The Ink Run

1. EXT. BORDER TRENCH · NIGHT

A deep canyon of barbed coral and rusted warning buoys. Searchlight jellyfish drift overhead, sweeping cones of light. The team crawls through the silt in kelp-camouflage ponchos: CHONKSY, SEABEAR (a white bear in a green poncho, which is not camouflage, it's a decision), and NAVY SEAL.

One JELLYFISH GUARD is profoundly bored. He sweeps his searchlight across the same rock again and again.

JELLYFISH GUARD: (to himself) Rock. (sweep) Rock. (sweep) …Rock.

A loose helmet on the seafloor clanks under SEABEAR. CHONKSY's world flashes for one frame: the war trench, ink bombs. Back to now. He breathes.

NAVY SEAL: (whisper) I've never been this far east.

CHONKSY: It's north.

NAVY SEAL: …Above my pay grade.

2. FLASHBACK · ACQUISITIONS BRIEFING · EARLIER THAT DAY

A classroom-style briefing room. GOTTER at the chalkboard, awake for once and alarmingly sharp. SEAVER holds up a diagram of the Octopus Kingdom: a single giant spiral.

GOTTER: The octopuses hoard human media. They're collectors. (disgusted) It's very annoying.

CHUMPY: Why don't we just hit another human house?

GOTTER: The humans ran out of good movies in 1999.

Silence. Nobody can argue with that.

SEAVER: (pointing at his spiral with despair) Everything over there is a spiral. Everything. I hate it. (beat) Nothing is load-bearing.

SEABEAR: In Arctic Shelf, we have saying: never trust a city you cannot walk in a straight line.

CHONKSY: That's actually good.

SEABEAR: (surprised at himself) …Is real one.

4. EXT. OCTOPUS ALLEY

Two OCTOPUS GUARDS patrol, each holding eight batons, one per tentacle. CHONKSY dives into a clay amphora pot. Only his heavy-lidded eyes and whiskers show over the rim.

GUARD 1 stops and knocks on the pot.

GUARD 1: Hello?

CHONKSY: (flat, from inside) …Pot.

GUARD 1: (beat) Okay.

He walks away. GUARD 2 catches up.

GUARD 2: Was that a pot?

GUARD 1: It said it was.

GUARD 2: Pots don't talk.

GUARD 1: Then that was a very confident pot.

5. EXT. OCTOPUS MARKET

SEABEAR's disguise: eight striped socks taped to his body as tentacles. Every octopus in the market stares. One very old OCTOPUS GRANDMOTHER with a shopping basket waddles up, squints, and hugs his leg.

OCTOPUS GRANDMOTHER: My handsome son. You came home.

SEABEAR freezes. His eyes fill up.

SEABEAR: (to CHONKSY, voice cracking) In Arctic Shelf, we have saying. If grandmother calls you son… you are son.

CHONKSY: We have a mission.

SEABEAR: (taking her basket) I have mother.

He carries her groceries up the spiral street. She feeds him a dumpling on every landing.

CHONKSY: (on comms) Seabear's been adopted. Mission's paused.

CHUMPY (V.O.): (mouth full) Honestly? Good for him.

21. REMAKE CLIP: "THE OFFICE (NEW CHONK CITY BRANCH)"

A smuggled TV in a market stall plays a chonk remake of the human workplace mockumentary. In it SEABEAR, as the intense assistant to the regional manager, writes in a binder labeled THREATS. CHONKSY, at the next desk, gives the camera a long, deadpan look.

SEABEAR (in remake): Question. What kind of bear is best?

CHONKSY (in remake): (to camera, saying nothing)

The octopus shopkeeper laughs so hard he inks.

6. INT. THE OCTOPUS ARCHIVE

A cathedral of stolen human media carved into a giant shell: spiral shelves of DVDs, VHS tapes and ink scrolls. At a high desk, an ANCIENT OCTOPUS LIBRARIAN with tiny spectacles dozes.

NAVY SEAL sneezes. Eight tentacles rise from the desk and point in eight directions.

LIBRARIAN: (eight times, in surround sound) Shhh. Shhh. Shhh. Shhh. Shhh. Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.

NAVY SEAL: (whisper) …Sorry.

One more tentacle rises from somewhere else entirely.

LIBRARIAN: Shhh.

7. INT. ARCHIVE STACKS

PLATRICK, on his first field op, reaches for a VHS tape on a high shelf. So does a tentacle from the other side. Paw and tentacle touch. They both look through the gap in the tapes.

INK: a young purple octopus archivist with big amber eyes and a little violet capelet.

INK: You're a platypus.

PLATRICK: Cool cool… cool.

INK: You lay eggs and have fur?

