“Whoa, Skipper” said Kowalski, stumbling backwards. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” said Skipper. “I’m going to finish this before you seriously hurt someone.” Skipper kicked out at Kowalski and Kowalski did a backflip to avoid it.
“Are you two okay?” Skipper said hurriedly to Private and Rico. Much to Skipper’s surprise, the two penguins ran over to Kowalski and stood in front of him, shielding Kowalski from Skipper.
“Skippa, stop!” said Private. “Kowalski didn’t do anything! And if you want to hurt him, you’ll have to go through us first!”
“Is this part of your fiendish plan, Kowalski?” said Skipper. “Brainwashing my soldiers and using them as shields?”
Skipper stood in front of Rico and Private for a few moments, as though sizing them up, then screamed and pointed behind them. “Leopard seal!”
“Aah!” said Private, and he and Rico cowered on the floor. Skipper took the opportunity to dash between them and run straight towards Kowalski, who had spun around in alarm but not ducked on the floor. Before Kowalski turned back, Skipper had already knocked him across the room, where he hit a mural and slid down.
Skipper ran over to Kowalski, who seemed dazed por the impact. Right as Skipper reached down to investigate the cloth wrapped around Kowalski’s head, the pinguim casually slapped Skipper’s wing away, then sprang up and began to run. Skipper was surprised but quickly began to pursue Kowalski, who was running towards his makeshift organ, but before he could reach it, Skipper grabbed his ankle and pulled it out from under him and Kowalski fell to the ground.
por now, Rico and Private had gotten up and were running over to Skipper, trying to stop him.
“Skippa, leave him alone!” said Private.
“What did you do to them?” said Skipper, staring at Kowalski. Kowalski simply shrugged, knowing Skipper would never believe him if he denied it. Then he tried to wiggle out of Skipper’s grip, but Skipper just twisted his ankle to get him to stop.
“Now, you’re coming with me back to the headquarters, Kowalski, and if you don’t get up and walk, then I’ll drag you” Skipper said. However, right at that moment, Private grabbed Skipper from behind and began to tickle Skipper’s belly. Skipper giggled and loosened his grip on Kowalski, which was enough for Kowalski to break free. He saluted Private before running off into the darkness.
“Private!” said Skipper in the midst of his fit of giggles (Skipper was very ticklish in certain places) “Stop…hehe…stop that!” he pushed Private off of him, but Private just jumped back on and kept tickling him. “Rico…please…hehe…help me!” Rico just watched.
Finally, Skipper grabbed Private’s flipper and whiplashed him over his head into the sewer. As Private swam to the shore, spitting out filthy water, Skipper sprinted off into the darkness after Kowalski.
Unfortunantly for Skipper, it was very dark in the sewer and eventually smacked into a wall, which he could not see. As he stumbled around, dazed, light suddenly flooded the section of sewer which he was in. He looked up towards the light and saw Kowalski had kicked open a manhole and was climbing a ladder, trying to escape.
“Kowalski, stop!” said Skipper, momentarily panicking as he knew that particular manhole led to a very busy street. But Kowalski did not slow down at all and in a few segundos had flipped off the ladder and out of the sewer. Skipper took a running jump towards the ladder and managed to grab onto the middle rung and started to climb as fast as he could. But he was blinded por the glare of the daylight and as he was squinting, trying to block the light with one flipper he heard a small thud, followed por the screech of car brakes. A car slid into place right over the topo, início of the manhole, blocking out the light and allowing Skipper to climb at topo, início speed. He popped out of the hole and whacked his head on the car.
“Oh man, what did I just hit?” said a man’s voice, and a car door slammed shut. Skipper peeked out from under the car and saw Kowalski lying motionless in the grama several feet from the side of the road.
Before the man could see what he had hit, Skipper dashed out from under the car and grabbed Kowalski and dragged him under the car.
“What’s this?” said the man, and Skipper peeked out from under the car once again. He saw the man bend down and pick up what appeared to be a small (large for Skipper) glass beaker, the kind that Kowalski used in his lab. The man turned it over and a few drops of liquid fell out.
The man just dropped the beaker and got back into the car, apparently deciding that he had not hit anything. Then he drove away.
“Skippa? What are you doing?” said Private from inside the sewer. Skipper ignored him and put Kowalski seguinte to the manhole, then walked out to retrieve the beaker. He wanted to look it over, but he didn’t want anyone to spot him outside the zoo so he grabbed Kowalski in one wing and the beaker in the other and jumped back down the manhole. Then he slid the cover back into place.
