Chapter 2: Casual Revelations

Occasionally my attention was broken by the sound of Dave's henchmen entering and leaving my office, each arrival and departure slowly but surely removing the stacks upon stacks of paper that filled the room like chipping stone with a pickaxe. It had finally gotten to the point where I could return to working at my desk, the many papers having been cleared enough to use my computer, and punch in all the financial information I could to be submitted to the banks. I thought myself lucky that Dave's henchmen were so smart, and helped me with freaking accounting stuff. I would find myself wondering if they'd even be more productive than actual people, and hilariously thought of what a world would look like with octopuses working in an everyday office with people like it was a normal thing.

I had to blink a few times to try and get myself focusing again. It was way too easy to get distracted, even by myself.

I found that instead of my eyes peering back down at the papers, my eyes glanced at the time on the bottom right of my computer screen. I had only been doing this for three hours since my last break, but it felt like an eternity. I could use another break, I thought to myself. Just a short one.

My hand reached for the mouse to my computer as I minimized the financial spreadsheet and brought up my blogs home site, scrolling through its contents mindlessly for a time as I began to scan over the many different discourse threads, pictures, and entertainment highlights that others had dropped onto the feed.

'Penguins situated back in zoos. Homecoming celebration,' one had read, below the headline an image of penguins happily swimming and playing in their exhibits. My mind seemed to shoot back in time to recall all the times I had helped Dave to kidnap penguins in his second attempt at exacting revenge on them. He had told me the story about why he did what he had done, but for the life of me I never really understood how it could have happened in the first place. I wasn't a zookeeper, and didn't know anyone who was a zookeeper, so it's not like I knew of the intricacies of picking and choosing what animals get exhibited or not. What made people like penguins more than… octopuses, anyway? Yes they were cute, but was that all?

I continued to scroll then, seemingly attempting to bury those thoughts, and moved to the next story below. It was an ad for Rayonna's beauty products, ironically. There were a lot of pictures of flawless skinned girls, and below that a video that started to play the actual commercial. I had it muted, but watching as they started pretending to put this makeup on their already smooth skin made me roll my eyes.

I proceeded to scroll past that one, too.

I did this for long while, forgetting that I had set out to help with the pledge drive funds on the desk in front of me. It had even gotten to the point where the coming and going of the henchmen didn't even break me from my focus on the computer screen, my eyes catching every image and every cluster of words with each stride of the mouse. I felt like at that point I was just browsing to browse, seeing but not really absorbing what was crossing my dash, when suddenly, I found my eyes widening as a new image briefly came into view. I had mindlessly scrolled passed it, catching myself however, and scrolled back up.

It was images of Dr. Octavius Brine.

In these photos there were crude edits of red circles around certain parts of Dave's body in his disguise, ranging from his head, his fake ass red wig, his thin legs—everything. I was starting to wonder why the hell someone would post this, pointing out some of Dave's weird traits, when I came to the text portion of the post. I felt like my eyes couldn't get any bigger at that moment as I began to read, a sense of dread flowing through me that felt like my own circulatory system was about to strangle me.

"Dr. Octavius Brine is and OCTOPUS!" I cried out loud, reading the first sentence of the post as if I was reading out loud a death omen. A couple of the henchmen that were in the room with me paused, their tentacles wrapped around the stacks of paper as they looked at me. Silence seemed to overtake the room then, but it was quite the opposite in comparison to the absolute batshit chaos that my mind was going through then and there.

I continued to read the post in excruciating silence: 'Dr. Octavius Brine is actually an octopus! Here you can see his long thin legs, and big abnormally shaped head. I have seen him with my own eyes, and I speak the truth! You all have been told lies!'

"Holy shit!" I screamed, sitting up from my chair so abruptly that it fell over the instant I made it to my feet. I literally jumped over the table then, ran out the door, then pelted down the hallway so fast that I felt like I could outrun even freaking Classified. My heart was racing so hard that my vision became somewhat scurried, making me feel like I was in a dazed dream or something. Reality definitely wasn't comprehensible as I made that hard run down the halls of Octo Corp and down the stairwell, justifying that the elevator literally could not be faster than my desire to reach Dave at that second.

