Petey was chewing on a stick.

It was an excellent stick, and although it kept breaking, it would fix itself if he thought about it hard enough. Which was naturally very hard, but it always coincided with a blue board showing up, so all he had to do was think hard until it appeared, and then everything was fine again. As for the dog-thing that Dave called a sleep-hound, it was napping on the nice soft grass after Dave had something with a lot of green light that apparently made the dog-thing feel better. Petey really wanted to figure out how that worked, and maybe if he could do it.

Dave was messing around with a white flat thing floating over his hand, talking into it animatedly. "No, we can't take it out! This dog's stats are higher than mine. By a lot, actually."

Someone spoke to him in the screen and Dave shook his head. "Not just a few million. He's like a whole army of me, but with their power multiplied by another million. It's insane how stupidly powerful this dog is."

Petey was not overly concerned with the doings of what exactly Dave was doing. The stick had finally splintered into too many pieces for him to see, and now he wasn't sure how to bring it back. He couldn't remember what it had looked like originally and now the blue board wasn't back.

Dave tossed the white plate away with a grumpy snort, and Petey lifted his shaggy head to look at him. The hooman smiled tiredly at the expression, and he knelt down to waggle Petey's cheeks. "Man, you're way too cute for this world. It'd be nice if you hadn't tossed my sword over the whole freakin' mountain, though..."

Petey's ears perked up. Did he want his stick back? Petey could do that!

Raising his nose to the air, Petey cast around for the moment of his own slobber and found it in a few places. Aside from the nice big city with a large hole in it, traces of his smells were on Dave, on the dog-thing, and really far away over the mountain.

Time to Fetch!

Petey lowered his head and lifted his front paws. Dave's smile froze. "Wait, are you about to-"

And he was gone. Petey was sprinting forward as fast as he could, straight for the big mountain that Dave's chew toy was behind. His fur was flattened against his skin, and his cheeks were ballooning outward from the speed, but Petey was fine with that. He would get the stick and then Dave would be happy!

Distracted by his thoughts, Petey didn't notice when he made it to the mountain and he only barely noticed crashing into its base, but he definitely noticed when the ground dropped out from under his paws. With a startled woof, he fell into the inky black abyss below, the only light coming from his glowing fur.

Except it wasn't entirely black and wasn't completely inky. As Petey fell, his paws splayed out to every side, he saw the glint of yellow fire on sticks, carried by hoomans wearing black curtains far below. Petey knew all about curtains. CATS!!! liked to claw at curtains and then blame Petey for it.

He didn't like curtains very much anymore.

A few moments of more falling later, Petey hit the ground, and his paws sank into the rocks with a really loud BOOM. The people wearing the curtains spun around holding more shiny sticks, shouting a lot, and Petey noticed that there were more people.

These people looked really hungry. They weren't wearing much, and angry red striped covered them in some parts. With their hands held out in front of them and put in small metal bits that were chained to each other, they looked really sad and maybe a bit... in pain.

It made Petey sad.

Moving forward, Petey watched the people wearing curtains take a few steps back, holding their shiny sticks nervously. They were mostly staring at his fur, which was glowing really brightly for some reason. They shouted something he didn't understand, so he just ignored them and walked towards the sad-looking people. Their faces were full of scared-sad as he approached, and their chains clanked as they moved away.

One of the curtain-people ran over with a loud yell and brought his metal stick down on Petey's fur. It broke with a loud clang, sending metal shards everywhere.

One of the shards hurtled and then slowed to creep through the air at one of the sad people. Petey watched it for a moment as it was brought to a near-complete stop in front of him, and he nipped it out of the air. His teeth practically pulverized the shard, crushing it into little bits that tasted like spoons.

Once he was done biting the potential danger, he let everything go back to normal, and everyone stared at him with wide eyes.

He ignored them in favor of going to the sad people and very calmly eating the chains off their hands. He didn't like chains very much. They kept him from playing and probably kept these people from playing too.

After he finished, he sat down and waited for a moment, his happiness sweeping across the floor and digging chunks of rock up as it did. Nobody moved for a long time.

Tentatively, one of the really young hoomans walked forward. The hooman standing behind her let out a little cry, reaching a hand out, but the man standing next to her pulled her back just as quickly. Hesitating, the smool hooman patted Petey's head.

He beamed happily, and the glow of his fur increased in intensity. Standing, he gently pushed against her legs and then licked her face, and her scratched features began mending, the little nicks of red closing and releasing yellow sparks as they did.

Slowly, the sad people started approaching him, petting him and scratching behind his ears, and he happily gave them a lot of hugs and kisses. They started laughing, a hollow and hoarse sound like they hadn't done it in a while, and Petey woofed, his happiness disturbing the air.

The people in curtains started looking angry, and one of them ran forward with his shiny stick upraised, trying to bring it down on the no-longer-sad people. Petey had clear memories of his owners using sticks like that. It had always - always - hurt. This hooman was trying to hurt his peoples!

Petey easily leaned up and bit down on the stick, and a blast of air sliced out of the sides of his mouth, cutting through the stone and the mean hooman. The stick vanished into a little rip in space, and blood sprayed out from the mean hooman's severed arm.

As the hooman screamed in pain, the spray of blood spread through the air towards them, but was deflected by Petey's glow. Petey was concerned. He hadn't meant to hurt the hooman!

It'd worked on the not-sad-anymore people, so Petey licked the man's bleeding stump, and his arm jumped back up into the socket and fixed itself. Everybody stared at it for a while, and Petey's tongue lolled.

A moment later, he realized that he should maybe get going and find Dave's chew toy, but what about the not-sad people? They looked like they wanted to get out from under the mountain just as much as he did.

With a shrug, he turned around and began to trundle off in a direction, sending a confident woof back at the hoomans to follow.

He was a Good Boy. He could find his way out.