Welcome back my dearest readers to another entry into the Dark Ends series. These are just short, going nowhere bits. Things that are inspired by… I rarely know, if I'm being honest. My muse is, as many have likely surmised, a fickle prick.
As with any Dark End, you know what to expect. MCD is kinda implied here. Get your tissues ready, and if you have the constitution, read on. I hope you enjoy.
I do not own and thus can claim no rights to Zootopia or its characters. They belong to Disney.
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Dark Ends 4
Being a cop is a dangerous job. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Not even the ever optimistic, glass is half full, rose colored glasses, Judy Hopps, was under any delusion about the risks of her chosen profession. She understood that being a cop meant danger well before her academy death count exceeded 1, and for someone like her, even more so. Her parents had happily, almost gleefully, explained the dangers to her at length in hopes of dissuading her. Everyone knows how well that worked out.
Truth be told, with her drive to prove herself more than just a token rabbit, Judy was on a fast track to an early place upon the ZPD memorial wall. At least until she met a certain vulpine. He balanced her, bringing a thoughtful restraint to her unrestrained exuberance, just as she tempered his instinct to be what was expected of him as a fox, driving him to be more and better. To be what she knew he could be. Together they were a true force of nature. Driven to prove what a fox and a rabbit really were worth, while keeping each other grounded and around long enough to actually do so. Together they defied the odds, their stereotypes, and the pessimistic expectations of those around them.
The pair were on a fast track for promotions, and not because they were the first of their species, but more in spite of that. Expectations were, if anything, higher for them, both due to their personal need to prove themselves; due to them being the first of their size class and species, with all the extra scrutiny that brought. They had a case closure rate of 90%. Arrests to their names from a midget mouse jewel thief who stood in at a mere 1.5 inches, to an elephant with gigantism. Three mayors, seven city council members, four fortune 50 CEOs, and countless thugs, drunks drivers, petty thieves, etc… From those arrests, due to their dilligence with their evidence, they had a conviction rate of 95% once handed over to the DA's office. They were in short order the team to which all others were held.
Every cop in the ZPD knew, if you were in the thick of it and called for backup, the sweetest words you could hear was, Z240, in route. Or. WildeHopps on scene. Every cop that was in the wrong, or on the take, who was on the wrong side of the law, learned to dread those very words. IA, and ZPD leadership in general learned quickly that those that criticized, denigrated, and loudly hated on WildeHopps probably had a reason. A reason likely worth looking into. All the more reason those that were on the wrong side of things hated them, and to keep one's muzzle shut.
Judy was once criticized for crossing the thin blue line at a press conference regarding the arrest of several officers. After some training with Nick, she got very good at handling the press. Her response earned her respect with the community and all those good cops out there who were too afraid to speak up themselves. "Thin blue line? Bah! We are officers of the law. Our jobs are to protect and serve the public! Not ourselves. Yes, we have to hold the line against crime. We have to support each other, back each other up, but not when that means violating the law or the rights of the citizens of this city. Trust. Integrity. Bravery. Those are the words on our badges, be that the badge of a fresh recruit, the chief, an elephant, or the newly minted tiny division for Little Rodentia. These are not conditional. Yeah, I screwed up during my first press conference, something no one, least of all myself, lets me forget. I make mistakes all the time. That's just being a mammal. But I own up to them, and when I can, I fix them. It is why I have a partner that is there to look out for me and keep me from repeating mistakes.
As officers, we cannot expect trust from the public if they worry that we are just out for ourselves. If we are just going to judge them for what they are. That means, if you are a good cop, you have to say something. It doesn't matter if they are a friend, a fellow officer, or family. I would hate it. I would cry like a stereotypical bunny for days, if I ever had to arrest my partner." Glancing back at Nick who smiled back with a nod. "But you know what? I would still do it. IF! He did something that warranted it. Sometimes I think about it when I see him slacking off on paperwork. Yet, you know what else? Nick would never put me into that position."
