Baa-Ram-Ewe!

-Petopia, four days later, travelers’ tent, Pom-

My right hind leg was getting a scan from both Dormarch and an X-ray by Marshall, we had to make some minor adjustments to set my bone fragments correctly in place, but otherwise my bone was almost fully fused back together properly. It was still very much fragile though.

“Yuck, that looks bad.” Chase stated, the police puppy stared at the damage with a slight whimper.

“You think this is bad, you should have seen it several days ago, well in Paw-tucket time anyway. I’m not going to think about the how time works here and just enjoy being alive.” Marshall was working on improving his medic skills through observing my injuries, Dormarch was also getting some studying in as well with his hospital database. It was a good thing berry trees grew quickly if tended to properly, hopefully some pets have green digits to keep them going in the form of a plantation after we’re gone. “Those berries are amazing.”

“As are Mitzi and Pepper, those two skunks have really helped with all the pain.” Saying that, a Sitrus Berry entered my mouth and I chomped down on it. So darn sick of them, they would normally be delicious under other circumstances and the benefits were well worth it in the recovery of what was my pulped tube sock of a leg.

“Well mom, you have been running around a lot these last few days, I’m actually surprised your leg is doing this well… your wool acting as surgical wires has helped with the recovery of your leg correctly and I don’t see any signs of the bone being off.” After a thoughtful look, Dormarch finally gave me a diagnosis. “You can walk on your leg now, but make sure it’s you’re wool moving it and not you’re muscles. No extreme activities, please, for the sake of your health.”

“I don’t plan on it.” Certainly not physical activity at any rate, the mentally stressful projects I had going on were much more interesting at the moment.

“Why haven’t you spent any time with us over the last few days?” Smolder asked as she watched Shanty and Dolly went at each other without weapons and were only using basic martial arts. Dolly was holding her own fairly well against the much heavier Shanty.

“Did any of you ask if you wanted to spend time with me? When I asked you, you guys were all up for spending time with me, mostly because I asked. Dolly is the only other one that spent another entire day with me over the last few days because she actually approached me for some quality time doing things I wanted to do instead of me going somewhere nice that you might appreciate, Dormarch has been spending his time just being a normal… well ‘mostly’ normal cuddly puppy.” It was nice to spend some time with Dolly doing things other than sports. We went cloud watching, smelling the flowers or in general talking to some of the surrounding pets for their perspectives on things about what it was like to have an owner and or live in their world with all the weird stuff going on. I even got Dolly playing board games with me, including some interesting dice rolling ones. Speaking of dice rolling, Liar’s Dice is a game that Dolly liked to roll some bones on and I had worked on her reasoning, combat and magical skills a bit at the end of that particular day. Still can’t remember a name unimportant to her, always in the same ballpark as ever. “Otherwise I’ve been learning a lot about the pets that live here with the Paw Patrol by wandering around. They all have so many interesting stories about the places they come from.”

Shanty looked a bit guilty about not asking me for another day like Dolly had, even then she still kept sparring with Dolly with bare bones no magic basics. She needed a refresher on how to fight without magic in case she was ever rendered incapable of using her magical abilities and didn’t have quick access to her personal weapon.

“Which leads me to asking this, are none of you are going to spend the day with one another. Like Dormarch and Ocellus spending the day together to work out some things intellectually?” I knew it was bad idea to push the thought, but I still had to put it out there. “I’m not the only one in the group that has friendships that need some work and I’ve worked on mine with all of you.”

“I’m not particularly fond of that idea mom, even if I am willing to be cordial with her.” Well at least Dormarch was okay with Ocellus in case he ever got left alone with her for any reason.

“I’m perfectly fine with that as long as it isn’t at the cost of someone’s life.” Was my immediate response. “Now, if nobody is going to ask to spend some time with me. If you’ll excuse me… I have to go meet with Skye at the air field to look into these Fly Wheel things some more. Apparently she’s getting a pet based pilot license for flying in Paw-tucket.”

