This one was a loooong time coming. I've been sitting on these asks for quite some time, eager to answer them as I already had most of the ideas fleshed out in my head even before they were submitted. However, my health and the amount of work it entailed to keep it in line with the previous "Bellheroverse" pages had me continually pushing it back to work on more pressing projects or to simply rest through being sick. But today, finally, we take a look at just some of the villains in the Bellheroverse, some small timers, and some seriously deadly foes.
Chamille Leona - Code Name: Chame-lion. Threat Level: Minimal
"All spliced up and nowhere to run."
Growing up as a hybrid is a rough start for any mammal. Even in a progressive city like Zootopia, being a mixture of two different species, even marginally different ones would make life that much harder for you, at least before the existence of hybrids became somewhat more acceptable in recent years. That said, Chamille was no exception thanks to her half-tiger, half-cheetah status. Born from a broken family, with an absent father and a mother who often seemed disgusted at the very sight of her, Chamille's early life started on very poor footing. Of course, things only got worse once she started school and began venturing out into the public. Her attempts to make friends would not only lead to scorn, but sometimes direct abuse and the adults in positions of authority didn't treat her much better. She heard the whispers, she could see the way their muzzles curled in distaste at her mere presence despite their attempts to sound diplomatic.
It didn't take her very long to learn that the best course of action for someone like her was to try and keep her head down and disappear. To pick a trait to hide, and do her best to obscure everything about her family to the best of her ability. Yet despite her best efforts to lean into her cheetahish appearance by covering her stripes wherever they cropped up, it never fully stopped the whispers, the hateful sneers, the judgment. Often she found herself wishing she were truly invisible, so that not only would she avoid the glare of her bullies, but so she wouldn't have to look at herself anymore, and the body she had come to despise.
It was during her adult years, and with her enlistment in the Zootopian Reserve that her life started to turn around. For the first time in her life, her appearance was a distant second in terms of importance to her ability and skill, at least by her superiors anyway. Her speed and swiftness was unmatched by even some of the highest-ranking officials in the outfit, and thus despite her hybrid status, she rocketed through the ranks of the Reserves, eventually earning a position on one of the organization's most elite strike teams. For once in her life, Camille was respected, perhaps even feared by some. It was a good feeling, one she quickly came to revel in. The vacuum where a sense of ego had never developed soon became oversaturated with pride and the adoration of her subordinates, and she became addicted to it. So naturally, when researchers working with the upper echelon of Zootopia's government came to her with a proposition regarding 'powereds', informing her that her status in the military along with her hybridism made her the perfect candidate for an experiment they were attempting, she enthusiastically agreed to take part in it.
The researchers she had aligned herself with had long since been in the business of trying to extract where the amazing, super mammalian abilities in natural born 'powereds' came from. They told her the intent was to arm the Zootopian Reserve and the ZPD with the ability to combat rogue powereds on an equal level and to eventually allow all mammals great and small to be super instead of a select few favored by fate alone. And like a fool she took them at their hollow words, accepting their alleged altruistic goals blindly thanks to the fog of praise and accolades they laid upon her. They told her that she would be a hero. A true hero, as she had chosen her powers rather than had them simply placed upon her by some unknown providence.
They were trying a new compound, one that had failed to yield results in any of the other test subjects they had tried. But apparently, the compound showed promising results when allowed to bind to hybrid DNA over that of pure-blooded species. The nature of the mixed genetics seemed to allow the compound to better integrate itself into a mammal's full genetic makeup. Dreamy with praise, compliments, and reassurances, Camille signed off on the experiments, and took her bold shot to become a 'real hero'.
How could it have all gone so horribly wrong? The most painful, agonizing procedure she had ever endured, and in the end it had left her unable to control her powers, and in intractable pain whenever they chose to manifest The ability to cloak herself, true invisibility, that was the aim of the experiment. But the attempt to infuse her with said ability didn't take in the way the research team had aimed. The compound proved to be wild, unstable, and often left her wracked with pain whenever a sudden onset of camouflage forced itself upon her. For so much of her life, she had wanted to be invisible, to disappear, and now in some cruel twisted irony, she had gotten her wish. She hadn't been warned of such side effects, and what's more, she hadn't been told she had signed herself away to the lab and Zootopian government as an asset by agreeing to the procedure. She was no longer a mammal, but a tool and a test subject, who wasn't allowed to leave the lab, and would become dependent on her captors for injections to help stabilize her condition while they researched a more permanent fix. When she became obstinant, when she refused them, they would withhold pain medication until she became cooperative.
