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Zootopia: Like a Cauldron Burning

Chapter one Something about a Truck on Fire

Violet eyes flickered open to a sunlit room. Rays of early morning scarlet caught tiny motes of dust floating lazily in the air like jellyfish, rising and falling and swirling away on unseen air currents. The window was open, bringing the scents of exotic cooking and diesel exhaust up from the streets in a savory, decadent cocktail. There was something else in that smell, something closer, wafting in from the kitchen. The bed was warm but the sheets were cold and stank with sweat.

Judy pushed the sheets aside, sitting up on her rump and blinking out the sleep and the residue of the nightmare that lingered like an oil stain. Already the bulk of it was gone, hazy images like a pile of pale scattered rib bones were trying to be remembered, and she took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the musk of the city and let everything out in one long slow breath like Juniper had showed her. With the breath went the bad dream and everything it entailed.

She looked at the alarm clock on the bedside nightstand, seeing that she had woken up ten minutes before the buzzer would go off...again. Her ears twitched along with her nose as she slid off the mattress, her underwear hiking up. Echoes of last night's wine were infused in her gums and the roof of her dry mouth, her head starting to ache again and she hoped that the dull pain that throbbed with the beat of her heart wasn't a prognostication. Hell of a way to begin another week. She straightened out her underwear and scratched her head, heading to the closet.

She bent down and grabbed the wine bottle from off the floor--she must have dropped it when she fell asleep; at least she had the common sense to choke it with the cork stopper beforehand. It still had a little bit left in it, sweet dark purple swirling at the bottom of the pine green glass. She downed it in one pull and set the empty bottle on the windowsill.

As Judy put on her uniform, she thought about people's lives, how frequently they seemed to change and the degree to which they change, and how you don't seem to notice it until the changes had piled up so much that you wonder how the hell you got there. She hadn't once suspected that half a year after joining the Zootopia Police Department that she'd have met the greatest woman of her life, or that two months later she would be living with her in her apartment up in the northern district of the city. It was a few blocks closer to the precinct, which was a plus, with ready access to the shops down below.

She tightened her belt and adjusted her badge, making sure she looked presentable in the mirror. She couldn't do anything about the bags under her eyes, but that couldn't be helped. As she straightened out her sleeves, the alarm went off. After silencing it, she walked out of the bedroom, through the hallway and into the kitchen, yawning.

The smell flooded over her, filling her nostrils and her lungs with something pungent and sweet, making her stomach rumble agreeably. Her headache reciprocated with its own agonized moan, but Judy ignored it. She saw Juniper seated at the table, her back to her, leaning forward in scrutiny over a thick folder, raising a mug of fresh coffee to her lips. The mug was sky blue with Art Deco designs of grass and clouds, a little chickadee sitting on an apple tree. She was wearing pajamas the color of spring moss, which went well with her milk chocolate fur, her long ears lying flat against her back.

She was framed by the steadily increasing light of the sun, which still had not yet breached the horizon, and Judy couldn't help but smile. She walked up to the other rabbit and placed her hand on her back.

Juniper turned away from her folder and, seeing her, let a soft smile break over her face, her eyes like green fluorite. Judy went to the cupboard and grabbed her own mug, setting it beside the coffee pot. "Morning, sweetie," Judy said.

"Hmm, morning. When did you get in?"

"Late. Someone forgot to file some paperwork so I stayed behind to take care of things for a while."

Juniper hummed in acknowledgement. She leaned over the table and Judy met her, their lips touching and smacking as they parted. The brown rabbit sniffed and pulled a face as she sat back. "You taste like Merlot," she said.

Judy shrugged unapologetically. "Pinewood's."

"Ugh, you're better off drinking gasoline."

The coffee was helping to wake her up, but the downside was that the throbbing ache in her head was speeding up, accelerating and growing. Her eye twitched from the pain, and she pretended that she had an eyelash out of place. Juniper was very perceptive, which was a fine thing unto itself, kudos, but she hated having people worrying or fussing over her. They settled into their own pockets of thoughtful silence, eating the breakfast Juniper had made.

"You must've had a nightmare last night," Juniper said after a while, catching Judy off her guard. She swallowed her mouthful of toast, wiping crumbs off her cheek.

"Why do you say that?"

A thin but warm smile creased Juniper's lips. "You almost gave me a shiner trying to get out of it."

"_What?_Oh, I'm sorry, June--I didn't mean to..."

