Wow, the final chapter. I'm going on a band trip tomorrow, so I thought I'd quick put this up. Thanks for staying with me, guys!
Also: The Italian in the beginning - I'm just going to give you ONE guess as to what it means. I'ts pretty obvious.
Amy had never been so furious in her life. Not even when she'd been taken from her friends and family in Antarctica and sent to the Venetian Zoo had she been this angry. She flung what was pretty much the only Italian she knew (besides ciao) at Ian:
"Lei bastardo! Ian, you went way too far this time! Almost getting innocent people killed-" she stopped, eyes flashing to the knife partially concealed behind her husband's back.
"Where's Rodney?"
Silence.
"Ian - tell me NOW where Rodney is!!" she yelled in his face.
"Rodney is gone." he said calmly.
Everyone - except Julien, who had no idea whom she was talking about - sucked in a breath. Amy took a few steps back."Oh my God… you've never gone that far… hurt people, yes, but never… killed…" her eyes filled with tears. "Oh, Rodney…"
"What are you talking about, Amy?" Kowalski said, now sat down. His leg was covered with a makeshift bandage - a trick Maurice had learned in Madagascar: a few thick, strong leaves pulled tight and stuck together with tree sap.
"I should have told you days ago -" she started.
"Amelia! Be quiet!" Ian yelled.
"NO! He does this all the time, he makes people believe things and do things there would never do otherwise -"
"Who? Ian?" Skipper said disbelievingly.
"Yes, Ian! Skipper, who was it that told you in the first place Marlene was cheating on you? Who was with Kowalski when he got on that sugar high? Who has been giving you so-called 'advice' this whole time?"
"Amelia!" Ian shouted, gripping the knife tighter.
Amy seemed fearless in her need to prove the truth. She carried on. "Kowalski - Ian never told you he'd brought fish to substitute the chocolates, did he? And who was it that told you to ask Marlene for help?"
"Ian…" he said, stunned.
She pointed an accusing flipper at Ian. "You told a lie, an odious, damned lie!" (1)
Ian's whole body shook with anger. She. Ruined. It. All.
But he did not control his actions. His inner instinct overrode his reason and will, acting for him -
Ian ran forward and, with the same knife that hurt Kowalski and killed Rodney, stabbed his wife through the heart. A single gasp emitted from her mouth and she fell instantaneously.
No one, not in a million years, who have guessed what happened next.
Ian froze, realizing what he'd just done. He fell to his knees and held her blank face close, tears already falling.
"No, not her, anyone but her…" he whispered, rocking the corpse gently. No one else moved.
"I loved you… I always have…" he sobbed. "I know you always wondered why I stayed after the egg cracked… I needed you with me, mio amore… and, I never meant to hurt you! Never… what have I done? What - have - I - done?" he chanted, mantra-like.
"For the love of me!" King Julien exclaimed, startling them all.
"I'm gone for less than a week, and look what happens!" he said, shaking his head.
Skipper, Marlene, Kowalski, Private, and Rico exchanged glances worriedly. Julien actually had a point.
Maurice looked around the room, reviewing the situation: two penguins dead; Kowalski stabbed through the leg; Marlene with a broken arm; Skipper was now guilty of attempted murder; and Mort looked like he was going to faint.
All in all, he concluded, not a good day.
…
Rodney and Amy were buried the next day under a willow tree in the park. Ian was permitted to leave the HQ (flipper- and foot-cuffed) for a few minutes to lay a small bouquet of yellow daffodils on Amy's grave.
Skipper couldn't bring himself to give Ian the just punishment he deserved.
"I am not sorry neither," he remarked upon making this decision. "I'd have thee to live, for in my sense, 'tis happiness to die."
However, they did force Ian into a packing crate (Rico finally got to use his crowbar) and, with the chimps' help, sent him back to Italy so he would get his just reward and never bother the Central Park Zoo again. But a sense of curiosity overcame Skipper and, just before they put the box on a postal truck, he had to ask:
"By the way, what did the rest of your plan entail?"
Ian chuckled. "Well, you would succeed in killing Marlene, and in a few weeks, I'd bring proof that she was indeed innocent. Overcome with grief, you would commit suicide, and when Creepy-Scarface and Mr. Too-Innocent-For-His-Own-Good wouldn't be able to go on without a leader, I would step in."
A chill ran down Skipper and Private's spines, and they hurriedly stuck Ian in the postal truck, never to see him again.
Kowalski and Marlene, in the morning, got Alice's attention and were soon on the mend in the hospital. Rico, the team's medic, would gladly have treated them, but Kowalski needed 3 muscles in his leg sewn back together and Marlene simply needed time away from Skipper to think. Now that she knew the complete truth she was considering taking him back, but was still a little leery of the idea of dating a guy who'd tried to kill her. Skipper understood, and bore no ill will if she decided to break up. Plus, she and Kowalski certainly had a lot of time to talk in the hospital…
Julien had heard a lot from Alice while he was in the hospital beforehand, including a certain conversation with a zookeeper from Hoboken. Julien revealed that the dolphin exhibit was getting a new addition - male. Discussing the situation on the walkie-talkies, Doris and Kowalski had decided that the respectful thing to do was to go back to being 'just friends'. Kowalski, surprisingly, wasn't really unhappy about this. He'd loved Doris, true, but upon hearing the rumors about him and Marlene and spending such a great deal of time with her in the hospital led him to realize that, perhaps… it was probable… 75/25 ratio that maybe someday, he and Marlene…
It is also worth mentioning that poor little Mort had to start getting therapy sessions with Private after seeing Amy killed so violently. He could hardly speak for days. - the first day it was so bad, the only way to get him to stop shaking was to put him on top of Julien's feet.
One of the side effects of Mort's learning the evils of life was that he began seeing conspiracy plots against Julien everywhere. The chimps told him to turn down the music… or else. On Mort's birthday, Maurice said he wanted to take him and Julien out. And don't even get him started on the penguins, whom he now perceived as what humans call the Mafia.
The worst instance would come six months later when a new lemur, a girl named Leah, came and told Julien that an uprising against Stevie the gecko had started in Madagascar. No one told Mort that Julien had left for a few weeks to check things out (Skipper and the chimps helped him get things planned out), so when the king was gone and Maurice took over, Mort began to think that something was rotten in the state of New York.
FIN
(1) Act V, Scene II, line 188
A couple of final thoughts:
*The rest of Ian's plan is actually what happens to Othello and Desdemona - I really didn't want to kill off Skipper and Marlene!
* The last line is supposed to be ironic, because that's how Shakespeare's play Hamlet begins, except it was in Denmark instead of New York.
Couple of mentions:
Monsy - you seem to have dropped off the face of the earth or something, but thanks for proofreading my story and correcting my errors. You're awesome!
Gewlicious - you get the award for best review! I hope the ending wasn't to "Disney" (I know what you mean - I really hate that in stories like this one). Like I said, I couldn't bear killing off Skipper and Marlene, but I made it so at least they weren't together anymore and plenty of other people died, so... yeah.
RIP Amelia (de Witt) Rosso. : (
Keep watch for my new series - the Flashback Series. It'll be a series, four in all (each featuring a different penguin), with no relation to any of its counterparts. It'll basically be about someone from their past coming to visit them, including: Kowalski's childhood sweetheart; Rico's twin brother; Skipper's ex-wife (not Lola!); and Private's family.
Thanks!