Happy Easter, everyone! (and Happy April Fools' Day). To celebrate, at the end of this chapter I'm going to start posting Easter Egg answers chapter by chapter instead of having them all in a chapter of their own at the end. At the bottom of this chapter you'll find the answers from chapters Four and Six. I'll be doubling up until I'm one chapter behind (i.e. each chapter having the answers for the previous one, if applicable) and just go from there. I wanted to do something for April Fools' Day with my Fox Dens and Rabbit Trails series, but figured I should prepare that better first. So, Happy Easter!

Proofreading by Hawktooth and Warriors27.

"Why should we not seize him at once?"

"Our case is not complete. The fellow is wary and cunning to the last degree. It is not what we know, but what we can prove. If we make one false move, the villain may escape us yet."

The Hound of the Baskervilles, a Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"What do you mean the judge never got our application?" Judy demanded. "You sent it in, didn't you?"

With a phone to her ear, Catano raised her free paw to stall the question. Her brow was furrowed, and her lips were drawn in. She didn't know if it helped or hindered things that the secretary on the other end had just asked her, in effect, the very same question.

"Yes, I filed it this morning," she answered calmly, waving Nick and Judy after her toward the cubicles. She kept talking on the phone as they walked. "I faxed it in at about ten hundred hours." She paused. Then, in a voice which seemed to subtly turn every syllable into, 'Oh, come on, seriously?' she translated that as, "Ten AM."

Under any other circumstances, Nick would have rolled his eyes. Figures she'd talk in military time.

Judy glanced at Nick. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" she hissed.

Nick nodded. On the one paw, the fact that their false alarm coincided so neatly with a misplaced warrant application and such a public gesture on Poisson's part… well, if that wasn't fishy he'd sell his tail. After deliberately humiliating and riling Judy a few days before, it would be exactly the skunk's style to dangle a clue that was so obvious and yet would never stick with a judge.

On the other paw, was it a little too obvious? He shook his head. "I am, but I don't know if we're right or not."

Officer Catano ignored them, concentrating on the phone call. "May I speak to the judge please. Yes, right this- well let me know when he gets out. I'll be right here."

Both of the smaller partners were getting exasperated. Their case was falling apart faster than a badly built block tower, and it was too much to believe that their various mishaps were by chance. Even Nick, despite his reluctance to pin an accusation on the obvious suspect, knew someone had to be orchestrating things.

"What the heck is going on here?" asked Judy, drumming her foot. Her ears seemed practically glued flat to her head.

Catano's ears were back as well, and her eyes had a peculiar abstract-yet-attentive look to them, like the practiced gaze of a detective studying every stitch, button, and mud stain of someone's attire. "I don't know," she admitted, "but if we're hitting this many dead ends then we have to be getting close enough to pose a threat to Obearon – whoever that is."

I'm so glad we all agree, thought Judy sarcastically. Now what the heck are we supposed to do about it already?

She groaned inwardly as they entered the elephantine cubicle again. Apparently its usual occupant was on paid migration. Judy bit her lip. I guess Callie likes the elbow room, she mused, trying to find something to be cheerful about.

The setting didn't do her any favors. Back when she started at the academy – her first exposure to elephant-sized furniture and objects – she had loved the novelty. For a bunny who grew up in a town full of mostly rabbit-sized things, it had been like stepping into a storybook; Jackrabbit and the Beanstalk or something. It got old fast, especially when it took her weeks to get the hang of opening those giant doors. Getting herself a cup of coffee without jumping up on the counter (and thereby incurring the wrath of the cleaning yak) should have been a Pawlympic event. Now, with its long shadows and oversized desk, the pachyderm's cubicle was starting to remind her of that.

"So now what?" asked Nick, disrupting her train of thought in an unwitting act of mercy.

Catano's attention returned to the phone and she held up a paw. Then she decided to put the call on speaker. "Yes, this is Officer Catano from the ZPD."

"Ah, good day. Well, officer, what can I do for you?" The judge sounded like he was doing the best he could to hide serious fatigue, suggesting his day had not been much better than theirs.

Catano didn't let that stop her. "I faxed you a request for a warrant to inspect the farms and facilities of Pwasson's Passion at Ten o' clock this morning. Your secretary says you never got it."

The judge sounded genuinely puzzled. "Well, he was right. I've gotten all kinds of search warrant requests lately, but I don't remember anything for a soap company. I think I'd remember something that unusual."

"But we've sent you two!" Judy exclaimed, catching his answer.

