Work Text:
LOCATION: GLUTTONY, THE THIRD LAYER OF HELL
With one final burst bomb, the Flesh Prison roared in defeat, blood spilling and spurting out from multiple angles as its body fell apart before exploding.
BIG KILL
Pearl and Marina stood side by side, hands on their knees, panting rapidly. “Wow…” Pearl started, “That was annoying…”
“Yeah, REALLY annoying…” Marina responded, cracking her back.
“Asshole kept healing himself, spawning eyes, and that blue shit he threw really bit me in the ass when I thought I dodged it…”
“Yeah…”
“So… pizza?”
Marina smirked, “Of course, that sounds perfect, Pearlie~”
Marina scooped Pearl into her arms and brought her to her face to give her a quick peck on the lips, then holding their heads together.
At least… until they heard an odd humming noise…
PRIME /// FIRST:
SOUL SURVIVOR
A bright, cyan orb slowly fell down.
“Is this our reward?” Pearl asked.
It was anything but…
When the orb made contact with the ground, it shattered like glass, revealing a tall, glowing white figure with a hole in the place his face should be. Heavenly music began to play, seemingly coming from the figure itself.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hNhU3ULuFAE&pp=ygUGb3JkZXIg
(This remix sounds the most like Splatoon to me)
“Ahh… free… at last…”
Pearl and Marina looked at each other worryingly.
“Oh Gabriel… now dawns thy reckoning… and thy gore shall GLISTEN, before the temples of man!”
“‘Rina, who’s Gabriel?”
“According to the terminal, he’s the angel we fought off earlier after he tried to kill us for being gay.”
“Oh, well, then we should be on the same page as this dude, right?”
“Creatures… of ink… my gratitude upon thee for my freedom…”
“You’re welcome.” Both Pearl and Marina said.
“But the crimes… thy kind have committed against humanity… are NOT forgotten!”
“Uh… w-w-what’s a humanity!?” Pearl stammered.
“What crimes have we committed, sir?!” Marina asked.
“And thy punishment…
Is DEATH!”
MINOS PRIME
/////////////////////////////////////////////
“WHAT?!”
“HUH?!”
Minos Prime stood still for a few moments before immediately targeting the least unguarded of the two, that being Marina, as he boomed:
“CRUSH!”
Minos Prime teleported above Marina and slams down, Marina performed a swim surge to avoid damage.
“HOLY MACKEREL!!” Marina exclaimed in fear.
After taking rapid fire from a dualie roll courtesy of Pearl, Minos Prime targeted her next.
“THY END IS NOW!”
Minos Prime preforms A four-punch combo, involving a straight punch using Minos' left hand as he moves forwards towards Pearl, a right hook going upwards after Minos teleports to Pearl's left, a vertical downwards chop with Minos' left hand after he teleports to Pearl's right, and a left fist overhead after teleporting straight in front of Pearl.
In a panic, Pearl rapidly used both of her rolls, making her dodge only the first of Minos’ strikes, to which the second strike connected to Pearl’s right shoulder, the next connected to her left leg, and the final blow connected to her face, breaking her nose, fracturing her skull, and sending her flying across the room.
“FUCK!!”
Upon impact of the fleshy wall, Pearl’s blood splattered all over it. Hitting her head on the way down, Pearl began to lose consciousness.
“Ma…rina… run…”
During the whole attack, Marina froze in horror at the sight of her girlfriend being attacked by a foe with instantaneous speed and unbelievable strength.
“Pearl… no…”
She only snapped out of her trance when Pearl lost consciousness and she looked at Minos Prime, who turned to her and cracked his knuckles while Marina put away her undercover brella and took out her Octobrush.
She put on a determined expression. She knew what she must do.
“JUDGEMENT!”
Minos Prime gets on a knee and launches an explosive drop kick at Marina at an instantaneous speed, but the former top soldier in the Octarian military blocks and parries it with her octobrush. She swings it across his chest, pushing him back a couple feet.
PARRY
“Fast, yet slightly predictable. Seems like I gotta wait for him to come to me instead of matching his speed…
…
The taste of my blood in battle… it’s familiar, but I don’t miss it. I hate it. I haven’t known it since my time in…
…
It hurts to remember… the sins I’ve committed in the name of following orders… I never wanted to be born to kill, or to make weapons of war and destruction…
For Wars without Reason…
But if I must, I will use my skills if it means saving Pearl.”
