"I spy with my little eye... Something green."

"Is it a tree...?"

"Nope. It was the grass."

Rolling through the forest, four pups were squeezed into a snowcat as they moved down their path. A Dalmatian sitting in the back rolled his eyes at the game being played.

The Dalmatian, unofficially named by others as Hood, was the only wild pup among the group. Because of that, he was detached from the other three sitting around him, feeling a bit displaced with them. And that wasn't only because he had tried to kill one of them, and fought the others like he was going to kill them. Apparently that seemed to be water under the bridge once they realized that there were dogs in danger where he lived.

Sitting in front of Hood was a perky Husky pup. She gently tapped her chin as she thought about the next item to be spied, scanning the surrounding area as they rolled ahead. She was the one piloting the snowcat, as it was her old pup house back when she was a part of the PAW Patrol. This was Everest, the former snowy conditions and mountain expert of the team. Upon learning that her friend had been inadvertently framed by Hood, she knew that she had to help him prove his innocence.

"Hm... I spy—" She began to speak.

"Uggh!" A mixed breed pup groaned, cutting Everest off, "How much longer!?"

"Oh come on, Rocky!" Everest complained, rolling her eyes, "At least let me finish before you start whining."

Wearing a pair of goggles loosely around his neck was a gray furred pup named Rocky, the former recycling and handyman pup of the PAW Patrol. For him, there always had been something strange happening to him every day. First, he becomes friends with the pup he considered to be lowest on his list of friends, next, he shares a heart to heart with that same pup, and then the next day, the pup is framed for a crime he didn't commit. Thankfully, he was able to help the pup out with his technological prowess and building know-how. He looked down at another Dalmatian, one that was wearing a red scarf. He wore a faint smile on his face as he waited for Everest to continue the game.

Marshall.

The very reason why they were all there in the first place. Sure, Rocky and Everest would have wanted to help out the dogs of the forest, but without Marshall, they would have never ended up there to begin with.

Framed for a crime he didn't commit, and was subsequently suspended from the PAW Patrol, Marshall found himself fighting an uphill battle with very few allies to turn to, and very little confidence within himself to keep pushing forward. Initially, he ran away from the lookout in hopes to not drag down the only two pups who seemed to believe him, but what he didn't realize was that they would go as far for him as he would them. From that point, more and more people seemed to appear in his corner, and helped a silent Marshall finally find a smile again, even if that smile wasn't always ready to show.

"I spy with my little eye, something... Brown."

Hood spoke up, "Bear."

"No, of course not, I—"

"No, there's a bear, get down!" He ordered, crouching down into the snowcat.

Rocky, Everest, and Marshall all turned their heads to look where Hood had been, and all gasped silently once they noticed a bear rooting around in the ground nearby. The pups followed the wild Dalmatian's lead, ducking down and out of sight. Seeing as there were four of them, it was quite cramped.

"What do we do?" Marshall asked, sweat beginning to roll down his cheeks.

Hood looked back at the other Dalmatian, "We stay like this, and maybe the bear will just pass by. After all, they don't know what these things are. They're wild animals."

Gulping, Marshall closed his eyes tight, trying his best to limit his breathing as much as possible. He dealt with wild animals all the time back when he was on the PAW Patrol, but at least then he had the security of being around his owner and his friends. That, and his firefighter equipment. Without his firefighter gear, and with his plunger pack stored away in one of the bags they brought along with them, he was useless.

Everest, meanwhile, peeked up to see where the bear was. She quietly observed its movements. It was a brown bear, which was standing on its hind legs in order to scratch its back. If she was being honest, it was kind of funny. In her experiences with bears, she never had expected to

"It's completely different from a polar bear..." Everest uttered, "Had it been one, it would've already been watching us. It would've caught our scent quickly, and would have been stalking us for however long we've been here, waiting for us to tire out."

