The camera returned after a jump to the cabin in the Grundy Catchyegrabber, where Princess Berryboo worked with an extra-large piece of aquarium gravel to saw at the mesh ceiling that cut her off from freedom. The sawing took up a great deal of effort and made a great deal of mess, yellow dust spilling off into the inch or so of air below the wire and down into the water below where it billowed into in a cloud. She brushed away the mess with the tip of one of her tentacles, and found to her disappointment that all she had accomplished was to polish a minute patch of one of a hundred bars. Muttering frustration, she moved instead to the long edge of the aquarium and attempted to jam her makeshift tool under the edge to use it as a pry bar. With all her strength she struck at the gap only to be rewarded with a muffled "pft!" and a smaller tool. Rat and Ram had done a good job securing the mesh, but the King of the Squiddles had not raised his daughter to be a quitter. Berryboo wrapped another tentacle about the stone and, eyes closed, slammed it forward overhead.

Bang! She, her stone and the water in the aquarium all slammed back at the force of a heavy blow that shook the aquarium hard against the bolts that held it otherwise still, to the blare of an orchestral sting. The instruments were no companion to the simplistic Casio tunes of the show's standard soundtrack, and heralded more than just the on-screen, where a green tentacle now lay across the box.

"'Allo love."

Berryboo, her pulverized stone sinking toward the fluorescent rocks below, shook with impotent rage before whirling away to face the wall. The sky through the nearby porthole was brighter than the night before, but not by much, suffocated from horizon to horizon with cloud that lit only by criss-cross of lightning. "Bosun."

The wide shot that followed - wide, but cramped, with the wall of the cabin taking up a quarter on the right and the foot of the bed much of the left - showed the sheer contrast between Ox and Berryboo. While still a Squiddle, Ox stood almost three times Berryboo's height, about the height of a child, and again in width. He hovered just above the floor, the mishmash of his tentacles hanging below him: long, stumped and hooked; one eye was covered by a patch. "Skip said you were giving it a go, so he wanted me to drop in and point out that it ain't gonna happen." He watched the stone come to a rest against the bottom. "But I guess we both know that now, don't we, darling?"

Berryboo was silent for some time, and as Ox waited for a response her tentacles, little strings compared to his, curled up defensively below her. "...Go away." She could make out his sneer and the ugly look in the glass before her. "I do not want to talk to you." Barely visible, Berryboo's own distorted reflection tightened. "...Bully."

"Heh. Bully, am I? Is that what you tell yerself?" He leaned forward, face close to the mesh, and whispered: "...Is that the worst you can do?"

"You are. You bully them and you bully us. You... I can't believe you!" She turned on him, tentacles swirling and her two foremost clutched into awkward fists of a sort. "What did we do wrong, Ox? You had a good home! You had all your friends. We miss you! Squiddler misses you. I miss you. We were friends! W-we were Tan-"

With another heavy slam, Ox's hook cracked through the mesh and into the water, wires splaying apart and away. Berryboo ducked into a corner of the tank with a screech and knocked over the tiny toy castle that had rested on the ground. The next shot came from her perspective as Ox loomed over her in a rage hot in his good eye.

"Say it," he said, voice level in spite. Berryboo shook her head furiously, and Ox responded by pressing forward with his hook until it curved to the glass, the protesting squeal and snap of the metal mesh overcoming the low music. Berryboo retreated further until the castle blocked her last inch. Ox reached up to remove his eye patch, the camera cutting from what it hid below to his view instead, on the face of the princess cast in shadow. "Then say how I'll let ye go. How we'll both run off back home and ev'thing..." And he tossed the eye patch onto the mesh, and with a strangled whimper, Berryboo began to cry. "Ev'thing will be all right again."

"N-not my fault," was all she said, shaking her head. Ox opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off.

"Bosun!" snapped a voice from behind before Ox had a chance to reply. Ox whirled as his levitation allowed but jammed hook prevented, and stared back into the face of Skipper Plumbthroat. "Out!"

