A/N: Found this among my scribbles. I hope you enjoy it. (I also apologize in advance for grammar mistakes. Still learning, guys.) Oh and please help did I do the genre thing right this time?
Disclaimer: I do not own PoM, Dreamworks does. And this story is purely fiction.
A few months ago Julien told her that sightseeing from high grounds is fun, even though the only high ground he knew was his cheap bamboo throne. And for once, his statement wasn't stupid at all. One sleepless night the otter climbed atop her rock of a roof slash slide. You can't see that many stars in New York City, so she gazed down to the zoo instead, where her neighbors slept peacefully in their respectful habitat amid the sound pollution of 5th Avenue and all the blinking city lights. Her train of thoughts didn't lead to a game of guessing dreams or chuckles upon finding funny sleeping habits of her neighbors, no – instead, watching closed eyes reminded her of mortality. She didn't find it strange that the word 'death' never came to mind during her late night musing. She thought her optimism had something to do with it. Instead, she thought of stories – plays. How they all have a beginning, middle, and an ending. When the story's over, you have to get off stage; it's our choice whether to leave something for the audience to remind of us or not. Sometimes people do an act so big that the audience couldn't get it off their heads for years. Sometimes an actor will give out a puzzle and only few people would understand.
She didn't want her stage to be empty once she leaves.
That night, she saw a figure of black and white pacing around next to the zoo's infamous golden bell, alert. Judging from the height, it was probably Private trying to fight off sleep in yet another night-shift. They've been doubling their reckon shifts lately for classified reasons. Marlene just smiled when she didn't see any bright yellow box around the penguin. Another skorca-less night is a good night.
As she hugged her knees to her chest, she realized that she was not just an actress in her own play, she was also an audience. An audience to a crazed up, suspenseful - with just a tad bit too many explosion sound effects and military slang she never understood – action-packed play (oh and by the way, the playbill was so misleading). She never knew what she signed up for. She didn't even know how she ended up being seated in a nice row with a mysterious ticket in her hand. During the opening she thought to herself, "Fine. I can watch a play. There's nothing wrong with it." Then she found out that she could never find an exit door, because they showed up in her play. A lot of times. They weren't even supposed to be part of the cast! One day the five of them shared one nice introductory scene, moments later they were having a scene about something they call 'five men operation'. Where did that come from?
Where did they come from?
When dawn arrived the next day, Private waddled back home to his habitat. He must've been so tired, because he didn't even acknowledge her, who was wide awake atop her habitat's rooftop, not hiding at all and could be easily spotted from far distance, and at early hours to add to that. He was welcomed home by Rico and Skipper, who looked almost as tired. Unbeknownst to the other two penguins, the weapon expert noticed a fourth figure eyeing them. He only gave her a curt nod of acknowledgement when Skipper and Private already jumped inside the hole that leads to their mini headquarters. From his quick gesture and lack of smile, Marlene figured out that Rico was not supposed to do what he just did. Once he disappeared and the fishbowl hatch was for some reason locked, Marlene felt the corners of her lips rose slightly in amusement.
"Classified, Marlene," she whispered to herself, before climbing down and entered her home, heading towards her rock bed. Not that far from it, hung a small white paper crane. It watched her until she fell asleep. It knew why it was there –as hope of peace.
It wasn't a coincidence that Marlene fell asleep exactly when the small morning crowd cheered and familiar splashes from the habitat right across could be heard.
One plain morning, she didn't have anything to do and the zoo was still pretty empty from visitors, so she thought she'd drop by their place to say good morning, maybe for a nice cup of English tea and morning TV news too. That was the plan, and it would've been reality if only she didn't jump inside the hatch and find the headquarters empty. There was no sign of recent activity aside from Skipper's almost empty coffee mug that still had a fresh fish. They must've left not too long ago, she thought. She was about to head home when she saw the rectangular object that was almost half her size – Skipper's recorder. Its shade of gray made it easy for it to be overlooked. Marlene wouldn't have cared at all, and she understood Skipper's paranoia and secrecy like the back of her hand, so at first sight she didn't have any interest to approach it. She didn't care, indeed, but then on the top corner of the recorder she found a yellow sticky note with her name on it. Thinking as if the note was some kind of permission, she let curiosity takes over and pressed the play button.
"Marlene. If you're hearing this that means the boys and I are on a tippy top secret mission – it's the mission that we've been preparing for our entire life!"
You always say that before every single one of your missions, she thought.
"It's dangerous. It's gonna be a full out action and fiery combat! Private might not make it out alive…."
Cue the sound of Rico's personal explosion sound effect, soon followed by Private's whimper of, "I think so too."
Marlene rolled her eyes. Of course he won't.
"Man up, Private."
"Sorry, Skippah."
"What we're trying to say, Marlene," Kowalski, the group's voice of reason (most of the time) intervened, "…is that we won't be back until tomorrow. And a certain someone forgot to turn on our hologram projector. Would you please turn it on and make sure the hologram stays active for the whole day?"
