Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

their story starts in a shipyard.

she's only just nineteen, with slightly shaking paws, staring down at a ship she’s built near single-handedly and wondering, quite frankly, where she goes from here.

she shakes paws with the captain – his grip is warm, his smile reassuring – and laughs, a little nervously, as the professor pumps her hand affably up and down with two of his tentacles. the captain’s sister has come to see him off. tweak imagines giving her pa the longest hug. gruffly, in her head, he reminds her that she should get going. she nods, and reminds herself that she isn’t going to cry, because her two crewmates are currently acting a lot cooler than she is. inkling, smiling, gestures to the hatch. first?

tweak winds her ears together, gulps a long, last breath of icy, english air, and takes the first tentative step onto her ship.

she gives them the grand tour, enjoying their open mouths and flushing at the compliments.

they set sail without a hitch, although she rushes from deck to deck more times in the first five minutes than she can count, panicking over unfamiliar readings and hoping her calculations hold up. tweak tries to remind herself that this is what a test drive is for, but if her innovative engine design goes kaput on the very first outing she can’t imagine that even the surprisingly open-minded octopus that changed her life six months ago would keep her on.

the sub stays afloat, and they circle the shore once before descending into the blue, a lone, waving polar bear left on the pier.

largely, tweak keeps herself to herself in the early days, spending much of her time on the level she’s commandeered of the sub, stressing over small glitches in her systems. a day in, she sets up the computer, logbook empty, on the large, blinking screens dotting the ship. she’s rewarded by affirmations from the kindly professor, interest from the captain. she ducks her head, and smiles in secret, and only works harder.

she enjoys teaching the captain how to pilot what they’ve soon properly christened the ‘octopod’. he’s a quick learner, jotting down the occasional note as the ship sways beneath his careful touch, but he quickly settles into his new role. soon, he’s taking the ship on longer and longer jaunts, growing with confidence with every outing, and tweak spends her time fastened to her workshop where she scribbles endless blueprints and works on the five main subs she’s been commissioned to design. it’s a fascinating project, one that if you had told her two years ago that she would be involved in she would have laughed. when she first pedals the gup f tentatively out into the lagoon, holding tight to the steering wheel, the captain cheering her on from the sidelines, the feeling is almost euphoric.

in return barnacles teaches her to swim. it’s not that she can’t – she spent many of her formative years submerged in swamp water, chasing creatures through the everglades, wading through fast-flowing rivers learning her craft from chattering beavers. but navigating in the open ocean is a very different experience, and she gets swept away in a current their very first practice, unused to the strength of the waves. he swims after her and they laugh, voices echoing into the deep. she admits to him she misses the heat and humidity and familiarity of the swamp. she learns he misses his sister, too, and she’s happy to take up the role, having never had siblings of her own.

she, the captain and the professor grow close. they sit in the kitchen night after night sharing recipes – inkling turns out to be an unsurprisingly good cook – and stories. barnacles has just six years on her but she gawps as she learns how he’s trained generations of polar scouts to navigate the arctic. inkling smiles as he tells them of his sea mountain home, of his decades of research, of his ambition that had led him to travel the world and dream up a project such as this. shyly, she hugs her knees and speaks of her home, of her pa and eventually, the circumstances that had led her to leave them.

they're around a month into their trial six when the ship begins to feel empty. tweak knows the floor plan like the back of her hand – she had measured every angle to the fraction of a degree, welded every joint with equal, anxious care – but with only one of the four main sleeping pods occupied by the snoring polar bear, the ship feels too big, too quiet. she finds herself wandering from room to silent room in her off-time, wondering. she knows all the names, and mouths them to herself as she goes – sick bay, science lab, games room – but it still seems like a dream, as do the people that will occupy them, one day.
finally, she finalises the design on the five smaller subs, and one by one tests them out, beaming like a proud mom as she and barnacles circle the reef in each and every one.

a year later, once they’ve crashed the ship and rebuilt it from scratch (long story!) she feels substantially better about treading off the icy, english pier onto their ship. because it is their ship now, and the four creatures stepping unsteadily onto the platform in her launch bay look a hell of a lot more nervous then she feels right now.

so she smiles brightly and sticks out her paw. “hey! i’m tweak.”

it turns out a crew of seven feels a lot different to three. they get on well, surprisingly well, once they all get used to an interspecies, international, inter-everything-really crew. life is suddenly different to everything tweak had ever known, though that perhaps was going to be a given.

she and the captain spend the first few, busy weeks teaching the new crew members how to drive the gups, how to control the basic systems up in the hq. dashi – a friendly, soft-spoken, australian dachshund, just a few months older than tweak – takes to the controls with ease, and she’s soon a constant up in the hq, keeping a careful eye on the radar and the weather systems. indeed she and the new scientist – shellington – had hit it off immediately, being both scientifically minded, and frequently disappear into his brand new lab, chatting affably about some new species of seashell or other. as for the other two, tweak hadn’t been sure what to expect when she had first met them – she’s surprised to learn their new, endearingly nervous penguin medic is only sixteen, while the lieutenant is a young ex-pirate cat who speaks only sparingly of his past and bounces around the ship with enough confidence to cover the rest of them. but once they start planning real missions the two come into their own, alongside their calm and collected captain. peso is easily the youngest of the crew, and she and inkling guide him as best as they can as he tentatively begins to head out on solo medic missions. she remembers the first time she sees him bandage the fin of an injured fish, speaking slowly and reassuringly, his flippers steady; the first time she watches kwazii dive into instinctive action to save a tiny seastar from the jaws of a snapping shark; the first time barnacles addresses the whole crew, complete certainty in his voice, alongside no small measure of pride – “octonauts,” he says, with an apt, captain’s frown. “let’s do this.”

and they do.

the octoalert startles her the first few hundred times it goes off, and for the first few official missions she feels antsy, a little anxious; she can sense everyone feels much the same, urgent to get this right. ‘aye, aye, sir’, she chimes when the captain gives her an order, and rushes to open the octohatch or prepare a gup for launch. she adjusts quickly to the jargon, they all do. she starts enjoying the moments when her radio will sound and someone will ask for her expertise, enjoys the challenge of whipping up a new invention at a moment’s notice. they’re all a little shy around each other for those first few weeks, but soon, they settle into their roles, learn to work around each other’s strengths. she’s never been afraid of hard work, although she comes to spend entire, timeless days squatted in the bottom of some engine or other, losing track of the hours until someone comes to rouse her for the meals that she forgets.

and she’s realised more recently that she calls the shots, in a way. for one, she’s the only one who knows how the hot chocolate machine works – not to mention the rest of the ship. tweak notices with some amusement that no-one seems to want to get on the wrong side of her, and she sets friendly limits that she’s pleased to find they all stick to, for example the ten-minute shower limit. it’s not as if there’s a shortage of sea water to call on, but filtering, purifying and desalinating it all takes a little time. they even seem a little bit intimidated by her, from time to time. it means that when she tells them to do something they do it, even the captain, without question.

temperature was always going to be a tricky issue, and she spends a fair few sleepless nights in the early days drafting solutions. two of their number grew up on the ice, after all, and she’s often caught barnacles mopping his brow or peso looking a little unsteady as the rest of them forget and turn on a heater from time to time, although neither of them are the sort to complain. she keeps their rooms carefully chilled. she and kwazii, however, are the opposite, and indeed bond over the first time they enter arctic waters, the ship core temperature dropping so that once she’s fixed the problem she’s forced to retreat to her carrot-patterned duvet, shivering and sipping at a hot chocolate. in fact, on subsequent polar trips, the cat usually appears after a while, looking forlorn, and she sighs and invites him in. they huddle companionably in her room, playing video games, arguing affably. dashi and shellington join them too, from time to time, as peso and barnacles smile and cheerfully wonder what’s wrong with the rest of the crew as they enjoy their icy swims.

and they become close, over the months, each and every one of them; they need each other in different ways. there’s usually someone at a loose end around the ship, tweak finds, and she’s warmed when she only has to ask over the radio for someone to immediately offer their help, since she’s usually got about five things on the go at once and having someone to hold the spare hammer usually comes in handy. the company’s nice, too. in the same way, the whole crew knows that they can rely on anyone to be there, at any time, unequivocally. she spends her due time in the lab, crouched over a pile of books, voraciously absorbing all she can manage to fit into her head. just sitting and listening to shellington speak with such passion about his discoveries and his research is an experience in itself. sometimes kwazii would join them and would wander around, knocking over things and mispronouncing long words with the biggest grin on his face until shellington would rarely lose his temper and her sides would hurt from laughing.

tweak spends a good few more hours helping dashi log everything they discover into the octopod computer, and they spend enjoyable evenings uploading the family photos of each crew member, giggling over the childhood faces. tweak learns the dachshund’s a talented programmer, and they eagerly start to collaborate on new, more ambitious projects – new cameras, robotics, new, more advanced computer systems. in addition, dashi’s a keen photographer, and documents their missions as they travel, soon filling the hard drive with colourful, carefully crafted photos of the reefs they explore and captures moments that tweak’s later glad they hadn’t forgotten when she looks back on them.

she nearly cries when the crew remembers her birthday the first year, almost her first anniversary of having first left the shore. the newest members of the crew look shy as they hand her a shakily iced kelp cake with what is just recognisable as a 20 on the top. tweak sniffles a little, and gives tunip a big hug as the crew make short work of it.

they’re the best friends she’s ever had, her true, found family.

Chapter Text

and the years go by with barely a mark.

the octonauts – for that’s the name that has stuck – travel further, plan bigger, rescue more creatures than inkling could have ever dreamed. he sits, quietly, in his library watching the water go by, pride swelling in his cephalopod heart as he listens in to the occasional chatter across the radio frequencies. he likes to keep an eye on things, check in when the captain declares a new mission, occasionally chime in with some encouragement. this hadn’t been the life he had ever envisioned for himself, but it’s certainly a life he’s lucky to experience, and wouldn’t give up for the world.

“hey, professor.” tweak enters the large room, her southern tones echoing, waving up at him as her searching gaze finds him on the upper level.

delighted at the company, he swings himself nimbly down from the ladders that she had rigged up for him, and lands in his chair, smiling at the mechanic. “hello, tweak. what can i do for you?”

“just came to say hi,” she says. they had both been part of the initial skeleton crew, and he had got to know her well, from the slightly nervous girl with grand designs and a whole lot of talent who he had first interviewed at barely eighteen, to the smiling twenty-one-year-old who he’s delighted to call a colleague and a friend. she pulls a plate of slightly crushed kelp cakes from behind her back. “wondered if ya might fancy a snack? fresh out of the oven, of course.”

“oh, you tempt me,” he chuckles, and she laughs and pulls up a beanbag.

they munch companionably, exchanging questions and stories of the week, tales of the crew. he’s grateful for being kept in the loop. as the senior and also supporting members of the crew in its early days, he and tweak have kept an eye on their younger crewmates. he had been a little uncertain at first about hiring peso, a young, slightly shaky penguin medic, but tweak had convinced him after the first interview to give him the benefit of the doubt – ‘ya did for me, remember?’ – and it had clearly paid off.

“how’s your new project coming along?” he asks at a staged whisper.

tweak lowers her voice similarly, although they’re unlikely to be overheard on a quiet day on the ship, with everyone else out on missions, and them standing by, just in case they’re needed, which they’re not usually. “it’s coming on really well,” she says. “hoping it’ll be ready for christmas, for the captain.”

“he’ll love it, i am certain.”

“i hope so.” her voice raises again, as does her smile. “looking forward to seeing where ya grew up as well, professor!”

“oh!” his tentacles twitch in excitement. “yes! i am looking forward to them meeting you – and seeing squirt again, of course! it's a christmas tradition I would hate to miss.”

“i've heard a lot about him,” she grins. “can’t wait to meet him in person.” tweak reminds inkling a lot of his nephew, in a way: her enterprising nature and easy affability and intellect to rival even a dumbo octopus’ large brain.

“we will have to make a trip to the other side of the world at some point as well, of course. i am anxious to see the everglades in its full glory –“ he chuckles, wryly. “although perhaps not during wildfire season?”

her gaze dips a tiny fraction, and understanding prickles sympathetically at the tips of his tentacles. inkling knows the feeling well, that uncertainty as to whether you would be a welcome visitor back home. it was a long time before he had ventured back to that sea mount. it had been a strange, unexpected delight to hear his name cried from its top, with hugs and smiles and questions to follow. he understands full well the scope of what everyone on board had signed up for, of what they had given up. tweak had left her home at sixteen to seek her purpose in the world, and had had little contact with her pa since. he knows she regrets leaving that part of her life behind, just a little. he knows she misses him.

inkling slips a tentacle around her slightly slumped shoulders and squeezes, expressing with body language what he cannot with words.

* * *

dashi gets rapidly tired of twenty-eight-hour days. they travel long distances across the world, skipping across time zone after time zone, adjusting their course accordingly. she sits silently at her station, keeping care of their systems.

the captain’s paws rest on the wheel, feeling every tilt of the powerful ship beneath his feet as they chase the sunrise across the globe. some days, he never quite lets it get dark. it reminds him of home, of bright arctic waters.

the ship tries to stick to a centrally agreed clock and calendar, but they’re all well aware that when the water is bright outside it makes it difficult to sleep, even when exhaustion claws at their eyelids and fatigue sits heavy on their shoulders. the polar creatures aboard are accustomed to it, but the others are less used to the strange phenomenon, to days and nights merging into one. it messes with your head, kwazii would often complain. those attempting to sleep in the pods often come down and nap in the darkened launch bay or library where there are fewer windows, tweak and inkling happy to accommodate them. the midnight zone missions are a relief, sometimes.

barnacles and dashi sit in companionable silence up in the hq, night after night when neither of them can sleep, sipping hot chocolate and watching the water rush by. over the two years they had been travelling, dashi had grown nearly as used to it as the captain, but the days are getting longer, the sunsets later, the missions slower. the ship drifts through the sea on autopilot. she's just there to keep an eye on things.

the captain reaches to squeeze her paw as she tries to hide her steadily sinking eyelids. she blinks blearily up at him. “shift’s over, dashi. time to get some sleep.”

she casts a disgruntled glance at the glimmering water outside the hq. “how can you tell?”

