PAW Patrol: Ryder's Errand

Chapter 5- Secrets in the Fire

It could've been worse, Chase fell once before, he should've been more than capable of getting up again. This was different, the whole day was ripe with failure, something he should've easily been able to clean up. He couldn't fix the screen, he couldn't get a new one, he couldn't beat Rocky, he couldn't beat Rocky a second time with his full effort, and now he was banished outside with nothing but himself to blame.

Relaxing under the orange sky, gradually dimming to make way for the moon, Chase sat to observe the glittering stars peeking through the clouds. To fail under such stupid terms, to fall flat on his face in front of everyone, in front of Zuma; Chase was boiling hotter than the active flames chewing away at the tower's shell. Losing was bad enough, but having such tenacious confidence in something only to be proven wrong was twisting the knife.

"Jerks," Chase sat himself in the grass, pouting with flattened ears. "I should piss in their water dishes, that'll be good revenge." Too harsh, he quickly stopped himself, way too over the line. Maybe something more subtle, like going into their kennels and stealing all the towels. He could also take Rocky's tools and plant them in Rubble's drawers, that could surely cause some entertainment. Rocky was always very protective over his tools, thinking they were stolen would cause formidable chaos. No, he did that last week, he remembered again, it needed to be something fresher.

He could remove a few screws in Marshall's equipment, that'd be funny. Although last time he did that, Marshall's firetruck ended up flying down the road and smashing through the marketplace like a loose lawnmower. Raining fruit and loose chickens were everywhere, the firetruck didn't stop until it stormed through the docks, sailing off the pier and crashing into the ocean in a massive splash. No one died so Chase was allowed to say it was funny, but he probably should've left the brakes alone. A dormant firetruck officially joined the many treasures under the ocean that day, hopefully the leaking oil and gasoline didn't kill anything.

There was that one time he put a stink bomb in Rubble's pup pack; he intended for it to go off in the open outdoors, giving the putrid smoke a few seconds before drifting off. Much to his dismay, the tiny explosive didn't go off at the right time, and Rubble ended up walking into his kennel and shutting the door with the bomb still attached to him. It went off like a primed gas grenade, clouding the windows and enveloping the bulldog in a fully sealed and contained gas chamber. No one even knew what happened until Rubble didn't show up the next morning for breakfast, and everyone soon realized he was trapped legs-up in a demonic atmosphere of fart. The remaining dogs all had to band together to evacuate Rubble's fumigated corpse from the den; it took several hours before he woke up.

"How did I get away with that, anyway?" Chase said to himself, pondering over his old spite-filled attacks on the team.

"Get away with what?" Zuma walked up behind him.

His abrupt presence made Chase's fur spike, but he quickly checked behind him and relaxed himself. As much as he loved being around Zuma, the shame from earlier was still following him, soaking under his fur with its wet dye.

"You put on quite a show in there," Zuma approached him, chuckling at the now core memories. "Skye might need her stomach pumped later, but it's not like swallowing a game remote does that much damage. Rubble is alive... probably, I'm pretty sure."

"Go away," the shepherd flattened his ears, not looking at him.

"Come on Chase, you don't really want to be all alone out here, do you?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," he tried to dismiss him, hiding his flushed face. "I prefer it out here, where it's quiet."

An entire segment of the tower's hull slowly peeled away from the structure, burning away from the fire until it dislodged completely. It fell through the air like a meteor, crashing into the Lookout's clearing in a slamming impact of ruined metal loud enough to be heard for a mile.