All the pups gathered from their Sunday afternoon activities in the backyard. Free of missions today they decided to take it easy. Everyone one apart from Marshall and Rubble, who had been cleaning their vehicles, we're taking a nap, relaxing the day away. All except Rocky. Rocky had been working on a secret project he has been keeping on the down low. He had been really excited to show it off to all the pups. None of them knew what it was, or what it did if anything, but at least they were all intrigued.

So apart from two, the pups were all tired and drowsy having just woken up from their naps, with Marshall and Rubble still needing to finish so they could relax the rest of their day. They all stood lined up, side by side with a white sheet covering something that laid atop a wooden crate.

Finally, Rocky came up from the lookout to the backyard running up to them with excitement in his eyes.

"Guys, I have exciting news. I've been working on it really hard!" his voice filled with hope.

Zuma let out a yawn. "Rocky dude, it's not that we don't care we, I'm sure whatever you did will be amazing, but can you make sure that this is worth it at the expense of precious nap time."

"Don't worry Zuma, what I made works perfectly, I hope," Rocky tried to say under his breath. However, everyone eyes darted opened once they heard it. Rocky cleared his throat, breaking the awkward silence. "Well, see, you know how Ryder and I are always making the inventions for the team?"

"Yeah," Chase responded drowsy, wanting this to be over as soon as possible.

"Well, everything I've made in the years has been made by both me and Ryder, not counting pointless contraptions like catapults, and such. Well, I wanted to test my self and try something small on my own, making this my first, very own, invention. I call it-" Rocky stopped mid-sentence as he pulled the white sheet of the thing which Rocky was showcasing. It was a green water gun looking thing colored green, accented with blue.

"-The ThoughtMeterV1!"

Silence filled the air after the reveal of the name, however, Rocky kept a positive attitude.

"Um, the name could use a little work buddy," Marshall said to which everyone agreed. "Besides that, what does it do?"

"Well," Rocky responded, "It scans the airwaves, and different frequencies, for 'thought patterns', translates them, and relays it back to the user."

Everyone stood confused trying to process what the mixed had just said. Seeing a clear confusion, he simplified his description. "It's a mindreader."

"Oh!" Everyone understood allowing Rocky to continue.

"Who wants to be the first one to test it?" the mixed asked enthusiastically. Not really caring about the outcome, either way, Chase stepped up in front of the group.

"I'll do it." Rocky grabbed the invention excitedly. He turned a nob on the side of it which began to fire it up.

"Okay, Chase. What I want you to do is just think about anything, anything at all," Rocky instructed.

"Okay, got it."

Being given the signal he pulled the blue trigger and fired it in Chase's direction, while Chase focused on thinking.

After 10 seconds nothing happened, and Rocky was getting nervous hoping that it worked. Only, to his suprise, he began to feel his paws heat up. They kept heating up until Rocky couldn't even hold on to the ThoughtMeter anymore.

"Owww!" Rocky said as he dropped it. Everyone gathered closer.

"Rocky are you okay," Marshall asked making sure he was okay.

"Yeah," Rocky said shaking the pain from his paws. "I don't know what went wrong. It just started overheating and-"

BOOOOOM!

Everyone jumped back by the loud noise and explosion. After it ended, everyone was cover in smokey soot, along with the surrounding area.

"Well...I'm awake now," Chase said eyes wide, and slightly annoyed.

"What!" Rubble shouted, not being able to hear. He rubbing his ears from the ringing.

"Well Rocky, you did something. Not only did you wake us up, interrupted our day off, you 'invented' a bomb!" Skye said irate, making Rocky feel bad about himself.

"Skye, don't say that. Rocky didn't know it was going to happen. Calm down," Marshall tried to reason.

"Well I don't blame her," Zuma responded in place of Skye. "I mean he could have tested it out himself. We didn't need to be here. On top of that our fur is black!"

"Oh, that! Pfft. I'll get us black to normal," Marshall joked. Everyone groaned from the terrible joke he made. Ignoring their responses Marshall just laughed it off. "Hehe. Arff, water cannons!" he shouted. The barrels emerged from the pup packs.

