The team of four sat in their H.Q in the circus as always, the wind was blowing harshly outside as trees creaked and swayed along the wind. It was hard to ignore it the first few weeks when they had settled their "main base" in the tiny remote country, but when summer came along it wasn't as bad, but there were days just like today.

"So... Do you think Flightless actually took the dare to climb that hill?" Skipper broke the silence between the four males, who were just looking around being quite bored, while they waited for the fifth one of them to return from her dare in their game of truth or dare, after she was dared to climb the tallest hill nearby, and come back afterwards.

"I doubt it, Skipper. I heard rustling items in her pocket when she left. She's probably stolen my money and went to go grab a cup of coffee... Again." Kowalski sighed, and started searching his wallet. Private and Rico were just gossipping about something a couple of feet behind them, as the crazed man with the slicked back hair dug something out of his bag, and gave it to the teen.

After a minute or so, they heard someone rushing to the tent they were located in. Skipper groaned and stood up, walking to the entrance of the giant circus tent. It was a dark-skinned and short-haired woman in her mid-20's, with some red objects on her hands. Yep, that was Flavia.

"Well Flightless, I sure hope you actually did the dare; otherwise I'll have to demand a very detailed explanation for your absence!" He tapped his foot on the grass, as his teammate stopped in front of him, and stopped to catch her breath.

"First; yes I did take that dare. Never dare me to do that again!" She panted and glared up at her very amused leader. "Second; there's a problem at the kayak house. I could hear it like, 4 kilometer- Sorry, I mean around 2 miles, away!" She corrected herself to avoid further scolding from her leader for using the metric system, as her accent got thicker when she yelled.

"The kayak house? Flightless there's always problems down there, especially with the tour guide running it! But sure, we'll check it out: Move along team!" Skipper called to the rest of the team from across the tent, and walked out to the fields that lead to the lake.


The wind was making their travel slightly delayed, as it wouldn't stop almost knocking everybody over, when sudden huge gusts of wind blasted into their faces. Skipper and his "lieutenant" were walking in front of the three others, who had decided to once more dwell into their own conversation.

"Skipper, I do believe that Lina may be in distress because of the winds. You know how easily her kayaks can tip over, and she is very emotional too... Flavia probably heard one of her overdramatic reactions!" Kowalski told his leader, mostly trying to hint to drop the mission because he was getting too annoyed by the wind constantly blowing sticks and leaves into his ponytail and his coat. Skipper shook his head.

"Even if it was, it's better to react on it anyways. You never know when something's a real situation! So we'll just see if it's one of Lime-y's drama-queen moments or not, and get moving! See? Easy!" He pointed out with a smug tone and walked faster, forcing the taller polish man to use more energy just trying to keep up.

"Alright Skipper, but don't cry to me when I was right and this was a waste of our time." He told, and gave him a challenging gaze.

"Okay, Kowalski, but don't you get angry when I'm right about not turning back, and I obnoxiously start to mock you about it." The smaller american man with the crew cut, challenged back.

A while later, they made it to the kayak house, which was a tiny cottage with two storeys; one for the reception and registation room, and the other which was the place the owner, Lina the tour-guide, lived. They rushed inside to see what was wrong, and sure enough, the brunette with golden-tips, and a very oversized sweater, was pacing back and forth, while looking at a note.

"We heard your distress signal, now show us your damsel!" Skipper anounced as he opened the door to the kayak house. Lina, also known as Lime-y, or simply Lime, by Skipper, looked at them with a slightly annoyed-by-the-introduction and very anxious expression.

"Oh guys, what're you doing here? Haven't you noticed the sign that reads 'CLOSED' outside?" She groaned at them, and slammed the paper onto the receptionist desk. The four adults stared at her with distant gazes.

"We're illiterate, and one of us can't even see." Kowalski pointed out, as the team looked at her. She muttered an apology, before then groaning with a strained voice.

