A.N. ~Just want to give a shout out to my discord amigos who have helped provide many of the prompting ideas that will be shown and alluded to within these one shots. Without them, I doubt I would have ever considered these two's friendship.

The Siren's Call

With a flash of smoke, the lab door flies off its hinges with Kowalski pressed against it into the wall of the living room. The penguin slips down with a groan and glares in the direction of his lab.

Skipper looks up from the ship in a bottle kit he's working on at the kitchen table, with a smirk. "Your thingamagig explode again?"

"What was your first clue?" He sighs, rolling his eyes as he stands up and dusts himself off. "Stupid wires keep breaking, shorts out the entire circuit. Never getting this brand again." He grumbles, marching back to the lab.

"Sure it's just the wires?"

Kowalski pauses for a moment as he considers this. "...Yes...Or pretty sure...I'm assuming it'll work if the wires will cooperate."

"Right...Right. Well, try not to blow yourself up. You keep rattling my boat."

"I'll keep that in mind, sir..." He sighs again and looks around his lab. At this point, wires were no longer his problem as the entire invention is in smithereens. He kneels down by it and just stares at it. "Three days...wasted...again..."

After a few more minutes of mourning his invention, he gets the broom and starts sweeping up the mess and wiping off the remaining smoke residue. "Maybe the eighth time will be the charm."

Kowalski waddles out and looks at the crunched up lab door. Without thinking, his flipper rubs his lower back. He hadn't even noticed that it was sore til seeing his dent in the door. "Skipper, I'm going out to get more materials...If you could have Rico relocate the door closer to the hinges, I'll fix it when I return."

"You still working on that same thing? What's this, fail five?"

"Fail seven, actually. But yes, I'm still trying."

"Maybe that's just the universe's way of telling you it's not meant to work, Kowalski. What's it supposed to be anyhow?" He glances over at him.

Kowalski balls his flipper by his side and takes a deep breath. After all, letting Skipper get under his feathers wasn't going to help him finish anything. "Quantum booster for the coup."

"Did you ever get those new brakes replaced?" He sips his coffee.

"Yes...I replaced the brakes last week."

"The normal ones or those iffy ultra brakes you were testing?"

Kowalski frowns slightly. "Which would you prefer?"

"I don't know, Kowalski. Did they work?"

"The normal ones are installed, sir." He then rolls his eyes. "You know I wouldn't put untested brakes on the coup."

"How am I supposed to know what you do when, Kowalski? I've got enough to keep up with than when and what you test and install." He sets the cup down. "Be back by 2100 hours."

"Yes, sir..." Kowalski leaves the HQ, and then the habitat and the zoo.

The junkyard wasn't the nicest place in the city, but it was one of the few places with materials up for grabs that no one would miss. Quality was horrible, but you can't grumble too much about free materials. Or at least, that's what he had been told by Skipper years ago when he first joined his team and was in search of materials to use…

Kowalski hops up onto an old car and begins dismantling it. "If Skipper knew just how hard inventing was, he wouldn't be so...so…" He balls his flipper into a fist with a growl. "I can't even think of the term. Would it kill him to be supportive just once in his life?"

"It might."

"What the—" He jumps and looks over in bewilderment. His sight falls upon a certain, slick-skinned sea mammal. "Blowhole?!" He raises his flippers in defense.

The dolphin rolls out into the light with a chuckle. "Kowalski, Kowalski, Kowalski. If I wanted to kill you, you'd be dead. So relax, I just want to talk."

Kowalski raises a brow and lowers his flippers. "You want to talk….with me?"

"Yes. Perhaps you would consider coming with me? Somewhere...cleaner?"

"I guess…." He nods slowly, hopping down from the car, but still glancing skeptically at him. "Where did you have in mind?"

"Why not the park? I'd say that's pretty neutral territory, right?" He glances down at the penguin with a smile.

Kowalski nods slowly, following behind him with his brow furrowed in thought. So far, none of this made sense to him. What possible purpose would their arch enemy want to talk with him of all penguins? Private would be the easiest to manipulate, Rico easily brainwashable...even Skipper just to mock him and drive him insane to make sense….but why himself?

