Seiche Engrossment: Part 1

The lights flickered again as he slammed the door on them.

"I don't like that guy a bit," said the one with the black-and-purple 'do. "It's like he's conspiring against us or something."

The other's face twisted into a worried glower. "B—but why?" she finally expressed. "What would he have to gain? We've already tried coexisting, just the few of us! How did that work out?" Think how the masses will respond if we try telling them…"

"Dammit, Marie, our reputation isn't everything! They're dying! They're all dying! The war is over, shouldn't we have mercy on the poor things…? They were just trying to survive in the first place and we made it worse!"

"Please, they stole from us. Besides, we cut ourselves out of contact before things started going south…" She paused, furrowing her brow. "The recent developments aren't our fault."

"Yes, it is our fault. It's like—it's like the humans, with their streetcar problem, or whatever you call it. We have the switch! You're forcing us not to pull it!"

Marie scooched her chair back and crossed her arms. The lights flicked again. "Well, regardless of whatever you think I'm doing, I didn't become a musician to get swept up in political shit."

"This again?" her cousin groaned.

"Callie, just hear me out! If those teenagers weren't running the place, we wouldn't be the only plausible leaders!" She sighed. "At least they have good taste in music."

"Or they will until we show them what we've been doing, or when Hookseine spills the beans! It's a lose-lose for us!"

"So now you see my point of view."

"Wh—" For a few seconds, Callie thought over what she'd said. "Just, forget that, okay? We aren't that important in the grand scheme of things! The Octarians are more important. They're a whole species—we're flipping the lever, okay? We're flipping the trolley lever."

Marie bristled.

"I know all the stuff they've done to us, Marie. I was there too. But they were doing it out of self-defense, just trying to survive." Callie looked at her cousin intently. "We have to go back undercover."

Nearly a minute of silence passed, lights flickering all the while. Marie lost herself in deep thought, trying to realistically consider Callie's point of view.

"Either way," she spoke up, "I really don't feel like doing the Idol TV segment today."

"…I guess not. Fine, we'll—just call in that Annie girl from the hat shop to do Inkopolis News, or something."

"Annie? Are you serious?"

"I'm sure she'll do fine, Marie! We have more important matters to work on right now. Keep your priorities straight."

"Right," she agreed. "Now, even if we're going back undercover, how do we avoid this catch-22 thing right now? Won't Hookseine question us when we walk through the door?"

"Okay, we could… Wait, you're letting us help the Octarians after all?"

"Yeah, I changed my mind. I was being really greedy and vain—I'm sorry about that. I had trouble… accepting the possibility of losing our fame, and following."

"W—wow. Anyway." Callie's eyes started darting about the room again. "Do you think we could escape through that vent up there?" She was pointing to a small air vent on the wall, with a grate not far inside.

"Through a closed ventilation duct? Are you sure you're thinking straight, 'cuz?"

With a glare of disbelief, Callie began untying the bow in her tentacles. "Marie, the humans don't call us 'squidkids' for nothing."

"Oh. Right. Sorry, I'm too used to my humanoid form. It's been so long since my last proper Turf War. Speaking of tentacles," she added as she undid the bow in her own, "we'd better change our ink color on the way out, so it will be harder to recognize us if we're caught."

"Yeah, good idea!" said Callie. The lights flickered again, this time for a few seconds.

"Wait, why are we undoing our bows?"

"Uh, so it's harder to recognize us, like what you were just saying? Are we not going undercover again?"

"Right, right. And not too loud, Callie. We don't want Hookseine hearing us. That was cutting it a bit close." She transformed into her squid form, with white, paintlike flesh—in the same color as her human form's tentacles, though this was slowly changing to a more reddish tone. "Throw me to the vent, and I'll bend down and carry you up."

Callie tossed Marie up to the vent. Marie reverted most of the way to her human form as her cousin jumped and turned into a squid herself. Then Marie reached down and grabbed her, lifting Callie into the vent.

"Move quietly and don't make any loud noises," Marie instructed. The Squid Sisters slid through the vent as squids, then carefully continued down the duct.

The quiet hours of waiting outside the room began taking their aggravating toll on Mr. Hookseine. He was alarmed to see an Inkopolis News broadcast appear on the lobby's widescreen, but Callie and Marie weren't on air.

"H—h—hold on to your tentacles…" stumbled Annie across her own words. Clearly she was quite nervous and unprepared. "It's time for In—Inkopolis News…

"The Squid Sisters… couldn't be here right now, so, er,"—she glanced at the clownfish on her head, cleared her throat, yet continued even quiter than before—"I'll unveil the, uh, battle stages… alright?

"Arowa—eh—wana Mall." Annie's eyes shifted even further from the camera as she started reading off of the teleprompter. "They're… selling sh—shirts… with Judd's p—pic—pictu—" Her eyes rolled into her head as she collapsed forwards from anxiety.

"THAT SURE COULDA GONE BETTER!" quipped the clownfish, which had fallen off of Annie's head. Hookseine decided to grab the remote and turn off the television.

"Are they really still discussing, though?" Hookseine pondered. It had been hour upon hour since he'd left them to make their decision, after all. He got up and walked to the door. The lights flickered as he opened it, making it difficult to see inside for a few seconds, before he realized.

The room was empty.

Hookseine stood and stared for a while, before finally visibly freaking out. "But if they're not here, and they're not there, then where are they and what are they doing?!" he blubbered. He turned around and paced out the door without noticing the drops of ink in the vent. "What will the government think? Hell, what do I tell them? I knew I should've checked in earlier; they're probably long-gone by now!"

The lights then flickered out completely. Hookseine marched back to the door and slammed it shut, muttering to himself about filaments all the while.