SWORD OF DARKNESS-STORM CLOUDS GROW
(CASTLE TOWER/1245HRS)
The rescue knights all gathered at the hound table in the castle tower to discuss plans for attack and how to go about getting the past the death dragon and stopping Duke from getting the sword.(Claws response follows all plan ideas) Chase: trying to flood the chambers with sleeping gas. "The dragon is immune to all known earthly medicine." Zuma: flooding it with ocean water. "The caverns are too large, heaven only knows how many off shoot chambers there are, or where they go. It would never work, at least not in the time we have." Rubble: Digging into the sword chamber itself. "The dragon is in the same chamber as the sword, and both lay deep below the ground from what I remember. There is no way to dig into it without alerting the dragon." Skye: Lure the dragon out of the chamber and take the sword while he's away "The dragon only leaves the chamber to find food and water, and once in its life, to find a mate and reproduce, but its top priority is protecting the sword. Nothing else will distract it. It will die before it will leave the sword if it perceives a threat to Caliburn." Marshal: Can't we show it we mean no harm to it and get the sword that way? "How stupid are you? No matter how kind you are to it he MAY leave you alone, but that dragon will kill you as soon as you TOUCH THAT SWORD!" Rocky: Burn or smoke it out? "I can't believe I am hearing this! Dragons are fireproof, fire will do nothing but make it MAD! Smoke? This dragon breaths out a toxic smoke more deadly than MUSTARD GAS! Smoke, again, will do nothing but MAKE IT MAD!" Ryder is very irritated at this point "Okay Claw, how would you get past the dragon?!" Claw silently scratches his claw tips back and forth on the table in deep thought as he blankly stares at the wall mounted TV screen behind Ryder. Claw is staring at the screen when he has a possible idea "AH-HA! There may be a way yet, the holy waters stream of the north most dragon highlands will protect the purist of an entire group, no matter the number from the death dragons breath! But only one, whether good or evil is the most prevalent." Rocky asked claw "How will you know who is chosen?" "The chosen one will of purist light, be bathed in a bright blinding glow, only for a second. But if they are the purist dark, they will be bathed in a darkness so pure they will not be seen with the aid of any light source, again only a second, we just have to see which of us is chosen." Ryder now comes up with a plan to take the sword and briefs the plan to the pups. "Okay if we are successful in this-" the screen shows a 2D image of Marshall in a pond bathed in white light- "we will use that one pup to take the sword of Caliburn-" The image shifted to show the 2D image of Marshall in a gray cave confronting a 2D black dragon in front of a sword laying on the ground. "-in order to stop the duke from getting the sword and using this weapon of ultimate evil, I wish I could give a better plan than this, but as you all know, we are flying this one by the seat of our pants." The pups all laughed at this, even Claw as Ryder called out "Paw patrol is on a roll!" and all the pups took off to their assigned vehicle stations, Claw however call to sparks as he jumps off the edge of the castle tower with marshmallows in his robotic pincers saying "Onward Sparks! To the dragon highlands!" He tosses a marshmallow to turn Sparks north as the rest of the paw patrol catches up with him. Claw looks back to the castle and says "I'm glad we convinced the princess to stay behind with the Earl. Without her, the royal bloodline would die." Claw looks toward his destination and breaks out in a favorite song from his puppy-hood. After a long ride they arrived at the dragon highlands and Skye could not help but pull along side Claw and ask "I have two questions for you, one: what was that song you were singing earlier? Two: how do you know about this so-called Caliburn sword?" Claw sighs and calmly replies "To answer question one: it was a song called Die Eisenfaust am Lanzenschaft, otherwise known as The iron fist on the spear shaft, a hearken back to my German heritage, and a return to the proud German knights of my ancestors humans. The answer of question Two: I have trained in the knightly arts, and have read the story book of Barking-burg my whole life and know it by heart. I discovered the hidden pages by accident, and quiet frankly was scared stupid by what the death dragon; and more over, what Caliburn can do. As soon as the duke knew about it I was going to tell the princess no matter what, I had to-Down there!" Claw shouts and throws a marshmallow to the ground causing Sparks to dive and land and lick it up. "Well here we are, the Holy water stream." Claw says as he dismounts the dragon and stands next to a pitiful looking muddy stream. Rubble grunts in disbelief "Yeah, you honestly expect us to believe this is the stream to protect us from that black dragons death breath? I wouldn't drink from this stream if I were dying from dehydration!" Claw snarls a response that was laced with venom "If you don't want to even try, just sit by and see who out of the rest of us is the purist." Rubble climbed out of his rig and shouts "HA! If you are the purist knight of the group, I will follow your orders for the rest of this problem, even if goes against Ryder's orders!" Claw smiles at Rubble's challenge with a "Let us just see who is worthy to fight the black dragon, (Bark) sword." his