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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/?
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- 11-11/?
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- 13-13/?
- 14-14/?
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- 18-18/?
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- 20-20/?
- 21-21/?
- 22-22/?
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- 28-28/?
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- 30-30/?
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- 94-94/?
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- 97-97/?
- 98-97/?
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- 101-101/?
- 102-102/?
- 103-103/?
- 104-104/?
- 105-105/?
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If Rico kept a log, then the evening of May 20th would have received a thoughtful entry in his Hamarskaftet Nunatak dialect.
IOIOIOIOIO
Private rang off the old school communicator that Kowalski was so proud of keeping maintained. The iceberg logo that his uncle plastered onto the latest Skype application faded into snowy pixels as Private turned to his companions with an odd expression. "Uncle Nigel says he wants to meet the littles on his next trip across the Big Pond. He also says he was right about me all along. Wot does that mean, then?"
"Aw, Nigel's a hell of a better role model than Buck Rockgut but your uncle has the tact of that bounder Joey, the sensitivity of that twerp Barry, the - "
Private pressed Skipper's beak closed. "He's family, Skippa, don't go further, please."
"Okay okay, all right already. Sheesh." Sally fussed and Skipper turned away to snug the blanket over her tiny chest. He knotted his flippers behind his back as he bent down close and Rico bent beside him. She opened her beak in a precious yawn that experience was beginning to tell them all was not the hunger signal.
When would she talk? wondered Rico. Why wasn't she like Private, who spoke seconds after hatching? Did the rough tumble through the snow that his egg received jumpstart his newborn brain? Was Rico himself responsible? Rico relived the moments when he had swallowed Private's egg to save it from leopard seals. The time inside his gut had been less than ten minutes, but did that spur Private to speech earlier than normal? Was Sally's timeline the correct one for speech in their kind of penguin? Did an even stranger particle than the Higgs boson exist inside his belly? Even Kowalski had no clue.
His love stepped in with a cogent question. "How are you and Skipper going to explain this event to Nigel?"
"It doesn't seem we'll need to, K'walski. He's thought I was secretly female but he never said anythin' to me in all this time." Private scratched his beak. "I don't know wot to make of it, gents."
Rico just knew that Kowalski thought the truth was best because Doctor Phil said so. His love could be blunt as a SnapOn sledgehammer puked from Rico's own gut. "Well, you know, Private, you love Lunacorns enough to quote their sayings ad nauseam. You must admit that's peculiar." Skipper's hiss sounded louder than the hrrblblblpip of one of Kowalski's gurgling experiments snaking through the open lab door.
"Now wait just a ding dong, Lieutenant Kowalski. Macho manly man machismorific Bada or Bing, I forget which, and Roy - ''
"It's Bing, Skippa."
" - macho manly man machismorific Bing and Roy like them too. It's just a matter of taste. This unit can handle personal choice."
Kowalski slapped his flippers on his hips. "That's not what you said last time the subject came up - "
"Ah bup bup bup! Never mind what I said, mind what I'm saying." But the insinuation did not pass unnoticed.
Private rocked the cradle to keep Tactic quiet. The lad peered up at him with a calm expression. "Is that wot you lot think of me, that I am girly?"
Rico spun Private into the air. "Yudaman, daddy-o."
"Don't squeeze too hard, Rico. I'm still sore."
"Sowwy."
Rico batted his baby blues at Sally and made kissies at her. She looked crosseyed up at her entertainment: two red sticks of dynamite that he dangled by their fuses. She squeaked adorably as Rico's mind drifted. If things had progressed to their natural conclusion with Xochi, he might have been a natural parent by now. If she had lived, she was the type to coo baby talk as best she could and nest in supreme content while he provided Sally and Tactic with fish. If ... that was the thing.
The story about immortal Nerites' love affair with and resulting child by his immortal boss Poseidon was just a silly myth because there was no hope of Rico, a mortal male penguin, renewing the penguin kind with Kowalski, another mortal male penguin. There was greater chance that Manfredi and Johnson hop down the lair's ladder toting bagels for a morning strategy meeting than have that happen.
