It was late inside Dr. Blowhole's lair, and the owner of said lair was lying on the floor, having just been knocked off of his scooter after a pitched battle between him and the penguins.
However, while most evil villains would be busy cursing the hero and telling them that the battle wasn't over, Dr. Blowhole had a different idea.
"Give it up, Blowhole! We'll never let you release that toxic gas over the city!" said Skipper as he stood triumphantly with the rest of his team.
To Skipper's surprise, though, Blowhole started cackling, knowing that he had a backup plan already up his sleeve should his original plan fail.
"Shouldn't he be retreating right about now, Skipper?" whispered Kowalski.
Skipper shushed him before turning back towards the evil dolphin, who by then had finished laughing.
"What the heck were you laughing about, Blowhole? We beat you…again."
"Do you really think that you've beaten me? An evil genius always has a backup plan, you know."
Skipper looked at him in confusion as two of Blowhole's lobster minions pushed him back on to his scooter.
"What kind of backup plan are we talking about here? If it puts the city in danger, we're gonna make sure that it doesn't happen."
"Oh believe me; it has nothing to do with the city. It has more to do with you four."
Surprised, the four penguins dropped their guards.
"Us? What do you mean by us?" asked Private.
"It's simple, really. I know that it's quite difficult for me to be able to defeat you with the four of you working as a team. So, I thought, why not break them up? I knew that would be tough to do, however, but I have managed to figure out the perfect way to do so."
Blowhole fell silent for a moment to take in the penguins' incredulous looks before continuing on.
"I've secretly reprogrammed one of you to work for me. All I have to do is say one little word, and they're completely under my control."
The room fell silent for another few seconds before Blowhole spoke up once more.
"I see from the looks on your faces that what I've said seems to have done the trick. If you'll excuse me, I've got some more evil plans to create. Ta-ta!"
Skipper barely noticed Blowhole extending the 'e' on the word evil, as he was completely lost in thought. Before he could get any more lost, though, Private walked up to him.
"Skippah, you don't believe what Dr. Blowhole said, do you?"
"Of course not! Why would I ever believe something that comes out of the mouth of my arch enemy?"
Skipper adopted a confident expression, hoping that Private wouldn't be able to tell that he was dodging the question. In reality, he wasn't so sure.
He obviously trusted his team with his life, but with his rampant paranoia, even the smallest seeds of doubt can grow into something much bigger.
Sighing, he turned towards his team.
"Let's move out, men! Looks like Blowhole won't be bothering us for now."
As the penguins headed out the door to go back to the zoo, Blowhole couldn't resist another evil laugh, knowing that he's already said the trigger word and it was only a matter of time before the team was no more.
The next day came, and Skipper woke up the rest of the penguins for morning training as usual. However, when the others hopped down from their beds, he found Kowalski hunched over, an annoyed look on his face.
"Something wrong, Kowalski?"
"Sorry, Skipper. I've just had a bit of trouble sleeping. I seem to be suffering from some sort of headache, possibly from that wrench I got hit with yesterday."
Skipper initially wasn't sure if Kowalski was making excuses, but then he remembered seeing one of Blowhole's lobsters specifically hit Kowalski with a wrench.
"Go find some aspirin, and quickly. I want you all up topside as soon as possible."
Kowalski saluted before heading to his lab, knowing that he had some in stock to use as part of some experiments.
A few minutes later, Kowalski returned from the lab looking good as new.
"Ready to go, Skipper."
"Good, now let's go. Time's a wastin'."
Once the zoo finally closed, Rico, Kowalski and Private were about to head down into the HQ for some free time. However, they were interrupted when Skipper cleared his throat.
"Hold up there for a second, boys. I have a little surprise for you."
The other three penguins turned around to face their commander, watching expectantly as they wondered what he had in mind.
"I think we need to have a bit of a celebration for successfully preventing Blowhole from releasing his toxic gas all over the city, so I'm treating you all to snow cones."
"Ooh, that sounds wonderful, Skippah!" said Private, beaming.
Skipper looked at the other penguins for a moment, seeing Rico's beak start to water, and Kowalski look pleasantly surprised.
"Let's go find us a snow cone cart."
