Rivalry {Part 2: Chapters 4-6}  

Chapter 4

 

 

 

"Pst! Skip!" Fang trotted across the lawn of Lady and Tramp's backyard, keeping his eye on Angel and Scamp as he sidled past them, long golden ears never moving even as he walked.

The yellow labrador puppy Skip turned to his Golden Retriever frind, scowling like always.

"C'mere a minute," Fang hissed, picking up a paw and holding it to the right a bit. "And hurry."

Skip rose to his paws and padded over, scratching at a flea. "Yeah, what?" he growled.

"Keep it down, boso," Fang muttered. "Get Affy, too. We gotta talk. Meet me under the front porch of this dump, got it?"

"Check." Skip rolled his very-green eyes and turned towards the female African shepherd puppy chatting with Danielle--one of Lady's Cocker Spaniel triplet daughters, the one with the white collar.

Skip stopped walking and turned to sneer at Fang over his shoulder. "Want me to tell her you called her 'Affy?'"

Fang didn't wince on the outside, but he was certainly doing so on the inside. "Nah, that's okay."

"You sure?" Skip smirked.

"Just get Afghanna, Skip, and never mind the wise cracks!" Fang barked. Skip set off.

Lady and Tramp looked up from their sunbathing by the flower bed.

Fang grinned sheepishly, trying to let them know nothing was out of the ordinary. He seethed inwardly. You couldn't find good help these days, could you?

He sat down and gnawed at an itch on his right shoulder for a bit, watching Angel and Scamp talk and laugh a few feet away. A growl rose in his throat. After today, Scamp wouldn't be spending a second with Angel. The pomeranian would have eyes only for Fang when the plan was in motion.

Fang finally trotted around to the front of the house and scotted underneath the porch, squeezing one eye closed and showing his teeth out of the corner of his mouth, staring up with one open red eye at the spiderwebs above him. He had to lay down; there was room underneath the porch to sit up properly.

Finally Afghanna and Skip arrived. Skip crawled under first. Afghanna shook her ears and scooted underneath the porch beside Fang with a disgusted look in her mismatched, one-brown-one-blue eyes.

"That House Dog Danielle can talk!" Afghanna grunted. "Thanks for calling your little 'meeting', Fang, or I'd be there all day."

"Yeah," Skip agreed, snorting. "Why are we here, anyway?"

"Simple." Fang grinned at them and dropped his eyelids halfway. "I got a plan."

"I'm out," Afghanna immediately began crawling for the exit.

Fang stopped her with a paw on her tail. "Hang on a second, Affy, you ain't even heard it yet!"

He flinched, knowing he'd said the wrong thing.

Too late.

Afghanna scooted her body around to poke her black, pointed nose against his brown one and growl, "Say that again?"

"You know what I mean," Fang muttered.

"What's my name? Say it!"

"Afghanna," mumbled Fang.

"What was that?"

"Afghanna, Afghanna!" Fang barked in her face, using his own nose to shove hers away. "Get that thing outta my face before somebody trips on it."

Afghanna settled back with her forepaws in front of her, satisfied. "Give the puppy a bone. Whaddaya know, Skip, he got it right."

Skip grinned wickedly at her, enjoying Fang's uncomfortable expression.

"As I was saying," Fang continued, exasperated, "I've got a plan."

"Ugh," Afghanna scoffed and rolled her mismatched eyes. "Everytime you've got a plan, my muzzle gets three more white hairs--and I'm just a pup!"

Skip, who was a month or two younger, looked confused. "But all of your fur is white. Well, except for the spots."

Afghanna's coat was dappled with many multicolored spots, tan, brown, gray, gold, yellow, and black. The the rest of her was white, including her muzzle. But her tail and fluffy, circular ears were spotted.

"Can we stick to the subject?" Fang cut in.

"What subject? Your big plan?" Afghanna rested her head on her front paws. "Gimme a break, Fang, we all know it won't work. Whatever it is."

Fang glared at her. "Says you!"

"Then what is it?" Skip arched an eyebrow. "And it better be good. I could do with a fresh bone right about now. So if your plan's a dud, I'm grabbing one of the T-bones in that house pet bowl of theirs and headin' out."

