A Zootopia to Remember

Author Note: This chapter has some disturbing scenes. I did have a mature label but some scenes may be extrmeley offensive. It is intended to show a level of depravity an out of control dystopia can reach. This is something we should all keep in mind. We must keep to our morals. We must not sell out. And we must keep society on an even keel because regardless of how horrible some scenes in this is, reality could become far worse.

Nick looked Finnick in the eyes as he took a breath, released it, and tried to start again. He put his paws on his knees, clenching tightly and looked down. Taking a second deep breath, he let go of his knees, leaned back into the couch and looked up to Finnick.

Judy beside him was looking at him with a sad loving look, having received all the memories already. Judy and Nick had discussed how the mind share worked, and while all memories were always shared between them, as Nick had unfortunately found out, if you intentionally think to keep something back, you could.

Judy and Nick made an agreement, in their minds of course to each other, that short of surprise events like birthdays, holidays, and, blushing slightly she confirmed wedding anniversaries and other special occasions.

Judy reached over and put a paw over Nicks who startled out of his inner turmoil looked down then over and across to his beloved, smiling slightly and nodding.

He shore up his spine, then once again looked to Finnick, "Finnick, I'm… sorry. It's hard for me to start. I say it was 30 years from now, but honestly it was closer to 40. 6 years from now, almost to the day, Judy was betrayed by Bogo and her fellow officers. She was murdered. There's no other way to state it. She was turned into a literal sack of meat, and dragged by meat hooks, actual meat hooks, to the front steps of the ZPD. The irony isn't lost that half of them that dragged her back that way were actual cops, the rest being the underworld that took over when they offed Mr. Big and his family."

Nick stopped his narration to Finnick's wide-eyed horror etched on his face and took a quick drag of his beer which was physically ripped out of his hand as Judy finished it off quickly after. Nick looked at his empty paw, to the chugging bunny beside him, and then reached down and pulled out another triple aged imperial stout. These beers would do for the talk. 18.5% abv per bottle.

Finnick seeing what was in Nick's hand and wiping his muzzle from the vomit that he emptied in the bucket, Nick paused, tossed Finn his bottle, then reached down for another. He made sure to get 6 6 packs of the beer. They'll probably go through all of them.

Judy reached down, this time grabbing one for herself, surprised how flavorful it was, but not bothered on the alcohol. Nothing touched Pop Pop's moonshine.

Nick smiled sadly to Finnick "That's one, I did say you'd vomit at least 3 times."

Finnick grimaced "I'll be prepared, now that I know what to expect."

Judy snorts "Expect? That was the lightest thing that happened. It gets considerably worse from here."

Finnick looks down, mutters silently "Fuck me, Nick. What did you go through? What the hell happened?"

Judy looks sadly to Finnick "After I was murdered, Nick gave up. But not the way Bogo and those in power hoped for, expected, or wanted. Nick gave up on his pride. Nick gave up on his effort to live. Nick gave up on what most mattered to Nick. Nick gave up on peace. Nick decided to burn the world, since the corruption was settled in so deep, it was the only solution."

Finnick, eyes growing wide with horror again "Wait wait… you're going to start a world wide WAR?"

Nick shakes his head "No Finnick, before it took me years and years to train up and learn what was truly going on. By then it was too late. Far too late to reverse or stop. I had to burn it away. Today? Now? We have the time to stop it before it even starts."

Finnick glowers "Nick? Judy? How do you know it's not already started?"

Judy chews her lip up with a pop "Oh it has. But not to the point it's set in, and not to the point they think anyone knows. We have a chance." Judy reaches over and grabs Nick's paw and holds it up to Finn "Finn, we have a chance."

Finnick looks back and forth between Judy and Nick, nods his head very very slowly then reaches over and drops a paw on-top of their joined hands "We have a chance."

Dropping all their paws Nick takes another quick swig then continues "I guess I should start a bit further back. Finn, about a year from now I'll be a ZPD officer. Judy's partner in fact. You, I think, went on to own a body shop for custom designs on vehicles. We… fell out of sorts… since you didn't agree with my joining the ZPD, especially for, as you called it 'a hop-less pray animal'. You even stressed the hop."

Finnick winces and rubs an ear "Yea, that sounds like something I'd do. I, uh.. I'm sorry."

Nick hand waves "You haven't done it, and you know more now than you did then."

Judy leans over and touches Finn's paw "You're a good mammal, Finn. You just lost your best friend to what you considered a traitor to your species. Of course you were angry."

