I do not own Zootopia, that belongs to Disney. This a fan work made solely for the sake of amusement.

"Let It Go, It's Happytown"

Chapter Four: Prey Go Home

By: Gabriel LaVedier

The crime scene of Charlie's apartment could only be maintained and guarded for so long. After political pressure from Mayor Mousawitz, against the objections of Councilor Seedsworth, Chief Bogo released the scene. The two rhino officers were pulled from the front to be put back into regular rotation, while Louis was sent back to the Happytown beat.

He had thought the investigative assignment would have pushed him out of the rotation for Happytown, but Bogo had kept him on the assignment. It was a slightly higher pay scale, but not the most desirable beat. Bogo had intimated that he was there to continue his liaison duty with Sherlock and Hermione. It was much easier to do that with him in the area. Understandable but just not very good.

Pounding the pavement almost seemed literal to him, given the rough nature of the pavement. He knew it was a very sad reality, and showed how disconnected he was from the plight of the Happytown folk. He had been pampered and gotten used to the cared-for streets and sidewalks of the better-cared-for areas of Zootopia. Even as a Division Child, with parents who got soft denigration from those around them and was only left mostly alone because he was passing, he still got to live at a level higher than those who languished in Happytown.

He knew, at least, he wasn't alone in his patrolling. According to the schedule Judy and Nick were also still there for the next few days. They tended to be walking together given Nick's experience in the area. Being a wolf, in form, Louis was more capable of single patrol duties, with his natural goat forcefulness adding to his power. A few others were around, but not many. There were very severe restrictions on how many officers could be seconded to the assignment. Commissioner Oliphant was pressured by Mayor Mousawitz, and the Commissioner pushed his reluctant influence onto Bogo, who angrily and begrudgingly obeyed.

Folks in Happytown had oddly divided reactions to him and other officers, sharply split and with no in-between. They either ignored him, intentionally, pretending he didn't even exist, or they were shocked and defensive, assuming that he already thought they were guilty of something. Cold dismissal or hostility, nothing but that.

The old ways were sluggish, stagnant. They dragged with the collective inertia of decades, drawing even young folks along with the same hate for the outside that had been give by that outer space. Normal Zootopians might as well have been aliens to the Happytown citizens. Just thinking of it made him realize that it was the younger types that were more unpleasant, the most harsh and unwilling.

The older ones grumbled, the younger ones joined gangs. They had plenty of them, separated by species. The Loup Garou, the Striped Claw, the Polar Kings, and more still, packed into the area, 'protecting' collections of scared folk being extorted and threatened by their protectors. It was disgusting, but real.

"Hey cur! Cur! Gonna beat your own kind? Gonna shock your own flesh and blood!" One of the corners he passed had concrete steps into one of the dingy apartment buildings, forming a broad stoop. On that stoop was a tight cluster of wolves in many coat colors, their attire mostly a uniform collection of jeans and white undershirts. The one that had called out was a light wheat color, wearing a collection of gaudy faux gold chains and holding a bottle of beer.

"I'm not a cur, I'm a mutt, omega," Louis snarled back, keeping his eyes forward. He wasn't in the mood to deal with drunk wolves on him for not supporting them. He'd had overtures bluntly and clumsily trying to make a dirty cop out of him for pocket change or raw pack status. He was tired of it, and even more tired of being accused of being against half his blood. He was just as proud of being a wolf as he was of being a goat, and showed it by being a civil wolf.

"Who are you calling an omega, you swamp-blooded mutt?! Bet you're half tiger! Just passing as a real wolf!" The drinking wolf threw down his bottle, shattering it against the stoop. He rose quickly, making the other rise with him, all of them baring their yellowed fangs.

"Goat, you idiot cur," Louis spat, doing his best to tamp down the goat blood rising in his veins. His father was a good mammal, a decent mammal, but he'd had the same troubles that all goats did, a hot blood that could result in great passion. He loved powerfully and didn't suffer fools. Even diluted, Louis felt the thrumming surge now and again. "I'll headbutt your stupid muzzle into paste if you rile me. Just get on with your day drinking."

