A mournful silence passed over Adventure Bay, wailing its sorrowful violin across the streets and fields. The citizens of the town no longer greeted each day in joyful optimism, but in hopeless defeat knowing the few shining hearts that upheld their home had been extinguished. Mayor Goodway was gone, the PAW Patrol was missing, and Ryder was a broken boy left in shambles over his vanished pets. Life continued on as normal; children still went to school, farmers still trudged their tools into the soil, merchants still stocked their shelves, and stray dogs still endlessly roamed the alleyways, but all joy and beautiful life had drained from their very souls.
The sky seemed dimmer than usual when Humdinger opened the windows of his new home, basking in the solemn morning air. He dwelled in the windowsill for a moment, tapping his fingers in patient anticipation. Gentle hums left his mouth as he gazed down at the barren, deserted courtyard of city hall.
"Well that's odd," he said, looking around the foggy outside. "Goodway usually had tons of people waving her good morning."
A single brown cat walked up, looking at him with an expectant meow and pointing at its mouth.
"Yeah yeah, I know," came the man's grumble, reaching to pick up the feline. "I got you guys some really good food this time, total upgrade from what you ate when I was homeless. Well, technically I'm still homeless, but city hall is a good place to hang out, and it's legal since I own the place now!"
The cats weren't listening, awakened sharply and following him like a herd of sheep, hungrily awaiting their meal. The employees didn't come in for the next hour, giving him a comfortable window of time to mill around in his pajamas, eating whatever he could and dressing himself for the day. The air was noticeably different, the cats were oblivious, but Humdinger found himself awkwardly gazing at his own reflection in a window.
"Lord, it's uh... it's pretty dull out there," he said with a mutter, frowning at the sorry state of a once thriving city. "It almost looks like Foggy Bottom."
What an insulting curse to follow him around, the doldrum-like atmosphere of the island he used to inhabit constantly pursuing any other land he dared to touch.
"The whole point of this, all of this, was getting out of that accursed place," his fingers clenched on the windowsill. "I can't let Adventure Bay become another Foggy Bottom... I have to fix this."
But how? How could he return life into something so gruesomely drained? How could he return the joy and laughter to a world of grey, so far drifted from the flowering scene it once was? The question lingered above him, staring its maddened eyes into the mayor as if they were spitting accusations, surrounding him with a festering disease of guilt. The parks were green and colorful enough, the streets were plenty clean, the economy was stable, the beaches were free of litter, there was no graffiti or petty crime to round up, what more could he do? The answer was obvious, so agonizingly obvious, so shameful Humdinger desperately searched for another way. But there was nothing, he knew it with a sad, hopeless sigh; he knew there was only one way to fix everything.
His wrinkled face hardened, "I have to free them. I need to set the PAW Patrol free."
But wouldn't they challenge his leadership? The second voice whispered in his head, reminding him of all he had now, all his wildest dreams finally gripped in the palms of his fingers. The PAW Patrol, upon release, would almost certainly rebuke his position, tear him down even for Mayor Goodway's return. He couldn't afford to lose what he fought so hard for; he couldn't let what he devoted his entire life around slip through his fingers.
"Oh hell with it, enough of this," Humdinger went to grab his clothes. "I'm getting them out of there, if it's the last thing I do!"
The man sharply dressed himself in his fine purple; but left his trademark hat behind, barely remembering he even had it. He threw himself into his car and let his cats in the backseat, revving the engine to roaring life. Speeding off into the foggy horizon, he disappeared in a cloud of dust, racing away to set the spirits free. He nearly ran several lights and stopped signs speeding back to the scene, not even turning his car off upon arrival.
The whole place was just as he left it, the metal facility stood like an echoing tomb of trapped spirits. An unbelievable stench of shame greeted him as he slid down the rusted ladder, his flock of cats were struggling to keep up with his anxious pace. A melancholy song pranced off the walls as he traveled back the gas chamber, nervously tiptoeing through the liminal rhythms. A piano's gentle weeps echoed down the rust-coated corridors; a tight lump dropped in his throat upon spotting the chamber at the end of the hallway.
It was like nothing had changed at all; the gas chamber stood proudly just as he remembered it. Not a single detail was out of the ordinary, not even the feces-slathered windows on the inside, caked over with canine excrement. He approached the locked box like an early man discovering fire, taking small steps and hesitating to even stick an arm out. His eyes flicked to the floor and spotted a discarded metal pipe, likely a broken remnant of the failing ceiling pipes that ran like spiderwebs all around the facility. His hands tightly clenched around his new weapon, so fierce his knuckles were turning white. His heart pounding in his chest, the realization of his twisted mistake hit him like a freight train. What he had thought was a harmless joke had turned into a nightmare, an unending, sleepless, madness-driven nightmare.
"Pups?" he said, calling out to the trapped spirits. "I'm here to set you free."