Finnick takes a swig and leans back "But not now bunny-cop. I'm starting to warm up to you. I can see what Nick sees in you. You were born the wrong species you know."

Judy frowns at Finnick "I like being a bunny."

Finnick guffaws a bit "I'm sure. And I'm sure Nick is happy you're a bunny, too. Outside and inside closed door—OOF!"

Nick smiles smugly as Finnick pulls the pillow off his face and looks to Nick dead-panned raising an eyebrow "OK, that's you're one free shot and only because I deserved it."

Finnick shakes his head "Judy, what I meant to say is you think like a predator, not a prey. It's like your brain was wired wrong at birth."

Judy blinks and leans back "Huh. You may be right. I always did get along far better with predators than prey."

Finnick nods "Anyway Nick, sorry for the interruption. Continue."

Nick nods his head "As I was saying, we were in the police, and things just… were not making sense. We saw inconsistencies in how society was ran, now that we had a more inside view. People moving pieces around like chess, slowly narrowing the gap. Controlling things tighter and tighter. Narrowing down distribution channels. Controlling pricing choke points. Heavier monitoring for those who were most likely to bolt or move unsolicited. This, sadly, was more predators than prey, since for the last 20 years or more, we have been far more paranoid."

Judy grumbles "Not like prey mammals gave you a choice." Finnick fist-bumps Judy "Right you are, toot-toot."

Judy raises an eyebrow and Nick snickers "Yea, I told him a few nicknames he used on you in the past cycle, and that one got a chuckle out of him."

Judy sighs and rubs her temples with a paw "I thought I'd avoid that one. Oh well." and does a move-it-along motion with her paw and Nick elbows her gently with a wink and continues.

Nick continues "So, we started to document everything, put it in our reports, and suddenly. Our patrols started to be at different times, different locations. Things we reported started to go missing, or were closed without reason. It raised far too many questions. So we went straight to Chief Bogo with our concerns."

Judy spat "Fat lot of good that did. If we knew then what we knew now, we'd have gone right to the mayor."

Nick pats down Judy's ears to calm her as he leans over and pulls her over to him in a hug "No, we didn't know then, and honestly it wouldn't have mattered if we went to the mayor. The mayor then was that damnable beaver Bill who was one of the paid shills for the corporate front end. He was just a puppet. Even Lionheart today wouldn't be able to do much, but I'd rather keep him in as long as we can as he's the best we can do until we find someone better."

Judy nods her head as Finnick interrupts "Wait, I know Bogo screwed you but he was in on it even then?"

Nick sighs "Found out later that it was the reason he was made Chief. Because the political engine wanted someone who would play ball. And the Chief played ball."

Finnick downs his beer, tosses it in the waste and makes a 'gimme' motion for another which Judy passes him with an underhand toss which Finnick expertly pops open with a claw "So you guys were screwed before you even started."

Judy grinds her teeth "Were we set up from the start? Yes, yes we were. They're playing from the same script even now, doing their game of chess. Setting up the board."

Nick grins and hugs Judy tighter as he kisses the side of her muzzle to her surprised purr "Yes, but the thing is, we're now playing mahjong and they don't know it. By the time they win at chess, they'll realize it was a game we never intended to play anyway and we'll have one our game and already started the next."

Finnick "So what happened?"

Nick snorts "Bogo played us, and we didn't even see. Damn buffalo is far more clever than I gave credit for, and it cost me my bunny." Judy tenses up beside him and holds Nick close as Nick nearly growls "He… cost me my bunny, Finn. And I burned the world for it."

Judy grabs Nick's muzzle to her and kisses him slowly and soundly then pulls back "I'm here, they haven't gotten me. They haven't gotten you. We'll win this time." Nick breathes in deeply. Once. Twice. Nods his head and surreptitiously wipes a tear from an eye "Yea…" Nick sighs "Yea… OK."

Nick releases his bunny only long enough to grab his beer off the table and take a swing before grabbing his bunny in a hug again "So, what Bogo did, is admit to what we saw and said it was possible. That he needs someone to work the system, someone sly like me. He literally said 'We need someone honest like Hopps. We need someone sly like you. We need to train you both up though, so you survive what is to come. We'll put you on the fast track to specials forces'"

Nick throws his head back and nearly screams "And I fucking bought it Finn! He hooked me fully. Hooked Judy fully. Shit she even binky'd and fist-pumped. I caught a smug smile on Bogo's face but didn't' take anything of it, but he knew then we were his. He fucking got us. And I hate me for it."

