smash_logs | where oh where has my little dog gone

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where oh where has my little dog gone

Who: Hayato and Jon
What: A masculine bonding experience
When: Sometime around the 11th
Where: Out in the woods
Warnings: Rich people being gigantic babies

At last, Hayato was free from being tethered to an antisocial robot via magical braiding hijinks, even if they still had no idea who was responsible for such a disaster. Truth be told, there were far worse people to be stuck with for an entire week, but Hayato was a man who valued freedom and mobility and, despite his love of being the darling of the public eye, he did like some privacy now and then.

Well, at least that was the worst experience he would ever have to go through here.

So he thought, anyway, but it wasn't long before he came home to find the room to his door open again. At first he wondered if he was getting yet another unexpected (and unwanted) roommate, but then he realized it was probably just the fault of the roommate he already had. What a nuisance. At least nothing was missing...

Except...

One [1] purebred maltese, who did not eagerly greet him at the door.

Melody was a good boy... usually... well, he'd been a little less than perfect since coming to the Academy, but Hayato wrote it off as being upset about sucha drastic change in living conditions. Even so, they'd been here long enough that Melody should have recognized the dorm as 'home' for now and wouldn't have wandered far. It was a wonder that the dog even made it out of the dorm building. Someone must have let him out. At least with the oncoming cold it probably wouldn't take long for him to be pawing at the doors to be let in.

Of course, twenty minutes later, Hayato was still searching and calling for the little fluffball out on the quad. Oh... Oh, no.

"Melody!" Still nothing. Not by the teacher's dorms, or the library, or the student dorms, or the fountain. Not even by the dumpsters... even if he was spoiled by high end kibble, in the end, he was still a dog and such filthy scavenging was kind of hardwired into them. But Hayato was kind of running out of places to look.

The second he found his poor pup he was going to punch Ryuuta right in the stupid face. Maybe that would get him to keep the damn door shut. If only he would get lost instead...

"Oi, you blasted dog...!"

Phew, good thing there was absolutely nobody around who could overhear that and take it as a personal insult or anything.

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"Ec-bloody-scuse me, mate?"

Look who just happened to be rounding the corner as Hayato let loose his terrible slur.

Jon was actually pretty sure that he wasn't the intended target. Buuuut... it might be kind of fun to see the other teacher sweat a little. He actually quite liked Hayato so far. But one couldn't pass up an opportunity like this, could one?

"Hardly the sort of thing you ought yell at a colleague."

"Ah--"

Oh, uh. Whoops. Hayato had nothing against werewolves, mind - he knew of a perfectly nice one back in Asahi Town and all - but he sure didn't want to get on one's bad side. Hopefully he could placate him with charm or something.

"Well, I'm sure the colleague I mean to be insulting will forgive me." Melody was practically his cheer squad's mascot, that was enough like a colleague. "You haven't seen a small white menace running around, have you?"

"Your Pup has nipped off, eh?"

Jon dropped any pretense of being indignant - he had a soft spot for dogs, after all.

"No. I've not. But...."

He lowered his nose a little and gave a few short, sharp sniffs.

"Don't smell him here. Let's backtrack a tad to the teachers dorms and I'll find his scent and we can track him. Hopefully he'll not have wandered far."

"Right. Thanks for your help."

Oh, perfect. While anyone who owned a dog did end up more than familiar with the smell of them, doing something like tracking was completely out of the question. Hayato would really rather not crawl around with his face to the ground if it could be avoided, anyway. Someone with a nose actually built for that would save a lot of time and potentially save poor Melody from some kind of predator. Even a large hawk could take off with him.

...Did a bird grab him?

He picked up the pace until they arrived at the entrance to the teacher's dorm building. "I don't know who would have let him out, but he would have had to start from here. My windows are closed, so that rules that out."

Jon dropped to all fours - He was just as nimble as a quadruped - and sniffed at the carpeting of the hallway.

"No, he definitely came out the door. He doesn't.... there's no smell of anxiety so he wasn't chased or hurt."

Definite plusses, in Jon's book. He started to walk down the hallway, nose a bare few inches from the carpet until they reached the opposite door to where they'd entered.

"Definitely took off out this way. Little rascal. Come on, let's see if we can't find him - wasn't too terribly long ago. If he's lain down anywhere to have a snooze or stopped at a rubbish tin for a snack, we ought to be able to catch him."

