An Evolved Sense of Justice

by dobanochi

A raccoon PI seeking asylum finds himself in Z-Town, he encounters a trailblazing hare police officer who's grown frustrated with her work and a fox who quit the force after an existential crisis - but didn't have a backup plan. As a strange new threat comes upon the city, the three must solve the question: how do you help save the world when you can hardly help yourself?

6. This Charming Mammal

Chapter Six, "This Charming Mammal"

Admittedly, he was a tad nervous. He wasn't sweating bullets or anything, but he was nervous, and much of that was nervousness about being nervous and making a bad first impression because of it; the rest of it was him being nervous that he'd already made a bad first impression by arriving late to a meeting when he lived in his car.

Granted, the other guy wasn't here either, but that begged the question of whether he was running even further behind or if he'd been there on time and left when the mysterious Howard had failed to show up. The raccoon had tried calling his contact multiple times, that same strange number with the 6-2-4 area code, but it went to voicemail every time. It rang all the way through rather than skipping straight to the generic robot mailbox greeting, so the guy wasn't consciously dismissing his calls, but that might just have been worse. If you're old enough to read this story, you're old enough to have had a moment like it: when you're annoyed at someone arriving late for something only to find out that they had a damned good reason for it, their car broke down or they suffered a nasty ankle sprain or their house caught fire or something dire like that, at which point you feel like an enormous asshole for not having assumed the worst that whole time. Yeah, that'd be just his luck: Howard stumbles ass-backwards into finally finding someone genuinely willing and able to help him get set up in this new city and they get hit by a bus on their way to meet him. A morbid thought? Oh, totally. But would that match the tone of the story of his life? Oh, absolutely.

...Of course, maybe Howard was right the first time and this guy had already come and gone while Howard was putzing around trying to find a convenience store that sold cigarettes and being curtly told we don't sell tobacco products here each and every time he dared ask a clerk. If he could have just had the bare minimum willpower to ignore his nicotine itch, he would have had an answer to that question. And the craving probably wasn't helping his mild but persistent feeling of anxiety about this situation.

He had an idea for how to take his mind off the stressful wait, but it didn't seem much less stressful. He'd give his favorite vixen a call. A simple checkup to make sure that no unsavory characters hadn't gotten to her yet, a chance to talk to one of the few people in the world who truly cared about him, and most importantly, a catalyst: everyone knows that when you're waiting on something to happen and finally say screw it and start doing something else, that first thing finally happens. It's like a law of thermodynamics or something. But the trouble was… what was he gonna actually say to her?

It's funny how we can find ourselves afraid to talk to people we know and love. Not even just in situations where you have to tell them something terrible that will make them angry at you, like telling your parents that you need them to sign a slip of paper saying they know you got an F on your report card or telling your spouse that you somehow lost your wedding ring. Just in the way that sometimes we're struck by the realization that as much as they're a part of our lives, the ones we love are still their own persons and we can never one hundred percent know what's going on in their heads; maybe they think we're being stupid, or boring, or interrupting something important, and then we put them into a position where they have to make the tough choice to either put up with us or tell us that we're bothering them.

He was a little nervous that calling her apropos of nothing just to check up on her might come across as overly paranoid at best and a complete waste of her time at worst. Yeah, he could err on the side of caring too much rather than too little, but to err is still an error. In his defense, he was several subnational jurisdictions and an international border away from her, so he had good reason to have a poor read on this person he cared about, not knowing whether she was in the middle of an uneventful writing session or running for her life. And he also had the excuse that they weren't quite as close as other people who loved one another were.

"Love" was not at all too strong a word in the context they used it in. It was clear when she finally saw him in the hospital that there was a love for one another in their eyes, and they were certainly something more than friends - but they weren't that thing that people who are "more than friends" are implied and inferred to be. It was understood by both parties that they would have given it a shot if their lives were compatible. But their lives weren't compatible. Their relationship and love for one another could best be described as something that fluctuated between that of platonic friends, adult siblings, and a romantic couple, depending on the situation; on the plus side, they could certainly say they had something unique, but on the other hand, that also meant they had to figure out themselves how to navigate it (and if you were a particularly cynical person, you could say it was really creepy that these two sometimes felt like brother and sister and at other times had the hots for each other, but we're just gonna trust that you're not skipping to the most unflattering conclusions).

What eventually made his mind up for him was simply looking out the window of his car at all the people having fun in Batavia Park with other people they loved: kids and parents playing, adults jogging and playing three-on-three softball, elderly friends playing chess here and elderly couples sitting on benches there. It simply made him feel lonely, and he decided that if he was brave enough to escape his homeland for his own safety, then he really ought to be brave enough to seek companionship with someone he already knew to care about him.

Riiiiing… riiiiing… riiiii-

"...Hello?"

"It's your favorite striper."

"Oh, so this is the Uber Eats driver? Hehe…"

He was glad to hear her in a joking mood, but he couldn't pretend to be amused. "Hmm… down here, I'd bet they call it 'Zoober' Eats or something like that."

Understandably, she sounded confused. "Really? I've… I've heard it's a weird place down there, did… is Uber really doing business there as-"

"Puns. Everywhere. I'm in the pun twilight zone."

"...Puns?"

"Common brands rename themselves here to get into the species-diversity spirit. Products, businesses, services… not all of them, but, like, two-thirds, three-quarters of them. Like… I'm by a park right now, but I can see on the other side that there's a McDonald's that's just called McDonald's, but right next to it there's a… it's not a 7-Eleven, it's a 7-Elephant."

"That… doesn't even scan right. The stresses on the syllables don't… align…"

"I know. How could something so cutesy be so… cynical?"

"Hm. I don't know."

"Oh, and also I can't find a place that sells cigarettes anywhere."

"Sounds like you're even more of a fish out of water there than you were in Seattle and Portland."

"Yeah. I swear this place might as well be its own country. Or its own universe…" He sighed as he decided to get to the point. "I hope I'm not bothering you."

"Well, I respect you enough to tell you that I was on a roll with writing something after having a hellish bout of writer's block-"

"Goddammit," Howard grumbled as he loudly smacked his own thigh and threw his hand up in indignation.

"...but I care about you enough to let that slip away to give you my full attention."

"...You're too good to me."

"You're not good enough to yourself. Someone's gotta be good to you."

Howard didn't feel like pursuing this line of dialogue any further, so he didn't. "...Are you okay? Still nobody messing with you? Nothing… I dunno, fishy?"

"...I'm tempted to make a joke that this is a maritime city so there's always something fishy going on, but I'm getting the vibe that you wouldn't be in the mood."

"You'd be correct. Vulpine wisdom right there." He tried not to groan too much as he adjusted in his seat in an effort to keep his jacked-up back from getting too stiff. "Please don't make me feel stupid or weak for checking in on you."

"I wouldn't do that because you're neither of those things. But no, Howard, I'm fine, and furthermore, if anything suspicious were to happen, you'd be the first person I told."

"Alright, but if something were to happen to you suddenly, you wouldn't exactly get the chance to tell me, now would you?"

"I see your point, but I counter with this: if something were to happen to me suddenly, you calling me five minutes after it happened wouldn't help much, now would it?"

The raccoon grumbled to himself. "So… I don't have any way of making sure you're okay while I'm all the way down here, do I?"

"Howard, don't worry yourself about me, worry about yourself - no, seriously, if they'd be after either of us, it's you. Worry about yourself. How are you doing? You alright so far? How are the people down there treating you?"

"...Like a raccoon. Like a stranger. Like a raccoon who's also a stranger."

"Figures. So no luck so far."

Well, he couldn't be all doom and gloom if he wanted her to continue enjoying his company. "Actually, I'm waiting on a guy who might want to come work as a P.I. under me."

"...Really? Already? Howard, that's great!"

"Yeah, let's just hope it doesn't fall through and fizzle out."

"Well even if it does fizzle out, it's promising that you're already getting bites-"

"Please don't use that word."

"...My apologies. But seriously, even if this doesn't work, you're already having better luck than you did up the coast."

"Yeah, but he was supposed to be here, uh…" He checked his watch. "...seventeen minutes ago and he's still not here yet, let's hope he shows… Alright, now you've got me wondering whether it's a mark against my character that I left you in Vancouver all alone instead of sticking around to make sure you're safe."

"Howard, we're our own separate people, it's not your job to keep me safe."

"But I want to! I'm trying to be a good person here! You saved me, I ought to return the favor!"

"...And while I appreciate that… it also sounds like you want to be the kind of person who… the person who people would expect to go out of his way to keep me safe."

And with that, Howard ground to a halt. Wow, he… he'd just let that slip, hadn't he? But as much as he was now focused on his embarrassment with having let the cat out of the bag… he also had to think about how she didn't seem at all upset about this revelation.

Knock knock knock knock knock.

"GAH!" Howard hollered, dropping his phone as he flinched. He turned to see a gentleman standing at his window, an orangey-red tod with black highlights on his extremities, wearing a plain purple collared button-down like one might wear to an interview for a job that they weren't entirely sure was legit. He also wore a smile that seemed eighty percent friendly and twenty percent self-impressed, clearly chuckling a little at how easily he had scared the everloving shit of the car's occupant. The way he was waving at Howard by flailing his fingers also straddled the line between genuine and sarcastic.

"Jesus fucking…" Howard swore to himself as he used one hand to put up a finger asking the fox to wait and the other to dig between the seats to find his phone, which he eventually located and put up to his ear. "Renee!? I'm sorry, I, uh… speak of the devil, the guy just showed up."

"Oh, he did? Well that's good to hear. The way you yelped like that, it sounded like maybe someone stabbed you or something. Hey, now you've got me worrying irrationally about you."

"I'd… hesitate to call that worry irrational." He glanced again at the fox outside his car, who seemed content to give Howard a chance to finish what he was doing, flashing the P.I. a thumbs up which the raccoon returned. "But… hey, I, I can't leave this guy waiting-"

"No, no, I understand. It's fine, we'll talk later. Hopefully this guy is cool."

Howard tried to size this guy up one more time in his peripheral vision, hoping he wasn't making it too obvious. "Well he's one of your Kind, so here's hoping I get lucky twice."

"He is? Then I shall will it with my vulpine telepathy powers that he understands you're a good man. Good luck."

"Thanks, I'll talk to you later." With that he shoved his cell phone into his pocket and started cranking his window down. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting, sir. You must be Mister, uh…"

Okay, great, now he was drawing a complete blank on this guy's last name. He remembered the name Nick but he didn't feel comfortable calling this guy by his first name right off the bat, that seemed unprofessional. All Howard could remember from hearing his last name on the voicemail were some vague hints his brain was giving him: something non-species-specific, he was feeling five letters and the letter W, and something reminiscent of a… of an old-timey English author?

"...Mister Woolf?" he guessed. Like Virginia Woolf? "Wait, no, um-" No, Howard, you fucking idiot! he chided himself, Does he LOOK like a wolf?

But far from being offended, the not-wolf couldn't help but guffaw. "Alright, you got me laughing right outta the gate, I think I already like you. You know, it's funny you should say that though, because my mom's maiden name is a wolf name from the Old Country. But hey, we don't have to do the whole government-names thing if you don't want to, and you don't have to call me sir, you're the boss-man here!" He extended a paw for shaking. "The name's Nick."

The raccoon reciprocated. "...Howard." Jeez, he never thought he'd be this nervous in a job interview he was conducting, but Howard wanted to make a good first impression on this guy just as much as this guy probably wanted to make a good first impression on him. And this certainly wasn't the most… formal of meetings.

"And I'm sorry I'm late, I'd already gotten a few blocks away from home before I realized that I probably should wear something classier than my usual duds for something like this; showing up to a job interview in street clothes might project confidence, but… maybe not the right kind of confidence, y'know?"

