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?

8. The Young and the Hopeless

Chapter Eight, "The Young and the Hopeless"

…COUGH! ACK, ACK, ACK! "...Jesus Christ, why do people smoke these?"

"Because somebody who was a trendsetter once did it and everyone wanted to be like them because our animal brains seek to follow a leader and conform to the crowd."

"Aw, God, well that's enough for one lifetime."

"What, you're taking one puff and you're quitting?"

"I mean, it's like… seriously? This is the plant we enslaved cheetahs and lions and elephants and shit for? It tastes like shit and it's not even enjoyable. Smoking this ain't like smoking green."

"Hey, no judgment, pussy-ass bitch, I don't fuck with squares either."

"I just wish I tried one before when I turned eighteen, then I could say 'yeah, I smoked cigarettes before they raised the age on me and then I was magically too young to buy them all over again and then I had to get them illegally like a fuckin' rebel 'till I turned twenty-one!' Now that a' been cool."

"Eh… maybe, I guess."

"Maaan, can't you just back me up when I'm tryna look like a badass?"

"Dude… you know I do. Happy big two-one, bruh."

"Aw, I appreciate it, man."

"Glad you finally joined me in being old enough to buy beer, kid."

"Oh, don't you talk down to me, you antenna-eared midget! Being older ain't a good thing! Hell - weren't you technically born in a different century than me?"

"Fuckin' A I was."

"You fuckin' oldhead."

"Kiss my cotton-tailed ass, I experienced the Twentieth Century and that's something you ain't never gonna do!"

"Yeah, for, like, nine hours! Bitch, you're just jealous because you wish your birthday was on six-nine!"

"If you were born at 4:20 in the morning on six-nine, then maybe I'd be jealous."

"...I'm too fucked up for this argument."

"Dude, same."

"..."

"So what're ya gonna do with the rest of the pack, then?"

"Well… I'm sure we could find a homeless dude somewhere who'd appreciate them."

"Oh, right right right, instead of giving them food and shelter, give 'em lung cancer."

"Well if they die of lung cancer, that'd probably solve the food and shelter issues, now wouldn't it?"

"Jeeesus Christ, what else should I expect from the kit who got kicked out of a fucking daycare when you were five because you kept saying incredibly edgy shit?"

"I didn't get kicked out, ya fuckin' idiot, I just happened to be on bad terms with the lady who ran it around the time my mom got the fuck outta that shithole city when it was becoming a fuckin' warzone. Besides, that racist-ass rabbit bitch was projecting her hatred of one particular fox onto me."

"Gutsy of you to call this lady racist when you were the one who called an Arabian lybica cat a fucking terrorist."

"Hey! I was fucking five, and my mom had just recently tried explaining to me what 9/11 was. You really gonna hold it against a kid who'd just finished preschool for not knowing why that was a bad thing to say?"

"Fine, I'll hold it against your mom. How dare she do a bad job explaining international acts of political violence to a preschooler? Your mom's a fucking idiot."

"Hey, don't talk shit about my mom!"

"Your mom's so stupid she thinks hyenas are dogs."

"...Your mom's so stupid she doesn't know when to use affect versus effect."

"Your mom's so stupid she doesn't know when to use whom in a sentence."

"Your mom's so stupid she doesn't know that pedestrians have right-of-way at crosswalks."

"Your mom's so stupid she thinks adding lanes to a road will alleviate traffic."

"Your mom's so stupid she doesn't realize Timbuktu is a real place."

"Your mom's so stupid she doesn't realize that Daylight Savings Time is in the summer and that the sun is supposed to set at 4:30 in December."

"Uhhh… your mom's so stupid that she thinks Left Twix and Right Twix actually taste different and doesn't realize that that's just a marketing ploy."

"...That's a little bit too implausible."

"Well, fuck, my mom actually thinks that!"

"Oh, Jesus, no shit?"

"Swear to God."

"...Wow… Your mom's also so stupid that she gave you a fucking girl's name."

"Hey! Just because the retarded fucking Klawdashians decided that Kendall was a girl's name doesn't mean it is! Your mom's so stupid that she thought it was in any way unique or interesting to name her son Ryan!"

"Your mom's so stupid that she actually believes that in Zootopia, anyone can be anything, and that's why she moved you here under the false impression that you'd actually have a chance at a decent future here."

"...That's pretty fucking stupid!"

"Heh, I know right?"

"Ah… I think the fact that we had this conversation so… coherently means we've been awake for so long that we're sobering up again."

"Naw, man, I'm just good at staying sharp when I'm crossfaded, you never got fucked up in the first place because you barely smoked or drank anything, you pussy."

"Fuck you, I'm handling it well because my people are nocturnal, you jealous bitch!"

"Why would I be jealous of a freak who can see the earth's magnetism floating in the fucking air, you… uh…"

"Hey, that's not how it works, and half of us don't even have that ability anymore-!"

"Uh, hold- hold on a sec, someone's calling me."

"Now? Is it your mom?"

"No, she knows I'm over here… Jesus Christ, it's Angela."

"Angela!?"

"Should I-!?"

"Don't answer it!"

"Alright, I sent it to voicemail-"

"No, you fucking idiot!"

"What!?"

"If it didn't ring through, she knows you're awake now!"

"...Goddammit."

"Yeah! Dipshit."

"...Aaand she's calling again."

"Don't answer-"

"Hello?"

"Goddammit, Ryan…"

"...You want us to come in to work!?"

"Dude, what else was she gonna call to ask us-!?"

"Uhhh, no, I don't think either one of us is, uh, fit to come in to work today."

"Bro, just be straight up with her and tell her we're crossfaded out of our minds-"

"I know because I'm with him right now, we've been up all night, it was his birthday to- yesterday."

"Tell her we've been awake for twenty-four consecutive hours."

"Yeah, we've been partying all night because we had the reasonable expectation that we wouldn't be called into work last-minute this morning!"

"What happened to Ishaan?"

"Yeah, Kenny's asking why Ishaan isn't coming in today."

"..."

"Well that sucks, but we can't work either! We've been awake since this time yesterday, we can't stay awake another… ten?"

