Member
RPM
Majoraa
The World
IAmTheIsland
Pathei Mathos
Xaltwind
Places Between
Mole
Pen-Rose was a curious place. Whoever decided to build a city near the north pole had to have a few screws loose. There was nothing there to sustain a city of any size, no natural resources or opportunities for jobs. It wasn’t like it was a particularly nice place to live either. It was also hard to sleep, as the day lasted about a year. The sun would peak over the horizon in March and creep across the sky until October. And it was cold all year round, which caused other problems. There was no soil to plant herbs in, and the most potent heating units couldn’t handle the temperatures. And were one to fail, it could potentially have a tragic outcome. This was to say nothing of the constantly shifting ice flows. Pen-Rose was never in the same place.
But Pen-Rose’s architect was none other than Saint Nick. The very same jolly red man in red who delivered toys all over the world. If he could do that in a single night once a year, you bet he could make a city at the north pole work. And while it did, it was only really habitable by elfs and himself. So as a dare, he brought in some penguins. Anyone who knows about animals will tell you there are no wild penguins north of the equator, as their inability to fly and vulnerability to land predators prevented them from spreading to that part of the globe.
But there’s nothing a little christmas magic can’t do.
Now the north pole finally has penguins. The magic did some weird things to them, sure. The girls look nearly indistinguishable from human girls and the men all have black skin and wear creepy penguin masks, but it is what it is. Maybe your biology teacher was right when they said there were no penguins at the north pole.
Walking among the penguins were Pen-Ni and Pen-Ken, her father. There was no work at the toy factory today so they decided to enjoy the crisp air outside the workshops. Pen-Ni had a jet black bob cut and wore an oversized fur coat, and her father wore a black suit with a black overcoat. He also wore a badge that marked him as a foreman, and the only spark of color on his person was a yellow tie. They both seated themselves at a park bench that overlooked a frozen pond. There were no birds, but there were some fish swimming beneath the ice.
“Daaaaaad!” Pen-Ni complained. “We gotta do something coooool!” His response to this was just to pick up some snow with his hand and dump it on her head. “Noooooooo!” she brushed the snow off of her head. “I wanna hear the story!”
“The story?” He responded. “You mean the one about how ol’ Saint Nick saved Christmas? Maybe one about Rudolph?”
“Nooooooooo!” She kicked her legs. “The one about the other Pen-Rose.”
Of course Pen-Ken knew this. Pen-Ni was on a magical girl kick and liked that the story took place in Penrose, which sounded a lot like Pen-Rose. Though he also suspected that she liked that Penny and Pen-Ni also had a similar name. To be frank, it wasn’t one he enjoyed telling her. Some of the scenes were graphic, some of the characters swore too much, among other content that likely wasn’t fit for Pen-Ni. But as long as he was the one reading it to her, he could massage those details any way he wanted. As an example, Alexander and Sakura tended to say “fudge” a lot, and while nobody died, they were beaten up and sent to the infirmary.
“Oh, that one!” He feined an epiphany before reaching into his coat for a book. “Here it is, this one?”
“Yaaaaas!” the little penguin girl bounced in place.
“Do you remember where we were?”
“Yea!” She lifted a finger to her lip. “I think, uhhh…”
“Wasn’t Penny there.”
“No!” Her face glowed red with irritation. “Mac saw that she wasn’t real!”
“Right, that was it.” He cracked the book open. “Shortly after Mac collided with Nefer, a new truth, or lie, had come about. While the Penny was not genuine, it appeared to have been made by Penny to serve in this fight. Nefer also seemed to be the real thing, if her words were anything to go by.” He had been muting Nefer’s constant flirting with everyone. Pen-Ni was an impressionable child, and would frequently repeat things characters said out of the blue. This was why he intentionally skipped every scene Oros appeared in, and was relieved when she had finally been killed off. “But Mac was not totally convinced. She had seen Nefer’s robot arm, and she was not made aware of any Penny backups. After all, that technology should have been destroyed, as it was part of Chloe’s deal with everyone. To really corroborate what she was being told, she would have to look into… her magnifying glass, to look into the past and see if they were telling the truth.” Omitting Oros from the story meant that Pen-Ken had to get creative with the description of the fake Endless Eclipse.
“No Magical Dream Princess this time?”
“I just read a single paragraph.”
But Pen-Ni had no attention span to speak of, and had already grown bored before the reveal. “What about Chloe?”
This was another character Pen-Ken didn’t much enjoy. And while she wasn’t as sexually provocative as she used to be, she had become a much darker character, bordering on sadistic. “Ah, well…” Pen-Ken pulled a completely different book out of his coat and flipped it open. “She was going to take her army back to Penrose, and then Viper contacted her.”
“I remember.” Pen-Ni leaned in. “So how did she respond?”
“Just that she would be there shortly. That there was no reason to go ahead with the sabotage attempt at this time, and that she should continue to relay information to her. Her army is still en-route to an overcity portal to return to Penrose, but now she’s trying to scry her orb for the location of the Queen.”
“Scrying is boring…”
“Well, you were the one that was curious.” He closed the books and tucked them away. “I think that’s enough of that for now. Shall we see if we can catch your mother a fish?”
“Yup!” Children were so easy.
Pen-Ken rolled up his sleeve before thrusting his fist into the ice pond. The frozen top layer shattered, and his black hand closed around the fish. He pulled it out of the water, tossed it into the air, and allowed it to impale itself on his beak.
“Yay!” Pen-Ni clapped, but her oversized coat muffled the sound. “You’re the best, dad!”
