Chapter 3: Who Framed Sasha La Fleur?
Ri-ri-ri-ring...
Click.
"Hello. This is the Flea Bite. What's your order?"
"Err... h-hello? Who's there?"
"It's Gerta. You all right, kid?"
"... Yeah. Is Charlie there?"
"Charlie Barkin, you mean...? All right, kid. Please hold a minute."
After this, the white Bichon Frisé rested the handset on the worktop, before making her way into the warehouse.
In there, she found the Shepherd cross, still lying there, on the green sofa. To Gerta's disgust, he was now in even more of a mess than before, with empty glasses and half-eaten sandwiches littering the floor.
"You are wanted on the telephone, my good sir," she said, trying to hide her annoyance.
"... Oh?" the male dog said, his ears perking up. "Who is it?"
"Your human friend."
With a sudden rush of activity, Charlie now sprang up from the couch, making his way past Gerta to reach the telephone.
"Hey, David!" he said quite informally. "What's up, my man?"
"Sniff... It's Sasha. She's... sniff!"
Charlie hesitated for a second, before continuing.
"Calm down," he said. "Tell me what's wrong."
"I can't!" the boy's voice replied. "Just... just come to my house, okay?"
"All right... I'll get there as fast as I can. Bye for now."
Charlie then hung up, before making his way to the rear entrance of the Café. He was about to leave, when...
"Hey, Charlie!"
"Huh?"
The Shepherd looked to his side, to see a brown Dachshund, with a green T-shirt and red cap, standing there.
"Wait up, man," he said. "What's the rush?"
"Itch..." Charlie panted. "It's David. He wants me to come and see him. Something to do with Sasha, he says."
"Then don't leave me behind," Itchy advised. "We should both go."
"Good. Just follow me, okay?"
He then started walking, before, slowly but surely, accelerating to running pace.
"Charlie!" his friend yelled, struggling to keep up. "You know I can't run as fast as you...!"
When the two males finally reached David's house, they both knocked on the front door.
Fortunately, the boy heard the knocking. Exiting from his bedroom, he stepped down the stairs with a tired gait, until he reached the door and opened it.
"Hey, guys," he said, trying to hide his tears. "Come on in."
Once the three of them were all inside, they sat together on the sofa, with the boy resting his arms on the dogs' shoulders.
"So," Charlie began, "tell us what's wrong."
Instead of giving a verbal reply, David took out the newspaper, which he had tucked into the back of his trousers, and passed it to Charlie.
"Wh-... what is going on here?" the Shepherd whispered, looking in awe at the cover photograph - a still from the CCTV footage, which showed the perpetrator stealing a mask from inside a glass case. "Am I seeing this right?"
He then passed the paper over to Itchy - and, surely enough, he saw the exact same thing.
"Yeah, David," he said. "What happened?"
"Someone's been trying to frame Sasha," the boy replied, almost bursting into tears. "After she left the house, the armed police arrived... and... they took her!"
"Oh, gosh..."
After saying this, Charlie put his arm around David, trying his best to comfort him.
"Don't cry, don't cry," he said.
Itchy, however, still had his attention turned towards the newspaper. He had now turned to the third page, which showed an archive photograph of the mask.
"Uhh, Charlie?" he said to his friend. "You... might wanna see this."
Charlie now held the paper in his paws, and looked at the photo as well. Upon recognising the face which the mask resembled, his body became tense with fear, and his hairs stood on end.
"I have a suspicion as to who could be behind this," Itchy continued. "Stay there, guys. Short-Legs is moving out."
"Wait, wait!" said Charlie, following his friend over to the door. "Where the heck do you think you're going?"
In response, the Dachshund looked back at the Shepherd, and cast him a wink.
"Investigating, of course..."
A short while later, Itchy slowly stepped up to the front porch of the old curio shop. The place now appeared to have undergone a small renovation - where there had previously been cracks in the walls, they had now been masked with plates of sheet metal, and as he looked up, the Dachshund saw that the sign identifying this eerie-looking structure had seemingly been vandalised: instead of 'Red's Curios', it now read, 'Killer's Curios', with the name Killer having been stamped on in army stencil.
"Whoa..." Itchy quietly gasped. I just wonder what Kill's been up to in the days since his spell in hospital...
After giving a small gulp, the short-legged dog took the last few steps up to the doors. Noticing a small intercom box at the side, he pressed the buzzer, and waited...
Click.
"Who's there?"
Itchy allowed a short pause, before giving his response:
"... The Feds."
"Ha! I know it's you, you prick. I can see you on the CCTV."
