The holding cells located further to the rear of police headquarters were filled to the brim with all the criminals that came and left. It was fitted with over twenty cells each on the left and right against a murky chartreuse wall with pine green and white stripes going across the middle. Judy could see at the very end was the familiar sight of Duke Weaselton, wearing the same clothes as before and holding a nervous discussion with an indirectly-sized-by-comparison rhinoceros named Connor Deacon who appeared to be disgruntled with his chatty-catty ways of explaining his motus-operandi.
"Did you know I used to sell pirated Blu-Rays? I even got movies that hadn't been released yet."
Of course, the ones that had not been released yet were different films, which seemed to lose the trust of his customers. Some who already knew they were fake ignored his vendor cries of declaring their (in)authenticity. Several others like a certain Nick Wilde called him the "Duke of Bootleg", but right now he was not a king of anything aside from the pale pink toothpick that he held in his left incisor. Indeed, the fox himself, aided by the bunny, duck and dog were approaching him in a gentlemanly fashion. Connor turned his attention to the window, already knowing that they were aiming for duke when he heard Nick say.
"Well, well, if it isn't the Duke of Bootleg."
Duke, disdained by the sight of this gentlemanly version of the con-fox he had often seen frequently around the block, used his right hand to remove the toothpick, angrily belittling him.
"Wha's it to you, motherfucker? Shouldn't you be melting down a pawpsicle or somethin'?"
Then his crimson eyes went to Judy, Goofy and Donald, smiling spitefully.
"Well, if it isn't Flopsy the Copsy and some other guests who seem to know me."
Judy crossed her arms in a reversal of Nick's shit eating grin, carrying a blasé tone of demand. Being a female, she would go easy on him before the masculine side of her went into full action of beating him up.
"We both know those were not onions I caught you stealing the other day, they were night howlers."
She leaned in by fifteen to twenty degrees, squinting her eyes by four inches. When Duke seemed to lower his smile, he was unable to reply when Judy asked again.
"What were you going to do with them?"
Duke wagged the toothpick in his right index and middle fingers, playfully.
"I ain't talking."
Fortunately on their part, Connor had widened his eyes at the sight of a duck in a cape and fedora through the three bar window, the cape blocking out the natural light of the cell into darkness. Nick, Judy, Donald and Goofy faltered at the sight, stepping back by a foot. Donald, surprised at seeing another member of his species since when they had first arrived, took two steps closer to the figure and before anyone could even think about doing anything else to Duke, the figure released his hands from the bars and jumped down between Connor and the weasel.
"I'm looking for one Quackerjack," the masked avenger narrowed his eyes.
Duke seemed to be familiar with the name, but with his eyes darting left all the way to the edge, he chose to lie.
"If you're looking for a crackerjack, buddy, go to an amusement park. I think you'd make a good character in that get up."
The masked duck's hands went from open to closed and his webbed feet stood on the toes. They left the ground along with the rest of his body in a magnificent leap to the weasel and with the strength of his hands, he grabbed the straps of Duke's tank top, pinning him to the bars.
"Don't get smart with me, Duke Weaselton, I know you were with the jester when he was harvesting night howlers."
His head leaned in by five inches, their eyes making direct contact with one another.
"Or so my files say."
Duke gulped and his Adam's apple bobbed at the duck's eyes inching to him on a menacing rate of an impending doom. He did not dare to suffer any consequence of what unspeakable tortures the figure known as Darkwing Duck would inflict upon him; whipping, quartering, tarring, feathering, you name it. So this time he spoke the truth in a quivering, almost "lippy" voice.
"Quackerjack needed me to get the flowers for his toys so that he could use those kids or whoever bought those as his own personal army or something to get rid of you."
But Darkwing was not impressed, his grip was tighter than before.
"I could figure that out by myself. Anything else?"
Duke tried to find his breath and the impatient Darkwing shook him up and down four times with a louder voice to go with it.
"When was the last time you spoke to him?"
"About two days ago, when he called me to get another batch of flowers, and I did before that bunny had to go and fuck it up."
Judy turned her focus away from Duke by turning her head eight degrees to the right and hoped that she did not hear his profane words.
"A ram who'd heard about the deal offered me money. His name is Doug Rameses. We got a drop spot underground. Just watch it. Doug is the opposite of friendly: he's unfriendly."
The weasel's words seemed to have convinced Darkwing, who with a satisfied smile, released his grip on Duke and the prisoner fell on his behind to the floor. Judy resumed to interrogate him again from behind her side of the bars.
"Where is this drop spot and is there an entrance?"
Duke turned to face her.
"Pick a subway entrance, any subway entrance. But I'll reckon you three that the closest to their laboratory's gonna be at the Banyan Street Station. Place went out of business ten years ago when built a new tunnel for the A, B and C trains."
"Thanks for the info," Darkwing smiled slyly in a way that could supersede Nick's. "I'll be happy to escort you there."
"Sure," Duke nodded. "But I don't think I'd want to confront him after failing to get his high howlers on time."
Darkwing's right foot slammed on Duke's chest and a surging mixture of oxygen and pain went through windpipe, forcing him to gasp for air. His vision, falling down to look up at the ceiling, was met by discontented face of Darkwing, looking down at him.
"Not you, cunt...them."
He extended his right hand towards Nick, Judy, Donald and Goofy, who smiled in return. Judy spoke first.
