SG: The Penguins of Doom "Deleted Scenes" Special

[Greg Fishbone]

[Author's Note: October 31, 2007, is the official release date of my
first novel, THE PENGUINS OF DOOM, which stars Septina Nash--the
daughter of Sal the Garbageman and Underling Number Seven from my old
Preteen Patrol series here on Superguy!  Copies may be purchased
through brick-and-mortar shops as well as Amazon.com, and more
information is available at www.septinanash.com.  To celebrate, I'm
posting this letter from the original manuscript which was cut for
space considerations.  Enjoy!]


On A Day That's Out-Of-This World

To: Miss Irene Snoqualmie
7th Grade Math Teacher
O.W. Holmes Middle School
Conwell, MA 02430

Dear Miss Snoqualmie,

I don't have my math homework again today and I feel sick to my
stomach about it. You wouldn't expect me to do any work while I'm
feeling sick to my stomach, would you? And if that's not good enough,
I have another very believable reason for feeling too sick to get my
work done. Last night, before I could open my math book, before I
could put my name at the top of a fresh sheet of graph paper, and
before I could even sharpen a Number 2 pencil, our doorbell rang.

You know those whistles only dogs can hear? Well, we have a doorbell
that only ultra-cool, purple-haired, math-loving, middle school girls
can hear, and I was the only one of those around right then. So I had
no choice but to put my homework aside and answer the door.

In the hallway outside our apartment stood a purple cow with green
spots. You can just imagine how surprised I was! I'd have expected a
purple cow on a Wednesday, since that's our regular Scrabble night,
but last night was only Tuesday.

"What's up, Agnes?" I asked the cow.

Agnes's posture was stiff and formal, especially for a cow. "Princess
Bella is opening a new Moon garden," she announced. "Your brother's
presence is formally requested."

"Am I invited too?" I asked.

Agnes bristled. "After what occurred the last time? I don't believe
the Moon is quite ready for your return."

"That was totally not my fault," I said. "Ask Princess Bella--I wrote
her a long letter to explain the whole thing!"

Agnes shrugged and the black cowbell on her collar made a loud
*clank-clunk*. That's how the Moon-cows communicate over great
distances. After a moment, the cowbell clanked again. "I'm told you
may accompany us if you want," said Agnes.

Quinn walked by on his way to the kitchen. "Hi, Septina. Hi, Agnes. Is
it Scrabble night already?"

"Grab your backpack, Quinn," I told him. "We're going to the Moon!"

Most people would be thrilled with a free trip to the Moon, but not my
brother. "I can't go to the Moon tonight," he sputtered. "I have
homework to do!"

"Me too," I said, not seeing what that had to do with anything.

Agnes shrugged her shoulders again, harder than before. A ruby-colored
lens dropped over her left eye. Her laser scope painted a dot of red
light on my brother's forehead, to show where she had aimed the bank
of micromissiles on her collar. "Quintus Nash, I strongly suggest you
accept Princess Bella's...invitation."

Quinn swallowed hard and nodded. Agnes shrugged again, and the
targeting lens folded back behind her left horn.

I nudged Quinn in the ribs. "I think Princess Bella still has a crush on you!"

He frowned. "Gee, do you think?"

Agnes was too heavy for the elevator in our building, so we took the
back stairs. Outside, a Moon-cow battleship hovered over the parking
lot, painted bright red with white trim around the square view ports.
The top edges of the ship were solar panels with a black tarpaper
texture, and on the middle of the roof stood a navigation array with a
metal arrow that spun around to show the wind direction. The ship
didn't look like anything I'd ever seen before but Quinn thought it
something like a floating barn--he has such a wild imagination!

Our neighbors stood around, staring up and pointing as if they'd never
seen an alien spacecraft before. We had to push through them to the
loading zone. A ramp dropped for us, covered in turf and edged with
wooden fencing, just as you'd expect from a ship designed by cows.
Agnes stopped halfway up the ramp to nibble at some weeds, then we
continued into the ship.