Catano raised a paw again to halt the rabbit's outburst. Though neither of the others could see it, she was trying to hold back a growl of her own. She was usually very disciplined, but she hated when things dragged on – and besides, every mammal had limits. "Sorry, Your Honor." She glanced at Judy, and a brief look flashed through her eyes as if she were mentally telling the bunny, 'I'm just as annoyed as you are, but this isn't the time. Keep it to yourself.' Then she returned to the phone call and was once again all business. "I still have the original. If I fax it to you in the next five minutes, can you be there to get it?"

The judge protested. "Officer, I respect your job, but I am up to a giraffe's neck in paperwork."

Seeing Judy's drumming foot, the cheetah decided – against her better nature – to exploit his stressed situation. "Then perhaps you could just approve the warrant and send it back to us. Quick in and out, and you'll have one less caller to think about."

The judge sighed. "I'm sorry, officer; I really am, but I'm up to my armpits in hearings for this and applications for that, especially over the new Night Howler attacks."

Judy resisted the urge to pull on her ears in annoyance, and Nick bit his lip. Oohhhh, the irony, he thought.

Catano kept her voice level, but her body was starting to stiffen up. "Well, that's exactly what this is about, so…"

"Listen, if you send it again my secretary will see that I get it as soon as possible."

"If I send it right now, will you-?"

"I have a hearing to get to. Just send it as soon as you get the chance, and I'll-"

"I'm headed to the fax machine… no, please don't-" she stopped in mid-stride as a click came through the phone. She let out a sigh, and for just an instant her teeth could be seen through her lips. Catching the flash of white, Nick thought that maybe he was finally going to witness someone successfully triggering the officer.

Better him than me, he couldn't help thinking.

Callie didn't erupt, though for a moment she wrapped her paw around the phone as if she meant to crush it bare-pawed. Then, seeming to remind herself that breaking the phone would fix nothing, the cheetah eased her grasp and sighed. "Hang up," she groaned. Then in a wearier tone, she added, "Bureaucracy."

Judy couldn't help thinking of what she'd been warned about before; that Olivia Poisson had the means to make things difficult even for the ZPD. "Do you think someone bribed the judge or something?" she asked.

"Eehhh, doubtful," Nick put in, twirling a paw. "That was Judge Stalker, right?"

Catano nodded, evidently inquisitive. "You know him?"

"I know everyone," Nick boasted, folding his arms smugly. "Well, almost everyone. And Judge Stalker may get a bit tangled up in things, but he's not crooked. He's almost as much of a stickler as you, and I'm pretty sure if anyone tried to bribe him he'd tie them up and tell the cops to keep the cash as evidence. Besides, he's a thylacine. Something that poses a threat to preds is as much of a concern to him as you," he pointed an index claw at Catano, then flipped his thumb toward himself, "or even me."

"Or me," Judy put in, herbivore though she was.

This drew a frown from the cheetah. "Well, your diets and my diet aren't the point here. Since we're stuck waiting on Stalker's queue, we'd better get back in it. I'll be right back."

Nick and Judy looked dismally at one another as she left. "I know what you're thinking, Carrots," Nick preempted.

She folded her arms, her face creased in an implacable scowl. "That this whole thing reeks of déjà vu?" She didn't mean to be snappy with her best friend, of all mammals, but the whole thing was getting really annoying. "Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm thinking."

Oh, boy, he thought. This could get ugly. He shrugged, hoping to dampen her smoldering temper. "It could be coincidence," he reasoned, "Or a false lead."

"Who could plant a false lead like this?" asked Judy, spreading her paws. "We get a false tip while she just happens to be in a meeting that ends up making it ten times harder to follow up her case? And somehow while all that's going on, the warrant requests on her just disappear?"

"Uh, well," he hesitated, raising a paw to scratch nervously at the back of his head. He could have pointed out that with things the way they were, Judge Stalker probably had enough paperwork on his paws to misplace half a library, never mind two forms. He decided this would be unhelpful and perhaps hazardous to his health. "When you put it that way… yeah, I guess it does sound like a pretty tight case. I'm just trying to keep an open mind on this."

Judy lowered her gaze. Her tightened lips and furrowed brow both loosened with uncertainty. Deep down, she knew Nick was right. Just because a given answer seemed obvious didn't mean it was true. Heck, when she went into that empty house all the evidence seemed to point to a Night Howler lab clear until she got upstairs. This could be more of the same. Poisson might not be Obearon; the culprit could be someone entirely different. Maybe she was just being suspicious because the skunk had been so obnoxious.

Still, Poisson was her initial assignment, and the clues on Obearon were slim enough that she had to follow what she could. "Well, any ideas on what we could chase down while we wait for that warrant to finally get through?"

He shrugged. "Well, we could try interrogating Lionheart, since we already tried Bellwether."

That actually got Judy's mind off her irritation for a moment. "Hmm. He'd probably be more cooperative than Bellwether. He sure couldn't be much less."

