-Earth, Airplane Cargo Hold, Dolly-
I was bored out of my mind, who knew being a good sidekick would be this hard? I munched on some kibble and took a sip of water from the canteen. My gaze drifted to Pom lying almost motionless on her back on my skateboard.
I could admittedly do a few exercises that Pom showed me, but I didn’t want to make too much noise or attract attention to anyone looking for stowaways. I’m glad I went in the fields around the airport before we left, as it would have been awkward to do so here.
This is going to be one long flight and my only company was the device Pom glued to herself with her magical wool. Said device that I was currently using it for light and was curiously silent, I looked at the screen.
The dog was just sitting in a corner of the screen with his head down. He looked like a sad puppy… with weirdly adorable fish tails.
I may not be the girly girl type, but I did have maternal instincts. The problem here is that I shouldn’t be having them for a computer! Something like this would totally be something Dawkins would do though.
Still… I did specialize in keeping puppies entertained by being highly entertaining myself, the center of attention even! No longer doing that, considering I’m pretty far from my family at the moment, I’m feeling fairly useless to Pom on a personal level.
What are the odds that this plane was heading anywhere near Britain? Not good, but anywhere is safer than with those mercenaries that were after Pom or were they after ‘him’? Pom did several sketchy things involving Dormarch when we went our separate ways, she protected me from being shot at and I really had no complaints about it… except that Pom got hurt.
Being independent or at least being able to travel around was one of my bigger dreams, I’m surprised mom and dad just let me do this. I’m not a space case like my brother, but I’ve always wanted to go out and do my own thing.
Fire dog, police dog and getting into extreme sports were what I considered careers for me, otherwise I could just easily slum it as a street dog. No offense to my step mother Delilah, who was a pro at what she does, but I wasn’t exactly bright enough to be a nurse dog… seriously wished I was at the moment.
Instead, I incidentally chose the rare option to be the sidekick of a heroic person who actively tanked a shot from a sniper rifle for a dog she just met. Pom was dedicated to protecting others and I could see myself doing similar things if I eventually became as strong as she was.
Speaking of that bullet, it was still embedded in the device. Drawing my eyes and thoughts back to the little puppy, I tapped the screen and that drew the attention of the Dalmatian with the three fish tails to me.
“Oh… um… what do you want?” ‘Dor’ seemed nervous, I gave him a friendly smile and tried to yip something softly.
“It’s okay, Pom will be fine.” Just ignore that fairly large patch of her wool that has turned a nasty brownish red color and the possible heavy bruising under her wool.
“I don’t understand you, but… maybe you know how to write?” Gave him a nod, because of course I did! Honestly, my ‘fam’ were intelligent enough to order pizza deliveries to our home. Pizza was an exceedingly rare treat, because it’s far too unhealthy for dogs. “Oh, that’s… that’s good. I’m the reason that Pom is like this, aren’t you upset with me?”
I felt the urge to gently poke my claw against his image and gently rubbed at it, I blinked when it felt like I was actually ruffling some fur and saw how he squirmed underneath my claw on the screen.
This made me blink.
What in the world? I actually felt like… was I actually touching him? Maybe something was wrong with my head or maybe it was magic that was causing this. Pom did mention something about looking out for something feeling off with our bond.
I gently rolled Dor over and he seemed perplexed at was I was doing until I started tickling his belly making him giggle. It brought a smile to my face.
“How is Pom?” I sketched this out one letter at a time, question mark included, then spelled out ‘keyboard’.
Access to the keyboard came up and the dog looked to be doing something before showing a picture of Pom and her insides.
“Pom’s current status? She still has arrhythmia from the shock of being indirectly struck by the sniper round, which means possible heart damage. Assault weapon bullet wound to the right side of her chest that needs actual stitches and not just her wool bandage thing, she was lucky the bullet only cracked her ribcage and didn’t just perforate her entirely. I’m sure you’ve noticed the problems with her breathing, which has worsened to being dyspnea, another bad thing when compounded with the arrhythmia. She really needs a hospital, she can’t stay ‘loosely’ stable like this forever… honestly, she’s a complete mess.” Looking a bit worried at that, I shook my head no. “I’m going to assume that you have a reason for saying ‘no’ to… what, the hospital? I know she really cares about your safety, but I don’t want to hear you callously disregarding her health, not after all she’s done for you!”
I nodded and started tapping out my response on the provided keyboard.
“Oh… you’re right… a normal hospital would be a bad idea, I can imagine people wanting to dissect her for her unique capabilities. I’m sure that neither of us would appreciate such a thing happening to her in her current state.” Gave Dor a message of agreement, he nodded back warily. “If you have a suggestion to find any form of trustworthy help, then that would be greatly appreciated.”
I typed out something. It was a longshot, but a little hope wouldn’t hurt right?
