Hello, readers! I hope you were not totally confused by the description. :p So yes, this is a short story that should be no more than four or five chapters. It does contain my OC Isobel, and you will probably most definitely be confused if you haven't read two of my other stories World Long Lost to Humankind or We Dream of Our Escape. It takes place at the Central Park Zoo while the penguins and Isobel are still there. And, you must be wondering, what alternate universe is Isobel going to end up in? Well, drumroll please... The CnC Universe, created by none other than the fantastical Treemist1022! Misty has given me permission to use her universe and some of her main OCs in my short story (I'll be addressing which characters belong to her as soon as they arrive). So yeah, hopefully this turns out pretty awesome. Anyways, I know, you're probably really excited to get on with this and read it (I'm looking at you, Misty), so I'll leave you to it!

Chapter 1: The Portal

It was mid-morning at the Central Park Zoo, and this particular March day was the perfect weather for being outdoors.

Isobel was in the lemur habitat gathering up her bow and arrows to practice archery, but when took her arrows out of her quiver, she noticed that all the feather had been torn off.

She furrowed her brow, and then heard Mort delightedly humming a little ways behind her. She turned around, and saw that the mouse lemur had taped the feathers to his head.

"Look, Isobel!" He said excitedly as he ran up to her. "I have a crown like King Julien!"

Isobel sighed, but then she gave him a small smile. She crouched down to begin peeling the feathers off of his head. "That's not what these are for, Mort. I'll get you different ones."

She soon had all of her feathers back. She knew she could go to the penguins' and borrow some super glue from Kowalski and twine from Private to reattach them.

Just as she was about to leave, she saw that Julien and Maurice also looked like they were going to leave.

"Where are you going?" Julien asked her.

"I need to go to the penguins'." Isobel held up her damaged arrows. "Are you taking Mort with you?"

"Eh, we can't." Julien told her. "We have some businessy talk with the chameleons to be speaking of. And Mort totally bugs them."

Isobel sighed and placed a paw on her hip. "I'll be going into Kowalski's lab, I can't take Mort with me."

"Please?" Julien tried giving her his best puppy-dog eyes, which were actually not good at all.

Isobel wasn't buying it and only resorted to crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow.

Julien dropped his hands down and sighed dramatically. "Okay, fine, we will be taking him."

"Yayyy!" Mort heard that he was going on a trip and instantly began running circles around Julien and Maurice.

"Meet me at the penguins' when you're done." Isobel said as she climbed over the wall.

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Once Isobel arrived in the HQ, she explained to the penguins what had happened.

Skipper nodded. "We can fix those right up, doll face. But it'll be a while; Kowalski is working on something top secret in his lab and cannot be disturbed. It's highly classified."

Isobel smiled at him as she sat at their table. "Skipper, I've seen your secret lair."

"Yep." Rico nodded in agreement.

Skipper placed his flippers behind his back. "That may be true, but this is different. Besides, 'Walski will tell you all about when he's done."

"I can get the twine for now, though." Private went to retrieve his crafting box.

The penguins and Isobel chatted for over an hour, as Isobel could not begin to fix her arrows until she could use the glue.

Soon enough, Kowalski came out of his lab. He removed his goggles and left the door open. He looked very tired but pleased.

He noticed Isobel and greeted her.

"The lady needs to borrow your lab, Kowalski." Skipper told him as he flipped through files.

Kowalski looked back to Isobel. "Are you taking up inventing?"

Isobel shook her head and showed him her arrows. "No, only repairing. I need super glue."

Kowalski nodded. "Sure. Super glue is on the top shelf. Just don't mess with what's under the tarp near the back."

Isobel walked back into the lab, and Kowalski walked up to the other penguins, an excited smile on his face.

"It's nearly complete!" he announced.

"What're you working on, Kowalski?" Private asked.

Skipper began to say, "Private, that's classi-"

"Alternate universe." Kowalski said, a gleam in his eye.
Skipper rolled his eyes. "Never mind."

"I have created a portal that can transport living and non-living matter through time and space to a whole different universe." Kowalski continued to explain. "Well, technically, it would be a universe like ours, but potentially with different people and events. I have it set to our zoo, and there are millions of different combinations that it could sent us to."

"We're going to an alternate universe?" Private asked, enchanted.

"Not quite yet." Kowalski said. "I'm not one-hundred percent sure that it won't irreversibly split molecules as you're squeezed through who knows what, so I'll probably experiment with inanimate objects beforehand."

The other penguins nodded in understand.

In the lab, Isobel had not heard the penguins' conversation, and she climbed onto and stood on the counter in the back to reach up to the super glue on the shelf.

When she crouched back down onto the counter after she retrieved the glue, the machine under the tarp begin to whirr, and Isobel looked over to it.

Instantly, the tarp got sucked into the kaleidoscope-like portal, and before Isobel could call out to the penguins, she too was sucked into the spinning vortex.

Yay, first chapter! If you get confused at any point, please ask questions! Thanks for reading, and please review!