"This the last of it?" Rocky asked, helping Marshall toss a large box into the back of the mixed breed's truck.
"It is for now." Marshall replied. "Once I get more junk, I'll let you know?"
"Yeah, totally. You know I can always find a use for whatever trash you and the others have lying around."
Having realised that his Pup House was starting to look like a paradise for Rocky, Marshall had decided that he probably needed to give it a thorough cleaning sooner rather than later, so he'd devoted the evening to doing exactly that. Marshall was still amazed at the junk he'd been hoarding throughout the months, and in some cases, years. In a lot of cases, he found himself unable to remember why he even had a lot of it in the first place. Not that Rocky would mind. The saying around the Lookout was that one pup's trash was Rocky's treasure.
"Even if it's a pair of... dentures?" Marshall fell silent with a perplexed expression. "Eww. The heck was I doing with these?" he continued internally.
"Don't bother trying to think about why you had these things, Marshall. You'll just make your head hurt." Rocky interjected with a smile. "Point is, I can find a use for anything. Why else do you think I have so much in my truck?"
"Well, you got me. Thanks a lot for taking it off my paws."
"Anytime, pal. You know what I always say: Don't lose it..." Rocky extended a paw towards Marshall with an expectant smirk.
"...oh! Re-use it!" It took a few seconds for Marshall to realise what was going on and finish Rocky's catchphrase, prompting the pair to share a laugh with one another.
"Anyway, I think I'll hit the hay for tonight." Marshall let off a yawn, realising that it was about to time to go to bed. "Thanks again, Rocky!"
"Don't let the bedbugs bite!" Rocky called after Marshall as the dalmatian walked back to his pup house.
An evening of cleaning was enough for Marshall to feel tired enough to fall asleep relatively quickly, but once he'd arrived back at his pup house, he realised that he would have to wait for a little longer, owing to some of the stuff he wanted to keep being strewn around on the floor. Sighing at his sleep being delayed, Marshall moved to put the scattered items back on their shelves, which now bulged considerably less than they once did.
From trophies to toys, now Marshall had far more of what he actually wanted to keep, and he could easily put it all into its rightful place now that his shelves had been given a thorough de-cluttering. Soon, there were only two items left on the floor: Marshall's teddy and what looked like…
"...a… photo?"
A small, brown frame lay face-down in front of the pup. Marshall didn't remember keeping photos in his pup house. And if he did, why was it stuffed away among his shelves rather than being on display? Why did he even have it? And for that matter, what was the photo even of? Something cool? Embarrassing? Deciding to bite the bullet and dispel the lingering anticipation within him, Marshall turned the photo to face him. But when he saw what the photo consisted of, he stopped dead in his tracks with a loud gasp.
What stared back at him was all too familiar. A very young human and a pair of even-younger pups. More specifically, a human with brown, spiked hair wearing a broad, happy smile with his arms around a german shepherd and a dalmatian.
Marshall placed his paw near the tiny dalmatian with the huge, toothy grin. The brief period of doubt in his mind was quickly ended when he saw what was unmistakably the Lookout in the background. That pup was unquestionably him.
After a few seconds, Marshall shifted his focus to the other pup in the picture. The german shepherd with a face adorned with a wide, confident smirk. Given everything else in the picture, that pup could only be Chase. It took a little longer for Marshall to realise this, in part thanks to Chase being slightly chubbier than he was now, leaving Marshall wondering if they really got that much of a workout on rescues.
Then there was the much-younger human. Brown eyes, brown hair and an aura of leadership about him. There was no doubt; that was Ryder. And yet, he looked so young. Marshall knew that the Paw Patrol had been around for a long time, but he'd put a lot of the happenings of the far-past out of his mind, so this window into the past came a huge surprise for him. And now all of the past happenings of the then-nascent Paw Patrol were coming back to him.
Chase and Ryder encouraging him as he trained with his new gear. Playing with the pair of them from dawn till dusk. The pair's first rescues. Meeting the other pups. Marshall quickly found himself sentimentally hugging the photo with a big smile as these happy memories flashed through his head and a warm feeling filled his stomach. The memories continued to play in his mind as he turned around in his pup house, laid on the floor with the photo still in his arms and closed his eyes for the night.
That night's dreams were like a night of rewatching a selection of cherished, nostalgic movies. Except Marshall was playing the part of himself. His failures. His successes. He relived these moments from his first years in vivid detail, leading Marshall to sleep more peacefully than he had in a long time.