I opened the stairwell door once I reached the bottom, sending a cascade of echoes into the building as I broke down another set of hallways, and finally into the lab room to see Dave standing there. "Oh, freaking SHIT!" I cried again, rushing up to Dave. He had turned around well before I had reached him, meeting me with a concerned expression.

"Kailey, what's wrong—" he began to ask, but I was already going off at that point.

"Dave, you've been freaking exposed! Somebody knows you're a damned octopus! Christ!"

"What? What makes you say that?" Dave asked.

I grabbed hold of one of his tentacles, wailing it around like a bitchy kid would do with their stuffed animal, and then proceeded to pull him with me towards the stairwell to take him up to show him what I had seen. "Hurry, you have to see! Good lord! Everything's been absolutely f—"

"Dearest, calm down!" Dave said then, managing to quell my chaotic outburst, and take his tentacle from my hand to place it gently on the side of my cheek. "You need to calm down first."

I felt like doing something as simple as calming down was so out of reach for me in those moments, but Dave being the calm one for once actually managed to bring me down a notch. I took a few big, deep breaths in order to regain some control of myself, and then began to talk again.

"Dave, you need to come up with me to my office now," I said. "Somebody has been posting about you. They know Dr. Octavius Brine is you. An octopus! As in not a person!"

"Hmm," Dave huffed, thinking to himself for a split second as he pondered my revelation. "Let me have a look."

"Hurry!" I yelled again, grabbed his tentacle again from my face, and then began power-walking with him back towards the stairwell, although he paused me again as I felt another one of his tentacles place itself on my shoulder, at first softly, and then a bit more sternly.

"Let's take the elevator, dearest, you still need a moment to relax," he suggested. I was starting to realize that my sprint had taken a good chunk out of my energy, so I obliged, allowing him this time to take control of our route, and followed him to the elevators instead. The second the elevator doors shut and we began to go up, I put my face in my hands, trying so hard not to let myself get out of control again. The climb up to my office floor was excruciating, to say the least. I had been tested of my patience for a long time now, but this seemed to be the test of tests.

The second the elevator let up, and the doors opened again, I felt my heart sink. I pulled my face from my palms and looked up at Dave, my eyes still widened like I was perpetually reliving the instant I saw the title to that post.

We exited and headed down the hallway. I went through the door first, letting a couple more henchmen pass me as I walked in, and then gestured towards my computer, giving Dave room to see it for himself.

As Dave scooted over to the computer, he pulled out his black-rimmed glasses, and placed them on his face, taking a moment then to look down at the computer and began scrolling over the images, and then after started to read the text. My hands were uncontrollably balling into fists as I waited for him to finish.

"Well, this is a first one for me," Dave muttered finally.

"What should we do!?" I gasped then, feeling as if the anticipation of our impending doom was well on its way.

"Nothing…" Dave shrugged. He started scrolling down the page a little more, his red eyes scanning over the comments section.

"How can we do nothing, you idiot!" I yelled, a bit meaner than usual. "This is literally you and your entire lie we're talking about! What if people start catching on?"

"They're not," Dave said, finally turning his head my way. "It's just one person that knows, it looks like, and nobody else is buying it."

"Huh!?" I huffed, my expression shifting as I attempted to wrap my mind around it. Looking at the comments myself, I started reading what some people were saying…

"His head is perfectly fine! You're just mean!"

"I'll have you know that I heard from a friend, of a friend of a sister, through her grandma, from her granddaughter, that Octavius actually wears a wig—which mind you looks absolutely fine. You are being hateful, and quite frankly, petty, and should be ashamed of yourself."

"Some people have small legs, Karen! Get over yourself!"

"Unlike you, Dr. Brine actually contributes to society. Go kill yourself."

I stood there in silence for a while as I read through nearly over a hundred comments to myself, over and over again seeing the same thing. I couldn't believe what I was actually seeing. I had to pause after all the reading and rub my eyes with the back of my hands, absolutely not comprehending that there was someone out there that knew, but… nobody believed them.

