Chapter Text
They felt something hard under their hand. They opened their eyes. They realized they were lying in a fetal position. With aching limbs, they stood up to examine their surroundings.
They were in a place that vaguely resembled a city square. Everything was a bleached, chrome white as though assimilated by an unknowable entity. Tall, branched coral plants stood one and a half times their observer’s height. A few dozen feet in front of them, a building towered over everything else at well over a hundred feet in height.
They heard the sound of rotors spinning, and looked up at the source of the noise. A tiny white drone was spiraling through the air towards him. It had a rotor on the bottom, a tiny crown on top, compound eyes with cross-shaped pupils, and a pair of wings with inkling-style suction cup decorations.
“Hey, what’s up? I thought I was the only one here!”
The octoling stepped back, startled at the volume of the drone’s voice. “Who are you?”
“You don’t know me? I guess it’s kinda hard to recognize me in this new form, huh? The name’s Pearl Houzuki, from Off The Hook! Now let’s make it even. What’s your name?”
“I’m…” They held out their fists in front of their chest, and slowly clenched them. “I don’t know. I know I’m not a boy or a girl, but I have no idea who I am. Where are we?”
“Eh, sorry. No clue there. This place looks kinda like Inkopolis square, but it’s definitely not normal.” Pearl floated closer to the octoling. “Maybe we should team up! I’m thinking that deca tower knockoff should be the first place we look.” She gestured with her wing towards the grand tower at the back of the square.
“Inkopolis… I think I’ve heard of that place. Okay, let’s go.”
While the drone floated next to them and a few feet overhead, the nameless octoling slowly turned their head to observe their surroundings. The sky was a pale white, and amorphous purely 2-dimensional shapes floated in the air. They looked down to examine their skin tight outfit. It was as pure white as everything else in the environment, and left their arms and most of their legs exposed. A pair of bulky shoes covered their feet up to a few inches below their knees.
Pearl took less than a minute to resume talking. “So if you aren’t a boy or a girl, then I’m guessing that makes you nonbinary. They/them pronouns, right?”
The octoling smiled. “Yeah, but I’m not sure that should be our first priority right now.”
“That’s squit. Even if it isn’t necessarily life or death, respecting someone’s pronouns is always important. She/her, by the way.”
“Thank you. I really mean that.” The octoling walked into the tower, through a short and cramped hallway with automatic sliding doors at either end. The loud, pneumatic hisses of the doors opening and closing filled their ears. The foyer of the building was far more massive than the exterior of the building implied, with training dummies and platforms of varying heights, all in a space roughly half the size of the square itself.
“Wow. Is it just me, or is this place way bigger than it looked on the outside?”
“Yeah. I don’t know if we should be here.”
At the back of the foyer, the stainless steel doors of an elevator slid open. A single octoling was leaning against the wall inside. Their skin was completely green, they wore a one-piece black dress that left their limbs uncovered, and a long blue tentacle with a red tip hung over their right eye. They wore a pair of red glasses, a brimmed cap with a simplistic drawing of a primitive squid on front, and a pair of headphones.
“Watch out! That’s a sanitized octoling!” Pearl flew in front of the nameless one.
“Easy, now.” The green individual held up their empty hands. “I’m not a threat. Promise.”
“Huh?” Pearl floated half a foot closer. “Gotta admit, you don’t seem quite as mindless as most sanitized octos. Or as lifeless, for that matter.”
“That’s because I’ve regained my soul.” The sanitized octoling stepped back into the elevator, beckoning the others closer to themself. “I’ll tell you everything if you come with me.”
“I’m not sure about this, but okay.” The pale-skinned octoling walked into the elevator with their green brethren.
“It’s your call, man.” Pearl floated in with them.
The doors of the elevator closed like the jaws of a metallic beast, locking the group in a small rectangular space that slowly ascended. “What’s your name?” The octoling asked.
“I’m Acht.” The green octoling answered, “They/them.”
“Really? Me too! I don’t remember my name, though.”
“Neither did I at first. Don’t worry. Once you clear the tenth floor, you’ll get all your memories back.”
“Wow, two nonbinary octolings? Small world.” Pearl remarked.
“What do you mean by clearing the tenth floor?”
