"Hey, Lashie!" Rovera pulled the bowl of hot gravy from the puffy pink fur under her ears and slapped it with a rattle onto the counter. "D'you ever think about alternate universes?"

Her snout already buried in the gravy, Brindle Lash paused her lapping and glanced up at Vera. She didn't much [i]want[/i] to get pulled into any of Vera's weirdness this morning—with the Comets starting their show season next month, Lash had been running practice courses since dawn. But Vera's weirdness wasn't the sort of thing a pup could just wish away, Lash had learned. It was gonna happen whether she was ready for it or not.

So— "Alter nut whats?" she asked.

"Alternate universes!" Vera waved her front paws. "A place that's exactly like this but totally different, too!"

Despite herself, Lash glanced around Milkbone Corner, pups scarfing down their breakfasts at the tables in the dining room. Outside the windows, the sun shone through a crystal blue sky over the roofs of Pupville, Towser and a bunch of the other farm pups getting the market set up to start another day.

"Huh." The plot of [i]Ruffen Ready and the Black Mirror[/i] popped into Lash's head, the whole thing with the evil twin world that had tried to spill out and take over the regular world. But that didn't seem to be what Vera meant. "So, we'd all be changed? Like, you a whippet and me a poodle?" She moved her paw back and forth between them.

"Bigger, Lasshie!" Eyes sparkling, Vera leaped up onto the counter. "We'd all be cats or badgers! Crows or eagles! Horses or frogs or monkeys! A whole alphabet soup full of possibilities! And we'd have adventures all over the place and learn valuable lessons about friendship and just have the best time ever!"

It said a lot, Lash thought, about Pupville and Rovera that only a few of the diners even bothered looking up from their breakfasts. "Vera?" Mrs. Stew called from the door that led back into the kitchen. "If you're gonna do a song-and-dance number, don'tcha know, could you please take it outside?"

Vera's curly fur almost seemed to collapse. "Yes, Mrs. Stew," she more sighed than said, then she slumped back onto the floor.

Which was just about enough of [i]that[/i], Lash thought. "Vera, didn't we face down Rustling Whisper and turn her back into Princess Night Sky? Didn't we face down Pandemonium and get him to not be such a jerk anymore?" She had to shrug. "I mean, yeah, Lacey did most of the work on that, but we all helped. And what about beating Snapcrack and meeting Ruffen Ready and getting Gloaming into shape so she could turn into a princess? Weren't those adventures big enough for you?"

"Yeah..." Vera rose onto all fours again behind the counter and shook her head. "But I guess the grass is always greener when you're not peeing all over it."

Lash rolled her eyes, sucked down the last of her gravy, reached over, and gave Vera a pat. She was a good girl, sure, but she could be one crazy bitch sometimes.