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Undertow	By : pronker Category: +M through R > Penguins of Madagascar Views: 11341 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I make no profit from this fanfiction set in Dreamworks' Penguins of Madagascar franchise. I do not own its characters, basic premise or settings.

Chapter List
- 1-1/?
- 2-2/?
- 3-3/?
- 4-4/?
- 5-5/?
- 6-6/?
- 7-7/?
- 8-8/?
- 9-9/?
- 10-10/?
- 11-11/?
- 12-12/?
- 13-13/?
- 14-14/?
- 15-15/?
- 16-16/?
- 17-17/?
- 18-18/?
- 19-19/?
- 20-20/?
- 21-21/?
- 22-22/?
- 23-23/?
- 24-24/?
- 25-25/?
- 26-26/?
- 27-27/?
- 28-28/?
- 29-29/?
- 30-30/?
- 31-31/?
- 32-32/?
- 33-33/?
- 34-34/?
- 35-35/?
- 36-36/?
- 37-37/?
- 38-38/?
- 39-39/?
- 40-40/?
- 41-41/?
- 42-42/?
- 43-43/?
- 44-44/?
- 45-45/?
- 46-46/?
- 47-47/?
- 48-48/?
- 49-49/?
- 50-50/?
- 51-51/?
- 52-52/?
- 53-53/?
- 54-54/?
- 55-55/?
- 56-56/?
- 57-57/?
- 58-58/?
- 59-59/?
- 60-60/?
- 61-61/?
- 62-62/?
- 63-63/?
- 64-64/?
- 65-65/?
- 66-66/?
- 67-67/?
- 68-68/?
- 69-69/?
- 70-70/?
- 71-71/?
- 72-72/?
- 73-73/?
- 74-74/?
- 75-75/?
- 76-76/?
- 77-77/?
- 78-78/?
- 79-79/?
- 80-80/?
- 81-81/?
- 82-82/?
- 83-83/?
- 84-84/?
- 85-85/?
- 86-86/?
- 87-87/?
- 88-88/?
- 89-89/?
- 90-90/?
- 91-91/?
- 92-92/?
- 93-93/?
- 94-94/?
- 95-95/?
- 96-96/?
- 97-97/?
- 98-97/?
- 99-99/?
- 100-100/?
- 101-101/?
- 102-102/?
- 103-103/?
- 104-104/?
- 105-105/?
- 106-106/?
- 107-107/?
- 108-108/?
- 109-109/?
- 110-110/112
- 111-111/112
- 112-112/112
- 49
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- 51
Private was unsure that Skipper could hear him but exclaimed in joy anyway. "Huzzah, I found the mug!" Private collapsed the collapsible mug, put on its tidy cover to keep it clean and balanced it atop the wad of twigs he carried.
Skipper's reply came quickly through the echoes seventy-five feet away. "And I've got the Hello Kitty backpack, so Operation: Flambeau is a go go go!" He ought to have considered his commander's ace hearing, really he ought. Private waddled slowly back to what they were beginning to think of as their campsite. Odds and ends that the humans had abandoned anchored their blankets. Skipper plotzed at one edge of the woolly expanse and gestured to the pile of sticks in the scoop he'd constructed. "Cozy enough?"
"Super." With a suggestive wink, Private added more fuel to the fire. "A soothin' fire, oh yes." Without asking, he poked through the backpack to produce matches and lit the tinder that Skipper had shredded from the pith of the sticks. After they both blew on the bits, spark turned to flame. "Ahhhh," breathed Private. He captured Skipper's beak in both flippers and kissed to either side of its tip as if he were French. "I love when your beak is in that position."
"Private, let's dance."
"Now? On gravel?"
Skipper held firm. "No better time." He hummed a Strauss waltz, a favorite of Kitka's but Private didn't need to know that. He slipped both flippers about Private's waist as he bent his greater height over his love's. Foreheads touching, beak tips bussing, the two penguins shuffled in a rectangle as sharp-cornered as Kowalski could have calculated.