He sprayed the cannons straight up cleaning himself off first, dowsing himself in water. Shaking the water off a drying off, he looked towards the others. "Who's next he asked."

"I'll go!" Zuma said with the other pups lining up behind him.

One by one the pups got cleaned from the explosion, dried off, and off they went to do what they were doing previously. Chase, Skye, and Zuma sleeping, and Rubble cleaning off his rig.

"Hey Rocky do you-" Marshall started as he looked around for Rocky. In all the commotion he didn't notice Rocky runoff. He went off to find him.

He looked around, in the garage, the lookout, the yard, and still couldn't find him anywhere. He was going to ask for Ryder's help but after the 'movie night incident,' Ryder wanted the pups to start solving things on their own without his help as they were growing older now. Plus Ryder was probably sleeping himself. After a few minutes of searching, Marshall decided to rest for a minute to rethink his search.

"Where could he be. I hope he knows the other pups didn't mean it. Now, if he's nowhere here then, he might have headed into town and-" Marshall stopped as his thoughts were interrupted by faint sobbing. Marshall looked over and saw that the sounds were coming from Rocky's pup-house.

"OfCourse," Marshall face-pawed. He knocked on the green pup-house. "Rocky?" he said calmly.

"*sniffle* What do you want, Marshall. Here to laugh at me, like the others," Rocky said as he opened the closed door to his pup-house. Rocky's eyes were stained red and the fur around his eyes was damp, with the smoke from the explosion still covering his fur.

"Rocky come out. And your fur is still...black. The others didn't mean it, they were just tired and frustrated. Don't let them get to you."

"Marshall, it's not even that. They should've laughed. I failed, miserably. I thought I could do this on my own. I'm not good," Rocky said as he covered his eyes with his paws.

"Well, why don't I help you fix your machine. Would you be happy then?" Marshall wagged his tail as the light bulb in his head turned on.

"Nah, I'm good. I'm not in the mood anymore. I think I'll take a page from the others' book and just go to sleep for the rest of the day." Rocky turned the other way and laid his head down.

"Really Rocky," Marshall said disappointedly. Before Marshall could lecture Rocky on how he shouldn't give up, Rocky started fake snoring loudly, to make it obvious he didn't want to be bothered at the moment. Marshall sighed.

"Okay, if that's how it gonna be," Marshall shrugged. "Arff, water cannons!" he barked. He spayed Rocky down, and instantly he ran out to escape the cold liquid from further wetting him. All Marshall could do was laugh,

Rocky shuddered, as he shook the water off of him. "Eww, wetwetwetwetwet! And I thought Chase's wake up call was worse," Rocky said which made Marshall laugh.

"Well, at least you're clean now. Come on let's go and fix your invention." Marshall said walking away, as Rocky sighed and followed.

Rocky took the lead and led Marshall into the garage where he had been spending most of his time in the past weeks. He opened the door to the garage, and it was scattered with blueprints and spare parts everywhere.

"So where's your ThoughtMeter dohicker. I want to help you make this thing work," Marshall said looking around for it.

Rocky responded half-heartedly. "It blew up. Remember?"

"Oh," Marshall chuckled to himself. "Well don't you have one of those proto-thingy."

"Hearing you trying to conjure the names of scientific terms is amusing to me," Rocky smirked. Marshall just smiled and rubbed the back of his head. "Anyhow, I have one prototype that I made just in case." Rocky walked next to a 3d printer and picked up a similar version of his invention just without the color on it, leaving it all grey.

"So, how does one science," Marshall asked taking it from Rocky's grasp. Marshall began to look at it getting a closer look which he didn't get to do before. "So we analyze the problem and figure out how to fix it, or something like that."

"Wow," Rocky said genuinely impressed. "How did you figure that out!"

"Oh, I read your nerd books to help me fall asleep sometimes," Marshall laughed. Rocky just gave an unamused look knowing the Dalmatian was just joking...somewhat.

