“Listen here, you cheerful little kitchen sponge. The tan ain’t the point. The point is the claiming . You see this stretch of sand?” She swept her arm across a fifteen-foot radius. “I got here at 5 AM. I staked my umbrella. I laid my towel. I have not moved in six hours. I have watched three families argue, two couples break up, and one seagull steal a whole hot dog. And I did not flinch. That’s power. Not saving the world. Not moving. ”
It was the aftermath of the apocalypse-burger. After being a superhero on land, after bursting out of that comic book page, returning to his three-dimensional, underwater self felt like putting on wet jeans. He missed the sun.
The Tanning Woman didn’t scream. She didn’t move. She slowly turned her head toward the ocean, licked a drop of salt water off her lip, and said: “That wave just made a powerful enemy.”
Mr. Krabs wept tears of confused joy. Plankton, watching through a hidden camera, shuddered. He didn’t know who had broken SpongeBob—but he knew, somewhere on a beach above, a tanning woman was smiling.