Chapter 4: Waiting

Hours later, Kowalski and Marissa are still hard at work performing surgeries on Manfredi. The rest of the teams sit out in the main room, trying to keep themselves occupied, but still they glance from time to time at the locked lab door.

"Manfredi always enjoyed playing pirate, I'm sure with having a leg amputated he found a way to look to the brightside." Skippsy says monotoned.

"But a plunger to hop around with, Skippsy? That ain't no way for him to get around worth a kipper." Skipper sighs and stirs his coffee.

"We have three marvelous inventors in our group, Skipper. They'll figure something out for him. I'd bet a whole catfish on it." She smiles. "Trixy already is making some plans as it is."

"So he's going to think of himself as a cyborg pirate?" He looks at her, highly unamused.

"Exactly! And he'll make up all kinds of stories to tell the women to explain it." She chuckles.

Skipper groans and sits back in his chair. "Hoover Dam...I had gotten used to having a calm unit that wasn't always out irritating the native dames. I'll have to lock up my coffee again."

"And the caffeinated sodas and any alcohol." She nods.

"But we'll get used to him again in no time." He sighs. "But how we will both Manfredi-proof and baby-proof the HQ…"

"Don't worry about baby-proofing." She shakes her head. "Marissa can bring him to our HQ to live for now."

"For now?" He looks at her.

Skippsy nods slowly and looks away. "For the next few months at least…"

"What do you mean?"

"They're closing up West Park Zoo…Didn't get enough donations to keep it up so they'll be shipping us all off to zoos all over...Halibut, they may even separate each of us individually." She sighs. "But for sure it wouldn't be to here."

"Why not?" He looks at her. "You girls keep getting sent here as it is."

"For short term...Your habitat is too small for four, well, six more inhabitants to move into." She shakes her head. "But I'll do what I can to keep as many of the four of us together as I can."

Skipper just stares at her for a moment before looking away and thinking. He had just started to get used to dealing with his sister again, working with her and all...And now she was going to leave to who knows where? And their teams? He looks over at Private and Trixy who are watching TV.

"No."

Skippsy looks at him. "What?"

"No. Just, no."

"Skips, what are you talking about?"

"You won't have to keep you all together. Once we got this with Manfredi straight, we'll enlarge the habitat." He nods.

"But what about the humans?" She frowns. "They'd notice something like that and get suspicious."

"No they won't. We'll do what we did with Gus that time he tried to fix our water pipe." He looks smug.

She looks at him like he's lost his mind. "You've lost me."

"We'll do it all in one night."

"One night?!" She gasps. "You've really lost me now, Skips."

"Just the basic enlarging, you'll see, but we'll need some tunnelers." He thinks for a moment. "Like, the beavers, the badgers...And meerkats."

Skippsy sputters and stares at him. "Ain't no way, no how I'm asking for help from those bandit-eyed weasels! They'll want to move in here too if I tell'em. There're too many obnoxious neighbors around here as it is!"

"Well, would you rather deal with them or have your team located to various locations around the country...All alone...Swimming alone."

Skippsy sort of growls and pulls at the ends of her hair-like feathers before sighing with a scowl. "I really hate you some days, Skipper."

"I knew you'd see things the right way." He smirks and pats her back. "Would have been hard for me to call you my sister if you didn't put your team first."

"I won't bring up those times they've said you put yourself first." She smirks back.

"Anyone can slip up now and then." He snorts and crosses his flippers. "Either way, just get the the meerkats to cooperate and stall the ship-offs as long as you can. We'll handle the rest."

"Alright…" She eyes him suspiciously. "But you still want us to keep the kid for now?"

Skipper rubs under his chin thoughtfully. "Marlene."

"You lost me again." She sighs.

"Marlene can watch the boy."

"But she's not a bird, Skipper, she won't be able to feed him right." Skippsy shakes her head.

Skipper considers this. "The only female bird around here I know is Shelley..." He looks awkward. "I wouldn't put the life of any soldier of mine in her wings ever. Her ladder doesn't go all the way to the second floor if you get the jist." He looks at her.

