FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

As Judy slept in Nick's arms, her dreams got stranger and stranger; hearing voices and odd sounds that weren't quite nightmares but were nevertheless disturbing. Her body twitched as the jumble of sounds and images in her mind gently started to take form, the warmth she had felt as she slept giving way to a jarring coldness that didn't quite wake her. There were a series of loud cracks that shook the air: as loud as claps of thunder when it's too close.

Judy's eyes flickered.

'The sound combined with the loudly growing admixture in her mind, the kaleidoscope of sounds and voices getting louder and louder until she-

Beeeeeeeeeep!

Judy's eyes flashed open at the sound of a loud car horn sounding right next to her. Instinctively she pinned her ears back, opened her mouth, and let out a long, terrified scream which only intensified when she realised that she was in a car driving down the middle of a busy road at an odd hour of the early pre-dawn morning! Adrenaline instantly flooded her system as terror seized her. She was just coming to an intersection where the light had turned red! Fight or flight instincts taking hold, she jammed her foot on the brake as hard as she could, cringing as she did so, and stopped the car--tires squealing loudly--just as it reached the intersection.

Even sitting still at the red light she didn't stop screaming until she had exhausted the air in her lungs. She began hyperventilating, her body not sure whether it wanted to continue screaming or crawl into a corner. Her head darted around quickly to take all of her surroundings. 'How the hell did I get here? Where the hell is this? What . . . Just what . . . ?'_she thought as her mind seemed to stall, a jumble of thoughts and sensations going through her mind as her brain worked to put together the world around her--the colours, the sounds, _the fact that she was in a car.

Beeeeeeeeeep!

She jumped a second time as another horn sounded behind her. She looked up and saw the light was green, the car behind her honking to alert her. She started forward and searched the sidewalks for a place to park. She saw a place up ahead of her along the right side of the road in front of a café.

She managed to station the car safely and, having done so, killed the ignition and simply sat staring straight ahead, hyperventilating loudly, as her heart and body worked to calm themselves. Her mind was blank, in a nearly meditative state, and quite possibly broken forever. She didn't know for how long she sat--whether ten minutes or half an hour--but it was after what felt like some time before her mind started reeling again. 'Where am I? Whose car is this? What the hell am I doing driving down a busy road? Where's Nick?!'

At the last thought, as much as she wanted to have a partner by her side, Judy forced her mind to focus. 'Okay. First things first: Whose car is this?' She reached over and opened the glove compartment to search for any information she could. She pulled out the registration and saw that the car was registered on behalf of the ZPD. 'Okay, so I'm in a police car . . . ?' She rolled down the driver's side window and looked down at the outside of the car and found the ZPD logo printed across the side. The registration papers in hand, she got out of the car and walked around to the back and took a look at the license plate. 'Everything matches. 'Okay, step two: Where am I?' She searched around but found no familiar landmarks which sent another alarm ringing through her mind which she quickly squelched: 'Just calm down! You're not in any danger--All that's happened is you're on a street that you don't recognise. Which is fine. No one is harming you, you've got both feet safely on the ground, and you're off the road.' Convincing herself that the immediate danger was over was a difficult trick; especially with the adrenaline still in her system. Evolutionarily speaking, her body was meant to stay hopped up on fear for longer: Even now, she was still hyperventilating. She was antsy, her senses were heightened, and her nose twitched with nervousness. 'Okay, step three: I need to figure out where I am.' After replacing the registration in the glove, she got out, locked the car door, and searched for someone to speak to.

She saw a young-looking stag walking down the sidewalk and caught up to him.

"Excuse me, sir?" she said hesitantly.

The stag turned to face her. "Yes?" he said, his face scowling the instant he saw her. Judy looked down at herself to find she was in uniform. Putting away, momentarily, the question that formed in her mind as to how she even got into uniform, she looked back to the stag.

"Uh . . . you're not in trouble or anything! Um . . . I . . . uh . . . could you just tell me where I am? I'm a little disoriented."

The stag regarded her oddly.

"Uh . . ." she stammered again, "I was just nearly in a bad car accident and my mind's a little vague . . ."

The stag sighed and said, "You're in Animalia."

"Animalia . . . ?"

"The Animalia district."

"Um . . . in which city."

"Okay, look, bunny, I don't have time for games. I've gotta get to work."

"No, no! Wait! Please wait! Just tell me the name of the city!" she cried as he walked away.

"Zootopia, dumbass!" he shouted over his shoulder.

While she internally winced at the insult she said nothing in reply as her mind instead started to focus on a whole new slew of questions. 'Animalia district . . . ?' She walked down the sidewalk to the other end of the block, intending to get a look at the street sign on the corner. 'At least knowing which street I'm on could help.' She found, however, when she got to the end of the street that things were even more bemusing. "'Happy Town Boulevard'?" she read aloud. 'This doesn't make sense! How are things getting even_more_confusing the more I learn?! Okay, maybe I just need to ask someone else or . . . .' She stopped her train of thought as she happened to look down the street. Very few animals were out at the time. Some shopkeepers were barely opening up their shops. She reached for her phone. It wasn't in her pocket. 'Is it in the car?'

With a huff of annoyance, she went back to the patrol car. She unlocked the car and found her phone on the floor on the driver's side. Thinking back to how it might've gotten there, she realised that she'd had the phone in her left paw as she'd been driving. It had fallen on the floor when she let go of the steering wheel after she'd parked and, as her mind was on more pressing matters at the moment, hadn't paid it much attention. She checked the time.

