As always, Stroke, Mr. Skimmer, Niches, Chang, and Tanachi are mine. Gill and the Tank Gang belong to Disney and Pixar.

Here it is! Chapter 6! Gill's first year in the tank. This also includes the first ever initiation ceremony and some of his failed escape plans. The worrying about if he looks like Phil is kind of stupid, but I left it in there. I know Deb being shot out of the volcano wouldn't have fallen in the dentist's chair, and Gill wouldn't be able to fit down the sink, but…well, it's there. Enjoy it anyway. Just a warning, though, it's long!!!

I update as soon as I get a few reviews, so send them in pronto! Thanks for the ones I have received!

FYI: to answer a question, I got the dentist's name from Finding Nemo: The Essential Guide. The book gives his name as Philip P. Sherman. Although if I took everything in that book to be true, then this fic would be a lie, since it gives a different account of Gill's past life. This will be addressed in the sequel to this story.

Chapter 6: Chain Gang Leader

Two years before a predestined separation, a tragic death left behind qualms for the future. Not to worry. You will soon learn that birds of a feather flock together, that salvation can come from unusual sources, that mistakes are part of life, and that love will always pull through in the long run. Shaping the future is a tough job. Someone's got to do it.

With a short cough, I awakened in an unfamiliar area, surrounded by the symbolic blue rocks. As I slowly pulled myself up into the water, I got my first look at where I would spend the next two years of my life. At the time, it seemed a friendly and inviting point. At least here I had some room to swim around. Looking out, I observed the humans sitting in chairs and Phil at one end, cleaning off something in a sink. I set my eyes on the fake ship, the decorative objects, the helmet, the skull, the masks, and the volcano, not registered yet as a cannon. At last there was the strange metal instrument in the corner. The strange, dangerous, connective, salvaging instrument.

Slowly, the others crept up out of their hiding places. I was barely aware when a small, striped humbug, a long, brown puffer fish, and an overexcited shrimp discretely snuck up, observing me from afar, addressing this new addition. Should they welcome Mr. Scary New Guy?

At last, the puffer fish had the gusto to glide up and meet me. He nearly touched my long snout. Staring into my eyes, he spoke in a deep, clear, crisp tone. "Greetings, newcomer. Can you understand me?"

I breathed a sigh of relief. For a while I had been afraid that they didn't speak English. "Yes, don't worry, I speak English. I pointed to the other inhabitants. "Do they?"

The puffer fish nodded his big head. "Well, the shrimp's bilingual. He speaks English and French." Slowly, the puffer fish turned around and gestured to the other two tank dwellers. They swam up, although they looked a little nervous.

"H-Hello," the striped humbug greeted me.

The shrimp offered me a polite, "Bonjour." Then, a game of 20 questions commenced.

"Where did you come from?" the puffer fish asked.

"The reef," I answered, since that was really where I had come from.

"The Reef?" the striped humbug said, confused. "I've never heard of a store called The Reef."

"It's not a store!" I cried. "The reef! You know, the coral reef!"

The shrimp's little eyes grew wide. "In zee ocean? Zat reef?"

"Of course," I answered him. This should be obvious and not need any extra explanation.

Like a little pink dart, the shrimp was instantly on my back, picking at my skin.

"Hey, get off me!" I yelled at him. With a swift flick of my filamentous extension, he was flung off and landed in the rocks below.

The striped humbug backed off.

"Hey, don't get all riled up," the puffer fish said. "Jacques just does that to new people to decontaminate them. He's sort of a neat freak."

After a moment, I looked back down at the little shrimp. "Uh, sorry Jacques. I thought you were attacking me." I could see the fear in most of their eyes, so I tried to make amends. I stuck out my left fin. "Really, I'm sorry. My name is Gill. I'm really not a violent fish, I've just been through a lot."

Slowly, the striped humbug glided up and shook my fin. "Well, that's good. My name is Deb." She turned to her side and pointed at the glass siding. "Over there is my twin sister, Flo. Flo, say hello to the new guy."

