Zootopia: ZPD Mysteries: Case #4: The Curse of The Pirate's Eye

Chapter 3: The Pirate's Eye

There was only one method by which ships came into Zootopia, and it was where Nick, Judy, Jack and Skye were all now standing.

The district known as the Marshlands was an area with simultaneous great wealth and great poverty. Of the three roughest areas of town, the Marshlands were by far the roughest: home to many gangs and ghettos who all managed to coexist in a peaceful hostility. In some areas were healthy, wealthy neighborhoods marked by beautiful homes and well-kept riverboat houses. In others were rundown and decrepit streets, marked by exposed plumbing and cracked pavement. In some places classical music could be heard wafting out over the streets from streetlamp-mounted speakers. In other places, this classical music was drowned out by the blastings of ghetto blasters bombarding their listeners with Krock Lamar's slightly iffy rapping.

Even the gangsters, however, couldn't bring down the unusual beauty of the swamps, with their enormous white-barked mangrove trees stretching up from the tops of the low buildings like the legs of a million pale spiders, and the long, eerie vines that hung from them like threads from a giant spider web. Some of the houses were even built in the branches of these enormous mangroves, wanting to stay above the ghetto blasters and bad smells of swamp gas. Others, such as the esteemed Senator Timrek's house, were floating abodes that maneuvered all over the swamp, from the silted river Murky to the edge of the Zootopia Sound. Although some said that they came for affordable housing and a good job in the harbor just a stone's throw away, it was the hot, muggy, steamy climate that attracted animals such as reptiles from the hot, distant north to live here.

The Marshlands hadn't always been so rough. In fact, it was one of the nicest parts of town at one point. However, because of the Port of Zootopia right on the edge of the district, which funneled in immigrants and commerce from all over the Free Lands and all over the world, the district soon became overcrowded, and those who couldn't find available housing soon built their own from whatever they could put together, spawning the unusual, cobbled-together ghettos that were less of a dangerous place to be and more of an odd place to be. Although improvement had long been assured by some of the alternative energy groups (promising swamp gas as an efficient fuel source), the economic quality of the Marshlands somehow remained at a stable, if deeply divided level.

It wasn't like there was unemployment, after all. All available animals from the Marshlands, from amphibians to mammals to reptiles, were required at the docks day in and day out, either as part-time or as full-time laborers. So, perhaps "ghetto" wasn't the best way to describe the Marshlands, but rather, "a modest place with little lighthouses of wealth."

It was at the Port of Zootopia, Bayou Bay Harbor, on Pier 8, that Nick, Judy, Jack and Skye all stood, speaking with their only lead so far in their quest to stop the Krakens, with Judy writing it all down on her trusty ZPD-issue notepad.

It was also here that Jack was growing increasingly frustrated with their lead's rather ridiculous vocabulary.

"So you're the captain of this ship; the Unicorn's Revenge?" Jack asked.

The captain, a large black Newfoundland dog dressed in a bright blue sweater and black pants under his dark jacket, stood straight as he messed with the pipe in his mouth. The little tobacco-filled pipe chuffed out thin curls of smoke like a tiny ship's stack. The captain's black-and-gold insulated jacket was apparently making him uncomfortable on this moderately hot morning, as he continually adjusted it, trying to look professional and comfortable as possible. (He didn't do a very good job). The hat he wore, the same colors as his jacket, clearly displayed his name as "Captain Archibald Maddox."