Ok, that was definitely depressing for everyone. Let's bring this back up again, shall we? I just couldn't leave the story at that point and had to write a third chapter. I've thought of a few titles, but those'll spoil the story. Also, I nearly lost this file. Thank goodness I decided to upload a draft to the doc manager. Let's get onto the story shall we?
CHAPTER 3 – The Return?
"Why, why did this happen?!" Marlene said to herself. "I remember nothing between the doctor and Skipper's speech! How am I here, yet not here? Where am I anyway? I'm so confused! I'll go talk to Kowalski again." She started walking toward the penguin habitat after saying that.
Little did Marlene know that she was now a ghost, and no longer alive. * Complete with intangibility, invisibility, and other ghost powers. ** All she thought was that she blacked out and was now somewhere in the zoo she never had been to before, for some reason.
Back at the Penguin HQ, Private and Rico were comforting Skipper, while Kowalski was frantically trying to figure out what happened to Marlene through her blood sample. "It's alright, Skipper," Private said.
"No, it's not," Skipper replied. "I took an oath upon myself to protect the zoo, and especially you men and Marlene. Now I've failed!" Skipper once again became teary-eyed. Up above, Marlene was quietly listening and thinking to herself.
"What does he mean, he failed to protect me? I'm right here. I was attacked, but I recovered, even though I wound up in a strange place. I need to patiently listen, I guess."
In his lab, Kowalski was running many, many tests on Marlene's sample. He was about to give up, when suddenly one of his devices was beeping. He quickly ran over to it and saw what was happening to the blood.
Marlene watched Skipper sobbing for maybe 5 minutes before she couldn't take it anymore. She decided to drop down the hatch and figure it out from Skipper himself. As soon as she dropped down, she thought of a million things to say, but could say one. "Skipper? Are you alright?" she asked in a comforting way that only she could.
Just as Kowalski was about to leave the lab to tell Skipper what he found about Marlene's cause of death, he swore he heard her voice. "No, that's not possible," he thought. "Marlene is gone, there is no way I heard her voice." Due to his scientist nature, Kowalski decided to check anyway.
As he walked out, he saw Skipper passed out. Private was just standing there, with his eyes wide and beak agape. When he looked across the HQ, there was Marlene. But how was she there?
That's the end of chapter 3. Yep, left two cliffhangers. What happened to Marlene that caused her to pass and how is she there now? You'll have to wait until the next chapter to find out, I'm afraid.
* Marlene looks like herself, but not solid. Kind of a cross between Private's pale figment of Mort in "The Penguin Stays In The Picture" and the nearly fully colored Alex in "The Return of the Revenge of Dr. Blowhole". So she's about ¾ of the way colored she was in life.
** It's a fan fiction story.