"Of course, we would be happy if you could take us to the Banyan Station."
"Or we could use the map app on your phone," Nick added.
Darkwing turned his head over his left shoulder to the window of light where he had come from, turning back to the quartet as he said.
"I'll meet you outside."
And he did, by crouching his legs as far as he could and leaping with open hands to grasp the wall, extending his arms over the edge which dragged his upper body to the other side and landed in a bush that broke his fall. Then he rushed over the Ratcatcher with the intention of driving the party of four all the way to the station...but he could have sworn to have seen a pair of silver bells hiding in the bushes.
After staring at the ceiling for three minutes, traumatized by the visit, Duke heard another voice. His thought told him that he was going insane, but the voice sounded very real and very familiar.
"And to think I trusted you with deliveries."
From the same window where Darkwing Duck had leapt from, came the somersaulting figure of Quackerjack, who landed on his feet, arms crossed and with a smile that spelled death for his victims. Duke could only gulp as he asked timidly.
"You heard?"
"I heard everything through my listening device. Doesn't come in custom colors, so I painted mine red and purple...out of my own personal tastes."
And just like Darkwing before him, he gripped Duke's straps, this time holding him with his legs still on the floor like a ragdoll.
"Now tell me, is there anything else about Doug Ramses that I should also know about?"
"Well, he's got a lot of contacts, a couple of friends, very little relatives and he copied your night howler gun."
But instead of an angry glare that some rouge criminal had plagiarized his technology, Quackerjack curled the muscles of his lips into a tight grin of evil.
"Well, isn't that coincidence? Here we are talking about some ram who copied my invention and I didn't even have to shut Manchas up with Mr. Big's permission....he, ha, ha, ha...Makes you want to laugh, doesn't it?"
He released Duke from his grip, turned clockwise to the window and leapt out in a more professional display compared to Darkwing's as he laughed and laughed his heart out, leaving the poor weasel traumatized for unwittingly helping an insanely homicidal jester in turning the children of his city into little monsters of sin.
The lonely entrance to the Banyan Street Station stood on the sidewalk next to an abandoned warehouse of bricks and dusty windows. The floral designed exterior was originally a darker shade of lush green, but the decade of abandonment turned the color into a faded turquoise. Above the bostwick gate of a doorway was a black screen with "Banyan Street Station" in white and below it was the letter "A" in indigo, "B" in maroon and "C" in orange. A particular shade of orange that accurately matched one gone rotten with the smear of black dust encircling it. On the gate was a sign of white and red, tilted at about ten degrees to the right that said "STATION CLOSED" in black bold letters.
Nick, Judy, Goofy and Donald passed a rhino on the phone and quietly approached the scissors gate that was rusted from age around the screws that flexed the bars. Darkwing sighed as he announced to his new companions who had been riding in the sidecar.
"Well here we are, and I didn't even have to use my GPS."
Donald shot a bolt of lightning from his mage's staff to the lock on the gates, which burst into a two second light of white. Released from the gates, the lock dangled for a second and the pendulum swing of the very object that held the gated door closed fell to the floor. Darkwing pushed the gates asides with both hands, allowing Goofy to go in first, Donald second, Nick third and Judy in fourth while he himself was the last to go and left quickly before there were any other chances of his cape getting caught on the scissors.
In what used to be a bustling metro station with seven lights forming a crescent on an alcove, the party of five travelled down thirty-nine steps to an antechamber of ruin with two lights glowing orange on the left and one on the bottom right. From a turnstile long since underused, the lights of an express train passed a rusty orange carriage decorated with illegible graffiti and markings from stolen school supplies. The passengers on that train were unaware of the source of the night howler plague coming from that car, but not the five whose's objective
"That must be it," Goofy whispered.
With the sounds of the wheels rolling away from her ears, Judy took the lead towards the car, peering her eyes through a window to a light of purple and pink mixed with red. She looked down at a lonely blue wire hanging off the other side with a group of four other wires in red and black leading down to two rows of a night howler garden under a pink florescent light. One hundred flowers on the left and another hundred on the right added up to two hundred night howlers in a brown earth of fertilizer. Judy jumped down, remaining on tip toe as Nick and the others followed her and her quiet compliments.
"The weasel wasn't lying."
Nick nodded his head.
"Yeah, it looks like old Doug's cornered the market on Night Howlers."
Before Darkwing, Goofy or Donald could state their opinions, they stopped at the sound of a door opening at a loud crash into the wall and without further questioning, Judy and Nick ducked under the left row while the three misfits took the right. From her vantage point, she could see the rear of a ram wearing a mustard yellow suit that looked too seventies for a laboratory use. The ram, believed in her mind to be Doug, strapped on a gas mask and breathed slowly as he lifted a garbage can of buds. Judy crawled over by five steps to see him dumping the content into a vat of liquid (she could tell by the way they splashed into the pot), following by a flushing sound before he shut the lid turned the dial with his right hand.
Sniffing the air, Judy watched a liquid of a night blue color travelling through a system of flexibly invisible pipes that were held from loop fasteners. The liquid circulated through the pipes at a rapid rate with about six or seven drops at first before rest of the liquid came as a whole. It came down into a small chemistry set of a miniature tank, up and down a thin pipe into a round tube, through another small pipe into a glass kettle on a tiny stove and up through a straw like dipper where it turned indigo and drop by drop, landed into a miniaturized jar that was half empty on top of a pine green device.
