YES!” exclaimed Robodog, back in the Lost Patrol’s shed. “WE! All of us must work together to find the dognapped dogs. And I need to introduce you to a little friend who has been helping me fight the baddies!”
Robodog then called out: “You can come in now.”
“Are there any dogs in there?” came a voice from the other side of the door.
“Just three!”
“Are you sure it’s safe?”
“Yes. Of course it’s safe,” replied Robodog, before swivelling his head back to the Lost Patrol. “You wouldn’t hurt a mouse, would you?”
“A mouse? No!” said Scarper.
“Cute little things,” agreed Gristle.
“Never!” cried Plank.
“Good,” said Robodog, his head swivelling back round to the door. “You can come in now, Ratty!”
The three dogs looked at each other. Even Plank thought it was a strange name for a mouse.
Shyly, Ratty tiptoed into the shed. “Hello! I’m Ratty!”
The three dogs shared another look.
“I can see you are all going to get along just fine,” said Robodog.
“RAT!” howled Scarper.
The three dogs went BANANAS!
They began yelping and chasing the creature all around their shed.
“STOP!” ordered Robodog.
But they wouldn’t. The sight of this creature had hurled them headfirst into a frenzy.
“I am just a big ugly mouse!” cried Ratty.
This did nothing to stop them. They bashed into the walls in their pursuit.
Soon the entire shed collapsed!
There was nowhere left for Ratty to hide, so he leaped on to Robodog’s head.
“ROBODOG! TELL THEM TO STOP!” he pleaded.
“STOP!” ordered Robodog. From his eye, a laser blasted as a warning shot.
The ground smouldered.
FIZZLE!
And there was calm, apart from the sound of the three dogs growling.
“GRRRRRRRR!”
All they wanted in life now was to chase that rat. Nothing else mattered in the world, for all eternity and beyond!
“How could you do that to a poor, defenceless mouse?” asked Robodog.
The Lost Patrol looked at each other in disbelief.
“It’s a rat!” exclaimed Scarper. “Dogs catch rats! It’s just what we do!”
“It’s even called Ratty!” agreed Gristle. “Ratty the rat!”
“Even I know that Ratty is a rat, and I am as silly as a goose!” concluded Plank.
“Don’t insult geese!” remarked Scarper.
“It’s a mouse!” said Robodog.
“What he said,” added Ratty.
“Now stop this nonsense, Lost Patrol! We have important work to do,” added Robodog. “Finding all our fellow dogs!”
“Maybe that’s not such a good idea, after all,” murmured Ratty, eyeing the Lost Patrol warily.
“Fellow dogs?” mocked Scarper.
“Yes,” replied Robodog in a flat monotone.
Scarper rolled his eyes. He and his two furry friends all laughed together.
“HA! HA! HA!”
“YOU’RE NO DOG!” exclaimed Scarper.
Robodog looked down at the ground.
“He’s more of a dog than you will ever be!” snapped Ratty.
The laughter stopped in a heartbeat. The three’s grins turned upside down.
Robodog lifted his metal head. “FOLLOW ME!” He was already trundling off. “Lost Patrol! This is your chance to finally become heroes!”
“Do we have to?” asked Scarper.
“YES!”
The villains were way ahead of them. They had moved on to PART four OF THE CATS’ MASTERPLAN TO DESTROY ROBODOG!
OBTAIN SUPERPOWERS!
The cats forced the professor to create special armoured suits for them, just like Robodog’s. If the professor didn’t do this, then her beloved wife, the chief, would meet a grisly end. This Velma communicated by holding a pen in her paw, and doing a series of drawings, like this…
These drawings were horrific enough for the professor to understand perfectly!
“NOOOOO!” she cried.
Fuzz Manor squatted on the edge of a cliff. The chief had been tied to the driving seat of the truck, and it had been rolled into place right on the edge.
All that was needed was a tiny little push. Then she and the dogs would plummet to the rocks below.
I told you it was grisly.