“You can possibly make contact with smart animals that might be capable of medical aid, you mean others that are smart like you?” His tails wagged and he looked hopeful. I nodded and let him know what I tried to tell him earlier. “What a little brother? I… I guess I can live with that... big sister. Do you really think things will be okay Dolly?”
He curled his tails around his front hiding most of his body and putting his front paws on top of them, he was a shy little guy. I tapped him on the head with a claw and gently rubbed at it and he looked like he enjoyed the gentle affection.
It warmed up my mood slightly that I had a pup to take care of, keeping him consoled and calm will hopefully make me feel the same about all of Pom’s injuries.
I decided to question him on something.
“Huh? An idea of where we are possibly heading?” Dor started mumbling something about a compass. “Current projected possible destinations puts us as heading to the northeastern United States region, Canada or even further north than that, that last one is unlikely. I’m not going to reactivate my map function, because I understand why Pom was adamant that I shut that particular function down.”
At least keeping him occupied will keep my mind off my family, I wonder how they are doing and if they were really okay with me doing all of this stuff with Pom? I could contact them using Dor… but I mentally kept convincing myself not to.
Okay, first things first, I typed the one word that no puppy like him could resist.
“Play?” Dormarch stated curiously with raised ears, he seemed interested and brought up a game… Poodle Wolf?! Ugh, exactly like my brother Dylan! Maybe the Poodle Wolf video game would be better than the boring dice rolling board stuff? His tails were wagging excitedly as he looked up to me innocently. “Can we try this?”
I groaned audibly and rolled my eyes; thankfully, he didn’t seem to understand my discomfort.
Well I’ve never left a puppy bored or completely disappointed yet! So I was going to humor Dormarch until I decide to take a nap.
-New York, after lunch, Smolder-
So Zsa Zsa had given herself up willingly, but only because she was morally worried about Georgette who disappeared. She only had a distaste for Canina and didn’t mean to do any harm to Georgette.
Zsa Zsa still had some hurt in her heart after her talk with Canina. It seems she’s dropped the lethal attitude entirely, according to Ocellus at least.
That’s about as much progress as could be expected or even hoped for in this situation, Twilight’s done something similar with people more dangerous than Zsa Zsa was.
If Ocellus vouches for her, which surprised Zsa Zsa to no end, then I’m willing to give the Labrador the benefit of a doubt. She was really bad at killing people anyway, even if she’s endangered Canina’s life pretty horribly before.
Canina was willing to forgive her, mostly likely since she was getting too old to really seriously hold grudges. Ocellus was meeting Zsa Zsa for the first time and was making an open effort to befriend her, she and Foxglove would be good at that considering both of them do have mild criminal histories.
I was still unsure what Ocellus did that could be considered criminal though, she’s never told me about it and I wasn’t really going to ask.
“I swear Dodger, when are you going to take notice of me? I’ve been throwing you signs for years!” Foxglove translated Zsa Zsa’s impersonation of Rita and Rita looked particularly impressed. Dodger looked a bit spooked and lowered his sunglasses as he looked between Rita and Zsa Zsa as if he couldn’t tell them apart. Dodger then grinned and barked something out that made both the dogs blush. Dodger was looking smug and Foxglove looked a bit red. “I’m… not translating that, nope, not happening. Zsa Zsa is really impressive when it comes to mimicking other dogs at least, I wonder if she knows someone who can get me into ventriloquism?”
Zsa Zsa came over to Foxglove and stated something.
“Would you? That would be nice.” It seemed like Foxglove was working up a rapport with Zsa Zsa, definitely Fluttershy style friendship in the making here.
“Uh guys, not to break up this heartwarming moment of forgiveness or anything, but we still haven’t found Georgette.” Raising a hand to draw our attention as he said this, Louie looked around lazily. “So let’s get to it.”
“We have no idea where to look Louie, we haven’t seen Georgette everywhere Zsa Zsa has already been and it doesn’t seem like she got free as this case would be solved otherwise.” I groused out, this missing dog case had been bizarrely more trouble than I thought possible.
“So… we need to find a lost poodle, but she’s not where we’ve already been to and we have the culprit who drugged her right here.” Yes, that’s where we currently were Dewey, get to the point. “How about we check in with the rest of those Rescue Rangers, where are they anyway?”
Zsa Zsa made a query and Canina responded and motioned to Foxglove who waved shyly at her, Zsa Zsa said something to Foxglove.
“Well… they were last heading off to find the location of Rat Capone’s gang with one of the members of Fagin’s Street Dogs.” The look Foxglove received from Zsa Zsa was looking both a bit haunted and pale. “No, I don’t believe they could have carried her in the open without someone noticing a bunch of rats carting a poodle around, but it’s one of the leads that led us to finding you trying to drop a billboard on Canina.”