"Well, the sign actually reads 'CLOSED, due to theft of kayaks and several materials'! Who would steal my kayaks?! They're for touring, for people willing to visit this place! Oh the horror!" She overdramatically stated, and slumped down on the couch while doing a dramatic pose. The group stared at her for a while, except Flavia, who was fidgeting with her sonar-vision devices on her hands.

"Alright, seems like this is an investigation job for the 'Penguins'!" Skipper announced, and clapped his hands together loudly. "Flightless, start sound-smell-taste-feel testing the area! Kowalski, Rico, go get info from our danish victim over here! Private, you and me go to the crime scene to find evidence!" The team nodded in agreement and scattered around to do their tasks.

When the leader and the teen had left, Flavia started sniffing the floor like a dog, and felt literally everywhere for anything suspicious, and other stuff. Kowalski started questioning Lime, who stared confused at all of them.

"Uh, how about we call the actual police? You guys could be ruining stuff they could use to find out who did this..." She said before Rico then put his hand on her mouth, hushing her and grabbed a police hat from his bag, and put it on his head.

"We are the p'lice now." He told her in his amused tone, in his 'Rico-Dialect'. The brunette stared at him like she'd just seen a ghost, but decided to just give in and answer their questions.


"Skipper, I found something!" Private announced and pointed into the water, to which the leader came over to the wooden bridge where the teen was, and looked at where Private pointed. "I think it's a note or something." He mumbled and reached his hand into the cold lake's water to try and grab it.

"Oh Private that thing's useless. It's probably all soggy and broken into pieces now that it's been in the water, and would most likely break as soon as you-" He couldn't even finish his sentence before Private interrupted, saying "It's laminated!".

"Huh... Well, that's awfully convenient. Look for anything readable on that thing!" He ordered loudly. The small teen nodded and looked at the paper. He squinted his eyes, and examined it closely, but shook his head and announced he couldn't make anything out of it. Skipper groaned and told him to come along, so they could get Lime to read it.


"...Well this is an awfully vague note." Lime stated, confused as she read it over and over again. The group stared at her with curiosity, to which she shrugged in reply.

"Sorry guys, but all this note says is 'AC-colon-DG' and next to it, '3-9-18-3-21-19'. It makes no sense!" She stated, and put the card back on the table.

"Our culprit is one pretentious, and sneaky fellow. But we will not rest until you have your awkwardly neon-coloured floating hollow plastic bananas back, Lime-y!" Skipper told the distressed tour guide, who just gave him a confused look back. "Until then, I'm sure you'll find something to cheer your blue face up!" Just as Skipper said that, Rico got an idea and fished something out of his backpack. It was a tiny model of a kayak, which he handed to the tour guide, and smiled in a kind, albeit very creepy, manner. She accepted it and said thank you, but noticed that Flavia was deep in thought, and repeated the contents of the note to herself.

"Ms. Flavia, what are you doing? Is everything alright?" Lime asked the russian-greenlandic woman, who snapped up and turned her head towards the group.

"I'm thinking. See- Back in my old workplace, before the whole going-blind thing, I used to decrypt letters... Sometimes, letters would be encrypted in a reverse letter-number language. So I'm thinking, what if that's what we have to do here!" She explained, as the team looked at her in bewilderment. Kowalski quickly snapped out of it, and looked confused.

"What does that mean Flavia?" He asked her, and scratched his head.

"It means; the letters in the note are probably numbers; like, A would be 1, and so on! And when it then reads in numbers, we have to see it as letters; like 2 is B!" She continued. Kowalski nodded and quickly recited the numbers in his head.

"Good GOLLY! Flavia, you're a genius! The letter makes sense now! AC:DG 3-9-18-3-21-19, it means 13:47 CIRCUS!" He beamed, as Flavia grew a cocky and satisfied grin as she muttered something in russian, praising herself.

