Skipper's log. 1900 hours on June the fifth.

"Well, all of the construction work has been finished. Apparently there wasn't much to do besides put up that bunker. The whole place is a fortress and doesn't need much work, so all of us on construction duty have been put on fishing duty. The entire number of soldiers that have moved to fishing in the last week has been unbelievably high, and even Johnson was moved. He was glad to be out of the kitchen, I bet.

"We start fishing tomorrow. It doesn't look like it's going to be any more exciting than pouring concrete on the northern front, but at least it won't be as hard of work. I haven't been fishing in a year myself, so I'm kind of looking forward to it. Also, we get to go some ways out of this quiet little town to the oceanfront. Maybe we'll encounter something dangerous on the way?

"I'm just not sure on why the base suddenly needs such a huge amount of fish. Nearly half of the soldiers here have been switched over, according to Manfredi, and thats several hundred Penguins. We'll be bringing in hundreds of pounds of fish within a few days. Why would we be stockpiling so much food?

"I questioned my superiors on this a few hours ago, and they told me that it was simply in case we were cut off from the ocean or put into a situation where our allies couldn't send us any more supplies. I asked my Staff Sergeant whether or not there was a threat of being such a predicament, and he simply told me, 'There's always a threat, soldier.'

"Other than that, there's been no word as to who or what we're fighting against. Morale is down around here, and rumors are spreading that we're only being used for manual labor. Some penguins even think that they're just going to sell the fish that we collect. Johnson is still confident that we'll see action soon, but Manfredi doesn't think anything is going to happen at all. He mumbles about how stupid he felt for joining this force quite often now. I just hope he doesn't decide to ditch it all and go AWOL. The last thing I want to do is have to track down my new friend just to kill him on the firing line."

The Speed of Darkness
Chapter 8 - Tuna

Skipper grunted as he hoisted himself up over the tall edge of the top of the convenience store. The climb was hard, but with aching flippers he had made it to the top. Kowalski closely followed him, and the leader penguin offered him a hand and pulled him over the edge as well. Next came Rico, tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. Private grunted with exertion but eventually he too made it safely up the drainage pipe.

"Now what?" Private asked after he caught his breath. Skipper looked around him. Nothing special: a puddle of water, a small air conditioning unit softly humming in one corner, a lot of gravel, random pieces of trash blown up there by the wind.

"Skipper, I don't think there's an access point up here," observed Kowalski, eyes looking for anything. A trapdoor, a ventilation shaft, a drain.

"We don't know that for sure," Skipper said, hoping the trip up here was not in vain.

"Yack, Yack!" blabbered Rico, who had wondered away. He stood next to the air conditioning unit and was waving his flippers. Skipper and the others proceeded to where he stood.

"Wonderful work, Rico!" he said, looking at the small hatch that Rico had just opened. It was rusty and didn't look like it had been used in ages, but was still a way inside.

Skipper peered down into the dark room. It looked like a decent fifteen or twenty foot drop to the ground, so jumping in would not be a good idea. He turned at the sound of Rico coughing and found his explosives expert holding a very slimy rope in his flippers. Skipper nodded, slapped his partner on the back, and took the rope from his hands. He then lowered it into the food mart, secured it onto the latch of the trapdoor, and in a blink all four penguins were standing on the linoleum floor of Marthe's Food Mart.

"Alright, we're in," said Skipper happily, "Now lets get us some fish."

"Aye, Aye, Skippah!" acknowledged Private. Skipper looked up and down the aisle he was standing in. There were cans with pictures of food on them, boxes full of words he didn't recognize and jars full of human food he didn't know. Not a single fish was to be found, though. None of the pictures on the cans looked like fish, either.

"Spread out team," he ordered, "and look for anything that might be fish."

His teammates nodded in approval and they each took different aisles, looking at the different items on the shelves in curiosity. Skipper took up a box of cereal in his flippers. It had a picture of fish on it! He pried it open quickly, tearing at the cardboard and plastic. He then held in his flippers a soft, powdery fish-shaped thing. He put it in his mouth, chewed on it a little bit before spitting it out.

"Yuck! I hate marshmallow,"

"Skipper, Rico, Private, I think I found something." came Kowalski's voice from the aisle next to Skipper. He slid on his belly over to his teammate, who held a small, cylindrical can in his hands.

"Look," he started, "This can has the word tuna on it."