Juniper dismissed her apology with a flick of her wrist, shaking her head. "Don't worry about it, honey, you weren't aware of what you were doing. I know you were somewhere else."

Judy gave a shaky smile, but inside a little worm was growing and burrowing a tunnel. How long had she been like that? Was she always like that when she was asleep? Was it during every dream, or just the bad ones? She picked at her salad with her fork, not really seeing it. She didn't really like the way she had put that, 'you were somewhere else.' That had connotations that she didn't like to consider.

When Juniper spoke, Judy was so entrenched in her thoughts that she didn't catch it.

"Sorry, what was that?"

"What were you dreaming about?"

"Oh. I, uh, I don't really remember. Something about a truck on fire...I was being chased, I think. I already forgot about it." Judy stuck a forkful of vegetables in her mouth to keep from saying anything else, hoping that Juniper would have the decency not to chase that bird any further.

"Huh. Sounds like it must've been a bad one. You know, my dream dictionary would say that you're being chased might mean that you're feeling threatened by something in your life--obviously; being chased usually means that you're frightened of something--or there's something about yourself that you don't want to acknowledge. That's a little too simplistic an explanation for me, but it's a maybe. The truck on fire, though...it could mean you don't wish to go anywhere in your life, or that you have something against traveling. Perhaps you were seeing a vision from some coming day."

Judy smiled and dug at her salad. "No, June, it wasn't like that at all. I was just remembering what happened a year ago. The truck on fire was the incident in the subway station, and I'm pretty sure I was running for most of that case. All over the city, in fact. Dreams might be symbolic, I'll agree to that, but they're not prophetic. You shouldn't blow things out of proportion like that, June."

The brown rabbit looked at her for a little while, staring at her with an expression she was slowly becoming accustomed to but couldn't fully understand. She kept digging at her salad, spearing a carrot slice and popping it in her mouth, listening with perked ears as Juniper spoke. "Well, maybe it's not the memories that're cluttering your attic, Judy."

"What're you talking about?"

"You know, you've been drinking an awful lot lately. There're a lot of bottles around here, and don't think I only know about the ones you keep in the open. Maybe--."

"Not again, Juniper."

"Maybe you ought to come see us at the center, Judy. That's all I'm saying! It couldn't hurt anything if you just showed up on one of your days off."

"I should be going. I'll be late."

She made sure everything she needed was on her person before she stood up. Her lover had lowered her eyes, staring at her plate as though it was a gravestone; as she passed, Judy put her hand on Juniper's shoulder and kissed the top of her head. "Have a good day," she said, receiving no reply. The walk from the kitchen to the door seemed a lot longer than it should have been. Longer, she thought, than the bus ride from her building to the police department.

---

Judy placed a pair of dollar bills on the counter, and the beaver pushed the pair of small blueberry cappuccinos toward her. She thanked him and walked back to her cruiser. The district wasn't quite as full with people as she had expected it to be at this time of the day. Usually you couldn't get the space enough to shake a tail. She didn't mind it very much, but it was a very noticeable thing.

She opened the door with one finger, sliding into the driver's seat with a whisper of fabric. She proffered one of the cups to Nick, seeing that he was already enjoying a paw-shaped popsicle. "Where'd you get that?" she asked. He smiled at her, probably winking behind those mirror-tinted sunglasses.

"From a friend of a friend. You want one?"

He held up another popsicle, and she groaned as she showed him the two cups. "You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

"If that's the way you want to look at it, Carrots. How 'bout we both get one of each?"

"And how am I supposed to drive?"

"Simple. You don't, and you give me the steering wheel."

Judy chuckled and shook her head, narrowing her eyes as she looked up at the red fox. "Fat chance, Nick. You had your license revoked, remember? Which means you'd be committing another misdemeanor. I had to ask a personal favor just to keep you in the passenger seat."

"Well, worth a shot, wasn't it?"

Judy hummed, rubbing remnants of sleep out of her eyes, though it was already noon. She placed the two coffees in the cup holder between the seats and accepted a popsicle, eating it as fast as she dared. When the brain-freeze came, she accepted it as part of her own foolishness, but there wasn't a chance in hell she was going to drive with only one hand.

"Did you hear about our old buddy Dawn Bellwether?"

"Huh? What about her?"

"They found her hanging in her cell, wearing a bootlace scarf. The guard found her after he came back from his day off; apparently rigor mortis didn't look too good on her."