Well, this guy was certainly projecting confidence alright. "Oh, it's… it's no problem, I just… I'm just wondering how you knew where to find me."

Nick shrugged coolly. "Can't say it's every day that you see a car with B.C. plates around town! And I did do a little Zoogling and gathered I'd be looking for a gentleman who was black, white, and gray."

Howard nodded tightly; so… this guy likely knew something about his background if he actually did take the time to research him. Hopefully he didn't dig too far. "I'll admit, that makes sense."

"And speaking of my mom again, she's actually from Vancouver! I thought for a second when I saw the flier that you meant Vancouver, Washington, but no, you're an authentic Canadian! Hey, let's hope this is a good sign!" And this fox said that in a way that seemed… suspiciously chipper. "Hey, I've got Canadian blood, you've got Canadian blood… you and me might just be related!" he added with a gentle fist bump to the raccoon's upper arm.

Probably not the case, but the between the overly mellow demeanor and the odd sunniness he switched to when he brought up the Canada connection, the thought crossed Howard's mind that someone from back home had put this fox up to track him down and now he was coolly hinting at his intentions before pulling a gun and blowing the raccoon's brains out. Howard knew that he was probably jumping to insane conclusions, but if that were to ever happen, this was probably what it would look like. In any case, now he was kicking himself for putting his name and city of origin on those posters under the assumption that it was unlikely anybody in this town had connections north of the border.

"Oh, you're… familiar with Vancouver?" Howard had to say something, so he said… that. "Uh… how familiar?" If this guy was going to answer with something to the effect of I know about this thing that happened up there where a rac accidentally busted a crime syndicate before erasing Howard's consciousness, then Howard kind of just wanted to get it over and done with.

But instead, the fox just smirked and said this: "Hmph, two words: Halloween fireworks."

...Okay, then. "Hm… you really do know that city." Howard breathed an internal sigh of relief. "But, uh… I also tried to call you to see where you were-"

Nick snapped his fingers. "Oh! That's my bad, you have my backup phone number! Lemme get you my real one…" He pulled out his phone, leaned over and rested his forearms on the windowsill, looking rather content like he was making a new friend.

Howard pulled his own phone out. This fox seemed nice enough, he just didn't seem to have the normal apprehensions you'd expect someone to have when meeting a stranger for a strange reason. Howard opened his contacts app and went to add a new one. "Alright, so Nick… what's your actual last name again?"

"Oh, sure, so it's W, I, L…"

...Wait.

Okay, now after filling him with a sense of danger, the weird little synapses in the raccoon's brain were going clear in the other direction: red fox, family in Vancouver, last name starting with W-I-L… Wilson!? Did… did Renee have family down here and not tell him? Is that how she found out that Zootopia has some weird prejudice against foxes? Did Renee call up a cousin of hers or something to track Howard down and keep him safe? Oh, he would never be able to pay her back if she'd done that-

"...D, E. Don't forget the E. Like Oscar. Or Kim if you're an Eighties kid like me."

…She had not done that. Duh, like OSCAR! And it's his Mom who's from up there, with some foreign lupine name apparently, so it wouldn't be… Howard was doing a stellar job of typing in Nick's number as he continued to chastise himself for his absurd hypotheses. Howard, again… you are a dumbass.

The P.I. saved the fox's number, which I am not going to print here because that would be enormously stupid of me to do. (Hey, my friend, if you wanna stalk Nick Wilde, you're gonna have to try harder than that.) Nick stood up straight again and slipped his phone back into his pocket before he seemed to realize something. "Wait, have you been running your AC this whole time?"

Howard didn't see what the big deal was. "Uh… yeah? I mean, I was in my car with my windows rolled up and it's June-"

"Oh, c'mon, it's a beautiful day out!" Nick tapped the roof of the Medium-Small-class Honda Civic to draw the raccoon out. "Do yourself a favor and stop burning all your gas, Mother Nature would probably appreciate it too!"

Hard to argue with that. Howard rolled up the window, turned off the engine, and now that he was fairly certain this wasn't a trap, he allowed himself to step out of the car.

"C'mon, we'll find ourselves a nice little picnic table to sit at," the fox said as he led the raccoon, "there's plenty here, oughta be at least one open that's our size. This town's kind of known for its inclusivity, sizewise."

"I've… noticed."

Speaking of size, Howard hadn't noticed until he was walking right next to this guy that the fox was a lot taller than he'd realized. Not the most surprising thing in the world, Howard was a short dude even for his species and most foxes were bigger than him (even Renee had a smidge on him) but usually not by too much. Here Howard found his eyes level with this fox's shoulders and the stranger's chin safely clearing the crest of his head. This wasn't a worrying revelation, this was just another strange detail about this guy that made the whole scene bear an aura of is this actually happening?

"Man, I'm glad I turned around to change, because I still feel underdressed!" Nick remarked as he took a seat at a wooden table, gesturing to Howard's white dress shirt and black tie. The raccoon, of course, had no idea that this guy's regular attire was another collared shirt (albeit with a goofy Hawaiian pattern that indeed should not be worn to a job interview) with a tie of his own, but even if he had, he'd probably still be liable to interpret that remark as a backhanded compliment mocking his admittedly retro aesthetic. But he still couldn't figure out how real or fake that comment was. It was like this fox was somehow coming across as genuine by way of his sarcasm. Figure that one out.

"Uh… don't, uh, don't worry about it," Howard stammered as he took a seat, trying not to wrench his back in the process. Oh, you want another worry for the worry pile? Now he was considering that maybe the reason this situation was so hard to process was something having to do with that neurological damage he'd acquired.

And the fox clearly noticed that Howard was kind of uncomfortable sitting down, clearly wincing a little bit and smirking as though he wanted to quip about it but was holding his tongue - until he used it to say something else:

"I hope I didn't sound like I was making fun of you there," he explained, looking just a little vulnerable for the first time in this conversation. "I know I've got a pretty snarky sense of humor, but I know it can rub people the wrong way sometimes, so…" Nick trailed off and seemed to stare off into the distance for a moment, wearing a tired smile, before returning his attention to his prospective employer. "...Eh, I'm trying to control myself here. It's been rough for a while, I don't wanna blow this opportunity by pissing off the guy who'd be in charge of hiring me, y'know? If I'm coming in a little too hot, just… don't hesitate to ask me to back off the gas. Alright?" And he finished off with a chuckle that seemed just a tad nervous. "...Probably shouldn't have said the words 'pissing off' in a job interview, but eh, you live by your mouth, you die by your mouth."

That was a lot to take in and Howard had different things he wanted to say to different parts of that paragraph, but one thought took precedent:

"Uh… well if we're gonna be working together, it's probably for the best that you just… be yourself - I mean… it'd probably end badly for both of us if you were trying to put a mask on all the time-"

Another guffaw from the applicant, again with the faintest air of worry. It looked like the cracks were starting to show on this fox's armor. "Ah, I'm just saying, a lot of people in my life would think you're crazy for assuming the real me won't get on your nerves eventually," he said with a smirk and a shrug.

The raccoon just nodded and grunted, not knowing what he wanted to say - which is to say that he knew exactly what he wanted to say, some permutation of so are you tacitly implicating yourself of secretly being an asshole?, but that somehow struck him as a social faux pas to say out loud, and he needed an "employee" as much as this stranger needed employment.

"But enough of me tacitly implicating myself of secretly being an asshole," Nick quipped, seeming to have his swagger back. "So! How you wanna do this?"

"Uh…" And Howard would have loved to have come across similarly, but he simply had no idea what he was doing. He hadn't expected to get this far; he wasn't even thinking his interviewee would show up. "...I guess if you just wanna start by telling me… what interested you in… becoming a P.I.?"

"Welp, seemed like perfect union between a way to help people while also doing interesting work!" But there was another brief flash of nervousness in his eyes that lasted only a moment before he clapped his paws and started digging in his pocket. "Oh! Shit, I almost forgot - pardon my French - ...man, I looked everywhere around my place for a backpack or a man-purse or something but I just couldn't find any…" He pulled out his wallet and from that further extracted a piece of paper many times folded, which he quickly opened up before sliding it over to Howard. "...I'm gonna have to ask you to excuse my lack of professionalism, I just wasn't expecting to get a job interview on such short notice."

The detective accepted the paper and took a gander at it. It was the fox's resume.

"Oh, don't… don't worry about professionalism here," said Howard as he scanned the document, "I mean… we're having an interview in a public park, after all. Same with the, uh, profanity; as long as you can still speak intelligently, I don't care if you work some bad words in there - God knows I do."

"So shit, piss, cunt, fuck, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits are okay here," Nick joked, "duly noted!"

But the raccoon didn't hear him because he was busy processing something he wasn't expecting. "...You were a cop!?"

Nick laughed out his nose. "Guilty as charged… pun retroactively intended."

There isn't much more I can add to this particular moment, my friend; Howard just saw that he had somebody who was ex-ZPD in his paws and didn't know what to do with this revelation. He'd just been hoping for somebody halfway competent he could use to help him legitimize and get out of a tough spot, he didn't think he'd luck into finding someone who might actually be good at the job.

"So… what kind of… cop were you?"

"Oh, you know," Nick said with a dismissive smile, "whatever kind of cop they needed me to be on a given day. All kinds of stuff. Including… if I may be so bold as to call it such… things that were basically detective work."

Howard raised an eyebrow. "Like… what?"

But while he was still smiling warmly, Nick clearly looked like he didn't want to say too much. "Just whenever there was a case that seemed to be a dead end, I was known to employ some, uh… lateral thinking, let's call it. I actually got into the police academy because I helped out this rookie cop crack a case that they just couldn't figure out. I'd go into more detail, but we would be here forever if I went into the nitty-gritty."

The raccoon had no idea what to say - for real this time. "Um… wow."

"I'm actually just the teensiest bit surprised you haven't heard about it, there was a made-for-TV movie that came out about it the year after."

"There was!?"

"Yeeeup. Aired on ABC, decent enough movie, but the movie clearly suffered because they blew a huge chunk of their budget on the cast and didn't have anything left for the rest of the project. For me, they got the guy from Arrested Development-"

"HIM!?"

"The very same. Academy-award winning actor 'Him!?' People had actually told me for years beforehand that I looked a helluva lot like that guy, so in a weird way, it was like the validation of a lifetime. But yeah, for something that aired on a Thursday night in March, it was pretty well-received and there was a lot of hype about it at the time, and I think I heard they were thinking about making a sequel about me going through the academy and entering the Force in contrast to my… background, but the excitement died down pretty quick, and I guess that they scrapped the idea for lack of public interest. Eh, art's a business, ain't it? I'm pretty sure the movie's on Sidney Plus, but I know I don't have the disposable income for an account."

Simply put, Howard was floored. "...Holy shit."

"Thank you for swearing, I feel much less trashy now," Nick grinned. "...I'm still only at about thirty percent snark capacity, so if I'm starting to annoy you, just say the word, man."

But this begged a question.

"...Okay, so I gotta ask… and I know this is none of my business, but… after all that attention, why aren't you with the police anymore?" Howard's first thought was that perhaps this guy had gotten fired for misconduct, and that alarmed him. Red flags were shooting up all over again.

"Actually, as you are the person conducting this interview about my background, I'd say it's very much your business why I left, and I'd be happy to tell you." And yet despite this professed happiness, Nick certainly started transitioning into a much more somber tone, and while his foxy smile remained, it seemed a much more sober one. "So… I joined thinking that it would be a great way to help and serve my community. Public servants and all, y'know? And… yeah, I can do that in such a position, and some cops do, absolutely they do, but… a lot don't, and I was certainly starting to get the impression that a lot more don't than do. I… hmmm… lemme put it this way…" He paused to make sure his audience was making eye contact. "Let's say you get pulled over. Maybe you were speeding, maybe you had a taillight out, maybe he caught you squeezing out a text message at a red light… but when that happens, are you gonna be happy to see Officer Johnson? Or are you gonna be annoyed? Maybe even… scared?"

