The Jasper Park has met their newest neighbor - the Green Goblin! But will they conclude that he is an ally or decide that he's an antagonist? And what will happen to Kate? Will she survive her serious head trauma? And how will Garth and Lilly react to the fact that there is a mysterious new force in the valley? Anyway you look at it, things will never be the same after the Jasper pack figures out about "The Green Goblin - Public Enemy No. 1"!
Garth and Lilly made a beeline for the top of the mountain. Garth, with all of his speed, constantly outpaced Lilly and barely seemed to notice. However, he would eventually grow wise and, realizing that she was not beside him, hold back for her to catch up. No words were spoken between them as she would meet him; both knew the urgency of the situation.
As they neared the top, they noticed that a large chunk of the cliff-wall was gone, the remnants strewing the path before them. Garth bolted over it with ease. He even paused and struck a commanding pose after he had done so, more out of habit than any real pride. Lilly, for her part, tried to run through the rock field only to find that the jagged edges and large stones were too much for her feet. On one or more of them – it was hard to tell just how many – she lost her balance and fell onto the pile.
"Lilly, are you okay?" Garth said, running over and helping her up.
"I'm fine except for – ow!" Lilly said as she tried to walk. One of her legs was hurt.
Garth quickly took a look at it. "It's probably just a sprain. It probably twisted in the fall. It should be alright in a few days."
Lilly nodded and Garth helped her get the rest of the way up the mountain. When they arrived, they found that all the other wolves were already gathered around Kate. They walked up and exchanged looks of great relief once they saw that Kate had regained consciousness. She was blinking and staring up at the moon, trying to piece together what had happened to her.
"Do you remember anything, sweetie?" Eve said as she worked on her daughter's wound. "Anything at all that would help us find this monster and claw its eyes out?"
"I just remember… flashes of green and purple and… laughter," Kate said, focusing her eyes upward as though she could still see the form of the being that she had been chasing.
"Laughter?" a number of wolves, including Garth, Eve, and Humphrey, said together.
"The most horrible laughter I had ever heard," Kate said. "It seemed like I didn't just hear it, it actually entered my body and ripped my soul apart. And then everything went black."
"And Razor, what happened to him?" Winston said.
"He was already unconscious when I got there," Kate said. "I think… the thing got to him before I did."
"Which may have been the only good service it rendered to us," Eve said. "Maybe I'll return the favor and let it die quickly."
She then looked over at her other daughter. "But Lilly," she said, "your leg!"
"It's okay, mom," Lilly said, "I just sprained it running up here. I tripped on all those rocks that are covering the path. It's nothing."
Eve howled with rage. "First, this monster nearly kills my Kate and now it hurts my Lilly too! Forget what I said about allowing it to die quickly! It will suffer, it will suffer indeed!"
"Hurts me? But it didn't–" Lilly began.
"Lilly, dear," Winston said, coming up close to her and whispering, "that thing, after it left Kate here, jumped from the mountain. We tried to chase it but it did something… I don't know what but something… that blew up that part of the cliff. We only now just able to get the largest boulders out of the path."
"Oh," Lilly said quietly.
"And it was… it was incredible," Kate said. "I chased the thing through the trees, but it always managed to keep one step ahead of me. It was like it somehow knew all those moves I learned in Alpha school. I can't, I can't remember anything else about it. It was just, those moves were uncanny…"
"That's good enough. Rest now, dear, keep up your strength," Eve said. She had managed to stop the bleeding from Kate's head and was busy trying to clean the dried blood out of her daughter's mane.
Sweets and Candy ran up to the assembled group. "We can tell you more," Sweets said.
"Yeah, we saw it," Candy added. "It was big and nasty and green, right, Sweets?"
"Oh and it smelled hideous, too!" Sweets held her nostrils up as though she could still smell it. "It smelled as bad as it looked!"
"Okay, girls," Winston said, "what did this thing actually look like?"
"Well," Sweets said, "it was hideous. Talk about ugly!"
"But we need a better description than that if we are to find it."
Sweets and Candy shrugged. "We were too busy running for our lives to paint a picture!" Candy protested.
"I bet they didn't even see it!" a wolf from the eastern pack said.
"We did too!" they both said together. Sweets said, "It blew up part of the cliff and laughed at us!"
"Yeah, yeah, it did!" Candy added.
"See," the eastern wolf said, "they didn't see it. They're just repeating stuff Kate and everybody else already said."
"So, what does this all mean?" Tony asked Winston.
"I don't know," Winston said, turning to address the whole united pack, "but it does mean that Hotshot and his boys are no longer the only danger we face. Someone or something else has infiltrated the valley and by the looks of it, it is hostile to us."
"Um, dad…" Lilly said, stepping forward, "maybe it isn't hostile to us."
"Lilly, don't talk about things you don't understand," Garth said in a whisper.
This just caused Lilly to become slightly more forceful in her protestations. "If it were hostile, wouldn't it have killed Kate in the valley and not brought her here where she could be taken care of? And it didn't actually try to injure any of us."
"It tried to injure us!" Sweets and Candy screamed.
"You didn't even see it!" the eastern wolf barked.
"Yes, we did!"
"No, you didn't!"
"Just shut up, all three of you!" Tony yelled. And when he was angry, the wolves knew to listen.
Lilly continued, paying no notice to Sweets and Candy. "So, if it didn't harm any of us–"
"What about Hutch and Can-do?" Humphrey said. "Who knows what happened to them!"
"We're right here!" Hutch said, running up the path with Can-do by his side. "We got separated from Kate in the darkness and we've been looking for her all this time."
Can-do added. "We decided to come get help and Ace told us the whole story on the way up."
Lilly started speaking again, "So, if none of us were harmed, how do we know that whatever it was is really against us? It might have just been defending itself because Kate was attacking it."
"And Razor, how do you explain the little fact that the thing beat him unconscious?" Humphrey said.
"We don't know why it did. Maybe Razor attacked it too."
Nobody seemed particularly convinced by Lilly's analysis, but Winston seemed to give it due consideration. Finally he said, "My daughter's point is well-taken. We don't know what this thing is or what its reasons for doing what it is doing are. But still, we know that it has the potential to harm us, if we're not careful. That's why I'm ordering all Alphas to be on their guard and to make sure that the whole of the valley is under patrol at all times. If any of you catch sight of this thing, do not advance or try to provoke it, but defend yourselves if necessary. That is all."
"I still want to see it suffer!" Eve said. "And if I get my paws on it, it will!"
Winston fumbled to think up a response. "Yes, well, you're a special case, dear. Come on, let's get Kate back to our den."
Kate tried to pick herself up. "It's alright, dad, mom, I'll be fine. I feel better already and tomorrow I can lead the caribou hunt." But she fell back onto the slab, her head throbbing in pain.
"You'll do no such thing, young lady," Eve said. "Not until you've recovered. Garth, you'll have to take on Kate's duties in addition to your own. You're the head Alpha now."
Garth nodded, his face firm and composed. Then he spotted Lilly, glaring at him. He tried to plead with her silently, with his eyes, but to no avail. She let her fur fall into her left eye and slowly walked away.
Kate is safe but still injured, Garth and Lilly are on the outs again, and the whole Jasper pack is in high-alert! Alarming things are happening in the pack, but the big question is, what does this all mean for our loveable lunatic? Especially now that Eve has both of his personalities on her death-list? And what about Hotshot's goons? You'll find out next issue, because the action is going to really ramp up when Philip Urich has to once again resort to "The Laughter of a Lunatic"!