Ladies, gentlekin and cryptids of all shapes and kinds, welcome to chapter seven. In this chapter, we get a slight peek into the lives of a few Zootopians as they either go through their morning on the upcoming Friday or their night on Thursday. However, as Nick and Judy had put their fears and worries to rest as the sun went down, others were being brought to similar revelations as theirs. Strange events to herald stranger ones. Until that happens though...
I remain your obedient servant,
Thrash Evaine Lovelocke
It was 6:30 AM in the Finewater Port district of Zootopia. A tuna with a pleasant disposition swam down to the fifth dam to begin her day of work as the head of the dam's north repair squad. There, it was her job to keep track of the hydro-pumps linked to the hydroelectric circuits. She hummed a happy tune as she swam and stopped at a Slush Bin to grab a drink and she drank it with a satisfied smile. The morning sun still had not finished its ascent over the rim of the horizon and the water was still dark, especially under the alcoves that were built under the surface of the walkers' city. This tuna was not fond of the dark, so she stayed out in the open, where the sun was already touching the surface.
A friend of hers, a salmon who worked at a Krill Grill, passed her urgently and barely spared a hello. As was normal, she was late to work and was swimming as fast as possible to make it to the floating building in the north end of the district. "Hi, Jinny, how ya doing? Gotta go, bye!"
"Um… hello, Mary?" Jinny asked more than responded affirmingly. She paid her friend little mind and continued swimming. She had just gone past the fourth dam and a gang of barracudas went flying past her, racing down the current she was crossing. Most of them moved on unfazed but one did call back a respectful apology for their carelessness. Jinny did not mind that they were moving so fast, the area past the fourth dam was regarded as the recreational area anyway. The only problem she had was that her purse had fallen off her fin and she had to swim down to grab it. She looped it back around her fin and turned herself to swim back up.
Then, a low but very much alive reverberation reached her otoliths. Sound travels through water at a warped pace sometimes and this throaty hissing was nearly impossible to pinpoint. She spun around quickly to see if she could locate the noise. The sun was almost totally over the horizon now and the shadows were disappearing. She had her eyes on the west wall of the district and saw, disappearing into a pipe grate, a strangely large creature for a fish with a snakelike anatomy.
It was 6:05 AM in the Rainforest District and, as always, it was wet outside. A capybara named Vicente dos Santos woke and stretched. He had a very nice house in the Amazona Villas and lived with his two friends. These friends were a pair of viscachas from Ciudad de Roedores; Alejandro Duarte and his boyfriend Onofre San Mateo. Vicente owned a restaurant about four blocks down on the corner of Hanging Branch Street and Rafflesia Lane. The restaurant was called Cape and Bar, a fitting pun of his species name, and focused on the theme of sea food and pastime alcohol.
Every morning was a gift in Vicente's eyes. He was an optimistic man who never seemed to grow tired of his work. The efforts of dealing with paperwork and angry barfights, the latter of which was a rare occurrence, was easily counterbalanced by his reputation for being a good boss and for having great food for the predators and omnivores that his restaurant catered to. He had earned some strange publicity for being an herbivore in ownership of a meat-serving restaurant but he maintained his passion for serving others with pride and always told the newspapers a proxy of the same statement: "As long as I see a smile, it doesn't matter if there are fangs or incisors in the muzzle."
Vicente was always very fond of his predator patrons. During the Bellweather Scandal, he had been one of the very few herbivorous voices of much significance advocating for the rights of predators. In his desperation to convince the Rainforest District that their predator inhabitants were not evil by nature, he had gained an even wider expanse of customers. Polar bears from Tundratown, coyotes and sand cats from Sahara Square and dingoes from Outback Island all started showing up every now and then. Sahara Square also began providing meerkats and bats came from the Cave Quarter. Their advocacy for Cape and Bar inspired Vicente to expand his menu to involve pond skimmers, wharf roaches and other water bugs.
Another good thing about being a predator advocate was that fear of his patrons' strength and devotion often left people afraid to attempt robbery. He liked to joke with Alejandro and Onofre that he was essentially an undercover crime boss, although any moron would easily know that Vicente would quake at the very thought of having secrets the like of a crime lord's. His closest association with the Zootopian Underworld came in the form of the timber wolf Lyyia Furheardt and her associates. Furheardt was a very recognizable crime lord in the Rainforest District and Precinct Four had been high on to find her with little success. She always seemed to have some unnatural sense as to when cops would arrive or be where she was going. It mattered little to Vicente whether she was sinner or saint. She was a good customer and was actually a very good and patient person in terms of her conduct.