pack center opens outward toward left and right and a broad style knight sword appears on a highly flexible metal tube-like arm where it could bent and flex in a way Rocky could only dream of with his mechanical arm. Claw recites his own catchphrase "That which doesn't kill me will fear me!" shows off his broad sword in standard training moves, defense and offense alike. After a few moves he barks his sword away and says "All right, we only get one shot at this, all must bathe in the water for the best chance of purity being bestowed on the truest of us." They watch claw begins to remove his armor, placing it all on the ground starting with the helmet, back leg armor, and removes his forward leg armor with a wince at the right shoulder revealing a scar on the right arm that was deep, and very long, extending along the whole forward right leg down the outside to the top of the paw, and finally his torso armor. With all his armor laying on the ground beside him, he lays on the ground, hanging his head with only an inch of space between the ground and the end of his muzzle. In his native German language he recites a knights prayer of purity and forgiveness of sins. Then claw at last stood up and says to the others "you would be best go to a private point to remove your armor and prey for forgiveness of your sins and ask for purity of spirit from the one true God and ask him to grant you the knowledge of how to deal with the dark death dragon before you bath in the water of holiness. Skye however was doing as Claw says and stores her armor in her helicopter and while walking back the short distance she asks "How should we pray?" Claw looks to Skye and offers some sage advice "Skye I can not tell you how to prey, but I will recite a short prayer out loud in English to give you all an idea of how to prey-" the rest of the pups and Ryder removed their armor and knelt/laid before the holy stream of the dragon highlands as claw offered a prayer for them "-In the name of the one true God, blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter. Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just. Blessed are the righteous, the light in the shadows. In their blood the maker's will is written, so we ask your protection on this mission of this most holy importance, amen." With that, they all stood and Claw swallowed a smile and a chuckle as he saw Ryder in nothing but his tighty whities and took a deep breath as he addressed the group. "Alright we must now enter the water and bathe in the holy stream, don't worry the water is only dirty on the surface. As soon as we enter, the stream will clear of the dirt and become crystal clear." At that moment the whole paw patrol and Claw entered the water and just as Claw said the water in the stream around them became clear as glass for a foot beyond each pup and human for a moment then the holes closed and the dirt touched all them as Chase began to glow with a bright light aura for but a moment and then disappeared. Claw looked upon Chase and addressed him in disbelief "What, how is that possible? I never expected it to be me, but Chase of all pups! (Sigh) Never mind, I need to teach you how to fight in a quick time so you can take on the black death dragon and get the sword of caliburn before the duke can. Chase, prepare yourself for a hard crash course in the broad sword. It will be grueling, difficult and very demanding, but as the chosen one you must meet the task, there will be no backup, because if we get blasted by that mist, were all dead!" Claw walks back to sparks and retrieves his spare pup pack from under the saddle pillow "Here, put your armor back on and change your pup pack, put this one on and get ready for the most intense training of your life."
(SAME DAY/1900HRS)
Claw and Chase are panting and their fur is drenched with sweat as Claw yelling, charges and swings at Chase yet again. Chase is exhausted from the relentless style of training Claw was using to train Chase in sword combat. Chase is unprepared for the swing when he misjudges it aiming his sword high the swing at the last second Claw goes low and knocks Chase off his feet and on his side onto the dirt YET AGAIN with a thud. "Ouch." Chase says with pain in his voice as Claw then swings his pack broad sword like a scorpion stinger into the dirt an inch from Chases head before he stops the landing motions and moves himself so his muzzle is an inch from Chases and says "You have to expect the unexpected, and turn your thinking inside out and upside down in a moments notice if you want to be a successful knight." Claw removes the sword and returns to ready position as Marshal comes up with his medical bag as he says "Are you kidding that looked like a two 'ouch' landing." Ryder watching all this shakes his head at Chases condition and decides to intervene "That's enough for today." Claw returns swiftly "The holy steam has given him protection against the dragons deadly breath, but if Chase is not ready for the death dragon, it will crush him like your would crush a tin can! He has to be ready for anything the dragon can do which means I have to train him for the swiftness of it at all costs!" Marshall who is done checking Chase up on decides to jump in with his own point "If you are too exhausted your reaction time degrades hand in hand with the time you push beyond your normal limits, he must rest." Claw sighs in defeat "Very well, lets end our training, we move on the dragons lair tomorrow at the crack of dawn."