The tight pack slowly stalked down the stairs, some of them snarling, their hackles rising. "Cops don't belong here. We handle our own problems. Don't you know who we are?"

"Loup Garou, another squabbling pack of omegas pretending you don't live in Happytown and that other mammals should respect you. I respect PIs more than you, they actually at least do something," Louis said, subtly reaching his far paw to his belt, where he kept his rather overly large container of suppressant spray. It was large-mammal formula, probably more than necessary for wolves not hopped up on 'bane. But their pain was a secondary concern. A stab of empathy and moral consideration didn't stop the button pop or sliding the can out.

"No, those stripers pretend they didn't live in Happytown," the ringleader retorted. "Filthy tigers would forget where they came from. That stupid hoofer and her ideas. Predators get nothing unless they shut up and obey. You're all traitors, all of you listening to that braying hoofer telling us to get along. Not gonna happen..."

Before Louis could bring the spray to bear against the wolves a heavy voice tinged with an accent called out. "It's not predators. Happytown is for all the discarded and despised." Sherlock smartly trotted up to the group, holding something that looked like a pipe, but which he did not puff on. Despite that, it emitted a sweetly-scented cloud of smoke. It was metal, with a dark, glassy lacquer over it, ornately designed with strange, foreign motifs. "It's for all of us. As my assistant Hermione is fond of saying, we are all fellow wretches here."

"Shut it prey! What does a hoofer know about anything?" The lead wolf turned his muzzle to Sherlock, catching a muzzle full of the aromatic smoke, sending him into a small coughing fit. The other wolves took a step back, waving their paws in front of their snouts.

"You see another yak. We have yaks here. But I was never from here," Sherlock said, pushing a small button on his not-a-pipe, sending the smoke billowing out more thickly. "I was from far away, like so many that are thrown away here. I was allowed to grow old enough to know what the old world was like, before we moved here. Yaks. Prey. But there was no room for us in the city. We had no money to grease the wheels, we had no family to ease the way. No one would speak for us, and the silence locked us away in Happytown. All discarded. Just like you. Hated. Just like you. It was a change I was prepared for, and still never saw coming."

The snow was always blowing past a point on the great mountain, on all the mighty mountains but especially the sacred mother. Even hardy yaks and snow leopards stayed below the snow line if they could help it, or as far down as possible if they couldn't. Higher and higher there were fewer and fewer, until only fools and sages remained, clinging to the mountain, with inhabited caves, yurts and elaborate constructions to delineate the edge of civilized habitation.

The ancient monasteries were storehouses of wisdom, holding the old sages that had been contemplating the world for long ages. Though they seldom left the old places, and seldom had strangers in, they knew much about the ways of the world. They took students very infrequently, and for their own purposes. The honor was great, and the lessons hard.

Shalva had been chosen. His parents had hardly said a word when they informed the calf that he would ascend the holy mountain and no longer be merely theirs. He would become the disciple of the venerable master, Bajja, one of the most mysterious and aloof of the sages. He held his mountain-clinging monastery alone, with only his disciples to give it life. As a young yak he had no clue what would be expected of him, but he would learn, very clearly.

His instruction was distant, detached. What few other disciples were there, a dhole, a panda, and a swamp deer, all said that meeting Master Bajja was a rare thing, his instruction was distant, harsh and demanding. He was effective, but required results.

No matter how young he was, he was expected to obey the things that were asked. His mop of hair had been shorn, he wore padded saffron robes to only just stave off the cold, he ate meager rations, but enough to keep his body strong. He had started as any novice did, working long days keeping the floors polished, and studying texts left for him. For much of his time there he never even heard Master Bajja's voice.

Even without hearing the master's voice he learned much. Discipline, determination, and bearing up under the harsh environment. He grew up humble, and determined. It became his normal life. He thought that would be his lot, until the voice came from the depths of the monastery, telling him to come to the courtyard, piled with snow and filled with the aged wooden training figures. The wind blew, vaulting the weathered wall and cutting across Shalva's form. The biting chill, heavy with snow and shards of ice, made the calf shudder despite his best efforts.

