Urgh, sorry about the last cliffhanger, but it seemed like a really good place to stop. Sorry if I sound weird in this chapter, but there's this old ex-friend of my sisters cruising around our house in a borrowed truck, so we're all on red alert. R&R PLEASE!
oOo
"That's not exactly the answer I was looking for, there, sir."
Now, as you can guess, I was thoroughly pissed off. His little "tough guy" show wasn't going to fly with me, and he wasn't going to just get off with a scolding and letting him off down the street. From what I'd seen, he was going to rape and murder a woman because she wasn't going to pay him with money.
He still looked terrified, and when I looked to the woman, she bore the same expression. I took pity on her, although my rage filled mind fought my rational one all the way. "Go, run, just get away from here."
She nodded quickly, and ran off down the street as fast as her stiletto heels would carry her. I turned back to the man, my rage now unleashed. I heard a strange noise behind me, and I turned to see Keila go dark. Under her now red eyes went black, and I quick glance down told me mine had done the same thing. She had grown talons, and was glaring at the man.
I grinned in a evil, twisted sort of way. I was glad she was backing me up on this matter, and happy that she wasn't afraid of her wild side. I snarled at the man, almost scaring myself when I heard the guttural sound.
"So, what do you have to say for yourself?" He seemed to be trying to gather his wits, and spoke in a quivering, basically wimpy voice, "What are you going to do to me?"
I laughed out loud. "Well, now. We haven't quite gotten there yet, have we? What do you think Keila?" I asked, turning to my partner in (not so much) crime. She shrugged, her eyes not moving from the man in front of us. "Maybe we should see just how many people those wings of yours' can carry, take him down to the police?"
I nodded. It seemed reasonable enough to take a man who had threatened rape and murder to jail. "Okay, let's do it." I leaned over and started whispering. "I'll knock him out, and we can look for some rope so if the dumbass wakes up during flight he won't knock us out of the air." She nodded curtly once, and I used a quick swipe of the wing to knock him out cold.
Keila and I didn't find rope per se, but we did find nylon cording in a dumpster nearby, and bound his wrists and ankles to each other, and a length holding them together enough to where if he started struggling, then he couldn't go very far. I took a step back, and snickered. Keila had taken out a Sharpie marker and written a smiley face on his forehead.
I got ready to fly by scaling the side of a tall building, (I had surprisingly great strength) and jumping off the top and flying for a few minutes. It was an exhilarating experience, since I had never even been on an airplane before. I felt immense strength flowing throughout my body, not just in my wings, and knew that not even a tank could take me down. I landed, to much applause on Keilas part, and started making a sling to carry the man.
I searched him first, and found his wallet. Along with having over $15,000 in cash, he had a drivers license, ID, and a small baggie which one sniff told us that it was marijuana. I threw it as far away as I could, and was satisfied that it flew almost 300 yards before finally making a splash in a shallow puddle. Keila looked at me strangely, and took a lighter out of the guy's pocket, throwing it almost as far down the road.
She grinned. We had never been the most athletic, and being strong was never our thing. Even being able to climb ropes in Gym had been a struggle. Now we could throw things further than anyone else, even a body builder, could. All in all, this was turning out to be quite the good deal.
We 'borrowed' the money from his wallet, and saw that his name was Gregg Finnard. I looked down at him. "Well, Gregg Finnard, I guess this is the end of the line for you, now off to jail you go!"
Keila snickered, and we got ready for takeoff. I decided it would be better if we took off from the roof again, since I didn't yet know how just how strong my wings were. Keila stopped me for a second, though.
"Wait a second, I think I feel something on my back. I don't want leeches or anything, so will you check me?" I chuckled, and had her turn around. I soon found out that it wasn't a leech, but wings, hers a light, almost white blue. I told her this, and she squealed with delight. "Oh my gosh! I wonder why they weren't there before? That'd be so bad ass if they could be retractable!"
"Yeah, it would! Then we wouldn't be those freaks in the crowd with the wings and tails! But I don't think they're retractable..." I frowned. Maybe we would just have to tuck them into our pants when we wanted to act normal. "Oh well, too bad so sad, I say. This is gonna be so much easier, since we can carry him between us now!"
