How do I love you?

Mysteries... and Discoveries

Captain Barnacles had known Kwazii since forever. Ever since he had put up posters asking animals to join the Octonauts to help Professor Inkling (an octopus and the founder of the Octonauts) advertise, Kwazii, being very adventurous and eager to join, had been the first member of the Octonauts. Then, Kwazii had asked his friend Peso, the penguin, to join, and Peso had become their medic. The Octonauts had just escalated from there. Now, they had a full on Octopod (their HQ), about ten different gups (vehicles that each could do different things, such as become a helicopter or become underwater scooters) and had gotten the help of Tweak, a very capable mechanic, who also happened to be a rabbit, who had helped the Octonauts to improve their technology and fix their vehicles.

But the polar bear captain thought that    Kwazii hadn't been himself recently. The pirate cat had become a lot more quiet and moody than his adventurous, wild and cheerful self. The first warning bell came when Peso had volunteered to go to visit his cousins in Antarctica. Rather than jumping up and telling Peso about the treacherous waters, the vicious monsters and the creepy ghosts living there like he usually would, Kwazii had simply stayed silent and curled his tail around his body, staring at the floor.

Then Tweak had asked Kwazii to go help fix one of the gups - Gup-A had been damaged in a recent adventure, and she needed help from someone who wasn't afraid to go into the depths of the sea to reach the gup repair station. And who better to ask than fearless Kwazii? But he had refused the rabbit's offer, saying he was very busy.

"But it'll be over before you can say buncha muncha crunchy carrots!" Tweak had protested. Yet still, Kwazii had refused, still arguing that he was extremely busy and if she could ask someone else. So Tweak had reluctantly asked Tunip, Grouber and Codish to come with them (they were Vegimals - a strange mix between animals and vegetables that had been born when Shellington, the sea otter, had found eggs and the Vegimals had hatched out of them. Since then, they had become a very helpful member of the crew, despite Shellington being the only Octonaut fluent in Vegimalese (the language that the Vegimals spoke that was similar to English except very distorted).

Captain Barnacles was worried about Kwazii, and thus decided to go to Kwazii's area of the Octopod that evening and ask what was wrong.

~~~

"Kwazii?" Captain Barnacles murmured softly. "You there?"

He was standing outside Kwazii's room next to the door. He had just knocked gently on the door, and was now waiting to see if the door opened. If it didn't, he would have to confront Kwazii when he came out, or another day. If it did, well, he would have to confront the cat now. Captain Barnacles didn't like direct confrontation. Well, he did, (he was a polar bear, after all) but he wasn't really a 'talk things through' kind of person. He was more like a 'awkwardly start a conversation and pray that talking gets easier later on' kind of person. A 'politely ask the huge monster standing there to let his friends go' kind of person. An 'I really hope that someone else will talk to Kwazii, because I ain't doing it' kind of person. But hey. Nobody else was doing it, so it was up to him.

Kwazii wasn't responding, so he whispered, "I'm going in, okay?" and pushed the door open with a paw.

Captain Barnacles waited until it was open all the way until poking his head inside the doorway. Kwazii was tossing a ball of blue yarn in the air, catching it, then throwing it at the wall, catching it, throwing it in the air, catching it, etc.. It looked tiring, and he didn't want to break his concentration, but he didn't really have much choice. He tapped Kwazii lightly on the shoulder.

Immediately, Kwazii jumped about five metres in the air, missed the ball of yarn, which hit him in the head, then rebounded and hit the Captain in the head, then spun towards Kwazii and knocked him off balance (how was the ball of yarn so heavy like what), causing Kwazii to fall backwards into Captain Barnacles, who then tipped over a whole shelf of yarn, each ball about a kilogram each (why were they so goddamn heavy) which then hit both Octonauts in the head about five times each. Then it stopped.