Watermelon Snow | By : pronker Category: +M through R > Penguins of Madagascar Views: 2672 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I make no profit from this fanfiction using the Penguins of Madagascar characters owned by Dreamworks. |
For the past ten days, Skipper had gathered as intel pieces of the puzzle that was Blowhole's latest scheme. The completed border formed who what when where why. As he looked around what would become a battle arena, the inside of the lorry supplied the inside puzzle pieces comprising how and to what degree.
Four similar consoles with attached monitors hunkered two on each long wall and the whole effect was very NASA-ish. An immobile crab stared at the penguins from each rolling lumbar chair in front of the consoles with another trembling on the metal floor at the right side of his boss' segway. A 2600 gallon tank on the far right corner of the lorry gurgled as its long side paralleled the long side of the lorry to make the righthand consoles offset from the lefthand ones in a pleasing display of feng shui. A comfy swivel chair with a snack stand containing apples and grass was bolted down between the tank and a hardwood bar. The bar, which was complete with a hanging glassware rack, captured the farthest space to the left front.
Eavesdropping had divulged that one minion had fled at their mere presence to hide behind the bar. Skipper's confidence upped a notch at this thought as his battle mind mapped the layout for strategy and tactics. Takedown was the final puzzle piece and now all the piece needed was jimmying into place followed by pressure for a snap fit. Skipper was okay with pressure as he found himself considering the words of a matronly opossum.
Ma's second reading in The Art of War described a battlefield on hemmed in ground governed by limited opportunities to retreat. "A small group of our enemies could crush a large number of us in cramped quarters if we can't escape easily. There needs to be some moments to plan an attack. The only worse sitch, Skipper lambie, is to fight with no delay with no retreat options and be desperate," she'd said. Skipper often suspected Ma of paraphrasing.
This crowded sitch needed more than immediate battle because of global consequences. What if the worms became hyperized with the destruction of one of these consoles? What if they could home in on this very lorry with a call from Blowhole's segway, undulate up the fjord and slime themselves through the crack between the double back doors to confront a team leader with poisonous needles? He failed to think of a third thing, but let himself off the hook as he glanced at Kowalski who stood battle ready at his right side. Kowalski likely contained a dozen ideas neatly grouped in four sections of three.
Kowalski had been ordered to use your brain ten breaths after turn off the think melon but he knew the meaning was to use his brain the correct way and not meander thinking about science, prototype lorries or Doris. He forced himself to keep Blowhole in view and sidestepped ogling the lovely monitors hooked up to equally lovely mainframes. He wondered if they synched to a satellite for tracking purposes before the jealousy lobe of his brain throbbed an unwelcome message: This is what you could do if you had no filters such as morals or friends. He glared at Blowhole for making him think such treachery.
Private glowered at the one who had commissioned a murder in the name of shameless self-indulgence. This wasn't to be borne, he had to be stopped right here and right now. Private hadn't had much time to practice his new signature move, but there was no better situation to put it into play. No one on his team knew about it and he sneaked a guilty look to the right at his commander. It wasn't like he'd broken regulations or anything, it wasn't. He ran the move over and over in his mind.
Rico wondered if there were fish in the tank directly ahead of him. When this was all over and Blowhole defeated, he'd find out.
"Okay, bottlenose, who'll start the traditional leaking of the exposition? I'm betting it's you."
"You're alive and" --- Blowhole's eye resumed its regular ruby color and Skipper got ready to dodge --- "a little the worse for wear. You looked less angry when I mindjacked you off the docks to drown in Shanghai Bay, remember that night, hmmmm? Or on second thought, maybe you can't."
"Oh, I am beyond rage about the mindjacking, Blowhole."
"You are? Good for you to cope so well. I wouldn't have thought it."
Private couldn't let this pass. "But Skippa, wot about the flashbacks you keep havin'? Last night you woke up --- "
"Ah bup bup bup, soldier! I told you what happens in the bunk stays in the bunk."
Blowhole spun his segway in irritation before harpooning Private with a glare. "Quiet, small fry! He says he's beyond it. Let's get down to the here and now." He appeared to be gathering hubris out of thin air after an undeniable shock to both his mind and plan. He looked down his long nose at his arch-enemy. "I've got crabs, so watch out."
