An Evolved Sense of Justice

by dobanochi

A raccoon PI seeking asylum finds himself in Z-Town, he encounters a trailblazing hare police officer who's grown frustrated with her work and a fox who quit the force after an existential crisis - but didn't have a backup plan. As a strange new threat comes upon the city, the three must solve the question: how do you help save the world when you can hardly help yourself?

11. A New Chapter

Chapter Eleven, "A New Chapter"

It may have been a Saturday, but Officer Judy Hopps was at the ZPD's downtown precinct bright and early that morning, ready to begin her new path as a police detective.

She was promptly told by the hippo working the weekend front-desk shift that she was there two hours early and that the individuals she was supposed to be training under wouldn't even be there until nine. Even Chief Bogo wasn't in yet; he wasn't even supposed to be coming in that day anyway, he was simply making himself be present to catalyze Judy's transition to a new division because he thought that would be the professional thing to do. Well, the bunny now had some time to kill.

She spent it wandering the familiar parts of the building, with a bias towards places she expected she wouldn't be seeing as much anymore. When the Force's weekend warriors exited the bullpen, she let herself in to have a seat at one of those tables one last time and just think back on all her time as a patrol officer; hey, if there's one downside to being an overachiever who got promoted early, it's that she didn't have as many memories to comb through as some others might. But she was still grateful for the time she'd spent on the beat. Her only real regret was that she'd spent so little of it with her fox.

…Aaand just like that, she zoned back into reality and realized it was 9:07. Perfect. Splendid. Start your first day in the Investigative Division with a blemish. You go, girl.

Embarrassed that she'd let her mind wander so far, she hopped out of her chair to go confront her new reality.

-IllI-

As part of the ZPD's restructuring in the last decade, the Force's detectives now reported directly to one dedicated police chief who in turn solely managed those detectives. Judy had heard this guy's name around before but couldn't place his face when Bogo told her; maybe she'd seen him around before but couldn't remember offhand. And as The Chief led her to this mammal's office to introduce them to each other, the old buffalo was as stoic and reserved as ever, not giving her any clues about what this new guy was like.

At first, Judy thought today's cause for Bogo's thoroughly-annoyed look was caused by her being late and making him look bad for nominating her as a good candidate for a new detective. But then she thought maybe he was just bummed out that he was losing one of his greatest patrolmammals. Then she thought it was probably a little bit of both. Yeah, that sounded right.

They arrived at the stranger's door and the buffalo gave a firm knock, and the bunny did her best to look friendly but determined.

"Come in!" bid a voice that rivaled Bogo's in depth.

The Chief opened the door and gestured for Judy to go in first. Awaiting them was a black bear, sitting patiently at his desk and wearing a gentle smile.

"Hey, how's it going?" he asked.

Bogo was similarly doing his best to seem… well, if not friendly, at least professionally cordial. "Captain Honeycutt, this is Ju-" But then he noticed something and dropped the cordiality immediately. "Carson, button your uniform all the way."

Captain Honeycutt was indeed wearing his tie loose with his top button undone. "Ah, yes sir, ya caught me fair and square," he said as he remedied his faux pas, shaking his head a little and wearing the toothy grin of someone who was caught breaking the rules but didn't want to seem like that let them affect their confidence. "Alright," he continued as he looked up, his collar now squeezing his thick neck, "so this is the super-cop you told me about?"

"That she is," said the chief, still sounding unamused. "Officer Judy Hoops has gone above and beyond in confronting every challenge she's faced with the ZPD, and as much as I'd like to keep her on the beat, I'd be doing this city a disservice not directing her efforts towards this department's most pressing cases." He looked down to face the rabbit. "Hopps, this is Captain Carson Honeycutt. Going forward, he will be your direct report. If you need my audience in the future, you know where to find me. Until then, I wish you the best of luck on your new journey."

"Yes, sir, sirs!" Judy said with a salute, swiveling her head to address the both of them. "I won't let you dow-!"

"Very well then," Bogo grumbled as he made his exit.

"Heading out for the day, M.J.?" asked Honeycutt with a cheeky smirk.

"I am. And I would tell you not to address me as such, but I need to leave you two alone to get better acquainted." And then he shut the door firmly and he was gone.

Judy just blinked, trying not to look awkward. She really hoped her being a few minutes late hadn't been the sole cause for the chief seeming to be in a worse mood than usual.

"So, Hopps, huh?" the bear asked before gesturing to a chair opposite himself. "Come on in. Have a seat, have a seat."

The bunny hopped on up to the chair and used its hydraulic function to lift it up to an appropriate elevation, where she found Honeycutt waiting with a paw out for a handshake, which she reciprocated. Now seeing him up close… something seemed off about him.

"Nice to meet you, Captain."

"Oh, you don't have to call me Captain!" he said with a faint chuckle. "I'm not The Chief, I won't demand over-the-top respect as long as you don't show me over-the-top disrespect. And I don't foresee that being an issue with you!"

He was only wearing a gentle smile, but… it seemed like he was putting a lot of effort into putting it on. And come to think of it, he did look kind of familiar…

"I mean, no disrespect to him," the bear continued. "He does care a lot, he just doesn't show it because he's old-school like that, he doesn't think it's manly to smile and stuff. But he's a good guy."

That's when it clicked with her. She and Nick had in fact encountered this guy in the hallways before, and now she was remembering how Nick, master at reading faces that he was, had only taken a few glances at this guy before concluding that this bear was a perfect foil to the buffalo: whereas Bogo cared but didn't show it, in the fox's estimation, Honeycutt made a show of caring but clearly really didn't.

And she respected Nick's judgment enough that now this old conjecture about this guy was coloring her own perception of him. She couldn't tell yet whether this guy was simply apathetic deep down or actually mean-spirited - or, third option, maybe her worry about being late was causing her anxiety that was making her see everything in a negative light, and Honeycutt actually was as friendly as he wanted her to think he was. But she was going to be looking for clues to figure out which reality was real. (Hey, might as well start playing the detective game right off the bat, right?) She wasn't getting vibes that Carson here was evil, just… fake. Which, granted, some would say was as good as evil.

"Uh, sorry for my, um… tardiness, Cap- uh… Honeycutt?"

He put his paws up to signal that this was a complete non-issue to him. "Wouldn't even have noticed if you hadn't said anything. If anything, I'm sorry for keeping you waiting because the detectives I'm gonna have you train under are running even later! They got a call at, like, three-thirty this morning to check out some new leads regarding a case and they're just now headed back. It's a messy one, some alpaca got beaten to death with his own prosthetic leg."

…Judy tried really hard not to look horrified at what Honeycutt had just described so casually. Man, talk about being thrown into the fire, she knew she'd be dealing with very grim things now that she was in this division, but she didn't think it would be hardly a few minutes in that she had to confront a reality quite this gruesome.

"Oh, I, uh… I understand completely, sir, that takes precedence over this! Let them focus on finding the guy who did it, my training can wait-!"

"Oh, there's… no urgency to it," he interrupted, waving her off and almost sounding embarrassed for her. "We're… eh, ninety percent sure we know who did it? The guy in question is already in custody for an attempted armed robbery that happened the next day, he's not going anywhere. But hey, good transition into your introduction to being a detective! So yeah, the detectives you'll be training with have already been up since an ungodly hour. I know you're already used to being on-call as a patrolmammal, but you're gonna be on-call a lot more now. Do you drink coffee?"

Judy winced at the odd question. "I… sometimes, as needed, but I try not to if I don't so I don't, you know, form a dependence on it-"

"Oh, you're gonna be a caffeine addict in this line of work. No two ways about it. I actually don't drink coffee either, I think it's nasty, I prefer Coke - -a-Cola, not the other thing, though that would probably work too, heh heh - but if you're not a coffee mammal either, well…" He trailed off to dig through his desk drawers to find a small black-and-yellow box which he presented to her. "Caffeine pills! You ever try these?"

"...I haven't."

"Oh, I highly recommend these for long unexpected shifts. This is Vivarin, there are other brands… I'd offer you some right now, but these are for a guy my size, they'd probably kill you. But yeah, this stuff is a miracle of modern medicine, it's like speed but legal."

Cool, now her new boss was blatantly encouraging her to take amphetamines to perform her basic duties. But no matter: the cavalry had arrived.

Knock knock knock.

"C'mon in!" called Carson. "There they are!"

And to that, the door opened, showing a smoke-gray wolf opening the door for a tan-brown doe to enter. They each gave a smile to their boss, but their faces really lit up when they saw who else was in the room.

"Oh, you must be Judy Hopps!" said the doe, almost squealing in awe as she put her hooves together up under her chin. "It's so nice to finally meet you! Justine O'Doherty!"

Well, if there was one cure for Judy's feelings of awkwardness, it was meeting a fan. "Oh, the pleasure is mine, Detective O'Doherty! I'm excited to learn from you two!" she beamed as she shook the deer's hoof, then moved on to do the same with the wolf.

"Henry Ulvestad," he introduced himself with a classy smile. "And the pleasure is ours to have the privilege of training someone who had an entire movie made about them! Y'know, Justine and I always joke that they should make a sequel to that… but that'd mean more terrible stuff would have to happen first!"

"Which is why it's a curse to tell someone May you live in interesting times!" Captain Honeycutt said as he stood from his seat. "Welp, Hopps, you've met Ulvestad and O'Doherty, they'll be training you these next few weeks; Henry, Justine, I trust you two, train her however you see fit; as for me? It's a Saturday, I'm getting the hell outta here!" And with that, he wasted no time unbuttoning the top button he'd just done up hardly five minutes prior.

"Oh, that's… that's it?" Judy asked. She didn't want to seem overwhelmed, but her head was spinning from how fast this was moving once again. She hadn't expected her training to be slow so much as she'd expected it to be more… well, thorough, like detectives are supposed to be.

"I mean, why beat around the bush?" asked the captain with a jolliness that still straddled the line of sounding phony. He grabbed his jacket and pulled out a set of keys. "You two take her to your office, I'm locking this up!"

"Alright! Sounds great!" said O'Doherty.

"C'mon, Hopps, let's show you around!" said Ulvestad, holding the door open for everyone.

"Uh… yeah! Yeah, let's get right into this!" She jumped off the chair without lowering it and made her way out of the office.

The deer and wolf led the way to their own dedicated office, seeming just as cheerful as Honeycutt had but without the air of being authority figures trying to manipulate their wards with fake charisma.

"Alright, first day!" Henry noted. "You think you're ready?"

"Oh, I think you two are gonna train me to be ready before I know it!" answered the bunny.

"Oh, she's so complimentary!" Justine chuckled to her partner. "So, Judy - may I call you Judy? - do you have any questions to start with?"

Now, this is Judy Hopps we're talking about, so she understood her sense of duty and didn't want small talk to get in the way of their work, but this was still Judy Hopps, so surely we know that there was always a burning question on her mind when she met fellow cops. And I must admit… it makes a pretty relevant icebreaker.

"Uh, I hope it's not too personal of a question, but… what inspired you guys to want to be cops?"

The wolf and deer gave each other a pair of knowing smiles.

"You wanna go first?" Justine asked Henry.

"Eh, might as well," Ulvestad said with a coy shrug and smile. "So… at a certain point, it dawned upon me that I wanted to be… a good guy."

Judy nodded. She was listening. She already liked where this was going.

"Reason being," he continued, "I've got this cousin from down in L.A. and… he's kind of like the family embarrassment. He always specifically wanted to be a bad guy. Like, he was kind of a lunatic. Like, uh…" He paused for a second. "Pardon me if this seems like an inappropriate detail, but I think it's relevant to the story: this dude was a looker, and a charmer, and any woman who wasn't a lesbian and wasn't racist against predators, he could get a date with if he wanted. But he could never get a second date because every single one of these women realized he was crazy."

Judy nodded, but wasn't smiling anymore. She was admittedly less eager to hear this story now.

"Like, he pulled off one major heist, I think he identity-thieved some tech billionaire… and he spent the money on a bunch of dangerous exotic animals and called it his 'villains team'. Like, a shark and a snake and a tarantula and stuff. Everybody in the family knew, but we weren't gonna report him, because he's blood, y'know? But then… so my mom's the youngest, her older brother is his dad, and then the middle sibling is our aunt, and she was marrying this Silicon Valley type. This dude was also loaded, he was another perfect target. My cousin shows up dressed to kill and he's playing it cool at first, but then as they're exchanging vows, this nutbag runs up to the altar with a fish in a Tupperware container and screams, 'MISTER PIRANHA, GO!' and I guess he was expecting it to latch onto this guy with its teeth, but it just bounced off him and landed on the ground."

"I… see."

"Yeah, and we were all just watching this poor creature flopping around in agony gasping for air - or, water, I guess, either way, it was suffocating to death - and right as my cousin starts pulling a python out from his pant leg, a bunch of the guys in my family finally tackle him. Yeah, I think in addition to attempted assault, they tried to charge him for Cruelty to a Non-Sapient Animal, but none of that mattered because they just declared him insane and now he's in a mental institution forever."

"Oh, I'm… so sorry to hear that happened to him."

Ulvestad didn't get it. "I mean, don't worry, he was just my cousin. It's not like he was my friend or anything."

"Uh, ahem, Henry," O'Doherty whispered to him, "I think she might be from one of those country families where they actually care about their extended family."

The wolf looked like a lightbulb had gone off in his head. "Oh! Oh, you're right, you're right," he whispered back before continuing at full volume: "But yeah, I was in my early twenties at the time and I was actually playing minor-league ball in the Twins organization, but I was just good enough to realize I wasn't good enough to make the Majors, so when that happened, I knew I needed a new career anyway, and I said screw it, I gotta be the opposite of that guy. Cop it was. The end!"

The bunny kept on nodding awkwardly, hoping she wasn't looking disinterested and rude. "Well, uh… at least it had a happy ending with you on the good guys' team! Heh heh, um… well, how about you?" she asked the doe.

"Oh, my story isn't nearly as interesting as his," Justine said with a faux bashfulness. "Police work just runs in the family, specifically my mom's side, the Italian side."

"Oh, well, that's nice," said Judy, feeling a little more comfortable again. "Just a… family tradition of wanting to be good guys?"

