Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"I really don't see why I have to be pinned down for this."

"Don't be silly, you know what you did. Feferi, can we borrow you for half an hour?"

Feferi looked up from her coding, still not even partially sure what her matesprit was trying to get her to accomplish. "I guess so, Sollux, can we break?"

"No problem, FF, do your thing."

Feferi headed over to the couch in the corner, where she found Jade and Nepeta sitting out in front of the pile of DVDs Karkat and John had arranged like a coffee table. Jade had a pile of them in her lap, but Feferi did not see the full situation until she had rounded the couch.

"Um... do I have to sit on Karcrab, too?"

"Hell no," Karkat replied. He was not really being sat on so much as pinned against the back of the couch, both hands trying to push Jade away, but she was stubborn and surprisingly strong. Except for a laughing jolt when he accidentally tickled her (something he would never do willingly lest risk looking playful), she stayed perfectly still.

"He wouldn't get up," Jade said, matter-of-factly. "I figured if he wanted the couch so bad, he could keep it."

Nepeta leaned forward with a grin. "Do you not want to sit on Kitty?"

Feferi eyed Karkat and noted that he looked half ready to bite Jade's arm. "I'll sit over here," she said, settling on the arm. "If that's okay."

"Oh, thank god one of you isn't a bitch," Karkat said, as Nepeta reached out to pat him on the arm. "Am I allowed to ask what was so important that you had to have the TV right away?"

"Well you weren't interested before!" Jade said. "So maybe you don't get to know now! I wanted to show something to Nepeta and I wanted Feferi's opinion on something related, stuff like that."

"Season 3?" Rose had stepped up from behind, where she had cast a look over Jade's shoulder. Her hand was still caught in Kanaya's, surreptitiously placed behind Nepeta where she would not think to look, and it brightened Jade's eyes to see it. "I thought you hated Season 3."

"I don't hate Season 3," Jade tried to explain, as Rose plucked the DVD case from her hands. "The Dargon Arc just scared me when I was little." Nepeta, emotive as always, looked up sharply and began to tremble.

"Yeah, you do seem like the type," Rose said, returning the case. She reached over and rubbed Nepeta's shoulder. "She meant 'scary for little kids,' Nepeta. It's not that bad," she reassured. "Seriously, calm."

"What's a 'Dargon Arc'?" Feferi asked.

"Dargon's a character," Jade said, looking forlornly at the box. "A villain. He's not even in the episode I want to show you. The show wasn't doing so well when they got to Season 3 and they were on their fourth animation studio, so this one threw out a few ideas to see how they'd do with the viewers. It must have worked, because a few episodes later they started a plot arc that lasted until the end of the season."

"A very Western, nineties move," Rose said with a nod. "Gargoyles, Batman: The Animated Series. Weird, what with it being a turn-of-the-century, originally Asian-produced product, I mean. Didn't work so well."

Jade piped up. "Yeah, because it was too scary for little kids! Nepeta, stop it, we're just exaggerating!" Jade reached over to hold a hand down on Nepeta's shoulder. She was not there long before Karkat kneed Nepeta, which stopped her quivering if it earned him a swat from nearly everone present.

"Not scary," Rose said. "We were just invested in the plot! What episode are you showing them?"

"Uh... Ties that Bind."

To Jade's surprise and to her own embarrassment after the fact, Rose's voice jumped a half octave. "Oh, that one's cute!"

"Cute?" Nepeta looked upside-down for confirmation. "Oh, hi, Kanaya!"

Feferi looked over at the boxes a second time. "Well, I think I can do 'cute'."

But Jade just scoffed. "Only you, Rose."

"What? How could you not find this one cute?"

Dave, who had been chatting with John and Aradia not far away, overheared their conversation and approached. "I think she's saying you were a really old kid for your age, Lalonde. What the hell are you all talking about, anyways?" Jade held up the DVD case. "Oh, hell no." And he left: not just from the corner but from the entire room. John and Aradia exchanged shrugs and followed him.

"I'm going to be the only guy here, aren't I?" Karkat asked, and was immediately ignored.

"Well, there'll be a few less girls, Karkat," Rose said. "Kanaya and I have got... We have plans."

Karkat nodded. "Uh-huh. 'Plans.'" Rose sneered back at him.

"Rose, we can spare a half hour," Kanaya said, looking over the DVDs. "We have all day, after all, and this is a part of your childhood, if I'm hearing you right. I'd like a chance to see a part of that."

"Well, if you're up to it, Kan, but I wouldn't wait to be too impressed."

Nepeta made a gasping, squealing sound and shot the other girls conspiratorial looks, unawares that she had been completely lapped in the Kanaya/Rose department just before her arrival. Karkat, on the other hand, began to make a series of retching noises that required both Jade and Feferi to silence.

"Jade, why don't you put in the DVD before this carping jerk interrupts again?" Feferi suggested, shooting Karkat a glare that broke into a smile when he responded to Jade's absence by simply making himself more comfortable. Everyone taking a seat, Rose and Kanaya by Jade's feet together, Jade hit play.

The others had gotten well used to working around Karkat and John's usual movie-watching in the past month or so as a matter of course, but nothing that had come before prepared them for this new DVD. Garish and loud, piercing and bright, it struck them to their cores with the raw force that dwelled at the opposite extreme from horror and insanity. It was too welcoming, too gleeful, too...

...far too...

...pink.

A dark-clouded night, shock bright with lightning, with the camera low by an island tower set barely above the ravenous, storm-whipped seas that spanned as far as the eye could see in every direction. The tower formed a scene of bleak desolation, a shot of the tip of an iceberg: a lost civilization consumed by the waves. It was ominous, it was brooding. It was a shot completely overthrown by bright-shaded animation and an obnoxious Casio piano tune being played in the background. In the dark, figures shuffled aboard a vessel anchored just off the flooded shore of the island, all dripping from head to toe. One struggled to find the switch for the deck lamps and found them inoperable, and each began bickering and blaming the others for every misfortune and stubbed toe. Two of them brought up the rear, still climbing aboard from the ladder. They hefted a bundle together, as though no one of the rabble trusted another enough to handle the task alone.

"I hope you realize none of you are going to get away with this," said a female voice, muffled. "My friends will see I'm gone as soon as the sun comes up, and then..."

"Wha's she talkin' about, mate?" said one of the figures, helping the other up to the deck with a free hand.

"Beats me, guess no one bothered to tell her the plan," said the other, giving a wheezing giggle that would accompany him in all his scenes. The characters on the boat all spoke with the sorts of accents children's providers liked to choose for their thug villains, though these in particular did not seem to know or care how one accent ended and the other began, and simply glued them together at random. It was an ill-planned and offensive association at best, but a trope so prominent that any English-speaking child would have immediately understood their role even this were their first viewing. The camera cut across the animated deck and to the bundle: a round sack no larger than a head, which the second figure collected. Along with his companion, they made their way to the stern in shadow.

"Yeh," said the first. "Step one, kidnap youse."

"An' step two," said the second, holding up two oddly-shaped fingers. "Get you on th'ship. So it looks to me like we already got away wif it, y'see?"

Hitting the indoor lights, a garish room came into view, built with a nautical décor. There was a bed complete with mounted ship's wheel on the wall above, flanked by photographs of fishing trophies. Nearly every piece of furniture was decorated with harpoon designs, sailing masts in miniature or mermaid figureheads. At one side of the room, just under the porthole, rested an armoire carved in a wave motif, carefully nailed to the floor and wall. Atop the armoire was another carefully secured bit of furniture: an aquarium. It was stocked with all the necessities, from coloured rocks and carbon filter, a chest that opened to spill out bubbles and the tiny castle with mermaid figurines built straight into the model. The two thugs went to the aquarium, their shadows cutting only briefly into the shot, where they up-ended their burden and an angry, purple cartoon jellyfish landed inside, upside-down.

"You know, you don't have to be so rough," she said, shaking her body off and then crossing two of her tentacles in front. On a second inspection (and as she began to right herself through buoyancy), her angry look gradually became one of simple, routine displeasure. A yellow crest atop her bulbous head, zig-zagged almost like a crown affixed with a single teal spot for its jewel creased with that same look. As she frowned, the teal freckles about her face swelled in what could only be described as an animator's quirk.

"'Ey, you know how this works," said the first figure. The camera cut to a shot from the jellyfish's perspective, showing the first figure to be a large, angry fish-man and the second to be some sort of fish-legged goat-man. The goat man prepared a tight mesh cover while the fish a screwdriver, which they used to seal the top of the aquarium. "We pick you up, you go in the box!"

"I'd prefer you not call it 'picking me up,' Rat, and some of your crewmates have been much gentler with me in the past. Now what were you saying about this being the end of the plan? Please tell me you're not just kidnapping me for the fun of it."

"Not this time, sweetie," said the second, holding up a finger to her and the camera for silence. Rat withdrew, returning the tools to their home in a box under the large bed. "We've already tol' you the whole plan and that's all you're gonna get."

"Ram, ey!" said Rat, leaning against the elaborately carved naval battle scene carved into the foot of the bed. "You don't think the boss is holding out on us, do youse? I mean... so we don't tell Prin—"

With a camera jump and a sting on the soundtrack, the door to the cabin slammed open and a crack of thunder and lightning revealed the silhouette of a tall human man. He was decked in a heavy overcoat, captain's hat and held a corncob pipe in hand. He tossed aside a towel to another member of his crew on the deck, who caught it in one of several tentacles. "No," growled the captain. "No, that be the whole plan, Princess. T'ain't no one skipping any details this time."

The jellyfish did not seem at all bothered by the new arrival though his goons, forced grins on their faces, clutched tight to the nearest pieces of furniture. The reason for their allegiance was quite clear. "Then what," asked the jellyfish, "am I even doing here?"

The man, now visible and visibly aged, smiled to her as he lit his pipe, casting a flash of red over sunken, grey eyes ("Japanese footage," Jade explained. "More permissive. Mixed with the American dubbing for the DVD release"). "Maybe I'm just taken by ye, Princess, and've decided to take ye in as a pet of me very own?"

"Not likely," she replied in a huff.

The captain stepped forward, tapping his pipe in one hand. "Yes, well, i's too bad, I suppose, since tha'd be much more polite to yer friends and... ur, gents?" He turned to face his sailors on both sides as the music began with comic trumplet blats. The soundtrack was ever willing to spell out the situation to its younger viewers so they would laugh along without understanding the joke. "As it stands, I'm a sixty-five year old man with a teenaged Squiddle locked up in his chambers, so none of ye try to eat her this time. But still, I think we might be a bit better off here if everything creepy in here that isn't part of the plan get back on the deck immediately."

Ram and Rat met one another's eyes. "Um... Skip?"

"That means the both of ye," supplied the Skipper, lowering the tone of his voice. With a bumbling trill of the old Casio, the crewmen bolted from the room with a "Yes sir, Skipper Plumbthroat, sir!"

Plumbthroat took Rat's place, leaning against the foot of his bed. "...Can't get good help these days, Princess."

The Princess was not amused. "What's this about, Eustace?"

The Skipper winced and winced hard, throwing into a pantomime of disgusted gestures and sounds. "Princess, how many times do I have to tell ye not teh use me given name!"

The Princess began a mimic of his own gestures. "Well, how many times do I have to tell you to call me Berryboo?"

"Well!" said the Skipper, and carried on in a high-pitched voice that did not at all match his menacing entrance. "Excuuuuuuse me, Princess Berryboo, if I stand up for me own point of view in me actions!"

"Well I guess we've reached an impasse!" replied Berryboo, in as regal a fit as she could manage.

"Fine!"

They both rounded and faced the walls, Plumbthroat stepping forward to slam open the opposite porthole. From her position inside the aquarium, Berryboo could see just over the bottom edge of her own porthole but could make out nothing but gale and wave in every direction. She turned back toward the room and found the Skipper drinking in the sea air.

"You're waiting for them, aren't you? You've set another trap."

Pulling his head back into the room, the Skipper faced her and his lips slowly curled into a menacing half-smile. "...Aye." The lightning crashed again and put every detail of his aged and cruel face into sharp relief. "But I didn't lie to ye, Princess. My plan's already finished. By the time the other Squiddles come to save ye in the morning, there won't be anything they ken do."

The lightning flashed again, and this time Plumbthroat caught notice of it and an odd look crept across his face. "...that's remarkable, does it do that for every dramatic moment?" He walked away and stuck his head out the porthole. "...'And with this Viking Gold I'll be able to rule the world!'" Another strike. He shook a fist triumphantly. "'And as soon as I'm done bulldozing this orphanage—!'" Krack-kaboom! "Ye know, I think I might consider settling down here when all is said and done," he said.

He turned back to her, and his smile began to simmer to one of dominance. The music, as well as the lighting, began to dim almost imperceptibly in a rare moment of competent subtlety. The Skipper's voice actor followed suit, his growl clearing up enough to speak at a dark whisper. "Tell me, Princess. Do you know where we are?"

Berryboo shook her head, her tentacles trailing after her like a dress. Plumbthroat smiled again. "Too bad," he said. "I know yer pappy does. He'll have yer friends here right on time, I promise." Another bolt of lightning touched down, this one much closer by far, striking a lightning rod stuck fixed to the top of the nearby, otherwise ancient stone tower. Plumbthroat followed her eyes, smiled and nodded. "Do ye truly not recognize that island, Princess? Have ye spent so much time under the sea that yer head is full of salt?" Berryboo was not about to dignify that with a response, so he continued. "That be the Island of Dread and Hate!"

Berryboo looked back at Plumbthroat with a pleading expression. "Eustace, it doesn't matter! You won't get away with this, my friends will rescue me! Please, won't you listen? We can still cooperate, I've said it a hundred—"

Plumbthroat knocked a hand against his footboard to interrupt her. "Yea, and each time less and less in my favour! I take it ye don't recognize the island of Dread and Hate, then, Princess? Not exactly a part of yer territory, I imagine."

Berryboo sniffed and shook her head. "No, we can't live there, it's too close to the Leviatha—" She shot back to attention in a panic and fluttered to the corner of the aquarium. "Eustace, no! M-my friends..."

"Ah... so ye do know about the Leviathan." The music then began to lower in tone dramatically, to remind the viewer that this was the real frightening moment. "Doesn't eat Squiddles, though, does he? But I think yer father would have told ye just how territorial he can get. I think ye see what I was saying about me plan, don't ye, Princess? I kidnap you, I bring ye to the ship... and by morning the seas will be so full of Squiddle ink I could scoop it up with me bare hands!" And he began to laugh, the lightning again casting contrasting shadows across his face.

Another electrical sound interrupted him, this time form the deck. "Bah!" he shouted. "'How many fisherman does it take to screw in a light bulb?'" he asked rhetorically, putting his pipe back in his mouth. "More than these!" he said as he punched his way out of the room.

"But... Eustace, my friends! M-my..." But he flicked off the lights as he went and the princess was left in darkness.

Jade clutched at her hair, ignoring the others as they reached past her to grab at the popcorn on her lap. "I hate this season!" she reiterated as the Squiddles theme song began to play as though nothing that had preceded it had even occurred.

Chapter Text

"Hmm," Rose mused as the theme song continued to play. Squiddle Dee Dee, Squiddle Dee Dum "I don't remember this theme song having so many high notes."

"That was Vriska," Kanaya said, leaning forward to grab from the popcorn bucket. "She just ran through the room screaming."

Let's all be friends! And work as a team! "...I don't want to know."

"No, I think we can agree on that point."

"So... what's the point of this show?" Nepeta dug in deeper as she asked, showing the first sign of movement since she had perked up at the sight of violent Technicolor.

"What's to get?" Karkat asked, trying to use the arm of the couch as a pillow despite Jade's now-adamant attempts to keep him pinned flat to the back. "It's a fucking grub show. It's bright, loud, and everyone talks slow and clear about how to play nice with your friends and not cull anyone that might be valuable to you in the future." Jade turned toward him slow with a look of revulsion before deliberately slamming back into his chest. "Ugh, fuck, Harley! Fine! 'But with Human stuff instead.' Shit."

"I know that, Karkitty," Nepeta said, reaching back to pat Karkat on the hip. "I wanted to know what it's actually about, though!"

Karkat rolled his eyes. "Only you, Fuzzy." Nepeta giggled, and did not remove her hand until Karkat deliberately did so for her. "But yeah, I guess I wanna know about the hairy adult Human if I'm stuck here. We can find out what the show is fucking—"

"I think we should be..."

"TANGLE BUDDIES!"

"...What the actual fuck."

Feferi gasped. "Oh my gog, the little baby squids are )(UGGING!! Jade: I love this show, so much."

Jade smiled but raised a hand for quiet. "Okay, I think I can do this fast. The Squiddles are these little jellyfish that live in the sea with all their underwater friends! And they live happy lives and try to help one another whenever there's trouble with the strength of their friendship and love!"

Karkat scowled, and even Feferi made a face. "Oh bouy," she said.

"Hey, hey, c'mon, let me finish. Sometimes when Squiddles are really close they become 'Tangle Buddies' and it makes them even closer friends!"

Rose cut in: "I always suspected it was a sort of polyamorous propaganda and I'm surprised they got away with it given the nature of children's media." Jade made a distant, whimpering sound.

Nepeta made a face. "Makes shipping too complicated."

"Polyamory?" Rose asked.

A nod. "Like... giant grid squares."

Rose reached out a wary hand and patted Nepeta on the shoulder.

Karkat rolled his eyes. "Can we please talk about the bearded Human before this offence to all audio comes to its far-too delayed end?"

"And the princess!" piped Feferi.

Jade had to pause before she could finish, but managed as best she could. "Well you see, Plumbthroat's a fisherman. He catches fish for eating."

"We get it," Karkat said.

"I didn't!" said Feferi. "I find it very INT-ER-ESTING!!"

"Well, you see, he's not very good at it. He's trying to catch the Squiddles to eat them but mostly to steal their ink. It's apparently really valuable."

"You mean..." Kanaya made an elegant gesturing motion in the air. "Ink, as in, for pens?"

Rose leaned forward, conspiratorially toward Kanaya's ear. "Popular fan theory is that they're recreational stimulants."

Jade groaned. "Oh, not again... Rose, it's a kid's show."

"And he's the villain!" Rose began to demonstrate by cupping a hand over her fist. "You see, the Squiddles pass on their good mood to other sea creatures via tangling, so it's reasonable to assume—"

"Turning the show back on!" Jade said over the sound of a bouncy orchestra.

"...which implies that they transfer it physically rather than through emotional connection alone..."

Karkat shoved Rose away from the couch with a hand Nepeta had negligently freed for surrepitous feather-touchings. "FANGIRLS SHUT THE FUCK UP; WE'RE WATCHING THE DAMN DRUG SQUIDS NOW! ALL THE ANSWERS WILL BE MAGICALLY REVEALED!"

Dawn, and suspiciously bright for a city built deep below the continental shelf. The camera passed by a patch of coral as it descended toward the city below the waves, to provide a proper scale. The city's skyline rose no higher from the ground than the waist of a child, and greeted the kaleidoscopic, scattered rays of dawn through the waves with ordered castle-homes of varicoloured sand. When the sun passed through the disc that stood at the centre of town square, it shone with light and the streets soon filled with life and activity, everyone bright and smiling first thing in the morning, like all good children should.

A deep maroon Squiddle catches the attention of the camera, squealing a high-pitched, warbled "Goooooooood morning!" to the viewer if no one else in particular. He continues about the square, spinning and grinning, haphazardly shaking the hands of everyone he meets. "Good morning, Squidnanna! " he greets an elderly-looking gray Squiddle, taking one of her tentacles and helping her across the traffic-free street after looking both ways. "Aren't you excited about today?"

"Why of course, Squiddler! Today's the day we send all our special treats up to the orphanage! I've been baking all week to get ready!"

Just then, a large, blue Squiddle galumphed from off-screen right. "B-boy, Squidnanna, I could sure go for some of your chocolate-chip starfish-cookies!"

The elderly Squiddle laughed heartily. "Oh, now Squibump. The cookies are for the orphans! You know that!"

"Aww, I kn-know, Squidnanna! I'm just so hungry!"

"That's because you'rbbbbbe on a diet!" said a squeaky voice, as a green Squiddle no bigger than the others' eyes spun on screen. The new Squiddle had a voice that was extra-high pitched and was spotted with even more bubbling sounds than the others, making it impossible to discern sex or gender by sound alone. She was, however, decorated with the usual adornment of plump, cartoon eyelashes.

("oh my god, baby fish!!"

"so TINY!!!!!")

The little Squiddle poked Squibunp in the side with her needle-thin tentacles, bouncing back in a spiral. "You need to lose a lot of weight!"

"I know, Squibella, I just can't stop thinking about all those delicious treats!" His stomach growled, as the gastrovascular cavities found in jellyfish are most definitely known to do. Squiddler laughed.