I found it funny that the billboard I got to destroy, which I enjoyed doing, was featuring Zsa Zsa and she really didn’t notice the loss of her own advertising until Canina had pointed it out to her.
Zsa Zsa started barking up a storm and turned to Canina and barked something to her.
“Yes, that does complicate things. Okay, Georgette’s system should be clear of the drugs at least.” As Foxglove was getting at, we still had nothing. “If she wasn’t seen walking around, but the drugs weren’t affecting her, then it’s still likely that that Rat Capone has her.”
“Does Georgette have any enemies?” Huey asked.
“You mean aside from all the other dog show participants she’s beaten six times in a row?” Why was Foxglove looking at Canina and Zsa Zsa curiously?
They had nothing worthy of note to add to the conversation; Though Zsa Zsa did comment that she would probably be going after Georgette if she had lost to her six time, because she apparently has inferiority issues like that.
“Well, let’s find the rest of the Rescue Rangers then.” Fluttering into the air Foxglove started to echolocate around to see if they were nearby, then we started to get directions from nearby animals as to where they were last seen.
-Wharf of abandoned warehouses, Ocellus-
“Okay, there’s something I want to point out for everyone that should be obvious!” Everyone turned to Louie as he pointed at something. “Coo-Coo Cola is a brand that is generally losing out to Pep, but they don’t make the bottles with caps anymore.”
Was that really necessary Louie? We all looked at the coo-coo cola can, but saw the aforementioned bottle caps with what looked to be sharpened edges stuck in it. I made my way up to it and looked it over much more closely.
“Uh, do animals use bottle caps as throwing weapons?” I had to ask because those caps absolutely looked like they were thrown into the vertically flattened can.
“Well that’s concerning on a number of levels… because we’ve done that once or twice when we’ve been shrunk down. I still fear the day that Dewey eventually gets enlarged into a fifty story tall monster like our cousin Fethry’s pet krill Mitzy, yes it is possible around us.” Huey stated while looking at the can. “This can looked like it was used as a makeshift shield, judging by the markings a chipmunk was holding it.”
Foxglove’s eyes widened and she went into a panic flying about and away from us frantically screeching. After a minute of this, she eventually came back.
“Guys, I’ve picked up the Rescue Rangers profiles, they’re in trouble!” After saying this, Foxglove lead us to a nearby warehouse and she helped us all find a quick way up onto the roof.
Looking through some dirty glass we saw what, to me at least, was a fairly unique situation going on below.
“Wow… so they are going to dip them all in boiling Coo-Coo Cola… I always knew it was the most evil soda brand.” Louie stated idly, before pulling out a can of Pep and sipping from it. How is he not sick from having too much of that stuff? “This has also got to be one my top ten weirdest sights I’ve ever seen in my life. Half of them look like mobsters and the other half has this funky ninja vibe going on, there’s one that even looks like a Viking barbarian.”
Below us is a veritable army of mice and rats, a number of them were armed with toothpicks with bottle caps strapped to their ends acting as tiny axes. It almost looked like there were two separate groups concerning the ways they were dressed.
“Rat Capone’s gang is certainly bigger than I’ve heard.” Foxglove shivered at the sight of so many armed rodents and turned her gaze towards the Rescue Rangers.
The main thing of note was that we finally found out where Georgette was, just not how she got here.
She was currently tied up with Tito and most of the Rescue Rangers hanging over the vat Louie pointed out.
Zipper, the ever unusual fly, was trapped in a glass jar that thankfully it had air holes in it.
Zsa Zsa made a dry sounding comment and looked to Georgette with a feeling of shame coming from her.
“Well yes, but how do you suppose we’re going to help them?” Foxglove gestured to the proceedings below. “We’re outnumbered almost seven to one!”
“Yeah, but you’re forgetting something… they don’t have much down there that could actually hurt me.” Which is why I never worry about your safety too much Smolder, though things like what happened with Axel Gear should warrant at least some caution. “Ocellus, shape shift into having wings, we’re going in to save the rangers.”
As I did as Smolder asked and took on my more natural looking winged dragon form, Dodger barked something to his gang and they started climbing down, he turned to Foxglove and growled something before setting off personally.
“Dodger and his gang are going to launch a raid, what are you going two going to do?” Foxglove looked to the two dogs that huffed. Zsa Zsa and Canina started talking to one another and eventually Canina shook paws with Zsa Zsa and the Lethal Labrador took off. Canina turned to Foxglove and stated something to her before setting off after Zsa Zsa. Foxglove turned to us. “We have a plan, let’s go make sure they don’t fall into that vat!”
“Ocellus hold onto my ribbon, I’m making the hole.” Smolder stated as she passed me the combat ribbon from her horn started pulling off her clothes that hid her appearance and left them on the roof. With two flaps of her wings, Smolder was already in position to dive through the skylight. “Follow me in!”
