On arrival in England, the submarine was put in dry dock while repair crews fixed the turbine, replaced the lost rivets on the seams, and scraped off suckers the size of dinner plates that had been steamed onto the submarine's hull. Chef Fournier ran around with a wheelbarrow collecting the suckers; he had exciting plans for a hundred pounds of flash-steamed and salted calamari. Captain Chilton was summoned to the admiral's office.
"What happened out there?" the admiral demanded. She had some familiarity with the damage a mad scientist could do and had fully expected the submarine to be filled with toxic gas or aetheric energy that killed the entire crew, to be pulled into another dimension by an elder god, or to sink after its hull was punctured by the scorpion tail of a ravening monster. Steamed octopus was new.
"We encountered an octopus off the coast of Spain, ma'am," Captain Chilton said.
"Would you care to describe this octopus?"
"No, ma'am."
"Very wise, captain. Because if you were to use words such as 'giant', 'monstrous' or 'ferocious', we both know who I would have to forward this report to."
"It was a nondescript octopus, ma'am."
"Good. Let's keep it that way. Those damned spooks are poking into enough of my business already."
~~~
Unfortunately for the British Navy, Hyacinth had no such restraint. She eagerly wrote to Professor Thrikopolis to crow about her momentous discovery: the Grimm Water Turtle. She was certain she had observed one, and would certainly have collected a specimen if it weren't for that inconvenient attack by a giant, monstrous, ferocious octopus. She posted the letter to the Royal University and went out for tea.
At the teashop she was approached by two black-cloaked figures in tophats. Hyacinth ignored them. They each produced a dagger. Hyacinth stopped ignoring them and noticed their cloaks were closed with a British Secret Service seal.
"Tell your Abomination of Science to wait here and come with us, or we'll gut you," the shorter one said.
"Please," the other said.
"Do you have the standing to address me? I'm quite certain we haven't been introduced."
"It's fine," the taller one said. "There's an etiquette exception for kidnappings."
"Oh, well if it's a kidnapping. Bom-bom, please wait for me here."
The Abomination grumbled in Hindi, but stayed at the teashop pretending to drink Earl Grey. Hyacinth was blindfolded and bundled into a stagecoach going west, then another going east, and finally one that went round and round in circles until the shorter kidnapper threw up. The two hustled Hyacinth inside a building and up several flights of stairs, then took off her blindfold with a flourish.
"No one can hear you scream here, Grimm. You are in a top-secret location," said the short one.
Just outside the door, a woman said, "These cells in the Tower of London have been used for centuries to imprison those of noble blood. There are even rumors that some are in use today by Her Majesty's Secret Service."
The spook glared at the door as if it had wronged them and started again. "No one will ever find you."
The tour guide said, "If you come back at eight, you can explore all these cells."
While their colleague shook their fist at the door, the taller spook said, "Lady Hyacinth, thank you so much for taking a moment from your day to speak with us."
Hyacinth said, "Of course. Always happy to help Her Majesty's Secret Service."
"Good, good. We had a few teensy weensie questions about your letter here."
"You wrote this," the short spook said. "Don't try to deny it!"
"Yes, I wrote-- wait, this is about my letter? Not Bom-bom?"
"What?" the tall spook asked.
"My Abomination. This isn't about them going on a killing spree after I operated on them?"
The short spook said, "We don't care about your Abomination."
"Indeed," the tall one said. "This isn't about the-- how large a killing spree was this, exactly?"
"Oh, I couldn't give you exact numbers."
The spooks exchanged looks. The tall one said, "We haven't gotten reports of any important people being killed, so let's set that aside for now. We're interested in what you wrote in your letter--"
"If you even did write this letter!"
"Your marvelous discovery has provided Britain with a golden opportunity."
"It threatens Queen and country, and you will be held responsible."
Hyacinth was, of course, familiar with the old good spook/bad spook ploy; it had been immortalized in enough penny-dreadfuls that everyone knew it. She had overheard her father say that it had largely fallen out of fashion in the intelligence community. The mad scientist/madder scientist/maddest scientist trio always produced results, if you count autopsy findings as results. Hyacinth found the spooks' reliance on the older method both quaint and reassuring.
"This giant octopus you've found could be the downfall of the empire—"
"—the saving of the empire—"
"—and it's your duty—"
"—responsibility—"
"—to remedy your mistake—"
"—to take advantage of this opportunity—"
"—by taming the creature to follow our bidding!" the spooks said together.
