Commissioner Elba listened quietly, hooves clasped in front of his stiffened features, as TUSK Commander Davis Bowser and Sergeant Higgins took turns explaining the events of the recent incident at Glacier Heights. Chief Trunchbull stood between them, all the while looking like he'd just bitten into a sour crab apple.

'Took turns,' indeed. The two mammals spent over ten minutes caustically interrupting each other whenever the other mammal said something that contradicted their story. Bowser said Hopps had shot at them first. Higgins countered by claiming that they'd instead shot at her when she refused to let them fire on the fugitive foxes without provocation. Higgins said Bowser had been so focused on Wilde that he'd failed to capture the smaller fox when he had the chance. Bowser countered that Higgins had been right next to Finnick Courroux when he'd escaped. All the while Elba thirsted for a glass of cool water with aspirin and failed to determine who was speaking the truth.

It was roundabout when both mammals began to accuse each other of gross incompetence that the water buffalo decided that enough was enough. "Quiet, both of you!" He snapped, silencing them almost immediately. "This isn't getting anywhere. Without witnesses we have no way of knowing which one of you is telling the truth. Trunchbull, what is the condition of the two TUSK officers who were darted at the scene?"

"They're awaiting treatment for both the gunshot wound to neutralize the tranquilizers, Commissioner." Trunchbull said. "But I wouldn't advise taking their statements as gospel. They have the most to lose if we choose Higgins' side of the story."

"I know." Elba said, nodding. Bowser gave Trunchbull the stink-eye but said nothing. "Here's what we're going to do. Bowser and Higgins will give their statements in separate rooms, and the two TUSK officers will be held in custody until we get to the bottom of this."

"But sir!" Bowser started.

"No buts! And that goes to Hopps, too!"

"Sir, no-one has seen her or the fox since they fell in the river. We've lost the trail. " Trunchbull said.

"Then you'll pick that trail back up again, and quick!" Elba commanded. "And until we get the truth of what happened in that alley, TUSK will have no part in the search!"

"But-"

Elba turned his mounting wrath in the razorback's direction. "I said no buts, Commander! TUSK is deep enough in hot water as it is! Koslov was right there, he was right there in that apartment block, and you couldn't even get that done!"

"We would have gotten him if someone hadn't tipped him off! He was long gone by the time we got there!"

"Commander, enough!" Trunchbull barked. "If you will excuse us, Commissioner, we will be returning to the station now."

Elba nodded. At this point he just wanted them out of his office. "You are dismissed."

When they were gone, Elba turned to his intercom and asked his secretary if he could borrow one of the aspirins he kept under his desk. Naturally the secretary agreed.

"Thank you, Vincent. Before you come up, could you call the mayor's office and check on things?"

"Right away, sir."

Elba wearily leaned back in his chair and considered asking Vincent to print a sign for his desk stating 'No Arguments Allowed.' He didn't need the aggravation, he didn't want it, and he sure as hell wasn't going to have another. Not in his office.

Vincent Porcupin arrived with a small packet and a glass of water. "Your aspirin, sir."

Elba accepted it gratefully and dropped the pill into the water to dissolve. "What did Llater say?"

"If you're worried that Captain Bogo is stepping out of line, don't be." The porcupine with the little glasses said. "The mayor hasn't asked him and the lieutenant to leave yet, but Llater said he'll update me about that later."

She must be worried about what they'll get up to if she makes them leave, Elba thought. "Have Llater tell them that I want them both back in their offices at Precinct One, and to wait there until I've spoken with the mayor myself."

Vincent agreed and returned to his own desk. When he finished making the call, Elba grabbed his cane and set out to the mayor's office at the summit of City Hall. Fortunately for his leg, the closest elevator was not far from his office. He didn't see Bogo or McHorn on his way there, but he did see the llama at his desk in the wide shiny hallway before Swinton's office. "Is the mayor available, Mr. Llater?"

"Just a moment, sir." Llater pushed a button. "Mayor Swinton, the Commissioner is here to see you." He listened to her response before turning back to Elba. "The mayor will see you now."

Swinton was sitting at her desk, still dressed in the ruby red pantsuit she'd chosen as her outfit for the debate. It was torn at the shoulder, and there was a dressing on her forearm where a tranq dart had struck her. Elba was impressed that in spite of this she was still as composed as Ravel's Bolero.

Swinton looked up and grimaced when she saw him. Elba braced himself. "Good God, Commissioner."

"Ma'am?"

"Your face. It's a miracle he didn't give you a concussion."

Elba touched the side of his face where Cunninghorn had struck him prior to abducting Benjamin. It still ached at the slightest pressure. "Your trust is touching, Mayor Swinton. I trust that Captain Bogo and Lieutenant McHorn conducted themselves professionally?"