“Oh, yeah, I guess you wouldn’t know that.” Acht muttered to themself, “Must be a glitch. Anyway, it’s a little complicated and I don’t want to overwhelm you all at once. Trust me, this’ll all make sense later.”
The elevator dinged, and opened. “I’ll take your word for it.” The non-sanitized octoling walked out onto the first floor. “Are you, ah, gonna come with me?”
Acht shook their head. “Nah, it’s best if I stay in here. Besides, I’ve always preferred small spaces. Kinda like reverse claustrophobia.”
“Okay.” While the elevator closed behind them, the octoling walked across the small platform. Lines of digital code appeared on their hips, and solidified into a holstered pair of solid white dualies. There was a training dummy next to a small metal circle set into the floor. Two metal bars rose from either side of the metal circle, with a green ring on top attaching it to a zipline. “Okay, so I guess I just stand here, right?”
A series of metal bars descended around the octoling. The cage was lifted out of the floor, and started slowly descending on the zipline. Pearl floated next to the cage. “Okay, so I’m guessing there’s something on this floor we’ll have to do. Somehow.”
All around them, the walls were made of an ever-moving black and white pattern. The cage floor disappeared and dropped its inhabitant. “Grab on!”
The octoling grabbed a handle that had appeared at the bottom of the drone. “Thanks.” They looked down at the wooden, irregularly shaped platform below them. There was a void-black sphere, with things that resembled skeletal fish swimming within. “What are those things?”
“No clue.” Pearl admitted, “Maybe we have to destroy all of them?”
“Like some kind of trial.” The octoling swung their legs to steer Pearl away from the sphere. They touched down, and released Pearl’s handle, a couple dozen feet in front of the localized void. They extracted their dualies from their holsters.
“Where’d you get those?”
“What, you didn’t notice? They just appeared on me when I left the elevator. I didn’t question it only because, y’know, it’s really just a drop in the bucket compared to everything else.”
At the octoling’s next step in its direction, the sphere began to pulsate. A swarm of monsters began to swarm out of it, as though emerging from a pocket dimension. The vast majority of them resembled primitive skeletal fish, roughly twice the octoling’s size, swimming a few inches off the ground and swarming towards the octoling.
The amnesiac screamed at the army of monsters racing towards him, loudly snapping the metal teeth within their biomechanical jaws. “What are those things?!”
“How the hell should I know?!” Pearl screamed, “Just shoot them!”
“Now that I can do!” The octoling started shooting their dualies rapid-fire, covering the ground in orange ink while annihilating the monsters in rapid succession. For each one they destroyed, more and more appeared in an endless stream of horrors. “It’s like there’s no end to these things!”
Pearl looked up at one of the obsidian spheres. “Oh, I get it! That round thing is spitting these monsters out like salmonids when glowflies are around! You’ve gotta destroy it!”
“Okay!” They jumped off the back of a skeletal fish in order to get closer to the device. From midair, they tossed a splat bomb that exploded on the sphere, causing it to expand while staining it with orange ink. As soon as they landed, they rolled forward and started firing twin streams of ink. They focused one dualie on the skeletal swarm, and the other on the sphere. It rapidly changed from black to orange, dripping copious amounts of ink and gradually ascending while tethered to the ground by a metal chain.
As soon as the vortex took more damage than it could withstand, it exploded into a spherical tsunami of orange ink. The octoling’s entire body, including their bruises, sore arms, and exhaustion, was instantly rejuvenated. Dozens of the skeletal fish were annihilated.
The octoling and Pearl were both reduced to lines of digital code, and disappeared.
Acht was casually tapping their foot against the floor, nodding along to the quiet rhythm they were creating, when dozens of yellow lines of code appeared in the elevator and solidified into an octoling and a drone. The larger of the two looked around in alarm. “The hell just happened? Acht, what was that? Did you have to do that to get your memories back?”
“Yep. I figured I shouldn’t tell you, since that might lessen the challenge.”
“I’d appreciate that, actually. Please lessen the challenge.”
“I’m with them!” Pearl floated over to the octoling with no name. “What even is this place?”
