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The Octobot King mech topples over, damaged and defeated. But Lily stays tensed up, eyes focused on it, though she sneaks a quick glance at her pet Smallfry, looking it over for injury.
She lowers herself, eyes snapping back to the mech as she pets him. “Y’alright?” she asks. The salmonid leans into her palm in response, and she smiles. She lifts him up and deposits him in her backpack. “Good work, lil’ buddy.”
Then DJ Octavio topples out onto the dusty ground, and it’s clear the battle is over. She lets herself relax a little bit, glancing at the Hero Shot in her hands.
“Right. Let’s end this.”
The King opens his eyes. Lifts his gaze. Sees the approaching inkling with the gun focused right on him. Wait, he knows that inkling. Isn’t that-
Oh no.
Lily stops before him, watching his eyes focus on her. “You can’t help yourself, can you?” She asks, coldly.
Tavi’s eyes narrow. “Like you can’t help stealing away our Octarians.”
She huffs. “You were there when we made that agreement. They left of their own free will.”
“All of them?”
“So you help yourself to a Great Zapfish? Again?” She snapped, lifting the Hero Shot, aiming down the sights at his stupid face. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t-”
“I didn’t take the Great Zapfish,” he says.
“Uh huh, and I’m the Queen of England.”
“What? No, really. Lily, I know that I-”
“Fuck’s sake, Octavio!” She fires, once, the inkshot splatting the ground next to him. He flinches. “You can’t put me through this again!”
“Actually,” the voice of Cap’n Cuttlefish says behind her, “I think he might be telling the truth.”
Lily’s head snaps around to face him, her eyes searching his. Then she turns to Octavio again. “What makes you say that?”
“This mech of his seems… weaker. Energised, sure, but… you of all inklings should know what it was capable of last time we did this dance.”
The Cap’n did have a point. Last time… When she had faced the New Squidbeak Splatoon alongside the DJ. When, behind those damn glasses, she attacked her friends from atop the Octobot. When she had felt it surging with energy.
“From memory,” Cuttlefish continues, “he usually sends his Octoweapons out to face us first.”
“I was a king, Lily,” Octavio adds, slowly raising himself onto his tentacles. “Do you think I’d really put myself on the front line if I had a choice?”
Lily looked between them both. Her nostrils flared.
Slowly, hesitantly, she lowered her weapon.
“Then who took it, Octavio?” She asked slowly.
“Not me. Who took my Octarians?”
“Not us,” said Cuttlefish.
The three of them went silent. Their eyes dropped to the ground.
The wind whistled over the Crater around them.
“Tartar?” Octavio asked, looking toward Lily.
“He’s dead,” she replied simply.
Silence again. The sound of rockfall in the distance.
“Uh,” the DJ calls, toward them. Eyes darted toward him. His eyes were focused on something. They followed his gaze…
It was a crack in the rock, emerging from beneath the mech.
And it was growing, spreading toward them.
All three sets of eyes looked hurriedly between each other.
“GO!” Lily shouted, and Octavio launched off the mark, slithering quickly toward the edge of the Crater. Lily swept Craig off his feet and with him and her Lil’ Buddy perched on her back she took off.
The heavy movement caused the hairline fracture to spread and spider out at a much quicker pace, and quickly overtook them.
Suddenly the ground was giving way-
And all of them were falling, plunging into an abyss below.
Lily lost her grip on the Cap’n, and she felt a shift in her backpack as her Smallfry fell out, raising above her, gravity doing its thing.
“NO!” she called, reaching out to them, but it was no use once the darkness engulfed them.
She wouldn’t see Cap’n Cuttlefish for a long time.
“Look, Lily, I’m sorry,” Remo said, as he and Lily sat atop one of the shelters littered around Alterna. “It just refused to register me.”
Once they and the Squid Sisters had figured out that the Alterna Logs, stored on an e-reader device that had been furnished to Lily by the site’s AI, O.R.C.A., had become gradually decrypted as she completed its missions, Remo, the Splatoon’s new captain, had decided to work through some of the missions as well, so they could quickly figure out more of what was happening here.
Unfortunately, O.R.C.A. had simply said to them that ‘registrations were currently disabled’ and refused to let them in.
