Article 26: Janitor Staff
MSF High is host to a large number of incredibly powerful students who are still, in many ways, learning exactly how to use their abilities. Knowing where to throw a fireball is just as important as knowing how to throw one, and the fast learning curve of the school practically guarantees numerous large-scale accidents on a single day. Generally, the school itself acts as a means of containment for this mayhem, but even its magically-reinforced structure can't shake off the effects of every miscast earthquake, thrown greathammer, and poorly-thought-through size change. MSF High is truly home to a number of magnificent messes, and there's only one group with the ability and know-how to restore its hallowed halls to a gleaming shine day after day.
They're penguins.
There may be some confusion, so please allow me to clarify. They're not penguin demi-humans. They're not shapeshifters pretending to be penguins. They're not an alien species which just so happens to look exactly like five distinct breeds of Altearthean penguins. They are, as far as anyone can tell, simply penguins. They lack the capacity for speech as well as opposable thumbs. They subsist entirely on a diet of raw fish. They waddle down the hallways at normal penguin speed. Somehow, and there's a lot about them that is not totally clear, they are simultaneously completely normal penguins and incredibly skilled janitors. They hold their various tools in their adorable little flippers and squawk determinedly as they go about their task, whether it's cleaning up a puddle of water or rebuilding the entire west wing.
The article request asked that I go in-depth about where these penguins, known only by the names occasionally visible on some of their uniforms as Bill, Hank, Larry, Francis, and Pete, came from. I've done all sorts of research, and the best I can come up with is that no one knows for sure. There are however, as usual, a number of competing theories circulating around Mahou City which attempt to explain this phenomenon, so I shall briefly discuss them, and give my opinion on the likely validity of each theory.
The most prominent theory is one you may have already heard whispered through the halls. According to this theory, when a student is so thoroughly evil or incompetent that they need to be expelled from the school, they're not actually expelled. Rather, they are transformed, presumably by Kasumi or possibly even Lady Sakura herself, into these adorable penguins and made to labor fixing the messes of those that they were once very much like as a form of punishment. Apparently, as the whispers say, once they've cleaned enough, they'll be given an opportunity to return to human form. There's not much in the way of evidence of this theory, however, as it seems to have been manufactured as a means of scaring students into behaving. On the other hand, there's a small mountain of evidence invalidating it. For one, even though the penguins cannot talk, they can make themselves understood through body language and sqwaking at the appropriate time. It's not entirely certain that they can fully understand human speech, but if they were being punished and wanted to escape, they'd have likely let someone know by now, and if they were working to repay some sort of debt, it seems that they've done so many times over. On top of that, their auras read almost entirely of penguin, and none of the alumni can ever remember any names on the tags other than the same five we have today. I just wonder whether it was a student or a teacher that made up this story.
Talking to someone more qualified in these kinds of matters comes a theory that holds a little more water. Allegedly, in the years immediately following the recovery of Princess Kasumi's DNA by the Golden Alliance, geneticists had to tune-in the exact genetic mix of human and animal data in order to get what we now see as modern Demi-Humans. It's possible that our Janitor penguins were the result of one such experiment, with full Humanoid intelligence, reason, magical capacity and modesty, but a totally animal body. Mahou City's crypto-zooligists call them "Demi-Demi-Demi-Humans", and if this theory is at all true, it also follows that Kasumi saw them as her direct descendants and brought them to the school to save them from whatever experimentation typically followed the creation of such an amazing set of critters. This certainly seems reasonable, though I'm not sure why they would be five distinct species of penguin and nothing else. Opposing this theory is the fact that no one has found any early data specifically mentioning penguins, much less penguins that then disappeared, but if such a thing did happen the Golden Alliance would likely keep it a secret.
The last theory is the one I personally ascribe to, and I'll admit, recently found more evidence pointing to it being the truth. The most likely truth is that the penguin janitorial squad are simply penguins, but the magics of Mahou City somehow imbue that particular grouping of animal with a distinct sentience and natural desire and ability to clean. In evidence, I can point to one of the school's first-year students, Jeanine, who recently came into possession of a penguin egg. The baby quickly imprinted on her, and on a hunch, Jeanine took the newly-christened Chauncey to see the school's Janitors. They presented the pair with a baby Emperor Penguin-sized janitor's uniform and a miniature broom, which Chauncey immediately took to. This, to me, implies that penguins are just natural janitors here at MSF High, but it's also possible that the egg is tied to one of the other theories somehow. Where exactly the egg came from, I've no idea, but the truth of MSF High's penguin conspiracy might lie with that answer.