"Mmmm, good beginnin' to better days ahead. More, Skippa, I want more."
Private had the music in him and so did Skipper as they waltzed as if on a subdued Dancing With The Stars. After three minutes of scuffing gravel, Private's growing excitement made him stumble out of step. They danced, swirled and shuffled a moment while Skipper licked the feathers apart over Private's earhole before breathing into it.
"Easy, follow my lead. Relax and let me guide you just like in training for throat singing."
Private mumbled into Skipper's throat as he slipped back into rhythm. "Thank everythin's that's penguin that we learned it for that one time we needed it."
We're not home yet, Skipper wanted to say. The warning didn't get past his thoughts. No, no warnings, no worries about whatever the deuce Frances Alberta schemed with her weird hunched friend, or whatever was going on with Alice, or whatever the hell the spider monkeys had up their, er, sleeves - he stopped himself. This vacation was for loving. He gave Private a little squeeze without losing the beat of the dance.
It was time to heat things up.
"Bug out, Private!"
"Wot? Are we under bat attack?" Private disengaged in confusion. Damn, he looked like a hundred bucks when he was all fluttery like that.
Skipper pulled him chest to lower chest with himself in a sweetheart push. "Jitterbug out, that is! Like on Fasta Island!" Skipper whooped while he threw Private over his head as if he flapped a blanket dusted with sand. "I'm all healed up, so no phoning it in!"
Private landed with his thighs grabbing Skipper's waist, flippers gripping the sinewy shoulders as if they clung to the rope dangling from Rico's grappling hook. "Woohoo, honey! Routine Eighty-One!"
"Hoo-yah for Manfredi and Johnson, wherever on the Endless Iceberg they waddle! They gave us Routine Eighty-One: Hellyeahaction for the win, babe! Say it again and say it loud, I am a penguin and I am proud!" Skipper shouted.
Private wanted this moment to go on forever.
They needed no outside music from Kowalski's stymied smart phone as their inside music filled their hearts. They danced and swayed. Eventually, even loving hearts could overfill and they plopped down on the blanket. The moment lingered as they lay feather to feather. After a mellow span of time, Private undid the flap of the backpack with a wink and a grin. In the beam of their Maglites, his shadow magnified to ten times his compact body.
Skipper expected the dildo to make an appearance sooner than he would have liked, but was pleasantly surprised when Private waved small birthday sized candles. "Candles, Skippa." He passed the candles to his leader, who set them aside to select a votive light that Frances Alberta and her irradiated mutant friend had abandoned. Really, the strange man left a mystery in his wake. An irradiated mutant sounded not completely paranoid. He'd reserve judgment on the zombie option.
Skipper tossed two similar candles from Frances Alberta's stash into the flames. An unfamiliar scent drenched the cavern's humid reaches. "What is that?"
Private sniffed. "Citronella?"
"I can't tell. That's the thing with smells, they're either good or bad or ought to be. This one is ambivalent. I don't like that in an animal or a smell. You pick the next candle."
"Okay." Private tossed in the next to last candle from the humans. This one was more to Skipper's liking.
Or not.
"Ack! Licorice! Pukehurlbarf! It's as stinky as it tastes nasty, do something!"
Private waved the smoke away best he could. "Be patient, it'll go if I - " and he blew on the fire to make it flare up to burn the candle faster. The tactic spread embers to the side and a few upwards. Tiny red sparkles swirled as Private blew and waved. The red died as quickly as Frosty the Snowman would die in Valdosta, Georgia, on an August afternoon. After a minute, the smell faded. Private placed the birthday sized candles back into the Hello Kitty backpack. No romantic candlelight in the foreseeable future, ho hum.
"Good glory, that stunk. Peeeyew." Skipper stood abruptly to stamp out the embers that had reached the blanket. "How about exploring more of Howe?"
"Er, um, the fire?"