She spent five long years in hades, nearly going mad while they poked and prodded, with every attempt at a true fix for her condition falling flat. In the end, it took a sheer force of will to endure the pain and get some degree of a handle on her powers, and an even greater will to hide that showing of control from her captors. Through the blinding pain and agony, one thought had managed to persevere, and that clear goal would allow her to endure the kind of treatment that would have driven lesser mammals insane. She was going to get out or die trying.
In time she got great at pretending to be drugged out of her mind, to be fading in and out of consciousness. She learned quite a bit from the loose lips of researchers who thought she was beyond hearing them. About how they sought to sell superpowers to the highest bidder abroad, and at home to allow the government total control over what kind of mammal would be allowed to be a powered at all. They sought methods to erase a natural powereds abilities, and they had yet to create a synthetic power that didn't come with a major flaw that left it completely unmarketable. All their dirty little secrets came to light, as well as the various access codes and methods to deactivate security protocols that would be vital to navigating out of her prison, and Camille dutifully filed them away as she planned her escape.
Then one day, her captors came to her cell only to find the feline missing. The alarms were sounded, crying out into the crisp clear night of the Saharan Square sky, but by then she was long gone, taking with her a suitcase full of morphine and swaths of very valuable and damning information about what the lab had been up to and just who they were working for. She had even sabotaged their whole network on her way out for good measure, setting back their research by about ten years in the process.
Camille has the power of true invisibility which renders her undetectable by even infrared scanning. With great concentration she can even control the visibility of specific regions of her body rather than a purely blanket cloak, however, her power comes with a price as going invisible to any degree causes her immense pain. She keeps this in check with a steady supply of opiates and has a distribution system plugged into her at all times whenever she's pulling a heist of some sort, as while she can grin and bear through some degree of pain thanks to having been practicing at pushing through it for years, it can still become unbearable depending upon the degree of invisibility. However, even without relying on her powers, she's still an expertly trained ex-special operative and extremely limber, a deadly combination for close-quarters combat.
Since escaping, Camille has mostly sat on the damning data stolen from the lab, saving it as an emergency measure to keep her and Zootopia's more corrupt elements in government in a sort of stalemate. Should they try to aggressively neutralize her, the information will be automatically distributed via a dead mam's switch. This is what has allowed her to pull increasingly high-profile jewel thefts across all of Animalia with significantly less pursuit than one would expect. But all that's done has fed her ego, and made her grow increasingly cocky with each new scheme. The fact that her morals are loose, and her services sold to whoever pays her well enough or does enough ego stroking hasn't helped her make any friends either, with even the renegades dealing with her at arm's length lest she tries to pull something over on them. But eventually, the patience and fears of those who once held her yolk will wear thin, and the data she stole will matter little if it means removing a long-term thorn in a lot of very powerful mammal's hides.
And in case you were wondering, while she has no lion blood in her veins, her name was chosen because it had the best alliteration. Not like she's worried about anyone calling her on it anyway, they'll never see her coming regardless.
Duke Weasleton - Code Name: Duke Whizzleton. Threat Level: Moderate
"Always in the wrong place at the wrong time."
That's the story of Duke's life, a perpetual case of just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Duke wasn't born with his superpowers, in fact, he had only come into them shortly before Hopp Speed arrived in Zootopia. It was supposed to be a simple, low-effort gig. Just keep watch while some... more large and intimidating-looking mammals than himself pulled off a heist at what was supposed to be a largely abandoned research facility in the Rainforest District's Cliffside. What he hadn't known was that he was meant to be the patsy should the job go south. And go south it did, just not in the way anyone expected.