Doug placed a one-inch orb of glass into a steel holder with his left hand, while his right pulled back a black rubber lever and released it along with the indigo liquid into what was known to scientists as a pellet. Holding it in-between his right index finger and thumb, Doug's eyes peered at the marvel of his creation: the thought that such a tiny object could cause a predator to go primitive and violent beyond any control of his own awareness.
Then the door opened again...to reveal the surprising figure of Quackerjack with his hands curled into a fist and filled with rage in his heart, mind and soul, yet more civilized compared to the victims gone savage. Doug slowly removed his mask in caste the jester would try anything funny, like killing him for example.
"Ain't it always the way? You trust a certain weasel and then he decides to stab you in the back for the oldest of all reasons...greed."
Doug's face remained unconcerned. He was familiar with Quackerjack through news reports, but he didn't know too much about the criminal as evidenced by what he said next.
"I thought you found tricks amusing, Quackerjack."
"Me?" Quackerjack asked by putting his right hand on his heart in a feminine way. "Tricks can be good sometimes, but not when somebody plagiarizes your work."
"I know; Duke gave me the blueprints to your pellet gun."
"In which Duke himself told me about your 'grand scheme," he said this with air quotes. "I had a feeling you were the cause of all this, especially that otter I heard about in the papers."
"Yes," Doug added with a casual tone. "I hit him through the open door of a car."
In her mind, Judy could see Emmitt opening the door for some fresh that would lead to a mistake of his life, one that would put him in the mindset of his forefathers. Quackerjack then proceeded to reveal his own discovery that would put him in police custody once Judy exposed the mention of his following action to the press.
"Well what a coinky-dink, I hit a jaguar that I know of who I thought would let my plan get loose into the public."
"Not even after that commercial with you and the toys?"
"Not everybody watches television, you know."
"If you think that I-"
A door from the other side, pounding for a sign. Quackerjack and Doug turned to face th3e source of the voice coming from the other side.
"Yo, Doug! We got ya latte!"
"That'll be Woolter and Jesse," Doug explained. "Perhaps we can talk some more outside."
The two crooks walked away with their backs turned to the unsuspecting intruders, and Judy, whose eyes now laid on a red blinking light from the cab, now knew a way to escape...despite Nick's objections.
"What the hell are you doing? He's gonna see you!"
"I have an idea," she whispered back. "Darkwing can knock those two out cold while I get the train running."
Darkwing's left thumb went up, signaling her agreement.
Outside, Doug's right hand opened the door to reveal a pair of large rams: One by the name of Woolter had dark wool and curved horns with a white shirt reading "Double Ewe" and blood red straps, the other, supposedly named Jesse had a black eye patch on his right eye with a very dark green shirt stamped with the faded logo of a ram's skull and blue shorts. Doug greeted the two with an unsympathetic expression to Jesse, who was holding the cup of the requested latte in his left hand, though not so much as surprised when he and Wolter laid eyes on Quackerjack from behind Doug's left flank.
"It better have the extra foam this time."
Before any of them could reply, Doug felt a tinge of pain coming from his back and Quackerjack, about a half-second later, felt it as well and he found his beak lying in dirt. The contents of the cup spilled in a single line of brown ditchwater that splattered across the dusty areas of the floor, wasting a perfectly good fill of latte that dried up upon evaporating. All four looked up just in time to see the door being shut and Doug pushed himself onto his feet with his hands, in a magnetic fashion, gripping the door handle. To his misfortune, it was locked tight.
Darkwing clapped his hands twice, congratulating himself for finishing the deed as Judy rushed to the cab, both of her hands rotating the accelerator throttle around until it stop what was supposedly the train's top speed.
Goofy rubbed his left temple with his index finger, asking.
"So, uh, tell me again why we're hijackin' the train?"
"We need to get all of this evidence to the ZPD!"
"So what are you, a conductor now?" Nick asked with the back of his hands on his hips. "It would take a miracle to get this rust bucket going."
Contrary to his words, the car started to inch, then creak as it jolted to a stop for a second before starting again at the initiative slow speed of two miles per hour.
Hallelujah. Nick prayed as the speedometer went to four miles an hour.
Quackerjack and the rams, not suspecting the escaping car until it was too late, were watching Jesse talking on the phone in his left hand, informing their employer about the intruders.
"Hello, we've got a situation at the lab-"
Quackerjack was the first to hear the creak of subway car's wheels, then Doug became the second to see it in motion. Woolter was the third to see it moving away from them and when Jesse saw it, he shouted into the receiver.
"It just got worse."
Woolter went after it with Quackerjack following them from behind.
In the cab, Judy saw the journey before her, taking them into a narrow tunnel with red and white lights with thin pipes for steam ventilation adorning the walls to and from the outside world. Donald and Goofy kept the table at bay in case the night howlers fell from the roots. They even held their breaths to make sure they wouldn't go wild from the effects that had been inflicted upon the predators. Nick stood by her right side, taking in the events of the successful escape.
"Okay," he began. "Would it be premature for me to do a little victory toot-toot?"
Darkwing looked back at the rams and Quackerjack following them in hot pursuit, but he could only care less about any attempt of the four ruffians jumping aboard with the increasing speed of the vehicle. He just watched them through the window, smiling before the sound of a deep "WHOOOOO" brought him back to reality and total awareness. He looked back over his left shoulder for the source of the sound, followed by another "WHOOOOO" which he later deduced was the train's horn...blown by Nick pulling the cord down with his right hand.