Lionheart's official public stance on the whole fiasco was, as he had told Judy at his arrest, that he was trying to protect the city. Everyone knew that he denied any knowledge of the darting and claimed that he had only meant to contain and analyze the problem without mass panic. Off the record, he had told the ZPD that the whole operation had been in motion before he knew it existed. According to him, the mercenaries and doctor had already been hired and in action when he learned of it and – naturally – took over. He suspected that Bellwether had set him up so that when the world found out he would get the blame, but wanted that suspicion kept quiet lest he look like he was passing the blame.

Truth be told, Judy still wasn't quite past being ticked at the former mayor for what he did. Whatever his motives, he had illegally held innocent mammals and caused their families endless worry. More personally, he had done this as someone she'd looked up to for years. Betrayal was nothing easy to shrug off. All the same, she had to admit his answer was logical. It covered all the facts, and it made looking to him for answers seem more reasonable.

"We could do that, I guess," she admitted.

Nick thought for a moment. "And there's another thing you need to look out for on this. Now that's Poisson's in the limelight, it's bound to come up that you're investigating her. It might even end up publicly known that you freaked out over some papers she left at your apartment."

She folded her arms at this suggestion. "I wish we could tell everyone that fiasco was her," she griped. Because everything was still under investigation, the ZPD had said nothing so far about the origin of the package. Rumors had flown around, of course, and the fact that the box had contained documents was officially the ZPD's worst-kept secret of the decade. There had even been a few articles – which she had tried to ignore – questioning her professionalism for having such documents dropped off at her apartment when she wasn't even there. All things considered, she would have loved for everyone to know that Poisson caused that ruckus on purpose.

Nick shook his head. "Uh, yeah, that's not gonna make such a good headline. 'Skunk Philanthropist and Benefactor Sends Files to Help Investigation. Officer Hopps Starts Mass Panic.'"

Judy was incensed. "Sends files to help?" she echoed. "Hopps starts mass panic?"

He nodded. "Yep. See, she's all over the news giving her own time and living space to help the city recover from a local disaster. People are not going to buy that she's getting in the way of a police investigation into the roots of that disaster. Besides, if she really is behind this then there's no way she just ad-libbed making you the town clown and herself the all-city champ in just a couple of days. She'll be just waiting to play the victim card."

"But she… is." Unfortunately, she could see that this was getting nowhere. Nick was completely right.

"Careful, Carrots; you'll ruin your teeth."

Judy froze. She didn't even realize she'd been grinding her teeth. "Actually, our teeth can get too long if we don't wear them down," she answered mechanically. Getting back on the subject, she added, "Okay, so what do we do now?"

"Well, we've got nothing on Olivia except that everything lines up," Nick reasoned. "I have an idea, but you're probably not going to like it."

It was a testimony to how well they had gotten to know each other that she needed say nothing. He could literally tell just by the twitching of her ears that she was listening.

"You could ask to be switched over to tracking down Obearon."

Judy scowled. Admitting defeat was not on her list of options – ever. "Nick, you know I'm not going to fold."

He lifted his paws, shrugging helplessly. "Hey, hear me out. We know Obearon's the bad guy; everyone knows that. Which means no public backlash if you go after him."

Judy was beginning to see how the dots connected. She hated to leave the skunk's scent (ha), but if she was Obearon like she thought…

"So we focus on Obearon, and try to find evidence to bring in whoever he or she is."

Nick nodded. "Besides, Old Hornhead's probably going to want everyone he can get on the known threat now that there is one."

It occurred to Judy that the ZPD's focus on only the known threat was just what kept them from figuring out the real cause of all those savage predators. On the flip side, they were spinning their wheels on Poisson anyway. At least this would help her to not go stir-crazy over the missing warrants.

"Alright, I'll ask Bogo. But I'm not giving up my assignment, and we should talk to Lionheart either way. Bellwether seemed to know something, and if she won't talk then maybe he will."

"That's my tough little bunny," Nick grinned, patting her on the head.

She pushed his paw away. "O-kay Junior, watch it." There was, however, no mistaking the more relaxed look in her lavender eyes. At least she had something useful to do now. "Thanks, Nick."

His playful, witty grin gave way to a softer smile, but all trace of it vanished at the sound of a clearing throat. Both of them jumped and spun to see Catano in the doorway, looking decidedly nonplussed.

"Well," she observed dryly, "I can see you two are hitting it off."

At Poisson Mansion, Barracus carefully fitted a bit of microfiber cloth over the tip of one of his claws, then dug it into the corner of an overlay on a gold-plated decorative urn. It was one of a half-dozen or so which stood on pedestals and added a regal air to one of Olivia Poisson's art galleries. It had been an hour since the mistress had called him with instructions to get everyone working double-time readying the mansion, and already it felt like five or six hours at least. Examining his work, he nodded in satisfaction and put the vessel back in its place before moving on to the next.