“PREPARE THYSELF!”
Minos performs a horizontal kick using his right leg to his left before Minos raises said leg upwards and brings his heel down onto Marina followed by an explosive serpent from Minos' right hand. Marina moved in the opposite directions of the attacks while in swim form, which was rather easy due to the floor already being covered in ink from her and Pearl’s fight with the Flesh Prison. Marina then sidesteps the serpent, but didn’t notice it turning right back around before it hits her in the back. Marina slid forward on her face, she lifted her head and spat the torn flesh and ink out of her mouth while Minos Prime prepared his next attack.
“CRUSH!”
Marina rolled sideways to avoid the slam, then dove over the shockwave, then jumped to perform another sideways strike followed by an upward swing and a kick.
“USELESS!!”
Minos Prime dashed forward. Marina held her brush handle up in preparation for an attack, only to have it smacked out of her hands. Minos Prime preformed an uppercut to her jaw, launching her into the air, then teleported to her altitude and smacked her back down to the ground, spouting blood with each hit. Marina lied on the ground, bloodied, bruised, and breathless as Minos Prime stood before her. Marina closed her eyes as Minos lifted his foot to crush her skull.
———
A young Marina stood in a straight line alongside a handful of other Octolings, all clutching their octoshots, all hiding their emotions, including Marina. Training was about to begin.
“In this lesson…” the Octo commander began in his gruff voice and manner, “you’ll learn how to counterattack your opponent!” He continued, stepping back and forth in a straight line. “The land of the battlefield is no fairytale, for your enemies are cruel, so you must be crueler. Do not treat them with kindness, as they won’t do so for you. Understood?!” “Yes sir.” All the octolings said in unison.
“As for our lesson today, even in the most dire of situations, one must never stop looking for a way out, even when threatened with death. Beyond this room are test dummies programmed to simulate the movement of fatal attacks of every type of weapon, you must learn to recognize and counter each and every one of them. Do i make myself clear?!”
“Yes sir!”
“Then let’s get to work!”
———
“My military training… never have I wanted to see them vividly again, even if only for a few moments. They disgust me, everything about them, the orders we were given, the perfection our superiors demanded, and worst of all, their purpose to be used for killing others…
But now… I can use them for good…
For protecting my precious Pearlie.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XaGoegN4hY8&pp=ygUcZmVlbCBpbnZpbmNpYmxlIGZlbWFsZSBjb3Zlcg==
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DWJUMc_VWnk&pp=ygUtYnJpZ2h0ZXIgdGhhbiBhIHRob3VzYW5kIHN1bnMgZmVlbCBpbnZpbmNpYmxl
(This one works too)
Marina’s eyes shot open as a blazing flame swirled inside her. She grabbed the foot of Minos Prime and lifted the former judge of Hell over her head and threw him to the ground, despite laying on it herself. Despite every ache in her body, she lifted herself back up and onto her feet at the same time as Minos did.
“… I didn’t hear no whistle.”
“WEAK!!”
As he says this, Minos Prime gained a blue fiery aura around him.
But Marina is unfazed. She pulled out two more weapons, a splatana wiper in one hand, and a prototype she’s been working on in the other, a splat brella more offense oriented than defense and a more compact spread per shot. It was intended to be held with two hands, but there was an alternate one- handed form that can be switched to with a push of a button in exchange for a wider spread.
”Why do you attack us?!”
”Thy kind dare replace God’s greatest creation!”
”Humanity was already gone thou-“
“THY END IS NOW!”
Marina got hit in the face by the first attack, then evaded the next two strikes in swim form, then deflected the last strike with her splatana and riposted with a roundhouse kick to the face and a point blank shot from her pump-brella, flicking her wrist to open a hinge on the gun to cool down the pressure.
PARRY
Minos Prime then fired a homing explosive serpent at Marina, only for Marina to deflect it right back at him with the blast of the pump-action brella. While Minos was stunned, Marina switched out her pump-action brella for her Dynamo roller to knock him down and followed up with a downward slam so hard, it broke the roller and left a small depression in the terrain.
QUICKDRAW
“Humanity was already dead, SOMETHING had to take its place!”
”And cephalopods were not the creatures intended!”
