Wilde Card (Zootopia Original Story)

5: EweTube

Song: All I Need, Jake Bugg

The sun was blocked by clouds above the city as Judy drove Nick to work the next morning. He asked her how her niece and nephew were. Her ears were folded against her back. "I had to call Becca. I felt horrible."

"It wasn't your fault, carrots."

"But they're not safe now. And what's worse is they know it. Bug said there was someone working at his school as a teacher-in-training for one day. One day, Nick? Even he knows it doesn't work like that!"

Whether it worked like that or not, Bug's paranoia was evident.

They came to stop a red light. Judy sighed as she leaned her head into the seat, and looked over at the fox. "What's happening with Flayre?"

"I haven't seen her yet. She texted me last night—"He pulled his phone from his pocket—"'Hi, dad. I'm still alive. I'll be back to get my stuff later. The gadgets here are so cool, I'm so lucky. Wow,'" he read monotonously.

Judy couldn't help but smile. "At least she's having a good time." The light turned green. The car rolled forward.

"But is she mature enough to know the severity of what she's doing? This is the ZSS we're talking about, not some geeky gadget shop."

"I think that she and Konni are safer with them. And she can figure it out. Remember that her mother was..."

"Don't," Nick began, shaking his head, "don't remind me..."

Judy apologised. The rest of the drive was silent except for the rumble of the engine and rhythm of passing traffic.

The cheetah, Officer Benjamin Clawhauser was sitting at the desk at reception as usual. "Hopps, Wilde, you two are not gonna believe this!"

They both exclaimed their confusion as they hurried up to the desk. Clawhauser gestured for Judy to hop up onto the tall desk so she could see: she did, gratefully. Clawhauser turned his monitor to face them: CCTV footage of a police raid on a bunker in what looked like the Nocturnal Ranges.

"There was a raid on one of the Herrenvore rebels' bunkers!" Clawhauser tried to whisper. He pressed 'play'.

A brown-furred wolf was running out of the building, a gun in his paws, his ears perked. He started arguing with an almost-wingless, anthropomorphic Vampire Bat, who slapped his gun away and pushed him against a van. He reached for his throat, gripping. A cheetah among the group seemed to shout at him to stop, and the bat said something, before they all piled quickly into the van.

"That's it?" Nick asked.

"Who were those guys?" Judy added.

"Well, they weren't rebels, that's for sure," Clawhauser began, "they're predators, which means that... I dunno."

"It means that the rebels aren't working alone." Nick concluded.

~

At 10:03 am that very morning, the Herrenvore rebels posted a video on EweTube.

The video depicted three unseen women asking simple questions to Konni about the state of Zootopia's predator-to-prey relations. They were prey, it was made obvious by their hands in the video as they reached toward the lion with microphones. He responded rudely; dodging the questions and claiming that he was 'quite busy at the moment'. The questions continued, one in particular asking if he thought any disputes between predators and prey in the public eye would be dangerous to society. His response was 'if you want to see a danger to society, look in the mirror'. It was a scandal! He'd made a personal verbal attack against a prey animal! Where had he learned this hatred? It was obvious, wasn't it?

His father: the mayor.

In the ZPD, a room of cyber affairs officers sat in an air-conditioned computer room with a good level of Wi-Fi. Once the video had been released, they tried their best to track it and remove it from EweTube.

The ZSS had their own room of agents working on the uploaded video. Flayre had just entered with Agent Tone. It was larger, with black blinds drawn to conceal the cloudy sky and the fastest internet Flayre had ever seen. They were bound to have more success than the police. "It's just been posted," Tone said.

Flayre watched intently: the otherwise-dim room was ablaze with blue lights from every computer screen at every desk. The clickity-clack of the plastic from paws and hooves was almost the only thing audible. Concentrated eyes bore into screens.

Tone led the young fox to a desk at the front, a zebra was sitting at it who wasn't typing as fast as the others. She looked to her left and right; conscious of this fact. "This is Agent Tabitha Brannbolt."

"Sorry, Tone, I'm struggling a bit: I've never been good with EweTube."

"Would you like me to help?" Flayre offered, but a glance at the screen showed her she wouldn't have a clue either. What even was that software?

"I've got a name!" Someone shouted from the back of the room. Tone hurried over. Tabitha smiled shyly at Flayre, nodding at her to follow him.

"The account name is Heron4 – clearly an acronym for Herrenvore – but I've tracked the account's owner and it's someone named 'Bethany Spruce'."
He was a mix between an Arctic and Red Fox. His fur was patched with white and bluey-grey, and he had black ear tips and blueish patches around his bright blue eyes.

"Nicely done, Quicksilver!" Tone praised, beaming. "Flayre, this is Agent E. Agate Bleren, AKA Quicksilver. You can guess why we call him that."

Flayre smiled at Agate, impressed.

~

Bug sat on a bench outside. It was break time (recess), but he didn't feel like playing like he usually did. He felt like he was a character in a movie where something serious had happened, and he couldn't do anything the same way ever again.

"Benjamin?" His sister called. She was probably the only one who didn't call him 'Bug'. She sat next to him on the small, painted wooden bench, her little white legs hanging from it. "You're still thinking about it, aren't you?"

He nodded. "I am too. But Auntie Judy will protect us."

Jade was two years younger than Bug. Her happy-go-lucky demeanour was thriving. But Bug had been unsettled since the day before, when the Polar bear had walked into his classroom. "Yeah..." He said distantly with a half-smile. He didn't want to make Jade feel unsafe, even if he'd had an almost sleepless night himself.

Jade turned her brother to look at her and when she saw her brother's brown eyes, she gasped. "What?" He asked, his ears perking.

Jade giggled. "There, you're back!" Jade couldn't perk her ears – she'd taken the Lop genetics from her father – so whenever Bug's ears drooped, she knew there was a problem. Shocking him seemed to do the trick. Benjamin smiled, grateful for the distraction.

A weasel kicked over a tennis ball. "Wanna play catch, Bug?" He asked.

Bug stood up and shook himself. "Okay." His sister watched him leave, smiling to herself.

If only the adults' jobs were as simple.

Meanwhile, Judy and Nick were watching as a buck they didn't recognise knocked on the door of Chief Bogo's office. The video had already been dealt with by the ZSS, so who was this? He didn't look like a civilian. But he was the least of their worries. They focused on drinking their coffee as the sun shone through the ZPD's windows. They deserved a few moments of peace and quiet.