Season 3 Episode 15: Campout At Home! Curse Of The Werepuppy!
May 20th, 2030
Everything was going smoothly as they transitioned back to Adventure Bay. The citizens of the town were still getting used to the fact that the Rescue Force was really back in town, as they had been gone for over two and a half weeks, almost three. Since rescuing had been rather slow, Ben had suggested they use this time to go camping out in the mountains. The entire group had been enthusiastic and had even invited along Everest, but she was plumb exhausted from having to handle the rescues in Adventure Bay. Everest and Tracker had been left in charge of the Paw Patrol back in their home town, and had handled the rescues there. "Sorry dudes. Evvie is just really really tired. She's taking it easy for the rest of the month." Jake told them.
"Aww…" Marshall whined, disappointed he wouldn't get to see his girlfriend.
"That's okay, there'll be plenty of opportunities to hang out with you and Everest during the summer. The mountain's snow melts during the summer, so that means you have to close the snowboarding lodge, right?" Ryder asked.
Jake nodded his head in response. "Yup, too warm to snowboard or anything, so we're going to be spending a lot of time at the beach!" Jake answered.
"See you soon, Jake!" Ryder said before ending the call.
Then, he made a call to Mayor Goodway. His mother figure picked up the call, with Chickaletta, Dwayne and Gasket sitting next to her in the side car of her motorcycle. "Oh! Hello Ryder. We just were about to leave for City Hall." Genevieve greeted.
"Sup Ryder?" Gasket chuckled, waving with her paw.
"Hi everyone!" Dwayne happily barked.
"Hey Mayor Goodway! We were wanting to go camping out in the mountains, and we were wondering if your Uncle Otis would be willing to host us?" Ryder inquired.
Mayor Goodway gasped at that idea. "Why, Ryder, that would be an absolutely wonderful idea! We could make it a family campout! Uncle Otis needs to meet my new pups anyways!" Genevieve exclaimed.
"We get to meet your family, Mayor Momway?!" Gasket squealed.
"Awesome! I can't wait!" Dwayne cheered.
And so, the pups gathered their things, stocked up on supplies, and loaded up into the Paw Patroller, where they drove up to Uncle Otis's cabin in the mountains. Marshall was a little sad that they wouldn't be spending time with Everest, but he was happy that they would get to spend time with her during the summer. Otis Goodway was an old gold miner and prospector, who had a rich knowledge of the history of Adventure Bay and its folklore. He may have been an old man in his sixties, but he was extremely charming and he made people smile. A lucky boom in the stock market with some chance investments had allowed Otis to retire early and spend his life mining for treasure. He helped support the town of Adventure Bay and his family.
As the PAW Patroller parked to the side of Uncle Otis's cabin, Ben, Ryder, and the pups trickled out from the van. "Well, if it ain't my honorary great-nephews and their ragtag team of rescue pups!" The old man guffawed, spreading his arms out as Ben and Ryder gave him a hug. Genevieve pulled up with her biking helmet, with Chickaletta, Dwayne, and Gasket in her sidecar. "Oh, Genevieve, you managed to get away from all that dusty paperwork and visit yer uncle! I see you've made some new additions to the Goodway family too? About time you got an assistant to watch over that troublesome chicken of yours!" Otis chuckled as he saw his niece.
"Hi! I'm Dwayne!" The Great Dane introduced himself.
"I'm Gasket!" The Siberian husky announced.
"Well, I'll be darned! This is quite a wonderful surprise! Two brand new puppies! Or I suppose teenage pups. How old are you, if you don't mind an old coot like me asking?" Otis mused.
"I'm nine years old, and my little brother Dwayne is seven and a half." Gasket answered.
"Teenage pups it is! How did my dear niece manage to adopt the two of ya? I'm quite curious!" Otis wondered.
"We can tell you all about it!" Dwayne earnestly replied.
"First, though, I want marshmallows and a campfire! I ain't spilling the beans until I'm nice and cozy by a fire!" Gasket demanded.
