Hello!
Am I the only one who sits at home when there's no school, in need of a social life?
Gary wouldn't stop screaming. Okay, so maybe Astra had no right to speak. After all, a feeling of dread had washed over her like the time she wiped out when surfing because she was being reckless, but Astra had quickly gotten over the fact that they were locked in Gary's so-called "reflection room"—if you could call it that, considering that his punishment was to play computer games and stuff himself with chocolate courtesy of the mini fridge—about three hours ago or so, like, thirty seconds of her initial shock at the issue.
Her companion/co-worker/burden, however, had not.
Currently, he was screaming at the top of his lungs in fear of being stowed away, forgotten, forever, the same state he was in when the realization that the two were trapped hit them. Astra had tried every trick she could think of to get him to stop his yelling. She went calmly at first, telling him that there was no need to panic, that they would find a way to escape or, at the very least, survive until someone found them. Astra's wording wasn't exactly the best since she lacked the skills to dealing with penguins in any situation because that completely backfired on her. Sure, Gary had paused his shrieking briefly, but that was to shout at her, "Are you saying that there's a possibility we won't find an escape route and that no one will find us?"
Astra flipper palmed. Jeez, this guy could think of more negative outcomes than Astra could back in middle school, and he was a grown penguin at least ten years older than her. What is up with the pessimism? That was Astra's job when she was grumpy about something else in her life.
Astra had decided to try more talking. "Um, no, I'm not saying that at all. When did you hear me say that we won't be able to leave? I said that we'll find a way to escape between your genius brain that absorbs random facts like a sponge and my weird ideas that usually work out well. Don't twist my words or jump to conclusions so quickly."
This notion epically failed as well, though she wasn't exactly sure whether the fail would counted towards her number of failures or Gary's because he did exactly what Astra told him not to do: use his amazing inferencing skills (note the sarcasm) to come up with the worst case scenario and completely change the meaning of Astra's attempt at reassurance.
"What?" he shrieked, his voice going up an octave. Astra winced as the high-pitched sound pierced her eardrums. Was this penguin really a dude? "My brain is like a sponge? Does that mean I absorbed the stupidity of the people around me? I'm not smart anymore? NOOOOOO! We'll never get out of here! We're doomed to be trapped in here forever for future generations to find and study our decaying bodies!"
"My brain is still available, unlike yours, which is preoccupied with the game Let's Overreact at Everything Astra Says," Astra grumbled, scowling at her burden—no, senior co-worker of a higher rank and position that she must respect at all times. Well, senior or not, she was getting pretty fed up with the mind of his that panicked in even the most simple situations, such as not being able to find the batteries for one of his inventions. The batteries had turned out to be located in his lab coat's pocket.
That led to her next method of verbal efforts to calm a penguin whose brain was overloaded with pandemonium: yelling, threatening, and blackmailing. None of those worked too well either.
"GARY, IF YOU DON'T BE QUIET AND AT LEAST CALM DOWN, I WILL BURN ALL OF THE PRESENTS YOUR MOTHER SENT YOU!" Astra threatened, yelling at the top of her lungs to be heard over his screaming. She was lying, of course, to get him to be quiet and possibly help her think of a way for them to free themselves from their luxurious confinement, but unfortunately, Gary didn't understand that that was the message she was trying to get across and took her warning seriously.
"I WILL NOT CALM DOWN KNOWING THAT ONCE WE ESCAPE THIS JAIL, YOU WILL SET MY PRECIOUS MOMMY'S GIFTS ABLAZE WITH A TORCH!" he exclaimed, completely freaking out over the made-up danger his prized possessions were in. Astra made a mental note not to go anywhere near his belongings. Well, at least the ones she knew were given to him by his maternal parent. She hadn't seen anyone this angry ever since junior high aside from herself and Mewcat, both blessed with the gift of being short-tempered and stubborn. "YOU MAY NOT GRASP THE CONCEPT OF COMPASSION OR HAVE ANY POSITIVE FEELINGS FOR THE PENGUINS AROUND YOU, BUT MY MOMMY IS THE BEST MOMMY IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!"