The day had dawned, and naturally, early bird Chase was the first one awake. As was tradition for him, he moved to each pup's house, waking each of them from their slumber. He did experiment with his megaphone for a week, but the prank the pups pulled in retaliation for scaring them all awake for a week still haunted his own dreams. Chase was stubborn, but he could take a hint.
Traditionally, he'd wake Marshall up last anyway, but upon seeing how happy he was in his sleep, the shepherd gave a warm smile. Chase felt a little guilty about having to wake him, but soon decided that duty called. This wasn't a day for them to sleep in, after all. Chase decided to wake him up gently, but paused briefly when he noticed the odd, rectangular object in his arms.
"Wonder what the story is behind this?" Chase thought before leaning in and licking Marshall's cheek.
"Marshall..." Chase whispered between licks. "Hey, Marshall… Wakey-wakey… It's time to get up..."
"Mmmmrrrgghhh… Ugghhh… Chaaaaaase..." Marshall moaned. "I was having a nice dream..."
Chase giggled as Marshall slowly came back from his groggy state. "Yeah, you looked really peaceful. I didn't really wanna wake you."
"I kinda wish you hadn't…" Marshall shuffled around where he lay, only to feel the photo in his arms from last night. "Oh yeah… But I'm glad you did. You wanna know what I was dreaming about?"
"Does it have to do with what you've got there?"
"Oh yeah. Feast your eyes."
"Huh? Some kinda phot- ...oh, my-"
In nearly the same instant Marshall had turned the photo around to show Chase, the shepherd had gone rigid and wide-eyed, finally providing Marshall the answer to how Chase might react to seeing a window into the past such as this. There was a deafening silence in the air as Chase touched his paw to the image, likely going over all of the same details he did last night.
"Where… Wh-where did you find this?" Chase whispered in awe.
"Dunno." Marshall replied. "I was just cleaning my pup house last night and found it on the floor before I went to bed."
"I remember Ryder gave us our own copies of this… but I lost mine years ago..."
"Wait. He did?"
"It was a long time ago, Marshall. Do you remember?"
"Honestly, until I found this photo, I'd forgotten a lot of it. It all came back at once. I even dreamed about the times when it was just the two of us."
Chase soon realised that he was probably going to be there for a long time, squeezing in next to Marshall and lying down close to him.
"Like what? The first time we rescued Chickaletta, say?"
"That was one of them. Heh, I still remember you catching yourself with your net that day." Marshall gave an amused grin.
"Says the pup who needed ice for his butt after falling down his ladder..." Chase responded with a smirk, prompting laughter from the pair of them.
"Man..." Marshall turned his attention back to the photo. "We were so young back then… I can't believe we've been the Paw Patrol for so long."
"I was so pudgy back then." Chase stared at the confident-looking image of his younger self. "Five years can really change a pup."
"And a human." Marshall added. "Ryder looked so… innocent back then."
"Well he was only five years old. But even back then when we had less emergencies and more time to play, he was still really smart..."
"And as kind as he is today… I should know, after all."
"Come to think of it, this picture got taken to mark the founding of the Paw Patrol, right?"
"Yep, right after I joined… And… a little while before my dad left..." Marshall's expression turned from one of blissful nostalgia to one of vague sadness.
"Oh yeah..." Chase added quietly, sympathetically nuzzling Marshall. "I'm sorry we haven't found him."
"Hey, don't be." Marshall replied, licking Chase in response. "I mean, if I stayed with him, I woulda missed a lot more."
"Heck, you almost did..."
Marshall knew that Chase wasn't wrong. Way back when he was only one year old, Chase was only two and the Paw Patrol was nothing more than a gleam in Ryder's eye, Marshall remembered how lucky he was that he had the life that he had now. For had things gone the slightest bit differently, Marshall's life would be nowhere near the same as it was today.
"It all started when you came and talked to me at the pup park, right?" Marshall asked, thinking back to five years ago.
"Almost." Chase replied with his mind drifting away to a slightly earlier period. "We weren't in Adventure Bay very long, then..."
Five years ago, Adventure Bay wasn't greatly different to how it was in the present day. The town was certainly smaller in terms of area, but the sense of community was undoubtedly still there. But with the recently-completed construction of a large, slender, white tower on an isolated outcropping, this sleepy coastal town was about to be forever changed.
