Long time no see peeps! I've been raised from the dead and have returned to reboot my sequel to "Normal".
As a lot of you may have noticed, I wasn't happy with how "Normal: The Octo Corp Chronicles" was turning out, and opted to cancel it. However, I was always set on making a sequel for Normal, so ta-da, here it is at long last! While a lot has happened since now and 5 years ago, I am happy to return to this project, and finish Dave and Kailey's story.
HUGE shout out to Gonturan0 for returning as my proof reader, and much thanks to its-just-blue-fairy on Tumblr for providing lovely fan art for these fics, as well as single handedly resurrecting me back into the Dave fandom.
I will be cross posting this on Ao3 as well!
Fic is rated T for language and cartoon violence
Chapter 1: Plan of Action
"Sophie, turn her on! I don't want to miss the commercial!"
My eyes shot open as Dave arrived into the room, the loud clank of the doors and his excruciating pun meeting my ears in unison like the collision of a train wreck. I slowly found myself turning my head around to look over at him as he skedaddled into the room, meeting with his henchmen at the large computer monitor there in the lab room with me. To think I was literally just beginning to maintain my concentration on my job before this. Alas! Octo Corp may not have a current penguin problem to deal with, but it continued to have it's own disruptions, anyway.
Dave's larger than life cooked-toothed smile immediately intensified upon his expression the instant the monitor was switched on. The henchmen quickly brought up a live channel that was just about ending a commercial prior to the one Dave was so happy about.
"Kailey, get over here quick, you've got to see this!" Dave yelled, his tentacles bending into knots as he tried to contain himself.
I let loose a big sigh, for a moment contemplating the large stack of papers on the desk from our previous pledge drives from over the summer, which had yet to be filed into the bank, and stood up limply. The second I had walked over and arrived next to Dave, he grabbed hold of me, hugging me so tightly that it felt like the air in my lungs launched from my mouth like the puff of a rocket ship. I could barely tell that the commercial he had been gloating about sprang up on the screen. I had to take a moment to adjust as the henchmen in the room settled around us to take part in the viewing.
The sound of heavy metal music took over the monitor's speakers, for a moment my brain trying to process that it was actually a metal version of the Safety Dance as flashing images of Dave as Dr. Octavius Brine and his building, Octo Corp, hit the screen. For some reason he was holding a giant hammer as he finally made a speaking appearance in the commercial, reminding me of one of those cringey lawyer skits I saw on TV all the time.
"I carry a big hammer because I'm Science Strong! Here at Octo Corp, we care about you and your insignificant lives! Whether it is your desire to help poor penguins or your right to eat at BJ's Burgers, I Dr. Octavius Brine, am here!"
The camera switched to a low angle looking up at him, showing a small foot-tall wolf statue that weirdly enough happened to look like Classified as Dave proceeded to swing the hammer and pulverize the shit out of it, the sound of it breaking clashing harshly with the chaotic music cover in the background.
The camera shot back to Dave again, this time as a close up.
"Yes! I AM HERE! Fighting the good fight and being awesome, because that's who I am! Give me money!"
The screen transitioned one more time, this time to a shot of the Octo Corp building specifically, with Dave in front of it with abnormally outstretched arms to showcase it. His gesture of choice happened to be another dead giveaway that he wasn't a freaking person. Next, his name and company logo zoomed onto the screen like a reversed Star Wars introduction title. After the logo appeared, beneath it in smaller letters phased into existence, creating a sentence, as an overlay of Dave's voice filtered softly thought the speakers, reading it aloud: "Octo Corp: Genetic research and science that means something."
That was it. The commercial ended, causing all the henchmen to blast into a series of cheerful gobbles as Dave himself continued with his larger than life grin and spun me around, lifting me in the air as he did so.
"Oh, what a success!" Dave almost seemed to sing as he continued with his celebration for a few seconds longer, the room still spinning even after putting me down. "Kailey! Kailey, dearest! Tell me, what did you think?!"
"It's great…" I said through clenched teeth, trying very hard to be happy for him, but the fact that it was so obviously a giveaway that something was very much wrong with him seemed to get the better of me. "But… Dave… what does it mean?"