From out of the misty frost a small object flew. Though Shalva could see it he couldn't dodge or deflect it. The small object struck the side of his head, sending him tottering. The object landed in the snow at his hooves, revealed to be a simple wooden-handled folding fan.

Shalva looked up from where the fan had come, seeing only a shadowy form. It loomed high, dark and indistinct, some billowy attire flapping in the wind. "So, young yak, I see we have many things to do before you can lay claim to any of the knowledge of this place..."

Sherlock pushed the button on his pipe again, sending up another cloud of the highly aromatic smoke, wrapping all the wolves in the miasma of incense. "The unexpected happens. But we learn to live. We must learn from mistakes or the vagaries of fate."

The lead wolf, who had made several attempts to return to a point of anger, made a last sally. But the combination of Sherlock's continual talk about his status as an immigrant and the choking press of the exotic smoke cut his ire down to the lowest ebb. He snorted and motioned with his head to his pack. "Let's go, huff, let's just leave the mutt and the hoo- hack- hoofer."

Louis waited for the grumbling wolves to walk away before he nodded to Sherlock. "Thank you, Mr. Gyag. That situation was going to end but I like your deescalation over unnecessary repeated suppressant spray in the eyes and nose. It's less paperwork."

Sherlock nodded, waving the not-a-pipe around and slowly inhaling. "Master Bajja always warned me that power could be beaten by more power, but cutting down the need could defeat anything. It's a perspective I try my best to live by. It certainly got taught to me very clearly."

"Young Disciple, do you think you have the force to defeat me?" Years later, Shalva was no longer the calf that had been so easily hit by the fan. His direct instruction from Master Bajja had made him more of a refined individual, more capable. His training in ancient ways from a true sage made him more capable than most who had studied for the same amount of time.

"I've been developing my technique and strength, venerable master," Shalva responded, taking the standard stance he had been taught for the start of lessons. "I know defeating you would be difficult, but you asked."

"Your humility needs work, but that is not the point. Let us say I am able to be beaten as I am. Then say I take up a staff. Could you beat me with your basic technique?"

"You taught me well, Master Bajja," Shalva replied, shifting his posture to be low and angled. "I could take on a staff with the power you taught me to release."

"And with a dagger, young disciple?"

"You've taught me to approach and with your instruction I can learn the proper techniques," Shalva asserted.

"And a sword, young yak?"

"I know there are ways we may do things. The great masters feared no sword or arrow," Shalva asserted strongly.

"You know what I have told you of the outside, of the terrible weapons beyond these mountains. Can you move faster than the rush of these weapons? Do you think that even the great masters could really stop a sword in swing? They were cut down like any other. No power in your hooves or in your head could ever stop the power of real force. Power will always be undone by more power, and there will always be more power, young disciple. Think deeply on this. Power will fail, but deflection will never raise the need, only push aside the force until it is abated."

Shalva thought deeply on the words, not noticing the shadowy form of his master until the billowing robes were practically fluttering by his form. Though he deflected what basic strikes he could manage, he eventually tried to attack and was stricken in the head with a paper fan with a wooden handle.

"I think maybe the ZPD should consider something like that. Stern force may work for Bogo but not all of us have the same inclination," Louis said, snapping his can of suppressant spray back into place. "Well... I mean, you heard why I do. It comes out at times I can't completely control, but also when I can."

Sherlock smiled. "As I've heard of other mixed children. Glad I could be of help to you, Officer Wulfberg. You've treated us fairly. You could have done the bare minimum but you've been attentive and helpful. You actually care."

Louis waved off the comment and looked at the thing in Sherock's hoof. "That's interesting. Just based on your name I figured, you know, it would be real but... I guess I should have guessed. It's a cliché but I see incense like that in places that have yaks and other mammals from the same place."

"I have a family collection of antique and special incense burners, but they're very basic. This not only fits the name, as you say, but this small button creates a bellows effect that makes it produce more smoke. I got this from a mail-order offer. I found an advertisement and sent money and designs to a shop run by a brushwood hound. Apparently the fact that I chose a pipe design was unique enough that she sent my money back with the pipe."