"Mostly they did." Swinton conceded. "But toward the end Bogo was getting visibly frustrated. I can't say I blame him."

"Did you answer any of his questions?" Elba couldn't hold back his own annoyance.

"How could I? I had nothing to do with what happened to that cheetah, or everything else that has happened in this city. I don't even have a collar."

"But Bellwether does." Elba spoke. "Some mammals might find that very convenient for you."

Swinton cocked her head and scrutinized him. "Are you one of those mammals?"

"I've decided to hold back on my opinion, for now."

Swinton seemed to accept that answer and gestured for him to sit in one of the chairs in front of her desk. Elba sat down. "Are you going to question me too, commissioner?"

"The city's in a crisis. The only question I have is what you're going to do about it." Elba leaned forward, propping his upper body on his cane.

Swinton tapped at the open notebook in front of her with a pen. "Predators are behind this. Only prey mammals were collared. It's obviously some sick, petty scheme to get back at us for repressing their basic instincts. I'd like you to put out an arrest warrant for every predator in the city until we find which ones are responsible."

Elba drummed his fingers on the cane. "You're telling me to persecute an entire minority."

Swinton dug the nib of the pen into the notebook. "I'm telling you to do what needs to be done, Elba."

"Arresting the entire community is stupid." Elba replied.

There was a muted crack as the pen nib broke. "What did you say?"

"Fascists are no different than fools. Are you a fool? Come on, answer the question!"

Swinton released the broken pen. "That community betrayed this city."

"And why would they do that?"

"Because they're terrorists."

"Why?"

"They don't like being collared. They can't accept that it's for the greater good."

"And what is the greater good?"

"Maintaining co-existence between predator and prey."

"Co-existence." Elba snorted. Swinton started looking through her desk, but didn't seem to find a pen. Having always kept a couple handy in his coat pocket, Elba passed one of them to her so she could continue expending stress on her note taking. "Swinton, you worry too much about other mammals outgrowing you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's something I've seen a lot in cases involving bigotry. I believe a socialist at our university even wrote a book about it a few years ago."

"Can you get to the point, please?"

"Apologies. The point is that many bigots feel the way they do because they're afraid of becoming minorities themselves. You've heard the complaints. Foreigners taking all our jobs. Educated elites looking down on the rednecks for using vulgar slurs such as 'pelts' and 'beefcake.' A common rat becoming President of the United States. According to the book, many mammals are concerned that as those of different species, religion and ethnicities gain social power, their social power is gradually waning."

"My social power is as strong as ever."

"Then why are you trying so hard to delay the inevitable? President Holloway has being working to get the collars abolished long before that pile-up happened, you know that. Permit me a small assumption: you're afraid of being left behind."

Swinton's features slackened for a little while before swiftly hardening again. "That doesn't make our family regime fascist."

"That's what your father and your grandfather wanted you to think." Elba was not going to pull punches on this one.

"But it's not."

"When Liberum started protesting the laws your father and grandfather set in place, didn't you try to stop them?"

"Of course I tried to stop them." Swinton rolled her eyes. "That was part of my job in Roarcadia."

"A leader who truly cares about their city would listen to all sides and try to act on their grievances, even as they understand that they can't please everyone." Elba's chair was on wheels, so he inched it closer to the desk. "I am thankful that you at least learned from Theodore's mistakes and revoked some of the crueler laws when you were elected to this office. I suggest that for now, we allow the ZBI to handle the terrorist attacks and focus more on the Tundratown war. If the ZBI ask for assistance, that's when we'll step in."

"I didn't realize you care so little yet so much for jurisdiction." Swinton said.

Elba snorted. "They're investigators, just like the rabbit from the Congressional Research Service. They're just as interested in us as they are in the terrorists. And every action we take could either endear us or doom us."

Swinton stopped scribbling. "Aren't you being a little dramatic?"

"Many a regime was toppled because they made too many enemies. Take Rudolf Hitler's regime for example. The atrocities committed in his name caused half the planet to rise up against him." Elba rested his arms on the desk, a foot away from Swinton's. "It's not just enemies. It's often the regime itself that defeats its creators. The Marmotoini Government failed because internal corruption almost destroyed its own economic system."

"So they almost ruined their own country, so what?" Swinton tapped the pen he had given her.

Elba sighed. "Dr. Lemming wrote reports on predator patients to deliberately make them appear unsympathetic on Theodore's orders, and since assuming power you've done nothing about it. Unemployment among predators is among the worst in the world, and those with jobs are working for cents."

Swinton waved her arm at the sparkling city skyline behind her. "That cheetah who was hired by Pottermass would disagree."

