Due to my research for this chapter I became a big fan of Copenhagen and hope that I will be able to visit the city one day. The zoo seems to be really huge (their website is also in English) and the Royal Danish Army Officers Academy is really next to it. All of my information and Danish sentences that are in this chapter are taken from Wikipedia, the web presence of the zoo, Google earth and a web translation dictionary. And finally THE secret is lifted!
Have fun reading!
Oxymora
Chapter 7: An unbelievable Story
Due to a splash of water he woke up. His military trained mind instantly recalled what had happened before his sleep. Manfredi and Johnson had overwhelmed him; and due to their announcement, he was either on the way or already back in Denmark. There was no need to check on his fetters. Lying on the ground he noticed he wasn't able to move a single feather. Luck for his opponents.
"Finally you're awake." There was a penguin standing next to him, but all he could see were two rosy feet. The voice, though, belonged neither to Manfredi nor to Johnson but someone Skipper hoped never to meet again.
"Blue." He recognized the foreign accent, which the penguin never had been able to unlearn. A smile appeared at Skipper's beak. "Or do you preferred to be called 'Little Blue'?"
"Shut up!" the small penguin shouted. He hated jokes which referred to him and especially to his height. Freeing his anger he kicked the defenceless prisoner in his side, whereon he was turned around. "You're not in the position to make jokes."
Skipper didn't wince or moan, although the claws of the foot had pierced through his feathers. He was bleeding, but he knew that the wound wasn't deep and nature able to close it without aid. He had more interest in his tormentor, who he was able to see now. Blue was a little penguin, which is the smallest species of penguin. Their natural habitat is Australia and New Zealand and everyone knew they were unbashful and very good fighters. But he wasn't any little penguin; he was a white-flipped penguin. They stood out as very aggressive but also as a loyal species. The head of the Danish Penguin Academy, the most renowned academy of the world, asked the Australian Defensive Military to send one of their best warriors to become the personal trainer of their children. And that warrior had been Blue, though due to his height everyone called him 'Little Blue'. After his arrival the penguin had needed five minutes to gain respect after overwhelming the top agent that was at the academy that day: Skipper. Anyhow the cadets still called him 'Little Blue' when he was not around. And he hated it.
"And in what position are you to treat me like this?" Skipper tried to move although it was impossible.
"I care about the security of the academy now. And you present a serious danger." Blue smiled. "I promised the lady that I will find you."
"Did she command you to find me for revenge?"
"She still thinks you're innocent. Love is blind, don't you think?" It was a rhetoric question, because he didn't gave Skipper the time to answer. "That's why I have to protect her."
Skipper wanted to respond but stopped before he said one word. There was no way for him to explain himself without bringing danger on someone else. Therefore he changed the subject: "I thought you would kill me right after you caught me."
"First I wanted. You were clever and we – including you – thought there was no evidence against you. But I will grant you something you don't deserve. We will court-martial you."
"Court-martial? Do you have any…?" He remembered what Manfredi and Johnson said. "So you think you have witnesses."
"No…" Blue drew nearer "We HAVE witnesses. And we have proof!"
"Proof? What proof?"
The little penguin straightened up laughing. "Be prepared for death penalty. Although that's not equal to the sorrow you raised upon us." The security administrator turn towards something or someone, Skipper wasn't able to see. "Tawaki, throw him into our jail – WITHOUT releasing his fetters."
The penguin did as ordered. He bit in one of the manila ropes and dragged Skipper though the room to the door.
Blue smirked fiendish. "I will never forgive you, Skipper."
And then Skipper was yanked all the way down to the basement, where he tried not to think about the pain that ran through all of his body after that torture.
"Finally! Copenhagen!"
Kowalski, Rico, Private, Julien, Maurice, Mort and Marlene set foot on Danish soil.
"I'm feeling sick after all the time in those planes," Marlene whined.
They had left the airport and hid in a side road behind a rubbish container.
Private watched the humans passing by. "Okay Kowalski. What's the plan?"
"Well… the plan." The penguin admitted, "I don't have any."
"What?" was the only understandable word of Rico.
"We came all this way without a plan to find Skipper?" shouted the otter.
"I've never been in Denmark before. How should I know where to start searching?"
"Now you see how important it is to have uz with you!" announced Julien.
"Do you have a plan?" asked Private, his voice filled with hope. Kowalski looked sceptical though.
"Mort has relatives in Denmark," explained Maurice to the disbelieving expressions of the penguins. "Come on, have you never asked yourself why all of us – hehe… well Julien and me – have French names but Mort is Danish?"