PLATRICK: I'm… a lot.

INK: (beat) I like a lot.

A tiny heart-shaped puff of ink escapes her and floats up between the shelves. She tries to wave it away. It doesn't go.

8. INT. ACQUISITIONS COMMAND ROOM

CHUMPY and SEAVER lean into the speaker.

CHUMPY: Platrick. Are you… flirting? Mid-op?

PLATRICK (V.O.): Cool cool cool. No.

INK (V.O., into Platrick's headset): Hi.

The command room goes completely silent.

SEAVER: (slowly removing his hard hat) Structurally… that's a relationship.

CHUMPY: (eating a chip, emotional) I'm so proud of him.

9. INT. ARCHIVE · FORBIDDEN SECTION

Behind a locked grate: one half-melted film canister, warped and blackened. A faded octopus label: WAR EVIDENCE: CHONK PROPAGANDA. Under it, scratched into the metal by hand: F. AGILLSAN.

CHONKSY works the lock with an Academy pick. Click. He lifts the can. It's warm, as if it burned yesterday.

CHONKSY: (barely audible) Chonks… made this?

10. INT. ARCHIVE

A tentacle touches his shoulder. INK. Caught.

A long beat. Instead of shouting, she pushes the can back into his flippers.

INK: (whispering) That one's sad. Take it. Nobody here should have it.

CHONKSY: Why help us?

INK: Back home, you go to jail for copying. Over there, you go to jail for making. (beat) Somebody should get to do it.

She looks past him at PLATRICK, who is pretending to read a VHS spine upside down.

INK: Also he's cute.

22. THE CITY WATCHING: THE SMUGGLED SCREENING

A cutaway: in a cramped closet somewhere in the Kingdom, an octopus family huddles around a tiny bootleg TV, watching a contraband chonk remake. They mouth the lines, gesturing along with eight arms each. A kid keeps lookout at the door.

OCTOPUS KID: (hissing) Guards!

All the tentacles yank the TV under a blanket. The guards pass. The tentacles bring it back out. The family keeps mouthing the lines.

11. INT. ARCHIVE · ALARM

SEABEAR returns from his new mother's house carrying leftovers. One taped sock slips off.

GUARD 1: (pointing) That octopus has seven legs.

SEABEAR: (solemn) Was war.

ALARM. Bells in eight directions.

12. EXT. OCTOPUS STREETS · ESCAPE

A massive explosion of black ink fills the street. Guards burst through it swinging eight batons each.

NAVY SEAL turns to fight all eight batons with one flipper.

NAVY SEAL: Above my pay—

BONK.

NAVY SEAL: —grade—

BONK BONK BONK BONK BONK BONK BONK, in rhythm.

SEABEAR sprints out of the cloud with three crates of DVDs and his mother's groceries. CHONKSY runs beside him clutching the burned can.

13. EXT. BORDER FENCE · NIGHT

PLATRICK reaches the fence last. INK is on the other side.

PLATRICK: Come with us.

INK: I can't. (beat) Not yet.

She presses one tentacle onto a scrap of pale kelp paper, drawing a heart in her own ink, and slides it through the gap.

PLATRICK: (holding it like it's made of glass) …Cool.

INK: That's all you ever say.

PLATRICK: It's all I ever mean.

14. INT. ACQUISITIONS DEBRIEF

The team, soaked and inky. CHONKSY sets the burned can on the table. GOTTER, half asleep, glances at it. Then he is suddenly, terrifyingly wide awake, eyes huge, both flippers shaking as he grips the can.

GOTTER: Where did you get that.

CHONKSY: Lost and found.

GOTTER: (a whisper) Who else touched it?

CHONKSY: Just me.

GOTTER takes the can and shuffles out without a word. Under the table, CHONKSY's flipper turns over: he palmed a single strip of film.

15. INT. CHONKSY'S APARTMENT · NIGHT

CHONKSY holds the strip up to his desk lamp. One frame, backlit: a young manatee cowgirl in a cowboy hat, mid-laugh, black and white.

16. INT. CHONKSY'S APARTMENT · LATER

CHUMPY comes in with snacks, sees the frame on the desk, and stops.

He looks at it too long. His face goes pale, or as pale as steel blue goes.

CHUMPY: We should… get in shape. (beat) Tomorrow.

CHONKSY: That's not what you were going to say.

CHUMPY: (handing him a cracker) It's what I'm saying.

17. INT. PLATRICK'S APARTMENT · NIGHT

INK's heart is pinned on the wall. PLATRICK wants to answer. He has no ink. He finds a ketchup bottle. He squeezes a heart onto paper. It's underwater, so it dissolves instantly into a little red cloud.

