Hush, Little Penguin

Beach Baby

After Peso had been permanently slammed into diapers, some changes had to be made to the Octonauts lifestyle.

Gates had to be set up on the stairs. Peso was too small to climb them correctly in the beginning and his risk of tripping and/or falling was great. What was only a few inches at most to the others came up past his waist, forcing him to place his flippers on the stair above it and hoist himself up, a task that was time-consuming and demeaning, making him look like a new puppy.

Wardrobe changes had to be made as well. Peso's regular cold suits, the ones that blended in with his feathers, were simply to small now. They needed something in Peso's size with a stretchy bottom, and they knew they could find it at Buster's. Of course, Dashi also helped make Peso some clothes, but there was no way around it...no other clothes existed outside a babyish form, bed-whamming Peso for days with the shame of having to go around in public dressed like a toddler who hadn't yet been potty-trained. It had taken quite a bit of comfort and then some to get Peso out and about once more, and even afterward, all Peso wanted to do was go back to bed. Getting him comfortable after the prescription was a long term job, and very heartbreaking. Peso had been bullied so much that he took this meaningless consequence and turned it into the end of the world. It had taken them  a WEEK to assure Peso it was alright to go outside his room.

Getting on land was the hardest part. Peso needed to come along and try on clothes. In Buster's store, this wasn't as big of a deal. But anywhere else dressed in his new apparel with no way out broke him to pieces. It took a long time to make him feel comfortable out of the ocean, and during that time, he had acquired the nickname 'Mermaid.' because he didn't want to leave to water for fear of people seeing his lower half, which was embarrassing and shameful enough on it's own, but just had to be topped off by babyish clothing, just because nothing else fit his new medical condition.

When they first showed him his new clothes, he hadn't spoken to them for days. Haunted by memories of his father's punishments and his classmates' bullying involving the look of a child had motivated him to suicide more than once. The only comfort he got was the fact that HE could now control how he looked with his father all the way in pueblo.

But of course, cruel, cruel fate had other plans for the little broken heart it had tossed over it's shoulder for so long. Peso was short and obviously chubby, and this meant that the kinds of clothes his classmates wore were not in his size, forcing him to wear clothes many sizes and many years littler. His mother had told him to roll with the punches because, despite being a seamstress, she was too busy with his new brother to make him normal clothes in his size, leading to...a not so great retirement from high school. And she didn't like the clothes his classmates wore anyway. "They're too dark." She had said. "And to depressing. You need some color in your life. You'll be the light." Oh, how badly she misunderstood kids his age, she refused to let him wear anything there than what they could find in his size.  Finally, finally, when he started college, did she decide he could wear more mature looking clothes, and made him some different ones, finally settling on one piece suits that blended with his feathers.

But now they were gone. It had been Peso's only comfort, his control over his looks, but it was gone. He was now back to being forced to wear the clothes of a freak crybaby, once again, because of his father. He could not change his chubby belly or baby face, no matter how hard he tried, but he could control his clothes.

 And now, because of these stupid, worthless diapers, and the even more infuriating fact that he actually, deep-down LIKED them, he was back to square one.

It was a good, long, PAINFUL while before he was ready to go about his normal life again, and even then, he wasn't completely reassured. So when the time came to take him up on land for maintenance checkups, he was an absolute mess. He hid behind the captain the entire time, despite the fact that not a single face saw anything out of place about him.