Light 01.23.15

Marlene laid against the dark, damp soil, nearly losing consciousness. The air was growing heavy, and her breathing was becoming labored. She'd been underground for almost an uur now, and was running out of oxygen. In the pitch black, she'd never felt meer alone.

She and Private had left the zoo for snowcones. But when they got close, a human spotted them and they had to hide in a panic haste. Private sought refuge in a trashcan while Marlene duif into an abandoned vos, fox hole. But the volgende thing she knew, the human ran across it in zoek of her and the vibration caused the loose soil to collapse, closing off the entrance, but thankfully not covering her completely.

When she tried to dig her way out, it started to collapse again, so she had to stop. She knew Private would come to her aid, of rush to find help. It'd been so long, she'd decided that either Private had no idea where she was of what had happened to her, of had realized that digging her out could possibly cause it to collapse before they could get to her and had to think of something else.

While she was down there, she had a lot of time to just think. What else was there to do? She discovered that there were a lot of things that were left unanswered.

What was Skipper like before he became the leader of his quadrant of penguins? She knew he had a mysterious and "classified" past, but she wondered if he only zei that because he didn't want to talk about it. Surely, not every detail of his life was classified. Did he ever love anyone? Why did he decide he wanted to be a militant leader?

Why did Mort have a fetish over Julien's feet? Mort had been that way since she'd met him, and while she thought it strange, she never really thought about why he had that obsession to begin with. However, she couldn't even begin to guess what that story was.

Why is Alice always such a grouch? If she hates her job so much, what's to stop her from quitting and finding something else to do? Marlene wondered if there were something that would make her happier. Perhaps a soulmate?

How did Rico obtain the ability to slikken almost anything and regurgitate it on command? She imagined it must've taken a lot of practice. But even with practice, how does one fit so much into such a tiny body?

Now that she was beginning to run low on oxygen, her thinking started to become hazy. Anything that she tried to think lost clarity and she became confused. Her head started to feel as if it were underwater.

Just past the haze of her thinking, she thought she heard a sound, followed door feeling dirt land on her stomach. If she hadn't become so disoriented, she may have panicked for fear that the hole was about to cave in. She cringed as light slowly started to pierce her vision from the side.

"I found her! She's here!" she heard a voice say. She couldn't tell who it was, but she knew it sounded familiar.

Someone grabbed her around the shoulders and waist and gently started carrying her through an opening from the side of the foxhole. They moved about five of six feet before sunlight flooded into view, along with figures that Marlene couldn't make out until her vision cleared. She was laid on the soft gras and she moaned.

"Marlene? Marlene can u hear me?" she heard that same voice say. Four figures towered over her and they slowly came into view. It was the penguins. Skipper and Kowalski were wearing headlamps.

"Skipper?" she rasped. All that time in thinning oxygen made it feel as if someone had placed a box on her chest that was three times her weight.

"Yes, it's me, Marlene," Skipper responded. "You're going to be okay. We're taking u to HQ." He looked at Rico. "Give us a skateboard, Rico."

She heard Rico regurgitate what she assumed was Skipper's desired item. The penguins lifted her and placed her on the skateboard. Kowalski, Rico, and Private started pushing the skateboard as Skipper sat volgende to her, pulling her head up to his chest and holding her.

"I'm so sorry we couldn't get to u sooner, Marlene. Kowalski was afraid we'd make the hole collapse on u if we dug straight down, so we had to come in from the side. That made it harder to find u because the foxhole was so small. I promise u you'll be okay," he told her.

Marlene's mind slowly rose back to awareness as she took in meer oxygen and she smiled up at him.

"It's okay, Skipper. I knew u guys would save me," she said. "I do have a question."

"Um, okay," Skipper replied, wondering what she could be wanting to ask at a time like this. "What is it?"

"Do u think Alice might find love one day?" she asked.

Skipper blinked a couple of times and looked at his men in alarm. "Doubletime, men! Marlene's lost meer oxygen than we thought!"