Chapter 47: Puzzling

Felix jumped up before it finally fully registered just what exactly what the doberman had said.

K-kill him... Felix' mind stammered as he stood slack-jawed. This totally dynamite dog wants to... k-kill Ralph!...

And by judging how angry and firece this pooch was, it was clear that she wasn't exaggerating in the slightest, either.

Finding his feet again, Felix shook for a moment before he bolted after her, happy he could now see just where he was walking as he bounced into the main corrior off the waiting room back towards the enterance.

"Wait...K-kill him?!" he yipped as he sprinted after her as fast as his little legs could go. "W-why?!"

He suddenly skidded to a stopped right in the middle of his running when a new thought hit him. "Oh, no...," he groaned ouloud, ears flat against his head once more as he rolled his head backwards in aggravation. "What did Ralph do?"

"What didn't he do?!" Calhoun growled over her shoulder without looking back at the tiny dog still a little aways down behind her as she kept marching. "He lied his way onto my force, abandoned me and my men with a bunch of helpless humans and multated scorpions, and then stole my well-earned, good dog collar in the process!"

Felix felt his ears twitch, his eyes widen and his body tensed up immediately at the word collar.

At the words...good dog collar.

He froze in his walking as the whole conversation between Ralph and Gene the night before replayed in his mind.

"You know what, Gene? I'm gonna get me a new collar- to prove I am good dog!" Ralph had threathened ...

..."Oh, I'll get that good dog collar... the best collar know to dog kind!" he had bosted...

Sure, Ralph had said and had bet he'd go out and get himself a collar, a good dog collar...

But had he actually went through with getting one...no matter the cost?

No...this can't be true...Felix tried pathetically weakly to convince himself. Ralph didn't want a good dog collar so badly...wanted to win that bet so badly... that he would lied his way onto the K-9s force and then resort to stealing from this goreous police dog!... Would he?

But there was no denying it... it all pieced together like a puzzle in Felix' mind now...

Ralph was on the breaking news in the first place...because he was "apart of" this same police force with the doberman...who had had a good dog collar around her neck...

And that was why Ralph had lied to her in order to get on the force...to steal that good dog collar!

"Stole your...Oh my land...," Felix finally gasped out more to himself than Calhoun as he shook his head, still trying to grasp a full sense of Ralph's actions.

He looked up in time to see that Calhoun had reached the end to the hallway and was paused at the main enterway doors, looking out into the world outside...a look of murder clear in her beautiful, hauntingly dark eyes.

Felix sighed and shook his head. It was time to clean up this mess.

"Ma'am, I am so sorry for my colleague's behavior," he called out to her softly as he continued his way towards her. "You have every right to be angry with him...even more than I am with him."

Calhoun broke her dead-panned glaze outside to smirk over at the approaching corgi, having an unbelievably hard time imagining him ever getting angry.

"But I can ensure you, ma'am," Felix continued as he now approached close to her side, "that I will get him to give that collar back to you immediately...once I find him, that is," he added with slight uncertainty as an afterthought.

He was shocked when he suddenly heard a callous laugh escape the doberman's throat.

"Pfff, it's not gonna be that easy to find that junkdog jerk, Short-Stack," she rolled her eyes before taking in a well trained deep smell. She growled with narrowed eyes as Ralph's scent poorly filled her nose as she peered blankly back through the doors.

"That stupid mutt is long gone by now, I'm sure," she hissed out, voice shaking with anger. "Finding him is going to be as easy as spoting a sleeping komondor in a feild of mops."

She flipped her head down to look at the tiny, bewildered corgi and smirked once more.

"There's no way that little nose yours could ever pick anything more than the scent of a squirrel," she insulted him with another low, impassive chuckle.

"Beside, I don't need your help in getting my collar back...I'm quite capable of getting it back on my own," Calhoun told him, nearly making him shake in fear with the now near content, happy look of murder in her eyes. "You need to leave the finding of that mastiff...and the killing of him... to the professionals, Corgi- and that's an order."

And with that, the fierce doberman slipped noiselessly through to hospital doors into the world outside.