"Yeah, but it's a relatively new tradition. So my… grandfather? Great-grandfather? One of the two of them, when they were young, he witnessed his mom get shot in a drive-by-"

"OH MY GOD!" Judy gasped, then covered her mouth upon realizing she'd just used the Lord's name in vain. She would privately pray for forgiveness about this that night.

"Yeah, they think it was completely random, and they never found the guy who did it," the deer said, unfazed by the rabbit's clear discomfort. "So that inspired him to join the police in hopes of one day finding who did it… He never did, but it gave future generations of his family a sense of purpose - and a viable fallback plan for when our other dreams didn't come true."

"Well, uh…" Judy could already tell this was going to be a weird day. "...Never too late to solve a cold case!"

"Oh, it's far too late to solve that case," Justine replied dismissively but jovially, not seeming upset about it at all. "Everybody who knew my great-gramma is dead. Besides, she'd probably want us to focus on solving the crimes that are still worth solving!"

"Now that's a good attitude to have!" Henry added, and the two partners laughed gently to one another as Judy struggled to determine what exactly was so funny. For her first day as a detective, the world sure was throwing her a lot of unexpected mysteries.

It was about this time that they came to stop in front of one specific door, Room 422.

"Ah, but that's enough of us and our goofy origin stories," Detective O'Doherty mused while Ulvestad pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket.

"Well, there is… one more detail about us that I think she deserves to know," said the wolf as he selected the needed key, giving the doe a knowing smile that he hoped she'd reciprocate.

But instead, she scoffed at him. "Oh, Henry, don't embarrass the poor girl!" If anything, she looked embarrassed herself.

"Oh, c'mon," Henry pressed as he unlocked the door, his smirk never waning. "This is Judy Hopps we're talking about, she'd love to know that she helped some mammals out with something important and didn't even realize it!"

"I… I did?" Judy asked; she had to admit, her curiosity was piqued.

Justine rolled her eyes but came to find herself smiling once more. "Fine, we can tell her," she told her partner, "but let's go inside the office first so we can have some privacy."

"Sounds like a fair arrangement," Ulvestad agreed with a nod, opening the door inward and keeping it open with an extended arm to let the other two in first. "After you, ladies."

"Oh, stop trying so hard to impress her!" O'Doherty giggled on her way in.

"Thanks, Detective," the bunny said as she passed the wolf. "But, uh… who exactly did I help without realizing it? Does it concern you two?"

"Oh, does it ever!" Henry snickered to himself before walking in and shutting the door behind him.

In the middle of the office were two large desks pushed up against one another front-to-front with a third, empty desk, presumably for guests; all around this island, three of the walls were lined with at least a dozen filing cabinets, shelves full of plastic bins containing what Judy imagined were pending evidence, and a dartboard with a printed picture of a tiny sheep stuck in the middle, the bespectacled ewe rendered there with a dart permanently stuck right between her eyes. The fourth wall was nothing but glass, one gigantic window peering out into the city, and although the office was only on the fourth floor, it was just high enough to offer a pretty splendid view of the collage of buildings in the foreground fading out towards the mountains on the horizon.

"Wow, this is a… wonderful office!" Judy couldn't help but remark.

"And we're honored you like it," answered Justine, "but don't get the impression it's perfect; when we get direct sunlight, it's a sauna in here!"

"And in the spirit of having a slightly-awkward moment now by disclosing something mood-disrupting so as to avoid a more-awkward moment in the future…" Henry began, "...when Justine and I found out that we were gonna be the ones training you, we had a discussion whether we should bring this up to you, but what made up our minds about it was realizing that if you spend any extended amount of time around us, you're probably gonna find out eventually."

"Well, what is it?" the trainee asked. Hey, if these two were deliberately trying to manufacture drama and suspense, they were succeeding, because the anticipation was killing her. Part of her was excited to hear how she'd helped, part of her was worried what it could be that they even needed to debate sharing it with her… and part of her was relieved that she wasn't the only one burning the clock by exchanging non-pertinent information.

The wolf and deer gave each other another look, one that could almost be described as cautious optimism, knowing that this probably wasn't a good idea but hoping it would go over well anyway.

"So…" O'Doherty began gently, "what I meant when I said that I didn't want us to embarrass you-"

"So it was the worst-kept secret in the ZPD that you and Wilde were an item," Ulvestad cut in, as kindly as he could say something that blunt.

And sure enough, even though she wasn't giving off any other body language to show it… Judy's cheeks were starting to burn under her fur. "I… okay?"

"Jesus, Henry, really?" asked Justine.

"Hey, I don't wanna keep her waiting for an answer, I don't wanna be inappropriate and rude!" Henry answered with a defensive shrug before putting on a friendly face for their trainee once more. "But again, we're not bringing this up to embarrass you! Because guess what? Once again… you were inspiring just by being yourself!"

"And what really got us about it all was…" the deer trailed off as she sought the right words. "...In the best way possible, nobody cared. I mean, it was an open secret, but in a city that's admittedly kinda regressive about interspecies relationships, especially between preds and prey… nobody cared!"

"I mean, I'm sure some mammals gave you shit about it," added the wolf.

"But even then, as me and Henry realized, fuck th- excuse me, forget them!" Justine was smiling like she'd just had this beautiful epiphany all over again. "And it was just seeing how you two just confidently… were yourselves…"

"...that had us start thinking…" Henry stopped himself just as soon as he'd started to give his partner a two-finger signal to come over to him, which she did, leaning onto him as he draped an arm around her shoulder. "...why can't we be like them? And… so we did!"

Judy was nodding slowly as she was starting to get it.

"I mean, we don't go around advertising that we're in a relationship," O'Doherty tossed in, "but… eh," she shrugged, "if someone asks, we won't lie about it."

And Judy looked up at the two mammals smiling warmly down at her, finding herself giving them a smile that was about ninety percent real in return. "Oh, well… that… that… well, I don't know what to say! I… I'm honored that I was able to help you two stop feeling ashamed about your love!" Yeah, this conversation was a little too much information for her taste, and Henry and Justine were very right to worry that this was not an appropriate work discussion, but… for the most part, the bunny was happy to hear that she'd helped them in such a personal way - happy for them for finding the strength to be themselves, as happy for herself, proud that she'd once again successfully encouraged some mammals to live their truth and not care what the world might tell them.

"And, y'know, we still have to be a little discreet about it," Ulvestad continued as he squeezed his partner in closer to him, "workplace relationship rules and all, but… hell, there's no way Honeycutt doesn't know at this point. But he can't split us up. ZPD can't split us up. We just work too well together as a unit, and they know it!"

Judy just couldn't stop beaming at them as the partners turned to look at one another with the eyes of soulmates. They'd achieved true love, something so few of us are fortunate enough to find in our lives, and it was all because of her. And yet as she just took in the moment, staring in awe at this living testament to her hard work paying off, there was still that ten percent of her that wasn't entirely pleased with the scene. But it wasn't just her mild discomfort with personal talk in a work setting.

ZPD can't split us up. We just work too well together.

A streak of sorrow ran through her as she looked upon them. She hadn't let these ideas into her head, but intrusive thoughts rarely ring the doorbell; as she stood there silently, some part of her couldn't dispel the notion:

This could have been me and Nick.

The joy of the detectives' reality outweighed the sadness of what now would never be, but the poor bunny couldn't deny that there was an itch in the back of her mind, agitated by thoughts of what could have been.

But no worries, Judy: you wouldn't feel heartbroken for too long, because the two individuals in charge of training you are gonna take your mind off it by making you so much more uncomfortable than you already are.

"Of course," said Justine, "the trade-off for being allowed to work as partners is that they make us work the weekend shifts nobody wants. So… here we are!"

"Hell, let 'em give us the shift nobody else is gonna take!" Henry scoffed, addressing his partner with their faces hardly a few inches apart. "Give us two days where we've got huge chunks of the building to ourselves! It gives us time alone!"

And with that, the wolf leaned in for his first kiss, a quick smooch right between the doe's eyes. The lovey-dovey floodgates had been opened.

Judy felt a tinge of anxiety run through her as she witnessed the first of many acts that she had always had drilled into her head were meant to be done in private company. She had no idea.

Justine giggled like a schoolgirl. "Oh, you dog, you!" she quipped before pecking him right back, planting her lips on his while also giving him a quick rub behind the ears.

"Uh…" was all their trainee could manage to say.

"Oh, you want me to be a dog?" Henry asked his partner before beginning to lick her cheeks up and down.

"Oh, woof!" Justine remarked before returning the favor and giving him some feral kisses on the neck.

"Should I… leave?" the bunny squeaked. Y'know, it was funny: besides the regular awkwardness of standing there and watching these two go to town… she also found herself hesitant to interrupt a romance that she herself had helped foster.

"Aw, what, now you're a doggie?" Henry joked before finally pulling Justine in to embrace her with both arms and giving her a very slow kiss on the lips. "That's not even your favorite style!"

"Do I make you howl, puppy?" Justine asked in amorous snark. Kiss.

"Well, you are my Moon Pie." Kiiiss. "And you're about as delicious as a Moon Pie, too!"

"Do you think if I was visited by the ghost of my Great-Gramma Bambinelli…" Kiiiiiss. "...she'd be okay with getting shot at random if she knew it led to me meeting you?"

"Tell her to tell the ghost of Kirby Puckett that I'm glad I never made the Majors…" Kiiiiiiiss. "…for entirely the same reason!"

"Babe…" Kiiiiiiiiiss. "I thought it was your cousin who was the charming one, I thought you said you wanted to be nothing like him!" Kiiiiiiiiiiiss.

"Honey…" Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiss. "...some things just run in the family!" Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiss.

My friend, I'm sorry for not keeping you posted about what Judy was doing during all of this, but she was mostly just standing there slack-jawed and dumbfounded, and as a writer, that really doesn't give me much material to work with. I've said it before, I'll say it again: I have no idea how Truman Coyote did this 'nonfiction novel' stuff and made it work.

"Oh, Henry…" the deer cooed as she gave her lover some obvious bedroom eyes.

"Hey, you know I can't eat chocolate!" the wolf shot back, looking dead serious for a split second before the two of them just cut to the chase and started full-on making out.

And Judy allowed it to go on for about a minute before she decided that she needed to just accept how it would be even more awkward to break this up.

"...Guys?"

But it didn't work immediately.

"...Guys!?"

Like… at all.

"...GUYS!"

That one did it. The detectives stopped kissing like teenagers and snapped their attention back to the bunny.

"Oh! Sorry about that," said O'Doherty. "I guess we got a little carried away there!"

"Yeah, well, now you know for a fact that our love is real!" added Ulvestad. "We were so into it, we completely forgot you were there!"

Judy just tried to strike the balance of looking friendly but firm. "And I understand that, and I'm glad you two can have these moments, but, uh… it's not really appropriate right here and now, y'know?"

But the wolf and deer didn't look embarrassed when she said that.

"...Oh," Justine muttered.

They just looked disappointed. And annoyed.

"...Awright," Henry mumbled with a shrug, surrendering his grasp of his more-ways-than-one partner. "Guess it wouldn't be nice of us to do that… I guess."

They were giving her looks like she had just done something very not cool, something not very chill, something un-lit, un-Gucci, and not at all cash-money, as the kids would say, fam, and she was trying really hard not to let it show that these authority figures' disapproval of her was bothering her. And in the complete opposite way, she most certainly wasn't enjoying the idea that she had lost her status as an inspiring figure in their eyes.

"...So," O'Doherty said bitterly, "what do you wanna do?"

"Uh… do?" Hopps was confused.

"Yeah, since apparently you think we shouldn't be doing… that," Ulvestad grumbled.

"Um… train me on how to be a… detective?" She herself couldn't believe how nervous they had made her to ask this incredibly basic question.

"Oh!" Henry beamed suddenly as he clapped his paws together, then made his way to one of the many filing cabinets. "Training you! Great idea! I mean, hey, that's what we're here for, ain't it?"

"Look at us!" Justine chuckled. "We got so carried away that we forgot the entire reason our guest is here!"

Okay, this was confusing: you would think that the wolf and doe were speaking with obvious sarcasm, but their tones sounded exactly as cheerful as they had when they'd first introduced themselves to Judy. This meant that either their attitudes really did flip like a switch, or they were so good at faking joviality that the bunny hadn't even picked up on it the first time. Part of Judy felt good about her future as a detective that she was immediately able to recognize these two true outcomes, but another part of her fretted because she could not for the life of her decipher which one was correct.

"So as a detective, when your superior doesn't specifically tell you which cases to work on, you get to pick which cases you work on!" Ulvestad started opening one filing drawer after another. "C'mon, c'mon, where's the juicy ones?"

"You ever read a choose-your-own-adventure novel?" asked O'Doherty. "It's kinda like one of those - except the stories are definitely not appropriate for elementary school!"

"You wanna thumb through these, or do you wanna pick one at random and see what we get?" offered the wolf, who didn't wait for an answer before thumbing through the manila folders himself. "Let's see, let's see, we got murder, murder, arson, murder, baby abandoned at a church, robbery, carjacking, murder, manufacture of bootleg children's movies, murder, murder, telephone harrassment, attempted kidnapping, the mystery of whoever keeps taking Officer Lyons' lunch from the fridge, murder, robbery, theft, larceny, flute that kills you when you play it, murder, missing mammal, murder - hey, Honeycutt filled you in on the guy who got beaten to death with his own prosthetic leg, right?"

"Oh, Henry, stop overwhelming the poor girl with choices!" the deer scolded her partner before turning back to their trainee and giving her a sweet smile. "Judy, perhaps you'd like a nice cold case to practice on? It'll give you a great chance to start practicing the detective's deduction process with no expectation that you'll actually solve anything, so no pressure!"

"Oooh, I like that idea!" said Henry. "Plus it'll give her the chance to get used to the feeling of not being able to solve a case - and that is a feeling you will have to get used to!"

She would never admit it, but Detective-in-Training Hopps was indeed feeling a wee bit overwhelmed in that moment, though that had less to do with any lack of confidence in her own abilities and more just her utter shock at how disorganized her training regiment was. Oh, and sure, it was also a bit disconcerting to hear Ulvestad casually breeze through a bunch of crimes she'd never even been told about.

"Um… well, I guess it'd be best if, uh… if you two demonstrated the process of how you decide which cases to take!" said the rabbit. "Y'know… uh, show me how you decide what's important-!"