"There's a shot for that nowadays --- "
"Blue fiddler crabs to help me, duh! The lobsters here have a union, some socialistic thing, I dunno. Crabs are scabs." Blue One raised a claw to say something but Blowhole ignored him.
At least Blowhole did not refer to himself in the third person like Hans did. "Oh don't tell me your problems. Moving right along, Blowhole, and speaking of tradition, I'm giving you the option of surrender." Skipper couldn't remember the last time this had actually worked but he had to try. The team functioned beautifully with four penguins and less so with three and two thirds. Sasquatch sidled away from Blowhole as he watched. Was she getting up to something independently?
Blowhole swelled his chest and then snorted. "This is going to sound crazy, but I'm glad you're alive. You're so good" --- he had to think a moment --- "at what you do, I mean, that there was going to be a challenge finding another to whet my wits on. A little bit of me thought I ought to clean up my act and do some good deeds so I had a chance of meeting you in the Good Place. Was that ever a chore! Really, how do you stand it all the time?"
Seeing his commander at a loss for words, Kowalski decided to go for the money. Taunting generally got results in the form of intel and he was dying to find out some things, in the name of the mission, of course. "You selfish braaper. Doesn't thwarting Greenpeace make a difference to you? I mean after all, they try to help dolphinkind."
Blowhole cleared his blowhole. It made a disgusting sound and the penguins flinched as much as they had at Roger's dinner table in the sewer. "It's part of the game. I elude them or make them go where I want them to go. " He waved a flipper, rolling his good eye as his bad eye remained fixed. He must have meant it as a distraction and it worked as Kowalski had to think hard to maintain focus. A blast from a laser would end any one of them. Was that a powering up hum he heard?
Even though Greenpeace's staff was human, Kowalski smoldered at their casual dismissal as Blowhole continued, "Greenpeace will be irrelevant soon anyhow, after the ocean grows to where it ought to be."
All five crabs in view got a goofy look of triumph on their faces. So far only one had run for cover and that threw off Private's assessment of their cowardice. Should he go with the tried and true battle routines rather than attempt a new one? A quick look to his left showed Rico's belly rippling. He was ready for anything.
Now Kowalski was on firmer ground. "Studies show that ice melt would drown the eastern seaboard and Coney Island --- "
"Where I performed three a day jumping through flaming hoops for boring humans? Yes! Go me!" Blowhole pumped a flipper, tottered on the segway and then regained his balance. "I've always wanted to see Kansas and soon I ca-a-a-a-a-an swim ri-i-i-i-i-i-ight over it. And Iowa --- "
He's excited about his plan because he's makin' that dolphin noxious noise more, so maybe I can distract him with Routine Thirty-Two, thought Private. "Iowa and Kansas are nice and flat --- "
"Private, no encouraging him." Private subsided with what looked like an abashed flipper drawn over his forehead.
Kowalski had to finish his sentence. " --- but Kansas would be the same and Iowa slightly affected."
Blowhole sagged. "You're sure? Aw, snap. I really wanted to swim over Salina, Stockton, and Sawyer ... wai-i-i-i-tt." The electronic eye flashed balefully and for a moment Kowalski thought he'd gone too far in baiting the dolphin mastermind. Would the weirdo transmit a killing beam? He stepped forward to attract Blowhole's aim before the laser eye modification could fricassee his friends. He closed his own eyes so tight they hurt.
But Blowhole wasn't through taunting. "I --- how did you get all this information about my scheme? No matter, it's still worth it. I'll get these glitches straightened out and the blend of Lineus longissimus --- "
Kowalski opened his eyes.
" --- Plectus murrayi --- "
Kowalski blinked.
" --- and Mesenchytraeus solifugus will help me rule the world!"
Kowalski exploded. "What? Mesenchytraeus solifugus? That's your third species?"
"Boy, you're one curious penguin." Blowhole got a patronizing look that reminded Kowalski that he was indeed Doris' brother. "Yeah, poor little Mesenchytraeus solifugus melts at 41 degrees Fahrenheit and since temperatures in the Arctic are warming due to climate change with average Arctic temperatures increasing at almost twice the global average rate, these babies collapse into goo and release their antifreeze into ice of any description, you name it, glaciers, polar ice and --- "
"Ice melts all over. Yeah, I get it." Humility dripped over Kowalski's soul like a slow melt from one of the affected icebergs. It left a cold fire inside.