With a surge of desperation, Humdinger raised the pipe and swung it at the glass. The first strike sent a shudder through his arms but did little more than scratch the surface. Again and again, just break the damn thing, he struck the glass, each impact a cry of desperation and regret. It began to crack, thin lines spider-webbing out from the impact. Just one more, it had to be just one more. He lifted the pipe and swung it, connecting with a resonating crash, and finally it smashed through. Behind the sharpened cloud of jagged glass, a blast of yellowed, poisoned air hit him like rupturing flames.
"Ugh-" came his choked recoil, staggering backward as weeks' worth of concentrated Solimane gas hissed out. The inner vents were still blowing, still endlessly churning that terrible poison. His eyes watered with a painful sting carving his lungs, great fistfuls of Solimane already pumping through his veins. Cowering before the majestic haze of the gas, Humdinger knew he had to vanquish that sadistic chemical before any further progress was made. The controls, of course, the grandiose revelation could've shone a light from the heavens on the idle control desk just a few feet away.
"Maybe I can reroute it somehow?" He said, suppressing his own coughs and hunching his body over the series of levers. His cats didn't follow him this time, curiously standing before the shattered window of the chamber smoking with raw Solimane. "Can't believe I broke the damn thing, there has to be another way! Ah dang it! Why aren't these things labelled?" His fingers fumbled over the brass valves, twisting pipes, when a new idea suddenly came to him; if he couldn't shut off the gas, could he reroute it somewhere else? Craning his squinting eyes back at the large pipe stretching up the wall, connected explicitly to the control panel and leading into the chamber. That was it, that had to be it, his only chance to stop all this.
The pipe had a valve of its own connecting it to another path, and Humdinger wasted no time clamping his sweating hands over it and forcing the brass handle all the way to the right. A tight hiss was audible, wheezing with protest as the pressurized Solimane was cut off in its travel, redirecting to the new path away from the chamber. He could hear the inner vents gasping in silence, the final puffs of the gas leaking out before the current went dead.
"There!" Humdinger said with a gasp, wiping his forehead. "I think that did it!"
He shooed his cats away from the door upon his return, fearing their close proximity to the gruesome scene. "Alright, now I just need to... get them out." His voice trailed off, looking disdainfully at the shattered glass window still steaming with idle Solimane. Should he let the room vent first, and should he have brought some kind of gas mask? Likely not, all it really did was keep you awake, and even if he was exposed, simply walking outside for fresh oxygen would take care of it. Disregarding their owner's warning, his herd of cats reapproached the chamber, watching with awestruck eyes at the new sight before them.
"Alright pups!" he said loudly, calling to the prisoners. "I'm coming in to-"
"No!" came a terrified shout from within the chamber. "Put it back, put it back, we need to stay awake!"
Humdinger faltered, hesitating in his step. "Wha... huh? Put what back?"
"The gas! We need it, put it back, please!"
"Who- who's talking right now?" the man squinted, trying to place the voice.
His question went ignored, the strained voice wailing in horror. "We can't live without it! Bring it back, bring it back!"
"Why?" Humdinger said, uncertainty breaking apart any plausible plan he could've made. His composure was broken in an instant, unsettled by the explosive chaos of screams. "The gas was hurting you! It made you crazy, that's why I'm here, I want to get you all out!"
As he edged closer, he didn't notice the subtle, ominous hissing sound growing louder. Every pipe and valve within the walls churned with pressurized overflow, struggling to keep its brittle frame together with the new, invading contents. Dials and monitors across the facility began blaring red, driven to panic and sounding their alarms too broken for anyone to hear.
"No!" said the voice with barking defiance. "We'll die without it! Please, we must remain awake! Bring it back!"
"I can't! I've already rerouted it away, there isn't anymore!"
A deep, resonant rumble began to echo through the walls, a foreboding warning of the mayhem ensuing within the facility. Humdinger froze, the sound of metal groaning and straining filling the air. Wait, where did the Solimane go, where had he sent it? First he was hit with a puzzled expression, reminding himself in his mind that the gas was, truly, gone. The rumbling grew louder, more violent, a horrific realization spread across the man's face. The dogs inside the chamber seemed to realize it too, as their pleas went silent, as if they knew exactly what was about to ensue.
"Wait, wait," Humdinger darted his widened vision around, his body tensing with petrified alarm. "No! No!"
A sharp, metallic groan roared through the facility. Thousands of pipes began fracturing in spectacular formation, rupturing from the inside in pressured explosions. Sharpened debris stormed every last hallway as the pipes gave up containing the poison, releasing it into the air with nothing to stop it. Within seconds every vent in the building choked and flooded with toxic Solimane, leeching it through the walls and floors like a festering airborne pathogen.
Humdinger had no time to react, covering his face as overhead ducts vomited out thick plumes of the gas. "Aaaahhhh!" came his panicked yell, mixing with the screaming chaos of terrified cats running in blind panic, fleeing in all directions. He staggered against the wall, coughing up yellowed fumes, but it had already infected his airway. Artificial energy awakened through his veins, shutting away his exhaustion with a false imitation of restfulness.