Hyacinth frowned. "Wait, this isn't about the Grimm Water Turtle?"
The short spook pounded their fist on the table. "Why would we care about some sea turtle?"
"Grimm Water Turtle," Hyacinth corrected.
"We want the monstrous octopus! It can destroy submersibles, and there is a particular one we would like it to destroy. Since you discovered it, we want you to tame it. I thought we covered this before."
Hyacinth's common sense—beaten down, starved and neglected in her pursuit of mad science glory—rallied her similarly weakened survival instincts. She said, "That sounds very dangerous."
"Playing hard to get, Grimm?" the short spook said. They wanted to get back to threatening.
The taller spook loved the dance of negotiation and had figured out that Hyacinth was just angling for a promotion. This would have come as a surprise to Hyacinth herself. "I think she has a point. This operation is much too delicate to be handled by a Mad Scientist Third Class."
"Fourth," the short spook said.
"Don't be silly, there is no fourth class." Hyacinth tried to retreat, turtle-like, into her high collar. "Her Royal Majesty wouldn't task this to anyone below the rank of, say, Second Class."
Hyacinth glared at them. "That's not fair! I discovered the octopus!"
"A good point. First Class, then."
Hyacinth wasn't about to let them take this assignment away and give it to some First Class snob like her mother. "I refuse!"
The short spook threw up their hands. "Take the assignment and the promotion to first class now, I'm sure we can get you a royal commendation and the mad genius of the century award when you've actually captured the octopus."
Hyacinth's common sense was steamrolled by her ambition. While her survival instincts ran away to save themselves, Hyacinth said, "Anything for her majesty! I think taming the monster should be a cinch. No, really, it's just a bit of animal mind-control." The tower cell was equipped with a blackboard--it was almost impossible to interrogate a scientist without one--so Hyacinth jumped up and started drawing on it. She drew a balloon with five strings.
"What is that you're drawing?"
"That's the octopus," Hyacinth said, adding a smiley-face as if that would clarify things. "Dr Thrikopolis is able to mind control hedgehogs with devices like this; I'm sure she could make them much, much, much bigger and modify them to work on octopuses." Hyacinth added cross-hatching on the top of the smiley-face balloon to represent a wire mesh hat.
"Octopi," the short spook said. "And what's this about another scientist? Are you some sort of collaborator?"
The tall spook said, "Octopodes, actually, it's a Greek root, not Latin. And I'm sure Lady Hyacinth misspoke; a real Mad Scientist First Class would never share her glory with another scientist."
Hyacinth winced. She quickly added straps and gears to her diagram to disguise the fact that it was still a Thrikopolis Device. "No, of course not, I only meant-- well, I'm not going to share my glory with you either!"
"Excuse me?" the tall spook said.
"The mind-control device is all mine and very top-secret. I couldn't just share its details with anyone. You might steal my ideas!"
The tall spook said, "We aren't going to steal your ideas, we just want to make a plan."
"You're wasting our time with nonsense," the short spook said. "How could you possibly get that on to the monster? It would weigh a ton."
"Surely someone as brilliant as you has a plan," the tall one said. Her expression was doubtful.
Hyacinth emphatically circled a random bit of the diagram, breaking her pink chalk in the process. "By—by training smaller octopuses to approach the giant one and hook it into the harness, of course." One spook glanced at the other. The plan didn't endanger so much as a single minion, much less the mad scientist herself. It seemed risky.
Hyacinth took a deep breath and tried not to panic. This was her chance to show her professors that she really could come up with diabolical schemes. No one would have a chance to say that this plan was "straightforward without any chance of going horribly wrong" or "light on casualties." She grabbed a piece of blue chalk and made slashing downward lines on the board.
"Then, a mass of yodeling minions will descend from the surface to distract it while my chief minion and I pump aetheric energy into the mechanism to wipe out its brain activity. After a quick resurrection, and some giant-octopus sized goggles for its new light sensitivity, I have no doubt that it will follow instructions like a little zombie lamb."
The spooks' faces cleared. That sounded like the plan of a Mad Scientist First Class. As they muttered quietly to each other, Hyacinth exhaled in relief. She hoped the last-minute addition of the yodeling minions would push the plan from "almost impossible" to "just crazy enough to fail in a horribly interesting way."
The tall spook smiled. "Lady Hyacinth Grimm, Mad Scientist First Class, please allow us to show you to your new top-secret lab."