Marshall got to work setting up a fire with Ben, and soon enough, they were roasting marshmallows and telling stories by the campfire as the sun made its way through the sky. Otis's niece told the tale of how she had met Dwayne and Gasket, as well as the trials and daring maneuvers she had to perform to win their trust. Ben and Ryder recounted some of their more exciting rescues and missions. Ben decided to go with a different story instead of his usual tale of the Adventure Bay Snow Monster, and instead spoke about their adventure in the jungle's monkey temple, how they met Tracker.
As they recalled how they escaped from the temple and discovered that Mandy was the queen of the monkeys, the sun went down and the sky turned from orange to violet. Chase sighed as he felt a brisk breeze ruffle through his fur. "Man, camping out is the best! Nothing beats fresh outdoor air!" Chase exclaimed.
"Or fresh marshmallows!" Rocky added.
"Yeah, just look at that beautiful full moon, and the starry night sky! We couldn't see anywhere near as many stars in Adventure City as we could out here!" Skye commented.
"Full moon, eh? Oh, that reminds me of a story! I ain't sure I should be tellin' it though. It might be a bit scary!" Uncle Otis chimed in.
"That's okay. It's fun to hear scary stories around the campfire." Ryder comfortingly said.
"YEAH!" The pups all cheered.
"I'm always down for a scary story or two." Ben agreed.
"All righty, then! Back in the day, whenever there was a full moon, people got real careful about going outside 'cause that's when it could come creeping and a-peeping… and a-prowling and a-howling! They call it… the wild… WEREPUPPY!" Uncle Otis began, shouting out the last word.
The sudden raising of Otis's voice startled the pups, and Rocky accidentally flung the marshmallow he was roasting onto his nose. Everyone laughed at the now white snout of the mixed breed pup. "Yuck! Guess I have to wash this off, like with water. Ugh!" Rocky groaned, before walking over to the pond to get himself cleaned off.
"Tell us more about werepuppies, Uncle Otis!" Zuma excitedly said. "Well, they're mighty strong, and can jump super far! With a howl you can hear for miles!" Otis continued.
"I wouldn't want to meet a werepuppy. I'd be too scared!" Rubble whimpered.
"I'd be scared, but not too scared. I've seen things a lot more scary than some werewolf dog thing." Marshall commented, thinking back to the Greenzilla incident that required not only the twelve Mighty Pups but the help of some Rangers, and the time when he had been nearly eaten by a spider when he was shrunken by a shrink ray.
"What do you do if you run into a werepuppy?" Chase asked.
"Well, you can change him back into a regular puppy by taking him to Sunflower Valley. Eating a sunflower turns 'em back into cute little puppies. Supposedly, the sunflower contains some sort of chemical or enzyme that transforms them back to their regular state!" Uncle Otis answered.
"Wait, turn them back? How do cute puppies turn into werepuppies then?" Skye questioned.
"Legend has it that a puppy's got to be standing in water that's reflecting the full moon." The prospector revealed.
"Standing in water…? ROCKY!" Rubble screamed in horror.
The pup was standing in the pond, wiping his snout off with his paws and washing the marshmallow off. "What? Do I still have some bits of marshmallow on my nose?" Rocky sighed, before looking down and seeing the reflected full moon in the liquid's surface. "...Uh oh." Rocky said, realizing that he had just fulfilled the requirements for becoming a werepuppy.
"Oh, calm down, everyone. There has to have been millions of pups who looked into the water's surface under the light of a full moon. If that legend were true, then there would be plenty of werepuppy sightings." Ben scoffed.
"Yeah, papa's right. Dudes, I tried standing in water under the full moon at least a dozen times when I was a stray and living on the Adventure Bay Beach! I didn't become a werepuppy any of those times!" Zuma added.
Zuma's words seemed to calm down the pups, save for Rocky, who was still looking upset.
Mayor Goodway took Dwayne and Gasket back home soon after. The pups laid down on their sleeping bags later that evening, with Rocky whining anxiously as he shifted around on his sleeping bag. "Oh, Rocky… you know that the werepuppy is just a fun spooky story, right? Just a legend." Ryder reassured his pup.
