A/N: Hello everyone and welcome back. Thank you for the messages and review for the last chapter. I know, I'm an evil person and have apparently lost some readers because of the dark turn of that chapter. Well, I'm sorry to say real life isn't that pretty and that chapter is tame compared to some of the other stories I've read. Either way it hasn't deterred my writing and I will continue to write and keep this story up to date. With that enjoy this chapter and again please like, comment, and share it really does keep pushing me to keep writing.
"Judy, they're ready for us." Nick poked his head in on his wife. She was sitting on a small sofa lightly kicking her feet while wringing her paws together crushing the tissue she held. She looked up slowly trying to give a small smile to Nick.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before slowly letting it out and hopping down and flattening out her dress. She looked herself over and adjusted the golden rose she had pinned on. "Okay, Nick. Let's do this." She said before walking over giving him a light hug.
They walked paw in paw down the dimly lit corridor, other mammals moving to the side to give them room even in their own haste. They made the short walk to the doors saying stage A when Judy stopped. Nick has his paw on the door but wasn't going to open it until she was ready, not with everything she had gone through the past week. Judy put her paw on the door as well and looked up at Him, "I'm ready Nick. We're doing this for Susan... Shara... James... Daphnie..." a tear slowly fell from her eye, she closed her eyes tight and shook her head. "No more tears. I've cried enough, I won't let their memory be tragic." She opened her eye back up again this time free of tears and with fire in them, "their memory will be the spark that changes everything."
Nick smiled warmly at her, "Yes it will, Judy. Now, our audience is waiting." Judy returned the smile and they both pushed on the doors revealing the ZNN soundstage. Eight chairs were placed facing the cameras and a small audience in the stands behind the cameras. Chief Bogo, Mayor Sam Bullwinkle, Assistant Mayor Dean Rocky, Bonnie and Stu Hopps, and Gideon Grey were all standing around the chairs. Bonnie was giving Gideon a tight hug, "Thank you, Bonnie. You two have been such a big help these past few days. It's been... hard. Home reminds me too much of Sharla right now."
"It's no problem at all Gideon. Our home is your home for as long as you need it." Bonnie reached up and placed a paw on the side of Gideon's face giving a warm smile.
"Thank you. I just don't want to feel like I'm a burden." Gideon tried to return the smile but faltered as his eyes started to tear up again.
"You'll never be a burden at the burrow," the three turned to see Nick and Judy walking up, "the burrow is so big you'll get lost if you're not careful."
Gideon gave a slight chuckle, "Actually the first night I did. I couldn't sleep so I just walked around all night until I got hopelessly lost."
Stu gave a small laugh, "That you were. We found him in one of the lower den rooms curled up on a couch."
"Yeah, I found that place and from the sound of it, no one was nearby. I climbed onto the couch and finally lost it." Everyone became very quiet, "Everything I had been holding in finally came out and I cried myself to sleep that night."
Judy went over to Gideon and gave him a tight hug, "I did the same thing after Nick and I had gotten back from the gardens that day. Everything was just a blur I really couldn't understand what was all going on. We sat on the couch just holding each other when it finally hit, I couldn't stop crying until Nick finally carried me to bed."
All the mammals got quite again as Gideon and Judy released their embrace, the shared pain held in their eyes as they looked at each other.
"Excuse me," Everyone looked over to see a sharply dressed snow leopard walking up with a tablet in her paws, "we are a few minutes away from beginning the show. Can everyone please take their seats."
Each of the mammals sat down as the audience quieted down and other mammals got behind all the cameras on the stage. Red, quite now, signs lit up above the audience, introduction music for the show began to play, and a small red light came on a camera pointed right at the host. "Good evening Zootopia, we are here at the ZNN studios to bring you a special report on the recent attacks on interspecies couples both within the city and the surrounding area. We have with us representatives from the ZPD, the mayors office, and citizens directly affected by recent tragic events." As she spoke lights came on different cameras pointed at everyone on stage, televisions across the city showed the faces of the mammals seated, even the large display in the city center that had Gazelle greeting mammals to the city was showing the special. "Thank you, everyone, for being here tonight, I know the last few days have been very difficult for you all so I am greatly pleased to have you all here with us tonight."