I made my way away from the tent, my thicker wool leg making me look like I was limping with how awkward it was to move compared to my perfectly fine legs. Also moving my right hind leg was still quite painful.

-Sometime around mid-day, within the general area of travelers’ tent, Brainy-

“And that created a hole in the satellite defense system. Mechanikat’s Cruiser is going to be landing near Paw-tucket any minute now. We managed to damage its two main energy weapons into an inoperable state as it passed through the hole in the defense system and we’ve taken some damage ourselves. It won’t take Snooky more than thirty minutes to a few hours to get them working again if they become a priority for the little rat.” That was not good news at all Paw Pooch, it seems Snooky was still up to his old tricks and was as sneaky as he ever was to be able to build a method to take out some of the satellites we painstakingly set up to cover the planet from such an outward invasion. “We’re currently making sure Agent Del is staying in her cell and isn’t trying to escape. We’ll try to send help down once we’re done checking the damages done to Dog Star Base.”

Said base was apparently shaped like a fire hydrant according to Krypto, fire hydrants certainly had their appeal even if that was not the original reason why the base looked the ways it does. It was just a weird coincidence, alien dogs used spaceships shaped like hydrants that mostly for pure sturdiness reasons. That and building something to absolutely have so few hull failure points in space was the point of having a space traveling vessel.

“Oh my goodness this is bad, Mechanikat is probably going to land an entire army of cat-bots in Paw-tucket and try to take Petopia for all of its resources after dealing with the inhabitants.” At least we had help in the form of Dolly and her friends, possibly her partner if she’s feeling up for it. “We’ll try to deal with it ourselves. I’ll gather the team and our allies down here and will get ready for the incoming assault.”

-A short time before Brainy was informed of the invasion, at Paw-tucket’s airfield, Pom-

It still surprises me the ingenuity of some of the smarter pets.

Skye came in for a landing after aileron rolling and then barrel rolled into taxying it along the ground expertly, eventually she came to a complete stop. If it was a flying vehicle, then Skye was absolutely rated for it. She had to be aeronautically smart to use a jetpack at the speeds she likes to go at in the air. The puppy was allowed to fly airplanes, jetpacks, helicopters and most recently the local airships and her own personal ‘Fly Wheel’.

A ‘Fly Wheel’ was the invention of one Trip Hamston the hamster, the very same one who was the best friend of one Quincy Goatee the fainting goat. Trip easily got Skye a second model Fly Wheel.

The first model of Fly Wheel required constant running to maintain flight, making it hard to steer. The second model took care of that problem and was upgrade to required running to power it up on a stored charge before taking off to the air and then it could be flown manually, or in auto-pilot using a paw pad as the automated navigation device.

Trip really hadn’t considered the problems of having to run while in flight, because he was a hamster and they rarely tired of running in hamster wheels and was happy the second model was far more friendly to the less physically inclined. However the second model still had a feature from the original design to allow a pet to run to generate emergency power mid-flight, in case something happened to the prior stored charge.

Skye of course scoffed at the idea she’d need auto-pilot for takeoff or landing. If I was to compare her to Launchpad McQuack, then she had about half the comparable skill without the absurd supernatural ability to make passengers and herself survive any crash. That and Launchpad could pilot, drive or control anything that is technically and even loosely defined as a ‘vehicle’ successfully… until he had to park it or safely come to a stop. Skye has been injured from various crashes before as Marshall has had to make sure she didn’t break any bones on numerous occasions, but she can actually land or stop without breaking anything.

Skye just finished a successful flight with a second model Fly wheel, she ran to charge it up and then quickly got it in the air and took it for a spin. She even seemed to enjoy having a personal one waiting for her in Paw-tucket as needed. The only thing is, this technology wouldn’t be useful for long term flights nor would it be useable for anything bigger than the pets that wielded them. Apparently size and weight constraints were a limitation to hamster wheel powered flying vehicles and Trip had invented the first model to be as simple as feasibly possible. The engineering was an incredible feat at the very least.

