You could practically hear the dial tone coming out of Ryder's head as he stared at the ceiling in the Lookout's lower floor from the comfort of his bean bag chair.
The boy's mind had simply not settled down for a number of weeks. After the events of a month ago, Ryder's fight to become the cheerful boy he once was had been going nowhere in a hurry. Despite frequent contact with a small circle of friends, he simply wasn't getting any better. His bouts of staring off into space and breathing heavily as his brain went into overdrive were becoming more and more frequent.
"Uh, Ryder, sir?"
"Bwagh-!"
But speaking to him was a good way of getting him back to Earth with a bump, as the pup who had appeared in front of him without him knowing it had just demonstrated.
"O-Oh, Chase..." Ryder stammered as he caught his breath again. "Sorry, y-you startled me."
"Sorry..." Chase replied meekly. "I just came to check if you were OK. I mean, you barely ate anything at breakfast this morning. And you normally never miss breakfast!"
Ryder sighed heavily. Part of him didn't want his pups to know that he was still suffering a month on, but at the same time, he wasn't doing a very good job of hiding it. But then, after he'd spent the last period of trauma that he'd suffered sealed away in his room, angrily rejecting any form of contact, he didn't want to hide it anymore.
"Saw right through me, huh? Yeah. I still don't feel up to eating very much... it's been a month since that incident with Marshall and I still don't feel any better..."
Chase whined sadly, pressing himself against Ryder's shin. "I don't think any of us do... least of all Marshall..."
The name of their fire pup prompted Ryder to suddenly widen his eyes as he remembered an observation that he'd made earlier.
"Oh, yeah... hey, have you noticed that he seems... off, lately?"
Chase looked up at Ryder with a furrowed brow. "'Off'? Off how?"
"I mean... he seems a little... spacier? Than usual?" Ryder tilted his head as he slowly brought the words to his head. "And WAY clumsier than normal. Like, not the Marshall brand of clumsy. I mean the 'can barely go five minutes without falling all over himself' brand of clumsy. And Rubble's said that he's not eating much either."
"Heh, leave it to Rubble to notice something like that..." Chase chuckled ruefully. "...but you're right. Something's gotta be on that pup's mind. Maybe he's still thinking about falling in the river?"
"He could be. Maybe we should-"
Ryder's suggestion of what to do swiftly died in his throat as his Pup Pad started to ring, along with the TV screen not far from him.
"Urgh... who could that be?" Ryder grumbled in frustration, wondering why a call always had to interrupt him like this.
"I'll get it, Ryder, sir. Don't get up." Chase reassured, moving over to the screen.
The ID notification on the screen was of no help, owing to the number being unknown. But calls could still be answered on the main screen if need be, and Chase thought that he could try and handle it himself to give his beleaguered owner a break. But when he pressed the button to answer the call, he found himself surprised to see two adult dogs on the screen looking back at him.
"Hello, this is- oh, hey! Mr. Jet! Mrs. Soleil! Long time no see!" Chase greeted.
Looking back at him were a tall, male poodle with a white coat and a cocker spaniel with a long, flowing, golden coat. Both were clearly very well-groomed, and bore pink eyes and identical white collars with gleaming, silver tags. And upon seeing the German Shepherd, the poodle's face lit up.
"Oh, why, hello, Chase! My, you've grown since I last saw you!" Jet greeted warmly
"Good grief, what is Ryder feeding you to make you grow so fast?" Soleil added.
"Aw, well, uh... nothing special, as far as I know?" Chase replied with a bashful grin.
"Ah, well, not the point. We thought we'd surprise Skye. Is she around? Not on a rescue or anything?" Jet asked.
"Since you're at the Lookout, I'd guess not?" Soleil continued.
"No, no, we're all here! I'll call her right away!"
Outside the Lookout, near Rocky's Pup House, Skye and Rocky stared down at the puzzle from Rocky's truck laid out on the floor, with the latter happily teaching the former about the finer points of assembling a jigsaw puzzle.
"And so... this piece goes... here?" Skye asked, using her mouth to move a piece with a yellow border at its edge to where it belonged.
"Yep, that looks like the one. Any more border pieces?" Rocky mumbled to himself as he sorted through the numerous scattered pieces. "Ah, here's one."
"I'm glad you taught me about working the border first, Rocky. Otherwise I'd be totally stuck!" Skye admitted with embarrassment.