Dave had been so patient with me the entire time that once I snapped out of my fit entirely I turned around to look at him, my gaze shifting to the floor, embarrassed.

"I don't understand…" I said meekly. It was so obvious to me that Dave was an octopus, after all, so it really was an enigma as to why nobody batted an eye at all of Dave's weird quirks. Even some of the things he's done in front of people before, like his weird dancing and stretches, seemed to be a dead giveaway of what he actually was, and yet, nobody thought different. What should very well have been a massive societal revelation just came out in the end as a casual utterance, ignored by the internet. Maybe it all reverted back to my experience of 'the veil of reality' being broken or something. I don't know. "I'm sorry I called you an idiot," I finally said.

"You don't need to apologize…" Dave said, smiling again, but in a soft, comforting way. "This is a bit odd, to say the least, but it's really nothing to worry about. I figured when I started this whole Brine getup that there'd be some speculation about me, but I've found the human masses aren't really that bright. There could be a giant conspiracy right under their noses and they'd laugh and say it's a fake! Ha! Like their precious Octavius Brine!" His soft smile had grown to a bigger one by now. He might have gotten over his revenge on the penguins but he sometimes still fit that evil genius scientist archetype without really trying.

"Hey, now that's pretty mean," I joked, "I'm a person too you know."

"You know you're different," Dave said. "Remember the snowglobe? The one you found me in? You saw me when that little girl—when nobody else did. Sometimes I wonder how my life would've been different if you would have found me years before that. When I was still in the zoos, being ignored…"

I thought somberly for a moment about Dave's past predicaments. I couldn't imagine how it felt to be ignored, and unwanted, but I did know how it felt to feel alone.

"But I did find you," I said, "and that's what matters, right?" I was getting sappy again, but I couldn't help it. My empathy for Dave had always been there, even the first day I met him, but now it was different, deeper, and more meaningful. I finally lifted my eyes completely from the floor to look up at him, my gaze having been diverting to and fro from him for the time after my outburst. He was still smiling, per the norm. A thought crossed my mind as to how somebody with such a sad past could have the biggest, happiest smile in the world. It was the kind of smile you craved to be around, the kind that would instantly brighten a room. Whatever was left of my negative feelings on what I had seen on that feed were instantly eclipsed from his confidence.

"You did…" Dave said, sighing afterwards.

Suddenly, we heard static from the speakers on the intercom, and then one of Dave's henchmen began to speak. I couldn't understand the oncoming series of gobbles, but Dave seemed to grow excited again from listening to what was being said.

"Oh, looks like dinner is ready!" Dave cheered. "Kevin cooks too, you know. I'm betting he finally served us all something up from that grocery delivery from the other day."

"Is it fish? And cheese?" I asked, amused.

"Yes…" Dave said, his eyes narrowing a bit as if he was joking—hiding the fact I had caught him on his crap again. "You'll join us, right? I had them make you salmon specifically. Kevin also made chocolate cake."

"Hell yeah! Of course I will!" I said excitedly. "How can I pass up a meal and another baking miracle from none other than Kevin?"

"I'm so glad!" Dave responded just as happily, if not more so. "Let's go! We don't want it to get cold."

. . . . . . .

The instant we arrived in the large dining hall the smell of food hit my nostrils. One may think that octopuses wouldn't make good chefs, but Kevin's cooking was oh so wonderful, so much so that I'm pretty sure if Gordon Ramsay tasted his dishes he'd say 'finally some good fucking food'.

A bunch of henchmen had gathered at that time, sitting along the tables, and bouncing up and down gleefully as some of the other henchmen worked as servers and placed plates with their dinner on top of it. I sat at the far end of the long table next to Dave, eagerly awaiting my plate. Just the thought of food right now made my stomach growl, and with all this talk about cake especially I felt like I couldn't wait another minute.