"Well, I can cross that off of my personal list."
Then along came the vibration of a jolt. With wide eyes and uncomfortable expressions, Nick and Judy didn't count on Quackerjack bursting into the car by pushing down a loose hatch with his bare feet, both him and the hatch landing to floor with an insane smile, causing the cowardly Goofy and Donald to leap onto the night howler rows.
With a gold whistle that had a sound of death when Quackerjack blew it in his right hand, he chuckled twice in a sickly tone of insanity and his hat curled into devil's horns as his voice became twisted and satanic, shouting "It's PLAYTIME!" while gritting his teeth hard.
Before he could even move, Darkwing's right fist, followed a half-second later by his left, pounded his head. The vigilante expected him to fall from a lack of consciousness, but instead, the dazed jester turned clockwise to face him with a slack tongue and double vision as he wobbled to keep his balance in check.
"I'm getting real tired of your shit, Quackerjack."
Quackerjack's right index finger went up and wagged slowly, reprimanding him with all the strength that was there in his adrenaline.
"You do realize you just said the 's' word, right?"
Falling to the floor, Woolter took his place and he was much burlier than the thin-statured jester who threw Darkwing to the opposite end of the car with a fast right cross and before Donald and Goof could take him on, he turned counterclockwise to see Nick, who pushed the green door to the cab shut and the ram was too late to stop himself from running into the door and leaving a bumped dent once his horns made contact. Once his right hand had realized that the door was locked, Woolter butted his horns into the glass window which left a web design. Goofy and Donald, glancing at each other for an opportunity of usefulness, leapt from the tables onto Woolter's back. As the ram struggled to shake them off, finally defeated by the Sleepga spell, Nick turned to Judy with a voice of regret.
"Looks like I'll have to be taking that victory toot-toot back."
The stomping of hooves that followed after revealed to be Jesse, who in his own way of getting in after watching Woolter's botched attempts, used his horns to smash his way through the middle glass door, growling for the throttle that reminded Judy too much of Mr. Manchas when he went savage. His right hand was reaching for the controls that were closest to him, but it kept aiming for the throttle. Then Nick joined the struggle by running up to the wild (yet not infected with any night howler venom) ram by gripping his right forearm.
"Back off, you cocksucker!"
But seemed to have infuriated Jesse even more, for the struggle only lasted for three seconds before he successfully shook him off. Nick felt his back pinned to the door, where he turned clockwise and looked through the door to see Goofy, Donald and Darkwing, who saw the danger before them, and it was Darkwing who charged towards the ram with both fists curled after a speedy recovery that matched the velocity of his charge. Nick casually opened the door and Darkwing rushed through at a near-bullet speed, his fists coming into contact with Jesse's horns on each side. When they did, the blows had enough energy to push him out against the wind of the car's speed, which was too light to suck him back in. Instead, Jesse was now running for his life on the track while Darkwing was dangling from the edge of the window, the glass, thankfully, having been completely removed and destroyed.
Although Nick seemed concerned for the ram running for his life, Judy, reading his thoughts, instantly shouted.
"DO NOT STOP THIS CAR!"
And he didn't, but Jesse still ran for two seconds until placed his back against the wall of pipes. What Judy heard next once they had passed was a scream of pain, implying to her that Jesse had most likely been killed, but before she could even think about mourning for him, the car had found itself in the open daylight. The glowing aura of the sun shining through the windows and the closed eyelids of Woolter and Quackerjack. It rumbled over the overhead track and under a signal tower...but ahead...
Of all the days for a goddam freight train to show up, it just HAD to be one of them! Judy thought angrily as she heard the diesel engine blasting it's horn in response for the car to stop. The sound of the horn dying away gave her the opportunity to speed the train up when she saw the switch, intent on using something to pull it to the other side without having to jump out and do it herself. She looked back through the open door to Darkwing, looming over Woolter's sleeping body, which seemed to give her an idea.
"Darkwing? You think you could throw him out the window? QUICKLY?!"
Darkwing faced Judy for a second, and without even questioning her, he lifted Woolter by the red straps and hoisted him through the middle window. Woolter flew on and his left horn hit the switch, pushing the lever over to the other side and when the unable-to-stop freight train was about ten feet away from colliding with the car, the track switched to a bend, a sharp, curved bend that would prove dangerous to turn at high speeds. When the car crossed the bend, it seemed to tilt to the left side at a seven-degree angle before it went back down again towards a fork of two tracks leading into two tunnels. The car took the tunnel on the right hand side and rushed into it with sparks from the friction of the wheels sprinkling the rails as it shook from going straight back up. In the distance was a large black "X" with two red lights above it; one on the bottom, the other on the top. Judy's subsequent choice of words seemed to fit with what was likely to be her final destination.
"Well, guys, this is our stop."
She quickly turned the throttle in reverse and three seconds later the mighty brakes screeched with even more sparks then before, giving the undercarriage a brilliant light of red turning into a bright yellow, it did not seem like the train would be stopping anytime soon...
And that was when a curious Morgana Macawber stepped in.
She had been following Darkwing in hopes of finding what he was up to. Her runaway thoughts the two previous nights had persuaded her inner voices to urge her to find him and with her granted supernatural ability of extra sensory perception, she was able to follow him to the prison, then to the subway station at a distance. She took a gamble by teleporting herself by smoke to the station where the car approaching, unable to stop in time from crashing into the buffer.