And so, now having cleared out what the AI had dubbed “Future Utopia Island”, Remo and Lily sat at the campsite, planning to pore over what was decoded.
“You know,” the inkling boy said as Lily logged into the e-reader, “this place is reminding me way too much of the Kamabo/NILS testing…”
“Yeah?” Lily hadn’t heard much of what had happened there, with Eight and Remo and the Cap’n - she had gotten the general idea from Marina some years ago, but…
“Yeah. The entry rooms, the fees, the testing… it’s all too familiar.” Remo swallowed. “I’m almost expecting to find out O.R.C.A. is just Tartar again, rebranded.”
“…It could be, couldn’t it?” Lily frowned. “An AI is just software. There’s no reason he couldn’t have backed himself up somewhere… God, that’s what we need. Ah, I’m in.” She tapped around on the device until she found the first entry for the Alterna Logs. Reading aloud, she began:
“As technology advanced at an exponential pace, so too did prosperity… and ultimately conflict. Before long, the entire world was embroiled. In the end, nearly all life on Earth waws wiped out. As hu–”
She stopped. Remo glanced at her as she read a bit further, her expression turning to anger. Then, suddenly, she flung the e-reader into the snow, got up and stormed off.
Remo stared. What in those logs had caused that? He hopped down from their perch, scooped the device up from the slush, and read, quickly catching up to where Lily had stopped.
‘…As humans squabbled…’ Ah. Humans.
Remo looked up toward Lily in the distance, as she reached the edge of the island, and leaned against a railing, staring into the water below.
Lily had a… difficult relationship with humans. They all did.
They were why she was here. Why Eight had been forced through a personal nightmare. Why he himself had a scar over his eye and cheek.
He sighed, and continued to read through the Log. As he did, more phrases jumped out at him.
‘Some humans survived’. ‘Cavern provided shelter’.
His brow furrowed deep when he read the final sentences.
‘All manner of squid, octopuses, and jellyfish had propagated in the deep. The surviving humans had found a source of sustenance.’
…They fed on us. They… might still be here.
His hand had found his chin and mouth. The implications here were… disturbing.
He began to follow after Lily, and as Callie nearby asked, “Is everything okay?” he passed on the reader.
“No, I don’t think so. I’m gonna go comfort her.”
Leaving her to pore over the device, Remo continued to walk over to Lily, to hopefully comfort her, talk it out with her.
Mr. Grizz.
The others might not have caught it in the transmissions from Craig’s containment, but she had.
The bastard who tried to let her die in salmonid-infested waters.
The bastard who was currently beating Lily for the title of ‘last human alive’.
She eyed the rocket in the middle of Alterna. Just what was he planning?
She had picked it out as a rocket destined for space when first she eyed it. And now that she knew who was behind what they were dealing with, she was having trouble picking out how it all fit together.
Why the Octarians? Why (and how, honestly) did they get fuzzed up?
Why the Great Zapfish? Well, okay, that was simple. It was a power source. For what? Alterna? Some weapon? …The rocket? Nah, this was humans we were talking about. They know how to make rocket fuels one way. Why change a fully functioning recipe?
…Why Craig? Well, every other villain she’s met had taken a hostage of some kind. Why change the trend? Was this to try to motivate her to give up?
Grizz, you won’t dissuade me. I’d kill you for a single corn chip.
She turned on the spot, looking around at the facilities around her.
I bet you, somewhere in one of these buildings, someone will have kept a gun.
I think I want it.
“Dude.” Lily pinched the bridge of her nose. She was getting tired of this. “For the last time, we don’t want treasure. We want our Cap’n back.”
“Aay? Ay! (Why would we have your friend? We’re bandits, not kidnappers!)”
“…Are you kidding me?! AUUUGH!!” She screamed in frustration and turned to walk off, but stopped. “Do you guys even have anything to do with… all of this?” She waved her arms around at the area around them, implying Alterna.
“Ay. (Nope.)”
“For the love of… Ugh. Whatever. Enjoy your treasure I guess.” Lily started to head back toward the launchpad.
“Uh, Lily, what are you doing?”
“What does it look like, Two?” She growled into her headset. “They’re a waste of time.”
“What about Gramps?”
“That’s not Gramps. Again.”
“Seriously? Just another piece of ‘treasure’?”