“because i’m the captain, and i say so,” he says with a slight smile.

* * *

the training videos are dashi’s idea, and the crew quickly warm to it. they’ve been sailing together for twenty-six months now, and they’ve settled into their routines, their roles as a crew and on the ship.

the captain often disappears to his desk, poring over a page, scribbling down everything he has learned about captaining their unique team, piloting their ship, writing and scrapping chapter after chapter. the professor points out that a video log of the missions they go on, the challenges they face, the creatures they meet, their roles on the crew – could prove useful in years to come, or for training similar, future ocean exploration teams after the apparent success of their pilot project. barnacles writes script after script and kwazii and peso acquiesce by acting out the many scenarios they’ve ended up in over the years. shellington is a natural in front of the camera, happy to ramble for hours about his findings and the thousands of creatures they’ve come across. “fascinating!” he says with a unique thrill in his voice. tweak fidgets shyly in her workshop, looking anywhere but into the lens as barnacles prompts her with an encouraging nod, but her favourite subject is quick to surface and she brightens as she explains the intricate workings of her ship and how she can fix it, in a crisis.

dashi spends long hours up in the hq, sailing the ship with a trained eye and editing the training videos together. the crew watch them through, settled in the game pod night after night, nibbling on kelp cakes and laughing at kwazii’s over-the-top acting as he swings and screeches and yells about the new, fake danger. it’s welcome downtime, in those days. they laugh, and toss around compliments, and dashi’s proud of the result.

* * *

it's late evening, and she finds tweak curled in her bed. “heya, tweak,” dashi says with a laugh in her voice. “what are you –?”

she shrugs, looking innocent, and shows her the screen. “it rung, and i was in here anyway, waiting for you to finish your shift. ya said we’d finish reading that mystery novel, ya can’t keep me in suspense like this.”

“you talk to her more than me at this point,” she complains, although she’s grinning as she swings her legs up onto her bed and pushes the rabbit gently over to give her some room. “hiya, koshi.”

“hi, dashi!” the younger dachshund beams, from a thousand miles away. one of the first things the mechanic had worked on when the rest of the crew had joined the ship was to boost their communications network so that the crew could contact their families whenever they wanted, and dashi is very grateful for it. “tweak was just telling me about your latest mission.”

dashi sends her a severe look. “the one that’s not due to be released to national seaographic until next week, you mean?”

“whoops,” tweak says, not that apologetically. “hey, s’fine, who’s she gonna tell?”

“i’m working for my school paper now!” koshi chimes in. “this will make the front page for sure! my big sister, dashi dog, saving her friends from a dangerous tremor, deep underwater! what did you say the new suit was called, tweak? can you send me pictures, dashi?”

“okaay, she might tell a few people,” tweak says a little lamely.

dashi laughs, taking the tablet and tapping at the screen. “i'll send you the folder, kosh.”

* * *

kwazii bounds out of the octochute into her room, already talking, waving his arms excitedly with a crumpled map held in one hand. she leaps up to greet him. dashi likes the way kwazii makes her feel. he’s wild, and unpredictable, and a lot of fun to boot. they go on some of the best missions together, and sprawl out on either of their beds when they return, exhausted but thrilled, with tales to tell and photos to show off to their crewmates later. they’re more similar than they realise.

* * *

the pirate slides down the octochute with a whoop, landing lightly on his feet in the launch bay. tweak had begun to relocate some of her workshop to the octo-repair station, and when she has a new gup on the go – which is surprisingly often - she’ll disappear completely for two or three days, and resurface, sleepy but smiling, the product of a productive few days. he realises that he misses her when she’s gone, and makes a point of slipping down to the launch bay when he hears the characteristic bleeping of her games console, late at night.

they game into the early hours, ever reluctant to let the other win. their engineer is a young, american woman who speaks with a southern twang, although all their accents have softened, mingled over the years as they had grown used to an international crew. she's friendly and witty and a little bit scary, although he’d never admit that to her. she's taller and certainly stronger than he is, judging by the toolkit she heaves around on a daily basis. she’s also busier than the rest of them put together, but she doesn’t seem to mind the long days and late nights. they bicker like siblings, but he likes that she isn’t afraid of anything.

“good game,” tweak drawls, fatigue pulling the familiar intonation into her syllables. “fancy another, or –?”

“nah, matey –“ kwazii begins, yawning widely, ready to call it a night, even though she’s six points ahead of him and likely to stay that way – when he sees her sudden frown. her ears twitch in a way that means she’s listening to something he can’t hope to hear. “uh - something wrong?”

“probably not, but i’d better check it out.”

“you’re just ‘fraid I’m going to beat you this time,” he jibes as he pads after her.

tweak hops across to the control panel. “all looks normal,” she says, apprehension altering the words in a way that tells him she doesn’t believe them. “better do a manual check, just in case.”

he’s come to trust her instincts better than his own. kwazii’s come to spend a lot of time down in the launch bay with her, once she had trusted him enough to let him help out with maintenance on the gups every once in a while. she knows the ship like the back of her paw, knows every creak and groan and warning alert, knows it better than anyone, better than the captain.

the fur rises instinctively on his back as he hears her utter a soft exclamation from inside the engine room. “what’s up, tweak?”

“something’s wrong with the main oxygen tank,” she says levelly. he watches the mechanic crane to read the display, then step back, staring at it for a moment. “s’venting.”

“what does that mean?”

“means we’re losing air through the vents. must be a leak in one of the tanks. a big one, from the red lights it’s setting off down here.”

“are you sure?”

“yep.”

“that’s… bad, right?”

tweak takes a breath. ”yep.”

she steps and slams her paw onto the radio button on the control panel, contacting every crew member simultaneously. “this is tweak – sorry for waking you,” she says hurriedly, realising the octopod clock reads just after one in the morning. “but we have to evacuate right now.”

the crew sound sleepy, annoyed, perhaps about to protest, but the captain quickly recognises the note to her voice.

“this isn’t a drill,” the engineer snaps over the radio, stress creasing her bright southern accent.

“we’re coming,” barnacles says, his tone brooking no argument, and the crew materialise in the launch bay only a minute or so later, climbing into the two largest gups as the engineer hurriedly explains the problem. only she stays behind in the launch bay, playing her paws nervously together. “i can fix it,” she vows. “faster than you can say bunch’a munchy crunchy carrots.”

barnacles’ expression twists into something worried, familiar. “be careful, tweak.”

she manifests her helmet and raps the bubble. “i’ve got a backup, don’t ya worry.”

he holds her gaze. “call us if you need us.”

tweak nods. “i will.”

she emerges after a couple of hours, just as shellington is getting a crick in his neck with kwazii catnapping on his shoulder. traditionally, the captain hadn’t been asleep. he’d go down with his ship if he had to, and god knows he’s not letting her go alone, if she needs him. the engineer’s covered head-to-toe in all manner of grime and oil, but smiles as she sees them blinking away hour-old sleep in the uncomfortable seating in the gups. “all clear,” she calls, waking the rest of them up.

dashi swims over and pulls her into a hug as the crew groggily return to their beds. “everything okay?” she asks gently, feeling the stress stored in her tightened shoulders.

“nothing i didn’t have a handle on,” tweak responds, squeezing back. “sorry about the wake-up call.”

“i mean, thanks for not letting us suffocate in our sleep, or whatever.” her lips curve.

(she doesn’t ask, but dashi stays in her room the rest of the night, holding tight to her paw, like she’s scared if she lets go tweak’ll slip away.)

* * *

tweak laughs, obviously full of adrenaline as she bounds nimbly from the fin onto the metal roof of the gup, depositing a toolbox with a clunk before leaping back down and bouncing on her toes, energy coursing through her lithe rabbit limbs.

“you’re in a good mood,” giggles the dachshund, approaching the launch bay tank. “what gives?”

“finally got it working!” she says exuberantly, taking a huge bite out of a carrot. “this is a celebratory carrot,” she explains with her mouth full.

dashi takes one from her toolbox. “what’re we celebrating again?”

barnacles, kwazii and peso are out on one of their customary exploration missions, with little else set for the day. sometimes dashi will take the opportunity and drag shellington away from his lab to steal some pictures and samples from a nearby reef, mainly to break up the day, but they’re in the open water right now, with no creatures in sight. they're happy to take the downtime, when the ocean doesn’t need them.

“right,” says tweak thoughtfully, tilting her head. “if you take this side, and dashi, you take the back…”

she and shellington help her right the gup f in the water. it’s a strange skeleton of a ship, but one that tweak has untold amounts of affection for. it had been the first prototype she had designed, back in the day, and the engineer often fondly recalls that it had been its base design that had caught the professor’s eye and gave her the project. they know how much it means to her, and are happy to help out when the three of them have some time to spare. the engineer takes a deep breath and releases the clamp attached to the top of the frame, taking a jump back as it splashes down into the pool. they watch it bob in the water for a moment, unaided by buoys or clamps. tweak narrows her engineer’s eyes as she makes silent calculations to the weighting, watching the fins dip one way or other.

“okay,” she concludes eventually. “i can work with this. thanks, guys.”

“we make a good team!” dashi slips her paw into shellington’s and squeezes, her canine way of showing affection, before laying her head on tweak’s shoulder, rubbing her cheek against the green fur.
tweak, having grown up with appreciative nods and abrupt, hurried, one-armed hugs with her pa, had been a little taken aback, unaccustomed to the behaviour at first. but as kwazii purrs warmly against her shoulder of a late evening or dashi flings her arms around her at the close of a completed mission, she had come to crave the contact.

“right,” she grins after a moment, pushing her gently off her shoulder and hopping back onto the fin. “let’s take it for a spin, shall we?”

they both laugh at the alarm in the sea otter’s expression as tweak ushers him teasingly into the pilot’s seat.

* * *

dashi, sat alone in the hq, reads through the news bulletin, sipping appreciatively at a hot chocolate. the system’s typically updated a couple of times a day: morning and early evening, sometimes more seldom when they’re settled in the deep and haven’t had a chance to come close to the surface within range of the satellites that beam them their updates. it’s usually nothing too interesting, revised weather reports, activities of the surface, occasionally a video package from her younger sister or another of the crew’s family members, which they all look forward to.

then a package blinks into her inbox, the subject line informing her it’s from national seaographic. interested, she presses a paw on the screen, assuming it’s a correspondence about her recent report. she had attached her newest album as an afterthought, and had been looking forward to seeing what they make of it: a string of photos detailing their latest mission, with the whole crew smiling in the last frame as they fly over a patch of floating rubbish on the backs of a flock of pelicans. tweak stands atop the filled recycling container with her hands resting proudly at her hips, just shy of her low-slung toolbelt; shellington shows the camera the positive results of his test on the recently cleaned water, peso bobs shyly next to a smiling sailfish with a bandage around its bruised nose. it had been a good day, a successful mission. she had been proud of her report.

then, her mouth falls open as the message loads. her eyes widen. she slams her paw down on the octo-alert, temporarily abandoning all attempt at protocol. “guys. guys. get up here.”

“what’s all the commotion?” tweak yawns, hopping from the top rung of the ladder. she’s often the first to arrive, with shellington appearing from the octochute shortly after.

unable to wait away another second, dashi beckons them both over to the tiny screen, practically quivering with anticipation.

the mechanic scans the letter, ears pricking with every word, smile widening. she looks up, looking a little disbelieving. “is this real?”

dashi pokes her paw at the number, printed in bold in the centre of the screen. “that’s real money, that’s for sure.”

shellington laughs, a little uncertainly, speed-reading over her other shoulder. “what’s this in aid of?”

“one of my reports got noticed, a few of my photos here and there.” dashi blushes, modestly. “and now i guess we made the front page.”

finally, the whole crew is gathered in the hq and dashi switches off the alert. she beams the letter up onto the big screen and they read it together. at the captain’s request, she shows them the mission album, scrolling slowly through the photos. it's the final one that’s made the cover: the crew and the pelicans flying in a perfect v over an ocean bobbing with rubbish. thinking on earlier, she had set the camera on the gup a to record while they worked, aware of the environmental angle she could set on her weekly report. “these are amazing, dashi,” barnacles praises.

“thanks, captain,” she blushes.

“but what does this mean?” wonders shellington.

“it means we’re getting more support from our sponsors,” inkling says, eyes sparkling. “we’ve been operating under core funding from national seaographic for several years now, but our recent operations appear to have gained some notice and they’re offering us this in order to extend our research, to help more creatures, to travel further than we ever have before.”

“this is huge,” dashi exhales, eyes glued to the screen as she scrolls through the double page spread, snipped from the advance copy of the magazine. it’s due to be published in three days time. people will see this worldwide, she’s well aware. her photos have been printed before, but this is the first time they’ve had full coverage of their work, courtesy of her latest, largest report.

“this is amazing, right?” peso says.

tweak shakes her head slowly, grinning her head off. “this is unreal.”

the brief bulletin details the assets that are being bestowed on them, should they choose to accept. more permits to travel further, deeper, go on longer, more exciting missions. tweak’s being offered all the supplies she needs and more. she can start working on more ambitious, big scale projects, with the budget to match. dashi had spent a lot of time writing about the casual brilliance of her mechanic friend in their day-to-day mission logs, and national seaographic had evidently listened, from the enthusiasm of their response.

“they’ve said we have three days to read through the article and decide whether we want to take up their offer,” dashi explains, interrupting the elated chatter. “if we decide not to take it, they won’t publish the article, no hard feelings.”

“why wouldn’t we take it?” laughs kwazii. “we have to accept, right?”

the crew quietens as the professor floats his chair to the centre. inkling looks cautious. “i can understand your enthusiasm, but i need you all to understand what this means for us. it’s a big opportunity, but it will also be a big change.”
“the caveat is that it’s going to mean a lot more work, a lot more publicity. we're going to be under a lot more scrutiny, and higher demand than ever before. everyone in the ocean will know our name, know where to find us. we can’t take this back.” his eyes soften, seeing the resolve on each face. “we have to be sure, is all i’m saying.”

