Chapter Text
“All right everyone, settle down, please find your way to a seat!”
Sonic sighed, taking another swig of his coffee as he sank down into the cheap, plastic chair that he stood closest to. Around him, the chatter amongst his coworkers steadily died out as people began to assemble, some having to stand from the severe lack of seats the cramped, outdated staffroom possessed. Equipped with a long table down the center and decorated with old, peeling posters from events that had ended months, even years ago, and topped off with a flickering fluorescent light that flashed in his peripheral vision, this clearly was one of the worst places to hold an employee meeting for literally every single person in the Guest Relations department at the aquarium, but Sonic digressed. If he was lucky, this whole thing would be over before he knew it and he could go back to enjoying his day off.
At the front of the room, his boss extended them all a warm, welcoming smile. Sonic wished that he shared her enthusiasm for the deplorable topic they were about to discuss, the very thing that had been looming over the horizon for quite some time now. “As you all know, this week marks the grand opening of our new Kraken exhibit here at the aquarium! Exciting news, right?!”
While his boss addressed the assorted conglomerate of employees from his department (otherwise known as the people assigned to various exhibits with the purpose of talking to guests, giving presentations, and answering questions), one of his coworkers steadily worked his way around the room, placing a pamphlet in front of Sonic as he passed by before moving on to continue handing the packets out. With deft fingers, Sonic picked it up, turning it over as his mouth twisted into a thin, displeased line.
He tried and failed to suppress a groan. Oh, wonderful. Yet another chunk of information he was going to be expected to read and memorize. He had only felt like he had recently gotten the hang of talking to guests about the creatures that resided in the touch tanks he was frequently assigned to, but this? Thing? The Kraken? Whatever it was (because as he skimmed the pamphlet, he realized that not even the people who had typed it up seemed to know very much about it), was so wildly different from the other sea creatures he had familiarized himself with over the course of the past few months, that he knew he was going to be a bit out of his depth with this one.
Sonic was snapped from his cranky reflections as his boss resumed speaking, raising her voice to cut through the quiet and excited chit chat that had begun to bubble up in anticipation. “Okay then! We’ve given you these pamphlets so that you may study them on your own time, but for this meeting, we’re going review some of the highlights!”
Propping his elbow up on the table and resting his cheek in his palm, Sonic took yet another idle sip of his beverage. Even with the cup of coffee he had grabbed on the way over, it was still way too early in the morning for him to be awake and alert. He had to show face for the mandatory meeting, of course, but that didn’t mean that he had to act particularly engaged. His presence was going to have to suffice.
Especially as his boss continued to talk rather ecstatically about the subject of their gathering. “As you all may know, the Kraken has been in our possession for a few months now. He has been quite the hot topic amongst our researchers and specialists ever since we discovered him, so you have likely heard the story of how he came to be a resident of our aquarium, but we’ll refresh everyone’s memories just so that we’re all on the same page!”
Sonic drummed the fingers of his hand currently not supporting the weight of his cheek against the table. He had already heard the story. Everyone had. Countless times; it was only once in a hundred freaking years that an unknown species of giant Cephalopoda washed up from the depths of the ocean, just up the coast from a world-renowned aquarium no less. It was almost like the damn thing had wanted to be caught.
“We found him beached in one of the coves of Point Lobos State Beach, just a few miles from here. At first, the initial passerbys who discovered him thought he was dead, however, upon further inspection from our team of marine biologists that were quick to arrive to the scene, we discovered that he was alive, but very weak.”
The pictures had been all over the news, both local and international. Fuzzy photos of a giant black creature with a mess of deflated, limp tentacles that looked nearly indistinguishable from the rotting clumps of washed-up seaweed dotting the beach, dislodged from the giant kelp forests that populated the ocean just off the coastline. No further images of the mysterious being had been released to the press, mainly to build suspense for the eventual reveal of the new display. Buzz had been building, and the crush of attention their already thriving aquarium had been receiving from both the press, scientific community, and general public was overwhelming, to say the least.
In essence, the opening of this exhibit was going to prove to be very exhausting in managing the influx of guests clamoring to catch a glimpse of the rare, mystical creature.
“Using one of our rehabilitation tanks, we were able to nurse him back to health, initially with the intent to release him back into the ocean, however, upon realizing that we were dealing with an entirely new species with no close relatives within the Animal Kingdom, we decided to keep him in captivity indefinitely for the purpose of research and hoping to understand more about this elusive sea creature.”
Sonic could read between the lines. Yes, research and rehabilitation were absolutely core pillars of the aquarium’s intents and values when approaching this unique scenario, however, the sheer amount of revenue such a revolutionary exhibit would generate would be staggering. The Kraken was more or less a money-printing machine.
