Chapter 2: The Origins of PENGUIN

In 1241, the Khans, of Mongolia, ruled almost the entire world. They held China, the important parts of Russia, the bulk of the Middle East and they were about to conquer all of Europe. They hadn't discovered America or Africa, but the way they were going, it would only have been a matter of time.

The Khans - in particular Genghis and his son Ogodei - were the reason that PENGUIN was created.

In Roman times, just seeing the wealth of the Roman Empire was enough to set the barbarians looting and conquering and keeping Rome pretty much in check. However, this didn't work real well with the Khans. The reason was simple. The Khans, though users of the world's most advanced military technologies, *were the barbarians*.

It was into this gap that PENGUIN was born. Back in those days, there were only ten penguins in PENGUIN. They didn't have any high technology or anything. What they did have was the world's best martial arts training. They knew it all, from the silent assassination techniques of the Arabs to the bow shooting of the Japanese. The early PENGUIN agents were some of the best the world was ever to see. They were legends whose stories far outlasted their own physical lives.

Why penguins you ask? Well, let's just say that because they lived so far away from everything else nobody saw them as real threatening. People in the know allowed them to act against the Khan because they were confident the PENGUINs wouldn't take the Khan's place. There was another organization, an organization of secret agent polar bears, that could have helped out. But people who influence over such things figured that if the polar bears stopped the Khan, nothing would stop them from taking over the world.

So, without the fear of opposition, the original ten PENGUIN agents staged the death of Genghis Khan. Once the Mongolians were convinced that their Khan had died, they returned to Mongolia. For the time being at least, the world had been saved.

The thing was, the Khan hadn't actually died. No, he was simply spirited off to the PENGUIN prison - an icy cavern one mile beneath the surface of Antarctica. He spent the rest of his life there, making PENGUIN's first mission an unqualified success.

The next Mongolian to threaten the world - aside from Genghis' assorted relatives and descendants, a few more of whom had to be disappeared - was Grobar the Goat.

He too was brought to that icy cavern one mile beneath the surface of Antarctica (although it had been expanded some since the day's of Genghis Khan).

Unlike the Khan's though, jailing Grobar didn't help much. You see, Grobar had drugged hundreds of people all over the world. He could temporarily control any one of them. He could take a perfectly normal person, as long as they had been drugged, and make them do anything he wanted. Being in an icy cavern one mile beneath the surface of Antarctica didn't even slow him down - it just made him mad.

This time, PENGUIN needed help. Who did they turn to? Everybody they knew - including Short Eddy of Lakedale, USA. The thing was, Short Eddy had no idea what to do.

That was how Grobar the Goat, a dumb goat from Mongolia, got to be more troublesome than Genghis Khan himself.