Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Prologue: Two Dads, Two Worlds

July 14th, 1986. Triton-Forge General Hospital, Ukulele Bottom.

“You’ll have no room for dinner tonight if you consume another one of those arms, dear.”

Harold SquarePants froze, blinked, and pulled his arms out from deep in his throat, spit-covered, but still intact. He hadn’t chewed his fingernails in years, and yet he just managed to feed four sets of arms into his mouth like paper in the shredder in the last five minutes. Of course, there were worse habits, and he was under a lot of stress. And as such, the grown sponge had consumed these instantly renewable appendages, from the ends of his nails to the tops of his shoulders, several times over in anticipation for the news he was soon to receive. 

But he wouldn’t even be nearly as nervous if not for one reason. “They kicked us out of there. They called it a code yellow,” Harold remembered, holding his slobber covered arm up in the air. “Plus, all these months, he didn’t… do anything, Mom.”

Harold looked left and right, but the hospital waiting room didn’t have any tissue boxes anywhere. Embarrassed, he lowered his mess of arms out of sight behind the pole arm of the chair, contemplating a run for the bathroom until the senior Mrs. Agatha SquarePants passed him a handkerchief from her purse. “Some don’t. That’s no reason to panic.”

“Then why could they be taking so long?” 

“First time’s always this way.” Her voice was gentle, but level with the kind of confidence that could only come from experience. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t inherit our bad habits, hm?”

“Like compulsive baking?” Harold finished mopping up his wrists, then dutifully folded the soiled cloth and tucked it into his pants pocket. The look in Mom’s eye told him that while her voice was as gentle as ever, if he forgot his manners again, he’d regret it.

Harold watched his mother set the container of warm cookies for the reception on the empty table at the meeting point of their L-seated lobby chairs. “At least my coping mechanism makes other people happy.”

No sooner had she said that, a random, blue fin reached up from under the darkness of the table and swiped the entire batch of baked goods. Agatha had her eyes on him and therefore didn’t notice, and Harold wasn’t about to tell her. 

The petty thief let out a poorly muffled “Mmm, macadamia…” before never being seen or heard from again. Her cooking was met with insatiable acclaim everywhere she went, and bottom feeders swiped more than their fair share. But the kind soul she was, she didn’t care. She baked for the art of it. She baked to make people happy. She lived to make people happy.

He was grateful that she was here. She filled the void of two parents. Perhaps he still needed her more than he cared to admit. As his eyes suddenly watered, he felt he might need the hankey again. “What I’d give for Dad to be here for this.” He took off his glasses, but Mom only smiled at him from behind her own. Hands folded neatly across crossed legs. It was only two months ago. She’d loved that man. It was way, way too soon for him to go. 

If his mother was still grieving, she was holding back something fierce. For them.

She thought up a question to break the silence. “Are you still going through with the name?” 

“Marge agreed that if we get a girl later on, we’d name her after her mother.” Harold pushes his glasses up his steeply sloped nose. “As I see it, it’s the least I can do for him. To show that boy how to be just like my Dad.”

“Solitary and technophobic?” 

“A real man’s man!” He raised his fist, flexing a small but still visible bicep. “Show him how to assert himself against the world that likes to push us sponges around like mops!”

“You do that. I have a good twenty, maybe twenty five years of spoiling to do, if I’m lucky.” 

“You can’t even pretend like you’re gonna help me, can you?”

“I did my time as the bad cop.” She winked. “Now, it’s your turn.” 

No sooner than she punctuated her thought with a wink, the double doors to the waiting room burst open. “Mr.-Mr. SquarePants?”

The sponges were seized upon by the owner of the voice, a young nurse with flowery scrubs, her dorsal fin tied up in a neat bun at the back of her head. She stopped before what was left of the SquarePants family, panting into her loosened mask, and holding her knees. It looked as if she just finished a marathon.

Harold leapt to his feet, nails dug into the fabric of his shirt front.

The senior Mrs. SquarePants leaped from her chair, too. in spite of her age and onset of arthritis. The nurse’s urgency made her nervous, too. “What’s happened?”

“I’m so sorry. I got lost,” said the nurse, who’s name tag read ‘Eva’, between heavy breaths. “I just had to hurry to to get to you two before—”

“BREAKER BREAKER: BABEE ON BOARD!”

A second person came flying through the doors, hitting the walls with an echoing BOOM! that made the nurse bolt to the side. 

“—That.” Eva’s figure sagged. 

If his periwinkle ushanka cap and bushy graying-brown beard didn’t set this orange sponge apart from the waiting family, then his volume, and the fact that he was carrying a red and blue police beacon did the trick. “Flash some lights, blare some sirens! Slam on that horn! Squeak a rubber chicken! We got another SquarePants in our squad! ”

“Blue? What are you doing?” Harold approached his older brother, scrutinizing him up and down, from the flashing light in his hands, to his frustratingly amused smile. “How did you get back—? You weren’t supposed to be back there! WE weren’t even supposed to be back there!”

“What? You think I’m gonna let some strangers take knives to my sister-in-law without the captain as backup?” The eccentric captain turned off the device and further emphasized his title, and command of the room now, by making a show of hiking up his already high trousers. “Naw, don’t give me those caterpillar brows, you ol’ worrywart! Margie’s done a bang-up job!” He pointed for the doors as if the crowd of two were a sea of fish. “C’mon, Mom! Harold! Let’s move ‘em out!”

Just like that, Mother and son went from petrified, to relieved. “He’s here ?” Agatha asked the nurse.

“He’s here,” nodded Eva.

“What about the... Er… complications?” asked Harold, fingers drumming anxiously at his side.

“The complications. Yes. Well.” The new nurse wrung her wrists nervously. “There was a bit of an interesting situation, but—”

“HA -HA! Was there! Harold, wait ‘till you see the angles on this boy!” Without waiting a moment longer, he thundered back through the double doors, shouting “Wee-woo! Wee-woo!” all the way.

Harold remained there, balling his fists at his side, his cheeks burning. Despite being the baby, he’d always been the quieter one of the three SquarePants brothers, and definitely more mature, which made it ironic that he was the last to become a father. “I knew we should’ve let Sherm come instead.”

“I believe this behavior is why we decided to let Sherman look after your nephews, dear.” His mother told him calmly, placing a meditative hand on his shoulder, gently nudging him towards the doors, following the nurse. “Let’s go before Blue gets the idea to use the megaphone to proclaim the news of your new son to the entire hospital, hm?

***

“Well, I suppose that explains why her tummy was shaped that way.” 

Agatha beamed at the bright, square shaped package in her hands, swaddled in a sky blue blanket. Robert “Bobby” SquarePants was quiet and cooing, and according to every nurse in the ward with two seconds to spare a glance, the most adorable thing they’d ever seen.

“We don’t get too many sponge families out in these parts,” Nurse Eva told them. “I hadn’t even realized until you showed up that sponges could have square children.”

“It’s not very common.” Margaret SquarePants’s voice was a husk of its normal self. She was laying ragdoll limp in her raised bed, a sheet tucked up to the waist of her gown. Going almost twenty hours without food or water had topped off her pain with a pounding headache. 

“He takes after my father,” her husband said. “I guess it’s, uh, that much more fitting that that’s who we’re naming him after.”

“Be proud, Mrs. SquarePants!” said Doctor Push, yanking back the curtain. Finished with her tests, she came over to pat the new mom’s hand. “He’s clearly got your eyes as well, and your husband’s… ” She looked at Harold and thought for a moment. “Er…”

“Manliness,” Capt’n Blue finished, crossing his arms.

“Bahahahaha!” Went the high pitched giggles of the baby boy with pronounced long lashes in Agatha’s arms.

“Yeah…” Harold let out a strangled laugh. “GAH!”

Blue had snuck over and slapped him in the back. “Yer kid is so dang cute, doc here had to stop one of the orderlies from snatchin’ him up for a joyride! I plum thought they was gonna run home with ‘em! Baw-haha!”

“Not on my watch.” said Grandma. She didn’t look very threatening, but being a sponge, this woman had faced adversity in her life, and could throw down because of it. She transferred the fussing baby sponge, stretching his newly freed limbs, from one shoulder to another. “Do you suppose it would be time to take the first pictures?”

“Not now!” Margaret groaned. She didn't need a mirror to know that her black hair had lost its curls, and yesterday’s makeup was smeared across her cheeks. “Oh, do I really look like a proud mama right now?”

“You look just fine, dear,” Push assured her. “There’s plenty of work ahead, but if you get a few hours of sleep on your back for the first time in month’s, haha! It'll help! Trust me, I’ve got three of my own.”

For the first time since the ordeal began nineteen hours ago, Margaret SquarePants found the strength to smile. 

“So I guess it… wasn’t that bad, huh? Hehe…” Harold leaned in and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “We might just try for another, after all.”

“Hehe…” Margaret slowly turned to her husband with a thin-lipped smile. “Sixty-two stitches, Harold.” She arched her brows. “Don’t touch me.”

“Ah—hehe.” Mr. SquarePants’s arm snapped back to his side like measuring tape. Welp. So much for a daughter.

While Mom and Grandma took their first pictures with Baby Bob, Harold whispered in the doctor’s direction. “So… no worries, then? I mean, when we were kicked out of the delivery room, I thought—”

“Standard protocol for the O.R., sir,” the doctor explained with compassion. “But cesareans happen every day, usually with no issues. It’s just another way the baby comes into the world.”

Mr. SquarePants sighed, and took the doctor further out of earshot before he went for broke. “Listen, this is my first kid. It’s been a hard time for my family. We just lost my Dad, and I just can’t shake this feeling like something’s wrong. I gotta know that everything’s really okay.”

Doctor Push wagged her fin like she’d heard this exact spiel a hundred times. “It’s normal for new parents to be a little anxious. The baby’s alive and well, and his charts are as perfect as a sunset on the horizon!” 

“My turn!” A raspy laugh cropped up behind them. “Give the Capt’n that box-shaped bundle of burbles!”

Harold turned as their mother passed Blue the baby. Another flash as she and Blue, and a weak Margaret smiled bright and white for photos that they already knew would be treasured forever.

“So, there’s nothing to worry about?” pressed Harold. “Nothing at all. He’s normal .”

“Yes. Well…” The doctor turned a page over on the clipboard. “I mean, for all that it matters.”

Harold raised his glasses, gaping at her with naked eyes. “Come again?”

The doctor rubbed the back of her neck, her look of confidence slipping away. “There was one test that came out… a little odd. To tell you the truth, it’s an anomaly I’ve only ever seen once in my life.”

Harold’s voice took on a suspicious edge. “What kind of anomaly are we talking about?”

Hesitant though she clearly was, Doctor Push opened her mouth to give a response, only for Blue to interrupt, yet again. “Your turn, Daddy-pops!”

“I… uh…” Harold took the bundle from Blue’s hand, and for the first time ever, gazed down at this son. Bright blue eyes shimmered and blinked, pupils fixed slightly above his eyes, as if looking at the shine at the top of Harold’s glasses.

The introverted sponge had a problem, something he never considered until the moment was upon them.

How does one introduce themself to a baby?

“Hehe… well… hello there, Bobby. Welcome to the sea. Welcome to… shucks. Everything, I guess.”

The boy was nothing like him. Square, yellow, with a wide mouth indicative of a future love for talking, someone the introverted Harold could not get along with. But somehow, in the moments since he’d taken the baby in his arms, he felt in his bones that this child was well and truly a chip off the old coral. “You’re my son, y’know?” He added awkwardly. “And you’re neat. You’re real neat, because you’re a SquarePants. And you’re gonna make me so proud.”

Unfortunately, this moment was short lived. Harold would never feel as serene, as close, and one with his boy as he did in that moment before the lights above their heads abruptly flickered, and shut off completely.

Along with it, a big ‘whoosh’ as electric devices came to a sudden and abrupt halt across the entire building. At once, the room, and everybody who was in it, became totally, eerily quiet.

Only Captain Blue could find his voice in the darkness. “Well, that can’t be good.”

Seconds later, the fluorescent lights above their heads fluttered, and revived. Back came a distinctive electrical buzz of power, followed by beeps, whirs and sirens of all nature as every light, fan and machine came back on.

Or at least that would’ve been the best case scenario. “Doctor Push!” Another nurse, a young male kipper, came bursting through the door. “Come quick! Not all the computer supported machines came back online with the generators!”

Just as he finished, Doctor’s Push’s radio crackled to life. “All available medical personnel, please report to the ICU.”

“Not good is an understatement.” The doctor sighed. “Congratulations again, Mr. and Mrs. SquarePants.” She started sprinting for the door. “The nurses will care for you from here!”

Harold stepped forward, baby still in his arms. “But you never told me about—!”

But she was gone, and several nurses followed after, including Eva, leaving just the two to care for all the new mothers in the maternity ward, both of which were left because they were tending to mothers who were still in labor. 

It was at this point that a foreign sound hit Harold’s ear. For the first of many times, his son had begun to cry.

And it was loud.

And it was louder than any of the present adults had really anticipated, prior parents or not.

“Holy King Neptune in a little pink handbasket, the kid’s got a set of lungs on him!” Capt’n Blue clasped hands over the sides of his head, much like the rest of the room.

Everybody heard the radio under his jacket crackling to life. “10-78 at 97th and Anchorway. Downed powerline, present danger. Requesting Backup.”

“Ooop! That’s my call to action! Ten-Four, SquarePants en route!” he shouted into the radio, before shoving it back onto his belt. “I don’t know what’s goin’ on out there, but I think I’m about to find out! Be seeing you guys! Margie, Mom! And for the love of yeast doughnuts and CB radios, wipe that doubty look off your face, Hal-boy!”

From his pocket, he produced the flashing beacon again, slapped it to the top of his cap, and flew out of the door.

Meanwhile, Harold attempted to bounce the baby, rock him slowly back and forth, called his name soothingly, just like every movie or TV show, but it didn’t work. Bobby continued to cry and scream until his face started turning red.

“The blackout must’ve really spooked him, didn’t it?” Margaret observed wearily. She tried to sit up in bed, but it was easy to see that it was a struggle.  “Harold? Do you want me to try and—”

“No! Honey, I’ve-I’ve got it. You rest… C’mon, Bobby, please stop.” He checked the baby’s diaper. Clean. He patted him on the back, trying to bring up a burp. Nothing. Baby shouldn’t have a burp yet anyway.

Minutes went by, spare nurses began to trickle back in, to give his wife water and talk with Agatha. And Bobby continued to cry. No matter what Harold did.

Why did this make him nervous? It was normal for new babies to cry. And cry really loud sometimes. Why wouldn’t it be?

“Here, dear.” Agatha stretched out her arms and took the baby from him. Within moments, being bounced in Agatha’s arms, the newborn stopped crying.

Unbelievable.

Why?

“There there, Bobby, everything is going to be okay,” Agatha cooed. “Isn’t that right, Harold?”

Mr. SquarePants answered numbly. “Yes. Everything’s gonna be fine.”

He turned away from his mother and the baby that looked nothing like him, that already acted nothing like him, that was an anomaly among fish and sponges, brows knitted. “For all that it matters.”

July 14th, 1992. Somewhere outside Houston, Texas. 

“And the girlie said, ‘ya’ll find me here in ten years, at the watershed, where one world ends, and another begins, ya hear? And I’ll have our solution.’”

“She didn’t say ‘ya hear,’!” The little squirrel who interrupted had the same thick southern accent. 

“It’s called ad-libbing!” Samuel stuck his tongue out at her playfully, emphasizing the ‘g’. “It makes the dialog better!”

On the left side of his bed, opposite the window, he’d reached the last line of the chapter. The grown squirrel paused and reached a huge arm across the nightstand to snatch a leaf-shaped bookmark. The burly squirrel took this pause as a chance to look up from the book, and what he saw made him frown. “What’s that look fer?”

“What look?” His six year old daughter was snuggled down into her hand-chopped wooden bed, with a detailed shark-head carved into the headboard, teeth and all. It looked like the mouth of the shark could swallow her whole, but Sandy loved it. Her room was a far cry from what her sister's bedrooms looked like, and that wasn’t to say it looked like what either of her brother’s rooms looked like, either. Sandy’s little nook in the tree was loaded to the brim with marine themed decor, most of which had been crafted by her father by hand. If it weren’t for the shades of the beige and brown, it would look nautical, and completely out of place.

Pa Cheeks finally said what he’d been thinking this whole time reading. “You ain’t likin’ this book too much.”

“It’s okay,” Sandy told him, not once looking him in the eye. Her eyes stayed on the spinning lamp on her nightstand. Pa had carved it himself, with a buddy to help with the wiring. The lamp projected shapes from the spinning punch-out cover around the bulb, lined inside with multi-colored tissue paper. The result was a rainbow of fish shapes that ‘swam’ by bouncing off the walls, the furniture, every surface of the tight, little loft of a room. Including the sea foam colored blanket cover pulled up to Sandy’s shoulder. “I thought it was gonna be a different kinda story. Like, where’s the action? The treasure? Where’s the crazy captain with swords for arms?”

Pa closed the book and held up between his fingers, his giant paws making the normal sized book look teeny-tiny. “If you wanted that stuff, why’d you pick this one?”

“Rosie picked it for me, on account of it having a picture of the ocean on it.”

Mr. Cheeks turned over the front of the book. The cover was a photograph of sparkling waters over the pacific, touching a cavernous land behind a narrow beach. The picture was taken just as a giant wave splashed up against a wall of corroded rocks and cavernous land formations, and dead center of which was a large wooden ship. “That’ll teach ya to judge a book by its cover, I reckin’.”

“Guess I wasn’t payin’ attention enough.”

Samuel laid the book down on the nightstand. When his daughter didn’t come back with a snappy reply, he knew something was wrong. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothin.’” Sandy was far from a spoiled child, and she usually expressed great interest in what her Dad read to her. But tonight was the first time Mr. Cheeks had just about neared the end of a book, and his daughter looked entirely disinterested. Her eyes were on the headboard, played with a splinter sticking out of the shark’s front tooth.

“Don’t lie to me, lil’ miss. Yer face is saggin’ lower than your grandma’s neck skin!”

“I’m not lying! It’s just…” Sandy turned on her shoulder, away from him. “You ever feel like a one-eyed alien on a three-eyed planet?”

This family loved its absurd metaphors, but this one left Samuel dumbfounded. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

But the odd little prodigy wouldn’t elaborate. After a while, she pulled her blanket up higher. “Read me Three Musketeers again tomorrow?”

“Again?” He looked again at the closed book on the nightstand. “Ain’t ya even curious how this one ends?”

“It’s just a dumb love story.” Her voice had taken a defensive edge. “They’re all the same, ain’t they?”

Pa bit the inside of one of his massive cheeks. He didn’t always understand his daughter, but a guy doesn’t father a bunch of kids without gaining a distinct sense of intuition. It wasn’t that Sandy didn’t like the book. Something about it had upset her. And he was gonna find out what. Even if she couldn’t tell him herself.

“Whatever you say, peanut.” He leaned forward and patted a large hand on her little shoulder before pushing back the hand carved desk chair. “Call me if you need me.”

“Sure,” the little squirrel sighed. She pulled her ocean blue comforter up over her head as her father turned off the light, and closed the door. She was grateful her dad had backed off as quickly as she did.

Sandy was a proud, strong headed little girl, and she didn’t want to be caught crying when nothing was wrong. When nothing was supposed to be wrong. 

Before he left, Samuel had quietly plucked the book back off of the nightstand.

Standing outside her door, in the tiny all-wood enclave between the twin’s bedrooms, he gave it another look over. To Sandy’s credit, the cover had a distinctly action-y look to it. Between the crashing waves and the bold font, and the ship in the distance, if someone didn’t read the summary, they might assume it was derivative of Peter Pan and the island of lost boys or something. Not some sappy love story the likes of which little his wife and Rosie would gobble up.

… if someone wasn’t in the right state of mind…

Rosie picked it out for me…

…  or, if they were confused.

He could choose to let it go. Chalk it up as a phase. This was an old-fashioned dad who popped son Randy’s broken finger back into place, then held it with a homemade splint made of duct tape. He didn’t exactly handle hurt emotions any better. 

But something about Sandy’s voice unsettled him. Sent the hairs on the back of his neck on edge in the unexplainable way that only a parent could feel. Like dropping your son’s troubled friend off at their house and sitting there waiting in the car, somehow knowing they’d be locked out before even they do. 

… ‘Guess I wasn’t payin’ attention enough.’

***

“Josie?” Samuel called, pushing open the workout room door. “Josie Pie?”

“Over here, baby!”

Right of the doorway, Samuel found his wife sitting in her rowing machine, a straight shot across the room. The Cheeks family, unsurprisingly to anybody that knew them well, had their own workout room. Mr. Cheeks felt heftier than ever as he stepped over barbels and ducked around various machines. It was tight, but outfitted nicely, and the entire family took advantage. But it was painfully obvious from the way he had to suck in his gut to maneuver around the various exercise machines that he didn’t frequent the room as often as he used to.

But Josephine looked up at this man with the same adoration as the day they got hitched. “Two hundred fifty reps! Best record in the house! Haha! Mama’s comin’ back, kids!” She gave a yawn and stretch rich with self-satisfaction, but looking up and finally seeing his expression, the moment quickly ended. “What is it?”

He was still holding the book in his paws. “Do you know anything going on with Sandy lately?”

“Going on?” She tilted her head, ever slightly. “Gonna need more information than that, Pa.”

“I dunno, I just thought, as their mother, you might know somethin’ I didn’t.”

Josie shook her head showily. Warily. “What’d that child say to you tonight?”

Three-eyed alien on a one eyed planet. Was it even worth repeating her jabberwacky if he couldn’t make sense of it himself? “It’s more like what she wouldn’t say.” 

