Chapter Six:

Clench and Meggy

An angry Meggy approached Tari, furious that her best friend had just mocked her for struggling to open a trapdoor, unaware that the voice she heard was not from the cyborg gamer's mouth. Tari's free human hand grabbed Clench, trying to keep him still, and she cowered with each second the former Inkling stared at her with fury.

"It wasn't me, I swear!" Tari whimpered.

"I could do that while having one arm tied behind my back!" Clench said in a kind of muffled tone, which didn't help his friend's case as Meggy got a little more angrier by the second.

"You want to say that again, Tari?!" She demanded.

'How do I get out of this, and apologize to Meggy?' Tari thought, 'Is it time to let her meet Clench? But, how do I do it, is it really a good idea to let her know that my cyborg arm can actually talk?'

Clench struggled against Tari's grip, and the gamer girl gripped him harder. Finally, her fingers became weak, and the robotic arm broke free, raising himself to the height of Tari's head. The mechanical fingers twitched as the orange-haired Splatfest champion took notice, and Clench said, "It was me, cupcake!"

"Wha...?!" Meggy was shocked.

"Heh-heh." Tari giggled, "Meggy, meet Clench. Up until recently, he was just my special arm that helped me while playing video games, and the only known special features in my cyborg arm were "EXPERT MODE", which enhanced my gaming skills, as well as the ability to warp inside games as well as simulations."

"Hi, how are ya?" Clench said in a polite manner.

"WHOA!" The ex-Inkling stumbled back, completely taken by surprise by this, "H-How...?"

"If I'm being honest..." Tari half-stammered, "I don't know how Clench came to life, but it was on the day we were practicing for my upcoming job interview, remember when I acted strange and hit you and Mario? That was the moment my arm became sentient and started talking, then we settled on calling him 'Clench', which he really liked.

"However, h-he kinda got me in trouble, especially during my job interview where Bob roasted me, and it prompted Clench to roast him back. Then, when we were at the zoo, Mario insulted a gorilla, and while we were intervening, Clench read the gorilla's mind to learn what happened and we made Mario apologize. A-And that's how I discovered I had a talking arm."

"Named Clench." Clench added.

"I don't forget." Tari hissed through gritted teeth.

"Wow!" Meggy said, "Maybe someday, I'll discover my foot is alive and name it 'Footy'!" She frowned, "No, 'Leggy'!"

"That's offensive!" Tari's cybernetic arm told the Inkling-turned human, "Also, uh, Margaret. I couldn't help but notice your arms couldn't open the hatch."

"It's Meggy, and I have hands." Meggy told Clench with annoyance.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever, Larry." Clench remarked irritably, "Let me show you how a real giga-chad does it!"

"Uh, Clench?" Tari said in an uneasy fashion, "You're just an arm, not a... AHHHHH!"

She felt her legs moving as if Clench had gained control of her body, and, in a second, Tari was on her knees just inches from the trap door. Her human arm seemed to be possessed by Clench's control as it moved in front of her, and the cyborg gamer felt herself cracking her knuckles. Seconds later, the two of them were doing what they could to open the trapdoor.

Meggy watched as Clench morphed into a drill, placed himself against the hatch, and whirred to life. Tari wound up getting dizzy from feeling her arm spin, and by the time the drilling ceased, the door wasn't even open and the cyborg gamer was down on her back.

Next, Clench tried to pull, which was what Meggy had done earlier, he pulled so hard until his fingers sparked and the robotic arm groaned, "Ack! My arthritis..."

"Robots can't get that." Tari told Clench, feeling the pain as well.

They kept trying what they could, but nothing seemed to be working, especially when Clench somehow went wizard mode and tried to blast open the trapdoor. However, his magic only caused a flower to wind up appearing on the hatch. Meggy smirked with amusement as she took in what she was watching.

"Having trouble?" The beanie-wearing human asked.

"No, are you?" Clench replied in kind.

"Are you?!"

"Oh boy..." Tari groaned as Meggy and the arm went at it while shouting 'are you' repeatedly, this was going to take a while, and she could only hope this was resolved when she, Meggy and Clench got that trapdoor crisis resolved. The cyborg's other hope was that the guys weren't having too much trouble with... whatever else they were doing.