Chapter Text
If Nick has learned anything over the past year, it's that getting shot sucks.
Of course, his previous life as a professional grifter had afforded him ample opportunity to become well-acquainted with the threat of getting shot. Whether it be via mob muscle flashing some steel buried in a waistband, or a drug-addled thug half-heartedly waving the barrel of a Saturday-night special in his general direction, the pervasive implication of what might happen to him, should he rub the wrong mammal the wrong way on the wrong night, loomed incessantly in the back of his mind when he was living and working on the streets. But in his twenty-something years of dubious activity, nobody had ever bothered to squeeze a trigger. It was always empty bluster. Over time, the threat of the threat began to lose its potency. 'Do it or else' became cause for nothing more than an eye roll, or a laugh, depending on who it was coming from.
It was a complacency that was easy to settle into considering the plethora of very real threats that the fox had to negotiate on occasion should a con go wrong- like getting gored by a pair of horns, or torn to ribbons by a set of claws, or squished like a tomato by an elephant, or iced by an irascible shrew... He's had a enough bad scrapes in his time to learn to avoid pissing off mammals with built-in weapons. At least, not without an escape route in mind.
And even after going to the police academy, and reading about terminal ballistics, and seeing the gruesome, full-color photos of the victims of shootings, some lingering sense unreality, of 'well, it probably won't happen to me', kept the true danger of what he may encounter while wearing a badge from coalescing into anything more than a vague set of statistics in the back of his mind. Frankly, most of his expectations for what getting caught in the middle of a gunfight might be like had been derived from the crummy 80's action movies he had watched growing up. Scenes of... Darting out of cover and weaving through projectiles and shrugging off glancing blows... The bad guys never seemed to hit what they were aiming at, and the good guys never seemed to die...
Well... Now, having experienced it first-hand, Nick can confirm: It's not like the movies.
In truth, the actual shooting was over so quickly that, even after an entire year and dozens of therapy sessions, his recollection of the event never crystallized into anything more than an incoherent slideshow of blurry sights and deafening sounds. Only the scents of that night really held any semblance of lucidity: The stagnant odor of mildew in the basement, the mealy clouds of concrete dust being thrown from the walls by errant projectiles, the ferrous flavor of blood settling awkwardly on the back of his throat...
It was a nightmare at the time, sure, but it was everything that followed afterward that really killed: The arduous and oftentimes degrading hospitalization, the agonizing, endless rehab, the deeply unsettling realization that things were never going to be the same again... He has, admittedly, come a long way with his recovery since then. After all, going from 'may never walk again' to 'relatively mobile' within the span of a year is nothing to sneeze at, but if his ongoing strength training at the ZPD gym is anything to go by, he still has a long way to go before he'll be even close to as fit and capable as we was prior to the shooting. It was a credit to his own stubbornness and the promise that he had made to his bunny partner that he hadn't thrown in the towel, and in more recent days his attempts at passing the ZPD physical examination had drawn him close enough to his goal of reinstatement that he could, perhaps, see an inkling of light at the end of the tunnel.
Breaking through that final barrier is on the forefront of the fox's mind as he plods into the precinct gym one particularly chilly Friday morning. Despite the early hour, the facility is already bustling with activity. The metallic clatter of exercise equipment and the whirring drone of treadmills is punctuated on occasion by the authoritative barks of uniformed fitness instructors dotted around the gym. Pounding music pours into the room from speakers mounted to the walls, the volume of which had been cranked up to levels approaching migraine-inducing in an attempt to drown out the grunting and growling of the mammals working out. On the plus side, the air inside is thankfully still fresh, not having had the opportunity to thicken into a soup from the hot breath and sweating bodies just yet.
Peering to his right, Nick cracks a small smile when he catches sight of a familiar tigress standing near the entrance, her paws set upon her hips.
"Morning, stripes," the fox greets routinely.
"Morning, Wilde," officer Fangmeyer returns. She gives the smaller mammal an appraising once-over before asking, "You well-rested? I want to try throwing a couple new exercises into your usual regiment today."
"Don't bother," Nick tells her. He shrugs his duffel bag off of his good shoulder before saying, "Get the coach. I'm gonna go for it today."
Fangmeyer frowns, quirking an eyebrow.
"...Again? You sure? Your last couple of attempts haven't gone... Spectacularly," the larger predator apparently feels obligated to remind him.
"Yeesh, thanks for the vote of confidence..." Nick murmurs with an amused chuckle. He takes a knee and unzips his duffel before saying, "Fret not- I've got a couple new tricks up my sleeve. Besides, today's apparently my birthday, and getting to be finally done with this shit would be a really nice gift."
"Happy birthday," Fangmeyer mentions plainly. She crosses her arms and asks, "And what kind of scheme does the clever fox have for us today?"
Nick rifles through his bag for a few moments, eventually producing an iPawd with a set of earbuds coiled around its case. Straightening, the tod says, "Well, for one, I got pumped so full of cortisone at the doc's yesterday that I can't even feel my toes at the moment." He powers on the device and quickly navigates to his saved albums. "Plus, I have a secret weapon I've been meaning to try out."