“i agree. if we are to do this, we do this together,” barnacles says calmly. “or not at all.”

the decision is a unanimous one, but later that night, the decision preys on dashi’s mind, the warning words of the professor sticking in her head.

“why the long face?” tweak wonders casually, appearing behind her across the hq, making the dachshund jump.

“oh, nothing,” dashi says with a half laugh, settling back down.

she sits beside her, and flashes her a knowing look. “would nothing make you look so worried?” a silent second, and then tweak stretches a paw to the soft fur of her cheek. the pad of her hand is hardened from the years working with machinery, but dashi softens at the sentiment.

“what if this is too much?” she murmurs, cupping her second cocoa of the night, feeling the steam rise to warm her cheeks. “it’d be my fault.”

the rabbit frowns. “how would it be?”

“it’s my reports they’re reading. maybe – maybe i talked us up too much, exaggerated...”

“they wouldn’t offer us the opportunity if they didn’t think we could do it. and we wouldn’t say yes if we didn’t think the same.”

“i know. i know.” she tilts her head, unsure quite what she does mean, trying to identify the worry scraping gently at her insides.

tweak slips off the seat and puts an arm round her shoulders. "hey. you know it'll be fine, dash.”

“yeah?”

“yeah.” she fixes her eyes, bright, watery green, on hers. she’s always so sure. it brings her resolve. “yeah. we’ve got this.”

she holds her gaze and takes a breath. “yeah.”

* * *

life gets a little crazier after that, it’s safe to say.

Chapter Text

it’s been a long day, and as usual, it’s far from over.

as tweak takes over driving for the third time and her co-pilot flips to the back of the gup to take care of their cargo of loudly chattering creatures, she props her chin on a fist and thinks idly of the early days, when missions had been an organised and purposeful affair. now their world is one of long commutes, of double, night-time shifts, of missions that last a long time with just two or three octonauts. it had begun two months ago, with their huge publication in national seaographic. in a matter of days they had gone from relative anonymity to their name suddenly acclaimed, worldwide. they get hundreds of messages every day, they’re sent new daily mission directives direct from national seaographic, they’re sought after across the world for their help. dashi often jokes that they need a ninth crew member on hand just to keep up with the flood of messages. tweak knows they’re helping more people every day than she could have ever dreamed when they started this, all that time ago, but sometimes she can’t help but miss the all-hands-on-deck approach.

kwazii rejoins her in the cockpit. tweak utterly fails to hide her yawn as she fights to keep her eyes focused on the road, so to speak. “all good back there?”

“yup,” he responds. “they’re just excited to get home, i think.”

“i know the feeling.”

he smiles in her periphery. “are the others back yet?”

“they haven’t reported in,” tweak responds. the second time the octoalert had gone off that day, the captain and shellington had taken the gup c to sort the aftermath of an avalanche on the nearest coast, while dashi and peso were already out on one of the medic's regularly scheduled reef checkups. they did try to travel in pairs when they could, but some days caused them to have to send four or five gups out in all different directions into the ocean. the third time the alert had sounded, the captain had wearily sent her and kwazii out to answer the call, and that was already six hours ago.

kwazii seems to read her mind and settles back into the copilot’s seat, flicking his tail thoughtfully. “we might make it back first?”

“hm.” tweak is doubtful. Their mission had been to return a large, displaced family of sea stars caught up in a strong current back to their home twenty miles upstream, and when they realised that there were missing members of the group, the rest of the day had really written itself.

kwazii laughs softly, seeing the look on her face. “yeah, maybe not.”

the gup creaks its complaint as she pushes it faster, catching a northerly current and listening as the propeller fights against the whipping water outside. the mechanic frowns, but concludes it’s probably nothing to worry about. she knows the sounds of these gups like the sound of her own breathing, and she can already forsee a long night ahead fixing them up for tomorrow, bright and early. rinse, and repeat. it’s a routine she’s used to.

the lieutenant checks the twenty or so sea stars in the back tank again, mainly for something to do, and she listens to him pad about the gup as she aims for the reef growing from the distance.

they’re profuse in their gratitudes as the two octonauts free the family onto their home reef, both smiling in a practised manner as the creatures are greeted by frantic relatives.

“thank you so much, octonauts!” gushes samantha the sea star, who had led the operation in finding sukie and sara and sid and little baby sophie earlier on. “i don’t know what we would have done without you!”

“you’re welcome,” smiles tweak, and she and kwazii bid their goodbyes, hopping back inside and finally, finally, heading for home.

“how far out are we?” he asks.

“about –“ tweak calculates, briefly. “an hour away, i think.”

his tail droops, but he’s quick to hide it. “we need dashi with one of her countdowns right now,” he smirks in an effort to cheer her up. “she’d be accurate to the second.”

the water is darkening already. finally, barnacles and shellington sound off on the radio – they’ve just made it home, sounding exhausted after their exertions, a day doubtless hauling rocks off the sandy shore. kwazii and the captain chat for a minute or so, then he signs off and takes over her position at the helm. tweak’s glad of the break, her paws are stiff from gripping the steering wheel, battling the currents.

she’s tempted to close her eyes for a moment or two, but the creaking returns with a vengeance making kwazii yowl in shock – he was half asleep himself, it would seem.

“i’ll just check our levels.” she hurries to the back, dropping to her knees and fiddling with the displays.

“everything good?” kwazii calls after a second of silence.

“well – the good news – the battery’s fine, but looks like the propeller’s had it.”

kwazii curses, softly. “all this rough water.”

“yup,” she replies, heart sinking as she examines the readouts. “there’s a spare in stores, but we’re going to need to stop so i can replace it, or we’re going to get a nasty surprise when we fall dead in the water.”

it’s only a chance, of course, but it’s a chance neither of them are particularly willing to take, and so kwazii sighs heavily and slows the gup.

it’s a fairly easy fix, and the cat helps out by chatting amicably to her while she works, keeping her awake – she’s letting him nowhere near her toolkit, thank you very much. she’s tightening the final bolt and kwazii’s starting up the engine again when he gives another startled yowl.

“spider in your seat, kwaz?” she inquires teasingly as she climbs back in through the hatch.

he turns to her, his face full of doubt. “um – guessing it’s not supposed to be doing that, matey?”

tweak moves to the dashboard, frowning as she verifies that no, it’s definitely not supposed to be doing that. she had made it halfway through her checks before noticing the chipped propeller, but the oxygen levels were chirruping at her now, the readout in the red.

“that’s bad, right?”

“uh huh,” she agrees, distracted, moving to the back wall, pulling open the oxygen compartment. “i swapped these this morning,” she murmurs, annoyed at herself.

“we have been driving all day,” he points out.

tweak sighs, pulling her tank over her shoulders and tossing him the spare. “better put this on, kwaz, just in case.”

he manoeuvres his arms into the straps, wriggling to fit the oxygen cannister securely to his back. “how much in your tank?”

“not as much as i’d like.”

“and in the gup?”

“maybe – half an hour?” but with he and her with their greedy mammalian lungs gulping oxygen at the rate they were, and the rough water stealing air from the vents… she deflates, ears drooping slightly. “probably fifteen minutes,” she admits. “twenty, at a push.”

and still just under an hour from home, kwazii doesn’t have to voice. they sit in silence for a minute, staring out at the rapidly blackening sea around them.

“how long if we leave the engines off and wait for pickup?”

she thinks it over. “not sure. longer, definitely.”

they sit and breathe their dissipating air for a second, then make a consensus that sitting around here is doing nothing useful and start up the engine again. the air is getting steadily staler as they hurry against the current. they both cheerfully ignore the fact that his radio emits static when he tries to contact the octopod, like hers and the gup’s when they try them. she swallows a sigh. extending the range of their radios has been on the bottom of the to-do list for a long while, and likely to stay there.

the urgent beeping finally reaches a crescendo a couple of miles from home, and they make a quiet exit as the last of the breathable air filters from the vehicle. bubbles rise to the surface far above.

“ahh, we were so close to home, matey,” huffs kwazii, engaging his oxygen tank and closing his eyes as fresh air pumps into the bubble surrounding his head.

“isn’t it always the way?” pants tweak. “c’mon. we can tow the gup in the morning.”

they make it back in the nick of time, launching themselves a little breathlessly from the water into the darkened launch bay. tweak can’t help but smile as she stomps the droplets free of her aching feet. home is always a welcome sight.

the captain slides down the ladder to greet them. she gives him a quick, tight hug, seeing the familiar shadows under his eyes. “it’s late, cap,” she admonishes him, an accustomed conversation. “you didn’t need to wait up for us.”

“just wanted to check you got back alright,” he says casually. tweak smiles as he releases her, well aware he wouldn’t have slept otherwise.

“dashi and peso get back okay?”

“about an hour before us. they’re sound asleep in their pod. i’m surprised you can’t hear the snoring.”

she pricks her ears and grins wearily. “yeah, sounds about right.”

the captain finally retires to his pod. kwazii is tempted to follow, but his stomach growls louder so he creeps to the kitchen and bargains with a sleepy vegimal for a midnight snack.

the mechanic is sat, her legs trailing over the side of the bay as she fiddles inside the engine of the suspended gup e. soot spreads over her face. she smiles as she hears him tumble from the chute, a smile that only grows when he tosses her over a kelp cake. “just the one repair tonight, the gups are in pretty good shape. won’t take long.”

he lets her work, knowing she appreciates the quiet. “fancy a game?” he asks eventually, as she lets the gup sink down into storage. after a moment she looks up like she’s registering him for the first time, her eyes heavy-lidded.

kwazii beats her, which is unusual. he’s three points off her high score. tweak gives a rare grin as her avatar leapfrogs his, and bites into a fourth kelp cake, utterly failing to hide her yawn.

“c’mon,” he says, and pokes her in the side until she wriggles in protest.

they curl up in her bed, her ears drooping further and further until she drifts off on his shoulder, staining the orange with black soot.

* * *

they run more training drills than they ever have before, record more training videos, each focusing on their relative specialisms.

she’s still not very good at them, tweak thinks, but barnacles is a natural, and she soon slips back into the swing of speaking to dashi’s smiling face behind the camera. she runs classes on basic gup repair, teaches the crew the ins and outs of the octopod systems and what to do if they fail. if she’s on the other side of the world and the engine falls dead in the water, she warns that she might not be able to get there in time to fix it.

shellington steals dashi’s camera and spends a few days speaking happily to it, detailing their adventures and their discoveries with his infectious enthusiasm. they all know elementary first aid from their original octonaut training, but peso teaches them different bandage techniques, emergency procedures, until tweak feels she could bandage a shark fin with her eyes closed – and might have to, one day, the medic reminds them. be prepared for anything and everything to go wrong, is the gist of it. she’s well used to that mantra.

kwazii leads drills in the gups, making gleeful loops and circling the reef they’re parked nearby. the captain insists it needn’t be a race, but tweak sees the challenge in the cat’s eyes and beats him by a whisker to the last rock in the reef, laughing as he flounders and demands a rematch.

dashi teaches them all the basics of the octopod systems with which she has become so intimately familiar. tweak first designed them, after all, so she doesn’t struggle too much with this part of the training. finally the captain advises they all have a go at steering the ship, just in case it ever becomes necessary. (shellington doesn’t look too thrilled at this prospect, nor the captain or the engineer as they feel the ship make shaky twists and turns with the sea otter’s inexpert paws at the helm.)

tweak smiles as her paws settle on the wheel. she has driven the ship manually before, in the very early days, while she was still working out some of the bugs in the autopilot, but it’s been a long time since she has felt the power of their ship beneath her.

the captain guides their course, stood just behind her in the small steering pod. she can feel the heat radiating from his thick fur, the slight tremble in his balled paws.

“don’t look so worried, cap,” she smirks, sparing a hand to reach back and punch him lightly in the shoulder.

he folds his arms, smiling as she brings the ship easily up to the surface. “i’m not. you drive better than me.”

she rolls her eyes and relinquishes the wheel. “flattery will get you e’rywhere, cap.”

* * *

she’s flat on her back, tongue sticking sideways as she concentrates on the bolt she’s tightening on the ship above her, enjoying the rare challenge of a new invention. she so seldom gets time to work on her side projects and she had leapt at the chance this afternoon with a relatively quiet ship. kwazii’s feet tap impatiently against the roof of the new, unnamed gup as he attaches the dorsal fin, attacking it with a hammer with what seems like a personal vendetta.

“tweak, come in.”

“tweak here,” she answers, dropping the wrench with a clatter. before she realises it she’s out from underneath the gup, running across the launch bay and snatching an air tank, automatically sensing trouble. “what’s up, cap?”

“uh –“ he hesitates. “there’s something wrong with the gup.”

“on my way,” she responds immediately, feeling anxiety twist in her chest. she’ll happily drop everything if her crew’s in trouble, they all will, and she knows the captain well enough to hear the worry, almost imperceptible, in his voice.

kwazii sees the look on her face and immediately relents the gup b. she drives as fast as she dares, hands tight on the wheel.

the miniature bubble engine inside the gup c is making an unhealthy clanking sound but, burying herself up to the waist in the engine compartment, she works on it as shellington and barnacles watch nervously on. the octonauts teeter on the edge of a chasm, hung only by the trailing rescue line wedged in a rock formation.

finally, she unhooks the anchor, holding her breath, and with a cheerful thumbs-up the captain successfully activates the engine.

* * *

tweak spends weeks away from the octopod at a time, working on expanding the octo-repair station. it’s a personal project that had been rumbling on for years now, ever since she started building the second octopod. while it’s true that seven years on the ship has meant that the crew crash her gups far less often and there are fewer serious repairs to make day-to-day, the sheer volume of more-or-less daily missions on top of the regular maintenance that the octopod requires has necessitated a more automated approach. at least, that’s the official line she had spouted on the request form, and national seaographic had eaten it up and sent her more funds and supplies than she really knows what to do with.

still, the echoing, silent station feels too big for just her, and at the end of another busy day she shuts herself in her tiny sleeping quarters, curls up in her bunk and calls dashi.