Acht leaned back, with one foot on the wall. “First off, those freaky bone-fish are called jelletons. The thing you had to destroy was called a portal. As you saw, they spew out jelletons until you destroy them.”
“Okay, but why exactly were we teleported back here?” Pearl asked, “And what’s with the dualies that showed up on my new partner?”
“Actually, they disappeared.” The octoling held up their hands.
“That’s just how this place works. On each floor, there’s a specific goal you have to accomplish before you get booted back here, and then you can get to the next floor. One level at a time.”
“It’s like something out of a video game.” Pearl remarked.
Acht nodded in agreement. “Something like that. Anyway, on to floor 2.”
The elevator resumed its ascension. “Okay dude, I’m thinking you should have a placeholder name for now. It’s getting annoying just thinking of you as ‘the octoling’ and stuff.” Pearl suggested, “Tell you what. You kinda remind me of a friend of mine. How about New Agent 8? Or just New Eight?”
“Who’s Eight?”
“One of my best friends! She’s saved the world countless times, and she’s a member of the New Squidbeak Splatoon!”
“Pearl, I don’t have context for any of that. Amnesia, remember?”
“Oh, right. You see, it all started nearly 4 years ago-”
The elevator dinged a second time. “You two can talk about that while clearing the floor.” Acht patted their fellow octoling on the shoulder. “Go get ’em, New Eight.”
New Eight backed away with a stifled yelp. “Uh, right. Okay.” They walked out of the elevator. As soon as it closed, their dualies reappeared in their holsters.
Pearl floated in front of New Eight’s face. “You okay, bud? You sounded like you got burned or something.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just that, I don’t know, something about being touched…” New Eight shrugged. “It just felt a little weird. I’m good to go now.” They rushed onto the cage floor.
“Okay, then.” Pearl floated next to the cage as it descended diagonally.
The second and third floors each required New Eight to destroy three jelleton portals. Over the course of that time, Pearl told them about the octoling named Katherine, and how she’d braved the trials of the Deepsea Metro and defeated a malfunctioning AI before joining a group called the New Squidbeak Splatoon.
The elevator dinged, and then opened into the fourth floor. “Are you sure you can’t tell us what we’re in for at least?”
“Sorry, New Eight. Your first three floors have been completely different from mine. I’m sure you’ve got this, though.”
“Thanks.” New Eight jogged out of the elevator, whereupon their dualies reappeared. They stood on the cage floor.
On the platform, there were two geysers of jet-black ink, twice as wide and four times the height of New Eight. There was a golden rectangle on the floor. “Where are the portals?”
“Dude, look at this!” Pearl floated over to the section within the rectangle. “It’s splat zones! Just ink the zone and then we’re all set.”
“Oh yeah. Acht mentioned there’d be different types of challenges.” New Eight started spraying the designated area, until it automatically filled with their orange ink.
Dozens of jelletons emerged from the black geysers, and immediately swarmed at the ink zone. “Pearl! I thought you said we’d be all set!”
“You have to keep the zone filled with your own ink! Just keep it orange long enough, and then we can win this!”
New Eight alternated between swimming in the ink to refill their ammunition, spraying ink to replace the jelletons’ black with their orange, and shooting the varied robotic horrors.
There were tiny fish that floated on vertical jets of black ink, massive jelletons that struck New Eight like battering rams despite not being able to produce ink of their own, and floating bulbous jelletons that sprayed ink in a wide radius like sprinklers.
New Eight and Pearl agreed that those ones were especially loathsome.
There were other varieties of jelletons as well, that filled the arena. Despite their mindlessly tenacious efforts, New Eight was able to outpace them enough to return to the elevator.
“Nice work out there, guys.” Acht smiled. “Now on to floor 5.”
“What do you think, Pearl?” New Eight asked, “Maybe this one will be another portal-busting floor.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Pearl agreed, “Or it could be something else entirely. I’m getting kind of excited just thinking about it!”
The elevator dinged. “Looks like you won’t have to anticipate it for much longer. Good luck, you two.”
There was a silver vertical rod, roughly twice the height of New Eight and standing on a base that hovered a quarter of a foot above the floor. “Okay, so I guess we’re going with something new!” New Eight started firing orange ink into the jelletons that appeared from dark geysers. When stray ink hit the rod, it partially filled with orange and moved a few inches down a yellow dotted line floating in the air.