"Mmhmm. This being...?" Fangmeyer leads. The fox holds the iPawd up for the tigress to see, who squints at the tiny screen for a beat before furrowing her brow in confusion. "...The new Gazelle album?"
"Hopps has been listening to it non-stop since it came out last week," Nick explains while working the earbuds into his ears. "Her and Clawhauser. Between the two of them it's like I've got it in stereo around here." He spares the larger predator a sardonic expression, adding, "I can't stand it. This one song, 'She Wolf', has a hook that makes me want to scream."
Fangmeyer regards the tod with an uncertain expression for a spell, one of her stubby, round ears twitching in befuddlement.
"Uh... Okay. So...?"
"So," Nick navigates to the song in question and toggles on the 'Single Track Repeat' mode before tapping the play button. Immediately, the upbeat and far-too-familiar intro begins to fill his ears. With a grimace, the tod slips the iPawd into the pocket of his gym shorts and peers up at the tigress. "The faster I get this over with, the sooner I get to turn it off."
Fangmeyer lets out a snort and shakes her head, a toothy grin splitting her lips.
"You're something else, fox," she muses. "Alright. Track first?"
"Track first," Nick confirms.
The tigress heads off to locate the coach, leaving the fox to his own devices for the time being. After tossing his duffel bag against the wall of the gym, Nick lazily meanders over towards the starting line of the track near the back of the room, working the kinks out of his stiff neck and shoulder as he walks. He takes a moment to bend forward to touch his toes and quickly has to fight a grimace off of his muzzle when his hip pops in protest of the motion. Straightening, the fox draws a quiet huff, unable to help but be frustrated that the joint is still giving him trouble after all these months. The cortisone helps to keep the pain at bay, but the scratchy, bone-on-bone feeling is persistently uncomfortable.
But despite his creaky bones, he is, admittedly, in fairly high spirits. He had somehow managed a full-night's sleep for once and found himself waking up with a smile on his muzzle. Though, that may have been partially thanks to the happy-birthday-snugglefest that his cuddly bunny flatmate had subjected him to immediately upon cracking his eyes open. That, and the fat stack of blueberry pancakes she had prepared for the two of them while he was getting himself showered and dressed.
...And Snugglefest Volume Two as they were getting ready to step out the door.
In retrospect, it was a small wonder that they managed to make it out of the apartment at all this morning...
'~Nocturnal creatures, are not so prudent,
The moon's my teacher, and I'm her student~'
"Ugh, I hate that bit..." Nick mutters to himself.
"Wilde! Giving it another shot?"
The fox turns to see a familiar jaguar padding in his direction with Fangmeyer close in tow.
"Rev up your finest timekeeping device, bud. I'm breaking through today," Nick informs him.
The tigress behind the coach playfully rolls her eyes, but the jaguar himself sprouts a rather genuine-looking grin.
"Confident today, huh? I like it." He fetches the stopwatch from around his neck and adjusts his ball cap before gesturing for the fox to take his mark. "Let's see it, then."
Nick offers a nod and draws a breath, turning to position himself on the starting line.
The bulk of the ZPD physical exam is a cakewalk for any reasonably in-shape mammal, but given that the fox is working with a mechanically rebuilt hip and a shoulder held together with screws, tackling even the simplest of exercises has been an colossal undertaking. Completing the mile-and-a-half run in under fifteen minutes, especially, has been the bane of his existence for the last several weeks.
That being said, he really should be counting his blessings- The recent influx of smaller mammals into the ZPD's roster had given the higher-up's cause to reevaluate their physical testing procedures. Rather than trying to paint everyone with the same broad strokes, they carved the exam up into more species-specific divisions, the end result of which meant that the tod was no longer expected to be as fast and nimble as a cheetah, or as strong as a rhino. It was a course-correction that sounded obvious on paper, plainly, but there was a case to be made about 'dumbing down' the standards to make way for mammals of objectively lesser physical capability. Regardless, The revised protocols were a boon that the fox was grateful for, as passing the physical exam no longer felt like an effort in futility, but a goal once again vaguely within reach. Still nearly insurmountable, but Nick was cognizant enough of his own progress to know that if he threw himself at the wall enough times, eventually he would break through.
And with the sultry, grating voice of the city's biggest pop icon scraping away at his brain cells this morning, he finds himself with just enough motivation necessary to feel... Relatively confident that today will be the day.
"Alright, Wilde," the coach calls. "On your mark... Get set... Go!"
With a grunt, the fox takes off from the line with a reserved stride and begins what he knows is going to be another long and arduous eight-lap trek around the gym. He's had enough shots at this stupid test by now to know that there's a bit of a strategy to it- It's all about endurance rather than raw speed. If he can temper his pace just enough to keep from straining himself, he should be golden.
Unfortunately, by the time he reaches the halfway mark, the tod already is short of breath and panting heavily to regulate his core temperature. All the same, he manages to keep his mind off of his rising fatigue, focusing instead on the numbing effects of the song looping in his ears.
'~I'm starting to feel just a little abused,
Like a coffee machine in an office~'
"Ugh, how does she listen to this garbage?" the fox grouses under his breath. He spies the coach staring down at his stopwatch with a frown as he hustles past the starting line and shouts, "Something I should know about?"
"...Well, uh... If you can pick up the pace just a little, you might actually make it, Wilde!" the jaguar calls in return.