Judy nods her head and growled "Me too. It was the worst decision in my life, and I include the speech I did about the predators in that, and how I treated you, Nick, in that as well."

Nick leans back into the couch. Judy pushes Nick back further then craws into his lap, making him into a fur-cushion "He was honest, at least to a point, with his training."

Nick snorts "It was an edited version of all the training. I found out later of course, but they intentionally trained us wrong. Put in weaknesses in every point of the higher end training. I corrected it and even caught them at it a few times. They tried to wave it off as it's acceptable as it's a fast-track program, but Judy and I talked in that timeline and it seemed off. We were more on alert, but we were already far too late. This was several years into our training, and a week later they killed Judy. We revealed our hand to them, they knew we were at the point of discovery, and they killed Judy. They killed my bunny."

Judy hiccups remembering the pain of her own murder, both from her own viewpoint and the aftermath through Nick's eyes and feelings. Judy speaks up "Finnick, you have to understand. This was going on for years. They were subtle at first, trying to change our behavior through repeated behavior alteration. Basic brainwashing techniques. I almost fell for it a few times but Nick, he was aware of this type of behavior. Nick took courses in psychology in college because he wanted to learn how people thought. It was why he was so good at hustling."

Nick buffs a paw and Judy rolls her eyes as she continued "So yea, Nick saw right through it and warned me what to look for. And then I did something stupid."

Finnick had a sick look on his face "You didn't confront them on it."

Judy nods her head "I carrot-picking confronted them on it. I was such a cabbage-headed moron."

Judy sighed "I was killed a week later. They said they saw what I meant but wanted to prove they were not brain washing with the training and wanted to show me what I learned in a real on-sight mission."

Nick sighed "And in so doing so showed how brainwashed you truly were."

Judy sighed "Yea, I bought it, even knowing I was being brainwashed, I allowed them to dictate my actions. My equipment. Where I went, where I stood. By the time I woke up and realized it was a setup, I was already shot. And it was by a police officer. Grizoldi. A Kodiak bear grabbed me by my neck, lifted me up, and shot me right in the back with his handgun. As I screamed and was bleeding out he had the nerve to say to me "It's wabbit season, Hopps. Be a good dinner."

Then he tossed me to the floor. While I tried to crawl out, I realized I couldn't move my legs. The jerk shot me right in the spine and severed it through the flimsy suit Bogo made me wear. Apparently it wasn't even armored. Just fabric and foam rubber. So I tried to drag myself to a safe area to the laughing of all the officers. And that's when the others showed up, most hiding around corners or materials. The criminal bosses and masterminds who required my sacrifice for, as Nick said, 'The Greater Good'."

Judy spits and coughs, unable to continue through her sheer anger and tears.

Nick holds her close, recovered enough to continue "The mob boss who did it was Cariktur, the mastiff. He was the one who bought out Kevin to kill Mr. Big and eat FruFru Big. Keven even video tapes eating FruFru, chewed her slowly through her screams for several minutes. Minutes. He took intentional time just to draw it out just to send me that video knowing that the daughter of FruFru that he ate with Fru was Judy."

Finnick sighed "Karma's furry ass, Nick. How did you manage?"

Nick snorts "What do you think? I took my time, and when I finally got to Kevin, I skinned him, kept him alive, used him as a live pin-doll to size the outfit and before I slit his throat, I wore his own skin as a fur. The damn-est of it? Kevin laughed the entire time, saying he should have done same to my bunny and not been there to fuck her corpse."

Judy gags "He did what? Nick you.. hid that from me."

Nick closes his eyes and relaxes the memories as they flood to Judy. She immediately reaches for the wastebasket and vomits. "I'll kill Kevin twice over. I'm going to make him my own personal vegetable bag."

Finnick just stares at Judy "Bunny-cop, I mean. Judy. I'm… no, I can't even say sorry for that. That's..."

Nick sighs "This is why I wanted to hide it from you, Judy. You shouldn't have to remember things that won't matter now, and we'll make sure those who did things like that suffer for it this time."

Judy wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, swirls beer and spits in the basket then wipes her hands and leans back into Nick "It's important Nick, because you remember it. It happened to you, so it happened to me. Share it Nick, and we'll get through it together."

Nick sighed again as Finnick spoke up "Nick er… how… ".. making a dry gagging sound and dry heaving a bit ".. how bad was it? How bad did they disrespect Judy's body?"