We grabbed Gregg by the wrists and ankles, got into a comfortable position, and took off. I still couldn't get over how free and wild I felt when flying, and one glance to Keila told me that she felt the same way. We flew as high as possible (Which was pretty darned high up!) so we would look like maybe large birds from the ground. The surprising part of this was that we could still point out individual people from crowds, and we found the police station easily.
We landed carefully, and so we wouldn't arise suspicion we took the ropes off him and hid our wings. The latter was a little harder, since we didn't know how to control them very well yet, but we figured it out pretty quick. Then we slung his arms across our shoulders, trying to ignore the obnoxious clouds of alcohol breath coming from his mouth, and tried to act like he was a huge burden. His toes just barely touched the ground, since we were almost taller than him. We got to the front door, and a secretary ran up to meet us after having seen us through the windows.
"Oh my gosh! What happened here?" She looked flustered and overworked. I started 'explaining'.
"We were on our way home from the zoo and we heard this guy trying to rape this woman up ahead, and we couldn't get away fast enough before he saw us! So he tried to take out a knife and hurt us, but I take Tai Kwan Do every 2 days, so I kicked it out of his hand and knocked him out." Keila butted in.
"This might've been a quarter of a mile away, we live not too far away from here."
The secretary looked absolutely terrified, and tried to get us tea or water or coffee, but we weren't thirsty at the moment. She kept looking at us like she expected us to go into shock at any second, which for any normal teenage girls would've been true. But we declined, and she brought out three police officers. They couldn't believe that we'd taken the guy out, but I insisted that that was what happened. I even showed them a developing bruise on the side of his head from where I hit him.
They took him into a cell, thanked us for our service to the community, and we were on our way again. We decided to regrow our wings and fly to the zoo to see the penguins like we'd wanted to do.
I shuffled my wings. "Ouch, is it just me or does it kinda twinge when we regrow them?" Keila looked back at me from her perch. "Yeah, kinda, but I'd bet it's just because we aren't used to doing it yet." (That last line sounded kinda gross, but too bad so sad. XD)
After we took off, I looked over to Keila. "Wanna race?" I grinned, and she nodded with a playfully determined look on her face. I reared my wings back as far as I could, and with a gigantic flap, I was off. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Keila do the same. I kept going as fast as possible, but Keila was fast! She kept up without breaking a sweat. I decided to kick it up a notch.
I dove about 100 feet, and swooped back up quickly. It was a bit shaky, but it did what was it was intended to do: I got forward about three hundred feet. Keila laughed like a maniac, and made a clever movement with her wings that propelled her forward almost as far. I giggled, and looked down. I didn't realize it, but we had made it almost all the way to the zoo without even knowing it yet. I pointed and yelled to Keila, telling her to go down. We dove with our wings pinned back as far as they would go, and landed without a noise.
Once we were settled, I motioned to Keila again to come over towards me. "Keila, do you really think we're in their dimension? I mean, what're the odds of us just happening to come to the one place where we'd want to come the very most, and have super powers most people would kill for?"
She shook her head, smiling. "There's only one way to find out, now, isn't there?" With that, she headed off in the direction of the zoo. I followed closely behind, not hiding my wings just yet. It felt so good to have my wings stretched out to their almost 20 foot full span, it should be illegal. "Hey, Kiki? One question... What happens to the rest of me when I got that mad?" She giggled, and I walked faster so I could catch up with her.
"Well, you start getting this weird black veiny stuff under your eyes, it's kinda cool looking, and then your eyes actually change to this reddish purplish color, I guess it depends on how mad you are. You get some huge claws, and, pardon my french, you look scary as hell." I was shocked. I'd never been called scary looking, even when I was pissed at someone I very scarcely knew.
"Come on, hurry up! I wanna get there before they close up!" But just as she said that, I saw something in my peripheral vision, black creatures that I had no name for, creeping deep in the shadows. I shook it off, telling myself that it was just a group of cats. "Hey, Keila, it kinda feels like someone's following us, doesn't it?" I said pointedly. She just sighed, and walked faster. I had hidden my wings a couple feet back, so hopefully whatever- since I'd decided it was too small to be human -was following us hadn't seen them.