'"Five forty-seven AM."' She hummed to herself while considering what to do next. 'I'm in an unfamiliar city--at least a city that I know but don't recognise. So, either I'm dreaming, which I doubt, or I was crazy when I imagined everything that happened in my life till this point--or maybe I'm crazy now! Either way, if I am crazy I can't let anyone know. My best bet is to figure out what I can without letting anyone think that I_am_crazy.' She put her head in her paw. 'What would Nick do?' she wondered. 'He'd be smooth. He'd know how to cover for anything he didn't know. He'd know to ask questions whose answers reveal more information than those being questioned were aware of. Get animals to talk! That's what he'd do--he questions suspects so that they think he's asking one thing but is really trying to figure out something else! Okay, you can do this Judy. You aren't crazy. You_aren't_crazy! You can do this. C'mon, Judy, survive!'

Though talking herself up, she was nevertheless filled with a sense of fear, her level of anxiety going up higher and higher as the daunting task presented itself before her. Shakily, she managed to stand from the crouched position she'd been in since looking for her phone. She looked up and down the street and, after locking the car back up, decided to go back up to the one road with which she was familiar: Happy Town Boulevard. She decided that the best course of action was to walk around and get her bearings. She had no idea what she was doing, and that sense of forlornness she felt made her steps going forward more hesitant. She had readily accepted that things were different: How could she deny the evidence of her own eyes? She was an officer, trained in examining and investigating crime. In the year and a half she'd lived on the peninsula she'd learned all the ins and outs of the city thanks in no small part to Nick who, as a hustler on the streets, knew all the places criminals were likely to go. Hardly any region of the city was unknown to the two of them. This city, Judy concluded, was not Zootopia. Not any Zootopia she recognised. Oh, sure, it seemed to have the same general vibe of any urban jungle, and the integration of nature and building structure appeared essentially the same; but the problem was that despite the familiarity with the architecture and style, the city itself (at least from where she was standing) was totally _un_familiar.

She reached the end of the street and decided to go around the block since she needed to familiarise herself with the city, anyway. Another benefit was that taking walks had always helped her to clear her head--and she needed that now more than ever. As she saw more and more animals out while many of the more-nocturnal animals seemed to be going home, another oddity struck her--Every once in a while she'd come across an animal wearing a collar. It was some time before she observed that everyone wearing a collar was a predator. She stopped walking as an uncomfortable feeling began to settle in her stomach. She knew it wasn't the most prudent thing to do, but she had to ask someone what the hell was going on, curiosity getting the better of her. She looked around for someone wearing a collar: Someone alone so as not to risk being overheard. She cast about and was suddenly stricken with a sense of relief and familiarity: Her gaze had landed on a familiar looking otter walking up ahead of her. 'Mrs. Otterton!' she thought gratefully, thanking her lucky stars as a sense of stability filled her. She ran as fast as she could to catch up with the lutrine. Mrs. Otterton was nearly to a crosswalk and seemed to be making to cross the street.

"Hey!" shouted Judy.

The otter seemed to not hear her, but several animals turned in her direction.

"Hey!" she shouted, more loudly still.

No response.

Fortunately she managed to catch up before the light had changed. "Mrs. Otterton!" said Judy brightly and slightly out of breath.

Mrs. Otterton turned to look at here. Her eyes widened in surprise before narrowing in anger and . . . fury?

Mrs. Otterton seemed to take a moment to regain her composure before she spoke. "Officer Hopps. What can I do for you today?" she asked distantly. She affected a tone of voice that said, "I'm above my anger."

"I have a question for you . . ." began Judy hesitantly, "wh-why are you wearing that collar."

If looks could kill, Judy was certain she'd be buried under six feet of concrete. Mrs. Otterton regarded her with pure malice. An uncomfortable silence had settled between them and Judy was feeling more and more uncomfortable by the minute. "Uh . . . never mind!" said Judy quickly and she turned to walk away in embarrassment.

"You know you can't just treat us that way!" came a shout behind her.

Judy turned back to face Mrs. Otterton. "What?"

"You think you can just lord your position of the rest of us?!"

"I . . . I don't . . ."

"How dare you! Why do you have to come after me? After what you did to m--!" Suddenly, Mrs. Otterton let out a cry of surprise as the collar around her neck buzzed.

"Did . . . did that collar just_shock_her?!" Judy took a step forward but Otterton quickly took a step back.

"Don't you come near me!" she cried, seemingly on the verge of tears.

"I . . . I . . ."

"I don't know why you think it's fun to torture us but it doesn't matter! Just leave my family alone!"

The light had changed. The otter turned in a huff of indignity, tears forming in the corner of her eyes, and crossed the street stiffly at a brisk pace.

After a moment where she merely stood at the crosswalk, Judy looked around and found some other animals looking at her, having stopped to gawk at the commotion--a badger, a racoon, and a tiger, she noted; all wearing collars. They all turned away the instant she looked at them and went back to walking to their respective destinations. 'Okay,' thought Judy to herself, 'don't ask about collars.' She very self-consciously continued her walk around the area.

She noticed as she went along, just taking her time, that she seemed to be in a metropolitan area just outside of a municipal district. 'I must be near Downtown,' she thought. She reasoned that the multitude of cafés and restaurants didn't make sense so clustered together unless there would be a lot of animals eating here in large numbers at once. She passed several restaurants tailored toward smaller creatures; some toward larger ones, elephants and giraffes and the like. She noted, however, as she walked along that many of the restaurants served food that was almost exclusively vegetarian save for those few serving poultry or fish; or insects, too, she also saw--though these were more common.

Many animals walked along, both predator and prey, peacefully. 'As I would expect,' thought Judy. However, the fact that all the predators were wearing collars was unnerving her more and more. She noticed, for example, that a lion in a business suit and tie walking past her seemed to have worn away the fur beneath his collar; as if it were worn continually. Judy flinched slightly but over time found herself becoming more and more accommodated to what she saw. Nobody really seemed to mind the collars. If predators really felt that badly about it there'd be rioting in the streets. 'No there wouldn't,' she rebuked herself, 'because if they could have fought against it, they would have.' She thought this just as she was coming up to the next crosswalk. She saw a crowd of animals there waiting for the walking green. Among the crowd, she could make out a wolf and, standing in front of him, a pig and a bull among others.

