Penguins of Madagascar Movie Novelization (10 page)

Then he swallowed the cat.

“No! Bad Skipper!” Private yelled.

Skipper lunged for Private again. This time, Private didn't dodge him. Instead, he slapped Skipper across the face.

“Oh, dear,” Private said. He would never dream of slapping Skipper. Not even a horrible, mutant, cat-eating Skipper. But now he had done it!

Skipper stared at Private. The slap jarred something in Skipper's brain. Images flashed through his mind. Baby Private, hatching from an egg. Private giving Skipper a silly salute. Private making an adorable sad face.

“Pry-vit?” Skipper asked.

“Yes! That's it!” Private said.

“Private! You're alive!” Skipper cheered in his normal voice.

Skipper's body was still mutant, but his brain was back to normal. He hugged Private, laughing and then sobbing.

Then he coughed, and the cat jumped out of his mutant mouth.

“Sorry,” Skipper told Private. “It's just that I thought you were a goner.”

Mutant Skipper and Private hurried to find the rest of their team. They spotted mutant Kowalski getting ready to throw a trash can through a store
window. His flippers had transformed into tentacles! They ran up to stop him.

“
Urgh? Hissssssssssssss!
” Kowalski flailed his tentacles at them.

“Get a grip on yourself, soldier!” Skipper said. “That's an order!”

“He's not getting a grip!” Private pointed out.

“Wait! I'll speak Mutant Zombie Penguin to him!” Skipper said. He turned to Kowalski.
“Gerbitwaaahbuggahissss!”

Kowalski paused . . . and threw the garbage can over Skipper and Private's heads.

Skipper shrugged. “Well, that's all I've got.”

Kowalski menacingly slithered toward them.

Private thought quickly. “Kowalski, Eva is worried about you!”

Kowalski's mind instantly snapped back to normal.

“She is?” he asked.

Skipper patted Private on the shoulder.

“What did she say? Did she say my name specifically? Were there tears? Details!” Kowalski begged.
Then it hit him. “Private, you're alive! Come here!”

He hugged Private with his snaky flippers.

“This feels a little awkward, but I'm happy,” he said.

Then they heard a familiar garbled cry, and turned to see Rico on a kebab cart. A pair of wings had sprouted from his back! He chased away the cart owner by waving a flaming kebab, and then swallowed the kebab like a sword swallower.

“Graaagh!”
he yelled.

“Rico, you listen to us!” Skipper pleaded. “You're—”

Burp!
Rico belched loudly and a puff of smoke came out. He smiled and waved.

“Eh, I guess you're kind of the same either way,” Skipper realized.

Then Rico noticed Private. He leaped down from the kebab cart and tried to kiss Private with his mutant beak. Skipper quickly separated them.

“Save your hug for the holidays, Rico,” Skipper told him. “We've got a mutant apocalypse to bring down!”

Private quickly led them all
to the ray.

“Private, you stole Dave's ray!” Kowalski exclaimed.

Private nodded. “Yeah! I thought we could use it to turn everyone back to normal.” He handed the ray remote to Skipper.

Kowalski peered at the glowing green serum inside. “It's not that simple,” he said. “To reverse the ray, we'd have to swap out the Medusa Serum with a fuel source of almost immeasurable cuteness.”

“You mean, like, a chipmunk?” Skipper asked.

“Not cute enough, sir,” Kowalski replied.

Skipper upped the cuteness. “Riding a train, in a cowboy hat?”

Kowalski shook his head. “No.”

“Inside a Japanese girl's backpack?” Skipper tried.

“What part of ‘immeasurable cuteness' do you not understand?” asked a frustrated Kowalski.

Private suddenly realized what he had to do. Maybe he wasn't a great leader, like Skipper. Or supersmart, like Kowalski. Or super . . . whatever Rico was. But he was cute. Really cute.

Immeasurably cute.

Without another thought, he hopped inside the ray and attached the cables to himself. Skipper spotted him.

“Hey! What are you doing?” Skipper yelled to Private.

“We have to change these penguins back before somebody gets hurt,” Private said.

“No, wait. No, no, waaah!” Skipper yelled, and he dropped the ray remote. That triggered the ray. A beam hit a random penguin and turned her back to normal.

“The ray, it works! It WORKS!” Kowalski cheered.

“Private, are you okay?” Skipper asked nervously.

“Yes,” Private answered. But Skipper, Kowalski and Rico all stared at him and gasped. Private had a butt-hand.

“Whoa, butt-hand! There's a hand attached to his butt. That was not . . . that was not there before!” Kowalski said. Private turned around to look and jumped, causing the cables to fall off of him.

“Get out of there! That's an order! This is too dangerous!” Skipper commanded.

“Permission to defy order!” Private replied.

“Permission denied,” Skipper said.

“Then I deny your denial!” Private cried.

“He's gone rogue!” Kowalski said worriedly.

Skipper jumped up and grabbed onto the ray.

“Private, we don't know what this is going to do to you. It already made you sprout a butt-hand!” Skipper told him.

“Skipper, this is the mission I've been training for my entire life. I know it has to be me this time,” Private replied. “And I think you know it too.
I'm
the secret weapon.”

Private fired up the ray. Skipper looked out at the chaos all around them. Hundreds of poor, confused mutant penguins battling with terrified humans. Private was right. It had to stop—now. And Private was the one to do it. Reluctantly, he let go of the ray and dropped back down with Rico and Kowalski.