A couple of remarks later from Skipper, the voice note came to an end – not in a graceful way, of course, since the last thing she heard was Skipper yelling to Rico not to touch anything and a mad laugh from the other aforementioned penguin.
Ah, a mission for her bored mind. She could also check the enemy monitoring system. Skipper did tell her that she can do it if they're gone as precautionary. At least that'll keep her busy until visitors start coming. With that thought, she left the recorder alone and made her way towards the TV, where a bunch of new buttons had been installed on the sides. She pressed one that was made out of an old computer keyboard labeled with the character Q, then the TV flickered on and a whole control set slid out from underneath the TV, complete with more buttons and a red joystick. Ever since the rat-Mort incident, Skipper and Kowalski resolved to change the monitoring system from audio based to video based – to prevent misunderstandings they said. So without hesitation she started inputting channel codes, starting from Channel Alpha, which had been set to spy on Alice's office. The zookeeper had just arrived an hour ago and was reading through some files while dancing to a weird inappropriate rap song. Let's just say Marlene didn't change the channel quick enough and was scarred for life. Channel B was for Officer X. He too didn't do anything suspicious, just his normal morning penguin pin ball crushing routine.
Once she was done monitoring their enemies, she set Kowalski's newest hologram projector. This one had been modified so that it can do more than projects four penguins waving. Now it can project a whole show. It also can project colors other than blue now, so it was their most realistic decoy so far. She made it back to her habitat just in time, and another whole day full of entertaining visitors started.
The rest of the day went normally. She performed, got some sweet rewards though no oysters was in sight, dealt with Julien's crazy quirk of the day, but most of the time she just sat on the roof of her habitat to watch the marvelous holographic magic Kowalski had pulled off a few weeks ago do its work to fool the humans. Until now the science enthusiast was still elated about his new "baby". He'd say in a high girly voice, "Oh my, it works like a charm!" everytime it was activated, so today Marlene felt incomplete watching those holograms swim and dance around knowing that she activated it and Kowalski wasn't there to gloat about it. As usual, Mort and Julien fell for the trick just as much as the humans did, but Becky and Stacy noticed the difference, and sometime during lunch they visited.
"So, what's up with the penguins?" asked Becky. She and Stacy sat down cross-legged next to Marlene; the three girls were facing the habitat in front of them.
"Oh, you know. Something came up… mission stuffs." Marlene shrugged before propping her head on her paws, sighing for what she thought was no reason at all.
"When are they coming back?"
"Yeah, what kind of mission is it, anyway?" Stacy chirped curiously, both badgers stared at the brown otter hopefully.
"I don't know. Why are you asking me?"
Becky answered as if the answer was too obvious. "Well, you and the penguins seem pretty close." Marlene raised her eyebrow, bemused. "You definitely know more stuffs than we do. It's like… written in the Central Park Zoo handbook, you know. 'If the penguins freak you out, go to Marlene for clarification.' Well, of course there's Julien too, but he doesn't count. So it's either you or Maurice." Becky added, trying to explain. But against all effort that could be made, Marlene would still be pretty confused at the statement.
"Is that what the whole zoo thinks of me?"
Stacy and Becky's eyes widened with panic. "No! Well, not exactly, just…"
"Subconsciously!" Stacy said.
Becky beamed. "Yeah, that's right! Just… an unwritten rule."
"But rules are boring." Becky elbowed the other badger in the guts to stop her while chuckling awkwardly. "I think we better stop." Stacy's cheeks reddened in embarrassment as she quieted down, rubbing her neck.
To their surprise, Marlene laughed, actually laughed. And yet there was also something off from her, the badgers could sense it. Something… something slightly mad.
"You guys really don't know anything, do you?" she said, when the badgers just looked at each other in confusion.
"What does that mean?"
Oh how she wanted to tell them how wrong they are. She wanted to tell them so bad that no matter how much light has been shed to her knowledge, she was still kept in the dark. Believe it or not, she was just as much of a stranger to the penguins as the rest of the zoo was.
But she made a promise once.
For the rest of the day, Marlene mostly stayed there on her roof, watching the zoo's heroes in tuxedo's holograms play over and over, musing to herself. Even without the badgers' warning, some zoo inhabitants already noticed her out-of-the-usual behavior. Maurice for instance tried to confront the usually cheerful otter at three, but he too was welcomed by an unfamiliar sight, and he returned without any clues.
Exactly seven days later, she and Maurice found another voice note.
They said, "Take everything but the TV."
So she stood guard, atop one of the highest points in the zoo. Watching over her neighbors. Waiting until they come back.
"But why? You don't have to do this…" said her fellow zoo residents.
It will take a lot of effort for the badgers and Maurice to say that Marlene's grin wasn't in any way disturbing when she said, as if to herself, "Classified."
.
She found herself in an empty theater with a single spotlight above her seat. She kept watching, even though the holograms had stopped playing long, long ago.
A simple paper crane hung in her cave. Lonely.
.
A/N: I was obsessed with paper cranes. And as a writer, I think I can easily relate being an outsider who knows something I shouldn't.