Squidward collapsed backward in his chair, gasping through split lips, his arms still tied behind him with bristly rope. One of his eyes was nearly swollen shut. Blood matted his face. His legs throbbed, one twisted at a sickening angle beneath him.
But she was dead.
It was over.
At least… for now.
A familiar glow sparked in the shadows, like a cigarette burning underwater.
Lurala phased through the ceiling, upside-down and grinning, her wings dripping with soft green decay.
"Well damn, Squiddy," she purred. "I thought you were done for."
Squidward glared up at her through a black eye. "You ran."
She twirled in the air like a satisfied cat. "I panicked!"
"You ran."
"I didn't know she knew about shinigamis," she cooed, voice syrupy and obnoxiously cheerful. "Soon as she said the word, I was gone. That's, like, Death Note DEFCON ONE!"
"You could've helped me!"
Lurala chuckled and landed gracefully on his coffee table, kicking aside a shattered clarinet reed. "And ruin your character arc? Please."
Squidward groaned, shifting his mangled limbs. "My character arc currently involves internal bleeding."
With a grunt, he twisted to his side, slowly forcing his arms free from the bindings Sandy had tied him in. The knots had loosened when she started ranting about divine patterns and statistical anomalies. She hadn't expected to drop dead mid-interrogation.
"Smartest person in Bikini Bottom," he mumbled. "Maybe in the entire sea."
Lurala tilted her head. "I see. You knew she'd eventually figure you out?"
Squidward's voice was low, hoarse. "Because I went public. Started playing prophet. The Seer. The town's personal doomsayer. And she was connecting the dots. Quick. Too quick. It was only a matter of time before she pinned the pattern to me."
He crawled to the side table, trailing a red smear across the floor. His house was in disarray—bookshelves knocked over, clarinet case shattered, photos torn off the walls during the struggle.
"I didn't want to do it," he said, hoisting himself up with one good arm. "I had nothing against her. Not really. She was bossy, sure. Sided with those idiots sometimes. But she meant well."
He grabbed the receiver of his conch-shell phone with trembling fingers and dialed.
"911, what is your emergency?"
"H-help," Squidward croaked. "Someone… broke into my house. They beat me up—real bad. I think my legs are broken. I need… I need an ambulance…"
"Stay on the line, sir. Help is on the way."
He let the receiver fall from his tentacle and sagged against the table.
Lurala sat tail-coiled on his kitchen counter, admiring her claws. "You really scheduled her death hours ago?"
He nodded, exhausted. "Wrote it before I even wrote Perch's. 10:00 PM. Peaceful. In her sleep. I thought maybe… just maybe she'd be home. Wouldn't feel it. But no—"
He laughed bitterly, then winced. "She had to show up early. Had to interrogate me. Had to tie me to a chair and scream about probability distributions and cause-of-death matrices."
Lurala looked amused. "She was dedicated, I'll give her that."
Squidward stared up at the ceiling, hollow-eyed. "And I had to just sit there. Bleeding. Hoping 10:00 would come. Hoping the book would save me."
His voice cracked.
"It did."
For a while, the only sound was the faint gurgle of a leaky pipe and the click-click of Lurala's claws tapping on the counter.
"You realize," she said eventually, "this means you've officially crossed the line."
Squidward didn't respond.
"Self-defense, revenge, career advancement… sure. But this? This was pre-emptive. Cold. Strategic."
Squidward nodded faintly. "And necessary."
Lurala smiled slowly. "Good boy."
Outside, red-and-white lights flashed against the windowpanes.
The paramedics banged on the door. "Sir?! This is emergency response!"
Squidward didn't move. He just stared at Sandy's body across the room—her expression still frozen in mid-sentence, her fist half-clenched.
"I think I just killed the last person who could've stopped me," he whispered.
Lurala leaned in close, her breath like wilted flowers. "Then you better make sure no one ever comes close again."
The door burst open.
And Squidward, bloodied and broken, finally passed out as the paramedics lifted him into the waiting ambulance.