"Push the red button…"
"Don't push the red button…"
Should he push the red button? Who was right? Nigel had said "red button" but he could have been about to continue, red button blows up the world, or something else he didn't want to do. The two penguins were only feet away. It was in that split second, that he pushed the red button.
"Oh tuna he didn't…" A tall penguin James hadn't seen before gasped, emerging from the tunnel behind the glowing red penguin. He pushed his way to the front, towards the machine. Suddenly, three devices, activated by the single red button, began to glow. The new, and slightly see through, penguin banged his flipper frantically on the button, with no result.
"I had no choice Kowalski." the glowing penguin shouted staring at the glowing machines.
"Skipper, it was untested!" the tall penguin replied.
"We're dead anyway!" Skipper retorted. The zombie penguin also approached the machine, and joined the tall penguin in his efforts to turn it off. The light from the machine was now so bright, it was blinding to look at.
"Skipper, this machine re-creates the accident that caused all this, it was a last resort…" A beam of coloured energy shot from each of the machines, combining into a glowing ball of energy in the centre, "Oh quantum entanglement…!" Suddenly the energy exploded, the brightly coloured energy sweeping across the room and through the walls, in less than a blink of an eye.
"Is he going to be okay, Skippah?" James recognised the voice as belonging to the penguin named Private.
"I hope so, Private." The American accented voice belonging to the glowing red penguin replied. James sat bolt upright, missing the top of the concrete bunk by a few inches.
"'e awake 'ipper!" an unfamiliar voice shouted happily. James looked at the speaker.
"Oh my mackerel IT's THE EXPLODING LAVA PENGUIN!" James jumped out of bed, intending to make a run for it, but a wave of dizziness swept over him. The penguin would have fallen face first onto the floor, if the exploding lava penguin hadn't grabbed him, and dragged him back to the bunk.
"James?" Private rushed into the room, and over to the penguin's bed.
"Buttons?" James mumbled.
"My name's Private, but you can call me buttons if you want to." The English accented penguin replied.
"What… What happened?"
"You pressed the red button, remember? Well, everything's all right now, the zoo's back to normal." The tall penguin, the glowing one had called Kowalski entered the room.
"How are you feeling?" Kowalski asked.
"Dizzy," James replied, then nodded in the exploding lava penguin's direction, "He's not going to shoot lava at me, is he?" Kowalski looked at him with a mystified expression.
"Shoot lava? That knock on the head must have been harder than I expected…"
"I think it's just popular rumour," Private explained.
"What happened, after the explosion?" James asked.
"Well, after the energy turned everything normal again," Private explained, "the machine…" the short, flat headed penguin whom Kowalski had called skipper entered the room from the lab.
"In the true style of all of Kowalski's inventions, exploded." Skipper interrupted sarcastically.
"Not all my inventions explode!" Kowalski protested, "anyway, you were caught up in the explosion and have been unconscious for two weeks."
"TWO WEEKS!" James exclaimed, trying to sit up, but Private pushed him down again.
"Yes, two weeks." Kowalski confirmed.
"Don't worry, your parents know you're safe," Private explained, "another team in the area, reported the 'strange lights' and opened the gates."
"I just kept you here for observation." Kowalski replied.
"What about Agent Nigel?" James asked.
"Yeah, um about that… We still can't find him," Kowalski explained, "Private only saw his disappearance briefly on a very small screen. We were hoping we could furnish us with some clues." James glanced up at the once ghostly penguins, who now seemed quite normal. At first he hadn't trusted them, but Buttons was with them, so they couldn't really be evil.
"He disappeared into the floor, then the floor just went back together again." James replied.
"Why didn't I think of that!" Kowalski exclaimed, "They put him in the emergency fish and fresh water cellar!"
"Commence Operation: Retrieve Nigel!" The four penguins raced out of the room and after their youngest member's uncle. James smiled, staring up through the fish bowl entrance, at the sunny day above. Finally, it was over, no more un-dead fish, no more spontaneous dancing, no more skeletal kangaroos. James couldn't wait to go home.
The End