In a Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong franchise on the outskirts of Phoenix, Rat Thing number B-782 comes awake.

Fido is waking up because the dogs are barking tonight.

There is always barking. Much of the barking is very far away. Fido knows that faraway barks are not as important as close barks, and so he often sleeps through these.

But sometimes a faraway bark will carry a special sound that makes Fido excited, and he can't help waking up.

He is hearing one of those barks right now. It comes from far away but it is urgent. Some nice doggie somewhere is very upset. He is so upset that his barking has spread to all the other doggies in the pack.

Fido listens to the bark. He gets excited, too. Some bad strangers have just been very close to a nice doggie's yard. They were in a flying thing. They had lots of guns.

Fido doesn't like guns very much. A stranger with a gun shot him once and made him hurt. Then the nice girl came and helped him.

These are extremely bad strangers. Any nice doggie in his right mind would want to hurt them and make them go away. As Fido listens to the bark, he sees what they look like and hears the way they sound. If any of these very bad strangers ever come into his yard, he will be extremely upset.

Then Fido notices that the bad strangers are chasing someone. He can tell they are hurting her by the way her voice sounds and the way she moves.

The bad strangers are hurting the nice girl who loves him!

Fido gets more angry than he has ever been, even more angry than when a bad man shot him long ago.

His job is to keep bad strangers out of his yard. He does not do anything else. But it's even more important to protect the nice girl who loves him. That is more important than anything. And nothing can stop him. Not even the ............