"I guess some folks really are good," Louis said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Have you discovered anything more on the case?"

"There's little enough to find. The police have all the information, and I only have cooperation from you, by virtue of what Councilor Seedsworth gave me. I'm doing my best to keep my promise to him, but I can only do so much."

"I did my best to give you access and let you see what records were available," Louis said. "The ME is the best bet for getting anything more than airy suspicion, though Chief Bogo said he was actively looking into charges of professional malfeasance when I, ah, gave my own report about indicators in the apartment. We did a lot of winking over whose signature was attached to that information, mostly because Mayor Mousawitz is raising high holy darkness over the mere fact that you exist."

"Existence is a troublesome thing much of the time. But in all my years of uncovering secrets I've never been cursed for simple existence. I usually need to do something of some substance to create such ire," Sherlock noted with a contemplative stroke of his chin.

"He really, really wants anything Happytown related quiet. Quick investigations, quick arrests, no need for a lot of fine detail and too much concern about getting things perfectly right. Just keep it out of the papers. He's mad at Councilor Seedsworth, but can't do a thing and he knows it. He's leaning hard on Commissioner Oliphant, and he's making a show of leaning on Chief Bogo. He can't keep up a charade forever. Someone has to buckle and go a little harder than they would like. We need some substance to justify more action."

"Councilor Seedsworth said that all I needed was something to increase police activity. He wanted the place given due and proper consideration. His wife is from here, and personal connections make good motivation. That's why I'm fighting so hard for it as well. I just wish I knew what more could be added besides the medical report and the investigation in the apartment."

"Mousawitz called it highly speculative which seems to be his term for politically embarrassing. It's just thin enough that he can justify turning a blind eye. One wafer thin sliver of additional significant information and he can't hold that. That's all we need."

"I'll get something. I owe it to Charlie, and this place. The mayor may think little of it and be too afraid to help it, but he's from elsewhere, and remembers it. I'm from elsewhere. So many here are. We may be from far away but we are here now, and this is what matters to us. Whatever others may think, and however it may be, this is ours."

Days piled on days, lessons piled on lessons. It was nothing like most other young ones could have comprehended. Even the most success-obsessed families in more urban places wouldn't have piled on the lessons as hard and continuously as had been piled on all the disciples of Master Bajja.

It had been years of such. Shalva was still very much a child, but he had learned so much he was more developed than other. He had become fluent in the strange tongue so many foreigners who visited the mountain spoke. He had inured his body to the harshness of the freezing environment and modest rations. His physical prowess in martial arts was matched by a keen and deductive mind honed by complex and elaborate challenges, including numerous times deciphering koans that meant nothing. Finding the misdirection led to knowing when you focus on other things and avoid putting too much stock in seeming depth.

He had seen his parents infrequently, but was still their calf, and still required to go where they went, even after years of being under the tutelage of Master Bajja. He hardly thought about such things, focused on the present, and thinking, sometimes, of becoming a master himself. He had absorbed a good amount of Bajja's technique. He could have worked in a similar way.

Everything changed one morning when Shalva was engaged in copying scrolls of the ancient sages. He put his own style into his calligraphy, his use of ink thickness, line motion and how well he had mastered keeping still while the brush was in motion. The language of his folk could be written easily with enough practice, but his biggest focus was maintaining the straightness of the bar that crossed the top of every word, to demonstrate his mastery of the technique.

"Young Yak," Bajja said, standing in the door frame to the scriptorium. "The time has come."

"The time for what, venerable master?" Shalva asked, continuing to form the letters.

"That time which I always knew would come. Your family is leaving the ancestral lands, and going to a far place, a strange land you cannot fathom."

Shalva's carefully controlled motion slipped, and his perfectly formed letter was ruined. "What? How can they?"

"They have the ability and the choice. They want better for themselves and you. That distant location will be much better for all of you."

"No... this is my home! This is where I wish to be! I can be a sage, a teacher, learn m-" The protestation ended abruptly, as his shaved head was slapped with the familiar wood frame of Bajja's paper fan.