"13:47 is most likely referring to the time! Currently it's 13:03!" Kowalski told, but corrected himself to "3 minutes past 1 PM" to lessen the confusion coming from his leader. "We have about 44 minutes to return to the circus! I think our culprit might be plotting something there!" He said. Rico gasped, and repeated the word 'circus' in a concerned tone.

"Let's hurry then, team! No time for walking, we run!" Skipper announced. He called back to the tourist guide to take care before rushing outside, leaving her to be confused by herself. At least she had her plastic kayak from Rico to keep her company now.


"We're at the circus, with 10 minutes to spare, Skipper!" Kowalski informed his leader, as they hid behind a nearby tree to see what was going to happen with the tent.

"Good! Flightless, get closer and use your weird-hearing-mojo-thingy to see if there's anything suspicious going on! Rico, you be backup for her in case of sneak-attacks!" The ordered the half-siblings, who nodded and went off to do as he ordered. "Men, the rest of us wait and see. Be on guard, though!" He told them. Somehow, he didn't notice the big bulky figure making way towards them.

"Y'hear anyth'ng Flav'a?" Rico whispered to her, keeping a close guard of the surroundings around him, closely obeying Skipper's order.

"Yes. I can hear the lunatics in the circus, but other than that I can hear two other figures... They're moving quietly, so I doubt these are just passerby's." She adjusted her sonar devices and felt around the place too. Rico nodded. He understood that Flavia's senses were enchanced to a level higher than what the average person would ever be able to comprehend, and therefore she was to be listened to about this stuff.

A while later Flavia suddenly gave a very extreme reaction out of the blue. "Брат, they're over at the other guys!" She snapped up from the hiding spot they had behind a rock, conveniently placed close to the tent, and pointed towards the other group's hiding spot. "They're being ambushed!" She stormed up and ran towards the place, only to have Rico storm faster towards their team's hiding spot while yelling their leader's name.

When they arrived, nobody were there. Only broken branches and scattered leaves remained, as Flavia started searching the area to find out where they went. 'Too late!' She thought to herself angrily, and searched the ground. Suddenly, Rico grabbed her and pointed her hand towards the tent. She picked up three figures being dragged into the tent, three struggling individuals. She nodded at her brother and wanted to run over to stop them, but was stopped by him.

"What're you doing?! They're right there!" She wheezed at him, but he hushed her.

"...we need t' s'prise th'm, or we get c'ught too!" He explained, and shifted his gaze back and forth from the tent to her.

"You are right. They would be expecting that... How about when I can hear them do villain monologuing?" She suggested to her taller half brother. He smiled and nodded as they wandered back to their old hiding place.


"Reveal yourselves, floating neon-coloured hollow plastic banana stealers!" Skipper barked at the figure who dragged the three tied up teammates into a closed off place in the tent. The figure looked confused as to what he meant, until Kowalski quickly told that Skipper was talking about 'kayaks'.

"Oh those things? We'll return them in a moment, we just needed some way to get you to find our note." The figure's deep voice suggested a male. The three were confused at the statement.

"Wait, so it wasn't easier for you to just place it at the enterance of the tent or something?" Private asked, bewildered and confused.

"Well, yes, it would've been; but not as fun, plus we had more time to prepare this show here for you when you weren't here all the time!" He defended, and tightened their ropes as he threw them on the grass inside a dark part of the tent. "We've waited years to have a nice reunion, kiddos. We wouldn't want to ruin it!" He announced and walked away for a second, before coming back with a partner.

"Gentlemen and... Kid? Apparently, but mainly that one gentleman with the crew cut, we present; the two guys you'd never expect to return to y'all!" Suddenly, the lights turned on to reveal two black-haired caucasian men, similar to Skipper. The one who had been talking to them was a short and chubby man with a stubble, and a clap over one of his eyes, and a prosthetic leg. The other one was tall and lean, and had spiked hair and a band-aid on his right cheek, and a missing tooth. The chubby one was wearing a tuxedo, and the tall one was wearing ripped-up denim clothing.

