Petey was being a lot more careful with the new ball because he'd kind of destroyed the first one, and he knew from experience that breaking balls meant he wouldn't get a new one for a while, but if he'd found a new one so fast afterward, didn't that mean he could find new ones all day? Was that possible!?

Pausing for a moment, Petey raised his head, a shocking thought occurring to him. The squishy ball sneakily started rolling away, so Petey patted it and it unfortunately exploded. A big blue board appeared in front of him, a lot of numbers growing like ropes, but he wasn't really paying attention, because there was yet another ball close by!

Did that mean...

Infinite balls!?!?

Dave was pulling at his hair and staring off into the distance where the chew toy had disappeared, muttering a lot of words under his breath that Petey didn't know the meanings of but were probably very nice. Stomping over to Petey, Dave booped him on the snoot, saying with some heat, "Bad! That was very bad! Do you know how hard it is to find the Herosword once it's been lost? Very! It's VERY hard! Bad dog!"

Ordinarily, Petey would have been shocked at the phrases Dave was saying, and would likely have laid down and made sad noises, if not for one simple fact.

Dave had booped his snoot.

Petey was a bit confused as to what he was supposed to do now. He could hardly boop Dave's snoot - it was pretty high up and didn't have much weight to it. He had a feeling that booping it wouldn't have nearly as much effect as Dave's boop had done to Petey.

Lying down in a comfortable position, Petey started thinking hard, his doggy logic working overtime. If Petey couldn't boop Dave's snoot...

...couldn't he snoot his boop?

There wasn't a lot of definitions as far as Petey was concerned when it came to boops and snoots as related to verbs and nouns and other words like that, but he'd heard a few terms that were pretty similar to 'boop', so he just had to pick one that felt right!

Dave's expression softened as the dog lay down, and he crouched. "...Sorry. I know you don't really get what's going on, it's just - that sword is really powerful, okay? I kind of need it for doing hero stuff."

Obviously Petey accepted the hooman's apology, but he still needed to figure out what snooting could possibly mean, and how he could do it to Dave's boop. It was a complicated problem, one that he wished he could discuss with a few more dogs. Maybe a Chihuahua. They were incredibly good at finding devious ways to get back at their owners, and even though Petey disagreed that owners were ever bad, the tiny dogs were very smart and knew how to make it look like an accident, and would probably know how to help him.

A bell went off in Petey's mind. All he needed to do was find some more dogs!

Getting to his feet with a satisfied 'whoof' of displaced air, Petey shook himself off and raised his sniffer, then started sniffing. To his surprise, his sniffer was working better than ever! It was working so well he could smell the chew toy's path through the air and over the mountain where it had landed in a swamp and was being approached by some dirty-looking not-hoomans that maybe didn't look quite as nice as hoomans.

Redirecting his attention, Petey started sniffing for dogs around him, and his sniffer twitched as new smells crashed into his senses. There was a big lizardy creature with wings hiding in the mountain and had wings not unlike the flying rats back in Petey's old home. There was a HUGE diggy thing really deep underground, tunneling through dirt. It looked like fun, but Petey had to focus!

Shaking his head and sending the remains of the dirt flying out of his lovely fur, Petey raised his sniffer and thought dogs dogs dogs dogs dogs. He kept repeating the word, eyes shut tight as he hunted for other dogs. Finally, he found one! Well, it wasn't like any dog he'd seen, no. Six legs and a really long tail, and a weird-shaped head, but it was the closest thing to a dog he'd found so far!

Turning around to face the smell, Petey bent down and stared forward, feeling a bite of nostalgia. One of his very oldest owners would tell him to 'point' and he'd do this very same thing! Of course, that owner had wanted him to bite ducks and geese, and Petey hadn't liked it very much. But then he'd get really hard pats, uncomfortable ones, if he didn't bite the ducks and geese and bring them back to the owner, so he had left, very sad.

Shaking his head again, Petey squinted his eyes and bent down a bit. Dave raised an eyebrow. "What are you-"

Petey ran. To his surprise, he could run A LOT faster than he possibly could think he could. So fast that the meadow turned into a road before he knew it, and he crashed through a really tall stone wall before he could stop, and he glanced back apologetically, pausing for a moment. The big bricks were frozen midair, people left motionless in a walking position. Carefully, Petey nudged the giant bricks back into place as best as he could, and moved some people out of the way. Satisfied, he turned and kept hunting for the dog-thing.

Ambling through the streets, he kept trying to get pats and rubs from people walking around (and even a few people that didn't entirely smell like people), but they were just as unmoving as the other ones. Petey didn't mind. Once they started moving again, he could get pats and rubs then!

He had to go in a dark alley, but he was familiar with dark alleys. He'd had to live in one a while ago, and hadn't had any owners for a while. A few moments later, he found the smell coming from behind a thick metal door, so he nudged it open. Once again, the weird super-slow movement thing happened, the edges of the door crumpling as the doorframe started turning into dust aimed inward, but Petey ignored it. If he didn't know what was happening, then he could always ask the dog-thing what was going on!

He found the dog-thing in the middle of a big circle with a CAT! IT WAS A CAT!!

Petey nearly short-circuited for a moment as he processed the fact that there was a CAT!!! bigger than Petey clawing at the dog-thing, frozen in place as it silently hissed with a very large mouth and super huge teeth. Sitting for a moment, he scratched at his ears with his back leg, considering his options.

One, he could sit and wait for everything to start moving again. Two, he could help out the dog-thing and get it away from the CAT!!!! until everything was better. And three, he could go away and find another dog-thing or something similar to help him out.

Petey laid down on his stomach, unusually thoughtful as he observed the unmoving battle. The dog-thing didn't look very healthy. Its ribs were almost as visible as Petey's were at one point, and it had a lot of sad scratches all over its hide. Its fur was pretty scruffy, and there was a look of visible desperation in its eyes.

He made his decision. Picking himself up, Petey put his mouth on the CAT!!!!!'s neck and tugged slightly. Standing back, he watched it start kinking sideways in a kind of unnatural way, but shook it off as a side effect of the everything-isn't-moving thing.

Carefully, he poked his head under the dog-thing's stomach and stood. It was bigger than Petey, and it took him a few minutes to get used to moving around with it on his back, but once he did, he left the weird circle-place with all the cheering mean-looking hoomans and went upstairs. Pausing at the door, he tilted his head. The thick metal was bent forward at a really sharp angle, ad the doorframe was starting to rip itself out of the wall.

Shaking his head, Petey decided to continue on. He didn't know all that much about doors and what they were and weren't supposed to look like, after all.

He was going to find a nice place to-

His head snapped upward as he had an idea. A good idea!

Just go back to the hooman with the chew toy, and bring the dog-thing with him!

Decision made, he happily sped back to the hooman.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The wall exploded inwards and outwards at the same time, massive chunks of it launching into the kingdom and then abruptly reversing their direction, hurtling off into the distance. It was a shockingly loud noise, one that caused everyone nearby to drop in shock, raising whatever defensive skills they possessed.

On the other side of the kingdom, at a less-than-legal animal fighting tournament, the magically reinforced door was sent to the other end of the building in two pieces, neatly shearing through walls and doors as it did.

In the arena below, where a Sleiphound and a Cheshire were fighting, the hound vanished as the Cheshire's neck snapped, taking most of its head with it and easily decapitating the formidable creature.

Petey didn't know about any of that, though. He was waiting for Dave to come back to full speed, ignoring the massive blue board next to him and the rapidly climbing numbers.