From the window, Darkwing could have sworn that he saw the figure of Moloculo Macawber for the second time before he felt the train lurch to a dead stop. Judy had not a clue as to the sudden halt, but she instantly assumed that it was the buffer. Goofy, Donald and Nick sighed deeply and so did she, relieved that all the evidence remained intact for Bogo and his men to find. She was relieved that practically collapsed to the floor on her backside with her ears up. The beats of her heart from the events up until now slowing down to a normal beat, imagining the alternate scenario of a collision with the freight train that would have ended in a spectacular explosion that would have only brought headlines and a long period of mourning for her family. However, she got up and soon realized that even with the help of her peers, and the fact that she could not risk leaving fingerprints, she could not take all of the evidence.
"Now to take one thing and present it to the police."
Nick looked at the black briefcase on the right table under the map of victims and opened it up, three pieces of a what looked like a dart gun remained inside: a nozzle, a handle and a magazine.
"Will this do?" he asked her.
"I guess it will. Will show him the rest after this."
Nick closed the briefcase and rushed out the same way he came in; through the rear entrance. Donald and Goofy rushed out as well, jumping onto the platform and ignoring the gothic duck hiding in the shadows.
"Well Morgana, I didn't think you'd want to hide your beauty under all that elderliness."
Surprisingly, "Moloculo" gave Darkwing an icy stare and slowly brought his hands up to his eyes, covering them in shame. In an instant, colorful sparkles surged from the fingernails to the hands and then the body began to morph. Darkwing could see what he done and in a minute the figure, covered in a plum light grew taller into the thin, shapely appearance of Morgana. When she uncovered her eyes, they held no form of surprise, nor shock, but a form of upset.
"So you figured it out...tell me how."
"I took a wild guess, but it was your perfume that gave yourself away. I smelled a similar sent when I encountered you as Moloculo the first time and all the other times I was near you. And it was you who tried to get rid of Taurus Bulba to gain a trustworthy reputation of the city that is better than mine."
Morgana, now realizing that she had been caught red-handed, smirked with eyes that were barely squinted and she began her spiel with an attitude of posh and arrogance.
"Of course, my father saw in a vision that predators and prey or either one of them were doomed to revert back to their primitive ways, so in order to prevent such a catastrophe, he concocted a plan to establish himself as the supreme ruler of Zootopia and her sister cities, casting a powerful spell that would pluck any primitive instinct right out of their minds, remaining civil beyond their biological instincts. But by the time his plan was completely conceived, he was too old and feeble to do it himself, so he entrusted me to finish the job via a disguise."
"Why the disguise?"
"For the oldest of all reasons...honor, tradition and deceit. To prove your love and my alliance to you, why not you kill that jester in the car over there so that he may no longer threaten anyone's life again and the city will look up to you as a hero for ridding it of its villainy by execution instead of an easily escapable prison."
Darkwing's eyes went wide. Murder was the least of his decisions.
"I can't do that! It would make me feel...empty. I'm sure there a lot of superheroes who can tell you that."
"You want this war on predators to end as much as I do, and my belief is that this city ought to be controlled by a figure with real power, then they can settle their petty differences once and for all under my spell."
"By removing their freedom? Morgana, what will all of this solve?"
The words seemed to hit the sorceress with what was likely to be one of her negative spells gone awry, the type that made her feel emotions of positive love, passion, romance and happiness...but not the happiness she was accustomed to. Her thoughts on the words lasted only for four seconds, looking away from Darkwing as she did. Following those seconds, she slowly turned her head to him and said.
"If there is anyone who know the answer to that, Darkwing, it is you."
Confident at the thought that she had changed her mind, Darkwing smiled.
"Then I say, we bring this evidence to the police, then we can leave on a private cruise for Hawaii. Deal?"
He held out his right hand towards her left one, which seemed reluctant to comply
"Deal."
And before she could say anything else, Darkwing was racing his way up the stairs.
Judy and Nick had soon realized that they were in the Zootopia Museum of Natural History, with its Italian style balustrades gracing the two upper floors of the building. There stood a proud statue of a primitive empress of an African tribe, a round tusked elephant to be exact, with a sharp spear in her right hand and the crown of a pineapple's leaves, she represented her tribe of aboriginals with the true leadership of a strong ruler combined with her warriors of virtue.
But there was no time to admire the scenery, they had to get the evidence to police headquarters and even if they did, the museum was closed for renovation work. The light at the end of the great hall was just ahead past a yellow sunrise display of a wild panther looking down at his soon-to-be victims, a trio of pygmy rabbits holding spears, from a tree branch and just when they were a hundred feet away from the door.
"Judy!"
Sliding to a stop, Judy, Nick, Donald, and Goofy looked back. Sure enough, there was Mayor Bellwether and an escort of two male ram police officers
"Mayor Bellwether!"
They rushed back to the panther display.
"We found out the source of night howlers. It turns out a trio of rams are the ones infecting them with a dart gun."
She grabbed the briefcase from Nick's hands.
"This is only a part of the evidence that were able to carry. The rest is in a subway car down at the station."
Bellwether clasped her hands together, relieved.
"Oh, I am so proud of you Judy. Now if you let me take the briefcase to the police, you can treat yourself to a long deserved rest."
