What Lies Beneath

This is the first episode of The Octo-Fairies. In this episode, the Octo-Fairies cram for a test when they discover a part of their headquarters that no one else knows about.

The episode begins at the headquarters, where a music-loving girl named Chief Bethany is practicing Magical Music, a type of magic that involves using magic with music. When it’s time of practice magic, Bethany says to the superstitious Selina that they will be given a test by their mentor, Keeper, and she encourages her to practice for the test.

At the garden, the laid-back Kara sarcastically suggests asking one of the trees for help in practicing for the upcoming test. As she and her friends share a laugh on their way to the artifact room, something inside a nearby drain gives off a faint glow.

In the artifact room, the Octo-Fairies begin studying for their test. But Kara and the energetic Peona have trouble understanding the course material, Selina becomes preoccupied by a book of flowers, and the spiritual Delancy dozes off into a state of mind. Despite this, the six remain in positive spirits.

Bethany overhears them as she looks at her staff in the form of a necklace. She expresses how great it is that they are relaxed about the upcoming test, with Selina agreeing, before adding that if Peona doesn’t panic about it, they’ll succeed. Offended, Peona says that her pirate ego gets them into more trouble. Selina then turns to Trixie about her stubborn self. Trixie argues that Delancy is too shy to focus on anything, with Delancy stating that’s not true. This causes the Fairies to wonder if friendship is in a crew’s nature.

Just then, the fairies hear a strange sound in the artifact room, and discover it is in the center of the room and see an open floor gate with a mysterious crystal root sticking out of it. Inside, they find a large cavern filled with more crystal roots, and they encounter three glowing figures, and they speak to them in a bizarre, mystical tone. The figures sense that the Octo-Fairies are “not one” and they tell them that they don’t believe friendship is in a crew’s nature. The figures don’t accept this and decide to give the Octo-Fairies a test. If they fail to pass the test before morning, they will remain trapped in the caves forever.

The fairies are all suddenly teleported to different parts of the caverns. Bethany finds herself in a very silent room, and she discovers nothing makes a sound in the room. Peona ends up in a small enclosure that gets even smaller whenever she touches certain shafts of light. Delancy finds herself in a room full of mirrors, where she sees herself in one, becoming a demon.

Kara encounters a creepy mime, and she is unable to escape from him. Selina finds herself in a room with hundreds of vines, and they start to ominously grow towards her as she runs. Finally, Trixie finds herself in a room with a lot of holes, and out of the holes comes extremely sharp needles. She seems okay at first, but after seeing the number of needles, she begins to run from them.

Inside her small, shrinking enclosure, an increasingly panicked Peona assures herself that if this is a test, there must be a solution. She realizes that there are two different colors of lights shining in - touching the purple lights makes the enclosure shrink, and touching the yellow lights makes it widen. After touching enough of the yellow lights, Peona makes the enclosure wide enough for her to squeeze out through a small opening before she gets crushed.

Meanwhile, Kara’s runs through the cave tunnels keep circling her back to the mime. She asks him what she has to do in order to pass her test and escape, and he silently hints that she fears mimes. Begrudgingly, Kara acts like a mime and eventually is able to escape. Elsewhere, Delancy cowers in fear of her demon form and starts turning into a demon. Turning away from the mirrors, she stops to take a breath. When Delancy tells herself she’s been good for the entirety of her life and declares she’s not a demon, she overcomes her fear and deletes her demon appearance.

Back at the caves’ entrance, Kara meets up with Peona. They notice that the way out of the caves is still open and reason that if any other fairy were in their situation, they would escape and leave the others behind. Realizing that even though they are different, they decide to stay and find their friends so that they can all escape together. Meanwhile, Bethany attempts to make some sound in the room with her instruments, but it is still quiet. She gets so nervous, she collapses.

When Kara finds Selina, Selina is tangled up in the vines and is too overwhelmed to escape from their grasp, saying that nature’s turned against her. Kara assures Selina that nature would not want to turn against her, and in an effort to help her overcome her fear, Kara herself admits that she’s scared of mimes. With Kara’s help, and the reminder that she can control nature and it’s magic, Selina conquers her fear and untangles herself.

In another part of the caves, Peona finds Trixie shaking in fear, due to the number of needles. Peona tells Trixie that there is a way out of the mess, and she helps her overcome her fear by admitting to her own fear of small spaces. With Peona’s encouragement, Trixie uses acrobatics skills to make her way through the needles and when she gets through all of them, they revert back into their holes. With both of their fears conquered, Peona and Trixie head to find the rest of their friends.

At the caves’ entrance, Trixie and Peona meet up with Selina and Kara, but Bethany and Delancy are nowhere to be found, and the entrance is slowly closing. Just then, Delancy arrives and goes off with her team to track down Bethany. Collapsed on the ground, Bethany gets up and gets over her fear. Bethany admits that she’s afraid of silence but because she cares about her friends, she’d go through anything to help them no matter what gets in her way. Because of this, Bethany passes her test, and the sounds return just as the rest of the team arrives.

With the six of them together again, the fairies return to the cave entrance, but it has closed too much for any of them to fit through. Just then, the figure appears before them again, and he is revealed to be the Ethereal Fairies. They explain that the Octo-Fairies themselves chose how their biggest fears manifested and that they overcame their fears for each other’s sake.

Because the Octo-Fairies have passed Keeper’s test, they are finally able to return to the artifact room. There, they have a conversation about what they experienced underneath their headquarters. But at the end of their conversation, the fairies realize something; the test they have taken was the test they were about to take. They had the courage to conquer their fears and their friendship helped them get past their fears. They learned that a crew can have some relationship troubles, but they can be fixed. The episode ends with the Octo-Fairies leaving the artifact room and the floor grate glowing.