"Wait a minute... You guys look familiar!" Skipper said, and looked at them thoughrally one more time. Then he gasped and his jaw dropped. "Manfredi? Johnson?" He asked in a shocked voice. "You're still around? And you found me?" He continued, observing the two in even more details.

"Yeah it kind of took some years, but we started investigating as soon as ya' disappeared from momma's home in Brooklyn." Manfredi, the smaller chubby male informed him, and looked at the tied up males. He seemed to be eyeing Private more than the others, with a confused expression.

"Yea'! Even that fourth friend of 'yers stopped visiting when you vanished!" Johnson, the taller one, exclaimed with a seemingly sad voice. "Was a shame, really. You four really used to have fun t'gether!" He continued, and noticed Manfredi was staring at Private, which made him curious about the young teen too.

"Fourth one?" Private asked to his elder brothers. Skipper was still too shocked from seeing Manfredi and Johnson in person again, and didn't notice his question.

"Flavia, Private. She did tell you she used to visit once every five months or so when we were younger, a while before we found you." Kowalski answered him, and while looking up at the two men.

"Oh, right, I forgot... But K'walski... Uh, who are these two, Manfredi and Johansson, was it?" The black-haired teen eyed the two with suspicion, as they did with him.

"Manfredi and Johnson, Private. John-son." Kowalski corrected his younger brother quickly. "And they're Skipper's elder brothers. They're about five years older than us, but they're twins. They used to join in on us, uh, "hanging out", and teased us a lot before we disappeared." He finished. Private looked at them for a while, then back at Kowalski, then back at them.

"Yeah, so now you know us... Now kiddo, who are you? I don't remember you from before Skipper and the others disappeared... Was he there, Johnson?" Manfredi asked his taller twin, who shook his head in response, and then turned his attention back to the teen.

Skipper then snapped out of his thoughts, and answered his elder brothers' question. "That, Richard, is Private. We met him after we disappeared, and we've taken care of him and raised him to be the soldier he is today." He simply told, and then went back to trying to wiggle out of the ropes.

"Richard?" Private asked confused, Kowalski snickered a bit.

"Johnson's actual name. We named him because, you know, the shortened version of Richard... And what Johnson is slang for..." He couldn't stop himself from snickering, but cut it short when his leader cut a glare at him. "Sorry. Very immature humor from our part." He apologized and slumped into the ropes in shame.

"Well, if you're Skipper's elder brothers, why would you tie him up like this? And how did you find us?" Private asked the two, who smiled and grabbed some papers, and a giant stick. Manfredi then picked the four up by their shirt collars by the napes, and placed them on a mattress somewhere else in the tent.

"Thanks for asking, kiddo! To answer your first question, we just want to bring you guys back home to Brooklyn, but Skipper would beat us up and never listen to us if we didn't force him to. To answer your second question; we can finally show our presentation! This is a very dramatic story of deciept and betrayal from our family, drama, and love~!" Jonhson cooed at the last part and made a shoulder movement, before then putting one of the papers up on a large whiteboard they found out of the blue.

"Ahem. It started with three males, early in their teens, vanishing from their respective homes in Brooklyn..."


"Att'ck?" Rico suggested as the two leaned close to the tent to listen to the villains. The wind had settled and the sun was now burning down on the two, having them forced to change into quick spare 'summer' clothing. The small shorts itched the half-russian man's leg.

"Nyet. They haven't really begun monologuing yet." Flavia told her half brother, and corrected a bit on her tank top, that kept creeping upwards. "But they'll be there soon."


"...And that's when Clarissa told me that the crook we'd been chasing was the dude in the fursuit, we passed ealier! She was so mad, and kicked us out of the department, and she even stole my favourite mug, but that of course is another story about how I got that..." Manfredi narrated the story, as Private and Johnson looked traumatised, while Kowalski seemed amused.


