Prologue

She was so proud.

She'd scraped and saved and worked, and him along with her, and finally, she was able to buy him a uniform.

The young red fox looked at himself in the cracked mirror, puffed out his chest, straightened his hat, and collapsed in a fit of giggles when his mother tickled him.

He wanted nothing more than to be a Junior Ranger Scout. And it didn't matter that he was going to be the only predator there, because by god he was going to fit in.

He could hardly wait. His feet were springs, jumping up and down and up and down until the clock chimed 6. As soon as that bong resonated throughout the little apartment, he kissed his mother on the snout and ran out the door.

She was so proud of her little boy.

He nearly overshot the building, he was so excited. Two at a time, he skipped up the stairs, and arrived in a room with the other scout members. He high-fived a zebra and beamed brightly at a beaver, the largest of the animals.

"Ready?"

He scoffed. "I was pretty much born ready."

The lights dimmed, and a bright light illuminated his face.

"Recite the oath," The beaver said in a mystical voice.

"I, Nicholas P. Wilde, promise to be kind, loyal, helpful, and trustworthy," He recited without hesitation.

"Even though you're a FOX?"

"Huh?"

The light shut, and the beaver pushed him down. He landed with a cry as two others, he couldn't see through his fear, held him down. The beaver pressed something down onto his snout.

"No! No! Please! What did I do? What did I do!" He screamed, but they didn't care. The muzzle snapped on, its cold metal pressing up against his fur. He squirmed again, but they held him down hard.

"You thought we would ever trust a fox without a muzzle? You're even dumber than you look." The words tore at his heart, hurt him more than any punch ever could. Desperately, he clawed in the dark, heard a cry, felt their grip loosen and sprinted away as fast as his paws could carry him.

He heard them laughing cruelly behind him, and one of them called out, "Did you ever think we could trust a FOX?" and burst out laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world.

He flattened himself against the wall, their laughs echoing in his head. He'd lost his hat, and his uniform was torn. A tear slid down his cheek, then another, and soon he was crying, crying to forget, crying to remember.

The horrible muzzle suffocated him. Black spots danced at the edge of his vision, and he fought to pry the horrible strap off. It slipped over his ears, and he threw that horrible thing away, far away from him. It landed with a clatter near a sewer grate, and he willed it to fall in.

I promise, he thought between hiccups and sobs, I promise no one will ever treat me like that again. I promise to be kind, loyal, helpful, and trustworthy. I promise that I'll be the best, the nicest, the most trustworthy animal in Zootopia. They'll like me. I'll make them like me. I'll never be a sneaky sly fox, and everyone will know, and then they'll see how wrong they are.

The red and blue lights of a passing police car startled him out of his trance, but in no time at all, he was mesmerized by it. He wiped a paw across his cheek and straightened his bandana. His eyes, though still brimming with tears, were filled with something new, something bold.

Hope.

Being a police officer would bring him that much closer.