The light changed and they all started to cross. Judy heard the loud revving of an engine to her left and watched as a small car drove by quickly. She was about to shout a warning but before she could, the car clipped the corner and ran over the wolf's foot and got stuck on it!

"Hey!" the wolf shouted angrily. Judy could see and hear the shock the collar delivered the wolf.

Judy could hear the creatures in the car laughing.

"Hey!" shouted Judy, suddenly remembering that she was in uniform and could not, therefore, afford to stand there gawking as she had been for a few initial seconds. This was absolutely unbelievable!

At the sound of her voice, the wolf turned to see her. He flattened his ears, let out a tiny whine, and licked his lips. Judy walked over to where they were, knelt down, and said to the two creatures, whom she could now see were hamsters, and said, "License and registration please."

There were two of them in the car and both of them only stared at her. "License and registration, please," she said again, now with a bit more bite.

"For what?!" shouted the hamster in the passenger seat.

"Let's get one thing straight:" began Judy, seriously annoyed at the tone he took, "There's only room for one attitude in this conversation and that's mine. So I'm asking you for the last time, 'License and registration, please.' Also, I'm going to ask you nicely to drive off this wolf's foot." It was illegal in Zootopia, for obvious reasons, to pick up a smaller animal--even in a car--unless it were a baby; as indeed, no sentient creature would enjoy being manhandled.

Properly reigned in, the hamsters drove off the wolf's foot and killed the engine.

She took a moment and started to write down the license plate number on the ticket pad she had pulled from her back pocket.

"Uh . . ." said the wolf. Judy looked up at him and saw his eyes darting around nervously and perhaps a bit fearfully. "Can I go?" he asked apprehensively.

"They ran over your foot; are you sure you don't wanna file a complaint?" she asked sensitively.

"No, no!" he said quickly, and he waved his arms in front of him. He was begging her! "Please, I don't want to cause any problems-"

"You're not! They just ran over your foot and cut you off--Oh! Watch out for the traffic!" she said as he started to back away from her and into the street.

"It's fine! I gotta get to work anyway!" he said as he turned around. When he saw there were no cars coming he dashed across as quickly as he could.

"Hey!" she shouted after him, "I thought you were going straight!" She wanted to give chase but couldn't since she had to finish the ticket.

"Sorry!" he shouted over his shoulder. That was the last she heard as she saw him dip into an alley.

"Listen, cop-lady, " said the hamster's voice behind her, "why don't you just let this go? You have no evidence and no witness--not that they'd believe thatchomper anyway."

Judy turned to face the driver. "First of all, I don't need direct evidence or a witness to write you up. I'm a police officer and I saw what you with my own eyes!"

"Oi!" came a feminine voice from behind her. She turned to see a female badger walking up to her--the one whom she'd seen looking at her after her argument with Mrs. Otterton. The badger merely shook her head lightly while she approached, as though to say "no" to some unspoken statement. Judy heard the squealing of tires as the hamsters' car behind her peeled out. She turned to shout after them when the badger gently took her arm and turned her to so they could see each other face to face.

"You've gotta be careful around here, Carrots."

Judy's eyes widened at the familiar nickname. "Do you know me?" she asked the badger in genuine surprise; her question, howeve, came out a bit more bitingly than she intended.

The badger released her. "Exactly," was all she said, and crossed the street, heading in the direction that Judy'd intended to go, without another word.

She wanted to follow but got a strong feeling from the badger that she shouldn't. 'Huh. Well,_that's_not something I'm gonna wonder about for the rest of the day,' she thought as she closed her notepad and pocketed it. She turned around, deciding to go back to the car. _'Also I kinda don't wanna follow her,'_she added to herself.

The sun had come up now and those animals who'd normally be up and about during the daytime were becoming more and more present. In that time, Judy's training had been coming more and more to the forefront--not those skills specifically pertaining to her physical stamina but those having to do in particular with blending in. As a rabbit, she often stood out for her height--or want of it, really. Having observed Nick in the field when he dealt with perps whom he either knew or had heard of during time as a scammer--and really, even those of whom he hadn't heard--she noticed his easy-going manner often had the ability to set animals at ease. He had practised masking his emotions for such a long time that getting animals to trust in him and the false persona he put on from time to time came naturally. He'd have made a great undercover cop if his ascension to police officer hadn't been so public. He, furthermore, had the distinction of being the only fox on the force which made him instantly recognisable; Judy faced the same barrier, being the only bunny. If you were gonna deal drugs with any fox or bunny, you only had to look at the pictures of the only fox and bunny on the squad to know whether they were legit.

Notwithstanding these difficulties, however, the training they had all been given as police officers, and her observations of Nick in particular, had given her a sense of what to do to blend in. She intentionally set before herself two interrelated goals: One--to blend in, and two--to prevent animals from thinking she was crazy. 'Treat this like an undercover investigation,' she thought as she continued on along the sidewalk, crossing the street. 'Undercover officers can and do wing it all the time and manage to pass for full members of whatever organisation they're infiltrating.' While she was certain as much as any sane animal about her own sense of reality--she was certain, for example, that she was an officer; she was certain she had slept with Nick last night; she was certain of all she had achieved up till this point throughout her career and her life in general--her instincts as a prey creature and training as an officer were both telling her that, practically speaking, none of that mattered anymore: The world seemed to be working according to different rules for some reason and, for good or ill, this was the situation to which she must now adapt to survive.

'But how?'