Nick spoke up from next to her. "She's right, you know. I'm a fox. Everyone. And I do mean everyone but Judy, expected me to be running a grift, or to be caught stealing evidence, or be running a con for information fed back to some criminal organization. I know this because I have spent a lot of time in IA interviews. I have been told as much to my face as my fellow officers have searched, desperately, for a reason to prove their assumptions about me right.
I at least give those mammals in IA credit for their integrity, because I have never once. Not once. Been held up as having done anything wrong. Because I have Judy. She reminds me when the pressure gets bad to still do the right thing, even when it's the harder thing to do. She supports me when the distrusting stares and the glares from my fellow officers starts to get to me. So to me, being a bad cop. That's so much worse. But being a bad cop, while looking down on me… Hell no! I cannot allow that. With all I have put up with to be a good cop, it doesn't make it any easier to arrest one of our own. Nor however will I look the other way, because that would in fact make me what they think I am. Now, if you will excuse us. We have actual work to do."
They were far from perfect, and the first to point out that they were more often than not the first of their shift on site, often by more than an hour, and the last to leave the precinct. Pointing out that their work had to be beyond reproach else someone be able to point to a mistake and make the claim that they weren't able to cut it. Stupid and unfair perhaps, but their reality. As well. Judy had a lot of specist baggage to unpack from her upbringing in the sticks, and Nick had a lot of work to prove himself to his fellow officers. By the time they made Detective II, they had actual friends and the trust of their coworkers.
Being Detectives meant fewer days on patrol, only filling in where needed, and being assigned bigger, more important cases, and theoretically less danger. Less danger doesn't mean none. Although Judy would never tell her parents that the danger was probably higher, given how relieved they seemed upon hearing that she'd be patrolling less. When they went to arrest someone, they always had a uniformed unit as backup, but their targets were more often than not, expecting it. From white-collar criminals like CEOs and business owners, that was never really a problem. Unless it was a violent crime they were being arrested for. However, being Detectives meant that the type of criminal they interacted with was often of the more violent type. Murderers, rapists, and higher level gangsters. While they still carried their tranqs, it was their lethals that saw far more use. Both adding a number of perps they had shot and killed to their tallies.
There was even a movie and a TV series being discussed. Although the talks around that had not gotten very far as it would require approval from the city and the ZPD, and they were slow to approve something that would potentially expose ZPD internal both were equally eager to garner some positive publicity.
It started as what should have been a simple, literally routine, follow up interview of a secondary suspect. Just checking their story, and maybe getting a clue or bit of information on the main target of the investigation. Show up, make it seem like you know more than you do, make them nervous and hope the target slips up. They had been assigned to look into a series of high end home invasion robberies that resulted in a few deaths. Five security guards across three homes, and one home owner. The eight others were better planned and at most had resulted in one guard getting shot, but not killed. It had been assigned as just the three where a death was involved. But as always seemed to happen, Nick and Judy realized that those three were linked to a larger string of robberies, and the deaths were just from early on in the crew's efforts.
They knew it was a crew of at least three on any given job, though Nick and Judy were both convinced that there were in fact more mammals involved. They just didn't know how they were linked exactly, or how many mammals were actually involved. Which was one of the reasons they were re-interviewing the mammal in question. The deaths were early on. The crew was clearly still getting it all worked out on those early, and deadly, heists. The homes they hit were higher end. Not mansions like Gazelle lived in, but a few million, gated community or private gate/road, and had either private security mammals, advanced security systems, or both.
Nick and Judy had a good feel for, and a working profile of the crew, or at least the core mammals of the crew. The mammal they were there to reinterview, they were highly confident was the driver, and had been verified to be the get away driver for at least six of the heists. They were clearly only the lookout and transportation, and was being surveilled in hopes of catching them interacting with the rest of the core crew. A perfect target to flip for a deal against the members they really wanted to pin down.