Rico and Private were waiting at the bottom of the ladder. Skipper found it difficult to climb while carrying Kowalski and simply dropped him onto Rico, who collapsed under the weight. Private pulled Kowalski off of Rico, but one he realized Kowalski was not moving at all or even breathing, he turned to Skipper with a look of shock on his face.
“What did you do to him?” said Private.
“Come on, Private, it’s obvious he’s just faking” said Skipper trying to sound confident but it was easy to tell that he was actually very nervous. He slapped Kowalski several times. “Kowalski, it’s over. You can’t run any more.”
“Did you shove him under a car or something?” said Private, looking anxiously at Kowalski.
Skipper sighed. “I chased him up the ladder and before I was even at the topo, início a car hit him. There was nothing I could do.”
“You’re lying!” said Private and began to whack Skipper in the chest. It didn’t hurt but it was annoying so Skipper just slapped Private in the face. “Knock it off,” he said irritably. Ordinarily he would done something like ban Private from watching TV for awhile but he was far too concerned about Kowalski to care about Private’s actions.
Skipper sighed and slung Kowalski over his shoulder, then began to carry him back towards the pinguim habitat. Private and Rico followed along, not talking, and after a few minutos they had reached the headquarters.
Skipper put Kowalski on his bunk and began to inspect him to see if he was still alive. After listening a few segundos for his heartbeat and feeling for a pulse, he sighed and walked away.
“He’s dead,” said Skipper as he walked passed Private and Rico.
Private burst into tears. Rico picked up Private and hugged him, then began to cry too. Skipper just sighed again and went into the bathroom. A small click signaled that he had locked the door.
“No! I don’t believe it!” said Private stubbornly and walked over to Kowalski, making Rico, who had been leaning on his shoulder, topple to the ground. As Rico grumbled and picked himself off the floor, Private put his head on Kowalski’s chest, listening for a heartbeat. After about six segundos with no sign of one, Private began to cry even louder, soaking Kowalski’s chest. Then he heard it. One tiny, fragile beat.
“Kowalski?” said Private, his crying immediately stopping. He listened for a few mais seconds, just to make sure he wasn’t imagining it.
About seven segundos later, another tiny heartbeat sounded. Private squealed and hugged Kowalski, that ran over to Rico.
“Kowalski’s alive!” said Private. Rico ignored him and gave a heavyhearted sigh.
“Humph” said Private. He went over to the bathroom door and was about to knock when he heard a sniffling noise coming from inside. He put his head up to the door and listened very intently, but it wasn’t hard to tell that Skipper was crying.
Not softly, either. It sounded as though he had just blown his nose on a tissue and was now crying his eyes out into the tissue. Private was a little taken aback, since he head never heard his commander cry before, but then again he had never had a member of his team die because of Skipper, at least not when Private was around.
“Skippa! Kowalski’s alive!” shouted Private from outside the door, deducing that if he bothered knocking then Skipper would probably run him off anyway.
“Go away Private” moaned Skipper. “Go pester Rico or something…just leave me alone.”
“But Skippa…” begged Private.
The door opened and Skipper jumped out, looking positively livid, but as he was about to yell at Private he dissolved into tears again.
“I thought it would be for the good of the zoo, taking out Kowalski...well, not like this, you know…but losing a teammate…a friend, especially in an accident which you’re responsible for…you don’t know what it feels like” said Skipper.
Private patted Skipper on the back and Skipper suddenly picked Private up in a bone-crushing hug. Private could barely breathe until Skipper finally put him down.
“Yes…sorry for tickling you as well. I don’t know what came over me,” said Private, thinking that telling Skipper that Kowalski wasn’t even going to hurt them would only make him feel worse.
“Oh, I forgive you Private,” said Skipper without looking at Private. “You know, it’s just so odd,” he continued, stopping his crying for a second. “Even after Kowalski kidnapped you two and perhaps even mind controlled you, I still feel…”
“Yes. Kowalski was a friend, Skipper. It’s natural for you to feel like that and it shows that you were a true friend,” said Private, cutting off Skipper.
Skipper forced himself to stop crying. “Well, I guess that now all we have to do is put Kowalski to rest.”
Private gave a confused face. Skipper sighed and said “Bury him, have a funeral, whatever you want to call it.”
