Lady Hyacinth Grimm vs the Nautilus

Chapter 10: A Danger to the Cephalopod Dynasty

In a bit of an anticlimax, a sailor on the observation deck spotted the giant octopus at half eleven. As a result, no one was woken from a sound sleep (except for the yodeling minions, who were woken from a sound freeze). The ocean's bottom was as bright and cheery as it ever was. No one even had to interrupt tea.

Hyacinth sprang into action, shouting orders and gesturing wildly in the wrong direction. Her Chief Minion repeated each of the orders at the top of his lungs and pointed in the opposite direction, which was still wrong. Replacement Minions A and B weren't very good at following instructions, so they ran off in yet a different direction, and by coincidence ended up where they were supposed to be: at the airlock closest to the mind-control device.

On the Candiru, an engineer pulled the giant ripcord to thaw out their minions. After they managed to stop shivering violently, the yodeling minions scrunched themselves into diving bells, which were shot out of the submarine and pulled to the surface by the attached buoys. The Candiru also prepped its torpedo bays for when the plan inevitably went wrong.

Mortis' homunculi and Galena's automatons, for once working towards a common goal, lifted the mind-control device and tried to shove it into the airlock, which was much too small for the massive artifact. Aludel, joined by that fifth mad scientist who everyone kept forgetting about, took a sledgehammer to the painstakingly detailed (and completely useless) gears surrounding the mind-control device. A squad of crack sailors (who had really hoped to be assigned to some mission—any mission—that didn't involve mad scientists) managed to fit the remodeled device into the airlock, though it was now in four pieces.

Hyacinth thought everything was going swimmingly. They hadn't even attempted to mind-control the giant octopus yet, and already her plan was failing in a way bound to have casualties. "Signal the yodelers," she bellowed like a battlefield commander, and she gestured for everyone to hurry. Usually she was unable to bellow, but she had loosened her corset just for this occasion.

Bobbing just below the surface, the yodelers saw bubbles streaming up from the Widowmaker, which they knew was either their signal or an indication that the submersible was experiencing catastrophic depressurization. Trailing air tubes to the surface, the minions began their descent, yodeling in unison. On the ocean floor, the giant octopus woke up. It stirred one giant tentacle in a lazy grab at the Widowmaker.

"There's little time left," Hyacinth continued to bellow. "Set loose the trained octopuses!"

Everyone froze. They looked at Hyacinth. They looked at Sushi, perched on her shoulder. They looked back at Hyacinth.

"Where are the trained octopuses?" Hyacinth thought to ask.

She was sure she'd included them in her plans—though now that she thought about it, she'd also meant to develop a training regimen and possibly a dissection program, before being distracted by an idea that might improve the efficiency of the camel digestive process.

"Oh," she said. "Oh dear."

The octopus got a second tentacle around the submarine and began to shake it. Furniture, books and various tools went flying around the cabins; metal gears became dangerous projectiles. Aludel broke several more feathers. Aludel's companion lost its left wing, then found it again. The group of crack sailors piled up on top of each other like tin soldiers rattled in a biscuit box.

All four pieces of the mind control device slid straight towards Hyacinth, whose outer skirt was firmly pinned by an errant knick-knack cabinet. Bom-bom stepped forward, caught a sledgehammer by the handle as it flew past, spun around, and delivered a mighty blow that crushed the pieces of the device back together--and half a foot into the metal deck plating. It protruded through the ceiling of the galley, where Chef Fournier was fleeing a pot's worth of boiling oil that was no longer in the pot.