Rico sighed. He had moved on from Xochi to Miss Perky because his dear dolly could never hurt him by dying. He hadn't even minded that much when Princess Pony Princess replaced his original Miss Perky, and he began calling Princess Pony Princess Miss Perky without missing a beat. On Åland, he progressed to loving Kowalski, who was male like himself. And then Skipper and Private got serious and got babies despite being male. Hooboy. He hated it when situations couldn't be resolved by a kaboom!
Skipper checked their clock again. He probably would disappear in the middle of the night again. Rico and Kowalski and Private would speculate on what was going on again. Since Skipper never failed in his duties established or new whether he was tired or not, there really wasn't much to be said on the matter again.
Rico played some more with Sally and forgot his questions in her happy babbling.
Again.
IOIOIOIOIO
"Ack! Ew! Ew! Ew! Gross!" Marlene grabbed her tail in its middle to swat its end at the cockroach strutting merrily around the rim of her teapot. It must have come up from the drainage grate, she thought, as six legs scuttled the insect from teapot to countertop. She gagged at the image of swarming roaches invading her home as she slammed her fist at her target, missing again.
"Hey, bro! Stop!" the roach said. He dodged another fist. "Bro! I'm Steve and I got a bromantic message from Skipper!"
"Bro? I am not a - wait, what?"
The roach settled warily back on two of its legs, spreading the other four wide in a gesture of peace. "Bromantic. Message. From. Sk- "
"Okay, okay." Marlene backed off. "Go on."
The roach looked as sly as any roach could. "First, how do I bro that you are Marlene?"
Marlene let out a splrrrpt. "Who else could I be? I'm the only otter in this zoo. Come on now, what's the message?"
Steve swiveled his head left and right before turning it almost completely in a circle to scope out her cooking area. "Nice brocation you got here."
Marlene gagged again. This seemed to please Steve and he relaxed into a story.
"Aw bro," he expanded, "This afternoon I'm just bropassing through the zoo to visit my bro at his dumpster when this penguin head bro says, he says, 'Tiny Insect where you from?' I says right back, 'Why?' 'cause I'm quick like that. He rolls his baby blues and says, 'Cause I need a uninterested party to give a message to a party I'm interested in.' Brodacious, he was."
"Cut to the chase, bug, er, bro, before I chase you with Black Flag spray."
Steve's antennae drooped. "You're a bro buster, you know that? Okay, your penguin bro will visit you tonight unless you say bro, I mean no. Think it over. I'll wait."
Her curiosity got the better of her. "How will he know if I say no?"
Steve shrugged his first and second set of shoulders. "You say no, bro, and I zip back to him, let him bro the news and take off to visit my bro."
"You sure are hard to understand."
"It's part of our mystique. We roaches take what we can."
"Yeah, like my food."
"Ouch. Yes or no?"
Marlene considered. Pride dictated she decline because she had "plans." "Plans" could range from a date with a delectable gentleman to a date with herself to restyle her fur. Eh, "plans" were for future gamesmanship because right now, this minute, she wanted to see Skipper. "Plans" be darned, she wanted him with her tonight.
"Yes."
"Okay, bro." He eyed the distance to the slots in her grate. Marlene imagined a dotted line on her floor from here to there.
"Wait, when you see him again tell him to come, I mean visit, about nine o'clock - "
He turned to face her and continued walking backwards on her countertop. In another animal it would look graceful, but not in a roach. "Bro, I won't need to see him again. He said you would most likely say yes and if you did, to bro you he would come at the usual time after lights out, whatever that means."
Well! The nerve! "Oh, he did, did he. Grrrrrr."
"He knows you pretty good, right?"