“What we know about him is very limited. He weighs around five-hundred pounds and has a length of nearly forty feet long. His diet consists of medium to large sized fish. He has eight arms and two tentacles, not unlike a squid, and has ten eyes, something that is unusual within the Cephalopoda Class that we believe he is an extant relative of.”
Ugh. More numbers to memorize. Sonic hated memorizing numbers, and unfortunately, those were the most frequent things that guests would ask about, that is, behind asking him where the nearest restroom was or the fastest way to get to the food court, gift shop, or ever-popular sea otter exhibit from where he was stationed.
“While still pending approval from the Marine Biologist Society, the scientific name we have submitted is Archumbra tenebris. However, the personal name we have dubbed him with is The Kraken.” Unoriginal, uninspired, and intentionally provocative to make the thing more mysterious and beastly to draw more visitors to the aquarium, if Sonic had to wager a guess. “And that’s it! Not a whole lot to memorize, but unfortunately, all we really know about our newest resident here. There are a few more fun facts for you to peruse in your pamphlets, mostly going over stuff related to squid, octopuses, cuttlefish, and nautiluses, the four Cephalopod Classes we believe to be distantly related to him, so that you can have some background knowledge about what we’re dealing with here.”
Zoning out as she rambled on, Sonic watched as the minute hand on the clock ticked behind her. This meeting was so far chalking up to be about as dreadful as he had anticipated it to be— he was grateful that he didn’t have to rally with a big smile on his face and go interact with guests afterwards. This exposition, one could call it, was dragging on to a pandering amount. Next time he was at work, he was going to need a full shift at one of the touch tanks in the kid’s section of the aquarium to remind himself why he even enjoyed his employment in the first place.
Getting a job had actually been Tails’ idea. Apparently, there had been one too many days in a row spent with Sonic lounging around and complaining that there was nothing for him to do before Tails had gotten fed up and taken matters into his own hands. Believe it or not, Eggman’s grand schemes didn’t happen in back-to-back succession with one another; he needed time to concoct his evil plans, and in this current stretch of time between exhilarating plots to foil, Sonic was left without anything to do. And while he did go on plenty of runs, there were only so many hours in a day that could be spent sprinting on the same tired trails, even if his usual routes were occasionally spiced up by Shadow crashing his party.
At first, Sonic had been appalled at Tails’ suggestion that he seek employment, his immediate response being to laugh directly in his friend’s face. “Ha-ha, yeah, good one buddy. I think I saw a ‘Help Wanted’ sign outside of the Meh Burger down the street. I’m sure flipping patties all day will be way less boring than literally doing nothing.”
He had meant it sarcastically, of course, and with a good-natured roll of his eyes, Tails had dropped the subject.
At least until a few days later, while Sonic had been enjoying his morning coffee and not thinking about going out and joining the workforce and becoming a functioning member of society, Tails had deposited a newspaper clipping right in front of him.
Which was not only incredibly old fashioned and comical in how out of date it was, but also, almost insulting in how perplexing the job that Tails had actually selected was.
“The aquarium? Really?” Sonic had asked flatly as he gave Tails an unimpressed glance. At this point, he was convinced that this was all some big joke at his expense. “No offense dude, but being surrounded by water all day sounds like a nightmare for me. In case you’ve forgotten, I can’t swim.”
Tails shook his head, and due to his lack of a quippy response, Sonic realized that his friend was being dead serious as he tapped the advertisement printed on the brown, low quality paper. “No swimming required. They’re hiring people in the Guest Relations department. It doesn’t seem too bad, you just have to talk to visitors about the animals and all that stuff. I think you might like it!”
Sonic’s eyes flickered from the paper, up to Tails, and then back down to the paper again. “Is this a serious suggestion?”
At this, Tails shrugged. “It’s just an idea, since you always say that you’re so bored. And besides. It probably beats working at Meh Burger!”
He did have a point. But then again, most things would beat working at Meh Burger.
Before Sonic had possessed the chance to crumple up the job listing and toss it in the trash, Tails had grabbed it and hung it up on the fridge with a magnet. “Just in case you change your mind,” he had informed Sonic, who in turn, had said some silly one-liner about how that was definitely not going to happen.
And yet….
After a few days of having to confront the stupid cutout every single time he went to open the fridge for a snack, which happened more frequently than he would care to admit, Sonic found his initial reservations constructed in a solid brick wall slowly begin to crumble. Even amongst the clutter that decorated the surface of their refrigerator, filled with various photos, magnets, and souvenirs from their impressive array of adventures, Sonic found his eyes being drawn to the stupid job advertisement every single time without fail.