Josie picked up her towel from the bench of the machine on her right, and wrapped it around the back of her neck. “I don’t see what there is to know. Our kids are all leading their classes, and Sandy’s settin’ the curve for the entire district. She reads at a seventh grade level, she can do algebra blindfolded… Her elbow grease at the county fair has made me brush ankles with Dolly Parton!”

“Book wise, yeah. She’s alright.” Samuel was feeling himself getting frustrated. Explaining normal feelings wasn’t a man’s man game. This was a whole other animal. “When was the last time she had a friend over? Or went to play at some other kids house?”

Now Josie had to think about it. “Can’t recall. But I ain’t never been keen on letting my kids stay over, not ‘less I know the parents like the back of my paw.”

“Ain’t she never been invited over?”

“Oh, she’s been to birthday parties.”

“With Rosie and Randy.”

Josie stood up. “Where are you gettin’ with this, Pa?”

“I think she’s lonely. I mean, she ain’t really got much in the way of friends.”

“Sandy’s got friends!”

“She does, does she?”

“Yes!”

Mr. Cheeks crossed his arms, the book practically disappearing under his massive bicep. “Name one.”

Josie pursed her lips thoughtfully. “What about Fern?”

“That’s Rosie’s lil’ girlfriend,” Sam corrected.

“Georgie, then.”

“That’s Randy’s best friend.”

“So? He’s her friend too!”

“I know, but. I think it’s time she made some friends of her own.”

“She will! She’s just a baby, for oak’s sake!”

Mr. Cheeks sucked in his beer belly once more, so his little wife could make it to the doorway. When they were close again she looked deep into his eyes. “I know what to do.”

“You do?”

“We ought to take her to a Cotillion.”

“Wait.” Sam’s brow furrowed as he tried to put a meaning to that word. “Manners class? Ain’t that for teenagers?”

“Oh, they’d make an exception for her. What with her being so smart and mature and all. She’s ahead in all her other classes, she might as well get her southern etiquette and hospitality up to speed. Why, what were you thinking we ought to do?”

“Well, what about karate class?”

“Oh, Pa…” Josie turned away.

“What?”

“You want her to make friends, right? But you want her to roll around on the floor with a bunch of strange little boys?”

“She’s said she wanted to go! That Mr. Yang’s already showed her the basics. I think she might just be happy here.”

“Why? You’ve taught her all enough wrestling to get ‘er out of most any trouble! If ever a fool thinks they could lay a finger on them, she’d put them in their grave, or at the very least, we would!”

“Doesn’t mean she can’t funnel all that strength into something more… fancy?” He wagged his fingers, looking for the words. “Interestin’? Who knows? Maybe she could show us a thing or two.”

But Josie wasn’t hearing it. “I don’t think so.” She flipped the light switch and exited the weight room. The conversation was over.

Only it wasn’t, really, because Samuel went after her in pursuit. He followed her down the dark hallway, up the bottom of the claustrophobic staircase, leading to the bedrooms. “But would you still let her rot away in some phony-bologna manners school?”

“At least she’d be learnin’ somethin’ practical!” his wife said without turning around. “She doesn’t need more self-defense lessons, Sam! What she needs to be a little more lady like, not—”

“It’s not about self-defense!“ Sam’s voice finally rose as the words to match his feelings finally came to him. “It’s about…  fittin’ in!”

Josephine froze, her paw on the railing. 

“It’s about finding herself away from us! It’s about what embracin’ who she really is.”

When Josephine turned, she raised a brow. “And what exactly is that? You mean… not like her Mama? Not like Rosie…”

“Not that.” Sam’s lips parted, but he hesitated to say it. “Not just a tomboy. Somethin’... different.” He muttered the last word. 

“Mom? Daddy?”

The parents froze in place before slowly and reluctantly turning around. Behind Sam’s massive shadow stood a slim young squirrel who’d lost all baby fat.

He looked just like his twin, Sandy, and for a moment the parents thought Sam thought he was gonna have a stroke. Hearing them talk about her like that. 

Thankfully, he was quickly identifiable in that he absolutely refused to wear a shirt outside of school, and the tips of his ears and tail fur seemed perpetually coarse and sticky, no matter how many baths he took.

“Randy Cheeks, what are you doin’ up at this hour?” asked Josephine.

“What’s wrong with her?” They might not have got along all the time, (part of the reason for having separate rooms so early into childhood) but the loaded question came from a place of loyalty for his closest sibling. “Sandy, I mean.”

“Nothing,” his father told him firmly. “Go back to bed.”

“Didn't sound like nothin’. So I’m not the only one who’s noticed how weird she is?”

“Don’t sass your father, and do not talk about your sister like that, or I’ll ship ya straight to the taxidermist!” Josephine came back down the stairs with thundering steps. “You’d best get upstairs and get to sleep, youngin’!”

“I can’t!”

“And why in heaven's name not? “

“Too quiet.” He bashed his ears with the back of his fists in frustration. “My ear’s ringin’ like a church bell.”

“Too quiet?” repeated Mr. Cheeks.

“That’s because everyone’s asleep,” Josie said. “As you should be.”

“No! Really! Listen...” Randy sounded frantic. He patted the air down for emphasis. Unlike daylight hours, his eyes were bloodshot, and his body language was tense. Like his sister, Randy played hard, and slept like a rock. This wasn’t a hyperactive little kid who just wanted an excuse to stay up late to watch some late night comedy with his folks. It looked as if he’d been trying to sleep and, for whatever reason, could not do so. “Ya hear it?”

At last, Ma and Pa did as he asked of them. They put their hands to their sides, and shut their lips. Sure enough, almost right away a mysterious ringing filled their ears.

This was a result of the overwhelming, uncanny silence that was actually there.

“The rig.” The little boy pointed to the sky.

The sound that had been all around him, all the time, in the background of everything since long before he and Sandy were born, like a permanent fixture in their lives, had suddenly stopped. Leaving behind a severe case of tinnitus in its wake. Randy had it, and now that they had stopped talking, Samuel and Josephine realized they had it, too.

Randy lowered his arm. “It finally shut up.”

“Can’t be.” His father shook hishead. “It’s been there for years.” But as soon as he stopped talking and listened again— really listened—Sam knew the kid was right. It had shut up.

“Oh… come here, baby.” Josephine came across the hallway and hugged her son apologetically, his mud-crusted cheek buried into her stomach. “Tell you what. I’ll fix you some hot chocolate, and maybe we can use daddy’s record player to play you some Al Downing. Maybe that’ll help with the ringing quiet. Right, Pa?”

Sam nodded, dazed, his mouth still agape.

“What do ya say?” she asked Randy.

“‘Kay, Mom.” The boy’s voice was muffled in her jogging sweater. In his six years alive, Sam couldn’t recall a time that little boy looked so exhausted.

While his wife led the boy downstairs to the kitchen, Sam went the other direction. Picking up his massive, shoeless feet, he climbed the wooden stairs so as to not disturb his other children, lest they all wake up and discover they had tinnitus, too.

The Cheeks’s home made up the interior of the carved out oak tree. It was at least three centuries out, straddled the edge of a shimmering creek, and was just large enough for a family of five. Perfect enough that when those pesky oil drillers came knocking into the neighborhood seven years ago, Pa could’t find the heart to suggest that they move. As long as they didn’t move another inch closer to the creek, they were safe. At least he hoped. 

The almost never interrupted 24 hour shifts meant there was noise, and it was constant . It had been slightly annoying in the least, and had caused a few awful night’s sleep at worst. But the Cheeks were made of tough stuff. They were Texaners, after all. It would take a lot more than some human industrialization to outright ruin their rural lives. So, the rig and its noise became part of their lives.

So much so that there was a consequence when it disappeared. Sam could’t believe how he hadn’t noticed it until Randy had said something, but when he was alone and standing still, sure enough, the ringing was there.

Which implied the rig was not.

Somethin’ weren’t right.

The former pro-wrestler climbed his way up to the very top of the tree, where the stairs met the ceiling. About five steps from the top, he reached up into the pitch blackness of the ceiling, and yanked open the cord of a hatch door. This hatch door, which would be better fitted for an attic, led straight to the outside. The relatively flat surface where the limbs started that served as the roof of the trunk, and their home.

Sam climbed out and stretched his arms. The warm night air of summer, once clean and sweet out here in the country, ruined with the distant stench of rotten eggs. No matter how hard the wind blew, it seemed the smell would be there forever. Long before the kids were born, Sam would come up here, find an opening in the treetop canopy and admire the few stars he could still make out in the skies outside rural Houston. But once that darned rig showed up, the accompanying workman’s lights made it so he couldn’t make out one star.

But tonight, he was looking for something else, and he was very uneasy about it. Beyond the tip of the furthest branch extending out from in front of him. Beyond that, he couldn’t make out a thing. He could, however, for the first time in a long time, see the shape of the Big Dipper, between the leaves above his head. 

This meant one thing: The night lights were gone. 

Somethin’ definitely weren’t right.

A sight like that ought to make him glad, but a sinking worry was making that hard. Why now? Why without warning? Didn’t seem normal. He shuffled out onto the biggest horizontal branch, ambling along slowly and carefully-like until the branch narrowed so much that he had no choice but to start putting one foot in front of the other. Climbing branches was a young squirrel’s game, but he was Samuel “Ful-ton” Cheeks, once a physical force to be reckoned with. The biggest, strongest professional wrestler in the county.

Didn’t matter how much time had passed since his hay day. He could walk a lil’ branch.

“Come on, cowboy, you got this.”

The branch grew narrower and narrower under his bare feet, toes pinched around any imperfection they could find in the bark. With his arms extended out to either side, he felt like one of the Flying Wallendas, except that he was pretty sure the ropes the Wallendas climbed didn’t feel as if they were starting to tip forward under him, down towards the creek.

Sam ignored it and kept going, slower and slower. Every even step, he was watching his feet, and all the odd ones, he looked up, trying to see out over the water. His duty as a father and protector of the family demanded it.

Something snapped, and Sam, instinctively, froze. The slowly returning ringing in his ear made him feel distracted and vulnerable.

“Daddy?”

Immediately, Sam lost his footing. The branch rushed up from under him, and he grabbed it for his life. With a series of fearful shouts and whoops, the branch bounced under his weight, bobbing up and down, up and down…

“What are you doing?”

He cracked open an eye. Sandy was peering out the tiny window of her room, a flashlight in hand.

“Oh I… just figured I’d go for a walk.” He looked at the water down below. Even on this warm summer night, he didn’t feel like going swimming. He wondered how long the branch would hold him. “I’m guessin’ you can’t sleep either?”

“I noticed, too, Daddy.” Sandy pointed to the darkness out across the water. “The machine stopped, but I didn’t think we noticed until the house was all quiet.”

“You don’t say, hehe… Hey! Since you’re such a ripe apple,” He should’ve asked their honor roll girl before he tiptoed off to the edge of their tree. “What do ya make of it? The silence, I mean?”

“It’s gone.” 

“Gone?!” The branch bobbed with the strength of his shout.

Sure enough, Sandy’s flashlight revealed the image that Samuel would not believe, if he hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes. Across the water, the industrious black shadow that interrupted their view of the breathtaking Texas horizon was no longer there. “The whole dang rig? Gone! How ?”

How? How without us hearing a thing?

Sandy just shrugged.

Of course he couldn’t expect her to have an answer for that. She couldn’t know everything. She was just a child, after all. But Pa’d be lying to himself if he said he didn’t consult his daughter’s book smarts three or four days out of the week. Heck, if it weren’t for Sandy’s early passion for invention, he’d still be wrestling into his old spandex by hand, instead of being steamed, stretched out and lubed up at the hands of a robot. 

Was he proud? Heck. Samuel was proud of all his kids. But Sandy was the one who always gave and never asked for anything. If he couldn’t understand her, he could at least make the effort to make her smile. If peanut wanted to go to karate, he would get her into karate.

But before he could verbalize his plan, the branch he was standing on broke at the limb, and the wood rushed up from under him. He landed stomach down, arms flailing until they wrapped around, securing him in place.

His heart pounded. It wasn’t until he heard the splash underneath him that he realized what he’d just done. He did a double take, pulling his empty paws away from the bark, palms empty. “Shoot!”

Sandy leaned out of her window, squinting at the water. “Was that the book?”

“Yeah…” He scanned the water, but he couldn’t see it. Even if he went fishing for it now, the book was probably long gone. “Heh… Glad you didn’t care to find out how it ended.”

“Daddy,” Sandy looked from the water, up at her dad. “I got that at the library.”

Samuel blinked, eyes widening. “Ah, nuts! — AAAHHHHH!”

The branch he was hanging onto for dear life suddenly snapped, and Samuel Cheeks, the burly, muscular squirrel plummeted all the way down from his treehouse home into the water with a tremendous splash.

***

“I ain’t goin’ to no Cotillion!”

Sandy was standing on top of her bed.

This child never stood on her bed. Not even to jump on it when she was a toddler. She knew better than that. This was a serious disrespect in the Cheeks household.

But Sandy was seriously outraged.

“It’s easy,” Josephine told her. She sat with her yoga pant-legs folded, her eyes heavy with too much makeup and unbothered. “You graduate from the class, and you can go to karate. No certificate, no karate.”

“That’s not fair! I work so hard! I got the highest grades in school! And now I gotta go to some stupid manners class? Daddy, help!”

Her pleading eyes made Sam sink lower into the extra chair. He was slouched so low, he looked almost as round as a beach ball.

“Peanut, Cotillion— from what yer mother tells me, anyways—it’s kind of a… maturity thing. And part of being mature is being able to make compromises. All we want you is to go to this class for a couple of weeks, and then we’ll send you to karate as long as you wanna go. That’s a compromise. Can you do that?”

Sandy was breathing so hard, her chest rose and fell. She looked from Dad, to Mom, then balled her fists, and closed her eyes.

So many things she wanted to say. This still felt unfair. They were picking on her, just like everybody else. Why not send Randy, too? The boy can’t keep clean for more than five minutes, surely a manners class was right up his alley, weren’t it? Or, what about Rosie? She likes girly things like that! Why’d Sandy gotta go through it alone?

Being a prodigy wasn’t easy. And before she’d even got to second grade, Sandy was coming to understand it was actually a pretty thankless job. But something Daddy said about the maturity factor resonated with her. She could understand it was unfair, but if it meant getting what she really wanted, she could swallow her words. For now. “How long?”

“Five weeks, and a dinner party,” said Ma.

Sandy swallowed. “Karate, and five dollars at the end of every week towards the telescope, and I’ll do it.”

“Karate, and two dollars at the end of the last class!”

Sandy thrusted her arm out to her mother for a hearty, strong-gripped, all-American hand-shake. The type between adults strangers, but strangers who respected each other. “Deal.”

Josephine shook, stood up and kissed Sandy on top of the head. “It won’t be bad. I promise.”

Sandy eased herself back down to sit on top of her comforter, then reached over to her bedside table and switched on her fish light. Samuel turned off the overhead light and left her to watch the fish swimming across the walls, same way as last night. Well, ‘cept that he was bruised, battered, and covered with bandages from the fall in shallow water yesterday. Never did recover the book. Since when did school library books cost a twenty dollar bill, anyway?

But something was distinctly different when he closed the door that night. Not only was he painfully aware of the silence, now that the rig was confirmed to be gone, but the last time he made contact with her eyes, they didn’t seem so sad.

He’d done a lot of the wood carving that made that bedroom special to Sandy. There’s not much he wouldn’t do to make his kids happy.

There were questions that would stay in his mind long after that night. Was Sandy right to feel like she was going through this manners class hokey because it would seem awfully strange to send an already tomboyish little girl to karate and not try to address her lack of girly-ness?

How does an oil rig just vanish in the middle of the night with nobody noticing?

And what in the great state of Texas did they mean by a ‘watershed’ anyway?

May 20th, 2002. Pleasant Street, Ukulele Bottom.

The sudden ‘slam’ of the front door brought Harold off the armchair and onto his feet in a second. His mind buzzed with paranoia. 

Who could be coming into their house at this hour? And how did they get in the locked door?

An intruder?

He reached for the hideous vase Sherm’s mother in law gave them for their wedding. He was the breadwinner, the husband, the father. The protector and defender of the house. It all fell on him. 

Oh… why’d it have to fall on him? 

When footsteps crossed the foyer into the living room, a meek, mild, far more timid sponge than he was willing to admit braced himself readied it to strike.

Only for his son to round the corner. “Hey, Dad—DAD !?!” He shot into the air and dropped his house key. 

“SPONGEBOB!”  Harold leapt back with enough force that his shoes flew off.

Mrs. SquarePants appeared at the bottom of the stairs, holding her bathrobe closed. She heard the door open from the quiet upstairs, and came down to investigate. Noticeably, without a weapon. “SpongeBob? What are you doing back? I thought you’d be out all night.”

“Oh, well, uh… prom’s over at 11. Didn’t want to be a third wheel, y’know. With Patrick and his date.”

Harold made a suspicious face. “Didn’t Patrick’s mother take him?”

“She did! But… I wasn’t really invited for a sleepover tonight. She kinda grounded him. Guess the lobby fountain isn’t for public swimming. Hehe…” He chuckled with his braces gleaming, bright and clean. “It was still a blast. Especially getting to meet all those policemen.” 

“Oh. Well… Are you hungry?” asked Mom. She joined them in the living room. “I just picked up some more Mermaid Man cereal!”

“Nah, that’s okay, I’m just gonna go to bed.” The teen began removing his dinner jacket. “I’m beat. But thank you.”

Mrs. SquarePants came closer and looked into her son’s eyes for a moment, then patted his shoulder. “Well, alright, honey.” She pulled him in for a quick hug. “We’ll see you in the morning. I love you.”

“Good night Mom. Dad.” He nodded towards his father, then with the jacket neatly folded over his arm. “Love you.”

Harold gave a curt nod over his paper. “Goodnight, son.”

SpongeBob began making his way to his room. Margaret watched him go with a proud smile. She was used to her husband not always returning their son’s ‘I love you’s.’ More often than not, SpongeBob could get a quick ‘you too’ and their son seemed satisfied with it. She didn’t think too much about it because she knew of her husband’s upbringing, and this is just how things were with him. Although she did think he could be a little tougher on their boy than she was. SpongeBob didn’t seem to notice the difference, or treat them any differently, so she didn’t say anything.

But as soon as Mrs. SquarePants heard the teen’s door shut, there came the long winded sigh. “I don’t know, Marge. I just don’t know.”

“What do you mean?” Margaret frowned.

Harold looked towards the darkened hallway, waiting for any sign that footsteps were coming back their way, before he lowered his voice to a whisper. “SpongeBob.”

“What could you possibly mean?” She whispered back. “He’s a good kid!”

“He’s a great kid.” Harold admitted. “That’s… kind of the problem. Y’know at this age, I was gettin’ a little rebellious at my old man. I wanted him to back off, to quit controlling me. To let me break the curfew once in a while. I don’t even remember what my proms looked like, that’s how good they were. I have a feeling SpongeBob will remember all of it. And not for the right reasons.”

“He had fun tonight! He said it himself! Why are you acting like this?”

“I think he thinks he had fun.” Mr. SquarePants opened his newspaper again, and flexed the papers. He’d been up late trying to get through the sports section, but he kept zoning off after a few sentences. He ate up the recipe section like cake, but if he’d missed the recent games, as he usually did. If he wanted to have any chance chatting it up with his coworkers at the water cooler, he’d have to have an inkling as to what they were talking about. And they couldn’t know he just hated sports. “He doesn’t know what real fun is. He’s too afraid to take risks. Too afraid to change. I understand a little hesitancy here or there, it’s in our blood. But this just isn’t normal.”

Plus, he never really did forget what the doctor had said, all those years ago, when SpongeBob was first born. It’s an anomaly I’ve only ever seen once in my life…

What

Did

That

Mean?

His obsession with cooking, his disinterest in long term dating, his lack of many friends. Was this the effect of the anomaly, whatever it was? 

“Is this what his life is gonna look like? Friend escorted from hotel for immature antics? Cereal and bed before midnight? Home on prom night, no boat, no license, no date?”

***

“I love my son the way he is…”

SpongeBob closed his bedroom door behind him, then haphazardly tossed the jacket he so neatly folded onto his desk chair. 

He slid to the floor. With only a tiny bit of light filtering in through the open blinds, he looked at all four walls in the darkened room with a new set of eyes. His bedroom hadn’t changed much since he started high school. While most teenagers had thrown away, donated or hand-me-downed their toys, clothes, and posters related to childish things like superheroes, Mermaid Man and Barnacle boy, SpongeBob hadn’t found a reason to. He had no siblings, and he was the youngest of his cousins. Actually, he was solely the recipient of hand-me-downs. 

One of these many posters tacked up on the walls was a vintage 1964 print of a young and muscular Mermaid Man carrying a curvy mermaid, fittingly named Lovely Lane away, just as an underwater explosion lights up the background. Her long orange curls parted just enough to show a wanting smile towards her savior in the form fitting spandex.

SpongeBob loved that poster, just as he loved the rest of this vintage merchandise that decorated his room. He’d played as Mermaid Man enough himself in his childhood, and dressed as Mermaid Man five Halloween’s in a row. He even considered having the Starfish mask tattooed to his face at one point in his adolescence (thankfully for Mrs. SquarePants, SpongeBob wasn’t crazy about the idea of a needle, especially in the face.)

While romance wasn’t his favorite genre, it seemed fitting that his biggest hero should one day find happiness with someone who loved him. 

At least in that movie’s canon, seeing as Lovely really never made another appearance in the franchise. 

That much about love was precious to SpongeBob. He loved his parents, and he loved that they loved each other. That it felt true, and could genuinely last forever. Something that he wanted for himself someday.

“ ... but let’s be honest with ourselves, here, Marge,” said Harold. You can’t hope to steal a kiss from a girl and still watch cartoons.”

***

“Oh, Harold!” Margaret was losing her patience, now.

