Watermelon Snow

Skipper followed Private's gaze one hundred feet over and forty feet up.  "It's ... Sasquatch? How did she get out of the zoo and up on the tower roof and we didn't hear anything --- let's go say hello."

It took agility to navigate in darkness along the battlement, but they each had that in spades.  Over and up the 40 feet to the tip-toppiest roof ridge they bounded.  Once Private slipped on black ice that formed on top of the indigo ice, but the sure extension of Skipper's foot saved him from a faceplant or even a killing fall.  Sasquatch watched in silence as they approached.

"Hello, you remember me, right?  And this is Private.  How's it going?"  

No answer.  Skipper tried Spanish.  There was no telling what traumatic events had led to her escape, if it were an escape.  A different language could jolt her into a response. "¿Como está, señorita?"

Private chimed in with an 'allo!' but there was nothing friendly, welcoming or even curious on Sasquatch's face. 

Something odd about Sasquatch's fur garnered Skipper's attention.  In the gloom of the back room in the primate house, it had appeared silky smooth except on the back of her hands, but now under the full moon he saw that the front and sides had mismatched ripples as if there were multiple cowlicks throughout her pelt.  Maybe that was the norm for sasquatches?  Was she having a bad fur day?  Any lady he had ever known would not take such an observation without offense.  He'd play diplomat, just this once.

He had his mouth open to say "Let us help you" when Sasquatch turned sideways, let her legs sprawl and straddled the icy ridge of the metal roof.  Skipper and Private winced in sympathy at the freezing seat, but Sasquatch's expression didn't change.  Now that she was more at their level, she crossed her arms and spoke.  "Добро пожаловать," she said.

"Whoa whoa whoa!  I haven't spoken Russian since the gulag, and that was ages ago."  Skipper rubbed his beak.  "So you're saying 'welcome'?  Welcome to what, sister?"

"Холат-Сяхыл."

Skipper backed away and even stumbled a little on the angled surface.  "What?  What are you --- why would you bring that up?"

"Мы вас похороним!"

Private sensed menace and went into battle mode.  Flippers at combat ready, he backed up, too, until the edge of the roof.  He looked down.  Seventy feet below in the lee of the prevailing wind lay the dark patch of ground where previous snow had melted to form mud.  Moonlight bathed the castle with only a few scudding clouds left over from the evening's snowfall, but in the castle's shadow the ground below seemed blacker than the Mariana Trench.  In fact, he couldn't imagine a scarier scenario than what they were in.  The team was two penguins short and the intel was scanty on Sasquatch's abilities.  Skipper, bless him, tried to make peace.

"Look, whatever's happened to you on Åland or in Canada or wherever else you've suffered, we'll make it right.  Just don't mention Death Mountain again, okay?  Because  ÐŸÐµÑ€ÐµÐ²Ð°Ð» Дятлова creeps me out."  Skipper risked a glance back at Private.  "Bad thing happened there, you don't need to know more, stay focused."

Sasquatch reached out with long, strong arms.  "I came here for you, Skipper." 

"Lucky Skipper.  Private, evasive!"  Skipper backpedaled in a controlled skid.

Private didn't need to be told twice.  He spread out his flippers for balance and sidestepped some sort of projection that rose from the roof ridge, but then there he stood at the brink again, looking down off the roof's edge with nowhere else to go.  In a daring slide, he launched himself forward diagonally down the slick roof, catching his claws in a spot of soft snow that clung to the metallic shingles despite all odds.  He scrabbled for traction and that loosened the snow so that it slid further down the roof's steep pitch.  The gutter caught him as well as the snow just in time.  He looked up to see how Skipper was faring.  

The projecting bit turned out to be a windvane, because Skipper secured both feet in a stylized metal rooster's tail as he whirled like a horizontal dervish with flippers of fury outstretched.  Faster and faster he spun against the backlight of the full moon, a pummeling powerful penguin that Sasquatch could not grab.  She may have stretched to her full height again, but the windvane's staff was tall and the rooster enhanced with a spinning Skipper whirled at face level to her.  More punches than not reached her jaw.  She staggered backwards and for a moment Private thought the battle was won then and there, but she regained her balance with some wild arm waving.  She rejoined the fray, and it was time that he did, too.  

He wallowed in the gutter's deep scoop of water to slick his feathers and flung himself flat onto the metal shingles.  Using the sharp tips of his flippers to propel himself up the shingles as he kept his center of gravity low, he zigzagged his way back to the roof ridge.  With a bit of luck, he could snake behind Sasquatch to provide a second front.  How different this ascent was than the half-playful scramble up to the battlement of only an hour ago!

Private still didn't really want to hurt Sasquatch, but the practical matter was that Sasquatch could withstand a fall from this height better than him or Skipper.  Whatever her painful background was that Skipper had divined through their brief conversation tonight, there was no denying the truth in this instant:  Sasquatch wanted them out of the picture, whatever the picture was, and she was big and strong enough to do it.  Even with Rico and Kowalski at fighting trim and them all doing their utmost as a foursome, the battle would be one for the Awesome Avian Action Arcade video game that Kowalski was always nattering about programming.

skreeeeongggggggg   Off flew the weather vane from its staff with Skipper clinging to the rooster with only one foot.  They whirled through the air and even though his commander couldn't technically fly, Private saw that Skipper maneuvered the spinning top-like action of the windvane by sticking out his flippers like ailerons.  The rooster and the penguin parted company when they hit the crumbling top of the battlement forty feet below.  Sasquatch whooped like an Irish banshee as she skimmed down the slope of the roof à la Tony Hawk.  She continued screaming as she honed in on Skipper like a leopard seal with borborygmi.

Private's blood curdled.  

IOIOIOIOIO

TBC

A/N  thanks to my friend Nisa for the Russian *mwah*