Botasky
Botasky is a rabbit and a ZSI special operative in We Can Fix Pawbert. He is a member of Charlie Sierra One, a ZSI rabbit special operations team that conducts covert intelligence gathering in hostile territories. Botasky and his partners Perkins and White are shot down during a mission in Vladifrostok in "Golden Age", and ZSI lists all three as presumed killed; the loss of the team is the first sign of the threat that drives the season. White is dead, but Botasky and Perkins are not: in the W-Series they are found alive in a mothballed climate station on the Vladifrostok coast and brought home.
"It's over, Perky. We did everything we could..." — Botasky's dying words to Perkins, "Golden Age"
Background
Botasky was recruited by ZSI fifteen years before the events of Season 5, partnering with Perkins from the beginning of their careers. The two became an inseparable team, working together in the shadows to protect Zootopia from threats most mammals never knew existed.
Like his partner, Botasky's value as an operative came partly from being underestimated. Rabbits were ideal infiltrators — small, unassuming, "just prey," nothing to worry about. But fifteen years of training and fieldwork had made Botasky a formidable combatant, capable of taking down mammals many times his size with controlled precision.
Series History
Season 5
Botasky and Perkins flee through a Vladifrostok facility after their mission has catastrophically failed in "Golden Age". Their sniper, White, has been killed by an RPG while covering their extraction, and Botasky's first instinct is to go back for him. Perkins has to grab his shoulders and tell him that White is gone — there is nothing they can do.
Botasky's breathing is ragged throughout their escape, fear and exhaustion and adrenaline bleeding through despite his training. But the professionalism holds: he covers angles, returns fire in controlled bursts, and fights alongside Perkins with the choreography of mammals who have fought side by side for fifteen years.
At a corridor junction, the team encounters multiple hostiles. While Perkins covers the forward position, Botasky peels off to handle threats from behind. He takes down a dhole and finishes a wounded gray wolf, but the wolf manages one final shot before dying. The round catches Botasky in the abdomen — a through-and-through that hits something vital.
Botasky goes down. Perkins reaches him immediately, but the wound is catastrophic. Blood seeps between Botasky's fingers as he clutches his abdomen, pooling beneath him on the concrete. His face crumples for a moment before training takes over, and he tells Perkins the truth: it's over. They did everything they could.
His last words before he goes under — "I can't... I'm sorry... It's been an honor..." — trail off as he slips away. Perkins stays with him, holding his paw, refusing to leave even as more hostiles approach.
W-Series
In "Souls on Board", Botasky is found alive at Station Nine, a mothballed climate station at Ostrog Point on the Vladifrostok coast, on a steel shelf across a nine-by-twelve room from Perkins. Their keeper, a corsac fox named Rustem Adaev, closed the abdominal wound from the corridor, and it held; his breathing has carried a hitch since the beginning, four beats in and five out, and it will be there for the rest of his life. He is wasted down to almost nothing and cannot walk. He is awake when Luther says his name in the doorway and reaches across the gap for his partner's paw, and when the medic, O'Donnell, asks who closed the wound, he tips his head toward the fox in the corridor and says the mammal read a book. O'Donnell sedates him before the flight home, so he sleeps through the cargo fire and the ditching in Sandy Cove; Reacher carries him off the aircraft first, at Perkins's request. At Zootopia General a vascular team repairs the artery the bullet grazed, and he wakes on the fifth floor to a window with a tree in it. He asks Perkins how long it was, and Perkins will not tell him.
Legacy
The loss of Charlie Sierra One leaves ZSI completely unaware of the Vladifrostok threat. The intelligence the team gathered never reaches Zootopia, and their sacrifice buys nothing except the knowledge that something terrible is coming.
In the episode's tag, Luther learns that three operatives from the Vladifrostok station are MIA, presumed KIA. ZSI does not know what they found or what happened to them. The threat that took the team will not be understood until much later in the season, and the presumption stands for the rest of the main series.
Key Relationships
Perkins
Botasky and Perkins have been partners for fifteen years, recruited together from Bunnyburrow and inseparable ever since. Perkins calls him "Bota." In the corridor at Vladifrostok, Perkins held Botasky's paw through what both of them took for the end, and in the room where they are kept afterward, Perkins keeps a count of days that Botasky asks for once, early, and then stops asking about. When Botasky asks again from a hospital bed, Perkins keeps it.
White
White was Charlie Sierra One's sniper, and Botasky's immediate response to his death reveals the depth of their bond. When White was killed by an RPG, Botasky wanted to go back for him despite the impossibility of rescue. His grief had to be overridden by tactical necessity, and Perkins is the one who made him leave.
Key Quotes
| Quote | Context |
|---|---|
| "Perky, we need to go back for White!" | After White is killed |
| "We're surrounded, Perkins. What do we do?" | As hostiles close in |
| "It's over, Perky. We did everything we could..." | Dying words to Perkins |
| "I can't... I'm sorry... It's been an honor..." | Final words, trailing off |
Trivia
- "Charlie Sierra One" is a reference to the manga/anime Cat Shit One (also known as Apocalypse Meow), which features rabbit soldiers conducting military operations.