Time Setting: May 21st, 2016

"Aggh! I can't look!"

Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde both sat motionless on the couch in Nick's apartment. Screams of terror and fright rang in their ears as they watched Nick's TV set intently. Like most animals across the great city of Zootopia did when they wanted to avoid sleeping, they were sitting up late in Nick's apartment, watching scary movies.

Judy now cowered behind Nick's couch, hovering between there and the door to the bathroom, where she had been for the past half an hour, hiding behind the shower curtain and praying for the nightmare to end. Her huge violet eyes were wide open in fear, and the whole of her compact rabbit body trembled like a tender branch in the wind. She gripped the back of that couch like it was going to fly away if she didn't hold on.

Her friend Nick, however, was motionless. Judy couldn't really tell if Nick was scared or if he was just focused on the screen intently. However, the insane twitching of his fox tail was a pretty sharp clue that he was not as brave as he appeared to be.

On the screen, the terrified female wolf lead, stared directly into the darkness, obviously in fear. The music calmed to the point of non-existence. Nick's green fox eyes widened. He then spoke back to his friend Judy.

"Hey, Carrots," he said with a slightly nervous smirk on his face, "how much you want to bet—"

Suddenly, the bestial, red-eyed monster on-screen popped into frame, eliciting a scream of terror from the female lead, and a jumpscare that fired Nick's fox body straight up in the air like a rocket from a tube. Judy cowered even further behind the couch, as though the monster on the TV was going to pop out and tear her limb from limb, something that was now happening to the poor soul in the film. Nick (at long last) recognized his friend's fear, and made an executive decision: turn off the TV. The finality of the black screen was a welcome sight.

Judy, panting like she'd been running for two and a half hours straight (something that she had only ever pulled off once without collapsing afterwards), turned to Nick with a look of desperation, her eyes bulging.

"Can you not, like, EVER, get one of these horror movies out again, Nick?" she said relatively calmly, then added a pitiful "Please?"

Nick nodded in agreement, and they headed back into his warmly illuminated kitchen, where Judy had placed her stuff for the evening: her carrot pen and her cell phone, along with a bowl of popcorn she had made. As Judy and Nick went about putting away their things, they spoke to one another.

"Hey, Carrots, I'm sorry about this evening," he explained. "It's been kind of a tradition in the Wilde family to stay up and watch movies late at night."

Nick's face was overcome with nostalgia as he thought of the days back when he was living with his mother.

"I remember the time when I was six, watching 'A Christmas Canary' and falling asleep dreaming that fox ghosts from the past, present and future would be following me and showing me my gravestone."

Nick shuddered at that thought.

"I still have trouble thinking about it."

Judy then spoke, her nerves totally shot as she shakily put away the clean popcorn bowl.

"All I remember doing on Christmas was eating my Aunt Thelma's carrot cakes and then going to bed. Speaking of which, I'd better get back to my apartment."

Judy went to grab her things from Nick's (somewhat unkempt) kitchen table.

DING-DING-DING-DING!

Judy's cell phone blared, and both of them jumped like a group of professional hurdle jumpers at the Furry Olympics. Nick, his hand over his heart, stared at Judy's phone. After giving his shot nerves time to calm down, Nick breathed a sigh of relief as Judy answered her phone. Looking down at the caller ID, Judy noticed the number was familiar.

"It's from Chief Bogo," she said as she answered. Nick rolled his eyes, a little annoyed that their water buffalo police chief was calling at this hour: 10:43 at night. His gruff voice came over the phone and barked orders to his two top officers.

"Wilde, Hopps, we need you down at the station now! An armed robber has broken in and is on the loose. He is suspected to be dangerous. Use caution."

Well, when duty calls, you can't exactly ignore it. Over the next fifteen minutes, Nick and Judy both changed into their uniforms and headed straight for the station in their police cruiser, with Judy at the wheel, propped up by a stack of books. She hoped the ZPD wouldn't notice the claw marks in the steering wheel from her intense grip.

From his seat next to her, Nick commented, his nerves obviously strained as well.

"Hey, Carrots? No matter what happens, we stick together, right?"

Judy, only half-paying attention, nodded as she put the pedal to the metal.