Skipper shifted beside Kowalski as all the pieces of Blowhole's plan now made sense. The tension in the lorry wouldn't seem to be able to rise further, but it did. Blowhole laughed as if the conflict upcoming fulfilled an urge for chaos that wouldn't be denied. "The ice worms die and you're all not around to stop me. Win-win."
The words tumbled out as if Kowalski's subdued brain channeled his Skipper. "What's the third win? These things always come in threes."
"I don't have a number three. It's just an expression."
"These things always come in threes. Try harder."
Blowhole escalated to euphoria. "Won't matter, won't matter, because I've got the upper flipper. Told you!" Any trace of depression or shock vanished with another wild cackle of glee. "I've got a sasquatch on my side!"
Skipper regained his voice. "What you did to her is beneath contempt," he growled. "I don't care that it was consensual." What was that female up to? Now she rubbed her forehead as if Hugo were nearby.
"Where are you getting this information? Sasquatch, did you gossip in the zoo when I told you not to?"
Sasquatch floundered in her role but tried not to show it. "A girl's got to have someone to chat with." She had edged farther away from her boss and rested an arm on the nearest console to go for the casual look. The plasma cutter atop it was within inches of her undamaged hand. From inside the artic's trailer she had seen the floating incandescent cutter free her at mere directing gestures from Blowhole's flipper and she wanted that cutter bad. She cringed as if the entire situation overwhelmed her. Her fingers walked a step nearer.
Skipper burst out with a reasonable conclusion to take the brunt of the nutjob's attention. "And you'll use a homeschooled Viking army to further your future schemes! That's criminal on a whole other level, even for you."
"Crawling crabcakes! What?"
"Aren't you?"
"No. That's just crazy."
"Oh."
"The sasquatch assassin and nematode nemeses are wild ideas enough. What were you thinking?"
"Um. Nothing."
The following cackle at Skipper's expense was superceded by a dire prediction. ''You can't die fast enough. Sasquatch, do your Перевал Дятлова thing like we talked about in Nepal, remember?" Blowhole scooted near the console in front of the tank to let the melée begin.
The last few minutes had been quite measured for a confrontation, so it took the youngest member of the team to introduce what the young do best: surprise the hell out of their elders.
"Oh no you don't! Never again! Remember Kastelholm!" To everyone's shock, Private slid like one of Rico's torpedoes towards Sasquatch's feet. He arched his supple back upon arrival to form a U shape and as his flippers supported the capoeira stance, an upside down wink passed between penguin and sasquatch. She punted his compact muscular body as she had on an icy rooftop.
Blowhole ascended into the ionosphere of giddiness. "Keep it up, old lady! Get that penguin! Ahhahahhahahah!"
Private aileroned his flippers to guide his course towards the righthand console nearest the back doors and landed on its chair. Blue Three made a half hearted try at escape but crumpled under a lightning fast karate chop. The swivel chair spun under the impact of the landing and the protruding edge of the console smacked Private over his left earhole. He nearly collapsed but then hung his head as he supported himself with a shaky flipper.
"Private!" Skipper advanced towards Blowhole. Despite Private's absence, Kowalski and Rico slipped ahead to form an attack triangle with Skipper its rear guard. Skipper grit his beak at not being on point and wasted no more words on the arrogant dolphin.
Blue Six determined to prove his worth. "I'm on it, boss!" He shoved his chair away from the console to send it rolling in the penguins' direction, perhaps not a deadly attack but providing a stumbling block, at least. Rico snap barfed a set of rubber chocks at two of its wheels and as the chair stopped short, Blue Six obeyed the law of gravity and kept on going. He tumbled from the chair to land on his back. "Ahhhh! No fair!" His scrabbling claws entangled in the rope linking the chocks and after some imaginative curses, he lay still, gasping.