“everything running smoothly without me?”

“oh you know, we’re managing. it's nice to get some peace and quiet without you crashing around the launch bay all day, anyway.” dashi's lips quirk to let her know she's joking. her hairclips are a little askew, her face a little flushed, water droplets clinging to her fur. just back from a mission, maybe.

she pretends to be offended. “glad to hear i'm not needed, then.”

“oh, you’ll always be welcome here, don't worry," she teases her. "how’s the station coming along?”

she smiles. “it’s taking shape. built two more workshops today.”

“sounds like you’ve been busy.”

“always busy, you know me.”

“i do,” dashi smiles.

* * *

peso and dashi, in tweak’s absence, watch her old training videos and attempt to fix the gup e, which had started spluttering and smoking on the way back from peso’s last solo mission. it had taken a few tries to find the right button for the winch, but the gup is now hanging from the ceiling, slightly swaying, as they search for the right tools to access the hatch.

their friend smiles and toys a little uncertainly from foot to foot as she explains the battery-changing procedure. it’s one of the early ones they had recorded, when dashi and peso had only just joined the crew, while tweak and barnacles had already been travelling six months. tweak’s visibly younger on the video, her voice higher, giggling as she struggles to heave the battery from its slot in the dashboard and the captain hurries obligingly to help her.

the two octonauts follow her instructions, and between them they find the tear in the battery. paws slightly shaking, dashi welds the rip shut and they manoeuvre the new battery back into the compartment. “will it work now?” peso wonders.

she shrugs. “only one way to find out.”

they both give sighs of relief as the gup chugs cheerfully into life, no smoke in sight. peso does a careful lap of the launch bay tank and hops from the driving seat, meeting dashi with an elated high-five, paw to flipper. “we’ll be fixing the bubble engine at this rate,” he says optimistically.

“and risk the wrath of tweak? best not.”

they celebrate their victory with a cup of cocoa in the hq, before the next alert sounds and peso hurries off out in the fixed gup e to attend the next emergency. dashi settles back in her seat, cupping her hot chocolate, and stares at the stationary picture of her friend. tweak’s smiling, with her arm thrown around barnacles’ shoulders and one of the professor’s tentacles wound around each of their spare wrists. she's stood on tiptoe, the captain slightly taller than her. they’re all grinning, at a joke long gone by.

dashi spends a lot of her spare time flicking through the photo albums stored on the octopod computer, she likes looking through the early days, before she had even joined the octonauts. she has filled the hard drive since, with so many pictures taken of the whole crew. it’s a nice reminder, of the family they had become.
her paw pauses on the last photo. last week they had made the front page again. tweak stands with folded arms and a huge grin on her face as the crew gather round her new octolab, faces floodlit by the lights, shining on the glossy magazine. it’s a dream come true, for all of them.

dashi just wishes they were all here to celebrate their achievements, wishes that sometimes their status felt like an achievement at all.

* * *

nearly a month. it’s the longest she’s been away from her ship in years. tweak breathes in and enjoys the freshly filtered air; it smells of home, or of what home had come to mean, over the years.

she has nightmares about the octopod falling through the water, her cherished engines just so much dead weight. she banks, in the gup d, and watches helplessly as the terrified faces of the crew dart about the hq, the engines failing, she too far away to help. in those dreams, she never sees it hit the sea floor.

she shakes the intrusive thoughts free as a dachshund flings herself at her, hugging her so tightly she struggles for breath. “hiya, dashi,” tweak greets, laughing a little breathlessly. “long time no see.”

she encloses peso in a similar hug, propping her chin gently on his head. she had forgotten how soft his feathers are. “the place hasn’t completely fallen apart without me, then.”

“we just about managed,” dashi says modestly.

tweak cranes in and glances at the patch on the battery inside the gup e, nodding appreciatively. “you guys fixed it all by yourselves? i’m impressed.”

“still nothing compared to your repairs, though.” dashi’s dark brown eyes flicker up to hers. “we missed you, tweak.”

it takes her a moment to reply. “i missed you guys too,” she says softly. she shakes her head, straightening. “who’s here?”

peso gestures to himself, then to dashi. “you’re looking at them.”

“but –“ dashi interjects, excitedly. “the others are due back from the arctic tomorrow.”

tweak feigns shock. “you mean we’re all going to be in the same ship, in the same place, at the same time? scandalous.”

* * *

barnacles, kwazii and shellington creep into the kitchen after eight at night, met with delighted cries and tight hugs, enough to rival the chill of the arctic waters they’re currently floating through. the crew collapse onto the kitchen benches and converse as tunip and the vegimals prepare a hearty welcome supper. it's been weeks since they’ve all been together. they've been operating on a skeleton crew, covering absent roles as best they can. dashi has enjoyed her time as acting-captain, but it’s nice to finally take a step back from mission control.

everyone's visibly exhausted but passing smiles around the table, barely speaking as they eat but unspeakably glad to be back together.

“busy day?” barnacles asks, hiding a wide yawn, almost automatically.

it’s an accustomed question; they’re used to the answer, but dashi quietens. "seven alerts today," she murmurs, propping her cheek onto her palm, not quite meeting the captain’s eyes.

she doesn’t have to explain, but they can all imagine. creatures clamouring at their front door, demanding their attention, begging for their help. there’s never enough hours in the day.
they do all they can.

* * *

the octo-alert goes off twice overnight, and tweak wanders the corridors like a particularly grumpy ghost by mid-morning, although she is definitively not a before-noon kind of girl anyway. she dimly remembers having let barnacles and kwazii out at some point this morning, but the details are hazy. she makes it to the kitchen and flops down at a table. tunip sympathetically pushes her over a mug of steaming coffee, a delicacy that the vegimals had only recently acquired, and which has become very welcome the last few weeks.

dashi will have been up for hours already, but she must hear her stumbling round the kitchen from upstairs and comes to keep her company, flicking through the weather channels linked to her tablet as she finishes the morning checks. “busy day?” she asks noncommittally, like the answer is ever no.

“what gave you that impression?” tweak mumbles, lifting her head from the table and taking a huge gulp of her coffee.

“only the fact that you’re up before ten am.”

“not by choice. the cap, peso and kwazii left sometime before seven. they’re answering a couple of the overnight calls, coupla’ nearby reefs. no biggie, might even make it back for a late breakfast.”

the dog tilts her head, gaze still focused on her tablet. “i didn’t hear the alert go off.”

“they probably only set it off in the launch bay. can’t say i blame them, for you guys’ sakes. though i'm getting less sleep these days than I did when I was a teenager, and that's saying something!" tweak’s laugh dissolves into a yawn halfway. “even ‘gators needed their beauty sleep, i guess.”

"i can sleep tonight's shift downstairs?" offers dashi. "it's not fair you're always getting woken up by it."

"nah, s'no problem really.” she nudges her shoulder with her own, downing the dregs of her coffee. “thanks though, dash. though you just want my nice warm bed.”

“i have a nice warm bed,” she counters. “i'm trying to be a nice person.”

tweak rolls her eyes. “you can’t fail to be a nice person.”

on cue, her radio chimes. “dashi, are you there?” barnacles asks, his voice muted through the mini speaker.

dashi presses a paw to her collar, straightening unconsciously, professionally. “right here, captain,” she replies, ever calm. “what’s up?”

“are you busy?”

she snickers softly. “other than watching tweak absorb an undoubtedly unhealthy volume of coffee, not really.”

“okay.” he pauses. they hear undecipherable voices that the radio can’t quite pick up. his voice is a little bit strained as it returns. “tweak, dashi, stand by. there's been a shark attack.”

they run down to the launch bay, exchanging glances as they grab their helmets and go.

* * *

the scene is nightmarish. the breath catches in her throat as tweak slams the brake on the gup, bringing them to a halt. she holds dashi’s gaze for a single, stretching second, something strange and cold and reassuring passing between the two octonauts before she leaves her in a daze and hurries through the reddening water to the penguin, knelt alone on what’s left of this side of the reef. he's surrounded by a small shoal of fish, each begging for a bandage. she taps him gently on the shoulder and pulls him away, squeezing his flippers with both paws. “i can handle it, peso,” she hurries, seeing the scandalised look on the medic’s face. “go help the others.”

the injuries are only superficial, and the pages she’s memorised many a time from the training manual swim readily past her eyes as tweak busies her paws with bandages and stickers and reassuring words, trying to channel the gentle penguin. the sea otter is doing much the same a few metres to the left. they share quick nods. she and shellington are the best substitute medics. they all have basic first aid training but barnacles can’t tie a knot in a bandage to save his life, and kwazii – well, peso’s wisely letting him nowhere near his medical bag. they swim circles of the reef, securing the area, carrying over injured creatures to the two acting medics and the one actual one.

feeling a little sick, dashi snaps a couple of obligatory photos of the scene for the report she’s dreading having to write later, then swims over to peso, kicking her legs hard to reach him. the medic is busy with a patient, his flippers pressed tight over a bleeding tentacle as the octopus wriggles beneath him. “what can i do?” she asks, trying to keep her voice steady, swallowing down the tremor. she's seen worse than this, they all have. sometimes it’s the only way to rationalise the situations they find themselves in, the fact that they could always get worse.

immediately, peso lifts his flippers from the wound and grabs hers. “paws here,” he directs. “press, and do not let go.”

* * *

dashi sits updating the daily mission log, one fist tucked tight under her chin, typing with the other hand. she resolutely ignores the shaking of both paws, and utters a rare curse as she misses a letter on the keyboard for the fourth time.

he finds her sat with her fist propping up her chin, jabbing at buttons with a little too much force as she runs through her regular checks. to the casual observer, there would be nothing to give her away, but shellington knows her too well. “everything okay?” he asks a little uncertainly, coming up behind her.

“oh, shel –!“ she jumps, then settles. “didn’t see you there. yeah – you?”

“i’m alright.” he hesitates, for a little too long to be casual. “maybe a bit shaken after today.”

“aren’t we all,” she murmurs. shellington had sounded the alarm. he had been out on a solo sampling mission, as he is so often, trying to maintain the organisation’s ‘explore’ quota, on top of ‘rescue’ and ‘protect’. she flashes him the canine gesture for sympathy, and pats the seat beside her for him to sit.

he sees the pictures she’s editing and pulls a face that he’s too slow to hide from her as she glances at him. the whole crew have swum into shot, busying themselves with the broken reef. “they love it when we work together.” she shrugs, trying to swallow down the second-hand sorrow, trying not to see the stationary shock on photo-tweak’s face as she helps barnacles heave a heavy rock from a turtle’s smashed shell. “happens so rarely, these days. the public laps it up.”

“isn’t it a bit – cold?”

her lips tighten, familiarly. she has demanded this of herself many times. “exploiting the sad stories we see every day for media content?”

he hesitates, sensing he’s hit a nerve. “uhm.”

“don’t worry, it’s not a trick question.” she stares at her screen, a familiar scratching sensation growing behind her eyes, threatening tears. she forces her voice to stay even. “but if we share these stories with national seaographic, we get more sponsors, and there’s a chance it helps us help more creatures. i just…”

“yeah,” he concludes. “i know you have to write this stuff up. it’s our duty to report it. people should know what we’re going through, what the ocean needs their funding for. might make them think, you know?”

“mhm.” her paws tremble as she returns to her typing.

after a long moment, shellington scoots his chair across to her space and pushes gently at her seat until it gives way. the squeeze of his paw is welcome. “hey, let me type. you’re going to take ages.”

she blinks gratefully at the sea otter, and lets him take over, gradually feeling the shivering of her hands slow.

Chapter Text

tweak, working alone down in the deep sea octolab; peso, stationed on an extended medic mission in the gup w; barnacles and kwazii, returning late every night with dark circles under their eyes. dashi: trying to coordinate every mission and send regular reports to national seaographic, documenting everything she can. sometimes, she’s reminded of when she’s surfing, negotiating the waves. one wrong move, one poorly calculated angle, and the tide would sweep her under. she surfaces, spluttering salt water, wishing she had stayed a little closer to the shore.

mission control is no easy task when there’s four different missions to keep track of, four different locations on the map to keep an eye on, four different icons moving in opposite directions across her screens. she’s so scared she’s going to miss something important. only last week, tweak, kwazii and shellington had been in antarctica dropping off supplies, and it had taken natquik to notice the giant iceberg that had nearly crushed her crewmates.

still, she and shellington have it easy, being sent on the fewest long-haul missions together. unlike the rest of the crew, who spend more time off the octopod these days than they do on it. she’s glad of his presence, even if more often than not they’re on opposite shifts. the octopod feels too big for just them, plus the professor and the vegimals, keeping the octopod running at base power. tweak had hitched a lift with the captain back from the antarctic yesterday and had been sent straight down to answer an automated maintenance alert from the octolab. dashi misses her; they all miss each other, keenly.

her radio bleeps, as if on cue, and she puts the incoming call on the big screen, smiling sleepily up at it. “hey, tweak.”

“hiya, dashi. holding the fort okay?”

she waves a hand to the empty hq. “you bet.”

“anyone else around?”

“just me tonight. shel’s getting some sleep.”

she smiles. “he’s earned it. looks like a quiet night.”

“oh, chance would be a fine thing,” she muses, casting an automatic glance at the radar. “you’ll have jinxed it now, just wait and see.”

“whoops, sorry ‘bout that.”

she notices the mechanic looks exhausted, dark rings under her eyes, a familiar angle to her shoulders, as if carrying a heavy weight. “have you slept?” dashi asks, a little sternly.

tweak twitches her ears, as if deep in thought. “sometime in the last… 48 hours, definitely,” she decides. “time doesn’t mean a whole lot down here, i forget when it’s night.”