“Just another piece of ‘treasure’, yeah. I’m moving on.”
“Ay? (Who are you talking to?)” came the voice of Big Man, suddenly leaning over her right shoulder.
Lily lifted her finger off the transmit button. “Quiet, you. We’re not fighting, so-”
“Uhh, Lily.” Callie was on the line now. “The Captain thinks whatever is there will probably fit with the rest of the pieces here in some way.”
“Has he figured out what it’s for?”
“Well, no, it’s a guess, but–”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“He’s asking you to retrieve it anyway.”
“Ah.” A pause from Lily. She glances across her shoulder at the manta next to her. “Is… that an order?”
“It is.”
“…Okay. Lily out.”
Drawing the Hero Shot from her belt again, she turned to face Big Man. Her face was mournful, in a sense. “I just- I just want you to know that I take no joy in having to fight you. Or Frye. Or Shiver. But my bosses want what’s here.”
“Aay?! (And you know Big Man won’t let it go so easily, right?!)”
“Right.” She gives a sad smile. “At least I can take some comfort knowing I fought for you the other weekend.”
The manta’s brow raises. Then he grins. “Ay? (You were Team Scissors?)”
She nods. “Not that it matters down here, but yeah. But I guess we can’t help fate.” She lifts her weapon into her other hand. “We do what we must.”
Big Man nods, readying himself. “Ay! (May the best Big Man win!)”
Despite the situation, Lily snorts at the pun. “May they indeed.”
Craig’s cries of pain, over her headset, also came from up above.
She quickened her pace up the tower, readying the Hero Shot, and the cold metal shotgun she had looted from a security office a few sites back. God it was heavy. She could feel it weigh her down as she slid it into position behind her backpack, a makeshift holster.
But she had made the decision long ago.
Mr. Grizz had to go. Humanity still had no place here.
There would be no joy in this murder. She would be recovering from this for a very, very long time.
But in her eyes, humanity’s lesson had still not been learned. Continuing to meddle with the lives of today’s society could not be tolerated.
And this ‘CEO’ had to be put down as an example.
Finally, she reached the top. She could hear the others somewhere down below. She pulled the shotgun from its holster and entered the last corridor that led into the rocket itself.
Something was on the floor, she noticed as she initially rushed past it to get on board. But she turned to look at it, something odd about it to her.
And as it fully sank in, her body stopped, blood running cold.
Cap’n Craig Cuttlefish.
What was left of him.
No… no, no, nononono–
Her weapon hung loosely from her hand, threatening to fall as she sank down beside him.
Was he…?
It was when Remo and the Squid Sisters reached them, gasped and mourned him that it became real. Lily’s body was filled with sadness, a deep sadness threatening to boil over into a white-hot rage. A rage she had felt twice before in her time as Lily.
He had to pay.
Remo, cradling Cuttlefish in his arms, teary, was the only one present to recognise the signs as he glanced at her. Silently, he pointedly looked up toward Callie and Marie, nodded in Lily’s direction, the two turning to see her, then gestured with his head behind him. Get back.
By some power, Remo’s tears rehydrated the cuttlefish shortly after.
And it was as they were figuring out what to do, when a massive shadow loomed into view behind them.
Lily didn’t hesitate. Barking at the others to get back, she stood and whirled around toward Mr Grizz, shotgun in hand– wait, that wasn’t a human– and screamed.
“FUCK YOU!”
The shotgun fired.
For the inkling, the force of the weapon’s knockback was simply too strong, and the barrels jerked upward as the weapon itself shot back against her, launching her backward against the wall temporarily stunning her.
The face of the massive bear before them simply watched, betraying no emotion as the inkling miserably failed to harm him, the buckshot splashing harmlessly against the metal behind him.
“A poor attempt at a hostile takeover,” Mr Grizz mused.
She had tried to grab on, truly she did.
But the metal of the rocket beneath her had burned violently to the touch, and it was impossible to get a grip on any part of it as eruptions and shockwaves from beneath launched her away.
And so here she was.
Stranded in the emptiness of space.
Mr. Grizz’s destroyed rocket shrinking away to her left.
The giant blue/green marble of the Earth slowly, but steadily shrinking to her right.
…At least it was over.
If only she could tell the others that.
