The fog transition happened, and they saw the whale resurfacing at a port with towering skyscrapers in the background and he blew water through his blowhole.
A very dirty and drenched Julien, Maurice and Mort screamed as they found themselves on top of it until the water went down and they ran in midair before plummeting and hitting a hard stone surface.
Groaning, Julien picked himself up and shook his fist at the submerging cetacean. "Not cool, Judy! This was so not first class!"
"Your majesty!" an awe-struck Maurice yanked him by the shoulder and pointed up. "Look!"
Julien did so and his face lit up at the sight of a giant statue of a lady with a pointy crown.
"It is her, guys!" Julien was jumping with joy. "It's that Lady of Liberation! We found her! Which means?"
He turned around and looked at the giant skyscrapers. "We have finally reached New York City! The city that is so nice, they named it twice! And which never sleeps! My kind of town!"
Julien rubbed his hands and chuckled wickedly. "And the best part? We made this perilous voyage without the aid of the freaks or those stupid penguins! Suck on that, bossy penguin!"
"Look at that!"
"What are those! Is that a lemur?"
"Aww…I want them, mommy! Especially the little orange one!"
Mort and Maurice jumped and hid behind Julien as they were faced with an onslaught of human tourists who were taking photos of them and/or typing on their phones.
"Yeesh, these New Yorkers are uglier than I thought?" Julien whispered to his advisor before straightening himself.
"Hello, New York Ugos! Yes, it is me! The great and glorious King of Madagascar, King Julien XIII! Feel free to be basking in my kingly glow!"
He clapped his hands. "I've come here because I aim to conquer your fair kingdom of New York City! With my charm and wits that is."
He laughed. "Got ya, didn't I? You thought this would be a hostile takeover, but that won't be necessary."
"King Julien, I don't think they are listening to ya?" a meek Maurice pointed at the humans, who were still blinding them with camera flashes.
Julien shielded his eyes. "Nonsense, Maurice. Can't you see that I have their full, undivided attention? They already love me!"
A catcher's net was suddenly thrown over the three.
"Huh, they have strange customs for greeting royalty?" both Juliens mulled.
"No, your majesty. You were taken captive." Masikura explained. "And then dumped at the Central Park Zoo. And given a habitat."
They then saw the lemur trio being thrown into a run-of-the-mill habitat, which turned out to be the former Warthog Exhibit until a zookeeper slapped "Lemur Exhibit" on top of the original sign.
"What! This is not a guest room befitting royalty!" both Juliens snapped in unison.
"Kay, can ya stop doing that?" Maurice winced. "It's giving me the heebie-jeebies."
Karl rubbed his forehead. "That's because to those humans you are not royalty, King Julien." He tried to explain. "To them, you are just an exotic animal to be gawked at like any other captive at a zoological menagerie."
"Karl's very right, King Julien." Masikura concurred. "Not only did the humans not think much of you, but neither did the zoo animals. Especially the penguins, once they came back to their old HQ and became your next-door neighbors."
"Next-door neighbors?" Julien spat in disgust. "And I thought having Mort with me was bad!"
"The penguins came back?" Maurice asked.
"Yes, they and the chimps came back after helping the freaks travel through Europe and left Circus Zaragoza in their care, after that Kowalski built them an artificial puppet human owner from metal."
"What circus?" Karl wasn't following. "Didn't you just tell us that the penguins went to Monte Carlo to gamble and that the others were stuck in southern Africa?"
"I'll explain in a moment." Masikura assured them. "But suffice to say, for…many reasons, King Julien was not very popular at the Central Park Zoo. The only one who genuinely liked him was Mort."
"What?" Maurice blurted.
"Yay! I really am King Julien's one and only friend!" Mort clapped his hands.
"But what 'bout me?" the aye-aye pointed at himself.
Masikura gave another sad sigh. "Unfortunately, King Julien's many poor decisions caused you to gradually lose your respect for him."
"That is ridiculous." Julien didn't buy it. "It is simply impossible that my kingly charm didn't sway at least some of the locals! And Mo-Mo would never be hating on me, no matter what!"
