The Fire Triangle, A Zootopia Fanfiction -- Part One

The Fire Triangle, A Zootopia Fanfiction -- Part One: Fuel - 111

Disclaimer: Zootopia stories, characters, settings, and properties belong to the Walt Disney Co. This story is written under Fair Use Copyright laws.

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The Fire Triangle—A Zootopia Fanfiction

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Part One:

Fuel

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Chapter 13 –Facts are Stubborn Things
(Continued...Part 6)

"Whoo-hoo, stand back losers, coz we...are...HERE!"

A chorus of squeaks, whistles, and chitters greeted the Maschay brothers as they pulled their vehicle around the corner and into the clearing, the two of them throwing triumphant fists in the air. None of the responses were derisive; the gerbils' declaration had been playfully meant and everyone had taken it as such. They were, in fact, two of the more popular members of Team Dragon Wasp.

Team...

There were many things the ZPD still didn't know about Zootopia's outlaw-drone crowd —and they wouldn't have liked it if they did. A year ago the 'drodents,' a term first coined by Chief Bogo, had started to form actual clubs. More recently, the practice had given way to another one, illegal drone racing. That was why the Maschay brothers were here tonight, along with what looked like half the youth population of Little Rodentia. The flag was about to drop on the biggest competition of the summer so far...the Ficus Gap Midnight Run.

The meeting place for the contest was 'Trollbooth' Park, the unofficial name for a place that had no official name. Not much to look at, it was little more than a flat expanse of broken pavement on the Savanna Central side of the Serpentine, the nearly vertical line of hills separating it from the Rainforest District. To the west, a towering, V-shaped canyon, with deep-gray walls stretched away into the darkness. This was the Ficus Gap Gorge, the divide that separated Serpentine North from Serpentine South...and also the course for tonight's race. Strewn out along the floor of the canyon were remnants of the old Ficus Grove Toll road.

In times long past, if you had wanted to travel quickly between Savanna Central and The Rainforest District, the tollway had been your only option. Eventually, with the construction of the Mongoose River tunnel, the thoroughfare had fallen into disuse and disrepair. By the time the ZTA light-rail system had come online, it was little more than a distant, weed-choked memory. The one time the city had considered refurbishing it, the plan had quickly been discarded. In the words of one surveyor, the Ficus Gorge cliff-sides were, 'a rockslide, waiting to happen.' And so, instead of repaving the tollway, the city had closed the canyon to all access, erecting high fences, topped with razor-ribbon, at either end. And just to make certain the purpose of these barriers was well understood, they were plastered with warning signs in four different languages—complete with graphics.

That was fine for keeping cars and pedestrians out; access from the air was another matter.

By rights, that should have presented another problem for the drodents, at least if they want to run this race at night; the possibility of an encounter with a bat in the middle of a race. Not necessarily; the Ficus Gap Gorge was a winding, meandering canyon. Why fly through The Serpentine, when you could hop straight over it in less than half the time? Those hills might be steep but they were far from insurmountable.