Howard pondered that question, less so looking for an answer and more so letting himself feel the gravity of the hypothetical.

"How would you feel, Howard?" Nick pressed. "Would you be happy?"

"...I definitely wouldn't be happy-"

"Alright. Now what do you think is the more common situation for people to encounter the cops: them showing up to help them out of a tough situation… and then actually succeeding at helping them out, instead of just putting a Band-Aid on the situation… or pulling them over to write them a ticket for not knowing that one of their brakelights went kaput?"

"...The second one."

"Mmmmmhmm," Nick hummed with a slow nod. "And I'm massively oversimplifying it, there's so much more to it, but long story short, something just clicked in my head that the majority of people I wanted to help… probably wouldn't feel like I was helping them by wearing blue. Most people seem to find the cops annoying at best and downright terrifying at worst, and while that itself might be an oversimplification… hey, you know what they say, for all intents and purposes, perception is reality. At the end of the day, if I want to help people, then it's my responsibility to be somebody the average person feels they can trust. And-" He turned his head to talk into space for a moment, his smile gone with an annoyed look of his own. "-yeah, I know there's good guys on the Force, and I'm not just paying lip service by saying that, I've met them, I was one for a while, my girlfriend is one-"

"Really?"

"Darn tootin'. If she were here, she'd probably derail my example and say 'oh, well what if they're pulling them over because they're a reckless driver and they might kill somebody!?' ...to which I'd say, yeah, no shit, that happens sometimes, but that's not what we're talking about…" He shook his head in frustration and looked back at Howard. "Suffice it to say, I'm not one of those weirdos who thinks cops are inherently evil… but so many of them just don't give a shit, y'know? What's that line, the worst evil is done by those who don't choose to be good? ...And so much of the public doesn't give a shit about cops. So…" And then the air of confidence was completely deflated as the fox groaned and put his elbows on the table and buried his temples in his palms. "I'm sorry, this is just a really sensitive and complicated subject, I'm usually a pretty good talker, but no matter how many different ways I've tried explaining this to people, I just never get the words right-"

"No, it's… it's fine, I understand." The raccoon felt like saying that was the least he could do.

"Alright… I appreciate it…" He raised his head up and returned eye contact. "Let's just say it's been a rough… twelve months for me, and as clever as I'd like to imagine I am, I just have not been able to get out of it, so… that's why I offered to be a mellower, less 'on' version of myself: it'd be easy for me to be someone other than myself when I'm not feeling like myself anyway! Because this rambling mess isn't who I usually am, either-"

"It's fine, it's fine. Um… if we're gonna be working together, we'd probably have to address this eventually."

Nick nodded, looking off through the park again, lips pursed. "You strike me as a good guy, Howie… can I call you Howie? You see, Cavalier Nick wouldn't usually care to ask first-"

"I… don't mind." Howard was definitely feeling better about his own anxieties now.

"Uh… cool." And with that, the fox seemed to regain his composure, sitting back up and straightening out his shirt. "Actually? Here, here's the long story very short version: it just wasn't for me. I met my now-girlfriend, she was a cop, I was inspired for a time, so I followed her lead, and my dick, but eventually I realized I was following her destiny and not my own. There! I didn't even need to go on that whole melodramatic meandering rant!" He finished off with a self-deprecating chuckle that might have seemed cool and collected if not for the context of thirty seconds prior.

"So… in other words…" (Was Howard about to seriously say this? He was about to seriously say this.) "...A certain part of your body was pointing at her and you took that as a sign to follow her?"

Nick damn-near fell off the bench from how hard he began laughing.

"Oh… oh, holy shit, that was a good one, Howie! Goddamn. Alright, I think I'm gonna like working for ya. And for context, I did like her as a friend first, but with that much proximity, feelings started germinating…" But he suddenly snapped into a crazed smile and pointed at the raccoon. "Wait! This has nothing to do with private investigating! Are you private-investigating me!? Is this your way of schooling me!? You little sneak! Ha-ha!"

Howard had to chuckle at the silly accusation, but he still kept a professional posture. "Wish I could take credit for playing a long-game like that, but no, nobody set me up to get you to spill secrets, Mister, uh…"

"Nick."

"...Nick." Howard nodded, straightened his tie, and cleared his throat before picking up the resume to give it another once-over. But he didn't get too far before the fox felt the need to toss in one more detail:

"Plus, you know… from one guy whose species historically used to be nocturnal to another… if I never have to wake up at five in the morning again, it'll be too soon!"

The raccoon had to laugh in agreement. "Oh, absolutely! Though honestly, even six is pushing it."

"Honestly honestly, seven isn't much better!"

"I know I don't even want to be up at eight."

"I swear, if I'm awake before nine, it's just not gonna be a good day."

"Same for me, but I'd say ten."

"Eleven's alright, but then I feel like I might as well stretch it till noon."

"If I have to wake up and it's a one-digit hour, it better be after twelve.!"

"Oh, I hear that!" Nick was chuckling along, seeming like he'd been looking for a long time for someone who could relate to him on this and was glad to have finally found one. "Going to bed at night and waking up in the morning feels like a chore, don't it? But going to bed in the a.m. and waking up in the p.m.? Now that feels like a luxury! Hey, tell me, Boss-Man, is this a job that's gonna require a lot of early mornings?"

Howard answered with a friendly scoff. "Oh, God no. I wouldn't survive in this line of work if it did. Lots of late nights. Lots of working what's basically second- or third-shift."

The fox joking let out a sigh of relief. "Oh, Howie, you're making my heart sing right about now."

And the raccoon chuckled again at this remark, but they still had business to attend to, so he picked up Nick's resume once more to examine it in earnest. And he was glad he did, because he now realized he'd been so distracted by Nick's police background that he hadn't realized how strangely and vaguely worded everything was regarding his background before that.

"So…" Howard murmured as he tried to think of a delicate way to ask this, "...what were you doing for work at the time that you decided to, uh… join the police?"

Nick seemed like he was back to knowing exactly how to answer any question thrown at him. "You could consider it sales. Not bad work, but something I would rather not go back to if I didn't have to. Just something I did to survive."

"Uh… got it. And, uh… I see you have a GED?"

"Mmmmhmm," Nick replied with a proud nod. "Dropped out of school because - again - I was already busy working to survive, but I felt like I needed to prove to the government that I wasn't stupid. You feel me?"

"I do. I do. Ummm…"

"And I fully admit, making that choice to prioritize work over education at that age might have left some holes in my book smarts - I can do basic math and science just fine, but if we start getting into calculus or chemistry, you're gonna lose me - but I more than make up for it with all the things I learned cutting my teeth on the streets," Nick said, looking determined to convince this raccoon of his invaluable urban wisdom. "Between being a cop and all the… stuff I did before that, I know this city like the back of my paw, and I'd like to imagine that'll help if I'm gonna be a P.I."

Howard had to admit, he was impressed by the display of confidence. "You know this town that well, huh?"

"Try me," Nick dared with a bounce of the eyebrow.

"Okay… well, uh…" There was admittedly one question that was burning in the raccoon's mind. "...you can start by explaining to me why it's so hard to find a place that sells cigarettes in this town!" He chuckled just enough to convey that he was at most only half joking.

And the fox returned with a chuckle of his own. "Oh, you poor, poor dear. They regulate the hell out of cigarettes in this town. The only places you can buy them within the city limits are at designated tobacconists and not only are there only, like… three dozen of them in the entire city? But they're overtaxed to hell and you'd be better off driving out to the suburbs to buy some, you'd literally still save money even accounting for the gas you burn."

Then he did something unexpected: he stood up.

"...Shall we go get some right now?"

"Huh!?"

"C'mon, let's go for a ride!" the fox insisted, curling his fingers to beckon the raccoon. "Hey, I asked you if you wanted me to ask you any questions about the city and the first thing your brain went to was getting some smokes. You're clearly itching for some, how's about we go take a jaunt through town? I'll show you around along the way!"

"We're… in the middle of a job interview, aren't we?"

"Sir, we're having our job interview in a park, aren't we?" Nick remarked. "Why not take it into your car? And along the way, I can tell you more about my background - and you can tell me more about yours."

What was annoying about that was that it made sense. Howard could never let his mom know that he'd rerouted something this important just to get a pack of cancer sticks.

-IllI-

"...Holy shit."

"I like how we had the exact same reaction to each other's backstories."

"Yeah, but it's not every day that you meet someone who went from… from running in the streets barely-legally flipping whatever you could get your hands on for a buck-"

"My girlfriend's particularly fond of saying I was a hustler, and while there's a dozen other words you could use, that one's starting to grow on me."

"...to being allowed into the police department despite kinda-sorta having a petty criminal past-"

"Helping them solve a problem they couldn't solve themselves probably helped with that, I don't even know if I'd've been clever enough to get in without that major accomplishment on my resume - assuming the thought would ever cross my mind that I'd even want to, but maybe I could see myself applying for shits and giggles, just to see what they'd say."

"...to arguably being in a worse position than where you started now that every cop and cop-supporter in town knows who you are and basically has it in for you. Plus all of the anti-police crowd who haven't forgiven you for joining in the first place."

"Howie, if you don't have a pack of haters hating on you, you're doing enough right! Now that's some street wisdom right there!"

"I'm just saying, that's a really weird… life… trajectory."

"Well I appreciate that you find it so cinematic, but I gotta say… it doesn't strike me as more exciting of a story than discovering a cannibalistic conspiracy, trying to get to the bottom of it simply out of a sense of moral duty, discovering a… what I understand to be some sort of fucking homonculus thing and getting freaking experimented on, barely escaping with your life, and then managing to take down the entire mob anyway and needing to flee the country."

"...Yeah, but taking down the mob basically happened by accident."

"Hey… you still did it, didn't ya? Don't sell yourself short, Howie."

"...Well I definitely can't sell myself tall, now can I?"

"Ha! Good to see you've at least got a sense of humor about it. Hm… I need a more creative nickname for you. Howie is basically your government name, Stripes feels like it's getting a little too close to a slur, Sherlock just doesn't seem creative enough… I'll find something, just give me some time… Like I said, I haven't been on my game these last few months…"

"Take your time."

"...Oh!" Nick suddenly exclaimed as he leaned forward to the center console to adjust the car's temperature control from full-blast air conditioning to full-blast heating.

"...Why did you do that?" asked Howard, who immediately felt like the car had become a sauna.

"Well, you see that gigantic wall hundreds of feet high to our left? Kinda hard to miss."

"...Yeah? You said it was like a… a climate-control barrier or something?"

"'Climate wall' will suffice, but yes. And in less than a minute, you're gonna take that exit onto the cloverleaf and we'll be in Tundratown. Three guesses why they call it that."

Howard didn't feel the need to say anything. He simply put his signal on, looped around on the exit ramp, and found himself facing an archway in the wall with the highway running through it, and as he saw snowflakes wisping through the hole and immediately dissipating in the heat of Sahara Square, he braced himself for whatever wacky driving conditions he was about to incur.

The raccoon double-checked that his headlights were on as he took them into the next district. There was by no means a whiteout blizzard occurring, but the steady flurry in the middle of June was a sight to see.

"I swear, even Vancouver doesn't get this snowy."

"You're talking to a guy who's well aware that you're from Canada's closest thing to a tropical paradise."

"So… was driving through here the safest decision? I mean, if we hit black ice or something like that?"