"Well, we had better get the cookies up to the orffffffffanage before Squibump gets any hungrier!" She swirlled as she slurred her F, to another burst of tiny bubbles. And they all laughed, including several passers-by. The only exception was poor Squibump, who looked bluer than usual until little Squibella launched herself haphazardly toward him with what would prove her usual energy, and clung to his side with her tiny arms. Squibump reached up and patted her head with one of his plump tentacles, which had her smiling, and they shared a whispered conversation that could not be heard over the giggling of the other jellyfish.

("Is Mocking The Obese Entertaining In Your Culture"

"Um... um... that not really, uh..."

"No, Kan."

"Then I Do Not Follow The Scene")

But all at once the joyful playtime of the undersea friends was interrupted by a shout from the nearby hill.

"The princess has been kidnapped!" came the call of a female voice. The Squiddles all looked up to see a dark green Squiddle dressed with an iron headband and carrying a coral stick, who looked down at their stunned reaction with irritation. "...Again!"

The Squiddles in town finally caught up with the announcement. Cries of "Oh no!" and "What'll we do?" and other such indecisive cries could be made out amongst the crowd. ("The same bubbles-added watermelon, watermelon recorded back in Season 1 and reused ad infinitum." "Rose, I don't interrupt your novels with trivia, do I?")

The green Squiddle ground her staff with three tentacles at once. "ARGH!" she shouted, and was down the hill and at Squiddlers' side in only a few strong swings of her arms. "Squiddler, didn't you hear me? The Princess has been kidnapped!"

"Well, gosh, Squiddette!" Squiddler said, scratching his head with a maroon tentacle. "Who did it this time?"

"Who else?" Squiddette spun about as she talked, clearly frustrated. ("The late Laura Marsette," said Jade, gesturing to the dark green Squiddle. "Likes to improvise.") "It's the same one that's always bothering us during fishing season!" and then, just to make sure the audience followed: "Skipper Plumbthroat and his crew!"

The other Squiddles all gasped as one. "B-b-but that means he's after our ink!" Squibump said, and with a shriek Squibella disappeared behind his tentacles.

"And it's all my fault," said Squiddette with a grunt. She planted her staff in the sand and crossed her foremost tentacles to sulk. "I fell asleep again."

"Aw, you don't have to guard her day and night, Squiddette!" Squiddler reached out a tentacle toward her but she just shrugged him away. "Do you know what I think?" Squiddette only replied by raising an exaggerated eyebrow, but in a jump cut Squibella peeked out of Squibump's tentacles and smiled. "I think you need a—"

"TANGLE HUG!" shouted the other three at once. Squiddette raised her tentacles in protest but was swiftly glomped by Squiddler, to the sound of a cream-pie splat courtesy of the foley team. That was followed by a larger splat for Squibump and a tiny pifft for Squibella, landing like a wart on Squiddle's forehead.

"G... you guys!" Squiddette tried to pry the others off, but it was no use, and soon her protests fell into giggling. "Hehehe, you g-guys!" She finally succeeded in prying off Squibump, and removing Squibella with a pop!, and Squiddette smiled a anatomically confusing smile for the first time in the episode. Only after did she realize that Squiddler was still clinging to her side, and tipped in to him in a drowsy sort of happy comfort, before coming to senses and swatting at his grip. "Ge... get... get off!" She glared at him as he sheepishly pulled away, and then coughed. "Anyways! You're right, we can't give up hope just yet! We have to do something!"

"D-do you know where they went?" Squibump asked.

Squiddette nodded. "They left a note! It said... 'We took her to Isle of Dread and Hate!'"

"Oh, my!" said a shocked Squidnanna. "The Isle of Dread and Hate! The King said we're never to go there! It's too dangerous!"

"Well I have to go!" said Squiddette. "I'm the Princess' bodyguard! I have to go after her no matter what! That's the law! If you all want to help me, I'll just have to deputize you!" And then, whispered loud enough for the mic but not for the director, a subtle murmur that sounded like another "...Again."

"Of course we'll come, Squiddette!" said Squiddler, and the others in their small group all chirped "Yeah! Yeah!" "We're your friends! And Princess Berryboo's too!"

"Hehehe," Squiddette was giggling frequently now, back to her normal self. "Aw, thanks you guys!"

"B-but what about the orphans' cookies?" asked Squibump, one tentacle tellingly on his side. The other pointed down the road, to where a Squiddle wearing a top-hat was driving a cart pulled by two pink cuttlefish. (Feferi squealed uncontrollably and began geeking out about the animator's attention to detail.)

"We'll take them!" said Squibella to Squidnanna. "We'll take everyone else to the island and make sure Squibump doesn't eat a single crumb!"

"Okay!" said Squiddler. "And Squiddette and I will take Squidradar to scout ahead!"

But Squiddette made a face. "Wait, isn't Squidadar still..."

A jump cut later—

"You guys, you guys, you guys," Feferi said as soon as the cuttlefish were well and truly off-screen and she had finished her sentence about "w-eyes," which was most definitely a technical term. "I have to show you some of my fish perchures. I have to. I'LL B--E RIG)(T BACK!! I'll catch up!"

"Her what?" Rose asked as Feferi disappeared in the transportalizer.

"Purrtchures," Nepeta clarified. She had a grin on her face that had been plastered there at the start of the show, and remained there even during the pause.

"Oh, that's good then!" Jade said, and reached back toward the remote, but Karkat reached out to stop her.

"Wait, hold on. It's not that I'm trying to follow this mess. I mean, that's sort of an Egbert move, but that's not my po—"

Just then, Terezi emerged from the kitchen hallway with Gamzee. "Oh yeah, Karkles. Like you don't want to pull any of John's moves." She only had to take another step to get a look at the paused freeze-frame of cartoon jellyfish before she broke down laughing.

"HEY! UP YOURS!" Karkat managed to shout before Terezi sat down at her computer, and Gamzee with his.

Kanaya reached down a hand to touch his wrist. "Karkat, that's not exactly conductive—"

"Yeah, well, I don't think this show's conductive to anyone's love lives. Moving on. What the fuck's an 'orphanage'?"

Jade and Rose exchanged looks. "It's..." started Rose, but Jade went with the direct approach.

"It's a place where kids get to live after their parents die or ..." For a moment it seemed like she was not going to say it to the aliens, but in the end: "or can't take care of them. There's one on the island that's near where the Squiddles live, they have a lot of friends there."

Karkat opened his mouth at once but Kanaya immediately slapped him on the shoulder. He mouthed an aggravated "WHAT?" up at her. Nepeta set another hand on his thigh, behind Jade's back, and stopped him short.

"Jade," Nepeta asked, "did... you live in an orphanage?"

"Huh?" Jade looked almost too ready to stomp on Karkat's inevitable reprisal that she was taken off-guard. "You mean after Grandpa died?" Though Jade was not looking to see, Kanaya also nodded. Before reaching her hand back she pressed Karkat back into his corner, who shied away only under duress. But Jade only spoke to Nepeta, who seemed so curious and concerned by the new tone of her voice all at once. "Well... no. I mean, nobody knew we were there. I guess I would have, but I had Bec, so it was okay."

"Well, okay then!" Nepeta said, her own tone reversed at once. As if to cover for the shift, she glomped Jade not unlike the Squiddles had one another. From her new position, she shot Karkat another glare. Rose exchanged glances with Kanaya. Nepeta turning on Karkat? Rose was starting to wonder if showing the Trolls the Squiddles was going to be a good idea if this and cuttlefish photography were going to be the after-effects.

They decided to wait for Feferi to return in the end (she seemed quite content after the fact, but no one was able to ask why as she bombarded them with pictures of her late pets). After that they returned to the show. Karkat even got to sit up and stayed of his own free will, muttering something about "building resistance to psychological torture." Jade snipped back at him for a while but eventually they were back on track.

A jump cut later and Squiddler and Squiddette were inside one of the castle-homes, where their yellow-toned friend Squidradar floated, upside-down and frowning. "Oh. Hi guys," he moped.

"Squiradar!" cried Squiddler. "You're not still upset about whales, are you?"

"Of course I'm not!" he said, arms crossed. "I know they have to migrate. I'm just fine."

Squiddette swam in front of him, looking a mix of encouraging and annoyed. "Then why are you sulking?"

"Well," he said, looking up to look down at his friends. "It's still okay to miss your friends while they're gone."

("OH GOG.")

"But you're not supposed to sulk, silly!" Squiddler reached up to pull Squiradar down from the ceiling. "Your friends would be sad if they knew they were making you sad!"

("OH GOG THEY'RE REPEATING LESSONS FROM A PREVIOUS EPISODE."

"Actually, I think it was three episodes ago. Rose?"

"I DON'T CARE. IF THEY DO IT AGAIN, SOMEBODY STAB ME.")

Squiddette picked up her friend's thread seamlessly. "So you should perk up or your friend will be sad when he comes back!"

("equius should watch this, he's always grumpy when i come over!"

"I AM ONE HUNDRED PERCENT SERIOUS. KANAYA, LEIJON, IF THEY REPEAT ANOTHER LESSON I WANT BLADES IN MY FUCKING ARTERIES. THAT IS AN ORDER."

"Neck Or Chest"

"IRRELEVANT.")

Squiddler was quick to close the debate. "I think what you need is a TANGLE HUG!!" He tossed himself onto Squidradar's side, and found himself soon slowly spinning in the water as his friend tipped to one side. "Uh... Squiddette?"

The dark green Squiddle did not budge. "I'm not doin' it. He's your friend."

But Squiddler seemed to be doing all right on his own, as he eventually turned his friend right side up. Squidradar seemed to have improved already.

"What's the matter, Squiddette?" he asked.

"Didn't you hear? Skipper Plumbthroat kidnapped the princess again!"

"What?" Squidradar immediately panicked and Squddler dropped to the ground. "But... but..." He bolted, reappearing in the next shot hidden under a set of Squiddle-sized blankets. Squiddette poked him with her staff.

"Hehehehe, C'mon, Squidradar! It's just Plumbthroat!"

"B-b-b-b-but..."

Squiddler helped drag his friend out from under the sheets. "Besides, we need your help! They said she was at the Isle of 'Dread and Hate'. And we don't know where that is!"

"But you can find any Squiddle in the ocean!" said Squiddette, resting a tentacle gently on one of Squidradar's. But he did not seem to hear them.

"The Isle of D-d-d-dread and H-h-ate?" He started to turn, back to his bed hiding place, only to find a coral staff snapped up in front of him.

Squiddler tried again. "Please, Squidradar? You can be brave, I know it!"

"O-okay," said the yellow Squiddle. "I'll give it a shot."

And he focused, his tentacles wound up tight and his brow furrowed, and purple waves of the Power of Friendship wavered out into the waters about. But despite it all, Squidradar shook his head even as he continued his search. "I don't... she must not be in the ocean."

"Plumbthroat must have put her in his tank," Squiddette mused to Squiddler.

Squiddler thought for a good long time before taking a different route. "Squidradar... what about Ox?"

"I..." And Squidradar nodded. "I think I can find him, I mean, if he's in the wat—"

And as he spoke, the image on the screen rent in two, split horizontally and each half skewed partway to opposite corners, to the sound of a tear and an animal shriek. Squidradar jumped back (Nepeta did, as well), his friends reaching out to him. In the gaps between the image and fading in and out in static, the image of a large Squiddle appeared, set too close to his face. He was twice the size of the others, a pirate's hat on his head and an eyepatch atop one eye, and came slowly into focus. His voice was not so clear.

"'Allo, Radar," he said. "Skip' told me to take a little dip whilst it was still safe to get me feelers wet." Ox raised some of his tentacles up into view. Many of them were severed and blunt, but one bore a hook and one just out of vision tipped a cutlass in and out of view as he continued. "Why don't ye make yerself useful to me and tell my baby brother I be wanting to give him a nice... big... hug."

The image snapped back into place, Squidradar falling to the ground in a slump. Squiddler helped him to his feet at once, and Squidradar looked up at him with glazed eyes.

"...Ox says hi," he panted. "Squiddler. Ox said... to say hello."

In the background, Squidette could barely be made out, muttering something about them knowing they were coming now, but Squiddler focused on his friend.

"Are you okay?" No real answer came, just heavy breathing, the voice actor carefully recorded. "Do you know where he was?"

"They're... the way the whales went."

Squiddette nodded and pointed off toward the southeast. "...Can you take us there?"

Squidradar's eyes widened, and he shook in his friend's grip. This time there was no stammering, no panicked dashes, just a deep breath in, a deep breath out. Once, twice, three time, four, and last of all: "...Yes."

And in the very next moment they were outside, and the tone had changed at once. The music was bouncy again, a sing-song tune, and two of the three Squiddles waved to their friends still gathering up the baked goods. Squidbella could even be made out calling "Goodbye! Bye!!" in a distant voice. The camera watched the Squiddles go for quite a way, abusing bumps in the terrain to jump them ahead without the viewer seeing. Once they had mounted the final rise, the camera went with them down the next. But when the sun-caught disc in town square disappeared over the horizon, so did the music, into a patch of white noise that seemed to imply falling. If the camera were to be trusted, the three Squiddles travelled downward on their journey, and when it at last settled on a new scene, the sand had turned black and the sun was already setting orange and yellow high above. In every direction the Squiddles found debris: a sunken ship from the pirate days.

Jade paused the feed a few seconds later. "There."

Feferi squinted. "Is that the thing you wanted me to see?" The object Jade had locked in frame looked like the top of a steeple or bell tower, all in metal corroded and covered with the living stuff of the ocean. The weathervane at the top, if it had ever been anything else, had degraded to a multi-branched staff of metal.

Jade shook her head. "No, but it might help. I don't know. That's the thing Plumbthroat pulls out of the ocean a few episodes from now. After that episode he disappears and a man calling himself 'Prince Dargon' appears the episode after and becomes the villain."

Rose nodded. "At the end of the season we find out it all sort of happened because Plumbthroat salvaged this thing."

The Trolls all shook their heads, and Jade shrugged. "That's okay, I just wanted to show you. I wanted to ask you more of a marine life question, but it can wait."

"What's this Prince Dargon guy like, anyways?" Feferi asked. "I mean... what's he do?"

"Pretty standard villain stuff," Jade said. "Except he's really... mean about it."

"Very personalized," Rose said, realizing the Trolls would probably not find much wrong with 'meanness'. "A lot of, 'this would never have happened if it wasn't for you,' or playing off phobias. 'Just you and the dark.'"

"Sounds just like home," Karkat said. "No wonder you came to us."

Jade cast Karkat a look out of the corner of her eye, pained, but Rose, who had been expecting his response from her time with the Trolls, was already on the next subject. "Most importantly, I think, is that he was smart enough to separate the Squiddles from one another. They can't use their friendship powers without—"

"They can't use their what?"

Rose ignored Karkat entirely. "—without being near their friends, and they don't always have much self-confidence because, frankly, they're all head cases."

Jade scowled. "Rose, for goodness' sake!"

"Okay, okay, 'simplistic characters'."

Jade raised her hands for silence. "Okay, I need everyone, especially Feferi to keep their eyes out in the scenes near the Isle, where it's all black. There might be something hidden there that would help me make sense of this..."

Meanwhile, in the nearby hold of the ship, eyes looked out from the deep. A face, barely visible, poked out of the dark of the ruined ship-hull and began to sniff the water. In the distance, just visisble in the frame, a distant spot of maroon, green and yellow passed by. And voices. "This is the right way, Squiddler, but I haven't been here before, so keep an eye out, okay?"

The craggy face shifted, a grin forming at the corners of its beaked mouth. But it was not the Leviathan of the land of the Isle of Dread and Hate, the rumble of constant thunder still distant. Still, it rose from the ship in bulk and muscle, still it rose in build and shape, with scales and armour unyielding.

The creature kicked a nearby plank as it rose its weight into the water proper. "Laughlin," he said, slow and deliberate in a Cajun accent.

"Yeah?" called another voice, within.

And the first rose to eat, and cast itself steady and slow to a gap in the boards; cast into the rays of the setting sun: the silhouette of a Great Sea Turtle. "...Jellyfish."

"Heh." And behind him, the sound of his brother.

DVD Bonus Material
Laura Marsette (b October 2, 1970 – d April 13, 2009) – Voice of Squiddette, Amber, Squideva and Colonel Plack-Plack, among others, Seasons 2 through 3. A professional voice actress whose career in animation began as a production assistant for Disney's: Return of Jafar. Marsette landed the role of Amber after the change of localization teams between Seasons 1 and 2, and was given additional roles after the second shift to Studio Upton during Season 3. Of her (relatively, for animation) widely publicized departure from Upton at the end of Season 3, Marsette repeatedly commented that the Director was "insane" and described the rest of the production team alternately as "sheep" and "zombies." "I hope they crash," she was quoted as saying after her contract officially ended and signs of Upton's collapse loomed. Her prediction proved true, her career outlasting the Squiddles studio by more than a decade.

Jacob Watt (b July 26, 1974 – d April 13, 2009) – Voice of Squiddler, Sebastian, Squiddoro, Bo'sun Ox and others. Watt's career in voice acting was nowhere near long as many of his co-workers, though still spanned the course of the decade. Of his split with Studio Upton along with co-star Laura Marsette, Watt placed the blame firmly on the production team. "There's a line in children's entertainment, and they crossed it and refused to cross back. They're past caring." After leaving the industry over the split, Watt went back to school and became a high school teacher. He states on his blog that he almost did not make it to graduation, suffering a boating accident that cost him his left eye. "Some kids recognize my voice and call me 'Ox' when they learn the eye is glass. It's nice to know I had an impact, and I'm glad to see that there wasn't any damage. They're all bright young kids."

Chapter Text

The camera returned after a jump to the cabin in the Grundy Catchyegrabber, where Princess Berryboo worked with an extra-large piece of aquarium gravel to saw at the mesh ceiling that cut her off from freedom. The sawing took up a great deal of effort and made a great deal of mess, yellow dust spilling off into the inch or so of air below the wire and down into the water below where it billowed into in a cloud. She brushed away the mess with the tip of one of her tentacles, and found to her disappointment that all she had accomplished was to polish a minute patch of one of a hundred bars. Muttering frustration, she moved instead to the long edge of the aquarium and attempted to jam her makeshift tool under the edge to use it as a pry bar. With all her strength she struck at the gap only to be rewarded with a muffled "pft!" and a smaller tool. Rat and Ram had done a good job securing the mesh, but the King of the Squiddles had not raised his daughter to be a quitter. Berryboo wrapped another tentacle about the stone and, eyes closed, slammed it forward overhead.

Bang! She, her stone and the water in the aquarium all slammed back at the force of a heavy blow that shook the aquarium hard against the bolts that held it otherwise still, to the blare of an orchestral sting. The instruments were no companion to the simplistic Casio tunes of the show's standard soundtrack, and heralded more than just the on-screen, where a green tentacle now lay across the box.

"'Allo love."

Berryboo, her pulverized stone sinking toward the fluorescent rocks below, shook with impotent rage before whirling away to face the wall. The sky through the nearby porthole was brighter than the night before, but not by much, suffocated from horizon to horizon with cloud that lit only by criss-cross of lightning. "Bosun."

The wide shot that followed – wide, but cramped, with the wall of the cabin taking up a quarter on the right and the foot of the bed much of the left – showed the sheer contrast between Ox and Berryboo. While still a Squiddle, Ox stood almost three times Berryboo's height, about the height of a child, and again in width. He hovered just above the floor, the mishmash of his tentacles hanging below him: long, stumped and hooked; one eye was covered by a patch. "Skip said you were giving it a go, so he wanted me to drop in and point out that it ain't gonna happen." He watched the stone come to a rest against the bottom. "But I guess we both know that now, don't we, darling?"

Berryboo was silent for some time, and as Ox waited for a response her tentacles, little strings compared to his, curled up defensively below her. "...Go away." She could make out his sneer and the ugly look in the glass before her. "I do not want to talk to you." Barely visible, Berryboo's own distorted reflection tightened. "...Bully."

"Heh. Bully, am I? Is that what you tell yerself?" He leaned forward, face close to the mesh, and whispered: "...Is that the worst you can do?"

"You are. You bully them and you bully us. You... I can't believe you!" She turned on him, tentacles swirling and her two foremost clutched into awkward fists of a sort. "What did we do wrong, Ox? You had a good home! You had all your friends. We miss you! Squiddler misses you. I miss you. We were friends! W-we were Tan—"

With another heavy slam, Ox's hook cracked through the mesh and into the water, wires splaying apart and away. Berryboo ducked into a corner of the tank with a screech and knocked over the tiny toy castle that had rested on the ground. The next shot came from her perspective as Ox loomed over her in a rage hot in his good eye.

