The Time Traveler's Guide to Zootopia

Chapter 24: El Zorro

After we had passed Acacia Street, my helmet's HUD revealed a new unread message that was recently sent to my inbox. Wondering who it might've been, I selected the message and eagerly waited for it to load. It took longer than I thought but the message finally read as:

*******

Hey Cherry, this is Jay Howl! Hope you're doing okay. How's your first day in Zootopia?

*******

Seriously? I thought to myself.

Nonetheless, my mind rejoiced greatly upon knowing that he was the same black wolf I somehow befriended back in the Bunnyburrow forest despite my less-than-cordial initial greeting with him and his family. Luckily, that was all behind us and we were now on good terms.

It was nice to receive a message from him but I didn't know how to respond. How should I respond? Just tell him that I got arrested on my first day? For the sake of setting off a good impression, especially for the Howl family, I decided to hold off on responding until I felt like I was in a more stable situation.

Whatever happens, happens, I suppose. A human is held in custody by animals, what could go wrong? What's the worst that could happen? I didn't think much of it until I turned my head to the left to see an elevated jumbo screen with a ZNN news-anchor logo at the bottom. A finely dressed male moose and female snow leopard were sharing their thoughts on screen surrounding what appeared to be the Zootopian secondary election results.

Who cares? Politics didn't matter to me. What I worried about was ending up on the news screen for the whole world to know. Oh, crud. Why did I come here? How was I going to do this? The cops already had me in their paws and it'd only be a matter of time before the full truth got out. However, I had to remain calm on this one because acting out of place would only make matters worse.

Just act natural, I figured. It was the best thing I could do. Don't say much, wear the fluffy tail with pride, pretend aliens don't exist and don't do anything foolish. How hard could it be?

At least in this world, there were no vocal language barriers present. However, I began to consider bodily language cues such as howling, snorting, purring, growling, ear twitching, foot thumping, nose twitching, or tail swiping to name a few. All of which I couldn't express since my tail was fixed, my ears were false, and I didn't have a mouth nor nose. Thanks to my helmet, all of those options were unduly suppressed. Now, if I were to remove the helmet, would I be better off? Surely, I could smile, laugh, cry, and express stronger emotions but I didn't feel it was worth the risk.

For now, I'd stick with the helmet and keep it on at all times in public. It's respectable in appearance, sleek in design, aggressively shaped, and made me feel safe. If anyone asks, I'll just tell them that I have a rare medical condition. If they can't accept that answer, then all I could do was simply walk away and ignore it. Plain and simple. It would only be a big deal if I made it a big deal.

Thus, my confidence was beaming brightly and I felt ready to take on whatever this strange world threw at me. Bring it on. I leaned forward and continued to rest my heavy-laden eyes.

...

"Oh my god!" the fox loudly gasped, slamming the cruiser brakes and causing my head to strike the back of his seat. "Is that Jerry Vole?"

...

That mindless vermin. What was the matter with him? He eagerly stared out the window with that detestable smirk but the only creature of interest was a stout lemming with combed hair, a tuxedo, and a bow-tie. The poor creature seemed to be jumped at the red officer's fanaticism and he rapidly shook his head back and forth.