Chivalry Isn't Dead | A Clawtie Fanfiction

• Wrong Time, Bad Impressions •

"This is a disaster. She can't be gone, she can't!" The Princess was out of breath, fanning herself with one of her hands despite a butler already doing the same with a large, actual fan. She looked like she was about to pass out.

"Your Majesty, I assure you, she's in capable hands. We just need to relax and hope for the best."

"Hope? You know the situation we are in, I can't just sit here and look pretty!" she argued with the duke, whose response was silence. He didn't know how to calm her down.

All the worries were heard from behind a plant, and truly, Chase himself was worried as well. He reminded Sweetie to return before dark, yet it was already past midnight and she still wasn't at the castle.

Chase sneaked out through a backdoor with his pup-pack, suddenly running towards the direction Sweetie left for that same day. His focus restricted him from counting the minutes as he searched, although it felt like hours, exploring for any hints of the missing pup's whereabouts. Every passing second increased his sense of dread.

He had a tracking device which could help but he had no DNA of Sweetie to activate it. His only method was to shout for her name and hope she'll respond, which was futile. He went hoarse the first half an hour of looking for her, yet he kept at it.

"This is my fault." Those words repeated in his mind, his system unable to rest as adrenaline was unhealthily keeping him awake, almost to the point he could throw up. All he could see as he turned to any direction were trees and darkness. Everything was the same, there was no way to know where he was nor differentiate the current place he was in from the last. He was lost in the forest himself with no map in his inventory.

As he was about to call for the PAW Patrol with his pup-tag, chest heavy from exhaustion and anxiety, he noticed one singular object that was polar opposite to the repetitive surroundings just sitting above a bush. It was a bright flower. To be specific, a hydrangea, alone on the plant which wasn't even connected to any stem, and it had the smell of roses and a familiar pup attached to it.

"Sweetie?" he said breathlessly, picking a petal off the flower before dropping it on his watch. It scanned it for a second, beeping before the interface flipped into a radar, and in the far northwest from wherever Chase was had a red dot beeping. Right before sprinting away, Chase took in the new smell of the flower, for the scent—an unfamiliar one—was something he thought he should remember. He was sure he could recognize it somewhere.

❛ ━━━━━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━━━━━ ❜

From what seemed like a worthless search turned into an emergency mission, Chase's paw severely dirtied from how long he's been following his radar. Until, there was an opening in the trees, leading to a dirt path, tainted with carriage and horse marks. He followed it behind the bushes, his rescue uniform having slight tears for moving around the forest for a long period.

His ears straightened to a hearty laugh and the crackling of fire in the near distance. He approached to catch men, about a dozen, either sitting around the campfire, asleep and hugging their bottles of liquor, or playing card games with their unlit torches and ropes by their side.

"Why's a settlement here?" Chase turned to himself, his eyes leading to a rather large, yellow tent in the far back area of the encampment. Chase didn't want to bother with them, it was a business for another day. He just needed to report them to Their Highness.

He scurried around the encampment, keeping aware to avoid making a sound. The shadows of the adults were dancing with help of the fire's supreme existence in the darkness, which Chase found entertaining. It reminded him of their own camping trips, Ryder and the others would make shadow puppets. Coincidentally, the men did start making shadow puppets in their drunk states.