Nick and Judy expected a nervous mammal. Someone they could hopefully stress into revealing something. The mammal that opened the door was exactly what they were hoping for. Nervous, skittish, and talkative to the point of rambling. They did not expect to show up just before the rest of the crew did in order to plan their next job.
The driver died where he stood, in the doorway of his home, a look of terror on his muzzle, shot in the head by the crew leader. Nick and Judy had to dive past the body as it fell, taking refuge inside the house while calling for backup. Their close support called it in as well, but was pinned down by the crew almost immediately as they tried to move in to back up Nick and Judy.
The crew bailed and a high speed pursuit ensued, ending in the warehouse district of Savanah Central. SWAT and TUSK were involved soon enough, and a full siege of a small warehouse complex began. It turned out the crew was a highly organized gang, and had enough firepower to hold off a platoon. Nick's knowledge of the area, his own warehouse a mere quarter mile away, allowed the ZPD to cut off any exit for the crew via service tunnels and such.
After hours of stand off, hundreds of rounds exchanged, and several sniper bullets, it came to an end. Or so it was initially thought by the ZPD. The gang had other ideas. Other members of the gang that had not been present, as well as several using paw-dug tunnels to nearby warehouses, pinned the ZPD in a three way crossfire. The gang even deployed heavier weapons against the ZPD, targeting the larger mammals and the TUSK and SWAT armored vehicles. Several grenades were thrown, and two rockets were fired at the ZPD. It was a true war zone. Once it was all actually over, the gang was all dead or at least shot. There were a lot of them, made to seem like more thanks to their access to fully automatic and military weaponry.
Of the fifty members of the gang, forty were confirmed dead or would die from their injuries within the week, three would never walk again, and the rest would never see sunlight without thick prison bars to filter it for them. Dawn Bellwether had more freedom then they would end their lives with. On the ZPD side, thirty officers were injured with various wounds normally only seen on wartime battlefields, as well as gunshot wounds. Ten were killed in the firefight, with four others killed by one of the grenades, and six by the rocket attack.
Nick collapsed against a wall, sliding down till he was sitting, leaving a large crimson smear as he did so. Judy limped over to him, large drips of crimson in her wake as she cradled an arm against her chest as she dropped next to him. She picked up his arm and slipped under it, leaning into him. Literally snuggling herself against him. Mumbling something about being cold.
Nick grunted in pain but otherwise allowed it, his tail managing to work its way around her waist. It was clear to anyone with eyes, or a nose to smell with, that the fox had given everything he had and had nothing left. The other officers, the paramedics looking after the other injured officers, working diligently to save lives, not Bogo himself, nor the reporters arriving on scene, dared approach. A single video reporter with a parabolic mic on their camera zoomed in and managed to catch the exchange. The entirety of Zootopia and beyond watching it live, the camera mammal not aware that the control room has switched to his feed.
"Hey, Nick. Hell of a day."
Nick chuckled weakly, then coughed, His teeth red with blood as he spat a large wad of blood and tissue to the side. "One way to put it."
Judy sighed heavily. "Paperwork is gonna be a nightmare."
Nick tried to take a deep breath and ended up coughing more blood. "Sorry Fluff. I… I'm done, Judy. I'm sorry. I…." Coughing again he closed his eyes with a whine and stopped moving a moment, seeming to deflate.
Judy elbowed him. "Hey. Not without me, fox."
Nick roused a moment, kissing her on the top of her head, leaving a bloody mark. "Sorry, Judy. I love you. I… I just needed you to know." Nick shuddered and slumped again, open eyes going sightless.
Judy reached up and closed his eyes. "I love you too, dumb fox. See you in the next life." Judy sighed again as she pulled his now limp arm over her more, closed her eyes, and slumped into him.
Neither moved again, oblivious to the news cameras trained on them as Bogo and some of the survivors watched, a silent tear in his eye as he revised the officer death count up by two.