Chapter 20

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After finishing their ramen, Retsuko, Washimi and Gori went back to the offices, splitting off on their way in. The red panda got in an empty lift, got out on her floor, and then slammed herself against the wall as a bawling Kabae ran past.

"Waaaah…." she screamed, almost getting turned into an ailurid pancake by the emotional hippo.

"Retsuko, change of plan!"

She then turned to see Haida run up to her, down on his knees and panting. "Sorry, but it seems we've lost our mammal."

"Wait, what?"

"Kabae," he said, gesturing over. "The obvious one for our mission. I started explaining it to her and she had a breakdown, so she's out."

Retsuko stared at him blankly for a few seconds before shaking her head. "Wait-wait-wait-wait… Kabae? Gori's the obvious one for the mission."

"No she's not," the hyena countered. "I mean, for a start Kabae is a hippo, so she can match him. She's also been wronged in the past by the legal system, so she has a strong motive. She's the obvious choice, you came up with her too."

"No I didn't. I thought you'd come up with Gori too!"

"No…" he said, his face blanking out as he realised something. "I didn't actually say out loud that it was Kabae."

"I didn't say it was Gori, either. I just thought…"

"That you naturally had the same idea… Oh right. Ooops."

"Yeah."

"You weren't thinking what I was thinking."

"Turns out I wasn't."

"Hmmm…" Haida mused. "But still, Gori is a good substitute. Better than nothing."

"Actually, she's on antibiotics right now, so can't do it."

"Oh come on!"

"Still," Retsuko mused. "Maybe Fenneko had her own idea too?"

"Yeah," he said, clicking his fingers. He then paused as his phone buzzed. Picking it up, he slapped his head. "Hmmmm… Now I really didn't think of that one" He then turned it to Retsuko.

"Have you recruited your…" she read, blinking. "That is not obvious, even when you think about it. But, it might work!" she announced, bringing up her phone. Dialing in, she waited for it to connect.

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Meanwhile, in Sahara Square.

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The gentle strumming of a legally 'unconsciously plagialised' acoustic guitar riff rang out, the chords shifting up and down every few beats. They were soon cut over by a sharp, high pitched and slightly distorted guitar, followed by the voice of one George Hareison. "My sweet Lord… Mmmmm, my lord. Mmmmm, my lord. I really wanna see you. I really wanna be with you. Really wanna see you Lord, but it takes so long my lord..."

A few mammals noticed the sound of 'My Sweet Lord' playing out of the locker as they stripped all the way down to their undies, and then beyond. Nobody bothered it though. In fact, most were appreciative. They smiled as they heard it, before walking out, stark naked, into the mystic springs oasis.

A few of them even passed two figures, sitting cross legged, meditating together. One, a yak, hummed softly. "Ommmmm…. Ommmmmm…."

The other had his own, unique, mantra.

"PROTEIN!"

…

"PROTEIN!"

…

"PROTEIN!"

…

"PROTEIN?"

The massive kangaroo raised his ears, before his trance deepened. He knew about the request for help sent to him. He began to feel intune with the universe, the cosmic balance, the great disturbances… The wounded family, and those that came to aid them, who…

He shied away, almost losing it, as he sensed something dark. It was not the thing that had brought that gang together, oh no, he could sense that solitary noble soul holding on elsewhere. Instead, it was a feeling of something that existed in the background of all that was and would ever be, the great fault and schism eternally at the heart of the balance of this world and many others. In a way, it was what the western mystics once called original sin. An origin in innocence and good, only turned in like an ingrown claw before life itself, infecting on and on until it became a bottomless pit of wrong, only exorcised within his own fleeting lifetime. And now, an orphaned satellite of it was in their paws, he wondered if they knew? He recognised it now, it was the woodpecker's burden; he was off, far away, with his comrade in failure. And what of the reformed one, who had once been beside the main body while it still existed, only to redeem himself later and battle alongside both this kangaroo's mentor and the vanquishers of the great evil. Ah, he was still in the city too, where he always was. It was likely still under control. He'd warn his fellow order about all of it for certain, though he was greatly allayed as he sensed the greater of the two great vanquishers very nearby. In the city, sleeping the deepest longest sleep he'd ever felt, but in there nonetheless.