In response, Masikura showed him a vision of himself standing atop his throne inside his enclosure and shouting through a megaphone, at the crack of dawn.
"Listen up, my adoring subjects, your king has another very important declaration to make, so please drop everything you're doing right now and meet me at the gift shop!"
"Yo, Bing? What's dat mook yappin' 'bout now?" a hulking gorilla with a deep voice said while beating a punching bag.
"Dunno, Bada? Who cares?" another hulking gorilla, who was holding the punching bag, replied in a very nasally voice.
A groggy white rhino looked up from his hay feeder. "Ugh! If that yahoo doesn't shut his trap right now, I'll go over there and skew him!" he ranted, also in a disproportionately high and nasally voice.
From another enclosure, a baboon with a cowboy hat got up and covered her ears.
"Will ya pipe down, ya pea-brained, loud-mouthed, pain-in-the-tushie varmint! Some of us are tryin' ta sleep!"
"Here ya go, Darla?" another female baboon gave her a big, brown ball of….let's just assume that's mud.
Darla smirked, aimed it and threw it at the Lemur Exhibit.
"Chop chop! Get to it!" Julien continued. "Your king cannot be waiting for-"
The baboon's projectile hit him right in the face, knocking him off his throne.
"This is just pathetic." Skipper watched and shook his head from the neighboring enclosure.
"Alright, men! I want thirty laps around the HQ! Toot sweet! You call that a backstroke, Private!" he barked and blew his whistle as the other penguins swam around him.
"Hey, Skipper!" an otter suddenly jumped up to him. "Are you guys going to the meeting?"
"Negatory, Marlene! My men and I cannot break our morning drill. Especially not for that ring-tailed chump." Skipper replied firmly.
"Awww…come on guys, let's not be mean. Can't we just humor him?" Marlene said in a tone that implied pity, before tapping her head. "You and I both know he's not all there, if you catch my drift?"
"What is this!" Julien was outraged and stomped his foot. "Why are all of them acting like I'm some kind of idiot and nuisance!"
Maurice shifted awkwardly, repressing the urge to explain it to his king.
"I tried to warn you, your majesty." Masikura replied.
Julien huffed and crossed his arms. "Well, I am glad I'll never be going to that New York City. Why would I abandon my peoples like a total jerkface just so I could be some smelly zoo's village idiot?"
"There's something oddly profound about that stupendously obvious answer?" Karl stroked his chin.
"You're right, you could have also joined a circus."
"What now?"
"See, there are two possible outcomes to this particular timeline, regarding you at least. Two branching paths if you will." Masikura explained while working on her crystal ball.
"In another one, you and your companions remained in Africa and helped Alex and his group travel to Europe to track down the tardy penguins. All of you then wound up joining the aforementioned traveling circus. You see, Alex thought that if they helped the circus animals clean up their act-"
"Ah-ah-ah! I didn't ask for Mr. Alex's side of the story." Julien said in a snippy tone. "What about me? What would I have to gain from joining a circus?"
"Nothing really, except for a girlfriend." Masikura shrugged and showed a vision of a seemingly wasted Julien entering a circus tent, with a dart sticking from his tail, stumbling past some showgirl horses, small dogs in daredevil suits and a ripped Siberian tiger in a speedo.
"Sonya! Sonya!" A big roar was heard and Julien beamed with plastered joy. "Sonya! Baby! I don't want to be king anymore!"
Julien's jaw hit the floor as he saw his alternate self throwing his garish feather crown way, crawling up to a boorish-looking brown bear in a tutu and groveling at her feet.
"What! King Julien does not grovel!" Mort lamented indignantly before the king himself could.
"I was so hung up on who I was." Julien slurred. "Who you was. What you smelled like. When all that really matters, if what we smell like together. Baby, forgive me."
The lady bear responded by sucking on his head like it was a lollipop.
"Yes, in this timeline, you gave up being a king altogether and joined the circus with your new girlfriend. Can't say I approve of your choice there, your majesty." Masikura said with blunt honesty.