Nick's lips quiver and he chokes back a semi-insane laugh "Kevin wore her corpse as a codpiece and walked around an hour with her body just hanging off him, before he grew tired of it and tossed it aside then stomped on it until it was mostly crushed, then the other people there grabbed any makeshift weapons they had and just beat on her corpse. At least they didn't kill her by bludgeoning her. So there's that."

Judy snorts through tears "Yea, being shot a few hundred times with large caliber bullets as a slow moving target was just so much better" and nearly spits it at Nick then looks on in horror and hugs him before Nick can pull away.

Nick gekk's a sad trill and just holds Judy to him "So yea Finn, it's still a sore subject for us. Especially since Bogo apparently blew up a picture of her remains and had it mounted on the wall behind him. He called the picture 'Shut your mouth, Wilde'"

Finnick just stares at Judy and Nick and shakes his head back and forth as if to clear reality from it "Nick… no, I mean Nick? What the fuck? How did you deal with this?"

Nick laughs "I burned the world, remember?"

Finnick "Wait, you destroyed the world?"

Nick laughs "No, I could never be that powerful. I just arranged things so those who wanted power wanted it absolutely. And as you know, there can only be one in true power. So they all killed themselves. It was going to happen anyway, I just… pushed them along faster. It was easy to manipulate them into it, and it got their attention off me so I could do what I needed to to."

Finnick "Which was?"

Nick smiles sadly "Investigate how I could reset the world in such a way to save everyone from this ever happening again. I got lucky though. I found a reset switch, and a way to get my bunny back."

Finnick blinked "Wait, what do you mean. You didn't intend to do this from the start?"

Judy smiles and shakes her head "I think Serendipity guided him, because he woke up one morning with the idea of the mind share. Then Karma had a hand and he woke up a year after he made the share with an idea to quantum link it. And at the time of his study on quantum linking they discovered that quantum link strings could go forward and backwards in time."

Finnick gasped and dropped the bottle "The mind share, you figured a way to link it to the quantum theory."

Nick just smiles as Judy started to pepper him with kisses "And I got my bunny back." Judy leans back as Nick starts to choke up in emotion and continues for Nick.

Judy speaks up "So, Nick, after my blatant murder and disrespect, took about 5 years before he was able to get my family to understand he wasn't to blame. He had to do research and do completely illegal finding to find records of what happened. You see, Bogo had experts modify the footage to make it look like Nick betrayed me himself. That he did to my body what was done. My father bought it at first, until they thought about it and realized it couldn't have been that way."

Judy takes a quick drink and continues "You see, Nick had already told my mom and dad he imprinted me. He couldn't hurt me even if he was nighthowlered. So how could he have done it intentionally?"

Nick nods his head holding his bunny tightly as Judy continued "So, the Hopps family joined Nick in revenge. They talked, they shared resources, and Nick. Nick became what he was always meant to be. He became a prodigy."

Finnick coughs "What? What do you mean?"

Judy smiles lovingly up to her fox "Finn, Nick's a generous." Nick scoffs "You are too, Miss Valedictorian of everything she does." Judy smirks "Maybe, but I would bet a carrot harvest you'd always score higher than I would."

Nick just bashfully shrugs and Judy boops Nick's nose as Judy speaks up again "So, Nick studied… everything. He first used the brain-share to do live streaming into his own mind. He… almost damaged it a few times but found the right configuration and he learned. Everything. As much as he could hold. Practiced. Cheated. Hustled. He sold away his own soul to get what he needed. The only thing he never gave up on was his morals, and his love for me."

Nick, finally able to speak continued ".. and I learned a lot of what shouldn't have been found out. They tried to come after me a few times. Hired thugs. Assassins. Commonwealth military. Special forces. You name it. I killed them all. Some figured out what was going on and joined me instead. I gained a lot of allies through it all and eventually we were able to overthrow the gestalt that controlled the world. It… tilted the world and caused a power vacuum."

Finnick looks to Nick confused until Judy mimes a huge explosion with her paws "Boom."

Nick nods and gestures toward Judy "What she said. Boom. I didn't destroy the world, Finnick. I just showed the big shiny button and let everyone else push it. And they did. Repeatedly. Gleefully. This is the future we're heading to if we don't stop it."

Finnick rubs his ears, looking to the bucket that he had only vomited in twice, not the three times or more Nick had threatened. Somehow, he felt like he won something. Hell if he knew what.