Kowalski ended Blue One's mad rush at him with a hiiiiyahhh! and a sweep kick, but not before a claw sliced his thigh and drew blood. Blue One skidded directly in front of the bar to break three legs against its teakwood. He moaned and out of the corner of his eye Kowalski saw Blue Five pull him behind the bar. The scientist kept up pressure against the thigh and chanted we heal fast we heal fast to himself. "Keep going, Rico! Protect Skipper!"
Rico dove ahead of Skipper with a wild gabble that contained "YuhurtVen!" Blue Two took a defensive stand in front of Blowhole as Rico charged him.
"Take that, you psychotic penguin!" The crab waved its blue outsized claw while the smaller one rattled a staccato like César Millan's dog training clicker. Rico made a rude sound as he somersaulted over Blue Two by a good half penguin to land precariously on Blowhole's back two feet up from his flukes. Blowhole leaned down to swat him before he remembered how segway competence requires an upright stance. The realization came too late as the segway obeyed its rider and swung to the left.
Rico whooped Yippeekiyiyay! as he imitated Roscoe Jarboe's prize winning bullrider pose with one flipper waving an imaginary Stetson and the other balancing himself against the surprisingly soft hide. In less than the regulation eight seconds, he was forced into a Crouching Panda, Supercilious Snow Monkey dismount because the segway jolted forward to crush Blue Two into five separate pieces strung together by slime. "Sasquatch! Help!" screeched Blowhole.
This was worse than the time hunters who called themselves "harvesters" shot contraband 30.06 rounds into Sasquatch's herd. During that horrific episode, the unspoken reality of being a herd animal meant that others of her kind stood the same chance of being shot. Today, the moment Blowhole learned whose side she was really on, she formed a huge solitary target for the crabs and Blowhole himself. Her courage failed her as had Hugo's. What was she doing in with this violent group? She cringed for real in the small space between the bar and the left wall. She forgot about the plasma cutter as she covered her face.
Skipper chose Routine Sixteen: Mix 'Em Up Melée Melange as he finally, finally broke free of his mother hens in front of the bar. He chose a simple judo hip throw when Blue Five gained heart by his co-workers' bodaciousness and charged from behind the bar. As he crashed to the floor, Blue Five whimpered loud enough to drown out Skipper's own hah of smothered pain at the exertion. The crab scuttled back behind the bar and when Skipper poked his head around it in pursuit, Blues Five and One screamed. The penguin team leader contented himself with making his war face. Blue Five swooned dead away on top of Blue One's broken legs to make him faint, too. A glance over their fallen bodies showed Sasquatch cowering in the corner. Now what the hell was up with her? She looked like she was washing her hands of the whole plan.
Growling to himself, Skipper faced Blowhole head on.
Blowhole's subsonic squeal ripened into an audible, "Sasquatch! A little help here!" The segway's left wheel spun in what was left of Blue Two to make Blowhole's retreat as uneven as his balance. Guts spurted as the wheel zzzzzzzzrrred on the metal floor and Blowhole slammed crookedly against his tank.
Hearing the slam, Private swiped his flipper in front of his face to clear his head. There was no way Skipper's gut had been correct about today being near perfect. His eyes recorded two Skippers shimmering before two Blowholes. Private wobbled on the chair and when his movement sent it spinning in place, he lost the battle to keep his last meal. Despair at his helplessness swept over him as thoroughly as the disgusting sick cascaded over the unconscious Blue Three. He dragged himself to the edge of the chair and fell off, calling upon Routine Seventeen: Just Relax And Take It You Fool.
She could commit, or not. She could bull her way through to the back doors and trust they were only closed and not locked. More than ever, she yearned for her horns and the mass that had been carved away. After nine deep breaths, she recited her mantra and straightened her shoulders. Sasquatch headed to the fray as the mantle of shame shed like last winter's fur.
Skipper registered random assaults on his senses: the smell of Private's voided stomach contents, the sight of Blowhole's alarmed retreat, the sound of Kowalski's hitched gait as Rico supported him to back up their leader, the touch of cold steel floor beneath his recovering right pinkie claw and the taste of his own bile as his ulcers decided to act up. He drove for the win with an epiphany that had just hit him. It was perfect because it formed the third item from his previous list of two. "Blowhole, I'm betting that your consoles have a kill switch for the ice worms in case they grow beyond your control or get up close and personal with you. Am I right or am I right? I'm right. I knew it."