Back to the matter at paw, he felt the presence of a familiar soul… Yes, a student of his. He sensed what was needed, and knew what he needed to do. He reached out, into the strings of longest light that whipped around, before telling them what they needed to know.

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Yakatomi Plaza

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Getting back to their workplaces, Haida and Retsuko paused as their phone buzzed. Seeing who it was, the red panda's eyes widened. "He answered back!"

She openned it up as Haida fistpumped. "Yeah! With Protein on our side, we'll be unstoppable!"

Retsuko nodded, before reading on. "His religious powers require him to be a teetotaler."

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...

"GODDAMMIT!" Haida yelled.

Retsuko grumbled too, stashing it back into her bag. "Come on, there's gotta be someone…"

"SOMEONE TO WHAT?" came a shout, and they both flinched as the ground shook. They turned, gulping as they saw a very angry Director Ton marching up to them. He glared at them, hard. "I've heard that you've been making an awful ruckus."

"Uhhh…"

"I…" Retusko began, only to be cut off.

"Both of you, my office, now!"

Their tails between their legs, they dragged themselves into a small office, Ton following. A sign was hanging from the door, similar to the open-closed ones on certain stores. He made sure to flip it over, so everyone could see what it read.

'Bollocking in progress.'

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"Mornin' Officer Jones."

The police tiger looked up from his desk to see Detective Oates standing there, looming over him. The large horse had a wheat straw in his mouth and was chewing it slowly but surely. The tiger frowned. "Cut the cowboy act, Slack Jaw."

"That's Mr McGraw to you," he spoke, his Texan accent if anything even more Texan than before. The tiger rolled his eyes as the massive equid sat down hard next to him. The chair groaned and shook a bit as he went down, the big cat glancing at it as he wondered whether it would break or buckle. Oates glanced down at it before looking up again. "Y'all know my Ma' used to tell me not to eat so much chinese food in my school days, else I'd turn into it. You are what you eat, that kinda thing. But Ma' knows best. Look at me now, I grew up to be a one-ton."

"Let's get to business," Jones said, turning to face him. "This about the kit?"

"Yeah, Jones…" he said, pausing as he pulled out another wheat straw and offered it, only to be shrugged off. "Or can I call you Ralph?"

"Ralph or Jones, it's fine," he answered, as Oates let him take it.

"Okay then, Ralph Allen Jones! What on earth was going through your mind when you made that a public spectacle!?"

The big cat flinched back. "It was nighthowlers," he spoke, paws out. "That stupid kit was messing with those things, he deserved everything he got!"

"Yeah, which kit was that again?" Oates asked. "Tell me about the mismatch."

"I… -Okay, there was a bit of a mix-up with the lockers," he confessed. "We were given one number for the fox we'd had the call about, but after checking that he was still in class, the sniffer said it was from the one below. So we sent off to get the caretaker and the list, we thought it was the cousin's locker but wanted to confirm, and then the teacher of the class came out and started asking around. So I went in, saw those two foxes sitting there, and as the kits were already scared at that point I thought I might as well go ahead and get the deed done."

"What, so publicly scaring them more?! Humiliating those two kits…"

"-They were criminals," Ralph said, throwing his paws up in the air before looking down.

"-Suspected criminals!" Oates shouted back. "And one of them was. Not two, one, and you didn't even know which at that point!"

"Who cares, they were handling Nighthowler!"

"Well, I happen to care quite a bit," Oates said, giving his piece of straw a chew before spitting it out the side of his mouth.

"Well, you would for them," the tiger remarked, glaring at him. "I mean, all through the nighthowler crisis you weren't scared. You could fight off any savages, heck you looked like you were looking forward to the challenge, and it wasn't like there was a chance you'd become one. Wasn't a chance that you'd get hit or be attacked by one of those empowered prey punks. Wasn't the chance that you'd get put on admin leave, which happened to me; though out in the city it was getting fired that you'd have to worry about. I and every other pred got screwed over by those things, and then those two little fox punks think they can just deal with them scot free and get away with it? Think they're better than every other pred and can? Oh no. You may think that what I did wasn't pretty, but have you seen a savage pred in the flesh? That is not pretty!"