"Say it," he said, voice level in spite. Berryboo shook her head furiously, and Ox responded by pressing forward with his hook until it curved to the glass, the protesting squeal and snap of the metal mesh overcoming the low music. Berryboo retreated further until the castle blocked her last inch. Ox reached up to remove his eye patch, the camera cutting from what it hid below to his view instead, on the face of the princess cast in shadow. "Then say how I'll let ye go. How we'll both run off back home and ev'thing..." And he tossed the eye patch onto the mesh, and with a strangled whimper, Berryboo began to cry. "Ev'thing will be all right again."

"N-not my fault," was all she said, shaking her head. Ox opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off.

"Bosun!" snapped a voice from behind before Ox had a chance to reply. Ox whirled as his levitation allowed but jammed hook prevented, and stared back into the face of Skipper Plumbthroat. "Out!"

As was part and parcel of the area, a crack of thunder accompanied Plumbthroat's arrive and Ox did not need to be told twice, extracting his hook and retreating with the same speed if not the demeanour as Rat and Ram earlier on. The skipper watched him go and even chased after him, shouting orders to tell the others to "keep prodding."

"He seemed nice," Karkat said. It was hard for the Humans to tell if he was really being sarcastic.

"Ox is a victim of behind-the-scenes collapse," Rose said. Jade, for once, did not interrupt her. "See, in even the tame episodes of Season 3, Squiddler and his friends are the leads, like in the second half of Season 2. But that wasn't always the case. Originally, Berryboo was the lead, along with another Squiddle, named Mint."

Karkat barked a laugh. "Quality of names used to be an inch higher," he said. "If even."

"There have been a lot of production teams involved in this," Rose admitted. "Naturally it was kind of sloppy. For example, Mint kept getting bigger and bigger, and I think partway along the line they forgot why they were doing it and just did it again. But in the middle of it, one of the Japanese voice actors left. Mint's. But you can't kill off a Squiddle."

"Why not?" Feferi asked.

Jade raised an eyebrow. "Because it's too dark for kids! And he's a main character! You can't do that... to... a..." Jade saw the looks on the Trolls' faces, and backed off.

"Anyway," Rose said, having already expected the reaction. "Mint was off with Berryboo when... something happened off-screen. Berryboo refused to say, she was so upset. The next thing we knew, Mint was calling himself 'Ox' and working for Plumbthroat, having lost all his friends. Whatever the studio was planning to do with him, we'll never know, though. A few episodes later—" she snapped her fingers, "bankruptcy. Studio Upton took over with no idea how it was supposed to end. They just... rolled with him like that..."

Plumbthroat held his fearsome pose even after Ox had gone, though it slumped away as he stepped forward to catch sight of Berryboo. He knelt down to pick up a tool box from under his bed, from which he extracted a roll of duct tape. Plumbthroat worked in silence and Berryboo did not stop him as he applied a rough patch to the hole. Just before he finished, he paused and then reached into the upper drawer. From deep inside, he pulled out a shaker of fish food, which he sprinkled through the remaining gap. Finally, he turned to go.

"Eustace," said Berryboo in a trembling whisper, ignoring the food. He turned back and saw her looking up at him with need in her eyes, but she said nothing more.

"...stop trying to help him, Princess," he said at last. As he went on, from his tone it was clear he somehow meant to be comforting. "There's nothing but tears in trying to help a man that don't want to be helped. A wild plan like that one is even worse, because ye'd be stuck with the shark, wouldn't ye?"

"You heard?" Berryboo asked, and Plumbthroat nodded.

"You're right, you know. He is terrifying. That's why he works so well with the crew, all the good he's been since his ink went black." Plumbthroat scowled but Berryboo was not surprised.

"No friends here either." She sniffed. "He was my friend, Eustace. I can't... n-not... help him!"

"Don't cling to the past, Princess." The skipper turned to leave. "Eat."

"'Berryboo.'" The princess corrected, finding her voice.

"Tha's better," he said.

"Skipper?"

Plumbthroat looked up in surprise to see Berryboo clutching to a single fallen flake of the food, but looking straight at him. "...Thank you. You're a good person, S-Skip. You really... you really are. You should stop this. You c-can."

A heavy pause filled the air between them, and at one moment Berryboo caught sight of Plumbthroat's eyes darting toward the deck, and Ox, but the strange calm was rent by sounds from outside. Plumbthroat made his exit, but not without abrupt parting words: "...I've heard much more convincing things from ye, Princess."

Through the starboard porthole opposite the aquarium, Berryboo could make out sounds of shouts, splashes from the waves and the protesting groans of the ship as it began reeling and bobbing in the waves. Ox and Plumbthroat's voices roared incompressibly in to the room, fighting to be heard against the stormwinds. A scream – Rat – had Berryboo nestled back against the castle for a time before reflex kicked in and she charged at the new patch of tape, hoping it might prove more pliable than the wire, to no effect. As she pushed and, from time to time, pulled her tentacles free from the sticky underside of the tape, a shadow cast over Berryboo. She looked up toward the porthole above and saw, to her terror, nothing at all past a massive silhouette that had risen opposite the commotion.

Another shout from Rat, safe and well-enough intact, drew the attention of the others to the shape. The sound of rapid footsteps played through the wall as the Casio rose into another of its stock tunes and the shadow fled. No one came back for Berryboo, and the only company she had as the soundtrack faded was the low rumble of distant thunder. She could not help but to stare at the porthole in disbelief, wondering what had passed her bye. The shadow cast across her face by the tape seemed to split the princess almost in two. In the silence, she made up her mind and prayed to her friends, whispering to the clouded sky and ocean below: "...Please don't come."

Far away, in the bright light of the sun and fluorescent bulbs, a nun waded through a sea of children and smiled as one of them, about eight or nine, tugged on her habit and spoke up to her in a troublesome but still comprehensible lisp.

"Sister!" he said with excitement, "the Squiddles are here!"

"Intended audience response right here," Rose was saying when Jade paused the DVD. It only took a moment for her to see what had caused the delay. "Oh wow," she said. "It's Milo."

"I know!" Jade said, mouth wide. "I... never noticed him here before!"

"What's a Milo?" Feferi asked, picking another kernel of popcorn off of Nepeta, where they had all landed after Ox had slammed down his hook and she had jumped a foot. Nepeta giggled as though this tickled her, like always, and swatted away Feferi's hand in a continuation of their game.

"It's that kid, right there," Jade said, pointing to the boy just to the side of the speaking child. "Well, I mean, I guess it's him. It could just be, like a... 'Oh hey, we need a new kid, maybe we should just use one we've drawn before,' sort of thing."

"But who is he, then?" Kanaya asked.

"He's pretty much the main character of the Dargon Arc," Jade explained. "He's new to the orphanage, and doesn't have any friends yet."

"No one cares," Karkat said with his perfunctory tone, and in response Jade blew a raspberry in his face. "...the hell was that?"

Jade laughed. "I said..." And then she did it again: "Tbbbbpppt." Nepeta, loving the look on Karkat's face, leaned past Jade and did the same. "Okay," Jade said to regain the calm. "Look, so a few episodes from now, Dargon shows up. Then Milo gets his first episode, and he's the new kid so everyone's swarming him, but he's actually really shy."

"Poor fucking baby," Karkat said.

"Karkat, he just lost his family!" Rose pointed out, only to get an eye roll in response. The other Trolls, on the other hand, nodded as they had remembered better, both of which Rose was prepared to acknowledge: "His poor, fictional family."

Jade continued. ”Dargon shows up and points out that Milo's popular but he doesn't have any friends yet. He takes Milo to the basement of the orphanage where the thing Plumbthroat salvaged has suddenly appeared. Dargon goes all creepy for a while and eventually tells him that he can wish on the thing, and can wish to be popular forever, because he'd rather be popular than lonely."

"Dargon actually says the thing is evil," Rose corroborated. "It's not exactly the most refined moment in the history of the Faustian Bargain but I guess you don't want little kids selling their souls to demons or something."

"What happens?" Nepeta asked Jade, already deeply involved in the story as was her uncontrolled habit, clutching her hands close to her face in suspence. There she noticed that one of the kernels of popcorn had stuck to her gloves and she bit it off.

"Well," Jade said, "the Squiddles were tracking Dargon and find them, and they tell Milo that he can make friends for sure if he just puts himself out there. So they and Dargon fight, Dargon runs away with the artefact, and then the Squiddles help Milo make friends with a girl named Carmen and her brother, uh..."

"Diego," Rose said. "Pre-Dora and still viable as a name."

"At the end of the episode, they show that everyone else actually did stop being friends with Milo," Jade said. "I mean, they still sort of respect him in later episodes but it's weird that they ended it like that."

"Except that it's Season 3," Rose noted. "Abrupt, depressing finales are pretty much par for course."

Kanaya, who was by that point kneeling down on a pillow behind the couch, looked up at Rose from the corner of her eye. "And this is the 'cute one,' you said?"

"Well, yes, this one."

"Hmm..." Kanaya tented her fingers in a way that almost hid her grin. "If this is what you call cute, try not to compliment me for a little while."

"Well, I'll try," Rose said, pulling a pillow out from behind Karkat and kneeling down next to Kanaya. "But I doubt you're going to make it very easy."

Nepeta made a tiny happy sound and then glanced up at Jade and Feferi with an ignorant knowing smile. Karkat just roared into his hands, a shout that sounded at least partially like "Put it back on for fuck's sake!", enough that Jade did exactly that.

"Hahaha, I know the Squiddles are here, Sebastian!" said the nun as she took the boy by the hand and led him on through the crowd. "Nothing else would get you all so excited, my goodness!"

"Gyaaack!" The camera adjusted to show a crowd of children, about a dozen, crowding about a single spot. With a mighty pull, Squibump appeared from the spot, hovering in the air as Squiddles do and pulling a seashell cart behind him. "Sister Bethany!" he said with surprise, and then fell to the ground. With another heave he reappeared above the heads of the children. "...help!"

"Good morning, Squibump!" the nun greeted, and took the rope from him. He hovered up to her shoulder level, followed by the gleeful laughs of the children who reached out to tug at his feelers. From behind and with a spin, Squibella followed. Sister Bethany had to lean closer to see the little Squiddle in detail, her bifocals perched at the tip of her nose and almost pressed up against the flying jellyfish. "Why, hello to you too, dear!"

"Hello!" Squibella said at once, but then faltered. "Hello, uh... uh..."

The nun laughed happily and reached out to tickle Squibella. "My name is Bethany, dear, but you can call me 'Sister' if you like. That's what all the children do at first."

Squibella made a face in close-up. "But you're not my sister."

Sister Bethany just laughed, and helped pull the cart over toward the orphanage: a small, red-painted building perched on an island just large enough for it and its children. In the distance, a fishing town of moderate size could be seen perched on an island just across a small patch of sea, with ocean otherwise in all directions. As they walked, Squibella continued her protests, pointing out that "my sister is at home!"

"What a heavy cart today, Squibump," she said in small talk as the scene began to fade in sound and visuals to the next. "Squinanna must have been working herself to the gills! I told her..."

The scene picked up in a small kitchen, where Sister Bethany handed off a tray of cookies to the boy from before – Sebastian – and a young girl, who carried it carefully out. Watching them as they went, the nun filled a glass from the tap and took a sip, eyes still on the room beyond where the children were playing tag with Squibella.

"Gosh, it's looking pretty busy, Sister Bethany!" Squibump was holding two cookies of his own as he floated. He took a bite from one but made sure to chew (exactly) twenty times and swallow before speaking again. "Are you doing all right with all of them?"

"Yes..." said the nun. "Sister Mary is in town picking up supplies. And there were new children the other day."

A cookie half-raised to Squibump's mouth dropped away. "...Oh."

"They're doing well, I think," she said, pausing only for a quick drink. "The little girl won't let go of her big brother, do you see? Haha. She's going to have to let go if she's going to chase Squibella though, isn't she? Do you think she will?" she asked, as much to the Squiddle as the audience.

Squibump nodded, agreeing through a full mouth. "...She'll be making new friends in no time."

("Oh no," Jade said. "I never understood that part before."

"what is it?? what am i missing?")

Squibump dropped into frame and landed firmly on the Sister's shoulder, which he squeezed. The nun reached up toward him with her opposite hand, but stopped when the children returned with Squibella in tow.

"Hehehehe!" Squibella spun into place next to her Tangle Buddy. "They're all so..." She paused for breath. "They're fast! You should come and play!"

"Ohhhhh, I don't know about that, Squibella." Squibump let go of the Sister and moved back to where he had set his snack. "I'm not really a fan of tag!"

Squibella floated straight in front of him and sashayed back and forth to keep him from getting by. "But you neeeeeed more exercise!"

"Sister!" said the little girl, somewhere near eight years old herself, who had entered. "We need more napkins!"

"Over in the drawer, Amber," said the nun, who stepped aside to allow her access. "And thank you for noticing!"

("That's Sebastian and Amber," Rose said. "They're the main kid characters. Well, until Milo showed up they were the only kid characters."

"FUCK, HOW DO YOU TELL ALL THESE CHARACTERS APART? HOW IS THERE ANY CHARACTER GROWTH OR DYNAMICS?"

"Well, Karcrab, t)(ose ones are s)(aped like )(umans! )(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E."

"UGH, BRAVO PRINCESS.")

Sister Bethany stepped over to the Squiddles. "Why don't you help the children carry over the napkins, you two?"

"Yeah!" shouted Squibella. "C'mon, Squibump! We can lift it together! Weightlifting! C'mon everybody, join in!" She grabbed a tentacle and made off with him. "One, two, three, you know?"

"Aww, Squibella..."

But in the end he helped out, carrying his own end of a pack of napkins. As they walked with the children, Amber spoke up.

"So where's everyone else?" She set her napkins on a table laid out with sandwiches. "Where's Squiddette, and Squiddler, and everyone else?"

"Ohhh, I don't know if I should tell you that." Squibump made sure the napkins were stacked evenly as Sebastian opened the first and passed them over. "They're busy with a problem right now."

Sebastian spoke up in a conspiratorial whisper. "Is it... Skipper Plumbthroat?"

Amber joined in. "Did he kidnap the princess?"

Squibella floated down into the triangle the three had formed. "Why does everyone always already know that part?"

Squibump looked up and then back to the group. "Okay, the princess might have been kidnapped again, but Squiddler and Squiddette will deal with it! They're on their way to the Island of Dread and Hate as we speak!"

The children were obviously shocked. "The Island of Dread and Hate!" Amber said, barely contained below speaking volume.

"That's where all those ships have disappeared! I know where that is!" Sebastian met his friend's eyes and they reached an immediate, unspoken consensus. "We have to go help them!"

"Huh? " Squibump flew up to them and began waving his tentacles. "Nooooo! "

But the children were not listening. "Come on, Squibella!" Amber said as she ran. Squibella, taking in the excitement of others as it was doled out in front of her, giggled and flew off only moments behind.

"Ohhhhhhh..." Squibump looked around, but it was obvious that Sister Bethany was all alone today, one way or another. He grabbed a sandwich and made his way off after the others. "Why is it always me?"

DVD Bonus Material
Amelia Everett (b March 17, 1924 – d April 13, 2009). Voice of Princess Berryboo, The Queen of Chimes, Sisters Bethany and Odette. "If I could be anyone I'd ever played," Everett said in a 2007 interview, "it would be [1943 femme fatale] Dahlia State by night, and Princess Berryboo by day. […] There's something to be said for optimism and pessimism and I'd rather take both hand in hand." Everett stayed with the show until its final days. "I think we were doing very good work with [Squiddles!]. We covered old ground… maybe too often… but some days we covered lessons I don't think young girls and young boys are hearing much of one way or another. […] It was a shame to watch the others go. I'd have liked to do at least one more run."

Aidan MacDermott (b March 1, 1932 – d April 13, 2009). Voice of Skipper Plumbthroat, Mint and various members of Plumbthroat's crew. Always the anecdotal bridesmaid, MacDermott's career, starting with the role of Ariel in The Tempest, spanned no less than 47 award-winning productions, though he never once collected an award himself. As he noted during his 2006 roast, "I was raised in the company of some of the finest actors of the British and American stage, and if my being here is any proof, have learned nothing from them." After a lifetime in dramatic and comedic roles, the classically trained actor claims to have been just as happy in either. "It was nice to be Plumbthroat. In the early seasons I was a goof and in the later seasons I got to be a monster, a little of both." Regarding his character swap with Jacob Watt, MacDermott says he holds no grudges. "Jacob did an excellent job as Mint-gone-bad," he said, "A shame about the accident."

Chapter Text

Far away, Squiddler, Squiddette and Squidradar continued to make their way through the ruin, Squidradar in the lead. Every few feet he would stop, close his eyes and concentrate, his friendship powers spreading out through the ocean and back to him like a loving echolocation.

"Just another hour now!" he said. "We've just got to keep going and... wait!"

"What is it, Squidradar?" Squiddler asked. Just behind him, guarding the rear, Squiddette clutched her coral staff and kept a careful lookout.

"There's something big ahead. Not another ruin, it's an animal. Wow... or maybe there's just a lot of them! Could it be..."

"We should go around," Squiddette said. "We don't want to bother anything that lives this close to the Island of Dread and Hate!"

"But that's just it, Squiddette!" said Squidradar, almost smiling. "I don't think they live there. They're not even near the island! I think it might..."

And then he stopped. Indeed, all three of the Squiddles stopped what they had been doing. Squiddette even loosened her grip on her staff. Turning slowly, they came about face to face with one of their most powerful, natural enemies.

"Well I say, what do we have here?" said the sea turtle. "I was hardly expecting to have guests for dinner!"

Squiddler reached out a quivering tentacle. "W-we're not afraid of you!"

The turtle extended its head toward them. "Aren't we now? Now, let's not make this personal."

And in immediate reply, Squiddette struck him across the face with her staff. The others, and even she, looked about for a moment, bewildered, before she shouted: "Swim!" She grabbed Squiddler and they both swam for their lives in one direction, while Squidradar, in a moment of panic, took the other, heading back the way they had come.

Squiddette led Squiddler over a nearby bank of sank, directly away from the turtle, and noticed a nearby hiding spot formed by two pieces of rotten timber. They pulled into it, panting for breath.

"Did you see where Squidradar went?" Squiddette asked.

"No!" said Squiddler. "We have to go back for him." Squiddette was still panting but nodded. In the background, barely perceptible at first, the sand beneath them began to shift.

" We need a plan, fast!" Squiddette said. " I'll distract him with my staff and you... uh... you lead Squidradar right back here when he's not lookiiiiiiiii—!"

From beneath the soft sand a second turtle lunged out with his head, snapping his mouth closed like a guillotine almost touching Squiddler's tentacles. In doing so the sand bank beneath the beams was revealed for what it really was, the beams supporting one another well without the temporary weight of the hidden turtle below. The jellyfish swam for their lives as Laughlin shook himself off.

Squidradar, for his part, had taken off toward a curious artefact ("It's t)(at t)(ing again! From t)(e ot)(er episode!") and hid in one of its alcoves. There he waited, trembling, and he cast his eyes down to the sand below. The sun was setting, and while it was distorted by the waves Squidradar could make out the shadow of the artefact spread along the ground. It was superficially rendered, by a computer in nineties vanity, but still showed when the original turtle raised up behind the artefact to search. Squidradar locked his eyes on the shadow of the artefact's mangled antenna, which was bent at an angle and branched thrice in one direction, twice in another. He stared, trembling, as each tick was consumed by the turtle's shadow as it rose up and over. As the turtle's shadow seemed about to overcome the final branch, where it would see Squidradar for sure, it turned and swam away.

Sighing with relief, Squidradar was not able to rest long, as he could make out his friends' voices in the distance. He had to help them, but what to do? He had only one plan: he clenched his eyes tight and sent out his thoughts once more into the deep.

As for his friends, Squiddette and Squiddler darted in opposite directions, only to discover that they now had two turtles chasing them rather than one. Squiddler ducked down and accidentally came too close to the ground, where he came to a rough stop.

"I say, boy, where do you think you're goin'?" said the turtle, who began to circle him as the music on the soundtrack again reverted to orchestral in a low key. "A'int nowhere to go in any direction, not when you've got two full-grown sea turtles on your tail."

"Funny," said Laughlin, who joined the other on the opposite side of his circle. Squiddette fell in just ahead of him. She careened into the ground, against a rock and rolled to a stop not far from her friend. "I was just telling her the same thing!"

Squiddler pulled up against Squiddette, who had hit the ground hard and had a dark bruise already formed on her head in the fashion of cartoons, but otherwise quite without, as she stared hard at the ground below her. Squiddler reached out a slow tentacle towards her, but she did not react, instead looking vaguely to one side like she could do no better.

"C'mon, Squiddette," Squiddler whispered. Nothing. He began to shake, and the turtles closed.

"Don't see many brightly-coloured jellyfish though, do we, Laughlin?"

"No, sir!"