“No, Margaret, I’m serious.” Harold’s eyebrows were narrowed. He never spoke in a stern voice, but now here he was, doing just that.

***

“He’s probably got it in his head that his wedding’s gonna be superhero themed, cake and all!”

SpongeBob stood up and went to the mirror, starting to untie his bowtie, looking at his reflection. The light from the street made his braces and retainer shine in the darkness. He’d be out of them in a year, but for now, he was stuck with them. Along with these glasses.

… my responsibility to make him a ‘man’s man’. .. like Dad …

The teenager took off his glasses. Every frame he owned was taped in the middle because of how often they’d fallen off and broke. It wasn’t exactly easy to keep glasses on your face without ears. He’d promised himself that when he moved out and started making his own money, he’d buy himself a new pair the minute the last one broke.

Now he found himself suddenly wondering how much laser eye surgery hurt.

“… just don’t know, Marge. … just don’t know...”

SpongeBob threw himself backwards on top of his superhero-themed comforter, and took off his glasses, folding them neatly and setting them on the nightstand.

He closed his eyes. Sucked in his breath.

“ …he’s not… ”

Exhale. His eyes sprang open, and he flopped on his left side, facing the wall. There, he reached a hand behind the bed, against the wall. He lowered his hand beneath the box spring, until his fingers touched the floor. After pushing aside various lost comic books and action figures, Spongebob found what he was looking for. Slowly so as not to disturb the dials, he slipped it up over the mattress. A 1994 Deluxe Edition Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy Walkie Talkie. Just one of two the pack had come with.

SpongeBob hadn’t seen these in several years. Among his other toys, he’d forgotten about it. But as he sat there, increasing the volume, he did start to remember the last thing he did with it.

It was just before Christmas, and he really wanted to know what Mom and Dad were getting him that year. He knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t contain his excitement. So he cranked up the Walkie Talkie’s sensitivity, and slipped it down between the couch cushions in the living room when no one was looking, waiting to overhear any conversation between his parents.

What SpongeBob overlooked at the time, and why his plan fell through, was that the walkie talkie didn’t work unless someone was pressing the talk button. A simple fix with tape would’ve solved the problem, but by the time he realized what he’d done wrong, Christmas had come, and he’d forgotten all about his devious little plan.

Until Junior Prom night, many years later.

Either the toy’s talk function mysteriously just began to work, or Mom had finally found the walkie talkie deep in the couch, and set it aside to clean and bring back to SpongeBob’s room, not realizing she inadvertently turned on the toy while cleaning it.

“The school ran tests on him.” Mom’s voice through the speaker. The sound was crackled, but the words were clear. “He’s—“

“Normal intelligence, socially ept, polite as can be. I know. I know. But—”

The voice SpongeBob was hearing was extremely quiet, but he heard everything. “—he’s not normal, Marge.”

Either Mom and Dad had forgotten about the other walkie talkie, or they didn’t believe it still worked, after all these years.

SpongeBob shut off the toy and gave it a long, hard stare, hands gradually shaking.

In a fit of frustration that had been bottling up for years, he threw it as hard as he could against the far side wall. Despite being the biggest lightweight in gym class, it broke, and fell to the floor in two pieces.

He didn’t care how the kids at school looked at him. Talked about it. Made fun of him. And he never had. Microphone or not, he knew he was unpopular, but that never got under his skin. Not even when kids would call him names and try to antagonize him, right to his face, in front of everyone else. SpongeBob was comfortable just the way he was.

But something about this, something about Dad saying these things behind his back. This hurt.

Before he fell asleep, he reached up and grabbed the print of Lovely Lane hanging right above his headboard, and ripped it off of the wall, right down the middle.

Chapter 1: Never Gonna Happen

July 14th, 2016

It’s too late.

In a twilight, underwater nowhere, where the currant blew tumble weeds across a flat plane of sand, SpongeBob SquarePants collapsed to his knees. “No… No… not like this! Isn’t there anything I can do?”

His throat was raw, his eyes huge. Pleading. Shining watery in the moonlight.

It’s too late, came the response, so distorted it almost like it was coming from another realm.

“Please, don’t do this! It can’t just end like this! Please! ”

He was alone, except for the blurry silhouette of a person, turned away. I always thought… if there’s anything to say, you’d have said it. I thought you, of all people, I could trust for that.

“But you can trust me! You could always trust me!” SpongeBob scooted closer, the knees of his long pants kicking up mounts in the sand. “Our friendship means the world to me, and I just didn’t want to ruin it! But we can start over! From the beginning, just like if we first met! We can do it all over again. I’d do anything. I’d be whatever you want me to be, if you’d only stay!’

No, SpongeBob. The silhouette began moving away. 

Slowly. 

Step by step. You had years. We had years.

Step.  

The company’s bust. There’s no more funding. Ain’t no more time for games, or karate, tea, or catchin’ bad guys. This chapter of our lives is over, and I gotta move on.

This was the worst feeling he’d ever known. Why? Why did he waste all this time? The games, the jokes, the adventures… If he’d only given one hint, one word, one moment in the last decade that would’ve confirmed the depth of his feelings, maybe he wouldn’t be saying goodbye. 

The silhouette turned away, the outline of a curled tail making itself pediment in the dark. Before the black of night consumed her form. 

I’ll remember you, she finished, voice almost ethereal. I’ll always love you. No matter what, partner. 

“No! No, don’t go! Don’t go! GAH!” He chased after her, tripping on a stone, and fell forward. 

By the time he peeled his face off the ground, rocks as big as his eyes stuck in his eye sockets. He reached in with his fingers wrapped around the rocks and yanked them out, but by then, the figure was gone.

It really was too late. 

“No..” His eyes were blurry with unshed tears. “No, no, no…” The black of night closed in around him, arms cold, blinding and lonely. “Don’t go… ” he sobbed into the sand. “ I—”

***

“… I need you.”

HOOOOOOOOOOOONK

went the bedside, foghorn alarm clock, with enough power to slide its spongy owner clear off the foot of the mattress in a rush of bubbles, pillow and all. He hit the floor with an ‘oomph!’, and a cat-like shriek came shortly thereafter. 

SpongeBob opened his eyes to the pillow, clutched between his fingers.

Morning light shone into the circular, curtainless window in the distinctly orange bedroom room, illuminating everything from the diving board high up by the ceiling, down to the multiple mattresses stacked high above the ground. On the sand-colored floor, at the foot of the bed lay the square yellow man, sideways in yesterday’s wrinkled clothes. His nose bent upwards from impact.

“GAH!” He reached up and took ginger hold of his nose. “One, two, three… OW!” He bent it back downward. “Man, what a nightmare!

“Meow!”

He realized where he’d landed at the foot of the bed was not a strangely sticky throw pillow, but actually his light sleeping, and rather irate, pet snail.

“Oh! Sorry, Gare-Bear.” He scrambled to his feet, picking the snail up and dusting him off. SpongeBob didn’t weigh much, and thankfully, Gary’s shell wasn’t hurt. “I was talking in my sleep again, huh? Guess I’ve just been a little stressed out lately.”

“Meow?” 

“Oh it doesn’t matter what it’s about.” He set Gary down and gave him a few comforting strokes on top of his shell. “It’s never gonna happen.”

A friendship like ours would never end like that, he thought. It can’t.

But as he glanced at the face of the clock, the nightmare was quickly forgotten. “Er, thanks for the wake up call, buddy. Here.” Beneath the clock, SpongeBob reached inside his bedside table’s drawer and tossed Gary a small treat, which the snail caught mid-air. “That should hold you over until breakfast .”

The sponge trotted right over his pillow, blankets and untucked sheets on his way to the bathroom. Lately he’d been throwing himself into bed the minute he got home, shoes and all. No dinner, no chores, and forget the obligatory rerun of MermaidMan and Barnacle Boy at 9PM sharp. It was bed, sleep, shower and right back to work the next morning. Rinse and repeat, with the sparse food and bathroom breaks in between.

Appeased and feeling better, Gary slinked up behind him. “Meow?”

SpongeBob answered with a hint of annoyance. “No. I didn’t forget what day it is… but, thanks, buddy.”

He approached the mirror, taking in a prominent five o’clock shadow before snatching up the shaving cream. “This is gonna be a long one.” His other hand he extended towards the fish-shaped radio, hanging by its hook-shaped dorsal fin on the rod of the shower curtain. “Maybe some music will help perk me up.”

The black eye-shaped dial turned, and his favorite station came on. Then he pointed the nozzle of the can at his face, shut his eyes, and fired, loading his face with as much cream as he could take before it tipped him over. This sponge overdid everything.

He staggered backward under the weight, arms flailing wildly until they landed on the razor, sitting in a cup on the sink, and was disappointed to hear an almost nostalgic songs was almost over. And what the DJ had to say right after didn’t help. “Electric Zoo! Feels like it was just yesterday you were hearing that for the first time, doesn’t it? Boy, how time flies! This is your favorite DJ in the morning, Smokey Pufferfish, coming to you live from 85.4, The Currant. At the top of the hour, and now here’s a requested message: a Bikini Bottom local turns the big 3-and-O today. An admirer wants everybody to say Happy Birthday to mister SpongeBob SquarePants.”

“Huh?” SpongeBob’s face spun a full 180 degrees towards the radio, even though he couldn’t see a thing, feet still planted in front of the mirror. “Me?”

“Do your thing, sisters !”

There was a squeak of the hanging studio mic being thrown halfway across the radio booth. Then came the slowly loudening tune of crooner-era piano music, followed shortly after by the retro-themed female vocals trio: The Sisters Sprat.

“My bay-be lives un-der the o-cean/

My bay-be lives un-der the sea/

My bay-be is what makes the wa-ters spar-kle/

My bay-be you al-ways will be!”

In one quick flick, SpongeBob wiped the foam from his eyes with the back of his hands like windshield blades. He lowered his arms and gaped at himself, stone still with anticipation.

No .

Could today, this moment, this second in time, be the one I’ve dreamed of, in the tiniest recesses of my mind?

“Thank you, Sisters Sprat.” The radio host finished the requested message. “Love you forever and ever… Margaret SquarePants.”

Clink. SpongeBob dropped the razor and fell backwards to the floor, feet in the air. SQUEAK.

It’s not. 

“Oh, Mom!” It took a lot for SpongeBob to feel embarrassed, but this had done the trick. “Now the whole town knows!”

“Meow?” said Gary.

“I am not insecure, Gary!” He sat up and snatched the razor, tossing it with a perfect arc into the draining cup on the side of the sink. For someone who wasn’t athletic in the conventional meaning, the former frycook mastered the art of flicking the wrist. “I just don’t want anybody to feel inclined to get me anything for my birthday. That’s all. Now, if you’ll kindly give me some privacy.” And he waited for Gary to leave. Then he stepped out of yesterday’s clothes, launching his undies into the growing hamper pile like a slingshot before climbing into the bathtub.

Under the noise of the water spray, he muttered to himself. “Silly snail.”

“And speaking of turning 30—”

SpongeBob sighed.

“—a nice segue for the topic of today’s morning brew,” Smokey went on cheerfully. “Today in 1986: The Big Bottom Blackout! A region-wide power outage that lasted almost 80 hours, affecting hundreds of thousands of residents under the Atoll, between Bikini Bottom to the north, Ukulele Bottom East, and Rock Bottom south. The cause for the outage came down to a series of power lines knocked down by large pieces of heavy surface debris, and caved in the ceiling of a central power station. While unidentified at the time, experts today believe the pieces came loose and drifted away from--get this--a dive bell belonging to an oil rig hundreds of miles off chartered course. Crazier things have happened. But given the historic level of chaos as a result, Bikini Bottom residents can’t help but ask: Where were YOU when the lights went out?”

“I was brushing my teeth and I fell down the stairs,” answered the voice of a frail old lady.

“Why were you brushing your teeth at the top of the stairs?” asked the radio host.

“Same reason you didn’t brush yours at all this morning, youngin!” the woman answered coldly. “Time management.”

SpongeBob stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around his waist. “Oh yeah! The blackout!”

Now that his master was decent, Gary poked his eyestalks back into the bathroom. “Meow?”

“I don’t remember it myself. I was only a few minutes old when it happened! Hm. Matter of fact, Grandma said the power went out right when they were taking my first pictures.”

Gary leaned an eyestalk forward in emphasis. “Me-ow?”

“What do you mean, ‘bad omen’? Lots of babies were born that day! At least… six for sure…” He acted as if he knew them by name, and were counting into his palm.

“ Well, I was walkin’ mah worm along main street downtown,” said another radio caller, a middle-aged man with a Bikini outskirts accent. “And all the traffic lights just plum went out just as we reached the intersection! Just blown dark, like a candle in a storm, I tell you what! Massive ten boat pile-up that morning! At least a dozen fishfolk turned ‘ta market cuts that day…”

“That’s horrible,” the DJ replied. 

“But me and mah worm, we was fine!”

SpongeBob bit his lip as he loaded toothpaste onto his toothbrush. “Gee. I remember Mom and Pop talking about the blackout growing up, but I didn’t know it was that bad!” 

What else haven’t they told me because they think I can’t handle it?

“Meow?”

“Coconut Cake and sea-salt ice cream?” He spat a mouthful of toothpaste into the sink. “No time today, ol’ boy. There’s so much to do! I’ve gotta get dressed, run down to the restaurant, place the order—”

RING!

“... Answer the phone apparently.”

SpongeBob painted and sped back into the bedroom, where his shell phone was ringing off the table in a flurry of bubbles. As soon as he picked it up, he knew why it was ringing so hard. “Hello?”

“SpongeBob! Where in the seven seas do you think you are? ”

“I… think I’m home, Mr. Krabs? I thought I didn’t start until nine.”

“Of all days for you not to think to come in early? ”

***

At the second Krusty Krab, Mr. Krabs, with a long blue dress shirt and tie to gussy up his Krusty 1 attire, was trying to mop a mess on the floor with a soggy dust broom with the other.

“We’ve got so much to do to set up for the Gala tonight! And that’s if you get the rest of today’s tasks done…”

***

“… HEY!” The phone trembled under Krab’s shout. “NO REFILLS ON THE GOOD WINE! ”

“The GALA! ” With a high-pitched shriek, SpongeBob launched him into the air. His eyes sank backwards into his head in horror. “Barnacles! I forgot that it was tonight!”

“You bet your foxy new pants it’s tonight! Now get down here and bring those multiplying hands before I break them off and put them to use meself! ”

Beep. SpongeBob lowered the phone from his ear. “What is wrong with me? How could I forget something so important?”

Gary likely knew better than to ask, but curiosity got the better of him. “Meow?”

“The Gala’s the biggest night of the year!” SpongeBob thought he’d explained this to Gary already. Guess he’d misremembered. “Mr. Krabs is closing both restaurants early to host a bunch of big-shot celebrity chefs to promote the rebrand of the Krusty 2: The Krusty Klass! And since I’m the manager, it's my responsibility to make sure everything goes down without a hitch!”

***

“I gotta get my suit dry cleaned, do tomorrow’s supply order today, close the doors early, count the peppercorns…!”

SpongeBob piled Gary’s food bowl in record time, throwing the can to the side of the room, towards an overflowing trash can. When he first moved into this house, he promised he’d never let it fall to chaos like this, but a lot changes in ten years. As soon as that was done, he sprinted across an overflowing sink of dishes, across a mud-stained floor, around the living room and out the front door, where his pet snail waited, concerned.

“Lock the door for me again, little guy. Okay? Love ya!”

When he was halfway down the block, his bath towel flew off and hit Gary in the face. “Meow…”

“Dang it. ”

The underwater laboratory had been quiet. Quiet enough to hear a pin drop, until Sandy put her fist through a wall.

The quarter-inch steel plate didn’t stand a chance. The titan-squirrel had blasted her fist right through it, like a bullet through a clothesline. Even with her white mitts on, her fist came with such force, she knew her knuckles would bruise. Growing up a Cheek had made her strong and fit, and thanks to the added help of Karate, she was able to funnel that strength into something that could be truly devastating.

But she was still mortal.

“This is it,” she said quietly, to herself. “I really am out of ideas.”

In her lonely little laboratory, where she'd toiled away at studies pertaining to her job, her life and everything in between, she slumped over her table.

She’d tried everything. Exhausted every known theory she could get her hands on. But some things can’t be made possible, even with enough scientific know-how. Even with every available tool at her disposal. Even with the unlimited funding from three eccentric gentle-monkey lords back in London with no better use of their wealth. She’d like to believe she was Superwoman, sometimes, between her overpowered brain and brawn. But she wasn’t a God. She couldn’t make the impossible possible, no matter how badly she wanted it to become so.

Over a decade in Bikini Bottom had inspired Sandy to experiment far beyond the duties of her actual job. It was only natural that personal relationships with the sea critters had given her ideas for how to improve the world, how people live, and even how she lived. Time after time, she’d upgraded her own dive suit and treedome, and even patented her own brand of rebreather tech for the suit. Her work had factually opened the door for others on land to have a better experience living and working under the sea.

But certain things were just impossible, and everybody found that out, sooner or later. For a twenty nine year old American squirrel, it was the ability to live underwater without the necessity of a suit, or, especially, an air helmet. To live among the sea critters without a curtain forever in between.

Sandy’s tinkering had started off vague and curious. It was a ridiculous idea, spitting in the face of all known science. Why, she ought to be grateful she had the technology to live in Bikini Bottom at all. But for better or worse, Sandy was young, bullheaded, and had an extremely difficult time letting an unsolved problem lay.

It began by researching and making a list of potential devices to fix the problem, based on hypothetical inventions that mostly appear in science fiction, take what you will of that. Once he crossed off the ones that right away, she knew wouldn’t work, she was left with a few concepts. Simple, but unproven. And knowing it took thousands of attempts to create the first lightbulb, Sandy knew that there hadn’t been nearly enough testing to rule out these ideas as nothin’ but  hay-feathers.

However, to this day, all have been humiliating failures. 

Portable breathing device? Easy to create her own, but it was too bulky. Not to mention she’d have to carry it around like an oxygen tank, on her back or in her hands. At least the suit kept her hands free.

Artificial gills? What a joke. She thought she’d actually made some headway with a prototype, and nearly drowned herself testing them out. Thankfully she was just in her bathtub in the treedome.

And even if she could give herself the ability to breathe underwater, there was no clear way of getting over the pressure problem. Sandy was putting herself at risk each and every time she ripped her suit off in a fit of rage or battle. Exposure to deep sea pressure was just not good for a mammal, and she could already feel her body aching first thing in the morning from those few stupid, brash exhibitions. She took calcium supplements to help counteract the damage she’d already done, but she was just glad she never broke a bone play-chopping with SpongeBob. For one thing, he’d completely over react. To see her get hurt so badly out of nowhere would make him nuttier than a Nutella Pecan Upside Down Cake! He might even go as far as to pressure her for an explanation as she understood it, and she couldn’t give it to him. Not yet.

Now, these experiments were completely top secret. Even the chimps were not to know about her venture into breaking the glass of her own treedome (metaphorically speaking), as she’d probably lose her trust as a… well. A sane person, really. As well as her funding, which would disappear faster than you can say ‘Adios, Bikini Bottom.’ Nor was anybody else supposed to know. Not even her on-again-off-again lab assistant with an annoying habit of breaking into and asking questions about everything he could get his eyes and hands on.

Sandy would never admit the real hot-blooded drive for solving this problem, the reason she hadn’t let this go yet, was not her pride, or her brash determination in itself, but her personal relationship with the sea creatures, And you’d sooner see Jack Frost ice skating in El Paso before she admitted a particular relationship with one of them was the hope-board picture of a life without the suit.

No one was ever gonna know. Especially if nothing ever came of this tinkering.

She didn’t really like to bring up her shortcomings, but she’d stumbled upon the biggest hurdle in her career, and maybe in her life. And she didn’t know what to do about it.

So, she fought. And when she didn’t have anything or anyone to fight, no giant rascally clams that needed to be taught a lesson, and with her punching bag already pulverized to smithereens, she did the only thing she could think to do.

She broke stuff.

“This one’s gonna be hurtin’s somethin’ awful tomorrow.” She took off her mitt and massaged her hand, throbbing already. That was a good thing. It pulled her back. Reminded her that she was an adult, and pitchin’ hissy fits had consequences, this one being that she’d waste two hours repairing a hole in her wall rather than anything productive.

For now, she was gonna try and focus on her other work in the meantime, tedious though it was. “After all, I’m still a scientist. I still got a job to do,” she told herself. In a weak voice, she added: “That’s what I’m here for.”

***

“Tarnation! What do ya make of that?”

Sandy held a test tube in her hands, bringing it to eye level. It contained one of a dozen samples of ocean water taken out in Jellyfish Fields yesterday, and a simple dye kit that would tell her the amount of a certain element present in the water. She’s been screening the water since she came down to Bikini Bottom every week for fluctuations in the composites. It was a key part of her job, and perhaps the most mundane thing she had to do for it.

Extract samples. Take them home. 

Go to the lab. Run them through a machine. 

Check for any significant change in the water composition. Check off that same, dang list. 

Scan and send back to the laboratory back home. Next week, same time, same place, rinse and repeat.

Dull. Dull. Dull. Though she understood the need for these samples, in all the time she’d run these tests, nothing really changed. The tiny fluctuation in this chemical or that, but for the most part, it’s been consistent, and the levels evened out the next test cycle.

Until three weeks ago. Exact same water from the exact same space, at the exact same time. Tube on the plate, into the extractor. Printed report. But that time the computer was spitting out very strange numbers. Same thing last week.

And now, today as well.

She knew was supposed to have this test done by the end of the day yesterday at the latest, but she’d been working on something else top secret, and it actually wasn’t related to living underwater without the suit. But the twenty four hour window shouldn’t change the results that much.