"Yeesh, don't act so surprised," Nick grunts through his teeth.
The tod tries to force a little more spring into his step but feels his energy reserves quickly beginning to drain. To make matters worse, his hip starts to flare up as well, stabbing its way through the cortisone and forcing an uncomfortable hitch into his gait. Nick sets his jaw and does his best to keep his mind off the pain, but each new step begins to feel more and more like an effort in futility. His breathing becomes terse and dry grunts escape his throat with every stride. Even Gazelle starts to get drowned out under the rapid, heavy thrum of his own heart in his ears.
But he knows he's close. Maybe within a few seconds of the pace. He can't crumple just yet. Not when he knows it's still possible.
Looping the track a seventh time (and the Gazelle track for the third), the fox has to blink a growing darkness out of the corners of his eyes as he begins to feel lightheaded. At this point, he's moving forward on autopilot more than anything else, all but numb save for the sharp, throbbing pain in his hip that keeps time with his heartbeat.
"Come on, Wilde, this is it!" the coach shouts as the fox starts his eighth and final lap.
All Nick can hope for at this point is that he crosses the finish line upright rather than face down. His gait dissolves into a shambling, shuffling mess by the time he rounds the final corner, and the last leg of the track feels like it stretches on for an eternity.
'~There's a she-wolf in your closet,
Let it out so it can breathe~'
"That's it, Wilde! Bring it in!"
Nick nearly trips over himself coming to a stop, his entire frame throbbing with pain and exhaustion. With barely concealed relief, he shuffles off the track and lumbers over towards the two larger predators waiting nearby. The fox draws an exasperated huff of amusement when he notes that Fangmeyer is tapping away on her cell phone as he nears.
"Am I boring you, stripes?" he heaves, bending over in an attempt to catch his breath.
"Hm? Oh, yeah," the tigress replies with a mischievous smile, still tapping away. "How's that cortisone working out?"
"May as well have been saline," Nick wheezes in frustration. He looks to the coach, a certain trepidation creeping up his spine despite his near-delirium. "...Well?"
"Well... Definitely not setting any land speed records, but... You passed," the jaguar tells him with a proud-looking smile. "Fourteen minutes and forty eight seconds. Congratulations."
"With time to spare. Damn, he's good," Nick breathes. Far too winded and sore to feel at all like celebrating, he simply collapses onto his rear and says, "Okay. Water, and then if I don't have a heart attack in the next thirty seconds, sit-up's next."
The fox clumsily catches his water bottle when Fangmeyer flings it in his direction, and after taking a few greedy pulls (and then dumping the remainder over his head), he flops down onto his back with a grunt. The tigress crouches down by his ankles with a crooked smirk.
"Not tapping out just yet, I hope," she states.
Nick just shakes his head.
"Not if it kills me," he grumbles. "I'm passing this fucking exam even if Bogo has to reinstate me at my wake."
"I'm sure Hopps will appreciate that," Fangmeyer muses through a chuckle. She reaches down and pins the fox's feet to the floor before looking to the coach. "Ready on the clock?"
"Ready," the jaguar nods.
"Alright, Wilde. Get after it," Fangmeyer tells the tod. Despite his soreness, Nick tucks his paws behind his head, and with a strangled growl, drives himself upwards. "One... Two... Three- Come on, Wilde, push hard! Four! Five!"
~ // ~
"...Five-fifty-one... Five-fifty-three... Five-fifty... Nothing."
Judy slows the ZPD cruiser to a stop in front of what should have been their address of interest and peers out the passenger-side window. The hare sitting across from her does the same, his long ears rubbing audibly against the roof of the car as he turns his head. He quirks an eyebrow in confusion under his dark sunglasses and spares Judy a quick glance before reaching for the radio on the dashboard.
"Piper, it's Digby. We in th' right place?" he asks into the transceiver.
"Uh... Wait one," comes a crackling female voice from over the wire.
Judy cranes her neck around to examine the building numbers on the opposite side of the street while they wait, just to confirm that she's not losing her mind, but no- All of the northbound numbers are even rather than odd.
"Yeah, your GPS signal says you're right on top of it. Five-fifty-five Whistling Thorn Drive, right?"
"Yeah, but there's, uh... There's nothin' here, Lou," the hare states, again turning to regard the view out the passenger-side window. "It's jus' an empty lot."
Indeed it is, neatly nestled between two fairly tall brownstone apartment buildings and stretching all the way through the city block to the next street over. Judy can vaguely make out the shattered remains of the concrete foundation of whatever structure used to sit atop the plot, but the building has been gone long enough for nature to start taking over once more. Tall grass and dense shrubbery pockmark the land, and some of the more... Charitable citizens in the area had apparently taken to dumping their bags of garbage onto the otherwise pristine-looking lot. More to the point, there is no sign of any active residency, at least, not from their current vantage point.
"Well, the gerbil did say that his place was stolen," the voice on the radio reminds them.
"Er- Yeah, but, uh..." Digby trails off, peering over at Judy for guidance.
The doe offers a shrug and says, "We'll check it out, Lou."