"..."

"Well that's you! Normal mammals aren't cool with staying awake for that long and any doctor worth their tail will tell you you shouldn't! If you're such a paragon of work ethic, why don't you helm the store today!?"

"...What's she saying?"

"She's saying that we must be pretty awake if I can argue this hard - Angela, it's called adrenaline!"

"Oh my God…"

"Hold on, dude, I got this… Okay. Angela. I'll strike you a deal: we'll work if you pay us double!"

"Dude, Ryan, no, she's not gonna-"

"Time and a half."

"..."

"Time and a quarter."

"..."

"Time and a tenth."

"..."

"THEN AT LEAST LET US GET SOME ENERGY DRINKS OUT OF THE COOLER, FOR CHRIST'S SAKES!"

"...What she say to that?"

"She said she'll be watching the security cameras to charge us for what we're taking - Angela, if you can do that, why can't you just work the store yourself!?"

"..."

"She said she needs two people and she's just gonna watch the footage later."

"Of course she is."

"Well you can't fire us if we don't come in today! You can't afford to, then you'd have to work the store yourself- Oh, what the fuck, lady!?"

"What she say now?"

"She brought up how she knows both our families would kick us out of the house if we quit."

"What's fucked up is that there are people in this world who think this is good leadership."

-IllI-

There were individuals in this world who still read physical newspapers - chiefly of the older generation. This screaming hairy armadillo (description theirs) was one such elder who still sought the printed page. Therefore in his search for the written word in Savannah Central, a ways away from his home in Sahara Square, he walked into the medium-small-size-geared convenience store that was probably still a little large for him, but damn was it convenient.

He didn't even look at the clerk as he walked into the Little Medium Mart, simply making a beeline for the newspaper stand. The two big publications were right next to each other: the Zootopia Daily Journal bore a headline criticizing the new mayor as being too progressive, while the Zootopia Times was criticizing him for not being progressive enough. The armadillo grabbed the ZDJ without much thought; he'd always found the Times to have far too much of a liberal bias.

He walked over to the counter and saw now that the young tod manning the cash register. The fox didn't seem all too cognizant of his customer, either. Of course, the armadillo had no way of knowing that the lad who was currently swaying back and forth, eyes bugged open and staring into space but completely unfocused on anything, was currently dealing with the effects of copious amounts of alcohol, cannabis, Red Bull and twenty-eight hours' worth of fatigue raging inside of him, and being of the older generation, the armadillo just assumed the young man was simply being rude.

"Excuse me," the patron said sharply as he firmly placed the newspaper on the counter.

The fox flinched as his trance was interrupted, but he still took a second before it registered in his head that he had a diminutive customer to ring up. Indeed, the clerk hadn't been ignoring the armadillo; he'd just been struggling to remain on this plane of reality.

"Oh! Uh, hi. Um… did you find everything alright?"

The customer couldn't help but notice that the checkout boy was focusing his eyes on him one at a time, back and forth, his eyes twitching ever so slightly back and forth as they took turns sizing up the armadillo.

Said armadillo simply grunted and pointed at the newspaper.

"Cool. I got this," the fox said as he picked up the periodical and turned it over… and over… and over. "Sorry, just, uh… looking for the barcode-"

"It's on the back page, like it always is."

The fox turned the paper over again.

"The back page," the armadillo repeated.

The fox opened the newspaper to its middle fold.

"The BACK," the customer repeated sternly.

The clerk nervously closed the newspaper and flipped it one more time before staring blankly at it. The armadillo pointed to one corner, and the fox made a faint sound with his tongue as he picked up the scanner and rang the item up.

"Alright, that'll be a dollar, and, uh… that'll be a dollar." Thank God Oregon didn't have sales tax, or he'd probably really have been bugging out. "You can put your card in the, uh… the… ummm…" The cashier began tapping the counter with the palm of his paw, then started tapping it much faster and more aggressively as he turned his head to the ceiling and squeezed his eyes shut, trying desperately to think of the word. "...Fuck, READER!" One last hard slap to signify victory. "You can put your card in the reader."

"Watch your language, young man."

"Uh, sorry."

And then the fox stared in deep confusion at the armadillo, who was glaring right back at him without an ounce of fear.

"...Is everything alright?" asked the clerk.

The customer angrily held up a standard-cut one-dollar bill up to the clerk's face.

"...What the hell is that?"

"It's legal tender! For all debts, public and private!"

The synapses in the young tod's brain popped back on as he swiped the bill out of the armadillo's hands and opened the cash register. "Rightrightrightrightright. Right. Right. Um… just… just, y'know, don't see much paper currency in this city, seeing as it's a, uh… sizeist concept in a size-diverse city, um…" He trailed off without any plan for speaking onward.

Now completely frustrated with this checkout boy, the old armadillo decided to let go of his inhibitions and tell the kit how he really felt. "And should you be wearing that hat on the job?"

The fox stopped fiddling with the dollar bill to grab his flat-brimmed purple-and-black Sacramento Kings cap and turn it backwards as he usually wore it, tucking some longer head-fur out of the hole above the snapback strap. "Uh… yeah, it's, it's part of my religion, um… Christi-hat-ity. I converted from… Hood-aism." The fox wasn't even trying to be snarky there, he was just too afraid to tell this man no. Man, there had been some reason why he'd turned his hat forwards today, but he couldn't for the life of him remember why. "Uh, so, this store is meant for medium-small mammals, sir, and this is a… regular-medium dollar, it's too big for our tray and I don't know if I have a place for it-"

"Young man, you're getting on my last nerve! I've already told you, you have to accept my dollar whether it fits in your register or not! Can you even read this!?" the customer grumbled as he held up the newspaper. But standing on the stepstool at the counter without the best vantage point for a wide field of vision, he just now noticed something off to the right and decided to draw attention to it. "And what about him!? Is he supposed to be wearing a hat?"