"Wait, we found you at the south pole, didn't we?" Rocky asked quietly, "Polar bears don't live in the south. How would you know so much about—-"

"There!" Hood exclaimed, cutting him off, "While the bear's distracted, get this thing moving."

Everest nodded, starting the snowcat up once more, "On it! Let's go."

The snowcat began moving once again, Everest following Hood's directions as the vehicle moved through the forest.

"Hey, Hood?" Marshall called out to him.

The wild Dalmatian looked back at Marshall, "You talking to me?"

"Yeah. I have a question. Why did you come to Adventure Bay in the first place?" He asked, looking forward at the terrain in front of them, "Was it the only place you stole from?"

"Not really, but when it comes to food, Adventure Bay seemed to have the most," Hood answered casually, "Adventure Bay was the first place I got caught though."

Rocky joined in, "Speaking of, I never could've guessed that there was another clumsy Dalmatian out there."

"Clumsy Dalmatian?" Hood seemed confused, "I'm not really clumsy. At least, I don't think I am."

"But what about the recording?" Everest kept her eyes on the trail as she drove, "You know, when you were taking the golden bones, and you slipped. That's one of the reasons people thought Marshall was guilty. They saw a clumsy Dalmatian, and they immediately turned to him."

"Oh that?" The doppelganger Dally raised an eyebrow, "While getting those golden bones, I hurt my paw. So when I was carrying them, I slipped and fell. Marshall and I might look a little similar from the neck down, but that's fortunately where the similarities end."

Marshall spoke under his breath, "Now that's just mean."

"So what would you have done if you didn't find Adventure Bay?" Everest temporarily glanced from the trail to the wild Dalmatian beside her.

"What else could I do that isn't continuing to look around? I'll just have to steal from somewhere else."

The Husky pup barked, "Stealing is still bad, though!"

"What should I do then? Let those dogs die?"

"I... I uh... You still can't... It's...!" Everest stuttered, taking her eyes off of the road for a moment to face the smug Dalmatian, "...Hm..."

Ever since she joined the PAW Patrol, she had been taught that stealing was bad, plain and simple, and the ones who stole didn't make a better case for themselves. There was Mayor Humdinger of Foggy Bottom, who seemed to love stealing from Adventure Bay any chance he got. Or Ladybird, who stole shiny things simply because she liked the way they reflected the sunlight. Then there was the tag team of Sid and Arrby. On top of that, there was the Duke of Flappington, who stole that gem for power. No matter what, thieves were always selfish, and did things just for the benefit of themselves.

Then why? Why did she almost feel bad for this thief? Thieves are bad. They've always been bad. They've never not been bad. She's dealt with many. Why did it seem as though Hood was different? As he pointed out before, he shared similarities with Robin Hood. He was stealing to give to the poor.

She never thought of Robin Hood as a bad guy. So did that mean Hood wasn't a bad guy?

Rocky nodded slowly as he listened, his eyelids lowering slightly. He still wasn't exactly sold on Hood being with them at the moment. They needed his help in order to get Everest's snowcat to where he lived in one piece, but hopefully, that's where it would end. He just wasn't too fond of him, especially after seeing the mental anguish it put Marshall through. He wouldn't let it slide that easily. He knew good and well that Marshall and Everest, especially Marshall, were forgiving pups. He could forgive, sure, but it would take a lot more for Rocky to be on board.

Marshall, meanwhile, didn't notice the sound of talking fade around him as he began to space out. He couldn't stop his mind from wandering back to the previous night, where he, Rocky, and Everest were truly introduced to Hood's everyday life. He couldn't get the image of that little pup, ribs physically protruding out of its sides, out of his head. Just the thought of that scene in the Medical Bay nearly made him throw up.

He found himself standing there once again, robotically relaying the information he never thought he'd have to use over the weak body of a pup younger than him. There was nothing he could do about it, he didn't even know where to start. For once, he didn't know what to do from a medical standpoint. They weren't sick, their paws weren't sprained or had a splinter in it. They were hungry. Hungrier than he could ever imagine. If he recalled correctly, he had only crossed into the first stage of starvation back when he was a stray.

