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Agent 3 had just defeated Mr. Grizz and caught Bud, her Smallfry friend, when DJ Octavio addresses her.
“Better hold on tight kid, re-entry will be rough.”
Bud shimmies back into his pouch as Three secures her gip on the pilot’s hatch. As they descend through the atmosphere she finds her breath stolen. She had never thought she would find anything more beautiful than the first sunrise after she escaped Octo Valley.
She was wrong.
The land rises and falls in gentle waves, and the ocean is a stunning blue hue. Splatsville looks like a tiny village from above, not the bustling city it is. Three wished the view could last forever, but soon enough they begin to descend back into Alterna.
The Octobot King comes to a stop on the large metal platform next to the Squid Sister’s camp. Three climbs down from her perch and turns to look at the small group that had gathered.
Callie is the first one to speak, “Agent 3! Agent 3! I’m so glad you’re ok! I mean… I knew you would be.”
“Nicely done,” Adds Marie. “We saw it all. The daring. The bravery. The inkredible skills. Who knew Smallfry could do all that. A-and you were there too!”
“Yeah!” continues Callie, “Agent 3 basically saved the planet. Does anyone other than us even realize that?”
“Bein’ a hero, well… it’s a real trip. A voyage, if you will. Some kinda… tour… where you go places…” Cuttlefish rambles.
The Captain just Nods.
Marie gives Cuttlefish a tired look, “Uh… Well said, Gramps.” She turns back to Three and smiles softly, “Oh, the captain was full of praise for you too. There was a heartfelt nod of approval.”
“Hear, Hear!” cheers Callie.
“Yeah you were amazing!” shouts Frye, “You totally showed that fluffy jerk who’s boss!”
“I’ll admit, you were pretty cool up there,” Shiver says, holding her fan in front of her face. She snaps it shut and uses it to point at Three with a grin, “Maybe I should ask for your autograph.”
“Ay Ay! (Can I have one too?)” asks Big Man.
Three doesn’t respond, just staring blankly ahead.
Concerned, Callie grabs Marie and Cuttlefish and forms a mock huddle around the Captain, furtively whispering about concussions and hearing loss.
“Well kid?” DJ Octavio asks, “You gonna say anything? Or keep staring into space like a zombie.”
Three shifts uncomfortably under his gaze, fiddling with her Hero Shot before looking at the ground in defeat.
“I… I don’t know Inklish,” she admits.
Three watches as the weight of her confession sinks in. First there’s surprise, of course, then confusion. And then strangely, for the briefest of moments, concern.
Octavio looks at Three incredulously. “Have…. have you not understood a single thing anyone’s said this ENTIRE time?”
Three sheepishly nods.
“And you’ve only mentioned this NOW? When everything’s finally over?” Shiver adds, having been eavesdropping on their conversation. She sweeps her hands in a wide gesture towards the New Squidbeak Splatoon, “You’ve been hanging out with those guys for like a week! How has this never come up?”
Three laces her fingers together and looks away, embarrassed, “Well, so much was happening all at once that I didn’t get the chance. And when things finally calmed down it was too late, it would have been awkward if I brought it up at that point.”
Shiver claps her hands together under her nose and closes her eyes, taking a deep breath. She slowly lets it out and stares into the distance, muttering something incomprehensible under her breath. Octavio just laughs at the absurdity of the situation.
Hearing the commotion, the Splatoon breaks away from their huddle to investigate.
“Hey! What’s so funny?” Cuttlefish demands, glaring suspiciously at Octavio.
Octavio stops laughing and responds in a scathing tone. “‘What’s so funny’ is that your habit of enlisting random civilians into your mock army has come back to bite you, Cuttlefish.”
He leans over his turntables and points with one of his wasabi roots. “I bet you didn’t even notice your newest ‘Agent’ was an octoling!”
“WH- Of course I knew! I may be old but i’m not blind Octavio!” shouts Cuttlefish, offended by the accusation.
“Oh really? And did you check to make sure she knew Inklish? Or did you just assume she did and never gave her the chance to prove you wrong?” Octavio hissed.
Cuttlefish tries to defend himself, but Octavio barrels on, irritation flowing off of him in waves.
“She had no idea what was going on this entire time! And yet you still made her do your dirty work. Did she get a choice in the matter? Or did you just throw her into the thick of it and hoped she would figure it out on her own.”
“You didn’t even have the decency to ask for her name.”
The silence was deafening. No one wanted to admit it, but he was right. They had just thrown her into a deadly situation without her consent. And to top it all off, if she ever faltered it would have meant the end of Marinekind. She was under a staggering amount of pressure the entire time and they had failed to see it.
Frye is the first one to speak up, “Hey Shiver, could you ask Agent 3 something for me?”
Shiver nods, “Sure.”
“Why did you never tell anyone?”
Three and Shiver have a quick conversation in Octarian, during which Shiver points at everyone one by one, barring DJ Octavio.
It takes Three a few minutes to respond, but eventually she takes a deep breath and starts to speak,
“Well, at the beginning when I met Mr. Cuttlefish I was going to tell him, but he never gave me the chance to speak. He gave me this gun and armor and immediately ushered me over to the first kettle. I figured I would just humor him for a bit and wait until he finally stopped talking so I could go home but it never happened.”
“As soon as I got back he started talking again, so I just tuned him out and went to investigate that weird fuzzy stuff. I eventually figured out that if I gave Bud some power eggs, he could get rid of the fuzz. Mr. Cuttlefish seemed happy when I did that so I assumed he was asking for my help in cleaning it all up. There was a lot of it but Bud could clear out a huge chunk all at once, so it only took about twenty minutes to clean it all up.”