As was part and parcel of the area, a crack of thunder accompanied Plumbthroat's arrive and Ox did not need to be told twice, extracting his hook and retreating with the same speed if not the demeanour as Rat and Ram earlier on. The skipper watched him go and even chased after him, shouting orders to tell the others to "keep prodding."

"He seemed nice," Karkat said. It was hard for the Humans to tell if he was really being sarcastic.

"Ox is a victim of behind-the-scenes collapse," Rose said. Jade, for once, did not interrupt her. "See, in even the tame episodes of Season 3, Squiddler and his friends are the leads, like in the second half of Season 2. But that wasn't always the case. Originally, Berryboo was the lead, along with another Squiddle, named Mint."

Karkat barked a laugh. "Quality of names used to be an inch higher," he said. "If even."

"There have been a lot of production teams involved in this," Rose admitted. "Naturally it was kind of sloppy. For example, Mint kept getting bigger and bigger, and I think partway along the line they forgot why they were doing it and just did it again. But in the middle of it, one of the Japanese voice actors left. Mint's. But you can't kill off a Squiddle."

"Why not?" Feferi asked.

Jade raised an eyebrow. "Because it's too dark for kids! And he's a main character! You can't do that... to... a..." Jade saw the looks on the Trolls' faces, and backed off.

"Anyway," Rose said, having already expected the reaction. "Mint was off with Berryboo when... something happened off-screen. Berryboo refused to say, she was so upset. The next thing we knew, Mint was calling himself 'Ox' and working for Plumbthroat, having lost all his friends. Whatever the studio was planning to do with him, we'll never know, though. A few episodes later-" she snapped her fingers, "bankruptcy. Studio Upton took over with no idea how it was supposed to end. They just... rolled with him like that..."

Plumbthroat held his fearsome pose even after Ox had gone, though it slumped away as he stepped forward to catch sight of Berryboo. He knelt down to pick up a tool box from under his bed, from which he extracted a roll of duct tape. Plumbthroat worked in silence and Berryboo did not stop him as he applied a rough patch to the hole. Just before he finished, he paused and then reached into the upper drawer. From deep inside, he pulled out a shaker of fish food, which he sprinkled through the remaining gap. Finally, he turned to go.

"Eustace," said Berryboo in a trembling whisper, ignoring the food. He turned back and saw her looking up at him with need in her eyes, but she said nothing more.

"...stop trying to help him, Princess," he said at last. As he went on, from his tone it was clear he somehow meant to be comforting. "There's nothing but tears in trying to help a man that don't want to be helped. A wild plan like that one is even worse, because ye'd be stuck with the shark, wouldn't ye?"

"You heard?" Berryboo asked, and Plumbthroat nodded.

"You're right, you know. He is terrifying. That's why he works so well with the crew, all the good he's been since his ink went black." Plumbthroat scowled but Berryboo was not surprised.

"No friends here either." She sniffed. "He was my friend, Eustace. I can't... n-not... help him!"

"Don't cling to the past, Princess." The skipper turned to leave. "Eat."

"'Berryboo.'" The princess corrected, finding her voice.

"Tha's better," he said.

"Skipper?"

Plumbthroat looked up in surprise to see Berryboo clutching to a single fallen flake of the food, but looking straight at him. "...Thank you. You're a good person, S-Skip. You really... you really are. You should stop this. You c-can."

A heavy pause filled the air between them, and at one moment Berryboo caught sight of Plumbthroat's eyes darting toward the deck, and Ox, but the strange calm was rent by sounds from outside. Plumbthroat made his exit, but not without abrupt parting words: "...I've heard much more convincing things from ye, Princess."

Through the starboard porthole opposite the aquarium, Berryboo could make out sounds of shouts, splashes from the waves and the protesting groans of the ship as it began reeling and bobbing in the waves. Ox and Plumbthroat's voices roared incompressibly in to the room, fighting to be heard against the stormwinds. A scream - Rat - had Berryboo nestled back against the castle for a time before reflex kicked in and she charged at the new patch of tape, hoping it might prove more pliable than the wire, to no effect. As she pushed and, from time to time, pulled her tentacles free from the sticky underside of the tape, a shadow cast over Berryboo. She looked up toward the porthole above and saw, to her terror, nothing at all past a massive silhouette that had risen opposite the commotion.