"I really don't know, Ryder. We all said the same about merpups, and those turned out to be real!" Rocky pointed out.
"Rocky, even if you turn into a werepuppy, we'll love you." Ben promised. The group went to sleep, and Rocky eventually dozed off for a few hours.
He woke up in the middle of the night to a dull, aching pain. Blinking, he saw his front paws growing and bulking out, and his vest and pup pack felt a lot tighter than they used to be. It was starting to become difficult to breathe with how tight his vest had become. Clawing at his vest, he couldn't manage to rip it off. His pup pack wasn't making it any easier, and he knew what to do. "Pup pack disengage!" Rocky hissed quietly. His pup pack detached itself from his body, and the vest flew off of him, as well as his collar. Rocky let out a small howl before cutting himself off. He quickly ran to the lake to see what had happened. To his horror, he saw himself fluffier, bigger, and much meaner looking! His fangs were super duper sharp, and his claws were really long! "Oh no…!" Rocky cried out.
Ben was fast asleep until his phone started blaring, jolting him out of his sleep. That was the pup pack disengagement alarm. "Why would someone disengage their pup pack…?" Ben wondered. Getting out of his sleeping bag, he saw Rocky was gone, with his pup tag, vest, and pup pack lying on the ground. Large footprints led away from his sleeping bag to the pond. Ben quickly started to run after the prints, following them to see a canine like shape darting into the woods. It looked like Rocky except a smidge bigger. Ben knew in his heart of hearts that had to be their green loving pup. "ROCKY!" Ben yelled.
"G-go away, don't look at me like this!" Rocky's voice shouted back at him as the pup began to pick up speed.
"LIKE HELL I'M LETTING YOU RUN AWAY! GET BACK HERE!" Ben roared at him, breaking into a sprint as he chased after the werepup. They continued to run through the forest, and Ben was starting to get tired. He had to figure out something to make Rocky stop. Then the idea hit him. "ROCKY, COME BACK HERE THIS INSTANT OR YOU'RE GROUNDED FOR THE WHOLE SUMMER! No Batman the Animated Series, no mechanic work, no video games for THREE WHOLE MONTHS! Do you really want that!?" Ben threatened. He didn't want to carry through on this threat, but the repercussions of Rocky not following this order should be too severe for him to continue running away like that.
Rocky stopped in his tracks and turned around, slowly walking to Ben, shame and anxiety in his eyes. Now that he got a closer look at the werepup, he was awed by the natural beauty of Rocky's werepuppy form. "ROCKY! How dare you run off by yourself! Do you have any idea how worried you made me?!" Ben scolded. "But dad… I'm a monster!" Rocky protested.
"Bull! I don't care if you turned into a monster! You're our family and that doesn't give you the right to run away without telling us! You might look different on the outside but it's what's on the inside that counts!" Ben insisted.
"R-really?" Rocky whimpered.
"Absolutely. At your core, you're still the same puppy who loves to tinker with random items that other people might call garbage and turn them into something useful. The other pups will recognize you for sure." Ben reassured him.
"Okay…" Rocky mumbled. Ben and Rocky walked back to their campsite, where Rocky stuck behind Ben a fair distance so he could come out when Ben gave him the signal.
Ryder, Chase, Skye, Marshall, Rubble, and Zuma were all sitting on their sleeping bags looking worried. The shouting must have woken them up. "Papa! Where's Wocky!? Is he okay?!" Zuma worriedly asked.
"Rocky's okay, don't worry. He's in the trees over there. I just wanted to tell you something before he came back. He's um… different. Different from when you last saw him." Ben told Ryder and the pups.
"Different how?" Ryder asked.
"Rocky, come on out." Ben announced. The werepuppy nervously stepped forward into their field of view.
"WEREPUPPY!" Rubble shrieked in terror, hiding behind a log fearfully.
"R-Rocky…?!" Marshall gasped.