Judy did so, moving the case to Bellwether...but when she saw the details of her new dress, pitch black with indigo bluebells all over it with glasses and a bracelet on her right wrist made to match, she took a light sigh and her face went from positive to worried. One rule of detective work is that you shouldn't trust anybody, and Bellwether offering to take over ownership of the briefcase was odd, even for a city official. Her suspicions grew worse, and with her ears drooping to the ground, she asked timidly.
"How did you find us?"
Bellwether did not even try to hide her true emotions, she took a great smile of darkness residing in her face.
"Jesse told me, with the help of your friend's instincts."
From behind the ram officer on her right came Sora, head down and depressed with his handcuffed hands in front of his abdomen, wearing a brace made from a seatbelt with a green light attached to a metal device covering his Adam's apple. Donald and Goofy's eyes widened at the curious sight. When Judy saw the brace, her proceeding words were at the speed of a sloth's speech.
"Sora...what...are...you...wearing...?"
Bellwether tittered four feet over to Sora, her right hand gesturing to the collar.
"Isn't it nice? I call it the 'tame collar'. Try to get any aggressive, and I can guarantee that it can shock you to...death."
Her mention of the word "death" sent a chill down Nick's spine, imagining himself in that positon. Having his neck locked in a collar with electrical features seemed painful and a purpose for driving a predator to suicide if he was unable to take it off. His mind went numb and morbid. It became an unspeakable atrocity for it to matter and seemed to conjure up a world where every predator wore that very same collar Sora was wearing. Zootopia, as he had imagined it, would then become a dystopia, where nobody could be anything.
"I think Nick and I will take this to Bogo."
As she said this, Judy backed away by six feet before turning counterclockwise to the entrance. Yet Donald and Goofy decided to stay behind, unwittingly staring at Sora and before either one of them could ask, the former human responded.
"I had no choice, Bellwether would have probably killed me if she didn't lead me to Judy. I'm such a shithead."
Bellwether looked to him with the smile of sadist hidden under her façade of a sweet little sheep.
"You're not, Sora," she soothed. "As my first predator that I can actually trust, you have done me a great service."
Then from the roof came a figure of red and purple bouncing off the walls in springs, Quackerjack. His feet pushed themselves against a right wall and plummeted like lightning to the ground, right in front of Nick and Judy.
"Not so fast! That gun is my technology to begin with and I'd like it back!"
"Actually," Judy went on defensive feet. "Darts guns go back longer than you."
"Well, this was custom designed by me and thanks to that weasel, those rams had enough resources to rip me off."
He pushed himself forward, his hands reaching for the briefcase. Nick, Judy, Donald and Goofy rushed to the east wing of the museum towards a prehistorical section of tusks and displays a world long since vanished. Bellwether, now glaring with her hooves curled into fists shouted to her bodyguards.
"After them!"
So they did, and Sora, now melancholy than ever, stayed by her side.
Through a faded blue curtain, they ran past boxes of items yet to be unveiled for the new exhibition, jumped over a mammoth's tusk and hid behind the wall of a Mayan temple recreation, certain that they had lost the rams. They hardly dared to breathe, but at the same, they had wondered where Darkwing had gone to. Little did they know that he had taken a wrong turn into the west wing where vases depicting the heroes of ancient Greek and Roman culture lay on two different sides, Greek on the left and Roman on the right. He had figured that a quick look wouldn't hurt during his search for the remaining party. But one wing away from the entrance, the threat was closing in.
"Come on out, Judy..."
The sing song voice, accompanied by the silhouettes of Mayor Bellwether and Sora, transfigured into the monster that she really was. It was also then that Judy thought of a distraction: she could try to reason with Bellwether and let Sora go while Nick got away with the briefcase back to headquarters with Donald and Goofy's help (that is if the two took care of the guards first).
"Take the case to Bogo, I'll deal with her."
"You said we were going to do this together, so we'll both do it."
"That was almost three days ago!"
"So what?" Donald interjected. "We're not going to leave Sora with her anyway."
Speaking of Sora, he was following Bellwether at his own pace, regretting having spoken to her alone about the night howlers. He could have avoided the unneeded opportunity of being forced to wear a collar that would most likely electrocute him to death if he was too aggressive, but of course, he didn't.
"Judy?!"
The guards by now were pushing the curtains back with a flashlight in one hand, their silhouetted figures providing a menacing light to their position and deportment. Judy looked back and Nick and tried to reason with him again.
"Just go!"
Nick took the briefcase without question and slid away from sight. Goofy and Donald placed their backs against the wall, ready to ambush the guards. With a strong posture, Judy stepped in front of Bellwether, slowly closing in on her in hopes of offering a peaceful approach. In spite of the looming threat, she had her feet firm to the ground and her fists ready for a fight...all the while asking.
"Why are you doing this?"
Bellwether kept her speed, content that Judy was not going to escape her without a fight.
"I know how it feels to be underestimated, underappreciated, underrated...and it MAKES ME SICK!"
Her exclamation echoed into the west wing where Darkwing could now see the entrance...along with Quackerjack stomping his way towards the curtain. The sound of Bellwether's voice was now back to normal volume, her left hand admiring the large carving of a wolf's head from an Egyptian pyramid.
"Predators. They think they're so strong and loud, but prey outnumbers them by ten to one!"