But she was suddenly cut off by music, playing in strangely low fidelity. The sound seemed to be coming from Ulvestad, who was patting himself to find the source of the instruments.

O'Doherty chuckled to herself. "You'll have to forgive Henry here, he still thinks it's cool to have songs for his ringtone."

"Say, say, my playmate…
Won't you lay hands on me…?"

"It would still be cool if you just told yourself it was!" the wolf grumbled as he pulled out his phone, sounding like he was genuinely annoyed at his partner for not willing herself into thinking his ringtone was badass. "But anyway, it looks like our minds might be made up for us… What's up, Cap?" he asked as he answered the call.

The ladies stood there watching him for a moment as he got himself comfortable, putting an elbow atop the filing cabinet and leaning back onto it.

"Alright, hey, do you mind if I put you on speaker?"

Evidently Captain Honeycutt didn't, because Henry did exactly that.

"Alright, tell 'em what you just told me."

"'Kay, so I'm… apparently turning around to head back to the precinct," the black bear said over the phone. "Fuckin' Bogo's on my ass because we just got another goddamn mammal missing hit forty-eight hours, it's… some fuckin' grizzly this time. Go and-"

"Uh, Captain?" Justine piped up bashfully. "Just a reminder… Hopps is here with us. Maybe, uh… be more careful about your vocabulary?"

The line was silent for a moment. "...Oh, um - Detective Hopps, I, I'm so sorry, that was unprofessional of me, forgive me for that."

But while the sudden harsh language wasn't exactly welcome to the rabbit's ears, it wasn't the thing Carson had said that worried her the most. Far from it.

"...Another… missing mammal?" she murmured to herself.

Honeycutt didn't hear that. "...Hopps? Judy? …You hear that? We good?"

Judy spoke louder. "Uh… yeah, we're… we're good."

"Alright, good to hear," said the captain, sounding relieved. "So yeah, Henry, Justine: we're gonna have to make this a housecall, the wife is hysterical. I'll text you guys the address, get there as soon as possible."

"You got it, Captain!" said the wolf as he disconnected the call.

"Well, talk about baptism by fire!" the doe said to the bunny with a chuckle that sounded just a bit forced. "Going right into a fresh investigation!"

And truth be told, a little bit of Judy was nervous that she was indeed being thrown right into this. But she was raised to believe that being nervous was far from a bad thing: it means you care. Losing your nerves means you don't care anymore. And, okay, sure, you could be cynical and say that that was nonsense, of course a species with astronomical rates of clinical anxiety issues and stress-induced fatal heart attacks had to tell their posterity that these were features and not bugs. But one way or another, Detective-in-Training Hopps knew how to channel that nervous energy into excitement and adrenaline.

"Oh, well, I'm ready for it!" she exclaimed. "And besides… missing mammals are kind of my area of expertise!"

Henry and Justine gave each other a look like parents about to send their child to their first day of school.

"Well, good to see at least one mammal is happy with this situation," said Ulvestad.

"You know what they say," added O'Doherty, "there's no substitute for passion!"

-IllI-

Every big city has those neighborhoods that aren't officially neighborhoods. In Zootopia, one might notice that most maps didn't even bother to demarcate where the Rainforest District ends and where the Meadowlands begin. That's because the locals referred to this area as The Woodlands: the arboreal geography of the Rainforest with the climate of the Meadowlands, with the official district boundaries squiggling seemingly arbitrarily right through the middle.

This wasn't the only example of a de facto bonus neighborhood in the city, but it was perhaps the most prominent. If your ancestors crawled out of a forest that wasn't primeval - and a lot of ours did - this was where Zootopia thought you belonged. But between the fact that many of the species who would logically live there were more suited to the Nocturnal District, the fact that it was literally a hybrid of two neighboring districts, and the fact that it was the most "boring" environment - indeed, it probably was the closest to Southwest Oregon's natural biome anyway - it didn't get a lot of love from the city's tourism marketing department. The Woodlands wasn't special, but for the mammals who lived there, they didn't want it to be; it just felt like home. And that made it all the more worrying when something bad happened on their street.

Even with the lighter weekend traffic, it took our three detectives the better part of an hour to get themselves to the home of the worried wife, an abode that was rather modest but with a front door that was very tall and wide, probably to accommodate for the stature and size of its intended residents. This made it a bit surprising when the bell was answered by a rather petite brown bear who was probably smaller than Captain Honeycutt and barely taller than Detective Ulvestad.

"Are you the detectives?" asked the bear, a bespectacled woman who seemed like she was at the tail-end of what could be called 'middle-aged'. She sounded like she was trying really hard to be polite and patient when she really, really didn't want to be.

"Yes, ma'am," said Henry, wearing a soft smile along with his partner and their trainee.

"Detectives Justine O'Doherty and Henry Ulvestad, Zootopia Police," the doe introduced as she and the wolf showed their badges.

The bear saw something very small standing behind them. "And who's that?"

"This is Detective-in-Training Judy Hopps," Ulvestad said as he stood out of the way, gesturing to the bunny with both paws like she was a prize-winning pumpkin.

"Hello, there!" Judy greeted, waving with one paw and flashing her own badge with the other. "A pleasure to meet you, ma'am, but of course we wish it were under circum-"

"Why do we need three people to investigate this?" the bear interrupted, her impatience starting to poke through.

But Henry and Justine were professionals. "Well, ma'am," Justine began, "it is standard operating procedure to have a pair of detectives for a case of this nature, and Hopps needs in-the-field training since it is her first day-"

"I don't think I feel comfortable having three people knowing my family's business."

Ulvestad and O'Doherty were maintaining their professional smiles, but it was clear that maintaining them was becoming taxing.

"Well, ma'am," said Henry, "in the investigation process, the details of this case would eventually be shared with large segments of the department so as to get all the mammalpower we can onto it-"

"Why do we need so many mammals on the case?"

"...Better chances of solving the case," said the deer rather flatly. "More heads put together-"

"So there's no way to only have one person investigating this?"

The wolf blinked. "To be frank, ma'am, that was never going to be a possibility. There would always be a great number of mammals involved."

The bear looked thoroughly displeased by this, but as with many from her generation, she didn't put up a fight solely for the reason that she knew it was a bad idea to risk pissing off the cops.

"By the way," Ulvestad continued, "we got so caught up in all these formalities that we completely forgot to confirm we're at the right house! Would you be Missus- uh…"

Henry trailed off as he noticed the mailbox next to the door had two last names on it, one that he was looking for, and another that frightened him just looking at it:

CAVEY / NIEDZWIECKI

"I-I'm sorry, I… guess I shouldn't have assumed," the wolf stammered. "Um… are you Michelle Cavey?"

"Hm? Yeah, why?" The bear realized he was looking at the label on the mailbox. "Oh, that. Yeah, that's my maiden name, it's Polish. I still get mail addressed to 'Michelle Niedzwiecki' sometimes, so I gotta put it on there…" She shrugged and forced a tremendously awkward laugh. "Let's just say I was very excited to marry a man with a last name mammals could actually pronounce!"

The others forced themselves to chuckle along with her. Everybody was now uncomfortable.

"...May we come inside, Missus Cavey?" asked O'Doherty.

Michelle seemed hesitant, but also resigned to her fate. "I guess we should get this over with," she mumbled as she held the door open for everybody to come in.

The ursine home was almost remarkably unremarkable in a way that screamed 'lower-middle-class'; there was plenty of stuff, but there wasn't very nice stuff. From the living room, you could see into the kitchen; this was a household where the groceries were name-brand but the electronics weren't. There wasn't much in the way of decorations: a framed scene of a rustic cottage in the woods that looked like it was bought at a major retailer for no more than twenty bucks; a tiny crucifix over the front door covered in dust, as though faith was more of a cultural relic at this point than something the inhabitants actually believed in; a family photo that seemed to be at least a decade old, with a younger Michelle sitting with her tired-looking husband and her embarrassed-looking teenaged son along with a pet parrot sitting on the son's shoulders, all of them looking like they were forcing a smile to maintain appearances, somehow even the bird. It all gave the investigators the vibe that while this home wasn't exactly a miserable place, the mammals who lived here couldn't be too happy, either.

Sensing this, Judy felt compelled to do what she could to lighten the mood in a way that acknowledged the direness of the circumstances while making it less depressing than it needed to be.

"What an adorable bird!" she mentioned as she passed by the family photo.

Michelle turned around to see what had inspired the remark. "Yeah… she was." And she turned back forward.

Was. The rabbit's ears went down as she kicked herself for insufficiently reading the room before saying that - which, come to think of it, there indeed was no parrot nor birdcage in this living room.

As for Henry and Justine, they each turned around and gave Judy a quick look to convey that while they didn't want to be too mean about it, it was their obligation as the individuals training her to convey that no, that comment was not a good idea.

They arrived at a small table in what must have constituted the dining room, a little nook connecting the living room and kitchen. The table was covered in old magazines and newspapers and other detritus, suggesting this family didn't actually eat meals together very often. Michelle pulled out two of the chairs for the detectives before pulling out the third.

"I'm sorry, we have a small family so we only have three chairs here," the bear explained, "I wasn't expecting… three investigators to come, but I can stand while you all sit-"

"No, no, that's quite alright," the wolf insisted, waving it off with a paw before turning to Justine and Judy. "You ladies can have a seat; I'm probably gonna be moving around anyway."

"Thank you, Henry," said the deer as she gestured for the bunny to pick a chair first before she took the other herself, Michelle taking the chair across from them.

"Alright, Missus Cavey," Detective Ulvestad began, pulling out a small pen and notepad while O'Doherty did the same, "just to make sure we have all our facts right, we'd like to hear it from you… the missing mammal is…?"

"My husband," Mrs. Cavey said bluntly.

Justine pressed gently: "And what is his name, ma'am?"

"Duncan Cavey."

"And how old is this gentleman?" asked Henry.

"Sixty…" The bear seemed to be squirming with anxious impatience. "I-I'm sorry, it's just that I already told the operator all this over the phone-"

"Which is why we're double-checking the information we were given before proceeding," the deer explained with the utmost professionalism before giving her partner a sort of knowing smile.

"We want to ask the mammal who would know best!" added the wolf, trying to add a little brightness to the dark discussion. "And as such, it behooves me to ask: when and where was the last place you saw your husband?"

"Right in this house when I was leaving for work, so… six o'clock on Thursday morning," answered the wife. "He was just in his room half-asleep watching TV, nothing, uh… nothing to suggest he'd run away that day or anything. When my son woke up - he works odd hours, so he wakes up… really late - Duncan was gone."

"I see," Henry murmured as he scribbled something into his notepad.

"How old's your son?" asked Justine, the intent of her question being to see whether the son was a minor whose word could not implicitly be trusted by the state.

Michelle suddenly looked very flustered. "Uh, he's… he'll be thirty-two later this month, um… he's not reta-! Uh - what's the polite way to say it these days? - uh, he's not disabled, he's just, uh… having some trouble getting his career going and striking out on his own! Um… it's my, uh, understanding that a lot of his, um, generation are having similar problems."

This bear woman seemed genuinely more embarrassed about her son than she was worried about her husband. Mrs. Cavey really did have the uncanny ability to make all of these detectives feel incredibly awkward at the drop of a hat.

"We… weren't going to ask that," O'Doherty said as politely as possible, with just a slight smile to seem reassuring and not condescending. Hopps had to commend the professional ways these two were conducting themselves with such a strange client - especially after seeing how unprofessional they could be behind closed doors.

"I-I'm sorry," the distressed wife and mother suddenly sputtered, "I told my son he had to be here for this, but he-"

"No, no, it's alright, you're alright," Ulvestad insisted, trying to calm her down. "But back to your husband, what does he do for a living? Where does he work?"

"My husband… does not work," Michelle answered, sounding just as embarrassed but for entirely new reasons. "He is disabled - physically speaking! He, uh… he's been hit by a car, he was in a bad motorcycle accident shortly before our son was born, he's been beaten up by muggers because he couldn't run away because… well, he couldn't run…" She just sort of looked around and shrugged. "He's been on disability my son's whole life. Same reason he's not allowed to drive."

"Hm. Understood," Justine murmured, taking notes. "Well, did he have any… hobbies that would take him out of the house?"

"No," Mrs. Cavey said glumly. "He just watches TV all day and smokes cigarettes on the back porch… He can't even drink anymore, he went through AA but he can't physically tolerate alcohol anyway since his innards are all messed up."

"Got it, got it…" said Henry. "What about friends?"

"Not anymore."

"Any other family for him to go visit?"

"Not in-person."

"Any nurses or healthcare providers who stop by the house?"

"No."

"Does he visit the neighbors?"

"No."

"Does he go to community centers?"

"No."

"Does he do volunteer work?"

"No."

"Does he participate in the community in any capacity?"

"No."

"Does he take himself to the doctor?"

"No."

"Does he walk himself to the store to buy his cigarettes?"

"No."

"Does he go for walks in general?"

"No."

"...Does he have any reason to leave the house whatsoever?" the wolf finally asked.

It seemed like the bear had to think about that. "...Going to check the mail. That's about it."

"...And the mail… being that mailbox we saw right next to your front door, attached to your house?" asked the deer.

"Correct."

The two detectives just nodded tightly, their trainee observing their every move while trying to keep pace with where their heads must be.

"But your husband… can walk, right?" asked Henry. "You didn't clarify the extent of his disability."

"He can walk, yes, but… not for very long. He can't bend his knee very much with all the metal rods and stuff stuck in there. He's supposed to have a walker or a cane, but he never uses them."

"And if he… were to be so possessed," pressed Justine, "does he have his own money to, I dunno, call a cab or take a bus somewhere?"

"He does… not much of it, though, and God knows where he'd ever want to go when he's got everything I could provide him right here," Michelle grumbled, making it clear to everyone that she was extremely bitter about how her life had turned out.

Judy was certainly forming her own conclusions about what was going on here, but she was keeping quiet and leaving it up to the veterans.

Above her, Ulvestad was still scribbling in his notepad. "Alright, and… just so we have a physical profile on the guy, what's this gentleman look like? Height and weight?"

Mrs. Cavey seemed unsure. "Uh… well, he was seven-five at one point, but between his bad posture and his spine deteriorating, maybe not anymore… Weight? Um… I'm sorry, Officers, but I don't have an exact number for you. But I can tell you that he's… probably underweight, especially for our people, he doesn't even attempt to exercise and he barely eats, and when he does it's all junk food with no protein… Is this helpful?"