"And Cunninghorn made it very clear to him that Pottermass had ulterior motives for doing so." Elba said. The crow-lines around Swinton's eyes became more pronounced as her glare deepened, but Elba was not going to be cowed in sugar coating. "And I'm still not happy about all those reports I scrounged up the last few weeks. Dozens- no, hundreds of incidents of harassment, profiling, violence and unlawful death against predators, all dealt with internally without so much as a slap on the wrist. And you just sit there, wondering why anyone would want to attack your city?"

Swinton gripped the edge of her side of the desk tightly. Elba expected a threat, but the words never came. Then the blonde pig slumped in her seat, the pen resting loosely in her hoof, as she gave up on finding a defense against Elba's brutal and contemptuous condemnation of the system her family created. The commissioner paused at the sight. He hadn't seen her so crushed since the decision had been made to abandon Roarcadia. She had grown up there. It had been paradise to her. Blind as she'd been to the darkness beneath the sunny façade, the city had been her home. Now, on the eve of her reelection, she faced losing this home as well. Elba felt guilt tearing at his insides. In the heat of the moment he'd forgotten about the losses Swinton had suffered already; her father dying earlier this year; her friend Assistant Mayor Woolton eaten alive in a Bug Burga several weeks ago.

Elba reached out and draped a hoof over her arm.

"I know that nothing of what I've said is what you wanted to hear." He spoke gently. "But if I'm going to help you through this then I have to be a realist. Give the predators more grief is just going to hurt you in the long run. You're playing with fire, and I don't want to see you get burned."

Swinton ran her other hoof through her thick blonde tuft. "It may already be too late for that."

"But not too late for a little aloe vera to fix the damage." Elba internally cringed at his own metaphor. "When we moved on from Roarcadia and started anew here in Zootopia, the first thing you did was recommend that I become the new Chief of Precinct One."

"You earned it. Your strategic decisions in Roarcadia ensured that the damage did not spread to affect our neighbors." Swinton said with a hint of pride. "Not to mention that you personally evacuated my family when the city proved unsalvageable."

"That was my job, you know." To a certain extent, Elba still regretted being so quick to accept the decision. He had been a lowly sergeant back then, and the promotion had been such a huge jump that all his smarter acquaintances had warned him that he'd be in over his head. Elba had been, at first, but with the support of those who didn't resent him for his achievement he had managed. "Your family didn't make that job easy."

Swinton sighed. When her grandfather had claimed the mayor's office, he'd wasted no time using his political influence to enforce some of Roarcadia's more distasteful laws on Zootopia, up to and include permitting violence to keep predators in line; Elba had often rolled his eyes at hearing how Thomas Swinton had even made it illegal for predator and prey to shake paws. Then Theodore Swinton came to power and introduced the damned TAME collars, and then malfunctions and accidents started maiming mammals left and right. For years Elba had tried to counsel the Swintons, to make them understand that their narrow-minded cruelty would only create a new Liberum, but none of them had listened. Or so he had thought.

It had turned out that Tilda Swinton, young and eager to learn what it meant to rule a city, had a more pragmatic head on her shoulders. She'd stood to the side, almost out of sight, watching as Elba was routinely ignored by her stubborn elders. Thomas and Theodore had been adamant that their methods were right, but she'd listened and learned. She shared their beliefs, absorbed their spiel that a predator's best place was beneath a pig's hoof where they could do no harm, but at the same time she understood that it was their unnecessarily cruel means of oppression that drove Liberum to do what they did. When she took her father's place after his diagnosis, the first thing she had done was revoke the brutal laws allowing predators to be abused without the perpetrators being punished. She removed some of the most unbelievably corrupt bureaucrats from City Hall and replaced them with pragmatists that were less likely to stab each other in the back. Finally, she had Elba promoted to Commissioner and transferred his office a mere two floors beneath hers. Of course her decisions had not been universally accepted. They never are. But she was a Swinton, and most knew better than to mess with her.

Elba was about to say more, but then the intercom interrupted him.

"Mayor Swinton, Mr. Pottermass has just arrived at reception." Llater said. "Should I bring him up, ma'am?"

Swinton tapped a button. "I'm a bit busy right now. Have him escorted to the Watering Hole. He can wait with Llamadeus until I'm ready."

"Yes, ma'am."

Elba eyed the intercom. "Isn't Llamadeus supposed to be under confinement with the other victims?"

Swinton shrugged. "I thought he would be more comfortable here. I've already hired some mammals to tend to his needs until this blows over." Elba gave her a look. "And I wanted him well away from Bellwether and her sycophants."

"How can you still be worried about that sheep after everything that has happened tonight?"

