Disclaimer: Zootopia and all canon characters are owned by Disney. All other characters, product names, trademarks, and copyrights, belong to their respective owners.

…..

Judy ducked down as automatic fire raked across the top of the planter box and bits of concrete and dirt flew in the air. "Take that, rabbit," came a voice Judy's ears pinpointed coming from a window high and to her right. "Kenny's here to teach you a lesson in how to die."

"How about a lesson in how to shut up," replied Judy shooting blind toward where her ears said to aim.

"Oh my god, she shot Kenny! What a bastard!" came a new voice, followed by the click and slide of something big being loaded.

The far end of the planter box Judy was hiding behind exploded as something sounding like a cannon went off.

"Ha Ha, bitch that'll teach you.

"Kenny, stop your moaning and hand me another round. This thing is huge."

Judy looked over at the debris that used to be part of her hiding place and sighed. Another pawful of shots like that, and their cover would be gone with them dead under the rubble.

"Come on, Ben. Where are you guys?"

Looking at the lions, Judy made a decision. "They've got too much firepower," and handing Nick's car keys to DeeDee, she said, "Take these. I'll draw their fire while you guys run for it."

More bullets kicked up dirt from the planters.

Motioning past the furniture store they were trapped in front of, Judy said, "When I give the word, grab Nick and run. His convertible is about a block up the street, hidden behind an old wreck. Take it, find a hospital, and find the ZPD. They'll know what to do."

Both lions nodded.

Judy reached a paw out and, rubbing the side of Nick's muzzle, said, "Do me a favor. When he wakes up, tell him I loved him and I'm sorry I can't be there for him."

Another section of the planter exploded.

Judy, a gun in each paw again, took a deep breath, "On the count of three, run. One… two…"

-/-/-

White cursed again as sparks flew from the control panel he was trying and failing to hotwire. "Damn computers! What the hell is a 'Page Fault,' and why is every screen in this office all blue?"

Reaching for the power button, White was interrupted by a frantic call from his radio.

"Sir, she's escaping. The rabbit's opened the front security door."

"Damn it all to hell, kill her, kill her now!"

"Sir! We can't… wait one…"

White fumed as he looked out the only window in the building that wasn't blacked out and covered in bars, and about to curse his rabbit nemesis again, he cursed his bad luck instead.

"Crap," spat White sprinting over to a wall covered in bookcases, "how the hell did that little bitch–"

"Sir, I have shooters on the third floor who've got her pinned down out front. She's hiding behind some concrete planters across the street. Can you open the security doors? All my guards are trapped inside, even the roving patrol. Sir, we can't kill her if we can't get to her."

'Idiots,' screamed White at himself, 'Who told the patrol to come in?'

Scraping a shelf's worth of books onto the floor, White pulled on a hidden, completely mechanical, 'thank the gods!' lever that swung open one of the bookcases to reveal a hidden stairway. 'Maybe everyone being trapped in the building is for the best,' thought White slipping into the stairwell while saying into his radio, "I'll have everything open in a few minutes. Send someone for the 50 BMG. It's time to bring the rain."

"Yes, sir. One rabbit killer of a storm coming right up."

-/-/-

Judy's count was halted by the screech of skidding rubber, followed by all the light from the broken-out windows suddenly being blocked.

And gunfire, lots of gunfire raking the building front.

"Hopps," shouted Pawson over the whir of spinning barrels and the clinking of spent casings hitting the ground, "come with me if you want to live!"

So happy to see backup, Judy forewent the obligatory eye roll and instead yelled at her lion charges, "Hurry, grab Nick and get in!"

Ushering the mammals into the ZPD's 'car,' Judy heard the pinging of gunfire hitting the heavily armored vehicle, followed by the roar of her boss in the upper hatch as he let loose another barrage of lead with an evil looking multi-barreled mini-cannon. How Bogo was able to shoot that beast of a weapon, Judy would never know, but shoot it he did. He emptied the rest of his ammo pack into every broken-out window he could see, especially the one with a now destroyed BMG barrel sticking out, silencing any fool who hadn't ducked out of the way.

"Pawson, move now!" yelled Bogo as he ducked down and closed the armored hatch.

Judy dove into the car and slammed the door as she screamed, "Go, go, go!"

Pawson hit the gas and, taking new fire, pulled up the block, turned, and stopped out of direct sight of the warehouse and in front of where a team of paramedics had just arrived and were setting up portable spotlights.