"Well considering that the part of town that's constantly below freezing is also geographically the largest, it'd be pretty stupid of City Hall not to do an at least halfway decent job of salting the roads," Nick said, unbeholden to worry. "But yeah, snow is still snow and ice is still ice, and when they built the interstate spur to downtown, they just went the long way and circumvented this part of town because for all the technological developments we made in making this neighborhood in the first place, we still can't figure out how to build infrastructure that holds up under winter conditions. Honestly, I'd be more concerned about hitting a pothole the size of France than skidding on ice if I were-"

BUMP.

"...you," Nick finished with a smile and chuckle containing just a tinge of nervousness over that bad timing.

Sure enough, Howard asked: "...Did you know that pothole was coming?"

Nick had to giggle all over again. "No, but let's say I did, eh?"

The detective shrugged, feeling like it was more important to grip the steering wheel and watch the road instead of making witty banter for the sake of making witty banter. But there was still one thing he wanted to clear the air on:

"Honestly, you seem to know this city so well, I wouldn't be surprised if you had a mental map of all the potholes in town."

"Aw, no, I can't take credit for that much," Nick said with a playful dismissive gesture. "I can tell you where to find every fast-food restaurant where the staff will offer to sell you drugs if you sit down at a certain table without ordering anything, or every mechanic to avoid because they'll screw with your car and then make you pay to fix it… but I'm not that talented."

"Hm…" Howard was still processing how ridiculously lucky he was to run into this guy. "I still can't believe you didn't actually grow up here."

"Yeah, and if you can be a doll and don't tell anybody that I'm actually from the East Coast, that'd be super-dee-duper," the fox said, a little less cheerily. "I mean, I don't lie to people about my background anymore, but… there's still a lot of people in this town who still think I grew up in a crappy neighborhood on the far side of the bay and that my mom still lives there in poverty and that my dad's a dead guy named John - generic name, people actually buy that? - and I just don't want to ignite any conflict that doesn't need to be lit, you feel me?"

The driver nodded. "I get you."

But now Nick was thinking about his own answer to that question, staring out the window and pondering his word choice. "You know what, though? It's not even that much of a lie. I mean - the mom living here and dead dad parts, yeah, but… fuck it, I did grow up here! I dropped out of high school, left home early to seek my fortune, zigzagged across the continent trying to find the damn thing, and finally found that fortune… here. But I was still basically a kid and had to learn how to get it, and learn I did, and it didn't happen back out east or anywhere else, it happened on the streets of Z-Town. And anybody who says that doesn't count probably has some growing up to do."

Howard's eyes may have been preoccupied, but his ears were free and clear to hear that, another rare moment of this stranger seeming less than unflappable. "Yeah, I can agree to that. The wise among us never stop growing up, now do they?"

"Well, if I've got a wise old elder cosigning on it, I must be saying something right!" And one more mirthful nose-laugh before he felt it appropriate to ask a somewhat personal question: "By the way, Howie, how old are you exactly? I can see you being anywhere from my age to… with that fashion sense, maybe pushing seventy!"

The raccoon had to wince at that. "...How old are you?"

"Thirty-eight," Nick said flatly, "don't remind me. And you sir? Wait, lemme guess, lemme guess! Uhhh… forty - no! Fifty-two! Fifty-two! Final answer, Regis!"

The driver dared to take his eyes off the icy road so he could look Nick in the eyes for a moment to see if he could glean whether this fox was being facetious; didn't look like he was. "Uh, no, I'm… I'm thirty-one, man."

He snuck one more glance at the fox, who had a look on his face like he'd just walked in on his parents conceiving his little brother.

"Pfft," was all Nick could say to begin with. "Howie, this is the part where if I was drinking something, I'd spit it out all over your windshield! You're seriously that much younger than me!? So that means you were born in, what, Eighty-Nine!?"

"...Ninety."

"Nineteen-Ninety? You weren't even born in the same decade as me? Holy shit, dude. Jeepers fucking creepers." The fox was clearly having a moment he couldn't just smoothly glide his way through. "I mean, this shouldn't surprise me that there's thirtysomethings running around born in the Nineties, my girlfriend turned thirty last month and that was jarring, but… hey, it's not your fault, you didn't choose your age, but… man, I've spent the last year worrying that I'm too old not to have my shit together and hearing this did not help. Heh heh…"

A nervous and very forced giggle. The raccoon had to wonder whether this fox was letting his guard down around him because he really did get a good vibe off of Howard… or if Nick was allowing the calm demeanor he showed earlier to slip because he was getting the impression this wouldn't work out and the two of them would never see each other again after this so Howard's perception of him didn't matter.

"Hey, in my defense," Nick added, "...you do not seem like you're thirty-one. It's not just the clothes, Howie, you've got this, like… old-school, stoic air about you. You don't seem like a completely grumpy old man, just that you sort of… you're sort of selective about when you show your emotions, you don't wear them on your sleeve like someone your age does. And you're not boring by any stretch of the imagination, but… you definitely aren't bursting with youthful energy."

Ah, would it have been a poor conversational decision for Howard to say what was on his mind? Aw, to hell with it:

"Well if it makes you feel better," said the detective, "hearing that I come across as that much older than I am has me worried that the, uh… injuries I sustained during my little, uh, adventure might have prematurely aged me more than my clothes ever could-"

"Oh. Oh, Howard, man, I'm sorry if I made that sound like I was making fun of you for being a cripple!" And Nick was right back to transparently nervous.

"No, I mean, it's fine, I know you didn't mean nothing by it-"

"Yeah, but me and my big mouth, I'm just so used to successfully saying the right thing on the first try - man, I gotta get my groove back!"

"Well, I hope this new career path will help with that," Howard offered.

"You're a prince, Howie," Nick said before turning to stare pensively out the window again.

But the raccoon didn't want this poor fox feeling stuck in his own head, so he thought the least he could do was change the subject. "So, uh… tell me, O wise one…" (He'd almost said "elder," but he assumed - probably correctly - that that would not go over well.) "...what else should I know about this city that you haven't already told me?"

That certainly got his passenger's attention. "Of course there is. Even with all the exposition we already covered, there's always gonna be more! Whaddya wanna know?"

Howard, not thinking much of it, asked a classic question: "Well, is this a… dangerous city? The kind of place where I really have to watch my back no matter where I go?"

"Well hey, Howie, it's a pretty big city," Nick said nonchalantly. "Some parts are good, some parts are not-so-good, some parts embody the American Dream, some parts prove the American Dream is dead. Like the one neighborhood I was alluding to earlier, this place called Happytown-"

"No, no-" Howard stammered, not wanting to interrupt the local's wisdom but also not wanting to waste his breath if he wasn't getting the hint. "-s-sorry to cut you off, but I meant more like… so, a, uh… an old colleague of mine… she was a vixen…"

Nick was listening.

"...and she said she never wanted to come to this city because it has a lot of species conflict, like everyone has a vendetta against foxes, for example-"

"MMMMMMM!" the fox in the car hummed loudly with a wide smile to signify that he'd had a moment of clarity. "Hmmmm, I think I see what you're saying. You're asking if it's the kind of town where someone like you-"

"My Kind."

"Your Kind, yeah yeah, I forgot you guys used that word up there. Hmm… so I understand your concern, and what I can say is…" He turned sideways in the passenger seat to size up the gray, black, and white creature at the steering wheel, who was trying to focus on operating a large piece of machinery but desperately wished he could see the look on Nick's face to try to figure out why he was being so theatrical about this. "Raccoons, raccoons, raccoons…" the fox pondered under his breath.

But perhaps the most theatrical thing he did was twist back to face forward in his seat with a loud clap of the paws.

"Nope! I'm not gonna answer that question!"

"You're not?"

"No, sir."

"Why not?"

Nick tutted his tongue. "It's a totally reasonable question, Howard, but I think you'd be best served feeling the city out by yourself assuming nobody's gonna give you flak for being a raccoon, and then you report back to me and tell me if you got the feeling that anybody did. I don't wanna put any ideas in your head or you'll start seeing signs everywhere, even where they're not, and I don't want this to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, y'know? Confirmation bias and all that."

Giving it some thought, Howard had mixed feelings about that reply. "I… I get what you're saying, that makes sense, but… the way you said that kind of insinuates there is some kind of… bias against my Kind here."

"And you know what? For that, I apologize. I've said too much. Really, I shouldn't even be answering that question because I'm not a raccoon myself and I'll never walk in your shoes. If I was suggesting people here have a bone to pick with you guys, it's because I was just thinking of the regular same-old-same-old hell people give you guys on the rest of the continent. Believe me, I get it, from your point of view that might have sounded like one heck of a Freudian slip…" As apologetic as he was, however, Nick was perfectly at enough ease to fold his arms behind his head and get comfy in his seat. "...but if we're gonna start working with each other, Howie, you just gotta trust me on these things."

Howard could tell that he wasn't going to get a more concrete answer than that. But there was still one question burning in his heart:

"Um… I thought that 'Freudian slips' only referred to… sexual… stuff…"

"I remind you I'm a high-school dropout."

-IllI-

Not too long later, after almost skidding off the road a half-dozen times, Howard and Nick finally found themselves driving across the Beaverdam Bridge and out of the city proper, across the bay and into the suburb of Zootopia Heights. The out-of-towner could immediately recognize that this place was very much a transition zone from Z-Town's distinct flavor, a much milder version of it but still more Zootopian than most places in America. Some of the chain businesses still donned the pro-diversity pun names, others simply did business as what they were known by anywhere else in the world. There was still a noticeable mixture of building sizes, but it mostly boiled down to the three standard big, medium, and small-sized structures you'd see elsewhere, simply in much closer proximity than in other, more size-segregated locales. The crosswalk signals and signs no longer sported a vast array of silhouette designs; whereas across the bay you'd swear that no two such signs bore the same species, here they went with the standard vaguely bipedal mammal with two arms, two legs, and a tail. And the most telling hallmark that you were leaving a big city: the gas was so much cheaper.

But Howard was here not for gasoline, but for nicotine. Therefore he paid no heed to the price differences of a couple of cents at various gas stations up and down Zootopia Heights's main drag and pulled into the first one he saw, a large 76 not far from the bridge. And as he pulled up to the convenience store, Nick wrapped up his lecture on all the things that made Z-Town and its environs unique, such as the way national and international brands were incentivized to come up with clever names when they did business in Southwest Oregon and Northwest California.

"Hmph," Nick scoffed, gesturing to the gas station's sign as Howard put the car in park. "They really couldn't come up with a more creative name for than that?"

The raccoon couldn't tell how much the fox was joking. "It's… two digits though. It's a number. What kind of pun name can you come up with from that?"

Nick just shrugged as he unbuckled his seat belt. "I don't know, sir; I know it's hard to tell because I'm hopelessly unemployable, but I'm not an artist; I'm a businessman." He opened his door and stepped out. "Or, as many individuals in this town would say: business mammal! But talking to someone like you who doesn't have the local accent is making me fall back into my native one. But now, let's get you some smokes!"

Howard stepped out as well and continued the conversation outside. "Heh, from everything you've been telling me, my educated guess is that the only brand I should expect them to have is… Camels?"

Nick scoffed again, more jocularly this time. "Aw, I know you're Canadian, but don't tell me you're forgetting about the classic American Snarlboros!" He made grand comic gesticulations as he led his guest into the store. "Or if you've been to prison, there's motherfucking Shrewports! And I think Lucky Strike kept their name but slapped a picture of a horseshoe on their box and called it a day; I can't make up my mind if that's lazy or clever - maybe cleverly lazy!"

At this point, Howard was getting the feeling that he could never add anything to Nick's quips, so he just stayed quiet and listened in case the fox was going to chain even more witty remarks together.

