"Finally!" the youngest penguin cadet collapsed exhaustedly at the edge of the concrete island of the penguin habitat. "I thought we'd never catch that opossum bandit!"

"Oh ye of little faith, Private," Kowalski leapt over his limp body and caressed his latest invention. "Against the Nebula Pneumatic Gun Mark 3.0, no marsupial stands a chance!"

"Outstanding work, men!" Skipper flipped on over next to them. "That mammalian moron didn't know what hit him!"

"Rock n' Roll!" Rico coughed up a rocket launcher and pointed it in the direction of the park. "Bang-bang! Kaboooom!"

"Excellent suggestion, Rico!" Skipper patted his back. "This victory has definitely earned the crew some snow cones!"

"Oh, I'll grab one later, Skippa." Private sat up and brushed himself off. "The new Lunacorns episode is tonight! I think this will be the one where Princess Self-Respectria finally finds the Flower of Friendship that will get Prince Naughty No-Manners to go back to saying 'please' and 'thank-you' again!"

Skipper rolled his eyes. "You sure you're not really a female, Private?"

Private flushed, "Skippa!"

"Not that anyone would be surprised," Skipper continued, slowly circling the younger penguin. "After all, you have overly polite manners… prefer babysitting to monster trucks… put a pretty bow on your head and it all makes sense."

Skipper got a faraway look in his eyes. He stopped to rub his chin as a smile tugged at his beak, "Plus it would make me feel better about all those secret pictures I've taken of you, if you were…"

Private's jaw dropped. "Pictures..?"

Skipper recovered and cocked an eye in his direction, "What pictures?"

"The pictures you said you took of me!"

"I don't know what you're talking about, soldier. Maybe you need to dial back on the caffeine in your hoity-toity tea drinks! It's messing with your MIND and causing hallucinations!"

"I am not!" Private protested. "Kowalski and Rico heard you, too!" He spun to face the duo. "Didn't you?"

Kowalski looked away awkwardly and rubbed the back of his neck. Rico was preoccupied following the flight pattern of lone fly that had wandered into their habitat.

Skipper stepped in between them, "Enough with your raving paranoia, Private! That's my thing. I'm putting a stop to this third degree interrogation right now! You're on roving guard until you cool off, comprende?"

"Wha… Bu… You..." Giving up on forming a coherent sentence, Private frustratedly threw up his flippers "AUGH!" and belly-slid away.

When he was finally out of sight, Kowalski timidly approached his leader and cleared his throat, "Ahem, ah… Skipper?"

"Yes, soldier?"

"Could I… uh, I mean WE, Rico and I that is… could we see those pictures?" He turned to the demolition expert, not wanting to feel like the only pervert in the group. "You want to see them too, right Rico?"

"Nah," the other replied, still absorbed in his fly watching.

"Aw, come on!" Kowalski pleaded. "You're not even a LITTLE curious what one of your teammates might look like in a more effeminate light?"

"Nuh-uh," Rico finally turned his attention to his crewmates. He surprised them both by hacking up a photo album. Opening it to a random page in the middle, he pointed proudly at his own picture collection of a said penguin. "Hubba-hubba!"

Skipper and Kowalski leaned forward for a better look. The recognition was almost immediate.

Skipper raised an amused eyebrow.

Kowalski clapped his cheeks together in horror and shrieked.

"AHHH!" The taller bird dove down for the album, but Rico was quicker. He lifted it above his head, leaving Kowalski to face-plant into the concrete floor. Pushing himself up on his flippers, Kowalski glared daggers at the grinning maniac. "Where did you get those!?"

The pictures were of Kowalski… specifically, Kowalski undercover during a short overseas mission where he'd adopted the alias of Seniorita Esmeralda Ramirez: the second cousin twice removed of the owner of a snorkeling equipment rental shop in Puerto Vallarta. Her mysterious past and vivacious smile, eyelashes a mile long and wavy black hair adorned by a single red hibiscus flower, made her infamous throughout the port. Her popularity led many suitors coming to court her, but she turned them all away with the excuse that she was too busy for dating. She preferred to spend her free time tinkering with the argon tanks, pressure gages, and valves, always trying to take her customer's diving experience to the next level. There were sometimes muffled explosions heard in the dead of night coming from the rental hut, but she always denied them. Rumor had it that only one man had ever managed to get close enough to make her heart go BOOM-BOOM…

Rico responded to Kowalski's question by coughing a gold-chained monocle into his free flipper and positioning it over his right eye. He straightened his posture and grinned down at him. "Ahem."

Kowalski felt his blood freeze.

"T-that visiting professor of advanced linguistics from the University of Chicago…" He gulped and pointed hesitantly up at him, "That was …you?"

Rico nodded "Yup!" and reached down to take the scientist's trembling flipper in his own, delicately kissing it.

"Señora," he waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Kowalski snatched his flipper back and held it desperately against his chest, "All my beautiful, bittersweet memories of Puerto Vallarta… RUINED! NOOOOO!"

