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Who Writes This?!

Chapter 2: Mistakes Were Made

The grey-toned bunny grunted as she dropped the medium-sized basket of laundry by her bed, neatly folded and warm. That was that all finished for the day and nothing ahead of her but a quiet evening. A rumble of distant thunder shook the tiny, sound-sieve of an apartment. Ah. A quiet but rainy evening. She was glad she got the laundry done already. It was a full two blocks between the laundromat and her apartment building and a storm soaking her fresh-washed clothes would have been less than amusing. She flopped onto her bed, pulling the covers up to her tummy and wedging her extra 'reading' pillow under her shoulders to prop her up more. She pulled out her phone and looked at the indexed tab.

Nick had been so serious about her not doing this. She felt a pang of guilt in going against his wishes but she felt that he was completely off base, and frankly downright insulting to insinuate that she was not emotionally stable enough to handle ... this. It was something that had come up before between them. Yes, bunnies were emotionally sensitive because they were naturally altruistic due to their highly communal nature. But she was not like other bunnies. The video with the bear showed that just fine. She shook her head. Nick was wrong about it; nothing someone who doesn't even know her could write could be bad enough to shake her. Disgust, surprise and appall perhaps, but not genuinely upset, and she would get over any of the other stuff.

Judy smiled and started looking through the list of stories. She frowned immediately.

"Oh sweet cheese and c- woah. No no no... Filters, there's gotta be filters... I don't have to start with a brain full of a teenaged buck's fantasies." She laughed to herself. She found a filter element on the site and employed it against the tag "Intercourse". The count dropped from 7210 to about 1630. Judy splayed her ears and blanched at that. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. "At least I can say I'm sexy. They are strangers but I've got needs too, so I will... forgive." She stated with a hand over her chest, nodding proudly. This, she felt, was what Nick had been so worried about. No need to worry, she had no intention of peeking at strangers' secret thoughts like that. They had a right to feel, and like Nick said, it was not really her, just based off her. It should be... flattering, right? She looked at some of the other tags and filters. "Mulch piles... I don't know what half this stuff even means. What the hell are rules? Sixty Three? What's AU? Self insert? Do I wanna know?" She shook her head and just thumbed down slowly through titles looking for something interesting that did not have a hundred chapters. She wanted something short in case it was interesting and might cause her to stay up all night. She and her partner were visiting a primary school in the morning and those kids did not want a cranky sleepy zombie bunny.

She finally located a story that gave a rose tint to her ears, but not in the genuinely embarrassed way from before. She murmured the name of the story out loud.

"The Unbreakable Judy Hopps.Story by HareScribe111." She looked at the details. "Three chapters, eight thousand words... so that's pretty short, I could do that. Summary..." She read quietly.

Judy Hopps stands against seemingly unbeatable foes as par for the course in her everyday job, but deep down, she's a bunny like any other. What more can she give? What more will Zootopia take?

The grey doe tilted her head at that summary. It seemed interesting, and she didn't recognize any tags that rubbed her the wrong way. As best she could tell, the story seemed about a very ordinary bunny having to do extraordinary things for her city and that was very much what she was. She opened it and began to read.

The story opened up with a somewhat jovial exchange between Judy and her partner Nick. She was immediately unnerved by how dead-on the writer had her mannerisms and those of the fox. She dismissed the chill that ran up her spine because she realized that Nick never, ever turned off his playful, smug attitude and they did banter occasionally in interviews. They definitely bantered in the classroom from time to time when doing outreach and this writer may well have been there for one of those encounters as it softens their audience and makes them more willing to engage. The only real problem that she had with the story early on is that a few of the things that they had Nick say were more harsh and judgmental of Judy than she knew Nick would use. Then again, it might be hard for a rabbit who doesn't know Nick to see that he's just being playful with Judy, and that they are actually very close friends. She overlooked that.

