In this chapter, our heroes will enter the swamp.
No, they're not there so they can train under a master. They don't have the time for that. Though it would be great if they did. Who knows what they could learn? Even Sandy could probably learn something...
And no, they won't find an ogre either. This is Nickelodeon, not Dreamworks.
Chapter 19: Totally Swamped
"Gee, I'm totally looking forward to entering this swamp." remarked Squidward sarcastically.
For starters, it was dark in the swamp. It seemed it didn't experience much sunlight.
Why couldn't it be somewhere more pleasant? Like a meadow?
Of course, he had already been to a meadow. That was where he had been locked up.
Unsurprisingly, the Shooting Star didn't have the same opinion.
"I'm glad I get to go to the swamp again!" cheered Patrick. He had been there with Bubble Bass once. Though a lot of Bikini Bottom residents didn't really seem to like him.
It seemed he didn't mind it there because of his lack of smell.
However, the trip to the swamp wasn't going to be an entirely pleasant experience for the Shooting Star.
Some of Plankton's cousins emerged from the swamp water.
Seemed they figured it would be a good way to ambush them as any.
Though they were probably going to need to take a bath later.
"We got company!" exclaimed Supersponge.
One of them whacked Spongebob with a hammer.
"Ow!" exclaimed the sponge. Now he had a bruised noggin.
"What strategy are they using this time?" asked Squidward.
As it turned out, they had a speedboat.
This made them harder to hit.
The plankton took advantage of their speedboat by firing crossbow bolts from a distance.
"We should try to sink that boat..." noted Spongebob.
Patrick wondered how they would do that.
Pearl's answer was to launch a black pearl at it.
"Oh no! We've sunk!" bellowed one of the plankton. That boat had been a rental too.
Well, it looked as if they would be fighting them on foot.
One of the plankton attempted to toss a harpoon at Pearl.
"Aah! My weakness!" shouted Pearl.
Fortunately, Patrick sat on the cousin before he could fire it.
"Thanks, Patrick." said the whale.
"You're welcome!" exclaimed the starfish.
A cousin attacked Squidward with an axe, but he countered with ink.
As usual, the Invisible Ink used his invisibility to ambush his foes.
However, the plankton seemed a bit more alert this time.
"Did I hear something?" asked the cousin.
Perhaps Squidward should approach them quietly. He didn't want to blow his cover.
Spongebob imprisoned some of the plankton in bubbles.
"How do we get out of here?" asked one of the plankton.
The plankton retreated. The swamp was kind of smelly anyway.
There were also firejellies.
They flew around the swamp, making buzzing noises.
"I thought all the jellyfish lived in Jellyfish Fields..." questioned Squidward.
"Perhaps some of them decided to immigrate here..." suggested Spongebob. Perhaps they were worried that Mr. Krabs had been out to get them...even though he was currently locked away at the moment.
"Hey, I remember these! We and Bubble Bass encountered them..." noted Patrick. They had stung Bubble Bass on the tongue, which was ironic considering that was where he hid pickles.
"Really? I should consider jellyfishing here..." evaluated Spongebob.
Chances are their jelly would be spicy though. Did he know anyone that liked spicy food? The Krusty Krab didn't seem to serve spicy Krabby Patties, though chances are Mr. Krabs would try it if he felt it would earn him more money.
He missed Mr. Krabs.
However, upon closer inspection, these firejellies had been smaller.
In addition, they were orange instead of their usual yellow.
"Are these jellyfish trying a new look?" asked Patrick.
As soon as they spotted our heroes, they attacked them.
"It looks like these jellyfish have been corrupted by Plankton too." remarked Spongebob.
However, instead of simply stinging them like regular jellyfish, firejellies were capable of manipulating fire.
This made them all the more threatening.
"Hot hot hot!" bellowed Spongebob. One of the firejellies had tossed a fireball at him.
"Your pants are on fire again?" asked Squidward.
"Yeah!" exclaimed the sponge. It was a good thing he had plenty of pants...though a lot of them were still at his pineapple house. Maybe he go pick them up later.
Quickly, he dove into the swamp water to put it out.
Unfortunately, that had the side effect of making him smelly.