"Well, Skipper, I think the soldier isn't ours to choose what happens with it...We should let it up to his parents."

"They're busy." He shrugs and crosses his flippers.

"Maybe then we should let him stay with Marlene and I'm okay with lending use of Trixy." She nods.

"That could work." Skipper nods and looks over at the paypen. Atlas is staring at him, with wide green eyes as he sucks on his flipper. "He's going to be a troublemaker when he's older."

Skippsy laughs and shakes her head. "I seem to recall Daddy saying the same about us."

"Are you saying he was wrong?" He glances at her.

"Nope." She chuckles. "But he'll be a smart boy for sure, I mean two scientists...He's going to be a giant nerd. I don't think he'll be a troublemaker, you've got Manfredi again for that...If he makes it, that is."

"Yeah, if he makes it…" He sighs and takes a sip of his coffee. "Not sure how well Rico would take losing him a second time if he doesn't...Barely were able to rein him in last time before he hurt himself."

"I'm sure they'll get the boy all patched up." She smiles a little at him. "You remember back when it was just you, me, Manfredi, Johnson, and Benny?"

"Yeah…" He sighs and looks at the floor. "If I had been more mature…"

"Skipper…" She puts her flipper on his. "I'm...Okay with it now. I hate that he's gone and I miss him...But it's okay. You didn't mean for him to die, you just wanted to give him a hard time because you were trying to micromanage my love life. I'm getting better with it."

Skipper turns and looks at her. "Have you been doing what you said the Commander told you to do?"

"Yep…" She takes a sip of coffee. "Yeah, once every two weeks I've been skyping with a therapist. He shipped me some antidepressants that have actually helped."

"That's good." He nods.

"Yep…Maybe you should try it."

"Nope."

"Awh, come on, Skips. You wouldn't need antidepressants, but something to help with paranoia could help out." She playfully punches his shoulder.

"My 'paranoia' keeps us all alive. That's different than your depression, your issue nearly got you killed." He gives her a stern look. "I'm fine."

Skippsy frown and snorts. "I thought we agreed to not talk of that night."

"I said I wouldn't tell your girls, I never said I wouldn't remind you of how low you stooped."

Skippsy just shakes her head and sips her coffee without a word. They then look over at the lab as the door opens and Kowalski steps out.

"And?" Skipper calls over.

Kowalski waddles over to him. "He's still out and will be in horrific pain when he wakes up...He lost a lot of blood, but Marissa has gone out the backway to go get some and some heavy duty painkillers, so as not to alarm everyone." He whispers. "But he will be fine. In fact, if we just can make him a new leg, he'll be just as good as he was."

"That's excellent!" Skippsy smiles.

Kowalski nods and looks tired. "I know Trixy is planning him a mechanical prosthetic...But I think with enough research we could possibly 3D print him a new leg and surgically attach it and have it grow with him as though he never lost it."

"Plastic leg?" Skipper looks at him.

"No, out of flesh...I'm talking about stem cells, sir."

"And where do you plan on getting them?" Skippsy narrows her eyes a bit. "Having another egg with Marissa so you can kill it and use the cells?"

Kowalski looks at her surprised. "No! That isn't our plan at all. There are lab facilities doing stem cell research...I just need one slide of cells and we can replicate enough of them and raise them to become leg cells for him...But we'd need to contact the penguin facilities, which will be more paperwork than infiltrating a human facility...But a human facility's cells wouldn't cooperate with Manfredi's body."

Skipper nods slowly. "Let's just keep that in the research phase for now, Kowalski...We'll see how well he does with a mechanical leg first."

"Yes, sir." He nods and returns to the lab.

"And so our scientists become controversial…" Skippsy sighs. "For once I wonder if it wouldn't be better for us to allow the humans to tend to him."

"A human would just put him to sleep." Skipper shakes his head. "To them he'd just be another dumb animal, they wouldn't even try to fix him."