”What the fuck do you even me-“
“JUDGEMENT!”
Minos Prime counterattacked with a dropkick to Marina’s face, splattering blood everywhere and launching her a significant distance away before she backflipped onto her feet.
Marina then summoned her Reefslider and revved up the handle, she sped towards Minos Prime and began to drift around him, avoiding more of his attacks while Marina took shots at him with the high accuracy shots from her squeezer.
When Minos Prime ran out of stamina, Marina activated her zipcaster form and flung herself to the ceiling. Now without a driver, her Reefslider drove itself right into Minos Prime and blowing up in his face in an explosion of ink.
Marina then let go of the ceiling and then grappled towards Minos Prime, however, he grabbed her arm and swung her around to then slam her into the ground, making Marina lose her Zipcaster armor.
“JUDGEMENT!”
As Minos Prime began his drop kick to finish Marina off, Marina actually used her splashdown to float into the air to avoid the drop kick and to hit Minos Prime on her way down with an explosion of ink.
“DIE!!”
Minos Prime teleported off the ground and grabbed Marina by her neck and slammed her face into the floor, splashing her blood into the air, then threw Marina into the air itself. Unlike last time, however, Marina was prepared for him to teleport to her altitude, so when he did, Marina grabbed his arm and threw him to the ground face down.
Once she landed, Marina took out her Hydra Splatling and fully charged it, where she then shoved it up Minos Prime’s face hole before letting go of the trigger, unloading dozens of highly pressurized ink shots into his face per second until the last shot knocked him back a little.
“AAAUGH!!!”
“…”
“Forgive me, my children, for I have failed to bring you salvation from this cold, dark world...”
“WWWRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAUGHHHHHH!!!”
Minos prime begins to slowly float into the air as one by one, beams of light burst from him and ending with a loud explosion.
Marina had done it. She won a fight against a Prime Soul, and with the adrenaline rush faded, she began to feel the weight of her injuries and exhaustion as she got down on her hands and knees and breathed heavily.
And then… she heard it…
A cough.
Marina’s head sprang up from the noise, and she picked herself up from the floor while ignoring every pain in her body as she ran to the source of the noise, her girlfriend.
“PEARL!”
Leaning against the fleshy wall was Pearl, who was a mess, and very lucky to be alive. One of her shoulders was dislocated, a leg was broken, and her skull was fractured, with a large gash on her forehead that had her blood pour over her eyes, blinding her.
“…Marina… are… we dead?” The inkling spoke weakly, taking deep breaths in between.
“Oh my cod…” Marina whispered to herself.
Marina’s three hearts broke at the sight of her girlfriend’s barely-alive state. The girl she fell in love with usually being so loud and energetic, was now quiet and somber.
Marina got down on her knees next to Pearl and scooped her into her arms. She used one of her hands to apply pressure to the gash on Pearl’s forehead to stop the bleeding, while one of her tentacles wiped the blood out of Pearl’s right eye, allowing half of her vision to return.
“No Pearl… we aren’t… we survived.” Marina spoke softly, finally answering her question. Pearl then noticed the lack of a tall white glowing dude with a hole for a face teleporting all over the place, “Is… he gone?” She asked. “Yes Pearl, he’s gone, you’re safe now.” Marina replied.
Slowly at first, Pearl began to sob tears of pure relief at Marina finishing the fight and being her rescuer.
“…You… should’ve just… ran… far… far away… but you didn’t…”
“Pearlie… you know I love you too much to do that.”
“I… guess we’re even now… after me and Eight… saved you from… the Memverse… huh?”
“Well I didn’t know we were keeping score~”
They shared a deep, long kiss as Marina pulled Pearl to her sweat-ridden chest, there was no taste of Pearl’s blood, only her love.
After the kiss, Pearl’s forehead stopped bleeding, Marina stood up, holding her girlfriend to her chest with the latter wrapping her remaining working arm around Marina’s back. “C’mon Pearlie, let’s head to the terminal and see if we can get you some medical supplies at the next terminal.” Marina whispered to Pearl.
“So…” Pearl began, “I’m assuming… the pizza is still… on me?” She flashed a toothy grin. Marina chuckled. Even in the most dire inches of her life, she still had a way to make a smile on everyone’s face.
“Oh, Pearlie…”