The next day...
Artemis was driving through Adventure Bay, making her way toward the lookout to listen to the puptag recordings. In her car, she had a copy of the floppy disk they had found the day before, and a floppy disk drive to play it in.
She was tired of these killings that were happening, and wanted to finally catch the one responsible. And soon, she arrived at the lookout.
Artemis parked her car in the parking lot, then turned off her engine and grabbed the floppy disk and drive before getting out. As she was walking toward the lookout doors, she saw Chase standing outside, who was watching her as she approached.
"Hello sir." Artemis greeted the shepherd. Chase replied by nodding before grabbing his puptag and calling Ryder outside.
Chase and Artemis waited outside the lookout for Ryder to arrive. And when he did, Artemis was brought into the lookout and lead to the server room, where all the data from the puptags were stored. Artemis entered the server room, looking around as Ryder led her to the monitor that'd let her examine the puptag recordings.
After teaching her how the monitor works, and how to go through the puptag recordings, Ryder left her to her investigation. Artemis immediately began searching through the logs, preparing to spend all day analyzing the voices, trying to find anyone the pups ever interacted with during a mission that could match the voices on the disk.
Meanwhile, at the Adventure Bay harbour
A boat arrived in Adventure Bay, slowly stopping at the harbour, getting ready to let all their passengers disembark. On this ship was two Golden Retrievers, sent there by their employer so they could work on their research safely.
"Are you ready for our new life sis?" Tuck asked his sister, beginning to feel kind of excited about finally returning to Adventure Bay.
"Uhh... Yeah, totally." Ella replied, smiling at her brother. She was lying through her teeth, not being ready at all to return to her old home.
Tuck didn't notice her hesitation, and stood up, carrying his luggage. Ella followed shortly after, and waited. When the boat was finally fully docked, the two twins began being led off the ship.
As they left the ship, they stared at all the new buildings and towers that were built since they left. Tuck and Ella had never heard about Adventure Bay's expansion, so seeing it having expanded massively was surprising to them. The twins looked at one another for a moment, before beginning to walk toward Adventure Bay. Finally reentering the town they had left years ago.
"Woah, it's so large now!" Tuck exclaimed, amazed as he admired the improvements to his home town.
"Yeah, when did it grow so much? I expected it to still be the small community it always was." Ella asked, genuinely surprised.
"Me too, though I can definitely get used to this. Maybe it won't be so different to Barkingburg afterall." Tuck replied, excitedly trotting down the sidewalk, making his way toward the building The Architect had assigned them.
While they were both walking to the new lab, Ella turned to see what was to her left. And through all the tall towers and many new buildings, she saw the lookout, the main base of the PAW Patrol, far in the distance. Ella began having all the memories of her and the PAW Patrol rush back to her, and particularly, the meteor.
If we were to get our hands on a meteor shard, what could we do with it's power? Ella thought to herself, becoming more and more curious as she thought about many different possibilities. Even maybe getting their abilities to grow and shrink back.
Several minutes later...
Tuck and Ella arrived outside the new lab building. It was a three story building, with large glass windows and blue trims wrapped around it, which made it look fairly futuristic. Both of the twins stood there, admiring it, before walking up to the door and entering.
The two Golden Retrievers looked around as they entered, setting their luggage down next to the door, and beginning to explore their new lab. It was made up of large, mostly empty rooms, with a couple desks in each one. With a main central hallway that connected them all, and at the end of the hallway, a staircase that led to the upper floors.
"This is amazing! There's so much room!" Ella exclaimed, she loved all the new space this lab provided, she'd finally have enough room to actually obtain and store the equipment and resources needed to continue her work.
"Yeah, there is." Tuck said, he was neutral about the new lab. He wasn't ecstatic about it like Ella was, he was just happy that his sister was happy.
The two twins then separated, with Ella going off to explore upstairs, while Tuck went back to their luggage and grabbed one of his bag. Specifically, the bag that had the equipment from their old lab. He then began setting up all the equipment, getting ready to begin researching and inventing once again, as soon as The Architect told them to resume working.
Meanwhile, upstairs, Ella was still exploring the lab, absolutely adoring all the new space. She was already planning what to put where, when she suddenly had an idea upon seeing a medium sized room, completely empty.
What if I made a canine. Ella thought to herself, she originally thought about creating a living canine, but very quickly deeming that impossible. However, what if she could create a robotic replica.
I could create my own army, maybe finally I'd be in charge! No more of The Architect bossing us around like we're just simple henchmen. Ella thought to herself, with a smile on her face.
