Chapter Text
War. War never changes.
When sea levels rose and consumed humanity after the fifth World War, those humans who survived built an emergency civilization known as Alterna. They crafted the Ark Polaris, a great spacecraft designed to be their salvation, to take them all into space and away from the increasingly rising water levels.
Unfortunately, systems on the Ark Polaris failed after takeoff, and the subsequent crash into the ocean left no survivors.
As twelve millenia passed, those creatures that inhabitated the ocean began their next stage of evolution, moving onto what dry land was left. Squids, Octopi, and other denizens of the deep formed humanoid legs, arms, and entire bodies. They were now able to survive and thrive on land.
However, when sea levels began to rise once again, the Octarians and Inklings fought for control of the surface world, the battles being collectively known as the Great Turf War. The Great Octoweapons stormed the Inkling’s stronghold and pushed the Inklings back. Months of warfare passed, and when victory seemed certain for the Octarians, a plug carelessly pulled from its socket thrust the war into their enemies’ favor. The war was won by the Inklings, and the Octarians were forced underground.
Years later, an Inkling Army faction known as the Squidbeak Splatoon, continued its fight against the Octarians when the Great Zapfish, the source of power in the Inkling Capital of Inkopolis, was stolen by King of the Octarians, Octavio. Octavio was once again defeated, this time by the Squidbeak Splatoon newcomer known as Agent 3.
The Squidbeak Splatoon faced one more enemy in the years that followed: a sapient grizzly bear known as Mr. Grizz. In Grizz’s quest to bring mammals back to planet Earth, he attempted the use of a rocket to drop fuzzy ooze from outerspace and onto the world’s inhabitants. Due to a team-up of the New Squidbeak Splatoon, the Deepcut bandits, Octavio, and the spirit of sealife, Grizz was overwhelmingly defeated and his plot foiled.
Blu, a member of the Squidbeak Splatoon and former multiverse-hopper, has unintentionally crossed the multiverse once again, which has taken a turn…for the worse.
~~
“Welp, another performance well done, if I do say so myself.” Pearl began to slurp down a medium-sized Matcha Reviver.
“Well done mostly by us, Houzuki.” Frye playfully corrected with a sharp, mischievous smile.
Pearl scoffed. “You talking to me? The MC Princess? When I am on stage, I own it, full stop.”
“You guys…” Marina decided to calm things down before anything got out of hand between her two fiery popstar friends.
Callie, Marie, and Shiver soon entered the backstage area to join the other three. “…so I said, hand over the little moai before Master Mega gets involved.” Shiver bragged about her bandit escapades, mostly to Callie as Marie was over this conversation and had tuned it out.
Callie started to gush over Shiver’s story as Marie immediately made a beeline for the juice bar. “I can’t get over how you tame giant sharks, Shiver. It’s inkredible!!”
The conversation carried on between the six idols, but eventually, Marina noticed that Pearl was uncharacteristically silent and drumming her fingers against the couch armrest as if she were impatient about something. Marina nudged her lightly and indiscernibly so that the others did not notice. “Pearlie… what’s wrong?”
Pearl sighed and stopped drumming her fingers, crossing her arms instead. “Blu was supposed to meet us here, ‘Rina. Where do you think they are?”
“Probably with Eight, right?” Marina’s tentacles drooped.
“But they promised…”
Suddenly, the backstage exit door opened, and Pearl perked up. However, she immediately slumped back into the couch when the newcomer was Acht, not Blu.
Acht discreetly motioned for Marina to come over as they stayed away from the rest of the group. Marina quietly got up from her chair and walked over while Pearl watched, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Yes, Acht?” Marina whispered once in earshot of sanitized octoling.
“Hey. I don’t mean to cause alarm, but Eight just told me that Blu’s not been around today. He’s worried about them.”
“Well, I…” Marina began before being cut off by a panicked yell from Callie. She quickly turned around, seeing Shiver and Frye suddenly missing from the couch. Before her very eyes, Marie suddenly faded into thin air, and Callie sprung up from her seat on the couch.
“WHAT THE HELLY IS GOING ON-” Callie exclaimed before also disappearing.
“’Rina?” Pearl’s voice sounded out from the other side of the room. She was fading slowly as well.
“Pearlie?!” Marina rushed over and grabbed Pearl’s hand, disappearing with her.
Acht looked around the now-empty room. “Damn,” was all they said before their entire form faded out of reality as well.
~~
“You got what you were after, so pay up.”
“You’re crying in the rain, pally.”
“Guess who’s waking up over here?”
Their eyes blinked open slowly, and Blu returned to consciousness, sitting up on their knees with great effort and finding their hands tightly tied together. They looked up, finding three…humans…standing before them.
“Time to cash out.” The human in a white-and-black checkered suit said as he tossed a cigarette on the ground before stamping it out. He stood in the middle of two other humans.
“Would you get it over with?” The human to the left snapped impatiently.
The checkered human spoke again, raising a single index finger to shut up the other. “Maybe Khans kill people without looking them in the face, but I ain’t a fink, dig?” He then turned his gaze back to Blu, taking something circular and platinum out of his chest suit jacket pocket before holding it so they could see it clearly. “You’ve made your last delivery, kid. Sorry you got twisted up in this scene.” He put the platinum chip back in his pocket before instead producing a pistol from a holster inside his suit jacket. “From where you’re kneeling, it must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck.” He paused before pointing the pistol’s barrel straight between Blu’s eyes. “Truth is… the game was rigged from the start.”
The shot rang out loudly, the sound carried by the brisk winds of the Mojave. Blu slumped over onto the dirt ground before being put in a shallow, poorly-dug grave by the two men that had been standing on either side of the checkered man. Though, as the checkered man walked away from the scene, he swore he could hear the melody of strange song in the distance. He turned to look at the fresh grave once more before leaving into the night…
