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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/?
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- 16-16/?
- 17-17/?
- 18-18/?
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- 20-20/?
- 21-21/?
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- 31-31/?
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- 96-96/?
- 97-97/?
- 98-97/?
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- 101-101/?
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- 110-110/112
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"Penny," whispered Marlene.
Penny's primary rider stroked his mount's neck. "The pretty little otter wants your attention, my girl."
Penny whickered in her rider's ears, but to Marlene's ears she replied, "Hi, Marlene! Looking good, my friend!"
"That's what I needed to hear. How's by you?"
Penny danced her front feet as zoo guests got out of the way before applauding. "I am fine but not dandy."
"Oh you kidder! What is dandy, anyway?"
Her rider soothed with a neck pat and swayed his weight prior to kneeing her side, so Penny talked fast. "Something human, but who cares? You okay?"
Penny never strayed far from being a police horse securing the security of her immediate area and Marlene warmed to her friend's concern. "I guess. I'm in heat and not fit to be around. Just ask anyone in this zoo."
"Oh no, nothing helps?" Penny bobbed her head sympathetically. "Swims? Sunbathing? Chewing hay? How about alfalfa dipped in honey?"
The threat of rain fulfilled its promise, briefly, and then a rainbow sparkled up on high. Marlene scowled up at the colored bands. "I hope it thunders lightning later because I'm a bitch today."
Penny rumbled deep in her chest. "I know what that's like. It's every twenty-two days for horses. Hang in there." Her rider insisted that she move out as Penny obeyed the reins. "Gotta go," she tossed over her shoulder. "See you around the park? Strawberry Fields? I free myself now and then in Colleen's memory. The 53rd Street stables are a bear to escape, but I do it for her."
"You go, girl! Maybe tomorrow?"
Penny whinnied an affirmative as she walked slowly through the recurring soft rain to the penguin habitat. Marlene did a double take before commenting to herself, "Every twenty-two days? I'd go bonkers. I do go bonkers and it's less often with me. I'm embarrassed. I feel stupid." The rain stopped abruptly to reveal a super nice day out, filled with fleecy clouds that danced with the sun, but she felt broody and headed for her cave to sit in the dark. Rainbows did not suit her mood. A brief dip in the water was called for after a gush made her grunt in discomfort.
"Why do you bro stupid?" echoed from her pond.
Marlene squawked in consternation like Pinkie did when the zookeepers didn't add enough coloring agent to her diet and her feathers turned an ego-shattering gray. "Ahhhhhhh! Don't sneak up on me like that!"
"I'm a cockroach. It's what we bro."
Steve floated on his back in her pond, sculling with all six legs. Marlene shivered at the sight and told herself to calm down. It almost worked. "I suppose. Let's just say it's an off day for me, okay?"
"Okay, bro. I'm easy."
Steve could offer a Kleenex conversation, thought Marlene; someone not a neighbor, not a friend, someone you unexpectedly found yourself next to and didn't know personally. You could spill your guts to them and toss them away afterwards. "Since you asked - "
"No, no, I'm bugging out because the park's main dumpster is chock full of brogoodies and garbage pickup is today in one hour, just enough time for me to leg it for home." He waved his antenna cheerily. "A quick dive and I'm out of your fur."
Marlene watched him flip over, dive about six inches under and then surface. She was glad she was born an otter. "Hey, Steve, got a minute?"
Steve scrabbled up the lip of the pond and paused two feet away from the questioning zooster. "Why?"
"You're male."
"I am? Oh right, I am. So?"
This was going to come out a babble no matter what, so Marlene just jumped in. "I had a fight with Skipper that was entirely my fault, only mine, and and I want to know how to make it up to him without explaining my physical condition at the time which made me act whackadoo oh you insects will never, never know what I'm talking about but the condition is on its way out now so maybe by day after tomorrow I figure that's enough time for us to cool off, don't you, and then he and I can get back on track just tell me what to say or do."
"Breathe, bro. Again. One more."
Steve didn't look quite as repellent as before. "Yeah, thanks, I was getting dizzy. So, any hints?"
The roach gritted his hindmost legs together in a not-unpleasant sound. Marlene took that to mean he was thinking. "None without telling him the whole story, no, bro, sorry. If you don't, he'll wonder and take it from this boy cockroach, what he'll imagine is worse than what actually was broing on with you then."