The faces were the answer to Maurice's question.
"Mort's father – who by the way was as annoying as his son, the tamarind never falls far from the tree – was Danish. Well he had that strange accent and told us that the human had put him in prison until the green humans rescued him and some of his friends," Julien told. "Silly Danes. Why are they green and uncage that annoying family?"
Kowalski understood the meaning of Mort's father's words. The family had lived in a zoo, which was indeed a prison for wild animals – well except for Julien apparently. Compared to wild life the enclosures were very small and just the intelligent animals – the penguins of course – were able to find a way to leave them. The other inhabitants of the Central Park Zoo used their 'secret' paths. But in the case of Mort's relatives Greenpeace activists had freed them and were able to bring at least one animal back to its native habitat.
"Do you know how to find the others?" Kowalski asked the small lemur.
Mort nodded. "My father gave me a map."
Suddenly he held the item in his paws and showed it to the penguin.
"Superb thinking of you!" cheered Private.
All watched Kowalski while he studied the map. After some minutes he spoke up, "I know where to go. This is the sign of the airport and this red spot marks the place of your relatives. Hopefully."
Rico commented.
"No. I didn't use the wrong map when we took Randy to the farm. You can trust me!" Kowalski defended himself. But Rico and Private glared at him doubtfully.
"Then let's go. I thought we can't waste time," Marlene reminded them. "Where to go, Kowalski?"
"That way!" he pointed along the street with his flipper. "We'll use the underground railway. And remember, we are not allowed to be seen!"
Twenty minutes later they left the building of the IT University running.
"Kowalski, had it been really necessary to stop by?" asked Private weaving through the puzzled looking human beings, who never had imagined seeing animals in the glass building and were already watching for the hidden camera.
They passed the bridge to the other side of Emil Holms canal to escape the attention.
"Look at that!" Kowalski stopped and observed the Tietgen Student Hall with its conspicuous circular shape, cubic, façade facing, shifted and therefore partly sticking out rooms. "This is beauty!" Once again his scientific brain had taken over to satisfy his curiosity about the foreign city he never had visited before and contained a lot of fascinating places.
"Nananana!" Rico grabbed Kowalski at his wing and pulled him. He was about to lose his patience and not far away from hitting his companion – although he was his superior.
"You are right, Rico."
All eased, thinking the scientist had come to his senses again.
"The University of Copenhagen is…"
The hand-to-hand combat expert had no time to act. Marlene slapped Kowalski before he was even able to finish his sentence. "Have you forgotten why we are here? This is NOT sightseeing!"
Not only was the large penguin shocked but the whole group.
"The otter is scary." Mort's remark broke the silence.
But Marlene hadn't finished yet. "And you should be the penguin in charge. So act that way!"
Kowalski hadn't much time to come back to himself. He turned and noticed that students from the Student Hall formed a cluster around them. All of them spoke in a language neither of the animals understood, but they needn't to know that they were the topic of all the conversations.
The sound of two voices grew louder.
"Pingviner, kattalemur og en havoddere? Det er da løgn!" 'Penguins, ring-tailed lemurs and an otter? You've got to be kidding me!'
"Nej. Dér! Se for dig selv." 'No. There! See for yourself.'
A path shaped between the students and in the outcome stood a man whose charisma was similar to Alice's. "Er dette en krone?" 'Is that a crown?' He laughed.
"Hey… I think they're talking about me. Yes… yes! I'm your new king! This is the robot! YEAH! The robot!" Julien waved towards his audience and started to dance the robot, where on the mumbling increased to a joyful enthusiasm.
"Cirkusdyr?" 'Circus animals?' The man wondered where the animals might have come from, because there was no circus nearby and the zoo wasn't missing any animals. Anyway he took his blow tube.
"That's a keeper!" Kowalski whispered. "We need evading manoeuvres… wait. I take that order back." He thought of something. "Could all of you gather around me?"
"What are you up to?" Marlene asked.
"I'll tell you later."
Although they were unsure about his motives all of them approached, even if Maurice had to convince his king to stop dancing around. Covered the scientist glanced at Mort's map again, which the humans should not see. An animal that can read a map! He didn't have the heart to think about the chaos that might cause.
"Kowalski. We're running out of time," Private whispered.
Rico already wanted to chock up his chainsaw, when the scientist touched his wing. "No, Rico. We are not allowed to blow our cover. That's why we are not allowed to flee. The place we need to go is near the zoo. That man will take us there."
Suddenly Private collapsed next to him. Between his feathers was a red dart.