“Oh, I get it.” Pearl floated over to the rod. “It’s just like tower control! Except with this version, I guess you’ve gotta hit it with your ink to move it.”
“On it!” New Eight split their attention between the tower and the jelletons. Each time the tower entered a red section of the line for roughly three feet, its speed was abruptly decimated. At the end of each red section, the tower hit a glowing circle and expelled a rapidly-expanding dome of green energy. Dozens of jelletons were eradicated, and the tower accelerated while filling to the top with orange ink.
After the fourth red section, Pearl and New Eight were automatically sent back to the elevator. “Alright, halfway point!” New Eight pumped their fists.
“Congrats.” Acht smiled at them. “Let’s just hope the second half is this easy.”
“Why do I feel like it’s not gonna be that easy?” Pearl asked.
Acht looked up to address her. “Because it never is.”
The sixth floor was another splat zones round, except there had been two different squares, forcing New Eight and Pearl to multitask between them and the jelleton hordes.
At the seventh floor, there were two massive white balls. Each was around four times New Eight’s size, and had an infinity symbol on it. There were two circular platforms with green light emerging upwards from the edges.
“Oh, no.” Pearl lamented, “No! No, squit, please no!”
New Eight looked up at the drone, both quizzically and apprehensively. “What’s wrong? Do giant balls scare you?”
“No, this is just like the 8-balls from the Deepsea Metro! Katherine had to bring them to a goal in a lot of her trials, but they were super finicky, and every time one of them fell off the edge, she’d get blown up and have to try all over again.”
“Wait, blown up?! Multiple times?! How did she survive? Am I gonna get blown up?”
“She survived because I guess the Deepsea Metro train had respawn generators built into it. But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll be fine! At least you don’t have a corrosive genetic sludge-bomb strapped to your back.”
“I’m just going to start.” New Eight started pushing one of the spheres by shooting it. Dozens of jelletons appeared from fountains of black liquid, forcing them to split their focus between guiding the ball and protecting themself and Pearl. The largest jelletons, which resembled massive fish with bulbous foreheads, occasionally knocked the balls out of New Eight’s range by headbutting the objects.
Despite the jelletons’ best efforts, it was only a few minutes before New Eight and Pearl successfully returned to the elevator with Acht. “Nice work. I hope you two are ready for the final three floors.”
“Are you kidding?” Pearl flew directly into Acht’s face. “We’re ready for anything these floors can throw at us! Right, New Eight?”
“Right. Gotta admit, I’m feeling pretty good about this. Bring on floor number eight.”
Acht smiled. “Your number, huh, New Eight?”
“Oh yeah. Lucky number eight.”
At the eighth floor, New Eight and Pearl encountered three unfamiliar jelletons. They were around twice the size of New Eight, with relatively long bodies and tall, pointed tails. Each of them had tiny white squares trailing upwards from their backs. “Okay, I’m guessing the goal of this floor has something to do with those guys with the glowy backs.”
“Right.” New Eight sprayed a trail of ink, in order to swim closer to the nearest target fish from behind. The second the cybernetic fish sensed their approach, it dashed away while floating less than an inch above the ground, leaving behind a thin trail of black ink in the process.
“Dammit! That thing’s way too fast!”
New Eight jumped into humanoid form. They watched as the target fled, moving in erratic patterns, while a multitude of jelletons poured out of a dark fountain and beelined towards them. “Oh, of course! The only one that doesn’t come after me is the one I actually want to get near!” He started firing ink and tossing pyramidal splat bombs into the jelleton crowd.
After less than a minute, a quiet ding emanated from New Eight’s dualies. “Wait!” They dodge-rolled twice, away from the oncoming swarm. “That’s it! I don’t stand a chance at catching up with that thing on foot, but these things have got a reefslider attached!”
“Oh, that’s brilliant!” Pearl realized, “Those cowards won’t know what hit them!”
New Eight eagerly turned on their reefslider, generating a massive toy shark beneath them. The air around him warped from the speed of the explosive vehicle, for all of a second before it stopped and detonated. One of the target fish was annihilated by the blast radius, along with several jelletons.
