Chapter 8

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     As everyone was sleeping peacefully in their tents, the same group of mysterious dogs who were keeping an eye on their journey approached the campsite. Many of them started to ravage through items, with the leader of these dogs going through Jean-Luc's sack. However, one item caught her by surprised and even touched her heart a bit: Jean-Luc's photograph of him and his grandpa.  However, when they heard a dog groggily get up in his tent, the dogs made a run for it.  It turned out to only be Jean-Luc, who had gotten up for a drink of water.  He held his flashlight and began looking for his canteen.  He got to his sack, but when he tried to look through it, he accidentally pointed his flashlight towards the giant light. This revealed that the light was actually a bunch of fireflies that were huddling all together. They began flying towards the young lab, who was finished drinking his water. As he put the canteen away, he noticed some of these fireflies and tried shooing them away. He then grabbed a stick to crush them. However, when he crushed one with a stick, the firefly exploded and burnt the stick up completely. This shocked Jean-Luc and then he suddenly realized, these were no ordinary fireflies. Many of them began exploding and setting the campsite on fire!
"Uh oh...fire...!" he said nervously.

As more of them made their way to the campsite, he made a run back to the campsite to earn everyone else while shouting,
"Fire! Fire!! Fire!!"
Woken up by the black lab's shouting, Hercules said to himself,
"That Labrador kid..." and got up.
He peeked out of his tent and said,
"Jean-Luc, go back to sleep..."
To his shock, he saw that the campsite was completely on fire and many dogs were trying to put the fire out with water buckets, including Judo.
"Get some water on that fire!!" she shouted.
However, knowing that those buckets would be no use, Hercules ordered,
"No time! We need to get out of those caves, now move it! Move! Move!!"
Everyone quickly got into their vehicles and began driving onto the bridge leading to Atlantis, with Winton leading everyone with his digger. In the back of one truck, Pom Pom noticed Jean-Luc trying to get on the truck, so she reached her hand out to him and said,
"Jean-Luc! Reach out!"
Despite her small size, the Pomeranian was able to pull the Labrador up to the truck and he felt relieved seeing her do that. Unfortunately, on the tail end, a truck had caught on fire and when a firefly landed on the truck, it exploded, causing the truck to explode. A few more trucks on the campsite exploded too, severing the connection between the burning campsite and the bridge. The explosion tumbled the entire temple a little, causing the structure the fireflies came out of to fall right in the center of the bridge, breaking the entire bridge. Since the digger hadn't reached the center of the bridge, he and everyone else began falling towards a dark area below.
"Oh no! No no no!!" shouted Winton, trying to get his digger to go back up.
In fact, everyone was trying to get their vehicles back up the bridge. But when the digger couldn't get up, no one could, so everyone fell into the dark area. They all shouted as they kept sliding back. Suddenly, everyone came to a huge crash when they fell into a large hole.

After several minutes, some dogs began to recover from the crash. Since it was completely dark, no one could see where they were. So Hercules lit up a match and asked,
"Alright, who's not dead? Sound off"
Many dogs moaned and got up, with Snickers in particular saying,
"Uh oh! One of those bugs bit me! Does someone have aloe or any anti itching cream? I feel like I have fleas!"
Everyone turned on their flashlights and they began looking at the area they were now in. When Hercules saw Pom Pom, he said,
"Pom Pom, give us a damage report"
She looked around and replied with,
"Hmm, not as bad as it could've been. Trucks two and three are completely destroyed, but I reckon the digger could probably still run. Luckily for us, we landed in something soft"
Winton was sniffing the ground and then he said,
"We landed on ash. It appears we've landed in the base of a dormant volcano"
Judo smacked Winton's hand and then shot a flare gun up the ceiling.
"It keeps going..." she commented.
"Maybe that can be our way out...?" asked Mackenzie.
Suddenly, they heard a distant boom from above.
"Maybe not" commented Judo.
Winton looked up the volcano and said,
"All the lava and magma has solidified in the bowls of this volcano, meaning it's blocking the exit"
Pretzel sarcastically added with,
"Great..."
As for Chloe, she was pretty worried on what Winton meant, so she asked,
"Wait just a minute! Are you saying that this volcano could blow up at any minute??"
The bulldog reassured her by saying,
"No, of course not! That would take a huge explosion for it to blow up!"
Mackenzie was working on a homemade bomb and when dogs started looking at him, he nervously put the bomb away in his bag.
"Um...maybe I'll do this later..." he sheepishly said.
Hercules and Judo looked up the volcano with Hercules saying,
"We blow the top, we have a straight exit to the surface. Jean-Luc, what do you think?"
But when he looked behind him, the Labrador wasn't there. So everyone began looking for him while shining their flashlights.

