The five arrived at the Unikingdom's official network of caverns, a group of deep caves home to a variety of gleaming minerals. The metallic shine of the cave's walls could reach their eyes from five feet away. A sign that read, Voted Top Tourist Attraction For 4 Consecutive Years! was mounted in the grass next to the entrance. Besides those who came to explore, some people paid them a visit to collect some of their hearty, glistening rocks, be that to ornament a shelf in their home or utilize them in some way. Dr. Fox had suggested the gang gather up some to fuel her shimmer engines. Her latest contraptions, they powered the illuminated floats for an electric glow parade that was planned to be held after sundown on the day of the festival. If Dr. Fox's calculations were accurate, they'd light up the night so spectacularly that the citizens would stay awake in awe of the display.

"We're finally here!" Puppycorn said as he entered. "I can't wait to eat the soda steam!"

"I hope I can find some tough rocks to crack for training." Hawkodile went inside as well.

Dr. Fox followed close behind. "I've been wanting to revisit these caves for a long time now."

"And I just hope no one gets impaled by dripstone," Richard mused, putting on a helmet.

"Okay! Let's get going!" Unikitty said, tagging along.

The perpetual twinkling of the wall and floor gave them the mesmerizingly peaceful feeling of walking under a clear, starry night sky. They nearly believed that the sun had suddenly run away. Iridescent stalactite protruded down from the top like it was fallen stardust clumping together as it entered the atmosphere. Stalagmite rose from the floor with that same colorful glimmer, a mirrored reflection of the pointed stone right above it. The echoes of the gang's voices resonated perfectly.

"Aren't they spectacular?" Dr. Fox asked the others, amazed. "I'm going to collect samples of every rock formation and study them for science!"

"No you're not. You're going to let the FLOATS study them so we can have lights for the parade," Rick reminded her.

"Oh, right. The parade. It's fine. I'll come back after the festival and collect them then! I just know I'll be in my lab, doing nothing but research all summer long!"

Hawkodile, who happened to hear that statement, raised an eyebrow. "Uh... what?"

Richard and Dr. Fox took out pickaxes from the wagon and began to dig up the rocks in one of the designated sections for mining. Perhaps out of an overload of enthusiasm, Dr. Fox speedily licked the first stone she unearthed. For Hawkodile, a pick wasn't needed when you had a pair of hefty, thunderous fists at your disposal. Puppycorn carried a pick in his mouth, casually wandering around, his eyes jumping from one interesting thing to another.

Captivated by the stellar way they shimmered, Unikitty followed the twinkling lights deeper into the tunnels of the network. Up on the ceiling, a colony of bats were all hanging closely together, having themselves a cuddle party. Somewhere behind her, she heard falling droplets of water plop on a small pool. Little squeaks from the bats came at just the right moments between plops. The swinging, quick-paced rhythm they created was backed by the clickety-clack of a distant minecart and topped with the frequent chime of an antique bell. She found her paws stepping back and forth in time with the cave's boppy ambience. The tempo was buoyant and perfectly moderate; not too fast, not too slow. Just right for Unikitty.

She danced further in, but her groove was abruptly thrown off by a gush of steam. A wisp of magenta gas rose close to her face, and from its popping, sweet scent, she could immediately tell what it was. "Hey, Puppycorn! I found the soda steam!"

Puppycorn, eager to get a taste of it, zipped over to his sister way faster than she expected. Together, they frolicked around the subterranean spring as pink steam puffs tickled their sides. Puppycorn stopped above a hole in the ground to let the steam rise into his mouth. When something crackled and popped on his tongue, his eyes widened.

"Ooooh, YUM!" he exclaimed, zooming in circles. From his point of view, he was running around the world. His paws began to get dusty.

"Gimme a piece of that action!" said Unikitty.

She positioned her open mouth above another hole. A short wait later, another wisp of steam rose out from the floor. It at first puffed up her cheeks like normal old air did when she held her breath. It then slowly hardened into a fizzy something that sizzled like cotton candy and snapped like pop rocks. Unikitty's eyes went as big and round as a beach ball, and her taste buds were dancing in jubilation.

"I love, love, LOVE IT!" she shouted as she jumped in the air to fly. Puppycorn's zoomies had gone down as soon as they had kicked in, so he watched as his big sister rocketed around him. Seeing her so excited brewed up a giggle in his voice.

