Chapter Eleven- Redbone
Frederick Jonas Manson walked outside of the station with a pack of cigars and a lighter in his hands, he plucked one of the cigars from the pack with two paw pads and jammed it into his mouth before putting the lighter to the cigar.
Smoke billowed from his muzzle as he opened his mouth and reached into his pocket, pulling out a very old and outdated flip phone, it was a phone from the early 2000's, he had never cared to get an upgrade ever since.
He thought it was simply because he didn't need one, but he knew it was really because he was far too old to even understand the phones they have these days, having one would make him look a fool with how poorly he understood them, and there was also the fact that it was much less traceable.
He opened the phone and pressed speed dial on one of his contacts, putting it to his ear as he blew smoke outward in front of him, a voice he knew too well answered.
"Sir" the voice spoke as the call began.
"Charlie, how've you been?" Manson responded.
"Just fine captain" Charlie said on the other end.
Manson took the cigar out of his mouth "Bogo's been given an update, he's in the loop"
"So no theatrics?" The wolf said looking up.
"None, he knows you're coming" Manson spoke through the phone.
"Well the SAS should arrive by tomorrow, we're crossing the Atlantic right now" Charlie said assuredly.
"Good, Team 1 is ready to go in again."
"Understood" was the only word that came from the other end.
"Do we even know where this bastard is Captain?" Charlie's voice asked, he sounded worried.
"A good idea, Redbone, I know how much you hate Fyodorov's guts, you're not alone" Manson said trying to dismiss the rookie's worry.
"We're gonna get him this time," He assured.
"We better, with how much ruckus he's caused in Zootopia, he can't get away alive" Charlie said angrily.
"I hope you know you'll be working paw and paw with Team 1 . . . They've shown potential" Manson's voice said after a short pause in the conversation.
"It won't be a problem sir" Charlie said, now his voice sounding assuring.
"Good, keep me in touch Charlie" Manson said before ending the call.
. . .
Sergeant Charlie Redbone was currently on a ship headed to Downtown Zootropolis with ten SAS teams of five mammals onboard. He was on the front deck as he finished speaking to his superior, with nothing but the open ocean in front of him.
As he put his phone away and walked into the ship's cabin, he already knew that the officers he'd be working with were far less trained than he was. The Zootropolis SWAT teams were trained extensively and for anything, but the training they underwent was nothing compared to Redbone's.
Though he was still looking forward to working with SWAT Team 1, they were apparently the most experienced out of all SWAT Forces the ZPD had nationwide in Zootopia, top of their line, but his was much higher.
But over the five years he's worked with him, he's learnt that you should almost always trust Manson. The wolf was ages younger than the grizzly yet he could still get his ass kicked by him in less than a minute, he respected that just like his superior respected him.
Redbone had many trades, negotiator, demolitions expert, but the most important one in his opinion was as a sniper, he still is one of, if not the best shot in the British SAS and was very proud of that, he almost saw it as his passion, be it a very weird one.
Being born in North London to a military family, he had pride in joining the Royal Marines in 1997 and was such a good sniper that a few years later in 2002 he was offered to be part of the British Special Air Service. After months of training and several tours in the Middle East, quickly earning the name "Black Mamba" he would be sent on his first special forces assignment in the Middle East, where coincidentally he met his superior. Frederick Jonas Manson.
He had heard about the situation in Zootropolis and Happytown when he was in Britain, but it was only just recently when he was contacted by his superior, something he somewhat expected. Manson was always involved in operations for the CIA, Redbone knew that he would eventually be brought into one of them.
Though Redbone wasn't a stranger to the target, Rouen Fyodorov has a criminal and arms dealing empire that spans worldwide, almost everyone has tried taking a shot at him, Redbone included. He had encountered Fyodorov in person on multiple occasions during his time in the Middle East, and even if that was a long time ago he remembered him very clearly.
Rouen knew he was tasked with killing him, but instead of running away the panther met him in a bar, almost casually striking up a conversation, before telling him he was found out.