"It doesn't look good on anybody, Nick. Wait, wasn't there another guard on duty there? That's a big facility"

"Yeah, but the one guy that was stationed there was 'taking a leak at the time of the incident,' says the newspaper."

Judy made a face as she nibbled on the rest of her popsicle. "The paper really said it like that?"

"In so many words."

"Hmm." She didn't have anything further to say, couldn't think of anything further. She remembered the kind of person Dawn Bellwether was like at her graduation from the police academy, and the favors she had done for her during the missing mammals case a year ago, but it was hard for her to not think about the things that turned in that woman's mind. She remembered the look Bellwether had given her that night at the museum, when she had pulled away the meek assistant exterior and revealed the dark, grinning thing underneath. She was a woman who didn't care how many lives were put in danger or how much fear and panic she caused, as long as she attained her goal. She was everything the police department fought against.

"When they were ransacking her office during the investigation, you know what they found?" Nick said, adjusting his glasses. Judy didn't really want to know, but she didn't bother saying anything, knowing that he'd get it out anyway. "They found blueprints for shock collars, designed specifically for predators. They give a mild shock whenever the predator's blood pressure got too high, like, say, whenever they became angry or agitated."

"That's horrible!"

"What's horrible is that the collars were supposed to be legalized and distributed after a couple years of Bellwether's inauguration. She probably thought the city was going to be so terrified that they would have agreed to anything, even forced pacification."

Judy hummed and shook her head. She hadn't suspected Dawn's awfulness was such that it admitted shock collars, and she found herself wondering what other fantasies were twisting in the little sheep's mind while she sat in the mayor's chair. Her father would have explained it as "Some people are good, Judy, and some people are bad" and leave it at that, as though that one statement could account for some of the wickeder things that people do, why there are so many bad people in the world. Oh, sure, there were the good ones, but...

"Looks like rain today," she said, trying to change the subject.

"Whole families were supposed to wear them. Even little kids."

Nick's face was blank when she looked at him. She thought it looked like he was scowling, his eyebrows were so low, but it was hard to tell. "Well," she said quietly. "She can't do anything now, I guess." She set the popsicle stick down in the compartment beside the radio, the one she reserved for loose trash. She keyed the ignition and pulled out of the curb, casting a cautious eye at the other drivers.

"Good riddance," Nick muttered beside her. He looked out the window, his ear twitching. She gave him a nervous look, deciding it was best to not respond to that one. She knew it was better to just let the anger fizzle out with time.

The clouds were filling the sky, dark and swollen with impending rain, making liars out of the weather forecasters. She didn't want to roll up the windows just yet, enjoying the cool air passing through her fur. Her eyes stayed focused on the street in front of her and the people on the sidewalks, but her mind kept returning to the events of the morning.

Juniper didn't know what she was talking about; she knew she wasn't an alcoholic. Sure, she liked to have a little bit every now and then, but Juniper didn't know how hard her job was. She needed a little drink to vent off the pressure. One thing was for certain, though; she had the wits and will to keep from going overboard--she _never_crossed that line, no matter how bad the day had been.

She thought about the time she first met Juniper Ashcroft. She was following up the results of a case, and she was making sure the individual had actually gone to the drug and rehabilitation center as the courts had ordered him to. Juniper was the manager there, happy to be of any assistance, and Judy found that the deeper and deeper she got into a conversation with her the more her tongue started to stick to the roof of her mouth. Juniper was beautiful, and she seemed quite interested in Judy's profession. Judy, for her part, tried not to sound like she had a speech impediment every time their eyes met.

She remembered their first date at that meager restaurant in the Savannah district of the city, the way she tried to make sure everything was perfect. She thought she had scared her away until the next weekend came around, when Juniper called to tell her she had a great time and would she like to do it again sometime? And her heart nearly broke at that question as she fought to not scream her answer into the phone. That was around the same time she had made a mistake, the one thing she never allowed herself to do. She had forgotten a warrant when she needed it, and the offender had been acquitted of all charges. To twist the knife, she was slapped with a separate charge of slander.

Judy squinted at herself in the rearview mirror, her nose twitching. Was that when she started drinking?

"You know they're placing bets on us," Nick said, his anger suddenly gone.

"Huh?"

"At the precinct? There's a pool going to see whether or not we'll get together. Don't tell me you haven't heard about it, with ears like those."

"Yeah, I have. What's the pot at?"