I looked around, confused. "Where?"

"Right there!" Deb cried, jabbing at the glass. "You can't see her?"

The puffer fish swam up next. "Don't mind her," he said. "She's a little nutso."

A little while later, I realized that she was talking about her reflection and I nearly burst out laughing.

The puffer fish then offered his fin and I shook it. "The name's Bloat," he told me. "Glad to have you on board."

After his introduction, I floated there uncomfortably as Jacques crawled around, cleaning me, and Deb swam around, examining me. She laid a fin on my filamentous extension.

"I like this thing on your head. It looks really nice. Wish I had one."

"Everyone like my filamentous extension," I commented.

"Your what?"

"Filamentous extension."

"What's a filamentous extension?"

Bloat could see my frustration, so he explained it to her.

Jacques finished his cleaning job and hopped off back onto the pebbles.

Deb swam around to my other side and examined my scars. "What happened to your fin?" she asked.

Now was my chance, I thought. I could make them respect me by saying the right things. Telling about the shark attack would not earn respect. "I'd rather not talk about it," I told them.

"Eets okay," Jacques tried to assure me, "Vee can keep a zeegret."

I swam a little away from them. "I said I don't want to talk about it," I repeated.

"Please?" Deb begged.

Fortunately, Bloat zipped up in front of them. "Hey, if the man says he doesn't want to talk about it, he doesn't have to. Understand?"

"Geez, Bloat what's with you defending him like that?" Deb asked.

The puffer opened his big mouth to explain, but I beat him to it. "He's doing that because in order to coexist, we all need to be able to get along. That can't happen without a little sacrifice now and then. You can't have it your way all the time, and you need to get used to that."

Thankfully, my forwardness actually made her think. "You're…you're right. I'm sorry, that was rude of me."

Suddenly, Phil approached our tank and peered in, since he had a short break at the moment. "Oh good, that new one finally woke up, guess I should throw some pellets in."

A woman's voice came over a small speaker. "Dr. Sherman, the front office would like to see you."

He pressed a button and called back, "Just a minute, I'm going to feed the fish."

"Does he have sponges?" I asked Bloat.

"Sponges?" By his tone of voice, I could tell that he'd never heard of sponges before.

Phil yanked open the top of the tank and threw in a bunch of that strange fibrous substance.

Bloat and Deb immediately swam to the top and began chewing on it.

I swam up beside them, confused. "What is that stuff and why are you eating it?" I asked them.

Deb looked shocked. "It's fish food, silly. Here, have a bite."

I stared at the little pieces in disgust. All my life, I'd never eaten anything but sponge pieces. It looked like that was going to have to change if I was to continue living. Somehow I managed to swallow my pride and a cheap pellet with it.

As Phil walked back into the room, I glanced sideways at him and noticed that he was looking at me. "Tanachi's full of baloney. He was just telling me that fish had a disease to scare me. See, he's eating."

Later that day, I learned that each of the fish I had met had their own places to sleep. Jacques always retreated into the fake helmet when the lights went out, Bloat took refuge beside the tiki heads, and Deb found shelter in the fake shipwreck structure.

Quickly, I glanced around, looking for a small, dark space to call my own. The hut seemed small enough, but I was afraid it was too small. The space beside the false volcano was glowing and definitely too bright. At last, I set my sights on the fake pirate skull. Sure, it was ugly, but after squeezing through the eyehole, I found the interior to be quite accommodating. Of course, I scared Bloat, Jacques, and Deb the next morning by emerging from it. They had formulated in their minds some sort of proof that if a fish took residence in the skull, it meant he was "tough."

These premature days were filled with worry. At first, I worried about whether I looked like Phil, and I spent hours comparing us.

Finally, Bloat snapped me out of this when I asked him if I looked like him. He replied, "Well, do you want to look like Phil?"

I shook my head vigorously.

"Then you don't look like Phil."