At the base of it stood a small boy of five years, staring in wonderment at what was going to be the new home for him and his companion, a two year-old german shepherd with a black collar, adorned with a badge carrying the emblem of a yellow sheriff star on a deep blue background. Ryder stood as the sole inheritor of his grandfather's immense fortune, being the orphaned child of his grandfather's offspring, but in truth, given Ryder's unusual intellectual aptitude at only one year of age, his grandfather couldn't have asked for a better candidate to lead the eclectic new organisation he was planning.
And Ryder was given his start with the present he received for his fourth birthday. A small german shepherd pup. The two bonded near-immediately. The pup hadn't lead much of a life before being adopted, being raised on a quiet farm by a kindly breeder. But he was described as having more energy and grit than a dog several times his age. Ryder and his grandfather debated names for a long time, before they eventually settled on one that they both agreed on: Chase.
"I can't believe we're gonna be living here..." Ryder said in amazement, unafraid of the prospect of living by himself with only a group of canines for company. As much as his grandfather loved him, his duties meant that he was scarcely around.
"It's a little like grandpa's tower. But smaller." Chase observed.
"Maybe it'll get bigger when we get older?"
"But we don't even know any other pups! Can we go to the park? Pleeeeease?" Chase was eager to get to know other pups, given that the only other pups he'd known were his litter-mates, who he didn't get to interact with very much, owing to their quick adoptions.
"Sorry, Chase, but I've still gotta go check out all the gear and blueprints grandpa left me." Chase looked down and whined at Ryder's response, making a show out of giving him a sad, dewy-eyed look. "But I'll tell you what. Why don't you go down to the park and see if you can meet any pups there?"
Chase perked up immediately.
"Remember that you've got your collar tag and I've got this… Pup Pad thing." Ryder punctuated his explanation by drawing the recently-created device from his pocket. "Grandpa left me the instructions for it. If you need me, you just gotta tap your tag. Got it?"
"OK! See ya later!" Chase barked happily, sprinting off towards the park they passed on the way to the tower as fast as his tiny legs could carry him.
"Wow..." Marshall said. "...I'd forgotten that you begged like that."
"Hey, I was young!" Chase shot back with an embarrassed face. "And pretty stupid, too!"
"Still, the thought of you with puppy-dog eyes now..." Marshall burst into giggles at the thought of Chase begging, earning him a chop to the skull from the embarrassed shepherd. Ironically, this only made Marshall laugh harder.
"Anyway, thinking about it..." Chase went on. "...it's a surprise that Ryder let me go out by myself."
"Hey, Adventure Bay was and still is a pretty safe town."
"Still, that was a lot of stock to put in a town's reputation. We didn't know anyone here."
"Maybe he trusted you not to get into trouble?"
"Ha ha ha. Maybe. But it wasn't long until I found trouble."
Chase smirked at Marshall, who got an offended look before delivering a chop of his own to Chase, making him burst out laughing.
"Anyway, that was when I met you, right?" Marshall attempted to steer the conversation back on track.
"Yeah, it was around then." Chase replied as his laughter died down. "I'd just gotten to the pup park. Kinda amazing how little that place changed…"
To Chase's disappointment, the pup park was sadly quiet. Some people were there with their pups, with a couple sat to the side as they watched their pups play, but beyond that, nothing. Chase decided to survey the park, wondering there was any pup in particular who seemed friendly or wanted someone else to play with. But a lot of the pups seemed very engrossed in what they were doing or were very involved with others. Chase started to lose hope, until from atop the play gym, something caught his eye.
It was a blue-eyed dalmatian pup laying on his belly and staring off into the distance. Small, black spots adorned his fur, but the most eye-catching thing about him was his lack of a collar. Chase blinked. "A stray?" he thought. Chase couldn't get a read on his facial expression. It was blank. Vacant. More-or-less emotionless. The pup seemed to be off in his own little world, but then again, perhaps his expression was a muted cry for help? In all likelihood, that pup needed a friend. And so did Chase. With a deep breath, Chase walked through the playing pups towards the play gym.
Surprised to see me? I must admit, I wasn't expecting to get this fic out so fast. But then, that's just as well, since I still have the one-shot collection to do. I guess having a week off work will help you out with that. Just wish I didn't spend it trying to kick the case of flu I'd picked up abroad (worse than a cold, I can say that with confidence).
Anyway, here's how this fic's schedule will go. Six chapters, one upload every two days, just like my last major outing. It's funny, I swore up and down to myself that I'd never do an origin story like this, and yet, here I am. Can you believe I actually tried to condense all of this into a one-shot? Anyway, I'll be back in a couple of days with the next installment. Hope to see you then.