Alright, it's official now...Penguins have taken over my mind, and suddenly too. I got obsessed with the Penguins of Madagascar only, like, a month ago. It's gotten so bad that I've got got Penguins fanfiction on my mind, which would be fine, except I can't concentrate properly on any of my other fanfiction until I write these ones out, so here we go.

And no, funnily enough, I don't own Penguins of Madagascar.

It was one of those rare, quiet nights at the 'Penguins' apartment. They didn't have any top secret missions to do. None of their friends needed their help with anything crazy. They weren't even doing any training because Skipper was spending the evening with Marlene. The others were glad to have the night off to do what they wanted to do. Private turned on the tv and quickly got absorbed in his show. Kowalski on the other hand was planning on spending the night working on his latest invention.

Kowalski headed for the door that led to his lab, but paused when he saw Rico. The mohawked man was just sitting on the floor, brushing the hair of a doll and humming roughly. Rico didn't even notice that Kowalski was standing by him until the scientist cleared his throat to announce his presence. Rico quickly hid the doll behind his back and chuckled nervously.

"Rico, give me the doll." Kowalski said sternly. Rico frowned and glared at Kowalski, but as his stern gaze didn't falter, Rico grudgingly handed him the doll. The maniac pouted angrily, and refused to look at Kowalski. Kowalski sighed and crouched down to Rico's level.

"Rico, we talked about this." Kowalski said. "I know that the doll calms you down, but you know the medication works just as well." Rico grunted, but nodded. Kowalski stood up and held out his hand to help Rico up. Kowalski led Rico to his lab, then went to get the medication.

Rico, while a very remarkable and talented man in the agency, wasn't quite right in the head. Kowalski honestly didn't blame him, he'd probably be a little insane too if he'd seen and done what Rico had when he was younger. For years, Rico had used a doll to calm himself down when he began to feel especially crazy. The doll could only do so much though, which was why they got Rico medication.

The medication was not without its issues though. For one, the maniac had a very hard time adjusting to taking medication rather than using his doll. There were also, of course, some dangers in taking medication, which was why Skipper had put Kowalski in charge of it. They trusted Rico with some things, but there was no way they were going to leave a man who would eat anything even the slightest bit edible in charge of his own medication. No, Rico didn't even know where they kept it.

Kowalski gasped when he returned to his lab to find Rico playing around with an unfinished invention, no doubt hoping for it to go 'Kaboom'. The intellect snatched the invention from the maniacs hands and placed it carefully on his desk. Kowalski glared at Rico, who just grinned back.

"Let's just get this over with, shall we?" Kowalski suggested. He heard the phone ring in the other room, but chose to ignore it. Private would answer it. Before Kowalski could give Rico his medication though Private called from the other room.

"K'walski, Doris is on the phone. She want's to talk to you." Private said.

"Doris?" Kowalski exclaimed happily. Doris was actually calling him? As quickly as possible Kowalski put down the bottle of medication, told Rico to stay put, and ran out of the room to talk to Doris.

Kowalski had been talking to Doris for a while when he heard some loud thuds from within his lab. Private had heard the sounds too, and was concerned.

"What was that?" Private asked.

"Rico must just be messing around with my stuff again. I'll clean up the mess later." Kowalski said sharply to Private. He then went back to his phone call. Private wasn't satisfied though.

"I feel like something's wrong." The kid said. "I'm going to go see." The boy went into Kowalski's lab, and was alarmed at what he saw.

"K'walski, something's wrong with Rico." Private shouted. Kowalski sighed and, phone still in hand, followed Private to the lab. He was sure the kid was just overreacting, but quickly changed his mind when he saw his lab. One of the tables had been flipped to its side, and everything on it had scattered everywhere. There was Rico, on the ground, leaning against the table, and he didn't look very good.

Rico was clutching at his stomach, as if it hurt. It sounded like he was having trouble breathing, and his eyes were very unfocused. He also seemed to be struggling to stay awake. Kowalski was immediately worried. He rushed to Rico's side to try to figure out what was wrong with him.

"Rico, are you okay? What happened?" Kowalski asked.

"Like dolly better." Rico mumbled weakly before falling unconscious. Kowalski paled and looked around the room, looking for...there, on the desk. Kowalski got up and quickly looked inside the medication bottle, and felt sick to his stomach when he saw it was empty.

"Doris, I'm going to have to call you back." Kowalski said into the phone that he was still holding. After hanging up, he shoved the phone into Private's hands.

"Private, call an ambulance." Kowalski ordered. Private didn't ask any questions, he may not have known what was wrong with Rico, but if Kowalski was this upset about it, it must have been bad. Private just hoped that Rico would be okay.

_meanwhile_

"So, Skipper, just what kind of secret missions do you guys do anyways?" Marlene asked Skipper as the two of them walked back to their apartment building. They were just returning from a night around town, and all night Marlene had been trying to get Skipper to tell her more about what they did...so far, she'd found out nothing.

"Marlene, that's classified information." Skipper replied not for the first time that night.

"Yeah, somehow I knew you were going to say that." Marlene muttered under her breath. "Come on Skipper, we're neighbors, friends, you can trust me. I'm not one of your enemies."