"Ugh..." murmured Squidward. He began to cover his big nose.
Spongebob scrubbed himself shortly afterwards.
Squidward sighed in relief. Now he wouldn't be Spongebob Smellypants.
Fortunately for Sandy, she was immune.
In addition, Patrick could stop them in their tracks with his ice breath.
"Man, I never thought that a jellyfish could be so fiery." remarked Pearl.
One of them shot a fireball at her.
"Aah!" exclaimed the whale.
Patrick also tried catching them in a jellyfish net, but they simply burned through it.
"Aww!" complained the starfish. If only his net had been fireproof.
Well, it looked as if he was going to need another net.
Spongebob defended himself by firing water at the jellies.
This seemed to be effective at holding them off.
"I feel just like a fireman." remarked Spongebob.
Patrick had tried drinking from a fire hose once. That wasn't a good idea.
Besides, the firemen needed that water more than Shooting Star did.
Fortunately, the water seemed to wash away the tainted jelly that Plankton's cousins had used to make them turn evil.
"Whew!" exclaimed the sponge.
Maybe now he wouldn't be a toasted sponge.
The firejellies were grateful.
Incidentally, the jellyfish that Patrick had frozen had turned back to normal as well. Maybe making them chill caused them to turn back to their senses.
Perhaps Squidward could summon them later. They would be useful if he were fighting an icy enemy. Or maybe a giant tree. A frosty opponent seemed more likely though.
"I wonder if there's a such thing as snowjellies..." remarked Spongebob.
"Why would you want jelly like that? It'd most likely be bitter cold." pointed out Squidward to Supersponge.
"Maybe it would taste like ice cream." suggested the sponge.
"Ice cream? We have to find those jellyfish!" exclaimed Patrick.
"It's just a theory, Patrick." noted Sandy. Perhaps snowjellies didn't actually exist.
Though if they did, she would like an opportunity to research them.
"Aww..." whined the starfish. Apparently, he shouldn't have gotten his hopes up.
Unfortunately, there were also swamp gators.
"Careful! There are alligators in the water!" warned Mindy.
"Really? All I see are logs..." questioned Spongebob.
"Those are the gators." explained the mermaid.
"Aaahh! Swamp gators!" bellowed the Shooting Star.
"What are you doing in our swamp?" asked one of the gators. This swamp was kind of remote. Though it wasn't far from the Goo Lagoon.
"I don't know, but they have a bounty on their heads!" exclaimed another gator.
It seemed there was even reptiles living in Bikini Bottom.
"Does anyone know how to wrestle a gator?" asked Spongebob.
If so, now was the time to tell everyone else.
"I do!" nodded Sandy.
"Good, because there's more than one." answered the sponge. And the alligators had lots of teeth. He didn't want them biting into him.
Sandy started wrestling them.
One of the alligators chomped Patrick.
"Ow!" exclaimed the starfish. He wondered what it would be like to have chompers like that. He could eat giant Krabby Patties, he bet.
For some strange reason, the alligator started crying afterwards.
"I thought it was crocodiles that did that." questioned Squidward.
"Whoops?" answered the huge reptile. It seemed he had forgotten that.
Then again, maybe alligators could do it too.
"Why is he the one crying? I was the one who was bitten!" exclaimed Patrick.
Another one of the gators tripped Squidward with his tail.
"Oof!" shouted the Invisible Ink.
Unfortunately, their hides gave them decent defense.
"Man, my punches aren't doing a lot of good here." noted Spongebob. Plus he ran the risk of one of the alligators deciding to bite off his arm.
He could regrow it, but still.
Ans to make matters worse, Squidward's invisibility wasn't very helpful. Like Hunter and the sharks, they could detect him through scent.
Invisibility had its limits. At least Plankton's robots didn't have heat vision. Not yet anyway.
However, they didn't like the cold. Seemed their hides didn't protect them from that.
Of course, even though Patrick was theoretically cold-blooded himself, he happened to enjoy ice cream.
"Brrrr!" exclaimed one of the alligators, who was now shivering. Being a reptile had its downsides. Though at least you never had to worry about hairballs.