In surprise, Itchy looked straight up, and only now he noticed the camera looking back at him.
"But you asked who was there!"
"Well, consider yourself caught-out," the voice continued from the other end. "Ah, okay. Come in."
Then, the doors were opened by an automatic mechanism, and the Dachshund stepped inside.
"Wow..." he said, as he looked around the room. The walls of the shop had now been completely repainted, and their edges were accented with trails of electrical wiring. The windows had also been made more secure - instead of the medieval shields which had previously protected them, they were now shielded with black metal cages. Last but not least, at the side of the room, there stood a decently-sized mainframe computer, which Itchy paid particular attention to.
"So?" said the brown-furred, bespectacled Schnoodle who now stood opposite him. "What brings you here, then?"
"Uhh..." Itchy hesitated, moving his eyes away from the computer. "You know, um... Just thought I'd pay you a friendly visit."
When he looked at Killer, the first thing he noticed about him was that he was standing on a pair of grey robotic legs, which were connected to his trunk via an artificial pelvis - his real legs, of course, had been blown off in an accident.
"What?" he said, noticing that Itchy was giving him a funny look. "You thought I'd be in a wheelchair?"
"Well, yeah... How did you even get those?"
Instead of answering, however, Killer walked over to his mainframe, before sitting down in its operating seat.
"Hey, Kill," said Itchy. "Don't be rude."
"Heh - fine... If you must know, this pair of legs, and this computer, were both generously donated to me by... let's just say, some friends of mine from the alma mater."
Itchy raised his eyebrow.
"Aw, you know. The Mississippi Institute of Dog-nology? M.I.D.?"
Now, both of the Dachshund's eyebrows were up.
"... That's not even a real word."
"What is?"
"Dog-nology."
Killer, interpreting Itchy's comment as facetious, decided not to answer it. Instead, he turned to his computer screen, and said, "Feel free to look around... So long as you don't touch anything."
"All righty, then."
Itchy then carefully crept away, making sure that the Schnoodle did not look away from the screen. Once he was about fifteen paces away, he now saw something new - there it was, resting on a rack attached to the wall. It was a large, black gun - resembling a rifle, but with a much larger girth. It was equipped with a red laser sight, and the barrel was surrounded by metal coils.
My gosh, Itchy thought. That looks pretty mean.
He then turned his attention to a brown, wooden door, which stood in the centre of the back wall of the shop. As he carefully approached it, he could see that it was covered in a set of rectangular stickers, which read:
KEEP OUT - RADIATION HAZARD
NO UVAs OR LIBERAL ARTS MAJORS ADMITTED
... SERIOUSLY. DON'T COME IN HERE.
"Hmm..." Itchy hummed quietly. The impostor must be in there.
Swallowing his anxiety, he took one last look back, before stepping up to the door. But, before trying the handle, he made the mistake of reading the stickers again, reminding him of the risks involved.
No! he thought. I have to do this. It's now, or never.
Then, with a thrust of his arm, he placed his paw over the doorknob, and tried to twist it...
... But it wouldn't budge.
Darn!
He then looked down, and saw that he had been standing on a doormat. Pressing against the door, he used his feet to slide it away, revealing a pressure pad. By unknowingly standing on it, he had triggered the door to lock itself.
Eeeeenggg...
This had been the sound of a piece of machinery warming up.
"What part of 'Keep out' do you not understand?"
Itchy looked up, and turned to his left. Killer was standing there, on his bionic legs, with the big black gun in his arms.
Itchy briefly looked down at his own chest, and was horrified to see a small, red dot.
"Step away from the door, you bastard."
Itchy had no choice but to comply, but not without asking, "What is that thing?"
"Oh, this? This, Mr. Itchiford, is what I like to call the KEW 5000 - Killer Electromagnetic Weapon... but you can call it the Gaussbuster."
"Okay, okay," said Itchy. "I'll go quietly, okay?"
"You better. Unless you like the feeling of bullets tearing through your sorry ass to the tune of five hundred rounds per minute, you shall go quietly."
The next minute, Itchy was walking out through the front doors, with them closing automatically behind him.
Once he was at a safe distance, he said, "Well, that worked..." before making his way back to David's house.
Author's Note
In this chapter, I refer to Killer as a Schnoodle, even though I do not state his breed in my previous stories. For a long time, I was unsure of which breed Killer belonged to, but a quick look at a thread on Animationsource told me that he is either a "Schnauzer/Poodle mix" (i.e. Schnoodle) or a bloodhound. Considering that (IMO) Killer doesn't look like Trusty, the former seemed more reasonable to me.