The Fire Triangle -- Part II, Oxidizer

The Fire Triangle: Book II - Chapter 7

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

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Part Two:

Oxidizer

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Chapter 1—A Rock and a Hard Place
(Continued... Part 7)

In nature, there is always a price to pay. Whatever gift she gives; whatever blessing she bestows; they always come with terms and conditions.

For example, turn out the lights in any room and you'll see the species possessed of excellent night vision, (I,e. foxes,) taking longer to adjustment to the darkness than the animals not so visually endowed, (I.e, a bunny.)

And 'lights out' was coming up very shortly for Nicholas Piberius Wilde.

Fortunately, he was ready; when the sign he was looking for came into view—Exit 129, Nocturnal District, 2 ½ Miles—he immediately pulled out a pair of red-tinted sunglasses and snapped them open with flourish. It was a hack he'd originally picked up from Finnick, an old submariner's gimmick...used to get a jump on the transition when climbing topside for a nighttime torpedo run.

Fixing the shades into place on his muzzle, Nick started to whistle; an off-key version of 'Darkness, Darkness'—an obscure tune whose history he couldn't quite recall at the moment. Ah well, no matter; the song fit quite nicely into his current state of affairs. Mmmm dang, but it was good to be back in action again, better than he could ever have imagined.

He was seated behind the wheel of Little Sparky, one of three electrically-powered cruisers operating out of Precinct-1—and the only one small enough to accommodate a fox. Even so, the machine wasn't quite Nick's size; he'd had to sit on a cushion to see where he was going.  That was bad  enough; what was worse was having to crank the seat up nearly all the way to the dashboard in order to reach the pedals. It was a cumbersome arrangement, but also entirely necessary. In an underground zone like the Nocturnal District, exhaust fumes have nowhere to go but into the lungs of the local residents. And so, except for a few emergency service vehicles, only hybrids or electrics were permitted to operate down there. Everyone else had to park their cars as soon as they entered the district and switch over to either public transport or a short-term rental—rentals that, luckily, were readily available at a nominal cost.

Rolling through the Riverside neighborhood on the Z-205, Nick was fully aware of whom he had to thank for his current assignment. He dearly wished that he could thank her in furson, but that, of course, was a non-starter; he couldn't even speak to her over the phone right now, another unpleasant but necessary arrangement.

And that wasn't the only thing the fox had kept to himself on this fine Zootopia morning.

Upon learning that the Rafaj Brothers had been transferred to the Precinct 7 jail, he'd been a mite less impressed by The Chief's reasoning than a certain bunny-cop. No, the Red Pig wouldn't send any of HIS soldiers into the Nocturnal District—but with the kind of money he had to burn, it wouldn't be necessary. He could easily hire a couple of independent guns to do the job, animals that would be perfectly at home in the darkness of Zootpia's nocturnal zone—and also completely inconspicuous. (There are only about a zillion aggressive species that operate mostly at night.)