Now this was what she had dreaded because telling the whole truth grated against her boundaries. The subject could not be more personal because it was tied in with babymaking, an impossibility for an otter with a penguin, not that she would have it any other way. There were enough babies in the zoo with Tactic and Sally, not to mention Cthulhu's litter and the spider monkey brood; she wasn't ready herself for anything like getting pregnant and the entire issue made her squirm. Ickypoo.
"I was afraid you'd bro that, Steve. Thanks for trying."
Steve sidled away. "That's life, we try our best." He scuttled further, turning his head all the way around to look at her. "Later!" And he was gone.
IOIOIOIOIO
"You can't go wrong with food, Marlene. Rinse and repeat." Penny looked especially fresh and clean today. Skilled hands had curried her coppery colored coat, polished her hooves and combed her tail. The strong breeze that Gil Force predicted for June 5th waved long strands of it to swirl about Penny before they settled back down again. Gil had not predicted the current rain showers, but didn't even humans deserve a break from perfection?
"You can't go wrong with food, you can't go wrong with food, once more for Skipper's sake to make three: You can't go wrong with food. Got it, Penny."
As the otter and horse dallied on the edges of Strawberry Fields that glinted with raindrops, Marlene stooped to cup a daisy in her paws. "The Mature Grain Festival runs today and tomorrow, Penny, and I'm going to be mature if it kills me."
Penny moved her bulk more into the shadow of a sycamore. On a day like today, few human visitors rambled near the Imagine memorial, but you couldn't be too careful. She licked away the daisy stems from her lips and said, "Maturity doesn't kill animals, Marlene. Get real."
Marlene plucked the daisy, twiddling it before sniffing and then offering it to her friend. "Maybe. Maybe. It feels like it, though."
"Did you want to stay an immature virgin forever, like me?" Penny snorted as she accepted the treat. "Thanks. Flowers we do not get in the stables on 53rd and 11th."
Marlene tapped Penny's mobile upper lip before Penny lifted her head again. "I'm not an expert, you'd have to talk to my mom for that, but I don't think virginity or non-virginity has a whisker's width of showing maturity or not. Sometimes I think I matured and sometimes not, it changes like today's weather." Blusters brought sprinkles of rain and then they ceased, on and off again until Marlene quit keeping up with the day. Rainbows flashed and then died. Rico loved this sort of psychedelic hoopla, Marlene felt sure.
"So what?"
"Wellll, it's nice to reach a certain age and think of yourself as mature, right?"
Penny ran her tongue around her lips to slurp in the last daisy petals. "Meh. I am just me and you are just you. It's enough that we are friends."
"Yes, I should say - my goodness, we are serious today! Let's talk about something else."
"Okay, Marlene. Just keep in mind that maturity doesn't kill; bullets" - Penny flicked her head towards the memorial - "runaway limousines on sidewalks, knives and acid thrown in the face kills. I know because I've seen the consequences."
"Stop! I can't handle the images - "
Penny bent her long neck down to nuzzle Marlene's bowed head. "I'm through. How's the latest art project coming along?"
"All, all right. Skipper needs to pose some more for his portrait, but Kowalski and Rico's portrait hangs in their lair. They seem to like it."
Marlene leaned against the stalwart pillar of Penny's fetlock before continuing. "I ought to invite Skipper over to finish the piece, apologize and then see where the day takes us. It's a good start, don't you think?"
"Baby steps, Ten Four. I, I'm not an expert on attraction, but maybe dyeing your fur white like you said happened before is his flavor?"
Marlene considered. "No. I refuse to cheat like that. It's fairly sure the sitch isn't serious enough to go that route. Er, even if I would."
A ripple coursed through Penny's hide that Marlene had learned signaled cautious agreement to another horse. "I'd call the tactic worthy of a S.W.A.T. team, Marlene, but that's me."
Art and the daily crime rate consumed the rest of their chat and when they parted after another hour, Marlene's plan firmed.
IOIOIOIOIO
It wasn't wine that I had too much of
It was a double shot of my baby's love
Private cuddled his babies and they burbled into his face with fishy breath until he settled them into their playpen. Since he had brooded Eggy before he hatched and had practiced with Eggy and his sibs after hatching, his own babies did not seem mysteries as they might have been to him long ago. He was happy he had the babysitting experience and his good mood bubbled over into his dance around the lair.
Maurice The Zookeeper scoured the topside of their habitat, scrubbing away mites and other vermin that infested no matter how clean the penguins' Cleaning Day schedule got the concrete cracks and crevices. Good old zookeepers! Of course, it wouldn't do to let on to the others about gratitude and zookeepers in the same sentence. He stopped dancing in the middle of a solitary Charleston as inspiration struck.