There was a long pause. "Two little fox punks?"

"-I meant one. There was one criminal…"

"-No, no…" Oates said, his eyes narrowing. "I think I know what you mean, and why y'all did what you did… Especially with the last comment. Which 'they're' are you talking about, may I ask?"

Jones blinked, before scowling hard. "How dare you accuse me of that. It was just a slip of a tongue."

"Cat caught it?" Oates said, grinning.

Ralph stayed silent, growling a little.

"Punks… criminals," Oates began recounting. "Didn't you mean sneaky, conniving…"

"You're just putting words in my mouth at this point! Nothing more. I have nothing against foxes, but if he tries to throw the fox bias card in to try and get off with a slap on the wrist, he's deserving of every stereotype speciesists throw at him."

Oates put his hooves up. "Let's step back a bit. Say y'all were angry with them both as they both had a potential connection to this stuff. Is that a fair interpretation of your words?"

Scowling, the big cat nodded.

"So you take it out on both of them, in public, amongst all their friends."

"Maybe those friends deserve to know…"

"-Know what?" Oates shouted. "Because I tell you this, boy. We don't know a thing about this case. There's the chance that the fox with the call planted the pellets in his cousin's locker. The chance it was all the cousin. There's the chance that a third party planted them and…"

"-Oh come off it, that's ridiculous."

"We have two very strong suspects for just that!" Oates yelled, the tiger freezing slightly.

"How was I supposed to…"

"You weren't," he said. "Nobody was, so y'all were supposed to act like it. Now normally, had you confirmed right away that it was the small fox's locker, you'd have had a single cop come in and take him away. Take him to the locker, ask a few questions, then read him his rights and lead him off. I suppose at least you did that last part right! Now, had it been the other fox, y'all should have done the same thing. Wait for the confirmation, bring him out, read him his rights and take him away. Instead, y'all chose to make it a spectacle for the both of them…"

"Oh who cares!?"

"The first child's parents, for a start!" Oates yelled. "Their kit had serious survivor's guilt after all of that, y'all damn well near traumatised him more than the kit you arrested. Heck, it looks like you scared him far more. So, bravo, good job. You terrified an innocent kit, one whose father writes for the papers." There was a long pause, the massive horse leaning down and up into the tigers personal space, giving a long nostril flaring snort. "You feel like a big cat now?"

"Well, he'll know now what happens to…"

"And the others, huh? What about them? They're terrified too. You think you're scared of the howlers, what do y'all think those kids think huh? So tell me, who's the big cat now, boy? And what if the one you hauled off in front of them is cleared? They'll all remember seeing that happen to him, and if any, any, are half as thick at getting an idea out of their skull as you are, then they'll still look down at him, still suspect him, going on for the rest of his life because of how you screwed up! Especially those that share your particular brand of biases."

Jones slammed his paws down. "The only biases I have are towards preds who go out and betray the rest of us!"

"And what if y'all were wrong? I mean, the original savage preds had nighthowlers planted on them by prey. Planted at a very high velocity mind you, but planted nonetheless… If they wanted to make a new kind of fear, they certainly succeeded, and you helped them far more than Officer Hopps' press conference mess up ever did!"

Jones seemed mollified for a second or two, before he looked away. "I… Maybe I overacted," he defended, his face scowling. "But I did nothing wrong. We've busted into houses and had to arrest parents in front of children many times before, then taking said children into care. We've got caught in fights on the street between kids younger than those ones and had to break them up. We've dealt with kids barely into double digits using their size advantage to do stuff to species much smaller than them. Heck, one even straight up pushed a mammal into traffic and said they deserved it because of their species. -Besides, even if we'd kept it quiet then, they'd have known soon enough."