It was strange. As an EMT he had been trained specifically to be able to withstand even the most gruesome of sights, but never had he expected to see something like that. He couldn't even begin to imagine how Rocky and Everest felt about it. Everest was wild before too, but she had spent long enough with her owner, Jake, to become a little softer when it came to the harsh elements.

It just goes to show how privileged he, Rocky, Everest, and their former teammates were the past few years.

"Marshall?" Rocky pushed his paw into the Dally's right cheek.

The scarf-wearing Dalmatian looked around confusedly, "Huh, what?"

"Are you okay?" The former recycling pup seemed concerned, "You seemed like you were pretty far away there."

"Oh! Sorry, I was just..." He trailed off, wondering if he should remind Rocky and Everest of what they all saw, "...Wondering if the others got back okay!"

"What, those humans?" Hood asked, a noticeable venom seeping from between his canines, "Why even bother to care?"

"Because they're our owners!" Everest retorted, "Well, in Marshall and Rocky's case, adopted owners."

The wild Dalmatian only snarled under his breath, "They're nothing but trouble..."

Suddenly cutting their conversation short, the familiar sound of a dog's howl could be heard echoing through the forest. Though, instead of the deep, powerful howl that would shake the insides of anyone who was to hear it, what the quartet heard was a meek, shrill, high-pitched combination of a howl and a whimper.

"The heck was that?" Rocky immediately began scanning their surroundings.

Everest was quick to turn the snowcat sharply to the left, nearly causing Marshall, Rocky, and Hood to fall out of the vehicle, "It came from this way!"

"Woah, what are you doing!?" Hood asked loudly, holding onto the side of her snowcat.

The Husky sped her snowcat in the direction the sound had come from, "We have to help!"

"What?" Hood's face scrunched up, "Why should we? Knowing this forest, that can't be good. Why get ourselves involved when we can just head back?"

"Getting involved, even if it doesn't make sense sometimes..." Marshall clenched his paws, "...That's what being a hero means!"

"Well I ain't no hero!" The wild Dalmatian argued, trying to turn the snowcat, "It's survival of the fittest out here. There's no room for being a hero!"

Marshall huffed, "Well, three of us want to go and see what's wrong, so how about that?"

"What's that have to do with it?"

"Everything," Rocky interjected, "Majority rules. Besides, you couldn't operate the snowcat, even if you wanted to."

Hood clenched his teeth. The mixed breed had a point. Multiple points, actually. He was the brains of the three, obviously. This time, he'd have to go along with them, as leaving the vehicle to go off on his own didn't exactly sound like the best idea.

Within minutes, the snowcat slowed to a stop in front of a collapsed tree. They all hopped out of it and spread around the scene, trying to figure out what the problem was.

"Hm... Well the tree here was kind of weak, but I wonder why it suddenly fell like this. The weather hasn't been harsh today..." Hood thought out loud, "And what was that noise?"

Marshall, meanwhile, was quick to approach the fallen tree and began to sniff around. If he knew anything about fallen trees, he knew that there was a reason behind it. Whether it be by natural causes or something different, it could still do bad things to the environment. Once he heard a faint squeak come from under the tree, he knew he had his reason.

"Guys, I think I heard something!" Marshall shouted as he began to remove chunks of bark and plants away from the place he heard the squeak come from. Rocky and Everest came over to help him, while Hood remained distanced, surveying the greater area around them.

Removing one last piece of bark, Marshall gasped when he noticed a small white furred pup quivering right next to the tree trunk, under the tree where it had fallen.

The Dalmatian looked into the terrified eyes of the white puppy, "Are you okay?"

"I... M-My tail..." The pup whimpered, turning its head to its right to gesture to the lower half of its body.