The next scene was something rather domestic. It was Judy grocery shopping and getting a call from an unnamed family member. The scene felt organic but the doe could not for the life of her explain why the writer wanted to put it in there. It felt disjointed and unneeded, but she supposed he was selling the ordinary rabbit part of the story hard early on, and Judy did in fact shop for groceries and talk to her family on the phone like anyone else. What she became irritated with is near the end of the conversation, her character told the family member that the chief still would not allow her to get a better partner, no one else wanted to work with a fox. Worse yet, the writer had her character say that she didn't trust Nick. She calmed herself again. She would not let Nick be right about this. This was not going to get to her. Lots of people didn't trust foxes and this guy seemed to just be burdening her, as a character of course, with his personal issue.

The chapter ended there and she got a drink from the small fridge of her tiny apartment and returned. The scene opened with some action and she was a bit more pleased with that. The buck had obviously researched a little in order to drop some radio lingo and tens codes into the story to make it feel more real, and that helped Judy get into the spirit of the story and forget the speciest slant from earlier. There was a foot chase and she was happy to see that Nick was helpful and brave in that part, and they caught up to the suspect with a bit of quick thinking and bunny agility. Judy felt that maybe Nick was too rough with the suspect, but again the writer likely felt that was what the fox was for. After the chase the scene moved to the partners driving along in their cruiser patrolling pretty randomly in Tundra Town, slow and steady as one does on those streets.

Nick in the story confronted Judy about her attempts to switch partners. He asked Judy why she didn't want to work with him. This struck the doe reading the story as odd, since it seemed to actually be defending Nick who was justifiably hurt by the fact. Maybe the buck didn't hate foxes after all. She leaned forward and read carefully, since it felt tense, and she would certainly feel emotional in such a situation. The story-Judy told her partner that she didn't like being the butt of jokes, she was very serious about her job and she did not like feeling demeaned in public by her partner. The reading Judy rubbed her chin thoughtfully. Did the public see Nick's teasing like that, she wondered? She might actually have to tell him to tone it down. At least the story Judy had a reason to feel like she did, it wasn't just... doesn't like foxes. She continued to read.

The fox in the story agreed to be more sensitive because he knew he was not very popular, but he wasn't good at interacting with a bunch of new people and laughter was kind of his umbrella when it came to breaking the ice with people he did not know. He was not aware that it was causing Judy real trouble. The reading lapine smiled at this. The story had Nick's reason for his constant banter down pretty solid, she felt, and was rather impressed. The interaction felt responsible and warm, and it made Judy happy to read someone hashing out two responsible mammals working out a disagreement like adults. The world could use more of that.

Judy stretched a bit and leaned back into her pillows again, feeling rather satisfied. She was actually kind of enjoying the story. She continued. The pair spotted a grey fox yelling angrily at the passenger window of a big blue van, medium-mammal-sized. The pair pulled up behind it and the grey fox turned and left abruptly, anger still in his eyes. There was no license plate on the van, so Nick asked Judy, who was driving, to radio it in while he spoke with the driver to ask if their plate had been reported stolen. They had to have a temporary if they wanted to keep driving.

Again, Judy was impressed as she read. The writer chose to display some of the very normal, everyday, low-action police work that she performed every single day. It was not super interesting to read but it felt real and organic and set the mood for her character nicely. She wondered if it would be creepy for her to leave a comment when she was done reading the story. Certainly the poor buck would probably freak out a bit if he felt like Judy herself had read this. She would have to stay anonymous or it would detract from the writer's enjoyment of writing. She resumed reading.

Nick approached the van with his notebook and a pen but just before he finished walking to the door of the vehicle, the side door of the van slid open and there was a deafening boom! Her partner flew backwards like a toy, but tattered fabric, chucks of fur and crimson spray went easily five times as far over the bright virgin snow. Judy's throat contracted as she could not stop reading the words fast enough. She put the phone down, mouth gaping.

How could someone write that about a real mammal?! Nick was someone they could just happen across on the street. Heck, they might have really seen him... talked to him in a class room or during an event. Judy put her hand over her chest. Her heart was racing and her hands felt ice cold. She flattened her ears down her back and sucked in a deep breath. Nick would tease her mercilessly if she let on that this had actually triggered an adrenaline response from her. It was a story. This was about real police work. Bad stuff happens to real heroes. But it was still a story. She slapped either side of her face to snap herself out of the shock of the sudden violence. She would finish reading this and be done with it, but this buck just lost his favorable anonymous comment!