"Sure, but - "
"So you said yes, but if you hadn't, bro, I would strut by his habitat to bro it to him. He called it a dead man's switch sitch. He said you'd understand what he meant. He jabberjawed to himself that some bird named Kawasaki would call your yes an unmarked case, but by that time I had a headache listening to him and split. I dunno who Kawasaki is 'cause it was just me and him talking."
"You're giving me a headache, Steve. Scoot."
Steve sidled to the edge of the counter and dropped to the floor. Before she could react, he zipped for her drainage grate and disappeared down it. "Don't thank me or anything, bro. Later!" echoed from the hole.
"Gosh, I hope not. Ick." Marlene found her Black Flag and sprayed the grate thoroughly outside and inside along with the first three rungs of the access ladder.
IOIOIOIOIO
As the black, clear night of May 20th shimmered into May 21st, Marlene hugged Skipper hard. He melted like Velveeta in a microwave in her embrace before lifting her off her feet with a rrrrrruuhhhhhrawr. He buried his face in her chest and murmured mamacita into the white fur there. She rested her head atop his. "Oh," she said. "Oh."
"Heh," he said. "Hmmm, you smell nice."
Marlene swallowed the lump in her throat before closing her eyes and inhaling deeply. "It's lavender oil aromatherapy."
"You been sick?" Skipper put her down to cup her face between flippers that trembled. "Let me see."
She brushed away his concern, laughing. "I needed touchy feely stuff to improve moods, don't worry. All us hippies get that way."
He gasped comically as he assumed his power akimbo stance. "Never use that word around me. I'd dump you in an instant if I thought you had gone hippie." But the lie in his words did not match the truth in his eyes. "You believe me, correctamundo?"
She hooked her paw through the crook of his flipper before standing at his side, leaning her head onto his shoulder. "Nah."
"Aw yeah, you can see right through me. I give. Hey, got any coffee? I got deployed for baby duty night before last so I'm a little wasted."
She turned her reflexive hustle to her hot plate into a sashay, swaying her hips in the way she knew intrigued him. "I'll put the kettle on and we can catch up."
He plotzed onto her bed. "It's time and more than time. I've missed you."
She turned on the hot plate before joining him on the bed. "Me, too."
They each clutched their knees and swung their feet, awaiting the herrreeeeeeeee signaling the boil. Marlene considered their poses as poetic and if she owned more poetry in her soul, she would have composed a line or two about suspense. If her affair - she had begun to call it a love affair - weren't so gosh darn secret, she would ask Kowalski to grace her romance with a sonnet. Or did he compose anymore, since he and Doris split?
Maybe he did not, she concluded glumly. Maybe he associated poetry with a past love that never should be revisiteeeeeeeeeeeeerrrreeeeee. "Ahah, special just for you, cariño, vanilla creme infused joe. It's vanilla from Guatemala and you mention your mission there a bunch, you know?"
"Ha, infused java is a little twee, but okay. Bring it." He placed his flippers akimbo, which appeared a tad strange when an animal was sitting down. Marlene assumed he felt as she did, a little discombobulated. He looked around. "Finished the anniversary gift, I see."
"Uh huh. Here you go." She passed him the aromatic brew and took a mug herself.
"Ahhhh. Just what the darling ordered." Their eyes met over the rims of their mugs.
Steam rolled upwards, pleasing to the senses of touch and smell. Warmth from the mug penetrated to the tips of her digits and back down to her palms. She closed her eyes again to drink in their reunion.
He began enthusiastically, "Let me know if I bore you, okay? I have a baker's dozen days of fathering under my belt, if I wore one, and it's, it's becoming a routine that we need to number? Maybe you can help with that? We've battened down the hatches on the good ship Operation: Parenthood to sail through a few perfect storms into smoother seas." He paused briefly before adding, "I - we - the team needs you more than ever because with littles, they never stop requiring at least one of us to tend them and, and it hasn't happened yet that a mission using all four penguins comes up, but it might."
"I'm listening." She rafted into his oceanic penguin metaphors while considering how otter river metaphors could apply.
Ten minutes later, he was still talking.