"Who says? Pass it off as a health problem with one of the parents, keep it quiet, and as for all that other stuff... Those were all things you were forced to do, this was something you chose to do. There's the difference boy!"

"So, fine," the tiger grumbled. "You're not going to let this go. So, what are the consequences then?"

"Well, for our investigation, y'all poisoned a bunch of potentially critical witnesses straight off the bat, something that's only going to cascade all the way down! They'll tell others, who'll tell others, and wrapping it up with all this stupidity from the DA…"

"-What's stupid about what he did?" the tiger asked with a shrug.

For a second, he was in danger of a hoof to the face before Oates restrained himself. "What's stupid is that any chance of investigating this properly is getting smaller and smaller the more that wrecking balls like him and you have a go at it! We might have students in there who knew things but are scared to come out now. Or who might have remembered things that could have been useful, but now your actions have coloured them all, throwing them off. When it comes to trial, if it comes to that, and any are useful in any way, I bet you that any competent defense attorney will be grilling them alive over biases around that. And let's not forget that the father is a well respected, well paid academic, and this case is already building up the sympathy points! Lawyering up, he could be going after someone like Sam Burmowitz, Eric Badge and Delilah O'Possum, or god forbid Vern Rodenberg for his son, who can have adult witnesses bawling out in tears on a good day. And never mind the witnesses, this whole treatment thing could have a major influence on the entire case and trial itself, potentially throwing any chance for real justice off of it. That's what it means to us! What it means to them is that a bunch will need therapy and the kit, if he is innocent, may lose a bunch of his friends anyways. Both of them may well end up traumatised, and we may end up with a bunch of lawsuits coming our way. As for you, I've talked with your Chief and you're going to be put on review."

"What? Come on! If you think you can label me as a fox hater..."

"Who knows," Oates said, smiling. "I can certainly interpret the evidence in that particular way."

Jones crossed his paws. "Well I interpret it a different way."

Oates shrugged. "Well, your new commander's trademark comes in use here. Y'all be transferred to our Precinct, Precinct One, as of tomorrow, and put under the command of Chief Bogo until your hearing date. Say… a few months away?"

The tiger looked on angrily, only to relax, trying to shrug it off. "When that's over, I'll still be me and I'll be back here and you'll have wasted your time for nothing."

Oates harrumphed, standing up. "And I'm pretty sure that y'all be busted down a rank or two, a tiger with a few stripes of his removed. We'll see. Still, whatever the case, it'll be a bump up after what Bogo will have you on." He turned and left, the tiger crossing his arms.

"Oh noooo, parking duty, Bogo's famous punishment of doom. I'm so scared."

Oates turned back, raising a hoof. "You would be boy, if you've seen the quota he's expecting."

And with that, the horse detective left. He had more work to do, as did Catano. He wondered how his partner was doing right now.

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Turning the wheel hard, Catano maneuvered her cruiser around the sharp bend. Quite unusually for a West Coast city, Zootopia was not built on a grid layout. Then again, in some parts, doing so was out of the question anyhow. Such was the case for the Peak District. The name was likely a joking reference to the mountainous region in England, but it was certainly apt. While the Rainforest and Tundra Town were split in two by a sharp backed ridge line, said formation split into two by the time it reached the crux of all four districts, a massive raised hill sheltered between the two lower ridge lines. This was what gave the city its iconic skyline, arguably the most recognisable in the world. The city planners, eager to capitalise on it and knowing its value as an area equidistant from all areas in the city, chose to zone the area itself as the skyscraper district, doubling up the effect as the already raised area soared even higher.

There were drawbacks though.

While there was a roughly square mile of plateau up there, perfect for building super tall buildings, the edge involved a long and just too steep to drive up escarpment leading down to the second highest tier, itself split from the main city by another similar escarpment. As a result, roads would turn and hairpin on their way up, weaving through the still-tall overspill from the central district. The result was an awkward and tricky drive up, requiring lots of sharp turns and plenty of hill starts at traffic lights. Catano relaxed slightly, thankful for the fact that the police cruisers were automatic. She didn't like the idea of doing all of this in a manual (then again, she didn't like the idea of a manual period).