“I had just cleared the last of it when King Octavio showed up. He and Mr. Cuttlefish immediately started arguing, and the next thing I knew I was fighting for my life.”
No one noticed, but Octavio looks away guiltily.
“After I managed to win, a huge pile of fuzz burst open from the ground and dragged us all underground. I must have fallen unconscious during the fall.”
“When I woke up I was alone, but I could hear voices in the distance so I followed them. That’s when I met Agents 1 and 2 and their Captain. I was going to ask them if any of them knew Octarian but they also just, started talking and didn’t stop. I thought that maybe they and Mr. Cuttlefish were related.”
Callie puts a hand in front of her face to hide her blush, while Marie not-so-subtlety hides behind her parasol.
“After I realized that they weren’t going to stop any time soon, I went into the first kettle I could see to look for a way out. Every kettle was a dead end, but I got a bunch of power eggs out of it so I used them to clear away the fuzz as I went along.”
“Just as I was about to enter the pipe that lead to the second Island, Deep Cut showed up. I was going to ignore them and continue on my way but then I noticed that one of them was an octoling. They were saying something to the agents, but then they left just as quickly as they came.”
“I knew they had to still be in the area, and they were my only chance for help, so I searched all over the next island. I eventually found Frye but then she started attacking me, so I couldn’t ask her, and when I beat her she immediately left.”
“I kept on looking and found Shiver on the fourth island, but she just did the exact same thing. She also kept talking in Inklish, which I thought was kinda rude, we were the only people there after all.”
Shiver hides behind her fan as she translates the line.
“I was getting kinda desperate at that point. Everyone was either talking over me, or running away as soon as I try to ask for help. And I still hadn’t seen any sign of Mr. Cuttlefish or King Octavio. I was starting to think that I was being ignored on purpose.”
“After I fought Big Man and brought back the last thing they were guarding, the agents finally helped me out by combining them into a big cutter thing and clearing away the huge pile of fuzz blocking me from getting to the rocket.”
“It was my last chance of getting out of this place, so I made my way to the top of the rocket. There I found a huge bear and Mr. Cuttlefish. The agents ran up behind me and started yelling at the bear, and then it flew away on the rocket.”
“The agents started panicking and pointing at the rocket, and after spending hours removing that fuzz it was pretty obvious that that bear was behind it and was going to do something Very Bad with the rocket.”
“That’s when Deep Cut showed up again, and gave us a way to chase after the bear. I was resigned to being ignored at that point, so I just took the helmet and went to stop the bear without a fight.”
“The only time I had a chance to speak after that was when we were coming back to the planet, but I was too distracted by the view to mention it.”
Everyone is silent as they process Three’s speech. Callie and Marie are still covering their faces, Cuttlefish refuses to meet anyone’s eyes, and even the Captain is looking at the ground with a frown.
Sensing the glum atmosphere she had created, Three tires to lighten the mood, “B-but it wasn’t all bad! I had a lot of fun gathering power eggs and watching Bud tear through the fuzz!”
It doesn’t work.
She doubles down, “I even had fun fighting the bear! I never would have thought I would get to be in space one day!”
“While listening to a remix of THE Calamari Inkantation, made on the fly by the king of the octarians himself!” she adds desperately.
That finally snaps them out of their moping.
“You played the Inkantation?” Marie asks Octavio in disbelief.
“I knew it!” cheers Callie, “You do like our —I mean the Squid Sister’s— music!”
“NO I DON’T!” Octavio shouts, voice much louder than he intended in his panic, “I just happened to have it, and Agent Three needed as much power as she could get!”
Callie grins, “Uh huh, sure you did.”
“Listen here you little—“
“Thank You.”
Octavio freezes.
“I didn’t get the chance to thank you earlier, what with the whole ‘saving the world’ thing. I would have died in space if it wasn’t for you…. So, thanks, I appreciate it,” Three says, giving the king a soft smile.
He’s stunned. No one’s appreciated his efforts in years. Not without mind control, that is. Faced with this pure, genuine gratitude —from an octoling no less!— his brain short-circuits.
“Ok,” he says lamely.
Shiver respectfully doesn’t translate that, though out of respect for who is up to debate.
Frye jumps in before everyone gets distracted again, “Well! It seems like we all need to do some apologizing, but before that I would like to point out a good point Three made during her monologue. How are we supposed to get out of here?”
The Captain, who had been silently observing the group this whole time, turns and looks at Octavio.
“….No, no way,” he says, throwing the inkling a withering look.
“Please?” Three asks, looking at him hopefully.
Octavio tries his best to ignore her, he really does, but he can feel his resolve crumbling.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he all but demands, turning away as if to hide from her gaze.
But she keeps pushing, pulling out one final attack on the DJ’s scarred hearts, “I want to see the stars again…”
Her words hit him like a bamboozler to the chest, and he finds himself unable to deny her request any longer.
“Fine,” He bites out, “But as soon as everyone’s out i’m leaving. The Octobot King isn’t a taxi!”
He begrudgingly lowers one of the machine’s hands so they can climb on.
Three’s the last one to board, but halfway up she hears Octavio say something that makes her pause.
“You manipulative little bastard.”
There’s no malice behind the words, and it fills her with a strange sense of relief. After days of stress and anxiety, she finally lets herself relax.
She’s ok.
They’re all ok.
She makes her way to the top lies down as they take off.
It’s over.
She can rest now.
She closes her eyes, and dreams.