Redbone had hated him ever since, not because of that alone, Rouen was a very evil mammal, sadistic even, insane, he had so many adjectives to describe him with. Not to mention his cockyness, his smugness and arrogance practically radiated off of him wherever he went, all while pretending to have elligence.
But the thing Redbone was really wondering, was why Rouen would reveal himself like he did. Rouen was always somehow one step ahead of them, it was just unlike him to outright tell everyone where he was . . . it was naive even, and it bothered Redbone incessantly.
When Manson called for him, Redbone didn't have to be convinced to join in, not that he had much of a choice but still.
He had been debriefed on the plan just a day earlier, Rouen had turned Happytown into a warzone after ZPD SWAT Teams attempted to raid the abandoned city.
On that topic though. Happytown was almost the definition of a slum, it's been abandoned for decades but in its prime, it was used as a place for the segregated predator population to be crammed into, once the segregation laws were were outlawed after the Civil Rights Movement between 1991 and 2004, it was starkly and completely abandoned in the early 2000's.
He was in Britain as he watched all of the protests and riots unfold, he was glad that the United Kingdom was strictly against the idea of segregation during its prime in the 70's and 80's, having completely abandoned and outlawed the entire concept in the early 40's.
He grew up watching shows and reading books about how horrible it was to live in Zootopia as a predator, and that all mammals were created equal was a fact and not an opinion, you were basically outcasted if you lived in Zootopia. If he were born there he would've never even considered joining the military and SAS.
As a Gray Wolf himself, he was very against the idea during his childhood and displayed it throughout his teenage and young adult years, participating in the many protests in Britain against the further restrictive laws passed in Zootopia in 1995 and 96. Already being interested in the military at that time, he knew that Zootopia's position on segregation was terrible for British and Zootopian relations, and that was an understatement.
He was very outspoken about the living conditions reported in Happytown, as was everyone else including many prey animals. No fresh water, barely any food, gangs and criminals ruled the streets, that wasn't even mentioning how crammed it was, disease was rampant, fleas, the flu, you name it, and the small rabies outbreak in 2000 boldened that, which spread like wildfire. Zootopia was committing mammal rights violations left and right back then, in fact the entire city was nothing but that.
What was even worse, Happytown was basically the industrial center of most of the west coast, with hundreds of factories producing steel, plastic, glass, concrete, textiles and other commodities. Most of, if not all the predator population were factory workers who worked in these factories, run by prey bosses that saw their employees as replaceable and expendable. They were terribly overworked, critically underpaid and there were next to no safety procedures or measures, it reminded almost everyone of the late 1800's.
When he wasn't in the military, he would watch hundreds of interviews of these workers, whenever the BBC was allowed to travel there and report on the conditions. Many of these reporters and interviewers were predators, and when put beside each other there was a very clear difference in both health and hygiene.
Many of the workers he saw on TV were often covered in soot from snout to toe and pitch black, eyes sunken in, dirtied fur that made arctic wolves look gray, almost every single one of them was devoid of emotion, voices cold and genuine.
All while every factory outside of Happytown was following labor laws perfectly, these workers were getting paid only a few pounds a day, a few pence even. He remembers many of the interviews and reports on the city, almost everyone in London was talking about it.
The factories in Happytown were essentially deathtraps, there were no safety precautions at all, every worker was exposed to the machines they used to make steel, concrete and plastic.
The products and materials made in those factories were surprisingly high in quality though, but unlike anywhere else, they were made with gallons of sweat and blood.
Upon seeing many of the reports and interviews, many British politicians, predator and prey, even compared it to modern slave labor, and most of not only Britain but all of NATO and the EU agreed.
These mammals were quite literally being worked close to death, working a minimum of ten hours a day, and a maximum of 15 hours. Many of the factory workers interviewed were saying that they'd only get $50 for working 15 hours, and that was seen as a lot by every one of them.
In the beginning of and throughout the 90's, starting at the end of 1991 with all of the news coverage and groundbreaking interviews by the BBC, the EU deemed it as a humanitarian crisis and began funding the construction projects of proper infrastructure and living spaces, apartment buildings, city squares and whatnot.