The lower half of the pup's body was trapped under the weight of the tree while the upper half of its body was close enough to the trunk where the lower half of the tree had been propped up by it.

"This isn't good..." Rocky put a paw on his chin, wondering what they could do.

Everest focused on the lower half of the pup's body, "How are your legs feeling?"

"...I can't feel them!" The pup exclaimed, its eyes widening in terror

"That makes sense," Marshall muttered, "The pressure is probably enough to the point where circulation is begging to be cut off."

"So what does that mean?" Everest looked at the former EMT pup.

Marshall looked between her and Rocky, "It means that if we don't move fast, their legs won't work right anymore."

"Guys!" They all heard Hood shout, "We're not alone here! We need to leave!"

Everest was quick to take action, "I'll go check it out. Please get that pup out of there."

"You can count on us!" Rocky smirked, "I think I know just what to do."

As the Husky rushed off in Hood's direction, the Dalmatian looked at Rocky with confusion, "What are we going to do?"

The mixed breed smiled with the utmost confidence, "We're gonna make a see-saw."

"...Huh?" Marshall blinked, confused.

Everest ran over, spotting the wild Dalmatian almost immediately. Hood didn't see her, though, as his attention was focused on something else entirely. His eyes were widened, and his mouth was agape. His brows threaded together with what was clearly fear. The former mountain pup was confused. The few times she had interacted with the Dalmatian, she never took him for one to scare easily.

She followed Hood's gaze, her face soon contorting into the same kind of fear he had.

Everest slowly walked to stand beside the doppelganger Dally, her sight zeroing in on something moving a short distance away. Her nose twitched, picking up the scent of something different. It wasn't food, it wasn't a type of tree or any type of flora or fauna, but a living creature. An animal.

It was familiar to her particularly. It was a scent that she could never forget, no matter how long she spent away from the arctic. Sure, the scent between what she was smelling and what she had grown used to smelling back when she was younger were slightly different, the scents' similarities were more similar than they were different.

Hood, on the other paw, needed no analysis to understand what seemed to be getting closer by the second. He had grown up in the wild. He knew almost every wild animal there was, because of how much he moved around before ending up where he was. And what he was smelling was often a common indicator to run for the hills.

"Wolves!" Both Everest and Hood shouted in unison.

The Husky was first to move, dashing to her snowcat and hopping in.

"Good survival instinct!" The Dalmatian complimented her, following behind and hopping in, "We can leave while we still can! Leave it to those two to handle it themselves."

"What!?" Everest quickly turned to Hood, clear anger in her eyes, "No way I'm leaving Marshall and Rocky behind!"

"Here we go with this nice pup stuff..." The Dalmatian rolled his eyes, "How do you all expect to take care of others if you can't even take care of yourselves?"

"We'll find a way... We always find a way!" Everest argued, starting the snowcat and beginning to turn it toward Marshall and Rocky, "We're not leaving them!"

"They're capable of taking care of themselves!" Hood grabbed the steering wheel, turning it in the other direction.

"They're my friends!"

"They're dead weight now!"

The Husky pup growled, "After Marshall allowed you to keep living in this forest, this is how you treat him when he's not looking?"

"It was his idea to come deeper into the forest, why should we possibly die because of him?" Hood asked loudly.

"Because we're a team!"

"Well the whole 'team' is gonna die if you don't get your head out of the clouds!"

The two struggled over the steering wheel, not willing to back down on what they believed. As they did, though, Everest's canines began to show more by the second as her strength grew in magnitude.

"They're my friends...!" Her eyes narrowed, "I've left those close to me to die before, I'll never leave anyone behind again!"

She shoved Hood to the side, his back banging against the side of the inside of the snowcat. The wild Dalmatian groaned faintly, deciding to let the Husky have this round.

Marshall and Rocky, meanwhile, were collecting a few things found nearby as they talked amongst themselves.

The Dalmatian looked over at Rocky, who was busy banging a few rocks together, "So when you said we'd make a see-saw, you didn't actually mean make a see-saw, right?"