Finnick spoke up "OK, so what do you need from me?"

Nick smiles sadly "I need you to gather everyone from our community you trust. No fence sitters. Only those you know absolutely can be trusted. And we train them. We're going to hook them all up to a modified version of the mind share. It basically imprints training into them. They'll learn years and years of material in hours."

Judy chirps up in a very very bad accent attempt of 'The Matrix' "… I know kung-fu!"

Finnick starts to laugh out loud "Damn bunny-cop, I needed that. OK, I'm in. But I want to be the first one in that chair learning shit. You're not doing this without me."

Judy leaps off Nick's lap and hugs Finnick to her "Welcome to the team, shorty."

Finnick grumbles "Stop that or I'll bite your face off."

Nick grins. Things were finally starting to come together.

Lionheart flipped the letter in his hands back and forth, almost calling Bellwether to his office to mail it but something stopped him. Almost like a warning from Karma herself. No, this letter he would mail himself before he left. Nick's P.I. license, the hidden carry, and a little something extra. Lionheart had no idea why he included it, but he put a signed declaration for seize and trespass during militant times for both Hopps and Wilde. It was old law, before the new legislation, but it covered things that the new law didn't cover. If one could state a need for severe defense, it was basically a carte blanche to do damn near anything. As well as carry-clause that would allow any and all forms of hand held weaponry.

Lionheart stopped flipping the letter, put it into his front coat pocket and flicked on his receiver "Smellwether!" a bit of buzzing and a picked up in a slimy voice "Yes sir?"

Lionheart started to feel, off, more and more on Bellwether. Something wasn't right "I'm going to go out, hold my calls for the rest of the afternoon." With a responded 'Yes Sir!' and a buzz of a hangup, Lionheart slowly got up and rubbed his face with a paw. "This is getting crazy. I think Hopps is right, I may have to bring her and Wilde into this. I think I'm being set up."

Lionheart was not a dumb animal, just easily manipulated, but changes were happening and it was making him more paranoid. Seeing a fox that was more alpha than he was was a wake up call and it was like lifting a veil from his eyes. He started to see more clearly than he had in years and he was nervous. Nervous as hell, because he realized very very quickly he was not in power. And more worrying, he didn't know who was.

But by damn, he was going to find out. As he reached his coat and left, closing the door behind him, the extremely small transceiver that Hopps had put on his desk kept blinking in a spectrum beyond normal sight, hidden away and transmitting everything that Lionheart had spoken of, always being outspoken and speaking aloud his thoughts.

Panning away from his desk, and near the door, it was almost missed, but a much larger, far less sophisticated recorder also blinked, sending its own message to a far nearer point than the one Hopps had placed.

Bellwether stopped the recording on her device and leaned back "Lionheart is waking up. Either I have to increase the dosage of his tea or maybe add him to the target list of the nighthowlers. We'll see if the dumb lion falls in line or not. And him bringing that damn fox and Hopps in this? Yea, that wont 'happen."

Dawn taps her desk as she waits for the call to come through "Doug? Yea, find anything on that fox yet? Nothing? Wait absolutely nothing? What do you mean there's nothing. Well, find something, dig deeper. If Hopps wants that fox teamed up with her, hes' not a normal fox. And we may need to neutralize him."

Dawn winces a bit as she hears snorting "No, I'm not joking. The fox is dangerous. Well fine. If you won't target him yet, remember, it's on you if he becomes a problem. But yes, I agree, we have other targets of higher visibility and priority. A savage fox won't even raise an eyebrow, if anything it'll be a mockery, we can't have that right now. We need to instill fear, not laughter."

Dawn hangs up and screams and bangs her paws on her desk. Why couldn't anyone see what she saw. That fox was trouble. Foxes are always trouble. Damn-able worthless stinking pelts. Her ancestors should have wiped them out in the last war, not that they didn't try.

What was that stupid rabbit that her ancestors easily tricked into wiping out that red fox platoon? Learington? No, Leaperton? Closer… Leaperson. Yea, that was the stupid officer. Just had to mention the word fox to that stupid long-ear and it would stop around and froth like a rabbit squirrel. It would have been humorous if not as pathetic as it was.

But it did show Dawn what she always knew about mammals, rabbits in particular. Easy to manipulate. Easy to control. Though Hopps… she was being an outlier. Yes, she'll have to keep a closer eye on that bunny. Both her and that fox.