Skipper looked at the word Kowalski pointed out. He couldn't recognize it, and had never been able to read before. Kowalski was unable to read very much either, but could recognize key words and symbols, which he used to plan things out on his clipboard. Skipper knew that not knowing how humans communicated through words or writing was a weakness for his team, but he had never taken to the time to try to learn.

"Tuna is a type of fish. Lets open it!" Private said excitedly, clapping his flippers together. Rico regurgitated a bat and aimed it at the can after Kowalski set it on the ground.

Several minutes of senseless pounding later, the casing finally cracked and an unfamiliar substance splattered all over the floor. Kowalski waddled over to it and tasted it.

"This is definitely tuna, Skipper." he said, nodding. "Well it's been pulverized already, but it tastes just like tuna."

"Alright," Skipper said, "Rico, swallow as many of those cans as you can."

Rico complied, swallowing several of the tuna cans and belching loudly.

"Alright team, move out." commanded the leader penguin.

The four proceeded and walked to the spot where they had left the rope hanging. Expecting to see it still dangling from the trapdoor above them, he waddled happily. Surprisingly, it lay on the ground now. Private walked up to it and picked it up.

"How're we going to get out now?" he asked. Skipper grabbed the rope and glanced between it and the hatch above them. There was no way to climb up to it, none of the shelves around them went high enough and there was nothing they could use to form a makeshift ladder. Skipper tied the rope into a form of a lasso and attempted to throw it up and hook it on a long, florescent light. However, the penguin lacked the strength to toss the rope high enough and it barely made it halfway.

"Didn't I tell one of you to secure this rope?" said Skipper, frustrated. His team looked at him confused.

"Skipper, you were the one who tied it off," Kowalski responded. Skipper thought he had tied it tight enough and it was still hanging when they had split up, and he wondered why it would be on the ground now. Someone must have untied it.

"On your guard men," Skipper said, "We might have company."

Rico, Private, and Kowalski glanced around them. It suddenly grew very quiet as they listened intently for any sound of a threat.

"Skippah, I don't think there's..." began Private. Skipper put a flipper on his beak to shush him. He barely heard something fall in the isle next to them.

"We've definitely got company," Kowalski said, tensing up.

"We find a way out of here," cried Skipper. He didn't want to get cornered in a dark place.

Skipper darted, instinctively heading for the windows at the front of the store. He hopped on top of a register and looked out of the window. There were no visible openings, and he was sure the door was still locked. The only thing he could think of was to smash one of the windows and leave through the opening.

"Rico, break one of the windows so we can get out of here!" Skipper ordered. Rico complied and began hacking up something to break the window with, but oddly enough he only hacked up a can of tuna. He hopped up onto a counter in front of the window and began beating on the glass with the can until it became dented, but he managed to crack the glass. He continued hitting it.

Skipper's eyes scanned the area. There were a lot of shadows that anything could be hiding in. A streetlight outside cast a light into the store that left most of it in darkness. Skipper tensed up.

"Hurry, get us out of here!" he cried. Rico swung with particular force and he finally broke a small piece of the window out. Unfortunately, he set off a pressure sensor near the bottom of the frame and a loud alarm began sounding.

A loud alarm began sounding. Skipper looked frantically around him for his teammates; there were nowhere to be found. He was alone right now, but he knew within moments that one hundred armed penguin soldiers would be upon him. He needed to move quickly.

He took the item from its holster, clutching the glass canister. Within seconds he heard the heavy machinery behind him grind to a halt and the lights went out around him, bathing the chamber in darkness. An emergency, battery operated light turned on near one of the exits and he ran towards it, nearly tripping over a thick power cable.

"Skipper, we've got to get out of here," Kowalski's voice awoke him. "The humans are coming!"

"What? Oh, right."

The two moved off of the register and out of the hole in the window where a confident Rico and a nervous Private were waiting for them. Reassembled, they moved out. Using the cover of night, they moved even more quickly through the streets then they had before. Skipper made sure to avoid the alleyway they had passed through on their way here, and they swiftly made it back towards the water treatment plant as police sirens whizzed by.

Back at Marthe's Food Mart, a rat sat on the roof happily gnawing on the stub of the end of the rope that was still tied to the handle of the trapdoor. Another rat moved between boxes on a shelf and hopped off it, sniffing the tuna that was smeared on the floor.