Either way, the oddities came out even stronger. Not random, but trending in the same direction. Stronger sodium. Stronger hydrocarbons. So many chemicals magnified to absurd degrees. Wouldn’t the fish folk have noticed? The jellyfish staying clear of this part of the fields?

Then again, it was the same computer and software she’d used since she came down here. Was it finally conking out? It looked to be working peachy, and a quick self-diagnostic test told her the same.

Only one way to know for sure. Sandy dug through her massive monthly crate of ship-dropped off supplies from lad, and found the kit she was looking for. It looked simple enough. Paper strips in tiny, air-locked capsules.

Sandy took the samples back into the treedome and laid her supplies out on her picnic table, the same she used to hold tea and cookies when Sponge and Pat came knockin’ around. She’d never used it for anything work related, promising herself that the treedome was her personal space, and that line wasn’t to be crossed. But today was an exception. She needed a dry place to test these samples.

Speaking of, she could’ve used SpongeBob’s help to lay out these simple tests. She hadn’t had breakfast, and her hands were starting to shake with decreasing energy and increasing nerves. But the lil’ dude was so busy with that rebranded restaurant these days, she wouldn’t dream of asking for his help. SquarePants would never, had never, told her ‘no’, and she couldn’t think of impositioning him right now. So it was back to work with her lonely self.

Sandy took off her helmet and massaged her temples. This was such a simple test, but the tension was enough to make her want to whittle a cowboy figurine with just her teeth, the way she did with Daddy when she was a teething toddler.

When the timer went off, Sandy carefully removed the tiny slip of paper from the first sample. But she could already tell from the clear glass that the bottom end had turned from white, to a deep sea blue. She picked up the next sample: Same result. Same with the third, and the forth after that.

The color change told her what she already suspected. “That level of hydrocarbons? In Bikini Bottom?”

It could be nothing. Or it could be the start of some trouble. Until she had more information, only time would tell.

Something was ringing in the back of her head, but she couldn’t flag it. She snapped her helmet back on, returned to the lab to scan her report, attached with an unusually long series of notes, back to headquarters. Once the email was sent, she turned her eyes to the clock, for the first time all morning. “ Holy guacamole! That late already?”

In a flurry of motion, Sandy packed up another briefcase of vials, and a brand new, state of the art water quality sensor. Leaving the anomalies tests laid out in a mess back in the treedome behind, Sandy elevated herself from her basement laboratory, and sprinted fully suited down the street.

Time to do more in-depth field tests. She had to go out anyway. There was somebody she absolutely had to see today, no matter how conflicted it made her feel.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: Plankton's Plan Purloined

“Today is the big day! How bad off are we, Ferg?”

A smartly dressed, tangerine colored parrot fish flipped through pages on a clipboard. Standing a head taller than the sponge, they strolled from the restaurant’s outdoor patio space, into the dining room. “The truck delivering the beef for dinner is late…”

“Oh, that’s not good. But at least we can get started on the appetizers—”

“The glasses still need to be polished,” the young man interrupted in a clipped voice.

“Really? Thought they were taken care of last night like I asked. Well, I can—”

“The table cloths were never picked up for washing.”

“I can see that.” SpongeBob eyed the bag of laundry laying next to the host’s podium as they crossed the threshold. It was as big as the sponge was tall, and gave off visible, wiggly stink lines that soared up to the ceiling, and burnt out the candles in one of the mini chandeliers. “It’s a good thing the laundromat is only half a mile away, hehe… um, Fergus?” 

“Yes?”

SpongeBob added each of his assistant’s notes to his own mental checklist that never seemed to end. “Do me a favor, and just hit me with the rest of them all at once, like er… ripping a bandage off, real fast!”

Fergus Finnegan pursed his full, widely admired lips, and after only a moment’s thought, promptly did as his boss asked. “The silver needs polishing, we’re out of garlic, someone put their shoe in the sous vide machine, and you’re not wearing any pants.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh— OH !” The sponge froze in his tracks and looked down, remembering he’d never changed out of his bath towel. “Ooops… Tehehehe …” he sped out of the room in a flurry of bubbles, and returned instantly, dressed in long blue pants and a sky blue dress shirt.

“Sponge BOB!” It was at this time that Mr. Krabs decided to make his appearance, scuttling out from behind the kitchen door. “It’s about time you got here!” He folded his arms and stopped just short of his two staff men. “Looks as if I can only count on one of you scallywags to show up on time, and dressed for the job!”

“Sorry, Mr. Krabs !”

SpongeBob had rushed to apologize, and froze. Someone had already beat him to it. 

The Klassy crewmen, Krabs included, turned with curiosity to the table behind them. A heavyset fish with bright blue fins and scales was aggressively polishing one of the wooden tables as he spoke. One of two black stripes that crossed his forehead was pinched together with intense concentration. Finished instantly, he grabbed one of the last clean linens, shook it free of its crumbs, and laid it back down on the tabletop. “I’ll run home on my break and come back dressed for tonight. I promise!”

“Hm.” Mr. Krabs’ eyestalks extended outwards. A stained apron with painter’s jeans and a Mermaid Man T-shirt were far off from the official Krusty Klass uniform, but at least the kid made the effort to grab the original Krusty 1 hat on his way out the door. “If it were any other day, I’d have a few words for you, Mr. Riverez. But SpongeBob’s praised you to no end since you started working here. I’d rather you not muck up your best waiting outfit before the cameras start flashing tonight. Carry on, lad.”

“Thank you, sir.” With that, the angelfish darted across the dining room, carrying on his work in a flurry that could’ve made SpongeBob jealous, if he wasn’t so grateful to have him on the same team right now. “Oh, to be so young and promising. Only seventeen, working to pay off his college classes, planning to become a CEO.” The sponge sighed and clasped his hands together with a proud smile. “He’s going places, Mr. K.”

“Thank Neptune it’s not today,” Krabs thought out loud. “He’s promised to work both the day shift and the Gala back to back, as long as I drop him and his mother back home safe and sound. Doesn’t get much more reasonable than that.” He cracked his back and started collecting another clawful of dirty dishes to his right. “I’m gonna camp out in the kitchen and focus on churning out day orders, and maybe finish off that last precious sip of seven hundred dollar Chateau Cove while I'm back there, since there ain’t enough to make a customer’s glass. Mr. SquarePants! Ye know what to do. Take the helm.” He quickly scuttled away from the group towards the staff-only door, square in the middle of the dining room’s back wall. “Get the boys sorted on deck, and then start pitchin’ in where ye can.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” SpongeBob raised his hand for a dutiful salute. Just like the old days . Sort of. “Mr. Finnegan! The chart for the party seating arrangement is in my office. Grab it and start arranging as many tables on the perimeter for tonight that you believe we can spare for the remainder of lunch. Place cards with names and numbers are on the chart as well. I want every table to look like it’s fit for King Neptune himself!”

Fergus winked and cocked finger guns his way. “You got it, chief.”

“Mr. Riverez, in between waiting tables, I need you to jump in with the cleaning. Help me in the dining room polishing the silver, then the glassware hanging up above the bar. If we have time, we’ll do it all, but for now, just take care of the frontmost row.”

“Well, I’ll—Oh! ” Angel fumbled with his tub of dirty dishes and they fell to the floor, some bouncing out and smashing in the process. “I’ll do what I can, but I can’t guarantee it will all get done on time.”

SpongeBob calmly bent down to help put the dishes and broken pieces back in the tub. “Your best is all I can ask for,” he told him. But I really need the best of the best tonight, SpongeBob thought, frowning as Angel stood back up. I don’t wanna lie, but I can’t risk stressing him out, either. Overthinking’s his only Achilles’ heel. 

“Can’t we hire more people?” asked Angel. “Just for tonight? It’s just that this Gala seems like a really big social media event, and I worry we might look silly, being so unprepared.”

“Can’t say I disagree.” SpongeBob flicked the last broken piece of dish into the tub, then rubbed his chin. “But we’re on a hiring freeze! We can’t take on anyone.”

But as SpongeBob stood, Fergus came around and derailed those thoughts with a firm pat on the back. “Chill, Mr. S. We’ve got it covered, your two team boys. Front to back row, every glass shining like a star reflecting on the water of the surface world. Just the way you like it. We’re gonna make this joint pop off, just for you.”

SpongeBob smiled in relief. “Ah. I’m glad you’re here, Fergus. I mean, look at you! Always so nicely dressed, with your black dress shirts. And that tie!”

Fergus took the ends of his red necktie and rubbed the satin between his fin-tips. “The best color there is.”

“Even your little ponytail and goatee combo is so stylish! You just radiate so much confidence!”

“As an assistant manager should.”

“And teamwork does work wonders. Now, time for a workout, team! Bahahaw!” SpongeBob snatched the bag of dirty linen waiting unattended, by the entrance. “I gotta get these tablecloths and napkins white and bright! Be back in a jiffy!”

With that, ManagerPants sped out the door, leaving a trail of smoke in his wake. Angel watched on, his nervous expression easing into a weak smile.

“Hope he remembered to grab a roll of quarters. And some OxyClean.” Fergus shook his head. “Well, I’m not chasing after him. Dude’s probably gonna tear up the road and everybody who stands in his way of that washing machine.”

“He’s a little loco,” Angel admitted quietly. “You can’t say he doesn’t pull his weight, though.”

“Yeah.” Fergus turned back to his clipboard, then reached into his pocket and retrieved a manager’s key. “Looks like you get to see the office today, bud. Lucky you.”

Angel held the key out, confused. “I thought Mr. SquarePants asked you to move the tables.”

“Yeah, but here’s the thing.” He pressed a thumb-shaped fin to his chest. “Then my nice black shirt would get all dirty and sweaty, and that wouldn’t be a good look, would it? Meanwhile, you’re already dressed for some hard work. I think you’d be the better fit for the job. Remember, tonight, our image is what matters.”

“Our image.” The teen narrowed his eyes, his forehead stripe making a subtle V. “So, you’ll be polishing the glassware, then?”

“Of course! Now go on! Before you’ve got another table to wait on.”

Fergus tapped the highschooler on the back as he left the dining room, and unlike when SpongeBob patted his back, his scales stood on end with disgust.

After the blue cichlid disappeared behind the staff doors, Fergus pulled out his mobile shell phone, and sauntered outside onto the patio. The sun was shining, and hidden in the safety of a cocktail umbrella sat a young woman with black hair hanging low on her face, a textbook spread out on her lap.

“Hey, pretty mama.” Without waiting for an invitation, he pulled a chair out and sat at the table across from her. “You look like a rocker. Wanna see pictures of my band opening for Blood on the Ship Deck?”

“Today’s the big day, Karen.”

“The day you clean the restaurant ?” 

The big monitor overlooking the Chum Bucket’s dining room bore an annoyed 8-bit expression, behind a screen caked with dust. “ I’m starting to go blind !”

Plankton ambled into the middle of the floor, wearing an unbothered smirk. “Bigger fish to fry today, my darling DOS. For thirty years, I’ve meticulously tested every combination of ingredients until I’ve identified what I believe to be all the exact components for the Krabby Patty!”

He reached behind his back and produced a remote control, fixed with a walkie talkie. “Staffbot Number 3! Wheel out K.P. dash 198.”
 
Through the kitchen's double doors, and balanced on a single wheel came the basic pincer-handed robot, dressed white apron and black bowtie. One of its arms was draped with a napkin, the other a plate with a fully assembled burger patty that he set down on the nearest empty table. " Your order as requested, sir." 

“Oh, yes. This is the combination.” Firing up a mini jetpack, Plankton rose into the air and planted himself with a gentle arch onto the table top. “It looks like a Krabby Patty… “ He tossed the jetpack offscreen, ran to the patty, and ripped off a chunk before stuffing it into his mouth. “Bleh! ” He spat it out. “It tastes almost just like a Krabby Patty, but it’s still missing something.”

“Maybe it’d help if the food was made by a person, ” Karen supposed. Nearby, a panel dropped out from the wall, and a robot arm holding a giant duster started cleaning her monitor. “Somebody with taste buds?”

“If I only knew what that secret sauce was. Then the entire recipe is mine! But what could it be? Tartar sauce?” Plankton shook his head. “Nah. Too obvious. Thousand Island? Too derivative.”

“Have you ever wondered if it’s nothing at all?” asked the computer, hiding her arm back inside the wall panel. “What if the secret ingredient for the sauce isn’t anything but what you’ve already discovered, and the only reason it doesn’t taste the same to you is that you perceive it to be different?”

“Pfft. Now you’re just being pretentious.”

“Being made on a grill that’s not lined with cobwebs would probably help.”

“Must you mock me? Curses! ” He bashed his tiny, balled up nubs on the hollow steel of the table, hard enough to make an audible ‘tink’. “I’ve tried a thousand different sauce combinations, fusions of sauces together, and I can’t figure out what it is!”

“What exactly are you planning tonight that you haven’t tried before?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Tonight’s that phony charity Gala at the second restaurant.” He went over to the window, pulling the steel blinds up just an inch. Outside The Krusty Klass was a road sign advertising the Gala. If not invited by staff, VIP invites could be obtained with a 500 dollar minimum entry donation. To ensure only ocean’s most prestigious influencers were filling those seats, and only those who could afford to donate to Sailors of the Seven Seas . “With all those Hollywood snobs keeping Krabs distracted, I’ll be able to sneak into the original Krusty Krab, and finally take the secret formula for the Krabby Patty’s secret sauce!”

“And what makes you think Krabs won’t have the sauce under lock and key while he’s next door?”

“Why, I’d be insulted if he didn’t. Which is what this is for! ” Plankton stuck his numbs between his teeth, blowing a distinct, sharp whistle. “Staffbot Number 3! Bring me the schematics for Lockpick Bot Number # 17.”

“Yes. Sir.”  The robot responded, and gracefully glided back through the double doors, still carrying the platter and napkin.

Plankton rubs his nubby hands together with a devilish grin. “I knew this bad boy would come in handy someday. I can assemble my new lockpick robot faster than you can say ‘stolen formula’, and by tonight, I’ll have a perfectly disguised, remote control, speed-running lock pick robot to… well. Y’know. Pick locks and steal things.” He pulled his nubs apart, shrugged and smiled in earnest at the monitor. “Plus, it’ll keep me out of the line of fire for once!”

“Lockpick Bot Schematics: Whereabouts Unknown.”

“What?” Plankton spun to the doorway.

“Mission failed. ” Staffbot stood holding the double doors open, head bent forward at the neck joint, metal eyebrows turned down, as if deeply dejected. “ Order undeliverable. Self district initiated…”

“No…” Plankton wagged his arms frantically. “NO, NO, WAIT A MINUTE! We can talk it—!”

bLAST

The Chum Bucket’s windows blew outward out an ultraviolet glow as the robot exploded. Unfortunately for his half-pint creator, he was standing just within the blast radius.

“...out.” Plankton recovered, shaking off the soot instantly. “Why do all my robots have worse self-esteem than I do? Ugh. Now that’s two robots to build.” He snapped his fingers. “Karen, run a scan on the restaurant. Tell me where the blueprints are.”

“I don’t know where they are either, Plankton.”

“What do you mean you don’t know where the prints are? I was just working on those plans last week! Remember? We were watching Rambo together?”

“You were watching Rambo and doodling something on the blue paper with you in a bandanna, holding a machine gun. I was on call with my mother, trying to convince her not to file me as corrupt, and divorce me from you herself. I don’t know where that paper went.”

“You’re telling me that on the eve of my comeback, my greatest plan is missing? If you don’t know where they are, how’d you know I drew myself with muscles?”

“I filed it away in your miscellaneous drawer like I always do! You know. The drawer that’s labeled ‘Not sure if related to evil plan, or a self glorifying graphic novel? ’”

Plankton slapped his forehead. “Of COURSE!” 

“And when did I say anything about muscles?”

Question unanswered, Plankton burst through the double doors back to the laboratory. Rushing to that same-named cabinet at the speed of light, he yanked open the top drawer, and dramatically launched into the air. Tucking his feet underneath and pulling his antennae back by putting his numbs together above his head, he dove in headfirst like a pool. Papers, yellow, white, and blue soon began flying everywhere as he tossed them aside. “Lockbot, lockbot, lockbot, no, no, no!”

“Maybe if you’d actually try to organize your things for once like I keep telling you to do ,” the computer voice droned, “ you wouldn’t keep losing components of evil plans like candy wrappers.”

Plankton emerged from the top of the drawer, steam rising from his head, “Great. I don’t have time to start the schematics all over again and build the robot! I’ll have no choice but to enter the Krusty Krab tonight myself.” He propped his chin up in his arm. “I just hope that quadrilateral simpleton SpongeBob has his hands busy next door…”

"Napkins!"

SpongeBob had returned from the laundromat, finding the restaurant to be in even worse condition than when he left. He left the bag behind the host podium and went to wait on customers. "Done! Now, where is Fergus—?"

"Excuse me, sonny, do you work here?" To his right, an elderly fish with his wife were seated at a table just left to the entrance. "We've been here twenty minutes and haven't even gotten any water yet!"

"gAH! C-c-coming right up!" SpongeBob cupped his hands and shouted towards the waiter's drink closet. "TWO WATER BARRELS ON THE PORT BOW!!"

"AYE-AYE-CAPTAIN!" cried back Angel. This was followed by the sound of some sort of glassware meeting an untimely death with the hard, unforgiving floor. "Ay-ay-ay... "

"Tone it down, lad!" Mr. Krabs emerged from the kitchen. After another hour of uninterrupted work, he'd been drawn out by the sounds of distress. "This is supposed to be a fancy restaurant, not a vessel sendin' out an S.O.S!"

“Sorry, capt’n! I’m bailing water as fast as I can, but I’m afraid our ship is going down!” SpongeBob sighed, finally ready to lower his voice. “I hate to say it, Mr. Krabs, but Angel’s right! We do need more help.”

“Hm…” Krabs rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m startin’ to get that feelin’, too. Maybe. Just for tonight. But who are we gonna find to fill in so close to battle? Someone who knows how we operate around here?”

“Hm.” SpongeBob rubbed his chin. “We need someone who really understands what it means to be fancy.”

***

Dear Diary,

How did it ever come to this?

I stand outside of my former penitentiary on a clear summer day. The sun at my back, the wind in my clothes. No longer a cashier at a dead-end dump, but a changed man. A man of culture. Of pride. 

I’ve seen the world. I had the world, and I lost it all. 

And now I’m back, outside of the, not one, but two, Krusty Krabs.

Do you remember that one movie, All Quiet on the Waterfront? When the young hero fought, got injured and shipped home, only to return to the front lines? Ater having seen it all, it became impossible to integrate with the naive civilians again.

I escaped. I was the lucky one. Finally, I was free.

So, why in the name of Neptune’s kingdom am I back?

Maybe it’s a fascination. How did Eugene manage to churn a profit from a brand new restaurant right next to the old one? When the only condition is that it’s tweaked to look like some sort of back alley derivative of a real fancy restaurant?

Or, maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome. Blah, I can’t say that! We all know the real reason I’m back, and it has nothing to do with love. For the Krusty Krab, or anybody inside!

I wonder how long I’ll last, once I pass those doors again. I wonder if I’ll see a little clam on a rock, and get to doodle him before taking a spatula to the back of the head, ending a disappointingly underwhelming life.

I’m sorry, mama, as Paul would say, in that lackluster remake, but I’m heading back. Back to where I belong.

Just tonight. And no more.

***

“The Krusty Klass?”

Squidward scrutinized the sign that stood outside of the second, newer restaurant.

The lobster trap had been painted bright pearl white, standing apart from the original restaurant to its right, and the ship-in-a-bottle Michelin-level restaurant Fancy! on the other side of town. The glass windows had been tinted black and outfitted so that they could be swung outward during daylight hours and let the refreshing, warm currant in. There was something of a patio space, with white tables enclosed inside of a small black fence, and bright cocktail umbrellas to shield the diners. “Real Klever, Eugene. Heh.. heh… heh… Klever… heh, jokes that only make sense in text… heh heh...”

Abruptly, slumped forward at the end of the patio walkway. “... Fin me.”

***

“Hm. It’s… bigger than I remembered it being.”

With the patio windows open and part of the old backroom wall knocked down to make for a more spacious C-shaped dining room, the restaurant looked… almost adequate. Twenty or so patrons were still scattered around the room having a late luncheon, but everybody knew the real crowds were coming tonight.

“Why, of all places, did it have to be here?” He slapped the side of his head. “The restaurant is going to be closed to everybody but very important celebrities from all across the sea!” He held up his favorite black woodwind instrument. “I haven’t got five dollars to my name, let alone five hundred for the ticket! And unless my Clarinet Journeys record goes platinum in the next five minutes, the only way to get back inside is to work for the restaurant.”

Nobody was manning the host podium as he walked up. Squidward leaned his arm on the top and rapped his tentacle against his cheek, taking in the restaurant. “Figures. That cheapskate hasn’t even tried to hire more help since I left. I just hope that means he’s that much more desperate… hm? That’s new.”

Squidward eyed a menu left on the edge of the nearest table, and he reached for it. “The Krabby Gourmet Burger?”

He read off the ingredients. “The original Krabby Patty secret recipe sandwich with melted swiss cheese, mushrooms, and brioche buns. Comes with a side of parmesan kelp fries?” He read further down the entree list. “The… Mary-Brown-Mother-Of-Pearl? A bunless Krabby patty with mushrooms, onions, and sauce on a plate with a side of cauliflower? What’s cauliflower?” He gave a glance around the paterons, enjoying their food quietly and pleasantly, just as they would have next door at the fast food shack. “This is supposed to be fancy food? The Crab-Steak Salad? A bed of the freshest kelp leaves served with a hearty topping of… Krabby Patty bits? Almonds, chopped onions, tomatoes, and tartar sauce reduction? Yeck!”