Oh yeah, seeing the rabbit passed out with his eyes and ears flat on the counter reminded the fox why he'd been wearing his hat forwards; the idea had been that if they fell asleep and collapsed face-first, the brims of their hats would catch them. But Ryan with his closed-back navy-and-teal Mariners cap had conked out so slowly and gradually that the brim just got pushed up as his head kept sinking lower until the hat was basically not even on his head anymore so much as atop it.

"Hey, uh, Ryan," Kenny asked tentatively as he poked his bunny friend a few times, "what're we supposed to do if we get a dollar bill that won't fit in the tray in the register?"

Ryan didn't show any signs of intelligent thought.

"Sleeping on the job, is he!?" the old man accused.

"Oh, no, he's not sleeping, he's just… medically unconscious."

The armadillo raised an eyebrow. "If that's true, you don't seem too concerned about that."

Note that the fox's ambiguously-terrified expression had not left his face. "I mean… what can I do?" he asked with an unconfident shrug. "He'll wake up… when his body realizes he's not… dying."

But the armadillo's patience had been depleted, and in an effort to get the excellent service to which he felt entitled, he did something that some would call bold; others, foolish.

"Boy, wake up!" he hollered as he grabbed the rabbit's limp ear to talk directly into it. This is an example of what is commonly referred to as a mistake.

Now you see, my friend, if at this point you would have expected Ryan's prey-species instincts to lean towards flight rather than fight when a sensitive part of his body was touched, you'd usually be correct, but, uh… I've done a decent enough job explaining that these guys weren't in a good mental state, right? Okay, good, just checking.

So yeah anyways the bunny instantly woke up and leapt at the armadillo's throat. Hey, rabbits are good at leaping. Ryan was also screaming like a banshee as he bounded over the counter and knocked the old man off the stepstool and onto the floor, which is distinctly less rabbit-like, but that's what he felt possessed to do.

"WHAYADUHTHAH!?" he hollered in the old mammal's face ("Why did you do that?")

"BOY, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!?" the armadillo protested.

"DUHFUNTUTCHMUHLUHTHAH!" ("Don't fucking touch me like that.")

"GET OFF ME!"

"Coooool," was all the fox had to say as he leaned over the counter to watch, utterly enthralled.

The armadillo didn't have the toughest time getting himself out from under the exhausted rabbit, and quickly stood up to address the vulpine clerk. "I'm calling the police!"

But Kenny didn't seem worried - he still looked like his head was about to explode, but he wasn't nervous, per se. "Uh, there's a… camera showing that you touched him first and startled him," the tod said as he pointed to said camera.

"Yeah, that's right!" the buck added as he staggered to his feet. "Ya fuckin'... armored… ball… bitch!"

Amazingly… these threats actually worked. Oldhead here seemed to realize he'd indeed initiated contact, and sensing that he was in an unwinnable situation, he climbed back up the stepstool, grabbed his paper, and made his way to the exit.

"Did you want your receipt?" asked the fox.

But the armadillo stormed out the doors without answering.

"Okay, because I… threw it away already…" Kenny trailed off as he turned to see Ryan stumbling back around and up to the counter. "Here's your hat back."

"Thanks," the bunny mumbled as he put it on between his ears, fashionably backwards like his friend but tilted much further back onto the crown of his head.

"...Has anybody told you it looks like you're wearing a yarmulke when you wear it like that?" Kenny asked. (He himself had told Ryan this twice the previous night alone.)

Ryan, however, had a question of his own: "Man, did I really just jump over the table like a crackhead and try to brain that guy, or did that thing happen where I fell out of bed but I stayed asleep and this is all still part of the dream?"

"I mean, I wouldn't say 'like a crackhead' because you were definitely asleep before he touched your ear, but yeah, that happened."

The bunny groaned and put his head on the counter, not unlike how he was earlier, paws on his temples. "Goddammit, why did we allow our boss to bully us into coming into work today?"

"Because she sniffed out our working-class desperation and weaponized it against us," the fox grumbled through his own lifeless stupor, before suddenly bursting out into a spurt of energy: "The prowletariat shall RISE!" he exclaimed with a gesture that his scrambled brain thought was appropriate for the remark.

His scrambled brain was wrong; the gesture was not appropriate. "Why'd you just do the Hitler sign?" Ryan asked.

Kenny bashfully retracted his paw from the air. "Wait… is that what I just did?"

"You did."

"AAARGH!" Now it was Kenny's turn to bury his head in his paws. "Dude, the energy drinks are not fucking working, I am losing my goddamn mind here." And as he heard the bell ding to indicate that a new customer had entered the store, the fox leaned over the counter pointed accustationally at her with a deranged look on his face. "I AM NOT A NAZI!"

"Ohhhhh, IIIII knowwwww thaaaaat, Kennnnndaaaaall," said the elderly sloth on her mobility scooter, smiling softly at the two would-be college-age dingleberries manning the store. "Youuuuu wouuuuuldn't suuuuurviiiiive verrrrryyyyy lonnnng innnnn thiiiiis ciiiityyyyy iiiiif youuuuu werrrrre!"

"Hi, Mrs. Crawley," Ryan calmly greeted their regular customer, who was very familiar with the duo and who found their antics amusing.

"Hellllllllllooooo, Ryyyyyaaaaan," she replied to the rabbit before scooting about the store to do her shopping, leaving the clerks to go back to panicking about how they were going to survive this shift.

"Okay, fuck this," the fox grumbled as he left the counter for a moment.

"Where're you going?" asked the bunny.

Kenny came back hardly a second later with a pastry he'd picked up off the shelf. "New strategy to stay awake: junk food." He held up a Mexican concha, a hearty chunk of sweetbread covered in a thick layer of off-white hardened frosting designed to resemble a shell (though the packaging claimed it was French for some reason). "We get by on a sugar high. Living with diabetes is better than OD'ing on caffeine that isn't even working for us. And I'm NOT paying for it!" He spun around to show the plastic packaging to the aforementioned security camera. "You see this, Angela? Five seventeen twenty-one, this expired last month, we should not be selling this, I'm doing you a fuckin' favor by taking this off the shelves, lady!" And with that, he turned back to Ryan and unwrapped the roll, offering it to him.

"...I ain't eating that."