An explosion ripped through the quiet atmosphere of the cliffside, the building suddenly erupting in a tower of flame and trapping the hapless weasel inside. A self-destruct sequence, meant to keep the materials in the facility from being removed by unauthorized personnel had been triggered. Duke's partners in crime had barely gotten back to him with the package when the facility went off, killing his cohorts and knocking him unconscious. When Duke came to...he was still inside the burning, crumbling structure, but something was wrong. Everything around him seemed to be moving at a sloth's pace. The lick of the flames, the falling debris, the sights played before him as though it was a film reel being played at 1/10th the speed.
Not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth, Duke began to run out of the building, the scenes around him slowing even more as he cleared the burning structure and ran deep into the dark cover of the rainforest district. Taking a moment to catch his breath, the weasel finally noticed the strange blue liquid that had soaked into his fur, and crackled with periodic darts of static. It appeared that whatever had been in that package those bigger mammals were looking to smuggle out of that place had ended up plastered all over him during the unexpected explosion. Whatever the compound was, it had saved his life. And as Duke would soon discover, it had bestowed upon him the gift of superpowers.
By the time the more warped events of this version of Zootopia take place, Duke has gotten enough of a handle on his abilities to be able to pull off several petty thefts and robberies to enrich himself. His super speed, coupled with his ability to compress his body to fit through all sorts of tight spaces quickly earned him the top spot as one of Zootopia's slipperiest criminals. His string of successes made him bolder, cockier, and he rapidly developed a sense of being completely and totally untouchable. That was until Hopp Speed put an end to his crime spree in a more wild version of the chase from the film, which while still ending in little Rodentia, requires Judy to trap him in one of the hamster tubes instead of the big donut, presenting him to the ZPD in the equivalent of a handy pneumo-tube sealed at both ends.
Completely humiliated, the weasel becomes increasingly obsessed with his new rival in the rabbit super cop and trying to humiliate her just as she had humiliated him. However, with each thwarting by the fastest mammal in the ZPD, his obsession turns from desiring simple humiliation to her utter destruction as his mental state rapidly declines. This isn't all madness simply driven by a down-on-his-luck mammal reaching his breaking point, but rather the signs of something much more troubling that the little weasel only discovers in the later stages of his madness.
As mentioned in Camille's story, there hasn't been a single synthetic-powered treatment created that doesn't come with a massive or crippling drawback, and Duke's abilities are no exception. With Hopp Speed, her body developed to work with her power. She can push her limits and recover from going overboard without suffering significantly. However, Duke wasn't made for his power, it was thrust upon him, unstable and without limits. The very use of his super speed is slowly destabilizing and decaying his atoms, which is in turn is warping his mind more and more as the cell decay increases. And if the weasel doesn't find a way to get his condition under control, he will eventually break down into an atomic smear of base particles. That is if he's even still sane enough to care at this point.
Aster Bellwether - Code Name : Rampage. Threat Level: Extreme
"The shared sins of the father."
Doug's research died with him on that fateful day. All the information as to the nature of what that rather unique compound buried deep within the fabric of the night howler flower, and what it could do to a mammal lost in the lab crash that killed everyone save for Judy Hopps, Nick Wilde, and Dawn Bellwether, who would eventually become beholden to the power of that mystery compound. 'Bleatdown' was born that day, and Zootopia, nay all of Animalia trembled before her power. Of what a meek, weak little prey mammal could do when pushed to her full potential. And while many of the mammals who saw her glorious birth cowered in fear at the unbridled strength on display, there was one mammal who was rapt in awe. After all, he had witnessed her original birth, the frail weak little runt that would just barely keep their family name on life support. He knew the former Dawn more than she knew herself, and that's what made her transformation all the more awe-inspiring for him to witness. That power, that raw force...this was what he needed to make the dream he had tried to tirelessly instill into his daughter realized. A world where prey was stronger than predators.