"You look really cool!" Chase exclaimed.
"Your fur looks really silky and soft!" Skye complimented. "Wocky, you look beautiful! Super duper handsome!" Zuma cheered.
Ryder started to pet Rocky's fur. "Skye, you're right, he does have silkier and softer fluffy fur!" Rocky's owner confirmed.
The werepuppy started to pant and his tongue rolled out as he was given a belly rub by Ryder. As Rocky submitted to the chin scratches and affectionate pets from Ryder, Marshall and Rubble shook off their fear as they saw that the werepuppy was nowhere near as hostile as they initially were led to believe.
"Duuuude, you should totally test out your werepuppy stuff! Try hitting that big rock over there!" Zuma suggested.
"Oooh, yeah, that sounds awesome! Come on, Rocky, do it!" Marshall agreed.
"Um, okay…" Rocky blushed as he ran over to the boulder faster than any of the pups could get there, even faster than Marshall could!
Glancing back at Ben and the others, he saw his father figure give him a thumbs up. Rocky then stood up on his hind paws and thrusted a paw into a rock. To his surprise, the rock shattered and crumbled into dozens of smaller pieces! "WOAH!" All of the pups exclaimed. Rocky was shocked. "Wow, this is amazing! I almost wish I could stay this way… almost. I still want to go back to being myself." Rocky remarked.
Ben gave Rocky a round of applause and then stood up. "All right, I think we've had our fun. Pups, to your vehicles. Let's head to Sunflower Valley!" Ben ordered.
The Paw Patroller was right outside Uncle Otis's cabin, and the pups all got in their vehicles before riding out alongside the van to Sunflower Valley. Rocky had to ride in the Paw Patroller since his werepuppy body was too big to fit in his pupmobile's driver seat. It didn't take too long of a drive to get to the valley, about forty minutes. When they got there, Rocky looked at the sunflowers. Zuma chuckled as he offered the werepup a sunflower in his mouth. "For you, Wocky." Zuma giggled.
Rocky hesitated for a minute. "The legend turned out to be true, and it turned you into a werepuppy." Chase mused.
"And the legend says that you gotta eat a sunflower to turn back!" Skye reminded Rocky.
"What're you waiting for?" Ryder wondered.
"I dunno… maybe it's the werepuppy part of me telling me not to eat the sunflower. But I gotta. I don't wanna stay like this forever!" Rocky determinedly said, before biting down on the sunflower and slowly chewing it.
It tasted awful, but he pushed through it and swallowed the plant. Minutes passed by and Rocky still wasn't turning back into a regular pup. "He's supposed to be turning back, right?" Skye questioned.
"Is it just me or does Wocky's face look a bit puffier than normal?" Zuma pointed out, getting up close to Rocky's face and noticing a small difference.
"Is it?" Rocky wondered.
"Yeah, it looks kind of swollen…" Chase noted.
"I'm not feeling good…" Rocky moaned.
The pups could all see the saliva leaking out of Rocky's mouth as he turned away and vomited up the sunflower he had just eaten, along with the marshmallows he had for dinner. Marshall's expression morphed to one of horror as he put two and two together. "WE HAVE TO GET HIM TO KATIE'S RIGHT NOW!" Marshall screamed, running to his fire truck and activating the ambulance mode, before turning it into his Rescue Racer.
"What!?" Ben, Ryder, and the other four pups gasped. "ZUMA, BEN, LOAD ROCKY INTO THE AMBULANCE!" Marshall shouted.
The human and chocolate Labrador stood there, frozen as they were still trying to comprehend the situation. "DO IT NOW OR ROCKY'S GONNA DIE!" Marshall shrieked.
That instantly got the two out of their frozen states. Ben and Zuma lifted Rocky up and carried him to Marshall's vehicle, placing him on the stretcher. Ben got on his motorcycle and started to drive ahead while the other pups took their vehicles, putting them in Rescue Racer mode as well while Zuma rode in the ambulance with Rocky.
