Zootopia: Try Everything, Try Anything

Partners Above the World

Note: This is a continuation of the story from First Kiss and Recovery Operation

"Nick, what are we?"

"Hmm?" Nicholas P. Wilde looked up from the remaining half of the sandwich he had been happily munching on for the past few minutes. Well, technically he looked down and to his left, at the tiny rabbit sitting beside him with her legs dangling beyond the metal railing that his elbows were resting on. His partner was a good foot or two shorter than the red fox was, even when sitting down. Especially while sitting down.

"I don't know what we are." Judy Hopps threw her question into the wind, along with the crumbs of her own veggie burger she had just finished nibbling into oblivion. She watched the tiny little cubes fall between her feet and onto the roofing tiles several feet below them.

Her partner of several months leaned down and placed his elbow on top of her head affectionately. "Well, last I checked you were a rabbit," he quipped, that iconic smug smile on his face. "And I'm pretty sure I'm a fox," he added.

Judy let out a frustrated grunt. "You know what I mean." He did, she thought. It was just so typical of him to be so deflective and evasive about serious conversational subjects. And when it came to the odd couple, this was as serious as it got.

She looked down at the traffic below them. Several hundred feet below them, that is. The pair were on their final break, minutes before they went off duty as members of the Zootopia Police Department. Previously, they had responded to a domestic disturbance at one of the ultra-posh condominiums downtown. It had turned out to be a minor misunderstanding, a combination of a loud, spirited discussion and ever-nosy neighbors. Judy could relate, her apartment walls being so thin that she could actually conduct conversations with her antelope neighbors through the thin, plaster walls of her room.

The pair decided to spend the rest of their shift finally consuming that hour-long break they had neglected to take earlier in the day. Judy, being the straight-laced cop that she was, had expected to spend it just parked in the alleyway behind the condominium, chilling in the cold air of their police cruiser while munching on some donuts.

Nick had other ideas.

Somehow, he had managed to lure her up to the roof deck of the tall, fifty-some story residential building. Under the guise of 'seeing the view from above', he convinced her to take the elevator all the way up to the top floor, which was indeed more of a deck than a formal building floor, missing a ceiling for most of the walkable area. It was there that Nick then prodded her to climb up some authorized access-only stairs that led to an even higher deck above what was supposed to be the highest floor, according to the elevator. Actually, Judy realized, that was probably the access floor for the machinery that powered the high-speed elevators. She was all ready to call it quits and just tell her adventurous partner to come back down with her but apparently, he still wasn't finished.

On top of the tiny extra level that housed the elevator motors, was a very tall water tower. It was huge, much bigger than most towers Judy had seen. It was definitely larger than the one on top of her own apartment building. Then again, it was a fifty-some floor condominium, probably housing at least a thousand or so denizens of varying shapes and sizes, and those mammals had to need quite a lot of water. And this up here, was the only place to store it, above the homes where gravity aided distribution to the residents. Upon reaching the top, Judy realized that the tower was firmly bolted to the very corner of the building, in a way that allowed them to stand within the safety of the railing and let their legs dangle with nothing but the city streets below to catch them if they fell.

Nick further surprised her by revealing a packed set of sandwiches and surprisingly cold drinks, something she didn't even notice him bringing with him when they first came up. So that was how they ended up sitting there, above the bustling city of Zootopia, watching the people go about their daily lives as the sun decided to come back down.