Moving on from this, I then worried that I was becoming a tyrant, rising to power through fear. This again returned to my friend's explanation. If I didn't want to be a tyrant, I wasn't a tyrant.

About a week later, I came into contact with another different species. I was innocently swimming along the side near my area when something suddenly smashed into the window outside. Normally, I wouldn't pay any attention to things like this, but following this, a big bird with a giant bill poked his head in beside the tank. Bloat, Jacques, and Deb came gliding up beside me.

"Hey there, Nigel," Bloat called to the bird.

"You know this bird?" I asked him.

"Yeah, we met because he keeps slamming into the window."

Nigel poked his head a little father in. "No, I'm just the friendly neighborhood pelican. That a new guy?"

"Oh, yeah." I swam a little closer to the edge, although it really wasn't that necessary. "I'm Gill, pleased to meet you."

Nigel laughed a little. "Wow, the new guy's got manners. Unlike some other fish I know…" I'm not sure whom he was talking about, but I thought I saw a glance at Bloat. I tucked this character in the back of my mind, since he would surface again many times.

Days passed slowly with this crazy crew and I kept my sanity by reading over the shoulders of various customers sitting in the waiting room. You would think someone would notice a big fish like me hovering above someone for 10-minute intervals. I read about the Olympics, the latest fashions, parental techniques, new technologies, the adventures of a group of magical ponies, and cooking tips I would rather not have read. The others thought I was strange for being able to read, but still accepted me as their leader since I knew more than them and I lived in the intimidating skull.

The same feeling as in the little goldfish bowl came back to me: This is nice and all, that I get to meet a lot of new fish, but this isn't my home. This isn't what I had come all this way for. In the future, I would find out that I was wrong again.

The four of us liked to watch the works on the humans in the office. By observing these bizarre spectacles, we expanded our vocabulary, and soon we were talking like technical junkies, although we really knew nothing at all.

At last, a while later, I wasn't "the new guy" anymore. The addition was a clingy, nervous yellow tang. He screamed when he saw me. It also took a while for him to adjust to eating the fish food pellets. In choosing a sleeping spot, he took a spot next to the bubble-blowing fake treasure chest he had become obsessed with. A few days later, we introduced this new guy to Nigel, and everything seemed to be going fine. However, I felt there was something we should do for this newcomer, a sort of welcoming ceremony.

As I stared out the eyehole, in the dark, I looked up at the fake volcano, spewing bubbles from an internal engine thing. The idea struck me- we could conduct an initiation ceremony with a test of "bravery." Pretending that the bubble spray was a dangerous trap, we would force new people to go through it, also pretending to "cleanse" them and do some mysterious chanting. As I gazed at the scene before me, I could see it being played out before my eyes. At first, it seemed a little cruel, but afterwards, once everything was done, the newcomer would feel confident and empowered to make a difference in the world. This is what I wanted the others to feel.

Instantly, I poked out of the left eyehole and made my way over to the tiki base, where Bloat slept. One tap on his head from my snout was all it took to raise him.

"Huh? What? Is it morning already? Hey, it's still dark!"

"Shh," I hissed at him, holding my left fin up. "I have an idea, and I need your approval."

"Huh?" Bloat was still blinking, trying to see, and he at last laid eyes on me. "Gill? Why'd you wake me up like that?"

I sighed, creating some bubbles. "Didn't you hear anything I just said?" It took a long time to get him to listen and not fall back asleep, but I told him about my idea, and he thought it was a good.

The next day, I managed to have a meeting with the other three members while hiding from the new yellow tang. We found a space behind the fake shipwreck to meet, although I had to pull my filamentous extension down because the tip was sticking up. Bloat and I explained the ceremony idea to Jacques and Deb. They were for it too, and we began setting up a plan for how it would proceed. We all decided that Jacques should be the escort, Deb would carry seaweed pieces and be the "cleanser", Bloat would chant on my side, and I would conduct the ceremony, since it was my idea.