"What do you mean, 'what does it mean'?" Dave's smile diminished by only a smidgen, but that didn't make it any less bright and overwhelming.
"Like, what exactly are we doing?" I asked. "The commercial said Octo Corp is doing 'science that means something', so what does that mean?"
"Absolutely nothing!" Dave cheerfully responded. "North Wind confiscated my Medusa Serum the last time they kidnapped me, remember? So it's not like I can study on that more even if I wanted to."
"So, you're telling me, you expect people to give you money… for doing nothing?" I felt my forehead wrinkle up a tad as I furrowed my brows, my mind attempting to dive deep into Dave's logic.
"Yes, exactly, dearest!"
"That's horrible, Dave!" My arms flung into the air as I tried to emphasize my sentence, but this did absolutely nothing to sheathe the ecstatic gobbles around me and Dave's excited, cheerful domineer.
"Oh, Kailey, what are you so worried about? Hundreds—thousands of companies do this all the time anyway and people don't notice! I'm just chiming in for my slice of the cake," Dave said, finally letting me go completely then to give me room to catch my breath from his overwhelming hugs and embraces. "Besides, we need to keep money coming in. North Wind still very much wants to arrest me, so we have to stay on our toes."
"Stealing millions of dollars. That sounds like a great idea Dave!" I said sarcastically. "Next thing I know you're going to be telling me that you haven't been paying taxes or some crap."
"What's taxes?"
I facepalmed. I should have known better. "Good Lord Dave, if North Wind doesn't arrest you then I'm absolutely certain that the people will." For a moment I thought about working to help him set up Octo Corp as a non-profit, but the mere idea of doing that made me feel horrible. Alas, if it meant helping Dave I guess that was the best thing I could personally do for him to keep up this act. "Can I get back to work now?" I asked.
"Not quite yet," Dave said. "I have some news I want to fill you in on. As you know, the New York City Macy's Parade is in just a few days… I was going to make an appearance on my official float to give the fans something more tangible than just a commercial."
"Why?" I felt the question slip from the back of my mouth uncontrollably. "You might as well draw a target on Brine's gourd ass head if you desperately want North Wind to see you causing more problems."
"What are they going to do about it?" Dave smirked mischievously. "It's not like they are going to attack and abduct me in front of all the humans. If anything, being in public is way safer than being cooped up in this building.
"I guess," I sighed. "Has the parade float already been transferred to the holding facility?"
"Indeed it has!" Dave assured me. "Ah…see, on our toes, aren't we? I couldn't have asked for a better lovely assistant and partner, now could I?" He lifted up a tentacle to place on my shoulder, snapping another grin my direction, his expression, however, mirroring less of his giddy excited self and instead more of the kind that I could only describe like dude would shoot at you if he was trying to act cool in preparation to tell you shitty one-liners.
"Dave, stop trying to act like a chad," I said, smiling softly, honestly a tad amused by his behavior.
"Chad? What's a chad?" He paused for a moment, his red eyes suddenly dilating as he remembered something, turning around within seconds as the recollection must've settled. "Which reminds me! Chad! Kroger—have you checked the front for the Kroger delivery?!"
"It's Kroeger," I corrected.
"What?" Dave asked aloud towards me, confused.
We stood there awkwardly for a second, my mind screaming at me again in my useless attempts at trying to connect Dave's unwitting usage of celebrity names to his punny statements in an effort to teach him.
"Dammit, never mind," I sighed.
A gobble from a henchman, obviously Chad, answered him from the other side of the room then, saluted as a response, and scurried out of the lab to do as Dave had asked. For a moment I had to consider how lucky we were that groceries could be delivered. Can you imagine Dave trying to go grocery shopping? Please. Not to mention the embarrassment of him trying to get a poor retail worker to load up a crap load of fish, cheese, and clams into that new McLaren he won back in Vegas.
"All right Dave, just… let me know if you need me for anything else," I said, waving my hand in a sort of 'shoo' manner to signal I was ready to get back to that stack of paper that was eating at my consciousness. However, that was when Dave decided to twirl back around, halting me in my attempt to step away by blocking my path.