"Brrr... uh, sis? Is it just me, or is it suddenly freezing in here?" he then asked.

Unikitty was suddenly shivering. "That's weird..."

A soft blue light emitted softly from the tunnel entrance on their right. They followed its beam through the archway, where they spotted a pointy-eared dog rummaging around in an outcropping. Their cyan fur was visibly matted and grubby from pushing aside rocks and digging through dirt, even on the one black patch of fur on their back. They sweated to the point that the tip of their unicorn horn, an upside-down icicle, was wet.

"Hello," Unikitty greeted them, her teeth chattering at the end of each word. "How's it going?"

The dog tensed up. "Uhh... just fine," they replied in a flat and perturbed tone.

"Hey, are you okay?" Unikitty asked them kindly. She got no response except for a shaky smile.

"I-I'm... I... I'm okay," they stuttered. Worry shrank their pupils, but the siblings couldn't see it for that long. They quickly went back to pushing aside stones and pebbles.

"Okay, I understand. You're busy. But..." Over them, they saw something oddly concerning, or concerningly odd, stir up- whichever order of words better described it. A wispy fluff the size of a cotton ball was hovering there. "Is there something wrong?"

"What? No. Why would there be?" they replied. Just then, the fluff stretched itself out until it completely sucked them into a shadow. As they kept poking around, Unikitty took note of the corners of their mouth struggling to stay pointed upward.

In a few seconds, miniature white specks started to softly fall from the enlarged fluff while the dog patted the sparkly walls. One by one, they fluttered down upon their face, ears, arms and back as they proceeded to dig underneath the rocks. Unikitty and Puppycorn found themselves rubbing the sides of their bodies for warmth. If it were suddenly this chilly now, the baby flecks descending from the fully-formed cloud could be nothing else other than snowflakes. Why was this happening, though?

"Uh, hey! There's a big cloud right there..." Puppycorn pointed out.

The dog paused their digging to check above them. When they saw the cloud showering them with its light flurry, they let out a short yet piercing shriek. They started waving their hands around as if they were trying to swat a fly with no flyswatter. The cloud moved aside with every hit they attempted to land on it, but it kept floating back over to them, continuing to envelope them in a swirl of snow. Puppycorn and Unikitty watched as they battled it with seemingly no chance of winning, trying as hard as possible to shoo it away. They fell over on their side, breathing heavily for about a minute or so. Unikitty stepped forward and offered to help them up, but they quickly picked themself back on their feet. They gave her one last distressed glance before scurrying away to another side of the cave, out of her sight, with the cloud in pursuit.

"Well, that was... weird," Unikitty said after a moment of silence, her shakes fading.

"Why was it snowing?" Puppycorn wanted to know. "Isn't summer supposed to not have snow?"

The two of them walked back the way they came to regroup with the others. "Right? It's supposed to be all about sunshine! One thing's for sure, though- they didn't look too good."

"What's wrong with them?"

"I don't know, lil' bro. But whatever it is, I'm sure they'll get it sorted out."

"Yeah. I think it's pretty rad that they were a dog, just like me!"

Unikitty chuckled. Once they were back near the front, Dr. Fox and Richard were loading up the wagon with the rocks they'd found. Hawkodile was punching the ones he'd found down to a size small enough to fit in it. Dr. Fox looked up at them from a sample she'd collected and asked, "Who was a dog like you?"

"What?" said Puppycorn.

"You two were talking like there was somebody else here," Hawkodile told him, striking a short rock with a hammer fist. "Bodyguard HAMMER!"

"There was, Hawk! But everything around them was really cold, which was weird, because they didn't really look cool. They also didn't seem very happy, even though they kept telling me they were okay. They were digging around and tapping the wall like they were looking for something," Unikitty explained. 

Richard floated to her. "And they looked similar to Puppycorn?"

"They were definitely a dog, and they had a horn on their head, just like us."

"Is that so?" Richard's usually droopy eyelids rose a little. "Where did you see them?"

"Down there," Unikitty replied, pointing to the depths behind her.

Dr. Fox stepped between them, her specimen in hand. "Whoever they were, we can consider finding them later. For now, we'd better tow these stones to the lab. My inventions for the festival aren't gonna wait for anything!"

Richard let out a tired moan.