For all of you who think this wasn't an easy task, congratulations, you're all geniuses. It wasn't. In fact it was so far from easy it was nearly impossible. When I'm finish telling this tale you'll see why I'm saying this.

If you thought Marlene stopped there, she didn't. She told me the one fact that out of everything, had to have shocked me the most. After she told me how Kowalski had risen to power and calmed down she turned to me and with the most sincere serious voice I think I ever heard come from her lips she said, "don't freak out, but I'm three hundred and twenty years old."

The first time I heard that I didn't believe it. I thought I had fainted from the story and was now dreaming. It was the most outrageous thing I had ever heard. Three hundred and twenty years old. That's crazy. To this day it perplexes me. But of course I didn't voice any of that. That would've been rude. Very rude. And it would've sent the message that I took all of this as a joke. And that was so far from the truth. Everything she said meant so much to me. It was one more piece to the very confusing puzzle that sat in front of me. But most of all, every word she said came from her heart, and if I didn't hear it…I swear I felt it. You would've never thought someone could make her like this. Marlene said that we were all different. We stuck out like sore thumbs. Well I'll tell you she wasn't different. Marlene didn't really break. She got scared, upset, angry, confused, sure we all do. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about bravery or iron nerves. What I'm talking about is the fact that she didn't ever let anyone break her down. No one could really put her down. She was going to be herself. She was going to be Marlene and no one else. But the Marlene that sat in front of me was different. It sounded like her; it felt like her, it was Marlene. But her eyes were dimmer; her smile wasn't as bright as it used to be. Her voice, while it was hers, it wasn't as happy or lively. And it was these things, along with her explanation of course, which made me believe that she was telling the truth. That she was in fact over three hundred years old. And to tell you the truth… it made me upset. For lack of a better word, it made me sad. Because then she would have lived in this dull dark city, in the shadow of fear and utter despair, at the complete mercy of a madman, for over three hundred years. Over three hundred years. I had been there for maybe an hour, give or take, and I couldn't bear to it. It was too much. It was the saddest, most disturbing city I had ever heard of. And every city around the world was exactly identical to it. It was scary. Very unnerving.

"I know that's hard to believe," She continued. Her voice dimming down. "But it's the truth."

I didn't interrupt. I wanted to hear how it was possible for a person to live so long. More than that, I wanted to know why.

"You see Kowalski didn't want anyone to come to power other than himself. He wanted to have control of the world forever. So in order to do that he had to make something that would give him eternal life. Something that would let him live forever. Rule the world forever. So he spent twenty five years manufacturing a forever tree. He had tested so many other prototypes, but none of them worked. He was practically on his death bed when he finally came up with it. But he didn't want to test it on himself. So…he used me."

That angered me. That almost made me throw a little hissy fit. But something inside of me told me to can it. Hold myself together. So all I allowed myself to do was let out a short shocked, "what!" How could he do that? I mean I knew then that he was sick and twisted, the basic anti-Kowalski. But to use Marlene? Marlene, despite her strong willed tomboy-ish attitude, was one of the nicest girls on the planet. How could he justify that?

"What?" She countered confused.

I guess she had every right to be I barely knew her, or was supposed to barely know her. Why should I be so outraged? So I quickly came up with this legitimate excuse for the sudden outburst, "You seem like such a nice person, unfit for a test subject. I mean I get the fact that he went mad but why you?"

"Well because…you see…" she replied. Words seemed to have escaped her. It was like she was ashamed of what happened and didn't want anyone to know. Finally she sighed and explained. "While he was concocting these eternity experiments, I had tried to talk some sense into him. I told him to think. Think about what he was doing and the effects it might have. I asked him if Skipper would have wanted him to do this. Not just the experiments but destroying the strongest capitalist state in the world and taking over the planet. Becoming the mad man that Skipper had always stopped. Skipper had always stopped Kowalski from becoming a mad man. But he wasn't there anymore," She paused.