At that thought she stopped in her tracks, puzzling over the situation. There was no way to ask an animal, she reasoned, without "blowing her cover" and appearing crazy. Her altercation with Mrs. Otterton only cemented in her mind the fact that the rules of propriety were different now, and not knowing what could piss someone off meant that playing twenty-questions with some random member of society was a potential minefield that could send alarms ringing in someone's head.

'And the last thing I need is to be remanded to Cliffside,' she thought as she pursed her lips. 'This is going to be harder than I thought! Let's see . . . even undercover officers usually start off with a briefing. What I need is to find out about the city in general.' She started walking again as she looked around at the different shops, continuing her train of thought.

She could hear Nick's imaginary voice in her head reprimanding her harshly, '"You dumb bunny, use the internet!"'

She flattened her ears and grimaced. 'Oh yeah . . .'

She checked the time on her phone and saw that it was almost seven. She'd been walking around the city for nearly an hour. Judy made her way back to the car in about fifteen minutes, got out her phone as she sat down, and pulled up a map of Zootopia. As near as she could tell, things were, at base, the same. The essential regions of the city were still Tundra Town, Sahara Square, Savannah Central, Rainforest District, Meadowlands--'Still north of Rainforest,' she thought--, and the Canal District which lay to the north-west. As she carefully looked over the rest of the map, she noted that there was another area that hadn't been a part of the city before: To the west of the Rainforest District, across the river that separated the Zootopian peninsula from the mainland, there appeared to exist a recently amalgamated region--

'"Happy Town,"' _she read to herself. She looked up the road to the intersection. '_So then that road's gotta lead to Happy Town,' she mused. She also saw that the peninsula was known as the Animalia region whereas Happy Town was considered an entirely different district altogether. She managed to look through photos of the city and saw a picture of the city hall with its motto written in bold bronze lettering that shone brightly on an arch above the shimmering public fountain:

PEACE THROUGH UNDERSTANDING

Judy sighed sadly swiped away from the pictures and got back to the map in order to get a better idea of the city, but there was no way she was going to be able to memorise a whole new layout that quickly. Wanting to do more research but unwilling to waste her phone's battery, she decided to go to the ZPD and work at her station. She had a computer there and her own desk. 'Or do I?'_she wondered. So much was different between the way she thought the world worked and now that she was scarcely sure she could trust her recollection at all. She sighed. _'Guess I'd better go and find out what kind of a life I've been living.'

She turned on her GPS system and spoke, "Zootopia police department." The menu screen brought up the location of the department and a map. She turned on voice directions and started the car. As she moved along, a sudden thought came to her. 'Am I supposed to work today?' She grit her teeth, switched on the scanner, took the mic from the holder, and spoke:

"This is officer Hopps to ZPD central . . . this is gonna sound like a stupid question but am I supposed to be at work?"

A few seconds passed before: "Good morning, Hopps," she heard Clawhauser's nervous voice come on. "No, you're off today. Please, you don't have to come in!"

"I am coming in, actually. And, uh, I guess I need to talk to you. Just hang loose till I get there!" she smiled and put the mic back.

"What?!" came his bemused and scared reply over the system. Taken aback, she wanted to reply but had to forget it as the voice from her phone started giving directions. She wanted to speak to Clawhauser specifically since, when she'd first met him, she'd known him to be so kind and accommodating to her.

When she stopped at the nearest red light she took the opportunity to look around, observing how differently things looked. Judy noticed that since her altercation with Otterton and her experience with the wolf and the hamsters--"Which drove over his foot!" she recalled hotly--that the city had suddenly appeared to her greyer and dingier than it had at first. The early-morning gold had faded and the city now seemed to her drabber than it ever had before in her recollection. As she looked about now, she could see in the windows of certain stores and restaurants signs that read, "No Chompers Allowed" along with others along the side of the road: Where Judy might've expected there to be a "No Parking" sign she saw a multitude of prohibitive messages reading things like "No Growling."

At another red light, she saw a pack of three collared wolves standing on the sidewalk talking. An armadillo and two bisons were walking through and, completely and totally wordlessly, the three wolves shuffled off the sidewalk and into the gutter to let them pass. As continued she saw yet another sign that read, "No Pack Behaviour." She managed to slow enough to read the text beneath the main lettering: "Groups of four or more are forbidden for all chomper animals pursuant to city code . . ." and she passed it by before she could read much more. The restaurants, which were now becoming fewer as she reached the centre of the Downtown area, were all tailored to suit the needs of prey animals.

'Well, where the hell are the predators going at night? Do they even live in the city?' she wondered. As absurd an idea as that might be, it was one of the few cogent conclusions she could come to. Cities practically throve on their nightlife! How could big businesses afford to put up signs denying chompers--'Predators,' she reminded herself--entry to their establishments and serve foods that only herbivores and some omnivores would be able to enjoy without losing revenue unless the predators simply didn't have their nightlife in the city?

_'But then where . . . ? Happy Town, maybe?'_she pondered as she drove.

At last, she arrove at the precinct and parked the car around the side with the other patrol cars. She got out and thought to pat herself down to see what she had in her pockets: Her phone, of course; no wallet, much to her displeasure--"I've been driving without a licence?!"; a set of keys, of which one seemed to be magnetic; the ticketing paper she had in her back pocket; handcuffs, obviously; and a few odds and ends such as a pen and pencil; and for some reason what appeared to be a remote control with a single red button on it which she pushed a couple of times to find that it lit up. She hummed pensively as she looked down at the keys in her paw, put the other items away, and prayed that she wouldn't have to lock or unlock anything in front of anybody since she really had no idea which key was for what. She replaced her keys and sighed as she walked around the building, up the steps, and into the station. She saw a doe sitting at the front desk. As Judy approached, the deer looked up from her reading and smiled at Judy warmly.

"Good morning, Sergeant!"

