"I'll never be a real cop." The fox stated, confident and smug.
"You'll make a cute meter maid though! Maybe a supervisor one day! Hang in there!" He added cheerfully as he skulked away, leaving her feeling very much like the wet cement pooling around her knees.
All washed up.
—
It was the middle of one of the coldest winters on record when Zootopia's weather walls malfunctioned, its desert wall practically imploded, the power grid overloading Tundratown's glacial waterways.
In the wee hours of the morning, at around 01:03, in the morning City Central found itself already a foot underwater.
It was 01:16 and Officer Judy Hopps, a police veteran with just over one year of meter maid experience, still in her pink bunny print pajamas, her tiny nose twitching at the thick knots of frozen rain smacking loudly against her window.
On her desk her radio squawked indignantly, voices of dozens of panicked mammals filling the airwaves with 10-codes, color-codes, and a hundred other ways of spelling distress.
The rabbit doe clenched her velvety fist.
Washed Up.
She pawed her badge, feeling its weight on her palm, considering, pondering.
She set her badge down and picked up her radio, steeling herself as a tiny muted note of excitement and a great deal of determination pulled at her ears.
She keyed her radio, "Officer Hopps to dispatch. What can I do to help?"
[You can help by not getting washed up by the current 'Officer'.]Came the snippy reply. [We don't need to be fishing your tiny corpse from a sewer drain.]
Washed Up.
"Right."
She set her radio down beside her badge, her ears dropping against her back.
"Right…"
For a moment only the thunderous roar of rain and rush of water several stories below beat against the walls of her small apartment.
For a moment the dejected doe considered just… throwing in the towel and going back to sleep.
Then above the roar of water she heard a cry for help.
[Hopps, stay in place, it's getting worse out there. The national guard and coast guard have been mobilized to help. Gear up and stand by for pick up.]
…
[Hopps?]
The radio chirped inside the empty room.