She read about her character calling in the shooting and jumping out of the car as the van sped away, her legs buckling from the emotional shock of it. She half ran, half crawled over the hard-packed road ice and slid to a stop. She didn't even need to check his vitals. Enough of the fox was physically absent that it was completely pointless. Judy gritted her teeth as she read that, her hand tightening on her phone so much that she felt one of her knuckles pop.

"What, he's just freaking dead?! Why?!" she cried out loudly in exasperation.

"Who's dead?" called a low-pitched voice from next door. Bucky, she thought. Pronk had a little higher pitch -

"A bear, maybe?" Yeah that one was Pronk. She was actually thankful for their loud interruption this time. It shook her from her building anger. She called out to the pair.

"Sorry guys, I'm reading a story."

"Is it any good?" called Bucky.

"Not really." Judy deadpanned.

"It sounds good, if it got you to yell at it." Bucky replied again.

"Sometimes we yell at the things we love!" the other added. Judy smirked at that and shook her head. Thankfully they did not continue to try to talk to her through her wall. She regarded the story again. She should just stop reading it, she thought.

"Wait, there's like... a whole other chapter, what else would he bother writing about if there's another chapter?" she asked herself more softly. She thought back to the old soap operas that her mother used to watch when she was a kit and the smaller siblings were down for their naps. It seemed like no one stayed dead in those things. It seemed a little unlikely, but Judy decided to just scan through the remaining chapter and find out where the heck this story was supposed to be going.

Judy would spend a lot of time wishing she had not.

The rest of the chapter kept pretty true to an accurate portrayal. Story-Judy got violently sick in the snow and was pretty much useless until help arrived. She was simply picked up and removed from the scene by another officer, placed in a heated cruiser to wait while the investigators did their thing. There was no hospital scene, no cliché CPR scene, no shocky-paddles as Nick liked to call them. Nick was dead. Skimming, Judy knew she dropped some of the detail but she didn't care. It was all about pain. It was all about how bad it affected her that in a flash, half her partner was scattered over a snow-covered sidewalk and he was just... gone. The more she read the angrier she got about that. There was no reason for it! The chapter ended with Judy's character falling into a fitful sleep at her own quiet, lonely, undescribed home.

Angrily, Judy opened the third and final chapter, skimming into it like someone rummaging through an odds and ends drawer looking for a battery for the remote control as they missed the beginning of their favorite show stuck tauntingly on another channel while said person is too frustrated to just push the buttons right on the cable box. As the story continued, story-Judy attended a funeral and was further emotionally poisoned by the sad handful of people who came to say goodbye. Like foxes just don't have friends or something! Half the city would turn out for Nick, Judy thought to herself. Story-Judy lamented not being more kind to Nick, not trusting him more. There was a scene with her getting put on desk duty because she needed time to mentally recover from that. Finally, the chapter went to Judy patrolling the streets alone, because THAT made perfect sense for any reason other than just sounding depressing. And it left off with some kind of half-assed narration by the author stating that the city gave to Judy her joy and her pain, but she would still serve Zootopia until her name joined his in stone, just like anyone else.

Judy dropped her phone on her pillow.

"What the heck was all of that supposed to accomplish?!" Judy fairly shouted and then slapped her hand over her small muzzle.

"What happened?" called Bucky helpfully.

"Sorry guys. This story is infuriating. They killed off one of the main characters for no good reason. He just... gets killed." Talking about it would help. She could not still be riled up when Nick saw her tomorrow; he would rib her forever for it.

"What's a GOOD reason to get killed?" asked Pronk.

"Shut up, she's talking about the story!" Bucky shouted.

"I don't know. Not that though." Judy answered, not feeling any better yet.

"Like how?" the lower voice asked.