"Private?" Before Kowalski was able to say another word the keeper drugged him too.
"Aiiii'm feeeelin' di-izzy," Julien announced slurring his words when he woke up in his cage. "Cra-azy stuff-ffff?"
"Anaesthetic," answered Kowalski, who had been awake for nearly half an hour. "They think it's easier to handle animals when they are sleeping. Actually it's true."
"Ca-an I orderrr some of that?"
"Your majesty, please get a hold of yourself." Maurice helped his king to sit up.
"I like him that way." Mort nestled up against the royal feet as he did the past fifteen minutes, because the unconscious king hadn't noticed it. But now he suddenly was fully awake.
"NOT DA FEET!" Julien shock his leg until the tiny lemur fell off and kicked him against the bars of the lemur cage. "How often do I have to tell you: Do NOT touch the feet!"
Sad looking eyes glanced at him, but the king was hardened. He calmed down, arranged his crown and asked then: "So? Where are we? This is definitely no palace."
"The veterinary station of the zoo," Kowalski explained. "At least that's the only place they could take us."
"After you exposed uz!" Julien accused.
Conscious of his guilt the scientist looked at the basement of the penguin cage. "I know. And I want to apologise."
"We'll think about whether we forgive y..."
Marlene, who was in the third cage separated, broke in: "We forgive you, as long as we can leave this prison! We're stuck at the moment."
"That's no problem. There was no human in this room for approximately ten minutes and I haven't seen any camera. Rico!"
"Aye aye!" The locks of their cages weren't even chick proof and after the explosive expert had opened the penguin cage without any further difficulty the other two were crackled open in an instant.
"We might have a real problem now. Our enemies surely know already we are here and sent out a troop to find us," Kowalski explained. "Whenever someone sees anything strange he has to report this to me immediately!"
"Ehm… Kowalski? In which way strange?" Private bore against his superior. "Like half horse and half zebra with… oh my Gosh! It's a unicorn!" He shrieked.
"Private… there is no way a unicorn could…" Kowalski and the rest turned while the scientist was talking "A UNICORN!"
In the window of the veterinary was the silhouette of something that looked like a horse with one horn in the middle of his head, while its legs, which rested on the windowsill, were shaped in black and white stripes.
"I'm not a unicorn," it spoke. "I'm an okapi. And that's my friend, Mathis. He is a mouse lemur."
The horn jumped off the head and landed in front of the visitors.
"And my strange looking friend here is Ukurugenzi Wakili." The newcomers started laughing due the shocked faces.
„Just call me Waki. Math is proud of himself that he can memorise my full name, but otherwise everyone calls me by my nickname."
"If this isn't Nikolaj's little son! Just like his daddy."
"Uncle?"
"Yes! I visited my friends the capybara when I saw, that they brought three cages. And then I noticed you and wanted to check, whether I was right after the zoo had closed. I met Waki on the way."
"Wait, I thought your uncle isn't living in the zoo," noted Julien.
"Yes, but I came back because life is much easier in here than outside. I still would prefer sweet homeland Madagascar, but you can't always get what you want. And you are his friend?"
"His KING! Maurice!"
"Ah… Presenting your Royal Highness, the illustrious King Julien XIII, self proclaimed Lord of the Lemurs, etc., etc., hurray everybody."
"XIII already?"
"Yes, my father was Julien VII."
"EH? But…"
Maurice stopped Mathis and whispered: „Don't question the king. Trust me."
"Even worse than his father?"
"Don't compare them!"
The mouse lemur turned towards the rest. „And you are?"
"Marlene. Nice to meet you!"
"Private… and they are…" he stopped and looked at Kowalski in shame. „Oh, I assume that's classified information."
"Indeed it is."
"Are you the penguins the others are searching for?" the okapi asked. "Are you the American friends of that traitor?"
All of them changed glances with each other unsure what might be the best answer. Then Kowalski spoke up: "Yes we are. We want to find him before he's killed out of revenge by his enemy, to which we think he was brought here in Denmark."
"I could tell you where he is. Where actually all penguins of Denmark are at the moment. It's no secret – more a national festivity. But you don't really want to fight against the whole Danish army, do you?"
"Where is he?"
"500 meters in that direction." Mathis pointed toward east. "He is in Frederiksberg Palace, the Royal Danish Army Officer Academy. They court-martial him today."
"Court-marshal?" Marlene exclaimed appalled. "What on earth has he done?"
"You really don't know?"
All of them shook their heads.
"He killed the beloved head of the Danish Penguin Academy, including his wife and their son."