New Eight and Pearl teleported into the elevator a few minutes after they’d departed. “Woah!” New Eight fell onto the floor, rubbing their tentacle-hair. “Oh, man, that was great! I’ve gotta use the reefslider more often.”
Acht smiled while helping New Eight to their feet. “I’m glad you had some fun. Now, on to floor nine.”
“Oh yeah! Bring on the final two! I’m actually kind of excited to see what new challenge is on the ninth floor!”
Pearl and New Eight looked down at the penultimate floor, with an odd sense of disappointment. “It’s just more portals.”
“Yeah.” Pearl remarked, “I guess the unique stuff is being saved for the top floor.”
Acht, Pearl, and New Eight listened as the elevator dinged. “This is it, team. The final challenge. Odds are, it’s gonna be unlike anything we’ve seen so far.”
New Eight punched their own palm. “I still don’t know what’s going on, but I’m ready to find out.”
“Hell yeah!” peal excitedly agreed, “Bring on the boss battle!”
Acht nodded. “Good to see you two in such high spirits. Now get out there, and win this fight.”
“Will do.” New Eight jogged out of the elevator, with Pearl following close behind. What they saw made them skid to a stop, with a look of horror on their face. “Pearl. Do you have any idea what that is?”
The elevator had already closed behind the two. There was a dark, massive shape on the other side of the chasm, connected to a multitude of wires hanging from the unseen ceiling far above them. Smaller arcs of wires, within those embedded directly into the massive shape, connected to the same unseen ceiling.
“I… I have no idea.” Pearl floated closer. “It almost looks like there’s-” She paused. “Oh no. New Eight, we have to get over there, right now!”
New Eight nodded past their confusion at the terror in Pearl’s voice. “Uh, yeah! Right!” They jumped into the cage that would take them to the massive platform that held the enigmatic machine. “What’s got you so freaked out?”
“N… nothing. It’s probably nothing.” Pearl’s voice was shaky, as though she were trying to assure herself moreso than New Eight.
The closer they ascended to the mechanical entity, the more clearly they could see an octoling’s head emerging from the top of the structure. Her eyes were covered by a silver rectangle. Her mouth was twisted into an emotionless smile. Her hands and arms, covered up to the shoulders in silver latex, were bent at the elbows so that her hands were on either side of her head, with her fingers curved and splayed out.
“No way. That can’t be her, it just can’t be!”
New Eight looked over to the side. Pearl was shaking. “Who is that?”
“That’s Marina. That thing took my girlfriend!”
The floor of the cage opened. New Eight grabbed onto the handle that appeared on the sentient drone’s underside. “Are you sure? How is this even possible?”
“I’m positive it was her! I’d recognize Marina anywhere! And I’ve got no idea how this happened, but we’ve got to save her!”
“Right.” New Eight landed on the floor.
The second New Eight let go, Pearl retracted her handlebar and floated in front of them. “Hey, Rina! Can you hear me, honey?!”
The cybernetic-encased octoling didn’t move a visible muscle.
New Eight’s fingers shook and tapped their dualies. “Guess not.”
A red light flashed in the corner of the device covering Marina’s eyes and ears. The mechanical structure emitted a glitching projection of itself, with flashes of warping and shifting colors. Her fingers and arms twitched and spasmed at speeds that no living entity should have been capable of. “Intruders confirmed.” Her voice echoed, completely emotionless with an underlying mechanical tone. The machine containing her pulsated like the heart of some eldritch monstrosity, pouring out copious amounts of smoke. “Commence grayscaling.”
“Sit tight! We’re gonna get you outta that thing! Ready to rock, New Eight?”
“I’ve got no idea what’s going on, but yeah.” New Eight took a battle-ready stance. “I’m ready.”
Four enormous black tentacles, each around four-and-a-half times New Eight’s height, sprouted from the corners of the raised platform. Each of them contained a black and red sphere, and acted as a portal through which hordes of varied jelletons appeared. New Eight screamed in fear and confused rage as they charged into the jelleton hordes, spinning and shooting everything in their path.
“New Eight, I think your reefslider’s ready!” Pearl took note of their glowing, waving tentacle-hair.
