Antarctic Volcano Base Assault Part 2

The thing about penguins is, they may look all cute and cuddly when they're standin on their daddy's feet and drinkin the last of his vomit, but when they grow up, they sure can turn into vicious bastards. Maybe that's only if they go mad or somethin. I'm not a real penguin expert or anything, but I feel my small experience in this area has led me to want to tell you people that, if you're ever plannin to be wanderin a mall under a volcano in the Antarctic, and that mall's full of penguins tryin to sell shoes and whatnot, bring a 2x4 with you, because, if you're anything like me, you are gonna need that 2x4 boy. Them penguins can rush in on ya before you know that you're bein attacked, let alone by penguins.

I tell you this because it is what happened to me. As soon as them lights came back on, we was overwhelmed with small, flightless birds. Since we had, up to that point, been blinded in a dark room by a spotlight, we still had them little light spotty things in our eyes and so we was havin the dickenest time tellin spots in our eyes from spots on penguins. And do you think those penguins gave us a chance to recover from our temporary blindness? I will answer that. No. No they did not give us that chance. And do you know why those penguins did not give us that chance? Because they are vicious little bastards. They fight dirty, too. Believe you me, they fight dirty. I been in a fight or two, and I seen a number of them on the tv, but I ain't never seen so many penguins go for so few man parts before. Now, when I seen them fights on the tv, I learned that there is an occasional shot that falls below the belt. But that's all the shots them penguins took. Now, I know you're out there sayin to me, "Pat, penguins are all below the belt. How can you expect them to take any other sorts of shots?" And I understand the confusion. When I say "below the belt" I do not mean all of the real estate on my body that happens to be located below the belt. I mean only that part of a man that he is makin sure remains covered up by his pants by wearin the belt in the first place. That, my friends, is the only spot a mad penguin will go after. If you don't believe me, go try it. Just wear a cup before you do.

So, there I am, tryin to stave off the flood of penguins and defend the future generations of O'Neils in the meantime when I hear Jared's voice. He yells out, "Pat! You came! I knew you would."

He sounded hopeful, which was more than I could say for myself at this point. Douggy and the squimonk were havin a time of it, too. We was runnin this way and that, just lookin for somethin to drive back the mad penguins. We had nothin, though. They were pushin us back into the Build-a-Bear and all we had at hand was creepy, deflated teddy bear skins, and those often don't make good weapons. Finally, I decided I'd had enough. I figured, if I was gonna die fightin a bunch of penguins, I was gonna take as many of them little black and white so and sos with me, and I was gonna do it like they was doin it. Now, I didn't know if penguins had jewels, but it was worth a shot. And that's just what it was; a shot in the jewels. The first penguin I kicked just went flyin off through the window somewhere. I think he prolly came down by the Orange Julius in the food court, if the map of the mall was correct. The next one, I kicked a little less hard, hopin to build a defensive wall of narded penguins. It turns out, penguins really do have jewels. I kicked that little sucker right in his and he bent over like any school boy would, graspin himself and cryin.

When that one had collapsed at my feet, I heard Alistair say, "That gives me an idea."

He disappears behind me for a few seconds, during which I down three more penguins. I hear some whispering and then somethin like a machine revvin up. Then Alistair yells, "Keep kickin Pat! You, too, Douggy! We'll take care of the rest."

Not knowin what else to do, I keep kickin like I was a Rockette and I'm about to be thrown out of Radio City just before Christmas. And also, I'm being attacked by psychotic penguins. I kept kickin and kickin, downin penguins left and right. As soon as I had one down, the squimonk would rush in, grab it and pull it behind me. Then there'd be this big ol' WOOOSH noise and the squimonk would be out to collect another one. After what seemed like a week of this, I kicked another one pretty hard and sent it through the window. As I looked up to follow its trajectory, I saw this black and white ball sail over my head and land in a pile of similar balls in the doorway. Then it struck me, them squimonk was fillin the penguins up with the fluff from the big bear fillin machine at the back of the store and then usin the newly stuffed penguins to seal up the door.

A mere fourty or fifty stuffed penguins later, the doors and windows were all sealed up and it was finally quiet again. Well, relatively quiet. Instead of the war shrieks of a flock of mad penguins, we now just heard the groans of a flock of stuffed mad penguins.

Then one of them spoke, "What is wrong with you people?!" He yelled.

I was taken aback. "What's wrong with us? What's wrong with you?"

"Hey!" he retorted, "We aren't the ones who filled someone with bear stuffing! Do you know how hard this stuff is to digest? We haven't eaten in three months and now you expect us to go through a load of shredded cotton? This is gonna be murder on my colon!"

"What did you expect, tryin to peck us in the swimmer stagin area?"

"Yeah," he said philosophically, "I sure am sorry about that. See, she knew you were comin, so she took us off our meds a couple days ago. That makes us get all weird and think everyone is tryin to steal our eggs. DON'T STEAL MY EGG!" Then he started thrashin around, tryin to bite somethin that wasn't there.

We all just looked around at each other. None of us wanted to be the one to climb through the pile of mad penguins, but we still needed to rescue Jared. It looked like we were stuck. Just then, we heard a doorbell go off. We looked around, not knowin what to make of it, when the penguin said, "Hey! Hey man! Could you get that for me?"

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's FedEx!" he yelled when he'd stopped thrashin. "They've got our delivery. Come on, man, help me out, here! If I don't get that, I'm gonna lose this job! I need this job, man! It's got health insurance! Without that insurance, I can't afford my medication and then I've gotta go back to the home! Don't make me go back to the home!" Then they all started yellin, "Not the home! Not the home! Please!"

I tell ya, they may have tried to end my line, but my heart went out to them little fellas right then. So I asked him how I got the delivery and he calmly explained to me how to get the key out of the register and then open the back door. So, that's what I did. I opened the back door up, took the delivery, signed his name (Gunther) to the FedEx guy's pad and then asked the delivery guy, "Hey, do you know how to get to the throne room from here?"

"Sure," he said. If you ever need directions anywhere, ask someone who delivers things for a living. They know where everything is, man. And if they don't, they can always radio in for someone who does. This guy didn't need to radio, though. He had it all in hand. He gestured down this back hall thing that was just a row of doors with store names on it. "Just go down this hall, turn right after the Mrs. Fields, then it's four doors down on the left."

"Hey, thank ya kindly," I told him. It looked like we had our way to the throne room and were a step closer to rescuing Jared.

Well, that's it for now. I'll let ya in on some more tomorrow or the next day. I also wanna thank y'all for clickin on them little ad thingies. I found out that I make about twenty cents when one of them gets clicked on. When it just gets "seen", I make about 1/100 of that. So, I ain't tryin to beg here or anything, but if you feel like this is worth someone else givin me 20 cents, please keep it up.