The Long Game, A Zootopia Fanfiction

Fixer Upper

Disclaimer: Zootopia and all related characters are owned by Disney. All other characters, product names, trademarks, and copyrights, belong to their respective owners.

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It was a beautiful morning for a run, he'd almost tried to sneak into one of the media rooms and bury himself in a couch and catch another hour of sleep, but his inner rabbit wanted to get out of the house and get some exercise. Nick rounded the path and headed up to the porch of the house. 'Inner rabbit, yeah right,' his outer fox was panting a lot more than it should be after only an hour of running, he needed to get back into a regular workout schedule, being injured and 'moseying' around with Buckstein hadn't been good for him.

After walking the last hundred yards of his run as a warm down, Nick stopped where his car was parked in front of the house. Pausing for a few moments, Nick rubbed his paw along the driver's side door and smiled, Lucas had done a fantastic job of cleaning off the graffiti, and the car's exterior looked better than when Finn had gotten it detailed out.

Nick was about to head into the house when he noticed a placard resting on the dashboard in front of the steering wheel. Looking through the windshield, Nick chuckled at what it said.

'This Car Protected by Sunni Hopps!'

The placard also had some pretty scary artwork on it too. It looked like Sunni had found a picture of a spear-wielding, prehistoric rabbit, like the one Judy and he had seen in the museum when Bellwether's henchmammals were chasing them, and pasted the picture right next to the warning. Nick nodded in satisfaction, the next mammal to try and mess with his car was going to find themselves in some severe trouble with a doe that meant business.

Walking into the house, Nick spied something new. On the large board of hooks used to hold all of the warren's vehicle keys, in the lower right corner, there was a new hook with the name Nick written right above it, and on the hook were his car keys with a brand new mini-carrot keychain.

Nick brushed the plastic carrot and ran his thumb across his name, written in permanent ink on the board, and smiled. He remembered that his mom and dad had a similar board in their kitchen, and his dad had his own special hook for his keys there too.

Just before his inner bunny started to get overly emotional at what Sunni had done, Nick's thoughts were interrupted by voices coming from the kitchen.

"Mom, no. Torrie and I have already paid for our fall semester classes, we'll find a place."

Another doe's voice chimed in, "Yeah, I saw an ad for a place, and I left the landlord a message to call us back so we can go see it. It's a small-mammal studio, and if we skip the furniture and use sleeping bags, we might all fit."

Nick made a face as he heard the voices coming from a phone with its speaker turned on, surrounded by a group of teen or older rabbits, and Bonnie.

Colton looked up at Nick as he walked in and said into the phone, "Hey, Tonya, Torrie, Nick's here. Maybe he can help, he seems to always know a guy."

Nick leaned over the counter and spoke into the phone, "Hey there, uh, Tonya? What do you need help with?"

"Hi Nick, my littermate Torrie, and a couple of my brothers, Phillip and Paul, we're all looking for a place that we can rent together. Torrie and I are going to be Sophomores at the University of Northern Zootopia, and we really can't afford to stay in the dorms another year, and my brothers are trying to get into the fix and flip business. None of us have a lot for rent, so we want to room together."

Pausing for a moment, Tonya sighed and then continued, "Nick, we've spent two weeks going from place to place all over the city. The landlords seem nice on the phone, but as soon as the four of us show up to take a tour, they brush us off, or the rent suddenly goes up, or the place is suddenly already rented. None of our friends are having problems finding a place like we are, any ideas?"