Blowhole's face said it all. "Don't you ever get tired of showing me up?" He poked his segway control panel and they all started as they looked around for whatever that activated. Rico took point as the only undamaged member of the team left and awaited orders. A new background akakakakak noise added to the murmur of the tank's pump, injured crab groans and crackles from one after another of the consoles.
Skipper heard Private stagger to his side. He didn't look around at the young penguin as he drilled Blowhole with the masterful gaze at which the Rat King quailed. Skipper had his beak open to ask is this all you've got? when Sasquatch drew near. "Ooops, sorry!" she said as she stumbled and ended the short minion career of Blue Six. He made no sound as her size 15EEE pulverized his exoskeleton. "I didn't mean to, boss!"
"Whatever! Just do it!"
Private rejoined his team. "Wot's goin' on?" He sounded confused and by Ringtail's Sky Spirits, he was too groggy to remember their plan. Now Skipper did turn aside to evaluate his soldier's condition and saw Private give a dazed stink-eye to Sasquatch. His gut warned Skipper that Private was not acting. A fierce knock on the noggin had reawakened the honest hatred he had harbored for her until recently.
Blowhole's voice turned deadly. ''Sasquatch, do your thing now."
Kowalski let go his thigh and drew himself up. He didn't think she would betray her new herd, but then she was female and he had trouble reading females. One glance to his right showed Skipper's face as calm as ever it got in battle. He trusted Sasquatch and so would his lieutenant.
"I am going to murder you, penguins." Sasquatch played her part as well as Sarah Siddons would have. She loomed over four little penguins to sweep them up and tuck them under one arm although they struggled gamely or acted like it. One deft hand plucked Private from the group and her other hand made as if to wring his neck like slaughtering a chicken for Sunday family dinner. Right before her palm closed over his eyes, Private's bleary gaze sought out Skipper as the last friend he'd see before diving into the Eternally Foggy Sea. Skipper sent all his reassurances in a look even as he played his part, too.
"No! Stop! Let him go, kill me! I've lived my life!" He saw Private's beak wibble with no words forthcoming.
Blowhole chanted, "Do it do it do it!"
Kowalski twisted himself in a different direction as if his sliced thigh grated against Sasquatch's brawny forearm. It did, but that didn't matter at the moment. "You butcher! Everyone, close your eyes!" On the last three words, Kowalski's voice got as high-pitched as any of them had ever heard it as the glass console screen still monitored by a frozen in place Blue Four shattered into micro shards. The crab thrust himself back from his workstation. His rolling lumbar chair banged against Blowhole's segway and the dolphin tottered off balance to flop like a flounder on the floor. He raised a flipper to his laser eye. The penguins heard a snap followed by a rising hum familiar to all fans of Commodore Danger films when the Ultimate Weapon prepared to discharge.
Skipper tossed out a command that he was sure Blowhole couldn't understand. "Rico! Thirty degrees larboard!"
"Aaaaaaaaa!" Rico snapped his head upwards as his auto-barf grappling hook snagged the plasma cutter from the top of a console. This was Rico's favorite auto-barf grappling hook and as it reeled itself back, he wrested a flipper from Sasquatch's deceptively loose grip to aim a well-placed karate chop that turned the plasma cutter on. Kowalski took over then as he gestured it to float in front of Sasquatch who was the largest spot among the many spots before his eyes. The unexpected effort took it out of him and he sagged against Rico.
"Afraid of you, harami? As if!" Sasquatch laughed and they'd never heard her genuine laugh. She placed Private gently on the floor and grabbed the live plasma cutter from the air. She raised her arm to let the other penguins drop without slicing feather, flesh, foot, or beak. She angled the blade back against Blowhole. Red laser met plasma blade. Blowhole's red eye laser blast zinged and zanged as it ricocheted from the green plasma around the interior of the lorry, finally shattering the sea water tank and dissipating in an explosive hisssss. The plasma cutter gave up its green ghost in a glow that highlighted Sasquatch's wide brown eyes. She dropped it with a "Harreram!"
"You --- traitor! Unnatural! Gargoyle!" Blowhole galumphed like an ungainly caterpillar towards Sasquatch until lifted by his aquarium tank's outpouring.