With all of these built in security measures, Vicente always felt comfortable coming in in the morning. He yawned as he rounded the corner of Hanging Branch and reached into his pocket to grab his keys. Then he was stopped. The glass of the front door had been smashed in. Someone had come in early.
Vicente took in a deep breath and stepped carefully inside, trying to avoid crushing the glass any further. He looked around the dining area and saw no signs of anyone being in it. Then, he felt a small splash. He looked down to see blood pooled on the foyer's floor. He looked back up and saw a light in the kitchen was flickering unevenly. He breathed deeply and pushed the swinging door open and heard a series of labored breaths in the corner of it, near the stoves. He trembled and began hyperventilating as he came to the hanging utensils and grabbed a boning knife in his hand. "Who… whoever you are, I'm armed!" The labored breathing turned into a trembled series of verbal utterances and Vicente rounded the corner of the stove to see a wolf with a large series of gashes in its neck and torso and three evenly spaced stab wounds in his stomach. "Oh, my God!" Vicente gasped.
The wolf wheezed and shook uncomfortably. "I… was… not… trying to b… break in."
At first, Vicente was inclined to disagree with this but two things stopped him from doing that. First, this wolf was clearly in no condition to commit crimes. Second, his brown jacket bore the crescent moon and howling wolf of Furheardt's small empire. "Then… what were you doing, exactly?" Vicente asked, still a little suspicious of it all.
Looking around as though he were afraid someone else were listening, the ravaged wolf leaned up as close as he could and gasped desperately for air. "I was running."
It was 9:18 PM on Thursday night, and Savanna Central's streetlights were as bright as ever, falling on the streets and illuminating the concrete sidewalks and providing light to walk by for the less nocturnal mammals that were living a night life or returning home late from work. One that was returning late from work was Banzai ya Fisi. Being a husband of an employee of the Zootopia Police Department, Banzai was generally secure in his walking at night. He often felt that he had nothing to worry about.
Walking down the sidewalk, he spoke into his phone somewhat impatiently and looked at his watch. "No, Garudi, we have to cut it. Call Better Horns and Antlers back tomorrow and tell them that we have been left with no choice but to liquidate their account. My wife still has the final say and when that company's financial insecurities come into play, she will not have it reflect on Rough Pelt Finances." He stopped and listened to his employee respond in an unsure voice. Then, he huffed. "How far under?" He asked. His employee answered again. "Oh, God," he put a hand over his face, "don't do anything final, then. I'll review it again tomorrow and postpone the liquidation. Just… tell them we still need to decide."
Then he sighed and bid Garudi goodnight as he leaned against a lamppost. He wiped his forehead and felt tears begin to well up in his eyes. In trying to do the biggest thing that Shenzi had asked him to do, he had failed miserably. Rough Pelt Finances was about to be staring down the hole of a horribly unnecessary risk or that of in the red debt. The lamppost guttered and nearly fell into darkness a few times before coming back to life.
Left to think on his predicament alone, Banzai sighed deeply and almost opened his mouth to scream in anger. The streetlamp guttered one last time and went dark. In the sudden darkness, Banzai's eyes hurt as they desperately adjusted to the low light to grant the hyena his sight back. As the streetlamp across Bunbonnet Drive flickered out, Banzai could have sworn that he saw something moving in the quick flash of the light and he backed away from his own streetlamp. Running quickly, he fled to the next streetlamp. Under the light, he felt at least a little safer.
Another couple of streetlamps cycled on and off depending on their timers. He wanted to run, at least partially, but he also felt compelled to figure out if those flashes of movement he thought he saw were real or not. They almost seemed to be too quick to be sure of. Once a few minutes had passed without him seeing anything else, he decided that the late hour beckoned him to finish his trek home and turned about to try and remember where he was. Once he had made the discernment of where he was, he walked a little further downstreet and rounded the corner.
A quick gasp escaped his mouth and he zipped back behind the corner of the building. He peeked around the corner again, slowly, and saw nothing. He sighed and assumed that his tiredness was finally catching up to him. A rather frightening prospect in and of itself, but even more frightening when what he thought he had seen a few seconds before came back into view. A pair of golden specks reflecting the light of a streetlamp across the sidewalk slowly turned in his direction and Banzai gasped again as he hid behind the building. Being a hyena of much caution in the dark, largely thanks to his wife's career choice, Banzai picked his phone out of his pocket and turned it to look down the street. A streetlight had come on behind where the glistening specks had been and there was now a large silhouette of some muscular creature with thinly layered protrusions coming from the sides of his head. Hanging tendrils were suspended by the thing's chin and its head was broad and flat at the top. What scared Banzai most was the way that its torso ended with a long tail that snaked to the ground. It was not like the tail on him or his wife, or any other dingo, wolf, panther or mouse. The tail on this creature did not protrude from its lower back and out. It operated in place of what should have been legs.