Walking inside, the store seemed to give off this vaguely uncanny feeling; all the shapes and colors were in the right places so that a blurry snapshot might make it look like any other gas station minimart in America, but upon focusing on the finer details, anybody who hadn't grown up in the Zootopia Metropolitan Area would eventually recognize what was so jarring: a good majority of the brand logos were different.

"Hi, guys," said the squirrel working the cash register, standing on the counter high above Nick and Howard's heads. The greeting almost seemed curt, but he didn't seem rude per se, just very straight-laced and reserved.

"Top o' the mornin' to ya!" Nick replied as he walked past him, knowing damn well it was two in the afternoon and not caring.

Howard simply responded to the greeting by looking up at him and tipping a hat that he remembered too late he wasn't presently wearing.

He had no idea where Nick was going when the tobacco products were behind the counter as always, but he kept following him deeper into the store, and when they were far enough out of earshot, the raccoon gave the fox a back-paw tap and curled a finger at him to signal that he wanted to whisper something. Nick tilted his head as far sideways as it would go to get his ear closer to Howard's mouth, a stance the fox was very used to doing with his diminutive girlfriend.

"Uh, so…" Howard was struggling to put his confusion into words as he spoke without using his vocal cords. "...Can you explain to me how a squirrel is able to run a store this big?"

"Oh, he's probably got a forklift/cherry-picker thing behind the counter to help him reach things and move around," he answered at full volume.

"Yeah, but how do they, like… stop shoplifters and stuff?"

"Security cameras, silent alarm going straight to the local police… and I wouldn't be surprised if there's someone bigger working in the back room."

"Okay, but how does he physically pick up and scan items like…" As long as his head was tilted way up to whisper to Nick, he was able to clearly see the highest shelves in the background. "...that." He pointed to an extremely large bag of not Doritos, but Boaritos, up top with the rest of the humongously-sized products.

"It's the honor system that you'll scan your own stuff while they watch. Otherwise, like I said… cops get involved. And in a city this diverse, whatever species you are, you stand out."

Howard just nodded, again unsure if he could add to that in any meaningful way.

"Anyway, I know we walked right past your cancer sticks, but I skipped lunch to meet with you, so Nicky needs some snacks! Lemme know if you want anything, I'm buying. I'll cover the cigarettes, too - unless you're buying them by the fucking carton, then you can piss off."

"I… thought the entire point of this was that you were desperate and broke, though." Howard had returned to speaking with his voice, but realized halfway through that he probably shouldn't have said this particular line that loudly.

But Nick wasn't offended. "Yeah, but not 'I can't afford a gas station snack splurge' broke! And hey… lemme let you in on a little secret…" He stopped walking and picked up the first thing he saw, showing the raccoon a blue box of chocolate creme-filled sandwich cookies whose iconic logo wasn't looking quite as iconic. "Roareos! Despite the name, completely meat-free, and honestly, as long as you have a voice, you don't need to be a predator to roar, now do ya? But during this little sabbatical of mine, I've been getting some extra spending scratch by selling things like these on eBay, passing them off as super-rare limited-edition varieties of common products, knowing full well that you can get these at any time at any place in the city and suburbs… but Bobby John Buttfuck in Yazoo City, Mississippi, doesn't need to know that!" He finished with a sly wink, but after a moment came to look rather serious. "And if you ever meet my girlfriend, don't tell her I've been doing that either; she knows I've been selling random things on the internet, but she doesn't know I've been fibbing about how rare they are. If she caught wind, she'd accuse me of falling back into hustling. And I don't mean disco."

"Noted," Howard said plainly, turning to look at all the other assorted junk food on the shelves, tiny versions on the bottom rungs and big ones on the top. Many did bear their standard trade names, but many more had strange names that exhibited wordplay at various levels of skill. Others still kept their names but added mammalian imagery to get into the civil spirit: Snickers bars had a doodle of a hyena printed on them, while Kit Kats had a happy cartoon fox child on one side of the insignia and a panther cub on the other. And then there were those who didn't even seem like they were trying too hard:

"Uh, Nick?"

"Yessir!"

"How do you pronounce… that?" Howard was pointing to a bag of so-called Cheetoahos, Chester notably drawn much less like a caricature.

The fox found the foreigner's perplexion amusing. "Dearheart, everyone just calls them Cheetos anyway. So! See anything you want?"

The raccoon was indeed kind of peckish, and after a moment of looking around, he found what he was looking for: turkey jerky. What brand? Why, Jack Lynx, of course!

"We can split this if you'd like," the detective offered.

Nick smiled but put up his paws to decline. "I appreciate the generosity, but I try not to eat meat when it's not a special occasion. Now, that's gonna be salty, you sure you don't need something to wash it down with?"

Something about the way Nick said that made Howard feel like the fox wanted the answer to be yes for some reason, so he made his way over to the refrigerator. "Uh, sure, they got any Doctor…? Uh…"

"Dr. Pawprint?" Nick proposed as he opened up the cooler and pulled out a bottle with a maroon label. "Not much of a soda drinker myself, a fox has to look his foxiest, but The Doctor's always a good choice. Not so say I don't have a soft spot for Mountain Ewe, I came of age in the Xtreme Nineties after all; and spending a lot of my childhood upper-lower class, I'm always gonna have a soft spot for the cola with the lion wearing the Royal Crown, even if it tastes like it might as well be generic," he concluded, pointing to a bottle of RC. "Note that Coca-Cola thought they were too good to come up with a new name; Pepsi was actually Pawpsi for a while in an attempt to beat Coke in the lucrative Zootopian market, but then Dr. Pepper sued them so they backed off. But hey… better Pawpsi was still a better mammal pun than Goatsi!"

The raccoon blinked. He didn't get it.

But Nick didn't know whether Howard didn't get him or was judging him for an incredibly off-color joke. "Okay!" he said with a clap of his paws. "I've certainly spent too much time on the internet during my funemployment! Let's go check out!"

"I can cover it, by the way," said Howard, "it's no big deal. It's all my stuff anyway."

"No, you listen here, I'm gonna be polite and pay for it as a thank you for having me interview for the position, and you're gonna like it, ya hear!?" he asked with a stern faux Southern drawl.

Howard just nodded again.

In the few seconds it took to walk back to the front, the raccoon had to reflect on how odd it was that this situation was going this impossibly well. Not without some bumps, but this fox answers his job posting on the first day he puts it up, turns out to be a pretty cool guy, isn't at all put off by the complete lack of professionalism in the interview, and now was giving him a complimentary tour around the city for his troubles. That doesn't happen, does it? That was too impossibly fortunate of an outcome. Was this red fox waving a red flag? Was Nick's odd devil-may-give-a-shit sort of charm a glaringly obvious clue that he was a dangerous sociopath? Was this man here to kill him!?

Unbeknownst to Howard, Nick was having similar thoughts that this series of events was too good to be true. He'd shown up late and with his resume folded up in his pocket, for Christ's sakes, and the raccoon still went along with it. Nick was desperate for a good opportunity, that's why he'd decided to go above and beyond and offered to show Howard the city, but he couldn't shake the feeling that there was an outside chance of that being an enormously stupid decision, because now this oddly-dressed guy who seemed like a loner who may or may not have even been in the country legally had taken him on a joyride far from home and could probably take advantage of this situation if he wanted to. Had Nick accidentally answered the call of an indiscriminate crazy person? Was this man here to kill him!?

The fox and the raccoon climbed the stepstool to the counter, Howard putting the turkey jerky and pop down in front of the squirrel. The cashier glanced at the Jack Lynx in particular, then at the two gentlemammals buying it… then, notably, back at the jerky again.

"And, uh… can I get a pack of… Shrewports?" asked Howard, figuring if Nick was paying for them it'd only be polite to get the cheapest ones they had. "Uh… reds?"

"Uh… Shrewport reds? Medium-small size, I-I'm guessing? Um… s-sure…" the squirrel stammered as he stepped back off the counter and onto his forklift, steering it very slowly over to the back wall, making clear and obvious glances back at the two mammals every three seconds as he did, along with nervous looks again at the package of flesh that once belonged to a living, breathing creature and at the cigarettes of ill repute he'd been tasked to retrieve. He especially had his eye on the raccoon, who as the forklift slowly rose seemed to be staring intently at him with a blank expression and cold, dead eyes. Was this man here to kill him!?

When the employee returned with the cigarettes, he didn't say a word. He just dropped them on the counter and gestured for one of them to do the duty of scanning them. Then he pointed wordlessly at the card-reader when it was ready without telling them their total and handed them a paper bag without asking if they needed one. It wasn't until Nick put his chip in the machine that Howard realized they'd missed a step.

"Wait," said the raccoon, digging for his wallet as he locked eyes on the squirrel, "don't you need my ID?"

Nick just tutted his tongue with a smile as he put an arm around the raccoon. "Howie, my man, you can pass for fifty! Nobody's gonna card you in this town. Except maybe for your AARP."

The machine beeped and Nick pulled his card out, and the squirrel gave them a very frantic goodbye wave, hardly even looking at them as they walked back down the stepstool. It was so quiet in the store that you could hear some folks having a rowdy conversation outside.

Once again, Howard didn't get it.

"What was that all about?" he asked as he and Nick swung the doors open and exited the store.

"Ohhh, lookin' fuckin' classy there, Gramps!"

The duo both turned to see a trio of young men standing along the front of the minimart, smoking cigarettes and wearing devilish grins as they towered over our heroes. Despite their great stature and deep voices, you could tell by their body language that they were teenagers, specifically the kind who were confident to smoke in public because they knew that they physically passed for adults. A lion, a tiger, and a big brown bear. Oh, my.

"How's it going, gentlemen?" Nick asked coolly, replying to negativity in the only way he knew.

"Hey, I was talking to your boyfriend over here, Foxy, not you." The earlier voice was now established to be the lion's. "Funny taste, going with a guy who dresses like a fuckin'... funeral director or something!"

"Man, don't mock a timeless style!" Nick joked back at them.

But Howard didn't need the fox's help. Getting friction from random people on the street was absolutely nothing new to him. He knew that in moments like these, you were supposed to speak their language to them and display some semblance of charm and affability - he wasn't always good at doing this, but he knew it was what you were supposed to do.

"Hey, if you guys wanna trade fashion tips, I'd be down!" Howard said as he pulled his box of cigarettes out of the bag. "What's a smoke without a conversation, eh?"

"Are those fucking Shrewports!?" the tiger laughed. "Shit, is that why you dress like that? Did you just get out of prison after fifty years!?"

"Man, what else is in there?" the bear demanded as he leaned forward and swiped the bag out of Howard's hands.

"Hey!"

"Turkey jerky?" the bear scoffed before throwing the bag and its contents out into the parking lot, the Dr. Pawprint nearly bursting before rolling away. "Man, your little asses don't deserve to eat meat!"

"Naw, I bet he's gonna eat the jerky and he's just gonna eat the plastic bag!" the lion quipped as he pointed to the fox and raccoon, respectively, eliciting a hearty laugh from his friends.

"Hey. Hey. Buddy," Nick said as he walked up to the bear to address him specifically. "C'mon, man, I thought your people and my people were cool. They thought you guys were big and scary, they thought we were small and sneaky… we teamed up, big and little, brains and brawn, us against the world? What happened to that?"

The bear clearly knew exactly what old species alliance Nick was talking about but didn't seem to care. "Yeah, I believed in that until my fox buddy and I had a run-in with the law, he got off scot-free and abandoned me to get dinged for fucking bank fraud, and now I can't leave the state of Oregon!" He proved this by pulling up a pant leg to reveal an electronic ankle bracelet - and then used this same leg to kick the fox square in the chest and knock him down. "Get fucked, Foxy! Your silver tongue don't work on me anymore!"