Slowly, Squiddette looked up with her whole head, a low groan coming from her mouth. Though the turtles edged ever nearer, she reached out and took Squiddler's hand, understanding, and he smiled back with some confidence. "Well," he said. "Then I guess you don't know what we can do... when we're with our friends!"

And the two jellyfish began to glow, an aura formed of both colours that shone in the deep water. It cast off beyond them in soft waves, in a fading gradient that overcame the dank of the ocean floor and filled the underwater graveyard with colour. The turtles froze at the sight of the glimmering light, a tactical mistake, as the light lanced off in a wide beam and struck Laughlin hard on the underside of his shell. The beam faded as he fell away, and Squiddler looked to his friend in confusion as her eyes fell closed.

The other turtle glared down at the jellyfish beneath him. "And what do you do when you're running up against someone and his friends?"

He gave them no time to answer. With speed not belied by what he could manage on land, the turtle crashed to the ground in a flurry of sand, knocking Squiddler away, and he slammed his jaws tight about Squiddette.

And so, in an instant, it was over; but in another, the victory changed hands. A shadow moved above, unseen by the camera favouring Squiddler's shocked and narrow point of view, and a massive shape – a tail – came down and struck the turtle hard across the back. With a lurch, it coughed up Squiddette and a cloud of sand, and Squiddler was by her side at once.

She was looking about the world in a slow, staggered way when he caught her short of the ground. "Squiddler?"

"...Hi," he said back. "Are you okay?"

Squiddette mumbled a reply but took to her tendrils, floating in the water under her own power. Squiddler could only pass along a guilty, nervous smile he disentangled from her and looked up at their saviour.

Their rescuer was no small denizen of the deep. It loomed above them such that they were only small shapes on a massive matte that had been drawn to spare the animators the trouble of working with such a beast frame-for-frame. Instead it existed as a creature of watercolour and heavy shading, cast by scattered light through the prism of water above. It cooed down at them through the combed teeth of a baleen whale.

The whale song went uncaptioned, but Squiddler seemed to understand it well enough. "Yes sir," he said. "Thank you, sir."

Squiddette looked up under her own power and Squiddler followed to see Squidradar arrive. "I told you I sensed something!" he said with a laugh, and was barrelled over by another new arrival. A young female baleen, about his age and not at all his size, came to a stop in front of the others and took an immediate interest in Squiddette.

"I-I'm fine, really," she said in response to the calf's soprano cries. "Really."

("That's his friend he mentioned earlier, that had to go away," Rose explained. "'Bailey.'"

"Yeah," Jade said. "Sorry, I didn't want to force you to watch all them or anything."

"YEAH, GREAT, IRRELEVANT FUCKING CONTINUITY. LET'S HAVE A GODDAMN PARTY OF THE STUFF, WHY DON'T WE?")

The father whale boomed down another song, to which the Squiddles replied in a very different matter.

"Oh, no!" Squidradar said for all of them. "We can't hurt the turtles!"

The camera cut to Laughlin, who was staring up at the whale with a mix of confusion and dizziness, but not so dizzy that he did not make out Squidradar's translation and take in with surprise and fear.

"Yeah!n" Squiddler said. "I mean...Just because they tried to eat us doesn't make them bad" And now, unmistakably, Squiddler began talking to the camera rather than the whale. "It's all part of the magical balance the world called the 'ecology' and the 'food chain!'"

"That's right!" said Squidradar, moving neatly into frame and taking on the same lack of respect for the fourth wall. "Turtles eat jellyfish because they need to to survive! There are other things out there that eat turtles, too! "

"So even though we don't want to be eaten, " Squiddler said, "we aren't going to be mad at the turtles, because they're just doing what we are: trying to survive! "

Then Squidradar threw all pretence to the current. "You and your mommies and daddies might eat meat too, or even get the money you need to survive from jobs that catch fish or work with meat! "

"Did I mention," Rose said, "that as well as being pro-poly, this show is also violently pro-consumerism?"

"OH MY FUCKING GOG I'M GOING TO BE SICK. HARLEY, I'M GOING TO BE SICK ON YOUR GODDAMMED LAP, GET READY."

"I think it's more of an editorial mandate because it just doesn't match the personality of the creators, which I'll admit is a bit sketchy but so much so that I couldn't believe they were all that interested in money most of the time."

"IT'S NOT BECAUSE YOU'RE NEXT TO ME, IT'S BECAUSE THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT."

"Okay, both of you shut up!" Jade had to put a hand in front of Rose's mouth to silence her, which Kanaya took over for her, but as for Karkat she simply took the popcorn from him. She ignored his angry puppy response with smooth poise. "If you're feeling sick, fuckass, you shouldn't be eating it!"

"Look," he said, "can we just fast-forward past the oh-so-valuable lesson here?"

"Yeah, yeah," Jade said, though she only had to do so for a few seconds.

"So..." Nepeta asked in the time it took. "Are there normally whales in this show?"

"Well, they show up from time to time," Jade explained, swatting back at Kanaya when Rose started giggling at something she was doing. "Just a few episodes ago, like I said, and again in a few weeks. It sort of ties in to another thing that's happening to Milo."

Seeing a curious look from the Troll girls on her left, Jade continued. "Well, Milo is doing just fine, and Dargon's been picking on the Squiddles in other ways instead. But one day, Carmen and Diego look like they're going to be adopted by someone from off the islands."

"What's that?" Feferi asked, and Jade and Rose took a few moments to describe the process of adoption to the suddenly intrigued Trolls. Nepeta explained the interest quite succinctly when she turned to the other three for confirmation.

"So it's sort of like a lusus!"

That accomplished to satisfaction, Jade continued her story. "Milo learns his friends are going to go and he's really upset. One day he goes into the basement and looks at the artefact, which magically shows up there again, and Dargon is waiting for him. He starts telling him really awful things about his friends, and Milo starts getting madder and madder at them."

"The worst part is that they're all true, because Dargon's a jerk like that," Rose said. "Sometimes he's just frank but the rest of the time it's just... people not being perfect. Kids don't get that."

"At the same time, Squidradar is upset because the whales have come back from migration." Jade hoped she did not have to explain migration, having forgotten she was talking to the sea princess, the huntress, the desert dweller, and Karkat, who would avoid admitting ignorance unless he felt it was absolutely necessary. "Bailey is a lot bigger, because she grew up while she was away—"

"And he," Rose interrupted, "lives in the thankless, pitiless and mostly-timeless void cartoon characters inhabit against their will."

Jade was able to ignore Rose entirely at this point, though she had a rougher time with Karkat, who was trying to get more popcorn. "Squidradar realizes that even though Bailey's happy to see him, she's changed a lot, and one day she'll be grown up and have a family of her own. Milo's just had a fight with the other kids, and he's thinking about going to make a wish on the artefact, when he runs into Squidradar and they talk." Jade shrugged. "Eventually they realize that it's good that their friends are going their own ways, and maybe it's even better for them, too. Some relationships are special and stay, some are special and... change. So they promise to make the best of what they have left, that sort of thing."

"And continuing our theme of abrupt, jerk endings," Rose finished: "the last shot is of him alone in the room he used to share with them. God knows where the other three that bunked there went. Sucked up into the void by Pathos, I guess."

"So, " Kanaya asked, swatting at Karkat for having strong-armed a handful of popcorn from Jade during her speech. "What does Dargon want that makes him so set on torturing this Milo?"

"It's actually pretty clever," Rose said. "Dargon's artefact is cued to activate on certain magic words. Two people have to say it: one from his world and one from ours. The magic word is, uh..." She and Jade exchanged a few rusty pronunciations before settling on "eyoosh." "Which," Rose continued, "through the way Milo extends his w's, sounds just enough like: 'I wish.'"

"What does it do?" asked Nepeta.

"It opens a hole in reality and lets Dargon through for real," Rose said. "Did we... mention that part? No? Well, the deal is that we never actually see Dargon the whole time. When he's finally revealed near the end, it... well, it turns out he's not actually there and he just... possessed Plumbthroat, because kids can only handle the idea of one villain, I guess. We hadn't seen him since this episode."

"So, Dargon's a ghost or something?" asked Karkat between chews.

Rose was about to answer when something occurred to her. Slowly, curiously, she met Jade's eyes, understanding at last. "...Sort of," she said instead of her original answer. "You'll see." To Jade, her tone was very different. "Holy crap!" she said, low, but not quite a whisper. "I... I had totally forgot! ...Did I... block it out?" Jade was just as confused, but said nothing.

"What is it?" asked Kanaya, but Jade just waved her off.

"You'll see. In just a minute, you'll see."

The show continued with Squibump and the two human children on an older-fashioned ship, but one still equipped with a motor that had them island-hopping at high speeds.

"Is this really such a good idea?" Squibella asked, her face full of glee more than inquiry as the sea-spray hit them all in the face.

"I'm gonna say no," Squibump said, "but n-none of you are going to listen to me!"

"But we've got to help our friends!" Sebastian insisted, though he seemed less confident than he had before. "And Billy thinks it's okay, right Billy?"

The camera cut to the side, where a man totally encased in an old-style bell-suit stood waiting, already attached by a hose to a machine on the deck. "Wellllllllll..." Billy said, "I dooon't really knooow if I can just say yeeeeeees..." He very slowly moved his hand up to his face, unseen even through the glass, as though resting it on his chin. "But I guess I owe you all a loooot of faaaaaaavouuurrrs. But don't blame me if you all get in trooouble!" He pointed an accusing finger at all four of them, which took almost thirty seconds. "And don't get hurt, do you heeaarrrr?"

"Don't worry, Billy!" said Amber. "I'm sure it's going to be perfectly safe!"

Dramatic irony forming an acceptable scene break, the camera panned across the waves for a transition, and with a subtle shift in the stock tunes and the fading light. The camera came to rest some time later, once again night on the pitch-black deck of the Catchyegrabber, where a light shone from inside the cabin. The camera's slow zoom came in to find Princess Berryboo picking between the splayed wire and the duct tape, having carved out a fair patch, if still not enough to escape.

Her efforts were interrupted by a crack of thunder, this one louder than those that had proceeded it in the scene. She looked up with surprise and found that the porthole window was open.

"Princess!" came the cry of relief, as Squidradar poked his face in through the gap. "We found you!"

"Oh, no, no no!" Berryboo said, and moved out from under the tape. "Squidradar! No! You can't be here, you have to go!"

"Is that her?" asked another voice, and in a moment Squiddette (who looked much better as her bruise had entirely vanished) poked her head up in the window sill and struck a neat salute. "Your Highness!"

Berryboo could only let out a whimper of protest before Squiddler made his own entrance. "Princess!" he said with a smile. "Are you okay?" Berryboo nodded and Squiddler, efficient as ever, was already on the next question. "Where's Plumbthroat?"

"They're on the island," Berryboo replied. "Because it's not safe here! Squiddler: there's a monster in the water. 'The Leviathan!' You have to go right now!"

"Your Highness," Squiddette said, staff in hands, "I can't do that. If you're in danger, that means there's even more need for me to stay and guard you!"

"Besides," Squidradar said, "the whales will keep us safe."

Berryboo's reaction to the news was such that she actually began to sink. "The pod is here? In the water with that thing? Oh no, no, no, no, no!"

Squiddler was floating about the room, and turned back toward the aquarium. "Where's the screwdriver?" he asked.

"In the toolbox under the be—argh, no! Go away!" But no one was listening to her. "You have to—"

Lightning shot across the skies and below, as a bolt struck down not far from the ship. The thunder that followed was deafening.

"...oh no," Berryboo whispered.

"It's just a little thunder, Princess!" said Squidradar.

"No," Berryboo repeated. "Not in this storm. The Leviathan knows we're here!"

Squiddler was about to open his mouth to reply when the ship suddenly shifted, and the hope sank out of Berryboo's eyes. "Are we moving?" he asked, but the answer was immediately obvious, and reinforced by a wide shot of the ship suddenly on the move in a violent, ramping current and storm.

Squiddette, always willing to take her charge's word at face value if not her advice, took stock of the situation. "...Get the tape!" she said, and immediately set to work attacking the mesh with her staff. Despite Berryboo's protests, Squiddler joined her and began to pick at the tape with the screwdriver. They worked at the hole for a time, until suddenly the ship lurched, hard. While Squiddette caught onto the edge of the aquarium, Squiddler went flying in one direction and his screwdriver in another. It was Squidradar that retrieved it and set back to work, Squiddler coming over with a pencil. Seeing her friends were just going to stay until she was with them, Berryboo herself joined in, pulling on the largest splayed patch of wire with tentacles and cartoon teeth. The storm raged on.

"Got it!" Squiddler shouted, and Berryboo felt the splayed edge come down in her arms, and she pulled open a wide rent in the screen. Squeezing through the gap, she found herself out in the free air with her friends, who made to pile on her in a traditional hug before she beat them off and directed them to the porthole. Squidradar was first, Squiddette insisted on going last, but they all made it, only to find that they had only escaped into a worse situation. In an instant, a dark shadow lashed out, and Squidradar disappeared at once, under the waves.

Over on the dark, rocky shores of the Island of Dread and Hate, Plumbthroat and his salty band watched by bonfire-light as the Squiddles escaped, but there was no look of disappointment on their faces, just cruel jeers. Back aboard the ship, Ox and several other aquatic members of the crew boarded and immediately set to work. "Pull 'er out!" he ordered. "Run, or we'll lose her to the Locker!" Plumbthroat stood out on the coast surrounded by the others, holding the only spot of light on the shore cast by the flame in his pipe. Though his eyes seemed conflicted they could barely be seen in the shadows, and as worse shadows gathered in the air above the water he could not help a dark, triumphant smile.

"We have to go back after him!" Squiddler said.

"Squiddler..." Berryboo stalled, her eyes darting back and forth between the waves and the distant chance of safety, and Squiddette seemed posed to get her to the latter at even this cost. But their thoughts were interrupted when another shadow cut across them, forcing them to part. The piercing call of whale song broke out to follow, a cry that cut across even the stock, action soundtrack that had been playing. Instead the whales took over, confused and angry moans filling the night amid percussion of thunder, from which an orchestra, rising, drew their cues. The camera took to the skies, as below the Squiddles had opened a great whirlpool.

Lightning crashed and showed the outline of the larger whales on the outskirts beneath the violent waves. Inside their circling patrol: a great mass, which rose from the centre of the whirlpool as though oil from a crack in the ground. And like oil it expanded, amorphous and sprawling, until it had grown to the edges of the whirlpool and beyond, huge beyond measure. As it grew, the whirlpool deepened and the ship began to spin in, Ox and his patrol fighting against its ultimate destruction. And as they fought, the soundtrack reached its crescendo and, the Leviathan breached the lowest point of the whirlpool, skin shining in the light of the storm. Its head peered out and its great beak opened wide, the water pouring inside in its spiral, into a mouth large enough to swallow the ship and the tiny Squiddles in a single bite. And it continued to rise.

Jade paused. The room, even those that had previously been ignoring the others and their movie, was silent except for the voice of Rose, who was whispering to herself. "How did I forget?" in variations over and over.

"...Well..." Karkat said, "isn't it obvious, Grimdarky?"

The only one who was not staring at the screen in revulsion was Feferi, who was simply confused. She peered up at the shot, frozen as it was on a lightning flash, and reached for the remote, moving from frame to frame until she was satisfied. She then turned to Jade and answered the question that had started this all.

"Yep," she affirmed. "That's my lusus."

DVD Bonus Material
Sachin Bhatt (b December 29, 1967 – d April 13, 2009) – Voice of Billy the Bellsuit Diver, many wildlife voices, among others, Seasons 1 through 3. Bhatt, who rose to become a Bollywood leading man in 2003, had his roots in a wide variety of early projects, including all three seasons of The Squiddles. There, he served as the second Billy the Bellsuit Diver before being replaced by a rotating stable of production assistants until the show's death. Brought in during the transitional period between production studios between the pilot and Season 1 proper, Bhatt's vocal range proved much wider than his now-popular tenor. His sonorous take on Billy conflicts dramatically with his energetic take on eels and small birds that made him a show regular and fan favourite, and he was kept by producers long after production was moved out of Bombay. Sanchin left the show in Season 3 in a show of unity with Marsette and Watt. His last few exchanges with the producers appeared to have gone foul, as the famously polite Sanchin shocked an interviewer by revealing – calmly – that he had outright burned the final letters sent to him after his employment was terminated. "That," he said, "was enough."

Aesha Kattan (b August 23, 1986 – d August 21, 2008) – Voice of Squibella and Carmen. Kattan's voice acting career had only just begun with The Squiddles, when Studio Upton hired her to voice their new infant Squiddle. Kattan remembers being terrified not by the recordings but by the readings with other cast members, but says that they welcomed her with open arms. "I was just doing my voice for Squibella, not anything special. Everyone else took me under their wings and helped me to really do this right." While Kattan was too young to actually quit the show with her compatriots, she said that she would have gladly. "They're my heroes. Were and are. I don't much remember the studio, and what was going on there, but if they said jump, I would have trusted them. Meeting with Laura, Sachin and Amelia were some of the best memories of my life. [...] If we wanted to do a reunion I'd be there in a heartbeat, but some of them just don't want to talk about it." In the summer of 2008, Aesha Kattan was killed while on a trip to the beach with friends, after being pulled underwater by a riptide. She was 21.

Chapter Text

Feferi had been staring straight at the TV when she made her dramatic announcement, and so did not notice the immediate reaction. As a result, she had time to add: "I thought you were going to ask me a BIOLOGY QU-ESTION!!" before all hell broke loose.

Karkat jumped to his feet and rounded on Jade and Feferi, pelting them with questions as Nepeta and Rose stared on in flabbergasted horror. Kanaya attempted to overpower Karkat's shouting to bring the discussion to a more reasonable volume, but no one heard her, as others in the lab joined in to tell Karkat to shut up. They finally left outright and did not return, leaving the six at the TV to their own private spat. The shouting only became more focused when Jade seemed to hear Kanaya and began angrily pelting Karkat with popcorn up until she landed one in his open mouth.

"WHAT THE HELL?"

"I said shut up, fuckass!"

"OH AND A SIMPLE FUCKING 'BE QUIET' WAS TOO HARD FOR YOU, THEN?"

"Looks it was too hard for you! Why don't you try listening to people once and a while, and maybe—" "MAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY SHUTTING YOUR DAMN MOUTH WHEN SOMEBODY'S TALKING, DIDN'T YOUR DOG TEACH YOU..." "...think you'd have realized by now that just maybe you're not the centre of..." "...WAITING FOR A PAT ON THE FUCKING HEAD FOR ENFORCING BASIC SOCIAL NORMS, I CAN'T IMAGINE—" "...so far up your waste chute that you don't even—"

But then: "Maybe you two should get a room!" Nepeta cut off her shout by tearing off her hat and spiking it in her lap. "Ugh!" She reached forward to snap up the remote and the room shook with noise as the others tried to shift out of her way. Karkat was so quick to avoid her that he knocked over a pile of Friedberg and Seltzer films. Nepeta, wilfully ignorant to the shocked silence about her, began to rewind the DVD to its position just before the interruptions. When she looked up after pausing it there, a blush began to creep onto her face. She smothered it with anger until finally passing off the conversation to "...Karkat?" with as much sarcasm as possible.

Karkat watched her out of the corner of his eye and did not speak until her hat was once again securely on her head. When he did, it was to Jade. "You know," he said, "you could have just said, 'Hey, there's an eldritch horror in this TV show. That's weird.'"

"I wasn't sure what it was, Karkat," Jade said, with a tip of her head to Feferi. "It might have just been a squid, or a kraken."

"A what?" Feferi asked.

"It's a... well..." Jade turned around to Rose for an explanation, only to see her friend staring off into space, tapping a finger on her lips. "Uh, Rose?"

But Rose gave no response: not even a blink from her enthused, focused eyes. "She's thinking," Kanaya said, not without concern. Jade had to defer to her when it came to Rose's physical expressions – though Jade had known Rose for years, Kanaya had spent more time with her in person by degrees.

"Great," Karkat said, "Grimdarky had gone bye-bye. Okay, honesty time:" Karkat said to Feferi. "Did you, or did you not, put your fucking lusus into the new universe against my goddammed orders?"

"No!" Feferi snipped.

Nepeta's did not take the renewed shouting well and stomped to her feet. "Karkat, this is a cartoon!"

Karkat spread his arms wide toward the TV. "Then why is she THERE?"

"I don't know!" Nepeta said, irritation still her byword. "Maybe she sent them a picture?"

"On Earth?"

"Oh my God, that's it." Rose whispered, unperturbed by the nearby argument. "...They're insane." In a bit of a daze, Rose stood up and began to pace, but on her second pass she stopped to reached out and rub Nepeta between the horns, eliciting the first cat sound from her since her outburst. "It explains everything. Assuming that this is unmistakably Feferi's lusus and not some other ambassador from the Horrorterrors..."