"What's the rush?" Dave cooed, almost in a pout, but that shifted quickly again in to that thing he had been doing lately—that half-smile, half-smirk thing. The one that made me feel butterflies in my stomach. "What could be more important than being together…?"
"Dave, what I'm doing is important, "I tried to explain, but I could tell this wasn't working in terms of convincing him, to which I immediately continued my train of thought and formed them into comprehensible words I thought he'd understand. "I mean—of course it's not as important as hanging out, but still… important. This work; these stack of papers can literally mean life or death for us."
"I got a few henchmen who are good at that accounting stuff, don't worry!" Dave tried to suggest.
"And they're swamped too, Dave. There are tons of these stacks in my office, so that's why I'm working down here. The henchmen haven't even gotten through half of it yet." I stopped myself for a moment, taking in a deep breath to let loose a sigh, trying to calm myself down. Thinking about everything I wanted to do and get out of the way was overwhelming, and certainly was testing my patience. "We have money still coming in from those monthly pledges, but this is going to help bring in what we need to continue rebuilding and prepping for any future North Wind attack."
"You're starting to sound like me," Dave said, his tone changing after my explanation to one that seemed to match my own, but not necessarily the same in reasoning. "They're consistent pests, always after us. And it's because of me."
"Hey, don't go turning into a grump on me," I said, taking a moment to pat his head. "We can acknowledge that we are very much being tracked by a weird ass inter-species organization, but that doesn't mean we can't still strive onward, right?"
"That's so true, dearest!" Dave suddenly ripped from his brief moment of bitterness and instantly back into his chipper attitude, his ability to not completely understand personal space being tested again as he drew in close to me with a smile. "As a matter-of-fact, I have something we need to attend to right now! We should go and make sure the float is ready to go at the parade holding facility, and while we're there I can show you all the details of the float itself and my plans for our portion of the parade. I'll go change into my disguise and we'll be off!"
"Of course," I said through gritted teeth. My idea of productivity still lay on the stack of papers that seemed to be screaming my name at that point, but I justified the time with Dave anyway.
Seemed I always did.
. . . . . . .
"Ah, there she is," Dave said, looking upon his custom parade float with a prideful smirk as he took in a big breath of air. "A beaut, isn't it, dearest?"
I looked at the float, one of my eyes actually twitching as I gazed upon the mess that was in front of me. Not that it was necessarily bad from an artistic standpoint, but more so that it was absolutely, 100% octopus themed. Again. Like, can Dave ever coordinate something that wasn't an obvious giveaway that he was a giant, sentient purple octopus? Worst case scenario was that people probably thought he just really liked octopuses, but this was insane, even six months in entirety being with him. Dave might as well run around with a sign that says 'I'M A PERSON' and all the idiot people in the world would probably agree and cry about it like they always did.
Yes, perfect, wonderful, totally normal Dr. Octavius Brine, the human being.
"It's wonderful, Dave," I finally responded, trying desperately to keep my response as steady and contained as possible. "I see you even used purple… again."
"It's your favorite color too, right?" Dave said. "I knew you'd like it!" He grabbed my hand then, quite suddenly, and pelted off with me up towards the float, finding a stepping stool and set of stairs that took us up onto the top of it. Here, under a large sprawl of large purple tentacles that resembled that of something like a horrible Iron Throne, only with you know, tentacles, we stood there for a moment.
Looking down at the handiwork and artistic depictions of underwater clams, fish, and of course, octopuses, Dave said, "So here's how it's going to go down…" He put an arm around my shoulder, then using his other hand to showcase outward, as if he was beginning a 'picture this' sort of montage. "We'll be towards the front of the parade, just behind the hideous Baby Shark float, but right in front of the National Geographic float. I've hired some human dancers to help with our procession, so they have a skit to show for the news stations to air. After that, I will show off my moves, make a brief announcement, again for the news stations." He paused for a moment, thinking to himself as he further pondered the float around us, and then looked down at me. "And you'll be up here with me!"
"Yeah, totally," I said. "As long as you're not going to make we wear something stupid again like a sparkly red dress or something."
