Chapter Text
“IT’S NIGHT?!?”
She held her face in one paw, pinching at the bridge of her nose while one foot tapped out her frustration. Judy was nearly at her wits end with this fox.
“Hey… Wanna hear another joke?”
His paws were in his pockets as he gazed lazily down at her, with hooded eyes and a wry smile on his face. Nick just could not help teasing this bunny.
“Stop talking and get in the scooter,” Officer Hopps ordered sharply. She tromped away, leaving the fox to trail behind her.
“Hoo hooo. The ankle biter snaps, I see…”
Judy was thankful he left it at that before they hit the road again. The ride up was silent, and upon reaching the frigid slopes of Tundratown, Judy knew it was too late. The sky grew darker as they traversed through the cold glow of the street lamps illuminating the way. Still, a part of her hoped that the luck of a rabbit could pull through for her yet again. She’d managed to get this far after all, and her tenacity kept her pushing for more answers.
Stubbornly rattling the lock on the gates of the lot, Judy huffed, “Closed! Great.”
“Mmm…” Nick took his time meandering over from the street, “And I will betcha, you don’t have a warrant to get in. Hmm? Darn it. It’s a bummer.” The tone was condescending, his air of disappointment dripping with sarcasm.
Her ears drooped down her back. She turned on her heel to face the mammal taking up her time, and pointed at him accusingly before jabbing the digit at the ground, “You wasted the day on purpose!”
Nick brought a paw to his chest in mock offence, “Madam! I have a fake badge. I would never impede your pretend investigation.”
She didn’t have time for this.
“It’s not a pretend investigation. Look, see?” Judy pulled out the photo from Mrs. Otterton, lifting it up to the fox, “See him? This otter is missing.”
The fox bent down for a quick glance, but was unperturbed as he straightened up, “Well then, they should’ve gotten a real cop to find him.”
With a huff, Judy tucked the photo away before retorting hotly, “What is your problem?? Does seeing me fail somehow make you feel better about your own sad, miserable life??”
Nick was not swayed in the slightest. He knew he had her near the end of her rope as he quipped back just as fast, “It does, one hundred percent. Now, since you’re… sans warrant, I guess we’re… done?”
The rabbit sighed, “Fine. We are done.” In her defeat, she held out the carrot, “Here’s your pen.”
The fox reached out for it. A smug grin spread across his face before his features dropped, as Judy gently tossed the carrot pen over the fence and into the lot behind her.
“Hey—!” He gasped as it flew out of reach, and his gaze followed its descent into the snow on the other side. Nick didn’t skip a beat, and sized up the height of the fence.
“First off, you throw like a bunny. Second, you’re a very sore loser,” the canid muttered, and managed to climb up to the top in a few leaping bounds. “See you later, Officer Fluff! So sad this is over. I wish I coulda helped more—“ he called out.
Dropping down effortlessly within the lot, Nick was surprised to be nose to nose with Judy.
“The thing is…” she grinned.
The bunny was the smug one now, holding the carrot pen aloft in one paw, mockingly. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the tunnel she had made quick work of under the metal fencing.
“You don’t need a warrant if you have probable cause… and I’m pretty sure I saw a shifty low life climbing the fence… So you’re helping plenty! Come on,” Judy sang gleefully, and crunched cheerfully through the snow. Effectively silenced, Nick followed her begrudgingly.
It took the rabbit no time at all to find the right vehicle.
“2-9-T-H-D-0-3! This is it!!!” she said excitedly, brushing away snow to reveal the full plate number.
They each picked one of the front doors of the limo, and both were greeted by a cold fog pouring from the floor when they entered. Judy pulled out her phone to shine a light around the foot pedals. It wasn’t long before she procured some tweezers to pick at a tuft of loose, white fluff.
“Polar bear fur,” she said quietly, holding it up to Nick.
He nodded once, unimpressed, and unable to stop himself from rolling his eyes over to the glove compartment in front of him. With a click, it flopped open for him, and Nick jumped back with a gasp.
