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Chapter 12: On Route to the City
"You're gonna take us to your lab? That's so cool!" Rocky exclaimed
"I can't believe there's an entire city here and we didn't know it!" Marshall awed. "How big is this island?"
"About fifteen kilometers across," Gizmo answered. "The city is about eight kilometers northwest of here."
"Wow, are we gonna have to walk all that way?" Zuma questioned, perturbed.
"No, we won't, but Ryder will have to stay here; he won't fit in the Bullet," Gizmo replied.
This concerned the pups. "We can't just leave Ryder here!" Chase objected.
"No, go ahead, it's okay," Ryder stated. "I shouldn't be moving around with my leg like this anyway," he admitted.
"But we don't want to leave you here alone!" Everest protested.
"I'll be fine! I should get some rest anyway." The boy looked back at Gizmo, "Can you move now?"
The Labrador tried and succeeded in moving his legs a few inches. "I can start to move, but not much. It should lose potency rather quickly, though. Maybe another ten minutes and I'll be able to stand up again."
"You said something about a Bullet. What's that?" Everest asked.
"It's an underground train system around the island. I've found it pretty useful. It's really nice; I've never had to do any maintenance on it. There's a concealed entrance about a hundred meters north of here. You guys can go search for it if you'd like."
Chase cheered up. He didn't really like not having anything he could do, and always preferred staying active. "Let's go look for it!" he exclaimed enthusiastically.
He ran out and walked north, and the other pups followed. Chase stopped. "Wait, how far is a meter?"
"It's about a yard long," Rubble explained. "I'll show you where it would be!" He helped approximate the distance, and they all started searching.
Ryder looked at Gizmo, who he was left with. "How long do you think it'll take them?"
Gizmo tried moving his paws again. He was able to move a bit more, but still not much. "Oh, about five minutes."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because that'll be how long it'll take before I can move again."
Ryder chuckled at Gizmo's statement. "Well how long would it take them to find it without you?"
The retriever gave Ryder a deadpan look. "They aren't going to find it without me."
Meanwhile, all the pups except for Tracker were sniffing around for something out of the ordinary. Tracker was listening for anything. "All I can hear is the ocean," he told the others.
"And all I can smell is sand," Chase said back. "I wish I could use my spy gear to look, but that's back at the Lookout…"
Marshall perked up. "Maybe I can look with my X-Ray! Ruff! X-Ray!" Marshall's X-Ray pad sprung out of his pup pack. He started looking around. "Nothing there… Nothing there… And nothing under us." Marshall scratched his head. "I can't find anything."
"I can probably help with that." Gizmo walked over to them a bit shakily, but now able to stand. He was wearing his satchels again.
"Gizmo!"
"You're up!"
"How are you feeling?"
"Well, I'm feeling, so that's better than being numb. I'll get the entrance." Gizmo walked south a few meters and over to the treeline, heading towards a specific tree before stopping and speaking. "Boosters." Suddenly a set of silver boots materialized around his feet, seeming to come out of nowhere.
"Woah, dude! How did you do that? Where did they come from?" Zuma asked in wonder.
"I'll show you in a bit," Gizmo replied in a preoccupied manner as he focused. He crouched down, looking up into the branches above him. Then he jumped up fifteen feet in a single bound, landing on one of the branches. Everyone gasped in amazement as he disappeared into the leaves. After about fifteen seconds, a loud CLANK echoed through the air. The sound of something rolling could be heard from the base of the tree, and then there was silence.
"What happened?" Everest asked.
As the pups started to go closer, Gizmo fell out of the tree. To their surprise, he landed on all four paws and seemed to be fine. Or at least it seemed like that at first. Just as his paws were about to touch the ground, they flung out from under him, causing him to land on his side.
"Ouch…" Gizmo groaned as he stood back up. "Apparently my legs are still only at 90%."
"What happened? Are you okay?" Skye asked worriedly.
"Yeah, I'll be fine. I just didn't stick my landing. Levitation is hard. No static friction or even kinetic friction; just drag, which is next to nothing."
This got Rocky very excited. "Levitation? So are those hover boots? And is that nanotechnology?"
Gizmo held up a metal-clad paw for the pups to watch as the boot seemingly melted away. "Basically! Technically it's microtechnology since they're 5.4 micrometers long. Currently I just limit myself to using it for jumping and landing. Anything else and I'm likely to land flat on my face. As I said, it's perfectly frictionless. One of these days I should add some form of gyroscopic stabilization."
"Frictionless? So it's kind of like ice skating?" Everest questioned.
"Um… Maybe?"
Chase looked around. "So where's the entrance?"
Gizmo walked over to the tree. "Right through here," he grinned before disappearing as he stepped into the trunk.
The pups gasped. "A hologram!" Skye exclaimed, "Cool!"
And so, one by one, they all filed into the entrance way and down into the Bullet.
After walking down a dark passageway leading to a single-car locomotive, everyone got comfortable in their seats as Gizmo started the train. "How long is the ride?" Skye inquired, marveling at the train.
Chase sat across from her trying not to sneeze from the dust. "Hopefully not too long."
Rubble looked around warily. "I hope there aren't any spiders here…"
Gizmo turned back to them after getting the train's engine running. "It'll only be about five minutes. It's only eight kilometers to our destination, so the train doesn't have enough distance to accelerate to terminal velocity."
"Alright, I'll - Achoo! - take your word for it," Chase stated. The only thing he had really understood was the bit about the ride taking five minutes.
Zuma, tired of feeling out of the know on everything up to this point, decided he wanted some answers. "So what's your plan for getting us back home?"
"Can't we just build a plane and fly back home?" Skye followed up.
Gizmo looked back at them from the control panel. "Oh goodness. You don't know."
Tracker tilted his head to the side. "Don't know what?"
"This island isn't going to be as easy to get off of as you might expect." Then Gizmo pushed a lever and they sped off down the Bullet Express.
Not much to say about this chapter. It introduces Gizmo's hover boots which he uses a lot, and explains why he kept not leaving footprints when he should have been. Other than that it was a transition chapter. Ryder will be staying behind due to his broken leg, need for rest, and plot armor. I wanted a bonding time with all the pups without Ryder, with some sort of adventure for them to go on together. I'm also realizing that it's hard to have nine characters and still make it feel like everyone has an equal amount of spotlight. It's especially hard right now because Gizmo is currently centric to the plot, seeing that he's the only one who knows the island like the back of his paw. It'll hopefully even out soon, though. (There are a couple adventures where Gizmo barely shows up at all, so I'm hoping things will even out adequately.)
