A Parade of Chaos

Steve had thought finally escaping Ethyl and the Welcoming Committee's clutches meant he'd be prepared for the rest of Gyllis. For a while that even seemed to be true. He'd grown used to the overly prominent use of mutations. The fish eyes, the shark scales, the tentacles - it'd all grown to be background noise. Shark God enthusiasts were a doubloon a dozen, and while he wasn't sure how on board he was with the whole religion, he'd at least grown to be used to it. The hundreds of committees for every little thing had grown pretty normal too.

The sound of alarms was not something he'd had on his radar. What did Gyllis even have alarms for? They certainly haven't gone off when Ethyl decided a fun group activity to introduce newcomers to Gyllis was arson.

But here he was, not sure where to look, standing in the middle of town square, golden statue of Shark God on his left, street vendors on his right, and people running frenzied everywhere. Just ahead and to his right, a cackling kid with the skin of a cuttlefish had taken over some vendor's soup pot to make some sort of concoction. To the left of that, a team of three with Reef Turtle, Cacophony Crab, and Dragonfish features respectively, readied weapons while they cheerfully discussed the best place to put a sniper. Next to them, a blue skinned woman with four arms led a team of six to build barricades with whatever they could grab. Oddly, Steve would think that the mood was fit for a festival if it hadn't looked like they were preparing for war.

"What the hell is going on here?!" Steve finally broke, bewildered.

"It's Inspection Day, we've got to prepare to meet them properly!" One of the more normal looking members of the nearby crowd answered, gesturing to the stream of text moving around the glass of the dome far above their heads. Steve turned to look.

INCOMING FROM OCTUS - THIS IS NOT A DRILL - INSPECTION COMMITTEE EN ROUTE

“And what on earth does that mean?” Steve asked, finding a little bit of reassurance in the fact that someone was actually answering him. Ethyl had seemed to get a thrill out of watching newcomers flail about in bafflement when confronted with their new reality in Gyllis. If she could answer their questions in ways that only confused them more she would do so with glee.

“Oh dear, you must be new,” The man said, coming closer. He really did look shockingly normal, now that Steve got a better look at him. He had long wavy brown hair that was half pulled back in a fishtail braid, and dark brown eyes; the only thing that really stood out was the splash of wine red skin across the left side of the man’s face and that looked more like a birthmark than a chosen mutation. As far as Steve could tell, the man had no aquatic mutations to speak of. It was almost suspicious. But maybe the man just didn’t wear the crazy that came with living in Gyllis on his skin like so many others here did. “It means that just now, an Angler ship hosting an inspection team from Octus docked at the airlock. Now, Octus’ Inspection Committee doesn’t like to tell us ahead of time when they’ll be coming, so the Announcement Committee kindly sounds the alarm whenever they decide to turn up. Really, the alarm started out just for the Gyllis Inspection Committee and the Special Committee, but then everyone else wanted to join in, and it grew from there!”

“But that doesn’t explain all this!” Steve replied, gesturing to the spectacle in front of him, still baffled.

“No, but I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise! You’ll see soon enough.” The man assured with a smile that did the opposite. It was like Ethyl all over again. Steve narrowed his eyes at the man.

“I never introduced myself, did I? Abraham Johnson, good to meet you!” The man said cheerfully, before a commotion to their left distracted him. “Oh good! It’s starting!”

And start it did. First with a procession of citizens obviously from Gyllis. The aquatic features were a pretty blatant clue, but even without that Steve would’ve been able to tell just from how they rolled between the haphazardly placed barricades before popping up like Gopher Eels, and yelling ‘Clear!’ before repeating the process. The fact that they all seemed to be wearing a uniform of a black suit, tie, and sunglasses was as odd as it was perfectly in sync with Gyllis’ weirdness.

Next came a group that if Steve was still living in Octus would be completely innocuous. The totally human, exasperated, exhausted, utterly normal looking group appeared entirely out of place in the center of the chaos of whatever this was -- Steve still wasn’t completely sure. As soon as they arrived however, it was like a silent signal went out as the entire square leapt into motion.

Objects went flying, shots were fired! The black suited Gyllians dove in front of attacks on what had to be the Octus team. The kid from before tossed his concoction as soon as the Octus team were in range, drenching them in a toxic green sludge that even from across the square smelled of a horrible mixture of cleaning supplies and rotten eggs. Steve had to dive behind Abraham to dodge a flying fruit someone had aimed horribly. There were cheers and jeers aplenty as attacks hit or missed, as well as melodramatic death wails from the Gyllians who were hit defending the Octus team before they theatrically fell to the ground ‘dead’.

Finally, stepping over the fallen bodies, holding clipboards and wearing stained lab coats, was another group from Gyllis. The group looked far too serious for the situation, nodding at whatever they saw going on, scribbling notes on their boards, whispering to each other conspiratorially, and occasionally holding up score cards if they were particularly impressed.

“So, how’d you like your first inspection day?” Abraham laughed, stepping aside so Steve could no longer hide behind him. Steve glared.

“I should’ve stayed home.”