I was happy to see how excited everyone was about this. Deb immediately began gathering little fake seaweed branches for her duty. Bloat quietly tried out different chants, trying to find the right one. Jacques didn't have anything to practice, being the little escort, so he just stood on top of the helmet, on the lookout for the new tang.

Using a stripped seaweed stick, I tried to write out my speech using goopy substances from the bottom. I was suddenly appalled, realizing I had forgotten how to spell "mountain", and quickly erased it. It wasn't as if anyone would have noticed. None of the others in the tank at this time could read.

Deciding on memorizing the speech instead of writing it down, I set to work piecing together fake yellow seaweed leaves that I liked to call "bananagrass". I arranged the pieces in a ring and made sure they would fit around my head, like a crown. This was my headdress.

Just at that moment, Bloat floated by and got a look at it. "Hey, that's cool! Can you make one for me too?"

I looked around the area, searching for another bananagrass seaweed stalk, but there were none left. "Uh, sorry, I'm out of bananagrass."

He pouted for a little while, but didn't argue because I was the scary fish that lived in the fake skull. Now I knew I was facing a different kind of discrimination.

Anyway, the night finally came, and everything was in place. Jacques scuttled out to the treasure chest and awakened our inductee. On the way to the illuminated plastic volcano, Deb whacked the new yellow tang with a seaweed leaf, "cleansing" him. Then she swam around to the back o chant with Bloat. As they were chanting, Jacques led the new tang up to the summit and then fell back down for the next part of the ceremony. I hovered a few inches in front of him, on the other side, wearing my headdress and trying to look overbearing. I guess it worked a little too well, since he was cowering there, muttering to himself. I raised my left fin to bring the chanting to a halt and looked down at him.

"State your name," I said, since this was required for the following speech.

He backed off a little bit and chewed on his fins. "Um…uh…I…I don't have a name…"

"Don't worry," I told him, "I'll give ya one." In my mind, that sentence was continued with "But at the end of the ceremony, since I need to think up a good one." "Newcomer of sunny yellow, you have come to the summit of Mt. Wannahockaloogie to join in our ranks. To prove yourself worthy, you must now swim through…the Ring of Fire!"

At that instant, Jacques slammed on the volcano bubble pedal and the bubbles came shooting out the top. The trembling tang nearly screamed again. I tried hard not to show my amusement. If I laughed, it would mess up the whole thing. This was a realization that even the mildest and gentlest of things can be terrifying if they are set up to be terrifying. I am the plastic volcano, lots of flashy lights and intimidating warning signs, but inside soft and penetrable.

At last, the tang zoomed through the bubble column, with closed eyes. He kept on going until he whacked into the glass siding. Bloat and Deb lost their serious masks and began chuckling.

Smiling, I pulled the yellow tang back in front of them. "From now on, you shall be known as Bubbles. Welcome, brother Bubbles."

One night, I was lying on the bottom of my ugly, comfortable hut, deeply thinking about my life up to this point. Suddenly, I began to get angry, and I don't get angry often. I didn't swim hundreds of miles, endure a shark attack, survive Shock Rope Ship, and deal with two losses, just to be caught and placed in a little box where I would grow old and die. I banged the sloping side, out of frustration and nearly toppled it over. If I had been in a cave, I wouldn't have such problems.

Suddenly, my gills constricted again, and I fell back to the bottom, coughing. This always happened when I got too worked up over something, but in this environment, they had been malfunctioning a little more. This water was different from ocean water- it wasn't as pure and easy to breathe. Up until then, I hadn't told the tank members about my asthma, viewing it as a weakness, but I wondered how long I could get away with not telling them.

The next day, I found a thin layer of goop covering the front glass panel. Picking up the stripped seaweed stick, I unintelligently wrote a cryptic message on the panel. "We are dying. Please let us free." ( I had to think of how to spell "dying" and "please," though.)

A few minutes later, Phil actually noticed the message when he went out to get someone. Of course, to them, it was written backwards, but still legible. "Huh?" he said. "Who's been writing on my fish tank?"