"Because I just know that bitch will find a way to blame me for this and put it in her damned paper!" Swinton hissed with unexpected ferocity, standing up and tapping her mayor's badge. "But I promise you now, there was always be a Swinton on this chair! She will not have it! No-one will sit here but me! So long as I still breathe air, she will not get this seat!"

Elba raised an eyebrow. "The way you talk about that seat, I almost see the words 'Siege Perilous' atop the backrest."

Swinton glanced at the backrest and turned back to the water buffalo with weary eyes. "Elba, why must everything be Arthurian to you?"

Elba smirked and twirled his cane like he's just pulled it from a stone. "We all have our quirks, Madam Mayor."

Swinton moved out from behind the desk. "It's time I met with Llamadeus and Pottermass. I'll need to arrange for Bisoniing to be brought here."

"I should being going to the precinct myself." Elba pressed his cane to the floor and stood up. When he blinked, his eyes didn't want to open. He checked his watch and saw how late it was. God, he was too old for all-nighters. But he had a job to do, and all the coffee in Precinct One to do it.

His first stop upon entering the station was to find Bogo and McHorn in their offices. When he got there, he found Higgins there with them, agitatedly cleaning a large gun as he vented to his comrades about the disaster at Glacier Heights.

Elba tapped his cane, alerting all three officers to his presence. "Officer Higgins, I have larger issues at present than having to listen to one of my officers use that language in my presence, so just this once I am going to forget you did."

Higgins' tiny ears flattened. "Sorry."

Bogo stood up and stopped just short of Elba's personal space. "Sir, it's the mayor. I'm sure she's involved somehow."

Elba was sure, too, but he kept that opinion to himself. "How, Captain?"

He was irritable from being up all night, but Bogo must have interpreted the commissioner's tone as irritation and him, because he immediately backpedalled. "Forgive me, sir. I know it's all conjecture, I shouldn't have said anything."

Elba pointed toward Bogo's private office at the back of the room. "You keep a recorder in your office, right? Tell me your thoughts. All of them."

Bogo and his comrades stared in bewilderment. It was yet another unorthodox action from the Police Commissioner, but the hell with that. Nothing in this city was orthodox anymore. Elba wanted to hear everything, every opinion, every theory. Anything that could help him make sense of all this madness, he wanted to hear it.

Once in the office, Elba sat down, glad to be off his tired, aching leg. "Go on, Captain. Why do you suspect her this much?"

Bogo looked uncomfortable as he sat down. "Have you ever heard of a Dr. Daniel Slothfeld?" Elba shrugged. "He was a sloth, a Boarlish neurobiologist and biochemist who died in a bombing two years ago. When that caribou, Antlerson was brought to the ER, my sister heard him say something about warning Dr. Slothfeld."

"Dr. Bogo stated he may have been delirious at the time." Elba started to ask if this was relevant to Swinton, when he froze. "Wait. When he abducted Clawhauser, didn't Cunninghorn mention a Slothfeld?"

Bogo nodded, his eyes full of hate. "Yes. When I asked the mayor if she knew who he was, she looked ready to have a stroke. Think about it, sir. Wilde said he was shot with a serum the night he went savage. If anyone had the skills to create such a serum, it would be Slothfeld."

Elba clenched his jaw twisted the cane into the carpet as fury threatened to take hold. What have you done now, Tilda?

"We need to find Slothfeld." Bogo urged.

"How?" Elba growled. "We have no leads. No concrete evidence. We have nothing but theories."

Bogo shook his head. "Who do we know has a connection to every major event that has happened in this city over the last few weeks?"

Elba shook his head. "I am in no mood for twenty questions, Captain."

"Whose disappearance started the conflict between Koslov and Mr. Big? Who is one of the missing predators that vanished over the course of two years, right after Dr. Slothfeld's supposed death? Who murdered the Assistant Mayor and targeted the key witness, the witness Cunninghorn is delivering to Slothfeld at this very moment?"

Elba felt a heat wave come over him, the kind that came with stress, and felt sweat start to form beneath his thick clothes. "That bear."

Bogo nodded fervently. "TUSK officers were killed by unknown assailants at a saw mill on Founder's Mountain. A jeep full of John Does was discovered by Officer Hopps not too far from there. We may find Sedor somewhere on that mountain, and possibly more evidence to prove my suspicions. We could even find where that backstabber took Ben."

"You want authorization to go to Founder's Mountain." Elba said.

"Sedor's up there, I'm sure of it!" Bogo hit the desk in his excitement. "He could be the key to understanding what the hell is going on in this city. We need Sedor, sir. We've got to find that crazy son of a bitch as soon as possible."