She shifts the little black-and-white vehicle into park and kills the engine before moving to disembark. It's another frigid January morning, so stepping back outside after being cradled in the warmth of the car's heater feels a bit like walking into an ice wall. The bunny lets out a cloudy breath and pulls the collar of her windbreaker closer to her neck. She probably could have opted to wear a more substantial jacket, but the forecast called for cloudless skies throughout the day and Savannah Central tends to warm up nicely before noon.
Digby steps out of the car behind her, trailing Judy as she hops up onto the sidewalk. Unlike her, the hare has nothing more than his regular duty uniform on (sleeves rolls up, even!) thanks to the thick, natural winter coat that he had developed over the last month or so. Judy couldn't help but feel a little jealous of the downy white fluff that had overtaken his normally dusty-brown fur. Much like Nick, the cold never seemed to bother the hare all that much, a sentiment that would have been nice to share given the bitter chill that had settled over the city for the last several weeks.
Then again, Judy already withstands enough teasing from her foxy partner. Transforming into a snow-white cotton swab once a year would probably be too much for either of them to handle.
Stepping up to her side, the hare hooks his thumbs into his duty belt and gives the field in front of them an apprising once-over.
"And... It's a house, he said."
"That's what he said," Judy nods.
The hare reaches a paw up to scratch at the tuft of fur under his chin.
"Well, we've done a few home burglaries by now, but never a home burglary. How the heck does someone go about stealin' a whole house?" he mutters.
A quiet snort of amusement escapes the bunny's lips as a particular thought comes to mind, something that draws a raised eyebrow from the hare beside her.
"Just... Something that Nick- Something that Officer Wilde told me once," Judy offers in response to the taller leporid's unspoken question. She tucks her paws into the pockets of her ZPD windbreaker and plods into the empty lot, her eyes scanning along the ground for any clues as to what may have happened. "He told me this, uh, story once, about a couple of guys who made some fast cash by walking into a car dealership and literally pocketing the vehicles that were designed for mice and shrews," she explains. "They were basically the size of toys from their perspective, so they simply slipped them into their coat pockets and walked out the front door with them."
"...You reckon someone jus' picked up a whole house and walked off with it?" Digby asks somewhat rhetorically, following in the doe's wake.
"Stranger things have happened," Judy muses. She takes a knee in front of a depression in the dirt, giving it a once-over before saying, "I mean, the gerbil allegedly also had his car stolen last week, so it's pretty evident that someone is walking off with his property."
"Yeesh. Poor fellah can't catch a break," the hare chuckles. He peers up at the buildings around them and seems to chew on a thought for a few moments before speaking again. "Ain't it kinda weird fer a mammal like him t' be livin' 'round here?" Judy spares the hare a glance over her shoulder, prompting the male to quickly add, "Not t' say that he can't live wherever he wants. It jus' seems like th' overall disposition of this particular neighborhood is, uh... You know..."
"Unsuitably scaled," Judy finishes for him. She turns her gaze towards the towering apartment complexes flanking them on either side and says, "I'm sure he has his reasons. Budget or... Proximity to work or something like that."
"Jus' seems a lil' odd considerin' th' rodent population got a whole borough all t' themselves..."
"Yeah, well, it costs a small fortune to live in Little Rodentia, from what I understand," the bunny tells him. She stands herself back up and brushes the dirt off of her knees, saying, "It's an enclave, after all, so there's a limited amount of property available. The bulk of the rodent population either lives down in the Nocturnal District or deals with being small in the big city."
"...And gettin' their homes lifted out from under their noses, apparently," Digby mumbles. He gestures around the empty lot, asking, "Shouldn't there at least be... Ya know, water pipes or electrical wires stickin' outta th' ground from wherever it used t' be or somethin'?"
"Not necessarily. In Little Rodentia, at least, the apartments aren't connected to the main power grid because of the risk of electrocution, and the city water pressure is too high to be usable for them. Most rodent homes run on solar and get their water straight from the rain."
"...Huh. Free utilities."
"One of the few benefits of being small," Judy considers with a smirk. She gestures back towards the sidewalk and says, "Come on, let's see if we can't get a lead from any of the neighbors."
Asking around, it quickly becomes apparent that very few of the locals in the area have any memory of the gerbil. Unsurprising, given that many of the mammals they interview are megafauna. Judy hates to make sweeping assertions, but having nearly been trampled on quite a few occasions, she can say from experience that it's easy for small mammals to fly under the radar when the line of sight of everyone around you is half-a-dozen feet in the air.
The two rabbits make a full lap of the city block, keeping a keen eye out for anything suspicious, but it doesn't take long for Judy to start to feel like it's a bit of a lost cause. After all, if someone really had just... Walked off with a house, the likelihood that they would ever find it again is slim to none. Like the car that the gerbil had reported stolen the week prior, trying to find something that small in a city as large as Zootopia is perhaps even harder than finding a needle in a haystack.
As they wait at a crosswalk for the signal to change, a large city bus trundles past and stops on the other side of the street short distance away. An array of doors slide open and mammals of all shapes and sizes begin to pile out.
"Hopps," comes Digby's voice. Judy peers over at her temporary partner to find him gesturing towards the now-white crossing signal, but the doe's attention quickly returns to the mammals dispersing from the bus stop. One of them, an elephant calf, holds a small, toy car in his trunk. Without much thought, Judy taps the crosswalk button for the opposite street, quietly tracking the elephant with her eyes as he plods away, notably, in the direction of the empty lot. Digby returns to her side with a quizzical expression, asking, "What's up?"