"That may be true, Marlene, but I still can't tell you anything." Skipper said, "If one of our enemies suspects you know something, they may capture you, torture you, or worse. No, it's better if you don't know anything."

"Um, okay. If you say so, Skipper." Marlene said as she leaned closer to Skipper. All his talk about enemies and torture always made her uneasy. Especially since he said it all so casually, as if those kind of things were just part of everyday life. If that was the case, maybe it was better that she knew nothing. Marlene was relieved when they turned a corner and their apartment building came into view. That relief quickly vanished when she saw the flashing lights.

"That doesn't look very good." Marlene muttered, "Do you think something happened?"

"Oh, I know something happened." Skipper responded. "They wouldn't have called an ambulance if nothing had happened." The ambulance began to drive away, and Marlene began to hope that it wasn't someone that she knew that was hurt. Sure, it would be terrible if anyone was hurt, but especially if she knew them.

"Skippah, Marlene!" A voice cried. A second later Skipper got tackle-embraced by a small sixteen year old.

"What the...Private, what are you doing out here?" Skipper asked. Private wasn't supposed to be outside by himself...even if they were just a few yards from their apartment building. None of the Penguins were allowed to go anywhere by themselves. Yet, here was Private, by himself, with no Kowalski or Rico in sight.

"Where are the others?" Skipper asked. Those two had better have a good excuse for letting Private out by himself. Private bit his lip and looked in the direction that the ambulance had driven off in.

"You mean they-?" Skipper trailed off and Private nodded.

"I don't know how it happened, sir." Private said quietly. "Rico just suddenly seemed very unwell. Kowalski was so worried. I've never seen him so scared before." The poor kid looked so upset, it was obvious that Kowalski wasn't the only one that was scared.

"Don't you worry, Private." Skipper said as he put his arm around Private's shoulder, pulling him closer. "I'm sure that Rico will be just fine."

"Do you really think so, Skippah?" Private sniffed.

"Well of course I do." Skipper said, "Now come on, let's get to the hospital. I, for one, would like to know what's wrong with Rico in the first place."

_At the hospital_

Kowalski sat with his head in his hands, elbows on his knees. He was in the waiting room of the hospital, doing just that, waiting. Waiting for the doctors to get that stupid medication out of Rico's stomach already. Kowalski groaned in frustration. This whole thing was his fault. Thirty seconds. It would have taken maybe another thirty seconds to get Rico his medication, and put the rest of it away. But no, he was so excited to talk to Doris, he wouldn't take an extra thirty seconds to do things right. Skipper always said that Kowalski's 'obsession' with Doris would get him into trouble some day.

But why did Rico have to suffer for it?

"K'walski, are you okay?" Private's voice brought the intellect out of his thoughts. Kowalski looked up to see Private, Skipper, and Marlene watching him.

"What I want to know is if Rico's okay." Marlene said.

"Me too. What's wrong with Rico anyways?" Skipper asked. Kowalski paled and hesitantly reached into his coat pocket for something. He brought it out and handed it to Skipper. When Skipper saw what he was holding, he looked worried for a second, before that worry changed quickly to anger. Skipper brought up his hand and slapped Kowalski across the face, hard.

"Overdose!?" Skipper asked as he held up Rico's medication bottle. "Would you mind explaining to me, Kowalski, how Rico could have possibly overdosed?"

"Could Rico have done it intentionally?" Marlene asked quietly. Private shook his head.

"That's not possible." Private answered, "K'walski's the only one who knew where Rico's medication was kept."

"Exactly, so how did this happen?" Skipper demanded.

"I-I'm sorry." Kowalski said uneasily, "I got distracted while I was getting Rico his medication, and I left it out."

"Distracted? What could have possibly distracted you from something so important?" Skipper asked angrily.

Kowalski mumbled a response, which wasn't understood by anybody.

"So I can hear you, Kowalski." Skipper said sternly.

"I got a phone call from Doris, okay?" Kowalski blurted out. This response earned him another slap from Skipper, who looked even angrier than before.

"So, you're telling me that Rico is in who-knows-what condition, because you just had to talk to your crush?" Skipper asked. Kowalski nodded shamefully. "Well, it's good to know that some girl is more important to you than your teammate."

Kowalski hung his head. Skipper was right, he had really messed up. If anything happened to Rico, it would be Kowalski's fault. He had left the pills in the room with Rico. He had wanted to ignore the sounds from the lab that alerted Private that something had happened. He had wanted to ignore Private when he had insisted that something was wrong. He had been so blind, all because of a single phone call.

Even if Rico was completely okay after this, the agency could easily come to the same conclusion that Marlene had. That this was an attempted suicide. They already thought Rico was unstable. If they also thought he was suicidal, there would be no way they would let Rico stay on the team. They could very well decide that Rico was too dangerous and unpredictable to live amongst normal people and lock him up, like they had wanted to do when they had first found him.

All because of Kowalski.

"I'm so sorry, Rico." Kowalski muttered to himself.

Well? How was it? Was it good? Should I write about what happens next? Should I stop asking these questions? Yes, yes I probably should, on both of those last questions. I mean, honestly, I can't just leave it like that. I have to write about how things get better, don't I?