He slapped the menu back on the table, making it rattle. “I can’t believe people are falling for this! It’s the same fast food slop repackaged with glitter and sold at a markup! Who in the right mind would fall for this?”

“Well, well, well, look who we have here!”

Squidward’s heart took a dive into his stomach.

When he turned around, Squilliam was sitting at a table in the dark back of the room, enjoying a cocktail. “Aren’t you looking spiffy? TJMaxx, or Ross? Hope that new shirt didn’t cost you a whole paycheck.”

“Hardly.” Squidward adjusted the collar of his new, favorite, bright red polo. “And don’t tell me you actually came here looking for me! You know I quit months ago!”

“Oh, that’s right!” Squilliam set down his martini and clasped his tentacles. “ And how’s the music store coming along?”

“It’s doing a lot better now that it’s in my hands, thank you! What’s brought you back to this side of town? Don’t tell me you’ve actually got suckered into this Klassy nonsense!”

“Not entirely.” He reached into the breast pocket of his coat and retrieved a vape pen. Smoking wasn’t allowed in most restaurants, but Squilliam had a way of bending people to his will with a crisp dollar bill, so Squidward wasn’t surprised. Not to mention Krabs would sooner put on a tutu and play every part in Swan Lake himself before he argued with a rich customer. “But as the most prestigious member of society in Bikini Bottom, I feel it is my duty to foster the social atmosphere for tonight’s very important guests.”

“y-YOU?” The power of Squid’s shout launched him into the air. “You’re invited to the Gala? For free?!”

“Well of course! Anybody who knows anybody is invited. It really isn’t that hard to get an invite. Why, mine was shipped out months ago! Which is why I have no doubt that I’ll be seeing you tonight as well, seeing as you’re connected to me, as well as a… respected veteran of the staff.”

Fish. Paste.

“Not unless you’re about to tell me the music store isn’t paying what I assumed it was, and that you, Squidward Tentacles, have come crawling back to your old workplace to beg for a second job, busing tables, and mopping up spills.” The vapor from the pen wrapped around Squidward’s nose. Butterscotch reserve. Even if he didn’t smoke, the smell was delicious, it made Squidward’s stomach whine treacherously. “That… isn’t why you’re here, is it?”

How he read him so well, Squidward didn’t know. But he hated it, and he hated Squilliam even more. “Not… on… your LIFE, Fancyson! We Tentacles do not go back down the ladder once we have ascended. It’ll be the day of days when I start working in food service again!” He leaned on the table and pointed a finger at Squilliam. “Put that in your vape and smoke it!”

“I’ll be looking for you tonight, then.” Fancyson tucked away his pen and laid out enough bills for his tab and more, and then laid it on the table. “Compliments on the drink, Eugene.”

SLAM! Like a radar had gone off, as soon as the bill fold hit the table, Mr. Krabs threw open the kitchen door, and rocketed from the kitchen and began cleaning the table after Squilliam. “Why thank you, Mr. Fancyson.” He pocketed the generous tip with glee. “Always a pleasure.”

There was silence until Squilliam was beyond the doors. And then it was just Krabs and Squidward. “Hm.” The old crustacean eyed him up and down with narrowed eyes, then put his claws behind his back. “Looking sharp, Mr. Squidward.”

“Uh… thanks.” Squidward rubbed the back of his neck. He’d expected this to go differently, somehow.

“Big city life treating you well, I see.”

“That’s… kind of what I came here to talk about.”

Short on time and help as they were, Mr. Krabs began clearing off another nearby table while Angel worked in the background, dragging tables about according to the Gala plans, sweating and gritting his teeth. 

“The music business is a little too much fun for ya, ey?” said Krabs. “How’s the champagne and caviar Squilliam promised you?” His eyestalks extended towards Squidward as if to point him down. “Do you even know   what caviar is made of, lad?”

“Mr. Krabs, listen. I know I left on bad terms, but I'm asking you as someone who’s served you for years with minimal complaint. I need a temporary job. I know you’ve got the Gala going on tonight, and a little extra help would go a long way! I can be a… waiter! I’ll serve h’orderves! I’ll-I’ll even scrub toilets! I’ll do anything ! I just need a job, and I need it tonight! ”

“Hmm? Hmm…” Mr. Krabs turned around, dishes piled in his claws, while he swished imaginary mouthwash his cheeks back and forth. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on !” Squidward dropped to his knees, so that the crab was taller than him for once. “I put in a full two week notice when I left! I cleaned up my station, I even turned in my hat! You’ve got to admit I was one of your best employees!”

“Second of three,” He clarified, no doubt referring to Jeff, the original fry cook. “But you got me there.” He picked Squidward by pinching the top of his head up and put him back on his feet. “But why are ya asking me?”

"Because," Squidward looked left and right with confusion, " you're the manager?"

“Wrong. I am now the founder and CEO of Krusty Franch., and apart from today, I don’t lift a claw. I most certainly don’t do franchise hiring.” His eyes sparkled as he added: “I just handle the finances!”

“Franchise? It’s just two restaurants!”

“Two ships is still a fleet, lad. As it were, you were employed at the original Krusty Krab, of which I was the manager. This is the Krusty Klass.” He turned away with mock pity. “You’ll have to turn your groveling over Klass’s manager if you be wantin’ back onboard this fleet for the Gala.”

“But if you don’t do the hiring,” Squidward began. “Then who—?”

“SQUIDWARRRRRRRD! ”

Emerging from his shift in the kitchen, SpongeBob sprinted through the path clear of tables and chairs, straight towards Squidward.

“No-no— GAHHH! ”

With a tackle-hug, the boys hit the floor with a thud. For being a lightweight that weighed next to nothing, SpongeBob could glomp with the best of them. At least hard enough to take down an interpretive dancer in their early fifties.

“Oh! I’ve missed you so much, Squiddy!” He grabbed the ends of his lips and and began squeezing them together, making Squidward kiss himself over and over again. “I thought I’d never see you again!”

“Eerrph— Get off of me! ”

The squid pried the little yellow hands off of his face, then shoved the tiny square man off as if he were a mean cat. The men shuffled to their feet, with Squidward dusting himself off. “I still live next door, Barnacle-for-Brains!”

“I know, but it’s not the same! A third of every good day is dedicated to work, play and sleep, and I only get to see you for a third of that!”

“You… see me when I sleep?”

“What are you doing here?” He pointed a finger at Squidward’s nose with a sly grin. “Hey, were you here to pick up your spare pair of… uh… unmentionables from the Krusty 1? Because I already found those, and returned them to you when you left months ago.”

“YOU’RE the one who shoved those in my mailbox?” Now Squidward was in his face. “I nearly got an assault charge from the post office for that!”

“Oh! Is that where I put those? Ohhhh… ” SpongeBob winced, exasperation coming on fast. “That explains why Grandma never got her care package.”

“Mr. S,” Fergus called from the bar. There was a glass in one fin, and a rag in the other. Between both of those was about twenty unpolished glasses. “Where can a guy find more Chateau Cove?”

“We’re out, Ferg. If a customer asks for it, eh… just give them the nearest priced blanc for half the price.”

“Gotcha, homie.” Fergus uncorked another bottle of wine, and began pouring a glass, before taking a cautionary test sip. And then another.

“Homie?” It was then that the realization hit Squidward. “Wait a minute. If he’s answering to you, and Mr. Krabs isn’t really in charge, then…”

“Yes?” SpongeBob’s eyes were starry with anticipation for the answer. His long pants, that new dress shirt, that suddenly very familiar manager’s pin on his chest…

Squidward’s pupils had shrunk to the size of pencil heads. 

***

No.

No.

No.

NO.

NONONONONONONONONO!”

There wasn’t a great way to slam a set of glass double-doors, but Squidward sure tried on the way out, anyway. “Not if my life depended on it! It was bad enough being his co-worker! There is no way that I am working directly under the employment of the biggest barnacle head this side of the ocean!”

***

“PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!”

Back on his knees, in the privacy of the restaurant’s office, Squidward took hold of SpongeBob’s ankles. “You gotta let me work here, at least just for the Gala! With all the celebrities, it’s gonna be the most prestigious thing that’s ever hit Bikini Bottom since the capsizing of that ship carrying Velour tracksuits and Coach wallets! And if Squilliam finds out I lied, well, he’ll… he’ll find out I lied! Then he’ll know the music shop he suckered me into co-signing with him really did ruin what little good things I had in my life! I can’t miss this last chance at saving my honor! Please! I’ll do anything!”

SpongeBob took all of this in quietly. When Squid was done, he replied with a calm, reassuring tone. “Sure, Squidward.”

“But you gotta understand! I didn’t mean it when I called you a buck-toothed barnacle headed weirdo, I just… huh?”

“It’d be great to have you back!”

“Really? You mean that?”

“Well, I can’t promise you much more than minimum wage, but Mr. Krabs did say I could hire on one more—”

“Deal! Deal! ” He sprang to his feet like a reverse slinky, and shook SpongeBob’s hand vigorously. “When can I start? I want to get as much done as possible so I can spend more time with the celebrity—I mean!—make the restaurant as beautiful as possible for tonight!”

“As a matter of fact, you can get started right now!” SpongeBob looks left and right. “Our chief cook and bottle washer needs a lot of help in the kitchen, and you’ve got a fine eye for details! What do you know about faux crab pâté?”

“Pâté!” Squidward sighed dreamily. “An appetizer for the fine and divine!” Compared to the menu he saw earlier, he was almost impressed. “Do you need my plating expertise?”

“Actually, it's more about prepping the tuna pate for plating that needs to be done.”

“... Huh?”

***

Minutes later, he stood back and watched SpongeBob yank open the freezer door. At the front sat about a couple dozen boxes, coated in frost.

“Behold! The most expensive item on our menu tonight.” SpongeBob bowed before the boxes as if they were the King of the Sea himself. “Minus the patty wellington.”

Squidward opened up a box, and instantly, his enthusiasm deflated like a punctured balloon. “... Fish. Paste.”

“Faux fish paste!” SpongeBob clarified. “Fancy, huh?”

“Real hoity-toity.” Squidward closed the box.

“Oh, and—” SpongeBob snatched a handful of Squidward’s shirt from the back—let’s not get your street clothes dirty.”

RIIP! The polo came off, and the Sponge vanished, leaving a naked Squidward standing there, stunned. “Hey!”

But before the rehire could finish his complaint, SpongeBob had returned, running at a speed that nearly matched his alter-ego, the Quickster. Around and around Squidward he ran, until the octopus had been redressed with high-end waiter clothes, complete with four legged black pants. "There! Now you'll fit right in! Gotta motor!" 

And the Sponge disappeared, leaving his new employee alone with his daunting chore.

Squidward growled and bent forward, scooping his red shirt from off the floor. “That was a hundred dollar shirt you just tore to shreds! I—” 

But he paused just then, reading the tag inside. 

“—Oh. Wait. It was TJ Maxx.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: Like the Good Ol' Days

“Hey Squidward… Squidward… Squidward… Squidward… Squidwaaaarrd? Squidwardiard! Edward with a squid—”

“What.”

In the 30 minutes since his spastic superior had left him to his task, Krusty Klass’ newest hire had only managed to defrost 7 of the 50 frozen cases of fish paste. He ‘click’ed off the hair dryer and put his tentacles at his side. “What. Do you want?”

“Oh!” Squidward’s unlikely warden for the hour had been passing by on his way to the kitchen, carrying a tub of dirty dishes that was taller than himself, Oxford shoes to forehead. Naturally, SpongeBob never went anywhere around the restaurant empty handed if he could help it. Efficiency tactics died hard, especially when they were on a time crunch. Yet, at the risk of burning a few precious moments, he simply couldn’t resist confiding in Squidward about something. He leaned around the dishes. “Are you busy?”

“Oh, no! Noooo…” He waved a slop-covered tentacle. “Don’t mind me and the hundred cases of overpriced chum you’ve left me to thaw in less than two hours, by my-self! Oh, please, what can I do to prolong this submersion in the cesspool that has become my earthly existence, and assist you further…” he gritted his teeth as if the next words were actually painful to articulate. “... Mister… SquarePants?”

“Uh, I just wanted to say, it’s great to have you back onboard the Krusty Krew, Squidward! Between you and Pat, it’s just like the good ol’ days! Only better!”

“Oh, yeahhhh. The good ol’ days. Same migraine, different dA—” His eyebrows launched up from his forehead, hit the ceiling, and fell back down, smacking the top of his head as if they suddenly weighed as much as soap bars. “OW! Wait a minute. Did you say—?

“Krusty Klass is in session!”

Squidward’s head pivoted sharply to the right. Down the dark hallway, emerging from the kitchen was the faithful pink starfish, dressed in a long black graduation gown. He held the matching tasseled cap as he jogged forward and met SpongeBob and Squidward under the lightbox just outside the freezer door. “Ah, it’s a good thing I kept this gown from high school! Never did get that diploma, but the outfit’s snazzy!”

“WHAT THE?!” The octopus’s head spun between the graduate that never was, and the manager that never should have been. “Patrick, what are you doing?”

“I’m just asking SpongeBob if this outfit will do for the party tonight!”

“YOU’RE INVITED TO THE GALA, TOO?!”

“Well of course!” SpongeBob said cheerfully. “Patrick’s a wiz at party decorations!”

“And I was made for celebrity balls! I am a star, after all! How’s this, SpongeBob?” He struck a model pose, putting his hands on his hips and arching his back, head turned to the right.

“Hm.” SpongeBob rubbed his chin. “Lay on your side for me.”

Patrick did as he was told, plopping down right there on the floor. Head propped up in one arm, top leg crossed over the other. “Draw me like one of your French narrators.”

“Hm. Maybe just wear this tie with your best trunks tonight.” From his pocket of seemingly endless useful oddities, SpongeBob retrieved a long, clip-on black tie for the starfish. “Then everybody will know you’re part of the staff. You did your laundry recently, right?”

“Just like Gary showed me,” nodded Patrick vigorously.

“Wh-wh-wait wait a minute!” Between them, Squidward was still reeling. “Staff?! I thought you said you could only hire one more staff member for the party!”

“I did!”

“I’m working under the table,” Patrick said, ripping off his graduation garb and tossing it offscreen.

“Under the table?!”

“Yup! In between doing dishes for Mr. K, you’re looking at the official Krusty K. Rocket-Mop! Stand back and observe!” 

And producing his tongue, he bent forward and slapped the tip flat against the hallway floor. He then went back and forth down the length of the narrow hallway, from where the freezer stood, all the way back to the kitchen doors from where he came. Picking up speed, Sponge and Squidward stepped out of the way as he swooped up the mess of ice and fake tuna Squidward had made in just two passes. In less than a minute, he was done, having made the entire length of the floor sparkle beneath the sparse lightboxes. 

“See?” He stuck out his tongue, which was now covered with tiny splinters. “Etz ezay.”

“He’s like a smart-Swiffer,” SpongeBob jabbed an elbow at his next door neighbor, “ay Squidward!”

“Oh, golly. While I’d love to add myself to the dance on the grave of what it meant to be ‘smart’—,” Squidward handed the hair dryer back to SpongeBob, “—if the Klass Dunce is done with dishes, then he can help you finish this! I am taking my fifteen to freshen up! And you’d better hurry up and get this back to Krabs before he finds out what you’re doing with it and busts that last unstented artery of his!”

“Wha? Oh, that’s not Mr. Krabs’ blow dryer!” SpongeBob chuckled.

“I was wondering where that was.” Patrick swiped the blow dryer from Squidward and stuck the lip under the waistband of his trunks, behind his back.Then turned it on. “Ahh, toasty buns! It’s just like a boat seat warmer!”

Squidward’s eye began to twitch. “The biggest social event of the seven seas… and the blow dryer that was defrosting the appetizers is now currently warming Patrick’s—”

“But!” SpongeBob cut him off, “since you asked, Squiddy, when you’re back, I could really use someone to help me finish polishing the silver!”

“WHAT?” Squidward threw his tentacles up in the air. “This workload is getting ridiculous! Why don’t you get your ‘assistant manager’ to do something useful?” He gestured to the doors in the middle of the hallway, leading out to the dining room. “Instead of sitting out there with the customers, moping over his phone.”

“Moping? What are you…?” SpongeBob spun around, and ran down the hallway to the double doors. Sure enough, peeking out from the staff doors, slouched over on the far back table, one of the only ones already set and ready for a guest, was the twenty six year old fish, using the thumb of his fin to scroll the phone.

“See? What are you going to do about that, Big Cheese?” asked Squidward smugly.

“Ohhhh…” SpongeBob balled up his hands into fists, biting his lip. Confronting employees was his least favorite part of the job, but it had to be done.

“Fergus, you know I hate to be the bad guy.” SpongeBob approached him tentatively. “But we can’t really afford extended breaks today!” He reached for a particularly dusty champagne glass on Fergus’ table, and began frantically scribbling something on the surface with his pointer finger. “But the Krusty Klass manual states that breaks cannot extend beyond the fifteen minute break period and one minute punch in-out period!” He presented the glass to Fergus, in which he’d instantaneously copied the entirety of the break procedures in the thick layer of dust. All 69 tiny words, Times New Roman. “We’ve only got three hours left until the party starts, and you haven’t even got the glasses done!”

“I mean, I did two.”

“Only two?”

“There can’t be that many, are there?”

“Only… two hundred…” SpongeBob felt himself getting nauseous.

“Oh. I’ll get to it.” Fergus waved his fin over his shoulder, never taking his eyes off his phone. “You can count on me.”

Hearing the defeated nature of his tone, SpongeBob took a closer look at his assistant. “Wait a minute. I know a frowny face when I see it. What’s wrong, Ferg?” 

“Well.” The fish boy pointed to the screen of his phone. His confident smile from this morning had been turned upside down. “You know that house I was gonna buy?”

“That five bedroom, three bath, for a steal?” SpongeBob didn’t have a perfect memory, but when it came to his friends and acquaintances, he remembered things incredibly well.

Of course, it helped that Fergus had talked about it quite a lot in the last few days since the sale closed. But he didn’t look so happy about it, now. “Yeah… a steal. Let’s go with that.”

“Don’t tell me there was a fire! A flood? Gasp!” His knuckles went into his mouth. “A m-m-mmu- Martian attack?!”

“Might as well have been all three, for all the good it is to me now!” Fergus slammed the phone face-down on the table and massaged his temples. “Someone else cast their line in the water at the last minute and bid a grand over me! One thousand clams, and the house is gone!” 

“But that doesn’t make sense.” SpongeBob was puzzled. “I thought you said the sale was closed.”

“Apparently not! Somebody must’ve known the homeowner and overruled the action… I don’t know. I paid ten thousand down just to get into the auction! And I just ordered a new love seat and a five thousand dollar glass pool table! Now what am I gonna do?”

“Welp, that’s what you get for joining a sketchy online betting war,” declared Squidward. Having abandoned his chore, he was at SpongeBob’s side. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Now, if Mr. Finnegan could get over himself and finish this and go help Patrick so I can thaw out my frozen tentacles, we might stand a chance of being done before Krabs throws us all in the blender instead!” His eyes widened as one thing Fergus said resounded in his head. “Did you say. Five. Thousand. Dollar. GLASS. POOL. TABLE?”

“Squidward, go easy on the guy!” SpongeBob put a fatherly hand on Fergus’ shoulder. “Can’t you see he’s taking it real hard?”

“Oh yeah? While he sits and wonders how his ‘too good to be true’ scam turned out to scam himself, I’m up to my eyeballs with iced lab-grown meat!”

“Squidward—”

“No no, sir. SquidMan is right.” Fergus slipped his phone in his side pants pocket and stood up. “Doesn’t matter what I’m going through. I have a job to do. And I won’t let you down.”

“Atta boy!” SpongeBob pumped a fist in the air. “That’s the spirit! OH WAIT!” Using that same hand, he reached for one of the back pockets of his long pants, producing a long, cylindrical metal can. “Squidward, I have this blow torch you can use to speed up the defrosting! I’ll come and help you as soon as I finish my check list! Ferg, forget the hanging glassware. We’ll pack it away and leave what's already on the tables to serve the guests. You go help Angel with clearing the lunch rush of dishes. Report to me the second you’re done, and I’ll give you the next task.”

And in a flurry of bubbles, the Quickster was gone.

“Aye, aye, Capt’n,” said Fergus, calmly popping a bubble with the pointy tip of his fin as it came close to his face. “Heh. You’d think he walked right out of a cartoon or somethin’, huh?”

Squidward scrutinized the young man who stood eye-level with him. “Nice try. I’m onto you, kid!”

“Man, I don’t know what you’re on.”

“Don’t play stupid with me! You came here and worked just hard enough that Krabs and Captain Calamity promoted you to assistant, and now you’re just coasting on their ignorance!”

Fergus looked left and right before letting his lips curl into a handsome smirk. “Takes one to know one, huh?”

“You bet your pathetic suck-up tie I do! I bet there wasn’t even a house up for auction at all, was there?”

“Harsh words, SquidMan.” Fergus looked him up and down seriously for the first time. “Tell you what: You worry about you, and I’ll worry about me. We good, then? Oh, and by the way,” he reached up and flicked a bit of fish paste from Squidward’s nose. “There we go. Wouldn’t want Squilliam to see bro as anything less than fabulous, would we?”

WHOOSH!

Smoke trickled up from under the crack of the staff room doors. The restaurant patrons listened as the voice of the franchise owner sobbed in distress.

“Mr. Finnegan! To the kitchen! Bring a fire extinguisher! And tell me ya actually know how to use it, because I do-oh-oh-ohn’t!” ”

“On it!” Fergus jogged behind the staff doors with the extinguisher (which, Squidward too quickly realized was never far out of reach since he himself had been gone). By the time he was out of sight, Squidward’s fury had turned his entire body from blue to red, steam wafting up from his skull.

“Mmm…” One of the last customers sniffed the air, then called over to Squidward. “Hey, sonny, how much for the calamari?”