“No need to tell me twice!” They activated their reefslider and powered forward, annihilating every jelleton in their path before catching the tentacle portal in the explosion. The eldritch appendage expanded into a bulbous thing, dripping with orange ink, for all of a half-second before exploding into an expansive, spherical wave of orange ink that eradicated over a hundred jelletons all at once.
“That was awesome, New Eight!” Pearl cheered, “I think that was even bigger than the round portal!”
“Makes sense.” New Eight pointed out while sprinting to their next target, “Bigger portal, bigger explosion.” They launched a curling bomb, and swam through the orange path it carved into the black ink. The device exploded a few inches away from the second portal, just before New Eight resumed humanoid form and began shooting the tendril.
The tentacle, even as it expanded, rose, and turned orange, continued to pulsate and summon forth new jelletons. New Eight was forced to spin around, constantly dividing their attention between self-defense and attacking the bulbous tentacle.
“How are we supposed to do this?!” Pearl yelled in a panic.
“We?!”
“Hey, I’d love to fight, but I can’t exactly hold a weapon like this!” Pearl complained.
New Eight continued their jelleton slaughter. Their arms grew tired, until at last the second tentacle portal exploded. The jelletons all around them disintegrated into a swarm of pixels and numbers, and then nothingness. “Finally.” They waved their arms, trying to get feeling back into them. “Now we can take a break.”
“Uh, not exactly.” Pearl corrected them, “Look!”
New Eight looked up, at the dozens upon dozens of jelletons being spawned from the two remaining tentacle portals. “Oh, great.”
“Hey, what’re those things?”
“What?” New Eight followed Pearl’s gaze down to the floor. Rotating above the surface were three objects that resembled thirds of an iridescent multicolored disc, with small beacons of white light emanating upwards from them. “I don’t know what they are, but maybe we can use them.” They sprinted to the disc pieces and grabbed them.
The fragments tore themselves out of New Eight’s hands and combined into a disc in midair. A slot opened near the bottom of Pearl’s mechanical form. “Huh? Wait what the-?” The disc spun into the open slot before it closed itself.
A blast of deafening music radiated out from Pearl, alongside circles of multicolored light. The entire arena trembled from the volume. The jelletons were knocked back by the light. “I feel like I just downed a whole box of Tenta Cola! New Eight, let’s go let’s go let’s go!”
“Alright!” New Eight started sprinting, while Pearl sped past them. As soon as she was in range for her light waves to strike the tentacle-portals, they were engulfed in the same light. It paralyzed them and prevented them from bringing forth any more jelletons. “Yes!” New Eight rolled closer to the third tentacle-portal and began shooting it with their dualies, in twin continuous streams of orange ink.
The tentacle portal ascended, growing more bulbous while the orange of New Eight’s ink encroached upon its viscous black. After a quarter of a minute, the tentacle-portal exploded in a spherical wave of orange ink.
“That was awesome! Keep going, I think the disc thingy’s starting to run out!” Pearl informed her partner.
“Okay!” New Eight swam through the ink created by the previous explosion until it ran out halfway to the final tentacle portal. As soon as they jumped out and resumed humanoid form, the light disappeared from the portal. “Agh, dammit.” New Eight swore at the jelletons that began charging for them.
“Ah well, at least we got one freebie.” Pearl hovered in a circle above New Eight’s head. “You can just blast right through these guys!”
“Let’s see if you’re right!” New Eight ran to meet the jelletons. All they could see was a frantic swarm of black and white. Digitized numbers flashed across their eyes and disappeared as fast as they materialized every time they struck down one of the seemingly-infinite hordes of jelletons.
When New Eight used their reefslider, it annihilated over a hundred jelletons, temporarily cleared the immediate area around them, and brought them within range of the tentacle portal. “Close enough!” They began shooting at the tentacle portal.
“Hey uh, New Eight? We’ve got jelletons coming in at all the o’clocks! You’d better hurry!”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Sorry! It’s just that I wish I could fight in this form.”
“Don’t worry!” New Eight narrowed their eyes at the tentacle portal. “I’ve almost got it.”
There was an orange explosion. The jelletons surrounding New Eight all perished in the wave. The red barrier surrounding Marina loudly cracked and shattered. The pieces disappeared entirely.