IOIOIOIOIO
"So right away Kowalski panicked about Sally's eyes, pfft, I knew they would open eventually and they did on schedule just like those in Magellanic penguin chicks. So did Tactic's, and our kids own four of the cutest little button eyes of blue you ever saw and their fuzz is just so, so soft like, like, well I don't know what. Like Eggy's ducking fuzz, I guess. You'll come to visit, ¿sí? Soon?"
She wrapped both palms about the warmth, savoring the trust she heard, wishing to acknowledge the momentous event in her friend's life. "Of course. Soon. When I'm absolutely fershur finished with the portrait, you know, spraying it with fixative - "
"You're a true friend to us all, Marlene." He pecked her cheek. "Kowalski and Rico will nail a hole in our HQ wall to hang the, the masterpiece. I'll look the other way."
"Tee hee, you're cute."
"So are you." Their eyes met again until Marlene cleared her throat.
"Ooops, swallowed some dregs. Bleurgh. There, gone now."
Skipper finished his mug with a big glonk of a swallow. "Tell me how you are, honeygirl. I really want to know."
Marlene licked her lips after placing the mug on the floor by her crossed ankles. "First, I apologize. I shouldn't have said what I said about you not wanting to parent. You take parenting as seriously as you do everything else and yay for your work ethic that all us zoosters appreciate."
"Pshaw, just doing my duty."
"You ought to get a medal." He looked down.
"Stop, you'll turn my head."
"I meant to. Look at me." Skipper did.
She drew near. "Happy Valentine's Day."
"Whu- "
She kissed him long and deep before continuing breathlessly, "What you mean is, why is it May 21st and not February 14th? It's the Asian Internet Valentine's Day because Wo Ai Ni in Chinese sounds like 520, which is short for May 20th and Wo Ai Ni means I Love You in Chinese." Were his eyes glazing over? She rushed along to the important part. "Actually, Phil signed that the holiday is two days, with the 21st being for males and the 20th for females. Tonight is yours."
She leaned in again. "I am yours."
"Oh." Skipper held her shoulders back. "I gave you a pink pearl on April 5th. Where is it?"
Marlene supposed she could tease and not have him get too mad. "Oh, you mean the souvenir from Howe Caverns? I lost it, I think, awhile back, it was itsy bitsy, you know - "
Skipper's aquamarine eyes sparkled as never before. "You fooler. Tell me."
"Why?"
"Because I want to renew us, just as we are. It's perfect to give as a pebble." He turned shy, his lowered lashes veiling the sparkle. "Unless you don't want to accept it."
Marlene babbled, "It's not an official public holiday, it's just for expressing romantic feelings, it got started on the internet according to Phil and I know how you feel about the internet - "
The shyness did not linger. "Will you or will you not accept my pebble?" He sounded so reasonable, so steady, that she forgot all about settling his hash regarding taking her yes for granted with yes being her unmarked case or dead man's switch sitch.
Someone with her voice said, "I'm willing."
"So?"
"It's in m-m-m-my easel tray." She pointed, unable to make her feet move. Skipper fished it out of the groove.
"Pretty as ever. The pearl is, too." He took a knee while he presented it as he had many weeks ago. "For you, Marlene The Otter."
"Thanks."
"Now we'll throw it into the nearest body of water."
"Huh?"
"It's tradition."
"I, I don't want to lose it - "
"It's tradition."
"Can't you change it just for me since I'm not penguin?"
"It's tra- you have a point." Skipper winked at her. "So let's make our own tradition, you and me, a, a pengotter tradition."
"Yes! Oh, yes!"
"What'll it be?"
Two sets of brows furrowed and then smoothed, but the otter spoke first. Marlene smacked one fist into the other. "Something dangerous!"
"Oh. I thought you were going to kiss me again. I'm ready to kiss back now."
"That's for later. Right now, let's put on our thinking caps. Where's the nearest danger?"
IOIOIOIOIO
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Undertow