Skye was lucky that they could build a Fly Wheel model to her needs. The vehicle was nowhere nearly as powerful as her jetpack was, but it didn’t need to be fueled by anything other than simple physical exertion. Skye appreciated the exercise and the ability to fly after getting a workout. She would eventually outgrow the ability to even use them unless a larger version of Fly Wheel could be successfully made and Shanty had something of a vested interest in airplanes. She should probably come here and research how these things worked so she could apply the ideas to a personal flying device later.

“Pom, that thing that you said was going to happen, it’s happening right now.” Roxy stated from my left as I relaxed at the table at the edge of the runway and she ran up to me. Soon she was manipulating a paw pad next to me, a device the pets used exclusively while they were in this world. “I’ve already alerted all of Paw-tucket on my paw pad.”

“Which reminds me, Skye have you worked out the communication issues with your Paw Patrol tags?” My query went to the Skye high flying pup who approached us.

“No, we also don’t know how to connect them to the local communications tower… kind of wish Rocky was here for that. We’ll work on getting more of Paw Patrol into Paw-tucket!” Well at least we had a way to communicate with any animal in the Paw-tucket region of this world that Brainy Barker calls Petopia.

“That’s okay, we at least have several pets near your friends and I can even inform Dormarch of what’s going on.” My motioning for Skye to come over had her curious.

Dormarch was going to freak out a bit when he hears what I’ve actually been up to, I’ve been giving him a lot of space and he’s still having traumatic episodes at night about possibly eating the soul of a tennis ball robot out of existence and then coming after mine.

I’m still willing and able to accept Dormarch and help him cope with that, he was like me in so many ways… that wasn’t exactly a good thing.

We all watched as several things launched way into the sky beyond the atmosphere that was recorded on a paw pad by a popular pet named Cheetaby. She had caught sight of the remaining Felonious Feline on the planet, Snooky, launching several attacks into the sky at something up in space from a large gun like device that destroyed itself after firing too much.

Likely aiming to destroy or disable whatever Brainy had her team set up to protect the planet from invasion, from the few times I got to watch some of her memories while she slept I got the idea of the situation from watching her generate adorable images above her head with her ears raising upwards. Sure it was a bit invasive of her privacy, but Brainy’s subconscious mind was letting me get away with my curiosity and I could apologize about that later.

“So these the Felonious Felines are likely to drop their invasion in this area.” I tap the paw pad and drew a circle around where our enemy was expected to come in at. “This is good news. Skye when we get more information of the alien invasion starting, we’re going to need you to be ready to back up your friends and the local pets. I hope you already have several teams of Fly Wheel experts to help you out, they are going to need time to charge up for their flights to assist the front lines.”

“I’m ready to fly!” Skye stated with a cheerful determined look in her eyes, she was excited to get in the air again after she just got her paws on the ground.

“Then get in a meal, get a bathroom break and some rest, because we’re going to be quite busy for the next few hours.” It would be entirely advantageous to the pets of Petopia were they aware and had a way to fight back, and they did have both and the initiative on top of that thanks to me. Only the biggest of the enemy weapons was going to be a problem and Mechanikat had a notable propensity for giant robots or ridiculously exotic weaponry, since it’s an invasion and knowing that I’m currently present on this world, it was going to be the former instead of the latter of which I would have absolutely no way to deal with depending on the effects of said weaponry.

Marshall and Chase would already be on the front lines for a quite bit of the earlier parts of all of this and I was a little worried about sending pups out to stall, but they were disaster relief specialists and would likely have been through worse than this… and nothing is more disastrous than an impending alien invasion you’ve been preparing the many pets all over Paw-tucket for over the last few days.

Sunil’s guild of magic pets were going to be exceptionally helpful with what they could do quite soon.