Likewise, their hides didn't protect them from Sandy's fireballs. They were just as vulnerable as a cousin was.
"Ow!" bellowed one of the reptiles.
It seemed that they no longer had the upper hand against the heroes...now that they were getting the hang of fighting them.
Eventually, the gators decided not to attempt to claim the bounty any longer.
"I never thought we'd lose to a squirrel." remarked one of the alligators. Especially not one that knew karate.
Our heroes discovered that there were more robots up ahead.
Some of them resembled bombs.
"Bomb-Bots!" exclaimed Spongebob.
Unfortunately, if they spotted our heroes, they would inevitably chase after them. And it was only a matter of time before they exploded.
They didn't want to be in the radius when that happened.
"Aaahh!" exclaimed Patrick.
One of the Bomb Bots had sent him flying.
Luckily, he had a soft landing.
He had landed on a lily pad.
"That's weird, I don't recall pressing the self-destruct button." noted Patrick. He had pressed those a few times, with some disastrous results.
Maybe he should reconsider pressing those big red buttons.
Maybe there was a way to make them explode before they reached our heroes.
As it turned out, there was a way to do that.
Sandy could set them on fire.
"Whew!" exclaimed the squirrel that resembled an astronaut.
In addition, they didn't affect Pearl.
The Bomb Bot wondered why that was.
Squidward used firejellies to ignite the Bomb Bots.
This too caused them to explode before they could reach our heroes.
"Perhaps this trip to the swamp wasn't so bad after all." noted the octopus.
Still, he would be happy if he got to leave soon.
"I can never have too much ham!" exclaimed Patrick as he ate a Ham-Mer's ham.
The now unarmed robot wondered why he even bothered trying to fight him.
Ironically, the same thing happened when another Ham-Mer tried to whack Pearl.
"It wasn't as good as my father's Krabby Patties...but that still tasted good!" exclaimed the whale.
Some Fodders attempted to zap Pearl, but it had no effect.
"Why do I feel a slight tingling sensation?" asked the daughter of the founder of the Krusty Krab.
"Is this thing broken?" asked one of the Fodders. Perhaps he was in need of repairs. He had been rebuilt recently in order to fight the heroes once again.
"Did that robot just talk?" inquired Patrick.
"Plankton gave us a voice chip." explained one of the robots.
Perhaps he wanted to communicate with his robots.
Although, giving them sentience could backfire on him. He had found that out when he first built the Duplicatron 3000. The one that had brought Robo Plankton to life.
The robots ran away after a while.
At the end of the swamp, the heroes found Bubble Buddy.
However, he was looking rather green. Literally.
"Are you not feeling well?" asked Patrick.
"That's odd, I don't see a guardian..." questioned Spongebob.
"Don't tell me this trip to the swamp was a waste of time..." said the Invisible Ink.
Where else could the guardian be, anyway? It seemed this was the one place they hadn't checked yet. And there were plankton in the area too.
On the other hand, Spongebob thought it was nice to see an old friend.
Perhaps he could help them find where the last guardian was?
It would be pretty handy if they knew their exact location.
"I remember him...he washed my hand...after I shook hands with Grubby Grouper!" shouted Pearl.
He had some nerve doing that.
Though to be fair, her father probably wouldn't give her money if her fins weren't clean.
"To be honest, I don't really like him." remarked Squidward. Why exactly was he so popular?
His worm complained about how he smelled. And it wasn't hard to see why. There always seemed to be flies surrounding him.
"I want an apology!" demanded the whale. Bubble Buddy had really ruined her day.
Squidward remembered how picky the bubble man was involving his food. At least he wasn't nearly as picky involving his choice of beverage.
Why did Spongebob create Bubble Buddy, anyway? He wasn't too popular among Goo Lagoon visitors. They all thought he was a public menace after a while.
For one thing, he took way too long to use the bathroom. Who spent two hours in there? Granted, he had eaten a lot of Krabby Patties earlier, but still.
However, upon closer inspection, Bubble Buddy seemed unhappy to see the five of them. Even Spongebob.
"Um, I think there's something wrong with him..." noted Spongebob.
Suddenly, Bubble Buddy attacked.