"Just a hunch," the doe states, waiting patiently for the light to change. She reaches for the radio attached to her hip and depresses the push-to-talk button. "Hey, Lou? Can you describe the car that the gerbil had stolen last week?"
"Uh..." comes Piper's high-pitched voice. There's a pause, followed by, "...Light blue, two-door hardtop."
Judy smiles to herself and spares the mammal beside her a glance, who adopts a crooked smirk of his own when he seems to catch sight of the elephant as well.
"Heh... Ya don't think...?"
"I think our bandit is making his getaway," Judy mentions lightheartedly.
The crosswalk signal shifts to white and the bunny makes her way across the intersection to catch up with the elephant. Despite her short stature, the calf's lumbering pace makes closing the gap between them require nothing more than a brisk jog.
"Excuse me!" Judy calls ahead. The calf peers briefly over his shoulder for the source of the voice, and upon spotting the rabbit approaching him, quickly looks around as if unsure of who she was addressing. "Yes, you," the doe giggles. "Good morning, how are you?"
"Um... I-I'm okay," the young elephant says cautiously. Judy finds that the calf towers over her as she slows to a stop in front of him. Even having lived and worked amongst elephants for a good few years now, she's still impressed by how large elephant children are. "I'm on my way to school and my mom says I'm not supposed to talk to strangers..."
Judy sprouts a small smile at that.
"That's very good advice," she tells him. "I'm actually a police officer. Do you think you can help me out?"
The calf squirms worriedly in place.
"...Am I in trouble?" he asks in a small voice.
"No, you're not in trouble," the bunny tells him disarmingly. She gestures to the car coiled in his trunk and asks, "That's a very neat toy you have. Where did you get it?"
The calf seems to brighten at the mention of his little blue car.
"Oh, yeah! I found it on my way to school last week. Isn't it cool? Look, the little wheels turn and everything!" he says, making a point of twisting the tiny, rubber tires on their axles.
"Super cool," Judy assures him with a grin. "...Do you find cool stuff outside a lot?"
~ // ~
The parents of the elephant calf were understandably shocked when their son returned home from school prematurely and with a pair of cops in tow, and then mortified when they came to find that his 'lucky discoveries' were worth a little bit more than they had initially assumed. They allegedly didn't think twice when he brought home a stray toy car, but when the calf returned from school with an exquisitely detailed 'doll house' held aloft in his arms, it at least threw up a few red flags. As recent migrants to Zootopia, the elephant family had apparently never even seen a dwelling as small as the one that belonged to the gerbil, so they could be forgiven for failing to recognize it as a legitimate home rather than a child's play-thing. Figuring that nobody would simply abandon something so seemingly expensive, the parents of the calf had turned the house over to their apartment's lost-and-found collection in a walk-in closet adjacent to the lobby, where the two rabbits, happily, found it still remained. Peeking through the tiny windows, Judy found that the furniture on the interior had been tossed like, well, like an elephant had picked the building up and walked away with it, but the structure as a whole, thankfully, appeared undamaged. All the same, Judy gave the calf and his parents a stern warning about keeping an eye out for the more diminutive mammals in the area and their property.
The father kindly offered to help load the gerbil's displaced house into the trunk of their ZPD cruiser while Digby opted to buckle the little blue car into the back seat to keep it from rolling around. After some amicable goodbyes, the two rabbits hop into the car and share a satisfied smile, equally glad that they wouldn't be going back to the precinct with empty paws.
"Welp," Digby grunts as he closes the passenger-side door. "I reckon that was our weirdest one yet."
"Oh, I don't know about that," Judy retorts as she fishes for her car keys. "How about the chinchilla we had to talk down from a ledge because she convinced herself that she was a flying squirrel?"
"Heh, 'anyone can be anything'," the hare chuckles with a shake of his head. "Alright, second weirdest."
"And we had the one with the sleepwalking beaver that kept breaking into the botanical gardens to dam-up all the water features," Judy continues. "And the one where our magical disappearing burglar turned out to be a quartet of meerkats hiding under a trench coat. That was pretty weird."
The hare pauses with a frown while sliding his sunglasses down over his eyes and spares the doe beside him a befuddled expression.
"...Hells bells, I completely forgot about that one," he mutters. "A year livin' in th' city an' somethin' like a meerkat stack is already evaporating outta mah brain like tryin' t' remember last week's supper..."
"Welcome to Zootopia," Judy smiles as she turns the engine over. "Never a shortage of mammals in need."
And there hasn't been. For the better part of a year now, her team had been plowing through a bottomless deluge of cases being funneled into her department from every district of the city. It was an amazing feeling, knowing that she was making a difference in the lives of others, rendering aid to mammals who would have otherwise been looked over or marginalized for their size or species or social class. Frankly, it was everything the bunny had hoped it would be back when she first enrolled in the ZPD academy. It was hard work, of course; nearly everybody on her team has endured a good scrape or two, and not every case concluded with a nice, tidy bow; but her team's work ethic and case completion rate had earned them a seat at the table amongst the other, more established divisions of the ZPD.