When all of the European workers got there, the conditions were so poor in the city that practically everything was in a state of decay. And that predator workers were harassed so often that they had to work nights in order to avoid heckling, and that went for any ethnicity, English, French, Irish, German, Swedish, Polish, you name it. In short, all of Europe was downright appalled by almost everything in Zootopia.
That wasn't even scratching the surface, outside of Happytown, if you were a predator you were denied everything from insurance, medical care, jobs that were above minimum wage, and even housing and a drivers license. All because of stereotypes and severe specism, but Happytown was by far the most deprived and heinous of it all.
He had heard that the prejudice against predators almost had no bounds, outside of Happytown, hate crimes were rampant and happened every single day, robbings, assaults, shootings . . . And the ZPD almost always did nothing and even when there was clear evidence of prey suspects, they were always let free.
Not to mention the T.A.M.E collars they had until the end, oppressive devices that predators were required by law to wear. They were shock collars that would activate whenever it thought the wearer was aggravated, Swinston implemented them for almost eight years and Bellwether tried to reimpliment them but didn't have the power.
They were quite literally torture devices, and they were everywhere until Swinston was diposed, British testing had said that the shock these collars would administer was over half the voltage of a defibrillator, it commonly killed nerve endings in the skin, and was able to kill small or medium sized mammals easily if there were too many shocks in a short span of time.
He couldn't even begin to imagine how hellish it must've been to grow up and work there, it was always a far cry from Democracy in his eyes. More like hell on earth.
And the only reasons it stopped were the Civil Rights and Predator Rights Movements and when both NATO and the UN stepped in after it had been taken too far, who threatened to cut alliances due to the atrocities.
It took over ten years of the Civil Rights Movement and backlash from many countries including some of Zootopia's enemies for the entirety of the current Zootopian government to be arrested and practically overthrown, before all of those laws were outlawed completely by President Lionhart and now Cubbington.
That's right, even countries like Russia and China displayed their disgust and condemned the severe segregation in Zootopia.
Cubbington took it a step further to make all forms and attempts of segregation illegal and enforced by all law enforcement, this was after the short blip of resurgence of segregation in Zootropolis, he set forward multiple programs for education on the concept of equality, Redbone found that the fact the president had to do that to stop it, quite unnerving.
The one to step too far, President Swinston, apparently was hated so much by the CIA and other government agencies that Manson has outright told him that the CIA had herself and her entire administration killed. The CIA was never a fan of the segregation laws because of how much it threatened to cut their workforce in half.
Putting all of the context and history aside though, it was an odd but fitting place for Rouen to hide, he had only seen Happytown on TV before so he was practically going in blind.
But instead of specist mammals, Redbone was facing what Manson called "untrained fanatics", and there were apparently thousands of them. He was more than ready though, the SAS was being sent in the name of anti terror and to finally capture or kill Rouen Fyodorov.
He was hoping to see what the ZPD was capable of as well, when Manson says someone has potential, he means it and Redbone should know all too well.
Though this time it was a whole SWAT Team, and he was very eager to meet Chief Adrian Bogo, one of, if not the only prey animal with a high political reputation to actively support the Civil Rights Movement and speak out against segregation during its prime, to many Brits he was an icon, especially to predators including himself.
Though he was still at sea as of now, he had to wait until they arrived and the operation continued.
And so he did.
AN: Okay, that was kind of A LOT of world building there. I want Happytown to have some history though, ya know? And hopefully I hit the nail. But Redbone is one of the main characters of the story and because he's from Britain, I feel like it was necessary for him to have a kind of . . . Outside knowledge of Happytown. Because Happytown is basically the epittomy of segregation and downright inequality, and having Redbone's segment explain this kinda just rolls with me, because Redbone has a distant knowledge of Happytown while Nick has a VERY strong opinion of it, having lived there his whole childhood.
Maybe I should do a separate story set in Happytown? It'd be a good dystopian setting. But enough of my rambling again, I just really hope everyone's enjoying this so far, so . . . See ya later.
Laughing Wolf.