After swerving through several busy city streets, the siren blaring, they pulled into the Zootopia Police Department's parking lot, not sure of what to expect. Just in case, Nick and Judy had packed a Taser each, the old standby weapon in a non-lethal situation. They now nervously fingered their holsters as they walked up to the front door. What disturbed them most was the fact that the entire front door, which revolved on a hinge, was smashed in from all sides.

Nick swallowed as he carefully pushed open the remains of door, trying not to cut himself on the glass. They both stepped into the dimly-lit reception area. Judy noticed that the fat, cheery cheetah that usually sat behind the desk, Benjamin Clawhauser, was nowhere in sight. They were expecting to see him with his feet up on the desk, listening to Gazelle's music on his MPZ while directing animals to and from the various locations in the station. However, the only thing to see was a small, black three-ring binder. Judy, her Taser at the ready, slowly picked up the binder and read the page of scrawling handwriting in the dim moonlight that shone through the skylight from above.

Behind her, Nick gazed around, his Taser out of its holster and ready for action. He noticed that there were no lights on whatsoever. In fact, the moonlight, and the light from Judy's flashlight app, were the only lights in the entire station. Judy had produced her phone from her pocket and was reading the scrawling text.

She didn't like what she was reading.

"'Listen good,'" she read aloud.

"Wow. Can't this guy just English so goodly?" Nick asked sarcastically. However, Judy could tell that he was scared too.

"'If you want to see any of your friends alive again, then you must solve this riddle: What is your worst fear?'"

Judy's eyes bulged as she turned to the next page.

"'If you don't know now, you certainly will soon.'"

Judy's hand instinctively went for her Taser, and Nick's ears shot up in fear. Both of their eyes were wide and alive. Judy turned to the last page, which appeared to have text that someone was writing while they were sliding off the writing surface, like a trail of ink leading to a dead victim's body. The last page contained only three words, but they were enough to send shivers down her already-shaking spine:

"'I'm watching you.'"

Judy put down the binder. She noticed Nick had his tail between his legs, his paws up over his eyes and ears, and was whimpering loudly. She attempted (and failed) to calm him by putting her paw on his shoulder.

"OK. Calm down, Nick. Everything will be fine. We're going to find Bogo and then we will solve this case, understand?"

Nick nodded nervously.

"But you're right. That doesn't sound good at all."

Suddenly, from in one of the hallways, they heard a crash, followed by a gunshot and someone yelling. Gunshots echoed throughout the station. Nick's eyes bulged. Judy's little rabbit heart was now blasting at a million miles an hour. The fear they had experienced while watching that horror movie was nothing like this. This was raw panic setting in.

Judy spoke, but her voice was shaking.

"D-don't panic, Nick. Just follow my light. Think happy thoughts."

Nick nodded, deciding to take her advice.

"Carrots, I hope this works."

Nick then closed his eyes and began to think about anything besides the thudding of his heart in his chest.

"Coffee... warm milk... blueberry pie..."

Nick kept listing off these things as they both walked further into the darkness of the police station. The moonlight in the main room was, it seemed, confined only to there. Every light in the building had gone out, and the only visible possibility of illumination was the light on Judy's phone. It seemed so small now, like a candle in the darkness. Suddenly, Judy's phone began to ring, and Nick jumped slightly, not expecting it. Switching off the flashlight app, Judy shakily answered.

"H—hello?"

It was Clawhauser's voice that came over the phone, and he sounded panicked.

"Hopps! Wilde! If you can hear me, get out of this building now! He's everywhere and nowhere at the same time! He's probably—"

Clawhauser's voice suddenly trailed off.

"Oh, no," Judy heard him say, just before full-blown panic set in on the other end. "GET OUT OF HERE! GO! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING TO—AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!"

Clawhauser's scream blasted in Judy's ear sharply, and if Judy had ever been scared before in her life, it was nothing compared to right now.

"Clawhauser! Clawhauser!"

Judy yelled into the phone repeatedly, but all that she heard in response was the flat, drone-like noise of a dial tone. Clawhauser had hung up.

Or something had hung up the phone for him.

Judy slowly pocketed her phone, plunging the hallway into pitch darkness. They both had to fight the urge to discharge all six ounces of that soda they'd had back at Nick's apartment. Nick shakily spoke.

"What—do we—do now?" He asked in terror.

Judy took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down.

"I don't know. We have to find this guy. Remember, Nick. That monster in the movie wasn't real. Now Clawhauser has reported an encounter with whoever the intruder may be. If we can just find a light or something—"

In the darkness, Judy finally found a light switch, and slowly fingered it on.