"Fine, more for me." The fox took a large bite, causing powdered sugar to rain down all over his clothes and the counter. "I bet you won't eat it because it's Mexican," he said through a full mouth, "fucking racist."

"Okay, first of all, I'm not taking that shit from a guy who just did the Hitler salute without even realizing it," the bunny protested. "Secondly, guess what, dumbass? Even if the sugar doesn't make you crash harder than the caffeine does, all those carbs'll probably knock you out even faster."

Kenny stopped chewing and stared blankly at Ryan for a moment before swallowing and narrowing his eyes. "Why do you say things you know will hurt me?"

CRASH.

Something came through the doors - quite literally through the doors, glass shattering and steel frames creaking as they bent, and I'm not withholding information when I say some thing. What was it? What shape, what color? Was it a mammal, or was it a monster? Ryan and Kenny sure couldn't tell, and I sure as shit wasn't there. All they knew was that it was something bigger than them, and vaguely black and… burnt orange?

But whatever this… blur was, it didn't seem to have much more of a motivation than to destroy. The fox and rabbit stood perfectly still, eyes wide open and following the entity around the store as it came crashing onto the counter, sliding along and knocking everything off before bouncing into the far counter along the next wall, smashing off the coffeemaker and the Icee machine with the surfing polar bear on it, then barrelling straight through the first door of the refrigerators that lined the opposite wall, burrowing left-to-right through the shelves of beer and soft drinks and almond milk and frequently forcing the doors to pop open when the debris pushed them out until the anomaly burst out the glass of the door on the opposite end, then ricocheting around the interior of the store, knocking over every single shelf in the process. And when it finally ran out of things to vandalize, it simply made its exit, perhaps predictably seeing itself out by crashing through the window.

It understandably took the two clerks a second to process what they'd just seen before they regained the ability to speak:

"Oh my God!"

"What was that!?"

"Oh my fucking God!"

"What the hell was that!?"

"Oh my FUCKING God!"

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!?"

"How was that real!?"

"Holy SHIT, dude!"

"How the FUCK was that real!?"

"Jesus poop-shitting CHRIST!"

"How did that actually just happen!?"

"I'm freaking the fuck out here, man!"

"Do we call the police?"

"Don't call the police!"

"Should we call the police?"

"Do not call the police!"

"We have to call the police!"

"Do NOT call the police!"

"I'm gonna call the police!"

"Ryan, do NOT call the police, are you fucking HIGH!?"

"YES!"

"..."

"...AND SO ARE YOU!"

Kenny just blinked at his friend, but it wasn't the stunned face of someone whose argument had been invalidated, it was the look of someone misunderstanding how someone else misunderstood.

"I mean… kind of," said Ryan. "Bro, it's on camera, we clearly didn't do this ourselves, they're not gonna figure out that we consumed intoxicants, like… eight hours ago. What are you afraid of?"

But with a solemn look, Kenny bent over to put his paws on Ryan's shoulders and looked his friend in the eye: "Dude… remember… I ate that shell thingie and now there's powdery white stuff on the counter." And to clarify his point, he added in a harsh whisper: "...They're gonna think it's blow!"

"Ken, these are cops, you really think they can't tell the difference between powdered sugar and cocaine!?"

The fox's only reply was to deepen his thousand-yard stare into the rabbit's soul.

And then the bunny got it. "...Oh my God, you're right."

"That's why we can't get the police involved!" Kenny shrieked.

"And if they look at the security cameras, they might see you doing the Hitler-y thing, which, um, isn't illegal I guess, but you don't want a branch of the government thinking you're a skinhead!"

"Holy shit, I didn't even think about that -!"

"Hellllllllllooooo?" interrupted a weak and distant voice. "Helllllp!"

"Missus Crawley!" the boys yelped in unison as they made their way through the wreckage to find the sloth amid the debris, she and her scooter both fallen onto their side.

"IIIII caaaaan't gettttt uuuuup!" she moaned in pain. "IIIII thiiiiink myyyyy aaaaarm iiiiis broooookennnnn…"

The clerks looked at each other.

"We gotta call 9-1-1, dude," said the rabbit.

"If I wind up on an FBI watchlist, I'm taking Angela to fucking court for making me come in today," said the fox.

-IllI-

The paramedics entered first to take Mrs. Crawley away to the hospital, followed by the two police officers sent to the scene: first, the cop who stuck out like a sore thumb wherever she went, who had no trouble entering the Little Medium Mart, begging the question of how the ZPD even operated without officers her size until, like, six years ago.

"Wait a minute," the fox clerk murmured to his coworker as the patrolmammal entered, "is that… who I think it is?"

"Nice to know we don't all look the same to you," his rabbit friend quipped.

"I'm serious! Didn't they make, like… a TV movie about her?"

She didn't hear any of their remarks, however, as she was staying by the door to help her patrol partner through the doorway, seeing as he was too tall for the small structure.

"Okay, this is getting weirder," said Ryan, "I've lived in this city my whole life and I can count on two paws the number of dogs I've seen here, now we have a dog cop, too?"

"I know, right?" added Kenny. "You'd think a dog cop would make the news or something."

"Do other cities treat cops like celebrities like Zootopia does? I feel like this isn't normal."

The German Shepherd did eventually get through the entryway and he and the bunny cop approached the two clerks on duty.

"Good morning, boys," Judy greeted, rather warmly but not quite as warmly as those who knew her might expect. "My name is Officer Judy Hopps of the Zootopia Police Department, this is my partner, Officer Brady Braverman…"

"Hello, guys," the dogs said rather formally with a raised paw constituting a wave.

"So we understand that-"

"I thought dogs weren't allowed in Zootopia because this city was founded on the idea of mammalian equality and wolves found the existence of dogs offensive because you guys were a bunch of race-traitors who allowed yourselves to get domesticated by a super-predator species that tried to subjugate the entire rest of the mammalian class before they froze to death so now your sheer existence is considered a lingering remnant of species imperialism and supremacy," Ryan interrupted without so much as an inkling of inhibition.