"Of course it's my lusus!" Feferi said with a bit of a huff. "And if there was an Ambassador on Earth, you'd have known! Think I don't know my own lusus..."

Rose nodded absently. "Well, Earth hasn't been short of eldrich rule ourselves," she said, earning a confused glance from Jade, "but we'll assume that isn't the case. Listen: the production staff had to have seen her to get such an accurate drawing. Spending that much time staring at a Horrorterror, trying to figure out how it relates to space and light to properly depict it..."

"Gl'bgolyb wasn't a real Horrorterror," Feferi said, arms crossed and glaring.

"I..." Rose looked back to Kanaya, who shook her head. "I'm sorry, you're right. That was rude of me to assume." But Rose's mind did not stop working. "...However, if your lusus had never been on Earth, the means of transmission..." she snapped her fingers. "The only way someone could have drawn your lusus is if they saw her, either because an image was put into their minds or because she talked to them directly via timeless space. Humans don't react well to that over time," she said, then stumbled. "Trust me."

Perhaps because she had Rose had already discussed Rose's history with the Horrorterrors to satisfaction, Kanaya was the one to break the awkward silence that followed. "But why a cartoon? If we're assuming that this was a sent message, it must have been deliberately sent to Human cartoonists."

"Not necessarily," Rose said. "Most evidence on Earth about eldritch interference was found second-hand via archaeological sites, et cetera."

Jade rolled her eyes. "Rose, those were short stories in science fiction magazines from the thirties!"

"Extremely accurate short stories, weren't they?" Rose tapped the side of her nose, and Jade hit her with a pillow.

Kanaya actually pondered Rose's point for a moment. "Then allow me to invoke a simple example. What seems less surreal: that an ancient Human artist contacted by Gl'bgolyb drew a piece on her that was rediscovered by a company producing a grub show about Human Friendship, or that she may have contacted the producers of a grub show about Human Friendship directly?"

There was a genuine pause in the conversation as the six of them took a moment to consider the question. "Kanaya," Nepeta said. "That's just more confusing."

It was Karkat who pieced it all together at last. "Well," he said, his throat dry. "Kind of obvious, isn't it?"

"How lucky of you to think so," Kanaya said, her own head now lowered in thought.

"No, really," he said. "Either she sent it herself or someone else did it. Maybe a God we know. Maybe an old friend," he said, Rose not meeting his eyes despite his attempt. "What's the common element?"

"My lusus," Feferi said. "So?" But after a moment, she caught on as well, her face falling. Jade saw the change and looked to Karkat.

"She or they used Feferi's lusus," he repeated. "Why use her lusus when they could have sent any sort of vision?"

Nepeta suddenly squirmed up into her spot. "Fefurry," she whispered.

"Us," Kanaya clarified. "This... either the episode or the entire – as you've said, unusual season – is intended for the sixteen of us."

"Can we be that sure?" Rose asked. "I'd appreciate a bit more evidence before assuming that it's meant for us and not... uh..."

The others exchanged glances. They were sixteen survivors, all alive, all relatively safe in the lab. They had long known that it was all too lucky. Not one of them was going to jinx their lives by uttering the words "Doomed timeline."

"...Leijon," Karkat said. "Turn it back on. Lalonde, Peixes!" Karkat pointed straight back to the maw emerging from the sill, paused sea. "I want to know any word she says."

When the camera returned from the Leviathan to the Squiddles, their reaction was one of pause and terror, like deer in the headlights. Berryboo reached toward Squiddette, both of them clinging her staff as if for reassurance that they were somewhat armed. Squiddler gaped at the whirlpool that had swallowed Squidradar whole; he was the one to speak first.

"I'm going after him," he said, mustering that impossible cartoon bravery that would be called foolhardy in any other place.

Squiddette floated forward to confront him. "No, we have to get the princess out of here! She's more important than all of us! "

Her words seemed to strike a devastating blow in Squiddler. "How can you say that about your friend?"

Squiddette clearly did not want to say anything of the sort about her friend, but she straightened up all the same, and was about to speak again when she was touched on the side by a small, purple tentacle. "...Go, " Berryboo said to Squiddler. "We'll be right behind you."

"Princess! " Squiddette said, turning to face her mistress. Squiddler slipped away at once, which only caused Squiddette to become more urgent. "We can't go down there! I thought you understood!"

"No, he's right!" Berryboo insisted. "You know it as much as me. We're Squiddles, we can't..."

Squiddette stood firm, the look of despair on her face cutting Berryboo all the deeper, until the princess' mind was made. In an instant, Berryboo demonstrated just how hard it was to keep someone constrained in mid-air by going into a dead-drop, down into the whirling waters.

An echoing call caught on the air as she plunged, and it hung there like a muffling blanket, warping the soundtrack to counter its vibrations and ripping through sound effects and art at random.

("She's talking." Feferi said. "It's like I'm hearing her against the current, though."

Rose agreed. "There's a voice there but it's not coming out right."

Some experimentation provided their answer, and Karkat conducted their viewing all-but-seamlessly from there. He replayed each line of the Leviathan's at half speed in reverse from there on out, demanding and receiving a translation for each with only a few quick orders. He was Leader and his battlefield was a televised program emphasizing the power of relationships: if never before, he was now in his perfect element.)

"a'crovis ntoyo, may caerwwych nechion ex br'ith merrarch, nre..."

(Rose closed her eyes to think. "She's noticed the whales are there for the Squiddles and wants to capture him so..."

Feferi giggled. "Eridan could tell you that one. She's hungry!"

"Well at least this confirms she's genuinely a Horrorterror," Rose said. "'The sleeper wakens... feast upon the souls of the...' et cetera, et cetera. This is all fairly boilerplate."

Jade rubbed out her ear. "Is it just me, or do the whale songs sound funny backwards?")

Berryboo fluttered for a moment, as though she had recognized the strange sounds about her as speech, but darted away, knowing Squiddette must have been in hot pursuit.

In the distance another boat approached, with its young passengers now leaning fore to see what all the commotion was about.

"Oh no!" Squibump squeaked to the others. "It looks like there's some kind of storm!"

"Iiiiiii dooon't knooow if we should go ooouut theeerrre!" said the Diver, still managing the controls.

"Are you kidding?" shouted the child behind him, Sebastian. "Our friends are out there!"

The other child, Amber, agreed whole-heartedly. "We have to go help them!"

Squibella flew up from wherever she had been hiding, never once raising the subconscious question of how she stayed floating above a fast-moving vehicle she was no longer physically touching. She pointed a tiny tentacle forward and shouted "Full speed ahead!"

They didn't see the whales moving about below them, those of the pod staying back to protect the young. They didn't see one of the adults move to block one of the older children when she made a dash toward the whirlpool.

Far ahead, Squidradar bounced back and forth through the waves. Every escape route seemed blocked, another tentacle rising to block in his path and the current swept him aside with doubled force every time he tried to pull aside. The water about him trembled, sound passing by warped and distorted. The whales kept their distance, but he pulled toward the nearest all the same.

("I can't make her out underwater," Rose said.

"I'm not really following it myself!" Feferi said. "'Space is' ...uh... 'no space...'" Feferi waved her hands. "She's taunting him about not being able to use his eyes when she's not entirely on Earth."

"Ohhh..." chorused Jade and Kanaya. "Yes, definitely," said Kanaya. "In fact I can easily demonstrate the same. The tentacles in the top-left would have to be knotted to achieve that arrangement. Your lusus is strictly non-Euclidean, it's fascinating."

Jade pointed to another tentacle. "Heck, this one's a möbius strip. Look."

"DOES ANYONE WHO'S NOT IN THE SPACEY CLUB UNDERSTAND THIS?"

"i don't understand it karkitty, you can be confuzzed with me!"

"THE LAST THING IN THE WORLD I WANT TO BE IS CONFUSED WITH YOU.")

Suddenly, the world slammed shut in a spiral about the yellow Squiddle, the Leviathan claiming its prize between its tentacles. Squidradar threw himself against one tentacle wall, then another. Taking a deep breath, he began to send out his radar pulses and gave the wall one final ram. When he opened his eyes, he did so to discover himself free, if dramatically to the right of the arrangement (Jade nodded, sagely). He snapped his eyes back to the nearest whale and made his way toward it, eyes once again closed and relying entirely on his radar. The tentacles swirled behind him and everything came to a jarring halt, all at once.

Squidradar opened his eyes, first just a crack, and realized that he had somehow ended up upside-down. He opened them wider before throwing them open all at once.

"You're not a whale!" he squeaked.

"Is that so, lads?" Rat asked over his shoulder to the rest of the Catchyegrabber's skeleton crew. "We not a whale?"

"Well don't that just beat all," said Horse, who through thanks to rigid application of themed names was in actually a talking crane-man who had flown out to join the others. He held Squidradar hostage in what the animation team had accidentally drawn as a butterfly net. "Well, I'm just let down."

"Yer all be 'let down' if ye don't get back to yer posts!" snapped Ox, who grabbed the net by the strings just above Squidradar's tentacles. "Double-time, swabs!" The two made off as fast as they could, and Ox took the opportunity to raise the net and its passenger to eye-level. "Welcome aboard, " he hissed. "Now where be my dear brother?"

"Ox!" called a voice from the edge of the ship. "Let my friend go right now!" Squiddler hovered just onboard the ship, and Ox turned to face him, setting his hook against Squidradar's face.

"Now tha's not fair, Squiddly, " Ox said in a juvenile tone. "We was just having a little chat is all." He adjusted his grip with his many tentacles, and dropped the net soundly on the ground, only for one of his back tentacles to pass fore a single-shot flintlock pistol. He levelled it and fired in the blink of an eye, only for Berryboo to land aside his brother, grabbing him as she went. They both glowed purple for a moment, and the shot ricocheted into a nearby crate.

"What is wrong with you?" Berryboo shrieked as the power faded from around her. Ox just shrugged, a grin on his face and a gleam in his one good eye.

("That wasn't in the American release," Rose noted.)

Not far away, on the Isle of Dread and Hate, Plumbthroat's land-bound crew laughed uproariously at the display on their ship. Even Plumbthroat began to chuckle about his pipe, goaded on by his crew.

"Five dollars on the bosun taking 'em all on 'is own!" shouted Pig, after Tiger pointed out that their other allies on board were tied up bringing the ship out of the whirlpool.

"Five bucks on the bosun?" laughed Ram. "Ten on the giant squid!"

The others laughed even harder, and the thunder crashed as the Island as its guardian seemed to think so appropriate. They laughed so hard that only Plumbthroat, who was standing at Ram's side, noticed when his shipmate suddenly developed a lump on his head almost as tall as his attacker. Squiddette and Plumbthroat both watched him drop, he with a snarl on his face and she with a look of boredom as she tapped her staff in her other tentacles.

"...I've... eh... 'come to talk,'" she said, still admiring her work.

The rest of the crew had noticed her by then. Plumbthroat was saved the trouble of even having to take his hand off his pipe as a thicket of weapons rose past him to point at the Squiddle girl. "Aye?" Plumbthroat asked with a straight face.

Squiddette kept her eye on Ram for a moment longer. "Stop this..." she said, spinning her staff so that it pointed out to the storm. "Right now."

Plumbthroat waited, then leaned forward, cleaning out his pipe on top of Ram. "...and?" he asked at last.

Squiddette finally looked up, and when she saw the weapons, she cracked a smile. "Really, guys?" She pointed to Plumbthroat's head cook, the snail. She giggled the way Squiddles do. "Because... I fought a turtle, today. Your call!" She shrugged and let the results stand ambiguous. The snail slowly lowered his cutlass, and those around him could not help but retract theirs as well.

Plumbthroat glowered at his faltering left flank and crossed his arms behind his back. "Did you hear that, lads?" he said, as he walked toward the shore. "She wants me to call off the giant squid!" Squiddette, not quite sure what he was doing, followed him as he went. "She wants me... to call off... the giant, underwater Squid-Monster the size of the skyscaper!" A chuckle rolled through the crew. "Might as well move the moon!" he shouted, and the others laughed out loud. Plumbthroat turned back to his guest. "No, little one, your friends are on their own." And the thunder crashed.

Squiddette clenched her staff. "Not while I'm still here," she said, and made for the water. The sound of a half-dozen pistols cocking behind her cut off her escape. She turned to find the crew back at attention, and Plumbthroat with his pistol at the ready and cutlass at his side. Squiddette let go of her staff at once, first at one end and then the other, so that it fell standing up in the black sand. Lightning crisscrossed the skies, lighting up Plumbthroat's grin.

"Funny thing about Squiddles," he called over the noise of the storm, now so prominent. "They don't do well on their own." He smiled, and again the air shook with thunder, and his face fell. "Yarr!" he growled up to the skies. "Curse it, would ye leave me to manage me own gravitas?" Plumbthroat roared. The storm quelled, just a touch, leaving Plumbthroat and his crew's focus entirely on their prisoner.

Aboard ship, Ox calmly swapped out his one-shot pistol for his cutlass. He hovered low, two of his heavy tentacles now holding Squidradar's net firm to the deck despite his fervent attempts to escape. Berryboo edged herself in front of Squiddler – being very careful not to let go of his tentacle.

"Why are you doing this, Mint?" she asked.

"Aye," Ox said, "the Skip said ye were having trouble callin' folks by their proper names, but ye seemed much more polite before so I can't say I believed him at the time."

"P-polite?" Berryboo glanced down at Squidradar, who was curled up inside the net, quivering. "I was scared of you, you bully!"

"Yes, yes," Ox said, "but if ye'd be so kind, my business is more with me kid brother, who at least knows to call a gent what he'd rather be called, than be called whatever he'd rather not."

Squiddler pulled himself to the front, adjusting his tentacles with Berryboo. "Gee, Ox," he said, more chipper than the scene really demanded, excusing a nervous taint lurking at the end of his greeting. "I just call you that 'cause it makes you happy! You're still my brother!"

Ox scowled. "I don't be needing your pity any more than you be wanting to fake it."

Squiddler's face fell. "I'm not faking it, Ox. I still like you!" He looked back at Berryboo. "It's what we do, isn't it? Squiddles love all their friends!" Back to Ox, he said: "Don't you remember?"

"I remember..." Ox said, with a telling sneer. He reached down and hefted up Squidradar to his side. "I remember enough. You!" he said, pointing to Berryboo. She looked hurt by his refusal to address her by name, but he just smiled. "...Leave," he ordered, and tossed Squidradar overboard, still tangled in the net.

Berryboo and Squiddler exchanged glances for only a moment before she leapt over the edge after her other friend, and Squiddler ducked to the side before Ox pulled his second pistol. The shot embedded itself in the rail beyond, and Squiddler slipped into hiding between crates.

"Sir!" Rat called from the helm. "We're about ta pull free of the whirlpool!"

"Then bring us ashore!" Ox shouted, eyes strafing the crates. "We'll drive out this Squiddle scum for sure when we've got all hands on deck!"

Berryboo went after Squidradar, who was sinking further and further as he struggled against the tangled mess that held him. He had managed to get his head free by the time she reached him, but it took their combined effort to free his tentacles. When she had, he immediately replaced the old tangles by tangling his friend in thanks. She laughed, and so neither was looking when a great shadow came out at them from the deep. Squidradar caught sight of the thing at the last moment, and shouted out loud. In their panic, the two shot off a beam of their friendship at the shadow, and the dusty murk of the sea flashed with dim cyan light. The Leviathan's tentacle reeled back, but only for a moment before charging back toward them, with reinforcements.

"We need the rest of our friends!" Berryboo shouted as they swam.

"Where'd Squiddette go?" Squidradar called back.

The camera jumped back, back to the beach where Squiddette hovered under the guns of a sore-looking Ram. The Grundy Catchyegrabber was pulling in by the shore, where the crew was for the rope ladder to drop so they could board. The camera offered a poor angle, but slowly began to focused on Squiddette's face. She looked first right, toward Ram, then fore to Plumbthroat, who was not minding her in his hurry to get the others onto the ship. There, in the middle of the sudden chaos, she was given her opportunity. The ocean itself pulsed cyan, the bright light drawing the eyes of everyone around, except for the Squiddle, who they had already forced to look the other way.

She dropped to the ground, snapped up her staff and struck out, once at Ram's ankles, then at Plumbthroat's. The Skipper proved more resilient, and he turned his attention and cutlass on her, if too late to stop another blow across his kneecaps. They fenced once, twice and Squiddette pulled back with each step. Then, once she was far enough away, she threw herself back into the water and disappeared.

"Forget her!" Plumbthroat called to the others. "Onto—" But Plumbthroat's command was cut off when a red Squiddle landed on his head.

"Oh, hi Skipper!" said Squiddler. "'Scuze me!"

He snapped up the Skipper's hat and tossed it away, so that it landed square in the middle of Bosun Ox's face the moment he cleared the ship's rail. Squiddler was off like a shot from there.

"After him, ye dogs!" Ox shouted. He tore off the hat and tossed it back to the Skipper before continuing pursuit, which was not made easy for him. Squiddler kept one step ahead of Ox and the rank-and-file crew members: he bounced off of heads and dropped down only to steal one of their bags of gunpowder and shot, which he hurled again at his brother. From there, he hit the beach like a pinwheel, kicking up sand and spraying in the faces of his would-be pursuers. Turning back to Ox, who had jumped into the water to clean himself, he blew a raspberry and made his way back up the Isle, the bosun hot on his heels.

"After them, men!" shouted Rat, safe on top of the boat.

"No!" Plumbthroat shouted, still trying to rub sand from his eyes. "Man the net cannons!"

Back from the ship and centrally situated on the tiny Isle of Dread and Hate was a ruin: a small ruined tower barely a storey tall. It was to that point that Squiddler tumbled, and Ox followed.

"Wow!" Squiddler chirped as they went. "You can barely even fly any more, can you?" He frowned and fluttered a little lower to the ground. "You really don't have any friends on that ship." Ox threw a rock, which kicked his brother back into motion. "Why're you so mad at Berryboo?" he asked instead. "She still wants to be your friend!"

Ox grunted as he picked up the pace. They were ascending the tower, up a pile of rubble that might have once been stairs, but Squiddler was making sure to keep visible around the edge of the tower. "I'd tell you to ask her yerself, little brother, but once I catch ye, ye won't be doin' much askin' at all!"

"Aw, Ox, you're not gonna catch me!" Squiddler said. He paused for thought. "Sorry about that."

"Sorry? Yer sorry?" Ox swung his cutlass at the air. "There's no way off this island, Squiddler! The Skip'll see t' that!"

"Sure there's a way off!" Squiddler said. "I just have to trust in my friends!"

Something about that tweaked Ox. His eyes narrowed and he charged forward, catching up to his brother at once. He swung his cutlass wild, hitting the step there, the wall there, and Squiddler dodged each one with ease.

"That!" Ox shouted as he struck air. "Is not! A plan!"

Squiddler dodged the last swing and vaulted over the parapets at the top of the tower. Ox followed, but when he landed his battle rage slipped away at once.

"I don't know about that," Squidradar said when he saw Ox's frown.

Squiddette grinned at Ox, as maliciously as a Squiddle could, the animator clearly strained to match the voice actress' tone "It sounded like a pretty good plan to me!"

The camera cut a wide shot of the island, where the tower wall burst open and Ox, sent flying by a beam of muddied white light, landed in the water below. When the camera returned to the Squiddles, they were still glowing off-white and bouncing with elation and concentrated friendship.

"We should get out of here!" Squiddette said once the light and exuberance had faded, but it was a moment too late. A shriek cut through the scene, and all four Squiddles looked up to the hole they had made in the parapets.

("Squiddles can hear when people are upset over a mile away!" Jade said matter-of-factly. She was now deeply embedded in the couch, with Karkat's legs on her lap, the popcorn on top of that and Nepeta curled up around her arm and resting her head on Jade's shoulder.

"Really?" Karkat said. "How do they hear anything else over the sound of their audience, then?"

"Karkat, you don't have to insult everything."

"Try me.")

Then another cry, and then more. The Squiddles met one another's eyes.

"That was Squibella!" said Berryboo. "A-and that was Sebastian! And Amber and Squibump! Oh, guys, tell me the kids aren't here too! Tell me you didn't leave them with Squibump in charge!"

Squiddette made a face. "They're not supposed to be here-here," she said, and went to the hole to check, but fell down with a yelp. A net, propelled through the air, slammed over the opening. Squiddette popped up her head and looked out, but only until the net fell loose of whatever purchase it had found on impact. The old net tumbled to the sea – the next might thread the gap entirely.

"They're on Billy's diving boat!" she whispered to the others.

The other Squiddles exchanged glances for a moment, and Berryboo edged her way along the wall toward the hole. Once there, she called out: "Skipper?"