"Alright, okay [First two words of Can't Hold Us]," Astra muttered, testing to make sure that her eardrums haven't exploded by making clapping noises. Fortunately, her hearing was fine and the ringing was beginning to fade away. "I just wanted you to stop panicking so I can at least try to think of a way to get us out of here without having to smash something because your screaming is stunting my thought process."
"Stop panicking?" Gary screeched in alarm, waving his flippers in the air. Astra tilted her head sideways. He kind of looked like a mad scientist who was announcing his evil plan to take over the world or something. "How can I calm down in this situation you brought upon us? It's your fault we're locked in here! If you didn't step inside the room in the first place to examine it, we wouldn't have gone through those actions and end up trapped in this...this...holding cell!"
If this was a manga or an anime, Astra bet that she would have either cross popping veins in the shape of a cruciform or a large sweat drop on her face (look it up). Maybe she would even have both.
Blackmailing was next. Astra clamped G's beak closed with one flipper—she was speaking from experience now: use both flippers to shut a screaming penguin's beak—and struggled to pull out her Spy Phone with a video she had taken months ago but nearly forgot about. "If you don't be quiet and calm down, I will post the video of you and Jet Pack Guy singing 'Baby' by Justin Bieber. Now, please be—Hey! You're going to break my phone!"
"PHOOOONE!" Gary howled, breaking out of Astra's grip to grab the phone from her. She didn't even bother calling anyone because Aunt Arctic had taken most of the agents' cellular devices hours ago during filming to improve on and add some new apps. Astra didn't hand it in because she was, hmm, maybe stuck in her stupid heated closet of a reflection room?
G, though, had caught Astra off guard and slapped her Spy Phone out of her flipper. To her horror, the phone hit the ground with a loud crack.
"Gary!" she groaned, picking up the phone. Unfortunately, Astra's phone now had a multitude of cracks on the screen (to real-life friends: think of Travis' old iPod) somewhat forming a spider web-looking pattern and a chunk of it had fallen off. When she tried to turn it on, the screen lit up briefly, flickered, and then—
"Ow!" Astra flinched, dropping the phone immediately. The device hit the floor, smoking as a tiny flame formed. Astra swatted at it with her beanie until the fire went out, but the phone was still too hot to touch, let alone pick up.
Frustrated, Astra had leaned over and slapped Gary's face not hard enough to leave a bruise but applied enough force to make him feel a slight sting.
Of course, this backfired like all the other techniques she tried. Gary stopped straining his vocal chords for exactly five seconds to stare at Astra in disbelief before using them again to scream at her.
"We are in a dire situation here, and you decide to pick a fight with me?" he scolded, probably trying to imitate Hulk when he was angry. Well, he was as much like Hulk as much as Rookie was like Archimedes. "This is not the time to resort to violence against the penguin you're supposed to be cooperating with to solve the problem! What is wrong with you?"
"You're yelling at me about solving the problem when the only thing you've been doing was screaming your head off?" Astra grumbled. As if on cue, Gary went back to screaming.
In desperation, Astra grabbed a Snickers bar from the mini fridge and shoved it in Gary's beak. Yep, she was that desperate to follow the words of a television commercial for chocolate. In every one of those commercials, there's someone who isn't acting like him or herself, so another person makes the former eat a Snickers bar. The person who ate it would be back to normal, and a voice over would claim, "You're not you when you're hungry. Snickers satisfies."
As expected, Gary spit out the candy and ranted about how Astra was trying to give him a cavity so his never-had-a-cavity-in-my-life record would be ruined and that he wasn't hungry, so there was no way that the commercial thing would work. Finally, he had continued, it was stupid that Astra had even tried to do the "Snickers satisfies" idea.