Skipper realized which fire that Private meant. "It'll wait." There was no rush to get physical, despite Olivia Newton-John's song. Olivia likely was hot to trot 24/7 since she was a mammal. Sheesh. Bird ways were better.
The expression on Private's face showed resignation. Good. When they two reignited their personal fire, the experience would prove that much more memorable. Skipper scattered the glowing twigs safely away from the blanket and passed Private one of the Maglites. "Good thinkin', we'll save the other one's battery," Private said.
"Backwards towards the dam we go! About face!"
Private about faced.
"Forward harch! Hup toop threep fourp - "
Back towards the Howe Caverns Lodge they tramped as Skipper tracked their progress, now and then accessing Mama Nature's magnetic fields to determine how far they traveled.
"I'm keepin' count, too, Skippa." Private swiveled his head north, south, east and west. "We're comin' up to the place where K'walski said old liar Howe spoofed people."
"How so?"
Private snorted. "Aw, I don't see why or how Howe would want to lie to the humans, but they paid their tuppence for tall tales, I suppose. He told them that Benjamin Franklin came down here." He produced an echoing raspberry. "Pbblblblbtsh. Tall tales or lies, wot's the difference?"
Sometimes Private was just too square. "Faith and begorrah, d'ye mean to say, Private me lad, that ye dinna believe in the Little People?" Oops, dinna dinna sound right in the Irish. Skipper goosed Private as they waddled along.
"Awp! Stop that! You said you wanted to wait - "
"Okayokay, sheesh. Just playing with you, babe." They marched under sparkling gypsum deposits until a large room loomed. Through a jagged arch they strode, admiring the way their Maglite flashed on the faceted surfaces. At last, they halted before before the largest single standing stone they'd yet seen. Its striking bulk resembled Burt The Elephant and his girlfriend lying close together, if the zoo ever issued Burt a girlfriend. Smooth and gray, the surface showed scribed markings. The fonts of the marks resembled the varying sizes that Phil went on and on about. The two penguins studied the rock.
"Writin', innit?"
Skipper licked the largest clean circle in front of his face. He moved to the pointy angles of the character to its right. "Yes. Writing." He kept a straight face. "Probably where old Benny Franklin signed his name."
Private's voice sounded bitchy to Skipper's earholes. "Oh noooo, I'm not risin' to the bait because I'm no dorado, I'm no minnow, I'm no sal- "
"Stop before you inventory the waters of the world, Private. Besides, tall tales like Howe told are fun, they're patriotic Americana like Paul Bunyan, Rip van Winkle and the little man in our icebox who turns the light on and off."
Private smacked his flippers together. "And I'll catch him one day!"
"See?"
"Now you're spoofin' me. I really don't see the difference between tellin' tall tales and lyin' - hold on!"
Why was he looking all around after startling into a jump eight inches off the ground? "We're alone here, babe - "
"Are you sure? Wot about bats?" Private scanned the ceiling with his Maglite. "Wot was that sound?"
Good grief and golly wolly. "Drips and drops like we've heard for hours on end, nothing different. Chill."
Something else set him off. "Wot time is it? Will humans tromp here to see this big fat rock, too?"
"Pretty sure their tours stop at five and it's way past that, more like seven. I say again, chill." Skipper put the state of nerves down to their jolting encounter with Frances Alberta and of course, lack of release due to no sex for quite some time. He'd remedy that soon enough, but damn, the bird was jumpy.
Private paced in a tight circle. "Wot if there's a special Spend A Night In The Caverns tour like there is a Zoo Snooze for spendin' a night in our zoo? Wot about that?"
"Mason would have told us if Phil saw it on the internet website for Howe, so how about we keep on keeping on, hey? Don't get the gollywobbles."
"Oh all right," Private grumped. "If you say so."