The penguins immediately hopped out of the habitat, sliding around as they searched for an unattended snow cone cart.
Eventually, they managed to find one, but they ended up having to go all the way into the park to do so. Still, none of them could really complain, as the snow cones themselves would still be very worth it.
The penguins quickly slid into a bush nearby, and Skipper turned towards Rico.
"Rico, binoculars."
Rico spit up a pair of binoculars as asked, and Skipper held them up to his eyes, searching around for anyone in the vicinity.
"No sign of any humans. We should be safe."
"We should probably work quickly, though. There's no telling when the human who pushes that cart will return." pointed out Kowalski.
"Noted. Come on, let's move."
The penguins slid over, stopping right in front of the cart.
"Attack stack, men!"
The penguins stacked up on top of each other, but the sudden nature of the stack led to Kowalski, who was on the bottom, to accidentally move forward a few feet as he tried to regain his balance.
"Kowalski, what's going on down there? We're too far away!" said Skipper as he looked down at the stack under him.
"Apologies, Skipper. My center of gravity was thrown off for a bit. Give me a second to fix this."
Kowalski attempted to try and straighten himself out so that he would be able to bring the stack back to the snow cone cart, but it was already too late, as the analyst tripped over his feet, and the other penguins were sent flying into a small pond a few feet away from the cart.
The momentum also ended up carrying Kowalski into the pond as well, and as the four penguins tried to pick themselves up and try again, the proprietor of the snow cone cart returned, grabbing said cart and wheeling it away.
"After those snow cones!" yelled Skipper.
Getting out of the pond, however, proved to be challenging. It was too shallow for them to swim efficiently, so they were forced to waddle their way out, which slowed them down.
Eventually, though, they did manage to get out of the pond, and they immediately dropped down to their bellies, giving chase. Unfortunately, the next time the human stopped was within a crowd of people, and as the penguins watched the man sell snow cones to everyone, Skipper knew there was no chance they would be able to catch him unaware and get snow cones.
Sighing in defeat, Skipper turned towards the rest of the team.
"Let's head back to the zoo, men. Looks like we're out of luck."
"But Skippah, can't we just look around and see if there's another cart somewhere?" asked Private.
"Private does have a point." said Kowalski.
"Alright, fine. Let's work quickly, though. I don't want to leave the HQ unattended more than we need to."
The penguins once again started searching through Central Park, combing through the park itself, as well as the zoo as they desperately tried to find another snow cone cart.
However, the search came up empty, and when the penguins finally returned to their HQ in defeat, Skipper rounded on Kowalski.
"What happened out there, Kowalski? We've always performed the Attack Stack perfectly!"
Caught off guard by the sudden questions, Kowalski blanched for a moment before sputtering out an answer.
"I-I'm sorry, Skipper! I didn't mean to drop you guys. I just didn't expect that you would want to use that method. Besides, don't we usually use a different way for getting snow cones?"
Skipper opened his beak to argue, but then he realized that Kowalski did have a point. He remembered specifically using the boost method the last few times they did go for snow cones. Sighing, he looked down at the ground for a moment before returning to facing Kowalski.
"Sorry I doubted you for a minute there, Kowalski. Just...do you remember what I said that one time, about expecting the unexpected?"
Kowalski nodded, choosing to let Skipper speak.
"Well, this is exactly what I meant when I said that! We can't simply go with the methods that we're used to. We've got to shake it up some times. Otherwise we'll be too predictable! Do you understand?"
"Yes, Skipper, I understand."
"Good."
Despite the niggling feeling in the back of his mind that something was wrong, Skipper trusted Kowalski and knew that he would never intentionally sabotage a mission. Unintentionally sabotaging a mission was a different story, though, but Skipper knew those were only because of Kowalski's inventions being more dangerous than they should.
As he watched the other penguins go through their normal routines during their free time, Skipper wondered if there was even a possibility that one of them could have secretly been reprogrammed, like Blowhole said. As much as it annoyed him that he didn't immediately doubt the validity of what Blowhole said, he knew that there was no limit to what the mad scientist was capable of.
"How could he have even gotten close to us? The security system would have warned us." he thought to himself.
Sitting down at the table, he put his head into his flippers, feeling a headache coming on.