“I guess it's true what they say,” he said, his voice filled with emotion. “There comes a time when you have to let a boy grow up and strap a tube to his head and his butt that uses his cuteness to power a ray that zaps mutants back to normal. I just didn't think it would be today.”

He picked up the remote and raised the ray higher, so its beam could reach more penguins.

Across the park, Dave did a happy dance, stopping every few moments to kick a penguin into a person or a person into a penguin.

“La-la-la, boot!” he sang. “Tra-la-la, kick!”

Dave hopped on top of a souvenir stand to get a better view of the scene.

“Yes! Fear them! Hate them!” he cried.

Then he noticed the giant ray rising above the tree line.

“Are you kidding me?” he asked. “They're going to un-mutant my mutants!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

With a loud war cry, he ripped off his Dr. Brine costume and charged across the park. He barked orders to his octopus henchmen through a walkie-talkie.

“They're on the ray! Hunt them down! Hurt them! Bury them!” Then he turned to an octopus in a chef's hat. Kevin, bake on!” he ordered. “We're still going to need that victory cake.”

Then he tossed the radio and headed for the ray. Skipper spotted him speeding toward them, his face red with fury.

“Uh-oh. I haven't seen anyone this angry since we all missed Rico's recital,” Skipper said. “We only have time for one shot. What's the ETA, Kowalski?”

Up on the ray, Kowalski and Rico were busy taping snow globes together to make one giant snow globe disco ball. With it, they could split the beam from the ray so that it would hit every penguin in the park.

“Going as fast as I can!” Kowalski called back. “These tentacles are tricky!”

Rico added another snow globe to the ball, and Kowalski laid down another strip of tape over it.

Then Rico noticed a small army of octopus henchmen headed toward them. They had to fire now!

“Uh-oh!” Rico said, pointing.

“Octopi!” Private yelled.

“Nearly there!” Kowalski promised.

Rico grabbed Kowalski and flew down from the top of the ray.

“Beam splitter ready!” Kowalski reported. “Fire at will!”

Dave realized he wouldn't get to the ray in time. He knocked a kid off a playground merry-go-round. Then he wound his tentacles around the bars.

“Oh, I don't think so!” he yelled.

He used the spinning motion of the playground ride to launch himself into the air. At the same time, Skipper pressed the button on the remote.

Click. Click
. Nothing happened. Then the no battery light flashed.

“Dead batteries?” Skipper couldn't believe it. “Batteries, Rico, we need batteries! Go, go, go!”

Rico raced off and found a Battery Park battery stand. But the sign on the front said
SOLD OUT
.

Rico spun around, noticing a convenience store on the edge of the park. He quickly flew through its doors, landing right next to the batteries . . . which were right next to a rack of Cheezy Dibbles!

At the same time, Skipper and Kowalski turned to face the octopus army. Kowalski jumped upside down on top of his huge, mutant head and wrapped his tentacles around himself. Skipper yanked one of the tentacles like a rip cord, sending Kowalski hurtling toward the henchmen like a spinning top.

Then a bunch of things happened at the same time:

Rico stood in the convenience store, trying to choose between regular and spicy Cheezy Dibbles.

Dave soared through the sky, headed right for the ray.

Skipper slid under the line of octopus henchmen, whacking them with the remote as he passed.

Then Rico coughed up the money (along with a harmonica and a rubber ducky) to pay for the batteries and the bags of Cheezy Dibbles and flew off. He tossed the batteries to Skipper.

Skipper caught the batteries and slammed them into the remote.

“Ha-ha!” Skipper cried triumphantly. He moved to press the button when . . .

Smack!
A henchman reached Skipper and knocked the remote out of his flippers. It sailed out of reach.

“Nooooooooo!” Skipper wailed.

Kowalski dove for it but missed.

The remote flew through wiggling octopus tentacles as the henchmen tried to grab for it.

Skipper tripped, hit the ground, and bounced back up.

“Dibble me!” he yelled to Rico.

Rico tossed Skipper a bag of Dibbles. Skipper popped the bag, sending one lone Dibble shooting through the tangle of tentacles.

Squish!
Dave smacked into the giant snow globe on top of the ray. He wrapped his tentacles around
it and reached past it toward Private.

At the same moment, the lone Dibble reached the remote before the octopi could.

Dink!
The dibble hit the big red button, and the ray fired with a tremendous burst of energy.

Then a brilliant flash of light blinded them all.

As the light faded, a
purple octopus tentacle wrapped around a skyscraper. Dave laughed maniacally . . . and then bumped into an invisible wall. Catching his reflection in the plastic, he realized the truth.

Dave had not transformed into a giant, city-­conquering octopus. He had transformed into an adorable, tiny octopus with a supercute face! And now he was trapped inside a snow globe.

“What?” Dave asked. “Are you monkey-fighting kidding me?”

He looked around the park. Soft, pink light
bathed the park, and hundreds of small, cute penguins began to dance around happily. The ray had worked! They were all back to normal!

Skipper, Kowalski, and Rico looked at one another and let out a cheer. They were back to normal too! Then a tumble of tiny, cute octopi henchmen fell on them. The ray had worked on them too.

Skipper, Kowalski, and Rico looked at the ray chamber, which was clouded in mist. They slowly approached. Was Private all right? “Private!” Skipper yelled.