"Eight hundred says we'll be married before next summer."

"Ha!" Judy chuckled. The streetlight just ahead turned red, and she slowed to a halt, the wheels settled perfectly on the white-painted bars. The first pellets of rain were starting to spatter the windshield, and she rolled up the window. Nick scratched at his nose, nibbling on his bare popsicle stick.

"Well, that is a lot of money. I know I could use a little of that."

"Nick..."

"I'm serious. We could hustle 'em out of the money and put a down payment on a nice house. Somewhere close to the sea or something."

"Stop it, Nick."

"Just something to consider," the fox shrugged. Judy looked at him, saw how withered he looked. She shook her head, her ears brushing against the roof of the cruiser.

"You know why we can't do that," she said after a while.

"Yeah, I do," he grumbled, crossing his arms like a child.

"No, not...it's because we're partners. Even if it wasn't a breach of conduct, it would still be too much. That kind of a relationship would deteriorate what we already have, Nick, and what we have is good enough. We're a solid team on the department, and that would...it just wouldn't work."

She didn't have to look at Nick to feel his eyes on her. She dared herself to keep looking straight ahead, but she couldn't help it. She gave Nick a consoling look, as if that alone would stop his optimistic advances. He turned away, the corner of his own nose twitching. "You look terrible, you know that?"

Judy scoffed, knowing that that bomb wouldn't be deterred for too long.

The radio crackled just then. Judy grabbed the CB and thumbed the trigger, giving the proper phrasing.

"We're getting reports of a jaguar in Baye Park causing a disruption and disturbing the peace. What's your ETA?"

Judy checked her watch, and then the time on the cruiser's digital display. She ran the distance in her mind. "We can be there in fifteen minutes."

"Copy that."

Judy flicked a switch on the dash's control panel, setting off the lights and the siren. People in the streets turned to stare as she accelerated, passing vehicles around her.

She felt Nick tap her shoulder. "Excuse me, Remington Steel, but you and I both know that that's a half-hour drive. How do you expect to get there in half the time?"

"By doing this."

Judy rammed her foot against the pedal, and the motor growled hungrily in appreciation. The cruiser ripped through the street, and she couldn't hold back a smile as she showed everyone how she completed the advanced driving course she had to go through during the academy. Nick gripped the side of his seat and fell into the cushion, muttering something about being too fast for her own good.

She thought about what kind of a disturbance this situation might entail. She hoped that it wouldn't be something too serious, something that wouldn't require a bit of legal documentation.

Shut up, she thought. She had to forget about that. It was one mistake, never again.

There was a crowd of people gathered in a loose ring when they got to Baye Park. There were the snaps and flashes of cameras and some loud muttering. When Judy and Nick got out, they could hear only one voice shouting over the crowd, scratch-filtered by a megaphone.

"We will not_be coerced and pushed into submission! We will _not be force fed the lies anymore! They have tried and tried to white-wash the truth, but they will not blind us anymore!"

"Oh, no," Nick muttered. Judy glanced up at him as they walked into the crowd, gently pushing the people aside.

"What?"

"I think I know this woman. Her husband was one of the predators that were targeted last year. She kind of...she never really got over what happened."

"What're you talking about? Didn't he get better?"

"Well, he did, but when he was under the influence of the flowers, he really tore some other people up. He couldn't deal with it, so he bit a .38 caliber sandwich. She blamed everything on the administration--She thinks there's some conspiracy against the predators in the city."

"Oh..." Judy bit her lip. She felt bad for the woman, and in all honesty she understood the woman's anger, but after the case last year she hated everything to do with conspiracies, specifically ones that were designed to instill fear and anger in the city. She ran her fingers over her pepper spray, hoping she wouldn't need to use it.

Judy gently placed her hand on a skunk, and seeing her uniform quickly stepped out of the way. She looked up and saw what once had been a tall, athletically built jaguar. Her hair fell over her wide eyes like a bramble pile. Her shirt was white and her pants were blue, but like her they seemed drained and ragged. Judy realized that she was looking at a woman that had been scoured by the world, and had decided to grow out her claws.

She saw that one hand was holding a megaphone, a rubber loop around her wrist, and the other was holding up a big sign. Since the sun was in her eyes, she couldn't tell what the sign was saying. But when she stepped into the shadow she found her jaw dropping.

The sign had a blown-up photograph of her face next to Dawn Bellwether's, red X's drawn over them, and one word in blood red, shakily written with evident hate: LIARS.

