Chapter Text
Inside her treedome, Sandy Cheeks adjusted the dials on her latest invention, squinting through her safety glasses as she soldered a delicate circuit. She was on the verge of a breakthrough—she could feel it.
The lab beneath Sandy's treedome was a controlled chaos of wires, metal parts, and half-finished projects scattered across tables and shelves. The faint hum of the air supply was the only sound as she worked, her focus narrowing to a single line of code blinking on the monitor. Her latest project, a handheld weather-monitoring device, had finally started yielding results after weeks of meticulous design. But tonight, the readings she was picking up were… unexpected.
“Now hold on a sec...” Sandy murmured, wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead. She leaned closer to the monitor, her eyes widening as a series of energy spikes appeared on the screen. Each spike pulsed with an unsettling regularity, as if something was sending waves of energy rippling through the ocean.
“Well, I’ll be a nut-gatherin’ squirrel in a snowstorm... what’s causin’ all these weird readings?” she muttered to herself, her voice trailing off. She adjusted the settings, expanding the range of her readings on the device in the hopes of getting a better idea of what was going on outside her treedome and possibly pinpointing the source.
"Somethin’ ain't right," she whispered, feeling a shiver run down her spine. Years of survival and exploration had honed her instincts, and every one of them was hollering at her now.
As she fine-tuned the device, a faint hum began to resonate through the water, so low at first she thought she’d imagined it. But it grew louder, building slowly, like the distant rumble of a massive engine, its vibrations echoing through her treedome and making the walls tremble.
"What in tarnation…?" Sandy muttered, stepping back from her work table, her ears twitching uneasily. The hum intensified, buzzing in her teeth and reverberating down to her bones.
Heart pounding, she hurried out of the lab and took the elevator back up to her main living area. As soon as she was ground level again, she looked outside her home’s window. Beyond the glass walls of her treedome, she saw something that made her heart skip a beat.
A green light—no, a glow —was seeping out from the edges of the horizon, as if it were bleeding into the water itself. The entire landscape beyond her treedome seemed to be slowly turning a sickly, unnatural green. And… strange shadows appeared to flicker along the edge of her vision—she shook her head, blinking away the odd visual anomaly.
The last time she'd seen water this color was during a green tide—a harmful macroalgae bloom that poisoned the water for miles.
But this seemed different. She didn't know what it was, but her gut told her something was very wrong.
Dark clouds churned overhead, swirling in a vortex, and that same eerie green light seeped through the cracks in the storm. It looked almost like the silhouette of giant tendrils reaching down from the sky—coiling and curling through the water with malevolent intent.
"What in the world is goin' on out there…?" she whispered, barely able to find her voice.
Grabbing her phone off the table, she dialed SpongeBob’s number, but it went straight to voicemail. She tried Narlene—no answer. A gnawing sense of dread twisted in her chest as she finally called Karen, hoping the computer wife would have some insight.
The line picked up immediately. “Let me guess, you’re calling about the massive energy spike my sensors picked up?” Karen’s synthetic voice was calm, but there was an edge Sandy hadn’t heard before.
Sandy let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Yes! But it’s more than that! Karen, have ya looked outside lately?”
There was a pause on the line. “What’s that squirrel yammering about?” Sandy could faintly hear Plankton’s voice in the background, his usual annoyance tinged with something that almost sounded like fear.
“Oh, just the end of the world as we know it,” Karen shot back, her tone dripping with sarcasm. Then, turning back to Sandy, “I was just about to check. But whatever this is, it isn’t just any signal, Sandy. It’s… probing. Alive. It feels like something’s trying to reach out. Do you have any idea what could be causing this?”
“I wish I knew,” Sandy said, glancing nervously at the green glow creeping closer to her treedome. “It’s like nothin’ I’ve ever seen. And whatever it is, it’s powerful enough to affect everythin’ within miles of here. I don’t think we’re dealin’ with just any ol’ disturbance.”
“Get off the phone, Karen!” Plankton’s voice cut in, more insistent now. “We need to lock down the Chum Bucket and activate the emergency protocols—!”
Suddenly, a loud crash echoed on Karen’s end, followed by the clatter of metal.
Sandy’s eyes widened, her pulse quickening. “Karen?! Y’all still there?!”
In the background, Plankton’s voice sputtered with a mix of outrage and fear. “Hey! What’s the big idea? This isn’t some kind of… cultist meetup point!”
“...Sandy, I’m gonna have to call you back,” Karen said, her tone unnervingly flat.
“Wait—what’s happening, Karen?” Sandy pressed, straining to hear over the commotion on the other end.
“If you freeloaders think you can just waltz in here without ordering anything, you’ve got another thing coming!” Plankton’s voice grew fainter, nearly drowned out by more crashes and shouts.
Karen’s voice returned, now edged with unease. “Let’s just say… Squidward, SpongeBob, and a group of hooded weirdos just walked in,” she said. “I’ll fill you in later, gal pal.” And with that, the line clicked dead.
“Wait! Karen!” Sandy shouted into the receiver, but it was too late. The line was silent.
Lowering the phone, Sandy felt a cold knot of dread settle in her stomach. What the heck is goin’ on? she thought, brow furrowing as her mind raced. “Squidward? SpongeBob? Cultists?” She clenched her jaw. “I need more information—and fast.”
A pang of guilt flared up as she remembered a phone call she’d had with SpongeBob just the other week.
"He’s been acting different lately, and I just don’t know what to do!” SpongeBob had said, his voice trembling with worry.
"Well, have ya tried givin’ him some space?” she’d suggested, more as a gentle nudge than anything.
“No, and I just don’t think I can do that, Sandy,” SpongeBob had replied, with an intensity in his voice that caught her off guard.
At the time, she’d rolled her eyes, chalking it up to SpongeBob’s usual over-the-top obsession with his grumpy neighbor. SpongeBob practically stalked the poor guy some days; it wasn’t unusual for him to call her, fretting over every little mood shift in Squidward. She’d thought nothing of it… but now, in hindsight, his desperation had seemed almost… unsettling.
Dang it, Sandy, she thought, clenching her fists. Ya should’ve taken him more seriously.
Determined not to waste another second, she sprang into action. Sprinting across her living room, she activated her treedome’s lockdown mode. Heavy steel barriers slid down over the entrances with a hiss, sealing her off from any uninvited guests. The faint hum of the airlock filled the quiet space, adding a steely edge to her focus.
She paused, taking a steadying breath as the reality of the situation set in. Something dark was happening in Bikini Bottom—something that had ensnared her closest friends. Whatever was happening out there, she wasn’t going to sit idly by. Her friends were involved, and she was going to get to the bottom of this—even if it meant facing down a cult.
“Alright, Cheeks, no time to lose,” she muttered, then bolted back over to her elevator leading down to the lab, her paw already reaching for the button.