The only major wrinkle left to iron out before everything could be considered perfect was the glaring absence of the fox that was largely responsible for the inception of the Minor Crimes Division in the first place. Judy had been eagerly anticipating Nick's eventual return to service, and from what she'd been informed, the tod may be due to complete the physical exam any week now. She'd done her best to keep her growing excitement at the prospect of having him back to herself, knowing that it would put unnecessary pressure on her partner to perform his best when he had already been grinding himself ragged trying to push his limits. All the same, the doe couldn't help but feel like Nick had been missing out. Or, perhaps, that she had been missing out on his presence, given the number of times she caught herself wondering what Nick would have done in any given situation.
On a whim, the bunny takes the opportunity to check her phone, and her eyes widen at a trio of unread text messages sitting in the center of her screen:
07:32 A.M. | FNGMYR: he says its happening today lol
07:47 A.M. | FNGMYR: welp he passed the run
08:04 A.M. | FNGMYR: HOPPS ITS ACTUALLY HAPPENING
The bunny lets out a gasp and quickly taps out a message of her own:
08:12 A.M. | JH: Oh no did I miss it???
To which a reply arrives only a few moments later:
08:12 A.M. | FNGMYR: No but u might want 2 hop on back bunny. 50% done and fox says hes gonna pass or die trying >:3
Judy quickly pockets her phone and spares the hare beside her a glance, saying, "Tell Piper we're going 10-7. We gotta pick up Wilde's surprise and get back to the precinct before he finishes the physical."
A look of surprise washes over Digby's features after a moment of uncertainty. "He's takin' th' exam again? Ya think he'll pass this time?"
"Sounds like it!" Judy chimes as she shifts the car into gear. The doe quickly pulls away from the curb, unable to keep an excited smile from splitting her lips. "If miss Negative Nancy Fangmeyer thinks it's going to happen today, he must be doing well!"
~ // ~
Nick is not doing well.
Frankly, he feels like he's going to die.
He lays face-down, huffing and puffing on the wooden floor of the gym, once again struggling to catch his breath. He had somehow managed to grind his way through the push-up test, something that even he didn't think was possible. His damaged shoulder certainly didn't take any satisfaction in the small victory, protesting his efforts with fiery pins and needles that made the whole upper half of his body feel numb.
He had pretended not to notice the coach's apparently lax standard of excellence when it came to qualifying his push-up's, as the tod's old injuries made for a rather unimpressive posture and an inability to dip and rise as far as one might consider 'proper' form. Nick was silently thankful for it, especially when he started to feel the eyes of some of the other officers in the gym falling onto him, straining his already frayed concentration.
"I'm officially impressed, Wilde," he hears Fangmeyer mention from somewhere off to his side. The tod can't even muster the willpower to look at her, but the tigress sounds rather genuine if nothing else. "This is a hell of a performance for a mammal that's been aerated."
"More holes... Less wind resistance," the fox gasps from his spot on the floor like a fish out of water. "High speed... Low drag..."
"Only pull-up's left to go, Wilde," the coach mentions, padding into Nick's field of vision.
The tod rolls his head to the side to peer over at the trio of pull-up bars near the back of the gym, each set at a different height to accommodate mammals of different sizes.
"Cripes, is that what those are...?" Nick utters between strained huffs. "Could have sworn it was a gallows..."
The two larger mammals share a laugh.
"Well, with any luck, we won't be needing the rope today," the coach states, bending down to pass the fox a bottle of water.
Nick rolls over with a groan and accepts the bottle, twisting off the cap before dumping the room-temperature contents over his face. He blinks, staring up at the lamps hanging down from the ceiling of the gym and seeing spots.
"...You ready to hit the bar?" Fangmeyer asks.
No, he isn't, the fox decides. Everything aches. His head is throbbing and all of his extremities feel so gelatinous that he's half convinced he may start to seep into the floorboards like a furry orange puddle. All the same, he knows that had Judy been present, she wouldn't have wanted him to give up. Not without giving it everything he had first. And he did have a little left to give.
So, with more than a little reluctance, the tod silently lifts his arms into the air, prompting Fangmeyer to heave him upright onto wobbly legs.
"Keep it together a little while longer, Wilde," she urges him as she half-leads, half-carries the tod over towards the bars.
'~Sitting across a bar, staring right at her prey,
It's going well so far, she's gonna get her way~'
"Fangmeyer."
"Yes, Wilde."
"I don't plan on letting go once I'm up there, so if my arms happen to pop out of their sockets like an action figure, I'll be expecting you to plug me back into them."
"I wasn't aware that foxes are modular," the tigress snickers.
"Modular or not, you may be sweeping me up off the floor with a broom and dust pan by the end of this," Nick mumbles.
Once they reach the pull-up bars, Fangmeyer plucks the smaller mammal up off the floor and holds him at arms length.
"You ready?" she asks.
"Give me a second," the fox huffs, still working towards getting his heart rate back under control. He draws a few deep breaths and peers up at the metal bar above him for a beat before turning his attention back down to the mammal patiently holding him aloft. "Lovely, big, burly arms you've got," he offers, earning a slow blink from the tigress in response. Nick nods to himself, and with a final breath says, "Alright."
