Ambassador Eunectes

Nomarch of the Glades and fifth to hold the title ‘Eunectes’, this stupendous serpent rules the lives of millions with an iron coil. Despite her relatively bloodless rise to power in a society that demands shows of strength, none have challenged her rule in all her 60 year tenure. Visiting Zootopian journalists suspect that her fabulous wealth and skill as a negotiator is responsible for this unprecedented feat, while local writers quietly note that many of her detractors have been known to mysteriously disappear.

A savvy, suspicious snake, Eunectes sees more than she lets on. Friends and enemies alike who underestimate this massive ophidian would do well to remember that anacondas are ambush predators; watching and waiting, patiently and without mercy, for the right moment to strike.

One of the main characters of the Swinton side-fic! Had a good time experimenting with art styles on the beautiful and cold-blooded giant anaconda Eunectes. And her story continues in Pearls Before Swine chapter 3! There’s more under the cut!

Swinton sat at her custom-made mahogany desk, watching her computer screen intently. She tapped her fingers happily on the shiny, near-mirror finish of the dense, hard wood inlaid with gold leaf; she loved watching her various accounts swell with Reptilian revenue. Even though the currency had to be laundered somewhat before it got to her, Herpetopian dinars raised a few eyebrows unless they were spread to the right pockets. Not that she needed to worry about any of that, she had set up that whole kit and kaboodle years ago, and there was no way anyone would sniff it out. Not without her knowing, anyway.

There was a thump at the door, Swinton’s eyebrow arched at the muffled “…Ow,” that followed.

“A twenty pound rabbit vs a two-hundred pound ironwood door.” She smirked . “It’s open, come in.”

The heavy, bull-oak wood door creaked open and Officer Hopps limped in, looking somewhat put off. She rallied quickly, though, and marched over to Swinton. “Alright, Swinton, I’m on to you! The pi–the gig is up! I know what you’re up to!”

Swinton steepled her fingers and donned a bemused expression. “Oh? To what 'gig’ are you referring?”

Hopps scowled and threw her hands up. “You have the nerve to–! Don’t try and hide it, Swinton! You’re as dirty as a pi…” her rancor dropped for a moment as she realized what she was a about to say and to whom, “…a p-person who’s, uh, not very clean.”



“Well said,” Swinton chuckled. “No, dear, you misunderstand. I was asking after which particular caper you were referring. Is it the drug ring, the fur farm, or the money laundering?”

July’s jaw dropped, her nonplussed expression nearly drove Swinton to hysterics. “Uhh…th-the money laundering.”

“Psssh!” Swinton scoffed, waving the bunny off dismissively. “Please! The fur farm is much worse than that. No kidding, there are cells, drugs, doctors, all sorts of stuff.”

“What?” July said, regaining her footing. “Are you insane?! I’m a cop! You can’t just tell me this stuff! I can arrest you!”

“This is even easier than I thought. She’s so desperate to make a name for herself she can’t see when she’s being led!” Swinton rolled her eyes and got to her feet, gratified when the bunny drew back as she walked forward. “No…you’re a meter-maid, you write tickets and get yelled at by entitled wage-slaves down on skid-row, that’s your job and I must say you excel at it. I admit, following the money from one of my associate’s outstanding parking tickets was clever, but running up here and confronting me about it? What exactly were you trying to accomplish? Yet another ‘Hopps busts the mayor’ headline?”

“Something like that!” July reached into her pocket, her expression shifting from triumph to horror.

“You’ll find your phone in your locker at the precinct,” Swinton grunted, pouring herself a glass of scotch. “I had eyes on you the second you got too close down on Pack Street. Not hard to arrange for some poor inner-city youth to bump into a meter-maid, is it? Incidentally, there are some excellent pick-pockets down there.”

July fumed and grit her teeth. “I still have my findings.”

“Maybe,” Swinton said, casually. “But that’s not even enough to get a rejection letter from the four or five judges that I don’t own. You’ll need something a little more…concrete. Besides,when you try to run with this and when it fails, expect major cutbacks in ZPD funding, not to mention strict background checks on all academy trainees. Officers will be lost and not replaced, wages will plummet, crime will run rampant and I’ll have all the reason I need to see that tod Wilde out on his bushy tail without pension! Maybe I’ll see him down at the shelter? Hell, maybe all you cops’ll wind up there and have a little reunion!”

July sighed and deflated. “And if I keep quiet about it?”

“If you do,” Swinton said, smirking. “Then nothing changes apart from my opinion on bunnies and their intelligence. Are we clear, Hopps?”

“Like Lalique,” Hopps grumbled, nodding at the glass in Swinton’s hand.

“Ah! A rabbit with taste! Stop the presses!” Swinton laughed flintily and downed her glass, turning her back on the bunny. “You may leave, now.”

The bunny sighed and shuffled out, defeated. Swinton waited for the door to shut before hurrying around her desk and picking up her cellphone. “She’s good, much better than I thought, playing the beaten and broken card like that. But make no mistake; you have to wake up pretty early to pull one over on me. If she’s anything like her aunt, all the clues I dropped in that little back-and-forth should have put her on the right track. Better call Porosus, let him know she’s coming. Heh! She’ll probably scout the place out before she calls in back-up, the timid little greenhorn. I can just imagine her surprise when she comes face to face with that old dinosaur! She’ll barely get stuck in his teeth!”

Swinton texted Marshal, smirking mirthlessly. ‘Heads up, Marshal, you’ve got a cop inbound.’

‘WHAT’

‘Calm down. Just tell Porosus and his little lizard henchmen to keep an eye out for a bunny. Permission to kill has been granted.’

‘A bunny cop?!’