“Oh my god!”
“What, WHAT?!” Judy cried out, all her attention suddenly snapped to the possibility of an even bigger discovery—
“The velvety pipes of Jerry Vole!” Nick answered, holding up a pair of albums. His feigned surprise quickly fell into his signature smirk. As Judy struggled to contain her disappointment, Nick continued, “But on CD… who still uses CDs?”
Tossing them back into the glove compartment, the fox leaned against the passenger seat while he took in the rest of the pristine interior. A privacy window leading to the main cab in the back of the limo caught his eye.
Climbing up, Nick slid the glass open with indifference and peered in. His demeanour evaporated immediately. As he took in the sight before him with wide eyes, he spoke with a tense hesitation, “Carrots…? If your otter was here, he had a very bad day.”
Intrigued by his words, Judy scrambled up onto the seat next to him and shone her phone light through. What she saw in the shadows made her heart drop into her stomach.
“Those are… claw marks,” she noted in awe, taking in the carnage of the scene. “You ever seen anything like this?” she asked.
“No…” the fox replied, now feeling like he’d bit off more than he can chew here. The tears and claw marks in the otherwise perfect, white leather was unsettling.
“Wait… look,” Judy said, and hopped through the privacy window into the cab with Nick following close behind her. Landing on the floor of the limo, Judy bent down to pick up a wallet that got left behind. She opened it, and was greeted by the ID of the very mammal she was looking for, “This is him,” she noted in recognition. “Emmitt Otterton. He was definitely here… What do you think happened?” Judy asked, looking up at the fox crouched before her.
He stilled for a moment and glanced around at the other contents of the cab. An overturned glass on the carpeted floor caught his gaze, and Nick picked it up. His ears flattened against his skull as his eyes widened, taking in the classy gothic font of the single letter “B” carved into its side.
“Well, now, wait a minute…” he said, posture stiffening as he counted out the coincidences. “Polar bear fur… Rat Pack music… fancy cup…?” the fox listed, tapping the glass he held. A sense of familiarity finally settled in once all the pieces fit together, kicking his body into fight or flight mode.
“I know whose car this is, we gotta go—“ Nick said quickly as he scrambled to reorganize the minibar.
“Why? Whose car is it?” Judy demanded.
“The most feared crime boss in Tundratown. They call him, Mr. Big,” Nick explained hurriedly, before turning to Judy with a crazed look in his eyes, “And he does NOT like me, so we gotta go!” he hissed, pointing wildly at the door.
“Im not leaving, this is a crime scene!” she retorted with planted feet, stubborn as ever.
Nick really did not have time for this.
“Well, it's gonna be an even BIGGER crime scene if Mr. Big finds me here, so we’re leaving right now—“ he said in a rush, shoving Judy to the door before swinging it open. Nick turned out into the cold, ready to bolt. Instead, he leaped back against the leather interior in shock, clutching at his chest. What waited for them on the other side was the last thing he’d hoped for.
Two, large, menacing polar bears.
“Raymond!” he exclaimed, trying desperately to feign nonchalance as he caught his breath, but his heart was racing, “And is that Kevin? Long time no see! And, speaking of no see… How about you forget you saw… me? Huh? For old times sake—?”
A massive white paw cut him off, snagging Nick firmly in its grip. Another nabbed Judy next to him, rendering both mammals immobile.
“That’s a no…” he mumbled with resignation.
Raymond, or was it Kevin? Judy wasn’t sure. Whichever bear that held the fox let out a low growl, and began to squeeze. Nick’s tail twitched as he struggled against the building pressure on his bones.
“Wait, wait, wait—ack—” he strained and coughed, feet kicking desperately while his lungs fought for air, “R-Raymond, please…“
The bears said nothing, focusing only on the task at hand as they traded places. Judy felt a spark of real concern flare up inside when the ursid holding Nick placed his tail at the edge of the limo entrance. The other, who held Judy, stepped to the open door and gripped it threateningly in his empty paw. He swung it back and forth a few times, testing its hinges, giving their captives a chance to understand the situation.