"Nobody," one little kid spoke up. "The fish wrote it."

I was paralyzed. One of the golden rules of animal coexistence says that if you can write, don't show it. I couldn't believe I had overlooked something like that.

Thankfully, Phil just laughed. "Fish can't write, you know that."

"But it did!" he insisted. "That one there, the big one with the stripes."

I quickly turned away, pretending that I wasn't listening.

Phil laughed again. "You see, it's impossible for a fish to write, their fins don't bend the right way." He stepped up and pointed at me and I nearly died. "This one especially wouldn't be able to write. Half of his right fin is missing."

"He's left-handed," the boy insisted. "I saw him writing with that piece of seaweed." They argued about it as they entered into the other room.

I breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing I wanted was to be in trouble with the animal communication committee. As soon as their backs were turned, I pretended to slam into the side, wiping the message off.

"The clean should be coming soon," Deb commented as she glided by. She stopped for a moment as she passed me. "What happened, Gill? You've got gunk all over your side."

"It's nothing," I answered her, but no sooner did I enter the other side of the tank, when Jacques jumped onto my side and the gunk was gone in a matter of minutes.

About a half an hour later, the top was yanked off by the notorious hand, and we were scooped up, one by one, and placed in plastic bags. I had a vague sense of déjà vu as I floated around, looking at the scenery from a creased bubble.

There was a sigh in the front, and I looked up at Bubbles, the closest to the window. "Look at the ocean," he said. "It's right there. If only we were out there right now…"

He turned a mental crank in my head, and the wheels began spinning. "Then let's go!"

Everyone was now looking at me. "Go? Where?!" Deb cried.

"Out the window!" I cried. "We're in rolling spheres of water!" With that, I jabbed at the side of the bag and it shot forward. I banged into Bloat, and we had a domino effect, Bubbles shot forward the most, almost nudging out the window. I was about to jab again, but at that moment, Phil finished with the cleaning job, grabbed my bag, and emptied its contents back in prison. Dumbfounded, the rest just stood there, waiting for doom. They were emptied back in also.

The chance was missed, but the hope was most definitely not gone. At last I felt like I had a mission and a reason for arriving at this horrible place- I had to return these captured fish to their rightful place in the ocean.

Staring at the volcano for a while, I formulated the first of a string of liberating plots, this one the most naïve. In this plot, I rallied the others and together we jumped up and knocked the cover off. Then, we all worked to turn and angle the volcano. I thought that if we got enough power, the volcano could act as a cannon, propelling us out to sea. Bubbles was the reluctant guinea pig. With one swift turn from Jacques, the jet stream erupted and Bubbles went flying straight out the window. However, I didn't hear a splash after that.

A minute later, a familiar voice reached our hearing range. "Help! …in the tree!"

That was when I noticed the little yellow tang caught in a high tree outside the window. Quickly, I began pulling up fake seaweed strands. "Hurry!" I yelled to the others. "Start tying them together!"

The other members didn't know what else to do, so they followed my orders. Soon we had a long seaweed rope that I threw out the window. Bubbles grabbed onto it and we carefully pulled him back up into the tank. He coughed and spluttered.

"I…I nearly suffocated!"

I shook my head. "No, this is definitely not going to work. The volcano doesn't have enough power to make it to the ocean." However, I did try that approach again, by myself. I tried so hard to gain higher altitude that I smacked into the top of the window and fell back onto the counter. Thankfully, it was daytime, and Phil noticed me and placed me back in prison. I tried several different variations, all times ending up on the counter or the floor. Phil was getting sick and tired of saving my gills.

One day, I was listening in on a conversation between Phil and a customer.

"My kids just love your fish tank," she said. "And I have to admire it also. You did a good job of putting it together. The fish are beautiful too. I especially like that one in the back with the long fin. Is that an angelfish?"

"Oh, Houdini?" Phil said, pointing at me. "That's a Moorish idol. It's missing half a fin, though." Why did he always point out my flaws to everyone? Whenever he talked about the others, it was only good things.