"Yes, and no," The mixed breed began to explain, "The goal of this is to make a fulcrum and lever."

"Fulcrum?"

"Okay, you know how a see-saw works?" Rocky asked.

"Yeah," Marshall nodded along, "One side goes down, and the other side goes up."

"Well the part you sit on is called the lever..." He elaborated, "And the part the lever rests on in the middle is called the fulcrum. That way, the lever, or the part weight sits on isn't just laid flat on the ground."

Marshall kept nodding.

"The weight we need to lift is called the load. And the other side is the effort."

The Dalmatian began to understand, "So the tree is the load?"

"Exactly, and the effort is on the other side, where we need to place something on it."

"But how can we get something that weighs as much as a tree?"

"That's the fun part, we don't need to!" Rocky chuckled, "By placing the fulcrum closer to the load, we need less effort to lift it. All we need is a lever and a fulcrum, and that pup is as good as out!"

Suddenly, both communicators on Marshall and Rocky's wrists vibrated, "Guys, this is bad! There are a pack of wolves nearby and I think they're going for the trapped pup! I'm gonna try to ward them off, but you need to work fast."

"Ward them off?" They heard in the background, "You're insane!"

Rocky nodded, "Don't worry, we have a plan. We just need a bit of time to execute it."

"Hurry!"

Once the communicators went silent, Marshall and Rocky quickly went back to work.

"Okay, listen closely Marshall. Find a log and tell me when you find it..." Rocky continued to bang the rocks together, but at a faster pace, "We're gonna need it if we want to get that pup out."

"I'm on it!" The Dalmatian nodded, dashing off.

As Everest revved her engine, she kept her snowcat between the little white pup and a group of four wolves. Hood remained hidden behind her seat, laying on top of the bags the three domesticated pups packed. If he had to be there, there was no way he'd let himself be seen.

"Back away!" Everest demanded, inching her vehicle forward.

One of the wolves barked at Everest, startling her. The wolf, which was noticeably bigger than the other three, inched forward, not showing a trace of fear as it approached her snowcat. She gulped faintly as she kept her eyes on the large wolf.

That was until her communicator buzzed, "Rocky, I found a log!"

"Nice!" She heard Rocky exclaim,"Is it hollow?"

"Yep! It's hollow!"

"Okay, get it out of the ground and bring it to me!"

"How's it going over there, Everest?" The Husky then heard Marshall ask, "Are you okay?"

"I've been better... But without my snowcat, it would be a lot worse..." She replied, sweating, "Let's just hurry and get that pup out of here before we end up being wolf food..."

A slight distance away from Rocky, Marshall was slowly dragging the hollow log toward the mixed breed. Luckily, it didn't fall apart as he moved it, despite him pulling such a long log. Letting out a long exhale before deeply inhaling, the Dalmatian began to use all of his strength to pull the log, finally beginning to cover serious ground.

Tilting his head back, he could see the place where Rocky was working. The former recycling pup was still busy banging rocks against one another, his face scrunching with concentration.

"Rocky!" The Dalmatian shouted, "I got the log!"

Rocky grinned, "Nice work, Marshall. This will surely work! You're just in time too. I just finished."

"Finished?" Marshall asked, walking over to his friend, "Finished what? You were just banging rocks together."

"You see Marshall, thousands of years ago, back before humans had technology and stuff, one of the first things they learned was how to recycle," Rocky looked down at a rock in his paws, "Because of that, they were able to make things out of seemingly nothing, like rocks."

The Dalmatian walked closer to see what was in the mixed breed's paws. His eyes widened once he noticed what was in them. Sitting in his paws was a flattened stone, the edges of it sharpened on one side.

"They could make anything with the power of reusing!"

"Is that...?" Marshall asked in awe.

"Yep!" He nodded confidently, "It's a blade made from rock. This should easily be able to cut through hollow bark like the log you brought."