Bogo grabbed an assault rifle and a portable radio from his bag and jumped out of the car. Running over to the corner of a vacant building, he looked around it and watched as three teams of TUSK positioned themselves around the target building, and a fourth pulled up to his position and disgorged even more heavily armed and armored officers.

"Boss, what have we got?" asked McHorn.

"Hopps, to me now."

Judy quickly kissed her now groggy fox lying on a stretcher and ran over to where her fellow officers were waiting.

"McHorn will be leading the breaching team, and he needs to know the layout of the building."

Judy nodded, "Metal fire door to the side, but it locks from the inside. The large garage doors are solid, but you should be able to ram through them. Behind them is a large loading dock area, and a set of double doors that lead into the office areas. The main drug testing lab is on the third floor. That's where I found–"

A flash followed by a blast rolled over the group. A blast that would have tossed Judy across the street like a rag doll if it weren't for McHorn standing between her and the mini-mushroom cloud that used to be an old warehouse and drug lab.

-/-/-

"Sir, some kind of monster SUV is headed our way, and… Oh no, sir, it looks like at least three districts worth of ZPD and TUSK units are right behind them."

White pounded the thick metal escape door with his hoof and cursed the moment he first heard the name Judy Hopps. Years of work, dozens of setbacks, and on the eve of rolling out their ultimate success, some hick rabbit brings everything crashing down.

"Sir–"

White pulled the radio away from his ear and threw himself on the ground as a buzzsaw-like scream drowned out everything except the sound of armor-piercing death passing through the building's brick exterior like it was crepe paper.

Hundreds of rounds later, White brushed chunks of mortar and plaster off himself as a scream finally made it out of his radio, "Sir! We're under attack! What do we do?"

Reaching up and pulling open another of Brown's secret panels, White set a timer, slapped a button with his hoof, and yelled back, "Stand your ground, kill them all. Do it for the Cause."

Whatever response might have been was silenced by another storm of mini cannon fire, and White dropping his radio as he burst out of the hidden door on all fours, and ran toward the vacant lot next door.

0:28

0:27

0:26

-/-/-

"Holy god, sir, said McHorn, "What happened?"

Bogo looked to Judy, who had her paws over her ears trying to block out the ringing, and touched her to get her attention, "Are you okay?"

Judy nodded and let her paws down, "Yeah, loud," and wiggling her ears, asked, "What happened?"

Moving around her thick-hided rhinoceros coworker, Judy answered her own question. "Sweet cheese and crackers…"

The building, that minutes ago had been the center of a mini-war, was now ablaze. Flames and smoke were coming out of the half still standing with rubble from the blast strewn a couple of hundred yards in every direction. The heavy security door that had almost trapped her small group in the building was now a twisted chunk of metal resting on the rubble that used to be her planter box hiding space. And the large garage doors she'd just highlighted as a breaching point were blown open by her kitnapper's white van spewing its guts while being hurled across the street and lodged into the wall of the building next door.

"…did someone shoot something they shouldn't have?"

Both large Officers looked down at the small bunny packing enough firepower to be considered her own TUSK unit. "Nice paw-cannon there," McHorn commented as he nodded toward the larger of the two guns in Judy's double holstered belt."

"Thanks, it's Nick's. It's a little louder than mine, but… Whoa," yelled Judy throwing her paws up, "that wasn't me. I have no idea what set that building off."

Bogo chuckled and put his hoof on the small Officer, "Don't worry, Hopps. That was too thorough of a demolition job for it to be a random hit on something. That building was blown to kingdom come by someone who didn't want us sticking our muzzles into their business."

Bogo's radio came alive, "Sir, ZFD's arrived. They want to know if the fighting's done and they can deploy rescue teams?"

About to reply, another small explosion blew out a chunk of the third floor.

"Sir," said Judy, "I found a lab on the third floor. Besides cages for all the mammals they kitnapped, I saw some vials of drugs. I think they must have been manufacturing some of whatever drug Nick and I found when we were attacked by Katie last month."

"Were there any other civilians in the building?"

Judy shook her head, "No, sir. The two lions and Nick were all the victims left in there. I heard a couple of guards talking that all their other experiments had been 'disposed of' elsewhere. And sir, I found Big John's body on a table. It looks like someone was in the middle of performing an autopsy on him.

"Other than that, I think it was just the guards and lab techs in there."

McHorn chimed in, "Sir, I've seen some pretty thorough demo jobs in my life, but not anything like this. Whoever set the charges wanted to make sure we weren't going to find anything, including any survivors to interrogate."

