"Mom! You're not gonna believe this!" Mako called out in his Tattle Tale voice.

"What?" Starflower groaned, half-asleep, half-listening.

"Dad opened the gate and got a-" The rest of her son's words were muffled.

"Uh, go back to sleep hun. I'll wake you up when dinner is ready!" Sunny's deep tone reverberated from down the hallway. She loved his voice. Her Barry White, so soothing to the ears, buttering her back into dreamland like a silky smooth lullaby.

"K..." Starflower shrugged.

She draped the bed sheets close, rolled herself into a burrito, and face planted into one of her many pillows. 

Several hours later...

RRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! RRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! RRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!

Starflower's green eyes ripped open from their crusty  lids.

"Sunny!?" She cried out, jolting out of her bed in a panic.

Still ensnared in her blanket burrito, Starflower tumbled onto the carpet like a sack of potatoes.

"Mako? What's going on!? Is everything okay?" She said, inching towards the open doorway like a caterpillar.

Her curly, emerald-green head stuck out from the doorway to peer down the hall. Nothing looked out of place, but something was definitely going on in the kitchen. The smoke alarm continued to chirp at an agonizing volume, but even louder was the sound of a struggle, with things being tossed about. Then there were the howls, the bellowing cries from a creature that sounded like nothing from this earth.

"Uh, Babe?"

Starflower rolled onto her back to stare up at a chiseled giant of a man. Her man.

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Sunny's favorite red plaid shirt was torn to shreds, revealing a bronze metal body nicked with cuts. No blood, thankfully. 

"Why are you on the floor like a sad burrito?" He asked, as if that should be the main concern of the hour.

"Uh, how about you tell me what the heck is going on. Whatever it is that's making that noise isn't our dinner, is it?"

A loud boom went off in the kitchen. It was so impactful that its force peeled away the surrounding walls like apple skin. Sunny grabbed his cocooned wife like a rolled up newspaper, shielding her from the blast.

"Mako? Where's Mako?" Starflower yelled at Sunny, trying to scream over the ringing in her ears. He waited for a brief moment, then said:

"Well, I kinda wanted to surprise you..." He grumbled with a sheepish look on his face.

His unfazed emotion to the chaos around him was unsettling, but it did its usual trick of calming her down. Sunny peered over his shoulder, grinned, then carried Starflower in his arms like a baby as they turned to look at the scene.

A giant, dark-flamed hell wolf panted excitedly on its back, rolling around the burnt remains of their kitchen. It looked as big as Sunny. No, bigger. Mako sat beside it, decked out in his silver mech suit—now caked in ash and grime—looking as small as a soda can next to the beast.

"Can we keep it Mom!?" The mechanical hum behind Mako's voice made the wolf howl. It playfully jumped onto the boy, who disappeared within the big ball of ashen lava. Her anger cooled at the sound of her son's giggles. She hadn't heard him laugh like that in years, not since Gabriella was still around…

"Ugh...fine." She sighed in defeat. There was no use in asking questions. She knew she wasn't going to like their answers, but if it made Mako happy, so be it.

"What? Really!?" Mako gave the wolf a big hug. It barked with equal excitement. "You hear that, boy? You're family now!"

Starflower pinched her rosy cheeks, hoping this was some kind of illusion made by one of her villainous frenemies. Sadly, it was not.

"Oh honey, I knew you'd like him!" Sunny said, cradling her in his arms. "It's such a crazy story. You wouldn't believe how it happened. Hun? Are you ok?...oh."

She glared up at her husband with a seething rage as they stood in what was left of their house. The anger was so powerful that it tore apart her blankets and shook the ground beneath them. The hell wolf coiled upright with a cautious stare.

Mako sensed the imminent danger and activated his suit's shield generator, expanding its radius to protect them both from what came next. The power of the ancient cosmos made an infinitesimal blink, an iota that was microscopic in scale, but powerful enough for Starflower to slap Sunny into an intergalactic voyage.

The boy and his new pet looked up at the giant hole where the roof used to be, and watched as Sunny disappeared into the night sky.