Behind The Mask

The Mask Is Off

     "RUFF! ZIPLINE!"

The young pup starred downward, right onto Brutus's whole body with blood coming out of his chest and flowing upwards towards him. Chase commanded one of his ziplines to turn over and shot it upwards, the line wiggled at first before it straightened out after getting a good grasp of the railings. Then the sinking feeling came to his stomach when he shot the other zipline towards Brutus, but unlike the railings, he was further down and both of them were already halfway down the tower. The young shepherd could hear his fast heartbeat and intense breathing increase and his furrowed eyebrows began to hurt.

The fall lasted longer this time, long enough for the zipline to reach Brutus to save him from the fall.

So then why...

Why does he still hold Brutus's body on his paws that were now covered up in blood?

The next thing Chase felt was sweat running down his face, his entire body was hot, hotter than normal temperature. He was sitting up from a bed, the blanket and the pillow was a little soaked from his sweat. He was breathing rapidly and his eyes were widened. His heart felt like it could burst out of his chest in any second. He felt sweat leaving his eyes, the only thing was, it wasn't sweat. It was his own tears. He wiped them off before looking down. His blanket was blue and when he looked to his left, he saw the sight of Adventure City from the Paw Patrol Adventure Tower. His eyes slightly widened as his mind slowly started to process it all.

"CHASE!"

The brown pup heard multiple voices crying out his name and the next thing he saw was many familiar faces with worried looks.

"How are you feeling?"

"Are you okay?"

"What happened?"

"Are you hurt?"

"Uh..." Chase blinked a couple times too. He couldn't even get a word out as he was in shock of seeing the faces in front of him and being bombarded with questions asking if he was okay, or if he was hurt or asking what happened. Suddenly, a certain Dalmatian softly pushed through them and stood in front of him, facing the rest of them.

"Guys! Come on, give him some space. He just woke up, he still needs some time to recover." Chase hasn't heard Marshalls voice in a while. The pup looked down at his leg and noticed that some parts of his legs were wrapped up in bandages. Everybody went silent and looked at the German Shepherd to see his expression of awe. It was clear to everyone that he was still trying to process everything and them crowding him and asking him multiple questions at once wasn't helping at all. So they sadly smiled before finally backing off and leaving Chase alone to recover.

Chase blinked a couple times again, everything happened just so fast. He then looked up to see Marshall looking back at him with a nervous smile.

"Uh...t-thanks."

For a second, Marshall looked surprised to hear Chase thanking him.

"O-Oh! It's no problem." Marshall nervously laughed while scratching the back of his neck.

There was awkward silence between the two.

"Um. Are you...feeling better?" Marshall asked nervously. He didn't get a response for a couple of seconds. Even though his heart ached and his stomach made him want to throw up, Chase answered:

"Yeah."

There was another moment of silence between the two. But then Marshall looked down at Chase's legs and he gasped.

"Hold on a second." He said and ran off, leaving Chase behind to sit on the bed. Before he could ask himself what just happened, Marshall quickly returned with his pup-pack and sat right across from Chase. He softly and carefully took Chase's left leg and the Shepherd saw that one of the bandages were entirely soaked in blood and some was escaping it. Marshall removed one of the bandages revealing that one of the wounds had opened up. Chase watched as Marshall carefully used a washcloth with soap to clean the wound. He then finally sprayed the wound and applied the bandages while also cleaning the blood around his leg.