Henry honestly almost looked disappointed as he kept his pen going on the paper, but he nodded and looked up at Michelle. "Yes, ma'am. Do you mind if I… go back into the living room to take a gander at that family photo? Just to get a mental image of him?"

The bear still had that sheepish look on her face. "You can, but… eh, just be aware, that's a pretty old photo. Fifteen years or so?"

"Understood," the wolf said with a small smile as he went back into the living room proper.

"And that's actually a good point," added Detective O'Doherty, "for best results locating your husband, we'll need a recent photo of him."

"Oh, well…" Another nervous chuckle from Mrs. Cavey. "...that might be the most recent photo of him - haven't really had much of a reason to take pictures of him… these last few years-"

The deer nodded with a gentle smile. "It's alright, ma'am, we understand you weren't exactly preparing for something like this; we're just saying for missing-mammal posters and such-"

"Oh, no, no, I understand! I understand!" the bear stammered. "It's not an unreasonable question! Just, uh… heh, not a lot of Kodiak moments these last few years, y'know? No, uh - no pun intended, we're not kodiaks."

"We understand," Justine kept on nodding. "Just try to find a relatively recent photograph when you have the time."

Meanwhile, Henry walked back in, the wolf producing something looking like an ID card. "Alright, Missus Cavey, this card certifies that I have passed all required tests to use olfactory senses to search for and collect evidence for the City of Zootopia Police Department; may I have your permission to have a sniff around to see if I can pick up on any… shall we say, foreign scents?"

Michelle seemed confused. "Foreign in… what way?"

"Scents of an individual who doesn't match your family, smells of some object or substance that might have caused a struggle… things like that."

She winced. "Wouldn't you need to… sniff us to get a sense of what we smell like-?"

"Oh, no, no, the cert means I can discern that without getting that close, but for best results…!" He dug in his pocket and pulled out a small, narrow pouch and put it up to his nose, drawing in a deep sniff; Judy would later find out these were smelling salts. "...OOOH, yeah, there we go, THERE we go! Yeah, I'm already smelling three distinct ursids… and THERE'S the tobacco! JESUS, that is strong! Yeah, I was about to say you guys usually have better senses of smell than we do, but with this much tobacco dulling your senses…" Henry mellowed out for a moment. "So may I have a poke around? I won't open any drawers or anything, I honestly don't need to."

Michelle just looked defeated. "Uh… alright, go ahead."

"Surely. And Hopps…" the wolf flipped his notepad to a new page and gave it to the rabbit along with his pen. "Feel free to add more notes while I'm away!" And away he went, up the half-staircase of the split-level.

Judy was happy to accept such an honor, but now she didn't want to waste this opportunity. Now that she was an investigator, she felt like she ought to investigate how the investigators investigated so she could investigate just as well as they investigated. As such, she lifted up the notepad and looked at the last page, the one Henry had just been writing on.

Much to her surprise, she found a doodle: two bears, one a head taller than the other (and crudely scribbled over to make him skinnier than his first draft), arms up and holding a cane in one paw as he roared at the scared-looking smaller one, who was noticeably colored in much more darkly and seemed to be wearing… a police officer's hat?

A deer hoof suddenly came down upon the notebook and pushed it closed. Judy looked up to see Justine slowly shaking her head at her. It worked just as intended, and the bunny bashfully took her paws off the paper, embarrassed to have been caught snooping.

"So… what else do you need from me?" asked the bear sitting across from them, still squirming. "What are you guys gonna do to help find my husband?"

Now, Judy knew she was there to be seen and not heard, but she was already practicing her deductive reasoning skills. In her head, the answer here seemed obvious: Michelle Niedzwiecki Cavey surely must be behind her own husband's disappearance. I mean, just look at her, she wasn't even heartbroken, she just seemed scared, and she seemed to be going out of her way to explain that she wasn't that content with her marriage. It wasn't normal for an innocent to be this nervous; this seemed a clear sign of a guilty conscience. But Detective-in-Training Hopps knew it wasn't her place to make that call, so she waited patiently for Detective O'Doherty to let it rip:

Composed as ever, the deer put her hooves together and gave the bear a professional smile. "Well, Missus Cavey, with the information you've given us, we will be filing a missing mammal's report."

…And that was it.

"That's it!?" Michelle nearly shrieked. And let's just say Judy was surprised as well.

"Well, ma'am, based on what you've told us, it sounds like your husband, despite his handicap, is of sound enough mind and body to still make his own decisions while still being young enough to not qualify as a senior citizen, in which case…" You could tell by her body language that Justine knew she was going to get a bad reaction to what she had to say. "...if he was capable of leaving home, he is free to do so."

Again, Judy was flabbergasted, but all eyes were on Michelle, whose mouth hung open as words refused to come out.

"...So you're not going to do anything!?"

"Well, ma'am, if we locate him, we'll be sure to contact you-"

"But are you going to look for him!?"

The deer's smile was clearly strained. "You see, Missus Cavey, it's called the right to disappear: adults over the age of eighteen don't legally have to return home. It's nothing against your husband, this is standard practice in police departments across the country: that priority in missing mammals cases is given to missing children, the elderly, and the mentally handicapped, all of whom would likely not be able to disappear of their own volition. For all others…" A tentative shrug. "...we can't assume it wasn't of their own volition if they had all their mental faculties about them."

Michelle was twitching in shock. "Well- he is mentally handicapped, too!"

O'Doherty steepled her hooved hands. "...He is," she repeated skeptically.

"YES! He… he, uh… he's diagnosed bipolar!"

"...He is."

"He is, yes!"

A deep breath through the deer's nose. "It would have been helpful to tell us this earlier, Missus Cavey. When we were discussing why your husband was on disability."

"Yeah, but, uh… heh heh, I didn't wanna just keep rattling off a list of things wrong with my husband. That might have sounded bad!"

Judy turned her head up to give Justine a look of c'mon, she's clearly in on it!, but the deer just looked up and called out to her partner:

"Henry?"

"Yeah?" the wolf answered from upstairs.

"I tried explaining the right to disappear to her and now she tells us that her husband's diagnosed bipolar."

Ulvestad came back down the steps, looking puzzled. "Well… I think bipolar's on the cusp where we can still grant them their autonomy, it's not like… an intellectual disability or anything…" He turned his gaze to the bear. "By the way, I smelled… a lot of opioid painkillers up there. OxyContin or Vicodin or… both? Was he-?"

"That's for his physical disability!" Mrs. Cavey explained anxiously. "But… my god, the effect they've had on his head, maybe he is intellectually disabled now! I understand your reasons for prioritizing some cases over others, but I assure you, he isn't capable of making sound decisions!"

Henry just blinked at her. "Alright, but I was going to ask whether there was any chance that he was… transferring them and whether some unsavory characters might have come by for them. Because otherwise, I didn't smell anybody else in the entire upstairs."

"Um… no, he's not selling his- at least he better not be! First I'd be hearing about it! Heh heh…" She trailed off and out of her forced chuckling into a very blatant pleading look. "Please, Officers… believe me that my husband can't be trusted out there by himself."

Judy sat there begging for eye contact with either one of the detectives to give them the hint that the answer was right under their noses. But the deer and wolf were just giving one another a look that seemed to say, welp, I guess we have to do this.

"We'll file a report with everything you've told us so far," O'Doherty said as she stood from the table and collected her notes. "We'll be sure to loop in the department about your husband's various conditions. We'll be in contact if we need anything else from you, and in the meantime, please try to find a suitable photograph of your husband."

"You can contact us at this number," Ulvestad said as he handed the wife a card with their names handwritten on it. "We have your contact information, and we'll be getting you a case reference number by the end of the day today as soon as it's in our system."

Michelle accepted the card and simply stared at it, dumbfounded. "...And that's it?"

"That's all we can do right now," explained Henry.

"But we'll be in touch," assured Justine. "Now, shall we see ourselves out, or…?"

"Uh… no, no," the bear said as she stood with them. "I'll let you out."

Mrs. Cavey clearly couldn't believe that this was how a real missing mammal's investigation went. And for what it was worth, neither could Judy.

-IllI-

"YOU AREN'T GOING TO LOOK FOR HIM!?"

Ulvestad and O'Doherty physically cringed at the ear-splitting shriek coming from the detective-in-training in the backseat of the patrol car.

"I said we weren't going to," the wolf retorted, grumbling from behind the steering wheel. "But I guess now we have to since apparently this guy is… bipolar and… demented or something." Judy could see his eyes rolling in the rear-view mirror.

"We'll probably end up deferring to Honeycutt on whether we should pursue it or not," added the deer, also making no attempt to hide her annoyance with their trainee. "But we've known him longer than you have, Hopps, and we're pretty sure he'll agree that looking for this guy would be an enormous waste of our time."

There were so many things the bunny wanted to say to that, feeling an urgency to say all of them, but unable to say any of them as they got stuck trying to squeeze out of her mouth altogether at once. Nevertheless, her moral compass demanded she say something while she had their attention, and what she finally got herself to say was fairly simple:

"How can you two say that!?"

Henry and Justine glanced at each other, both trying to see if the other was willing to take this and finding that they were not.

"We can say this…" Justine began carefully, "...as professionals who have been doing this for a while. That's how."

You probably aren't surprised, my friend, to hear that Judy Hopps was unsatisfied with that answer.

"But this is a living being! This is a mammal's life! Don't you care!?"

"I'm sorry," said Henry in a tone that didn't sound too sorry, "did we say something to suggest that we were happy that this guy went missing?" A beat. "I'm not being sarcastic, Hopps, if we gave you that impression, tell us now so we can clarify that we're not, we just used our judgment to determine that this guy is probably not a high priority."

"Every missing mammal should be a high priority!" Judy felt like she was arguing with people who thought the world was flat.

"Hopps…" O'Doherty began, sounding almost like she was pitying the poor dumb bunny, "...you did see how much we have on our plate, right? That enormous file cabinet full of cases? We literally don't have time and mammalpower to handle each and every one of them."

"SO!? Are you going to let a little hard work stop you!?" asked the raging workaholic. "You should feel honored that you have the privilege to play the hero and find out what happened to this bear, this is somebody's loved one!"

"'Somebody's loved one'?" Ulvestad repeated with a skeptical sneer. "'LOVED one'? Hopps, I'm not even trying to be mean: were you not paying any attention in there!? It's clear as day that that woman has completely fallen out of love with her husband!"

Part of Judy wanted to say that surely somebody out there loved Duncan Cavey, surely that unseen son of his did… but she could admit, she couldn't prove that empirically. So instead she went with a talking point that she felt she had much more evidence to support:

"And you know what!? What about that!? Are you two just going to ignore how that woman who clearly didn't love her husband obviously must have been behind his disappearance!?"

Instantaneously, you could see a look of horror overcome the detectives' faces.

"Wait, is that what you think happened!?" asked the wolf.

"Oh, my God!" went the deer. "And I thought you were the cheerful, optimistic type; is that what a few years on the beat's done to ya!?"

…No, my friend, it had never occurred to Judy that there was a chance they hadn't drawn the same conclusion as she had. Literally never even crossed her mind. "Uhhh…"

"You know what?" Henry said with a finger in the air. "I will say, I will say… that makes more sense now why Hopps is so pissed at us. I thought that she thought that we were just being lazy, but now that I know she thought we were ignoring what seemed like an… obvious murder cover-up to her…"

"Yeah, I was thinking the same thing," said Justine. She then turned around in her seat to face their trainee directly. "What made you so… confident that it must have been… that? I mean, I can see how maybe you could draw that conclusion-"

"Didn't you see the way that she was acting!?" Judy sounded like she was pleading. "Her husband disappeared and she isn't even sad, she's just nervous-"

"Yeah, that's called anxiety," interrupted the wolf. "My mom was the same way. Someone raised to obey the rules at all costs to the point that she's nervous talking to authorities even if she's done nothing wrong, because she knows the authorities have the authority to punish her anyway if they're wrong in their judgment or just… bored. My granddad was a tyrannical dick to my mom and her siblings, and knowing bears, especially of that lady's generation, I wouldn't be surprised if her upbringing was the same way."

That did indeed trip the trainee up for a moment. "Uh… I mean, yeah, I can understand that, I… heck, I'm a bunny, anxiety runs in my family, I'm all too familiar with mammals who're afraid of punishment even when they didn't do anything wrong, but-"

"So you agree that that's probably what's happening here."

"-but even still, her husband went missing! Even if it is just… anxiety, you'd think she'd be more scared than… fidgety and awkward-"

"Maybe she's already come to terms with it," offered the deer. "It's been forty-eight hours; it's funny how quickly you can make peace with something when you realize it was never too far-fetched… and hearing how she described her husband's poor health, it honestly sounds like she was ready already deep down for this guy to die any day now."

"Which would make it all the more ridiculous if she decided to kill him when it sounds like if she wanted him gone, all she had to do was wait," said Henry, much calmer now. "It would just be stupid and impatient of her. And you know what? The fact that you did jump to the conclusion that she did it when she might not have… completely vindicates her reason to be nervous of exactly that. Even if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, fear of fear itself incriminating her."

"I know it sounds… sick, Judy," Justine continued, "but we're just being honest. And we were honestly expecting that with the policing experience you have, you'd be a little more… aw, Jesus, what's the word?"

"'Jaded'?" suggested her partner.

"No, not jaded, jaded sounds like a bad thing! Um… well, realistic, frankly. Knowing that there's some grim stuff in this world you're gonna have to confront, Hopps."

Judy was a little bit bummed out that this had taken such a cynical turn, but even more than that, she was offended that they thought she was a naïve rookie, just like they all thought on her first day on the Force. She wasn't going to just allow them to treat her like that all over again. "I am realistic about the dark things I'm gonna encounter in this line of work! That's why I assumed that woman was behind it! If she did do it, wouldn't it make sense that she'd report him missing and pretend she didn't know anything about it to throw us off her trail!?"

"Maybe, but we're not going to assume that," said O'Doherty. "Especially when Occam's razor says that it probably wasn't something that contrived."

"Then what does Occam's razor think happened?"