He cried out to his fleeing cats, "kitties! Come back!"
Spotsy had been standing directly under a vent once the pipes blew, brutally assaulted full force by the gas. The kitten was overwhelmed with watery eyes and disorienting coughs, stumbling it off balance until her back collided with the wall of the gas chamber. Barely saving herself from being toppled, Spotsy struggled to regain her footing, only to suddenly hear four large animals land on the ground behind her. Fear ran through her fur, a sickening feeling of dread gripping the kitten as she shakily looked over her shoulder.
Coughing through the storm of toxic fumes, Humdinger's vision finally focused through the tears and heat peeling across his skin. What he saw standing before him made him freeze where he stood, his entire body locking up with horror.
Chase, Zuma, Skye, and Rubble had dragged their mangled bodies through the open window, oblivious to the glass remnants cutting their bellies open as they passed over it. They were terrified to exit the chamber before, their only soothing protection of contained Solimane even as if actively leaked out of the broken window. But now it was everywhere; now the toxic fumes of awakening burned and choked through every last room and corridor of the building, not a single room left clean of its swarm.
Now there was no need to stay in the chamber.
The four puppies were unrecognizable to what Humdinger remembered. Their skinned bodies left bloody tracks and puddles as they moved, disemboweled entrails hanging below them like loose debris ready to fall off at any moment. Chase's face was locked in a permanent, dripping snarl as he no longer had lips to wrap around them. He breathed in heavy rasps, shaking uncontrollably from the light burning his exposed muscle and tendons. His liver was completely gone, absent with nothing in its place but feces-covered intestine dragging along the metal ground. His eye, the one, maddened eye he had remaining, stared forward in feral insanity.
Rubble trudged his shredded body up to Chase's left, growling through his broken teeth and snapped jaw. His muscles ripped and tore in several places, shredded and clawed head to toe that gave the impression of a rabid animal attack. The bulldog was mercilessly eaten away, a victim of cannibalistic depravity, with very little muscle mass remaining to keep his skeleton protected. His idle, yellowed stomach helplessly dragged on the floor underneath him, churning away with digested meat of sadistic origin. There were no intestines remaining on him to break down the processed food, all several yards of the digestive tract pulled from his body until only a tiny pink stub remained attached to his liver.
Zuma still had patches of his skin left, barely hanging on to his exposed organs and muscle layer. His entire face had been pulled from the skull, emerging as leering, staring bloodied skull wrapped with tendon and red teeth. His stomach loudly growled, jiggling against his rotten lungs. While the other three sporadically quivered and shook in violent madness, Zuma was oddly collected in his bleeding state, surveying the room and resting his vision on Spotsy.
Skye used the only two legs she had to climb her way up Chase's sogging backside, gripping onto his exposed shoulder blades with an iron grasp. The lower half of her body was gone, either torn off, lost in a struggle, or cannibalized against her will. Her voice endlessly cried with splitting screams, pleading to die at a god refusing to answer her. Every last wound felt, every sinking jaw of teeth endured, every tendon and bone snapped from the body, every layer of flesh pulled and cut off like paper, had failed to kill these four dogs. What of the remaining two? They hadn't walked out alongside their comrades.
"Oh my God..." Humdinger breathed, petrified at the nightmare standing before him.
"God is not here," Chase said in his shattered voice, choking his own words. "Through the waking air, we are kept alive. Through the waking air, we achieve beauty," his heart tilted to the side with a sickening scrape of bone. "Through the waking air, we are enlightened... to the true selves that lie within us all, kept only at bay... by sleeping."
"G-get away!" the man scrambled himself backward, pleading for everything to just be a terrible dream. "Get away from me!"
Spotsy screamed at the top of her kitten lungs at the horrific animals, her mind swirling from the overdose of Solimane. Zuma attacked like a blinding jaguar, latching onto the cat's throat and flinging her in brutal directions. Blood splattered through her fur across the once-Labrador's face, tragically alive as a degloved paw punctured through her body, tearing out her own stomach to be feasted upon. The other dogs jumped her as a group, gruesomely tearing the cat apart in a savage frenzy. Helpless to save her, Humdinger took off sprinting, the agonizing screams of Spotsy's horrific death stabbing his ears. He had not a clue where he was going, running wherever his feet took him and vanishing into the dark abyss of the facility. The remaining cats scattered like frightened rats, sprinting for their lives wherever they could.
The four dogs ravenously devoured the kitten collectively, brimming with bloodlust and scrambled minds. Howling out their deranged voices for all the prey to hear, they split up as a group, taking off to hunt down every last one of the surviving cats, and certainly the man who originally sent them on the spiral.
Now it was not the PAW Patrol who were trapped, but Humdinger, and terrified he ran through the Solimane-poisoned maze, four relentless pursuers swiftly on his trail.