Bogo nodded and, speaking into his radio, said, "No civilians ID'ed in the target building. Toxic smoke likely from drug lab, high probability of more explosives. Bomb squads deploy and neutralize smartly. ZFD SAR cleared to check the perimeter for collateral victims until the all clear is given. Fire crews take your lead from the explosive scent teams. All teams to wear their hazmat gear. Bogo out."

Watching a half-dozen fire engines park and firemammals unload hoses and gear, Bogo made another callout to his Officers, "Bogo here. Higgins, Delgato, Krumpanski, Johnson, liaise with those new ZFD units. Keep them back until the bomb sniffers give the all clear. Rescue teams and their paramedics have clearance to deploy."

Another two paramedic units pulled in behind Judy's position followed by a military Humvee leading a convoy of armored troop carriers and a mobile anti-missile battery coming in from the opposite direction of the burning building. A bull moose, wearing an Army Colonel's rank, jumped out of the Humvee before it had come to a full stop and approached Bogo.

"Colonel, Jacobson, sir. Commonwealth Guard, 3rd of the 5th. We got the call that a couple of your people needed backup, so where do you want my troopers to deploy?

Bogo grunted, "Thank you, Colonel. I have my teams setting up a perimeter three blocks out. If your people can set up another perimeter five blocks out, that would be a big help. I've got a helluva mess here, and the last thing I need is any civilians, or the press, sticking their muzzles into my investigation."

"Yes, sir, no problem."

"And Colonel, anything you can do to keep the television helicopters out of my way would be greatly appreciated."

Colonel Jacobson smiled as he waved a hoof toward the rooftops, "Already happening, sir," as flights of attack helicopters flew over and split off to create a no-fly zone around the crime scene.

Judy waited until the Colonel hopped into his armored vehicle and took off before her foot started tapping, and she looked up at Bogo.

Bogo sensing a question, looked down at his smallest officer, "Yes, Hopps?"

"He got a call that Nick and I needed backup?"

"Yes."

"A hundred cops, four full Tusk teams, a dozen ZFD companies, a battalion of Commonwealth Guard troops, and a squadron of attack helicopters. That's what happens when I call for backup?"

Bogo shrugged, "You've never called for backup before."

"But–"

Another explosion rang out as a water heater-sized tank of something blasted out of the lab ruins, slammed into the lot across the street from where the small group was standing, bounced, and shot into a vacant building like a bunker-buster rocket and exploded.

As the small group watched a pawful of fire engines race over to the newly collapsed and burning building, Bogo turned to Judy and raised a brow.

"Fine," huffed Judy, "but I'm going to need help writing the report on this one."

-/-/-

White coughed into the tall weeds as he shook some debris off his back.

Another series of coughs, along with a sharp pain from a bare spot on his shoulder where the fur had been burned off, and White gave out a bleating groan as more debris fell away from his damaged fur and clothing.

White thought he'd given himself enough time to execute his escape plan, but a piece of old barbed wire fencing had tangled him up before he made it to the drainage ditch that ran along the backside of the lot. Instead of running on all fours along the ditch to the concrete culvert and through it to his getaway car and safety, he only had time to hide under an old mattress and hope it was enough to protect him.

It mostly did. Mostly, until the devil slapped it away, cooked his fur, and dumped new debris on him after the initial explosions.

"Damn, Brown, how much C-4 did your guys plant?" groaned White looking over the smoking ruin that used to be Brown's secret lab.

Bending wrong, the ram felt more furless patches on his back where the now exposed skin had suffered what felt like second, and maybe some third, degree burns.

White fell on his side and groaned again. He needed to get moving, this whole area was minutes away from being thick with cops.

"Hey, buddy. Are you okay?"

White coughed again and looked up to see an EMT with a flashlight and a medkit slide to his knees next to him.

"Don't move. Let me take a look." The young warthog opened his kit and pulled out some burn cream and bandages, "Sorry bud, this is going to hurt."

"Not as much as this," replied White.

…..

White, wearing an over-large fire jacket with EMT written on the back, tossed a last piece of debris on top of what the scorched mattress wasn't covering and headed toward his culvert escape route.

That is until he saw the drain culvert blocked on the far side by a cruiser with its overhead floodlights on and blocked on this side by a boar ZPD officer sitting on a crate with a portable lantern holding his arm.

And cursing.