"Whoa! Since when was Bubble Buddy so aggressive?" asked Patrick. Normally he seemed pretty docile. But not today.
"Oh no! Dirty Bubble must have corrupted him!" exclaimed Supersponge. Now Bubble Buddy was Bitter Buddy!
"I sure did! I'm sure that some of you would like to fight him, anyway..." noted the Dirty Bubble.
"Well, he did owe me for the chocolate bar I gave him." remarked Patrick.
Or had he repaid him and had forgotten about it? There was that one time where he thought that Spongebob had eaten his candy bar...even though he had actually eaten it himself.
Perhaps he should have been more trusting of his friend. It would be a real shame if their friendship ended simply because of a candy bar.
"Not me!" shouted Spongebob. Fighting his buddy was not something that he wished to do, though sometimes he was tempted to fight his son because of his behavior.
If only there was a way to change him back.
Wait, maybe there was.
He decided to pull out some soap and start scrubbing Bitter Buddy.
He recoiled from the suds.
"Hmm, I see that you managed to figure out his weakness. Well, I'll see how this turns out." remarked the Dirty Bubble.
Maybe if he was clean, he would turn back to normal. It had worked on the Dirty Bubble back in the day.
However, it seemed that he would need him to hold still for him to be efficient. Otherwise he risked being punched.
It looked as if they would be fighting...for now.
Bitter Buddy punched Patrick, sending him flying.
"Oof!" bellowed the starfish. He was awfully strong for a bubble.
"Hahahahaha! That was hilarious!" exclaimed the Dirty Bubble.
"I don't see what was so funny about that." answered Spongebob.
"Hey, starfish! I'm going to knock you into space!" bellowed Bitter Buddy.
Pearl zapped Bitter Buddy with lightning.
"Ow!" exclaimed the bubble man. It was effective because of his watery body.
Because of that, Squidward attacked him with jellyfish.
"Consider this retribution for everything you put me through." remarked the octopus. To think that he had to be a decent Krusty Krab employee because of him.
This wore him down, but Spongebob still couldn't scrub him.
He started making bubble bombs in retaliation.
These bombs exploded as if they weren't made from bubble.
And to make matters worse, Sandy couldn't use her fire powers to make them blow up before they reached our heroes, like she could could with the Bomb Bots. They were simply too damp.
Though Pearl still didn't have anything to worry about.
Patrick fired shooting stars at his foe.
"Ow! If only I could make a wish on these..." exclaimed Bitter Buddy.
But he eventually started countering by using a bubble shield.
"That's better." said the bubble man.
The shooting stars bounced right off it.
"Ow!" exclaimed Patrick. He was getting a taste of his own medicine.
Maybe if he had a shield of his own, it would even the odds.
"There's got to be a way to get past that bubble shield..." pondered Spongebob.
Squidward pulled out a needle.
He then used it to pop the bubble shield.
"Oh. Why didn't I think of that?" asked Spongebob.
Squidward slapped Bitter Buddy in the face, but he didn't really feel it.
In retaliation, his bubbly adversary tossed him into a tree.
"Oww!" exclaimed Squidward.
Stars swirled around his head.
"Squidward's down!" exclaimed Spongebob.
Unfortunately, that meant no more summons. Which was a shame because it gave them a number advantage.
Well, a bigger one anyway.
Afterwards, Bitter Buddy began to fly.
Which was unfortunate, because this made him harder to hit.
He rained down bubble bombs from above.
"Oof!" bellowed Patrick.
Fortunately, Sandy managed to restrain Spongebob's friend with a lasso.
This gave Supersponge the chance he needed.
"I better scrub as fast as I can!" exclaimed the sponge.
Fortunately, he could scrub pretty fast.
Spongebob finished scrubbing Bitter Buddy.
"This reminds me of the times I scrubbed all those dishes at the sink." remarked Spongebob.
Of course, he didn't really see why he needed a sponge. He WAS a sponge!
As soon as Bubble Buddy was clean, he stopped attacking.
"Did it work?" asked Pearl.
"I think so." nodded Spongebob.
Bubble Buddy was now sparkling.