You know that feeling you get when pure panic sets in? When something scares you so badly that you just want to run in any direction you can screaming your head off?

That's just what Judy experienced when she reached for that light switch.

Instead of the hall lights lighting up, a burst of cold air shot out from the ZPD lunchroom beside them, followed by a growling voice.

"Who dares to enter my police station?" it growled. Nick pointed at the door to the lunchroom, and Judy's scared eyes popped wide open, peering into an opening between the door and the wall they both were hiding behind. There was nothing in the lunchroom.

Wait.

Judy could now see a vague form in the lunchroom: a shimmering, ghostlike outline of a figure, a figure that was so black that not even the shadows looked dark when put next to it. It was tall and muscular, but the face of whoever it was was impossible to discern. Judy could tell, though, that it was definitely something to be feared. It was not Bogo. It was not Clawhauser. It was someone else.

The animal's ghostly form stared at them for a split second and then shot towards them at unbelievable speed, seeming almost to flow through the tables and chairs, creating a high-pitched whizzing noise.

Oh, yeah. Nick and Judy screamed.

They ran as fast as one could possibly imagine, screaming their heads off as they attempted to escape into the main room of the ZPD station. Just as they were about to make it to the front, an alarm blared, and metal doors slid from gaps in the walls, suddenly closing them off.

Someone had pushed the station's master lockdown button. It was a notoriously difficult state-of-the-art system of massive bulkhead-like doors designed to trap a criminal when deployed. Apparently, someone... or something... had tripped those alarms.

They both slammed against the metal door. Nick pounded on the steel barrier, his voice panicked and scared-sounding.

"HEY!" he yelled, "We're still in here! HEY!"

Judy, from where she stood next to Nick, tapped him on the shoulder.

"It's no use. These barriers are designed to block an intruder from escaping their jail cells. They're bulletproof, soundproof and fireproof."

Judy drew her Taser and then looked back in the direction of the hallway. She had managed to calm down by this time, and expressed to Nick the plan she had created.

"Are you out of your mind?" Nick asked in response. "You want to go back and find that guy?!"

Judy nodded solemnly.

"Yes, Nick. I don't care if he's almost invincible or fast like you wouldn't believe. I want to solve this case."

Nick facepalmed, running his paws down his face in fear.

"We're both going to die, Carrots!"

Judy held both of his paws as a way to get his attention.

"Listen, Nick. This is all suspicious to me."

"Everything's suspicious to you! You're a cop! What are you asking from me?"

"Well, think about it. First, we found that binder, right?"

Nick nodded.

"What did it ask again?"

"It wanted to know what our worst fears were."

"Yes. So, why are we being chased by this guy? It's not asking us for any answers, or confronting personal fears. It's all about being chased for no reason, along with creepy noises and the spontaneous tripping of the lockdown system."

Judy was pacing back and forth now, in her usual fashion when she was trying to figure something out.

"So, I, for one, want to know why the two events don't seem to be connected. That's why I'm going back there."

Nick was beginning to see her logic.

"Yeah. You do have a point, Carrots. But what about that guy? He's still back there."

Judy nodded, then gripped Nick's paw.

"Which is why we're going to face him—together."

Nick nodded in affirmation, an intense look on his face.

Judy then hesitated to go forward.

"You first, bud."

With that little interlude behind them, Nick and Judy moved back into the creepy darkness of the Zootopia Police Station, Nick in the lead. He held his Taser aloft in a defensive position. Judy, shadowing Nick from behind, managed to keep her cell phone light on as she scanned the relatively sterile hallways inside the station.

They came to the end of the hallway they were inspecting and poked their heads around the corner. They spotted something interesting.

A single light was on somewhere in the hallway, but it was so far off that neither of them could discern where it was coming from. The only places Judy could think of that were in that direction were the stairwell, the security office and the evidence room. The stairwell would prove a challenge to hide in, if that guy really was in there, and the security office could only be accessed by officers with a special code. That left just the evidence room.

"I'll bet he's trying to steal some of the evidence from the evidence room," Judy concluded aloud, and Nick nodded in agreement. Judy then decided to head for that room, much to Nick's protest.

"Don't leave me here alone!" he protested.