Judy’s ears drooped further and her nose twitched in genuine fear, reflecting the fox’s panic. The rabbit was too shocked to speak. Gone was the signature suave mask of Nick Wilde, and she hated seeing him like this. Judy hated seeing any animal like this. It wasn’t an act. There was no joke. This was real.
“No, please— hnghk—“ he choked out, begging, and rasped, “You gotta believe me… I didn’t know— agh—I-I didn’t know it was his limo we were checking, please—!”
Unknowingly, Judy had served him on a silver platter, and herself as a likely second course (or possibly, a light dessert). This was her fault, her responsibility. Her impulsiveness had led them here. The academy had trained the rabbit for situations like this, but her cozy country life had not. For the first time, Judy felt out of her depth. She felt her breath hitch as it sped up. The fox was wheezing badly now, and he groaned from a horrible pain he recognized. His ribs creaked, threatening to give.
A snap rang out, followed shortly by a terrible yelp that echoed across the lot. Nick gasped and his expression pinched, with canines bared from his scrunched up snout. His squirming immediately stopped, as his movements sent out aching pangs in unbearable, radiating waves through his core. A high pitched whine scraped sharply past his vocal cords, whistling out beyond his control.
“Nick…” Judy breathed, as her foot shook in distress in response to the sound piercing her ears. The rest of her body was frozen. She struggled to find her voice, but in the end it didn’t matter.
He screamed with his own.
Without warning, Kevin had slammed the door on Nick’s tail. Guttural, his voice tore at his throat as agony lit up his spine, throbbing in his hip. Judy cried out with him in horror. He felt a thousand needles burning his nerves, piercing through his limbs. If something wasn’t broken, it was definitely fractured or misaligned.
Raymond tugged him forwards, adding more strain on the tailbone pinched in the vehicle. Nick wailed, unable to contain his discomfort as metal bit into his skin. A trickle of red that could rival the shade of his own fur, started to drip down the white paint of the limo’s exterior. Nick’s captor leaned down to close the distance with a growl, almost nose to nose with his prey.
“Remember, this is your first warning. Yeah… ? Next time, we take the tail,” the polar bear rumbled menacingly in a low tone.
Kevin chuckled, and the laughter drummed so deeply from his chest that Judy could feel the vibrations rattle through her whole body. It shook her to her core, as deep as her bones.
“Oops. Wrong car, innit?” he said with little emotion, before opening the door to release the crushed appendage.
It made little difference to the fox. He’d been through worse. Much, MUCH, worse while working with the same two bears that were currently tormenting him. Even if he hadn’t been on the receiving end at the time, he wasn’t proud of witnessing it. Nick only sold popsicles now. A humble, more or less solitary, hustler. He was done with this crap. Or, he thought he’d been until today.
Raymond slammed Nick’s head against the roof to send the message home, eliciting a grunt from the canid as Kevin shut the door with a gentle nudge. Now free of any obstacles, it closed with a soft thump.
The rabbit was too stunned to break the silence as she was carried away, hesitant to test the ever thickening tension in the air. Her consultant was slack in the paw beside her. Nick’s head lolled in the bear’s grip, as he fought to see through the stars that now blinded his vision. A small cut at his right temple, a new source of blood, wet the fur down the side of his face. Each desperate gasp of breath that left his lips, fogged into visible puffs in the freezing air.
Judy’s heart hammered in her chest. Any thought she’d been trying to process was forgotten, as the bears approached an idling limo outside the gates. Kevin opened the door to the main cab for Raymond to roughly toss Nick at the floor. Judy was thrown in shortly after, landing nimbly on her springy legs next to Nick’s tangled limbs.
As the bears phoned in their discovery to their superiors, the captured mammals had a moment to catch their breath.
“Alright… alright, I-I may have…underestimated the situation,” Judy admitted quietly, crouching over the trembling fox. Her paws were shaking almost as badly as Nick was, and he didn’t respond beyond a wheezing cough.
