Chapter 21 – Kaboom (Rico's Story)
It was yet another beautiful day inside the Central Park Zoo. It was just after closing time, and the penguins were using their free time to get some training in.
"Come on, men! Let's hustle!"
Skipper was busy giving as much encouragement to the rest of his team as he could as they did power laps around the pool.
"Kowalski, you'd better not be slacking down there!"
Although Skipper was unsure if the others would be able to hear him with how deep in the water they were, he still felt that they needed some help.
Finally, Skipper held up a whistle to his beak and blew, signaling for everyone that they were done.
Exhausted, Kowalski, Private and Rico managed to pull themselves on to the fake iceberg before collapsing to the ground.
"Nice work, boys! I think we'll just need a few more sessions of these, and we'll be able to take on anything!"
The other three penguins groaned in protest, but thankfully Skipper was too preoccupied with heading towards the hatch to notice. When he reached the hatch, though, he noticed the fact that they haven't moved from where they came up, and he gave them all a curious look.
"Are you guys coming or what? The yearly Shirtless Ninja marathon starts in a half an hour!"
"To be honest, I'd rather just rest here for a while. I'll join you guys a little later, alright?"
Kowalski managed to pull his head up to look at the others as he waited for an answer. However, he was slightly surprised to find neither Private nor Rico had moved an inch either.
"I think you've got the right idea, K'walski. How about you, Rico?" asked Private.
Rico simply grunted, too exhausted to speak.
Skipper shook his head as he watched the other three penguins try to catch their breath.
"Welp, suit yourself. Guess I've got some more action just for little ol' me, then."
Skipper was about to kick the food bowl aside and head down the hatch when Julien suddenly appeared, landing right between Skipper and the other penguins as he gestured emphatically towards the sky.
"Hello, silly penguins!"
Skipper, however, wasn't completely paying attention to who was in front of him, as he was too busy thinking about all of the shirtless ninjas he was about to see. So, when his foot made contact with the fish bowl, it sent it forwards with enough velocity to sweep Julien off of his feet, his booty landing right inside the bowl which thankfully prevented the king from a hard landing.
"Wha-Ringtail! What are you doing here? I thought I told you not to interrupt us when we're training!" said Skipper, finally noticing the lemur in front of him thanks to the thunk Julien made landing in the bowl.
"Well, I was going to be asking you a small favor before you tripped me and made me fall on de royal booty! Now, I am not knowing if I am going to ask about de favor!"
Skipper watched as Julien picked himself up off of the ground, dusting himself off before he realized that the fish bowl was still stuck on his bottom.
"Maurice! Get over here and get dis ting off of my booty!"
Skipper looked over towards the lemur habitat, expecting to see Maurice rushing over to help, but just as the aye-aye was about to climb over the fence, Skipper heard a popping noise.
"Uh, your majesty? It looks like Private's already got that for you."
Both Skipper and Julien looked over and saw that Private indeed had the fish bowl in his flippers, free from being filled with Julien's posterior.
"Oh, thank you, nice penguin! I can finally shake my royal booty once more without having dat dumb bowl thing around it!"
"No problem, King Julien! Happy to help!"
Skipper then awkwardly cleared his throat, looking for a way to change the subject before it got too mushy.
"Anyway…let's get back on topic. What's this favor you've been babbling on about?"
Julien looked at Skipper for a moment, confused, before suddenly remembering what he was originally here for.
"Oh, dat's right! I need to borrow de crazy penguin for a little bit."
"And what, pray tell, would you need Rico for?" asked Skipper as he gave Julien a wary look.
Instead of answering, though, Julien simply pointed towards his habitat, and the penguins looked in surprise as they saw what was in front of them.
"Kowalski? Analysis?" asked Skipper as he looked towards his second-in-command, who by this point had stood up and joined the others.
Kowalski took a moment to study the scene in front of him before replying.
"It appears that there's another billboard hanging near Julien's habitat, and judging from the amount of lightbulbs that I can see from here, it looks like it's probably going to be pretty bright once nighttime hits."
"Exactly! And dat is why I need to use Kico-"
"Rico." corrected Skipper.
"Whatever. Dat is why I need to be using him to blow it up again so I can get my royal beauty sleep!"
"Not happening, Ringtail. You know what happened the last time Rico's violent tendencies weren't reined in."