He would teach his own children to be more tolerant, like the lunacorns were.
Maurice The Zookeeper's wire brush grated as he caterwauled My baby takes the morning train She works from nine to five and then she takes another home again To find me waitin' for her All day I think of her, dreamin' of her constantly I'm crazy mad for her and she's crazy mad for me drifted through the cracks around the hatch cover. Private knew without doubt that the baby was Maurice's own sweetheart named Valerie.
Then there was Alice. After her kiddie was born, it would rest safe in day care as she worked. She would pick her child up each work night, bouncing it the way that Private and his team mates bounced Sally and Tactic, cooing sweet nothings into the parental air as the two of them settled into domestic bliss for the evening.
Private paused his musing and scowled. Alice got a baby the perfect way, he grumped to himself. No Significant Other to muddy the waters, just a one on one relationship. How easy life would seem if sex did not enter the picture. How easy for Private's conscience if he had not blatted you're the most important thing in the world to me I want to be in your bunk forever to Skipper.
But things did not turn out that perfect way for Private and he sighed again as he watched Sally and Tactic pull themselves upright, only to tumble onto fluffy bum bums over and over. For example, his long ago dream held one baby and then another, spaced about one year apart so the work of parenting spread out. His dreams ordered themselves neatly, sweetly, and completely with one baby at a time and one mate at a time. Sally and Tactic still acted independently, as Phil had related baby development via Mason: Independent play followed by side by side play followed by cooperative play. Still and all, his kids' babyish ways delighted Private although Kowalski briefed the team that penguin chicks in the wild stood quite soon and waddled shortly after.
No, life was not perfect. What did he know about natural penguin life, anyway? Only the basics: father and mother making eggs to nurture and mother and father alternating fishing trips lasting for weeks at a time while Significant Other waited patiently as they protected precious offspring. Offspring who eventually swam to sea to forage on their own.
Zoo life was better!
Sally and Tactic enjoyed creche care as natural, feral penguins did, he said to himself stoutly. The two had four dedicated guardians. Bombastic Rico, smart Kowalski, brave Skipper and himself. How could he describe himself? Caring? Definitely. Practical? Hmm, maybe. Partnered with a leader who dallied with another? Yes. And that stank to highest Mount Vinson! No, he fumed, Mount Sidley, because that dormant volcano resembled the situation more than a calm mountain. And just because Skipper couldn't keep it in his feathers, too, just had to have sex, with a mammal yet.
Yet, did the male penguins who stayed behind nurturing on land form bonds with other male penguins? Did the endless hours of caregiving wear down female with male mating bonds in the males to, well, offer chances for caresses followed by, er, the usual actions while the female penguins foraged miles away? Or - Private's eyes grew round - did the females at sea form bonds with other females? Bonds which led to, um -
skrawk ehhhh skrawkawkawk
"Peckish, are we? Here you go."
After upchucking a light luncheon into two begging baby beaks, Private welcomed Skipper as he returned from visiting Marlene. The mood was peaceful after Maurice The Zookeeper packed his tools and departed, but if there were one thing that Skipper had taught him, it was that war was worth it when the cause was right. Preserving the team as family was a just cause.
"So how's Marlene, then?" Private armed himself for battle with both babies. He adopted Momma Duck's easy-breezy stance with her own brood and channeled her sway-sway-quack method that she used when hefting a youngster or two in strong wings. She could converse with adults while not leaving her kids out of the loop of attention and he'd always admired that ability in her.
Skipper absorbed the question without responding. Private could see that he also took in the vision of his Private burdened with two wide-eyed infants, one in his brood pouch peering around the belly bulge and the other in competent, caring flippers. Private waited.
"Er, she's fine. Why shouldn't she be?" Skipper said at last.
Answering a question with a question nearly always set Private's pinfeathers to itching. He took a deep breath. Righto, Private, you can do this. Bein' an adult and all with hatchlin's, you can do this. "Oh, I dunno," he drawled. "She seemed not herself the last time we chinwagged. Is there somethin' goin' on between you two? Wot did she want to see you about?" He had the satisfaction of seeing his love swallow hard before turning to the refrigerator and grabbing a juice box. Skipper fumbled with piercing the right spot with the sharp edge of the straw and at last stabbed it hard. Juice spurted from the box onto the floor and the commander cursed with an Angry Word that Private hadn't heard before. He assumed it was something about a girl dog. In France.
"She wants me to come pose for her tomorrow." Skipper's voice rose to an unusually high pitch. "Where are Rico and Kowalski?"