Judy allayed his fears somewhat by telling him to think happy thoughts once more. His countenance never wavering, Nick agreed, then closed his eyes while Judy moved on ahead. Judy could hear his trembling voice as she got closer and closer to the mysterious light.

"TV shows... Porkémon Go... Popsicles... cheese..."

Judy moved further on down the hallway. Apart from occasional balls of dusty fluff and a few pieces of dropped change, the hallway was totally empty. The warm orange light, from wherever it was, gradually began to get closer. Her paws padded across the tile floor, making a soft flop-flop-flop in the darkness. Her breathing became more regular.

Still, as she grew ever closer to the light, she couldn't shake the feeling something was watching her. Something that was creeping up behind her and...

Judy swung around, half-expecting to see the massive shadowy figure, staring down at her. Fortunately, nothing was there. She breathed a sigh of relief. She continued on towards the light, and knew that whatever was going on, she had to be ready. Her Taser still drawn, and the flashlight on her phone illuminating the hallway, her confidence was bolstered. At last, she grew close enough to the light that she turned off her phone.

Big mistake.

The instant she turned off her phone, Judy felt something tighten around her ankle, something that she was pretty sure was a paw. An ice-cold paw, one belonging to that terrible monster in the cafeteria. Before Judy knew what was happening, the paw was dragging her into an area of the police station she had not noticed—a small broom closet off to the side.

"AAAAAAGGGHH!!!!"

Judy's earsplitting shriek of terror was heard throughout the station, and then cut off, muffled. From his vantage point, Nick had gruesome images similar to the ones he had witnessed on TV flashing through his mind when he heard Judy scream. He peeked around the corner, panting like he'd run for two hours straight (he'd followed Judy on her marathon).

"Carrots? Judy?" He called, his voice tense. And that was where the sense of panic began to set in. His whole body was immediately drenched in sweat, and his breathing was hoarse and shallow.

"Carrots? If you're there, answer!" he called out, his voice now dropped to a frequently-cracking squeak. "For Pete's sake, Judy! Are you there?!"

No response from the fuzzy-headed, violet-eyed little friend of his he called Carrots. The light ahead went out completely. Whatever had happened to her, Nick didn't want to find out. At the same time, however, he didn't want to stay where he was, alone. His two conflicting ideas kept colliding in his brain, driving his sense of panic even further. And that was where he broke down completely.

Sobbing in fear, he dropped to his knees and spoke aloud to the darkness that now completely surrounded him.

"OK, mister! OK! You want to know what my worst fear is?!" he yelled. "My worst fear is... is... is being alone!"

It was true. Nick had had a deep-set fear of being alone ever since his childhood, when he had been lost for six days straight in the midst of Zootopia's Canal District. He had had no sleep on any of those six nights, for his paranoia of being alone was too deep-set to describe. It was enough to drive him to near-delirium. And now that his one friend, his closest friend, Judy Hopps, had disappeared, that delirium was beginning to set in again. All of his reasons for being afraid came spilling out like candies from a gumball machine.

"Alone in the dark, with no one around, with every horrible thing closing in on me like wild... animals! With no hope of escape!"

He then turned to the reasons why he specifically needed his Carrots.

"Judy is my comfort and help! She is what keeps me from being afraid! I need her, mister! Otherwise, I am... abandoned! Alone!"

Nick continued to break down sobbing as he covered his face with his paws, giving in to utter despair. He would never see his partner again, and he would never wake up from this nightmare.

He would be alone.

And then, something odd happened. A familiar voice came from the darkness. One that often caused Nick great annoyance to hear.

"Officer Wilde?"

Nick slowly stopped crying as he heard the voice. He responded through his remaining tears.

"What do you want, Chief Bogo? Can't you see I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown?!" he yelled into the darkness.

"I must say," Chief Bogo's disembodied voice said calmly, "that you have been the bravest one yet to undergo this test. The bravest one yet."

Suddenly, one by one, all the fluorescent lights in the hallways came on. Nick shielded his tearful eyes from the sudden light. He groaned.

"What? What's going on?"

Suddenly, Nick looked in the direction of the voice he'd heard. It now spoke to him from a speaker in the ceiling; the PA system.

"By admitting your fear, sometimes you show the most bravery of all."

Chief Bogo's voice was kind but firm. He was speaking to him via the loudspeakers.

