Chapter 31: Fly, You Fools

When Zuma woke up, it was already light out. He quickly got ready for the day which consisted of giving his ears a shake and stepped outside where, to his surprise, he found he wasn't the first one up.

"Hi Everest! Nerves keep you awake?" he asked the husky as he walked up to her. Everest was lying in the grass outside their house, her head resting on her forepaws.

"Probably part of it."

"What's the other part of it?"

Before she could reply, however, their pup tags lit up, letting out a siren-like wail that none of them ever wanted to hear again for the rest of their living days. As soon as the alarm stopped, they heard cries of distress from their upstairs bedroom.

"Ouch!"
"I'm up! I'm awake!"
"Oy, oy, oy, what was that?!"
"That's worse than a dog whistle!"
"What kind of alarm was that?"
"Who did that?"

"Everyone needs to get up asap," Gizmo warned. "Meet me at the holo-table at FIR. This is an emergency."

Everyone looked at each other, wondering what it could possibly be to warrant such an unpleasant awakening.

Immediately Chase startled everyone into action. "You heard him! Everyone move! To the research center!"

Arriving at FIR, all the pups leapt out of their vehicles with Ryder following close behind, forgoing his crutch. Marshall raced towards the door, eager to help with whatever had gone wrong.

"I'm first! I'm finally first! I can't belie–OOF!"

The Dalmatian's exuberant outburst was cut short as he splatted into the glass door of the building. With the power out, the automatic doors weren't so automatic any more.

"Marshall!"

The hasty pup managed to stumble to his feet. He groaned in annoyance at the door, "I'm okay, but I almost never get to be first…"

Chase raced toward the door. He stopped. The doors did not move. "They're not working right! We gotta get in, guys!"

Ryder and the pups tried forcing the door open, but to no avail.

"Gizmo, how did you get in?" asked Rocky into his pup tag as the others struggled with the inoperable door.

"I used the One Meter Rule on the back door," the Lab replied.

"So you used your mini force field to make a hole in the back door?"

"Yep."

Rocky sighed. It would take them a while to go around to the back. "Okay, well how soon do you need us?"

"As soon as possible. I don't care how you get in."

"¡No problemo! Ruff! Cables!"

SMASH!

"That was very loud," Tracker's voice echoed from inside the research center.

Everybody stared in surprise at the shattered door with the potcake-sided hole in it. Gizmo's voice came through their coms again. "Well, maybe I did care a little."

Chase spurred them to action. "Everybody IN IN IN! Watch out for the glass!"

Everyone maneuvered through the broken door. A quick scan of Tracker revealed that he was miraculously okay, so they scrambled into the normal meeting room at FIR. When they arrived, they found Gizmo there, looking like he had hardly slept at all. Usually they would find him working with the hologram table, but this time he was simply pacing back and forth restlessly. He raised his head when the crew entered, his muzzle contorted in worry.

"What's the problem, Gizmo?" Ryder asked as everyone took a seat, filling up the ten spaces around the table.

"And what was that alarm? My ears are still ringing!" one of the pups complained.

"That was an alarm specifically designed to be the most unpleasant sound possible. Sorry for using it, but I needed something that would get everyone up for sure. Especially Rubble. I would have gotten you up sooner, but I figured five AM was too early for some of you. Even seven AM is pushing it, but I couldn't delay any longer."

"So what happened?" Ryder inquired.

The black Lab took a deep breath. "As you might have noticed, the power went out last night. I went and checked the geothermal turbine. Fifty years of minor rotational unbalance going at thirty or forty thousand rpm must have worn it out, because it wasn't caused by anything I had been doing. The main shaft had a major stress fracture, and at that speed… Let's just say the kinetic disassembly was imminent and thorough."

Ryder observed the confused looks on his pups' faces. Apparently even Rocky hadn't been able to explicate that statement. "And that means…?"

"It means the turbine broke, and it won't be an easy fix."

Everyone gasped in dismay. Zuma had noticed something odd, though, and ventured a question. "But, if the power's out, then how is the Island Dome still on?"

"I looked into that. Turns out there are backup batteries installed in case the power cuts. They last for three hours. Two have already passed, so we have one hour left before the shield vanishes. There's no telling how long the rim will hold after that."

"And what if it doesn't hold?" Rubble gulped.

"Then I guess you'd better be in the air by then. If you have things that need packed up, get them ready now. You have one hour."

"We finished packing yesterday," Ryder informed him. "We're ready to go at a moment's notice."

"Well, consider this to be a moment's notice. Go out the back door. It's got a two meter-wide opening… And there's less glass that way."

As the pups and Ryder made their way to the back door, Gizmo noticed that Rocky hadn't moved.

"But what about the geothermal turbine? Do you need help fixing it?" the mixed-breed inquired.

The black pup looked at Rocky oddly. "There is no fixing it. It exploded. Within an hour, the force field will disappear forever."

The recycling pup gasped, "But that means the island will sink!"

Gizmo looked through the windows at the view behind him, temporarily lost in thought. "It already sank," he replied mournfully. "It's just taken a few hundred years for high tide to come in." As he spoke, he lifted up his right forepaw, looking at his paw pad as he lost himself in thought.

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"If you stay here, you'll die!"

The black pup went back to staring out the window. Rocky walked up beside him, the pup's silence concerning him.

As Rocky sat next to him, Gizmo spoke. "You outsiders have an old saying, if I remember correctly. The captain always goes down with his ship."