“Four o’clock, and all is not well!”

SpongeBob exited the kitchen, startled by where the hands sat on his watch face. “Tartar sauce!” His feet were starting to blister, and he hadn’t eaten anything all day, not even snagging scraps from the kitchen. At this point, he’d take a squirt of tarter sauce to the mouth if it would quell his uneasy stomach, but unless he ran past a bottle of their in-house salad dressing, there wasn’t a moment to lose. 

On the outside, the Krusty Klass was the same size as the original Krusty Krab next door. Much like Squidward’s comment earlier, however, on the inside, it seemed so much bigger somehow. Even with square shaped balusters instead of round ones, and dark oak walls on the far left and right sides, with only the patio windows letting in natural light.

Only a handful of customers remained as SpongeBob weaved around these support beams, and in-between all the tiny two-seat tables that had been newly set for the party. It was as I’d he knew the layout as well as the boating school track layout. 

Interestingly enough, had he’d been behind the wheel of a boat, he likely wouldn’t have dodged even one obstacle as effortlessly as he did on foot, with a clipboard smack in front of his face. 

Attached to this board were a dozen checklists, and in his other hand was his work phone. “Let’s see, our Finbook account is finally up and running, the digital donation box is set up, the photo booth is ready, Patrick should be setting the curtains for the stage—OOMPH!”

Whatever he slammed into was not a piece of restaurant furniture. But it was tall and firm, and made him splat like a wet sponge against a kitchen wall. “Whoa there, chief!”

He knew that voice. He knew that voice all too well, even though he hadn’t heard it for weeks. The top of his head peeled away like a sticker away from its backing, and he landed a foot away, next to the clipboard and a scattering of papers. He opened his eyes to a wall of white material that made up a high tech dive suit. “Sandy!”

She chuckled comfortingly. “Where’s the fire?”

“Where’s the fire? Hehehe…” Only in his cheeks, his pits, his… everywhere. Her voice might as well have flicked the lighter.

SpongeBob had been running nonstop all day, and only now, as he lay on his back on the floor, did he feel his cheeks prickle with a hot flash. And a doozy at that. Oh, Neptune…   was it obvious through that helmet of hers?

Thankfully for him, no. Sandy’s attention was quickly snagged by the young angelfish, speeding between the tables, doing four things at once. “Seems the fever’s catchy.”

“Oh, that’s how Angel always is.” SpongeBob got back onto his feet, following her line of sight. “Although he might be a bit on overdrive. Though I suppose two cans of Cracken and waiting for the semester’s Finals results will do that. Bahaaha…” He trailed off as he took notice of his clipboard, overturned with crinkled papers scattered around the floor. “Ah, barnacles.”

“Here, let me help.” Sandy bent down and reached for pieces of paper nearer to her. “Hey, I didn’t hurt you a minute ago, did I?”

“Hurt me? Oh, no, no… In fact, I was… gonna ask you the same thing,” he said finally. SpongeBob took the papers from her and calmly clipped them in a disorganized heap on top of the board before tucking it under his arm. “Silly question though it may be, me being a, well, you know, talking mattress and all. Hehe… AHEM. Uh… What-what are you doing here?”

“I got a few tests runnin’ back at the lab.” Sandy shrugged as she got back up. “Computer’s tied up ‘til it’s done. While I waited, I thought I’d pop in and say, well… Happy Birthday! I wanted to ask, since yer tied up tonight with that big party, if maybe you wanted to get something to eat together tomorrow? Or maybe snag a movie? But it seems plain obvious you haven’t got time for chatter. Maybe I’ll give you a ring later, and we can plan something—”

“No no! It’s okay! I’ve always got a minute for you, Sandy.” His eyes trailed down to the briefcase she’d just set down. “There, uh, wouldn’t happen to be anything for me in there, would it?”

“Huh?” She looked at her own right hand, and slapped the top of her helmet in frustration. “Ah, nuts! The water samples!”

“You… got me water samples? That’s, uh… neat, I guess.”

“No! It’s—ugh. There is something, I promise! Drat. I guess I was in such a rush to get out to the fields to collect more samples, I forgot to grab the present, too! I’ll head home and grab it now.”

“No, Sandy! Don’t go! You’re fine!” He gave a nervous chuckle. 

Don’t go. 

The echo of his own voice in that nightmare made his chest tight. “Really. I wasn’t expecting anything anyway.” An unexpected visit from Sandy in itself was not a gifted seahorse to be looked in the mouth, especially not these days, as said visits were fewer and farther between. “I’m just… happy you came to see me.” Suddenly, eye contact was becoming difficult. He meant that way more than he wanted to. “Feels like we don’t really get to hang out much anym—OOF!”

Sandy had swept the sponge up off his feet in her arms. “You’re the best,” she said. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“Hehehe… that’s okay.” Her hugs were strong enough to cut a cinder block, forget a talking block of cheese. How uncomfortable he’d be if he didn’t like it so much.

He wished he didn’t like it so much. “Really… Ohhh…” Calm down, Sponge. She’s hugged you a billion times. It never meant anything before. It doesn’t mean anything today.

But it feels different! Is this just because of my dream? She’s holding me sooo tight, and—and maybe it isn’t different? Maybe I just want it to be? But she’s letting it linger so long—is this just all in my head? Oh, gosh, my heart, she’s gonna hear it! I can’t take it she’s holdingmeshe’sholdingmeholdingmeeeeeeeeeeee

“Ohhhh—HERE!!” SpongeBob produced a golden envelope from his pocket. His heart was beating like he’d just ran a marathon, and if it wasn’t for her suit, she definitely would’ve felt it. He had to put space between their bodies, now. “Take this!”

This did the trick. “For me?” Sandy set him down on his feet. “What is it?”

“VIP invitation to the party tonight. Mr. Krabs gave me two of them to hand out to whoever I want.” He handed it over, then fiddled with his fingers. “Dinner and entertainment paid.”

Sandy turned over the envelope. The type font was calligraphy style, and the back was held closed with a white Mother of Pearl shell-shaped seal, to contrast the gold. The old miser didn’t skimp on expenses for this event, even if the restaurant’s very own manager was only allowed two paid guests of his own. 

Krusty Franchise 

would be honored by your attendance to benefit 

The United Sailors of the Seven Seas, on their 86th consecutive year.

Held at the newly renamed restaurant, grill and five star sand bar, “The Krusty Klass.”

Date: July the 14th, 2016.

Time: 7:00pm to 11:00pm.

Black tie and dress are highly encouraged, not required. Be sure to wear yer dancing shoes! Take lots of pictures, and be sure to add #KrustyKlassGala to add to our online album!

And most of all…

Get ready to donate LOTS of money!

Yours respectfully,

Eugene H. Krabs, veteran shipboard cook, founder and CEO of Krusty Franch.

“I gave the other one to Pat,” SpongeBob explained, “since he agreed to help set up for the party. Provided he gets first dibs on the appetizers.” He dug his toe into the floor, hands behind his back. “You’re not busy tonight, are you?”

“Well.” Sandy lowered the invitation. “I’m looking into somethin’ kinda important right now.”

She had to get these samples back to the lab and try to get to the bottom of whatever in Sam’s Hill was going on in Jellyfish Fields, before it became a problem. Or stop it if it already was. It was her job. It’s what I’m here for.

But SpongeBob SquarePants was mighty difficult to say ‘no’ to. At least for her. He could already see that she was about to turn him down, and the visible disappointment on his face twisted her heart somethin’ fierce.

She had been working pretty hard lately. They both had. And his carefully tailored square pants were startin’ to look loose on him. If she came to the big shindig tonight, maybe she could convince him to sit down and eat somethin’ other than salad dressing. Talk about somethin’ other than work. Maybe he’d start to look a little more like the SpongeBob that she used to know. The same darlin’ boy she’d nearly laid down her life to protect more times than he realized.

A night off wouldn’t mean the end of the world. “Ah, shucks!” She swung at the air with one mitt, tucking the invitation in the outer hip pocket of her suit with the other. “What kinda jerk would I be if I didn’t spend the night with my best buddy on his birthday?”

“TERRIFIC!” SpongeBob leapt into the air with his fists to the ceiling, his loose pants nearly flying off as he rocketed upwards. Saved by the belt. By the time he came back down on his feet, the sponge was a whole shade brighter. “You won’t regret it, Sandy!”

“HOLD THE SHELL PHONE!”

Scraping scorch marks from his sleeves, a burnt Squidward stormed out from the doorway of the backroom, up to his new square manager. “You mean you can just pass out free VIP invitations to whoever you want? Then I want an invite!”

“Not so fast, Benedict Tentacles!” 

A huge, red claw appeared and grabbed Squidward by pinching his noggin. Mr. Krabs then appealed his arm clear across to the other side of the dining room, until he had Squid within five feet of eye contact. “Those invitations are for loyal Krusty Krew staff and managers to give to their friends and loved ones. NOT for last minute rehires! Now clock back in, get in the kitchen and help me start blending that appetizer!”

Squidward pounded the floor as he followed Krabs. Bits of unintentionally cooked tuna dripped from his uniform as he went.

“Golly. Never thought I’d see the day he stumbled back into this place,” Sandy thought out loud.

“I know! Isn’t it great? With you, me, Patrick, Squidward, and Mr. Krabs, it’s really starting to feel like old times, now!”

And SpongeBob really meant it, to. But there was something special about the addition of Sandy to this unofficial reunion. For as long as he’d known her, Sandy had been his safety net. His bungee cord, keeping him from disaster. Not just in physical danger, but problems he couldn’t overcome with his own limited knowledge and wisdom. Between her, and Patrick, and Squidward, and the serine memories associated with them, he felt something like confidence finally solidifying. Maybe things haven’t changed as much as I thought they have. Maybe I’m not all on my own just yet—

“Mr. SquarePants!”

Four syllables, and SpongeBob was instantaneously reeled back to the present. “Angel?”

His best employee stood before him as the sponge turned around, and he was soaked. Even his spiky black pompadour hair was weighed down with a sticky, off-green colored liquid that smelled distinctly like vinegar.

SpongeBob watched Fergus march his way to the other side of the restaurant, avoiding the trail of liquid dripping from Angel’s clothes. “What happened?”

“A customer complained there were no pickles on his Krabby Gourmet. So I asked Mr. Finnegan where I can find more pickles, and he said to look in the utility closet. And I said I didn’t find any, and he said ‘well, you didn’t look hard enough.’ And I said I’m going to ask Senior Krabs, because at least he has some idea about what’s going on around here! So we got into an… a sort of argument? And one thing lead to another, and he tells me to go ‘¡Meter la cabeza en el refrigerador, ya que de todos modos paso gran parte de mi día libre allí!’”

“Whoa whoa, slow down!” SpongeBob wagged his hands. “I don’t understand!”

“¡Ese idiota no hace nada por aquí!”

“Er. Sandy?” SpongeBob turned to her. “You picked up some Spanish living in Texas, right? Wanna translate for me?”

“Uh…” She hadn’t lived in Texas in a decade, and even back then, she wasn’t fluent. “Somethin’ somethin’ about pickles and a jerkface. That’s all I got.”

“Ah! Now I got it!” SpongeBob snapped his finger. He then laid a consoling hand on the fuming fishe’s shoulder. “Angel, I know our clientele can be kinda snooty and uppity, but that’s no reason to let them get under your scales! You are a proud Krusty Klass soldier!” He reached behind his back and produced a clean, white towel, handing it to him. “Now dry yourself off, march into my office and get that jar of pickles I keep taped under my desk. And when you feel you’re getting frustrated, just imagine you’re stuffing them between two delicious sesame seed buns, and you’ll feel so much better!”

“I’ll pretend I’m stuffing them in someone’s buns for sure,” Angel muttered. He inhaled deeply, funneled all his frustration into it, and in a flurry of fin-steps, went flying back through the double doors. “FOR THE KRUSTY KLASSSSSS!”

“Atta boy!” SpongeBob pumps his fist in the air. seeing the puzzled look on her face, he explained. “I’ve kept a jar of emergency pickles on hand since the Bubble Bass incident.”

Sandy scrutinized the teen as he went. “That boy’s more stressed out than a sunburnt clown locked in a bullpen!” she thought out loud. It reminded her of somebody she knew all too well. Or at least, someone she used to know so well. Someone she used to be closer to n’ bark on a tree. “But he works like he got a twister in his blood.” Her eyes then darted to the chameleon fish, who’d taken not so subtle refuge behind a baluster as he went back to looking at his phone. If there had really been an argument behind the staff doors, Fergus didn’t seem too bothered by it. “And if that fella stands still long enough, he’ll grow algae! I know I shouldn’t be stickin’ my nose where it ain’t wanted, SpongeBob, but why ain’t that angelfish your next in command?”

“Oh, well, Mr. Krabs has this thing about teenagers being in charge. You remember the strike incident I told you about? Plus, I already gave the job to Fergus before Angel applied. I can’t break his heart by giving it to someone else!”

“Yeah… break his heart.” She folded her arms. If there was one thing this Texaner couldn’t stand, it was snakes in fish clothing. She wanted to fix this herself, but she had to let SpongeBob wake up to the problem. “Sounds like a real odds and ends crew you’ve got in yer mitts.”

“Sure, the boys are a little… rough around the edges—not like I don’t know what that’s like…. Bahahah…”

SpongeBob had to look away from her. It’d been so long since they had a one-on-one conversation like this, he was afraid that he’d look at her too long, she’d see something, detect something she was not supposed to. “… But they’re the finest fish in the entire sea!”

Sandy and SpongeBob stepped out of the dining room, out onto the patio. Currently, no one was seated outside, which worked in Sandy’s favor. She wanted to ask this question in private. “So, you’re not nervous that you’ll get everything done by tonight?”

“Nervous? Why would I be nervous? Why should I be? I know what I’m doing! It’s not like I’m in charge of the biggest event of the year!” He began pacing the width of the stone and rock aisle between the tables without even realizing it. “And if tonight’s song of success isn’t pitch perfect, it’ll be all my fault! And it’s not like Mr. K will even consider taking the restaurant away from me or something, right? When I haven’t had a moment to stop or eat or even take a full breath and I still won’t get to for the next I-don’t-know-how-many hours?! And that everything I’ve worked and sweated and dreamed over will come crumbling down right before my eyes?? RIGHT?? Right?? ”

Sandy watched her old friend pant for breath. She thought for a moment, then proceeded cautiously. “Well, if you’re so sure, I—” She looked up and pointed to the open windows. “OH MY GOSH, SpongeBob, look over there!”

“WHERE?”

“HEEEEEYYYYYYYYAAAAAA!”

With his head pointed away, Sandy brandished a swift chop to the back of his head.

SpongeBob went flying across his own restaurant like a homerun baseball. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHH!”

“Never,” she called after him, “Let yer guard down, SquarePants!”

The Sponge went soaring through the air, tumbling head over shoes by the length of his square body. Landing on an empty patio table with such force, it brought the whole set folding inward, umbrella down to feet.

CRASH! 

Despite the catastrophic noise made by the table coming down. SpongeBob crawled out of the cloud of dust and debris without a mark to be seen. Much to Sandy’s relief, he took the surprise attack about as well as he could have. “No fair!” he said, brushing off his pants. “I’m still on duty!”

“Sorry, but all’s fair in love and war, mister Nacho-Head-Honcho. That is,” she narrowed her eyes with a playful smile, “assumin’ there ain’t a rule against karate outside the restaurant during business hours. Is there?”

“Oh, I don’t know. But the manager may look the other way, just this once, as long as Mr. Krabs is still preoccupied.” SpongeBob got to his feet. “How’d you do that?”

“Years of practice. Though it helps that I’ve had to practice with a dummy, ever since yer promotion. An empty cereal box with four shoe laces taped to the sides doesn’t stand much in the way of defense.”

“Ah, shucks. I’m sorry. To be honest, I’m feeling pretty beat up after work lately. I don’t know when I’ll find time to practice again.”

“Ain’t nothin’ to be sorry for! But I’d be lyin’ if I said I was hoping you’d at least practiced Harai Goshi.”

“Is that the one I call ‘the Flipper’?”

“The one that overpowers stronger opponents.” Sandy spread her arms and feet apart. “Let’s try again.”

Standing five feet away, SpongeBob pressed his hands together and bowed before her. He then limbered up his fingers. “Okay… here I go!”

And then he went for it. He rushed towards her, panting as he went. And just before he collided, he spun around, so that his back faced her. And then he reached behind himself, grabbing her arms.

“I’m doing it?” SpongeBob staggered with the suited squirrel raised in his arms. “I’m doing it! I’m lifting San—UMPH!”

He’d kept her up in the air for two seconds before collapsing with her on top of him.

Sandy lay on the back of her yellow mattress, feet kicking the air. “Nice try. But yer tryin’ to lift a squirrel, not a sack a’ potatoes.”

“Aww.” His voice was muffled with the ground. Sandy got off of him and SpongeBob got up, dusting off his pants. “What’d I do wrong that time?”

“You forgot a step again.” She turned around and showed SpongeBob with the toe of her own boot. “See how my right foot is on the outside of yours? This means I can lift up my leg, lock your elbow down, put you on my back—”

“Uh-oh…”

“HEEEE-YAAAAAAAAAA!”

Sandy had scooped him up like he weighed nothing at all. The sound when he hit the ground was like glass. The next thing he knew, he was flat on his side, facing the restaurant. When his mouth opened, his tongue rolled out of his mouth like contents from an overturned cardboard box.

When she came around his legs to stand before him, the sun was high in the west, casting the tips of the fur on her tail, and the edges of her helmet in a triumphant glow. “Maybe next time you’ll listen when I give the full instruction.”

“Your mistake, sensei!” cried SpongeBob, still laying on his side. “If there’s one thing a fry cook knows, it’s how to flip! Once I master this move, you’ll never beat me in a match again!”

“Yeah.” Sandy looked away and frowned. “Hey, uh, I’d better let you get back to work.”

“Oh!” He got back to his feet.  “Uh… yeah. Work.”

“But I’ll see you tonight! I promise! Save a dance for me!”

“A dance? Yeah…” He looked down at his watch again. “YEEEAAAAGHGHGHAH! Five o’clock The decorations!” He began sprinting back for the doors, unaware that sometime during the practice, the back half of his pants ripped away to expose his underwear. “Bye, Sandy! I-I’ll be waiting for you!”

I sure hope you learn to defend yourself someday, partner, she thought as she marched away, collecting her briefcase before heading home. She was determined to not let her troubles be apparent. If we only had more time for me to teach you.

“I can’t thank you enough for all the help, Pat.”

“Sure thing, buddy.”

Seated on the floor in the Krusty Klass utility closet, Patrick brought an uninflated balloon to his lips, just to lower it back down again. “So, how much am I getting paid, anyway?”

“Well, I’ve already hired Squidward for the night.” SpongeBob was squeezed in the six foot closet between Pat, the mop and bucket, and all the balloons already blown. He tied a ribbon to the end of his newest balloon, and carefully let it float to the ceiling, next to the old, lone little lightbulb. “Not sure if I can afford to add another name to the payroll. Worst comes for worst, I’ll just give you my paycheck for the day.”

“The restaurant manager’s pay? For this precious artisan work? Pfft .” Patrick scoffed, letting another half-spit, half-air filled balloon rise to the ceiling. “You drive a hard bargain Mr. SquarePants. It’s a good thing you’re my best friend.”

“Thanks. Hey Patrick… do you think I’m doing good? Y’know, as a boss?” This was the first time he’d gotten to talk to Pat alone in weeks, and in that time, he’d become more insecure about it than ever before.

“Well, sure, SpongeBob! What? You think any loser they could grab from off the street could do this job? Put together the biggest bash in Bikini Bottom with just six people, and keep from going crazy?”

“Never thought of it like that.” The sponge needed this compliment. He’d acquired a throbbing headache, and every part of him was sore. And the rest of the normal crew weren’t much better off, from what he could see. Despite the odds, they’d cleaned up the restaurant, with decorations being the last thing on the checklist. “Maybe I’m not doing that bad after all.”

“Uh, hey SpongeBob? You’d… you’d let me know if Mr. K opens up another restaurant, wouldn’t ya? Being a manager would look really nice on my resume for the royal guard!”

“Oh! Sure thing, Pat—Wait a minute—the royal guard?”

“Sponge BOB!”

The closet door swung open, and Squidward stood in the doorway, face as red as his long gone shirt, and looking ready for a fight with the first yellow box he could get his hands on. “Mr. SquarePants, I need to lodge a complaint, and I need to do it—OW!”

“Sorry, Squidward.” Patrick had let his balloon go, and it flew around the room in imperfect figure 8s until it hit Squid in the eye. “They call that lucky in some parts of the world.”

Squidward peeked the searing plastic from his eyeball, then threw it on the ground. “Listen, SquarePants!” He jabbed a tentacle in the sponge’s direction. “I agreed to bail you out in your hour if needed, not be up to my shoulders in putrid, cretaceous slop!”

“Mr. Krabs having stomach problems again?” asked Patrick.

“Furthermore, as a curator of all things fancy, I must critique your managing style for this party! I mean, really!” Squidward gestured to the plastic orbs populating the ceiling. “A black tie event, and we’re blowing up BALLOONS?”

“Black and white balloons, Squidward!” Patrick’s baby tooth sparked as he spoke.

“With glitter writing!” SpongeBob held up a newly finished one in front of his face as an example. “See? ‘Krusty Gala!’ Free to take home!”

“Oh! My bad!!” Squidward clutched a tentacle to his chest. “That makes ALL the difference!”

“C’mon, Squiddy!” Even SpongeBob could tell he was being sarcastic, now. “Besides, really, what's a party without balloons?!”

“The kind of party thrown by adults without an intellectual handicap?”

“Well, who’s throwing that party?” asked a puzzled Patrick.

A ‘whoosh’ of air from his ears preceded Squidward’s head deflating, like a pierced basketball.