Nick then heard a door open ahead of him, and the wide-eyed Judy came out of the broom closet. She looked around in panic for Nick, and then spotted him. She looked less terrified than Nick had expected. Instead, her face broke into a broad smile as she loped over to Nick.

"Nick! Nick! Oh, thank God you're all right!" she yelled as she ran up to Nick. Putting both paws on his shoulders, she spoke right into his face with a huge grin across her rabbity mouth.

"You're not going to believe this."

And she was right. Nick didn't believe it. At that moment, Clawhauser, dressed in a black trench coat and with his left paw covered in water and frost, stepped out of the broom closet, a sheepish grin on his face. He waved casually.

"Hey, Officer Wilde."

Nick stood up, all of his tears now completely gone. He stared at Clawhauser like he'd grown a second head (something he'd often boasted about on Facehoof). "Wait a second. Why are you wearing that stuff, Clawhauser?"

He looked around, the realization of what was going on finally sinking in.

"This was—this was all a PRACTICAL JOKE?!"

Nick glared at Clawhauser, now fully angry.

"All right, buster, you've got a few things coming to you! Why in the name of all that is furred would you think it would be fun to scare the crud out of us?!"

Nick walked towards Clawhauser, warming up his fist for a few good slugs. However, before he could get the chance, Chief Bogo stepped out of the door to the security room.

"It's not a practical joke, Officer Wilde. If you don't mind, please don't damage Sergeant Clawhauser, even if he does deserve it sometimes."

Bogo emphasized the last part of his sentence with a glare at his tubby police sergeant. Clawhauser chuckled nervously as he avoided the senior officer's gaze.

Bogo then turned back to Nick.

"I apologize for the strain we put on your nerves, Officer Wilde. I never intended this test to be a psychological torture chamber for you. However, it did require that you face your worst fears."

Nick's mouth hung open.

"This was a test?!"

Bogo nodded.

"Twenty years ago, when I first joined the police force, I was the victim of an unofficial initiation exam that pitted me against my worst fears. The administrators called it the Mental Test, and it was designed to see how new officers could possibly learn to face their worst fears, or even to conquer them."

Bogo grinned with a slight amount of mischievous relish in his eyes as he stared at Clawhauser.

"Clawhauser's Mental Test I particularly enjoyed overseeing."

Clawhauser nodded.

"I used to be afraid of my voice being heard in public. Now look at me!"

Judy followed suit, agreeing with Clawhauser.

"I remember that now. I was not particularly happy about my Mental Test. I used to have this fear of loud noises, and I was trapped in a place where Officer Grizzoli blasted his Thousand Fur Krutch at top volume. It scared me to death, but I came out realizing that the loud noise wasn't going to hurt me."

Bogo picked up the conversation.

"Knowing that you were the latest one to join the ZPD, Wilde, Clawhauser and I put together this Mental Test to see how you would react. By facing and admitting your fear, you proved yourself one of the bravest candidates ever to take this test. Welcome to the ZPD."

Bogo put his hoof on Wilde's shoulder in a fatherly gesture. Nick let it all sink in.

"A test... it was all a test..." he said, beginning to calm down. He even laughed, his relief coming out as quickly and as without restraint as his panic.

"My question is, how did you get all of those things to work? I mean, with the binder and that guy in the cafeteria, and the whooshes of the air and all of that?"

Bogo nodded, considering his answer well.

"I wrote in that binder, Clawhauser worked a projector to show the intruder, and those air whooshes were smoke cannons that are used during rescue training I hid inside the alcoves and behind the restroom doors."

Clawhauser chose that moment to interject.

"I stuck my paw in ice water so that it would feel cold when I grabbed Judy. As soon as I got her in the closet, she found out what was really going on."

Nick nodded.

"And what about the gunshot and the yelling?"

Bogo spoke again.

"That was me firing blank rounds at Clawhauser. He wasn't expecting it either."

Bogo grinned slyly at Clawhauser. Nick shook his head.

"Dude, though, wouldn't you think that just one shot would be enough? Why'd you shoot three times?"

Bogo's eyes suddenly widened.

"I only fired once, Officer Wilde. Whatever you heard those other times, that wasn't me."

Nick, Judy, Clawhauser and Bogo all glanced around themselves suspiciously. If Bogo hadn't fired off those extra gunshots, then who had?

No one knew.

THE END