"Keila?" She looked back around at me, so quickly that I had a hard time seeing her. "What is it now, Lizzie?" I stood stock still. "I wonder, is there some of Blowholes minions after us? I mean, could that even be possible?" She never got the chance to answer, because just at that moment, something slick and thin hit me in the back of the neck, my last conscious memory being Keila gasping out, "The penguins!" before she too hit the pavement with a thud. Then I blacked out, not knowing anything more.
oOo
The first thing I felt when I woke up was cold. Not just air conditioned room cold, like iceberg in the Arctic Ocean cold. At first I thought me and Keila had dozed off with the window open, then the happenings of the past day hit me like a ton of bricks. I tried sitting up, but seeing as I was already there, I opened my eyes, and couldn't believe what I was seeing. There I was, in the middle of the penguins HQ.
I looked around incredulously, and then looked at myself. I was tied up to a wooden chair, and my wrists were bound behind my back, where I could feel another chair, most likely holding Keila. I realized that she was still asleep, and I prodded her in the back gently, glad that the penguins weren't in the HQ just yet. "Keila, wake up! You gotta see this!" She snorted groggily, then I felt her head snap up to the back of the chair. "Oh my gosh, that wasn't just some strange dream!"
I giggled, thinking the exact same thing when I'd opened my eyes for the first time. "Ugh, but we're tied up to each other." She snorted playfully. "Dude, we have claws, tails, wings, and a bunch of other super powers, and you're worried about some rope?" I looked down, realizing just how silly it sounded for me to be saying that. "But we don't want them to know about that unless they have to, now do we?" She nodded, me feeling it more than seeing it. I decided to try something. I closed my eyes, and used my shoes to scuffle around on the floor. It had the effect I desired, and I could hear it bouncing off objects in the room, and I could picture exactly what they would look like.
"Oh my god, you have to try that!" I explained what to do, and she giggled giddily when she found she could do it too.
"That's too freaking cool! That'll be nice when we're trying to work in the dark, or maybe we have something like cats eyes?" I shrugged, and I could hear her doing the echo-locating thing again, 'seeing' my shrug. The nice part was that we could 'see' all the way around us, so having your back to something or someone didn't matter.
Just then, the penguins dropped in through the fishbowl entrance, Skipper first, then Kowalski, Rico, and Private. Keila and I got dangerously silent, and hoped they still thought we were asleep. But our luck had struck out, Skipper came right over to us, seeing right through the closed eyes and slumped shoulders. I sighed, sitting up straight again, acting like a kid caught in the act of doing some 'no-no' or another. Keila did almost the same, but silently, almost scaredly. Skipper broke the awkward silence that followed.
"So... Who are you and how do you know about Dr. Blowhole?" I, again, sighed, this time much more loudly than when I acted like I was asleep.
"So you heard that, did you?" I realized embarrassedly that my "Hillbilly" accent was showing through. I must really be scared, then.
"Yes, we did. Now answer the question!" The last part he said in my face, close enough for me to feel the spittle flying from his beak. I growled quietly, and he backed off. I sighed.
"Okay, I'll tell you. He's after us. He's tried to kill us multiple times, because someone who can talk to animals and humans would be valuable when he's trying to get supplies for his dumbass lobster army. So now we have no idea where we are, have a bossy penguin in our faces, are being chased by a murderous bottlenose, and are quite frankly scared shitless. Great. Just fricken great." By the end I was practically yelling, and the entire team looked startled, Skipper especially. A female had never acted this hostile at him, they were usually sweet and helpless, and he'd never heard a girl cuss before.
He gathered his wits back up, and tried to make a coherent sentence. "Well, we had no idea... We thought you might be working for another organization that was supposed to be taking him down, and we don't want any competition getting in our way... We wouldn't have knocked you out if we knew you were just two girls that were in danger from him..." I snorted. "Can it. We've already thought about getting help, but no one we know would believe us if we told them there was a homicidal dolphin trying to kill us."
He seemed to get over the shock of my language. He moved around the chairs, and looked to Keila. I closed my eyes, and tried to do the echo-locating thing again so I could watch and hear at the same time. The team tried to make themselves comfortable, but couldn't really rest easy knowing that there were two girls tied up being interrogated in the middle of the room. Private was sitting in front of the TV, but didn't dare turn it on until Skipper was done with us. Kowalski was pacing in the corner, which was kind of messing up the echo-locating, but I could still see what was going on behind me. Rico was the only one who seemed at ease, polishing a large knife in the corner.
