Jessica stood tall atop the pedestal of the competition, smiling and holding the largest trophy that anyone in Adventure Bay had ever seen. It was glittery, gold, and had "First Place: Jessica Jackson" engraved on the front of it in giant, bold letters. While she was happy to see everyone in the adoring, cheering crowd, there was only one person she was looking out for. She scanned the crowd, her smile never fading, and saw him standing in the middle of everyone. Her heart skipped a beat as she felt herself practically floating towards him.

Lucas Quinn, the boy of her dreams.

The crowd seemed to part, giving the two of them time to really enjoy each other's company. Lucas was smiling at her in the same way he always did, radiantly, brilliantly, and obviously, mega cutely. Jessica placed the trophy down and leaned up to face Lucas. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in, closer, closer, even closer, until..

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Ugh. Dang it.

Of course she was dreaming. The happiest moment of her life, and it wasn't even real. Go figure.

She yawned and stretched her arms as far as they could reach before dejectedly turning off her alarm clock. Why do those things always wake you up when you're at the best part of a dream anyways? She pondered that, and her own feelings as she made her way to the bathroom to brush her hair and get dressed for school.

While her finally winning the track meet and kissing Lucas (almost) was a dream, what wasn't was the red collar sitting on top of her sink. Right, superhero. Can't forget something like that. She wasn't sure if she could wear this as a necklace without looking weird, so she decided to just put it in her pocket for safe keeping. She tied her hair into her trademark ponytails and put on a black and white polka-dot t-shirt underneath one of her new blue hoodies. The red one was still recovering from it's run-in with the ground the day before.

"Jess! Hurry up! The bus is going to leave without you again!"

"It was one time!"

She huffed at the sound of her little brother's laughter. He could be such a jerk sometimes. But all the same, she loved him. She made sure to give him a noogie before she left, much to his protest.

She took a deep breath inward before stepping onto the bus. Before anything else, she made sure to say good morning to Mr. Hudson, the bus driver. He tipped his hat in response. She nervously looked around for a moment before finally seeing where she needed to sit.

Since Cydney always got a ride to school, Jessica would usually end up sitting alone, but today that would finally change. Sitting in the exact middle of the bus, by himself, was Ryder. He was reading a large thick book with intense focus. He didn't even notice Jessica approaching him until she awkwardly tapped him on the shoulder, causing him to jump in place.

Ryder turned, flinching slightly, only to be met with a very apologetic Jessica. He relaxed his posture a bit as he moved his backpack, inviting her to sit down next to him.

After a moment of awkward silence, the two of them both tried to start a conversation

"Can we-"

"Did you-"

They both paused a moment before bursting into laughter. Social interactions weren't necessarily easy for either of them, but this should have been a cakewalk.

"You first today"

"Sounds good. So I was thinking about the ways that we could train and get you more used to being in a dog's body. I was thinking we could do that at the park after school"

"Um, what makes you think that I don't have plans today?"

Ryder raised an eyebrow and looked her up and down for a second, before gesturing to her with his hand.

"Fair enough. At least I'll be getting out of the house. Anything other than sitting around listening to gross kissing or my dumb brother and his guitar playing."

"Your brother plays guitar?"

"Plays is a strong word, but yeah. Can't imagine that'll help us much."

Ryder quickly wrote something down in a notebook before continuing.

"At any rate, with enough practice and hopefully a few more recruits, the New Adventure Bay Paw Patrol will be the best it can possibly be in no time."

He paused for a moment, scratching his chin in thought.

"Maybe that name is too long..."

"Yeah, maybe we can just be the Paw Patrol. It's not like we're replacing the old ones, we're just carrying on the mantle, right?"

Ryder nodded, glad she understood.

"Well, I'm all in. I just hope I can get along with the other members."

Resisting the urge to giggle, he reassured her as the bus ride continued. After another awkward silence, Jessica changed the subject to TV shows, and the two of them spent the rest of the ride talking about the shows they liked and disliked. They had more in common than they thought.

Before either of them had realized it, they were at school. They shared a nervous look before getting up and walking off the bus. Ryder scanned the crowd for any of his regular bullies, and Jessica followed suit. While Ryder got to breathe a sigh of relief for the time being, Jessica wasn't so lucky, making direct eye contact with Paris, who walked over to her with her trademark smirk plastered on her face.

"Wow Jackson, I didn't know you started babysitting" she said, emphasizing her Ts so much that she was practically spitting on the both of them.

Right, he was still 8, wasn't he? Sometimes it was easy to forget that with how smart he was. The younger of the two looked up with an apologetic expression on his face, seeming to be ashamed of bringing Jessica even more trouble than she already had to deal with.

"Paris, come on, you know full well he's smarter than both of us."

"Maybe smarter than YOU, Jackson, but I think I could beat this little twerp in anything if I got the chance." she smiled a large, toothy grin, like an alligator waiting to eat its prey.

Ryder couldn't tell if that was an academic or a physical threat, but it was scaring him anyways.