Answering a question with a question again; how Private despised that evasion. "Hoohoo, they're out for corndogs to celebrate their anniversary."
He might have known that Skipper would try Routine Thirty-Two: Confuse And Distract. "Anniversary? Oh, right. One year and two and a half months, right. Yeah. Cute idea. What, do you think we'd look soft to give them something?" Skipper sat at their table, concentrating so hard on drinking his juice that it was funny. Private didn't feel quite up to laughing, though.
"Ug guh glub," burbled Tactic.
"Maaaaaaa eeeeeeeee oooooooh," agreed Sally.
"Sally said something!" shouted Skipper.
"No, she's just practicin' her vowels. She's been doin' that lately. You'd know if you were around more." Oh Private, Private, bitchy, much?
Skipper's face fell from his joy at Sally's new ability. "Oh."
Private's tender heart twitched. "Sorry, Skippa. I might be a tad on edge."
It had never penetrated Private more that Skipper was brave because, by jingo, he put down his juice box and faced Private dead on. "All right, you know something is up with me and Marlene. It's exactly what you think, no more, no less. I love her. We've just had a tiff, but I still love her. I love her."
Private's tone hardened along with his heart. "So I overheard. I followed you that rainy day in late April."
"And you witnessed everything?"
"No, I left before hearin' you and Marlene slobber all over each other. You said we need to be secret and gave her a sardine, which she accepted." Private wanted to be dramatic, and it was difficult to pace and gesture broadly with Sally waving her flippers around so that they patted his neck. He settled for swaying her back and forth in his usual calming Routine Forty-One: Hushabye Right This Second. Tactic settled behind the belly flap again, properly soothed. Sally was more wide awake and Private was glad she could not understand his next words. "And now it's June, you're still disappearin' at night and sometimes in daytime to see her, so it's serious."
"Oh hell, Marlene's your friend. That must hurt." By all that was penguin, Private felt a tantrum coming on at this attempt by Skipper to analyze like Doctor Phil did every day.
The words spilled out in an acid rush. "Yeah, well, you're the father of our kids, so that hurt more, doncha know. Her I can live without. Crikey, some friend she is." For a moment, he was sure he would never be considered cute again because of his curdled expression. "That bint."
"Don't let Marlene hear you say that. She loves you, Private." He saw that Skipper caught himself. "Like a friend, loves you, I mean. You know that, right?" Private prepared himself to hear a lecture about family. "We're both fathers. I may have been the seedcaster and you the egg carrier, but we're both parents of the father variety." Now the commander was on a roll. "And dammit, Kowalski and Rico are fathers, too! Love isn't picky that way, love is - "
"Love, love, love! I'm bleedin' sick of that word!"
Skipper gasped first and Private was not far behind at the unexpected phrase coming from Private's beak.
Sally caught her breath in the calm before the storm. Dismayed, Skipper and Private looked at each other as experience told them they were in for a deluge. The baby girl penguin reacted to angry vibes and loud voices in the only way she knew how as she broke out in huge sobs.
"Braap all, Skippa!" Private bounced her amid rapid pacing between the computer station and his prize fish. Tactic awakened to add to the din and the more beleaguered parent of the father variety looked to his leader to help as he stopped pacing to raise and lower himself on his toes to quiet the lad. This style of rocking had worked before, but not this time.
"Give her to me." Skipper cradled his baby in strong, tender flippers. He walked back and forth at a measured pace as Private looked on. "Come back to Erin, mavourneen, mavourneen -" He completed the sweet tune and by the final repetition of aroon, Sally stopped whimpering as she subsided into long sighs. Tactic benefited from the song, as well, and Private stopped bouncing on his toes, which was a bit tiring to keep up long.
As their daughter and son watched them both best they could from their angles, Skipper and Private said the necessary. "Orry say, Ipper-Skay."
"Ikewise lay, Abe-Bay."
But the issue would not disperse so easily, and at the end of two hours when Kowalski and Rico returned with ruffled coats while appearing more overjoyed than corn dogs could explain, Skipper and Private found activities to absorb them at opposite ends of the lair while the two babies drowsed in their crib in the lab. Private appeared stuck on finishing the difficult zebra picture puzzle that Julien passed along to him for no charge or obligation, a strange thing for the materialistic lemur, and Skipper began work again on his poop deck on The Sloop John B. Some designer of ships in bottles opined that a smoked glass bottle would add stormy atmosphere to the finished model; it proved to be prophetic.
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