Octonauts

Part 3

Peso jumps, the sound of the Octo Alert siren shocking him.

"Octonauts! To the HQ!" the loudspeaker bellows in Barnacles' voice.

Dragging himself to his feet, Peso hurries to the nearest door, leaping down the stairs two at a time. Arriving at headquarters, Peso sees the Professor standing hunched next to the Barnacles, his grey hair hanging over his eyes. His hands scrunched into fists.

"What is it, Barnacles?" Peso asks, forgetting the title.

"That's Captain Barnacles." The Captain corrects Peso.

"There's a hostile whaling ship up there, it's killed some of the vegimals. Apparently, we are in the way of their killing the whales. They want us gone." Professor Inkling debriefs the team.

Peso's breathing quickens, his heartrate speeding like a bullet as his vision begins to blur. 

"What?"

He glances around. All the other crewmates are staring at him, they know. All but Kwazii are looking. They revert their attention back to the Professor and Barnacles. They all put suits on as he helps explain the plan in detail. 

Kwazii wasn't looking. He should be the first to look, he likes seeing me uncomfortable. So what has he attached his attention to that could distract him from watching me tear up?

Peso focuses his eyes on Kwazii. The man is smirking, his catlike face eyeing Dashi up and down, standing next to her at the back of the group. Dashi. She looks at him, pleading with her dark brown eyes, fear visible on her beautiful face. Kwazii's hand explores her back. It runs up her spine, stopping at her neck. He grips a chunk of her hair, jolting it downwards and grinning. Her head lurches backwards with the pull of her hair. He slides his hand around her throat, rolling his fingers on her skin. She shudders, incredibly distressed. His hand roams down, across her waist, halting momentarily on her hip. He continues to move it downwards, slowing as he slides it around to the inside of her thigh and gives it a squeeze. Dashi's eyes open wide, intense terror growing in her expression.

"Hey!" Peso runs at Kwazii, giving him a shove. "Leave her alone!"

"Ooh!" Kwazii hoots, raising his eyebrows. "Someone's protective!" he puts his arm around Dashi's shoulder, aggressively pulling her into his side.

No one notices the scene through the noise of the gups starting and the last vegimal chanting his unnerving tune.

"I said, leave her alone, you pig!" Peso looks at Dashi, questioning. She's closed her eyes, clenching them shut. Blocking out everything.

"It's just a joke. She doesn't care." Kwazii states, looking down at Dashi. No response. He presses her closer to him and digs his nails into her arm. "She doesn't. Care."

"Ah!" she exclaims "I- No. I don't care." Dashi agrees automatically.

Peso clenches his fists. Kwazii's much taller than him, but he'll try. "Why, you-!"

"Hey! Get ready! We're going in five."

"Lucky bastard." Kwazii mutters as he drops his arm off Dashi's shoulder. Flicking his fringe and walking towards the suit rack, he elbows Peso out of the way.

Darting over to Dashi, Peso pats her shoulder. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah." She smiles feebly. "We'd better get ready."

Peso nods in agreement, walking her over to the opposite end of the rack from where Kwazii slips his suit over his clothes.

Tweak walks in. "The gups are ready. Take X so you can shoot 'em down."

"Yes. Tweak, are you ok?" Barnacles asks.

"No, Cap. But I'll live." She lies, the grin looking slightly off on her tear-streaked face.

Piling into their gups and starting the engines, they speed off to stop the illegally attacking ship. 

Kwazii races ahead in gup B, pissed about Peso's interference in his 'joke'. Peso doesn't know how far he would have gone, but he's afraid he can guess. As the harpoons bounce off the armoured shell of gup-X, bullets shoot through the water. The distraction works perfectly. Peso and Dashi swerve through the onslaught, heading towards an area of water with dark swirls of red. 

Sharks swarm towards the bodies of the vegimals, a team of genetically engineered creatures designed by Shellington to help around the Octopod. Tunip, Shellington's favourite, begins to shake side to side as the frenzied sharks grab at his bullet riddled corpse. Dashi is unperturbed. She opens the hatch of gup A, climbing around it to reach Tunip's body. Reaching past the sharks, who don't care about her, she attempts to grab Tunip's mangled fin. Shellington needs at least a bit of Tunip back, he's the prototype. Shellington doesn't have another to base the cloning on.

Now that she's tried to take their food, the sharks notice her. One of them butts Dashi with its nose, shoving her away. She is sent flying backwards, into the path of a harpoon. It pierces her suit, exiting in the middle of her back and lodging in a rock below. Peso screams, frozen to the spot. Unable to move, to breathe, to help. 

The look of horror on Dashi's face is terrifying. Peso sees her gurgle as blood bubbles from her lips, water entering the puncture in her suit. Screams, silent to him, burst from her bloody face. Peso does nothing but watch as the murky red water burbles into her helmet, her hands pulling desperately at the chord through her middle. She's stuck on the harpoon rope. Eyes wider than ever, Peso stares as the helmet fills. Bubbles rise from her nose and mouth through the crimson water. Peso shrieks, he sees a shark lunge at her, her body jerking around. Arms wave frantically, slowing as shark after shark latches onto her. The mass of bubbles stops. She's gone.

"NOOOO!" Peso wails, falling from his chair tothe floor of the gup. He howls in hatred at himself, ripping out hishair.

"WHY" He tears out a chunk, blood splatteringonto his hands. Tears pour out of his eyes.

"DIDN'T" he slams his head onto the metal deck. 

"I" he continues to smash his head onto thefloor, breaking his nose. Snatching up handfuls of hair and dragging them out. 

"DO ANYTHING!!" at this, he brings his bloodied head back, ramming it with such force into the floor that he hears a crack before blacking out. 

Shite that was pretty intense. You really alright there Peso?