Chapter 3
All tied up
The gates of Raincloud city were surrounded by puffy, pink clouds that swirled in the mist with the colours of every sparkling rainbow. Private gripped his lunacorn courageously as Princess Selfrespectra led the flight of lunacorns to the castle where Prince Shirtalot was waiting. Pow, pow, pow, pow... went the lunacorns as they soared over fields of luscious, green grass. Private cried as he flew, "All you need is star kisses, moon hugs, and a pixie ticket to the peaceful land of imagination! Lunacorns, go!"
Private woke up. Though dazed, he could tell instantly that he was no longer flying a lunacorn to meet Prince Shirtalot in Raincloud city. He was in the air though, dangling ten feet over a shiny metal floor and tethered with thick ropes, "Erm... Skipper, you might want to take a look at this!"
Skipper came round suddenly, startled by the unexpected sound of Private's voice. He had been having a bad dream, a Dr. Blowhole dream, where he had found their secret HQ and, and... "Oh, for the love of God!" He hollered. Skipper looked down in horror; Blowhole had captured them again. Let's just hope that we can escape again, he thought. Alive.
Skipper's yelp must have woken the rest of the penguins, as Kowalski was quick with a breakdown, "Seems to me like a top-grade inox steel water cover, where both properties of steel and resistance to corrosion are required for maximum efficiency and value. In other words, there's something wet beneath it, and judging by that three millimetre gap, the distinctive whiff of chlorine and a sufficient number of breathing holes, it also appears that the contraption has been designed to open, to allow something, or someone out. I'm not trying to scare you Skipper, but I think there's something alive under there, and it's not looking pretty."
Rico attempted to cough up a bomb, but failed to do so; the contents of his gut seemed to have been emptied for him. The penguins had no feasible means of escape, and to make matters worse, they had no rough estimate to the scale of the problem, for all they could see was a floodlit drop with a hungry, metal floor. The lemurs and Blowhole were absent from all sight, or so they thought. What did he have in store for the penguins and the human race now...?
Abruptly, the scene was filled with Dr. Blowhole's terrible, bloodcurdling laughter. All four penguins prepared to look death in the eye; the dolphin halted in front of them, a menacing grin, reaching the very corners of his expression, "Well done bird-brains. I was almost impressed. Funny how much you can tell if you know me so well, which you don't! Let me enlighten you some more..." He took a breather, expecting a response; he received none. "You, pen-gu-ins, are about to witness the very start in a line of revenges that are designed to literally, blow your mind, although for you, wily penguins, there wouldn't be much ammunition to play with, would there? Ahhahahahahahaha!"
Kowalski growled. He hated it when Blowhole tried to insult his intellect like that.
The dolphin noticed his obvious reaction, "Oh, don't worry Kowalski, I've devised a much more pleasant way for you and your pathetic bird buddies to die, or at least, it would be more pleasant for me to clean up..."
The penguins all looked down on cue at the metal plate that preserved their fate inside. They decided that it was best not to think about what exactly Blowhole had meant with 'more pleasant to clean up,' "Your sick-minded carnage ends here!"
"Oh, we'll see about that Skipper. I'm not done with you yet, and when I am, my carnage will have ended here," he turned smugly to the others, each wearing a curtain of disgust over their trembling beaks, apart from Rico, who was enjoying a bit of violence, "How will you escape my clutches now? Oh, and I forgot... your guard dogs are going down with you!" Blowhole pressed a knob on his adapted seg-way. 'I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world' blasted from seventeen speakers symmetrically arranged round the room. He panicked, "Sorry, wrong button..." Without further ado, three similarly tied up lemurs dropped down from the ceiling next to them.
"I don't own a dog, and if I did, I'd train it to bite your neck!"
"Yes, divert him with the trash talk..."