The lights changed and she slowly started on her way up again, weaving up through the ever towering structures. She supposed that this geography affected all transport users equally. After all, the height difference was why the metro system had some of its famous glaring faults. While the Snowcastle Line from Tundratown had a reasonable pre-made slope up, it still came in deep; both Lionheart Avenue and the line's terminus at Peak Street were far down. Then there was the Inner Loop. The original version was just that, an inner loop, serving all four districts, with a shuttle branch then added in Sahara Square, peeling off and out from Heat Street before terminating at Dead End.

For the new business district though, it was planned to send those shuttle trains onto the main line for a bit before cutting west at the closest point in Sahara Square, Olive Street. However the trains at the time had no chance of climbing straight up, so instead the line had to take a long spiral up to and then around the middle tier (probably a good thing, given that (again) due to the geography, the original Inner Loop didn't serve it), passing through Herd, Troop, Flock, Pack, Trip and Hill Street stations (going from a deep tunnel to a viaduct along the way), briefly slipping into the Rainforest (Old Growth City, to be exact) to link up with the many sky-tram termini at Fruit Market before entering the top tier from the west and reaching a much shallower terminal at Peak Street.

It explained why there were no subway connections between Pack street, western most of the bunch, and the earlier inner loop station at Grass Street. The vertical climb from one to the other was massive, with the links instead provided by cable drawn trams (which, while today mainly running on electricity, could still clamp onto the cables in these regions).

However, capacity soon became a major issue, as well as long commute times from Sahara Square given the round-about loop. As a result, a new line was built from the Outer Loop station at Tundra Gate (closest to the climate wall on the desert side) straight up to the Peak District (with two stops along the way, one connecting to the Inner Loop at Cactus Grove). While displayed as part of the Outer Loop, it was completely separate, and had to be. The only way to make the climb was to build it as a rack railway.

Even now, with the planned North-South line, the geography made it hard. Modern trains could climb far steeper gradients, but even so the line had to go out of the Savanna Central tunnel and up on rising viaducts, hitting the lower escarpment mid-way up before passing through its new platforms at Troop street. The branch up to Peak Street did the same thing again, rising out of the ground, onto a viaduct, before entering the cliff part way up; they also had to build new platforms for it, even deeper than the to be abandoned Snowcastle Line terminus, before it then merged with said line just before Lionheart Avenue.

Pulling off again, Catano shook her head. -Why was she recounting this?

Probably to keep herself distracted. She was weaving up in the area around Hill Street, one of the most expensive parts of the city. Not just for megafauna, or large fauna or even medium sized mammals. No, this was expensive period, even rodent sized housing selling for more than the equivalent in the famously overpriced Little Rodentia. Turning one last corner, she pulled up to a large condo complex, shaped like a semi-circle sticking out of the earth but with cladding and decorations inspired by curled ram and goat horns. She felt she was just a bit too tall for it, something reinforced as she pulled up on the road (hanging her police ID on the vehicle) and got out. She'd have to duck to get through the doors and her ears would likely brush the roof going through.

Still, she had a job to do. She walked into the reception, spotting a young looking and well dressed markhor: a mountain goat with long pale grey fur, a long dark beard and two spectacular horns which looked like ribbons corkscrewing up out the top of his skull. With him and the building design, she was sensing a theme, one that made sense given the gradient of the ground that they were on. He stood up, adjusted his suit and tie, before looking at her. "Afternoon, Maaaaa'm," he spoke, part of a bleat working its way in. "How can I help you?"

She smiled, bringing out her badge. "Hello, I'm Kii Catano of the ZPD. I'm here to talk to the Calrama family, are they in today?"

"Sure," he replied. "Floor four, flat 6." He brought out a card for her. "Have a nice day."