“now is night,” dashi confirms. “it’s dark here, anyway, in whatever time zone we’ve drifted into. you should get some sleep.”

“i know i should, but…”

she deflates at the look on dashi’s face. “i will,” the engineer echoes. “promise. just got a last couple repairs to make.”

“and then you’ll come back?”

she pauses to smile. “yeah. s’been a long haul, but i should be back in a day or two.”

the dachshund gazes past her, watching the dark water. “good,” she says softly. “we’re missing you here.”

* * *

dashi has been asleep all day, and comes groggily to as she hears soft footsteps at the bottom of her octochute. a few seconds later, as she is beginning to believe she had dreamt it, tweak pads across the room and tugs gently at the corner of the duvet. drowsily, dashi finds her hand in the dark. “when’d you get back?” she asks, still half asleep.

“’bout an hour ago,” the engineer responds, burying her face in the pillow. “you on the night shift tonight?”

“apparently. peso switched with me. had patients to drop off.”

“ah. explains why the gup e was gone. i remembered to put a fresh battery in, just in case. don't want a repeat of the trench incident.”

she nods drowsily into her shoulder. “where are we?” dashi wonders.

“just off the coast of japan, just parked up. you’ve been travelling all day. took a while to catch up to you, even in a fast current.” she yawns, on cue. “god knows what time it is.”

she snuffles sympathetically. “time zones are a killer.”

“agreed.”

they drift in the quiet for a little while. finally, dashi stretches out a paw and taps the screen of her tablet, groaning hazily at the display. “s’almost eight. i should get up, but…” she squirms and makes herself more comfortable against tweak’s side, burying her nose in her short fur.

“don’t do it.”

“i could sleep another eight hours. easy.”

“do it.”

“oh, don’t tempt me.”

eventually, she caves and slips her feet into her shoes. she stands and stretches and squints at the murky water, flowing past outside her sleep pod. “are you staying here?” she snickers.

“this is my bed now,” tweak says indistinctly into the pillow.

“huh?”

“it’s my bed now.”

“no it’s not.”

“it’s mine.”

* * *

the next morning brings an automated alert, and dashi and shellington sent down to the octolab to check it.

“i could just… not let you go.” tweak crosses her arms and leans back against the control panel, half contemplating it. “i could refuse to open the octo-hatch.”

“oh, because you’re the only one who can open it."

she throws up her paws, daringly. “go on, then. try it.”

dashi chases her across the launch bay, and they fall into the water, grappling and squealing, until a smirking shellington surfaces the gup c underneath them, and tips them, spluttering, onto the platform.

* * *

tweak is still awake when the octoalert goes off, echoing off the walls of the empty launch bay. her legs protest as she swings them grudgingly out of bed. barnacles slides neatly down the ladder and moments later, inkling crawls from the chute, a bleary look on his face that gives away the recent rude awakening.

“why do you always look wide awake whatever time it is?” complains tweak to barnacles, well aware of the dark circles under her eyes.

the captain just smiles, and they hurry to the main screen, where tracker blinks apologetically down at them. “sorry, i'm sorry,” he hurries. “i always forget the time difference. i can…”

“wasn’t asleep,” she yawns, and tries to look as accommodating she can as he fills the three of them in.

“tweak, tracker's station is in dire need of maintenance," barnacles summarises once the young polar bear has signed off, his voice full of apology. “we can spare another octonaut to go with you, but dashi and shellington are still down in the octolab, and peso only just got back an hour ago…”

“it’s okay cap,” she interrupts, hearing the slight growl to his voice, signifying the worry there. “don’t mind going alone.”

“are you sure?”

“uh huh.”

she feels a little silly wrapping up warm in the relatively toasty launch bay, but as she pulls her snowsuit snug around her ears, she’s glad of it. however much time she spends in the freezing arctic, she never quite becomes accustomed to the temperature drop. "s'going to be a cold night," she comments without spite, hopping into the gup s. she sets the autopilot, and curls up in one of the bottom bunks, hoping to steal some sleep on the way.

the solo missions are the worst, in a way. tracker is profuse in his gratitudes as she sets to work, but he was right, his station has seen better days, and the repairs take her almost a week. it's hard work in the arctic winter. she misses the sunlight, and she has grown to hate working in the dark, wherever she ends up. she’s relieved to sink back into the sea once her work is done, a lone, waving polar bear left behind in the freezing research station.

* * *

tweak tiptoes along the middle deck corridor towards the bathroom, trying not to wake anyone up. she squints at the time on the wall screen. it’s sometime before the next day, but only just. she jumps, surprised as the captain steps from the kitchen, his paws wrapped round a mug of hot chocolate. “cap!” she folds her arms, looking forbidding. “you’re up late.”

he blusters for a second. “i – er – so are you!”

“i just got back. you, on the other hand…”

he looks suitably guilty for her to know her guess had been right. “you know, if you wait for all of us to get tucked up in bed every night, you’ll never get any sleep yourself.”

he shrugs, keeping his expression under careful control. he doesn’t need to say anything.

the crew do this a lot, these days, these cold, dark nights when only half of them are home and the other half feel their absence keenly. barnacles would very rarely join them, but on occasion he would. she’s still shivering from the arctic waters. he rumbles familiarly as he settles in beside tweak, who snuggles into his side, feeling the warmth emanate strongly from his thick fur. they're old friends and they've done this many times before, when the ship was new and they were both young and they had missed their families along with everything they had known back in their old lives.

* * *

peso calls out for the hundredth time to his patient, his voice plaintive. kwazii’s paws tighten instinctively on the helm as he guides the ship through the black water. they’ve been chasing the massive blue whale for a day and a night, after in its pained frenzy it had damaged the garden pod and swum off into the deep, a large laceration around its blowhole.

they get themselves caught in its slipstream and follow at a cautious distance as it thrashes and wails to itself. its call is ghostly in the dark. the cat shudders. he's seen many a shadowy monster in his time, but there’s something about the eerie wail of the largest animal in the sea that sets his whiskers shivering.

“i think we should leave the gup,” peso says softly, his chin set at a determined angle. “i think the sound of the gup is spooking him, maybe messing with his sonar.”

he slows the ship, looking deep into the penguin’s nervous eyes. “are you sure, peso?”

“you don’t have to come, kwazii.”

he shakes his head with a roll of his eyes. “not letting you have all the excitement, matey. c’mon, let’s see if we can calm him down.”

the water is cold, and the chasms below them groan, sending ripples flooding up through the water. kwazii’s tail thrashes as he follows peso, swimming ahead of him, still shouting out to the whale. “my name is peso,” he calls. “i help any creature who is hurt or sick! please – i want to help.”

the shadows seem to blend into one, down this deep. kwazii wishes he had had the foresight to don his deep sea suit. “peso,” he calls, once they’ve circled nearly the whole way back to the gup. “i think we might have to –“

and suddenly a huge shadow develops right beneath them. kwazii, acting on his octonauts’ instinct alone, throws himself forward into peso, sending the penguin tumbling forwards with a shout. they both twist and back away, the medic falling silent, his mouth continuing to form soundless words. kwazii sees the horrified look on his face and flies into the giant whale’s path, trying to calm the terrified creature that’s perhaps a hundred times bigger than him, copying the captain’s conciliatory paws.

moments later he’s whirling, winded, a crack arching across his helmet and rapidly growing. the panicked, injured whale deals him another accidental blow as it smacks him upside the head with its tail, rushing downwards into the deep. he’s almost dragged down with it, flipping helplessly head over heels in its powerful slipstream, but has the presence of mind to grab peso’s flipper as the penguin dives frantically for him. his helmet deactivating, the cat calmly holds his breath for the twenty seconds it takes for the medic to pull him back to the gup a.

peso claws at him, easing him back with insistent flippers into the spinning chair. "how many fingers?" he demands.

kwazii just about manages a smile as he catches his breath. "that's a trick question," he drawls, closing his eyes, pressing a paw firmly to his forehead. “but if you’re asking if my head hurts, matey, that’s an easy answer.”

peso giggles hoarsely.

they're never going to make it back before the morning without either of them falling asleep at the wheel, and kwazii’s in no fit state to drive in anything resembling a straight line anyway. reluctantly, still gazing longingly after his giant patient, but gripping the cat’s paw, peso calls the octopod. barnacles appears an hour later, hazy in the dim, amber light, brow furrowed in worry as the dazed lieutenant struggles to focus on him.

(kwazii curls up beside him, the captain’s bed cool to his feverish, bandaged brow. his tail flicks vaguely in sleep. barnacles wraps warm arms around his skinny form and prays he can chase the concussion away.)

* * *

the sun never dips fully below the horizon in this part of the world, but the temperature suddenly plummets, accompanied by the blackening sky, meaning the two trekking crewmates are forced to seek shelter in the snow. the captain was really hoping to make it back before dawn and avoid being caught in the snowstorm, but then here they are.

he’s glad of tweak’s snowsuit. they both deal well with the cold, being polar creatures, but even peso’s shivering. barnacles wraps the penguin to his chest, well aware of the heat that radiates from his thick fur. it had been quick work with his large, shovel-like paws to dig out a space enough for two of them in the packed snow. they sit there for a long while, watching the sky’s slight darkening through the blizzard. feels a little strange to be back in the arctic, after all these years.

the snowstorm shows no sign of letting up. their view of the outside is almost entirely obscured. barnacles angles his back against the entrance to their little cave, ensuring they don’t get snowed in overnight, and blocking out the icy wind that he barely feels against the thick fur covering his spine.

“we should get some rest,” he says. “we still have a long walk tomorrow.”

obediently, peso lies down, but as he rolls to face the captain five minutes later, barnacles recognises his troubled expression.

“can’t sleep?” he asks softly.

quietly, the medic shakes his head.

the captain shifts onto his back. “no,” he muses, aware this isn’t a one-off occurrence, for any of them. “me neither.”

as the youngest of them, peso feels it perhaps the most acutely when there’s creatures just beyond their reach, communities who refuse their help. he stares at the snow packed over their heads, eyes dark, expression pensive.

“we’re not fast enough,” he whispers, as if this has been a weight on his mind for a long time. “no matter how much we do, there’s still places we can’t get to in time, people who we can’t help.”

“we do what we can,” barnacles echoes. they're familiar, empty words.

after a second, peso glances back at him. his pupils are black pinpricks against the blinding, white ice. “is what we can enough?”

* * *

they’re all at home, for once, and jet-lag is catching up with the lot of them. they gather, almost accidentally, in the kitchen, and set about preparing some food since the exhausted vegimals are piled up, sound asleep in the garden pod. dashi’s paws are tired from typing up the week’s lengthy mission report, but she chops kelp almost without thinking, listening to the conversations drifting idly from table to table. barnacles is next to her, mechanically kneading a ball of biscuit dough. peso crouches to check the oven, gaze faraway. shellington sits in silence, head in a book. tweak hasn’t surfaced all day. it’s late, and everyone’s tired, but traditionally, no-one can sleep. it’s a common affliction, with these twenty-eight-hour days. tempers are rising, patience slipping.

dashi passes out the plates silently, and tries to stay awake long enough to eat the kelp cake the medic deposits in front of her.

“what time even is it?” shellington yawns, chin lowering almost to his plate. he keeps sending longing looks at his lab across the empty landing, as if it’s a battle between his growling stomach and his drooping eyelids.

it takes her a moment, tilting her head to think quite straight. she hasn’t had time to calibrate the octopod computers yet today, to adjust their virtual clocks, or her mental one at that. “we’ve crossed six timezones today, so – 8pm? no, 9.”

he sighs. “what shift does this even count as anymore?”

she glances at the captain, who shrugs his massive shoulders and steals another sip of cocoa, large paws dwarfing the cup. “don’t ask me.”

kwazii comes into the kitchen, oddly subdued, given he doesn’t flip straight to the fridge, as is customary. his shoulders are a little slumped, his collar dishevelled, eyepatch askew. “anyone seen tweak?” he asks, wearily.

they shake their heads – no. “have you tried her workshop?” asks dashi.

“first place i looked.” he shakes his head, as if annoyed at himself. “just got the gup b in a spot of bother again, but i wanted to tell her not to worry about it tonight, or at least not to get her ears in a twist and blame me if she finds it before i get the chance to fix it up.”

shellington murmurs something next to her that dashi doesn’t catch, but the cat’s shoulders tense and his tail flicks, irritably. “didn’t ask you, did i, matey?” he mutters, turning his back on the room as he collects an armful of kelp cakes and slouches back towards the door,

“leave some for the rest of us,” shellington murmurs sleepily, as if not registering his mouth moving.

kelp cakes roll over the floor, and kwazii turns, and his tail lashes, and there’s sudden fire in his eyes, and then the captain is stepping between them, paws held out, conciliatory. “kwazii,” is all he says, and the cat visibly reacts, raised shackles relaxing, eyes widening from the slits they had rapidly become.

“sorr’eh,” he mutters to shellington, waiting barely a second then sticking out a paw, barely looking at it. “s’been a long day.”

the otter grips it. “it’s alright,” he says, finding a smile that a moment later, the lieutenant returns.

they sit and share out a fresh batch, and everything is alright, at least for a little while.

* * *

another day, and another disaster.

they’re coming more and more often these days, dashi reflects, as she runs towards the ladder to the launch bay, wringing her paws anxiously together. she skids down, skipping the rungs entirely, like she’s seen tweak do a thousand times. tweak, she thinks, loudly. she had heard her shout from downstairs, and then radio silence, which is never a good thing on the octopod. peso hops down after her, hot on her heels as they race across the room.

the engineer’s out cold on the platform just shy of the launch bay tank, water crashing around her as the captain fights with the controls two floors up. the octopod veers precariously and dashi slides the rest of the way, shouting out in surprise. the gup b skids back past her and splashes back into the launch bay tank, a dent in its side. “gup b must have hit her when it shot out of storage,” dashi murmurs, crouching and checking a narrow laceration in her friend’s forehead. “knocked her out cold.”

peso elbows her aside. “the bleeding’s already stopped,” the medic reports, giving her a careful onceover, tilting her chin gently from side to side with a flipper. “she’ll be okay.”

