It was a calm Monday evening. The wintery evening wind whistled throughout the neighborhood as he stepped into the cul-de-sac. He felt the wind tickle his fur, but he kept his serious demeanor as there was nothing funny about the situation. After years of being subject to bizarre mathematical misfortunes, acting as the laughing stock of the math community, and being endlessly bullied, Puzzled Penguin realized that he wasn’t puzzled, he was just misunderstood.
A day before, in a formally written letter, he declared his resignation from the slavery of SpringBoard textbook problems. For years, he had been sent frustrating math problems, and every time he got them wrong, SpringBoard mocked him in public. They published his mistakes and used him as an example for students. This humiliation led to other penguins disassociating themselves from him. They left him in isolation lonely and depressed.
However, as he stood in the neighborhood, everything came into clarity. The fuzz in his brain dissipated and he felt determined to clear any misunderstandings anybody had. He stood at the tip of the first driveway, aimed and fired his RPG, and the rocket followed a perfectly calculated parabola. As he watched the house explode into flames, an overwhelming sense of pride overcame him as he envisioned his future nickname: “Perilous Penguin.”
Scanning the area, there were 4 cars plus 2 bikes, equating to C-4 being the weapon of choice. He tossed the C-4 and activated the detonator, destroying everything in its proximity. He then moved on to the next house, carefully considering which weapon to use. He swiftly handled his sniper onto his flippers and shot a pinpoint bullet through the window, into the bedroom, and out the other window, hitting the owner who was gardening. Years of anger and frustration finally exited his body as the recoil toppled him onto his back.
After quickly multiplying the unit rate of time-per-house with the number of houses, he predicted that he wouldn’t be quick enough to get to the entire neighborhood, especially in dry conditions. He had to think bigger; He had to think better.
Neighbors started screaming in terror, watching as the flame from the initial house started spreading, the wind assisting it. This sparked an idea in Puzzled Penguin’s mind: burn the neighborhood down.
Unfortunately for him, he was just a penguin in a human world. He hadn’t taken into account the lack of snow in his surroundings, leading to an inability to slide on his belly to get out of a sticky situation. The police were able to arrive on the scene before he could take any further action and they handcuffed him while a fire truck arrived to extinguish the fire. The chaos was over.
The neighborhood all slowly came out of their houses to comfort each other and provide solace to the families who had been hurt. Little did they know that Puzzled Penguin’s plan wasn’t over. The handcuffs easily dropped from his slimy flippers and the police put on masks as they unlatched the firetruck’s hidden hose; a puzzling gas emerged. Puzzled Penguin took the hose and maniacally swung it around, exposing each house to the deadly gas.
It was later revealed that the police were notorious math haters and had been secretly conspiring in a Facebook group to make the rest of the world feel how they felt: puzzled. For years, scientists experimented on the exposed group of people, but they eventually succumbed to the confusion themselves.
The exposed group was left to live lives with confusion at every step, headaches from the constant blur, and eventually insanity. Puzzled Penguin, or rather Profound Penguin, returned to the Arctic with a newfound clarity, but has been on the run ever since. Free from his confusion, he decided to spend the rest of his life sliding on his belly and carelessly flapping into arctic water, living out his true penguin dream.