Julien froze up, too horrified by what he saw to even speak.
"King Julien?" Maurice asked his petrified friend, who promptly fell over and lost consciousness.
"King Julien? Wake up!" Mort shook him. "Don't you give up on me!"
"What do we do? We cannot call that slithering charlatan to resuscitate him?" Karl said.
"Oh, I know!" Maurice had an idea and pulled out a banana.
He peeled it and lowered it for Julien to smell. In a second, the king was back to life.
"Agh! Banana! Yuck! Get that filth away from the royal nose!" Julien shoved it away.
"King Julien! You're okay!" Mort glomped him but was pushed away.
"Ughh! Mo-Mo! What in Frank's name were you thinking?" the ringtail snapped at the aye-aye.
"What do ya mean? I thought something like this could never happen?" Maurice shrugged.
"Well, it did! And thanks a lot for seriously harshening the royal mellow by making me see this horrible horribleness!" Julien lamented while rubbing his temples.
"I mean fine, that bear lady might have been very fetching and obviously had a lovely personality…" he admitted candidly.
"Maybe he and his uncle have similar tastes after all?" a queasy Maurice whispered to Karl.
"…but no lady, no matter how gorgeous she might be is worth throwing your kingship away, or your kingdom! Who does that!" Julien rambled.
Karl smiled a bit. "Then perhaps this is the incentive we need to just leave and tend to more pressing matters?"
"Yeah, like a certain volatile blood feud between-"
"No!" Julien barked. "Thanks to Maurice's unquenchable curiosity, Masikura's stupid visions have left a very bitter taste in the kingly brain and I need to wash it down with something more pleasant."
Maurice scowled. "Me? But it was you who insisted-"
"Karl!"
"What? Me?" the fanaloka pointed at himself.
"Yes, you. I'll be needing you to ask Masikura another question? Something interesting? Something nuanced? Something that will surely enlighten us all in some shape or form if we bear witness to it. I know you won't disappoint me and make me sit through another round of unimaginable mental torture, unlike a certain Maurice over here."
Maurice facepalmed.
"But I don't know what to ask her?" Karl shrugged. "I made it clear that I'm not curious to know what my fate would have been, had I made different choices during pivotal moments in my life. "He paused and looked aside with a grimace. "For surely, they all ended with-"
"Aww…come on, Karl." Julien pleaded. "Don't be such a buzzkill. Just once? It doesn't even have to be about you? Ask her about anything? Anyone? Just as long as it somehow relates back to me."
"Well…" the fanaloka scratched his chin. "I suppose I always have been a little curious about one thing involving the mountain lemurs?"
"The mountain lemurs? And what is that?" Masikura asked.
"We all know that musclebound moron Sage shamelessly abandoned his responsibilities as King of the Mountain Lemurs in order to…" Karl looked to Julien and Maurice. "Um, what was his goal again?"
"To be a color? Or maybe a sound?" Maurice shrugged, himself finding it hard to believe what Clover had told them about her himbo hubby.
"Yes, that. So, I have been wondering what would have happened if that shiftless oaf had actually been a responsible adult and succeeded his father as king?" Karl inquired.
"Interesting? Let's see…" Masikura turned to her crystal ball.
The fog cleared and they saw what appeared to be a canyon. There was a large dust cloud, which they soon realized was caused by stampeding bushpigs. And they saw Sage Moondancer, or rather Babak, struggling to climb up a steep cliff right above the stampede.
Babak was nearing the top when Koto appeared, looming over him and his face cast in shadows.
"KOTO!" Babak cried as he was losing his grip. "Brother! Help me!"
Koto reached out as if to help pull him up…only to then reach into Babak's mouth and pull out a tooth. He promptly placed it back into its proper place.
"Koto…" Babak shed a tear. "Why?"
Koto answered by pressing his foot against his older brother's face.
"Long. Live. The king." Koto smiled darkly and shoved him off the cliff.
Babak cried and fell down dramatically before the scene was engulfed by fog.
"Yikes! So those nasty bushpigs trampled Sage to death?" Julien asked in shock.