“just have the mother of all headaches when she wakes up.”

he shakes her shoulder and repeats her name, but tweak doesn’t stir. the octopod jolts to the side again and dashi has to duck as a crate comes flying for her. “i always tell tweak she should strap those things down,” dashi muses, trying to flatten down her fur, standing instinctively on end, the familiar flight or fight response leaping into her limbs. “she just says she’s got good at dodging them.”

“not that good, clearly,” peso answers, his eyes tightened in worry. “come on. we have to get back to the hq, help the captain navigate.”

an arm hooked around each of their shoulders, they somehow manoeuvre tweak up the ladder and make it to hq, which is in a state. dashi runs over, calls up the map and they make it past the cyclone without ripping their ship apart, mercifully.

tweak is awake and answering peso’s quiet questions when dashi hurries over. “hey, you with us?”

peso, satisfied with his checkup, waddles back a step. “she’s got a mild concussion, but she’ll live,” he relays to her. “i’ve got to go check on my other patients,” he realises, and rushes off towards the octochute.

dashi flops into the seat beside her, the exhaustion catching up with her all of a sudden. “hey.”

the mechanic manages a rueful grin, rubbing her head. “hiya.”

“he’ll have you sleeping in the sick bay tonight, you realise.”

tweak laughs. “yeah, i know. think i can convince him i’ve gotta clean up my launch bay first?”

she crosses her arms. “you’ll have to convince me first. gup to the head, i think that gives you the rest of the day off.”

“too right it does,” says the captain, apparently overhearing as the lift deactivates. “if peso doesn’t beat me to it, you’re on bed-rest for a day or two. captain’s orders.”

tweak rolls her eyes and then winces, not exactly helping her case. “cap, i'm fine…”

* * *

they’re swimming, fast, frantic, and thoughts are flashing through the captain’s mind like a lightshow. his first mate insists it’s a monster, and with the size of the shadow chasing them, with the size of its just-visible, glittering teeth, for once he’s inclined to agree.

he wishes shellington or dashi were here, to give him a calm, scientist’s appraisal of the situation. but they are far away in antarctica, with the other half of his crew, and if they don’t lose their pursuer soon, barnacles knows in the back of his buzzing mind that they’re not going to make it back for the mission report.

the water ripples around them, and the two octonauts have to kick hard to avoid being caught in the rings of bubbles rushing upwards from the depths of the small lagoon they’ve found themselves cornered in.

he wishes peso was here. he’s aware many creatures don’t expend the energy to chase their prey across half the atlantic ocean without good reason; they must be injured, or starving, or desperate, as so many creatures they have dealt with have been. the medic would try to reason with them, try to help them, but he’s far away, helping dig a colony of his penguin cousins out of an ice avalanche in antarctica.

barnacles swims faster, trying to keep up with the fleeing cat, who shoots through the water like a bullet, his small frame making him surprisingly aerodynamic. not for the first time, he curses his thick, bulky fur, waterlogged, slowing him down. he kicks harder as they make it to a formation of rocks behind the reef and dodge out of sight, just in time.

he wishes tweak was here, flying above them, shooting down a perfectly timed rescue line. “another close one, cap,” she calls down with a grin, as she air-lifts the two swiftly out of danger. he fights the urge to look up, to stare at the surface, searching for the welcome sight of the gup h. she’s far away, in antarctica, fighting to dig the buried gup i out of fifteen tonnes of packed snow. she'll make light of it later, as will he, just as they all make light of the danger they find themselves thrown into every single day. he hopes they get the chance to joke about it later.

behind them, an unseasonably loud rumble.

kwazii twists to face the captain, treading buffeting water, his eyes big. “you have to trust me. i know these waters,” he whispers. “i know a way out, if you can keep that thing busy long enough for me to find it.”

“i trust you, kwazii,” barnacles says immediately. and he does, he always has. “what do you need me to do?”

* * *

sometimes, by the time they get the call, it’s impossible to get there in time.

dashi drives the gup a as fast as she reasonably can, but they find the tiny reef decimated, and the creatures that once called it home have long since fled for deeper waters. snapped coral drifts idly towards the surface, filling the empty waters – eerily quiet – with shadows of colour and fragmented life.

peso buries his beak in his hands, and looks away. a strange, small sound escapes from tweak’s mouth as she springs from the ship with paws outstretched, as if to sweep up the shards of sharp coral in her bare hands. the three octonauts float there for a full five minutes, staring, breathing in and out. giving the horror scene the reverence and the distance it deserves.

“i have to write the report,” says dashi shakily, finally kicking away, her eyes large, gleaming with tears.

unable to rest, she throws herself into her work, because what else do they have?

* * *

he promised he could handle it, and tweak knows full well he can. but kwazii hasn’t reported in in three hours, and worry twists like a spanner buried in her stomach. the three of them sit around the hq, scared into silence. dashi keeps her eyes focused on his icon, moving in short, static increments across the screen. she had fallen quiet an hour ago, beside sending out regular radio bursts on their frequency every five minutes, on the off chance that kwazii can still hear them.

the dachshund glances at the captain as the clock creeps into the next morning, her brow creasing.

“he told us to stay put,” reiterates barnacles, more to himself than either of them. “and i trust his judgement.”

they do too, but taking care of the ocean is a big job for all of them, let alone just one octonaut.

another hour passes, and they still haven’t heard anything. she knows kwazii well, knows that logically his helmet radio is just out of range or he’s simply forgotten to check in, caught up in the exhilaration of a mission. still, she drums the dashboard with impatient paws, wanting to hit something, maybe him, for scaring them all like this.

the captain has nodded off. gently tweak shakes his shoulder, rousing him and shaking her head hurriedly at his look of alarm. “nothing, yet. you should get some sleep – in a real bed,” she says. “we’ve got it up here.” and god knows when you last slept, she wants to add, slight irritation replacing sympathy in her expression as he shakes his own head. “ya’ll be no good to kwazii if you’re too tired to drive,” tweak adds firmly, staring him down, before he can open his big, stubborn mouth to say anything. she’s his oldest friend, and they’ve known each other long enough by now to be able to call each other out. when she’s being childish, and grumpy, and unreasonable, she can rely on him to come and confiscate her blueprints until she’s had a good night’s sleep and stops obsessing over a solution to something she can’t yet see.

barnacles sees the look on her face, and his head lowers. “fine,” he says, whining a little, like a cub, and she’s just about aware enough herself to count that as a victory. “but wake me if there’s any news. any,” he insists. “even if it’s in ten minutes time.”

“oh, I’m sure you’ll really benefit from that minute of sleep,” she retorts, and smirks at the look of resigned amusement he throws her before he hops into the octochute.

she takes his place at the control panel beside a silent dashi and activates the radio, as dashi has been doing periodically for the last forty minutes. “this is tweak,” she says, her voice a little hoarse. “hey, kwaz, if you’re out there, come in.”

she pilots, because the still slightly swaying captain doesn’t look in any fit state to, although of course he insists on coming. dashi, exhausted, retreats to her pod as soon as they leave. she’s pulled a double shift, and will feel it tomorrow. silently, tweak reminds herself to bring her a hot chocolate and a bowl of breakfast kelp pudding when she wakes up.

kwazii’s paws quiver a little as he grips the controller, his gaze a little too bright, the game reflecting off slightly glassy eyes.

he cheers up as he beats her by two points and proceeds to lord it over her for the next three rounds. tweak smiles, ruffling his still-damp, ginger fur as they play-wrestle and tumble off the bed, grappling for the console.

she had let him win on this occasion, but she’d never dream of telling him that.

* * *

as half of their crew head to bed, the engineer opts for the late shift, on watch down in the twilight zone, and without a word dashi joins her, swimming down to the gup cradling two steaming mugs of cocoa. they do this a lot, on late night missions, they would settle together in the gup e and talk about everything and anything. she's really the sister tweak had never had. she reckons it had been worth the wait.

tiny sea snails knock tentatively on the windscreen, a group of crabs scuttle past and dashi notes down their complaints to check out on morning patrol, tweak fits a prosthetic light to an anglerfish’s broken stem. they sit and sip and wait for the beams of morning sun to drift through the darkened water and let them call it a night.

“don’t you love being at the beck and call of a million creatures all the time?” tweak drawls as she shivers her way out of her deep-sea suit, hooking her air tank back over the bracket at the back of the ship.

"yes," dashi replies honestly, because they do, they love their job, that's why they're all still here, six years on.

someone a couple of weeks ago mentioned a holiday with a laugh on their lips and really, they're all thinking it. but then the octoalert would sound again and again and they'd be split up across the sea again, spinning wildly through the whirlpool that has become their life.

* * *

peso waddles softly along the length of the launch bay. tweak had been asleep, but her keen ears pick up his slight hesitation and she leans out of bed, blinking muzzily. "c'mon, then, if y’coming."

his feathers are cool against her fur. he’s short enough for her to comfortably rest her chin on his head. she switches on a video game and peso watches with half-lidded eyes as her avatar leaps across the screen. he had turned twenty-two a couple of days ago, but the celebrations were marred by the fact that only half of them were around to mark it.

peso doesn’t say much on the subject, as with most things, but she finds the penguin can be surprisingly direct when he wants to be, with those dark, solemn eyes. he rests his head back against the headboard. “i just miss them,” he whispers.

"i know,” tweak says, sympathy in her eyes as she lays her head atop his and battles to concentrate on the game, instead of the water welling in her lower eyelids. “i miss them all too."

* * *

dashi has drifted off at her station as kwazii tells one of the stories they’ve all heard a thousand times, the tales increasing in magnitude and decreasing in credibility with each telling. “kwazii,” barnacles starts with the usual laugh-groan in his voice as peso squeaks familiarly and jumps behind the captain.

“captain,” she interrupts, uncharacteristically, and kwazii looks up questioningly, unused to being cut off.

barnacles looks up with a smile that rapidly fades when he sees her expression. “what is it, dashi?”

she usually prides herself on her ability to keep calm in a crisis, but the last few, long weeks are catching up with her, and dashi struggles to keep the worry out of her eyes. “it’s – it’s – well, the scans aren’t 100% clear, and sometimes they miss things…” i don’t miss things, she thinks furiously, paws a blur on her keyboard as she checks and double checks. the tiny icon persists. she feels hollow. not now, not now.

the captain steps up behind her and looks closely at her screen, but he’s less intimately acquainted with the systems and struggles to follow the swirling symbols. “i’m sorry,” she mumbles under her breath, and realises she’s repeating it over and over as she triple-checks, willing her calculations to be wrong.

“it’s okay, dashi,” barnacles interjects evenly. “what are we dealing with?”

we. even after this long, it still brings her strength, knowing they’re all in this together. she looks up at the room with big eyes. “it’s a hurricane,” she whispers.

the captain nods, like he’s just been told they’re out of kelp cakes. “how long do we have?” he asks.

then, something hits them.

a lot of somethings hit them, and then they’re being picked up by the current and spinning madly towards the trench they’re parked next to. dashi pushes herself up from the floor and fights to think straight through the roaring of water and the screeching of the circling ship and the shouting of her crew.

“dashi, activate launch!” barnacles roars, somehow drowning everything else out, and yelping, her autopilot takes over and she manages to follow his command.

thankfully, the octopod behaves and she carries the launch sequence through smoothly, guiding them into flight, keeping her eyes focused on her controls as the crew gathers at the window, gazing down at the rapidly widening trench with widening eyes. “it’s okay,” she says loudly, trying to drown out the thrashing water. “it’s –“

the ship rocks and tilts, precariously, and peso squeaks as he slides all the way across the hq, having no time to grab onto anything as the rest of the crew dive for something that’s fastened down. she finds tweak’s paw in the dark as the emergency lights flicker on. kwazii jumps up, only slightly unsteady on his feet. “everyone okay?”

“a-okay,” dashi responds, distracted by the dizzying array of rocks clipping the window, making her jump. the captain and tweak join her at the circular dashboard, six paws flying over the buttons and levers as they work together to try and stabilise the ship.

“what was that?” yelps shellington.

peso glances up, but his gaze is somewhere else as he regards the room with wandering eyes. letting tweak cover her controls, dashi hurries over to the medic, face a mask of concern. “hey. hey, peso. peso. i need you with me,” she commands.

vaguely, he looks up, and his dazed expression comes into a form of focus. “i'm – i’m with you,” he mumbles.

shellington crouches down next to the penguin as dashi runs back to her station, thoughts flying faster than she can follow. perhaps if the octopod had undergone maintenance any time in the last few months they’d be okay, but she’s acutely aware of the scuffs to the pods, the damage to one of the chutes, the creaking joints. they’re not in any condition to do battle with a hurricane. “we have to get out of here,” she breathes.

she doesn’t have to say it. the captain knows it too. he shares a long look with tweak that relays more than words could, then steps smartly to the platform, somehow keeping his balance as a hundred different currents fight for dominance over their ship. “octonauts,” he says, in his captain’s voice that’s a world away from the joking polar bear of five minutes prior. dashi and kwazii stand at attention as the captain hurriedly delegates responsibilities. “we need to keep an eye on the engines, keep them running at all costs. tweak, kwazii…”

“on it,” his first mate responds without him needing to say another word, and hurtles towards the ladder, tweak in hot pursuit.

the captain, worry in his grey eyes, glances over at shellington. “is peso okay?”

“he needs a medic,” shellington announces, then laughs, a little hysterically.

“shellington, do what you can for him here. dashi, activate manual steering,” barnacles orders, already running towards the central platform.

she slams her paw on the button, and watches worriedly as the captain ascends to the top of the ship. immediately, she feels the ship respond to his touch, and wills the fur on her back to stop standing instinctively on end. the captain’s got this. there’s no-one she trusts more in a crisis.

as the octonauts move to their stations, dashi slips into her usual role of mapping their path through the thrashing waters, dodging the fleeing shoals and the flying boulders. she and the captain fly the ship as one. they’ve always been a good team.

they make it down to the launch bay at a run. as kwazii runs to the control panel, nothing but a sea of blinking red lights, tweak wastes no time and dives into the launch bay tank. she dodges the strokes of the struggling bubble engine as she makes it, miraculously, to the display.