The ramp closed behind us, and moments later we had left Earth's
atmosphere. I thought about starting my homework then, but I'd
accidentally left my math book back on Earth. Anyway, Moon-cow ships
are so fast that there wasn't enough time for problem-solving during
the trip. Before we could say "Hey Diddle Diddle," the cruiser had
arrived at the Moon, entered an airlock, and floated down a long
tunnel.

My science teacher says the Moon is all craters and grey rocks, but
she's wrong. That's just a story the Moon-cows spread so our
astronauts would stop littering the lunar surface with American flags.
The inside of the Moon is where all the air is, and the running water,
and the psychedelic rainbow swirls of mineral deposits.

Under-moon tunnels each follow a different color, so they snake around
in all kinds of crazy directions. If we didn't have Agnes with us, we
would have been hopelessly lost before the first purple tunnel
branched into a red tunnel and lime green tunnel just after the second
yellow intersection.

"This way," said Agnes. Her cowbell clanked as she walked. "I'm told
that Princess Bella is most anxious for your arrival, Quintus."

I winked at my brother. "Quinn and Bella, sitting in a tree,
M-I-L-K-I-N-G! First comes milk, then comes butter, and then comes
Quinn with a green-cheese cutter!"

Quinn's face turned bright red, as it always does when he's
embarrassed, which is a whole lot of the time. He whispered, "Septina,
you've got to get me out of this. That heifer princess won't be happy
until I've milked her dry."

"Aren't you being a little selfish, Quinn?" I asked. "Birds gotta
swim, fish gotta fly, and cows gotta be milked before they explode in
a raw mess of beef and dairy juices. They need your help! Do you
really expect awkward clumsy-hooved Moon-cows to milk themselves?"

Agnes cleared her throat. "You know, I'm still walking right next to
you and I can hear every word you're saying."

"Yes, you can," I agreed. Sometimes Agnes likes to state the obvious,
for no reason I've ever been able to figure out.

After a dozen more twists and turns, the red hallway met a yellow
hallway which opened into a green and orange junction and then became
a blue promenade filled with orange-spotted yellow cows. "Princess
Bella is waiting in the garden, just through those doors," Agnes told
us.

"See if you can get some lowfat this time," I told my brother. "Or
soy! If Princess Bella concentrates hard enough, I'm sure she can pump
out some healthy blue soy."

Agnes gave me a calculating look. "Tell me, Septina Nash, do you enjoy pinball?"

"Of course. I'm a pinball wizard."

"Yes, I thought so. Princess Bella's installed a new machine you might
want to try. It's just down the red hall, to the green, to the yellow,
to the indigo-violet swirl. Take your next three lefts, and you can't
miss it."

"Can Quinn come?"

"No."

"All right then." I paused to think. "Waaait a minute! You're trying
to get me out of the way so you can force Quinn into milking the
entire royal entourage, aren't you?"

Agnes shuffled all four of her feet. "Um...um...um...no."

"Well, all right then. See you later, Quinn. I'm off to beat the high score!"

"Wait, Septina! Come back!" Quinn tried to run after me, but a
half-dozen purple cows blocked his way. Just as well. I'd never seen
my brother so eager to play pinball, but how much fun could he have
watching me rack up free games?

I tried my best to follow Agnes's directions through the twisty lunar
cowpaths. I found the red hallway, and then the green, but where was
the yellow? Maybe she had meant orange, and then turquoise, and then--
Where was I?

Then I saw it: a huge console with hundreds of buttons and flashing
lights. The name of the game was DAMAGE CONTROL CENTER, and it was
decorated with cute little decals that read, "Warning!" and "Danger!"
and "Authorized Technicians Only!" Instead of one big playing area,
like most pinball machines on Earth, there were twenty separate
screens showing different sections of the game.

I cracked my knuckles. This was going to be fun!

It took me a while to figure out the controls. There were big colorful
buttons meant to be pushed by cow noses and knobs meant to be pulled
by cow teeth. The game had no plunger but I dropped the first ball
with a button labeled, "Power Core Emergency Release--DO NOT PRESS!" A
door slid open in one of the video screens, and a silver ball rolled
out. The ball was just small enough to fit into the swirling blue
tunnel.