Rico ignored his drama and went back to admiring his pictures, "ooo"ing and "aww"ing and even throwing in an "Ooo-la-la!"

Kowalski gave a guttural battle cry and tackled him to the ground.

Skipper scratched an itch under his chin as he watched his subordinates duke it out. Technically he knew he should stop them and make them both run laps around the perimeter of the zoo on their flippers, but this was a personal problem. It would keep coming back if it wasn't dealt with right then and there. Whoever came out the victor would determine the future of their relationship. Personally, he'd bet his last Peanut Butter Winky on Rico, if for no other reason than that he was a firm believer in brute force always winning against intellect.

"AHA!" came a sudden cry, causing Skipper to fall over backwards. He pushed himself to a seating position to see young Private popping his head out the entrance of their HQ. The young cadet was pointing accusingly at him with one flipper and holding a stack of what looked dangerously like incriminating evidence against him in the other.

"I found the photos!" Private waved them angrily. "How COULD you, Skippa? I'm burning them right now!"

Private disappeared beneath the fishbowl.

"NOOOOO!" Skipper ran towards the entrance, but tripped over the still tussling Rico and Kowalski as their grappling match rolled them into their leader's path. "Private, wait!" he pleaded, trying to detangle himself from the fight. "Don't do anything rash! It's not what you think!"

The muffled sound of a blowtorch could be heard flaring up below.

Skipper gasped in horror.

Smoke tendrils began rising out around the base of the fishbowl.

"Sweet mother MacArthur!" he covered his face with his fins. "Fire in the hole!"

A damper was put on the fight as the trio was blasted backwards into the swimming pool by the flaming column of burning paper shooting straight out of the HQ and into the sky. Rico temporarily forgot about Kowalski and was engulfed by the adrenaline rush that always accompanied him and explosions. "Yeah, yeah! Kaboom-boom! WOOOOO!"

The scientist took advantage of the distraction to capture the photo album, "YES! Come to papa!"

Skipper wiped away a tear as he watched the smoldering remains of his precious collection rain down all around the habitat. "It… it's not so bad," he told himself. "Maybe I… maybe I can still put them all together! All I have to do is think of this as a big molten puzzle! Yeh-heh-hes! I can do this!"

He began catching pieces as they fell, only to have them disintegrate into dust at his touch. The penguin leader began running in frantic circles, stubbornly hell-bent on making his puzzle idea work. Meanwhile Rico continued to whoop and holler in the background, Kowalski flipped through the water soaked pages of the photo album. Despite his urgent need to destroy the thing as soon as possible, his scientific curiosity wouldn't let him do it without first examining the contents.

…Okay, maybe it was a little bit of ego too. Come on, who wouldn't feel at least a little flattered at having a mini gallery dedicated just to them? But what he discovered took the wind out of his destructive sails. Although a few pages were pictures, most of the album was actually drawings. Some sketches, but others were done in full color. And they were… the only word Kowalski could come up with to describe them was…

Beautiful.

Page after page he found Esmeralda smiling at tourists, resting her head boredly on one bent flipper, sipping a cup of punch while reading a thick textbook under the shade of a palm tree…

But Kowalski's eyes were attracted to one drawing in particular. He smoothed out the wrinkles from the protective plastic cover. In this picture, he and Rico were diving. In between them, a trail of bubbles adorned the elongated petals of a blooming, red hibiscus flower, the same color as the one Kowalski had worn as Esmeralda. On the left side of it, Rico had drawn himself. No top hat. No monocle. He was heading straight down towards the bottom, but at the last minute, his head tilted upright, his eyes having found a reason to slow his decent. On the right side,Kowalski was his original self. The wig and lashes were gone. His dive had taken him a bit deeper, and he too had to look up at Rico. His flippers were raised towards Rico's face, as if he intended to touch it. Their beaks were millimeters apart, and it was from there, in the space between them, that the hibiscus flower blossomed up towards the shimmering ripples of water above them, pierced by rays of sunlight that crowned the piece.

The sound of a clearing throat brought Kowalski out of his reverie. He looked up to see a bashful Rico grinding the toe of his foot in circular motions, his flippers folded behind him.

Kowalski couldn't think of anything appropriate to say. Words escaped him. But perhaps the situation didn't require words. He understood now. It wasn't Esmeralda the Rico had fallen for… and it wasn't righteous indignation that had spurred him to seek the destruction of the photo album. Kowalski had been jealous… of himself. And Rico, in his own eloquent, non-verbal way, had shown him quite clearly that there was no need for him to be.

He looked up shyly at Rico,

"WHAT THE DEUCE!?"

Kowalski and Rico's moment was shattered by Skipper's loud outburst. He'd miraculously managed to get his flippers on some of the more stable pieces of his photographs. The problem was…

"This looks like an elephant's trunk!" he exclaimed, pointing at a charred parchment on the left. The penguin commando was on his knees with the picture fragments spread out in a small circular array before him on the ground. "And this…" he held another one up at beak-length. "Is that Ringtail's feet?"