"I've already sent a lobster to get us some snowcones. I had a feeling you'd be at the junkyard tonight."

He looks up at the dolphin even more quizzically. "Huh?"

Blowhole rolls over to a park bench and flops over onto it. "It'll make sense in a moment, pen-gu-in, just be patient."

"Of course….Of course." Kowalski stands by the bench. A look of complete confusion and suspicion covering his face. He watches as a lobster brings them each a rainbow snowcone. "Er...Thank you?"

"You can sit down."

Kowalski nods and hops up on the bench a little awkwardly beside him. "And now you're going to start making sense? Please?"

"Fine." He licks the snowcone. "So I'm sure you already know that I have lobsters watching you pen-gu-ins' every move. Well, I've noticed you've been struggling with….a quantum booster for your toy car, right?" He glances at him.

"Ye-es…It has been...Frustrating." He nods slowly and licks his own snowcone.

"And Skipper really...Jeez, you'd think he'd be more supportive of innovations that could help you guys out, right?"

"You'd think that, yes." Kowalski nods, frowning. "Instead I swear he keeps trying to convince me to stop inventing. I mean, he even banned me from it once!"

"No way! He didn't!" The dolphin gasps dramatically.

"He did!...I mean, I didn't listen though." He sighs.

Blowhole chuckles. "I always knew you were a sly dog, Kowalski."

The penguin smiles a little at that and licks the snowcone. "So you were saying about my quantum booster?"

"I'm curious, Kowalski." He says, sitting up. "I was watching and thinking to myself, what could you do if you had actual good materials? You seem like you may have potential to make something great, but it's hard to tell that amongst your failures. So I thought, I have a crate or two of the good stuff just sitting around...why not let someone put it to good use?" He smirks at Kowalski.

The penguin looks at him, blinking in astonishment as this sinks in. "You're offering me...good materials?"

"That's exactly what I'm doing."

"For what in return?"

"Oh, nothing. I'm just curious if better materials would make a difference in your inventions."

Kowalski stares at him. "I...I don't know what to say..."

"Thank you would be fine. You're the best arch enemy ever would be preferred." He chuckles, finishing off his snowcone.

"Of course, yes, thank you." He rubs a flipper over his head feathers, smoothing them back as he still absorbs the thought of having actual materials to work with. "Yes, thank you."

Blowhole grins and climbs back onto his Segway. "Just let me know how it goes...I mean, I'll know of course from the lobster cams, but I'd like to hear it from your own pen-gu-in beak."

"And how would I do that, Blowhole?" He looks at him from the bench.

The dolphin gestures and a lobster offers Kowalski a business card. "You can message me that way, Kowalski...And you can call me Francis if you want. Dr. Blowhole fits better when I'm doing evil...this is in my free time."

Kowalski accepts the card with a slight nod. "Alright, Fran-cis. I suppose I'll be in touch then."

"Good...Oh and do also let me know a secure and discrete location for my lobsters to drop off your crate...Probably would be best to keep this secret from Skipper. He'd lay an egg if he knew we had been chatting, hmm?" He smirks.

"Yes...Yes, he would be displeased..." He slips the card into his feathers. "I'll message you when I decide on a location."

"I look forward to your message, Kowalski. Have a good evening." He smiles and rolls away. "Come along, Red One. Let's leave the pen-gu-in to his planning."

Kowalski watches the two leave before he waddles back towards the zoo. Once back, he sighs and starts silently on resurrecting the door to his lab. He had found through the years that it was always easier to sort through confusing thoughts when his flippers were busy. This certainly was a surprising and unexpected...and complicated situation. On one flipper, his enemy is offering him materials, on the other there is Skipper and his paranoia and suspicion that he had strongly implanted within each other their heads. He could easily be court martialed as a traitor for talking to Blowhole—Francis—and not telling Skipper if he was discovered...But when might he ever have another chance to work with the good stuff?

He tests the door's movement before shutting it and sitting down and taking out his phone and the business card. He texts the number and a set of coordinates and deletes the conversation from his phone.