The Town of Fracs

"We're about out of fish," Mumble muttered.

I gasped. "OH NO!"

"What?" Mumbled looked at me skeptically.

"I don't know."

"Whatever. Well, I definitely need to go to Waddle-Mart and go fishing... Would you like to go with me?" He offered with a smirk.

"Yes!" I clapped my wings together. Then I thought, What's fishing?

---

The day was pleasant as we made our way to the lake. The sun played peek-a-boo with me from behind the clouds.

"Clementine, what exactly are you doing?" Mumble asked.

I concealed my eyes once more behind my wings. "Playing peek-a-boo with the sun."

"Typical," he muttered with a well-placed eyeroll.

"Clementine!"

I halted in my tracks and searched for the unseen person who called my name. Oh Penguin God! Please say it isn't a killer whale!

I then saw a male penguin who was waving his wings about his head. I wonder if he was dancing? I was tempted to dance with him, but who was he? I thought Mumble bragged about being the only dancing penguin in Fracs? Well, obviously he didn't know that there was another dancing penguin! I must meet him so Mumble can be friends with him! Gosh, they already have something in common!

I waddled to the fellow. "Who's calling me?" I wondered out loud.

The dancing penguin stopped dancing and answered, "It's me, you know, the one you bumped into the other day?"

I cocked my head to the side. I bumped into another penguin? He did look familiar, but where had I seen him...?

I jumped up. "Yes! Yes! I remember!" He was the penguin who had saved me from sliding to my doom!

"I haven't stopped thinking about you," he commented.

I instantly sympathized for him. I must have slid into him really hard, and he probably had a bruise! OMPG! I didn't mean to hurt him! Now every time he probably moved, that bruise would hurt, and then he would curse my name!

"Really?" I asked sadly. Poor penguin!

"So what have you been up to?"

Aww! Now he was worried about my well being! I was such an awful penguin! I didn't even know the bloke's name!

"Nothing much. What's your name?" I asked. There! I would know his name, and that was one less thing I would worry about.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Emile."

I was about to argue that I was the one who should've been apologizing when he bent over. He must have dropped something! It was the least I could do to help Emile find what he dropped!

"What did you bend over for?" I asked, bending over, too, so I could extend my help. "Did you drop something?"

"No, I-"

"Clementine!" Mumble screamed.

I glanced back at Emile before standing up. I forgot that Mumble was taking me fishing, and I was being rude by chit-chatting.

"Okay, I gotta go. Mumble's calling for me. See you later, Emile!"

I didn't wait for him to reply before I scurried off to Mumble.

"Okay, I'm ready to fish!" I chirped.

"Hold up a minute!" Mumble jerked me backwards and made me face him as I was starting to dash off.

"What was that for?" I rubbed my sore shoulders as he gripped them tightly with his wings.

"Do you know who that penguin is?" His eyes were huge with shock and anxiety.

"Emile, my friend. He's a dancing penguin! You should get to know him! Well, I don't technically know if he's a dancing penguin or not, because I-"

"SHUT UP!" He clamped my beak shut. Talk about deja vu! I wasn't screaming my head off this time though.

"That's the Raping Penguin! He was on the news! He raped someone last night, and he has a past of sexual assault in over fifty other cities!"

I wriggled out of his grasp. "Nuh-uh!" I defended my friend.

"Yes, he is!"

"Liar, liar, pants on fire!"

"I'm not wearing any pants."

"WHAT! Oh, no! My virgin eyes! Oh, the agony!" I twirled around and fell to the ground, covering my eyes.

"Talk about a drama queen," Mumble muttered. "Now, Clementine, that Emile guy is the Raping Pen-"

"LALALALALALALA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU! LALALALALALA!" I shot up and jumped from foot to foot, drowning out his mean remarks towards my friend.

Letting out a growl and rolling his eyes, he waddled away.I followed him, of course.

He stopped at some metal thingy and pulled a newspaper out of it.

How did the newspaper get into the metal thingy?

Mumble flipped through the pages of the newspapers as the gears of my mind whirled. "Oh you evil FIEND!" I yelled before charging at the metal thingy. I began to repeatedly kick at it.

Mumble dropped his paper and came to pull me off of it. "What the hell, Clementine? Stop squirming!"

"No! It eats poor, helpless newspapers! Super Penguin cannot sit by and let injustice happen!"

"When the hell did you learn those words? Surely you don't know what they mean?"

I stopped. "No, I don't, but I watch a lot of TV through the windows of some of the igloos uptown."

Mumble sighed in exasperation as he released me. "That didn't eat the newspapers. It's a newspaper stand! It's like... the newspapers' home."

I gasped. "OMPG! I killed the newspapers' home!"

"You didn't kill it, for God's sake! Come on, I got what I needed."

My lip trembled at the horrid thing I had done as Mumble drug me off.

"We're not going in the water are we?" I began to hyperventilate as we reached the edge of the water.

"Of course not! We're getting a boat!" He gestured toward a small rowboat moored on the dock.

"Is it safe?"

"Perfectly."

Mumble and I boarded the vessel of doom. I shut my eyes tight. I hated the way the water lapped against the boat and how the boat rocked as Mumble rowed it farther and farther from shore.

The boat then stilled, and I halfway opened the lid of my right eye. Mumble was looking expectantly at me. "Ready?"

I nodded.

He gasped. "Look! There are two other penguins on the shore!"

I poked my head over the boat and saw them! One of them looked exactly like Mumble. Maybe it was his long lost twin. The other one looked unfamiliar to me.

"Hello penguins!" I greeted.

Mumble's twin smirked before reaching down to the back of the other penguin's head.

"What are you doi-"

All of a sudden, my head was submerged in the water.

I flapped my wings wildly about. Oh no! The water engulfed me. Then something grabbed my face. I kicked my feet and tried to pull myself up, but someone kept pushing me down.

Finally, I was let up. But that wasn't the end of the nightmare.

You know them suction cup things that go on the window? I felt as if there were a hundred of them on my face. I couldn't see, and when I swiped my wing over my face, it was slimy.

"What is that?!" I screamed.

"Chill out, it's just a squid."

The suction cups got tighter around my face. "OMPG! THE SQUID IS TRYING TO SUCK MY FACE OFF! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!" I squirmed around wildly.

Mumble commenced to slowly and painfully remove the squid. Once it was off, he laughed.

"What!?" I demanded fearfully.

"Your face..."

"Am I that ugly?"

His expression quickly sobered. "No, you just have circles all over your face from the squid's tentacles."

"Oh..."

"You know, you call yourself Super Penguin, but how can you be Super Penguin if you can't even save yourself?"

"I could too save myself! I was just surprised! Did you push me in the water!?" I asked.

"I was just trying to help you get over your fear of water."

"And then I almost died because of some squid! Why the hell would you do that to me?" I yelled angrily. I gasped and covered my mouth when I realized what I had said.

Mumble's jaw dropped. "Did you just use a word in a vulgar way?!"

A couple tears slid down my face. I couldn't believe I had just said that. "Take me back to the shore," I whispered. I then sat down in the boat and looked over the water.

"Okay... You're still going to Waddle-Mart, right?" Mumble asked.

"Sure," I murmured before drifting off to sleep.