Judy heard this statement and simply had no idea how to respond, looking at once confused and embarrassed at the same time - not embarrassed for herself, but embarrassed for her canine partner, who was understandably fuming at the tone-deaf remark.

Enough of Kenny's brain was working for him to realize that his friend had just said something wildly inappropriate and incredibly rude, so he decided to remedy the situation by taking one of Ryan's ears and stuffing it in the rabbit's mouth. "Oh, don't mind him," the fox said nervously, "he's just, uh, clinically, um… stupid."

Officer Braverman, however, was none too forgiving. "Well if you must know, the fact that so many mammals in this town think that is the case makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy and that's why so few of us move to this city: because we feel unwelcome. Same reason why you almost never see primates in this town - what's just as bad as being the lapdog of the oppressor? Being the cousins of the oppressor." His quick expository lecture over, he turned to his partner. "Let the record show that I was trying really hard to be in a good mood before this happened. Let the record show, I want this in writing. I was trying to be a fun partner on your last day on patrol-"

"It's your last day!?" Kenny cut in. "B-but aren't you that famous bunny cop chick who they made a whole-ass movie about about the time when you and that time you and your fox boyfriend whistle-blew the whole Nighthowlers thing and they've been using you as a publicity figure ever since!? You're quitting the police!? You!? Is it because your boyfriend convinced you to quit after he quit!?"

Now it was Judy who looked deeply agitated, and Brady who was at a complete loss for words.

"I… don't recall saying he was my boyfriend," said Judy.

"Yeah, but everybody knows y'all are fuc-"

Enough of Ryan's brain was working for him to realize that his friend was in the process of saying something wildly inappropriate and incredibly rude, so he decided to remedy the situation by taking Kenny's tail and stuffing it in the fox's mouth. "Disregard him," said the rabbit buck, "he… he sucks. Just, like… in general."

As you may well imagine, Judy was embarrassed by the fox's remark to the point that she started to feel her grasp on her emotions start to loosen a bit. Her personal and intimate life was none of this kid's business, and many would have refrained from faulting her had she decided to go off on Kenny for saying something so inappropriate. But as much as she had a right to remain agitated, Officer Hopps understood that she was in the presence of two young men who weren't very good at talking to people and a rookie cop who tried really hard to control his emotions but wasn't very good at it, and therefore she needed to be the mature adult in this situation. So she took a deep breath and - not because they deserved it, but because they were going to stay curious if she didn't give them something - decided to give them an explanation.

"No, this has nothing to do with my - it has nothing to do with him," she said very carefully, "he's his own individual with his own life and so am I. And Officer Braverman here never said I was quitting; I'm getting promoted to Detective."

The clerks' mouths hung open just a little as they gave her a pair of bug-eyed nods, trying to politely pretend that the actual truth wasn't much less interesting.

Brady suddenly clapped his paws firmly together. "M'kay. So last I checked, we were here to ask you guys why this place looks like a bomb went off in here."

The employees suddenly perked up and murmured in nervous agreement:

"Oh! Oh yeah, that sounds… right."

"Ah, yeah, coolcoolcool. Gotcha."

In fairness, the boys' intoxication from last night had probably worn off by this point, and even then, the substances they'd ingested were legal in this jurisdiction and they were of-age to consume them. But their fear now was that their extreme comedown fatigue and the way they were simultaneously tweaking on sugar and caffeine was making it seem like they were fucked up in public anyway, and they especially didn't want to look publicly fucked up in front of a couple of cops.

This fear of theirs was 100% justified as both Hopps and Braverman were thoroughly convinced that Ryan and Kenny had come to work on something. Luckily for the shopkeeps, however, Judy was trying to ignore this inkling because it didn't seem relevant to the task at hand and Brady just wanted to hurry up and get out of here lest he do something rash if they spoke ill of his species again.

"Alright, so first things first," the policewoman said as she pulled out her pen and notepad, "can I get your names and phone numbers?"

The cops didn't think it was possible, but the clerks now looked even more spooked.

"Uh…" Ryan sputtered, "why- why do you need our-?"

"No, she's not asking you out," the German Shepherd interrupted flatly, "this is just so we can follow up with you and contact you as we figure out what happened."

"Oh, my word," Hopps groaned with a paw over her eyes, "Brady, please just be a professional about this."

"Hey, you saw the same looks on their faces as I did."

But the employees had not at all been thinking that that was where the rabbit officer was going with this; they thought this was just a roundabout way of trapping them and erroneously booking them for being high out of their minds on controlled substances. And you just know the fox in particular was trying really hard not to look at the suspicious white crumbs on the counter lest he seem to incriminate himself.

"Names and numbers, boys?" Judy repeated.

"Uh… Ryan Gray, [number redacted]... um, Gray with an A."

"Ken- um, Kendall Clay, [number redacted]... but you can just… call me Ken or Kenny, or… 'Hey, you', I'll probably answer."

"Gray and Clay?" Braverman asked as Hopps wrote the information down. "Man, with names like those, you two really ought to start, like… a folk music band or something."

"And it's always nice to see a fox and a bunny getting along," Judy said just to be nice before immediately kicking herself for invoking herself and Nick again.

"Oh, yeah, uh… me and Ken go way back," Ryan muttered purely to keep the topic on anything other than their flummoxed states of mind. "We… knew each other since he moved to town in kindergarten."

"Yeah, um…" Kenny was also trying to add to the conversation for much the same reason. "Hey, it works out fine, he knows that if he pisses me off, I can eat him at any time," he quipped with a nervous chuckle.

You could tell by the look on Officer Hopps's face that she didn't care for that joke.

Her fellow lapine attempted damage control: "Yeah, a-a-and if he pisses me off, it's easy for me to just sock this big motherfucker in the crotch!"

You could tell by the look on Officer Braverman's face that he didn't care for that joke.

Okay, double damage control now, seeing Kenny coming in with a wholesome remark: "Yeah, just, uh… a, uh… a regular Ebony and Ivory we are!"

The dog winced. "I thought that song was about a zebra with Multiple Personality Disorder."

Ryan also winced and glanced at his friend. "I thought that song was about a skunk who sometimes wishes he wasn't a skunk."