PLATRICK: (watching it drift away) …Cool.

He draws another one. It dissolves. He draws another.

END OF EPISODE

PUNCH-UP INSERTS · EP 4

• Sc 2: Gotter's briefing gets edgier: "Octopuses. Three hearts, no spine, blue blood. Basically lawyers."
• Sc 3 (heart): Chonksy in front of the mural, after Seabear's "is good propaganda": "…We don't have murals." Seabear: "We have billboards." Chonksy: "That's what I mean."
• Sc 4: Guard 2's speciesism: "Chonks. They smell like fish." Guard 1: "We smell like fish." Guard 2: "Our fish smell is heritage."
• Sc 5: The octopus grandmother, adopting Seabear: "Finally, a son with a job." She looks at his gold chain: "And jewelry." Then, about her real sons: "Eight sons, and not one of them calls." Seabear calls her every week for the rest of the series. It's never mentioned again.
• Sc 7 (interspecies): Ink: "I've never dated a mammal." Platrick: "I'm barely one." Ink: "That's hot."
• Sc 8: Seaver on comms: "Structurally… how would that even… with the eggs, and the—" Chumpy: "Seaver." Seaver: "I'm an engineer, I have questions."
• Sc 9: The WAR EVIDENCE label has a second, smaller octopus note scrawled under it: "Chonks made one good thing once and then burned it. Typical."
• Sc 11: Ink, panicking at the alarm, does a full panic ink, enormous and black. The guard, blinded: "WHO SHARTED?" Ink, mortified, invisible: "…Nobody."
• Sc 12: Navy Seal, after the eighth bonk, flat on his back: "…I'd like to file a complaint with my pay grade."
• Sc 16 (heart, Chumpy): Looking at the film frame, Chumpy says what he really wanted to say: "She looks happy. (beat) Like she made it herself." Then: "Anyway, we should get in shape."

31. INT. HALL OF RECORDS · NIGHT · after Scene 14

• (The first domino.) Gotter requests a sixty-year-old file: AGILLSAN, F. The clerk is a sea slug. Lifting the stamp takes ten seconds. Bringing it down takes thirty. Gotter's eye twitches the whole time. Ka…………chunk.
• She hands the slip to a remora, the city's interoffice mail, who swims it across town and suctions onto the belly of a Sea SI dolphin agent. The agent peels it off, reads the name, and smiles (dolphins always smile). He opens a new folder: GOTTER.
• The remora floats there, waiting for a tip. It doesn't get one.

32. RUNNER: INK'S CLOCK · Ink and Platrick's date

• Octopuses live about a year or two. Ink: "I'm fourteen months." Platrick: "Cool cool cool." Ink: "That's middle-aged for me." Platrick: "…Cool." (beat) "…Cool?"
• She has three hearts. "One for you. Two for backup." He doesn't laugh. He does the math. Silent heart beat: he puts a hand on her arm, and the arm, which has its own brain, holds his hand back.

40. THE SPECIES DRAFT · Current News cutaway · Chappelle

• The Treaty's annual broadcast: disputed species get "drafted" by the Octopus Kingdom or New Chonk City. Live from a podium with draft-night pomp.
• Commissioner: "With the first pick, the Octopus Kingdom selects… the cuttlefish." (polite applause) "Obviously." "New Chonk City selects… the walrus." (roar) "Big get. Big, big get."
• "With the next pick…" (gravely) "…the platypus." Octopus table: "Pass." Chonk table: "Pass." The platypus delegation is one guy, Platrick, in a suit, under the spotlight. Nobody picks him. Third round. Fourth. He's still standing. Platrick: "cool cool cool."
• (A freshwater immigrant in a salt city, and both sides agree on exactly one thing.)

41. THE DISGUISE · Scene 1, border trench · Farley

• Chumpy's octopus disguise is four rubber tentacles strapped around his belly. One falls off. The octopus guard shines a light on it. Guard: "…Rough molt?" Chumpy: "…Yeah." Guard: "Octopuses don't molt." Chumpy (sweating, all in): "I'm the first."
• Ink, deadpan, saves it: "He's my cousin. From the shallows." The guard winces with sympathy and waves them through. (In-world prejudice, for once, working in their favor.)

42. "I'VE GOT OCTOPUS FRIENDS" · Scene 5, octopus market · Gillis

• Chonksy, the war veteran, is trying very hard. Chonksy: "I've got a lot of octopus friends." Vendor: "Name one." Chonksy: "…Ink." Ink: "I'm standing right here." Chonksy: "And she's great." (to the vendor, too loud) "SHE'S GREAT." He buys eleven of something to make up for it. He doesn't know what it is. It's alive.