'Sergeant?' she wondered. 'Okay, file that away for later.' She tried to force away the rising panic the title sent through her--there was no way she would be able to pull off the managerial duties of a police sergeant without having been trained at all. Someone was bound to find out that something was wrong with her.

"Good morning!" she replied brightly as the wave of nervousness in her stomach threatened to overpower her. The doe's look told her something was amiss though what, she had no idea. The fact that this deer was at the front desk and not Benjamin was a little disconcerting, anyway.

"You seem happy this morning," began the doe carefully. "What . . . uh . . . what's changed? Good news on the case?"

"The case?" asked Judy?

"Oh, right! Chief says that since you were coming in he was going to send you a private email. Boy, you sure get all the fun ones!"

"Right . . ." continued Judy uncertainly. "Um . . . you don't suppose . . . where's Clawhauser?"

The doe arched her brows in surprise. "Clawhauser? Why would you want to talk to him?"

Judy suppressed the urge to reprove the doe's tone and continued as politely as she could manage. "Yes, Clawhauser. I have something I need to ask him."

'Like where my desk is!'

"Didn't I just speak to him on the radio?" continued Judy as she stared at the doe curiously.

"Did you?" asked the receptionist, whose name Judy could see was Cevilla on her nametag; "If he was he wasn't supposed to be." She leant in to Judy conspiratorially and whispered, "Maybe we can finally get him off the squad." She winked cutely.

And suddenly it seemed to Judy that the female's face was frigid and icy beneath her warm façade.

"For talking to me on the scanner?"

"Well, someone's gotta teach these chompers a lesson. They know they're not supposed to be on the front desk. Besides, we both know he's just a token figure like the rest of 'em. Not like anybody's ever going to let him out on patrol," she said. "Savages are great to have around, don't get me wrong. I mean, somebody's gotta do the dirty work around here. But he's just not up to it!" she finished haughtily.

"Uh, look, sorry to interrupt," said Judy a bit more angrily than she'd intended, "could you just tell me where Clawhauser is now so that I can talk to him?"

The doe sat back, crossed her arms, and humphed.

"Now there's the sergeant I know," she said with a hint of smile in her eyes. "He's down in records, like always."

Judy nodded her head appreciatively but felt none of the sentiment. She walked to the back of the station and down the stairs to the basement level. She found Clawhauser, as Cevilla had promised, sitting at a desk sorting and filing paperwork along with a slew of other predators--all of them, of course, wearing collars.

'Are they keeping them all in the basement?' She was positively astonished.

As she walked up to him, she saw his eyes widen and his ears flatten back. She slowed as she reached him and said, "Benjamin, can I have a word with you real quick?"

He approached her almost cautiously, the other predator animals giving each other nervous looks as Clawhauser reached her.

"Y-yes, Sergeant," he asked somewhat nervously.

Judy thought very carefully about what she had to ask Clawhauser. From the time that Judy had discovered that she was either crazy or in another world--or both!--there had been one thing in the back of her mind which had been nearly ever-present, and that had been to find Nick. She had pushed that desire aside in order to deal with the very real fact that she needed to survive and for that she needed clarity of purpose; always, though, she'd hoped that there'd be some indication that Nick existed here. Of course, she realised by now that he might be a changed fox when she found him. But she had to hope, even so.

'Oh, Nick!' she thought as a pain went through her heart. She wanted to see him so badly! She was feeling lonesome for something familiar and that feeling of loneliness terrified her--it was one thing to be alone, but quite another to be alone in a dangerous place. Sure, she had seen Otterton and now Clawhauser--familiar faces they might be--but they were so different from how she'd remembered them that they were little more than strangers to her. She turned away from the cheetah before she lost her composure at these thoughts and simply said, "I need to, well, to ask you some questions that may seem a little strange. If you would be so kind as to lead the way back to my desk, we can discuss the matter there." She tried to make her tone indifferent and distant.

The Benjamin's face fell--not that Judy could see--but gave no sign apart from that that she'd affected him. He stifled a sigh and went around her to head up the stairs. They went up to the entry level and walked amongst the rows of desks, Judy following behind, before he reached a cubical. Judy looked around and saw there were a few others dotted around the station. Hers was furnished with a desk on which there sat mountain of paperwork to the right and a computer at the left. There was another chair present; and as Judy made to sit down at the desk she motioned for Clawhauser to sit in the chair across from her, swivelling her chair to face him. It was clear from every visual tell she could see in Clawhauser's face that she was probably acting out of character. Or at least making him uneasy. That was her take, anyway.

She put on a smile and said, "Uh, for how long have you been working here?"

"F-for about three years, now," he said, his ears pinned back. "I . . . I'm sorry for using the intercom system."

"That's not what this is about!" she said abruptly. "I just need to know . . . well, you know everybody who works here, right?"

Clawhauser nodded.

"You know in general the animals who come through this station?"

He nodded again, looking puzzled.

Now for the main question: "You . . . wouldn't happen to know anybody by the name of Nick?"

"Nick?" He tipped his head to the side.

"Nick Wilde."

Instantly the features of his face went slack. "No, what makes you think I would know him?"

"Well," began Judy, "you just seem like the type of mammal who knows everybody. If anybody were to know Nick, I'm certain you would," she continued softly. "A red fox is a difficult thing to forget. Especially in this department."

To her surprise, she saw Clawhauser's bottom lip begin to tremble before he clenched his jaw.

'He's positively terrified!' she thought sadly.

"Um, look," she said abruptly, not wanting to make the poor mammal any more uncomfortable than he was, "you've actually answered everything I needed to know; I just . . . I need to get on with my work now. Sorry for troubling you." She wanted to let him go as quickly as possible. She could tell by his face that there was something very, very wrong. Not only that, she should've kept her big mouth shut and said nothing about Nick. She cussed herself for having made that mistake. Hadn't she said that she wanted to try and figure out more about this world before asking about things directly?