Kenny winced at both of them. "Man, I thought that song was about a panther and an elephant gettin' jiggy with it!"

Judy just took another deep breath as she kept her eyes on her notepad, finishing what she was jotting down. "All three of you boys are something else. But… back on topic. So what happened?"

"Uh… whaddya mean?" asked Kenny.

"...How did the store get destroyed?" She was trying so hard to be patient, but she was only mortal. "All you said to the dispatcher was that something came in here and ruined everything."

"Um… how do you want us to… explain it?" asked Ryan.

"Guys, literally, just… play-by-play!" Brady was not trying quite as hard to be patient. "Don't even think too hard about it, just… speak. List details and it'll all come back to you."

The clerks glanced at one another.

"Uhhh… can we have a minute to… talk it over privately?" asked the rabbit buck.

Officer Hopps tried to reply with professionalism: "We'd prefer you didn't-"

"No, because that's gonna make it seem like you're conspiring to fabricate a story," Officer Braverman interrupted. "Which… I dunno how you two could have possibly been responsible for a mess this big, so I don't know why you two are acting all nervous. Unless you are hiding something-"

"Brady, just calm down-"

"Judy, at this point I think I've earned the right for you to assume that if I'm not being calm, I've got a damn good reason not to be."

In the employees' defense, they legitimately didn't know much more about the entity that had wrecked the store than the cops did, so in addition to their lingering paranoia, they knew that they were seeming suspicious by not just spitting it out, but… they didn't know what they could say to describe what actually happened, either. The truth was providing them no refuge.

But they had to try. Kenny took a shot at it first:

"So, um…" He decided to mosey on over to a spot right in front of the counter so as to block the strange substance from their field of view. "We were just standing around, minding our own business, talking to Mrs. Crawley as she shopped, when, uh…"

OH, SHIT! Suddenly it snapped in his head: if he brought their lives of vision anywhere near that area, they could just as well see the non-booger sugar in the background and think it was yes-booger sugar. Thinking quick, he launched himself straight forward across the aisle, making all three of the onlookers turn their heads.

"...when this THING came in and started wrecking our shit!"

"...Wwwhy did you just do a somersault?" asked the German Shepherd.

His fellow canid blinked at him blankly. "...Dramatic effect?"

"Well, we appreciate the dedication to your art," said Judy, an aura of exasperation surrounding her, "but we don't need the dramatics, we just need a straightforward account of what happened. So this… thing-"

"Yeah!" the other bunny piped up. "So it came in here and then it went… there," he said, pointing to the far wall, "...then there, then there… and then there… and then there… and then there, and then there… and then there - no, wait, there… there, there, here, there… there, there, there, there, there, and then he left." Ryan had pointed at pretty much every spot in the store except the counter.

"How'd it leave?"

Ryan pointed at the shattered window. "Through there."

The dog pinched the bridge of his nose. "Oh my God, this is like pulling teeth…"

Judy patted her frustrated partner on the back. "There, there…"

Brady simply turned to glared down at her.

"Uh… sorry, wrong choice of words…" Addressing the clerks once more: "So what exactly did this… thing look like? I'm guessing it wasn't a mammal then if we're calling it a… 'thing'? Was it a bird, was it a… I dunno, a projectile…?"

"It, uh, it seemed like it was something alive because it was moving, um… not… totally randomly," Kenny said as he tried to shimmy even further away from the counter, "so, uh… maybe some level of intelligent thought…"

"Yeah, but what did it look like?" Braverman pressed.

"Oh, it was moving way too fast for us to see, but, uh… it was bigger than any of us, that's for sure," said Ryan. "And it was, um… black? And… orange? Or maybe yellow?"

"Black and yellow!" added Kenny.

"Black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow!" They sang in unison, invoking a song from their childhood about as dated as their sense of dress.

"I… see…" Hopps murmured as she made a note of it. Yeeeah, this witness report was going nowhere.

Now, anybody who knew her knew that Judy was never one to do a sloppy job of something. If she was going to do something, she'd see it all the way through with a dutiful sense of consciousness the whole way along. But seeing that these two bozos weren't going to make this any easier and having the perspective to realize that this was not a case she would personally be investigating any further past the end of this shift, she couldn't help but feel this strange and intrusive notion that actually trying to do her job to the best of her abilities here would just be a waste of time. She didn't like this feeling, it made her feel dirty and it made her feel like she was being rude to whoever would have to pick up these pieces in her place, but the feeling just wouldn't leave her.

It didn't help that she could just hear Nick whispering in her ear to work smarter rather than harder - not to say she wouldn't take that advice when she remembered there was an easy answer to all this.

"So how can we see the security footage?"

The employees' stupid smiles from their impromptu singing session evaporated immediately.

"The… security footage?" asked the fox.

"Yeah," said Brady, "or is this place like the sandwich shop that got broken into a few weeks back where the cameras were just a deterrent and weren't actually plugged in?"

Knowing they couldn't communicate much amongst themselves without seeming incredibly suspicious, the fox and rabbit had to settle for a quick glance to make sure they were on the same wavelength. They did, they were, and the message was clear: although the footage would probably get the cops out of their fur, it would likely result in the police seeing the fried-brain tod doing the Nazi gesture when he was trying to jokingly make a Communist gesture instead (which, depending on these cops' personal politics, might be even worse of an explanation). Therefore they each understood what they had to do: they needed to destroy the evidence while making it look like an accident. Hey, these two weren't idiots, they just acted like idiots because it was more fun than acting smart (and also they were too broke to pursue a higher education in America).

"Alright!" Ryan said with a spring in his step. "Kenny, help me get the camera!"

"I'm on it!"

"Uh…" Judy wanted to say something to express her confusion, but the off-the-charts strangeness of this situation left her struggling for words.

"Throw me, THROW ME!"

Kenny made some kind of warcry as he tried throwing his rabbit friend like a football at the security camera up near the ceiling, but the fox wasn't that much bigger than him, so Ryan didn't go very far.

"No no, let's use physics!" Ryan hollered as he got up off the floor and crawled onto a loose shelf that was sticking up like a seesaw. "Simple machines and fulcrums and shit!"