Meanwhile in a different part of the volcano, Jean-Luc was unconscious and he had a scar near his arm. The mysterious dogs from earlier were checking him out.
"/Who do you think that is?/" asked one dog in Atlantean.
"/I don't know...he doesn't look dangerous.../" replied the leader.
Jean-Luc began regaining consciousness, but he was startled by these mysterious dogs in large masks. But he winced when his scar began hurting more. One of the smaller mysterious dogs said,
"/He looks hurt.../"
The leader replied with,
"/Here. Let me take a look at him/"
The leader dog, with the smaller dog following her, got a closer look at Jean-Luc. When the leader dog lifted her mask, underneath it revealed a lovely, teenage blue heeler, Bluey. And behind her was her younger, teenage, red heeler sister, Bingo, who took a quick peek from her mask. Jean-Luc was surprised by the sight of Bluey, but he was no longer scared. When Bluey observed the scar, she gently touched it with her crystal necklace, followed by her hand. Although the black lab flinched from this, he felt the pain go away. Bluey lifted her hand, leaving the scar in a blue glow. When the glow faded away, the scar was completely gone, impressing Jean-Luc. He looked at the blue heeler with awe in his eyes. Bluey and Bingo smiled at him, but then they put their masks back on and began running off after hearing the digger.

Jean-Luc quickly got up and began following Bluey, Bingo, and the rest of the dogs.
"Wait!!" he shouted, trying to catch up.
It wasn't easy to do in the slightest due to some tricky obstacles that the dogs could easily cross, but he couldn't, such as angled platforms and large rocks to climb.
"Come back! Qui es-tu?? Ou sont es-tu??"
But nonetheless, he was able to get across both of them. He ran out of the volcano and onto a grassy cliff. He shouted,
"Hey! Wait a minute! Who are you?!"
Although upset that he couldn't find the heelers anymore, he was shocked to see what he was looking at. Shortly after, the digger arrived at the same cliff. Everyone couldn't believe what they were seeing: Atlantis itself. It was a large structure standing on a huge waterfall. In the distance was a bridge leading to the lost city.
"Holy moly..." said Snickers.
"It's beautiful..." said Pom Pom.
Chloe put her hand on Jean-Luc'a shoulder and she happily said,
"I must admit, you really pulled through!"

But then, the dogs that Jean-Luc followed surrounded everyone and pointed their spears at them.
"Uh...I take that back..." added Chloe.
Hercules asked Jean-Luc,
"Who are these guys??"
"They gotta be Atlanteans!" replied the black lab.
"Huh?? That's impossible!" added Judo, who was in disbelief.
Snickers then said,
"Ooh, I've seen what these dogs can do. They smell fear from MILES away, so be quiet!"
In the Heeler group, Bluey spoke up with,
"/We mean no harm. All we want to know is who that black lab is and what all of you are doing here/"
Since no one else could understand Atlantean, they were confused by the blue heeler's language. Winton then whispered to Jean-Luc,
"I think she's talking to you, Jean-Luc"
"/Black lab! How did you and your group find us all the way down here?/" said Bluey.
Jean-Luc, doing his best to speak Atlantean, said,
"Oh! Um.../We...come from above.../"
Bluey took off her mask, looking confused. She said,
"/The way you speak sounds funny/"
Jean-Luc replied with,
"/I'm a friendly explorer/"
"/A friendly explorer?/"
"Ich bin ein freundlicher reisender"
"Das ist deutsch"
"Parles vous français?"
"Oui monsieur!!"

Winton suddenly said,
"Oh oh, let me try this! Down here!"
Bluey bent down a little and Winton whispered something in her ear. However, she ended up punching him on the shoulder in an annoyed fashion after hearing what he had to say. Impressed, Chloe clapped and said,
"Wow, I like her!"
Pom Pom said,
"Aw man, I wanted to punch him..."
Suddenly, Bingo and the other dogs, who were also blue and red Heelers just like Bluey and Bingo, unmasked themselves and introduced themselves in different languages, including Atlantean. Pom Pom then asked Jean-Luc,
"How do they know every single language?"
"It's likely a root dialect! They did say we used to know all one language after all" replied Jean-Luc
Hercules then stepped forward and said,
"If that's true, maybe they can speak English"
He turned his attention to Bluey and said,
"We're peaceful explorers and we come from the surface!"
Now speaking English, Bluey proudly gestured to Atlantis while saying,
"Welcome to the city of Atlantis!"
Naturally, everyone gets impressed again. Bingo then grabs Jean-Luc's hand and begins to guide him to the city while saying,
"Come with us! You simply must meet me and Bluey's father!"
Hercules then ordered everyone else,
"Team two! Get back to the ashes and salvage what you can!"
"Yes sir!" the dogs replied.
"We make our rendezvous in twenty four hours!"
Everyone began following the heelers, crossing the bridge to Atlantis. They had arrived at last.

This special episode of Bluey is called, "Atlantis"!Where stories live. Discover now