This version of Aster, while losing Doug as his direct contact, still would wheel and deal among the upper echelons of Zootopia's political figures in order to seed his sinister plans for the future of the city. However, his plan in the Bellheroverse is significantly altered. Instead of pursuing night howler as a purely terrorist agent, used to get revenge on the city at large and force his vision of a Ewetopia, he seeks to achieve it by getting to the root of Dawn's power, and exposing all of Zootopia's Sheepfolk to the compound. Naturally, this is a tall order. With Doug gone, and his research gone with him, Aster and the rams at his disposal are back at square one when it comes to isolating this mysterious power source. But it wasn't entirely a loss. After all, thanks to Aster's connections to rams in high places, they had access to the only known current source of that power, Dawn herself.
Naturally, his plans suffered a setback when Dawn escaped and went missing, especially since after the five years they had her at their mercy, they had gotten very close to finding a method of replicating the compound, as well as neutralizing it. Aster's agents on the ground had developed a theory that they could harvest the compound directly from Dawn herself since they had very little luck with the flower. By drawing Dawn's blood from her during the stage of imminent transformation, they could in theory implant Dawn's abilities into another mammal. What's more, if they were to cycle Dawn's blood completely with new, untainted blood while administering an 'anti-compound' they had developed, they believed it could neutralize her powers permanently.
The catch? Dawn's blood would have to be transfused into a direct relative with the same blood type for their best shot at a successful transfer. Fortunately, Aster shared his daughter's blood type. Unfortunately, Dawn was still MIA, supposedly skulking around with those Renegades behind the fog of Zootopia's hidden places. He would have to lure her out, to draw her to him so the deed could be done...and what better way to lure his daughter home, than with the love the little ewe still managed to hold for her mother.
It wasn't hard to convince Clover to go along with his plan, a few swift back hooves and his timid little mate was on board. The problem came from making sure Clover's apparent need to contact her daughter managed to carry all the way out to the deepest nooks and crannies of Zootopia. And that was done by planting Clover in the Zootopia Mayoral debates and having her hijack the question segment by begging Dawn to contact her. It didn't take long for the ewe to quietly reach out to her mother, and after assurances that neither the ZPD nor her father was involved, Dawn went to Clover in secret, even keeping it from her fellow Renegades for fear they would try to stop her.
The needle went in so easy, he had merely stepped out from the shadows and with the slightest effort implanted the syringe deeply into her neck. She was out like a light before she even had time to register her father's piercing glare. Only the ember of his cigar burned in her consciousness as everything faded to black. Dawn would wake up in the Woolery Winery, the same place the climatic showdown took place in Rehab, but with a wildly different outcome. Merely the sound of her father's voice, mockingly reassuring her would send her into a spasm, the urgent need for Bleatdown to come out swinging. But it would all play right into Aster's hooves, and the transfusion would go off seemingly without a hitch, leaving Dawn powerless and weary as Aster bursts free from his own restraints. The ram known as Aster is no more, now...there is only 'Rampage'.
Rampage is essentially the 'Abomination' to Dawn's Hulk. Super strength, super agility, and nearly invincible under most conditions, Rampage is truly a force to be reckoned with. As for his differing appearance compared to Dawn, with his flesh a deep crimson and his horns and wool having darkened to almost jet black, this is the result of having used Dawn's blood as the primary method to infuse himself with her power. However, the reign of Rampage is short-lived compared to the other villains on this list as his plan quickly unravels with the appearance of the Red Moth.
Having tracked Dawn to Clover's home, and finding a beaten and bruised Clover on the floor, Dawn's frantic mother conveys to Vernon what Aster is up to, and where she thinks he might have taken Dawn. Vernon arrives on the scene shortly after Aster's successful infusion, and just in time for the ram to try out his new powers on his uninvited guest. Despite the wolf's best efforts, he is beaten, battered, and rendered almost half-dead by the powerful beast in Aster. Dawn can do nothing but watch as the poor wolf gets clobbered by her father's might, and when it looks as though he's going to finish Vernon off, Dawn pleads for Aster to stop, and declares her love for the wolf.