(SAME DAY/2000HRS)
The paw patrol all gathered around the fire and rested for the coming battle the next day when Claw spoke up "I must tell you all-if only to put your minds at ease-that it will take the duke of flapping-ton a long time to figure out the ciphers and codes of the hidden pages texts, so we are probably at least one or two steps ahead of him." Rocky looked puzzled at Claw for a second and decides to break the ice with questions in his own mind "HOW did you discover these pages of the hidden text of Barking-burg and how did you decode them?" Claw looks at Rocky's face and sighs while he prepares to recall the story. "This story I am about to tell you took place 5 years before I lost my knighthood..."
(FLASHBACK/6 YEARS AGO)
Claw was looking at the story book of Barking-burg and committing the stories to heart when he reached the last page of the story book and was about to put it up when he noticed a piece of leather was coming unbound from its stitching in the back upper corner of the book. Curious, he used his robotic pincers to peel back the leather so lightly when he noticed there was pages of paper back there. Claw carefully peeled back the leather to expose more of the page when he saw that there was writing on it, not like the story book at all but a totally different style of texts. Claw removed them and took the pages to the castle library where he found a book of many different languages and found one with the same style of text that was written on the hidden pages. Claw discovered they were a more ancient style of text (Sumerian cuneiform) and using the book he was able to decipher and copy the text in English to normal paper. Claw, when he translated what he had found. He then began to read what his work had uncovered and was gasping in horror by the time he was half done. Upon completion of the last line he shoved the pages to the floor. But in his heart he knew he had to report this to the his majesty the king and queen, in terror he regathered the pages together new and old and presented them to the king and queen of Barking-burg as a whole manuscript. The queen wanted to strip him of his knighthood and banish him from the kingdom at once. The king had another idea, and convinced the queen to let Claw keep his knighthood under oath, then bound claw to secrecy on his life! The king had the book rebound with Claws translated pages now added and explained afterwards that the hidden pages were the most well kept secret of Barking-burg and not even knights were to know about them. Claw felt like he had dodged a bullet with the king and queen! Claw chose to try forget the pages were there at all and figured it for the best as he continued his training.
(END FLASHBACK/2010HRS)
The paw patrol lay on their sleeping pads staring at Claw, unsure of what to say to the fallen knight when Zuma chirped up "Dude, that is so rough!" All is silent when Rocky and Chase have a rude realization in their minds at the same time. Rocky looks at the mountain to the west-just barely visible in the distance, so dark it is impossible to make out more than the most basic outline-with a dropped jaw and Chase screams it at the top of his lungs "THE DUKE HAS THE STORY BOOK! THE DUKE HAS THE ORIGINAL PAGES AND CLAWS TRANSLATED PAGES! ANY ADVANTAGE WE HAD WE LOST TODAY AT NOON! WHAT DO WE DO NOW!?" The rescue knights shoot to their feet and all look at the mountain where they were to move out to at dawn. Claw walks up to Ryder and says "Sir Ryder, what are your orders?" Ryder looks to the mountain himself and says "We follow Claws plans, because he has the most knowledge of the sword and experience with dragons, for now we will follow his orders." Claw walks up to Chase and says "You are the only one to be able to resist the dragons breath, at dawn we take the sword, if its gone, we will take it back from the duke himself. Rest up everyone, as Marshall says we need rest to be our best." All went to bed and had a restless nights sleep.
(NEXT DAY/0505HRS)
"LETS MOVE OUT!" Was the first thing the rescue knights heard when they woke up to daybreak and Claws voice. All got up and gathered their gear for their mission of the most importance, and all were ready in 5 minutes, Claw knew the battle ahead will be far from easy, but must be undertaken for the sake of the world! As Claw looks up to the mountain Ryder asked "Do you have a plan?" Claws response was far from inspiring but true "Simply put, keep the sword of Caliburn from being used at ALL cost."
(END SWORD OF DARKNESS-STORM CLOUDS GROW)