“Roxy, send out the word, we’re going with Operation: Bad Pet. Have the areas closest to the intended landing zone for the aliens evacuated and our volunteers ready. By the time we set up, the volunteers are probably going to need to hold their positions for a few minutes while we build up for the retaliation.” Generally speaking, I was now mission control and the general of the Paw-tucket Pet Patrol forces. “Have our ‘Special Forces’ move for the docks and prepare for their part in this.”

This operation would be aided by the five Paw Patrol members in this world, though Skye’s cousin Coral would be limited in what she can do to help and would be assisting the stealth team. Everyone else will draw out the major threats, hopefully only Snooky and Mechanikat were said living threats to worry about, by wearing down the cat-bot army that’s inevitably going to be thrown in our general direction.

If I was quick enough I can have Dog Star Patrol sit back for a bit and then wait for Paw-tucket Pet Patrol forces do some major damage to the enemy first before they take to the field. The more damage the pets can do, the better.

“Whoa, Operation Bad Pet, Really?! I’ll have everyone work on getting into position and setting things up.” Roxy was immediately tapping away at her paw pad and numerous forces around Paw-tucket immediately started reacting as the large ship came through the atmosphere and was visible to everyone below it.

The younger pets would be kept out of the fighting if it could be helped, they were being evacuated to shelter outside of Paw-tucket city itself.

I then told Dolly what I needed her and Dog Star Patrol to do. Dolly felt a little shocked that I was aware of the Felonious Felines, not that it was that well hidden in her mind when I went to look for any additional information, but Brainy had already informed me in her sleep of what was likely to happen and what was predicted to occur. Dolly would immediately make her way over to me with Dog Star Patrol so I could inform them of the plan, before they could get to actually fighting Mechanikat.

I gave Dormarch some mental orders as well and he would get Ocellus, Smolder, Dodo and Shanty together. They were going to be moved into position to do some damage when the time comes too.

Let’s hope the enemy doesn’t have a backup plan or had very low expectations of the pets of this world being able to put up quite a major fight. The starting ploy was stall into slow retreat, let’s see how that plays out.

Sure we might not have had many days to prepare for this, but at least most of the pets that come to paw-tucket were aware of magic and aliens enough to believe this was actually happening and were quite understanding that we had to shut down the magical portals and protect them from being damaged.

The Felonious Felines would be sorely underestimating the pets because they don’t have space age technology and also looked entirely cute and small, the running theme of Paw-tucket.

Ocellus had surmised a few things about ‘friendship magic’ being present on this world. The magic related to or even is the very same magic that comes from our home planet of Equus, given how welcoming the world felt it wasn’t hard to believe that the magic of Equus was very much present here.

There were also thoughts that this world likely came about because Starswirl the bearded did a thing… a lot. Said thing may have eventually resulted in this world of familiars coming into existence because of magical contamination. That’s basically what this world was, as every pet here had some form of strong bond to someone in some way, shape or form. Aside from a few outliers like Scoot Racoonerson who didn’t consider himself a pet, this world was built out of the love of companionship.

Even if this world was somehow connected to Equus, we couldn’t use any method to get back that way because we’d still just end up in Tambelon and that wasn’t likely to end very well if we forced the issue before we were ready. I’d rather accept Arceus’s eventual promised aid for the coming jump into facing the world that belonged to the demon goat Grogar.

So this world was kind of like it was ‘slightly to the left’ of Equus in some way. So close… so very close…

Lots of fascinating stuff going on here really. I had to focus on the incoming, and likely very short, battle since I intended to go overly brutal with our opponents in a tactical manner. Only I’m in the unenviable position of being the direct commander of it all… I already hated the idea of sending the pets of others out to fight.

Sighing audibly, I firmed my face and shook my head.

“Roxy, is Jade already in the midst of setting up or getting started? Is Edie in contact with Marshall and Chase? Also contact Ray and ask if Everest is getting the snow bound pets setting up their part in this.” Well time to get started on things.