"Oh, no. He was not that lucky." Masikura shook her head. "They ate him in a mad frenzy. You wouldn't want to see the gory details."
"I'm sure we don't." Karl shuddered.
"But what happened then?" Maurice asked, both terrified and intrigued. "Did Koto still crave to rule all of Madagascar after that?"
"He certainly did." Masikura answered.
"Oh, but I'm sure I, King Julien, stepped in to save the day like before, right?" Julien smiled. "Things looked bleak for a while, but me and my peeps pulled through, thanks in no small part to my great leadership skills."
"Negative." Masikura said flatly, wiping the smile off the ringtail's face.
"After assassinating his brother, Koto felt more empowered and confident than ever, and proceeded with his plans at a brisker pace. His forces reached your kingdom before you had a chance to grow into your role as a capable king and experienced disaster survivor. Without Sage's vital role in the War of the Beasts, the results were…less than pretty."
The fog inside the orb cleared and showed another scenario. It showed a bleak, grimy landscape, filled with boulders and dead trees that were covered with propaganda posters saying "Do you have a sense of urgency?", and armies of ripped indri lemurs were marching through it with huge spears in their hands.
Lemurs, aye-ayes (which are just weird-looking lemurs), Malagasy rats and crocodiles were seen trudging through the apocalyptic landscape, looking beaten and malnourished, and carrying large boulders, while others were up constructing and chiseling various giant statues carved in Koto's likeness.
Maurice gasped as he saw himself walking among the unpaid interns and struggling to hold up a boulder, and winced as his alternate self was nearly whipped and moved faster.
"Work faster, ya scrogs! Move it!" they saw Nigel, the eye-patched captain of the mountain lemur army, urging them on via flogging them with a huge whip, with Benson and Zora doing the same thing, all three riding atop of bushpigs with saddles, while other indris were holding fossa on leashes that were roaring and swiping at the interns.
Willie couldn't move anymore and dropped to the ground. Nigel jumped off his swine-steed and arrived to poke the bamboo lemur with his spear.
"Oi! Benson!" he called out. "This intern is a bust!"
"Time to feed the fossa!" Benson giggled childishly as he dragged Willie by the tail.
"No! No! Mercy!" Willie cried in his high-pitched voice while digging his fingers into the dirt until Benson lifted him over a hole that was labeled "Fossa Pit" and dropped him in.
Julien, Maurice and Karl cringed as the sounds of carnage were heard, punctuated by Willie's death scream, while Mort watched attentively and was once more munching on popcorn.
"Now this a good post-apocalyptic thriller!" he giggled.
Fog appeared and disappeared, chancing to a scene inside a cavern that had been renovated into being Koto's dark palace. He was sitting on his rock throne, atop of a rock staircase, wearing Julien's crown and flanked by guards.
"Nobody knows…the troubles…I've seen. Nobody knows…my sorrows…" Xixi sang, or rather just droned while dangling inside a birdcage.
Julien's eyes widened as he saw Alex and Marty inside the palace, crudely stuffed and mounted, covered in stitches and wall-eyed.
"Why are the freaks just standing there and not squashing Koto?" a vexed Julien asked, making Maurice and Karl facepalm.
Koto chuckled. "I told you I would make Madagascar great again? Didn't I, my beautiful queen?"
"Yes. You were destined to be the king. My love." A blank-eyed Clover said robotically, wearing a small leaf tiara and rubbing Koto's broad shoulders.
"Clover?!" Julien blurted in disbelief. "Why is she there? Why would she ever agree to marry that monster-"
"I told ya." A gravelly voice was heard and Maggie the Unwashed appeared in front of Koto. "That love potion of mine works wonders."
"I love you. More than life itself. I am yours forever. My king." Clover droned on.
Koto and Maggie fist-bumped in agreement when a terrified Uncle Julien appeared and offered Koto a bowl of grapes.
"Here are your grapes, oh illustrious King of Madagascar." Uncle Julien said in a sycophantic tone. "And might I say? You are looking especially regal and kingly today. A true king of kings. No! You are a true god in physical form!"