Private looked scandalized. “But Skippa! Kowalski’s still alive! I felt his heartbeat!”
“Oh, you tell me now?” said Skipper. “Besides, I checked Kowalski myself, his heartbeat’s gone. You must have been imagining it.”
Rico was standing around, looking at pictures of all of the penguins playing voleibol and crying. “Come on Rico, we’re going to give Kowalski a proper funeral.”
“No! I won’t let you!” said Private frantically.
“Rico!” said Skipper, and Rico slapped Private.
“Much better sir” said Private. “Perhaps I was just imagining it after all.”
Private decided to check on mais time and put his head on Kowalski’s chest. Just to make Private feel slightly better, Skipper did too. They waited for a good eight seconds. No heartbeat.
“I could have sworn…” said Private.
“Sometimes you can go a little insane when you lose someone like this, Private. I remember what happened to Manfreeti back in Ecuador when he got the news his mum had been killed por an angry leopard seal…” Skipper shuddered.
Private felt the oddest mix of relief and despair.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A few hours later the three remaining penguins, Marlene, the chimps and Maurice were assembled por a bare patch of ground behind one of the zoo storehouses. Mason the chimp was dressed in very formal looking black clothes complete with a topo, início hat and tie while Phil shoveled dirt onto the hole in the ground containing Kowalski. Maurice and Marlene stood and watched in respectful silence as the penguins put little flores and a peixe on topo, início of his grave. Everyone was wondering why the peixe was there, since Kowalski wasn’t going to eat it, but no one said anything.
Mason recited some funeral passages in a very mechanical tone of voice, as though he didn’t want to be there and was wishing he were somewhere else. After he was finished, the penguins came up and said some final words (I’m not going to write them all because firstly I fail miserably at conveying dramatic emotions for any amount of time longer than a few minutes. Also, Private stood up and spoke for about an hour, and for me to write everything he said would be tedious on my poor fingers). Not wishing to attract the attention of the humans or other animais around the zoo, instead of sticking a gravestone or something into the ground Phil simply wrote in the dirt with his finger:
“Here lies Kowalski: 1998-2009”
After crying for a few mais minutes, the animais realized how late it was and said hasty goodbyes before scurrying back to their habitats. A half an hora passed.
Then a black flipper poked its way out of the grave.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” said Skipper. “I’m going to finish this before you seriously hurt someone.” Skipper kicked out at Kowalski and Kowalski did a backflip to avoid it.
“Are you two okay?” Skipper said hurriedly to Private and Rico. Much to Skipper’s surprise, the two penguins ran over to Kowalski and stood in front of him, shielding Kowalski from Skipper.
“Skippa, stop!” said Private. “Kowalski didn’t do anything! And if you want to hurt him, you’ll have to go through us first!”
“Is this part of your fiendish plan, Kowalski?” said Skipper. “Brainwashing my soldiers and using them as shields?”
Skipper stood in front of Rico and Private for a few moments, as though sizing them up, then screamed and pointed behind them. “Leopard seal!”
“Aah!” said Private, and he and Rico cowered on the floor. Skipper took the opportunity to dash between them and run straight towards Kowalski, who had spun around in alarm but not ducked on the floor. Before Kowalski turned back, Skipper had already knocked him across the room, where he hit a mural and slid down.
Skipper ran over to Kowalski, who seemed dazed por the impact. Right as Skipper reached down to investigate the cloth wrapped around Kowalski’s head, the pinguim casually slapped Skipper’s wing away, then sprang up and began to run. Skipper was surprised but quickly began to pursue Kowalski, who was running towards his makeshift organ, but before he could reach it, Skipper grabbed his ankle and pulled it out from under him and Kowalski fell to the ground.
por now, Rico and Private had gotten up and were running over to Skipper, trying to stop him.
“Skippa, leave him alone!” said Private.
“What did you do to them?” said Skipper, staring at Kowalski. Kowalski simply shrugged, knowing Skipper would never believe him if he denied it. Then he tried to wiggle out of Skipper’s grip, but Skipper just twisted his ankle to get him to stop.
“Now, you’re coming with me back to the headquarters, Kowalski, and if you don’t get up and walk, then I’ll drag you” Skipper said. However, right at that moment, Private grabbed Skipper from behind and began to tickle Skipper’s belly. Skipper giggled and loosened his grip on Kowalski, which was enough for Kowalski to break free. He saluted Private before running off into the darkness.
