Hoboken Zoo.
Tuesday, April 14th, 2012. 20:43 hours. (And for the NancyCats out there, that's about 8:43pm.)
It was a normal Tuesday night; the wind blew cool and crisp, even blowing a few leaves through the air. At night, the Hoboken zoo was dark and quiet. The whole zoo seemed to be deserted of all life, the golden gates rattled along with the gusts of wind blowing against them.
The place wasn't really deserted. All the animal inhabitants were dormant for the night, sleeping away in their remote habitats. They didn't know what was below them, and to be honest they probably couldn't have cared less.
The only disturbance in the area was ll,000 meters and 7 miles below the zoo, and then an estimated 500 feet out into the ocean. No one could hear the disturbance however, in fact no one above land would have been able to hear it at all. Up top it was silent, save for the usual Hoboken mobs and rampaging news anchors yielding wrenches. Then the crackling of trash fires burning a light in the dark.
But 500 feet to the east of the Hoboken zoo, and 7 miles down to the deep depths of the ocean inside of an undetected undersea lair, a widescreen television was playing rather loudly inside of a 'cutesy' little living room-like environment.
A Dane sat on the couch, thoroughly entertained by the rolling film in front of him.
"Ha ha ha ha!" Hans the Puffin laughed and with his wing he took another scoopful of popcorn from a blue floral bowl. The man on the TV got hit by another car and the puffin found that he had had enough of this show, deciding to change the channel. With a click of the remote the station changed from a comedy to an exhilarating car chase with explosions and fascinating hand to hand combat. "Ooh, I love this show!" The puffin exclaimed to himself, leaning back into the soft cushions of the couch. He loved this! Hospitality that was out of this world, free Wi-Fi, crustacean servants that tended to his every whim, and he could spy on Skipper all he wanted? ...He tended to abuse the use of that last one...but this was the life!
"Enjoying yourself?" asked a voice from the doorway.
"Yes! Very much, Dr. Mammal-fish!" Hans nodded, struggling to hold the remote properly in his wings to change the channel again. "And how is that evil scheming going for you?"
Dr. Blowhole eased into the living space on his Segway, maneuvering it in front of the couch where he let go of the handles and flopped back on the pinkish seat cushions. "I must say it's going quite well."
"That is good." Hans said, more focused on flipping through the channels on the television set. "So are you here to finally tell me the plans or- Oh, this show I like!" He put the remote down when he found a suitable station to his liking.
The dolphin rolled his eye. "I'm still having the plan looked over by the lobsters, they are buffing out the little kinks that could make it fail."
"The who? I sorry Dr. Mammal-fish but I was not listening to you."
Blowhole sighed. "The lobsters, you know, my henchmen, the red ones who bring you smo-o-oothies all the time!"
"Oh right, them! How are they doing?"
"They're fine…"
"That is good."
"I had to boil a few for insubordination against me, or speaking out of line, or just because they were annoying me, but other than that they're all fine."
Hans continued to look at the TV screen, horribly distracted by it. "That is so sad…it is always hard to lose a friend…yes…I remember when I lost one of my very good friends…it was very sad for Hans…" The puffin said in between trying to focus on the moving picture screen.
Blowhole huffed out of his blowhole. "Please tell me you aren't talking about my arch-foe being your friend, again."
"I forget that you don't like when I mention that. It is my bad Dr. Mammal-fi—"
"Stop calling me that!" The dolphin growled, making the small puffin flinch.
"And you don't like that either I'm assuming."
"No, I don't. It's no better than that ringed-tailed imbecile calling me—"
"Fishy-face?" finished Hans. He blinked at the dolphin, quite unsure.
It irked Blowhole and he snatched the remote to turn off the television. The monitor flicked off and the surround speakers hummed down. The dolphin glared at him.
"What?" Hans asked, blinking at the cold stare he was receiving. "What did I do?"
"It isn't so much what you did do than it is what you didn't do that is bugging me."
"What is it do you think that I did not do then?"
"Denmark!" barked Blowhole. "Remember?"
"Of course I did Denmark! It is my own home country! " Hans narrowed his eyes. The insult at how he could forget such a thing, stung him deep down in his puffin gut. "How could you think I've never been there done that?"
"That isn't what I meant."
"Then what is it?"
"What happened?"
"Uh…" The puffin rubbed the back of his neck. "What do you mean?" Hans tried to reach for the remote back. He wanted a distraction of some sort, maybe to get the dolphin to drop this particular subject he didn't really want to talk about.
Blowhole held the remote away from him and put it on the other side of the pretty pink couch. "Tell me what happened between you and Skipper in Denmark!" demanded the evil dolphin, annoyed.
"I already told you! It is a long story, one with—"
"—so many twists and chases and explosions! Ye-e-e-es, you've told me that! But you really haven't told me anything! I want to know what caused my nemesis to be booted out of a whole country, what made him so undeniably hated that he was never again given access to return…" Blowhole chuckled at the very thought of so much more people hating Skipper, wanting to hunt the despicable penguin down and seek out its last breath.
"Why do you want to know this so much?" asked the Dane.
"Because I really need to."
"Why do you need to?"
"Okay, I have to then!"
"But why Dr. Blowhole-fish?"
"Because it has something to do with the evil scheme I'm planning!" Blowhole finally snapped at the smaller animal. "And that is all I will tell you, now spill! Why is Skipper forbidden from entering Denmark?!"
Hans blinked. "Your evil plan has to do with open-faced sandwiches?"
