Well, there's something that I don't tell mammals. My biggest secret, so if I'm going to tell you at all, you have to swear that you'll never share this with other mammals." He looked at us over the tops of his half-moon lenses. "Do you?"

"I do," I said. "Judy? Do you?"

"Ye-es…."

"Fine, then. I'll tell. This is a long tale, so grab a seat and listen up. Back when I lived in Zootopia Proper, all I wanted was predator rights. End the fur trade, increase the public's awareness, revitalize the downtown areas, abolish Happytown, all that jazz. Well, it was great, all up to about five years ago. Then everything all went to scat, let me tell you."

"What happened?"

"Well, Judy, I suppose you might have heard about the Night Howler Crisis?"

"Um….I hate to disappoint you, but no, Mister L., I haven't."

"Hrrm, unfortunate, most unfortunate. You see, Judy, I used to be Mayor of that city, but you see, the people chased me from office about a decade and a half ,ago. You see, apparently, my Assistant Mayor, she wanted to have a bit more power- she had some former coworkers of hers cook up this flower- midnicampium holicithias, a.k.a Night Howler, hence the name- into one of the most powerful hallucinogens ever created, then shot innocent predators with it to try to push across her TAME Collar agenda. Of course, that sort of discrimination wasn't legal- these things would have been just an excuse to get rid of the mammals she didn't like by putting shock collars on them. I wouldn't stand for it, no matter how many times she tried to push it through on me.

"I guess she just got sick of waiting- once she shot those poor mammals, they went off the rails crazy, and if you can imagine the craziest mammal you've ever seen, then multiply that by itself several times over ,and then you've got what these mammals look like. I didn't know that until it was too late, by that time, no progress had been made on any sort of antidote. The attacks just kept happening for months and months and months, until an otter named Emmitt Otterton- apparently his parents liked the TV show Emmitt Otter's Jug Band Christmas. But I digress.

Well, he came to me when the attacks had been about six weeks running, and he told me what he had managed to figure out, that it was just a drug, and he also told me that he had discovered an antidote, as he was one of the city's most prominent chemists, with a speciality in botanical medicine.

As soon as he had given me that info, I knew what I had to do. Unfortunately, I didn't know where she had kept them, but thank the Celestials that Otterton did. He had been a former contractor, in charge of keeping City Hall's grounds kept neat and tidy, so he had had some access to the databases. It had just so happened that he he had seen mammals infected with Night Howler before, as it was used as a commercial pesticide, and he knew how to take care of the problem. He also knew where the infected mammals had been kept but had been under quite the threat if he ever spilled, that he would be darted himself.

I placed him under my protection at a safehouse out of the city, and he made it safely out. I then managed to stage a raid on the asylum and I was this close to giving them the antidote when you-know-who showed up with the entirety of the ZPD to haul me in, and placed the blame on me, both for masterminding the whole the whole thing as well as 'falsely imprisoning' those mammals. I never got the chance to cure them. As soon as those cops showed up, I was hauled into the back of a police cruiser and sent to prison.

I actually met your parents while I was there, Judy, they were then and are still now wonderful mammals. Well, we shared our ideas, and when they were released from prison, they went into hiding. As for me, I was exiled from the city. That was the only real choice I was given- get the hell out or wear a collar myself. I chose the first option and ran, like the coward I really was.

As for your parents, Judy, they wanted to run away years ago. They couldn't do it because Bellwether had placed restrictions on predators like you wouldn't believe. Did your parents ever take you out anywhere, or did they find someone else? I get the feeling that you never saw them outside, did you?"

"No, but why not? I mean, could it really have been that bad?"

"Look, Judy, I mean no offense, but you couldn't possibly have been more naive. You were lucky. You're a prey kid, you could, in all honesty, do anything you want in that city. Your parents, however, well, they weren't so lucky. If they were at home, they didn't need their collars. However, if they were to ever leave home, they did. If they tried to go outside without them, they would be sent away, never to return. Bellwether also made sure to keep it all under wraps, no information ever to leave."

"But then, Mister Lionheart, how could I have done that project on the fur trade? It makes no sense."

Mister Lionheart sighed. "A very good point, Nick. Money talks, that's all I can say about it, really. I got a letter right before I assigned you that project, signed with a red pawprint, that gave me a login key. To this day, I don't know who gave it to me. I get this feeling that it might have been someone in government that was sick of the system. I just don't know."

"Well," Judy said, "my parents will do that sometimes. Usually it's on letters to their friends, but you have my interest."

"May I make a suggestion, then?" I asked.

"Okay," said Mister Lionheart, "but who are you asking that question? Me or Judy?"

"Judy," I said.

"Yes, Nick?"

"We need to make another stop, and this time, it's to your house."