A scanner came out from the ceiling of the ambulance interior and scanned Rocky. Monitors on the side showed his vital signs. "M-Mawshall, what's going on?!" Zuma shakily asked.
"R-Rocky's going into anaphylactic shock!" Marshall answered with a sob.
"DUDE, SPEAK ENGLISH, DUMB IT DOWN! I CAN'T HELP HIM IF YOU KEEP USING BIG WORDS THAT I DON'T UNDERSTAND! I TURN SIX IN ABOUT A MONTH! I DON'T KNOW WHAT ANAPHYLACTIC IS!" Zuma angrily snarled at the dalmatian.
"It means that he's having a really bad allergic reaction! Clear, Zuma, I'm having the robot arms give him a shot of emergency medicine!" Marshall explained.
Zuma backed away as the robotic arm extended from the ceiling and pricked Rocky with a syringe, injecting him with epinephrine. Rocky's heart rate was still lowering, and the heart rate machine started to flatline. Zuma knew what that meant. He had seen it and he had heard the awful beeping noise when his owner had succumbed to cancer. "NO, NO, NO, NO!" Zuma cried out.
The medical training that Marshall, Ryder, and Ben had given him and the rest of the Paw Patrol kicked in immediately. Zuma jumped onto the stretcher and pressed his paws onto Rocky's chest before he started to push down in a rhythmic fashion. This was how they had been taught to do chest compressions. "Come on, come on! Wocky, don't you dawe die on me now! Dude, you can't die!" Zuma wailed, continuing to do chest compressions as the medicine worked its way through his system. With one more push, Rocky gasped as he came back to consciousness and his heart started to beat again. Zuma started to weep when the werepuppy shot up from the stretcher, taking in deep breaths. The swelling in his face was going down. Zuma buried himself in his friend's fur. "D-don't do that again, Wocky!" Zuma whimpered.
He felt the ambulance stop, and Marshall opened the doors of the back. "Help me roll him into Katie's! Ben called ahead and woke her up." Marshall ordered.
They rolled Rocky into the emergency room of Katie's veterinary clinic, where she gave him a thorough examination and some medicines.
When she was finished examining the mixed breed and making sure that Rocky wasn't going to die, Marshall and Zuma told her what had happened on the way there. Katie went pale when she learned that Rocky's heart had stopped. By the time the two pups had finished recounting what had gone down, Ben, Ryder, Chase, Skye, and Rubble had trickled into the room. "I'm going to tell you this now: you're very lucky that Rocky is alive. If it weren't for your quick thinking, he'd probably have died." Katie bluntly stated.
Ben and Ryder were silent. "W-what happened? A-and is Rocky going to be a werepuppy… f-forever?" Rubble whimpered.
Katie shook her head as she opened up a book of veterinary conditions. "Not according to this. Lycanthropy is actually a decently documented condition in pups. It's rare, but thankfully it doesn't seem to be too debilitating or impactful. Werepuppies have a bad reputation because they're associated with werewolves. Most werepuppies actually are peaceful and kind, just like their regular canine selves. The condition is triggered by the lunar radiation produced by a full moon, reflected off of the water's surface, and beamed into the afflicted's body. Only certain pups have this gene. We don't know what breeds were Rocky's parents, but one of them had the werepup gene." Katie began.
She closed the book and set it down on a table, before turning back to the rest of the Paw Patrol. "It appears that Rocky's allergic to sunflowers, and since he threw the sunflower up before it finished digesting, that means the enzyme that cures lycanthropy didn't get fully ingested into his system. Trying to inject the enzyme directly into him is too much of a risk, we don't know if he's allergic to the enzyme itself or a different component of the sunflower, and either or both of those could trigger a lethal allergic reaction. Rocky's going to be in a state of permanently being able to transform into and from a werepup. Strong emotions can trigger the change, but calming down should turn him back to normal. As he gets older, he'll become a tad bit more aggressive towards others in werepup form, but since you're his family, you all should be completely safe." Katie continued.
"Well, things are certainly going to be different…" Ben commented.