Needless to say, he ended up filling out a job application a week later.
The bar for entry must have been low, or at the very least, they were desperate for people to fill the minimum-wage position, because Sonic had heard back a few days later, and shortly after that, was hired.
To be honest, he had expected to hate it. Surprisingly, however, as he had settled into his new position, he found that he actually enjoyed being a docent quite a lot, especially on the days he was assigned to the touch tanks. He loved handling the sea creatures in the laughably shallow water that he could definitely handle and definitely didn’t freak him out (okay, so the close proximity to water still did freak him out just a tad, but he was getting better!), and more than that, he enjoyed answering questions and engaging with the curious, inquisitive guests on a day-to-day basis. It was fun, and definitely the refresher that he needed while Eggman took some time off being an evil supervillain to do whatever sad, lonely things he occupied his time with between trying to take over the world.
Although, Sonic did have to admit, coming in before the aquarium opened on his day off for some dumb staff meeting about a Kraken wasn’t something he was having all that much fun with at the moment. Primarily due to the fact that he had little to no interest in the exhibit (because he highly doubted he would be able to touch the new creature, nor did he really want to for that matter) as well as the fact that it was way too early in the morning for him to be learning about this.
As his boss continued to blather on about something unimportant (catching a snippet, it seemed to be something pertaining to guests that liked to take flash photography, a recurrent issue that plagued the staff that worked there), Sonic focused his attention on the pamphlet beneath his fingertips.
He squinted at the cover page, tilting his head in confusion. A photo of the Kraken was nowhere to be found, which if you asked him, seemed like a pretty important thing to include on an info packet. Especially when one of the key descriptions detailed how the creature was rather elusive in its tank and tended not to make itself visible… yes, it only made sense that seeing a picture of it would help him identify and describe it to inquiring guests.
Sonic snorted to himself as he read it. Some exhibit this is going to be, if it never shows itself to the public. Perhaps his initial assessment had been incorrect; instead of having to memorize a list of information about the new creature, he would have to field questions from upset parents and children asking where the mythical beast was. Emphasis on the word mythical, because if it never deigned to reveal itself, then who was to say that the dark tank it resided in wasn’t just some empty money grab?
His cynical musings were interrupted as his boss continued her monologue at the front of the room. “Throughout the upcoming week, you all are going to be rotated through staffing the exhibit. These will be short, bite-size shifts so that everyone can get a chance to experience being stationed there.”
At this, Sonic had to bite his tongue to suppress a complaint. Oh great. Not only was he going to be expected to read the pamphlet about the Kraken, he was more or less going to be tested on his knowledge about it too. So much for idly skimming through the words and then immediately forgetting about it; it seemed like he was going to actually have to put in effort and try.
Hopefully he wouldn’t be assigned to the exhibit until later in the week. Other than this silly meeting, it was his day off, after all… he had absolutely zero plans to do anything related to work after he was released from this imprisonment, even if reviewing the pamphlet in preparation for the inevitable would take him less than five minutes to do.
At the front of the room, his boss clapped her hands together, the action overall far too loud and peppy on Sonic's tired ears. Even with his nearly-depleted cup of coffee sitting on the table in front of him, Sonic found himself unable to perk up... hopefully the run he was planning on going on after this would help chase away his crabby grogginess. “All right, if nobody has any questions, then those of you working today can go ahead and leave for your stations! And for those of you who have the day off, thank you for joining us!”
Folding up the pamphlet and shoving it into his quills, Sonic prepared to leave, pausing to check the sloppy whiteboard by the door on his way out. He was on the schedule the next day, and his name was scrawled under the hermit crab touch pool with the dying ink of a marker that seemed like it was in desperate need of being replaced. Excellent— that was one of his favorite places to supervise. Hopefully it wouldn’t get spoiled and interrupted by being sent to oversee the Kraken tank. Sonic knew it was wishful thinking, but he prayed that he would be glossed over and not get bumped there altogether. He had a gut feeling that he would hate it, between the deep and overwhelming waters of the tank, the darkness, and the freaky creature inside… yes, Sonic was already not a fan, and he didn’t need to rotate through to know that.
Bidding some of his coworkers a friendly farewell, and not envying those who had to disperse to the exhibits they were stationed at, Sonic finished off his coffee and tossed the empty cup in the trash on the way out. Shaking away the lingering tendrils of annoyance about having to attend a meeting that ultimately wasn’t all that bad, he prepared to go out and enjoy a nice run along the coast on his day off.