"Young disciple, the world is not set in stone. We who make statements about it are only telling what we can see with benefit of years. We can be wrong, too. You must learn to take life as it comes and only attempt to change when it is necessary. You will know it when it comes."

Shalva was quiet for a long while, looking at the ruined scroll before him and feeling like he was just falling through nothing. "But..."

"Home is not a patch of dirt covering the bones of your ancestors, or soaked in the blood of the fathers that fought to take it. Home is where you are, and it only is home if you make it so. You live where you live. Home is what becomes of your intention. Remember that always, young yak. If you feel a place is your home, it is your home. This place is your home. But as well, if you feel it, this new place could be your home. You will make the choice."

The lesson echoed in Shalva's mind. He thought often about the land he was leaving. The land he left. He encountered such new things, things he had only seen from visitors, but approached them with open curiosity, using the lessons of Master Bajja to allow him to reason his way though cars, computers and the overcrowded plane that took them across the land and sea into a place he could scarcely believe.

The sacred mother was grand, an austere glory, white and massive, spread far, each feature a speck in the immensity. Zootopia was a new experience entirely. It was a glittering jewel, packed tightly together. He was astounded by the size. Packed in a small space, an enormous small space. So many mammals there, of every size and shape that he could imagine.

New arrivals were subjected to tests and repeated examinations. The family health was found to be at least proper, while language was a different matter. His parents were minimally fluent, the impetus for the trip. Shalva was found to be more technically fluent, loaded up with vocabulary and robotic rote replies but little extemporaneous capability.

They had no family in the city. They had money enough to live, and his father had a job prospect, but nothing to convince the Zootopian authorities they were anything more than common foreigners. They were advised to just go to Happytown, but his father had an idea to try and settle among those culturally similar, in Tanukitown. He was a good man, a daring man that wanted the best for his family in a new world. He would see them integrated into the culture of the city.

They had made a good effort of it, taking the smallest place they could, sending Shalva to school and doing the jobs they had arranged. They made the effort. They truly tried. But everyone looked at them as others. They didn't belong among the other citizens of Zootopia. If they were not looked on with suspicion, they were derided for their foreign rural roots. They were pushed back, more and more, by cold stares and bitter insults. Pushed to one place.

Happytown was there for them. Even if it was mostly predators, there were prey. Prey like them. Prey with heavy accents, prey with foreign habits and foreign thoughts. That was them too. They were among their own kind. Strangers who were the exact same. They were all the same, squeezed into their tiny rooms with frequent cold water and insects trying to take possession of some portion of that space. But they had lived in a harsher environment. They had survived an environment that killed, in surroundings with less sophistication. Their surroundings were not the trouble, it was the ones outside that place that had taken them.

He lived through that, grew up in it. His parents worked outside Happytown. He went to school outside of Happytown for as long as it was possible. Other mammals didn't care what they said to them, especially when they found out or inferred they lived among the other discarded in Happytown. His peers and some adults looked down on Shalva for that reason. He was told to go back where he had come from. Go back home. In that squalid little room in Happytown, for all its faults, was a space for life.

He was home.

Author's Notes

Hate-Slang- There's a lot of it, of course, mostly of my own development. It's pretty self-explanatory but I've had folks ask about other elements I thought were that, so I prefer to err on the side of caution. Cur is a generic insult to other canids. Mutt is a reclaimed insult for a Division Child, especially a passing one. Striper for tigers. Hoofer as a collective generic term for hoofed mammals, typically with an insulting overtone.

'Bane- Wolfsbane, the intoxicant of choice for canids and vulpids. Other species mess around with it, as they do with other botanicals, but such things get exceptionally specific.

Sherlock's Backstory- It's a very loose, very dramatic reinterpretation of the background from the cartoon.

The Pipe- This is a private reference. I had an idea, and still have all my notes and preliminaries for a comic or novel about a boarding house run by a married pair of canines, one of them a retired Japanese doctor shiba inu. She always carried what looked like a meerschaum pipe that was actually an incense burner, with a way to draw in and puff out air without actually smoking it. I always loved the concept, so I gave it to Sherlock. It's beyond appropriate.