“the bubble engine’s shot,” she shouts over their struggling radio. “steering’s fine, but we’ve got no manoeuvring power, no control over how fast we go in these currents.”

“can you fix it?” dashi’s voice crackles back.

“already on it.”

“we need to land!” calls shellington.

“we can’t land,” she answers, voice low as she makes the same calculations next to him. “the current’ll tear the ship apart before we do that.”

in fact there are a thousand different currents, trying to tug them in a thousand different directions at once. her sleeping pod cracks against the window, metres from her head, and she flinches, although she knows the glass is strong, designed to withstand pressures of the deepest parts of the ocean, unlikely to splinter at the impact of simple rocks.

“dashi, which way?” barnacles barks from above her.

her head swims, faster than the fish flailing all around her. “r - right,” she manages, paws typing faster than she can think. “then a little to the left. alter course starboard, 6 degrees.”

the captain’s expert paws on the wheel adjust their course by minute intervals, but it still feels like they’re caught in a tumble dryer. never had they planned to sail in a hurricane, never had it occurred to them they would need to. “where’s the eye of this storm?” she mutters to herself, zooming in and out of the map in several spots. it has to settle at some point, she’s well aware, they just need to capitalise on the short amount of time they’ll have to get to a safe distance, preferably before the storm rips the ship apart. the sand below them ripples, the reef a mess of fleeing creatures, shouting up towards them.

she freezes as the world seems to slow down, as a large boulder, bigger than the hq, barrels towards them riding on the strongest current. “turn!” dashi gabbles into the radio. “right! right!”

“i see it,” the captain responds, and the ship rocks uncontrollably, giving a terrifying screech as a particularly strong current threatens to pull one of the octopod’s arms off.

down on the lowest level, tweak’s ears twist together as she hears it. she fights to pull herself up onto the platform with the ship tilting at a terrifying angle. kwazii darts over and helps her up, handing over her toolbox and hurrying back to the dashboard, the cat unusually subdued.

“the current’s going to pull the ship apart if we keep this up much longer,” dashi calls over her collar radio, her voice sounding strained. “we have to land.”

“we can’t,” tweak says through gritted teeth as she heaves open the hatch and buries her arms in the massive tangle of wiring she had been vowing for weeks to sort through. she grabs a likely-looking handful and tugs it out, throwing the excess wiring out over the floor with a clatter. “we can’t control where we land, and there’re a hundred panicking creatures down there. how’s that gonna look on your report?”

“i –“ dashi slips into shocked silence.

“there’re no good options,” she snaps. “sometimes, we just have to work with what we’ve got.”

kwazii points at the display and she dives back into the tank. her treasured bubble engine screams its complaint as she kicks her way through the thrashing water to get to it, pulling herself into position at the screen, which blinks to life as the captain opens a direct line to her. “tweak, we need an exit and soon. what can you get us?”

“i can get you turbo for the exit,” she grunts around a mouth full of screwdriver.

“are you sure?”

"sure as I can be, if you give me another five minutes.”

“you’ve got it.”

she spits a curse as one of the fuel tanks gives out with a grating screech, but laughs under her breath as she realises that isn’t even their biggest problem right now. kwazii runs back and forth across the launch bay with armfuls of tools, throwing her what she yells out for.

“right,” she says across the main radio after what feels like an interminably long time but must have only been a few minutes. “i have to cut the engines for a second, then you should have turbo, cap.”

“got it.”

“good luck.” tweak takes a fast breath then she, dashi and kwazii hit the button at the same time at their respective stations.

she feels her stomach drop. the ship falls dead in the water. for a moment they’re weightless, then they begin to fall. the captain counts slowly to three, then dashi hits the turbo button.

tweak clings on as the bubble engines suddenly spin at double speed, threatening to rip her from her fragile position. she sees kwazii barrelling down towards her out of the corner of her watering eyes.

the octopod rockets upwards, out of the currents, heading towards the surface. the captain alters their course and rocks fly and dashi squeezes her eyes shut.

and suddenly they’re sailing out into the open ocean.

tweak lies, flat on her back on the platform, breathing hard, soaking wet. kwazii is slumped upside down against the wall. neither of them make an effort to move for a good few moments, then she starts to laugh.

he gives her a strange look and she only laughs harder, looking at the mess she’s made of her launch bay, at the wiring and barrels and scrap metal strewn across the room, the gups bobbing in the bay. “we made it,” she laughs.

up in the hq, dashi crosses her paws and rests her forehead heavily on them. she feels the captain’s paw land on her shoulder, and squeeze. she doesn’t look up. “we’re okay,” he rumbles, and this time, she can let herself believe it.

there’s no need for the captain to sound the octoalert. the crew gathers in the hq, and peso starts sniffling before he knows it, relief and sheer exhaustion taking over. they had all been running on reserves of nervous energy and not much else. shellington encases the medic in his arms and, laughing and chattering, the rest of the crew piles in for a group hug.

"good work, octonauts," barnacles says gruffly, struggling to hide his own emotion as he squeezes shellington's paw behind peso’s back. "is everyone okay?"

“could’a done without a sneaky hurricane messing up our night.” kwazii grins brazenly at tweak. “still, made it, didn’t we?”

“only just,” she returns.

they all sleep in the games pod that night, sprawled on bean bags and leant against each other. tweak has hold of dashi’s trembling paw, barnacles rests his arm around shellington’s shoulders and kwazii’s tail coils round peso’s narrow hips. kwazii finishes his story and trails off into a yawn which they all emulate. eventually, it’s enough just to settle and listen to their breathing ease into a gentle rhythm, in and out, off and on.

Chapter Text

kwazii spills hot cocoa over his paw and utters a curse which makes a vegimal squeak and scuttle excitedly away. shellington has nodded off in his seat at the dashboard, and is snoring gently, head on his hands. dashi pokes him, and the sea otter makes a muffled sound, something in the realms of ‘five more minutes’.

“right. that’s it.” surprised, dashi turns to see the captain stood just behind her with crossed arms. she prepares to defend shellington, just as barnacles puts up a paw, frowning. “we’re all exhausted, and we need a holiday.”

her eyes widen. “a –“

“a holiday. you heard me.” his lips twitch, almost imperceptibly. “gather the crew, dashi.”

dashi pokes shellington excitedly, then sounds the octoalert, which wakes him up quite a bit more efficiently.

* * *

the octonauts convene, chattering. “yes – even you, tweak,” barnacles says sternly, just as tweak’s opening her mouth to mention enthusiastically all the repairs the octopod could do with. “last time we had a holiday you spent it here.”

she grins, looking a little sheepish. “i was very relaxed.”

“i mean… the last time we had a holiday, we only made it about two days in,” smirks kwazii.

“a proper holiday, this time,” barnacles insists, looking a little abashed. “i promise i will try not to get all my relatives stuck on a shrinking ice floe every time we take a break.”

the news is met with general elation and, although no-one admits it out loud, relief. they schedule it in the octopod calendar for three days’ time, a full two weeks off, away from the octopod. it hardly seems real.

“we all have family i’m sure we’d like to see,” barnacles smiles over dinner, as they gather in the kitchen. the happily chattering vegimals serving up kelp stew, delighted to see seven smiling faces in their kitchen. “i’m certainly going to visit bianca and the twins.”

“koshi’s just finished school for summer,” dashi says, with joy in her voice. “i can’t wait to go surprise her.”

“i’m going to go home too,” shellington smiles. “i’ve been waiting for a chance to help out with some of pearl’s research – and see how little peri’s getting on!”

“not so little any more!” peso reminds him.

“are you going to go home, peso?”

the penguin smiles, wistfully. “i haven’t been home to see my whole family in a long time. it’s a long way, but… i’m really excited to see pinto, and mum, and perdita, pogo, pinata… and, well, you get the idea.”

tweak giggles. “i wish i had all those brothers and sisters to forget the names of.”

“what about you, tweak?”

“yeah, reckon i’ll go and stay with pa, if he’ll have me.”

the eyes of the room drift to kwazii, who has gone quiet, uncharacteristically for him. “oh aye, mateys,” he says, with a grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “if you’re all planning to go stay with family, might as well track down my granddad.”

“you have always wanted to travel with him, kwazii,” barnacles smiles, not noticing the hesitation.

“aye, me and calico jack, we’ll have a wild adventure!”

* * *

tweak finds kwazii in the games pod, playing table tennis against the curved glass window. he flips to intercept a stray shot, and nearly leaps out of his fur when he realises she’s stood right behind him. “whoa!” he laughs, landing lightly on his feet. “where’d you come from, matey?”

they sit on beanbags, sipping hot chocolate, looking out to the open water. he never talks much about the time before the crew, but she recognises the shadow, familiar, over his face. “y’alright, kwaz?” she asks.

“aye.” he casts a quick look at her after a moment, brow furrowing. “you?”

“yeah. just – feels weird to be going home, after all this time.”

“s’only for a holiday.”

“i know.” she pats the beanbag beneath her, only half joking. “i’ll miss this place, though.”

“maybe you’ll realise that a park ranger was what you should have been all along. your true calling. you’ll never want to leave.”

she snorts. “yeah, maybe.”

tweak watches his eyes skim the glimmering surface, a hundred metres above them. they darken, almost imperceptibly. “no sign from your granddad?” she wonders aloud.

after a moment, he glances at her and shakes his head. “nothing,” he says, sounding a little defeated. “the parrotfish did say it was a shot in the dark, but…”

“but you hoped. yeah. i get it,” she concedes. “there’s still a couple days.”

he curls his legs up underneath him. “he could be anywhere in the world.”

“you found him before.”

“accidentally.”

she pauses, desperately curious, but then she had been for years now. “don’t you ever go back to where you grew up?” tweak asks, keeping her voice carefully light.

kwazii shrugs. “nothing there for me anymore, really. no-one would know my face.”

her eyes narrow in comprehension. “i chose the pirate life,” he announces, before she can say anything more. “the sea’s my real home, matey.”

“on your own?”

she sees him stiffen, ever so slightly. “if granddad doesn’t show, i’ll probably head back to coconut crab island,” he says, a little too quickly, brightly. “never got to relax properly with my hammock and coconut milk. there's always another emergency.”

* * *

“what’s – what’s going on, tweak?”

laughing, she guides him forwards, paws over his eyes. “just a coupla’ more steps.”

confused, kwazii tries to get a gauge of where he is. he hears the familiar whir of the engine room to his left. “are you going to push me into the launch bay?”

“yup, you got me.”

“awhh – not again.” she feels him angle his head, considering. “i haven’t even crashed the gup b recently.”

tweak rolls her eyes. “i’m not going to push you into the launch bay, kwazii.”

“oh.”

“three, two, one –”

tweak releases her hold and he stares, taking a second to process it. a tiny, wooden ship, tied to the edge. the mast leans precariously under the weight of a folded white sail, with a fluttering flag at the top, daubed with the cat skull and crossbones. he cranes, dumbfounded, to look inside, sees the rolled-up maps scrawled on yellowing paper and the hammock knotted from either side. an appreciative sniff finds four crates in the corner stacked high with kelp cakes.

“surprise,” she grins. “the cap’s not the only one i pull together christmas presents for.”

“it’s not christmas. or –“ he calculates, quickly. “my birthday – it’s not my birthday, right?”

“it’s just a present,” tweak shrugs. “don’t need an excuse. sorry it’s a little haphazard, i put it together pretty quickly. haven't built with wood for a while.”

“it’s – it’s perfect!”

she grins. “should stay shipshape long enough for a coupla’ weeks’ vacation, anyway. take you back to your pirate days. glad y’like it, kwaz.”

kwazii finds his eyes stinging, and vehemently rubs the eye that isn’t hidden behind a patch. “you built this all for me?”

“ah, i can’t take all the credit. everyone helped out. barnacles helped me collect the wood from a mangrove forest, shellington drew out the treasure maps from some books the professor dug out of the library, peso whipped up a sail out of bandages, dashi painted the flag. betcha can’t guess who fixed you up the food.”

he looks hard at her. “who had the idea?”

she smiles. “a present,” she says. “from your family.”

* * *

tweak’s knee-deep in swamp water when she hears the familiar chime from the cabin. grumbling to herself as she wades through the warm, squelching mud, she hops up onto the wooden planks and rushes for the tablet. it had been a second thought to slip one into everyone’s bags before they parted ways, and now she’s glad she did. “hi tweak!” dashi waves, from 10,000 miles away. “how’s your vacation going?”

“not much of a holiday so far,” she jokes. “second i got here pa put me to work. been crawling round after baby gators all afternoon.”

“sounds like you’re already having fun.”

“how’s australia?”

“hot!” dashi replies. “you’ve finally got me acclimatised to octopod temperatures, i almost passed out when i stepped out of the gup e.”

she takes off the ranger’s hat ranger marsh had handed her when she had arrived and fans her face with it. “you’re telling me!”

“yeah, i imagined it’d be the same over there. barnacles and peso don’t know what they’re missing, do they?”

“they don’t,” tweak concedes, shivering at even the thought of spending the best part of a fortnight on the icy terrain.

dashi pauses. “it’s strange being back,” she says honestly. “it feels like we’ve been hoping for a holiday for so long, i don’t know what to do with myself now we’ve actually got one.”

“you’re always welcome here in the swamp if you’re bored,” she offers, only half joking. “never a dull moment in the everglades.”

she tilts her head, as if considering it. “bit of a trek from australia.”

