Chapter Text
Venus pressed an ear against her door, making sure her family was asleep. When she heard nothing, she moved quickly to her closet, moving aside a false panel in the wall to reveal a secret alcove.
Inside the alcove was Venus's stash of surface memorabilia: posters and CDs of various surface bands, most of them belonging to bands with octolings in them such as Off the Hook, SashiMori, and Diss-Pair; a few articles of surface fashion that she had managed to acquire from people who had visited Inkopolis; and a picture of the giant statue she had heard rumors about in Inkopolis Bay. In the image the statue was half covered in a bright pink ink, the other half having giant bombs planted on them: inventions by one of the Domes’ finest minds and Off the Hook member Marina Ida. Next to the photo was a crop of the same photo zoomed in to a figure grinding along ride rails placed around the statue. It was hard to see, but the number of tentacles made Venus pretty sure that it was an octoling.
Venus smiled as she started packing whatever would fit into a backpack. It had taken months of preparation and paperwork, but it was finally time: she was cleared to leave for the surface.
For months and months she tried to win back her mother's favor, but no matter what she couldn't live up to her expectations. Worse, it seemed like her mother stopped expecting anything from her in the first place; Octavio's defeat and departure left a power vacuum, and Mercury had taken the opportunity to become conductor of Dome One under the command of the Great Conductor, elevating the Hamamura family to even higher levels of nobility. When it became clear her mother no longer needed her she just stopped trying, resigning herself to the fact that her mother would always see her as a failure. As she heard more and more stories of octolings who had made it on the surface, she became more inspired to leave her life in the Domes behind, a process that had become much easier thanks to official emigration processes being implemented after Octavio's fall. Thanks to her family's name she was able to speed up the process a bit and keep it under the radar, and now she was about to leave the domes without her family having any idea.
Venus crept out of her room towards the door. As she passed through the living room, her eyes caught on her mother’s old Octobrush hanging on the wall. In recognition for her part in stealing the Great Zapfish, Mercury was awarded an Octarmament, a custom weapon with a clone of one of DJ Octavio's tentacles grafted onto it. The Octobroom, as she had taken to calling it, was an improved brush that also doubled as a blaster for ranged capabilities. Venus was supposed to inherit Mercury’s old Octobrush once she became a soldier, but those plans were cut after Venus's accident.
Venus stared at the Octobrush for a moment, thinking about the inheritance she was denied. It was supposed to be mine anyway. Might as well take it as one last ‘fuck you’. She grabbed the brush, slipping it into her pack.
As she went to leave, she passed by an old picture of her and her father and hesitated. Unlike Mercury, Aster Hamamura had no concept of a sharp tongue. As a composer, one of the upper engineers who dictated the designs of the lesser DJs, Aster had always been eager to show inventions to Venus and even made her a few things. Even when she was being scolded by him he never raised his voice at her. Still, after Venus’s accident he agreed with Mercury about Venus's need to redeem herself, and even if he seemed reluctant he had still chosen Mercury's side in the end.
Venus closed her eyes and sighed. I'm sorry Father… you didn't leave me with much choice. She looked at the photograph for a long while before turning around and creeping back to her room. She opened a drawer in her nightstand and pulled out a small music box, stars and constellations engraved on the sides. Her father made it for her on her fifth hatchday, and it played a song that her father said his parents used to sing to him to celebrate his birthday, a song from back when they lived on the surface. She held it close to her, remembering the times it had helped her fall asleep as a child. She blinked back tears as she pocketed the music box, deciding she couldn't leave without it. She quickly headed back into the living room, taking one last look at her former home before slipping out of the door, her ink color changing from the blue of her family's to the pink of the statue in the bay.