She smiled. "Thanks, I'll try to." She silently noted that it would be a tall order as she entered the lift and made her way up. It was at the end of the building and plated in glass, primarily giving her a view of the other tall buildings. In one half though she could see the view out and it was spectacular. On one side, the sharp cliff cutting off the Rainforest district swept down, wisps of clouds curling off of its peaks. Beneath it, framed in, the city descended, revealing itself beneath her. The tall buildings gave way to the mid-rises of the poor Pack Street neighbourhood, before descending again into the dense sprawl of Savannah Central. All throughout, the building colours were peppered with green, before it met the blue of the ocean.

The lift came to a stop and she walked along, noting that the flat in question would have that view. She came to a stop and knocked with a quick flurry of knuckle-raps.

…

"Coming," came a (male) grunt from inside, followed by a pause. "Who are you?"

"Kii Catano, ZPD," she said, professionally.

"Oh," he said, suddenly bitter, angry, aggressive. Her ear flicked back. "Do you have a warrant?"

"No, I just want to…"

"Then cuss off. You hear me? Cuss off!"

"Listen," she said, her ears going down as her face scowled. "I just want to ask some questions, and…"

"And why would that be, huh?"

She bit her tongue, stopping herself from saying something that would be unbecoming of a police officer. Given who his relative was and what she'd done, if he wanted mammals to be nice to him then he should at least try and help out. If he was innocent, of course; if he was guilty of this or connected to the old plot in any way then his reaction made perfect sense given his deplorable actions. Indeed, when Dawn fell he didn't stand up and decry her like his older brother. Instead, he'd tried to run and hide, burying it all and trying to vanish away the past. Then again, part of her wondered, maybe that was understandable given that there were mammals like Gruinard Gal out there…? She shook her head. Whatever the morality, she had a job to do. "You're Dominic Calrama, yes?"

"Yes."

"But it's not your first surname."

…

"I know what happened at that school," he said, blithely. "Honestly, it was only a matter of time before you came to bother us."

'Well, duh…' She thought. "This is just a fact finding mission, I…"

"-You say that, but I bet you have all the facts that you need already," he spoke. "However, you don't have a warrant, so…"

"-How long do you think it'll take for us to get one, hmmm?" she asked, choosing to just go into no-nonsense mode. "And you need that to search the property, not to ask questions. I could take you into the station, for police questioning, something which I have no doubt would be distressing for all of your family. The same would be true of your daughter. If I really wanted to search the place, I could get a warrant, too. Just a matter of time. I just want to ask some questions."

There was a long pause, before he spoke again. "I'm going to record this. Say that again, then I'll let you in, just to talk, and we can discuss these things. I might even let you search a few things, not like I have anything to hide… Not that I think you will believe that."

"Thank you," she said, relaxing. She knew that many mammals didn't trust the cops but, in cases like this where they were offering an olive branch, there was no reason not to take it. She repeated her assurances and there was a shake as the door was unlocked, before it opened up to reveal the ram in question. There really was no doubt about it, he was Dawn Bellwether's brother. He had had the same round green eyes, glasses (sleek and narrow rather than warm and round) placed over them. That was what struck her the most, even before she realised just how small he was. A head taller than Dawn at least, but still notably small for a sheep, though he made up for it in terms of girth. He wore his wool thick, yet still dressed smartly in some black trousers and a grey dress shirt. He had her ears too, very long and thin ones, similar in shape to those of a bunny but firing out the side of his head, not the top. Then there was the face structure, a bit squarer but similar, with two tiny nubs of horns sticking out. Finally there was the way the wool grew around it. He had her big head poof, though here it was cut into a sharp 70's style fro, and her mutton chops, though the wool here was shaved down into a sleek frizz. All in all, he looked sleeker, more dapper, but the cute, innocent, sweet, adorable and evil mayor was still in there.

If you didn't know, you'd never guess. If you did know, you'd wonder how you could ever miss it.

"Are you going to stare at me for much longer?"

"-Sorry, I…" she said, trailing off. "Just you look so much like her."

"Well of course I do, I'm her brother," he said, as he let her in.

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AN: A few references given to some of the best fictional lawyers out there in the fandom. Can you place them all? Might we bumping into any of them later? Well, guess you'll have to wait and find out.