Ulvestad had an answer ready to go: "That that bear realized that his life sucked staying in the house day in and day out, decided to go for a walk outside without telling anybody because he realized nobody cared about him, probably went into the woods and did that thing where mammals go wandering in nature to get back to our wild roots, greatly overestimated his physical ability, maybe passed out and cracked his skull open on a rock or fell into a creek and drowned or stumbled into a gully and broke his leg or his neck or something, and if he didn't die immediately, he probably died of exposure or is in the process of doing so as we speak, past the point that we can save him."

Judy was quiet. And actually, so was Justine.

"...I… would've just said regular suicide," the deer eventually said, "but… yeah, that's also a good possibility. I definitely agree that he probably wound up in the woods one way or another, though."

Well, as long as these two already thought she was being immature, the rabbit saw no reason not to protest further. "Well, if you two say that detectives choose their own cases, then as soon as I'm out of training, then I'll take up the case of Duncan Cavey myself-"

"Oh, well then what is the point, then!?" O'Doherty suddenly snapped, hooves in the air. "Why are we bothering to fucking train you if apparently you already know everything about being a detective!?"

"Hey, Justine, Justine…" Ulvestad cooed as he put a paw on her shoulder. "Mellow out-"

"Oh, don't tell me to mellow out! Hopps, are you even considering how it makes us feel that we're trying our best to train you and you're telling us to our faces that you think you're morally superior to us!?"

And again… Judy went quiet. Checkmate, she had been so sure she was right that she really hadn't considered their feelings in the argument. And while she still thought she was more right than wrong, reflecting now on how she'd spoken to them… it probably felt for them not unlike how she had when she tried to offer Nick help getting a new career and he just wasn't taking it. Justine surely had no idea just how hard that question had hit.

"Go easy on her," said Henry, trying again. "She just… well, she alluded to it earlier when she said we should wanna play the hero, she's just got Main Character Syndrome."

Okay, screw it, Judy was agitated at them again. "Well… if I may be so bold…" the bunny began carefully, "...I've always been of the mindset that… yeah, it might be obnoxious when someone thinks they're a hero, but if nobody tries to be a hero… we're not going to have any heroes."

Now it was the wolf and the deer's turns to be quiet. They had to ponder that for a moment. Each of them still did think that was a wee bit too idealistic of a worldview, but they each also found Judy's can-do attitude difficult to mock.

"...I can concede that," said Ulvestad plainly, eyes simply focused on the road. "That makes sense… uh, counterpoint, though: Hitler thought he was a hero, too."

"Or to use a less dramatic example, ahem…" said O'Doherty, "...all those mammals trying to be social-media activists without ever doing anything in the real world probably think they're heroes, too. We're not afraid your hero complex is gonna accidentally bring about a fascist dictatorship, ahem, but we are worried you might waste all your energy doing a whole lot of nothing if you don't know exactly what you're doing."

Judy just nodded quietly; they had all made fair points. "Well, I appreciate your concern. And I'll remember that."

"Good to hear."

But that doesn't mean I'm going to quit fighting.

They were all quiet for a few moments as they drove along. Henry had his left paw sticking out the open window, riding up and down on the waves of the wind.

"...You know, this was probably all an enormous waste of breath, Honeycutt's gonna get the final say in all this."

"Goddammit, Henry, don't ruin the moment."

-IllI-

As it turned out, if anybody in the Investigative Department was truly being lazy, it might have been Captain Honeycutt himself. After coming back to the station, he never left, specifically because he didn't want to have to just come back again. In his defense, though, he was kind of right: he needed to be back in-person to debrief with the detectives and their new trainee.

"...Alright," the black bear said with a soft smile as he clapped his paws together on his desk, having just heard Ulvestad and O'Doherty recap everything that they'd learned during the visit. "Sounds like a successful info-gathering operation. Did you guys write down your report while you were there?"

The deer and the wolf just gave him a pair of faux-bashful smiles, while the bunny looked up at her trainers and pondered whether they hadn't even been doing their own jobs correctly.

"Well, based on what you told us, we didn't think we would need to," said Henry.

"We're loyal to a fault, aren't we?" added Justine.

Nobody noticed the small bunny's face scrunch up. They'd disobeyed protocol because they were loyal? To something Honeycutt had said?

Carson just chuckled and waved a paw at them. "Oh, you two! But if not then, then it'll have to be now."

The detectives just nodded.

"That's totally fair!" agreed the doe.

"You know we saw that one coming a mile away!" added the wolf.

"Alright, alright you two," Honeycutt said as he stood and made his way to the door. "You guys get cracking while me and Hopps here powwow about how her first day's been going so far!"

"You don't have to ask us twice!" O'Doherty said sweetly as she walked out.

"Dutiful to the end, we are!" Ulvestad said as he followed her.

And as they left, Judy had the mind to get the disgusted look off her face as she was left alone with Captain Honeycutt.

"So!" the bear said as the door clicked shut. "How's it going so far? Is it everything you thought it'd be?"

It hadn't been, and now Judy was in a quandary. She was smart enough to know that complaining about Henry and Justine's lack of diligence and professionalism would never in a million eventualities go over well, but she was strong-willed enough to not be able to live with herself if she didn't protest the Investigative Division's negligent and lackadaisical attitude when she had the opportunity. Ah, at times like these, the rabbit wished she wasn't so awesome at being the intelligent and empathetic hero Ulvestad and O'Doherty had accused her of playing.

But that's when she realized she had an out: this bear didn't know that.

He didn't know that's what she was thinking. Honeycutt didn't know who she was. And he wouldn't know it if she wasn't acting like herself. Oh, Nick would be proud of her for this: it was time to play dumb.

"Well, Captain, it's been even better than I thought!" she beamed; at least her enthusiasm wasn't fake. "I can't wait to get to work helping that poor bear woman find her missing husband!"

And just as Judy expected, Carson, in that fake-caring way of his, just kept smiling at her as he sat down and folded his paws, giving her that oh, you sweet summer child look like he knew he was gonna have to gently drop some harsh truths upon her.

"Ah, Hopps, Hopps, Hopps… you're exactly as Bogo advertised," he said, shaking his head while still smiling softly. "And lemme start by saying, it's nothing but a good thing that you care this much. But - and I was hoping Ulvestad and O'Doherty had already told this to you, but I guess they had other priorities given the circumstances - the toughest part of this job is confronting the fact that there's simply so many problems and so little time to fix them that… we've gotta be picky and choosy with which ones we elect to spend our finite time on. And so… based on what Missus Cavey herself first reported to the department and what Henry and Justine have confirmed just now…" He threw his paws up without lifting his elbows off the table as he shrugged and gave her an increasingly awkward smile. "...I don't think it would be in our best interest as a department to pursue this case. At least not right now."

No part of her was surprised by this response. But she still had her amateur acting chops about her.

"...Oh!" Judy gasped. "Oh, dear, that… that sounds so tragic, but I do understand what you're saying!"

"Yes, yes…" the bear nodded regretfully. "It's never easy, but it's a necessary part of what we do."

"Though… I have to say…" The rabbit was trying not to sound too sly. "...It surprises me that the mentally infirm aren't given priority when they go missing!"

This succeeded in making the captain's smile melt away into a look that seemed puzzled and just a little bit troubled. "Uh… the, um, mentally ill, uh… are given priority… when they go missing."

Judy once again acted very surprised to hear that. "They are! Interesting! Because Michelle Cavey mentioned that her husband has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder!"

You could see on Carson's countenance that he was starting to see where his trainee was going with this, but he kept playing along: "Well, then… interesting that Henry and Justine didn't mention that…"

"Oh, I wouldn't fault them for that, Missus Cavey herself almost treated it as an afterthought and didn't mention it until we were on our way out!"

Honeycutt was dreadfully intrigued. "Did she now? And what inspired her to throw that in at that last second?"

She pretended to chuckle awkwardly as though she were embarrassed on the wife's behalf. "Oh, she was panicking when O'Doherty told her that his physical handicap wasn't enough to make her husband a special case - which also surprises me that we aren't treating the physically disabled as priority cases, but I do trust the judgment of authority-"

"So you were aware that we give some cases priority over others."

The bunny stopped dead in her tracks. "...I'm sorry?"

"You did hear at the Cavey house that some missing mammals are given priority over others," the bear said bluntly. "From Justine. Whereas you were acting just now like I was the first one to inform you of that."

Now it was Judy who was wearing one of those you caught me but I'm not gonna let myself look embarrassed expressions like Carson had worn when Bogo called him out earlier. She was still smiling, but she knew that she'd let herself get overconfident. "Hmm… yeah, now that I think about it, it does ring a bell-!"

"Hopps," the captain said firmly, "y'know, as the leader of the Investigative Division, I was an investigator myself for a good long while. I can tell when you're bullshitting me."

To this, she simply nodded and kept forcing that smile so as to seem unafraid. "I mean no disrespect, Captain Honeycutt, but I felt… compelled to see how you'd… explain it yourself, if you had to explain it from scratch. As the boss and all!"

And to this, the black bear simply put his paws together, closed his eyes, took a deep breath in through his nose and sighed it right back out. "I mean… if you think that's what a good detective would do."

…Alright, now that she wasn't expecting. And fair game to Honeycutt, if he wanted to win this conflict decisively, daring Judy to reflect upon her own moral code was a pretty good strategy. It was like a parent's I'm-not-mad-I'm-just-disappointed routine but better. Hopps wasn't feeling ashamed… but she was feeling something close to it. She felt got, maybe that's a good way of putting it.

"Listen, Hopps," the bear said bluntly, "between everything you three heard about this guy, between everything his wife told us over the phone, between the public records we have of this guy - or lack thereof, the guy's got no job history in the last quarter century, but we do have an old incident report from 1994 about him stealing his wife's car when he didn't have a license, she wound up deciding not to press charges and we never got to ding him for the no-license thing because we never caught him actually operating the vehicle…" A groan, as though he were frustrated himself by the bleakness of what he was about to say: "...This bear does not make the world a better place by existing. He just doesn't, there's no evidence to say that he does. If anything, he makes it a worse place. Just listen to that woman speak about him and tell me that she sounds like she's living happily ever after with the love of her life, I defy you. Argggh, I'm gonna just rip the Band-Aid off here, Hopps… this is quite possibly the most worthless missing mammal we've ever had reported, and there is absolutely no way we could justify spending our time looking for him. We've got plenty of other missing mammals to look for, spend your time looking for them if you insist."

Judy's head was spinning as she wanted to say a million things at once. "...Wait- other missing mammals-!?"

But she got cut off anyway. "I can say with a clear conscience and complete certainty that this bear will not be missed. Finding him would be a waste of time, end of story."

The bunny's eyes were wide as she felt like she'd just been drained of blood. She knew when she started this journey that she'd be encountering some grim things, but… certainly not this cold and calculated disregard for mammalian life. And as such… her mind and body viscerally rejected it, and she challenged his assertion even when she knew she couldn't win, because she knew she'd be physically ill if she didn't try.

"B-but… but you don't know that!" she retorted, her tone sounding like she was pleading. "Th-this bear… he still is a part of their family! How sick do you think that family must be if they want him gone!?" She was trying her best not to outright scream. "He has a son! The bond beyond a parent and child, it's… it's, it's biological! Hardwired into us! Everyone loves their parents deep down - THERE! Someone to miss him! His son! Case in point!"

The look on the police captain's face was now something unreadably blank. "...Is that what they teach you in science class in Bunnyburrow? Because that's simply not true."

Once again, Judy found herself disarmed. With a clear head now, she can look back on this moment and absolutely concede that in her fit of fiery passion, she had gotten rather hyperbolic in the arguments she was putting forward. But she still thought she was more right than not.

"...Okay," said Judy. "Fine. Not everybody. But most mammals do, it's the default, it's an evolutionary mechanism that we've had carried down from our most primitive ancestors, pred and prey alike! Yeah, sure, fine, some individual mammals here and there might not have that, but they're-"

"Defective?" Honeycutt asked with a raised eyebrow. "...Or were you just gonna use a more vague term like weird or just not normal?"

The bunny backed off for a moment to try to gauge whether her boss was offended personally or just offended on behalf of the authority he represented which she was now disrespecting. Now, a year later, she still doesn't know which it was.

"Yeah, Hopps, a lot of mammals are privileged to have a family that's not completely fucked up," the black bear continued, "but not all of them are, because some families are genuinely terrible. Hating your parents isn't just for wayward teenagers and the adults who never stopped being wayward teenagers, even if that is what you were taught in your little redneck family-"

"Excuse me!?"

"You are not excused. My point, Hopps, is that while I don't know this family, I know a lot of males who have issues with their fathers, and I know a lot, a LOT of my fellow ursines who come from rough households. My people notoriously make shitty parents, to the point that sharing stories of our fucked-up families is something we bond over, knowing damn well that we're too fucked-up because of our families to be able to break the cycle. Maybe the Caveys' son isn't a Danny Daddy-Issues, maybe the missing guy is actually a good-hearted guy who's just in too much pain to do anything to better his family. But based on what I know - because being a detective, Hopps, is about synthesizing the information you've gathered and drawing an informed conclusion - in my estimation, it is likely that the Cavey's son probably hates his dad's guts. Maybe for valid reasons, maybe not, but he probably does, I'd take it to the bank." He gently clapped his paws together. "So let's recap: the son, in all likelihood, doesn't like his dad; the wife sure as shit can't stand her husband anymore; and there's nobody else in this guy's life. Ergo… nobody cares if he's around or not."

The poor bunny felt like a boxer seeing the world spinning, knowing she was about to get knocked out but also knowing she couldn't give up the fight until she couldn't fight anymore. And so she threw one last punch:

"...Okay, well…" She searched for the words before continuing. "...I'm not disagreeing. But you really don't think that… despite everything that might happen between family members… the love is still there deep down? That you can accept that a relative… wouldn't otherwise be worthy of love, but… that there's still some spark, some light deep down that always lets you know, hey, this is your flesh and blood, and they'll always mean something to you?"

Carson simply looked unimpressed. "Well, since apparently you're not putting the pieces together that I am one of those bears who had to grow up with abusive parents - which has me worried about your detective skills, but we can discuss that later - no, if a family member is shitty enough and deserves it, completely emotionally disconnecting yourself from them is…" He started counting on his fingers: "...the mature decision… the spiritually freeing decision… and just overall, the correct decision. So frankly, I expect this brownie's son, who I understand to be well into adulthood, to have already come to the conclusion that his dad's a stupid asshole mauler who deserves to be deprived of love, and…"

He trailed off when he realized his new detective looked like she'd just watched somebody get hit by a truck.