Another shout from Rat, safe and well-enough intact, drew the attention of the others to the shape. The sound of rapid footsteps played through the wall as the Casio rose into another of its stock tunes and the shadow fled. No one came back for Berryboo, and the only company she had as the soundtrack faded was the low rumble of distant thunder. She could not help but to stare at the porthole in disbelief, wondering what had passed her bye. The shadow cast across her face by the tape seemed to split the princess almost in two. In the silence, she made up her mind and prayed to her friends, whispering to the clouded sky and ocean below: "...Please don't come."

Far away, in the bright light of the sun and fluorescent bulbs, a nun waded through a sea of children and smiled as one of them, about eight or nine, tugged on her habit and spoke up to her in a troublesome but still comprehensible lisp.

"Sister!" he said with excitement, "the Squiddles are here!"

"Intended audience response right here," Rose was saying when Jade paused the DVD. It only took a moment for her to see what had caused the delay. "Oh wow," she said. "It's Milo."

"I know!" Jade said, mouth wide. "I... never noticed him here before!"

"What's a Milo?" Feferi asked, picking another kernel of popcorn off of Nepeta, where they had all landed after Ox had slammed down his hook and she had jumped a foot. Nepeta giggled as though this tickled her, like always, and swatted away Feferi's hand in a continuation of their game.

"It's that kid, right there," Jade said, pointing to the boy just to the side of the speaking child. "Well, I mean, I guess it's him. It could just be, like a... 'Oh hey, we need a new kid, maybe we should just use one we've drawn before,' sort of thing."

"But who is he, then?" Kanaya asked.

"He's pretty much the main character of the Dargon Arc," Jade explained. "He's new to the orphanage, and doesn't have any friends yet."

"No one cares," Karkat said with his perfunctory tone, and in response Jade blew a raspberry in his face. "...the hell was that?"

Jade laughed. "I said..." And then she did it again: "Tbbbbpppt." Nepeta, loving the look on Karkat's face, leaned past Jade and did the same. "Okay," Jade said to regain the calm. "Look, so a few episodes from now, Dargon shows up. Then Milo gets his first episode, and he's the new kid so everyone's swarming him, but he's actually really shy."

"Poor fucking baby," Karkat said.

"Karkat, he just lost his family!" Rose pointed out, only to get an eye roll in response. The other Trolls, on the other hand, nodded as they had remembered better, both of which Rose was prepared to acknowledge: "His poor, fictional family."

Jade continued. Dargon shows up and points out that Milo's popular but he doesn't have any friends yet. He takes Milo to the basement of the orphanage where the thing Plumbthroat salvaged has suddenly appeared. Dargon goes all creepy for a while and eventually tells him that he can wish on the thing, and can wish to be popular forever, because he'd rather be popular than lonely."

"Dargon actually says the thing is evil," Rose corroborated. "It's not exactly the most refined moment in the history of the Faustian Bargain but I guess you don't want little kids selling their souls to demons or something."

"What happens?" Nepeta asked Jade, already deeply involved in the story as was her uncontrolled habit, clutching her hands close to her face in suspence. There she noticed that one of the kernels of popcorn had stuck to her gloves and she bit it off.

"Well," Jade said, "the Squiddles were tracking Dargon and find them, and they tell Milo that he can make friends for sure if he just puts himself out there. So they and Dargon fight, Dargon runs away with the artefact, and then the Squiddles help Milo make friends with a girl named Carmen and her brother, uh..."

"Diego," Rose said. "Pre-Dora and still viable as a name."

"At the end of the episode, they show that everyone else actually did stop being friends with Milo," Jade said. "I mean, they still sort of respect him in later episodes but it's weird that they ended it like that."

"Except that it's Season 3," Rose noted. "Abrupt, depressing finales are pretty much par for course."