Julien did in fact remember Rico nearly destroying his habitat, but his need for a sufficient amount of sleep overrode the downsides in his mind, so as much as Julien's pride didn't want him to resort to it, he got down to his knees and began begging.
"Please! I cannot be as beautiful as I am right now without my beauty sleep!"
Skipper immediately saw through Julien's poor attempt at begging, turning towards Rico, who had also joined the group after getting his rest.
"Rico, kick him out, please."
"Okay!"
Rico immediately headed towards Julien, who was too busy continuing to beg to notice the psychotic penguin heading his way. After picking the lemur up and placing him back down with him facing his habitat, Rico walked back a few steps before football punting Julien over the fence.
Skipper watched as Julien completely cleared the fence, landing right on top of his throne, which somehow didn't collapse despite the rough landing.
"Nice work, Rico! That was a pinpoint landing right there." he said, impressed.
Rico simply chuckled, happy to receive a compliment from his commanding officer.
"Now let's get going. We might have missed the beginning of the marathon, but at least we'll still get our shirtless ninja fix."
Skipper headed towards the hatch, glancing behind him and noticing that everyone was following behind him, before hopping down the ladder and heading straight for the TV.
A few hours later, after the action-packed marathon was finally finished, the penguins finally headed to bed for some shuteye.
However, before long, the hatch slowly opened, and Julien hopped down, sneaking over towards where all of the penguins were. Once he finally made it to the beds, though, he looked back towards where the ladder was and noticed that he was by himself.
"Maurice! Get down here!" he whispered loudly towards the hatch.
A few seconds later, Maurice slowly made his way down the ladder towards Julien, letting out a big yawn when he reached him.
"Listen, your majesty, can we just get this over with? I would like to get some sleep." he whispered.
"So would I, but that bright sign won't let me! Now help me carry Tico."
"Rico."
"Whatever."
Both Julien and Maurice went over to Rico, Maurice taking the head and Julien handling the feet. Despite Rico's bulk, they somehow managed to carry the weapons specialist out of his bunk and drag him up the ladder, and he still continued to sleep like a baby.
"Wow, he sleeps almost as hard as you do, Maurice."
"Wha-I don't sleep that hard!" said Maurice in defense.
"Of course you do. It's like-"
Julien then began making exaggerated snoring sounds, leaning over the sleeping form of Rico as they stopped for a moment in between the penguin and lemur habitats.
"Look, let's just get this done. I'm really tired right now, and I want to go back to bed." said Maurice as he desperately wanted to change the subject.
"Ugh, fine. Ruin all of de fun, why don't you?"
Maurice and Julien somehow managed to drag Rico over the fence into their habitat, which in truth meant that Maurice was doing most of the work while Julien barely pushing Rico over. Once he was over and they managed to carry him over near where the billboard was, that was when Julien's plan hit a wall.
"So, uh…how are we going to be waking him up?" asked Julien.
Maurice rolled his eyes before walking over and roughly shaking Rico.
"Come on, wake up. Julien needs you for something."
Maurice's shaking apparently somehow managed to do the trick, as Rico's eyes slowly opened before the penguin immediately shot up to his feet, flipping Maurice over his shoulder before adopting a fighting stance. It didn't take long, though, before Rico suddenly realized where he was and looked around in confusion.
Before Rico could walk away and begin making his way back home to go back to bed, Julien suddenly jumped in front of him, blocking his path.
"Uh, hey dere, neighbor! Sorry I had to be dragging you out of your bed so late, but I really need to be getting rid of dis ting right away!"
Rico gave Julien a wary look for a moment before launching into a string of gibberish, the only English words coming out being 'no kaboom'.
"Eh, I have no idea what you just said, but you don't have to listen to dat bossy penguin! If you listen to me, your king, you can do de kabooms whenever you want to."
Rico paused as he glanced back towards the penguin habitat, unsure about what he should do. Julien, sensing his uncertainty, hopped over in front of Rico's view and pantomimed explosions.
"Eh? Eh?"
"Um…okay!" said Rico, shrugging.
"Great! Now, all I need you to be doing is to blow dat sign up so dat I can finally get de royal sleep! I'm already feeling de effects of not having it!"
Excited, Rico regurgitated a stick of dynamite. Before he could light it and set it next to the billboard, though, Julien interrupted him.
"Oh come on, crazy penguin! Dat sign is not going to be falling with just the one boomy stick! We need many more sticks if we are going to be taking that down!"