"We know who you are, Will-Dee!" the tiger jeered. "We know the police aren't gonna care what we do to ya!"

Howard looked on to Nick to see what the clever fox would come up with as a retort. But Nick looked like he'd just had the bat taken out of his hands.

"Welp, I think it's about time to take the L and walk away from this," Nick said as he propped himself up into a sitting position. "I've probably got more ammo, but I don't think it's worth using."

"Alright," Howard agreed, trying to still maintain an air of confidence even as he prepared to fundamentally walk away from a fight. "Let me help you- GAHHH!"

Howard's scream and subsequent flinching and stumbling away came when he was bumped in the side of his head by a large mass of brown fur with a crevice in between.

The bear pulled his pants back up as he and his feline friends had a laugh and a half at the retreating fox and raccoon.

"And don't go too much farther out of the city!" the bear cackled. "An eagle might swoop down and nab yer tiny asses!"

Howard followed Nick to the perimeter of the gas station's land parcel, well aware that they were walking further away from his car and assuming correctly that they were going to walk all the way around the edge to get as close as possible to the vehicle before making a beeline to it. It seemed like such a cowardly thing to do, but Howard had seen the look on Nick's face when the tiger had pointed out that nobody was coming to help him. That cat was right. Game, set, match.

And as they circumnavigated the property, Howard kept giving nervous side-eye glances to see if there really was absolutely nobody else who had been there to intervene on their behalf. But alas… there had been, and he'd chosen not to. Howard hadn't realized it at first, but in the midst of all the pumps was a small booth. Oh yeah, he remembered now, this state was weird because most gas stations wouldn't let you pump your own gas; he still wasn't used to that and hadn't even noticed the booth blending in with the scenery until now. And he most certainly hadn't noticed the attendant occupying it, a buck who must have been there that entire time and seen the whole thing, who was now staring straight back at the raccoon with a dull expression that from all this distance could still tell a good number of words: If you idiots didn't want trouble, you shoulda walked away without engaging them; get the fuck out of my gas station.

They eventually did get back to Howard's car, the three teenagers having watched and given them taunting smiles the entire way around, and the trio kept staring at the duo with those same self-impressed smirks and cheeky grins through Howard's windshield as he started the ignition and drove away. They were both silent for a couple blocks afterwards until Nick finally made another remark, probably just for his own amusement.

"Man… I'm surprised one of those kids didn't use the old 'Swiper, no swiping!' line on me, that used to be a common one, what happened to that?" But he pondered that for a moment and seemed annoyed when he answered his own question: "Wait, is that show even on anymore? Did today's teenagers not grow up with that like teenagers ten years ago did? Good goddamn, I'm getting old!"

"Well… for what it's worth, I think you handled yourself better than most people would," Howard said to cheer the guy up just a little. "You just got stuck in an unwinnable situation."

"Eh, I'm not even really worried about that, things like that happen," he said, his speech slowly becoming a mumble across the span of that statement. "But in a weird way, it warms my heart to see the youth are still engaging in ass-facing."

"Ass-facing?"

"C'mon, Howie, you're a detective, don't tell me you can't figure out what ass-facing means," the fox replied with a smirk.

"I'm just surprised that this is something you have a word for."

"It's not a very creative word. I toldja, I'm a businessman- businessmammal, not an artist."

"Yeah, but how often does it happen that it needs a word?"

"The act of someone pulling down their pants and putting their ass to some unwilling schmuck's face? Kids their age do it all the time. Especially those big guys doing it to us little guys since our faces are already at ass-level to them. Good clean American fun."

The Canadian was flabbergasted. "This is a common thing?"

"Not super-duper common, but it happens. Never used to have it happen to me because I used to be able to command respect before I gained a certain level of, um, infamy, but now it's happened to me about three, four times this past year. And I distinctly remember it happening to a kid in the library in high school."

"...In the middle of a school library? With teachers watching? That ballsy?"

"It was a lower-middle-class suburban American high school. Nobody gave a shit, Howie." Nick almost sounded embarrassed that he had to explain this. "I mean no disrespect by this, Big Maple, but you might have some learning to do about our country's culture of cynicism and apathy."

Howard had a funny feeling that Nick was exaggerating, but he was a stranger in a strange land and specifically in a very strange city, so he figured perhaps he'd best just take the wisdom in good faith.

"...Red light," Nick noted. "Last chance to light one up before the bridge, and then the street turns into a highway again."

"Good idea," the raccoon agreed as he pulled the cigarette box out of his pocket and unwrapped it. "You don't mind if I smoke in the car?"

"Not at all." Nick then extracted something from his own pocket. "Lighter?"

Howard had one of his own somewhere, but he probably wouldn't have had time to find it before the light turned green, so he accepted it. "I thought you didn't smoke."

"I don't," Nick said with a wise smile, "but carrying a lighter for people who do is a great way to meet people. It used to work even better back when people smoked more, then a lot of people quit and carrying a lighter stopped being effective at making you a popular guy… but then more people started smoking the other thing, so now depending on the form they prefer it in, people wanna make friends with the guy who loans them a lighter again!"

Howard nodded along as he listened to the logic of it, quietly agreeing that it made perfect sense, as he lit his cigarette and rolled his window open a crack.

Nick was still smiling as he took the lighter back, but soon seemed like the smile was hard to maintain. "So… maybe this is just because I'm a lightning rod for negativity these days, but… I gotta say, when I told you I was waiting on you to experience Zootopian anti-raccoon sentiment firsthand before I explained it to you, I didn't think you'd encounter both extremes of it immediately. That's just goofy."

And the raccoon had to actively try to not look annoyed. "...So you could have prepared me for moments like that."

"In my defense, it was cartoonishly bad luck - or at least it was bad luck that they were so crystal-clear with how they felt about us. But… yeah, Howie, what you have to understand about Z-Town is that it's a city where people are very aware of our biology and history… and that begat this weird side effect where, because we know so much about each other, a lot of people in - excuse me, mammals in this city… think that they have biological and historical precedent for not liking other species." He slumped in his seat, clearly not enjoying having to give this talk. "The long and short of it is that prey species don't trust historical predators on the grounds that we have hunting and killing in our DNA, pred species don't trust prey because ever since all our brains turned on, it seems like they've been using their sheer numbers to paint us as monsters and squeeze us out… and your people, sir… and to a far lesser extent, mine… are in this weird position where you're kind of on the cusp of pred and prey, but because distrust is a survival instinct baked into every animal's DNA, nobody sees you as 'one of us', they all see you as 'one of them'. I'm sorry, bud, but you're the mammal in the middle and you're gonna be taking a lot of heat from both sides of the trenches."

Howard kept his eyes on the road as he pondered that. It all seemed a faintly familiar sentiment, but worded in a way that made it seem strange. "Well, that's nothing new, everywhere everybody thinks of us as scavengers who eat trash-"

"Kind of, Maple. But it goes deeper than that, and for different reasons. Here there's specifically two warring factions who hate each other - in this city, Howie, the biggest source of conflict is between predators in general and prey mammals in general, and while we can mostly maintain harmony… it's really just for appearances." A quick glance at Nick showed that his jovial and jocular look was completely gone and he was treating this miniature lecture like a matter of national security. "Here people won't - goddammit, mammals here won't just joke 'ha, ha, your people eat garbage.' Either they'll see you as yet another bloodthirsty killer who would not hesitate to eat their gramma's corpse straight out of the casket and who would treat a morgue like an Old Country Buffet… or they'll see you as a pathetic, dinky little shit who for all intents and purposes is someone whose ancestors were preyed upon by the truly strong, but in an embarrassing effort to be above the other prey species, your people tried to acquire the taste of meat, but were too weak to actually kill anything of consequence so just wound up eating the leftovers that the big boys didn't want."

The raccoon gave it some thought as he looked at the ice-covered Welcome to Zootopia sign over the roadway as the bridge came back to land. He could kind of see where the fox was going with this.

"They won't just see you as some lowly second-class citizen whose people lived off scraps," Nick continued, "they'll either see you as some monster who would rather dine on those who're trying to rest in peace instead of having the decency to kill your meals fresh… or some scum-of-the-earth lowlife who consumes the parts that weren't good enough for the actual kings of the food chain in a desperate attempt to be somebody your not. Like I said, we know our history and our biology here. Mammals in this town don't give a shit where your family's from or what you think happens after we die - but they care a lot about whether, in times immemorial, your people were the oppressed or the oppressor. Your people seeming like an oppressed race trying to join the oppressor… is just gonna make everybody hate you." And then Nick finished with a flourish, letting out a comically exaggerated sigh and shaking his head violently, suddenly wearing a cheeky grin when he mellowed out. "Man, that was a lot of boring serious talk! So, how you feeling about all that?"

Howard knew how he was feeling, but needed a second to figure out how to put it into words: "...You sure speak pretty well for a high-school dropout."

"What can I say? I was pretty good at English - assuming we were reading something written after World War II."

"Okay, fine, but… Jesus, people really care that much here about something that literally happened so long ago that… like… something that happened so long ago that we didn't have the ability of speech or profound thought to have these conversations about it at the time?"

Nick nodded slowly. "We're too smart for our own good here. Hey, this city was founded by civil-rights activists - it only makes sense to me that we'd have a prevailing culture of thinking a lot about these things."

The detective was rerunning the events at the gas station through his head, this new context putting a new light on them. "So… was it the turkey jerky that scared the cashier?"

"Absolutely. Though the brand of cigarettes probably didn't help - I'm not even being a wiseass at this point, I really think he might have had it in his head that Newports-slash-Shrewports are for dangerous people. I know that's not the case - my dad smokes Newports, they're named after Newport, Rhode Island, he's from Pawtucket, he has his Ocean State loyalty - but a lot of other people don't know that. Looking at the guy's body language, it seemed like he was feeling guilty deep down about being double-racist against both meat-eaters and Whatever-port smokers, but… it seems the forces of both of these prejudices combined were too big to ignore."

Pondering… pondering… "And we just happened to run into belligerent assholes who think my people are fake predators." It was not stated as a question, Howard was merely processing the series of occurrences out loud.

"That we did! Hey, the best stories always have a ridiculous coincidence at the crux somewhere, now don't they?" Nick joked. "Of course, the fact that they were… not teenagers, but in that age bracket where they're above 18 but not 21 yet; hell, do we have a word for that? Yeah, them being very young adults didn't help-"

"So we really couldn't have gotten it any worse."

"Oh, of course we could have gotten it worse," Nick retorted, again looking like he was trying to hide how embarrassed he was for needing to explain that. "Rocky there could have just skipped straight to signaling the Zootopia Heights police on suspicion of suspicious activity being performed by suspicious characters, suspiciously, and it's a miracle Grizzly Adams didn't fart on you and give you pink eye - or he could have just straight-up shit on you. Not to mention the possibility of him opening up the other side of his pants and literally slapping you upside the head with his d-"

"Alright! Alright, I get it!" Howard protested to mellow out the fox, who seemed to be enjoying listing all the ways their consecutive conflicts could have been even more absurd. Therefore, the raccoon turned it back to seriousness: "So… this really is a place that cares that much about whose Kind any given person belongs to, huh?"

"You'll have to stop using 'Kind' to refer to 'species' or people might realize you're a filthy canuck and have you thrown back across the 48th, but yes… this is the kind of town where hooved mammals rarely get the surgery to have their hands broken up into crude finger-y things that allow them some level of dexterity because to do so in this city would be considered an act of species traitordom. Every city has a unique culture, Sherlock," Nick said as he crossed his leg onto his knee and began wagging his foot, "this one's just happens to involve a lot of pride in species identity."

Howard… had several questions.

"Uh… was '48th' supposed to refer to the border? Because that's the 49th, dude. And I don't think… is 'traitordom' a word?"