"We really wait'n f'r mon'logue?" Rico asked as he started to lose control over his need to demolish or smash something. Flavia thought for a moment.

"Actually I'm just waiting for them to get really into the story, so they will be veeeery surprised by the cool-omega-ultra-brother-sister-dual-attack-which's-title-I-just-made-up thing we'll do!" She informed, and continued listening as the sun's heat became slowly more intense.


"...Of course Johnson wasn't aware that she didn't mean his name, but the following story is waaaaay too PG-18 for this tale. Anyways, so my secret identity- Man F. Reedy: clever, I know, tricked the mobster to reveal where the illegal tunas in the smuggling scandal had ended up, but it turns out Johnson had found out, thanks to the señorita, that they had ended up in Liechtenstein's parliament building...!" Manfredi continued on, and replaced his prosthetic with a leg that looked like a swordfish.


"B'red!" Rico exclaimed as he ripped out pieces of the grass. Flavia sighed.

"He's not really into it just yet, he's getting there though. Right now, he's kind of middle-school play-into it" She replied and kept listening.


"...Of course I would've been more happy with being spliced together with Manfredi, had he not been the one controlling our legs. We were more wobbly than three worms made out of slinkies. He sure wasn't used to having a non-prosthetic leg! It probably would've been better too had we been like, cyan, and not green..." Johnson narrated the story now, as Manfredi made special effects with his movements.


"Okay Rico, they're both into it now! Let's get them now." Flavia announced as Rico bounced up in excitement and grabbed a stick of dynamite from his bag.

"And no kabooms- not just yet. We need to make sure nothing expensive is in the way of the TNT." She quickly informed him, as he pouted and stuck the dynamite into his bag again, while grumbling something.


"...And so that's how we found your trail and travelled along your route, but it took us some time to get away from the crooks in the alleyways in Manhattan, but then we found out you guys left there, and were here now so we then- Wait, can you hear something?" Johnson paused as he heard a distant constant noise, like a sort of cry of anger or some sort.

"Yea', I hear it... What is that noise?" Manfredi questioned, and looked around to see if any electrical device was on and was playing an alarm. The three tied up males looked around as well, also confused by the noise.

Then they all spotted Rico and Flavia. Flavia was on his back, and he rushed forwards with a battering ram, which they didn't even know they had in the circus, while the two yelled a war cry of some sorts. Then Flavia jumped off of Rico's back, as he crashed into the twins with the battering ram.

"Timing, Flightless. It was actually getting pretty exciting." Skipper said dissappointed, and sighed. Flavia replied with a huff, and walked over to untie the three. Kowalski and Private thanked her though, unlike Skipper.

"-OOOOW! Stop it, Rico! We just wanted to get you guys hoooome!" Johnson's cries were heard, as Rico stood with a foot on his back, and Johnson's arm stretched way behind his back. Rico gave a creepy smile, and pulled harder on his arm. "WEDIDN'TMEANANYTROUBLEGUYS!" He cried louder and banged his free arm on the ground.

Skipper groaned and planted his face in the palm of his hands. "Rico, let my idiot 'brothers' go. Manfredi, Johnson, we can forget about this incident... IF...!" He exclaimed, and pointed at the kayaks he spotted a while ago, laying in the corner of the tent. "...You deliver those two boat-thingies back to the very upset tour guide back in the hut, you stole them from." He finished, and gave a cocky smile to his older brothers. The twins looked at eachother and sighed, nodded, and left; sailing to the hut in the kayaks.

"...Well that was awkward." Flavia mumbled as they left, and fidgeted with the sonar vision device on her right hand. Kowalski agreed, but soon after, he noticed the sun was shining, and walked outside the tent, and flopped down on the grass. Soon after the others did the same. As they all watched the sky, Skipper simply muttered one thing.

"Hey Flightless, I dare you to swim to the other side of the lake."