‘Well, technically a meter maid.’ Swinton snorted in irritation. “Keep your head on, Marshal, if you know what’s good for you…”

‘When?’ he was ‘sounding’ much calmer.

‘Don’t know,’ Swinton typed, airily. ‘Maybe later today. Maybe never. It’s not like I gave her a map! Just be on guard, she’s a sharp one.’

‘Okay, will do.’

‘Glad to hear it!’ Swinton typed. ‘Oh, and Marshal…?’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t fuck up.’ Swinton let that sink in for a while. ‘Ciao!’

Three days later.

The paper read 'International Crisis! Reptilian Emissary Arrested’. The farm was lost, Marshal, Porosus, and everyone else was in custody and the stock had been freed. Swinton gritted her teeth, there was no chance of this leading back to her, no one would talk and nothing the stock had to say would hold up under the scrutiny of a competent defense attorney. But it still stung. It wasn’t just money she had lost, and she had lost a lot, but her connections in Herpetopia were now an utter shambles; Eunectes would distance herself from this fiasco, likely never to return, and with her Swinton’s hoof in the door with an ancient and extremely wealthy market. More that, more than the money and the connections, Swinton had lost. For the first time, things had not gone according to plan, all because of a tiny, impulsive rabbit.

No. It wasn’t the money at all.

Swinton reclined in her chair, staring the Lalique crystal in her hand. She poured the ice cubes out and onto the carpet and hurled the beautifully crafted glass at the opposite wall. It shattered spectacularly, the shards glittered incandescently in the soft light of the 60-watt bulbs suspended above. The sound was hard, sharp, and tinkling, clear as a bell and piercing.

“Six hundred dollars,” Swinton hissed, “I don’t miss it. This desk?”

She drew a hard, pedicured hoof across the polished wood, gouging the surface. “Five thousand. I don’t care. It’s just money. All this, everything, is only money. I am long, long, past the point of caring about money.”

Swinton held up a bottle of scotch. “Highland Scotch, aged 25 years and finished in a port barrel. Four hundred dollars a bottle…” The amber liquid pooled on the gouged mahogany as she poured it out. “Might as well be a plastic bottle of bargain bin ripple for all I care…the things my father would have done for this expensive swill, and here I am, pouring it out. He’d have a heart attack! If he weren’t already dead, that is…”

Swinton set the empty bottle down, glaring at her reflection in the puddle. “My father…a drinker and a lout. Coasting through life on welfare cheques, drinking through half of mother’s pay and gambling away the rest. Two brothers, a sister, my mother, me, he kept us all under his hoof. To this day I don’t know how he did it, he was a man of few talents, fewer scruples, and truly breathtaking ignorance; yet he swaggered about our hovel like some gilded king.”

Swinton turned around and gazed out the window, overseeing the sprawl of Zootopia. “If he taught me anything, it was this: money is a means to an end, and that end is control. Withholding our money, he controlled us, he dominated us, and through us he got all he ever needed out of life.” Swinton grinned, toothily. “He also taught me that one need only drop a little bait for a boar to charge headlong into a trap. Our hovel was spartan, with steep, sharp stairs…The fall didn’t kill him, not right away. I remember how he looked up at me as I knelt down next to him, his eyes wide and wild and enraged. His airway was twisted shut, he couldn’t speak, but not for lack of trying. He gurgled and sputtered, the closest he ever came to giving his final words was a mewling ’…please’.’

I sat and watched for thirty minutes, and when I was sure he was dead I ran into the night, shouting and crying as loud as I could. There was a suitable uproar, a funeral, the whole nine. We were the talk of the neighborhood for weeks. It felt good, like a reward, almost. It was then that I learned how easy it was to sway the public, how trivial a task to get a group of people to agree on an absolute farce. To this day people still speak of Oscar Swinton fondly. It was then that I knew my calling. The media, public opinion, politics. It was my kind of game and I play dirty.”

Swinton examined the mess she had made, her lip curling in disgust. “Speaking of dirty.” She depressed a labeled button on her intercom. “Lydia. Be a dear and give my office a once over. I’m afraid there’s been an accident.”

Lydia, a stoic and obedient sow from one of Swinton’s housing projects, hurried in with her broom and dustpan, a rag tucked into her waistband. Swinton liked her because she rarely stole, barely spoke, and never asked questions. “Mind the broken glass, dear.”

Lydia quickly and efficiently cleaned up the office and scurried out, before long Stevens padded softly into the room, a new glass and bottle of scotch in his huge stripy hands. “Louproaig 18 year single malt, as you like, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Stevens, you know just how to cheer me up.” Swinton said, smiling. “Stay for a drink?”

The burly, one-eyed tiger shook his head. “Not while on duty, ma'am. But thank you.”

“I’ll get you across from me one of these days, Stevens, mark my words.” Swinton laughed, gesturing for him to leave. “Stevens is the heart and soul of this administration. Calm, collected, professional; he makes things hop when I’m not around to crack the whip.”

Stevens nodded and left the room. Swinton turned around and gazed out the window at the city, her city. “It’s all I ever need and it’s still not enough.”

Ms. Muston’s low, timid voice squeaked over the speakerphone. “Mayor Swinton? Chief Wilde is here to speak with you, he says it’s urgent.”

“Wilde? Oh, right, his bunny-buddy. This will be fun…” Swinton grinned. “Tell him to come back when he’s made an appointment.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Muston said, nervously.

“Nothing will get a fox through your door faster than telling him he’s not invited,” Swinton said, folding her hands in front of her. “Three…two…one…”

Continued in the link!

http://mistermead.tumblr.com/post/147204139686/chew-toy-the-phone-rang-it-was-the-low