Through the magic of a writer's poor understanding of acoustics, Plumbthroat heard her clearly. His return cries sounded only slightly distant. "Princess! We've got you trapped in that tower. There's no way down and we'll net you if you come up. Now how about ye make this peaceable and come out quietly?"

"Skipper, there's another boat out there!" She gave him a moment to send someone to check and then continued. "Our friends are going to die if you don't do something!"

The pause clearly extended longer than she had expected. Berryboo's breathing began to shallow, knowing that every second Plumbthroat squandered was another second their friends had to spend at the mercy of the Leviathan.

"...Ye forget, princess!" Plumbthroat called. "The plan was t' let the Leviathan at yer friends! Seems to me there's no sense in stoppin' what's already the plan!" Berryboo simply closed her eyes when she heard Plumbthroat's complaint, but the others reacted with varying degrees of panic. From the distant sounds of things, the crew took the whole exchange as a joke.

"Skipper!" Berryboo called, eyes still shut. "Skip, don't do this! You don't want to hurt these people!"

The jeers from the crew answered her complaint before the Skipper even opened his mouth. "I think you'll find, princess, that the ends necessitate the means."

"Is there any way out?" Squiddler asked Squidradar. His friend shook his head.

"The whole building's collapsed under us!" he said. "It's just the roof here, on top of some really strong beams, we can't get out!"

"No, guys, " Berryboo said, her eyes sad. "I know how to get us out. Trust me. I know Plumbthroat." They watched her carefully, but all Berryboo did was to call out again. "Skipper." she said. "There are kids on that boat too. From the orphanage."

This time even the crew was silent. "...Children?" Plumbthroat said. There was a murmur of conversation from the ship.

"Doesn't care about us one bit, does he?" Squiddette said, her staff at the ready. The line was once again in the voice actress' under-her-breath tone, but the production team seemed to have decided to go with it.

Berryboo looked even more sullen and sad. "He... he should." Squiddler, who was nearest, fluttered over to hug her.

Plumbthroat called back a moment later. "There's nothing we can do about that monster," he repeated. "Jus' like I told yer friend."

Berryboo turned to her more tactically-minded friends. Squiddler spoke first, clearly improvising. "Well, all you need to do is get them out of the whirlpool. Get them onto your boat and get going."

Squiddette chimed in as soon as he was finished. "We'll distract the Leviathan!" When the others turned to her to ask how likely that was, she could only shrug.

Plumbthroat took another moment and then started shouting orders, loud orders, to move out and head toward the whirlpool. Squiddette peeked back out, this time between two of the parapets. When she signalled to the others that Plumbthroat was indeed fulfilling his end of the bargain, they followed after at doubled speed.

"Two of us weren't enough to stop one of its tentacles before," Squidradar said. His eyes were stuck on the water, which was rendered fast beyond what one would have assumed of the studio's budget. The Emissary of the Horrorterrors writhed below past silt and shadow, her tentacles tearing toward the boat but intercepted time and again by the whales, which were falling back bit by bit.

"Then we're going to have to get the others from the boat," Squiddette decided. "C'mon!" She veered off from the others, Squiddler fast behind her.

"I'm going to go talk to the whales!" Squidradar said. Below the two Squiddles, the whales' battle agains the Leviathan was still clearly visible. "We don't want them to get hurt!"

"Okay!" Berryboo had to shout to be heard over the storm as they got closer to the centre. She looked straight down, toward the white beak of the creature and the torrents of water the swept up into it with every passing moment.

"Are you going to wait here?" Squidradar asked.

Berryboo sighed. "No," she said. "...I..." she added, almost a laugh, "I'm... I'm gonna talk to it," she explained, with a half-hearted shrug and a forced smile. "It deserves as much a chance as anyone else, right?"

Squidradar looked astonished. "That's a great plan! I can't believe no one else thought of it! I can't believe anyone thought of it" he babbled. "We'd be a lot better off if we just talked about our differences instead of fighting over them!"

("All right, time to stab me. You all promised!"

"Karcrab, shush!")

"Heh heh... yeah." Berryboo turned away and started her slow descent toward the maw, but was stopped abruptly when Squidradar hugged her from behind. When he left a few moments later, Berryboo was left alone with her plan. She looked down, took a deep breath, and plunged.

The Leviathan did not take her intrusion without notice. Though the whales continued to strike at it from below, new tentacles appeared from the shadowy mass and rose up, high into the air until they and Berryboo nearly touched. She flew back, but froze when she remembered why she had come.

"Hello," she shouted. "My name is Berryboo. ...We live near here, and I want to talk!"

For a moment, with the camera caught over the princess' shoulder, the whirlpool stopped in mid-motion. Just for a split second it froze, and when it returned the sound in the air changed, worse than ever. Distortion reigned and the calls of the coordinating whales were once again replaced with a strange, jarring soundalike.

"gwoshna brestos mi senarii"

("'Your pleas fall on the deaf ears of mountains.'"

"'Sunken mountains,' I think.")

Berryboo shook her head intermittently, violently. "Please!" she called. "Just talk to me. Ugh, gotta get closer..." She reached down toward the creature, and as she spoke and fell, the reverberations around her continued.

"Meazathoth kav brestin"

("'The Noble Circle isn't here to listen.'")

"brestiu gah feferi iar"

("You'll be the one to listen, sea-princess."

"WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, WAIT. I HEARD THAT."

"W)(AT IS IT?"

"It said 'Feferi!' What, you were named by your five-hundred storey space-lusus?"

"OF COURS--E!! Didn't your lusus name you?"

"...Is my name 'Grarrrggghgllgl'?")

Berryboo reached out further; the thunder crashed above her and the power of her hope for friendship glowed about her in a purple haze. She was so focused on the horror below her that she did not see the tentacle sweep out of the dark to her left. For a moment, the camera jumped to her point of view, staring straight down at the beast below, and then, impact! The camera jarred violently to the right, and twisted her view left before it suddenly went red. When it returned it stared straight into the dead eyes of a rotted skeleton, and then jumped: a man wrapped tight in shadows, then a relic lost deep on the seabed, then red again, which held.

"Stop, stop!" Karkat shouted. "What were those?" He had the others strafe back and forth over the brief montage until he had his answers.

"They're from later in the arc," Rose said. "Except they're in reverse order. Not unlike her speech."

"Yeah," Jade said. "You remember the relic from the sea floor," she said, pointing to the third image paused on screen. "Look at the top of the screen. There's the winch: this is from a few episodes from now when Plumbthroat brings up the relic."

"The second shot..."

"That's Prince Dargon," Jade said. "Or Plumbthroat possessed by Dargon, however you want to put it."

Karkat began to curse. "...so yeah," he said. "You both realize by now that your evil prince that wants to open a hole in reality is—"

"A Horrorterror, yes," Rose said. "Fairly obvious in hindsight, but it's all coming back now."

Jade picked up the last. "The third shot... well, the first shot, is one of Cap'n Flint's pirates from Treasure Island!" No response. "It's a children's novel from a hundred years ago?"

Rose explained without the trouble of going into the actual plot. "When Dargon's plans go south, he gathers all the major villains at Treasure Island and the Squiddles go to find him there. Common assumption is that the producers conned the investors into thinking they were funding a literature plot instead of the terrifying episode that actually resulted for the series finale."

When Jaded realized, to her relief, that no one was actually listening to Rose's fannish speculation, she picked up the story. "Dargon turns out to be a pretty bad boss and pretty much everyone is bloodied and half dead. Plumbthroat's crew tattles to the Squiddles that Dargon is just possessing Plumbthroat. In the end, all the bad guys have turned on Dargon and the Squiddles are going to blast him with friendship from everybody, but Berryboo tries to talk Plumbthroat out because she doesn't want him to be hurt. Long story short, it works and they blow the real Dargon into paradox space before he can really attack."

Karkat grunted. "So where does that leave us?"

Nepeta raised a hand, and when no one noticed, propped it up with another hand. "Question," she said, until Karkat acknowledged her with a glare. "Am I the only one that actually wants to watch the episode instead of talking about it?"

"I kind of do," Feferi said. "I don't want the princess to be hurt!"

Karkat's protests about all them being hurt by "fucking eldritch magic" if they were insufficiently prepared were quickly overturned.

Far below Berryboo, Billy the Bellsuit Diver's little boat rocked back and forth as a whale, just below, lashed out at an approaching tentacle. The whale's tail caught the boat on the follow-through, and its passengers hung on for dear life.

"Whoooooooa! Iiiiiii don’t like this any more!" Squibella clung to a bundle of rope on the wall of the ship's cabin.

"Just hang on, Squibella!" called the little girl, Amber.

"Nowwww," said Billy, who was still outfitted in his diving suit and did not truly seem perturbed by the situation. "You children are wearing your life jackets, riiiiight?"

"Wow," said Squibump, who seemed to be the only one brave enough to look over the edge, if only barely. "I'm sure glad Squibella and I can breathe underwater, or we'd need life jackets too!"

"You should alwayyys wear your life jaaaackets," said Billy. "Even when there's not a stoooorm because you neeeverrr knooooow juuu—"

"Guys!"

"Squiddler!" Everyone on the boat walked carefully to the side of the ship where their friend had appeared. Billy continued his lecture to an audience of none.

"Oh, I'm so glad you're okay!" Squibella shouted, and then herself at Squiddler. When Squiddette appeared to his side, whatever she was about to say was interrupted as she, too, was struck back by a tiny green bullet.

Sebastian looked up sheepishly toward Squiddler. "We... we came to help," he said.

"Now you kids know better than that!" Squiddler said. "I know we've had lots of adventures together but this is too much! Billy!" The bellsuit diver lurched, as though shaken from sleep.

Squiddette floated forward after prying Squibella from her skin. "We've talked to Plumbthroat, he's coming to get you all. You're going to have to abandon ship!"

"No!" protested the children, which in this case included Squibella.

"Nowww kiiiids," Billy said. "You come over heeeere, and I'll tell you the story about why it's impooortant to trust people, and to never look a gift hoooorse iiin the mooooooouuuth."

"Not you two!" Squiddette said as the other Squiddles started off to join the kids. "We need as many Squiddles as we can get!"

"But..." Squibump looked back at the kids. "Gee, Squiddette, we can't just leave them! They need us!"

"We need you too!" Squiddette admitted. "And they need you to be with us! We need every Squiddle we can get!"

Squibump turned toward his tangle buddy, who put on her toughest face and headed up to him. Together, they took to the air after their friends.

The Squiddles had not gone far from the boat, however, when Squiddler stopped. "Every Squiddle we can get, huh?"

Squiddette turned back to him. "Oh, no, Squiddler, don't."

But he turned all the same, and swept through the air just outside the perimeter of tentacles. He flew until he came up to the still-distant hull of the Grundy Catchyegrabber, only now out to sea and en route to the children.

"I don't see yer distraction, Squiddle," Plumbthroat accused in lieu of greeting.

"Almost on it," Squiddler said, determination in his eyes. He passed by the sea captain and several of his anthropomorphic crew before finding the one he looked for.

"Ox..." he called, and held a tentacle outstretched. Ox, his tentacles still gripping a rope, looked to his brother, but his look tightened and he turned away.

"...Okay," Squiddler said. Without another word, he turned back to the sea, and flew up to join his friends.

"There he is!" Squibella called when she saw a spot of red on the horizon.

Squibump reached out to take her tentacle. "That's great, Squibella, let's go!"

Squibella was a jostling bundle in his hands from there on out. With her friends, she was no longer afraid, and she was already bubbling with both her and his power. "This is going to be great! We're going to show that big monster what it means to face friends that look out fo—" She stopped with a gasp as Squibump and the others came to a sudden, aerial halt.

Berryboo hung in the air, slumped forward, her breathing carefully rendered: shallow and slow. Her eyes were closed and her cartoon skin had changed: where she had once been purple, her skin now sucked in the light with a deep black; where she had been highlighted yellow or teal, her markings now shone with gleaming light that cast a white aura about her body. An eyelid cracked open, revealing a pupil like a pit, surrounded by white that glowed stronger than any other part of her body. She saw them.

"...a'vrr?"

("...Oh! That was: 'Guys?'" Feferi translated, but only when she realized Karkat alone had kept his focus on the show, as opposed to their company.)

Berryboo, seeing the others stare, looked down at her own tentacles. Squiddette floated forward and reached out toward her princess, but Berryboo shirked back, and shook her head violently.

A whale's coo cut through the air as the Squiddles tried to sort with one another, but the call changed as a wave of air seemed to pass up by them from below. The reverberation returned and the whale song changed, this time clear and without distortion: like all the others, it had been replaced with a human shriek.

"r's nrakk mlcorian trok br'th nyrania"

("'The plans of children will fall like blocks...'" Rose said, unperturbed by the developments or the stares. "That's odd."

"No fucking commentary!"

"Well it's just very human-centric, considering... Never mind. ...She's just talking about food again, now.")

"...mr'sis nechion, nret merrarch q'dwow" The thing repeated itself many times, the whirlpool speeding up below it as the whales pulled away. It became impossible to tell from the distance whether or not the ships were safe.

Squibump, his eyes darting between the princess and the sea, caught sight of the tentacles first. They were still low below them, but rising. He grabbed hold of Squibella and Squiddler by the tentacles and Squibella, in turn, reached out to Squiddette. Squiddette barely noticed long enough to grip her back. Her staff held tight in other tentacles, she focused instead on her mistress and friend, tentacle outstretched.

Berryboo stared at the others as they began to glow. Slowly, she began to float back and away.

Squiddette shook her head. "No time!" she called. Berryboo raised her tentacles in protest.

("'I can't, it's not safe.'")

More strange syllables spilled from Berryboo's mouth. "Nykava, x'p dtree!"

(Feferi did not so much confirm Rose's pre-translation as turn back to her in confusion. Rose knew the others were looking at her, but she only looked to Karkat. "This..." she said, with a tap at the back of the couch, "...is meant for our timeline." She said no more. Instead, she took off to pace the room, clutching her head as though it hurt. Kanaya went after her before she finished a single lap.)

A powerful glow, growing brighter and closer to white with every new Squiddle, had come across the linked tentacles of the other Squiddles and had almost blended across Squiddette's dark green. She extended her tentacle as far as it would go. "Please!"

"mr'sis nechion! mr'sis nechion!"

Berryboo faltered for a moment, but took the step forward. Her tentacle took Squiddettes', and at once things began to change. The soundtrack dropped, and the combined white light of the other Squiddles ceased to spread. Instead, the black ran from Berryboo into Squiddette's tentacle, spreading like a burn that darkened her skin before consuming it entirely. Both Squiddles gasped, and met one another's eyes in panic, and Berryboo pulled away at once.

But her bodyguard was too fast. Squiddette's tentacle shot out and caught the princess', pulling it back and wrapping around it all the tighter. The camera changed to Berryboo's eyes as Squiddette spoke, but neither the princess nor the viewer could hear. Whatever she said, her lips moved and settled on a nervous smile. Then Squiddler appeared, taking one of Berryboo's other tentacles and closing their circle. Though the black power soon spread down his body as well, he also spoke, and then Squibump, apparently in agreement. Squibella was in agreement too, for all she smiled and swung about, using the tentacles of the two Squiddles that held her like swings. And as the camera took away, Berryboo herself smiled, and the light swept over her from both sides.

Far below, Skipper Plumbthroat watched as the ring of Squiddles above exploded with light, stronger than the veiled moon beyond the clouds. A low whine cut through the air, building until a lance of bright, white light shot down and struck the beast in the whirlpool. And the Leviathan screamed, a deep, rumbling shout that shook the air until it cracked, snapping the lines above the Skipper's head. It shook the ship with waves and the soundtrack with a constant bass that brought the force of the scream into every home that watched the show around the world...

Nepeta shrieked and Kanaya as well, into Rose's ear as she collapsed in her arms. Feferi's breathing simply quickened, but Karkat screamed until he was out of breath, his hands in his face as he began to bleed. Jade panicked. She had the remote, but she searched for Mute instead of Pause and by the time she had found either, the scene had passed and the damage had been done. Kanaya shuddered for breath, unable to stand, and Rose helped her to the ground. Nepeta clutched her stomach as though she were about to vomit, and Karkat did not respond until Feferi broke the silence.

"Sollux!" she said, after taking in the room, and her shell laptop was out at once.

Nepeta, still queasy, turned toward her leader, who had his legs yanked up close to his chest. She pulled up over the leg, as though it were a tree she had to climb, and then shouted "Karkat!"

Karkat lowered his hands, revealing the full mess of blood from every orifice, and he froze for a moment before he remembered there was no one present that did not know about his blood and did not care. Before he could prevent it, Nepeta leaned forward and began to rub at the blood on his face with her sleeve.

"Ge—Get off!" he shouted, keeping her at bay. By then, Kanaya had recovered, if only somewhat, and stopped trading silent words with Rose to hand Karkat a monogrammed handkerchief. He cleaned himself furiously, face and hand, before anyone else could walk in.

"He's okay," Feferi said with a sigh. "Sollux. He didn't hear any—" Her laptop chimed, and she checked another window. "I don't think anyone heard anything who wasn't here."

"Well it's a good thing the Jellyfucks scared everyone else off!" Karkat shouted. He pointed straight to Feferi. "That was her. That hit all of us. Do I have to spell it out? How? How did they get that sound clip? Is there a Not-So-Vast Glub she might have used at some point in the past? In all Troll history?"

"Well... no!" Feferi looked to Kanaya and Nepeta, who did not appear to know any different.

To Rose, who still clung tight to Kanaya's arm, Karkat asked: "Well, could she have sent it as she was dying?" Rose shrugged and Karkat swore. He swore under and over his breath for nearly a minute until he looked at the screen and saw the shot of empty sea that served as their pause point. "Is that it?" he asked Jade.

"Well, there are a few scenes left," Jade said, "but yeah, she doesn't show up again."

"FUCK!" Karkat threw up his arms. "I don't get it! Why go to all the trouble of sending us this message if all you're going to say is 'The Noble Circle's here to speak, now excuse me while I help myself to the seafood buffet?' What, was she just trying to kill us? Because if it didn't kill me, it wasn't gonna work!"

The others looked at one another in dismay. Jade alone tried to look bright. "Maybe it's not just about her?" she said, but Karkat swatted a hand toward her.

Nepeta, who still remained clinging to Karkat's leg, slumped down against it: less cat-like and more teenager. After a long moment of thought, she spoke up. "...Fefurry's lusus isn't the only demon in the story."

Karkat raised his head slowly, and did not even detach her from his leg. "...Harley," he said. "How many episodes is this Dargon punk in?"

Jade waffled on the point for only a few moments. Math was a strong suit. "Thirty-one, if you count three cameos as 'one.' It's a little kid's TV show. 'Season' is a pretty broad term."

Karkat cursed again. "Okay then." He pondered for a moment. "...spill. Just the gist. How does the Dargon arc end?"

Chapter Text

Jade exchanged glances with Rose at Karkat's request to fill him in about the Dargon arc. "Do you... do you remember Milo?" Jade said. Karkat nodded. "He was in some other episodes after the second time with Dargon. His friends were there too – Carmen and Diego. I know how that other episode ended but after that they decided the adoption process wasn't actually finished yet. It doesn't matter. They team up with Amber and Sebastian and the usual cast of kids. Milo's friends all help with his reading and speaking but he doesn't quite get it. But one day the new parents come."

"Sort of a B-plot, actually," Rose said.

"And so Milo is upset again," Jade said. "So Dargon shows up, and he says that he should wish for his friends to stay. But Milo's stronger now, and he says at once that he's happy for his friends, even though he's sad. You know, the same thing he said the second time around. He says they taught him how to write, so they can exchange letters. Dargon tells him that he's going to be alone, so he repeats from the first one: he'll make new friends like he's already been doing, and together they'll make a new group."

"And it looks like that's it," Rose said. "Dargon leaves and we go back to the A-plot about one of The Colonel – one of the other villains – smuggling... kumquats? It really seems like Dargon showed up just to keep his face out there. At the end of the episode we see Carmen and Diego heading off with their new family."

"...But then," Jade said, almost with a sigh. "Milo gets a letter, at the very start of the next episode. It's from his friends' new aunt, their... mother or father's sister," she explained to the Trolls. "He opens it and..." Jade stalled, began fiddling with her fingers for a moment, until it fell to Rose to continue.

"His friends... died," Rose said. "With their parents. Car crash, just a few days after they all got settled. I suppose I have to emphasize that this is not exactly normal for a children's cartoon. ...Dargon wasn't saying Milo would be alone because his friends would be gone, he was..."

"That's awful," Feferi said, which seemed to give Rose hope that the Trolls at least understood the impact to a Human child to a point.

"So everyone at the orphanage is upset," Jade said, "and so are the Squiddles."

"But not Milo," added Rose.