"He just gets shot walking up to a car to write a ticket or something." Judy stated flatly.

"Yeah that's dumb." Bucky called out.

"I mean, it sucks, but that stuff actually happens. I mean, it's not unrealistic." Pronk stated. Judy's hands both came to her muzzle at that, and her heart dropped into her stomach.

"Don't say that to her, she's a cop, that's insensitive!" Bucky shouted at his mate. The two began to loudly bicker but Judy could not focus on a thing they were saying. Their voices almost echoed in her mind as her body tensed and she felt ill. Pronk was absolutely right, that could happen. It had happened before, they had to read about it when she was in the academy, but it was not even just that. Anything could happen. Nick could walk out to help a cub who slipped on the ice and get flattened by a bus, he could be helping to get a lemming who can't take it anymore off a ledge and go headfirst to the pavement, Nick could go so quick that Judy didn't even get to say goodbye. And worst of all, there absolutely, positively did NOT have to be a reason. It could be for nothing. All the suffering and anguish story-Judy went through was a real and tangible future for her, and the writer didn't even scratch the surface of how the rabbit would really feel if it happened. She paced a while, then went to the bathroom, splashed water in her face, returned to her bedside and paced again.

"Okay, calm down, it's a story, you read a story, Nick was maybe a liiiiitle bit right, but it's still a story." She whispered to herself, too soft for her neighbors to hear. She sat on her bed and took a deep breath. "It's a story, you read stories that scare you or make you sad and you get over them in a bit. Scary movies are nothing to you, this is no different." She leaned forward. It wasn't so bad when it was anger, it really was about the story then, but it had just become about something real. And there was no escaping how much that bothered her. Worst of all, her mind kept making up its own little scenarios where Nick didn't make it, and sometimes she wasn't even there and she just heard about it from the news, or she got a call from Bogo telling her to come in, they need to talk. Judy found herself literally shaking after a bit of this tumbling around in her mind. She jumped up finally and walked to her window. It was still pouring outside, so no walk to clear her head. She looked at her phone on her pillow. There, that would be the source of her relief.

Nearly an hour on Zootube watching funny videos brought her to almost midnight and only distracted her a little while. She felt fine while she watched them but as soon as she looked away she thought about the description the writer gave of an innocuous and dutiful red fox strolling up to a van to find out where its license plate was. Then suddenly Judy's story has almost nothing to do with foxes anymore. She punched her pillow angrily. She was so dumb for getting herself into this, and Nick called it. He knew she was too invested in the real mammals in her life to separate herself from the story enough to insulate her from getting upset. This probably wasn't even as bad as it could be, or it wasn't the kind of upset he even meant. At least she didn't have to buy 80 bucks worth of pizza over this. She looked at her phone again and sighed softly, stroking her ears back down her back with both hands. There was only one way out of this. She didn't have to tell him why she was calling; she could just say she wanted to make sure they were both clear on where they were going tomorrow. She needed to hear her partner's voice. It was just a story. The real Nick was safe and warm in his bed and he would be there tomorrow. Her subconscious just needed to hear his voice.

Judy picked up her phone and selected Nick from her contact list as "Shifty Fox" which is how he had actually entered it the day after Bellwether had been caught.

Disastrously, it went straight to voice mail.

"What? Noooo!" groaned Judy.

"Did it get worse?" Pronk asked.

"Leave her alone!" Bucky snapped.

"Yeah, it did!" Judy whimpered.

"I don't want to read it anymore, it sounds super sad." Bucky stated matter-o-factly. Judy dialed again in case it was a glitch. Voice mail. She inwardly cried out. Not tonight! Did you forget to charge your phone again you lazy fox!? Pick up! She texted him and asked him to call when he got the text no matter what time it was. She decided not to leave an actual voice mail because she felt she would sound too stressed and did not want Nick to think she was actually panicking over this.

Judy flopped onto her bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to think about anything but that stupid story, her careless partner, or how completely exhausted she was already going to be when she got to work tomorrow even if she went to sleep right then.

And right then was certainly not when Judy was going to sleep.