The fox replied by groaning through his nose and putting a paw over his eyes. "My God, Howie, I already told you a dozen times that I put all my chips in being street-smart over book-smart, thanks for validating my fear of being open with people instead of putting up a shield of sarcasm like I usually do."

But aside from the geographical error, everything the fox was saying was making complete sense in Howard's head, but it all begged one more big question, a question he didn't want to ask because he refused to believe there was a straightforward answer for it, but… a question he felt compelled to ask all the same.

"So… what do we do about this?" he dared to ask.

"Do about it?"

"Yeah, I mean…" Howard didn't really know what he meant. "...I know it sounds like a stupid question, because there probably isn't anything to do about it, but… this seems like one of those situations where you can't do nothing, it feels like it'd be ridiculous not to do something just to… I don't know, to do what you can."

He still kept his eyes on the road, but in his periphery, he could see Nick turn his entire head to stare at him as he came up with an answer.

"Well…" the fox began carefully, "I gotta say, for someone who carries himself like a guy with clinical depression, you've proven a few times already that you're capable of having some pretty fun and optimistic moments."

"...You think I give off the vibe that I'm clinically depressed?"

"Oh, absolutely, Quiet Stoic Guy-Who-Rarely-Barely-Smiles. But don't worry about that, Sunshine: in complete seriousness… it's a good sign that you see all the injustice in this town and your first thought is about how to fix it against all odds instead of just throwing your hands up and saying fuck it. My snark is completely disengaged right now, Howie. There was a time not too long ago when I would have laughed at you for daring to be such a can-doer…" Nick mysteriously trailed off as his chill smile melted and a haunting silence filled the car for a long five or so seconds. "...But then I grew up. See, I toldja this is the city where I became a man. Growing up isn't just the province of children. And hopefully I can get something good out of having a good dude like you in my life."

The raccoon nodded slowly as he let these words wash over him. "And I appreciate the statement of faith, but… that still doesn't answer my question about what we can do about the rampant bigotry you're telling me is in this town."

"Oh, there's absolutely nothing we can do, Zootopia is totally screwed," Nick answered with a chuckle. "All we can do is be our best, change what we can, and hope that people have enough decency to admire us for that and follow our lead. And with any luck… maybe this gig can offer us an opportunity to do that."

Howard had no objections to any of this; he just kept nodding. "I sure hope so," he sighed. "So… gotta prove I'm better than what people think I am because of who I am. Okay. Not impossible. Not unlike what I've had to do before. People think I'm a monster now instead of a bum-"

"Oh, and did I mention that this city also has a major sizeism problem?"

The detective's eyes nearly burst open. "Sizeism? Whaddya mean, sizeism?"

"We're in touch with our animal instincts here, remember? That includes our primitive wiring to think that physically bigger is better. Even the mayor we had for over a decade - he wasn't just a lion, he was a big freaking lion. I don't have as much of a profound explanation for this, but I think it's another way other mammals are gonna think you and I are pathetic weaklings, even big prey like… deer and such."

It was seriously a miracle at this point that Howard hadn't skidded off the road with all the distracted driving he'd been doing. "Is that why the buck working at the gas station in that little booth thing didn't help us when those big guys were assaulting us!?"

"It's possible. Or maybe he was just being a coward, afraid of some big scary predators. Or a third option… he might have recognized me and hated me for quitting the cops. Oh, yeah, keep that in mind, that's gonna be an issue, too, if you're around me, a lot of people are gonna hate you by proxy."

And to this, the driver let out a loud groan. "My God, does it ever end?"

"Nope!" Nick beamed. "But as I now know… that's not a reason to quit fighting it."

Howard didn't want to argue with such a bold statement, but he still thought this was a lot to process, so he just shook his head, took a drag off his cigarette, and blew the smoke out the side of his mouth towards the open window where freezing air took it away. "Well… nothing new there, either, I told you about how the cops hated me back home, right?"

But his passenger felt like changing the subject. "Not even trying to butter you up here, Howie…" Nick remarked, "...you actually kind of look like a badass when you smoke. Especially with the suit and tie and the car window rolled down. You kinda make me wanna start myself just so I can look that cool… hell, are you sure you don't secretly work for Big Tobacco?"

Well, whether or not the fox was being genuine, that compliment actually worked to make the detective feel like he'd found someone who might come to think highly of him. Holy hell, had he gotten lucky.

-IllI-

"Alright…" Howard said as he parallel-parked alongside Batavia Park, "that was a… nice little mini-adventure, I guess."

"You could even call it… a misadventure!" Nick amended. "See? I know words sometimes."

"Yeah, can't argue with that…" The raccoon trailed off, looked around everywhere except at the fox, and wondered what he ought to say to break the awkward silence. "So… what do we do now?"

Little did Howard know, Nick had an answer ready to go: "I suppose this is as good a time as any to pop the magic question…" And with the look of a child trying to get what they wanted by looking cute, the fox asked with an innocent smile: "Did I get the job?"

If you've been paying any attention to how well these two had hit it off, my friend, you should have no trouble predicting how Howard responded to that magic question:

"...FUCK!"

Nick couldn't help but chuckle. "What's wrong?" He had a hunch.

"...We spent so much time shooting the shit about other things that we never even went over the actual… work, did we?"

The hunch was correct. "Hey, don't sweat it. Now we know we have rapport and chemistry, and with this, we can do anything! So tell me, Columbo, what's a typical day like for you?"

The detective felt just a little weird about the fact that the applicant was running this particular section of the interview, but Nick was right, best cut to the chase to make up for lost time. "So… this is the part where I'm a little afraid I might lose you with how… boring the work can be."

"Now you've got me deeply fascinated by how playing whodunit can ever be boring," Nick said, his irresistible smirk unwavering.

"Uh… if you say so. But we're not really gonna be solving… mysteries, necessarily. It's… I mean, there's exceptions, but I swear, ninety-plus percent of the jobs I book are married people trying to find out if their spouses are cheating."

Nick hadn't been lying, he was finding this profoundly interesting. "Really! I feel like I shouldn't be so surprised by that, but I honestly wasn't thinking it would be that much of a market share."

"Yeah, even in places where adultery isn't illegal and getting busted for infidelity won't make you lose custody of your kids - which, as I learned in Portland, Oregon is one of those places - people just want the satisfaction of busting their S.O."

"Hmmm. Makes sense," his protégé pondered, index fingers up together against his lips. "This begs the question, however… what do you do to get this kind of evidence?"

"In cases like that, literally just doing some digging to find out where the unfaithful partner might be found, basically stalking that person, getting hard evidence - most of the time, but not all the time, a photograph - and delivering the goods to the client."

"That simple?"

"That simple. In this particular scenario. Which is far and away the most common scenario you'll encounter."

And as much as Nick looked intrigued, he still looked like he had some uncertainties about this as a business model. "But tell me, sensei, how does one… advertise such a service? Especially if you're trying to make it a sustainable source of income?"

There it went. Howard was hoping to stave off this particular question for as long as possible - he hadn't been the best at marketing himself back home and most certainly not in Seattle or Portland - but he had to inspire confidence in his new pupil, so he gave it his best shot. "Well, there's a few different things you can do… you can, uh… well, we're living in the Twenty-First Century, I had a crappy little website up just so I would appear in Google searches-"

"Which here would be Zoogle."

"...Right. Um… you can put up a sign outside wherever your office is… I guess? Some people still use phone books, so hit up whoever publishes the yellow pages…" But then, seemingly out of nowhere, something snapped in his head on the topic of publicizing his services as it related to his conflict back home, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat (especially uncomfortable with his spine damage) as he decided to include it in the conversation. "...But actually, the bigger cases you get, the less you're going to want to put yourself out there, just in case some people who don't want you to find things out try to find you, you don't want to make it easy for them. It was risky enough for me to put up those flyers in this city, so as I'm trying to start over again here, I'm probably gonna try to get as far as I can go on word of mouth before I-"

"Word of mouth?" Nick's eyes lit up at those words. "Hey, if that's the route you wanna take, let the businessman here help you out!" He shifted in his seat to pull his phone out of his pocket. "You wanna get your first Zootopia case right now?"

"...Right now?"

"Hey, no time like the present, huh?" The fox tapped a few buttons on his device. "Now I know, I know… I already told you that everybody in this city either hates me for joining the cops or for quitting the cops, but what if I told you that when I said everyone…" He leaned in with the expression of an eccentric huckster, a look in his eyes doing well to fit his surname. "...I was actually implementing the literary technique known as hyperbole! There are still some mammals in Zootopia who are completely agnostic to my life choices, and when I say I know everybody in this town, that 'everybody' is completely literal! And one of those Everbodies is someone I was just thinking about earlier with regards to their marital problems…"

And thus he began scrolling through his list of contacts, and although the raccoon tried to be polite and look away, after a moment, Howard realized that Nick was tilting his phone for him to see just how expansive his contacts list was. When Howard noticed that, he wasn't going to be rude and decline the invitation to look, and after each blur of names, one could make out a few clearly between each flick of Nick's thumb. Some had their real, regular names in there, but a very good proportion had an endearing nickname that would have meant nothing to anybody but the phone's owner:

Ángel Valderrama… Benny the Jet… Big Teddy… Bridgette Hamlin… Carrots… Chief BuyOneGetOne… Dan Cunningham… Duke of Bootlegistan… Flash… Josh Wolfowitz… Not Dead (Dad)... Pipsqueak… Quinn Kraft… Redcoat Rob… Rin Tin Tin… Selma Leonardo… Shark Finn… Top Fox (Mom)... Will deBeer… until finally he arrived at:

"Who's Ziggy Stardust?" Howard had to ask.

"This German guy I sold coke to way back," Nick said casually, his eyes on his phone as he hit Call, "I met him in a bar while he was rocking out to David Cowie."

The fox put the phone to his ear and looked now at his driver, who he just now realized looked terrified by this revelation. And not the David Cowie part.

"...Oh, oh this was a looong time ago, I was new in town in my early twenties!" Nick stammered, trying to make this guy whose help he desperately needed feel less uncomfortable. "I wasn't like a drug dealer or anything, I was just a… a drug catalyst. A liaison! Y'know, I'd run into people who'd mention they wanted to try some controlled substances, but they'd say 'oh, I don't know where to find drug dealers' or 'I don't have the time' or 'I can't be seen in a sketchy alleyway buying blow,' so that's where I'd come in, I'd buy it myself, bring it to these people, and flip it at a markup! I, I never got too involved in that stuff, I was just a… a voluntary pack mule! Don't worry, I got out of that world years ago when one of the guys I bought from got his -"

But then the phone stopped ringing and a voice answered, and Nick immediately flipped like a switch back to his mellow demeanor to make his casual acquaintance on the other end feel comfortable.

"Siegfried! How's it going, man? Hey, do I remember you saying a few months ago that you thought your wife was seeing another badger? Well listen, I saw just earlier today a picture of you two on Facebook, does that mean you two are still together?"

He listened for an answer.

"Aw, well I'm sorry she's still making you wonder, but hey! What if I could give you the solace of a concrete answer?"

Nick kept listening while Howard raised an eyebrow.

"I actually just started working at a private detective agency, and marital issues are kind of our forté," Nick said confidently, knowing he was mispronouncing forte but also knowing that if he correctly said it as 'fort' then no one would know what the hell he was saying. "So how's about this, we can go look and see if she's participating in some extracurricular activities! And just for you, Ziggy, I'll -! Uh…" He covered the receiver and turned to his new boss. "How much do we charge for these?"

The detective blinked, sitting silent for a second. "Um… a hundred fifty?"

