More artwork of Werekitty's Felicia Briggs and my own Walter Hamlin of the ZPD.
This time by the incomparable DUTCH https://www.furaffinity.net/user/dutch/


Five minutes into knowing Hamlin and Felicia learned one thing about her new friend that she liked. He absolutely refused to so much as enter any Doebucks coffee shops, and Felicia couldn't blame him. The taste of the greasy, overpriced brown water they called coffee aside, those grinning, brown-shirted baristas just plain gave her the willies.

They opted for a place called Mom 'n Pop's Coffee Shop and found they had an assortment of fresh-baked bagels as well as decent coffee in sizes from the Plus Sized mammal on the go to the uh... under-tall.

Taking their bounty to the park across the street, they found an unoccupied bench and took some time to enjoy the noonday sun.

"So..." Felicia said, taking a sip of her latte. "Probably best if we get the obvious question out of the way first."

"You mean the one that goes 'Why a cop?', or something like that?"

"That's the one. Me, I just wanted to do some good."

"Really? That's pretty cliché, don't you think?" He said smirking over the top of his Rat-sized cappuccino.

"I mean that's what you see on the recruitment pamphlets."

"Yeah yeah, but how many small cats do you see on the force? Not even lynxes or servals."

"That's true. So far I'm the first and only Rat in the ZPD, and I was in WAY before the Mammal Inclusion Initiative so you can imagine how loud and hard I had to argue with the recruitment office just to have the chance to fail." Hamlin took an angry bite into his Cheese and Onion Bagel and ripped a hunk of it free. "I wasn't going to let some closed-minded jerk tell me to turn around and go back into the sewers."

"Good for you. Me, I came in after Hopps. I heard her speech to Wilde's class, and was inspired. 'So no matter what type of animal you are, from the biggest elephant to our first fox, I implore you: Try. Try to make the world a better place'."

"Oh yes... Hopps." he said in a flat tone. "I can't hate her for her enthusiasm... or that she got results when no one else could in her first four days... and the follow-up that cracked the Nighthowlers down to it's rotten core. She has earned the right to be our official, unofficial face of the ZPD. "

"I'm NOT matching her record of two-hundred tickets before noon. That's just unreasonable... Never mind kind of unfair to the ticketees."

"Oh yes! I remember when I had to process those. Heck of a record to make. No one had ever done that many in one day... much less before noon." he said in an almost upbeat tone before dropping to a growl. "Now if only she had been willing to do her stint on parking duty like every other cop and not go running off, chasing the weasel into Little Rodentia."

"Ooooh. Now it becomes clear. You hold a grudge against Hopps for going into Little Rodentia."

"Little Rodentia has nearly no crime to speak of. At least little that requires a Badge to show up. So the few times something police-worthy happens an officer of... smaller stature is sent in to deal with things." He explained, his tone settling down. "In a completely unofficial way the community of Little Rodentia has become MY beat. Since I started working for the ZPD I have only been needed to be called in oh, seven times. Then that oversized rodent had to break procedure and spring into a territory she hadn't been trained for."

"And of course Bogo was all for the accentuate the negative when it comes to Hopps, so they ignored all the good she did in minimizing the damage, being polite, and saving the life of an arctic shrew. But they noted the reckless endangerment, and inciting a scurry."

"Oh yes... That's one of the reasons they usually send me in as a point man. Sometimes you'd think Scurrying is their regional pastime."

Mice, am I right?" Briggs commented. "As timid as rabbits are supposed to be."
Hamlin sighed and took another drink before shrugging noncommittally
.
"I know I shouldn't be angry at her but it's one of those territory things. I do not get out of records in official capacity all that often. Yes she managed to catch Weaselton probably faster than a larger officer would have, and yes it led to the solution to a crises we didn't even realize we had at the time. I just worked my own tail off to become more than just another Rat and bang! Right punch to the ego."

"To be somewhat fair, she probably didn't know about you. After all records is all the way down by the boiler, and they had the joke mobile pre-registered just for her. WITH the bloody governor on. You have to disable that little bit of quote safety equipment unquote to get the thing moving faster than a sleepy sloth on sedatives."

"Well... it's not illegal IF you got the right paperwork filled out. So let me know if you would like to have that troublesome apparatus removed." he said in a conspiratorial tone before chuckling. "You would be surprised what 'make it legal' paperwork exists that we don't run around telling everyone about."

"Should do that when we get back. I just deactivate it then turn it back on at the end of my shift."

"Don't get caught." he warned before adding. "I'm on my break right now so what do I care what I overheard?"

Briggs winked, chewed her Tuna Bagel and savored her cuppa.

"Will try, until I get the proper documentation filled out."

"I have yet to actually meet Hopps face-to-face, you know that? Most famous cop currently in the ZPD and we have yet to cross paths." he paused a moment then shrugged. "I was getting my teeth filed the day she got her clown car."