"They want us in collars! They want us in jails! They want us in chains and on buses out of the city! They are not going to stop until we stand up and fight!"

"Excuse me, ma'am. You're going to have to stop what you're doing and clear off the grounds."

The jaguar stopped shouting into her megaphone and turned her eyes down to Nick. The hate that filled her eyes looked like it was going to spill out of her ears like cherry jelly. When those eyes fell on Judy, her hand almost instinctively went to her pepper spray.

The jaguar twisted the megaphone in her hand and pointed an accusing finger at Judy. She saw how it shook in the air, like she was holding a gun and Judy was certain that if she did, the groundskeeper in the cemetery would be getting a lot of work in.

"You!" the jaguar shouted. "How dare you!"

"Please, ma'am. You'll have to leave the premises right now."

The jaguar, still holding her sign and megaphone, took a quick step toward Judy. Nick flew between the two women, his hand raised to hold off the offender. She jerked as she ran into his hand too quickly.

"Miss, please get off the--."

"Get off me!"

Before Judy could react, the jaguar had already pulled back her sign and swung at Nick. The board connected with his side, striking so hard that the thin wooden post snapped in half. He cringed backward and clutched at his side, a growl choking back in his throat. Judy ran between the fox's legs, adrenaline fueling her limbs; she grabbed the megaphone dangling from the jaguar's wrist and ran behind the big cat, trailing her hand. She grabbed the jaguar's forearm and leapt up, driving her foot into the back of her knee to bring her down.

She scrambled onto her back, bringing her other arm over. She grabbed her handcuffs from off her belt and slapped them on the jaguar's wrists. She could feel the cat rumbling beneath her and she wondered if she and Nick could actually subdue her.

"Get off me, you filthy bitch!" the jaguar screamed at her.

"Come on..."

Nick was still holding his side, his lips peeled back in a snarl, when he came around and took the woman by the shoulders and began leading her to the cruiser. She flailed her head like a wild animal, catching Judy on the nose. She jumped off of the cat, her hand raised to her mouth to make sure her teeth were where they should be. The crowd was still watching, but she tried to ignore them and their whisperings. She caught Nick doing a good job of informing the perpetrator of her rights, though he hadn't yet explained why they were about to haul her in.

The outer edge of the crowd was already dispersing, but the inner circle remained enthralled by the brief spot of violence. Judy told them that there was nothing further to see here, and that seemed to work.

Before she began following Nick, she looked at the signboard the woman had been holding. She remembered the two photos as being taken for a magazine that came out a year ago. She looked at the photo, at her bright and upturned smile, and saw that her eyes had been ripped out. She felt a cold thorn twisting in her back before she bent down and grabbed the signpost for evidence.

One count for disturbing the peace and two for assaulting a police officer. No, she would deny the second count. The jaguar was a disturbed woman, but she was still just trying to live her life.

Judy wondered if she had any children. That would just twist the knife even further.

She tossed the two halves of the signpost and the megaphone into the cruiser's trunk and slammed it shut, taking a deep breath. The angel-piss drizzle had already grown into fat, heavy drops that stung through her fur, the sound of distant thunder like the bellowing of some great beast. This day was going well; only eight more hours left of the shift. It wasn't the worst day she'd ever experienced, but...

Judy climbed up into the driver's seat, sighing again. She checked to see if there was an entry into the street, and she checked her mirror--she caught the jaguar's eyes, months of hate filling every corner, and she looked away.

"Having fun?" she said to Nick, a bit wearily. He smiled at her, but the smile quickly vanished. He suddenly started digging into his front pants pocket, struggling to take out a handkerchief. He handed it to her, and she looked at it blankly.

"What's that for?"

"You might want to wipe your nose, Carrots."

She looked around at the side mirror, seeing red spattering her nose and descending down in a ribbon over her top lip like a thin scarlet moustache, falling to the next. "Huh," she muttered. She grabbed the handkerchief and held it up to her face. She didn't think the jaguar had hit her that hard.

"I'd do worse to you," the jaguar growled in the back, glaring nuclear death at her. Judy's voice was muffled behind the kerchief, trying to sound serious.

"Ma'am, I don't know why you don't like me, but I'm just doing my job. You did something wrong, and I have to bring you in. It's that simple."

"Life isn't simple, bitch."

Judy gave another sigh, breathing into the fabric and switching on the windshield wipers. Eight more hours...