It seem, just in time, one of the henchmen arrived to me, setting my plate down to reveal a perfectly baked piece of salmon, just like Dave had foretold. The additional smell of lemon seasoning could be hinted at on top of everything else. Next to the salmon were a few symmetrically placed pieces of new potatoes divinely baked in garlic and olive oil. Looking up from my plate, it seemed like mine was the most unique dish of them all, the others happily about to devour whole ass bass and mackerel. Dave was being served this along with an assortment of cubed cheeses.

"My complements to Kevin," I said to the henchman who had served me my plate, giving him a thumbs up with a wink. The little octopus clapped happily, and rushed off out of the dining hall and through the large doors to the kitchen. I sat among the chattering of octopus gobbles and clanking of dishes for a few seconds before the same octopus came rushing back out, this time with Kevin, who was wearing a chef's hat on his head. The two rather quickly arrived next to me, the henchman from before standing back with two of his tentacles clasped together as Kevin looked like he was about to cry of utter happiness and started gobbling a bunch at me.

I sat there listening to him for a bit, his gurgles completely not understandable to me as usual. I still kept a smile on my face even though I couldn't understand him, getting out of his long breath of words that he must have been happy that I had complemented his cooking. Where is Edgar when you need him, I thought to myself, thinking about my translator who was probably off somewhere else in the building right now.

"No, thank you, Kevin," I finally said after he finished, my mind filling in the blanks and generating a response I thought was right. "You are the talent here, after all."

That seemed to be exactly what Kevin needed to hear, because he actually started crying by then, proceeding to flail himself over my lap dramatically as he continued with his happy-tears. I patted his head, consoling him, "Oh, Kevin, you are too much, I swear! No need to be modest."

After a bit, Kevin finally sat up, wiped his eyes, and gave me a quick bow before rushing back off towards the kitchen. After his departure was about the time everyone else in the dining hall had gotten situated, sitting patiently at their seats as they all collectively looked down the long table and at Dave.

"You may eat now, gentlemen," Dave acknowledged. His cue instantly set the entire dining hall to begin their meal, surprisingly a giant table full of octopuses having wonderful manners, although not necessarily as practiced as I imagined. Some of the henchman dropped their forks occasionally, while some ended up full blown dismissing the usage of forks and knives to just grab hold of the fish whole and shove it under themselves in their mouths. I had to at least applaud their attempts.

"I see where you get your table manners from, Dave," I said, remembering back to the incident he had with me and my freaking parents at that Japanese restaurant.

"Hey, holding those human things, dinglehoppers—forks, chopsticks or whatever, is harder than it looks!" Dave mused. "Especially for us! Do you have any idea how much concentration it takes to work those things?"

"And making yourself have 'hands' under those gloves isn't?" I chuckled sarcastically.

"It's even harder when I'm doing that!" Dave looked over at me, lifting one of his tentacles towards me, and started to morph the ends into an actual hand shape. Caught by surprise and stunned from the secret being revealed, it was instantly retracted before I could comprehend what I just witnessed. Dave returned his attention back to his plate, then.

I laughed nervously, softly said, "What the hell?" then reluctantly looked away and back down towards my food. Focusing on the delicious plate helped direct my attention away from whatever the shit that was, and I started joining Dave and the henchmen with their feast.

A few peaceful minutes in, Dave perked up, looking over everybody at first, then began to speak. "I thought this would be a good time to check in with you all about any progress or updates you may have! As well as an update of all my plans, of course. Call it a casual report meeting." He paused for a moment, giving his henchmen a moment to prepare for conversation, then said, "Taylor! Swift call this weekend, am I right? Tell us how you handled the North Wind sighting?"

Taylor, a bright orange octopus in the back, sat up slightly to speak, in which he then proceeded to run with a series of gobbles as he explained what had happened. We all listened silently as he explained, although thankfully by the end of it Dave paraphrased everything so I could understand.

"So you're telling me the owl has been at it again, huh? Spying on us? Ugh, obviously North Wind would do that," Dave replied with a sneer. "But I'm glad to hear you shot off that pellet gun at her. Shame you missed, but oh well, that's better than nothing! Losers better watch out for us!"