In the back of Rico's psychotic mind, there was a small feeling that what he was about to do was only going to lead to trouble with Skipper and the others, but the rest of his mind completely drowned out that feeling. All he could think about was how cool it was going to be to watch the billboard go up in a huge inferno.
Giddy, Rico hacked up some more sticks of dynamite, bundling them together into two different stacks and attaching them to the two supports holding the billboard up.
He then lit the fuses before getting the hell out of there, leading King Julien to a safe distance before turning around and watching as the billboard went up in flames just like he predicted, an earth shattering kaboom accompanying the scene.
"Yeah! Woo-hoo!" celebrated Rico as he watched the explosion.
"Yes, finally! I can finally go to sleep!" said Julien, turning towards Rico and giving the weapons specialist a hug.
However, the jubilation was short lived, as the two of them were interrupted by a voice that Rico knew only too well.
"What in the Sam Hill is going on here?"
Rico looked over towards where the voice came from and saw a thoroughly pissed off Skipper, as well as Kowalski and Private, who joined their commander when they too were woken up by the explosion.
"I don't remember authorizing late night pyrotechnics. Rico, explain yourself, soldier!"
Rico was about to do as he was asked, only Julien to step in front of him, the lemur deciding that he was going to take care of the explanation.
"What he was doing was taking care of the bright sign for me, like I wanted him to. Since you were being de bossy penguin, though, I had to do it when you weren't looking."
"Rico! Is Ringtail telling the truth? Answer me!"
Rico immediately launched into another string of gibberish as he attempted to explain himself.
"So, you're saying that you were taken here while you were asleep? But how did they manage to break in to our HQ without setting off the alarm?"
Kowalski nervously coughed, which caused Skipper to round on him.
"Um…I was still in the middle of working on some upgrades to our security system, and I may have forgotten to turn it back on before we went to bed."
"Kowalski…"
"Right, Skipper."
Kowalski slapped himself as hard as he could, which thankfully satisfied Skipper as he turned back towards Rico.
"Now, as much as I want to blame Ringtail for kidnapping one of my soldiers to do his dirty work, that doesn't mean that you're not any less at fault. As of now, you are hereby banned from the kabooms until further notice."
Rico's beak fell open upon hearing Skipper's proclamation, but the crazed penguin barely had any time to process it before Kowalski walked up and leaned over to whisper something into Skipper's earhole.
"He'll be fine, Kowalski. A little time away from blowing stuff up will do him a lot of good."
"But I remember you specifically saying the same thing about letting him have some bouts of uncontrolled mayhem. Wouldn't bottling him up like that only lead to more trouble?"
"Well, I suppose that could be true, but I think it would be best just to let this go through. Rico needs to learn that there are times where blowing something up isn't the answer."
Although Rico was distraught about getting cut off from his only real source of entertainment, he remained silent, not wanting to anger Skipper even more. As the four penguins headed back to their HQ to finally go back to sleep, Rico silently sulked, wishing that Julien wasn't as persuasive as he was.
At first, everything was going smoothly, as Rico successfully managed to deal with some of the issues that have popped up around the zoo using different methods than explosions. Admittedly, though, he did have Skipper telling him what to do, but Rico has not tried to suggest blowing something up, at least at the moment.
However, as Kowalski predicted, Rico not being able to fully express himself with his violent urges has led to some major problems.
Down in the HQ, the penguins were enjoying their free time doing what they usually do, with Kowalski in his lab, Private in front of the TV, Skipper enjoying his cup of coffee, and Rico spending time with Ms. Perky.
However, Rico was looking noticeably stressed, as his eyes were constantly darting around the room. His lack of focus has also led to him being a little rougher with Ms. Perky than he usually was which Private couldn't help but notice as he looked over from his spot in front of the television.
"Rico? Are you alright over there?"
Rico immediately whipped his head over to face Private, slightly frightening the young penguin when he noticed the wild-eyed look on the weapons specialist.
"Skippah! I think something weird's going on with Rico!"
"Just ignore it, Private. He'll be fine."
Private tried his best to ignore Rico, but as he tried to focus on his show, he couldn't help but feel like there were a pair of eyes that were boring into the back of his head.
"Rico, please! You're scaring me!" he said, whipping around to face Rico, only to realize that the mentally fragile penguin had returned to playing with Ms. Perky.
"Private! Calm yourself! You're just imagining things. As I've said before, he'll be fine. He just needs some more time."