The professor was a world-class boffin, so these armoured super-suits came fast. The cats observed the progress down in the laboratory of Fuzz Manor, their claws out in case the professor tried any funny business.
“Soon I will have deadly powers! Powers to destroy ROBODOG!” Velma announced to the other three.
“We will all have superpowers!” exclaimed Slash.
“Four against one!” added Codger.
“Robodog won’t stand a chance!” boomed Pavarotti.
Then Velma turned to the professor and bared her fangs. “HISS!”
“I am going as fast as I can!” protested the professor as she attached a booster rocket to a washing machine.
Back at the Police Dog School, Robodog was leading the Lost Patrol across the parade ground.
“Treats!” exclaimed Scarper. “I can smell them, but I can’t see any.”
“Not a one!” complained Gristle.
“Did somebody say ‘treats’?” piped up Plank.
Robodog was putting the whole thing together in his metal mind like a master detective.
“So a trail of treats was laid to trick the dogs out of their kennels to be dognapped…” he mused.
“Not fair!” muttered Plank. “I wish I’d been dognapped.”
“But where were they taken?” asked Robodog.
From his vantage point high up on the robot dog’s head, Ratty’s eyes searched the ground for clues.
“Tyre tracks!” he exclaimed.
“Good work, Ratty,” replied Robodog. “Truck tyre tracks! All we need to do is follow the tracks and we will find out where the dogs were taken! This way!”
With that, Robodog sped off along the road.
WHIRR!
The three members of the Lost Patrol watched him go.
“Well, it’s way past my bedtime,” said Gristle. “Let me know how you get on. I’ll need a lie-in. So I’ll catch up with you around lunch! Late lunch!”
The other two shared a look, and then headbutted his butt.
“No! No! Gristle!” said Scarper. “We’re all in this together!”
Back at Fuzz Manor, the cats’ super-suits were finished.
Sporting wicked grins, the four cats leaped into their suits.
Once inside, they weren’t just cats, they were SUPERCATS!
The first thing they did was fly up and out of the laboratory, carrying the poor professor in their metal claws.
“NOOOO!” she protested, but she was no match for four supercats. They opened the door to the truck and tied her to the passenger seat.
“Not the quiet night in we were hoping for,” muttered the chief.
“No!” agreed the professor.
“Now we can destroy Robodog once and for all!” exclaimed Velma. “We will fly to the Police Dog School and blast him to a million metal pieces! FOLLOW ME!”
Velma engaged her booster rocket and zoomed up into the night sky.
BLAST!
Her three supercats followed her.
BLAST! BLAST! BLAST!
Behind them, the police dogs were still stuck in the truck. They howled and howled for someone, anyone, to rescue them. But the only people who could hear were tied to the seats in front.
“AROO! AROO!”
“ROBODOG!” shouted the chief. “We need you! Where are you?”
CREAK!
The truck wobbled over the edge of the cliff. One big gust of wind and they would all be jam, spread over the rocks below.
Meanwhile, Robodog, Ratty and the Lost Patrol had reached the edge of the city. The truck’s tyre marks ran into the main road that cut right through the centre of Bedlam. The road was a patchwork of tracks, and now it was impossible to work out which way the truck had travelled.
“What now?” asked Ratty.
But, before Robodog could answer, four streaks of light lit up the night sky.
“What the…?” said Scarper.
It was only when these streaks grew nearer that Robodog knew what they were.
“CATS!” he exclaimed. “FLYING CATS!”
“NOT JUST FLYING CATS!” shouted Velma from inside her armour-plated flying suit. “SUPERCATS! ROBODOG, WE WERE COMING FOR YOU AT THE POLICE DOG SCHOOL! BUT NOW I SEE YOU HAVE SAVED US THE TROUBLE OF GOING ALL THE WAY THERE! PREPARE TO MEET THY DOOM!”
With that, she shot a missile from her super-suit.
ZOOM!
It flew straight at the dogs on the ground!