"Damned idiot rabbit. I know this is all her fault. Real cops would have gotten those lions out without destroying a whole building. Stupid, worthless… and now I'm bleeding, wait until I get my hooves on her scrawny little…"

'Rabbit? Hopps? And my experiments? All still alive?' thought White as he felt around inside his jacket for his pistol, 'They need to die, but where–'

"Yo, ambulance driver," called the boar holding his arm up, "over here, I cut my arm on some rebar."

Looking around for a private place to kill this cop, White smiled, "Sure, buddy. I can fix you up real good."

"Good," said the boar nodding toward a brightly lit area a couple of blocks away, "I need to talk to the long-eared waste of a badge relaxing at triage, and I need two working arms to do it. Capiche?"

Following Schweinly's nod past a couple of cops talking with a firefighter and toward what looked like the back of an ambulance, White asked, "Is that where the survivors are being taken?"

"Yeah. Can you bandage my arm? It hurts like hell."

Relaxing his grip on the gun in his pocket, White grimaced. No way could he allow the ZPD to get their paws on his test subjects, blood tests weren't a big problem, but other kinds of tests would be a sure giveaway as to what Brown was up to. The preds had to die.

"Sorry, I lost my bag. How about I help you to the triage area and fix you up there."

"Great," whined the boar, "I'm practically bleeding out, and Dufus McUsless here can't do his job because he lost his bag. Moron. You're lucky my radio is in pieces from my fall, or I'd report you in a hot second."

"Yes, sir. Sorry," grumbled White offering a hoof to the boar. "Come on, let me help you up, and we'll go meet your rabbit friend together."

-/-/-

"Roy, are you sure he's okay?" asked Judy, holding Nick's paw.

"Huunnnyyy buunnnyyy," moaned Nick.

"Yeah," chuckled the coyote EMT, "The tranq's wearing off. He should be waking up in a few minutes."

"ZFD to DeZoto. ZFP to DeZoto. Over."

"Sorry," said the coyote nodding toward the cab of his truck, "duty calls."

Judy sighed, the night's excitement had started to wear off, and she was looking forward to heading home. Unfortunately, Bogo was holding off on letting her and Nick and her two lion charges from leaving until he was sure the scene was secure and he didn't need anything more from them.

Judy looked around at the small triage area, and aside from the single EMT and her group, the space was empty. DeeDee and Billy were huddled together under some blankets, being cute in a silently cuddling and only grunting when she asked them anything, way. Nick was slowly waking up, and the EMT who'd been here a moment ago had just finished cleaning up from the pair of firefighters and a ZPD officer who'd been treated for minor smoke inhalation and sent to the hospital in another ambulance for observation.

Which all meant that Judy was not only tired, but basically on her own waiting for Bogo to show up with a question or something for her to do.

"Damned, worthless rabbit, this is all your fault."

Judy turned around from tending to Nick to see Schweinly bat away a ram EMT's helping hoof and stomp into the triage area.

"Officer Schweinly, what happened to you?"

Holding his arm, the overweight boar went over to a portable bench across the triage area from where Nick was lying on his stretcher, plopped down on the now whimpering canvas frame, and spat out, "Exactly what I told you would happen, a lot of good Officers, firefighters, and innocent civilians got hurt because you're worthless as a cop and you have no idea what you're doing.

"And now look at me, I cut my arm because of you, and now it hurts."

Nick growled and unconsciously flexed his paws.

Judy shook her head and turned back to Nick. She was too tired to care about a loud-mouthed boar.

Seeing that Hopps was ignoring him, Schweinly grunted as he watched the ram EMT lean in between the two lions and whisper something that caused the male to nod and the female to start shivering, and then yelled when the ram straightened up and turned to leave.

"Yo, you damned sheep, get over here and do your job. I need a bandage, maybe some stitches too."

The ram nodded as he went and grabbed the boar's arm and leaned in close to examine the injury.

"Ow! Watch what you're doing, you idiot. That hurts."

White glanced at the two lions and said, "Don't worry, you'll be taken care of in just a moment."

Nick's ear twitched like he was reliving a bad dream.

Judy froze as something told her–

"Good, it's all that rabbit's fault that I slipped and cut my arm. I'll probably need a tetanus shot now, too, damn it."

Thought vaporized by Schweinly's asinine behavior, Judy continued to bite her tongue. Trying to defend her actions by explaining to Schweinly what happened here was the epitome of the old saying about trying to teach a pig to dance. Besides, Nick was almost awake.