“Jade’s already moving her extended list of friends. Edie is in contact with Marshall and Chase, also watching the alien ship landing in the general area you circled… if a little bit further away, which is good for us since we’ve set up the area earlier. Ray says Everest is getting it ready already and that she’s a little bit uncomfortable about what she’s currently doing.” Don’t need to tell me that Roxy, I already knew Everest was going to have some issues with what I’m asking of her and her team here. “Scoot Racoonerson is already ready with his job and has an engineering team in position for the other things.”

“I would hate to be a guy in a giant robot right about now.” I commented dryly as the airfield was on the far side of things and closer to the travelers’ tent that Arceus left us with. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

-Paw-tucket outskirts, front line of the alien invasion, Chase-

“Chase, did any of our adventures ever get this dangerous?” Yes, they did Marshall, but we’re usually looking on the bright side of things too much to notice. That and we don’t deal with super villains every other day.

“Everest taught an elephant to ski... under duress.” It was one of the weirder ones, but it was still one of the more dangerous things to have happened in our line of work. Everest wasn’t just a puppy for snow rescue, she was a mountain climbing specialist as well.

“Wasn’t there a one ton boulder involved in that incident?” Yes Marshall, we led dangerous lives.

“The little elephant could have hurt her too if the elephant had slammed into her with how heavy it was and it lost control of its skiing.” So yes, dangerous was our general lot in life in Paw Patrol, also hurt was the nice word for it. Hit with that much weight at those speeds wouldn’t end well.

I knew more of the dangers involved than the others in Paw Patrol were willing to acknowledge existed to themselves, Skye was at least aware of the dangers of crashing and Everest knew how bad avalanches could get so there was that too. We met Rubble in a tree hanging over the edge of a cliff, enough said about that situation. Zuma has almost drowned multiple times and became really good at swimming. There’s even Marhsall’s numerous incidents, which he has gotten better about since meeting Pom and finding out what the problem was.

It’s a tossup between Ryder trusting us to handle dangerous situations and keeping us entirely safe from the worst of things that could have actually come at us so far. Paw Patrol something of a marketing gimmick and we sold well. We did actually do good and very real work, but we weren’t usually doing the really hard stuff… like assisting in stopping an alien invasion.

“It didn’t though… we should consider ourselves lucky I guess.” Well it was very lucky, Marshall, to have not been thrust into a situation like this without Ryder or our Paw Patrol vehicles before now.

The alien ship had landed and it didn’t take long before it started letting out large orange and yellow colored bipedal cat robots with what looked to be silly lightbulbs sticking out of the top of their heads. You can tell they were not friendly just by looking at them with their red eyes and grumpy faces. At least said eyes weren’t glowing, but still they looked plenty evil enough to me already without adding that.

“We’re always lucky every day Marshall we can spend more time together as friends and as a team.” Except for this one apparently and I was worried, I turned to Edie. “How long do we have to hold this position for?”

“We need to slow their march for ten minutes.” The colorful bird Edie answered, as she looked over her paw pad device. “Then we’ll need to safely retreat, we can call in the Roller Derby teams early if we need to, but Pom wants them on reserve and ready for the later stages of things. Udder Chaos will apparently be heading them… she really could stand to tell people her real name. Anyway, Skye will be ready to lend aerial assistance in a few minutes, but they’ll need to reload after every shot so they’ll be making them count and can only do a single flyby.”

We saw a mostly metal cat move to the front of the army of scary large robots. Gee, I wonder what happened to him to make him like that.

“This is the pitiful force you could send out to face me, how pathetic!” Crossing his arms the metal bodied bipedal cat who wore purple cape and clothing seemed to be happy that we weren’t presenting a very capable force of dealing with him. He was definitely alien if the visible green fur on his head was anything to go by. We were hearing him because he was broadcasting his voice at us. “Cat-bots attack, ruin their perfect little society and conquer it in the name of Mechanikat!”

No chance for peaceful talk or surrender I guess.