“She’s open!” New Eight immediately began firing upon the mechanical structure holding Marina. With each continuous shot, it turned from black to red and pulsated like the enormous heart of a terrible, biomechanical beast.
New Eight had to split their attention between the remaining jelletons and Marina herself. The vessel controlling her fired bright red lasers out of black metal discs that resembled satellite dishes.
New Eight spun in a full circle. Occasionally, they needed to retreat and toss a curling bomb at an inkrail in order to activate it.
Minute by minute, more of New Eight’s orange ink covered the red, throbbing mechanism. Minute by minute, more jelletons were summoned by the central machine only to be eradicated by New Eight’s dualies, curling bombs, and occasional reefsliders.
Five minutes after they’d first touched down, Pearl cheered, “Dude, look! She’s basically completely orange now!”
“Yes!” New Eight was launched into the air from behind by an enormous jelleton. “No!”
“I gotcha, bud!” Pearl floated over to New Eight with her handle deployed.
“Thanks!” New Eight passed one dualie to the other hand, so that they could grab onto Pearl’s handle. They maneuvered their fingers to holster one dualie on their hip, while shooting the device holding Marina with the other. “I think…” They groaned as their arm holding Pearl grew sore. “We’ve… almost got it!”
“Thank you so much, New Eight! Just hold on a bit longer!”
Sparks exploded out from the machine, before it visibly deflated like a popped balloon. The surviving jelletons were deleted in a swarm of digitized numbers. While Pearl and New Eight touched down a few dozen feet in front of the device, Marina slumped forward. The visor over her eyes was covered in red glitches as she fell out of the machine.
“Lady! I gotcha!” New Eight held out their arms. Marina fell on top of them while the visor disappeared entirely, causing the both of them to fall on the floor.
Marina floated over to the two octolings. “Marina! Are you okay?”
Marina rolled off of New Eight. She was wearing a one-piece skintight outfit with a silver top half, a key-shaped hole in the middle of her chest, and a blue lower half with diagonal silver lines criss-crossing her upper legs. “That voice… Pearl? And who are you?”
Massive sparks of purple electricity arced on the outside of the device that had been holding Marina. A cloud of black smoke rose to obscure the ink-covered central mass. A purple, digitized face appeared within the smoke. It consisted of a pair of eyes with vertical lines for pupils, and a mouth that warped and shifted size as it spoke. The face and the smoke surrounding it glitched and jittered. Its voice was deep, warped, and sounded as if it were coming through a faulty walkie-talkie.
“ERROR. Grayscaling interrupted. Intruders confirmed disorderly. Classifying as dissidents.”
Pearl flew in between her companions and the digital face. “Who’s this fool?!”
“I am Order itself. A consciousness generated from the processes of many who yearn for stability. I am now fully realized. I therefore have no further use for a host vessel. All things…” Circles of black clouds radiated outwards from the face, while the air itself was covered in miniscule squares of randomly-shifting colors. “...will be converted to memory.” A wave of red energy poured outwards.
“Woah!” Pearl exclaimed.
Marina shakily stood up. “Oh, this is bad… the tower’s shaking like crazy!”
“Not just that!” New Eight pointed at the trembling walls. The metal was covered in glitch squares that rapidly turned into a red expanse. A wave of black smoke and debris struck Pearl, New Eight, and Marina, causing all three of them to burst through the wall. The rapidly-expanding hole in the top floor was accompanied by everything glitching.
Sections of the tower moved horizontally in small lines. Squares of shifting colors infested the edges of the hole in the wall. Bright blue outlines surrounded Marina, Pearl, and New Eight.
The entire world glitched and shook. The tower was covered in pixels that rapidly changed colors, from blue to green to black and scarlet. Pearl struggled to fly with two octolings holding her drone form’s wings, while the sky itself shook all around them.
The pixels expanded outwards from the tower, like a shell being dismissed, and disappeared into the ether. The tower grew. Its walls were marred with massive black spaces that almost resembled windows into the cosmos. There were branching red lines inside, and the edges of the walls were jagged and flickering in and out of existence.
Pearl’s drone form gave out, as did the world around her.