“Don’t be salty, Squid! You can join us!” SpongeBob blew up another white balloon, just like the last only this time it grew into a long, narrow, hotdog shape. He then reached behind his back for a long, black balloon, and in a flurry of fingerwork, he tied them together, and then presented Squidward with his creation: Balloon art of Squidward Tentacles, in his black and white Krusty Klass uniform, holding his own tiny balloon of SpongeBob in the ends of his tentacles. Both grinning happily.

“We’ve still got a couple hundred to go,” said Patrick.

“But with your help, we’ll get done in a third of the time!”

“No, and thank you, Bozo and Rusty!”

“Well, okay!” SpongeBob rubbed his sleeve and stuck the balloon to Squidward’s nose. The static held it in place. “I’ve got another job you can do! Go push table 7 and 8 over there together for me! I’ve got a big party coming at 7!”

“So now I’m doing manual labor? YEEEOOOWWW!” Squidward plucked the balloon from his nose, zapping himself with the disconnected static in the process. “Why don’t you ask the Incredible Bulk here to do it? He’s stronger than I am!”

“Under the table,” the starfish reminded him.

“And we can’t really afford a lawsuit if Patrick throws out his back,” explained SpongeBob. “But if you do, we’re insured for that!”

Squidward growled under his breath, turned and stormed for the door, slamming it behind him.

***

“I can’t believe I’m dressed to the nines, just to give my chiropractor a pay day!” Squidward folded his arms across his chest. “Meanwhile, the airhead manager and his bubble brained best friend can hide out in the closet and blow up balloons ?”

“I heard that!” shouted Patrick from inside the closed closet. 

***

“And that is MR. AIRHEAD MANAGER SQUAREPANTS SIR to you, Tentacles!” Patrick pointed to the closed door. “And you will address him as nothing less!”

“Er… thanks,” said SpongeBob.

“Don’t mention it.” Patrick plopped back onto the floor. “What’s the matter?”

“I’ve just had a lot on my mind. Pat, you remember when we met Sandy? The first day at the treedome, I mean?"

“Of course! Hehe, you sounded funny and all dried up like that.”

“Patrick, you got dried up in the treedome, too!”

“Oh, yeah. Good times, good times.”

“Yeah, yeah they were. Um, do you… remember what I said about her that day, all those years ago?”

“Something about her being a girl, and putting on airs.”

“You said that. Do you remember what you thought I wanted from her?”

“Bull riding lessons?”

“No.”

“An atomic wedgie?”

“No!”

“You wanted her to be your girlfriend—nah, that’s not it.”

“NO! I MEAN YES, I mean!— GAH!” SpongeBob ripped the napkin he’d been twisting in his hands in half. How could Patrick could just come out and say the words that had been forbidden from passing his lips for so many years? “Ah, barnacles! That’s coming out of my salary!”

“Our salary,” Patrick corrected.

“Ooh...”

“Relax! Everything happens for a reason!” To demonstrate, he took a napkin piece and blew his nose into it, then handed the snot filled rag back to his stunned best friend. “See? Perfect size hanky. I’ll shove the other in my pocket for later.”

“Eeugh.” SpongeBob tossed the used hanky over his shoulder. “Do you remember why I decided against dating her, anyway?”

“Something to do with the helmet, and how you can’t do the big Hollywood Motion-Picture kissy face with one of you guys wearing that?”

“That’s… part of it, I suppose.”

“I’m glad you were never really that into her to begin with. I mean, I can’t imagine how weird it would be to stay so close with someone and pretend like you don’t think she’s hot. Like, really hot.”

“Well… ”

“How could you stand rolling around on the ground, pinning down, touching, feeling, smelling, looking at someone who lights your skin on fire?”

“I don’t know…” SpongeBob murmured, an ache in his voice.

“How could you look into their eyes, watch their lips when they’re talking when you’re all alone, when your brain is screaming for you to figure a way for you two to kiss—?”

“Dear Neptune.” SpongeBob’s pupils had shrunk to the size of pinheads, the half-inflated balloon between his fingers letting out air with a whimper. “How have I been doing this?”

“—I’m just glad my girlfriend and I were clear with our feelings from the start,” Patrick went on obliviously. “It’d be way too hard to play it off when you’ve got it that bad for someone.”

This news totally sidelined SpongeBob’s revelation. “You have a girlfriend?!”

“I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND ?? Where-where is she?”

“Patrick.”

“Oh. Wait. Nevermind. That was a puppet. But, I am undaunted! This single man has had his good-eye on one pretty lady in particular for a long time now, and this one’s flesh and blood. SquarePants, let me tell you, the next time I see her, I’m going to woo the heck out of her, whether she laughs at me or not!”

“Wow. That’s actually pretty brave, Pat. Who is she?”

“That’s for me to know, and you to see draped over my arm someday. Just you wait! Yes, buddy, as I see it, it’s better to lay your heart out now. Who knows what’ll happen tomorrow?” 

“Huh. That kinda sounds a lot like something Grandpa SquarePants would’ve said.” SpongeBob reached behind his back and produced his Jellyfishing glasses, slapping them over his nose before speaking in a raspy voice: “Sometimes you gotta lay out your high card in the first round if you really want to win the jackpot. After all, you’ll never know if you’ll live long enough to see the next round! Bawhahahaw! ”

“That was a terrible impression,” said Patrick.

“I suppose. I never did meet the guy, but I—Hey, wait, how would you know? You’ve never met him, either!”

“I rest my case.” Patrick folded his arms across his chest and looked away.

“Hard to take advice from a dead guy, anyway,” thought the sponge out loud. Grandpas were supposed to be wise, but based on everything he’d been told about his paternal grandfather, SpongeBob didn’t quite think the man was any more a fountain of wisdom than the other patriarchal figures in his life, like Mr. Krabs, or Mermaid Man. As such, SpongeBob suspected that particular nugget wasn’t meant to be taken for anything riskier than a box of Bran Flakes, and getting more raisins. “Especially about poker. I’m more of a Crazy 8s kinda—WAIT A MINUTE. You—” He stood up. “You think I should just go ahead and tell her? Let her know how I feel?”

“Only if you think there’s the slightest chance she likes you back.”

“Hm.” SpongeBob remembered that hug in the dining room earlier. It was so intense, and it lingered. Almost as if she was trying to tell him something without telling him…

What if it was…?

“Oh, Patrick!” He leaped into the air and gave his buddy the tightest hug he could manage. “Thank you! Sometimes your wisdom is just what I need! Hey, uh, cover me while I go pick up my party suit from the dry cleaner, would ya? This is gonna be the biggest moment of my life, and I can’t afford to look anything less than my best!”

“Sure thing, buddy.” As the door to the closet closed, Patrick raised another uninflated balloon to his lips and blew. “Now, how am I supposed to do this again?” 

But as soon as he let go, the air shot right back into his mouth and up into the tip of his head, making his eyes POP! out like airbags. Fully expanded, they were half the size of his body. 

“Ah, man! And I just had those replaced, too!” 

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: The Krusty Gala

... Tick...

... Tick...

“Four… three…”

A pair of red-lidded eyestalks watched the overhead clock. The owner stood center of his dining room, his claw clutched tightly around the handle of the device hidden behind his back.

Tick. The crustacean slowly raised his arm, bringing it around front until his lips were inches from the megaphone’s speaker. “… one…”

...

... Tick. 

“ATTENTION ALL KRUSTY KLASS PATRONS!” 

Magnified, Mr. Krabs’ voice shook the entire foundation of the restaurant. Shrieks and cries rang out all over as their tables and chairs rattled, wine glasses tipping over. A customer near Eugene began choking as a whole piece of kelp ravioli slid down his throat. His frantic wife had enough sense to give him one good WHACK on the back, and the pasta came flying out like a bullet. 

SMASH! It went straight through another patron’s wine glass mid-anniversary toast, giving them both a hundred dollar champagne shower, and kept going.

“Here’s your bill. Thank you for dining with— Gyrahh!” Squidward hastily dropped the paper slip and billfold when the rolfed ravioli hit him straight between the eyes. 

The fish couple he’d been waiting on somewhat professionally up until this point dropped three twenties for the bill, and quickly hurried out of the door. No thought for a tip anymore. 

By the time the unwilling waiter had scraped the puked projectile from his eyes, they were gone. He could only ball up his tentacles and seethe at the crab, still barking into the megaphone. 

“The dining room is now closed ! As we’ve announced several times in the last hour, we will be shutting down at seven PM sharp! Everybody who’s been paying attention has already vacated the premises! Everyone who hasn’t…” Krabs lowered his tone to a rumble. “... I hope you’ve got good health insurance.”

***

“MY ROTATOR CUP!!”

Bodies, finely dressed aquatic folk in pearl necklaces and shiny shoes, began flying through the front doors. Stacking up sideways out on the walkway of the patio, like fresh catches from the net of a steel vessel. It might’ve been decades since Krabs had kept fit for service, but this old sailor had more than enough muscle left to hoist his own precious customers like overfilled trash bags, and dispose of them as such. 

“But I paid fifty dollars for this steak!” the last man on the pile protested. “Can’t I at least get a doggy bag?”

“Too late! Just take the plate!” Krabs tossed the steak, plate and all, out the double doors like a frisbee, before pushing them shut. “Slower than granny snails.”

He then pinched his long dress shirt and pants, and ripped them off in one clean motion, revealing a black tie and ivory tuxedo underneath. “WHOOPEE! Let the money makin’ party begin!”

“Tonight, on The Bikini Top! Bottom’s Hottest celebrity news segment!…”

 “... I am a realistic fish head wearing a tuxedo! And tonight, we’re covering first access to the most hyped party of the year!”

The photo-real salmon ducked out of the way of live footage of the Krusty Klass: Flashing cameras dotted an aerial shot of the crowds trickling into the restaurant.

“All across the ocean, famous chefs of household fame have flocked to the Krusty Klass to honor navy veterans… and fru-fru foods! Hosted by Krusty Franchise owner Eugene H. Krabs, under the management of what appears to be a phone book with eyes—hey, remember those? Let’s go down live to the restaurant, where our very own Perch Perkins is conducting interviews at the door! ”

***

“Thank you, Johnny!” said Bikini Bottom’s most beloved reporter. He, too, was decked out in a silver suit and black bow tie, along with his headphones. “As you can see, between the star studded crowds and the flashing cameras, this place is absolutely sparkling! Limousines bumper to bumper to bumper in the street, with more on the way. So many beloved television personalities have churned out at the gracious invitation to give back to our veterans! But it’s not just celebrities, of course! What would a Navy party be without the Navy itself? Every fish currently enlisted in the regional naval academy, to our fathers and grandfathers who courageously fought and served for our freedom has received an invitation! With celebrities shaking hands with the local brave and bold, it’s sure to be a night for the ages! And the donation pool is rocketing towards its goal—five million dollars! Here’s one now!” 

Perch turned his microphone to a fragile looking old couple in blue and white uniforms, approaching the door. “Sir, please tell the folks back home what it’s like to see your men finally recognized for their service, and to such a degree of glamor?”

The tall male fish on the right chuckled awkwardly. “Well, it’s a pretty nice thing, but I can’t say I’m the one who should do the judging!”

“Oh?” Perch frowned. “What’s that mean?”

“It means—” The fragile looking old woman narrowed her eyes, raised her cane, and gave the reporter’s head a wallop of a CONK! “—they’re my men, nitwit! Captain Marie Guaro, Second ship of the Shark-Nose Fleet, 1966!”

“Ow! Oh… sorry…”

“Punk Perkins, more like,” she muttered before she and her husband shuffled her way inside.

***

Beyond the doors, there was hardly room to sit, let alone move. The dining room had all unreserved tables set in the back to make for larger passing space, and a tiny square of a dance floor later on. Half of the dining room was set aside for the current and retired navy, the other half for the biggest stars under the sea.

“Officer and Mister Guaro, pleasure to finally meet you.” Eugene kissed the woman’s fin and gestured to the left side of the restaurant. “Allow me to lead you to the Captain’s table.”

Krabs and the couple carefully moved through the central walkway. Just off to the left, returned with his bright white management tuxedo and tie, SpongeBob had his face stuck to the window, utterly starstruck. “It’s more than I ever dreamed of! Strong, proud sailors and household celebrities a mile back, and they just keep coming! Look! There’s 30 Minute FishMeal star Rachel ManRay—no relation to the supervillain. And over there! It’s BAM! Emeril Lagooney! I feel like I’m in a dream, don’t you, Squid?”

“Please.” Squidward scoffed as he dropped a bucket of ice at an empty table. “These has-beens haven’t seen the limelight since I still had hair! Why am I surprised to find out this town couldn’t pull an A-List celebrity any easier than pulling my own wisdom teeth? Now, if the easily dazzled ManagerBox desires nothing else of me, then I. Am. Leaving. And I expect to be compensated for my three hours of back-breaking labor! My routing number should still be in Krabs’ books—”

“SQUIDWARD!” Spongebob expanded, eyes and entire body, flattening himself against the glass until he looked like a poster. “Look!”

Squidward wasn’t sure why he bothered to stop and turn around, but when he did, he did not regret it. The empty bucket he’d just replaced fell out of his tentacles, and he, too, flew to the window and flattened his body against the tinted glass. “Is that…?”

They let out a gasp at the same time. 

Outside, a limousine door opened, and a tall shark wrapped in a form-fitting, short sleeved, white chef’s coat climbed out of the back seat. 

Sponge and Squidward uttered the name together: “Gordon RamShark!”

“ The most incredible and subtly terrifying Michelin star chef in the world!” The pupils of SpongeBob’s eyes filled with dancing stars. “A mere fry cook could only dream of being in his presence!”

“His prestige is untouchable!” Squidward pulled away from the window. His eyes sparkling, too. “He’s posh! He’s hip! He's stylish! He's British ! And he‘s a marathon biker!”

Outside, Ramshark smiled a pleasant smile to the cameras, now flashing uncontrollably. Like the rest of him overall, it was a handsome, photogenic smile, but lined with hundreds of tiny, sharp, menacing teeth.

“I’m asking for seventeen autographs!—NO!” Squidward backed away from the window, pointing a tentacle in the air. “Eighteen!”

“I'm asking for a hundred!” SpongeBob tilted his head away from the glass, unstuck himself and, as if to show off, did an effortless backflip to stand before Squidward. “ And a fin-shake!”

 “Oh yeah, well I’m asking him to be my godfather!”

“I’m gonna ask him to be at my wedding and be the guest of honor!”

“I'M GONNA ASK HIM TO LEAVE HIS WIFE AND MARRY ME!”

“Hold yer seahorses!” 

Mr. Krabs ran up to the window, putting himself between the boys. “No proposals! Not on my dime! Don't forget, yer sweat is far from over! We still haven’t reached our donation goal!”

He pointed his claw to the gold ship-shaped meter on the wall. Next to the figure was a line which ended at the top of the crow’s nest, the ship’s highest point. “Five million clams! That’s chump change for these big wigs we got dressin’ up the place! But if we reach the goal, not only does Krusty Franchise get to keep ten percent for growth, but there will be extensive bonuses for Krusty Franchise managers—“ his eyestalks pointed at Squidward. “—and maybe even a one time bonus for a certain one night only Squid.”

Sponge and Squid looked at each other like Mr. Krabs had started speaking another language. “Are… you feeling alright Mr. Krabs?” asked the latter. “You did take your meds this morning, didn’t you?” 

“Whoo! A bonus!” SpongeBob pumped the air. “I’ve heard of those! What is it, a rubber chicken?”

“He means cash, moron! At least… I think he does.” Squidward put his tentacles together in prayer. “Mr. Krabs?”

 “It’s even better than that! This is all on the down low… ” Krabs whispered. “... but I do believe this party has the potential to thrust the three of us into stardom, and all the riches that come with it!”

“A star…” SpongeBob sighed dreamily. “Just like Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy! Wait a second.” He looked left and right across the crowded restaurant. “Shouldn’t they be here, too?”

“I sent the old boys a pair of invites, just like you begged me to. Figured they’d draw in even more publicity after the fact, but I never got the RSVP back. Maybe they’re tied up elsewhere. Oh well.” Krabs picked up a ready tray of sea-butter champagne before scurrying off to tables of waiting diners. “Can’t have everything. Well, don’t just stand there! Get the liquor flowin’, lads! Our guests will be much more eager to donate with a little bubbly under their belts!”

SpongeBob went to pick up a second tray of champagne with a frown. “Gee, I hope they’re alright. It’s not like Bikini Bottom’s greatest superheroes to miss a social call! They’ve shown up to every comic book convention from 1977 to 1995, even in The Kraken Attack of ‘87!”

Keeping one admiring eye on RamShark, Squidward went back to work, uncorking a champagne bottle, and filling a waiting platter of empty glasses from the same table. “Knowing those geezers, they probably tossed the invitation in the trash with their prescription bag.”

“Squidward! Those pill-popping wizards were once our saviors! You wouldn’t want somebody talking about you like that when you’re they’re age, would ya?”

“At that age,” The octopus picked up the platter, and turned in the direction opposite the comic fanboy. “I hope I give nothing for people to comment on other than the rocketing value of my art, posthumously.”

“Barnacle Boy, have you seen my debit card?”

The once young ward left the kitchen and stomped into their condo’s living room, carrying a white bag. “I’ve told you once if I haven’t told you a thousand times to stop throwing the card in with the bag when you leave the pharmacy! It winds up in the trash!” 

He handed Mermaid Man the card, then gestured to what the old man was wearing. “Now, why aren’t you dressed?”

“It can wait a minute! I’m watching the comedian who screams a lot!” Sitting in a bath towel, Mermaid Man put the card back in his wallet and pointed to the TV screen. “I don’t understand a lot of what he’s going on about, but he’s a hoot!”

“Get this,” said the hefty fish on TV. “You’re sitting there in your home, you’re watching the news, all nice and cozy, and then you turn to your wife. Only it’s NOT your wife!” The hefty fish banged his fins on his cable news desk. “It’s called an Alternate, and she’s about to suck the life out of you! Leave you looking like an un-inflated aluminum balloon at the dollar store! Think of a succubus? Well, get that thought out of your head, cuz it’s so much worse! They’re these mysterious beings that come floating out of VHS tapes, living on the film! They can take the form of your spouse, your neighbor, your kids, your pet worm! And these old cassette tapes are how they recruit you! If you get one in the mail, save yourself the trouble, don’t ask questions, just get a hammer and smash it! Matter of fact, do this for every VHS tape in your house, right now!” From behind the desk, he raised an example video cassette. “They feed on film, and they feed on your personal memories! None of it can be trusted! My wedding tape?” he showed the handwritten title of the tape, then laid it on top of the desk and raised a hammer—“SMASH it!” He raised another tape—“My kids first birthday? SMASH it!” Down came the hammer again. “That recording of Elvis’ last concert?” He put this cassette off to the side. “Well, we set this one aside to transfer safely to a computer, and then we SMASH SMASH SMASH!”

CRACK! The desk splintered down the middle, thanks to the blows from the hammer, and fell apart, leaving a stunned reporter sitting there in his underwear without the cover of a desk. 

Barnacle Boy turned away from the screen, brows knitted with concern. “ Mermaid Man, I don’t think that guy’s meant to be a comedian.”

“Nonsense, Barnacle Boy! Nobody in their right mind genuinely believes a certain strain of water turning the amphibians homosexual!”

“I knew I shouldn’t have introduced you to the internet. Just-just get up and snap a bra on!” Barnacle Boy paused the video, turned off their flatscreen smart TV and slapped the remote back onto the coffee table. “My daughter will be here any second!”

Mermaid Man’s eyes grew one half times their size, and he turned to look at him for the first time since the conversation started. “You have a daughter?” 

Barnacle Boy spluttered. “Yes!-we-We’ve been over this a thousand times ! Remember the late seventies? Your edgy loner era? Where do you think I was?”

“Oh yeah, the Watch Fellas era… Well, congratulations, boy! I’m so proud of you!” His eyes glistened with tears. “My adoptive son has become a father!”

“She’s thirty seven!” 

“Ah, they sure do grow up fast, don’t they? One minute you’re barely potty trained, the next, you’re helping your adoptive father foil baddies with complex backstories.” He turned back to the TV, surprised to find the screen dark. “Say, where’d the funny lad go?”

Knock. Knock. 

“Just don’t embarrass me,” Barnacle Boy said as he slumped back towards the kitchen. “If you can help it.”

“Since when have I ever done that?”

Barnacle Boy opened their apartment’s front door to a thin, pretty Merwoman in a green jacket and purple dress. She took mostly after her mother now, but in his youth, he had her unblemished olive skin, shiny black hair, and most importantly, an unforced smile. “‘Sup, Dad.”

“Oh, Wendy! It’s always good to see the twinkle of my eye, all grown up.” He gave her a hug, and ushered her inside. “I’ve got orange chicken in the wok, and rice is keeping warm.”

“I would’ve been fine going out so you wouldn’t have to cook, but I’m glad you guys have the option.” She hung her jacket on one of three empty hooks near the door, and took in the layout of her father’s new home. “Was that the reason for the move?”

“Well, it was more about the fact that annoying kids kept coming around Shady Shoals and screaming a certain word that would set the old man off.” Barnacle Boy finished stirring the wok and set the spoon down on the stove rest. “But having our own kitchen sweetened the deal.”

“Barnacle Boy, is dinner ready yet? Oh !” 

Behind his mortified ‘young’ ward appeared Mermaid Man. Still in his bath towel, starfish mask and gloves. He reached behind his back and scratched his backside.

Wendy found another smile, albeit this one came with a stifled giggle. “Hay-ho! Uh… Grandpa Mermaid Man!”

Barnacle Boy folded his arms across his chest. “Please, don’t call him ‘Grandpa.’”