"...What?" he asked.

Judy ventured carefully: "Um… I'm sorry, Captain, it just sounded like you, uh… used a certain word, that, uh…" She stopped talking and just hoped he could play where the rest would come.

It took him a second, but he got it. "...Oh. Oh! Maul-! That word, that word! Um…" He pondered his options for a moment before forcing a smile. "Alright, you're right, that was awfully unprofessional of me! But, uh… hey, take solace in knowing that… I am a bear! I do have M-word privileges!"

The bunny still looked squeamish. "Yes, but, uh… it can still make other species uncomfortable…"

The fake smile was gone. "...Well, Hopps, I would argue it's not really your place to be made uncomfortable by that word."

She was silent. She was out of ammunition.

Honeycutt broke the tense silence by patting both his paws hard down onto his desk. "Well, would ya look at that!? What was supposed to be a two-minute conversation about whether you were enjoying the job turned into a twenty-minute conversation about how you… clearly have the passion for it, but maybe not the mind to make it work in a way that's actually plausible. Well, if the question is whether this is all you thought it'd be… evidently, it isn't."

All she could do was give him a dejected look.

"...Am I wrong?" he pressed.

She shook her head slowly.

"And y'know what? That's okay," he said, lightening up a little. "No dream job ever turns out quite as dreamy as we imagine, reality gets in the way - wait, hell, there's already an entire movie all about how you're very well-acquainted with the feeling! Heh heh. But… hey, we're adults, we get it, we adapt."

Judy relaxed now that her boss had relaxed. She didn't know how genuine it was, but any sense of danger had indeed seemed to go away - not to be speciesist against the angry bear, but… aw, you know what I mean.

"And as such, the question becomes… are Justine and Henry doing a good job of training you?" Carson continued. "Making everything clear to you? Not leaving you with any questions? Because they're a damn good pairing, but they're also liable to get… distracted from time to time."

Distracted. What curious word choice. Such a polite way to refer to exactly what Hopps thought it was referring to. Such a jarringly brilliant way to convey the idea that her eyes just popped open and she didn't know what to say in response.

Captain Honeycutt suddenly looked worried. "...You look like you know exactly what I mean by distracted."

Oh. Great, now the bunny was worried she'd just inadvertently snitched on two mammals she'd be spending a lot of time with in the coming days and weeks. "...Uhhh-"

"Have they been making out at work again!?"

Judy bit her tongue and drew a complete blank on what she could say to diffuse the tension.

So the fuse went off: "SON OF A F-!" the bear growled as he suddenly shot up from his seat, but just as quickly stopped himself and regained his composure. "...Excuse me for just a moment, please, I wanna go talk to them."

The captain walked out of the office and closed the door behind him, leaving her there alone with her thoughts - and with as many thoughts as she was having, that room might as well have been a party. But among the ideas and notions gathered at that little shindig in her head - Is Honeycutt gonna be a Jerk Boss more often than a Cool Boss?, Are Henry and Justine going to make my life a living H-E-double-carrot-sticks for tattling on them to the boss?, Am I really the only mammal here who truly cares?, et cetera - there was one thought that seemed to be -

"WILL YOU TWO ACT LIKE FUCKING ADULTS FOR TWO GODDAMN MINUTES!?" she could hear her new boss hollering from down the hallway.

- hogging all the attention: What was that he said about there being plenty of other missing mammals?

"You know you can't fire us!" yelled Ulvestad.

"You're just jealous that we HAVE each other!" screamed O'Doherty.

Those three were clearly going to be occupied for a while. And since Honeycutt had gone so far out of his way to stress that a good detective is wise with how they spend their time, Judy couldn't help but think that she'd be better served using this downtime to seek out one mammal who may or may not have been in the building who could answer a question that was now burning inside her, burning even greater than the questions about finding Duncan Cavey ever did.

-IllI-

She felt foolish for thinking he'd ever even left. No, Madongo J. Bogo was still in his office, working away, dutiful as ever. Well, he'd said that if she ever needed him, she knew where to find him; in her head, that constituted an open invitation. But still, she tread carefully:

"...Come in." He sounded surprised more than anything.

The rabbit opened the door slowly enough to convey regret for bothering him, but fast enough to show she didn't mean to waste his time; after all these years, she knew exactly how to approach him in moments like this. And perhaps he knew that she knew by this point, because when she walked in, his gaze was aimed at just the right angle to greet someone her size.

"...Hopps," the cape buffalo stated matter-of-factly, like he was answering an obvious trivia question.

"...You were expecting me."

"Hmph… not so much expecting you as not having much reason to expect anybody else," he clarified. He took off his glasses and pushed his computer's keyboard aside. "But I told you my door was open and I meant it. So please, shut the door and have a seat."

She did the first task, but hesitated with the second. "Oh, uh… thank you, Chief, but this doesn't need to take long-"

"Anything worth doing is worth taking the time needed to get it right," he interjected as he put his hooves together. "I gave away one of my best officers to Honeycutt and I want to ensure that will not have been a waste. Please, I insist: sit."

Well, hard to argue with that. Finally doing as she was told, the bunny hopped up onto the seat and pulled the lever to raise it higher. Bogo was once again wearing that 'frustrated, but not at her' expression on his face, and he seemed to be aware of it, trying to look less annoyed but not trying too hard.

He cut to the chase: "Has Honeycutt been treating you well, Hopps?" he asked, obviously expecting the answer to be some sort of no.

"Oh, yes, certainly, he has!" Judy insisted. "Just… you know, it takes time to adjust to a new boss-"

"Then if not him, what brings you here?" He wasn't trying to seem so patient anymore. And she knew he wasn't angry at her, but she knew that he knew there must be something wrong for her to be here, and that still affected the mood in the room. "Is it whomever's been training you? Who has he even been putting you with? It's not O'Doherty and Ulvestad, is it!?"

Her conscious mind knew not to feel intimidated, but her heart didn't know that. "Uh… no, they've - I mean, yes, they're training me, but it's nothing they've been doing-"

"Has he been letting those two behave like teenagers on the job again!?" the chief demanded, pounding his fists on the table.

Judy didn't say a word; her wide eyes did all the talking.

Then the buffalo relaxed. "...My apologies, Hopps, that outburst was… uncalled-for. Captain Honeycutt is effective at his job, though I do disagree with his leadership methods, and if he ran a looser ship, there'd be flotsam across the bay. So when you walked in here, I confess, I assumed either he or his wards were conducting themselves unprofessionally." He put his hooves together. "I… trust that you can understand now why I was so hesitant to lose you to him."

And she did. And she hoped this appreciation of her service would make the question she was about to pop go over better.

"...But please, Hopps, to what do I owe the pleasure?" he continued. "The anticipation is killing me."

No more screwing around, time to get to business: "It's… something that he told me. Nothing, uh, inappropriate, just… something I wasn't expecting, sir."

The chief raised an eyebrow. "Do go on."

Confident but not insubordinate, that was the tone she was shooting for: "Chief Bogo… what is this I'm hearing that there's been another… slew of missing mammals cases?"

And to this, he just nodded his head slowly. "Hmmmm…"

"Because I… I'm going to be honest, Chief, with my track record, I… I have to ask, did I do something wrong that I wasn't put on those cases?"

Bogo remained composed. "...Quite the opposite, Hopps… I felt as though you would be more of a benefit to this city staying on the beat for a while longer."

She had to wince at that. "...How so?"

He looked a little disappointed that she'd asked that. "I thought it was obvious: to train Braverman and to mold him into a competent cop."

…Oh, sweet cheese and crackers with a side of carrot sticks. Really? It was Braverman's fault? His awkwardness and clumsiness really had tangibly harmed her after all if they thought she was better off babysitting him instead of going on the important cases. Ah, she felt bad kicking that poor puppy, she knew he wanted so badly to be more than what he was, but if his general lameness and utter lack of heroic attributes had cost her what she'd rightfully earned, she was going to have trouble containing herself. But of course, she couldn't just say that:

"Oh, well, uh… I'm honored you think I was the best officer for that job, Chief, but, um… I just would have thought that if there were such a need, I could lend my talents to cases like, well, y'know, the big one from a few years back, and that Brady would be fine training under somebody else-"

"Whom?"

Judy blinked. "I… I'm sorry?"

"Whom would he be better served training under than you?" Bogo closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath through his nose. "...Do you remember how many new officers joined the force after that silly film about us came out?"

"...I do."

"How many of them stuck around, Hopps?"

She looked like a deer in headlights. "I… don't recall, sir."

He gave a tight, firm nod. "The correct answer, Hopps, is not many. So many of them resigned quickly after finding out the job was not what they had imagined - which for some of them surely meant the day-to-day work wasn't what they had expected, but as I'm starting to suspect, Hopps… I theorize that many of them were turned off upon meeting our other ZPD officers and realizing that they weren't like you."

Bogo's reference to the movie… Judy was starting to get where he was going with this.

"Why did I fire so many officers these last few years? Because seeing how many bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new applicants made an about-face as soon as they arrived made me confront something I'd suspected for a long while: far too many of my officers either did not truly care about serving their public or were actively antagonistic mammals to whom I should never have given a modicum of power." A low grumble could be heard deep in his throat. "And I am utterly ashamed of myself for ever letting them into our department in the first place, not just because they scared away all the recruits who had your heart but not your determination, Hopps, but rather because they fooled me into thinking they could ever stand for the values the ZPD stands for when in reality they were only ever going to embody the diametric opposite."

Judy just kept her mouth shut and sheepishly nodded.

"Our attempts to use you as the face of recruitment backfired, Hopps. Badly. It showed how uninspiring and frankly unlikable a good number of our officers were that new trainees would walk away even after devoting so long to the academy. And thus… as you've surely concluded on your own by now… this leaves a majority of our officers as either the lazy ones seeking a government job with government-job benefits or outright bullies seeking a position with power - and that's after I've done all I could to weed out as many of those types as I could without the department becoming unstable from a lack of members! I don't mean to take my frustrations out on you, Hopps, but you're reminding me of a major failure of mine as a leader, a failure I'm still struggling to remedy. Surely… surely you can understand why this strikes a nerve."

She nodded again. "I do." And she regretted ever having said a word.

He was quiet for a second before speaking again. "...Hence… I wanted to keep my best officers on the beat patrol, not only to increase the likelihood that they'd be the ones any given civilian might run into, but also to be there as mentors to the few new officers who stuck around. That's why I stuck Braverman with you, Hopps: I don't know if it's drive or determination, but the fact that he didn't quit already was enough to make him stand out. That dog may have no natural talents needed to be a good officer, but I can tell that he at least wishes he did - and I was hoping that perhaps you could find some way to draw greatness out of him in ways another officer couldn't. That's why I kept you on the streets and away from the bigger cases: I needed you there more. It was as simple as that."

The bunny kept nodding bashfully. She got the point, and now she was just hoping her boss would stop talking so she could get the heck out of there. But the way that was all phrased suggested something, putting a question in her mind that she was hesitant to ask-

"In any case," Bogo continued, "take solace in knowing that this new promotion will remedy the injustice of you not receiving what you've rightly earned."

-but that statement inspired her to ask it anyway:

"...Does that mean you're giving up on Braverman!?"

The buffalo looked puzzled.

"You… you promoted me and split me up from Braverman because you're giving up on him?" she elaborated; two minutes ago, she was livid with Brady, and now here she was feeling sorry for ever thinking so lowly of him. "Because- because if you think he won't be any good with anybody else… he's not that bad! He's got a good heart!"

The chief seemed like he was trying to be patient as his officer ranted and raved. "I'm… not disagreeing-"

"If… if I'm not there paired with him, does that mean you fired him!?"

He put a hoof up. "Hopps, I've done nothing of the sort-"

"You haven't!? Oh, that's good! Alright, um, how about this: put me back with him! My detective career can wait, you've already shown me you trust me enough to be a detective, I can be patient and save it for when the moment's ready! I'll make a good cop out of Braverman yet, and- and you know what? Why can't we pursue the missing-mammals cases together as ordinary cops? That's what I did with a civilian a few years ago! Two beat cops on it should be no problem, right!? And hey, the experience made a great officer out of Nick, so why wouldn't it make a great officer out of Brady!? Chief Bogo, thank you so much for the opportunity to be a detective, but if the goal is to get Braverman into ship-shape, then I won't let you down-!

"Stopps, HOP!"

That certainly put the brakes on her. "Uh… I'm sorry, Chief, what did… you…?"

The buffalo just glared at her for a moment before repeating: "Stopps, h- oh, bollocks…" he muttered as he put a hoof over his face for a moment. "Hopps, STOP. Contain yourself. You and Braverman have both been reassigned to positions that I believe are more suited to your skill-sets, and that is that. I could appreciate the eagerness to help, Hopps, but the fact of the matter is I am your superior, and by the nature of that, my decisions and judgment-calls are more important than yours; I do not need your backseat driving telling me what to have you do. We had this conversation several years ago, Hopps; I didn't think we'd need to have it again. Must we?"

And y'know, in another time and place, that all might not have sat well with her, but Chief Bogo was assuring her that she hadn't failed Brady, so that was all well and good, and moreover… she'd just been made privy to something that was really eating her boss up inside, more than she had ever realized. For these two reasons, Judy could tell herself to cut her boss some slack and not take his frustration too personally.

"No, sir…" she said quietly but clearly, "...no, we… we don't need to."

He took another deliberate breath though his nose. "...Very well then. I'll let you get back to your training, after which you can appeal to Honeycutt to pursue all the missing mammals cases you can get your paws on."

Appeal to Honeycutt. Yeah, been there, tried that. But this was not an appropriate moment to continue the conversation and ask whether Bogo cosigned on the black bear's decision to not even attempt to find Duncan Cavey.

Besides, she didn't need to. As she saw herself out of the chief's office, she found herself feeling resolved: she was going to find that missing grizzly if it was the last thing she did. She didn't need Honeycutt's permission for it or Ulvestad and O'Doherty's training; just call it an extracurricular activity engaging in a self-taught hobby.

Don't worry, Duncan, she found herself thinking, somewhere out there, there's a mammal who loves you… and I'm gonna bring you back to them.

