'I'm alive, yippee'
I woke up in a large metal caldron full of water. And from what I can guess, someone picked me up after I fell unconscious. It's not great, but it's probably better than before. I'm not trapped in a mansion run by crazy strong lunatics, and there are dead fish in here. Score.
I peered over the edge of the tank, and it was a small room with a kitchen on one side of the room and a table with one chair on the other side of the room. Covering the floor is a random assortment of balloons, balls, rubber chickens, squirt guns, rope, and variously colored outfits.
'This must be the clown's house.'
For exits, there are two doors and a small window above me.
'Welp, it couldn't hurt to look.'
I tried climbing the wall, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't lift myself past a few inches. Having only one tentacle means I can't move anymore. I don't have any way to climb up, even with two tentacles. Climbing up is hard, with one it's basically impossible with just one. The only thing I can do now is eat the fish in the cauldron. What a terrible fate befalls little old me. There wasn't a wide variety of fish here, just mackerel and nothing but mackerel. It's not as tasty as my last buffet, but what can you do? After about 4 hours, the Clown, without his costume from before and his makeup, walks through one of the doors and approaches my cauldron and looks in.
"Hey there, little guy, I hope you like the food I prepared for you. Man, I thought you might not make it; you were bleeding blue stuff for a while there. Oh, how rude of me, let me introduce myself to you. I am Huso the clown. It's nice to meet you, octopus."
He put his hand out like he was trying to give me a handshake, and I reached my tentacle out and shook his hand. He proceeds to pass out and fall backwards from the shock.
'Not again, this is starting to hurt my feelings.'
...
After about one hour, the clown wakes up, rubbing the back of his head.
"ow, augh, what happened. ah"
He opened his eyes, and sitting on his chest was the color-changing octopus holding a brush with its tentacle, it then pointed to a very crudely written message on the floor, written in ink. The clown reads aloud.
"Hallo, I am an intelligent octopus. I was injured escaping that place and need a place to stay for a few weeks. Is it okay if I stay here?"
The clown looked very confused and flustered at the incredibly strange creature.
"Uhm, I'm not sure. My landlord says I can't have any animal in my place."
The octopus points to another message he painted on the side of the cauldron.
"Remember, you owe me for stepping on me twice."
The clown, looking a little conflicted, sits up and sighs.
"Fine, you can stay here for a month, but I have questions for you."
The octopus then points to the clown's forehead. He gets up and runs to the mirror in the kitchen, and on his forehead it is written out "thank you" in the same ink. The clown laughs to himself.
'I just got pranked by a fish.'
...
After about five minutes of trying, the clown realized the ink was not coming off. He walked back over to me, and I just pointed at another message on the wall that I had written earlier.
"It will take about a month for that to come off."
The clown just laughed at himself again, and then sighed
"That's a pretty good prank, Octopus. You would make a great clown. I need to get you some paper so you will spare my poor walls."
He ran frantically back into his room and pulled out stacks of notices and overdue bills. He flipped one over to the blank side and handed it to me.
"I'm going to ask you questions, and you're going to answer them on the paper, got it?"
"Okay, but you only get 5 questions."
"Really? Only five questions?"
I began writing. "Yes"
"Well, I feel stupid now, that's four, right? Wait, don't answer that. Here's my second question. Where did you come from?"
He now understood the premise, and I began writing, and as I was writing, he read it aloud.
"When a mommy and daddy octopus love each other very much- okay, okay, I get it. Moving on, how are you intelligent?"
He handed me another piece of paper and began writing. He began reading.
"I ate weird moss... that's it?"
I nodded my head. He went silent for a little bit, then continued, and handed me another paper.
"What are your abilities other than the color changing and intelligence?"
'That is a pretty good question.'
"' I can go partially invisible, I can change the properties of my body a great deal, I can climb vertical surfaces, and I can spray people with a long-lasting ink that lingers for a while.' That's quite a bit, little octopus."
"Why did you pick me to escape with?"
'That is a weird last question. Okay'
I began writing, and just like before, he began reading it aloud.
"You looked like you weren't paying attention to your surroundings, you were by yourself, and your clothes were a good cover." He looked a little sad for a second by but he perked himself up. Just then, his eyes light up, and a mischievous grin spreads across his face.
"You said you can change shape and color, so hypothetically, you could mimic anything?"
'I don't like where this is going at all'
...
Meira is standing, observing the tank where the octopus was last seen. Over the last few days, she has been asking everyone who has seen the octopus to give her a firsthand account of everything everyone knows. She first asked her dad and Beau what happened with it on the boat. After hearing about the training it was doing on the boat from Beau, she then tasked them to head back to the same area they had found it before, next time they go bottoming. She then inspected Wade and the ink on his face.
She discovered that the ink is only slightly different compared to normal octopus ink, but when she checked the ink on the head maid's dress, she was very surprised. It was completely different.
The ink on the maid's dress had a slightly different viscosity, color, and adhesiveness. It's as if the ink was changed to be better for the situation. She checked Precious's face next, and the same thing happened there. She began speaking into a strange, shell-shaped recording device in her hand.
"The ink from the subject appears to change based on the situation it is used in. Further analysis to see the scope of the changes."
She then moved over to the tank where the octopus was kept until the party. She sadly couldn't get any of the old water that the octopus was kept in, as the tank was cleaned out after the octopus was moved to the party. Instead, she questioned all the guards and once again was met with disappointment. Every conversation went like so.
"Hello, I am William. This is Barry. We were the last guards on shift with the octopus."
"Did you notice anything off about the octopus?"
"Yes, it kept changing colors. Ooh, Barry, wouldn't it be great to get scones after this at Bob's?"
"Definitely, Will. For sure."
Every single guard was useless to Meira, but she did learn one thing. The octopus escaped to get away from the mundanities of the guards. And now, she went back to the party room to inspect the tank and ask around. She asked some of the partygoers, but they were only slightly more useful than the guards. She then asked Oscar, the presenter of the entertainers, what he knew.
"It escaped, right?"
Meira, surprised by this, asked him,
"Why do you think that?"
"Well, after Mirth approached the tank, after that, all the guards near the tank left and started searching for something. Also, after that point, I didn't see the octopus again. I just put two and two together."
"If that's the case, how do you think it escaped?"
"If I had to guess, it probably escaped on one of the entertainers," Oscar told her.
Meira was very surprised by this and followed up with a question, "Why do you think that?"
"Well, many of the entertainers passed by the tank to leave the party, and most of them headed straight out of the party. If I were him, I would escape on them."
She thought about this for a moment and came to the same conclusion as him. She looked him in the eyes and smiled.
"Get me a report of every performer that night that walked by the tank."
"I would love to, but I work for your father on his boat, so I can't help you."
"Hold on just a minute."
She walked out of the room and came back ten minutes later with Mirth next to her. Mirth then said to Oscar.
"If you help my sister find the octopus, I will clear your debt to my father."
Oscar paused for a moment.
"Let's find that octopus boss lady."