"No," Jade said. "Milo is angry. He doesn't want to talk to the Sisters, and when the Squiddles try to talk to him—"

Rose cut in. "See, they're sort of inconsistent about this, but some of the writers portray the Squiddles as something you have to believe to see. What Dargon did when he talked to Milo the episode before was to get him to reiterate his believe in what the Squiddles taught him. But now his relationship with his friends has changed for good, and he can't be happy for them. And he's too angry to make friends."

Nepeta shrank away into the couch and filled in the blanks. "So he doesn't believe in the Squiddles now either," she said, with the stress on 'believe,' as though betrayal of imagination cut her as deep as the rest.

"Dargon doesn't even have to come to him this time," Jade continued. "Milo just goes to the basement with the artifact, and the Squiddles follow because as far as they're concerned, he's still their friend. So then Dargon shows up and takes his hand, which is... so, so creepy. He says to wish them back, because heck, that thing doesn't actually grant wishes, what does it matter what he says? And Milo thinks and finally he says, very strong and clear, that he wishes he could go to his friends' funeral."

John had long since explained to the Trolls what a funeral was when he tended to their parents' bodies back in the game, and they reacted with only small nods, not really having an emotional connection. Rose picked up from there. "Except... because he was speaking so clearly – speaking for his friends who were teaching him how to improve his writing and his speech – he doesn't have his lisp any more. And it doesn't trigger the artefact and Dargon leaves in a real huff for the final episodes."

Jade smirked, but only for a moment. "That's pretty much it. We've explained the Treasure Island part. There's just the last scene. There's this little girl, and she's new to the orphanage. And Milo's still upset but he realizes that... since his friends are gone, it's his turn to be the big kid, and to try to make friends with the new girl. And he goes over to her and sits with her, and that's how the whole show ends."

"Lack of funding," Rose asserted, but Karkat was no longer listening.

"I'm going to have to watch the whole damn thing," he muttered, like a curse. "The whole gogdammed fucking season from start to finish." It may have just been a trick of the light, but it seemed that his nosebleed had restarted.

"...Can we watch the rest of this episode first?" asked Feferi.

"yes!!" said Nepeta, climbing all the way back to the top of Karkat's legs. That finally earned her a shake off, and she landed with her head in Jade's lap instead.

"Whatever," Karkat said with a wave. His mind was clearly on other things. Jade looked to her other friends first, and seeing that Rose and Kanaya seemed ready to stay as well, she resumed play.

The Squiddles arrived on the deck of the Grundy Catchyegrabber and into the arms of their Human friends. The five of them still pulsed with power, lingering far longer than usual, and that same light flowed down to their friends as they laughed and spun about. Plumbthroat growled at them only out of the side of his mouth but otherwise let them be, tending instead to the crates that had been jostled loose in the storm. Only Berryboo sat apart, waiting for the glow began to fade. When it did, it revealed her own purple skin beneath and she breathed a sigh of relief.

But when the glow had faded, a mechanical clack sounded just off-screen and a barrage of nets flew out, quickly pinning the Squiddles and children to the deck. Squiddette reached toward Squibump, but their tentacles were not long enough to reach, and they were left helpless under the weight of the nets. Berryboo looked about – in her privacy, she had been spared the nets, and she locked confused eyes on Plumbthroat. He seemed no less confused than she, and worse when Horse stepped out from off-screen to hold Billy the Bellsuit Diver hostage at sword point.

"Tidier than sea monsters," Ox said with a sneer, the net cannons at his back and the crew behind them.

"Bosun..." Plumbthroat growled.

"You!" Berryboo shouted, springing forward once she saw that the net cannons were all unloaded. "What do you think you're doing?"

"'You'? " Ox parroted. "I thought I was still 'Mint' to ye. Looks like we're half-way there, but I think I ken forgo the rest."

Berryboo tried to ignore him. "What do you want with my friends?"

"Oh... few hundred an ounce, and at least a few dollars a pound for meat once you go dim. How's the market, Skip?"

Plumbthroat grunted in reply, though Berryboo began stammering over the word "meat." Seeing her out of sorts, Plumbthroat sighed and spoke up. "What, princess? Did ye think he was here for the benefits?"

Berryboo was aghast, but her reaction served some purpose. Behind her, safely ignored, Squiddette began to squirm against her ties with the help of the stronger children. But it was still no use: the nets had been securely tied and heavily weighted. As she and the others struggled, Squidradar alone stopped. His eyes up at the sky, he closed his eyes and began to concentrate his hardest.

"I... I don't believe you!" Berryboo shouted. "These were your friends," she said to Ox.

Ox wagged a tentacle at her as though he were scolding a naughty child. "Ye can keep saying that all day, princess, but it doesn't make it any more important to me."

Berryboo edged away from Ox, straight into a crate. "But... that's your brother, and I... I..." She could not say it, and Ox smirked back at her. Instead, she rounded on Plumbthroat, her mood changed fast from sadness to fury. "And you!" she shouted. "Why do you never listen? For a moment today I thought you might have understood, but now?"

Near the back of the ship, Ram tapped Ox with one of his hooves. "Uh, boss?" He tossed another look over the edge of the rail when the bosun did not turn around. Berryboo did notice, however, and her eyes lowered, and she turned back on Ox.

"I don't believe you," she said, "I take it back. Earlier, when I said you were a bully. You're not a bully, you're a monster! When your mom and dad hear what you've done they'll just..."

"Boss!" Ram shouted, but Berryboo's gambit had paid off. Ox pushed the crewman away, and advanced on Berryboo.

"I think, princess, that me folks have long since made peace with what ye'd rather ignore."

Plumbthroat was not as foolish as his subordinate and he ran past Ox and Berryboo at the sight of Ram and the other crewmen's panic. Berryboo tried to edge out in front of him, missing only by inches, but to no worry. Just as Plumbthroat reached the rail, before he could even see what was coming, the ship shook from a powerful blow from below.

"All hands!" Plumbthroat shouted, before another blow rocked the ship. A jet of water shot up into the air just behind he and the crew as the passing whale crested, moments before a third blow. "Get us out of here!"

"What about the prisoners?" Ox shouted over the sudden cacophony.

"Damn the prisoners!" Plumbthroat shouted back. Ox had to strain to listen, and as he did he relaxed his grip and Berryboo swiped in and took away his cutlass. Ox started to go after her before Plumbthroat called again. "Man yer post, sailor!" Ox scowled, but did as he was told.

The camera did a short time skip, showing the Squiddles and Humans having duly freed one another with the stolen cutlass. Squiddette had made a point of shredding the nets before they tossed them and the sword safely overboard. "Skipper!" Berryboo called. Another whale hit, almost knocking the children to their feet. Billy the Bellsuit Diver slammed head first into the floor with a clang!

"Welllll thiiiis is not how I intended to spend todayyy," he said, barely audible above the whales' attacks. The children rushed to help him up.

"Skip," Berryboo said, a growl still on her voice, "we'll call them off if you get us safely back to Billy's boat and let us leave." The boat shook again, and though he stalled for a moment, Plumbthroat nodded. "Squidradar, tell the whales to hold off until Billy's ship is safe."

There was still after that, and the crew looked to Ox and Plumbthroat for their orders. Plumbthroat kept them still. Through the magic of television, it was not hard for the Squiddles and children to unload to Billy's boat, which for all the trouble it had getting out of the whirlpool, was still operational. The boat tugged away, but as it left, Berryboo, Squiddette and Squidradar stayed behind.

"Well, princess," Ox said as he watched the others, including his brother, disappear in the distance. "Looks like ye win this round."

"It does, doesn't it bosun?" Berryboo's voice was dry and tired, and she did not meet Ox's eyes. Instead she hung down and low, as though she might fall from exhaustion at any moment. "I think this is one you'll try to keep in mind in the future."

"Oh, I'll be keepin' it in mind," he said. He ran his hook along the edge of a cutlass he had taken from the stores. Plumbthroat had his back to the proceedings, as though he wished the Squiddles would just go away and leave him to his long repairs. Ox was not so dismissive. "The next time we meet, princess, you'll see just how well I've been keepin' in it mind!"

He levelled his hook at her, but she did not seem to notice. Instead, for just a few frames of animation, her sunken eyes seemed to seize on something far below. "Oh Mint," she said.

The Grundy Catchyegrabber heaved in the water, another spout of water jutting off to the left of the Squiddles. Berryboo's eyes snapped back to Ox, but her haggard expression did not change. "I agree," she said. "I think Billy's boat is safe now."

Squidradar, suddenly realizing how he had been used, did a double take between the whales and his princess. "B-Berryboo!"

Ox, before the Skipper could prevent him, lashed out at Berryboo with his cutlass, only for Squiddette to spring in between them. His cutlass bit deep into her staff. From there, the storyboarder's poor understanding of coral served Squiddette well as she used that new grip to yank the sword from her opponent's hands and toss it after the other, into the sea.

"Bosun!" Plumbthroat shouted, and he yanked Ox back onto the deck. "Get to work, damn ye!"

Ox scowled back at him, but slipped back into order not long after. "Load the nets!" he called the others.

"We already used the nets!" called Ram, and the rest of Ox's plans fell into the muffled background noise of the scene.

Plumbthroat took to the nearby rail as the ship reeled again. "What are ye doin', Yellow?" he asked Squidradar. "Call 'em off!"

"I..."

"No!" Berryboo interposed herself between Plumbthroat and Squidradar, swiftly followed by her bodyguard. "You went too far this time, Eustace," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "I can't let you keep going like this."

"So ye'll drown us? Leave us stranded on this shell of an island?" Plumbthroat tossed his hat to the deck in anger.

"Oh, like you get a say," Berryboo said as the ship shook again. "Like you gave us a say when you kidnapped me, or when you tried to have us all killed, only so you wouldn't have to do it yourselves! I thought you were better than that!"

The boat shook again, throwing loose all the crates the crew had already re-secured. Plumbthroat stood his ground solid. "Princess," he said, "this isn't you."

"Well maybe I've learned something," Berryboo said back. "I can't let you get away with this any more, Eustace."

Plumbthroat kept his solid expression. "Well then it'll be a fine afternoon back at home, won't it? First ye sink me ship—"

"You'll be fine," Squiddette interrupted. "You always are."

Plumbthroat ignored her, except to step aside to get a better view of Berryboo. "First ye sink me ship," he repeated, "leave us to starve on your well-wishes. Then ye and yer red friend go to tell the bosun's folks how their oldest boy is a would-be murderer, to use yer terms." Berryboo's eyes lowered. "And then ye go home to yer mother and father, and tell them how their little girl's a hero. Aye. A fine afternoon."

With that, Plumbthroat turned back and started shouting at the crew, his orders coordinating smoothly with Ox's in the background. Berryboo watched him go.

"...Squidradar," she whispered. "Call them off." Squidradar nodded vigorously, already glowing with his power. "Let's get out of here."

By the time the shaking had stopped and one of the whales had taken a parting shot for their own reasons, the Squiddles had gone. The camera swept out from the crew of the Grundy Catchyegrabber and into the seas, which began clearing as the light of dawn rose up behind the clouds.

Chapter Text

The footage that followed was worn, with backgrounds and many of the characters taken from reels that had been used and reused so many times that they had lost all quality and context. More than worn, it was rotted, gangrenous and ignorant to the scenes it had followed, like a dead limb. Back in the town square of the opening, Squiddler once again popped up in front of the camera.

"Wowww, that was sure an adventure!" he said, that one clip almost as worn as the scenery. "I think we all learned a lot from that one! I learned..." he said, his animation suddenly vibrant, his voice clear. "I learned that you really don't want to hit your head on a rock! Oww! Squiddette sure looked like she was hurt!"

Squidnanna, the older Squiddle from the opening, swam onto the set. "That's why you should always wear a helmet when riding a bike or a skateboard!"

"That's right, Squidnanna!" Squiddler swam over to Squibella, whose introduction as a character was too recent for her footage to have worn. "What did you learn today, Squibella?"

"Wwwwelll," Squibella said with a spin, "I learned that turtles eat all kinds of things like sea grass or..." A campfire whisper: "...jellyfish!"

Squibump appeared from the side. "A-And I learned that little kids will eat their weight in free cookies!"

"Wow!" Squiddler said with a laugh. "And what does that tell you!"

The reused shot of Squibump had him looking directly at the camera. "That they should probably brush their teeth twice a day!"

"At least!" added Squidnanna in a group shot.

From there, Squiddle swam up to the audience much as he had at the episodes' start, and all those that had come before. "Wow!" he said, audio quality plunging. "Those are all great lessons, you guys! Well, it looks like all the trouble's gone, so it's time to sing a Squiddly Song!"

"Yaaaaay!" chorused the crowd. "Ohhhh, ♪ SQUIDDLY DEEEEE! SQUIDDLY DUMMM! EVERYONE SIIIING... ♪"

And as that final scene came to its traditional end, like every episode that had gone before it, something swerved. Visually: the camera, which hooked to the left, and began to travel. And as it went the sun began to set again over the ocean, casting shadows down from coral trees and rock mountains, until the camera came to slow as the world woke up in starlight. The music played low alongside, coasting on one last chord of whale song as the pod passed overhead late into the night. The viewer passed eels, fish and other things, until they came to a slow rest on a heavy anchor, and then up, up the chain to the Grundy Catchyegrabber.

With a gentle pop of water, a small, dark green head breached the surface and shot slow looks in each direction, before she signalled below with her staff. Berryboo followed, exchanged glances with her bodyguard, and then pushed off into the air above, dripping water in her trail. Squiddette watched her go until she was over the edge and out of sight, her face screwed up from the moment the princess turned away, but once she was gone Squiddette returned dutifully to the water below.

The deck was empty save for a single shadowy figure leaning against the rail, her arrival perfectly timed. Beside his feet lay a small board, unattended as he blew clouds of smoke into the air and abandoned the watch. Berryboo hesitated, but then inched forward, making sure to stick to the air just above the rail in case she had to beat a hasty retreat. He did not look in her direction, though she waited a fair time; his eyelids drooped low, and what little attention he minded in the present was limited to his pipe.

"Eustace."

Plumbthroat's movement slowed, his grip on his pipe tightened. "Aye?" he said, voice taught but wavering. He settled to brace his pipe along the rail and did not look up.

"I... I came to apologize," Berryboo said. Though she could have fluttered into the air above the sea to face him she respected his right to look away, though it pained her to see him choose it. "You were right. I didn't want to hurt any of you. If you hadn't been there..."

Plumbthroat moved for a moment, as though to wheel, snap up his pipe and respond, but he seemed to think better of it. Berryboo's face fell when she realized she was talking to a wall, so she changed the subject. "Is... will Ox be standing watch tonight?"

"No," Plumbthroat said. He himself off before he could say another word, as sharp as though he had bite his tongue to hold his peace. He glanced over his shoulder, just a few degrees, and saw the Squiddle princess hang her head and sashay her tentacles back and forth in worry. That time the pipe made it back to his teeth. "Why? Are ye going to pick us each up and apologize in turn?" Berryboo froze when he caught her in her favouritism, so he pounced. "How ye almost drowned us, left us in wreck and repair and not a dime to show for it back home?"

"'Not a dime...'" Berryboo's embarrassment turned to shock and she did fly up to him, eye-to-eye. "Your ship needs fixing because of your plan to kill us! I think you've earned every lost penny! The only thing you have to blame for that is you being pig-headed and selfish to point of... of murder! If I hadn't..." She trembled, and let out a shout of aggravation. "You're not going to listen! Why don't you ever listen?"

Her tentacles hung limp, but as Plumbthroat opened his mouth, she floated down to the rail. "No," she said, the wind taken out of her sails. "I know. I know how it works." Plumbthroat held his pipe to his lips as he watched her drift slowly to her stop and then drape about the edge, letting gravity pull her lower. He kept his silence.

"I am sorry, you know," she said. "And grateful. I don’t think I could have lived with myself if—"

"We'd have survived," Plumbthroat said, before his sudden reversal in stance caught even his notice. "Ye were right. I didn't hire this lot because they're bad at fishing... goodness knows..." He coughed. "I hired them because they're stubborn."

"Stubborn as an Ox," Berryboo muttered.

"And now ye want t' apologize to him."

Berryboo glared back. "He was my friend. He was..." she repeated. The Skipper's only response was to blow a stream of smoke in her direction, which she coughed at out of contractual obligation to the censors but otherwise ignored. "He was more than my friend and I wanted him to come back so much..."

"It's not that easy," Plumbthroat said. "Ye think I don't talk to my men? That one wants subordinates, an' nothing else. I don't know what happened between you two, but... I'd wager 'friends' are fairly low on his list. Much less you, princess."

"I think you're wrong," Berryboo said. "I think everybody wants friends, Eustace. You just have to open your hear to them and if they want to come..."

"Let in the bosun? Princess," said Plumbthroat. "I don't think you were listening to me today. He's not yer friend any longer, princess. Letting him in would mean nothing but pain and trouble t' ye."

Berryboo knew well enough when she was being made fun of. "I listened. And I thought about it, Eustace. I did. But I think... if you don't let people in, they can't get in."

Plumbthroat replaced his pipe between his lips, his eyes turned away. "Aye."

Berryboo's face fell. "I know he's not very good right now. I don't think I'll ever really understand why. And, today... when he..." She clenched her tentacles, ground them at the tips as though crushing sand, then released. The venting drained the hate from her eyes until there were only traces of hurt. "But you stopped me. You."

She perked up, leaning in closer. Plumbthroat barked a dismissal and turned away, but Berryboo was not so easily pushed aside. "But you did!" she insisted. "You didn't let me hurt anyone!"

Plumbthroat was aghast. "I didn't let ye hurt me!"

Berryboo laughed a bit. "Well, yes, but..." Berryboo shook her head. "It's not just that. You've been looking out for me all day! You're a good person, Eustace! Isn't that what I told you? You could have talked to the others, but you talked to me because you knew I would listen! Because you listen!" Plumbthroat turned even further away, his shoulders hunching in as if wincing under the blows of her words. Encouraged, she pressed on. "Because you know me. You knew you could stop me and I... That was more than I deserved." She seemed to flutter for a moment, the memory searing her still. "Because... you've got a good heart, and you just need to listen to it, Eustace! I just needed someone who cared to remind me who I was, and maybe that's all you need, too!"

Plumbthroat's hand shot out, directly in front of Berryboo as she tried to close the final gap between them. "Stop," he said. She looked up toward his face and met with angry eyes, choked and narrowed. "Stop, aren't you listening to yourself? Don't you know how you sound?"

"Eustace..."

"Plumbthroat!" he shouted, and he slammed his hand down on the rail, blowing her back up into the air as it rattled. "You! You with your smiles, you with your glassy-eyed speeches. You!" He removed his pipe and jabbed it at her. "There be a word for this," he said, "and I'll have no part of it!"

Berryboo's frowned at him. "I am not delusional!" she countered. "This isn't some... coping syndrome! Don't you think for one minute, 'Skipper Plumbthroat,' that I've forgotten whose plans these were today! You were the one who kidnapped me and you were the one that tried to have my friends killed! I'm not here because I'm deluded, Eustace." Her shouting calmed. "I'm here because I think everyone deserves a chance. I think you're a good person because... well, that's just how you act. You listened to me today. You helped those kids as soon as I mentioned them, even though that thing was in the water. Squiddles just... with our friends, we can do anything, and we'd do anything for our friends. I just... I think if you had someone who cared for you, you'd see how good you are."

Plumbthroat glowered, and then he began to mutter. Whatever dialogue had been set before his voice actor had been read with only a whisper, but it was a whisper sharp and personal. It sunk to murmurs cut by sharp lashes of his tongue to heights of legibility, where the viewer could catch the hint of a phrase, none of it complimentary. He stopped only with a jolt, and when he looked down, Berryboo had latched to the back of his free hand.

"...Princess..." he growled in caution, though that only succeeded in getting her to squeeze tighter, eyes clenched shut in strain.

"You care," she insisted. "I know you do, I just want you to see. I don't want anyone to be hurt and I don't think you do, either. I don't want you to hurt anyone, anymore."

The Skipper had reached toward her, to pry her from his hand directly, before he realized what she was trying to do and halted, tangled in her grasp, and he said: "Then you don't know 'care'." He rested his hand instead on the rail aside the other. "And what will you do when you're wrong? When I have your friends in my traps and all you have is that I 'care'?" He set his pipe back to his lips. "Or what if you're right? Because I don't think you understand what you're sayin'. Yer talkin' about takin' on the weight of another person, a person who wants things you hate, while you cap their violence until yer overwhelmed. That's no friend. That's pourin' all your care, and your love and your pity into a pit to win nothing o' yer own!"

Berryboo glared up at him. "My people would be safe."

"Aye," Plumbthroat said with a chuckle. "Your people. A good royal answer, except not for you. Yer people are yer friends, princess. Yer friends, watching yer sails lose their wind, day after day, only for it t' come blast ye back the way ye came."