Both amused and disgusted, Aster begins to tease his daughter, playing with Vernon's limp form as though he were little more than a mere rag doll and reveling at the life he now held in his hooves. However, he tires quickly of this game and readies to make the killing blow against the wounded wolf, but he is interrupted within mere inches of ending him when a massive blue-clawed fist smashed into his face. To his surprise, Dawn has transformed despite efforts at neutralizing her. The ram sneers, spitting the trickle of red ichor oozing from his maw. He was sure he could handle her, he always had been able to after all. His little Dawnie just needed a bit more training to remind her just who was in charge.
A knockdown drag-out fight ensues, the factory catching fire as Aster and Dawn trade blows and knock each other into extremely flammable equipment. As the building turns into literal hades around them, completing Aster's demonic visage, Dawn manages to get the upper hoof, forcing Rampage into a wall. Rampage struggles, confusion wracking his adrenalin-filled mind as his strength starts to wane. But Dawn is only ramping up, her rage building as she clasps his horns and repeatedly slams his head into the wall over and over again. All the abuse, all the pain, all those memories forced to the surface all at once. She no longer saw a mammal in the ram pinned beneath her, but a demon, her father's true face as it had always been.
His strength withering rapidly, panic and fear overtake him as he tried to brace himself from each successive blow. A loud crack, and the horn Dawn was gripping came off in her hoof. Reeling it back, she glared at the demon, then back at the crumpled form of Vernon behind her, and then back at the shrinking devil. With a roar, Aster's own horn found itself planted into his chest, ripping clean through into the wall and pinning his body there. Quickly his monstrous form began to shrivel in spots, parts of him returning to normal while others remaining large and gangly as his synapses began to fire wildly. Pain, confusion, terror, those were his final thoughts as the last glimmer of light flittered from his fading yellow irises. He struggled to maintain his gaze on his daughter's cold, emotionless eyes, without an ounce of love held within them for the ram before she turned away, scooping Vernon's broken form into her arms and escaping into the night. Leaving Aster to be swallowed by the hellfires of his own making.
Vernon lives, if you're wondering, though it takes months of physical therapy, and some augments courtesy of Gus to get him back to fighting fit. All the while with Dawn at his side, with the wolf making his own admission to loving her just as much as she loves him. The pair are unsure how they'll make the relationship work with Dawn's 'abilities' being directly tied to her emotions, but they are both more than happy to make a go of it. And despite the pain that Aster caused, his research that Melanie was able to glean from Dawn's experiences has helped make some decent headway in creating something that will allow Dawn to willingly suppress Bleatdown, even if she still can't outright be rid of it.
The King of the Cetaceans - Threat Level: Extinction Class
"The time of the land dwellers has come to an end."
Ulric was crazy, certifiably nuts. But even a broken clock is right twice a day, and Vernon wasn't stupid enough to ignore the red flags despite how impossible the scenario it painted seemed.
Ulric and Honey had been out for the long haul, off to solve yet another mystery that the veracity of which had long since been disputed. And while they had failed to find the Loch Ness Monster, or Catsquatch in their previous travels, they were certain that they had actually found the lost city of Cetacea. It had started with a strange signal, one that had cropped up periodically on radio stations worldwide since the onset of radio. however, the weird broadcasts were rare...and sparse. The clicking noises being relegated largely to background interference, and later cross-station contamination. But Ulric was nothing if not a determined wolf. When he got stuck on a subject, he went over every scrap of info he could find twenty times over. As it turned out, those broadcasts were clearest over the Atlambtic ocean, and more pressingly, in the last six months, they had started to crop up with increasing frequency and regularity.
The cause? The Cetaceans, the lost race of aquatic mammals that had hidden themselves away after the great awakening, advancing by leaps and bounds in quiet isolation while the rest of the land mammals were still throwing spears. At least, that was Ully's argument. And what's more, he believed they were co-ordinating something, plotting something big. The increased broadcasts were evidence of this, and the tighter they got to one another, the closer we were growing to that critical point. But whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, he couldn't be sure. However, the fact that there had been an increasing number of cargo and civilian vessels disappearing across the Atlambtic was a definite sign to err on the side of a less-than-ideal scenario. Ulric and Honey's rental trawler would become another one of those casualties much to Vernon and the rest of the Hunter Family's distress. Another son gone...the number now falling to five and leaving Audrey devastated.