Kanaya, who was by that point kneeling down on a pillow behind the couch, looked up at Rose from the corner of her eye. "And this is the 'cute one,' you said?"

"Well, yes, this one."

"Hmm..." Kanaya tented her fingers in a way that almost hid her grin. "If this is what you call cute, try not to compliment me for a little while."

"Well, I'll try," Rose said, pulling a pillow out from behind Karkat and kneeling down next to Kanaya. "But I doubt you're going to make it very easy."

Nepeta made a tiny happy sound and then glanced up at Jade and Feferi with an ignorant knowing smile. Karkat just roared into his hands, a shout that sounded at least partially like "Put it back on for fuck's sake!", enough that Jade did exactly that.

"Hahaha, I know the Squiddles are here, Sebastian!" said the nun as she took the boy by the hand and led him on through the crowd. "Nothing else would get you all so excited, my goodness!"

"Gyaaack!" The camera adjusted to show a crowd of children, about a dozen, crowding about a single spot. With a mighty pull, Squibump appeared from the spot, hovering in the air as Squiddles do and pulling a seashell cart behind him. "Sister Bethany!" he said with surprise, and then fell to the ground. With another heave he reappeared above the heads of the children. "...help!"

"Good morning, Squibump!" the nun greeted, and took the rope from him. He hovered up to her shoulder level, followed by the gleeful laughs of the children who reached out to tug at his feelers. From behind and with a spin, Squibella followed. Sister Bethany had to lean closer to see the little Squiddle in detail, her bifocals perched at the tip of her nose and almost pressed up against the flying jellyfish. "Why, hello to you too, dear!"

"Hello!" Squibella said at once, but then faltered. "Hello, uh... uh..."

The nun laughed happily and reached out to tickle Squibella. "My name is Bethany, dear, but you can call me 'Sister' if you like. That's what all the children do at first."

Squibella made a face in close-up. "But you're not my sister."

Sister Bethany just laughed, and helped pull the cart over toward the orphanage: a small, red-painted building perched on an island just large enough for it and its children. In the distance, a fishing town of moderate size could be seen perched on an island just across a small patch of sea, with ocean otherwise in all directions. As they walked, Squibella continued her protests, pointing out that "my sister is at home!"

"What a heavy cart today, Squibump," she said in small talk as the scene began to fade in sound and visuals to the next. "Squinanna must have been working herself to the gills! I told her..."

The scene picked up in a small kitchen, where Sister Bethany handed off a tray of cookies to the boy from before - Sebastian - and a young girl, who carried it carefully out. Watching them as they went, the nun filled a glass from the tap and took a sip, eyes still on the room beyond where the children were playing tag with Squibella.

"Gosh, it's looking pretty busy, Sister Bethany!" Squibump was holding two cookies of his own as he floated. He took a bite from one but made sure to chew (exactly) twenty times and swallow before speaking again. "Are you doing all right with all of them?"

"Yes..." said the nun. "Sister Mary is in town picking up supplies. And there were new children the other day."

A cookie half-raised to Squibump's mouth dropped away. "...Oh."

"They're doing well, I think," she said, pausing only for a quick drink. "The little girl won't let go of her big brother, do you see? Haha. She's going to have to let go if she's going to chase Squibella though, isn't she? Do you think she will?" she asked, as much to the Squiddle as the audience.

Squibump nodded, agreeing through a full mouth. "...She'll be making new friends in no time."

("Oh no," Jade said. "I never understood that part before."

"what is it? what am i missing?")

Squibump dropped into frame and landed firmly on the Sister's shoulder, which he squeezed. The nun reached up toward him with her opposite hand, but stopped when the children returned with Squibella in tow.

"Hehehehe!" Squibella spun into place next to her Tangle Buddy. "They're all so..." She paused for breath. "They're fast! You should come and play!"

"Ohhhhh, I don't know about that, Squibella." Squibump let go of the Sister and moved back to where he had set his snack. "I'm not really a fan of tag!"

Squibella floated straight in front of him and sashayed back and forth to keep him from getting by. "But you neeeeeed more exercise!"