 Fang would've agreed with Skip on normal terms, but this wasn't a normal situation. But these weren't normal terms. "Okay, here's the plan."

Skip and Afghanna leaned in close as Fang whispered it. Afghanna nodded when he was finished. Skip grunted and said it was the smartest one Fang had ever come up with--and that was saying something.

"Alright, you two," Fang crawled out from under the porch. His friends followed. "You know what to do, right?"

Skip grumbled a 'yes'. He hadn't been particularly happy with his part of the plan before, but since when was he happy about anything?
 

"Good. Great. Affy?" Fang turned to her.

Afghanna, for his sake, ignored the fact that he had improperly used her name once again. She gave one, tiny nod of the head and trotted across the grass to the backyard, ready to fullfill her side of the master plot.

"Skipper," Fang locked gazes with Skip, using the lab's full name, overdramatically playing his part of the leader in this plan. He really considered himself leader all the time--in anything--but with this role of leader, he could do it with a bit more style. "Hop to it, kid," he muttered.

Skip opened his mouth--either to protest at being called kid or to take a bite out of Fang's left ear--but decided better of it and followed Afghanna into the backyard.

Fang wriggled his eyebrows. Now to get to his part of the plan.

Instead of trailing after his street-pup friends, Fang turned on his heels and raced at full-speed to the fence in the front yard, sliding through the hole dug in between two fence posts, and bolted down the street. He spied what he was looking for almost immediately as he rounded the corner of the brick-walled building across from Lady and the Tramp's house.

The Dogcatcher's truck.

Standing in the middle of the road, directly kin front of the vehicle so that the driver couldn't miss the sight of him, Fang squared his feet and stood his ground. A grin, fangs showing, spread across his muzzle. He lowered his head and eyelids, one red-orange eyebrow arched in the expression he always used when antagonizing the dogcatcher.

It worked. The cage-reared turck squealed after him as the Golden Retriever pup turned and ran as fast as he could to Lady and Tramp's street, stopping comically in front of their house, pressing himself--dramatically trembling--against the fence.

Meanwhile.......

 

Afghanna approached Angel. She pricked up her ears, hearing the dogcatcher's truck outside the front yard. Good--Fang was on time, for once. He must want this pomeranian's affections badly to be so punctual.

"Did y'hear that?" Afghanna twitched her head in the direction of the front yard, adressing Angel.

Angel got up from where she was laying in the grass, the sun turning her golden fur creamy-yellow. Her lemon-yellow collar's liscense jingled as she got to her paws. Afghanna resisted the urge to curl her lip.

"What?" Angel lifted her crooked ears. "I don't hear anything."

"That!" Afghanna winced. "It's the dogcatcher's truck--wait--where's Fang?" She hoped she sounded convincingly worried.

"Fang?" Angel blinked. "You mean he's gone?"

"What if the dogcatcher caught him?" Afghanna barked. "He's never been in the dogcatcher's net--much less that truck's cage!" She fidgeted, paws splayed, the picture of concern.

Skip was leading Scamp over to the girls. "Hey," he growled in his deep, gruff voice. "I just saw the dogcatcher's truck out front."

Scamp's eyes narrowed at the sound of it.

"Fang's missing." Afghanna informed them. Just like Fang told us to. Just like we rehearsed.

"Yeah?" Skip's eyes widened, but the scowl in his eyebrow-line didn't waver.

"Well, what if he's been caught, what do we do?" Angel yipped.

"Shouldn't we go after them or something?" Scamp asked, looking perplexed.

Angel looked at him. "You're right--"

"Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah," Afghanna cut in, talking rapidly. "Hang on there, house pet. You gonna stick your prissy little neck out for a Street Pup you barely know?" She certainly knew how to play her part.

Angel met the female pup's gaze with cold determination that could only come from experience with life on the streets. "He saved me from the pound once. Who's stopping me from returning the favor, huh?"

Skip craned his head around to gnaw at a flea on his hind leg. He turned back, tongue lolling out. "Fang?" he scoffed. "He saved you from the pound? Yeah, right."

Another yelp came from where the dog pound truck was. Angel's neck hairs lifted. Definitely

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