• (Insert Mario and Luigi: Partner’s in Time, Boss Battle theme)-

There were a lot of cats, dogs, snakes, lizards and plenty of other pets here all staring grimly as the robots started to march on us. They were all wearing protective gear, but had no weapons with which to fight with and we definitely didn’t actually want to fight those cat-bots up close without a lot of gear to help out with that. We were just presenting a united front at the moment.

“No problem too big!” I said as I turned to Marshall standing by my side.

“No pup too small!” Marshall responded cheerfully even when we had hundreds of those things coming at us.

“All birds move out and distract the cat-bots!” Edie stated and raised a flag in her wing to wave it over her head. With all the birds on nearby trees or buildings taking off, things had started… the battle certainly hadn’t yet.

At best the birds were just going to fly around the heads of the cat-bots to distract them, which is our entire purpose here.

We weren’t here to win a fight, we were here to slow down the enemy and lead them into making a huge mistake. A mistake like a few of the cat-bots taking a swing or two at the birds and incidentally knocking other cat-bots down.

The birds had them completely distracted and managed to stop the entire army, they even managed to take down a few without even touching them by making them attack each other.

“You imbeciles ignore the birds for now, we can deal with them later, keep marching on the ones on the ground!” Well that wasn’t good, Mechanikat put a stop to that plan.

Now if only the next part of our plan wasn’t already set up for that.

“Tell them to knock out the supports now!” Hopefully I called it soon enough to Edie as the cat-bots were crossing the field at us.

Suddenly large sections of the ground started crumbled and collapsed out from under the cat-bots, they seriously started losing numbers in droves as they fell into the hundreds of pits that opened up in the ground. Said pits were filled with a very weird smelling mud that was splashed everywhere all over the cat-bots that fell into the collapsing field.

The cat-bots that weren’t destroyed, ignored the mud that got stuck to them and continued to wade forward over the bodies of their fallen machine comrades.

The only part that hadn’t collapsed was the central road where Marshall and I were currently standing as several cat-bots continued to march up to us, this was planned and hopefully we could stall them out with our pup packs. The pets behind us started organizing into position behind us to prepare for the retreat, we just had to hold on a little longer.

We had things like this set up for the other directions the evil alien invaders could have come from, this was the best scenario according to Pom and we’re glad the robots didn’t actually have any ranged weapons.

“Grapple!” My pup pack extended and fired a grapple claw and it clamped onto the oncoming cat-bot’s pointy right ear, it quickly pulled me forward and I slammed all four of my paws into its face roughly. “Wire nets!”

I kicked off in a high back flip and fired off a series of interconnected metal nets that covered multiple cat bots with a wire leading between them.

“Water!” Marshall shouted and my hind paws were pressing into the two water cannon tubes that popped out of his pack. I was blasted high into the air by the spouts a second later as he sent out a spray of water blasted forth in a wide cone, it soaked the various cat-bots and pushed them back with or without the bits of metal netting on them.

“Taser!” I fired off the dart and wire down and at an angle. It came from the opposite side of my pack from my grapple down into one of the now wet cat-bots and the cat-bots lit up and started to explode and quite violently at that.

“Grapple!” Grapples were standard issue for pup packs after a specific number of incidents. Marshall ran under me as he pulled me back towards him and managed to stop in place without slip sliding all over. Marshall caught me on his back as I came down and quickly started backing us away from the danger of the electrified and violently shaking robots as I retracted my taser darts wire away from them.

The cat-bots that exploded caused several others behind them that hadn’t been caught in the water blast to explode as well in a chain reaction. That pushed back the cat-bot forces that were still crossing the collapsed field covered in the strange smelling mud.

“Are you two alright?” Edie asked as she hovered nearby with the paw pad clutched in her talons.

“We’re fine, I’m surprised that we managed to pull that off!” Marshall stated cheerfully. “It was awesome!”

“Marshall don’t stop backing up!” Hopping off I was quickly backing up beside him as the cat-bots started clearing out the destroyed cat-bots and were coming after us.