"And up goes the fox," Fangmeyer states as she hoists the smaller mammal upwards. Nick reaches his still-aching arms up and coils his fingers around the bar. "Got it?"
"Got it," the tod grunts.
"Three good ones, Wilde," the coach calls.
"...Just three?" Nick asks in surprise. Even Fangmeyer looks to the jaguar with a raised eyebrow.
"Is that your way of asking for more?" the coach retorts with a crooked smile.
"...Okay. Three good ones," Nick repeats under his breath. He feels Fangmeyer begin to loosen her grip on his frame, leaving the tod to hang under his own power. His shoulder immediately flares back up under load, forcing a grimace across the fox's muzzle.
Knowing that it will do more harm than good to prolong the inevitable, he sucks in a breath and tightens the muscles in his arms and core. The lack of collagen in his shoulder makes the joint pop loudly as he drives himself upwards. Both Fangmeyer and the coach wince at the sound, but Nick is so used to it and the scratchy, uncomfortable, bone-on-bone feeling that comes packaged along with it, that it hardly fazes him any more.
Though, to be fair, the fox's attention is elsewhere at the moment.
'~Nocturnal creatures, are not so prudent,
The moon's my teacher, and I'm her student~'
"Rrrgh!" Nick growls through his teeth as he wrestles his way towards the top of the bar. "I hate that bit. I hate it!"
Fangmeyer laughs aloud, regarding the fox with a certain amount of fascination.
"You know, Wilde, most mammals opt for positive reinforcement," the tigress is apparently compelled to mention.
"Too much time around Hopps," the tod gasps as his chin clears the bar. "I'm a glutton for punishment."
He carefully allows himself to go slack on the bar after completing his first rep, cringing the whole way down. His entire body quakes and rattles at the effort, and by the time he reaches the bottom, his joke from earlier about his arms popping out feels a little too real to be humorous anymore.
"Oooohh, that sucks," he hisses through his teeth.
"Come on, Wilde, you got this!" the coach calls. "Tough it out!"
'~A domesticated girl, that's all you ask of me,
Darling, it is no joke, this is lycanthropy~'
Screwing his eyes shut, the fox growls hoarsely and begins his upwards struggle once more. He can see flashes of light and color under his eyelids as licks of pain dart across his upper body. A metallic flavor dances on the sides of his tongue, possibly from biting the inside of his cheek as he snarled and grimaced in an effort to keep himself moving. Every fiber of his being is begging for him to stop at this point, to give up, to let it end, and with every inch gained it becomes harder and harder for the fox to keep from breaking the promise he made to himself. After all, if he can't do it, he can't do it, right? What's one more failed attempt when he can just try again another day? His breathing is haggard and strained by the time his nose nears the bar, and the fox barely has time to consciously register the coach calling 'two' before his arms practically give out of their own accord.
A pathetic whine escapes the fox's lips on his way back down. He had built up a pretty substantial tolerance for pain over the last six months, but this is really pushing the envelope.
"One more, Wilde," the coach reminds him.
One more. Just one more.
Nick grits his teeth, struggling to even find the willpower necessary to keep going. There's nothing left in his tank. Less than nothing. Half of his body feels like it's on fire, while the other half is so numb that it may have fallen off for all he knows. His stubborn, relentless grip on the bar is the only thing he has left at this point.
'~Not getting enough retribution,
Or decent incentives to keep me at it~'
With a wavering snarl, Nick desperately attempts to pull his broken body upwards, but apart from a shuddering tremor, he doesn't budge.
"Fuck," the tod squeaks weakly. He shakes his head free of his earbuds, which come to rest hanging from his collar. "I... I can't..."
"Oh, hell no, I am not hearing that," he hears Fangmeyer drone from somewhere nearby. "You can, fox. Cripes, if you quit now, I'll kill you."
"Just one more push, Wilde," the coach adds.
"You can do it, Nick!" chimes a third voice.
Nick snaps his eyes open in surprise to find a familiar bunny now standing beside the two larger mammals.
Oh, no. What is she doing here?
Judy clasps her paws together with an encouraging grin.
"Come on, you can do this!"
Nick groans and screws his eyes shut once more.
Well, at least she's confident...
'Come on, Wilde, you can do this,' he thinks. 'You have to do this. For the rabbit, if nothing else. Do it for her, and then you can die.'
With a desperate growl, the fox tenses every fiber of his being and drives himself upwards, all but willing himself to rise. His arms are shaking so badly that it feels like his muscles are rippling under his fur. His legs thrash around under him, desperately trying to find purchase on a surface that doesn't exist. The coppery flavor of blood in his mouth returns once more, though the taste is very nearly lost under the blistering torrent of other agonizing sensations. A faltering snarl escapes his throat as he attempts to clear the final inch required. The bar is so close now that he can smell it.
"Three! That's it, Wilde!"
At once, the fox's entire body goes limp. His once-commendable grip on the overhead bar slips loose and the tod feels himself starting to fall. Thankfully, before he can even muster the energy necessary to attempt to do anything about it, he finds himself being plucked from the air by a pair of brawny, striped arms.
"I got'cha, big guy," Nick hears Fangmeyer say.