Meanwhile, back at the lookout
Artemis was still in the server room, quickly skimming passed all the tag recordings with Chase by her side. The police pup had decided to join her in searching through them, informing her of which recordings didn't have them meeting new people in them, and really helping make this process a lot more simple.
They had already gone through all the recent ones, and were now going through the logs that were recorded just after Ace joined, over a year ago. Most of them took forever, as they were just meeting all the new citizens of Adventure Bay, which meant a lot of new voices to compare to the tape.
"Jesus, how many are there?" Artemis asked, surprised at how many different people they had met over the years.
"A lot, like a lot lot. The PAW Patrol has been around for over a decade, we began keeping track of logs and stuff about four or five years ago. There's a lot of data here to go through." Chase replied.
Hearing this, Artemis began debating with herself if it was even possible to find the identity of the person on the tapes. When they finally got all the way back to when Ace joined, Artemis decided that she needed a short break. She had been doing this for hours, and her eyes were beginning to get strained.
When Chase and her left the server room, Artemis went straight to Ryder, thinking maybe he knew something that could help. Unfortunately, when she got to him and asked about anything he might know about the case, he knew nothing. She then decided to just hang out with the other members of the PAW Patrol for the duration of her break, hoping to get to know them better.
Back with Tuck and Ella
While Ella was still exploring the new lab they were going to be working in, Tuck had gotten everything on the first floor ready. He was now just sitting around, waiting for Ella to get done exploring.
When she finally returned to the first floor, Tuck greeted her and informed her that he had already gotten everything set up. Ella apologized for not helping, stating that she had gotten distracted by the new environment, Tuck said it was fine and also informed her that The Architect wanted them to begin work. Ella was clearly surprised that The Architect called Tuck and not her, but she began working anyway.
Tuck grabbed one of his bags and pulled out the prototype masks, setting them up in one of the rooms. While Ella went ahead and started a new project that The Architect had requested a couple days before, it was a special type of bullet, to deal with people who made enemies with The Architect more efficiently. Tuck did begin questioning why The Architect needed this stuff (Neither were aware of what their work was being used for), but Ella quickly brushed him off, not concerned.
Once all the masks were set up, Tuck began helping Ella on the special bullets, still hesitant about making actual ammunition.
After a couple minutes of them working, both of them heard the front doors to the building open. The twins looked at one another for a moment, confused, before going to see who it was. When they entered the main hallway that connected all the rooms to the front doors, they saw a Dalmatian walking toward them. When the Dalmatian got to them, they took off a mask that the twins didn't even notice from their face, and quickly turned into a shepherd, holding the mask in their paw.
"Sir, I didn't know you'd be visiting so soon!" Ella said, surprised to see him on her first day in Adventure Bay in years.
"Me neither." Tuck added, also surprised to see him.
"Well, I am. I came to see the progress you've made on the project, are they ready?" The shepherd asked, clearly not in a good mood.
"No sir, we've just started developing them. It'll take at least a few days to make a useful amount of them." Ella replied.
The shepherd stared her in the eye for a moment before speaking. "I'll give you a week. If it ain't done by then, there will be consequences." And with that, the shepherd left the lab and went on his way.
Tuck and Ella stood there for a minute, staring at one another, before returning to work. Neither of them wanted to find out what the shepherd meant by "consequences."
Back at the lookout
Chase and Artemis had returned to going through the logs, comparing voices, looking for a match. They were beginning to reach the time when they were all in their adolescence, and that's when they found a clip of Ella, shortly before her and Tuck resigned.
Both of them were shocked upon hearing it be an almost exact match of the third person in the tape. They were mostly focusing on who the second person was, but finally the people they were talking to would help significantly, as it meant that they knew who it really was behind the mask.
"So we have one match." Artemis said as she wrote down the name Ella on a piece of paper she brought with her.
There's no way it can be, right? Chase thought to himself "Skip ahead seven minutes on that specific recording." Chase told her, Artemis looked at him, confused, but complyed
The monitor then played a clip of Tuck, and despite Chase saying it couldn't be, he matched the first person that was on the disk.
"That's another match, neither are the person we're looking for, but that does help." Artemis saud as she wrote down the name Tuck on the piece of paper as well. She then turned to Chase. "Do you know where these two are? So we can question them." Artemis asked.