“Should I call in the Roller Derby teams?” Edie asked as she kept hovering behind us.

“Edie, coming in from above! Marshall, Chase, if you can hear me, then back up a little further. I wouldn’t want to accidentally hit my own teammates!” That was Skye’s voice!

We backed up to the line of pets that would cause their own distractions like the birds if necessary, some of said birds were Edie’s friends that were being entirely ignored.

“Clear the airspace!” Edie hollered to the birds and they all scattered away as we heard the incoming sound of the flying hamster wheels.

The cat-bots were starting to overcome the collapsing ground trap. I and Marshall successfully held the small bottleneck, only for them to be almost upon us again.

“What are you going to do, hit my forces with toy planes?” Mechanikat stated over the speakers as he oversaw his army from a distance, we still needed to draw him and Snooky away from his ship.

“No, but we are going to hit them with modified firework bombs!” Shouted Skye as hundreds of Fly Wheels started diving from the sky, oddly making the same noises as a remote controlled plane would. They let loose tons of rockets into the collapsed ground trap… incidentally this ignited all the stuff that went unnoticed on the ground by the cat bots and a massive firestorm started.

“Hope I don’t have to put out this fire…” Marshall mumbled as we watched the world light up in front of us.

The collapsing ground trap had been turned into an inferno, as what might have been mud at the bottom of the collapsing ground trap wasn’t exactly normal mud. We learned some science about 'oil based mud' before this happened, really fascinating stuff that was used in drilling… except without water and in dry conditions like today it made for an effective double up trap.

The inferno melted quite a number of cat-bots metal parts together and blew out a number of goofy looking lightbulbs on top of their heads, rendering a number of them harmless statues. The flames also locked up the ones that hadn’t been in the mud or got covered in the stuff from the heat alone.

Numerous explosions continued to rain down around the cat-bots, even if each Fly Wheel only carried two explosive they had to fire both at once, there were more than a hundred flying hamster wheels in the air bombarding the cat-bots so that was a lot of good damage.

“Woohoo, going back for a reload, stay safe down there guys!” Skye called out as she flew by us smiling as several other Fly Wheels flew along above heading back.

The flames quickly petered out as they burned through the oil based mud rather quickly, the mud hardening and becoming brittle. The field was now covered in cat-bots trying to move the destroyed or disabled cat-bots out of the way.

“What the heck, where did you get those things from!? This planet was said to have no active threats to stop my rule!” Mechanikat stated as if he had never seen flying hamster wheels before, probably hadn’t since this was my first time seeing them too. The guy obviously hadn’t done his research on Paw-tucket or the planet of Petopia, he wasn’t welcome here and we were going to show him why it was a bad idea to mess with the peace around here. “No matter, Snooky get out there and assist the cat-bots while I get the giant robot of my magnificent visage going!”

“Pom, the enemy made a confirmed mention of giant robot, so we’re going to need those setups soon!” Edie called into the paw pad as she landed and looked at the surrounding pets.

“Five more minutes before you can fall back, hold them a little longer. Jade is still getting things into position! We have most of the setups for the giant robot ready to go, can’t be as big as that spaceship is, so we’ll be able to do some real damage for Dog Star Patrol to get in and finish things off!” The first part of the plan was working so far. “Marshall is everyone okay so far?”

“Yes we’re fine, but Snooky is being sent after us while Mechanikat goes to get his giant robot!” Marshall answered and then we saw Snooky’s Mad Cat Machine as it marched onto the field, it had ranged weapons and many started pets on the ground started scattering as rockets fire in the direction of the Fly Wheels. Two fly wheels on the tail of flying away were caught in an explosion and started to glide to the ground badly damaged and smoking badly. “Change that, two Fly Wheels just got shot down and last we saw they were smoking as they glided into the Paw-tucket city. Can we get some advice on what to do Pom?”