"Ah, it's easy! Once you learn to work your way in, puzzles like this are a cinch!" Rocky replied happily, before being cut off by the beeping of Skye's Pup Tag, followed by Chase's familiar voice.
"Hey, Skye! Your parents are on the screen!"
Skye gave a huge gasp of excited shock, grinning from ear to ear. "REALLY?!" she shouted. "They didn't say they were gonna call!"
"They wanted to surprise you!" Chase added.
"(And it sounds like it worked!)" a distant, feminine voice added from over the screen, hearing Skye's voice over Chase's Pup Tag.
"Errrr... yeah." Chase concurred. "C'mon!"
"Coming!" Skye called, running towards the Lookout doors in a hurry, leaving Rocky to put the puzzle on hold for now.
In mere moments, the pink-eyed cockapoo darted through the doors and looked towards the screen, her face lighting up as she saw that her parents were indeed waiting for her, who gasped with delight on seeing their daughter appear on-camera.
"Mommy! Daddy! Hey!" Skye cried.
"Ah, there she is!" Jet cheered.
"Our little sweetie-poo! Hello, Skye!" Soleil cooed affectionately.
"Aw, mom!"
Jet gave his mate a sideways glance. "Soleil, really, she's not THAT young..."
"It's fine, daddy! How have you both been?" Skye asked.
"Urgh, busy..." Jet grumbled. "You wouldn't think that a pair of old dogs like us would still get so much work in acting!"
"Well, what he means to say is that we've been teaching a lot of up-and-coming acting dogs!" Soleil elaborated.
"Really?! That's so cool!"
"Not as cool as all of the rescues you've all been doing!"
But the two dogs on the screen quickly went from delight to concern as Soleil finished her sentence, as they noticed Skye's smile fade and saw her gaze drop to the ground.
"...honey, what's wrong?" Jet asked in concern, worried that they may have upset their daughter somehow.
"Well, er... we haven't done very many lately..." Skye admitted sadly.
"OH-!" Soleil shouted. "Oh, no, I just remembered! Didn't they recently come close to losing someone?!"
Skye sniffled quietly as her mother's realisation turned out to be correct. "...yeah... it was Marshall, actually. Ring any bells? Dalmatian?" Skye made a vague gesture with her paws. "About this big? Our fire pup?"
"I know who you mean, Skye..." Jet affirmed quietly. "Are you doing OK since then? We haven't had the chance to talk to you since then..."
"We were so worried about you..." Soleil added. "We heard that you were leading the Paw Patrol for a while... that's a lot of pressure to put on a pup like you... you must've been in so much pain the whole time..."
"Yeah... it really sucked... a-and... w-we still-"
Skye's valiant attempt to stop herself from tearing up soon turned out to be for naught as the words died in her throat and tears came to the pup's eyes. The sight wounded both the watching Ryder and Chase...
"She's in tears! That's it! Call off our appointments! We're coming down there!"
...but not as much as Jet and Soleil, the latter of which immediately shouted an order to an aide of theirs.
"Wha-?! No! No! Mom! You don't need to do that!" Skye shouted, recovering her wits quickly.
"We do, young lady! We need to be down there right! Away!" Jet rebutted.
"Jet, Soleil, please!"
Skye quickly looked around to the voice that came from behind her.
"Hm?" Jet said.
"Is that Ryder?" Soleil asked.
"Yeah. Sorry I didn't speak up until now..." Ryder soon walked into the camera feed from his beanbag on the other side of the room, looking sadly up at the two older dogs. "...please. Don't drop everything for us. You've still got work and you two are on the other side of the country..."
"Ryder." Jet greeted with an air of stern worry. "You know that we were thinking of you as well, right? I hope you're ready, because we've got a LOT of questions. And we want answers."
"Jet! There's no need to interrogate the boy!" Soleil scolded. "He nearly lost one of his pups, for goodness sake!" The spaniel quickly turned back to Ryder after silencing her mate, taking on a gentler expression and tone. "It's OK, Ryder. I can handle the talking. Why don't you go ahead and tell us what happened? Just take your time and relax, OK?"
Ryder sighed with relief. "Thanks, Soleil... you might wanna get comfy..."
Of course, Skye's parents were out of the loop with what had gone on, only managing to find out how things were going via the regular news reports out of Adventure Bay they picked up regarding the exploits of their daughter and her friends. And since they'd only picked up news reports regarding something about a pup from the Paw Patrol having died and Skye taking over leadership, only for that said pup to be later reported as alive and safe, obviously they had a lot of questions and concerns.