-IllI-

Judy barely remembers how the rest of that day went after that. She, Ulvestad, and O'Doherty had most assuredly poked around into a few other open cases, mostly to give the detective-in-training some extra practice with her deduction skills. And they even made some progress with a few of them; turns out The Flute That Kills You When You Play It smelled like it was both made out of lead and covered in lead paint to boot, so thanks to the wolf's nose, that thing was sent into the lab for testing so they could prove it wasn't just haunted.

But for the most part, it really did feel like they were all just killing time. Henry and Justine knew that Judy had already cracked an enormous case with minimal help from the department, and as much as it seemed they weren't having as much fun with her as they'd hoped, it was clear they had nothing but the utmost respect for her intellect and problem-solving skills and wouldn't be rushing to give her unsolicited and unnecessary advice. As such, it felt like the three of them were just hanging out playing Clue without the dice, running out the clock until Judy could start working by herself… whenever that would be.

Their shift ended and they said their goodbyes for the night; nothing too sappy, they'd see each other the next day. Of course, Ulvestad and O'Doherty had driven to work together, so they'd be leaving together as well, leaving Judy to walk alone through the precinct while she gave them some "debriefing" time in their office alone. (...Wait, Jesus, I didn't even realize that would sound as dirty as it did until after I wrote it. Whatever, I'm rolling with it.)

In any case, if being a third wheel to an obsessed couple all day wasn't enough to make her feel lonely, walking through the station's desolate hallways would probably do the trick. She'd rarely been in the building on a weekend evening, and it never got any less unnerving just how abandoned it felt during these hours. Every other fluorescent light in the ceiling was extinguished and you could walk around for a solid few minutes without so much as hearing another mammal breathe - and you would hear them breathing if there was anyone there to hear, because it would be just that quiet in there. It really didn't feel like the same place at night, the hustle and bustle she'd come to feel was intrinsic to the precinct simply wasn't there. It wasn't even that it was creepy, per se; just so darned lonely and depressing, as if the building she knew was itself her friend and now she was looking at it laying in a hospital bed in a coma.

…Wow, that got dark! But no matter; soon enough, at least a little something familiar would come along to make the bunny feel less alienated.

"...Hey, what's up? …Naw, I just got to work. …Oh, dude, don't worry, this place is as quiet as a graveyard, nobody's around to- …I mean, it's a police station, they've probably got cameras with mics, so I shouldn't say anything it's enormously stupid to say, but even then, they probably won't check it unless they have a reason to. We're fine, dude…"

The rabbit powerwalked to the front desk. Jeez, when just a few hours ago she'd been thinking she'd never hear that voice again…

"...Brady?"

The German Shepherd hadn't even seen the little bunny below his line of sight, obscured by the desk itself. Upon hearing her voice and noticing her ears sticking up above the ledge, it might as well have been a jumpscare.

"GOD-!" the poor dog yelped as he fell halfway out of his seat, dropping his phone in the process. "Uh, e-excuse for a moment," he mumbled as he went down under the desk to retrieve his device. "Hey, listen, uh… somebody was here, I'm gonna have to call you back. Alright? …Okay, cool." And a moment later, he was leaning over the desk, smiling down at Judy and - strangely, considering him - not looking at all embarrassed. "Judy, how's it going!?"

She just had to smirk at how he'd played off that mini comedy of errors so well. "Hm… you're not supposed to take personal calls at work, Brady."

He smirked right back. "What're you, a cop?" he chuckled.

Judy found herself giggling right back. Wow, that was… oddly smooth of Braverman. "Well, I… heh, I was gonna ask what you're doing here, but… I guess that question kind of answers itself!"

The dog nodded mellowly. "Yeah, the older dude who usually works night-desk is gonna be working part-time now. Chief wanted to keep me on the books in some capacity, so this seemed like a perfect arrangement! At least as a stopgap; he mentioned that as long as I'm free during the day now, I should go to a doctor to see if they can do something about my condition, and until if and when that happens, this way I can take a shit WHENEVER I NEED TO, UNIMPEDED-!"

"ALRIGHT, alright, alright…" the rabbit interrupted, physically cringing as she pulled her ears over her eyes. "You didn't need to say all that…"

"Oh, I know I didn't need to… but I WANTED to!" the dog chuckled. "But for real, though, Judy, I'm not apologizing for that. That's a serious issue in my life, and for the first time since I started this job, I'm not living in fear of being in excruciating pain without any way to stop it. I'm not letting nothing kill my mood today."

And he just kept on smiling at her, and it didn't even seem fake. Braverman was seeming a lot more confident than she'd known him to be, and while she was tempted for a moment there to say Brady was carrying himself tonight a lot like Nick usually did… no, on second thought, Brady didn't seem to be wearing a mask like it now seemed so obvious Nick usually did. For the first time in as long as Judy had known this dog, he seemed genuinely happy for more than a fleeting moment.

And honestly, that made her happy too. I mean, how could she not be? This was the bunny who wanted to help everybody she met. Sure, she'd briefly been annoyed earlier that his lackluster abilities might have delayed her promotion, but after being scared after that that he'd been promoted to Civilian, she was overjoyed to see that not only was he still employed, he seemed to be very, very content with his new role. And she couldn't help but feel bubbly just seeing it.

"So!" he continued with a cheerfulness she'd never have guessed was in him, "How was your first day of detective training?"

He seemed genuinely interested, so she was happy to answer: "Uh… y'know, pretty good, actually! Training under a couple of detectives who're fans of mine… got to dig into some missing mammals cases, and, y'know how it is, glad to get to helping them though I wish it were under better circumstances… oh, and we might have made a breakthrough with the case of The Flute That Kills You When You-"

"IS IT HAUNTED!?" Braverman interrupted.

Only now did Judy stop smiling. "...It's not haunted." Honestly, she looked unamused. "If anything, it's probably lead poisoning."

The German Shepherd scoffed. "Aw, that's basically the same thing as haunted!" he laughed. "Ah, but I'm glad there's a logical explanation for it. Life in Zootopia doesn't need a Halloween special. And in June, no less!"

Somehow, someway, that got her smiling again. "So… this your first shift as the desk jockey?"

"Yes, ma'am! As of twelve minutes ago. And I've got a wild night planned! I'm basically gonna be alone and unsupervised all night long, so I'm gonna delve into the wacky world of fanfiction! Lemme tell ya, it is nutty just how much depth grown adults can mine from children's cartoons - and you know they're for children because all the characters are humans so the animators don't get in trouble for a species imbalance! I mean, I'm not a skinny myself - not, uh, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I just admire the creativity, y'know? Though it's an interesting lens into the whole idea of art and inspiration itself, because at a certain point it becomes obvious that… well, not all of these skinnies by any stretch of the imagination, but a decent number of these mammals are clearly getting a lot of inspirational mileage out of being insatiably hor-NY for these humans-!"

"Again, again…" Judy squeaked nervously with two paws up to slow him down, "you don't have to… well, heck, you wanted to, didn't you?"

"Ah, someone's catchin' on! But yeah, I'm spending my free time thinking about cartoon characters," he said with the tonal equivalent of a knowing wink. "...Just when you thought I could get any more pathetic."

And Judy just felt mortified. "Oh, Brady, Brady, no," she insisted apologetically, "I don't think you're…"

But she trailed off as she realized he didn't look as embarrassed as he professed to be. If anything - as Judy realized that he'd absolutely been picking up on her less-than-impressed opinion of him, but now had forgiven her because he'd found his own peace - he looked more comfortable with himself in that moment than she did. And she realized she shouldn't bother apologizing, because even if it was the right thing to do after getting busted thinking mean thoughts about him… he had no use for her apology. He didn't need it; he was finally content, perhaps moreso than she was.

Sensing she'd best switch to a more fitting tone, she started over: "Well, uh… I don't know too much about skinnies, but my understanding is… heh, you're a dog! Aren't all you guys skinnies to some extent?"

He seemed confused for a moment, but soon smirked: "...I am, aren't I?" he mused as he laughed through his nose. "Yeah… we miss our old friends. Damn shame the wolves are gonna see to it that history never remembers humans fondly, buuut this is neither the time nor place to start a race war. However…!" He clapped his paws and drummed on the desk as he stood from his seat. "It is time for me to utilize one of those perks of my new job now! …If you gather my meaning."

She did, and she simply nodded as Brady set up a paper standee reading BACK IN A MOMENT with a clock whose arms the dog set to five minutes from then - before reconsidering and making it twenty.

"Oh! Uh… by the way," Judy thought it would be nice to add, "thanks for the idea to get Nick into real estate. I already went and signed him up for classes!" As much as he didn't want me to…

"Hmm! Good to hear! Happy I could help!" But Braverman was already out from behind the desk and didn't seem to be slowing down too much. "Hopefully he enjoys it! Hey, send him my regards, would you please? And hey, if you need me, you know where to find me! Great to see ya, Judy! Toodles!"

The bunny just waved meekly; she knew better than to try to stop this dog when he was walking with that brisk, intent gait towards a certain room of a building. But there was also the fact that he'd stolen the show and she wouldn't know anyway what she could say to match his new attitude.

And that was totally fine by her. Whoever this reinvented Brady was didn't have to cater to her tastes; this version of him seemed to like himself more than his old self did.

And as she turned and walked out of the precinct to go back to her fox, she was smiling. Sure, her new department seemed troublingly derelict of duty, her boss seemed to be privately losing his mind, and her boyfriend seemed less than enthused to go along with a new line of work he didn't really care for; but at least one mammal was happier in this strange new status quo than they were previously, and the others still had plenty of time for that to become true for them as well. Nobody was doing much worse than before, and one individual was doing so much better that he was singlehandedly bringing up the average of the data set. That's what mattered to her: that things were trending upwards overall. And as she made her journey home that night, she felt tentatively confident that the next day would show still more signs of hope.

-IllI-

Officers Carter and Villalobos were already frustrated as they pulled up to the Little Medium Mart, and anybody who knew the situation would say they had every right to be. The horse and wolf stepped out of their cruiser and craned their necks up at the officers they'd essentially been sent to babysit, the moose and the polar bear putting their argument on pause to regard them. The responding officers had to wonder how long it would be before one of these two bozos went out of their way to disrespect them.

As soon as their car doors opened, Officer Gordon Kitchener knew why they were there and thought that reason was ridiculous. "Kelly, Jesús… how goes it, gentlemen?" the moose sneered mockingly, knowing full well that Carter and Villalobos detested being called by their government names.

Kel and Jimmy gave each other an unimpressed look; they had their answer, and it was 'two seconds flat.'

"Why are you referring to us by names you know we don't like to be called, Kitch?" an annoyed Carter asked as diplomatically as possible.

"Because he's an asshole who doesn't give a fuck about anybody but himself," grumbled Officer Dean Hudson.

"Aw, hush, ya stupid snow-mauler!" Kitchener shot back at the polar bear, leaning in for emphasis, then addressing the horse and wolf. "Yeah, I am trying to piss you off! Maybe then you'll leave us alone! This is between me and him, it's none of your business, now fuck off. We don't need outsiders telling us how to settle shit between us. Again."

Again. This hadn't been the first time dispatch had sent backup just to break up a fight between Kitchener and Hudson. Their rivalry was well-known throughout the department, in this precinct and others. And yet you'll notice that not only were they still employed even after Bogo's purge of all the cops he deemed unsuitable, they were paired together. Here's the thing: neither of these two had any history of bad behavior with anybody else on the Force, and especially not with civilians. No infractions of any kind; outside of their squabbles, their records were spotless. And in a weird way, their desire to tell each other to eat shit brought out the best of them, making them go above and beyond in their work in a one-upmanship battle - most of the time. But every so often, something like this happened that needed intervention, but in the eyes of the Chief, it was usually worth putting up with. Usually.

"Dispatch told us you two were supposed to be conducting a smell test at this convenience store," said Villalobos, "but you two haven't even gone inside yet."

"Ya hear that, Hud?" the moose snarked. "They're with me on this one!"

"Guys, look at this fuckin' store!" the polar bear protested, gesturing to the entrance and boarded-up window, upon which someone had spray-painted 'I ASSURE YOU WE'RE OPEN!' "That doorway's not even half my height! Draw me a diagram of how I fit in there!"

"As I told him," Gordon said to Kelly and Jimmy, "time to be a grown-up and get on all fours to do your job, Deano."

"That's still not enough, dipshit!" Dean shot back. But to prove his point, he got down with his paws on the ground. "We're the same fuckin' height, you idiot! You should know how big we are when we're walking like primitives!"

So Gordon, with his shorter torso and longer legs, got on all fours himself. "Hm, I dunno, looks like you're a lot shorter than me now!"

"MotherFUCKER-!" the bear growled as he lunged over to start wrestling the moose. The two got a few good swings at each other as the horse and the wolf (mostly the horse) broke it up.

"Boys, boys!" hollered Carter. "Let's not behave like children!"

"You think I want to!?" demanded Hudson, now sitting on the ground. "I was under the impression that they called you guys in because Jimmy's got the Sniff Cert too and he could probably fit in there if he ducked."

Everyone looked at Villalobos for an answer.

"They mentioned we might have to do your job for you," he answered flatly.

"Yeah, and they were vague about it because they were embarrassed that they sent the wrong guys for the job in the first place!" said Dean.

"What're we smelling for?"

"Hell, anything familiar. Security footage showed some… creature or something barrelled through here that even the computer didn't recognize."

"I'm sure it was just such a mysterious force," scoffed Gordon.

"You'd've seen the footage too if you hadn't been sitting in the men's room for forty-five minutes watching ZooTube videos about making hockey pucks or whatever!"

"Guys!" the wolf barked, getting the bear and moose's attention. "...Are the owners here?"

"No, but some employees are," said Kitchener.

Villalobos just nodded and headed for the entrance.

Inside, the two cashiers on duty were sitting on the counter, in the middle of a riveting debate:

"Alright…" the fox said to his rabbit friend as he held two soda bottles from the fridge, "...So Dr. Pawper and Mr. Pibb. They're both the same color soda, same maroon labels, one's marketed as a spicy cherry cola and the other is heavily implied to have spices and cherry in it." He held them together for emphasis: "My theory is that they're a gay couple."

"Well, what if Dr. Pawper's a woman?" asked Ryan.

