Once upon a time, in the forgotten land of Americam, there was a ranch named Hope Farms. On Hope Farms there were many dogs, but there were two who ruled over all the rest: the Big Dog, King, and Top Dog. Top Dog was King's lieutenant. King also had a bunch of smaller dogs always around him, making a protective wall whenever he went out onto the Farms. Their yapping could be heard for miles around Hope's Valley whenever the Big Dog would go out to play.

One day, one of the lesser dogs who made up King's retinue found a megaphone propped up on a crate outside the barn. Nothing would help but to tell King about it, who immediately began to howl through it when he saw it. His growl was heard all across the valley and beyond. King now had the power to speak to all who would hear him in the valley. (He didn't tell anyone that his nether regions would glow every time he howled through it, though.)

King could now speak to all the creatures of Hope Farms who could understand him. The little dogs would growl a little while King spoke, until Top Dog snapped them into line. The Dems stopped their incessant chittering and occasional finds of shiny objects long enough to listen to him. Hillary, the Housedog, paused in her search for a tasty morsel to listen to what her King had to say. (She had been watching for the Pubs, circling high above, wishing they would come down to where she could paw at them. Their hawkish mien frightened her in some vague way.) All the other little dogs who carried out King's commands had been promised great things by King.

The Pubs could hear King's speechifying as well. They said nothing, waiting for the time when King might make a fatal mistake, and took note of every word that he said. They didn't trust King; they had heard him make many promises before he found the megaphone, and seen very few that were actually delivered. But King still claimed credit for anything good that happened on Hope Farms, and convinced the Dems that he was their savior, and that he could do no wrong.

King had been known as a bad dog almost from his youth, especially when it came to his bitches. Some of the smallest dogs would be enlisted in the search for new meat for King's rampant appetites, which only grew after King found the megaphone. No one could stop King's drives, not even Hillary the Housedog. He tasted of everything which all the smaller dogs brought to him in tribute to his position as Overseer. His pride knew no bounds; was he not worshipped by all the Dems and all the dogs surrounding him? He considered himself the god of Hope Farms, and everyone who lived there had better get his religion or else. The Dems were true believers; they loved their debauching god-dog. The Pubs didn't buy King's statements, so King considered them his enemies. Unfortunately, the Pubs always stayed just a little too far away from him for him to chew on.

Whenever King would run in the animal election for Overseer of Hope Farms, his Pub opponents would bring up King's shady past, trying to convince the rest of the animals in the valley that King wasn't fit to oversee all the activity that took place on the Farms. Whenever King spoke, the chickens would flock to the megaphone and sit around it, clutching pens and pads of paper in their claws and chicken-scratching every word their beloved King had to say there. (89% of the chickens had voted for King in the latest election, according to an informal chicken exit poll.)

A couple of years after King had been elected Overseer of Hope Farms, some allegations began to surface about some of King's nefarious activities. Some claimed that he and Hillary the Housedog had been involved in some inappropriate dealings on the rapids nearby. Rumors spread like wildfire among the animals of the valley. What would come of these charges? Did they have any basis in reality? No one knew.

Then, King conferred with all his dogs, including Top Dog. He knew no one could prove he had done anything wrong on the rapids, so he told Top Dog to get the most rabid hound she could find to investigate the matter. This way, when the hound found nothing, King would be able to say that the entire investigation was a witch hunt and turn the situation to his advantage.

So Top Dog talked to three of the elder dogs who no longer ran with the pack but still had other dogs' respect. These three dogs conferred and finally decided to appoint Star as the new Dog Catcher. Star was a big surprise to King; he hadn't expected one that consorted with the Pubs to be the Dog Catcher. King would growl in his sleep, dreaming of Star. His legs would shiver with involuntary reaction to the dream run which King was on. But when King awoke, he knew that he was safe; it didn't matter who the Dog Catcher was. It was only in his dreams that the fear took over.

King didn't tell anyone about his fears, but Hillary the Housedog might have divined it from his nightmare episodes. He still felt safe in his world. The previous Dog Catcher had been unsuccessful in his investigation of King; he had even defied Top Dog and appealed directly to the elders. But somehow King and his cronies had managed to squeak by and avoid that Dog Catcher's net. He would avoid this Catcher's net, too.

Unfortunately, King underestimated Star's zeal. Star knew many things about the valley of Hope's Farm; he knew about King's shady past, even if he hadn't proven anything yet. And he knew that King would eventually make some mistakes, and Star would be there to net him and put him into the doghouse when he did.

Now, Star's office had a retinue who had been attracted to his cause. They helped him do the many, many dog-hours of work necessary to fully investigate the matter of the rapids. Many animals of the valley who had been to the rapids were questioned by Star's dogs. Chickens would call regularly, trying to pump information out of everyone. Anything they said would be twisted and used against them by many of the chickens who were loyal to King, so that Star would lose face among the animals of the valley. And King and his dogs would put words into the mouths of Star's dogs as well, 'leaking' a story or two as anonymous sources to the faithful chickens. But in the face of all this, Star persisted, gathering and coordinating the mounds of information that his dogs dug up about the rapids situation.

You see, King had been at least partially right: Star, so far, had been unable to find anything that could tie King directly to what happened at the rapids. But in the course of his investigations other things would come to the light of day.

-The Watcher (So begins a slippery-slope opera.)