Quotidian (T) [Penguins of Madagascar]

Title:  Quotidian

Author:  pronker

Era:  Anytime during the show's run, afterwards, and likely before it, too.

Genre:  PWP

Summary:  Kowalski wouldn't be human if he didn't like to strut his stuff.  [NOT a humanized fic.]

A/N below.

IOIOIOIOIO

On any given non-mission day, Kowalski sets aside five minutes for teasing, his way of showing that he does, too, have a sense of humor.  His team mostly emits groans of show-off at the big words and Skipper chimes in with, "Put a quarter in the show-off jar, Kowalski, sheesh we're building up to gorilla-sized hot fudge sundaes all around in there."

The day his team turns the tables on him starts like many others.

IOIOIOIOIO

"No more Froot Loops?  Aw."

Kowalski shuttled the Cheerios box across the table.  "Here, sir.  Mango slices to top?"

Skipper made a face at the notion of desecrating a classic mix of cereal and milk.  "Nope, these are good as is."  He adjusted to the taste of plain oats.  

"You are a purist, Skippa."  Private swirled the yellow Froot Loops to one side of his bowl and arranged the orange ones to their left and the green ones to their right.  "I'm makin' a rainbow!"

Rico looked up from a game of sinking his Cheerios under his spoon to keep tabs on where they surfaced.  "RoyGBiv!"

"Righto!"  

Now was the perfect time to play: a quiet morning, a peaceful morning because the lemurs slept late as always and Marlene had no crisis to tend.  Roy and Burt had patched up their quarrel, Mason and Phil likewise, and the chameleons were recovering nicely from attempts to imitate plaid.  

Kowalski sipped the milk from his spoon and left the Cheerios for last in a squishy blob, which he ushered into his mouth by using his genetic tongue-rolling ability to form a siphon.  He wiped his beak daintily afterwards and began.  "Oh no, our Skipper will never be a franion."  He rose to dig through the box of frozen waffles for the one with no crumbled corners that would be his alone.

The bubbles outside the portholes rose for one full minute before Skipper answered.  "You're correctamundo there, m'man."

Skipper, Rico and Private exchanged nods behind his back as Kowalski busied himself at the microwave.

"Nope, Kowalski, I'm resigned that I will not experience epicureianism.  In fact, I'm velleitous about it."  Skipper crunched into the oat circles that resisted getting soggy per his explicit orders.

This was new, this was strange.  Kowalski's mind spun on the two unfamiliar words as he stared at the four revolving waffles through the microwave window.  Timing was crucial to render waffles soft without turning them into Brillo pads.  "Ding!  Here we are, second course to breakfast coming up.  This one's mine."  He shortstopped the plate of yum to slide the perfect pocked rectangle onto his place setting before centering the plate on the table.  Private reached for the darkest waffle.

"Speakin' of, K'walski, do you think Alice is elumbated?  I noticed she had trouble climbin' her ladder to put up the Zoo Snooze banners."

Skipper snorted and reached for the waffle nearest him.  He flipped it over to check for doneness.  "Alice probably has other problems to think about, Private, like her maschalephidrosis, am I right?"  He winked at Private and the two of them exploded into guffaws.

"Mass Kuh Lef Id RO Sis!" chortled Rico around a beakful of waffle as he joined them.  "Heehayhoohoo!"  He pounded the table and their flatware danced the Boogaloo.

Kowalski tried to keep up.  "All right, all right, Alice may not be a candidate for apodyopsis and her thin skin is particularly meable, but she's not all that bad.  Zookeeper X was worse."

Teasing and sarcasm had a lot in common, so Skipper blended the two with all the caution and forethought regarding the subject that suffused his nature.  That is to say, none.  "Are you saying that the team's relationship with Alice is incommensurate with reality like yours is imparlibidinous with Doris?"

"Oh Skippa."  Private shoved his cereal bowl aside.

Rico put down his waffle before he finished it and for him to do that, something heinous must have been spoken.  "Burn, 'Kippaaaahhh."

"What?  Too far?"  By the untroubled look on Kowalski's face, the word's meaning flew over his head and no way was Skipper going to enlighten him.  He backpedaled.  "Uh, how about those Penguins winning the Stanley Cup again?"