Banzai felt his face heat up and his body begin to shake. He brought his phone back close to him and took a deep breath. He turned his phone on and its appalling brightness felt extremely exposing. Suddenly, the building behind him did not seem like enough of a shield. He would have sworn he could feel the golden eyes of that creature on his back. Opening his camera application, he slowly peeked his phone around the corner and saw the creature's reflection again. Just as he was readying himself to press on the photo button, the creature turned its head sharply and looked directly at the camera for just a moment. Banzai gasped and nearly dropped his phone. He barely hit the button to capture the photo as the creature turned again and zipped down an alleyway.
There was now a picture on Banzai ya Fisi's phone that looked like a strange shadow's blurry movement against a phantasmagoric spotlight. The shadow looked roughly like the head of some reptile with a roaring expression on it and a single golden eye looking to the side at the camera. Perhaps it wasn't very clear what it was, but that was what made it all the more terrifying. Barely feeling safe now that the corner's streetlight had come back on, Banzai opened his phone once again and went to his contacts. He dialed the only number he could think to call. The tone rang once, twice, thrice, four times. "Hello?" The voice on the other end asked in a naturally sass-filled tone.
"Shenz…" Banzai said, whispering shakily, "I need to show you something when I get home."
Tasha Ferrett, at 8:06 PM on Thursday night, was enjoying a nice evening at home with her steady boyfriend, a mongoose named Kevin Tavi. The tall and focused, at least tall for a mongoose, Kevin had arranged a blanket over him and his girlfriend so they could laze together and watch a movie without any interruption. Said girlfriend was arguably more interested in reading her novel. It was a favorite author of hers and it was this author's newest publication. Well over eighty thousand words and always so little time to read it in. There was nothing she loathed more than having to stop in the middle of a chapter and that was a curse she often had to face. "Hon, quit staring at that stuff. I know you've read the same sentence seven times and still haven't actually figured out what it means," Kevin sighed as he leaned against her.
Tasha chuckled at her attention hog of a boyfriend and wrapped her arm around him, stroking his shoulder. She kept her book open with her remaining hand and flapped it open a couple of times. Once more, she read the same sentence without fulling comprehending it and groaned heavily. She officially gave up on her reading and marked her place in the book before shutting it and putting it on the couch's end table. She looked down at her needy partner and shook her head in mock disapproval. "Kev, you are hopeless."
"I know," he said with a hint of shame in his voice. He suddenly brightened up. "But I am worth it!" Tasha snorted with laughter and stroked his ears. It made him feel good and he wrapped his arms around her, nuzzling into her chest. She hummed an unfamiliar tune quietly and stared halfheartedly at the movie. The plot would have been lost on her if she had not seen it before. The only reason they were watching it was because it was a drama movie. Were it an action, sci-fi or fantasy movie, Kevin would have gotten too invested to fall asleep as they eventually planned to do. If it was a crime mystery, suspense or horror movie, the same would have been true of Tasha. Yawning, Kevin settled into his spot a little deeper in the couch and Tasha could feel him getting heavier as his muscles relaxed and pushed down on her. Then his phone went off ringing Andrew Elklore's Racks and Racks, a double entendre of a song referring to a buck's antlers and a doe's curvy breasts. The most famous joke about Andrew Elklore, which held a lot of truth, was that he was the bisexual dreamboat of Zootopia. This often made Tasha disapprove of Kevin's ringtone as it constantly reminded her of his appeal. Kevin groaned angrily and looked at his phone. "Oh, great. It's my brother. I'll be back in a second, hon." He swiped the answer button on his phone. "Hey, Rikki Tikki! How're you?" He paused for a moment as he walked towards the kitchen and let him explain why he was calling at such an hour. "Actually, Rikki, I was trying to get some early rest with Tasha. Don't make jokes, just tell me what's up."