"Yeah, so, the problem was that it got too hot, and I'm assuming that it overheated and spontaneously combusted."

"So how do you normally keep things from exploding. Like our vehicles," Marshall said messing with the prototype. As he did he fumbled with it and it dropped.

The two gasped, but Rocky, however, narrowly dove down and caught it, letting out a sigh of relief.

"Oops," Marshall nervously laughed.

"You know, Marshall, we may be best friends and all that, but sometimes you're a handful," Rocky said as he got up.

"That's why you love me!" Marshall smiled. Rocky's eyes opened wide.

"What! Where'd you get that from!" Rocky shouted as his cheeks turned a shade of light pink.

"Um, love me as a friend," he responded confused.

"Oh, thank God," Rocky said as he exhaled.

"Come on Rocky, if I liked you like that I would've told you by now."

"Yeah," Rocky said bleakly under his breath out of earshot of Marshall.

"We've been friends for 3 and half years now. The only pup who beats you is Chase at 5."

"That's not fair. You and Chase are basically brothers. That doesn't count as friendship, that's brotherhood. If you two were the same breed you would've had me fooled."

"Yeah. Chase and I have been through a lot. Hey, you remember when I was scared of you when we first met," Marshall smiled as he reminisced, longing the memories he shared in the past.

"Yeah!" Rocky giggled. "You acted like I had a disease or something."

"Well I mean after that day, you steered clear of me once you found out I was a clutz, and I kept spraying you down," Marshall said as he laughed remembering that painful week for him and Rocky.

"Anyways," Marshall said breaking their trip down memory lane. "Let's finish this. So what do normally do to cool our machines and tech."

Rocky's face returned sadness forgetting why they came here in the first place. "Well, the vehicles and pup-packs use a coolant stop them from overheating. I can't do that with the ThoughtMeter because it is far too small for me to do something like that. I could use a mini fan to help, but I think that'll just create more heat than it can cool!" Rocky said growing frustrated. He was too torn to even thinks straight, let alone solve a problem to fix it. Rocky thought of more ideas but each one left him angrier than the last. After every suggestions, he came to himself be became more frustrated.

Seeing his friend's visible anger Marshall tried to step in. "Rocky, calm down. Take a deep breath and think rationally."

"Hey Marshall, kinda hard when you were the one who dragged me here. Now that I'm actually invested, I can't figure something so simple out! This is why I hate myself something," Rocky growled.

"Rocky, why don't you go ahead and just vent out your anger before you boil." And it was at that moment Rocky was struck with a stroke of genius.

"Marshall! You Air headed genius, you!"

"Wait! I am?"

"Yes!" Rocky shouted ecstatically as he set the contraption down and began work.

A Few Hours Later...

"...And, done!" Rocky said as he held it up. It looked the same as before but it had three slots on either side, that you'd see on your air ducts.

"You finished!" Marshall said excitedly. He walked to the other side of the garage after messing with some stuff after a few hours of being bored.

"Yep. Thanks to your idea, I added ventilation vents. The way I designed them should now gradually let out heat from the motor that runs it, so it doesn't get too hot."

"Glad, I could help?" said Marshall still confused on how he came up with that off of a sentence. Either way, he was still happy for him.

"Marshall, despite all the hell I give you from time to time, I wouldn't trade it for the world. I'm glad to have you have a friend. A great friend." Rocky smiled and hugged Marshall for staying with him where no one else would, and for helping him out. Despite being shocked by the sudden action all Marshall could do was smile, and be happy to be Rocky's friend.

Post-Author's Note: Ehh, 2,200 words. I was shooting for 2,500 but it still came out okay. I feel the ending was a bit rushed but I feel like this turned out great. This could stand alone as a one-shot really. My original plan for this chapter was to have Marshall help rocky and reshow case it to the pups, but for the so terms of where the next few chapters are heading.

Tell me if you see any errors via PM or review, thanks! Cya later. Bye!