And the incident still brought Ryder and the pups a lot of pain. After a long time of taking breaths and psyching himself up, Ryder began to recall the gory details that had traumatised him and his pups so for the two dogs before him.
"It was a rescue by a river. A cat of one of our friends had got stuck on a tree over a river. Real fast one, too... the cat... the stupid thing jumped straight on his face... blinded him, and..."
Ryder stopped to take some more deep breaths, desperately attempting to vent his rage. He couldn't lie, even though Cali, the cat involved, didn't mean to cause this accident, Ryder still felt angry even thinking about her. Despite Marshall pleading with the group not to blame Cali, none of them could help it after all they had gone through.
"...it was all an accident, but he fell off his ladder... we couldn't reach him in time, and... the ledge he landed on gave way. Dropped him straight in..."
"Oh, my goodness..." Soleil whispered in horror. "I'm not surprised you thought he'd died! How in the world did he not drown?!"
"I don't know, honestly..." Ryder continued sadly. "...and I don't think he does either... for three days, we all thought he was dead... I'm sorry, guys... it broke me... totally and utterly..."
The boy dropped his head to the floor sadly, the weight of the painful memories forcing his head downwards.
"...I see..." Jet said soberly with a note of shame in his voice. "Ryder, I'd like to apologise for getting pushy... I didn't realise how bad things were..."
"...it's OK, Jet. I was so convinced that I was such a bad owner that Marshall died because of me... so I shut myself away for three days... all I did was cry... I never came out once."
Jet's face quickly turned from one of sympathy to one of total horror.
"WHAT?!" he roared. "How could you do that to yourself?! I feel like we really SHOULD come down there, now!"
"Mr. Jet!" Chase called, frantically running back into frame. "Don't go after Ryder! Please! I mean, after I basically did the same thing, we left Skye on her own..."
Chase's newfound energy swiftly bled out, and he joined the others in lowering his head in shame, knowing that he'd effectively done almost the exact same thing that Ryder did.
"...you probably wanna kick our butts, right?"
Jet inhaled strongly, before giving a loud, nearly-exaggerated sigh. Years of acting meant that such theatrics now came naturally to the pair of them, which was something of an embarrassment for the Poodle in particular.
"Don't be ridiculous, boy... we'd come down there just to make sure you were all OK!" Jet reassured the three. "I mean, whenever we're on set, we freak out if someone gets hurt doing a stunt or something! But someone DYING?! Urgh, I can't imagine..."
Jet lowered his head and whined, visibly shuddering at the awful thought.
"Oh, Jet..." Soleil whispered, nuzzling her mate, who swiftly returned the favour.
"I mean, I'm one to talk, I know." Chase continued. "But Skye was so brave... even though we'd just abandoned her, she handled things so well until Marshall came back..."
"Chase, I told you, I forgive you! AND Ryder!" Skye cut in, shame prickling away inside her as she remembered how the stress caused her to lash out at the pair of them. The cockapoo quickly turned back to reassure her parents. "Seriously, these two are still beating themselves up over that. Don't mind them."
"Skye, you can't blame Ryder and Chase for still feeling down. They nearly lost a pup, and he got lucky that he came back at all, I'd say." Jet replied sternly, reminding Skye of why everyone was still in pain over the incident in the first place.
"And you're still thinking about that, too, right?" Soleil asked rhetorically. "I mean, hiking back through the woods for three days? No food, barely any water? How lucky was that Marshall to escape all that danger?"
Skye whined. Her parents had just seen straight through her. The pain of losing a pup, even if it had never come to pass in the end, was all too real for every one of them, and that they were all one whim of fate away from losing Marshall for good.
"Yeah... you're right, both of you... I'm sorry..." Skye whispered shamefully.
"Skye, if you ever feel down at all over this, we want you to call us right away. We're still your mom and dad, and it's our job to make sure you're OK." Jet began, taking on a much warmer and more reassuring tone.
"And you know that we worry about you, even from afar. Do you think you can do that for us, my little angel?" Soleil asked consolingly.
And almost immediately, Skye felt better. As did everyone else in the room. Even if Skye's parents couldn't physically be there for their daughter, they were always ready to lend an ear to their daughter's tribulations from afar. The smile quickly came back to Skye's face.
"You bet, mommy!" Skye cheered.
"That's the spirit, my darling!" Soleil praised.
"Oh, by the way, is Marshall around? I'm curious. How's he doing?" Jet asked.