Rocky gasped, "You're just gonna stay here and- and drown?!"

"No, but what else can I do? I can't leave this place… I've spent my whole life here taking care of this place. And now it's all going to be gone…"

Rocky watched as Gizmo hid his face beneath his paws.

"You know, I felt pretty overwhelmed when I left too," the mixed-breed remarked.

Gizmo's ears perked up. After a few seconds he lifted his head. "Left where?"

"The garbage dump. That was where I was before they found me."

"Who found you?" the Labrador whispered, fascinated by the forthcoming story.

"The Foggy Bottom Animal Control," Rocky spat bitterly.

"Foggy Bottom… Animal Control? Why do they need to control animals?"

"The mayor there doesn't like anything but cats. He has the animal control center confiscate and subdue any unlicensed animal… except cats."

"That's awful! How can they do something like that?"

"Because Mayor Humdinger's the mayor. He can do whatever he wants. Which was really infuriating because I had really made a home at the dump. I had a ton of cool gadgets built, and… I didn't know the world outside. Somehow a news report got out about the stuff I made in the dump. Ryder saw it, and when he heard I had been taken by animal control, he convinced his parents to let him adopt me."

"Then what happened?"

"I didn't want to go. I wanted to go back to my home and stay there. But if I did that then I'd just be kidnapped again. So Ryder made a compromise. He took me back to my shelter and told me I could take whatever I wanted, as long as it could physically be brought back. Since I couldn't stay there with my stuff, he let me take my stuff back with me to the Lookout. I'm sure Ryder said something along those lines to you too, right?"

The black pup nodded, recalling the boy telling him almost that exact thing the night before.

"Being able to take stuff back with me really helped. Is there anything you want to bring with you?"

A few seconds passed with Rocky waiting expectantly. Then a gleam entered Gizmo's eyes as he smiled slightly.

"I can think of a few things. We'll have to hurry and go though. Stay here."

As Gizmo bolted out the door, Rocky tried to make sense of the contrasting instructions, but stayed in the room. He figured the instruction to stay overrode the previous one to hurry and go. Twenty seconds later, the black pup returned with a short, thick metal cylinder about the size of a can of pop. "Take this and put it in the Air Patroller. And whatever you do, don't drop it."

Rocky barked out his claw and took the cylinder. "Got it!"

"I'm going to go around grabbing some stuff from around town. Can you stay here and get some stuff I tell you to get and load it in your truck?"

"Yeah, sure!" the grey dog replied, smiling inwardly as Gizmo kept changing his instructions. He took a glance at the cylinder and shouted a question to the black pup as he raced out the door, "What is this thing?"

The Lab looked back over his shoulder. "A Tipler cylinder!" he shouted as he disappeared from sight.

Rocky froze. "Wait! What?! Don't they have to have an infinite length or something?"

The green pup tag on his collar lit up, and Gizmo answered through it, "Not if you use negative mass."

Rocky's eyes widened. He held the metal component father away with a mixture of awe, fear, and confusion. "Yeah I'm definitely not dropping this thing."

Twenty minutes later, Rocky pulled up outside the hangar entrance with a truckload of gadgets, materials, and inventions. Ryder raced up to him as soon as he appeared, followed by the rest of the pups. "Rocky, where have you been?"

"Gizmo asked me to stay behind and help him pack some stuff up that he wanted to bring with us. I've gotta say, this truck feels a lot more familiar with its back loaded."

Everest jumped onto the front of Rocky's vehicle, planting her paws on the front windshield. "Wait, WHAT?! He's coming?!"

Rocky jumped back a bit in surprise. "Well, yeah, he kind of-"

"WOO HOO!" the husky cheered, joined by howls and excited barks from a few of the other pups.

"Wow, you're excited," Marshall commented with a chuckle.

"Well of course I'm excited! We have a new friend! And besides, if he doesn't come, then what happens to you?"

Marshall's eyes widened as the realization hit him considerably later than it had for the rest of the pups. "Gosh… I hadn't thought of that…"

Rocky jumped out of his vehicle and opened up the back. "Alright guys," he commanded as he grabbed the metal cylinder Gizmo had given him earlier, "help me put this stuff securely in the Air Patroller."

As the Paw Patrol started to help unload Rocky's vehicle, Gizmo pulled up next to it driving a dark green vehicle resembling a pickup truck. He jumped out and grabbed what looked like a medical bag from the truck bed. There weren't many objects in the truck; the black Lab had only gathered essentials. "Alright, guys, this is the last of it," he called out.

But before anyone could begin loading the supplies on board, the ground started to shake. "Earthquake! Everyone back outside!" Ryder shouted as he scooped up Marshall and ran out of the hangar. Everyone quickly raced back out into the open, and those already there stabilized themselves by firmly planting all four paws on the ground. Skye barked out her wings and jumped into the air to avoid the quake altogether. As the vibrations subsided, everyone visibly relaxed. The only pup that remained frozen was Gizmo.

"That wasn't a normal earthquake," he corrected. "That was Mount Ashton."

There's a lot happening in this chapter. The turbine has exploded and the island will be destroyed, some of Rocky's backstory has been revealed, and Gizmo has decided to depart with the group! Though to be fair, the other option, as Rocky pointed out, was a pretty bad one. It's getting really close to the end of this adventure. By now, I almost might as well start publishing the next section under a different story. I've gone well beyond 60,000 words, which I've learned is basically the length of a fiction novel. It's amazing how that works. Next chapter will be out on April 1st! See you then!