"Well, unless you stop getting Ds on everything, that's not going to happen any time soon."

Paris's smile twisted into an angry grimace as she whipped around to face whoever butted into their conversation. She was met with Jason Young, one of the school's hall monitors. He was the spitting image of professionalism, with a well-kept uniform and curly black hair in a near-perfect crew cut.

"Ugh, nobody asked you, narc."

Her insult was met with a stone face as Jason carried on, "You know, I'm pretty sure that threatening any member of the student body is harassment. I don't think I need to explain to you why that's bad, right?"

Jason took after his father in more ways than just appearance, he was also equally as serious of an enforcer. A middle school hall monitor isn't as high up on the law enforcement chain as the chief of police, but rest assured, he was treating the position with the same seriousness. Paris's attitude evaporated in an instant. If she wasn't careful, she was going to get written up again, and that meant a one on one conversation with the world's scariest gym teacher, Mr. Lewis.

Her face paled at the thought, and she quickly muttered an apology and rushed away to find her posse by the school's entrance. Jason watched her carefully, brown eyes not leaving her for a moment until he saw her slip inside the building. He calmly turned to Jessica and Ryder, who stood in shock and amazement at how fast he had gotten her off their backs.

"Whoa. I can never get her to leave me alone that fast. You're amazing!" Jessica half-yelled, purely from adrenaline.

"All in a day's work. Has anyone else been bothering you guys?"

"Nope. Just her." Ryder lied.

"Alright, if she starts pulling that nonsense again, let me know. We've been told to keep an eye on her after her little...incident last week"

Neither Jessica nor Ryder could figure out what he was talking about specifically, and they didn't want to ask. They offered a small nod before rushing away to their first hour classes, aiming to beat the bell. Jason resisted the urge to yell at them for running.

By the end of the day, everyone was completely exhausted. It seemed like all of the teachers had gotten together and decided to give everyone random, incredibly long tests. Ryder wasn't too bothered by it, seeing as it was all things he totally knew how to do, but Jessica was struggling her way through each class for a solid 4 hours. At least she had managed to finish everything, unlike poor Cydney, who had to stay after school to finish her last 3 tests.

Walking home by herself was never fun, it felt like everyone was staring at her. There goes Jessica the Loser again, all alone. She tried her best to squash those feelings down as she took the back street to cut right to the park, texting her dad as she walked. He was generally pretty lax about her hanging out with friends after school as long as he knew where she was. Was Ryder one of her friends now? She'd have to ask him later. As concrete was replaced with familiar dirt, Jessica took a deep breath inward. She was going to figure out how to be the best dog in the world, and it was going to be awesome. Probably. She hoped.

Beep beep. Beep beep.

Oh no, was she dreaming again? Where was the beeping coming from this time?

"Jessica?"

Ah, right, her collar.

Jessica released the tension in her shoulders as she took the collar out of her pocket. She pressed every part of it until the beeping stopped, making a mental note to ask Ryder how to do that once they'd met up.

"Hey Ryder. Where are you? I've been walking around the park for like 10 minutes."

Ryder cleared his throat before replying

"Okay so I kind of lied about where we're gonna be training today.."

"Um, lied how?"

"Well we're not gonna be at the park. I mean we kind of are? It's hard to explain."

We are but we're not. What does that even mean? Unless Ryder had some kind of secret superhero lair, there was no way that-

Oh my dog

"Ryder, I want you to be totally honest with me, do you have a secret superhero lair that you didn't tell me about?" Jessica asked with complete sincerity

Ryder swallowed a laugh, covering it up with a fake cough before replying, "Well, I don't know if it counts as a lair since it's above ground, but sure"

Jessica's jaw dropped. How rich was this kid anyways? Well, it didn't matter, all that mattered to her was actually getting to see it. Ryder took a cue from the look on her face and lead the way to a small patch of ground that was slightly less green than the rest of it.

"Uh, I thought you said it wasn't underground?"

"It's not."

Ryder pressed down on the patch with both hands, causing a door to pop open and reveal a tunnel.

"But the entrance is. Don't worry, I've already gone down here a couple of times. It's like a slide."

Ryder took Jessica's hand in his own and lead her towards the opening. Her heart was racing a mile a minute as he let go and shot himself down the slide. She took a deep breath inward, grabbed the top of the tunnel, and shot herself forward with her hand. As she went down, the door closed behind her.

Both of them couldn't help but scream at how fast they were going, though Jessica was having a lot more fun that Ryder was. The wind rushed through her hair and whipped it in a bunch of different directions while she stuck her hands up. Ryder covered his eyes and braced for impact.

After a minute or two of uninterrupted sliding, they were shot out of the end of the tunnel towards the front of a large watchtower. It was covered in dust, but it was still oddly homey. It had a faded red roof and a white exterior. Both of them ate dirt as they landed, with Ryder making a note to install some sort of cushion at the end. Dusting themselves off, they both stood up and looked at the large, majestic building before them.

"Jessica, welcome to The Lookout."