There were quiet mumblings of thank you's but it was mayor Bullwinkle who spoke out, "It is us who should be thanking you, Clair. The past few weeks have been very troubling with all the anti-interspecies problems plaguing the city. We've had mammals forcibly removed from homes, publicly humiliated, physically assaulted, and worse. My office has been getting phone calls and e-mails asking me what we are going to do about it. The sad part is the numbers have been equal for both sides." Sam closed his eye and gently shook his head remembering all the hate calls coming to his office.
"Both sides, how do you mean?" Clair asked while he paused.
Sam looked up at Clair, "I've gotten calls from the mammals who were the victims of the prejudice. They first called the ZPD but there was nothing criminal done to them, so they called my office asking what I was going to do about it. On the other side, I get calls asking when I was going to finally enact some laws or ordinances to prevent any interspecies couple from even living in the city."
"Your talking about laws passed years ago preventing same-sex couples from getting work benefits, adopting, getting married, even been seen in public together." Clair was swiping at her tablet pulling up the old laws and having them display on a few tvs around the room.
Sam got a fire in his eyes, "Yes. Certain mammals wanted me to enact laws just like those while forgetting I'm the one who got those laws removed. In a decent society, there is no need for anything like that. Any mammal should be able to love whoever they want regardless of gender or species." This caused a loud cheer to come from the audience. However, a few remarks could be heard through the cheering of mammals not thrilled with the mayors choice to remove the old laws.
Dean got a large smile on his face from all the cheering, "My husband and I thank you every day for removing those laws, Sam." The moose looked down at his closest friend and smiled before the flying squirrel turned to the host and continued, "That is why when the anti-interspecies story was published in the Zootopia Times the mayor and I knew something needed to be done about it. We sat down and began writing a bill to bring to the city council prevent the discrimination of interspecies couples." This got a very loud response from the audience that took several minutes to quite down.
After the audience finally settled down Clair then spoke to Bogo, "That definitely would be a step in the right direction. But, I have to ask Chief Bogo how would something like this be enforced? Even now its difficult to prove any kind of discrimination, unless it's blatantly overt."
"Yes, anything but overt discrimination is very difficult to prove and honestly unless it is overt it becomes more of a civil than a police matter where the lawyers need to step in. However, we will work with local businesses and the general public to bring to light things that are prejudicial to hopefully prevent it before it happens. We won't be able to change every mammal's mind but hopefully, we can change most and prevent the tragedies of last week from happening again." The room got uncomfortably quite after Bogo's statement, at that point the entire city had heard about the murders that happened in Bunnyburrow.
A loud sniff broke the silence as everyone looked over at Gideon Grey who was wiping his eyes with a tissue. "Mr. Grey is there anything you would like to add," Clair asked quietly.
Gideon wiped his eyes one last time before looking at the leopard, "One mammal changed my whole life, Sharla. I was not a very nice fox growing up." He looked over at Judy sitting next to him, she put a comforting paw on his big one trying to give him extra strength. "I was a bully and treated other mammals like they were beneath me. Sharla, she saw the real me and helped to make me a better mammal. When we got married it was the best day of my life right next to the day we found out she was pregnant. Then, another mammal decided to change my life again…" He took a deep breath slowly letting it out, "Stan. He took away my Sharla. He also took away two of the kits she was carrying. One survived, who I named Sharla and will hopefully be leaving the NICU next week." A warm smile slowly came across Gideon's muzzle as a round of applause cause from the audience. "Losing them all was so difficult, I lost someone who brought out the best in me. Now, I'm going to fight to make sure no-one else has to go through what I did and to make sure my daughter has a safe world to grow up in."
More applause erupted leading to Clair trying and cut in, "Thank you, Mr. Grey. We need to take a short break, but when we come back we'll be speaking with the two mammals who were at the center of the newspaper controversy, Judy, and Nick Wilde. We'll be right…"
"Stan didn't do enough!" An outburst from the audience brought a shocked reaction to everyone. Lights went up on the audience as the cameras panned to find the source of the voice. A red panda stood up, "Yeah I said it. That hare only began what should have happened a long time ago. Mammals should stay within their own species!"