"Oh no, the parade won't call for anything like that," Dave said. "We'll just be our good ol selves. Well, you will, I'll be the doctor, of course."
"Of course," I said, cringing again.
"Oh, Dr. Brine!" The sound of a woman's voice suddenly called out to him somewhere in the large holding garage, filtering through and bouncing off the other floats that were currently collected here as both Dave and I instantly looked around to see who had called. It wouldn't take very long for us to finally notice a professionally dressed woman trot up to our float, her heels clicking against the tiled floors and filling the room with their echoes. "Dr. Brine, I can't believe the coincidence! Would you mind if I spoke to you and your lovely fiancée for a moment?"
From up where we were I couldn't really tell who she was. I found I was squinting to try and figure out if I had seen her before when Dave took my arm gently and began to escort me back down the little staircase, off the float, and back to the ground once again. It was there that the lady had met us, her close presence finally setting off a trigger of familiarity; although one I hadn't met in person. She was exceptionally pretty, reminding me of someone that would probably make appearances on talk shows or something.
"I'm sure you know of my show segment on NYC Life and Action. Channel 2 News?" Her words created a pause as both Dave and I tried burrowing ourselves into our memories, attempting to connect the dots. It was then that I had remembered seeing billboards of her around New York advertising her show, and commercials I had seen of her advertising her own beauty products.
"Oh yeah, Rayonna Desiree, right?" I finally acknowledged.
"Yes, that's me," she said casually, smiling in a way that accentuated her facial features, perhaps an out-of-habit type that she had been using for years for her career. "It's finally nice to meet both of you in-person. It's not often a journalist has this kind of opportunity. Are you putting your float in the Macy's Parade?"
"We are," Dave responded. "Just here to make sure everything is in order."
"Great!" Rayonna said happily. "In that case, I wanted to ask: did you two have any plans after the parade? I would absolutely love to interview you guys and do a report on you for my segment."
"Ummm." I felt like agreeing to this was a terrible idea, much less something I wanted to do, but Dave immediately jumped at the opportunity.
"We'll do it. It would be great for my publicity," Dave confirmed, though slowly I watched as he began to shift into acting mode, bringing on the fake tears and everything. "See, after that horrible terrorist attack we—we lost everything!" He paused for a moment to fake choke up, trembling his lips and everything. "After what they did to my beautiful fiancée…"
"Oh, Dr. Brine, you know I am so sorry about what happened! This interview would definitely be a mutual and beneficial meeting, as I can talk about your new research efforts and need for funds for millions to see."
"That would be great, Ms. Desiree," Dave said, continuing his act.
"Lovely! I'll see you two after the parade then? I'll look for you guys where the floats let up."
"Thank you," Dave said. Rayonna gave us a wave, turned around, and started out of the large holding area. Before long, the sound of her heels clicking on the floor ceased the moment the sound of her opening the facility's doors and close behind her, leaving Dave and I alone together in silence briefly before I shot a glare at Dave.
"What are we going to tell her, huh?" I asked, putting my arms around my chest in a defensive manner as I quizzed him. "What freaking research are we going to talk about, hmmm?"
"I'll figure something out…" Dave said, placing a hand to his 'chin' in thought. "Can't talk about the Medusa Serum at all…."
"You think!?" I huffed irritably. "Whatever lie you're going to come up with next you better think of an elaborate research study, with actual evidence to back it up before this thing happens."
"Do you not believe in me then?" Dave asked, smirking. "I'm the master of coming up with plans, you know. You should already know this."
"I do, but—"
"Then don't worry! I've got everything under control, dearest! We've got this in the bag."
I honest to God hoped he was right. Even though I've seen him pull through plenty of times before, I couldn't help but feel a sense of dread whenever Dave took another 'leap of faith' so to speak. Every step we took forward with these acts of deceit was just another opportunity for things to go wrong. But honestly, that was just my negativity talking. I tried to constantly set myself straight, and be positive like Dave had been teaching me to do. I suppose it was a defense mechanism I had in order to not disappoint myself, and you know, to keep my sanity.