“Is this one of those door to door moisturizer sales gals?” asked Mermaid Man, reaching for the towel’s fold on his hip. “See, I’ve got this rash—”

“NOPE!” He rushed over and quickly tied Mermaid Man’s towel back on. “Ugh. Forgive him, honey. He hasn’t been in the right state of mind since we lost the Mermalair and all the secret gadgetry to that fire.”

“Still kept the boatmobile!” chirped Mermaid Man. “Although I never did figure out how there could be a fire underwater… Bah! I’m only playing around! How could I forget about my little Trendy-Wendy!” He spread his arms with their trademark green gloves, despite the rest of the ensemble being missing, out wide. “Come here and give your grandpappy a big-ol hug!” 

Barnacle boy’s daughter rushed in for an unabashed sea-bear embrace, exactly as she would have if she were still five years old. “So glad you guys came out of that mess safe and happy.”

“Well, safe, at least,” Barnacle Boy muttered, laying out three bowls on the counter, left of the stove. “Make yourself at home. Water’s out while they do maintenance downstairs, but that’s no problem. You still drink the diet, right?”

“For whatever good it’s worth,” Wendy confirmed, turning with aversion at the sight of her own face in the framed brass looking glass across the room, to the table next to the door. “Hey, what’s this?”

Her eye was caught by a stack of mail on the narrow table to her left, next to a candy dish, occupied by scratch off tickets and walnut shells. 

She picked up the gold-colored envelope on the very top of the pile. “The Krusty Gala?”

“Junk mail I haven’t gotten around to throwing away,” her father explained. “Probably some trap to get us to buy a timeshare plan.”

“I’m up to four!” said Mermaid Man, plopped down in the kitchen nook. “One more, and I think I get a free pizza! Barnacle Boy, tell me you put extra green peppers in that stir-fry!”

“Wait a minute. This is that charity thing going on in Bikini Bottom, isn’t it?” Wendy hesitated by the wall-seat of the dining nook, setting the unopened envelope down only after giving in a long, thoughtful look, front and back. “I’m surprised you aren’t there right now. People love getting to meet you too!”

“Ah, we’re done with those appearances, and all that nonsense,” said Barnacle Boy, setting a steaming bowl down in front of his old mentor. “We’ve been retired for over ten years now. We shouldn’t even be expected to make guest appearances at this age! Besides, it’s no good for Mermaid Man’s heart when some idiot decides to go and shout the ‘E’ word, just to see what’ll happen.”

Mermaid Man raised a knife, studying it like he’d never seen one before. “Eggnog?”

Barnacle Boy plucked it from his grasp, and thrust a spoon into his hand instead. “Exactly.”

“No, I mean, do we got any eggnog? I’ve got this craving—”

“It’s… July.”

“Aww.”

Mermaid Man became quiet as he tucked into his dinner. Barnacle Boy gave Wendy her bowl, then slid into the booth across from her, with his own. “So, how’s the teller's life?”

“It’s… fine .” Wendy put the envelope aside and slid into her seat, propping her chin up in her hand as the steam rose before her face. “You never really appreciate how lucky you are until you meet at least ten people a day with less than a hundred dollars in their checking accounts.”

“Why do you sound so down?” asked Mermaid Man. If he was aware enough in the moment to notice anything, it was a frown on the face of Barnacle Boy’s child. “What’s the matter, child?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She folded her arms on the table. The smile she’d come in with was long gone. “Have you ever had the feeling like you’re missing your calling in life?” She looked at her own hands. “When there’s so many problems with the world, and all you can do is give people their own money, and tell them the bad news when it runs out?”

“Honey, we’ve been over this,” said Barnacle Boy. “Many super powered kids had the same struggle, getting a hold of your powers, honing their skills. You just… well… never got over the hump!”

“Yeah,” sighed Wendy. She spun her finger around the rim of her ice-filled drink glass, the can of diet Dr. Kelp sitting next to it. She removed her black driving glove, and began to wiggle her fingers over the glass, feeling a warmth like blood rush to the tips. With a crease in her brow, water droplets began forming from the tip of her fingers, dripping onto the ice. She imagined there’d be enough to make a full glass of drinkable water, but the more she concentrated, the more the tips of her fingers seemed to grow hotter, until there was a familiar, fiery pain, radiating up her hand. And like always, her hand dried up there and then.

The woman dropped her arm, and with the other hand, picked up her fork. “If I haven’t got the hang of my powers by now, I guess I never will. Still, I just can’t help but feel like I could’ve tried harder, done something differently… Ugh.” 

Wendy was playing with her food rather than eating it. She dropped the fork, picked up her can of soda, slid out of the booth from the left side, and wandered across the apartment to the living room.

Curiously, she picked up the remote and flipped the channel to local news, showcasing the Gala. “At least the real heroes of the sea are being recognized.”

“Pha!” replied Barnacle Boy from the booth. “Recognized, maybe. Appreciated? I doubt it. Some corporate big wigs thinking they could piggy back off the blood and sweat of our mortal counterparts in the navy. Just a bunch of seahorse feathers, if you ask me.”

“Smoke in the mirror… ?” asked Mermaid Man.

“Huh?” Wendy looked back over her shoulder.

“Not exactly the phrasing I’d use, but yes. Smoke and mirrors! Finally, you contribute something meaningful to the conversation—”

“No, I mean, smoke! IN the mirror !” Mermaid Man shot up out of his seat and pointed at the stove. “Look!”

Barnacle Boy’s gaze jerked from the bronze-lined mirror above the TV in the living room, to the smoke reflected across the room in the kitchen to his left. just as a giant flame erupted from the burner. “Screa-ming sea turtles!” He leaped from the nook. “I forgot to turn the stove off!”

“EVE-ALLL!” Mermaid Man leapt up from the table, grabbing his fork and wielding it out in front of him. “The comedian was right! You won’t threaten my family, you despicable duplicates!” 

At the first sign of danger, the retired crusader leapt into action. But instead of going for the stove, he went for the mirror. His slippers skidded to a stop just before he hit the walk. “Blasted villains!” He shouted at his reflection. “Barnacle Boy, the alternates are using force field technology!” 

Eeeeeeeeee ! He scraped at his face in the mirror with the prongs of his fork. “I can’t reach them, but they’re here!” He jabbed a finger at his own reflection. “Come out from behind your transparent wall, you wrinkly counterfeit!”

“Forget the mirror, you ol’ coot!” Barnacle Boy shouted, plodding for the pantry as fast as his aching, atrophied legs would go. “We’re about to have another Merma-Fire!”

Remote in hand, Wendy sprinted back over, skidding as she reached the divider between the kitchen area and the living room. 

The remote tumbled from her hand, to the floor. While her father started digging in the pantry she sprinted for the sink and threw the tap on. Only to be horrified when nothing but a drop came out. “Ugh! That’s right! No water….”

As the flames spread across the stove, licking flames caught the nearby curtains hanging before the window, above the sink. Wendy began tossing open a drawer, then another. “Lid, lid… come on… !” Pots galore, but nothing to cover them. “Where are all the lids?” 

“I lost them in the last fire!” Her father had given up stacking cans on the floor. Now he was just tossing them over his shoulder to get to whatever he was looking for. “All I have are the pots!”

Adrenaline buzzed the tips of her fingers. Watching the two most dear men in her life flounder in danger in  their own home, Wendy ripped off her gloves, pushing back her sleeves.

It’s so simple. Waterball.

Waterball. 

Waterball. 

She wound back her arm. No reason to believe anything would be different. That after thirty some-odd years, that today would mark a new beginning. Yet, Something was happening. Something that lay dormant in her blood had just awoken. 

Barnacle boy spun from the cabinet, a heavy unmarked bag weighing down his arms. He knew what she was going to do, and dropped the bag on his toes in horror. “No—YEOW! Wait, Wendy! STOP!”

But it was too late to stop it, even if she wanted to. Whatever was buzzing in her blood came launching out of its own volition. It started like the drips of water from her fingertips, but then came the bright, scalding sensation. It did not hurt at all. 

Whatever it was shot towards the fire like a bullet, in a green iridescent glow. Or at least it looked like it. It was suddenly very hard to see—

Bam!  

Instantly, she could see in perfect 20/20 vision again. And the woman was stunned to discover that whatever she’d done, whatever had come shooting out of her, was not a fireball. It had, quite literally, caused the fire to double in size.

“Heee-YAAAAAAAAA!”

With her eyes still entranced by the flames she’d helped make worse, a wave of white granules like sand came flying by her left arm. While her back was turned, Barnacle boy had ripped off the seal on a new ten pound bag of salt, and with a grunt, tossed the whole thing at the stove. The bag broke open, spilling out over the wok and the grease, and cutting the fire in half. In seconds, the flames that licked the curtains were cut from their energy supply, and began to fizzle out.

Danger eliminated, the room became very still. But for Barnacle Boy’s labored breathing.

Wendy couldn’t even look at him. Could look at nothing but the scorch marks bordering the mounds of salt that now covered the stove, counter, and floor. She was used to her father saving the day, big way, or small way. That was his job, or at least it had been, a long time ago. On another day, another time, this would bring about an unsurprised smile, and maybe a toast towards the enduring heroism of Bikini Bottom’s superpowered protectors.

But Wendy couldn’t appreciate the victory. She slowly lowered her arm, feeling as if she’d just touched back down on earth from somewhere else.  “What… what was that?”

“I don’t know.” Barnacle Boy waddled through the salt carefully as he came up to his grown child and placed a hand on her back. But he hesitated before touching her, as if he was seeing a threatening force about her that he never knew existed before. “I’m just glad none of us are hurt.”

“You’ve been thwarted, villains! ”

The once young ward and his daughter turned around. In the living room, the towel-clad retiree was still berating the looking glass. “The flames of foul deeds have been extinguished! Come out, or get out!”

“Uh.” Wendy turned to her father. “Are we going to do anything about that?”

Barnacle Boy was preoccupied. His eyes swept over the burnt curtains, his ruined wok, the salted stove, and the cans all over the floor, and at last, gave a tired wave of his arm. “Do me a favor,” he sighed. “Take the mirror home with you tonight.” He plodded back over the salted floor and slid back into the booth, intent on finishing his dinner before considering how to tackle it. “If it wasn’t for the fact that it makes the room seem bigger, I'd have gotten rid of it the first time he accused his reflection of stealing his brand new mask.”

“It’s like I’m in a snow globe filled with glitter! Everywhere I look, my eyes can’t stop sparking! Er… or is that my new contacts?”

Eyes red and itchy, SpongeBob set down a platter of dirty dishes on the nearest clear table edge and ‘ pluck’ed his left eyeball from the socket. He breathed and rubbed it on his shirt. 

“Interesting contact cleaning method you’ve got there, Spongey. Might I recommend a home based saline solution made with boiled water and a teaspoon of salt?”

Recognizing the voice immediately, SpongeBob spun around and slammed his eyes back into their respective sockets. “ Wow ! It’s Martha Stewart, and her unlikely on-again-off-again associate… Snoop Dogfish! What are you two doing here?”

“Well, you’re probably too young to remember,” said the woman seated at the nearest table. “But I used to be a chef on TV.”

“I do remember! I mostly remember you from the time you got arrested. Tee-hee...”

“Chill there, box man. We ain’t ripplin’ your waters. Now, you wouldn’t happen to know where to score some grass in this town, would ya?”

“SpongeBAAAAAAAAWWWWB!”

An unmistakable, and very irate voice called him from across the room (this voice was normally irate when calling him, but that’s besides the point). “Probably the home and garden store?” a distracted sponge answered. “Ah, s-sorry guys, I gotta go!”

And SpongeBob panted as he sprinted away, full jogger pose, with his arms pumping as he went. 

Martha folded her arms and smirked at Snoop. “And you said this town would be boring.”

***

“Ladies and gentle fish!”

On the far left of the restaurant, propped up hastily, was a stage, where Mr. Krabs stood before a microphone. “If I may please have everyone’s attention! Welcome one and all to the very first Krusty Klass Charity Gala! We gather here today in celebration of almost ninety years of service by the United Navy of the Pacific and beyond! If the cameraman would kindly pan to the left—

Out of the spotlights on the stage, in the dark of the left of Mr. Krabs on the stage, a heavyset fish running the only inside televising camera panned slowly to the left.

“—are the greatest navy men, now and to be, the Pacific had to offer!”

Men and women with scars, patches, canes, crutches, beards of white and gray and wrinkles galore, clapped respectfully at the acknowledgement, while other guests all around them cheered vibrantly.

“To your right—”

The cameraman gasped and panted as he desperately swung the camera to the right, trying to keep up with Mr. Krabs’ words. 

“—are the stars that have graciously come down to meet their acquaintance—and supply financial support. Now you’re probably all wondering how to get inside a mind like yours truly, what goes on in this shelled head o’mine—?”

Everything the camera captured was being shown not just on live TV, but on a two-sided projector screen that hung up in the middle of the dining room, so that even guests in the far back could see the stage. Unfortunately, the overworked, underpaid cameraman was running on even less sleep than its phonebook-with-eyes manager, and inadvertently forgot to extreme-zoom back out when swinging the camera back towards Mr. Krabs. The result was the projector displaying an enormous closeup of Mr. Krabs’ nostrils, a countable set of nose hairs, and unfortunately, more.

“EUGENE!” shouted a familiar elderly woman’s voice from near the stage. “For the love of sun and moon, blow yer nose!”

“What in the devilfish is that? Looks filthy as—SHIVER ME TIMBERS!” cried Mr. Krabs, realizing the image on the projector was an extreme closeup of his own left nostril, with a countable set of nose hairs, and, to his mother’s upset, more. “Ah, erm…” Mr. Krabs saw the screen, and reached behind his back for a handkerchief. “Yes… mommy. AHEM!”

The cameraman looked up from his two-second nap in his own fist. “Huh? OH! Sorry-sorry!”

Mr. Krabs furiously blew his nose, tossed the cloth behind the stage’s purple curtain, before returning to the microphone. “Now, if everyone will set down their glasses and stand for the Bikini Bottom National Anthem, sung by our very own Mr. Hoopla Fish!”

Mr. Krabs plucked the mic from the stand, then bent down and passed it to a tiny green fish with bulging yellow eyes, and a staunch white tuxedo. 

The lights across the restaurant momentarily dimmed, and on a screen that came down behind him was the Bikini Bottom flag, hyper realistic, billowing in the sun-lit waves.

He took a deep breath, blinking one eye, and then another. “Hooooooooooooooooooo-pla hoo-pla, hoo-plaaa, hoopa…”

“Aye… You ought not to have a favorite rendition of the Anthem,” whispered one teary-eyed sailor to another. “... but I think I just discovered mine!”

“Excuse me! Sorry! Pardon me! I’m so sorry! Can I get by? Thank you!”

SpongeBob panted as he squeezed between the chairs, brushing between sailor and celebrity like a clown fish through the tentacles of sea anemone. He definitely felt like a clown, albeit more flexible. It had quickly become yet another one of many times in his life he was grateful to be an invertebrate. He could make himself into the exact shape of the gap between the tightly packed bodies, and slide through, like play-dough through a mold. At one point, a couple was making out in the middle of the room. SpongeBob tapped them on the shoulder.

“Oh! Uh, I’m sorry to come between you two, but can I—oh… wow… you’re really doing that right now? You do know we’re… on TV right now, right?”

 Finally, SpongeBob squeezed himself between the frenching fish, telling himself he wasn’t jealous, and that that was just weird.

“The party’s only started,” SpongeBob muttered. “What could’ve gone wrong—HOLY FISH PASTE!”

SpongeBob’s heels screeched as he encountered Squidward, his white working tuxedo and every inch of him drenched in a dark red liquid, like he just walked out of a certain 70’s horror movie.

“Not even half hour into this fiasco, I’ve already been doused in wine, had two of my feet trampled by starlets in pasties and high heels—”

Squidward furiously pointed to the cantaloupe sized dent in the side of his head. Wine dripped from his shoulders, to the bandages on two of his feet. 

“No amount of celebrity-brushing would make this socially-accepted torture worth it! So, now that I’ve successfully helped lube up your sparkly patron cash-tankers with enough liquor to kill a whale,” Squidward removed his Krusty Krab hat and held it out before SpongeBob. “I’m ducking out of here before Squilliam shows up. If you require more you can find him in the back next to the ice machine, smacking his head in a wall until the part of my brain that can contemplate Squilliam’s tweets in the next twelve hours is dead.”

“But Squidward, you can’t hide yet! The party’s only beginning!”

“And I’ve suddenly decided that I am a wallflower. Specifically one that grows on the break room walls… or whatever Eugene calls that walk-in cooler.” 

“And besides,” SpongeBob flicked his thumb upwards, “you’d make a great host!”

“Host?” Squidward had one foot in the air, and stooped like a dime. His head swiveled around like his neck was elastic. “You mean, like THE restaurant host? Get to chat one-on-one with the guests?”

“Uh-huh!”

“Ask them if they need a top off of champagne, or-or even ask them for pictures? Autographs? Offer to be their wingman for any young starlets the stars have their eyes on?”

Bob nodded vigorously. “Yeah!”

“Yeah… not interested.” 

“Wait! Don’t go! I uh…” SpongeBob felt control slipping through his fingers. He couldn’t lose control this early. There was such a long night ahead!  SpongeBob’s eyes swept the room. Think, think, think… And when he turned right, and his eyes fell on one guest in particular, his pupils became lightbulbs.  “What about Chef RamShark?”

Squidward’s narrowed eyes shot up like garage doors, his head suddenly un-denting itself with a loud ‘pop’. “RamShark.”

The world-renowned, Michelin star chef was, by and large, the most popular guest at the Gala. Squidward could barely see him as he turned his head to look across the darkened room, and that was only because he was flanked by a set of bodyguards. “You mean, I’d get to speak to him directly ?”

“Well, of course! As a matter of fact,” SpongeBob remembered quickly. “I’ve got a special twist on the patty Wellington that Angel’s prepared just for him.” He grinned a toothy grin. “And I can’t think of a more handsome Head Waiter to deliver it to his table.”

Squidward slowly turned back around, taking tentative steps back towards SpongeBob. “And you’d… make sure Squilliam saw everything? Maybe even aim the camera at his face the minute he sees me photographed with the most esteemed chef in the ocean?”

“Uh, sure. I don’t see… any harm in—THAT! ”

Squidward had grabbed and lifted him up from the floor by the shoulders. Gazing at him with the same gaze of adoration with which he would a mirror. “Sponge, if I didn’t despise you three hundred and sixty four days out of the year on average, I’d kiss you on the lips, right here and now.”

“Oh-oh!” SpongeBob blushed. “You flatter me, Squidward, but I’m afraid it’s entirely possible that my first kiss is being saved for someone speci— OMPH!”

“I’ve gotta get ready!” Having dropped his boss for the night like a box of scorpions, a wine-dripping Squidward rushed off towards the staff doors. “Can’t take my viral picture with RamShark looking like Carrie!”

“Wait, Squidward! That’s not what I…” he looked back at the waiting tables, brow creased. “Oh, Barnacles! That’s another pair of hands down.” He looked down at his wrist. “And our big VIP party will be here any minute!”

The watch on his wrist was unique. Not quite like what he pictured having the position of power he now found himself in, but it was straight from the Krusty Krab kids’ collection, circa 1996. The one with Man Ray’s face and quote from the Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy episode 122. “Hehe… The witching hour is upon us,” cackled the semi-crackling recording of Man Ray when SpongeBob pressed the button on the side. “The question is, what action will you take, young ‘hero’?”

A/N: Really small note to start, but I know Ramsay is Scottish, but since Squidward’s obsession with anything posh seems to imply he’d hyper focus on Ramsey being a Brit, I just went with that. Most of the dialog in this fic is first draft, just the first thing that comes to mind for the characters and how they might react to things. And because the dialog is the easiest thing to write for this story, it's largely what’s carrying this fic. I’m doing my best to really match what the SpongeBob characters would do or say, the non-canon shipping for this fic aside.

IDK what I was going for mixing Alex Jones with Youtube Analog horror, the scene just wrote itself and I left it in there. I just get a giggle out of the thought of Mermaid Man being convinced someone that unhinged is doing a bit when they’re not. I also get a giggle out of someone so unhinged thinking alternates are real and going on a tirade ala.

Wendy, Barnacle Boy’s daughter, is named after one of Robin’s kids in one of the DC canons. :D  I didn’t have any particular names in mind so I just went with that. I don’t know anything about the DC Wendy, to be honest, and she’s not meant to resemble the Wendy from DC. I hoped that would be acceptable since MM and BB aren’t always the one-to-one universe equivalent of Batman and Robin in their collective appearances. Sometimes they’re This character’s got her own little story conflict, like a lot of characters, both OG and original, in the story. I wanted to have a young upcoming hero to throw in the mix, and have the sort of common-ish trope of a superpowered character who can’t use their own powers because of X-reason. There’s a good reason why Wendy never learned to throw water balls with ease, and it might be obvious why. Since it’s a side plot I can spoil a bit, but let’s say she takes more than looks after her mother. ;3

“Hey, if they’re underwater, how can there be a—?” Well obv. Wendy should’ve just asked this question and the problem would’ve solved itself. Maybe Patrick has superpowers, lol. I’m using NaturePants cartoon logic for the kitchen fire.

If this and the next chapter seem a bit short compared to the rest, I had to cut this chapter with the Gala in half. Between overtime at work and juggling another fanfic, It was talking wayyyy too long to finish, and the scene with MM and BB at their apartment ran longer than I meant for it to. Wendy wasn’t going to be a major part of the story until I started writing the scene out and thought of a way they all could actually have an impact on the story much later on.

Typos possible, as I’m updating this and another fic today ‘cuz I won’t have access to my computer for the next two days, so I’m letting it rip here. Comment/crique always welcome. Those who are turning in for le Spandy get a major scene in the next chapter. Enjoy, guys!