…Did I mention they were stone-cold sober this time?

Kenny scoffed. "Man, does Dr. Pawper seem like a woman?"

"Oh, what, you're saying a woman can't be a doctor? That's pretty problematic, Kenny. I'm gonna have to report you to Antifa."

And fully-rested, too.

"Ryan, I'm not saying a woman can't be a doctor, I'm saying this doctor is clearly not a woman! It doesn't match Dr. Pawper's personality! Besides, believing they're a gay couple is more woke than believing one of them's a female!"

"Oh, no it isn't!"

"Bullshit it isn't!"

"Gentlemen?"

The duo turned to see the wolf officer approaching, the back of his head up against the low ceiling as he navigated through the warzone. The broken glass had been (mostly) swept up, but not much more was cleaned or repaired: shelving units were still misaligned, half the shelves themselves were collapsed or crooked, and product seemed to be stacked and stuffed haphazardly wherever it would fit. So far, though, he wasn't smelling anything out of the ordinary.

"Oh, shit, a cop!" exclaimed the fox. "Hey, Officer, we need a tiebreaker. What's more woke, having two gay guys or one straight woman?"

Jimmy gave them a perplexed look.

"Don't worry, Officer," said the rabbit, "we're not actually too invested in the answer, we're just practicing for in case we're ever called out on it." He turned to his friend. "Remember, Kenny, we gotta make it clear that we're not Antifa because with him being a cop, there's a good chance statistically that he's a neo-Nazi."

"So…" replied the befuddled wolf, "...I'll tell you right now, I'm not a neo-Nazi-"

"A Classic Nazi then-"

"I'm not a Nazi. It'd be pretty stupid if I was, since I'm Mexican-"

"You are?" asked Kenny. "Arrest Ryan then, he wouldn't eat a concha because it was Mexican! And then he said that the powdered sugar looked like cocaine! That is ultra problematic!"

"No, arrest Kenny for being a witch!" Ryan protested. "His people can see magnetism in the fucking air!"

"Ryan, for the millionth time, most of us've lost that-!"

"He's a witch!" the bunny carried on. "He can see magnetism! No creature loved by God should be able to do that! Burn him!"

Villalobos looked uncomfortable. "I'm not gonna burn him-"

"BURN HIM-!"

"GENTLEMEN!" the officer repeated. "...I'm here for a reason. The other day, your place of work got wrecked by a… mysterious… thing. This sound right?"

"Yeah," answered the fox, "that's how we'd describe it."

The wolf raised an eyebrow. "You saw it? You were the ones on duty?"

"Mmhmm," went the rabbit.

"...IDs, let's go. Let's see if the names match."

The cashiers looked nervous, but they produced their driver's licenses.

"I toldja they'd think the sugar was coke," Ryan muttered to Kenny, who rolled his eyes.

The officer paid no attention, instead analyzing the ID cards. "Ryan Gray and Kendall Clay?"

"Yuh-huh," answered the bunny. "Isn't it funny that Kenny has a girl's name? Let's make fun of him for it and destroy his self-esteem."

"Uh…" Jimmy just shrugged. "Well, my partner's a guy named Kelly and my dad's an Eustaquio who'll answer to Stacy, sooo… not too weird to me."

"Whoa, Kenny! You can start a club with these guys! You three and that rich kangaroo dude named Ashley we met the other day!"

"That'd be admitting Kendall's a girl's name!" the fox growled. "Which it fucking isn't!"

"Wait a minute," said the wolf. "...How long have you boys been working here? Specifically you, Mr. Clay."

"Uh… since last fall?" Kenny scratched his head. "September, I think? Same as Ryan."

The officer frowned. "Well according to your IDs, you only turned twenty-one three days ago. And you, Mr. Gray, turned twenty-one on New Year's Eve. Neither of you should have been working selling alcohol and tobacco products."

The boys looked defensively nervous, like one does when they're about to be blamed for someone else's mistake.

"Well…" Ryan mumbled, "we weren't, like, consuming those things just because we worked here-"

"Don't care," Villalobos said bluntly as he returned their licenses. "Your boss ain't here, I understand? Can you call her? I wanted to talk to her anyway about the video footage, but I think I'll bring this up while I'm at it."

"Sure," said the fox as he pulled his phone out. "By the way, Officer, you never gave us your name."

He thought about that, then nodded tightly. "Fair point, you're right. I'm-"

"JIMMY, GET OUT HERE!" his partner hollered from outside.

Well, that couldn't be good. "Excuse me," he said as he excused himself.

Meanwhile, Kenny used this as an opportunity to continue their debate. "Y'see, Ryan?" he said as he gestured to the ringing phone in his paw. "I'm more woke than you are because I'm making sure there's a female presence in this scene!"

"There'd already be a female presence in this scene if you just agreed that Dr. Pawper was a woman, you fucking troglodyte!"

Outside, the wolf found the horse trying once again to break up the moose and polar bear, who were doing that thing where two dudes get into a shoving match and each relaiate by charging at one another to shove back harder, paradoxically bringing themselves closer the harder they tried to push the other away. Carter couldn't separate them by himself, so Villalobos threw himself into the scuffle and the two pushed the pair of nine-footers apart by their torsos.

"What now!?" Jimmy demanded for clarification.

"This asshole is calling me a lazyass for not just sticking my nose in the doorway and doing a smell test that way!" Dean explained. "As though that's in any way effective and thorough!"

"But it'd be nice of you to at least do what you can fucking do instead of refusing even attempt to do your job!" Gordon shot back.

"Man, at least I have a nose that can do this job, ya useless-!"

"BOYS!" Kelly barked before turning to his partner. "What about you, though, what's taking so long?"

Villalobos looked a bit flustered. "These boys aren't being uncooperative so much as they just can't stay on topic, and now I gotta call the owner and ask why she hired two kids who weren't old enough to work here-"

"Hey, Officer," Kenny said as he and Ryan walked out of the small door, each holding a soda bottle. "We got our boss on the line."

"Oh. Thank you," the wolf said unenthusiastically as he took the phone and walked a few feet away for some privacy. "Hello, this is Jesús Villalobos of the Zootopia Police Department, am I speaking to the owner of the Little Medium Mart…?"

Meanwhile, the bunny looked down at the soft drink he was holding and seemed to have an epiphany. "Wait, crap, you might be right. I don't think Dr. Pawper can be a woman. Remember that advertising campaign from when we were kids for their crappy new diet version? 'Dr. Pawper Ten: it's NOT for WOMEN!' A female soda wouldn't say that."

"Oh, dude," replied the fox, "I completely forgot about that-!"

"What the hell are you two talking about?" the horse interrupted.

"Whether it's more woke to have two gay dudes or one straight woman," Ryan replied plainly.

All three cops looked baffled.

"Well, shit, I guess that's the kind of question I'd expect a couple a' kids to ask when they're wearing stupid backwards hats with the stickers on!" Carter scoffed.

"Hey!" Kenny protested as he and Ryan took their hats off to show the teams they were representing. "Ken Gruffey, Jr., and Jason 'White Chocolate Bear' Williams are two of the coolest motherfuckers in American sports canon and we will not be disrespected for trying to invoke them!"

"Well, speaking of stuff from ten years ago," quipped Hudson, "that style of hat with that style of hoodie makes it look like you guys are living in 2011."

The employees looked at each other for a moment before shrugging in confusion.

"Were things not better in 2011?" asked the fox.

"They call our generation Zoomers because our lives are zooming by after surely being curtailed by the mistakes of previous generations," added the rabbit, "so now we're already having nostalgia for our youths in our early twenties."

"So anyway," Villalobos continued on the phone with Angela, "we'll be using whatever scents I find as evidence towards figuring out what wrecked your business… And by the way, ma'am, what's this I hear that you hired the checkout boys before they were twenty-one? …Ma'am? …Ma'am." He took the phone away from his ear and looked at the screen. "...She hung up on me."

"What I wanna know is," said Kitchener to the other cops, "why do we need a wolf or a bear to do a smell test if we've got a fox right here?"

"Kenny's mom smoked indoors so now he has no sense of smell," Ryan said bluntly.

"Aw, don't listen to him!" said Kenny. "Ryan's got brain damage from his mom bunny-hopping so much when she was pregnant with him. It was like prenatal Shaken Baby Syndrome. Honestly that's probably why rabbits are so stupid in general, their heads get scrambled in the womb from all that bouncing."

"Well, the owner gave us permission to do the smell test," the wolf said as he returned and gave the fox his phone. "...I don't like your boss."

"This is the correct response to meeting Angela."

"Alright," Jimmy muttered as he pulled a smelling salt out of his chest pocket and headed for the door. "Let's get this over with. C'mon, Beaver and Butt-Head, you're coming with me."

"Hey, we're not Beaver and Butt-Head!" Ryan attested as they followed the officer in.

"I always thought we were more like a cross between the clerks from Clerks and the two dudes from Regular Show," added Kenny.

Once inside, the wolf ripped open the salt packet and gave it a good whiff, shaking his head violently as he adjusted to his olfactory hitting its full potential. Immediately he started sniffing the air, but didn't seem satisfied.

"Okay, so immediately I'm picking all kinds of species - I'm guessing all the employees and customers who come through here. Is there anything or anywhere that only the… whatever-it-was touched or went?"

"Uh… maybe the fridge?" Ryan hypothesized.

Villalobos nodded and went to investigate.

"...Hold on," the rabbit said suddenly, pointing to the bottle his friend was holding. "...It's not Mr. Pibb anymore, it's Pibb Xtra!"

"Yeah?" asked the fox. "It's been like that since we were kids. Everyone still just calls it Mr. Pibb."

"Yeah, but where did the Mr. go!? That has to be deliberate."

Jimmy opened up the cooler door and started sniffing. And once he forced his nose to unfocus from the scents of plastic bottles and almond milk…

"…Jesús, what is that!?" the officer asked of a higher power as well as of himself. How could something smell so foreign and yet so… familiar? "Hey, guys?" he called back to the employees. "Anywhere else I should try?"

"Uhhh, it went all up and down along that counter in the back," proposed Kenny. "Maybe try there?"

And so he did, hoping a different spot would provide some aromatic clarity.

"So I have it figured out," Ryan stated. "Dr. Pawper is indeed a guy, but Pibb is either transgender or nonbinary."

"Oh, just because Pibb dropped the Mr. means that they're automatically nonbinary!?" Kenny scoffed.

"Dude, of course Pibb Xtra has some gender-identity issues going on, why do you think there's so much emphasis on the X!?"

The wolf found the back counter with the soda fountain and coffeemaker banged up and placed haphazardly back in their spots, cups and lids arranged in piles rather than stacks. Since he was already too big for this place, he just leaned over the Icee machine and sniffed the back of it - nobody else would ever touch that part, right? He could smell traces of vulpine and lapine, probably the employees putting the machine back on the table, but then…

"...What the hell is that!?"

He headed outside to find the moose holding the polar bear in a headlock but Hudson countering by shaking Kitchener by the antlers. The horse was off to the side smoking a cigarette, boredly watching the giants go at it.

"HUD," Villalobos said sharply. "Hud. Hudson. Get over here."

Gordon relented and Dean walked over.

"What's up?" asked the bear.

"Take a smelling salt," the wolf instructed, followed by him holding up a coffee-cup lid. "I found the thing's scent, this thing has it very strong. And I need somebody else with the Sniff Cert to cosign on this so the Department doesn't think I'm crazy."

"Uh… okay?" Despite his skepticism, Hudson went ahead and did pull out a smelling salt, sniffed it, sneezed into the crook of his arm as his senses were amplified beyond comfort, and then took the coffee lid and started investigating. Sniff sniff sniff… "Well, besides smelling you, I…" That was when his face twisted. "...Oh, Jesus Christ." Sniff sniff sniff sniff sniff. "It's like…" Sniff. "...I swear, it feels like I've smelled this before, but I know I've never smelled this before in my life."

"I know, right!?" Villalobos exclaimed, feeling vindicated. "It's not even that it's on the tip of my tongue, it's more like my brain is shouting out a million words and none of them sound right!"

"Well, what does it smell like?" asked Carter, a tad impatiently. "What are all those words coming to mind?"

"That's the thing! I… I can say for sure it was mammalian, but beyond that? Man… I can't confidently pick a… pick an adjective let alone a specific species."

"Yeah, it's almost like…" Dean sniffed again. "...Like it's every species I've ever met, and also none of them."

Kelly winced. "...Well, how can that be!?"

"You think we know and we just ain't saying it?" grumbled Jimmy. "Man, fuck… what is this thing!?"

"Guys!"

"We figured it out!"

The four cops turned to see the fox and rabbit exiting the store, still holding their soda bottles.

"We figured it out!" Kenny repeated. "Dr. Pepper is indeed a guy, but he lost his medical license when he accidentally killed Tab Cola during a botched liposuction. Meanwhile, Pibb Xtra has embraced their new identity as genderqueer and follows the MuPaul philosophy where they don't really care what pronouns you call him as long as you think she's pretty. After fleeing the United States when they got busted for tax fraud, they moved to Thailand where the former doctor illegally performs discount surgery while Pibb runs an all-gender strip club where you can see every combination of genitalia known to nature, and they have an adopted son who they named Telemachus Aloysius Hermenegild Bonaventure Horatio Bob who's from Burundi and who has no arms or legs." He stopped and looked down at the soda bottle in his paw. "...Which they don't have either, now that I think about it."

"Yeah, if you could do us a favor, don't tell anybody that in our endeavor to practice our wokeness, we completely forgot the disabled existed," Ryan added. "...Wait, are we racist for assuming these sodas would hook up just because they taste the same?"

The four cops all blinked at them. They had nothing to add to that.

"So anyway," said Gordon, "let's get back to talking about how this was all a complete waste of time because you two predators completely sucked at doing the one thing you were sent here to do."

The polar bear didn't bother with words, he just turned and socked the moose right in the nose. They wasted no time escalating to full-on fisticuffs, and horse and the wolf tried to break them up (but didn't try too hard) while the Canadian-American cops bloodied one another. And while the fox and rabbit began debating who would win in a fight between Colonel Sanders and Captain Crunch, it really did seem that Officer Kitchener was right about one thing: the only conclusion they could draw about the mysterious entity was that it was hellbent on keeping its mysteries inconclusive.