Focusing on Nick, Judy was interrupted by DeZoto coming back with his portable medkit, "The ZFD just found an unconscious EMT stripped of his gear, I have to go–" Seeing a ram in ill-fitting EMT gear tending to a ZPD officer, DeZoto finished with a weak, "help."

Having followed DeZoto's stare and about to intervene, Judy heard a growl. Then she heard the gnashing of teeth. And then the ram looked at her and mouthed,

"Bye-bye bunny."

"They're going savage, the lions are going savage," screamed the ram as he jumped up and backed away from Schweinly and watched from behind one of the open ambulance doors with a smirk on his face.

Judy's head spun back to the lions as she saw Billy tearing at the blanket covering him while DeeDee sat violently shaking and staring at the hiding ram.

Schweinly screamed and backed toward the ambulance.

Billy used his teeth and fangs to throw off the remnants of the blanket, and once clear of the minor restraint, he focused on his screaming prey.

"Aaaaaaahhhhh," screamed Schweinly, diving under the ambulance.

Or trying to dive under. Schweinly got stuck with his curly tail in the air and his snout whimpering into the gravel on the road.

Billy gnashed his teeth as he sniffed his prey's fear in the air… and his prey's urine on the ground.

Judy reached for her gun but stopped mid-motion and instead jumped toward the truck and, bouncing off the bumper, hit Billy in the top of his chest with her patented double rabbit foot power kick. Said move, drove Billy back into DeeDee, who suddenly came alive and pounced on Billy, holding him down.

Judy did a backflip after bouncing off Billy and landing next to Schweinly, who was still stuck under the ambulance, grabbed his tranq pistol and double-tapped each of the lions. "Sorry guys, a wicked headache is better than getting shot with a lethal."

"Bitch," said White coming out from behind the ambulance door, "you were supposed to die killing them after they killed your worthless friends. Now I have to fix everything myself."

Judy pointed the tranq pistol at the ram holding a lethal on the barely moving lions, "Drop your weapon, and you can walk away from this."

"Stupid rabbit, at best, you have one dart left, and if you try to use it on me, I'll shoot all of you before I drop. So, how about you drop your tranq and your gun belt, and I let you hop back to your carrot farm or wherever your sorry tail crawled out of."

Judy's ear twitched.

"And the lions?' asked Judy as she backed away from the ram.

"Not your problem."

"You were the one on the loudspeaker telling everyone to kill me, weren't you? And I bet you were the one that blew up the building too. All that to stop little ol' me? I'm touched."

"You're smarter than you look, rabbit. Or stupider because you've been in our sites for a while now. First, a few interrupted snatch attempts and then a failed hit job. And now that you know what a pain in my ass you've been, it's time for you and everyone else around this happy little campfire to die."

Judy stopped backing up, and then with her ears held high, she smiled and said, "We got it there. Thank you, Yackety-yack."

"What?"

Judy cocked out her left hip and said, "It's called a hustle, sweetheart."

A red-furred blur of a paw shot out from under a blanket, grabbed its pistol out of Judy's left holster, and then rolling into a prone position on the stretcher, Nick yelled, "ZPD, drop the gun, or I'll drop you."

White's eyes widened, then narrowed as he pointed his lethal at Judy and snarled, "Hustle this, pelt."

Nick kicked Judy out of the way just as–

Both mammals fired.

Judy screamed at seeing the blankets or what was under them absorb the bullet meant for her.

The ram went to his knees as Nick yelled for Judy and tried to move from the stretcher so he could–

The ram laughed, pointed his pistol at Nick's head, and wheezed out, "Damned pelt."

Judy went for her pistol at the same time as Nick tried to recentered his. They were both too slow.

Two shots rang out.

White stopped laughing and instead coughed as the gun fell from his hoof.

"Hopps? Wilde?" said Bogo, still pointing his pistol at the bleeding ram as he moved into the light. "What's your status?"

"I'm okay Chief," replied Judy holding her elbow as she made her way back to Nick.

"Nothing serious here," said Nick handing his pistol to Judy so he could hold his side. "I think he might have trashed my dad's party shirt though."

White knew he was dead. He'd failed. Glancing over at the two tranqed lions holding themselves, he knew Brown's plan had failed too. The lioness had beat the drug. They'd missed something, but what?

Vision going dark, White saw the bunny fussing over the fox still on the stretcher, and it hit him. Love. Predators can love. Brown needed to–

"How is he?" asked Bogo.

The coyote EMT checking the ram's pulse shook his head as he said, "Gone, sir."