Judy took one cautious step with her right foot and Bellwether did the same. The ram guards readied their muscles as did Donald and Goofy with their weapons...and Sora could not even see even a glimpse of their own shadows with his eyesight down to the floor. The bitchy sheep resumed her spiel.
"Think of it. Ninety percent of the population united against a common enemy will be unstoppable. Either that or we can make peace as always by implanting them with these collars so that if they even try to become aggressive, they'll be killed instantly."
Cringing at her tone of voice, Judy took the step back and darted her eyes right to Goofy and Donald, inching their way to the end of the wall.
"And I thought you were sweet...but not as sweet as my friends! Now!"
Right on cue, Goofy took two steps out of the wall and his right hand threw the shield Frisbee-style to the guard on the left which took him by surprise. He barely had time to duck when the shield crashed into his forehead, falling onto his back. Donald's left hand holding the staff threw a freeze charm at the guard on the left, striking his feet and crawling up to his head, literally freezing him solid in ice. Bellwether who had seen the shield, ran after Judy meeting up with Nick, who had inched his way to the alcove on the other side. While Goofy and Donald searched for a key on one of the officer to get Sora out of the cuffs, Nick and Judy were ducking under a yellow barrier and out in the hall for the second time where they saw Darkwing running towards them.
But unfortunately for all three of them, Quackerjack had bypassed Bellwether on his way into the area, and seeing Nick with the briefcase, lunged forward.
"That's mine! That's mine!" he shouted.
His arms encircled the fox and the rabbit before Darkwing could stop him, Nick's right arm threw the briefcase over to the hero and Quackerjack's head had unwittingly pushed the duo into the open circle that lay without a guardrail in the center of the entrance. The briefcase landed in Darkwing's arms, holding it high above his head and shouting.
"I got it!"
However, it was Quackerjack who gripped the briefcase by the handles while Darkwing did his best to hold it back.
"No, I've got it!"
Now the briefcase had become a subject for a tug of war.
Inside the circle was an artificial earth of prehistoric nature, with tan and light brown rocks surrounded by synthetic star-shaped leaves gone extinct and the wall was a panorama of a green forest landscape that neither of them could hide into. There was also a log bridge, statues of a deer and her fawn on opposite ends of a firm painted river and two small floodlights providing an orange-yellow light to the scenery on the opposing sides of the bird's eye view.
Nick and Judy felt as if they were back in time to a thousand years ago when the only inhabitants of North Americlaw were Indians (or natives as some preferred to call them by), which was their initial thought until they heard the sounds of struggling that were stopped by Bellwether's voice.
"I'll be taking that, thank you."
Successfully having broken up the fight, Bellwether left Darkwing and Quackerjack to their own devices...in the form of horseplay no doubt. Then she crept her way over to where Nick and Judy were trapped.
"You should have just stayed on the carrot farm, bitch, because I really liked you until you discovered my plot."
Judy was not about to let Mayor Bellwether break her bones with her words.
"And what the hell are you going to do about it?!" she shouted from the ten-foot-high pit. "KILL ME?!"
"I would," the snitty sheep chuckled. "Or I could do this!"
She whipped out the dart gun from the briefcase, and checked to make sure that a pellet was already loaded into the magazine. Taking it in her right hand, Bellwether was as fast as a sharpshooter and Nick did not realize a large drop of liquid on his right cheek until it was too late. Judy rushed over to him and feared the worst.
"Nick!"
Then Bellwether took her cell-phone in her left hand, acting rather poorly in a reminiscence of her perception of a cheesy B-movie.
"Police! THERE IS A SAVAGE FOX IN THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM! OFFICER HOPPS IS DOWN! Please, please hurry!"
Then Nick started convulsing violently.
"Nick, don't do this. Fight it!"
But Nick's ears in a poetic sense went deaf, and Bellwether would only taunt her in a voice of sick sweetness.
"He can't help it! After all, predators are biologically predisposed to be...savage."
The word "savage" was just the trump card Bellwether needed to get Nick on all fours. Judy backed away, wishing for Sora or Darkwing to help her out, but by now he was too immersed in his battle with Quackerjack, throwing a series of one melee attack after the next. She wasn't where Sora was now other than the fact that he was still handcuffed. Before she could think about where Donald and Goofy still were, Nick was soon growling in her face, and, fearing that he had rabies, Judy ran across the solid river and used her only weapon of defense: the fawn display.
She hugged it tightly and turned clockwise to Nick, letting it go with all her might. The spine of the display struck Nick's abdomen and he found his head stuck between the fore and the hind legs, with his hands sticking out before the forelegs. Judy ran into the artificial high grass where she could hear Bellwether taunting her for the second time.
"Imagine the headlines: 'Hero Cop killed by Savage Fox'!"
From the high grass, Judy could see Nick trying to free himself...by ripping out the white colored stuffing, a less gory representation of the fawn's intestines, with his teeth. Judy could only imagine herself in that position as the memories of her childhood pageant flowed through her mind, but this was reality, history repeating itself even. Then with the rear section of the fawn having taken too much damage, Nick whipped it around with the white blood oozing out of the baby's stomach, Nick's eyes were locked onto Judy. But the rabbit, remembering the carrot pen still in her belt, had her own trump card to pull by asking Bellwether...
"Is this going to be it? Prey fears predator and you stay in power?"
"Correct," the sheep replied diabolically.
Judy had to push Bellwether even more to extract the truth within the pen's hearing range.