And just like that, the mood immediately dropped once more. Everyone's faces quickly fell as they remembered the poor state that the Dalmatian was in, and how much the distance he was putting between them and himself hurt. Especially after the events of a month ago.
"...Mr. Jet... I'm not sure that's a good idea, right now..." Chase demurred.
"Marshall's kind of in a bad way right now..." Ryder added "...he's under a lot of stress and, well... recovery is slow right now, so-"
"Say no more, young man. I understand. As long as he's getting better." Jet accepted.
"Now how about we come away from all this heavy stuff?" Soleil asked. "How have your rescues been going?"
Skye immediately perked up. "OH! We actually went on a really cool one not long ago! Our friend, Alex, got stuck on top of a mountain!"
"Oh, my goodness!" Soleil replied.
"That must've been exciting!" Jet added with muted excitement.
"Yeah, and not just that! He met a goat up there, too! But that goat had hurt its leg!" Ryder went on.
"So we had a lot of lifting to do..."
But unbeknownst to Chase, Ryder and Skye, the latter of which was happily continuing her story of a recent rescue, a certain spotted pup was looming by the doors to the Lookout. And although no-one knew it, every word spoken by Skye's parents cut said pup deeply.
As much as Marshall loved speaking with Jet and Soleil normally, this time, with everything on his mind, he simply couldn't bring himself to show his face around them. Marshall could only think one more more thought before sadly slinking away back to his Pup House.
"(At least YOUR parents are doing OK, Skye... and you don't have to worry about them...)"
Iiiiii'm baaaaaaaaaaack... heh heh heh heh heh ha ha ha ha ha...
Yeah, turns out, I just couldn't stay away. I left the door open for my return when I finished Rekindled Anew with two ideas for stories. And now, one year on, I'm walking back through it. I wish I knew how to quit this fandom. And yet somehow, I can't bring myself to do so.
And speaking of years... ooh, dear. 2020 wasn't the best was it? Both personally (elderly relative dying of non-COVID causes, family drama) and generally (I don't think I need to explain why that is. Kobe Bryant dying near the beginning seemed like a stark warning in hindsight). Not even Paw Patrol itself was safe, thanks to people going after Chase on account of... being a police officer. That's it. Seriously, that's both stupid AND screwed up.
So I felt like I needed to try and get some light back into at least SOME people's lives. But fair warning, this fic isn't going to be that. In fact, it's even going to be somewhat dark in places. But I had two ideas when I left. And if I want to get to writing the second, more upbeat and cheerful one, then I've got to write this in order for it to make any kind of sense. And the schedule for the chapters uploads - yes, I am still pre-writing everything, and yes, I haven't forgotten - will be every three days starting now, with chapters going up both here AND on Archive of our Own (for those who're wondering, my name there is the exact same as on here).
This fic will serve as a direct continuation of two of my previous fics: Start Your Engines and Rekindled Anew. But worry not, I'm going to try and cover my bases in this fic as best I can to keep you from having to read a bunch of other stories first. But if you wanted to read my other stories... well, I certainly won't try to stop you... nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more.
Now, one thing you may or may not have noticed is that this fic is going to have a heavier emphasis on OCs than my other work, and as you may be able to judge from the title, most of the story won't be in Adventure Bay at all. I swore to myself I wouldn't make a fic like this, and I'm personally worried going forth. Purely because I'm pretty squeamish about OCs myself due to all the pitfalls associated with such. But right now, I can't really avoid it. And don't worry, once this is done, I will NOT be using any of them again to the best of my ability.
In addition, I'm not just going to charge in blindly with this fic. I've taken some precautions:
1) I'm going to tie each OC back to a canon character as best I can at all times.
2) Not every OC is going to be relevant/will need to be kept track of at all times.
3) I'm going to be keeping an OC Key down at the bottom of almost every chapter to help keep track of who's who and who's relevant at the current time.
And one more thing I'd like to add. Once more, the cover for this fic has been made by my partner in crime, Zojak. And once more, the result is absolutely amazing, so a special thank you goes out to him.
Right, if you're still with me after that titanic amount of rambling, then thank you for bearing with me. I hope you enjoyed the Prologue, please review/favourite/follow if you did, and I hope to see you next time for the next chapter.
OC KEY
Jet – a male Poodle and Skye's father. An accomplished actor. Generally more straitlaced and serious than his beloved wife.
Soleil – a female Cocker Spaniel and Skye's mother. A well-respected actress. More energetic and outgoing than her adored husband.