I tied the ribbon off around my neck with my claws and followed after her.
-Smolder-
“So what Dewey do?” I heard Dewey ask before I slammed through the skylight face first.
-Dale, the red nosed reindeer chipmunk in the loud Hawaiian shirt-
Foxglove would hopefully figure something out and come find us, plus there’s the rest of Fagin’s Street Dogs. I’m not going to forget Ocellus and Smolder either, those two just wanted to be helpful.
So this was the forty seventh time that something like this has happened to us.
Was it weird that we always ended up over a boiling pot of something this frequently? I’m of also counting the times something boiling was hanging over us and slowly being poured at us too.
What is it about us that made people want to kill us with hot liquids all the time? I mean it was getting unoriginal at this point and I even sarcastically suggested it only for them to actually take my suggestion seriously.
“Say, if we don’t make it out of this one, do you think Foxy will… huh?” I heard the sound of flapping and relaxed. I smiled. “Never mind, we’re good.”
A large portion of the overhead skylight burst apart in a shower of glass as Smolder came through it, the rope beneath us was quickly cut and Smolder dove our way.
We all fell towards the vat and then heard a huge splash and lots of screaming, that screaming didn’t belong to us however.
We were all standing on the side of the toppled vat as Foxglove and Ocellus quickly came to untie us, Smolder had knocked it over by diving straight into the liquid headfirst.
A number of the surrounding mice and rats were running away and getting mildly burned by the hot soda, others had been hit by falling glass and then splashed with the hot soda.
Smolder just walked out of the fallen vat licking at her claws curiously, she was covered in boiling soda and was completely fine. Yep, that’s a real dragon for you, didn’t even look like she felt that at all and when one of the Cola Ninja threw a bottle cap at her… it just bounced off her scales.
“Foxy, you made it to the party!” I stated jovially as she nuzzled my neck, is my face heating up?
“Every day with you is a party cutie.” Foxy responded sweetly as a door was blown inwards and the Fagin’s Street Dogs charged in after dealing with the guys posted outside.
The chaos was kind of fun to watch even as I was in the middle of being freed, what made it even worse for the two groups that captured us is that Bubble’s Coo-Coo Cola ninjas and Rat Capone’s gang started attacking each other making things far easier for us to possibly catch them all.
We’d have a crate full of bad guys gathered up by nightfall.
“Rescue Rangers away!” Chip announced and jumped into the fray with Monterey close behind him.
Smolder was just wading through the mice and rats smacking them around and not try to hurt them too badly, it was kind of hard because she was like a kaiju wrecking an entire city in how she was knocking a lot of them out.
“Golly, all that wasted soda…” Gadget shook her head sadly, then she leapt off next. “I’m going to go free Zipper, cover me!”
“That’s our cue!” I stated as I leapt off the vat after the soda on the floor thinned out with Foxglove following after me.
We had to keep these goons off of Gadget to get Zipper in on the fun.
-Ocellus-
I just hovered above the huge mess of emotions, mostly of it wild panic and fear, awkwardly wondering what Canina and Zsa Zsa were doing.
I decided to stay up here and avoid everyone, if any of our friends needed help then I would get involved. As far as things were going, Smolder really didn’t need her combat ribbon for this brawl.
Tito was particularly aggressive for his size, he wasn’t letting anyone near Georgette and she seemed to be having pleasant feelings near him which was nicer than all the other stuff I was feeling going on.
Eventually Zsa Zsa and Canina finally arrived, yelled something and waited.
“Pick up the Recue Rangers and fly upwards Ocellus!” Foxglove yelled and dove down to where Gadget had just finished prying the lid off the jar.
Once all of them made their way over to me I flew upwards.
Dodger’s gang gathered up together around Tito and off to the side, a second later a water hose was fired full blast into the warehouse and swept about until the fighting completely stopped.
-Late that evening-
So we had at least one hundred rats and mice all stuffed into one box, I wonder what the Rescue Rangers were going to do with them all?
Georgette was slightly out of her mind due to the somewhat persistent side effects of the knockout drugs making her loopy, she would soon get help and Zsa Zsa couldn't apologize to her enough.
-????, late night, Dolly-
“Wake up, we're landing!" Dor actually managed to rouse me.
It wasn't long before we were sneaking away from the plane into the night.
Time to call for some local help on the World Wide Woof!
"This is Dolly Dalmatian, my friend is in serious need of an 'animal run' hospital that won't ask too many questions about her!" I waited and got an answer in the form of a chain of distant howls. "Yes, my friend is seriously wounded and needs help!"
Couldn't they hear my desperation?!
"Please... send someone here to help me with bringing her in!" I would soon get Pom to safety with help from two mice and a dog.
-
The Rescue Aid Society never turns away those in dire need.