Gently, she turned him onto his back, biting her lip as he moaned from the movement jostling his injuries. “Sorry, sorry! Oh gosh, I’m so sorry for all of this, Nick…” she whispered in distress, not knowing what to do.
He coughed dryly again, wincing as it pulled at his burning chest, “Aheh… ‘s fine. Y-You… didn’ know,” Nick slurred breathlessly. Struggling to prop himself up on one arm, he rasped, “My karma… tends to bite back at me, hard…”
But the moment was up sooner than they’d liked. Raymond climbed in, and batted the fox none too kindly up onto the seat next to him. Taking the hint, Judy scrambled up after Nick just as Kevin took the seat on the other side. The car lurched, then drifted quietly through the snow and into the still night.
Nick sat up stiffly, tense for a number of reasons, as his wide eyes stared off into the distance. His breath was rapid, and shallow, puffing through a clenched jaw out his damp nose. Judy tried not to stare at him, but concern and guilt ate away at her. After a while of sitting in silence, she finally broke it with a whisper.
“What did you do to make Mr. Big so mad at you?” Judy asked, glancing up at the bears on either side of them.
“I, uh… I may have sold him a… very expensive wool rug, that was made from the fur… of a skunk….’s butt,” Nick breathed back soberly. His eyes were as wide as ever while he relived the memory, and his expression held no mirth. He was dead serious.
“Oh sweet cheese and crackers…” Judy breathed, thoroughly exasperated.
She wanted to be more mad at him than she was, and a part of her definitely was. Yet somehow, she felt the anger melt away quickly. His existence held the pieces of this case together, her one and only consultant on the inner workings of Zootopia and its hidden, back alley culture. Whether he knew it or not, and as much as Judy struggled to admit it to herself, he’d been indispensable in her relentless search for answers. A rock of guilt sat heavily in the pit of her stomach, as she remembered how she blackmailed him into helping her in the first place.
It had only been that morning, and yet so much had happened within the span of a day that Judy had almost forgotten about it. Now that the evening was settling in, she was eager to make headway before more trouble found them, and preferably before time ran out.
Her luck struck gold, yet again. It brought her to the Big Man himself, at just the right time.
The peak of a reception sang jovially in the background. A wedding. One that happened to be for the tiny arctic shrew she’d saved in Little Rodentia, just the other day. Parking duty be damned, fate and sheer force of will had led her here.
”Oh Daaaaddy! It’s time for our daaance!” the small bride sang elatedly, until she tuned into the scene around her.
A rabbit and a fox, dangling over the cold plunge.
”Ugh, what did we say?! No icing anyone at my wedding!” she cried out in dismay.
”I have to, baby. Daddy has to...” the elder shrew said gently, before barking out his order again, “ICE EM—“
”Wait, please!”
His daughter was having none of it. She ran forwards as the bears lowered their victims closer to the freezing water below, only pausing at her request.
”She’s the bunny that saved my life yesterday!” the bride explained to her father, “From that giant donut!”
”This bunny??” he asked, pointing at Judy incredulously.
”Yeah!” she confirmed, and turned to greet her saviour, “Hai!”
With the presence of his daughter, Fru Fru, Mr. Big was convinced to let them live, much to Nick’s astonishment.
His jaw dropped at the act of mercy, while the rabbit received her kisses of acknowledgment. Mr. Big was even swayed to let the fox ice his injuries. They were invited, or perhaps allowed in Nick’s case, to sit at the wedding reception, while the little crime boss gave context to what they had found at the limo lot.
The otter had gone savage in the cab, attacking the chauffeur before running off into the night.
“But, he’s a sweet little otter…” Judy stated in disbelief.
“Meh, my child…” the old arctic shrew said softly, “We may be evolved. But, deep down, we are still animals.”
This was wildly useful information, including something that Judy was hoping for.
Her next lead.
“You wanna find Otterton? Talk to the driver of the car,” Mr. Big concluded, “His name is Manchas. Lives in the Rainforest District. Only he can tell you more…”