They circled the rock known to humans as Signature Rock as the atmosphere grew strained. Skipper resorted to signals for go back the way we came. When they reached the spread blankets, it took two minutes to start another fire. Somehow the flames soothed Private and because they did, Skipper felt better, too. After a brief supper, the silence grew until a subject for a St. Urho's Day conversation presented itself. Maybe they'd even sing the Ballad of St. Urho later, but maybe not. It wouldn't be the same with Kowalski and Rico to round out their quartet. Skipper poked the fire with a warped driftwood piece.
"Private, I know you're all about lovey-dovey gooey mush, but did you ever consider the power of hate?"
"It's nothin' to talk over because it's wrong to hate like it's wrong to lie."
He'd predicted this response. "Talking about wrong makes us right, don't you see?"
"No."
Skipper powered through. "Hate can motivate us to do right. I hate space squids, for example, and every time we encounter them, I hate them more." He pulled back. He was spilling his guts and it didn't feel right. A better tactic was to explain his feelings. Ew. Feelings talk, touchy feely. Ew. Better get it over with quick. "They, they endanger us all, animals and humans and our whole damn planet. They earned my hatred."
Private looked at him as if he didn't know him. Skipper refused to backpedal. "Well, I do hate them. I'm being honest."
"So I see." Private continued to stare. Abruptly, he opened the backpack to retrieve the coffee makings again and produced a steaming mug in record time. He opened a tin of anchovies to drape one little fish on the mug's lip. The smell of the anchovies registered as a homey odor and quelled their nerves a little more.
Skipper had resolved to prolong the quiet but the resolve quailed in the steady regard of his love. "If you think the less of me for it, I can't help it. They are pure evil." He accepted the coffee.
The stare stopped, thankfully. Private stirred the fire. "This sounds personal, Skippa. Wot did they do to you?"
"What do you mean what did they do to me? They are, are space squids! It's right there in the name, for Quisling's sake!" Skipper felt squeezed around the chest as if tentacles gripped him again, like they had when - he cut off the memory and took a deep breath. "They poke and prod and stab and squeeze and inject - "
"Like needles, you mean? With poison or somethin' like K'walski's truth serum?" Private's voice softened from blunt inquiring sharpness. "So I see. That must have been the worst. You needn't tell me more, honey."
The fire blazed with the both of them poking it. As embers rose, so did Skipper's memories despite his efforts to squash them down into a tiny little hate ball. "They captured me in Atlantis, Private. They did things I only half remember. Needles were just part of it."
Private sounded like he wanted to believe but was having a hard time of it. "Skippa, space squids are the reason you're afraid of needles?"
IOIOIOIOIO
"Maybe! I don't know! I always thought it started when Gacy tranked me with that dart! But, young Private, space squids! Ew! Ew! Eeeeesh!" The commander executed a full body shiver before continuing. "I was young and foolish on my first solo mission and tried to tough it out fighting them alone when I got separated from my Atlantis squad. Those tentacles came from nowhere, I tell you. Before my eleven-bird team charged the squid pod to rescue me, I was disarmed, injected, turned turtle and - well, let's just say they dove where the sun doesn't shine." Skipper pulled himself together and raised Private's estimation of him more than ever. He swigged a long drag at his coffee and his shaky coffee nerves forced the long dead anchovy to wiggle on the rim of his mug. He sat it down with an oath before turning to his most junior squad member. Private glimpsed a younger, more vulnerable Skipper. "What the hell intel do they expect to find up there?"
Private gave a helpless shrug. There were times when he felt ineffective in his unofficial capacity as morale officer. "Wot happened next?"
"Sarge dragged me to safety."
Private reached out to pat the rigid shoulder and then pulled back. He yearned to comfort the dread thoughts away, but there was no remedy for memory. After a minute, Skipper shone the Maglite to the stalactite's glittery shards that spiked down from the ceiling. "I can see beauty in these sharp formations now where I couldn't for months after Atlantis." He hugged himself and clicked off the Maglite. Now the only light was from their fire.