'Damn it!'

She reproved herself as she looked at the cheetah before her, the alarm he seemed to be experiencing.

'And it had been in reaction to Nick!' she exclaimed to herself. Or had that same fear always been there? Maybe Clawhauser had been afraid the whole time and he'd only displayed his unease at Judy's questioning him and it had nothing to do with Nick at all.

The chubby cheetah arose from his seat shakily. "Um . . ." he began in a trembling voice," are you gonna do anything?"

At his words, Judy looked confused. 'Do anything about what?' she wondered, but gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile and shook her head no. He audibly gulped and backed away from her and out of the cubicle, before turning around and shuffling back to the records room. Puzzled by his behaviour, she turned to the computer on her desk and drummed her fingers on the desk. While Clawhauser's reaction bothered her, it was--by this point--merely a drop in a very large bucket containing a multitude of things that troubled her. She tried to focus, figuring that the next logical step would be to look as much as she could into what she could and couldn't do here--what was legal and what wasn't. Judy had a sudden thought and pulled out her phone. She opened the camera app and started looking through her old photos. She saw, clearly, photos of her and Nick together and those taken last night. Seeing them, she let out a sigh of relief and felt a profound sense of surety: As certain of her reality as she'd been, she'd've been lying to herself if she'd said that she'd had no doubts at all.

She put her phone away and logged into her computer, glad to see that whomever she'd been in this world used the same log-in information. 'This world,'_she mused to herself. _'_Another_universe? Am I insane?' She paused to herself as the computer logged on, the idea of another universe causing all sorts of thoughts to go through her head. It made her giddy and excited to think that she had somehow gone between worlds. 'But how? And why?' she wondered. The realities of the world she found herself in, particularly those which pertained to the treatment of predators, did much to dampen her excitement. She was brought to another thought as she pondered these things: 'What if Nick was here, too?' She couldn't imagine what kind of trouble the Nick from her world would be in if he were here. The treatment would be harsh, which only served to strengthen her resolve to figure out what she could about this world.

Nick clearly existed in this universe in his own right if Clawhauser's reaction were anything to go by. An idea came to her: Clicking on the icon that logged her onto the file database, she searched through the online records for "Nick Wilde." She found him, alright--with an even longer rap-sheet than he'd had when she first met him and for different things. 'An awful lot of disturbing the peace,' she thought. Taking a look through other records, she found mug shots of him in orange prison jumpsuits. He had clearly been scarred on his face in some places, though what they were from she had no idea. He looked positively miserable and Judy's heart clenched at the thought of his suffering. As she continued looking through his records, he found an address for him and wrote it down on a scrap of paper. When she looked up his address on the maps app on her phone, she found he lived somewhere in Happy Town in an apartment. He seemed to have a business address near the same area as his residence; or so she read. It appeared to be on the docks, across the river from the Zootopian peninsula--also in Happy Town.

She would have to actively search for him later, though, she decided. If Nick were even still Nick. Her first order of business was to see what, if anything, she could learn about the Zootopia in which she found herself, now. Judy thanked her lucky stars she remembered her visits to the museum of natural history. From what she could recall as a child, having gone on field trips to learn about Zootopia and the surrounding area, the city's heart had been a watering hole--now a public fountain--that had been in existence for some time. It had been a place where prehistoric animals had gone for refreshment. From ancient times, she seemed to remember, it had been the custom in this region to lay down arms; and though she knew at that time that there was still some hunting of prey animals going on, the area near the watering hole had an implicit ban on it. This spirit of cooperation spread throughout the mammalian world--from regions similar to prehistoric Zootopia--and, by the time recorded history began (some eight-thousand years ago or so), animal society had been engaged in an era of peace and cooperation for some time. For the most part, anyway.

The city of Zootopia had changed paws many times over the course of history and it had only been within the last century that the city's constitution and been reformed so that neither prey nor predator should implicitly be leader of the city. Proof of the success of the founding mammals' dream rested in the fact that the city--or at least, the city that Judy remembered--had elected a predator mayor even though prey animals made up the vast majority of the citizenry.

It had been this ideal that had materialised in her mind's eye the desire to go out and achieve that dream for herself. She had seen that goal before her with such clarity; and while her illusions had had to die in order to truly address the injustices she saw once she actually got there, she had, notwithstanding, kept her vision of the city alive: hoping that one day such an ideal could be realised. The city, though, was probably as close to perfect as it could ever be given different personalities. And of course, the occasional animal willing to take over the city for their own gain as acting-mayor Bellwether had. Indeed, what Judy read concerning these things attested to as much as that, though with some noticeable and disturbing differences.

She went to ewetube to see if there were anything there that could quickly explain the city to her and its history. She often found that if she needed to digest such information quickly that often there would be something on the topic there. She discovered through a short ten-minute film about the history of the city, for example, that Zootopia's founding was more contentious than she remembered. Much more contentious. In the documentary, she saw that the delineations between different regions of the city had initially been predicated on whether an animal were considered prey or predator rather than strictly based on animals' climatic and environmental necessities. She noted, somewhat uncomfortably, that the predators were referred to as chompers. She'd known that already, however, from the signs she'd seen around the city to say nothing of the hamsters' earlier usage of the word, but it was slightly different to have it confirmed in such a straightforward way. She swallowed her unease as she sat through the rest of the ten minutes.

Once finished, she switched to another video that caught her eye. The video's thumbnail was of a child wearing a collar. He was a young wolf cub, around seven or eight years old. The title of the video read "Lou's first field trip." She clicked it and watched the shaky hand-held footage.

A class of children was being led through the museum by a boar who was clearly their teacher. Judy smiled at how darling they all looked. Her smile faltered, however, when she noticed some of the children--somewhere near half the class--were wearing collars. Had she become desensitised to the collars already? Looking around in the video, she took note that many of the adults in the museum were wearing the collars as well. There was no doubt at all, now, whether there were any exceptions: shock collars were ubiquitous if you were a predator.