"Thanks for saving me, Spongebob. I don't know what I would do if I were still evil." remarked Bubble Buddy. Besides, he wanted to set a good example for his son.
"I reckon he's back to normal now." suggested Sandy.
Or maybe he just didn't want to.
A life of a supervillain just wasn't something that he wanted. Though being a supervillain had its advantages. Like having the freedom to do what you want.
"You're welcome, Bubble Buddy. Anything for an old friend!" exclaimed Spongebob.
"Oh, by the way, you can have this." spoke the bubbly resident of Bikini Bottom.
He had the last passcode.
"So Bubble Buddy was the guardian..." noted Spongebob. It was the last person that he would suspect. Dirty Bubble was clever.
"Can we leave the swamp now?" asked Squidward. He felt that he had stayed there long enough. And he was worried that he would encounter more swamp gators.
Besides, his worm needed rescuing.
"I know a shortcut!" exclaimed Bubble Buddy.
"Thank Neptune..." answered the octopus. The sooner he could leave, the better.
"By the way, I think you still owe Mr. Krabs money..." explained Spongebob. He had racked up quite a tab at the Krusty Krab.
"The Krusty Krab doesn't accept bubble money?" asked Bubble Buddy. He was under the impression that Mr. Krabs would accept any kind of currency, considering he paid his employees in Wacky Bucks.
"He tried accepting it, but it popped!" shouted the sponge.
"Whoops." answered the bubble man. He hadn't considered that. Perhaps he shouldn't tip the taxi driver with it. Of course, he had a credit card now.
"Well, you still have time to gather money to pay him. He's still locked up." explained Spongebob.
"Really?! That's a shame. I was hoping for more Krabby Patties." remarked Bubble Buddy.
"Maybe if I turn things in Bikini Bottom back to normal, I can make you some." suggested Supersponge. It would please him to use the grill again.
"Sounds good! My son and I would like that!" exclaimed the father.
"Bubble Buddy has a son?" asked Patrick.
"Yeah...things have changed when he last paid Bikini Bottom a visit." noted Spongebob. He had babysat his son once, though it was a dangerous experience. Why did Bubble Buddy's son want to visit such dangerous places?
"That makes sense." nodded Sandy.
"I wish I wasn't single..." complained Patrick. Perhaps it was because he was unemployed.
"Me too." nodded Pearl.
The five of them left the swamp.
Bubble Buddy waved them goodbye.
Suddenly, Scooter appeared.
"I'm sorry I buried you too close to the high tide." apologized Bubble Buddy. He should have buried him further away. Where it would be safer.
Though he did have to admit it was unusual for a fish to drown when they weren't on dry land.
"These angel wings were spectacular, anyway." remarked Scooter. Besides, he came back to life due to negative continuity.
As the five of them made their way to the lighthouse, Spongebob decided to ask something.
"Why do you think Dirty Bubble chose the lighthouse as his lair?" asked the sponge.
"Being a bubble, he probably prefers an area with high altitude." suggested Sandy.
"Huh?" asked Patrick.
"He likes an area that is high up." explained the scientist.
"Oh." answered the starfish.
Personally Squidward noted that perhaps his job at the Krusty Krab wasn't so bad. At least at the time Plankton hadn't taken over Bikini Bottom.
He still wanted more money though.
Dirty Bubble had witnessed the battle with Bubble Buddy. It seems that the three guardians couldn't defeat the five of them. Though he liked to think that they were strong opponents.
Like Manray, he figured he would keep an eye on the heroes as they fought against his forces. He didn't want them to catch him by surprise.
It seemed the heroes would be coming for him next. They now had the three passcodes.
"Hmm, I'm beginning to see why these heroes defeated Manray...but I think I'll be fine." answered the Dirty Bubble. He was more prepared for the heroes than Manray had been.
He was looking forward to fighting the five of them.
Well, all that's left now is to take on the Dirty Bubble. Maybe instead of fighting him they should clean him. It would really clean up his act. Heh heh.
I might feature Bubble Buddy in later chapters. I'm not sure how I would include him though. Spongebob doesn't have the time to be babysitting his son.
Though that would be an adventure in itself, now wouldn't it?