"I'll give you a special Nick's First Case discount, only only one-fifty!" Nick said proudly back to the phone, listening for a moment before continuing. "Alright, and your wife's a flight attendant, right? So she keeps odd hours? Might even be out having fun right now, mid-afternoon on a weekday? … Alright, where do you think I might be able to find her right about now?"

The fox shot the raccoon a thumbs-up, and the raccoon, daring to be confident that this was somehow actually working, gave the gesture right back.

"Awesome!" Nick said to this mysterious Ziggy. "And hey… if anybody asks… you and me haven't talked in months, sound good? … Alright! Copacetic. I'll have a photo for you soon. Toodles!"

With that, he tapped the End Call button with much satisfaction and turned to his new partner.

"So… shall we go make ourselves some money?"

"Wh- ri-right now!?"

The fox simply widened his smirk and blew some air out of his nose. "If not now, when?" he said with a wink that might have seemed creepy if anybody else tried it.

And the raccoon just shrugged, putting his car back in gear. "Hard to argue with that. So where are we headed?"

"So you're gonna wanna head that way for a few blocks…"

-IllI-

While Nick ran inside a jazz club called The Jungle Bomp to try to get evidence of the infidelity, Howard waited in his car across the street. Figuring he'd have some time to kill, he had the thought that besides Renee, there was one other woman in his life who surely cared about him, and even though the two of them didn't have the best relationship, he knew he ought to do more to keep in touch than he did.

Riiiiing… riiiing… riii-

"Hello?"

"Hi, Mom, uh… your son is still alive."

He could hear a heavy sigh on the other end. "Hmm… well, I'm glad to hear that, of course, but it still distresses me that I need to hear that."

"Well… back home, I always knew I should have called you more, so the least I can do is deliver some good news-"

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!" Howard swore as for the second time that day, a phone call of his was interrupted by Nick sneaking up on him.

"Howard? Is everything okay?" Even from the phone's new position on the floor of his car, he could hear his mother's worry loud and clear.

"Uh… yeah, um, everything's fine, Mom, I just…" He stopped fumbling the phone and locked eyes with the smiling fox outside his window, wanting to convey his frustration but not wanting to antagonize his cadet. "Sorry, I'm gonna have to call you back."

"Howard?" BEEP! You see, my friend, this is how you know this story is not a work of fiction: it would be shamefully abysmal writing if I were to set up an emotional moment with a sociopolitical dissident and his mom just to abruptly end it as soon as it started, and me making shit up just to round out the story would be deplorable journalism on my part.

Figuring that the rookie had gone astray and that this would require a long talk, the raccoon opened his door and stepped out of the car to get a little closer to eye-level with the fox.

"I gotcha again, didn't I?" Nick teased.

"Seriously, though, what are you doing back so soon?" Howard asked, still aiming to be kind but firm. "Something go wrong?"

The fox winced. "Why would you assume something went wrong?"

"I dunno, is this not the right place? Was she not in there?"

Nick stayed quiet however, only answering by extracting his phone and pulling up a photo he'd taken: a selfie with a pair of European badgers.

"You took a photo WITH them!?" Howard shrieked.

But Nick looked annoyed at Howard's lack of faith in his methods. "Well, what'd you expect me to do? Take a picture of them? 'Hey, guys, can I take a picture of you guys just to… have? Maybe hang over my mantle?'"

"No, no, you're supposed to, like… sneak a picture of them-!"

"Aaand that wouldn't be enormously creepy if I get found out, how?" the fox challenged. "This was much less risky and much, much easier! Plus, not to mention, I also got this, just so there's no ambiguity in the context…"

He swiped the picture away and presented a video with the same couple.

"Hey, look who I ran into, it's my favorite badger!" Nick had said.

"Yeah, me with a new guy who's a million times more fun than that boring old German guy I married!" The wife sounded like she was in that sweet spot where her inhibitions were compromised but she could still speak incriminatingly coherently. "Y'know, they told me when I got older, I'd start to find quiet guys with stable jobs attractive… BULLSHIT! How can a cokehead be that boring - YES, Siegfried, we all know!"

"Ma'am, can you keep it down?" a presumed employee had asked, and the video ended.

"Now I just gotta post the photo on social media, tell Ziggy to go look for it, and pretend I just made a stupid judgment call by putting it up in public if the wife ever calls me out about it," the new sleuth explained confidently.

Howard was dumbfounded. "...How did you do that?"

"So if you go to your phone's camera and hit the Video button-"

"No, no, I mean…" Admittedly, this taste of Nick's actual, undiluted scathing sarcasm did indeed hinder his process of finding the words he wanted. "...How did you get them to be so… open with you?"

Nick just smirked, shrugged, and shoved his phone back into his pocket. "Oh, you know… say hi, talk 'em up… you make friends, Howie. You know how to make friends, don'tcha?"

"...Yeah?" Because Howard couldn't say no. Honestly, he didn't know the answer to that question because he didn't know where the line between friends and casual acquaintances was supposed to lie, so he just changed the subject: "So… you did that in… what was that, three minutes!?"

"Was it?" the fox asked. "Oh, dear oh dear oh dear. In that case, I apologize for dawlding and wasting your time, it should have only taken me two."

"O…kay, then…" The raccoon looked up and down the street for a second as he thought about what to say next.

"What's on your mind, Maple?"

"...Well, you're definitely a valuable person to have in a line of work like this-"

"Valuable mammal," Nick corrected, "you gotta get in tune with the local slang if you want people here to trust you- fuck, mammals here to trust you! I swear, one day around an out-of-towner and I'm starting to unlearn the lingo already."

"...Right. But, um…" Howard wasn't truly ready to put this out there, but if the theme of the day was no time like the present, then he figured he ought to go for it. "...Maybe this is as good a time as any to let you know what the, uh… actual goal of bringing you aboard would be."

"Hm!" Nick beamed with curiosity as he put an elbow up on Howard's tiny car. "Do tell!"

"Okay, so…" Man, this was gonna suck. "...Remember the poster saying I'd help you set up your own P.I. firm?"

"I very much do!"

"Alright, so… I, um…" The poor little guy was having a lot of trouble maintaining eye contact with his student. "...I'm only allowed to be in the States on a visitor's visa for… oh-so long, and I can't just get a work visa because they don't hand those out to self-employed freelancers. So… maybe you can see where I'm going with this… I need you to start your own detective agency and hire me as an employee. Um- officially. Then I can stay. Maybe. Hopefully."

And to this, the fox gave him a look of utter disgust - which was quickly proven to just be Nick breaking Howard's balls as the redhead burst out laughing shortly afterwards.

"My God, Howie, could you have possibly even waited any longer to bring that up!?" Nick chuckled. "Did we even need to do all this detectiving stuff?"

"...Whaddya mean?" Howard asked with a wince.

Nick simply gave two taps to the roof of the car with one paw and one firm pat on the raccoon's back with the other. "C'mon. This is the easy part."

Howard had been feeling uncharacteristically un-eloquent all through the day with this strange character, and this mysterious new turn of events just kept leaving him struggling for words. "Um… okay."

But before he could get back into his vehicle, Howard had to stop and acknowledge the sun bear standing on the sidewalk, staring straight at him and… scrunching up his snout?

"Why do you smell like bear ass?" the stranger asked.

"Ohhh, callback!" Nick cheered like a meathead before immediately getting rather serious as he grabbed the passenger door handle and gave the foreigner a lesson: "For real, though, Howie, how's your sense of smell? I know, I know, not everybody's as blessed in that category as our primitive ancestors were, but we're pretty proud of our noses in this city, so if yours doesn't work the best, there's medicine you can take to give it a boost! And I know which pills actually work because I used to sling the ones that don't."

"I still wanna know why the striper smells like bear ass," the sun bear repeated.

-IllI-

If you subtracted travel times, it took twenty-seven minutes.

"HOW did you DO that!?" the raccoon demanded to know as he looked at the documents officially incorporating Nicholas P. Wilde and Associates Private Investigation Firm, papers which had been acquired by methods Howard didn't fully understand and which Nick is respectfully declining to explain to me.

In response to this exclamation, the cunning fox simply let out a playful scoff and a dismissive wave. "Oh, don't be too impressed. I was my own boss for twenty years, I was hustling looong before everybody and their grandmas started bragging about their 'hustles'... if I couldn't figure out after all this time how to get a business legitimized quick, I'd be embarrassing myself."

Well, one thing was for sure: this guy was sure of his abilities and Howard couldn't deny him. "I… yeah, being able to finagle things like that is a pretty good skill to have, actually."

"Ain't it, though?" Nick said teasingly. "But I can't do it on my own. The flip side of knowing everybody is that everybody knows you, and some of those people who know me decided, eh, they don't very much care for me. Like Simba, Tony, and Yogi back at the gas station, for example. You'll have to step in sometimes where I can't make any headway with mammals who want nothing to do with me, and I'll back you up when you need a fox's wit and charm to bail you out of a tough spot - not to say you'd be helpless without me, don't let me disrespect you after all you've done for me-"

"No, no, it's fine," Howard insisted, "even the most talented people shouldn't have to fight battles alone."

"Attaboy! You don't need my help making friends with the denizens of this crazy town…"

And then Nick did something that many who knew him - and many mammals did know him - would find uncharacteristically genuine of him: he extended a paw for a shake and said,

"...Because you already made friends with one of them today."

Howard was spooked at first, but forced himself to realize this was a good thing and reciprocated the… um…

"So… is this a handshake or a pawshake in this city?" the foreigner asked.

His tour guide had to let out a single chuckle one more time. "Now you're asking the right questions!" he said with a clap of the hand-paws, and promptly relaxed in his seat again. "Ah, Howie, Howie, Howie. What a day we've had, huh? You mind taking me home? I'll give you directions."

The raccoon nodded and refired the ignition. "Yeah, I think it's about quitting time."

Off they went to Nick and Judy's place, Howard seeming much more relaxed now that the day had had a happy ending while Nick seemed just as chill as ever.

"Now I'll admit," Nick began again, "I've never had to actually formally employ somebody under myself, so you're gonna have to give me a day or two to look into that before I officially hire you-"

"Oh, no, Nick, it's fine," said Howard, "I… I'm just glad that it finally looks like I might have a chance to stay in this country without the clock running out on me."

The fox smiled. "You know, I bet a lot of people think you're a bummer, don't they? Stupid people who don't care to take the time to get to know you. And admittedly, you kind of have this air about you like you're quiet and reserved and cynical - I mean, for God's sake, you're from a gloomy city - wait, no, even your fur looks like a raincloud!"

"Uh… duly noted."

"...But I think that deep down there's an optimist in there somewhere - a disappointed optimist, but an optimist all the same. I can see it a mile away. Takes one to know one."

The driver looked over to see his passenger's persistent smirk was looking particularly goofy and, dare he say, friendly rather than self-righteous or condescending like it had seemed throughout the day.

"...And you gotta ditch those shoes, Howie, we don't wear those here."

"Yeah, I noticed that, what's that all about?"

"Wearing shoes goes against our nature and the process of manufacturing shoes is bad for the environment. The only ones here who wear shoes are horses."

The nice moment of fraternity was now thoroughly broken as Howard tried to conceive of some way that this wouldn't be the stupidest thing he'd ever heard. "Well, what if I step in a puddle? Or - or bird shit on the ground?"

"Have you tried being an adult about it and sucking it up?" Nick's smirk looked self-righteous and condescending again. But he turned away from the raccoon to slump in his seat and pull his phone out to adjust his phone's contacts. "If you can put up with my next-level sarcasm that I use as a coping mechanism for my deep-seated insecurities, you and me are gonna get along like Martha Shrewart and Snoop Dogg. Howie… I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Howard would later find out that this was this was about the time that the fox had finally come up with a colorful moniker for him:

First Name
Howard .

Last Name
Lotor .

Nickname
Sunshine .