An Expression Of Love

Kowalski was lying in his bed dreaming about experiments and Nobel awards and Lindsey... wait, Lindsey?! He suddenly woke up in the middle of the night. What? Oh... it was just a dream... he thought to himself. He hated those kind of dreams, since they usually ended badly. He shook his head and fell asleep once again.

"Wake up... Kowalski." something ordered, standing behind him. Kowalski didn't move. "Kowalski!"

"Let me sleep for 5 more minutes ma," Kowalski mumbled absentmindedly, not knowing that this wasn't a part of the dream. Something tapped his shoulders, but he just turned around and slept facing the wall.

"Soldier, wake up!" Skipper shouted as he somehow managed to push Kowalski off his bunk.

"Ow!" Kowalski complained during his painful landing, as he woke up to see Skipper and Lindsey standing behind him. Lindsey smiled, which told him that he should be embarrassed. "Oh boy," he muttered rubbing his head. Lindsey chuckled, her eyes sparkling with amusement.

"Soldier, have I not told you that we wake up at 7:00 sharp?" Skipper asked Kowalski, giving him a disapproving look.

"Yes captain," Kowalski replied sighing. He waddled off to get ready for training.

"Care to join training, agent Innocent?" Skipper asked Lindsey as she was looking in Kowalskis' direction.

"Actually, I would love to join, it's a perfect day for training," Lindsey answered cheerfully. She followed Skipper outside. Time for Training.

Kowalski quickly checked a few things on the abacus and then hurried outside, so he wouldn't make Skipper angrier. He suddenly bumped into Marlene.

"Hi, Kowalski, " Marlene greeted him smiling. Kowalski waved to her slightly confused.

"Hi... may I ask you why are you here?" Kowalski asked, looking at Marlene, who blushed as he asked the last part of his question.

"Well, you see... I um wanted to ask you if... Skipper's okay," Marlene replied hesitantly, with a light stammer catching up to her. Kowalski didn't know why would his leader not be okay.

"Why would you ask me then, Skipper is outside," Kowalski questioned, confused. He tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. In all honesty, the female otter could have simply asked this question herself, Skipper was close by and not in a too terrible mood.

"Well, you know how Julian invited all the animals to the party," Marlene replied," after he danced with me, I asked him why he was smiling - not that I minded his smiling - and he just disappeared."

Kowalski was puzzled. Why would his leader not want to answer that kind of question? "I did not know Skipper danced with someone, he usually hates dancing," Kowalski mused, puzzled.

Marlene said, "well he didn't seem to mind dancing last night, he seemed calm and looked so..." She blushed leaving her sentence discontinued.

Kowalski gave her a "What are you talking about?" look.

"Well, I guess I will have to find the answer somewhere else, I guess you're not that brainy," Marlene joked. It obviously didn't sound like a joke to Kowalski.

"No way, I can solve this quicker than you can say Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, which ironically means the phobia of long words," Kowalski retorted returning to his abacus. Marlene thanked him, smiled and walked off to her enclosure.

"Kowalski!" Skippers' voice echoed through the room.

"Sorry Skipper, but Marlene asked me to solve something so I kind of can't," Kowalski apologised.

"What did she want help with?" Skipper looked at Kowalskis' clipboard. "An odd time to smile" it said. "Huh?! Skipper asked. Kowalski hid the clipboard. "Well, Marlene wants to know why you smiled and didn't tell her the reason and then just disappeared," Kowalski answered looking at Skipper.

Skipper grinned nervously. "No reason... just tired... the rest is classified information!" Skipper exclaimed and disappeared. Kowalski looked at his abacus. He tossed a few beads to one side and then tried to express the probability from numbers into letters to ease the working. Coming up with a suitable answer he thought: If I am correct then Skippers smiles came to the surface as soon as he started dance with Marlene but to justify this I need proof.

Meanwhile Lindsey noticed that something was bothering Skipper. He was too deep in his thoughts to give her proper training, this wasn't unnoticed to a penguin's eye. Suddenly it hit her. Last night she saw Skipper and Marlene together. She admitted they were a cute couple and even cuter when they waltzed around. She saw Skipper smile and then Marlene asked something that must have made Skipper unhappy or bothered him, because a few minutes later he told his team to go back. Then again, maybe Skipper was just a little worried or he wanted to deny something. She did a few push ups as Skipper instructed her and Private to do. Seeing that he was not even looking she decided to go for a run instead. "Why are you running Lindsey?" Private asked her as she ran round the lemur habitat making Julian look at her.