"Sister!" said the little girl, somewhere near eight years old herself, who had entered. "We need more napkins!"

"Over in the drawer, Amber," said the nun, who stepped aside to allow her access. "And thank you for noticing!"

("That's Sebastian and Amber," Rose said. "They're the main kid characters. Well, until Milo showed up they were the only kid characters."

"FUCK, HOW DO YOU TELL ALL THESE CHARACTERS APART? HOW IS THERE ANY CHARACTER GROWTH OR DYNAMICS?"

"Well, Karcrab, t)(ose ones are s)(aped like )(umans! )(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E."

"UGH, BRAVO PRINCESS.")

Sister Bethany stepped over to the Squiddles. "Why don't you help the children carry over the napkins, you two?"

"Yeah!" shouted Squibella. "C'mon, Squibump! We can lift it together! Weightlifting! C'mon everybody, join in!" She grabbed a tentacle and made off with him. "One, two, three, you know?"

"Aww, Squibella..."

But in the end he helped out, carrying his own end of a pack of napkins. As they walked with the children, Amber spoke up.

"So where's everyone else?" She set her napkins on a table laid out with sandwiches. "Where's Squiddette, and Squiddler, and everyone else?"

"Ohhh, I don't know if I should tell you that." Squibump made sure the napkins were stacked evenly as Sebastian opened the first and passed them over. "They're busy with a problem right now."

Sebastian spoke up in a conspiratorial whisper. "Is it... Skipper Plumbthroat?"

Amber joined in. "Did he kidnap the princess?"

Squibella floated down into the triangle the three had formed. "Why does everyone always already know that part?"

Squibump looked up and then back to the group. "Okay, the princess might have been kidnapped again, but Squiddler and Squiddette will deal with it! They're on their way to the Island of Dread and Hate as we speak!"

The children were obviously shocked. "The Island of Dread and Hate!" Amber said, barely contained below speaking volume.

"That's where all those ships have disappeared! I know where that is!" Sebastian met his friend's eyes and they reached an immediate, unspoken consensus. "We have to go help them!"

"Huh? " Squibump flew up to them and began waving his tentacles. "Nooooo! "

But the children were not listening. "Come on, Squibella!" Amber said as she ran. Squibella, taking in the excitement of others as it was doled out in front of her, giggled and flew off only moments behind.

"Ohhhhhhh..." Squibump looked around, but it was obvious that Sister Bethany was all alone today, one way or another. He grabbed a sandwich and made his way off after the others. "Why is it always me?"

DVD Bonus Material
Amelia Everett (b March 17, 1924 - d April 13, 2009). Voice of Princess Berryboo, The Queen of Chimes, Sisters Bethany and Odette. "If I could be anyone I'd ever played," Everett said in a 2007 interview, "it would be [1943 femme fatale] Dahlia State by night, and Princess Berryboo by day. [...] There's something to be said for optimism and pessimism and I'd rather take both hand in hand." Everett stayed with the show until its final days. "I think we were doing very good work with [[i]Squiddles![/i]]. We covered old ground... maybe too often... but some days we covered lessons I don't think young girls and young boys are hearing much of one way or another. [...] It was a shame to watch the others go. I'd have liked to do at least one more run."

Aidan MacDermott (b March 1, 1932 - d April 13, 2009). Voice of Skipper Plumbthroat, Mint and various members of Plumbthroat's crew. Always the anecdotal bridesmaid, MacDermott's career, starting with the role of Ariel in [i]The Tempest[/i], spanned no less than 47 award-winning productions, though he never once collected an award himself. As he noted during his 2006 roast, "I was raised in the company of some of the finest actors of the British and American stage, and if my being here is any proof, have learned nothing from them." After a lifetime in dramatic and comedic roles, the classically trained actor claims to have been just as happy in either. "It was nice to be Plumbthroat. In the early seasons I was a goof and in the later seasons I got to be a monster, a little of both." Regarding his character swap with Jacob Watt, MacDermott says he holds no grudges. "Jacob did an excellent job as Mint-gone-bad," he said, "A shame about the accident."