Now, Astra was flipping lazily through the channels of the television, something she rarely did, her headphones placed over her ears just to muffle Gary's shrieking. She wasn't about to take her iPod only to see it get destroyed by the genius inventor like her Spy Phone. Luckily, she had sent copies of her blackmail material from her phone to her iPod in case something like this would happen. Hey, blackmail material was pretty important: it gave an agent of lower rank, such as herself, power of a higher ranked agent, like Gary.
Might as well watch the talk show, Astra thought to herself after seeing that it was being broadcasted live right now. No one would hear Gary screaming because (a) his reflection room was all the way in the back and (b) the two of them would've been let out a while ago, though Gary's screaming wasn't as loud as hours ago.
She found the channel that was featuring Club Penguin Talk Show and watched the commercials, waiting for the actual show to begin. When the Snickers ad came on, that made Astra want to pick up the coffee table in front of her and throw it at the television.
"Welcome back to...um, what's my line again?" Rookie whispered the last line rather loudly to someone off-camera.
"The least you could do is remember the show's title!" Jet Pack Guy, Astra recognized, snapped back. "Just get on with it. Everyone knows you messed up already."
"Anyway, today we're going to do a special segment titled, um, Follow the Leader, right?" Rookie stammered, looking off-camera for help. The image broadcasted on television flashed towards Jet Pack Guy, who face flippered and handed his headset to Dot, as if saying, I'm not dealing with this anymore.
"Basically," Rookie began explaining, "We'll have two teams of three: One group consisting of myself and two audience members and the second will be three of our staff. So, uh, you and you, come down, and Dot, Jet Pack Guy, and PH will be the other team. The game is divided into rounds that require four players each, so at the end of...five rounds, the team that comes out victorious the most wins."
The penguins from the audience seemed pretty excited, though the other three were obviously confused as to where Rookie was going with this. Astra didn't catch the audience members' names, but didn't really care either way. She sat up in her seat, suddenly interested in what was going on.
Gary must've also found this eye-catching because the volume of his screaming immediately reduced to zero, like someone had it the mute button. Astra took her headphones off and put them around her neck to hear what was going on better. Rookie's explaining of the game was so complicated and lengthy that Astra lost track of whatever he was trying to do. Even PH looked perplexed, and she was the logical one who usually understood everything.
Rookie cut himself off, positioned Jet Pack Guy, Dot, and one of the audience members in front of a large television, and said, "Just follow the penguin on the screen."
Two minutes later, Astra was laughing so hard at the activity Rookie forced the penguins to participate in that she had difficulty breathing. Even Gary was chuckling at the penguins' performances.
Apparently, someone had given Rookie Just Dance 4 as a present and he decided to play it...live on television, humiliating several other penguins as well. Jet Pack Guy was dancing clumsily because of his heavy jet pack weighing him down and his face was redder than his feathers, Dot was shooting death glares at Rookie, the audience member wasn't doing too bad, and Rookie was genuinely trying to win the round, following every move the penguin on the television was making. Jet Pack Guy and Dot, however, were dancing lazily, until PH merrily shouted at her teammates, "Actually try to win! I don't like to lose! If things don't go well for us, it'll be the thumb tack incident all over again!"
That motivated the two of them immediately, both waking up with a crazy look in their eyes as if they had accidentally made coffee with Red Bull instead of water. The dance and the song itself were severely humiliating and would definitely bring down their street cred. The Tactical Lead and Stealth Lead were doing some of the most girly and cheesy dance moves Astra had ever seen. The song didn't exactly help, either. Out of all the songs the Just Dance creators provided, Rookie chose the song he claimed was his favorite: Call Me Maybe.
Wait a minute, Astra thought to herself as the camera angle changes. The ceiling could be seen briefly, but that was enough for her. Astra had spotted a metal air vent located on the ceiling.
"I know how we can get out of here."
Quick quote: "I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are."
Anyone know who said this? Hint: It wasn't Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.