"HI-YAH!" Kenny threw his entire body shoulder-first onto the up end of the shelf and sent the bunny up to the ceiling, where Ryan managed to grab it, turn himself upside down (phone, keys, and wallet falling out of his pockets as he did), and used his disproportionately strong rabbit legs to push of the ceiling and dislodge the camera, only to "accidentally" let it slip out of his paws on the way down, and as Ryan himself belly-flopped onto Kenny's stomach and knocked the wind out of both of them, the coveted camera landed on an empty spot on the floor and shattered.

Officer Braverman gave Officer Hopps a look. "Okay, so I admit, I missed a few days during training because I was sick… did I miss the part on what the hell kind of drugs make mammals act like this?"

"I'm… starting to think they might just be… quirky," she replied, wincing at the writhing employees.

"...Should we call the paramedics?"

"No, just give them a few minutes." Judy was a tomboy, she knew temporary paralysis of the diaphragm when she saw it. "It'll solve itself."

A moment of silence passed as they waited for them to recover, before Brady decided to capitalize on the lull in the action.

"So, uh… as long as they're incapacitated for a moment-"

"Oh, Brady, please do not tell me-"

"I need to hit the men's, whether you like it or not." He was used to having this inherently awkward conversation with her by now, so he played it completely cool since he was well past the point of caring. He even took the initiative to make his way to the door marked Employees Only, behind which the facilities presumably were.

Judy groaned. "Is it an emergency?"

"It's gonna be if I don't put this fire out before it burns the house down." He tried the door handle, but it wouldn't budge. "Oh don't you dare tell me it's under lock and key!"

"Are you sure it can't wait?"

"Not now that I'm thinking about it…" He looked at the clerks still gasping for air. "Do you think they have the keys?"

"I mean, I would imagine -"

"Goddammit…" the poor dog grumbled as his lower stomach grumbled almost as loud. He seemed to contemplate his fate for a moment before throwing his paws in the air and making his way to the exit. "Fuck it! Gimme a second, I'm gonna go take a squat in the alley."

"EWWW, Brady, that's disgusting!"

"My life is disgusting!" he replied rather aggressively as he ducked under the low doorway. "I'm sorry my medical conditions make you uncomfortable, but I gotta live with it! Jesus, this shit is ruining my life, this LITERAL SHIT!"

And off he went to go relieve himself outdoors like our ancient ancestors did. Judy was left alone with the shopkeepers, but luckily it wasn't much longer before they regained the ability to breathe and speak.

"Is… is this a bad time for you two?" Ryan asked as he staggered to his feet. "Because if there's something going on between you that you guys need to sort out, it's fine, you can come back later-"

"No, no, let's get this sorted out sooner rather than later," Officer Hopps said tiredly. "Where does the footage get saved to?"

The lads gave her a look of terror for about the tenth time that day.

"Saved… to?" asked Kenny.

"Yeah, is it digital, or are you guys still on VHS tapes, or…?"

They gave one another a look of terror for about the tenth time that day.

"Is it… I'm probably just going to have to get in contact with your boss to get access to it, aren't I?"

The boys' mouths hung open, but words weren't immediately coming out.

"I mean, it's the Twenty-First Century, I'm guessing the footage stores itself remotely…"

"Uh… p-probably?" Ryan said as he turned to Kenny, who nodded his head sadly. "Probably."

"Yeah, we… we ain't got it ourselves, one way or another," added the fox before turning back to his bunny friend. "Shit, so if Angela doesn't know about this already, she hasn't been watching us over the cameras all day, has she? She fucking lied to us!"

The rabbit officer simply nodded as she flipped to a fresh page of her notebook to take down the proprietor's contact information. You know, a past version of herself would have been much harsher with these two to try to figure out why they were acting so weird, not out of a sense of malice but out of a sense of duty that told her something must have been up if these two seemed to be nervous in the presence of a cop. But she was taking a cue from Nick here: look around, observe the scene, see that it was very unlikely that these two guys had actually done this and come to the reasonable conclusion that these two were probably engaging in a victimless crime by getting intoxicated at work. Yes, some part of her still wanted to be vigilant and say that something worse could happen as a direct result of these two not being of sound mind, at which point it might retroactively become a victim crime, but in reality, these two were probably going to have the rest of the day off to sober up and such an opportunity for further disaster likely wouldn't come. And if the security tapes showed otherwise, then whatever, she'd cross that bridge when she came to it. Her fox had always poked fun at her for working harder rather than smarter, and while her conservative upbringing meant she'd probably always err on the side of being a hard-working simpleton rather than a cunning slacker… goshdarnit, she just didn't have the energy at that moment to work harder than smarter. Fine, Nick, you win this round.

This didn't feel like her. Doing it this half-butted way didn't feel like the way she would do it. But assessing the situation, it seemed like the way she'd be doing it simply would not have been the best way to do it. She was trying not to think about the idea that perhaps the person she fundamentally was wasn't suited to beat police-work; instead, she was trying to occupy her mind with hope that the former question was irrelevant and that the next stage of her career would be where she truly belonged.

-IllI-

After wrapping up with Misters Gray and Clay, Judy left the Little Medium Mart in search of Brady, who had never come back to the store. She walked around the corner into the adjacent alley (paw preemptively covering her nose in case she encountered any of many potential revolting smells back there, including something that might be particularly fresh) only to find Officer Braverman staggering around the next corner from behind the store. He explained that he had taken so long because he was nervous about finding a spot to go in that truly couldn't be seen by anybody who wasn't going out of their way to look for him, and on top of that was fretting about how safe any given spot was because he'd heard a story once about a polar bear somewhere who'd caught a felony and had to register as a sex offender because he'd urinated in an alley without realizing that a homeless mouse was sleeping by his feet. And when Judy asked why his uniform shirt was dirty for some reason, he bashfully admitted that he'd lost his balance while attempting to defecate and had fallen down onto the filthy ground. Oh, Brady, Brady, Brady, you poor poor dear, maybe one day you'll be able to go more than ten minutes without humiliating yourself. (Once again, I don't know why he told me that, I don't know why this guy admits half the embarrassing shit that happens to him.)

