Every Sunday, Dogsy visits Green Valley Zoo. It's his favourite place in all of Delhi — not to look at the animals through the bars like everyone else, but to actually talk to them. He knows every animal by name. He knows which peacock is vain about his tail, which elephant likes to be tickled behind the ear, and which parrot tells the same joke every single week and still expects everyone to laugh.
This Sunday starts exactly the same. Dogsy walks up to the elephant enclosure, waves, and says, "Good morning, Raja!"
Raja the elephant just... looks at him. Blinks. Swings his trunk. Keeps eating.
"Raja? It's me."
Nothing.
Dogsy frowns and moves to the next enclosure — the peacocks. "Hello there, showing off today?"
The peacock glances at him with mild curiosity, the way any stranger looking through a fence might get glanced at, and goes back to strutting around like Dogsy isn't even speaking a language at all.
By the third enclosure, Dogsy's heart is pounding. This has never happened. Not once, not ever, in his entire life. Every single animal in Delhi understands him. It's who he is.
He runs to find Napu, who is near the reptile house, trying — and failing — to talk to a python.
"Napu, is it just me, or—"
"It's not just you," Napu says, looking pale. "I've been trying to talk to this python for five minutes. He's looking at me like I'm a confused tourist."
They stand there, staring at each other, both realizing the exact same terrifying thing at the exact same moment.
"What if we've... lost it?" Dogsy asks quietly.
"Let's not panic yet," Napu says, though he looks like he very much wants to panic.
They test it everywhere in the zoo. Every single animal — elephants, peacocks, snakes, monkeys, even the usually chatty mynas near the food stalls — responds to nothing. It's like their powers simply switched off, and only here, only inside these walls.
They call Bytes immediately. He arrives on his scooter, already holding a small device that beeps.
"Before you ask — no, I don't know what's wrong with your powers," Bytes says. "But something IS wrong with this zoo. Listen." He holds up the beeping device. "This little gadget picks up sound frequencies humans can't hear. And this whole place is buzzing with one. A very specific, very steady hum. Been going for a while, I think."
"Can you find where it's coming from?" Napu asks.
Bytes wanders around, following the beeps, until he stops near a cluster of speakers mounted on poles, disguised to look like they're just playing pleasant birdsong for visitors.
"These aren't playing birdsong," Bytes says, prying one open. "They're broadcasting a steady frequency. High enough that people can't hear it. I'd bet actual money this is exactly what's jamming your signal."
"But who would want to block animals from hearing me?" Dogsy asks. "And why?"
They march straight to the zoo director's office. Dr. Oberoi, a tired-looking woman with reading glasses pushed up into her hair, looks up, startled, when all three of them burst in.
"You found the speakers," she says immediately, sighing. "I suppose I owe you an explanation."
"That would help," Napu says.
"Three weeks ago," Dr. Oberoi says, "someone almost stole one of our rarest animals — a white peacock, worth an enormous amount of money on the illegal wildlife market. The thief didn't break any locks or cut any fences. He just... called the peacock. Used some kind of recorded sound, mimicking the exact calls our keepers use at feeding time. The peacock trusted the sound and walked calmly toward the service gate, following it like it was dinner time. We caught it on camera at the last second and stopped him, but it was far too close."
"So you built a jammer," Bytes says.
"I built a jammer," Dr. Oberoi confirms. "To block any strange calls, sounds, or signals from reaching our animals ever again. I didn't know—" she looks at Dogsy apologetically, "—that it would block you too. I am truly sorry. I never imagined a real animal-talking hero existing outside of legends."
"So the peacock thief is still out there," Dogsy says slowly.
"We think so. We've had two more attempts since, always at night, always using recorded sounds. We've stopped them every time, barely. But I don't know how much longer our luck holds."
Napu straightens up. "Then turn the jammer off tonight. Just for a few hours."
"That's exactly when they might strike again," Dr. Oberoi says nervously.
"Exactly," Napu says. "So we'll be here. Without our powers working properly for most of the night, if the jammer needs to run to protect the animals from fake calls — we'll just have to catch them the old-fashioned way."
It is genuinely nerve-wracking, waiting in the dark zoo that night, powers useless, every rustling leaf sounding like a footstep. Dogsy, so used to simply asking an animal what's wrong, finds himself crouched behind a bush instead, straining to hear actual human voices, actual footsteps, actual anything.
Just past midnight, a soft, familiar melody drifts across the enclosure — the exact feeding-time whistle the real keepers use. Raja the elephant's ears perk up. He begins, slowly, calmly, walking toward the service gate.
"There!" Napu whispers, spotting a shadow near the speaker system — a man crouched with a small recording device, whistling into it, adjusting dials.
Without their powers to warn the animals or calm the situation instantly, Dogsy and Napu have to move fast, human-style. They sprint, Bytes right behind them, and tackle the man before he can reach the gate controls.
"Stop right there!"
The man — later identified as Balwant, a hired thief working for a buyer nobody will name, paid to steal exotic animals to order — struggles for a moment, then gives up entirely once he realizes he's completely surrounded, with zero escape route and an extremely determined mouse standing on his chest for some reason.
"How did you even get past the jammer?" Dr. Oberoi asks, arriving breathless.
"I didn't," Balwant admits. "It's just sound. My whistle isn't magic — it's just a recording of your own keepers. The jammer blocks strange signals. It never blocks familiar ones."
Bytes looks thoughtful. "So we need something that tells the difference between a real keeper's voice and a fake recording."
"That," Bytes says, already typing, "I can build."
Within a week, Bytes upgrades the whole system — a smarter device that filters out any recorded or synthetic sound, blocking fake calls completely, while leaving real animal communication (and one particular alien Dogman's voice) completely untouched.
The following Sunday, Dogsy walks back into the zoo, heart in his throat, and calls out, "Good morning, Raja!"
Raja swings his trunk happily and trumpets a greeting right back.
Dogsy grins so wide his face nearly splits in half. "I missed you too, old friend."
The peacock struts over, delighted to have an audience again, and immediately starts showing off his tail like nothing happened at all.
"You know," Napu says, watching Dogsy laugh with the animals again, "for one whole day, neither of us could do the thing that makes us who we are. That was terrifying."
"It really was," Dogsy agrees. "Good thing we're not JUST our powers."
Bytes, still fiddling proudly with his new invention, doesn't look up. "Speak for yourselves. I am absolutely just my powers. Very proud of them, actually."