Chase was in a bit of shock, so he didn't respond at first. Artemis then repeated herself, which caused Chase to snap back to reality. "Uhh, no, sorry. We haven't spoken or contacted one another since they resigned. I genuinely don't even know which continent they could be on." Chase replied.
"That's going to complicate things then..." Artemis muttered. How come when we finally find the people who match the voices, they're both missing! Artemis mentally yelled.
They both then heard the door open behind them, and when they turned, they saw Ryder entering the room. "Did you two find what you were looking for yet?" Ryder asked.
"Yes, but we have a problem sir." Chase replied, he could see that his owner didn't like the sound of that.
"And this problem is...?" Ryder questioned, rasing an eyebrow.
"The two matches we found are for two, apparently former members, named Tuck and Ella. The problem is, according to Chase here, they haven't been contacted in years." Artemis replied, showing Ryder both the voices on the tape and the voices of Tuck and Ella on the monitor.
"Of course." Ryder muttered, holding the bridge of his nose. Chase and Artemis sat there, staring at him, until finally, he spoke again. "Artemis, I'm sorry, I don't think we can help you further. We haven't seen or even heard from either Tuck or Ella for years. For all we know, they might not even be... around... anymore." Ryder told the police shepherd.
Artemis thanked him and Chase for their help before she grabbed the disk and disk drive and began making her way back to her car. Once she got outside, she hopped in and began driving home, equipped with the information of who the first and third person were. She still didn't know who the second person was, but she could now potentially track down these Tuck and Ella people and ask them.
In a empty field, not too far away from the lookout
Ace, Rocky, and Sierra were outside in an empty field, testing out the drone with Rocky's puppack. Sierra had finished his new, improved puppack, and a new helmet that was wirelessly connected to the puppack. This helmet had the ability to drop down a dark visor that let Rocky see through the drone and control it, not too different from how a VR headset operates.
Rocky had the visor down and was controlling the drone as it flew around them. One problem was that Rocky couldn't see when he had the visor down, so someone would have to accompany him when he does use it.
Ace and Sierra was watching Rocky from a safe distance as he moved around, controlling the drone. Sierra was also keeping an eye on the drone, seeing where Rocky was flying it.
"Guys! This view is amazing!" Rocky exclaimed. Both of them looked up at the drone, which was about 30 meters up. Both of the pups glanced at one another before waving up at the drone. Rocky, reflexively, waved back at them. Ace and Sierra noticed him do this and giggled.
"Rocky, waving doesn't do much when you're controlling a drone. The drone doesn't have arms to wave." Sierra informed him.
"Oh, right." Rocky said, lowering his head. Ace and Sierra quietly giggled again before going back to watching him fly the drone around.
Rocky began speeding up the drone, trying out a bunch of tricks with it, when he lost control of it. The drone plummeted down to the ground, causing a moderately loud crash when it impacted. Rocky rasied the visor as Sierra walked over to the drone, picking it up and examining it.
"Is it functional still?" Ace asked as he followed Sierra.
"I don't think so. A fall from that height must've caused enough damage to at least cause it to stop functioning." Rocky replied, assuming the drone was total. He was looking at Sierra with an apologetic look.
"Actually, It's structurally secure-ish still. It's power source is beyond useless now, so it isn't exactly functioning anymore, but the drone itself is surprisingly fine." Sierra stated as she finished examining the drone and began bringing it back to the Fuchs.
"Sorry for crashing your drone." Rocky apologized to the husky, whispering.
"Don't worry. Like I said, it didn't get too damaged." Sierra responded, placing the drone into the back of the Fuchs.
The three of them then hopped into the Fuchs before Ace began driving all of them back to the lookout.
Several minutes later...
Sierra entered the lookout holding the drone, with Rocky and Ace following behind. After thanking them for helping her test the drone and the puppack, she separated from them snd went to the elevator, before descending to the basement.
I need to find a way to let Rocky control the drone while stationary. The fact that he needs to move to use it effectively could potentially cause issues during a mission if it's on a dangerous location like a cliff edge. Sierra thought to herself as the elevator descended.
When the elevator hit the bottom, Sierra exited it and made her way to her room. She opened the door and entered, shutting it behind her before tossing the drone onto a small table she had in there. She was debating about if she should began fixing it now or tomorrow, she ended up deciding to fix it tomorrow and hopped into her bed, ready to fall asleep early for once.
That's the end of Chapter 9.
Next chapter will be a bit more Zuma focused. I feel he is really underused in stories here, probably because he isn't used very much in the show either.
Anyway, until the next chapter, bye everyone!
-König der Könige