The lady laughed a little. "Why's it called Houdini?"

"Oh, that's just a name I gave him, since he's an escape artist. I'm always finding him flopping around on the counter or the floor, and I don't know how he got there."

I almost laughed at them. It became a well-known fact that humans generally thought fish were stupid and couldn't think for themselves.

A few days later, I happened to be pacing around the office side, and I noticed a few books lying open on a desk. One was a fascinating instruction manual, with a detailed diagram, of the filtering device sitting in the corner of the tank. I instantly memorized this diagram, thinking that it might come in handy one day.

The second, fascinating piece was an article on reducing ocean pollution. One sentence struck me and whirred the gears again- "Since everything that goes down the drains goes into our oceans, we ask our residents to be wise in choosing what to toss down the sink." Everything that goes down the drains goes into our oceans. I was aiming in the wrong direction- we needed to shoot for the sink, not the window.

I streamed for the other members, ready with my new information. As soon as I told them about it, they were already doubtful.

"No way," Bubbles said. "I'm not going to try that again. I was almost killed being launched out of that window!"

I shook my head. "Well, I'll make sure you're not the one to go first. C'mon, don't you want to get out? I know this is going to work!"

Bloat turned around and gave me a questioning stare. "What are you going to bet?" This was his only way of assuring that I truly meant what I said.

Not knowing what else I could put on the line, I grabbed my headdress and tossed it in front of him. "I'll bet my bananagrass."

That seemed to satisfy him, and that night I thought would be liberation night. We tilted the volcano, as normal, but this time we didn't have to rotate it. This time, Deb was the one going first. She went shooting off in a perfect arch…and landed straight in the office chair.

"Help!" she yelled.

We instantly got to work again, forming the seaweed chain, and tossed it to her.

As soon as she touched down into the water, Bloat looked over at me. Then he grabbed the side of my headdress. "Alright, gimme that bananagrass!"

I had choice but to surrender, and he paraded around the next day, wearing my headdress. (Phil was pretty much convinced his fish were crazy by now. Mysterious writing appeared on the side of the tank, Houdini managed to magically appear outside every now and then, some mornings the seaweed would be all torn up, and now the puffer fish was wearing some sort of crown of seaweed.)

Soon after that, there was another new tank member. (Maybe he was brought to try to ease some of the insanity.) Anyway, this new purple-and-yellow gramma became Jacques' new best friend, both of them hating germs. He was long and skinny and just as nervous as Bubbles, if not even more nervous.

Fortunately for him, I was forced to hand over the ceremony speech to Bloat, new master of the bananagrass. In a way, it was a good thing. His voice was so booming and forceful, and he added a few words to my initial speech.

I gave this new clean freak the name of Gurgle, and we introduced him to Nigel, and the normal regulations. He chose a sleeping spot next to the volcano where he said it was "bright and sanitary." This particular fellow never really made an impact on my life, but he did have a genius idea one day.

Bloat was arguing with Gurgle about redecoration and what new things should be taken in or out. Suddenly he puffed up from overexcitement. As he went floating by Gurgle, the little fish managed to grab his side and chuck him like a big volleyball, over to my side.

"C'mon, Gil, hit him back!" he called.

Normally, I'm not one for frivolous play, but how could I resist a chance to get back at that bananagrass swindler? I whacked the inflated Bloat back over to him.

We had a good rally going for a while, but then Gurgle slammed into the sidewall trying to return him. After that, Bloat deflated and we had to give up. Only a few people in the waiting room witnessed our strange underwater game of "pufferball", thank goodness.

After this, I kept trying time after time to get a new plan, but it wasn't working.

Springtime was upon us, and with it, came something dreadful.

A new fish was added to the mix- a goldfish with hardly any personality. He wasn't nervous or confident, and he wasn't friendly or grumpy. Occasionally, he sneezed, it sounding very much like a laugh. This was what made me name him Chuckles at his ceremony. In my mind, he didn't seem to have a purpose in life…he just existed. Soon, I was about to find out exactly what his purpose was.

