Zootopia: The Visitor

Keep Your Friends Close

[Nick]

  "C'mon Judy, I promise from the bottom of my heart, I was going to tell you. He and I ran into each other late last night. I needed to wait for the right moment. How was I supposed to approach the situation?" I whined at her.

  Judy stood with her arms folded again, annoyed that I hadn't immediately contacted her when I'd met Luke, which in my opinion, was unfair.

  She wore her casual clothing, pink shirt and blue skinny jeans. I could tell by the look on her face that she wasn't nearly through with me yet.

  Luke himself sat on the couch, watching Judy and I battle it out. I couldn't tell for sure, but he seemed to be enjoying himself quite a bit in the midst of our argument. I thought the the whole thing was stupid, but Judy wasn't going to back down.

  "You didn't know 'how?' Oh, I'll tell you how. It's as simple as picking up your phone, finding my name, and pressing 'call,'" she batted. "Seriously, Nick? We're partners, and friends. You couldn't trust me enough to think I would be able to handle it? I thought you knew me better than that."

  "I know. You're right, and I'm sorry. I should have known better," I admitted.

  She seemed somewhat surprised at my submission, and her anger faded. "Yeah, you should've, but we've got more important things to worry about at the moment."

  "Like me?" Luke sat forward.

  Judy turned toward him. "Yes, but you're not what I came for. I'll get to you in a minute," she said, facing me again. "The attack last night? It was the bear again, but when we arrived at the scene, we realized that somebody had taken him away."

  My ears perked up. "Wait, you mean like what happened to Mr. Manchas and the others three months ago?"

  Judy nodded. "Seems that way."

  "I'm sorry, who's Mr. Manchas?" Luke asked, as he obviously hadn't been present during the events which we spoke of.

  "You think I should explain the whole thing to him?" I asked for Judy's approval.

  "Sure, just make it quick."

  I turned toward Luke. "Okay, so about four months ago, exactly fourteen mammals went missing. Two entire weeks passed, and the police couldn't even find one. I assume that this is right about the time that you arrived?" I looked back at Judy, who confirmed with another nod.

  I continued. "Yeah, so that's when Carrots over here came into the picture, as a fresh cop. Upon her first day, she was assigned parking duty by her police chief, Bogo. I know this because she met me on that day-"

  "Nick, that's all great information for another time. Let's get to the point here," she hurried me along.

  "Right. Anyway, let's just say that she convinced me to help her find out what had happened to a particular mammal, an otter named Emmitt. In the process of this search, we were brought to a guy named Mr. Manchas, a panther who lived in the Rainforest District. When we tried to talk to him though, he essentially went savage for reasons we didn't yet know and tried to kill both of us. We were lucky enough to get him chained up on a canopy, but during the ordeal I was knocked off, and would've fallen to my death had Judy not saved me. When we made it back up, Manchas had been taken by former-Mayor Lionheart's secret service."

  Luke, who had been listening intently seemed to understand. "That's right, I think I overheard a reporter talking about that while wandering around yesterday. Something about more 'animals-gone-savage,' as if this isn't the first time something like that has happened here, which would explain why you kept thinking that the wolf and the bear had once been 'sentient' like us."