The Great Eight (Temporary Hiatus)

Man's Worst Enemy

While Atlanta and Mel were going shopping, Herry and some of the other guys had arrived to the city pound. Their truck looked hilariously large in the empty parking lot, but the overall gloom and depression enshrouding the place held a far larger presence as compared to their vehicle. And the emotional oppression got worse the farther the group of teens went into the building.

"What's wrong with it?" Herry asked, crouched in front of a kennel where a seemingly rabies-infected dog rested inside. His fingers dangerously latched to the chain link face, just asking to be bitten at.

"Whatever it is, it's contagious." Odie assumed aloud as he gazed around the uncharacteristically full room of canines. Many of the dog crates and kennels bore biohazard warnings, or something to that effect. And there was such a surplus of them that the newer dog crates were piled atop of one another around any free space in the space, also full of snarling dogs that came in all kinds of shapes and sizes.

However, Odie's voice was not helping the tense situation. Adding with it the curious pairs of eyes belonging to teenage boys rattling the dogs' nerves and it was a recipe for disaster. Anger was quick to contaminate the air as if it was a corporal miasma that spread even to the dog closest to Herry that manifested in a startlingly violent lunge into the kennel face.

"Whoa! Easy, boy." Herry tried to placate the frenzied pet once he got his fingers, and in general his whole torso, out of the line of fire in time. Instead, the dogs claws now replaced the slots where Herry had rested his own fingers in previously. Yet, the dog didn't stop at all. He just kept biting and barking at the quartet of teenage boys with all the rage his large frame could muster up and then some.

But with all the newfound fuss, one of the dog pound workers arrived into the room. Carting yet another dog crate on a large trolley that looked far too easy to break with its inhabitant shaking the plastic contraption on its hinges.

"Hey! What are you kids doing back here?" The worker asked, flustered that strange kids had somehow made it into the restricted section of the city pound. Going so far as to massage his chin in thought in tandem with a good head scratch. But Herry's attention was pinpointed on the new canine arrival on the trolley.

"Pepe?"

Inside the dog crate, a dog sharing Pepe's size and markings sat. Though, the similarities ended there quite quickly. Assuming this was in fact his Grandmother's dog, Pepe now sported enlarged fangs especially along his lower jaw. His meticulously kept claws were now jagged and overgrown claws. Matted fur surrounding bloodshot eyes and a frothing mouth and nose. As Herry dared to get closer, his eyes alighted on a familiar bow miraculously still attached to the dogs fur atop his head, but what remained of it was in tatters. However, the state of the bow was not the pressing issue here. Somehow, this vicious dog was indeed Pepe. But how in the world did a dog go from eating treats just this morning with a carefree temperament to this brute of a thing? "What happened to you?"

"We don't know what it is." The worker piped up, arriving to the conclusion that these boys were concerned pet owners who went to the extreme to find their pets by breaking and entering. Illegal, mind you, but with the worker's rationalizations this situation was not nearly as frightening as the dogs surrounding them. "I'm afraid we're going to have to put him in quarantine." And so the worker grabbed hold of the trolley once more and maneuvered it around the mountain of a boy to get to a floor space not yet occupied with dogs.

"Wait!" Herry pleaded.

"We can't let these dogs out until we know what's causing this." The worker supplied and continued his trek with Pepe into the kennels and away from a saddened Herry and his troupe.

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"Maybe there's a radiation leak or something causing the problem?" Neil got the ball rolling as the boys sat in Herry's bedroom.

"No, like I said, it's like he smelled something and just ran off into the woods." Herry groaned as he flopped onto his bed rather loudly. Neil and Jay joined him on the bed, setting on the edge as Herry's bulk took up the middle of it.

"Maybe it's just this place that makes me think of toxic waste " Neil muttered under his breath as his eyes roamed over the various smelly things and strange looking objects strewn around his fellow hero's room. A particularly nasty set of coiled socks toppled in the corner were practically emanating pollution. But despite the atrocities of smell, the room could be likened to a barely overflowing hamper. Contained and organized, but no where near pristine.

"Hey guys." Archie suddenly appeared at the doorway into Herry's room but was quickly over spoken by Odie.

"All set!" An engineer's travel set of gadgetry littered Herry's study desk as Odie's hand shifted through the metal bits proudly.

"All set for what? What's up?" Archie eyed the room suspiciously.

"Come on. I'll tell you on the way." Jay also interrupted Archie as he passed him on the way out of the room Archie just arrived to.

"The way where?!" Archie just seemed to be the one chosen to be ignored today as no one bothered filling him in at this moment.

"We'll meet you back at the dog pound after we get the girls." Jay announced to Herry and Odie as he grabbed Neil and Archie and began dragging them away. But not before Archie caught sight of a techno-enhanced dog collar that Odie waved into the air.

"We're taking girls to a dog pound? How romantic " Archie grouched as he was dragged by his hoodie out of the dormitory. He was having a lovely morning.