For a moment i was afraid. A fear suddenly rose within me that she blamed me for everything. She blamed me for being the hero and saving the day. That if Kowalski had died I would've stayed together. I would've kept everyone together. Stopped anyone who became a threat. And she would've been right. I did basically that when Manfredi and Johnson died. They were good men, and I carried on because that's what I believed they would've wanted. But that didn't mean that if I had gone completely insane it was to be their faults. No it would've been my own. For letting myself go insane. But that was what I was taught.

Because I was afraid I was unable to hold my tongue. "Do you blame him?"

"Who?" She replied. She didn't understand. I guess that should've been a dead giveaway that she didn't but a was scared that she did. That she blamed me and for some unknown reason if she did blame me I don't think I would've been able to live with myself. Which is ironic because I'm supposed to be dead.

"Skipper," I said.

She stared at me in complete shock, and what I believe to be, insult. As if I has uttered a giant unbelievable act of insult that I should at once be hung from the branched of a giant tree and beaten to death.

"Why would I ever think that?" She snapped. "Why would I blame him? I would never blame him. it's all that stupid bears fault. He killed him. he killed Skipper. Not me and not Kowalski. And the world had nothing to do with it. If that stupid bear was never born than none of this would've happened!"

By the time she finished she was in a hysterical outrage. By hysterical I don't me that she was running around the room with a metal bat swinging at me like I was a mass murderer. No, what I mean was that tears were rolling down her cheeks one after another, her breath a jumbled uneven mess, and her body shaking like a leaf. I was left to feel fully ashamed. It was Marlene; of course she would never blame me. I was dead. Gone, and it wasn't my fault. I was trying to save a friend, a brother. And I think she completely understood that. She did what everyone I think did and blamed the killer. They blamed Scruff the evil polar bear. The villain. I should have never been afraid. I should have never opened my mouth. But then again if I hadn't I never would've known. Because when she calmed down she said the words I thought I would never hear from her.

I feel the need to explain that Mary at this time was giving me the dirtiest look I had ever gotten. It didn't help all the shame I was feeling. Forget shock, and confusion, I was completely ashamed of myself. To this day I can still feel the shame vibrating in every bone of my body.

When Marlene calmed down she looked at me, and with her brown teary eyes she looked straight into mine and said, "Why would I blame someone I loved? Why would I do something like that?"

I don't think I will ever forget that moment. I can't even begin to explain everything that washed over me. To compare, it was like a tidal wave washing over a small town. Why? Because it intensified the shame that was running amuck through me, but at the same time, it made me feel weird. The good weird. It's hard to explain. She loved me. Marlene loved me. And I loved her. At that moment I realized that I loved her. But I was supposed to be Steven, not Skipper.

I looked down at my feet. I was depressed for a moment. Because I couldn't tell her that I loved her back. And truthfully I wasn't so sure if I really did. I had had feeling for her for a while now that I think of it. I just chose to push them away because well, she was an otter, I was a penguin. And we didn't really seem to fit together anyway. Still there was something about her that caught me. Something that never went away. But I still couldn't tell her I loved her.

I was Steven. And Steven didn't love her, Skipper did. Steven pitied her. I can't begin to tell you how much I hated that. Because I hated being pitied. And maybe it was because I realized that as Steven I pitied her, or maybe it was the shame that I was still feeling, or maybe it was both, that made me say, with a serious dejected tone, "I'm more trouble than I'm worth, I can already see that."

"You are a very confusing boy," Mary replied, "but there are plenty other that are more trouble that three of you are worth. All you need to do is control that moth of yours. It could get us all killed," She finished, sounding a lot like a stingy lawyer.

Marlene just smiled at me. "You're not at all," she said softly. She looked tired to me. She closed her eyes for a while before struggling to reopen them. He body sagged against the beaten old couch. She didn't look like she could stay awake much longer. But sleep would have to wait.

Because right as I was about to ask if they wanted to go to sleep, everything froze. And then the man who had so rudely stolen us from the Central Park Zoo stepped out of a blue vortex (though it looked more like a triangle).