He swore under his breath and nearly dropped the vase - which cost more than he made in six months - as his phone rang. Hastily he set the article down and answered the phone with as civil a tone as he could manage, in case it was Poisson. "Yes?"

A nervous voice answered. "Bruce, I can't keep this up much longer."

He rumbled in his throat. It was the voice of Judge Stalker's nyala secretary. "Have you been figured out?"

"No, but they faxed it in again - and the judge is getting phone calls now wondering what's the-"

"Enough!" snapped the hyena, growing impatient. "I don't care what you have to do, but keep stalling for time. If this catches up with me, you'll be next. Understood?"

The antelope nodded. "Yes sir," he uttered, obviously wishing he'd never gotten involved.

Barracus hung up, growling to himself as he went back to his work. The antelope would never know it, but they had something in common.

The sooner this is over, thought the hyena, the better off I'll be.

Ohh, shitake mushrooms. Now what? How exactly are things getting gummed up, and what's Barracus' angle in all of this? Will Lionheart have anything useful to tell them? Will he want to share it if he does? And what about Catano's untimely return? What exactly did she see, and what's going to happen if it gets back to Bogo? (then again, at least Clawhauser would get his donuts back)

The nyala referenced in that last scene - for those who don't know - is a kind of small antelope which I was fortunate enough to see on the zoo outing referenced in my previous Author's Note. Unlike the stately deer-like animals one usually thinks of with antelope (a la Gazelle), nyala are not that different in size from large terriers. I was fortunate to see so many species of herbivore there, because I realized that it's much easier to think of carnivorous species but more necessary to think of herbivorous ones to keep Zootopia's ratio consistent.

Thylacines (such as the judge) - for those of you who don't know - are a type of carnivorous marsupial officially listed as extinct in this world due mainly to hunting and deliberate extermination (owing to their reputation for attacking livestock). Also known as Tasmanian Tigers because of their striped pelts, they are rumored to still live in parts of Australia based on sightings, scat, and tracks. Since they would probably not have been willfully wiped out in the Zootopia world (except maybe in an event such as the Holocaust, which it strikes me would make a good but very grim story), it is safe to assume that Zootopia would have a stable population. For those who are wondering, I've dabbled in reports of unconfirmed animals most of my life, and cases of maybe-not-extinct ones like thylacines or Mokele-Mbembe are among my favorites. Believe it or not, slipping one in on a day about someone coming back from the dead was totally unplanned on my part. Still loving it.

Easter Egg Answers:

Chapter Four: Bambi (the rabbit and fawn trying to ice skate), Beauty and the Beast (less obvious; the snow leopard and the bison having a snowball fight), Lady and the Tramp/ Lady and the Tramp II (son of mismatched parents teasing his sisters). The Spectacular Spider-Man reference was in the lemming (dressed in red and blue) riding the back of an otter clad in red and green, reminiscent of a scene where Spider-Man more tauntingly "surfed" on Vulture's back in midflight. The comic strip was probably the easiest, with a duo of friends - one being a tiger - building a freakish snowman. This is, of course, a nod to the many bizarre snow sculptures of Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes, particularly of the "Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons" story arc. I realize most of the other Easter Eggs were not so obvious in writing, this being one of my earlier Easter Egg chapters. I should probably revise it later to give later readers a better shot.

Chapter Six: Saint Ninian's is, as AngloFalcon guessed, a nod to the Redwall books by Bryan Jacques. Benny nailed the Christopher Lloyd reference, with Emitt Otterton having the same first name as and using the catchphrase of Doc Brown (played by said actor in the Back to the Future trilogy and other related works) and having a baseball bat in his room (a nod to Al, Lloyd's angelic character in Angels in the Outfield and its sequels). Personally I would love to see him play a part in Zootopia 2 if he's still in shape for it. The plot twist Judy recalls - targeting stockholders to raise one's own share values - is a nod to "The End of the World," the second episode of the Doctor Who reboot (i.e. the current series). I'm not as much of a fan of the reboot as I used to be, but End of the World was an exciting episode and the plot twist was fitting. Last but not least, the reference to a two-mammal team of feline mechanics working in a desert region (the ones who refurbished Nick's car) was a nod to the old action cartoon Swat Kats. If you look at chapter 13, there's a nod to them in there too.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed. Little confused by the Spanish one; the only translation I could get was "Huy bets."

One Easter Egg here, and because it's a special day I'm going to make the clue extra tricky:

Timing is everything

As always, don't forget to Fave, Follow, and Review (unless you already have). Happy Easter!