"It won't work! Your plan is a poorly crafted piece of shit!"
Then the sheep glowered with angry green eyes of not jealously, but pure evil itself.
"Don't you cuss in front of me, bitch!" Bellwether was now being hypocritical with her choice of words. "Fear always works, and if my collars are as poor as you think they are, I'll throw every damn predator in Zootopia into death camps just to keep it that way."
Judy now knew she had one last act to pull in the balance of life and death as she Nick growling at her through the long blades of grass that obscured the rest of his body. She held out her right hand and Nick slowly began to hesitate, decreasing his growling by a huff.
"Nick..."
And when the moment came with her fingers making contact with his fur, there was a surge of...electricity. But this wasn't the same type of electricity from friction or even from Bellwether's collars (since Nick obviously was not wearing one), it was an electricity that surged from the heart, a heart of light to be exact. The light that could purify a violent creature into an animal of peace through the power of love and friendship. Nick's breathing stopped entirely and his eyes went half-mast, then closed entirely, relaxing his body into submission. Judy could almost see a smile forming on his lips, taking in the warmth of the "magic touch" from her paw that seemed to quell his negative emotions into something suitable soft and fluffy.
This moment of powerful emotions almost seemed to have an effect on Bellwether as well, albeit a negative one. Her smile slowly faded into a frown of dread, predicting her plan falling apart right before her very eyes. But her curious vision remained on the tender moment between Nick and Judy, her undaunting words proceeding with another threat.
"I framed Lionheart and I can frame you too! It's my word against yours."
But then, there came another voice from her far right flank: Sora.
"Not if I can help it. Sleepga!"
He pointed the Kingdom Key Chain forwards and a powder of white magic shot forwards like a cannonball from the teeth. Perfectly camouflaged against her fur, Bellwether did not see the powder, nor did her head turn in response to Sora's voice until it was too late. The powder collided with the large poof of hair above her forehead and before she could take in every ounce of realization that was happening, her head limped to her right shoulder and the rest of her body collapsed to the floor in a heap. Surprisingly, her glasses did not fall off and the gun fell just one inch away from falling into the artificial landscape.
"Let's hope she counts herself into a deep sleep," Sora chuckled to Goofy and Donald.
The two covered their mouths, creating a stifling laugh. Over by the pit, Darkwing and Quackerjack, beaten, bruised and with some small damage done to their outfits had reached an impasse...or a double victory. Darkwing lay on his back, while Quackerjack had his beak on the floor, dazed and with his eyes at half-mast.
"For once, I'm stuck without a victory punchline," he uttered to no one in particular.
He looked up at the sight of a duck in red, glowering down at him with an unimpressed face.
The mutter of "Hello babe," was all he said before he found himself suspended from the floor by his shirt.
Sora, Donald and Goofy could wait for them, they were more concerned about Nick and Judy as they rushed to the pit.
"Are you hurt, Judy?" Sora asked.
With a smile of serenity, Judy could care less about Nick's attempt at trying to kill her. She looked up at Sora, then back to Nick who was resting in peace by her right hip. She could imagine doing the same to Gideon Grey when he clawed her right cheek back in elementary school, saving her from a loss of blood and the overreactions of her parents that was pushed into the back of her memories. Maybe what predators needed was a little love, and people like Dawn Bellwether couldn't understand it, they could either do the same or hold back their negative emotions into the darkness of their hearts and let the light reach into their inner souls, where they could find sympathy with another kindred spirit.
"I'm fine!" she called back in a voice she hoped that Nick would not wake up from. "I also have this as evidence."
She held up the carrot pen in her right hand and her index finger pressed the play button where Bellwether's voice echoed from the speaker.
"Fear always works, and if my collars are as poor as you think they are, I'll throw every damn predator in Zootopia into death camps just to keep it that way."
The recording ended with the sudden arrival of the Chief Bogo and his men, who had responded to Bellwether's call and sneaked in, preparing to pounce on the savage fox until the echo of Bellwether's discriminating words told otherwise. Bonkers was the first to approach the sleeping sheep and his right foot swung at her nappy hairdo, enraged by her betrayal. The others shared his disappointment as well, looking down at the sheep who had nearly caused a holocaust if she remained in office.
"How long have you been standing there?" Sora asked Bogo.
"Long enough for her to confess, thanks to Officer Hopps."
Then Darkwing pushed through the cordon, shouting and pointing his right index finger towards Morgana holding Quackerjack by the neck in her left arm.
"He's the one you want!"
But Morgana kept her grip on Quackerjack with her left arm being as strong as an iron barrier and moved back by a step.
"No, I'll take care of him personally. One way or another, this whole anti-predator agenda ends with the dawning of a new era in which mortals and immortals join as one."
As the police exchanged glances to hide their true judgement of her as a crazy witch with no power at her command, Morgana gave Darkwing a morose face that signaled the end of a very brief chapter in her life.
"Goodbye, my love."
With a wave of her free right hand, grey smoke began to stem from her dress, covering her abdomen and Quackerjack's feet until her hair and his silver bells were visible. Darkwing could only watch the smoke from Morgana's feet disappear and within three seconds, to the amazement of Sora and the officers, she was gone. Disappointed, Darkwing did not dare to even call out her name in an exercise of futility, he turned back at the sound of a moan and it came from the throat of a poor, misunderstood sheep named Dawn Bellwether.