Prince Sharesalot said it was best to highlight the positive in such tales. "So this Sarge saved young you from more indignities." An idea occurred. "Did he give you a butterscotch lolli afterward?"
Skipper barked a laugh and some tension left his frame. "A lolli? Private! You're too much!"
"Wot? A hug then?" After hearing the space squid story, he formed connections between fear of being probed with tentacles and of being probed with needles. He made himself the butt of his commander's amusement deliberately. Hearing laughter in the deepest chasm-y caverns was worth the price of being seen as befuddled. Any morale officer worth his salt never quibbled at making himself the butt of a joke for the good of the team.
Skipper lost it. After wheezing to recovery following a fit of coughing, he continued, "Private, he recommended that I go back to OCS for a do over. He said, and I quote, 'Come back when you grow up, boy, so I don't have to save your sorry ass.'"
"Rude!"
Skipper blew a raspberry. "Sarges are like that, at least every one of them I've met. No, he was right on about me and I learned more about life from him and that shit Hans in Copenhagen two weeks after Atlantis than I learned in OCS." He frowned and the flickery light from the embers shaded his face more to the macabre than Private liked.
"Hold on, you commanded eleven in Atlantis?"
"Yeah. What a trial for a rookie officer, too. I never heard so many excuses why a penguin couldn't report for duty. Atlantis holds a buttload of distractions, like Coney Island only wilder."
"Wot are they?"
Skipper held forth as much as he was authorized to, Private realized. "It's a magical place under the Atlantic. I think nearby Rio loaned them their congas and macarenas for their delightful mermaid dance clubs - " He caught himself. "Never you mind. When your next promotion comes through, your security clearance will rise and then we'll talk Atlantis." He grinned. "Sirummock vais numalor."
"Wot?"
"That's Atlantean for hurry up and wait, which is the motto of any fighting unit, am I right?"
"Oh, I get it, Skippa. I can wait. I can wait for a great many goodies."
Skipper's yawn ended in a grunt. "OCS chipped away my rough edges to make me a gentlepenguin and Hans and Sarge brought them out again. I don't pretend to explain it and hell's bells, this is more thinking than we need on a vacation. Lights out."
Private obeyed as he made to drip water from their canteen onto the fire.
"Hold on, not the water. We head away from the stream tomorrow and water'll be scarce. Use sand."
"Righto, sir." Private scooped gravel on the flames and snapped a mini glowstick, which would last for only a few minutes. With glowsticks a comforting touch of technology in the bowels of the earth, Mama Nature seemed friendlier than she had when they tumbled ass over teakettle in currents as strong as any in which either of them had ever swum. Feeling a little lonely without his Lunacorn to cuddle despite the stellar company, Private glanced at Skipper relaxing and nudged his own tailfeathers closer on the blanket to the powerful silhouette. Which Lunacorn would his commander be? A King to Queen Pleaseandthankyou? King - half a moment, now - King Justiceforall? Yes, that suited Skipper to a tee.
The stories made him a bit wakeful but to his surprise, venting them to an audience of one turned Skipper into a snoring machine within one minute. Perhaps Private had fulfilled his role as morale officer more than he had thought. He opened his beak in a huge yawn and winced. The water had surged into their breathing passages not generally wetted and he felt the pressure on earholes and sinuses. Hmmm, it would be many hours until they reached drying daylight, so the damp would need to be borne until then. Oh well, this time of closeness to his love was worth it.
He fell into a dreamless sleep and when he awakened, he was in his favorite sleeping position, big-spooning against Skipper's shoulders. Curled into a fetal ball, Skipper was not snoring in the fastness of slumber. Was he awake? Private yawned and stretched and ever so carefully Stirred In His Sleep before easing their shared blanket to their waists. Had his love awakened to what he considered unwelcome advances? If he had, he did not mention it and after a light breakfast from their opened tin of anchovies, they set out for drier parts of the caverns.
IOIOIOIOIO
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Undertow