I put down my fork in order to place my hand on my face. "A pellet gun, really?" I asked under my breath. I didn't know how much worse off we'd be with North Wind with that stunt, but at this point I don't think we could possibly be in any more trouble with them than we already were.

Dave shifted his attention to the other, far side of the table. "Will! Smith! How did the confiscation of the bazooka go?"

Two blue-ish colored octopuses sat up then, one more of a teal, one a navy color as they began to speak with Dave, the back and forth between them taking much longer than the report about the pellet gun. They started dramatically reenacting the stunt with their tentacles, gobbling louder and more frantically to show emphasis on what had happened.

"Oh! Glorious!" Dave cheered. "You even destroyed the files? Did you destroy the evidence, too?"

More gobbles, but this time they were more calm and confined. It seemed like everything had worked out.

"I'm so proud of you, gentlemen! That would have been a real pain if the humans got any bright ideas." Dave shifted his attention over at me. "You hear that, Kailey? No worries there!"

"Yay," I said flatly. I almost had forgotten about that stupid ass thing. Dave taking me with him on that particular kidnapping still haunted me to this day with that shark and everything. Ugh. I still get shivers about it.

"Well then, if that's all you have for me, I have some updates for you all!" Dave said, keeping his eyes on me for a moment longer. "This one is important for you to hear to, dearest."

"Okay…" I said, letting my hand fall over my face roughly before I put my hand back down on the table to pay attention.

"As you all know, Kailey and I will be participating in the annual Macy's Parade here in New York City! On top of my commercial that has recently began airing, a series of in-person appearances will help immensely with our outreach. We also have plans to interview with a local journalist, who is most definitely going to help bring in the money once her story is published!"

The henchman started nodding seriously as they listened, waiting for Dave to continue.

"I also, reluctantly, have made a decision to change course with our next pledge drive. Having these drives at the local convention centers is great, but it's a stale atmosphere to say the least. The humans need association with my name, and with my history of, quote, 'helping penguins'…" Dave did a quote gesture with two of his tentacles to mimic that of what a person would do as he continued: "…we will be having our next pledge drive, tomorrow, at the Central Park Zoo."

The dining hall got exceedingly quiet. I felt exactly what everyone must've felt at that moment, because I paused myself, swallowing my food slowly before I turned to look back up at Dave. "Umm… hon, don't you think that's... hmm, well with your history there and all." Awkwardness was spilling off of me even though I tried to remain casual.

"The Central Park Zoo contacted Dr. Brine and offered to host him for his next pledge drive. It's strategically a good move, but…"

"Dave, you know you don't have to do that," I said, my hand reaching out then to touch his 'shoulder'. I was concerned for him, but at the same time I wasn't really sure how to help him. "I understand that we need money, but—"

"You're right, we need the money," Dave sighed, interrupting my sentence before I could finish. "But not one, but two mess-ups, have to be covered now. The only way we are going to recover is if we finish replacing what we have lost. The submarine is gone, my island lab, what was left of my Medusa Serum, my mechs and all. All we have left is a few jets and a chopper from my fleet stored here. Besides…" he paused, looking over my direction again. "I have a lot to protect right now than just myself, you know."

I found myself blushing, taken aback by his sudden shift from business and to his feelings for me again. It wasn't that I forgot that he loved me, but I felt like he had more to worry about than me sometimes. I guess those thoughts were completely wrong. It was nice being reminded, though. Ugh, here I go again, being all mushy. Somebody punch me, please.

"I'll be going with you, of course," I said, looking at him tenderly. "I don't want you going to that place alone."

"I'm never alone…" Dave said, almost longingly. "Not anymore."

A series of soft, cheery, high pitched garbles could be heard then, the entirety of the henchmen looking adoringly at us from all corners of the dining hall. Even Kevin was peaking from the kitchen doors, staring at us from across the room.

I found my blush from Dave's prior comment shifted to one of embarrassment, as I glared at all the henchmen. "Hey, don't y'all still have dinner to finish? You can't have your dessert if you don't eat your meat!" I felt like a mom scolding her kids.

God, I felt like I had a lot on my plate coming up, and it wasn't the salmon.