“Private!” said Skipper in the midst of his fit of giggles (Skipper was very ticklish in certain places) “Stop…hehe…stop that!” he pushed Private off of him, but Private just jumped back on and kept tickling him. “Rico…please…hehe…help me!” Rico just watched.
Finally, Skipper grabbed Private’s flipper and whiplashed him over his head into the sewer. As Private swam to the shore, spitting out filthy water, Skipper sprinted off into the darkness after Kowalski.
Unfortunantly for Skipper, it was very dark in the sewer and eventually smacked into a wall, which he could not see. As he stumbled around, dazed, light suddenly flooded the section of sewer which he was in. He looked up towards the light and saw Kowalski had kicked open a manhole and was climbing a ladder, trying to escape.
“Kowalski, stop!” said Skipper, momentarily panicking as he knew that particular manhole led to a very busy street. But Kowalski did not slow down at all and in a few segundos had flipped off the ladder and out of the sewer. Skipper took a running jump towards the ladder and managed to grab onto the middle rung and started to climb as fast as he could. But he was blinded por the glare of the daylight and as he was squinting, trying to block the light with one flipper he heard a small thud, followed por the screech of car brakes. A car slid into place right over the topo, início of the manhole, blocking out the light and allowing Skipper to climb at topo, início speed. He popped out of the hole and whacked his head on the car.
“Oh man, what did I just hit?” said a man’s voice, and a car door slammed shut. Skipper peeked out from under the car and saw Kowalski lying motionless in the grama several feet from the side of the road.
Before the man could see what he had hit, Skipper dashed out from under the car and grabbed Kowalski and dragged him under the car.
“What’s this?” said the man, and Skipper peeked out from under the car once again. He saw the man bend down and pick up what appeared to be a small (large for Skipper) glass beaker, the kind that Kowalski used in his lab. The man turned it over and a few drops of liquid fell out.
The man just dropped the beaker and got back into the car, apparently deciding that he had not hit anything. Then he drove away.
“Skippa? What are you doing?” said Private from inside the sewer. Skipper ignored him and put Kowalski seguinte to the manhole, then walked out to retrieve the beaker. He wanted to look it over, but he didn’t want anyone to spot him outside the zoo so he grabbed Kowalski in one wing and the beaker in the other and jumped back down the manhole. Then he slid the cover back into place.
Rico and Private were waiting at the bottom of the ladder. Skipper found it difficult to climb while carrying Kowalski and simply dropped him onto Rico, who collapsed under the weight. Private pulled Kowalski off of Rico, but one he realized Kowalski was not moving at all or even breathing, he turned to Skipper with a look of shock on his face.
“What did you do to him?” said Private.
“Come on, Private, it’s obvious he’s just faking” said Skipper trying to sound confident but it was easy to tell that he was actually very nervous. He slapped Kowalski several times. “Kowalski, it’s over. You can’t run any more.”
“Did you shove him under a car or something?” said Private, looking anxiously at Kowalski.
Skipper sighed. “I chased him up the ladder and before I was even at the topo, início a car hit him. There was nothing I could do.”
“You’re lying!” said Private and began to whack Skipper in the chest. It didn’t hurt but it was annoying so Skipper just slapped Private in the face. “Knock it off,” he said irritably. Ordinarily he would done something like ban Private from watching TV for awhile but he was far too concerned about Kowalski to care about Private’s actions.
Skipper sighed and slung Kowalski over his shoulder, then began to carry him back towards the pinguim habitat. Private and Rico followed along, not talking, and after a few minutos they had reached the headquarters.
Skipper put Kowalski on his bunk and began to inspect him to see if he was still alive. After listening a few segundos for his heartbeat and feeling for a pulse, he sighed and walked away.
“He’s dead,” said Skipper as he walked passed Private and Rico.
Private burst into tears. Rico picked up Private and hugged him, then began to cry too. Skipper just sighed again and went into the bathroom. A small click signaled that he had locked the door.
“No! I don’t believe it!” said Private stubbornly and walked over to Kowalski, making Rico, who had been leaning on his shoulder, topple to the ground. As Rico grumbled and picked himself off the floor, Private put his head on Kowalski’s chest, listening for a heartbeat. After about six segundos with no sign of one, Private began to cry even louder, soaking Kowalski’s chest. Then he heard it. One tiny, fragile beat.
“Kowalski?” said Private, his crying immediately stopping. He listened for a few mais seconds, just to make sure he wasn’t imagining it.