'A chomper,' she reminded herself as she shook her head in distaste.

Judy sighed and resumed watching, aware now that the teacher was talking to the class.

". . . was many years ago. So," continued the boar, "why do you think that chompers and prey weren't friends?"

"Because we would fight a lot?" asked a young wolf cub.

"Alright, that's a good guess--you're close. Any other ideas?" asked the teacher.

When the class remained silent the boar continued.

"Lou was close when he said it was because we fought a lot. The precise answer is because chompers would eat us."

The boar pushed a button on a display table behind him which played a short animation of a lioness attacking and killing a wildebeest calf. Judy's mouth dropped.

"Ewww!" exclaimed the class in unison.

'This can't be real.' She couldn't help gaping.

"So, how can we tell from a distance whether somebody's a chomper?" continued the teacher.

"The collars?" came the voice of a young otter.

The teacher nodded. "That's one way to tell! But what if you chompers weren't wearing your collars?" The lutrine girl looked away, unsure. The teacher turned to the prey animals. "I'll give you guys a hint. Think of the word chomper . . ."

"More like _chump_ers" giggled one boy from the prey group as the rest sniggered.

". . . what does the word chomp have to do with?" finished the teacher.

"Biting?" asked a young rabbit.

"Exactly. So chompers are called chompers because of their sharp teeth. We prey have flat teeth. But they needed their sharp teeth so that they could hunt us. But now we have something that keeps them from killing us. Does anyone know what that is?"

Judy was fuming now, and she noticed that the teacher had his back turned to the preda--to the _chompers--_and was addressing the prey exclusively.

"Is it the collars?" asked the same bunny again.

"Exactly. So whenever chompers do something bad, they get a little shock--just a tiny one--that reminds them to be good. So we made it be in this city that chompers wear collars so that we can all live together in peace and harmony." The teacher said this last as he turned so as to face all the students. "Isn't that great?"

Judy sat there like a stone. Her surprise redoubled when, to a child, the all smiled and marvelled about how cool it was when a display behind the teacher lit up to feature a panther wearing a business suit standing proudly, his chest puffed out, the shock collar round his neck clearly visible.

'How the hell are these kids buying into this?' she wondered before chiding herself: 'They're just kids, of course.'

Clicking away from the video and searching elsewhere, she found out through various informative sites that Happy Town was indeed the residence of nearly all of the predators in Zootopia. Judy was positively astounded when she read about it. It was little more than a slum: No climate walls, no integrated natural infrastructure. The city was essentially a converted industrial zone. It had docks across from the water market in the canal district which were used originally to import and export goods. However, it seemed that much of Happy Town's wealth had gone straight to Zootopia. It's amalgamation into larger Zootopia seemed to have been the work of certain legislators seeking some way to gentrify the city. To her surprise, part of the deal pushed forward by many members of the think tanks and development committees included the need for passports. Each and every member of Happy Town needed a valid passport to travel into and around the city of Zootopia.

'That's ridiculous!' she thought hotly. She clenched a fist. It was unbelievable!

Pictures of Happy Town's coast showed it to be lined with abandoned factories and fish canneries. She read further and eventually concluded to her satisfaction that Happy Town's amalgamation had been part of a tricky manoeuvre to control the predator animals living there. It seemed as though the city had undergone a rapid change. Chompers in Zootopia, she read, had always been in some way excluded from participating in the urban life of the city. About seventy years ago, Happy Town seemed to have been a bustling and thriving community and doing about as much trade and bringing in as much money as Zootopia. Around the time that Zootopia's constitution was reformed, the city's population seemed split a tad more evenly--though prey still held a majority. In the reconstituted city, provisions were made to protect those animals who seemed to have a genuine fear of predators. Fear mongering eventually brought over enough mammals to the opposition side that they were able to pass laws that discriminated against predators to the point that predators were given their own sections of the city in which they had to stay. On the other paw, she found that prey animals were able to walk about the city freely.

Selective lending by banks that were largely controlled by prey animals who sympathised with the opposition made getting loans for businesses in the city much more difficult for chompers. Since the wealth was largely controlled by these prey lending institutions, the resultant lack of money and business opportunities ended up pushing many of the predators into Happy Town which subsequently became poorer and poorer; though there were no restrictions on what the animals there could and couldn't do. Then around forty years ago came the introduction of the shock collars. The collars were championed as a means by which predators within Zootopia would be "allowed" to move in and around the city. This ended up being supported by many hapless chompers who were longing at that time to have at least some kind of freedom within the city. They were made promises by those in power that there would be better opportunities for them. Prey animals would no longer have to be afraid of predators, who would now be welcomed into the city with open arms.

Of course, any predators living elsewhere but wanting to work within the city needed to be collared as well. As a result, many of the inhabitants of Happy Town were collared, as well. Judy was surprised to read that the vast majority of animals had voted for the collars--predator and prey alike.

'They were suckered!' thought Judy angrily. Though she could see clearly why: They had been promised opportunity and told that if they weren't bad animals that predators should have no problem being collared. As she read more into it, she came to realise that one of the main and prevailing reasons for Happy Town's incorporation into Zootopia proper was to control and collar all predators--not merely those who had their labour in the city. She had read that Zootopia had incorporated Happy Town somewhere within the last thirty to forty years.

'So collaring the predators in Zootopia coincided with their trying to collar all predators in the vicinity of the city, too,' she concluded. It also answered the question she'd wondered about when she'd spoken to the stag earlier in the morning: What had originally been two cities--Happy Town and Zootopia--had now become two boroughs under the name Zootopia, with Happy Town keeping its name and the Zootopian peninsula becoming formally known as Animalia; though in practice, Zootopia was still used to refer only to peninsula to the exclusion of Happy Town. The redistricting, then, seemed to have been achieved in name only.