But that wasn't the end of Ulric's contact with Vern. One last email, out of nowhere, terse, direct, short. "They're coming, tell Ma I'm sorry."
Even with the advanced warning, shoring up some level of preparedness and even a tenuous level of cooperation with Hopp Speed and her other 'registered heroes' behind the back of the Peacekeeper's as a whole, they were still woefully unprepared when those pale, hideous looking armor clad creatures rose from the surf at Sahara Shoals, and began vaporizing every mammal they came across. With technology that appeared practically alien, these soulless beings from the depths made quick work of the ZPD and even the Zootopian Reserves in Sahara Square. It was a quick, merciless affair, nothing but charred mammal skeletons left in the wake of the creatures as they convened on the grounds of the Palm Hotel, their detestable monarch planting the banner of his people into Animalian soil and loudly declaring, in clear Animaglish to the surprise of all who could hear, 'The time of the land dwellers has come to an end."
Despite the best efforts of the Zootopian Renegades, the Peacekeepers, and any hero or villain they could get their paws on, nothing seemed to be able to stop the relentless march of the mad Cetaceans. No pleas for treaties or truces were heard by the clammy creatures. They had but one desire, to wipe every land mammal, from the smallest shrew to the greatest giraffe from the surface of the planet. To leave the fossil record as the only testament to the existence of all life on land. They slowed in pace in Tundratown, the weather seeming to disrupt their land suits, but only slightly. It was only by dumb luck on the part of the Red Moth that the tables began to turn when the beasts marched on the Rainforest District.
It was the first time he had to tangle with one directly, and after managing to disarm it despite its augmented strength, he struck at the Cetacean foot soldier with all his might. Sadly, Vernon lacked Bleatdown's strength, and soon the beast got the upper paw, and began strangling the life out of the poor wolf. In desperation, Vernon wildly slammed one of his night howler grenades against its armored hide. At first, it appeared to do little more than leave a trail of deep blue slime across his glimmering golden armor. However, within seconds the wolf felt the strength leave the Dolphin's grip around his throat as it began to rapidly pale. Releasing the wolf it began to screech in anguish, clawing at its suit as its deformed cranium began to pulsate and darken. The brain visible under the beast's translucent skin growing a deep blue before its entire skull ruptured within the dome, turning the pure blue water inside into a slurry of meat as the dead soldier slumped to the ground.
It didn't take Vernon long to put what happened together. Checking the suit, it was clear the night howler he had desperately stabbed at the beast as though it were some sort of holy relic had trickled into his whatever regulated the Dolphin's breathing equipment. He was sure technology like that was meant to filter out most bacteria and pathogens, but in the case of the night howler, not only had it bypassed or totally overwhelmed whatever filter they had, but they were deathly allergic to the plant.
Quickly the Red Moth parroted the news to his compatriots, and from there to all the heroes putting in the good fight that Night Howler was the key to beating the beasts back. The remaining science and military forces around Zootopia went into rapid production of night howler-based weaponry to stem the tide. And just as quickly as the Cetaceans as gained as much ground as they had, they were being driven back to the sea. The King of the Cetaceans dying, clawing for breath at the foot of the banner he had placed in Sahara Square just a week prior as his troops retreated in terror.
"I'm afraid the land dwellers are here to stay." The Red Moth leaned down to mutter as the King's head began to swell. "And we ain't gonna stop till we've driven ya to the doors of Hades itself..."
The cetaceans are a formidable force to be reckoned with despite them looking visibly fragile under their suits. They have mild psychic capabilities mostly in the range of thought transmission and creating noise in one's head. Though their species has no powereds among them to date, their advanced weaponry and intellect give them a significant edge against pretty much anything modern mammalian society can throw at them save for the powered mammals among them. Were it not for their severe allergic reaction to Night Howler, they would probably be unstoppable.
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Phew, that was...a lot. My write-ups for these ideas just get longer and longer....but it's hard to turn it off once it gets going. Hope you guys like the art, and thanks for the asks! I'm going on thanksgiving break now!