"So how'd it go in there with Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum?" asked the dog once he and the bunny drove off back to the station. They were probably going to have to spend the rest of the day doing paperwork about this while dispatch sent some other cops to find this mysterious Angela and retrieve the footage off her computer.

"It was… fine," she said unenthusiastically. "Nothing really happened worth mentioning."

Brady just nodded so subtly that Judy probably wouldn't even have noticed it if not for her excellent peripheral vision. Neither of them wanted to talk any more about the strange encounter, and that was fine. They didn't even want to speculate on what the anomalous entity had been, instead deciding to just wait patiently for the footage to give them a clear answer, it's not like the clerks had given them a reliable account to build a hypothesis upon anyway.

"...Did the Chief tell you who he's going to pair you with going forward?" Judy asked. This wasn't solely to fill the dead air, she was genuinely curious and a little worried where and how the dog would fare without her guidance.

"Valid question. He actually hasn't," Braverman replied, not coldly but definitely flatly. "He's alluded to a few different ideas, though, most notably the idea that we're losing so many people that it might be beneficial to just have me patrol aimlessly by myself and just… be around when they need me."

Sure enough, this worried her. "You… sure you're ready for that?"

He didn't look ready, but he did look passively accepting of his fate. "Well, lots of mammals in this world have to do a lot harder stuff to survive; I'll manage."

That… was actually an unexpectedly mature thing for him to say. Well, heck, looks like their partnership might be ending on a high note after all if she'd rubbed off a little bit of a can-do attitude onto him. Shame she wouldn't be around to see his continued progress (or to ensure there would even be any further progress), and he still looked more bored and disassociated than anything rather than excited for the challenge, but she was telling herself to see this as a W.

"How about you?" he asked. "Chief give you any specific details about how your training's gonna go?"

"Not too much, but he did mention I'd probably be shadowing some detectives my first few days to make sure I had a grasp on, y'know… the day-to-day work and stuff."

"Hm, got it." There was another positive: she'd have an escape from their astounding lack of chemistry. "...How 'bout Nick? How'd he take the news?"

Okay, now, see, the way he phrased that struck her as very… peculiar. "What do you mean, 'how'd he take it'? It's not like it was bad news or anything."

"Yeah, but he's still a mortal like the rest of us, and he's not as incapable of feeling insecure as he'd want people to think he is. The fact of the matter is that your life is moving ahead while his isn't, and… y'know, some might call it a sexism thing that he might not like that his female is more successful than him, guy-to-guy though, I don't get that vibe that it's a masculinity issue, but I definitely think he wouldn't want anybody in his life running away into the land of milk and honey while he gets left behind… because who would?"

…That actually hadn't even crossed her mind to be honest. Uh… yeah, no, she'd fallen hook-line-and-sinker for Nick's aura of being someone who wouldn't get themselves that far down, capable of having lapses in their confidence like the rest of us, yes, but not to that extent. And while she'd reflected plenty on how his stagnation must have been eating him up inside, it hadn't even dawned upon her that her own little victory might have exacerbated his issues. Jeez, she didn't know what would have been worse, the idea that Brady here was utterly terrible at reading mammals than he realized and was completely off the mark here… or if he wasn't as bad at getting a read on others as Judy would have assumed. Maybe there was more Nick in him than she gave him credit for.

"Oh, he was fine with it," she explained. "He was happy for me, he said congratulations…" But wait, stop, had he said the word 'congratulations'? Or was her brain making up memories now to fabricate its own narrative and keep her placid? Stupid Brady and his valid points and questions had her suddenly reassessing how last night had gone down. He'd seemed in good enough spirits after the news broke… but then again, this was a guy who was a career expert at grinning and bearing it when he needed to, and he did seem a lot less enthusiastic in general after that… little performance of his (this narrator's account of which Nick read and saw how uncomfortable I was with putting that on the internet, inspiring him to make it up to me by sending me a $200 Wingstop gift card for my troubles on top of what he's already given me because that guy knows I'm a slut for fried chicken).

But you know what? Even if Braverman was right, so what? Should Judy let Nick's insecurities stop her from succeeding and moving ahead with her life? No, just like she'd told the clerks earlier, they were separate individuals with separate goals and that was fine. If anything, she felt inspired to use her good fortune to more effectively help Nick get his own life together. Because when someone feels insecure about something about themselves that actually, measurably isn't good, such as a complete lack of direction in life in one's late thirties, you can either try to get them to stop feeling bad about it… or you can help fix that bad thing so they'll have no reason to be insecure about it anymore.

"Well, that's good to hear," said her partner. "But in any case, you seem to know what you're doing, you seem to know what you want out of life, maybe you can use that power to help him get his shit together so he won't have anything to feel inadequate about."

…Jeez louise, Brady, your room-reads were getting scarily accurate.

"I mean, you're not obligated to by any stretch of the imagination, you don't exist just to serve him," he continued, "just… y'know, you seem big into helping people out, and you know and love this guy in particular, so… shit, maybe take advantage of having a clearer head and help him brainstorm ideas? Like, there's mammals my age who're already filthy rich in real estate, why doesn't he give that a try? It's just selling shit, that's exactly what his background is, isn't it? Seems right up his alley."

"...I might talk to him about that, that could be a good idea… thanks, Brady," she replied, something louder than mumbling but not quite speaking.

Well, Nick, if you were politely pretending to be cool with Judy's promotion the night before, then that makes the two of you even, because Judy was plainly lying through her teeth when she said nothing was on her mind last night. She was absolutely dwelling on whether she'd made the right decision and couldn't make up her mind about it to save her life. But it seemed today made it crystal clear that it was, in fact, the right move, because not only did she need to help herself get out of a rut, but her beloved foxxo needed some help too, and she needed to be strong for the both of them. He was lost in a fog and needed someone to lead him into the light. So she would be his leader. She'd done it once, she could do it again.

Don't worry, Nicky. Your bun-bun's coming to save you from yourself.