Energize the flow - Chapter 1
Ignition.
Judy walked into the massive lobby of downtown precinct 1. It was still awe inspiring and she felt even smaller than usual. The beaming face of Clawhauser brought a smile to her face and she gave the bubbly cheetah a wave before heading further in.
The locker room for females was a mess. Not because it was unkempt, it was in fact flawless, but because it catered to mammals ranging from massive to medium sized. And one small sized one. Her locker was placed on the side and underneath one of the sinks.
She had long since stopped complaining about it and just changed into her uniform. Eight months here had broken several illusions she'd once had about being a cop. Sidestepping her larger colleagues and generally following the flow lead her to the briefing room.
Chief Bogo handed out the daily assignments like always and like every day since her arrival she was left to last. The other cops didn't even look like they knew she was there. Her presence lost in the crowd. It was difficult to make friends with them when they didn't care about you.
Most of them either ignored her completely or found her presence insulting. What could such a small mammal do when faced with one of the larger mammals in the city. Judy carefully kept quiet about the fact that she had graduated the academy with the highest grades they'd ever granted.
"Hopps, parking duty." Bogo's voice was the same monotone he used when not screaming at someone. She slipped from her seat and took the folder without saying anything. At first she had believed that it was a hazing ritual, that all new arrivals had to go thru the same thing on their first day.
Then she had rationalized that it was an introduction session to get to know the area of the precinct. It sounded good in her ears and had even managed to take away some of the humiliation from her parents being so happy to hear about her being a meter-maid and not a real cop.
A week of the same had changed her mind and when she had asked the Chief for a change of duty he had very thoroughly informed her of how little he wanted her in his precinct. Large words spoken loudly had told her how insulted he felt at having her here and how she had only been accepted to the academy because of the mammal inclusion project.
A run in with a wise-ass street hustler the same day had broken her and for the first time ever she had cried herself to sleep that night.
Every day after that had been the same, parking duty. The city had been in the midst of a plague outbreak turning preds feral. One day as she was writing a ticket on a car the sound of breaking glass had drawn her attention.
A small weasel had robbed a nearby store, the owner chasing the robber out to the street. Seeing her he had called out for her to stop him. She had not even tried all that much as she caught up to him and with a simple slide dropped him to the ground.
The Chief was furious with her. That was something unexpected. She was a police officer on duty, letting him escape on purpose would constitute neglect on her part. Telling him this had actually managed to get him so angry that he turned red.
"YOUR JOB IS TO TICKET CARS! IF I EVER HEAR ABOUT YOU DOING SOMETHING ELSE AGAIN I'LL HAVE YOU FIRED FOR INSUBORDINATION!"
She stopped trying to get two hundred tickets before lunch after that and eventually settled for just-past one hundred. The rest of the day was usually spent in the archives reading through old case files. If the Chief was going to be adamant in keeping her down then she would learn on her own.
It too a full six months to solve the damn savage case. Three hundred infected mammals and nearly one thousand dead. Mayor Bellweather had even attempted to exile all predators from the city and was pushing for shock collars as an alternative.
It was pure luck that one cop spotted the weasel Judy had caught earlier slink down to an abandoned subway platform. Riots on the streets had broken out and preds were being assaulted just for walking down the street. After the truth came out most changed completely. The riots changed from targeting predators and now they instead protested Bellweather's sentence.
20 years in prison wasn't enough. At least the crowd thought so and when she had left the court house that same crowd had attacked. It was as ugly as one might imagine. by the time the police had summoned the SWAT team's Crowd Control group Bellweather was dead. They never found all pieces of her body.
The damage to the city was done though. A darkness descended, leaving unrest and mistrust against predators in it's wake. Through it all Chief Bogo had only given her parking duty, even when they were understaffed and had to call in for help.
The afternoon came and she found herself perched high on the top of the shelf reading a random case file. She knew this one by heart, it was her own capturing a thief of moldy onions. A frown marred her face as she read that. Even the paperwork was mocking her. She'd been lucky to even remain a cop as it had been Bellweather's initiative to select her as a aspirant for the academy.
She hoped that no one would look into her work too closely. Judy might be implied by acquaintance. She had made it her life goal to be a police officer and even if she would have to drive the meter-maid car for the rest of her career, her badge still said police officer Judy Hopps.
She had started her night time activities one week after Bogo had yelled at her. It started simple, stopping a few muggings here and there. Then she had slowly expanded her reach and used her position within the police to plant evidence against groups or criminals.
She knew that it was a tricky balance act on a razor edge. On one side was the law, and they would put her behind bars for a long time if they found out. The other side was actual justice, is it the right thing to do? That question had given her a few vivid nightmares about weather she was doing the right thing or not.
She'd be back out there this night as well. Someone was getting illegal weapons and selling them to the gangs. The paperwork at the factories had nothing she could see that was wrong with them and the military base outside the city was not only far more difficult to infiltrate, their paperwork was in order as was their stock.
The weapons were being produced somewhere inside Zootopia. It was the only logical conclusion. That was why she dressed in her skintight spiderweave Kevlar suit. It had cost her a fortune but was so worth it. The Kevlar would stop bullets and tranq darts while spiderweave silk was the strongest naturally occurring material in the world.
Soaking it in acid stopped it from deteriorating on it's own and if not for the rarity of high quality, spider silk would likely replace normal clothing. It had for Judy.
She had considered adding som sort of insignia on the chest like the heroes in the books until she realized that it would only act as a target marker. Her own police outfit, unique among the others, had just the same thing with a very dark Kevlar chest piece and the golden badge over her heart.
She chose a dual red line going down her right arm instead, keeping her suit dark and non reflective. For the head she used a Polycarbonate helmet shaped like her head. The transparent material allowed her to see unhindered and some application of black fur-dye to her head made it impossible to identify her.
As a kit Judy had found herself able to siphon energy from the power line in the walls of the house. Those days she never got tired but with twenty sister in the same room she had just as quickly learnt how to hide her ability.
The older she got the better her understanding of those powers grew. Physical strength could be augmented with power to the point where she could lift a car and jump high into the sky. Growing up on a farm meant that she had vast empty land to experiment by her self. The hardest part had been to teach herself how to push the energy outside of her.
One day she sneezed and nearly electrocuted her mother. After that day shooting lightning from her paws was nothing more than an afterthought. These things and more is what she brought to the city and wielded against it's darkness during the blackest nights.
Somewhere out there was a gun smith with a factory and an agenda.
The Energizer Bunny was going to find him and tear it down.
Author notes.
This is a super hero story AU thing.
Judy has energy abilities, There will be others, some nice some not.
I was inspired by many things to get to this point.
Until the next time.