"Couldn't keep ahead with your gnawing?"

"Yeah. I aught to bring something to work to gnaw on. I keep having to fight the urge a lot at my workstation, chewed-up pens and pencils make the place look unprofessional. "

"I think I saw some gnaw sticks in one of the all inclusive stores I shop at... Meter maid's salary plus crappy apartment equals I have to be super thrifty when shopping."

"I'll have to look into that, thanks. Mom would lecture me if she knew I was neglecting my teeth like that. 'A filing at the dentist's office is no substitute for daily gnawing.'" Hamlin let out a sigh. "I love my parents but I had more reasons for leaving Deep Down Town than just wanting to change the world's idea of what Rats are supposed to be like."

"Yeah... I hear ya. 'Don't go to Zootopia, you'll get run ovah. Those big mammals don' look out for tha little creatchas'," Briggs said going into a stereotypical Mother voice. "Ohyle..."

"And my dad... I love the guy but he's all about the family business. It's 'Sewer maintenance', this and 'waste infrastructure', that. Not to mention his whole 'Hey Hey, You might call it sewage but that's' our bread and butter there.' speech." Hamlin said in a deeper voice that indicated his father, before quickly adding "Of course he means that as a metaphor... mostly."

"Hey we have something in common. Parents who don't get it."

"Hey, we have at least that much." he agreed before something else came to mind. "Well, that and the academy didn't pull punches just because we were smaller."

"Oh yeah. They didn't even accommodate Hopps."

"Well, if I could get through it all, someone several times my body mass should be able to. No wonder she was able to take down Weaselton. If I could take down a Rhinoceros then she should at least be able to handle a weasel."

"She took down the rhino, too. And so did I."

"I don't doubt it. They don't give the badge unless you can deal with the EEE-Nourmous criminal part of the training. "

"Oh geez... That polar bear coach..."

"Yeah. You just wanted to finish the course just out of spite."

"I know, right? Good lord... Also... How did YOU beat the rhino?"

"I... well... I had a plan. At the sound of the bell I was gonna climb all the way up that craggy gray landmass of a mammal and while perched on his nose punch him between the eyes until he went down." Hamlin said before speaking quietly. "In my defense, in my head it seemed like a much better plan than it does spoken out loud."

"Cripes, I’ll say. You were lucky he didn’t flatten you when you tried. So what happened?"

“The moment I started going up his leg he… panicked. Long story short he got an icepack and I got a commendation for original thinking.

“Eeeeeeugh…” Felicia cringed in distant sympathy for the poor Rhino. “You got him to punch himself out in a manner the Marquis of Queensbury would never have approved.”

“Bingo. So what did YOU do? Punch him in the back of the knees?"

"Something similar to your escapades. I climbed his back and provoked him into punching himself in the face. I was even smartass enough to say 'stop hitting yourself'."

"You at least got to finish the plan I had. Probably was good I didn't get that far. If he freaked out that much with me on his legs, I can only imagine how he would have reacted to a rat on his face."

"Yeah, being a cat I can jump, so I went directly for the back."

"I'll admit my time on the obstacle course was my weaker subjects. Sahara Square was ok... I'm more aerodynamic than most when I drop to all fours. The Ice wall was troublesome until I worked out how to use my teeth to quickly chip some holds in the ice. The 'thousand foot fall' thing... HAH! I grew up dashing about on slimy pipes. I just climbed up that sucker and jumped from rung to rung."

"I walked along the rope on the side of that thing. That rope thing was built for large creatures, so I wasn't about to try swinging rung to rung. Ice wall?" Briggs said then flexed her hands and out came her claws. "Claws. Five out of six appendages on a cat have sharp pointy things."

"Always good to have a natural advantage like that. Mine was the simple fact that rats are good at cramming ourselves into any ecological niche we are dropped into."

"Small cats are the same way... but then..."

"I have to... admit that the classroom courses are where I excelled. My physical shortcomings kept me from being the head of my class but I never realized I had a head for paperwork and procedure until the Academy."

"That might be why you're in records more than your size."

"I won't deny the thought hadn't crossed my mind. I always just thought it made it easier for Bogo to put me where I wouldn't be underfoot... any more than being down in the basement is."

"You apparently do good work down there."

"I refuse to do shoddy work on the principle of the thing." He said taking another bite of his Bagel . "I'm good enough that I made sergeant in record time."

"Nice."

"I just... Well we all do parking duty in the beginning. It gives us a feel for the streets and takes some of the enthusiasm out of the rookies so they don't make as many mistakes later on. I worked that one out on my own. It's only that I wanted to impress on others that my species can be more than just people who do all the jobs that no one else wants to. That and I'm realistic about my original aspirations on being a firefighter."