“just a bit.” tweak leans into the screen, lowering her voice conspiratorially, although there’s no-one around to hear her. “actually, dash, i’ve had an idea about the last coupla' days of our vacation, if you’re up for it…”

* * *

tweak had, somewhat reluctantly, let shellington take the gup d on his travels. she had picked the gup k, on account of the marshy terrain, and even her pa had been glad of it when she had successfully saved a bunch of flamingos from a muddy lake before, despite his frequent jibes she’s carefully choosing to ignore. the sea otter grins at her from the screen, looking very relaxed reclining on a flattened kelp leaf, a pile of notebooks just visible in shot beside him. she’s curled up in her tiny wooden childhood bed, missing the octopod’s air conditioning. “how was the trip to scotland?” she asks, narrowing her eyes. “have you kept my gup in one piece this time?”

shellington grins sheepishly. “when have you ever known me to crash a gup, tweak? okay – okay –“ he amends immediately, seeing the look on her face. “maybe don’t answer that.”

“just be careful on your way home,” she says seriously. “no reading while you drive. and don’t go too crazy on those urchins.”

he pulls a face. “i’m staying well away, don’t worry. pearl and peri have it sorted.”

* * *

peso doesn’t answer – their communication signal’s never been that strong in the snowier regions – but she hopes he’s having fun with his family. in any case, this had been partially his idea.

* * *

the captain calls her before she gets the chance to. she signals to her pa to let him know she’s taking a break and leaps up into the gup k to take the call. “hiya, cap,” she smiles, genuinely. “s’good to see ya.”

the ice is bright in the backdrop, she has to blink to see him properly. “hey tweak,” barnacles responds. his brow furrows slightly. “how are you doing? is everything okay?”

“fine, cap,” she laughs. “why do you always assume that whenever we call something bad’s happened?”

“because it usually has?”

“touché,” she responds. “how’s the family?”

“a handful!” he laughs. “orson and ursa are nearly done collecting their polar scout badges, they’re going to be training the rest before we know it. i have no idea where they get all their energy from.”

“says you,” tweak smirks. “hey – look, i’ve got an idea, and i’ve mentioned it to the whole crew. they’re on board if you are.” she snickers. “so to speak.”

* * *

she finishes a quick call with the professor, and ducks out under the low beam of the doorway. she's grown taller since she left. her old world seems a little smaller now she’s finally returned to it. tweak stands and watches as the sun throws deep orange rays up through the rustling trees, and as it retreats sullenly below the horizon her father appears, rowing his raft through the murky water. he hops up onto the station and glances over at her, stood watching the sunset. his eyes crinkle in a way she’s unused to, and for a second, it takes her by surprise. “how’re your friends?” he asks.

she smiles. “they’re real good, pa.”

* * *

her dad looks strange, a little sad, as she collects her things and throws her tiny knapsack easily into the gup k. tweak tenses and readies herself to hear what she’s expecting him to say, to ask her to stay, but weirdly, he stays quiet, and just helps her carry a large crate of homegrown, everglades carrots back to the gup.

he fastens her in a tight, uncharacteristic hug. “come back and visit, won’t’cha?” he says gruffly, his bristly fur tickling her shoulder.

she sniffles a little, which she will later deny. “will do, pa.”

as she sails out into the open water, she activates the autopilot. it’s short work to rig up her tablet to the map in the gup k; tweak plays around with a couple of settings, and then, blinking at her on the screen, is a kwazii-finder.

* * *

she can’t resist it as she nears the location on the map, and drops the gup down a few feet, aiming for the tiny, dark shadow on the glimmering surface. she grins to herself, hammers on the thruster to make the engine growl, and pops out of the ocean with a huge splash that catches the cat neatly and makes his boat rock violently side to side.

“yeow!” startled, kwazii falls off his makeshift hammock. he stares up at her as she falls about laughing, looking bewildered, still half asleep. in that moment, tweak fervently wishes she had dashi’s camera to capture his gawping expression. “tweak?”

innocently, she tilts her head. “hiya, kwazii. just thought i’d check in on how my newest gup is doing. still shipshape?”

“uhm.”

“i’ll take that as a yes, shall i?”

“shouldn’t you be in the everglades?” he asks suspiciously. “with your dad?”

“i was.”

“but don’t you still have, like, three days’ holiday left?”

“you mean we do.”

tweak hops aboard, tapping a button on her tablet and watching as the gup k sinks down under the surface. she knocks a paw against the wooden bow, nodding in satisfaction. “one of my more successful side projects, i think. done much swashbuckling on your vacation yet?”

“a bit,” he answers drowsily, still at a little of a loss.

“good. hate for me to miss out on any pirating.” she covers one eye with a paw, widening the other meaningfully at the still-staring cat. “so, do i get an eyepatch or what?”

* * *

tweak holds the map at arm’s length, angling it this way and that, squinting against the sun. “i have no idea what this is saying.”

“give me that.” he scoffs. “pretty sure it’s meant to be this way up.”

“pretty sure it isn’t.”

“pretty sure i'm the pirate on this ship, so...”

tweak tugs on the sail, sending the ship swinging round, nearly sending kwazii toppling overboard. “i think i see land!” she announces, one foot braced against the side of the boat.

kwazii steadies himself against the stern and stares, blind against the sun. “where?”

“this way! look, says so on the map.”

“no it doesn’t.”

“uh – think i can read a map, kwazii.”

“you’re a terrible pirate.”

“rude. who built you your pirate ship?”

“you’re an amazing engineer,” he amends. “but a terrible pirate.”

“i can still push you into the sea, kwaz.”

“don’t do that.”

“fighting every urge.”

* * *

they near a tiny island, dotted with palm trees. “see it now, kwaz?” she asks.

he squints through his spyglass, before dropping it and crossing his arms. “yeah, yeah, alright.”

“where do we look for buried treasure, then? is there an x marks the spot?”

“the treasure map says –“ he trails off, lifting his eyepatch and leaning over the prow of the boat to see better. she resists the strong temptation to twist the wooden wheel and tip him headlong into the sea. “huh?” he murmurs. kwazii's eyes widen as he looks up and watches the tiny, waving figures on the shore come into gradual focus. “it – is that –?”

“might be,” she says slyly.

the rest of the crew wave madly as tweak eases their ship up onto the sand. “hi guys,” she says casually. “good vacation so far?”

* * *

cheerfully, the octonauts pack onto the tiny ship. “hiya,” dashi says, giving the cat a quick one-armed hug and snapping a photo of his gawping expression, just for good measure.

“hey.”

“hi.”

“good to see you, kwazii.”

“i – you –“

tweak hops after them up onto the ship, kicking the sand off her boots. “cat got your tongue, kwaz?” she asks. “are you coming or not? thought we had buried treasure to find.”

he stands on the shore, staring slackly. “you all –“

“we said we planned to spend this holiday with our family.” tweak shrugs. “who did you think we meant?”

* * *

“it’s just crowded, now,” the cat complains as he climbs aboard, but the look on his face says differently.

the boat is indeed packed, with shellington and dashi sat swinging their legs on the hammock, and peso and the captain squeezed into the back.

“tunip packed you enough kelp cakes to feed a small village, i think we’ll be okay for a few days – or weeks,” smirks shellington.

“have you tested it with this many people on?” peso asks tweak.

she grins. “nope. there’s a distinct possibility we’re about to sink this ship.”

pointedly, peso engages his helmet. “ready,” he says with a serious look on his face that makes them snort with laughter.

the captain, shellington and tweak push off from the sand. the boat rocks precariously, but stays upright. they all cheer, kwazii the loudest of all.

“we still have three days left of our holiday,” barnacles says, fanning his forehead with his captain’s hat. it’s been years since she’s seen him look so relaxed. “so, where are we setting sail, kwazii?”

casually, kwazii hooks an arm around her shoulders. “well, my first mate was doing a decent job of navigating before.”

tweak pretends to be shocked, cupping a paw around the base of one ear, leaning in. “wait – what? was that a compliment?”

“yeah, alright,” he grumbles, promptly releasing her.

“i can actually hold a map the right way up, believe it or not, kwazii.”

“yeah, yeah.”

* * *

the crew returns to the octopod three days later, sun-drenched, tired, chattering readily, happier than they’ve all felt in a long time. they gather in the hq, enjoying the cool air tweak’s set blasting from the vents.

dashi sits in her usual spot, and her shoulders stiffen as she starts up her computer. it feels like they’re crashing back to reality, far too fast. it had been so easy to forget while they laughed and sailed – and swashbuckled, in kwazii’s words – but she feels the entire crew tense a little around her as the alerts flash up, one by one, faster by the second, on her screen. she doesn’t bother to count them. her shoulders slump. “two weeks,” she murmurs, almost to herself. “we were gone two weeks.”

by habit alone, they all look to the captain, who shakes his head, and for once, seems to have nothing to say.

tweak’s shaking her head too; her ears straighten. “we can’t keep doing this alone,” she chokes, clenching her fists by her sides. “we just can’t.”

“we can’t,” dashi echoes.

the tsunami of alerts and messages and pleas keep flooding in on the screen overhead. dashi can’t tear her trembling gaze from it. she doesn’t feel shellington approach until he steps up to the dashboard beside her and softly, rests a paw on her shoulder. “maybe you should tell them that.”

* * *

dashi writes her daily report, and speaks more truthfully than she ever has before. she sends it around the crew, who read it, one by one, and once everyone has approved it, she takes a breath, and hits send.

* * *

shellington finds her in the games pod, sat cross-legged on a beanbag, keeping score as the happily oblivious vegimals bat a ball back and forth across the table-tennis table. “hey, dashi,” he says, his gentle scottish accent faintly questioning. not finding the words to quite reply, she shuffles over on the beanbag, and he sits beside her, resting a paw on her knee. she lays her head on his shoulder. “it was the right thing to do,” he says softly.

“i don’t know,” dashi says in a tiny voice, hugging her knees, feeling more tired than she has in a long time, now that they’ve finally admitted defeat. “it kind of feels like giving up.”

“it’s not giving up to admit that we can’t help the entire planet all at once,” shellington says.

he’s right, of course – they had all agreed on this – but she wishes it felt anything like it.

* * *

the message arrives early the next morning, just as she’s stood stretching in her sleep pod, gazing out at the incongruous, blue water of the open ocean. she had slept, or at least she thinks she had, but the second her tablet chimes she snatches it up and stands, panting, at the opening to the octochute.

dashi sits at her station in the hq, paws trembling on the keyboard. it would be so easy to ignore it, to let it sit in her rapidly overflowing inbox forever. but here it is, the awaited broadcast from national seaographic, the cutting response to her plaintive cry out into the ether that they can’t do this anymore. the response is undoubtedly you can, you have to, there’s no-one else who will – but a part of her aches for her australian home that it had once been so hard to leave. dashi breathes, readies herself, and opens the broadcast.

her eyes get larger and larger as she sees the smiling face of the national seaographic communications officer she has exchanged so many correspondences with over the years. frowning, taken unawares, she scans the transcript. ‘barnacles – captain,’ she reads to herself aloud. ‘kwazii – deputy. dashi – deputy –“

she turns and hits the octoalert, suddenly shaking with excitement. “guys. guys. to the hq. you’ve gotta see this.”

the octonauts collect, a little nervously, around the small screen. the last time they had done this, it had been the biggest and best opportunity of their lives, and also strangely the worst. dashi looks up and inkling is smiling knowingly. “you knew about this, professor?”

“i had an inkling,” he says, his smile widening. “all i know is that they’ve been putting together the proposal for a crew on land – they hypothesised a central team of around eight, alongside a network of agents stationed across the globe. i offered our services months ago.”

“you mean… leave the octopod?” peso asks.

“not permanently – we could still be based in the ocean, if we wished it. this proposition is provisionally for six months, to be extended if our research mandates it. they’ve sent us the general plans, if you would, dashi?”

she opens the file full-screen and the captain reads it aloud.

tweak punches the dachshund’s shoulder once barnacles reaches the end of the first paragraph. “a promotion, look at you!”

dashi smiles, secretly delighted as she meets kwazii with a jubilant fist-bump over her shoulder, they will share responsibilities and leadership with the captain.
“they understand they’ve been putting us under a lot of pressure, and as such they wish to change our brief,” barnacles continues. “we can decide where we go, decide what research we wish to do. they also say that since we have already been building a rapport with our friends who live and work in these remote environments, they’re putting us in charge of further recruitment.”

“tracker and natquik are already involved in our organisation, pole to pole,” the professor completes. “why not? we could put forward all their names, anyone who wants to help.”

“this is perfect,” shellington says slowly, realisation creeping into his tone. “while we were home on holiday, i got talking to pearl. she’s a scientist, just like me, and she wants to travel, and learn, just like we do. and – quite honestly, she’s a little sick of studying kelp.”

“i got the same feeling off pa,” tweak says. “usually he doesn’t mind living on his own in the middle of nowhere, but… I dunno, he seemed – different, somehow.”

“i'm sure min would be delighted to assist,” suggests inkling.

“same with ryla,” dashi chimes in.

tweak flashes a look at kwazii. “your granddad might even like a look in. it’s certainly a new adventure, he’s never one to turn one of those down.”

he shrugs, trying to look nonchalant, although his eyes are shining. “he might, yeah.”

“pinto will be jealous,” says peso. “he’s still a little young, but…”

“one day,” barnacles chuckles. “my niece and nephew will be demanding they join. but i do have a few friends from my polar scout training days, if i get in contact with them i’m sure they’ll be on-board too.”

“looks like i have a lot of work to do,” says tweak, folding her arms, although she can’t hide her own growing grin. “new designs, new blueprints. new gups.”

“don’t tell me you don’t already have a whole folder full of land gup designs, tweak.”

“i – don’t?” she says unconvincingly.

they all laugh, and the captain finishes reading the message. “effectively, this brief would extend our remit onto land, sea and air – do a bit of research, plenty of exploration, protecting the creatures where we go.”

“in short – explore, rescue and protect,” kwazii says. “our usual agenda.”

“so… we’re doing it then?” asks dashi, a slow smile creeping across her face.

the professor looks around at the enthusiastic expressions of his crew. “we must all agree on this,” he says gently, the echo of a discussion from long ago.

“yes. if we are to do this, we do this together,” says the captain. “or not at all.”

the decision is a unanimous one.