"How did he come to find out about you twos' condition? I mean, he couldn't have just stumbled upon it or anything." Keilas face hardened, her brain working to find a good enough lie to please them. "We went to the Coney Island Zoo when we were really little, and we talked to him without knowing his little revenge problem, so he knew our names and relative ages, so it would probably be pretty easy for him to track us down. By the way, random change of subject for ya, Elizabeth, do you think we should show them..." I nodded. "Let's only show them certain aspects for now, just the ones that would get us out of these god forsaken ropes and chairs, I'm starting to get a stiff neck." I heard three things at once. Her claws come unsheathed, a snipping sound that I assumed was her cutting the ropes, and the entire teams gasps.
I did the same, but I also changed my eye shape on accident, turning them into cat-like slits. Skipper jumped back with a yell, and I stood to my full height. "High ceilings. Thank god for that, I have back problems without having to be stooped over the entire day." Keila noticed their shocked faces. "Hey, calm down, we won't use these against you unless you piss us off." She said casually, flaunting her claws like a fresh set of nails. I laughed maniacally, and they seemed to believe us in a minute sense.
"Where are you two coming from, then? I mean, you can't have been from around here, you looked lost." This time it was Kowalski that spoke, causing me to turn fast enough to make him jump.
"We're from Florida, but some way or another we came here, I honestly have no clue how exactly we got here, one second we're going through her toys," I jerked my head towards Keila, "and the next we're in a street about three miles from here, wandering around like a bunch of idiots. No doubt that evil porpoise has to have an evil purpose for this." Private snickered behind his flippers, and I joined in, just now realizing what I'd said. (All rights for the "Evil Purpose" joke goes to halfhuman123's story "Operation: Search and Rescue". Thought I'd throw that in before I get flamed for stealing a line. =D)
Skipper cleared his throat loudly, and we both stopped laughing immediately, though we kept our huge grins plastered on our faces.
"So, what're we going to do about this? You girls can't just wander around the city, homeless." A wonderful thought ran through my head, one that every Penguins of Madagascar fangirl would give their left hand for:
"Why don't we just stay here? I mean, there's plenty of room, and we wouldn't be too much trouble." Skipper sighed, but Private cut in.
"Yeah, they wouldn't be too much of a nuisance, Skippah! I think they could be useful when we have to do things and interact with humans, think about it! They could buy us chinese food!" He whispered the last line, but what with our impeccable hearing, we could both hear him, and Keila looked to me, I looked to her, and we both started laughing like maniacs at the same time, which only made us laugh harder. Skipper looked irritated, Rico and Private looked like they wanted to join in but were too afraid to, and Kowalski looked only slightly amused, not being close enough to hear what was said.
"Will you two ever stop laughing?" I tried to answer Skipper, but this is what it sounded like:
"I- hahahaha- can't- haha- stop- hahahahaha- to- hahehe- breathe!"
Private finally cracked, and was rolling on the ground he was laughing so hard. I had tears running down my face, and Keila was in a fit of those really annoying silent laughs that come from not being able to breathe. We started to calm down after about 2 minutes of this, and then there was a really awkward silence afterward that couldn't be broken by anything but conversation.
"Who knew that such a simple sentence could cause all that?" I grinned. Keila and I had those fits on a regular basis, although never over something as funny as that. Even during school they would happen. That brought a thought to my head: What happens when we get back to school? We'll want to flaunt everything that's happened in their faces. What if we lose our powers when we go back? How do we get back in the first place?
I didn't dwell on that last thought too much, or else the worry would show on my face and we would be caught between a rock and a hard place, so to speak.
"So, are we going to be staying here or what?" He looked torn. Let us stay here and catch on to their missions, or let them go and go against everything their unit stood for. He decided on the first thought, and had a look of great dislike on his face.
"I guess you two can stay here until you find a way to get home, but that's it. No 'Can we just stay here?' if you don't have a home to go back to." He threw us a threatening glance, then turned to the team.
"Looks like we're getting a few temporary house guests, so let's get them some things gathered up so they can be as comfortable as possible. Operation: Home Sweet Home is a go." He sent them off to get us things like bunks and bathroom necessities. I looked to Keila with a look of confused laughter.
"Operation: Home Sweet Home?" I laughed out loud, but quickly stifled it after Skipper threw me a look. Looks like we're going to get settled in pretty well here, huh? But that thought proved wrong, because the next day would be like going through hell.