The Octonauts and the Random Role Reversal

Chapter Nine

There was barely enough space for one, fairly slight Octonaut down this deep, and Peso felt a tiny bit panicky as he pulled himself along the trench wall, flippers trembling and slippery. The rock was right up against his back, the corridor only growing narrower as they climbed gradually downwards, heading towards the source of the voices.

For once, the penguin was glad of his small size in this scenario, although he felt sorry for Tweak; the taller Octonaut had to hunch herself over to fit through the crevice, and her breath came out in huffs of carefully conserved air as she manoeuvred herself carefully after him, Peso leading the way as he was more likely to fit into the cramped space.

"Are you okay?" he checked for the third or fourth time, a little of his concerned medic self escaping.

"I'm fine," she agreed over his shoulder. Tweak wouldn't say she was at all claustrophobic as a general rule - she spent enough of her time squatted in tight spaces under engines and such, after all - but there was something about being down this deep and this dark that would make anyone feel antsy, she thought.

Peso audibly hesitated. "Should we call Dashi, tell her what we're doing?" he wondered aloud.

"We don't want to worry her," Tweak said surely. "She's worried enough about the whole captain thing as it is. When we find these guys and rescue them, then we'll call her and give her a status update."

The confidence in her words helped, and Peso nodded in agreement.
Finally, after what seemed like an age but what could have only been a few metres down into the cramped tunnel, Tweak made another one of her regular calls and there was a reply at last, a faint voice growing stronger by the second as they registered someone there. "Help!" it cried.

Peso smiled, but Tweak was frowning, her ears, although coiled tightly to the rim of her helmet in the restricted space, twitching in a way that meant she was listening closely to something he couldn't hope to hear. "What is it, Tweak?" Peso asked anxiously.

"I can hear something else," she responded.

"Help!" repeated the voice, but even Peso heard it this time as another one joined it - joined by another, and another, until it sounded like an entire chorus of voices were all chiming for help somewhere down below them.

Exchanging worried looks, the two Octonauts did their best to hurry along the narrow crevice, Tweak having to almost bend double as Peso helped pull her through a particularly tight gap between the narrowing walls. It was too late to go back now anyway, and Peso just hoped there was another way out of the trench into open water, or he would have a lot of patients to treat with no medical supplies to speak of. Despite the fact he wasn't technically a medic today, that of course wasn't going to stop him from helping these creatures - that was if they could find them.

Tweak was forced to crawl the last few metres, even Peso struggling to stand straight as they reached a point where their helmets clashed against the low cavern roof so they couldn't realistically go any further. "This doesn't make sense," she pointed out, voice low. "Hello?" she repeated into the blackness.

"Er - hello," piped up a voice apparently right next to Peso's ear. Peso jumped with an alarmed cry, hitting his helmet on the ceiling.

Tweak turned, uncomfortably, stared hard at the wall. "You guys alright in there?" she asked it, somehow barely betraying the concern that was in both of their voices - creatures trapped behind an apparently solid wall of impenetrable rock.

The voice whimpered. "We're stuck," it said, needlessly.

"Don't worry. We're gonna get you out," Tweak said with authority, although she threw a meaningful look at Peso, the clear meaning being - how?