The ball picked up speed as it rolled from one tunnel to the next, and
from one video screen to the another, all over the console. The trick
for me was to open and close the right doors to keep the ball rolling.
It was such a challenge!

As I played, a herd of green Moon-cows ran past me and down the orange
hallway, mooing in terror. I didn't look up but saw their reflection
in the glass screens of the game. Seconds later, the Moon-cows were
followed by a twenty-foot metal ball that shook the entire complex as
it rolled past. Also, some kind of alarm kept going off.

What separates the typical pinball player from a pinball wizard like
myself is the ability to stay focused. I could have stopped playing to
check out what was going on, but then I'd never have beaten the high
score. I was doing well, too. The more I played, the more "Warning!"
and "Danger!" lights flashed in my face.

My ball entered a screen filled with circular bumpers that caught fire
and exploded. It sounded so real, the ground trembled under my feet!
Once I'd destroyed a few of the bumpers, the rest went in a chain
reaction. It was awesome!

The tunnel lights went out. Only the emergency lights and alarms still
had power, and the pinball machine, thank goodness! I kept opening
doors and watched my ball crash through screen after screen of twisty
colored pathways.

"Earth-child!" A green Moon-cow technician shoved me aside with her
head and neck. Her tail swished back and forth. "What are you up to?"

"About 47 million points," I told her.

The technician examined the game machine. "I've never seen such destruction!"

"Does that mean I beat the high score already?" I asked. "Hooray! And
I'm still only working on my first ball!"

The technician seemed to be so impressed that she could barely speak.

"Hey, could you do me a favor?" I asked her. "I need to ask Agnes if
she has anything more challenging for me to play. Would you mind
taking over for a while?"

"Yes, please go," she said, with gratitude in her eyes.

"Just put in my initials in at the end," I told her. "S7N--the 7
stands for 7alevin."

I tried to retrace my steps back to Agnes and Quinn. The tunnels
looked familiar but with a lot more rubble than I remembered, and it
was hard to navigate with so many panicked Moon-cows running all over
the place.

Around a bend in the dark green tunnel, I ran into my brother.
"Septina!" he exclaimed. "What have you done?"

"High score on lunar pinball," I told him. "Bam! Zoom! Pow! I really
showed that game who was boss. Saaay... What's that you're wearing?"

Quinn's face turned red again. Bib overalls, a plaid shirt, and straw
hat made him look like he'd just stepped out of an old black-and-white
educational film called Where Corn Comes From. "They're ceremonial
milking garments." Quinn tossed the hat away in disgust. "Princess
Bella insisted that I wear them."

"Ah." I reached into my bag for the package of Oreos I'd brought. "Got milk?"

Quinn reached for two overflowing buckets of royal blue Moon-cow milk.
We were most of the way through the Oreos when Agnes found us.

"By the fiddlecat! Septina Nash, what have you done?"

I wondered why everyone kept asking me that. "High score on pinball,"
I told her. "You'll need a more challenging game next time, and would
it hurt you to clean this planetoid up a little when you know you're
having visitors from Earth?"

"What's going on, Agnes?" Quinn asked the Moon-cow.

Agnes seemed to have a hard time retaining her composure. "We've had a
bit of an...accident." She flashed her eyes in my direction.
"Somebody--" Again, her large brown eyes flashed at me. "Somebody
released a power core from the upper storage chamber and let it roll
through the entire complex and into the underground sea."

"How awful!" I wiped a blue milk-mustache from my upper lip. "You
should definitely punish whichever cow let that happen."

Agnes gnashed her cud, then sighed. "To err is human; to forgive,
bovine," she muttered to herself. Whatever that means. She and the
other Moon-cows rushed us back to Earth faster than a dish running
away with a spoon.

It would still have been early enough for me to start my math
homework, except that I now had that nasty stomachache I was telling
you about. I guess cookies and blue milk don't go well together after
all.

Sincerely,
Septina Nash, Pinball Wizard

-- 
Greg R. Fishbone - http://gfishbone.com
* Author: THE PENGUINS OF DOOM - http://septinanash.com
* President: Class of 2k7 - http://classof2k7.com
* ARA: New England SCBWI - http://nescbwi.org