"Security, remove that panda. I won't take that kind of talk in here with these mammals present." Clair was standing visibly shaking with rage.
"No." All eyes turned to Judy who stood up from her chair, a single camera spinning around locking on her as she began to walk forward.
The TV control room was going crazy, "Sir what do we do, we were supposed to be on a commercial break."
"Are you kidding me, keep this live damn it! Don't you dare go to commercial. Camera A stay on Judy, Camera B keep on that panda, C and D stay with Clair and the group to get reaction shots and get the damn audience mics turned up, I don't want to miss anything."
The whole room was quiet as Judy moved slowly past Clair and toward the panda in the audience who grew a bit nervous with the bunny walking toward him, he started looking around to try and find an escape route. "This mammal has a reason for what he said. It's not a popular opinion and it hurts like hell. But, there has to be a reason for it." She was next to the panda when she looked at him, "So what is it, what is the reason."
The panda looked startled at Judy with his ears laying flat on his head, "It's, it's just not right. It's completely unnatural! There's a reason there are so many different mammals. To start mixing specials would not be natural."
Judy looked at the panda and could see the nerves started to disappear as he talked, "Okay, I can see why you would think that. Rabbits and foxes were mortal enemies in the past."
The panda got more courage visibly easing up and letting his ears come off his head, "Exactly! He could easily kill you."
Judy looked back down at Nick and begun rubbing her neck lowering her ears, "You know I never thought of it that way. If he had closed his jaws a little tighter at the museum he could have easily bit into my jugular causing me to bleed out."
Nick had a shocked look on his face and was about to speak when he noticed a wink come from Judy and a sly smile grew on his face.
The panda had grown very confident and placed a paw on Judy's shoulder while pointing at Nick, "See look at that! He probably wanted to do it as well, see that smile he has."
"Yes I see it and I can see why you would then think us being together would be completely unnatural." She turned back to look at the panda, this time a fierceness had grown in her eyes and her ears stood erect as she stared into his, "If you hate things that are unnatural then why are you wearing clothes then. Go ahead take them off."
He removed his paw from Judy's should and stammered, "What!?"
Judy took a step closer, "You heard me, take them off. Clothes aren't natural, we ran around naked before evolving into a decent society so get rid of them." The panda just stared blankly at Judy as she continued. "I'm going to take it you live in a house, have a job, probably drive too. Well give it all up as well, they are all completely unnatural."
"Get him carrots," Nick said under his breath leaning back into his chair, everyone on the stage had huge smiles on their faces as Judy went after the spiciest mammal.
"But, but that's different. We're evolved now, those are normal every day things now." The panda had backed up and fallen into his chair with Judy towering over him as he sunk into it.
"Exactly! They are normal occurrences because we have evolved. We live in houses instead of dens or in the open, we drive cars and ride trains instead of walking everywhere, we get jobs to pay for food instead of scavenging or killing each other to eat. Nick and I have two beautiful kits together because we have evolved to be with whoever we want to be with and love whoever we want to." She started to walk back to her seat with all the mammals on their paws clapping before turning back towards looking at the panda, "I just have one last question, do us or any other interspecies couple have any impact on your own life." The panda just stared as his own paws shaking his head to embarrassed to speak anymore, "I didn't think so." She turned around and walked back to her seat to the sound of applause as every other mammal gave Judy a standing ovation.
Nick took her into a tight embrace as she reached the stage, "There's the Judy I know. Welcome back, my love." Judy looked up and grabbed each side of Nicks muzzle and pulled him slowly lowering it to her own enjoying a tender kiss.
"Well everyone we are overdue for a commercial break so when we come back we'll have more insight into the lives of all these mammals who have been touched by this topic." Clair looked into the camera with a huge smile on her face. All the TV's showed Nick and Judy kissing lost in their own small world as mammals around them clapped in support of the couple.