Skipper's hypothesis, however, was immediately proved wrong, when Rico suddenly snapped. Dropping Ms. Perky, Rico immediately got to his feet, hacking up a few sticks of dynamite as he ran towards the ladder, babbling incoherently.
"We've got a maniac on the loose! Pursue and restrain!" yelled Skipper.
Private saluted before giving chase to Rico. However, he was the only one who did so, as Skipper soon noticed that the door to Kowalski's lab was closed. Sighing exasperatedly, Skipper walked over and flung the door open, revealing Kowalski in the middle of mixing some of his chemicals.
"Kowalski, what are you doing? Didn't you hear my orders?" he said, annoyed.
"Oh, um…sorry, Skipper. I was kind of engrossed in working towards another breakthrough. I won't go into any details, though. It would be kind of boring to people like you."
Kowalski nervously coughed, unsure of what else to do.
"Rico…Go after him!"
Kowalski jumped, realizing what Skipper was trying to say. He quickly removed his goggles and gloves before rushing out the door, Skipper following once he gave the retreating analyst an exasperated look.
Kowalski and Skipper managed to catch up to Private not too long after they left the HQ.
"Private, status report!"
"I've been trying my best to catch up to him, Skippah, but Rico's been a slippery little devil."
"We need to make sure that he doesn't light those two sticks of dynamite that he had in his flippers. Kowalski! Private! Try to lead him into a corner. We're gonna box him in."
"Aye, Skippah!" said Private before belly sliding off towards the crazed weapons specialist.
As for Kowalski, he simply saluted before heading off in the same direction as Private. Skipper began following a few seconds after the two of them left, intending to bring up the rear in their formation.
The three of them eventually managed to catch up to Rico and successfully box him in over by Joey's habitat, who looked none too pleased to see the four of them in his vicinity.
"Hey, what are you four blokes doing so close to Joey?"
"That's classified, marsupial!" said Skipper, despite Joey easily being able to discern what was going on with the scene in front of him. Thankfully, though, Joey decided not to insert himself into the picture, choosing instead to hop over to the other side of his habitat and ignore the four of them.
With Joey out of the way, Skipper returned his focus to Rico, who was clutching the sticks of dynamite he hacked up for dear life.
"Now hand over those sticks of dynamite, Rico. You don't want to light them. Lighting them will only lead to more trouble." said Skipper as he attempted to talk the weapons specialist down.
Rico looked for a moment like he was going to listen to Skipper and hand the sticks over, but as the other penguins attempted to walk towards him, he hacked up a match, lighting both sticks of dynamite.
"Rico, no!"
Rico tossed the dynamite in front of him, forcing the other penguins to flee. However, when they finally managed to hide behind a rock, hoping that it would be sufficient to block the explosion, they soon realized that there was no explosion.
Looking out from their hiding place, the three of them were surprised to find Rico laughing, as the sticks of dynamite fizzled out in front of him.
"Those were fakes?" asked Private as he turned towards Skipper.
He didn't get an answer, though, as Skipper looked like he was annoyed at being led on like that. Both Private and Kowalski braced themselves as they watched Skipper stomp towards Rico, expecting the commander to yell, but what they heard next made their beaks drop.
"You know, that was actually a pretty good prank."
Rico stared at his commander for a second, not expecting him to take it so well, but he soon decided just to take it as a good thing. He uttered another string of gibberish, adding a questioning tone to it as he addressed Skipper.
"Of course! Even I almost believed that your lack of being able to explode things made you go over the deep end."
Confused, both Private and Kowalski joined them.
"So…does this mean that Rico's fine?" asked Private.
"Yep!"
"Oh, okay."
Although Private was still confused with how this all played out, he decided it was best just to let it go. As the three of them began walking back to the HQ, Skipper turned to face Rico.
"So, do you understand where I'm coming from about the best time to use your kabooms?"
Rico nodded.
"Good. I'm hoping that I won't have to resort to these sorts of measures again. Is that clear?"
Rico nodded once again, looking like he understood.
"Excelante! Oh, and also, if Ringtail tries to do something to you like he did to start this whole mess, you have my express permission to beat him up. Am I understood?"
"Uh-huh." said Rico, a devious smile suddenly appearing on his face.
Satisfied, Skipper returned to focusing on the path in front of him, as the penguins continued to head back to their HQ, looking forward to another normal day in front of them.