CHAPTER 12 - THE TUNNEL
"But before you could do that, we have to get out of this town and into Bikini Bottom," Howard said.
"Good point," I replied. "Let's get moving."
We started once more to walk around, but this time, we had a goal. Now that I've figured out exactly what I was supposed to do not only to redeem myself but also to give an old friend some peace of mind, my days of aimless wandering are finally over. My life already had direction and purpose once again, and neither had anything to do with stealing the Krabby Patty formula or planning world domination. Every time that we almost got trampled on, we pulled each other away from the soles of the bigger fish. Neither of us has felt alone at all even if we're in the middle of the City of Apathy, a name we chose to call this unknown town. We stopped at a nearby corner after a few meters or so of running.
"Do you think... we should go... through the drain... instead?" I said, pointing at the curb of the sidewalk. I paused at every other word as I caught up for breath.
"Good idea," he replied. We went straight to the road's corner, being wary of boats passing by and of the soles of pedestrians. A few meters in front of us was an entrance to the drains.
"Barnacles!" I shouted in anger as soon as we went down the drain. Most of the inside was pitch-black, the rest just dimly-lit by small rays of sunlight that go through the entrances to the drains. We were inside what seemed to be part of a network of underground, rounded tubes.
"Why be so angry all of a sudden?"
"I can't believe I haven't thought of this earlier! I had to go all the way through the sidewalks for normal-sized fish and get trampled on repetitively when I could have just passed through here, where no one else could possibly step on me!"
"Just continue walking," Howard said, restoring my focus on my goal. "Besides, if you passed here, you could have never met me."
"But my main goal of going to this unknown town is to forget all about my past," I replied.
"If you didn't pass through those roads, you could have never known what happened to your old friend," Howard continued. "Whatever it is you're doing now, it's a good thing. Remember, we are doing this so that we could go back to Bikini Bottom and reconcile with your old friend. You might be the one who is becoming forgetful."
I was no longer able to reply when Howard said those words. He was right. If I had thought of this idea earlier, I would have just stayed in this tunnel for the rest of my life. But soon enough, I would get hungry, so I would have to emerge from this tunnel eventually and pass through the sidewalks or run the risk of getting caught anyway just like what happened when Howard and I snuck into that restaurant and ate some pesto. I would still know about what happened to Mr. Krabs if I see someone reading the newspaper or if I hear someone talk about him. Besides, he is a world-famous restaurant owner, so news about him getting a heart attack is definitely big news. However, that eventful day when I was freed from that prison was never even published on the newspapers. No one really ever talked about the fact that a would-be dictator was set free from Neptune's dungeon. It seemed that only Mr. Krabs and Howard knew, or Spongebob, if Mr. Krabs had told him.
We held on to the rounded 'walls' to maintain our balance in these slippery pipes.
"I'm just wondering," I said, steering the conversation towards a different topic. "Why do we have drains and tunnels like these when we are underwater anyway?"
"And I've also wondered why we have a beach resort underwater," he replied.
"You mean The Goo Lagoon?"
"Yup," he replied.
"After all these years, I've only observed the great mysteries of the world now," I said, full of wonder and fascination. "All my life has been spent on that one pursuit where I no longer had the time or the interest in anything else."
"Neither did I," he replied. "All those years have been spent trying to take care of that restaurant that never really made it big. I ended up becoming forgotten. No one really ever talked about that restaurant anymore."
"I also owned a restaurant before," I continued. "Obviously, it was a blasted fiasco. Even if I advertised my business in billboards and backs of phonebooks, The Chum Bucket never rang a bell to anyone. Or maybe it did, but for all the wrong reasons."
"Wilson?" Howard said all of a sudden.
"Wait, who's Wilson, anyway?" I replied in surprise.
"You," he replied. "Landon, it's getting dark already. Darker than it already was in here..."
"It's Sheldon, not Wilson or Landon," I corrected him. His forgetfulness was starting to set in again.
I soon noticed that the light rays that went through the tiny entrances to this network of pipes turned into a shade of orange that soon enough, faded away. All we had to rely on were the faint lights that reflected from boats and neon signs.
"Ouch!" Howard grumbled and he stopped walking. He sat down for a while and decided to rest. "I guess I'm not as fit as I used to be anymore..." Just seconds after, he started to snore.
I also rested my slightly aching, taut muscles. Today was another very long day for me. So many things have happened, from the time I met my new best friend Howard in that alley, ate some pesto from a restaurant, got shooed from said restaurant, learned about Mr. Krabs's worsening condition, and started the journey back to Bikini Bottom. I closed my eye and tried to sleep, but I couldn't. Something in my mind kept telling me to move forward. I wanted to continue on with this journey back home.
However, something else also urged me to wait for Howard to rest well before we can move on with this journey. It was only now when I fully grasped sympathy and friendship. I knew that I had more important things to do than to care for an old stranger in a big city I got lost in, such as to think of my own survival, but I knew I just had to be with this poor guy who had it worse than me in life. Besides, he is the only one I know, besides my family, who shares my perspective, the Plankton's Eye View, both figuratively and literally.
My family has also helped me to try and get the formula, but Mr. Krabs scared the barnacles out of all of us when I read aloud that plankton is the secret ingredient to a Krabby Patty. Unlike them, however, I'm not foolish enough to actually believe in that. I always knew that Mr. Krabs was very sly. I had to work alone again because they were all too scared to try again, no matter how many times I've tried to convince them that Mr. Krabs just tricked all of us.
[Author's Note: Wow, it sure is great to be able to update again! Interesting things have happened so far in the time of my hiatus. I noticed that my trollfic, One Less Lonely Gurl, has already been taken down by the admins, along with a few other trollfics and badfics. Good job, admins! But if you guys want to read the trollfic in its original form (no MSTs or edits) and relive the lulz, there is a rehost of it already in a subpage of my blog.
rehost site: onelesslonelygurlfanfic . blogspot
Also, someone already made a TV Tropes page for the said trollfic. I gotta admit, it's a pretty amusing read.
TVTropes: tvtropes pmwiki / / Fanfic / OneLessLonelyGurl
Cartoonatic55 - I'm glad you're enjoying this fanfic so far. You don't need to apologize for that long review for OLLG. That fanfic deserves your flame comment anyway. The mere fact that you flamed that story means that there is still hope for humanity left. Besides, it must have been quite a cathartic experience to be able to vent out your frustrations. By the way, the reference to Brewdening Love is a coincidence. I haven't even heard of that fanfic until I read your review.
Actually, that was a stealth shoutout to My Immortal. There are actually many MI shoutouts in OLLG, especially in Chapter 2. How? There is a character in MI named Lucian, who is a video game character in Valkyrie Profile (although it's possible that Todd didn't mean for Lucius to share names with said cideo (geddit?) game character. Ward, on the other hand, is a video game character in Final Fantasy VIII.]