She tightened her grip on him to reinforce her honesty, but he ignored her, so she spoke instead. "You can't ask me to give up, Eustace. You can't ask me to give up on people. Mi—Ox and I were friends my whole life! You... much as you've been a rash on it, you've been here my whole life, too, and I don't... I don't need to be friends. If you'd just look out for other people. That'd be enough." She pointed to her face. "I'm allowed to hope for the world. And I'm allowed to work for it, too!"

"Not like this, not like this!" He raised his hand so that she was at eye level. "Ye can't force help on people tha' don't want it, and the people that do... you don't want that. Ye won't find joy strapped to a deadweight on the ocean floor, ye won't find safety chained to a monster!"

"You're not!" Berryboo rubbed at her eyes, as though afraid of tears that had not yet come. "You're just trying to work, I know that, and Ox—"

"People change," Plumbthroat snapped.

"People grow!" Berryboo cried, though her grip loosened to do it. "As much one way as the other!" Her tentacles tensed under her, above his hand, as was reflex, and she shook with pain and hope. "Sometimes all they need is a friend who loves them."

Plumbthroat paused, and he took a moment to dump his pipe, to tap it against the rail until it had emptied into the sea. After that, there was silence. Drained and exhausted by the day, they waited alone on the deck in silence. Stars peaked through above: the Isle of Dread and hate had lost its curse.

Finally, Berryboo picked herself up. "...You care. I don't know what you call this if not that. B-but I'm done. I'm sorry, Eustace. I did mean what I said. I... won't bother you any more."

"Wait," Plumbthroat growled. "Princess." She turned up to look at him, though he did not look to her. "Why're ye here, princess?" Berryboo half opened her mouth before he interrupted again. "Are ye truly here to apologize, or are ye here so an old monster will tell ye that ye don't have to?" Berryboo looked up as Plumbthroat continued. "That the ends justify the means, that ye were 'just protectin' yer people,' that yer father and mother would un'nerstand?"

"...I don't have to take this, Eustace," she said, and she turned.

Plumbthroat paused, and as he did, he reached down and picked up the board that rested by his feet. "Ye said ye thought I'd be happier if I had someone in me life to love and t' hold. Well imagine me, if ye will, with a little one. Heart as big as yours." That stopped Berryboo. Though they stood apart, their eyes met, and she listened. "And one day, she saw the world was dark? That other folks were like storms instead of good winds, and that even she could be dangerous? D'ye know what I'd tell her?"

Berryboo looked away, but Plumbthroat stepped forward. "I'd tell her it was all right to be angry, when the time is right," he said, drawing her attention and surprise. "And seein' as how she was growing into the world, I'd hope she'd find someone to love and love her back. Just as angry as her," he added, and it was clear he knew how odd this must have sounded at first. A smile cracked on Berryboo's face. "So that they'd both un'nerstand why, when one of them was sad or angry," he explained, his voice still soft, "and bring each other back again. Both ways. That's not friendship. That's love, and it's stronger, even if it's much, much harder. I wouldn't damn her to someone so opposed to her that she'd never get anything back. That's not love. I think you see that."

Berryboo sat up as straight as she could in his hands. "I don't think of you or Ox as worse than me, Eustace." Her eyes wavered all the same, and Plumbthroat's face fell.

"Take it from an old man, princess," he said, lowering her to the rail. "Who's been there before. Ye tried, and ye can be proud of that. But I think ye've spent enough love, even before today. Don't waste it. We both know how that would end."

She looked up at him, sad at first, but then smiled as broad a smile as she had ever managed. "I don't think you know Squiddles very well, Eustace. We know we're not wasting our love on our friends!"

But he did not smile back. Instead, he took up the board he had gathered and brought it into the light: the mesh cage that had rested atop the aquarium. Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved a spool of wire and a pair of clippers, and set to work repairing the thing. "Ye'll see," he said.

When he looked up next she had disappeared, leaving him alone on the deck, and he nodded to the empty air. He worked for a moment before his hands first fell lax, and then toward his pipe as his mind drifted. Finally, Plumbthroat held up the mesh frame, examining not the tear but the opposite, intact corner. The starlight that bounced off the ocean shone through obscured, casting glimmering light onto his face past grid in black. And Plumbthroat sighed, stepped back, and let the frame fall into the sea.

It was beyond late, deep into the Human's night and the Troll's day, and Karkat watched the screen with eyes too bloodshot to hide his once-greatest secret. He had cleared the others out with his trusty Broom of Office and had locked himself, metaphorically, in the corner of the computer lab, trapped with his new roommates. His new roommates were bright neon, and voiced in only the highest octaves. He had trapped himself, he thought, until he had watched Season 1 from start to finish, scouring it for "evidence."

They were driving him slowly mad, and he was sure it was intentional, a surety that grew with each passing scene. That only made sense, didn't it? After all, these episodes were messages from a sanity-twisting pack of gods, weren't they? Or was that just the third season? After seeing what he had of the first, he was no longer so sure. The morals of the Human children's programming were opposed to his own, nearly to the point of induced vomiting. The programs the fleet air-dropped on Alternia and slipped alongside the schoolfeeding was focused on the hemospectrum, on the importance of filling quadrants and on taking your neighbour's land if he or she didn't deserve it. Perhaps because the foremost applied so little to him, Karkat had trimmed his respect for the last, but he had never discarded them entirely.

Besides, the show was shit.

Kanaya entered the room via the transportalizer, her arrival gone entirely unnoticed as Karkat stared up at the screen like an antlerbeast caught in the vehicular visible spectrum highbeams, and did not even notice her nervous hand touch down on the couch. He sat there, hypnotised, until the moral of the story had been triply confirmed and the credits rolled. At first, he was too incapable to give her any more response than an askance glare.

"The animation looks different," Kanaya commented.

"Watching the first two seasons first to get context before going back to Three. This style is early nineties anime," Karkat replied from memory. Jade had been allowed to stay until he had gauged that she had "overdrawn her helpfulness account" for the day.

"It seems somewhat more limited than that the later seasons, but that may just be a cultural difference."

"It's asinine," he said, and then stammered: "I-I mean the writing is asinine. Unbelievable. Did you know you shouldn't fight with your friends, Kanaya?" His hand clenched the arm rest next to him near hard enough to tear. "You really shouldn't! Because they've told me five times. And this show is fucked, by the way. The end credits try to convince Human babies to go to sleep on time or their favourite characters will be horribly murdered. People in our shows were only murdered if they deserved it!"

Karkat's manic mood began to fizzle when he looked up for a reaction. Kanaya's look was haggard, heavy. Though she kept her voice even, it was clear at a glance that she had been crying. Karkat truly did not have the energy for this.

"What is it?" he asked. He was worried that the worst had happened. He and Kanaya had had a conversation the day before on other subjects. He had helped defuse that situation. It couldn't be the same thing.

"I may have... exploded at Vriska." Kanaya wavered. "About... everything."

"Oh... Good. About time," Karkat said as credits wrapped up. Soon the screen had exploded in a familiar pattern of technicolour that made up the main title credits as the next episode began.

"No 'I told you so?'"

"I said you should, is what I said. Did you hurt her?"

Kanaya stopped, as though this was a particular worrying point. When she replied it was to say: "No, I did not."

Karkat glanced partially over his shoulder before the gleeful grins on the screen forced him to growl at the TV just for posterity. He upturned the pillows he had been leaning on and slapped a hand on the cushion he had freed. "Sit."

Kanaya did not approach. "No further inquiries as to the outcome? Lectures about the need for cooperation in trying times? No insult implying that, given my temper, my 'explosion' must have been lacking?"

"Jegus, Kan, of course you can blow up as bad as the rest of us. Better with the gogdammed chainsaw." Karkat reached forward to the coffee table of stacked DVDs to retrieve the bowl of popcorn, which he offered to her along with the adjoining seat.

Kanaya, somewhat less nervous, took the offered seat with a graceful toss of her skirts. "How have you found the program's earlier seasons?"

Karkat grunted and collected the popcorn for her to share. "Harley wasn't lying, these Season 1 episodes don't have a thing to do with one another. Though it's messed as fuck watching Mint fucking Julep," he said, pointing to the Squiddle that would become Ox, "cuddling with Carefree Princess Bubblegum here." Karkat did not have to look up to feel Kanaya's stare at the names. "...Terezi decided to drop back and started naming everyone. With the clown again, of all people."

"I take it the conversation did not go as you could have hoped."

Karkat squelched a puffed kernel between his fingers, in what at least passed as unintentional. "Kanaya, rule number one is to not talk about Pyrope."

"I Was Simply Observing That Your Use Of Her Colour-Coded Terms Implied—"

"Hey!" he snapped. "SHUT THE FUCK UP AND START TALKING!"

Kanaya stopped and took a handful of popcorn. "I'm sorry things aren't at their best."

Karkat just ignored her save to gesture for her to continue her story. Instead, Kanaya stopped and watched the show, the manic and flashy appearance of a children's program always hard to ignore. Mint – Ox – spun about the town square, saying good morning to all the citizens. A little red Squiddle, somewhere in size between Squibella-to-be and his fully grown, third season self, trailed after him. The young Squiddle parroted Mint's greetings, though he suffered at the uneven hands of comic relief in pratfalls and stumbles aplenty. Like déjà vu in form of a script, Mint's conversation with a carpenter Squiddle was interrupted by the royal entourage. A discouraged Berryboo approached to tell him that the Pepper Islands were behind on their Smiles Quota (oh no!).

"Fascinating," Kanaya said. The two Squiddle leads were over-enthused to see one another in a way only lazy anime could convey; with the bonus of shots being reused and taken out of context in a way only a shoestring could afford. Mint and Berryboo had exchanged these same emotions a dozen times before and would a hundred times more, until the show turned a profit and a tentacle-driven hook would slam through mesh wire. "Whatever could have changed things so drastically?"

Karkat just shrugged. "I haven't seen it yet, have I?" was all he had to say. The comfortable repetition of the opening scenes had already seized his attention in a way he would never admit. The Princess, too, had a shadow: a dark green Squiddle with a crooked chunk of coral in her grip and an iron headband that slumped over her eye. "So are you here to watch TV or are you going to tell me why you decided to blow up at Vriska now, of all times?"

Kanaya did not at first seem all that comfortable with his question, and curled up her legs to her chest. She kicked off her heels instead – a blister of green ran along one side of her foot – and sighed. Onscreen, Berryboo and Mint reassured one another about their dangerous mission with egregious, Tangle Buddy tangling. Mint's little brother tried to copy him but the girl that-would-be-Squiddette deflected him with a blow from her coral staff. Comic injury, frames dutifully recycled. Something about the scene caused Kanaya's sad frown to fade even, and she said: "I've grown."

Karkat did not quite know how to take that sort of ambiguity, and Kanaya simply sat with her head on her knees. She kept her eyes on him, and when he had nothing to say, spoke up again, cautious. "Can I talk to you?"

Her tone was quite serious, even for her, and lacked all ambiguity. Karkat met her eyes, a bundle of cautious nerves suddenly between them both. "Why me, anyway?" he asked.

"Because I want to." Straightforward, for Kanaya. Though perhaps not for a Kanaya that had just had words with Serket. She smiled. "Because a cartoon Human told me to look for balance in my relationships."

Karkat growled. "I hope you realize that if this story of yours doesn't end with Lalonde or Nitram prying your heel off of Vriska's throat, I'm just gonna be fucking insulted."

Kanaya laughed in spite of herself. "Of course, Karkat. What am I here for if not to humour your delusions of rage?" Karkat harrumphed. "You... still wish to speak with me?"

"Of course I'll talk with you," Karkat said with a wave of his hand. He reached forward to grab a new bowl of popcorn – he had prepared several out of what he firmly felt was necessity. "You're the only one sensible or pleasant on this rock. It's nice to pretend the world's still sensible and pleasant from time to time, and how the hell am I gonna trick myself into thinking that when the most sensible person here's got a beef with Vriska big enough to throttle her."

Kanaya smiled.

On screen, Berryboo and Mint had arrived at the islands, where they worked and brought smiles to everyone they met, implicitly trusting their friends to bring reinforcements if it came to that. Karkat and Kanaya talked. Kanaya told him about Vriska, how she had come in the middle of her time with Rose and how it had all gone downhill from there, and how Rose had to pry her off in the end. Karkat provided a running commentary, solid as he could manage second-hand. Kanaya had lashed out, and he told her that only made sense – it was an action he understood, and applauded. She had threatened to put paid some of Vriska's old debts, and while Karkat had leaderly concerns about her carrying it out, he was proud to hear she had stood up for herself. She asked him questions about Rose's response, and he answered.

As the conversation carried on, something changed. Though Karkat was happy to compliment his friend on her behaviour, Kanaya's early enthusiasm began to burn away. She began to pull back, into her corner of the couch, and Karkat was at a loss to explain it. As flowed naturally, he had his own questions, though he tried to turn things back to her. She was stubborn, however, and he came to ask her about Nepeta's behaviour that afternoon, and had questions about her answers in turn.

The show went on, Mint and Berryboo's investigation landing on the troublemaker with only a single interview. Kanaya, on the other hand, kept quiet, not willing to speak another word even as Karkat pried at her for follow-up. He asked about the conversation Kanaya had had with Rose after the fight and more, until the entire conversation had dried. The Squiddles took their information and moved on, to stop the evil Colonel before it was too late. Kanaya shrank further away.

"Is that all?" Karkat asked, after a long, awkward pause he was at an utter loss to explain. Kanaya nodded and Karkat resigned himself to wait. The episode wavered on, through obvious reveal and final conflict. Mint and Berryboo had made friends with a local hermit crab, who helped their reinforcements arrive right on time. As time wore on, Karkat noticed Kanaya watch him: gauging, guessing and trying to speak, only to cease each of her own attempts. It was only once the plot was almost said and done, and it seemed to Karkat like her time had been exhausted, that she spoke again.

"I wish..." she confessed, "I wish that I hadn't."

She shook to say it, but she had Karkat's full attention. "You..." Karkat had never heard a Troll confess to anything of the sort. "Is that what you're so tightly wound about?"

She slowly nodded. "I know, considering the circumstances, that that is not the prescribed response. You've been very supportive of my attitude, and I appreciate, but that was never..." She shook her head. "Vriska and I have known one another for some time. And though our relationship is no longer in the state it once was, I hardly think that justifies my response. I told her that she'd never had a pitying thought in her life, and she never bothered to be my moirail... but I would never all of our history to simply come to senseless platonic violence over some minor slight. If I could take it back... and... I'm sorry, this is... much harder than I thought it would be. I am a mess this evening."

"What, you're apologizing for not wanting to gut Serket?" Karkat rolled his eyes. "Well of course you don't want to hurt her. What, you come in here post-cry and you think I don't get that you were upset about what happened?"

"I..." Kanaya's legs slipped out her arms. "...truly?"

He reached for more popcorn. "Yeah?"

"...Karkat, if I had said that to anyone else..."

"That's why you're here, isn't it?" he said. He stopped his digging for snacks and snapped up a raised finger in Kanaya's direction. "Do not," he ordered, "hug me."

Kanaya retreated to her former position with a fang-bit smile. "I Will Refrain"

Karkat nodded. "I mean, shit. Who did I go for when I wanted to bitch about how I was getting used to fucking Egbert? Don't you realize we need to co-operate in these trying times?"

"Karkat."

Karkat snorted. "What, that was funny!" Kanaya frowned her hardest – she was quite good at it – and Karkat took another handful of popcorn before turning the bowl over to her. "You don't wanna hurt Vriska?" Kanaya ignored the popcorn and shook her head. "Good," he said. "I don't want you to hurt her either." Karkat took to his feet, and swung out his tired arms. "...You're right," he admitted. "That was weird to say. But I mean it. If you're this upset because you jostled her a bit I'd hate to see the mess you'd be in if you killed her."

"Stranger to say, stranger to hear," she said, a nervous smile on her face. "Considering it's you. You, saying it's all right to not want to hurt another; you, the one with the speeches about pride in our natural bloodlust—"

"Uh huh."

"...and your initially persistent attempts to terrifying the Humans with our culture clash!"

"Ah! I did no such thing!" Karkat said.

Kanaya shook her head. "No, Karkat, I remember it being direct orders!"

"They're standard tactics!" Karkat countered. "Every species is afraid of Trolls!"

"It didn't work." Kanaya crossed her arms, trying to look cross, but her anxiety had melted away. "Karkat... Speaking of speeches."

"What?" But then he remembered. "Oh. No, it's nothing. For fuck's sake..."

"I seem to recall," she said, ignoring him, "a certain noble and... vociferous leader of mine making an example of his own red and black quadrants, despite several pieces of evidence implying he had no such filled quadrants."

Karkat coughed, and took a seat on the pile of DVDs serving as a table across from her. "Now, see, what I was doing..."

"Mm-hm." Kanaya leaned forward.

Karkat held up his hands between them to gesture. "What I was doing was making a illustrative point in front of the moron gallery." Kanaya nodded. "They don't understand subtleties, people like Egbert, so I based my example on... uh..." Kanaya had pulled down his hands.

"Your speech was to the other Trolls, not John," she reminded, "...and a gentleman asks," she said.

Karkat could not help it if he broke out in a smile. Just a little one. He freed a hand to point at her. "A gentleman was going to fucking ask the next fucking afternoon. Gog knows you're the only one who listens to me any more, and I think the speech proves it."

Kanaya used her free hand to pull back a lock of her hair behind her horn, where it would stay out of her face. "Would you like to know a secret?"

Karkat suppressed the urge to shrug. If he was going to flirt he was at least going to pretend to know what he was doing. "What's that?"

"I... despise... your speeches." Karkat snorted and she laughed. Still. He should have seen that one coming. "I find them... biased," she said, and he nodded. "...poorly organized... and most disappointing I find they are often conducted by a small, angry little boy who – while he has my respect as a leader!" she said, while taking his hands between her own. "He is nowhere near as eloquent as a certain calm young man I know. He and I have spoken to a number of times in moments of duress or stress, and I think would do excellently in a... more public role."

"Mm-hm," he echoed, looking at his hands pressed between hers. "...You trying to picture my manicure?"

Kanaya managed to keep a straight face. "...It is favourably towards the back of my mind."

"...So," Karkat said. "You want to take me and my rage issues and turn me into a portrait of authority..."

"Mm," Kanaya said, now overtly examining his nails.

"And I..." Karkat let her do it. "I want you to go back to doing... whatever the hell it is any of us are doing here in this lab of infinite opportunities." She laughed. "But I bet it'll be kind of hard for you to do if you start by putting half of an old friend in one side of the room and the other half in the other."

"Extremely hard."

"Well," Karkat said. "I just wanted to point out how that sounds."

"Well," she said, "we do need to cooperate in these trying times..." Kanaya freed her hands and set them under her chin. "I think it's exactly how it sounds. You?"

"...do you want to know a secret?" he asked.

Kanaya nested her hands tighter together. "If you're willing."

Karkat nodded, and then sighed. Kanaya reached up to brush some of his hair behind his ear. "...Here it is:" he said. "...if I watch another episode of this show, I'm going to... brutally murder everyone in this laboratory. Starting..."

"With Jade," Kanaya said, understanding covering her smile. "This is originally her fault."

"Right, so instead, I was thinking that instead of the killing... you and I get something to eat, and then we riff this shit into paradox space and no one has to die."

Kanaya crossed her arms looked at him in feigned suspicion. "You can't cook."

"No, but Egbert and Gamzee can and I have all their alchemy codes."

Kanaya, feigning faint, fanned herself with her hand. "Oh my, Mr. Vantas! You'll spoil me!"

"Shut up," Karkat groaned as he took to his feet. There, he stood up straight and offered her his hand. Smiling, she reached up and took it, and when she was standing to her full height, she pulled him into an embrace.

"My pardons," she said, past his shoulder. "But I think I have a certain imperative to sidestep your orders from this point if they're against your... better interest."

"Yeah, yeah," Karkat muttered. He fidgeted for a moment before caving and pulling her closer. "Hey," he said when she broke off the hug. "Speaking of ignoring my orders, what the fuck was Vriska doing in your room when you were so pissed at her, anyway? I thought those things were locked."

"Oh," Kanaya said, with a shake of her head. "Did you hear the news?"

"Doubt it."

Kanaya took the lead down to the kitchen. "Apparently, Vriska was in the main transportalizer chamber with," she counted off: "Aradia, Feferi, Equius and Dave, and... well, I should step back for the full story..."

They left the DVD paused behind them as they went. There on the screen, Berryboo and the others had returned to town, where the morals had passed and the celebration had begun, each frame of animation still new and fresh. The Squiddle princess cheered and danced with her Tangle Buddy, happy and safe, in that childhood world that would keep them so, forever.