Pet Or Threat?

**Pet Or Threat?** is the twenty-second Season 2 episode of Leeko: The Beginning trilogy, and the fifty-sixth episode overall. This episode is notable for the first appearance of Chewies and the Hammer Copy Ability.

## Summary

Leo’s new pet Chewies go on a hungry rampage after he ditches them in the woods.

## Characters

### Primary

* Leeko
* King Leonardo

### Secondary

* Aurora Man (*no dialogue*)
* Chef Peppermint
* Chewies (*debut; no dialogue*)
* Chief Gordy
* Cindy
* Gene
* Hilda
* Hover
* Lady Chanter
* Manny
* Mayor Bay Brittleton
* Milly
* Miss Yuubin
* Moonlight Man
* Parker
* Sir Chanter
* Sir Pathogen (*no dialogue*)
* Tommy
* Twilight Man (*no dialogue*)
* Viruses (*no dialogue*)
* Various unnamed Puffy villagers

## Episode summary

The episode begins in Castle Leonardo, where King Leonardo is ordering something new from Nebula Enterprises. Through the transmitter comes several boxes of pet food, and then a kennel with four Chewies in it. Gene questions King Leonardo about his new pets, explaining that they will only be loyal to their owner, and Leonardo soon becomes enamored with them. Despite Gene's warning about their particular nutritional needs, King Leonardo decides to feed his new Chewies a new massive cake instead of the food they came with. Later on, King Leonardo takes his Chewies out for a walk through Puffy Town flanked by a group of Viruses guards and shows them off to the townsfolk. After a few comments, one of the Chewies accidentally gets it by Mayor Bay's car as he drives by, and Leonardo orders his guards to toss him into the castle dungeon as punishment. The others watching try to tend to the hurt Chewy, but Leonardo dismisses them, and takes his Chewies to Peppermint's Table instead.

Despite Chef Peppermint's initial apprehension of having pets inside his restaurant, he prepares them food on Leonardo's behalf, which they scarf down happily. However, as they eat, they begin to twitch in a strange fashion, though this is not noticed by the others. Seeing them eat, Leeko tries to join in, but one of the Chewies bites his hand hard, and King Leonardo tosses Leeko away after scolding his Chewy for trying to eat something so unappealing. As Milly worries about Leeko's wound, the Chewy that bit him relishes its taste by licking its lips. Later that night, at the castle, Milly and her family are about to have dinner, but the Chewies barge in and eat all of their food. Outraged, Milly and Manny chase them down the halls of the castle, only to see them eating once again with King Leonardo. Milly and Manny comment on their appetites, as well as how Leonardo is spoiling them. Later on, as the Chewies sleep, King Leonardo obsessively watches video tapes of himself playing with them earlier in the day, but then soon starts to tire of them. Tommy then barges in and explains to Leonardo that the cost of feeding the Chewies is unsustainable to the castle's treasury. Seeing this, King Leonardo immediately turns on his new pets and plans to abandon them in the wilderness.

King Leonardo and Tommy drive the Royal Racecar deep into the Vinebush Forest with the Chewies and release them there without a second thought. Hilda soon discovers them and offers them an apple, but the Chewies do not accept the fruit, and soon start to chase the monkey through the woods. Hilda manages to escape them, but the Chewies soon start to wander the countryside. They stumble onto Mayor Bay's sheep and proceed to devour them, leaving only their bones for Cindy to find. From here, the Chewies begin to multiply, and find their way to Leeko's house. As they pass by, the Chewy that bit Leeko earlier notices the pink mouse sleeping in the tree, and decides to try and eat him. The other Chewies follow suit, and proceed to sneak up on him. After getting his hand bitten again, Leeko wakes up and runs screaming in pain into the house as the Chewies corner him and Hover. Hover is then eaten whole by one of the Chewies, but is later spat out having apparently not tasted good to it. Leeko runs out of the house after getting the Chewy off his hand and the monsters pursue him.

As Leeko runs, the Chewies continue to multiply and the town becomes aware of the situation. As Leeko tries to escape the Chewies, they invade various places in town and cause havoc. As Leeko runs toward Castle Leonardo, Hover tells King Leonardo about the situation, claiming there to now be twenty Chewies. King Leonardo laughs this off, but Milly and Manny come in to berate the king for his irresponsibility. After being accused of not wanting to keep feeding them, King Leonardo remembers the boxes of food sent to him earlier and insists he will feed them that if given the opportunity. That opportunity arrives when Leeko comes running into the courtyard with several more than twenty Chewies on his tail, prompting everyone to run. After making it into the throne room, King Leonardo and Tommy desperately try to feed the Chewies the food in the boxes, which consists of bags of small bones. Once the Chewies eat these, they proceed to transform into their monstrous "angry" form and then attack everyone.

After the Chewies multiply further and attack the castle residents, Leeko attempts to vacuum-mouth them, but is unable to do so. Meanwhile, as King Leonardo tries to defend himself from the Chewies, he whacks on, causing it to cough up its bone treat and return to normal. Seeing this, Milly tells Leeko to vacuum-mouth Leonardo's hammer, and he does so, gaining the Hammer Copy Ability. Using this ability, Leeko performs a series of hammer swings that knocks away all of the Chewies and returns them to their normal state. Later on, King Leonardo tries to sell his Chewies back to N.L.E., but they inform him that since the Chewies have multiplied, Leonardo has to pay a thousand dollars to send back each Chewy that was not part of the original package. Given that there are now three hundred of them, King Leonardo is left to bemoan his financial fate, and the episode ends as Milly, Manny, and Leeko watch Leonardo and Tommy get piled on by their pets, and then Leeko gets his hand bitten one more time for good measure.

## Trivia

* This is the first episode of *The Beginning* trilogy to feature the Hammer Copy Ability.
* This episode shows that Chef Peppermint does not allow pets in his restaurant.
* The cake that King Leonardo feeds to his Chewies at the start of the episode greatly resembles the cake for Leeko that Baby Boomer emerged from in the episode Leeko’s Anniversary!.
* Despite Leonardo's orders, Mayor Bay does not appear to have been actually taken to the castle dungeon, as he appears later that night after Cindy shows him what happened to his sheep.
* This is the first episode to feature the Vinebush Forest as a setting, but not feature King Forrest himself.