"Marlene's actually," came the answer behind him.

Skipper spun around, still on his knees and looked up at a very un-amused Private.

"I… I don't understand. Private, what is this?"

"Postcards from the Zoovenir shop," The smaller bird answered. "I couldn't find any pictures of me, but…" He leaned down slowly and stared his commander straight in the eyes. "I figured I could get you to confess if I pretended that I did."

"Ooo," Kowalski's awkwardness gave way to his leader's more embarrassing scene. "Want some water-based, antimicrobial gel for that BURN, Skipper?"

"Busted!" Rico chimed in.

Skipper glared at the pair. "Shad-up!"

"Skippa…" Private crossed his flippers and tapped his foot, the universal sign of a penguin running out of patience.

Skipper cringed and turned back to Private. He gave a curt, nervous laugh as he stood up, "Erm… right. Yes, well, you see, soldier, I, uh…"

"Go on,"

"The truth is, I may have… engaged in some possibly unethical conduct concerning-"

"POSSIBLY unethical?"

"Okay-okay, COMPELETELY unethical!" Skipper threw up his flippers in frustration. "The point is, Private, I have broken the sacred bond of trust and mutual respect that exists between a commanding officer and his subordinate! I have violated your sense of privacy, breached your security, and compromised our long-standing friendship… my bad."

Private raised an eyebrow, "And?"

"Uh," Skipper awkwardly scratched the back of his neck. "And… I promise never to do it again?"

"And?"

Skipper gulped. He knew what Private was asking him. Those weren't the REAL pictures of him that had gone up in flames just now.

"And … and I promise to… I'll promise that I'll…"

He couldn't do it. He couldn't bring himself to harm his precious collection. He covered his face with a flipper to hide his tears of shame. "They're inside the fish trophy. Do what you have to, soldier! Just… please don't make me watch!"

"And?"

Skipper blinked, uncovered his face, and stared incredulously at his smug looking subordinate. "And? And WHAT, Private? I said I was sorry! I said I wouldn't do it again! I even told you the top secret location of my hidden stash! What more do you want from me!?"

Private waddled right up to Skipper until there was only a feather's breadth between them.

"A kiss," he stated simply.

Skipper faltered. "Wha-"

Private cut his question short, putting the other's beak to better use. He reached his flippers as far around Skipper's rotund body as he could, pulling him closer.

Skipper tried to think of a proper way to react, but his brain was fried. He could almost swear he heard steam rushing out his earholes by the amount of heat rushing to his face. He knew the younger male had a bold alter ego, but...

As Private pulled back, Skipper could hear whoops, atta-boys, and cat-calls behind him. His crew was enjoying the show. He'd have to remember to inflict some horribly cruel training on them later.

"Skippa," Private smiled up at him. "You like me, right?"

"Uh…" Skipper wasn't sure where he was going with this interrogation, but he was already on thin ice. He had no choice but to answer honestly. "Well, yes, but-"

"Good!" Private interrupted. "Because, I like you too!"

Skipper blinked, "…really?"

"Really! So, you'll have to court me properly," Private patted his cheek affectionately. "You can start by taking me on a date."

"…a date?"

"Tonight."

"…tonight?"

"This'll be fun!" Private clapped his flippers together happily. "Ooo, I can't wait to see where you'll take me on our very first date, Skippa!"

Rico suddenly smiled and tugged inquiringly at his comrade's free flipper, "K'waski?"

"Hmm," the scientist rubbed his chin. "An excellent idea, Rico! We should go on a date, as well!"

"Oh, I know!" Private ran up to them. "We should make it a double date!"

"Hey!" Skipper tried vainly to take back control of the situation. "Wait a second!"

Kowalski broke out his abacus, "I calculate there to be at least 3 movie theaters, 2 ice-cream parlors, and 1 Hot Air Balloon Festival within a 15 mile radius of the zoo."

"Vroom-vroom!" Rico drove up in the penguin's mini pink convertible. "Le's go!"

"YAY!" Private cheered as he jumped in. Kowalski took shotgun next to Rico. They all turned to look expectantly at Skipper, who was still standing flabbergasted on their concrete island.

"Come on, Skippa!" Private patted the empty seat beside him.

Skipper slumped in defeat. He knew a losing battle when he saw one. "Alright, boys," he said, getting over himself rather quickly and straightening his posture. "Operation: Date Night is a go!"

He jump-flipped into the empty car seat. "Let's roll!"

"Roger!" Rico saluted. He gunned the engine and they were off.

"Oh, Skippa," Privates smiled at him sweetly. "One last thing."

Skipper raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"I'm still burning the real pictures."

"Aw, come on!" Skipper begged. "At least let me keep one? I'll even let you pick! Please? Private? Pleeease?"

The End.