Koto just ate a single grape before gesturing for the old ringtail to get lost. Uncle Julien nodded and slinked away.
"Ahhh… it's good to be king." Koto chuckled before growing a peeved scowl.
"Hey, Fanning Boy! Why aren't you fanning faster!"
Julien gasped as he saw that the fanning boy was himself, with no crown and wearing the dreaded Iron Booty!
"Yes, your highness!" the bug-eyed Julien replied, his voice very Gollum-like. "I'll fan faster! Fan faster! I live to serve you, your greatness! Your awesomeness! I'll scratch your evil itchy bits with my own hands to make up for the slack!"
Koto looked unimpressed and pointed at his feet. Julien nodded frantically and kneeled down to kiss his king's feet repeatedly. Koto laughed in mirth before kicking Julien in the face and sending him tumbling down the stairs, hitting each step in the process until he hit the bottom.
Koto and his guards roared with laughter. Lying in a heap, Julien trembled while also giggling.
"Yes, he's laughing! I've been good! I made my king laugh! And I got to touch the royal feet!"
"Stop it, Masikura! I cannot be witnessing this horror any longer!" Julien covered his eyes and waved his hand frantically.
Koto threw his arm over Clover and purred, "How about we start making me some heirs?" The incoming fog promptly ended the scene.
"Dear Frank." Maurice said in utter disbelief. "I never could have imagined that Sage shirking his kingly responsibilities saved us all in the long run?"
"Yes. The Sky Gods work in mysterious ways." Masikura said cryptically.
"More like majorly messed-up ways!" Julien lamented. "I'll never be able to unsee that stuff! Especially me being Koto's Mort!"
The real Mort giggled.
"It is very ironic though?" Karl rubbed his chin in contemplation before Julien gave him a nasty glare.
The fanaloka shrank sheepishly. "But you are very correct. This alternate timeline was nothing short of horrifying. The part about "making heirs" was the most unsettling one."
"Not cool, man!" Julien pointed at him. "I asked ya for something cool and yet you killed my buzz even worse than Maurice!"
"What can I say?" Karl simply shrugged. "Unlike Masikura, I'm not psychic."
"Karl, from now on, I am never asking you for suggestions if it involves fortune-tellers and alternate timelines. Same for you, Maurice!" The king proclaimed.
"Fair enough." Karl didn't argue. "I cannot imagine many scenarios where those two elements will be present again."
"Your majesty? Perhaps this was enough fortune-telling for now?" Maurice suggested. "Maybe some things are simply better left to the imagination?"
Julien snapped his head up and groaned. "Ugh…I cannot believe I am saying this, but you two sourpusses are right! All this fortune-telling seriously killed my buzz!"
"Alright, let's get to this feuding business already!" Julien ran towards the door and gestured at them. "Come on, you lazy bums!"
"Yeah, yeah. I've just learned another important lesson about being a responsible king and how my actions can have severe consequences if I neglect my royal duties, blah, blah, blah, the usual drill! Now come on!" And with that, he was gone.
Maurice and Karl smiled at each other in relief and followed him.
Mort giggled and skipped after them.
"I'm coming too, King Julien! I'll be your meat shield!"
We all know Sage isn't the brightest bulb in the shack. He's like Johnny Bavo if he was on a shit ton of weed, mellowed out to the max and also a pacifist hippie XD Basically, you're garden variety himbo XD He claimed that "as long as he held the throne, Koto's cruel ambitions would be kept in check", but knowing Koto, I'm hard-pressed to think that he wouldn't just take cues from Scar and orchestrate his older brother's death, hence the Lion King homage XD So perhaps Sage shirking his responsibilities as king for years actually SAVED Madagascar in the long run. Now there's something to think about XD Plus, who doesn't love to see a "what if" scenario where the bad guy totally won and is in charge of a dystopian fascist future XD
The same can be said for King Julien himself, seeing how several of his poorly chosen canon actions could have had far worse consequences if he had made a different choice, the choice his movie incarnation did being especially scary and character-damaging if put into the context of AHKJ.