Chuckling at Kevin's antics with his brother, Tasha saw the open opportunity to continue reading her book. She finally finished reading that heinous sentence and actually managed to move on to the next page. At about this point, it was 8:22 PM. Kevin had walked into their bedroom to continue talking to his brother. The hallway was dark, implying that Kevin had done as he usually did and opted to leave their bedroom light off. His conservative habits did help out sometimes as it kept the apartment building's electric bill from getting too high because of them. They had been in the living room so far with only a lamp for Tasha to read by, a small light in the kitchen over the counter and the light provided by the television. Tasha was just getting to a noticeably important part of the book when all three of the previously mentioned lights died with no warning. "Lovely," Tasha groaned, knowing that Kevin would not have noticed the change of light yet. She marked her spot in the book again and stood to go to the kitchen. A flash of light from outside startled Tasha but she quickly attributed it to being the building's transformer blowing out. A blue glow, flashing with the strobe-like effect of electricity, caught Tasha's eye from the outside. She placed a few candles on the counter and walked over to the living room window. She drew back the curtain slowly and gasped at what she saw.
Covering her mouth and feeling tears of fear slowly come down her face, Tasha saw a scaly thing with a thin figure holding a staff in her hand. Other hands, her grand total of the appendages being four, seemed to be holding a ball of electricity in them. Her face was like a lizard and she had an extensive tail where her legs should have been. Long, yellow sail-like fins protruded from her back and contrasted in a strangely beautiful way against her purplish scales. The creature turned to the street and opened the grate of a manhole cover, then lowered itself inside. Tasha closed the curtain and slid down against the wall. The darkness was now more absolute and her eyes had still not quite adjusted.
Tasha's breath shook heavily as she heard Kevin Tavi still talking to his brother in the bedroom. She did not want to move. If she did, it would either be because the lights came back on or Kevin came back into the living room to get her. Holding tightly to the cross ornament on her necklace, she took in a shallow breath and began muttering.
"Pater noster, qui es in Caelis,
Sanctificetur nomen tuum,
Adveniat regnum tuum,
Fiat voluntas tua,
Sicut in Caelo, et in Terra,"
It was 6:51 AM and Chief Bogo had already come into the office to get ready for his day of work. Equipped with his uniform and badge before he even arrived, he began sorting through his daily concerns. He first unlocked the bullpen and turned on the lights within. The early risers would likely start showing up by 7:00. Lisa McAllister was the only person in the department who had access to the records room except for him and they always had a sort of humorous competition to see who would be the one to open the records first. Today, he had won that race and Lisa would be very frustrated at the fact she had lost.
Out of all the people in the department, Lisa was one of the few employees he held in high respect outside of Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps. Nick and Judy had commanded his respect for solving the Bellweather Scandal in only two days of the start of their investigation, all while under the pressure of fearing for Judy's job. Granted that had been his fault, but with the overcoming of that test they had fully earned his respect. Lisa McAllister had won him over for her ability to lead her part of the department without the need for aggression or jaded indifference. He had mastered both of those arts, but he had not mastered Lisa's.
The job of a police chief was not necessarily an exciting one, but it was an accomplishing one. For twenty-three years of service, Mason Bogo was easily one of the most well-regarded members of the Zootopian Police Department of the whole century thus far. He always hated this part of the day though. Checking to make sure the graveyard shift had fixed everything up properly for the day shift: clean locker rooms, safety on the handguns, organization of the paperwork, refilled ink in the stamps, one chair for every desk and all of the necessary things in front of records for them to input before officially opening up later in the day.
With a great yawn, Bogo walked back through the foyer and proceeded up the stairs to his office. Clawhauser waddled into the building at about that time and called up a cheery hello to him with half of a donut in his mouth. He gave an audible grunt in response and let Clawhauser take his seat with no rebuttal. He sat down and looked through the papers that had been left on his desk.
After a moment of simply skimming and not totally paying attention to the fine things of what was written on these pieces of paperwork, he finally put on his glasses when he saw a red stamp that told of the one thing he never wanted to see: a call of note. In fact, there were four. Two were from Savanna Central. One was filed by graveyard Officer Tamara Barkins, a coyote, and the other by Officer Lirondo Felanti, a fossa. Then there was one from Precinct Four in the Rainforest District, Chief of Police Brian Gatinheiro being its sender. Yet another came from Finewater Port, although it was only a report of suspicious activity. Chief of Police London Jawson had sent this one most carefully packaged in a waterproof envelope.
Calls of note, as may be implied, are specifically unusual or unexplained reports made by an officer responding to a call made by any witness. The cause for a call of note could be anything from an astonishingly great use of violence, at least one of which was reported during the savagery height of the Bellweather Scandal, to an unidentifiable cause of death. Receiving four over the course of a graveyard shift was not a common occurrence. Especially not recently, what with the unseen spear that was Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde being aimed at the criminal world. Perhaps the Zootopia Police Department's unbreakable weapon was finally starting to dull.