"No! It has to do with Skipper! Our foe!"
"Your plan is to get Skipper to close another sandwich? I wouldn't go through with that. It didn't go well for him the first time. It's part of the reason he was banished from Denmark in the first place."
"Why was he banished from there?! There has to be more to it than just open-faced sandwiches!"
"There is, much more."
"Then why won't you tell me it?!"
"Why won't you tell me the evil plan that I am somehow involved in?" Hans brought up.
"I told you! It takes time and the kinks are being taken out of it!"
"Well, my story takes time too, and I too have to work out some kinks as well."
"How does it have kinks when it's already happened?" Blowhole asked, beyond irritated with the Danish puffin. "Mine has kinks because it's still being planned and hasn't happened yet! What I have to tell you is in the future, not the past!"
"You don't understand, Dr. Mammal-fish." Hans started pleading to the evil dolphin. "It's hard to bring up things we very much wish to forget…also to remember every detail or else you tell it wrong and then everything is out of perspective. I need more time, you see, to remember the whole story before I tell it to somebody else…"
Blowhole sighed. "Very well, you will receive more time." The dolphin said and tossed over the remote. "But when I'm ready to tell you the scheme, you better be ready to tell me the story. The whole story."
"Of course I will, I promise it to you!" Hans raised his right wing and crossed it over his small puffin heart.
"Good." Dr. Blowhole said with a relaxed sigh, allowing himself to sink back more into the couch. "Turn to the Species World station, I hear there's a documentary playing about flightless birds and maybe that would help give us some weaknesses of those blasted peng-you-ins! Don't you worry Hans, we'll get Skipper and his team soon enough. Then we will get our revenge once and for all…!" He cackled and told him to turn again. "Seriously, we already missed crucial segments. We wouldn't want to miss anymore of the program."
"Yeah…" Hans pretended to think about it. "But actually…I was going to go up for a walk around the zoo. May I borrow your transport poddy please?"
"Fine…and it's a pod! Not a potty! Doesn't even look like one of those…" Blowhole muttered.
"Thank you~!" Hans said in a sing-song voice and dashed quickly out of the room.
Dr. Blowhole shook his head and turned to the documentary he wanted. "Demented puffin…" The dolphin muttered into the empty room.
Outskirts of the Hoboken Zoo. Underwater Lair.
Hans slipped out of the living part of the underground lair and back into the lab part of it. There, lobsters crawled around every corner. Some had stacks of papers, others had test tubes and machinery, they talked as they worked. This was a normal sight for the puffin, he has been staying with the dolphin doctor for a while now until their plan was ready to go through with.
Actually, it was more of Dr. Blowhole's plan because the dolphin had yet to tell him about it, just like how he has yet to tell the dolphin about what happened in Denmark. It's not that he had any issues with Blowhole. The two got along alright. The dolphin was a bit hostile and annoyed with him at first, also the puffin was a bit cautious of him but soon they had gotten used to having each other around. They weren't friends really, but they both had a past with Skipper so that was reason enough for them to live and work together. That was Blowhole's logic anyway. Han's didn't really care.
The two resided in Hoboken now, in the zoo. The puffin normally went off into the zoo when it opened, but the dolphin just stayed in the underwater lair all the time, only coming close to the zoo to call the puffin down back to the lair for things he couldn't do himself. Blowhole could handle most things on his own and he did, so this left Hans with almost nothing to do while the dolphin did all the work. This also left the puffin with an excessive amount of time to do thinking. He hated what he thought about. About his life, about what he was doing in said life, about what he wasn't doing in said said life, about his home he was ousted out of, and then his thoughts always brought him back to one thing.
Skipper.
Why couldn't he stop thinking about that dream crushing, friendship rejecting, paranoid and frustrating penguin? Why?
He'd tried to talk about his frienemy with the dolphin, but Blowhole would just talk about destroying him and crushing him and all those things. Blowhole would speak of how it would be for them once Skipper was long gone. Once the penguin was out of the picture, they could do anything. They could flood the world if they wanted.
Flooding the world wasn't something he was entirely sure about doing. He was a bird and he was rendered unable to fly because he had his wings clipped in captivity. He wasn't even sure he'd be able to survive if the entire earth was flooded. He made a note to bring that up to the dolphin later on when he got back. If he got back…No, that thought was ridiculous. Of course he'd come back. He hoped he'd come back better off than he was before, maybe more refreshed or settled instead of stuck and floating around like a particle.
The puffin took the red glass elevator up to another room where he got out in the room used to hold various items of transportation. There were Segway's of different models and some new, others broken down and rusty. There were escape pods and mobile pods, some that could accommodate both land and water.
He looked them all over with much thought on each vehicle. He thought about hijacking a Segway and taking it out for a test drive, but the dolphin might find out and he didn't feel like being thrown in a crockpot tonight so he took one of the pods like he told Blowhole he would.
Hans opened up one of them and jumped in, activating it by pressing on a button with the tip of his wing. "This is nice, and it is so roomy too!" And he was right, his small puffin body made him barely able to see the windshield after he closed it. Whereas Blowhole's larger dolphin body made the space very cramped and too small for proper fit. "Push!" He announced as he pressed down on another button. "I push you so much, you naughty pod..." cooed the puffin to the machine.
The red transparent pod started rolling to a certain spot on the floor that gave way underneath it. The pod was then shoved out into the ocean where it floated to the top and then started off towards the city.