The tigress lowers the fox to the ground, where he's quickly swept into a hug by his overeager partner.
"Oh, that was amazing!" Judy gushes, giving him a squeeze. "I'm so proud of you, Nick!"
The tod warbles out some semblance of an acknowledgment, unable to do much other than wait for his heart rate and breathing to normalize while he rides out the still-searing pain in his shoulder.
"Not bad at all, Wilde," he hears the coach say. The fox peers up at the larger predator to find the jaguar wearing a jaunty grin. "Congratulations are in order. I can't honestly say I expected you to pass the physical any time soon." He jots something down on the clipboard in his paws and signs his name at the bottom. "I'll get your certification up to Mammal Resources for you."
"Thank you, coach," Judy states in Nick's stead when she finds him still short of breath.
The jaguar offers a nod and turns to take his leave. Fangmeyer lingers behind for a moment only to flash the fox a wink before following in the coach's wake.
Though not quite alone in the gym by any means, the bunny takes their relative solitude to offer the fox a tender nuzzle.
"Finally did it, huh?" she asks proudly, her stubby little tail waggling excitedly.
Nick licks his dry lips and clears his throat.
"Why are you here?" he asks breathlessly.
"You really think I'd miss out on my partner passing his physical exam after all that hard work he put in?" Judy questions with a teasing grin.
"No, I mean... How'd you even know I was taking the exam?" the fox clarifies. He certainly didn't tell her. As far as she should have been aware, it was just another day of strength training for him.
"A large, orange birdy texted me," the doe says, tilting her head in the direction that Fangmeyer had plodded off to. "She seemed pretty confident that you were going to pass."
Is that what she was doing with her phone earlier...?
"Maybe tigers aren't familiar with the whole 'snitches get stitches' shtick," Nick grouses.
Judy quirks an eyebrow at that, asking, "What, you didn't want me to see you pass or something?"
"No, I just... Didn't want you here in case I failed," the tod admits self-consciously.
"Like the six-or-so other attempts?" the bunny asks with a knowing smirk. Nick frowns and furrows his brow in confusion. "Yes, I've been getting regular updates. My network of spies is vast."
"Then... Why didn't you say anything?" Nick asks, his tail swishing anxiously. "You just let me lie to you this whole time?"
Judy offers a slight shrug, taking a moment to straighten the fox's sweat-drenched shirt.
"If you wanted me here, you would have asked me to come," the doe rationalizes. "I know you hate appearing weak in front of other mammals, especially me-"
"Carrots-"
"No, come on, Nick. You do. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. I know you just wanted to be able to drop a signed physical exam certification on my desk and avoid any unnecessary drama. Me looming around the gym cheering you on would have just added an additional layer of stress to this whole thing that I know you were trying to avoid."
With a final huff, the fox feels like he has his breathing more or less back under control. The throbbing in his extremities slowly begins to dull as well, affording him some much-needed clarity.
"Well... I'm glad you were here for that," he mutters. "I... Don't think I would have made it, otherwise."
Judy flashes a gratified grin and peels herself back to kneel beside the tod before giving his leg a pat.
"And with that out of the way, all that's left is your PDW certification before you can get back into the field, right?" she asks.
Nick finds himself perplexed for a beat until a lick of realization drives a soft smirk onto his muzzle.
"Maybe your league of spies and snitches doesn't run as deep as you thought," he tells her. "I went down to the shooting range first thing this morning. You can't smell the nitro and CO2 on my fur?"
"Under your horrifying, sweaty fox aroma? No, I can't," Judy states with a somewhat bewildered expression. Shaking her head, she asks, "Wait, so... You passed that, too?"
"It went about as well as you'd expect of a mammal with keen peepers but shaky paws, but..." he nods.
Judy's broad grin returns.
"So that means..."
"That means I'm cleared, fluff," the fox affirms. "Barring a nice chat with the chief, of course, but yeah."
The bunny looks as though she may burst at any moment. As it stands, she's practically vibrating as she kneels by his side.
"I really want to kiss you right now," she informs him.
Nick cracks a small, bashful smile and can't help but glance around the gym for any inquisitive ears that may have been trained in their direction. "Contain yourself, cottontail. Mammals are watching."
The doe shakes her head amusedly, and with a contented sigh, moves to stand herself up.
"It's getting harder and harder for me to care," she admits softly. The bunny holds a paw out for the tod, saying, "How about you go get yourself scrubbed up and then meet me at the MCD? It'll take a little while for your paperwork to get processed."
"Sure," Nick agrees with a huff. He's never too thrilled about having to use the precinct showers, but considering that even he can tell how rank he smells at this point, he figures he has little choice.
The fox takes Judy's paw, and with a mighty heave for a mammal of her stature, finds himself being tugged back to his feet. The bunny flashes the predator an odd look after getting him stable, her ears perking upright. She reaches a paw up and fetches one of the earbuds dangling from his shirt collar.
"It's not what you think," the tod quickly insists.
"Oh, officer Wilde!" Judy gasps, her sprightly grin returning, though with a smarmy twist this time. "I knew it!"
'~Nocturnal creatures, are not so prudent,
The moon's my teacher, and I'm her student~'
Judy giggles and peers up at her partner once more.
"I love that bit."