One day, a little human girl came into the office, and Phil greeted her with excitement. Then I realized that this was his niece whose birthday was coming up.

"Look what I have for you," he said to her.

I closed my eyes, totally uninterested. Then a noise, louder than a sonic boom shook me out of my peace.

"Wake up, fishy!" the girl's gaping mouth said. The horrible noise continued as she banged the outside of the tank.

I quickly retreated behind my fake skull, and saw that Deb, Bloat, Bubbles, Jacques, Gurgle, and Chuckles were taking refuge behind the fake shipwreck.

"You like the fish?" Phil said in a sweet voice. "Well guess what? You want a fish to take home with you?"

The girl finally stopped banging and looked up at her uncle. "Yea! Fishy, fishy!"

I looked around frantically. Who was going to be going with this monster? I really didn't want anybody to go, but thought that maybe if I went, I'd be able to escape. I floated up a little as Phil reached in with a plastic bag. However, he wasn't aiming for me. The bag swooped in and picked up Chuckles. He sneezed a little and waved to us. We all waved back at him.

"Bye, Chuckles!" Deb called.

"Enjoy your new life!" Bloat added.

Those sentences had a dual meaning.

As soon as Phil handed Chuckles' bag to this little girl, she began to shake it, violently. I turned away, unable to see this. The girl squished it, bounced it around and around, and continued to do so for a whole ten minutes. How could Phil allow her to do this to his fish? That, to this day, I still do not know. I saw Chuckles' little orange body slamming against the top repeatedly. At last, the girl stopped shaking and held up the bag, happily.

Phil snapped a picture of her. Then he happened to look in the bag. "Goodness, Darla, …the fish…!"

We all gasped and came out of our hiding places. Chuckles was upside-down, motionless…dead. I'd heard of fish dying before, my own mother and father had died, but I had never before seen an actual dead fish. These horrific images were seared into my mind. Even today, I can still see it happening with terrible accuracy. We all watched as Phil took the bag and emptied the dead body into the toilet. The solemn flushing noise echoed throughout our heads.

Suddenly, I knew something good had to come from this loss, and I knew what. My desperate mind suddenly thought that maybe if we all pretended to be dead, Phil would flush us all down the toilet, and we could escape. A contradictory thought popped up a minute later, and I knew that it was useless. Phil would probably wonder why all his loony fish had suddenly keeled over.

Then, I remembered the initial failed bag escape. If only we could get Phil to put us back into those bags, but the tank would have to be dirty. How to make the tank dirty? After thinking about this, I turned my attention to the filter on the side of the tank. That was what kept the tank from getting dirty every day. If there was some way to jam it up… I surfaced in the area between the water and the lid. Slowly, I moved close to the device and tried to peek in. I just caught a glimpse of a rotating blade before the water exit wheel scratched my snout and I fell back down into the water. The others asked me what I had been doing up there, and I had to make up something like I was going up there to try to get a better look at the toilet.

A few days later, a replacement came to us in the form of a starfish. We all instantly liked her. At the ceremony, she was named Peach, although I was nice enough not to do the bubble thing, since she had a disadvantage. The first extraordinary thing I noticed about Peach was that, like me, she could read. By sticking to the glass siding, she could read things that were even too far away for me to read. Through this, we became close friends. She was always telling me what customers were reading, and would read things for me that were too far away. She also came in handy because she was always stuck to the edge, and made a great spy.

The next year passed very slowly. However, I still had not accepted the fact that I'd probably be in this stupid little box for the rest of my life, and I thought I never would. There was still hope shining somewhere in me, and as long as I had that hope, I had a reason to keep going and keep on trying. I was a little off-target by thinking that my purpose in life was to liberate the tank fish. It might have been part of the reason for my existence, but I was soon to know the real reason I was here. Destiny was creeping up, and I was ready for it.