About seven segundos later, another tiny heartbeat sounded. Private squealed and hugged Kowalski, that ran over to Rico.
“Kowalski’s alive!” said Private. Rico ignored him and gave a heavyhearted sigh.
“Humph” said Private. He went over to the bathroom door and was about to knock when he heard a sniffling noise coming from inside. He put his head up to the door and listened very intently, but it wasn’t hard to tell that Skipper was crying.
Not softly, either. It sounded as though he had just blown his nose on a tissue and was now crying his eyes out into the tissue. Private was a little taken aback, since he head never heard his commander cry before, but then again he had never had a member of his team die because of Skipper, at least not when Private was around.
“Skippa! Kowalski’s alive!” shouted Private from outside the door, deducing that if he bothered knocking then Skipper would probably run him off anyway.
“Go away Private” moaned Skipper. “Go pester Rico or something…just leave me alone.”
“But Skippa…” begged Private.
The door opened and Skipper jumped out, looking positively livid, but as he was about to yell at Private he dissolved into tears again.
“I thought it would be for the good of the zoo, taking out Kowalski...well, not like this, you know…but losing a teammate…a friend, especially in an accident which you’re responsible for…you don’t know what it feels like” said Skipper.
Private patted Skipper on the back and Skipper suddenly picked Private up in a bone-crushing hug. Private could barely breathe until Skipper finally put him down.
“Yes…sorry for tickling you as well. I don’t know what came over me,” said Private, thinking that telling Skipper that Kowalski wasn’t even going to hurt them would only make him feel worse.
“Oh, I forgive you Private,” said Skipper without looking at Private. “You know, it’s just so odd,” he continued, stopping his crying for a second. “Even after Kowalski kidnapped you two and perhaps even mind controlled you, I still feel…”
“Yes. Kowalski was a friend, Skipper. It’s natural for you to feel like that and it shows that you were a true friend,” said Private, cutting off Skipper.
Skipper forced himself to stop crying. “Well, I guess that now all we have to do is put Kowalski to rest.”
Private gave a confused face. Skipper sighed and said “Bury him, have a funeral, whatever you want to call it.”
Private looked scandalized. “But Skippa! Kowalski’s still alive! I felt his heartbeat!”
“Oh, you tell me now?” said Skipper. “Besides, I checked Kowalski myself, his heartbeat’s gone. You must have been imagining it.”
Rico was standing around, looking at pictures of all of the penguins playing voleibol and crying. “Come on Rico, we’re going to give Kowalski a proper funeral.”
“No! I won’t let you!” said Private frantically.
“Rico!” said Skipper, and Rico slapped Private.
“Much better sir” said Private. “Perhaps I was just imagining it after all.”
Private decided to check on mais time and put his head on Kowalski’s chest. Just to make Private feel slightly better, Skipper did too. They waited for a good eight seconds. No heartbeat.
“I could have sworn…” said Private.
“Sometimes you can go a little insane when you lose someone like this, Private. I remember what happened to Manfreeti back in Ecuador when he got the news his mum had been killed por an angry leopard seal…” Skipper shuddered.
Private felt the oddest mix of relief and despair.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A few hours later the three remaining penguins, Marlene, the chimps and Maurice were assembled por a bare patch of ground behind one of the zoo storehouses. Mason the chimp was dressed in very formal looking black clothes complete with a topo, início hat and tie while Phil shoveled dirt onto the hole in the ground containing Kowalski. Maurice and Marlene stood and watched in respectful silence as the penguins put little flores and a peixe on topo, início of his grave. Everyone was wondering why the peixe was there, since Kowalski wasn’t going to eat it, but no one said anything.
Mason recited some funeral passages in a very mechanical tone of voice, as though he didn’t want to be there and was wishing he were somewhere else. After he was finished, the penguins came up and said some final words (I’m not going to write them all because firstly I fail miserably at conveying dramatic emotions for any amount of time longer than a few minutes. Also, Private stood up and spoke for about an hour, and for me to write everything he said would be tedious on my poor fingers). Not wishing to attract the attention of the humans or other animais around the zoo, instead of sticking a gravestone or something into the ground Phil simply wrote in the dirt with his finger:
“Here lies Kowalski: 1998-2009”
After crying for a few mais minutes, the animais realized how late it was and said hasty goodbyes before scurrying back to their habitats. A half an hora passed.
Then a black flipper poked its way out of the grave.