Looking up information on the collars, she found that initial experiments with trying to get set them correctly were disastrous. Severe injuries and burns were incurred by those on whom they were initially tested. Little regard had been given to differences in height and weight. Many predators came close to dying from a failure to take into account those individual factors. Any attempt to cut off the collars would result in an extraordinarily painful shock that could knock the perpetrator out for several hours. Judy read the word perpetrator and mentally substituted the word, "victim." The purpose of this was to knock the chomper out for a long enough time for it to be found and recollared before becoming a danger. Punishments for being found without a collar could include--and here Judy winced and let out a hiss of pain--being declawed. Her horror exceeded when she read that within the last few weeks, collars with trackers were being rolled out in order to know where the predators were within the city and where they were going.

Judy finished reading and buried her face in her paws. This was positively incredible to her--as in she literally did not believe it, but the further she read the more she was forced to accept that this is how the world was now. She knew but didn't want to accept that the Nick of this world had likely suffered tremendously at the paws of the prey animals here. She'd be frightened and weary of prey animals for the rest of her life if she'd faced such awful discrimination. While she sat in deep thought, absorbing the impact of what she'd read, she heard her computer let out a small sound indicating that she had received an email. She minimised her browser to take a look at her desktop. She clicked on the icon that led to her work email and found that she had two messages, one of which had been sent much earlier. She saw that they were both from Chief Bogo. She clicked the one she'd just received and read:

Hopps,

I know you're in. Read my email.

Bogo

Judy hit the back button and clicked on the other email. Her heart began pounding at what she read.

Hopps,

Regarding what we discussed earlier, you need to find and bring in Nicholas P. Wilde. Today. And just so you're aware, this isn't coming from me but from up top. I've included a photo below so you know what he looks like along with his addresses--place of business and home. Approach him with great caution. There's no telling who he might be willing to kill to escape.

Find him, and stay safe:

Bogo

From what Judy surmised, her counterpart seemed to have no idea what Nick even looked like. To what extent Hopps had been involved in Nicholas' case remained dubious. The email seemed to imply that she'd had never seen Nick before. She thought over what she needed to do next: She was desperate to find Nick and Chief Bogo told her that she needed to bring him in--for what, she didn't know; but either way it added to the same: she was being asked to look for Nick and was pleased that her personal and professional goals coincided here. A sound behind her caught her attention and she turned from her computer to see Clawhauser standing behind her. She opened her mouth to ask what he needed but he shuffled off before she could say anything. Now, what on Earth had that been about?

She turned back to her computer and saw that it was seven twenty-three. She deleted the emails and pulled up the browser again. She typed in Nick's work address to see if she could find a street level view. While she'd found his address through Nick's police records and been given it again by Chief Bogo in his email to her, she wanted to actually see what kind of business it was. The view revealed a moderately-sized office building with a red roof and a white façade. Judy leant in close to the screen to read the lettering on the sign outside.

SPEEDY CARE WALK-IN CLINIC

'Judy snorted. 'There's no way Nick's anywhere near being a doctor. You don't rack up that kind of record by treating patients.' From what it looked like, the clinic was seated on the edge of a corniche. Down below, a few hundred feet, Judy estimated, she could see the wide river: the shore and the cliff side being relatively near each other. Judy closed the browser and logged off her computer. She made sure she had everything, left her cubical, and was headed out of the station when a deep, accented voice from behind her called her back. '

"Sgt. Hopps!"

Judy turned to see Chief Bogo walking up to her. "Yes?" she replied coolly.

"You got my messages?"

"I did. I'm headed out now."

Judy had to suppress rolling her eyes when the Chief offered her a can of fox repellent. She knew, given that many animals here seemed to think that she was anti-predator--"Anti-chomper," she corrected--that her character would likely have been glad to accept the spray. She plastered on a happy smile and took the can gratefully.

"Now I want you to do everything by the books. None of what happened last time."

"I'll do my best," she replied, uncertainly.

"I don't doubt that." He smiled and continued, "I've been here all night. Care to walk me out?"

"You're going home?"

He nodded and they both continued their way out of the building. "Who're you leaving in charge?" she asked.

Bogo yawned the name, "Yaguarete."

Judy's eyes widened. "The jaguar?"

Bogo laughed a little. "Now, now; just calm down," he started, mistaking her question for displeasure, "he may be a savage but he gets the job done."

Judy merely stared ahead, saying nothing. When she reached the patrol car she bade farewell to Bogo who continued on to his truck. She got in and started the engine. The scanner turned on and immediately she heard a terrified voice coming over the airwaves:

". . . -n need of assistance! Prepare a cage at the ZPD: we are apprehending a collarless savage! We're pretty certain we've caught another feral," the male continued, "and again, he is not wearing a collar. I repeat: He is not wearing a collar!"

Judy rolled her eyes, turned off the scanner in disgust, and pulled out of her spot--deciding to make her way around to city hall, just to drive past it and see how it was. She stopped at the parking lot exit and put Nick's work address into her maps app. She asked the phone for voice directions but ignored them as she left the parking lot, going her own way since the city hall lay in the opposite direction. The phone worked to recalculate its directions in the mean time. About a minute later she reached the city hall and looked at it carefully as she drove past.

PEACE THROUGH UNDERSTANDING

Thus read the motto in tarnished bronze lettering on an arch beneath which sprang the waters of a dull fountain. The surrounding gardens were unmanaged and seemed to be growing wildly. It clearly suffered from a want of care, it seemed to her. She sighed and was coming to a red light just as the voice on her phone finished recalculating.

"Turn left, now, onto Happy Town Boulevard."

Judy waited nervously until the light turned green, then made the turn.