Teasing faded from Kowalski's thoughts with the mention of Doris.  "Whatever you said about Doris and me, and I admit I do not know that term, is nongermane.  Our love is timeless."

This was getting out of hand; specifically, the hand that translated big words from an internet search, the glib hand belonging to a certain chimp named Phil, who signed the words in slow motion to his partner Mason, who spoke the words ever so carefully to Skipper and Private and Rico.  The chimps would do about anything to prank a fellow zooster.  And that's all this was, right, a harmless prank?  Now Skipper wasn't so sure.  And for Perry Mason's sake, what could anyone who knew the pair's history reply to such a starry-eyed, untrue statement?

"Uh, sorry to bring up Doris --- "

Now Kowalski was on a roll.  "She'll come back to me.  We'll pick up where we left off.  She might even join the team!  Wouldn't that be great, sir?  A dolphin on our team, why we could visit Atlantis more often, I can just see it now, Doris would ask her friends there to put us up --- "

Skipper shivered.  Doris' friends, and probably Doris herself by now, would wear the Atlantean equivalent of granny glasses, peasant skirts, and love beads.  They would blather of moons being in the seventh house and Jupiter aligning with a Mars bar.  "Put us up the wrong tree, you mean, uh that came out weird oh forget about Doris, Kowalski."

"Not possible, sir.  Not even for the team."

This was too serious for six-thirty in the a.m.  Damn.  Double damn, triple damn, hell.  Skipper was not good with words, not like Kowalski was, anyway.  He groped for a way to restore their usual morning mood.  Private was the one to dethrone the autocrat of the breakfast table by being completely honest.

"K'walski, I was prankin' you."

"Metu."  Rico shredded the remainder of his waffle.  "Ha.  Ha."  He formed the bits into an outline of a Molotov cocktail.  "Ha?"

Skipper regained his equilibrium.  "Come on, lighten up, team!  So, Kowalski, we wanted some way to fight back because, and I might regret these words, you're the smartest penguin around.  Now don't get a swelled head like you did that one time."

It was quiet in the HQ.  The bubbles rising past the porthole slowed to spy on the situation in suspense.  They didn't have long to wait.

"You mean the time I experimented to make myself even smarter?  It proved impossible."

Equilibrium was never meant for statements like these.  "You're impossible!"  

"K'walski, hang about, that's that's --- well I don't know wot it is except, um, impossible.  Not the sentence, the idea that you actually said it oh I give up.  You know wot I mean."  

"Burn, Kwoskii."

Kowalski slapped the last mango slice onto his perfect waffle and folded it roughly to make an imperfect sandwich, but he didn't care.  "I maintain that I do have a sense of humor in re my last sentence, ipso facto."  The sandwich slid down as easily as the mushy mess of mashed Cheerios.

"Aw snap, he pranked us, men.  I'm ashamed."

"Way to go, K'walski!"

Rico flipped a bit of his ruined waffle Kowalski's way and Kowalski caught it like a tossed peanut.  "Notburn."

IOIOIOIOIO

Kowalski continues to strut on mornings of leisure.  The team learns words such as jejune and counts themselves lucky when the time of mental exercise dwindles to three minutes from the original five.  Kowalski makes all of them promise that when he and Doris reunite, they will visit Atlantis as a team.  Skipper makes Kowalski promise that if a visit occurs, hippie attire will not impact the team's stated policy of clothing optional.  

The gorilla-sized portions of hot fudge sundaes give them all tummyaches on Independence Day 2017.

IOIOIOIOIO

The End.

IOIOIOIOIO

A/N:

Apodyopsis:  The act of imagining someone naked

Elumbated:  Weak in the loins

Epicureianism:  Pleasure is the highest goal, but a restrained sort of pleasure

Franion:  Someone of loose behavior, a pleasure seeker

Imparlibidinous:  Pertaining to an unequal state of desire between two lovers

Maschalephidrosis:  Runaway armpit perspiration

Meable: Easily penetrated

PWP:  Polysyllabic Word Presentation

Quotidian:  Occurring every day to the point of tedium

Velleitous:  Desiring, without the action or involvement to effect change