That much was a relief, at least. A content and safe dog tended to be one that went at a leisurely pace, unless something small and chase-able caught their attention. Hopefully he didn't end up chasing a squirrel into the woods or something stupid like that.

Yeah. Melody would never go as far as the woods and put Hayato and Jon through so much hassle. Ha ha.

"I never thought I'd ever hope he's been eating garbage." He crossed his arms, smirking a little at his own stupid joke. "Well then, lead on as fast as you can. I'll keep up. Osu!"

Or he'd catch up, anyway. He was quick but he was only bipedal.

"I'll be sure not to lead too far."

Despite Hayato's confidence, Jon could travel pretty quickly. Especially when on all fours.

He took off at a brisk jog, nose to the ground and ears perked. The trail wavered around a little bit, which was unsurprising.

"Dogs in unexplored spaces rarely travel in straight lines." Jon explained, should the other teacher be wondering as to why he was weaving back and forth. But even with the haphazard trail they were blazing, one thing was becoming clear: They were approaching the back of the school and the woods beyond.

"The nice thing about that means he can't have gone off too far." As maddening as it was sometimes to try to get someplace with an animal who had to zig-zag around and sniff everything, he understood. It was just canine nature.

Of course, as the forest loomed ever closer, Hayato's relief turned to a slow-building dread. It wasn't like the forest was anything particularly intimidating. In fact, it was kind of nice in the quiet fall, even if over half of the leaves had gone from yellow to brown and fallen to the ground by now. But it would certainly be harder to find a small dog amidst all the trees.

"I spoke too soon," he muttered as they reached the tree line. "Don't tell me... he's gone right on in."

Jon stood up on his hindlegs and clapped grass from his hands.

"Aye. Seems like he has. Probably caught a whiff of some other creature and went in to investigate.... There's a lot of strange wildlife out there and I'm sure he's little experience with most of it."

Which sounded bleak, sure. But the situation was salvageable, depending on what the little bugger had decided to follow. Whatever it was, Jon couldn't pick it out. There were too many scents here and any one of them could have grabbed the little dog's attention.

"And to be frank, there's rain on the way."

Ah crap something definitely ate him, then. No, he couldn't just give up on his beloved pooch as a lost cause immediately like that. Giving up just wasn't in Hayato's nature.

"We'll just have to beat the clock then, won't we?" If he framed it as a challenge, it seemed a little less bleak. Even if they got caught in the rain, a little water was harmless in the long run. Just annoying. He let out a sharp whistle, but there was no bark in response.

"Can you still make out his scent at all in here?"

"I can, yes. He's not a hard creature to track, even in amongst the jumble of other animal smells and impending rain. But we ought to be quick about it, you're right."

He dropped down to all fours again and started to move into the forest, keeping his head low and pressing forward against the brambles and briars and other undergrowth. The little dog was much more able than him to carve a path through this stuff because he was so much smaller and therefore had so much less mass to get snagged and hooked. Jon, by comparison, was actually having a less than easy time of it. If he was making his own way through the wood - as he often did - he'd pick a path of less resistance. Still, at least all the noise would make him easy for Hayato to follow.

Melody may have been tinier but he did have a coat of long beautiful fur that was bound to snag on all kinds of bits of bark and plantlife. Although it was more likely that he was going to be the one collecting dead leaves and brambles on himself instead of leaving traces behind.

Likewise, it didn't take Hayato all that long to start to get leaves and branches in his own luxurious mane while he tried desperately to keep up with Jon. Of course, with a thick coat like Jon's, he probably wasn't the only one having a rough time.

He lifted a thin branch away from his face, nose wrinkled in disgust. "It sounds like the wind's picking up." At least the trees acted as a fine enough shield for them, but the nearly-bare branches up above clattered together menacingly. "That's not the rain coming, is it?"

He remembered hearing something like that once. And certainly, he had noticed a tendency for the wind to gust a little harder before a storm, but there was no way there'd be one of those this late in the year...

"Aye. It's started to fall. Less than a mile away. We're in for it in a few minutes."

He could hear and smell it.

"Your little friend certainly isn't making this easy - I've got to wonder what caught his attention here. There are several smells that might have done it and he's gone from winding and weaving to making a beeline for something..."

A beeline drawing them directly into the deepest part of what remained of the forest. Naturally.

"How much time have you spent in the wilderness, by the by, Hayato?"

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where oh where has my little dog gone

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