"Really?" The former firefighter's eyes lit up as he looked at the modified stone, "Then let's get building!"

Rocky walked over to the log with the flattened stone in his mouth, adjusted his position, and stabbed it into the log. Luckily, he managed to modify the stone correctly, as it quickly pierced through the hollow log thanks to the sharpened ridges.

Marshall watched on in awe as the mixed breed began to carve through the side of the log, walking all the way down as he did. It had been so long since he saw Rocky work with something that wasn't electronic that he had forgotten that the mixed breed's original skill was his talent to innovate however he could, with whatever he could.

Once Rocky carved through the other side, he asked Marshall to help him flip the now detached top half of the log and flip it over. That too, thankfully went on without a hitch, and they now had the top half of the log turned upside down to fit within the other half.

The mixed breed nodded, "There, that should reinforce it enough so we can put some real weight on it. Now help me push."

Marshall complied with the order as he and Rocky went to the other end of the log and began pushing it toward the fallen tree. Once they made it to the clearing near the stuck pup, they noticed Everest using her snowcat to chase off the pack of wolves.

"That's it!" A lightbulb went off in Rocky's head, "We can use Everest's vehicle to carry the logs the remaining distance while we get the fulcrum ready!"

"Everest!" Marshall called out to her, catching her attention, "We need your help!"

After relaying the plan to her, Rocky and Marshall pushed a fairly large rock into position before Everest used her snowcat's claw to place the logs down on top of it. Rocky began to adjust the positioning of the logs so it could fit under the log right between the trapped pup and the trunk of the fallen tree while Marshall went off somewhere else.

"Woah..." The little pup's eyes sparkled, "What's that?"

"That's the thing that'll get you out of here!" Rocky exclaimed before looking up, "Marshall, Everest, now!"

The Dalmatian, who was on a tree branch nearby, nodded and jumped off of it, right onto the other side of the lever. This managed to slowly lift the fallen tree. Everest rushed over to the trapped pup, waited until the tree's weight was completely off of it before pulling the pup out from underneath the fallen tree.

Rocky clenched his paw, a confident grin spread on his face, "We beat the tree! We won!"

Hood peeked out from behind Everest's seat in the snowcat, his eyes widening. Normally, a fallen tree could only be moved by a bear or an animal physically strong enough to make it budge. So for dogs, one getting trapped under a tree was a death sentence. But for some reason, three pups with a big rock and a log were able to lift up the tree and get an animal out from under it.

Everest hurried over to the snowcat and hopped in, barking, "Medical sled!" She then looked over at Rocky and Marshall as the latter carried the furry pup toward the snowcat, "Bring her to the sled, Marshall!"

"On it!"

The wild Dalmatian watched the pups move around the snowcat as though they had dealt with this hundreds of times. Once Rocky had boarded the vehicle and Marshall was on the back taking a look at the little pup's legs, Everest began to drive forward.

"...How'd you...?"

Everest gave Hood a side eye, "Understand this..." The Husky spoke, her eyes narrowing, "Marshall, Rocky, and I aren't like you. Our first instinct isn't to run away, declaring that it isn't our problem. Because if it's under our watch, if there's a way we can help, it will always be our problem."

"She's right," Rocky let out a sigh, "We may not be the PAW Patrol, but if there's someone out there that needs help, we're gonna help."

Hood and Rocky turned around to look at Marshall, who was performing a careful examination of the little white pup on the medical sled.

"No matter what it takes, I'm gonna make sure you'll be okay!" Marshall spoke in a hushed shout as he tried his best to reassure the little pup.

"How far are we from where you live?" Everest asked.

Hood looked back ahead, "Not very far, look."

The Husky noticed the large wall made from wood looming over the snowcat as it drew closer. It looked a lot different than it had the night before. Hood leaned back and let out a sigh of relief. He cleared his throat to speak once more.

"Welcome to the Canine Valley."