We were only presenting the front of a force that could somewhat fight the cat-bots… at least for the time being. The actual fighting will come soon enough, well beyond what Marshall and I have already done with slowing them down anyway.

“Just hold their attention for a few more minutes in whatever way you can, help is on the way. When you see some pitching machines, retreat to them. You should have everyone backing up anyway and don’t let the cat-bots get close enough to catch anyone. I’m sending Caper Canine in to draw Snooky’s attention and stop him from bombarding you at range. Edie send someone out to check on those brave pilots and make sure they are okay.” Pom could be clearly heard worrying about putting us all in danger, but this world needed help and protection. The pets were willing to fight, but they definitely weren’t able with magically reduced statures against eight foot tall robots. “She will pull back when the giant robot comes into play, she’ll be there in a minute. Dolly I’m authorizing you to use Haste, make it count!”

“Haste!” I heard Dolly shout, but what would the word ‘haste’ do? If Caper Canine was where Pom was, she was entirely across town from…

“Make Caper Canine’s arrival ten seconds… almost forgot to take momentum boosting into account on top of what 'haste' does to her.” The encroaching cat-bots were already scaring all of us into an early retreat despite a number of pets growling, hissing and glaring. They weren’t exactly going to be great fighters, not until we retreated into the more urban portions of Paw-tucket. Still it was quite a sight to see them holding the line even if we were all slowly moving backwards.

A slightly red glowing Dalmatian blurred past us and caved in the head of a cat-bot with a skateboard swing to the head that was almost close enough to grab us, then said Dalmatian started hammering the entire line of cat-bots back entirely by herself.

“Aw yeah, Caper Canine in the field. Watch my back will you guys? Thanks!” Dolly shouted as she tore through the cat-bots with incredible speed and ease while swinging about her board. With each impact destroying a cat-bot, Dolly seemed to flow from one motion into the next without pause and expertly avoided any attacks coming at her. If they could be called attacks since the cat-bots couldn’t even begin touch the glowing Dalmatian at the speeds she was moving at. The cat-bots were bulky, big and rather intimidating, but they just couldn’t keep up with Dolly blurring about in the air it was almost like she was flying. “Hit me if you can Snicker Doodles, ten points to you if can actually tag this Dalmatian’s backside!”

Dolly appearance emboldened the pets to hold the line with determination and we stopped moving backwards. Not that we were doing any fighting, but we had to keep up appearances that we were going to do at least some fighting. That was about all we had at the moment, aside from my and Marshall’s skills with our pup packs. The two of us could do some damage, but the taser on my pack used a lot of battery power.

“It’s Snooky Wookums, how can you keep forgetting my name so easily Caper Canine, I’m known throughout an entire galaxy!” The angry looking bipedal cat machine crossed its arms.

“That sounds like it’s your problem Smoky Cooked Yams!” Dolly stated with grin as she stopped to stand on top of a cat-bot with her hind legs and pulling out a bone while holding her skateboard as a shield.

“Rarrghhh!” Snooky was now focused on attacking Dolly with rockets and a laser from the tail of the machine. This wasn’t good for Snooky since the cat-bots were in the way and Dolly was closing in on him with an insane amount of ease despite the cat-bots trying and failing to slow her down in the slightest.

“Setup four is done, we’ve made good time with that one thanks to Brainy’s help. All preparations are almost complete.” Pom called out from Edie’s paw pad. “Everyone on the front lines get ready for a full retreat, leave no pet behind! We’ll let these Felonious Felines really have it in the retaliation phase of things. Pets of Paw-tucket, as a rather interesting figure I met once said and I would like to quote in this moment for what we’re about to do… IT’S- PLAYTIME~!”

"Everyone retreat to behind the pitching machines!" Marshall called out as we finally saw them arrive with pets slowly pushing them into position and others moving loaded baskets of baseballs and tennis balls.

Paw-tucket was more than prepared for this 'Mechanikat' and he definitely had what coming to him soon with his assault, he had absolutely no idea at all as to what was about to happen here.