They must be so worried for her, for marine-kind.
But small pieces of debris had already damaged the communications module in her headset.
They couldn’t reach her anymore.
It was truly quiet for Lily and her Smallfry, floating through the nothingness.
Slowly, carefully, she lifted him from his perch in her backpack and held him tightly to her chest. “T-thank you,” she choked, holding back tears. “You did so, so well. A lot of people would be so happy with you.”
He stared back at her with those large, uncomprehending eyes. Oh, you poor thing. You don’t know we’re destined to drift through space until we run out of oxygen or go hungry.
She turned her body, facing the planet beneath her. Taking in the changed landmasses, the greater oceans. The desert in the centre of the continent that represented the Splatlands, where this adventure had started. The grey around the southern coast that represented Inkopolis.
Her home.
Now so impossibly far away.
She was unable to stop the tears from flowing.
What a way to die.
…
…
Somewhere around twenty minutes later, her tears ran dry.
She had come to a decision.
There was no way she could fling her Lil’ Buddy back to Earth without him surviving. She knew that.
At least he could indulge in a final meal.
“L-Lil Buddy?” Lily said, quietly. His eyes focused on her again. “I can’t bring myself to wait for Death out here. I…I’m going to take off my helmet.”
She knew once her helmet was off she would begin to suffocate. It wouldn’t take long, hopefully. Maybe if she gived the helmet to Lil’ Buddy he could survive for a while longer. And if her corpse provided him some sustenance…
“Buddy. I’ll miss you a lot. I… I wish there was something I could do to save you. If… by some miracle you find your way back down… please don’t forget me.”
…
One last moment of hesitation. He nuzzled against her helmet. It’s almost like he knew…
“…See you soon, friend.”
She lifted her hands to her helmet, the smallfry keeping right by her, and with a breath laced with finality, she popped it from her head.
Even as she began to choke, she pressed the headpiece down onto her Lil’ Buddy. The sensation of choking, the lack of air, was magnified by the fact that even as her body struggled to breathe in, nothing passed her lips.
It wouldn’t take long.
The smallfry, trapped in her helmet against her body, began to panic. It had managed to sense that the person that had looked after him for so long was putting herself in peril.
She wished, as the oxygen in her brain went stale, that she could have done more for him.
Her vision was beginning to fade. Soon she would close her eyes for the final time.
Somehow, perhaps her grip loosening on the helmet, Lil’ Buddy forced himself from beneath it and nuzzled worryingly at her cheek, licking at her. Its eyes saw something behind her, and pointed with one of its fins, trying to get her to look.
She did.
Something was rushing up toward them. She was too far gone to see what it was.
And then it smacked into them, carrying them along, and then suddenly there was sound, and– air. Lily gulped it in for dear life.
Air. Slightly spicy air, but air. Thick, beautiful air. But how–?
“Get that back on!” Called a familiar deep voice, as tentacles pulled the helmet from her hands and slammed it back down on her head.
Blackness ebbing away from her vision, she turned to get a look at her savior.
“…D…DJ?”
DJ Octavio grinned.
He had caught her in his booth, inside his mech.
The abrupt sound around Lily became clear again. The thump-thump-thump-thump of four-on-the-floor beats. “Good thing for that tracker tech, eh?!”
“B…but how–?”
“You think I’d let this fool do away with all of us? This, at least, we can all work together on.”
“…And your mech…? How is it…?”
“How do you think?” He jerked his head behind him, at the screen behind him. Lily turned, and the face of a Great Zapfish stared back at him. “He doesn’t need it anymore.”
“B-But Craig-”
“Let me borrow it to chase you up here.” He turned to Lily. “I’m your reinforcement.”
She stared at him. After everything, Cap’n Cuttlefish let him have it to power his mech enough to blast him to space? “But… it’s over. You came all the way out here just to save me?”
“Well, yes, I did. But also, kiddo, we’re not finished yet.” He pointed out into the space in front of them, and Lily looked.
No, it certainly wasn’t.
Fuckin’ Grizz. How are you not dead yet?
“Now, you okay?” His eyes glanced at her again.
“I… I think.”
“Good. Get topside. Get in the pilot’s seat. Let’s take this bastard down.”
She nodded.
This, at least, we can work together on.