"Why does she not want to be my queen, Maurice, am I that bad?" Julian asked sighing. The aye-aye looked at him.

"Your majesty, it is not that she does not want to, but you can't pressurise ladies, it is not the way to get their love," Maurice said, "and then again, unlike the other penguins, she thinks of you as a great friend and she does not deny it." Julian looked at him. Unlike usual, he didn't shout at Maurice, instead he smiled.

"Yes I think you are right, my right handed lemur."

Wow that lady penguin has a great influence on the king, Maurice thought, smiling as well. "Well I better start cleaning the royal throne, your majesty," Maurice added and started his work.

"You know Private, I don't know if you noticed this, but because Skipper is deep in thought, doesn't mean we can ignore our training, so I am trying to train," Lindsey said, stopping for a bit. She breathed in and out a couple of times and then went back to her running. Private just nodded and started running as well.

Kowalski was looking at his samples and all sorts of other things when he heard a knock. For the first time in forever.

"Come in," Kowalski said turning around, to see Lindsey," H... hi .. uhh... Lindsey," Kowalski stuttered as he saw her entering. She smiled.

"Hi Kowalski, I wanted you to ask you a question," Lindsey said casually.

"I didn't eat you're popcorn that was Rico!" Kowalski replied quickly without even knowing what she was about to ask. She looked at him faking anger.

"What?! You ate my popcorn, I saved up for it from dog walks!" She said," but that wasn't the question." Kowalski smiled sheepishly.

"It wasn't?... and I didn't eat all the popcorn, sad eyes ate the rest, I just tried some out!"

"I was gonna ask if you don't know anything about Skippers' late oddness, he doesn't seem to take training like he used to," she replied worriedly. "To get some training done I had to make myself run around Marlene's exhibit, but unfortunately I miscounted the number of laps by 5." Kowalski laughed. It did explain why she looked worn out.

"So let me get this straight you wanted to train so much you tried training yourself."

Lindsey nodded. "But that's not the point."

"Yeah I know... and I am on it. Actually, I started my research 2 hours ago, so I don't know what's the hold up with Marlene's word pronunciation."

"What a what-eh-what?" Lindsey asked giving him a Rico look. Kowalski sighed.

"I told Marlene that I would be finished with this before she could say the word Hippopotomonstrosequippeddaliophobia... which it is an actual word for the fear of long words."

Lindsey laughed. "Hehe... ironic!"

"I know," and they fell into fits of laughter. Suddenly Skipper appeared.

"You guys finished laughing?" he asked glaring at them. They nodded and as soon as he was gone they started whispering.

"Science is more fun than I thought," Lindsey whispered, giggling.

"Great!" Kowalski whispered back. "If you want I can teach you a thing or two."

"About chemistry?" Lindsey answered, giggling. Kowalski soon realised why and blushed.

"Well... I think someone here went to a school of flirting," he said laughing quietly.

"Nope, but I got it from the TV!" she replied, "you should throw the TV away, before I start acting like one of those odd TV show people. You know going to bars and dance outs," Lindsey added.

"Well, I knew the TV had a bad influence on penguins, but this bad?" Kowalski joked. "And if you want those two things you were talking about, you got them in this zoo."

"I think we should start off by a few experiments, you know like mix a couple of liquids," Lindsey said, looking at Kowalski. He nodded. They started immediately.

Whilst, Kowalski was going over the results of the samples he got, Lindsey was testing a couple of thing. "Bang!"

"Oops," Lindsey apologised as a red liquid cracked the glass test tubes and spilled over the scientists' table. He quickly went to clean it up. This would be a long day.

"Did you know that Kowalski could ever behave like that? I mean, I didn't."

Kowalski: "I keep information classified - highly classified, you haven't even pecked the surface."

Lindsey: "Yeah, though you are usually shy and Skipper is usually solitary, military, serious!"

"Yeah they have changed. Well lets hope that the next chapter will solve all questions. Like: Why is my ability to come up with flirty science phrases so darn bad?"

Private: "Bye and see you all in the next chapter!" *He smiles cutely.*