A salty suffocating wave surged to the lorry's door and then back, leaking through electronic consoles as it drowned the last hope for the entire linked control boards. The penguins surfed the sloshing waves until they reached Sasquatch who had planted her big feet against the floor. The water reached mid thigh on her as she stuck out her arms to balance in the deluge. After they made their way up her body, Kowalski loosened one flipper from her fur to brush water off Skipper's chest frantically and then stopped at a look from his commander saying that he would not get sick from the soaking because he couldn't. They struggled up to her shoulders, Rico and Kowalski on the left and Skipper and Private on the right. Shades of Manfredi and Johnson's killer tsunami, this had been a close one.
The team squinted to find where Blowhole had beached until the emergency lighting sizzled to nothing. In the murk, they heard Blowhole's "Until next time!"
"After him, boys! And lady!"
A dolphin-sized trapdoor opened under their aquatic adversary and the water followed the laws of fluid dynamics as it swooshed away and down. The four penguins and Sasquatch hurried to the opening in time to see Blowhole seal himself inside an escape ruse shaped especially for him. From its bay suspended underneath the lorry, the torpedo-like vehicle shot forward as its fairing scraped the undercarriage. Blowhole got away in a backfiring belch of internal combustion fumes. The last they saw of him was his bottlenose pointed defiantly forward as his flippers maneuvered a control yoke that looked like an airplane's. Blue Five and Blue Four dragged Blue One between them through the opening and disappeared to everyone's disinterest.
Kowalski said what didn't actually need to be said. "A customized Messerschmitt KR 201 roadster. It can do sixty miles per hour. Blowhole's on the loose again."
Skipper panted and sat on the abandoned segway's tire. "We stopped him from drowning the world. That's as good as it gets." He brushed off Private's attempts to preen the damp from his bald spot. "Leave it." Private seemed not to know what to do with himself until Rico lifted Kowalski's flipper with his and nodded at Skipper. Skipper placed his flipper atop Kowalski's and nodded at Private. Private acted more like himself as he slipped his flipper atop the penguin pile of appendages.
"Yayyyyy!"
"We did it. By Light-Horse Harry Lee, we did it."
"Sir, your gut was right."
"Ahgrommmtzteam!"
Sasquatch slogged through mushy piles of wiring that resembled intestines as she macerated already crushed crabs whose guts spurted from between her toes. She had a look of despair despite their triumph. "I'm stuck in this body. I --- I gave up everything to defeat him." She sat on the pommel of the segway as her weight lifted Skipper's seat until his legs left the floor. He swung his feet thoughtfully.
"Stuck in this body?" Kowalski, Rico and Private chorused.
''No one else promised me what he did. No one else could have changed me. No one else can change me back."
Skipper turned hopeful eyes to his Science Guy. Kowalski shook his head. "I don't dare try. I'm not as smart as Blowhole or Dave." It was a bald statement and must have cost Kowalski a great deal.
Blue Three moaned from a soggy mess of apples, lichen, broken champagne flutes and fescue. He rubbed his eyestalks like a sleepy hatchling. "What did I miss?"
IOIOIOIOIO
TBConcluded
While AFF and its agents attempt to remove all illegal works from the site as quickly and thoroughly as possible, there is always the possibility that some submissions may be overlooked or dismissed in error. The AFF system includes a rigorous and complex abuse control system in order to prevent improper use of the AFF service, and we hope that its deployment indicates a good-faith effort to eliminate any illegal material on the site in a fair and unbiased manner. This abuse control system is run in accordance with the strict guidelines specified above.
All works displayed here, whether pictorial or literary, are the property of their owners and not Adult-FanFiction.org. Opinions stated in profiles of users may not reflect the opinions or views of Adult-FanFiction.org or any of its owners, agents, or related entities.
Website Domain ©2002-2017 by Apollo. PHP scripting, CSS style sheets, Database layout & Original artwork ©2005-2017 C. Kennington. Restructured Database & Forum skins ©2007-2017 J. Salva. Images, coding, and any other potentially liftable content may not be used without express written permission from their respective creator(s). Thank you for visiting!
Powered by Fiction Portal 2.0
Modifications © Manta2g, DemonGoddess
Site Owner - Apollo