Floofy, Popcorn, and their new friend, Silver, snuck into Pearl Aquarium, ensuring that they made no noise whatsoever. When they crept up to the entrance, they saw the first guard, whom they nicknamed the lazy guard because he was always sleeping. Floofy started to tiptoe around him, not noticing the bump in the ground. Suddenly, she tripped! Facefirst in the sand she landed. Fortunately, the fall didn’t hurt, but it made a loud BANG! Miraculously, the guard didn’t wake up. Wow, Floofy thought, he’s so used to sleeping that he didn’t even notice that? They snuck in successfully but couldn't find Seal! In the room across them, Seal was swimming around frantically, trying to find the way out but with no luck. After swimming three laps, she finally noticed the others. "Help me! I’m over here!" She wailed. Silver, Floofy, and Popcorn finally noticed her. Floofy and Popcorn stared at her in awe: her white skin glittered like pearls and exactly six gray whiskers on each side matched perfectly, although she had one black whisker on the left. "Silver," she asked, "who are those creatures looking at me as if I’m a weirdo?" Silver explained, "they’re here to bust you out of this nasty aquarium." Floofy and Popcorn introduced themselves. In the middle of the introductions, Seal asked, "Very nice meeting you all, but can somebody quickly get me out? It smells like rotten fish here!"
The three quickly got to work. Popcorn stood guard while Floofy and Silver determined how to get Seal out. "There’s no lock anywhere," Floofy noticed. Silver started panicking. "Then how do we get her out? What if we never get her out? Or what if we get caught? Oh no! Then I’ll never be able to open that seaweed shop I dreamed of!" Then, Floofy thought of a brilliant idea! "What if we find a hammer or a tool that can smash through glass, and then Seal is free! We might flood the aquarium, but it doesn’t matter. While we’re at it, let’s just bust every creature out!"
"I know somewhere we can find those tools!" Squealed Seal, "It’s in the storage room, but be careful, they have a guard with a whip in there. But when he does notice you guys, let him try to crack that whip. He might even slap himself in the face! You guys should make noise when you get to the storage room, so you can watch the most hilarious incident of all time!" Ignoring Seal, they put Floofy’s plan in action, heading in the direction of the storage room. There, too, stood a guard, a huge oaf tall as a giant, his face covered in scraggly white-gray whiskers, and he was also sleeping! Floofy snuck quietly in and picked up the hammer, but she heard a loud SNORE behind her. She was so surprised, she jumped up and dropped the hammer! It landed with a loud CLANG on the ground. The sleeping guard awakened! "Hey, you little pests, get out of here before I slap you with this whip!" He raised his whip, and Floofy was about to duck, but she remembered Seal’s words: When he does notice you, just let him crack the whip. She stood still as the guard tried to hit her but ended up tripping over himself! "Quick!" Floofy shouted to Silver and Popcorn, "Let’s go! This is our chance—we have to hurry!" Floofy grabbed the hammer and sprinted across the aquarium, swimming as fast as her legs could swim.
When she finally made it, she was exhausted. She handed the hammer to Silver. The wall of glass through which he threw it broke into a gazillion splinters flying everywhere. Water went everywhere, too, but the aquarium was nowhere close to flooding. "I’m free!" Seal exclaimed. "Now I can finally punch those aquarium guys in the nose!" Silver and Seal got to work, Silver hammering the hammer into every cage, while Seal used her tail to give a good thwack to whichever guard she could find. Water was everywhere, but it wasn’t deep.
Soon, Silver had freed every animal in the aquarium—all kinds of creatures: jellyfish, octopus, piranha, even sharks! Floofy led them to the entrance and told everyone to go Queen Octopus’s palace where they would meet and talk about their situation, a quite complicated situation because they were once criminals, and when they got banished to the aquarium, their houses were taken down and replaced, so they didn’t have a place to live. When they made it to the palace, Floofy and Popcorn returned the gem and gave back the urchin’s pearl. Queen Octopus led all of the once-criminal creatures into her private space and decided that her construction builders were to build a sanctuary for those who didn’t have a home at present and other homeless creatures who never had one in the first place. While they were building it, the former criminals searched for family members to live with. After a month or so, the building of the sanctuary finished, they had a grand opening to celebrate the return of the gem and the opening of the sanctuary.
News spread fast about the new place, and homeless creatures from all around the ocean came to live. Inside the sanctuary, a restaurant had an unlimited supply of food, so no one had to cook or starve, each creature getting their own room and key. It was basically a large apartment, but with many creatures in it. Floofy, so happy to see this new apartment in which everybody she knew could live, arranged a party inside the sanctuary to celebrate once more. As for Silver and Seal, they opened a shop inside the apartment and ran it together. It was a shop that sold various different kinds of seaweed. Floofy and Popcorn visited it occasionally to brighten up their gardens, which usually had nothing but dying plants and dust in them. Seal and Silver always thought of new names for the plants—such as sad seaweed or blinding blue. The one that Seal liked the most was the kind of seaweed she called Sarcasm because she could annoy and argue with it all the time. Silver liked the ageless seaweed, a new type of seaweed. You could put it in a corner of your room, leave it there for one year, and it still would look as good as new.
The new creatures in the sanctuary also began to build new lives—Shark, once a fierce criminal who could swim so fast he was a blur, found a new job as a doctor! Floofy and Popcorn were so delighted to see the whole community now working together. Popcorn had another case to solve, so Floofy went back to the cottage, a little disappointed that her adventure had come to an end, but little did she know, she was wrong. For ahead, unbeknownst to her, adventures galore awaited her discovery!
